Siberian Peninsula viewed from 35,000 feet. Note curvature of the earth.
About 30 minutes out of Beijing, I just finished a light supper of ravioli, fruit and Knott’s Berry Farm shortbread cookies—not a bad little supper. The flight hasn’t been too bad. I was able to sleep lightly for 2 to 3 hours. I never mind flying west, it’s the eastbound long flights that take me out of commission. We’ve come 9,574 km so far (5,951 mi.). Our current ground speed is 512 mph. 2006.05.07 Sunday (Beijing) I arrived last night around 7:30—just enough time to throw my suitcases in my room before heading down to the lobby for the 8:00 meeting I had scheduled with my students. One of the students, Brian Jacques, was waiting for me at the airport in the precise place we arranged to meet, so we shared a cab to the university. The fare was 90 RMB and traffic was light. When we stepped off the elevator into the lobby, two of the other students were waiting to get on as the doors opened—Mike F and Jason C. They let out an enthusiastic “Gu Laoshi!” when they saw me which made me feel good. I finally met Kimberly W (took 101 and 102 with Shen Laoshi so I never met her) and her parents (Albert and Suzanne). They are very nice people. Her dad teaches deaf education at a university in Dallas. After our informal introductory meeting everyone (except Matt F, who hadn’t arrived yet) went down the street to a dumpling house for a late dinner (Jinbian jiaozi guan). We ordered two portions of three different cold dishes (pai huanggua, which was cucumbers in a garlic sesame sauce; spinach with sesame sauce; and laohu cai, which is green peppers, garlic, and a lot of cilantro) and 200 dumplings (100 pork/chive and 100 egg/green pepper). Everyone seemed pleased with the food. We finished all but a few of the egg/green pepper dumplings. Everyone also had a Sprite and the entire bill was 164 RMB, so under US$2 per person!
Kimberly W looking stylish in her PLA cap.
Everyone went to church this morning. As I’ve indicated in prior entries, I always wonder who I will meet at church in China. This time it was Alan T, a fried of Tami D back in the university days. I once helped this guy drive a 24-foot U-Haul to Detroit. I actually got out of the truck in Ann Arbor, where I was to visit my friend, and now Tami’s husband, Steve D. Due to a financial convention here, the Beijing Branch set a record sacrament/fast meeting attendance today—over 380 people! It was very tight and very warm. I also saw Shay, Tirzah, and Addie and we planned to get together sometime during my stay here.
I have to say that I’ve been completely excited ever since arriving here. This is definitely one of the highlights of my career. To finally have a group of students here—I can’t quite describe how I feel. As I think back to where I was 21 years ago taking Chinese 101 at BYU. I had such powerful feelings about studying this language and now look where it’s taken me. I feel kind of emotional as I write this. China has been such an integral part of my life. It’s so exciting to see it becoming such for other young people.
I just called Trish. She sounded a lot more positive than last night when we talked. The kids are getting over their colds, except Harry who still has a pretty bad cough. I talked to Harry and Madi each for just a few seconds. I miss them all. It would be a dream if we could all come over here to live for a few months or even longer. I just don’t know how it would be financially possible unless we made some radical changes or just saved really aggressively for several years.
2006.05.09 Tuesday (Beijing)
I spent yesterday making sure the students got through their placement tests, book purchases, and to the right classes, etc. We all had lunch in the dining room downstairs. The food was quite good, and the price was right: ten RMB. The whole chaban issue is a bit difficult. Everyone is pretty excited about their classes, likes their teachers and classmates, etc. but I think several are pretty overwhelmed with the whole notion of joining these classes that have already been going on for two months. I think in the future, at least for the next few years, the ideal plan will be to run the program during the 6 week break in July-August. This way, if we could get ten students who were all at about the same level, they would open a new class for them. This would be ideal. The more advanced students could likely chaban if necessary.
I bought a phone number and SIM card for my mobile phone yesterday. I feel like a regular cosmopolitan communicator now. It’s pretty nifty to be able to use my phone here. All my running around at a hare’s pace caught up with me today. I have felt fairly spent most of the day, although I kept up a pretty good pace today as well. Tonight everyone met for dinner (except Gary L and Matt F, who apparently had fallen asleep) and went to a pretty good Sichuan place down across the street from the “Wu Mart” supermarket. We had a private room upstairs and had about twelve dishes. I think everyone was pleased with the food I ordered. It wasn’t as good as the Sichuan food Matt and I had last night at a place called Yu Yuan (Xidan). I saw today in the Insider’s Guide to Beijing that it is considered to be extremely good by the Sichuanese themselves.
Trish was kind enough to spend fifty minutes on the phone with me today helping me set up virtual discussion groups, etc. for my online Chinese culture class that I can’t access from here. The Internet access here is extremely slow. I can access my Gmail account but nothing via the university website. I think I will try to get online to send another message home now. I tried and the connection is way too slow to even get on with Gmail. So I think I will try to go to bed.
2006.05.15 Monday GQ
I flew into Yan’an this morning with Fred C for visits to the CREF supported schools and meetings with some of the county government and education officials. More on this later. Last week was really great. On Wednesday I took the students to the Temple of Heaven. The weather was perfect—blue skies and not too hot. The restoration work had just been completed a week before so the structures were absolutely beautiful. There weren’t that many tourists there, for a change. And the groups that were there had guides that were not using megaphones—a very pleasant change from the norm. On Thursday I spent the morning working on correspondence, etc. and the afternoon at the Xidan Tushu dasha (the largest bookstore in China) purchasing books and dvds for the library. Brooks H told me I could spend $500 to $1000, but I think I came in closer to $300-400. It took about three hours just to do that much. I purchased some of the classic novels (Ming-Qing), a few contemporary novels, and some youth readers with pinyin that will be suitable for beginning and intermediate language learners.
Freshly painted Temple of Heaven
On Friday, Fred called me in the morning to see if I wanted to accompany him out to some villages around the periphery of Beijing to do some research on rural health issues. It was really interesting to see about how he goes about one aspect of his work. I was heartened by what I learned, as it wasn’t too intimidating. I feel that I could conduct similar research if I had a client that was interested in a particular kind of information. We spent the late morning and afternoon in Daxing 大兴 visiting local clinics and public health offices. I learned a lot about rural health from these visits as well. There are three levels of medical facilities in China (1st, 2nd, and 3rd class, with 3rd being the highest). It is exciting to see signs of the central governments policies that have been implemented to lift rural China. It is clear that there are efforts in motion to increase the quality of rural health, education, etc.
Fred with the hospital administrator (right) and a pharmacist at a village hospital near Daxing
Friday night I organized a dinner in the Chinese restaurant in the dorms for all the students. I invited Shay B (former student and current Microsoft employee in Beijing) and Fred to speak to the students. Shay gave a really good talk on his career path this far and how he has parlayed his Chinese skills, etc. Fred talked briefly about similar issues.
Saturday was another day of gorgeous weather. This made our trip to the Badaling section of the Great Wall particularly pleasant. If there hadn’t been tens of thousands of other visitors there that day as well it would have even been nicer! Shay, Tirzah, and Addie also came along on the Great Wall trip. We visited the Ming Tombs on the way back from the wall. In the future I would not take students there. It’s quite expensive and anti-climactic. The students unanimously agreed that future generations of students should skip the Ming Tombs. I took Shay and Tirzah out to dinner at a place they showed me in Wudaokou (Lush—above a little bookstore). It was quite the expat dive. Excellent food. I had a hamburger, Caesar salad, and a slice of mud pie. I definitely have not lost weight on this trip so far and I don’t see it happening this week.
Shay and Adelaide with me on Badaling Great Wall. Photo by Tirzah.
Yesterday at church I saw Mike H who I hadn’t seen in fifteen years. He was accompanying the chairman of Continental on some sort of a trip to China, which included dinner at the ambassador’s home. He remembered who I was. We had a nice chat. He and his family are based in the States now but he is back and forth so much that he maintains an apartment in Hong Kong. That would be a tough schedule to keep, but I’m sure the compensation makes it very worthwhile. I also saw Kathy H, Eric’s wife. Eric is one of my former mission companions who now works for the State Department in embassy security. I also met Brother and Sister T, from Idaho Falls, who are welfare service missionaries. Apparently they are the only official representatives for the church in China. Fred introduced me to one of his (and Gary W's—my mission president) former mission companions. Cliff is a political officer with the State Department recently stationed at the embassy. He invited me to go to a function at the ambassador’s home next week. I’ll already be returned to Rexburg by then, however. Matt and I went to Shay and Tirzah’s for dinner. Tirzah reminds me a lot of Trish—a very conscientious hostess. She had prepared a delicious chicken and white bean chili with fresh salsa and homemade cheesecake for dessert. Their little Adelaide is sure a cutie. She would smile for me if I played with her from a distance, but she didn’t like me to hold her. I topped the day off with a nice mother’s day conversation with Trish.
Fred picked me up in a cab at the university gate this morning at 5:30 a.m. Our flight departed on time at 7:30 (a nearly-empty 737) and arrived in Yan’an just over an hour later. It was a beautiful flight and I enjoyed my window seat, taking more pictures of the Yellow River. A vice principal at GQ High School and his driver picked us up at the airport and brought us back to the GQ Binguan. Mr. Z (sort of the superintendent of schools here) and Mr. Q (I remember him from last summer—high level political cadre for GQ county) came to our rooms and hung out until lunch at noon. Lunch was delicious, as I remember all the food here last summer. In the afternoon we visited YZK K-2 elementary school and the LS consolidated elementary school. Fred delivered the letters from the school children in his daughter Allyson’s neighborhood as well as a bunch of school supplies. I took a bit of video footage as well as some good stills. The little ones are really cute. We also visited the GQ city middle school and the local hospital. It seems that we will need to increase the per student allocation to cover the room and board fees of the students (the government is now covering the tuition and miscellaneous fees). Mr. Z, Q, one of the drivers, Fred and I all dined together again at dinner. The food here is really quite good. I didn’t realize how cool the weather here would be. It was quite chilly when we arrived this morning and all I brought were short-sleeved shirts. Mr. Z took me down the street to a small men’s clothing store where I hoped to buy an inexpensive blazer but instead came out with a thick, long-sleeved, sort of dressy t-shirt. They had a blazer that I really liked, but it was about $50. I paid about $15 for the shirt, which I still feel was a bit high. Clothing is definitely cheaper in Beijing, where there is an economy of scale.
The Yellow River
After returning to my room and doing some laundry in the sink, I prepared to write this and realized that my computer wouldn’t plug into either of the two plugs in the room. The hotel not having an adapter, I set out in search of one myself and located one across the street at the second place I visited. It cost me 24 cents. I feel like a true China hand now. Most of the places I have stayed have had receptacles that accommodate western-style plug heads.
I really feel isolated here. It’s interesting how technology and access to information and communication has made the world seem smaller. In Beijing, for instance, I can use email right from my room as well as make crystal-clear international calls for 10-15 cents a minute. Now I even have a cell phone number in China! I bought a sim card for my mobile phone for about $24. I wonder if I still had a working Beijing sim card if I could use it to call from my cell phone here in GQ. There’s no internet access in the hotel and in order to make an international call I would have to go to the local telephone office.
2006.05.16 Tuesday
Today was a great day. We began with breakfast at 7:30 (accompanied by Mr. Q, Mr. Z, Xiao D (driver) and Xiao S (publicity specialist for school district). We drove directly to DZH village after breakfast and visited the students there. There are now two classes there, a pre-school class (xue qian ban) and a first grade. Since there were only a few second-graders, they have sent them to LZ (consolidated elementary school). Everyone sort of stayed with Fred, so I took the opportunity to sneak out and into the other classroom while he was in the other. I had a really great visit with the pre-schoolers and an o.k. visit with the first graders. The younger ones were more willing to talk. I took some good pictures and video footage. I turned the monitor on the video camera toward the students and they really came to life as they saw themselves. They answered my questions and even sang a song. I have this idea to make a mini low-budget documentary and show it and then accept donations for the CREF. We’ll see what happens.
Here’s one of the images I made of the GQ students:
After visiting the DZH village school and LZ consolidated elementary, we visited the SM Xiang middle school. As we visited the cafeteria, the cooks were making mian piar, a type of noodle. It looked quite labor intensive as the cook poured a bit of the noodle batter into a shallow pan and then steamed it in a giant wok (it floated) over a coal-fired stove. After a minute or so she would remove the pan by its little handles with her bare hands and then cool it in another wok filled with cool water. The flat circular noodle was then removed from the pan and placed in a stack. I suspect the noodles were sliced up later. The other cook was in the process of preparing the noodles. Fred and I were each offered a dish of these delicious noodles. The noodles were prepared with shredded cucumber, vinegar, hot pepper (crushed in oil type), and tofu mixed in. It was really fabulous. Here are a few photos of the cooking process and me enjoying the finished product.
I just had a visit from Mr. C, a physics teacher at GQ High School. He brought the English curriculum by for us to take back to the language acquisition specialists. His daughter, who is seven years old, accompanied him to my room. She was the cutest little girl. She reminded me so much of Madi. She was very willing to engage in conversation with me. I showed her Madi’s picture on my computer and asked her if she would like to become pen pals with her. She said she would so I wrote Madi’s name and address out for her. I hope it works out for her to write. I think it would be a great opportunity for both of them and she seems like she has a personality that Madi could relate to, even if via letters. Maybe Madi will have an opportunity to come here to visit her in the future. I suspect she will.
Mr. C’s daughter
Before coming back up to our rooms after dinner, Xiao S, the publicity specialist for the county school district, took us to his parents’ internet bar to check our email. I was able to send a couple quick emails home and to a couple students. I hoped for one from Trish but didn’t expect one, as I told her I wouldn’t have access while here. Tomorrow should be a fairly relaxing day, as we have already visited all the schools and met with the county education officials to plan next month’s visit by our four language acquisition specialists. Mr. Q will take us tomorrow to visit one of his friends who is a well-known local calligrapher.
2006.05.17 Wednesday
I met Mr. Shangguan 上官, Mr. Q’s calligrapher friend, this morning. I was quite surprised to find out that we sort of have a mutual acquaintance. This past year I helped curate an exhibit in the Spori Gallery of about sixty pieces of art, mostly made in this area of China during the 1960s-80s. I received a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council to partially fund the exhibit as well as a screening of a documentary by Dodge Billingsley and Eric Hyer on the life of one of the artists whose work was featured prominently in the exhibit. The artist’s name is Jin Zhilin and he spent a good portion of his career in this area. I asked Mr. Shangguan if he knew Jin and it turns out that they are very good friends. Jin was one of his teachers. Last month when I was in Beijing and called Mr. Jin, his daughter said he was in Shaanxi. It turns out he was here with Mr. Shangguan! What a small world. I feel that I have to meet Jin Zhilin this week when I return to Beijing. I planned to call him anyway, but I really have to now.
We visited Mr. Shangguan’s studio—which wasn’t exactly what I expected. It was a huge room in an abandoned building. He seems to work on very large-scale calligraphic art. He wrote a character for me and one for Fred. Here are a couple images of Shangguan Yongxiang’s studio:
Before we visited Mr. Shangguan’s studio we visited a vocational middle school in Ganquan. After visiting the studio we drove out into the countryside to see “Yunli Shanzhuang,” Mr. Shangguan’s privately developed park. He bought the approximately 35-acre plot about seven years ago (actually leased the land for fifty years) and has done a lot of work to turn it into a very beautiful, serene retreat of sorts. I was somewhat disappointed to find out that he’s planning it as a tourist destination. I think it will lose something once people start visiting, unless it is very small-scale. After visiting the retreat we drove onward to Dong Gou 东沟, the township (xiang) where Mr. Q served as party secretary from 1980-85. During his administration he developed cultivation of rice in the area. He met with a lot of resistance as he initially introduced the idea to his superiors. He took one mu of land and did a test crop and harvested nearly 1000 kg of rice the first year. Since then they have been cultivating rice in this area. Today we observed the farmers using a mule to smooth out the clumps of mud in the paddy prior to planting. We also saw women planting rice seedlings. The time period when Mr. Qiao served was one of rapid change. Collectives were changing to townships. The area, still quite primitive, was very remote and undeveloped at that time. When he had to attend meetings in GQ he rode his bicycle.
After a brief introduction to the current party secretary of Donggou, we drove up into the mountains to a national forest. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but it was very beautiful and serene. We drove several kilometers up a steady but not-too-steep grade. When we arrived at the trailhead it was shady and cool. Apparently one can hike for several kilometers from where we were. One of the attractions along the trail is “Bo ji mu,” 薄姬墓, which is allegedly the burial place of one of Sui Yangdi’s concubines (Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty, ca. 589). I would have liked to hike there to see this sight but we were not prepared for such an adventure today. Perhaps one day I can return and explore this park.
Farmers smoothing the mud in Donggou xiang
We stopped back in Donggou on the way down from the park and had lunch in a tiny little restaurant operated by one of the villagers. It was the first time a foreigner had eaten there. The food was excellent. I was particularly taken with the rice, which was harvested and threshed by hand last year from the paddies we had just visited. It somehow tasted better than the other rice I’ve eaten since being here.
After returning to the GQ Hotel and resting for an hour or so, Fred and I ventured out to explore the little county town of GQ. We visited the department store/supermarket again and walked up and down the two or three “main” streets. Fred paid a young cab driver and his copilot twenty RMB to take us on a quick tour of GQ. They took us up and down the streets, out to the train station, and back to the hotel.
Some of GQ’s older citizens, still dressed in mid-twentieth century styles
2006.05.18 Thursday Beijing
Fred and I returned to Beijing this morning on another half-full 737. It was a quick, uneventful flight. I had lunch in the student (Chinese student) cafeteria with my students—it was quite good. I had some kind of a chicken sandwich (about 30 cents) and a dozen egg and chive dumplings (which I shared with the students—I only had three or four). Fred came by this afternoon and I made cd copies for him of the images I made in GQ. It was a good trip. I ended up back in room 525 of the CNU foreign students’ dorm. It seems like the Ritz Carlton after the GQ Binguan! Matt and I went out for Sichuan food at the restaurant across the street from Wu-Mart. We had chuanwei liangfen, ganbian biandou, jingjiang rousi, and dandan mian. It was a great dinner. After dinner we went to the Hailong computer tower in Zhongguancun where I purchased a 160 gig external hard drive for our computers. I’ve been meaning to get something like this to back up to for a long time. I will also download some of the video I shot onto it. I wanted to call Trish as soon as I returned from purchasing a phone card today but it was after 11 her time. Turns out she was writing me an email at that time. We ended up talking later this evening. She had sent me some long emails which were most welcome after my information dearth during the three days in GQ. It’s funny how isolated one can feel after a few days with little or no communication.
2006.05.21 Sunday Beijing Capitol Airport
I just finished my last plate of jiaozi for this trip. This has been perhaps my best trip to China to date. Bringing students here and seeing them experience China firsthand and seeing their love for the people and the place deepen has been extremely rewarding. The trip was also good due to the trip I took to GQ with Fred. And yesterday was the icing on the cake for this and all China trips—an hour with the artist Jin Zhilin. I truly feel that an interesting chain of coincidences, or perhaps just incidences, brought us together for a very warm, stimulating, sincere hour of discussion. Eric Hyer had told me that Jin Zhilin was now working on the “tree of life” in Chinese art history. What Eric did not tell me is that Jin is one of the leading experts in the world on exploring the common cultural origins of mankind through his research in folk art, archaeology, and anthropology. Jin summarized for me, in language I could clearly understand, the scope of his first four or five books and then told me what was to be expected in the forthcoming volume as well as the volume planned to follow that one. I found his ideas extremely compelling. They are things I have thought about before but not known where to go to learn more. He gave me copies of his four books. We sat in the living room of his tiny Beijing apartment for fifteen or twenty minutes before going down the hall (to a separate apartment of sorts) to his study. It was perhaps the most interesting study I’ve ever been in. The place was filled with shelves and stacks of books, which smelled as only such large quantities of books can smell. Additionally, there were all kinds of interesting artifacts that he has collected all over the world—not simply to collect, but as objects of his research. He has taken over 10,000 photos around the world that he uses in his research. It was a fascinating conversation. I am intrigued by the way he combines art history, archaeology, and anthropology in his research.
Let me recount briefly the interesting chain of multiple coincidences and relationships that have affected my recently established relationship with Jin Zhilin and others I’ve been working with lately. It was a couple years ago that my colleague Ron A forwarded me an email from his brother. His brother worked in Taiwan around 1980 with Fred and currently works in the financial services industry in St. George. He had sent Ron an email around the holidays telling him of a non-profit charity organization on whose board of directors he sat and invited his family to donate money to the organization. Ron thought I would be interested in the non-profit, since it dealt with China. The organization was, of course, the CREF. Through Ron’s brother I became acquainted with Fred. Through Fred, and last year’s trip to Ganquan, I met Mr. Q. On this trip, he introduced Fred and me to the aforementioned Shangguan Yongxiang, who of course is a friend and former student of Jin Zhilin.
There is a whole other parallel of relationships also tied to Jin Zhilin. Some fifteen or so years ago I had an international politics class with Eric Hyer. Eric and I have stayed in touch over the years and have become good friends. Last fall when Eric was in Rexburg giving a forum address (which I had initiated), our conversation turned to a documentary that he and Dodge Billingsley were completing on the relationship between art and politics in Mao’s China. He told me also of the collection of about sixty pieces of art that they had collected as they were on location in China filming. To make a long story short, just before I was to take him to the airport in Idaho Falls, we drove over to my friend Jerry G’s house (curator of university gallery) and talked to him about the possibility of exhibiting this collection on campus. Jerry was interested. Eric, Dodge and I were awarded a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council ($2,000) to partially support the exhibit and an accompanying screening of the documentary. So through this interesting chain of events and relationships, Jin Zhilin came to Rexburg through his art and through the documentary about his life. Yesterday I took him a copy of the poster we used to advertise the exhibit as well as a few of the postcards. He seemed disappointed that I didn’t have a copy of the dvd for him. When I return I will contact Eric to see about having a copy sent to him.
I’m not sure what will come of all this, but I have the feeling that there are yet evolutions to take place in these relationships.
Jin Zhilin in his Beijing study
