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Published: November 6th 2006
Model of Chou En Lai
Here's Chou En Lai during the negotiations with the KMT.Yesterday I had an official tour of Nanjing’s famous places. I called the Jingling Hotel, the five star hotel in the city and asked about one-day tours. I was the only person on the tour, so I had the guide and driver moving at my pace. Originally, I was signed up for last Friday, which had 14 tourists, but I had a conflict and moved to yesterday. We saw several sites that I’d already visited and some new sites. It was a mix of 1940’s and 50’s revolutionary and ancient dynasties. In recent days, I visited the Presidential Palace, originally built by the Taiping rebellion victors and later used as Sun YatSen’s headquarters in 1912 and by the Kuomintang from 1927-49. Rain Flower Terrace, the Martyrs’ museum is a garden with memorial statues, and biographies and belongings of the Communists who lost their lives in the revolution here. This was a large garden, open spaces, huge statues, lots of steps and formal plantings. The Nanjing Treaty History Museum is very different. It is a group of small houses in the city. It is the site of the negotiations between Chang Kai Shek and
Chou's car
This car is from the 1930s. Chou En Lai called the Nanjing Treaties. I also saw the Ming City walls several times. I twice visited Fuzi Miao, the ancient Confucian temple, and Linell and I went to the Imperial Examination History Museum, and later with Wu to the Jiming Buddhist Temple, first build in AD 527, during the Three Kindoms period. We looked at the top of the city wall (the longest city wall ever built in the world) and out over Xuanwu Lake. (Nanjing has many lakes and the Yangzi River (new name is Chang Jiang).
In an earlier blog I wrote about the antique market. Yesterday I visited the palace built during the Ming dynasty that houses the market. The main building is a Confucian temple that is part museum. I saw burial artifacts. The human figures from the southern kingdoms had happy faces—they had lived in peace. The figures dug up from northern kingdoms had unhappy faces—they had lived in war after war. I also saw an old taxi. This was a horse drawn cart with a drum and a wooden figure that hit the drum every kilometer. After six kilometers it would hit several times. It was time to pay the
taxi.
If you come to China to visit me, I have a lot to show you.
Tutoring: I meet with two young women on Saturday afternoons for about 90 minutes. They are preparing for the conversational section of the IELTS (?) the British English competency exam. On Thursdays I meet with a another student who wants to pass the conversational section of the Toefl test. (I may have initials wrong for these two tests, but the content is basically the same.) A native English speaker will bring up a topic and ask several questions. It’s called conversation, but it’s really an interview. For example, “Old Buildings” What do the people in China think about old buildings? Do young and old people have different attitudes about old buildings? Or: Which famous person do you want to meet? What questions would you ask the famous person?
A large part of the process is understanding a native English speaker. Generally, the interviewers are American. Since I speak General American with some slight Southern influence, I just have a conversation with the students and correct their pronunciation and word usage.
Another tutoring/editing project I have off and on is helping
individuals with presentations. For example, one of my friends in the building is a cardiac surgeon. Very smart and well educated. I helped him with a PowerPoint presentation about a genetic heart problem. So I corrected his English pronunciation, word usage, some spelling, and just general PowerPoint editing.
I like offering my native knowledge of English to help people who ask for help. The surgeon, reminded me not to work all the time and suggested he, his wife, and I go to one of the lake parks and enjoy ourselves. I hope we do go, before winter hits.
A Friend’s Perspective: My old friend Mariana and her daughter, Amanda, came to visit me a few weeks ago. Amanda is a reporter and worked on a paper in Taiwan several years ago. She speaks Chinese. In 1983 Mariana and her husband, Ron, were university teachers in Hunan Province, when their daughters were very young. This fall, after returning home from a month in China, Amanda sent the following e-mail to her friends, and she gave me permission to share parts of it with you.
“My summary: China today is a testament to how quickly change can happen. I Compass car
Note the figure on top of the pole. it always faces south. remind myself that it can go both ways: in the span of a couple of decades, a nation can go from poor to rich, or vice versa. In Shanghai, I saw hundreds of skyscrapers in the same spot where ten years ago I saw nothing but rice fields. In Beijing, I saw subversive modern art and ate better food than we have in South Lake Tahoe (Restaurants owned and run by Europeans have overtaken McDonalds to represent "western food," thank God). We visited Buddhist temples, Daoist temples, Confucian temples, Tibetan Lama temples, all of which had fresh coats of paint, restored buildings, freshly polished statues and actual worshippers outnumbering tourists. This was a stark contrast to the dust covered, abandoned and decrepit temples of just ten years ago.
”I talked to a soldier who reminded me that China's army is 22 million strong. He grew up in the countryside in Sichuan Province and when I said China has changed so much, he agreed and said that now everyone, even the poorest in the countryside, has something to eat.
“I often heard people talking about the environment, traffic and pollution. It's on people's radar, and they know they have
Martyrs museum description
Read it; it speaks for itself. to clean things up. I heard in many conversations that the government is promoting environmental protection, but I got the feeling that it encompassed a wide range of things, including something like not walking on the grass in a park (the signs translate to: protect the environment, love the lawn.) So I think my mom is right, the next moneymakers in China could be businesses that sell cleaner technology, water purification, envrionmental consulting, etc.
“Oh, and I finally got my question answered. I asked a former teacher of mine if there were still things you can't talk about in China and she laughed at me and asked, like what kinds of things? I said, you know, stuff like TianAnMen. She didn't hesitate to talk about it. She said she has debates with her friends about the pros and cons of democracy, and that the only thing you can't talk about is actually overthrowing the regime.
“Those are my two cents. Mao and modern capitalists have one thing in common: an effective slogan is the most powerful marketing tool.”
Amanda included a recent article from the
New York Times Magazine about China, “China's New Left Calls for
a Social Alternative,” By Pankaj Mishra.
I wonder, why don’t we in the USA know more about how China really is right now. Although China is still a developing country, it’s a very modern country, especially in the cities. The middle class is a fast growing segment. Consumerism is huge. There was another table in the courtyard outside my front door signing people up for credit cards. But if you figure gross domestic product based on population, China has the largest population to feed and support. On the other hand, a headline from
China Daily was “Reserves set to surpass US$1 trillion”. The debate now is how to manage that trillion dollars.
For those of us from the non-profit side, the rise of the middle class and of personal wealth, has also led to philanthropy. It’s the state’s responsibility to provide the social welfare system, but individuals are stepping up with personal philanthropy. The forthcoming Olympics in Beijing in 2008 has brought out personal resources. The Hong Kong tycoon Henry Fok, who just died at 83, donated 200 million yuan (US$25 million) for the construction of the Games venues.
Well, there’s a lot to think about the
unhappy artifacts
These are from northern graves where there was constant war. past, present and future of this incredible country.
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John Miller
non-member comment
Just a Thank You
Susie ... the blogs are great! We would like to visit, but granddaughter Liz (15) is now living with us. Parents again! It is a lot of work ... but we will survive ... although we are very homebound. Keep sending us the blogs.