Eric's Beijing Diary

Just saw the news. The Chinese unmanned moonship "Chang'e" has successfully entered the earth-moon transfer orbit. The regimen they have designed for this thing is impressive. They put it into orbit around the earth, and then set up a series of ever increasing concentric circles to bring the apogee to a point where the craft can switch to an earth moon orbit. The obvious intent of this is to save fuel. They are playing the earth's gravity off against the moon's gravity until they can make the exchange. This is really an ingenious plan. They don't say why they did it this way, but it seems to me the reason is obvious. Once a satellite is in orbit, it doesn't need fuel. The moon has been traveling around the earth for many years without using any fuel. So by keeping the craft in an ever increasing earth orbit until it is able to make the short jump to the moons orbit, they can get the craft to the moon with very little fuel. It's a much longer trip that way, but who cares? Most of the journey is being powered by the following simple words of wisdom by Isaac Newton:

Every body is attracted to every other by a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

I'm really not a party animal, but I couldn't say no to these kids. They wanted me to be a judge for the contests at the Halloween Party. Halloween, at least the way it is celebrated now, is really a pretty American holiday, so it is interesting to see how it has been adopted by Chinese young people. I say Chinese, because although the coffee bar is frequented by many different kinds of people, when there is a party of this nature, it is primarily Chinese young people who show up. I guess other countries don't adopt holidays like this quite so quickly. And the Americans themselves are busy with their own parties, either at their apartments, or at places like the Lush, which are more oriented toward drinking and loud music. The bars do attract people in wierd costumes, but they don't have pumkin carving contests, and games like bobbing for apples. The one American holiday that has never really caught on in China is Thanksgiving, except in the churches. In the Chinese church at Thanksgiving, people bring all kinds of fruit and vegetebles to church. It really is impressive. I'm still not sure what I think of it, because the idea of bringing food to God doesn't really seem like a Christian practice. But at least I can say that the Chinese Christians do make a big deal of giving thanks to God during this time. Christmas is big in China, but still pretty much commercial. There is no vacation either from school or work during Christmas.

Some people just do not like to have their picture taken. Tibetans are particularly shy, but I do meet people among the Han who are a bit on the shy side, too. That's the exception, though. And it should be; they certainly take enough pictures of me! I guess you'd have to say that you have an assumed right to take pictures of someone who is taking pictures of you. Last summer I got caught in the crossfire between a tourist and a local gawker who were shooting each other (with cameras, of course). Tibetans are quite friendly, but they generally don't like to have a camera pointed at them. Mainly the women, though; men don't seem to mind that much.

Finished my six week language immersion class today. I am supposed to go on to the next book, but I really don't have time to do the study necessary to justify proceeding. So I am going to study on my own for awhile now until I get caught up to where we are, then go back and study the next book. I like this program. Very conversation oriented. And the classes are small--a maximum of four students--in this case, a Korean kid, a Frenchman, and myself. But if you go to class for three hours in the morning, you really need to be studying for another three hours in the afternoon. I just cannot afford to do that. So I will spend a few months going over the stuff we have studied, then move on. Inch by inch it's coming along.

Found a poem by one of my favorite Tang Dynasty poets that expresses the sentiment I was trying to convey last summer:

Sitting Alone in Face of Mount Jingtang

By Li Bai

All birds have flown away, so high;

A lonely cloud drifts on, so free.

Gazing on Mount Jingtang, nor I

Am tired of him, nor he of me.

Gazing at mountains. That's it. Actually, I do like to climb mountains, too. I'm just not as crazy about it as some people. I guess I would say that I like being in the mountains more than I like being on the very tip top of them. Mountains are not objects of worship for me. But the God who created them is. It's sorta like looking at the stars, I guess. But not exactly the same. There is a little difference. It's the difference between God's glory and God's handiwork, as Psalm 19 says: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork." There's a solemn comfort in gazing at God's handiwork and knowing that the same God who created those mountains can build my life on a secure foundation that will not be alarmed by the rain, floods and winds that are part of any earthly sojourn.

Got up at the crack of dawn this morning for the trip to Jingtang. I had told Elisha that I wanted to see the seaport. I am interested to see how the logistics of shipping is being handled in China. All the rest of the world together handles about a third of the containers that move through Chinese ports. The Jingtang port, about 80 kilometers from Tangshan, has been operating since 1993. It is nothing like Shanghai, of course, but it's natural harbor promises to make it an important part of China's shipping in the years to come. Quick turnaround is important, because the trade imbalance with other countries is growing. Ten years ago, only about 10 per cent of containers leaving the United States for China came back empty. Now the number stands at about 60%. Think about this. A shipping company hauls a ship load of containers out of China, and for every 100, 60 come back empty. The effect of that, of course, is that the ones that aren't empty are netting much smaller revenue on the way back to China, since the demand is so low. Some shippers are responding to this by refusing to haul cargo to China, since they can save money by going empty and moving faster. When I was in the trucking industry, it was very hard to get a load out of LA, because so much more freight went in then came out. Shippers in LA liked this, of course, because they paid a lot less for shipping than the folks back east, but it was a real loss for trucking companies. A similar situation prevailed for shippers hauling livestock. Those guys almost always came back empty. The drivers would compensate by driving faster on their return trip. Listening to bull haulers talk about the tickets they had gotten could be rather amusing. One guy told me he was doing 110 through Kansas when a cop pulled him over. This officer was very angry, and quite sarcastic. He said, "Can I see your pilot's license, since you're flying so low!?. Well, this guy happened to have a private pilot license, so he pulled it out and handed it to the officer. Now the officer was in trouble, because the pilot license was genuine. Everything was up to date. This driver was legally licensed to go "flying" through the state. The cop was at a loss for words. Finally, he said, "Well, down here on earth we're doing 55, you think you can handle that?" Can you believe this driver got out of that scrape without a ticket? I said, "I bet you slowed down." He said, "I crawled out of that state!"

This morning, Elisha took me to the museum for the 1976 earthquake. After leaving the museum, we went to McDonald's for lunch. Both McDonald's and KFC tend to be very crowded at lunch, but we managed to find a seat near a young nurse, who watched me with curiosity when I got up to get a refill for my coffee. Elisha tried to explain to me patiently that I would have to pay for it, but I stubbornly persisted that I would not have to. When I came back with the coffee, both Elisha and the nurse told me that I got the free refill because I was a foreigner. I told them that the free refills on coffee was a McDonald's policy, but there actually may be some truth to what they were saying, in the sense that sometimes people who work at McDonald's may not be aware of the policy, and local people don't know enough about McDonald's to push the issue.

As we were leaving McDonald's to go to the park and climb hill overlooking the city, I saw a young guy with a short beard and a head full of curlers. It was a Kodak moment if I ever saw one, but I couldn't get my camera out quickly enough. You never know these days...more and more young people especially are adopting all sorts of interesting styles. Multi-colored hair, and punk-rock dress are not nearly as unusual as they would have been even a few years ago. In the eighties, when China first began opening up, you used to hear stories about women wearing nylons on the outside of their pants, obviously a wild guess at how they were supposed to worn. But today, both young women and young men are just as fashionable as their counterparts in the West.

We were going to leave the park to go to the church for a prayer meeting, but first Elisha wanted to introduce me to cotton candy.

"This is traditional Chinese food."

Hmm..... Oh well, she's young. You wait. Twenty years from now, young people will be introducing McDonald's that way.

One moment in time. The whole city was sleeping, totally unprepared for the monstrous catastrophe what was about to befall them. Well, not totally; strange things had been happening; the problem was that nobody knew what they meant. The day before, a thousand chickens in a nearby village refused to eat and kept running around in circles. An otherwise placid fish kept jumping out of its fishbowl. People reported hearing loud noises, and some even reported seeing fireballs shooting across the sky. Nonetheless, they went to bed completely unprepared for what was about to happen.

At precisely 3:42 on the morning of July 28, 1976, disaster struck. Thousands of people were instantly killed by the crush of falling concrete. Many thousands more, who lay patiently beneath the rubble, waiting to be rescued, were crushed when the powerful aftershock hit. The official death toll stands at 242,419, which would be about three times as many as died in the bombing of Hiroshima. But local people will tell you that many more died. Who knows? At least seven thousand entire families were wiped out.

The recovery was hampered by the political situation at the time, which made asking for outside help unthinkable. If it had happened today, the Red Cross would surely have been in there, but China was staggering through the last turbulent days of the Cultural Revolution. The Red Cross was not invited. One can only imagine how many lives could have been saved. Nevertheless, a plea for help went out across the country, and many, many people responded. The earthquake museum shows some pictures of the devastation--it's really mind boggling. When you look at the pictures, it's hard to believe the current metropolis that is Tangshan could have risen from that devastation.

Golden Week. China has three of them. The National Day holiday in October, the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) holiday, and the May Day holiday. Each of them are a week long, except that for students, the Spring Festival holiday is longer. This time I wasn't quite sure where to go, and hadn't made any plans, because I had been holding out the possibility of taking a quick trip to the States. Anyway, I was having dinner with Elisha and Dragon on Sunday evening, and Elisha invited me again to come to her home town. I was interested in Tangshan for several reasons. First of all, Tangshan was the epicenter of the 1976 earthquake. Tangshan also has a sister city relationship with Jiutian (Sataka) in Japan, one of my home towns. Finally, Tangshan is sorta the gateway to the Jingtang (Beijing de jing, Tangshan de tang) shipping port.

This afternoon we boarded the bus at Zhongguancun for the three hour ride here to Tangshan. This evening, after dinner, we walked to the square near Elisha's house where a large number of people were dancing in the special dancing square. This is something I see all over China. It is a favorite evening past time that seems to transcend the regional differences that prevail throughout this very diverse country. When we first got there this evening, they were waltzing to "Edelweiss," from the "Sound of Music," but there were several Chinese tunes, too. Classical music seems to be favored, but there is actually quite a bit of variety.

National Day. A bunch of us went to the Disanji building at Haidian Book City and had Shuan Yang Rou. "Yang Rou" means "mutton," but sometimes beef is also included. This restaurant was pretty good, but I still say the best place to have Shuan Yang Rou in Beijing is that little dump of a place down in Chegongzhuang. It really comes down to the sesame seed sauce that you dip the meat in, because mutton is mutton. Anyway, it's a good way to eat together in a manner that allows you to have a balance of meat and vegetables in a meal that will fill you up, without making you feel bloated. It's not exactly fat free, because the meat does have some fat in it, but it is boiled in water, not cooked in grease. Very healthy, and very tasty.

This afternoon, I decided to go down to Tiananmen and look around. In past years, I have always gone down earlier in the day, but everything is so crowded on national day, so this time I decided to wait until later. When I was on my way back, I met some students who were in town for the holiday. One of them asked me if I knew a university where they could stay. As far as I know, my university does not provide this kind of housing, but I told them about the youth hostel. The student told me that 60 RMB per person was too much--they were hoping to get something for 30 kuai each. Well, there were five of them, so it's possible that they can get a cheap room and split the cost. But I still can't imagine how they can come out for less than what it would cost them at the youth hostel. Oh, well, it's their decision, but right about now I'm kinda wishing I had tried harder to talk them into coming back to Wudaokou with me. I'm not really worried about them, because they are young. They will find something--a tea house if nothing else. But I just have a feeling they are going to end up being relatively miserable for not much less than it would have cost them to have a nice comfortable bed.

The problem for me is that, since I am a foreigner, I have tended to defer to students on issues like this. The students I work with are pretty savvy, and they have an amazing sense for a good deal. But this time, I think I know more about what's up then those kids I met tonight. They are not from Beijing. And it was already about 7pm when I talked with them. Well, I gave them my email address, so I will let you know if I hear anything.