Eric's Beijing Diary

I went to St. Andrew's Church this morning. I discovered this church by accident three years ago when I was looking for the CLC bookstore, which does not have a sign out in front. St. Andrew's is an old Anglican church, built at the beginning of the 20th Century, when Nathan Road was a dirt track. It was taken over by the Japanese after the Battle of Hong Kong, and used as a makeshift Buddhist temple. Fortunately, the original structure was not altered by the Japanese, so it was fairly easy to restore it to it's original use after the war. Under the "one country, two systems" policy, religion in Hong Kong is not governed by the Beijing government. There is no Religious Affairs Bureau in Hong Kong, and no Three Self Patriotic Movement. So churches in Hong Kong function pretty much the way they do in any western country. I have mixed feelings about this, actually. I'm sure it's nice for the church people of Hong Kong not to have the government breathing down their necks. But the house churches in China are also quite independent. And even the Three Self Church I go to has quite a bit of latitude to do what they want (provided it is done by Chinese nationals, as discussed previously in this blog). And since Christianity is not a status religion on China, there is a purity and singleness of purpose that I find lacking in many churches in the West.

I am staying the Mt. Davis Youth Hostel again. That's where I stayed last November. It's convenient because of the free shuttle from the Shun Tak Center at the Shueng Wan MTR station. Otherwise, it would be a very inconvenient place to stay, because it's up on top of Mt. Davis. I suppose it's about a half hour to forty minute ride, but the shuttle driver drives like a mad man, so it only takes about 15 to 20 minutes. Really convenient. Pretty nice view of the bay from up here too.

I attended the public memorial for Szeto Wah this afternoon. Although the South China Morning Post is not easy to find in China (I can only buy it at the International airport, and then only after I go through security), I do listen to Newswrap (6:00 o'clock evening news on RTHK) every evening, and I also watch The Pulse, which is a public affairs television show on RTHK, so I was aware of Szeto Wah's illness, and his recent death from cancer. I had assumed that a funeral for someone of his stature would be by invitation only, but I was planning to go to St. Andrew's church tomorrow, so I was on their website yesterday, and I discovered by coincidence that the funeral was being held there, and that there was a public memorial before the funeral, so I decided to go down there and pay my respects.

Szeto Wah was a public school teacher in Hong Kong for many years. He first came to prominence when he founded the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union in 1974, in response to cuts in teachers' salaries. In anticipation of the handover of Hong Kong to Mainland China, he was appointed by the Beijing Government to the committee charged with drafting the Basic Law. Although Beijing did not really like him, they knew his influence among the democratic community in Hong Kong. I think perhaps they wanted to get on the "good side" of him. But the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown changed all that. Szeto Wah withdrew from the committee, He established the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, and was subsequently banned from entering China.

During the last months of his life, Szeto Wah surprised many of his former backers by supporting a compromise measure with Beijing regarding the eventual establishment of universal suffrage for the people of Hong Kong. This move created much disillusionment among people who had previously supported him. But I am inclined to think that their anger is misplaced. I have mixed feelings about the compromise, because, although it means giving in to Beijing's timetable, there is no question about the motives of the compromisers. They want democracy just as much as their detractors. I don't want to go into all the details of the various democratic factions in Hong Kong--you can study that on your own if you want. Suffice it to say that democracy was promised to the people of Hong Kong as part of the handover agreement between Deng Xiao-ping and Margaret Thatcher. But the Beijing government has been putting off the full implementation of that agreement.

I am not a strong believer in democracy. I think democracy is overrated. It does not work in a society that does not have a strong Judeo-Christian moral foundation. But the people of Hong Kong were promised democracy, and a promise is a promise. So while the various factions dispute about who is most invested in what is best for Hong Kong, I think their energies would be better spent on calling out the central government to keep the promised committed to in the treaty that established the S.A.R. Look at it this way: How long would it take to implement full universal suffrage for the people of Hong Kong, if the Beijing government really wanted to keep that promise? Two months? Maybe two years..but not twenty years (2017 is the new target date set by Beijing). So while we mourn the death of a long time democracy activist, we must also mourn the death of integrity. There is simply no honesty in Beijing's position. I guess we should try to see their side of it. Personally, I think Legco (the Legislative Council of Hong Kong) is a refreshing alternative to the hopelessly sterile atmosphere of the National People's Congress, but I imagine when those guys in Beijing watch the proceedings in the Legislative Council, with people yelling at the Chief Executive like a bunch of two-year-olds having a tantrum, it makes them pretty nervous about giving them too much autonomy.

I was walking back to the MTR station from the memorial service, and when I got to the intersection, the light was red, so I looked one way, until the traffic was clear, then crossed to the middle and looked the other way to check the traffic coming from that direction. Suddenly I looked up and realized that I was absolutely the only person in the middle of the road, with a crowd of people on both sides of the street waiting patiently for the light to turn green. Oops, I have to remember I'm not in Beijing. Hong Kong operates like the rest of the civilized world.

On the train to Hong Kong. My current visa requires me to leave China every 90 days. I was thinking, again, about going to Vietnam, but I sent several emails to youth hostels there, and did not get any response, and I had not taken the trouble to get a Lonely Planet guide for Vietnam, so I didn't want to go in there cold without some information. Also, I talked to Snow a few days ago, and she told me it was really cold in Beihai. "Really cold" is a relative expression, of course. South China folks tend to feel very, very cold in North China. The attendant standing at the door of the car when I got on today is from Guangzhou. She said she had lining in her shoes, but was still freezing. And she has been doing this kind of work for 18 years.

But as a matter of fact, South China locations are often quite humid, so in the winter, the inside environment, where there is often no heat, is cold and damp--much more unpleasant that Beijing. It's interesting. When people from the south come to North China, they feel cold and want to go home so they can be warm. When i go to South China, I feel cold (because there are no hot water radiators inside), and can't wait to get back to Beijing so I can be warm. Anyway, I said all that to say that when I checked the temperatures, I found that the weather in Hanoi, which I would have expected to be quite warm this time of the year, is actually colder than the weather in Hong Kong. So I bought a cheap hard sleeper ticket to Hong Kong and called the youth hostel. Hong Kong has a big youth hostel association--lots of dorm beds.

But I am also thinking along other lines. I am very interested in setting up some kind of organization to facilitate Chinese young people getting involved in outreach to other places. So I am going to Hong Kong to meet some people. I don't know who yet, but I think I will find out. Divine appointment. I first heard this expression when I hitchhiked across the country as an 18 year old kid. I ended up in Florida, and the Miami Baptist Association set me up with a family that had agreed to host people who were coming to participate in their outreach campaign for the Democratic Convention. Dick Shirey told me that he felt my coming to his home in Hialeah was a divine appointment. I couldn't argue. Before I had gone to Florida, I had never heard of Hialeah. It seemed perfectly logical to me then that I was put there by some sort of divine arrangement.

So how do we understand a divine appointment? Sometimes, I think you just have to let them happen. But it's not fate. It is directed by a sovereign God. So the focus for each of us, I think, must be on getting in touch with God. It is up to God to get us in touch with whoever else he may want us to meet. I can't say I was particularly good at it that summer of 1972. But I definitely was determined to find God's purpose, and I believe that God heard my desire, and met my need. He got me in touch with exactly the right people.

Krystal contacted me yesterday and told me that she was going to take me to the doctor. I told her that I didn't really need to do that, because I felt that the worst of my allergic reaction was over, but she was quite insistent.

At the time that my rash first broke out, I wasn't paying very close attention, so I just can't remember for sure what might have been the cause. Most people, when they see it, immediately call it an allergic reaction. It's quite interesting...local people who see this all look like they have seen it many times before. Another expat said to me, "Let's face it, in China, you're never far from a chemical of some kind."

But it does seem to be fading slowly on it's own, so I don't really think I need any special kind of treatment. I have been putting olive oil on it, and then smearing it heavily with Vaseline. Still, Krystal went to the trouble of setting up an appointment for me, so all I had to do was show up. Krystal is a customer service manager for a state owned enterprise--she is a "take charge" sort of person, so when she saw my rash at the Bible study Saturday night, she was determined to do something about it.

When I go to the hospital, Krystal said we were already registered, and just had to wait for our number. She said, "We have a very lucky number: 66." That was interesting to me. The standard "lucky number" in China is 8. But it turns out that 6 is also a lucky number.

Krystal said, "If a phone number has more sixes, like three sixes at the end, you will have to pay much more for it."

I said, "I don't think too many people in America would pay more money for a phone number with three sixes at the end."

When we saw the doctor, I told him that the rash seemed to be slowly clearing up on it's own, so what I needed more than anything else was to know what caused it. He couldn't tell me, but he did say that it could be caused my something I ate, not just by something I touched. Great. That broadens it out. But he did prescribe hydrocortesone, and didn't know the Chinese name for that, so it didn't hurt me to visit him.

Interesting feature article you might like about wood block printing in China. It's a very old tradition kept alive by craftsmen who have spent their lives learning how to do this meticulous work.

Seven years. I am sitting here in the Lush thinking about the seven years that have flown by so swiftly since that day in January of 2004 when I flew into Beijing from Los Angeles to begin my China life.

So much has changed, and so much has remained the same. As I look around me, I see the same place I saw seven years ago. But so much has happened between then and now, and, although I cannot by any means say that I "know" China, it does seem that I am starting to get my arms around it.

I came to Beijing to fulfill my promise to establish an Oracle (database) program at the Software College of Beihang University. I had hoped to set up the program, and then implement the means to continue the program after I left. I accomplished the first part, but not the second. I grew up with non-native speakers, and started teaching English to high school kids when I was about ten years old, so I think I was uniquely suited to design a program that would allow Chinese students to transition into an English language learning environment in a way that would not be like hitting a brick wall. I did this by setting up a testing system that enforced reading of the text, and then conducting a classroom discussion of the content that rewarded students for taking the initiative to participate in working through problems in front of the class.

But the courses I was teaching require specialized skills that are not that easy to obtain on the kind of salary the Software College is willing/able to pay. They will still be teaching many of the same skills (although the program will almost certainly be short on vendor-specific software skills), but they will not be taught in an English language environment. So I failed to achieve the second part. The program basically died when I left.

When I moved to Beijing seven years ago, I had kinda figured it would take me fifteen to twenty years to accomplish what I wanted to do in China. I didn't say that very often, though, because the next logical question would be, "What is it you want to accomplish?" I didn't know for sure. I guess that is the part that has changed the most. Before I came to China, I had thought to set up some kind of non-profit organization to do relief work in Western China. I think that's the main reason I didn't even respond the first time I got an email from Beihang University (in response to the resume I had sent to the Director of Software Colleges, who was referred to me by the Asia Pacific headquarters for Oracle in Singapore).

I found out after I got here that it is very difficult for a foreigner to set up an NGO in China. I visited the offices of the China Development Brief (which has since been kicked out of China), which had a handle on all the NGO's in China, and they told me that every NGO in China has to have political supervision from some sort of government agency. I think you can imagine it would be very difficult for a foreigner to persuade a government agency to assume oversight of his organization, and thereby be responsible for any politically incorrect actions by that foreigner or his organization.

But there's more to it than that. When I went to Sichuan after the earthquake in the summer of 2008, I saw first hand how difficult it is for a foreign NGO to get involved with a problem that the government strongly prefers to handle by itself. I worked with an informal unofficial effort set up by a house church. There is no way I would have been allowed into Beichuan as a member of an international NGO. Even the folks I did go in with, who had established a relationship with the PLA (People's Liberation Army) that allowed them to get past the police checkpoint, pulled over to the side of the road and had me get in the back seat before they reached the checkpoint.

So after 2008, I was much more inclined to turn my focus outside of China, and I think this is good. Chinese young people need to get involved in reaching out beyond their own country, especially given China's strategic location vis-a-vis so many needy areas of the developing world.

Last night Krystal, and Hans, and Zhou Tao and I went to the Palestinian restaurant for a pleasant New Year's Eve Dinner. I had planned to do something at Fragrant Hills, but there seemed to be too much of a schedule conflict to put the thing together, so I had given up on the idea, and was planning to just go to the English Corner and then go home. But Krystal called me Thursday, and we decided to do something in Wudaokou. It was a nice way to spend a cold, windy, New Year's Eve. We had a short autumn this year. In some ways, December was like October usually is, because there were lots of really nice days in December. But when the wind comes up, you better have lots of layers.