Eric's Beijing Diary

New Years Eve. Sitting here contemplating the year that is slipping away. What kind of a year has it been? A lot has happened in the past year. I think I can say that I have made a little progress in coming to terms with the language. It would be nice if I could study language full time for a period, but that has never been possible. So I content myself with the piecemeal effort I am stuck with. Actually, though, it's not all bad. In fact, if you're not in a hurry, slow learning is better than fast learning, because you are less likely to learn stuff that has to be completely unlearned later. The point is that after several years of this piecemeal stuff, I think I am finally coming up with a modus operandi that is facilitating steady progress toward the goal. This is the part that is more important than anything.

Work. Hard to believe I have almost completed three years here at the University. I flew into Beijing from Los Angeles on January 10th, 2004. I have spent the three years since then developing the Oracle program here at the Software College, interrupted by the need to travel to remote sites to facilitate the expansion of the program. Some of these remote locations were a good idea. Others I am not so sure about. The most important of these, of course, is Beihai College.

Travel. I have ridden some twenty to twenty-five trains back and forth across China during the past three years, trying to build my understanding of this country and its culture. Fortunately, travel is reasonably inexpensive at the moment, otherwise I wouldn't be able to do this. And it's important. There are some things you just can't learn by reading books.

Life. Still seems that there is something new everyday. I guess maybe that is because I live and work in such a fluid field. Technology is always changing. Last summer, the Software College announced that the undergraduate program was going to be eliminated, and the undergraduate students would all be merged in with the Computer Science Department. Naturally, I wondered where that left me. But a group of students complained, and the president of the university reversed course. But that is only one area. If you live in China, you will see change happening all around you all the time. Nevertheless, even with all the change, Beijing is a pretty easy place or a foreigner to live.

Mission. What am I here for? What is my mission? This is by far the most important question I have to answer. Three years ago, I was in the process of preparing to come here. I first heard about Beihang University after I had contacted the Asia Pacific office for Oracle in Singapore in the summer of 2003. When they first contacted me, I didn't even answer their email, because I had planned to go to the western part of China. But they sent me another email, and I decided that courtesy demanded at least a cursory response, and the rest is history. In retrospect, it is probably a good thing I came here instead of going to the countryside right away, because I really wouldn't have been prepared for it. Now, however, I am beginning to wonder if the time may soon come when I will need o reassess my position here. Beijing has been good for me, because the Upper West Side provides so many opportunities for language learning, etc. But every time I go to the western part of China, I am reminded how much different it is from prosperous eastern cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Am I ready to pick up and move to the West? I don't know.

It's a dismal world. The execution of Saddam Hussein yesterday underscores the sense of despair and anguish in a world that just can't seem to come to peace. Yet, the very bleakness of the landscape once more brings to mind the words of Thomas Hardy, in his poem, The Darkling Thrush. If you remember your English Literature, perhaps you are protesting that Hardy was a novelist. I know, I ploughed through The Return of the Native myself during my undergraduate years. But Thomas Hardy turned to poetry in his later days. As you read this poem, remember that it was written by a man whose novels betray a very dismal view of life, and of the futility of the struggle against fate and the mercilessness of nature.

The Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy

31 December 1900

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
And aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.