I'll Have a Venti

Xingbake, or as it's better known in America, Starbucks, has not yet made its way to Henan province.  But the richer cities of China are no strangers to them.  Though all the English translations are idetical to the American versions, Chinese speakers need not worry about the difference between a tall, venti, and grande.  The Chinese version roughly translates to "
medium cup" "big cup" and "really big cup."

 

 

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Patriotic Beijing

I have wanted to post this for a long time.  These pictures were taken in December.  Beijing, being the capitol, is under more scrutiny than most places.  A few images.

Training For the Job

It's a little funny to think that I just finished training for a job I already have been doing for almost a year.  Being a foreign language teach in Kaifeng consisted of three easy steps: 1) be foreign.  2) show up in Kaifeng. 3) don't cut class often enough that your students complain to the higher ups.  I think the five of us last year managed to set the bar a little higher than that - but we would all readily admit that we had no idea what we were doing.  Our goal was to make coming to class more worthwhile than cutting it.  That was all the structure we had.
We arrived in Beijing on August 2nd.  August 3rd we had orientation.  On August 4th we began our daily schedule for the next two weeks - 1 hour of teaching, 3 hours of TEFL classes, 2 hours of Chinese, 1 hour of group meetings and information about Shenzhen.  After group meetings there was lesson planning and coordinating with the group of teachers you shared students with in order to make sure there wasn't too much overlap.  It was tiring.  But we learned.  We got advice on how to deal with problems.  We were taught a framework to put our class lessons on in order to create structure and goals.
Aside from the 24 hour train ride, we haven't had any days where we could sleep in.  I'm looking forward to that in the next few days.

At the Foot of a Sacred Mountain

The Dragon Gate

Toilets of China

On the left is the Ladies room, the right is the Mens

This is one I've been wanting to do for a while.
Toilets, like light switches, are one of those things that you really don't think about.  Everyone has a basic idea of what to expect, and though there are varying degrees of clenliness, you seldom find any surprises.  But, as it does in many other aspect of life, China surprises you when you're not expecting it.

A Restaurant Restroom

Most public facilities in China have what is called a squatting toilet.  To be fair to China, lots of countries besides the US have squatting toilets.  My mother says she first encountered one at a tourist venue in Paris.  In Japan they are considered more hygenic than Western-style sitting toilets.  No matter how disgusing the toilet, or who might have used it before you, you don't have to put your body in contact with anything someone else had contact with.  It doesn't prevent some public toilets from being quite disgusting.  But I at least have enjoyed the freedom to not have to worry about seat covers.

Foreign Language School Ladies Room

In most public rest rooms, there are stalls for privacy.  At Henan University, there was no such privacy in the stalls.  Everyone would squat over a trough, and politely avert their gaze while going about their business.  Each teacher had a different level of comfort with these bathrooms.  I know for myself, after being a little shy my first few times, I got used to them.  Students were often very social and would talk a lot in the bathroom, to an extent greater than I think there would be if the stalls were closed off from each other.

Foreign Language School Toilet

The norm in China is to not flush your toilet paper.  Every facility has a waste paper basket to use instead.  No ever facility provides toilet paper.  Most people carry with them packet of tissues for that purpose.  There is enough of a market for tissue packs that you can find packs decorated with popular cartoon characters or otherwise personalized.
But not every toilet is like this.  There are some rather classy toilets as well.  If you are planning on going to China, and you are not sure how comfortable you would be with public restrooms, I shall pass on some advice from my grandmother: "Relieve yourself at every opportunity."

Private Bathroom at Hutang Hostel, Xi'an

One Week To Go

In one week I head off to Beijing to begin my TEFL training.

Nervous, excited, rushed, and feeling a little cocky.
Most of the other people in the program I joined have never been to China before.  The farthest south I've ever been has been Hangzhou (if you compare China to the United States, Hangzhou is around where you'd find Washington D.C. in the US).  But I have lived in China.

I've not done much language practice this break.  Mostly, I've just been relaxing, enjoying the fact that I'm now speaking the native language, and checking off what errands need to be run in the US.

シーン: Sound of Silence

In Japanese, there are a number of sounds for things we don't think of as having sounds in English.  Pika pika means flashing lights.  Fuwa fuwa means something fluffy.  And Shiin means still silence.  The following are all pictures from vacation which I associate with Shiin.

Osaka Castle Park

Summer Palace in Winter

National Museum in Beijing

若草山焼き
Wakakusayamayaki
Burning Wakakusa Mountain

Kidneys Behind Their Eyeballs

It's St. Patrick's Day.  I'm planning lessons to talk to my classes about Ireland.  The Chinese for Ireland, 爱尔兰 (aierlan), happens to start with the character for love.  St. Patrick's Day is a time when I remember my grandmother Sally.  Not only was she Irish, but she passed away right around St. Patty's Day about eight years ago.  Like most Americans, I'm a mix of several different countries, none of which I have any real solid claim to.  But a little sliver Ireland has been passed through, though I cannot be sure how much of it is my grandmother and her quirky personality.

It times when I have been in distress, my father or my aunts and uncles would say to me sayings that Grandma Sally used to say to them.  Many of these are things that don't make much sense the first time, or have a wry, slightly crude humor to them which I have been told is very Irish.  But they stick with me, and over time have given me strength and wisdom.  “Do the best you can, it's all a horse can do.” Don't worry about getting everything perfect, you have limits.  Just do your best.  And the one that I have been thinking about the last few days, “The Irish have their kidneys behind their eyeballs.”

This last one was explained to me as meaning that Irish people are sentimental and emotional and dwell over what they've lost in a mournful wistful way.  I once read someone describe a requiem this way.  You're sad, but you feel good feeling sad.

I am embarrassed to say that my knowledge of Irish history is sorely lacking.  I have had the chance, in preparing for class, to read a bit more of history and I feel like I'm getting in touch with my roots.  In describing St. Patrick's Day, and in describing why the Irish left Ireland, and how Irish Americans feel, I feel a great deal of pride and emotion.  Were I in the United States, around various Irish American organizations, or even just home with my family, I would say I am not the most Irish person.  My Dad, whom I take after, is more Norwegian than Irish.  Which, a family joke, needs explaining.  Even among caucasians in America, there is a deal of surviving cultural distinctions that still exist in communities.  Depending on the community, that ethnic origin has come to be associated with regional traits.  The Dakotas, Minnesota, and Montana were settled by many Norwegians, and those Norwegian cultural traits in America have come to be associated with the area even more so than the ethnicity.  Other communities, like in New York City, can be distinguished by neighborhood and has a bit of a stronger sense of country of origin because that neighborhood is trying to remind itself and its neighbors that they are different from the Italians or the Polish neighborhood just next door.  Growing up, when I would visit my aunt and uncle in Fish Town I would see Irish flags flying next to American flags outside people's houses.  It was much the same way I would see Italian flags outside the houses in South Philly, where I went to middle-school.  So who can be the most Irish or the most Norwegian out of a set of brothers and sisters?  Though I don't think any of us have a serious definition for it, I would say it's a combination of personality, stereotypes, and what we tell ourselves it means to be Irish or to be Norwegian.  So though in Fish Town I don't think I would be very Irish, I feel very Irish right now.

I have been listening to Irish songs I have either heard second hand that my grandmother used to sing, or have read about once when I was younger.  There is a feeling of longing and sorrow.  There's “Down By the Glen-side,” about remembering the brave young men of an Irish rebellion.  The singer does not say that he/she saw them himself, but heard of it from an old woman humming to herself.  “Green Fields of America,” a series of letters are sent out to a man who has gone to America.  He and his family grow up.  Time passes.  And though the family is glad for him, thankful for the money he sends them, have great affection for the family he has started, they miss him very much.  They keep asking him to please come home to visit.  It would be good to see him again.  And I cry when I hear them.  And I listen again.

It feels good to cry.  It feels good to feel sad about the things that have been lost, the things that will be lost.  And though I feel like I'm making the right decision, I still feel sad.

I never like saying goodbye.  I hate saying goodbye to friends.  Thanks to the internet it is easy to stay in contact with people.  We don't really have to say goodbye to people so long as we have a computer.  But there still can be emotional distances between people.  And though we hope it is not goodbye forever, we know it will not be the same.  I will miss my students here very much.  But at the same time I feel that I have to go.  The more I learn about Shenzhen, the more I think about the future there, the more certain I feel about the decision I have made.  But I still wish I could have my cake and eat it too.  I wish I could keep everything I like and carefully cut around the unpleasant things.  But I can't.

I can accept that.  But I feel a good cry is in order.  And a good cry is in order, in honor of Ireland, and my grandmother whom I wish I had known better.

The Road Not Taken*

There are a number of different people reading this blog.  Most of you have met me in person.  We are friends from high school, or college.  We are family, or friends of family.  You may even possibly be a former professor.

Those of you who spoke to me last year, around this time, might have heard me talk about making a decision about where to go.  I was torn between coming to Kaifeng, and going to Shenzhen, another city in China.  While Kaifeng is nearly two thousand years old, it is considered 'off the beaten path.'  There are few foreigners or tourists.  It is one of the poorer cities.  Shenzhen on the other hand was a small village until 1979, and has since sprouted into the fourth richest city in China.  Between trade, and its close proximity to Hong Kong, there are no lack of foreigners.  When seeking advice as to which city to live in, I kept hearing both cities are incredibly different, but I would gain a valuable experience in both places.

After vacation, I felt I needed to plan what I will do for the next few years.  I will spend one more year in China.  Then I will go to graduate school in International Relations.  Last semester I told many people, including some people back home, that I intended to spend next year in Kaifeng.  But I have applied to the same program in Shenzhen, the one I chose not to do last year, and they have accepted me.  I have not made a final decision yet.  But I find myself getting more and more excited with the idea of going to Shenzhen.

There is one thing that holds me back.

I will miss my students.  Today I taught reading for four hours, and in a few minutes I will teach it for two more hours.  I teach Minsheng, which I have described before.  And it is truly a pleasure to teach them.  I will miss this kind of relationship with students, where we are more like peers.  I really enjoy teaching these classes.  I may find a joy in teaching younger students, but that is still somewhere in the future.  It is unknown.  And this is familiar, and precious.  Some students I have become close to, and consider friends.  I know I will keep in contact with them, even if I do leave.  But I will not be able to stand in front of the class and explain Brave New World and Playdough in the same lesson, with several jokes and questions in between.

I have a little more time before I have to decide.  There are many things I believe Shenzhen can offer.  One of them being that it is so different from Kaifeng, I may be able to use that experience to further my grad school education.  I will have seen different parts of China, and will be able to compare them.  And frankly, as you may have noticed whenever I bring up Japan, I love comparing things.

Unlike Robert Frost, I would be backtracking down the road less traveled by in order to see the road, just as fair, but slightly more traveled by.  I wouldn't be able to set down further roots where I am, which would be a shame.  But I would be able to come back and visit friends and colleagues I wish to keep in touch with.  And so I will take the other road, and see where it takes me.

*This post I had meant to put up for some time.  I have since decided to go to Shenzhen next year.  I still would like to share this piece.

Nothing But Time: Exploring in C

Originally written in early February

Half Recovered Photo of Buddhist Monks

This is a bit of a tangent essay.

Just a few short hours after deleting my vacation photos, I wrote on here, as well as on facebook, bemoaning my stupidity.  Well, on facebook several friends were kind enough to point me to PhotoRec, a freeware program that recovers your lost photos.  I will not get into the specifics of how it works.  But after I got back, I downloaded the tar file for it.  Unfortunately Archive Utility would not unarchive it.  I would keep getting told “Error 2- no such file or directory.”  The best thing about freeware is that you can fiddle with it yourself.  The worst thing is that if you don't usually fiddle around with your computer, you can be more than lost with no customer service.

I would say my computer literacy is maybe a little bit better than my Chinese, though not as good as my Japanese.  That is to say, I've done some cool things in conjunction with classes where teachers would do the hardest parts and I could always double check to make sure I was doing the right thing.  It's been over six months since I've done any kind of programing, and I've forgotten the syntax for C.  I don't remember how list the files in a directory, but I know how to get to understand the contents of the help manual.  So right now I am spelunking through C, trying to see if I can unpack my tar file.  I know I have done all of this before once, but only once.

I will say, one of the great things about liberal arts is that you have the chance to try some crazy things unrelated to your major.  My last semester I took a class on data compilation for Physicists which involved learning the basics of C (a language not too different from Java, which I studied in high school, one of the basic languages many people start out learning).  C is a little bit less pretty and user friendly, and unlike Java, I don't think it can quite flow in a way that English speaking brains can intuit.  But it works.

I've found that I don't have the motivation to learn programing as an end to itself – I have to have some sort of goal, something I want to make.  Similarly, I don't think I would have the patience to learn a dead language – something that can't communicate with live people.  I admire people who can, I just don't think I could do that myself.

When I stop worrying about how much I've forgotten, and what a newbie I feel like, I learn quite a bit.

Though at times it can feel like you are just bashing your head against the wall.  Would that be .bash?

A Force for Evil

This is just looking at a pair of characters and how character simplification works.  In spite of the ominous title, I don't have any philosophical story, or even anecdote around this theme.  I just think this is fun.

There are three sets of 'Chinese characters' 汉语、漢字used in the world today, Traditional 繁体字, Simplified 简体字, and Japanese Kanji （日本語の）漢字.  All three are based on the same set of characters.  Traditional characters have remained unchanged.  Though what words are used most often have changed, the way of writing words is no different.  Think of it like the difference between Dickens and Rowling.  Words have taken on new meanings, but the spelling is more or less the same.  Kanji underwent slow changes over a thousand years, and a few new characters were invented.  Then after World War II, the Japanese education system was reformed, standardized, and a number of characters were simplified.  Mainland China also simplified its character system.  In order to explain further how they were simplified, I would have to get into what makes a character and how do you read them, which I feel should be in another post.

One of the main things I've noticed, coming from Japanese to Chinese, is that most characters in Japanese fit into one set or the other – they are either the same as simplified or the same as traditional.  I found it interesting that one character, the character for evil, has turned out different in all three.

惡 Traditional  繁体字

悪 Japanese  漢字

恶 Simplified  简体字

On the other hand, the character for demon/magic (usually appearing as a pair with the word 'evil') is the same in all three.

(惡, 悪, 恶)  魔

Same combination, three ways of writing.  One changes, the other stays the same.

I guess the devil is in the details.

Travel Journal, Beijing, January 13th

I kept a notebook with me during my trip, and when I had free time I would write about whatever I was thinking in various places.  This will take me a little while to type these up, so these will be in episodes.  Accompanying photos will be added soon.

I am an 中山公园. In the spring I'm sure it's very beautiful- full of flowers and people.  Right now it has a much quieter beauty- full of evergreens, stones, and ice.  A few people walk through, but their conversations are drowned out by the crows calling to each other.

I am sitting outside the teahouse, listening to a recording of a biwa.  I can hear when the player plucks the string and moves his fingers. When he lifts his fingers while the string is still resonating from the previous note.  I think of my violin.  For all my complaining, and the many many days I didn't practice, I miss it now.  The bare, singular biwa notes remind me of the trees – without foliage, naked, exposing their branches.  They are natural and random.  Logical and asymetrical.  Cold, but honest and elegant.

It may sound a little silly but for the my first two days I haven't eaten much Chinese food.  For breakfast, there's a great little 包子 place I have been frequenting, but otherwise I've eaten Korea, American, and now Italian.  Yesterday, the Korean place was one that Ting's friend recommended, and Pizza Hut because Ting confessed she really wanted to go there.  Today I'm at a surprisingly inexpensive Italian place nearby my hostel because I've secretely been imagining spagetti and it's only 10 块 here.

What Was Once Lost Has Now Been Found

Thanks to Eaaf, to whom I am forever grateful for many many things, I now have my photos back from vacation.  I went to Beijing, Harbin, Mingshui (a small town nearby Harbin) and Osaka.  Over the next few weeks I will share stories about travels mixed in with stories about the new semester.  But without further ado, here is what I wished to share with you.  Please click on them to open them up to full size.  That is the only way to do them justice.

Pink Carnations and a Caterpillar

In Japan, amidst Valentines Day sales and decorations, in Kyoto station I found a gift store selling key chains, folders, and other paraphernalia – the sort that Japan is so good at making, pretty and practical enough that you almost can't resist buying it as a gift for someone – all with the Very Hungry Caterpillar on it.  And I thought of my mother.

My mother is a unique person whom I have often tried to describe, but I don't think I have every really been able to capture her.  I have described her to friends, and occasionally one might say, 'I bet your mother would...' and say something that to me sounds so completely unlike her that I think I must have been unable to portray her.  She is very civilized, in a way which I have always thought of as being European.  Every morning even on the weekends she is very well put together, but she is not a clothes horse or fashion conscious.  And, though this is my own quirk not hers, I remember her favorite books and cartoons from my childhood better than my own.

My mother loved Eric Carle.  Now that I am older, I can see the artwork with a mature eye and see why, but at the time I thought it was a dull book.  I was in first or second grade, perhaps too old for it when she read it to me and my younger brother, who would have been at the perfect age for that book.  I have been told that I was a slow reader in first grade, and by the end of second grade I consumed them.  But I don't remember it.  I don't remember any of the books that I read then, or the books that I liked though I'm sure I had strong opinions about them at the time.  But I remember that green caterpillar.

When other people talk about their favorite cartoons as a child, my contributions are usually followed by, “that was one of my mom's favorite cartoons.” 'Batman Beyond,' 'Dexter's Laboratory,' 'Rocky and Bullwinkle,' I know there were other shows.  I do remember them.  But they are never the first ones I think of.  And rarely to I get as excited remembering them as I do those ones.

And usually when people ask my opinion on Valentines Day, the first thing I think of is not mine, but my mother's.  I remember one year my mother telling me that she had decided to no longer celebrate Valentines Day.  But we all brought her cards and flowers anyway.

I remember in middle school we could buy white, red, and pink carnations.  We could send them to other students, or keep them to take home.  I would buy one or two and take it home, make a card with a large heart and glitter, and give them to my mother.  Because even if she wasn't celebrating Valentines Day, I wanted to say 'I love you.'

I know it's been many years since I bought you carnations.  I know my memory is not clear, and things may have happened in a different, less poetic order than I think they did.  But standing in that decked out for Valentines Day store, staring at that hungry green caterpillar, I thought of those pink carnations.  I and just want to say, I love you.

仕方が無い Nothing You Can Do

We have been on break these last few weeks.  Many of us have decided to go traveling, myself included.  I went to Beijing, Harbin, Mingshui (a town outside of Harbin where Ben, Ben's old friend Garth, and I stayed with a friend, Casey's family for new year), and now, Osaka Japan.  I bought a new camera with money I made from tutoring and made sure I had it with me for this trip.
Though I know I haven't put up photos nearly as often as I intended, the original idea for this blog was a place for pictures.  I really love taking pictures, and take great pride in them.
Today, in a moment both of great distraction and even greater stupidity, I erased all the pictures on my camera.  I have not taken my computer with me for this trip, and none of the pictures I've taken these past few weeks were backed up. 
I'm not going to lie.  I literally cried when I realized what I'd done.  I had to then walk a great deal in order to get back to the train station, which helped a great deal.  I've managed to think of a good many philosophical things to console myself.  And fortunately, I was already planning to go to Beijing again in the Spring.  As for Harbin, I will just wait till Garth and Ben upload their pictures to facebook and look at them if I want to remember.
In lieu of showing them, I am just going to describe a couple that I wish you could see.  It may sound a bit silly, but I feel this is the best way to say good bye to them.
I took a panorama shot of the Great Wall, the section beyond the "do not enter" sign, which was overgrown with weeds so high you could easily hide a fully grown person.  From there, outside the brush, you could see older parts of the wall, parts that have not been repaired and are too dangerous to climb.
I took a short video of Ben lighting a firecracker and throwing it.  Casey had shown us how to take apart a string of firecrackers, light an individual section with a cigarette, and throw it before it exploded.  We walked and threw mini-fire crackers in temperatures below zero Fahrenheit.
I took a picture of my friend Ting eating Korean barbecue, looking incredibly happy, even though we spent the afternoon talking about uncertain futures in romance and careers.
I took a picture of my friend Dana, eating pizza.  She is busy studying advanced Japanese.  As always, she is full of stories that are almost to incredible to believe.
I took a picture of my friends Risa and Yuko, as we ate okonomiyaki together.
I took pictures of Lu Xun's house in Beijing, pictures of strange varieties of goldfish in Zhong Shan park, pictures of various turtle statues in the Forbidden City and in museums.

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Just before I returned home from Japan, two years ago, my hard drive crashed.  I lost all of the photos from the whole year in Japan.  I remember thinking at the time that I at least had the memories.  I can still hold onto that.  There's really nothing else I can do.

The Ones Who Walk Away

My title today comes from the Usula K. LeGuin short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelos.”  In this story there exists a perfect society.  There are a few flaws, but they are the most benign blights a society could have.  There exists only one fundamentally unfair, unchangeable thing – a single child is kept in a small dark room and is left there with only just enough food to eat for its entire life.  Each citizen is brought before this child, without which society could not exist, in order that they understand.  Some stay, and appreciate the sacrifice.  Some walk away.  We are asked to contemplate just what they are thinking.

When we were asked to contemplate this story in class, I remember thinking rather bleakly that such was the cost of living in any sort of society.  There wasn't really a way of walking away from Omelos.  The ones who did were really just kidding themselves.^*

People who have known me for a short time see that I am very optimistic.  People who have known me for a longer time know that I am also very cynical.

Another idea I would like to play with today also comes from Ursula K. LeGuin.  In high school, I read 'A Wizard of Earthsea,' in which magic stems from the true name of each object, creature, and person.  LeGuin is not the only person to use this device, and I would guess it comes from older Celtic or Druidic traditions.  I remember at the age of sixteen thinking about how powerful language was, and playing a mental game in which I tried to disassociate words from their meaning.  The fact that signs made up of lines, curves, and circles could create images in my mind was a miracle I had taken for granted.  I would try to force myself not to imagine their meanings, to look at the words as only what they were – images.  In an elective creative writing class in high school, I remember our teacher talking to us about the power of words and how the very sound, even without its meaning could have the power to create an image.  Her example was the word 'pus,' which she thought produced a visceral image purely through sound.  My friend Emily pointed out to her that the word 'bus' sounds almost the same and produces no similarly gruesome image.  Four years latter in Japan something reminded me of this idea – of an object's essence lying within the name, and I remember thinking how small and limiting that idea was.  It seemed to understand theoretically that languages could be complete yet unrelated, yet not understand its actuality.  Language is a human construct.  Without humans the world has no names.  There are no words, no power, while the physical world remains undisturbed.  But this does not mean language is not powerful.  It is so powerful as to tie the world together in all of our minds.  It does not tie them in a way that mimics reality, but in a way that is whole and entirely original.

Recently I talked about homesickness.  Homesickness affects different people different ways.  Before we start, I think I have to make it clear that while I sympathize with people who have very strong homesickness I have trouble empathizing with them.  I remember feeling homesick only two times in my life – the second time I have described already on this blog.  Both times were around a holiday, and both times I recovered as soon as the holiday had passed.  I feel I should explain this about me before I continue, because what follows may not ring true for persons with different personalities from myself.

Humans rely on predictability.  When things are predictable, then we feel secure.  This makes evolutionary sense.  You don't need to run.  You don't need to starve.  You can plan ahead to avoid both situations.  A great deal of socializing is based on predictability.  We only recognize social patterns when they are absent.  We avoid people who behave in an unpredictable way, a way deviating from social norms.  Ostracizing these people also, I believe, unfortunately makes evolutionary sense.  Patience, understanding, behavior therapy are all luxuries of stable societies, several steps away from primitive man.  If the rules change – if suddenly we are the ones who do not understand the social signals or norms when previously we did, it can give one the feeling of going mad.  It can feel as if the physical world itself has altered itself somehow.  An alternative is to declare that everyone is mad except one's self.  Others have the 'correct' 'natural' way of interpreting the world hidden from them, but one is able to intuitively understand it so it must be true.  This I believe is analogous to language and the physical world.  Without language the physical world would still exist.  Similarly, I believe that without social norms human personalities would still exist.  Our mental framework is fundamentally rooted around perceiving one using the other.  It would be a mistake, albeit a very easy one that everyone makes, to think the two equated each other.

Most people, cultures, etc. interpret one's ability with language to equate one's ability to think.  As teachers it is difficult to predict at times what sorts of things others are exposed – and plenty of times information that is commonly available in the United States, such as sexual education, critical thinking, hostile debate, is not accessible in China for cultural or political reasons.  But we are very young, with limited life experiences ourselves.  We are separated by a few years, not decades.  We are older brothers and sisters, not uncles and aunts.

So who are the ones who walk away from Omelos?  They are the ones who are not comfortable with what they saw, and cannot live with themselves once they have that knowledge.  They have seen what they consider to be a fundamental part of humanity to trampled upon.  I sympathize with their discomfort.  I disagree with their observations.  I disagree with their premiss – of ideas being as directly connected to speech as objects are to words.  I disagree with their conclusion – that humans are not beings filled with contradictions, that some values might only be different but not less valuable to each human.  And I do not believe we can escape these things by walking away.  

Afterward:  There is a pink elephant in the room as I write this, and that is the question of values.  What are values?  Are they universal or culturally specific?  No one really believes them to be on the extremes, but it is easy to make emotionally satisfying arguments about why absolute universalism and absolute cultural relevancy are wrong.  I heard my Uncle Matt say once, “Academics fight so hard because there is so little at stake.”  I am cautious to talk about cultural relativism in this essay because I am afraid of having to then defend myself against arguments similar to those I have made in the past against cultural relativism.  Really, everyone should have the same degree of universalism and cultural relativism as me, and I am sure my views contain no self contradiction on this point.

*Please debate me on this story and interpretation in the comments.  I encourage you.  I really enjoy these kinds of debates, and some of you I know enjoy them too.

Kites of Nanjing

I have a set of photos all taken the same day in Nanjing at Zhonghuamen.  Will and I had arrived the evening before.  We explored a bit together then, and together in the morning, we parted ways in the afternoon, a few hours prior to these pictures being taken.  I had chosen to go to Zhonghuamen because of its proximity to our hostel, curiosity, and a desire to walk and observed independently.  At the top of Zhonghuamen were at least half a dozen people with kites.  I assumed they were connected and that they had all planned to be there at the same time, but there was no sign or announcement to the public and on retrospect they may have had no connection at all.  These are some of my favorites of all the pictures I've taken so far.  I showed a few of them before, so I am properly showing them here now.  Usually when I don't add explanations for individual images I don't put them in any particular order.  These ones I have ordered specifically to recreate the feelings I had while taking them.

Never Forget

I'd like to build off the theme of 'the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves' I touched on when talking about television, and talk about the Nanjing Massacre Memorial.  Professor Paul Scott at Kansai Gaidai taught all of his classes how to 'read' museums – how to interpret what political message a museum tries to tell.  When we hear people describe historical and politically sensitive events we often take things with a grain of salt, allowing for personal bias.  For the most part we do not practice this with museums.  Part of what made me interested in visiting the memorial was a chance to 'read' this museum.  In Japan, I visited several World War II museums including the museum on the grounds of Yasakuni Shrine in Tokyo.  Yasakuni's museum denies that the Japanese army engaged in any kind of aggressive attacks anywhere in China.  My hobby is to try and collect these stories told about World War II in Asia as well as I can understand them being told to the people who live there.

There were two indoor museum areas.  The smaller of the two is built around the archeological site where a mass grave was discovered.  The team, comprised of Chinese scientists but in cooperation with Japanese groups, were able to identify bodies as being executed, and then attempts to destroy the evidence.  The exhibit was coldly descriptive, which made it all the more horrifying.  Bone fractures and pieces of metal were noted as causing death by driving nails into people.  Wounds were counted.  But the actual words were emotionless, written as though the writer was trying to avoid accusations of bias.  At the end, a pile of paper cranes lay on an eye-level shelf.  Each string of cranes came with a small banner declaring it from a school from Japan and a message in Chinese or Japanese promoting peace.

The much larger building, the more popular building, I believe was arranged and organized by different people.  The larger building used photographs and artifacts to create a time-sequence narrative.  The nature and tone were very different.  There were clear villains.  One villain who caught my attention was an officer who made a bet with a fellow soldier as to who could cut off the most heads.^*   It was specifically noted that he was sentenced to death during the International War Crimes Tribunals.  The Guomindang were grossly ineffective at protecting the city.  The details of the slaughter were described in detail, but not as much detail as the feelings of loss and fear coming from survivors who wrote about the experience.  One pair of pictures that stands out in my memory is toward the end of the museum, where there are two quotations on China and Nanjing and their roles in World War II as a whole.  One quote is from Mao Zedong, the other from Chiang Kai-shek.  The content is almost identical.  Each quote is accompanied by a picture of the man who said it.  The picture of Chiang shows him standing stiffly for a formal picture facing the camera straight-on.  He appears old and uncomfortable and inanimate.  The picture of Mao shows him at an angle with his arm outstretched while giving a speech.  He appears young, hansom, and comfortable.

I can't say that the larger museum lied.  They didn't lie.  To use just the example of the photographs, those were both real photographs of real people.  But it created a forceful narrative for how an event is to be remembered.

I have two other thoughts that are related to the location, and to the theme of memory.  The memorial entrance has a series of statues based off of photographs of people fleeing the city while it was under attack.  Beneath each statue is a piece of poetry about the massacre.  Above them on the wall in large metal letters is the name, 'The Memorial Hall for Compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression', written in half a dozen languages.  Beneath the name, in large metal letters is inscribed 'AAAAA.'  Tourist attractions nearly all have a rating.  I'm not sure if these ratings are how culturally important somebody thinks the location is, or how highly recommended the location is.  The ratings are between one and five A's.  The Nanjing Memorial is a bit less discrete in displaying it than other places, but not by much.  It is a stark contrast to see.

The second thought is where the title for this essay comes from.  Though most of our time in Nanjing William and I explored on our own, we both decided to go to the Nanjing Memorial on the same day.  It had struck me as strangely ironic that the area were were in seemed to be nothing but malls, with a space carved out for an out-of-place memorial.  The creates an odd, but emotional reaction in me.  So many people felt so intensely at the same time so much pain.  And now, fifty years latter, nearly everywhere outside of that small island, all of that had disappeared.  While we waited in line to go into the larger building I wondered aloud about how that could happen.  William disagreed.  He felt the memorial and the attachment to its history were more artificial than the malls surrounding it.  The natural tendency is to move on and live normally, especially after so much time after an event.  So what is the nature of remembering, and what is its value?  I had thought given time I would be able to come up with a satisfactory short term answer that could conclude this vignette, but unfortunately I cannot.

*Do you remember in 'The Two Towers', Legolas and Gimli have a bet as to how many orcs they can kill at Helms Deep?  Remember how that was comic relief?  I wonder why I have a harder time getting into classic fantasy stories than I did when I was a kid.

CCTV Z: Television and The People's Republic of China

There are two kinds of TV stations on mainland China – Chinese Central Television (CCTV) channels of which there are easily a dozen, and all of the others.  For most of the day, there is not much difference between them; CCTV stations tend to specialize in something like movies, peking opera, or documentaries, while the other stations are more likely to have soap operas and game shows.  Except, for half an hour between seven and seven thirty pm, every channel shows CCTV 1 news – every channel except CCTV channels.

The news itself I cannot give a detailed account of.  Aside from a few names, like Hu Jintao, and a few common words like afternoon (xiawu) and work (gongzuo) and CCTV, I can't understand the commentary.  What I can understand is the imagery.  Lots of flags, political figures busily at work^*, and  a large sickle and hammer figure prominently on the screen.  Ballet dancers perform in the United States, while singers do a translated Mama Mia for a Chinese audience.  On the local news show, African children sing in Chinese.  Children compete on the local news station on 'red' contests, doing various communist related activities, like racing to pick up apples.  Aside from this very patriotic half an hour (an hour if you count the local news) this channel will show a romantic drama taking place during the Han Dynasty^**, and a dating game show^***.  Commercials will sell makeup and moisturizer.  A soccer team whose goalie appears to be a frail classical beauty, will pass around Snickers bars and the beauty will turn into a young man who is no longer hungry.  Babies will wear disposable diapers, and cell phones will play one's favorite music.  A hansom father takes his son to KFC for dinner while mom is out of town.  A young woman chews a piece of Winterfresh gum her father gave her, and magically is transported back home to visit.  I have picked mostly American brands to talk about in order that my American readers will quickly be able to imagine the advertising landscape, but Chinese brands also have very similar commercials.

A great deal can be learned about people and their perceptions by looking at media and advertisements.  My father taught me this in high school with subway billboards.  It was latter emphasized by Professor Paul Scott at Kansai Gaidai when he would show and discus films in political science classes, both fiction and documentary.  Rob LaFleur at Beloit put it the most articulately: “the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.”

China seems to be telling itself two very different stories.  There is a story about socialist ideals that are genuinely valued and respected.  It includes things like technological development and cultural and global respect.  But there is a much newer, sleeker story that, though it does not contradict, has a very different tone.  It is a story that does not quite match the outside world in Kaifeng, but is being beamed into ever person's television set.  And in the outside world stores, new city policies, the use of decorative English on every kind of product, move reality closer to that sleeker image every day.  It is one thing to read about this in the newspaper or for class.  Here it is really happening right in front of my eyes in front of my TV screen.

I can really only describe this by using an anecdote.  Two years ago I visited a friend who's parents live just outside Jinan in Shandong province.  One day we were watching a television program dramatizing Mao Zedong's battle with the Guomindang (KMT)^**** for control of China and the survival of the Chinese Communist Party.  Without warning or pause, as is quite common, the show cut to a commercial.

*date 10/17/11 TV showing politiburo.

**MeiRenShinJi was for a while my favorite show to watch.  I learned how to say 'shut up' (zhukou), your royal highness to the queen mother (taihouniania), and what to say when you are about to be killed or if another man is with your lover (buyao, literally 'do not want').  It also was a good thing to chat about with other girls my age.

***My father has informed me that according the the New York Times, these dating game shows are a governmental concern because they do not promote approved social values.  But they are everywhere on the dial, and I've had a large number of people ask me if I've watched them.

****There are two romanization systems for Chinese.  One of them, Pinyin, was developed by The People's Republic of China.  The other, Wade-Giles, is still used by Taiwan and other areas.  Using Wade-Giles, Guomindang is Kuomintang.  Using pinyin, Kuomintang is Guomindang.  One of them is showing up as a spelling error on my computer, but both are in my Apple Dictionary application.

Afterward:  In a conversation that is referenced in my post about the Nanjing Massacre memorial, William and I talked about the time it takes to process the ideas that form around what one sees when one travels.  This is one of the contrasts I've noticed when I did my post about our different blogs – different people wait different periods after an event, and post with different frequency.  This post was originally started in October during a week when I was sick.  I wish I could say the fact I hadn't worked on it since then was intentional, but I kept meaning to go back to it and edit it and finnish it, but I didn't until now.

Also, bonus points to anyone who can spot the B-52s reference in the title.

Fish 鱼魚

Outside Oracle Bone Museum, Anyang Henan 

Anyang Henan

Small Town Outside Kaifeng

Anderson Japanese Garden, Janesville Wisconsin

Anderson Japanese Garden, Janesville Wisconsin

Anderson Japanese Garden, Janesville Wisconsin

Millenium Park, Kaifeng Henan