bezdomny ex patria

We bowled up to Terminal 3 with plenty of time, dressed in our best compromise clothing – got to get into the terminal before hypothermia sets in, through the airports and flight in reasonable comfort, then from the terminal to the best place to change without spontaneously combusting, not an easy compromise to draw. Personally, I prefer summer to winter flights. But we got to the terminal without freezing and with plenty of time. We got through all the formalities easily and to our gate with time to wander round being underwhelmed by what T3 had to offer in the way of duty free. But whatever. I have only three complaints about the flight:

1. I got absolutely no sleep whatsoever. For that, I don’t blame Air New Zealand. I can’t. Somehow my brain went into hyperdrive for 13 straight hours.
2. The air was getting pretty skanky towards the end of the flight. I still don’t blame Air New Zealand, as there are probably many technicalities of keeping a pressurised aircraft cabin intact at high altitude and affects of these technicalities on the possibilities for providing ample amounts of clean, fresh air that I’m not aware of, but it would be nice if fresher air could be brought onboard as well.
3. The plane ran out of water. Still not blaming anybody, but you really gotta wonder when they get on the intercom and explain that nobody’s getting no tea or coffee with their breakfast as there’s no water left in the tanks.

Whatever, we made it to Auckland safe and sound. We touched down 15 minutes early, in fact. Stepping out of the skanky aircraft cabin air into humid Auckland air was expected. From that into the equally sticky, apparently unairconditioned air of the terminal building was not, and did not feel good. Whatever, we got through the formalities at that end without any hassle, out the other side and there were my parents waiting, standing, hurrying over to greet us. Then in the car and off to my uncle’s house where we could get ourselves cleaned up, get a change of clothes, a cup or ten of tea, and generally start feeling human again.

But there was a reason for us to stay in Auckland, and to have gone first to my uncle’s house, and that was my grandmother. She had been in poor and deteriorating health for some time. I hadn’t seen her for over ten years. About a week before our arrival she’d asked Mum when I’d be back. The plan had been for us to stay in Aucland and visit her before heading down to Hamilton, where my parents live. A few days before our arrival she’d had a massive stroke, and as we packed, then travelled, the family started to gather and prepare. But that’s a matter for another post I’m struggling to write.

I don’t really want to go into a travelogue. That’s been done. I do want to write about a few impressions, though. The first of them – at least, the first I want to write about – is the opposite of Arctosia’s. The thing is, I fully understand where he’s coming from, while I’m still trying to figure out my own reaction. I was struck by New Zealand’s prosperity. Not just prosperity, but possibility, too. I think that’s the first time I’ve felt that way about my own country, and I’m trying to understand why.

For example, I was surprised by Raglan. I had never been there before, and knew it only by its reputation as a surf beach. I was expecting only a few buildings – the requisite petrol station, pub, general store and maybe a church with a few houses and perhaps an area school, not much more. It’s much bigger than that, of course, but what I didn’t expect was an apparently quite thriving retail area full of boutiques, cafes, a few bars, and generally what you’d expect in a trendier part of Wellington or Auckland, but transported to the coast of the Waikato. Tirau was similar, in that the road was lined with some fancy stores selling lots of cool stuff and a few cafes and…. surprising prosperity for a tiny town not much wider than the highway that runs through it.

Oh, and  a giant corrugated iron sheep and a giant corrugated iron sheepdog. And a giant corrugated iron shepherd in the grounds of the church next door. In Tirau, that is.

Still, at half past four in the afternoon all the shops in Tirau shut, much to my wife’s disgust. How lazy! she said. How can they all shut?! If I had a shop here I’d stay open until much later in the evening! Then I pointed out how small the town is by pointing out just how far she’d have to walk up one of the sidestreets before she was in a paddock – not far at all.

Nationalism. For years my Mum has been sending me t-shirts with a New Zealand theme. Things like a map of New Zealand with the word ‘Home” next to it in big, bold letters. It’s almost as if she’s trying to tell me something. When we did get to Hamilton, she gave me more t-shirts of that nature. The day we left she gave me a hoodie with three colourful tikis on it. I think perhaps I sense a pattern developing here…. Anyway, so I’ve been aware for some time now that clothing with New Zealand patriotic/nationalist messages exists. What I wasn’t expecting to see so many blatant displays of national allegiance in New Zealand.

That first day there, in Auckland, had to be spent partly at the hospital with Grandma. But the situation meant that we were given time off, and Dad took us to do a couple of necessary things like change money (NEVER CHANGE MONEY AT AUCKLAND AIRPORT!), then we went across the Harbour Bridge and out to Devonport for a bit of a look-round. On the road (to get back to this nationalism thing) I couldn’t help but notice quite a few cars with a southern cross design, basically the same as the right-hand half of the New Zealand flag (four five-pointed red stars with white borders in the shape of the Southern Cross on a blue background – remember that and you’ll never confuse our flag with the Australian one again), to the left of their licence plates and a silver fern to the right.

Flags, too. I saw more New Zealand flags than I remember being used to seeing flying around. But with flags it gets a little more complex, especially when we were in Rotorua. I couldn’t help but notice more than a few Confederation of United Tribes and Tino Rangatiratanga flags flying, too – in one memorable case, a house in Rotorua had a torn-up United Tribes flag and a Tino Rangatiratanga flag flying from a flagpole in the yard and larger and more intact versions of both flags covering the front windows. Rotorua also sported graffiti along the lines of “Tangata whenua 4 eva”.

It seems I forgot to warn my wife what a maritime climate means: Summers are surprisingly cool. Overnight, when cloud covered the sun, when there was a breeze or rain, especially all of the above combined, she found it cold, and was even seen shivering. It seems lzh learnt the hard way that what I’d told her about the Pacific sun really is for real: As soon as the sun came out, she was complaining about the heat. I think the highest temperature we experienced in New Zealand was 27 degrees – in other words, daytimes were consistently a good 10 degrees cooler than midsummer Beijing.

My wife likes Hamilton. Actually, it is a nice enough town in its own right. My parents don’t like living there, because there’s nothing happening there (they say – I will refrain from commenting, having only ever visited, and never for the sake of visiting Hamilton). I can understand lzh’s point of view – it’s quiet, clean, green, full of trees, and generally pleasant. I’m sure that changes for the weekend of the V8s, but that’s one weekend. Mornings there were nice. I’d wake up, somehow instantly back on my summer schedule of absurdly early starts, brew a pot of coffee, and alternate between reading the paper and stepping out on the deck to observe the sunrise. Despite the fact I was awake at a time I have always felt should be illegal, I have to say it was quite a nice, almost civilised way to start the day.

She liked Taupo even better than Hamilton. The natural environment, the setting by the lake, she said. I can see why. I don’t have a bad memory of the place, and it’s natural setting goes a long way to explaining why.

She didn’t like Wellington. Dry and windy and densely packed. I think I saw for the first time just how tightly packed into the valleys and the few scraps of flat land central Wellington and the older suburbs are, and I think it was a combination of time away (seven years, as it happens) and lzh’s reaction as a first time visitor that opened my eyes to that. Windy, of course, and it is unfortunate that the few days we were there Wellington turned on its typical weather. For myself, it was just a little breezy, nothing unexpected or untoward. For lzh, it was windy. And yes, Wellington’s air is oddly dry.

That dry wind has been blamed for everything that’s been wrong with our skin since we left Wellington.

Books really are expensive. Still, I came back with 10 of them (and somehow our luggage wasn’t overweight): 2 were gifts, 9 were ‘New Zealand’ in some way, shape or form (history, poetry, fiction…). Necessities don’t seem to be quite so expensive. We needed shampoo. We were at a store in Tirau on our way home from Rotorua. lzh said, hey, this is only $5. I said, don’t buy it, it’s always more expensive in these small shops. She didn’t understand what I was on about, after all, it was cheap enough as it was. Next day in a real supermarket in Hamilton we got a bigger bottle of shampoo for even less.

We were in the souvenir shop at Rainbow Springs in Rotorua. The cashier rang up our purchases. She told me the price, but in Chinese…. I must’ve looked surprised and a bit confused. Oh, I’d heard you two speaking Chinese, she said. I hadn’t actually noticed the cashier before, being preoccupied with getting our already large pile of souvenirs onto the counter and stopping lzh from adding to the pile and getting her out of the shop and us on our way to lunch in time to catch the afternoon performance at Whakarewarewa, and the hour was growing late and I still hadn’t readjusted to being able to traverse twice the distance in half the time thanks to the very low population density. Turns out the cashier was from Guangdong – must’ve been a relatively recent immigrant, though, considering her Mandarin was slightly accented but basically flawless, most certainly not like that of a Hong Konger. We ate two lunches in Auckland. On both occasions, lzh ordered in Chinese. I noticed a Chinese-language (traditional characters) newspaper on sale in the Asian supermarket in Hamilton.

Chinese-language signs seemed to be about equally divided between Simplified and Traditional.

I was, however, surprised by how few Chinese, or East Asian people in general, were around. There must be plenty of them, especially if the Waikato now has its own Chinese-language media, but I guess they tend to hang out in areas other than the ones we visited.

lzh is still commenting on the distances that had to be travelled in order to do anything, even just buying a bottle of soy sauce or whatever the kitchen had suddenly run out of.

We were on the road to Rotorua, and my wife was glued to the car window, constantly commenting on how green everything was, how many sheep were in that field, how many cows over there, and so on. I spotted an odd-looking herd and said, hey, check out those animals. The look of mixed-up surprise, confused recognition, and a little shock was so priceless I should’ve had the camera ready. “就是那个草泥马吗?!” (Is that that grass mud horse?!) Yep, it was a herd of alpacas.

That’s about all for this long-overdue post. We’ve been back in Beijing two weeks now and the snow is falling thickly outside. Two weeks ago I was wandering around barefoot in a t-shirt.

Well, I was almost tempted to weigh in on the Great Google Melodrama, but Mr Bamboo saved me the trouble by writing pretty much what I wanted to write in this concise paragraph:

Another entry raises a question about Google censoring certain search terms and functioning within the law. If Google.cn ceases to censor search terms, then isn’t it breaking the law? Thus Google can’t negotiate because it can’t somehow be exempt from the same laws which apply to everyone else. Like any other government, the boys in Zhongnanhai aren’t about to concede anything.

Exactly.

And will everybody please just calm down? Google is not the internet. Baidu is not the only alternative. Any hypothetical shutdown of all Google services from inside the Mainland would be a pain in the arse, but is in no way equivalent to Mars colliding with Earth and the Sun exploding. This will all blow over and we’ll go on to have a 2010 with many more things to overreact to.

That said, I am a little concerned at the possible advent of the Great Chinese Intranet….

Or perhaps that should be Three Shots. I certainly think Three Shots would be a better English title than the official one. Still, I guess the official English title contains a reference to the films inspiration.

I was standing on the corner of that big, fancy mall on the northwest corner of the Shuangjing intersection waiting for my wife to finish sifting through overpriced clothes so we could go watch the film. I knew which of the buildings around me were old and which new- indeed, I remember when the spot I was standing on was a fancyarse lawn scarred with pathways leading into the sales office for the complex which was then little more than a hole in the ground. But somehow all the buildings looked the same age, as if the norwester had finally put the upstart new buildings in their place. It seems we have a habit of going to the cinema on blustery, dry, cold December days to see the latest blockbuster. Indeed, last time we’d gone to the cinema was almost exactly a year ago (indeed, we’re ony 3 days short), and the coldest December day in Beijing since 1951. That day we saw Feng Xiaogang’s 《非诚勿扰》. This time, when lzh emerged from the clothes shop, we wandered up to… oh, no “Wait, we’ve still got time, let’s go check out those discounted shoes first, you need new sandals for when we go to New Zealand”. grrrr. And it wasn’t any kind of shoes we bought, but a new pair of thick longjohns for me, me having discovered unfortunately late yesterday afternoon (when I really needed to be getting out of barbeque-reeking clothes and making myself respectable as presentable as possible) that the top half of my other set of thick longjohns was MIA. And then back to the cinema to see Zhang Yimou’s latest film, 《三枪拍案惊奇》/A Simple Noodle Story.

I have a love/hate/like/why can’t he get back to realising his full talent? relationship with Lao Zhang. I love his early work. I hate his martial arts epics. 《千里走单骑》/Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles was good, but not as good as his early films. 《三枪》 I don’t yet know how to rate.

I suppose I should note that the version we saw at UME Shuangjing was Mandarin soundtrack (obviously) with Chinese subtitles. Those whose Chinese is not up to following a film entirely in Chinese should either look for a cinema showing it with English subtitles or a DVD with more subtitling options than the cinema allows.

First impression was that the volume knobs on UME Shuangjing’s amplifiers must have a Number 11, because the three shots that bring the opening credits to a close really were one louder. Or to put it slightly more directly: If those three shots hit you with such force that you wonder if somebody hasn’t just put three bullets in your forehead, then perhaps somebody should turn the volume down just a tad. lzh spent most of the film with fingers firmly planted in ears, and yet didn’t miss a line.

Based on what I’d seen on TV, I went in expecting some form of comedy, probably of the rather silly kind, some Lao Zhang’ed cinematic errenzhuan [that is perhaps the worst wikipedia stub I've ever seen, but at least it gives you a brief description], perhaps. I also did not have high hopes from the film, having heard that it wasn’t all that good. Second impression was that the expectation the TV promotional stuff had given me was right, but the comedy was good. I certainly would never have expected to see 饼 (Chinese pancake type thing) given the same treatment as one of those errenzhuan kerchiefs and spun around till it became a pizza base so huge it’d have the Kro’s Nest pizza chef putting three shots into his own head for shame. It was a lot of fun to watch, but at the same time not a total surprise considering that 3 of the 4 actors playing the noodle restaurant staff (Xiao Shenyang, Mao Mao, Cheng Ye, with Yan Ni the only exception) came up through Zhao Benshan’s errenzhuan circle.

Third impression was that this was most certainly a Zhang Yimou film. Only Lao Zhang could possibly make a desert look so incredibly lush.

There’s also something incredibly discordant about this film. It’s set somewhere way out in Northwest China along the Silk Road, but most of the actors spend most of the film in costumes more appropriate for an errenzhuan stage in Liaoning. Was a time when Lao Zhang was making Northwestern films with distinctly Northwestern vibes, but if you closed your eyes and listened only to the dialogue, you’d think this one was set somewhere on the black earth of the Northeast. Anachronisms litter the script like drug dealers on the streets of Sanlitun of a weekend evening. And I couldn’t help but feel those anachronisms hid a lot of knitting needle jabs at modern Chinese society.

Before too long, a certain darkness crept into the film. It acquired an undertone and atmospherics so black you’d swear it was filmed by a Kiwi. Lao Zhang’s lusciously filmed desert turned all gothic, with ever-passing stormclouds looming, threatening. Sun Honglei’s soldier turned into a psychopath who did everything possible to empty the noodle restaurant boss’ safe. Yan Ni’s 老板娘/Boss’ Wife was so keen to buy the Persian Merchant’s gun because she had suffered ten years of horrific abuse at the hands of the Boss (Ni Dahong). And the Boss is quite a piece of work: Abusive, with a penchant for cutting the fat baby’s face out of New Year paintings and forcing his wife to put her face in the hole as he quietly, calmly tells her off, then slams burning tobacco into the small of her back. Self-centred, manipulative, and tighter than a Scotsman’s arse. While the errenzhuan actors seem to spend most of the film on the errenzhuan level of comedy, Yan Ni’s Boss’ Wife takes a wild, bipolar ride between brave face, slapstick comedy, and Greek tragedy, with Xiao Shenyang’s Li Si desperately trying to figure out what’s going on and how he’s supposed to respond to it all. But can this 娘们唧唧的/Big Girl’s Blouse man up and John Wayne their way out of this mess?

All three shots in the gun sold by the Persian Merchant are put to very good use, with the second being sidesplittingly, laundryman’s-going-to-be-busy hillarious. But I’ll say no more than that the Boss’ Wife gets what she needs, but at a cost of Shakespearian proportion.

Beware, within this beautifully-filmed, light-hearted comedy are hidden a myriad of ragged shards of glass. But it’s a great film. Watch it.

Oh, and for the “Some People Are Just Too Damn Talented For Their Own Good” file: Xiao Shenyang sings the song that animates the final credits (the first of his songs which is not a pisstake of other singers?), a song in which all the dead bodies come back to life and join in the dance. It isn’t just that Xiao Shenyang can act errenzhuan and more widespread forms of drama, and sing and dance (uh… errenzhuan), but Sun Honglei also turns out to be a pretty decent dancer.

“Tear down the multi-media classrooms!” a student cries at the start of this article by Xiong Bingqi on 思想国@21世纪评论. What could this be about? As Xiong states:

这让我很吃惊，因为那时全国各地的大学，正推行多媒体“先进现代教育技术”，鼓励教师上课用PPT，用多媒体技术，其好处据说很多——可以让教室很环保， 老师不用吃粉笔灰；可以图文并茂，图像、视频、音频并用，让讲课丰富多彩；可以点击链接，与网络连接，延伸学习，大大拓展上课空间；可以与异地学校课堂交 互，获得完全不同的上课感受……

This really surprised me because at that time universities throughout China were implementing multimedia “advanced modern educational technology”, encouraging teachers to use powerpoint in class. Apparently there are many advantages to using multimedia technology in class- it’s more environmentally friendly, the teacher doesn’t need to eat chalk dust; you can use pictures and text, images, video and audio can be used all at once, making the lesson rich and varied; you can click links, connect to the internet, extending learning, greatly expanding the class space; you can interact with classrooms in other places, getting a completely different experience of class…..

First a few translation notes:

1. I don’t know what the English usage is outside of my own immediate work environment, but ‘PPT’ seems to be the common Chinese way of referring to powerpoint presentations.
2. 图文并茂, according to the dictionary, is used to refer to books, magazines, etc, and means “both pictures and texts are excellent”. It’s Friday morning, and I’m not yet caffeinated enough to find a better way of rendering that into English than “you can use pictures and text”. Maybe I should use coffee rather than longjing tea to fuel my translations….
3. Chinese university classrooms still largely use blackboards and chalk, and believe me, environmental concerns aside, eating chalkdust is one of the bigger occupational hazards of teaching here. That chalkdust is incredibly efficient at drying out the skin on your face and hands and your throat- the throat’s the worst, though, as that, apart from shredding your voice, increases your susceptibility to colds and flus, and when you look at the students’ living conditions….. Teaching in China gives your immune system a good, solid workout.

Anyway, when I read this yesterday morning (I didn’t have time to post on it then, and had no energy after class yesterday afternoon), I was intrigued. See, I’m too lazy to use powerpoint much- for one thing, my first several years teaching I had a desk, blackboard and chalk. Heck, I had classrooms in Taiyuan that had no electricity and lights that went on and off according to the whim of somebody in some other room. Secondly, I find that powerpoint drastically increases the time spent preparing lessons. All that fiddling around with text, images, video, audio…. and despite the obvious advantages of multimedia, the actual benefit to the lesson outcomes is not always worth it. Yes, pictures, graphs, video, audio, maps, and all that can be extremely useful for boosting the students’ understanding of an issue, but I mostly teach academic writing. For that I find a good old-fashioned blackboard and chalk combined with working the classroom talking to students individually far more useful than fancy multimedia stuff, and word at least as good as powerpoint.

But the explanation comes: Apparently a lot of teachers have used the multimedia as an excuse to get lazy. Just borrow somebody else’s ppt, chuck it on the multimedia, and work off of that, no need to prepare. And if there’s a powercut…. you’re screwed. The result is students who, powerless to rage against their teachers and the system that allows them to continue “teaching”, vent their fury on the bloody multimedia classrooms. The machines can’t retaliate (yet), so they’re a safe target.

Xiong points out that, obviously, one cannot cure this “ppt dependency” (PPT依赖症) that lazy teachers have developed by simply ripping the multimedia technology out of the classrooms. The problem is in the system, so clearly the system needs to be fixed so that lazy teachers can’t use the technology as a crutch. He offers up a comparison that I find interesting:

America. In the American system, he says, universities have to compete for students and students have a lot more freedom to choose their university and then to transfer if they are not satisfied with their first choice. This keeps the universities on their toes, and although America, too, has its university staff who’d rather not see the inside of a classroom, the pressure is there to perform.

Fair enough, and it would be nice to see students here offered more choice as to what they study, where, and how they arrange their courses. But one can’t simply import some foreign system and expect it to work. Considering America’s own not small population, I can’t figure out how their university admissions departments work…. Surely they must find themselves buried under whole rainforests’ worth of paper? How do they process all of that? Vast armies of highly trained oompa-loompas?

In any case, I was intrigued by the article and found it provoking a thought or two. Firstly, it confirmed a suspicion I’ve long held that much of this new technology is little more than gimmickry. Let me explain: In the hands of good, dedicated, motivated teachers, the technology can be very useful for improving educational outcomes. But here’s the thing: Good teachers will get good results regardless of the technology used. The technology, be it a blackboard and chalk or a computer, projector and screen, is simply a tool. The tool itself is a mere object. The results depend on how the tool is used, not what the tool is.

Some people seem to think that “kids today” have somehow magically changed and we need to be using fancy electronic stuff to reach them. Nonsense. When I was a student the lazy students would skip class, read books or newspapers, or generally just not really listen much, maybe take a few token notes at best. Instead of reviewing or working on assignments, they’d go to cafes or pubs or watch TV or read books or…. My students now, if they’re lazy, play with cellphones, skip class, read books or newspapers, sleep, or generally just not really listen much. Instead of reviewing or working on assignments, they’ll play basketball or go to the internet bar or watch TV or download and watch pirated movies or…. Whether I use blackboard and chalk or computer and powerpoint, those who are motivated pay attention and study, those who are not, don’t. Using fancy technology doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to how many students pay attention or how attentive they are. The change is in the range of methods students can use to not study, not some magical difference in the students.

Secondly, I’ve been thinking a lot this semester, perhaps even deeply, about how my classroom works and what I can do to improve things. There are issues particular to my job that I won’t discuss and which I can’t do anything to change anyway, but I have been thinking a lot about what I can do to improve what happens in my academic writing classes in particular. I doubt there’s any way to make such a dry, technical subject interesting for the students, but as students of a Western as well as a Chinese university, they need these classes. I’ve finally gotten a chance to experiment with a whole new approach, something entirely different from how I’ve done things in the past. It’s really hard to change old habits. But I have seen improvements- some even quite dramatic- in how the students have handled various aspects of writing. Xiong’s article is a reminder that technology, in and of itself, will not make things any better. The key is not the tool, but how the tool is used. The big question for me is: How to apply the technology so as to improve outcomes in my writing class? I have yet to find an answer to that question- in fact, I find it puts more of a barrier between me and the students, as it keeps me behind a desk when I’d rather be moving around engaging directly with the students.

Food for weekend thought, at least.

This piece in the Economist got my wife all riled up yesterday. “Bastards saying bad things about us! Who the hell do they think they are?!” and all that. Fair enough. It seems to be one of those pieces which uses mostly easily verifiable and undeniable facts to support a conclusion not all will like, and the tone of the article is rather negative. I’m inclined to sympathise.

But one thing that got lzh’s blood boiling was the word “goose-stepping”, and I got to wondering if the word is actually derogatory in and of itself. Here’s the sentence in question:

Goose-stepping soldiers, tanks and intercontinental ballistic missiles filed through Tiananmen Square, past the eponymous Gate of Heavenly Peace, where, 60 years ago, as every Chinese schoolchild is taught (wrongly, it now seems), Mao Zedong declared that the Chinese people had “stood up”.

It is clear from this sentence, and from the whole paragraph and many similar references scattered through the article, that the author is trying to build a rather ominous picture of military might on open display. There is even a reference to 19th century Prussia and Japan (ooh…) for those who may have found the article too subtle.

Now here’s my question: For me, the word goose-stepping refers purely to a style of marching. It’s a style I find immensely uncomfortable- a few minutes with my first years, a couple of third years, and a drill instructor during first year military training at my school in Taiyuan was more than enough. It’s a style I really don’t like to watch because it looks so unnatural and uncomfortable. But it’s just a style of marching. At least, that’s how it is in my brain. Indeed, when I watched the parade, I did not like to see how the soldiers were marching because of how uncomfortable and unnatural that style of marching looks to me, but I was very impressed with the soldiers and the incredible stamina and discipline they displayed.

But then I got to thinking about it: It’s a style of marching one generally associates with Nazi Germany and evil, menacing Commie soldiers. So perhaps there is something offensive about the word “goose-stepping”. But wherein lies the offense? In the word itself, or in the kinds of soldiers we associate it with? After all, your average Chinese might not see much to worry about in Communism, but for those of us raised in “the West” it has long been held up as a boogeyman and the soldiers of “Communist” countries portrayed as a menacing, mindless, faceless horde of evil threatening to swarm into our happy, Capitalist lands and enslave us. And of course, there’s no need to comment further on the Nazi association.

Tangent: And so we see that all media is propaganda.

And so here I am wondering whether the word “goose-stepping” should be considered offensive. For me, personally, it is a simple, value-free statement of fact to say that the Chinese soldiers taking part in the National Day parade were goose-stepping. On the other hand, given the associations the word “goose-stepping” brings to mind and the overall tone of the article, I certainly understand why lzh took offense and fully agree with her opinion on the article.

And so I put the questions to you: Is the word “goose-stepping” offensive? Why or why not?

To whoever came here via this google search, and to all others who may be thinking of coming to Beijing to work as a teacher: Yes, you do need at least a bachelor’s degree to legally work as a foreign teacher in China. Beijing does enforce this regulation. Diplomas and certificates are not enough. If you do not have at least a bachelor’s degree, then please do not even consider seeking work as a teacher in Beijing as you’re only wasting your time.

Have you seen this dog?

Our dog is missing. He disappeared two days ago, but we weren’t told until six this morning. Sounds like an odd statement, except that he lives with my in-laws out in the countryside where he has space to run around and be a dog. Keeping a dog in a city apartment always seemed a bit cruel to me.

So the day before yesterday Zaizai disappeared. My parents in law went out looking for him, but couldn’t find him. We have no idea what happened or where he is, and if any of the neighbours no, they aren’t telling.

My wife, who has spent most of the morning in tears, but managed to get herself together and head off to work just a few minutes ago (I waited until she left before even finding that photo, let alone starting to write, no need to upset her even more), said that she wouldn’t mind so much if somebody decided he was cute and took him home to raise him. That wouldn’t be so bad, as somebody would be taking care of him. Hey, it’s happened before. One Spring Festival a couple of years ago, we were visiting Lao Gu and Lao Gufu who live in the county town, my brother in law (who is still slowly, slowly learning “responsibility”) arrived with Zaizai in tow. Zaizai had followed him to the bus stop, and so Didi rather stupidly took him on the bus and brought him into the county town. To make matters worse, when he left, he took Zaizai with him, then lost track of him for a few minutes- just enough time for a neighbour to see him and take him home. Fortunately it didn’t take us long to find him and claim him back. See, Zaizai’s always been very friendly and just a tad mischievous, so it wouldn’t surprise me if somebody visiting from outside the village saw him, liked the look of him, put him in their car and took off. Apart from when we bought him and that one trip into the county town, his world has been limited to the village, and car (or bengbengche, at least) trips have been out to the fields or orchards then back home. There’s no way he could understand that jumping in somebody’s car for a bit of fun could end up with him hundreds of kilometres from home.

And if somebody did take him away, there’s always the hope he’d pull a Lassie and run back home. Despite his friendliness and mischievous streak, he knows where home is and who is family are.

But there’s all those what ifs. He’s unlikely to have been hit by a car in the village, as the roads are too narrow and cars too slow. He’s unlikely to have gone to the highway or the road along the base of the mountains alone. But those are possibilities.

But there’s worse, and the worse has precedent. Rural China can be a rather brutal place. Years ago, long before I came on the scene, lzh’s family had a donkey. One day Ba took it out to the orchard and left it to graze while he went to work. When he came back, the donkey was dead. Somebody had come across the donkey left unattended and, knowing who it belonged to, bludgeoned it to death with a hammer or some similar blunt instrument. And for no more reason than which family the donkey belonged to.

Zaizai enjoys a fair amount of popularity in the village, and the number of puppies running around with his big, floppy ears is testament to at least one aspect of that popularity, but a lot of the people in the village love him, too. But he’s also acquired a certain measure of notoriety in certain circles, and has come home with mysteriously acquired injuries before.

算了，别瞎想了。There are too many possibilities, too few answers, and nothing we can do about it except hope.

Yang Hengjun has a post up on his blog that starts with a rather disturbing story, an incident in Xi’an, I hope he won’t mind me translating at least the story here:

6月29日9点45分，我从西安鼓楼后面的回民食物一条街出来后看到路边有闪烁的警车，于是也走过去加入了围观。原来，这 里刚刚发生了一起交通事故，邻省甘肃牌照的一辆白色宝马在从停车位出来时碰一位过路的妇女，两人争执不下，不知道是谁报了警。警察来后协调不成功，正准备 带他们到前面的医院去检查。

At 9:45 on June 29, when I came out of a Hui food street behind Xi’an’s Drum Tower, I saw a police car with lights flashing by the side of the road, so I crossed over and joined the onlookers. As it turns out, a traffic accident had just happened here, a white BMW with Gansu plates had hit a woman crossing the road as it pulled out of a parking space. The two people quarrelled, both sticking to their guns, so somebody called the police. When the police came, they couldn’t bring them into line, and they were just preparing to take them to the hospital up ahead for a check-up.

一个看上去很弱势的本地妇女，一辆外地来的很显眼的白色宝马，一群围观的当地人，情形看上去对那个宝马车主很不利。可让我惊讶的是，大多数围观者保持了沉默，而开口的几位当地人却并不是在为那位妇女说话。

A very disadvantaged-looking local woman, a shiny white BMW from another province, a group of locals looking on, the situation did not look very favourable for that BMW driver. But what surprised me was most of the onlookers stayed silent and the few locals who did speak were not speaking up for the woman.

[Note: Corrections thanks to Jim's advice. See comments.]

我问一位嘀嘀咕咕的当地人怎么回事，他没好气地说，那女人根本没有受伤，欺负外地车……他说这话时，旁边的几位西安人也赞同地看着他，还有一位直点头。这时，我也注意到那个妇女确实没有任何受伤的样子。

I asked one muttering local what happened, he ill-temperedly said, that woman absolutely was not hurt, bullying an out-of-town car…. When he said this, some Xi’an people nearby looked at him approvingly, and one other nodded his head. This time, I also noticed that that woman absolutely did not look injured at all.

为了确定，我模棱两可地问，不能这样说吧，也许她正好被宝马撞了，撞了就撞了，难道一定要受伤？

To be certain, asked equivocally, you can’t talk like this, it’s possible she had been hit by the BMW, being hit is being hit, does she really have to have been hurt?

一位西安人打断我说：我们看到了，再说，这里也不是第一次，都是发生在外地车在缓缓开动的时候，她们就被车“碰上”，然后就倒下了。这样欺负外地人，太不应该了啊。

A Xi’an person interrupted me saying: We saw it, and anyway, this isn’t the first time it’s happened here, it always happens when a car from another province is moving slowly, they’re “hit” by the car, then fall over. This method of bullying out-of-towners is just too much.

这时警车和宝马已经载着那位妇女到医院去了，人群散开，我也准备离开，离开前，我还是冲那几位和我对话的西安人赞赏地点点头，为西安人的公正态度感到欣慰，我说，也许你们是对的，但既然警察来了，让他们决定更好。

By now the police car and the BMW had already taken the woman to hospital and the crowd was dispersing, I was also about to leave, but before I left I nodded my appreciation to those Xi’an people I’d been talking to. To satisfy the sense of fairness of the Xi’an people, I said, maybe you’re right, but since the police came, it’s better to let them decide.

什么啊，你到前面的儿童医院看看，一位西安人又突然冲我说，还用手指了指警车和宝马车离去的方向，那里躺了很多被车撞伤的儿童，都是这样撞的，敲人家十几二十万的都有……

What? You go have a look at the children’s hospital up ahead, a Xi’an person suddenly said to me, pointing in the direction the police car and BMW had gone, there are many children lying there who were hit by cars, and it all happened this way, there are some who blackmailed people for 15 or 20 thousand…

我突然停下脚步，我担心自己没有完全听懂他的西安话，咄咄逼人地盯住他追问了一句，你说什么？儿童被撞？

I suddenly stopped, worrying that I hadn’t completely understood his Xi’an dialect, and aggressively staring at him inquired closely: What did you say? Children were run over?

那人用西安话说，是的，就是有人故意用孩子去撞那些很好的小轿车，撞伤后就和车主讨价还价……

Using Xi’an dialect, he said, yes, there are people who deliberately use children to hit those nice cars, then when the child is injured, haggle over the price with the driver….

这次完全听懂了，我当时的震惊可想而知。用身体去撞小车然后敲诈车主钱财在中国一些地方几乎早就是一种行业了，但用幼童去撞车？我还是第一次听说。

This time I understood completely, and you  can well imagine my astonishment. Using your body to hit a car then extorting money from the driver has been a profession in some parts of China for a long time, but using children to hit cars? That was the first time I’d heard of that.

Notes: Yes, I have swapped between “from another province” and “out-of-towner” and other phrases for “外地”. If you can think of a better word which would cover all the uses of “外地” in this story, then leave a comment. And there are places where I’ve used masculine pronouns when gender was not specified in the original. I’d rather be sexist than use “it” to refer to a person, and a singular “they” just seems ugly in this context.

But it’s a horrible story, and Yang goes on to say that it left him sleepless so that he had to get up and write it all out. He also goes on to discuss the use of injured and disabled children as beggars in China, the idea being that an injured or disabled child arouses people’s sympathy. It’s hard to walk past an injured or disabled child without feeling sorry for the child, and very hard not to give a child beggar money, especially when the child beggar is injured or disabled. Unfortunately, as Yang points out, the adults running these begging gangs will sometimes go to the extent of deliberately provoking the wound so that it leaks pus and blood. Yang also points out that last year there was a big movement to clean up this nastiness, and he hasn’t seen any of these poor children since.

It gets a bit more interesting when he brings up the old comparison between China and The West. In most western countries, he says, when an injured child is brought to hospital, the doctors will inquire into the cause of the injury, and if they have any reason to suspect foul play, they will immediately report it to the police. This is done to protect children from abuse. I don’t know much about the legal situations in many western countries, but I believe Yang is largely correct.

China, he says, lacks this legal protection for children. There’s no need for doctors to call the police when they have suspicions about the real causes of a child’s injuries. So long as the child doesn’t die and the parents are cooperative, no problem.

I don’t really want to go into the rest of his post here. Let’s just say this incident in Xi’an and the apparent lack of legal protection for children in China compared with western countries seem to have shaken him up- and fair enough, too. It is hard to see children begging, and I’ve seen some in some pretty awful states.

A former boss once gave me the task of rescuing a young Kiwi lad from his hotel room and taking him out for an evening in Sanlitun, fearing that this poor lad wasn’t getting enough time away from his parents. He saw the gangs of kids who used to beg in Sanlitun, dirty little ragamuffins who had the light and energy of young kids anywhere, but who were stuck in what can only be described as an abusive situation, and he just couldn’t handle it, it totally knocked him off his feet and turned his heart upside down to see these kids. I explained the situation to him as best I could, but he needed to do something for them, anything, even if it was just a once-off thing, even if all he achieved is to set his soul back at ease. Eventually we rounded up the kids, chased off the adult beggars (oh, yes, was I speaking very fluent and extremely colourful Beijinghua that night), and fed the kids up on kebabs from a nearby stall. Sure, all we achieved was to salve our affluent, liberal guilt, and we both knew it. But what else could we do?

Yang, in the second to last paragraph of his post, calls for Xi’an’s doctors to call the police or at least speak out when they see children with suspicious injuries and for the relevant authorities to investigate this phenomenon. Ordinary folks like us don’t have the power to investigate, but I guess there is one thing we can do: Speak up.

So, thank you, Yang Hengjun, for speaking out.

So I was sitting under tall, expansive trees with an ice-cold Tsingtao pondering a series of tweets by @pdenlinger. He raised an interesting question:

Friend: “Up till now, anyone could call themselves global if they knew English. Now the language needs to be Chinese. And fluent.” Agree?

And my answer, of course was no. English is still very much number one, Spanish is rapidly growing, and I certainly would not rule out Portuguese, French or even Arabic. Each of those languages is large, growing, and influential over at least one significant part of the globe. But, aside from the obvious question “What, exactly, does “Chinese” mean?”, Mr Denlinger later pointed out:

“Global” is about attitude, not about languages. Sure, they help, but they are not dealbreakers.

Indeed. My brothers speak English, but I suspect they could quite happily go through their lives without ever needing a passport. My parents in law speak Chinese, but I would hardly call them “global”. I guess it is also possible to be a xenophobic polyglot, as weird as that may sound- well, I suppose China does manage to produce quite a few hyper-nationalistic youth with at least some command of the English language, and I don’t think China is the only country with that ability, not by any means. A conversation with a bunch of drunken Vikings late at “night” halfway up a Norwegian mountainside in a house accessible only by tractor when the winter snow piles up (fortunately it was mid-summer, hence the scare quotes around “night”) springs to mind. Everybody present was bilingual, English was the language we all shared, they were swearing to defend Norway to the very last drop of blood.

But my next question is: What on earth is “global”? What is this mysterious attitude? I think we’ve established that it is by no means defined by linguistic ability, nor is it marked by nationalism, so we’re going to have to go looking for new criteria.

Taking myself as an example: I have always been interested in the big, wide world beyond the shores of the island I grew up on, still am. I’ve always loved reading about other countries and other cultures. I’ve always loved reading. I’ve always paid close attention to the world news, still do, and I like to get my news from a variety of sources from around the world- although, of course, I have sources I go to first. Although I do love and am proud of my home country and culture, I don’t feel any particular patriotism, really, and I automatically recoil at the slightest hint of Kiwi nationalism- I mean, Kiwi nationalism seems utterly absurd to me, for starters, but more importantly, to me, all nationalisms reek of fascism, and that’s a stench I can stand least when it’s coming from my homeland. I also like to read and hear a variety of different viewpoints from a variety of cultures, even when such viewpoints are utterly obnoxious to my ears (although, obnoxious viewpoints from fellow Kiwis I found very hard to tolerate). I also firmly believe that genuine leftists (of which there are very few in this world) would fully embrace globalisation. Workers of the world unite, and all that.

Am I “global”?

I don’t think so. For one, I do confine my life to a very small area, that area being for now a small section of southern Chaoyang District, Beijing. I very rarely venture out of this small area. And it’s not just geographic, but social. It’s been a long, long time since I was in any kind of hurry to meet new people, at least in the real world. Secondly, in reading as widely as I do have time and energy for, I’m only following my own interests, not trying to pursue some big “global” agenda.

Also, I’m having real trouble trying to separate “global” from “multi-lingual”. Sure, linguistic ability, in terms either of what languages one speaks or of how many languages one speaks, says nothing about one’s “globalness”. And sure, if one is an English monoglot, then it certainly seems that the world is at one’s feet. But what so many English monoglots (and I should take care to emphasise that by “English” I am referring purely to the language, not to any nationality- I’m referring equally to Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, Irish, Scottish, etc who only speak English) don’t realise, in their arrogant complacency, is just how much of the world is closed to them because they don’t speak any other language. And the same applies, of course, to all monoglots regardless of their language. There is only so much that is translated, and the English language, like all other languages, has absorbed terms from every language it has come in contact with and coined many new terms because so many ideas are untranslateable.

No, really: Give me purely Anglo-Saxon words for ‘mana’, ‘mauri’, ‘kayak’ or ‘tea’. Or ’sport’, for that matter.

And to add points I omitted from that paragraph above exploring my own “globalness”: I majored in French and studied German and Russian for fun. In all three cases, that means both language and literature, and in German and Russian, film, too. And, of course, my entire adult life has been marked by the study of Chinese language, culture, society, history, film and to an admittedly far too limited extent, literature. That does not, by any means, mean that I speak all those languages. In fact, I would say I speak only two: English and Chinese. Those are the two languages I use every day, and the only two I actually speak. I can still make a few utterances of variable degrees of intelligence and intelligibility in French, and can muster up the odd sentence, or more likely word or phrase in German, with the occasional snatch of Russian or perhaps Maori, Norwegian, or a few other languages. But the only two languages I am capable of holding down an at least halfway intelligent conversation in are English and Chinese. Reading is a different story, though: I regularly read in English, French and Chinese, and I suspect I could get my German reading back to a passable level without too much effort.

I say none of this to boast, only to illustrate why I find it so hard to separate “multi-lingual” from “global”. An ability to speak at least one foreign language certainly does not make one “global”, but surely it is a symptom of “globalness”? One symptom among many others, for sure, and not necessarily one that is essential for a diagnosis of “global” to be made, but still, a symptom.

I am, however, no closer to figuring out what “global” might mean, beyond it being the adjective derived from “globe” and generally used to refer to things of a worldwide nature. And given that the world, despite our ever more globe-shrinking technology, is still so immense that no one person could possibly spread themselves so thin as to experience the entire globe while retaining their own coherent identity, how is it possible for a person to be “global”?

I mean, “warming” can be “global” because temperature and temperature variation are natural characteristics of any physical object, and this globe we occupy is a physical object. But how can any one person, given how small even the biggest of us are, be a characteristic of this globe?

So clearly, “global”, when referring to a person, must reflect an attitude or state of mind. It must refer to a person who has risen above petty patriotism to embrace the whole world as home, surely. But can any of us really do that? As I said, I’m not easily moved by appeals to Kiwi patriotism, but that doesn’t change the fact I don’t like to see the All Blacks lose, or Australia win (unless it’s England, or perhaps, depending on my mood, South Africa they’re beating), and although I have mellowed a lot over the years, like all Kiwis I strongly dislike being lumped in with Australia.

[Somehow, though, being assumed to be British- a pretty common assumption given how my accent has mellowed over the years- doesn't bother me at all, despite the post-colonial chip on the shoulder I share with all most Kiwis. I guess that, aside from history, Britain is so remote from my experience as to be almost meaningless to me.]

So I guess I can see how “global” could describe a certain outlook on life, but I’m struggling to see how anybody could really fit that adjective. I also understand that linguistic ability certainly does not define how “global’ a person is, but I’m still struggling to see how it is not involved in a person’s “globalness”.

So yesterday morning, yesterday being a Thursday, when I start class a bit later and have time to sift around the internet, I read this post at The Useless Tree, and it got me thinking (as Prof. Crane’s posts almost always do). I was going to sit down and write out some of these thoughts yesterday afternoon, but as so often happens, I got distracted, and so I didn’t. And so I was going to sit down and write them out this afternoon, but it’s Friday, it’s hot, I’m tired, and how much of what was running through my head yesterday morning do I remember, anyway?

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