Eric's Beijing Diary

It's time to leave again. Tomorrow I fly to Beijing. It's a different feeling leaving this time..I guess because I know that the Beihai I see now is soon going to be a very different place. I don't know...maybe it won't change that fast. Beihai is a laid back town. Several times I have come up to a rickshaw driver with money in my hand ready to hire him or her for a ride down to the Seafood Island, and had the driver point at a motorcycle. No problem, those guys are generally willing to take you anywhere for three kuai. Sometimes they try to get more, especially if it is quite a distance, but most of the time three will do it. I guess there is a helmet law of some kind in Beihai, because often the biker I am riding with hands me a hardhat to wear while I am riding behind him, as if that would protect me in an accident. Half the time it is so small, I have to hold it to keep it from flying off. But if it keeps the guy from getting a 100 kuai fine, oh, well. One bad thing about the motorcyclists is that they sometimes like to run red lights. With cars and motorcycles whizzing by in front of you and right behind you, it is a bit unnerving. But it is an exhilarating feeling to get through an intersection and realize that you are still in one piece. Things are always changing in this world, and in China it seems so much more so. Now Beihai has been targeted for development by the government. Good for the economy, I guess, but the increase in business so often brings with it a loss of simplicity. I hate to wish failure on any enterprise that promises to bring prosperity to people who are hoping for a better life. But if this new plan doesn't manage to bring millions of people to this little town, I don't think I'll shed any tears. And the people shouldn't be too disappointed if things don't quite turn out they way they are hoping. After all, they got a nice big new airport out of the deal. Pretty fancy, but not too tough to deal with. No need to worry about which gate to go to. Just look for the one with the plane parked next to it.

Labels: Beihai

The May holiday has been shortened. The government opened up a couple other holidays during the year, and shortened the May golden week to 3 days. I think the idea was to cut down on the massive crowding on mass transit, especially trains. Not sure what I think about it, because I am afraid the average working people may not be able to see their families as often this way, but the crowding problem is something that had to be addressed. It's not easy, you know, when you have 1.3 billion people to keep happy.

Thursday, Snow and Fly and I traveled to Fly's home in the country. His folks are farmers--mainly sugar cane. I like the quiet peacefulness of the South China countryside. Not sensational, really, except for the bamboo trees, I guess that's a little unusual, but mainly just peaceful and pretty.

Yesterday I went with Snow to visit with her grandmother. On the way, I saw a big billboard proclaiming Hu Jintao's statement re: development the North Coastal part of Guangxi Province. Hmmm... so all this development really is coming from the top. Orders from headquarters. Not sure what I think of it. I am always reticent about top down development. Better to create an economic environment where development can happen naturally. I can remember another top down development initiative that really worked. Shenzhen. This was Deng Xiao-ping's idea. But Shenzhen was different, because it sits right on the north side of Hong Kong. I mean right on the border. The Chinese were right next to all this wealth and not benefiting from it for no other reason than that it was against their religion. But their religion let them down, so they abandoned the faith and opened the floodgates. Manufacturers in Hong Kong were invited to open factories throughout the Pearl River Delta in a bonanza that increased their profits exponentially. They already had established markets, and had developed a business structure that was managed tightly enough to preserve some measure of profit after expenses. Now they were handed an opportunity to drastically reduce their production costs, and they didn't turn down the invitation. The Hong Kong -- Pearl River alliance became very, very competitive worldwide, and the result was phenomenal development in both Guangzhou and more sensationally, Shenzhen, a small fishing village which exploded into a metropolis of 12 million people.

But Beihai is not Shenzhen. There is no Hong Kong nearby. The development of Beihai seems to be more focused on tourism. Not quite sure if the growth of tourism encouraged by the development will eventually generate enough capital to pay for the investment. And This quiet town will probably never be the same. But I don't hear any of residents of Beihai complaining about all the development money flowing in. It is only reasonable that their wishes be considered before those of people like myself, who stop by from time to time.

Labels: Beihai

Stopped by the new Old Town Coffee Bar tonight. Jeremy was there, and he wanted me to sing some praise songs while he played the piano. Jeremy is from Taiwan, but he spent a good bit of time in Germany. He has recently purchased an old colonial mansion down on the old street, and built a massive restaurant and coffee bar. You know, in an average Chinese city, there are Chinese restaurants, and then there are KFC and McDonald's. Chinese restaurants are the best if you are going to eat with a group. I mean that both in terms of price, and food. But if you are by yourself, Chinese restaurants are kinda awkward. There are very few places where you can just go in and buy a single meal. I live near Wudaokou, which is basically College Town, China, so I have several options.Pretty easy for me to get bacon and eggs or a plate of spaghetti. But Beihai doesn't have many such places. There are a few--Tommy's Bar out on the spit has really good burgers, and the shepherd's pie isn't bad, either. And I had a really nice lamb steak on my birthday. I go to McDonald's, but I really don't like to do that every day. So it's always interesting to see a place that gives some new options. This place is really nice. Jeremy knows a lot of praise songs, and he happened to have a book with him, so I sang some songs while he played the keyboard. Good sound system in that place. It's hard to describe this old, old brick building. Beihai was made a treaty port by the Treaty of Yantai in 1876, and the foreigners moved in. The street they lived on is one I have seen many times, because the old village church is located here. But I have never been in one of these old mansions. You really have to see it.

Labels: Beihai

I was riding the bus into town this morning, when we passed a Xinhua Bookstore. You know that feeling you get when you drive by a bookstore? I am sure you've all felt it. "Somewhere in that bookstore is a book that could change my life, and I missed it!" This time it got the best of me. I got off the bus. Not much in that place, but I did manage to find a bilingual collection of stories by Sir Walter Scott. I like him. I studied Ivanhoe in Ninth Grade, but there were several others I hadn't read yet. Don't know--I'll probably read a couple stories and throw it aside, but it was only 20 kuai. Met an Irish guy at Tommy's today who is building a golf course. Golf course? What is going on with this town? New airport, new golf course...somebody somewhere in authority must have a plan for Beihai that anticipates an increase in tourism. Something tells me this sleepy fishing town is going to be a very different place one of these days. But I wonder what they will do to increase the tourism? Silver Beach needs a lot of work. I don't want to make it sound too bad, but it's a far cry from Waikiki. The island (Weizhou Dao) is a pretty place, I will have to say that. Out of the way, though. And Beihai itself is nice in the evening during the spring of the year. But it's kinda raw in the winter. Not subzero or anything, but cold and damp, you know. And summer is burning hot. So I'm just not sure. If your vacation is in the spring I do think you'd like the place, if you don't mind a slow paced community. Medicine. Got an ear infection somehow. I was chatting with Anne Marie on Skype and she recommended Cortisporin. Good thing I talked to her, because I would have looked for Neosporin. I wasn't quite sure if ear drops were what I needed, but today the ear infection switched over to the other ear, so that made me pretty sure it must be an outer ear infection. Can't imagine that happening with otitis media. I went to the pharmacy in town, and told the lady I needed something for my ears. She showed me a couple things, and I found one that said, "hydrocortisone." Fortunately, I had gone online before I want to the drug store and found the actual chemical components for Cortisporin. And the price was right. Seven jiao. Less than one yuan. That's the thing with buying meds in China. In any given situation, if you walk into a drug store, the odds are they have exactly what you're looking for, and it's cheap. But you have to figure out how to tell them what you need. Be sure you go online before you go to the pharmacy and find out the actual name of the drug, because you can't go by the brand name. Every drug in China has a the chemical componants printed in English, hopefully on the outside, but always at least once on the inside.

Labels: Beihai

With Snow and Fly on the pier by the sea.
Sunday morning, I took the bus into town for church. After church, a young middle school student came up to me and started talking. She had her classmate with her, and we walked together toward the town square. They are students at a local middle school, which apparently has a boarding school component. The term middle school in China can be confusing, because the term "middle" denotes an intermediate between elementary school and university. In America, the term "middle school" denotes a program bridging elementary with high school. So the term "middle school" denotes a broader range in the Chinese education system. So junior middle school would equate roughly to junior high school or middle school in the US. Middle school would generally equate to high school in the States.

Snow is 18 years old, so I am assuming she would be in the upper middle school, although she told me that she has two years left at this school, so perhaps there was some problem transitioning from her village elementary school. Wouldn't surprise me. Elementary education in the villages can be quite limited.

For all the talk about China's current prosperity, this is still very much a peasant nation. Eight hundred million people in this country live on a dollar a day or less. So one thing China has an abundance of is warm hearted farm kids. They don't all speak English as well as Snow, though. But they do speak Mandarin. With the adults, there are no guarantees. Many of them are pretty much limited to their local village dialects. I should clarify this, though, because the various local dialects in China are Chinese dialects. So the speakers of these various dialects would be able to read the same newspapers (assuming they could read), but they would not understand each other. But if you can manage Putonghua (Mandarin), you can communicate with the young people.

I took Snow and Fly to McDonald's and bought them each a strawberry sundae. Neither of them had ever had a sundae at McDonald's. Snow ate hers with no difficulty, but Fly had trouble getting his down. He said he was full, but I rather think it might have been a bit of a shock to his system. Probably ten times sweeter than anything he had eaten before.

Labels: Beihai

This morning, as I was riding through the narrow streets and back alleys of Beihai in a bicycle cab, sipping my McDonald's tea, I was trying to put myself in the place of Peter and John as they ran to the sepulcher that first Easter morning. In one sense, it is more than a bit presumptuous for we who have been brought up hearing the story of Easter, with the benefit of so many infallible proofs, to think we can quite imagine what it would be like to be the disciples of Jesus--how it felt to them. As I entered the church, I could hear the strains of Wesley's old Easter anthem, "Christ the Lord is Risen Today."

On a simply human level, the story is poignant enough. Their dear friend was returned to them. Jesus, who had always seemed to have the right answers, who always put the needs of others before His own. Jesus, the altogether lovely friend and guide. He was back! He was alive!

But far more important for us is the fact that his resurrection was a triumph over death itself. It had never happened before. Lazarus was raised from the dead, of course. But that was not resurrection. Lazarus still died a natural death. He was raised from the dead, but eventually, he, too, went the way of all flesh. The resurrection of Jesus was far different. It was not only a triumph over the power of death for Him personally. It was a massive defeat for the power of death for all who place their faith in Him. This is why Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die." (John 11:25).

I hate death. I will never forget the overwhelming feeling of anger that I felt at Uncle Otto's funeral. As I sat that casket lying there, I knew that death was something I could never, never be at peace with. But Ecclesiastes says, "It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of everyone, and the living will lay it to heart." (Ecclesiastes 7:2) So the process of thinking through these things is good for us. Some time ago, I was talking with a bunch of young people at the English corner. I said, "Everyone of us is going to die." Of course they did not argue. Then I said, "There is no way you can convince me that it was supposed to be that way." When we contemplate questions of life and death, it is clear that sometime, somehow, something went terribly wrong. This wrong is called sin. And with sin came death. The power, the majesty of Easter is the power over this terrible cancer that has caused so much heartache in this dark world.

Up from the grave he arose,
With a mighty triumph o'er His foes!

And finally, the resurrection was confirmation that Jesus was, in fact, exactly who he said he was. The Bible tells us that Easter was a bold declaration that Jesus was the Son of God. He was "declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of Holiness by resurrection from the dead." There have been many throughout history who have claimed some special connection with God. They came from different backgrounds, and they started different religions with different dogmas. But they all have one thing in common. They are dead. Jesus and only Jesus was able to conquer death. But the beauty, the wonder, the hope, the glory of Easter is that in conquering death, he not only conquered death for Himself, he conquered death for all who love his appearing (2 Timothy 4:8). So now we have peace, not because we have somehow managed to resign ourselves to death as something which, though undesirable, is unavoidable, and therefore something we must accept. We have peace because we know that in dying we live. The great evangelist, D.L. Moody, used to say, "Sometime you will pick up a paper and will read of D.L. Moody's death; don't believe a word of it; I may be asleep, but I shall not be dead; death has no terror to me." When he sensed that death was approaching, he said, "This is my triumph; this is my coronation day! I have been looking forward to it for years." As he climbed the stairs to the room where he would die, it was with a sense of anticipation. And as he passed from this life, he said, "I see earth receding; Heaven is opening; God is calling me." This is a perfect picture of what death is for those who walk with Jesus. This is the power, the victory, the triumph of Easter.

Labels: Beihai