Slow Boat

So where to start..?

2012-02-12T22:56:00.000+08:00

Hmm, how about "I'm back!" After some time off in Thailand, a conference with our organization in Hong Kong, and two overnight train rides across a good chuk of southern China, the kids and I are back at home outside of Chengdu, where it's just a bit, um, colder than it was in Thailand.

You'll notice that I said "the kids and I" - Jane is still just outside of Bangkok, where she is participating in an ecovillage design conference. It's a great opportunity for her, and ties directly in to several paths that she'd like to take professionally once we leave China. The conference has been a long one - seven weeks total - which puts her back in China by the first week of March.

So in the meantime, I'm here at home single dadding it, which I'm enjoying in an ever so slightly hermit-ish kind of way. Classes don't start for another week, and because the weather has been so gukky (yes, that's a word), I've been enjoying spending some time at home with them, with no big plans other than making sure they've been properly introduced to all of the Star Wars movies and an extended Monopoly game or five. And while the Lego intergalactic trade routes have been established through our household (much to the chagrim of Ysa, who would rather be playing school), Im slowly finding a balance between easing back in to the China groove on one hand, and planning ahead for our next steps after our time with MCC ends this summer on the other.

Which means writing reports for our organization, writing lesson plans, and getting a resume or six into circulation. Balanced by an occasional dose of procrastination. (My routine for writing material for a deadline: 1) Spend an entire day doing Absolutely Nothing Productive when I know I should be writing. 2) During this time, become increasingly grumpy and frustrated. Give up on any hope of ever getting anything useful done Ever. 3) Open a Word document. Decide on the formatting and the font. Write a sentence, then delet it. 4) Go to bed in frustration after looking at a few web pages vaguely related to the topic. 5) Wake up with the introductory sentence fully formed in my head, with the next five paragraphs writing themselves within a half hour. 6) Wish that I could send a note back in time to my yesterday's self to tell him to chill out a bit and stop the worrying already.)

So in and amongst my routine, I hope to be back to life on the blog again, if only to reassure friends and relatives that yes, we're still around. Content will, as always, be fairly nonlinear, and there will probably be the usual nonapologetic random pauses between posts. (By now, this (and the addition of randomly nested paranthetical remarks) should come as no suprise.)

Anouncing a change in venue

2012-01-11T10:32:00.000+08:00

Yes, the Slow Boat has headed for warmer territory, and is now anchored in the Gulf of Thailand on an island named Koh Kut near the Cambodian border. No pictures as of yet, and nothing that we've done that's incredibly different from previous trips that we've taken to Thailand. We're doing many of the things that we did last year - watching the kids run around on the beach, eating yummy street food, looking at piles of disassembled automobile transmissions near our favorite hotel in Bangkok... Traditions are traditions, after all.

And some new experiences as well, including the first Thai transvestite vampire movie that I've ever seen (shown on a bus while the kids were asleep - try seeing that on Greyhound!) As per usual when the Slow Boat is in ports elsewhere, more details to follow as internet connections and my personal whims and motivation dictates. Enjoy your Januaries, everyone!

The Mathemagical Awesomeness that is Vi Hart

2012-01-04T09:32:00.001+08:00

Here at Slow Boat's main shipyard, we (and by that, I mean "I") have been doing a lot of thinking about education lately. (Hmmm, could it be related to the next direction I want to go in my life? Crazy, huh?) As a result, you just might be seeing a few education-related thoughts, videos, or links crop up here from time to time.

And speaking of education and awesomeness, what better place to start than Vi Hart? A rare mix of mathematics, creativity, music, art, and humor, flavored with a healthy dose of girl power awesome. Here's one of her latest videos. If you haven't checked her site out, be prepared to park yourself in front of the computer for a while to check out her past videos as well. Bring the kids!

Lessons learned while falling

2012-01-03T19:31:00.000+08:00

Last spring, I was headed off to one of my freshman classes that I had been discouraged with. They were fine talking with each other, but when it came to talking out in class, they just wouldn't do it. "What was missing?" I asked myself, and the answer came very clearly; Trust. You can read and write by yourself, and you can listen by yourself, but when you speak a new language in front of others, you need to trust the people you are making yourself vulnerable in a certain way, and placing your trust in the people you are speaking to. So how to start talking about trust, in a foreign language, in a way that would possibly be understood?

Hearkening back to my oh so many days as a camp counselor, and in church youth groups before that, I immediately thought of a trust fall. A bit cheesy, perhaps, but essentially simple - one student stands on a table or desk and falls backwards into a group of eight or more other students. As long as the person falling keeps their legs and back perfectly straight, it is totally safe and easy, as the weight of the person falling is distributed among so many people. Ah, if only I could get my students to do a trust fall... but no, I didn't think they'd go for that. Not when saying an English sentence in front of twenty students was too difficult for them.

All that to say that thirty minutes later, I ended up standing on a desk counting slowly backwards from twenty with a panicking cluster of fifteen of my students behind me, all freaking out because they were quickly realizing that I was indeed going to fall backwards into them when I reached zero. Which I did, and quite safely, too. In fact, it worked so well (aside from a very elevated heart rate on my part) that I went on to do the same exercise in all my other classes last spring, and in all of the classes that I taught this fall as well.

So, after doing this a few times, and giving my students a chance to write about the experience a bit before discussing it with the class (giving my heart rate time to come back to normal), here are a few things that I learned from the experience:

Trust is very surprising to people.
There is often a big difference between perceived risk and actual risk. (In other words, we usually think a given activity is riskier than it actually is.)
Making yourself purposefully vulnerable is a very powerful act.
If you are going to embarrass yourself in public, do it memorably.
It's necessary to continue to push boundaries - others' perhaps, but mainly your own.

As this new year is now coming in, it occurs to me that this year more than most will be a year of closing my eyes and falling, both backwards and forwards, for us, as we finish our teaching contract here and look for the next steps to take. New situations, new jobs, new risks, and most of all new opportunities. Here's wishing you all an exciting, risk-taking, challenging, safe, and happy 2012!

The things people carry

2011-12-29T06:39:00.002+08:00

If you're reading this from the US or Europe, I'd like you to take a bit of time to imagine all of the Things that are moving back and forth around you now. All of the food and clothing and plastic toys and electric appliances and general consumer goods that are on the back of semis going from one place to another on the highways and streets near you at this very moment. Do you see all that stuff in your mind's eye? Now double or triple it. Take half of this ginormous mass of stuff off of the trucks, and put it on motorcycles, carts, bicycles, or wheelbarrows. Or simply on people's backs. Welcome to China... (Or most of the rest of the world, for that matter.)

Are you thinking about privilege right now? I know I am...

The sounds of the season

2011-12-23T11:46:00.000+08:00

Aaand another round of classes and final exams is done! Now, on with the traditional festivities, including having people over for jiaozi (dumplings) and buying tickets on the high speed train... Merry Christmas, everyone!

Grand Openings

2011-12-19T19:19:00.000+08:00

...of stores are mainly in pink, usually flanked by multiple floral arrangements on red woven bamboo stands. The doorway is usually framed in an arc of purple and pink balloons, and there's sometimes a local percussion band and drill team / dance troupe to liven things up.

The Shapes We're In

2011-12-18T11:29:00.000+08:00

I don't know how many other people besides myself walk along the street and think "Wow, what a great rectangle!" And maybe I don't want to know. Further proof, if needed, of how years of art school have messed with my brain...

Herewith, a few more photos about the shapes that I've seen lately. And how we've been (are still being?) shaped, besides..?

Diagonals, triangles, and some big clothing models.

A diagonal stuttering down through some rectangles. That's me in the the top center, by the way..

Lots of tiled rectangles, three pyjama'd mannequins, and a glimpse into a restaurant kitchen. I sincerely ask you - what more do you need in a photo?

Business on wheels

2011-12-17T12:54:00.000+08:00

The Vision of the Floating Hats

2011-12-15T08:14:00.002+08:00

Counting Cranes

2011-12-14T09:02:00.000+08:00

Hey, look, another blog post about construction in China!

So what do you do when you're on the elevated platform waiting for a train? Count construction cranes, of course...

One!

Two, three, four...

Five, six, seven, eight, nine... (you'll have to take my word for it - my pocket camera doesn't have much of a telephoto lens)

..Ten..

...11,12,13,14...

15, 16, 17...

Eighteen, Nineteen..... Twenty! Twenty construction cranes! HaHaHaHa! (Cue the Count from Sesame Street)

Schematic

2011-12-14T07:00:00.000+08:00

Can't decide if I like the photo better with or without the big blue garbage truck, so you're getting them both.

Life on the Streets

2011-12-13T16:57:00.001+08:00

Even though it's getting pretty cold out (4-8°C, 39-46°F), life here still continues to happen outdoors as well as in. Here, a few examples, (some a little on the fuzzy side), taken from recent wanderings around Chengdu...

A glimpse of the future. No wait, the past. No, maybe the future. No, maybe...

2011-12-12T20:55:00.001+08:00

Lately, the area around our local high speed train station has been looking more and more, hmmm... dystopian? Post-apocalyptic? Or perhaps, just plain surreal. Above, huge concrete tracks, where futuristic trains quietly zoom along at around 175 kph on their way in to the metropolis of Chengdu. Below and directly outside the station, a flagstone plaza and driveway, covered with construction dust and looking more ancient by the day. Just past a fifteen foot section of wall, left over from the small factory that was there two years ago, a vast field of rubble where the construction area for the whole train line used to be. The rubble field is arranged into randomly placed mounds, is the size of several football fields, and is now covered in vines and weeds. Close to the station, some enterprising people (the station employees, perhaps?) have put in some terraced garden plots of bok choy and other vegetables. More towards the horizon, several towering new five-star housing developments under construction.

Some taxi drivers playing cards around an improvised fire of pieces of scrap lumber, adding to the overall Mad Max kind of effect.

A Christmas Discovery

2011-12-10T06:30:00.001+08:00

One thing I have appreciated about living in China is that every day, there's a chance for a new discovery. For example, did you know that Santa has a thing for playing the saxophone? Neither did I, until now...

Everything's going on all at once...

2011-12-09T11:47:00.001+08:00

Another photograph from the Lotus Market in Chengdu. Every once in a while, I get this revelation that life is going on all over the planet, all the time. At the same time that I'm typing this, for example, countless huge blue trucks all over China are being stacked full of cardboard boxes and are then probably rumbling off to countless marketplaces full of countless people. Meanwhile, most of the people that I have known for more than three years (i.e., most everyone I know who's in North America right now) is either getting ready for bed or already asleep. Life is going on more or less as usual in all of the places that I've lived or visited, even if I haven't been there in the last twenty years...

Simplistic? Obvious? Nostalgic? Or incredibly cool that we make the connections that we do as we go about the world? In any case, welcome to my brain, everyone.

But back to Chengdu - the guy in the bottom center of the photo who just noticed me and the camera? He makes the shot happen, don't you think...?

Honoring the tradition

2011-12-07T18:44:00.001+08:00

Was at the sprawling Lotus Market near Chengdu's North Train Station yesterday, which has no Lotuses to speak of, but darn near everything else. I was looking for a new Christmas tree, which I found in a ~~remote forest clearing~~ market stall next to 3-D Buddha posters; ~~chopped down with my hatchet~~ bargained down with the vendor from 60 RMB down to 45, hauled home through the drifting ~~snow~~ crowds of people and electric motorcycles; and ~~sawed the trunk down~~ took it out of its cardboard box so that I could fit it into the stand.

Then I sat on the couch for 45 minutes, untangling snarled masses of Christmas lights and trying to figure out which bulbs were broken so that I could get the darn things to work, while the rest of the family dug stuff out of boxes and decorated the rest of the house. Some traditions are universal, after all...

With Great Power comes Great Responsibility

2011-12-06T19:50:00.001+08:00

If you were the Executive of the Tobacco Monopoly, what would you do with the power at your disposal? This particular Executive seems to be hanging out in his van playing video games on his cell phone. Sounds like a reasonable choice to me...

Riding multiple horses

2011-12-05T09:11:00.001+08:00

Photo: A glimpse of Chicago, as seen on a local billboard..

Ah, December, that magical time when everything happens at once. Aside from the usual preparations for the holidays, weekends taken up by various retreats with various organizations in various places (most recently, back from Shanghai), and having all five of us back together in the same time zone under the same roof for the first time in four months, there's also the matter of planning for what we're going to do this summer. As in our contract to teach here is finishing then; so we are busy deciding where to work, which country to live in, and what to do for the next step in our lives kind of planning.

So you can well imagine that the past few weeks here at Slow Boat Central have been full of all sorts of challenges, choices, and possibilities to consider. Exciting at times, draining at times, and most definitely not the most conducive to blogging. Especially since this blog now has a wider audience than just our family and friends who we're keeping updated. I'll still be putting up photos and thingies as time permits, and will fill you all in as developments develop. If you know us, however, and want to get more detailed news, by all means keep in touch - we'd love to hear from you!

Among the many things to be thankful for this coming holiday season...

2011-11-25T14:42:00.001+08:00

...is this public microwave, provided free of charge in a park that we went to last month. (Hours listed below. Sorry, no Orville Redenbacher's microwave popcorn within a 3,000 mile radius)

Setting forth

2011-11-23T17:07:00.000+08:00

Seen while crossing a busy street in nearby Xipu. (Don't worry - her mom was just outside the picture frame.)

A bit of timeless and ancient wisdom, fabricated

2011-11-22T16:10:00.001+08:00

"At forty, a man should no longer be confused" - Confucius
"Confucius was actually a bit of a smug jerk when you got to know him, and he was never very much fun at parties" - Lao Tzu

I ran into the Confucius quote (which is actually a paraphrase, as far as I can tell) the other week, and it inspired me to imagine an imaginary Taoist quote in response...

Night on the Town

2011-11-22T02:12:00.001+08:00

On the advantages of having your spouse and oldest child living in the same time zone with you instead of having to communicate with Skype over a 13 hour time difference (14, once it went back to Standard Time)

2011-11-17T06:53:00.001+08:00

I could go on for a while, but I think the title of the post says it clearly enough...

La vie quotidienne

2011-11-14T18:56:00.001+08:00

I was reminded the other evening, while talking to another teacher here, that one of the joys in China is the pleasure of sitting around and simply watching things happen. Here, for your viewing pleasure, a couple more videos of life on the basketball court next to the primary school on a Sunday afternoon, circa late September / early October.

Part the first: In which Z tools around randomly on his bike, Y follows two girls that come by with a kitten in a small box, a random passerby talks on her cell phone, and a clump of children then run off to points unknown...

Part the second: In which Z and friend play a Pokemon-type game with small circular trading cards, Y experiments with a plastic fake guitar, and someone in the background says ”对“ ("dui" = right, okay) repeatedly so fast that it almost sounds like machine gun fire.

Part the third: In which Y shreds on the toy guitar, Z loses a round of rock/paper/scissors, and a toddler and her mom take their leave.

Hide and Seek

2011-11-14T08:57:00.001+08:00

Glossolalia

2011-11-13T21:23:00.000+08:00

Doing some errands in the nearby town of Xipu, I came across the vegetable market there, which is a bit bigger than the local market near our house in Hongguang. To distinguish themselves, vendors often record a short sales pitch of a word or phrase or two, on a little hand-held digital recorder that loops the sentence constantly. The recording ("Fresh fresh spinach!" or "Bananas, bananas, two kuai, two kuai", for example) is then played back very loudly through a battery powered megaphone, and, if you have two or three of them playing together in the same market... Well, just watch the video below, with the sound turned up and your headphones on.

Ah, the things that Jane's been missing...

2011-11-12T19:47:00.001+08:00

Since Jane has now been away from campus for more than two months, I thought it might be time for a timely update on happenings around town.

Presenting our University's brand new green electric intra-campus shuttles! At the beginning of the school year, all of a sudden they were all over the place, whisking students from the back gate to the central classroom area, or from the side gate to the south gate (we're big on gates here), all for one Yuan. Like crosses between oversized golf carts and a pack of wild dingoes with their vocal chords removed (large green and white electric wild dingoes with wheels and 12 to 15 seats), these minibusses now roam the narrow streets of the teacher apartment area. I think the drivers must be working on commission - they make NYC bike messengers look relaxed by comparison. As an added bonus, the open seating gives the opportunity for college girls from the far reaches of campus who haven't seen our kids before a brief chance to shriek "How cuuuuute!" and "Hello, boy!" as the bus whizzes by, almost grazing our elbows.

Other than that, the changes around campus this fall have been fairly minor. A slight majority of parents and grandparents of babies and toddlers are now using strollers to push their kids around, instead of carrying their kid in the traditional wicker basket backpack. When we first arrived, and Ysa was still most definitely stroller-dependent, we were the only family on campus that used one, and that only because our frame pack was killing a sore ankle I had at the time. Are we trendsetters or are we trendsetters? (The correct answer to that question, by the way, is "probably not".)

There are now more of these guys around who jump over curbs and things with their bicycles, who I call, for lack of a better name, "Jumping Bicycle Dudes". I first noticed the first two Jumping Bicycle Dudes on campus the spring after we arrived, and since then their numbers have grown to around twelve, I'd say. They seem to have been driven indoors by the colder weather and (maybe?) pressure to study, but I'm thinking that next spring, they may double yet again to around 24 when it gets warmer.

Eye Contact

2011-11-12T08:53:00.001+08:00

Realizing some goals, beginning others...

2011-11-10T10:53:00.000+08:00

I'm probably breaking confidence a bit as a dad, but here is part of my son's collection that I found the other day while cleaning up around the house. Before he left for the States, Xander had taken a plastic apple-shaped pencil holder and filled it with scraps of paper, each of which had an important life goal written on it. Here are a few:

Get in world record
Good life
Nice Family
Ride 1st class plane seat
100 元 (Yuan - the Chinese currency)

Hard to believe, but he and I left for the US on July 18 - almost four months ago. I haven't been posting about his story much on this blog, but today, some good news - he had successful surgery to remove the pins and external fixators that were holding his bones in place as they healed. That means a green light to travel China, so Jane and Xander will be flying back early next week! To say that there is much relief at the whole thing being over is a bit of an understatement...

Found in translation

2011-11-09T19:56:00.000+08:00

Here's a challenge: Can I decipher the note from my son's first grade teacher before my son finishes his homework? Before you answer, here's the note:

"我校定于本周五开秋季学生运动会，请家长于周五早上8：10分准时送孩子了到校，中午11：00到校接孩子。下午不到校。
请家长勿必协助做好以不工作：
1。周五必须穿上校服。请家长检查校服拉链坏的及时修理。
2。请家长为孩子准备一双白色运动鞋（周五穿）
3。长发女孩子要求马尾辫（高一些）；
4。男孩子头发长了，请家长带去理发。做到清清爽爽。
谢谢客位家长！"

Piece of cake, right? I suppose I could have asked a student or an English-speaking neighbor for help, but since I already had the online dictionary and Google translate up on the computer, Zekey and I spent a fun half hour working together figuring out which character said what.

(For those uninitiated into the wonders of typing Chinese on the computer: if you know a character's pronunciation, you can simply type it into the computer, choose the character you want, and there it is. Unless you've got the pronunciation wrong, of course. If you don't know what a character sounds like, then you can draw it using your mouse into an online dictionary, and that will give you several character choices, one of which will hopefully be correct. Before computers, you would have had to look up a character by its most important stroke, or radical, and hope that you find the right one. This is where I get very jealous of anyone learning a language that has a phonetic alphabet...)

Anyway, since that was a thirty minute investment in basic data entry, I thought I'd share the results that Google Translate came up with:

Our school is scheduled to open Friday games fall students, parents Friday morning at 8:10 am sharp to send their children to the school, the school at 11:00 to pick up their kids. Not at school.
Please parents do not do will help to not work:
1. Friday must wear school uniform. Please check the school uniform zipper bad parents timely repairs.
2. Please prepare a pair of white parents to their children shoes (wear Friday)
3. Asked a girl with long hair ponytail (higher);
4. Long hair, boys, parents bring haircut. So cool-cool.
Thank you class parents!

Poetry, no? Certainly much better than anything I could do on my own...

I'll be with you in a sec...

2011-11-09T09:04:00.000+08:00

Taken at the crossroads

2011-11-08T21:59:00.000+08:00

A couple of pictures from the main intersection just outside the side gate of the university where we live.

The vegetable sellers, Xipu

2011-11-08T21:50:00.000+08:00

Was fortunate to be able to borrow a camera last Friday and over the weekend, and lucky enough to get some good pictures out of the deal. My favorite pictures are generally the ones that require the least amount of verbal explanation, and this batch is no exception. I'll be posting some of what I think are the best of the lot in the next couple of days.

Ordinary Stuff - Grinding away

2011-11-06T09:12:00.000+08:00

- Six to eight students per dormitory room.
- Around fourteen, and sometimes up to twenty, different classes in the course of a single week.
- An educational philosophy that emphasizes the mastery of an existing field of information, often accomplished by memorization.

= People Studying Everywhere.

Here, an unused lecture hall in the first floor of the fourth teaching building that I pass on my way back home after my Tuesday class, which gets out at six. If it's cloudy, which means most always, the class gets out right around dusk. The classrooms are the most brightly lit spaces on campus, spilling their light out onto the rapidly dimming sidewalks as most of the students head to the campus cafeterias for dinner.

I don't know much about art, but I know what I like...

2011-11-05T16:40:00.000+08:00

...and what I don't. And what I don't like so much that it ends up coming all the way around to me liking it again. Anyway, rather than prejudicing you with any further opinions, here are some finds from a trip into town last Friday. I'll let you sort out which ones work for you on your own...

Just when you thought it was safe...

2011-11-05T12:53:00.000+08:00

I know this post is a little bit late for Halloween, but may I humbly present...

Yet more scary looking kiddie rides! Yes, it has been a long time since I've featured them on this blog, but the profusion of scary childrens' rides continues unchecked on the streets of Chengdu, with yet more species being discovered (and more flagrant copyright violations..) every time I go into town. Besides the Skitch copy above, if that's what it is, there has also been a notable Transformer upswing. I'm pleased to report, however, that the ever-popular Xi Yang Yang and his cartoon sheep companions continue to hold their own.

Also of note - no matter where you go in China, or what the ride, the color palette remains exactly the same. Don't believe me? Check out the earlier installments of the series here and here.

...and you're looking at Who, exactly?

2011-11-01T22:21:00.000+08:00

One of the small learning experiences we still undergo here is the experience of often being the center of attention. I've more or less gotten used to it, but even after two years here, there's the occasional grandmother or grandfatherly type that will just plant themselves stock still in front of the kids and just stare.

And stare.

And stare. (See exhibit A above.)

And then, usually, get bored and walk away...

China soundracks, part II

2011-10-31T09:25:00.000+08:00

Another video about getting around in China. More specifically, experiencing China as an outsider, with a foreign soundtrack. For this one, wanted to give a sense of how jazzed I get sometimes going from place to place here, even if it can be a bit overwhelming at times. The music this time is "Jing Jing", (Firefly), a traditional song from Okinawa, performed here by Shoukichi Kina with Ry Cooder. Enjoy!

The entrance to the kids' primary school

2011-10-27T18:12:00.000+08:00

Now with 50% more weeds and trees growing above it. I think I'm justified if I tell Zekey to run at top speed every time he enters or leaves the building, right?

My Kingdom for a telephoto lens!

2011-10-26T09:00:00.000+08:00

Had a borrowed camera last Sunday afternoon while watching the kids ride bikes in their usual kid rodeo area in front of the primary school. Most of the time, a small portable point and shoot is more than enough, but on occasion, it would be nice to be able to zoom in a bit closer. Still, with a little bit of cropping, I was able to get a few decent pics out of the deal, mostly of Ysa and friends because Zekey was zooming around too fast. (You should have seen the pictures that got away...)

Foreground/Background

2011-10-26T06:51:00.000+08:00

Half and half

2011-10-26T06:46:00.000+08:00

(Green on top, grey on the bottom)

(Yellow on the left, blue on the right)

How to Be Alone

2011-10-24T09:08:00.002+08:00

As we know, we humans are generally social creatures, deriving a large portion of our happiness from interaction with others of our kind. However, we are also by definition individuals, who obtain our identity from within. Thus is born the continuum between extrovert on one hand and introvert on the other. For some strange reason, we are, generally speaking, much more comfortable with the first end of this scale than the second.

Take this weekend, for example. A fine weekend indeed, and spent almost entirely at home with Zekey and Ysa. Highlights included finishing up a short video that I'd been working on, reading a bit, making black bean chili, editing some photographs, and chatting with Jane and a few friends in the States on Facebook and Skype. The kids played inside most of the day Saturday, half by themselves, and half with a (very loud) young friend who came over for a three hour long match of... Jedi knights? Ultraman? In any case, something involving a lot of swords and yelling, in (to me) nearly incomprehensible Chinese.

Sunday, more of the same in the morning, followed by an afternoon following the kids on their bikes as we went first to the exercise park (a small plaza fitted with generically dangerous clunky metal workout equipment that passes for our playground) and then to the paved lot in front of the elementary school, where I watched the kids interact with a streaming succession of friends, older schoolmates, friends' parents, giggling college girls trying to get them to pose for pictures on their cell phones, gaping grandparents who had never seen a foreigner before - still! after us being here for two years!! - trying to push their two year olds into playing with Ysa, who now knows how to deal with such behavior by a simple humph! and a turning away that is just charming enough not to be offensive...

Aaanyway, my point in all this is that, through all this, I don't think I had a face to face interaction with an adult that lasted more than ten minutes. And was fine about it. (Notice the obligatory disclaimer. You see what I mean about us humans feeling much less comfortable with the introverted end of the spectrum, right?)

All of this a long, round-about intro to this video, which, now that I've gone on for a while, really speaks for itself:

A good reminder that no matter where we travel, the most comfortable, and the most challenging place to live is inside your own skin.

Imaginary cities

2011-10-22T17:22:00.000+08:00

A short video I just finished editing, about urbanization, China, too many toys, and seduction (of a sort...). Oh, and Frank Sinatra.

!

2011-10-20T11:33:00.000+08:00

Bird's eye view

2011-10-16T10:22:00.002+08:00

(Well, if the bird had to do a lot of waiting around at train stations, anyway.)

Also a shot of students coming in to class.

Walking speed, of course, is different from culture to culture, as are traffic patterns. Two years in, and I still do a back and forth avoidance dance with an approaching pedestrian who has zigged where I think they should have zagged. And you know when you're in a car or on a bike, and you're turning when there are pedestrians crossing the street? You slow down and then aim for the spot behind them, right? Unless you're in China, in which case you speed up and cross directly in front of them. Of course. (My students all get a big kick out of hearing that in America, I usually walk across the crosswalk without stopping once the green man lights up...)

Stuff we should all know by now - the causes of the US Defecit

2011-10-15T09:46:00.000+08:00

For this week's know-it-all (because you darn well should) tidbit, a chart explaining US budget deficits, both recent and projected. Another thing that's not in the news much, but hopefully will become more common knowledge as time goes on, is the contribution war and tax cuts have made to the US national debt. From this article by James Fallows

Mostly about the color, these...

2011-10-14T19:03:00.000+08:00

Red, Green, and Orange

Blue with bits of red, purple, and black

A big hunk of pinks, oranges, and yellows, with stars and candy bananas

Chunky blue, gold brown and beige rectangles, and grey. And a white arrow!

Where children sleep

2011-10-12T09:08:00.000+08:00

Pictures of children and the places they sleep, from all over the world. The images do most of the talking, right? Worth clicking to the source article to see more from this series.

A small place in a large place, and the other way around

2011-10-11T19:57:00.000+08:00

Last summer, I took a four day trip to nearby Guang'An, to report on a few projects that my organization is helping with. One of the people that we visited lived in a fairly isolated area. As in, "Well, the main road is under construction, so instead taking you on a 45 minute motorcycle ride to the ferry across the reservoir and then hiking up another half hour from there, we're going to drive another hour to the back side of the mountain and hike for just over an hour to get there instead" kind of isolated. But not that I was complaining - coming up through the woods and cresting the ridge of the mountain, this is the view that I got:

Right around the bend was this building, which turned out to be a small temple, build and maintained by the farmers in the area.

Here is a small hint of what it looked like inside, minus a feeling of dust, dim light, and the feeling that something was still happening that had been going on for a very very long time indeed.

I'm not going to pretend like I know very much about what was going on inside, or even if the temple was Buddhist, Taoist, a combination of the two, or something predating both. I'm even reluctant to post the photos, but am doing so because, um, why? The word 'continuity' comes to mind...

Captain Cynical Strikes Again!

2011-10-11T14:55:00.000+08:00

Don't know what it is about a camera, some simple photo editing software, and a crowd of people in a heavily touristed area, but combine me with these three elements and you get (cue theme music) ...

...Captain Cynical!

Fortunately, Captian Cynical sometimes finds some interesting groupings of people...

... or a funny bit of Chinglish here and there...

...or combinations of things and people that are just plain weird, but in an interesting way.

Good thing that Cpn. Cynical occasionally delivers the goods, isn't it? Cuz otherwise, I wouldn't dream of posting his stuff online. (After all, the internet is a very serious place, is it not..?)

Giving the ol' Panda Suit a rest...

2011-10-10T19:32:00.000+08:00

Back in the swing of things

2011-10-09T12:56:00.001+08:00

Image: National Day holiday travelers in the North Train Station plaza, Chengdu

A quick Sunday update to all, as the students stream back from almost a week off of classes from the National Day break. Jane and Xander are still in the States, return date still not fixed, but now estimated to be late October or early November. Ysa, Zekey, and I had a pleasant, if relatively non-eventful week off, mostly at home, with visits to our friends the Gaos and their farm, and several other gatherings with classmates and neighbors.

The October weather, aside from a couple of gloriously clear days caused by factory shutdowns and the general lack of car emissions over the National Day Holiday, has been its typical lead sky overcast, with just a hint of nippiness in the air. I'm realizing more and more just how solar powered I am, and I'm getting good at figuring out my mood lately. Annoyed at the kids? Weather related. Not feeling like doing much? Weather related. General blahs? Weather related.

The good news? Anything weather related usually disappears soon after diagnosis. Or a strong green tea caffeine fix, whichever comes first. And spicy food. Oh, and as a further preventative, I've taken to burning incense, and lighting lots of candles at night to compensate for deficiencies in the red end of the spectrum outdoors.

Waitaminnit... Green tea? Spicy food? Incense and candles? Lots of red? Hmmm, sounds familiar, but just can't place it....

Oh, yeah, right. So culture is influenced by environmental factors! Whattya know? (Jane, don't be surprised if our apartment resembles a Taoist temple by the time you get back...)

Stuff we should all know by now: Who's paying for your gas?

2011-10-08T17:32:00.000+08:00

For this week's set-O-facts, a couple of different breakdowns of the subsidies that the US government gives the petroleum industry, compared with how much it helps solar and other forms of alternative energy.

First, this chart, showing the comparative amount spent on each sector:

And then this one, showing a couple of "what if" situations:

But solar isn't efficient yet! The subsidies are smaller because the solar industry is much smaller! Let's wait and give solar a chance to prove itself before we give them the money that they need to become more efficient. Ummm, anyone else sense a catch-22 here?

Home is where the drawing is

2011-10-07T09:29:00.001+08:00

A recent drawing by Ysa that inadvertently sums up our family's living situation at the moment...

People in your neighborhood, part I

2011-10-06T10:18:00.000+08:00

Way cooler than you'll ever be, and they want you to know it...

2011-10-04T16:04:00.001+08:00

Photographic proof that the young male adolescent semi-sneer is in fact a universal expression. (Though I like the fact that the second guy in from the right can't help smiling...)

Transects

2011-10-04T10:14:00.000+08:00

Right after college, I volunteered as an archaeological assistant for a summer in the Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico. A lot of what we did was field survey work, which meant running transects of a given area of the forest. We'd spread our group out in a line with everyone 20 feet apart, following our compasses as close to due north as possible, and watching the ground for artifacts. Mostly, we found flakes of chert or obsidian left behind from someone making a spear point about 800 years earlier - the Archaic Tewa Indian equivalent of pencil shavings. Every once in a while, one of us would find an actual arrowhead. Or an empty whiskey bottle from the 1920s, or an elk skull, which was always fun.

So now, if you can, imagine the top of a dusty mesa in Rio Arriba county, covered with piñon pine and juniper scrub on the top, and only reachable by a three hours' bouncing drive up a deeply rutted four-wheel Forest Service road. The sky overhead is eyeball-achingly blue, and the nearest house is about 50 miles away as the crow flies, except that you're not a crow. Smell the red dirt and the sage yet? Okay, good. That experience has Absolutely Nothing to do with the part of China that I'm living in.

For a taste of that, why not take a look through the slide show below. The photos were all taken on October 1st, which is National Day (the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic) here in China. It's a bit long, so you may want to make yourself comfortable. Grab a beer (or tea, to be more authentic) and settle down for a bit. On our photo walk last Saturday, I took almost 300 photos, and the slide show has about 130 of them. They don't all work equally well as perfect photos, but taken together, they make for an interesting sampling of the culture that I've been lucky enough to call home for the past two years.

Oh, and make sure you watch in full screen mode. (should be a button on the bottom right.) Happy transecting!

Stuff we all should know by now - Prisoners in the US

2011-10-03T08:56:00.000+08:00

What are approximately 1 out of every 100 Americans doing right now? Why, sitting in jail, of course! Young black men? That jumps to 1 in 10. Per capita, that's higher than most places in the world by an order of magnitude, and even higher that places with less-than-stellar human rights records such as Iran and, um, the country that I'm currently living in.

People in the US aren't terribly aware of this, but many other parts of the world are, as in, for example, this clip from a UK game show. Probably no wonder that other governments often don't take the US very seriously when it comes to accusations of human rights abuses...

For more information, and links to some of the facts in the video, click here.

Both Sides Now

2011-10-02T21:29:00.000+08:00

Front:

Back:

Anti-Intillectuatism in America, part 647.5

2011-10-02T06:51:00.000+08:00

Yes, we're all populists now! I'd comment a bit more, but I think the title of the post says it all...

Harvard-Supported Harvard Grad Mitt Romney Criticizes Obama for being a Harvard-Supported Harvard Grad

Wow!!

2011-10-01T18:34:00.000+08:00

Photos cropped from a kid's talent/variety show on CCTV (China Central Television), around a year ago or so.

Up and Over

2011-09-30T11:58:00.000+08:00

Jane shot this video last spring of a fairly normal-sized crowd exiting our local high-speed train and making their way to the exit of North Train Station in Chengdu. For everyone in China - Happy National Day weekend, and wishing you safe travels (with at least a place to sit for most of the time) should you be going anywhere!

Done

2011-09-29T18:18:00.000+08:00

The Done Manifesto:

There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
There is no editing stage.
Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
Once you're done you can throw it away.
Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
Destruction is a variant of done.
If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
Done is the engine of more.

(From Bre Pettis. Posted more as a reminder to myself than anything else...)

The photo that (almost) got away...

2011-09-28T16:45:00.000+08:00

A surreal moment from last winter, from the archives...

I was going into Chengdu with the kids on the first fast train one Saturday morning. We lingered around for a bit to watch the other trains coming and going on other platforms - still one of Zekey's favorite things to do. As we were about to exit the station, the crowd leaving another arriving train caught up with us in the corridor leading out of the station.

Leading the charge were fifteen or twenty people carrying large baskets of vegetables and huge burlap bags. They were running so fast, I was almost worried that their combined momentum might knock the kids over, especially since many of their bags and baskets were blocking their view. I moved the kids over to the side, partly out of safety, but mostly because it was so interesting. It soon became obvious that most of the people leading the charge were vendors, and were hustling out of the station as quickly as possible to grab the best places to set up shop in the plaza outside of the station.

The next wave, however? Much more puzzling. Again about fifteen or twenty people carrying baskets suspended on shoulder poles, but this time the baskets were full to overflowing cuts of uncooked meat - some still steaming in the cold December air. It all went by very quickly, and by the time I thought to dig my camera out of my pocket, the last of them was fast approaching. I snapped one shot, and then they all were gone. We got out of the station in time to see the last of the meat carriers disappear into the crowds of people waiting for their trains in the plaza outside...

Explaining things, continued (the kid's turn)

2011-09-27T16:01:00.000+08:00

From the Slow Boat family video archives, the Xander and Zekey Electricity Show! (First aired sometime last spring; global syndication rights now negotiable...)

Stuff we all should know by now - Doing the numbers

2011-09-26T15:53:00.000+08:00

So then, class, let's get back to my posts about consensus, numbers, and Cookie Monster proclaiming the end of the world, shall we...?

To review a bit:

A: We humans in general, and we Americans in particular, have a few problems that we need to figure out.
B: An important step in solving these problems is coming to a consensus on what, exactly, these problems are.

To which I now will add...

C: It would be very helpful if everyone started with the same facts, then, wouldn't it?

Or, put in to question format: What can be proven? What do the facts suggest, versus what is merely commonly held opinion? Put scientifically, then, what is actually observable in the world around us?

Let's take, as an example, the huge income disparity that now exists in America between its wealthiest citizens and everyone else. This can be represented in any number of ways, but let's simply take one statistic: today, the top 1% of Americans earn almost 25% of the income every year. Okay, big deal, big deal - what we need is more context, so let's compare it historically. Twenty five years ago, the figure was about half as much, at 12%. Turns out the last time this particular number was this high was in 1929.

Now, this is America, right? (Or, more globally speaking the internet. Readers from other countries, please bear with me for a bit...) You're free to think this is a good thing, or a bad thing. You can argue about the causes of the inequality, or its possible results. You can rephrase it, as in "Hey, the richest top ten percent pay 60% of the taxes." (Well, yeah, that's still saying the same thing, but less directly.) And, if all else fails, you can start to yell "Class Warfare" whenever someone who may vote you out of office brings it up.

What you can't do, however, is pretend otherwise, which is what it seems that many of us are doing. Here is a video of people taking a look at another statistic - the distribution of wealth in America.

For those of you with slow internet connections (or those with aversions to Warren Buffet for whatever reason), skip ahead to around 1:15. To sum up: here is the chart that most Americans surveyed selected when asked to chose one that shows what wealth distribution in America looks like (yellow representing the share of wealth held by the top 20%):

Nope! Sorry, that's Sweden. Here's a chart that shows the actual distribution of wealth in the US:

Good thing? Bad thing? I've got my opinions on the subject, and I hope that you've got yours. What we can't do, however, is pretend like it's otherwise, or tell ourselves that it really doesn't matter. Unless you live in Sweden*.

*in which case, you may want to feel smug for a moment or two, and then start looking at statistics for wealth distribution globally...

A chart worth enlarging

2011-09-25T11:59:00.002+08:00

This chart from the New York Times does a pretty good job of consolidating what's been on my mind lately. Yes, there may be a bit of editorializing about the captions chosen and the choice of time periods that have been contrasted, but the basic numbers are fairly plain to see. Are we paying attention?

Cookie Monster tells it like it is

2011-09-24T22:08:00.002+08:00

"Who are the ones that we left in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers.."

Maybe it's just me, but Cookie Monster seems to be not only channeling Tom Waits on this video, but a couple of Old Testament prophets as well. (Wonder if Jeremiah & co. had as much fun...?)

Overcast, with patches of umbrellas and isolated lettuce

2011-09-23T11:59:00.000+08:00

A photo from the archives showing a not-too-uncommon sight in China - people finding a patch of land just about anywhere to grow a batch of veggies for themselves.

Octacular! (Octopolis? Octopular? Octopimization..?)

2011-09-22T09:38:00.000+08:00

Last Sunday, I went with Zekey and Ysa to meet some of our friends to People's Park, one of my favorite places in Chengdu. This time around, instead of focusing on the tea-drinking and relaxing part of the park, we did the cheap-but-cool looks-like-some-of-them-are-about-to-fall-apart kiddie rides section of the park. The kids got to ride on dang near every ride that they wanted to, and I had fun, mingled with a slight longing for our camera, which is still in the States with Jane.

While doing some photo-weeding on the computer, I did find this previously unpublished picture from a visit last spring, so you all can imagine at least some of the clanking tentacley goodness of the place. Kinda fits in with the day's squiggly theme, don't you think?

More Beautiful

2011-09-22T09:23:00.000+08:00

Because, really, can't we all use a bit more Ve in our lives?

Squiggly Snacks

2011-09-21T11:41:00.000+08:00

You know how in America, you get all kinds of packaged snacks that are sweet and stale and utterly disgusting, yet also totally compelling and delicious at the same time? One cool thing about China is that you can get that same exact snacking sensation, but without all that extra packaging. Yum! Now, if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go get me some of those...

Saving the World, one bicker at a time

2011-09-20T11:22:00.000+08:00

Sometime last spring, I was having a Facebook "conversation" about some political thing or other, and, as sometimes happens when friends of friends start putting their two cents in there into an online forum, it turned into a Facebook argument shortly thereafter. Well, not an argument, exactly, but a heated discussion, carried on fairly intelligently, considering it was limited to bursts of 140 characters or less. Such is the life of an American political junkie in China...

I don't even remember the topic that we were discussing, but one comment that I do remember was something along the lines of "What's the use sitting around and discussing what's wrong with the world, anyway?"

...and I started to think, "Wellll... if we all could agree with what's wrong, we could all start to fix it, couldn't we?" You know, how a flock of birds hangs out in a clump of trees for days and days, some flying off, and then all flying back, and you can hear them chirping and bickering for miles around. And then one day - pow! - their collective mind is made up, and off they fly. Together.

So, if we go with the idea that all of this chatter about what is wrong with this or that or the other thing in the world at large is really just the noise of the global flock making up its mind, then the individual conversations start to take on a greater meaning, don't they? What may seem like an isolated argument on someone's Facebook page may actually be an artifact of the human community struggling to come to terms with its most pressing problems, in the same way that the chirps and hops of individual birds at some point add up to an action taken by the flock as a whole.

Don't know if this Tipping Point argument (see Malcolm Gladwell, et. al.) is true or not, but it does become an interesting way of looking at global change, politics, and the world at large. From this point of view, discussions of issues among friends on Facebook are not just so many tempests in so many teapots, but our species' way of building global consensus, hashing out our issues on a molecular level.

A bit grandiose, perhaps? Maybe. I have certainly become increasingly suspicious of any kind of "Save the Word" argument in the last couple of years. After all, the world has gotten along just fine without us for the last 4 billion years or so, and it will do just fine for the next 4 billion, regardless of whether us humans are on it or not. But as a species, I'd like to think that in spite of everything, we're still worth keeping around. Or worth improving, to put it more accurately.

Maybe our mantra should be, not "Save the World!", but rather:

"Hey everyone, let's all keep bickering back and forth good-naturedly for a while until we all can agree on a couple of simple ideas that are slightly less idiotic that our previous ones!"

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't scan quite as well, does it? But it does become more catchy after you repeat it a couple of times. Give it a try, and let me know what you think. I'll be posting the best results onto Facebook.

I've got to stop watching documentaries right before going to bed...

2011-09-19T10:36:00.000+08:00

I woke up this morning in the middle of a lucid dream where I was part of a documentary crew assigned to follow Jesus on a peacemaking tour among the gangs of South Central L.A. (Apparently, He's still a very good negotiator in such matters.) I was puled from the camera crew at the last minute because the main gang that we were following had just registered their name as a registered trademark, and the producers of the documentary were worried that the gang might sue us for copyright infringement if we accidentally caught Jesus mentioning the name of the gang on camera.

(No, I don't usually post my dreams to Anywhere, but this one seemed very apropos of, well, something, anyway. Not to be sacrilegious or anything, but isn't there a rule that states that when Jesus appears to you in a lucid dream, you have to share it on some form of social media? Think it's in the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew somewhere - I'll have to look it up to be sure...)

Look, Honey, it's our friends the Mangosteens!

2011-09-19T08:44:00.000+08:00

...and the Rambutans, and the Dragonfruits....why all sorts of our friends from China and Southeast Asia are here! What are you all doing in Canada?

Seems like I took these photos in Toronto's Chinatown back during a visit there in the summer of 2008 - right about the time when we were considering a volunteer position open in Egypt. That would have been interesting, would it not?

(Spoiler alert: The Egypt thing didn't work out.)

Now that I look at the photos, I do remember thinking "What the heck are these strange mutant things?", and we talked to a Chinese guy who was really excited to find what I now know are longans (the little brown ones in the photo above), which didn't make it to Toronto that often, apparently.

Wow, a sign that our whole Asian adventure was predestined after all!

Or, more likely, a sign that I've always been attracted to strange-looking tropical fruit...

15,790. And shrinking.

2011-09-18T23:53:00.003+08:00

What is 15,790? Why, the number of digital photos on our laptop's hard drive, of course. That's 28.8 gigabytes of pixelly goodness, or over one third of this old Macbook's available storage space. It's hard to believe that 80 GB was more memory than we could use when we bought this thing five years ago- now I feel like we've got the computer equivalent of the house with twelve cats and rooms full of stacks of old newspapers. It doesn't help matters much that the hard drive is now making a sound that sounds like a mix between an 1956 Vespa scooter in dire need of a tuneup, a foot-powered dentist drill, and, well, a MacBook hard drive that may fail at any minute.

Or maybe that will get better once I install the latest two direly needed software updates. I've heard that can sometimes be the case. (Please be the case, please be the case...) Oh, but I need more space on my hard drive to install said updates, so back to the 15,970 photos that I'm in the process of weeding out. I mean, Lordy, 15,970 photos?? I don't know why anyone in their right mind would have more than 13, 476...

This all just to say that several forces in the universe, chiefly being my need to delete a couple of thousand photos or so (don't worry, they're backed up onto the external drive), but also including the fact that my camera is in the United States right now, have conspired to send me back in time to re-examine the far distant past of 2010. And wow, nothing like a year or so gone by to give you a fresh eye on your photos. And Jane's photos, I might add. The picture at the top of the post is hers, as is the one below, and several more on the way.

So yeah, I've been cropping like a Banshee, and sending all the results to Flickr. Which is why you may see a few more things that are out of sequence coming up, but, you're not expecting chronology from me anyway, right?

Oh, and yes, you heard correctly: Banshees crop their photographs. All the time. It's what they do when they're not screaming.

Henri Cartier-Bresson? Not a Banshee.

Extreme Schooling?

2011-09-17T10:16:00.000+08:00

Extreme Schooling, China Style

An interesting artice from the New York Times this weekend made me realize, "Oh yeah, we are doing something out of the ordinary, aren't we?" Titled Our Family's Experiment in Extreme Schooling, it's the story of a Clifford Levy, a Times reporter who's worked in Moscow for the last four years, and how his kids handled the culture shock of being dropped into a school where they (gasp!) only spoke Russian! From the article's introduction:

My three children once were among the coddled offspring of Park Slope, Brooklyn. But when I became a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, my wife and I decided that we wanted to immerse them in life abroad. No international schools where the instruction is in English. Ours would go to a local one, with real Russians.

I've got to admit that one of my first reactions when reading this article (and watching the accompanying video, which you should make sure and see) was a half-suppressed disgusted snort and a sarcastic "Whoop-De-Doo!" Russian is a hard language? They've got an alphabet, for crying out loud! How hard can it be?? And a slight tinge of jealousy - man, I wish I could send my kids to a $10,000 a year private alternative school in Mandarin. And his kids get mistaken for Russians all the time! No way no how will our kids ever fit into China that seamlessly, that's for sure...

But some of the details from the article were also gut-wrenchingly familiar - the sinking feeling in your gut as a parent during that first year of immersion, knowing that you are sending your child into an environment where he understands next to nothing and is totally miserable. And the elation and beauty of hearing another language flow effortlessly out of your child's mouth at a school performance a year and a half later. And the familiar push and pull, now that we've been to the States and back, of "Where, exactly, does my child belong now?"

When all is said and done, entering another culture is an incredible leap to make, no matter how you do it. My congratulations to Clifford Levy and his wife, for deciding to guide their kids along the road less traveled instead of taking the easy way out. And more importantly, congratulations to Danya, Arden, and Emmet, his three kids, who are now citizens of the world, and seem to be much richer for it.

On Diversity, Labeling, Hospitality and Gratitude (Being a Short Treatise and Encapsulated Rant upon the nature of Difference among Peoples)

2011-09-16T12:00:00.000+08:00

For your leisurely perusal: A list of the people and organizations who hosted Xander and I in America this summer, in chronological order. (In parentheses; religious affiliation, where applicable)

A graphic designer and a writer, with one child; currently talking care of their mother with Alzheimer's. (agnostic / whatever?, culturally Jewish)
A geography professor and a freelance blogger, with two kids (Jewish)
A guest house for families of hospitalized children, run by a charity arm of a multinational corporation (Capitalist)
A children's hospital run by the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (The Shriners), a Masonic fraternal organization.
A German / American couple - an archivist and an IT specialist, I think..? - currently living away from their home in Berlin and volunteering for the Mennonites, two kids. (Mennonite / Protestant)
A (Catholic) doctor and an (Episcopal) priest, two kids.
A healthcare management professional, currently laid off, and an administrator at a nonprofit agency, three kids (Catholic)

I would draw your attention to the labels involved. All fairly ordinary, right? And fairly boring, come to think of it. They're all also fairly arbitrary. Consider the following list of people, who we likewise encountered:

A Polish-American soccer coach and beer distributor.
A Vegan activist who recently adopted a poodle/terrier mix.
Two lesbian Republicans with Libertarian Ayn Rand-inspired leanings, heading a bi-racial adoptive family.
Predominantly white males in their late fifties and early sixties, who are mostly known for wearing red fezzes and driving miniature cars in parades.
An expert in the history of milk in turn-of-the-century Chicago
Two gay men in a committed long-term relationship. One from the Canary Islands with a passion for gardening, and one a former architecture student who was, at one point, making a pipe organ in his basement.
A salesman of orthopedic hardware, recently relocated from Florida. Single, mid-fifties.
A former East German draft dodger, who was once arrested while trying to escape on a train to Sweden.

Much more interesting, no? But here's the thing: most of these descriptors actually apply to the same people in list one. And most of these labels, while factually true, are utterly useless when it comes to describing the people I want to describe. (Unless I want to pat myself on the back for knowing such a diverse group of people - but that's condescending, to both them and me.) No, the labels are useless because they ignore the most important commonalities, namely that:

All of these people went out of their way to help us in some way
All of them have a belief in something much bigger than themselves
And most importantly, all of them have taken that belief as inspiration to do something to make their small part of the world a little bit better.

And that's the thing about labels - they mean everything and nothing. Everything, because, wow, if I try to imagine any of the people above without those characteristics, they wouldn't be themselves, would they? Each phrase represents some essential part of a person's identity. And, pardon me while I go all patriotic here, one of the best things about being in America was savoring that richness of all of those different lives.

And of course, the labels also mean absolutely nothing. I'm sure that my friends who recognize themselves on the list are inwardly cringing right now. "What do you mean, I'm a traditional English folk dancer who can repair accordions and is now working in the IT department of a law firm? Is that all that I am to him??" Well of course not. A label, by its very nature, is a gross oversimplification of something far more complex. Labels are simply tools that we use to make sense of a world that is far more complicated than we can wrap our little minds around.

Diversity and labeling have been on my brain lately, as I'm back to being on campus in (fairly provincial) China. There's a new crop of freshman wandering around, which may explain why I'm hearing exclamations of “外国人, 外国人!" (Waiguoren, waigouren! = Foreigner! Foreigner!) all the time lately. And no, there is no revival of a certain seventies pop band over here - that's me they're talking about. Just this morning in fact, while crossing the little bridge on the way to Ysa's kindergarten, a clump of several girls walking by exclaimed "Waiguoren!" three times. In unison.

And you know, my reaction wasn't angry, or defensive, or hurt, like it sometimes is. But neither was I interested in being very sympathetic to them. It was more like feeling sadly embarrassed for somebody's total ignorance. Like when your dad would walk around in plaid shorts and sandals with socks. Black gold-toe socks. And sunburned knees to boot. But this was the opposite, generationally speaking, and I tried to throw in a little sip of optimism, because, hey, you never know, those kids may learn something about the rest of the world at some point in their lives, right...?

Not that it's my intention to start feeling smug about my culture's fine and noble sense of Diversity and Tolerance for Others. I mean, after all, I did grow up in labeling central, rural Illinois. And then there are articles like this one (seems like the FBI is schooling their agents to pigeonhole an entire religion. Good work, guys) that keep popping up all the time. And don't get me started on the current political climate (this is where we've chosen to focus our national discourse? Seriously??) in the Land That I Love.

But here I've spun off track a bit. It was originally about gratitude, and about how here, there, and everywhere, I've been incredibly blessed to find amazing people. Of all sorts and kinds, and I'm all the richer for it. This may sound like a canned soapbox speech from the Obama campaign (hey, everyone, remember when he was actually inspiring?), or a Coke commercial from the seventies, but no, it's been my life, for real. And any time I forget that fact, I find that I regret it sooner or later.

As for all that labeling that I was ranting about? Take a close look. Regardless of your political, social, religious or ethical affiliation(s). Are you doing it to anyone? No? Good. It's just embarrassing. Really. Stop it, already.

I mean it.

Midsummer, from Ronald McDonald House

2011-09-12T09:39:00.000+08:00

A note: This is a letter that I wrote to friends and family about a week after Xander's operation in Philadelphia at the end of July this summer, which I thought might be good to post here as well. Xander is now doing quite well in Chicago, by the way, and it's looking like he and Jane should be back in China by early October...

Quick quiz - what do Xander and I have in common with clowns, a dozen Shriners with jeweled fezzes, Santa Claus, Megan Shiel (New Jersey Super Miss, 2010), an Amish buggy maker, and about 450 guys on Harley Davidson motorcycles? Answer: We were all at the same party last Sunday!

The occasion was a Christmas in July party at Shriners Hospital, and most everyone mentioned above was there to deliver toys to kids who were there. (The Amish buggy maker was the uncle of one of Xander's hospital roommates, which is a whole story in and of itself..) Xander and I took the city bus there from our nearby digs at the Ronald McDonald house, just three days after his surgery and two days after he was discharged.

It was a fun party. Highlights for Xander were lots of big gleaming motorcycles to look at, and a clown that caught a soap bubble and transformed it into a small glass bead that he could keep. Highlights for me were people watching, being gladdened and amazed that Xander was getting around so well after surgery on both forearms, and being impressed by the generosity of so many different kinds of people.

We've now been in Philadelphia for just a day over a week, and I continue to be amazed and humbled by the generosity we've encountered. We're staying at Ronald McDonald House, about a fifteen minute bus ride from Shriners, and every evening, a different group of volunteers comes in to give us a home cooked meal. For breakfast and lunch, we're free to help ourselves to food from a restaurant sized refrigerator, freezer, and pantry. Most of the staff are likewise volunteer, including a weekend manager who comes in for a weekly 24 hour shift.

And then there's Shriners, which is a hospital that is funded entirely by donations, and doesn't charge its patients for anything. Ever. There's a very interesting positive vibe to the place. This particular Shriners specializes in pediatric orthopedic and spinal cord injury care, which means that in the spectrum of things, Xander's surgery, even though it requires a couple of months, seems fairly routine. In contrast, the two other boys in Xander's shared hospital room, both with scoliosis, were on their eighth and twelfth surgeries.

On the van on the way back to RMcD House, Xander and a teenage girl from the Bahamas that also had arm surgery had four of the five functioning legs of all of the passengers under eighteen. All of the other passengers were staying at another RMcD House in New Jersey, and you could tell that they had all become extended family during their kids' extended physical therapy. The talk was all in (Dominican? Puerto Rican?) Spanish, but you could tell that the jokes were flying. One teenaged boy in particular, a double amputee, seemed to be the master of ceremonies, and was cracking up everyone else in the bus. (Well, everyone else who spoke Spanish, that is...)

This isn't to say that everyone who is at Shriners is a carefree superkid gleefully overcoming adversity. My impression is that most of the kids and parents that we saw there have numerous challenges to deal with, and are happy to have landed in a safe place where they can get some help along the way. Still, it does put many of life's so-called "problems" into perspective.

So, as a final conclusion, yes, Xander and I are doing quite well, all things considered. The surgery and the night afterwards wasn't particularly fun, for sure - let's just say that there are much more enjoyable things to do than wake up every two hours the whole night long to help your kid maneuver two heavy arm casts and an IV attached to his ankle so that he can pee..
Now, though, Xander is feeling almost up to his normal self, except that he's got the aforementioned casts to lug around for another couple of days. He complains of a bit of soreness in his arms every now and then, but we haven't had to use the Tylenol 3 with codeine since the weekend. His next appointment at Shriners will be to get his arms x-rayed, and if all looks good, the casts come off and we start the one millimeter a day process of bone lengthening.

We're settling into a routine at the House of Ronald, and have already had a good visit from Cathy, a good friend of mine from college. We're also looking forward to more visits from my brother and family and my mom in the next week and a half. Gifts and cards for Xander have also made their way here from various points around the country and worldwide, which have cheered him up a great deal. I could (and probably should) go on and on about all the help and support we've received, but then this email would move away from the territory of an update and start sounding like an Oscar acceptance speech...

So, to wrap up, thank you all so much for your prayers, support, and just plain concern and caring. The whole process has been much less difficult that I had worried it was going to be, and much of that is due to help we have gotten along the way - thanks so much!

-Dave and Xander

How we ended up with Reality TV...

2011-09-10T10:45:00.000+08:00

An interesting quote from my airline reading...

"Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day's end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them."

The book is Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. It's a big long chunky piece of science fiction sprinkled with a little too much long-winded philosophy, but it does a good job of creating a totally believable universe that your head can live in for a while, and that makes you see the planet that we happen to be on in a new light. It's had me thinking of monasteries within monasteries, thousand year clocks, divergent realities, the power of a shared narrative, and what really happens when cultures interact.

Once we start seeing each other, we just can't stop

2011-09-10T10:23:00.002+08:00

Higher Ground | Playing For Change from Playing For Change on Vimeo.

One encouraging thing about the world as it stands is that it seems that many people around the world are making connections with each other that are more horizontal and global, if that makes any sense. Is shared interest taking precedence over narrow self interest after all? Are we starting to use the internet to create a global culture? I'd like to think so (he says with fingers crossed...)

And at least we're getting some really cool music out of the deal in the meantime. (Is it just me, or is this the Best Stevie Wonder Song Ever...?)

Greetings from In Between!

2011-09-08T09:38:00.000+08:00

So for all of you out there that haven't been following me on their personal GPS trackers, I'm now sortof back in China. I say "sortof" because I've been here for only two days and the beginning of a third, and the afternoons of both of those days have been spent in a jet lag haze with me trying desperately not to fall asleep and generally failing.

Which means that Zekey and Ysa and I have been awake for long stretches in the middle of the night at varying times, with the general rule that if a kid's awake, I'm awake. At least there are no diapers or 102° fevers involved...

Which further means that the kids and I have been spending some quality time in the third country we inhabit, the Free and Autonomous Republic of the Internet. Or better said, the land of the imagination...?

An example: an early film of the pianist Glenn Gould going completely hyperballistic (in a good way) on a Bach - two part invention? (help me out here, piano folks) Zekey and Ysa were bored with this one until right in the middle, when Gould's hands simply explode on the keyboard, eliciting whoops of joy and serious giggles for the next fifteen minutes of playing and replaying the clip. And is it my imagination, or does Glenn do some serious channeling of Harpo Marx during the piece?

The video comes courtesy of The Kid Should See This, a web site that I highly recommend, even for grownups. As the author puts it:

"There's just so much science, nature, music, arts, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them...
But we don't underestimate kids around here."

Even if they're not jet lagged.

Put me in the middle for the time being...

2011-09-06T23:03:00.000+08:00

Jet Lag (among countless other situations) in a nutshell..

Image: Null Set, by James Barron

Fixed

2011-08-17T10:09:00.002+08:00

Don't know if this proves that the Chinese are in no way capable of taking over the world, or in fact the total opposite, but here, for what it's worth, is a repair job that I noticed in the mens' room in the new high speed section of the Nanchong train station.

Yes, the only thing connecting the bottom of that urinal to the floor drain is a green plastic iced tea bottle. And yes, in fact, every single urinal in the bathroom used a different kind of soda bottle for the exact same repair in the very same position. And no, I did not stand around documenting them all photographically - I got enough strange looks by being a foreigner with a camera in the mens' room as it was....

Okay, I've tarnished his FBI file for good, now...

2011-08-13T06:55:00.000+08:00

Around the first of May, Xander was sworn into the Young Pioneers, which means more or less that he's in the Honor Roll, except with the added bonus that he could also be on track to join the Communist Party of China. The main thing is that he gets to wear a red scarf every day to school, and he gets a nifty plastic pin with a red star on it. Xander, externally motivated student that he is, was crushed last fall when he didn't get a red scarf like the "good kids" in the class, and thought for a while that he was a Bad Student, so now he's been officially recognized.

And yes, teachers in China (well, at least in Xander's school) are very up front about separating the sheep from the goats in that way. Good students often get to sit up front close to the teacher, with the bad kids towards the back. For a couple of days, Xander refused to play with a friend of his because the teacher had mentioned that she hadn't done her math homework well enough. Yeah, we had to have a talk with him about that one...

Turns out that he hadn't gotten his red scarf last fall because, understandably, his teachers weren't quite sure what we as parents would think. We said fine, as long as they ignored all of the reports to the Central Committee that he was sure to make on us (joke!), and so he got his scarf in an all school awards ceremony, complete with an honor guard, a speech to the gathered parents from a vice president of the university, and, of course, synchronized dance performances.

The music that was playing while they were being led up to the stage? The theme song from the 1960 American Western The Magnificent Seven. (Which was itself a copy of Kurasawa's Seven Samurai.)

Of course.

Stuff we all should know by now: trains can work

2011-08-11T19:21:00.000+08:00

Okay, and here I go trying to make sense of everything right off. One series of rants on the soapbox - errrr, make that posts - that I've been thinking about lately is "Stuff that we all should have figured out a long time ago but somehow still have a problem wrapping our brains around for reasons unknown."

Which I've conveniently shortened to "Stuff we all should know by now."

Rather than a long winded intro, which really is implicit in the title, let's lead on by example, shall we? Remember Carmageddon? Okay, neither do I - it was a media hype induced minor panic, from this summer, apparently because some two mile stretch of highway in L.A. was due to close in its entirety over a weekend. Or something.

Anyway, one post from the aforementioned media frenzy caught my eye - one of the guys over at Freakonomics doing a very simple "apples to apples" comparison of the number of people carried per hour by one lane of traffic versus the number of people a single commuter rail line, which takes up less space in a city, can carry.

The math is explained in a bit more detail in the article, but it basically boils down to this: one lane of traffic, under optimal conditions, can carry up to 2000 people per hour. A well-operated train line? Up to 40,000 people per hour.

So which system do we go with in America? Why, the system that makes the least sense, of course. Why? Beats me. Something to do with paragraph number one of this post, I suppose... Stay tuned for more.

Up to no good

2011-08-11T05:32:00.000+08:00

The first and last time you will hear me mention this movie on this web site. Ever.

One of the advantages of being in an undisclosed location with not many responsibilities other than to entertain my son as he happily recuperates is that I've been able to get a huge amount of work done. I've planned all my classes for next semester, I've been able to study Chinese four hours each day, I've ghostwritten several speeches for Hillary Clinton, I've... well, okay, I exaggerate a bit.

True geek confession? I've watched the George Lucas-produced animated Clone Wars series on DVD with my son (you know, the stuff that happened between the two last Star Wars movies that shouldn't have been made in the first place?), and surfed the internet a lot. Yep, it's (enforced) staycation time here at Slow Boat Central.

Now, mind you, I have actually gotten a few things done in the midst of all of this. Doctor's appointments are being made and kept, and the laundry is getting done. The middle to longer range planning tasks are getting checked off the list, bit by bit. And just the other day I went for a walk, played air hockey, AND made two sandwiches!

The things that haven't happened as frequently as I thought they might are regular updates to the blog. I haven't been terribly worried about this, but I have been puzzled. After all, although I can't see myself ever writing another sentence about Clone Wars ever again in my life after this one, I have been running into some cool stuff on my journeys through the internet, and there are all sorts of experiences from last Spring and insights from my break here in the States, and a few observations on politics and life and, and... I haven't been inspired to write any of it down.

And then it hit me - wait a minute, I've been waiting for everything to make sense! I have all of these big ideas about long series of blog articles that my experiences will fit into, and, hmmm, they don't really add up to anything much. (Or if they do, they seem pretentious or obvious or boring.) Silly me! Here I am, thinking that I can go from one of the most surreal countries on the planet to the second most surreal country, with a bit of the third country of the internet thrown in for good measure, and still be able to share something that's coherent in five paragraphs or less.

So what does this all mean? Bring on the random! Yeah, yeah, I know - as if this blog wasn't random enough already, right? Actually, this is yet another post where I'm simply giving myself permission to write, and I should probably delete it immediately. Except I won't, because, hey, it's my blog and I can do what I want to with it. And because, as much as I hate to admit it, Clone Wars is kinda cool...

Two years ago - HIgh Speed Train

2011-08-10T02:17:00.003+08:00

So in the time that it took Barack Obama to run for president, get elected, get everyone excited about this Hope thingie, propose the first high speed rail network ever, and then get sucked into a political quagmire and recession and have everyone in the country basically forget about the whole environmental thing...

2009:

...China had a huge earthquake, recovered from it, and built some thousand plus miles of high speed train tracks, including a short line from Chengdu to the northeast that conveniently stops by our town now. (Oh, and had an accident and attempted coverup that was fairly controversial, at least on the Chinese internet.)

2011:

Ysa's big number four

2011-08-05T11:59:00.003+08:00

Also before I left: Ysa turned four years old, which shouldn't be terribly surprising, as she turned three around a year ago, I guess. But there's always that little bit of, "Wow, where did that year go off to?" She had a party at kindergarten and a party at home, and a splendid time at both, with new friends that she's getting to be old enough to appreciate and interact with in ways that she didn't when she was three.

Oh, and by the way, you'll pardon me if many of my posts while here in the States are about regular ol' family events in China, right? It's a bit strange to be in my home country, but away from my home city, and missing family that are at home on the opposite side of the world... Guess I did know the risks of such surrealism when I signed up now, didn't I?

It's Late

2011-08-04T11:48:00.002+08:00

but I'm going to post a picture anyway, if only for momentum's sake...

I was taking a bus during rush hour, and at every red light, the driver would lean back, close his eyes, and start snoring gently. When the light turned green and the bus ahead in the line of traffic started moving, he would awake with a start, gun the motor, and drive ahead until traffic was stopped at the next red light, at which point he would tilt his head back, and start the procedure all over again. Seemed like a workable system to me...

Two Years Ago - Domesticity

2011-08-01T07:46:00.003+08:00

Travel the world over, and no matter if it's a grass hut or Buckingham Palace, one of the first things you're likely to hear from your hosts is "oh my gosh, sorry about the mess!". I suspect that this is because, deep down inside, most of us (Buddhist monks excluded) have an awkward relationship with our Stuff, and how the state and amount of said Stuff compares will other people's Stuff.

Or maybe the place is a bit cluttered because, oh, it's Saturday morning, you're planning to travel back to the States on Monday, and you are procrastinating all the packing and planning you need to do by just a bit and taking pictures of your apartment for some silly "then and now" project that you're blogging about. (Yes, that would be me I'm talking about...)

In any case, since I've had many friends ask us what our apartment in China is like, I present you, in all of its eternally transitional glory... our apartment! (And if you ask me, I think the 2011 version looks better. Don't you?)

2009:

2011:

.

.

Two years ago - now, with added family members!

2011-07-31T19:20:00.002+08:00

Continuing on where I left off, here are some pictures we took in 2009 of our apartment in the first hour after we brought up our luggage, followed by the 2011 versions, taken sometime last month.

2009:

2011:

2009:

2011:

Home is where 2/3 of your kids are...

2011-07-31T18:56:00.002+08:00

...and, since Xander and I won't be there for a while, I thought I'd fire up the blog by posting some pictures of the kids that we took before we left for the States. Missing you guys!

Incidentally, Xander is doing fine after surgery, and is now recovering nicely. I probably won't be covering too much of our current activities in the U.S. on this blog, but we are emailing periodic updates to friends and family, as well as posting on Facebook, etc. Want to know more? Leave a comment, or drop us a line - we'd love to hear from you!

For the first time in TWO WHOLE YEARS!!

2011-07-29T00:41:00.003+08:00

I had a couple of robo-posts on the blog last week while I was in Chicago, but this is the first time that I've posted on this blog from the United States in two years. Correction - this is the first time I've posted from the States in TWO WHOLE YEARS!! (That extra exclamation point at the end makes all the difference, don't you think?)

To start out, then, a partial list of things that I've done in the last week or so, for the first time in TWO WHOLE YEARS!!

I've:
- driven a car (several, in fact, thanks to the generosity of friends)
- eaten homemade cherry pie ala mode, salad with Ranch dressing, and Costa Rican veggie burrito with awesome grilled mushrooms
- gotten onto Facebook without having to connect to a VPN
- paid more for a bagel sandwich than it usually costs to take our whole family out to dinner back in China
- and, most importantly, been able to reconnect with many friends that I haven't seen in (all together, now!) TWO WHOLE YEARS!!

As I think I mentioned, we're here for my son's surgery, (now underway!), and one of the reasons I can write this while waiting instead of pacing up and down the waiting room like a caged ferret is the support that we've been getting from everyone. Thanks, all! Great to be back.

The first time I've seen Mt. Ranier from an airplane window in TWO WHOLE YEARS!! (okay, the first time ever, but that doesn't sound as good)

Don't think I've got very much to add to this one

2011-07-25T06:57:00.000+08:00

I mean really, what's there left to say?

Meanwhile, back in Shanghai...

2011-07-22T07:23:00.000+08:00

...they have charging stations for mobile phones that are quite handy. Do they have these in the States yet?

The best part? There's even an ultraviolet telephone sanitizer at the bottom, just so you don't get a virulent disease from your Nokia.

Time warp

2011-07-21T18:16:00.000+08:00

Pictures again of the area in and around the coal mining town of Bagou, this time with a bit more focus on landscape.

People in the neighborhood

2011-07-20T07:06:00.000+08:00

More pictures taken around the mining town of Bagou and environs, featuring the residents of the area. I forget the exact statistics, but the town currently has only around 10% of its original peak population still living there.