Jenny and Tony waiting at a Nanjing Subway Station

Random thoughts, recollections, and observations about and not about my Nanking trip

The Nanking Trip

I came. I saw. I didn't do much.  The trip was ostensibly so my wife could see her friend who lives in the suburbs of Nanjing.  Chinese suburbs are virtually indistinguishable -- Shanghai, Wuxi, Nanjing -- they all look the same.

Wedding Anniversary

Thursday (today) is Jenny and My third wedding anniversary.  I wouldn't have remembered if my mobile phone alarm had not reminded me.  So, no special plans.  I will say I love Jenny and the job she is doing raising Tony.

Nanjing Subway Posters

One thing that attracted my interest in Nanjing were these posters that they had on the walls of the stations --  historical photos showing among other things, parades in Beijing and the all the great leader Chicom leaders.  I saw one poster showing a photo of the October 1, 1968 parade at Tienanmen Square where the marchers were holding and waving Red Books.  Fascinating to look at.

I don't want to make that much money!

One of my last classes on Monday evening, I did a mock job interview with a young female student who had recently graduated from university and was working at Caterpillar.  I offered her a job where she would make 20,000 rmb a month and she refused it because she said she didn't want to have to work that hard.  20,000 rmb a month is an astounding salary to have in China.  It would put one in the top ten percent of earners in China.  But she didn't want that salary, telling me she would be happy with 5,000 a month which to me is a subsistence salary.

I found the girl's answer to be first astounding and naive at first, but then modest, honest, and unpretentious after reflection.  I remember working in a pizza restaurant in the day; and hearing all the moaning from the other workers about how little they were being paid, which was still more than the student was willing to take.  The western attitude would be take as much money as you get and not give two thoughts to the responsibility inherent in getting paid a high salary.  

Back in Wuxi!

Sound and Safe in Wuxi, the family Kaulins is.  Happened what in Nanking?  you ask?  Anon, I shall tell you. 

 

What I mean is:   tomorrow.

Nanking Dispatch

I have access to the Internet here in the Southern Capital.  I don't have much to say for myself except that I ate four hot dogs at Ikea, I have taken three WTUs, and I am bloody cold!

 

Get me back to Wuxi!

Wuxi Tony Update #477: Double Decker Bus

Tony saw a double-decker bus and he insisted that we ride it. I saw it an as opportunity to take another WTU.

Wuxi Tony Update #476: Interesting Exhibit

While I am in Nanking, you can also watch this video. It was taken at our Xihui Park trip at a museum on the park grounds. There was an exhibit of interesting figurines or statuettes.

While AKIC is in Nanking, you can look at these quotes and links.

  The gift of not giving.

In the column linked above, George Will makes a case for not giving gifts at Christmas.  It is actually an enormous misallocation of resources causing tremendous damage to the economy.

The top 25 short stories of all time.  

I have to admit that I would have a hard time making a list of five. I can think of some James Joyce stories from Dubliners that would go on my list as well as one from Lu Xun. I have been reading some of the stories on the list linked above and they are all very good. And so should you.

Spengler on Obama's Foreign Policy

According to Spengler, Obama's foreign policy has two peculiar characteristics:

The first is that Obama runs his administration out of the Blackberry in his vest pocket. The second is that everything that he has done in foreign policy has failed. The result is a poignant feeling of univeral failure, with no telephone number to call (except Obama's) to learn what to do next.

Monday for you, Friday for me Headlines

Daddy Pajamas

To set up this Tony anecdote, as told to me by my lovely wife Jenny, you should know two things about my morning routine.  First, I get up much earlier than the other two thirds of the K family, who are still asleep when I leave for work.  Second, I leave my "pajamas" on the bed -- with the colder temperatures, Casa K needs many layers of clothes to be easily procurable meaning every available spot to drop a t-shirt or sweat-shirt is occupied, leaving me little choice but to put my sleeping wear on the bed.

 

Anyway, my wife informs me that Tony, when he gets up, will point to the pajamas and say Daddy!

 

Going to Nanking

Living in China for over five years now, place names have become local for me and the exoticness has been lost.  Suzhou or Nanjing have taken on the localness of saying Fort Garry in Winnipeg, Minnedosa in Brandon, Abbotsford in Vancouver, and Jiangying in Wuxi.  So, to make the place seem exotic again, to give me the feeling of being a million miles away from where I normally am, I will go to Nanking tomorrow -- not Nanjing.  Nanking hearkens to a time when China was on the other side of the Earth and part of the mysterious Far East.

 

Haircut hopefully

I will leave Casa K earlier this morning because I will go to a place on Wu Ai Road in the downtown of Wuxi where the hair-cutters have electric shears.  I am looking like a goddamn leftist -- all unkempt and disheveled.

 

Comb your hair!

Evidence of oncoming senility, full-blown Alzheimer's, or my becoming the absent-minded professor type?  The last few weeks, I have been taking showers and then forgetting to comb my hair.  Imagine my horror when I am just about to leave for work and look in the mirror to see dry hippie hair!

Condolences

AKIC sends its condolences to rare reader Maralin from Tuscon, Arizona, U.S.A. whose mother has just passed away.

Wuxi Tony Update #475: Tony on the chairlift going down

This is the second video taken on the great Xihui Park chairlift trip.

Wuxi Tony Update #474: Going up on the chairlift

Tony and I went on the Xihui Park chairlift ride. This is the first of two videos of the trip

Sunday (AKIC Thursday) Headlines

Standing between seats on the Bus

Saturday morning, I saw this young person standing between two seats on a bus.  He was doing this at the back of the bus.  The back seats on the bus  were above the engine so the there was no space under the back seats. The space between the back seat was taken up by a surface that one can stand on.  So standing on the surface, the young man had his arms spread out wide grasping onto two poles used by people standing in a normal way.  To stand out more, this fellow was talking to his friends loudly.  Many on the bus were giving him a curious, cursory glance.

 

Finally!

All the Xihui Park videos I took on Wednesday have finally been uploaded to Youtube.  Uploading isn't so easy from here in China.

 

Quietly

Saturday night, Tony went to bed quietly, in my arms, with no wrestling.  Wonderful!

 

Podcast Saturday

Saturday afternoon, I download them off Itunes.  The rest of the day when opportunity affords I listen to them. 

 

Yesterday, I listened to John Derbyshire, PJM political, JWisdsom, and Econtalk.  I learned that Woody Allen is still alive and made yet another movie about an old guy having an affair with an attractive young woman.  John Derbyshire talked of a report that America, the most obese nation on Earth, has 50 million people starving -- the Obama administration was on the ball talking of getting Americans to be in touch with the problem.  Richard Posner said the current economic crisis was caused by unsound monetary policy, and bad, lax regulation.

Saturday (AKIC Wednesday) Headlines

Images

Thankfully, I don't include many photos of myself in this blog.  But this morning, as I stood at the bus I got to thinking.  I didn't start thinking that I should put more photos of myself in the blog.  No sir!  Tony's photos will do fine.  No one really wants to see how age how crept up to me. But I thought that if there was one image that would encapsulate my experience in China, it would be of me standing at a bus stop  waiting along with lots of locals for the bus.  I guess you could also take a photo of me standing in a crowded bus but it would just be my head you would see.  The bus stop image would do it.

Nanjing?

The Kaulins family may be going to Nanjing this next AKIC weekend (that be Tuesday and Wednesday).  The wife has to see a close friend and wants to go shopping at Ikea.  I just want to go to eat hot dogs at Ikea, and sit in the cafeteria there and read some Louis L'Amour or Michael Crichton.

Something big in the works?

I am feeling kind of I-can't-think-of-the-word.  My mind seems a blank.  I have to really think hard to find something to talk or blahg about. Not much has happened lately.  The mediocrity of Obama and the Left is boring.  Life with Tony and Jenny is good but not newsworthy - thank God.   My favorite blogger has a similar feeling of sorts.  He said this:  

I spent a good part of the morning reading news stories, and I simply didn't find anything blogworthy. I don't know whether there's something wrong with me or the news. I have an odd feeling that this moment in history resembles an indrawn breath. Nothing seems to be happening, except for wrangles over ludicrous legislation, ludicrous treaties. It feels empty and meaningless. Nothing seems to be happening, but something is about to happen, something momentous, something that will put all these trivia out, as city lights extinguish the stars.

 In my life, I do have a nagging feeling about a bill about to come to due -- a bill I have thought constantly but procrastinated about all the while.  I pray to have the courage to deal with any tests life will throw me and my family.  Personal disasters scare me more than World disasters  -- I don't know why this should be.  

Wuxi Tony Update #473: Tony and a Camel

Tony thought it was funny when I touched the Camel's butt.

Full of gas!

I asked the students to tell me the meaning of this English idiom: Empty vessels (Containers) make the most noise.  The students always seem to read idioms too literally even when you tell them not to; and the students did do that yet again this afternoon.  None could tell me what the idiom meant in a general sense.  However, one student inadvertently said something profound: she said that the vessels made the noise because they were full of gas.  Who, pray tell, has been making empty gaseous speeches the last year?

Wuxi Tony Update #472: Tony at Nine Dragons

If you are good to us, Tony will give you a kiss.

Friday (AKIC Tuesday) Headlines

Flat Front Tire

Poor Sleek.  Last night, she got a flat tire as we were trying to get home after my having taught the last class of the evening.  We were fortunate as to where the flat occurred  -- it wasn't too far from work.  I pushed Sleek back to work with the plan of having it fixed today.  However, Sleek is a big girl -- much bigger than most other electric bikes. Pushing the girl with a flat front tire proved to be more difficult than pushing her with a flat back tire.  It didn't seem to be a good idea to push her back to the underground parking garage.  I was probably going to have to leave her on top in the open air exposed to the elements.

But passing the shop where I sometimes buy cigarettes, the lady shopkeeper pointed me in the direction of a bike repair shop that was nearby.  There I was able to get Sleek a new front tire, and be on my way home.

All's well that ends well, but I had to get my wife on the phone to communicate with the repair woman who didn't understand my Chinese.  I also got home so late that Tony was asleep.  So it worked out that I didn't speak to him all day.  He was asleep when I left for work and when I arrived from work.

700,000 Youtube Views

With the amount of video I have uploaded to Youtube, the number 700,000 seems like small potatoes.  Still, I will one day say I have had a million views on my channel.  I may be able to say so within a year -- assuming I get a thousand views a day which is what I have been getting.

Uploading to Youtube is not easy from behind the Great Fire Wall.  I have to use a VPN and cross my fingers that the upload actually goes through; and it is a very time-consuming process.

Christmas Package

We received the Christmas Package from Canada yesterday.  I opened it when I got home.  Of interest to me were the photos and this book of Latvian short stories my parents included in the parcel.  

The photos took me down memory lane.  I now have a black and white photo of my parents getting married in 1962.  My parents also sent me some photos from my teenage years.  One of the photos, taken when I was in junior high school, shows a very ugly looking pimply face teenager with a Ringo-haircut and a cheesy adolescent mustache.  I am thinking of having the photo scanned and showing it to you.  It may be embarrassing to me, but I figure what the hell.  You can't forget where you came from and who you were. 

The book of Latvian short stories written by a Latvian exile from the Soviet Union included a history of Lativia in the introduction.  For me, to read this was to delve into the past of my ancestors.  And I forever damn the Soviet Union for occupying Latvia.

Late November Links and Quotes

The Epitaph Teabagger

I had a big debate on a local expat forum about the use of the word ""teabagger".  The linked article backs up all I have been saying.

 

   The diary of a mad man by Lu Xun

Lu Xun has been called the George Orwell of China. The students have told me that they find him very grim.  But if you are equipped with Orwell's clear sightedness, a writer, observing the China of the early twentieth century, could be nothing but grim.

An Incident by Lu Xun

Six years have slipped by since I came from the country to the capital. During that time I have seen and heard quite enough of so-called affairs of state; but none of them made much impression on me. If asked to define their influence, I can only say they aggravated my ill temper and made me, frankly speaking, more and more misanthropic.

One incident, however, struck me as significant, and aroused me from my ill temper, so that even now I cannot forget it.

It happened during the winter of 1917. A bitter north wind was blowing, but, to make a living, I had to be up and out early. I met scarcely a soul on the road, and had great difficulty in hiring a rickshaw to take me to S-Gate. Presently the wind dropped a little. By now the loose dust had all been blown away, leaving the roadway clean, and the rickshaw man quickened his pace. We were just approaching S-Gate when someone crossing the road was entangled in our rickshaw and slowly fell.

It was a woman, with streaks of white in her hair, wearing ragged clothes. She had left the pavement without warning to cut across in front of us, and although the rickshaw man had made way, her tattered jacket, unbuttoned and fluttering in the wind, had caught on the shaft. Luckily the rickshaw man pulled up quickly, otherwise she would certainly have had a bad fall and been seriously injured.

She lay there on the ground, and the rickshaw man stopped. I did not think the old woman was hurt, and there had been no witnesses to what had happened, so I resented this officiousness which might land him in trouble and hold me up.

'It's all right,' I said. 'Go on.'

He paid no attention, however -- perhaps he had not heard -- for he set down the shafts, and gently helped the old woman to get up. Supporting her by one arm, he asked:

'Are you all right?'

'I'm hurt.'

I had seen how slowly she fell. and was sure she could not be hurt. She must be pretending, which was disgusted. The rickshaw man had asked for trouble, and now he had it. He would have to find his own way out.

But the rickshaw man did not hesitate for a minute after the old woman said she was injured. Still holding her arm, he helped her slowly forward. I was surprised. When I looked ahead, I saw a police station. Because of the high wind, there was no one outside, so the rickshaw man helped the old woman towards the gate.

Suddenly I had a strange feeling. His dusty, retreating figure seemed larger at that instant. Indeed, the further he walked the larger he loomed, until I had to look up to him. At the same time he seemed gradually to be exerting a pressure on me, which threatened to overpower the small self under my fur-lined gown.

My vitality seemed sapped as I sat there motionless, my mind a blank, until a policeman came out. Then I got down from the rickshaw.

The policeman came up to me, and said, 'Get another rickshaw. He can't pull you any more.'

Without thinking, I pulled a handful of coppers from my coat pocket and handed them to the policeman. 'Please give him these, I said. 

'Even now, this remains fresh in my memory. It often causes me distress, and makes me try to think about myself. The military and political affairs of those years I have forgotten as completely as the classics I read in my childhood. Yet this incident keeps coming back to me, often more vivid than in actual life, teaching me shame, urging me to reform, and giving me fresh courage and hope.

(*Recently, I reported an incident where a man fled on motorcycle after he had hit a man on a bicycle.*)

The Needle's Eye

Spengler co-writes this article  -- a good analysis of Obama's Economic Policies.

David Warren on Obama and other things

Some memorable quotes from the past week of David Warren Columns:

How blessed we would all be to be ruled by men or women who do not want the job and are aware of their limitations.

There is longing for some kind of "Eurobama" to titillate the political palate. But the last thing Europe needs, especially now, is a spineless, incompetent narcissist with a gift for rhetorical enchantment.

While I've taken two uncharacteristically subtle digs at the current U.S. president already, and would not hesitate to take more at the man Charles Krauthammer referred to this week as "baby Jesus," after reviewing the president's latest narcissist performances in Asia -- surrendering U.S. interests in Taiwan, Japan and India that his Chinese hosts hadn't even asked him to surrender -- Barack Obama is only a foreground illustration.

And we can hardly sneer at the Americans, after we accepted 16 years of Pierre Trudeau. There will always be demagogues, as there will always be people eager to follow them, into new "promised lands."

I think we are living in a society that has -- through lovelessness, in fact -- lost sight of what they are.

Pope Benedict XVI on Beauty

...the experience of beauty, beauty that is authentic, not merely transient or artificial, is by no means a supplementary or secondary factor in our search for meaning and happiness; the experience of beauty does not remove us from reality, on the contrary, it leads to a direct encounter with the daily reality of our lives, liberating it from darkness, transfiguring it, making it radiant and beautiful.

Indeed, an essential function of genuine beauty, as emphasized by Plato, is that it gives man a healthy "shock", it draws him out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum -- it even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it "reawakens" him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings, carrying him aloft. Dostoevsky's words that I am about to quote are bold and paradoxical, but they invite reflection. He says this: "Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would no longer be anything to do to the world. The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here." The painter Georges Braque echoes this sentiment: "Art is meant to disturb, science reassures." Beauty pulls us up short, but in so doing it reminds us of our final destiny, it sets us back on our path, fills us with new hope, gives us the courage to live to the full the unique gift of life. The quest for beauty that I am describing here is clearly not about escaping into the irrational or into mere aestheticism.

Wuxi Tony Update #471: Approaching Xihui Park

Thursday (AKIC Monday) News

Twankle Twankle Litt L Star!

I don't know if Tony got if from t.v., or if my wife taught him, but he made a pretty good stab at singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star last night.  He almost knew all the words.

Charging the Scooter Battery at Work

Sleek's battery ain't what it used to be.  Now, I am going to have to charge her battery at work, otherwise the ride home is mighty slow.

A Foggy Day in Wuxi Town

I can say it was fog not smog that was thick this morning in Wuxi.

Photos taken Wuxi's Xihui Park

A chairlift.

Tony in a tunnel built in the 1960s as a shelter against a nuclear attack. Tony is telling me he has to go pee.

If you look closely, you will see a terracotta warrior guarding the entrance to the tunnel.

This was one of many striking figurines at a show the park is hosting. I took a WTU of it which will be uploaded to here, eventually.

Tony goes to Wuxi's Xihui Park

Seven WTUs (Boy Tony videos) taken

Since I took a lot of video, I will talk about the things that happened today that aren't on video.

 

Monkeys make Tony laugh

To see things through the eyes of a child is to see things anew.  I am paraphrasing someone, probably Chesterton, when I say this.  The Wuxi Zoo is nothing special.  But Tony appreciated it nonetheless because he was seeing things for the first time.  He loved the baby elephant, the Zebras, and the leopard that growled at him, and feeding the monkeys.  But he was particularly impressed by the monkeys playing in the cage  -- watching them engage in hi-jinxs, Tony laughed and laughed and laughed.

 

I, taking Tony's view, was impressed by the strength and grace of the Tiger.

 

Look at the Laowai

Someone actually took a photo of a Laowai and child.

 

Fog or Smog?

The view from the top of Hui Shan (mountain) was disappointing.  I don't know if it was because of fog or smog.

 

Gratitude, Acknowledgement, Request

I have been trying to do this for a minute every hour the past few days.  I haven't been consistent.

 

Thanksgiving in America

What I liked about American Thanksgiving, being a Canadian, were the Thursday Thanksgiving NFL games.

 

Uploading

I have got some uploading to do:  WTU 471 to 477.

 

Wuxi Ikea to open in 2013

From the China Daily.