My dog is missing
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, tilting at windmills on July 2, 2009
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.
an incident in Xi’an
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on June 30, 2009
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.
humid rugby
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on June 30, 2009
I don’t get out enough. No, really, it’s true. I spend far too much time in this small corner of the city, and too much of my spare time online avoiding everything offline.
Anyway, on Saturday, when my wife was at work thanks to some big, urgent project they’ve been given, and I was all alone, I started thinking about lunch. With spectacular timing, Roubaozi sends me a message, something odd about a rugby game. So we agree to meet for lunch at a nearby restaurant where he would try to persuade him to go watch this mysterious rugby game.
Well, having gone, thanks to his dodgy description and inability to remember the name of the place, to the wrong restaurant down the wrong lane, then having figured out through more dodgy description where he was, I trundled off to the right place.
Along the way I passed a woman in the midst of a rather heated dispute with the security guard outside her apartment building. I couldn’t understand a word she said- she had a bit of an accent and in her rage she was utterly incomprehensible. But I felt sorry for the poor guy on the recieving end. She wasn’t just metaphorically tearing strips off him. I’m sure her words were hitting him with such force as to cause him actual physical injury. I can just imagine the headline in the newspaper:
Man Shredded Through Sheer Force of Verbiage
And then finding Roubaozi in the restaurant whose name he can’t remember- 西门烧烤 (West Gate Barbeque), as it happened, I was reminded briefly of my second summer in Beijing, most of whose evenings were spent outside the muslim restaurant on the Bei Yu campus. Many an evening meal that summer consisted of a few kebabs, a salad of some description, and naan, washed down with the coldest lager available. That’s hard to beat for a summer meal. And that was pretty much Saturday’s lunch. Well, I also decided to try their Korean cold noodles, and found myself confronted with a bowl of noodles huge enough to feed an entire rugby team. Naturally, I was soundly defeated by the noodles, and I had to tell the boss that yes, her noodles were great, but next time I’ll bring a small army to help me eat them.
So the goal of lunch, other than nutrition and the simple enjoyment of good food and company, of course, was for Roubaozi to persuade me to go watch rugby with him. Ok, fine, but what game? Oh, must involve the All Blacks, considering he was wearing a black t-shirt decorated with Kiwiana. All Blacks vs Italy. Right, so the result is a foregone conclusion, the only thing left to be decided is how much the All Blacks win by [sidetrack: Does anybody know if Italy has ever beaten New Zealand at rugby? Or is that as silly as asking if New Zealand has ever been Italy at football?].
And the thing was, I was just feeling lazy and didn’t really want to do much more than go for a wander through the neighbourhood before heading back home.
So, where? Lido, he says. No way, too far. Well, it’s either two buses or a 30 kuai taxi. Exactly. Sanlitun. Right, that’s better, meaning closer, but where? Well, there’s the Den… No. …or Danger Doyles. Hmm, new pub, sounds alright, might as well check it out, but I still can’t really be arsed.
In anycase, I would need the wifely consent were I to go watch rugby, so a quick phonecall, and…. Yeah, alright, I s’pose. Been a long time since I last watched any rugby, anyways.
So we both quickly stopped home, then headed off for Sanlitun. Well, opposite the east gate of Worker’s Stadium, more precisely. As I was waiting for Roubaozi outside the building, I couldn’t help but thinking these two had the right idea:
Yup. That’s about the smartest thing to do in this kind of weather. But us humans aren’t quite as intelligent, and when Roubaozi came back downstairs, we headed off in search of transport. Running a bit short of time- I don’t mind missing the national anthems or the kick-off, but you can never miss the haka- we grabbed a taxi.
We walked into Danger Doyles and…. no rugby. Something really weird on TV, but no rugby. No people, either, other than the staff. Right. So what now? The Den. Well, I guess it’s the only option now, given the time. So off to the Den.
I hate the Den, always have. It’s the abode of sifty old men. It’s walls exude ickiness. But it has rugby. We arrived just in time for the end of the Italian national anthem- what a weird-sounding song- then New Zealand’s anthem- boring- then the good stuff. The haka, then the game.
Well, it’s no wonder the All Blacks lost to France in Dunedin. What a mess. Lot’s of stupid, careless play riddled with basic mistakes. It’s a sad and strange day when you find yourself in the Den trying to ignore the sheer ickiness of your surroundings, wondering why so few of the Italian players have Italian names and thinking the Italian team actually deserves the win, or at least a much higher score. But as terrible as they were, the All Blacks were still too strong for the Italians, and in the midst of all that mess, did manage to put together some brilliant play.
I had been wondering at how few people had turned out to watch the game, but if that’s the level the All Blacks have sunk too, it’s no surprise.
Anyway, Danger Doyles was showing the Australia – France game, so we fled the ick and headed back there. That was a much better game and the surroundings were far more pleasant. Still, there were very few people. At most, 5 others were there during the game, and at most only 2 of them were watching, but they didn’t seem very enthusiastic. And as pleasant as the surroundings were, it still seemed kinda boring. Sure, it was early, and sure, it would liven up once the crowd started building up, but I found myself thinking that a lively, happy crowd wouldn’t have made the place any more attractive. In any case, I wasn’t out for a night on the town, just to watch a bit of rugby, and not particularly caring about the third game in Roubaozi’s planned rugby marathon (Lions – South Africa, was it?), I left him to it.
Could this be possible? Did I temporarily travel through another dimension? I made it all the way to the subway station without being harrassed by any ladybar touts!
Did I miss something, or is there no southwest entrance to line 10’s Tuanjiehu station? I wound up walking to Hujialou. anyways, on the subway, straight down to the terminus at Jinsong. And then I stopped in the 7-11 by the northeast exit of the station for a cold can of Yanjing to ward off the heat and humidity and walked home. Down Wusheng Lu, then along the lane that runs along the north side of our estate, with a detour to a public toilet. But that detour wasn’t necessary, I wasn’t far from home and I was hardly about to burst. The thing is, from the moment I turned on to Wusheng Lu, I was surrounded by something far more interesting than pubs and bars: Life. Ordinary, everyday community life. People out strolling, chatting with friends and neighbours, playing chess and mahjongg, playing with the grandkids, grandkids playing with neighbours’ grandkids, young women squatting in shadow visible only by the ghostly blue glow of their cellphone screens reflecting off their faces, people out enjoying the evening. The public toilet, being a couple of hundred metres down another lane, was just an excuse to enjoy the surrounding life for a few minutes longer.
But the weather was utterly suffocating, and so a stop in a local store for another cold can of Yanjing to ward off the heat and humidity was necessary. The usual pleasantries were exchanged- where you from? New Zealand. You’re at BeiGongDa? That’s right. And so on.
There have, in the past, been bars that have created their own sense of community, and there probably still are. There are still bars and cafes I do like to visit on occasion. But none of them can match the simple pleasure of strolling through a well-established community on a summer evening.
skyscapes
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, weather on June 23, 2009
It’s been a good couple of days for skyscapes: Clear blue skies, strong clouds. Here are a couple I snapped on my cellphone:
That one was taken yesterday afternoon, from the 6th floor of the IT building, looking northwest. Yeah, it’s not the best, but it was taken on my phone, and a little fiddling with Picasa left me thinking the original is as good as it’ll get. Still, not too bad for a phone.
Next up:
Didn’t bother trying to touch that one up, the original seemed to capture the drama I saw as I walked out the door this morning.
Gratuitous Master and Margarita thot: That is what I imagine the Yershalaim sky looking like about halfway between Pilate’s public announcement of Yeshua’s death sentence and Yeshua’s crucifixion.
It seems we’re in for another season of the dramatic skies Beijing can put on in the summer time. I’ve experienced a few in the past- they can be impressive, they can be tempestuous, they can be calming, they can be scary. Cobalt skies, still air and baking heat can turn to winds scouring the ground for any loose dust available to pelting rain driven by gales that would make Wellington blush to a ruffled calm in half an hour. Or maybe hordes of heavy clouds swagger across the sky like members of a bikie gang enjoying the fear they inspire.
That last summer we spent in Tongzhou District is stuck in my memory. Somehow the relatively wide, open expanse of Tongzhou and its position at the southern end of the flight path into Beijing airport combined to magnify the drama of a Beijing summer sky in those seasons its the mood. From my various vantage points in the vicinities of Liyuan and Guoyuan I would see often three or four planes beginning their approach to Beijing airport, big planes working their way between clouds that made the planes seem like mere playthings.
A sidenote: You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the tread pattern on the tires of an A340 from directly underneath. Yeah, sometimes those planes fly so low over Tongzhou you find yourself counting the rivets on their undersides and making notes of tread patterns on tires, then, after it passes out of your sight, waiting for the bang.
Of course, Beijing also turns on those summers marked by long, constant, oppressive humidity, the kind of weather that leaves you praying for a good thunderstorm, and perhaps a personal lightning strike, followed by a nice, bone-dry nor’wester, and yet all you get is the occasional, mysteriously windless storm and ever increasingly oppressive humidity.
But in a good summer the Beijing sky provides endless entertainment, entertainment of the awe-inspiring variety. This season is shaping up to be a good summer.
Yeshua’s visit
Civilisation: A summer Sunday afternoon in the shade of mature trees with a good book and an ice-cold bottle of beer.
In this case the book was Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the Penguin Classics’ edition of 1997. Between bouts of people watching, contemplation and daydreaming, I read the first few chapters yesterday afternoon. Berlioz and Homeless’s (yes, they translate the poet’s penname, bezdomny) meeting with a mysterious stranger by the Patriarch’s Ponds (Bulgakov took care to use the pre-revolutionary name), the prediction of Berlioz’s decapitation, a wild, crazy discussion on Atheism, the stranger’s proof of the historical existence of Jesus by eye-witness account, cut to….
…wait, this isn’t quite the Jesus of the Bible, nor is this quite Jerusalem, this is Yeshua who is brought before Pilate in Yershalaim. And is this the same Pilate? This is a suffering Pilate, one struck by what he calls “hemicrania”, a punishing pain crushing half his head, stuck in the stifling heat of a city he loathes on the day before Passover having to rule on the death sentence passed by the Sanhedrin on a young man, who…
…this Yeshua is an odd young man, about 27, from Nazareth, an orphan who thinks perhaps his father may have been Syrian, a speaker of Aramaic, Greek and Latin, who gave up whatever life he had before to wander the Holy Land preaching. But is this Yeshua naif or intelligent? He insists all people are good. Some are unhappy or angry or hurt and therefore do bad things, but they are all inherently good. Even Mark Ratslayer, the centurion with a fearsome reputation who tortures him, is good. Judas of Kiriath, his betrayer, is also good. Presumably Matthew Levi, who decided to follow this Yeshua and write all about him in his parchment book is also good, although Yeshua insists that what is inscribed on this parchment is entirely false and the cause of the great misunderstanding that lead to his trial by the Sanhedrin and death sentence for inciting the people to tear down the Temple.
Pilate’s reaction to Yeshua is both troubled and troubling. On the one hand, this clearly highly intelligent young man fascinates Pilate, and he considers a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity and confining him to Pilate’s own house. It is not made explicit, but I’m left with the impression Pilate wants to hear and discuss more Yeshua’s views. On the other hand, Pilate seems to want to take out his pent up anger and frustration and the pain of this headache on this convenient scapegoat. In the end he confirms the death sentence because Yeshua’s belief that one utopian day all people will be enlightened and the need for authority will disappear, thereby, according to Pilate, insulting the emperor’s authority. Or something like that.
At a meeting the the High Priest Kaifa, Pilate offers a choice of either Yeshua or Bar-Rabban to be freed. Pilate pushes Yeshua, but, echoing Peter’s denial of Christ, three times Kaifa chooses Bar-Rabban. Once again, Pilate’s pent-up rage bursts out, and he warns Kaifa of impending trouble. Kaifa, naturally, disagrees over the cause of any trouble in Yershalaim, and a polite if somewhat heated debate ensues.
Of course, legal formalities must proceed, and Pilate must face the heat, dust and crowds of this loathed city.
Two people here astound me:
Is Yeshua naif or a genius? Both? What inspired this insistence on the innate goodness of man? How did he come to insist that all this brutality in the world is caused by our own internal unhappiness and anger? Whence his utopian vision- one not too dissimilar to those taught by Communists and Anarchists?
And Pilate. We only get a few hints of his military background, and anybody who’s ever gotten close to a vet knows the psychological damage caused by war. But surely there must be more. Whence his loathing of Yershalaim, a city that in Bulgakov’s description seems quite attractive despite the oppressive heat and light, crowds and dust? What is the cause of his hemicrania? Is it psychosomatic, or is there some underlying physical illness? Why, when he is obviously intrigued by Yeshua’s philosophy, does he alternate between listening and bullying and then finally find a pretext to confirm the death penalty? When he’d thought of a legal pretext to avoid the death penalty?! Why does he ask Kaifa three times which prisoner should be freed? Why does he push for Yeshua’s release?
And then we’re back to Moscow, where Berlioz suffers his predicted decapitation and our poet Homeless/Bezdomny chases the mysterious stranger, the choir master, and a large tomcat at warp speed through the streets of Moscow, along the way entering a stranger’s apartment and seeing a naked but apparently quite short-sighted woman in a bathtub, then deciding the stranger must be at the Moscow River amphitheatre, running off there, then stripping off and going for a swim in the Moscow river.
A mysterious stranger whose accent alternates between something vaguely foreign and native Russian, who refers to a breakfast with Immanuel Kant and is apparently omniscient, repeating to Berlioz and Homeless/Bezdomny their own thoughts, knows their full names despite never having met them before, and predicts the future. An eye-witness account of the trial of Jesus, except that Jesus has become Yeshua, and Jerusalem Yershalaim, Yeshua has only one disciple whose parchment etchings Yeshua insists are more akin to fiction than biography, and his philosophy is markedly different than that taught by the church these past two thousand years, a madcap dash through Moscow chasing the stranger, a choirmaster and a giant tomcat- a tomcat who tries to ride a tramcar, even trying to pay the 10 kopeck fare, but who is chased off by the conductor, and somehow nobody but our poet finds the fact that a giant tomcat is trying to pay his 10 kopecks to ride a tram. A tomcat, for crying out loud!
And our poet, Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, who writes under the penname Homeless/Bezdomny, whose words and deeds so far are thoroughly and increasingly impetuous and irrational.
And the heat, the suffocating heat.
Altogether, a very suitable start to the greatest of all Russian novels, a start that knocks the first-time reader off balance, wondering just what previous knowledge of and assumptions about the world will survive the onslaught.
p.s. Peony reminds me Margarita will soon make her appearance. Oh yes, I am very much looking forward to renewing my acquaintaince with Margarita.
p.p.s. I’m writing “Homeless/Bezdomny” because in the edition I have, the poet’s penname is translated. For purely aesthetic reasons (and this is by no means a criticism of the translation), I prefer his name to be left as Bezdomny.
and now, to lunch
randomnesses from a strange day
Posted by wangbo in Environment, life in Beijing, weather on June 18, 2009
It started with the exhausted struggle to both wake up and sleep in that has become normal this end of semester, but fortunately Thursday is my easy day: 10 o’clock start and only one class. Usual Thursday morning routine: Look out the window and see the same humid murk that’s been smothering us since that big midday storm on Tuesday. Fire up the computer, put the kettle on, do a little surfing while I slowly recaffeinate, generally take a relaxed, civilised start to the day.
Eventually it was time to head off to the office, hoping to see the boss and talk over a couple of things before class. On the way, I saw a couple of cool posters, the first posted at the little gate of our estate:
Cool, huh? It’s not just posters, though. Our building will be getting a much-needed fresh coat of paint on both the outside walls and in the stairwells for the 60th anniversary of the PRC.
And then, after I’d crossed the bridge, just inside the West Gate of the campus:
Power saving… and am I right to read part of those posters as saying “save power to reduce emissions”? In any case, a good thing to be seeing.
And then, well…. Didn’t get to see the boss, but he’s often busy, so I’ll just have to wait. Got to class and that was all good. Then ran off to the gate to meet a possible new teacher, showed him around, took him to lunch with another colleague, showed him a classroom and let him sit in on my colleague’s class. That was all good, but as that was happening, the air seemed to grow ever thicker and tastier and more and more nutritious. Well, in the run-up to the afternoon’s classes I showed this possible new teacher where the nearest Starbucks was- it would normally be easily visible from the building we were in, but it was a struggle to make out the gate he’d have to leave the campus through, and that was only a couple of hundred metres away. And I showed him the toilets, just in case… I mean, we had just had lunch. Chatted with the students for a few minutes- my former students, it’s fun to catch up with them between classes now that I no longer teach them. Then as the bell rang I ducked out and headed home, promising to meet this possible new teacher back in the office at 4, when we’d hopefully manage to see the boss.
Well, by this time the air outside has a distinct smell of smoke to it and visibility is at the point where I’m really glad I’m not flying anywhere. I mean, a few years back I flew into Hong Kong on a day as grey and murky, and that was one of the scariest flights I’ve ever had. The flight was perfectly smooth, nothing even remotely bumpy, but my ears were telling me we were descending and, sitting in my window seat staring out at the scenery, all I could see was thick grey, until suddenly spots started appearing in the grey. As we descended, I realised these spots in the grey were boats. All I could do is sit there watching these boats get ever closer hoping the pilots could see more than I could.
You know it’s ridiculously humid when you put a cold bottle of beer on the desk and a puddle forms at its base- and no, the bottle was not leaking. Yeah, it’s been the kind of day when the only valid option is to put yourself somewhere where you won’t be arrested (like the privacy of your own home, for example) and strip down to as little as possible. And perhaps consider investing in gas masks.
So I trundled back over to the office, moving as slowly as possible to avoid sucking any more of that murk into my lungs than absolutely necessary, met this new guy, and we sat and chatted and waited. The boss was all tied up in meetings, so we arranged to meet again Monday morning- just one of those things, circumstances that can’t be avoided. So I walked him out to the gate and put him in a taxi to Dawang Lu subway station. As we walked, a few hesitant raindrops tried their luck falling to the ground. A few more saw their success and followed. Then nothing. I grabbed up my empties and took them to the store to recycle, wading through the murk praying for rain followed by a nice, dry norwester.
I got home and fired up the computer, removed all unnecessary clothing, turned the fan on, and suddenly the roar of heavy rain hit. I looked out the window, disbelieving my ears. Nope, it’s true. Oh wait, better run and close the windows on the southern side of the apartment before our phone gets drowned yet again and the obviously filthy rain drops unclean the laundry trying to dry on the balcony. But after about a minute, the rain retreats to a gentle shower, then stops. Bugger.
lzh got home and it turns out her story was similar to mine. She’d caught the bus home, like I told her, not wanting her to suck in all that muck cycling home when the API, according to so many people on Twitter, had hit 500. The rain hit when her bus reached Bawangfen, and stopped not long before she got to our stop. Beautifully timed.
Then we headed for what is rapidly becoming our favouritest restaurant in all the world. 28 kuai for a malaxiangguo (is there an English term for 麻辣香锅 other than the “dry hotpot” my colleague uses?) and you can choose three veges and one meat to throw in, and I can get all the barbequed stuff on sticks I could desire. Mmmm…. garlic on a stick…. mmmm…. chopped up chicken hearts on a stick….. As we left, the air was still heavy, thick, humid, sticky and unfortunately tasty. On our way back a few more tentative rain drops started to fall. Then they stopped again. And as I sit here writing this nonsense, I can hear the music of heavy, fast rain beating down. That’s probably the most beautiful music in the world. I’m hoping this music continues through the night, and that sometime in the wee small hours a norwester blows up to drive this humidity away again and let us breathe easily one more day.
language? global?
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on June 14, 2009
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”.
happiness
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on June 12, 2009
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?
summer
Summer has arrived.
This morning dawned bright and clear like almost every day this year, the sun beating down bright and hot as it has done almost constantly since May Day. I trundled off to my morning class trying not to sweat any more than necessary, considering how thoroughly unreliable the aircon in Teaching Building 3 is- I mean, arriving in a sweat could easily mean swimming out of class, depending on what room has been assigned.
Lunch proceeded pretty much as always. Those foreign teachers in the mood gathered in the Muslim restaurant, food and drink was ordered and consumed. Those who had afternoon classes trundled off by about 1, those of us who didn’t ordered more beer. Eventually we took the waitresses’ hints and went our various ways.
I got home and, for whatever reason, first looked at the aircon- our aircon being on a permanent standby that keeps track of the time and temperature- and saw it was 31 degrees inside. Shit, summer’s arrived. Just yesterday it was only 27 or 28.
About half an hour later, wondering why the sky was suddenly so much darker, I looked again at the aircon. 32. Right. Then the wind started picking up, but this wasn’t like the winds that have swept the city the last 3 months. This was an angry wind, a wind looking to forcefully clear a path for the storm that would follow it. Rain drops, big fat rain drops, began to smack against the window pane like stray bullets. The wind was threatening to tear the rather old outer window from its hinges, so I quickly closed it, but still it rattled as the wind tore at it.
Ten minutes later, everything is calm again, almost. A directionless, drifting wind swirled around, and dark, threatening clouds filled the sky, with an angry orange glow along the southern edge, but we’d only copped the edge of the storm.
Not long after I noticed the clouds building up again, looking like they’re getting ready for another go at scouring Beijing’s southeastern quarter clean. I decided to do a beer run before any storm hit. Beijing’s summer storms can be nasty. I stepped out the main door into a soup of thick, hot humidity, the malicious kind. I waded through to my local store, stocked up, and headed home. On the way back that latent energy was starting to look for expression. Heavy raindrops were starting to fall, an unhappily pregnant wind was starting to rough things up.
But once again, we only copped the edge of a storm. A few nasty gusts of wind scraping at the walls windows, a few buckets of rain smacking down hard, then it passes.
And the sky is still grey, but lighter and less menacing.
Summer has arrived in Beijing- heat, humidity, occasional wild winds, often threatening, rarely delivering rain.
prereading
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on June 2, 2009
Yesterday morning I finished up class, gathered up my stuff, and prepared to head back over to the office. I put my sunglasses on so I wouldn’t be blinded as soon as I stepped outside. As I did, one of my students said:
“好像黑社会老大”- looks like a triad boss.
My sunglasses are new, my haircut even newer, the students are still making comments….
Then the same student called me “大哥”- big brother, the appropriate term of address for a higher-up in the triad world.
This afternoon I went into the “new” (as in I watched it being built when I lived opposite the south gate, but until today had no reason to visit it) building opposite the south gate with instructions to go to the 5th floor and pick up a package that had been couriered to me. Saw myself reflected in the doors of the lift and thought, yeah, I can see the triad boss resemblance (apart from the obvious skin and hair colour issues).
It’s been a long series of those kind of days you enjoy for the weather, but which leave you petrified for the near future of our water supply. Hard, hot blue skies, sun baking down, occasionally, like yesterday- and this afternoon clouds building up to the west and north vaguely threatening thunder storms, but not delivering. The kind of weather when fans are essential, but none of my classrooms have such necessities. Got home after class and immediately received a message: “Go to the main building (the one opposite the south gate), 5th floor, pick up your couriered package”.
Odd. The address I’d given would normally see mail arrive at the front desk of the Foreign Students’ Building, said building being responsible for all issues (except utilities) associated with foreign teachers’ accomodation, mail included. Well, I guess a package from Japan addressed to a Kiwi teacher could flip out bureaucrats. Whatever, I want what’s in the package, so off I go.
It’s still early enough in the summer that shadow provides relief, so it was a journey constantly flitting from blessedly shaded and bearable to heat beating at me from every direction, punctuated by one of the gardeners spraying his nasty smelling chemicals on a few trees at roughly the halfway point. The unshaded portions of the journey were a mixture of the sun beating down from on high and asphalt darkly glowering, radiating heat, or concrete reflecting it from below.
Approaching the building I realised a new problem: It’s one of those weird modern buildings, y’know, where you can’t tell from the outside, especially if you walk around and look at it from every ground-level angle, which is the ground floor or first floor or basement or… shit, is that part even part of the same building? On it’s southern face is a grand ramp circling round a stair case, so the Big Men can zoom up to the main door in their fancy cars while us mere plebs humbly stumble up the stairs in awe. So I walked up the ramp. The wrong way. Like the few heading in the same direction but ahead of me.
So I collected my package and headed back home. This time I took the stairs. Taking the fancy-pants car ramp the wrong way didn’t seem anywhere as much fun on the way down as it did on the way up, so I took the very repititive stairs down to the forecourt that seemed designed to disorient. But hitting bottom I looked up rather than trying to decipher the curves of paving stone beneath me. The colleagues who had provided a welcome stop in relative shade on the way there had left, which was probably for the best, considering the shade in question was of immature trees and the sun was sinking below even their meagre efforts to shade.
Across the bridge, into the welcome cool of my building’s stairwell, home, and… What’s all the fuss about?
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
so now you understand… or probably not. The Master and Margarita I would rate as the greatest of all Russian novels, with the two provisos that:
- I have certainly not read every Russian novel; and
- I generally don’t like Russian novels. Russia is great for short fiction- no, Russia is bloody awesome for short fiction. But not for novels, not in my (admittedly limited) experience.
Having said that, right from the first time I read it, The Master and Margarita quite simply blew me away. A horrible cliche, I know, but that’s what happened. It’s a novel of extraordinary clarity, depth, directness and mysteriousness, the kind of novel you keep coming back to discovering new angles each time.
So what is this novel? It’s been several years- seven, at least- since I last read it, and I’m not sure I can remember much, but it has left such an indelible impression. Trouble with impressions is they don’t give themselves easily to words.
I remember clearly- I think- the Biblical scenes. Jesus up against Pontius Pilate. But there was something different, something that didn’t quite gel with my rather conservative, bordering on evangelical upbringing, something in the way Jesus’ trial was presented. I could never put my finger on it, the facts of the case seemed the same, but there was something in the presentation that leant it all an air of the surreal. A feeling of tropical desert heat, a sun like today’s in Beijing, but fiercer, brighter, sharper, heat so hard it was chipping at the stone walls of Pilate’s palace. And a languor one could never find this far from the equator, a languor that naturally leads to the stubborn… not zealotry… acceptance? still not right…
And then, from what I remember, the novel moves to Moscow, the Moscow of Stalin’s days, perhaps a little earlier, the time of a poet named Homeless- bezdomny-, when all was normal until the Devil showed up. This devil isn’t your lazy assumption, red, horned, tailed, bearing some kind of trident as red as himself, goatee, but something greater, more ancient, more evil, and yet…
…as the novel progresses, one gets the impression that all this evil the Devil gets up to is an integral part of God’s will. It’s a similar impression to what I got from Tolkien’s Silmarillion, but from an opposite direction. It’s an intriguing idea: Could an infinite, omniscient, omnipotent God have been using the Devil- with the Devil’s knowledge and implicit consent (as if the Devil has a choice)- to further His own purpose, right from the beginning of Creation?
And yet, of course, this novel was written in the depths of Stalin’s reign, and comes with all the questions that raises.
And the autobiographical aspect? The burning of the manuscript? The psych ward?
An intriguing novel, in other words, and one I look forward to diving back into.