Back to Hohot, Back to Xinxiang, Back to Reality
The trip from Datong back to Hohot was uneventful though it was a nice day of clean air once we got out of the city. From that point of view, I should probably not call it uneventful at all. Clean air is indeed an event. Another uneventful—i.e. typical—situation was the traffic snarl we encountered trying to go the last block into the bus terminal. I clocked us at taking 20 minutes to go the last hundred yards and make a left turn across the lane of oncoming traffic. Needless to say there was no traffic light, no one to direct traffic and no one in the oncoming lanes willing to stop a moment to let anyone make a left turn. To quote the Analects of Confucius, “And so it goes...”
At the evening meal across the street from the hotel I was spoken to in English for the only time on this trip. The speakers were two 15 or 16-year old waitresses who were almost surely just junior high school graduates or drop outs who took this job near the hotel for the occasional break from drudgery that I apparently represented to them. They were paying a Chinese person to teach them some English occasionally, but when they found out I was a native speaker and a teacher they immediately asked if I would take them on as students. For a second I was afraid that they were going to get down to do a traditional kowtow and call me master. I hastily explained that I was just passing through and it wasn't possible. They reminded me so much of my early attempts to learn Cantonese on the street in Chinatown in Chicago, a far cry from the privileged in both China and the US who could shell out big cash to send their bright aspiring youth to study abroad. Stubbornness and a willingness to work my way overseas and learn on the street eventually took me a long way, but only in miles, not career. Indeed, it ultimately dead ended me into permanent “comp slave” status on both sides of the Pacific. I wish these two young ladies well, but it's a very safe bet that if I were to live long enough to go back there in 20 years, I'd find them. My young university students are yearning to go to the west of China to give educational opportunities to the poor children in the villages of Xinjiang and Gansu but haven't figured out that they could save a lot of bus fare by just looking under their noses.
While looking for an internet bar afterward we stumbled onto a small old Daoist temple just blocks from the hotel. The priest we talked to said he was one of five who look after the place and interest in Daoism is growing. He told us he was 75, so he was born in 1932 and has seen a lot of history. For example, he recalled that the Japanese military had come to Hohot. I really did not know the Japanese had gone so far into Mongolia until I came across it for the first time reading Haruki Murakami's The Windup Bird Chronicles. The priest also said that he got lots of trouble during the Cultural Revolution and was chased to this place from his original temple, which got shut down. He told me what sect he belonged to and that Daoists still revere Laozi and pay attention to diet and do not eat meat. His parents were Daoists and that was how he got his start. He smiled when I was able to quote a few lines from the Dao De Jing (道德经), and that earned me some "free" books on Daoism though I had to follow with the customary "offering." (Life in the Daoist world is all about balance, don't you know.) We got a complete guided tour of the temple and it was interesting to see a whole separate room for a very large statue of the God of Wealth (财神) complete with smaller statues of Kuanyin and the Buddha thrown in for good measure. As a passerby told me in one of Buddhist temples in Datong regarding the Book of Changes zodiac on the temple floor, well, these traditional philosophies have lots in common. This is certainly true enough, but these believers might just be covering all their bases in a kind of Chinese version of Pascal's wager. This point was reinforced to me later in the evening when we passed a good sized Christian church, and just down the block a bit there was a store with "Soul Bookstore" in English over the door. It sold religious books and crosses, etc., but they were covering their bases too because they also sold drapes and curtains on the side!
Most of the last day in Hohot was spent at the Inner Mongolia Provincial Museum. It is a new huge building with very original architecture. An interesting aside first: We went there by #3 bus, which in fact is run and driven by the military. There was a statement behind the driver's seat that this service was set up to serve some military offices in the area and the public as well. In fact, there were no military personnel on the bus that I could see and I'm thinking it was mostly a public relations thing. The bus driver was a rather austere looking woman in her 20s wearing her army uniform, but she was quite helpful when I asked about where to get off for the museum. I only felt bad that I hurried to the back of the bus so as not to miss the stop and didn't properly thank her.
The museum itself is very impressive—four floors with exhibits on two themes, natural history and Mongolian culture. As for the former, there was an excellent dinosaur and early mammal exhibit with findings from the many rich dinosaur bone fields in the Gobi desert (another parallel with the Dakotas). The exhibits were accompanied by video displays rivaling those of Jurassic Park. The other natural history exhibits were on the geology and geography of Inner Mongolia and how the exploitation of these resources is of great benefit to the nation, etc., etc. I had not been aware of the great diversity of Inner Mongolia's geography including wetlands and forests mostly in the northern and northeastern regions. Much of it looked like northern Minnesota. Everywhere too were statements about the importance of protecting the environment.
Most of the rest of the museum was devoted to the history, culture and society of the Mongol peoples, who are many and varied. The main theme was how these peoples were/are an integral part of the Chinese nation and Chinese history. There was nothing at all that I could see about the country of Mongolia just down the pike to the north. The Wei and Liao dynasties, both of Mongol origin are especially fascinating in that they had a very high level of culture and indeed four or five of the Mongol peoples, including the Manchus, had their own writing system totally distinct from Chinese characters. One small group, the Dauer, number only about 130,000 today and still don't have a written form of their language. Well, as noted in an earlier blog, when your culture turns into a museum exhibit, you'd better be looking over your shoulder because the handwriting is on the wall.
One last exhibit was about Inner Mongolia at the time of the anti-Japanese war. There were many pictures and stories of young “heroes” in their 20s and 30s who were killed by the Japanese for their communist party/nationalist activities. No doubt that their anti-imperialist sacrifices and struggles were inspirational. The exhibits were used, however, to lead into rather typical statements about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) history and how due to that history the CCP is uniquely suited to continue leading China today and into the future.
Before going to sleep I headed across the street for some bottled water. Looking to stretch a bit, I took the stairs instead of the elevator and saw some interesting stuff on employee bulletin boards. All of this stuff probably came out of some undergrad personnel management course in the US. There were pictures and awards for the employees of the month, just like the nonsense I used to see at the University of Wisconsin in Superior (except there the big prize was a special parking place!). There were complimentary messages about particular employees from guests (I presume) to make the workers feel good in lieu of decent pay. Sound familiar, oh ye workers of the world? Workers of course are decent human beings and for the most part are kind to their fellow human being hotel guests just as I have busted my chops to teach decently for little pay, no permanent job status and expensive insurance policies (or none at all). There were even English phrases pasted up on the board like “Corporate Culture” without any Chinese translation. Give me a break. I doubt that even one of these sheet changers and mop pushers ever had a chance to go far enough in school to learn such English vocabulary if any English at all. Another interesting notice had to do with an insurance policy option for drivers. They could choose to buy medical insurance for things that might happen to them on the job—accidents, injury, etc.—for 100 yuan per year, maybe about 10 or 15% of one month’s salary. It was not really much, but I could see people blowing it off. What the hell, pocket the money and take your chances. What are the odds that they would pay up on your whiplash anyway?
The last thing of interest I noted was at the Hohot airport on the way out. Clearly catering to the air traveling Chinese business crowd, there were translations of two of Thomas Friedman's feel good books about the global economy—a great thing for everyone, especially Tom Friedman. It just needs a little tweaking in some places once in a while and then we will all benefit. In Deng Xiaoping's immortal words, some of us (us?) just have to get rich first. (His children happened to be among the very first.) There was also a book by a young Chinese CEO, which contained the following advice on politics. As a business person, you have to stay on top of what's going on in politics, but don't try to influence it. This guy will definitely go far.
Well, I can't say the trip to Inner Mongolia was a waste. I got 80 papers and journals read on the road a whole day before getting back to Xinxiang in time to get a fresh batch. Workers of the world...
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Datong--From the Sublime to the Earthy
Datong—From the Sublime to the Earthy
We got a cab first thing the next morning to head out to the Yungang Grottoes (云冈石窟) just outside of town. This is the main attraction of Datong, dating back to the early years of the Northern Wei dynasty in the 5th century A.D. The grottoes are carved into a one-km long sandstone mountain ridge and hold some 50,000 statues of all kinds and sizes from the minute up to the 17-meter high seated Buddha. For those into such things, it's easy to see the strong Indian artistic influence on these carvings reflecting the recent arrival of the Buddhism from India at the time. The cost, energy and craftsmanship required to build such structures at a time when there was little to spare in a subsistence economy never ceases to amaze one.
It was somewhat surprising that there were very few foreign tourists there, though indeed it was past the international tourist season. However, since it was the week of the National Holiday the place was swarming with tourists from all over China. Thus, the austerity of the place was pretty much lost, not only from the crowds but also from the huge coal complex that you knew was just across the valley. By late morning a steady rain was falling and umbrellas suddenly sprang up to 150 yuan from just 15 a few hours earlier. I put a plastic bag on my head and made do. One woman was trying to sell me a picture book of the grottoes for 265 yuan that I had seen on the street for 90 the day before. Indeed, as one so often hears back in the US, things can change fast in China!
On the way out to the grottoes, the cab driver and I were exchanging stories about drunk passengers and other risks and challenges of my former profession. He was also quite interested in US alcoholic beverages and taxes. He seemed pleased that in China when something is listed as 10 yuan, that's what you actually pay. He also said that, unlike the rich in America, the rich in China do indeed pay taxes but nothing in comparison to what they rake in. Then he said what I've heard so often here in the same joking manner—about how the big guys in every country always get the cream and the rest of us have to do real work. Of course, that's true enough but I almost think many average Chinese almost feel good about how they have now joined this “family of nations” and can claim solidarity with the rest of the world. Now that China has fat cats, China has arrived. Another topic was race relations. He seemed very pleased with China's record. One does certainly see many slogans about all people's unity (团起来) as though sloganeering makes it so. Nevertheless, for sure there is more recognition here of the need actively to stress and promote the need for racial harmony, bilingual education, etc. whereas in the US all of this is swept under the rug or papered over on the assumption that all individuals are equal before the law. None of this takes away from the fact that in both countries the real divide is socio-economic class status, the elephant in the room that no one wants to notice.
What's just as impressive as Datong's huge coal complex itself is the many, many blocks of apartments stacked on the low mountain right below the mine entrance to accommodate the workers, certainly many thousands of them. In response to my question, the cab driver said that this particular mine has been safe because it's overseen directly by the state. He said that it's in the small independent mines where the fatalities happen. Even if true, the stats are that about a dozen or so coal miners die in China every day. I've seen several times in international news reports that a new coal burning power facility comes on line in China about once a week. Both the US and China are burning more coal than ever. I just hope that there's no coal under the Yungang grottoes or their fate will certainly be sealed.
Datong is certainly a kind of backward city, not only for its older housing stock but just little things like the fact that the bus station where you buy tickets is in one place and depending on where you are going you might have to trudge for blocks with your luggage to some unmarked parking lot where the bus actually departs from. Unlike in Hohot where a computer spits out your ticket with all the details of cost, seat and departure time, in Datong the handwritten ticket doesn't say anything about which bus you're on, not to mention a seat; it merely confirms your right to fight your way on to one of the busses leaving that day. You also have to pay one yuan for insurance—from Datong to Hohot but not the other way. What do the Datong drivers know that the Hohot drivers don't?
In a bookstore in the highly commercialized temple complex area, we met a young woman who went to a computer school after high school in another city but came back to work in this city and felt positive about recent improvements, modest though they seemed to me. She gave up on computers and got the bookstore job because she loves to read and suggested a couple of popular contemporary novelists. It seems that lots of people I've met are loyal to their home area, even a kind of run down place like Datong. Of course, this is more true of working class people everywhere—place and family are more important than mobility and career—who you are with rather than what you do.
My last experience in Datong was to shed a tear before boarding the bus for the 3 1/2 hour ride back to Hohot. I saw what I took to be a public toilet across the square in a small building run by an old man who sold small snacks and daily use items on the left and oversaw the very odiferous toilets on the right, which more than overwhelmed any pleasant smells that might have been coming from the snacks not 10 feet away. I told him I needed to use the facilities, so he promptly asked me “a shit or a piss? (literally a “big comfort” or a “small comfort,” 大便 or 小便). I wasn't expecting to pay or answer such a question and hesitated for just a moment, so he continued, “Shits are a dollar and pisses 50 cents.” So I said, “A piss” and promptly handed him my coin. “Door number three!” he said, and for just a split second I was reminded of some US quiz show game, but I quickly realized I was in a different realm as I followed my nose down the corridor, held my breath, did what I came for, and headed back to the bus.
I really want to come back to Datong someday. Its combination of ancient cultural treasures and earthiness—China in a nutshell—appeals to me.
We got a cab first thing the next morning to head out to the Yungang Grottoes (云冈石窟) just outside of town. This is the main attraction of Datong, dating back to the early years of the Northern Wei dynasty in the 5th century A.D. The grottoes are carved into a one-km long sandstone mountain ridge and hold some 50,000 statues of all kinds and sizes from the minute up to the 17-meter high seated Buddha. For those into such things, it's easy to see the strong Indian artistic influence on these carvings reflecting the recent arrival of the Buddhism from India at the time. The cost, energy and craftsmanship required to build such structures at a time when there was little to spare in a subsistence economy never ceases to amaze one.
It was somewhat surprising that there were very few foreign tourists there, though indeed it was past the international tourist season. However, since it was the week of the National Holiday the place was swarming with tourists from all over China. Thus, the austerity of the place was pretty much lost, not only from the crowds but also from the huge coal complex that you knew was just across the valley. By late morning a steady rain was falling and umbrellas suddenly sprang up to 150 yuan from just 15 a few hours earlier. I put a plastic bag on my head and made do. One woman was trying to sell me a picture book of the grottoes for 265 yuan that I had seen on the street for 90 the day before. Indeed, as one so often hears back in the US, things can change fast in China!
On the way out to the grottoes, the cab driver and I were exchanging stories about drunk passengers and other risks and challenges of my former profession. He was also quite interested in US alcoholic beverages and taxes. He seemed pleased that in China when something is listed as 10 yuan, that's what you actually pay. He also said that, unlike the rich in America, the rich in China do indeed pay taxes but nothing in comparison to what they rake in. Then he said what I've heard so often here in the same joking manner—about how the big guys in every country always get the cream and the rest of us have to do real work. Of course, that's true enough but I almost think many average Chinese almost feel good about how they have now joined this “family of nations” and can claim solidarity with the rest of the world. Now that China has fat cats, China has arrived. Another topic was race relations. He seemed very pleased with China's record. One does certainly see many slogans about all people's unity (团起来) as though sloganeering makes it so. Nevertheless, for sure there is more recognition here of the need actively to stress and promote the need for racial harmony, bilingual education, etc. whereas in the US all of this is swept under the rug or papered over on the assumption that all individuals are equal before the law. None of this takes away from the fact that in both countries the real divide is socio-economic class status, the elephant in the room that no one wants to notice.
What's just as impressive as Datong's huge coal complex itself is the many, many blocks of apartments stacked on the low mountain right below the mine entrance to accommodate the workers, certainly many thousands of them. In response to my question, the cab driver said that this particular mine has been safe because it's overseen directly by the state. He said that it's in the small independent mines where the fatalities happen. Even if true, the stats are that about a dozen or so coal miners die in China every day. I've seen several times in international news reports that a new coal burning power facility comes on line in China about once a week. Both the US and China are burning more coal than ever. I just hope that there's no coal under the Yungang grottoes or their fate will certainly be sealed.
Datong is certainly a kind of backward city, not only for its older housing stock but just little things like the fact that the bus station where you buy tickets is in one place and depending on where you are going you might have to trudge for blocks with your luggage to some unmarked parking lot where the bus actually departs from. Unlike in Hohot where a computer spits out your ticket with all the details of cost, seat and departure time, in Datong the handwritten ticket doesn't say anything about which bus you're on, not to mention a seat; it merely confirms your right to fight your way on to one of the busses leaving that day. You also have to pay one yuan for insurance—from Datong to Hohot but not the other way. What do the Datong drivers know that the Hohot drivers don't?
In a bookstore in the highly commercialized temple complex area, we met a young woman who went to a computer school after high school in another city but came back to work in this city and felt positive about recent improvements, modest though they seemed to me. She gave up on computers and got the bookstore job because she loves to read and suggested a couple of popular contemporary novelists. It seems that lots of people I've met are loyal to their home area, even a kind of run down place like Datong. Of course, this is more true of working class people everywhere—place and family are more important than mobility and career—who you are with rather than what you do.
My last experience in Datong was to shed a tear before boarding the bus for the 3 1/2 hour ride back to Hohot. I saw what I took to be a public toilet across the square in a small building run by an old man who sold small snacks and daily use items on the left and oversaw the very odiferous toilets on the right, which more than overwhelmed any pleasant smells that might have been coming from the snacks not 10 feet away. I told him I needed to use the facilities, so he promptly asked me “a shit or a piss? (literally a “big comfort” or a “small comfort,” 大便 or 小便). I wasn't expecting to pay or answer such a question and hesitated for just a moment, so he continued, “Shits are a dollar and pisses 50 cents.” So I said, “A piss” and promptly handed him my coin. “Door number three!” he said, and for just a split second I was reminded of some US quiz show game, but I quickly realized I was in a different realm as I followed my nose down the corridor, held my breath, did what I came for, and headed back to the bus.
I really want to come back to Datong someday. Its combination of ancient cultural treasures and earthiness—China in a nutshell—appeals to me.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Datong--Ancient Dust and Modern Dust
Datong—Ancient Dust and Modern Dust
Datong (大同) is the ancient capital of several dynasties starting in about the 4th century A.D. Thus, there is yellow earth dust going back thousands of years. Most of the dust, however, is of more recent origin, more black than yellow, emanating from the huge coal complex right outside of town. Thus, it is perhaps symbolic of lots of places in China where grimy, oily coal dust covers unbelievable cultural treasures. In Datong you can typically look up directly at the sun in mid-day and it looks like the moon. The first impressions are that it also has less of 2007 China's new construction and better quality housing, but I never saw the whole town. Coal powers China, but for some reason it seems to be doing less for Datong.
We arrived at the hotel in mid-afternoon and the cab driver from the bus station was very anxious to cut a deal with us to drive us all around to see all the sites of the area for a fixed price. He was very confident we could do it all in a day, probably at about 100/km/hr., slowing down a bit for some pictures, of course. He said that Datong and the surrounding counties had 4 million people and that the hotel we were staying at was (淘汰) past its prime or fallen into disrepair. I suppose he just wanted us to experience the very best of Datong, and he did introduce us to a fabulous noodle shop right across the street. In fact, the hotel was a bit run down, but there was plenty of hot water in the shower and it had a fabulous view into people's kitchens in the apartment block 10 yards across the alley through some smoke vents.
Since there was plenty of time in the day yet, we set out to see the two big Kuanyin temples, which were within walking distance. They had very nice accompanying exhibits of artifacts from the Tang, Jin and Liao dynasties. Also, in spite of the soot and noise of the city, they were very peaceful places as well as being active temples.
At the second temple, Po-lin bought a small Kuanyin statue, mostly at the encouragement of a friend in Tianjin, who has now become a very serious devotee of Pure Land Buddhism, which they also had books on. After the purchase, the sales lady, having become a Buddhist since starting to work at the shop, suggested taking it over to be blessed by the monk (for a donation, of course!) and while he was doing that I asked the her about a huge newly built Christian church sticking up not a hundred yards from the temple and whether or not there were a lot of Christian converts. She said quite a few (挺多) and I asked why. She quickly became very solicitous and started talking about how we Chinese have our Buddhism and the Moslems have their god and the Christians have theirs and it's all ok. Perhaps she assumed as a Westerner I was a Christian who needed reassurance about China's being open to Christianity. But I said that was not my concern at all. I was only curious about whether Christians were actively proselytizing (传教) and she said no. Nevertheless, there are lots of Christian converts in China compared to before, and it's a topic for further discussion.
After we got back to the hotel we had a dinner of daoxue noodles (刀削面), literally ‘knife cut noodles,' which is a kind of very fat chewy noodle made by slicing strips off of a big cylinder of heavy steamed bread or whatever about 2 feet long and 5 of 6 inches in diameter. These noodles then get slopped into greasy pork or mutton soup or whatever suits your fancy (even vegetarian—guess which one I didn't have). This is a specialty of the region and the place was crazy crowded. One had to stand with one's tray and wait for a table, but not for long because those slippery noodles greased with pork or mutton fat slide down fast.
This was still early in the week of the National Holiday, so most people were off of work and the night market was swarming partly due to decent weather (coal dust aside). There was every kind of snack and we started off with smelly bean curd (臭豆腐), which really does smell, well, pretty bad. It's first fermented in some way and then deep fried, after which it tastes, well, pretty good. In the south they serve it plain, but in north they like to serve it with sauce, which we really didn't want. Please hold the sauce. Oh, no, you have to try the sauce. It's very good. Well, ok, just put a little on the side. A little! This is typical of street vendors, all over the world probably. You always get more than you want. I want half a catty. Before you can start reaching for your money, here's one catty weighed up and in your hands. Oh, well, I guess so. Sure... Why not... I'll use it eventually.
There were various other kinds of things like fried squid, chestnuts, roasted sweet potatoes, barbecued lamb, all kinds of peanuts, melon seeds in all sizes and colors, cold vegetables, steamed corn on the cob (not sweet), pop corn, and much, much more. While we were buying the smelly bean curd, a middle aged dark skinned country woman in the next stall was trying to interest me in some roasted chestnuts. I put her off, but on the way back while finishing my squid on a stick I bought 5 yuan worth and after the usual stuff about my speaking Chinese she looks over and says, Oh, and you've married a Chinese. She seemed pleasd...maybe because I bought her chestnuts after all. She reminded me of Sandburg's fish monger, terribly happy for there to be fish (or chestnuts) and people to sell them to.
We also happened to walk past the very large Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government office building facing the square, and in celebration of the national holiday, it had huge banners of self-congratulation about CCP leadership and banners for long live Marx, Lenin and Mao, all of whom might be somewhat perplexed about what was going on in the square across the street. But maybe not. Anyway, it was interesting to see Mao so unambiguously praised given that he has been pushed into the background for some time. It seems like some kind of reassessment is going on but it's hard to get just which way the wind is blowing.
The night ended at a 3-storey jade store full of very expensive stuff, where Po-lin wanted to go in and look around. Up on the third floor there were small things going for a couple of grand USD. Preferring to be in a bookstore where prices are more in my range, I paced about silently in the distance because I had no/have no/will never have any interest in buying jade, but then somebody, looking in the foreigner's direction, said oh, too bad he doesn't understand, and I said well it's not that, I'm just not a jade shopper. Oh, he talks, he knows Chinese! Well, then, sit down, and out comes the tea and the cigarettes and more chit-chat and the whole thing took another hour. I still don't know anything about jade except that the China-Burma connection has lots to do with it, and I never expect to buy or own a piece of it in my life.
Datong (大同) is the ancient capital of several dynasties starting in about the 4th century A.D. Thus, there is yellow earth dust going back thousands of years. Most of the dust, however, is of more recent origin, more black than yellow, emanating from the huge coal complex right outside of town. Thus, it is perhaps symbolic of lots of places in China where grimy, oily coal dust covers unbelievable cultural treasures. In Datong you can typically look up directly at the sun in mid-day and it looks like the moon. The first impressions are that it also has less of 2007 China's new construction and better quality housing, but I never saw the whole town. Coal powers China, but for some reason it seems to be doing less for Datong.
We arrived at the hotel in mid-afternoon and the cab driver from the bus station was very anxious to cut a deal with us to drive us all around to see all the sites of the area for a fixed price. He was very confident we could do it all in a day, probably at about 100/km/hr., slowing down a bit for some pictures, of course. He said that Datong and the surrounding counties had 4 million people and that the hotel we were staying at was (淘汰) past its prime or fallen into disrepair. I suppose he just wanted us to experience the very best of Datong, and he did introduce us to a fabulous noodle shop right across the street. In fact, the hotel was a bit run down, but there was plenty of hot water in the shower and it had a fabulous view into people's kitchens in the apartment block 10 yards across the alley through some smoke vents.
Since there was plenty of time in the day yet, we set out to see the two big Kuanyin temples, which were within walking distance. They had very nice accompanying exhibits of artifacts from the Tang, Jin and Liao dynasties. Also, in spite of the soot and noise of the city, they were very peaceful places as well as being active temples.
At the second temple, Po-lin bought a small Kuanyin statue, mostly at the encouragement of a friend in Tianjin, who has now become a very serious devotee of Pure Land Buddhism, which they also had books on. After the purchase, the sales lady, having become a Buddhist since starting to work at the shop, suggested taking it over to be blessed by the monk (for a donation, of course!) and while he was doing that I asked the her about a huge newly built Christian church sticking up not a hundred yards from the temple and whether or not there were a lot of Christian converts. She said quite a few (挺多) and I asked why. She quickly became very solicitous and started talking about how we Chinese have our Buddhism and the Moslems have their god and the Christians have theirs and it's all ok. Perhaps she assumed as a Westerner I was a Christian who needed reassurance about China's being open to Christianity. But I said that was not my concern at all. I was only curious about whether Christians were actively proselytizing (传教) and she said no. Nevertheless, there are lots of Christian converts in China compared to before, and it's a topic for further discussion.
After we got back to the hotel we had a dinner of daoxue noodles (刀削面), literally ‘knife cut noodles,' which is a kind of very fat chewy noodle made by slicing strips off of a big cylinder of heavy steamed bread or whatever about 2 feet long and 5 of 6 inches in diameter. These noodles then get slopped into greasy pork or mutton soup or whatever suits your fancy (even vegetarian—guess which one I didn't have). This is a specialty of the region and the place was crazy crowded. One had to stand with one's tray and wait for a table, but not for long because those slippery noodles greased with pork or mutton fat slide down fast.
This was still early in the week of the National Holiday, so most people were off of work and the night market was swarming partly due to decent weather (coal dust aside). There was every kind of snack and we started off with smelly bean curd (臭豆腐), which really does smell, well, pretty bad. It's first fermented in some way and then deep fried, after which it tastes, well, pretty good. In the south they serve it plain, but in north they like to serve it with sauce, which we really didn't want. Please hold the sauce. Oh, no, you have to try the sauce. It's very good. Well, ok, just put a little on the side. A little! This is typical of street vendors, all over the world probably. You always get more than you want. I want half a catty. Before you can start reaching for your money, here's one catty weighed up and in your hands. Oh, well, I guess so. Sure... Why not... I'll use it eventually.
There were various other kinds of things like fried squid, chestnuts, roasted sweet potatoes, barbecued lamb, all kinds of peanuts, melon seeds in all sizes and colors, cold vegetables, steamed corn on the cob (not sweet), pop corn, and much, much more. While we were buying the smelly bean curd, a middle aged dark skinned country woman in the next stall was trying to interest me in some roasted chestnuts. I put her off, but on the way back while finishing my squid on a stick I bought 5 yuan worth and after the usual stuff about my speaking Chinese she looks over and says, Oh, and you've married a Chinese. She seemed pleasd...maybe because I bought her chestnuts after all. She reminded me of Sandburg's fish monger, terribly happy for there to be fish (or chestnuts) and people to sell them to.
We also happened to walk past the very large Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government office building facing the square, and in celebration of the national holiday, it had huge banners of self-congratulation about CCP leadership and banners for long live Marx, Lenin and Mao, all of whom might be somewhat perplexed about what was going on in the square across the street. But maybe not. Anyway, it was interesting to see Mao so unambiguously praised given that he has been pushed into the background for some time. It seems like some kind of reassessment is going on but it's hard to get just which way the wind is blowing.
The night ended at a 3-storey jade store full of very expensive stuff, where Po-lin wanted to go in and look around. Up on the third floor there were small things going for a couple of grand USD. Preferring to be in a bookstore where prices are more in my range, I paced about silently in the distance because I had no/have no/will never have any interest in buying jade, but then somebody, looking in the foreigner's direction, said oh, too bad he doesn't understand, and I said well it's not that, I'm just not a jade shopper. Oh, he talks, he knows Chinese! Well, then, sit down, and out comes the tea and the cigarettes and more chit-chat and the whole thing took another hour. I still don't know anything about jade except that the China-Burma connection has lots to do with it, and I never expect to buy or own a piece of it in my life.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
No Melon Seed Cracking, No Smoking
No Melon Seed Cracking, No Smoking
These were the first words by way of announcement as we rolled out of Hohot on the way to Datong by bus during the next leg of our Inner Mongolia/Datong trip. ‘Melon seed cracking’ is the literal translation of 嗑瓜子, which refers to the eating of sunflower, pumpkin or other melon seeds after cracking them between the front teeth and skillfully grabbing the little prize with the tongue, something people frequently do while killing time for whatever reason, like a long bus ride. Most often people just spit the seeds out on the ground or wherever they happen to be. However, this was not going to be acceptable on this bus presumably because he who was making the announcement would be he would be cleaning up the piles of seed husks at the end of the trip.
The bus ticket from Hohot to Datong (大同), the home of the Yungang Buddhist grottoes, was 50 yuan or about $7 US for the 3 and a half hour trip. It's just the kind of trip I love—overland through eastern Inner Mongolia and then south into northern Shanxi (山西) province. Shanxi means ‘west of the mountains’ though there is hardly a place in China that is not east, west, north, or south of some mountains or others.
As we headed east—but also on the previous day above Hohot and in Xinxiang as well, I noticed that lots of tree planting has been going on in recent years. Many seem to have been planted just this spring and many othes are clearly only about 5 to 10 years old. Most are along road sides, in the dry gulches, or on the lower slopes of the low mountains we were winding through. Most were making it, but given the drought of the past 3 years some have not. Twenty years ago it seemed that very little tree planting was being done after the demise of communes, after which time everything was to be done only for immediate profit. Though the profit motive is more operative than ever, tree planting has made a come back probably for environmental reasons, and hopefully not too little too late. High on the bare brown mountain sides in a several places there were huge slogans spelled out in white stone, “Re-beautify the mountains and rivers.” Note the appropriate emphasis on Re-. At least a start is being made on doing something about these dry valleys and bare mountains. It's encouraging. I choose to be encouraged.
The 4-lane highway was incredibly crowded with truck traffic and very few private cars. The trucks carried mostly semi-finished goods like pipe, specialty steel products, light machinery, etc. License plates were virtually all local Inner Mongolian plates so there is almost no long distance hauling by truck as in the US. Thus, in spite of the loss of some land, the highways seem to be serving a better more regional purpose than they do in the US. Our driver was exceptionally aggressive. He laid on the loud horn constantly and it always sounded the same but the meaning did in fact vary. Sometimes it meant “Be careful because I'm passing you on the left” while other times it meant “Watch out because I'm passing you on the right shoulder” or perhaps “Here I come squeezing in between at 90 km/hr." or maybe "Get out of my way because I'm passing someone who's in the process of passing someone else.” Variations on a theme, as you can see. The right shoulder is in fact a passing lane or at least is used as such without hesitation. People have no qualms about passing vehicles that are themselves passing vehicles in the face of oncoming traffic. Amazingly it somehow all seems to work because everyone is operating by the same rule and accidents are in fact quite rare. That basic rule of the road is that driving here is an elaborate second-nature game of chicken.
In spite of the rather dry and somewhat bare countryside, the villages we rolled by seemed to be prosperous enough, well kept, and in a generally good state of repair. Fifteen years ago I wandered into rural villages like these in the northeast where homes had only dirt floors, not to say that there couldn't still be some like that here. As is typical, all the homes face southeast with their high back walls to the cold northwest wind and the courtyards and large windows welcoming the warm sun, which here does manage to get through the dust and minimal pollution. Villages varied in size from maybe less than a hundred to three or four hundred, but not so big as one would see in the far south, where more people can live per square mile due to year around agriculture. Some homes still had corn drying on the rooftops and in a few places further north farmers were still digging up potatoes. In this dry area there seemed to be little in the way of a second crop. The poplars in the valleys were getting quite yellow and reminded me a lot of northern Minnesota, but in that their beauty was comparable I wasn't homesick. To my joy and amazement, I even saw a couple of wild geese in flight.
In the fields with some regularity there were traditional mound burial sites, in some places quite elaborate with large round piles of soil and stones and even occasionally low concrete walls rather than the more modest oblong ones with a few flat stones in front. These were once strictly forbidden lest farm land be wasted on the dead, but even 20 years ago they were making a comeback.
In a couple of places I saw a few new Buddhist statues, in particular one maybe 20-meter new concrete lying Buddha with some new temple buildings going up around it. Clearly there has been some renewed interest in Buddhism, but new structures on this scale are still rare.
In this somewhat less developed area, I saw more donkeys than further south but also more milk cows. Maybe it could be said that as donkey labor decreases with mechanization cows are on the increase replacing old animal labor for cereal crops with new animal sources of protein.
Across the valleys parallel to our highway was a train bed with long trains passing every 20 minutes or so all heading west probably out of Shanxi coal country, maybe toward the Batou steel mills in central Inner Mongolia.
Fortunately, we managed to get an hour and a half into the trip before the DVD player came on at the front of the bus with loud syncopated pop song music videos sometimes accompanied by anime characters or else MTV style singers. There was even one disc of Cantonese songs, and all of them had karaoke lyrics at the bottom. Fortunately, no one started singing along.
Outside, in stark contrast to the DVDs, the wild geese and the yellow poplars around the villages made it clear that the quiet beauty and simplicity of the Chinese countryside hasn't been totally lost. Yet, near Datong a ceiling of grey daylight took over and spoke to the precariousness of country life as 5 huge coal-driven turbines and their accompanying stacks came into view, the center of a tangle of power lines heading off frantically in every direction to carry needed power but also noise and neon into every village and valley.
These were the first words by way of announcement as we rolled out of Hohot on the way to Datong by bus during the next leg of our Inner Mongolia/Datong trip. ‘Melon seed cracking’ is the literal translation of 嗑瓜子, which refers to the eating of sunflower, pumpkin or other melon seeds after cracking them between the front teeth and skillfully grabbing the little prize with the tongue, something people frequently do while killing time for whatever reason, like a long bus ride. Most often people just spit the seeds out on the ground or wherever they happen to be. However, this was not going to be acceptable on this bus presumably because he who was making the announcement would be he would be cleaning up the piles of seed husks at the end of the trip.
The bus ticket from Hohot to Datong (大同), the home of the Yungang Buddhist grottoes, was 50 yuan or about $7 US for the 3 and a half hour trip. It's just the kind of trip I love—overland through eastern Inner Mongolia and then south into northern Shanxi (山西) province. Shanxi means ‘west of the mountains’ though there is hardly a place in China that is not east, west, north, or south of some mountains or others.
As we headed east—but also on the previous day above Hohot and in Xinxiang as well, I noticed that lots of tree planting has been going on in recent years. Many seem to have been planted just this spring and many othes are clearly only about 5 to 10 years old. Most are along road sides, in the dry gulches, or on the lower slopes of the low mountains we were winding through. Most were making it, but given the drought of the past 3 years some have not. Twenty years ago it seemed that very little tree planting was being done after the demise of communes, after which time everything was to be done only for immediate profit. Though the profit motive is more operative than ever, tree planting has made a come back probably for environmental reasons, and hopefully not too little too late. High on the bare brown mountain sides in a several places there were huge slogans spelled out in white stone, “Re-beautify the mountains and rivers.” Note the appropriate emphasis on Re-. At least a start is being made on doing something about these dry valleys and bare mountains. It's encouraging. I choose to be encouraged.
The 4-lane highway was incredibly crowded with truck traffic and very few private cars. The trucks carried mostly semi-finished goods like pipe, specialty steel products, light machinery, etc. License plates were virtually all local Inner Mongolian plates so there is almost no long distance hauling by truck as in the US. Thus, in spite of the loss of some land, the highways seem to be serving a better more regional purpose than they do in the US. Our driver was exceptionally aggressive. He laid on the loud horn constantly and it always sounded the same but the meaning did in fact vary. Sometimes it meant “Be careful because I'm passing you on the left” while other times it meant “Watch out because I'm passing you on the right shoulder” or perhaps “Here I come squeezing in between at 90 km/hr." or maybe "Get out of my way because I'm passing someone who's in the process of passing someone else.” Variations on a theme, as you can see. The right shoulder is in fact a passing lane or at least is used as such without hesitation. People have no qualms about passing vehicles that are themselves passing vehicles in the face of oncoming traffic. Amazingly it somehow all seems to work because everyone is operating by the same rule and accidents are in fact quite rare. That basic rule of the road is that driving here is an elaborate second-nature game of chicken.
In spite of the rather dry and somewhat bare countryside, the villages we rolled by seemed to be prosperous enough, well kept, and in a generally good state of repair. Fifteen years ago I wandered into rural villages like these in the northeast where homes had only dirt floors, not to say that there couldn't still be some like that here. As is typical, all the homes face southeast with their high back walls to the cold northwest wind and the courtyards and large windows welcoming the warm sun, which here does manage to get through the dust and minimal pollution. Villages varied in size from maybe less than a hundred to three or four hundred, but not so big as one would see in the far south, where more people can live per square mile due to year around agriculture. Some homes still had corn drying on the rooftops and in a few places further north farmers were still digging up potatoes. In this dry area there seemed to be little in the way of a second crop. The poplars in the valleys were getting quite yellow and reminded me a lot of northern Minnesota, but in that their beauty was comparable I wasn't homesick. To my joy and amazement, I even saw a couple of wild geese in flight.
In the fields with some regularity there were traditional mound burial sites, in some places quite elaborate with large round piles of soil and stones and even occasionally low concrete walls rather than the more modest oblong ones with a few flat stones in front. These were once strictly forbidden lest farm land be wasted on the dead, but even 20 years ago they were making a comeback.
In a couple of places I saw a few new Buddhist statues, in particular one maybe 20-meter new concrete lying Buddha with some new temple buildings going up around it. Clearly there has been some renewed interest in Buddhism, but new structures on this scale are still rare.
In this somewhat less developed area, I saw more donkeys than further south but also more milk cows. Maybe it could be said that as donkey labor decreases with mechanization cows are on the increase replacing old animal labor for cereal crops with new animal sources of protein.
Across the valleys parallel to our highway was a train bed with long trains passing every 20 minutes or so all heading west probably out of Shanxi coal country, maybe toward the Batou steel mills in central Inner Mongolia.
Fortunately, we managed to get an hour and a half into the trip before the DVD player came on at the front of the bus with loud syncopated pop song music videos sometimes accompanied by anime characters or else MTV style singers. There was even one disc of Cantonese songs, and all of them had karaoke lyrics at the bottom. Fortunately, no one started singing along.
Outside, in stark contrast to the DVDs, the wild geese and the yellow poplars around the villages made it clear that the quiet beauty and simplicity of the Chinese countryside hasn't been totally lost. Yet, near Datong a ceiling of grey daylight took over and spoke to the precariousness of country life as 5 huge coal-driven turbines and their accompanying stacks came into view, the center of a tangle of power lines heading off frantically in every direction to carry needed power but also noise and neon into every village and valley.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
The 17th National Communist Party Congress
17th National Party Congress—The State of the Union
On Monday night 10/15 I stayed up and watched a good bit of Hu Jintao's 2-hour plus speech at the opening session of the 17th National Party Congress (NPC). Though I have watched these before, this one more than ever struck me as so similar to presidential State of the Union messages in the US: look authoritative and confident, stay on the scripted message, hit the major themes repeatedly, have good applause lines, and give the pundits something to chew on after the show. It was all there. Only George Bush was missing.
Actually, though evening classes and reading essays leave me little time for TV, I noticed a number of programs in the week prior to the opening of the NPC that were clearly meant to prime the political pump. One chronicled the abolishment some years ago of the hukou (户口) policy, which had tied rural people to the countryside by making it technically illegal for them to move about freely to seek work. In fact, due to the old policy it was easier for employers to exploit rural émigrés who were “secretly” “sneaking” into the city to work in the booming construction field in particular. Now that the policy is gone workers can come freely to the city, though it's an open question as to whether they are less exploited. In any case, the TV program had a clear spin interviewing former rural residents now working in computer fields or showing young women in clean, quiet high-tech production industries. Indeed, the population shift is massive. An article in the local paper just a few days ago reported that in Henan Province alone from now until 2010—three years—two million will move from the countryside to medium and large cities. Though these clean and quiet workplaces may likely be the exception rather than the rule, there is no doubt that the new policy has greatly contributed to China's current economic boom just as the US a century or more ago evolved from a nation of small farmers to one of urban factory workers.
What then were some themes of Hu's speech and what do they tell us? Let me mention a few that struck me as hinting at some underlying tensions that the government is struggling with and that are of major concern across the population. Two related phrases that were repeated by Hu and discussed afterward were “scientific development” (科学发展) and the pursuit of “both good and rapid development” （又好又快的发展）. These, of course, are related to the issue of whether or not the government is going to be able to continue sustained growth without overheating the economy. The follow-up pundits made much of the fact that the word “good” preceded the word “rapid” in the second phrase, suggesting an awareness of the need for careful choices, not just unrestrained and uneven growth. By some accounts the income gap in China has outstripped even that of the United States. The differences in opportunity and quality of life between the city and the countryside are also of serious concern. So the question of who the future growth is going to be good for is on the table more than ever. In this context, Hu's emphasis on “social harmony” (社会和谐) is also telling because it indicates awareness that if the benefits of development are not more equally distributed there will be trouble. While the lid is still pretty much on the kettle, the potential for its flying off is never far removed. This is not a matter of altruism or even justice. The regime's fate depends on it and they know it.
Indeed, Hu frankly stated that the very survival of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) depends on solving the problem of corruption. There has been some very good foreign reporting on issues of corruption, particularly land grabs by local party officials of farm land, which is then sold or leased to “developers” often over the protests of farmers, usually older ones because many younger people would often just as soon throw in the towel and seek their fortunes in the city. Some of the protests have been met with violent suppression while others have been left to simmer. The question is whether there is more to this phenomenon than numerous or even patterned instances of blatant corruption. In my view there is.
In fact, the CCP needs to deal with two non-voting but very influential constituencies as it tries to “modernize” and “develop” China (= industrialize production and turn the population into consumers). The first is the ever more powerful urban business class, many of whom go through revolving doors with party members and their families. Like their American counterparts, they never seem to have quite enough, and they are always ready to tell others how good their acquisitive behavior is for everyone else. The second is the majority of the population, which is either still on the land or working in factories or the growing service sector, many of them mom and pop small enterprises. Lots of these folks are struggling with marginal salaries and worries about health care, but are also as hopeful as they are wary and suspicious. On the surface, the party's strategy seems pretty straightforward—alternatively throw bones at one group and then the other to keep the lid on the kettle and stay in power. It's kind of like the Wall Street crowd switching its contributions from Republicans to Democrats in the current election cycle.
However, the picture I see in China is in fact a good deal more complex than that. Besides just staying in power, or indeed for the sake of doing so, the CCP has to make China into a modern world economy capable of competing with the established industrialized economies like the US and Japan as well as local rival rising star India. In order to do that, the thinking goes, farmers have to be gotten off the land and into urban production facilities. This is what the Meiji autocrats accomplished in late 19th century Japan and what the combination of poor European immigrant workers and robber baron capital did in the US. Now it's China's turn—the same top down exploitative process—but about 100 years or so later, a mere blink of the eye when it comes to Chinese time.
Making this transition with both of the above constituencies hot on their heels in the context of a very volatile world economy is no mean task. Even Bill and Hilary would be challenged. Given a recent history of high-handedness, corruption, and the legacy of Tiananmen, one might wonder how they have survived even this long. There is an answer, but it goes beyond the superficial and self-serving conventional western press explanations of Stalinist repression, lack of human rights, not enough churches, or whatever.
During the week of the NPC, evening television programs of nationalistic song, dance and pageantry were everywhere. I even saw an old Korean War propaganda film rerun as well as a current TV drama about the WW2 Chinese resistance against Japan. Of course, these broadcasts did not just happen by accident during NPC week. They were meant to recall the Chinese Communist Party's finest hours. Certainly not everyone is enthusiastic about the regime, and almost across the board people are concerned about rising income gaps, rural health insurance, unemployment and inflation, but the celebrations about the success of the Chinese economy and the Chinese nation are far less about the CCP government polity than they are about the Chinese people's feeling of having finally arrived after more than a century and a half—yes, a short time by Chinese historical standards but excruciating nonetheless—of weakness, imperialism, and national humiliation. It is hard to tell government statement chickens from public opinion eggs when one reads official editorials about the right of all Chinese people to have a comfortable life (小康) as their Western and Japanese counterparts do and not just be free from hunger and cold (温饱) because this is indeed a matter of national consensus. Equally it is a matter of human rights and justice in the mind's eye of the majority of Chinese, and at this time in their history it is of the highest priority.
On Monday night 10/15 I stayed up and watched a good bit of Hu Jintao's 2-hour plus speech at the opening session of the 17th National Party Congress (NPC). Though I have watched these before, this one more than ever struck me as so similar to presidential State of the Union messages in the US: look authoritative and confident, stay on the scripted message, hit the major themes repeatedly, have good applause lines, and give the pundits something to chew on after the show. It was all there. Only George Bush was missing.
Actually, though evening classes and reading essays leave me little time for TV, I noticed a number of programs in the week prior to the opening of the NPC that were clearly meant to prime the political pump. One chronicled the abolishment some years ago of the hukou (户口) policy, which had tied rural people to the countryside by making it technically illegal for them to move about freely to seek work. In fact, due to the old policy it was easier for employers to exploit rural émigrés who were “secretly” “sneaking” into the city to work in the booming construction field in particular. Now that the policy is gone workers can come freely to the city, though it's an open question as to whether they are less exploited. In any case, the TV program had a clear spin interviewing former rural residents now working in computer fields or showing young women in clean, quiet high-tech production industries. Indeed, the population shift is massive. An article in the local paper just a few days ago reported that in Henan Province alone from now until 2010—three years—two million will move from the countryside to medium and large cities. Though these clean and quiet workplaces may likely be the exception rather than the rule, there is no doubt that the new policy has greatly contributed to China's current economic boom just as the US a century or more ago evolved from a nation of small farmers to one of urban factory workers.
What then were some themes of Hu's speech and what do they tell us? Let me mention a few that struck me as hinting at some underlying tensions that the government is struggling with and that are of major concern across the population. Two related phrases that were repeated by Hu and discussed afterward were “scientific development” (科学发展) and the pursuit of “both good and rapid development” （又好又快的发展）. These, of course, are related to the issue of whether or not the government is going to be able to continue sustained growth without overheating the economy. The follow-up pundits made much of the fact that the word “good” preceded the word “rapid” in the second phrase, suggesting an awareness of the need for careful choices, not just unrestrained and uneven growth. By some accounts the income gap in China has outstripped even that of the United States. The differences in opportunity and quality of life between the city and the countryside are also of serious concern. So the question of who the future growth is going to be good for is on the table more than ever. In this context, Hu's emphasis on “social harmony” (社会和谐) is also telling because it indicates awareness that if the benefits of development are not more equally distributed there will be trouble. While the lid is still pretty much on the kettle, the potential for its flying off is never far removed. This is not a matter of altruism or even justice. The regime's fate depends on it and they know it.
Indeed, Hu frankly stated that the very survival of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) depends on solving the problem of corruption. There has been some very good foreign reporting on issues of corruption, particularly land grabs by local party officials of farm land, which is then sold or leased to “developers” often over the protests of farmers, usually older ones because many younger people would often just as soon throw in the towel and seek their fortunes in the city. Some of the protests have been met with violent suppression while others have been left to simmer. The question is whether there is more to this phenomenon than numerous or even patterned instances of blatant corruption. In my view there is.
In fact, the CCP needs to deal with two non-voting but very influential constituencies as it tries to “modernize” and “develop” China (= industrialize production and turn the population into consumers). The first is the ever more powerful urban business class, many of whom go through revolving doors with party members and their families. Like their American counterparts, they never seem to have quite enough, and they are always ready to tell others how good their acquisitive behavior is for everyone else. The second is the majority of the population, which is either still on the land or working in factories or the growing service sector, many of them mom and pop small enterprises. Lots of these folks are struggling with marginal salaries and worries about health care, but are also as hopeful as they are wary and suspicious. On the surface, the party's strategy seems pretty straightforward—alternatively throw bones at one group and then the other to keep the lid on the kettle and stay in power. It's kind of like the Wall Street crowd switching its contributions from Republicans to Democrats in the current election cycle.
However, the picture I see in China is in fact a good deal more complex than that. Besides just staying in power, or indeed for the sake of doing so, the CCP has to make China into a modern world economy capable of competing with the established industrialized economies like the US and Japan as well as local rival rising star India. In order to do that, the thinking goes, farmers have to be gotten off the land and into urban production facilities. This is what the Meiji autocrats accomplished in late 19th century Japan and what the combination of poor European immigrant workers and robber baron capital did in the US. Now it's China's turn—the same top down exploitative process—but about 100 years or so later, a mere blink of the eye when it comes to Chinese time.
Making this transition with both of the above constituencies hot on their heels in the context of a very volatile world economy is no mean task. Even Bill and Hilary would be challenged. Given a recent history of high-handedness, corruption, and the legacy of Tiananmen, one might wonder how they have survived even this long. There is an answer, but it goes beyond the superficial and self-serving conventional western press explanations of Stalinist repression, lack of human rights, not enough churches, or whatever.
During the week of the NPC, evening television programs of nationalistic song, dance and pageantry were everywhere. I even saw an old Korean War propaganda film rerun as well as a current TV drama about the WW2 Chinese resistance against Japan. Of course, these broadcasts did not just happen by accident during NPC week. They were meant to recall the Chinese Communist Party's finest hours. Certainly not everyone is enthusiastic about the regime, and almost across the board people are concerned about rising income gaps, rural health insurance, unemployment and inflation, but the celebrations about the success of the Chinese economy and the Chinese nation are far less about the CCP government polity than they are about the Chinese people's feeling of having finally arrived after more than a century and a half—yes, a short time by Chinese historical standards but excruciating nonetheless—of weakness, imperialism, and national humiliation. It is hard to tell government statement chickens from public opinion eggs when one reads official editorials about the right of all Chinese people to have a comfortable life (小康) as their Western and Japanese counterparts do and not just be free from hunger and cold (温饱) because this is indeed a matter of national consensus. Equally it is a matter of human rights and justice in the mind's eye of the majority of Chinese, and at this time in their history it is of the highest priority.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Can't Make It To Inner Mongolia? Try the Western Dakotas.
Can't Make It To Inner Mongolia? Try the Western Dakotas. 10/14/07
On the second day of our time in Inner Mongolia we took a day long tour to part of the grasslands above the city of Hohot （呼和浩特）. It was good to get out of the city and up into the mountains, but in fact once you get up in elevation to the grasslands you see that they look virtually identical to the high plains of the western Dakotas. The area has been badly short of rain for the past three years so the grass is in rather poor condition. Our tour guide for the day was a very energetic and interesting young woman of Mongolian ancestry who had lots of stories about history and customs of the local area. Like our cab driver from the previous day, she knew some Mongolian but didn't speak it fluently. We shared the van with 4 other folks from the northeast of China who were also there on vacation. The lunch we had was far more than the six of us could possibly eat and included two different kinds of mutton, both of which were very delicious.
The big thing on the grasslands that the tourists go up there for is horse back riding and it's a regular dude ranch atmosphere and that's where the locals make their money. Well, whatever. We coughed up a little more cash and went horseback riding. You had to pay for a guide too even though you could hardly get lost given that you could see so far and the horses sure as hell knew where to go back to get fed. Stupid me assumed that at least the guide would be a local Mongolian whom I could pump for some comments on the state of Mongolian culture in Han-dominated Inner Mongolia, but in fact he turned out to be a Han Chinese ex-farmer from the area of Taiyuan (太原) in central Shanxi (山西), about 8 hours southeast by bus. The conversation turned out to be interesting anyway. This fellow like so many others was dying to escape the drudgery of low income farming and was lucky to have someone introduce him to this better paying less strenuous job. Typical of rural folks, he was a man of very few words. We talked of farming in his native area and he confirmed that it's a “yellow earth” (黄土地) area, the fertile but dry soil that covers much of northern China. Thus, farming relies extensively on pumping ground water for irrigation and he acknowledged the need to go deeper for the water every year. He also confirmed what I had read in the local paper that the first phase of a huge south to north irrigation project was already beyong the experimental stage. (This is a project even bigger than the schemes we have heard discussed in the Duluth area about diverting Lake Superior water to southern states.) We talked of coal mining, which is big in his native area. He said the pay is good so many people go into it, but it's dangerous because "something's always exploding.” He said that he felt that indeed lots more people in China were “warm and full” (温饱) than before, but that it does not include all. He kept talking about the US as a “developed” country unlike China in almost fatalistic way. He was riding behind me most of the time so I didn't really get a good look at him until later and then saw that we was probably about 50 with the leathery face of someone who'd worked hard outside all his life. Now his whole immediate family lives up on the high plain and his two sons have even gotten into college though he was quick to add that the tuition was a big burden for a horse riding guide, on top of what he'd already paid to get then through junior and senior high school. (No free tuition anymore at those levels either.) But he agreed that this was an investment and he can probably expect that these sons will support him in his old age. I wondered what he might get of the 50 yuan/hr that we paid for the guiding; probably only a fairly small portion washes back to him. Anyway it is surely better than farming. He rarely goes back to his old home around Taiyuan these days.
After we got back from the horseback riding there was an exhibition of Mongolian wresting, but most if not all of the participants were Han Chinese including our former riding guide. Actually, it was rather interesting. Contestants wear a kind of loose leather vest and grab each other on the vest at the shoulders and try to take each other down by tripping and pulling down the opponent at the same time. Winners kept pairing off until only two were left. The champion was one pretty short fellow, who then took on any willing tourists including a few pretty tall Westerners and some husky Koreans, but he beat all of them even though some were easily 1/3 taller.
The whole experience invites comparisons to going to a Hawaiian luau in spite of the fact that bilingual education and the existence of an "autonomous region" should make the area of Inner Mongolia at least potentially more viable than US Indian Reservations in pre-casino days. However, the issue is overwhelmingly one of economics, not bilingual education, as explained in Vanishing Voices (Oxford University, 2000), one of several recent works on the ever quickening disappearance of the world's lesser spoken languages. Sticking with one's native language (even as a bilingual) makes little sense since it's either a waste of time or becomes an impediment to economic survival. It makes a lot more economic sense to speak the language of those with the jobs and/or commodify one's culture and package it for majority culture tourists. Minority culture becomes handicrafts, horse rides, or eco-tourism, all for sale. The North American illustrations of the process—back to the Dakotas—are perhaps the best, or at least most familiar. Indigenous cultures are first overwhelmed (if not outright attacked), then isolated into tiny islands, and finally given the option of total assimilation/annihilation or commodification. Well, perhaps the absolute final stage is having one's culture become a museum exhibit, be it in Hohot or part of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. But from beginning to end the operative factor is economics. In North America, Native Americans hunter-gatherer land was taken by small scale European farmers, who were themselves later replaced by huge scale agribusiness and then perhaps by suburbs. The supreme arbitrator at every turn is profit, rewarded most generously to those who are best at turning land into bank accounts.
Driving from the low plains around Hohot up to the high plains, one can see why over the past few thousand years the Han Chinese and Mongols have fought over the low plains, which could be used equally well for pasture land or farming. It is at the northern edge of the yellow earth belt, and the Han there today grow corn in the lower areas or potatoes in the higher areas till the elevation rises and the yellow earth gives way to thin soils that can only support rough grasses. Thus, this area became the northern outpost of the Han sedentary agriculture-based civilization. This land could function just as well as low pasture for grazing animals at certain times of the year and quite attractive to a nomadic culture like the Mongols. In short, this little corner of the earth illustrates perfectly the Owen Lattimore thesis that the very productive and efficient Chinese agriculture-based civilization extended itself as far as it could from its original center to the northeast, the north, the northwest and west, its political and cultural boundaries becoming equivalent to the geographical boundaries to Chinese style farming.
On the way to the Hohot bus station the next morning to head out for Datong, I listened to the young male cab driver's rather interesting radio station. It was part of a syndicated chain of stations that broadcast simultaneously in about half a dozen major Chinese cities including Hong Kong. The music was very contemporary with some English words like “music radio” splashed in here and there for effect. It was definitely youth-oriented with phrases like 我要我自己的音, ‘I want my own voice.' The best example was a syncopated version of the old classic love song 忘不了‘I can't forget’ with a few phrases of breathy English right at the end. The golden hoards Genghis Khan meet the gold diggers of simulcast radio. And so it goes.
On the second day of our time in Inner Mongolia we took a day long tour to part of the grasslands above the city of Hohot （呼和浩特）. It was good to get out of the city and up into the mountains, but in fact once you get up in elevation to the grasslands you see that they look virtually identical to the high plains of the western Dakotas. The area has been badly short of rain for the past three years so the grass is in rather poor condition. Our tour guide for the day was a very energetic and interesting young woman of Mongolian ancestry who had lots of stories about history and customs of the local area. Like our cab driver from the previous day, she knew some Mongolian but didn't speak it fluently. We shared the van with 4 other folks from the northeast of China who were also there on vacation. The lunch we had was far more than the six of us could possibly eat and included two different kinds of mutton, both of which were very delicious.
The big thing on the grasslands that the tourists go up there for is horse back riding and it's a regular dude ranch atmosphere and that's where the locals make their money. Well, whatever. We coughed up a little more cash and went horseback riding. You had to pay for a guide too even though you could hardly get lost given that you could see so far and the horses sure as hell knew where to go back to get fed. Stupid me assumed that at least the guide would be a local Mongolian whom I could pump for some comments on the state of Mongolian culture in Han-dominated Inner Mongolia, but in fact he turned out to be a Han Chinese ex-farmer from the area of Taiyuan (太原) in central Shanxi (山西), about 8 hours southeast by bus. The conversation turned out to be interesting anyway. This fellow like so many others was dying to escape the drudgery of low income farming and was lucky to have someone introduce him to this better paying less strenuous job. Typical of rural folks, he was a man of very few words. We talked of farming in his native area and he confirmed that it's a “yellow earth” (黄土地) area, the fertile but dry soil that covers much of northern China. Thus, farming relies extensively on pumping ground water for irrigation and he acknowledged the need to go deeper for the water every year. He also confirmed what I had read in the local paper that the first phase of a huge south to north irrigation project was already beyong the experimental stage. (This is a project even bigger than the schemes we have heard discussed in the Duluth area about diverting Lake Superior water to southern states.) We talked of coal mining, which is big in his native area. He said the pay is good so many people go into it, but it's dangerous because "something's always exploding.” He said that he felt that indeed lots more people in China were “warm and full” (温饱) than before, but that it does not include all. He kept talking about the US as a “developed” country unlike China in almost fatalistic way. He was riding behind me most of the time so I didn't really get a good look at him until later and then saw that we was probably about 50 with the leathery face of someone who'd worked hard outside all his life. Now his whole immediate family lives up on the high plain and his two sons have even gotten into college though he was quick to add that the tuition was a big burden for a horse riding guide, on top of what he'd already paid to get then through junior and senior high school. (No free tuition anymore at those levels either.) But he agreed that this was an investment and he can probably expect that these sons will support him in his old age. I wondered what he might get of the 50 yuan/hr that we paid for the guiding; probably only a fairly small portion washes back to him. Anyway it is surely better than farming. He rarely goes back to his old home around Taiyuan these days.
After we got back from the horseback riding there was an exhibition of Mongolian wresting, but most if not all of the participants were Han Chinese including our former riding guide. Actually, it was rather interesting. Contestants wear a kind of loose leather vest and grab each other on the vest at the shoulders and try to take each other down by tripping and pulling down the opponent at the same time. Winners kept pairing off until only two were left. The champion was one pretty short fellow, who then took on any willing tourists including a few pretty tall Westerners and some husky Koreans, but he beat all of them even though some were easily 1/3 taller.
The whole experience invites comparisons to going to a Hawaiian luau in spite of the fact that bilingual education and the existence of an "autonomous region" should make the area of Inner Mongolia at least potentially more viable than US Indian Reservations in pre-casino days. However, the issue is overwhelmingly one of economics, not bilingual education, as explained in Vanishing Voices (Oxford University, 2000), one of several recent works on the ever quickening disappearance of the world's lesser spoken languages. Sticking with one's native language (even as a bilingual) makes little sense since it's either a waste of time or becomes an impediment to economic survival. It makes a lot more economic sense to speak the language of those with the jobs and/or commodify one's culture and package it for majority culture tourists. Minority culture becomes handicrafts, horse rides, or eco-tourism, all for sale. The North American illustrations of the process—back to the Dakotas—are perhaps the best, or at least most familiar. Indigenous cultures are first overwhelmed (if not outright attacked), then isolated into tiny islands, and finally given the option of total assimilation/annihilation or commodification. Well, perhaps the absolute final stage is having one's culture become a museum exhibit, be it in Hohot or part of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. But from beginning to end the operative factor is economics. In North America, Native Americans hunter-gatherer land was taken by small scale European farmers, who were themselves later replaced by huge scale agribusiness and then perhaps by suburbs. The supreme arbitrator at every turn is profit, rewarded most generously to those who are best at turning land into bank accounts.
Driving from the low plains around Hohot up to the high plains, one can see why over the past few thousand years the Han Chinese and Mongols have fought over the low plains, which could be used equally well for pasture land or farming. It is at the northern edge of the yellow earth belt, and the Han there today grow corn in the lower areas or potatoes in the higher areas till the elevation rises and the yellow earth gives way to thin soils that can only support rough grasses. Thus, this area became the northern outpost of the Han sedentary agriculture-based civilization. This land could function just as well as low pasture for grazing animals at certain times of the year and quite attractive to a nomadic culture like the Mongols. In short, this little corner of the earth illustrates perfectly the Owen Lattimore thesis that the very productive and efficient Chinese agriculture-based civilization extended itself as far as it could from its original center to the northeast, the north, the northwest and west, its political and cultural boundaries becoming equivalent to the geographical boundaries to Chinese style farming.
On the way to the Hohot bus station the next morning to head out for Datong, I listened to the young male cab driver's rather interesting radio station. It was part of a syndicated chain of stations that broadcast simultaneously in about half a dozen major Chinese cities including Hong Kong. The music was very contemporary with some English words like “music radio” splashed in here and there for effect. It was definitely youth-oriented with phrases like 我要我自己的音, ‘I want my own voice.' The best example was a syncopated version of the old classic love song 忘不了‘I can't forget’ with a few phrases of breathy English right at the end. The golden hoards Genghis Khan meet the gold diggers of simulcast radio. And so it goes.
Monday, October 8, 2007
First Days in Hohot, Inner Mongolia
First days in Hohot, Inner Mongolia
As I knew before we got there, few Mongols live in Inner Mongolia anymore. It's about 85% Han Chinese nowadays, but in fact the Han Chinese have been engaged in a tug of war for an upper hand in Inner Mongolia for a couple of thousand years. After being there for a while one can see why.
As luck would have it, during our first days in town we stayed in a hotel that is just on the border of the Moslem and Mongolian districts of Hohot. I had no idea that there was such a huge Moslem presence in Hohot. Due to the fact that the economy is taking off, lots of Han Moslems, ethnic Uyghur Moslems and non-Moslem Han Chinese have come to Hohot from far west provinces like Gansu and Xinjiang. Wandering the back alleys in the Moslem district around 9 p.m., we tasted some snacks like hot roasted chestnuts, fried beef dumplings, wind dried beef, and, best of all, delicious greasy mutton roasted on a stick over hot coals with local spices that I could not identify but probably containing cumin. The kids selling it were working for a middle aged Xinjiang Uyghur fellow, but they were Han Chinese from the countryside of Gansu, the province next door, one of the poorest in China. The older one was maybe in his upper teens, but the younger kid looked barely fifteen. They said repeatedly that the place they come from is “very poor” and they looked the part with their quiet manner, dark rough faces and hands, worn down fingernails and brown teeth, all dead giveaways. “Very poor” in this area can mean things like minimal health care, marginal protein intake, limited education and maybe dirt floor houses—things that would make one want to take a chance on moving on and doing just about anything else. I kidded with their boss about how many thousand yuan (rmb) he was paying them per month. He answered with a loud laugh that they were getting a few hundred per month—less than $100 US—plus room and board. But they looked pretty well-fed and I suspect that was their primary motivation for being there.
Just after dark the worshippers in a local mosque were just finishing prayers; most of the people leaving the place on their bicycles were older though there were some younger ones too. All the women had their heads covered but not their faces. Nearby there was also a very large Moslem high school, and restaurants serving religiously appropriate menus were everywhere to be found in the district.
Hohot, a city of 1.4 million, is booming. Baotou, an hour and a half to the west, is the industrial center in Inner Mongolia with its mines and steel mills, but a good bit of the money from resource exploitation in Inner Mongolia seems to be finding its way into Hohot, the provincial capital. New construction and business hotels are everywhere. Tourism is the other big industry. Someone with a strong public relations/advertising background is doing lots of aggressive city planning in Hohot. In the Moslem district all the buildings on the main drag are done in a Mid-East décor of domes and minarets outlined in neon (which happily got turned off around 11 p.m.). Monday was the first day of National Day, celebrating the founding of the PRC and a 3-day national holiday for all workers. However, it was more like a huge city-wide Fourth of July sale at Walmart and a K Mart blue light special rolled into one because nearly every business was open, many of them having nothing to do with direct consumer sales to the throngs of people wandering the streets to shop and sample the street food. Given that there's so much money to be made everyday of the year, why would any fool want to take a day off?
A cab driver we hired to take us to one of the bigger historical sites a bit outside the city turned out to be an ethnic Mongol, but he and his parents were all born in the city in Hohot. I asked him about Mongol-Han relations and he said that they were good. He took a little light razzing in the army (he volunteered for 3 years) about being a mutton eater, but said he never had any problems at all. He recounted his experience in a bilingual Mongolian-Chinese program in high school that he was put into due to his ethnic heritage, but he often skipped the Mongolian language classes because knowing Mongolian wasn't going to do him any good in the future. He didn't grow up speaking the Mongolian at home either. Virtually all shop titles in Hohot are in Mongolian script as well as Chinese characters, but this fellow said that the quality of the Mongolian translations was terrible, probably as bad, he guessed, as the English one sees on signs and T-shirts. He mentioned almost in passing that he has a brother who's studying for a Ph.D. in Japan. This could be testimony of equality of opportunity or just as likely that the family is investing in this brother as the one most likely to succeed.
The place he took us was the tomb of Wang Shaojun（王绍君）, a beautiful Chinese woman who was a commoner but agreed to marry the Mongol chief during the Han dynasty (about 2,000 years ago) to promote peaceful relations between the two peoples and end many years of bloodshed. Due to the success of her mission she was given a lavish burial by the Han dynasty government after her death. On the grounds of the tomb there was also a free live performance of Han era music that was both interesting and enjoyable. Later we visited a district with some Buddhist temples and all around them was a huge area of new construction in traditional architecture—maybe 3 or 4 bocks long and about 2 blocks wide—for shops to make cash off tourists. They were just finishing construction, so there were “for rent” signs for potential shop keepers, but the signs said you could only open a shop if it was for selling cultural kitsch along the themes of the neighborhood or food, of course. One of the temple complexes to the Bodhisattva Kuanyin was being completely rebuilt from the ground up by a company from Hangzhou (way on the other side of China) that specializes in such projects. However, the huge new main temple was being built in concrete, an incredible departure from any other temple restoration project I'd ever seen before anywhere, which is typically done piecemeal maximizing use of original materials by or under the supervision of local monks. I don't think there is going to be as much as a scrap of original material in any of the new structures. I'd love to know who was putting up the cash for this project. This is clearly an economic venture that has nothing to do with Buddhism.
Of the other two temples, one was in fact a rather peaceful place with its original structures intact. It has an inscription from Kangxi, the first Qing emperor, written around 1700 in Chinese, Manchu, Tibetan and Mongol script. It was interesting to see the scripts side by side. In front of one of the statues of Buddha I observed a woman in her 30s giggling slightly and doing a quick embarrassed kowtow (with her family standing sheepishly around) and then drop a 100 yuan note--the only one--into the offerings basket. That could be about10% of an average worker's monthly salary, so maybe it would be no laughing matter for some, though she was pretty well dressed, so the 100 yuan might not be more than she'd spend for a new skirt. She might just as well have been thanking the Buddha for her good fortune as asking for a favor. One might as well cover all one's bases—Pascal’s wager in modern China.
Since October 1st was the actual national day, the day of the proclamation of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the evening TV was full of appropriate programming—patriotic songs and sketches, etc. Two things of note were that a number of song-sketches gave average people high visibility, one in particular to the hard hat workers doing all the new high rise construction projects going up everywhere around the country. The other thing was the prominent role of the military, both in the performances and in the audience, which was panned frequently by the cameras. Various prizes were given out for artistic and cultural achievements and many of the recipients were in the military. Their acceptance speeches were impassioned declarations of their loyalty to the nation and willingness to sacrifice on its behalf.
As I knew before we got there, few Mongols live in Inner Mongolia anymore. It's about 85% Han Chinese nowadays, but in fact the Han Chinese have been engaged in a tug of war for an upper hand in Inner Mongolia for a couple of thousand years. After being there for a while one can see why.
As luck would have it, during our first days in town we stayed in a hotel that is just on the border of the Moslem and Mongolian districts of Hohot. I had no idea that there was such a huge Moslem presence in Hohot. Due to the fact that the economy is taking off, lots of Han Moslems, ethnic Uyghur Moslems and non-Moslem Han Chinese have come to Hohot from far west provinces like Gansu and Xinjiang. Wandering the back alleys in the Moslem district around 9 p.m., we tasted some snacks like hot roasted chestnuts, fried beef dumplings, wind dried beef, and, best of all, delicious greasy mutton roasted on a stick over hot coals with local spices that I could not identify but probably containing cumin. The kids selling it were working for a middle aged Xinjiang Uyghur fellow, but they were Han Chinese from the countryside of Gansu, the province next door, one of the poorest in China. The older one was maybe in his upper teens, but the younger kid looked barely fifteen. They said repeatedly that the place they come from is “very poor” and they looked the part with their quiet manner, dark rough faces and hands, worn down fingernails and brown teeth, all dead giveaways. “Very poor” in this area can mean things like minimal health care, marginal protein intake, limited education and maybe dirt floor houses—things that would make one want to take a chance on moving on and doing just about anything else. I kidded with their boss about how many thousand yuan (rmb) he was paying them per month. He answered with a loud laugh that they were getting a few hundred per month—less than $100 US—plus room and board. But they looked pretty well-fed and I suspect that was their primary motivation for being there.
Just after dark the worshippers in a local mosque were just finishing prayers; most of the people leaving the place on their bicycles were older though there were some younger ones too. All the women had their heads covered but not their faces. Nearby there was also a very large Moslem high school, and restaurants serving religiously appropriate menus were everywhere to be found in the district.
Hohot, a city of 1.4 million, is booming. Baotou, an hour and a half to the west, is the industrial center in Inner Mongolia with its mines and steel mills, but a good bit of the money from resource exploitation in Inner Mongolia seems to be finding its way into Hohot, the provincial capital. New construction and business hotels are everywhere. Tourism is the other big industry. Someone with a strong public relations/advertising background is doing lots of aggressive city planning in Hohot. In the Moslem district all the buildings on the main drag are done in a Mid-East décor of domes and minarets outlined in neon (which happily got turned off around 11 p.m.). Monday was the first day of National Day, celebrating the founding of the PRC and a 3-day national holiday for all workers. However, it was more like a huge city-wide Fourth of July sale at Walmart and a K Mart blue light special rolled into one because nearly every business was open, many of them having nothing to do with direct consumer sales to the throngs of people wandering the streets to shop and sample the street food. Given that there's so much money to be made everyday of the year, why would any fool want to take a day off?
A cab driver we hired to take us to one of the bigger historical sites a bit outside the city turned out to be an ethnic Mongol, but he and his parents were all born in the city in Hohot. I asked him about Mongol-Han relations and he said that they were good. He took a little light razzing in the army (he volunteered for 3 years) about being a mutton eater, but said he never had any problems at all. He recounted his experience in a bilingual Mongolian-Chinese program in high school that he was put into due to his ethnic heritage, but he often skipped the Mongolian language classes because knowing Mongolian wasn't going to do him any good in the future. He didn't grow up speaking the Mongolian at home either. Virtually all shop titles in Hohot are in Mongolian script as well as Chinese characters, but this fellow said that the quality of the Mongolian translations was terrible, probably as bad, he guessed, as the English one sees on signs and T-shirts. He mentioned almost in passing that he has a brother who's studying for a Ph.D. in Japan. This could be testimony of equality of opportunity or just as likely that the family is investing in this brother as the one most likely to succeed.
The place he took us was the tomb of Wang Shaojun（王绍君）, a beautiful Chinese woman who was a commoner but agreed to marry the Mongol chief during the Han dynasty (about 2,000 years ago) to promote peaceful relations between the two peoples and end many years of bloodshed. Due to the success of her mission she was given a lavish burial by the Han dynasty government after her death. On the grounds of the tomb there was also a free live performance of Han era music that was both interesting and enjoyable. Later we visited a district with some Buddhist temples and all around them was a huge area of new construction in traditional architecture—maybe 3 or 4 bocks long and about 2 blocks wide—for shops to make cash off tourists. They were just finishing construction, so there were “for rent” signs for potential shop keepers, but the signs said you could only open a shop if it was for selling cultural kitsch along the themes of the neighborhood or food, of course. One of the temple complexes to the Bodhisattva Kuanyin was being completely rebuilt from the ground up by a company from Hangzhou (way on the other side of China) that specializes in such projects. However, the huge new main temple was being built in concrete, an incredible departure from any other temple restoration project I'd ever seen before anywhere, which is typically done piecemeal maximizing use of original materials by or under the supervision of local monks. I don't think there is going to be as much as a scrap of original material in any of the new structures. I'd love to know who was putting up the cash for this project. This is clearly an economic venture that has nothing to do with Buddhism.
Of the other two temples, one was in fact a rather peaceful place with its original structures intact. It has an inscription from Kangxi, the first Qing emperor, written around 1700 in Chinese, Manchu, Tibetan and Mongol script. It was interesting to see the scripts side by side. In front of one of the statues of Buddha I observed a woman in her 30s giggling slightly and doing a quick embarrassed kowtow (with her family standing sheepishly around) and then drop a 100 yuan note--the only one--into the offerings basket. That could be about10% of an average worker's monthly salary, so maybe it would be no laughing matter for some, though she was pretty well dressed, so the 100 yuan might not be more than she'd spend for a new skirt. She might just as well have been thanking the Buddha for her good fortune as asking for a favor. One might as well cover all one's bases—Pascal’s wager in modern China.
Since October 1st was the actual national day, the day of the proclamation of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the evening TV was full of appropriate programming—patriotic songs and sketches, etc. Two things of note were that a number of song-sketches gave average people high visibility, one in particular to the hard hat workers doing all the new high rise construction projects going up everywhere around the country. The other thing was the prominent role of the military, both in the performances and in the audience, which was panned frequently by the cameras. Various prizes were given out for artistic and cultural achievements and many of the recipients were in the military. Their acceptance speeches were impassioned declarations of their loyalty to the nation and willingness to sacrifice on its behalf.
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