The Theory of Everything

Halloween as an Attack on Communist Doctrine...

2011-10-12T00:25:00.001+08:00

I'm preparing to give another lecture at my college later this month. Given the timing, I thought that the title 'The Importance of Superstition' might be appropriate. That idea got shot down right away--apparently the propaganda department of the college would have a hissy fit about this opposition to the Communist doctrine of 'Materialism'. Wow. Paint me surprised. Did they mean 'materialism' in the sense of the gold-plated BMWs most likely currently cruising the streets of Shanghai, perhaps? Anyway, it's 2011, and the Cultural Revolution was more than 40 years ago! Oh well. Guess I'll go with the less obvious, 'Halloween: Why We Tell Scary Stories'.

Here's a scary story for this year's Halloween: "And then Mao awoke, breaking free from his cryogenic entombment in the mausoleum on Tiananmen Square. He proceeded to terrorize the Chinese people, once again; slaying millions, yet again, as his zombie apocalypse spread like wildfire across this densely populated nation."

Critique of the critical

2011-04-14T10:34:00.001+08:00

Of the many cultural gaps between China and the developed democracies, criticism may be the most difficult to bridge. I sometimes feel, however, that it should be among the first that we try to bridge. A conversation in which only positive strains are allowed is only half a conversation. The project of finding ways to unite humanity in solving its own worst problems is difficult enough; it simply cannot be done without criticism of human weakness and past or present mistakes.

I grew up in an atmosphere of constructive criticism. An early memory from my childhood: my mother preparing a college seminar on critical thinking for Honors students. I wondered what this "critical thinking" could be, knowing that criticism is a negative thing, but guessing--from the very interesting games my mom prepared--that critical thinking was not an exercise in negativity at all, but the path to solving problems.

When I finally reached college, I found that all of my creative projects required constructive criticism as a necessary step, allowing me to push my writing and visual art further through the (often negative) observations of others. I can say with absolute certainty that my current artistic capability improved 10-fold by accepting others' criticisms and by training myself to criticize my own work. This is the basis of evolutionary adaptation, applicable to any human endeavor just as it is to the diverse creatures that thrive in the world.

As for China, let me start with a positive: there are at least two areas of discussion in which I find diverse Chinese taking on criticism without reflexive feelings of hostility or humiliation--even when foreigners jump into the conversation!

1) The Chinese natural environment, every Chinese person I've ever discussed the matter with agrees, is in a dire state. The smell, sight, and taste of urban smog cannot be ignored. The trash strewn by the side of highways and footpaths alike cannot be ignored. The scrim of algae (reacting to pollutants in the water) that covers once-beautiful scenic lakes cannot be ignored. Most importantly, exhortation to save China's environment has come from the government itself, signalling that criticism of this problem has been sanctioned at the highest levels and can be safely discussed. Thus, unlike the many problems glossed-over by the government, this is a criticism coming from Chinese as well, rather than an isolated imposition by foreign media.

2) The education system. As I've written before, all strata of Chinese society seem to agree that the education system requires reform. Students, parents, teachers, professors, and government administrators have all discussed this with me. This is an area where all have internalized criticism of the system as it stands, yet substantive reform has not yet taken place. Given the torpid bureaucracy and the doubtlessly numerous actors who benefit from the status quo, it may be decades yet.

I'm heartened that I can actually have full debate and discussion of these aspects of Chinese society and the China experience--without my Chinese friends taking offense and decrying me as a foul, critical, laowai! Some days it seems to me that there are few other subjects where critical thinking is as encouraged.

Perhaps it's just that outsiders,foreigners, are not welcome to criticize any aspect of China. Foreign media relishes open criticism--giving praise only where it is undeniably due--with a fervor that contrasts with the tame, state-owned Chinese domestic media. I'm sure, seeing this through the eyes of the average Chinese, the contrast must be shocking. What, newspapers that don't limit themselves to 30% negative news and 70% positive news? How crude! How gauche!

That shock I can understand, given the news environment. Likewise, I can understand how many Chinese might view global criticism, outside criticism, in view of China' humiliation by various Western and Japanese industrial nations in the past few centuries. Fenqing--young Chinese chauvinists--react particularly violently. The government hardly dissuades them from taking offense, of course, and even does its part* to fan the flames (most noticeably in its recent publication, "Global Times").

*The government can hardly distance itself from what Chinese news organizations do, given the level of government ownership and control over all media within the country.

All that said, there are a few realizations that would do a lot to improve the Chinese reception of outsiders' criticism--I think.

A) The "Western" tradition is that criticism is more acceptable when shared among all groups. Americans in particular have a historic distrust of government, going back to our relationship with the British central government, and thus have a habit of criticizing government--of any ideology or nation-state. All governments, including our own, merit being lampooned, so we are highly unlikely to make an exception for China--quite the opposite, any attempt to protest such criticism will only invite more concerted criticism. Some Chinese government bodies or news organs like to declare that western media have "hurt the feelings of the Chinese people" with critical reports of China or its government. Such declarations are destined to backfire.

B) With great power comes greater outside criticism. Example: Countries such as Eritrea or Equitorial Guinea have much more dictatorial, corrupt governments than China's, but come in for far less criticism in international fora. Why? Because most people are not likely to be concerned about such geographic, economic non-entities. Conversely, developed democracies such as the US, France, or Japan come in for quite a lot of criticism despite having high standards of living, many personal freedoms, responsive governance, and most other attributes widely considered desirable. So perhaps we could see criticism of a country, China for example, as a sign that people around the world actually care about it.

"China, you are important to us; now, why did you go to the KFC to eat junk food and hang out with your boyfriend instead of studying for your college entrance exam?"

C) A well-known dictum says, "problems cannot be solved until they have been accepted and faced". An alcoholic or other addict will never beat their addiction until they have admitted that they have an addiction. Likewise, when an outsider looks in on the situation in China--a situation where numerous problems may be discussed privately, but are commonly not allowed to appear in public fora--they see a lop-sided societal conversation where many important points (mostly criticisms) go unsaid. This is a vacuum that then draws the confident, criticism-comfortable outsider to express whatever he/she feels has not been said. This, then, may result in the impression that foreigners are far more critical of China than Chinese are, or that foreigners are negative by their nature.

Pleasantville = Harmonious Village

2011-04-08T01:05:00.001+08:00

Conservatives, whether of the Chinese Communist or American Republican variations, can be strikingly alike. When I assigned my class to watch the film, Pleasantville, (as homework, what a kind teacher I am) I was not struck by the film's portrayal of a mythical, white, 1950's utopia which American conservatives work so hard to return the country to. This much is as obvious as a toucan's nose.

I was, rather, struck by how closely this utopia seems to resemble the "harmonious society" which Hu Jintao has proclaimed as the Chinese Communist Party's goal to work towards: a world that works like clockwork, where the privileges of the powerful are unquestioned (patriarchs in either case), where sex is not acknowledged or even existent, where disaster (represented as fire or rain in the film; as milk adulteration or hit-and-run incidents in China) cannot impede upon man's utopia. Hu Jintao's "harmonious society" does not, as in the film, represent a humanly attainable ideal. This sort of harmony represents an ideal that if achieved would destroy the very humanity it sought to preserve.

Perhaps it is hyperbole to conflate an aspiration for harmony with a static, undead society. Certainly there is nothing wrong with hoping for harmony. Perhaps harmony is a virtue to work towards, but never entirely achieve. The journey, not the destination, is the valuable attainment. Right?

I wonder. Like in the film, China's harmony is less a harmony where all parties (both powerful and vulnerable) make concessions to the whole, and more a harmony where the powerful set the tune--however dissonant others may find that may be--and snuff out any divergent melodies. This is not a Confucian harmony, where great power begets great responsibility (yes, Confucius came up with that one before Uncle Ben). According to historians, no emperor of China has ever conceded fully to Confucian harmony. Likewise, The One Party--like the One Ring--concedes to no one. Thus, a harmony of complexities becomes impossible. Thus, Hu Jintao's harmonious future seems more and more like Pleasantville's: an empty paradise from empty platitudes.

One last thought the movie gave me: Color, like sex or rain, is a irresistible natural phenomenon. Color will come.

Universal Values

2011-04-01T01:53:00.000+08:00

A topic that has come up again and again in Sinophile discussions is the question of whether China is an exceptional case (note: Americans also like to see themselves as exceptional, exempt from international norms), or whether the Chinese people also ascribe to "universal values". There are important questions to ask: Are "universal values" as established in such documents as the UN Declaration of Human Rights truly universal--or merely Western? Do these universal values gel with the values that Chinese civilization aspires to? If human vices are--seemingly--universal, shouldn't human aspirations be as well?

For those who would like a wall of text that I did not produce, now turn to the China Media Project (run out of Hong Kong University), which has provided a truly beautiful comparison of two views, both from authentic mainland Chinese, on this subject:

http://cmp.hku.hk/2011/03/29/11205/

The first, clearly, is the view which the Chinese government wants promoted: that the China Model is exceptional due to China's exceptional circumstances as a continuous civilization-state; this view is that Chinese exceptionalism (also known as "_______ with Chinese Characteristics") can explain away all of the China's policy differences and frictions with the developed democratic countries of the world.

The government makes its arguments well. They should do: they've got numerous academics in numerous government think tanks whose full-time job is to come up with fig leaves for controversial government policies and practices. Their strongest point is that economic rights are human rights, too. China has indeed made a U-turn on economic rights, so I can understand why they wish to focus on the importance of Deng Xiaoping's policy reversal which has raised millions of Chinese citizens from utter poverty. I wonder, however, if the government understands that their greatest contribution to this has been their inaction (the Chinese philosophy of "wuwei", action of inaction), allowing private enterprise to bloom, rather than their actions--continuing support for numerous government monopolies in the form of easy loans from state banks, preferential policy, and preferential policing--which so often have the effect of squelching private innovation and enterprise.

The greatest error the authoritarian apologists have made in this project is in trying to suggest that this is simply a tug of war between "The West" and the rest (or maybe just that exceptional case, China). Are there not Chinese who ascribe to different points of view from those sanctioned/funded by their government? My own five year stint in China suggest that there are many:

Many who do not accept zealous state paternalism (much less authoritarianism) as an essential "Chinese characteristic"; many who do not accept a shackled and uniformly state-sponsored press as an essential "Chinese characteristic"; many who do not agree that a one-party government without checks and balances on its powers or accountability for its responsibilities is an essential "Chinese characteristic". It may be very hard to argue about what Chinese exceptionalism even means when the Chinese people as a whole have not been able to engage in a national conversation about which Chinese characteristics are essential to preserve as well as which Chinese characteristics are actually Chinese characteristics rather than common characteristics of most pre-industrial, pre-literate, pre-modern states.

Let me end with this: it is not a bad thing to discuss our assumptions about what constitutes "universal values". We must value the input of voices from developing countries which may be skeptical. Can the conversation have truly begun, however, when the greater diversity of views from countries like China has been suppressed? The powerful, of course, prefer to hide behind the excuse of exceptional national characteristics and circumstances whenever they have done ill--and that applies equally to how America and China have each used their "exceptionalism".

China's Winning Schools (a response)

2011-01-18T09:25:00.001+08:00

In response to this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/opinion/16kristof.html

Every Chinese I've ever discussed the topic with has lamented the horrible state of their schools: based on rote learning and constant testing, the "most successful" students here are often ones who know how to take a test well and memorize material, but can't solve even the most basic practical or creative problems. Some Chinese joke that their best universities (Tsinghua University and Peking University, both in Beijing) are only fit to putting out teachers, because the students who get such high scores on the Gaokao (the Chinese universal university entrance exam, and more-or-less the only qualifier for getting into a Chinese university) only know how to get high scores... and nothing else.

I often ask teachers and students about this, because it seems to me that everyone in China--students, parents, teachers, administrators, and officials--laments the state of their schools, but despite this, no widespread reforms seem to be in the making. They reply that a country as large as China, with many vested interests in the current system (most prominently the students and parents of students who are preparing for the Gaokao even from kindergarten--they'll say as much!--and the teachers and administrators who don't want to invest time or money in changing teaching methods), has a lot of difficulty making changes to that system.

For one thing, currently college admissions decisions are made based on a exam result number spit out by a computer. That number not only tells students which colleges they are eligible to attend (usually a list of about 4 or 5 schools, to my knowledge), but also which programs in which colleges they may attend. Often students have a dilemma between studying the money-making subjects at less-regarded colleges, or studying impractical and monetarily-useless programs (history or philosophy) at a good college. As far as incentive, they will usually take the better brand college, because college programs in China are generally thought of as useless in teaching practical knowledge (the author of the article is indeed right to call China's college system a national disgrace, but more on that later).

As for results from the Shanghai PISA testing, that can be explained in several ways: (1) from the excessive hard studying that Chinese students put in (a typical student starts his day at 6 or 7 AM, doesn't leave school until 6 pm, and studies until 1 AM); (2) Shanghai is a place that attracts the best, brightest, most resource-rich (to invest in the education of their children), and ambitious Chinese; (3) Shanghai, as well as a few other places such as Beijing and Shenzhen, serves as an experimental zone for further reforms. Like Americans, the Chinese have learned to make societal experiments on a smaller level before attempting to apply them to society at large. The reasoning being that societal change can be vastly destabilizing, the Communist Party is absolutely opposed to any change that could threaten its own survival. (Another couple reasons the school system hasn't changed on a wider scale in China being that their children (and childrens' futures) are one of the few things all Chinese will stand up and fight to the death for, and the other being that the children of Party members usually benefit from early access to promising experimental reforms.)

One important thing to note: do not be fooled by Chinese statistics with regard to education. There is truth in saying that China has done a good job improving education for even rural areas... because most of those areas did not even have formal education even quite recently. However, the education most receive in the countryside is still quite terrible by national or global standards, lacking resources or many qualified teachers (few Chinese are likely to do something akin to Teach for America as a character-building act of charity; although I have known a few students who talked of doing something of that sort, I'm sure their parents will probably talk them out of it). China, as an example, claims to have a 98% literacy rate, and yet official definitions of literacy in China only extend to the person understanding 1700 characters, rather than a requirement to be able to read or write coherently (the latter is the UN definition). That is to say that while China has undoubtedly accomplished a lot in terms of education, numbers and statistics provided by testing are often not an accurate way of gauging their success or any "threat" they may pose to other countries in the race to have the best education, and thus the best economic futures.

Now as for colleges/universities in China, they are generally quite pitiable. Several causes can be identified: (1) Students, after studying hard for the Gaokao all their life to that point, have finally made it past the great winnower and so they relax; (2) schools have been given the remit from the government in the past few years to expand massively to accommodate the vastly increased numbers of Chinese who can afford a college education; (3) schools have been partially weaned of government support, making them increasingly reliant on profiting from student tuition fees in order to both expand and to skim off private profits for administrators and teachers.

We can see a few major problems developing when we look closely at the model. The schools relying on tuition for their butter (or at least their extra butter) means that they are loathe to expel students (students = $). The result is a rash of diploma mills, grade inflation, and unmotivated students who correctly do not take their college seriously, and (perhaps) rightly want to take a breather after the long grind they've been put through. Students also know that--in China even more so than in other countries--the name of the school you graduate from matters infinitely more than the grades you achieve there in the finding of a job; most of the teaching being theoretical rather than practical, hiring companies disregard the content of that education to great extent. What we have, then, is a massive increase in quantity of degrees churned out yearly and a vast decrease in the value of those degrees--not just in quality, but also in terms of supply and demand. I imagine, in fact, that it could take a century or more for many Chinese institutions of higher learning to recover from this vast loss in the quality/quantity ratio. They do have futures as a respected institutions, but... quite a ways in the future.

One point alluded to here (and mentioned more in-depth in other articles) is that many Asians of the Confucian system succeed in education despite, rather than because, of the specifics of their country's education systems. Chinese value education, thus when students get vacations, they do not get time off, but rather get private tutoring and training that may indeed be more practical, creative, and valuable than the bulk of the studying they do for their public school testing. Chinese parents are more than willing to invest in the education of their children. As it quickly becomes clear (and has done in the past few years) that a college education is no longer a guaranteed path to a well-paid job, it is the private training centers that will indubitably pick up the slack, not the public school systems.

So yes, I would take the message of the article to heart: America should learn from the Chinese societal admiration for education (rather than repudiation of it); America absolutely should not copy by rote the Chinese trap of studying and testing by rote. Moreover, America should do what the Chinese have not yet successfully done: it should put more emphasis on reforming the education system holistically--with parents, teachers, unions, administrators, and government each doing their part.

First Contemplations of the New Year

2011-01-06T00:27:00.000+08:00

As I see it, chaos is without structure. It may consist of changing
forms, but those forms have no meaning because they have no context,
one to any other. They have no relationship, one to the other.
Thoughts, then, work to create relationships as well as boundaries.
Relationships cannot exist without boundaries: a link between two
things helps create a definition of those things (at least in what
they have in common). The more such links, the more defined a thing
is, and definitions--by definition--are exclusive. They exclude.

So, thoughts are the method by which we relate observed or conjectured
things. Thoughts define. These may (and probably always are)
approximate definitions. Models for understanding the universe that
work most--but not all--of the time. In this way thoughts restrict
meaningless chaos; thoughts channel its mutations. This leads to
something much more interesting than either changeless order or
indefinite chaos: complexity. One theory of the universe (God),
becomes many (multiple religions), and then even more complex (all the
many laws of physics, growing ever more complex, from Newtonian to
Einstein's theories to quantum). In a universe moving from a
highly-ordered state to a completely chaotic one (the third law of
thermodynamics), complexity is the best we can hope for.

The genesis of this particular pondering came from a friend's byline
which stated that 'not knowing' is intelligence, because the unknown
is boundless whereas thoughts are strictures. If that means that
remaining malleable to the surprising, shocking, paradigm-shifting
experiences life offers is wisdom, then I would agree. If it suggests
that thoughts themselves are at fault, I disagree. Thinking is not the
same as knowing. With thinking, there is always room for
reinterpretation and additional perspectives, even radical
redefinition. We see this happen in language, arts, and science.
Slang, new ideologies, and social adaptations would not exist
otherwise. Knowing, on the other hand, is assumption: taking for
granted. Rather than using the definitions provided by thought and
accepting their potential mutability, being used by those definitions.
The path to fundamentalism--whether of the secular or religious sorts.

As a matter of course, however, we all fall prey to the necessity of
knowing things we cannot absolutely know--erring on the side of order,
rather than complexity. We have finite resources of mind within which
to build our civilizations. We will all make assumptions, so that we
can devote energy to mundane tasks of survival, rather than
questioning--every second of every day--whether the ground beneath our
feet will dematerialize, whether we will spontaneously combust, or
whether we will vibrate into another dimensionality.

Chinese: The World's Newest Dead Language

2010-12-23T22:17:00.001+08:00

Chinese censors strike again: this time Chinglish (pidgin English based on Chinese grammar and idiosyncratic direct translation) is to be the victim.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12050067

Chinglish, RIP 2010?

I think not. Such hybrid language usage is far from dead. This does make me wonder about both the motives and the methods of the government in attempting to impose linguistic purity amidst China's debut on the world stage and accession to the forces of globalism. Mixed messages, a righteous volley against cultural imperialism, or just another imposition of the Great Firewall of China?

One motive may be that Chinglish (as well as English and acronyms derived thereof) can be effective in circumventing government censorship. Outright use of the English word 'government' on some BBSs, for example, sometimes hyphenated or with spaces as additional protection from the censors, allows commentators to directly reference the one party regime. The government could attempt to block input of non-hanzi characters on some websites, citing this new law, but is possible to block English (and Chinglish) from all the various non-governmental mediums such as social networks or text messaging services? Again, I think not.

Let us compare, moreover, living languages--such as the current lingua-franca, English--that attain wide global usage with dead languages incapable of assimilating alien concepts or making them easy to use. This government directive, then, is one step towards a harmoniously dead language, rather than a culturally vibrant, or creative language capable of innovating or renovating itself for modern usage. Less-than-grammatical borrowed appendages of the English language may offend snobs or nativists, but they are part of a larger creative process. Where would English be without bona fide Chinglish phrases such as "long time no see" and "chop chop", much less words like ketchup and tofu? And what of more elite loan words such as fengshui, kung fu, or yin yang? Descriptions such as 'salty/sweet tomato paste' or 'oriental martial arts' lack elegance and insert bulky explanation where none is necessary. The same problem happens when the Chinese broadcasters are forced to use the entire Chinese translation of a simple (and popularly understood) concept such as the NBA.

One last thought: will China soon be attempting to popularize acronyms based on pinyin transliterations of its own language? GCD (Gongchan Dang), for example, instead of CCP (Chinese Communist Party)? Or are any acronyms (by necessity romanized) verboten?

Waving the Bloody Shirt (if allowed)

2010-12-09T00:20:00.001+08:00

Something I'd been meaning to get around to mentioning:

>Some months back, I was invited to go on a weekend outing with some of my students, a Chinese colleague, and the colleague's daughter. We were to visit a local museum, or perhaps climb the nearby mountain--I forget which. The important bit is that the outing was called off without explanation. Curious about this, I asked my students what had happened. The weather had been nice; no revolution had yet begun; everybody involved was in good health. Apparently, all students were quarantined within the university that weekend. My colleague probably felt embarrassed to bring the matter up--as with so many other political issues. The reason being that there had been a demonstration in downtown Nanjing, so the undergrad students in their isolated, suburban "university town" developments were being deliberately kept from the fun. This follows a theory (I may or may not have expressed on this blog) that one reason for the university suburbs so popular in China now is the ability to cut the vast majority of students off from the city center in event of any event the government does not approve of. There are, of course, other reasons for such developments, but this anecdote now provided solid proof of this theory. Later, trolling the web, it turned out that the weekend had seen a number of anti-Japanese demonstrations (related to the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute).

While I find myself ambivalent at the idea of my fresh-faced young students being fascinated with a sometimes-racist nationalist protest of a matter that could be easily solved through diplomacy and concessions by both sides (and almost was)... I also feel quite sad that they were not allowed to see what a protest/demonstration is. Yet another example of how Chinese citizens, and particularly young people who are no longer children, find themselves unnecessarily treated as helpless, hapless children by their "strict father" government. I wish they could have been given the chance to see both what is nasty and base and what is exhilarating and uplifting in mass protest. They are old enough to discover their position on the matter for themselves. If the protest be an unreasonable protest which the government wished to keep from escalation, perhaps that should be seen as the consequence of frequent government sponsored anti-japanese "waving of the bloody shirt". Regardless, it is certainly not the fault of my students who are merely responding as they have been taught throughout their upbringing to respond.

The Sinocan-Catholic Church (and its repercussions)

2010-12-03T01:11:00.001+08:00

Does the Pope piss in the woods? I do not know, but, he is currently pissed at the Chinese government (okay, that was horrible). Several ordained bishops of the official Chinese Catholic Church (the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association or CCPA) were more or less kidnapped and forced to witness the ordination of a man chosen by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) without consultation from Rome.

(http://www.economist.com/blogs/asiaview/2010/11/catholic_church_china)

The Chinese side of this story just sounds like Chinese politics per usual: the Revered Guo Jincai had the guanxi (influence) to rise in station, so the CCP made sure that he did so regardless of moral credentials or Vatican approval.

I'm surprised that the Economist--given its home country--was not reminded of a historical parallel.

As in: five hundred years ago, King Henry VIII decided he wouldn't accept a church controlled by a political entity in Rome, so he created his own church--under English state control. True, this occurred within the context of a more general religious schism (the Reformation); regardless, parallels abound.

Today, the Chinese state has created the CCPA for similar reasons: an understandable paranoia about foreign political entities maintaining influential operations within one's borders as well as rivalry with the moral authority of religion in general. Also, there exists (as did in Henry's England) a Catholic church in secret, recognizing the papal authority and meeting privately within members' homes.

Perhaps Rome should just disavow itself entirely of the state-owned Chinese catholic church? Is there really any benefit to be gained from the continued semi-association and semi-legitimization of the CCP's puppet organization? Reconciliation with the state-owned church recognizes that the Chinese government is not as fanatically anti-religion as it once was, but the apparent ascendancy of hardliners within China's government suggests that there will be few if any religious freedoms won through such diplomacy.

The problem, of course, is that the Roman Catholic Church is acquisitive and not particularly content with the knowledge that other forms of Christianity win converts for the base religion. I doubt it wishes to accept--as it didn't with the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox churches--a schism which creates yet another church more-or-less catholic in tradition but which has no actual ties (moral adjudication or otherwise) with the Roman Catholic brand.

And now the Orwellian twist! The Catholic church decried this latest action by the Chinese government as a violation of Catholic religious freedom. The Chinese government then turned around and claimed the Vatican's criticism as a violation of its (the atheistic state's, apparently) religious freedom. Aside from the question of whether a protest or criticism (verbal) can be a violation of freedom, I began to wonder whether the Chinese government would actually have any basis for argument along those grounds if the Vatican fulfilled its threats of excommunications or came up with any other actions against the CCPA. For that matter, if the threat of excommunication is viewed as an action, rather than a verbal threat, does that mean that the Chinese Communist Party is recognizing the Vatican's spiritual authority to enact such a threat upon the Chinese government's church-like organ? Does this mean that an atheistic government (albeit one that claims the ability to assign reincarnations to politically-acceptable candidates) recognizes a spiritual threat as an actual threat? The CCP does leave itself open for so many hilarious zi xiang mao dun (self contradictions).

I give you this question: Could it ever be considered a violation of religious freedom to oppose a government's strictures on (or control of) religious activity?

The self-contradiction seems less so if one considers a state-backed church (like the modern Anglican Church) as a fully separate religious entity which citizens are fully free to join or not to join, to respect or disrespect as a religious authority. That would be to say that the Chinese government has the right to do whatever the hell it wants with its church-like organ, and the Chinese people have the right to view that organ with whatever disdain it earns.

Finally, perhaps we should view this matter as the theft of a brand: if the CCPA claims the moral authority of the Roman Catholic Church, but views the Vatican's punishments as a violation of the CCPA's religious freedom, then perhaps the Chinese state is guilty of having stolen a brand (the Vatican's) which does not belong to it. This CCPA does seem similar to a shanzhai (pirated, knock-off) product--such as the Blockberry--trading on the good reputation of the product it imitates--such as the Blackberry.

My advice, Pope, is this: Perhaps the time has come for the Vatican to join the WTO and accuse China of moral and/or intellectual property theft.

The Fifth

2010-11-07T01:45:00.001+08:00

I did have a nice, long weekend--my birthday, the fifth of November, happened to coincide with my school's sports meet.

I've been thinking further on the meaning of the Guy Fawkes gunpowder treason plot. Wasn't this an example of Christian fundamentalist terrorism? A precursor of the IRA?

Far from being the social revolutionary hinted at in the movie, 'V for Vendetta', Guy Fawkes was a Catholic reactionary. If I had a nice bonfire handy, I'd be happy to toss him on. I do sometimes wonder if the U.S. needs a similar cathartic holiday on September, 11. Perhaps I've mentioned this before, but I think we could throw effigies of Bin Ladin onto twin towers of burning Bush, I mean brush.

Fashion Zombies Get a Makeover

2010-11-07T01:25:00.001+08:00

I've been in China for almost five years. That's a frightening fact in itself. Given that time period, it would be reasonable to expect some changes. Hype provided by both the Chinese government media as well as foreign media suggest that China's current mantra is change: Change for the millions seeking economic upward mobility; change for China's openness (or sometimes lack thereof) to the world; change for the business climate and all the infrastructure that underpins it.

These examples are quite easily seen. Entire neighborhoods are being leveled to make way for leviathans of infrastructure and compositions of sky-sculpture from the trendiest architecture firms. But, five years spent in China reveal that these changes are just more of the same. Perhaps there is a more subtle evolution happening behind the veil of smog and skyscraper-barnacled horizons. The scenery of construction hasn't changed much in five years--recently-built streets experience precious few months of harmony before they are torn up and rebuilt-- but how about the people? Are they also merely static noise--a chaos abstraction--in their hearts, or have they reached new equilibrium points in that time period?

That's not a question I'm not prepared to answer at the moment. I have to ponder more on some of the conversations I've been having with various Chinese.

What I am prepared to talk about are some of the habits and behaviors that I found so fascinating on arrival in China. Habits aren't easy to change--says the computer game addict--and yet I've seen them do so.

NB: I now live in Nanjing, a far more cosmopolitan city than either Lianyungang or Chongqing. Some changes in attitude and dress might be reflections of that quality.

I remember a blog post from my first year in China. I excoriated the fashion-sense to be seen on the streets, and affirmed a (Chinese-American) college classmate's joke about the main external difference between Japanese and Koreans, and Mainland Chinese being the lack of fashion sense demonstrated by the latter. Does this unkind joke still make sense? Not from my observations on the streets of Nanjing in 2010. Perhaps off-brand, quirky Chinese outlets are still selling clothing meant for Martian prostitutes (in 50's B-movies) in the hinterlands, but it is no longer often to be seen in the major cities. It seems the Chinese fashion scene has reached accordance with world fashion in general--even if quirky bits of Chinglish still proclaim themselves from the otherwise sensible clothes.

Spitting. What foreign observer doesn't like to comment on the state of China's saliva, and whether it currently patters down on sidewalks from Harbin to Kashgar? My own observation is that public spitting is still alive and well amongst the country-folk and older generations, but its frequency seems to have greatly decreased--at least here in Nanjing. I only hear the torturing of tonsils followed by a watery 'thwack' about once or twice a week. Public campaigns for 'civilized behaviors' seem to have had an impact.

Ashen Wisps of Hair

2010-10-04T14:16:00.001+08:00

In any gathering of young Chinese you are likely to make a surprising observation: many of them, at the ancient ages of 17 or 21, have a significant frosting of white hairs radiating across an otherwise pitch-black scalp. Like the majestic silver-back gorillas, this fashion statement (intended or not) is not without its lining. But it does raise a mystery that I haven't answered to my satisfaction.

Is this a medical condition? Signs of bodily distress from all the pressure that young Chinese endure in the pursuit of good test scores, good college diploma, and a lucrative career? Deficiencies of an important nutrient? Evidence of the pod people? Shampoo chemicals run amok? A reaction to environmental hazards?

Or is this a fashion statement? Many young people--myself included--admire the Sephiroth look. That said, a few hoary strands do not make a pearly mane.

Wedding on a Budget?

2010-10-03T01:44:00.001+08:00

I need some advice on how to conduct a wedding on a budget.

With a prospective move to US, visa/immigration costs for my fiancee, and costs of settling into our chosen destination (Seattle), the prospect of paying for two weddings (one in the US, one in China) has my financial future looking a bit grim. Furthermore, my Chinese in-laws have suggested that the Chinese wedding will cost about 50,000 yuan (about $8,000). While that's not an unreasonable cost for a wedding--a friend recently paid about 10k for her wedding, so she tells me--it may be unreasonable to expect that we can pay for one at that cost and still have money for another wedding. Not to mention, I'd like to keep some of my savings as a buffer/nest-egg for starting the next leg of life with all its various responsibilities and needs.

Unfortunately for me and my bride to be, we're up against a conception of honor, obligation and shame that permeates the bedrock of Chinese culture: "face". Face is the shame inflicted by the eyes of others--never the guilt one inflicts upon oneself--for not living or acting the socially accepted norm. Face is the obligation to succeed and become the envy of others. Face is being calm, collected when staring at calamity or injustice. All these and more. Face, as you might guess, insists that a wedding be a grand one, providing (among other things) a feast 30% more abundant in food than even the most gluttonous guests could possibly consume. While I've been hoping to plan simple and smart, spending at most a couple thousand per wedding, my fiancee's family has been thinking about the envy on their neighbors' faces.

Face has not always been unkind to me. Kiera's family perceived a great gain in face with their neighbors and friends for having caught themselves a foreigner as a future son-in-law. They are kind people, so I doubt they would have mistreated me in any case, but it certainly eased the acceptance of such an alien element into their lives. This conception of face is not without reason, but it does not fit well with an unconventional guy like me in an unconventional situation.

One bit of brightness, although it may sound crass in the extreme: the Chinese do have a tradition of wedding money given to the bride and groom. Some Chinese even manage to gain a net profit from their weddings. Alas, this does not solve my problem. Kiera's extended family and friends are not (by and large) well-to-do, upper-class or upper middle-class Chinese. Her father estimates we might get back about 20K RMB on an outlay of 50K. That still leaves about double the cost I was looking to pay on the Chinese half of my wedding.

Well, strategies for the weddings in general may have to be reformulated, and budget ideas may not translate well to the Chinese ceremony, but I'd nonetheless appreciate any ideas any one of you--out there in cyberspace--might have to share. Do keep in mind that although this blog gets re-posted on Facebook, as well as on Buzz and the blog at Blogspot itself, I'm not often able to get through the Chinese Great Firewall to check FB or Blogspot. Shoot me an email (to my Gmail account) or find me on Google Chat/AIM.

This Island is... Diaoyutai or Senkaku?

2010-09-29T18:07:00.001+08:00

Island disputes in the waters surrounding China seem to be all the rage of late. The Paracel, Spratly, and now the Senkaku/Diaoyutai island chains are being contested by the resource-hungry rising powers of East Asia. Will the world's next naval conflict be fought over these barely-emergent atolls and shoals? I'm beginning to worry that it might, and plan to be long gone from China when that does happen.

The surrounding fisheries might be reason enough to covet these islands--remote outcrops that support few if any humans, and in some cases only the odd goat or a few colonies of seabirds. But like many major conflicts in the world,the natural gas and/or oil below the seafloor seem to be the root of the problem. I doubt that China would see fit to attempt to claim the ENTIRE South China sea if not for the resources supposed to be down there, and I doubt the Chinese and Japanese would spend much time wrestling over the Diaoyu/Senkakus if not for the natural gas fields located squarely where Japan claims (and China disputes) the sea border between their two territories.

These disputes could be solved amicably through negotiations (China has certainly settled disputed borders with almost all of its other neighbors, excluding India), and many observers had thought that such a resolution was well on its way to reality--Japan and China had agreed to jointly exploit the gas reserves along their border. However, lately China has taken a bullying, sometimes petulant, approach. A zero-sum, winner takes all, Neocon approach to diplomacy seems to have taken root in Beijing. Why?

Is it that recent financial turmoil has given China's government a new confidence in its clout? Or, conversely, is this evidence of weakness: that China's central government is now beholden to the whims of a variety of special interest groups--populist, military, and industrial? Opaque in its methods and its considerations, it may be impossible to pinpoint a singular, main reason for the recent aggressiveness of China's foreign policy. Many possible culprits exist.

Chauvinist nationalism has been promoted among the populace to replace the defunct ideals of socialism (with or without Chinese characteristics); in recent years, China has reaped unpredictable dividends from this educational campaign. No longer do top leaders seem to have much leeway in negotiating foreign policy, particularly when it comes to territorial claims or protecting Chinese and Chinese interests overseas. Does it seem odd that an authoritarian government bows to populist pressure at all? Perhaps the politburo feels that giving in to populist pressure on foreign policy issues allows it to ignore demands for domestic reforms.

China's industrial/military complex--like in other major countries--seems to have grown in power and sway as well. Territorial claims (and bordering territories where China's cultural assimilation process is yet weak) certainly come under the remit of military concerns. Unfortunately, some of the top brass seem to have reached their melting points in these recent, relatively peaceful times. Several top generals have weighed in on a variety of border disputes, rarely with anything diplomatic to say, whether or not it aids China's foreign ministry. How much power do they exercise over China's leaders? Again, hard to say, but clearly the CCP can not rule without the aid of the military. As one of my Chinese friends put it: "The moment the army turns on the Communist Party, many of us would be happy to end one-party rule." Consequently, military aggressiveness, like populist chauvinism may be a force that cannot be contained, or as the Chinese might say, a tiger that must be ridden.

Last, industry may also play a large part in the unfolding drama of the barren islands. Steel price negotiations, revaluation of the yuan currency, and China's strategic loans to resource-rich countries have all shown the degree to which China's government and its business establishment have melded into one entity. Fossil fuels to be extracted so close and so cheaply could hardly fail to attract the interest of powerful bureaucrat-businessmen within the state-owned energy companies. I have read that Chinese negotiations to buyout Australian resource extraction company, Rio Tinto, were organized from the office of the premier, Wen Jiabao. Consequently, when Australian governmental and populist unease blocked the negotiations, anger reached to that very same lofty office in the official heirarchy. Retribution shortly followed. Is there a parallel to be seen?

While the Japanese have at last released the Chinese fishing trawler captain, the Chinese are now demanding an apology. An apology for a legal process and relatively quick release that would not have occurred had the shoe been on the other foot? This bodes badly for peace in the seas surrounding China, whether populism, militancy, industrial greed, or diplomatic overconfidence be the cause. I would wish to be neither fish nor trawler in those frought seas.

Concerns in a New Semester

2010-09-11T15:49:00.001+08:00

A new semester and a new school. Both seem to be going well, thus far.

Pros: Motivated students well-qualified to take the IELTS exam; a computer with a printer (although the computer seems to be the exact same one I had about 10 years ago, back in the states); housing in a nice hi-rise condo in downtown Nanjing.

Cons: The campus is huge, and my oral English classes--and office--are on the exact opposite side of it from my IELTS writing classes; my direct boss (of the foreign study program) seems to be the penny-pinching, more concerned with cutting costs on foreign teacher maintenance than on taking care of those particular charges; my office is a barren shell of a room in a building where the paint flakes from the walls like a grove of birch trees.

Other current concerns:

> Starting the process to obtain a fiancee visa for my fiancee. The outright costs look to be about $1500, not including medical exams, translation fees and suchlike. Yikes.

> I wrote (or adapted) a few nursery rhymes for Kiera's kindergarten classes. One of the kid's parents happens to work in publishing. They have an idea to publish a book of English-language nursery rhymes adapted where necessary to make the language easier for 5-year old Chinese kids to learn. They want to hire me to write/re-write the nursery rhymes. This idea has a lot of profit potential, apparently. The parent/publisher gave Kiera a 500 yuan "Teacher's Day gift" on her phone--both a practicality for future business calls and a standard Chinese method for obtaining guanxi (influence) in order to reserve Kiera's (and my) services. The parent has also suggested that the book would include some mention of the school where Kiera works. Great advertising opportunity for the school--the boss is thrilled--and a great way for the publisher to work out any problems with Kiera's main employer before they develop.

> Preparing for and looking for a proper career-type job in the States. Seattle, specifically. In order for the Fiancee visa (and then Green Card) to be issued, I have to have an income of $10,000, then $17,000 a year in order to prove I can support my new bride. So, despite having saved up a small nest egg, the job issue is a crucial one. Great timing to be looking for a job, also, right? But despite all the doom and gloom in US news reports and the perceptions of the middle and lower classes, I have a lot of faith in the economy of my home country. Jobs do exist, for people with skills, talent, and the willingness to take on less-than-perfect work as a stepping stone. I believe that, and I hope my belief is not misplaced, because now all our plans are riding on it.

Problems, always problems

2010-07-23T13:26:00.001+08:00

There's just no relenting by the forces of Murphy's Law. It turns out that the Foreign Affairs Officer at my previous school booked me for the wrong visa. This whole year I have been incorrectly and illegally working while on a 'student' residence permit. I have no idea how she even finagled this, but we're guessing she did so because the student residence permit might be cheaper, and she can just pocket the difference. Well, she seems to be out of town (or just not answering her phone, which would be just like her-eternal-laziness), and my visa runs out on the 31st of July. So even assuming that I don't get kicked out of China about one week from now, my travel plans for the month of August might have just gotten kicked in the teeth. I have to have my residence permit thing worked out so that I can take my passport with me while traveling in China (needed for checking in at almost all hotels and hostels--just the ones that aren't technically allowed to house foreigners will keep you off the books, and thus not need to see passports).

BAH!

My Burmese Days (5): Pilgrims of the Golden Rock

2010-07-23T01:50:00.001+08:00

My previous missive (over a month ago!) left us on the shoulder of a highway several hours north of Yangon. The time is about 3:00 AM. A large pig roots through darkness in the ditch below the highway. Several Burmese are seated with us on flimsy plastic stools. My plan is to flag down a bus heading to Kyaiktiyo (pronounced: jike-tee-o), the place of the holy, golden rock poised at the brink of a mountaintop. The fellows seated nearby have other suggestions. A pickup--much like the "jeepneys" of the Philippines--hurtles from the dark, and in we jump. Cold wind whistles through the interstice of our clothing, and we huddle with little old ladies, their baskets of fresh-picked roses ( the fragrance a presence as well), and a rack of gas tanks warning us not to smoke. An old woman sat smoking towards the back, sandals hanging off into oblivion. Forty minutes on, Kiera and I are passed on to another pickup like batons in a relay race. And we do race on, the dawn sneaking towards us as we do. Our new coach is laden with sugarcane, and my knees are scrunched up at eye level in order to accommodate it. Kiera is none too happy, either. A fourteen hour bus ride and then this? And I do not even know if this will be our final truck in the journey towards the golden rock. It isn't.

Day 8

Passed on again, an ancient lady--squished against Kiera--belches constantly and the surreal, serene pre-dawn blue infiltrates our muddle. No one speaks a word of English. Minority women, most likely Mon or Karen chatter on in their own languages, and the need for a bathroom break makes itself known at this least convenient of moments. I can't find the correct translation in my guidebook, and my garbled Burmese enlightens no one. We arrive in the village of Kinpu around 9 or 10 AM.

Kinpu is a quiet village resting at the base of the mountain ridge where the golden rock, Kyaiktiyo, perches. Jungle canopy shades the motley wooden assortment. The town is named for a arboreal seed pod that yields the natural shampoo that helps keep many a Burmese coiffure glossy and black. Oddly enough, the subject of hair brings us back to the object of our quest: Kyaiktiyo.

The golden rock was not always golden, one must guess, and neither did it always perch precariously on its aerie, gazing at the distant sea. The perfect balance of this cottage-sized rock upon the edge of the abyss is aided by the presence of one of Buddha's hairs somewhere beneath its bulk. And how did this wondrous rock get to where it is now? It was floated there, of course, on a flying ship captained by an alchemist prince of yore, from its origins in the depths of the ocean. No one seems to know exactly why the stone was brought from seabed to mountaintop, the logic lost to the mists of time. Now an object of pilgrimage, we see how the animist traditions live on within the folds of Burmese Buddhist tradition. Worshipers of the rock ascend the mountain and daub it in eternal layers of gold leaf, and where is Buddha to be found in all this fuss?

Regardless of the compromised theology behind it, I respected Kyaiktiyo. First, like all good pilgrimages, sweat and tears and a bit of sacrifice had brought us here. Fears and a little bit of fury. Through an all-night odyssey of cramped conveyances and a final, steep ascent, we had moved towards this lodestone. I'm still not sure if this stop on our journey through Myanmar felt predestined for Kiera, but for me it did. Ten years previous, I had sat in a Barnes & Noble bookstore, absorbed by photography and a description of Kyaiktiyo. Buddhist I may not be, but this had been an actual pilgrimage for me.

Marbled paving, heated by the afternoon sun and slick with the wax left by evening pilgrims, caps the final few hundred meters of ridge approaching the rock itself. Young monks in crimson robes stand beside us on the quieter, inland side of the plaza. Lands disputed by minority militias race away towards the Thai border. A helipad plasters a knob of ground closer below us. Tourists gravitate to the seaward side and its golden glint. A small pagoda rides the back of the rock like a barnacle on the shell of a sea turtle. Men are allowed across a short bridge that guards the rock itself. There they prostrate and wrestle little square tabs of sticky gold leaf onto the available surface of the Kyaiktiyo. Wisps of fugitive gold leaf flutter in the turbulent winds that wash across the face of the rock, and off into the abyss beyond it. Semi-detached bits curl in the wind like the fluff of a newborn chick. The hair and clothes of the pilgrims is speckled with wealth.

A mere hop away, a terrace projects. Women are allowed to worship the rock from there, or from a desk that extends down the cliff face beneath the rock. God forbid the men behind and above should accidentally shift the rock with all their fervent daubing, down upon the bent heads of the women worshiping below.

I cross the bridge and tamp down some gold. On closer inspection, the surface within range of pilgrims' hands bulges and undulates with accumulation. The brilliance of the gold here is blackened with the grime of a million imploring fingers and the natural shampoo of a million bowed heads.

Day 9

Down the coast to Mawlamyine (Ma-lee-myen) where George Orwell was once stationed. We're in the long, thin tentacle of Myanmar that gropes its way south between Thailand and the Andaman Sea. Much of this region is off-limits to tourism, particularly in the mountainous territory inland. Bombings and incidents between the national army and armed minority militias are not unknown in these parts. That said, the trip is uneventful. A thousand palm trees nod assent in the drowsy tropical breeze. Kiera has never been to the ocean, and we hoped to find a beach where she can make that acquaintance. What we found, however, were reedy mudflats and a romantic city sleeping by the sea.

Approaching Mawlamyine, a great bridge crosses the mouth of the Salween River (now called the Thanlwin). Both north and south of the river, a ridge accompanies the highway and backdrops the city. Spines of numerous golden paya erupt from its backbone. The bridge crosses above Shampoo Island, so called due to the hair-washing rites that ancient royalty took part in. The city itself is decaying grandeur: teal mosques and high-peaked temples of teak are lost among ravenous, long-limbed banyans.

Arriving hungry, we set out to find what seafood delicacies were to be found. What we found, however, was a local marriage ceremony for a young ethnic Indian couple. Two of the guests (a Burmese and his ethnic Chinese wife) invited us upstairs from our chosen restaurant where we supped on caramel ice cream and met the happy couple. This was probably about the thousandth happy accident I've experienced while traveling. My advice? Forget cast-iron plans and let the accidents happen. Given the language gap, we could have easily refused to be beckoned upstairs.

My Burmese Days (4): The Pagan Plains and Mount Popa

2010-06-12T14:22:00.001+08:00

What is now called Bagan has at other times been named "Pagan". I'm not sure if that's happenstance or a Western judgment of this sultry plain strewn with a multitude of brick temples and raised plinths dedicated to an un-Christian god. Regardless, I couldn't resist the alliteration.

Day 6:

Sandy tracks proliferated among the brush and temples, sucking at the ravaged tires of our bikes. Vendors, today's temple guardians, stick close to their fount of spirituality and present-day wealth. Sand paintings, postcards, and the usual assortment of contraptions that clueless tourists buy. Considering Myanmar's closed economy, a vital string of potential sustenance for people who have no other strings to pull.

At one magnificent pahto (full-blown temple with interior circuit) squirrels clung to crumbling crenelations. Hop-scotch across sun baked stones became necessary--we shed our shoes on crossing into the temple grounds, including the outer courtyard. The peace is interrupted, and a meal, when I'm backing up to try and get a picture that can encompass the height and breadth of the temple. A hiss interrupts my thoughts of composition, and an angry snake left off wrestling with a dazed gecko. The snake quickly disappeared into a chink in the temple wall, but the gecko remained sitting upon the brick of its almost-doom. Dazed, perhaps, or just wary of this new bipedal savior.

The next temple is accursed. Spires rise from the burnt-umber plain, blunted. Unfinished. A cruel and hated king of ancient Myanma built this place. That king had decreed that the bricks should be fitted so tightly together that not even a pin could be pushed between them. Slots in the walls supposedly are where the king had laborers' arms chopped off--slashed from living bodies that hadn't managed to build the temple to the king's exacting standards. Some years into the construction the king was assassinated and the interior of the temple bricked up. Sealed with its evil memories inside. Coincidentally, Kiera's bike went completely flat (one tire broke open along a lateral seam) while we were inside the cursed temple. We scuttled back to the hostel, defeated for the moment.

Another sunset watching the Bagan plain. After nightfall we biked along unlit roads towards the most famous (and most touristed) temple, Ananda Paya. We walked in just minutes before closing and got a guided tour from one of the caretakers. Bat flit in the cavernous interior; a 10 m Buddha carved from a single pine tree trunk (hardwood trees of such splendor must be long gone from Myanmar) gaze down at us, mingled apathy and bemusement in those eyes. So I've always felt. Mini-Buddhas occupy the hundreds of niches that interpose each giant, cardinal-point Buddha.

Day 7:

We got up very early to start the first of two pilgrimages we undertook while in Myanmar. We chartered a minibus with two European couples. Outnumbered by the Europeans, I fear Kiera had a difficult time keeping up with the chatter. These days in China I don't get so many chances for quasi-scholarly conversation. Our conversation took us past the bumpy miles of washed-out road leading to Mount Popa.

Mount Popa's veneration predates Buddha, going back to the pantheistic nature worship that prevailed in Myanmar before the arrival of saffron-robed monks from the Indian subcontinent. Mount Popa is the home of the remnant, Nat spirits. Are they angry that they're no longer the sole gods of this golden land, or just grateful to be given any sacrifice, any attention? As with other Asian cultures that took up Buddhism--but didn't wish to forsake their native religion--the Nat pantheon was given a place as servitors of Buddha, using a theological loophole. A compromise that allows them to remain revered.

Mount Popa is a spire of shriven volcanic rock, a core from while all the dross has been eroded over the ages. The palace of the Nat rests upon its brow, much as fabled Olympus. Whether or not the Nat actually reside there, simian servitors certainly do. A horde of monkeys awaits on the winding stair that ascends the cliff face toward Nat heaven. The excrement and piss left by unrepentant monkeys exceeds the alms left by penitent pilgrims. And we had to climb the mountain barefoot!

Pilgrimage should never be without trial or treacherous obstacle, however. As it is, the cement and iron re-bar path, carpeted in parts and tiled in others, is too easy on the foot. I can only imagine what manner of rocky, sandy path and bamboo ladders might have once existed here as access and egress from the home of the gods.

Knowledge of the Nats, unfortunately, was beyond our ken--we didn't hire a guide--and as a result, the full effect may have been lost on us visitors. The Nats themselves were mannequins dressed in fairly ordinary clothes that would look at home in any Asian mall, rather than this sanctum sanctorum. They all had a pissed-off expression molded into their plaster faces. I suppose they have reason. "Damn you, Buddha! You fat bastard." You'd think that all the (admittedly nearly-worthless) Myanmar currency deposited around them and pinned to their clothes would mollify them a bit.

The panoramic view from the top: dry lowlands crisscrossed by pilgrim trails to one side; a high, volcanic rim sheathed in fog and monsoon forest on the other side. Once upon a time this must have been a true Olympus, aloof from the earth beneath and insulated from the troubled country beyond. Now, a Disneyland kitsch and the overall ease of the ascent detract from the spiritual ambiance. What Mount Popa does have, is the steady stream of very real, very devout pilgrims that come here. The worship of the Nats and the mercurial natural world they represent (see above: monkeys) yet lives on.

On my descent, a monkey napping in the rafters was disturbed by my passage, bared his fangs, and made to jump at me. Who is the Nat of Monkeys that I should placate?

Day 7 1/2:

Another dreadful twelve hour bus ride through the Burmese night, past the stolen wealth of Nay Pyi Daw. Epic sore butts. Our bus left us on the shoulder of a deserted stretch of highway outside the town of Bago. Three o'clock in the morning. The next adventure began there.

My Burmese Days (3): The Road to Bagan

2010-05-20T15:32:00.001+08:00

Day 4:

The murderous tropical sun caused Kiera to lament for a parasol--boating along the dockside shores of Yangon was out, then. The sampans on the Irrawaddy lay bare to the heat. Would we travel up to see the gems museum--but avoid buying any of the gems for sale in the attached Junta-run gems market? No, we opted to get cheated out of about $30 by a black market money changer instead.

On our way to the train station, I allowed myself to be beguiled by an offer of 1,000 Kyat on the dollar. Kiera, by contrast, was the voice of reason, and I should have listened to her. We were led to a darkened stairwell next to a youth hostel at the Sule pagoda's roundabout. The moneychangers split the stack of money they were trading for my 'Benjamins' into two sections--asking if I wouldn't like to trade more than just $200? I counted one stack, handed it back to the fellow (see the mistake?) and counted the other stack. They then proceeded to kick up a fuss about the annotation of the notes--HB on my notes, but CB notes have often been refused in Myanmar due to a counterfeit 'superbill' that had circulated some years back. I stood up, ready to take back my dollars and walk out (I had the kyat back in hand), and they backed down. So here the darkness, the fact that I was planning of leaving Yangon for the countryside that day, the diversionary tactic, and the fact that kyat are so devalued that it is unwieldy to count an entire stack of 200,000....

Oh well, it could have been worse. I decided to change *only* $200 (and kept back another couple hundred). Palming off 30,000 Kyat ($30 at the exchange rate they claimed they wished to give me, or about $22 at the exchange rate given at our hotel) from a stack of 100,000 kyat was about the limit of what they could possibly take, given the circumstances. So let all future travelers beware: Exchange your dollars with neither tourist-area black market exchangers or the Myanmar government--both are reliably criminal.

An old city train--probably British-era--encircles Yangon. The train cars were battered, rusting, with wooden planks for flooring more commonly seen in a barn. Creaking as it swayed on mangled tracks beneath us, the train carried us onwards as we pushed through curious, helpful crowds of Burmese. Piles of fruit and small goods lay about the train car, strewn like turds behind a horse. An area at the back of each train car is roped off. This might be called first-class seating--instead of sitting on our haunches among the holloi polloi, we needn't even knock elbows in the section reserved for low-ranking soldiers, police, and tourists. These three groups are the only forms of VIP likely to be stuck on this trundling mode of transport. At least we were getting value for our overpriced $1 ticket fee.

3:00 PM - 4:00 AM

The bus ride to Bagan really did take that long, eating its way across the dusty central plains of Myanmar. Scrub brush and prairie grass as far as the eye could see--not exactly what one pictures when thinking of tropical Burma, but reality rarely does fit itself to the distant predictions of armchair wanderers. Bumpy, cramped, uneventful.

Until.

Sometime around midnight, the unlit darkness pared back to reveal multitudes of sodium lamps borne on their poles like the slim palms of a Hollywood boulevard. That demonic, vermilion glow was appropriate illumination for the newest creation of a junta gone mad with money and numerological paranoia: Nay Pyi Daw. The brand-spanking new capital city of Myanmar.

Is Nay Pyi Daw a developmental oasis in an otherwise parched and unlivable section of the country, or is it a mirage that will eventually become just another ghost town in a county dotted with the projects of power-mad kings? Analysts around the world tried to parse the decision in 2005 by Myanmar's junta to relocate the government from downtown Yangon to an area of barren fields some 200 miles north of it. Some said that the Iraq invasion inspired the paranoia of Myanmar's junta, Yangon being more susceptible to seaborne invasion; some said that astrologers and numerologists had precipitated the move by playing on the superstitions of the generals--most of the now-rotting capitals of Burmese kingdoms past were built for similar reasons; and the generals themselves claimed that Yangon was too constrictive, not spacious enough to allow for expansion of the government. Any or all these reasons could be true.

What is also true is the unimaginable amount of resources it cost to construct--in a country where electricity blinks on and off constantly, public utilities in even the largest, most urbane city of Yangon are crumbling, and the vast majority of its population lives in abject poverty. Can a capital be a crime?

Triple rows of unblinking lights cast light on ostentatious sculptural effigies; flower gardens sprouted from dessicated earth; massive new boulevards sketched wanton runes of oppulence across the dark, empty plain. Spas, malls, and mansions clustered like torpid zombies by the side of the highway. This place built for SUVs and gated communities--a new Versailles or a new Beverly Hills?--fawned upon by every infrastructural advantage conceivable. Whatever other conclusions one might draw about Nay Pyi Daw, the most obvious one was just how insulated the ruling elite would be from the mundane difficulties experienced by their subjects. The aftermath of Cyclone Nargis would be but the first of many horrors that these McMansions on the road to Mandalay would be able to ignore.

We arrived in Bagan around 4:00 AM, the stillness of the early-morning dark cloaking both village and the wonders beyond it. Avoiding the touts, we walked across the road and onto unlit sandy lanes. Both stillness and darkness were occasionally punctuated by the chug of generators and the filaments of light that they supported. I think we walked past our intended hotel (which had neither generator nor light) several times before a helpful local cast a high powered flashlight across its entrance for us.

Day 5:

We woke at noon. A batch of Indian curries served on palm leaves dispelled the last vestiges of fugue from our stomachs and minds. The owner of the restaurant was once a gem salesman in Myanmar's center of ruby mining and trade: . He appraised the ruby of Kiera's engagement ring: real, but apparently rubies of that size used to cost only $1, back in the day, rather than the much more expensive price I paid for it. Nonplussed, I hired a couple trishaws (bicycle rickshaws common to Myanmar and other parts of SE Asia) to take us to Bagan's UNESCO treasure trove. Kiera's driver was so old, wheezy, and decrepit, we were concerned that he might up and die as he strained at the peddles of the trishaw.

Bagan: A vast, dry savanna dotted by hundreds of ancient brickwork temple spires. A mere skeleton of its ancient grandeur, when the cruel kings of old sought to placate the divine with the building of these temples, Bagan is still easily one of the wonders of the world. Like Angkor Wat, but more numerous in its spires, and much more dispersed. No one picture could ever possibly encompass or capture the breadth of this place. I tried to do just that, of course, if only in microcosm.

We shed our shoes and climbed up to the roof of a lonely pahto (pahto: a type of temple containing an interior as well as several accessible decks on its roof) sited well off the main road and halfway to the greasy, green waters of the Irrawaddy. Dusk closed slowly upon us, rapine clouds descending to steal the sunset's ruddy glow from us and every other tourist upon the plain.

My Burmese Days (2): The Shwedagon Paya

2010-04-10T20:12:00.001+08:00

*NB: I'm omitting last names of people I met in Myanmar... there's no knowing if things they said to me could get them in trouble with the government.

Unmissable and unmistakable as one taxis around the scuffling low-rise urban sprawl of Yangon: the jewel-encrusted spire rises from a golden bell and a forest of lesser spires. The Shwedagon Paya is Yangon's most ancient symbol, and Myanmar's most holy place. This was the crowning jewel of our second day in Myanmar, but I get ahead of myself.

Our night's sleep plagued by the blackouts that periodically sweep the city (and the country). What better introduction to the criminal lack of public infrastructure (not) developed under the current regime? The problem for sleeping was less that the lights went out, but more that when the lights went out one would reconcile oneself to an early night's sleep... but forget to make sure that all the room's light switches had been turned to the off position, only to be wakened in the middle of the night when the lamps blinked on again.

We awoke fresh, with aspirations to blend--as well as tourists can--into the hubbub of Myanmar's main metropolis. We walked past the Sule Paya, at the center of the city, into the Chinese Quarter. This part of town marks the importance of economic migrants from China and India, when Myanmar was under British rule. The British rulers encouraged Indian civil servants to fill a gap in educated labor and Chinese merchants to bring international commerce into Myanmar. Both minorities were faced with racial pogroms, however, as power was handed back to the Burmese, and thousands of Chinese and Indians fled the country at that time. Quite striking compared to post-colonial Malaysia, wherein harmony is maintained by Malaysian domination of civil service and Indian/Chinese domination of the private professions.

Today's Myanmar, however, sees a resurgence in business-immigration from China and India. I'm told that the boom in Chinese business and investment is much more evident in Mandalay (further up the Irrawaddy river, and thus closer to China) as well as the regions bordering China, but that day in Yangon's Chinatown, we saw much more evidence of Indian investment and business-migrants. On a side road dotted by electric generators we met a middle-aged Indian businessman from Calcutta. His first name was *Haji Mohamed. Mohamed's import business was thriving--having the right to add 'Haji' to one's name signifies that a Muslim has made his pilgrimage (or Hajj) to Mecca... not a cheap trip to make from India! Mohamed's business was mostly concerned with bathroom fixtures and other necessities for home decoration, but Myanmar's economic isolation meant that even this simple business could be quite profitable. Mohamed's English was basic, "Bush BAD, Bush just knows WAR; I don't know politics, don't know war, just know BUSINESS!" In this fashion (and through his son who was completely fluent and articulate in English) we learned that he didn't like the Myanmar government (whom he referred to as Communists, which at one point they loosely were), disliked the Chinese government for similar reasons, but liked the Chinese people just fine (he sometimes did business with a Chinese furniture/bathroom fixtures company), and liked Obama quite a a lot. As we had this stilted conversation in the cool recesses of his office, his son was on Skype with a business contact located in Bankok, Thailand who overheard our discussion of the current US president. "You like Obama?" It turned out that all of us there, from the US, from China, from India, from Myanmar, and from Thailand could agree on that. No matter what other political discussions may be ongoing in the States these days, anyone who steps beyond the US borders will quickly understand the difference Obama has made on foreign perception of the US.

Outside, mosque cupolas were obscured by the shifting flocks of pigeons; another pigeon perched upon the head of a Hindu god; street sellers of myriad goods called out their wares. A pervasive street good was betel nut: a reddish, mild narcotic quite popular throughout parts of India and SE Asia. This SE Asian equivalent of a cigarette called for elaborate preparations: the nut of the Areca palm is laid upon the leaf of the Betel tree, squirted with a liquid made up of dissolved mineral lime (to catalyze the narcotic chemical), cut with tobacco or flavorings, and wrapped up into a neat little package that can be tucked into the mouth and chewed. The eventual remains of that chewing can be seen streaking the gutters of the city, and a lifetime of chewing Betel leaves one's teeth burnished dark red.

Just north of the famed Aung San Bogyoke Market (named after Aung San Suu Kyi's father, one of Myanmar's liberators from colonial rule), we had lunch. Fried butter fish lived up to their name, melting in our mouths. The Burmese cuisine, we found, was not very spicy at all--quite strange considering that it is surrounded by SW China, Thailand, and India. A centerpiece of the meal is a salad of random fruits and greens (uncooked Thai eggplants were quite common) soaked in fermented fish sauce. Kiera wasn't really a fan, but then she (like most Chinese) doesn't much appreciate the taste of uncooked vegetables.

Given Myanmar's aforementioned economic isolation, imagine my shock to find A&W root beer sold in a department store in the midst of the Chinese quarter!

After our wanderings and meanderings under the hot, tropical sun, we both felt ready to catch a taxi north to the Shwedagon. Feel free to skip the following paragraph which is certain to be a history lesson if you don't have the patience!

This is the story of Buddha's hairs, a subject of much concern as Buddhism spread beyond the confines of the Indian subcontinent, and newly Buddhist (formerly pantheistic or animist) faithful sought pilgrimage sites that were closer to home and more cost-effective than trekking all the way to the Bodhi tree. These particularly Buddha hairs made their way to the site of what is now Yangon, having lost several of their brethren (hair brethren, that is) to the manifold perils that a journey from India held in those days. The total number of hairs had been depleted to just four, but when the King of these parts opened the holy package he discovered the full number of eight Buddha hairs. Then a special sort of chaos ensued involving rays of light, dumb people speaking, blind people perceiving the hairs, etc. The hairs themselves were laid to rest in a golden stupa, then encased in silver, in turn encased in tin, copper, lead, marble, and finally bricks of iron. Despite all the shock and awe produced by these hairs, or the glorious monument raised above them, the site eventually was lost in the jungle, only to be rediscovered by the great Buddhist emperor, Ashoka, and reclaimed from its ruin. Eventually, the Burmese kings of old encased the shrine in gold, adorned its upper spires with saphires, emeralds, rubies, and diamonds... and the rest is (yet more) history.

More recently, the Shwedagon has suffered from Portuguese pirates (who carried off one of its bells), wars with the British, fires, and several earthquakes. And yet it stands today amidst an impoverished and isolated country and has lost none of its gilded luster. The plaza below is a place of peace and quiet (when not used as a gathering place for political dissenters as it has done most recently in the monk's uprising of 2007) where tourists snap pictures, the faithful pray, and monks stroll. A couple young monks beckoned me to join them. As their English was excellent, I had a good conversation with them... only having to pretend I was not conversing when some government minders strolled past. One of the monks was twenty-two years old, possessing an impish grin and an unquenchable thirst for information. He asked me much about American politics (particularly my thoughts on the present president and the recently departed one), noting that he'd read about them both on the internet. He seemed to have a preference for Bush *gasp!*. Perhaps this young fellow approved more of Bush's hard line stance on the Myanmar junta rather than Obama's offer of detente, or perhaps his online readings had been partisan in source. Given that he thought that Bush had fought in Vietnam and wasn't sure if Obama was originally from Africa, I would say that partisan sources were at least part of that puzzle.

We had a good discussion, nonetheless, of Hurricane Nargis, Hurricane Katrina, life in China and the States, and an earthquake he had experienced as a boy. He told me he was training to be a missionary monk, in explanation of his efforts to learn English. The monk told me he came from a town near the famed ruins of Mrauk U, in the far western province of Arakan that borders Bangladesh. He also joked that the darker-skinned monk who sat on my other flank had come from Africa. If anything, my clearest impression of these young monks was just how normal they were, no different really than any inquisitive young men would be, whether in China or Europe or the US. There was little mysticism or abstraction in their words or actions--they seemed quite grounded in the practicalities of the life they had chosen and the sacrifices or benefits that life path might bring.

In parting, the young monk gave me some advice: go to the back corner of the Shwedagon and search for markings among the marble paving stones. Wait there until the sun falls, and you will see light refracting through the largest diamond at the pagoda's apex. The color of that light changes as you move from position, to position: yellow-gold to bluish-green.

Kiera had waited patiently for my conversation with the monks to finish, and we strolled around the vast base of the pagoda and its many spires as we waited for dusk to fall upon the sacred ensemble. We came upon intricate carvings of teak, Buddhas reclining in the shade, golden Buddhas being bathed in water, vast bells, mythical beasts to represent the eight days of the Buddhist week, and paintings representing events in the life of Buddha or the history of the pagoda. The sun fell, and spotlights enveloped the golden spire in an inferno of ruddy hue. As everything became dark beyond the pagoda, the contrast of its blazing warmth was magnificent. Finally, we sought out the semi-secret markings and hopped from spot to spot to see the light glowed first topaz then teal through the bulk of a 76 carat diamond some 300 feet above us. The other 4351 diamonds surrounding it were blind and dumb against the night sky... perhaps in awe of their brother.

As we descended the hill, one of Buddhism's great landmarks at our back, I wondered how to describe the place to my friends and family. The blog posting I conjured in my mind just couldn't do it justice. Three hundred feet of gold plate, precious gems, and above all the untold hours of artistry and care made this the heart of Myanmar--never mind in the bandit villas and never-dimming lights of the general's new capital upon the barren plains at Nay Pyi Daw--the true heart of Myanmar.

Rat Soup (In China)

2010-03-09T13:39:00.001+08:00

I seem to recall that some sort of field rat is considered a delicacy in the tourist playground that is Guilin, in southern China. I've never had the pleasure of eating it, so I can't be sure whether this is just tourist trappings or a rather minor example of the Cantonese tendency to eat, well... everything.

Unfortunately, last night Kiera and I came quite a bit closer to inadvertently dining upon rat than we had intended.

The scene: Eating in one of our favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurants across the street from our apartment. The time is late, perhaps 9 pm. Kiera works late some nights, so we eat late. All the other customers have cleared out. The family that runs the place is cleaning up; some of the older members are relaxing at another table to chat until their last two customers finish. Our food is a vast pot of stewed chicken, potato, and other veggies. The preponderance of cumin betrays the origins of the dish as coming from the Turkic western frontiers of China. A rat falls from the ceiling onto the table directly behind Kiera.

Kiera naturally stands and screams. Not the full-throated wail of a horror movie vixen, but a frantic warble that also somehow communicates her embarrassment to be making such a commotion. She also jigs about as if she's caught the tarantella. The rat scurries as fast as its little legs will take it, back towards the back of the restaurant. The staff saw us, and the rat, but they didn't seem very bothered by it--mostly just amused at our reaction to the unwelcome intruder from above.

The rat had fallen from a crevice (an unused light well, perhaps?) that ran around the edge of the restaurant's ceiling. We'd seen it scurry by earlier that evening, but hadn't worried too much. As long as it wasn't near the food, I was willing to be sanguine about the whole experience. In countries like China (not to mention in Myanmar and Africa and other places I've traveled to) you just have to accept that such critters are everywhere... or spend all your time cloistered in decadent 5-star hotels. We were even joking that at least the rat hadn't jumped into our pot of food, when it did in fact jump. Just not into the pot.

So, I still haven't had rat. But I've certainly come a bit closer to that culinary milestone. I was thinking that in the US, such an event would get a restaurant shut down permanently. In China, owner and patron alike just shrug and get along with their everyday concerns. I'm a bit torn as to which is the better reaction.

My Burmese Days (1): Yangon, Not Rangoon

2010-03-09T13:24:00.001+08:00

The British had a liking for renaming the distant corners of the world that they ruled. Local names in obscure languages often didn't sit well on a public-schooled tongues of officers and government workers, much less upon the palates of the Irish, Scottish, or Cockney laborers and seamen doing the dirty work wherever Her Majesties shadow fell upon the globe. They had difficulty enough with standard English, much less towns like Pyay whose names changed pronunciation depending on which Burmese who happened to be speaking with. Thus there were the city of Rangoon (Yangon), the Irrawaddy River (Ayeyarwaddy), Prome (Pyay), Moulmein (Mawlamyine), The Mergui Archipelago (Myeik), and Burma itself (named after the majority Bamar ethnicity) where the ancient kingdoms of Myanma once stood. The names thus composed still evoked exotic destinations, but without spraining the average British tongue in the process.

The names have been changed back in recent years. Like regimes everywhere in the recently decolonized developing world, de-anglicization was a good opportunity to wave the bloody flag of nationalism. Historical names brought pride to the average Burmese--the colonial overlords were well and truly gone. I sympathize much more now that I know the names do have a historical basis and weren't just cooked up by the junta. But unfortunately for Myanmar, names are not the only historical trend that has returned to the living. Myanma of old was a place where cruel, war-like kings forced serfs to build grand monuments to themselves and the gods. These lords have seemingly returned to flesh, dressed in camo rather than golden raiments, but just as capricious and cruel of temperament, just as unwilling to consider the fate of their peasants as they lavish themselves with proceeds from sales of Myanmar's wealth of resources. This is the aspect of Myanmar for which it is famous today: an isolated totalitarian state ruled by a military junta who have used conscript labor to build infrastructure for themselves and live in luxury as the rest of the country molders in abject poverty. There is more complexity to the story, of course, but the basic idea is correct. Myanmar is a totalitarian, impoverished pariah of a country.

* * *

Day 1

Arriving at Mingaladon Airport in the northern suburbs of Yangon, there was nothing particularly shocking for us to see. A modern airport with all the conveniences. The security apparatus and immigration control procedures gave us no hint of the draconian regime. Even the touts waiting outside seemed relaxed and diffident about the newest batch of tourists to arrive. Our fellow foreign arrivals seemed largely of the elderly, wealthy persuasion. I had expected to see more backpackers--this being one of the last frontiers of travel--but I suppose the necessity of flying in and out of the country (as well as the general higher cost of travel) keeps most of the shoestring budget types out. Other parts of SE Asia (and China) can be traveled on as little as $10 - $14 a day. We averaged more like $25 a day per person, in country.

Our hotel sent a van to pick us up--free service and much appreciated after the ordeal at Bangkok Airport--and we sped away. The appearance of Myanmar was much like the Philippines: low-rise architecture of impermanent mien, palms and banyans sprouting like weeds, decrepit architecture, the occasional grand, rotting colonial edifice. We spotted the great Shwedagon Pagoda rising high above the city like a vast golden bell set to rest upon a molding tablecloth. Its alien architecture was the most clear signal to our sleep-fogged brains that we had arrived in Myanmar, a place like no other.

Exchanging money is the first of many hurdles for the traveler who reaches Myanmar. Dollars are accepted, as are Euros. Yuan might be accepted, at least in some parts of the country--business with China and Chinese tourism are one of Myanmar's few relatively open windows on the world. The first catch is that none of this exchange is done under official auspices. The official dollar exchange rate for kyat (sounds like the word chat spoken in the Cockney form of English) is about 6 kyat per dollar. The black market exchange rate is more like 1,000 kyat per dollar. Thus, no one exchanges at banks or the airport. The second catch is that only pristine new dollar bills will be accepted. A microscopic tear or wear or fold upon the dollar will render it worthless as far as the Burmese are concerned. Larger bills (100s preferred) get a better exchange rate. I exchanged some money at the hotel and some money with street changers (not a mistake I intend to repeat in future).

Errands attended to (and nap had--I hadn't slept for more than a couple hours in the previous 24 spent traveling from China), we headed down to the center of town: the Sule Pagoda. Squatting upon a roundabout amongst the dressed up colonial buildings, the newer constructions of glass and steel, and innumerable hawkers, the Sule Pagoda is a gleaming bell of gold and incense. Salary men on their way home from work, children just off school, and housewives stopping by to take a hiatus from their shopping errands all congregate in that patch of serenity. A little boy and his father washed an image of Buddha (and what appeared to be Buddha's pet dragon-lion-monster). In Myanmar, Buddhism is not just the facade of millennial culture dressed up for tourism and giggles--as it generally is in mainland China. Buddhism is a way of life, and we could see that common people both rich and poor made a space for worship, meditation, and solemn contemplation. Even young people who sat along the cool marble courtyard facing the inner spire of gold were subdued, giving way to the spiritual impulse. For our part, Kiera and I shed our shoes and socks and strolled a circuit through the worshipers. I could see that while religion is a more common and serious duty in Burmese life than it is in China, there are some great similarities in its incarnation. First, the love of gaudy baubles. Diamonds and gold encrusted the upper surfaces of the pagoda. The Buddha images had been (recently, I guess) adorned with halos of scintillating, multihued neon electrified and set to dance and shimmer like the lights of Las Vegas. Second, the commercialization of hallowed ground. Temples, pagodas, and other religious shrines were often preceded by government tourist toll booths as well as hawkers. Thirdly, the overlay of Buddhism onto older regional pantheons. But more on that later.

Outside the pagoda, with the sun's last light withering into tropical gloom, we decided on our first meal in Myanmar. An elderly Burmese woman with haunting blue eyes had advised us that the street side woks of biryani (Indian fried rice) were a good choice, and certainly cheaper than some of the nicer restaurants touted in guide books. The biryani stalls, unfortunately, were tapped out. Clearly the hoi polloi also favored this form of dinner. Perhaps that was fortune, however. I had other plans for our valentine's/spring festival dinner in Myanmar.

It was in the upper stories of the well-to-do--and romantically dimmed--restaurant, Monsoon, that I proposed to Kiera. She was dutifully scribing the names of our dishes in her pocket notebook. She handed the booklet over to me so that I could advise on spelling. I did so, and then wrote my proposal and handed in back. The answer was affirmative. A good note on which to end our first day of adventures in Myanmar.

Tidings, on Return from Myanmar

2010-02-26T19:31:00.001+08:00

First: Kiera and I are both safe and sound, returned to the urban hubbub of Nanjing. We were not shot or imprisoned by the infamous junta; we did not fall ill with malaria or break-bone fever; we were not bitten by any of Myanmar's many venomous snakes.

However....

Our trip was not without obstacles, trials, and tribulations. This was Kiera's first trip abroad from China, and she certainly got a taste of the challenges as well as the rewards that easily make travel one of the most worthwhile pursuits in life. In fact, the first problem hit us before we even got to Myanmar. Having booked three sets of flights (Nanjing to Guanzhou, Guanzhou to Bangkok, Bangkok to Yangon), we arrived at 1:00 AM in Suvarnabhumi airport (Bangkok) for a night of uneasy snoozing. Our flight for Yangon was set to take off at 8 AM that same morning. What we learned, upon waking around 5:30 AM, was that our budget carrier (Air Asia) did not have an agreement for in-airport transit. With only a couple hours til our flight, we learned that Kiera would have to apply for and successfully receive a visa-on-arrival for Thailand, and only then could we make our way through immigration control, customs, get our tickets, back through security, and run for our gate of departure. Guts churning, fearing for this trip we had already spent so much time and money preparing for, we raced through each hazard as quickly as we could. The short of it is that God, airport security, and fellow travelers all had mercy on us. We made it to our gate with only a few minutes to spare.

Yangon is one of those romantic destinations that have nothing to do with sunsets on sandy beaches, hip clubs, royal hotels, or any other lap of luxury you could care to name. Yangon is old-school romance: the smells of curries, voracious plant life, and sun-baked spoilage; crumbling colonial architecture succumbing to vines; giant banyan trees festooned with hanging shrines to the Nats (pre-Buddhist Burmese deities); golden bell-curved pagodas towering over a ground-hugging cityscape of old British manors, Chinese temples, Indian mosques, tenements, bamboo huts. Arguably, even the great democracy advocate, Aung San Suu Kyi--imprisoned within her home upon the shores of an urban lake--only adds to the romance of that city. A genuine damsel in distress guarded by thuggish warlords! Yangon, in shorter and less baroque description, is the romance of a world less globalized, less sanitized, less homogenized. And we arrived on February 14th: Valentines Day as well as Chinese New Years Day by the lunar calendar. The stars had aligned.

So, on February 14th, 2010, I asked Liang Li Li (Kiera Liang is her chosen English name) to marry me. She said yes.

How's that for heart-stopping news? I assure you, it was heart-stopping for us, too. Are we really that old, to have stumbled upon this particular milestone? Kiera lamented--even as she smiled and cried tears of joy--that she was no longer a young girl. I feel the same way, but at least if we are to give in to that human condition of aging until we become dust, we will have good company for the durance.

The rest of the story may seem anti-climactic following this *big* news. However, I will soon post the stories of our adventures in depth. Myanmar is a beautiful, if isolated, country that will remain an important and memorable one for both Kiera and myself.

Myanmar's Eve

2010-02-13T15:53:00.001+08:00

Also Chinese New Year's Eve, and Valentine's Eve. Quite a conjunction of events, don't you say? And when Kiera and I finally arrive in the former capital city of Yangon, on the Irrawaddy Delta, we'll have missed their 'Union Day' celebrations by a mere two days. Supposedly some of the events will be ongoing. But that's getting ahead of the story.

Three flights--Nanjing to Guangzhou (formerly Canton), Guangzhou to Bangkok, Bangkok to Yangon (formerly Rangoon)--and two days are the cost of getting to Myanmar (former Burma). And what could be worth such costs? A country, isolated under a despised and despotic government, where magic realism is reality. This the guidebooks assure us. Boulders perch in peril upon holy peaks, encrusted in gold dust brought by countless pilgrims. A plain studded with over 4,000 temples, emerging from the fields in various states of dishabille. And, well, beaches. A beach without any sunburned tourists studding its modest brown sands or guzzling the juice of its blowsy palm trees. Myanmar is a good place to find such beaches. Kiera hasn't yet in her life met the ocean; I was introduced with its rough play at the age of three; I feel well able to make the necessary introductions. Most importantly, Myanmar has--so it is said--many kindly, curious people. Sanctions on the luxurious lifestyles of their military junta shouldn't be allowed to cut contact between the country's common people and the world.

So here's hoping for a good Chinese New Year and Valentine's spent in a remote and fascinating corner of the world. I'll let you know how it went.

Mongolian Adventures (6): Swans and Horses

2010-01-03T11:36:00.001+08:00

August 5th:

We said 'Bayartai' (goodbye) to the children of the nomads. As a parting gift, I left them with some Disney stickers I had bought for the purpose of distributing just so. That seemed to break the ice a bit, so one young boy decided to practice his English with me. I showed him my notebook with its sketches of ruined monasteries, dunes, wastelands, and the sour mare's milk contraption I'd shared the ger with that previous night. Amusingly, the boy told me his tow-headed little sister was really a Russian, and her name was "Jenny". His father was less amused with the jest. As it turns out, many Mongolian children have blond hair which gradually darkens to hickory as they get older. I suppose this is a remnant strain of Caucasian blood from the days when the horde raided Russia and Europe, bringing back concubines for the Khans.

The grasses were again green and thick by this point in our journey. But as the day progressed, the land around us stretched itself, shrugging up mountains from the rolling hillsides. Pine forests hugged the southward faces of the higher slopes. Yaks and yak-cow hybrids grazed the lower meadows.

We stopped for lunch on a steep hillside overlooking a broad valley, and the river winding through it. A couple Kazakh men had arranged a ger at the roadside, with a golden eagle and bows to entice any tourists who happened along. Although later we did try the bows (I didn't do too badly with mine--thank you Camp Au Sable!), for the moment we were more interested in our bowls of stir-fry with pasta. So was a hungry goat who wandered away from his herd and across the asphalt to join us. More welcome to join us in our prandial gorging, an orange butterfly. The goat was discouraged after we shoved him away from our food a few times. The butterfly, meanwhile, alighted on a cup of our heavily-sugared tea. Tea had become something of an indulgence, with our small traveling group devouring box after box of the stuff each day.

That afternoon we journeyed half the length of a broad valley. Ragged upthrusts of volcanic stone bespoke a violent past for serene valley. Our encampment sat on an embankment; the stream below wound through a gorge engraved into the valley floor. A pair of swans swam circles in stately grace within its rocky parenthesis. Periodically, yaks nudged the side of our ger, calling us outside to play.

August 6th:

Mongolian horses are half-wild, so our Mongolian horsemen tell us just before we jump up into the saddle. They look it--with their shaggy hair, angry eyes, and the way the Mongolian horses will buck their heads rapidly up and down when tethered as if they are headbanging at a rock concert.

Our quest is for the Orkhon Khukhree, a waterfall somewhere in the valley not far from our encampment. The guide then lets me (or more specifically, my horse) guide the way. I don't know the way, and my horse seems more intent on finding himself a nice grassy lunch. My companions, however, are having even more trouble with their half-wild mounts.

Eagles, vultures, falcons and hawks have spotted prey, somewhere ahead of us. The usual description is to say that these raptors "circle", but when these hungry birds form a certain density, what they really become is a cyclone. The waterfall is somewhere beneath them, and we dismount accordingly. Forsaking the waterfall for a moment, however, we search for the fount of these carrion birds and find a cow, its ribs picked clean.

The Orkhon Khukhree waterfall was formed--like the valley itself--by volcanic action. A pit falls in the middle of an otherwise flat valley floor, then trails off downstream in the shape of a comma. The water thunders down over the edge of this hole. Forest grows thick within the rift. We descend via a treacherous crack in the rift's wall, dodging a never ending stream of ascending tourists wearing their florescent tour-caps. When the noon-day tumult of tourists depart, we have the thundering falls, the icy pool beneath it, and the tranquil forest to ourselves. I sketch the mossy forest floor as the sun sketches ruddy fire onto my skin.

After leaving the waterfall, I was ready to nurse my badly sun-burned arms in the cool depths of our ger; our guide had one last surprise in store for us, however. Upstream from the waterfall, a small waterfall (more properly a rapids) sent spray up towards the blue Mongolian skies. What was our purpose in being here? we wondered. The guide pointed to the falls and told us to look more carefully.

Then I saw it. A dark shape darting amid the falling water. And another. And downstream my eyes suddenly perceived differences of depth amongst what had previously seemed nothing but stony shallows. Fish were jumping upstream. Taimen, perhaps?

Later, I found my island of solitude further away from camp. Upstream. I explored an ancient sandbar with rocky margins. A pine tree, scarred from fire or lightning, stood sentinel. Although I wasn't really very far from camp, I could feel the silence and tranquility of nature. But then nature called with its forceful urgency, reminding me that tranquility is just a title we bestow upon it out of nostalgia or misconception. I had a choice. Did I wish to return to the encampment with its smelly outhouse--nothing but a hut placed over a pit of piss and shit, a few boards and a gap between them functioning as the commode? Or should I find a more natural solution? I have to come clean, the main argument in my mind against the latter was the issue of how to come clean. Leaves are never satisfactory. But there is this pristine, crystal clear stream....

* * *

I looked around me and saw none to see; clothes were lain upon the bleached river boulders; I jumped into icy waters that scoured my skin. I've never felt cleaner in my life than when I emerged from that Mongolian creek.

Later, returning to camp, I would tell my companions that the waters were warm enough to swim in. Was that mischief on my part?

Mongolian Adventures (5): Origins of Indiana Jones, Dinosaur Eggs, Lycanthropic Bovines

2010-01-01T09:55:00.001+08:00

August 3rd:

We left the Khongoryn Els (the great dune sea) behind us.

Onwards to the site of Roy Chapman Andrews's dinosaur excavations. There, the saxual (not sexual) trees can be be seen growing from the nobbly landscape, hunched and bunched like withered crones gossiping at market. Our guide and driver must have grown weary of us by this point, as Zoola merely pointed vaguely in the general direction of an escarpment of livid sandstone on the horizon. 'There', she said, 'You'll find the dinosaurs. Maybe 1 or 2 kilometers. Dinner and hot showers will be ready when you come back."

Oh, but we three remaining travelers (one of the Danish girls had to fly back from Dalanzagad due to her inner-ear problems and the bumpiness of our journey into the Gobi) swear... we SWEAR that the round trip that day was at least 10 kilometers! Straight into a biting gale of sand! Uphill both ways! Without feet!

Okay, well maybe the last part is an exaggeration on my part. I did have some problems with my shoes, however. My shoes, which I had bought a couple years earlier in Chongqing (China), finally gave up the ghost that day. I had already had the sole's attachment reinforced with stitching, but the stitching gave way. Rocks and sand migrated deep under my feet as I trudged across a rolling, barren expanse of gravel towards the cliffs which never seemed to get much closer. I watched as poofs of sand spurted from the newly-gaping mouths of my shoes, each forward stride producing an arc of sand or gravel. Not good.

We did eventually reach those eroded, blazing cliffs where Roy Chapman Andrews--often cited as the inspiration for the movie character, Indiana Jones--withdrew the bones and eggs of a mighty dinosaur trove. The Protoceratops (a smaller and less viciously-horned version of the famous Triceratops) was one of the main finds of this particular dig. Of particular importance was a Velociraptor and Protoceratops found locked in deadly combat, the the Protoceratops's beak-like mouth locked on the Velociraptor's leg and the raptor digging his claws into the Protoceratops's underbelly. This particular specimen is the one of the great prizes at the contemporary Mongolian Museum of Natural History in UB which I saw later in the trip.

But for now we were in the wasteland realm of dinosaurs, not polished halls of learning. This was the desolate region that Andrews, explorer extraordinaire, fought through pirates, bandits, an angry and wounded whale, typhoons, wild dogs, illness and "mad lama priests" to reach. The aforementioned calamities conspired at his death, but merely managed to kill off ten of his expedition members. Of course his contemporaries claimed that the man was given to tall tales: "The water that was up to our ankles was always up to Roy's neck". Tales of great height or not, the man certainly provided plenty of fodder for the modern-day tale of an adventurer/archaeologist.

August 4th:

We headed north from the burial grounds of the 'terrible lizards' of yore. The lands grew greener by the mile as our van chugged along. Before we had reached the proper steppe, however, we stopped to explore the vast ruins of a once-great monastery city, Ongiin Khiid. A long-since dessicated riverbed separates the two parts of this complex. One side housed the master monks and a series of temples upon the rocky slopes of a ridge, the other, flatter side housed their disciples. Neither is much more than a chest-high labyrinth of foundations and walls--like the remains of the far more ancient Greek city of Mycenae--sprouting from the dusty ground. A couple stupas and one small rebuilt temple are all that remain. The temple is merely two rooms about two stories high, containing the usual assortment of Tibetan Buddhist relics and a few photographs of the Dalai Lama. I believe the holy fellow may have even visited the place, sometime in the 90's. The monastery was razed and the monks slaughtered in Mongolia's communist purge of 1937. Apparently the communists promised the monks they would be allowed life if they brought a herd of cows as a tribute... but of course they weren't spared. Our guide, Zolaa's grandfather was a monk (evidently not the celibate sort, at least during some portion of his life) who perished at that time. Apparently he hid the family treasures before he died, but the family has only be able to retrieve a part of those valuables.

Later, we saw a double rainbow cast over a herd of horses and and yaks upon the steppe.

We made several stops at nomad encampments not able to give us succor (often the city-dwelling cousins of nomad families come back out to visit and enjoy the fresh steppe air and traditional lifestyle). Eventually, towards evening, we found one that could. A gaggle of children played upon the threshold of our ger. More ominously for my ability to sleep well that night, a stench of sour milk permeated the air of our ger. The famous Mongolian fermented mare's milk, or airag, was being fermented in a large leather sack suspended at the foot of my bed. A wooden frame carries the weight of this bag; a wooden paddle is thrust into its depths. Every so often, the nomads came within the ger and thumped the paddle down into the sudsy fermented milk. Apparently it is considered good luck to give the bag a few thumps every time one enters a ger that has an airag bag (called a khokhuur). The tradition is a practical one, as the concoction needs to be thumped at least 1,000 times before it is considered fit to drink. And if it is extremely sour to whiff, the drink is tongue-curdling to taste. I fell to sleep, lulled by the fizzing of the fermented mares milk and (I kid you not) the cows howling at the full moon that rose above our ger. Were-cows?

Mongolian Adventures 4: The Dune Sea

2009-12-31T00:57:00.001+08:00

August 1st:

In our ger, we learned how to play a traditional Mongolian game. The game is played with the vertebrae of goats or sheep. Each vertebra represents one of four common Mongolian herd animals, depending on how it falls on the ground. Each base (the side that stacks on top of another vertebra to make up a spinal cord) has a convex and a concave side. Each side (perpendicular to the fatter 'base') also has a concave and a convex side. Concave base = camel, convex base = horse, concave side = goat, convex side = sheep. So when we throw the vertebrae on the ground, we have camels, horses, goats, and sheep. The person who cast the die, so to speak, gets to flick one bone at a time, trying to make it touch another vertebra of its type. Only one hand can be used to flick, and you can not touch any of the other vertebra as you do so (either you or the vertebra you flick). If successful, grab one of the pair that touched, with the non-flicking hand. The strategy is in choosing which of the pair seems easiest to use to flick yet another vertebra of like kind. When only three vertebra total are left on a throw-down, and if all come up the same or different (no like types or all the same type), all players are allowed to grab for as many of the remaining vertebra as they can grab.

Most of that afternoon, we skirted a great dune sea. The dune sea's edge looms above the flat hardpan like pancake batter spilled upon a stove. Its edge is luminous with reflected light; a phantasm creeping over scoured gravel. By early evening we arrive at a ger camp near the base of the dunes. Between the camp and the dunes lies a wet place, a true oasis. Hummocks of grass and brush contrast so green against the face of the dune. A rivulet of water snakes between these verdigris humps. Camels, with humps of their own, and horses wander freely in this sheltered place. Why is it that such an oasis exists just within the shadow of sandy annihilation, when there is a whole dessicated plain beyond it begging for its water?

As the sun sets, we plan our ascent of the dune face. The face is quite sheer in most places, but dimples and rumpled edges (like an unruly blanket remaining as a child departs bed for school) seem ripe for our ascension. Zoola, however, tempts us with a delicious Mongolian supper: goat fried with peppers and onions on a bed of rice. Our ascent, then, takes a nasty turn as our full stomachs and the strain of climbing upon a curtain of sand bring nausea. The moon rises, full, above the knife edge where the face of the dune meets the sky. We plan to try once more tomorrow, and we descend.

On the threshold of our ger, a little goat lays his head. Not a grown goat--just a kid, really--the creature is obviously sick, dying. My companions named him Jesus.

August 2nd:

Jesus is dead. Thus spake Nietzsche, as if he could see how the Mongolian nomad lady grabbed that little goat by the horns, pulled him up from our doorstop, and tossed him into the shade in a dusty corner of the encampment. Hours later, he breathed no more.

In the late morning we went camel-riding below the dunes. Truly evil beasts, they are, as texts since the dawn of time have attested. If not for their unique adaptations to desert life which in turn make possible human habitation of the deserts, they would have long since been hunted into extinction for their tough meat, and in retaliation for their bad manners. We decided to name our camels after prominent dictators. I named mine Mugabe. The name helped add to my delight in whipping him with a ragged rubber goad, onwards across the burning sands.

I spent most of the day sketching in my ger, waiting for the heat to pass.

As evening fell, we climbed the great dune's face once again. I left my shoes at the base, as they tended to fill with sand and hinder my attempted ascent. Sometimes soft enough for feet to sink into, sometimes a hard crust, hard enough that feet skid and skitter towards the knife's edge of a wrinkle in the dune face, and the abyss beyond. I felt such terror, I never could have imagined, from climbing at the edge of such sandy cliffs. When the ground beneath your feet is so uncertain, and the gulf of air beyond is so certain, it must be sheer hubris to tread in such a place. I often scrambled on all fours, discovering that this provided a more secure feeling (four pods planted in the sand) and on steep ascents, more stability. I developed a rhythm, climbing the 60 degree incline like a steam-powered greater ape. Thirty meters, we ascended like that. And Bina, my Danish companion on that stretch, was about to give up. She had a fear of heights which to her credit she had sought to defy in climbing this monstrous sand mountain. But I suggested that we must be at least 1/3rd to 1/2 the way up of the sheer part of the face. Not a time to give up! So she steamed ahead of me at that point, and we learned that in fact we had been about 90% of the way up that sheer face. Distances can be deceiving when measuring an angle of sand against the night sky.

So at last I straddled the dune's peak, a knife's edge that stretched away for kilometers. On one side, hardtack gravel in complete darkness. On the other side, twilight still smoldered above a dune sea doing battle with itself--its crests and troughs much lower than this vanguard. And then, descent. The depths of the sand gave off a deep drumming sound, a thrumming that vibrated the entire dune face, as we pushed the sand ahead of us in our long slide into the gloom. The sand speaks. Eerie.

Mongolian Adventures (3): Enter the Gobi

2009-12-30T16:20:00.001+08:00

July 30th --

We woke to discover that a jerboa had drowned in the goat's trough during the night. Silly kangaroo-hamster.

Had I written that the lands we passed through the previous day were desolate? The Gobi soon taught me the definition of that word. Jouncing over ground that became steadily drier, the grasses of the steppe around us turned yellow and brittle as the morning hours passed. Then the grasses became mere tufts, like the feathers of a leprous vulture's pate. Then the beds of gravel that had once peeked between grass tresses became entirely predominant.

We rolled into Mandalgov, the capital of Middle Gobi sum (province) sometime mid-morning. The sun had already become an angry, white tyrant by that point. Only 14,000 unfortunate souls lived in that collection of sand-worn shacks and gers, the desert sands blowing in from all sides. No proper roads could be seen there (as I recall), only patches of bald wasteland left undeveloped between the cowering dwelling-places. Was this the setting of a spaghetti-western or post-apocalyptic civilization? The shy youngsters who played football in its streets didn't seem to mind their surrounds, however. Eden is not needed for a youngster's happiness, I suspect.

Our shock-absorbers, unfortunately, were not so forgiving of the surrounds. We found ourselves waiting at a mechanic's garage for an hour or so, while "new" shock absorbers were cobbled together out of spare parts and welded into some semblance of utility next to us. I attempted a few conversations in Mongolian with the ladies who were crushing piles of plastic Sprite bottles into bales for recycling, practicing such basic pleasantries as 'What's your name?', 'Where are you from?', and 'Are your livestock doing well?' A quick look at the dessicated hillsides would seem to suggest "no".

I also passed the time asking Zolaa about the relationship between Mongolia and China. The short answer is "bad". The Mongolians have a bit of a chip on their shoulder when it comes to the Chinese. The long history of rampage and conquest that goes both ways between these two ancient cultures underpins the dislike, but modern justifications exist as well. Illegal Chinese immigrants are a problem in Mongolia, and Chinese businessmen are distrusted--building contractors came in for particular scorn from the Mongolians I talked to. More recently, a Chinese businessman shot a Mongolian. A country-wide purge of Chinese expats (legal or otherwise) followed. I was left wondering whether getting a tourist visa for Kiera would be a problem.

Beyond the grim oasis that is Mandalgov, our van passed deeper into the wasteland. Little tufts of onion-grass sprouted from kitty-litter gravel. Among them could be found small lizards, so lazy in the heat of the sun that I could easily catch them and hold them in the palm of my hand. Bulbous beetles trailed wet ovipositors through the gravel, sheathed in exoskeletons as verdant in green as the wasteland was not. Our stop for a lunch of sandwiches revealed that even the vast litter box was filled with life.

The Gobi is not kind to intruders. Once again that day, our van failed us. The radiator overheated, and we were forced to stop at the top of a dune, the van turned crossways into the wind in an attempt to maximize its cooling. I could only think how horrid it would be, to be stranded here in the midst of nothing. There was, after all, not even a proper highway with the eventual certainty of other caravans passing along our particular path in the desert. There was well and truly nothing... to all horizons.

Of course our van did eventually start up, and we did eventually come to another small town carved from the sand and grit. A herd of camels groaned and moaned. A small shop sold us aloe juice, Turkish cookies, and pickles. That night the pickles were positively devoured by myself and the American girl, Stephanie.

July 31st

Around noon we reached Dalanzagad, another major outpost in the midst of the Gobi. We ate sushi for lunch, at least a thousand miles from the nearest ocean, in the midst of a waterless hardpan. Is this irony? Perhaps only by Alanis's definition, but in fact our small rolls of seaweed, rice, and veggies only represented a miraculous and strange juxtaposition.

The land over which we bounced, jounced, and skidded became increasingly rumpled and wrinkled as the day wore on. Perhaps in the midst of summer there was no obvious culprit for the rapid multiplication of ravines we passed over, but I could imagine that this sere desert is carved and torn whenever water does pass down over its bald hills. The distant crags--and crags these are, the very definition of, with ravenous raptors perched upon their clefts and spires--are our destination for this today. We seek the place known ominously as "The Vulture's Mouth".

The Vultures Mouth is a gorge set in a range of crags, set in the middle of the Gobi desert. This gorge is so deep that even in the midst of summer, shards of ice still sleep unmelted in the depths of its gullet. This gorge is so treacherous that the Argali sheep, ibex, and antelope that graze on its upper slopes routinely fall to their deaths upon the jagged rocks within, a daily feast for vultures and other carrion eaters. Hence the name.

We also quickly discovered that the gorge is a most hospitable home for a legion of pikas--cute little rodents somewhere between a hamster and a rabbit in both size and appearance. The pikas chirp merrily as the vultures circle above. Evergreen shrubs scent the air with hints of allspice (perhaps it was?). We do indeed come upon both remnant ice and an antelope fallen to its death. We are somewhat disappointed that the only wild ungulate we come across is the dead one, its stomach busted upon a rock. There is no better place in which to see that the Gobi's cruelty and generosity are one and the same.

Mongolian Adventures (2): The Road Into the Gobi

2009-11-29T19:50:00.001+08:00

July 29th--

The phrase, 'screaming bloody murder' has new meaning to me now. 3 AM or so, at my chosen guesthouse in Ulaanbaatar. A 60-year-old American man comes back to the hostel, pounding on the door and screaming 'Wake up! Police! Wake Up! I'm an American citizen! You can't do this to me!" and proceeding to lay a variety of threats on Mongolia and this hostel in particular. The fellow even claimed to know the American ambassador... I was half-asleep and already I had no sympathy for the imperious brat (actually an old man). The story later came out that he felt he'd been cheated by his taxi driver--and may even have cheated the taxi driver himself. An insane response--particularly towards the hostel, which was doing everything it could to calm him and respond to his panic in a reasonable way... while also trying to get him a bit quieter so that the rest of us could sleep.

The next morning (morning proper, that is, with a risen sun and no psychotic old coots giving Americans a bad name) we met our driver, a quiet older fellow named Ganba, and our guide, a spunky young woman named Zolaa (pronounced a bit like Szoot-luh). With little ado (and only a short stopover at a net cafe) we were off on our way to the southern wastelands.

The road into the Gobi turned out not to be any proper road at all. While the Mongolians have a few two-lane highways that extend from the capital, Ulaanbaatar, these peter out rapidly. Then the real fun begins, as a multitude of dirt tracks expand across the open steppe. These tracks are left behind by SUVS, old pickup trucks, cars, horses, various herd beasts, and motorcycles. There seem to be no rules or limits on where the tracks may range, although the rainy season (late July through September) bogs down quite a few modern caravans in the depths of sudden quagmires.

Much like Montana, the landscape seemed fixed just a short step below the sky. Great burls of cloud let down rain, greening the wild grasslands as they passed by. Rocky spines intruded on our periphery. Herds of sheep, goats, and horses scattered about in search of food; great eagles stood watch, talons digging into the turf as they eyed their fleecy prey. Stately cranes stalked the grasslands too. I was hoping for more cryptozoological sightings. I had read in a local (English-language) paper that a British expedition was then using explosives in the southern Gobi to search for a creature known as the "Mongolian Death Worm". This death worm could shoot lightning from its anus and spit toxin from its mouth. It was also apparently attracted to seismic disturbances, hence the use of explosives as a sort of mating call to find it. Certainly this creature must make any must-see list (just below the slightly less rare, but rather more beautiful, snow leopard) of Mongolian creatures to sight... from a safe distance.

The lands grew more arid as we go (the opposite of the effect we observed coming up from Beijing), the grasses more yellowed. The passing rainstorms brought out vivid greens amid the yellow, though; rainfall set the dust ablaze with ruddy color. Wind-scarred rocks crept like gnarled goblins around the desolate remains of ruinous monasteries. The sun was low in the sky as we came to one such, a place known as Ikh Gazrin Chuluu. A Buddhist monastery was once sited there, before the Mongolian communists slaughtered the monks and toppled its stones. The remnants stand in a sheltered ravine carved from the bulbous surrounding ridges. The only trees to be found for miles are hidden away within the cleft, one reason this place is said to be a nexus of unseen powers, perhaps a locus on some Mongolian ley line. The ruins were peaceful, anyway, and one could see why monks would choose to meditate amongst the desolate beauty surrounding it.

Stone piles (called ovoo, a tactile form of prayer) trapped small offerings of food and money. Passing pilgrims bound the trunks of the lithe aspens with blue and gold scarves. The former monastery had not been forgotten by the locals. More eerily, cairns were scattered upon the ridge above--reminding me of 'Pet Sematary'. Do gruesome semblances of once-living dogs, children, and yaks prowl the steppe there at night? We didn't stay to find out.

A little girl--her hair shaven so short we first took her to be a little boy--greeted us as we ended the first day of our journey. The Mongolians consider it lucky to keep the hair short until about the age of four. We were welcomed into the gers of a nomad family. They shared their fresh yoghurt--so sour it could make a lemon cry for mercy--and a bit of soup with us as we sat with them around an iron stove. As we got to know one another, they showed us a bit of Mongolian humor as well: they told us they would give each of us a Mongolian name. The girls were given nice enough names, 'Adimii', 'Chitske', and 'Tuya', with meanings like 'apple' or 'sunshine'. Then the old men took a good look at me. Zolaa almost fell over laughing as she translated their naming of me: "We think you look like a Russian! So we want to give you a Russian name: Lenin or Putin."

That night, a man, recently rechristened "Putin" by a band of Mongolian nomads, dreamed sweet dreams of spreading tyranny and mayhem across Eurasia.

A Deluge (of Reporting from China)

2009-11-22T20:01:00.001+08:00

With Obama's first state visit to China earlier this week, there was bound to be a torrent of generic news stories covering that country--and indeed there was. I had a few general thoughts.

(1) No new news. The spotlight was on China, certainly, but there was nothing particularly noteworthy about what either Obama or China had to say publicly. There should have been some serious discussion between the US President and the various Chinese powers that be, as many a news piece hinted, but should I waste several minutes on an article that can do no better than hint at what should have been said? For the most part these articles accomplished the same thing usually accomplished for the US public: they provided some back story on China (for those who don't know anything about Chinese history), provided the laundry list of disagreements between the two countries, and provided the laundry list of contemporary problems the two countries should try to cooperate on. So while I appreciate that I'm probably not the target audience (i.e. I'm overly familiar with the basic 'China narrative), I also felt a bit of a letdown that 'spotlight' opportunity was mostly put to such generic use.

(2) The eternally undervalued Yuan. The Economist harps on the subject pretty much every week, and this week every major (non-Chinese) newspaper seemed to have an article on the subject. I'm in complete agreement: the Chinese artificial devaluation of the Yuan is akin to cheating the rest of the world, and China shouldn't be doing it. But... frankly I'd say it's time to stop whining, and start hitting China with harsh penalties until it actually does float its currency. Everyone treats 'tariff' like a dirty word these days, but sometimes a big, scary stick is needed to incentivize good behavior. Such a move won't really save basic manufacturing jobs in places like America (because there's always someplace where labor is going to be cheaper), but it would lead to a fairer apportionment of outsourcing to countries (SE Asian, S American, African) that need the export income and jobs more than China apparently does.

(3) The 'town hall' meeting. Obama's attempt to talk with the youth of China and answer some of their questions was a necessary and important gesture. For some time now, the Chinese (and youth in particular) have been upset that their voice isn't heard or their feelings understood enough on the international stage. While hearing and understanding are not the same as heeding or following (and some here might not understand that difference), it is a fair point to make. The CCP often misrepresents China, both by representing most-faithfully its own party interests before the country's and through its bad reputation abroad which often overshadows broader aspects of Chinese culture and opinion. This was an excellent chance to break through the wall of that still separates most of the Chinese public from the world; it also was a good example of Obama's pledge to at least listen to the world's reactions to US policy.

For that very reason, the event was threatening to the CCP--the very substance contrasts sharply with their opaque, 'imperial mandate' style of governance. Of course the newspapers abroad all pretended to gasp at the impertinence of the CCP for (a) stalling on whether or not to allow the meeting at all, (b) limiting Chinese domestic media coverage and access to it, and (c) vetting the audience and planting more than a few non-student CCP members. Well, come on. The CCP has no reputation for honesty or sincerity. As the Chinese would say, these guys are 'pianzi' (cheaters). I wouldn't have been surprised to heard that every person in that room was a vacuum-packed zombie cadre of the CCP, but they don't really have to strain themselves that far. The CCP recruits members heavily from the elite universities (much as US politicians heavily represent Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and a few other leading institutions), so finding 500 junior party members to attend Obama's speech should have been a breeze. And for all we know, that teacher supplanted a student simply because she wanted to see the US president and had the guanxi (influence) to do so. Recap: a positive event, despite its 'fixing'.

(4) And finally, we have all the sad laments about the decline of American power and the rise of Chinese power, particularly the loss of confidence among Americans due to the recession. Well, I don't know about those of you whom are still back home in the States, but the narrative strikes me as an unnecessary pity party. The Chinese right now are like a rubber band that has been pulled back for the past several hundred years, storing potential energy the entire time. Incompetent rule by a succession of imperial dynasties, warlords with pretensions to imperial power, and imperial communists has acted as a stopper on that potential, much as does the finger that pulls and holds the rubber band. All Deng Xiao Ping had to do (and I do respect him for doing this) was remove the restraint on China's natural potential, and... BAZINGA!

That's great for the Chinese--and for the world, if the Chinese can keep a lid on their imperial pretensions and chauvinism--but I don't buy the story that this rise (or return) has to come at American expense. Human progress is not a zero-sum game, even as it isn't assured. And while Chinese industry has been adept at profiting from shanzhai (fake) interpretations of American innovations, Americans should never forget where those innovations came from, and the conditions that made them possible.

More Thoughts on China and the Zombie Apocalypse

2009-11-14T01:51:00.001+08:00

That quintessential (and rare) day of horror, Friday the 13th passed beyond the barren western borders of China just a few short hours ago. In the spirit of the day, I watched the excellent new film, 'Zombieland'. Having heard a few details on the movie, I had dismissed it. Surely any new parody of the 'zombie apocalypse' genre couldn't out do 'Shaun of the Dead'? Well, I have to say that at least in some respects, this movie took a shotgun to Shaun's place in the pantheon of zombie parody and gibbed it. The key, of course, is that (like Shaun), Zombieland takes the genre seriously, creating an interesting storyline, sympathetic characters, and finding some hilarious new perspective on life after the big Z. Bill Murray's minor role was the cherry on the putrescent, rabid cupcake.

What I was left with, however, was a burning desire to see the zombie apocalypse in China. Hollywood being so Ameri-centric (and everyone knows its Cali-centric, since it's often cheaper and more convenient to shoot there), no one--with the exception of one or two sections in the novel, World War Z--has taken on the setting. If you thought Zombie America was bad, think about how things would play out in a country with more than four times the population, living in much denser communities. Although (in this case) the authoritarian government's massive army would count in China's favor, you do have to deduct the fact that very few private citizens own a gun or other proper anti-zombie weapon. Most Chinese (i.e. everyone except the spoiled middle-class youth) also haven't even heard of Bruce Campbell, so it does make one wonder what instinctive defenses would come to their minds as they watched a rabid corpse run their way... probably they'd get gobbled up, but there's plenty of room for innovation away from the hackneyed (but satisfying ) chainsaw.

The other point in favor of a movie about the Chinese version of the zombie apocalypse is the usual comparisons made (by such movies) between modern society and zombies. This sort of parody-rhyme on real life has become popular in zombie fiction--perhaps since 'Dawn of the Dead' and its comparison to mindless consumerism--and surely could be used symbolically to good effect. Granted, the western perception of the Chinese as a culture of brain-washed conformists is definitely overplayed. Every society has its share of brain-washing (think TV advertisement and Fox News) as well as conformist sheep to be herded by political, idealist, or religious symbols. My experience of China (perhaps not that of others) suggests to me that the relatively enhanced conformity of the education and political systems just brings into greater contrast (and sometimes greater extremity) those people in society who exhibit a strong character of some sort... and of course it's easy to miss the sometimes subtle signs of the individual amid such a vast, insular population when you are new to it and don't know the language. In any case, there are interesting themes to be played with... if done with the right understanding and subtleties.

In some sense (and I've said this before), Z-Day is a state that has--from time to time--already existed in China. The competition for survival can be brutal, particularly in the times of anarchy or famine which occur cyclically in China. The environment already seems to mirror a world of zombies--the wild animals stay hidden from ravenous humans, or end up eaten.

Hmm... maybe I need to write this script?

Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

2009-11-07T17:51:00.001+08:00

Well, this will have to do as a substitute for actual replies (on Facebook) to the various people who sent birthday wishes. At the moment, the Chinese censors are relatively more successful in their blocking of my activities there: I can see the whole website--thankfully including some sections devoted to better methods of bypassing the Great Firewall which I will soon try to put into practice; I can't, however, post much at the moment.

So anyway, thanks for your wishes! My own birthday wish I shouldn't tell--as tradition dictates--but I think you can guess. I hope everyone else had a good 'Guy Fawkes Day' as well, and the various terrorists, hobgoblins, and 'culture warriors' burned merrily upon their respective bonfires.

Mint.com: useful if...

2009-10-31T19:10:00.001+08:00

...you have a relatively normal financial situation, and are situated in the US. The website takes into account your bank balances, budget estimates, loans, assets (car, house, stocks, etc.) to provide user-friendly displays on one's personal finances. I suppose it'd be quite a useful tool. Unfortunately, I only have one bank account in the states, its sole purpose being to pay off my student loans. I haven't had a credit card for the past three or four years and don't plan on having one in the foreseeable future. My salary here in China is direct-deposited to one of my two China-side bank accounts--and the "Industrial and Commercial Bank of China" doesn't seem to be listed in Mint.com's extensive list of financial institutions it can take into account for calculations. My salary is in RMB, also known as Chinese Yuan, so trying to compare APY is difficult if not useless over a period of time: the vaster proportion of my money is helplessly tied to exchange rates which may fluctuate based on political decisions in Beijing; it's also subject to Chinese government rules that do not allow foreigners to exchange RMB for foreign currency in a normal manner. Luckily, I have Kiera to help me, or I'd have to rely on the 'official' black market dealers for this service. While at least the value of my RMB holdings are not rapidly depreciating, as they would if my eventual intentions were to transfer into Euros, Pounds, or any number of other major currencies, this does still hamper me greatly in my attempts to keep track of my finances. For those of you not currently enjoying foreign financial entanglements, however, I'd recommend the service provided by Mint (a nice pun on both the money-making word and their website's color scheme). Budgeting 2.0 can be an empowering experience.

Question: Secular and Muslim?

2009-10-14T09:31:00.001+08:00

As I read a report about Turkey 'calling off military exercises with Israel', I was confused by the reporters' description of Turkey (Turkiye) as a "secular muslim" country. The two adjectives appear to be oxymoronic. I ask as a genuine question, rather than an accusation, if it is acceptable journalistic practice to oversimplify in this way. I don't believe the uninformed reader would know what this description of Turkey is supposed to mean.

(report can be found here: http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN13205852)

Having lived in the Republic of Turkey for a brief time, I could disambiguate: The modern republic has a fiercely secular constitution and political tradition handed down by the much-revered founding father, Mustafa Kemal Attaturk. The government is currently headed by a mildly-islamist political party (much milder in its pushing of religious issues, in fact, than the Republican party of the secular republic that is the United States) in parliament and presidency. The majority of Turkish citizens are at least nominally muslim in faith, and many are devoutly muslim. So when we pair these two words, secular and muslim, to describe Turkey, are they in fact oxymoronic?

"Muslim" is traditional in its use as a noun to describe the adherents of Islam (literally the meaning of the word "muslim" as derrived from Arabic is 'a follower of God'. But in the English language we can see this word also sometimes used as an adjective. Thus far--poring through the online dictionaries available to me--I haven't found a dictionary entry that defines what muslim means when it is used as an adjective. Does it overlap or superimpose the adjective "islamic"? The word islamic, if used to describe a country would, I think, suggest a non-secular government.

"Secular" is a word that refers only to form of governance, but muslim could possibly be seen here as a reference to either the people or the government. "Majority-muslim" could have disambiguated this description, discerning between Turkey as a government and Turkey as a body of people who are mostly muslim.

The result is ambiguous. The reporters (based on name, one of the reporters seems to be a Turk or of Turkish ethnicity) surely know better, but their readers won't.

Propaganda Organs Modernize--Become Tabloids

2009-10-11T20:04:00.001+08:00

I recently read an odd article concerning Sweden, written by Xinhua (China's main news agency, as well as one of the CCP's main propaganda outlets), and propagated by various other mainland news agencies. The article discusses a town in northern Sweden where only women are allowed, and lesbianism is rampant. The only problem is that the Swedish have never heard of this place. Swedish article commenting on the matter can be accessed here:

www.thelocal.se/22476/20091005/

The whole newspaper website is blocked in China, unsurprisingly (oh you silly censors, I still managed to get past your ramparts). Apparently the original story has also been deleted from Xinhua's website--however, it can still be accessed through Google's cached pages*. How embarrassing for Xinhua.

It seems to me, this problem could arise from two conditions: (1) Pressure on Chinese news agencies to maintain quotas for reporting good vs bad news, and (2) state run agencies' (such as Xinhua) tendency to suffer from nepotistic hiring practices. The result: Xinhua ends up with a surplus of untalented hacks looking for positive, whimsical stories with which to entertain the masses. The result is that national news agencies in China often contain a lot of tabloid journalism. I've seen plenty such stories in the news papers here--my girlfriend likes to point out odd stories to me sometimes--although this one takes the cake for being the most bizarre example. I suppose the fact that the reported subject matter is foreign gave the reporter the feeling he/she could take more license in the fabrication of the story.

Local or specialist papers (the Local, for example) can probably sympathize with the search for entertaining, oddball subject matter to report... but they're still more accountable for the accuracy of the stories they print, and less accountable for making sure their stories do not reflect on negative trends/events or negative perceptions of their home governments.

*Read the comments section of the article itself for more specific details (as well as list of Chinese newspapers that printed this article).

Mongolian Stories: Over the Border and Through the Steppe

2009-09-30T15:52:00.001+08:00

July 27th:

Early in the morning, I rode out of Beijing on K23, the train line direct to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The train seemed almost deserted: maybe twenty westerners, half as many Chinese and Mongolians, and a bevy of sullen train attendants. The few passengers all seemed excited, however. The train compartments were decorated with heavy woolen rugs and blankets in patterns redolent of Mongolia or Siberia. The fan bolted above the window could have easily been soviet issue, as it clanked to life. I shared my room with a young 20-something Brit couple: Dave was a wind-power engineer who had been working in Beijing (and sometimes inspecting turbines in Inner Mongolia province... in the dead of winter); Susan had been teaching school kids in Ningxia province (another desolate part of northwestern China). She sported a mischievous sense of humor and a miraculous ability to figure out how the various 'Soviet-era' fixtures and mechanisms of the train could be made to work. Sean, an Australian programmer/surfer dude, settled in by himself in the compartment next door. Not counting our one train attendant, the rest of our train car was empty. The attendants, occasionally marching past our door, were stolid in physiology and brusque in manner. It almost seemed as if they weren't happy to be returning to Mongolia... or perhaps they just had hangovers.

Initially, the train passes through dry, wrinkled mountain ranges--possibly under but somehow past the Great Wall without our noticing it. Narrow valleys house brick villages as well as the occasional factory steaming in the morning light. Rivers rush onwards towards Beiing and the North China plain where they will soon be entrapped in reservoirs, sucked dry for irrigation, and polluted with runoff. But here in the mountains, the river still runs in unfettered enthusiasm.

The landscape rises higher and drier. Inner Mongolia spreads out beyond the wall once meant to keep it out. The province, after centuries of fighting back and forth over its border, finally fell to permanent Chinese control and cultivation in the Qing dynasty. By now its Mongols are a minority, their culture submerged in the same bathroom-tiled homogeneity to be found anywhere in China. This shaving sliced from the Mongolian heartland contributes to the general enmity Mongolians hold against China. More on that later. The land becomes more inhospitable by the hour. Isolated sheep ranches, coal mines, wind power turbines, dot the horizon. Desert sands appear as dusk falls.

We reached the Chinese-Mongolian border at midnight. The visa process and inspection was painless, although we were all subjected to an instant temperature reading from a laser thermometer beamed at our foreheads--an ode to the swine flu in its carmine gaze. The train was refitted with new bogies because Russia and Mongolia have a different standard than the rest of the world (an attempt to slow down any attempted invasions). Passengers were confined to the customs control house during the process. As we waited, a British fellow who sold insurance in Ulaanbaatar and Beijing told me about his first run up to UB (expat nickname for Ulaanbaatar). At the border, the engine exploded into flames and had to be decoupled and allowed to burn to the ground in isolation. Such a wonderful anecdote to have swimming in my mind, as we got back onto the train and tried to fall back asleep--now in the empty vastness of the Mongolian Gobi.

July 28th

I woke up mid-morning, bright sunlight reflecting off the desert sands of the northern Gobi--we'd crossed most of that desert in the night. Breakfast proved that bogies hadn't been the only thing to have changed in our train car: a Mongolian dining car had replaced the bland Chinese one, complete with a sullen Mongolian attendant drinking vodka (and carefully pasting the seal back onto the bottle after she was done sipping) in the corner. The car itself was ornate, with dense wooden carvings, bows, horsehead fiddles, and other Mongolian knickknacks for decoration. The land became greener, bit by bit, as we ate.

Around 2 PM we came over a mountain ridge, and into UB itself. The transition was startling, as most of Mongolia is a grassy wilderness undeveloped by outside standards in which nomads still live more or less as they have for thousands of years (with the addition of satellite and motorcycles, however). Even up to the edge of Ulaanbaatar (population 1 million out of the 3 million or so people living in the whole country), there is nothing but grass and grazing livestock until one breaches the city's central valley. Tents or 'gers' were the most common domicile to be seen in UB's suburbs. Wooden fences cross-hatched the hillsides, each defining a family yard in which sat a pure-white ger. We had arrived at the heart of Mongolia, a city exemplifying nomadic Mongolia's modernized future as well as its Soviet near-past. Our hostel, The Golden Gobi, was located in a residential quad next to the 'State Department Store', one of UB's main malls and a remnant of that former Soviet-satellite era. The Golden Gobi, a typical backpacker hostel benefits from a sense of the traditional hospitality of a Mongolian family. It is family run, and the first thing you do after coming in the door and removing your shoes and backpack, is to sit down and enjoy a nice cup of tea. Whether or not one stays in this hostel (or in one of the many others that have sprouted up in UB in recent years), it was quickly apparent to us that the Golden Gobi was a sort of nexus for traveler activity, with many backpackers just stopping by to band together and share costs (guides and transport are fairly necessary to traverse Mongolia's desert wastelands, frigid peaks, and grassy steppes if one doesn't have months of spare time) on their travel plans. I was fairly quick to arrange a trip into the Gobi and up through central Mongolia. My companions were two Danish girls, Bina and Louisa, as well as an American, Stephanie. I became a millionaire (after exchanging Chinese Yuan into Mongolian Togrog), checked up on Facebook (no Chinese censorship!), guarded my day pack and money zealously (Susan had her wallet snatched right out of her backpack by a pickpocket), and finished with an evening out on the town with companions once and future. Despite the misadventure of being assaulted by a dwarf beggar and the realization that a Tuesday night in UB is not prime time for nightlife, a good time was had by all.

Driving in China: The Deadly and the Dead

2009-09-28T00:53:00.001+08:00

Recently the Chinese government has stepped up a campaign against various driving offenses (drunk, speeding, or other violations of traffic law; a major problem in China). Like many other campaigns--at any given time, there's always something!--I'm aware that this one has cropped up sporadically for many years. Some years ago, in the desolate town of Cherchen which skulks by the remote southern edge of the Taklamakan desert, I witnessed a battered and scarred poster showing car crashes--propaganda intended to scare drivers into obeying the traffic rules. The decayed state of the signage suggested that the desert sand storms of many years had rasped across its surface since the bygone campaign of its inception. The sign may soon blow away into the sandy expanse, but the problem it addresses won't.

The latest campaign may have begun this past spring, around the time that my college posted on its bulletin board full of edifying/horrifying pictures chock-full of dead and dying car accident victims similar to what I'd seen before. The other foreign teachers expressed disgust at the goriness of those pictures, but of course the intended audience was our wealthy, irresponsible batch of students: many of mine spent this summer practicing for their driver's license and I shudder at the thought. The image of one of those kids behind the wheel makes me more sympathetic to the government's methodology.

By late summer, the campaign must have been in full swing. In the little Miao (Hmong) minority village of Xijiang, set amid the mountainous countryside of Guizhou, Kiera and I watched a film version of the same. Drunk drivers were interviewed, traffic police were shown giving breathalizer tests, and further corpses were shown strewn outside the wreckage of their cars. This must have been diverting edutainment, because a decent selection of the townsfolk turned up to watch as the bloody images were shone (and shown) through the fabric of a white sheet strung up across the town's main road.

The fear of the local drivers pervades those of us who have lived here a while, but what has brought this problem to the surface at this moment? Certainly accidents are happening everywhere in China, all the time. Actually, I saw a taxi run into and tip over a woman on an electric moped earlier today. A co-worker tells a story of two little girls he saw killed on the streets of Suzhou, little, orphaned slippers lying askew in the middle of the intersection ahead of him. The richer cities are paradoxically suffer worse from deadly drivers, it seems. Suzhou and Hangzhou, both rich cities full of so-called 'Chuppies' or Chinese yuppies, seem to have some of the worst accidents reported in the news. Perhaps this is because wealth in China so often removes any sense of accountability (guanxi, or connections, is all you need to escape consequences in most cases); also because rich individuals have money to buy driver's licenses rather than go through the testing process. I have Chinese friends who have done just that--thankfully, the couple I'm thinking of don't yet have a car. The driver's licensing department here in Nanjing even provided a cheating service to a foreign co-worker of mine who was trying to get his Chinese driver's license. They provided, for around 400 yuan (approx. $60), a "translator" who just went through, question by question, and told him which answers to circle. Yes, Nanjing is a very foreigner-friendly city... but it's drivers aren't. I've seen enough flipped or smashed cars along its roads to be leery in extreme of ever driving here.

So Hangzhou was the scene of the latest furor--and what I imagine began this campaign for better driving. A rich kid drag-racing through the city killed a pedestrian. Another recent accident saw a Porsche kill a young girl, also in Hangzhou. This article (http://www.chinahush.com/2009/08/08/car-smashing-elder-and-chinas-road-kills/#more-2119): talks about an elderly gentleman who threw stones at a succession of cars running a red light. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considering doing the exact same thing. Clearly public opinion is coming to a head on the issue. Thus the crackdown. The problem with crackdowns, however, is that they often seem to end with little substantial, permanent change. A few show trials and many propaganda speeches later, the political elite move on to crackdown topics of personal interest to them and the nomenclatura to use their influence to continue their bad habits--whether whoring, gambling, driving drunk, or pirating foreign products. I hope, for the sakes of all who live in the grasp of China's grid, that this time is different: drivers less deadly, less of the dead.

Sixty Years of Oppression... yay.

2009-09-23T15:23:00.001+08:00

Little more than a week from now, TV channels across China--and news stations around the world--are likely to be blanketed with Soviet-esque military parades and other fun displays of Chinese chauvinism at its most presentable. As we know from the Beijing Olympics, when it comes to triumphant displays, the Chinese government doesn't stint. And so it will be for this little party for the Party--the CCP "liberated" China some sixty years ago.

The organizers know that any successful birthday, like its confectionary, is a mix of ingredients. Our first ingredient is the sauce of delayed gratification: students at Chinese universities have been ordered to remain studying until the very day before the celebrations, and not to get an early start traveling back home to their families for the national holiday. Certainly the Party has been burned by student idealism and discontent; the Party will chance no repeat of that old Tiananmen classic, 'Student versus Tank'. Next fold in the solidity of government strictures against hospitality: In Beijing, residents are being told to not invite friends or family to stay during what has long been one of three main Chinese holiday periods. Furthermore, the residents have also been told to seal their windows and stay off of balconies facing the parade route. Apparently, the festivities are primarily meant for the vetted participants and for the cameras, not for the common people of Beijing.

Add a bitter note of ethnic strife: the Party is taking no chances in Tibet, where foreign visitors are under yet further strictures (the few allowed in: NYTimes reports that China has now barred any further applications for foreigners to visit Tibet during the next three weeks); the government also reports having foiled a bomb plot in Xinjiang/East Turkestan, the restive Turkic territory in western China. Racial tensions are not going to disappear any time soon, and what better time for one to show displeasure with cultural assimilation than at the birthday bash of their oppressors?

And let us finish this concoction with a lascivious frosting... but not to be eaten until later, lest it distract from those glorious, oppressive flavors: as my family observed*, pink-light districts across China have been shuttered at least for the duration of the celebrations. Yes, that's right. Whores have been given an impromptu holiday in which they can celebrate the liberation of their country from bourgeosie depravity and exploitation. Doubtlessly, they'll be hard at work again in their parlors after the official vigilance has passed by again.

The flavors evoked by this mix of recent actions takes us back through the sixty years that the CCP has ruled China. While it is not fair to say that nothing has changed in their management of the country, it does make clear that heavy-handed control has never gone out of style. Subtlety, like the fresh flavors of a Cantonese dim sum delight, has never overtaken firey bombast and overkill--as exemplified by the mouth-destroying explosions of Sichuan pepper--in popularity with China's movers and shakers. The country has grown richer, more cosmopolitan, and yes, almost a parody of bourgeosie affectations, but the strategy and methodology of China's rulers hasn't really changed much in the more than 2,000 years of their imperial dominion. So, forget about a mere 60 years of communist dominion, let us give factual wishes for a chronologically greater episodic subjugation:

Happy 2,370th birthday, emperors of China past and present! May your actions bear strange and difficult fruit.

(*Yes, my sister was interested in seeing, in passing, the 'pink light' beauty parlors that infest China's cities. However, in neighorhoods of Xingyi and Chongqing once chock full of such places, almost every store front was shuttered. Other symbols of the pampered bourgeosie were not given repreive, however: our bus passed by a truck full of caged dogs bound for the restaurant.)

Lord of the Wrongs III: Return of the Hat

2009-08-09T18:16:00.002+08:00

Oh yes, THE HAT has been reincarnated this very day. Perusing the fedora selection at the State Department Store (no, not the State Department store) in Ulaanbaatar, I found myself a suitable one to replace that beloved adornment of shaped wool felt that was so rudely ripped from my vulnerable pate during my winter trip to the Philippines.

And now that my crown has been resuscitated...

Let the Wild Rumpus begin!

Beijing, Again

2009-07-25T21:47:00.001+08:00

My vacation begins, although I'm still quite some way from Mongolia. I took the high speed train to Beijing, last night. Turns out the subway line out to the South Train Station isn't finished yet, so I walked all the way to Tian'anmen Square from the station. Luckily I had a similarly luckless Brit traveler to keep me company on the cross-town hike.

Got up around 6 AM. Wandered over to Tian'anmen. The surveilance cameras (at least three installed on each and every lamppost on the square) were somehow more noticeable this time. Also, they've newly installed luggage detectors/security points heading onto the square itself (at least I don't remember such a security presence last time I was here). I had to go through two (actually they tricked us on the first under-road passage, because it led to a section of the square that was cordioned off for no good reason) to get to the square proper. But no metal detectors, so I guess if terrorists want to blow themselves up with explosives strapped on, they could probably still find a way. Granted, the terrorists had better look more like western tourists than musliims if they want to get through--I imagine the process is more thorough.

Grabbed my tickets to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia from the CITS head office; next on my itinerary: the Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace is the country home (now enveloped by the city) for the hot summer months when Beijing becomes an unbearable furnace. I don't blame those emperors. The Forbidden City is nice and imposing and all, but it's kindof desolate and charmless. I imagine it wouldn't be a treat when baking in the July heat. Thus, the Summer Palace, a place of meandering pathways, temple-crested hilltops, and very uncomfortable-looking thrones carved out of Birch roots (one of them was, apparently). The place would indeed have been a bastion of peace and harmony for the richest, most powerful man in China--plus his harem of concubines--but the estimated tourist intake on the day I visited was 40,000 people. Mein gott, the fresh air was nice, but sandwiched in with that many people, the charm of the place is lost very quickly indeed.

The Palace was burned down at least twice (both by coalitions of European troups rampaging/retaliating against the Manchu throne during (a) the Opium Wars and (b) the Boxer Rebellion. The Palace was rebuilt both times, one of those times by misappropriated funds that were supposed to be allocated for building China a modern navy. Oh well, Empress Cixi did build herself a marble boat, however, so perhaps that counts as an addition to the Chinese navy? In any case, it didn't help much in protecting the palace when it got burned down the second time.

So now I'm absolutely exhaused and wondering whether or not I feel up to hiking a section of the Great Wall, tomorrow. It is both sad and true that this is the fourth time I've visited Beijing, but I've still never been out to the Great Wall. I'm always either on my way to somewhere, or felt completely tired with major Chinese tourist attractions when I came through there, albeit a somewhat weak excuse when talking about a putatative world wonder. I guess we'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow. I don't want to use up all my energy reserves before I reach Mongolia, after all!

Signing out in Beijing,
Bruce

Last One Out of China, Please Switch Off the Sun.

2009-07-23T07:03:00.001+08:00

Yesterday morning, it did feel like the sun was switched off for a brief moment in time. Probably you may know from the news coverage of it, that the century's longest solar eclipse covered a fair portion of Asia that day, running between the Indian coast, over the Himalayas, through China, and off into the Pacific Ocean. The upper edge of the 'totality' (area where the sun is completely covered) passed perhaps ten miles south of Nanjing, so I was able to witness the effects, if not at their greatest power.

Unfortunately, the skies were shrouded as I awoke yesterday morning, and a serious thunderstorm approached the city at the same time as the eclipse neared completion in Eastern China. The doors on the upper deck of my 25-story apartment building were locked, just in case the weather had permitted us to watch the event. I leaned out my window as winds whipped over the trees, and the city began to darken as if dusk approached. Street lights sprang on; the city skyline, including its almost completed super-skyscraper, Greenland Plaza, lit up within as myriad office workers were forced to turn on the overhead lights. For a period of about five minutes, the skies approximated the darkness of about 7 or 8 PM, just short of true night. The ominous cloud hanging over the park just across the street became ever more sinister in appearance. Then, suddenly, it was like a giant hand had begun to turn up the 'dimmer'. Moment by moment, the day had returned, if still under storm clouds. Several minutes passed, and the city lights turned off, whether automated or by the irritated hands of coffee-crazed interns. And the heavens let loose a monsoonal downpour that drenched the streets in inches of rainwater. I'm not sure if the eclipse had any bearing on the weather, but it certainly made the moment more dramatic.

Facebook Blocked In China

2009-07-10T20:12:00.001+08:00

This message brought to you via Gmail (recently blocked, currently unblocked), sent to Blogger (blocked for both viewing and posting in China, but not able to block email-posting capability), and then automatically re-posted by my Facebook account.

A few weeks ago the CCP blocked Google (including all its apps) for about 24 hours. Now, because of the current crackdown on Uighurs--and ongoing race riots--in China's far western territory of Xinjiang (also known as East Turkestan), access to Facebook is denied throughout China. Thanks to some lovely proxy-servers, I can still *see* Facebook (including messages and wall posts), but my current proxy setup doesn't allow me to respond or actually interact with my Facebook account. Messages are piling up, including those from American Uighur friends hoping I had any helpful news concerning their friends and family currently endangered here in China. My appologies that I functionally can't respond to you if I didn't already have your contact information. Feel free to send me a facebook message with email address if you wish, but I should also say that Nanjing is about the opposite end of China from Xinjiang/East Turkestan, so I really don't know anything about what's going on there that hasn't already been posted on Facebook groups and reported by western news media such as the New York Times, et al.. To others, my appologies that I can't respond or write notes on your photos or any other form of Facebook interaction. So until I come up with a better solution to this digital interference from China' communist party, I guess I'll see you on the flip side.

Do pray (or keep best wishes in mind) for the innocents, both Uighur and Han, who are now suffering. This is a terrible ongoing tragedy in a part of the world normally unoticed and unthought of by the rest of the world.

The Lecture Circuit

2009-07-07T00:12:00.001+08:00

These days I find myself a university lecturer in demand. Granted these are usually one-off deals, a sort of special treat or indeed a promotion for educational services. As with most things here in China--as most other places--it all comes down to money.

Two days ago I was picked up from the front of my condo in Nanjing by a van, with driver and "translator" (in reality a high school student who had much trouble following my English, so I tried to trouble him as little as possible... he soon dozed off in the back of the van). We drove four hours north across the broad, flat rice-paddies, wooded levees, and canals that make up much of Jiangsu province. I found that I missed such long, uneventful drives. I used to do a lot of my best rumination while being chauffeured between Ann Arbor and East Lansing (past similarly bland, agrarian scenery).

We arrived in Huai'an, the birthplace of one of China's best known political monoliths: a man who played Robin to Chairman Mao's Batman (The Penguin might be a more fitting comparison for Mao, but nevermind), that suave foreign policy mouthpiece and PR guru. None other than Zhou Enlai. The town actually reminded me a lot of Lianyungang, which is to say that it was a small city (by Chinese standards) with few tall buildings, not particularly photogenic, centered on a round-about with a very similar tacky sculpture (vaguely global, this one, whereas LYG's is more like a winged abstraction if I remember right). A trip to the town's museum had been mentioned to me, so I asked if there was anything commemorating Zhou Enlai. Apparently not. Either that, or they didn't want to take me there to see the associated CCP triumphalist memorabilia, I guess.

We arrived at a high school that looked about to--literally--go to seed. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a tree trunk bursting through the blackboard of one of its classrooms, and I definitely wouldn't want to be teaching there in an earthquake. I was told that that was where I would deliver my lecture, to be entitled: 'Tips for Better English-language Study Habits'. Good enough. My translator scooted off into the advancing, humid gloom and was replaced with a young lady (20-something) with a face most unfortunately blistered with acne. She announced in awkward English that she'd be my translator at the lecture. She and the 'big boss', an indecisive 30-something fellow with a baby face, were duly alarmed to find that I hadn't written down my lecture notes yet--I had been told that it wouldn't really matter too much what I lectured about, so had assumed that a general lecture on my background and country would do... the specific topic 'English study habits' was imparted to me at the last minute, as is custom here in China: Wouldn't do to let foreign spies find out what the exact lecture topic would be ahead of time, after all! I think their alarm was mostly due to the fact that this young woman would have to translate my lecture, and she clearly wasn't up to the job. Even trying to explain to her the very basics of what I would discuss and some possible audience activities to follow was horribly painful on both of us. As far as my biographical information goes, she'd never heard of Turkey, Los Angeles (I used both the English and Chinese name as well as common acronym, but still no go), nor the University of Michigan. She spent about an hour or two quailing and balking at the idea of translating audience questions from Chinese to English as well as my answers in English back into Chinese. I assured her that I had done these sorts of lectures before, and not only would it be necessary to do this sort of translation in order to encourage more than one or two questions from the audience, but that it would be a horrible waste for some of these people to not be able to ask their questions in a manner comfortable and understandable to them, since, for most, their English would be rudimentary and their chances of meeting another foreigner any time soon would be vanishingly small. Eventually--Didacticus, non-existent patron god of teachers, be praised!--it was arranged that an English professor from a local university would be my lecture translator instead.

Dinner was atypically indecisive--I usually let the Chinese order since they know what the local specialities are better than I do--as the boss dithered. The food was good, however. Aromatic, spicy crawfish; salted, sliced duck breast; shrimp on a bed of some sort of aqueous tubular vegetable. Just the sort of food that Jiangsu rightfully boasts of.

After a night bedeviled by mosquitoes, I gave my lecture to a crowded hall--at least 100 children as well as some parents--at around 9 AM. As always before standing in front of a new batch of students, I felt nervous. The great shyness and lack of curiousity with which they avoided filling out the time I had alloted for Q&A didn't help. However, my translator (a friendly fellow with excellent English going by the English name of Joe) and I soldiered on. I started by disappointing their hopes of 'shortcuts', as practice really is the only way to perfect language skills, but continued by giving my best tips for making practice a more fun and self-tailored experience, making best use of books, tv-clips, movies, music, English-Corner, chance encounters with foreigners on the street (key point: be brave, feel free to approach and introduce yourself, but politely make certain that the foreigner really has time and inclination to talk rather than more important things to be about), as well as a few pronunciation exercises that could be practiced at home and modified according to preference for British pronunciation or American pronunciation. The lecture was a success, I think. At least in terms of its raw commercial purpose, eighty students immediately signed up for the program my lecture was in effect a promotional activity for. Both parents and students seemed to appreciate my forthwright appraisal of study methods and how to better them, in any case. One girl asked me what my advise for her was, she said she had absolutely no interest in learning English. I told her that since a certain capability with English was a prerequisite for attending a decent college in China as well as graduating from college, she'd best emulate Bill Gates (drop out and start her own business) or just resign herself to making the best of the unwelcome situation that exists. A lesson that could easily apply to us foreign expats who live in China as well, I suppose.

Green Dam: The CCP Gives Itself a Virus

2009-06-27T03:13:00.001+08:00

China's internet censorship is always news (if not exactly front page news) in the West. Far rarer, I think, is that censorship looms prominent in Chinese public discourse. Usually the regime is content to engineer things behind the scenes: implementing the so-called 'Great Firewall of China' in order to block or slow access to foreign websites covering topics it is frightened of; making backroom deals with major Chinese websites as well as local versions of major foreign web companies--such as Google--to encourage and enforce 'self-censorship'. Most of the Chinese public probably doesn't consider the topic in depth either, because (a) most of this occurs behind the scenes, (b) they've adapted to this sort of stifled environment, (c) many Chinese have been so bored-to-tears by communist rhetoric that they view all forms of political discussion as equally boring, and besides which (d) nationalist, pro-Han Chinese arguments reduce sympathy for such things as democratization (a Western import, not that they turn up their noses at BMWs, Gucci bags, or indeed, communist doctrine, Western imports all) and ethnic minority cultural protection.

The CCP's latest public relations blunder has changed all that: both bringing censorship directly into common discourse here in China as well as stirring vocal public resentment at such intrusion. I'm talking about the recent requirement for all computers in China to be sold with 'Green Dam' censorship software (onstensibly to combat access to porn, but also to extend control and oversight of other topics the regime doesn't want Chinese to see/discuss). Most foreign news readers have already read the coverage there. Of particular interest to me is that Chinese netizens have begun to fight back: hacking the Green Dam website, making death threats to the company, etc. Since the government has often fanned nationalist flames among its young netizens when such flames happened to benefit the government line or distract from its deficiencies (namely when death threats were being made to foreign media company offices in China, during the run-up to the Olympics), it is interesting to see the flames turn in the other direction. Death threats either way shouldn't be condoned, but raising the ire of Chinese hackers should probably be given more consideration by self-important bureaucrats in Beijing before they mandate such ill-conceived measures.

The end result? China's netizens are quite capable of pooling resources and hacking talent when it comes to subverting such an obvious method of censorship, particularly when the prize is pornographic goodies (which quite a few of the boys at least would be interested in), rather than forbidden political topics (which many Chinese youth profess disinterest in). I'm sure we haven't heard the last of hack attacks on this company, or other mass methods to subvert the software (when present in net bars, for example, where uninstalling or reformatting are not options). Perhaps those who oppose the CCP can even use software to compromise government computers, if the security loopholes are as bad as has been reported.

Even more importantly, the CCP has made censorship a solid, rather than abstract concern for millions of young Chinese by: (a) directly interfering with the internal software of their computers (a very personal, beloved piece of technology) rather than relying on less visible/personal forms of censorship; and (b) by making this a fight against porn (which many Chinese might find interesting, even somewhat educational given that sexual health education is skipped in the Chinese curriculum) rather than political abstractions that many Chinese youth find boring or have little sympathy for.

By solidifying the concept of censorship and what it means to the average Chinese netizen, people's resistance (if I might borrow a phrase :-D ) to it will also solidify, as indeed it has in regard to this 'Green Dam' incident.

Bicycle! Bicycle! I want to ride my...

2009-06-18T23:34:00.001+08:00

Yes, Kiera and I have finally gotten bikes with which to roam the sycamore-shaded streets of Nanjing. Joy! Just today I biked down to the Phoenix Bookmall to buy a LP guide to Mongolia--summer trip plans are coming my way--and then on down past the construction site of what will be the world's 3rd tallest building (for a brief time after completion), and on up Beijing Street past an ancient bell tower. A new sense of freedom has been gained thanks to my bike--which I will be naming Heilong, or 'Black Dragon'. I had wanted to buy a green bike so that I could call it 'Lü Xiaolong', a pun on Bruce Li's Chinese name (Li Xiaolong), but no dice. There were no green bikes of good quality and reasonable price in the supermarket where we bought our bikes.

So it goes.

In other news, I'll be done testing my students soon, and then my summer can truly begin. It seems I'll be doing a bit of work here and there--providing lectures for top business and government officials at nearby Hohai University, or for younger students on the opening day of an English summer camp in Huai'an. I also may be tutoring a Chinese student who is planning on attending a boarding school in England next fall. End of July I'm thinking of heading up to explore the crystaline lakes, feathery steppes, cragged mountains, and vast deserts of Mongolia (Outer Mongolia as the acquisitive Chinese reckon it). End of August should see the arrival of my mother, father, and sister for a guided tour (myself the guide) of Shanghai as well as various parts of southwestern China.

A good summer it should be.

Bicycle! Bicycle! I wanna ride my...

2009-06-18T23:22:00.001+08:00

Duan Wu Jie (Dragon Boat Festival)

2009-05-29T17:46:00.001+08:00

Time for sailing the dragon boats once again, as Duan Wu Jie comes--and goes!

Long suppressed as a national holiday by the government in mainland China, Duan Wu Jie or 'The Dragonboat Festival' was once again restored to national holiday status last year when the government decided to reconsider their approach to national holidays--previously, there had been only 3 major holidays (National Day, Labor Day, and Chinese New Years) which had annually swamped tourist capacity.

Duan Wu Jie (held yesterday) dates back to an ancient Chinese poet/mandarin who was exiled due to political intrigues and later drowned himself when his nation-state was captured by the stronger nation-state of Qin (which went on to form the first major imperial dynasty of a united China, as well as lend its name to the country as "China"). This poet fellow was well regarded by the locals, who searched for his body in the lake where he drowned, and supposedly threw food into the water so that the fish wouldn't chew up the poet's body too badly before it could be recovered. From this we can see the possible origin of a special food item specially prepared by Chinese families for the festival: 'Zongzi', a tetrahedron of sticky rice and sweets or meat wrapped in a tight binding of bamboo leaves and string. If the fish disliked the stuff as much as I do, I doubt it kept them from dining on the revered poet's flesh. The racing of dragonboats could also possibly date back to this desperate search for the poet's corpse.

As for myself, I get a three day weekend which is much appreciated. Later today I will be using Skype's new video-chat capability to chat with New Yorker first graders taught by a friend of a friend.

Blocked, Once Again

2009-05-17T03:13:00.001+08:00

It seems the Chinese censors have gotten smarter. Previously they only blocked the 'blogspot' suffix, now they seem to be blocking the 'blogger' site as well. Too bad for them I also have the option of posting blogs via email.

Warning! Teaching Can Be Hazardous. Roadmap, Anyone?

2009-04-25T16:39:00.004+08:00

(Note: another example of a submission to www.borgger.com. This one uses the Creative Commons Non-Commercial copyright, the idea being that if someone saw this and wanted to use my idea in a non-commercial way to benefit all English teachers abroad, they should just give credit to me, but if they wanted to profit--web-advertisement from pageviews on such an application as the one I mention--they would have to pay to buy the commercial rights. I guess we shall see if this is how things work in practice, but the system Borgger has at least encourages people to write down and share their "in-the-shower" epiphanies, hopefully with a result of added-value to society as a whole.)

A trend, of which I am a part, is for native English speakers to teach their language abroad. Demand for these services have increased dramatically in the past few years, particularly in regard to the recent, massive expansion of China's economy. This type of job opportunity is only likely to become more popular as economies in the West shrink and China's economy pulls along with (relatively) good prospects for growth, leaving college graduates with a choice between dead job markets at home and a large demand abroad--particularly in view of the fact that many English training schools in Asia have incredibly low (actual) requirements for the qualifications of the presumptive teachers.

One problem this creates--particularly with schools with "lowered expectations" of their teachers--is that many of these places are hell holes. Many a TESL/TEFL forum is crammed with teachers complaining that they were subjected to: nasty, dilapidated living quarters; racist treatment; fights with the managers/owners over salary or contractual obligations not being met; lack of teaching support; being lied to about any manner of expected conditions at the work location; Triads/toughs their boss hires; and the list goes on. Now as much as I would like to say that lecherous, 50-yr-old paedophiles lacking a college degree who end up in teaching in China (or other places) because they're running away from (a) creditors, (b) alimony payments or (d) the feds deserve what is coming to them. Of course at least half of all the ESL teachers in Asia hopefully don't fit the aforementioned mold, myself included.

That said, what would be most useful to this increasingly relevant band of didactic economic refugees that doesn't seem to have been provided in any of the major ESL websites? A map that corresponds with the addresses of schools that have gained a bad reputation among teachers, and correspondingly should be blacklisted. This map could be cross-referenced with details about major locations that teachers find themselves living/working in and separate reviews pertaining to life in those places. I think this would be exceedingly useful, especially for the first-timers who often, out of no fault of their own, end up in crappy schools in crappy locations.

Example: me. My first six months in China was spent in a town I often described as a pock mark on the ass end of nowhere, yet the city was also too large to be considered nice for purposes of 'quaintness' or 'fresh air' of which it had neither. I also spent a goodly portion of the six months fighting with a boss/owner about the specifics of my contract. All this because when I was choosing where to go, the best that my google search could come up with was the company's own description of [said hell hole] as a seaside city with fresh air, mountains, beaches, and waterfalls.

Now wouldn't a cross-listed map of recommendations and blackmarks have been useful! Now there are surely fresh-eyed teachers still being snookered into going to that place in dire need of a WARNING sign. On the other hand, hoboes newly-minted by the global downturn and looking for a good place in the middle of nowhere to hole up and avoid their creditors could consider a 'reversed' strategy when looking for schools with low expectations for teaching ability and low interest from other foreign teachers with better credentials (hence greater demand for the services of said bum).

Surely this wouldn't be too difficult to put together, especially with the tools Googlemaps provides, no?

Thoughts on Reform and Reunification of China

2009-04-25T16:30:00.002+08:00

(note: these are an example from my recent problem/solution collaborations listed on www.borgger.com; the original material for these thoughts is culled from my discussions in the Facebook forum: "Students for a Peaceful, Unified, and Democratic China")

As a teacher living and working in China (PRC), there are three T's that are considered verboten subject matter when teaching the children: Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square (i.e. democratic reform). Although these are certainly not the only areas of sensitivity to the Chinese people of the mainland, these are matters of primary concern to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). Taiwan is also a dicey geopolitical problem for the entire region, as well as the US due to its obligations. Here are my own thoughts regarding how this issue may eventually be resolved. Feel free to add to/debate their efficacy!

(1) No politician--except Cincinnatus--in the history of politics has entirely willingly given up his acquired power. It cannot be expected that either the democratically-elected politicians of the RoC (Republic of China) in Taiwan or the authoritarian oligarchs of the PRC (People's Republic of China) would be willing to give up their political domains or share those domains without a pretty major upset of the status quo, most likely one of catastrophic proportions.

(2) The status quo is a foreign policy fiction which states the existence of a single nation called China, despite the foreign policy reality that there are two governments sharing that nation and even giving slightly differing names for that nation--the two governments being the democratic government of the RoC which controls 'Taiwan province' as well as some islands off the coast of/belonging to Fujian province, and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) which controls all of mainland China, several autonomous ethnic regions, the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau.

3) Current thought in the CCP/PRC favors the extension of the SAR (Special Administration Region) status to Taiwan and its RoC. It already maintains this as a sort of polite fiction that can often be seen in the setup of its special airport concourses lumping flights into the SARs and Taiwan together. This form of SAR would allow for 'one country, two systems' of government, as seen with Macau and Hong Kong, the latter more than the former defending a quasi-democratic form of colonial government that (supposedly) allows for only limited interference in its internal governance by Beijing amd (supposedly) allows for ultimate transition to full democracy--although this transition has already been postponed several times by Beijing in order to preserve a status quo where pro-Beijing representatives in the legislative council enjoy advantage. Given the degree of actual interference by Beijing in Hong Kong's internal matters, and given that the RoC government (with its pretences to be the legitimate government of all China) cannot be equated with the colonial governments of the two SAR city-states,I find it unlikely that the people or politicians of the RoC/Taiwan would find SAR status an acceptable compromise.

3) This brings us back to the apparent necessity of a catastrophe within the overall territory of China in order to change the status quo between the two governments of China/two Chinas.

A lot could be debated about where/how/what potential catastrophe could upset the current status quo in a way that would aid a peaceable transition from two governments occupying that nation to some manner of unity. Various prognosticators envision natural disaster, man-made disaster, or revolution stemming from CCP mismanagement of China.

While no one can really know the future, I don't see these as events to be hoped for, not least because of the damage to China itself and danger to the lives of the Chinese people. I also don't find the last option all that likely, especially as long as the army is firmly loyal to CCP policy. For one thing, the current generation of Chinese youth is notable for its self-indulgent (xiao huang di, or 'little emperor syndrome') behavior, and thus it is unlikely to see much growth in attitudes for change among the middle class--at least enough so to truly endanger the CCP's privileged position in mainland Chinese society. Of course the CCP itself seems to be playing with fire when it encourages Chinese youth in recent displays of hyper-nationalistic attitudes; it cannot be certain how long such passionately patriotic youth will put up with leadership from aging CCP dinosaurs with whom they have little in common.

Other posible vectors for internal societal change could come from the increasing discontent of the country's rural majority, or its increasing numbers of urban migrant workers who are not fairly too well in the current global economic downturn. It remains to be seen whether any effective leadership or capability to strike at the country's leadership could emerge from such a quarter. Historically, China has often managed to do just this.

In any case, as said previously, such violent ends to the current status quo are probably not anyone's first preference.

4)The needed change, therefore, seems most likely to come from within the CCP itself. The current arrangement of the Party, after all, has almost nothing to do with Communist ideology, and everything to do with the powerful maintaining their position at the center of a vastly self-enriching web of guanxi (personal favors; corruption). So what argument could possibly persuade such people to put their position and access to personal wealth in the hands of popular mandate? The only situation would be one where political insiders are contesting rival factions for access to China's official and unofficial taxes.

It is apparent now that there are at least two main factions, possibly more, and certainly several minor factions as well, all contesting for power within the insular CCP (note, recent reprisals against Jiang Zemin's 'Shanghai faction'). It is possible that the contest could eventually spill outside the bounds of the party, and one or both factions would need to resort to having their power claim validated by popular or military mandate.

IF such happened, it might also be possible to see an alliance between one or more former CCP factions with RoC (and HK) political parties. Taiwanese politicians are unlikely to rejoin the mainland unless they can both retain benefits of their current position, and acquire a piece of the national pie. As for the mainlander party, whoever can successfully negotiate the reunification of Mainland and Taiwan would have won a great prize indeed, enough to fuel a popular (democratic) mandate. The mainland military might not appreciate being bipassed to achieve that goal, however, and it is hard to determine exactly what role they might play in all of this.

Finally, I don't imagine that this will come to pass in the immediate future. It could take fifty years or more, quite easily, for the opportune moment to arrive. Even in the current economic crisis, China does not seem to be one of the worst hit, and the current regime can probably manage to squeak past, even if discontent among the migrant workers recently unemployed increases.

Patience is the key ingredient. Democracy in substance rather than words is still pretty new even in Taiwan, after all.

Borgger.com

2009-04-25T16:26:00.003+08:00

A friend of mine has started up his own web company. The basic idea seems to be of an online collaborative think tank. The format allows for easy collaboration between users as well as easy copyright using a variety of options of rights reserved (non-commercial, open, free use, and full copyrights reserved). For myself I've generally been posting my thoughts on problems/solutions to various foreign policy problems I'm interested in, as well as issues I've encountered in my life as a teacher in China.

Feel free to give it a look-see! My username is "llothe" as it usually is.

www.borgger.com

Bones Buried Beneath My Blackboard

2009-03-06T21:46:00.003+08:00

Today I finished showing my students James Wan's very frightening film, 'Dead Silence'. After a short lecture on basics of the supernatural, I had them practice writing and telling ghost stories. Most of the students regurgitated various plot lines from Japanese and Hollywood horror films.

A few students gave me something more interesting... more substantive, if that word can apply to ghosts.

--Apparently the university where I teach (and the whole 'university city' that the city government has had built from what was recently rice fields) is built on one of the many mass graves scattered around Nanjing, where the Japanese buried their victims during World War II (and the famed 'Rape of Nanking' which left aproximately 300,000 citizens of the city dead). As a result, several buildings intended as lecture halls or dormitories have repeatedly collapsed. The Feng Shui masters claim that the spirits of the restless dead in the soil beneath are the culprits. Also, there are supposedly elevators that open and close for ghosts, but I think I'll believe that when I see it.

As if I didn't have enough reasons to disparage the relocation of this university, the place is haunted too!

--One girl told me a story about her family. Apparently her grandmother had three sons, but the last one was not wanted by the family (something must have been wrong with the child, because normally Chinese families are ecstatic to have sons). Her grandparents took the baby boy to a river and drowned it there.

Some years later, they had a baby girl, my student's mother. Now, recently the grandmother had died, and the family contracted the services of a man who could 'call back the dead from paradise' because they wanted to talk to the ghost of the grandmother. But instead of the grandmother, the psychic was contacted by the ghost of the little boy that they had drowned so many years ago. The little boy shouted at them, and particularly at my student's mother, "because she took his place, and lived the life that should have been his". Then the ghost of the boy told them that he had killed his mother (the grandmother), had cursed her in some fashion, and this is why the old lady had recently died.

--One last grisly story, not about ghosts: ten years ago in Nanjing, there was a female student who left her university one night and three days later hadn't returned. The morning of the third day, her fellow students saw a picture of her head (decapitated, apparently) in the newspaper. The police were soliciting information as to whom she was. The students went to the police and learned that only the head and arm had been found. The arm was found in a pile of trash, cut up cleanly into precise little pieces, as only a butcher or doctor could have done; the arm was found by a poor woman who didn't recognize the white little pieces of meat as human, and thanking her luck for discovering such good, unspoiled meat, took the remains home to eat. To her horror, as she washed the meat, she discovered the tip of a human finger among the pieces. The police questioned the butchers of Nanjing, but no clear suspect was ever found.

The story has the sounds of urban legend to me, although my students (Nanjing locals, both of them) assured me that this indeed happened ten years ago. I wonder, though, if a newspaper here in China would really publish a picture of a decapitated head in order to ID a body.

From a Soggy Notebook (Philippines Trip '09)

2009-02-28T17:11:00.003+08:00

I've been sinking back into the grind of teaching several rather remedial bunches of Chinese college students, and duly forgetting all promises to self that a new year would merit a return to regular postings. So here I turn to the daily log I kept whilst sailing the blue waters and trekking the dread jungles of the Philippines. The log is rather soggy because I took it up into a cloud forest that was perpetually rainy and sodden. I will now attempt to decipher these heiroglyphs scrawled within its ink-stained pages. Can I discover anything legible therein?

January 15th

Day One

My flight left Shanghai at half past midnight, the peril of using a budget airline (Cebu Pacific). Taiwan and the restive Pacific ocean passed below us. I never have much luck sleeping on flights, and this time was no different. I only achieved oblivion for about half an hour out of the four hours in flight. Coming down over the Philippines' largest island, Luzon, just before dawn, we were greeted with rampaging lines of fire burning semi-circles from the darkness. Were these lava flows descending from volcanic heights, or merely farmers burning their fallow rice fields? I couldn't determine which. It seems unlikely that our flight path would descend over active volcanoes, however.

The first shock of arrival in Manila, was a generalized feeling of freedom. There must be some hidden tension involved when a citizen of the democratic world lives in an authoritarian country for some time, witnessing in his daily life some acts of repression, censorship, and various small intrusions of the state into the private lives of even its more privileged citizens and guests. In the Philippines, whatever flaws it has (government corruption and interference from the Catholic church should be mentioned), at least I could be free to make use of wikipedia, the BBC, various blogs, and other websites that I find to be routinely blocked in China; I would also find myself able to see the law-enforcement in a more benign light.

The second shock was the degree to which English permeates this country whose national language is not English but Filipino (Tagalog). Advertisements are usually printed in English, with maybe a few words of Filipino added mainly for emphasis; daily conversation, news reports even are sprinkled with English words, particularly technical words, words referring to artifacts of modernity, and catchphrases. In fact, most Filipinos are remarkably fluent in English, even those who can't express themselves well (but can at least understand what they hear). Coming from a country where even serious students of English have great difficulties understanding what they hear or expressing themselves in rudimentary terms, this was a vast difference. Several things account for this difference: (1) The Philippines were essentially a US territory for many years, between the Spanish-American War and the end of World War II; (2) English is an official language of the Philippines, and continues to be (supposed to be) the main language used for teaching students of all ages; (3) the Philippines has been a remarkably open country for quite some time, so welcoming tourists and travelers and catering to them is one of the most important industries.

The third shock was the number of foreign food restaurants, even in poor neighborhoods and remote towns. Perhaps the tourists or Spanish/American colonization account for this, but it seems that the Filipinos aren't in the habit of turning up their noses at any potentially delicious cuisine (unlike, say, the French or the Chongqingers), and thus happily incorporate many different culinary traditions into their country.

The last shock I will mention is naturally the vast difference between leaving the Siberian chill in Shanghai for the tropical heat of Manila and my final destination of the day, Cebu. The Filipinos, however, were all bundled up that day. This winter had been unseasonably cool, with quite a few rainstorms sweeping across the islands. For me, however, this unseasonable cold felt a bit like the middle of May... utter temperature perfection!

* * *

In Cebu city, on the island of the same name, I arrived exhausted. I had been awake since about 1pm of the previous day... the time was now about 11AM. But unfortunately for me, my day was not yet done. After checking into an overly expensive hotel (still confused about the conversion rate), I decided to take a quick trip down to the local visa bureau to get my visa extended. That couldn't take very long, right?

Wrong, of course. I waited there for about four or five hours, in total. I waited in a room stuffed with nuns and what seemed to be an AARP convention. Hordes of balding, fat, ancient, white men shuffled about the room with bronzed Filipina beauties on their arms. Each time I thought the travesty could not be topped, in would walk a yet older, balder, fatter man with an even more teenaged-looking girl. I felt a strong urge to hie myself to the jungles, and escape from this beastly scene. Of course as I've said before, such relationships do have the benefit of being, probably, a more equitable and sustainable form of wealth transference than making the national government of the Philippines apply to the IMF for loans.

I finished my day with a trip to the Ayala Mall (where the affluent locals, and myself, were able to buy cans of A&W Rootbeer) in order to exchange my Chinese RMB for Philipine Pesos, and then booking a cheaper place to stay (literally the custodial storeroom of a pension) for the next few days during the famous Sinulog Festival.

More on the festival, Cebu, and sacred dolls in my next post. I end here with the peaceful image of myself slumbering at last in an air-conditioned 'double' room, vastly surplus to my usual needs.

Dusk on the Philippines

2009-02-10T15:19:00.006+08:00

Another two days left in my vacation here in the Philippines leaves me with feelings of both satisfaction and sadness. The country is much larger than could possibly be seen in just one month, so I certainly feel dissatisfied that I didn't have a chance to explore the islands of Palawan, Luzon, Mindoro, Bohol, or the Eastern Visayas. Mindanao and Sulu I'm happy to have left alone, considering the recent kidnapping of Red Cross workers, and my fellow teacher's stories of having seen the dead bodies of soldiers and rebels in the streets of a city he visited there.

I'm also quite sad to have missed a multitude of chances for snorkeling and scuba... but my attempt at snorkeling in Mocambique some years ago proved beyond doubt that I'll need either contacts or eye surgery before I can make a real and satisfying go at that. The "Blue Hole" dive, wherein one descends into the open maw of an underwater volcano, as well as the numerous WWII wrecks, and an unmatched diversity of corals makes this one of the great regrets I'll leave behind me here.

I will miss the calamansi (a kind of lime) drink, as well as the delicious local cuisine that I've had a chance to try at numerous family-run 'toro-toro' (point-point) establishments. And in the grim Chinese winter, with the soot of a thousand factories clogging my throat each morning and the small racist indignities that go along with life there, I shall most particularly miss the fresh, clean sea breezes and the correspondingly light-hearted and breezy Filipino ethos. The tension of haggling and forcing one's way past hawkers is severely depleted when they all seem to be smiling and drunk on the eternal sun of the tropics.

Today I've been racking up a few expenses in the resort locale (I'm staying in quite humble and cheap accomodations, however) of Tagaytay, just an hour or so south of Metro Manila's incalculable chaos. The city is one long strip mall that runs along a crater ridge... the outermost crater of a vast, flooded volcano, actually. The restaurants here are stilted out over the edge of the crater's jungle-clad wall so as best to view Lake Taal (the flooded volcano) with its islands, including an island volcano that has another small lake nestled within its crater. Lake within volcano, within lake, within crater... a beautiful location, too well touristed for my tastes, but a suitable place to enjoy grilled lapu-lapu (grouper) and a cold calamansi juice as I simultaneously bemoan and rejoice my return to China.

Dusk is coming, but there is a full, silvery moon coming with it.

The Filipina and the Lecher

2009-02-10T14:59:00.003+08:00

On the beaches, in the malls, scooting along the pot-holed streets, one sight is ubiquitous in the Philippines: The aging, white male and his bronzed, young Filipina beauty. And that certain degree of disgust sets in every time I see this sight. When a pockmarked, wrinkly white face that would do a naked mole rat proud pops up at the checkout line in the supermarket, I crane around to see where this mister's mistress could be. After all, it just would not do--could not possibly be!--that the man has come here to brave the hot beaches and the frigid waters of a calamansi-lime juice (and gin) on his own! In fact everyone I meet here is surprised that I travel alone, and am positively uninterested in the marriageable young things that surround me. So sad for these girls, I suppose, when at least I'm a young guy--even if I don't look so young--compared to the aged predators that limp in pursuit across the sands.

Some of those young Filipinas have aged as well, of course. It's not unlikely to meet a 40 yr-old Filipina lady with a 75 yr-old German. I suppose it does say something for her managerial abilities that she has managed to hold on to him for the past 20 years!

And then I came to the realization that one must give the Filipina her due. It is not so much that she is prey for the lecherous old Westerners, but that they are her prey. The average girl here has two options for bettering her life: (1) finding a job abroad, or (2) finding a hubby abroad. She takes this responsibility seriously, and every tourist is her potential fillet mignon. Amongst the legions of gold-diggers in this world, at least the union of lecher and young Asian has the potential to take the wealth of the west and transfer it directly among poor families as the elderly fellows move out here and allow their wives to start businesses that will in turn help pay for retirement. Net-cafes, small beach resorts, and shops selling local delicacies are the result. As recent history has shown, a shop selling buko pies is probably a more worthy place to put money than Wall Street is.

In Which Bruce is Propositioned by a Lady-Boy

2009-01-27T17:34:00.006+08:00

As if things weren't grim enough last evening--what with the loss of my longtime companion and hat--an evening at the net cafe turned out rather more interesting than planned.

As I came in the door, I was hailed enthusiastically by what appeared to be a group of young ladies. This is pretty normal for the Philippines where everyone greets foreigners with great ado. I waved back and headed to the front counter to arrange my computer. Where things diverted was when I approached them, and it turned out that they were guys in drag--with different relative levels of success in their ladylike appearance.

As I sat down at my computer, it was obvious the degree of fascination that I was subject to, and I answered questions about my age, country, and marital status. This also is quite normal in the Philippines where it appears to not be considered rude to ask questions about age and 'where is your missus?'

That was also okay, although after a few minutes of this I did try to signal that I wanted to focus on answering emails rather than questions. The girls/boys moved off to other pursuits, and all seemed to be calm. Then one of them came back. She/he was certainly the one who most appeared to be a woman, quite pretty in fact. She sat down next to me and quite forwardly asked me if I would like her/him to join me in my room that night. She/he asked me if I would like that, and suggested that she/he could fulfill my sexual dreams. I guess she'd/he'd gotten quite familiar with that line, as young Filipinos of both sexes and various orientations spend quite a lot of time online practicing sexual innuendo, 'cyber', and generally looking for a mate from a more prosperous country.

But how to answer such a question, or rather the inevitable follow up to my "No", the "Why". Considering that I wasn't even entirely sure of this one's gender--but had plenty of suspicions due to the fact that he/she (a) hung out with a bunch of less successfully dressed transvestites, (b) had a sort of modulated voice that didn't ring entirely feminine to my ears, and (c) most women in my experience are not quite so forthright when they want to bed you... generally engaging in 'engrossing' conversation until they are in your room and in your bed is considered a more proper move.

I was, strangely enough, concerned not to hurt his/her feelings too much. I didn't know if she/he identified as a her or him; I didn't know if it would be proper to just say outright that my orientation doesn't swing that way. I found, rather, that the simplest and most accurate answer was probably best: that I had quite a serious relationship going on back in China and thus was not currently available for one-night stands. That seemed to do the trick and she/he and her/his friends disappeared into the night looking for other sources of fun.

And now, it seems that odd/bad luck runs in threes. I'm feeling dizzy, feverish, and suffering in the bowels. That didn't stop me from visiting a coral-stone church today that possesses the largest bell (cast from coins) in Asia, but I do worry about my plan to cross the restive seas north of here on dilapidated pump-boats while ill. We'll see how that goes!

Hat Today, Gone Tomorrow

2009-01-26T23:06:00.002+08:00

Tis unfortunately true. "The Hat", my ratty old fedora that has accompanied me to more than twenty different countries, is finally gone. As evening fell today, I riding in a bus, rushing through the darkness of a backcountry road here in the Philippines. Suddenly a gust of wind tore through the window to my left, clawed my hat from head, and then before I had even a second to react, sucked said hat out the bus door behind me. There was almost something comical in how quickly and completely my beloved hat was gone, disappeared into the jungly darkness. I'm not entirely sure whether I'd like to laugh or cry about this.

Of course it helps that my hat was probably nearing the end of its natural shelf-life. I'd discovered that the felt near the top of its frontal ridge was almost worn through. The top was dark with dirt collected between the fibres, and sweat had stained in a growing ring about the base of it. There's really no need to speak of the indescribable monstrosities said to live within the cavity itself... best not to wake sleeping demons, after all.

It also helps that my hat had almost escaped me quite a few other times as well. The first attempted escape was on the Makgadi-gadi saltpans in Africa. Aboard ships, trains, buses, and on precarious mountain slopes that hat showed that it had picked up an instinct for travel and constant movement from its bearer. I think when I replace my hat, I shall try to find one that comes with a descendable leather neck string so that great winds will merely garrote me, rather than stealing my hat.

I'm also able to put this loss into perspective. What with all the recent articles about asian ferries capsizing, there are certainly worse things one can lose than a mere accessory--however much that accessory may have been incorpated into one's persona. Things are just things, stuff is just stuff. I do try to buck the American trend towards endless consumption and acquisition, not to speak of the worship of stuff.

Anyway, to this fantastic hat, I bid a fond adieu! I hope that somewhere a young Filipino is enjoying you as much as I did. And I also hope that I will find a suitable replacement.

On the Island of Negros

2009-01-24T21:08:00.000+08:00

I'm forcing myself to give just a simple account of recent activities. I want to save the 'words dripping from tongue' narrative for a moment when I'm able to accompany those words with photographs.

The past couple days I've been traveling across the length and breadth of the Philippine island of Negros. The name is derived from the small, dark-skinned aboriginal inhabitants who now occupy wild stretches of the volcanic highlands in the center of this and a few other islands in the Philippines.

The first day I hired a motorcyclist to drive me (and guide me) up to a couple ancient crater lakes festooned in jungle. There we kayaked in absolute solitude, caught a giant centipede with mirrored scales, and did a bit of trekking through the cloud forest. My guide also illegally harvested some young orchids from the trail we took, but I guess that's pretty much par for course in the Philippines.

The second day here I took a long bus journey up across the length of the island, in the shadow of a gigantic active volcano named Mt. Kanlaon. I had wanted to hike on the mountain, but this was obviously the wrong time of year. The top was shrouded in storm.

Today I find myself in a sugarcane plantation boomtown (once known as the 'Paris' of Negros) now gone bust. There are some lovely 'ancestral' homes which are more than a century old; also a 75-year-old swimmer/model/patron of the arts named Ramon Hofilenya who showed me around his family's ancestral home. He has an amazing collection of Filipino art, some from an untaught, unknown local genius who obviously mastered numerous painting and drawing styles... and kept some masterworks in his nipa hut where the sun and rain could damage them.

Tomorrow I'm planning to visit a church at a plantation... the church has one of the most amazing, detailed, frenetic religious murals in the world. Sometimes called the 'Angry Christ' mural, because the face of Jesus seems a bit wrought (with love, not anger, says Ramon).

Beach Bum For A Few Days

2009-01-20T14:28:00.003+08:00

Beach bumming in the tiny townlet of San Remigio (San Reh-mee-ho) has gone swimmingly the past couple of days, although oddly enough I haven't done any swimming. The reason for this is the terrible sunburn on my calves from a few hours of beach combing without sunblock--stupid me. The waters are inviting, warm, and apparently free of dangerous pelagics (sharks, stingrays) even as they abound in the beautiful crabs and shellfish that the locals fish for.

Otherwise, the tropical life is quite nice. The beach here is beautiful, and empty of tourists. A few old expat retirees live in town and slowly fade into senescence in paradise... leaving their young, Filipina wives with some (usually) decent money for widowhood. The few expats who beat their wives (the whole village is interrelated) are taken out to sea in a fishing boat, and never return to shore except as a sun-bleached, wave-polished bone or two. I wish we had such customs in America as well.

Yesterday afternoon and last night, many of my shells came to life and began to ponderously scurry about the room. I was awoken numerous times by the sound of a shell clattering on the floor, having fallen from the table where I put it and the rest. This morning I took care of the problem--after searching around for the escapees, one small shell with zebra stripes having crawled into the toe of my shoe--by dunking the suspected hermit crab realty in a small bucket of mixed water and bleach, then pulling the poisoned crabs from their homes. I guess that makes me the ultimate in bad landlords, huh?

Tomorrow I'll bid fond adieu to my hosts, Forbes and Cecile, and try to catch a ferry across the straits that separate Cebu island from the next island over, Negros.

Cebu, Philippines: Sinulog Festival

2009-01-17T10:26:00.002+08:00

I flew into the Philippines a few days ago, coming down over fires in the mountain that were either lava flows or farmers burning their fields. But why would the farmers burn their fields at 4 AM?

My flight had left Shanghai half an hour after midnight. Four hours later in Manila I settled in for a four hour wait for my connection to Cebu. The flight was an hour delayed. Another hour later we arrived in Cebu... more specifically on Mactan Island where centuries ago Magellan landed, pacified most of the tribes, and then was himself slaughtered by the ultra-ripped (according to the statue on the island) chieftain, Lapu Lapu. I hope this isn't a bad omen for my trip in the Philippines!

I have arrived in Cebu in the midst of their biggest yearly festival, the Sinulog Festival. The deal is that a religious icon called 'Saint Nino' is carried through the streets as part of a massive dancing, drumming, bugling procession from one cathedral (right down the street from my pension) to the docks, carried by sea, then to a stadium where there will be a further dance competition. I probably don't have a prayer of getting into the stadium, but I'm hoping to catch some of the dancing procession tomorrow. I also got up/was awoken today by the 4 AM mass at the cathedral down the street which was followed by a procession of the icon (it looks like an American Girls doll, actually) plus drums, bugles, dancers, and half the population of Mandaue town. Exciting!

A word on my pension: basically I'm sleeping on a cot in what is really a storage closet. Not as bad as it sounds, and probably one of the cheapest deals in town during the current festivals.

Comparisons between China and Philippines from first impressions: Filipinos are very friendly, much more laid back, relaxed. Generally easy to get along with, which is nice. Most of them also speak at least a bit of English which surprised me (but perhaps shouldn't, considering the country was occupied by the Americans for a while) but definitely makes getting around easier, and means that I've had some good conversations with taxi drivers, slum kids, fellow passengers on the jeepneys, etc. Definitely the country is less developed than China (which is saying something), but also in some ways more affected by western trends, particularly foods and stores. I've been recognizing hardware store brands from America, not to mention the barrage of places offering pizzas, hamburgers, mexican, etc, ranging from high-end restaurants through fast food to family run places. It's nice to be able to buy burgers, hotdogs, and pizzas on the cheap again (not overpriced relative to local food, as they are in China); although I'm spending most of my time enjoying the Philippino food thus far.

Jeepneys: Perhaps the oldest of these were originally jeeps left behind by the American forces... I have no idea, actually. But these are an awesome alternative to a formal bus system. Basically these low-slung jeeps that are all individually decorated and graffito'd by their owners fill in for the lack of city buses. So cheap, too! 10 pesos takes me from my location in a suburb, all the way to downtown Cebu. That's about 1.5 Yuan, or 20 cents US.

Exams

2009-01-06T22:35:00.002+08:00

I have to say that my experience of taking exams is now a much more happy one than my experience of giving them. With a few exceptions my students did rather terribly on the mock IELTS exam that I gave them. I'm currently wearing my fingers to the bone marking and writing up their end of semester grade report, but for what? Like I say, most of these students plainly didn't come to class, work hard and participate if they did come to class, and generally make the most of the class. Oh well. I guess they'd all get A+ grades if Blizzard proctored exams on Azeroth's bestiaries, best skill synergies for various classes, or estimating the undead population per square mile of Lordaeron.

What's more, some students really did think they'd get away with cheating in my exam. MY exam! Well, unfortunately for them, it seems they cheated off of people who got wrong answers, so it generally did not help their scores much. It may have actually hurt their scores, since they spent less time actually considering the questions and answers written before them.

Now, considering all the China hype lately, particularly the people in the West who are running scared of a resurgence of Chinese might (a few hundred years overdue, really; but that's what bad economic and social policies will do), I find these students a bit underwhelming. In other words, if these are the cogs in China's growth machine, I don't see a threat. Many of these kids are the children of rich people (i.e. the children of the communist party, as well as of business people). Their parents have been paying lots of money to send them to the BCIT program, because of the alleged chance for these students to augment their 3-year technical degree with a 4th year at BCIT in Canada. As far as I can tell, only 2 out of 126 students actually make the cut.

That's sad.

The real sad thing, however, is that a decent (somewhat larger) proportion of these students are smart enough to have gotten to Canada (they need a 5.5 on the IELTS exam) if they'd studied a bit more.

Back to the cresting wave of the 'Chinese resurgence' and the relative lack of oomph here at this college, I think I should clarify an important point. Although these are rich kids with good guanxi (connections) that will assure them important jobs in government and business, these are hardly the cream of the Chinese crop. The cream of that particular harvest is generally sent abroad en masse, mostly to various universities in Europe, N. America, and Australia. Hence the misunderstanding that leads us Westerners to stereotype Asians as being ultra hardworking and ultra smart. No, China in particular and Asia in general is one vast Darwinian survival of the fittest machine. The underachievers and the less intellectual never make it past the Chinese (or Japanese, or Korean, or Indian, etc) borders. If they happen to have some money and influence, they usually end up being processed through diploma mills like the one I'm employed by. Thanks to increasing numbers of the wealthy in Asia, of course, there are quite a lot more students who fall into this quality. Thus, although there has been a great surge in college attendance in places like China and India, most of the students (and most of the colleges built or expanded to hold them) are unemployable by international standards. The expanded or recently created colleges also reflect the expectations and quality of the students they process, so these colleges are also somewhat slipshod affairs where it becomes rapidly apparent that no one cares to maintain quality or standards.

It does make more a generally laid back place to work, however, other than the marking period wherein I must finally process all these laconic drones so that the college may expell them like pent-up flatulence into the workforce.

I should note that my students are also, for the most part, nice 'kids' possessing sunny, playful dispositions. Those relative few who attended my classes regularly I had a fun time teaching and I will surely miss them, even if I don't hold out much hope for their future prospects.

Tis the Season to be Freezing...

2008-12-23T09:19:00.003+08:00

Fa-la-la-la-la *shiver*, *shiver*, hypothermia!

I never really understood the use of longjohns when I lived in America. Although such things must have been pretty normal once-upon-a-time in the States, many a short-sleeved maniac can survive the ten minute intervals of exposure they might face in winter. Warmth is all around the average American consumer... whether at work, in their car, at home, sitting in Starbucks, or shopping at Wal-Mart.

Yes, the season where I wake from slumber to watch freezing clouds form above my mouth has come once again. These past few days have been particularly brutal, despite the fact that no snow has yet fallen. Ice covering the ponds at school is a bad sign of frigid things coming my way, however. And Nanjing is much colder than Chongqing ever was.

Longjohns, however, make a day spent in a cold workplace and then back to a cold apartment much more liveable. I can only imagine my wait for the bus without this essential gear and shudder. Normal jeans or khakis might as well be cobwebs when it comes to keeping that merry rapist, Jack Frost, away from the skin of your bare arse.

A Surreal Job of Judgment

2008-12-20T16:08:00.006+08:00

Earlier this week I was asked to judge an English competition at the college where I teach. The role was not one of importance, so much as one of entertainment. Three out of about twenty teachers and school administrators, the English-speaking foreigner's opinion of the essays and songs (all in English) did not really count for much.

The first essay was by far the best and most interesting, both in terms of the imagery used and the creativity applied to an otherwise mundane topic, 'My Town, Today'. This boy had obviously memorized his essay, but never asked for a second opinion on his pronunciation. The words he spoke were unintelligible, but spoken with confidence nonetheless. Reading the copy of his essay (which we were given), he spoke of his small town in the Jiangsu countryside. As a boy, he and his brother would fish in a beautiful pond. A paradise. Now, however, chemical factories and other noisome aspects of development had arrived in his small town. "White [fish] maws gaped at the surface of the pond" which had turned putrid black in color. No one fished there anymore, and few boys even chose the area around the pond as a place to play. "Paradise Lost", the author claimed. He then produced a balanced view of the benefits of development (more jobs for the rather poor populace) versus his nostalgia for the green days of his youth, and his hope that China would no longer allow such ecological blight to mar its economic growth. He praised the Central Government for drawing attention to China's pollution problems. Perhaps he even meant that praise, although I'd imagine that having written the only vaguely negative essay of the whole bunch that we heard, some praise thrown--like a bone for a dog--to the government is probably de rigeur. Certainly it seems that the central government here in China is more concerned about these sorts of problems than local government is.

The event proceeded with myriad more essays about people's hometowns: sunny, relentlessly positive accounts detailing (sometimes in too much clinical detail) the triumphs of various local industries, and peppered with various common slogans. A bit boring for us judges, really. To top it off, the only other essay subject allowed was related to '30 years of reform' as instigated by Deng Xiaoping. Now, I respect the man and what he accomplished; I respect that even the crackdown of 1989 was probably sanctioned by Deng Xiaoping out of a love for his country rather than a love of the CCP's monopoly on power. Mao, by comparison, was completely motivated by self-interest. But I'm not confident that these students really even understand what Deng Xiaoping accomplished. Perhaps they're just not allowed to go into more interesting comment on the process by which an aggressively communist county became hyper-actively capitalist. But even if they could, would they be capable of it? Critical thinking is actively discouraged in Chinese schools, one would not be surprised to learn, to the point of total atrophy.

Over the evening, we heard a lot of those same vague slogans such as 'Socialism with Chinese Characteristics' that allowed Deng Xiaoping to steer the country around some of the vehement 'Maoist' communist apparatchiks. Since the judges were allowed to ask one question after each essay was given, I was sorely tempted to ask the students to define 'Chinese Characteristics'. I had pity, however. These young apostles of Mammon, the children of relatively well-to-do Chinese families, have been cloistered from reality since childhood: spoiled by their parents and grandparents like 'little emperors', entranced by the fake virtual worlds presented in computer games and TV, and relegated to spending most of their time studying for ubiquitous tests. Furthermore, students here have never been exposed to uncensored explanations of modern Chinese history, such that they've lost all interest in history because it is all presented in such a false, cardboard fashion. So could we determine what did interest these students, by the content of their essays? Yes.

Money; consumption; pride in the return of their country to a powerful place on the world stage. These are the prime interests of China's youth, at least as far as I could determine that night. Some even supposed that China has become a 'world power' in 2008. I think this may be a bit presumptuous, but the title is probably only waiting another twenty years or so. In any case, few of them were willing to let any cynicism into their appraisal of the world they inhabit (at least at this event). I asked two of the readers: "Having explained the many ways in which your hometown had improved over your lifetime, could you tell us about any problems you see there which still need to be fixed?" Their response, in both cases, was more than cautious. If one listened to these students, the worst problems China faces is that people in crowded buses seldom move aside to let pregnant women and the elderly have a seat. Hmm.

Just off the top of my head, I can think of one very simple problem far greater than the one named above, but less controversial than the ones often named in Western expose stories about China. When I asked my students in an exam what their favorite hobby was, most of them answered, "Sleeping".

Yes, 'sleeping' is one of the most popular hobbies among China's youth. My god, a more boring answer to that question could probably not be devised! Are these the people who will be important cogs in a vast, dynamic, and increasingly important country? When given the freedom of a little time, time with which an infinite array of activities or thoughts could fill, their best response is to lower their eyelids and depart once again from reality!

Observations in December

2008-12-17T12:11:00.004+08:00

This morning in the entrance of the tunnel that passes beneath Xuanwu Lake, the tunnel the bus takes from my apartment to the college where I work, the bus came to a sudden halt. I peered, like my Chinese colleagues, out the window to see.

In the entrance to the tunnel lay a small, white dog. His fur was blindingly white like newly fallen snow. It looked soft like cotton bursting from its pod. A halo of crimson gore spread out around its head and neck. The back legs and tail still struggled frantically for life, but somehow I doubt it has much chance. So much blood and guts could not be anything but fatal, I think.

I wonder, sometimes, about the idea of progress. Societal progress, economic progress, political progress, scientific progress, etc. Is there really such a thing as progress? We have an idea that humanity has undergone a long road up. Stone begets bronze, bronze begets iron, iron begets steel. Stronger, more flexible substances are born from our ancestors. Our genes, we feel, are much the same. Survival of the fittest... without regard for the fact that often the most sadistic, inhuman of humans are the ones who successfully conceive the most children. In exempla: most of us living today contain the royal blood of hundreds of various dynasties ranging throughout the epochs of human existence. This is because royals most commonly used their 'noblesse oblige' to rape and pollinate their serving wenches, and really anyone else they wished to. And what characteristics allowed such people their positions? A demonstrated capability for ruthlessness. Thus, we bear within ourselves a rather un-progressive genetic trait for selfish, cruel striving.

Economic progress is equally deceiving. What is the basis for increased money supply to fill the hordes of the wealthy and the pittances of the wage-earners? The basis must be the energy supplies (mostly mineral), construction supplies (mostly mineral), and food supplies (again, derived from the forbearance of the earth. Even many supplies of water (used in industry, and not just the creation of various commercial beverages) are 'fossil' reserves that cannot be replenished within hundreds or even thousands of years. So where is our economic progress? In reality, any growth is only a growth in our ability to siphon off a vast bank account prepared eons before any of our species walked the earth. Unless some sci-fi miracle occurs--capability to fabricate any kind of matter or energy from any other kind of matter or energy--I don't really see 'growth'. I just see a hastening to the endgame.

I don't point this out to be pessimistic or negative. I just think that people should admit whose hide their pay check or stock investments is coming out of. In the end, our species will have to find ways of either bending matter and energy completely to our will, or harvesting additional bank accounts (planets, star systems) in order to keep this system going. Will we become spontaneous creators, or gradual destroyers? I have no idea. The seeds of both possible mutations are contained in contemporary society.

Strange Bedfellows: IMDB and the CCP

2008-12-09T08:55:00.003+08:00

I was surfing through IMDB just now and an oddly mis-worded advertisement caught my eye. "Mysterious Tibet Dalai". With a Chinese web address, no less! I was immediately suspicious. The only people in the world who refer to the Dalai Lama disrespectfully simply as 'Dalai' are his PRC Chinese critics. Is the Chinese government now so desperate to sway world opinion on this issue that they're taking out propaganda advertisements on popular Western websites? Perhaps hounding President Sarkozy of France over this issue didn't have the effect they were looking for?

Yep. A quick look over the website linked by the short advert reveals a hybrid attempt at (pragmatic) luring more tourists to Tibet and (less pragmatic) propagandizing on the Chinese government's 'official line' on Tibet and the Dalai Lama, and various other issues (Tibetan Antelope) geared to put a good spin on China's occupation of Tibet. Perhaps they don't realize that this would be considered in very bad taste (discussing tourism and politics in the same breath) among the very audience they want to cultivate here for both purposes of pilfering fat tourist wallets and inseminate with imperial Chinese ideology. Ugh. Makes me feel dirty even spending a few minutes on such a website.

The Hollow Skyline

2008-11-12T19:53:00.002+08:00

I've always wondered what the earth would like to do with the skyscraper thickets we build--if it had its way. Today's mega-flora of glass and steel begs the question, 'Where are the mega-fauna to go with?'

We've consumed the earth's surface with a lunatic building spree. Nature has not quite caught up yet. The pigeons, rats, cockroaches, and doppelgangers have already moved in. They aren't picky sorts, willing to pick through scraps and garbage heaps to make the best of things. The coyotes and hawks are moving in, though. We built this jungle with the idea that we, humans, would be its apex predator. King of the concrete hill. Perhaps that was true, and will be true for a while longer. The arrival of zombie dogs in our habitat should perhaps be viewed as a harbinger of things to come, however. (Do a google search of the term if the link doesn't work for you and you don't believe me.) We may not remain at the top of the pyramid much longer.

Rogue biologists may soon seek to re-inject biodiversity into our cities. If they don't do it, the earth itself has a few evolutionary tricks up its sleeves. And I do look forward to it.

I look forward to the days when Parking-spotted beasts wait patiently on the macadam to devour the unwary Intrepid, when feral sidewalk gnomes harvest the flesh of muggers, and a variety of flying beasties hunt snatch the occasional CEO from his penthouse balcony. I think of balances restored, and humanity returned to its natural place as just one of many diverse dangerous creatures to walk the earth.

The Loss and Redemption of Seeing

2008-11-12T17:52:00.003+08:00

I close my eyes to see, and taking my seeing slow. My little homage to the poet Roethke, but seriously though... I woke up yesterday and realized that I had let my habit of seeing go.

Why should this be? After so many years as a curious person and an artist, so long unafraid to stare back, bare eyeball-to-eyeball at others to see their secret selves. Even when I didn't find the courage or convenience to talk, I observed and noted the details, the pinpricks where devils dance. But now, I find that I have been flinching back from my most immediate environment in a helpless effort to inure myself to it, and thus I have been closing my eyes, shielding them and losing what might have been noticed otherwise. I have surrendered myself to interior pursuits and analysis, rather than careful observation of the facts beneath my nose. Perhaps that's one reason why I feel less compunction about writing my findings down in the blog these days. I'm adding thoughts and analysis to the observations I've already made about China, I'm unsure if I've covered a particular observation or analysis too many times before, and my eyes have become jaded so that they offer less fresh perspective on what they are seeing. I also grow tired of extending my attentions outwards from this frail fleshly redoubt, because I am more vulnerable when I do that.

China, in this way, works like a ceaselessly pounding wave on the shore, a tireless hammer for the nail that stubbornly sticks up from the smoothness of the wood. I think I know much more about the power of conformity than I ever did in America--because in America there is at least some cachet to being non-conformist. Here, it just makes you even more of an oddity worthy of being a caged zoo exhibit. Certainly foreigners often get treated in this sense, like pandas in a cage: sometimes to be petted with intrepid fingers as the little girl gets her picture taken with a cute creature, and other times to be pelted with unwanted food and shouts. As an artist I want to capture and communicate the beauty and humanity in Chinese society; as a human, I just want to build a Great Wall around me to protect me from the alien masses and shouted 'halloos' that sound more like taunts. There is a constant burden inherent in the lifestyle I have chosen, and unconsciously I have bowed beneath the weight, I have coped. The blame is not with the gormless masses who have few true entertainments in their bitter lives, but with the incremental changes that their stares have wrought in me. I have allowed this.

When I pull out my sketchbook, it is like a drawbridge let down for the horde to cross, for crowds to gather around--blocking my sunlight, my line of sight to the subject matter, and disrupting my concentration. Most importantly, that almost telekinetic connection between the subject, mediated by the eyes and communicated through fingers, wood, and graphite to the page... is burnt away like a skim of frost on a pond that is seconds away from being nuked. This is frustrating, and one eventually learns that it rarely pays to let the naked eye extend itself beyond its protective lid; much the opposite, I end up shuffling too and from the safety of my apartment and job with sense and self withdrawn deep inside.

To become invisible, one must also become sightless. A blind worm in the tunnels of the mad might escape the notice of the moles, with their bright teeth and long, sharp claws. In fact, I'm sure I don't really escape notice, not really; but when I can pretend that I am blending in, as I walk quickly past the catcalls with unhearing ears, and sighless eyes, then I can move quickly to the more comfortable interior worlds of internet or reading or writing.

On a more hopeful note, the seeing... well, I'm trying to encourage good habits to return. Yesterday: I walk down through a quiet neighborhood where the old men play Chinese-style chess with large round chits that look like the wooden joints used in Tinker Toys. A verdant park begins where the street ends, and I continue on in. The old city wall of Nanjing paces me to my left, an offshoot canal from the Changjiang (Yangtze) on my right. There are few people in the park with me, not the crowds I'm always used to seeing in China. A jogger. Some old ladies chatting together. An older gentleman rollerskates in swoops and spirals around a stone plaza, playing 'Auld Lang Syne' quite well on his violin. He gives me a most conspiratorial smile. Probably one of those rehabilitated intellectual types. The sun strikes the pitted stones of the city wall, and saplings (sassafras or sycamore) burst forth from crannies between the bricks. One section of the wall has been lowered (or just not rebuilt) so that an avenue can bridge it.

Behind the wall, more park. A mock rocket ship, and a not-so-mock gunship and MIG fighter jet are placed in the park for kids to gawk at and play on. A group of college students stands on the grass in a circle with hiking gear in a pile beside them. I climb up the hill, through the weeds, and then onto the wall itself. I'm hoping to walk back up the wall, and hopefully find a path on the other end of it that can let me down to the street so that I don't have to double back several times in order to go home. The wall, however, ends at a precipice from which I can see my apartment building rearing up about a mile away.

I look down the side of the wall. No good, no safe ways to climb down the wall, although if I had ever practiced climbing it would probably be a piece of cake. There are shacks and muddy paths down there where migrant workers are illegally squatting. I climb down a path through the woods behind the wall. Where does it go? An tiny orchard. A nanosized farm with a bevy of black chickens that scuttle away from me. The farm is squeezed between the woods, a blank cement wall, and a sheer drop down to the running track of a highschool. The school kids are out running and I expect them to see me (so strange to find a laowai pop out of nowhere on the ledge above our running track!) but none of them do. Some things are so strange and unexpected that we just don't notice them at all. Especially when we've been accustomed to the value of not seeing.

News Flash: Batman Fought in Turkiye

2008-11-07T19:34:00.003+08:00

I knew this, of course. When I was in Ankara for my study abroad, we picked out the oddly named city in Eastern Turkiye... Batman. In Turkish pronunciation, the city is actually called something like 'Buttmun'. One of a few oil-producing locations in Turkiye, apparently the resulting boom hasn't done very well for it. High crime (Gotham, anyone?) and virgin suicides there have led the mayor to try and pick fights far outside his territory in an effort to distract his constituents from dismal prospects at home. Apparently his plan is to sue the director, a Mr. Nolan, of the latest Batman movie. He claims that the beloved superhero is a copyright infringement on the name of the centuries old city. Nevermind that the current name of 'Batman' is actually just a shortening of an older, longer name.

His main complaint regarding DC Comics ownership of copyright for the Batman name is that Turks originating from the city are not allowed to name their businesses using the name of their home town. Example: a Turkish restauranteer in the German city of Wesel had named two restaurants after his home town (Batman Bar and Shish Kebap Grill, perhaps?) and was visited by employees of the production company for the new Batman movies and told he must change the name of his restaurants.

Hmm... sounds like a job for Joker.

The Consensus

2008-11-05T23:36:00.002+08:00

Wow. What can there be to say about this election now that our president-elect, Barack Obama, has not already said? The struggle to bring our hopes to fruition, the need for humility from victors, the need for consensus solutions to common problems, can--after eight long years of nothing good this way coming--at last begin. That's my synopsis.

But you know, as amazing as this historic election was--and Jesse Jackson was not the only one with misty eyes as Obama made his victory speech--there was something else I learned last night that struck me even more, really dumbfounded me with gratitude and awe.

Matt, my friend from college days of yore, a longtime moderate conservative and Republican who voted for Bush in 2004, admitted to me that he had voted for Obama this time around, and two other college friends I had always considered moderate-to-moderate conservative had done so as well. He wanted me to know that Obama had support among young Republicans.

Mein Gott!

Now, I knew that for some time my friend had been becoming more and more centrist. I think living amid the natural beauty of Washington state helped him to realize an interest in the preservation of America's natural wonders. But I also recalled (and in the post somewhere below) that we had liked both McCain and Obama, some years past. I had figured he'd support McCain as the bipartisan change-maker from the side of the political aisle he felt more comfortable with. Boy was I wrong, and for a number of reasons.

The first reason is that even moderate Republicans and conservatives had become displeased with Bush's imperial presidency, expansion of government, and excessive kowtowing to business lobbies. Matt was not a happy camper, last we had spoken about Bush some two years ago, because of Bush's habit of adding his own opinions onto the ending of legislation crossing his desk--a clear attempt to unilaterally alter legislation he didn't like, and break the checks and balances our forefather's had intended to safeguard our democracy from would-be Caesars. No, despite having voted for Bush in 2004, there were clearly some second thoughts appearing in thoughtful voters' minds by late 2005, including that of my friend.

The second reason was entirely McCain's own fault. Despite beginning the election (notably the primaries) as a solid maverick, independent spirit, and bipartisan consensus maker, he betrayed his own principles in a huge way during the general election by moving to abjectly appease the rightwing conservative fringe that had never approved of him. Conservative culture warriors who still didn't really like him gave McCain the nod, and we all got to see something that not even the communist Vietnamese had managed: a once proud veteran, broken.

This choice defied strategic common sense (move right/left in primaries, move to the center for the general election), not boding well for McCain's performance under pressure. Many have noted that he really didn't seem to be himself for the past four or five months, and only seemed to wake up again when it came time to deliver his concession speech. Picking a pitbull for wannabe VP was just the last straw, and things went worse from there.

Perhaps my friend was concerned that the ill-mannered *cough* female dog *cough* would chew up the linens in the Lincoln bedroom or shit all over the Oval Office rug. Or perhaps it was just the internal illogic of choosing a particularly divisive VP ("pro-American parts of America") when McCain was claiming he would bring a new bipartisan spirit in his leadership. This was the last straw, and my formerly Republican friend donated money to the Obama campaign the very next week after McCain made his VP pick.

Lastly, McCain really didn't stand too much chance with a candidate like Obama. For young people such as ourselves, Obama knows how to speak as one of us--a smart and confident, but also very approachable, very accessible guy. For African Americans, minorities, and even many in the white plurality, Obama also represents a reconciliation of our greatest humanitarian tragedy. He doesn't stand, like other activists have, with an accusatory finger; he stands with self-confidence and offers his partnership with all Americans on equal and respectful terms. Unlike Kerry or Bush, he's not a blue blood. I think the conservative pundits didn't quite understand that making 'liberal elite' labels stick would not be so easy when it came to a guy who worked his way up the ladder like any other hard-working American, and spoke clear, logical English.

In any case, I really think the most important component of the election was not the Democratic return to power, but the mandate for bi-partisan progress that is the basis for such enthusiasm from people who wouldn't have been receptive to it if we were all running around like beheaded chickens in the imposed "culture wars".

I'd like to finish with some of my friend's own words on Obama: "Obama stayed himself. It means a lot to me. Obama always spoke clearly to me, like a normal guy. He stood by his morals, and you know what he stands for. It's the little stuff. People who don't watch as closely don't see it. He's the real deal. The next great president.

I have never liked a candidate more. He is the first person in my lifetime that has moved me big time, as a major public figure."

So there you have it. Matt has spelled out one of the essential reasons I have supported Obama's campaign since the primaries, even against all that the Clintons stood for. Because it is important that our president be capable of inspiring all Americans, not just half of them. I believe Barack Obama will do just that.

Happy Voting! Don't let the Zombies bite!

2008-11-05T02:42:00.003+08:00

I will be watching anxiously from China, probably hopping from website to website in attempt to find live streaming coverage of the election that isn't either blocked by (A) the Chinese censors or (B) my lack of desire to install exotic web media players (damn you CNN!).

You know, for me, this both is and isn't a life or death election. Unlike Bush, who probably will not be topped any time soon as worst president in American history, McCain I never particularly had a problem with. Once, some years ago, a moderate Republican friend of mine and I made a pact in which we would support McCain and Obama over more divisive partisan figures. In the event of McCain vs. Obama, we would feel free to support our own party's bipartisan consensus-maker.

The agreement wasn't really set in stone; it was more like something to think about. We were trying to imagine an America beyond the culture wars which have so visibly torn the country's sense of unity asunder. And in those days I felt some fondness for any Republican willing to buck the more hardline elements in his party on issues such as immigration, global warming, and campaign finance. That isn't an easy stance to take, by any means when you have such imperialistic bedfellows.

Unfortunately, McCain (the real one) disappeared sometime after the primaries finished this year. Replaced--or perhaps lobotomized--with a clone who blandly repeated the hardline Republican line, and gave up all or most of his once brave stands. If elected, McCain would not (as is so often repeated) be the oldest first term president, but rather the first undead president to ever be elected. I say this because for all intents and purposes, the real McCain who used to fight the good fight (or more importantly, not fight--when compromise and consensus could be reached) is dead and gone, already food for the voracious attack worms the Republican party keeps on hand for dealing with would-be mavericks.

And all this even before the dreaded Palin VP pick. So many pundits and people ask, 'What was McCain thinking?' And I would respond that he clearly wasn't thinking, and probably wasn't capable of thinking, because zombies do not think.

*Whew* I'm glad I got that off my chest.

In any case, I will surely mourn the death of the once-maverick, McCain. The Republicans could use more of that sort. But this is not a time for mourning, I suspect and hope. This is not a dawn of the dead, so to speak. If predictions hold true, I think I will wake up tomorrow morning to good news and a golden, hopeful dawn for America.

And there really are no excuses for not voting. I spent $20 mailing in my absentee ballot to Michigan, and those stateside can accomplish the same thing for free. Happy voting!

Lessons from Horror

2008-11-03T22:42:00.003+08:00

Oh, a sad little blog this is these days. My thoughts I mostly save and spill out for the edification of my college students... and the blog gets less than full attention. Well, once again I will renew my onslaught on the myriad worms that eat away at each day, and find time to spill here. Where the ground is as stony as a man's heart.

This last month was my own personal version of fright month with my students. We watch a film in class at the end of every week, and this October had four Fridays (not including the first Friday of the month, because that fell during a national Chinese holiday) including the last: All Hallows Eve. I'm a firm believer that the horror genre is overlooked for its insight into human minds, hearts, and morals. Fitting with one of the tasks I assigned to my students (find the 'moral of the story'), horror stories are perhaps the most moralistic of all stories, beginning with the sort of frightening yarns woven by mothers and fathers throughout time in order to get their children to behave: 'You stop that right now, or the boogieman, with his threadbare eyes and unzipped mouth, will find you... and gobble you up!'.

For good measure, I began with a film that scared my students (and myself) shitless: Dead Silence. A long dead witch-like woman who tears out the tongues on those who scream and turns them into ventriloquist dolls... yeah, this one stayed in some nightmares for some time after. The film also, since it made such an impression, provided my class with some common ground, as if we had all faced this supernatural threat together: the subject of Mary Shaw continues to crop up in all sorts of conversations we have in class. One girl told me that after watching this film, she saw everyone around her--in class, in line at the restaurants, in the dorms--as a human doll, carved up and hollowed out... manipulated by hidden strings.

The next week I ratcheted down the tension with a detour into funny horror: Shaun of the Dead. We discussed the fact that indeed many of my game-addled, sleep-deprived students have a quick similarity to zombies (but could probably do with more of a hunger for brains, given their lack of academic motivation). They loved the fact that Shaun still plays video games with his zombiefied best mate at the end of the film. Games beat all other pastimes or concerns, in the end, eh?

The third week, I decided to introduce my students to that master of horror, the venerable Stephen King, with his oldest (and arguably one of his most famous) stories: Carrie. It helps that I actually have a girl in my class named Carrie. She probably didn't appreciate the comparison, however, given that Carrie is batshit crazy by the end of the movie, however. I think this story, like many Stephen King stories, makes a good (and frightening) point, that really horror is never more than a step or two away from our normal lives. A numblingly mundane activity, such as high school girls practicing cruelty on one of their number, is only a mind-power away from tragedy. As your mother always told you, 'If you kids don't stop that now, someone's going to get hurt'. Watching this movie three quick times in succession also gave me an appreciation for some of the artistic choices of the filmmaker. While my students were ga-ga over the unashamed nudity in the opening credits, I most enjoyed the scenes with Carrie's mother. Early in the movie, she is framed beneath a heavy, wooden arch, and she crouches there like some fundamentalist hag... full of menace for her piteous daughter. Later, when her daughter comes home from her tragic prom, the mother is there waiting behind a doorway... few of my students even noticed, but those who did were quite scared by what they saw. The funky, crazed crucifix-con-Jesus was another nice touch.

Finally, for this last Friday, Halloween, I saved one of the scariest Stephen King stories of all time (in my humble opinion). Pet Sematary is a story about Eden, I think. A story about the childlike innocence that we all possess. A story about the unintended consequences of resurrection, particularly when it takes place in a high and lonely Micmac indian burial ground haunted by a wendigo. A story once again about something that any of us--if we were in the doomed protagonist's shoes--would probably carry to conclusion. One reason why Romeo and Juliet strikes a chord with all of us (when Hamlet might not always do), is because the underlying stupidity of tragedy, of that tragedy, is one which any of our love-addled minds might succumb to. Pet Sematary is the same: at heart this tragedy is about the extremely stupid decisions we make when the loss of love is the question of the day. Lewis, all my students agree, was a completely stupid guy. He just doesn't learn! He buries the family cat up in that haunted soil, and the cat comes back with a stench beneath his fur and a new meanness of spirit. Then, when his son gets hit by a truck coming hell-for-leather down the road in front of their yard... well, I think we all see where this is headed. The little boy comes back, but he's not quite bought and paid for yet, and his towheaded curls cover a mind that has been warped and rotted by whatever terrible grinning things haunt the highlands. When, predictably, Lewis's wife dies, what do you think he does? That edenic power of life and death is a rather addictive one... even if it carries with it a nasty kick.

I think all of us who have loved and lost pets would agree that given the chance, we might well bring those beloved creatures back... and nevermind the consequences. So damn, but we're scared when we see what the consequences could be! Because at heart we're all guilty of the desire to play god if given half a chance.

'The soil of a man's heart is stonier, Lewis--like the soil up in the old Micmac burying ground. A man grows what he can, and he tends to it'. -- Judd Crandall, Pet Sematary

V is for Victory

2008-10-28T17:45:00.001+08:00

In the bitter blizzard tides of November, there is soon to come a reckoning for those forces that have, through eight long years, waged a war upon the integrity, reputation, and economic competitiveness of America. More important still, these lengthening wintry nights are a time for so-called ‘culture warriors’ to shiver in their burrows and lairs, as the mandate for a united, bi-partisan consensus rules that scare tactics and divisiveness are overdue to wither and flee from the country. And not only the likes of Bill O’Reilly should fear that outcome, but also Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and China probably would have preferred us to continue on our way down the path to a broken, incompetent government and land. But this is not for us.
This is not a time to be speaking of ‘pro-American’ parts of the country—assuming, illogically, that the rest of America is anti-itself. This is not a time to be planting falsehoods that renew ethnic tensions. Neither should this be a time for gloating on the left. Victory dividends for either side must be spent on healing a country thrown into a downward spiral by the past eight years of incompetent leadership. Our halls of power must also be taken from the hands of partisan flamers and given back into the hands of statesmen who are willing to work out bipartisan compromise that can get the country moving forward again. I’m tired of seeing totalitarians the world over rubbing their hands with glee and telling us ‘I told you so’, in their belief that democracy is a weak and self-destroying form of government. It must be proved this November, once again, that American leadership has an inherent strength in its ability to adapt and change, to learn from and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
In an odd coincidence, this year two great and historical events will coincide. As it happens, the morning of my birthday (November 5th) in Beijing time overlaps with the evening of Election Day (November 4th). All and sundry had considered what gifts to bestow upon this miraculous annual day of reincarnation (I will be reincarnated as a 26-year-old). However, I seriously doubt that there could be any greater gift that the masses of Americans—poor and huddled around their TVs, waiting for the latest reports of financial and economic collapse—could give this particular battered traveler of the outer planes of English teaching, than to vote for a change that can benefit America and the rest of the world besides. Really. Go vote!
And do be sure to register with people or organizations that you trust, and to take your absentee ballots to a proper postbox. The ‘culture warriors’ have been waging war on the basic methods of our democracy, and they do not know what an honorable fight is. Do not give them a chance to deprive you of your vote!
If V is for the Victory that America so requires, then O is for the Opportunity to put partisan and racial strife behind us.
Go Obama!

Academe Exiled: A Rant

2008-10-20T23:30:00.003+08:00

I waited by the curb below my apartment, early this morning (6:40 AM), for a bus to the university where I work. The forty-minute long ride into the boonies beyond the city proper left me plenty of time to ponder the reasons my diploma factory (and other academic institutes) have been exiled to the sticks.

Our bus passed through the tunnel below Xuanwu lake, and along the parkway north of Zijin Mountain where Sun Yat-sen lies buried, then past industrial developments, suburban gated communities, a few remnant country villages, fields, and at last we arrived on the edge of the fairly new 'University City' the Nanjing government had planned out. Unfortunately, my college is on the far side of the whole caboodle.

Many Chinese cities are developing these academic enclaves. Mid-grade institutions that were once located in the Urban area proper are cashing in on their valuable properties and relocating to cheap converted farmland. For the luckier headmasters, there may even be enough money left over after this transaction to buy themselves a nice BMW. More reputable institutions are expanding their universities (which, being built a hundred years or so ago, were often located in the middle of inconveniently expensive/otherwise spoken for downtown land and were often not terribly large to begin with) with new campuses in these educational ghettos.

Every student I've asked about this phenomenon speaks of these places with dread. Every student I've talked to wishes fervently to be able to study in one of the downtown campuses of a university that still possesses such. In Chongqing, the 'university city' was located in empty farmland on the other side of one of the mountain-ridges, giving the place a particularly remote feel. This one isn't much better, however. And the students, unlike most of the teachers and staff, are stuck there. Transport options are not convenient, and certainly do no accomodate late-night hijinks in the tea houses and clubs, witholding one of the ancient and essential rights of all college students.

After at last arriving in the misty fields, barren plazas, and white-washed lecture halls (the facades seem to be cracking already, despite this place being no more than a few years old), I look over my lesson plans and decide to apply an activity I had considered for a while now. We will have a little discussion and debate on this issue of sending students to the boonies.

My students, of course, are more than willing to ascribe every sort of insanity to the school's headmaster. They also, however, are very aware of the potential benefits of having moved to the middle of nowhere. I'm sure they've been lectured on all these very same points in numerous speeches and school events. To begin: The air is fresher; the environment is greener; the government intends to improve the economic situation of this particular patch of nowhere by dumping thousands of hungry, stir-crazy students here; there is less noise; there is less traffic, and less (bus) traffic issues in the city center if all the students have been effectively removed from it; so many students in one area might create a sort of critical mass for studiousness (alternatively, it might just create a critical mass of computer gaming dens); and of course that the land is cheap, offering the chance for an otherwise undeserving school to expand its premises. I added, in the silence of my own mind, that in the event of future Tiananmen-like student protests, the students here are easily cut off from the city proper and controllable. The CCP being very security-conscious, I'm sure that this fact did not escape their interest.

For cons: Oddly enough, my students (having already said in pros that the air is fresher) say that the air is in fact not fresher here, due to nearby industrial developments; shopping, eating at nicer restaurants than those available in the student ghetto, bus/train station, local attractions, are all not easily reached by public transit (the zone is also essentially cut off from the city proper every night when the buses stop running); utter and interminable boredom. No wonder 9/10ths of my students spend all their free time (and a good part of their class time) immersing themselves in rampant escapist fantasies... particularly, World of Warcraft. As if that game weren't addictive enough, its gameworld is at least a hundred times better than facing life in such a drab and boring locale as this.

Discussing the matter with other teachers, one of them had a really good point: Chinese students are not terribly grounded in reality to begin with. Starting life as an only child--often spoiled senseless by parents and grandparent's whose retirement plans rest on the success and happiness of the child--the Chinese student then graduates to the relentless grind that is the primary, and secondary school system.

The systematic and constant tests leave little room for a life, an active imagination, or hobbies. Most Chinese students spend their summers bored to tears because they never really developed an inner or outer life beyond school in the rest of their time, and even summers are not safe from homework projects that are due at the start of the school year. Can this be described as a real life wherein real skills and interests are discovered? Compound that by the excessive gaming that many indulge in, and these kids don't spend any time at all observing the real world. All time is spent cloistered in one fantasy/nightmare or another. Then, at the time when children all around the world are seen to be growing up, and would be packed off to fend (more or less) for themselves at college, these less fortunate Chinese students get sent to live in a bubble world built on loam.

No, real life only catches up with them when they suddenly must face the prospect of looking for a job. At this point absolute despair sets in, because those who have no useful connections (guanxi) will have few decent job prospects indeed. Connections to the proper people--even if you're a lazy, useless sort of rich slob--could easily result in a doubling or quadrupling of the average post-college wage a student could expect. Those who have no connections might expect a wage of about 1,000 RMB or less each month (equivalent, roughly, to $145) which is not so much to live on in the eastern, more developed cities of China.

Many of our students suddenly seem to leap from oblivious ebullience into black despair in their final years of college, even when they are among the most talented and hard-working individuals in the entire school. They've obviously not been prepared to face their futures with confidence, despite enjoying a luxury that relatively few in China have the priviledge of.

I suppose it could be a stretch to argue that the difference of location between an urban campus and a rural one could make much difference in a system that is so dramatically skewed to favor the few. I do think, though, that officials and headmasters may be overlooking the psychological impact of such dramatic isolation on the aspirations and confidence of youth. After all, the majority of Chinese graduates from these institutes are probably not looking at a career ensconced in ivory towers, but rather an uphill fight through a quite rough-and-tumble job market. Employers (and I used to be one in this job market) are also liable to become frustrated with this crop of potential employees who have no idea what the world beyond their college ghetto is.

Bi-Monthly Pictures

2008-10-07T13:56:00.016+08:00

This is the sort of thing that I do when my students don't show up for class, or disappear during the mid-class break. As I may have mentioned, they're not terribly motivated students. In an ironic twist of fate, they enjoy playing games (such as World of Warcraft) late into the night, and thus are too tuckered out to attend my class most days.

The misty view along the top of the old city wall of Nanjing. Both the towers of the Jiming Temple, and the under-construction Greenland Place (7th tallest building in the world, when completed, aproximately the same height as the Empire State Building) can be seen.

A view of Nanjing from my apartment window at different times of day. Again, the Greenland Place tower can be seen quite clearly. Zijin Shan (Purple-Gold Mountain) can be seen behind the skyscrapers along the left.

During the mid-autumn festival, perhaps billions, of mooncakes are consumed by Chinese whilst they contemplate the full moon--or if the moon happens to be shrouded by a thick layer of smog, whilst they contemplate Korean melodramas on TV. I found this lovely bit of Chinglish mooncake advertising while shopping in Carrefour.

Moody weather over the Bund (the old financial district of Shanghai, when it was an international concession), as well as over Pudong which is the new financial district of Shanghai built over the past ten years on what used to be empty cabbage fields (below).

The two buildings above, (shorter) Jinmao Building and (taller) Shanghai World Financial Center, are currently the world's second and fifth tallest buildings.

Cherry's relatives in Hangzhou had caught a baby soft shell turtle. The Chinese call these creatures "wangba". You can also call someone a "wangba" when what you really mean is that he's an asshole. I'm really not sure why Chinese dislike being likened to such cute, strange creatures, but they don't seem to mind eating them.

Mmmm... tasty!

(No, I didn't actually eat the poor little fellow.)

Prayer-sticks burning, taking their carcinogenic hopes up... up... and hopefully through the thickening ozone.

Apparently some temple-goers have been saying prayers to this long extinct tiger who once may have inhabited a cave on the cliffside behind the temple. Are tigers in the habit of answering prayers, except ones that go: "Please eat me, oh striped master of the jungles!"?

Lovely temple, though.

Hangzhou: Another Vacation

2008-10-07T13:18:00.002+08:00

October 1st marks the PRC's National Day--equivalent to the 4th of July for Americans. Unlike Americans, however, Chinese get an entire week off. If I recall correctly, we get one day.

For our week of freedom, to relax the tensions of work and life, Cherry and I took a couple days in the midst of the week to visit Hangzhou. Hangzhou is an ancient city, a very wealthy city filled with 'Chuppies' by the handful. According to its advertisements the last couple years (and changed this year), Hangzhou is "the most beautiful city in China".

I beg to differ.

Hangzhou is not a bad city, don't get me wrong. It's certainly not an ugly city. Numerous parks, upscale establishments, ritzy condo high-rises, and 'California-styled' suburbs riddle the city proper. The air, compared to other cities of similar size, is fairly fresh. Perhaps that's because Hanzhou's main money makers tend to be software and animation--relatively pollutant-free industrial activities. But Hangzhou is not Shangri-la, is not that gem of the orient Hongkong, and in terms of beauty doesn't even stack up against Kangding--a town nestled in the Kham Tibetan highlands, and perhaps 1/100th the size of Hangzhou--because wealth and culture aside, it's just not a showcase of anything special.

West Lake (which we largely avoided, due to the millions of tourists descending upon it during the vacation week) is Hangzhou's main and pretty much only tourist draw. The lake isn't really very large (especially to someone coming from the Great Lakes region of the US), and is surrounded by mountains. But I have visited at least three or four lakes just in China that beat it for beauty, one of which is in the mountains directly above the aforementioned Kangding. And why? Because the mountains aren't terribly high, and the shore is awfully over-developed. Nature, not man, is the source of divine artistry, but the locals don't seem to have learned that lesson.

Looking through the Lonely Planet guide, aside from the lake there really isn't much else listed for Hangzhou. Which doesn't mean there aren't some hidden gems--there should be, a city that size--but does mean that Hanzhou is really a second-tier Chinese city as far as beauty and fascination go. The new advertisement for Hangzhou, by the way, says, "Come to Hangzhou, discover the mysteries of China" which is a pretty weak line, by my reckoning. China's mysteries aren't readily found in any of the major cities; in my experience, you have to walk about a hundred miles off the beaten track to see any of those, and preferably deep into the wild mountains, deserts, and jungles of the western 2/3rds of the country. I'm sorry, Hangzhou, but wealth, industriousness, and first-world living style doesn't necessarily translate into a truly Chinese sense of either beauty or mystery. If clean streets and proper parks were my cup of tea, I'd take my vacation in Paris or Vienna or somesuch.

Now all that said, our vacation in Hangzhou was actually quite pleasant. We weren't looking for major tourist draws, mystery, outstanding beauty, or any of that shtick. We were visiting some of Cherry's relatives in the countryside outside the city proper. Delicious homecooked meals of river crabs and other crustaceans were duly enjoyed. We visited a small factory (located in a tiny village-let among the rice fields) owned by Cherry's cousin. The point of the factory, apparently, was to create little cylindrical, hollow, plastic doohickies spooled with copper wire on the outside and containing a roll of unnamed metallic alloy on the inside. The cousin claimed that this new alloy was more environmentally friendly than competitive types, which is an interesting claim even if it isn't true, because it is somewhat unexpected that environmental sensitivity would be trickling this far down the business chain. But I guess that just shows how rapidly environmental qualifications are being coopted by big business as an essential product quality--now that the writing is on the ozone.

Biking among the rice paddies brought back pleasant memories. Stealing cotton pods split open in the heat from the farmer's fields; visiting a local food fair which was offering Turkish-style doner (meat from an upright revolving spit); climbing up to a functioning (as opposed to touristic) Buddhist monastery/temple on the ridge behind our hosts' house; and playing with our hosts' baby. There was quite a bit of fun to be had, and little of it was conventional tourist fare.

Shanghai

2008-09-18T11:50:00.002+08:00

We visited Shanghai last weekend, as the Mid-Autumn Festival gave us a useful 4-day weekend. Cherry hadn't been there for about seventeen years, so I imagine the city she has vague, childhood memories of is almost entirely gone.

With the exception of the Bund, with its nineteenth century banks and hotels, the city has been reinventing itself yearly, even monthly since the mid-1990's. Pudong has sprouted shining stalagmites in the new financial heart of the city across the river from the neogothic and art nouveau edifices in the Bund. Pudong was cabbage fields when Cherry last visited this city.

We visited a Turkish restaurants--so that I could get my fix--and ascended the Pearl of the Orient tower to get views, as high-flying scavenger birds might, of the spiny caracass below. We enjoyed breakfast with Uighurs in a beautiful old neighborhood north of Suzhou Creek that has mostly disappeared beneath the hubris and shadows cast by glass-encased towers. I felt very sad to see some of these unique streetcorners vanishing beneath cement and marble facade.

Facade is, in fact, the best way to consider Shanghai. This is a city that sells and buys everything, but half of that everything is a fake. That includes the shining towers that project above the underlying swamp, mist, and miasma. Statistics say that at least 60% of the business real-estate in Shanghai is empty, tenantless. So beautiful and (hopefully) structurally sound, these skyscrapers may be, but they are still mostly false-fronts for a wild west business environment that snares the unwary and the gullible. I imagine--in my more hopeful moments--that this will eventually change, that the real-estate market will eventually slow to more realistically model demand, and that the skyscrapers will fill up with busy little amoebas in suits. I imagine that real-estate owners may also take more pride in the upkeep of their buildings then. Currently it seems that new locations are projects pop up so quickly that landlords have little incentive to take care of their previous acquisitions. Even simple things, like dusting off their glassy hides, just doesn't seem to happen. More worryingly, interior fixtures rapidly crumble because corners were cut and cheap furnishings furnished. Quality has been sacrificed for speed and quantity.

That said, there is also plenty of quality to be found in Shanghai as well. Substance and false-fronts seem to coexist here. Dining with Cherry's relations in a high-class restaurant in the oddly named 'Super Brand Mall' in Pudong, we enjoyed subtle dishes (a nice change of pace from the blaring spice and oil of Chongqing/Sichuan cuisine) and a night view straight across the river to the Bund and the city center beyond. The expat element is also worth mentioning, as Shanghai is one of the few genuinely cosmopolitan cities I've encountered in China. And Shanghai, unlike many others, is very comfortable in its role as a portal between China and the outside world. This is not just a sycophancy upon world trends, an addictive dependancy, or a parasitic seller of cheap goods. Shanghai gives the impression that it will soon (if not already) become a setter of trends, rather than a follower. Shanghai has been given an almost unique opportunity by its history as an international concession where no one sovereign ruled. In more than one way, this is a place where cultures blend, and one of China's very few spots where cultures melt together into something new, rather than assimilate. This is New York in China.

Speaking of Massacres...

2008-09-13T01:10:00.004+08:00

We visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial (the actual name is much longer, much more unwieldy) last weekend. This had been my second visit, the last being in spring of 2006.

The spot was chosen carefully--the museum lies atop a mass burial site used by Japanese troops to dispose of some grisly Chinese remains. I remembered that part of the memorial quite well: there just aren't so many places in the world where you can come face to face with a moldering pile of massacred skeletons. Literally inches between the skin of your nose and a rictus smile of polished bone.

The new setup seems well-designed, reminiscent of Yad Vashem or the Vietnam War Memorial. The enclosure is a barren sea of gravel, baking under the sun. That alone would make most visitors begin to feel uncomfortable (which might be the point). If that didn't get the point across, the entry point through a jagged, cleaved boulder, or the burnt remnants of dead trees standing vigil near the excavated skeletons would probably do the trick. A massive statue dismembered into two parts, (another part I remembered well from my last visit) a hand clawing up from beneath the gravel, and a despairing woman's face certainly make one wonder whether a race of giants was also subject to Japanese torments. Also, some aspects--like the aforementioned trees and boulder, or a large bell--actually seem more mysterious than germane.

The walk to the entrance has been transformed, with a serene stream passing beneath horrific statues depicting: a raped woman holding her dead baby son; an old man reaching out in a physically-impossible bent postures with zombie-like hands clawing at the distance, a dead baby frozen to its dead mother's chest by a mixture of blood, milk, and tears; a teacher holding the falling body of his ghostly wife, etc. Captions explain, somewhat poetically, each episode of the horrors contained within the museum.

A bell tolls for the dead, as one enters the museum proper. Walls are duly inscribed with the names, some substituted with nicknames when the proper name is not known (Xiao Mao-mao, translated as little fur-fur, for example, is a suitable Chinese endearment for a baby boy). A drop of water falls into a pool every seven seconds (I think) to demonstrate the rate of loss of life during the period of Japanese occupation of Nanjing. A total of around 300,000 dead is claimed, some 16,000 of which are completely verifiable according to research recently compiled and released by the Chinese government.

The museum has an amazing collection, and does a very good job of taking its visitors through the immediate prelude to war, onslaught of Japanese aggression in and around Nanjing and Shanghai, the battle to capture Nanjing, a variety of Japanese war propaganda (much of it thoughtfully provided by the Japanese themselves, particularly the Sino-Japanese Peace Society), the occupation, the various horrors of that occupation--including special sections devoted to rape, pillage, arson, Chinese shot, Chinese burned, Chinese drowned, Chinese sliced by samurai swords, and a wax reenactment of a typical Chinese home with about ten various members of the family lying dead in various positions within--the foreign residents who set up an international safety zone for protecting Chinese refuges, the puppet regime, and the post-war attempts at truth and reconciliation on the matter of the Nanjing massacre*.

(*Note: some people refer to this as 'the Rape of Nanking' which seems like a typical news headline manner of description, and although rape is a terrible thing in itself, the name perhaps doesn't address the many other atrocities that occurred.)

Then--and at this point the museum was closing, so the security guards were not-too-subtly prodding the remaining visitors along--the museum recounts the entire history of Japanese aggression in China during WWII. That will be interesting to explore at another point in time (the museum is now free of charge, so I doubtlessly will visit again at some point), but didn't seem like a very good museum design choice, considering that most visitors are probably physically and emotionally exhausted by the time they get to that portion of the museum.

Overall a memorial well suited to truth and reconciliation. There was even a brief wall at the end of the museum detailing recent peaceful relations between the PRC and Japan.

This sort of museum--intentionally--puts one in a reflective mood. But my reflections may be somewhat controversial to many, including Japanese, Americans, Chinese, Turks, and Kurds. The question it puts in my mind is the unfolding, equal-opportunity nature of atrocity. Every human may find his or herself capable of atrocity. Situations change over the centuries, and an aggrieved people will suddenly find themselves in an opportune position to exact retribution, to ethnically 'cleanse' lands they feel are rightfully theirs, to right wrongs with further wrongs, or just to set aside the burden of compassionate humanity and indulge in an atavistic surge of rage, greed, or lust. Lest readers assume that I'm pointing fingers here, lets start with the US. We certainly have had our moments, in gifting small-pox blankets upon the natives of our beautiful land, in incinerating two Japanese cities (surely including vast numbers of civilians) rather than sacrificing committed soldiers, in the numerically smaller tragedies and travesties of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

So the Japanese have memorials in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to commemorate the wrong done to them. The Chinese have this memorial to commemorate the wrong done to them. Perhaps the stateless Tibetans, Tatars, and Uighurs have meager memorials to the injustices done to them, lost among the sands of remote deserts or amongst the prayer flags strewn atop the Himalayan peaks. The Jews have Yad Vashem, yet they continue the madness of allowing criminal settlers to occupy Palestinian land and their security establishment to partition Palestinian villages and olive groves. The Armenians point their fingers at the Turks, and the Turks point their fingers at the Armenians. The Kurds helped to cleanse Armenians from eastern Anatolia, but their own identity has been until recently criminalized in those same parts. As my Kurdish friend Dino once stated to me, "The Turks like to kill. I don't know why." But in Iraq, the Kurds are also busy cleansing Turkomen and Yazidi from Kirkuk. Modern day Christians like to feel aggrieved in remembrance of 9/11 terrorist plots. Modern day Muslims still feel aggrieved by the rape and pillage they experienced at Christian hands during the crusades.

These are but a few examples, and I can already imagine the haranguing I might receive from Turkish, Kurdish, and Chinese friends for even stating this comparison. There is a basic hypocrisy inherent in our inability to recognize the genocidal impulse as a basic human impulse shared by all races, religions, creeds, and nationalities of man. Certainly every nation or ethnicity that has found itself in a position of strength has abused that position with any number of atrocities, merely a macrocosm to the corruption power accomplishes as well with individual people. Can there be such a thing as a great nation or great people, whose shining city was not built upon a hill of broken bones and angry ghosts? I've always felt that this is exactly the reason why modern day horror stories always make a strong tie between guilt and fright. The shambling form of Samara, faceless behind her long black tresses, confronts us with the knowledge that all of us were born through the forgotten acts of treachery and atrocity of our ancestors. History may have been written by those of us who survived off the flesh of our fellows during the hard times, the lean times, but the guilt of it cannot be shaken. We all own this.

The second question engendered in my mind by the unsymmetrical halls of Nanjing's memorial: why should atrocity be controversial? Certainly it is horrible, and should be protested, should be ended and never again revisited by the humanity. But I wonder sometimes, why we put such special emphasis on the various genocides and massacres of the World War era. There is nothing particularly special about them, when ranked against the entire human history of civilizations.

Why should there not, for example, be memorials to the numerous cities sacked, raped, and burned to the ground... multiple times, no less... by such luminaries as Julius Caesar, Timurlane, Attila the Hun, Alexander the Great, et al. Is this just the fading effect that history has on our memories? If you go back far enough, even the currently peaceable Tibetans were playing polo with the severed heads of their enemies. Rape and pillage are mentioned numberless times in the histories of all world civilizations, and genocide crops up fairly often as well, but why do these atrocities bear special mention when Hitler, Stalin, or various Japanese generals are at the head of the dirty deed rather than some forgotten Babylonian, Hittite, or Qin dynasty general?

Do we really have such a high opinion of 'modern man' that we would assume ourselves incapable of the basest human traits? Have we, by inventing light bulbs and Morse code and calculators that fit in one's pocket, somehow gone through some miraculous mutation that puts us above the obscenities seemingly hard-coded into our behavior? I think this is an utterly unrealistic lesson to derive from human history. Razed to the ground, raped into submission, enslaved generation upon generation, tortured or flayed or crucified when submission could not be had by any other means. These are descriptions of average towns and cities throughout the last 7,000 + years of human history that happened to get in the way of bored military men and spoiled god-kings. Atrocity, in this sense, is a banality. Taboo, but nonetheless a common thing.

Our modernity--our time in space, technological progress, and social development--no more than our religion, credo, nationality, or ethnicity, does not put us past the nightmares we are all capable of inflicting on the world. I don't question the need to memorialize horrors of modern times, or the need to put a stop to the horrors that are ongoing. I do think our denial of the universal nature of abomination is just as dangerous as would be forgetting the facts and origins of abomination. Not only is it petty and self-serving to trivialize the tragedies experienced by our rivals and enemies, but it is an extremely dangerous habit in such an overpopulated and overly weaponized world.

The memorial of our worst tragedies must also be a reminder of our worst capabilities, lest it become little more than a score-sheet from which to foster the atrocities of tomorrow.

Nanjing Ninjutsu

2008-09-03T11:46:00.006+08:00

Nanjing vs. Chongqing

I've moved from Chongqing to Nanjing for the coming year; I will be teaching at the Nanjing College of Information Technology, starting Friday. I figure a little background on my environs would be useful in understanding and imagining the stories I will tell.

Chongqing city proper has about 7 million denizens, Nanjing has about 6 million although it comprises a much smaller land area. Nanjing is a cleaner, greener city that has 22 universities and colleges, and numerous parks including a large lake near the middle of the city, the most complete ancient city walls remaining in China, and Zijin Mountain where famed first president of China, Sun Yat-sen lies buried.

Ancient Nanjing

One of my friends who lived here in Nanjing for a time told me this story:

When the first emperor to unite all of China, Chin Shi Huang, of the Chin Dynasty, had completed his conquests and lay tired on his throne in the ancient city of Chang'an (now called Xi'an), he asked that the greatest geomancer (Feng Shui expert) be brought before him to consult. The emperor wished to know the best location in China to establish the seat of the empire, and if there were any locations that might by their energy forces provide a rival to his throne.

The geomancer told the emperor that there was one place with such good feng shui that it could not help but to produce a rival to the emperor's throne: Nanjing.

The emperor, perplexed, asked if there was anything to be done about this possible threat. The geomancer, backed by the emperor's forces, built a canal to drain away the good feng shui of Nanjing. Thus, while several dynasties, including the Southern Song Dynasty, the early Ming Dynasty, and the Nationalist government (before retreating to Chongqing in WWII, and before retreating to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War) have made Nanjing their capital, few have lasted there for very long.

Modern Times

Today's Nanjing is a city of government (seat of Jiangsu Province), a city of gardens, and a city of students. With twenty-two universities, young people abound in the streets and exotic cuisine is available for the many foreign teachers and students who come to live here for a time. Some of the older universities (Nanjing U., Nanjing Normal U., SouthEast U.) will be exactly a hundred years old next year.

One key difference between Nanjing and Chongqing which we noticed almost immediately is that the air here seems fresher. That could be partly because the rather flatter landscape allows the winds to blow away smog at a faster rate than in the narrow, hilly river valleys that comprise Chongqing. Another reason is that this is a much greener city, with gardens and campuses seemingly around every corner. Walking along a tree-lined boulevard, I could actually smell some of the summer smells which I had grown accustomed to in rural Michigan. Speaking of the trees, giant sycamores overhang the main boulevards of the city. Some say these trees have been here since the days when Qing emperors may have passed by in the midst of their vast retinues.

One of the more famous attrocities of world history has made Nanjing (or its older spelling in English, Nanking) rather famous. The so-called 'Rape of Nanking' during the early years of World War II saw much of the city razed, at least 300,000 Chinese massacred, and plenty of rapes and maiming committed by the Japanese soldiers. This episode in the city's history has certainly been branded into the minds of Chinese school children, and is one of the reasons why most Chinese express hatred of Japan (despite the fact that Japanese cartoons and cuisine are often quite popular). The Nanjing Massacre Museum, which I have previously visited, lays open a mass grave so that tourists can view the tragedy firsthand. Even if other parts of China seem to have made their peace with the Japanese (notably Dalian, Qingdao, or Shanghai), I doubt that the Nanjingren will forget their historic emnity any time soon.

Living Situation

We will be very comfortable in our new life here in Nanjing, I'm sure. Our first evening we had some quite passable lasagna and pasta with roasted pine nuts. The next evening we dined at a putative Xinjiang (Turkic Muslim westernmost province in China) restaurant. I know there must be a Subway restaurant or two in the city, because I saw a girl walking down the street with a sub wrapped in the familiar logo-printed paper of that sandwich chain. I'm quite excited for that, and excited as well to see what other gems of international cuisine might turn up. The local supermarket giants (even the Chinese ones) seem well stocked with proper pickles, dijon mustard, tortilla chips, cheese, bacon, and even American hotdogs. For lunch today I roasted up some of those.

I should also be able to access plenty of English-language reading material. The ultra-modern central public library which I drooled over the last time I visited this city, a couple years ago, is now open, and I made a point of getting my very own library card. I'm allowed to take one book out at a time, and take a book for up to a month before fines start to set in. The English-language section isn't huge (and is mostly comprised of nonfiction), but I did spot a few gems, including that book about gnomes which spawned the 'David the Gnome' children's tv show which I watched when I was a child. The book isn't as suited for children as the tv show was, however, with a rather more European attitude on nudity being expressed in the drawings of the illustrator. For that matter, could it be that the version of that book which the public library in Berrien Springs stocked had been censored? I don't at all recall this section on Rusalki.... They do have lovely bodies, though!

Our apartment is at the northwestern edge of the city, an hour's walk from Nanjing University's campus, maybe a fifteen minute walk to the banks of the Changjiang (Yangtze River), and right next to a large forested park. Right across the street from us, there is a giant tower with a rotating restaurant clinging like a treefrog at the top of it (you know the sort). We probably won't be having much difficulty finding our way home from other parts of the city.
Across the other street (our hi-rise apartment complex is on a corner) one section of Nanjing's ancient city wall begins. It comforts me to think that in ancient days my abode would be situated right about where I am, and I might have more or less the same view of the city that a tower guardsman might have had.

Here's another view from the window of our apartment, looking south across a park towards the bright center of the city:
The apartment itself is much smaller than my apartment in Chonging, but that is expected in a more expensive city and a one-bedroom apartment. The bedroom duals as a living room, the kitchen (which is not much of a kitchen at that, with no permanent stove and very limited counter space) duals as an entryway, and the bathroom is small enough to have one hand in the shower, one hand in the sink, and one's butt on the toilet.

Working Situation

My college is located on in a 'university city' district out beyond the city proper, in what I'm sure was farmland not many years ago. This is a common trend in Chinese cities, what with city officials eager to sell off valuable urban campuses to developers, as well as develop research hubs on cheaply obtained (against the protests of farmers?) land in the countryside. Chongqing had set up something similar, and I'm sure that students here (just as there) dreaded being sent off to such modernist "learning" concentration camps. The architecture is uniformly modernist, with vast empty, sun-drenched squares, lawns no one is allowed to walk upon, and overall only a slight improvement on the socialist architecture of Soviet times. Form is addressed in ways that doubtlessly looked good on the drawing board, but less so with rust stains forming down the sides of the white-and-blue buildings, and a distinct lack of comfortable places for students or faculty to hang out. In reality, all the faculty and staff live in the city proper and arrive on campus via an hour-long shuttle ride. Only the students are required to live in such bland surroundings.

As to the students, I'm sure I'll know more about that on my first working day--this Friday. The director of the BCIT program informed me, in a wry aside, that my students are a bit rowdy and not terribly bright or studious. I suppose thats why they ended up in this educational ghetto, and not on the gladed campus of Nanjing University.

These things aside, I'm sure life in Nanjing this year will be pleasant. Once again I will re-iterate my welcome for any of you who might like to see China this year and come visit. I hope this invitation will not continue to fall on deaf ears, as China really is worth seeing and certainly won't be getting any cheaper than it is. Now's the time to see this vast land!

Comparisons in Political Slander

2008-08-29T04:58:00.003+08:00

I was just reading an article in which Fox News (who else?) was exploring the tie between a designer used for something or other by Britney Spears, and now as set designer for Obama.

... Oh, what trite bullshit!

Honestly, the Republicans must be pretty hard up for Obama criticism, if this is the best that they can do. What, are we in high school, making fun of each other's homecoming parade floats? The tie to a designer used by Britney is really a stretch. People who have the funds to do so (which Obama does, and McCain doesn't) will make use of the best designers and consultants... period.

I didn't mind McCain, and once had some respect for the old codger who stood up to his party on a number of issues... until he sold himself out to his party's right wing extremists. Now he's just making himself look silly with the "celebrity" line of attack. Republicans often tout Reagan as their greatest president (at least of the Republican party in its modern sense), but the man was quite literally a celebrity of the Hollywood variety. The only presidents lacking 'celebrity appeal' (such as Bush the Elder or Gore) were somewhat less than successful in their search for executive powers.

Speaking of Gore, you certainly can't accuse Republicans of consistency. They accused that learned candidate of being too boring and lacking in charisma, but now they're essentially accusing Obama of the opposite, being too exciting and too charismatic.

Moving to Nanjing!

2008-08-26T19:56:00.001+08:00

As of our last conversation, it seemed that I would be joining a magazine just opening in Chongqing. Unfortunately I won't be taking up that job offer, for a variety of reasons including under-investment and reluctance by those people in charge to pay a fair wage (they wanted me to manage the magazine's new branches in both Chongqing and Chengdu--a city four hours away by train from here--for about half what I'd been making as an English training school manager). In any case, I managed to get about three months experience with that business, as well as a digital copy of our proposed first magazine issue mostly comprised of my own photography and articles. I should be able to use that in my portfolio of work experience, I imagine, and leverage a similar sort of job later on.

In lieu, then, of staying in Chongqing to work on this magazine, I've taken a job as an English instructor at the Nanjing College of Information Technology. I've always wanted to try my hand at teaching college students, and now I'll get a chance to see how I like it. I recall that one of my classmates in high school insisted that I carried with me the ambiance of an English professor... well, I guess I now am one, sort of.

Nanjing is a lovely city. Maybe some of you read my descriptions of it two years ago in my older blog. Shortly after I arrived in China for the first time I visited that city of long history, grand universities, and beauteous gardens. I thought then, and still think now, that I'd enjoy living there for a time. I'll be sending another update along soon, as well as more detailed information about Nanjing.

A Politically Correct Massacre

2008-08-22T05:55:00.002+08:00

As a writer, I feel quite comfortable with the vagaries of language--all the little assumptions (often incorrect) that slowly grow up around the words, some ancient, some young, which we use in everyday parlance. We will probably always seek advantage in our choice of words: as economists tend to do when they label subsidies they support as 'incentives', and subsidies they don't support as 'behavior distorting'. We also often feel a need to be sensitive in how we vent steam from our mouths.

But there is also a need to examine when sensitivity gives way to senseless timidity.

Namely, there are times when genocide should be called genocide, and not 'ethnic cleansing'. I mean, is there not something sick in our apparent zest to equate historical horrors such as the Holocaust with ablution and cleanliness? The word was clearly developed by the very mass murderers we like to abhor in international headlines, so then what use is there in adopting their terminology (and thus their thought process and explanation for such acts).

Being politically a liberal progressive, I always viewed 'political correctness' with sympathy. But lately, as I look at the words picked up and promulgated by news reports and disseminated and ingested by the populace, I really have to look askance on our constant need to sanitize language.

Never mind the fact that as a writer, I also see no reason why words rich that are voluptuous in their accretion of powerful meaning should be replaced with the vapid, clean products of political testing for least amount of offensive potential. Words can and sometimes should have the vim to break bones, and we shouldn't rob them of that.

Why, for recent example, should we pretend that the Caucasus is an apparently spic-and-span place according to our depiction of cleansing there (the ethnic or racial variety) that has a noble history going back to Roman times. The ancient denizens of that land, then called Alans, Khazars, Circassians, etc, and now called Ingushetians, Chechens, Georgians, Ossetians, et al, have been trying to wipe each other from the face of the planet in between the more economically rewarding activity of raiding the Silk Road caravans. Should we assume that the planet will be a more hygienic place with this inflamed quilt of ethnicities 'wiped' clear?

It is bad enough that the Ossetian and Georgian grand ma-ma's are busy these days burying the festering remains of sons and husbands in their unfinished basements to avoid the roving bands of 'cleansers' outside. It is worse to suggest that the gathering clouds of flies and ancient recriminations are somehow clean.

Quote of the day: "If you speak of cultural melting pots to the Caucasians, they'll melt you!"

(The quote is attributable to S. Hakan Kirimli, Ph.D., professor of a class on the history of the Caucasus at Bilkent University in Ankara,Turkey; Justin, please correct me if I mangled that quote in any way.)

A Guide to the Opening Ceremony

2008-08-10T03:01:00.003+08:00

-I thought the presentations on Chinese culture were wonderfully done. Allusions to the Communist Party were kept to a minimum, and past/future achievements of science, culture, and artistry were brought to the fore. Particularly, I enjoyed the performance of the Confucian disciples, dressed in grey robes and adorned with feathered tee-pee headdresses. The corresponding demonstration of a printing press showed the evolution of the Chinese character 'He', which means something like 'peace'. Granted, the whole proceedings, including a lavish display of fireworks, was underwritten by the governing CCP, so I suppose they can afford to minimize self-congratulation along with the many controversial episodes of Chinese history tied to their rule.

-'Da Shan', a popular foreigner who speaks fluent Mandarin, works for the government-owned media conglomerate, CCTV, and adorns various advertising campaigns, joined his fellow Canadian Olympians as they marched into the stadium. I suppose that this means the tongue contortions necessary to speak proper Chinese counts as an Olympic sport?

-I was surprised to see the Taiwan delegation show up. I wonder what manner of diplomatic fast talk resulted in the rather odd title bestowed on them, "Chinese Taipei" (Taipei is the main city), or their interesting banner?

-Speaking of delegations, I think some applause is in order for the delegations from Iraq (who narrowly avoided being kept from attending), Afghanistan, Sudan, and Palestine. I read that the Palestinian athletes had little or no resources, and little access to even sub-par training centers, so their arrival (along with delegations from those other war-torn nations) is a minor miracle. Ditto on the Sudanese.

-I'm sure, on the other hand, that the Chinese won't know what to make of the Georgians. It appears that this warlike Caucasian republic has initiated a small war with the Russians and their proxies, the breakaway republic of South Ossetia... during the Olympics!

-Fireworks in the shape of footprints, quite inventive. I suppose we'll all be looking over our shoulders in trepidation at the invisible giant this is supposed to represent. I also rather liked the initial fireworks, which created a shape and color much like the Chinese national flower, the peony.

-The American Olympians were headed by an athlete originally from Darfur. Thus far none of the Chinese I've talked to have picked up on this subtle slight, although one of my students did ask who the guy was.

-The many delegations of the nations of the earth marched into the stadium, demonstrating one pragmatic fact as they did: The Olympics is about money and prestige. Authoritarian countries, and overly-wealthy ones continue to dominate, at least in terms of numbers of athletes they send. How else to explain the imbalance between the rather small delegations fielded by India and Indonesia (second and fourth most populous countries in the world, I believe) when compared to large delegations by tiny, wealthy European countries such as the Netherlands? And although China and India are comparable in economic status, economic growth, and population, China's delegation could far surpass India's only because China's government is accountable to no one--thus able to afford intensive cradle-to-retirement athletic programs designed to increase its number of competitors in the sports that offer the highest number of gold medals--whereas India government is almost over-accountable and certainly too fractured and indecisive to support such efforts. Rich democracies such as America have ample private and (relatively small, when comparing percentage of GDP and tax revenues) public funds for this athletic prestige project, and poor democracies can barely support a token delegation.

-I wanted to eat a Chinese dish called xihongshi chaojidan (fried tomatoes and eggs) in honor of the controversial design choices for the costumes of the Chinese delegation, but had to settle for some nice homemade pasta instead. The red, at least, was still represented, if not the bright gold.

-A note on China's flagbearer and accompaniment: Yao Ming is an NBA giant. I'm not really a fan, as his basketball skills seem to come from the 'Shaq' school of thought. The little boy is perhaps more notable. He was apparently somehow involved in rescuing people in the recent Sichuan earthquakes.

-My students were unanimous in their criticism of the Olympic theme song, 'You and Me' (Chinese: Wo he Ni, lit: I and You). They thought that it was too slow and too soft to make a proper Olympic song. I have to agree--although I admit to having a bias against saccharine pop music duets which this seems to take its style from. The song was not rousing at all and would probably put a caffeinated chimp to sleep.

-All in all the event as pulled off well. I think we can attribute the talents of Chinese director, Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern; Hero; House of Flying Daggers). His zest for bright, almost surreal coloring was certainly evident. We can also attribute the apparently bottomless pockets of the CCP. I doubt that any following Olympics host will dare appropriate as much money as they have to put on such a 'coming-out' party. I also doubt that any Olympic host will have such broad powers to shut down local traffic, factories, bars, clubs, street food vendors, etc. Although I'm not there myself (and happily so), I can well imagine that Beijing is currently enduring a kind of half-life, or undeath, until the Olympics are safely completed.

I'm also cautiously optimistic that there won't be a major incident of whatever kind during the midst of the Olympics. But in China, you never know. Despite rigid state control, chaos is still just a breath away.

Rain Washes Away All Sins

2008-08-07T21:16:00.003+08:00

Tonight, on the eve of the long-awaited Beijing 2008 Olympics, grand thunderstorms blanket the uplifted teeth of the city, and rain washes down their soot-stained flanks. Here in Chongqing we are far to the south and west of Beijing, center of tomorrow's festivities, and I am thankful for that. The hoopla that city will undergo for the next few weeks is their fun and their sorrow. I can enjoy it vicariously through the TV, the new articles I read, and the enjoyment or frustrations of my students.

I look out over the darkened city, silvery gusts of rain descending like curtains along the street below my window. People, like beetles, scurry before its wrath. I wonder if this is a natural storm, or if the scientists have seeded the clouds over China with silver iodide to cause this sudden downpour. The officials of the CCP had threatened to do as much, funded experimentation recently into such technologies for weather modification, just in case nature decided to rebuke their attempts at a "most perfect" Olympics. A rainstorm over a Chinese city has the decidedly wonderful affect of clearing the skies over the cityscape of pollution for several days. I've seen this often, here in Chongqing. The day after a thunderstorm usually showing unusually blue, clear skies. Then day after day the smog gradually returns to rule its dominion.

Recent reports of humid, smoggy days settling in over Beijing may well have prompted such actions.

Will a fresh, new day dawn over Beijing tomorrow? Or will darker events ensue. Stay tuned....

A Note to the Announcers...

2008-08-04T00:06:00.003+08:00

...of various American news agencies. I think it's high time that professionals such as yourselves learned the proper way to say the name of the city where the Olympics will be held this month.

It is no more correct to pronounce Beijing with a soft, French, J than it is to pronounce Michigan with a hard, British, CH.

Now, follow me: the first part, 'Bei' is said with a tone that first falls and then rises like the sharp curve of a V; the second part, 'Jing' uses a hard J and is spoken with a high, flat, unchanging tone.

Now then. I do hope that saves us all a bit of embarrassment. The American public famously only learns the proper pronunciation of foreign place names after our troops have invaded those same places, and I think we'd all prefer this geographical education to happen without the accompaniment of bomb blasts and bullet ricochets.

WWZ

2008-07-23T03:41:00.002+08:00

A novel recounting the fictionalized WWZ, or 'Zombie Wars', starts out with a recollection from a Chongqing doctor who witnessed one of the early outbreaks of the disease. According to the fictional account, the region which once had a population of 35 million people is reduced to about 50,000...

I really can't even imagine this place so empty as that.

It does, however, seem likely that if an outbreak of 'zombie-ism' did occur, it could easily occur here, or in one of the many other overpopulated parts of China. (First) SARS, (second) Bird Flu, (third) Zombie Flu.

Not so far beyond the realm of possibilities as we would wish. Unfortunately, I doubt that the local branch of the PLA would take kindly to me arming myself with either shotgun or chainsaw. I wonder what manner of ZDDs (Zombie Deterrence Devices) can be procured from the ruins of an English training school?

China is, definitely, one of the more dangerous places to be if/when the zombie outbreak happens. You can't turn and spit without accidentally taking a bite out of your neighbor's brains. I can well imagine the tidal hordes of rotten, angry flesh unleashed in the mall squares.

Zhangjiajie (Part 2)

2008-07-09T02:30:00.014+08:00

I have mentioned before, there are places in Zhangjiajie park where not very many human feet tread. There are gorges where the only sound, echoing from wall to stony wall, is the call of the subtropical birds. These are places where perhaps the stealthy padding of snow leopard feet can sometimes still *not* be heard... just before the pounce.

I had crept away into just such a remote corner of the park, and merely by steadily climbing further and further away from the paved roads and snack stalls more easily accessible to tourists. There were, as far as I know, no other backpackers there. Considering later events, perhaps that is a good thing indeed.

In solitude I sat at the pavilion of the moon, a crag in that sliver shape rose above me. I rested, and allowed the sounds of the wilderness to immerse me. This pavilion sat on a sheer ridge between two different valleys on one axis, and below yet higher cliffs on the other axis. A stairway descended into a green abyss ahead of me. Descending those stairs, once my breath had been caught, I found that corner of the park which in my time there I always felt some claim to. There was, quite simply, no one walking, talking, or treading here besides myself. Rose red cliffs shouldered their way up through the greenery on either side of me.

Having reached the valley floor, wherein a stream rushed, I then proceeded to scamper like a lamed and aching goat up a trail that climbed up the side of a crevasse snaking its way from the main valley. I hadn't seen anyone in hours. I was beginning to wonder if this was a particularly wise turn of events, given that late afternoon was already upon me, but the map indicated that civilization (and the main trails) couldn't be too far away from me by now. Past trees rooted in the merest of cracks in the cliff walls, and up past formations with names like 'cat fishing' or 'tiger fights dragon', I climbed onwards.

On the upper trails of this particular canyon, I did eventually find humanity--whether I wanted to or not. Fortunately for me, I found an urbane woman and her young daughter, guided by a local fellow who was taking them back down the crevasse I had just climbed, and then further down the valley to where a little village could be found. I joined them, in hopes of a relatively cheap place to rest for the night, and my hopes were eventually rewarded. As we climbed back down the canyon I had just laboriously climbed up, I passed the time by teaching English words to the woman and her daughter. The daughter was somewhat reluctant--and very cranky from a day spent clambering in the wilderness--but the mother already knew a little English. As dusk descended, however, we had arrived at a little farm house-turned-motel. The prices were a bit ambitious for such a small, unkempt place, but then again: location, location, location.

Day 2:

The next morning I avoided the guide altogether by getting up around 5:00 am. Surprisingly, this was actually when I fell naturally awake--not a natural condition for me, as I'm sure many of you know. The guide had been keen to guide me around the park, make the best use of time, and get his cut of my money (through overpriced meals, no doubt). I was having none of it. It was fair enough that he and his friends were overcharging me for a convenient place to rest for the night--and a place to leave my larger backpack during the day, no less, since I was feeling stiffer this morning than the previous one--but quite another for them to expect to get anything more of me and the coin that dwelt in my pocket. I am, as you have already seen, quite capable to take care of myself, and not at all interested in guided tours--much less those in a language I barely speak.

The morning was humid, and, despite being cool, I soon grew hot as I hiked back up the valley--my valley. And here is where my real brainwave occurred. For I realized that not only was this an extremely remote part of the park where no one came, but also this was a time of day not likely to see travelers pass through these parts. And best of all, Chinese tourists can always be heard from miles away: shouting, scuffling, hooting, and generally attempting to show loud bravado in the midst of the powerful wilderness. So I sat down. I pulled off my shirt. I pulled off my pants. I was standing in my boxer shorts now, with my backpack slung across my back. Mischievous imps implored me to go all the way, to explore what Adam might have felt like as he traversed Eden, but I ignored them. This was quite enough. The chill morning air kept my flanks cool as I climbed up the crevasse. I figured that if I heard even a peep of human activity (as doubtless I would), I could be back in my pants and shirt in three twitches of a mountain lion's tail.

At the top of the crevasse I was rewarded with a skinny trail that snaked along the flank of the cliff, eventually culminating in a rocky promontory with glorious views and a wind that smelled sweet, that smelled of the vast lands it had traversed that morning. I sat down and began to make myself a well-deserved (so I felt) breakfast of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as the dawn's light caressed the nobbly peaks and mountain ramparts on the opposite side of the valley. Oh yes, I did feel a bit of that 'king of the world' vibe that the movie Titanic speaks of. To stand naked (or half-naked) before the enfolding fury of nature's chasms, peaks, jungles, and winds... there are few such chances in life to let loose one's hair (figuratively speaking, in my case) and behave as a barbarian without a care for the judgments of society's mores.

(Below I will try to capture some small sliver of the feel of that place and time, with a series of pictures meant to emulate my view as I sat and ate sandwiches, from right to left.)

When breakfast had been finished, and I had drunk my fill of the winds, I clambered upwards and onwards. Not far above this place, I came to the first signs that other humans were not so far off--hoots echoed across the vastness of a labyrinthine system of canyons. The people were not close, but they weren't so far either. I pulled on my pants.

Helpfully, a pinnacle nearby had been scaled by ladders to allow for yet another superb view of the subtropical labyrinth. I was still quite alone, and could enjoy the view in absolute peace.

With care, and slow steps to savor it all, I walked along the dragon-backbone ridges towards the land of man and buses.

(to be continued)

An Old Comic-story Project...

2008-07-08T13:44:00.003+08:00

...which I can't currently access or download, so here I am uploading it to my blog so that I can save to disk from there. Bloody Photobucket seemingly won't allow me to download the pics at a decent resolution straight from their website. Not sure what's up with that!

An Adulterated Story of the Fruit

2008-07-02T07:04:00.003+08:00

N.B: If you are not the sort of person who can enjoy an irreverently told Biblical story or references to adult situations with good humor, perhaps you should pass on this one. :-)

* * *

At the beginning, there was light. Or was that God? Or was God, in fact, composed of light? There were no other commentators there at the time, so perhaps we will never definitely know what happened at the beginning. But I suppose I might admit that God was there: as both a particle and a wave.

Shortly thereafter, when all the heavens and earths and various mostly-harmless creatures had been birthed, God made his first mistake.

What, God makes mistakes? No, we can’t say that, can we?

The mistake is a common one that when filtered through the hipster shades of Greek myth comes out as the story of a minor deity named Narcissus falling in love with and drowning in his own reflection, or as the robotic genocide of lazy human masters in the telling of sci-fi space opera. God definitely fell fatally in love with himself that day. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, really. He had after all just created the entirety of existence where previously there had only been a tiny black hole—a pinprick of a place which quite frankly had sucked. Oh yes, God had plenty to be proud of, and so to commemorate his good work thus far, he formed a statue in his own image out of the dirt. To some of us, it still might have appeared to be little more than a reclining lump of loam, but this was hardly the end of God’s plan.

Not content with a merely three dimensional self-representation, he did what no other artist before or since has ever dared to do—he breathed life into his own self-portrait.

Thankfully, he withheld godlike powers from this naked dirt-boy (we’ll call him Adam), or else the newly formed universe might have had a godly clone war on its newborn hands. Such cataclysms rarely lead to satisfactory solutions—more often leading to rips through time and space (convenient peepholes for Cthulhu and his brethren) or endless tug-of-wars over the TV remote when Thursday evening comes around.

No, God at least had the sense to keep a bit of his breath to himself and I just bet we’re all thankful that he did. Because there was another imperfect bit of symmetry to this living statue called Adam. Perhaps it was the original substance he’d been made of—dust to dust, loam to loam, as well as some roach carcasses and rat droppings accidentally swept up in the proceedings—but Adam had a single-track, dirty mind.

Now Adam was released into a sort of safari park named Eden, to play happily with the lambs and yetis and giant squids (Whoever said that Eden was an entirely land-based garden?) that resided there. After a brief seventh-day siesta, God sometimes even came by to chat and check up on the frisky automaton he had installed there and to lavish him with love and gifts such as we all no doubt will do when we each have a pet clone of our own.

Not long after, Adam grew tired of playing soccer with the hedgehogs or ‘find the tonsil’ with the lions. He was really and truly bored. His dirty mind began to wonder what fun he might have if only he could have a clone of his very own. After all, God (the ultimate role model) had done just this in creating Adam in the first place. What wonderful games could be played, Adam imagined. Why, he’d even seen some dogs playing a strange and frantic game the other day that had given him ideas… and when he and his new pal were through playing, his buddy should have convenient, natural pillows for him to rest his head upon. This was a win/win deal, Adam figured.

God was amused. He supposed he could see some possible problems with an infinitely expanding infestation of his lesser likeness, but that eventuality seemed to be a long way off. And he could handle that problem when it occurred. Indeed, He was God, wasn’t He?

“Okay Adam, we’ll give you your clone, but this is going to be on my own conditions, alright?” God is God, and his intentions at this time were neither good nor bad. His intentions were Machiavellian.

Adam couldn’t figure out what God was smirking about, but he didn’t really care and he agreed with the conditions. He was surprised of course when God, still smiling, yanked out one of his ribs, but didn’t have much time to ponder the matter since he immediately fainted into the anesthetic stupor of sleep.

Sometime later, Adam was awakened in a rude manner. His face was being pummeled on each side by something fleshy, something he had never before encountered in all of Eden.

“Pfah!” He cried, opening his eyes and attempting to fend off his jiggling attacker.

Soft eyes regarded him from a short distance away. Equally soft hair the color of a baboon’s ass in full blush, a gentle heart-shaped face, and… (Adam looked down at what his hands were groping) …it seemed that all his dreams had been answered.

“Sorry,” the-woman-soon-to-be-called-Eve said, looking down at the breasts Adam released with some reluctance, “I hadn’t the faintest idea what these things were for, and since I just saw you lying there….” She trailed off.

Yes, Adam decided, this woman had been a great idea.

***

What a crap idea, Adam thought, looking over at his everlasting mate, Eve.

In the summery garden it would be hard to say whether several years had passed, but in all likelihood many, many years had passed. Things had progressed as they usually do whenever a non-asexual creature meets another non-asexual creature. Of course the results of such a progression are not what we know so well in our modern age. God, wise as he is, had endowed Eden with a magical contraceptive quality in order to ensure the happiness (and generous territory distribution) of all his eternal creatures living within. As fundamentalists can attest from a strict reading of scripture, there is no mention of a need for either fig leaf diapers or porcupine abortion nurses in that sheltered instance!

And so things had certainly been great for both Adam and Eve in the rose-colored twilight of their vacation from reality.

But now Adam was yet again bored. Many a married couple that has not chosen wisely when the full strength of their hormones had been upon them can attest to a similar feeling as the trickster nucleotides in their brains have worn off. I’m not certain that Adam’s problem was one of elapsing hormones, however, as God had not yet gotten quite angry or capricious enough to think of making such essential things elapse. Adam’s problem was that God had spoiled him silly. Let this be a lesson to those of us even now thinking of feeding our little clone pancakes--with melted mars bars, peanut butter, and lucky charms on top--for breakfast tomorrow. This had been God’s second mistake, but one we will forgive him for as most every good grandparent since has repeated the mistake of overindulgence.

Yes, Adam, despite receiving his greatest wish (a version of himself with breasts and more delicate features), was hopelessly bored with Eve. All she wanted to do was talk! But he had recently had a genius idea for how to get rid of her.

The idea had come the previous day when God had been reporting unto them the monthly news and gossip. It seemed that God, scientist that he was, had a special biogenetics laboratory not far beyond the walls of Eden, and a particularly pernicious plant had escaped from therein, crawling upon sinuous roots not properly hitched to the ground (the events that later transpired would convince God of the necessity of ‘rooting’ trees more properly), and climbed over the fence and into the otherwise perfect garden of Eden. The tree had turned up between a Chimera’s den and a field of artichokes.

“What is so wrong about this plant?” Eve asked in interest and innocence.

“Well… um… never mind that,” God said with a sheepish grin, “let’s just call it ‘The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil ‘ and leave it at that, shall we?”

Both proto-humans thought this name was odd and cumbersome. They’d also never seen God embarrassed before.

“So does it do anything interesting?” Adam asked without too much hope. He was on the lookout for any suitably interesting toys or activities with which to replace the inevitable hand-holding or ‘eating’ of inedible body parts which Eve was always insisting on.

“Yeah… you could say that.” God noticed the gleam in Adam’s eye and decided to head the subject off before he accidentally destroyed the naivety of his two clones, “and of course it is a very dangerous plant that you should both stay well away from! I want you to promise me, Adam, and you too, Eve, that you will leave the poor plant alone. And absolutely, on pain of death, you will not eat the fruit of that dangerous tree!”

Eve nodded her head in agreeable fashion, and (a bit slower) Adam did too. He was wondering what these words ‘death’ and ‘dangerous’ meant. He was also pondering the possibilities of getting God angry at Eve. If God was angry at Eve, Adam thought, perhaps he would agree to transmute her back into the form of my rib. Or perhaps a backscratcher. He then had a pleasant daydream about playing a new game he had just invented called “boomerang” with the Eve-rib and pretty much tuned out of the conversation that Eve and God were having about the special tunneling properties that subatomic particles sometimes have.

Neither of the two thought to ask God why he didn’t just uproot the damned tree and take it back to his laboratory of biological monstrosities. God, it must be said, is not just a scientist but also an artist. The tree, coming to rest where it had, had brought just the right shade of deviance to an otherwise bland corner of the garden. God hadn’t the heart to remove it from a place that somehow the tree seemed cosmically destined to occupy.

So it was that soon thereafter, Adam and Eve went for a picnic near The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and Adam mysteriously forgot to bring any fruit jelly for their intended peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

This otherwise simple fellow was rubbing his hands together in glee. It was true, of course, that he would miss his favorite headrest when she was gone, but there were plenty of amiable minks in the garden that could be pressed into service in a jiffy. Oh, nothing could have brought Adam down to earth now!

The blankets were laid out on the grass, the hampers unpacked. Eve discovered with dismay (and Adam pretended dismay) that there was no jam for the sandwiches. There was no argument against the fact that peanut butter sandwiches without the corresponding jam were simply not edible. As Eve put it, the stickiness of peanut butter requires a less viscous counterpart to ease it past the troublesome area of a mouth’s roof. Adam just thought that it was a good thing that his overly-verbose wife would soon be a goner.

They debated their options. Adam argued that he had in fact not just forgotten, but lost the fruit jam. There was certainly no time to squeeze and prepare jam from the usual sorts of fruit either. Both of them had a hankering for good old PB&J. Then Adam made the obvious suggestion. Eve looked doubtfully at the fruit tree in question.

The fruit looked nothing like apples, of course. The plump-to-bursting globes dripped golden nectar from their pores; all the colors of the rainbow arranged themselves into mesmerizing, arousing designs that shifted across the skin of the fruit. The contour of the fruit seemed to shimmer in a haze of effervescence that smelled of forbidden desires. The fruit was irresistible. But Eve, like many women after her, had an iron will that could still have desisted from such pleasures.

It has to be said that, in the traditional telling of this story, undue attention is given to the serpent. A serpent is said to be the instigator in the matter of forbidden fruit eaten, and even quite literally demonized in the process of casting blame. Let me set some facts straight then: (1) The devil, curiosity of horror though he may be, had not been invented by God yet—his biogenetic research had not gotten that far; (2) Man has no need of devils nor serpents to blame for falling flat on his own face, as he does that quite well on his own; (3) the snake was only one part of the tragicomedy that was to follow.

Namely, one third of it. A chimera is a strange beast, perhaps another escapee of God’s laboratory of biogenetic wonders. The front head and body is that of a lion, the middle (including a head sprouting from its spinal cord) is that of a goat, and the hind region (ass and tail, to its disgust) is known to be a snake. The beast as it was then, rather than being dangerous or frightening, was a bewildered creature. Never quite sure which direction it was moving in, or which direction it should be moving in, thanks to the rival operations of three fully functional brains countermanding each other in the space of one body, the chimera moved about the earth in a sort of awkward dance one most commonly sees from a mime who has imbibed hallucinogens.

Upon ambling from its burrow that day, the chimera had headed towards the scent of a bizarre new tree that now sprouted nearby. Although the carnivorous lion and snake parts had been not at all interested in a new vegetarian option for their diet, the goat controlled the hind legs and dug in with his hooves until he had propelled them towards the tree. While the lion sniffed at the wind, and the serpent let out a horrifying fart, the goat reached up and was the very first earthly creature to nibble upon the forbidden fruit. The succulent skin of the fruit broke easily at the first nip of the goat’s teeth and an intoxicating liqueur poured forth. The ecstasy of that first taste shocked all three, however, and the extreme dose of sugar in it left the entire beast feeling a bit woozy, so it sat down. And so it remained, dozing there quietly for several hours until Eve happened to come under the shade of the tree to inspect the fruit she was about to denounce as unsuitable for PB&J sandwiches.

Unfortunate Eve reached up, not to pluck a fruit, but to gesticulate as she formed her starting arguments, and the shadow of her motion disturbed the half-sleeping chimera. The chimera woke up, saw Eve, and had exactly three reactions.

The lion—now conscious of the fact that this woman constituted a lot of supple, delicious meat—bounded forward with a yawning roar. The goat bleated a warning at a dumbfounded Eve, a cry of inarticulate anger at the sky, and then attempted to dig in his back heels, not really wanting the addition of meat to his belly. As a result of the mixed signals from the front and middle of the beast, the chimera now went into a sideways somersault and the head of the snake grabbed the nearest thing it could find to hang onto to for dear life: a branch of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. A good shaking of the tree as the beast dragged down on it sent a shower of fruit splashing down all around, including into Eve’s outstretched hands. Golden goo covered everything, and the fruits’ perfume was… somehow… deafening.

Eve, now covered with droplets of the fruit, holding the fruit, smelling the fruit, had a whiff or a glimpse of something far more fascinating to her than mere natural sweetener. Knowledge. Saturated knowledge, uncensored knowledge, knowledge without filters, boundaries, or the limits of taste, knowledge to corrupt angels, enlighten devils, and quantify the mysteries of the world. Knowledge of all kinds just mixed up together in one gigantic grab bag constantly there for the looting. Eve loved knowledge, a little more than she loved Adam to be honest. So she licked her lips, where the dewy essence of the fruit had been flung, and took a big bite out of the fruit clutched now in her hands.

Adam, through all this, was also dumbfounded… but entertained. This was perhaps the funniest thing he had witnessed in a long while. And his plan had worked! Whoopee!

Eve looked over at Adam. She now had the knowledge not only to judge him based on the size of the shriveled squirter between his legs, but to guess that the events of the day hadn’t quite come as a surprise to him. She thought quickly and decided that as bothersome as Adam could be, she really didn’t want to face Godly punishment alone. Time to implicate him as well—which was fair, given that he bore plenty of guilt for Eve’s situation.

Knowing Adam’s love of games, Eve threw one of the fruits directly at his face. He put up a pathetic hand, and the fruit splashed all over it. His hand went into his mouth before he controlled himself—or at least that’s what he told himself later. A look of horror spread over his face, but not for the reason that Eve supposed. A hissing, bleating roar shook the ground behind her.

Now again our story departs from the prescribed one, as Adam and Eve fled across the garden from an enraged Chimera. Despite their newfound knowledge, neither quite realized that the chimera had only managed to follow them a short while before its muddled assortment of brains tripped it up. The pair cowered beneath a canopy of fig trees when God found them, as they had been for the last hour.

He knew something was up. Here they were, trying to cover themselves with fallen fig leaves and wipe the juice stains from their fingers. It doesn’t take a god to figure that one out.

Thus Adam, Eve, and the Chimera were all banished from Eden. Adam and Eve lived a life accursed by all manner of things they’d scantly noticed before, such as mosquitoes and menstruation. The Chimera merely lived a life accursed by its own twisted nature, eventually settling on the southern coast of what is now Turkey, spawning legends among the Lycian city-states as it devoured various heroes in its embittered old age.

And the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Whatever happened of that source of forbidden fruit, that source of knowledge that can be consumed utterly unfiltered, unrated, and with the good unsorted from the rotten?

***

Adam types in the URLs, clicks the hyperlinks, with only one hand on the keyboard. His dirty mind has found troves of titillating things for his perpetually bored, perpetually dirty mind to engorge itself upon.

In a nearby building, Eve pores over the latest entries in Wikipedia.

The Naming of Names

2008-06-26T21:28:00.002+08:00

My expat friends and I often have a gentle laugh about the kinds of English names chosen by our students. Although many Chinese will choose normal sorts of names, and some will choose beautiful and unusual names, many more choose whimsical names that could make even a hippy envious. Sometimes, of course, the fault lies entirely with the interesting sense of humor that English teachers have. Names which would never have survived the 'oh, but what will the other kids twist that into' test--back in the States--are given room to flourish in a country where most will not understand all the implications.

There is no harm in it, usually, college students or even young kids are not burdened by names like Zeus, Toxic, or even Skeletor. What surprises me more are the hardened professionals who seem to have held on to their English nicknames and now use them in a corporate setting. The representative of a major international hotel chain whose chosen English name is "Only", for example, or a CEO of a minor corporation quoted in a news story I read a while back whose name was "Eagle". I suppose their international peers are too polite to say anything, and among their Chinese peers the English name matters not.

But I don't mean to suggest that the silliness with names is only a Chinese peccadillo. When choosing Chinese names, the expats and exchange students often choose purposefully silly or evocative names. One Canadian who has lived in China for more than a decade and a half, and has become a household name here, is simply called Da Shan, or 'Big Mountain'. The simple name hasn't hurt him professionally it seems, as he has his own TV show on the English language channel and stares at me from the sides of milk boxes among other things. Other famous foreigners have taken names based on dragons, and other large, ferocious, or intimidatingly masculine symbols. A favorite name is "handsome".

They could, of course, just stick to the phonetic rendering of their names in Chinese, but that would just be boring, would it?

As for myself, I chose a Chinese name purposefully that had a poetic assonance to it, as well as containing only characters related to nature: Bai (the cypress tree), Hai (the sea), and Feng (the mountain peak). This too is a whimsical name to choose, I suppose, as I am surrounded by little but smog, traffic jams, and epic skyscrapers.