A Brief Exercise in Historical Imagination (Beijing Continued)

By the dawning of our third day in Beijing, we knew the drill pretty well. We met Samantha in the lobby, and were soon on our way for the most important step of the tour -- getting all the tourists from the lobby. It took an hour and a half of driving around the city to retrieve our tour group, which consisted of a nice family of Austrians who didn't speak much english, and a nice family of English people who didn't speak any German, and us.

We started off at the Ming Tomb (actually one of multiple Ming Tomb sites; ours was the Chang Ling tomb). The centerpiece of the site was a gigantic marble stele inscribed with the name and deeds of the emperor. The stele was a dingy red color and covered with scratches and faded graffiti. Samantha caught my questioning look and said, "Yes, long ago this monument was white. During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards came here and tried to destroy it. They burned it and stained it red."

This is the kind of thing you hear a lot on a tour of China. For those of you who don't know much about Chinese history, the Cultural Revolution was a movement whose stated goal was "to rid China of its liberal bourgouise elements." In practical terms, it encompasses more or less a decade of violence, chaos, and destruction beginning in 1966, peaking in 1969, and (in most people's minds) ending with the arrest of four of its key proponents in 1976. Gangs of semi-legitimized thugs (the Red Guards) swarmed over the country closing schools, shutting down businesses, destroying relics of Chinese history, plundering people's belongings, and humiliating, beating, or killing those whom they decided were not sufficiently enthusiastic about the reign of the proletariat. As you may have guessed, the only sure-fire way to be sufficiently enthusiastic was to participate. Apart from the apalling human cost of the Cultural Revolution, many artefacts of China's unrivalled history were damaged or lost. Such as? Well, a home and temple compound was almost completely destroyed and its scrolls burned by a rampaging mob of students and staff from Beijing Normal University; it had belonged to a prominent ancient philosopher named Kong Fuzi. You may know him as Conficius.

So I wasn't surprised that the Red Guards had made an attempt on an imperial tomb. I did find it vaguely amusing, however (as I have at other places) that these thugs were so ineffective. Here's what apparently happened -- some young punks are hankering to go out and break things and hurt people (all in the name of revolution, naturally), and one of them says, "Hey! The tombs of those Ming oppressors are just a day's hike or so! Let's go smash 'em!" (of course, he said it in Chinese). His cohorts enthusiastically follow, and they kick the gates in, shouting revolutionary slogans and waving their revolutionary implements of destruction. They chop up the available woodwork and line up to spit on the imperial altar. Then they head for the stele -- it would be the most obvious target for destruction, since it's a twenty-by-five-by-ten slab of white marble. "Haha!" they shout, as they kick it and hack at it with their crowbars. "Take that, you capitalist-road filth! No-one will revere your memory any longer! Long live the rule of the people!" After about fifteen minutes, this gets a little old, and they decided to actually break the thing, not just take a few small chips out of it. "Ok, who brought the heavy equipment?" says the leader. "Ropes? Block and tackle?" Everyone looks around at each other and there's a long silence. "This pig isn't worth our time!" pipes up one of them eventually. "Let's just burn it!" A cheer goes up. They build a fire around the slab, scribble graffiti like WANG WAS HERE AND SPITS ON THE EMPEROR, sing a few revolutionary songs, and wander off in search of a doctor to beat up.

Ultimately, however, the most devastating rebuttal to the Cultural Revolution isn't a Canadian making fun of it; it's the fact that virtually no-one cares about the art and aesthetic of the Cultural Revolution, but millions of people (foreign and Chinese) pour into these sites every year to admire the splendor of those parts of Chinese heritage that endured every attempt to destroy them. History is not without a sense of irony.

But seriously, setting fire to a marble slab? That was dumb.

Dave

Beijing: Louis XIV was an amateur

Day two in Beijing began at the Guanzhou Hotel's breakfast buffet, where my father-in-law was anxiously waiting. Dad Werner is serious about food (when we were planning our wedding reception dinner, he told us that the meal had to be good, "because years later, nobody will remember who got married, but they'll remember the food."), and as we strolled out of the elevator, he trotted up to meet us.
"I came down here at 6:00 to check things out," he said confidentially. "They were just setting up, but they let me in to have a look. Seems like a real classy joint. Got a lot of Chinese food, though."
Dad was correct -- the joint was as classy as I could have wished for, and the food was delicious.

Our guide -- an endearing and informative girl named Samantha -- met us in the lobby and we soon found ourselves stepping out of the bus and into the back gate of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City, palace of the Chinese emperors, sits in the middle of Beijing and was built over a period of fifteen years (starting in 1406) by more than one million workers. Its moat, walls, and 980 buildings(originally totaling 9,999 and a half rooms) cover an area of 720 hectares -- and that's just the palace area itself, not the three huge parks that border it on three sides.

Now let those numbers sink in for a moment. One. Million. Workers. That's roughly the same size as the entire U.S. Army. All in one place. For fifteen years. Building a home and an office. For one family.

The numbers don't really do it justice, either. The Forbidden City is absolutely colossal, and each imposing gateway or stunning courtyard vista seems to open onto another just like it. Samantha told us that more than 10,000 people lived in the palace during the height of the Qing dynasty. It was cool to imagine uniformed officials hurrying this way and that while soldiers drilled in the courtyards and tittering concubines pretended not to admire them. Since there were probably ten thousand tourists there, it wasn't too hard.

Our tour group was great. Aside from the five of us, there was a Romanian flight attendant on a day trip and a family of Canadians (from Calgary -- small world, huh?) exploring their Chinese heritage. The three little girls (Stephanie, Sandra, and Melissa) were adorable and, considering that our day consisted of six-ish hours of walking in the heat, very well-behaved. We were delighted to be able to speak in english to children after being in Shanghai with college students for four months, and as kids are wont to do, they came up with some real gems. "Wow!" exclaimed Sandra as she was shown a replica of a Qing emperor's silk ceremonial robe complete with gold embroidery. "That's a really big t-shirt!"

The little girls also seemed very pleased to learn that Desiree was my wife, and immediately set about pushing Brian and Lena (our Romanian flight attendant friend) into a similarly blissful state.
"Are you married too?" inquired five-year old Melissa as Lena and Brian were snapping photos of the Temple of Heaven. Upon being informed that they were not married, she opined thoughtfully, "Well, you look like you're married. Maybe you should get married."
"What a naughty girl you are!" retorted Lena, laughing.

The Imperial Summer Palace (a few miles up the road and our final destination for the day) was only slightly less impressive than the Forbidden City. Samantha ushered us through the gate and along a beautiful covered walkway, explaining that no-one but the emperor and those to whom he specifically gave permission were ever permitted inside the walls of the Imperial Palaces. As the walkway opened onto a beautiful view of a broad, placid lake bisected by a shaded causeway and ringed with verdant hills, I exclaimed, "This looks just like Hangzhou!" (Hangzhou is another ancient imperial center near Shanghai which we have visited before.)
"Yes," replied Samantha, "the emperor liked Hangzhou so much that he built the summer palace as a replica. The lake and the hills are man-made."
We are not talking about a small lake here, people. We crossed on a boat to an island in the center and it took us ten minutes.
"Wow," muttered Dad, an excavator by trade. "All with hand tools, too."

There were loud lamentations on the way back to the hotel when our little friends (the smallest of whom we had been taking turns to carry around all day) discovered that we were not going with them on the next leg of their trip.
"But I want to go with Desiree!" moaned Sandra, and grumped around the bus until she fell asleep.
Melissa contented herself with playing with my beard (quite a novelty, apparently, since her father didn't have one) while Stephanie asked each person in turn which animal they would like to be and why. She wanted to be a hippopotamus, herself, "because no-one would bother me. Actually, or maybe a turtle. Or a kitty cat."

We were sorry to see our new-found friends go, but comforted ourselves with ice cream and thoughts of the Great Wall to come. I was not entirely comforted, but it was probably because Dairy Queen was out of blackberry.

Dave

Beijing: The Saga Begins

One of the most common questions that I get from inquisitive Chinese friends is, "Have you travelled in China?" I don't know if this is a formal question to which no real answer is expected (like "Have you eaten?" Now that can be confusing if you're not ready for it, since it sounds to North American ears like an invitation). Whether it is or not, I have always reluctantly answered "Not much . . . but someday soon I will!"

It was with great anticipation, then, that I peered through the window as we trundled out of the Shanghai Railway Station and commenced our ten-day, mostly-inclusive, fully-featured tour of China's Highlights. Desiree and I were accompanied by her parents (seasoned world travellers in their own right, though this was their first trip to Asia) and our friend and fellow teacher Brian.

The first leg of our trip was an eleven-hour train ride to Beijing, the capitol city of China. The train was a "soft sleeper" which departed at eight-thirty p.m. or so, and the plan was to sleep all night on the train and arrive in Beijing feeling fresh, happy, and ready for a day of sight-seeing. I was skeptical. No matter how soft the included beds may be, I am far taller and wider than the average Chinese citizen for which they were designed. I was pleasantly surprised, then, when the couch/beds on the train turned out to be just long enough for me to stretch out for a decent snooze. True, my slumber was more fitful than what I get from the average hotel bed, but the average hotel doesn't usually get up and walk 900 miles during the night.

We rolled into Beijing right on schedule, and as the train was slowing to a stop, an eager-looking young man with a backpack came jogging up alongside our carriage, banged on the window, and held up a sign with DAVID AND DESIREE TALBERT printed on it. He grinned widely and flashed us a thumbs-up. If his goal was to impress us, he had succeeded. Never before have I heard of someone being met by their local contact before the transportation they came in on had stopped moving.

The young man's name was Jeff, and he grabbed our bags and headed for the exit. Jeff was only our guide to and from the hotel, but he made up for it by talking non-stop all the while. His english was excellent, and while his topics of discussion were often politically incorrect to the point of being surreal, he was an engaging conversationalist. Jeff was widely read, especially in english-language newspapers and magazines, and he took a deep interest in discussing international politics as our driver weaved through traffic. He seemed particularly taken with the recent mortgage banking crisis in the US--something which (despite my background) I had not really followed with any interest--and he was not above cheerfully placing some personal blame at our feet for the recent downturn in his own fortunes. "I lost a lot of money in stock, you know," Jeff said, nodding sagely. "Thank you for that. The Chinese banks were together with the international banks, and they all lost money in your -- how to say it? -- housing. Your housing market. So now I am much poorer than before. Many Chinese are." I felt vaguely guilty, especially since he seemed to think that it was a conspiracy on the part of homeowning Americans to deprive Chinese citizens of their savings.

On the topic of the Olympics, Jeff was just as cavalier. "I am a guide, so I must work during the Olympics. But actually, I don't want to. It will be too crowded -- I would rather stay at home." Since those sentiments sum up my feelings on the Olympics exactly, I just nodded in agreement.

Jeff dropped us off at a plush hotel several blocks away from Tiananmen Square, wishing us well in our attempt to get to the Memorial in time to see Mao's body (in which attempt we failed), and took off, leaving us to our own devices.

Our own devices turned out to be a walking tour of Beijing that Desiree had printed out from an Internet site -- we tooled around a big lake where men were fishing with twenty-foot poles, saw a famous historical site of a famous historical person whose name I have already forgotten (though I do remember a line from the plaque in the garden: "This crabable tree was planted when here was a garden. Mrs. [Famous Historical Person] enjoyed make crab bubble preserves in her free time."), and watched some old people playing Turbo Nuclear Ping-Pong in a public exercise yard. We also stopped in and visited the home of a famous Beijing Opera performer. We were slightly disturbed that it took us ten minutes to figure out that this performer was, in fact, a man, rather than a woman.

After finishing our tour of Creepy Opera Thing's house, we immediately became lost (a crucial part of any holiday), and were saved by a passer-by who took pity on the four foreigners crowding around a map and arguing. She sent us to a nearby bus station and, as rain began to pour down on us, we finally set soggily out on the right path back to our hotel.

I concluded the day's exertions (somewhat dampened by the lack of solid sleep the night before) with a traditional McDonald's Chicken Sandwich, staggered into my room, and passed out with visions of the Forbidden City -- the next day's agenda -- dancing in my head.

Dave

The End of the Semester: A Numerical Journey

June 20th to July 4th: the last two weeks of second semester two thousand eight

Final exams supervised: 3
Number of students caught cheating: 0
Number of students actually cheating: I will seriously pay you like fifty bucks to find out.
Number of words graded: 67,850
Average grade: Not high enough to make grading sixty-eight thousand words fun
Number of colleagues who helped grade multiple choice questions: 4
Amount of gratitude felt: 6x10^17
Number of wooden models of the Eiffel Tower given to us by students as parting gifts: 1

Birthday parties attended: 3
Weight of gourmet teppanyaki eaten at Matt's second birthday party (including reindeer and amphibian): 1.22 metric tonnes
Tab for said birthday party: A very large amount of RMB
Amount we paid: 0 RMB, thanks to Awesome Stephen The Awesome Guy of Awesomeness
Number of times I won Stephen's weird German boardgame: 1. I'm the king of the WORLD!
Number of times Matt was wrongfully executed during Mafia because of the prophetic indications of flourescent lighting: 1

Suitcases carried: 11
Hugs given: 6
Weepy moments: almost 1
Hours spent moping around in an empty dormitory building: 6
Colleagues who permanently left for the U.S.: 3
Large pairs of shoes that that the new people will have to fill: 3

Eras ended: 1

Dave

Things You Don't Want To Hear As a Mock Job Interviewer (But That I Did . . .)

Me: What unit of the hospital do you prefer to work in?
Student 1: Surgical.
Me: Why?
S1: Because I like to see people's organs.
Me: Uhh . . . you what?
S1: I like to see the organs. It's very interesting.

Me: So what position are you interested in at the hospital?
S2: This! (pointing to the line on her resume that says "Computer Programmer")
Me: You want to be a programmer?
S2: Yes, yes, yes!
Me: And you studied nursing?
S2: Yes!
Me: Exactly what are your career goals?
(much confusion . . . I explain this several times using different words)
S2: Oh, yes! I want to have a big shop.
Me: A shop?
S2: Yes! It will have many, many, many beautiful clothes!
Me: OK. Um, since you studied nursing, let me ask you what your idea of a good nurse is.
S2: If the patient is very poor, I will not take his money. I will treat him for free!
Me: Uh . . . great. We'll call you.

Me: What do you think is your greatest weakness?
S3: Sometimes, if I have a lot of work to do, and I think it's too hard for me, and I can't do it, I will get depressed.
Me: And how do you deal with that?
S3: Well, I eat a banana.
Me: A banana.
S3: Yes.
Me: And that works?
S3: Yes. It's very help me.

Me: So what kind of work experience do you have?
S4: I am . . . I work . . . I was . . . A-S-S-I-S-T-A-N-T. In shop.
Me: And why do you want to be a nurse?
S4: It is my . . . my . . . D-R-E-A-M.
Me: (smiling and nodding outwardly, weeping and gnashing teeth inwardly)



Dave (eating a banana)

Lessons from a Cricket

On Saturday afternoon, we had a miniature typhoon. It was one of those brief summer storms that build in the stifling air for four or five days in a row, and then explode in a quickly spent fit of rage. I was sitting in my room, chatting with Brian, one of the other teachers, and glanced outside when the rain began slamming against the walls and windows in sheets. It was an impressive display -- tiny whirlwinds scudding across the surface of the canal, trees bent double, farmhouses obscured by the downpour -- but I felt safe and warm inside, and so thought no more about it. Until I remembered my cricket.

Desiree, gripped with remorse for so cruelly imprisoning our pet, Qin Shi Huang, had urged me to release him. "He can't fly," I pointed out, "and what about all of the frogs that live near the fountain? He'll just get eaten if we let him go."

"Well, we can put him on the balcony," she suggested, brightening up. "That way, if he wants to go, he can, but it will be his choice." Indeed. I'm sure that Jean-Paul Sartre would have had a field day with a statement like that. We carried out her plan, however, and discovered that either by choice or incapacity, our little emperor never clambered over the threshold of the balcony to seek his fortune in the wide world. He seemed content to stroll around in circles, chirping the day away.

What would be his plight, however, in such a terrible storm? If he was knocked over by a gust of wind, he might not be able to right himself, and he would die. I went to the window and peered out, searching for my pet and not finding him. I was just on the point of going outside when I spotted him, huddling up under the air condition on the lee side of the balcony in the only dry spot still remaining. Ah, good, I thought to myself. He's OK.

But scarcely had I taken my seat and resumed my conversation when I remembered that little Qinny Qin Qin would most certainly not be OK. The balcony was equipped with a drain, which was located on the same side as the air conditioner. Well and good, except that the drain was prone to clogging. I had gone outside after previous storms to find the entire balcony under an inch of water. And if a human child can drown in two inches' worth, how much would it take to kill my cricket?

I bounded again to the window and saw that my worst fears were being realized -- the drain was already backing up, and Qin's six little legs were churning furiously, trying to keep him pressed up against the wall and away from the water. "Quick!" I shouted to Brian, "I need a cage -- a cup -- something!" My glance fell upon a decorative tin of tea that had been given to us by a student, and I scooped it up. Pulling the foil-wrapped packet of tea out of the box and throwing it on the desk, I open the balcony door and stepped out into the downpour. I could see a wave of water (a small wave, true, but it looked big enough compared to Qin Shi Huang) sloshing across the tiles toward the little insect, and crying out "Don't worry, cricket! I'll save you!" I thrust the open tea tin underneath the air conditioner. Maybe I was lucky, or maybe the cricket had an inkling of the seriousness of his situation, but he scrambled into the tin without any further urging, and I retreated inside, slamming the sliding door behind me.

I thought about that rescue operation later, after the storm had passed and my cricket was once again scrambling around on dry ground. It occured to me that I am very much like that cricket in many ways. I found myself in a helpless position. I had no more ability to protect myself than that poor flightless cricket did to escape the rising water. Not only that, but neither of us even realized the extent of the trouble we were in. But just when I needed help most, Someone far, far above me reached out of the storm and called, "Don't worry! I'll save you!" Just like Qin Shi Huang, I was rescued. But in my case, I was rescued from the domain of darkness, and placed, not on a dry balcony, but into the kingdom of a glorious Son.

If that's the only thing that I learn from having this cricket, he will have been worth his weight in gold.

Dave

T-Shirt Sighting for May 21st, 2008

Sometimes I see a shirt that looks like it's trying to say something serious and edgy, but doesn't quite succeed.

A student yesterday was wearing a tee upon which were three leering skeletons, partly green and partly white. Each was wearing a helmet and gripping a weapon in its bony fingers -- one had an AK-47, another a grenade, and the third . . . was a bit indistinct, actually. Underneath this grim scene, in dripping letters, was the hard-hitting phrase "WE ARE RGHFY?"

And people say that the counter-cultural movement is dead.

Dave