Guangzhou Airport

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Guangzhou airport in Guangdong Province in China, July 12, 2013. Waiting for my flight to Guiyang -- a 7-hour wait -- leaving tonight at 7:30 and arriving at about 9:30. I hope that Diane and Simon will be there to meet me. If not, then I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I decided to check 1 bag because the 2nd was going to cost about 200 RMB but when I went through security, I had a couple of aerosol cans of sunscreen and they wouldn't let me through -- I had to dump the sunscreen or go back and check the second bag. I decided to go back. It was relatively painless and I managed to get back to the front of the line at security -- it was worth the wait, I guess. My bag had been opened at security along the way...I wonder if some of the NY t-shirts that I bought for the teachers will not be there but what can I do?

I am reading Mo Yan's epic novel Life and Death are Wearing me Out. It's a humourous reflection on reincarnation -- kind of a tongue-in-cheek look at China's history from the perspective of a landowner Ximen Nao who is killed at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and is reincarnated, first as a donkey and then now as an ox. Blackie the donkey tells the story of the village at the beginning of the revolution and then the next part featuring the ox's life is told by the son of the farmer Lan Lian, who for some reason is karmically tied to Ximen Nao. In some ways this is a brilliant work -- while there are stories and scenes that are certainly fiction there is the underlying thread of truth that frames each of the stories -- the unthinkable actions of sons against fathers, daughters against mothers and sisters, the poor against the rich. While many of the works of fiction written today about that period in chinese history seem to focus on the humiliation and horror of the experience, Mo Yan turns reality on its head. The characters who are publicly denounced march around labeled as donkeys themselves but choosing not to be humiliated but to enjoy the spectacle. They don't give the villagers the power to humiliate them. There is something to be learned from this epic tale.

This book and the one that I finished this summer about reincarnation (many masters?) makes me think more about reincarnation. I have believed in reincarnation for a long time but haven't thought seriously about it in a while. I have basically been vegetarian for some portion of my life -- about 28 years. Originally my rationale was more of an ecological one than a religious reasoning but then later I began to think that it was more of a spiritual motivation. I think of this because today on the JAL 877 flight I had a wonderful meal -- a bento box full of goodies that included some meat: fried pork with Chinese Starch sauce and okra, jellyfish salad with shrimp, simmered deep fried tofu burger, egg omelette, and simmered (pickled) carrot, oyster mushroom and pickled bamboo shoot, marinated komatsuna vegetables and a meat ball, and sakura zuke pickles (not sure what that is but it seemed like the pickled ginger in Japanese restaurants). They also served grilled salted alaska rockfish and hijiki seaweed rice. When I bit into the pork I really didn't enjoy the texture or taste and when I ate the beef meatball I can't say that I didn't think about it being flesh. Someone's flesh. I still prefer fish and vegetables and of course dairy -- I would never be a vegan -- but I wonder if I will not go back to being a vegetarian. I am thinking more about the larger picture here -- how what goes round comes round.

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