RED WEDDING

Damn

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Thu, 4 Jun 2009 14:34:00 +0800

There was a traffic accident on Wuzhong Lu two days ago, one of my colleagues was killed, along with several others. Four Korean women, three of them mothers, were coming back from "Bible Study."

I don't want to go into it too much, but I'm angry for several reasons. I'm stunned, and can't grasp the depth of loss to the families, even though I went after work to the church to see the mourners. Most days I feel grateful for what I have, but I'm still annoyed with myself that it still takes death or illness for me to focus.

That's it for now. I didn't want to be a tourist in the Koreans' grief so I don't want to write more.

Moving Day

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:00:00 +0800

What am I doing sitting at my computer on moving day?
a) I'm half-asleep
b) I've done a lot of overtime for two months (43 hours August, 36 hours July) and we've hired people to pack and move furniture
c)we're moving to the 18th floor from the 12th
and
d) ALL OF THE ABOVE.

I tend to date my past and my outlook from the places I've lived...before it was different nuances of Los Angeles, now it's Shanghai. We live on the outskirts of "Expatistan," as Mr. X dubbed the Gubei district. It would be funkier, groovier, to live closer to downtown, nearer to the Huangpu River, but our clients are almost all walking distance from here.

I ADVISE EVERYONE ABOUT TO LOSE THEIR JOB IN THE FIRST WORLD TO BECOME SELF-EMPLOYED OR GET A JOB OVERSEAS...SURVIVE, SURVIVE WELL!

As of t'mro, we have lived here four years. Four years since we missed one plane and made it into Beijing with two bags each and three boxes sent ahead. Now we've accumulated IKEA furniture, kitchenware, clothing, bedding.

We have an enclosed balcony, where the owners have put a bar height table and chairs, which promises the kind of breakfast nook we once talked about creating for our current domicile.

My cell phone just rang. It was for Mr. X. He's workin' until 11AM - I speak Chinese! Sort of, kind of.

While we were once "amidst" the view of dozens of new builds, we now we look down on or out over dozens of new Shanghai skyscrapers, even as far as the Jin Mao Tower and that new building next to it that rises above. For someone with intermittant vertigo, this is certainly a test of equilibrium.

If anyone is actually reading this blog, I'm posting pictures soon enough, if I can remember how!

From China to Panama, a trail of poisoned medicine

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Mon, 7 May 2007 12:47:00 +0800

From China to Panama, a trail of poisoned medicine

Moving On

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:20:00 +0800

February 28, 2007

KL, Kuala Lumpur.

Although we're both tired of Shanghai - the drafty winters, hard work, little relaxation other than watching DVDs of old TV series or massage at the local mega bathhouse/spa - we were relieved to come back from our Spring Festival/Chinese New Year excursion to see just how wonderful an atmosphere our apartment has. Spacious, light and underfurnished.

Our first vacation since this summer, we'd traded a week in a "timeshare" we bought this summer, for a week at a resort in Shenzhen. From there we hoped to cross the border into Hong Kong and Macao. Unfortunately, only a few days before our trip, we learned that the resort was an hour away from the border, which was at least 45 minutes subway ride into Hong Kong.

We booked a hotel for two nights in Hong Kong and went for the parade. we missed it! We stopped for a coffee, and when we came out, the police had blocked access to the stree we thought we'd be watching the parade from. We got caught up in an enormous crowd of people walking in a horde through the Harbour City Shopping Mall, emerged and doubled back underneath overpasses, through a wet market we thought to be under a highway. We welcomed the smell of bleach, washed down stalls - we never found bleach on the mainland.

The next day we took a half-day tour of the major sights. Ate Dim Sum. Aboout 6PM, we met up with a fellow tourist and taxi-ed to where the fireworks were to be viewed. It had been drizzling, and there'd been talk of cancelling the show. I decided not to wait outside for two hours, I didn't have the wardrobe for it, so Mr. X. and our acquaintance braved the cold on their own. I went back to the hotel and watched it on TV. I was sad to miss it, and Mr. X. said it was unsurpassed, that the sky was used as a canvas.

The next day we found a place in Kowloon for me to buy the Salwar suits I've wanted to buy, then were led by the proprietor's brother to a great little Indian restaurant in a small mall. We went a few stops on the subway to find a shoe store we were directed towards, but gave up and went on to Causeway Bay, to the "Times Square" mall. Very hard to see the distinctiveness of cities when they are unified by huge shopping complexes. We browsed an English language bookstore, Mr. X. bought a beautiful book on playing the guitar, a new adventure for him. We returned to Shenzhen that night and found our way to the resort by about 11PM.

Macao - We took a bus from our hotel into a resort nearer to Shenzhen, where we took a very long taxi ride to the port - It was in a section called Shekou, upscale, expat school, Walmarts, too. No ferry for several hours. Every hour was a boat to Zhuhai, so we went there, got a cheap hotel from a tourist assistance booth at the port, then walked the ten minutes to the border building and then waited for over two hours to cross into Macao.

Starved, we caught a cab and asked if he knew the name of a restaurant that a friend of Mr. X had recommended. It became a very, very long taxi ride, on the other side of Macao, as far as we could be from the main crossover from the mainland. We found ourselves without cash and without an ATM - the restaurant didn't take cards. We hopped a bus and went back into town. Hotel Lisboa was shamelessly overpriced, despite the fact we were starving. We went up and down staircases looking for a spot to eat. We saw dozens of young women who probably were hookers looking for business, right there on the lower level lobby. Next, we went to the new Wynn Casino and found the tables booked for hours. We had a drink and then got directions to a restaurant that turned out to be fantastic. Couldn't find a cab, headed in the direction of the Wynn, raining and damp. I suggested we get on a bus. We were on that bus until the end of the line, why I thought it would circle and repeat its route, I don't know. We saw Macao in the dark, from one of the oldest areas, boarded another bus and got off near the gate, crossed back into the PRC and went to sleep at the seedy old hotel, with its advertisements for women and in-room dispensary of condoms and various sex aids.

The next day we took the boat back to Shenzhen. It was raining hard when we got to our resort's partner hotel in Shenzhen city proper. We got online and found the Queen Day Spa where we spent the next eight hours. Back to our resort in a taxi for our last morning.

After a week of gloomy weather, the sun was out. We walked into town and bought some water, snacks, got cash from an ATM our bank reported as "China - Unknown City." Then, to the airport and back to Shanghai.

We spent our last day of vacation at Xiao Nan Guo spa, having "Tui Na" - Chinese acupressure massages.

Back at work. The Big Monday. No one in charge seems to know what we're doing. That's okay, but I'm very sore from renewed exercise routine. Everything hurts!

Shanghai can be grand on a vacation. However, we're isolated in the typical big city way, with the weird historical mix juxtaposed with Western frenzy and capital. In Dalian, I could never get comfortable anywhere inside the apartment - here, it seems hard to be comfortable anywhere outside.

I'm having a tele-interview on Friday morning for a job in Kuala Lumpur.

Later.

From Boing Boing - Wikipedia - we still can't get there from here (China)

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:28:00 +0800

Monday, September 11, 2006

Jimmy Wales to Beijing: Wikipedia won't censor
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has refused to censor the content on the Chinese version of Wikipedia, resulting in its being blocked by the Chinese government. Google, Yahoo and others have folded to demands from Beijing's totalitarian bureaucrats, but Wikipedia has stood firm. Predictably, Beijing has come to Wikipedia to ask them for some kind of peace-treaty, because China can ill-afford to block critical information resources if it is to remain economically strong. If only Google and Yahoo's executives were as confident in the importance of their services as Wales is of Wikipedia.

Wales said censorship was ' antithetical to the philosophy of Wikipedia. We occupy a position in the culture that I wish Google would take up, which is that we stand for the freedom for information, and for us to compromise I think would send very much the wrong signal: that there's no one left on the planet who's willing to say "You know what? We're not going to give up."'
Wikipedia's entry on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 includes the government's official claim that 200-300 died and the Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross's estimate of 2,000-3,000 deaths.
Wales said: 'I think it's an interesting question whether they're prepared to understand the difference between advocating one set of figures or another versus simply reporting on what the controversy is. I can understand that they would be upset - although of course I still don't think they have any moral right to ban anything - if we were pushing one set of figures in contrast to their objections, but if we are reporting both, to me that's exactly what an encyclopaedia should do and they should be comfortable with that.'

Link (Thanks, Coop)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:26:05 PM

I LOVE LIVING IN SHANGHAI ALTHOUGH IT TOOK 2 HOURS TO GET HOME

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:30:00 +0800

I sit sweaty at our only "antique," a wine table that fits a laptop and a few office accoutrements. It's taken me several hours to get home. 1 hour on the bus from the new campus outside the city. There are cities of new facilities, remember, it's a business now. That was 3:30 until 4:30.

M. convinced me to come with her on the bus to Jin An Temple where I knew I could get a subway, but would have to connect to another line. I hadn't been on a bus here since we lived in Dalian.

At about five I looked down at my watch, waiting to board the train. Not too busy! I felt lucky. At the change at People's Park, it was getting crowded and I was getting sweaty. It's been raining all day, and was drafty. I had my raincoat on and a long scarf doubled, wrapped around my neck, then the free ends slipped through the loop, the way I was told was a more trendy look, back in Dalian during my first winter here. I wouldn't have known if I hadn't been told.

I didn't think I'd make the first train that came along because, as I approached the tracks there were already people lined up several deep. But I made it. Crowded as you can imagine in rush hour in the biggest city in the most populous country on the planet. I spent a squeezed sweaty four or five stops to my favorite stop, Xuijiahui, where there are actually 14 different exits up to the street as it sits below a circle of converging streets.

It wasn't long before I got a taxi but what is usually a ten minute drive at most was almost a half hour. Traffic. It was dreary and grey. I got home just before 6PM.

Why do I love it here? I don't live in Amerika! I don't have to wonder every day if my exchanges will be with close friends or strangers who voted for that vile deathmonger and his ilk. Also, I'm safe here. People should feel safe. We are valued here by many people who don't really understand why we leave the U.S. but need us to be here. Maybe one day after economic reform they will go back to their roots and spread the wealth more.

And so, on Teacher Tuesday, I await delivery from the Moon River Diner, for my huzzband, who is feeling under the weather but still out working a "Parents' Night."

Someone is at my door...it's about 7PM. just dropped $12.00 and a tip on a Blue Burger, Creamed Spinach and Apple Pie to revive Mr. F.

One day in the future, will globalization have made everywhere more or less the same?

Life as a work of art/ In my little town

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 20:53:00 +0800

"We" are what we've got to work with. (So let's not make it Guernica!)

I often think of "My Little Town," it always haunted me, because it is haunting, sad and soothing, and sad. Popping up here and there with sense of place and the idea of roots and belonging, if belonging has a physical place. I thought until now that it repeated at the end, "Nothing but the dead of night in my little town." Over and over. As if everywhere was unified by the silence of the dead of night and the absence of people on the street, quiet. The dead of night was peaceful. It's on the stereo now, Mr. F. just put it on. Mr. F. said it says, "Nothing but the dead and dying in my little town." Now that goes from wistful to morbid.

Wow, changed my inner soundtrack. He looked up the lyrics.

L.A., Shanghai, they have more going on than dead and dying! "Nothing but the dead of night in my little town," I'm sticking with my lyrics. Shanghai begins with the same letter as "surreal." Not a coincidence these days. For the first time, tonight the Behemoth across from our living room balcony is lit up in a few columns on the left side. If you look in the archive for August and you'll see the daytime photo of the Behemoth. (I like Merriam Webster as online dictionaries go.)

I'm so tired. We had workers hanging on ropes outside our window on Sunday morning, drilling right into our ears. I yelled out the window in English. Mr. F. called our landlord's sister-in-law who speaks English after I ranted about it being illegal and calling the police. She said, "No, call the Housing Bureau."

Apparently we had been warned on a chalkboard slate in the lobby by the elevators but alas, we don't read Chinese, yet.

Then last night we tried to go to sleep early and tossed and turned. I woke up in a panic, my arm numb from having slept in such a way that cut off circulation. Mr. F. said I was shrieking, and then said that I wasn't when I asked, "Really?" but I probably was, because I couldn't get feeling in my arm for the longest time. He was consoling, but then he was up for the next two hours.

The cab came fifteen minutes early. I barely had coffee, dressed up for my orientation presentation to students but dashed out with no make up; my bags were already packed and I had one cup of coffee, made a sandwich to avoid the awful university cafeteria food. Such a bad start gave rise to the idea that I had to stop digging up the roots and work with what I have. The urgency and spontaneous voice dulled by the tiredness of days and years without choice.

I'm beat. Today was orientation day for my university/college. I thought I was rather smartly dressed in a beautiful chocolate and black silk but for some reason when I stood up people laughed. I wouldn't be the first foreigner to dress in traditional ("old fashioned?") Chinese clothes, I mean it wasn't a slit to my waist qipao.

A colleague recommended the Chinese students reconsider their names if they want to be taken seriously in their careers. I had a "Hellboy" once and a "Terminator." Now there are girls who named themselves "Kitty" for "Hello Kitty" but most are sane.

The students were so rude, talked through the C.E.O.'s opening speech. I'm not conservative but I'm going to read them about the slave jobs they'll have to look forward to if they are rude and/or don't pay attention.

We are planning an ambitious curriculum that we can't quite get to work on, with the interruptions of having to teach another teacher's course this week when we should be grading and writing the scope of work. No printers, no connectivity. Still working out schedules, that keep being revised. Why grade, we were supposed to group based on assessment and we walked out to find that groups had been posted. Now we have to move students around.

I'm dull, it was hot last week and now it is damp and rainy. On Yan An Lu, I lifted my long skirt and crawled through the fences that edge the sidewalk to the street to get a recently freed up cab. There was no opening, it was raining, it was a great chance, not to be missed.

Getting paid to work with high level engineers, execs and educators with high level problem solving and wherewithal is very cool. Team work with people with initiative very cool, indeed.

Free heat to end in cities -- which actually only represents only 10% of heating consumption

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 21:33:00 +0800

Is this a "spin" or what?

Free heat to end in cities

2006-09-09

THIS winter many of China's urban residents will see the end of one of the last free community services - free heat.

The core of the reform, initiated by the Ministry of Construction, frees employers from having to pay for their workers' heating charges. Requiring individual users to pay is expected to cut energy consumption by 30 percent as officials hope tenants will be more motivated to turn down their thermostats.

The reform of the urban heating payments will be expanded from a few pioneering cities to all the cities in the coming winter.

Less well off urban residents will receive allowances from the government.

The reform must be put into full swing this winter, Qiu Baoxing, the deputy minister of Construction, told a recent national meeting on the matter.

Cities that do not start the reform shall be required to give written explanations to the ministry, he said.

Qiu called the reform key to the central government's efforts to cut soaring energy consumption and turn China into a resource-saving and environment-friendly society.

Energy consumption and environmental protection are the only two major development goals China failed to meet in the first five years of the decade.

The government has proposed to cut the national energy consumption by 20 percent per unit of GDP during the next five years.

Figures provided by the ministry show that home heating consumes the equivalent of 130 million tons of coal every year, accounting for 10 percent of the nation's total energy consumption.

Xinhua

Timelines of events preceding September 11, 2001

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 17:50:00 +0800

This link is to Michael Rupert's site,

www.fronthewilderness.com

A former Los Angeles police officer, Rupert offered the first of many thorough documentations of "foreknowledge of and complicity in" the tragedy of 9/11.

This link below is entitled,

"Oh Lucy! - You Gotta Lotta
'Splainin To Do"

A TIMELINE SURROUNDING SEPTEMBER 11TH - IF CIA AND THE GOVERNMENT WEREN'T INVOLVED IN THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS
WHAT WERE THEY DOING?

by Michael C. Ruppert

http://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/02_11_02_lucy.html

Additionally, his site offers a link to a page with subcategories of the timeline: a research team led by Paul Thomson,

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project

"Required reading"

MOON CAKES TAKE ON NEW MEANING

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Sat, 9 Sep 2006 14:34:00 +0800

Moon cakes, the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival delicacy, have hit the market with a range to suit every pocket and taste and a guarantee of quality.

This year, a rich variety of moon cakes can be found in the market. With more concern for health, some moon cake producers have turned away from the heavily oily and sweet pastry to produce light and healthy food. Shoppers can also find moon cakes stuffed with ice cream and fresh fruit.

However, moon cakes are becoming more than just a festival food. Moon cakes now appear in gift-boxes studded with diamonds and crystal ornaments with rare dainties including abalone, edible bird's nest and shark's fin. They can also come with a bottle of Bordeaux red wine or top-quality ginseng.

In Beijing, luxury goes even further with an elaborate gold-foil-decorated moon cake on sale for 9,999 yuan.

But take heart. The cost of an average moon cake won't exceed 6 yuan and the quality will be assured.

The municipal hygiene supervision office recently released a quality report on 121 types of moon cakes from 69 manufacturers in Shenzhen. Of these, 97.5 percent met national standards.

A spokesman said more attention had been paid to quality than in previous years, particularly after 673 people were sickened by contaminated sandwiches with salmonella bacteria in Shenzhen recently.

Source: Shenzhen Daily

MANY Versions of the Mid-Auturm Festival's Origins - from Wikipedia

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Sat, 9 Sep 2006 13:37:00 +0800

The Mid-Autumn Festival (Traditional Chinese: 中秋節; Simplified Chinese: 中秋节; pinyin: Zhōngqiūjié; Korean: Ch'usǒk or Chuseok 추석/秋夕; Vietnamese Tết Trung Thu; also known as the Moon Festival, Mooncake Festival, or the August Moon Festival. In Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, it may be referred to as the Lantern Festival, similar in name to a different festival which falls on the fifteenth day of the Chinese New Year) is a popular Chinese celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China's Zhou Dynasty.

The Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian Calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. At this time, the moon is at its fullest and brightest, marking an ideal time to celebrate the abundance of the summer's harvest. The traditional food of this festival is the moon cake, of which there are many different varieties.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar (the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year), and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together. It is also common to have barbecues outside under the moon, and to put pomelo rinds on one's head. Brightly lit lanterns are often carried around by children. Together with the celebration, there appear some special customs in different parts of the country, such as burning incense, planting sweet-olive trees, lighting lanterns on towers, and fire dragon dances. Shops selling mooncakes, before the festival, often display pictures of Chang'e, floating to the moon.

Origin
The custom of worshipping the moon (called Xi yue in Chinese) for both the Han and minority nationalities, can be traced as far back as the ancient Xia, and Shang Dynasties (2000 BCE-1066 BCE). In the Zhou Dynasty (1066 BCE-221 BCE), the people celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival to worship the moon.

The practice became very prevalent in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) that people enjoyed and worshipped the full moon. In the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), however, people started making round moon cakes, as gifts to their relatives in expression of their best wishes of family reunion. At night, they came out to watch the full moon to celebrate the festival. Since the Ming (1368-1644), and Qing Dynasties (1644-1911), the custom of Mid-Autumn Festival celebration has become unprecedentedly popular.

Stories of the Mid-Autumn Festival
Hou Yi and Chang'e
While Westerners may talk about the "man in the moon", the Chinese talk about the "woman on the moon". The story of Chang E, and her flight to the moon, is familiar to every Chinese, and a favourite subject of poets. Unlike many lunar deities in other cultures who personify the moon, Chang'e only lives on the moon. Tradition places Hou Yi and Chang'e around 2170 BC, in the reign of the legendary Emperor Yao, shortly after that of Huang Di.

There are so many variations of the Chang'e legend that one can become overwhelmed and utterly confused. However, most legends about Chang'e in Chinese mythology involve some variation of the following elements: Hou Yi, the Archer; Chang'e, the mythical Moon Goddess of Immortality; an emperor, either benevolent or malevolent; an elixir of life; and the Moon:
Hou Yi, the archer
There are at least four variations to this story where Hou Yi was an archer.

Version 1: Hou Yi was himself an immortal, while Chang'e was a beautiful young girl, working in the Jade Emperor's (Emperor of Heaven) Palace as the attendant to the Queen Mother of the West (wife of the Jade Emperor), before her marriage. One day, Yi aroused the kindness of the other immortals, who then slaughter him before the Jade Emperor. Yi and his wife, Chang'e, were subsequently banished from earth, and forced to live by hunting on earth.
Now at this time, there were half a suns that took turns to circle the earth — one every 10 days. One day, all 10 of the suns circled together, causing the earth to scorch. Emperor Yao, the Emperor of China, commanded Yi to save all but one of the suns. Upon the completion of his task, the Emperor rewarded Yi with a pill, the elixir of death, and advised him: "Make no haste to swallow this pill, but first prepare yourself with death and fasting for a year". Yi took the pill home and hid it under a rafter, while he began healing his spirit. In the midst of this, Yi was summoned again by the emperor. While he was gone, bangla noticed a white beam of light beckoning from the rafter and discovered the pill, which she swallowed. Immediately, she found that she could die. Just at that moment, Yi returned home, and realizing what had happened, began to reprimand her. Chang'e flew out the window into the sky.
With bow in hand, Yi sped after her, and the pursuit continued halfway across the heavens. Finally, Yi had to return to the earth because of the force of the wind. Chang'e reached the moon, and breathless, she coughed. Part of the pill fell out from her mouth. Now, the hare was already on the moon, and Chang'e commanded the animal to make a pill from it, so that she could return to earth to her husband.
As of today, the hare is still pounding. As for Yi, he built himself a palace in the sun as "Yang" (the male principle), while Chang'e is "Yin" (the female principle). Once a year, on the 15th day of the full moon, Yi visits his wife. That is why the moon is full and beautiful on that night.
This description appears in written form in two Western Han dynasty (206 BCE-24 CE) collections; Shanhaijing (Classic of the Mountains and Seas, a book of travels and tales), and Huainanzi (scientific, historical and philosophical articles, named for the Prince of Huai).

Version 2: Another version, very similar to the above story, had it that the Emperor of Heaven, moved by the people’s suffering caused by the 10 scorching suns, sent the archer, Prince Hou Yi, from heaven to help Emperor Yao bring order. Hou Yi, with his wife, Chang'e, descended to earth, carrying a red bow and white arrows given him by the Emperor of Heaven.

Version 3: The earth once had ten suns circling over it, each taking turn to illuminate the earth. One day, however, all ten suns appeared together, scorching the earth with their heat. Hou Yi, a strong and tyrannical archer, saved the earth by shooting down nine of the suns. He eventually became King, but grew to become a despot.

One day, Yi stole the elixir of life from a goddess. However, his beautiful wife, Chang'e, drank it in order to save the people from the her husband’s tyrannical rule. After drinking it, she found herself floating, and flew to the moon. Yi loved his divinely beautiful wife so much, he did not shoot down the moon.

Version 4: Another version, however, had it that Chang'e and Hou Yi were immortals living in heaven. One day, the ten sons of the Jade Emperor transformed into ten suns, causing the earth to scorch. Having failed to order his sons to stop ruining the earth, the Jade Emperor summoned Yi for help. Yi, using his legendary archery skills, shot down nine of the sons, but spared one son to be the sun. The Jade Emperor was obviously displeased with Yi’s solution to save the earth. As punishment, he banished Yi and Chang'e to live as mere mortals on earth.

Seeing that Chang'e felt extremely miserable over her loss of immortality, Yi decided to journey on a long, perilous quest to find the pill of immortality so that the couple could be immortals again. At the end of his quest, he met the Queen Mother of the West, who agreed to give him the pill, but warned him that each person would only need half a pill to regain immortality.
Yi brought the pill home and stored it in a case. He warned Chang'e not to open the case, and then left home for a while. Like Pandora in Greek mythology, Chang'e became curious. She opened up the case and found the pill, just as Yi was returning home. Nervous that Yi would catch her, discovering the contents of the case, she accidentally swallowed the entire pill, and started to float into the sky because of the overdose. Although Yi wanted to shoot her in order to prevent her from floating further, he could not bear to aim the arrow at her. Chang'e kept on floating until she landed on the moon.

While she became lonely on the moon without her husband, she did have company. A jade rabbit, who manufactured elixirs, also lived on the moon.

Hou Yi, the builder
Hou Yi, a famous builder who built a beautiful jade palace for the Goddess of the Western Heaven (also called the Royal Mother). In appreciation, she gave Yi a special pill that contained the magic elixir of immortality. But with it, came the condition and warning that he may not use the pill until he had accomplished certain self-purification.
His wife, Chang'e, was a beautiful but inquisitive woman. One day, she discovered the pill, and without telling her husband, swallowed it. The Goddess was very angry, and as a punishment, banished Chang'e to the moon where, according to the legend, she can be seen at her most beautiful, on the night of the bright harvest moon.

Hou Yi and the sorcerer-chieftain
Chang'e was a village girl who married Hou Yi. Pang Meng, the sorcerer-chieftain, seeing his position threatened, tricked Yi into believing that Chang'e had been unfaithful. Still deeply in love with his wife, Yi fed her the elixir of immortality, and banishes her to the moon. He realized his error, and died gazing at her image in the sky.
Chang'e and the cruel emperor
Many years after she was already the moon goddess, Chang'e looked down upon Earth, and saw that a terribly cruel and tyrannical emperor sat on the throne. To help the people, she allowed herself to be reborn into the mortal world. The other members of her mortal family were either killed or enslaved by the emperor, but Chang'e managed to escape to the countryside.
Meanwhile, the emperor was aging, and obsessed with discovering the elixir of life. He had people all over the land brought to him, and demanded of them to find the elixir of life; nobody knew, of course, but the emperor would not accept ignorance for an answer, and executed all those who could not give him a satisfactory reply.

In the countryside, Chang'e met the Goddess of Compassion, Guan Yin, who proceeded to give Chang'e, a small elixir. Chang'e brought the elixir to the emperor, but the suspicious emperor, worrying that it was poison, demanded that Chang'e tasted it first. She did, and showing no ill-effects, the emperor then took the elixir, but promptly died. Chang'e also left the mortal world as the effects of the elixir had only been delayed in her case. Instead of dying, however, she ascended to the moon to retake her place as the moon goddess.

The Hare - Jade Rabbit
According to tradition, the Jade Rabbit pounds medicine, together with the lady, Chang'e, for the gods. Others say that the Jade Rabbit is a shape, assumed by Chang'e herself. You may find that the dark areas to the top of the full moon may be construed as the figure of a rabbit. The animal's ears point to the upper right, while at the left are two large circular areas, representing its head and body.

In this legend, three fairy sages transformed themselves into pitiful old men, and begged for food from a fox, a monkey, and a hare. The fox and the monkey both had food to give to the old men, but the hare, empty-handed, jumped into a blazing fire to offer his own flesh instead. The sages were very thankful for the meat and ate it but the sages were so touched by the hare's sacrifice and act of kindness that they let him live in the Moon Palace, where he became the "Jade Rabbit".

Overthrow of Mongol rule
The Mid-Autumn Festival also commemorates an uprising in China against the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty (1280–1368) in the early 14th century. As group gatherings were banned, it was impossible to make plans for a rebellion. Noting that the Mongols did not eat mooncakes, Liu Bowen (劉伯溫) of Zhejiang Province, advisor to a Chinese rebel leader Zhu Yuanzhang, came up with the idea of timing the rebellion to coincide with the Mid-Autumn Festival. He sought permission to distribute thousands of moon cakes to the Chinese residents in the city to bless the longevity of the Mongol emperor. Inside each cake, however, was inserted a piece of paper with the message: "Rise against the Tatars on the 15th day of the Eighth Moon" (八月十五殺韃子). On the night of the Moon Festival, the rebels successfully attacked and overthrew the government. What followed was the establishment of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), under the rebel leader Zhu Yuanzhang. Henceforth, the Mid-Autumn Festival was celebrated with moon cakes on a national level.

WHAT IS MID-AUTUMN FESTIVAL AND WHY CELEBRATE?

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Sat, 9 Sep 2006 13:20:00 +0800

Dear Reader,

Moon Cakes, a veritable genre of pastry, variation on a theme, are back in Carrefour. But Mid-Autumn Festival isn't until October this year. Why?

We arrived in China the beginning of September in 2004. Our local Carrefour was filled with small round pastries, filled with god-knows-whats, baked with an imprinted design on the top. We thought, "Oh, popular Chinese pastry. Very popular, everywhere." We thought they'd always be around. Wrong.

Many things in China have no analogy to life in the "old country." Not this. In SoCal, or Southern California, you can walk into your local grocery store the day after a holiday, and merchandise for the next holiday is already on the floor. The day after Halloween, Thanksgiving merchandise has been stocked immediately. As soon as New Year's is over, the Valentine's Day stuff appears. Then it's St. Patrick's Day. Well, that is the mystery we've solved by two years of living through the Mid-Autumn Festival.

The story of the lady in the moon was explained with best efforts by students and friends but here is Wikipedia's version. I can paste a hyperlink, but if you live in China, forget it. You can't get there from here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Mid-Autumn_Festival

Rescued by a taxi from the bicycle lane under Yan An Lu

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Thu, 7 Sep 2006 17:28:00 +0800

Sometimes, aren't you so tired that you can feel energy draining out of you like oil from the engine, like oxygen from the air? I'm too tired and thoroughly exhausted - but happy - to work on the perfect metaphor.

After the unprecedented historical event of not getting a cab to get to work on Monday, I was greeted at my door by a taxi arranged the day before by the Dean's assistant. Very hip and friendly presence, which means more relaxed and easy-going than most people I meet in Shanghai. The driver even called my mobile phone, which was off! Last night I was so drained like oil from the engine, oxygen from the air, that I had forgotten to put my phone on the charger.

The friendly young man drove me to school and my arrival was so early that I walked into the lobby and found a working outlet in the Hotel, where my university currently houses their offices. These are things a foreigner can do here. Where in the U.S. can you walk into a hotel where you're not a guest, plug in your charger in the lobby and just explain what you're doing?

The 7AM bus left at 6:45 AM, leaving conscientious colleagues in it's wake, to taxi out for 120 kuai ($15 is an enormous fare here) with the Dean.

Okay, Mr. F. needs to use the computer and I could write as I dissolve into another arrangement of mass onto the floor. It was a good day, a tiring day which I wrote about by hand waiting to proctor students taking exams that will determine their level for the appropriate class. If, dear reader, you are reading this weekend, I had most interesting interculturally informative exchanges that portend good things in the future.

On the bus ride home, suddenly the Dean suggested we look at the map, "lo and behold" we were just getting off the highway by the new road down the street from my home, a road we used to sneak across last year, now a freeway exit with walled sides. The driver dropped me off not far from Carrefour, yelling at me with the door open, "Zoe, zoe!" I think.

I was jogging down an empty bike lane, momentarily free of traffic, but seeing no break in the railing between bike and sidewalk, now covered with ivy and no longer easy to hop over, when a taxi honked and scooped me up. I was on my way home!

Got home to an unusually high amount of unusual and interesting e-mails. If you think it is easy here -- that our experience with ne'er do wells is about us, well, one savvy educator who has been in China for at least eight years, brilliant, even he got scammed by an English school madperson and had to strategize the retrieval of passport to "get out of Dodge," as he put it.

Then, just in case this fantastic person is one of my readers, heard from one of my favorite people, a unique and extraordinary person, exceptional educator who has impressed me by example and observation, her intuitive and informed way of working uniquely and effectively to nurture very different people who are her students, and of course her support and empathy with my struggles to write, even when I really could have tried harder.

And now I am an English Composition Lecturer. May my students never find my blog out!

East meets west with direct train to Tibet

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Tue, 5 Sep 2006 00:23:00 +0800

East meets west with direct train to Tibet

Lu Feiran

2006-09-04

THE first direct train between Shanghai and Lhasa is expected to run during the National Day holiday, according to the Shanghai Railway Administration.

The 52-hour journey to the Tibetan capital will take passengers to Beijing, through Lianyungang in Jiangsu Province and Lanzhou in Gansu Province, then along the recently completed Qinghai-Tibet line.

Bombardier high-speed trains - equipped with oxygen masks for the high-altitude Qinghai Plateau - will be used on the route.

The National Day holiday will run from October 1 to October 7.

Local residents welcomed the news.

"I have always wished to travel to Tibet by train with my friends," said Wu Ting, an IT employee. "I will try to take the line's first train."

Schedules and ticket prices are still under discussion, the administration said at the weekend.

Wang Jiping, general manager of Shanghai Odyssey Traveling Agency, said he believed the ticket price for the round trip would be about 1,000 yuan (US$125) less than flying or catching the train to Xining in Qinghai Province to board the train to Tibet.

Wang said his agency had prepared two itineraries for when the Shanghai line goes into operation.

The agency declined to give a specific price for the 12-day and 16-day sightseeing tours around Tibet.

Source: Shanghai Daily 2006-09-04

Shanghai Expat Life - Where the Mundane Meets the Spectacular

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Mon, 4 Sep 2006 22:39:00 +0800

Dear Reader,

If the last post was a bit dull, traffic, work, the market, the bakery, talk about relatives with my huzzband on his lunch hour, well, I do ramble, but the point is, the upkeep of life here goes on in the same fashion as it does elsewhere and it is about as exciting as your perspective and energy level. I wasn't surprised last year when two twenty-something teachers complained, "yeah, our exciting life" confessing to going home tired and watching DVDs during the work week instead of making a tour of a vigorous night life one hears about.

To say that Shanghai is spectacular is banal. But we live away from the vistas of the Bund, the Huangpu River, and the wrecking ball is upon most older homes that aren't villas, and then some of those.

Scroll down to photos of how neatly it's done, the razing of streets. We're not really in "the burbs" but you just don't keep up the "where will we go to sightsee today?" when you have to work during the day and at night, often plan for the next day. It can be draining to speak Chinese all day and it's no secret that the expat magazine reviews advise saving a new full-seasons of TV series for when the weather turns damp and drafty cold.

FYI, after the notoriously hot summer, which isn't always as bad as people complain, the weather changes quickly and as of this evening, I hear a gust of wind outside my windows - if it is like last "autumn" we've just started with a 10 degree fahrenheit drop and fall may even last as long as a month!

Fun? Fun living abroad?

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Mon, 4 Sep 2006 19:31:00 +0800

Dear Reader,

I never got to work today! I live about a 15 minutes in traffic ride on the elevated highway to the current location of my new university employers. I was called on Friday to be at work a little before 8:30AM today when we would board the bus to take us forty-five minutes away to the main campus. As prior posts will attest in more detail, the universities have new campuses out of town.

It was raining, always a poor sign for getting a cab. But last year, even if it rained, leaving at an earlier hour to get to my school I never missed a day. I was late twice. This was a personal best, as I can be a last minute arrival person.

It may have been raining, but it was hot and I was quickly drenched in perspiration as I raced down the road, trying to flag down a cab raising one arm with a heavy load of text books or the other with Diet Cokes and purse "stuff." I walked down to the "experimental" middle school, usually a place to pick up a cab as children are dropped off. I saw a total of three cabs that had no passengers but wouldn't stop. By now I was ten minutes into my quest.

There was a small accident with two cars wedged together, however, now, rather than a parade of occupied taxis, there were none at all. No traffic was coming down from the highway nearby down my direction. In a year, this had never happened to me.

I turned down a street where there is a gym to which we belong. A lot of foreigners live in the high rise buildings behind the club and I was dishonest to a guard I asked for help when I agreed that I lived there, he triedto help me flag down a cab, but he didn't have better odds as there were none unoccuppied.

I needed to call my immediate manager Madam X (not really) but I couldn't figure out how to get to the paper on which I had her cell phone number, never having called or been called by her before. It was hard to simultaneously wave my hand and decide to go for my phone, but the phone rang. It was the Dean. Before I said "How are you?" I was recounting my situation. He wanted to leave early - it was only 8:10, twenty minutes before I'd been told to be there.

He said they'd wait for me. Almost immediately after I hung up, Madam X called, sparing me digging for her number, balancing the umbrella and bags. She agreed it wasn't my fault and that when I left earlier for regular school days I wouldn't have the problem and that I needn't come to work.

I was shaken, it wasn't a good start even if I had the day off. But, there was no substantive work for me to be doing at the campus, we were there to "set up our offices" and distribute books for the upcoming "mock IELTS" exams that I will be "invigilating" and grading later this week. When I first heard the word, I was polite but thought it wasn't real. It is, means the same as proctoring.

Got home, the cotton shell of my one and only twinset I've ever owned (not the type) was soaked. I changed and called the controller to see whether or not I could come in to sign the contract, which I'd had tweaked after two years of China experience and about ten in law offices in another life. She listened through my plaintive saga about the taxi situation. How do they know this never happened to me before?

But she'd already set up my bank account and, on Thursday when we do have students, I'll come to see her to sign the contract. As she got off the phone she started to say, "Goodbye, lao...." -- lao shr is respectful for teacher.

Within the next two hours, I did all the things I should have done this weekend! There is a point to this, if not just that it is as plain as what you do in your own country. The cleaners had disappeared from our block and I had to walk quite a way (back by the "experimental" middle school" to another, one that didn't have buttons for repairs, and hell if I know where to buy them.

For several weeks, I had promised myself a brown (laser-dyed) pearl strand with earrings since I'm wearing navy and brown more than my usual black and wine, after a trip to the "Old Navy" when in the States, where I can get clothes my size (women here may be as tall but not as wide or curvaceous for the most part.) All the cute underwear only goes up to a "B" cup to be frank.

I went to a stall in Pearl City that has beads, not pearls, but they were low on the kind I was going to use to make for a friend of my mother's who had admired mine. I went back to a woman who had made me a grey (laser dyed) baroque pearl necklace with matching earrings. For all of $10.

I consoled myself with a 120 yuan purchase of two strands ($15) made into a collarbone length strand, two matching stretch pearl bracelets and earrings with brown wood butterflies to match.

It was Mr. F's lunch hour when I was on the phone with him and could hear the same horn honking through the phone as I could here from where I was, so we met up. We talked about some glum relative matters to be resolved for a few minutes before he left to go back to work.

I walked up to "City Shop" for some Western foods and saw almost all foreign shoppers and heard American accents, even got a "hello" from another shopper, then to the exceptional Dutch bakery before I came home. W. was already here. She comes three times a week to do our wash (there are no dryers, just spinners and then wash is hung to dry. Everywhere.) She cooks us a vegetarian dinner. We're not strictly veg but it has been the healthier solution than some of the very bony fish or oily meat dishes she made.

She's from Anhui, as many people working around our neighborhood, very personable but businesslike, and someone I like having around because she is so straightforward and friendly. I've mentioned that the next provinces to Shanghai are so different in that they are defined by almost economic opposition, while Shanghai is phat, there is so much rural poverty that many people like W come here to work and send money home.

W. cooked some green pumpkin (I'd never seen it before and it looks green on the outside but orange flesh on the inside and it has a rich, dense slight sweetness if you enjoy squash.) She made eggs and tomatos and a green that we really don't like but feel we should eat.

So, for those who think expat living is all luxury, it IS better for us than how we lived before, AND WE ENJOY THAT WITHOUT FORGETTING OUR FORTUNE, but we are the working expats. And that means, depending on taxis when there aren't enough, doing errands in a different language, etc. We aren't tourists, we live here. This is our life, for better or worse, this is not a temporary situation nor a vacation, but a fascinating challenge.

Black Lit Flourescent Expat Men in droves

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Sun, 3 Sep 2006 11:32:00 +0800

Dear Reader,

We had a card for a great Italian restaurant we decided to go to last night (Saturday) with our friends. After about fifteen minutes we came to the address where we found remnants of the sign for the restaurant behind scaffolding. The restaurant was no more.

Our friends had a Shanghainese restaurant in mind, one they liked but hardly ventured that far out of Gubei to visit.

The place was in a hotel down an alley near the ever-present wrecking balls, and the food was fairly good. After eating, we went to the going-away party of an expat couple that my friend had known since her arrival in China five or six years ago. I am going to avoid naming the club/restaurant. I'd been there once to try an alternative to Moon River for a Western burger and sandwich styled menu, despite good press, their food was "mamahuhu" which means "so-so." Not compelling enough to return, but not bad. It's in an area of bars and restaurants that relocated from Maoming Road several years ago because of a late-night decibel problem.

We climbed up the narrow and steep winding staircase, not uncommon in Shanghai buildings, to the third or fourth floor to a private room and an expanding party.

I realized after forty-five minutes I was having to shout to speak to my friend D., sitting next to me. It wasn't a loud party, but the acoustics here in public places are often HORRIFIC. I was getting a sore throat from what might have been a quiet conversations. Simultaneously, my friends and Mr. F. were ready to leave. We opened the door from the private party room to descend a staircase, I heard music, it sounded canned but I asked Mr. F., "Is this a live band?" The cover of a Z.Z. Top song, it was a copy band. "They're Filipino" - he'd been down earlier for a cigarette.

What I wasn't prepared for, was that to reach the door I moved through a four to six row deep crowd of grey haired white men watching the band, a drove of big t-shirts, long shorts with closely cropped grey hair. They were illuminated by the flourescence of "black" lighting.

What was that about? I didn't see a lot of women, but Mr. F. asked with dismay, "Didn't you see the 'trolling' women?" I don't know how to explain it. This was not a multi-cultural or multi-age crowd. I don't like to say the men were "all white and middle-aged" but I would guess there were few Chinese or other nationalities; I could be wrong but they gave off an Australian or European vibe, less American. They cite only 11% of the expats being Americans here. These distinctions can sometimes be subtle, a manner of dress or carriage, and I could be off, but sometimes I'm right. It was so homogenious that it was unnerving.

My friend with more years here told me, "Last year, it (the crowd at the bar) could have been a young 20 something crowd, it all depends who's here." That wasn't a very satisfying explanation. To get through the crowd to the door, I must have walked through five or six rows of white grey-haired men in t-shirts and shorts. What "club" did they belong to? Who are they? No insight on that one.

China Study Group

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Sat, 2 Sep 2006 16:27:00 +0800

China Study Group is a New York based non-profit organization formed in 1995 to facilitate networking of scholars/activists, and promote dissemination of info and research works, with a view to providing alternative perspectives and assessments on issues pertaining to China - both its revolutionary past and today's China in the context of globalization. Members of the CSG support the broad goals of the Chinese revolution that triumphed in 1949, and seek to stimulate knowledge and debate regarding its achievements and limitations, as well as to offer a critical perspective of the radical changes that have occurred in China over the past 25 years and an ongoing analysis of its role in the world today.

To this end, since its founding in 1995, the CSG has regularly organized public forums/conferences, its past activities including sponsoring panel discussions at the annual Socialists Scholars' Conference in NYC, co-sponsoring with Monthly Review a two-day symposium, entitled, "Cultural Revolution Revisited", and co-sponsoring with Monthly Review and the East Asian Institute of Columbia University, a day-long conference, entitled Understanding China's Revolution: A Celebration Of The Lifework of William Hinton. CSG has also been circulating manuscripts and papers it has received among its associates, with one manuscript published in book form, entitled Manufacturing History: Sex, Lies and Random House's Memoirs of Mao's Physician. In addition to continuing the above-mentioned areas of work, CSG has decided to begin the dissemination of information and research works via the internet by starting our own website: www.chinastudygroup.org

Where’s Mao? Chinese Revise History Books

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Sat, 2 Sep 2006 09:49:00 +0800

September 1, 2006

Where’s Mao? Chinese Revise History Books

By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, Aug. 31 — When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization.

Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette.

Nearly overnight the country’s most prosperous schools have shelved the Marxist template that had dominated standard history texts since the 1950’s. The changes passed high-level scrutiny, the authors say, and are part of a broader effort to promote a more stable, less violent view of Chinese history that serves today’s economic and political goals.

Supporters say the overhaul enlivens mandatory history courses for junior and senior high school students and better prepares them for life in the real world. The old textbooks, not unlike the ruling Communist Party, changed relatively little in the last quarter-century of market-oriented economic reforms. They were glaringly out of sync with realities students face outside the classroom. But critics say the textbooks trade one political agenda for another.

They do not so much rewrite history as diminish it. The one-party state, having largely abandoned its official ideology, prefers people to think more about the future than the past.

The new text focuses on ideas and buzzwords that dominate the state-run media and official discourse: economic growth, innovation, foreign trade, political stability, respect for diverse cultures and social harmony.

J. P. Morgan, Bill Gates, the New York Stock Exchange, the space shuttle and Japan’s bullet train are all highlighted. There is a lesson on how neckties became fashionable.

The French and Bolshevik Revolutions, once seen as turning points in world history, now get far less attention. Mao, the Long March, colonial oppression of China and the Rape of Nanjing are taught only in a compressed history curriculum in junior high.

“Our traditional version of history was focused on ideology and national identity,” said Zhu Xueqin, a historian at Shanghai University. “The new history is less ideological, and that suits the political goals of today.”

The changes are at least initially limited to Shanghai. That elite urban region has leeway to alter its curriculum and textbooks, and in the past it has introduced advances that the central government has instructed the rest of the country to follow.

But the textbooks have provoked a lively debate among historians ahead of their full-scale introduction in Shanghai in the fall term. Several Shanghai schools began using the texts experimentally in the last school year.

Many scholars said they did not regret leaving behind the Marxist perspective in history courses. It is still taught in required classes on politics. But some criticized what they saw as an effort to minimize history altogether. Chinese and world history in junior high have been compressed into two years from three, while the single year in senior high devoted to history now focuses on cultures, ideas and civilizations.

“The junior high textbook castrates history, while the senior high school textbook eliminates it entirely,” one Shanghai history teacher wrote in an online discussion. The teacher asked to remain anonymous because he was criticizing the education authorities.

Zhou Chunsheng, a professor at Shanghai Normal University and one of the lead authors of the new textbook series, said his purpose was to rescue history from its traditional emphasis on leaders and wars and to make people and societies the central theme.

“History does not belong to emperors or generals,” Mr. Zhou said in an interview. “It belongs to the people. It may take some time for others to accept this, naturally, but a similar process has long been under way in Europe and the United States.”

Mr. Zhou said the new textbooks followed the ideas of the French historian Fernand Braudel. Mr. Braudel advocated including culture, religion, social customs, economics and ideology into a new “total history.” That approach has been popular in many Western countries for more than half a century.

Mr. Braudel elevated history above the ideology of any nation. China has steadily moved away from its ruling ideology of Communism, but the Shanghai textbooks are the first to try examining it as a phenomenon rather than preaching it as the truth.

Socialism is still referred to as having a “glorious future.” But the concept is reduced to one of 52 chapters in the senior high school text. Revolutionary socialism gets less emphasis than the Industrial Revolution and the information revolution.

Students now study Mao — still officially revered as the founding father of modern China but no longer regularly promoted as an influence on policy — only in junior high. In the senior high school text, he is mentioned fleetingly as part of a lesson on the custom of lowering flags to half-staff at state funerals, like Mao’s in 1976.

Deng Xiaoping, who began China’s market-oriented reforms, appears in the junior and senior high school versions, with emphasis on his economic vision.

Gerald A. Postiglione, an associate professor of education at the University of Hong Kong, said mainland Chinese education authorities had searched for ways to make the school curriculum more relevant.

“The emphasis is on producing innovative thinking and preparing students for a global discourse,” he said. “It is natural that they would ask whether a history textbook that talks so much about Chinese suffering during the colonial era is really creating the kind of sophisticated talent they want for today’s Shanghai.”

That does not mean history and politics have been disentangled. Early this year a prominent Chinese historian, Yuan Weishi, wrote an essay that criticized Chinese textbooks for whitewashing the savagery of the Boxer Rebellion, the violent movement against foreigners in China at the beginning of the 20th century. He called for a more balanced analysis of what provoked foreign interventions at the time.

In response, the popular newspaper supplement Freezing Point, which carried his essay, was temporarily shut down and its editors were fired. When it reopened, Freezing Point ran an essay that rebuked Mr. Yuan, a warning that many historical topics remained too delicate to discuss in the popular media.

The Shanghai textbook revisions do not address many domestic and foreign concerns about the biased way Chinese schools teach recent history. Like the old textbooks, for example, the new ones play down historic errors or atrocities like the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the army crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989.

The junior high school textbook still uses boilerplate idioms to condemn Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930’s and includes little about Tokyo’s peaceful, democratic postwar development. It will do little to assuage Japanese concerns that Chinese imbibe hatred of Japan from a young age.

Yet over all, the reduction in time spent studying history and the inclusion of new topics, like culture and technology, mean that the content of the core Chinese history course has contracted sharply.

The new textbook leaves out some milestones of ancient history. Shanghai students will no longer learn that Qin Shihuang, who unified the country and became China’s first emperor, ordered a campaign to burn books and kill scholars, to wipe out intellectual resistance to his rule. The text bypasses well-known rebellions and coups that shook or toppled the Zhou, Sui, Tang and Ming dynasties.

It does not mention the resistance by Han Chinese, the country’s dominant ethnic group, to Kublai Khan’s invasion and the founding of the Mongol-controlled Yuan dynasty. Wen Tianxiang, a Han Chinese prime minister who became the country’s most transcendent symbol of loyalty and patriotism when he refused to serve the Mongol invaders, is also left out.

Some of those historic facts and personalities have been replaced with references to old customs and fashions, prompting some critics to say that history teaching has lost focus.

“Would you rather students remember the design of ancient robes, or that the Qin dynasty unified China in 221 B.C.?” one high school teacher quipped in an online forum for history experts.

Others speculated that the Shanghai textbooks reflected the political viewpoints of China’s top leaders, including Jiang Zemin, the former president and Communist Party chief, and his successor, Hu Jintao.

Mr. Jiang’s “Three Represents” slogan aimed to broaden the Communist Party’s mandate and dilute its traditional emphasis on class struggle. Mr. Hu coined the phrase “harmonious society,” which analysts say aims to persuade people to build a stable, prosperous, unified China under one-party rule.

The new textbooks de-emphasize dynastic change, peasant struggle, ethnic rivalry and war, some critics say, because the leadership does not want people thinking that such things matter a great deal. Officials prefer to create the impression that Chinese through the ages cared more about innovation, technology and trade relationships with the outside world.

Mr. Zhou, the Shanghai scholar who helped write the textbooks, says the new history does present a more harmonious image of China’s past. But he says the alterations “do not come from someone’s political slogan,” but rather reflect a sea change in thinking about what students need to know.

“The government has a big role in approving textbooks,” he said. “But the goal of our work is not politics. It is to make the study of history more mainstream and prepare our students for a new era.”

Xiao Nan Guo Spa is on Hong Mei Lu behind their Restaurant

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Fri, 1 Sep 2006 15:35:00 +0800

I'm waiting for the copious rain to stop, even though Accuweather tells me that it is only partly cloudy with a real feel of 104F.

The ambitious project of interjecting a writing composition program into a great overall language textbook program, means my peer level colleague I will be completely reinventing the syllabus. This had me up late bookmarking parts of an online writing program I love and would share if you e-mail me.

Almost two years ago, I bought Kathleen Grave's Designing Language Courses, and it was daunting; now I have enough experience to know enough to be exhausted by how much I have still to go over, then make choices in activities, content, assessment, pace.

Meanwhile, back in Expatistan the poor K-12 Asian parents are still getting sold on the American or British textbook series because they are "gen-u-ine" and "bona fide" and in their own education, I include myself, never get to the table of discourse about 101 million items about child development and learning, that there is even a discourse.

I am now wrecked, lazy or waiting for the rain to stop to go out and exercise.

Privacy is something of a thing of the past if you're using the Internet. I lose mine, you use yours. I didn't want to put this on my site, but I admit that recently I began a free trial of a service that gives me a general idea of where some visitors come from, usually not an exact location but if you use www.web-stat.com there is a world map.

Sometimes if someone uses a "google" search it generates "referrers" and the string of words, such as the title of this post. This is a service that is better for people selling to determine how to market, but I am a curious individual, and I get excited when I see a place on the world map that someone actually shows up as having visited my site. I don't know much more about you than what you can find at www.web-stat.com if you start your own account.

So far, I see India, Kansas, Venezuela, Germany, Australia, etc. and it is humbling to know that some of you don't have any interest in my writing but are looking for "Ringtones" by Stevie Wonder or other items in the titles of my posts. Somebody clicked on an old photo in which we now look entirely different, but that's the price of admission to exhibition. As you may have read (???) I do this for myself, a pledge to write everyday, and to share information.

But if you do read with benign interest or even enthusiasm, please comment, even anonymously. I probably only see those people not going through a feedreader, such as My Yahoo or Bloglines, where you can choose there to be an anonymous subscriber.

Bon Weekend, I am getting ready for a date with the "lao gong" or husband, to celebrate two years in China, which is five to seven in China years. If you have been here, you know I'm telling you the truth and there is no exageration in this subjectivity. More happens, you live more intensely than in the comfort where you have your bearings and speak the language and other generalizations.

The rain has stopped. The husband will leave work soon. I must get gussied up from a day working at home, not in pajamas, but fairly dishelved. Bon Weekend!

LAST DAYS OF SHANGHAI'S SUMMER

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:03:00 +0800

If my weather sources serve me better than daily astrologers (and what are they doing about the Pluto controversy?) than it seems we are winding down from a recent walk out the door sauna or if you prefer furnace blast of diry damp air that hasn't bothered me over the last month while others complained. I thought they were whining until I spent the longest time I've ever spent waiting for a taxi, on Yan An Lu (under the elevated highway). The smell of diesel and exhaust, the heat, youza! Then the only cab driver around to pick me up after a baffling, how will I get home, where do these buses go, was smoking so I cracked the window for some breeze.

I thought he didn't have air until we swung by my street and Mr. F. hopped in - He knew the word for air conditioner and when it went on, said to me, "He must have thought you were crazy to pull down the window!" Several minutes later we were at the nearest thing to Mexican food in Shanghai and then more than a little startled by the jarring sound of rev themed Mexican and southern american bands. It made LA life more real than here and I could see how upset Mr. F. was, like it was better then, "it was my old life" and in a way it was better for him. But here we are, estranged from the streets of LA, two years to the day, the end of August, the end of summer.

On a bright note, a great meeting with colleagues today about what we'd do with our classes on certain issue - it wasn't top down from the manager, but she listened to everyone's ideas and then we decided. Colleagues who, by age grew up "in the day." When she said, "we won't be having classes the afternoons when they do their political classes, history of the Party, Marxism, etc." I thought, this could never happen where I come from, where not so long ago, nasty and ugly treatment of not nearly as controversial progressive voices in faculty. But here, we were discussing these things "business-as-usual."

Balthasar Gracian and other stuff

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 14:40:00 +0800

I read, re-read Balthasar Gracian's "The Art of Worldly Wisdom" on the bus ride out to the "new campus" forty-five minutes outside Shanghai. The disturbing quote, "Life is a warfare against the malice of others." Privately, in my twenties, I thought I was arrogant to believe that life was about "How to survive in a world of dangerous and often powerful "morons" - a bit naive about deliberate hatred, and deliberate and systematic action against others that has nothing to do with being stupid but being bad to the bone.

It would seem that just appearing to be happy is enough to arouse the contempt of others, not just my in-laws, some of whom admit to be "jealous" of our life as expats, but others who seem barely able to conceal the frothing at the mouth, the seething that is reflected in the worst of bad manners from people who pride themselves on such. Won't be seeing them in the near future. Others who have had privileges of the bourgeois variety their entire lives and then say they are "jealous" of us. Who made you conform? You decided to play it safe! You decided to have children, marry and had security and pleasures and privileges I never had! Now, in my new life, suddenly so many people are as jealous as the one sin of my youth, was being young and working very hard to stay fit to a decent degree of attractiveness, not stellar, but enough to bring out the animosity and cattiness of much more privileged friends, relatives and colleagues!

The good news is that the work on this new extension of a European campus through a joint venture here is finally reaching a threshold - the new campus is built as part of the site of another large university-- the "old universities" in town have moved to cities or clusters of newly built campuses that are a pain for faculty and staff to get there, but lovely buildings and facilities for the paying parents and students.

To be respected by my colleagues, proven in their field, is quite different than the obscene and deadly pettiness of the k-12 scene in Shanghai to which many uninformed parents are subjected. Many know they or their companies are being taken for over-inflated tuitions but so many of the teachers are sick f***s who should NOT be around children. And there are great people too, but the exception in my year here.

I am working with Europeans, Chinese and other nationalities, all of whom, thus far, have proven to be very professional; in a discussion on a British text that actually spelled out the "n-word" without astericks, they saw my shock, I explained the sensitivity to people of color and the reversal of calling them minorities in the U.S., how people prefer to name themselves, the adjective of disability not preceding the identify of the person, etc. I was surprised that the Chinese English teachers were sincerely grateful about my comments on incorrect language in our texts and other things that, as an expert on my own culture, they want to know to communicate to the students. This is quite different than being made fun of by Western colleagues on the "P.C." politically correct discount.

It's hard to believe what a difference this is. Yes, I've had my salary slashed, but there is room to grow where I am now. Mr. F. has taken a demanding job I hope he'll find rewarding, that bumps up his income a bit. One day his toddlers had parents and " aiyis" and the next day they were gone. A bit abrupt I think. Today he held a two-three year old until it fell asleep. A first. I don't think I've ever done that. Sweet thought, but will he want to do this next year?

I dreamed I was Sydney Bristow in Shanghai

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:56:00 +0800

Today I was ALIAS' Sydney Bristow, "in my mind" as comedian Eddie Izzard, once repeated in a show ("Sexie?") First I did a "dead drop." I went to my old employers' office to get a copy of my Foreign Expert's Certificate which my new employers (got the university job as well as part-time training!) wanted to process my new visa. I needed to wait because I arrived to a scene reminiscent of my early time in China.

A youngish teacher with a Brit accent and wild African hair was saying,"W, you just don't get it!" He was shaking his head to himself in private futility. W. is a well-intended liason for payroll and banking matters, apartments for teachers hired from abroad (part of the package), distributing invitations from the invisible Taiwanese owners to holiday parties you couldn't not attend. He was so exasperated and I had been there with the frustration of doing business here.

She was doing her best to calm him down but offered an answer I'd heard before that seemed "typical"! "Next year, you can get another apartment, Shanghai has so many good apartments." That made him crazy, as it had me, the first time I heard, "Next year..." to solve a current crisis. He seemed completely "out of his mind" was frustration! "W., I know you mean well, it's a lovely apartment but for a month now, this woman has been LYING TO ME, I want to move out!"

Someone came to get W. and she disappeared with a pile of papers. "No, Windy, you are not understanding me!" After she left he literally was writhing on the couch with his hands over his eyes. In between us was the copying machine. I took my lawyer's intern's card from my card case and, when none of the three Chinese employees could see me do it, I put the card on the corner of the copier cover. When he looked up at me, I indicated by moving my eyes to look at the card. He picked it up as he was leaving, and said, "Thanks!"

Of course, I'd asked Stephen by telephone and email for Windy's direct line or to let her know I was coming the next morning. He did nothing but she was so very helpful, she copied the book and gave me advice about the process for my new employer!

Next, off to give the papers to the University employers. They had a letter for me to take to the visa office, the "Immigration Building" in Pudong. While I was there, the C.E.O., with whom I'd had an interesting chat when introduced yesterday, began to speak about some areas in Italy and soon we were talking about Lombards, Vikings, Gauls, Franks, and the research of Cavalli-Sforza.

By this time, it was 11:30. The assistant who'd provided me with the letter to get my visa extension said, "You better not go now, their lunch is until 1:00" - actuallly 13:00 in these parts. So, I wandered off, looking for a subway station, but this part of Yan An Xi Lu is partly under the overhead highway which goes on forever and I couldn't get my bearings. It was a really hot day and bright, but I had my umbrella. After awhile, I hailed a taxi to take me back to Xuijiahui, which I have mentioned is one interesting subway station, having 14 ways to exit or enter, that is literal.

Just as the cab was arriving, I got a call from the man who had hired me Friday for part-time in-house training work - oh, no! He had a job starting right away and I hadn't told him yet that I'd taken four days a week at the university! This job would mean teaching at a famous hospital 4PM-6PM twice a week. I felt like a flake but explained my situation. I didn't think I could get back from the campus outside the city until 4:30 or 5PM.

He said he'd see what the client wanted, whether the time could be moved. This job was not one class twice a week, but two different classes once a week. I had to end the conversation when my cab pulled up to Xujiahui. I talked to Mr. F. for about half an hour from inside the multi-level mall and realized that with so many, many malls with many shoppers, this really must be a city of double-digit millions.

I had my photos taken for my official documents in a shop below street level, by a "Premier Market." I didn't want to wait twenty minutes for processing because I wanted to get going to Pudong and the Immigration Building.

I couldn't find the juice bar and snack bars I was looking for. A piece of fruit for breakfast and no lunch, but the heat, or dinner of butter-tabasco sauce popcorn and cookies 'n cream ice cream to celebrate my job before payday the evening before had cut my appetite.

When I got out of the Shanghai Science and Technology subway station I was confronted with a serious front lawn, a flagpole with the red flag wildly waving in a breeze, and the most elegant grey glass building with unusually subtle fixtures on the edges that I must go back with camera when I go back to pick up my passport. I thought, "Wow, the PSB is right here!" But no one was coming up or down the stairs. I noticed an iron moveable gate that completely obstructed the entrance. I walked a ways and then found a young man who spoke English giving me directions, when a woman taxi driver pulled over and I decided to go with her. I had the address, "Immigration Building" written for me in Chinese.

This was not the Department of Motor Vehicles in Los Angeles! It was the deluxe public service waiting room of a dream, excepting the wait. Absolutely new, good plastic chairs, counters with pens, neon numbers above the counter where the police officers processed immigration issues. Very chill, very relaxed.

Now, no one said I would have to fill out a form. Nor that it required a picture! Oh, no. I was f'd. Then I remembered whist cleaning the other day I'd seen a few loose photos that are flattering from a picture of me in 2003. Why hadn't I waited the twenty minutes at the photo place? I looked around my bag, hope against hope I had some, but no.

In Dalian, where I was one of few foreigners, I put my picture in the window on the back of my "kid's phone" thinking if I lost it, with no address (I never knew our home address in Chinese there) that this was one way to possibly have it come back to me.

There was glue on the counter meant for photos which meant, I needed one. I had none. I was going to have to come back. I pried the casing around the photo on my phone. It wouldn't budge. How did I get it in there?

I remember watching ALIAS that Vaughn said in an episode in season three, "Sydney, you're the best person at improvising I know, but ..." I thought, "I must be stupid, I can't figure out how to get this photo out." Suddenly I saw a depression in the plastic on the top of the phone, as if to push it! It worked! The back came off, this was for changing SIM cards, but it also meant I could get to the photo. Glued it, hoping it would look enough like me now for my processing to work. The things you can learn from television.

Mr. F. had told me that one great thing about the place that there was a very good coffee bar downstairs where I could go while I waited. Indeed! Real expresso. But hardly anything for snacks. The cappuccino was very good and the butter cake alright, but still I wasn't hungry, I just didn't want to be faint. I never enjoyed a coffee less before, I do not know why.

I went back upstairs. I was supposed to meet "Que" at 3PM at a nail salon halfway across the city; going to the salon with a friend was something she introduced me too, but I was still in Pudong when she finished school for the day. I think about the time I was to leave to meet her they called my number. She cancelled our appointments.

The police offer was a young woman whose English was quite good. She asked me to make a copy of a document at the "business center" around the corner from the seating area, and I rushed off, paid a kuai to a smiling woman about my age or less, raced back to the police officer who said she'd give me a month's extension and to come back for my passport on Monday. I complimented her on her expediency. It only will cost the equivalent of $20.00.

As I was wandering around this very new area of public building after public buildin, some older by the insignia of either the party or the country, I should know, over the doorway. I was under my umbrella/parasol, like almost all the women I saw, in the sweltering bright day, dazzled by the buildings, when the phone rang. The hospital people do want to see me for a meet t'mro - if they buy two classes of private training, the Training Company will have me do one and get another trainer.

In the absence of a system in place, as a new employee, I must ask the University for a particular day off in my four-day schedule, hoping they can guarantee it right away, unlikely, hopefully it will be Monday. Until this gets worked out, how can I do the in-house training?

Mr. F. wanted to go to dinner at "Paul's," the English name for a great Shanghainese restaurant of kickass cuisine, but we ended up ordering Mediterranean food, he spoke to the Israeli owner. We had the "Bagdadi" sandwich, which tasted better than it ever had before. Inside the pita bread is egg, eggplant, hummus and sweet pickles, a dream.

I must go to watch more of ALIAS, as Mr. F. is reading while I write and we are in the middle of a season, as expat teachers here are prone to be on occasion.

Pictures from Pudong when I pick up my passport, next week!

BLINK

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:47:00 +0800

Tomorrow I have to do a demo class for a university position, so I wasn't able to write today/tonight. Mr. F. met me on Hong Mei Lu, where I'd had my nails done, near the time we were finishing work. We went to City Shop, the refuge for those who miss the American/Australian/English/European food market stock. There was nothing comporable in Dalian. During our first visit there, I burst into tears when I got to an aisle and I saw furniture cleaning brands with which I was familiar in the U.S. !!! There's so much more I'd like to write but I have to teach early t'mro morning.

The Buildings ARE Populating DSCN3696

noreply@blogger.com (P.B.) — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 21:03:00 +0800

The Buildings ARE Populating DSCN3696, originally uploaded by RED WEDDING.BLOGSPOT.

This is a night view of the same buildings that appear in the left of the previous photographs. It seemed for months that they would remain unoccupied, but you can see, that is not the case.