Letter from China..
[A letter fom my mom in China.. as requested. Thanks Mom]
OK, Mom's in China, and those frogs you saw are what's for dinner...don't ask.
China, from the sublime to the when-am-I-going-to-start-loving-it-here???:
Yesterday I was moved to tears when I heard a Mozart symphony played to perfection by a young woman who was on an up-right piano in a small, dirty stall. I ate snake, squid, camel, jellyfish and mystery cookies. The horrifying thing is, it was great. Hunan food cannot be beat. The frogs are for later...MUCH later. My students are of University age; they are polite, sincere, modest, bright and grateful. They also spit on the floor, pee in open stalls, scratch their bums in plain view and throw garbage anywhere and everywhere. I live in an apartment with a wide-screen TV, a new computer, a king size bed and very tall ceilings with elaborate plaster scroll-work. I also chase four ounce insects from my fridge, shower in an open, tiled room with a sprayer, listen to "political" speeches over a loudspeaker at 6 in the morning and have dog s--- in my hall. I am going on a vacation for The National Holiday (October1-9)to Xi-an for 6 days, stay in four star hotels, have all my meals provided...tipping is NOT allowed in China, and tour sites of 2000 BC and older...all for $400 US dollars. I will have no toilet paper, unless I bring it, eat many indescribable things which crawl or squirm rather than walk, breath air that would be an 8 star red-alert in any major U.S. city and ride on vehicles which have never known a shock absorber. I fell in love with four small wild kittens and their mother below my window and fed them for days. Later they were killed, most probably for food. I love it here; sometimes I hate what I see, or cannot see, but mostly I am glad I came. It is like nothing I have experienced in all my travels, and they have been extensive. I am in a place where 20,000,000 humans in a city is chump change. I come from an old, beautiful city of 2,000 where everything is clean, green and where you can't blow your nose without your neighbor yelling, "What?" It's only been a little over a month. What a land of contradictions. I do not think I will ever really know what is going on here, but it HAS been interesting guessing!
posted by miked @ 8:31 AM
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1 Comments:
Another excursion:
Went to Yeuyang for the day... a city of millions; two hours by train north of Changsha. It is a university town, but also contains a military garrison and towers from 3rd century AD. Naturally, in the colorful, ornate, style of the Chinese slanted, multi-leveled tiled rooves. The Generals who were garrisoned there in 300 AD lived in fine style. The peasant farmers were, however, starving because their land had been conscripted by the Emperor in order to grow opium poppies for the rich and obviously idle to smoke, or whatever they did with opium.
I have been acutely aware that China was NOT a land where everyone wore silk and owned large tea houses, spice running ships and traded along the silk road (from and to Xian). The masses were impoverished and veritable slaves. They starved by the millions and died at 20 or earlier. The Dynastic system was henious. There were numerous peasant revolts, and those brave folks were publicly beheaded then the dismembered heads placed on stakes in their front yards. I quess that was a deterrant!
The military garrison was interesting because it was for the navy. Third Century Chinese navy, no less.
The train ride to Yeuyang was also an "experience"...hard seats and floors covered with spit, seeds, cans, bottles, various parts of ducks and chickens, stickey plastic bags and used tissues. The coaches not cleaned until the last stop, and that may be for 17 hours. Seventeen hours of Chinese garbage in one coach car would fill any respectable North Jersey dump. Men were playing cards in the isles and yelling madly and laughing at each other, obviously a group of friends.
Friends are forever in China. It may take a while for the bond, but when it happens there are no boundaries. They would literally die for their friends. I had a young man (who spoke English, sort of)attach himself to me and lead me around for three hours while I went through the intricate and prolonged process of buying a laptop. It ivolved (among MANY other things) two cab rides, three counters for payment and reams of paperwork. While getting cab #2 he threw himself in front of a motorscooter in order to stop me from being flattened. He, being Chinese, was most adept at dodging various swerving, speeding vehicles and remained intact. We both survived.
I did not know that the trip also included attending a Chinese wedding. Sometimes things are lost in translation, as I was dressed in jeans and sneakers. This, however, proved to be no problem. Everyone was casual. That is the norm. The hotel was lavish and the guests numbered about 600. ( the cost was about $10,000 U.S.) We, the foreigners, were in a private room...mercifully. The wedding ceremony lasted for 5 minutes and was punctuated by a LOUD saxaphoneist and a Master of Ceremonies who screamed insults at the bride and groom rigid on the stage. Both looked as if they were before a firing squad and not a throng of well-wishers. The noise was unbelievable. People on cell phones yelling, entertainers yelling, microphones on 1,000,000 decibles and no one really paying attention to the bride and groom standing at attention at the front of the room. As we were in a private room, we stayed, in Western style, for 2 hours talking and eating. We later saw that the guests had vacated in entirety after one hour. We were the LAST to leave. The bride, during all this mele, changed clothes three times.
The train ride home was also another "experience". The coach was much cheaper that the first, but had luxurious seats, clean floors and a bathroom tank that was not heaped to overflow with "you know what". Half way through the trip, however, we were beseiged with women in uniforms hawking all sorts of products from socks that were so strong they survived a wicked attack with a long wire brush, to salves that would "cure" anything from joint swelling to insect bites. Truth in advertising is not a Chinese tradition. The women were yelling (what else) in a high nasal tone. That is also one used by the Peking opera and other Chinese institutions when they need to shout over one another. Women seem most adept at this technique. Many people fell for the demos and bought. I ate Chinese sesame candy and watched. We arrived back at the Changsha railroad station and I went home exhausted. It was a day of temps in the 90's. WHEN will it get cool here??????
Still...I love it; I endure it, I love it.....I , oh well. Maybe I SHOULD get that Hapatitus B shot after all.
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