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Published: December 24th 2013
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Reminder, double click on an of the photos and it will enlarge and you will get to view all 16 attached!
In three days we pack up, have a final farewell dinner and, after a short night's sleep, head off to the airport for our journey back to the US. It has been, as always, a visit filled with friends, great food, sometimes feverish activities (mostly for Ellen), and the exigencies of life here. I sometimes wonder, given our lack of language skills, how we manage at all, but we do. Last week, in preparation for an out of town engagement, I needed to buy a train ticket. For Chinese citizens there is no need for any human interaction as people buy their tickets at automated machines. But since you need either a Chinese ID card or a foreign passport to buy a ticket, and since the machines aren't equipped to read our passports, we need to go to a ticket window. Past experiences has led me to make my purchase ahead of time to avoid any last minute snafus.
I had a colleague write out what I needed, the date, the from where and to where information, even
Fix it all!
We got off the metro at a major transfer station and found that all surfaces were covered with posters like this, fix all parts of your body the train number and with that I confidently approached a local agent. She took one look at what was written, smiled and said what might just as well have been "
You need sadkejjf ajewuhfz adikuwh bwudtjadh,cxjsurcls gsewrejr, for me to give you a ticket". I had left my phone at home so calling for some help was not available so I smiled wanly, shrugged my shoulders to convey “beats me I am just an ignorant foreigner”, and walked away. Fortunately when I approached another agency they looked at what was written, took my passport and money and printed a ticket. Who knows?
I am writing on December 24 and for the Chinese Christmas is just another work day. In fact, even when they have Chinese holidays the days off are made up on the previous or subsequent weekends. For example the National Day holiday, commemorating the PLA's march into Beijing on October1, 1949, gives people three days off, only to force them to work the weekend days surrounding the holiday. When I read that some US stores were jump starting their Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving Day I was reminded of the convergence of the world's two biggest economies
Making a living?
All sorts of begging is visible, most pitifully people with severe disabling conditions often singing with an amplifier or in this guy's case, doing his characters with a brush in his mouth. as they slug it out to see who can extract the most from workers.
December 26 this year marks the 120
th anniversary of Mao's birth and there is some talk of making this a national holiday. Interestingly, the name proposed is the same name that Christmas has here, translates as “Sacred birthday”. Hey, Christians co-opted the pagan Solstice holiday so why can't the commies hijack Christmas?
I had a typical conversation with a student this weekend, I was in Zhuhai (on the border with Macao) and she was a student leader, very capable and thoughtful and wrestling with a decision about her future. She had an offer for a fully paid scholarship to attend graduate school in Germany but her mother thought she needed to go out to work and find herself a husband. She was in great conflict and was looking to me for advice. She wanted assurance that she could get a job as a social worker in China that would be meaningful (I could offer no assurance only advocacy for risk taking) and how she could deal with her mother. This is no unusual conversation even as the numbers of college graduates who cannot find
Made in China
Beginning n mid-October, the wholesale markets are filled with Christmas paraphernalia. work commensurate with their training grows, another US-China convergence. Incidentally, the German program was taught in English, a growing phenomenon in Europe as school there seek to compete for Chinese students with English language skills. Most students still seek the US followed by the UK, Canada, and Australia as sites for their university studies but with the exception of France (450 cheeses but little higher education in English) the competition is growing.
As I was traveling to Zhuhai on the new not so high speed train (for China) at 120 mph I found myself thinking of the things I like in China and the other things. On the top of the likes has got to be the transportation systems; metros that are frequent, clean, fast, and reliable if horribly overcrowded. Intercity train travel that whisks you along at up to 350 km/hour. There are the vegetable markets everywhere, the Guangzhou town plan call for everyone to have a market within 500 meters of their home. They are well stocked, the produce is presented artfully, and things still have the dirt clinging to them, very fresh and cheap. If I go to market for my lunch for example, I will
Sleeping as if he were dead
As I have mentioned, Chinese of all ages seem to have great ability to fall to sleep before the cabin doors are even closed. This young one is well on his way at mastering this national asset buy some fresh noodles (I have a choice of eight or nine varieties) for $.16, some tofu (again around nine varieties) for $.30, scallions for $.08, and some red peppers and broccoli for $.60, very good. If I am hankering after mushrooms, there are at least a dozen types on offer.
Another food like is found in restaurants, mind you we do not do fine dining but this afternoon we have a cold tofu skin salad (tofu, cilantro, hot peppers, some amazing dressing), and three dozen dumplings and we were set back $8, which is expensive by Chinese standards. When I joined some students at their canteen last week the tab was $.96.
And most admirable are the people, enthusiastic, helpful, somewhat bemused and pleased by our presence (it shows that China has arrived on the world stage) and determined to have good life, which they deserve. Unfortunately, there are also the not so good parts of China: the pushing and shoving that goes on wherever there is a crowd (except on escalators where it seems there is some anesthetizing gas that must single out Chinese people for as soon as they step on they slump into a
Just another 24 hour a day job
This was after 9 on a Saturday evening, work continued unabated as a New China is being built. seeming stupor and stand idly by as they are transported along.) There is a food demerit for Cantonese food, the local cuisine, which we find tasteless, meat heavy, and hard to look at. Plates full of chicken feet, platters of fish heads, pigs the size of bulldogs presented with a small apple in the mouth and some cherry tomatoes in the eye sockets. Fortunately, with the movement of people around the country we are never forced to succumb, except for official banquets which over the years have gotten less frequent.
Try as I might, I have not managed to convince my tofu vendor to keep her hands off my tofu as she puts it into the plastic bag. I will go and carefully use some chopsticks (or a plastic bag depending on the variety) and carefully wrap it. She then puts it on the scale and will inevitably round up the purchase by grabbing another piece and putting it in the bag. These are the same hands that are handling hundreds of incredibly worn and torn, grubby beyond belief bank notes from people. This has put cold tofu off the menu, it all needs a good heating and even
Tuches and naynays (look it up)
Automobiles are, everywhere, entwinned with sex, sexuality, and power. At the auto show last month scantily clothed women were draped over cars and pummeled with the lenses of the crowd. then immune compromised individuals should probably take notice.
The Internet firewall and the outrageous justifications for it are an annoyance for us, surmountable with ease through the use of proxies and VPNs (virtual private networks.) Our Chinese friends use these devices as well although there is some thought that while the information gets through, the USE of a proxy is noted by the authorities and will get you an "
invitation to tea", something you want to avoid. What is galling about this is that people here are sophisticated, make nuanced reading of materials, and are not more gullible about foreign influences than anyone else. If anything, it undermines the credibility of the whole project here, one that has made unprecedented progress in improving the lives of hundreds of millions. At the same time, the leadership makes sure to send their own offspring to education in the US, knowing that they will need the wider access to information and interaction that is part of that experience. Arrogant, selfish, and self-defeating in my view.
OK, signing off for this term, and hope to see you/speak to you soon. Ellen and I will be in NY for late winter-early spring some come and
This is a habit of mine
I go around inspecting vehicle identification numbers to determine the country of manufacture for vehicles. This indicates a US produced car and there are a few of them exported here. More significantly if the plan of Honda and Toyota to export cars from here to the US as their output ramps up. visit.
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