unraveling
29.Nov.03
Whoop! Finished the trip journal, in the nick of time to avoid spilling
over into December. There's still the video to edit, and more photos...
But I rearranged the days' entries and put them in forward order on a
standalone travelogue of our adventure in
China, or you can continue at the
last day's entry here in the blog. I'm going to
thin out the trip entries in the blog in favor of the separate page,
when I get to it...
Big pile of rain comin down today, snow above 4000' or so. It's about
time the weather changed into fall. Keep thinking snow, we can
use lots more.
Statistical tidbits from NY Times stories:
"China's exports have nearly quintupled in the last 10 years." Daniel
Vasella, CEO of Novartis: "They've become the manufacturing center of
the world. It's amazing. And I'm not sure if the United States and other
countries will not end up regretting it."
DoCoMo and its customers reject more than 3/4ths of cellphone text
messaging as spam.
Viruses are next.
"(F)amilies typically buy a new (TV) set every three or four years...
Americans are
expected to buy 30 million televisions this year, at a rough average
of $400 each." (Refrigeration, plumbing and television are the essential
technologies in Chinese homes and apartments, too.)
Black Friday
I got sucked in by advertising, I wanted to go pick up a DVD player
for $25. ($25!) We drove to R.C.Willey at the absurdly late hour of
9am, at which time the parking lot was overflowing, the store was
overflowing and the checkout lines were threaded through multiple
departments. #1, we didn't see any of those ultra-cheap players
(they wouldn't bait and switch us, would they?!), and #2, I had a
tennis date at 10, and I wasn't about to stand in line for 45 minutes or
an hour or more. Shopping! On Black Friday! What the heck was I
thinking?
The COBRA stuff from HP arrived, 2 weeks to the day after my
termination. Good news on the life insurance front - a $50,000 bet on
me checking out only costs $0.71 a month. I like those odds.
The bad news was what it will cost to continue our big deductible
medical plan, and we're shopping for alternatives.
Another incredible politico-military-marketing stunt by the Bush team,
dropping POTUS into Baghdad for 2½ hours on Thanksgiving Day.
You think the security for the friendly fire in London was tight!
Holy cow. It makes for exciting
television
drama, rallying supporters at home as well as the troops in Iraq.
"He visited Iraq for the sake of the Americans, not the Iraqis. He
didn't come to see how we are doing," Muzher Abd Hanush, 54, said in his
Baghdad barbershop. "To come, say hello and leave -- what good does that do?"
(
AP) The troops thought it was "an extremely admirable gesture," but
I guess the Iraqis are interested in more than a gesture or "daring
stunt." Governing Council member Mahmoud Othman said "we cannot
consider Bush's arrival at Baghdad International Airport yesterday a
visit to Iraq. He did not meet with ordinary Iraqis. Bush was only
trying to boost the morale of his troops."
We can judge how meaningful the interaction with Iraqis was by
W's own account:
"I shook a lot of hands, saw a lot of kids, took a lot of pictures,
served a lot of food and we moved on to see four members of the
Governing Council -- the names are here. Talibani is the head of it
right now, so he was the main spokesman. But Chalabi was there, as was
Dr. Khuzaii, who had come to the Oval Office, I don't know if you all
were in the pool that day, but she was there -- she was there with him,
and one other fellow, and I had a good talk with them.
"We were there for about maybe a little less than 30 minutes. I was able
to assure them that we were going to stay the course and get the job
done, but I also reminded them what I said publicly, that it's up to
them to seize the moment, to have a government that recognizes all
rights, the rights of the majority and the rights of the minority, to
speak to the aspirations and hopes of the Iraqi people. I assured them
that I believe in the future of Iraq, because I believe in the capacity
of the people to govern -- as I said, govern wisely and justly. I meant
what I said. I told them that privately. I told them I back Jerry Bremer
a hundred percent. He's got my full confidence. He was sitting right
there, as well. We had a nice visit."
It reminds me of when we saw
Gorbachev at Stanford in the spring of 1990, by contrast. Those
were simpler times, but the soon-to-be-former leader of the
soon-to-be-former Evil Empire passed through a huge crowd in the Quad,
in the open air and sunlight, spoke to a full house at MemAud.
We can presume that
Hillary Clinton wasn't in on the top-top-secret plan for the Bush
layover, and the timing of
her visit
to Baghdad with Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed was a coincidence.
The Bush team probably squelched her publicity with its timing, but the
juxtaposition adds to the entertainment back home.
Driving in Iran is
more dangerous than a Gulf War: one casualty every 40 minutes, on
average.
Thanksgiving
The holiday competition seems to have become who can get their store
open first on the day after, the start of the Christmas shopping melee.
Radio Shack thought they were being clever starting at 7am, still dark
up in the north country. Target and Wal-mart scooped 'em with a 6am
start, and Shopko really, really wanted to be first by going for
5am. One of the things that caught my eye in their ad was DVD
players for $30. Thirty bucks! Makes me think of the Chinese hawkers
selling watches (battery included) for the retail price of a watch
battery. How can you make a DVD player for $30?! Maybe you can't,
and it's a loss leader. But leveraged, low-cost engineering, and cheap
labor all through the manufacturing chain are how you get close.
Made in China.
25.Nov.03
Jeanette discovered a little symantic problem when she went to cash in
her coupons good for "$2 off any grocery purchase of $2 or more" at
Albertsons. It seems produce
isn't "groceries." Neither are dairy products other than milk. Bakery
isn't. Meat isn't. Canned foods between aisles 11 and 14 are what they
mean by "groceries." Who knew?
Not to be outdone by
KB Toys' Elite Force Aviator action figure, there's a new
Man of Action series
featuring George. W. Bush. The Karl Rove control chip
accessory is sold separately.
We don't see much of each other... well, heck, I'll be honest,
we've never met, but I'm not the only one out the door at HP:
Compaq's former CFO,
Jeff Clarke is outta there, along with the other leader of the
integration effort, Webb McKinney, head of HR Susan Bowick, senior VP
Mary McDowell, HP director of business continuity services John A.
Jackson (to IBM), storage div. VP Mark Sorenson (to EMC) and of course
the man with the most golden parachute of all, former Compaq CEO and now
head of MCI/Worldcom, Michael Capellas.
24.Nov.03
Cory Farley says he got it under the heading
"Things you have to believe to be a Republican today" and it starts
with "Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you’re
a conservative radio host. Then it’s an illness and you need our prayers
for your recovery." Funny diatribe.
Can't understand that technician on the other end of the line?
Dell hears you, and is
pulling out of India where accents are too thick and scripting is
too tight. Dell's spokesman, Jon Weisblatt, said the work would be
moved to call centers in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee according to
CNN.
22.Nov.03
The House put in some serious overtime last night, staying up late
into this morning to pass the Medicare bill. The roll call started
at 3am, but when the count wasn't in the bill's favor, somehow it kept
going for another three hours, long enough for Idaho's
Representative C.L. "Butch" Otter to cave in to partison pressure.
Minority leader Nancy Pelosi noted that
the Republicans won "Florida style." The Senate will take it up
quickly, the important bipartisan goal being... to finish work for
the year by Thanksgiving. Nice work if you can get it, eh? Most
working people have a few hours they have to put in between
November 27th and January 2nd.
Maybe this is an historic improvement to Medicare, or maybe it's the
nose of an elephant on the way into the tent to trash the place.
We'll start to find out in 2006, when the new plan kicks in. (So
what was the hurry to get this bill passed, again?)
18.Nov.03
Deep in the heart of Texas, MTBE manufacturers desperately want to be shielded
from product liability lawsuits for the groundwater pollution disaster
in process, and House majority leader
Tom DeLay is leading
the charge to give them what they want. "Transition assistance"
would be nice, too, to help them get out of a dead-end business, and
they tell us the sooner, the better.
William Rivers Pitt weighs memoranda from Jay Rockefeller and Ed
Gillespie in
The Other Memo
Scandal:
"The nature of these dueling memos exposes several deadly problems that
face this nation today. One problem is a White House that lied its
populace into an unnecessary war, and used September 11 deliberately to
make the American people afraid. Another problem is a partisan
Congress, exemplified by Senator Roberts, which shields the Bush
administration from being called to account for any of this. Another
problem is a mainstream news media whose coverage of these issues is
wildly skewed in favor of the GOP."
In a bit of free-lance speechwriting for Evan Bayh, Pitt provides what
we'd like to hear from the Democrats, instead of hand-wringing
apologies for pursuing the truth a little too directly: "We have pages
and pages of statements by administration officials that have turned out
to be wildly false. There is plenty of evidence that the American people
have been lied to in a process that has gotten a lot of good people
killed. Why is the White House hiding? Why is Senator Roberts
whitewashing this investigation? We apologize for nothing, and demand
that this inquiry be widened to any and all areas that can bring us
answers to these important questions."
17.Nov.03
Long (two) day's journey home: put our bags out, checked out,
breakfasted, bused to the airport ahead of Monday's rush hour, shared
our last stories from and with our national guide, had our last group
instructions and deadlines (everyone on time -- ahead
of time, finally -- at the crucial moment), cleared immigration,
health checks (half of us lying about coughs and colds), airport tax,
security and triple check of boarding pass, off to Narita on a triple-7
overwater. Brief bad moments when Suzanne followed a blue flag off into
the crowd at a different entrance to the Beijing airport, and when Gale
discovered his passport missing when he walked off the plane at
Narita. (After insisting that it could not
be anywhere on the plane, someone did find it there.)
Our 3-hour layover in Japan was a pleasant visit to the foreign first
world, their state-of-the-art "happy rooms" more deserving of the name
than anything we found in China. Spotless (and kept that way by a young
female attendant), a spritz of foamy soap for the temperature-adjustable
auto-faucets, a hand-dryer that actually dried hands. United's home in
Terminal 1 is greatly improved since the first time I visited in 1996,
still growing and full of jolly shops with souvenirs, rice cakes, sweet
bean paste, Poky chocolate pretzel sticks, electronics, high fashion,
duty free!
...concluded in
the China travelogue.
16.Nov.03
Mongolia delivered one more sunny, crisp fall day for our visit to the
mountains outside Beijing and the Great Wall. A
cloissoné factory was conveniently on our way, and we stopped
for a slightly more authentic factory tour than most, followed by -- you
guessed it -- a serious shopping opportunity.
(There's also a Disneyland[-esque?] amusement park under construction
along the way... where work has stopped due to a lack of funds,
apparently.)
They did have a large area marked "Self Service," amazingly enough,
but of course the best items were guarded by an army of neat, young
clerks, eagerly following the buyer's eyes. It was a big shop, though,
and we wandered unmolested into the far reaches, then slipped up the
back stairs (under the big GO UPSTAIRS sign) to the furniture department
and got halfway through before we were spotted. Our salesman's English
was good, and we used him shamelessly to learn more about the wide range
of their huge inventory, while the real buyers in our group focused on
the designated craft downstairs.
Then up into the impressive, close-by limestone mountains, we got to the
Badaling section of the Wall before noon, had the "special shop"
among the rows of similar stalls pointed out, got our group photo with
certificate of heroism taken (with orders for later pickup) and then
were turned loose for 2+ hours of free time. The Fenwick boys & I
made a beeline for the "more difficult" section, powered through the
incessant buzz of hawkers to enjoy the day, views and experience as
fully as possible. The amazing Louise kept up with no problem,
but stopped at a steep, icy stretch that required wall assistance to get
up, and a bit of excitement coming back down. We walked to the end
of the restored section on the left, appreciated the continuing view of
the unrestored part (and a few hardy hawkers far beyond the main tourist
run). After taking my time coming back down, I tried the first pitch of
the right side, which was more populated (being merely "difficult") and warmer,
with a more southerly exposure. The enjoyment of everyone there was
contagious for me. I provided some entertainment by skipping through the
crowd down the steeper ramps....
...continued in
the China travelogue.
15.Nov.03
SUNSHINE and blue sky! Thank you Mongolia for sending some clear
(brisk!) weather down for our last two days in China. I'd resigned
myself to seeing nothing but dun smog skies up north, and this was an
unexpected treat. Our first stop was
the
Temple of Heaven and we happily joined the throng of locals who were
out for a morning in the park. Ballroom dancing (to a boombox), a drum
and flag corps of middle-aged women, singing, Chinese tennis, paddle
ball, dominos, cards, musicians, sidewalk calligraphy and people
watching people. We did the emperor's buildings, all the
admission-required snippets that the regulars don't need (but lots of
Chinese visitors do), mostly enjoyed being outside in the sun with lots
of our fellow humans.
After we stopped to listen to (and I videotaped) one group of singers,
accompanied by a man with a flute, he started
Frère Jacques, and we joined in English and French while they
sang Chinese. Then Auld Lang Syne, in English and Chinese, and
cheery round of applause for all of us, from all of us. What a nice
country. A pair playing paddle ball (solid paddles about the size of
squash racquets, with a lightweight crochet-covered ball, the
apparent object being an artful game of "catch") offered to give us a
try, and some of our party discovered it was harder than it looked, but
enjoyed the trying.
...continued in
the China travelogue.
My 9 week "job search" period ended yesterday, and I officially fell off
the rolls of HP employees. I'm a free man. Since I've been leaning
into this jobless thing for 9 weeks now, it doesn't feel a whole lot
different. Just that little *ding* of the timer running out.
14.Nov.03
Our bus ride out of Xi'an had a little excitement, as traffic jam was
piled on top of thick fog. The driver pulled a U-turn on the "farewell
highway," then diverted around a huge oversized load behind us by
driving on the sidewalk for a while. Zhang paused his narrative to call
ahead for rerouting advice, and assured us that, improbably, it was sunny
at the airport and we wouldn't be fogged in. That's why the airport is
a ways out of town, as it happens, up and out of the foggy bottom
of the Yellow
River.
...continued in
the China travelogue.
Molly Ivins
examines the shock, shock, that rightward pundits have discovered at
the "unprecendented" hatred expressed toward our current president. The
closest thing we have to this surprising phenomenon is... well...
what happened with our last president. Short-term memory
problem? Perhaps that comes as part of the conversion experience.
"By now, quite a few people who aren't even liberal are starting to say,
'Wha the hey?' We got no Osama, we got no Saddam, we got no weapons of
mass destruction, the road map to peace in the Middle East is blown to
hell, we're stuck in this country for $87 billion just for one year and
no one knows how long we'll be there. And still poor Mr. Krauthammer is
hard-put to conceive how anyone could conclude that George W. Bush is a
poor excuse for a President."
13.Nov.03
Our local guide in Xi'an was the best we had -- good English, great
humor, flexible and competent. At one point, he enumerated the major
religions in China: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Christianity, Confucianism
(not really a religion, more of a philosophy). There's a new religion, he
tells us, that everyone believes in: tourism.
There were still the obligatory shopping opportunities, the jade
"factory" (this time it was one guy on a bench grinder in the hallway to
the showroom) in the morning and another art "museum" at the big goose
pagoda. After a quick tour of 3 or 4 unheated exhibit rooms with a few
artifacts and buidling models, we got the identical brief introduction
to Chinese watercolors that we'd had at the Chongqing zoo. Our
two best shoppers decided to walk away from a negotiation, leaving the
salesgirl on the verge of tears; she got permission from the manager to
run after us and accept the lower price, two more deals better than
nothing.
We Americans learn this wheeling & dealing pretty quickly. There
isn't much we need and we know there are many, many souvenir
opportunities to come. Our willingness to walk away is not feigned.
The prices are mostly absurdly cheap, but we'er not satisfied now unless
we've worked the price way down. In the "free markets," Jeanette has
figured that the right price is 1/10th the initial offer. The
government stores don't have that much room, but 50% less than whatever's
listed is probably the most you need to pay.
...continued in
the China travelogue.
12.Nov.03
Sign at the Chongqing zoo, on a recent sculpture painted in rainbow
colors:
DEVELOPMENT IS THE ABSOLUTE NEED
...continued in
the China travelogue.
The supporters of Judge Roy Moore, applauding him after
a nine member panel voted unanimously to remove him as Chief Justice
of Alabama's Supreme Court apparently believe that religion should trump
the law and our judicial system. Consider how well that's worked in
Afghanistan, say, or Iran. Oh, but wait -- Moore's is a different, better
religion than in those places, right?
When a
high school senior can write a better opinion
against
your position that you can defend it, you know you're in trouble.
(In ex-Judge Moore's defense, J.C. does appear to be an above-average
high school senior.) Alabama's Tennessee neighbors cheerfully offer a
suggestion for
the next step: disbar him.
11.11.03
Veteran's Day back home, it passed without special ceremony over here in
China. They have a different view of what we call WWII; it was the
war of
Japanese aggression from the Chinese perspective, starting in 1937.
They do have a positive memory of the American role, though; the
"Flying Tigers"
came to their aid against the Japanese. While we were in China, the
discovery of an old crash site made the news, and gave reason to recall
the heroism of the American volunteers.
...continued in
the China travelogue.
10.Nov.03
We awake to our mooring at Shibaozhai, layer after layer of gray forming
morning light. I was admiring the scene, thinking about black and white
Chinese watercolor scenes and mentally framing a picture when a sampan
motored across my view, carving a gentle vee in the smooth water of the
big lake. Oh, how nice, but my camera's two decks down, in the cabin.
After I fetched it, I realized that the cloud of diesel from the idling
motor of the cruise boat parked in front of us was adding a brown cloud
to the mix that was less than appealing. Trouble in paradise, what can
I say?
Shibaozhai is the site of a Taoist temple built in the 1700s, perched on
a squareish chunk of rock. One way up is a wooden pagoda leaning
against the rock, comprising 9 floors, because it's good luck (or 11 or
12, if you actually count them). The other way up (or the way down if
you follow the "A route") is not so dramatic, down the sloping backside,
but still a fair number of stairs involved. When the lake reaches its
final level, Shibaozhai will be an island, but with enhanced moorage and
roadway connections planned to keep the tourist thing going.
...continued in
the China travelogue.
Perhaps economic arguments will be more persuasive than human rights
when it comes to prison reform: it's just getting
too
expensive to keep so many people locked up.
The
US Supreme Court is going to consider whether prisoners at
Guantánamo should have access to civilian courts to challenge
their detention. Will they have the backbone to arrest the usurpation of
Executive power? Their order hints that they'll consider the question
of whether we're sovereign at Gitmo; the Administration says we aren't,
because it serves their purpose, but also manages the armed forces, who
make sure that we are.
9.Nov.03
There are actually four gorges in the Three Gorges of China's Yangtze
river (Chang Jiang). Four's unlucky though (in Mandarin, it sounds
like the word for "death"), so they call them Three Gorges....
...continued in
the China travelogue.
Here's an
awesome satellite photo, showing the stretch of the Yangtze that
includes the two big dams, before the Three Gorges dam was closed,
from NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and the U.S./Japan ASTER Science
Team.
The states
aren't going to give up on the Clean Air Act, even though the Bush
Administration is rolling over big time, retroactively dropping
enforcement as it embarks on its Orwellian "Clear Skies" program.
"Industry officials said new lawsuits would be counterproductive and
delay air quality improvements." (Did they also say "just trust us"?)
After seeing the profoundly polluted air in China this month, the
positive legacy of the environmental movement in the US is worth a
moment's acknowledgement. I'm guessing
the global
situation would be best served by anything we can do to help the
Chinese solve their problem of reliance on high-sulfur coal and
sub-standard infrastructure, and their inability to accept the need for
economic dislocation to make improvements. The Chinese government is
loathe to put anyone out of a job, even if unproductive workers provide
no useful output. Easing up on our own demonstrably successful
regulations seems like a terrible idea, but their very success is what
prompts the idea; if the commons is too clean, there are costs to
be avoided and money to be made by changing the rules.
8.Nov.03
 |
The morning of the 6th was our chance to visit the Shanghai museum,
which lived up to the local guide's assessment of "world class."
The less-than-2-hour allotment was tough for us, though - we typically
spend at least twice that in a good museum when we travel. Traveling in
a tour group is nothing if not about making compromises. Both Jeanette
and I devoted ourselves to the 4th floor, galleries for "Chinese Minority"
artifacts, jade, coins, furniture. Next time we can see the bronze
stuff, sculpture, and ceramics. The portable audio players were a big
addition to the experience, easy to understand and use, and providing
enriching commentary for many of the exhibits, in clear English.
(They don't seem to have forwarded any of that English to their
museum website,
unfortunately.)
Travel China Guide has a helpful
introduction and guide. Given the low lighting level, I didn't take
any indoor stills, but have video to sort through. This outdoor shot is
of some of the fantastic animal sculptures lined up out front.
...continued in
the China travelogue.
7.Nov.03
It's really the 22d today, I'll just have to catch up three travel days
in one now instead of only two. I spent most of the day going through
my 200+ digital still photos from the trip, correcting gamma on the
gloomy day shots, cropping, renaming, culling a few. Burned a CD with
the originals I want to save, and then went through them all with an eye
to what I'd show to friends on a Monday lunch date. I ended up with
194, which aren't going to fit into an hour, especially if I'm stumbling
through captions auf Deutsch. (The Monday lunch is a
"Plauderstunde," wherein we practice our German.)
It's fun to go through photos in detail, to recover information from
the shadows of high-contrast scenes, and to make snapshots a little more
interesting, but I'm not sure it's that much fun... I abandoned
shooting on film more than 3 years ago, but I haven't forgotten its
positive attributes. You shoot rolls of film, you turn them in, pay
some money a day or two later and you have a big pile of beautiful
prints, maybe two of each. You share them with friends and family, and
then you put them away somewhere, and someday pull them out to enjoy
again. It just doesn't occupy that much of your life, the way digital
seems to be occupying mine.
On the China trip, I shot a frame with an old Canon A-1 (?) that our
leader brought, and it was a pleasure to get real photons through the
lens in the (comparatively) big viewfinder, quickly tweak it into focus
and trip the shutter with a satisfying "clack." Our old Canon AE-1 has
been shelved for a mechanical looseness in the winding mechanism, $100+
minimum to get started on the repair, is it worth it? For what I paid
for either of the digital cameras I bought in the last 3 years, we could
buy a way nice SLR, or repair the AE-1, or both. The instant
gratification, the lack of chemicals and paper for culls (and web-only
display), the ability to make good shots better with a digital editor,
all those things are still attractive. But for a two-week vacation and
a couple hundred snapshots, there's a lot to be said for shooting on
film.
Since I'm taking a day off the travelogue, I may as well catch up on
some of my timeless blogbits, too.
The Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune reports on
John Travolta's aviation lifestyle. The
flying foamers are all wild about it.
Garrison
Keillor, on this mess we've got ourselves into (written back in
April, but still on the mark, 7 months later):
"The conservative intellectuals who did the think-tank work on our new
preemptive strategy have made a brilliant case for it, that reads well
in the pages of political journals and sounds brave and good on the
Sunday morning talk shows, and now a few tired old liberals must try
to express the old conservative objections: the world is not an
abstract construct and as much as you try to reassure the Muslim world
that this is not a religious war, it is one if they think it is.
Everyone knows that 9/11 was a religious attack, and the crusade in
Iraq is our response to it. A religious war is the worst kind, a war
impossible to win and very difficult to extricate ourselves from."
Comparing
Office2003 to previous versions from an independent reviewer.
New or improved features include:
Product implantation
"Each user will have a microscopic magnetic implant inserted into their
skulls to prevent unauthorized copying of Office 2003 programs. Your
company doesn't want to be liable for piracy. Trust us on this one."
Improved proprietary formats
Keep information private by making sure no other program from any other
manufacturer can open your documents.
Better Obfuscated XML
New XML format for documents is even more confusing for greater
pseudo-openness.
New advertising category:
a send-up
website for "SkyHigh Airlines," with subtle alternate links
sprinkled in to send you off to Alaska Airlines' site. It's good for a
few laughs even if you don't need help getting to Alaska Air.
6.Nov.03
Not so many of the religious sites and relics survived the advent of
Communism in China, and the so-called Cultural Revolution. One whose
centerpieces did survive is the temple of the Jade Buddhas in Shanghai,
and it was heartening to see plenty of maintenance going on during our
visit: stone work, plumbing, painting. Some of the big guardian
statues, like the ones we'd seen in Japan, at
Nikko National Park, were dusty and dim under
roofs, but how could you keep it all clean, after all?
The milky pale jade Buddha at the moment of enlightenment is clean, and
cozy behind glass at a discreet distance from the nearest tourist.
No photos! unlike most of what we saw in the country.
Our local guide had explained "big vehicle" and "small vehicle" Buddhism
on the way over, the former with room for everybody and happy to
proseltyze, the latter suited for the monastic, inner life of a
dedicated few. The temple is "big vehicle," all the way. The pious
were mixed in with we gentiles, praying for long life, or good fortune,
perhaps, non-attachment and a happy death. (Or would that be an indifferent
death?)
...continued in
the China travelogue.
5.Nov.03
We are fat, bare-skinned mammals at a mosquito feed, the hawkers
gathering around the opening maw of tour buses to proffer post card
sets, fans, 2-for-$5 copywatches. Survival Chinese starts with
bu yao, "don't want," which you will repeat many, many times.
Avoiding eye contact and staying in motion helps a little, but the
purported Chinese aversion to physical contact does not apply to hawkers
going after white tourists. Some of it borders on assault, but
returning the favor didn't seem like a good strategy in a country where
the police may not speak your language unless perhaps a sufficient
"monetary incentive" is produced. The same thing that works for Idaho
mosquitoes works here - keep moving, wave them away, and sprinkle
bu yao liberally.
 |
The zig-zag bridge at the entrance to the
Yuyuan garden is said to keep the evil spirits at bay, but the
¥15 admission price to the garden itself is what actually does the
trick. One enters a space where contemplation can actually be
contemplated, in between the tour guides explaining selected highlights
and waving their colored flags to herd their tourist groups from one
viewpoint to the next. After our comfortably-paced tour from the local
guide, we used our 45 minutes of free time to wander back through,
shooting video and visiting the art gallery where paintings (prints?) of
various sizes for various budgets by local (?) artists were for sale.
They were cheerfully advertised by a more respectable tout, a cheerful
old man with good English, keenly attuned to what caught the visitor's
eye, and ready to share more information. "This is 480, but if you like
it, the price could be 180" for one that is 8x10"-ish instead of 2 by 3
feet, in other words. This attentiveness and accommodation was novel at
the moment, but it was a pattern we learned to expect from clerks
everywhere we went; the least interest in something produces an
immediate response and the start of price negotiation.
...continued in
the China travelogue.
4.Nov.03
By 04:10, we've slept as much as we can, and get up to review schedules,
maps, write in journals, peek outside. Traffic is quiet, an occasional
bus or taxi, a pedestrian, a bicyclist in the dark....
...continued in
the China travelogue.
3.Nov.03
Part of flying across the Pacific Ocean to Asia is the great leap
forward across the International Dateline. One date disappears
-- poof! -- somewhere in the middle of a long, long day.
The good news is that you get two of the same date on the way back; the
bad news is you'll spend most of the bonus on airplanes and departure
lounges. Our lounging on the outbound leg was minimized by a big hop
from SFO to Shanghai.
I sat next to a Chinese woman with a persistent cough, hoping I wasn't
going to catch something from her, but glad that I wasn't obsessing
about it being SARS the way I might have if the trip had been on the
original, April schedule. One of the movies was Finding Nemo,
which seemed somehow well-suited to an airplane venue.
The entry card for foreign travellers asks your main reason for coming
to China (one only):
Convention/
Conference |
Business |
| Employment |
Settle down |
| Visiting friends or relatives |
| Outing/in leisure |
Study |
| Return Home |
Others |
...continued in
the China travelogue.
2.Nov.03
First, some catch-up on non-travel related items. I get the daily NYT
email update, but with more than two weeks unread in my inbox, I'm
further than their 7-day window of free articles. It's still good for
reviewing the top headlines (from the NY Times' POV of course),
and searching Google for title words can often find a republished
copy.
Common Dreams has this story by David Johnston and Eric
Lichtblau, for example,
Critical
Study Minus Criticism of Justice Dept., about an internal report on
the Justice Department's diversity efforts that was so heavily redacted
that half the pages and the summary were blacked out. It was the
good old Memory Hole that
provided the public service of removing the blackout, apparently done by
an incompetent JD clerk. In the Well, Duh section of the article, this:
"some Justice Department lawyers said the editing of the report had
overshadowed the purpose of the study." Stacey Plaskett Duffy, senior
counsel to the deputy attorney general, doesn't quite get the
nature of the problem when she notes that "we didn't have to let people
know we were doing this," but at least that's more direct than the
spokesman who announced that the report was "deliberative and
predecisional."
"The activity in this back channel, detailed in interviews and in
documents obtained by The New York Times, appears to show an
increasingly frantic Iraqi regime trying to find room to maneuver as the
enemy closes in. It also provides a rare glimpse into a subterranean
world of international networking."
But the
last-minute
attempt by Iraqis to avoid war was a collect call that the US did
not accept. Imagine how many lives and how much destruction might have
been avoided if an alternative to waging war had really been
considered.
I'll bet this anti-virus initiative works:
bounties for turning in perps with $5 million initial funding.
You know these twits have to be bragging to someone about their
"accomplishments," and we suppose the company of virus writers is as
untrustworthy as the company of thieves.
Nov.03
Regular readers will note a shocking hiatus here for more than two
weeks. We're back live, after going offline for a 16-day junket to China:
Shanghai, Wuhan, the Three Gorges, Chongqinq, Xi'an, Beijing, the Great
Wall. It was an incredible journey, as you might imagine. I'm in the
momentary giddiness before jet lag sets in, feeling 9am-ish at 6pm,
plus or minus a day and two nights' sleep. I'm thinking I'll try to get
some of the travelogue highlights blogged out, probably point to some
more illustrated pages, when things get caught up. (December?!) When
you see a blog entry with a date close to what's current, you'll know
I'm closing in on it. Stay tuned!
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
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Friday, 05-Dec-2003 18:04:46 MST
http://fortboise.org/blog/200311.html
