The Many Adventures of Steve and Elva

An Apostle in Xi'an

2009-09-17T16:07:00.000-07:00

From the journal of Robbin Henderson, BYU China Teacher's Program, Xi'an, China

Our little Branch of Zion received a very special visit from an Apostle and his traveling companions. On Tuesday evening, September 15th, we met in President Britton’s apartment near the old city wall, down an alleyway and up six flights of gloomy stairs to his 2-story accommodations. His wife Elise, 19 year old daughter Brittany, 15 year old son Isaac, and 12 year old son Curtis all live there. We had 26 in attendance, which included all of the branch members plus Janic, a French woman who, is not a member, but visits the university from time to time and attends church with us, plus Philip and Elizabeth Wok who taught here 3 years ago and are now teaching in Jinan. It was good to see them again.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of 12 Apostles, his wife Kristen and The Area President, Anthony Perkins and his wife Christy were our visitors. We were hooked into a telephone conference call line to 38 other locations throughout China including Urumqi, Ha’erbin and several places I had not heard of (including Hotpot). There were about 125 Saints listening in to the fireside from these locations. They are all part of the China International Branch which was organized just a couple of years ago to include all the Saints scattered in small groups in several cities throughout China. They have their Sunday meetings by telephone.

Sister Perkins spoke first saying that she gains solace from the scriptures and from service, when she can put aside the worries of the world. She said that she would prefer to look ahead in anticipation rather than back, because she finds that it brings her happiness.

Elder Perkins spoke next, telling us that we are living in the wilderness, just like Lehi and his family, among the many peoples of China and that it should be a purifying and a sanctifying experience and help us draw closer to the Lord. He listed three things (of brass) that we should take with us on our journey: 1) the plates of brass, the scriptures (1 Nephi 5:21); 2) the Liahona (representing the Holy Ghost) and the covenants of the sacrament (1 Nephi 16: 10); and 3) the brass serpent, representative of the Savior; that we should look to the Savior in all we do.

Sister Oaks was next and reminded us of the Title of Liberty raised by Captain Moroni (Alma 46:12) and that we should gladly take upon us the name of Christ.

Elder Oaks spoke last and testified that “God knows you and He loves you.” He quoted the scripture from John 3:16 as the most convincing evidence of this concept…”for God so loved the world, that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

From her story, Elder Oaks had his testimony reaffirmed that God’s love for His children is not only extended to those who are trying to live worthily, but also the wicked are greatly loved by God, and that Gethsemane was for all of us.

Our Xian Branch Choir (all 12 of us) sang the closing song, Come Follow Me. Nancy and I had the distinct pleasure of standing immediately behind Elder Oaks while singing. He did not complain, so I assume that we were on key. (They wanted me to sing Tenor, but I couldn’t get the hang of it, so I sang the melody).

Afterwards, we had refreshments, photo ops and our visitors freely mingled with us shaking hands and making small talk. It was indeed fun to hob-knob with these wonderful people. In speaking with Sister Oaks, she remarked how she wished she could become a BYU China Teacher. I told her, jokingly, that her husband would first have to retire, to which she responded sweetly, and smiling: “That’s never going to happen.”

Amazing Tibet

2009-08-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

We have been many places in this old world, but Tibet was one of the more interesting. Up until now, Egypt, with its bleak landscape and legacy of ancient pharaohs, temples and tombs, has been the place that has been the furtherest removed from our Western view of the world. China has also been very different. It, of course, is the oriental world, almost the polar opposite of my occidental world. But on top of the ancient customs, temples, Buddhist statues, is a veneer of the modern Western world. Many people speak English, they have high-rise buildings, and they operate their everyday economic life on one of the most energetic forms of capitalism I've ever seen. But the Tibet part of China is strikingly different.

Tibet is the top of the world. This becomes abundantly clear the minute you step off the airplane and can't breathe. After four or five days it is still difficult to breathe, especially after some exertion. Our first day there we did nothing except veg in our hotel room and try to acclimatize. It's worth noting that every room is equipped with tanks of oxygen.

We took a van trip from Lhasa to Shigatze, the second largest city, and spent the first several hours climbing up the sides of mountains on a serpentine, two-lane road until we reached a high plateau. Nestled in between snow-covered mountains (in July) is the beautiful Yamdrock Tso Lake with its crystal-clear waters. Like nearly everything, it is sacred to the Tibetans.

A little further down the road we passed the glacier that fed the lake.

There was not much traffic on this road, mostly just tourist vans and buses, but there was a lively trinket-selling trade at nearly every stop. You could take a picture sitting on a yak for a fee.

Vendors set up shop on a blanket spread out on the ground at every intersection or pull-off. Prayer flags could be seen flapping in the breeze at prominent points, especially at points overlooking the river where "wet burials" were performed. Look it up on Wikipedia.

We were interested in the agriculture. Green crops were growing in the fields in every valley.

The yellow-blossomed rapeseed seemed to dominate at this time of year and bathed the countryside in a yellow glow.

Farmhouses with their stone walls and enclosed pens for animals were everywhere. Prayer flags few on staffs on each of the four corners of the houses. Most appeared to be new. I saw very few rundown or abandoned farmhouse anywhere. There was lots of new construction. I understand that the Chinese government is pouring lots of money into Tibet, its poorest province, partly to improve the lives of the peasants and partly to quell any dissent.

Once, while stopping by the side of the road for a break, our guide asked an old grandmother squatting by the side of the road if we could tour her nearby house. She consented and this little tour turned out to be the highlight of our trip in Tibet. The lady of the house turned out to be not the grandmother but a beautiful young mother of about 30 who took great pride in her home.

It was an extremely humble home. The kitchen featured a cast iron, yak dung-fueled, cooking stove and a cupboard. No running water. There was an electric bulb in the center of the room and a small TV that did not appear to be working.

There were places for sleeping with yak-hair blankets. The courtyard featured a primitive loom. All the wood trimmings were highly colored with delicate designs.

Around the courtyard were pens for animals, and plastered on the stonewalls were yak dung patties set out for drying. Once they were dry they were stacked on top of the wall until time for use. But the family was delightful. Humble but happy, and gracious to a fault. And the young mother, in her native soiled costume, had the face of an angel.

That Tibet is Buddhist is obvious. One only had to look at everyday people walking down the street on any city or any side road spinning pray wheels--old people, businessmen, monks, housewives and shop girls.

We visited the Jokhang Temple, the heart of Tibetan Buddhism, and saw a side of Buddhism we had never seen before, much different than what we had seen in Thailand or China.

Outside the entrance were dozens of people praying by holding their palms together, genuflecting, then kneeling down, and then fully prostrating themselves on the ground with their foreheads touching the stone pavers. Then they rose, only to repeat the motion hundreds of times. To make things more comfortable, they had homemade mats to lay on and pads on their hands to protect them as they slide down into a prone position. After a hundred or more motions, they paused to get a drink of tea or visit with a neighbor. And then they went on all day or more. Many were old women, but some were young women wearing designer jeans (probably tourists).

In side the temple, things were chaotic. There was a long line of pilgrims waiting to get in, all lined up belly to bum. People were selling yak butter to use in fueling candles. The line inside snaked around the interior wall but disappeared into side rooms featuring Buddha statues and bodhisattvas, all of whom were honored by some active of devotion, including pushing money through the wire screens protecting the statues (they were made of gold, after all). The inside of the Temple was dark, noisy, dirty, smoky, and crowded, almost like a market place. Indeed, in one corner there were several monks selling prayers they wrote on small pieces of paper.

The yak butter smoke was overpowering both to the nose and the eye. From every side of us there loomed yet another Buddha figure, large and small, smiling and grim, comforting and threatening.

Compared with the inside of a Mormon temple with its solemnity and simple decor, this was a strange experience. But no one could deny the devotion of the adherents there that day, and it is inconceivable that God would withhold His blessing because of what I considered to be the grotesque nature of their religious practices.

Our peak into this exotic religion continued with a tour of the Potala Palace. Built as it is like a cap on a stoney hill in the center of Lhasa, it is an architectural wonder. It is no longer a religious site (although some monks apparently inhabit the place), but is run as a museum by the Chinese government. We paid our money and showed our papers, and proceeded to climb the steep, snaking stairs up the front. We ran out of breath every 20 steps or so. So we paused and went another 20 steps.

It is quite well maintained; the step are in good repair and it had a fresh coat of whitewash. After some effort we got to the top levels and began winding through a labyrinth of rooms housing more Buddha figures. There were dozens and dozens of these rooms and hundreds of statues. On the very top we saw rooms that had housed various Dalai Lamas, including the 14th, now in exile. Here there was none of the chaos of the Jokhang Temple, but there was still the bizarreness of the Buddhist figures. This palace is one of the most recognizable images of Tibet and one of the more remote places on earth; Elva and I were in awe that we were actually standing there.

A Little Primer in Chinese Poetry

2009-08-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

I told them I hated poetry, which was a preposterous statement given that I was standing before a British and American literature class at the Xi’an International Studies University in China, where I was the teacher and poetry was part of the curriculum. But it was true.

I have never really enjoyed poetry: too hard to read, too obscure, too much of a mental investment to understand the meaning. But I soldiered on with Robert Frost’s “The Path Not Taken” (one of the few I do like) and a few others by Dickinson, Burns and Poe, but Wordsworth and Whitman I left alone. Mid-semester I instituted a poetry exchange where I taught them an English poem, and they told me about Chinese poetry. In the end I learned far more about poetry than they did.

From an Early Age

The Chinese are crazy about poetry. They learn it from an early age and even have poetry parks. One day last month I was sitting next to a large statute dedicated to some of China’s most famous poets. Through an interpreter I asked a 9-year-old boy if he knew any poetry. Without hesitation he recited in Chinese, not a child’s poem, but a poem by the renowned Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai. In English it is rendered as follows:

Thoughts On a Tranquil Night

Before my bed a pool of light—
O can it be frost on the ground?
Looking up, I find the moon bright;
Bowing in homesickness I’m drowned

Li Bai Gazes at the Moon

When I asked an 11-year-old the same question, he recited a poem by Wang Zhihuan from the same period:

On the Stork Tower

The sun along the mountain bows;
The Yellow River seaward flows.
You will enjoy a grander sight
By climbing to a greater height.

Climbing to a Greater Height

And how old was he when he first learned this poem? He was seven. It was taught in the context of trying to achieve higher goals — “climbing to a greater height.” Nearly every grade school child in China can recite either of these two poems.

Wanting to impress my class, I found a Tang-era poem I liked on the Internet, a long one, and as I started to recite it to them, the whole class of 80 students started to recite it along with me. They had learned it in high school. Poetry is part of the curriculum at every level. They are tested on it in order to advance from one grade level to another, or as part of their college entrance exams. Typically they are given a few lines of a poem and must fill in the rest.

The Golden Age of Chinese Poetry

For the several thousand years the Chinese poets have been writing verse, perhaps the most well-known are those who wrote during the period of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). It is almost universally regarded as the golden era of Chinese poetry. According to one account, this 300-year span produced almost 50,000 poems written by over 2,200 authors.

This as a time when China was administered by a large cadre of well-educated scholars who had to pass exacting civil service examinations to gain government positions, and a mastery of poetry was part of these examinations. Moreover, writing poetry was a favorite pastime of the Tang court.

Du Fu

One example is Du Fu, who is called by some the “Chinese Shakespeare.” He was a prolific poet, writing on a wide range of subjects, and nearly 1,500 of his poems have survived him. In his early years he traveled widely throughout China before landing a secure government job, which unfortunately was later disrupted by a rebellion. The last 15 years of his life were a time of turmoil. He has been called the “poet historian” because his poems reflect the times in which he lived.

LiBai

A contemporary of Du’s was Li Bai (quoted in the poem above) who was a little older than Du Fu and a poet “rock star.” The two met in mid careers and even wrote poems to one another. He received the epithet “knight errant,” translated literally as “wandering force,” because of his never-ending travel throughout China. He too wrote about the trials of common people. He was enormously prolific but only about 1,000 of his poems are extant today. He is one of China’s most beloved poets and he has become one of mine too. I particularly enjoy this poem written in seven-character quatrain:

A Reply

I dwell among green hills and someone asks me why;
My mind care free, I smile and give him no reply.
Peach petals fallen on running water pass by,
This is an earthly paradise beneath the sky.

The Structure of Classical Chinese Poetry

Like English poetry, classical Chinese poetry adhered to certain structures. Many poems rhymed, usually with the first line rhyming with the second line and the third line with the fourth line, although this was not always true. Chinese is a tonal language with four tones: high, rising, dipping or falling. In another form of poetry, the poet matches the tone pattern rather than make the verses rhyme. Thus, the pattern in which the tones occur in the first line is matched in the second line, and the third with the fourth. There are, of course, many other patterns.

Many of the poems of the Tang era were written in quatrains of four lines with either five or seven Chinese characters in each line. An example of this is by the poet Wei Lingwu. In Chinese, the characters look like this:

野
渡
無
人
舟
自
橫

春
潮
帶
雨
晚
來
急

上
有
黃
鸝
深
樹
鳴

獨
憐
幽
草
澗
邊
生

滁
州
西
澗

Reading from right to left and from top to bottom (the old Chinese style), first comes the title and then the poem in seven-character quatrain format. Translated into English it reads as follows:

At Chu Zhou on the Western Stream

Where tender grasses rim the stream
And deep boughs trill with mango-birds,
On the spring flood of last night’s rain
The ferry-boat moves as though someone were polling.

Trilling Bird

Hidden Meanings

As with most poetry, a poem has more meaning if one understands the story behind it. In this case, the author was a government official who had been demoted from the capital to a remote place called Chu Zhou. He compares himself to “tender grasses” (or “lonely weeds” in another version) near a western stream. Above him are mango-birds or orioles trilling or chattering, which many experts interpret as court officials who are always flattering the emperor and looking down on the people. The next two lines paint a picture of heavy rain and a surging tide where a ferry boat would be needed to transport the court across the river, but although the boat moves there may not be anyone guiding it. And thus Wei Yingwu writes a poem and also takes a stab at the royal court that has excluded him. Such “between the lines” meanings by court poets were common.

Tang Court

Translating Chinese Poetry

Translating a poem from Chinese (particularly the ancient Chinese of more than a century ago) can be challenging because it cannot be done on a “word for word” basis as might be the case with the romance languages. For example, with the Chu Zhou poem above it obviously took many more English words to convey the meaning expressed in just seven Chinese characters in each line. Fortunately there is wide latitude in choosing which English words can be used to express the meaning of the Chinese characters. Thusly, this same poem can be rendered this way too:

I prefer the lonely weeds grown along side the creeks;
To the oriole above, chattering in the grove.
With a downpour the night cast, over bank the spring tide cast;
Sequestered is this crossing, free is the ferry floating.(1)

Either way the loneliness of the author, his alienation from the court, and the aimlessness of the ferry remain.

At Chu Zhou

This latitude makes it easier to translate a Chinese poem that rhymed according to its own pattern into an English rhyming pattern while still retaining the meaning of the poem. Though daunting, there is no shortage of Chinese and English-speaking scholars who have done it, often with very pleasing results. Accordingly, on the last day of literature class I expressed my appreciation for all they had taught me about poetry and left them with this poem from the poet Xue Tao as translated by Xu Yuanchong (2)

Farewell to a Friend

Waterside reeds are covered with hoarfrost at night;
The green mountains are drowned in the cold blue moonlight.
Who says a thousand miles will separate us today?
My dream will follow you though you are far away.

Note: Material and suggestions for this article were provided by Yuan Yue (English name, Rhine) and Zhang Yuan (English name, Christine), both students at the Xi’an International Studies University.

Notes

(1) Translated by Yuan Yue (Rhine)

(2) Xu Yuanchong, 300 Tang Poems, Peking University, 2008.

Amazing Story of Amanda de Lange

2009-08-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

Amanda de Lange looked out the bedroom window of her high-rise apartment building in the ancient city of Xi’an, China, and contemplated the chain of events that had brought her to this far-away place, half a world away from her original home. Before her stretched kilometers and kilometers of other high-rise complexes, public parks, and streets that made up this large metropolitan city, and behind her slept more than 50 tiny orphans that made up her brood of castoffs from a society that struggles to keep up with its burgeoning population. She recalled that her patriarchal blessing said that she had a great mortal destiny awaiting her, but she never dreamed that it would fulfilled in this way and so completely. It had been a long and difficult journey but also one where the hand of the Lord had been unmistakable.

Her family life when she was young would certainly not have been an indicator of what was to come. Born of Afrikaner stock in South Africa, her family had been plagued over three generations with alcoholism and divorce. But then the unexpected happened. Through the auspices of a friend, she joined the Church when she was nineteen and a few years later she went on a mission to South Africa. To Amanda, these were more than just ordinary events: They were spiritual manifestations of God’s hand in her life. “I gained renewed hope and an all-important understanding that I was a child of God and that he loved me beyond measure.” This reassurance laid the foundation for the rest of her life.

Post-mission she attended and was graduated from Brigham Young University. Not having found a spouse, she pushed on with her life. She taught English in Taiwan for seven years and became fluent in Mandarin. When she was unable to acquire a permanent visa to remain in Taiwan, she took a job teaching in an international school in Xi’an and settled into her new life. Then a seeming opportunity came her way. She lined up a job teaching English in South Korea, a job that brought with it the chance to obtain a master’s degree. She was within days of embarking on this new direction in her life when events took a turn.

Over the months in Xi’an, Amanda had been volunteering at a huge government orphanage housing about 500 children. The situation for these tiny ones was grim. Amanda found herself yearning to do something to help. And then she found herself sitting across the table at lunch with a Chinese woman discussing how a foreigner, like herself, could become more involved. It was during this luncheon that the words forcefully came to her mind, “Why don’t you start your own orphanage?” She quickly dismissed the idea because starting an orphanage in a bureaucratically-inclined country as a foreigner would undoubtedly involve numerous permits and expenses. But the idea would not leave her.

As it turned out her lunch partner was well connected, and her Heavenly Father had led her to the one person in the country of 1.3 billion people who could help. Amanda recalls that, “there was no bureaucratic red tape, no requests for money, no mountains of paperwork and no endless waiting.” A few months later, permission was granted and a few days after that six tiny babies arrived at her apartment. Just as with her baptism and mission, Amanda felt the Lord’s presence behind this life-changing event, and she received a quiet spiritual confirmation that she was to remain in China and do the Lord’s bidding.

Amanda had always been impressed with the story of the starfish.

Once a man was walking along a beach. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. Off in the distance he could see a person going back and forth between the surf's edge and the beach. Back and forth this person went. As the man approached he could see that there were hundreds of starfish stranded on the sand as the result of the natural action of the tide.

The man was stuck by the apparent futility of the task. There were far too many starfish. Many of them were sure to perish. As he approached, the person continued the task of picking up starfish one by one and throwing them into the surf.

As he came up to the person, he said, "You must be crazy. There are thousands of miles of beach covered with starfish. You can't possibly make a difference." The person looked at the man. He then stooped down and picked up one more starfish and threw it back into the ocean. He turned back to the man and said, "It sure made a difference to that one!"

And thus was the Starfish Foster Home named, and it accurately reflects Amanda’s drive to “make a difference.”

Over the last four years, a total of 80 little starfish have passed through her loving hands. Periodically Amanda roams through the city orphanage looking for more. She does not choose those you would expect—the cute ones, the adoptable ones. She brings home those she describes as “medically fragile”—the scarred ones, the unadoptable ones. Usually this means babies with cleft palates, holes in their hearts, or with spinal bifida. These are babies that are likely to perish in a large institution for lack of attention and care. Cleft palate babies must be fed with special care because it is difficult for them to suck and receive the nourishment they need.

And special care is what they get. Amanda now presides over a small army of paid nannies and volunteers that feed, bath, and care for these fragile ones. She is like the CEO of a small company. There is a budget, a daily schedule, routine tasks, and a to-do list a miles long. Trucks arrive weekly with loads of food, formula and diapers. She operates a small kitchen to feed her growing staff.

She not only cares for her little charges, she repairs them. Some come into her care only skin and bones, but soon they develop into the fat, cuddly, smiling babies we all like to see. When they are ready, Amanda and her helpers take them to hospitals all over China seeking out specialists to fix up the cleft palates, sew up the holes in the hearts, and close exposed spines.

As Amanda and I talked about this, 3-year-old Shawn burst into the room full of vim and vinegar from his daily outing with the nannies. “Manda, Manda,” he cried as he sought a place in her lap. Shawn is a scamp. The other day he climbed to the top of a dresser to look out a tall window. As they cuddled, it was hard to imagine that when he first arrived his chance of survival was slim. All his ribs showed and his bones pressed against his thin skin. He was so small that the smallest-sized Pampers went clear up to his armpits. Now his future is much brighter. Next month he will be adopted by a family from France. And thus it goes—salvaged, repaired, adopted. So far, 20 little starfish have been adopted.

Later, I held tiny Sophia on my lap and gazed into her face which unfortunately was marred by a double-cleft palate. She had arrived in a condition similar to Shawn’s, but she has since thrived. Soon she will have her cleft palate repaired through the generosity of my home ward. She looked up at me and touched my face as I looked into her deep, dark eyes and speculated on what unexpected life she might be able to live now that she will be adoptable.

But things have not always turned out so well. One of the early starfish, Susan, came to her at three months old with a heart condition. A small operation put her right for awhile, but later an infection set in and swept her away. Amanda lay with her in her arms as her breath grew shallower and shallower until finally her spirit slipped beyond the veil. And she is not the only one that could not be saved.

Although Amanda grieves at the loss of these little ones, she looks at it from an eternal perspective. The tie between her and Susan (and the others) has not been permanently broken. She knows she will see them again. She has a scrapbook of all her little ones that will ultimately go to the adoptive parents, but as she stands before her window her eyes fill with tears as her fingers trace over the images in Susan’s scrapbook. Could it be, she wonders, that through God’s tender mercies she might be permitted to raise these lost ones through the childhood denied them on earth?

But in the meantime there is work to do. Shawn breaks into the room again. “Manda, Manda,” he cries. He has come for a hug and then he’s off. Her cell phone rings. It’s the central orphanage. Does she have room for one more? You can guess the answer. And thus Amanda’s unexpected life goes on in an unexpected place.

Elva's Day in a Chinese Country Village

2009-05-10T05:32:00.000-07:00

Edith and Ross Brown had been invited to spend Saturday visiting the Chinese country village of one of their students. Parkson had taken the Browns to his village on two previous occasions and they had experienced many new and different aspects of Chinese culture. I was thrilled when I was invited to tag along on this third occasion.

We departed campus about 7:30 a.m. by taxi to the main bus station where we boarded our bus. The bus was full of people leaving the city for the May Day holiday. I was delighted to be able to sit at a window seat, because I loved looking at all the sights as we traveled from Xi’an out into the country. Once we got off the bus we had to walk a mile down a country road to reach his village. As he had been previously been directed to do by his mother, Parkson stopped at a small vegetable market on the way to buy some fresh cucumbers for our breakfast.

It was obvious when we arrived that they had been waiting for us, and they greeted us with open arms and hugs. The neighborhood children were especially excited to see the Browns and presented them with simple little gifts: rocks, shells and flowers. Gift giving is a big part of Chinese culture. We had also brought gifts. We gave the father a ball cap from America that had a logo of Commander and Chief. For his Mom we brought a new glass tea thermos, and for the children, candy and a game of jacks.

Parkson’s mother had most of the breakfast food ready so as soon as she prepared the cucumbers we sat down to eat. Chinese breakfast is very different from what we eat in America. We had corn porridge, shredded potatoes soaked in vinegar, roosted garlic, seasoned cucumbers, a mystery green vegetable and wonderful steamed buns. His father is a master at making steamed buns. I was hungry and anything mixed with hunger is delicious.

We visited with his family and neighbors for a while with Parkson acting as our interrupter. We were invited to tour his home as well as to visit and tour his older brother's new home. The homes are different than any house I have ever been in. They are constructed out of bricks plastered over on the outside with a coating of cement. Tiles cover the roof. The front doors are more like a gate with a small door inset in one of the large doors. You enter into an open courtyard with rooms on both sides and rooms in the back. The first room to the right was their living room. It had a couch, a TV and a warming bed. The warming bed is used in the winter for the entire family to sleep on. It has been constructed so a fire can be built under it.

The next room is a small kitchen. It was a simple room containing a wood cupboard, a long wooden shelf with storage under it. In the corner was a very large built-in pot where most of the cooking takes place. It is designed so you can build a fire under the pot. The dishes are also done in this big pot. There is no running water in her kitchen. There is a well on the other side of the court and she has to hand carry any water she uses.

Parkson’s brother arranged for an old van to drive us five miles to the next village where they were having a May Day Festival. I have never seen so many people in such a small space. I was very hard to take any pictures because someone was always in my space. People had come from all the surrounding villages to buy goods, listen to music and eat special food. It was a lot of fun. The only thing I bought was a Chinese ear cleaner.

When we returned we were treated to an outstanding program prepared by the neighbor children. I was just like the programs our grandchildren perform for us. One little boy was the MC, and he also sang a song. The girls had dressed up in their best dresses, and they sang and danced for us. We spent some time teaching them a little English. We gave them the jacks and they loved learning to play with them. They taught us to play a Chinese hopping game. I was surprised how well we could communicate with body language and only a few words .

Dinner was outstanding. (Chinese spaghetti.) We ate in the courtyard again. Parkson had told his Mother that we did not like hot spicy food so she served all the dishes separate, and we could put what we wanted over our lovely delicious home-made noodles. I could eat his mother's cooking every day. It was by far the best Chinese food I have eaten.

The sun was setting and the children were waiting to walk us to the bus so we said our reluctant good-byes to his family. I had had such a wonderful day I hated it to end, but my feet let me know it was time to rest. Ross bought ice cream for all the children. Their ice cream is kind of like a pop icicle. They stayed with us until the bus came. It was a day that will be etched in my memory forever.

Maiji Mountain

2009-04-21T02:53:00.000-07:00

We went on a little three-day trip west of Xi'an along the route of the ancient Silk Road to see a mountain high in the valleys outside the city of Tianshui in Gansu province. The mountain is famous because of carvings of Buddha figures on the near perpendicular face of the mountain and the numerous caves or grottoes carved into the cliffs each of which contain Buddhist statutes and iconography that are about 1500 years old.

It was a rough trip mostly because it was by bus over very rough roads following the Wei River valley up over the mountains. Although this is a major trucking route leading to western China, in some sections it is only two lanes wide thereby leading to traffic jams. There is a new super highway under construction that is rather dramatic because much of it is perched on high pylons as it crosses the valleys and the river or disappears into mountain tunnels rather than clinging to the sides of the mountains as did the road we traveled, but in the meantime the current road has deteriorated leading to a slow, bone-jarring trip for us with many stops and delays.

The Wei River valley is photo-op heaven. The valley is a tribute to intensive farming. Beautiful terraced plots climb the hillsides outside every village and town. This time of year, all are luscious green, not with rice as is the common picture of China, but with wheat and rapeseed, the latter being in full bloom with yellow flowers. There are also terraced orchards of apple and peach trees sitting high on the sides of these mountains some of which are in bloom and all of which are well tended.

Farmers are out everywhere working the fields and orchards. There is little mechanization--I saw only two rototiller-type machines--but I did see several ox-drawn plows in operation and one being pulled by a human. The soil appears to be rich and deep.

Many fields were growing crops in plastic-covered hot houses or in rows where leaves were poking through plastic sheeting laid on the ground to retain moisture and curb weeds.

Everything was a treat to the eye. Maiji mountain was a wonder. I don't know how the ancient monks carved all those figures and grottoes on the cliff face so high up. Since there are deep holes in the rock around all these figures, it appears they erected a framework of scaffolding that rested on timbers that were seated in these holes.

Of course, all the original wood scaffolding has rotted away, but the tourism ministry has replaced it with concrete and steel. It is quite safe, but the steps are still steep and when a stiff wind is rushing across the cliff face and you're hundreds of meters above the ground it is still unnerving and you find yourself gripping the handrails extra tight.

I can't say much about all the Buddhist carvings we saw, because I don't understand what all the symbolism means. It's was all a little strange and off-putting, but you have to admire the devotion of those who dedicated maybe their whole lives to these carvings. They were dramatic, and the whole experience of climbing so high up and seeing things that were so old was worth the 10-hours trip it took to get there.
It was even worth the 13 hours it took to get back. The return was dramatic because we went over the same road only in the rain, which turned out to be the cause of numerous truck accidents, which in turn caused hours worth of delays. Chinese cargo-hauling trucks are enormous. They are much longer than what I've seen in the U.S. and Europe, so when we encountered them on the hairpin turns on this road, they took most of the roadway.

We first encountered a car carrier whose rear axle had slid off the road and whose cab protruded out into half the roadway. Cars and even our bus could still get by one-by-one, single file, but since the accident had occurred on a turn the long cargo trucks could not, although they tried which only resulted in a traffic jam.

We sat on the bus for about an hour while the police tried to sort it out, but eventually the guys got out and stood on the side of the road to watch the action. It was pretty dramatic seeing these big trucks straining to get their loads moving uphill. Their exhausts were belching black smoke as the engines accelerated, the cabs were bouncing with each surge of energy, and the pneumatic brake systems were hissing compressed air as the drivers alternately engaged and released the brakes while maneuvering between a steep drop off on the outside of the turn and the broken-down car carrier on the inside of the turn. The front outside wheels were within centimeters of the sharp edge, and on the inside the truck’s loads were scrubbing against the car carrier’s cab. After several of the larger trucks had cleared the wreck we were permitted to pass through, but looking back at the side of the mountain we could see several kilometers of backup that took the rest of the day to clear.

But we were not home free. Several hours later traffic stopped again. When we got to the front of the backup we found several big trucks inching their way through a tunnel. Trucks jammed one lane inside the tunnel and could not move, and in the other lane was a truck with a large load squeezing through. It had a large section of a crane on the bed, and the top corner was catching on the wall of the tunnel while the other side was catching the loads of the trucks in the other lane. Men were all around pointing and gesturing, cursing and yelling, while the driver swung the steering wheel first to the right and then to the left until his rig was through.

Behind him emerged kilometers and kilometers up backed up traffic, which passed us as we stood on the side of the road watching. For reasons unknown, our lane did not move for another hour. But I didn't mind. I watched and watched as China passed before my eyes. There were sweating, rough-looking Chinese truck drivers with cigarettes hanging from their lips, farmers in their motorcycle pickups carrying loads to numerous and varied to describe, well-dressed city folks in their SUVs, young couples on their motorcycles usually with a young child squeezed in between mom and dad, a small van filled with school children their noses pressed to the windows--a cross section of the 1.3 billion people who inhabit this beautiful land.

China's Second Language

2009-04-02T20:57:00.000-07:00

Fortunately for those of us who use or understand English, it is easier to get around in foreign countries than it used to be. English is becoming the international language. Certainly it is the language of international business. At Xi’an International Studies University in China where I teach, it is the most popular foreign language because students who have any desire for continuing contacts with the West (or to work for an international business) realize that English is essential. English is taught as a required subject in most schools in China at both the elementary and high school levels.

Pinyin

In fact, when mainland Chinese students learn English they actually have to learn two languages. That is because they have to learn an intermediate language called “pinyin.” This language converts Chinese characters into a phonetic version using the Latin or English alphabet. Thus the personal name of 杨晓华 is rendered as Yang Xiaohua in pinyin, which can then be read and understood by English speakers.

The use of computers has probably raised pinyin from being an obscure language system of interest only to linguists. The Chinese have their own software for creating documents in Chinese characters on the computer, but given the fact that they use the same “qwerty” keyboard as Westerns, there has to be an intermediate language. Using a Chinese language plug-in, the Chinese can use Microsoft Word to type in pinyin words and have them converted to a choice of Chinese characters. The writer then only has to select which Chinese characters are closest to his or her meaning and they become part of the text.

Furthermore, the Chinese have adopted the almost exclusive use of Arabic numerals in expressing numbers. I have been in business offices where accountants are working in large MS Exel spreadsheets where the words are in Chinese characters but the numbers are all the recognizable 1, 2, or 3. This is the numeral system used with mobile phones, sticker prices, advertising, and so on. The ancient Chinese numerals are rarely seen.

China’s Second Language

For these reasons, plus government urging, English has become the defacto second language of China. Most street signs in major cities and the directional signs on major highways are in both Chinese and English. This would be the equivalent of seeing all the signage along I-80 or the M-5 appear in English with Chinese subtitles.

English appears along with Chinese on the signs above many shops. In English-speaking countries this would happen only in Chinatown shopping districts.

The labeling in stores of products made by Western companies is usually in Chinese, but there is often enough English on the packaging (albeit in small lettering) to recognize what it is.

Limitations

Nevertheless, the prevalence of English in China is only a thin veneer. Once you get away from the tourist or university environments the number of English-capable Chinese drops off radically. Although most young people have acquired some English proficiency in school, if they do not use it, the words evaporate.

So I have often been stuck when encountering a sea of Chinese writing I do not understand, such as a shelf of Chinese products in the grocery store where not one word is in English.

I have a similar feeling when confronted with a computer (such as in the computer labs where I sometime teach) where you know you are looking at a Windows XP screen because all the icons are recognizable but it is otherwise unreadable because all the words are in Chinese. I can navigate for awhile just using icons, but eventually I get down to screens with Chinese words only, and then I am stuck.

Sign Language

So what is an English-only-speaking person to do? It is amazing how much can be accomplished with sign language. One can think of a whole range of hand gestures and head shakes that can communicate yes or no, bigger or smaller, too much or too little. My wife and I bought a camera the other day where the two lovely young sales girls did not understand any English, and we did not understand any Chinese. We pointed out what camera we were interested in, and they showed it to us. The on-screen menu was all Chinese, but they were able to navigate to the settings in the camera that set English as the standard language.

They had a brochure in English that described the specifications of the camera, and we mutually went over the number of mega pixels, camera speed, zoom capability, etc, exclusively with head nods. They showed us the sticker price. A headshake and hand wave by us indicated that the price was too high. They handed us a small hand-held calculator where we punched in our counter price. A look of agony passed over their faces as if we were driving them to the poor house, and they typed in their counter-counter price. Then we looked pained. They threw in a camera case. We crunched more numbers. They threw in a flash card. Body language indicated they had nearly reached their limit. One final number was entered into the calculator and the deal was done. There were smiles and handshakes all around without a word of English having been spoken.

Calligraphy

Written Chinese characters are beautiful, and they are very economical. You can express thoughts in only a few characters that it would take a sentence to express in English. I see them on signs and shops all around town expressed in multiple forms. Some are in block style, some in what we would call italics, and some in a flowing script. As with English letters, they can be written to evoke a sense of elegance on the one hand or in a comic style on the other.

Some of the characters are downright beautiful, and the Chinese take pains to make them even more so through the delicate art of calligraphy. To them calligraphy is art. The art museum in Shanghai has a gallery dedicated just to calligraphy.

Masters of calligraphy become famous, and books have been written about them and their styles, such as Chu Suiliang, a chancellor in the Tang Dynasty over a thousand years ago.¹

In many of the parks around China, retired people can be seen practicing calligraphy by writing on the pavement with long brushes dipped in water or a stick with water-soaked padding on the end. They write long passages of poetry in water that then evaporates an hour later under the hot sun. To keep themselves alert, they write one passage with their right hand and then another with their left. It becomes a kind of Tai Chi for the mind.

There is much to appreciate about the Chinese language. It is strange and mysterious on the one hand and beautiful and appealing on the other. For an outsider like me, it seems like an only partially-blossomed flower whose true beauty can be revealed in full bloom only if I take the time to learn its secrets.

Twisted History

2009-02-13T04:55:00.000-08:00

As interesting as our trip to Vietnam was (see post below), there was an aspect of it that left a bitter taste in my mouth. The Vietnamese have gone out of their way to tell the history of the Vietnam War from their point of view, as is their right. The victors get to determine how events are remembered, and let's face it, they were the victors and we were the losers. But their telling of the story was so blatantly one-sided that it was almost laughable. Following is a tale of a propaganda machine that went overboard.

Hoa Lo Prison
This is the old prison in downtown Hanoi built by the French and later inhabited by captured American fliers during the Vietnam War. The Americans gave it the nickname of the Hanoi Hilton. The part of the prison where they were incarcerated no longer exists; it was torn down to make way for an apartment building. The older part of the prison remains and has been turned into a museum.

During the first part of the last century the prison was used by the French primarily for political prisoners, most notably the early leaders of the Vietnamese Communist Party. After the French were defeated in 1954, the Vietnamese kept their own political prisoners there. The treatment of prisoners by the French, and later by the Vietnamese, was barbaric. Torture was routine. The prison even had its own guillotine. Even without torture, the day-to-day conditions of incarceration can barely be imagined by most in the West. It was not uncommon for prisoners to be shackled to their beds by one foot or two most of the day. The Vietnamese have dramatically shown how the French did this by the use of life-sized wax-type figures in the old single-person or group cells. Untold numbers of "heroic revolutionaries" were imprisoned in this way, and many perished under this harsh treatment.

There are two small rooms devoted to the American prisoners of war. Pictures on the wall show the POWs playing basketball, playing board games, and receiving presents at Christmas time. One glass-cased display shows John McCain's flight suit and helmet, the ones he was wearing when he was shot down over downtown Hanoi. The intent of the displays is to show that the treatment of the POWs was benign, almost a holiday. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, American POWs were housed and treated in the same manner as the French treated the Vietnamese before 1954 and the Vietnamese treated their own after 1954. After the POWs were repatriated in 1973, some of them drew pictures of how they were treated. As shown here, they were shackled in the same manner as in the days of the French.

But that is not all. The treatment was even more barbaric. The Vietnamese were keen on extracting confessions and political statements from the POWs largely to feed the growing anti-war movement in the United States. To do this they used a torture method called the "ropes." The procedure was to tie the wrists together (often cutting off circulation) and then bind the forearms and later the upper arms together until the elbows touched. This often had the effect of pulling the shoulder joints out of their sockets. The pain, as described by those who underwent this torture, was excruciating. But to apply even more pain, the arms were pulled upward bit by bit until the torturers got what they wanted or the prisoner blacked out. No POWs escaped the ropes without telling the Vietnamese anything they wanted to know. The diabolical part of this torture is that it left no marks, no visible signs of torture.

There is no display showing this.

At the tail end of 1972 when peace negotiations were underway in Paris and it appeared the POWs would eventually be released, the Vietnamese let up on the torture and started to prepare them to be turned over to the U.S. Food rations increased to fatten them up, the shackling was abandoned, and the prisoners did indeed play basketball and board games. But this was only in the last few months of the war. Unfortunately, this latter, small piece of the POW experience is the only thing the Vietnamese chose to display.

The War Museum
But the Hanoi Hilton version of twisted history is mild compared to the displays in the War Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. The lead display in the first room shows Robert McNamara's sentence from his book, "In Retrospect," that the war was a mistake. The following displays try to make the point that the main aim of the American bombing campaign in North Vietnam was to kill civilians. They have cherry-picked their quotations and pictures from sources I've never seen before.

In the rest of the museum there is a wall devoted to every bad thing the Americans ever did during the war. There's a wall for My Lai. A wall for napalm. A wall for Agent Orange, as if they were the only victim of this chemical--I also am an Agent Orange survivor. Every famous photograph ever taken showing the horrors of the war are displayed. The one of the naked young girl fleeing a napalm attack. Pictures showing soldiers burning villages that had housed Viet Cong guerrillas. The effects of very errant bomb that may have landed on a village are shown. But there are no pictures of their counter tactics: tiger pits, punji sticks, Viet Cong beheadings, you name it.

I accept the fact that the victors get to tell the story their way, and I never went to the museum expecting a balanced portrayal. But the presentations were so blatantly one-sided it was beyond belief. What I felt bad about was that the museum was mobbed that day with people from about every nationality, most of whom were too young to know much about the war. So for most young Australians, Germans, Americans, Vietnamese, Chinese, etc, the only thing they will know about the war is what they saw in this museum. There is no place they can go for a balanced presentation. In American museums, we are so much into political correctness that who can tell how our curators will tell the story.

Cambodia

2009-02-11T04:51:00.001-08:00

There are two themes in this post. The first is about Angkor Wat and the second is the floating villages on the Tonle Sap Lake. In actuality Angkor Wat is only one of the temples in the area around the town of Siem Reap. There are many temples hidden in the jungle over hundreds of square kilometers, each with the name of its own. Angkor Wat (wat means temple) is just the most famous and kind of serves as a general term for the whole area. Following is a photo essay of the three we liked best. There will be few words; the temples speak for themselves.

The Bayon
This temple comes at you suddenly. You go down a small path and are all of a sudden confronted by one of the ancient guard gates with four faces of Buddha, one on each side. All the imagery carved on the walls features both Buddhist and Hindu gods. This temple was built around 1200 AD when Hinduism was the dominant religion but was slowly being replaced by Buddhism. Inside there are doorways and staircases everywhere.

Ta Prohm
This temple is still in the jungle. While most temples are being restored, a decision was made to leave this one much like it was found. Its key features are the trees that are growing out of the walls and foundations. Giant roots from these trees snake across the stones and then plunge into the earth. Most of the temples were like this once, but the jungle has been hacked back and the stones restacked. The temple is where the movie "Laura Croft and the Tomb Raiders" was filmed. Elva is standing at one of the spots where a scene was filmed.

Angkor Wat
And now for the most famous temple. It is the largest in area covered. It has a majestic causeway over a 200 meter-wide moat leading into the outer enclosure and then another from there into the main temple complex. It was thronged the day we were there. There are corridors in every direction. It would be easy to get lost. It was big and grand, but truthfully I liked Ta Prohm better.

Floating Village
The Tonle Sap lake is the most peculiar thing. It is actually an "overflow basin" for the Mekong River. In the spring when the Mekong is in flood, the excess water flows into the Tonle Sap, and during the dry season the water flows back out again. All along the banks of the lake live a large colony of boat people. Either they are too poor to afford land or they are immigrants (mostly Vietnamese) with no legal standing in Cambodia, so they live as landless people on their boats and depend on the lake for their livelihood. They fish the lake (or have fish pens beneath their floating homes) and take the fish to market in trade for vegetables.

Vietnam

2009-02-10T22:15:00.000-08:00

It was very surreal for me to visit a country I have flown over several times but never set foot in, and which I spent some portions of two years of my life targeting during the war. As we drove around the country I recognized names of places because I had seen them previously on target maps.

It did not appear to me that much had changed since the war. Hanoi was a shock because it appeared frozen in time. It was dirty and congested with motorbikes. At night it was dark with little street lighting or illumination from neon signs in shops or billboards.

Few buildings in the downtown area were over two or three stories, and electrical wiring was a spider web of hundreds of wires tacked haphazardly to poles or store fronts. In fact, there was no downtown. No area with tall buildings, banks, government buildings, or grassy parks. The downtown consisted of crude shops surrounding the lake in the center of town and looked no different than it had decades ago.

The one thing that did give Hanoi some life was that the beginning of the lunar New Year was only hours way and people were busy preparing, one feature of which was to get an orange tree to decorate their homes. Hundreds were for sale or rent along side the road, and it seemed that every motorcycle had a tree of some size lashed to the back on the way home for the celebration.

Ho Chi Minh City was better. It was cleaner although the treatment of utility wires was no different. There were some high rises, many with hugh neon signs on top. There were some really upscale hotels down near the water front. It appears that Hanoi is a government town and HCMC is the commercial center.

The one bright spot in Hanoi was the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. All the streets leading to it were clean and transit upscale neighborhoods (actually the embassy housing area). I understand that Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body is inside and available for viewing on some days, but not on the day we were there. But the grounds and surroundings are well groomed and decked out with flowers.

The Ho Chi Minh museum is nearby, and for its size it is really quite remarkable. Of course, all that is in it are tributes to all the martyrs and historical figures of the communist revolution in Vietnam from Ho's time in Paris all the way through the war with America. There are displays of American weaponry from the war and commentary about the heroic efforts of the Vietnamese people in defeating a superior power. No surprise there; they were the victors and victors can usually determine how history is told.

Surprisingly Vietnam has turned into a tourist designation. When we were in Hanoi, there were lots of Caucasians walking around; it turned out most of them were Russians. Compared to the fridgid temperatures of eastern Russia, Vietnam must seem tropical. One of our destinations was Hai Long Bay near the Gulf of Tonkin. It is notable because of the hundreds of karst islands with their small fishing villages. We cruised for hours among them while we ate an on-ship lunch of Vietnamese food. I should note that Vietnamese food is much superior to Chinese food. It was very enjoyable.

While in HCMC we had the most interesting tour of the Mekong delta area. It was a long bus trip, but that was the interesting part. We drove south along the famous Route 1. It was very heavily populated with shops cheek by jowl and vendors along side the road selling everything imaginable.

It was slow going because the road was choked with motorcycles and scooters, the main form of transportation in this part of the world. By boat we cruised around on the Mekong River and ended up on some islands where we sat under a veranda on a 80 degree day and lunched on fish and fruit amid banana palms and breezes. It was hard to believe that 30 years ago the Viet Cong moved clandestinely through these marshy areas and American gunboats cruised these waters looking for them.

In many ways visiting Vietnam was like going back in history. We visited what used to be the Presidential Palace. It was a little haunting right from the first minute our bus drove through the gate. The palace is in prime condition now and a favorite tourist sight, but the minute I looked at it another image flashed through my mind. Compare these two pictures below and you'll see what I mean. If the second one doesn't mean anything to you, then Google it.

The Little Emperors of China

2009-02-05T01:10:00.000-08:00

Preface: This from an article written for Meridainmagazine.com that appeared the last of January, 2009. For many in the West, China’s one-child policy is a hot-button issue. Numerous academic and polemical articles have been written on it, with which I am only partially acquainted. But I see its fruits everyday on the streets and in the homes of the large Chinese city where I live, and I have a “street level” view of it through dozens of conversations with students, fellow teachers, and other acquaintances for whom the policy is a fact of everyday life. Polemics aside, this report may provide readers a small glimpse into this unique social phenomenon.

Chinese history is often defined in terms of dynasties and the various emperors that ruled in each dynasty. Children learn their names in grade school. Probably everyone has heard of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 AD) from the pottery and antiques that made it famous. Stretching back even further was the Qin (pronounced Chin) dynasty (221-210 BC) and its famous emperor, Shi Huangdi. This was the emperor who was responsible for the beginning of the fortified walls that eventually became the Great Wall of China and for the army of terracotta warriors that guard his tomb. What images that have survived show him to have been an imposing figure. One can only imagine him sitting on his throne issuing edicts, ruling over his generals, and even deciding who lives and who dies.

The One-Child Policy
While the emperors of old are long gone, there is talk these days about a new class of emperors—little emperors. These are the present generation of little children born under the edicts of China’s one-child policy.

This policy, first instituted in 1979 and increasingly enforced in the 1980s, was designed to control a population growth rate that threatened to outstrip China’s capacity to feed itself, and for almost 30 years it has restricted parents to only one child under the threat of heavy penalties. The policy is most strictly applied to urban dwellers where the demand for public services is most acute, but elsewhere over the years there have been many changes and exceptions. For example, in rural areas, two or more children are permitted, especially if the first is a girl. This exception bows to the need for rural families to have enough children to help work the farm. After the earthquake disaster in Sichuan province, parents were permitted to have more children to replace those lost in this tragedy. I am told that even in the city if both the husband and wife are themselves only children, they can have two children. Again this is a nod to practicality to avoid the situation where an only child becomes responsible for two aging parents and two sets of even older grandparents. This is known as the 4.-2-1 problem. There are many other exceptions—twins, for instance—but the norm for three decades have been to have only one child.

In terms of population control, the policy has apparently been very effective. One estimate claims that the policy has resulted in 300 million fewer Chinese being born than would otherwise have been the case—a number equal to that of the present population of the United States.

The Little Emperors
But what of the social consequences? The other day when I was in a taxi waiting for the stop sign to turn green. I saw a three-year-old driving his own small, motorized, toy car across the crosswalk. That a three-year-old should have his own car and be permitted to drive it around in traffic seemed to stretch the bounds of parental liberality. Only on second glance did I see that his grandfather, who followed a few steps behind, was actually controlling the car with a remote device. Still and all, this seemed like a major indulgence.

And the Chinese are not unaware that indulgences like this one have the potential for these children to become little emperors like those of old: issuing orders, making demands, and throwing fits when not obeyed. With four grandparents and two parents all doting on one little child, it is difficult to avoid turning them into little dictators—with their own remote-controlled cars. This phenomenon is studied in academia and appears often in the Chinese popular press. The Chinese themselves are quick to point out that they may be raising a generation of brats. They worry about their children’s sense of entitlement. While the grandparents may have lived through years of poverty

(and even famine), they nevertheless shower affection and gifts on their only grandchild. Grandparents and parents have been known to wait outside grade school all day to provide transportation home. They tie their shoes, carry their packs, and even wipe their bottoms long after they are able to do so themselves. Articles point out that this overindulgence may even have health consequences. The little emperors are becoming fast-food addicts, which may in turn foster a generation of obese kids. I remember seeing a mother with her eight-year-old in a McDonalds sitting patiently while he finished off an after-school treat of a milk shake and French fries. She was not eating. He can only be described as rotund.

Something Had To Be Done
While the idea of a government edict limiting how many children you can have is anathema to many in the West, I was surprised to learn that the average Chinese do not seem that concerned about it. Studies indicate that 75% of Chinese agree with the policy, and my anecdotal evidence would agree with that number. To them it is a practical matter. Something had to be done to control a mushrooming population, they say. One only needs to stand at a crowded bus stop during rush hour to understand their thinking.

Those in their 40s and 50s have seen an unbelievable transformation in China’s economy. While they might have been inclined in their early child-bearing years to have followed the traditional Chinese pattern of having more than one child and would have expected to tough it out as best they could economically, they now find that with only one child life has been better than they could have expected. Both parents have careers, a nice apartment, maybe a car, no concerns about feeding the family, and a child that is now in university. In dozens of my conversations with them it is apparent they feel the one-child policy has been a boon.

Down On the Farm
While one would expect this attitude from the urban elite, the view from the farm does not seem to be much different. One farmer who has two sons and three daughters—more than he could afford to send to high school—observed that without that essential education his children were doomed to “the bottom of society.” Others noted that more children means more mouths to feed. Farm life in China is not what it used to be. As in the West, youth are leaving the farm to seek their fortunes in the cities, so a large family seems to have lost its economic appeal.

One Child or Two?
From my conversations with those in their 20s and 30s, I can only conclude that their attitude toward the one-child policy is ambiguous. There are some who express a vague wish for a second child. If they have a girl, they say it would be nice to have a boy, mostly to carry on the family name. If they have a boy, then they might wish for a girl thinking that having a child of each gender is more desirable.

None that I have spoken with was interested in having a second child of the same gender. Some had more practical considerations. One young mother worried about the 4-2-1 problem and thought a second child might guarantee that her old age would be more comfortable, especially if it were a girl. Some were interested in a playmate for the first child. If a fine were the only barrier to having a second child, some might risk it. But the risk is not spread evenly over Chinese society. For those with government jobs, the penalty has been not only a fine but also possibly being fired, and with the loss of a job goes the apartment, insurance, pension and other benefits. Here the risk has been too great.

What If I Could?
In all my conversations, I have yet to find someone who wanted to have the policy overturned so they could have a large family. Or if they did, they were not ready to admit it to a foreigner, although none seemed guarded in their conversations with me. Most of my acquaintances are young, urban professionals, and they seem reconciled to having only one child. In fact, it almost seems that the policy gives them top cover to pursue their professional careers and move in more affluent circles. Since they can have only one child, most are putting it off until much later in their careers.

China’s Treasure
While all these social issues sort themselves out, there is no denying that the Chinese love their children. They dote on them, they are proud of them, they display them. One sees the beauty of family life everywhere on any given day. I see grandparents or parents lovingly tending to these little ones in the parks, on the streets, in the shopping malls. They push them around in prams or hold their arms to steady them as they take their first wobbly steps. This time of year they are all bundled up so that their bright eyes peering out are the only evidence there is a child under all the padding. I have seen a child or two acting like a miniature Shi Huangdi, but no more so than in any Wal-Mart on any given Saturday in the United States.

For the most part, what I see from my vantage point is pure joy on the faces of young parents as they treasure this one little child. And the children laugh and play under their parents’ watchful eyes just as you would see anywhere in the world. China is now into the second generation of the one-child policy and while it may yet reap bitter social and economic fruit from this bit of social engineering, for now there is no doubt that the little emperors of China are also little treasures.

Shanghai

2009-01-12T17:06:00.000-08:00

During the winter break between semesters (about seven weeks), Elva and I are touring China, Vietnam and Cambodia. Our first stop was Shanghai. To us this is like a mystery city. It has such an exotic name and appears in Western literature as a far away place in history where the ordinary rules of society do not apply: opium dens, Charlie Chan, coolies, queues and gang pressing of thousands of Chinese to build the Central Pacific railroad. It is still possible to see old films of turn-of-the-century Shanghai with old cars, trolleys, and other modern features that the British introduced into China. But of course today Shanghai stands on its own two feet and has little that it needs from the West. The thing that met our eyes after stepping off the airplane was a modern airport as nice as any we have ever been seen anywhere in the world. Once in the city, we were overwhelmed with the skyscrapers. No only are they tall, they are beautifully designed with some of the most innovative architecture I’ve seen anywhere. We went first to the Oriental Pearl Tower,

which as I understand it was inspired by a Chinese poem about pearls dropping one by one. From the observation deck on the uppermost “pearl” we could see over the whole city and the river below. Unfortunately it was smoggy and the tall buildings loomed out of the dirty brown air like specters.

The next day was better—clear and cold. This made for better pictures, but we were very uncomfortable. Shanghai is the largest city in China, currently estimated at about 18 million, so there were hundreds of buildings that soared into the sky and had some architectural features that

were worth photographing, but eventually we had to give our cameras a rest. The more prominent buildings, in addition to being tall, all had something unique in the way they were designed that was intended to set them apart. For many of them it was the way the top of the building was designed. They were pointed, or had unique antennae or towers, or had spacecraft-like saucers on top. You

can see what I mean from the photos accompanying this blog. We also visited some old neighborhoods with the traditional Chinese architecture. In most cases, however, when photographing the old-style roof line, in the background you could see a modern building peeking

out above it. This is one on the paradoxes of China—the old and the new together. In addition to the skyscrapers, we were next most intrigued with the Shanghai Museum. It was a beautiful building as architecturally unique as all the rest although not a high rise. It was the ceramics gallery that went to our hearts. We have some appreciate for ceramics because of our son Jared who during high school created beautiful pottery in our basement and fired it in our back yard. So we know what it takes. In this museum we followed the development of pottery from its first development in

prehistory down through the various dynasties to the porcelain China is famous for today. Viewing it was much like photographing the tall buildings: each time you turned the corner there was another

vase more beautiful than the one before. There was no way you could pick a favorite. Nevertheless, we have picked a few for you to consider. Please feel free to make a comment and tell us which one you favor. So this is our take on Shanghai: amazing skyscrapers and a first-class museum.

A Fall Day on the City Wall of Xi'an

2009-01-04T02:48:00.000-08:00

When people think about Xi’an, China, they usually think about the terracotta warriors, but a sometimes overlooked fact is that Xi’an has around it an ancient wall just like the Great Wall of China. It looks very much the same. It’s as tall as the one guarding the northern approaches to Beijing and even wider. The construction is the same: a rubble and rammed-earth center fronted and topped by gray stone.

It has the same crenelations and watch towers as the Great Wall. The major difference, of course, is that it is not nearly as long. While the Great Wall stretches for about 4000 miles, the city wall of Xi’an is only 11 miles in length. Its main purpose was to surround and protect the city, just like many walls around ancient cities. But it is the best preserved city wall in China even though it is almost 700 years old. The city fathers have done their best to make it a tourist attraction. It is lit at night and a beautiful park has been created between the base of the wall and the old moat.

The city wall also serves as the site of many civic events. In early November, the city holds a marathon race on the wall. We’re not talking about a real marathon of 26.2 miles. Rather there are different distances one can run, or stroll, or slowly amble: 5K, 10K, or longer. It is a fun time.

Many of the foreign teachers from our university participated, including Elva and me. (You can guess what distance we chose.)

Our bus load of teachers looked like a miniature United Nations. While nearly all the foreign teachers speak English, their native languages are German, French, Russian, Hindi, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, Thai, and many others. It’s really interesting to hear us all talking at once on the bus.

The race on the city wall is a great civic event. Thousands attend from the local area, and there are dedicated long-distance runners who fly in from other parts of China and other countries to race. Many nationalities are represented.

In addition to the racers, many other civic organizations participate just to add to the festivities of the day. There was a senior citizen drum band with the participants all dressed in ancient Chinese costumes. Another group of retired men demonstrated spinning tops. They spun them on strings stretched between sticks and tossed or balanced the tops. There were musical bands. It really was festive.

We each got a number to pin on our chests and were divided and started out in small groups. The young ones ran off at top speed; we older ones paced our selves—meaning we walked the whole way. It was a beautiful fall day, clear and mild. Flags were flapping in the slight breeze. The sun was warm on our faces as we walked along. About half way to the turn-around point near one of the old watch towers, the real racers passed us on their return trip and cheers went up from spectators.

along the route. Eventually we completed the circuit and returned to the starting point, although the crowd had largely dispersed by then. We felt a little like marathoners who arrive at the finish line after everyone’s gone home. But that’s okay; we had a great time.

Family in China

2008-12-03T04:02:00.000-08:00

This is an article I wrote for Meridianmagazine.com. You can view it here

It will come as no surprise to Meridian readers that family is important in China. Anyone who has read Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth will remember how family life is depicted. The protagonist, Wang Lung, fights to feed and protect his family in the midst of famine and war. His long-suffering wife, O-Lan births her children alone at home and then returns the same day to help her husband in the fields. His aged father lives with them, and when the family flees a drought, Wang Lung (following the Confucian ideal of filial piety) carries his father on his back. In better times, Lung and O-Lan, their sons, daughters-in-laws, their children, and even the wicked uncle and his family all live together.

A Nation of Shops

You can still see traces of this today. I am sure it still exists in rural areas although my exposure to this is limited. Rural China is changing. Few of today’s generation want to stay on the farm; many are migrating to the cities seeking new opportunities. And that is where I see today’s Wang Lungs. China is a nation of small shops, most of them run as family businesses. Many of them front out onto the street, open in the front with no door. Inside can be seen one of the family members manning the shop and helping customers. Behind a curtain in the back other family members are eating lunch, visiting, washing clothes or taking care of personal grooming. It is common for several generations to live upstairs above the shop. Children play underfoot and are tended by whatever sibling, cousin, or aunt is available. In a covered bazaar with many shops fronting out onto a narrow alley, some of the shops—one at this end, one at the other end, and one in the next alley—are owned by the same extended family. Once I was admiring a baby in one shop as it clung to its “mother,” but the next day I saw the same baby in another shop around the corner with its real mother. Another time when I was trying to pay for an item with a bill too large to cash, a small child ran up the street to an uncle’s shop to get change.

Grandpas and Grandmas

It seems that no matter how upscale a family gets, the family ties remain the same. There are many upwardly mobile families in China these days—young professionals on the rise. In nearly all cases, the mother works and the child (or children) are placed in daycare or tended by the grandparents. Many professionals in China retire in their 50s on a small government pension. Housing is hard to come by so it seems a natural thing for three generations to live together with the oldest taking care of the youngest. Every day on the streets of the city where I live I see a grandmother or grandfather gently shepherding a toddler along. It is a most endearing sight. In the morning I see grandfathers pedaling the family bicycle to kindergarten with a young child sitting behind. In the evening the flow is reversed, again with the grandparents providing transportation.

In the Words of My Students

I know little about the dynamics of family life in China. I suppose it may be the same as for any family in the West: a mix of joy and tears, arguments and reconciliation, high expectations and disappointments, stars and prodigals, Lamans and Nephis. But I do know there is love. It is revealed, unsolicited, in the bios and writing projects of my students. Each has filled out a card with his or her student number, name, contact information, and a little something personal about themselves. Guan Long (who uses the English name Lavender) wrote about her beloved Grandpa with whom she has lived since she was born. She added, “I love our family where I can feel more comfortable and happier.” Fan Shan Shan (Pheobe) writes, “We love each other very much, and as I grow up we’re more and more like friends.” Liu Xiao Xi’s (Alex) parents both work, one as a policeman and the other as a government employee, but she says, “Love and harmony are very important in my family, and I love my parents very much.”

When I asked them to write about their families, the results sounded like they had come from a Seminary class. Wang Zijia (Myra) wrote that, “My mother seems to be an angel sent by God. No words, no languages can express my feeling toward her. I think I will cherish the precious memory we have shared with one another forever.” And a similar sentiment was expressed by Xing Jie (Jessie) who wrote these profound words, “Family is where you get the power to move on.”

“I Am Their Hope”

In many cases it is on the backs of my young students that the family will move on. Families make an enormous investment in their children by sending them to a university. While it is obvious that the parents of some students are full partakers of China’s new prosperity—their children are taken to college in black Buicks (China’s new status symbol), carry laptops, and have braces on their teeth—it is equally obvious that others are sending their children to college on a prayer and a shoestring. Some students come from small villages. When describing his parents, one student simply wrote, “They are peasants.” I took this to be literal, not figurative. Having a child graduate from college is sometimes the key to upward mobility. Often the whole extended family will chip in. One student wrote about how her older businessman brother was funding her education. I was asking one promising young student about her parents. She said they were farmers, and it became clear further on in the conversation that the farm was very small, that there was no mechanization, and that the earnings were meager. Then most poignantly she said, “I am their hope.”

A Bitter Choice

In a land where retirement plans are not universal, children are indeed the hope of their parents in both the filial and financial aspects. Young people are amazed when they learn we have seven children, when they plan on having only one. But I was shocked when one young professional said she planned on having none. Early in their marriage, she and her husband had made a choice. Her aged parents lived with them and were totally dependent on them. The living quarters were small and cramped, and because of the crunch on housing this was not likely to change. They had decided that she had more of an obligation to her parents—to make their declining years comfortable—than she did to a future generation. They had arrived at this decision with full knowledge that the family line would end with them. In my experience, I find that while this attitude is not common, it is frequent.

From Dawn to Dusk

Maintaining a family unit economically is not easy. Chinese families work hard and long. This is particularly true of shop owners who always seem to be in their shops day and night. The idea of a weekend has little meaning for them, except that it may mean a spike in business since many professionals and government employees are off on the weekend. I know a man who runs a small copying business near campus. He operates with one copy machine and two computers out of a space that measures about six by eight feet. This is the family business. And he is always there. His hours are 8:00 am to 10:00 pm, seven days a week. But family is nearby. I see his little girl playing around his feet sometimes.

Settling In

2008-10-24T00:52:00.000-07:00

We can hardly believe we have been here for almost two months. We are so busy and the experiences keep coming at us so fast we can barely take them in let alone record them in this blog. Nevertheless, we have settled in nicely and are comfortable in our circumstances.

In the previous blog we described the building in which we live, and there is a picture of what it looks like on the outside. The inside is equally Spartan, but we have gone to great efforts to fix things up even though we know we will have to leave them behind after our tour is over.

Our first effort was to fix up the kitchen. That meant buying some appliances we thought we needed to make life livable. Elva bought a few pots, dishes, a frying pan for the gas burner, and a microwave. We have since added a toaster and crock pot. But the purchase that really put our life in order was a new washing machine. It only does a small load. It fills from a cold-water tap under the kitchen sink (although you can add some warm water from the faucet) and drains into the kitchen floor. But it works great. We then hang the wet clothes on a line on the back porch if it’s warm enough outside or on a drying rack in the spare room when it’s not. Oh, we also had to buy an iron to press them with.

Basic furniture was already in the apartment—sofa, chairs, desks, and bed—but it was pretty bleak. True to our natures, we spent the money to decorate. (That was when we had money before the stock market tanked.) Beautiful Chinese wall hangings are now displayed in the living room and bedroom. We have also bought some original Chinese oil paintings (and have our eyes on more). A colorful bedspread spruced up the bedroom.

We had functional drapes in all the rooms, but they were not up to Elva’s standards. They were an ugly beige color, dirty, and older than Lao-Tzu. Moreover, the hems were uneven, which gave Elva nightmares. But a trip to the fabric market put this right. For a few hundred Chinese yuan she had new ones made. They were done in two days by young girls on treadle sewing machines who were working in an outdoor alley. They did a good job. Gold for the bedroom and red and gold for the living room. (It seems that red and gold are our colors these days.) And all the hems are the same length.

But the weather is turning cold. The leaves are dropping. Fall is here and winter is not far behind. I guess we’ll be back to the fabric market for winter coats soon.

XISU

2008-10-02T23:49:00.000-07:00

We would like to introduce you to our university, the Xi’an International Studies University—known locally as XISU (pronounced, Shee Sue). It is one of 20 or 30 universities, institutes, or colleges in Xi’an. In fact, Xi’an is known as a university town.

Elva in front of XISU's old campus gate

We live on what is known as the old campus. It is the site of the of the original university established in the 1950s, partly with the help of the Soviet Union. The architecture of the older buildings mimics that of Soviet-style construction during the Cold War, which is mostly concrete walls covered with plaster inside and out. There are newer buildings as well that are very modern in their outward appearance. The old campus houses faculty, some students, and features cafeterias, ball fields, and administration buildings, as well as our foreign teachers’ residence compound.

Our apartment, first floor, on the left

It is a ‘downtown” university on a busy street not far from the old city wall. Outside its front gates is one of the busiest commercial districts of the city where the traffic is crazy and the streets are alive with people, street vendors, shops and bus stops. But inside the campus is peace and tranquility, with tree-lined streets and students sitting and visiting on arbor-covered benches.

XISU's new campus

The real action is on the new campus about 20-plus kilometers out of town. This is where most of the students live and go to school. China has an increasing number of young people it has to educate, a population that has outstripped the facilities of most of the in-town campuses. The only solution has been to build new campuses on the outskirts of town in what used to be wheat and corn fields. XISU is one of a dozen or more of these. So while we live on the old campus, every morning we board a bus for a 30-minute ride to the new campus. Given the nature of traffic in China, this is an exhilarating and often death-defying event.

The Library

The architecture of the new campus is as modern as it gets although the construction technique of poured concrete appears to be the same. Its centerpiece is a soaring new library of glass, concrete, and shinning steel. There are long rows of dormitories on one side of a quad and two rows of multi-level classrooms and administration buildings on the other. A student cafeteria and ball fields are on the far end.

The usual schedule is to teach two classes of about 30-40 students in the morning, each class lasting for two hours. Then there is a 2-hour lunch/rest break followed by another 2-hour class in the afternoon. Each freshman class is divided up into 30- or 40-person groups at the beginning of the year, and those groups stay together as a class for all four years of their university life. Moreover, for the most part they stay in the same classroom all that time; the teachers are the ones that move about from room to room. The students even decorate their “homeroom” according to their own tastes. One has a giant mural of Yeo Ming, a national hero.

One of Steve's classes

Such are the physical aspects of XISU, the “bones.” In a future post we will describe the “heart” of XISU: the magic of the classroom and the spirit of those in it.

Concert

2008-09-28T21:11:00.000-07:00

One never knows when one will discover a little jewel—a diadem—in a faraway place. We discovered one last Saturday evening. All the foreign teachers at our university—and indeed foreigners from across the city—were invited to a musical concert sponsored by the Shaanxi Province. It was in honor of the contribution that “foreign experts” had made to the province. Essentially it was an awards program. The provincial governor was there, and he handed out awards—Oscar-like—to both Chinese and foreigners who had been working on various international cooperation and exchange programs. This was followed by the concert.

And what a concert it was. A full orchestra came on stage, all in black tuxedos or dresses, just like the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC. Most of the instruments were those normally associated with a classical western orchestra: percussion, horns, basses, and so on. But the string section featured only a family of Chinese instruments I believe are called Huqin that has a drum-shaped, hollow, snake-hide covered sound box at the bottom from which extends upward a round stick on which are strung only two strings that were strummed with a bow. A small version called an erhu replicates a violin and a larger one, zhonghu, serves as a viola. Interestingly enough the sound is not dissimilar from their western cousins.

Then the conductor made her entrance. She was a statuesque woman with horn-rimmed classes and shinny, black hair that was pulled back rather severely in a ponytail that streamed glisteningly down her back and extended below her waist. She was dressed in the traditional western black tie and tails and was a strong presence on stage. She directed the orchestra commandingly through a variety of Chinese and western musical pieces. As she shook her head in time with the music, the movement flowed all the way down her hair like ripples in a pond.

The Chinese pieces featured names like, “The Jubilant Yellow Earth,” “Heavenly Road,” “The Butterfly Loves,” and “The Red Detachment of Women.” All were by Chinese composers but sounded very western. We also enjoyed the “Carmen” overture and a piece from La Traviata. It was a first-class performance. All these numbers were performed beautifully. The audience was on its feet for a standing ovation at the end and coaxed two encores from the orchestra. It was a terrific evening.

Pomegranates

2008-09-19T17:03:00.001-07:00

You never know what new and exciting thing is awaiting you just around the corner. Last week, the English department was looking for a couple of American teachers to help advertise the upcoming Pomegranate Festival. The fruit ripens around the end of September and apparently it’s a big deal. Elva and our next-door neighbor, Edith Brown, another BYU teacher, volunteered. They had no idea what they were in for.

They were picked up in a big, black, government car and driven for miles out into the country. Upon arrival at the pomegranate grooves, which covered a whole mountain, it seemed the entire press corps of Xi’an was there. They interviewed Elva and Edith (with the help of a Chinese translator from the college) and shot hundreds of photographs of them picking the pomegranates. Elva felt like a movie star and had a great time.

Afterwards they were treated to a lovely Chinese banquet with many different foods. Elva tried most of them but let many pass by. After the officials observed that Elva and Edith weren’t making it with the chopsticks, they took pity on them and gave them forks. By the way they were treated you would have thought they were very important people. Anyway, they were in several local newspapers the next day and even made the front page of one of them. So what started out as an ordinary day ended up with Elva's picture splashed across the front of a Chinese newspaper. Elva’s students were very impressed .

Elva's Post

2008-09-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

We have been in China for almost three weeks and wow have we been busy. I know we promised to write on our blogspot at least once a week but as you know it didn't get done. There are too many reasons to explain why that didn't happen, but I will try to fill you in on what we did get done.

We arrived in Xian late Wednesday night the 26th of August after 23 hours of traveling. They showed us our apartment and we went right to bed. We only slept a few hours because we were still on Virginia time. I got up and unpacked all seven of our suitcases. First problem was I had forgotten to pack a bath towel. We have wonderful BYU teachers across the hall and they loaned us one. They also took us to the store which is about a one mile walk to buy some needed supplies. It is a good thing there were four of us to carry it all back.

It is a lot of work to try to collect the things you need to set up an apartment. We bought a pot, a frying pan, a shower curtain, towels and wash clothes, and some dishes. We had some nice Chinese friends who went with us because every thing is written in Chinese. We also bought a very small washing machine and a microwave. I have learned that you only use one thing at a time or you blow out the circuit. Since we have no car, it really has been challenging trying to get everything home. Yesterday we bought two book cases, and two lovely young sales girls helped us carry them the two kilometers to our apartment. We tried to pay them but they would not take it. Every one is so very willing to help us.

On that first Friday here we had a meeting with the Dean of the Business Department and all the other teachers who will be teaching with us. The meeting was all in Chinese accept when they introduced us and had us talk a little about ourselves.

We started teaching classes on Monday. The students are all so happy to have a foreign teacher. They make us feel very special. Steve loves his classes. He is teaching two writing classes with 40 students in each class. He spends a lot of time correcting papers. He also teaches three oral English classes and one class on History of Western Civilization with 150 students in it. I went to his class this week and it was outstanding. I have been assigned to teach five classes of Listening and Speaking and three classes of Business English. We work very hard at getting our lessons prepared because each of our classes is two-hours long.

We live on what is called the old campus near the center of the city, but we teach on the new campus on the outskirts of town, about a 30-minute bus ride away. The traffic is crazy. I have never seen cars drive so close to each other and so fast. Every bus ride is a new adventure.

We eat many of our meals in the campus cafeteria. The food is very different and most of the things we have tried we have liked. Some of it is too spicy for us. But we found peanut butter and jelly in the store so P&J sandwiches are always a good bet. Eggs are also available, and they come in several shapes and colors.

Today is the third Sunday we have been here. A story about our Branch President was in this week’s Church News—look it up. We have about 20 people in our branch consisting of 12 BYU teachers, two young students from BYU, and a woman from South Africa who is running an orphanage, and assorted others. Last Sunday after church the whole branch took taxi's to the orphanage, had a pot-luck dinner, and visited the babies. Right now she has 19 babies waiting to be adopted. Some of them are in need of operations (e.g. cleft pallets) before that can happen. How I loved holding them and loving them. She is an amazing women. I hope we can do some service for her. Steve has been called to be a counselor to the President, and I was called to be a primary teacher although we have only one 11-year-old boy in our Primary. They called two primary teachers: one to give the lesson and one to do sharing time. We get the needed material off the Internet.

Life is surely different of us, but we are well and happy. Remember us in your prayers as we do you. We love and miss everyone more then I can express. Please send us your news by e-mail (elvaorton@gmail.com). The internet is up most of the time now, and I will try to answer every e-mail.

Done (or is it finished?)

2008-08-17T14:24:00.001-07:00

The big day finally arrived. We finished our course of instruction. We even received a certificate noting the 100 hours of instruction we received in Chinese history, language and culture. Our minds are on overload, but our spirits are high. We are anxious to be on our way. We will have a week back in Virginia to decompress, retool, and repack before climbing back on an airplane for our 16-plus-hour flight to Beijing and then on to Xi’an.

We have been preparing for this adventure for almost a year now. We remember fondly having dinner with a couple of BYU China Teachers Program (CTP) instructors last year in Beijing (due to the kindness of Mac and Janet Coleman) when this idea was first hatched. Since then we have sold our home and moved into a smaller one (thereby requiring less maintenance). In the process, we have divested ourselves of half our possessions. We have spent hours on the phone with former CTP teachers finding out what was involved. After all this, we’re ready.

In addition to the Chinese and teaching lessons, one of the joys of this experience has been the people with whom we have had the pleasure of associating. These are some of the best people we have ever known. Most are retired professionals who have raised large families and are now on their way to do a little more good in the world. After all these hours in one another’s company we have bonded more than you would think possible. We have delivered practice lessons to one another and sat in discussion groups together. Most are amazingly talented and will do a great job for their Chinese students. We feel privileged to be in their company. We feel a little sad to see the group break up as we go to our separate universities, but we will see each other in Hong Kong in January when we reconvene for more training, and we are already looking forward to it.

2008-2009 China Teachers

However, there is a little group of us that will remain together because we all will be going to Xi’an. Ross and Edith Brown will be with us at Xi’an International Studies University (XISU), and Roger and Linda Terry along with Ronald and Diane Kimball will be nearby at Northwestern Polytechnic University. And there will be other BYU CTP returnees whom we have not met. So we will be in good company. Wish us God’s speed.

Xi'an China Teacher: (left to right) Brown, Terrys, Kimballs, and Ortons

In training

2008-08-09T17:42:00.000-07:00

Steve and Elva are about to embark on another great adventure: we’re going to China to teach English in a Chinese university. Our destination is the Xi’an International Studies University in Xi’an, China, or XISU as it is known. This is a program sponsored by the Kennedy Center for International Studies at Brigham Young University. We are very excited about this opportunity. We have been to China once before as tourists, including Xi’an, and thought a return trip would be great. There are about 80 of us being sponsored by the Kennedy Center, spread across about a dozen universities in China. All of us are retired empty-nesters looking for a way to serve others while having a little adventure of own.

But first a little training. Right now we are at the Kennedy Center in a crash course of Chinese history, customs, language and teaching methods. Our brains are full and our fannies have turned to cast iron as the results of training sessions that last from 8:00 in the morning to 9:00 at night. And we are only half way through.

We’ll return to Virginia for about a week before finally jetting off to Beijing and Xi’an on August 26^th. Check in on this blog from time to time and we’ll keep you updated.

Is It . . . Fortune or Misfortune?

2007-07-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

The story is told in the Taoist Huainan Zi (Book of the Master of Huainan) about a man who lost his horse. “Surely this is a great misfortune,” said his neighbors. But in the Taoist tradition the man was sanguine about it, thinking that some good might come of this down the road. “We’ll see,” said the man.

Sure enough, several months later the horse returned bringing with it several other horses. “How fortunate,” said the neighbors. “We’ll see,” said the man. While his son was attempting to break one of the horses, he was bucked off and broke his leg. “What a great misfortune,” said the neighbors. “We’ll see,” said the man.

During the son’s recuperation, the army swept through and forcibly inducted all the healthy young men of the village, but the son with a splint still around his leg and on crutches was exempt. How fortunate for him since all those caught up in the military campaign met with untimely deaths.

This story could go on and on, but enough has been told for us to see interesting parallels in our own lives.¹

The Farmer of Xian

In the same land where this story took place I recently met a man whose own life story could be a modern version of the ancient one. In 1974, as an impoverished farmer he was digging a well when he happened on what appeared to be pottery fragments. More digging brought up the pieces of a ceramic head.

An interesting find, thought he; maybe even a turn of good fortune.

“Not so,” said his father when the man brought his find home. Citing the ancient Chinese suspicion of burial grounds and the dead, the father thought that bringing an unearth clay image of a head into the house could bring only misfortune. Although the family tried to conceal this find, word eventually leaked out, and the authorities began excavations of the site.

Of course what the farmer had discovered was what is now known as the famous terra-cotta warriors of Xian, China.² The find has been a boon for the Chinese and the government has carefully preserved the site. Today it is a busy tourist attraction and undoubtedly a welcome source of income for the government.

A few of the terra-cotta warriors, as photographed by the author in 2007.

But what of the farmer? Did fortune or misfortune visit his house? He did receive a reward. It wasn’t much: a new wheelbarrow. The government at the time had more egalitarian views, and rewards that raised one individual above the collective were frowned on. Nevertheless, a new wheelbarrow could be considered as fortunate indeed. But after this early recognition the farmer returned to his farm and faded into obscurity.

Until 1998, that is, when U.S. President Bill Clinton visited Xian. After the official tour of the terra-cotta warriors he asked what had become of the farmer and expressed an interest in seeing him. A meeting was arranged, and all of a sudden the misfortune of obscurity appeared to turn into the fortune of celebrity.

All this high-level attention paid to the farmer prompted authorities to think the farmer might play a more prominent role in this important tourist site. Accordingly, the farmer was provided a place in one of the museums where he could sit and interact with the tourists, and receive some belated recognition for the role he had played in the site’s discovery. Here the farmer could retire from the rigors of farm life and enjoy his declining years in comfort. Many would say this was fortunate, indeed.

But the farmer did not consider it so. The museum was a non-smoking building and the farmer missed his pipe.

Eventually another location was found and now the farmer sits in the souvenir shop, signs autographs, and enjoys some degree of celebrity status. You can see him there today, enjoying what seems a turn of good fortune at last.³

Fortune or Misfortune?

And so it is with all our lives. Seeming misfortunes turn out to be blessings. And what may seem like an answer to our heart’s desire fades with time and perspective.

How many times have we heard someone say that a seeming catastrophe ended up being a blessing in disguise? A man loses his job but ends up with another with better circumstances and remuneration. One door closes, but others open up. A family tragedy has the unforeseen consequence of drawing family members closer together. In the eternal perspective the tragedy itself may have little import, whereas family togetherness will.

I’m certain that as Paul lay stricken and blind on the ground on the way to Damascus he thought a great misfortune had befallen him. But a new world was about to open for him. Had the Lord not intervened in the course of his life it is likely that few would know his name today, but the sudden turn of events, as unfortunate as they seemed at the time, ensured that his name would be known for good among Christians around the world.

The next time we lose a metaphorical horse and count it as misfortune, perhaps we would do well to pause and reflect, even as the Chinese of old, on the words, “we’ll see.”

1 - For an alternate version of the same story see http://www.chinapage.com/story/losthorse.html

2 - See http://www.allchinanet.com/china_travel/terra_Cotta_Warriors.shtml

3 - Story as related by Chinese tour guide, Xian, China, 4 June 2007