Summertime

Hey folks,

If any of you are still reading my blog, I'm really surprised. I haven't written anything here for so long. In fact, I haven't written anything for a long time. I started this blog back during my last vacation from school. At the time I felt like if I didn't write something I would burst, so I started the blog as a kind of release valve. Well, now in my summer vacation I really don't feel like writing anything, and what's more, I really don't feel like reading anything either. This is really weird because for me to not want to read is like a fish not wanting to swim.

I am reading something however. In the mornings I get up and brew a cup of Pu'er tea or Chinese black tea and read The Training of the Twelve by A.B. Bruce. It is a good book. It's kind of like a commentary. I also have been reading a book called 普洱茶. I say I am reading the book, but it is a Chinese book and I can't really read Chinese very well. Since it takes me about thirty minutes to read one sentence, it is probably more accurate for me to say that I am reading the first paragraph of the book. The book is about Pu'er tea, my current favorite brew.

Later sometime I'll tell you all about my summer and my long march and my favorite tea. But for now I'll go to bed.

Strange Place for a Carrier

As you may know, this nation is debating the merits of adding an aircraft carrier to its naval fleet. Some say that carriers are good for power projection, and thus this nation doesn't need one since it doesn't express an interest in projecting its power overseas.

What you may not know is that it already has a carrier. However, I don't think that it would do much good at power protection given the size of the body of water in which it is found.

Why this carrier is here, I don't know. It is probably just for training or gaming or whatnot. According to what I heard it was built near Shanghai. However, I got this from an internet discussion group, so who knows how accurate the information or even the picture itself is.

Finished Paper

My wife finished her paper yesterday and gave it to her adviser. The adviser will read it and give suggestions. Then we will go back to work on it to prepare the final draft.

I've noticed in this that my wife is one of the most patient people I know. I thought I was really patient, but I noticed lately that she doesn't get flustered about things easily. As the dead lines were looking more and more deadly, she seemed positively unconcerned. She just plugged away at it. Once we made a mistake, deleting a little portion of the paper, and whereas I just about went over the top, she was just as collected as can be.

Today I met with a couple of students for lunch. My wife had been planning to come with me and meet them too, but she was really tired after doing her paper. She stayed home and slept until who knows when. She deserved it because she had worked hard.

Thanks to One and All

I read something by Douglas Wilson the other day that made me smile. He wrote about things he was thankful in the form of a Hebrew poetic convention. He said, "For two things I give thanks, and for three I am extremely grateful. First, I am very thankful for the godly character of my wife and family. Second, I am grateful for the integrity of my friends and co-laborers . . . . But third, after careful consideration of the subject, I have to say that I am profoundly grateful for the caliber of my enemies."

Lately, I've been busy with teaching and my wife is busy writing her graduate paper. We have been staying up late together recently while she works on her paper, but unfortunately I don't have the luxury of sleeping in. So, needless to say, I'm getting cranky. I should go to bed and just let her work, but I just don't like going to bed all by my lonesome. It has been about a year after all since I was a loner like our luchadore friend Nacho. And even then I didn't really agree with his estimation of single life ("It's the best!").

By the way, it has been about a year. Last week was an anniversary for my wife and me. I surprised her with a gift and stuff. It was a good anniversary, but it was kindof overshadowed by a looming dead line of my wife's paper. That isn't too bad that we couldn't have a big celebration because last week was only one of our anniversaries. We have more than one actually because of Chinese tradition. It is the next anniversary that is the most important for us.

If you want to know why we have more than one wedding anniversary, you can look at my "This n'that" entry of February 10, and that should make it clear.

Gone for a While

Hey folks,

I'm terribly sorry that I have been away for such long time. I was quite busy with the beginning of school for a week or two and then something happened which I didn't quite expect. I was unable to get onto my blogs all of a sudden. I have three blogs that I participate in, and all of them one day became inaccessible to me. Even now, strangely enough, though I can post, I cannot view my blogs. I guess I should have expected it; just a day before my blogs became inaccessible, I read a news story on the topic of the Internet here. You can say that the news story was the "writing on the wall" for my blog.

Probably my friends in the States can read my blogs now, but I can't. Perhaps I will start a new blog on an "acceptable" site soon. If so, I'll send you the link. Or perhaps I'll just keep posting here.

I've been encouraged by your comments, both on the blogs and face-to-face. Whether you know my wife and me or not, I am happy to tell you about my sometimes strange, sometimes boring life, and I am especially happy to read your comments. I will go and do some reading now. Perhaps if I have time tonight, I will tell you about my wife's and my first anniversary.

Take care,

Syme

Luo Ye Gui Gen

"Luo Ye Gui Gen" is a new Chinese movie that Zhao Benshan stars in. I feel that it is a movie that Americans should see, but I know most will not. Then name means something like, "Fallen leaves return to the root." It was a humorous movie about a migrant worker returning home with his friend. Well actually, his friend didn't do much during the movie. He was dead.

In the movie Zhao's friend died while the two were drinking together after work. Zhao had promised his friend that if he ever died away from home, he would take his body back to be buried in his hometown. Zhao took the body, and he boarded a bus to go to his friend's hometown. Of course, it would be impossible to openly carry a dead body around with you, so Zhao pretends that his friend is drunk so that people will not be alarmed. The trouble begins when the people on the bus discover that Zhao's friend is actually a dead man and not a drunk man. Disgusted and frightened, they force Zhao and his friend (of course) to get off of the bus. Zhao has many adventures and trials as he tries to get his friend's body back to be buried in his hometown.

The reason that I think Americans should see this movie is that it depicts the lives of normal modern Chinese people. The biggest movie that has come out of China was probably “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” That was a good movie but it was about the upper classes in the distant past. The other big movies that might have gotten wide international viewings, such as “Hero,” “The Banquet” and “The Curse of the Golden Flower,” were all about the upper classes in the distant past. Because of this, Americans that see just these movies from China get an unbalanced and perhaps a hackneyed view of China.

“Lu Ye Gui Gen” shows normal things that you encounter in China today. Here are a few things that made me smile because they mirrored real life here. While Benshan is riding on the bus, it stops on the side of the road. Then the driver stands up and says, “Men on the right, women on the left.” All of the people then filed out of the bus and relieved themselves. There was no outhouse where the bus stopped, just forest. This exact scenario has never happened when I was riding a bus, but if you lived here for a while, maybe this scene would make you smile too.

Another thing that it showed was people’s relationships towards their laoxiang (to others who come from the same region). Benshan is a Northeasterner. One night as he is walking through a town, he hears a hair parlor worker speaking in the Northeastern dialect. Because of this he goes in to her hair parlor and trusts her, telling her his whole story about how he is trying to get the friend’s body back to his hometown. She believes him, and helps him by putting makeup on the face of the body.

Another scene showed the existence of and the fight against the black market in China. Benshan goes to give blood at an official blood center in order to get some money. But because he had had a disease, he was ineligible to give blood. As he left the blood donation center, a man walks up to him quietly and offers him 500 RMB for some blood. Benshan follows the person into a dark building and waits his turn to give blood. Just then, the police raid the blood center and take the operators to jail.

I wish this movie could be exported to America. It would do the Americans well to see a movie about common people in modern China. It is an amusing and lighthearted movie, despite the fact that the movie is about a dead guy.

Spring Festival

The past few days I have been visiting various relatives. The eighteenth was Chinese New Year, or otherwise named Spring Festival. It is the biggest festival on the Chinese calendar, the festivities lasting several days. It falls on a different day of the (international) calendar each year because the Chinese holidays are reckoned according to the Chinese lunar calendar.

As an interesting side note, in the Chinese lunar calendar last year there was two Julys(?). My wife, Poppy, has her birthday in that month so, counting her birthday on the international solar calendar and her two birthdays in the two Julys of the Chinese lunar calendar, she had three birthdays last year, which is simply not fair.

Another note concerning the Chinese calendar. Several Chinese people have said to me very smugly that it is no surprise to them that this winter was so terribly warm. They say they knew it would be a warm winter because last year’s lunar calendar had two Julys. They claim that the lunar calendar is more fitting to the weather than the solar one. I don’t know if this claim is true because I still as yet barely understand the lunar calendar.

Anyhow, back to Spring Festival. On Saturday Poppy and I went to her mother’s relative’s house and talked with them for a while. Then we went to her father’s parents’ house and spent the night with them. We ate a huge meal for lunch, consuming so much delicious food that whereas our mouths were delighted with flavor, our bellies were feeling the crunch. After the meal, most of us drove over to Poppy’s grandfather’s brother’s house to visit them. There is a special word in Chinese for going around and visiting the relatives because it is an essential tradition of Spring Festival. After that we returned to Poppy’s grandfather’s house and talked and watched the annual Spring Festival TV program.

This program is probably the most watched television program in the world. I think the Super Bowl is the most watched program in the USA, and maybe less than 50 percent of TV sets in America during that time are playing the Super Bowl. In contrast, in China during the Spring Festival program something like 90 percent of the total TV sets that are on are tuned into this program.

There are lots of people singing and dancing and doing comedy plays in the program. The Chinese navy boys sang and danced. Then, the brave and handsome army guy sang, flanked by two beautiful young army ladies. As you guessed, the air force guys also got to sing and dance. Then they have various Chinese minority people groups sing and do traditional dances. Then the little children with their red neckerchiefs did their song and dance, which was cute. Probably the biggest star of the show this year was Zhao Benshan. He is the number one comedy play guy in China. Usually the middle-aged Zhao does comedy routines on a stage but he also has a TV show. He is attractive to us laobaixing (common folk) because he always plays a common person, dressed in poor cloth and behaving as a good ol’ Northeasterner. The reason he was such a star this year was that he recently put out a full-length movie. Later, I hope to tell you about this movie which all of you in America should see, but never will.

While we were watching the program, we were making the festival food: dumplings. They are meat or vegetable balls wrapped up in a doughy covering. Right before twelve o’clock, some of us went outside to light off some fireworks, which is a must do before eating any meal during the festival. We didn’t do many fireworks this year, just popped off a few crackers and rushed back inside to eat. Most of us were probably still full from lunch, so we didn’t eat too many dumplings. However, tradition says that we have to eat dumplings at midnight, so we all obliged. Finally, everyone went to bed. That was Spring Festival.

My wife and I visited other family members for the next couple days. Now, we are home for just one night. We will go in the morning to visit other family members.

When I have time, I would like to tell you about many things, including
-Regifting: what to do when you don’t know what to do with it.
-Bathrooms: how sometimes you feel you are in a glass house.
-Zhao Benshan’s movie: why I’m surprised the other main character had a name.
-Potentiality: would it still happen if it wasn’t going to happen in the first place?