Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White

I’m currently in Japan, about the same time as I was last year. This time I Have the honor and privilege to escort my piano teacher Suzi for a week around Hakone and Kyoto to see the cherry blossoms. I’ll write more about this trip later, once I get my photos off my camera. I won’t bombard you with all the same stuff I did last year, but it’s been only one day and already some interesting observations have been made.

I had a brief time to sit by myself in a coffee shop and I quickly jotted down my immediate impressions on coming from Beijing to Tokyo. I paid a little more attention this time, though the list below necessarily will contain some of the same things I mentioned last year. More relevant is the fact that I’m in downtown Tokyo now, not the nice suburb I was last year. Here’s what immediately strikes you as you travel from China’s capitol to Japan’s:

• It’s not as crowded, though Suzi mentioned how surprised she was to see so many people out walking and so many bicycles. (It’s about 1/100 of Beijing’s.)

• Pedestrians don’t cross the street unless the pedestrian “walk” sign is green.

• Pedestrians wait on the sidewalk for the green “walk,” not halfway through the intersection.

• Cars wait for pedestrians and cyclists as they cross the street, and there’s no aggression shown by the drivers against these others.

• It’s not dusty; the cars, sidewalks, streets, bicycles, buildings, etc. all look clean and shiny.

• I saw not one person spit the entire day.

• The clothes are much less colorful: the men all wear black suits with conservative ties, and the women are only slightly more colorful.

• The women wear cosmetics.

• The women, but not the men, look heavier (probably a result of affluence).

• Talking in public places is subdued.

• More men, but not more women, smoke.

• No air pollution, and my chronic headache and runny nose from Beijing stopped within an hour of getting off the plane.

• Food is more expensive.

• Many more non-Asians here.

• Not one horn honk was heard all day. NOT ONE!!!

保罗

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

It’s been an eventful week, right here in Lake Wobegon. Our school has been hosting a training session for principals, and my colleagues and I put on a session on Interactive Teaching – which means, of course, that we’ve spent a lot of time discussing PPTs and content that had to be squeezed into 10 minutes.

Those who know me know that I don’t go around looking for new friends. I have a few friends, some of them who go back to elementary school, whom I treasure, and I don’t have enough time to interact with them, so why would I want to clutter up my declining consciousness with more people? Sometimes it’s unavoidable, though. Being the only non-local who frequents the park regularly, I think I’ve become an item of interest among the locals. Though there are plenty of foreigners in Beijing, there aren’t too many like me.

Warm weather has arrived, sort of, and my time in the Park is increasing with the temperature. About 10 days ago, on Sunday, I was quietly enjoying my cigar when, off to my left, I heard a child’s squeal (a noise that also has a direct relationship to the ambient temperature). Ah, the kids on tricycles with their grandparents are now common in the Park.

Then I heard other squeal directly in front of me and I Saw two kids trying to walk along the short wall of the central garden.

It was a girl (in orange; let’s call her Sally) and a boy (Spike), and the boy was the first in China that I’ve with his cap sideways.

A little later, Spike was playing hide and seek with his mom.

I went back to my book (the third installment of Hugh Howey’s “Wool” trilogy), and when I glanced up again, Sally had a toy I didn’t recognize.

I got up (something I’m generally not anxious to do) to get a closer look and saw that it was a chainsaw.

I offered her a weekend job at my home as a gardener, but she ignored me.

A little later I saw a guy twirling a light-weight stick with what looked like a conductor’s baton.

He was very good at it, and as people started to watch, he started to perform, first on one leg…

…then two at a time.

As the crowd converged, he started to give lessons.

The name of this ancient Chinese game is “hua gun” (which got translated to me as flower stick game) and I took a stab at it, but it would be generous to describe my skill as lousy. [Henry: Are you familiar with this?]

Despite my ineptitude, he and I chatted (with the help of a translator). He and I were equally charming, and we quickly became friends.

His name is Liu Ziyun, he’s 61 years old, and he is a retired principal of an elementary school. He has one son and three daughters, all of whom are in graduate school. He is part of a group that practices every day at a large, nearby park called Purple Bamboo Park, a place I ride to frequently in warm weather, and he encouraged me to join the group.

We struck a deal: he would make me a flower stick with batons and I would make him a DVD ROM of the movies I took of him this day. We were to meet the following Sunday to exchange these gifts.

Despite my ongoing efforts to avoid making new friends, it seems I’ve failed in this instance.

保罗

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People, Let Me Tell You ‘bout My Best Friend

(If you haven’t seen Nilsson’s “The Point,” you should. It’s free on YouTube.)

You’ve already met many of my friends and colleagues here at the school. Outside of school relationships, I have only 2 other people whom I could call friends (though I’m on the precipice of launching another friendship), though I have a few acquaintances to whom I nod when I’m in the Park.

The first is a male, one year younger than I, who befriended me last spring. Let’s call him JJ.

JJ laughs when I tell him I’m only 22, so he says he guesses that makes him 21, and I reply that he doesn’t look a day older than that. He is a retired government official, and he seems to be well informed about a lot of political stuff. Now that it’s warm again, we’ll be meeting in the Park several days each week because he goes there daily to speak with his parents who are 95 and 99.

JJ and I talk about the history of china, current politics in China and around the world, his son who is in the U.S. getting a graduate degree, back problems, etc.

From JJ I get a lot of internal Chinese news that usually does not make it outside the country, only because most other people are too busy looking for a plane in the Indian Ocean and stability in Ukraine.

During the winter months, JJ and I met several times for dinner, usually paid for by one of his close friends who are wealth business people. Yesterday he invited me to spend Friday night and all day Saturday at a hot springs spa about an hour from Beijing. The event was sponsored by a large company for Beijing VIPs, and I suspect a room suddenly became available. I was greatly tempted but I had an evening appointment with a colleague.

My other non-school friend is a 23-year old girl who is a graduate student in mathematical logic. Let’s call her X23.

She is a friend of a friend of JJ, and he introduced us in the Park one day last year. Her English is OK, about on par with JJ’s. She thinks I’m just like her grandfather. I think we’re both a bit of strangers in a strange land: me, for obvious reasons, and she because she’s so much smarter than her classmates; she’s the only girl in a class of boys, and the teacher asked her to tutor the others.

If you had to conjure up a vision of the Western image of the archetype of the shy, gentle, rural Chinese girl, X23 would be it.

X23, JJ, and I can often be seen on the same bench in the Park, X23 studying (as she seems to be constantly) while JJ and I chat. When JJ’s not there, I will read while X23 studies; otherwise she’s telling me about her former boyfriend and his fiancée or the melodrama of her roommates, which is like “War and Peace” both in length and substance.

We ride our bikes together to stores and noodle shops, and she is the only person I’ve ridden with who is almost as aggressive a rider as I am. I taught X23 how to play chess and backgammon and now she’s hooked.

These names will be cropping up now and then in future posts.

保罗

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Oh, the Shark, Babe, Has Such Teeth, Dear

When you arrive at the Beijing airport, you grab your suitcase off the carousel and head for the exit. It is quite possible that you will be required to have all your bags scanned again as you leave. (They used to scan EVERY bag, but in the last year they seem to have relaxed a little. I haven’t asked the officials directly, but I think they’re looking mainly for guns. Guns and drugs are tightly controlled in China, something I wish we’d do better in the U.S.

By now I’m sure you’ve heard of the killings in Kunming where a small gang of separatists (am I allowed to call them “thugs” or has that become politically incorrect?) from Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region hacked about 25 people to death in a train station. Kunming is #1 on the map below and Xinjiang is #2.

Lest you think the strange name of Kunming refers to some backwater outpost, here’s a picture of it. (I think there is a tendency for people to have a nebulous and disconnected image of foreign cities they have not actually seen.)

This attack was the big talk among my friends for a couple weeks. They don’t take these events any lighter than we do.

Xinjiang is a large area in northwest China with oil and natural gas – and a lot of fierce separatists.

If it weren’t so dangerous to go there, I would.

My friends told me that many of the people selling meats on the street in Beijing are from Xinjiang, and that most of them did not show up immediately after the Kunming episode for fear of reprisal. Xinjiang restaurants in Beijing were sparsely populated for a couple weeks after the killings.

Here’s a street seller from Xinjiang who decided to show up for work and found himself surrounded by official observers.

A couple days ago another Xinjiang guy knifed and killed 5 people in Changsha in Hunan Province (#3 on the map above), but there’s no indication that he’s a political activist. This is Changsha.

About a year ago I bought some tiny paring knives at Carrefour.

They came in a pack of 4 but I have only 2 left. They were so flimsy and the plastic so cheap that 2 broke easily while I was cutting the cheese (ooops) (smaller knife in the photo below).

A few days ago I went back to pick up a couple more substantial paring knives. I walked up and down the utensil aisle but saw no knives, not even the flimsy ones I purchased initially. Then I came upon a locked glass case with many high quality knives in it, assuming they were locked in there because they were expensive and the store wanted to avoid thefts. Then I saw cheap paring knives, at about $1.50 each, in the same case.

I found a sales clerk and I pointed to the inexpensive paring knives, indicating that I wanted 2 of them. He asked to see my passport. I said I only had my driver’s license with me. He called over an assistant manager (I guess), and she spent several minutes examining my license, whereupon she okayed it as a form of identification. She gave the thumbs-up to the clerk, who unlocked the case, took out two of the cheap knives, then motioned for me to follow him as we went to pay for them at a special cashier’s station meant for dangerous items and other special things. The clerk stood with me while I paid and while the cashier wrapped and sealed them in a bag. (One of these is shown as the larger knife in the photo above.)

At first I was thinking how ridiculous this was, but then I wondered what it would be like in a third-world country with political turmoil having guns like the U.S.? Oh, wait, isn’t most of Africa, the mid-East, and Eastern Europe like that?

保罗

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Cat’s in the Cradle

Guilin, Day 4 – Market Day

KK and I will be leaving Guilin this day on a bus that will take us southwest to Yangshuo, which also is on the Li River. A we had a little extra time between breakfast and pick-up, so we decided to take a little walk. We were richly rewarded by stumbling on a nearby market day that provided some of the more interesting photos and movies of our trip.

When you walk around Guilin after coming from Beijing, you notice 3 stark differences: (1) everything isn’t covered with a layer of dust, (2) the air is breathable and people don’t wear masks, and (3) life is much more orderly (sans spitting). Being there made me wish that I was working in Guilin instead of Beijing. Then again, I’d rather be in almost ANY other city than Beijing.

A high percentage of people were commuting to work on scooters.

As in Beijing, almost no one wore a helmet, even when carrying precious cargo.

Believe it or not, I have seen an entire family of 4 on one scooter.

When parked, the scooters were lined up neatly.

Often on electric bikes and scooters to see stuff the rider is taking somewhere to sell.

I’m not sure where this person was going, but it’s not unusual to see people around China riding scooters with their pets.

Many people use three-wheelers to haul their wares to market.

This guy is probably recycling this plastic.

Is he going to sell is wife at market price? “Take my wife…please.”

Around China I have noticed that a lot of people go to the park or parking lots with their badminton rackets and hit the birdie back and forth without a net.

Another thing I’ve noticed in all developing countries (Asian, South American, African, etc.) is the tendency for people to squat when they’re at rest. I’m wondering if this originated from the initial lack of stools or other sitting utensils.

We passed, or rather failed to pass, a little dumpling store where KK picked up a little post-breakfast snack.

Then we came upon a lone table in the middle of the sidewalk where a woman was selling pork pieces.

Some people just park their cars and unload their trunks onto a side street or alley with stuff to sell.

In Guilin, as all around China, there are a lot of tiny stores on both main and side streets that sell odd assortment of things, often with no apparent connection.

We came to a little walkway next to a large pond…

…where it appeared people were standing in line.

It turned out to be the beginning of a major outdoor market, and the people were simply trying to squeeze by to look at the “stalls,” which were no more than non-defined places on the ground or a table where people sold stuff.

The variety of stuff for sale was truly remarkable.

Small fish:

Crayfish and crabs in net bags:

The white tubing are air hoses; many of the aquatic animals were alive in tubs of water with bubblers to keep them alive until sold. Chinese people like their aquatic food very fresh.

Frogs, snails, and eels:

Eel skins?:

Small catfish:

Large clams:

Pig parts:

Some sellers specialized in one or two things, such as oranges…

…tiny oranges,

…peppers,…

…or ginger,…

…while others had a variety of vegetables.

We watched this guy peel his bamboo shoots for a while.

Some sellers intimately associated their vegetables with their favorite pig parts, such as these ears.

This is how you buy fresh poultry in China:

The sign is either a USDA Prime guarantee or a long disclaimer of any liability.

You can take your purchase home while it’s still kicking…

…or have it plucked while you go choose your pig parts.

Right after the poultry section was a covered area,…

…and one of the stalls apparently was a rest or eating room.

Don’t know what was in these jars. Maybe KK’ll remember.

This woman had baked a 150-layer cake with weird stuff in it…

…and these puffs with nothing but air in them,…

…while her neighbor made these green things.

Anyone need a genuine Rolex…

…or a second pair of red underwear?

This woman is cleaning fish for buyers,…

…saving the heads to sell separately, presumably for fish head soup. (You think I’m kidding?)

In Guilin, there seems to be a stronger inclination for women to carry their babies on their backs than there is in Beijing.

I’m not sure whether this guy was selling hair or hair attachments. Note the small loudspeaker and headset that is common among hawkers around China. Really annoying.

We saw this interesting looking man all by himself and we wondered what, if anything, he was selling.

Not sure whether this cat is being sold as food or a pet. Don’t wanna know.

But the cat was the last straw, so we started back to our hotel. On the way we saw this cute little street cleaner…

…and a balloon man.

Here’s a scene I have not seen in Beijing, a summery man sauntering with his dog. (Even dog-walking in Beijing is frenetic.)

In the distance, across the street, we saw a group of young children walking hand in hand with several adults, clearly on a field trip. How cute! Off to Patagonia, I suppose.

When we walk down streets in China, we often get inquisitive looks from the locals. These two women were chatting with each other on a bench when we stopped and said hello.

The one on the right smiled immediately, but the one on the left appeared much more reserved. Finally, KK’s charm worked its wonders and she smiled, revealing a set of coppers worthy of Jaws.

保罗

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Breakfast of Champions

When you live in a foreign country, you end up doing things you wouldn’t ordinarily, thanks to either opportunity or desperation. This morning I am sitting in front of the TV watching the Oscars Red Carpet, a parade of stars going into the Oscar awards ceremony. One of the interviewers referred to Julia Roberts as “Jessica Roberts.” Good grief.

Last weekend (yesterday and the day before) the air quality soared as the PM 2.5 dropped below 100. It had previously been up to 500, and everyone, including me, was walking around with our masks.

During the bad days I stayed indoors as much as I could. Got a lot of reading done. I finished the first in the 24-book Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell about the Napoleonic wars (although the first couple books have Sharpe cavorting about India).

I’m now reading “The Sirens of Titan” by Kurt Vonnegut.

You need to be in, or of, the right frame of mind to read Vonnegut. His humor is a little quirky, and I usually don’t do quirky. But for some reason Vonnegut has got my number. There are only a few books I would consider reading twice, usually books that I both liked the first time and was pretty sure I didn’t understand. John Fowles’ “The Magus” is one of them,…

…as is J. D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”…

…and Jerzy Kosinski’s “Being There.”

One book I’m certain to reread is Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions,” which I thought when I read it that it was one of the funniest and weirdest books in the world.

“The Sirens of Titan” is in that same vein.

I’ve suddenly gotten really busy, which has prevented me from responding in a timely manner to recent emails, notably updates from former students. (Also, thanks to the modern miracle of jet lag, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in 3 weeks.) I’m in charge (well, as much as any subordinate here is actually in charge of anything) of a half-day session of oral presentations to “noted” principals and teachers from around China. The session is on the art of interactive teaching, and I’m hoping this will help me spread “the word” beyond this particular school.

In addition, over the next couple weeks I’ll be interacting with other high schools in Beijing on behalf of my own school to try to come up with an overall plan for improving education in China. Making progress here.

We’re talking about my continuing to help them in the school year of 2014-2015, but I made it crystal clear that I could not live here full time a third year. Regardless of what happens with the school, I will be spending more time on my Virginia patio after September, smoking cheap cigars, drinking red wine, and eating stinky cheese. Ah, heaven!

It’s starting to warm up here, thankfully; I left my winter jacket in Virginia a couple weeks ago, thanks to “she who must be obeyed.”

Tong Jing just came by for dinner, saying that she missed my Greek salads, so I made her one.

Speaking of food, I know I told you I missed Mexican food. Well, on a recent trip to Carrefour, I discovered they were expanding their international foods section by 3-fold. As I browsed, look what I found and bought!!!!:

The very next morning I had this concoction of tortilla, refried beans, over-easy egg, and salsa, sort of a hybrid between breakfast burrito and huevos rancheros. El desayuno de los campeones.

In the evening, I decided to eat Mexican again, so I sautéed some frozen chicken breast and from frozen shrimp with a half packet of taco seasoning.

Fortunately, I knew the instructions by heart, because the staff at Carrefour are a little cavalier about their labeling and showed no respect for the essential, complex instructions on the package.