Eric's Beijing Diary

Water Run

2012-02-10T13:57:00.000-08:00

The moon is just going down over the ridge. You want to get up pretty early when you go to the spring to get water. If you don't, you're going to end up standing in a very long line. Five kuai to fill a 20 liter jug, but you have to carry it yourself. It's worth it for me, because this is good spring water, and it's not that far from my village. Just walk to the bus yard, take the bus to Nanhetan, and then walk the road up the hill to the spring. They have a little stick there that you can use to pop the cap off your water jug. But I have started doing that at home before I come.The reason for this is that last time I came I was standing outside for awhile, and when I got to where I needed to have the cap off, it had already gotten so cold that it broke into pieces when I tried to pop it off. They only charge 5 mao (.5 yuan) for a new one, so that's not a big issue, but it's really hard to get a broken cap off so you can put the new one on. I had to cut it off with a pair of shears.

There are eight spigots inside, so it goes pretty fast if you get there early. Once you get up to the spigot, it takes five or ten minutes to fill the 20 liter jug. Pop the cap on, throw the jug over your shoulder, and hike back down the hill. Tough to avoid frostbite in the winter, because your gloves are usually a bit wet. But it's not too bad.

When you get home, what you're supposed to do is take the top lid off, then tip the jug upside down and place it in the dispenser. As it slides in, the inner seal breaks and lets the water flow down into the dispenser to either be heated or cooled. But I don't have a dispenser. The problem with those things is that even though they look really handy, they are not mainenance free. They do need to be cleaned from time to time, and the other thing is that when it's just one of you, it isn't really efficient to keep that thing turned on 24 hours a day. Much better to just pour some water in the teapot when you need to heat some. I have a couple 4 liter jugs I put the water in, and then use those until they're empty. Anyway, I'm boring you with details. You can do whatever suits you. If you don't like the idea of carrying your own water, you can pay 20 kuai to the water guy, and he will bring a jug right to your place. But no telling where the water he's going to bring you comes from. I'd much rather go to the spring myself and get good spring water. Like I say, if you get there vearly, it's not that bad.

Glasses

2012-02-07T16:03:00.000-08:00

Finally bought a new pair of glasses. The thing that took me so long (other than my problem with double vision) is that I had misunderstood how it works in China. In the U.S. ophthalmologists work in hospitals, and optometrists work in the places where you actually get fitted for glasses. But in China, both ophthalmologists and optometrists work in a hospital. So when you go to buy a pair of glasses, they will tell you they can check your eyes, but it's really obvious that they don't really know what they are doing. I was disgusted. I was talking about this a couple days ago in our Sunday afternoon Bible study and one of them mentioned that a sister in her BSF study group was an ophthalmologist at Tongren Hospital. I told her that I didn't really need to see an ophthalmologist; I wanted to find an optometrist. But they got Lilian on the phone anyway, and she told me to come in and she would make time for me.

Lilian is an eye surgeon, and she was quite busy yesterday, because yesterday was the Lantern Festival, which, in China, always happens two weeks after Chinese New Year, and is the last opportunity for people to use up their fireworks. So there were quite a few folks coming in with eye injuries. The way people play with fire in this country it doesn't surprise me...but that's a different subject.

Anyway, it was a good thing I saw her, because it gave me a chance to ask once more about my double vision (which got me another lecture on eating low fat foods), but mainly because Lilian called the optometrist and was able to schedule an appointment for me directly. Dr. Zhao was very thorough. So take it from me, there are real optometrists in China. But they work in hospitals. So go to Tongren Hospital first and get a valid prescription. Then you can go to the glasses mall in Jinsong and get your glasses.

I had never been to the glasses mall, but one of my friends gave me the shop address for a place run by a Christian couple from Wenzhou. Took 30 minutes to have the glasses made. They charged me 150 RMB. That's one tenth of what I paid in Guangzhou seven years ago.

Super Bowl

2012-02-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

I called Jordan the other day and asked him if he had any plans to see the Super Bowl. He said, "Super Bowl?" I think he's gone local. I've usually seen the Super Bowl over on the east side, because that's where the big sports bars are. But I heard some folks talking the other day about a Super Bowl thing at Pyro Pizza, so I decided to go there. I have moved out to the hills, now, so the east side is quite a jaunt when you need to be there by seven in the morning.

First time I've ever seen the Super Bowl in Chinese. You really had to pay attention to keep up with what was going on--something I'm not very good at doing. It was the incredible turn around that almost was. I'm talking about that hail Mary into the end zone in the last second of the game. I can just imagine the talk if that pass had been completed.

Got into a conversation with a Buddhist from Vermont who bought a pitcher of beer for Jordan and I. I don't generally like beer that early in the morning, and the truth is I don't drink beer very often anyway in the winter time. But it was a nice gesture, and this guy was friendly and interesting. It was quite evident from talking to him that he had learned his Buddhism in America. This was partly because he had no connections to Asia in his background, but also because his Buddhism tended to be associated with a reaction to Christianity that I don't see too often in China. I explained to him that we Christians generally tend to like Confucius, because even though we feel he didn't go far enough (since he only deals with questions of this life), we do tend to like what he said. But Buddhism presents a whole different set of problems for Christians. Buddhism's idea of reincarnation suggests that one has an infinite number of second chances with which to "get it right." But the Bible says that "it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment (Hebrews 9:27)."

He told me he worked at a language camp in Minnesota where all the staff meetings were in Chinese. That one took my by surprise. Minnesota? Well, that got me talking about my boy scout days in Minnesota. Most people don't realize that most of northern Minnesota (especially the northeast) is covered with forests and wilderness.

It is interesting to see that Americans are starting to catch on to the idea of learning Mandarin. It's been big in the U.K. for some time, but the Americans have been a little slow to catch on to the idea. But that's changing. Mandarin is the lingua franca of a billion people, and many of those are not native speakers. They learn it after they start school. When I go to the Tibetan areas, I have to use Mandarin to communicate. The old folks don't speak Mandarin, but the young people all speak Mandarin, although you won't meet many who speak even a little English. The only Tibetans I have met who speak English are the ones who are directly involved in the tourism industry. One guy told me he sneaked down into India and learned English. But they are the exceptions.

Not So French Toast

2012-01-29T22:15:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning and discovered I didn't have any eggs. One of the waitresses at the Bridge Cafe taught me how to make French toast, so I like to make it on Sunday morning. It was too early to buy some and I wasn't in the mood for changing my plans, so I decided to see if I could make it without eggs. Take it from me, it doesn't work. Don't ask me why; that's just the way it is. Way too soggy. It didn't taste that bad, actually, but it was kinda hard to eat. The problem is that French toast without eggs is basically, well, milk toast. Saw smoke coming from it, but it was actually mostly steam. When you put it in the frying pan, it gets black before it gets dry. You wouldn't think one little egg would make that much difference, but it really does. And truth be told, my French toast isn't anything to write home about anyway (which is why I haven't so far). But with the egg, it's just a lot more forgiving. Put a little peanut butter on it and some honey and you're good to go.

I can make regular toast in the frying pan as long as there's no oil. Just lay a slice of bread in there, hold it down with the pancake turner until you smell a little smoke, then flip it over and do the same. It isn't perfect, but it's actually pretty close to the real thing. But with the milk... It's just no good. I didn't know that before, but I do now.

Chinese New Year

2012-01-23T19:15:00.000-08:00

The fangdong (landlady) took us to a Manchu restaurant last night for New Year's Eve. Most people go to their home towns during Spring Festival, so it was just the landlady and her son and myself, another couple and their son, and the lady who lives a few doors down from me with her little boy. One exotic dish after another. Oh, man! Those Qing Dynasty emperors lived good! Deer tail sausage, giant honey shrimp, ox elbow, some delicious pork dish that I don't know the name of, and lots of other stuff. Fragrant Hills would be the place for a restaurant like this. Fragrant Hills was a key resort for the Manchu emperors.

Almost 900 RMB. That is astronomical by Chinese standards, but I think it would probably be a bargain in the US for a meal of this quality. Really delicious food.

The little boy is about three years old. I asked him if he could speak English. "Ni hui shuo yingwen ma?"

He looked at me. "Apple!"

I said, "Hey, that's pretty good!. "Pinguo."

He said, "Jiushi (Exactly)."

We walked back to our village, and I decided to take a little nap to get ready for the evening. Along about 15 minutes to 12, World War III got started, although there had been skirmishes all evening leading up to it. Last year I was in Hong Kong for New Year's Eve, and the place was dead. Not China. This place goes crazy on New Year's Eve.

Anniversary

2012-01-10T23:18:00.000-08:00

Tonight was the eighth anniversary of my arrival in Beijing. The 10th of January is also Bulu's birthday, so I decided to make a party of it. I managed to get in touch with Eric Wu, and he invited Lily and Courtney. Bulu also brought another student I had not seen since a bunch of us had dinner together in Yokohama, already five years ago now.

Click for larger image.
I see Bulu every once in awhile, but I hadn't seen Eric for a number of years. He hasn't changed a bit since the day I first met him. Lily and Courtney were both at the party the Software College had for me the night I landed in Beijing eight years ago. Back then they were young graduate students full of hopes. Now they are both mothers, transferring those hopes and dreams to their little ones. Oh, how swiftly go the years!

I remember before I left Arizona, someone asked me, "Do you have any friends in Beijing?" I said, "No, but I will pretty soon." I wasn't mistaken. It's interesting to me that the Streams in the Desert devotional for January 10th is about God's prohibitions. Closed doors. Interesting because when I came to China, it was very clear to me that this was God's open door. The scripture is in Revelation 3, verse 8:Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I didn't really understand why I had come to China, but I knew that I knew that I knew that I was here because of God's specific direction. That's a good feeling. But God's direction often comes as the result of our willingness to give up something else that we thought might be His will. In my case, I had thought for many years, at least since the early eighties, that I would eventually be going to the Middle East.

God very clearly changed my direction. I didn't understand it, but I accepted it. A call is a call. After 40 years of waiting, I was ready to take anything. But I almost didn't come to Beijing. When I first got the email from Beihang University, I ignored it. I thought I should go to Western China, because that's where the poorest people are. Fortunately for me, a week later they sent me another email. This time I felt a little guilty because I knew that I was getting this email because of having sent out my resume, so I dashed off a quick email to soothe my conscience. I got a reply immediately asking me how soon I could come, and the rest is history.

Vision

2012-01-04T20:05:00.000-08:00

January. A new year. The first thing that happens to me at a time like this is to think back to where I was a year ago. My focus then was to find some way to get to the Middle East. I didn't have a job a year ago, and I thought perhaps I might be able to get some kind of work in Dubai or something. I don't know. I was brain storming, but I never really did come up with anything definite. Perhaps that's good, because a job in the Middle East would have addressed one side of my (spiritual) double vision but not the other. Speaking of double vision, it seems to be getting a lot better. I noticed when I was riding the bus today and looking out the window, that some things looked double. But maybe that's not so unusual because of the motion. Most things look normal now. The mega-doses of B vitamins they've been giving me seem to be doing the trick.

But we're still working on the spiritual double vision. What I mean is that I have a vision that has two aspects, neither one of which can happen without the other. I have a burden for the children of Afghanistan. Two million children with no education. Things are getting better, but there are still a lot of kids in the streets. So there is definitely a need for the kind of thing I want to do. But I also have a burden for the young people of China, who are very well educated, and willing to serve, but who have no facility for missions. Chinese churches don't do missions. Strictly speaking, NGO's (Non Government Organizations) are illegal in China, so when people in China want to do charity work, they need to either set up a for-profit company, or they operate illegally. I don't want to do either, so I am in the process of finding some way to operate outside of China, which is the right thing to do anyway, because we are not going to be doing any projects in China.

Tongren Hospital

2011-12-19T19:52:00.000-08:00

Angela took me to Tongren Hospital today. I was suprised last week by a sudden onset of double vision. Fits my personality, in a sense, because I have always believed there are two ways to look at everything. But I generally prefer not to see them both at the same time. When I mentioned my condition to Angela, a friend of mine who is a pediatrician, she recommended that we visit the eye clinic at Tongren Hospital. Tongren Hospital is an old 19th Century mission hospital. The Eye Center is regarded as the top eye treatment facility in China.

It's hard to describe how things are in China at a famous hospital like Tongren. Lots of people from all over the country, so treatment takes place in what looks like a reverse assembly line. The docotors are all sitting in an open area, and you line up and wait your turn to sit on the stool in front of the doctor. It all seems really rushed, but the doctor was actually quite helpful, and I peppered him with questions (with Angela's assistance). He prescribed some medicine (mostly B vitamins) and recommended that we go see a neurologist, so we decided to go to the foreigner clinic at PUMC. Very different place. The foreigner clinic at PUMC is more expensive than a regular Chinese hospital, but much, much cheaper than the International Hospital (Beijing United). And this clinic rotates the best physicians in China, so the level of competence is quite good. I am saying that as an outpatient. I have never been hospitalized there. The neurologist seemed to think I might be diabetic, so she prescribed a blood test and also an MRI, but she told me to hold off on the MRI until after the blood test.

Christmas in China

2011-12-14T22:15:00.000-08:00

This week the topic for the English Majors was "Holidays." I put together a list of the basic facts of Christmas and told them to take that information and make up their own Christmas programs. I divided them into groups of six to eight students. They are pretty good at role playing, so I thought it would be a good way for them to get a feel for what Christmas is all about. They didn't have any trouble coming up with some interesting variations. A bit irreverent in places, but hard not to smile. These kids really are quite entertaining.

Christmas programs. I've seen a lot of them, and I've been in a lot of them. I remember once when I was seven years old, I was drafted to play the role of Joseph for the evening Christmas at the church in Sakata. It wasn't really a full Christmas program--mainly just a nativity scene. I was told that I didn't have to say anything, so I went along with the idea even though I was slightly less than enthusiastic. But there was one problem. Church services in Japan are very long, and standing in that little store room off to the side of the stage, it seemed like forever that we had to wait. I just could not keep my eyes open. When it came time for me to go on, I was out cold. The Mary for that scene was a little Japanese girl. She went on dutifully and did everything perfectly. Me? Well, they shook me awake, and I managed to stumble onto the stage, but my bathrobe caught on something that was stored in that little room, and I managed to drag it onto the stage with me. So if you can imagine yourself in the audience--you're sitting through a long, long Christmas service, and then it's time for Joseph and Mary. Mary comes on and walks to the middle of the stage just like she's supposed to. But...no Joseph. All of a sudden, here comes the gaijin, stumbling onto the stage like he's had too much Christmas cheer, dragging half the back stage with him. I'd never make it in Hollywood.

Dad told me that when he first went to Japan, he saw a Christmas tree, and on top of the Christmas tree was a cross, and Santa Claus was hanging on the cross. Got to give them an "A" for effort. It's interesting to me how Christmas has become such a thoroughly international festival. I can't say "holiday," really, because China does not have a Christmas holiday (yet), but it is quite noticeable here. Different from America, but I do like Christmas in China, because there isn't quite so much emphasis on presents. I remember asking one of my students about his Christmas...

"How was your Christmas?"

"Perfect!"

"Really? What did you get for Christmas?"

"Nothing."

I said, "This I gotta hear." He told me that he had taken his girlfriend out to dinner and given her some flowers. In China, Christmas Eve is called, "Ping An Ye," which means "Peaceful Evening." I like that. Restaurants are open late so that young people like my student and his girlfriend can have a nice evening out.

The Chinese Puzzle

2011-12-10T21:19:00.000-08:00

Had lunch with Mike today. Well, almost. The computer was down at the Bridge Cafe, so they missed our order. We got it straightened out, but Mike couldn't wait, so they returned his money. Just one of those things, and they were pretty good about it, so what can you say? That place is very busy on a Saturday--the only way it works at all is because their system is fully computerized. But when the computer is down, it is pretty near impossible to keep things straight.

But we had a good talk. Mike had read my post about the Shouwang Church, and wanted to see me. He is in China to do some research for the latest edit of his book. I told him that I felt that what happened at the Shouwang Church wasn't really news. I still have mixed feelings about it, because I don't know that it should be the government's business to decide how big a church congregation can be. But the government does have a very definite policy on church registration, and Shouwang Church was not registered, and had no intention to do so. Small family churches are technically exempt from this requirement, but Shouwang Church was operating in a manner that demonstrated very publicly that they were not small, and did not intend to be small. They had a thousand "members." I use the term "members" loosely, because membership in house churches is quite informal. But it's actually quite informal in Three Self Churches too. Bottom line: What happened to Shouwang Church was to be expected, given the present state of things in China. But the government is going to discover that this problem is not going to go away. Christianity is growing exponentially in China. There will be other Shouwangs.

Mike's organization is involved with distributing Bibles, and building church buildings for family churches in the countryside. I was very interested to hear that he buys the Bibles from the place where they are published in Nanjing, and then distributes them in the countryside. I told him this is exactly the way things should be done. I have met and heard of people who were involved in "smuggling": Bibles into China. It always strikes me as completely absurd to smuggle Bibles into China from outside, when they can be purchased quite easily here. Mike told me that at any one time, the plant in Nanjing has a quarter of a million Bibles. They decide how many Bibles to print by replenishing that supply.

Seasons

2011-11-29T14:09:00.000-08:00

Oh, how quickly go the seasons! They say Beijing has a very short autumn, but I don't agree. Actually, it depends on what kind of summer you have and what kind of winter you have. If the summer fever breaks the first part of September, and the coming winter is reasonably mild, then the fall season at least seems like it drags on for almost four months. But easily three months. But if September is a hot month and winter comes a little early, then autumn can seem pretty short.

The real problem is that there are four seasons in a year, and only twelve months. So simple math tells you that the average length of a season is going to be three months. That's not very long. Goes pretty fast. Late fall seems a little depressing until you get used to it, and especially as you begin to appreciate the beauty of winter, which you could never have if autumn lasted forever. I guess this is why I like a four-season climate.

As you may know if you are familiar with China, one of the left over practices from the Maoist era is the assumption that public buildings in the northern part of China should be equipped with hot water radiators. So winter in Beijing is quite comfortable (inside). South China is very different. Cold outside and cold inside. In the far south, it is actually warmer outside than inside. But in Beijing, the inside temperature is usually quite pleasant. The only time of the year that is a little uncomfortable is the first part of November, because the tradition says that the heat doesn't need to come on until the middle of November, and sometimes the first part of the month can be a little chilly. But once the heat comes on, most places keep the boiler stoked with plenty of coal.

Hainan Island

2011-11-28T14:30:00.000-08:00

Just got back from Hainan Island, the "Hawaii" of China. One of those last minute faculty outings. I was skeptical about trying to do Hainan in a weekend, but it actually worked out quite well.

We flew down to Hainan on Friday evening. Maofu had reserved rooms at a place with a pretty nice breakfast buffet. I guess they have both a Chinese buffet and a western buffet. I didn't see the Chinese one, because, although I really do like Chinese food, I have never been a big fan of Chinese breakfast. The western buffet was an essential, because there are so many Russian tourists. You turn on the TV and see old Russian movies. And many signs are in both Chinese and Russian.

There are three major beaches in Sanya. Our hotel was right above Dadonghai, but Maofu had arranged for us to go to Yalong Bay, which was a good thing, because the swimming beach at Yalong Bay is really nice. I was surprised how warm the water was. I don't mean like a hot tub or something, but really nice.

In the afternoon, we took a boat to Wuzhizhou Island. My Lonely Planet Guide shows this island on the map of Hainan, but there's nothing written about it in the book. The tour of the island is guided--you can't just walk around. But it is really very pretty. Just toward the end of the walk,we came upon a large swimming pool fed by a spring or springs. It as completely unattended, and there was no fence or anything, so we took advantage of it and jumped in. Really refreshing water, and not cold at all.

Yesterday, we took a tour of the tropical rain forest. This place had a lot of tourists, but if you've never seen a tropical rain forest before, it is quite informative.

I am really not one for rushed vacations--I would never think to take a trip to Hainan for a weekend. But this trip went really well.

2011-11-08T23:32:00.000-08:00

Got a call yesterday from a company in Hong Kong that does incorporation. It was in response to an inquiry I had sent them some time ago. They guy who called me said he had sent me two emails. I didn't get either of them, and he was thinking perhaps they ended up in my spam folder. I told him to send me another one, and, sure enough, I found it in the spam folder. Not sure why--It was not a group message. There could possibly be some problem with his company's ISP. But that's only a guess. Just when I think I have a handle on what causes an email to be regarded as spam, something like this comes along and throws me for a loop.

But it was a good thing he called me, because he told me that we could not get non-profit status in Hong Kong unless we could prove that the primary beneficiaries of our work were in Hong Kong. That will not be the case, because we will be bringing young people from Asia to work with children in Afghanistan, so our primary beneficiaries would be the children we would be teaching. Not sure what I am going to do about this, but I am thinking now about the possibility of just setting up an NGO in Afghanistan itself. Afghanistan's NGO law is pretty straightforward. I actually do like it, and it would probably be a good bit simpler than setting up in Hong Kong. The one major issue there, though, is that at least one person would have to be a resident of Afghanistan. I don't know any Afghan residents. I guess I just have to take a trip there first and see what I can discover.

2011-11-07T23:22:00.000-08:00

Anne Marie and Tom were here for Jordan and Lily's wedding feast Saturday. It was a rushed trip, but we did get a chance to spend some time Thursday at Fragrant Hills. I don't usually go anywhere near the park during the day time, so even I was a bit taken aback by all the hubbub, but it was still nice, because the weather was good, and if you have never seen it before, then I guess it feels somewhat normal to be there with the tourist hordes.

The wedding banquet was at a really nice restaurant near Haidian Church. I have been around that area for years, now, but I don't recall being in that place. Anyway, it was a pretty good place for a group occasion.

2011-10-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

Cherish came up to me today after class and said, "This tie is very beautiful. Can I take a picture of you?" I told her I bought it on the street for 20 kuai. For awhile there, I was buying ties quite often, because the street vendor never argued with me when I chose a tie and handed him 20 kuai. As a matter of fact, that's probably more then he gets from most local people. But his ties are pretty nice. Walk over to Hualian by the light rail station, and you can see the very same ties for several hundred kuai. I talked to a foreign teacher the other day who told me he paid 400 for a tie. I told him I paid 20. He said, "Yes, but if my tie has a problem, I get a new one." He may be right. But I don't need a warranty. I can buy a lot of 20 RMB ties for 400. Maybe not, though. The police have cleaned out a lot of those street vendors in Wudaokou. Now if I need a tie, I will have to go find a market somewhere.

Visa Run

2011-10-18T20:42:00.000-07:00

Almost 2 am. I am in Hong Kong. You can't get a work visa for China in China (unless you buy it from a black market visa broker), you have to go out and come back in. I suppose every country has this rule, but fortunately, in the case of China, you don't need to go all the way back to your home country. The train ticket to Hong Kong or Shenzhen is not expensive. I chose to go to Shenzhen this time, because the train got in early Sunday morning, so it was easy for me to go to church. I was last here the end of July, to extend my visa by going out and coming back in just before it expired. A one year multiple-entry tourist visa gives you the right to enter China as many times as you like in a one year period as long as you don't stay more than 90 days on any one visit. Since I last entered China just before the expiration date, I automatically had another 90 days. When I got my current job, I thought I would have plenty of time to get my work visa before the 90 day stay had expired. But the government office in Beijing was way too slow about getting my paperwork ready, so I had didn't get that until the 10th. To minimize the number of class days I would have to miss, I waited until last Friday to leave so that I could be in the visa office first thing Monday morning. So I walked into Hong Kong from Shenzhen Sunday morning on Day 89 of a 90 day stay. Why does it always seem to come right down to the wire?

I decided to use a travel agency this time, partly because a Z visa is a little more complicated than a tourist visa, and because I really did need to have express service so I could get back to Beijing as soon as possible. I don't like paying a middle man to do stuff that I could just as easily do myself. But using a travel agency has the effect of putting you at the head of the line. I was in the visa office about 15 minutes turning in my application materials, and there was no line to stand in when I picked it up. Travel agencies are convenient, I will have to say that. But they don't do it for free. After I picked up my visa I was berating myself for paying someone else to stand in line for me, but when I got back to the youth hostel shuttle, another lady from the hostel who had decided to save money and do it herself told me that they were queuing way out into the street at the visa office.

So I sit here on Mt. Davis on a cool, quiet evening. Or I should say morning. But my mind is far from here. I had planned to be in Afghanistan right about now, but I decided to put it off, partly because I'm broke, and partly because I can't really afford it. Outside of my travel account, I was pretty bone dry. It's probably better this way, because in the initial stages of putting together an NGO, it isn't really appropriate for people to be supporting me when I'm not really doing that much. In fact, if there was a way to avoid being supported at all, I would strongly prefer it. I am not independently wealthy, so that may not be possible. But I am going to run it that way for as long as I can.

There is something else, and that is the visa situation. I have been living in China this past year on a tourist visa. A couple months ago, a guy from the US alerted me to the fact that China had revised their application process for the tourist visa. There's nothing really unfair about the new application, but it does seem that China doesn't want people to use a tourist visa to live in China. The actual fact is that they have never minded that, but they really seriously do mind people using a tourist visa to work in China. So they seem now to be addressing that problem by clamping down on people using tourist visas for anything other than scheduled, itinerant travel. But even before the change, tourist visas have always been problematic (especially for Americans) if you tried to get them outside of your home country. Usually the most you can get in Hong Kong is 30 days. That can be extended to 90 days, but that's it. I had a one year tourist visa. I have never heard of an American getting a visa like the one I had without going back to America.

Afghanistan is different. I went to the Afghan embassy in Beijing, and those guys were really friendly. They seem quite enthusiastic about giving visas to someone who is coming to help. So I could have gotten to Afghanistan, but I would have had trouble getting back. I don't even know if the Chinese consulate in Kabul would give me a visa at all. I tried to contact them, but they did not respond. So, I sit here in Hong Kong instead of in Afghanistan. I guess it just isn't time yet. God has his perfect time for everything, and it is always best to wait for it. Always.

Mao's Last Dancer

2011-10-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

I have written a number of book reviews for Amazon, and also for Powell's Books. For some reason, my review of Mao's Last Dancer has generated more comments than any other. I haven't written a review for some time, but I still get an email whenever someone comments on one of my reviews. Here is one I felt was worth sharing:

I feel that the reviewer is an honest man and tries to see "both sides", but unfortunately one cannot see the other side without experience it. I as a refuge from the communist country (former Czechoslovakia)remember how during the Nazi occupation we could not believe the Russian refugees from the USSR that Stalin is the same devil as Hitler. Several years later and lot of imprisoned, murdered people, we agreed. Maybe that is our human nature to learn so slowly. To simplify the problem: some people accept millions of executed people worth for the "social progress", others are inclined to accept Dostoevsky's ".. No revolution is worth of a tear of one child.."

Sincerely,

K.Kriz

I should say that, while my review was not without criticism, I did like the book, and gave it five stars. It is well worth reading. The comment of this reader makes me wonder if I would have seen the book differently if I had actually grown up in the China that Mao's last dancer came from. Perhaps. And Mr. Kriz seems to be referring to the issue of political repression. But there is also the issue of poverty. Many people in the China in which Mao's last dancer grew up were not inclined to be affected by political repression, because they were too desperately poor for it to matter. This, I think it the issue I was exploring. The Dancer rebelled against a system he disliked because it infringed upon his ability fully to experience the life of the privileged in America. But his exposure to that privileged American life was made possible only because he was among the privileged in China--a privilege granted to him by the very system against which he was rebelling. Would he have preferred the life of a poor man in America to his life of privilege in China?

Autumn in the hills

2011-10-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

This past week has been the October holiday. China has three "Golden Weeks." The first is in October, and coincides with the October revolution, when Mao stood on Tiananmen Gate and declared that China had "stood up." The second is the Chinese New Year, and the third is the May holiday. What this means is that the whole country goes on vacation at the same time. This makes for havoc on the trains. But in a way I do think it is a good thing. If it were not for these holidays, many working people would not get a holiday at all. I visited a sweater factory in South China some years ago, where the workers told me they had one day off a month.

Anyway, every day the hills are alive with the sound of people. It's not so bad, though, because most of them come on a bus, and there aren't any busses that get to the hills before six in the morning. More like 7 or 8 o'clock. So if I can get up to the East Gate before 6:30 or so, the park is still pretty pleasant and quiet. I start climbing right away, because even after people start coming, it takes them some time to work their way up to where I hang out. Most people have the idea that you're supposed to go to the top. I stay away from that place. I spend my time on the lateral trail about half way up the mountain.

I'm sure I have said this before, but you really can't beat a North China autumn. This is the nicest time of the year in Beijing. I notice it more than some, I suppose, because I particularly dislike Beijing summers. Everybody's different. When Jordan first came to China, he showed up in June. I was apologizing all over the place for the sultry weather, but he didn't seem to mind at all. I sure mind. I go to the Western mountains in the summer. So beautiful. But in the fall, there is no place I would rather be than right here in the Western hills.

Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T22:50:00.000-07:00

Lots of talk about the passing of Steve Jobs. Certainly he was a key figure in the development of the IT revolution that took place in the seventies and eighties. In 1977, I took a course in "Basic Computer Coding." I was working off a Control Data 3300 at Oregon State University. I was not a student at OSU. I was a student at Oregon College of Education, twenty miles up the road. I sat in the computer room at an old military style teletype terminal. Processor time cost $25 for five minutes. But they gave you 5 minutes at the beginning of the class. I always figured out the logic of my program before I tried to run it, so as to minimize processor time. The teletype terminal had a punch tape dispenser that could print out your program on a punch tape. I rolled it up and put it in a Tupperware container. That was my data storage. Toward the end of that course, my professor told me that a company--I think it was Radio Shack, was coming out with a 4 K computer that could fit on a desktop. I was incredulous. Four thousand bytes of Random Access Memory in a desktop machine?? But it was true. The 4 K was followed shortly by the 16 K. Then the VIC 20. It was a small keyboard machine that you plugged into your TV. I was teaching in a country school in North Dakota when the school district purchased some Commodore Pet computers. Sixty-four thousand bytes, and a little cassette tape drive. Cool. I didn't have to type up the programs every time I ran a new one. Everybody was using BASIC in those days, but it was Apple that developed the Graphic User Interface with a mouse. It wasn't their innovation. Xerox engineers developed it at the Palo Alto research lab. Xerox paid big bucks for a research lab, but the powers that be did not appreciate what the engineers in that lab developed. Watch the movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley. Engineers from the Palo Alto research lab bring a mouse into the boardroom and demonstrate how it works. The executives each look at it quizzically and then pass it on. They rejected it as a useless toy. Big mistake.

Apple took the idea and developed it. Bill Gates saw what Apple had, and was determined to get it. So he formed an agreement with Apple, and copied the technology. There is a classic scene in the movie where Steve Jobs confronts Bill Gates for stealing the Windows technology. Gates said, "Xerox let the door open, and we just helped ourselves." The statement was technically true, but also disingenuous. Steve Jobs had not invented it, he had gotten it from Xerox, that's true. But Gates didn't get it from Xerox. He got it from Apple. This is a little bit of history that many people are not aware of. Microsoft would not be Microsoft without Steve Jobs.

During the early days of the microcomputer, I thought Apple was stupid for being so proprietary. Because they refused to license their platform, it became marginalized. But as time went on, I realized their wisdom. They had a very small corner, but what they had was all theirs. In those days, you either had a Mac, or an "IBM clone." I bought an IBM clone, as did most people. But IBM did not make a dime off my purchase. My computer was made by Hyundai. So IBM could boast that they had the most widely used platform, but what good did it do them? I made the mistake of judging Apple's approach based on market share. But the other night, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh on my old "home town" radio station from when I was in the trucking industry. He said, "Steve Jobs never cared about market share. He only cared about profit." That's the point. Market share and profit are not the same. And Apple's proprietary approach to hardware really paid off when they came up with the iPod and iPhone. They ruled the world. And created another revolution. Thursday night, Ahmed showed me his new Sony Ericsson phone running the Android system. Not an Apple product, but it was certainly inspired by the iPhone. Smart phones would not be smart phones without Steve Jobs.

Several years ago, a friend of mine told me about iTunes. I told her that I was not interested in buying an iPod. She told me the software, which comes on a CD with the iPod, could also be downloaded free. I decided to take a look. She had explained the podcasting feature to me, and I was curious. What I found changed my life. I had been going to a few websites and listening to or downloading news and information mp3 files. Now I go to each website once to subscribe, and after that, iTunes visits each website for me, checks for the latest program, and downloads it automaticallly.

I was not surprised to hear Rush Limbaugh praising Steve Jobs the other night. When I was a truck driver, I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh almost every day. He was a Mac fan, and mercilessly ridiculed anyone stupid enough to own a PC. The other night, he said that people asked him how he could like Steve Jobs when Jobs was known to be a liberal. He said, "I have always been a fan of greatness."

I have never owned an Apple computer. I am a server guy, and a technical trainer, so I have had to focus on the systems that most companies use. But all of us owe a debt of gratitude to Apple and Steve Jobs for the innovations that inspired the graphic user interfaces all of us now take for granted. Steve Jobs was not always an easy person to get along with. He was a perfectionist, and was once fired by his own company. But he set the standard for what a nice computer was supposed to look like, and every personal computer owner has benefited in some way from that standard.

I have a dream today!

2011-09-26T22:44:00.000-07:00

I was sitting by the flagpole waiting before the afternoon speech contest today, when a student came running up to me. "You can't sit here. It's too hot! You need to sit in the shade... S-H-A-D-E! He grabbed my backpack and started heading for the library. He found a ledge for me to sit on that was in the shade, and started spreading a newspaper for me to sit on. Then he said, "I'm sorry. I have a meeting. I have to go," and he was gone. Nice kid.

Mr. Gao had asked me to be a judge for the afternoon speech contest today. It was interesting. I heard "I have a dream today" a lot. The question of the day was whether nuclear power was a blessing or a curse. Most students seem to have studied the issue quite a bit, but seemed hesitant to come to a clear position themselves on the issue. One kid wandered off into a diatribe on the Americans selling weapons to Taiwan. I took the liberty of reminding him that there was a difference between nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

The other judges were quite outspoken about the students' hesitation about taking a clear position on issues. I think it is a cultural thing, perhaps. I remember a few years ago, when I was in Shanghai for a conference of some kind, and I asked a couple students why Chinese young people were so hesitant to state their views. One of them quoted an old Chinese proverb to the effect that the person who sticks his neck out will get it cut off. Perhaps this is the reason for the classic stereotype that is part of an interesting "survey" a Kurdish friend of mine sent me once:

Last month, a world-wide survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was:

"Please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world."
The survey didn’t get any results because...:
1. In Africa they didn't know what “food" means.
2. In Eastern Europe they didn't know what “honest" means.
3. In Western Europe they didn't know what "shortage" means.
4. In China they didn't know what "opinion" means.
5. In the Middle East they didn't know what "solution" means.
6. In South America they didn't know what "please" means.
7. In USA they didn't know what “the rest of the world" means.

First Day of School

2011-09-19T22:40:00.000-07:00

I was counting today. Today was my 34th first day of school. Actually, it's just about impossible to get an accurate count, because I tend to focus on the fall of the year, and I taught a couple year around schools where that pattern doesn't really fit. But if I think September then it's thirty-four. Thirty-five if you count kindergarten, although, for some reason, it doesn't stick in my mind. I don't know why, but I can remember everything about kindergarten except the first day.

I remember the first day of first grade like it was yesterday. Lewis and Clark School in Williston. And of course I could never, never forget my first day of second grade. Just arrived back in Japan, it was my first day at the boarding school. Auntie Esther came to me personally and told me not to worry about anything, and if I ever needed anything, to talk to her. I worried about everything and didn't talk to her about anything. Pathetic waste of kindness, but I was just too shy.

The first day of eighth grade was quite a shock, too. Fergus Falls, Minnesota. The Junior High school had just burned to the ground, and we were sharing the building with the high school. It was a blessing in disguise in some ways, because we didn't start school until noon, and got out about 6 pm.

I stayed out of school for a year after high school. I didn't want to go to college. Why fill my head with man's knowledge? But, in the end, I did. I had narrowed my selection of a major down to a final choice between Humanities and Social Sciences. I attended a session for the Humanities Department, and one for the Social Science Department. The Humanities guy had a mouth full of black teeth, and smoked heavily without an ash try, letting the ashes fall where they would. The social science guy was a noted geographer from California who had wanted to come to a small college so he could spend time writing or something. After those two sessions, I still couldn't make up my mind which major to choose, so I chose both of them. Did a double major in Humanities and Social Sciences with a Secondary Education endorsement.

The next first day of school that really sticks in my mind is my first day of teaching Palmer School in rural Williston. One school, one room, one teacher. Part of a fading era. I was the last person to teach that old school. It closed the next year.

Fast forward to 2011. A bunch of cheery freshmen just in from the countryside, and I am their first foreign teacher, although English is not their first foreign language. Many young people in China are essentially tri-lingual by the time they reach University. They speak a local village dialect, they have to start speaking Mandarin as soon as they enter school, and, of course, English. Some of them have also tried their hand at other foreign languages. I asked one class if anyone spoke Japanese. One young freshman yelled out the one Japanese expression in his repertoire: "Baka Yaro!"

Mid Autumn Festival

2011-09-12T23:21:00.000-07:00

Very pleasant outing today with the volunteers from the Haidian English Fellowship. We were at Beihai Park downtown. I haven't spent a lot of time at that park, and I was afraid that it was going to be swarming with people, but it was actually not too bad. We had lunch together, with everyone throwing what they had in the middle of a bit sheet spread out on the ground and all of us just helping ourselves. It was an interesting arrangement. Fortunately, Daniel had brought a couple Frisbees, and someone came up with a football, so we were busy looking like a bunch of Americans for awhile.

Click picture for larger image.
Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival. It's listed as one of China's major holidays, but I don't know if that's really true, because it is pretty short, actually. So this isn't anything like Spring Festival. But it is a very old traditional Chinese holiday, so in that sense, I guess you'd have to say that it is relatively important. Not the kind of thing that sends the whole country back to their home towns, like Spring Festival, but significant in the sense that the whole country celebrates it.

I've noticed in recent years that the moon cakes are getting a little more varied. Had a couple today that were designed like French tea cakes. Really good. Some of the folks were planning to stay for the evening festivities, but I had sorta promised a house church that I would join their Monday evening English Corner.

Maggie

2011-09-10T15:40:00.000-07:00

Pretty persistent young lady. She contacted me last summer when I was in Guangzhou. I didn't recall meeting her, but I guess I must have given her my business card in church at some point, because she sent me an email letting me know that she had asked a friend of hers about possible openings for English teachers at his university. I didn't actually tell her I was looking for an English teaching job, because I wasn't. I have been focused on the mission to Afghanistan that I have been thinking about putting together.

So I didn't answer her email. She was not deterred. She gave me a call one morning while I was praying about God's purpose. Later she sent me a text message saying that a teacher at this university had passed away and it was very important for me to send her my resume.

I got an email from her a few days later saying that the campus would be closed until the end of August. So I put it out of my mind. Last week, I got a call from her friend telling me that he had arranged an interview for me. I have been hoping to go to Afghanistan this fall, so I have not been applying for positions here, but I decided that perhaps it wouldn't be right to blow off an interview staring me right in the face, especially since I have been out of work since January of 2010.

I got on pretty well with the folks at the University, and decided perhaps a teaching job for a year or so would give me some breathing space while I am trying to set up the NGO I have in mind. I am running into a couple snags re: Afghanistan. The first, and most obvious, is that the whole country, except for Kabul, is so very unstable. I try to be philosophical about it. I certainly don't have a death wish or anything, but I guess I figure that if something happened to me, I have already lived longer than James Fraser, who designed the alphabet for the Lisu tribesmen in Yunnan, or Samuel Pollard, who designed the alphabet for the Miao (which is still being used today).

But if I were to take some Chinese young people to Afghanistan and one of them got hurt, I would feel really bad. I know that there are no guarantees in life, but I really do need to try to develop a plan that ensures a reasonable measure of security.

The other issue is that I don't know a soul in Afghanistan. That doesn't really stop me, because you have to get acquainted somehow. I didn't know a soul when I came to Beijing, either. The difference is that when I came to Beijing, I had a job. Got of the plane and was taken to my apartment. I have never spent a night in a hotel in Beijing. That would not be the case if I went to Afghanistan without knowing anyone. The countryside of Afghanistan may be inexpensive, but you really can't travel alone as a westerner in the countryside of Afghanistan these days. You can do it in China. China is a relatively stable society. But Afghanistan is not. Even in Kabul, you can't just stay anywhere. You need to be conscious of security, and that costs money.

So, it seems that I have to hold off on going there for a few months or years. Waiting. So much of life is about waiting.

Bible vs Quran

2011-09-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

Started our Quran/Bible study again last night. My good friend just got back from Kuwait and sent me a text message saying he wanted to start our study again.

I was in the Arabian restaurant last spring with some friends from church, when one of the owners asked me if I could teach him about the Bible. I told him that I would teach him the Bible if he would teach me the Quran, so we are doing a comparative study of the Book of Genesis. Earlier this summer, he had to go back to Kuwait to tend to his family. He told me that he was also going to visit a mystic in Oman, who was going to teach him some things, including the deal where you draw a line in the sand, and when you step over it, you're in another place. When he left, he said, "If things work out, I may be coming back to visit you, but I won't need a ticket." So when I got his text message, I said, "Did you come back on an airplane, or did you find some other way?" He responded that he took a plane this time, because the other way is not going to be as easy to learn as what he had thought. I can imagine.

Studying with him is very helpful, because he has iQuran on his phone, so he can instantly find the Quran equivalent for the stories we are going through in Genesis. At any rate, we have a lot of interesting discussions. I bought an English language Quran one time, but I have never really studied it.

Bad News

2011-09-01T19:55:00.000-07:00

Really bad news. They paved the road going from the bus yard to my village. I live out in the western hills now, where Mao and the Red army were holed up before they took Beijing in the fall of '49. The whole area is now part of Fragrant Hills Park, and it is a national treasure. Mao's office and the place where he stayed is a little museum. The place where Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De (Mao's general), and Ren Bishi camped out is all boarded up now, but I have managed to get in there a few times just to see what it looks like. The East Gate of the park is about a fifteen minute walk from where I live. Before I moved out here, I used to visit Fragrant Hills Park about once a year. It was pretty, but a bit unpleasant because so crowded. It's different when you live here, because you can get there early. If I can be at the East Gate by 6 am, and climb right up to the trail half-way up the mountain, I can just about have the whole place to my self. Or I go there in the evening when it is starting to get dark. Everybody is leaving and it is quiet and peaceful.

Fortunately, although my village is close to the park (as is the bus terminal) it is not between the bus terminal and the park; it is off to the side. The result of this is that during the busy tourist season, tens of thousands of people pass within a few hundred yards of where I live, but no one ever ventures down the dusty road to my village. There would be no reason to; it doesn't go anywhere. So even though my village is not that far from the city (takes about 45 minutes to an hour on the bus to reach Wudaokou), it is actually quite remote. In some ways, I might as well be on the top of a mountain in Shanxi Province living in a Yaodong (earth cave). The young daughter of the folks who run the little produce market next door was just a toddler when I moved out here. Whenever she saw me, she would start laughing, and then cover her face and start screaming. She was so overwhelmed she couldn't decide which emotion to express. She literally didn't know how to respond to the strange apparition standing before her. Her mother worked with her quite a bit to help her get used to me, and now she is quite friendly and playful. But my point is that the remoteness of this village, in spite of the fact that it is not far from Beijing, and is, in fact, within the boundaries of the Haidian District, has resulted in my village remaining a quiet, Saturday morning kind of place, in spite of the frenzied growth in the more central areas of the city.

But that's all over now. This is China. Paved roads draw big black cars like a magnet does iron filings. Paved road. Better drive on it. You know how that goes. Once a few rich people in their big black cars get a chance to see the peaceful tranquility of this place, they will be bringing their friends. Pretty soon, the tour companies will catch on, and one after another they will be scheduling seven hour tours to South Hardship Village. In one sense, it's not as bad as I'm making it sound, because the first three hours and the last three hours will be spent shopping for trinkets at a souvenir shop somewhere, but even one hour in this village--well, you know, with 1.3 billion people, it adds up after awhile.

And as if that weren't enough, wait 'till it shows up on Google Earth. You know how that goes. Paved road. Must lead somewhere. Backpackers the world over will be fighting to come here and experience the quiet peacefulness of this remote village. And the growing numbers won't dissuade others, either. When you look at Google Earth, you're not seeing a picture of a village taken just yesterday. You're looking at a picture that was taken right after the road was paved, before all the people started to show up. So they will just keep coming. I can see it now. Before long, there will be a youth hostel on every corner, and bars all over the place. When I step out on my balcony and night and gaze at the southern sky, I won't see Orion. I'll see the bright lights of the revelry below me. And I won't hear crickets chirping. How could I, with the loud music coming from the bars blaring in my ear?

And rent will be sky high. I rented this little place for 700 RMB a month when I moved out here last year. It has already gone up since I have been here. My landlady let me know by telling me quietly, "If my husband is here, you must pay me 800, but I will give you 100 back later." It's simple now. No lease--I just pay my rent month by month. If I forget, the landlady doesn't get angry. She just makes me a plate of jiaozi. I think she's beginning to think I forget on purpose just to get the jiaozi. Not far from the truth, because her jiaozi is pretty good. But after the crowds get here, the place will probably be confiscated by some corrupt official and sold to the highest bidder. I better just go ahead and say goodbye to my neighbors now. I can't afford to live in a resort hotel for 10,000 RMB a night.

I've always known it was going to get bad. The subway is supposed to be out here by 2014. But somehow I had hoped to delay the urban sprawl as long as possible. Now there's no hope. Oh, China! I knew this was too good to be true.

2011-08-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

Last night I woke abruptly to the sound of someone prowling around in my pantry, which is really just an entryway between the outside and my bedroom. The light was on and a lady appeared to be looking for something. I jumped out of bed and blurted out, in English, "What are you doing in here?" I was greeted with a sight that was as absurd as it was comical. My landlady was standing on the balcony looking in the window. A slender woman who turned out to be one of my neighbors, had been recruited by my landlady to squeeze herself through the porch window. My landlady told me that there was water coming through the ceiling down below, and they were convinced it was coming from my apartment. I quickly pulled my pants on and let her in so she could check my toilet.

2011-08-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

I was talking with a young lady this evening who thought she was too thin. She was trying to get some advice on how to deal with the problem.

"How do you gain weight?"

"Well, I don't really work on gaining weight."

"But see the achievement you've made!"

I assured her it was effortless.

China and Mission

2011-08-04T19:44:00.000-07:00

Had lunch with Rose and Titus today. I wanted to share with them my thoughts about the mission I am contemplating to Afghanistan. But while I am concerned about the two million children in Afghanistan who have no education, I am also concerned about the situation in China that makes it difficult for Chinese young people to get involved in mission activities. In America, there are many non-profit mission agencies that facilitated the involvement of young people in addressing both spiritual and practical needs in some part or other of the world. In China, organizations like this just don't exist. There are some non-profits. But relatively few, and none that I know of that are set up to help church groups to get involved in international missions.

I had thought about the possibility of visiting some family churches in the countryside to get a feel for what interest there might be on the part of young people in family churches. But Rose and Titus told me I was not likely to find young people with the kinds of skills I am looking for in the countryside. I guess they are probably right. After some thought about it, I may not need to go to the countryside anyway. Everybody talks about how the countryside is littered with family churches, but I have heard estimates that there may be as many as 3000 family churches right here in Beijing.

Shandong

2011-07-27T21:50:00.000-07:00

Finally back in Beijing. Sunday the driver for the foster home picked me up in Linyi (in Shandong Province) and took me to my friends' home. They have a foster home for 35 handicapped children. Their home is in the countryside, so it is a very pleasant rural location. These kids are pretty lucky. The orphanages they come from are glad to let them go, because they are still registered as being cared for by the orphanage, so the orphanage gets the money from the government. But the orphanage is not actually putting out any money for their care.

Steve is from California. His father was an Assembly of God pastor. His wife is from Shandong Province. I first met them when they were involved in the Living Tree, a foster home on the east side of Beijing. Now they have moved to the countryside, which is a really nice environment for the kids.

The staff there are all Christians. Every morning at 6 am they meet for devotions and prayer. In the evening, they have a group Bible reading. Most of them are from the neighborhood. Hard to find a neighborhood in China that doesn't have a family church or two nearby.

Yesterday I caught a ride to Rizhao with a youth group that had stopped to visit the foster home. I wanted to go to Rizhao, because I figured since it is the originating station for the train that goes to Beijing, it might be easier to get a sleeper ticket. The guy who took me to the train station was horrified when I told him I didn't have a ticket yet. I explained to him that I had no way to get one, and if they didn't have sleeper tickets, I would just have to take what I could get, because I really needed to get back to Beijing. Fortunately, they had added an extra car to the train just before I walked into the station, so they had a few sleeper tickets available. Relief. I don't like the hard seats. It isn't that the seat is so uncomfortable. The problem is that they sell a whole bunch of standing tickets for the same car, so even if you do have a seat, it is absolutely impossible to move.

2011-07-21T18:47:00.000-07:00

Minnie has been so nice to me the past couple days. The youth hostel really was full, but she managed to find a cheap hotel for me. At a nice one, too. When I first came to China, "cheap hotel" usually meant an old, run down place in a bad neighborhood that wasn't supposed to accept foreigners. But recently, I have started to see these new places that are clean and new, but come with a number of very tiny rooms for a bargain price. Because of the standards of cleanliness, they are also approved for foreigners. The price isn't quite as good as a youth hostel, but not that bad. The rooms don't come equipped with broadband, but they do have a few computers in the lobby for patrons to use. I wasn't looking forward to that--I'm spoiled, I guess. If I use a computer in a lobby to check my email, I have to go to the web sites for my email accounts one at a time and log in. I am used to just opening up Outlook, and watching it all come in automatically. I don't like web email. But it's not just that. My files are not readily accessible if I use a strange computer. So, when I got to my room, I did what I always do in a new place. I opened my computer and did a search. By God's good mercy, someone in the neighborhood had an unsecured router, so I have been able to use the Internet from my room.

But I have had lots of trouble getting a ticket. As soon as I got in on Tuesday, I went to the ticket window to try to buy a sleeper ticket to Beijing. No luck. Minnie mentioned that she had sometimes been able to find cheap air tickets to Shandong, so I got the idea of going to visit some friends who live there. Shandong is not that far from Beijing. But when I checked, the place where they live is quite a distance from the city Minnie mentioned. This morning, I decided to go to the other train station, and I was able to buy a sleeper ticket to a town not far from where my friends live in Shandong. When I got back to the hotel, there was a message from Minnie telling me that the next available ticket to Beijing is one from Shenzhen on the 8th of August. She urged me to go and get one right away. I called her and told her that I had a ticket to Shandong Province. Hard sleeper tickets are not expensive. So basically, I paid for my trip to Guanzhou by doing this. The problem is that when I get off the train on Sunday, I will not be home. I will be somewhere in the middle of Shandong Province. We'll just have to wait and see if that turns out to have been a good idea.

Guangzhou

2011-07-18T23:44:00.000-07:00

Bought a ticket on the through train to Guangzhou. I am in Hong Kong now. I got a one year multiple-entry tourist visa a year ago in San Francisco. It expires July 21st. Sort of. Actually, with a multiple-entry tourist visa, you are limited to 60 days, 90 days, or 120 days each stay. Mine is 90. So the visa doesn't actually say "Expires July 21, 2011," it says, "Enter before July 21st 2011." So I decided to leave China and go back in just before the 21st, which will give me an extra 90 days to decide what I am going to do with my life.

But I hadn't anticipated the level of demand for tickets. For the first time in my life I was unable to buy a train ticket to Hong Kong. I finally got a ticket on the slow train to Shenzhen, which is not too much different, because the train station is right at the border. But now I am trying to go back. I had thought of stopping to see Minnie in Guangzhou but decided against it, because the youth hostel in Guangzhou had no openings. Same with the youth hostel in Shenzhen. But now I just found out that there is only one ticket on the train from Hong Kong to Beijing, and it is a soft sleeper ticket. Those things are expensive. The extra cost would easily pay for my ticket to Guangzhou, and a couple nights in the youth hostel. So I bought a ticket on the through train to Guangzhou and decided to take my chances on getting a bed at the youth hostel, even though they are telling me they're full. Surely at least one person will cancel out.

2011-07-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

Fascinating editorial in the China Daily today. Seems the Chinese government is up in arms about news that the Americans may have developed a way to make it possible for Chinese people to connect to the Internet without using local infrastructure. I am skeptical, but what caught my attention is this sentence:

"It is feared that the product will be used to help dissidents in countries where governments have strong control over cyberspace."

It is feared? Feared by whom? Certainly not the netizens of China. I never heard any of them expressing their terror over having easier access to information.

This is entertaining. China is terrified that someone may invent a way for Chinese people to get around the Great Firewall of China, thus making it harder for the Chinese government to control the flow of information. I have news for them. It's already happening, and it isn't being done from outside. China's increasingly restrictive policies have motivated enterprising Chinese young people to look for workarounds. The Great Firewall is slowly eroding, and there is nothing China can do about it.

Except deny it. A government official recently made a complete fool of himself by saying that "Supervision and management of ideology and new media in Western countries is far stricter than that in our China." He was promptly pilloried online by young Chinese Internet users, who openly mocked his comments.

Point at a Deer and Call it a Horse

2011-07-01T22:33:00.000-07:00

指鹿为马. It means, "Point at a deer and call it a horse."

Full two-page spread in the China Daily today giving a timeline, with comment and pictures of the history of the Chinese Communist Party. I was drawn to this statement:

At the crucial juncture of China's reform and opening-up course in January 1992, Deng Xiaoping tours southern China where he delivers speeches aimed at clarifying whether the establishment of special economic zones is capitalist or socialist in nature. After a visit to Shenzhen, he says Shenzhen's achievements are socialist not capitalist in nature, as they have improved productivity and people's livelihoods. His words help push forward China's reform and opening-up in the 1990s.

So here's how it goes in China: You implement a socialist system, condemning capitalism as evil. When socialism proves to be a dismal failure, you implement capitalism, but call it socialism. This approach to governance in China goes back to the Qin Dynasty, when an evil minister, in order to test the loyalty of his underlings, brought a deer before them and told them to call it a horse. In China, it has become a standard idiom, that manifests itself in so many ways.

When I first came to China, my freshmen students asked me, "What is the difference between socialism and capitalism?" I would answer by asking them a question:

"If you have a company, do you think you should own it, or would you rather have the government own it and you just work for them?"

There answers were predictable. "I think I should own it." Then I would tell them, "Then you're a capitalist. If you think the government should own it, you're a socialist." I would often tell them to go to www.dictionary.com and look up the two words. The definitions are quite simple:

Socialism: Public ownership of the means of production

Capitalism: Private ownership of the means of production.

The reason for the confusion, of course, is that students look around them and see capitalism, but they are told it is socialism. So naturally, they ask, "If this is socialism, what is capitalism." I had to tell them, "This isn't socialism. Your grandparents had socialism. This is capitalism."

This is the irony of today's China. It is not politically correct to actually believe and teach Marxist philosophy. But it is also not politically correct to publicly admit that we no longer believe what Marx taught. So we continue to "point at a deer and call it a horse."

Human Rights

2011-06-23T23:25:00.000-07:00

The Communist Party of China is 90 years old, and this summer is dedicated to celebration of the event. As part of it's propaganda surrounding the anniversary, China Daily published an interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn. One statement stands out. It is his response to the question of human rights:

Here is the social contract from the perspective of China's leaders. The economic human rights to a decent standard of living and the social human rights to personal and social freedoms of more than 1.3 billion people are more important than the unfettered political human rights of a relatively few people. In order for China to continue its remarkable development, and to continue to increase the personal and social freedoms of its people, political stability is required. There can be no progress without stability, and instability, which China endured throughout much of the horrific 20th century, both imposed by foreigners and severely self-generated, has been a national scourge. Political stability requires a one-party system, which itself requires limitations of certain political rights, such as assembly, and restrictions of media freedoms, namely, political debate. Yet, today, the Chinese people have more personal and social freedoms than at any time in their 5,000-year history.

This really is the bottom line with China. The good of the masses takes precedence over the rights of a few rabble-rousers. Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a paid consultant for the Chinese government, so one would expect him to say something that makes China feel good. But there is some merit in this argument. So many times in today's China, you see people fighting for the right to complain about the lack of freedom to complain. Still, the greater freedom does not negate the importance of speaking up for those who are victims of China's progress.

It is true that, in fact, people in China have a lot more freedom than they had before. But there are areas that do need reform. Particularly important among those is criminal practice. Judges are not independent in China. The problem is that the ones who are crying the loudest don't seem to be fighting for the rights of the poor and downtrodden. They appear, rather, to be fighting for their right to fight. When David was fighting Goliath, his classic statement was "is there not a cause (1 Samuel 17:29)?" There is widespread corruption in China today. Poor people in the countryside are often the victims of that corruption. But who is speaking out for them?

South China Sea

2011-06-15T22:03:00.000-07:00

Lots of talk about the growing military strength of China, and China's approach to disputed claims in the South China Sea. An editorial in the China Daily today gives the arguments for China's claim to the Spratly Islands (called "Nansha" by China).

In my opinion, the most important fact relative to the conflict (the islands are claimed by several countries), is the potential of large petroleum reserves in the area of the islands. This is true not only of the Spratly Islands, but the Senkaku Islands (called Diaoyutai by China) now governed by Japan. So, again, we have a group of islands that no one seemed to want until it was discovered that they may contain sizable oil reserves, after which everyone wanted them.

I don't know enough about the history to have a strong opinion about which country should be considered the rightful owner in this latest dispute. What is more interesting to me, is the way China comes out looking like the bully regardless of the situation. After all, China is not wrong about everything. But China comes out looking wrong even when her case is strong. A classic example of this is the case of the American spy plane that collided with a PLA fighter plane and was forced to land on Hainan Island.

I have often said that China should bring Kissinger over here and have him teach them a thing or two about how to do diplomacy. Diplomacy is something the Chinese do not do very well. Over and over again, their actions produce results that are quite clearly the opposite of what they attended. In 1996, when the KMT on Taiwan was facing a serious challenge from a party that openly advocated Taiwan independence, the Chinese fired a missile over Taiwan just before the election as a "warning." Not surprisingly, the pro-independence candidate was elected. China's behaviour was pure gold as far as he was concerned.

In 2001, a US spy plane collided with a Chinese air force plane that, according to the Americans, had been harassing the large spy plane, trying to drive it away. The Chinese pilot's actions were very risky and dangerous, and ultimately resulted in a collision, and his death. The Chinese came out with a statement that the spy plane had veered toward the Chinese plane, The pilot of the American spy plane insisted that the spy plane was on auto pilot at the time of the collision. The American pilot's statement was confirmed by all available evidence. The Chinese statement looked for all the world like a classic Chinese denial, and the collision took place in international air space. China clearly lost the PR war. But James McGregor (One Billion Customers) says that a senior government official who had spent time both in the State Department and the Defense Department told him that what the Americans were actually doing was to violate Chinese air space deliberately at key points to test the Chinese air defense system. Basically, they were looking for blank spots that could be used in the event of a war with China.

What is the appropriate response when an enemy spy plane has invaded your air space? You call them up and say, "We really want to get along with you guys, but if you enter our air space again, we're going to take you out of the sky." If China had done that, and then shot down the plane, there would have been an uproar (of course), and China would look like a monster. At first. Eventually, though, the ensuing investigation would reveal the truth, and the detail just mentioned, which is now known by very few people, would be known by everyone, and Donald Rumsfeld would have taken the hit instead of China. As I said, China doesn't know how to do diplomacy.

China's "petulant child" approach to diplomacy has meant that even as she is building up her military and becoming more powerful, the military alliances lining up against her are also increasing. It's not a good formula for peace.

2011-06-14T23:01:00.000-07:00

Met a school girl this morning who must have seen me before, because she said, "It's been a long time." She's a shy kid--I walked right by her and she didn't say anything. Then I heard her mother say, "Talk to him," so she came up along side me and said that she hadn't seen me for a long time. I didn't really remember her, but that doesn't mean anything, because I meet lots of people who seem to know me quite well, but I can't remember ever meeting them.

I think the kid's mother wanted her to practice her English with me or something, but that wasn't going to happen, because the she didn't speak English, except to say, "My name is..."

As we entered the park, her mother was walking ahead of us. Every once in awhile, she would yell back a question.

"Ask him how long he has been here."

"Ask him how old he is."

After awhile her mother told her to ask me if I liked music. I could see what was coming, so I said, "Not while I'm hiking. I prefer to listen to the birds." I had a feeling this was going to get rather annoying, but fortunately, her mom dropped behind as we started to ascend the slope. The little girl was a chatter box, but she was speaking clear, lucid Mandarin, not some countryside dialect, so it wasn't too hard to keep up with her. After awhile, we came to a pavilion, and the little girl suggested we stop for a rest. I gathered that this is where she usually stopped to wait for her mother. I didn't complain, because the kid was energetic and walking fast, and I didn't mind a chance to catch my breath. Besides, she was a pleasant kid. She asked me what my favorite TV program was, so I gave her the name of a popular local sitcom that I sometimes use for language practice. She said, "Oh, I like that one too," and started telling me all about it.

After a few minutes, Mom showed up with her boom box blaring. I asked which way they were going and informed them that I was heading the other direction, which was true, actually. I don't know...I guess you have to let each person choose their own way of doing things, but it is really frustrating to be hiking out in nature and suddenly hear a lot of amplified noise that drowns out everything else. I think the problem is that Chinese people are so accustomed to the cacophony of urban life, that when they encounter the wonderful quiet of a cypress forest, they feel uncomfortable.

US public prefers parochial view of world

2011-06-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

Read with interest Li Xing's glowing review of the Chinese media in the China Daily last Friday. The gist of her article is that American news media outlets tend to focus on domestic news, because that is the only thing Americans are interested in. Although her criticism may seem a bit extreme, since national news outlets in the US do discuss international events, it must be admitted that there is a lot of truth to what she says, especially for someone who has had the opportunity to compare American news services (she refers specifically to television) with what is available on CCTV. Viewed from that perspective, I tend to agree with her, because I do watch CCTV 9, the 24 hour English Channel.

As I mentioned in a post a couple weeks ago, there is a misconception among foreigners in China regarding Chinese news outlets. Some seem to be under the impression that every news report they see in China is propaganda dictated from the highest echelons of the Party. In fact, much of the time, even government news outlets are left alone to do their job, as long as they do not present reports that portray the Communist party negatively. CCTV is a very high dollar outfit, which the Party keeps handy to use for its purposes. But this means that if you are watching news about something going on in other parts of the world, the coverage can actually be quite good.

The problem in China though, is that local news is quite limited. China is great at reporting about what is happening on the other side of the world, as a distraction from what is happening here in China. Most notable recently is the blocking of any mention of the protests in Inner Mongolia. Go to any Chinese media outlet web site, and do a search for any news about the Inner Mongolia protests last week. Nothing. These protests are profoundly significant, because they are the most volatile protests in 30 years, and because Mongolians are usually held up as an example of a minority that generally gets along quite well with the idea of being Chinese, while still retaining their cultural identity. But news about these protests is completely unreported in the Chinese media. This is a very common occurrence in China. In China I have actually been told, "If I want to know what is going on in my country, I need to ask a foreigner." Chinese people tend to be the last to know about what is going on in China.

But it isn't just local news. CCTV does have some very informative news reports about news in other countries. But it also puts out misinformation when it is ordered to do so by the Party. And they don't announce it. In all the years I have been in China, I have never heard an announcement like "We interrupt our newscast to bring you some misinformation from the Communist Party." They just sort of slip it in and hope you don't notice. For example, several years ago, when China was going through a "hate Japan" phase, I was watching CCTV and there was a report on the buildup of the Japanese military. Those of you who know the history will know that, in fact, Japan doesn't have a military. It was proscribed by the constitution MacArthur wrote for the Japanese people after World War II. Japan does have a defense force, but it is a rather docile outfit. I suppose the CCTV propagandists felt that if they showed an actual clip of the Japanese defense force, it would not inflame emotions the way they wanted, so they slipped in some footage of the North Korean army. You can imagine my bemusement. I'm listening to a report on the buildup of the Japanese "military," while the North Korean army is goose stepping across the screen. You might wonder how they thought they could get by with that. I suppose they figured they had kept the average viewer ignorant enough so that they wouldn't know the difference. They would have to have been quite ignorant indeed, because the North Korean army has a very distinctive uniform. It doesn't look at all like the Japanese defense force. But, sad as it is to say, I would venture that the majority of viewers bought it hook, line, and sinker. Maybe that's why, when I tell people that I am from Japan, they often respond with "We hate Japanese." That hatred is very carefully crafted by China's government media, and swallowed whole by viewers who have been discouraged from thinking critically from the day they were born, and proceeding throughout their entire education.

So the two problems in China are lack of information, and misinformation. American viewers have the opposite problem. It is information overload. And that overload includes a very high dosage of trivia. Americans are so busy trying to find out which movie star is having an affair with whose husband, that they don't have time to even think about anything really important. So Americans tend to know a whole lot about really trivial stuff. American students are not discouraged from thinking critically the way Chinese students are. They would never tolerate the propaganda foolishness that Chinese people take for granted. But the problem with Americans is that they are never really required to think at all. So Americans also do not tend to think critically. This is why I have often said that the two most ignorant groups of young people I encounter are Chinese young people and American young people. The Chinese are ignorant because they always have only half the story (if that)--the half the Party wants them to have. And Americans are ignorant because they have very independent ideas, but precious little truly important information. News outlets in America are largely driven by advertising, so they publish what the people with the most money want to read or see. News outlets in China are not all controlled by the Party. There are many independent news outlets that are not required to publish Party propaganda. But the Party can and does order them not to contradict the Party line, and also forbids them from publishing articles relative to certain issues the Party does not want the people to know about (such as the current unrest in Inner Mongolia).

Now, that having been said, I do watch CCTV. I like being able to walk in and turn on the TV to get a quick news report. When I first moved out here to the village, I thought perhaps I would not get a TV. But I found that I missed CCTV, so I finally got a small 13 inch TV. I don't watch it a lot, but I do like having it available. And it's a refreshing reprieve from the information overload and incessant advertising of American television. But you do need to watch it critically.

And I buy the China Daily every day. The China Daily has some fascinating feature articles about ordinary people in China. I say "ordinary," but in fact, many of them are actually quite extraordinary. When it comes to national and international news, however, China Daily is rather pathetic, except for the reports from international wire services. There are "debates" in the China Daily, and they are announced as "debates" in big letters to show that China allows "debate," but the "debates" are sterile and boring, because they can never touch anything political. You would absolutely NEVER see a debate about the merits of allowing Tibet to be independent, or whether or not China has a right to take Taiwan by force. Never. You see debates like, "Should apartment buildings in South China be equipped with hot water radiators like the apartment buildings in North China?" But this is reasonably easy for we foreigners to live with, because we have so many other ways to get information, and it is easy for Chinese people to live with, because if you've never been allowed to think for yourself, you wouldn't know what you were missing.

Li Congjun, president of the Xinhua News Agency, wrote an interesting OP-ED piece on this subject for the Asia Wall Street Journal the other day. His article complains about the imbalance in the flow of information between East and West (much more information flows from West to East than from East to West), and suggests "negotiation" to address this problem. He talks about establishing international "rules" that will correct the imbalance. Reading between the lines, what he seems to want is for the Western media to place more control on their output, so that China's media controls won't look so obvious. This will help the international media to become an "active force for promoting social progress." It's not going to happen, Mr. Li. The purpose of the media is not social engineering. It is about allowing the free flow of information, so that free citizens can make informed decisions. What Mr. Li doesn't say, is that a big part of the imbalance of the flow of information from West to East has to do with news about China.

Zhao Ziyang was the premier who refused to approve the Tiananmen Massacre. He was very influential in introducing economic reforms in China, and had a lot to do with the initial opening up of China after the Cultural Revolution. But he fell out of favor with Deng Xiaoping, because he refused to approve the slaughter of young people at Tiananmen. He was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Zhao Ziyang died in January of 2005. I remember reading about it in the Wall Street Journal at the coffee bar. There was lots of information about what Zhao Ziyang had done for China (in terms of economic reforms), along with several editorials concerning the state of reform in the Country. After reading and mulling over this information for a couple hours over a cup of coffee, I walked out into the street and bought a copy of the China Daily. The sum total of everything the China Daily had to say about Zhao Ziyang's passing was encapsulated in one terse article. The one statement that caught my attention was

In the political turbulence which took place in the late spring and early summer of 1989, Comrade Zhao committed serious mistakes.

What mistakes? And mistakes according to whose judgment? Chinese young people are not allowed to ask questions like that.

This was not [supposed to be] an editorial. It was a regular "news" report. But this is my problem with China Daily. Articles in the China Daily read like they were written by middle school students who still don't know the difference between an editorial and a news report. Blatant editorializing in "news" articles is so common, one wonders how in the world those kids ever made it through journalism school. I have no idea. As a consolation, there are usually several articles from international wire services, which are written by professional journalists according to Western standards of journalism.

One of the most famous pictures of Tiananmen is the picture of Zhao Ziyang going to the Square to warn the students that the Politburo had decided to bring in the tanks. Standing just behind him in the picture is his young assistant, who, of course, is Wen Jiabao, the current premier. Naturally, I was very interested to hear what sort of tribute Wen might pay to his former boss during the period of his passing. Nothing. Not a whisper. I was absolutely dumbfounded. Sometimes I think China is a very strange country. Li Congjun seems to hope that western media outlets would impose some of this strangeness on themselves so that China's strangeness would seem less horrifying. God forbid.

China is changing. The government's decision to block Facebook during the Xinjiang trouble has spawned a silent revolution, particularly among young people. When I first came to China, young people seemed to be mainly uninterested in seeking access to web sites that were blocked. But the blocking of Facebook and Youtube changed that. There has been an explosion of VPN's among Chinese young people. Go to Google or Baidu and type in "VPN," and you'll see what I mean.

Last night, I went to the prayer meeting at church. One of the items we were praying about was the autonomous regions of China. I mentioned the trouble in Inner Mongolia, which resulted in a scene I have seen played out over and over again in the years I have been in China--intelligent, educated professional people plying me with questions, trying to find out what was going on in their own country. It is a scene you cannot quite imagine if you have never lived in China.

Shouwang Church (Part Three)

2011-05-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

I went to a small family church this morning near Wudaokou. I had been interested in going there for some time. After the service, I had a talk with the pastor. I asked him what he thought about Shouwang Church. I told him that I thought the fact that they had allowed their "house church" to grow to 1000 members was what was causing them so much trouble. The pastor told me that he did not believe that was the issue. He told me that there are other family churches in the Beijing area that also have very large numbers, and they have not had trouble. He seemed to feel that the Shouwang Church's "in your face" approach had more to do with why they were having problems..

He's probably right, at least partly. One of the other family churches that is very large is composed of business people who are using private business property as their meeting place. The Shouwang church has purchased a place as a church organization. In other words, they are operating as a mega-church in a place that requires churches to be registered, but without registering. Put another way, they were operating in a manner that would have effectively forced the government to essentially abandon the policy. Their position was completely unrealistic. The pastor said that they were not breaking any laws, but this statement is a bit hollow, because they certainly were violating the government policy re: family churches, and they were doing it quite deliberately.

I am conflicted about all this, because even though I don't like mega-churches, I really don't think it's the government's business to decide how large a church should be. Mega-churches tend to be impersonal, and they basically throw scriptural principles like church discipline to the wind, because they have let themselves get so large that it is logistically impossible for them to follow through with those principles. Mega-churches do not facilitate the development of Christianity in a community nearly as well as smaller, more family oriented churches. Mega-churches tend to promote development of a "program oriented" Christianity. But again, what business is it of the government to make decisions like this?

Although there seems to be a consensus among family church pastors that the Shouwang Church people placed themselves in an untenable situation, to their credit, several of those family church leaders signed a letter of support for Shouwang Church. We'll see how much good it does. For the sake of the Shouwang Church members, I do feel some anguish. But for the sake of the church as a whole in China, this situation only serves to underscore the tremendous growth the unofficial church has enjoyed--unregistered churches in Beijing have to have several hundred members before the police can even think about shutting them down.

CBD Bible Study

2011-05-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

Started a new Bible Study in Guomao recently. As luck would have it, there was an artist in the crowd. Not sure it quite does me justice, but I was amused.

Ever since I have come to Beijing I have seen a pattern that concerns me somewhat. Young people who go to University in the university district (Haidian) move to the Central Business District after they graduate. They always tell me that they are going to keep coming back to Haidian Church every Sunday, but all to often, they just disappear. So I decided to have a Bible study in that area two times a month. It helps me to see people on a regular basis that I don't usually see very often. Professional people in Beijing are very often quite fluent in English--several of these folks work for international companies. But due to the religious restrictions in China, there are only about "Three Self (registered)" churches in Beijing. But there are probably several thousand family churches. But these churches are all Chinese, and many young professional would prefer to have something in English. There are quite a number of those kinds of Bible studies in China these days, but most of them are on or near university campuses.

2011-05-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

Heart-rending story in today's paper about a woman who's husband urged a divorce on her because he could no longer support her due to his illness. She remarried but required her new husband to accept her continued care for her first husband. So now she takes care of two families.

This story reflects the nose-to-the-grindstone realism of countryside people in China. It tends to be the theme of Zhang Yimou's old movies (before he joined the martial arts craze). The characters in those movies deal with the trials of life by suffering through them.

Shouwang Church (continued)

2011-05-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in the South China Morning Post this am about the Shouwang Church. The article was pretty well written, in contrast to much of what I read about China in the western media. I don't know..perhaps it isn't completely accurate to call the South China Morning Post "western media," since it is indigenous to Hong Kong. Yet, that is precisely why it tends to be viewed as such. It has never been under the strictures of China's communist regime, and the media controls that we are all so familiar with when it comes to papers published in mainland China.

I am back in Hong Kong again. News is a bit different here. I guess I should be more specific. News about China is different here. China's CCTV is a very well funded outfit. So there are many very informative programs. I find CCTV quite useful, actually. It is not true that Chinese media outlets are mere mouthpieces for the Communist Party. I rather think the party keeps itself quite removed from what goes on in the media most of the time. The problem is that in China everything is under the party. So if the party wants to use a given government media outlet as a mouthpiece, they do so at will. Notice I said, "government" media outlet. In today's China, there are many media outlets that are not government outlets. They cannot be used as mouthpieces for the party. So it is perhaps not accurate to say that they are "controlled" by the party. But even the media outlets that are not owned by the government are still regulated by the government. There are limits to what they can say, and if they violate those limits, they will pay the price.

There is one statement in the article with which I might argue a bit. The article refers to "clandestine" house churches. This is a common view that seems to be reflected in stuff you read about the house churches in China. In fact, although they don't tend to advertise their presence openly, it is not accurate to call them "secret." They used to be. There was indeed a time in the history of New China when house churches met in secret so as not to be discovered by the authorities. But that time has passed. House churches are not illegal in China, as mentioned previously.

I am a bit conflicted by this whole issue. The government policy I mentioned the other day actually has a good affect on the church in China. But is it the government's business to decide how churches should be organized? So while it is right to point out that the Shouwang church is and has been violating a policy in a way that they always knew could get them into trouble, it is heartening, in a way, to see a group of people challenging that policy in a way that forces the discussion about how much the government gets to dictate to a given church how large they can be. This is going to be interesting to watch.

The King James Bible

2011-05-03T23:14:00.000-07:00

I have a task in the Task Scheduler that opens a hot link to my favorite Internet radio station every morning at 5 o'clock. This morning I woke to the news that I had missed a very important anniversary yesterday--the 400th birthday of the King James Bible. I cut my teeth on the King James Bible, so I was interested when I was reminded that the King James Bible was 400 years old this year. Seems the day passed without much fanfare. The King James Bible seems to be a forgotten book. Part of that, I guess, is becuase it is too hard to understand for speakers of modern English. King James grammar is a little hard to get used to if you are not familiar with it, and there are no courses you can take, as far as I know.

I never read the King James Bible exclusively, so I don't agree with those among the Fundamentalists who suggest that the King James is the only Bible we should be reading. I heard a song recorded by a popular Christian musician who said, "all I hath needed thy hand hath provided." It's like scratching on a chalkboard every time I listen to it (I have, he hath--just so you know). My point is that modern young people cannot be expected to like the King James. It's just not written in their language.

I got a lot of help during my middle school years from the Amplified Bible. Wore out two of them. And I read the old American Standard (1901) on e-sword now, because it is the only English language version that translates LORD correctly as "Jehovah." The distinction between Lord and LORD in most English versions is too subtle for most people. I would venture that most native speakers of English do not know the difference between the two words, because they are indistinguishable when read a loud, and the distinction is all but unnoticeable in print. The Bible I carry with me and use in Bible studies is the English Standard Version (actually a bilingual version with the Chinese). So I am not, and have never been a "King James only" type. But it must still be said that the King James version is a tremendous contribution to the English language. I have always said that the King James Bible is God's gift to the English speaking people. I don't know of any other language group that has a Bible of the same literary quality as the King James (except for the original Hebrew Old Testament).

Shouwang Church

2011-04-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, 160 members of Shouwang Church were arrested as they approached the outside meeting area they had chosen for their assembly after they were not allowed to occupy the meeting place they had purchased. In one sense, this is not really news, because churches in China are required to register, and this church was not registered. So it is not surprising. What really is news is that they have been allowed to accumulate some 1000 members before they had this kind of trouble.

Actually, that's not quite true. This is not their first brush with the "law." I use the term loosely, because I am not sure whether the policy requiring registration is actually law, or just Party policy. The church leaders insist they are not breaking the law. They may be right in a technical sense, because the National People's Congress is the "highest body of state authority," and I don't know that the Congress have ever passed a law that specifically restricts the size of religious meetings, especially the maximum size for religious meetings that don't need to be registered. But that's kinda irrelevant, because, as as Jiang Jinsong says in his book, The National People's Congress, in China, the party is over the State. So in China, what the party says supercedes law. So I'm not sure whether the policy came from the National People's Congress (law) or directly from the Party (edict). What is clear, though, is that the members of the Shouwang Church knew about the policy, and chose to violate it. Here is what the policy actually says:

There is no registration requirement for, to quote from Chinese Christians, "house services," which are mainly attended by relatives and friends for religious activities such as praying and Bible reading. [Official English version]

House churches take full advantage of this clause to set up home fellowships that are not registered. As long as the fellowship in question can be considered "family and a few friends," the police will not bother them. The problem, of course, is that if the church is successful, pretty soon you will have another family and a few more friends, and before long, the fellowship will exceed the limits of what can be considered a "house service." When this happens, the police will begin to take action to stop this development. Many churches respond to this action by splitting up and becoming two or more churches. In this way, you could argue that the policy actually promotes church growth in China. But other times, the fellowship in question will resist the pressure and just keep on growing and developing. At this point, it is up to the police to decide how they will respond. In some places in the countryside, the police take quite an active role in stopping the growth of these family churches, because they have clearly gone beyond what can be considered "relatives and friends." But in Beijing, and in some other cities, the police will often look the other way, as long as the unregistered fellowship is not too large, and especially as long as the fellowship is not being run by foreigners. I have been to several "family churches" which were actually informal, unregistered groups of Christian believers who had rented a meeting place, and were conducting church meetings on a regular basis. But since these fellowships have clearly grown beyond the limits of the policy, every city seems to have its own unofficial limit to how big a church group will be allowed to grow before the government gets involved. In Beijing, I would gernally say that a group of one hundred to two hundred people would probably not have too much trouble. In Wuhan, unofficial churches are generally allowed to get quite large, and actually have an open relationship with the police. They register in a more or less unofficial way and the police allow them to operate, as long as they comply with basic requirements for public meetings.

My first introduction to Shouwang Church was a couple years ago when I was asked to give a presentation about freedom of religion in China. A young lady came up to me after the presentation and asked me what I thought of this unofficial church that had just been shut down. I told her that they would probably disperse and then reemerge. I turned out to be partly right and partly wrong. They eventually did reemerge, but they had not really dispersed. They just kept getting bigger and bigger. If a church changes their location, they can sometimes elude the authorities, because they have moved to a different police district or something. But again, the Shouwang church as clearly grown beyond what the powers that be will tolerate from a church that is not registered. They have not accepted this yet. They even bought a meeting place. But the police have prevented them from moving into it.

Complex Problems, Simple Solutions

2011-04-10T22:59:00.000-07:00

Lush on a Sunday evening. I'm supposed to be studying my Chinese lesson, but I'm sitting here staring into space. It's a database problem. I am setting up a schema for my research at the National Library of China. Ordinarily one would think that the ISBN would be a good unique identifier for each book. But there are many old books at the National Library that do not have ISBN numbers. But they all have library bar codes, and the bar codes are simple and straightforward (not a combination of alpha and numeric values). So it's really easy to use the bar code as an identifier. The column data type can be set to "number," and you don't have to worry about how many characters need to be reserved for the column.

But I also read books that are not at the Natural Library. Almost all of them would have ISBN numbers, but they would not, of course, have National Library bar codes. So at first, I planned to set up two separate schemas. The problem with that is that every time I want to look for something, I have to do two separate searches. Of course, I could write the search code so that it joins the two queries together and searches both schemas at the same time. But since the schemas are identical in every respect except the bar code, it seems that there should be a way to combine them.

The solution I came up with is painfully simple. It goes with out saying that books from outside the library would need to use the ISBN as an identifier, since they don't have a library bar code. But even for books from the library, I want to have a column for the ISBN number, because I want to have access to that information for each book (in case I want to order a used copy online or something). So there will be a column for the bar code and a column for the ISBN number. The fields in the ISBN column can be null for those books in the library that do not have an ISBN, since the ISBN column is not used to join tables. But the fields in the "barcode" column cannot be left null for those books from outside the library that do not have a bar code, because the "barcode" column is the primary key, and a primary key column would not function properly if it contained null values. You would have lots of data anomalies. It would be more accurate to say that if the primary key contains null values, it is not a primary key, because the requirement of a primary key is that it uniquely identifies each record, which means that it cannot have null or non-unique values.

The solution is to use the ISBN as the bar code for those books that do not have a bar code. Solves the problem, and if I ever did want to separate them later, it would be easy to surgically remove those records:

select * from booklist where isbn=barcode;

It never ceases to amaze me how much time and thinking it takes me to come up with the most obvious simple solution.

OK, enough of the musings of a database guy. If you don't understand what you just read, just forget it and use Excel. Excel is not as versatile as a relational database, of course, but it is a good flat file database, and if you don't have too many records, you can live with the inefficiency. My reason for using a relational database comes down to scalability. Years ago, when I was doing a study of the Civil War, I was using an old DOS program called, "Electric Desk." I had accumulated some 1400 records. When you get that many, it's kinda hard to take a look at the whole table (what we call a "full table scan"). Electric Desk worked pretty well, but it did not follow the rules of normalization, and in the process of moving to Arizona, I lost the floppies I had it all stored on. I guess it doesn't matter much, because I don't even have a drive that would read them anymore, and, as far as I know, the software that would implement the data is now obsolete. I don't want that to happen again, so this time I determined to set up a relational database that would be both scalable, as to size and adaptable to future changes in software. Got the job done, thanks to God and E. F. Codd.

Spring

2011-04-04T22:55:00.000-07:00

Spring is coming to the Western Hills, now. I took the picture on the left on Valentine's Day, and the one on the right on my morning prayer walk early today. The seasons come and the seasons go, and how swiftly time time passes! It isn't all green yet, by any means. Lots of scrub left. But the buds are on the trees. It won't be long.

It's interesting, you know--in the fall of the year, there are times when I find myself wishing that the leaves would never fall from the trees. But when spring comes, I am always reminded that in my heart of hearts, I do prefer a four season climate. I think it keeps one more through all the unpredictable changes of life. The times they are always changing, and in ways we can seldom anticipate. But seedtime and harvest always come in their season.

If the old doesn't go, the new can't come.

2011-04-02T18:22:00.000-07:00

旧的不去, 新的不来. If the old doesn't go, the new can't come. That's the colloquial expression that was quoted to me when my laptop was stolen.

Downloaded the new e-sword software today. I have had e-sword on my computer for several years, but alas, my laptop was stolen. Fortunately, I had backed up my e-sword files. Actually, I wrote a batch file that backs them up for me. Then I went to the Task Scheduler in the Control Panel and created a task that executes the batch file once a day. The files are backed up to my Drop Box, which is backed up automatically online, so fortunately I didn't lose any data.

E-sword was designed by a software engineer by the name of Rick Myers. He created the application, made it available free of charge, with the only restriction being that it cannot be sold. I really respect people like him. They are doing something I would like to see a lot more of--presenting premium software as a public service.

With e-sword, all relevant data (study notes, topic notes, underlining, etc.) is stored in files in the e-sword directory. If you have taken the trouble to back up those files, restoration from a disaster is pretty simple. Just reinstall the software, open e-sword and make sure everything is working, then close it down again, go to the e-sword folder, paste the old backed up files in over the new, and when you open it up again, all your information will be there.

My problem was that I had neglected to save a copy of the software. Not a problem, ordinarily, except that e-sword has gone through a major upgrade, so the database is completely new, and all the file extensions have changed. You can't paste in the files from an old installation over files with new file extensions, because the new software will just ignore them. The files are useless by themselves. But when they are properly incorporated into the software, every verse you have underlined before is underlined in the new version. And every note you have taken magically appears whenever you click on the verse to which it refers. Fortunately, I was able to find a copy of the old software that I had burned on a CD to give to someone, so I installed that, put in my old files, and then installed the new update over the old.

I am not a fanatic about always having the latest software. New software often has glitches, and sometimes the new stuff is much more problematic than the old. This is especially true with Microsoft operating systems, but the principle applies to other stuff, too. To tell the truth, I was not that impressed with the previous upgrade of e-sword. In fact, at times I found myself wishing I hadn't upgraded. But this new version is really nice. It has a download manager, which is important, because there are plug-ins that you really need to install. None are required, but some are very important. Albert Barnes' commentaries used to be a shelf full of expensive books. Now it's a 20 minute plug-in for e-sword. I also like Clarke and I usually install J. N. Darby's commentaries as well. Matthew Henry is a little wordy, but he's a really nice guy, so I always install at least the Concise Commentary. Click on a verse, and you have your choice. Thayer's dictionary is useful for the New Testament, especially since you can reference the entries directly from the Strong's Numbers. You used to have to look up the words individually in Greek. Myers has also started incorporating old classics as e-books which can be installed as topic notes. Really handy. He's got Calvin's Institutes, which is an old classic of course, and I was happy to see that he also has Edersheim's Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.

And I didn't mention the new Bible versions. The King James is the default, of course, because of Strong's Concordance. But I have always installed the old ASV (American Standard Version from 1901, not the New American Standard, which came out in the Seventies), as well as the Chinese Version, and the English Standard Version, all of which are free plug-ins. Now he has added the old Geneva Bible (the Bible used by the Mayflower Pilgrims), as well as the Latin Vulgate, and he even has the Septuagint (ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, which predates the oldest Hebrew manuscripts we have available).

2011-03-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

Finally getting things put back together. My laptop was stolen a week ago while I was on the bus. The bus was really crowded, so I was standing just inside the front door. I had my briefcase with my laptop and books between my feet. A couple stops after I got on, someone stepped off the bus, grabbed my computer from between my feet and took off. It was dark, and I couldn't see anyone, and, you know how it is..you spend a couple seconds checking to see if it is anywhere near you, and then it's too late. I called the police and they came and brought me to the station so that I could file a report. Don't know what good it did, but I thought I should do something. Pretty useless, I'm afraid. The irritating thing is that the thief ended up getting an old laptop that has little, if any, market value. But I had it all set up, and it was very useful to me. I think I could have made it go another year or so.

My neighbor chided me, "You should always watch your things when you are on the bus!"

I said, "It was right between my feet!"

"You should never put it between your feet! You can't see it. Your belly is too big!"

I thought I would be without a machine for awhile, because I am not in the mood to go out and buy a new computer right now, but last Sunday, James brought his old Thinkpad to church for me to use. It's old, but my laptop was old, too, and this thing is in very good condition. God is good. His Name is not Jehovah-jireh for nothing.

The Flying Pig

2011-03-08T13:42:00.000-08:00

Sunny is a story teller. Her background is in Education, and she loves children. She feels most comfortable speaking her native language, so if you want to follow this one, you will need to brush up on your Mandarin. Join us on the Beijing Diary for an interesting visit with a warm-hearted performer and educator.

The Two Meetings of China

2011-03-07T13:27:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the Disanji Book Building was crawling with cops. We had to sign in just to enter the building. A bunch of us often go to the food court in the basement of the Disanji Building. The Disanji Book Company has actually moved out of the building. I don't know whether they went bankrupt, or just moved out because the rent was too high. So the building is practically empty. Didn't seem to justify the number of officers. There were cops all over the place. I asked one of them why there were so many police, and she said because of the two meetings (obviously the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference). It's that time of the year again. Still, I have been in Beijing for seven years, and I have never seen anything like this.

The BBC this morning gave me the answer. Apparently, there were messages sent out throughout China recruiting people to demonstrate. Somebody wants to foment a Middle East style protest in China. Not so easy to do here. The government intercepted the messages and sent police to all of the proposed demonstration areas. The government also announced that the effort would fail, because Chinese people want stability and are happy with their government. Government propaganda statements can be pretty nauseating, but this time it is pretty much true. Young people in today's China are focused on getting ahead. And for the most part, they have jobs. Not like Egypt, where the government poured lots of money into higher education to ensure that they had a large pool of professional people, and were then unable to get work for them.

Security is pretty tight around Beijing during March every year because of the two meetings. But it does seem to be a little tighter this year. I have never heard of them actually removing propellers to make sure that planes can't fly. Seems a bit extreme, doesn't it? I don't know. I remember when I first came to China, I was at BICF one Sunday, and I walked across the lawn that separates the Twenty-first Century Theater (where the church meets) to the Twenty-first Century Hotel (where the church library and offices were). There was some sort of officer standing in front of the building. Ignorant me, I thought he was a security guard or something. I nodded to him and kept right on going toward the door to the hotel lobby. He quickly put out his white gloved hand and said, very loudly, "NO!!" I guess every PLA officer knows at least one English word. The government had commandeered the hotel to use for the twin meetings that year, and they weren't allowing anyone else in. Well, I didn't want to get blown away, so I backed off rather quickly. Crossing a security guard is one thing. But if you're dealing with someone who has orders to shoot to kill, it's better not to press the matter.

Peking Union Medical College

2011-03-03T22:37:00.000-08:00

Took the subway to Dongdan today to see a doctor at the International Clinic at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital. I have been dealing with an inflammation of some kind on my foot since last summer. I wasn't sure what it was, so I wasn't giving it any treatment, since it didn't really hurt; it just looked red. But when it didn't go away, I started to apply a fungicide, even though I didn't think a fungus would develop on that part of my foot. Athlete's foot usually develops between your toes, not on the ball of your foot. When the fungicide didn't seem to work, I went to the clinic and got a drip. No real change. I decided to go back to the fungicide, which seemed to be better than nothing, but not really effecting a fundamental change. So I finally decided to go to the International Clinic at PUMC. The doctor there told me it was neither a fungus nor a bacterial infection. He called it a "sterile inflammation." Something about they way my bones are rubbing or something. It does make sense, actually, because I tend to walk a little sideways on one foot, which may be a little wearing on the ball of my foot. We'll see.

As with many other things in China, it is simply not the case that the more you pay for something, the better it is. There is an international hospital in Beijing, for all the foreign businessmen with high dollar foreign expat benefits packages. The doctors there may be OK, but not necessarily exceptional just because they charge more money. But they are foreigners, and so foreigners feel comfortable going to them.

The International Clinic at PUMC is certainly more expensive that an average Chinese hospital. I paid 150 RMB (about 25 US dollars) just for the doctor's visit. That's astronomical by Chinese standards, but a whole lot less than what you would pay at the international hospital. And the physicians there at the clinic speak English. Ordinarily, to get the benefit of lower medical costs in China, you need to be proficient in Mandarin. The International Clinic at PUMC is a compromise, I guess. More expensive that ordinary Chinese hospitals, but cheaper than the foreign hospital, and still able to accommodate foreigners who don't speak Chinese.

If the doc turns out to be right, I will have wasted too much money on fungicide over the past few months, except that it taught me that rubbing some sort of cream on it does make it better. So the fungicidal cream didn't hurt anything, but it's expensive Vaseline.

The Peking Union Medical College was founded in the early years of the 20th Century by a union of Christian mission boards, and taken over by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1915. It is one of the many residual effects of Christian missionary activity that began in the middle of the 19th Century in China.

Lantern Festival

2011-02-18T16:04:00.000-08:00

Melissa invited me to her place for the Lantern Festival last night. She and her roommate had invited some Pakistanis who are here on a short term training visit.

In China, the Lantern Festival marks the end of Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival. So basically, the Spring Festival period lasts two weeks. Fifteen days, to be exact. New Year's day this year was the third of February, and the Lantern Festival was yesterday, which would be the fifteenth day of Spring Festival. The loudest time of the whole period, of course, would be New Year's Eve (except in Hong Kong, where there were NO fireworks on New Year's Eve), which fell on February 2nd this year. The second loudest time of the whole period is the evening of Lantern Festival, both because it is the last celebration of the Spring Festival period, and because everybody has to use up all the fireworks they haven't blown up yet.

I was talking to one of the Pakistani guys about my interest in Afghanistan. I told him that there were two million children there who had no school. He said the number was probably larger than that, and the ones who did have schools, did not have very good ones.

Interestingly enough, these guys are studying at my previous university. I guess that's where they have the short term training set up. Lots of folks come to China from developing countries to get training or advanced education. They are taught by Chinese professors who "speak English a little."

Our dinner was a little awkward getting started, because the hostess had gone to quite a bit of work to prepare a Chinese hotpot without being fully aware of the exigencies of Muslim dietary laws. Muslims cannot eat food which does not meet the standards of Halal. It isn't good enough that you don't serve pork. Even meat that is permissible must be slaughtered in a certain way. Unless a strict Muslim can be assured that the animal was slaughtered according to strict Halal standards, he will not partake. The hostess had decided to compensate by making a rice dish for them, but I said, "We can make this work. Let's put the vegetables in first, and then we can add the meat after they have had a taste of Chinese huo guo [huo=fire guo=pot or pan]." It took a little talking to convince the guests that there was nothing sacrilegious in the water, but they finally decided that it would be alright to have some boiled vegetables. We kept the mutton out until they had had their fill. The hostess (bless her heart) had kindly prepared some mutton for them because she knew that they would not eat pork. But she didn't realize that they won't eat mutton either, unless they are sure that the beast was slaughtered in the proper manner. It worked out, though and turned out to be a very nice dinner.

Cops in China

2011-02-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

Went to the local police station this morning to register, since I just entered the country again yesterday. One of the young police women there asked me how much vacation American police get. I told her that most working people would get a two week vacation each year, and then after working for the same company for a period of time, their vacation time would be increased. She told me that in China, the police get one week a year. Hats off to those folks. They make China a much more livable place than what it was years ago when the countryside was inhabited by bandits, and you couldn't travel safely from one place to another. There are still plenty of hustlers trying to take your money in China. The cops cannot always spare you the consequences of your own stupidity. But generally speaking, China is considered a safe place to live.

Tai O

2011-02-05T21:54:00.000-08:00

Met the folks from the St. Andrews Church at the Tung Chung metro station (you can actually ride the metro across the causeway to the island now), and rode the bus with them to the old Cantonese village of Tai O. Really touristy today, but it was interesting none the less. I usually stay away from places like that on holidays, but there are some things you would see at a festival time that would probably not be seen ordinarily, such as the lion dance (above), which I filmed with my pocket camera. So, sometimes for the sake of culture, one must suffer.

I got into a conversation with a Canadian guy who has lived in Hong Kong for 12 years and speaks Cantonese. I asked him if it was really possible for a Westerner to learn Cantonese because of its many tones. Mandarin has four basic tones, and everybody knows what they are. When I first started learning Chinese, my tutor used some books for elementary children she had brought with her to Arizona. The beginning of the book introduced the four tones of Mandarin using four little drawings. The first little drawing showed a car driving on a road. The second showed a car driving up a hill. The third drawing showed a car driving down the hill and up the next one. And the fourth showed a car driving down the hill. Mandarin is like that. It is a tonal language to be sure. But the tones are simple and straightforward. Cantonese is so different in that respect. I have never been in a conversation with more than one Cantonese speaker at the same time and had them agree on how many tones there are. Seven. No nine. They always argue. And forget about asking them to tell you what they are. So learning Cantonese seems a hopeless endeavor. But the Canadian guy told me that because Cantonese has so many tones, it is a bit more forgiving. You can get a few wrong, and still be understood. He's probably right about that. When I am speaking with Chinese people who do not speak English, especially when I am asking for a specific item in a store, or something, they just cannot understand me if I don't get the tone just right. It can be really frustrating. There are fewer tones to learn in Mandarin, but there are so many words that sound exactly the same, except for the tone, so if you don't get the tone just right, it is really hard for them to guess what you are saying.

Lantau Island

2011-02-04T21:50:00.000-08:00

Took the ferry out to Lantau Island today. St. Andrew's Church is having an outing there tomorrow, so I am going to spend the night at the youth hostel there. On the way out to the island, I saw these barges doing an offshore load/unload. Not sure, but it looks like the barge on one side is loading while the other is unloading. I don't know what is the reason for this offshore approach--lack of birth space at the dock, or just simplicity.

I can't say that I recommend this youth hostel. The hostel is nice, actually, and the site is rural. But it is right near the tourist area surrounding the giant Buddha. The website said there were plenty of places to eat in the village. But "the village" turns out to be a modern shopping area. Everything is expensive. And another thing. Bus fares on the island are astronomical. I know, I am spoiled. I am used to Beijing, where the standard bus fare is 4 mao (about 7 cents US).

The most depressing thing, though, is the pervasiveness of Hong Kong's pollution. It fills up the area near the mountain, seeps out across the bay, and covers the outer islands. Makes one feel a bit dismal about the future of this colony.

Health Care in Asia

2011-02-03T21:47:00.000-08:00

Had dinner this evening with Robert and his wife. Robert was a colleague of mine at the Software College when I first came to China. I can't remember what brought it up, but we got into a conversation about health care. We were comparing health care in Hong Kong, China, and the US. The thing I always say is that if you don't have an unusual condition that requires development of a completely new procedure, China is the best option, because it is a pay-as-you-go system and the costs are much lower than they would be in the States. Robert mentioned that he had a condition that the doctors in Hong Kong had not been able to treat properly because they did not know what it was. He said one visit to a doctor in California solved the problem. He could be right about that--diagnosis is probably better in the US than in other parts of the world. And the United States is definitely the location of choice for rich people with life threatening conditions, such as heart problems. But I personally don't like to go to a doctor until I am pretty certain I know what the problem is. Then it's just a matter of getting the right treatment.

Thailand always comes up in discussions like this. I mentioned the Bunrungrad Hospital, and Robert had also heard of it. This hospital has quite a reputation among English teachers because they say you can get world class treatment for a very low price. I don't know if that's the case anymore, though, because once the word gets out, medical tourism increases, and with it, the prices. But even if the prices are a lot lower, you don't always have the luxury of delaying treatment until you get to a distant location.

Faith Missions

2011-02-01T21:44:00.000-08:00

Been talking with a guy from Korea that I met here at the youth hostel who is interested in my idea. He is in the process of getting a business license in Beijing, and is exploring ways that a business could be combined with the kind of thing I am talking about. I told him that I tend to move toward George Muller's model. George Muller fed and clothed ten thousand orphans in England and never solicited funds. I saw a book at St. Andrews church the other day about Hudson Taylor referring to him as the "father of modern faith missions." Close, but not quite. I have a great deal of respect for Hudson Taylor, and his determination to depend on God for the support of the China Inland Mission. But it is only fair to point out that Hudson Taylor was able to do what he did because he was bankrolled by George Muller, who was the father of modern faith missions.

The Korean guy emphasized to me that George Muller's model was not the only model. He's right. Paul the Apostle talked about the importance of supporting those who are working for the cause of the gospel. But he was also determined to support himself, so as not to be a burden on people. Still, after living in America for forty years, and seeing the way non-profits who bill themselves as "faith missions" actually raise gargantuan amounts of money by making strong emotional appeals, I am definitely turned toward George Muller's approach.

St. Andrew's Church

2011-01-30T20:32:00.000-08:00

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.

Szeto Wah

2011-01-29T23:26:00.000-08:00

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.

Divine Appointment

2011-01-27T19:22:00.000-08:00

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.

Winter Itch

2011-01-17T22:18:00.000-08:00

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.

Wood Block Printing

2011-01-12T23:14:00.000-08:00

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 in China

2011-01-10T17:49:00.000-08:00

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.

New Year's Eve

2011-01-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

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.

A Hole to Bury You

2010-12-29T01:41:00.000-08:00

Very interesting couple of articles in the Asia Wall Street Journal. They aren't in the same part of the paper, and the fact that they both occurred in the same issue may be coincidence, but I thought it was interesting.

The first concerns a professor in China who was roughed up by police after trying to visit a dissident. His report on the incident is very well written, and convincingly condemning of the Chinese approach to law enforcement (putting human rights safeguard into law and then dutifully ignoring those safeguards). The other article is about a young Black kid with no money who was accused of a murder he did not commit.

It's interesting. When you read the story by the Chinese professor, you get a picture of China's cops as goons and thugs who have no respect for law. But the professor was free after a very short period of time. This does not justify what they did to him, of course, but what he suffered at the hands of the Chinese legal system is nothing compared to what the Black kid went through in the American system. He was not roughed up at all. But he did spend 15 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and ended up getting out because, and only because he acted as his own lawyer, and would not let the case die.

The second story does not mitigate the first. But what it does point out is that, while the legal system in China certainly needs reform, if China ever has a mind to reform the legal system, China must not follow the American model. Both legal systems are seriously in need of reform. Both systems have deep flaws built into the standard procedure that almost guarantee injustice.

China, the New Black Hole

2010-12-26T13:07:00.000-08:00

I grew up in a boarding school in Northern Japan. It was an isolated environment in many ways, but I had a connection to the world that predated computers by a generation. It was my short wave radio. I used to tune in the Voice of America from the States, the Far East Network (American Armed Forces Radio) from Tokyo, and Radio Moscow from the Soviet Union. But from China, nothing. China in those days was the "black hole."

China's "reform and opening up" has changed that situation dramatically, but the vestiges of China's historical antipathy toward outsiders does have modern manifestations. A fascinating map put together by a Facebook Intern shows a light for every Facebook connection in the world.

Click picture for high resolution image.
Most interesting is the big blank spot where China is supposed to be. Facebook is blocked in China. But the map is misleading. I am in China, and I use Facebook regularly. The blocking of Facebook started a revolution among young people who suddenly had a reason to break through the GFW (Great Firewall of China). VPN (Virtual Private Networks) are fast becoming a standard accessory for young people who want to be involved internationally. When you use a VPN, it effectively takes you "out" of China. The other day, I was trying to view a video on Youku (Chinese Youtube copycat site) that I sometimes use for language practice. Since I was going to a site inside of China, I didn't need my VPN, but I had been using it for something else, and had forgotten to turn it off. When I tried to access the Youku video, I got a message that said, "Sorry, but this video is currerntly available to be streamed within China only (China blocks some content going out as well as some content coming in)." Obviously, I was coming at it with an IP address outside of China. So when you look at the lights in this Facebook map, many of them do in fact show connections with Chinese users, but they show up as connections to locations (wherever the VPN server happens to be) outside of China.

The blocking of Facebook was frustrating at first, but in many ways, it is one of the best things that has happened to the Internet in China, because it has motivated young Chinese engineers to conquer the GFW like nothing else could have.

Christmas in China

2010-12-25T23:56:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to the Bridge Cafe for a Christmas dinner. I don't generally go to this dinner, because it is quite expensive. It's not that easy for a restaurant in China to provide a traditional American Christmas dinner, so the cost is quite a bit more than the same meal would be in the States, and about ten times as much as a reasonably similar meal in China. Sorta like trying to get Chinese food in the US. This year, however, Nell decided to invite me because I have been a customer of the coffee bar for so long. I have been in China nearly seven years now, and I have been studying at the Bridge Cafe for almost that long.

After the dinner, Jacky and Melissa and Betsy wanted to stop by and visit me. Their small house church had a Christmas party, and they came by after that was finished. Christmas Eve in China is very much a church thing rather than a family thing. When I was a kid, Christmas Eve was for family, and then Christmas Day there was often a church service. Since China is not a Christian country, families don't really celebrate Christmas. But Christmas has gradually become an international festival, so it exists in come form in practically ever society. In China, Christmas Eve is called 平安夜 (ping an ye), which means, literally, "peaceful evening." For most people, it's considered an excuse to go out to dinner at a nice restaurant. So restaurants are open a little later then usual, and there is a more or less festive atmosphere.

Christmas Day. Most years I have had a Christmas party in my apartment on Christmas Day, but this year I moved out to Fragrant Hills, and the tiny place I rented is not really big enough for that sort of thing. I had thought of holding it in a coffee bar or something, because I have done that before. But I found out that Rosie had organized a cooperative Christmas party in her office building. It was a joint party for several Bible study groups, and she invited us to join, so I decided it would be a good idea. It turned out really well. She had contracted with the cafeteria in the basement of her building to prepare a dinner for us, and then we each bought dinner tickets for 30 RMB. It's a lot of work to set something like that up, and I was quite impressed with how well it went.

Most nations oppose peace prize to Liu?

2010-12-14T21:35:00.000-08:00

I have never seen China so angry. This time they have abandoned all attempts at even a pretense of integrity. Sixty-five nations were invited to Oslo for the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Peace. About 19 or 20 declined. I suppose you could say that some of them would agree with China. Russia, for example, has had it's own issues with the peace prize. They don't respect it. But countries like the Philippines have said privately that they were afraid of angering China. But to read the headlines in the China Daily, you would think support for China was all but unanimous.

What would you be led to believe if the only information you had about the peace prize controversy came from headlines like, "'Most nations' oppose peace prize to Liu," or "100-plus nations, organizations back Beijing's peace prize stance?"

Whatever you think about Liu Xiaobo, there is absolutely no integrity in China's position relative to this issue, and that is why China is losing the propaganda war, at least internationally. Within China, it is a different matter, because Chinese people have learned from painful experience that their lives will be much less complicated if they stay out of politics. And in today's China, you are allowed to be apolitical. It wasn't that way during the Cultural Revolution. During those days, if you weren't saying, "Long live Chairman Mao" every other sentence, you could be accused of being "counter revolutionary." But in today's China, the neutral option is allowed. So to people in China, Liu Xiaobo's decision not to be neutral is viewed as prima facie evidence that he is a troublemaker. That is, if they have heard of him. Most have not. Which again points to China's sense of desperation in responding to this issue. A Global Times editorial said, "The Nobel committee has no reason to believe their political judgment is better than that of 1.3 billion people. The West has no authority to overrule Chinese people's values and judgment." The statement is disingenuous. Their own research shows that well over 70 percent of the public doesn't even know who Liu Xiaobo is. And you wouldn't need the research. The person who wrote that editorial knows very well that information about this issue is strictly controlled in China. Trust me, this one is not about how the Chinese people feel. It is about how the Communist Party feels about their image before the watching world. In their desperation to counter the negative image and downplay the Nobel ceremony, China quickly invented their own "Confucius Peace Prize," giving the award to Lien Chan. Lien Chan is a former KMT leader from Taiwan who supports reunification with China (which is the official KMT position) and has visited China and met with mainland leaders.

Unfortunately, in the rush to throw the whole fiasco together, somebody forgot to tell Lien himself about the "award." He only heard about it when the media called to ask him what he thought. In his absence, they grabbed a little girl who happened to be handy, and gave the "award" to her. Poor kid looks like she's trying to figure out what the whole thing is all about. She and a lot of other people. I guess her parents can't be too disappointed with the 100,000 RMB in prize money. But what a farce!

China really doesn't get diplomacy. Every time they do something like this, they end up looking stupid. It's as if they had gone out and hired a western ad agency and said, "Money is no object; just help us to look as ridiculous as possible."

As I have said before, I do not agree with Liu Xiaobo's idea that American style democracy is the cure for China's ills. China is not a Christian country. Democracy requires a strong, underlying moral foundation, and this China does not have. I believe American style democracy would be a disaster in China at this point. But Liu Xiaobo does have some good ideas that ought to be discussed. Cantankerous? Perhaps. Controversial? Certainly. But criminal? No. That isn't working.

What is his crime? China says that he is guilty of "subverting state power." But what does that mean? What, exactly, did Liu Xiaobo do that constituted "subverting state power?" Answer: He advocated implementation of a multi-party democracy. He wrote this proposal (along with several others) in a charter, and put it on the Internet. It was signed by 10,000 people, including several top Communist Party members. So you can see why the CCP considers Liu Xiaobo a criminal. This is China's conundrum. China holds out the irrational hope that she will be able to convince western countries that Liu Xiaobo should be considered a criminal deserving an 11 year prison sentence just because he has called for an end to one party rule. It's a vain hope. Western countries worship multi-party democracy.

But even though I don't agree with China's assessment of Liu Xiaobo, once they decided not to participate, they should have just ignored it. That's what a confident, self-assured nation would have done. And that's what the largest number of respondents in their own survey advised. China chose to ignore that wise counsel, which shows that they don't really care what their own people think. But they are hopelessly obsessed with what the rest of the world thinks. This is one propaganda war China is going to lose. Most people are impressed with the tremendous economic progress China has made, beginning with Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms, which have lifted some 400 million people out of poverty. But when it comes to human rights, China is not respected. You can fake a peace prize, but you can't fake human rights.

Fragrant Hills Fellowship

2010-12-11T21:25:00.000-08:00

This evening Mellissa (she spells it with two l's) invited the Fragrant Hills Fellowship to her place for a Chongqing hotpot. Mellissa's village is three bus stops from Fragrant Hills. It is not that often that I have Chongqing hotpot in Beijing. What is much more common in North China is the Beijing hotpot, which is actually the old Mongolian hotpot.

The Mongolian hotpot generally focuses on mutton, but also often includes beef and pork, and uses a water based soup. The Chongqing hotpot uses an oil base, and in it's purest form, employs the stuff that used to be considered garbage. This is because the Chongqing hotpot was invented by longshoreman working on the docks in Chongqing in the first half of the 20th century. They were very poor, so they gathered the scraps discarded by the meat processing plants, and spiced it up to obscure the original flavor. So now, when you have an original Chongqing hotpot in Chongqing or Chengdu, the stuff on the menu will be the same old garbage, now regarded as delicacy.

If you have a Chongqing hotpot in Beijing, it may have the same base as the hotpot in Chongqing, but you will more likely be eating the razor thin sheets of mutton, beef, or pork that are more commonly associated with traditional Beijing (Mongolian) hotpot.

Shawarmas and Tea

2010-12-05T21:18:00.000-08:00

Charley and James and Shasha and I went to a new Palestinian restaurant this evening that Jordan told me about. These guys are Palestinians from Jordan (the country) and Jerusalem. The food is really, really delicious, and quite reasonable. Maybe not every day reasonable, but not expensive at all. Fifteen kuai for a Shawarma, and boy, are they good!. Hard to predict what the future of this place will be, because Wudaokou is a changing community--businesses come and go pretty fast. And the place is not located right on the corner. It is down on the south end of the strip. But it really doesn't take more than a few minutes to walk down there. It's not exactly a study bar, so it is not the kind of place where I would be inclined to spend a lot of time. But the food is exceptional. Really tasty. I think it's going to be a success.

Nationalism

2010-12-01T21:52:00.000-08:00

Nell has started to hold lectures at the Bridge Cafe on Tuesdays. Last night's subject was "Nationalism and Politics in China." I was a little surprised by the title, because I thought the question of Chinese nationalism would be a little sensitive. In fact, the lecture was not about Chinese nationalism vis-a-vis the rest of the world, but about "nationalism" among minorities in China. That being said, the professor (from Peking University) was quite open and straightforward. I had met him before because I was on a panel with him last year when we did a presentation on the development of religious freedom in China.

He said that when he talked about Chinese nationality, he was referring to Zhongguo (the country) Nationality, not Han (the main "Chinese" ethnic group) nationality, but I said to him that in my experience, Zhongguo nationality becomes Han nationality, because the Han people have the power. I still think that is largely true, but he did tell me that his research showed that 40 per cent of Uighurs identify themselves as Chinese first and Uighur second. That is higher than I would have expected. But it still shows, I think, that most Uighur do not think of themselves as Chinese. That's a problem for the country as a whole. But the larger problem, in my opinion, is that when most Chinese people express their feelings about how China is viewed in the world, they don't always see that it is not a reaction to China as such, but to the Han people themselves, and their treatment of minority people in China. The government seems to think that what they are doing is good, because they are taking care of minorities, and to a certain degree, that is a valid point. Minorities in China get special preferences in China just like they do in America. But the problem with that is that human beings do not like to be taken care of. Dogs like to be taken care of. But human beings prefer to take care of themselves. It is just a fact that minorities in China are not treated like normal Chinese citizens.

Several times on CCTV, I have heard the statement that China (under the New China government post 1949) entering Tibet constituted a freedom for the Tibetan people from the serfdom of the monks. There is considerable truth to this. Life for the common people was not better under the monks. Many of them were taken advantage of. But the statement (on CCTV) that follows always irks me: "This was the beginning of Tibet's democratic reform." This in nonsense. Yes, the Tibetans as a whole probably have a better life under the current Chinese government than under the monks. But no, they most certainly do not have democracy or anything like it. This is the paradox of Tibet. American idealists, like actor Richard Geer (a Buddhist), seem to think that Tibet given back to the monks would be Heaven on Earth. I do not concur. Life for the common people was oppressive under the monks (I mean when the monks were political leaders, not just religious leaders). But the Chinese position seems to be that the Tibetan people should be thankful to be taken care of. But the Tibetan people and the Uighurs and others don't just want to be taken care of. They want to be treated like human beings. And all the propaganda notwithstanding, minorities in China do not have the same freedoms as Han people. For example, any Uighur will tell you that it is much harder for a Uighur to get a passport than for a Han person to get a passport.

Winter Heat

2010-11-23T16:40:00.000-08:00

Interesting debate in the China Daily on the heating system in China. I think I have probably mentioned this issue a few times before, but in North China, hot water heat is standard in most family dwellings. In South China that is not the case.

So in the winter, North China is actually much more livable, in my opinion. I visited some folks in Wuhan a few years ago, and their home had no heat. They wore parkas outside, and the same parkas inside. Their inside and outside dress was the same. Being outside with a parka is very, very different from having to live inside with a parka. When I am outside, I am always moving--walking, riding my bike, or climbing the mountain. But inside, I am sitting at my desk or something, and then I really want it to be cozy. Can't do that in South China. I will admit that it is not as cold outside in the south. But it is much colder inside. Miserable. Anyway, read the debate (actually a discussion between two people who took basically the same position). I think you will find it interesting.

In America, inside winter heat varies widely from fire places to furnaces, but the majority of systems have traditionally been some form of forced air heat. In China, hot water radiators are the standard. Hot water radiators went out of use in the U.S. because the temperature is not as easy to regulate. You can turn the water up or down, but there is no thermostat. Americans are used to being able to enter a room and set an exact temperature. Personally, I much prefer radiant heat. Much easier on my allergies. My room is not hot--I generally wear a sweatshirt. But it's comfortable.

2010-11-20T14:36:00.000-08:00

My fingers are flying these days. A new keyboard was willed to me by a dead laptop. Eason's machine fell off his desk some time ago. That was the end of it, but he salvaged some of the parts. He gave me the battery and keyboard, because I have the same model. My battery is still in good shape, even after five years, because I am much more careful about it this time. With my old Toshiba, I would shut down my laptop, and then unplug it and start putting it away while it was powering down. And when I took it out at a new location, I would turn it on and let it start powering up while I was getting it set up and plugged in. Needless to say, the battery burned out after a couple years. With my present computer, I always make sure it is completely powered down before I unplug it, and I never turn it on until I am sure it has power. So the only time my battery ever gets used is if I have a power failure in my apartment while I am working on it, or if I take it out at a coffee bar and realize that I have forgotten to bring the cord with me. Bottom line, I live as if I don't have a battery, so when I need it, it is always there.

My keyboard was quite another matter. You know how it is when you get a crumb lodged under a key, and find that the key will not depress properly. You start by trying to blow out the crumb. If that works, fine. But if not, then you have to take the key off and remove the crumb. I have done this several times, usually without incident. But once in awhile, something breaks when I am taking the key off, so I cannot quite get it back on properly. So I had a couple keys that really didn't work very well. I was constantly having to type over those letters several times, which always slowed my typing speed down considerably. Eason's keyboard was in mint condition. Don't know how long this one will last, but it sure is nice for now.

Cell Phone Dictionary

2010-11-16T22:41:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in Lush today with my laptop, when a friendly American kid showed me a website where you can download dictionaries for cell phones. The Chinese English dictionary is a tidy 10 MB application. I suppose if you don't have the Chinese fonts on your phone already you might have to set that up, but if you live in China like me and have a Chinese cell phone, that stuff is already going to be in place. It's really handy for me, because the little electronic dictionary I bought four years ago is pretty much worn out after getting so much use last year during the nine months that I was in language school every day. An electronic dictionary for a Chinese person learning English is a much simpler device. All they need is a keyboard. But if you are learning Chinese, you need to have a screen where you can write the Chinese characters with a stylus. My Nokia has all that--I can write text messages in Chinese--just didn't have the dictionary part. It hasn't stopped me, of course--I use the radical chart in my Xinhua dictionary just like I did when I first started studying Chinese. But it sure it handy to be able to grab my cell phone and write a character on it to get the pinyin and a short definition.

Streams in the Desert

2010-11-11T22:08:00.000-08:00

Getting caught up on Streams in the Desert. Streams in the Desert is a devotional book written by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman, who was a missionary (along with her husband) to China and Japan in the early part of the 20th century. Perhaps this book would not be of as much interest to you if you don't come from the China-Japan theater of world mission. I think you might still find it encouraging, though. Here's Tuesday's meditation:

"They that dwell under his shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn and grow as the vine" (Hosea 14:7).

The day closed with heavy showers. The plants in my garden were beaten down before the pelting storm, and I saw one flower that I had admired for its beauty and loved for its fragrance exposed to the pitiless storm. The flower fell, shut up its petals, dropped its head; and I saw that all its glory was gone. "I must wait till next year," I said, "before I see that beautiful thing again."

That night passed, and morning came; the sun shone again, and the morning brought strength to the flower. The light looked at it, and the flower looked at the light. There was contact and communion, and power passed into the flower. It held up its head, opened its petals, regained its glory, and seemed fairer than before. I wonder how it took place--this feeble thing coming into contact with the strong thing, and gaining strength!

I cannot tell how it is that I should be able to receive into my being a power to do and to bear by communion with God, but I know It is a fact.

Are you in peril through some crushing, heavy trial? Seek this communion with Christ, and you will receive strength and be able to conquer. "I will strengthen thee." -- Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Yesterday's Grief

By Katharine Lee Bates

The rain that fell a-yesterday is ruby on the roses,
Silver on the poplar-leaf, and gold on willow stem;
The grief that chanced a-yesterday is silence that incloses
Holy loves where time and change shall never trouble them.

The rain that fell a-yesterday makes all the hillside glisten,
Coral on the laurel and beryl on the grass;
The grief that chanced a-yesterday has taught the soul to listen
For whispers of eternity in all the winds that pass.

O faint-of-heart, storm-beaten, this rain will gleam to-morrow,
Flame within the columbine and jewels on the thorn,
Heaven in the forget-me-not; though sorrow now be sorrow,
Yet sorrow shall be beauty in the magic of the morn.

Home again

2010-11-10T21:15:00.000-08:00

Got back from Shenzhen yesterday. I spent some time catching up on the McLaughlin Group. It's kinda funny, you know...McLaughlin Group is not blocked in Hong Kong. That would be the place to get caught up. But I was so busy, I only had time to watch one episode. So I watched two back to back yesterday. Glad the political season in the US is over. At one point, McLaughlin asked the panel to comment on whether too much money is spent on political campaigns. Here's part of the interchange:

MCLAUGHLIN: Exit question: Political spending this year is estimated to top $3 billion, a new record. Is this sum of money, A, too much; B, about right; C, too little; D, misspent?

BUCHANAN: We spend more on dog food, John, than we do on politics. What are you talking about?

ELEANOR: The dogs deserve it. The politicians don't.

I think the world of Buchanan, but this is one time I will have to agree with Eleanor.

When I was coming back to my apartment this evening, I noticed they had fired up the boiler. That's good news. Last night was my first night back from the south, and it was really cold. I stayed warm under the hand made quilt that I bought years ago from a lady in a mountain village in Shanxi Province. But it was sure nice to see that the hot water has started flowing for the winter.

Shenzhen

2010-11-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

This is the third time I have stopped in Shenzhen to visit Linda. The first time I stayed in the dormitory at her company. Last time I stayed with Linda and her brother at their place.But she lives at a factory in a remote area now, and her brother is no longer here. Fortunately, there is a youth hostel in Shenzhen now. Pretty nice place. My roommate is a young engineer from Bangladesh. He told me there are three types of schools in Bangladesh, the Bengali schools (which would be the regular public schools), the Christian schools, and the Islamic schools, which teach Sharia Law.

As a moderate Muslim, he had nothing but disdain for the Islamic schools which imposed Sharia Law (much as an ordinary American Protestant wouldn't have much time for the Ku Klux Klan), and he said the Bengali schools were not very good quality. But he also said the Christian schools like the one he went to were a little too expensive for the average person.

I was in High School when East Pakistan became Bangladesh, and West Pakistan became Pakistan. It actually goes back to the days right after the independence (of India from Great Britain) when the Muslim areas (East and West Pakistan) were separated from the larger Hindu part of India. That's how independence always seems to work. As India, they wanted independence from Britain. But as Muslims, they wanted independence from India. And finally, as Bengalis, they wanted Independence from Pakistan.

Trains in China

2010-11-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon after crossing the border into Shenzhen from Hong Kong, I went to the Shenzhen train station, which is located conveniently right north of the border. I told them I wanted a hard sleeper ticket to Beijing.

That's pretty much what I have come to. When I first started to ride trains in China, which is about 50 train rides ago, I had a strong preference for the soft sleeper. Hard sleepers are a bit more crowded and not always very clean. But a few things have happened since then to change my mind. One is that the soft sleepers are getting smaller. On the newer trains, they seem to be compromising storage space to make the ceiling lower. The train I took from Beijing to Shanghai this time was brand new. But there was no overhead storage rack. Fortunately I was able to squeeze my backpack under one of the beds with the help of another passenger. But that's really not a good thing to do. The floors on these trains can be quite dirty. Less so in the soft sleeper, but certainly not as clean as an overhead rack.

Another change is that the soft sleeper tickets are getting more expensive. The price for soft sleeper tickets seems to be going up faster than hard sleeper tickets, which naturally means that the price differential between the two is greater than before. I have found that if you get a hard sleeper bottom bunk, the difference between hard and soft sleeper is not that great. But the price is. But what really helps put the matter in perspective is taking a trip with no bed at all. I will never forget the 13 hour train ride I took to Shanxi Province with Jean and Claire in the fall of 2004.

We bought 2 tickets for four people, and I spent most of the time sitting on the floor hunched over trying to catch a few winks of sleep. Toward the morning hours, some seats opened up, and Jean and Claire, who had been sleeping, took seats and let Lucy and I use the bunks. After a night like that, you really begin to believe that any kind of bed is better than no bed. As if that experience wasn't enough, two years later, in the fall of 2006, I was pick-pocketed in Suzhou, and had to buy a no-seat ticket to get back to Beijing. Twenty hours.

So the bottom line is, if you are riding the trains in China, any kind of sleeper is better than nothing. Even if you get stuck with a top bunk where you can't sit up, you always know that when you get really tired, there is a rack reserved for you to stretch out on. If you ever have to ride rough in the countryside of China, you will come to really appreciate that. It's a luxury, believe me.

Leaving Hong Kong

2010-11-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

This morning I packed my bags and prepared to leave the youth hostel. As we were checking out and getting ready to board the shuttle for the trip into Sheung Wan, a Russian guy showed up. He had been out all night drinking with his buddy, and had taken a taxi or something to get back to the hostel (because no shuttles run at night). Problem was, he had misplaced his friend. I told him that his friend could probably find his way back, but he told me that his friend did not speak any English, and that he had left all his identification at the youth hostel. Definitely not smart. In Beijing, I usually leave my passport locked in my desk, because I don't want to lose it. Since I live here, if the cops ask to see it (which has never happened to me, but has happened to Michael the Mountain Man, probably because he was sleeping on the ground by the side of the road during the Olympics), I can invite them to follow me home and look at my passport. But when I am travelling, I always carry it with me. I have a special passport pocket in my pants, so it won't get lost. In Hong Kong, I might get by with leaving it at the hostel, because the last time I renewed my passport, I also took the trouble to get a passport card, which does serve as identification. But this guy was telling me that his buddy could not speak English, and had no identification on him. I told him that anytime you are staying at a youth hostel or something, you should at least carry a business card from the hostel with you. If he had that, he could show it to any taxi driver, and get back to where he needed to be. Kids. They just don't think, you know. I probably never will find out how that story turned out.

I got off the subway at Central, because I wanted to go to the Companies Registry and get some information about setting up a nonprofit organization. For some time, I have wondered if there could be some way that Chinese young people could be mobilized to get involved in reaching out to people in other parts of the world that do not have the advantages they have had. I guess this idea really began to take root during my visit to Kashgar in the summer of 2005. It's still just an idea, but I am interested in at least checking it out.

So, another trip to Hong Kong has come to a close. I spent a little more money this time, because the youth hostel is a little more expensive than the YWAM base where I stayed last time. And I ended up eating out a little more than I did last time, because last time I usually ate the morning and evening meal at the base for a nominal cost. That having been said, Hong Kong's prices are really not that bad. More expensive than Beijing, but much less costly than Tokyo. And many things actually compare favorably to Beijing. I found a little cafe near the Shun Tak center that has really good barbecue pork omelets for 25 Hong Kong Dollars. It's a good thing I don't live in that neighborhood, because I would be eating way too many of those. They really are pretty good. Another interesting tidbit: The standard coffee creamer in Hong Kong is condensed milk, so a regular cup of coffee at a Hong Kong cafe is better (in my opinion) than a latte at Starbucks that would cost two or three times more. That won't be of much interest to you if you're not a coffee drinker, I suppose, but it does mean that for someone like me who isn't into the Starbucks atmosphere that much, and is just interested in reading the South China Morning Post and having some breakfast, Hong Kong is not a bad place to be.

The Battle of Hong Kong

2010-11-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

Took the subway to Central and boarded Bus #6 for Stanley Village. My destination was the old military cemetery.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese proceeded to take the Pacific. One of the first places to be attacked after Pearl Harbor (actually the next day) was Hong Kong. I won't go into all the details, because the plaque at the cemetery gave a pretty good rundown of the battle, so I took a picture of it and converted it to a .pdf file for your convenience.

In my opinion, the main difference between Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Hong Kong is that Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack against a very well defended location, whereas the Battle of Hong Kong was an expected attack (since Japan had invaded the mainland some years earlier) against a very weakly defended community. In my opinion, there should have been an Allied decision to give strategic assistance to Hong Kong, since the Allies had to know the Japanese were going to attack it sooner or later. Remember, they took Shanghai in 1937. So you could argue that Hong Kong had eight years warning.

The problem was Europe. The Americans were fighting a war on two fronts, and Europe was a much higher priority. But Hong Kong was not by any means the only place that had to take a back seat to Europe. The leader of the Philippines was quite bitter about Roosevelt's refusal to render adequate aid to prevent a Japanese takeover. Basically, Roosevelt's strategy was to pull MacArthur out (he had to trick him into leaving), let the Japanese take it temporarily, and then fight the Japanese off once the war in Europe had been one. It was a tragic betrayal--one that almost killed Uncle Otto, because he was involved in taking back the Philippines. But that was Roosevelt's decision. I don't know if Manuel Quezon (Philippine president at the time) ever forgave Roosevelt for that prioritization, because it meant terrible suffering for the Philippine people under Japanese occupation.

But if you ever have an extra day in Hong Kong, I would recommend that you go down to Stanley Village and hike out to the cemetery on the grounds of the old Stanley Internment Camp. Many of the gravestones were actually crafted by the prisoners in the camp, and those original tombs have been left as they were and preserved to this day. The area had been a cemetery much earlier in the life of the colony, but had been closed for 70 years by the time World War II started. So the cemetery also includes some much older tombstones from the middle of the 19th Century.

It as a rainy day, and I hadn't brought my umbrella. But fortunately, it was just a very light drizzle, so I was able to walk out to the old cemetery without getting too wet. I would have been disappointed by the weather, but I guess I felt that the cloudy day was strangely appropriate for visiting a cemetery. It is a very pretty area, with an excellent view of the bay, and was, in fact, used as a meeting place and park for internees at the camp throughout the years that they were interned by the Japanese.

After leaving the cemetery, I headed back toward Stanley, taking the path down to the beach to Main Street. Fortunately, since I had decided to go to the cemetery first, I ended up coming into Stanley from the "wrong" direction, so I found a little place for lunch beyond the main part of the town (if you were coming from the other direction) where they prices were a lot cheaper. Not quite Beijing prices, but pretty close, actually. The main part of Stanley, though is basically a tourist trap with lots of pricey bars. Not my kind of place. Pretty, I admit, but really tiring.

Mt. Davis Youth Hostel

2010-11-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

Mt. Davis Youth Hostel. Last time I came to Hong Kong, I stayed at the YWAM base at the invitation of a friend. But I don't know anyone there, so I was not surprised when they did not answer my inquiry (especially since I told them I was from Beijing). I wasn't worried, because Hong Kong does have a pretty good youth hostel network, and I had been in touch with the Mt. Davis youth hostel a few times before, since I had considered staying there on my first trip a couple years ago.

The Mt. Davis Youth Hostel is located in Sheung Wan, on the western end of the Island Line. It is convenient in one sense, because it is only one stop from Central. But it is inconvenient in another sense, because it is right near the top of Mt. Davis, so you would have to walk quite a ways to get there. Fortunately, they have a shuttle that picks up at the Shun Tak center right by the MTR station in Sheung Wan. The shuttle doesn't run all day, but it makes several trips in the morning, and several trips in the evening, so it is enough to get the job done.

When I first got to the youth hostel yesterday evening, the place seemed deserted. I am sure this was partly because it was in the middle of the week, but also perhaps because the Hong Kong youth hostel network is slowly expanding, so many backpackers are opting for the youth hostels more removed from the center of the city. For me, though, this hostel is really a convenient place to stay, because it is more like home for me than most of the other places I have stayed. Since I moved out to the western hills of Beijing, I have become accustomed to climbing up to a little pavilion in the early morning for a time of meditation before I start the day. I had figured I would have to forgo that for a week or two while I was on the road, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that this youth hostel is situated near the top of the mountain, and it is just a ten minute hike to the peak, which is an old abandoned World War II fortress. It's not developed (fortunately). There is no tourist site up there. No one taking tickets. Just an old abandoned gun site. Sorta like the World War II bomb shelter in the back yard of our house in Sakata. But quite a bit bigger, of course. As an added benefit, even though my cell phone doesn't work in Hong Kong, I discovered this morning when I was sitting on the top of one of the old battlements having my devotions, that I could get my text messages. That's about the right balance for me. Text messages once a day, otherwise no phone calls.

The Mt. Davis Youth Hostel has a very well equipped kitchen area. It is on top of the mountain, so there are no restaurants nearby, but there are many near the Shun Tak Center where the shuttle picks up and drops off. Youth hostels in China do not always have good kitchen facilities, but they often have a small eatery of some kind where you can buy cheap meals. And some of them will let you eat with the staff for 5 kuai, so that works out good for me, because I'm not much of a cook. But in terms of the way traditional hosteling is supposed to work--where you buy groceries at a local market and do your own cooking--this place is pretty well equipped.

Hope Needs Rejoicing

2010-11-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

Doing my homework. Just left Shanghai on the train to Hong Kong. I stopped by Amy's office, and she and Jenny walked to the train station with me. We found a little Japanese restaurant, and Harry, another guy from the company Jimmy and Amy have started joined us for dinner. They they walked with me to the train station, where we had to say goodbye, because I was taking an international train, so they could not go to the train with me without "leaving" the country.

Yesterday I went to the Mu'en church near People's Square. In today's China, all public churches are part of the Three Self Patriotic Movement, but the old missionary churches all have their own history. The Mu'en Church happens to be an old Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist Episcopal Mission started work in China in the middle of the nineteenth century and spawned believers like Watchman Nee, and was involved in establishing schools and hospitals, including the Peking Union Medical College.

The Mu'en Church does not provide English translation, and the pastor was a fast talker, but I was intrigued by the Chinese version of the text he spoke from (Romans 12:12). In English, it says, "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." But the Chinese phrases it a little differently. Translated literally, it would be "In hope you need to rejoice, in tribulation you need to show restraint, and your prayer needs to be constant." So the emphasis is on what attitude is appropriate for which situation. It is the first one that I tended to focus on, because I tend to identify hope with nail biting. But that's not faith. God wants us to hope with an attitude of faith, which means rejoicing in the fulfilment of what we hope for. Here is how the Thayer's lexicon in e-sword defines the word:

Rejoicing
G5463
χαίρω>chairōr>Thayer Definition:
1) to rejoice, be glad
2) to rejoice exceedingly
3) to be well, thrive
4) in salutations, hail!
5) at the beginning of letters: to give one greeting, salute
Part of Speech: verb

This, then is the essential attitude for anyone who has dared to ask God for something, and patiently wait in hope for the answer.

Hotels and Hostels

2010-10-31T23:49:00.000-07:00

Last night when I checked into the hotel, they told me that they would need to hold my passport until I checked out. I refused (of course). At first they told me that I could not stay there. It was awkward, because it was getting late, but I will sleep in the streets before I will surrender my passport to a complete stranger. I think they could see that. Harry was with me and he told them that I would be leaving in the morning, so they settled for a photocopy. I am not sure what the big deal was, because I have never had a hotel ask me that before. Harry told me that this hotel was not legally certified to house foreigners. But if that was the case, I would think they would not want to even see my passport, because they wouldn't want a record that I had stayed there. So I'm confused. But I am not confused at all about the inappropriate nature of their demand. Never give up your passport.

This morning, I told them I was wanted to stay another night, but they said that I would have to give them my passport until I checked out. I decided to check out and go to the Captain Youth Hostel. I was getting on the subway, and was just picking up my bags from the scanner, when the security guy stopped me and asked me if I had a knife. I told him I didn't and he asked me to open my computer bag. He saw my Bible, said "Shenjing (Bible)," and let me go.

I'm still curious about that, though. I can't imagine what could have made the guy watching the monitor think I had a knife, unless they saw the little pair of scissors that I usually carry in my backpack. I think he should have been a little more persistent with the guy right before me. He asked that guy if he had a knife, accepted his answer, and turned to me. I think the other guy had the knife.

When I got to the People's Square station, I met a couple young people from India, who asked me if I knew where the Phoenix Youth Hostel was. I told them I did not. But I offered to try and help them find it, because they said it was supposed to be right near the square, and I figured we could go out there and ask a few people. But they said they had information on their laptop. After they left, I started thinking about it, and decided to stop at a coffee bar so I could open my laptop and check it out. Turns out the Phoenix hostel is not on the China youth hostel list, which probably means it is not a licensed Hosteling International hostel. It came right up in Google, but the problem with those listings is that they all have exclusive agreements. So they don't give you the phone number. This time it didn't matter. The street address was all I needed, because I was sitting right on the square.

I walked down the street to take a look at the place. It's new and small and simple, but that's actually good. I like simple youth hostels. Staffed by eager smiling young people, excited about being able to practice their English with so many foreigners. Helpful, and friendly. This place is not as fancy as the Captain Youth Hostel, but the Captain Youth Hostel is a bit of a rip off, and you get tired of that after awhile. The youth hostel had a Halloween party tonight. I was tired, and not in the mood for coming up with a costume, so I went as Santa Claus. At least, that's what everyone called me.

Shanghai

2010-10-30T23:43:00.000-07:00

Amy asked me to come to her wedding. I was about to say I couldn't make it, but I realized that if I left a week earlier, I could pretty easily stop by on my way to Hong Kong.

Weddings in China have a pretty standard format. It should be noted that Chinese weddings do not normally include wedding vows, because when the people have their wedding, they are already legally married. This is where Chinese weddings differ significantly from those in America. In the United States, the pastor of a church performing a wedding ceremony is acting as a legally designated officer of the state. Not so in China. In China, people go to a government office to register their wedding first, and then any ceremony they wish to have is pretty much up to them and their families.

Another thing that is very interesting about China, is that there are no wedding pictures. Couples take pictures, but they take them before the wedding, and often display them at the wedding. So the wedding pictures are not pictures of a wedding at all. They are pictures of two people dressed up in wedding garb assuming various poses. I have often wondered about this, but I think the reason is that in the past, many people could not afford a wedding, so they settled for the pictures. So any pictures you may see of an actual Chinese wedding would have been taken by guests of the event. The official "wedding pictures" are taken before the wedding, and are often displayed at the wedding.

That being said, it was a very nice party, and the weather cooperated enough to allow an outdoor ceremony.

Beijing South Station

2010-10-29T23:38:00.000-07:00

Took the Line 4 subway to Beijing South Station this evening to catch the train to Shanghai. I have been in Beijing for almost seven years, now, and I have never been to Beijing South Station. That's not as impressive as it seems, because Beijing South Station is new. It didn't exist when I first moved to Beijing. But even after it did exist, it was not popular, because it was located so far from the city center. Several years ago, when the Beijing to Tianjin high speed train opened, it was trumpeted as a significant achievement that would almost make Tianjin a part of the Beijing community. But in fact, friends I know from Tianjin told me that they didn't use it, because it ran from the Beijing South Station, and it took longer to get from Beijing proper to the Beijing South Station than to get from Beijing South to Tianjin on the high speed train.

The Line 4 Subway has changed all that. Line four cuts across the old Line Two (which is a circle around Old Beijing) twice, going from up by Fragrant Hills to down past the Beijing South Station. Now it is just a few extra minutes beyond the lower part of the Line 2 circle. As a matter of fact, the new South Station was never that far away, it's just that there was no direct way to get there. But now, I would predict that it will see a lot more use, because it is incorporated seamlessly into the subway system. Get off the Line 4 subway at the Beijing South station, and you're almost ready to board the train. The gate is right up the stairs.

Reminders

2010-10-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

Last night I was climbing up the steps to the old Tang Dynasty temple site. I usually go to the park after the crowds have gone home, so it was pretty peaceful. Suddenly, a group of working ladies came running up to the steps. I think they were probably trying to squeeze in an outing after work, and were not able to get to the park until just before dark.

As they approached the steps, part of the group broke off and started walking up the winding road that runs back and forth along the old stone steps. One of the ladies who had started climbing the steps yelled at them, "Why are you going that way?"

"Because the steps are too steep."

"Nonsense! The old man is climbing them, why can't we?"

Like I said, reminders.

Migrant Workers

2010-10-23T20:24:00.000-07:00

Troubling article in the Global Times about the plight of migrant workers. As if it were not enough that migrant workers should have to put up with low wages and poor working conditions, they often have to put up with no wages at all. Poor migrant workers are hired by companies that have ties to the very government agencies which are charged with protecting those workers. The workers don't get paid until the money comes in. What that means is that companies can hire workers when they don't really have the money to pay them. They don't have to worry about the government enforcing the rights of workers, because they are the government. The word "corruption" does not appear in this article, but corruption is a very big part of this problem. This is the main difficulty the Communist Party has in this country. There is a fear on the part of the leaders that they may not be able to control the anger of poor people in the countryside, which may be why there is such a push for urbanization. But the real problem in China is the inability of the party to control corrupt officials. This problem is so widespread in China, that corruption has almost become the expected standard, which is why this article, which clearly points a finger at corrupt officials (without naming any) was allowed to be published in the primary Communist Party propaganda rag (Global Times).

Corruption dies in the light. If corruption is allowed to be exposed, it dies very quickly. In China, they are trying to deal with corruption while still keeping the specifics secret. It's not working, and it's not going to work.

Liu Xiaobo --- The Taiwan Reaction

2010-10-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Interesting article about Taiwanese reaction to the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Liu Xiaobo. I don't know quite how to react to this. It is doubtful that many of the politicians reacting to this are really that aware of what Liu Xiaobo stands for. In the case of Taiwan, it appears that his name has become sort of a political football for politicos to kick back and forth, each blaming the other for not taking a stronger stand.

But I think there is some lack of understanding among the Americans also. Liu Xiaobo was not merely imprisoned because he expressed is feelings about some things. He is viewed with deep contempt by the party because he is actively pursuing a course of reform that would clearly require them surrendering power, or at least submitting that power to the will of the people (which would be the same thing, basically). So I guess I can understand why the Party doesn't like him. But my point is that they asked for the problem, because they have continually cultivated the image of a country that is moving in the direction he advocates.

This, I guess, is the difference between the way I see this, and the way this matter is viewed by most foreigners I talk to. They are interested in his stand on democracy, and critical of the Party for resisting it. I don't care that much about democracy. Democracy is just a form of government. But I do think that we should be passionate about freedom, and also about honesty and integrity. It is not the lack of democracy in China that bothers me. It is the lack of honesty. If the Communist Party doesn't want to implement democracy in China, they should just say it. But when they talk about how democratic and open China is becoming, and then arrest a university professor for actually trying to implement what they pretend to believe in, it makes them look foolish.

As I have said before, I don't know if Liu Xiaobo is quite the hero he is portrayed as in the West, but he does have a lot of good ideas that need to be talked about, and for that it is only fair to give him credit. But would that that credit were given by people who actually know what he stands for, rather than by opportunistic politicians.

Seniority

2010-10-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

A guy came up to me in the park the other day and said, "Are you 80?"

I guess it's the beard. I told him I was 56.

Seniority does have it's benefits, but I haven't seen any need to hurry it along. Still, once in awhile reminders like the one above do tend to wake me up to the growing reality. I guess it's the sincerity of his question, you know. He obviously wasn't joking. When friends call me "gramps," it goes in one ear and out the other; they're just giving me a bad time, right? But when little kids in my village call me "ye-ye," it's kinda hard to blow it off, you know what I mean? So it starts to sink in.

But, as I said, the passing of the years does have advantages, and I'm not talking about the senior citizen's discount at Denny's. There are no Denny's restaurants in China. But when I get on the bus and the ticket lady says, "All right, somebody get up and give the professor a seat!" it is kinda nice. I still feel uncomfortable, though, if a young lady stands up to give me her seat. Really caught me off guard when I first came to China. A young lady would stand up for me on the bus or subway, and I would quickly motion her to sit down.

But as time goes on, you know how it is...you just sorta get accustomed to the world in which you live. Then one time you get on the bus and a young lady is sitting there with her ear phones in her ears, chewing her gum, and pretending not to see you, and suddenly a posture that I would not even have noticed in America, presents itself as quite rude within the context of this society. By the same token, when I get on the bus and a young lady who is obviously from a good family instinctively jumps up and runs shyly to the other end of the bus so that I cannot make her sit down again, I am more likely, now, to respect her than to be shocked or flustered.

Some Chinese have asked me if I am offended when a young person stands up for me. Stuffy foreigners have occasionally taken umbrage at the courtesy, I guess. It doesn't offend me at all. I just feel a little guilty, because I'm not really old. If I am riding the bus and I am getting ready to climb the mountain, and a tired working lady gets on the bus, it just doesn't make sense that she should have to stand while I sit down. She needs the rest more than I do. I wonder if I will feel the same way when I really am old.

Some time ago, there was a special program at Haidian Church. Lots of people. Packed to the gills. I came in and one of the greeters motioned me to a chair. I was pleasantly surprised to see a chair still open and was about ready to sit down when I saw Claire walk in. I told her to sit down, but she refused, and pointed to the sign on the back of the chair. It was in Chinese, of course, so I hadn't paid attention to it at first, but when she pointed to it, I read it. It said (in Chinese) "Reserved for the elderly." I don't know. Maybe if you're an old person, that wouldn't seem that funny. But if you're a young person who just happens to look old, it's hilarious.

Forced Abortion

2010-10-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

Forced abortion. The dark side of China's one child policy. You need to watch this video, because it gives a very clear picture of how the one child policy is enforced. Contrary to what many in the West believe, the one child policy is widely supported in China, especially in the cities. But you always have to ask yourself, "What happens if a woman who already has a child gets pregnant?" I have asked many people that question. I have gotten many answers. I guess it is left up to the local government to solve this problem. I heard of one community where, if you had another child, they would come to your home and tear down a room in your house. Sometimes, people who have more than one child get off with a fine. But other times, it is this.

In some places, there will be forced sterilization after the first child. Many times I suppose it is requested. But it is by no means universal, because after the 2008 earthquake, couples who had lost a child were allowed to have another one, which, of course, would not have been possible if the mother had been sterilized after the first pregnancy. It is almost, certain, though, that the poor woman in this story was sterilized after her baby was born dead. God have mercy on China!

6 of 10 Chinese demand Norway apologize: survey

2010-10-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

Well, they're trying. The Global Times today published a survey that they claim indicates 60 per cent of Chinese people think that Norway should apologize for giving the Nobel Prize to Liu Xiaobo. The details of the survey are not nearly as significant as the fact that they took the survey in the first place. Can you imagine any other country in the world doing this? Surveys in China are always suspect, because the government controls the results, and there is no way for anyone to check the responses to see if the numbers reported are accurate. The other problem is that in China, public opinion is carefully crafted by the government. So you can pretty much guess what the results are going to be before you ask a single question. I have experienced this at the English corner. As the government position on a given issue changes, the responses I get from people at the English corner tend to follow. It is not completely uniform, because of the Internet. Some people (not many, but some) do take the initiative to become informed, and they disagree with the government's position. But that is still the exception.

But even assuming the numbers are accurate, look at the table. They took the 41 per cent who said they should just forget it, and simply subtracted that from the total, assuming that the other 59 per cent wanted Norway to apologize. But there was no question on the survey that mentioned an apology. So the results of the survey do not match the headline of the article at all. Shouldn't be surprising, coming from the Global Times, which is one of the main propaganda arms of the Party here in China. Still, the contrast between what the headline claims and what their own data shows is so striking, it makes you wonder how they dared to publish the results. Interestingly, they were left out of the print version.

The Global Times is a pretty good barometer of how the Party is feeling about a given issue, because as soon as a question arises, the Party will issue an order to the Global Times to say something about it (and tell them what to say). So it is clear that the Party is really super annoyed with Norway for giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo. Norway's repeated statements that the Nobel Committee is independent mean nothing in China. China is looking for someone to blame, and Norway is the obvious target.

But the Party doesn't seem to have caught on to the fact that this award reflects the feelings of a whole lot of people both in and out of Norway. Personally, I think Liu Xiaobo's ideas are unrealistic. He is advocating democracy, and I don't believe in democracy. I am not opposed to democracy, of course. I just don't think American style democracy would work here in China. Democracy is just a form of government. There is no inherent virtue in it. Democracy means "rule of the people." So if the people are virtuous, then a democracy would bring virtuous rule. But if the people are not virtuous, democracy would usher in the most virulent form of tyranny.

Think about it. If you have a hundred people, and fifty-one of them decide that the other forty-nine should be tortured to death, is that justice? It passes the test of democracy with flying colors. But living in such a society would be horrible indeed. But if all one hundred people are inculcated with a deeply held belief that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then those one hundred people will be motivated to protect the rights of the minority even as they pass laws that are not necessarily favored by everyone.

So it is clear that democracy requires an underlying belief system. It has no virtue in and of itself. Democracy is God's gift to a free people. It's as if God is saying, "OK, you guys, since you are living right, and following after truth and justice, I am going to let you rule yourselves."

But what has happened to day is that America has forgotten God, and decided to worship democracy as the source of their freedom. Freedom does not come from democracy. Democracy comes from freedom. Modern Americans are busy dismantling the moral foundation of their society even as they enjoy freedoms made possible by that foundation, and turn to Godless values that never would have produced the freedoms they take for granted.

And in China, intellectuals who have been educated in the United States think they can implement American style freedom and democracy in China without paying any attention to the moral foundation necessary for that sort of democratic government to produce a free society. China is not a Christian country (yet). There are lots of really nice people in China, and the church is growing very rapidly. But Christian values have not permeated to the extent that would make democracy a viable option at this point.

So I don't agree with Liu Xiaobo. Is he a hero? I don't know. I guess you'd have to say he is one way, because he was willing to pay a price for taking a stand. If he were running for office, would I vote for him? Maybe. I would certainly be inclined to give him an ear. I don't know. But one thing is for sure. If I were a student on his campus, I would sign up for every class he taught, because he is a clear, creative thinker, and he is bringing up stuff that needs to be talked about in this country. This is a good man, and I think he should be set free.

Out of the Depths

2010-10-14T18:58:00.000-07:00

The drama that gripped the world is over. The miners have been rescued. CNN has put together a video montage for those of you who didn't get a chance to see the rescue as it was happening.

In China, the drama has grabbed the attention of the Chinese people, but has also been a source of profound embarrassment for the Chinese government. It just hasn't been a good week for China's international image. First the Peace Prize, and now this.

In China, the annual death toll for mining disasters usually numbers in the thousands. It is almost accepted as the cost of getting the coal out of the ground. Maybe it isn't exactly a fair comparison, because I remember talking to a couple hard rock miners from Colorado one summer when I was working in the fish cannery in Alaska. They told me that coal mining is much more dangerous than hard rock mining. Hard rock mines are usually much more stable. Still, the cost of coal in China was once reported as 4 lives per million tons. That's a lot--even for coal mining. Government officials had to be wincing every time one of those Chilean miners was brought up out of the ground to such extraordinary personal attention. In China, mining disasters tend to be quite impersonal. I guess it's just that the numbers are so great here. It haunts one to think of all the many miners who have been stuck down in some dank cavern alive, daring to hope that they would be rescued, but never again seeing the sun...slowly dying as hope faded. It was almost that way in Chile too. But the ability of individual citizens to make their case without fear of being sent off to a labor camp is much better in countries like Chile. Openness. China is changing ever so slowly. But this extraordinary drama has once more contrasted the secrecy which so often surrounds events like this when they happen in China. They are announced of course, but the details of how things turn out is often hidden.

BBC radio interviewed the President's chaplain, who, interestingly enough, is English. He said that several of the miners were Christians, and several who were not became Christians down in that mine. It is a story that I think we will hear more about in the days to come.

For me, the most compelling moment was at the very end, after all the miners had been rescued. There were still several rescue workers left in the mine, and they were pulled up one by one. When the last one was left, the camera down in the mine showed him talking on the phone to the folks up on top--I think they wanted to keep him from getting panicked, since he was down there all by himself. He kept talking until the capsule descended for the last time. Then he got up, bowed to the camera, and made his exit. The scene of that empty deserted cave that held those men captive for so long was something I don't think a person can ever quite forget.

After the last rescuer had reached the surface, the president gave a little speech commending the rescuers. Typical politician, he went a little overboard in his closing remarks: "On the Day of Judgment, we will call you guys to come and rescue us from where some of us are going to end up." I think that would qualify as hyperbole.

The Nobel Prize for Peace

2010-10-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

How is China going to handle this? Liu Xiaobo has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Liu Xiaobo is the primary author of the Charter 08 document, which advocates democracy, and particularly (I think this is the part that has caused him the most trouble) an end to one party rule.

It does appear that China's decision to make a criminal of Liu Xiaobo is coming home to roost. He was sentenced last year to eleven years in prison on Christmas Day last year for the crime of "inciting subversion of state power." Here are the main points of the Charter 08 document that got Liu Xiaobo in trouble:

Amending the Constitution.
Separation of powers.
Legislative democracy.
An independent judiciary.
Public control of public servants.
Guarantee of human rights.
Election of public officials.
Rural–urban equality.
Freedom of association.
Freedom of assembly.
Freedom of expression.
Freedom of religion.
Civic education.
Protection of private property.
Financial and tax reform.
Social security.
Protection of the environment.
A federated republic.
Truth in reconciliation.

China's problem is that most countries in the community of nations would see these values as laudable, not criminal. So China's contention that the award is being given to a criminal is not impressive. When Liu Xiaobo and others put out the Charter 08 document, the government had a challenge to face. Certainly it was a threat to their power, but I'm not sure how much of a threat. I think they made the wrong call this time. I don't know if I would call Liu Xiaobo a hero or not. When he was a guest scholar at Columbia back in 1989, he quit his job and rushed back into China to get involved in the demonstrations. So I guess I can understand why the government sees him as a bit of a trouble maker. But a criminal? I think that's going to be a problem for the government. Most people just don't see him that way. He is a scholar, and a very smart man, and he has brought up some ideas that most people feel need to be talked about. When they decided to make him a criminal, they pretty much bought the farm. This is going to be tough to back out of. I think China is going to lose the propaganda war on this one.

Teeth

2010-10-05T23:30:00.000-07:00

Disgusting. My new crown broke off yesterday. I pulled a biscuit or something out of the fridge that turned out to be hard as rock when I bit into it. So this morning I took the bus to the McDonald's near the Hills here (yes, same song--over and over and over) and called my dentist, whose office is nearby. Used to be kinda inconvenient to go there, because his office is way out at the Air Force hospital. But now I live way out on the other side of the Air Force hospital, so it's just a ten or fifteen minute bus ride. He spent about an hour or so cementing it back in again, and didn't charge me a thing. Nice guy.

I don't know how that tooth is going to go, though. It is one of my two front teeth, so it's hard not to use it. The good news is that there is really no reason for it to come loose if I can remember not to bite into solid rock.

The older I get, the more crowns I seem to have. So far, though I have been lucky. Most of them are glued to solid roots. If the root goes, then you have to make a bridge, and that can be tough if every other tooth is a crown. My other front tooth is an old root canal that has never been crowned. And the tooth on the other side is also a crown. It can't be used to support a bridge. I guess I'll just have to be really careful. All it takes is once. Fortunately, my dentist is quite a craftsman, but this one is turning out to be quite a challenge for him.

I do have an old bridge on the right side in front that I have had since I was in high school. Fortunately, the tooth it is glued to is solid as the rock of Gibraltar. I have never had any trouble with it. If something should happen with that, I'd be in trouble. So far I have never had to have dentures. My teeth function like normal teeth. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Armor of God

2010-10-04T22:45:00.000-07:00

Click picture for larger image.
Just got back yesterday from a leadership retreat at Beidaihe. I had debated about going. I wasn't in the mood to spend a bunch of money on a trip, especially a trip to Beidaihe on National day. During the early days of New China (Communist China, in other words), Beidaihe was the vacation place for national leaders. So everyone in China has the idea that this is one place they must see. Consequently, it is very crowded on holidays. I didn't look forward to it. In the end, though, I didn't really feel right about not going either, and I am glad I agreed to go. We found a cheap hotel, and the church kicked in some money, so in the end it only cost 150 RMB for each person. That's about as close to free as one could expect something like this to be.

The English Fellowship at Haidian Church has been going for a couple years now, and the volunteer group is developing into a strong organization. It is good to see so many people from various countries working together for one purpose.

One couple who are both involved in the volunteer group had brought their little boy along with them. They both studied English in University, and speak pretty well, as do most university students who really apply themselves to learning language. When they got married, they made a decision to only speak English to their child. It's quite interesting. The kid is a native speaker of English even though his parents are not native speakers. He speaks Chinese of course (as any kid would who grew up in China), but never to his parents. To his parents he always speaks English, because they won't accept anything else. I am sure it must be a bit of a challenge for them to keep up this discipline, but I think it will pay off. His English is really quite good. Once in awhile, you can hear him doing literal translations from Chinese--sorta like when Josh was little and he would say something like, "I forgot because."

We were divided into groups and each group was assigned to prepare one meal. Mostly Chinese food of course, but the last night, some BSF folks from Canada came up with a menu that had more of a western flavor--complete with chocolate pudding. It was really nice.

Badachu

2010-09-30T22:32:00.000-07:00

I went behind Fragrant Hills Park today and hiked up over the mountain to Badachu. Lots of old structures, but the pagoda pictured here looks brand new. Not sure what's up with that. But the park is very pretty. Still like my side of the mountain better though. I don't know...maybe if I lived over there, I would be thinking of reasons why that side of the mountain is better. Doubt it, though. To much glitzy commercialism. A lady with some horses tried to hit me up to take a ride. I told her that it was my first trip there so I wanted to walk down. She told me that she would give me a ride, then bring me back. Well, I figured that might not be too bad. Only 10 kuai. But once I got in the saddle, she started telling me that it would cost me 10 kuai to go, and another 10 kuai to come back. I got off.

In one sense I don't blame her. Usually, tourists climb the mountain, and they are tired, so they want to ride down. So she didn't want to bring me back up. But it's her dishonesty that bothered me. She knew that if she told me the truth, I wouldn't take the ride.

Actually, I should have just refused in the first place. Most people climb up the mountain, and then they are tired and they want to ride down. But I came over the mountain from the other side, so I was starting at the top. I had never been to the bottom of the mountain or anywhere in between, and I wanted to see it. Anyway, as I said, too much commercialism. I get tired of that stuff really quickly.

When I got to the bottom of the hill, I decided to take the bus back, because I was tired, and not really in the mood for hiking back over the mountain. After a few stops a whole bunch of school kids in their uniforms got on the bus. One of them happened to be the little boy whose family I lived with last year in the village behind Fragrant Hills Park. What are the odds of that? I didn't recognize him at first, although he looked familiar (they all do). But when he said my Chinese name, I knew it had to be him.

In other news, China released three of the four Japanese nationals they had arrested. They couldn't release the fourth one, because when Japan released the sailors on that fishing vessel, they held the captain for awhile longer. So I would expect to see the fourth Japanese national released in another week or two. We'll see.

National Day

2010-09-27T20:25:00.000-07:00

Construction continues in the park. Last minute preparations for the October First holiday. October First is National Day in China. You could call it China's "Independence Day," but that's not what they call it here.

In China, it's mainly just a holiday. There isn't a lot of patriotic music in China. But more than that, even though many Chinese people love their country, they don't have the same emotional feeling about 1949 that Americans have about 1776. Americans regard 1776 as the birth of their country. But no one in China would allow you to say that China is only 61 years old. And while the regime change a half-century ago did bring a measure of stability, it also brought a lot of pain. So people just don't have the same sentimental feeling about it that Americans feel. That doesn't mean that Chinese people are not sentimental about their country. I encounter a range of sentiments, actually. Some are quite disgusted with the way things are, some hopeful, and some philosophical. But even those who are very into being Chinese do not tend to associate that feeling with the First of October. October First celebrates a party taking power, not the birth of a country.

That being said, the mood in China is generally positive. The fact that China has enjoyed almost a generation of unbroken economic growth probably has a lot to do with that.

Wall Street

2010-09-26T21:46:00.000-07:00

Stopped at the Bridge Cafe before Church this morning. An expat I have talked to several times before came in and sat down. I handed him the Wall Street Journal. He said, "I'm not interested."

I asked him why not. He said, "I worked on Wall Street for 27 years. Nothing ever changes." I told him about one of my former neighbors in the Foreign Teachers' Dormitory at Beihang University who had written a book that discourages any stock investment. My stock broker friend said, "I tell people the same thing. The thing that finally convinced me is when I noticed that 92 percent of the money was being made by 8 percent of the investors."

The current disillusionment with Wall Street is understandable. But what would replace it? When I talk to young people in China about the dangers of speculation masked as investment, it goes in one ear and out the other. China has been seeing consistant economic growth for longer than most of my students have been alive.

2010-09-25T21:44:00.000-07:00

I was riding the subway this evening when a guy came up to me to practice his English.

"Where are you from?"

I told him I was from Japan.

"Oh, your English is quite good!"

I don't hear that one very often, but I'll take every compliment I can get.

Japanese Captain Released

2010-09-24T21:13:00.000-07:00

Three items in the news today. One of the young hikers who had strayed into Iran territory and been arrested as a spy was released. Four Japanese people who had strayed into a military in China were arrested. And Japan announced that the captain of the fishing vessel that rammed a Japanese Coast Guard ship would be returned to China. Not sure what connection, if any, exists between events, but I can't help wondering.

The Dialogue program the other day contained what I thought was a veiled threat. It looks like that threat has been carried out. If you're not that interested in this issue, the Dialogue program might not be that interesting to you. But it is (to me) a startling display of the siege mentality that can develop in a country where only one line of thinking is allowed. Can you imagine a conversation like this on a national network news program in the United States or Japan?

Mid Autumn Festival

2010-09-23T22:46:00.000-07:00

This morning, I went to the McDonald's restaurant nearby for breakfast. Egg sandwich and coffee for 6 RMB. That's not a bad deal. And this place is near the Hills, so it is a bit remote from the city, which means that it is usually not crowded. It's a really good place to study--except for one thing. They only have one song. I'm serious. One song. Over and over again. Every day, all day long.

It's not the first time I have had this happen in China. From time to time, I have to talk to the manager at a coffee bar and ask them to change the music. Some managers pick a song for the day in the morning and just run it on an infinite loop all day. I don't know how people can stand it. I look around me and never see anyone else complaining. I guess Chinese people are just more used to being programmed or something, I don't know. It drives me nuts. To me, it's a form of torture. But usually, when I bring it to the manager's attention, they will do something about it. But at this McDonald's, they just apologize and tell me that's the only song they have. Every day. all day long. Over, and over, and over again.

A couple of my former graduate students came out today. This is the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. The actual day was yesterday, I think. It is August 15th on the Chinese Calendar. A beautiful full moon.

My students both went to Japan as interns while they were doing their graduate work at the Software College, so they both have good jobs. I find this pattern to be very consistent. If I have students who tend toward research in the field of Computer Science, I encourage them to go to America, because the Americans have lots of research funds from which to create graduate assistanceships for Chinese students. But for students who show a talent for software engineering, I always encourage them to go to Tokyo. The ones who go to Tokyo always get good jobs when they come back to China (if they come back to China--some, like Piano, have elected to stay in Japan), because they are in demand by Japanese companies.

When I encourage sofware engineering students to go to Japan, the most common response is, "We don't like Japanese," or some such thing. Those who manage to rise above this always come out ahead. Unfortunately, the recent economic downturn has sharply reduced the number available internships. This does not prevent students from soliciting their own work in Japan, but they aren't having it handed to them quite as easily as before.