The Foreign Devil

Poem to accompany a poorly-written paper in a Chinese literature class

2010-12-03T02:08:00.001-05:00

逛遍翰林賞古詩，
上師一教知已至。
唯恐晚輩智慧少，
老師請恕學生癡。

To Infinity-- and Beyond! (Ibimus illâc.)

2010-10-31T16:20:00.003-04:00

This year's halloween costume is (if I say so myself) a marvel of engineering:

Dixit et ignotas animum dimittit in artes....

---- Postquam manus ultima coeptis

Posita est; geminas opifex libravit in alas

Ipse suum corpus.

Two Poems

2010-10-12T18:58:00.000-04:00

During today's Chinese literature class, the classroom was overheated as usual (it's a terribly designed room, with no ventilation and a lot of south-facing windows). I'd had a very long morning, and I found it impossible to concentrate. In the margin of my notes I jotted down the following verses. They're modeled after the Chinese formal verse called 絕句, but the tones are all in the wrong places.

上課怨二首

其一
悶氣滿課堂，
陽光照桌上。
欲注意不能，
學生皆遐想。

其二
多人擠小室，
疲倦心裏痴。
聞言未懂意，
此中宜作詩。

A Parable about Signs

2010-09-29T01:39:00.003-04:00

Quaeritur de Lazaro et Divite:

If miracles and resurrections are a crutch for the faithless, why did Jesus need to be publicly resurrected at all? [...] Why should the people who had rejected Jesus's teachings when they heard them get the encouragement that the rich man was refused? Why should Paul get a personal appearance from Jesus on the road to Damascus, when his colleagues were allowed to go on persecuting the Christians?

Responditur:

The Resurrection of Christ, at least, is not a counterexample to the parable. The Resurrection is not merely a sign that Christ has conquered death, but the very fact of that victory. It's not as if Christ's resurrection validates his message, and encourages us to take him seriously (though this is true to a certain extent); rather, the Paschal drama is itself the reason for the Incarnation, and the Resurrection is an integral part of that.

This is not the case with the resurrection of Lazarus (and with other miracles). One traditional understanding of Christ's miracles, however, sees them not as prodigies performed to compel unbelievers into belief, but as symbols that reveal something about the nature of what we believe in. It's worth noting that almost all Christ's miracles are performed for people who already believe; in fact he refuses to perform any miracle when a sign is demanded of him.

In point of fact, I don't really think that too many people are convinced by miracles. The miracle of the sun at Fatima was witnessed and testified to by all manner of atheists, but they generally managed to find some explanation for it that didn't require the intervention of the Mother of God. For all we know, there were a hundred Sauls of Tarsus who were struck temporarily blind on the road to Damascus, and only one who resisted the temptation to write it off as heatstroke or attribute it to those sketchy-looking kebabs they'd eaten along the way.

This is what Christ means when he says that signs will not convince those for whom the law and the prophets are not enough. And on that note, I will tell a parable (it's been presented as history, but I'm not sure whether I believe the source):

Émile Zola, in an anticlericalist mood, decided to make a trip to Lourdes, to record, in his characteristically realist style, what was to be observed there, and to assemble it into a critique of French Catholicism.

Lourdes provided him with plenty of ammunition for that, and he reveled in the place. There were the innumerable shops and booths selling kitschy religious images and dubious relics; the hucksterism of the preachers; the multitudes of sufferers preferring, in their ignorance, magical water to modern medicine; and the waters themselves: frigid, brackish, and contaminated with the pus and blood of a million pilgrims.

There was more than enough in the grottoes of Lourdes to satisfy Zola's taste for grotesquery. And in the interest of narrative drama he sought out the most pitiable case he could find. There was a woman afflicted with lupus; her face -- on the few occasions she raised her veil -- was a nightmare of running sores and swollen flesh, and she had come to Lourdes out of desperate hope that the Virgin might cure what her doctors could not.

Zola pointed at her the triumphant finger of doubt: "I will believe," he pronounced to the pious doctors in attendance, "when this woman is made beautiful."

And of course it came to pass that when the poor woman took to the waters, her disease began to show signs of improvement, and she grew healthier with each day. The pious doctors could find no medical explanation for this cure, and they brought the woman to Zola, pointing the triumphant finger of faith: "M. Zola," they said, "you who would test God: behold! she is cured."

And they showed her to him: her sores had ceased to run, new skin had begun to grow over her lesions, and the swelling in her face had subsided enough that one might see her smile.

But Émile Zola averted his eyes, and said only: "She is still too ugly."

Mountains beyond Mountains

2010-08-19T23:26:00.002-04:00

Because my musical tastes are (in their way) completely predictable, it was inevitable that I should sooner or later download this song from the new album by Arcade Fire:

It's not a bad song. And I've got to hand it to Arcade Fire; they really know how to push my buttons. I couldn't say what any of their songs really mean, or whether they really mean anything, but I've got a persistent suspicion that they represent cultural and even theological criticism of the sort I'm inclined to hear most happily. And I can't say that about just any band.

Another example: the same album includes a song called "Rococo" (already enough to win over anyone who's spent a few minutes in the vicinity of Karsten Harries or Margaret Blume) which is -- wait for it -- an attack on hipsters.

But I only brought them up because a line from the song embedded above -- "mountains beyond mountains" -- seemed to remind me of something, when I first heard it. And once I'd allowed a little time for the mists of memory to clear, there it was. A restaurant I ate at several years ago in Hangzhou, called the 山外山菜馆，the "Mountains Beyond Mountains Restaurant."

I recall that when I ate there, someone mentioned that the name of the restaurant was taken from a line of a classical poem. And after a brief search through the world's largest repository of Chinese texts, I found it. It's from a poem "Written at an inn at Lin'an" by Lin Sheng, a minor poet of the Song Dynasty (Lin'an is an ancient name for the city of Hangzhou).

West Lake, outside Hangzhou

山外青山樓外樓，
西湖歌舞幾時休？
暖風熏得遊人醉，
直把杭州作汴州。

Which may be loosely translated as:

Beyond mountains, mountains; beyond towers, towers.
At West Lake the dancing can go on for hours.
The guests are made drunk by the warm summer wind--
And it's here that you'll find the imperial powers.

(I've taken liberties with the last line; literally, it means "They're treating Hangzhou just as if it were Bianzhou." Bianzhou means Kaifeng, the ancient capital of the Song; Hangzhou was a sort of Paris of China, a city famous for the perfection of its culture and the decadence of its morals, and in Lin Sheng's time the imperial court had for a long time demonstrated a preference for the pleasures of Hangzhou over their official duties.)

Though it may not be immediately apparent to one reading this poem outside of its proper historical milieu, it was intended as a withering critique of the decadence of the Song court.

Which bears comment, because the song by Arcade Fire is intended, as far as I can tell, as a critique of our own decadence: "dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains."

Is there any connection here? Beyond a coincidence of language, almost certainly not. But there's no doubt that the phrase has now, for me, acquired a special significance, and that when I next drive down the turnpike near Port Elizabeth, and pass the great hulks of the refineries, glorious with safety lamps, and am as suffused with the scent of gasoline as the revelers of Hangzhou were with that of the summer breeze, and remark to myself how strange it is that something so destructive, that represents the so-dubious spirit of the automobile, should be so beautiful, I will very likely think: "mountains beyond mountains."

Such are the pleasures of overeclectic overeducation. But this meaning of the line allows me to enjoy that song far more than (I suspect) its authors intended; which, to add another needless allusion, is further evidence of the merits of the literary criticism of Tlön.

A translation from the Mencius (《孟子 · 盡心下》)

2010-05-30T02:02:00.032-04:00

I’m bored tonight, so why not translate something?

萬章問曰：“孔子在陳曰：‘盍歸乎來！吾黨之士狂簡，不忘其初。’孔子在陳，何思魯之狂士？”
Wan Zhang asked, “When Confucius was in Chen, he said, ‘Why should I not return! The scholars of my hometown are ambitious and simplistic, for they cannot forget their old ways.’ When Confucius was in Chen, why did he think of the ambitious scholars of Lu?”

孟子曰：“孔子‘不得中道而與之，必也狂獧乎。狂者進取，獧者有所不爲也。’孔子豈不欲中道哉？不可必得，故思其次也。”
Mencius said, “Confucius ‘could not find and be with those who had attained the Middle Way, so it was necessary to seek out the ambitious and the narrow-minded. The ambitious rush out to seize it; while there is that which the narrow-minded will not do.’ Did Confucius not want to find those who had attained the Middle Way? He could not be certain of finding them, and so he thought of their inferiors.”

“敢問何如斯可謂狂矣？”
“May I ask what sort of man is called ambitious?”

曰：“如琴張曾皙牧皮者，孔子之所謂狂矣。”
Mencius answered, “Men like Qin Zhang, Zeng Xi, and Du Pi were those whom Confucius called ambitious.”

“何以謂之狂也？”
“Why did he call them ambitious?”

曰：“其志嘐嘐然，曰：‘古之人！古之人！’夷考其行而不掩焉者也。
Mencius answered, “Their aim was to be grandiloquent; they said, ‘The men of old! The men of old!’ But if one considers their behavior, it did not match their words.

“狂者又不可得，欲得不屑不潔之士而與之。是獧也，是又其次也。孔子曰：‘過我門而不入我室，我不憾焉者，其惟鄉原乎。鄉原，德之賊也。’”
“And when Confucius could not find even the ambitious, he wished to find and be with scholars who would have nothing to do with the impure. These are the narrow-minded, and they are again inferior. Confucius said, ‘When they pass my door but do not enter my house, I do not regret it. They are only the village worthies. The village worthies are the thieves of virtue.’”

曰：“何如斯可謂鄉原矣？”
Wan Zhang asked, “Why did he call them village worthies?”

曰：“‘何以是嘐嘐然？言不顧行，行不顧言，則曰“古之人！古之人！”行，何爲踽踽涼涼？生斯世也，爲斯世也。善斯可矣。’閹然媚於世也者，是鄉原也。”
Mencius said, “[They are those who say] ‘Why all this grandiloquence? Their words do not accord with their actions; their actions do not accord with their words, and they say, “The men of old! The men of old!” Why is their behavior so cold and distant? We live in this age, let us act according to this age. It is enough to be a good person.’ Eunuch-like, they flatter their age. These are the village worthies.”

萬子曰：“一鄉皆稱原人焉，無所往而不爲原人。孔子以爲德之賊何哉？”
Wan Zhang said, “The whole village calls them honest men, and wherever they go, they act worthily. Why is it that Confucius saw them as thieves of virtue?”

曰：“非之無舉也，刺之無刺也。同乎流俗，合乎汙世。居之似忠信，行之似廉潔。眾皆悅之，自以爲是。而不可與入堯舜之道。故曰德之賊也。
Mencius replied, “If you would condemn them, there is nothing you could point out; if you would criticize them, you could find nothing to criticize. They go along with the prevailing customs; they are suited to a polluted age. Their habits seem to be loyal and honest; their behavior seems to be upright and pure. The masses all delight in them; and they themselves think they are correct. But one cannot enter with them into the way of Yao and Shun. Therefore are they called the thieves of virtue.

“孔子曰：‘惡似而非者。惡莠，恐其亂苗也。惡佞，恐其亂義也。惡利口，恐其亂信也。惡鄭聲，恐其亂樂也。惡紫，恐其亂朱也。惡鄉原，恐其亂德也。君子反經而已矣。經正，則庶民興。庶民興，斯無邪慝矣。’”
“Confucius said, ‘I hate that which appears to be, but is not. I hate the tares, for they may be confused for wheat. I hate smooth talk, for it may be confused for righteousness. I hate eloquence, for it may be confused for honesty. I hate the tones of Zheng, for they may be confused for music. I hate purple, for it may be confused for red. I hate the village worthies, for they may be confused for virtuous men. The Superior Man seeks only to restore the standard. When the standard is correct, then the common people will be inspired [to virtue]. When the common people are inspired, then public evil and private vice will be no more. ’”

"Mark but this Flea..."

2009-10-30T17:40:00.001-04:00

Hey, it's University policy!

An email was just sent out by Yale's Sexual Harassment and Assault Resources and Education Center letting us know that the university is looking out for us on Halloween:

"It is our wish to ... strengthen the resolve of those who are dedicated to finding just the right words that would lead to glorious, consensual sex."

But if they really wanted to strengthen our resolve, they would show us how a real man goes about it:

In der Wunderkammer Belauscht

2009-10-30T01:50:00.003-04:00

[The FOREIGN DEVIL is sitting in his "office chair" with a book and a bourbon, underlining passages with a ruler in that obsessive way of his, and cursing under his breath when he leaves an unwanted blot of ink. HERR GOER enters with his laptop.]

HG: What are you doing?

FD: I'm reading a book.

HG (in his most pretentious voice): "I'm reading a book." What's the book?

(The FD lifts the book so the title can be read.)

HG: "The Beauty of the Infinity" ... What's that, mathematical philosophy?

FD: No, more like antiquarian theology.

HG: Because, you know, there are some philosophy books that deal with infinity as a mathematical concept.

FD: I know, but this-- is not one of those books.

HG: You know, in math sometimes when you get infinity, you can also say-- like when the limit is infinity, you can also say, "It doesn't exist."

FD: Okay.

HG: So does that mean God doesn't exist?

FD: No, it means Christianity is pretty shocking.

HG: ...

FD: It means Christianity looks things like that in the face, and admits them, and then says, "Nevertheless..."

HG: Oh. Well, good night.

Chesterton Celebrates Today's Victory

2009-10-07T07:02:00.003-04:00

White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,

And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;

There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,

It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;

It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;

For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.

They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,

They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,

And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;

The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the mass;

From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,

And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,

Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,

Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,

The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,

The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,

That once went singing southward when all the world was young.

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,

Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,

Don John of Austria is going to the war.

Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold

In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,

Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,

Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.

Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,

Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,

Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.

Love-light of Spain—hurrah!

Death-light of Africa!

Don John of Austria

Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,

(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)

He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees,

His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.

He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,

And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;

And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring

Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.

Giants and the Genii,

Multiplex of wing and eye,

Whose strong obedience broke the sky

When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,

From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;

They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea

Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be,

On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,

Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;

They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—

They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.

And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,

And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,

And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,

For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.

We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,

Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done.

But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know

The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:

It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate;

It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!

It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,

Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth."

For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,

(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)

Sudden and still—hurrah!

Bolt from Iberia!

Don John of Austria

Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michael's on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north

(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)

Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift

And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.

He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;

The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;

The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes,

And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,

And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,

And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,

And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,—

But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.

Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse

Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,

Trumpet that sayeth ha!

Domino gloria!

Don John of Austria

Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck,

(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)

The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,

And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.

He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,

He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,

And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey

Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,

And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,

But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.

Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed—

Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.

Gun upon gun, ha! ha!

Gun upon gun, hurrah!

Don John of Austria

Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,

(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)

The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,

The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.

He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea

The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;

They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,

They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;

And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,

And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,

Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines

Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.

They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung

The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.

They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on

Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon.

And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell

Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,

And his finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—

(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,

Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,

Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,

Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,

Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea

White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

Vivat Hispania!

Domino Gloria!

Don John of Austria

Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath

(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)

And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,

Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,

And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade...

(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

A Fairly Good Argument for Totalitarianism

2009-10-06T21:21:00.003-04:00

Fioretti, I.viii

2009-10-04T17:29:00.007-04:00

One day in winter, as St Francis was going with Brother Leo from Perugia to St Mary of the Angels, and was suffering greatly from the cold, he called to Brother Leo, who was walking on before him, and said to him: "Brother Leo, if it were to please God that the Friars Minor should give, in all lands, a great example of holiness and edification, write down, and note carefully, that this would not be perfect joy."

A little further on, St Francis called to him a second time: "O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor were to make the lame to walk, if they should make straight the crooked, chase away demons, give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and, what is even a far greater work, if they should raise the dead after four days, write that this would not be perfect joy."

Shortly after, he cried out again: "O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor knew all languages; if they were versed in all science; if they could explain all Scripture; if they had the gift of prophecy, and could reveal, not only all future things, but likewise the secrets of all consciences and all souls, write that this would not be perfect joy."

After proceeding a few steps farther, he cried out again with a loud voice: "O Brother Leo, thou little lamb of God! if the Friars Minor could speak with the tongues of angels; if they could explain the course of the stars; if they knew the virtues of all plants; if all the treasures of the earth were revealed to them; if they were acquainted with the various qualities of all birds, of all fish, of all animals, of men, of trees, of stones, of roots, and of waters - write that this would not be perfect joy."

Shortly after, he cried out again: "O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor had the gift of preaching so as to convert all infidels to the faith of Christ, write that this would not be perfect joy."

Now when this manner of discourse had lasted for the space of two miles, Brother Leo wondered much within himself; and, questioning the saint, he said: "Father, I pray thee teach me wherein is perfect joy." St Francis answered: "If, when we shall arrive at St Mary of the Angels, all drenched with rain and trembling with cold, all covered with mud and exhausted from hunger; if, when we knock at the convent-gate, the porter should come angrily and ask us who we are; if, after we have told him, 'We are two of the brethren', he should answer angrily, 'What ye say is not the truth; ye are but two impostors going about to deceive the world, and take away the alms of the poor; begone I say'; if then he refuse to open to us, and leave us outside, exposed to the snow and rain, suffering from cold and hunger till nightfall - then, if we accept such injustice, such cruelty and such contempt with patience, without being ruffled and without murmuring, believing with humility and charity that the porter really knows us, and that it is God who maketh him to speak thus against us, write down, O Brother Leo, that this is perfect joy. And if we knock again, and the porter come out in anger to drive us away with oaths and blows, as if we were vile impostors, saying, 'Begone, miserable robbers! to to the hospital, for here you shall neither eat nor sleep!' - and if we accept all this with patience, with joy, and with charity, O Brother Leo, write that this indeed is perfect joy. And if, urged by cold and hunger, we knock again, calling to the porter and entreating him with many tears to open to us and give us shelter, for the love of God, and if he come out more angry than before, exclaiming, 'These are but importunate rascals, I will deal with them as they deserve'; and taking a knotted stick, he seize us by the hood, throwing us on the ground, rolling us in the snow, and shall beat and wound us with the knots in the stick - if we bear all these injuries with patience and joy, thinking of the sufferings of our Blessed Lord, which we would share out of love for him, write, O Brother Leo, that here, finally, is perfect joy.

And now, brother, listen to the conclusion. Above all the graces and all the gifts of the Holy Spirit which Christ grants to his friends, is the grace of overcoming oneself, and accepting willingly, out of love for Christ, all suffering, injury, discomfort and contempt; for in all other gifts of God we cannot glory, seeing they proceed not from ourselves but from God, according to the words of the Apostle, 'What hast thou that thou hast not received from God? and if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?' But in the cross of tribulation and affliction we may glory, because, as the Apostle says again, 'I will not glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Amen."

Another, from the Chinese of Chen Cao'an

2009-09-20T13:54:00.004-04:00

《山坡羊》

晨雞初叫

昏鴉爭噪

那箇不去紅塵閙

路遙遙

水迢迢

功名盡在長安道

今日少年明日老

山　依舊好

人　憔悴了

To the tune, "Goats on the Mountainside."

The rooster crows at break of day,

At dusk the ravens squawk and fuss,

Who isn't busy making noise and raising clouds of dust?

The highway stretches far,

And the water flows away;

Everyone is city-bound and hopes to be a star,

And they'll be old tomorrow who are young and fresh today.

The hills

Will always last,

But men

Get ground down fast.

A Translation from the Chinese of Guan Hanqing

2009-09-20T12:42:00.007-04:00

《四塊玉》

南畝耕

東山臥

世態人情經歷多

閒將往事思量過

賢的是他

愚的是我

爭什麽

To the tune, "Four Pieces of Jade."

Go till the southern fields

And sleep on lonely hills.

I've seen much of the world's and men's hearts' fickle ways,

And in my leisure I have pondered former days:

Others are worthy,

Dull am I,

Why should I try?

Sedona

2009-07-27T00:56:00.008-04:00

My family is taking the scenic route to my cousin's wedding next weekend in California; the first stop on our itinerary is Sedona, Arizona. Our plane landed in Phoenix, a city that could serve as an epitome of all that's wrong with the way Americans live. Acre after acre of poorly built and unnoteworthy subdivisions, many of them vacant, punctuated by big-box stores and the occasional megachurch, stretched along the interstate leading north from the airport. Only the temperatures and the occasional cartoonized petroglyph set into the concrete of an overpass reminded us that we had arrived in the Southwest.

Within an hour we had passed through the outermost circle of exurbia into the desert. Great saguaros stuck up out of the ground, branching off at improbable angles, and little scrubby bushes sprouted out of the ground every once in a while. Dim ranges of mountains rose in the

distance; at one point the interstate passed through a sloping trench to run along the top of a mesa. And above the whole scene loomed black clouds, lit up within by lightning, that

stretched down to the horizon ahead of us and increased the unearthly impression of that wind-blasted plain.

But soon enough we were in Sedona, a town of unsurpassed natural beauty whose population of moneyed retirees and graying Aquarians has taken steps t

o ensure that the town's booming development of the past 20 years has not significantly spoiled the view. (The McDonald's in town sports turquoise arches — the color yellow was thought to be out of keeping with the place's southwestern charm.) At the beginning of Sedona's rise as a second-home destination, a developer — I'm told — gave prospective buyers tours of the area in his pink jeep, until, realizing people would rather take tour the land than buy it, he converted his enterprise into the Pink Jeep Tour Company. My family took a tour with them; these pictures (I hope) capture something of the grandeur of this corner of the world.

This formation, known as the Kissing Rocks, is just one of the countless unusual rock formations in the ranges around Sedona. Most of them have whimsical names; there are nuns, movie cameras, Snoopy, a witch's hat, an elephant, and so on.

The rock around Sedona is a type of pale sandstone, that in most places has formed crystals with rust. The resulting stone is known as the Schnebly Hill Formation (Schnebly having been the first postmaster here), and is found nowhere else on earth. Veins of other minerals running through the rock create patterns like the one above, and the erosion of the millennia has imparted a deep red color to the soil.

The prickly pear is found everywhere here, restaurant menus not excepted. It can be grilled or fried and tastes like soggy zucchini.

The unusual formations of the rocks here allow for all kinds of perspective tricks.

The specially-modified jeeps used on the tour can manage impressive slopes; as the guide enjoyed saying, "Just because they're pink doesn't mean they're pansies."

On the Anniversary of the Republic

2009-06-21T23:26:00.004-04:00

On this day, in the year of grace 1788, upon the ratification of our present Constitution by the legislature of the State of New Hampshire, our Republic was born.

May the Lord bless the American Republic, confound her enemies, and ever favor her people with prosperity and peace.

A Few Pictures from Bavaria

2009-05-27T22:41:00.010-04:00

The church of the village of Wamberg, in the Alps above Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Feeling Romantic in the mountains around Schloss Neuschwanstein.

View from the so-called Bärenhöhle outside Oberammergau.

On the choir loft of the beautiful church at Steinhausen.

Ducks in a stream in Oberammergau.

St. Florian on the firehouse in Unterammergau.

The island of Frauenchiemsee.

Et in Bavaria Ego

2009-05-12T19:00:00.001-04:00

until the 26th instant.

Don't Mess with Agamemnon

2009-05-11T12:55:00.003-04:00

Μή σε, γέρον, κοίλῃσιν ἐγὼ παρὰ νήυσι κίχειω
ἢ νῦν δηθύνοντ' ἢ ὕστερον αὖτις ἰόντα,
μή νύ τοι οὐ χραίσμῃ σκῆπτρον καὶ στέμμα θεοῖο·
τὴν δ' ἐγὼ οὐ λύσω· πρίν μιν καὶ γῆρας ἔπεισεν
ἡμέτερῳ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ ἐν Ἄργεϊ, τηλόθι πάτρης,
ἱστὸν ἐποιχομένην καὶ ἐμὸν λέχος ἀντιόωσαν·
ἀλλ' ἴθι, μὴ μ' ἐρέθιζε, σαώτερος ὥς κε νέηαι.

Why am I reading this instead of studying economics?

THECEL

2009-05-06T03:04:00.006-04:00

appensus es in statera, et inventus es minus habens.

The decline of this blog has only been an aspect of the more general decline of its author.

But the end of term, God willing, will bring a close to the current academic, legal and financial disaster, and the indolence of summer will drive me back to this poor corner of the internet.

Expect:

Fragmenta Litteraria

Second-rate Photography

Third-rate Doggerel

and the pleasure of watching a Foreign Devil arise from his ashes.

For the Record, I Like Flying...

2009-02-18T00:49:00.000-05:00

End of Finals

2008-12-19T16:35:00.004-05:00

Starring: Snow, sewers, sticks, students, shovelers, sakebombs, &c.

It was t-minus-3 hours before the start of my last final, and like any hard-working type-A Yalie, I was holed up in the library, bent over my computer, staring intensely at the screen as I reviewed what my friends were up to on Facebook. But since it would almost certainly be unhealthy to keep up such strenuous work for long, I decided around noon to take a well-earned break and get some lunch.

I came out of the library just as the snow was starting to fall on Wall St., and there's nothing like snow in the collar to remind you that your scarf is warm and dry on a hook in your room. Did I have time to run back and get it? My cellphone informed me that I did. But as I tried to return it to my pocket with my thickly-begloved hand, it slipped free somehow, and with alarming purposefulness shot a few feet along the gutter into a storm sewer. While I was demonstrating to myself beyond all reasonable doubt that the grate would not be budged, a gentleman came over, and with an almost aggressive solicitude instructed me to find a Yale Security officer and see what they could do.

And what was my good luck, but to see a Yale security man coming out of the school? He sent me inside to see another security officer, who put in a call to the custodians. While he was on the phone, my friend Mr. al-Yemeni came down the hall, and hearing of my cellular woes, he went out to wait with me until help arrived. As we went out, the alarmingly solicitous gentleman, still on the scene, asked me urgently whether I had spoken to anyone inside.

The snow was falling thicker now, and I was afraid my phone would be ruined by the snow unless it were rescued soon. Mr. al-Yemeni and I sprung into action, taking dead branches off the trees in the library moat and using them chopstick-style to fish for my phone. We met with limited success until al-Yemeni discovered he could reach around the grate to the muck at the bottom of the sewer, after which I made short work of poking the phone to a place he could reach.

My phone, it turned out, was unaffected by the trauma or the snow, as it demonstrated by ringing as soon as I put it into my pocket. It was, much to my surprise, my old classmate Lord Carroll, calling to ask whether over break I would be finding myself in his part of the British Empire (viz. New York). I told him the story narrated above, which, said the eminent Peer, "Immediately made me think of you as Quasimodo going around in the sewers of Paris." At that remark I almost unconsciously straightened my posture and sternly reminded him that I was not in Paris, but New Haven.

Mr. al-Yemeni and I then went to take a fine and leisurely lunch, which was wonderful until I realized my exam was about to begin. I dashed through the snow (much thicker now), and sat down for the test. Sample questions:

_________________ is to the state as ______________ is to the body.

Law is ________________________________________________.

The abstract sculpture next to Woodbridge Hall tells us ______________

_________________________________ about international relations.

&c.

Needless to say many people in the exam hall seemed rather Freaked Out. I was a little freaked out myself, but in the end I managed to draw on the arcane arts of Meaningless Bombast and Pointless Quotation to at least put something down in every blank.

But after the exam—— Snow is wonderful; it humanizes everything. On a city street that normally echoes with the sounds of rushing cars and buses, only a few pedestrians crunch their way through the drifts. The falling snow softens the edges of the monumental buildings, and the little lit windows are a thousand times more cheerful than on a normal day. There's a sort of camaraderie among those out walking in such weather that makes them orgetful of the scene. I was ducking under the porticos of Becton Labs to get out of the snow when I found myself in conversation with another pedestrian:

WEST POINT (Damn, I can't remember this kid's name; was it Max? I know we met at the Game in a haze of Yale fervor and ethanol, and—oh yeah, he was a transfer from West Point; I heard somebody call him that.): Hey, buddy, how's it going?

FOREIGN DEVIL: I just finished my exams, so pretty good. Are you done yet?

W. P.: Yeah, except for a lab report due the day after Christmas. And I know I'm not going to start that one ahead of time.

F. D.: Well you can't do a lab report on Christmas!

W. P.: That's why I'll do it the day after. I figure, if Christmas is heroin, the lab report is like withdrawal.

......................

W. P.: What do you think of that metaphor?

F. D.: If Christmas were heroin... I'm sure it's one I'll never hear anywhere else. Well if Christmas is heroin, I'm jonesing right now.

At the corner, the FOREIGN DEVIL dashes across the street to catch a light.

W. P.: Have a good break!

F. D.: Thanks, you too!

The Foreign Devil leaps up the steps to Commons, nearly breaking an ankle in the process, passing a snow shoveler looking absolutely miserable.

F. D. (with an unusual cheerfulness): Hello!

SHOVELER: Hello, sir.

In a second the FOREIGN DEVIL is through the memorial hall and shoving open the strangely heavy doors. A student comes in.

STUDENT: It's crazy!

F. D.: Yeah.

--------------------------------

Writing authentic dialogue must be impossible; the above was taken from life verbatim and still looks fake. But I'll leave it. This is no time for literary work; the term's over!

Although I do have one small Duty left to take care of.

20 Years

2008-12-08T00:01:00.003-05:00

---------------------------------------------

Shamelessly plagiarized from The Perry Bible Fellowship.

High Street in Early December

2008-12-05T12:51:00.009-05:00

Don't fret for naked trees

Or coming chill.

December's austere mysteries

Have beauty still.

There is an arch revealed by barren limbs

And students hand-in-hand.

Understand:

This image calls for hymns.

A nearer sun would bathe the walls

In vernal gold;

But keep your summers, springs and falls:

The year and spires are old,

And we are young—and these shall always be the same.

Yale needs no leafy frame.

Washington on Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T00:01:00.006-05:00

"Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me 'to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.'

"Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

"And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

"Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789."

A very happy Thanksgiving to all friends of the Foreign Devil!

Now that you mention the Reformation...

2008-11-10T22:58:00.008-05:00

The young and clever Amanda Shaw points out an interesting shift in the Gray Lady's opinion on a favorite play of mine:

“A Man for All Seasons” is written with distinction. It combines in equal measure the dancing, ironic wit of detachment, and the steady blue flame of commitment. With its commingling of literary grace, intellectual subtlety and human simplicity, it challenges the mind and, in the end, touches the heart. For it is not only about a man for all seasons but also about an aspiration for all time. . . .
Because the nature of Sir Thomas More deepens rather than alters and because his emotions are merely suggested in the quiet sparkle of his mind, the role is enormously exciting.
—Howard Taubman, NYT, Nov. 23, 1961

That was then. This is now:

Is it heresy to whisper that the sainted Thomas More is a bit of a bore? Even Frank Langella, an actor who can be counted on to put the pepper in mashed-potato parts, doesn’t find much variety in the monolithic goodness of the title character of “A Man for All Seasons,” Robert Bolt’s 1960 biodrama about More’s road to martyrdom during the reign of Henry VIII. . .
Cromwell is easily the most intriguing soul onstage. Now there’s a character Mr. Langella could sink his teeth into. Surely, it would be more rewarding than being the fixed if towering center of a shrine.
—Ben Brantley, NYT, Oct. 8, 2008

Back in high school I had the honor of studying under the great Mr. FitzGerald, and I remember one afternoon I stuck around his desk after school to discuss, inter alia, the Divine Comedy. Fitz, universally recognized as a great scholar and popularly viewed as something of a saint, argued that the last two cantiche were no less important than the Inferno. I wasn't going to disagree, but I rather callowly asked him why the holy seemed so much less "interesting" than the damned. And Mr. Fitz——I wish I could remember the words he used——pointed out more charitably than he needed to that if I found sin more interesting than God, it was hardly Dante's fault. If I remember rightly, he was also a big fan of A Man for All Seasons.

An Ecumenical Exercise

2008-11-10T21:52:00.001-05:00

What Have We Done?

2008-11-05T17:31:00.001-05:00

Not, of course, that this is directed at anyone I know.

My God— It was the Mormons all along!

2008-11-05T17:29:00.001-05:00

And we all thought the Catholics were the ones to look out for...

Yet Another Endorsement

2008-10-30T19:30:00.003-04:00

From the land of the Inca, this time:

Blowing incense over a sacred llama fetus perched on a bed of coca leaves next to posters of the leading candidates, the shamans shook rattles, chanted “Up, Obama, up!” and threw flowers at their images.

Another Endorsement

2008-10-30T15:20:00.004-04:00

A tip of the hat to a Latinist, who tips his biretta to a Philologist.

An Overgrown Song for the Middle of the Night

2008-10-23T03:31:00.005-04:00

It's nearly four. The sky has long been dark,

And I, like all diurnal folk, should be in bed.

I wish that I could fall asleep—— alas! my tired head

Is overstuffed with prosody and politics and Wondermark.

With sincere apologies for the poor cut-and-paste job.

Head of the Housatonic

2008-10-13T01:24:00.005-04:00

It wasn't really a success, but we still did better than we, our coaches, or anyone for that matter had expected. I'm in two-seat (second from the right, for those of you not up on your rowing argot).

And afterwards, a picnic with the family atop East Rock, and ice cream, and running into old friends on the street, and a long nap, and all in all the best sort of weekend, when nothing especial happens and everything that happens is good, like a lazy Saturday afternoon in a happy dream of childhood.

Photo credit: My sister.

Life is But a Dream,

2008-10-07T21:11:00.010-04:00

with notes on a Roman Holiday.

Be informed: this blog is not defunct. It's just that I'm at practice all the time and have little opportunity to write or to do things worth writing on.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

But on a rowing-related note, today marks the 437th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, the last major naval battle fought between fleets of rowed galleys. This battle, a victory for an (almost) united Europe over the Turks, is not as famous as it ought to be——I don't remember any of my history classes putting much emphasis on it. Of course I may just have been dozing off in class.

I began to take an interest in this bit of history when I was in Rome with my father. We had gone to get tickets to see the pope, and while we were waiting on line in the courtyard outside the office of the relevant ecclesiastial body, we were approached by an old American priest, who asked us if we would like a tour of the place. As we found out, the office had formerly been a seminary, and the seminary had formerly been a convent. (The place, by the way, was a block from the Pantheon; who knows what it was at first?)

With a few other tourists tired of waiting in line, we were led through a small side door into one of those exuberantly Baroque chapels that are too common in Rome to arouse much interest. With the glazed eyes of overwhelmed tourists we followed the priest's finger from one work of art to the next. It seemed he had half-a-dozen anecdotes about each statue; but after only a few days in Rome, I had got used to this kind of routine, and the words flowed by me like a sort of soundtrack as I gazed around the room.

But when the priest turned to a side altar near the back of the chapel, his demeanor changed. Over the altar was an unassuming and rather crude image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which I recognized from my grandmother's prayer cards and from Mexican T-shirts. "This," explained the priest, thrilling to his own words, "is the icon of the Virgin that was carried on the papal flagship at Lepanto. Now how many of you know what Lepanto was?" None of our group knew (though I think he would have explained either way), so we were treated to a delightfully jingoistic account of Christianity triumphing over the Turk. He was a priest, after all.

Cervantes fought at Lepanto, and in Chesterton's poem he dreams up the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance as he sheathes his sword at the battle's end. The poetic license of this scene aside (Cervantes was probably more concerned with his maimed hand), I don't think it's necessarily a coincidence that so much artistic achievement, and not just in literature, seems to follow on Lepanto. There's nothing like a victory to remind people that they can do great things.

Pure Genius from Madison Avenue

2008-09-27T00:34:00.002-04:00

How do you answer those insufferable Mac commercials?

Beat them at their own game. I doubt this commercial will have any huge effect in the market, but it successfully makes PC's somehow appear interesting. Mac's monopoly on nonconformist conformity may really have been beat.

Another Pearl of Wit

2008-09-22T14:49:00.000-04:00

from the Celebrated Dr. Boli.

Q. But if I don’t write down my personal information, how will I remember who I am?
A. For this purpose we recommend some mnemonic device such as a short rhyme. The renowned classical scholar Benjamin Jowett came up with this little ditty:
My name is Benjamin Jowett.
I’m the president of this college.
If anything’s knowledge, I know it,
and what I don’t know isn’t knowledge.
By means of this easily memorized poem he was able to remember, not only his name, but also his employment, and even the attitude he intended to adopt toward his students.

An Alarming Revelation

2008-09-19T00:50:00.002-04:00

On Bush Doctrines

2008-09-14T14:55:00.003-04:00

There's been a lot of chatter these days, to which I reluctantly add, about Sarah Palin's obvious confusion and alleged ignorance when confronted by Charles Gibson about the "Bush Doctrine" during an ABC interview. This interview has met with almost breathless expressions of horror and undisappointed shock from many, not only here in the Ivory Tower, who seem to be pleased at Mrs. Palin's ignorance, as if it confirmed some suspicions they already didn't doubt.

The most important fact about this controversy, however, was that "Charlie" is wrong. As Krauthammer has pointed out, four different ideas have been referred to as the "Bush Doctrine," and the most common use of the term is not exactly what Mr. Gibson pointed out. This Foreign Devil is somewhat of a Palin supporter, although not so much that I would feel the need to rush to defend her honor. The interesting thing in this interview is not Mrs. Palin or anything she said, but rather what Gibson's attitudes reveal about the American Left, of whom I think he can be taken as a representative.

"Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?" he asks, and pursing his lips, closing his eyes, and turning down his face in the manner of a disappointed grandfather, he awaits her answer. Her first response is reasonable, and the second not understandably seems to grasping for straws. But when Mr. Gibson condescends to educate this vice-presidential candidate, things get particularly revealing.

It is a shame, really, that the cameraman does not give us a shot of the lecturing Gibson, as he explains "the Bush Doctrine, as I understand it." Instead we may only look at Mrs. Palin's face, and it is the face of a person who is convinced she has slipped up. Even she, a professed opponent of the worldview embraced by the "media elites" (and no one has a better claim to be a media elite than Charles Gibson, who also sits on the board of trustees at Princeton); even she expects that Gibson knows the truth of the matter. On this she and Gibson agree: that Gibson probably knows best. This seems to be an almost universal belief in America. Whether or not he believes the Left to be morally superior, the average American, red or blue, assumes liberals are more cultured, more educated than their counterparts on the Right.

As soon as Palin opens her mouth, and speaks in an accent not learned in any classroom, she has already lost credibility to a certain degree. So it is an irony we can all enjoy when the pompous and measured tones of Gibson setting her up to fail are in fact themselves mistaken. It is a classic case of image vs. reality, perhaps the predominant theme in this election.

On a related note, a friend has enjoined upon me to read The Audacity of Hope, some reflections on which book I plan to post, as I think of them.

A Virtual Tour of Narnia

2008-09-13T17:21:00.011-04:00

Suite I43/44 of Pierson College early acquired the nickname of "Narnia," and not simply because it's a place of magic and wonder. While the bedrooms here are comfortably large, my roommate Mr. al-Yemeni decided to make some space by placing his wardrobe in the hall. But lest you fear, like the security personnel here at Pierson do, that such an arrangement might block off a fire "egress" (for some reason official Yale refuses to say "exit"), know that the back of the wardrobe was ingeniously disassembled, creating behind it a sort of "walk-in closet" that opens onto the fire stair that most friends of ours use to enter the suite. Once this was put into place, the suite's moniker was more or less inevitable.

Within the suite, I was lucky enough to get a truly phenomenal single room, which is a bit larger than it looks in these pictures and every bit as pleasant. The fireplace is a nice touch, and it seems to be the hallmark of a luxurious Yale room, but the rule on not lighting fireplaces is unfortunately one that they actually enforce here. I'm taking a course on architecture this semester, and as I do my course reading in this room I'm confronted with a fine example of how architecture can really construct a place absolutely suited for human dwelling.

The common room is small, but thanks to the presence of a wii and fine decor (for both of which Dr. Manutius deserves due thanks), it's become a fairly popular place. At right is a fairly typical scene at home, with Herr Goer and the Demoniac, some of the many Yalies who seem to spend more time here than they do at home, going at it on the wii while I subject myself to the Yale Daily News. The Russian Peasant also is nearly always present here in Narnia, but today she's gone off to some swing state or other to spread the true gospel of Obama, and has to miss out on this long and slow and wonderful Saturday afternoon at Yale.

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, VI

2008-09-12T01:09:00.003-04:00

In court, if I defend a crook,

He usually gets off the hook.

My arguments are super-slick;

I never miss a legal trick

To fool the jury. Even so,

What comes around around must go.

But till my ways catch up with me,

I grow rich when my clients walk free.

Popular Science

2008-09-11T10:49:00.003-04:00

For those of us confused these days by all the talk of hadrons and bosons and Switzerland and whatnot, Dr. Boli offers a succinct explanation.

An Ethical Thought

2008-09-10T21:08:00.006-04:00

On my way back to the dorm, I gave a few dollars to a woman who, with assumed or genuine tears in her eyes, told me she needed to catch a train to wherever it was she said she lived. In retrospect, her routine was probably too slick to have merited alms. I can't regret giving her the money——at the very least there was nothing wrong with it——but it's this way with me almost every time I give someone money: I'm full of fear that I've been had.

Back in grade school I once read a story that made a lasting impression on me. It was about a family who, like most of the characters in that sort of reading textbook, suffered from some sort of social exclusion or domestic tragedy; I forget the specifics. But what I remember is a line spoken by the father of that family to his daughter, something along the lines of "Sometimes being taken advantage of is the tax you have to pay on your faith in human nature." I thought it was very profound.

Now I don't have much faith in human nature, and as a rule I assume most panhandlers are frauds, but I'm a sucker for sob stories, and beggars have an easy time getting money before me, however much I look down at myself for giving it. I write this not to "sound a trumpet before me," but because I think this story hints at a more important meaning:

We must really live in a fallen world, if even charity can make us feel guilty.

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, V

2008-09-07T23:56:00.003-04:00

I’ll make you clocks that ring and chime,
And accurately tell the time,
From brass and glass and tiny gears.
They won’t lose time for several years.
I’ll also make the outer case
And paint the numbers on the face.
I’ll pour my care and effort in it,
So that you’ll know the hour and minute.

I dream'd in a dream...

2008-09-07T17:19:00.003-04:00

...I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the world,

I dream'd that was the new City of Friends,

Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love——it led the rest;

It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,

And in all their looks and words.

——Walt Whitman

Virum Monumenta Priorum

2008-09-06T14:35:00.002-04:00

YGQJ, the former web address of this blog, had the double defect of being impronuntiable and impossible to remember. It made sense, though. If you look at the chop at the top of the page, you will see the four characters that spell out the blog's Chinese name: Yáng Guǐ Qiǎn Jiàn, which is a rather highfalutin way of saying "The Foreign Devil's Humble Opinions." But I had long ago taken to referring to the blog as the Foreign Devil, so it was high time for it to have a shorter and more English name.

But when I tried to change the URL, I found that foreigndevil.blogspot.com already existed, and while it was wholly without content, the author, one Ronan, had provided for it a singular title:

From West to East, or, travels in the principal parts of Asia, being an authentick account of voyages in China and Japan, containing an accurate description of whatever is most remarkable in those countries, with accounts of customs and manners of the Chinese. Intermixt with great variety of modern adventures and surprizing accidents: being the truest and best remarks extant on those countries.

Now the Foreign Devil does not discuss Japan, and makes no claim to be "truest and best" of anything, but it was an unusual sensation to see a blog——even a failed blog——with a purpose so similar to my own here.

But hasn't that purpose been achieved? I am in New Haven again, in the great State of Connecticut (great at least until the fourth of November, when people on TV will probably just call it "Connecticut" again). And I'm at a university to boot, in the very heart and mind of the West. I don't have the heart, however, to shut down the Foreign Devil, and so, Ladies and Gentlemen, esteemed Readers of the Foreign Devil: watch this space.

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, IV

2008-09-06T14:26:00.005-04:00

A good tradesman, I’m hardly poor,
With sundry wares stocked in my store:
Spices, cloth (both wool and flax),
Velvet and silk, honey and wax,
And foreign goods——I’ve got all sorts——
That I ship home from foreign ports,
With worry and painstaking care,
For danger’s lurking everywhere.

An Endorsement

2008-09-06T14:21:00.000-04:00

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, III

2008-09-02T18:54:00.004-04:00

I’m a ship’s captain on the sea.
This compass here will show to me
Where on the ocean we are bound;
But when we hear the thunder sound,
And winds are high, and waves are steep,
We’ll plunge the anchor in the deep.
So that the ship will stay secure
Until cruel Fortune smiles once more.

Travel Plans

2008-08-15T02:33:00.002-04:00

Thanks to time differences, I can say that I'll be in New York in 24 hours.

At the Games, II

2008-08-14T03:25:00.010-04:00

Last night I went with Jiahao to see some of the women's handball competitions (I'll take what tickets I can get) at the Olympic Sports Center. The first match of the night was Norway vs. Kazakhstan; the second, Germany vs. Hungary. Norway and Hungary both brought winning teams to the stadium, accompanied by truly obnoxious fans. The Norwegian fans had a fairly threatening aspect to begin with, which they heightened by dressing up as Vikings——I think they scared Jiahao half to death. The Hungarians were less frightening and less sober, but they did set up some pretty intimidating call-and-reponse cheers across the stadium.

Sitting directly to my right was a student wearing a Yale cap, who it turned out had come to the matches with another Yale man. Both were students at Princeton's program here in Beijing; both were, like most Foreign Devils, desperately ready to get back to America.

Jiahao and I arrived well before the matches begun, so we had a chance to get a good look at the stadium and its grounds. Jiahao photographed everything, explaining to me in his adorable manner——nationalism is adorable in small children——that he needed to "capture this historic moment." And at the stadiums, it's hard not to get caught up in the Olympic excitement...

...especially when the cheerleaders (or to use the delightful Chinese term, the laladui), take the court with the Fuwa and schoolchildren who have just finished a pre-game pee-wee match. The cheerleading squad, by the way, was officially called "The Chinese Honey Bunnies," and they performed to the music of——well, have a look yourself:

The first game was a bit of a blowout, much to the disappointment of a small group of Kazakh fans, who spent the entire second half of the match singing a Kazakh song that sounded like something straight out of Borat; the second game was extremely close, with Germany maintaining a narrow lead until the very end, when, to raucous Magyar exultation, they finally pulled ahead. I was a bit disappointed; the Hungarians had cheered wholeheartedly every time one of their players injured a German, and I'd hoped they would get shown up by the end of the game. Thinking the Germans would win, I took some footage of the German team scoring; if an athlete had ended up on the ground clutching her knee it would have better represented the violence of the match. Handball's more exciting than I expected; but I've only experienced the sport under the iron rod of Mr. Donodeo, where no game is quite like it is in the rest of the world.

On the way out I took a picture of the 鸟巢, the Olympic Bird's Nest, looming over the Fourth Ring Road. When the weather's not awful, Beijing can be a fairly pretty place.

At the Games, I

2008-08-11T02:57:00.007-04:00

On Sunday I went to the rowing races at Shunyi, I got there a bit late but I saw more or less all of the quad races. The picture at left is of China beating England by a fairly comfortable margin.

Apart from the races with China in them, the only thing that got the mostly Chinese audience excited was the appearance of the Fuwa, who are really unavoidable these days.

The Chinese would have enjoyed the last race on the schedule, in which America and China were to face off in the eights, but unfortunately the races were canceled due to a thunderstorm. It was some consolation to watch the Chinese basketball team lose to the US later yesterday night, but I would still have liked to see some eights races.

胡萨汤尼克河上

2008-08-06T10:16:00.004-04:00

It's very rarely that I write something in Chinese that I'm proud of. My vocabulary is far too small to express any actual emotion or impression, and my command of the grammar, enough for stringing words together, is far from being secure enough for me to produce the subtle and intricate sentences I like to think make for good writing. But today, with plenty of help from the teachers here, I wrote an essay I'm moderately proud of. The similes are a little on the ridiculous side and in a few places my word choice has missed the mark, but it's the first thing I've written in Chinese that I've been very pleased with. I'm not sure if there are many Chinese-speaking readers of this blog——in fact I'm not sure this blog has many readers at all——but since one can't be sure of anything in this sublunary world, I post it here for their entertainment.

天上都是层层叠叠的云；地上都是灰蒙蒙的雾。在那个秋末的周四傍晚，天气很冷。在山坡上的房子里，人人都躲起来，在享受温暖的热气。山上的树叶已经凋零了，有的像赤裸的人一般显出尴尬的样子，遗憾自己不能穿上像样的服装。有的显出悲痛的样子，像丧失了孩子的父母默不作声地站着。然而在这莽苍的情景中，连最近的树也模糊不清，只能看到其阴阴的影子。

山谷里，胡萨汤尼克河慢慢地流着，其平静的水面下蕴藏着无穷的力量。南边有水坝；河却对此视若无睹，继续往海洋悠游自在地流动。当时，我们八个疲劳的人坐在小船上。我们已经训练了一个小时，把船划到离码头最远的地方。教练喊叫了，我们开始划船了。薄薄而狭长的船体看似一触即碎，但是它像剪刀一般划过水面。船上的运动员用尽力气，有如战场上的士兵，咬紧着牙，拼命前进。我们划得越快，天上乌云堆积得越厚。我们总算完成了这次运动，终于能休息一会。我们喘息着等待教练的下一道命令。

在那一刹那，轰隆隆的雷雨声突然充满了空气，在山谷里回响。下大雨了，两边的山也遮住了夕阳，我们像盲人一样看不见周围的水与山。教练又喊叫了，我们无奈地开始划船。雨越来越厉害，我们的衣服湿透了，雨水与汗水混杂在一起。船飞也似的往船房里的安全去。这回胡萨汤尼克河恨不得露出自己的力量，翻滚的波浪忽然来临，攻击我们的小船。那里的河水，雨水，闪电，我们都视而不见。我们一心一意的划船，舍不得关注别的事。我像狂人一样盯着前面，脑子里却很安静。我问自己，这种运动岂不是荒谬的极端？只当这个问题没有浮现在我的脑海里。此时，我奋力地划船，我感到莫名的快乐，非常满意。

Museums

2008-08-05T01:46:00.012-04:00

On Sunday the mother pro tempore, along with her mother, took me on a whirlwind tour of two of Beijing's museums. We had to ride the subway for an hour, walk a few blocks in scorching heat, fend off the Olympic volunteers looking for a foreigner to say something quotable, wait on line, buy tickets, find the decent exhibits, and (in my case) translate the placards. But you, Readers of the Foreign Devil, have it easy:

At the Capital Museum, I saw some of the unusual bronzes unearthed twenty years ago at Sanxingdui in Sichuan, testifying to a previously unknown ancient Chinese civilization. Sanxingdui bronzes are generally distorted depictions of men or animals; their meaning has long been lost to history.

This is a more or less typical example of early Chinese bronzeware, showing the high level of workmanship that modern craftsmen have had little success in replicating.

The Capital Museum also had a few bingmayong, the terra-cotta soldiers and horses found in the tomb of Qin Shihuang, first emperor of all China. They were all individually crafted, and plenty of them have their idiosyncracies: although you can't see it in this picture, the soldier in the back has his left hand put on backwards.

To take this picture of a jinlüyuyi, a garment made of jade worn by the deceased in their tombs, I had to reach over the heads of a crowd of museumgoers.

Next we went to the Military Museum, guarded by military police taking refuge under umbrellas bearing McDonald's ads.

Many of the exhibits at the Military Museum were just collections of old weapons. There were however a few more interesting things....

...such as this placard on the base of a rather ugly Soviet-style propaganda statue. The devils in question are, naturally, the Japanese.

Not everything at the Military Museum hewed to the party line, however. In a little-noticed display case I saw this picture, displaying the Communist and Kuomintang flags side-by-side, from the brief period of coöperation between the two parties. Elsewhere in the museum, of course, Chiang Kai-shek and his party were represented as more or less absolute evil.

Chairman Mao had pride of place in the lobby; and since I hadn't taken my obligatory photo with a Mao statue yet, I figured it was as good a chance as any.

Stranger than Fiction

2008-08-03T10:18:00.006-04:00

Readers of the Foreign Devil currently basking in the light of Liberty Illuminating the World may have heard something about the beast called Chinese nationalism, that seems to lurk at the margins of any discussion about this country. Chinese nationalism is neither more nor less frightening or unthinking than the European nationalisms that it cannot admit inspired it——if I keep on writing like this we'll be able to discover how much leeway my political sell-out has bought——and like the Italian and German nationalisms a hundred and some years and a few thousand miles distant, it's driven by a form of irredentism.

Now with the exception of Outer Mongolia (and if we wanted to be provocative, we could say Taiwan as well), China right now owns almost all the land it ever has. What is unredeemed is for the most part not land, since officially Taiwan is a part of China, and doesn't need to be annexed, but rather the national dignity which the greatest propaganda system on earth has convinced the Chinese people was lost to foreign powers over the course of the twentieth century. At a museum today (pictures to follow), my mother pro tempore informed me nonchalantly, as we passed a display of weapons won from the Japanese during the War of Resistance against Japan (we generally call it the Second World War), that she did not like Japanese people. Of course the crimes committed by the Japanese in China are horrific to recall——even if not quite so hard on civilians as our method of ending the war was——but China's bitterness about the matter sometimes reaches nearly incredible levels.

China does not forget——and if they did the party's there to remind them that China is a nation that has been taken advantage of by the West, by Japan——in short, by everyone——and which the party can restore to its rightful glory. This psychology of national victimhood has some truly fascinating expressions, like the following commercial, in English no less, which was not made by the government (they have better standards) but put out by a sports network. Any foreigner who has watched a basketball game here has probably seen it; since many of you have been denied that pleasure, I reproduce for you, esteemed Readers, in all its Chinglish glory:

Mother

The world laughed at you for being backward;
The world was full of envy and anxiety when you opened up and
progressed into a financial powerhouse;
The world condemned you when you put law and order into the
upheaval and lawlessness created by followers of a self proclaimed Robin Hood in
Tibet but failed to applaud when you used your influence to save the lives of
Burmese monks;
The world threatened to boycott and disrupt the August
Olympics on ground of your violations of human rights standards set by the West
who by apartheid policies and discrimination of coloured people blatantly
violated for ages the same standards set.

Let me tell you Mother as a dragon seed brought up outside
China:
They fear you Mother as you out compete them;
They fear you Mother as you are set to replace them at the
healm of word order faster than they can accept;
They fear you Mother as you have refused to take sides in
every international dispute as you believe that to each his own and from each
his best;
They fear you Mother as you have by hardwork hastened the
failure and decadence of self assumed western supremacy system;
And finally for the period 12th May to eternity, you have
shown the world the tenderness, love and care of the best guardian government
and leaders the Chinese People can ever have contrasting greatly with the
aftermath of the Florida and Burmese cyclone.

Mother, words of praises and admiration will never come from
the West as they have painted you falsely as a hardcore monster with no feelings
for your own for too long and the Western World is watching with total disbelief
on CNN,BBC,Fox Media, live, the search, rescue, care and rebuilding operations
to restore life and normalcy into the millions of displaced victims led by
brothers Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao demonstrating love care and simplicity with no
political agenda whatsoever.
Mother, we whether in or out of the Great Wall are lucky and
proud to be descendants of the ever Supreme Dragon.

Amen.

Mr. Ben 吕律师
Chairman / CEO,
Bensports Satellite TV
May 2008

To which, apart from some caustic comments about the importance of commas, this Foreign Devil has nothing to say.

Two Pictures You May Like

2008-08-02T08:14:00.012-04:00

The skies have been clearer lately in Beijing, thanks to a shutdown of industry around the city and the halving of cars on the roads. For the first time ever in this city, I saw a wonderful sunset last night. As a young westerner I was taught to thank God for such things; here at least credit goes to the Communist Party. For most people in Beijing it is an established fact that the party can control the weather, either by controlling the amounts of pollutants or by seeding rainclouds. These days they've proved they can provide blue skies and wonderful sunsets; but what will people here think after the Olympics if the party turns the smog back on? For the past few years, China has been preparing for the next few weeks. Every aspect of government policy has been designed to fit in with this country's Olympic plans: after the Olympics, China's future is an absolute cipher.

I went to the famous market at Panjiayuan today and entertained myself by arguing with shopkeepers on behalf of the Americans they were trying to cheat. Some of the American members of the Olympic Orchestra (there's an Olympic everything, more or less), just arrived in Beijing with their families, were touring the market, and I was able to prevent a few of them from paying ten times what they should have for what they bought. As a foreigner I got ripped off as well; but at least not as badly as those unfortunate musicians. Among other purchases, I had this piece of calligraphy made for next year's dorm room:

It's not a masterpiece of calligraphy, but it's done in a fairly standard modern interpretation of the Small Seal script, a bit more whimsical than the sort you'd stamp on a document; which I think is very pleasing and apt, given the meaning of the characters. The characters are drawn from the Chinese language's vast archive of four-character descriptive phrases, referring to——

But why would one have something written up in Chinese, and in the Small Seal script to boot, if he wanted everyone to know what it meant?

But is it a fake?

2008-08-01T05:33:00.004-04:00

Olympic Mania

2008-07-29T05:58:00.012-04:00

Today's one of the nicest days I've seen in Beijing. The sky's unusually clear today; not that I can see the sky, but at least I can see buildings in the neighborhood. In the picture at right you can see mountains in the distance; generally the two square towers near the middle of the picture are hard to see through the fog. As nice a day as today calls for being outside, so I decided to take a considerable detour on my way to the gym, and bike by the Olympic compound. As the big day gets closer and closer, every day new Olympic banners, signs, and security checks appear on campus. These days there are three checkpoints between my dormitory and the classrooms, and every lamppost I've seen lately carries a banner with the Olympic motto in Chinese or English. But as they say here, 百闻不如一见, so I'll go ahead and give you the pictures.

This sign appeared over the back gate to campus yesterday. The Olympics don't even need to be mentioned; the motto speaks for itself. Neither does there need to be a connection between the back gate of the Language University and the Olympic Games. The entire country is on board for the Olympics, and no area of life is safe from this slogan, from the Fuwa, or from that truly unbearable song "Beijing Welcomes You."

The gym on campus is still cordoned off for the Olympics, but it's been downgraded. It's now the practice venue for the Special Olympic basketball teams. This hasn't reduced the amount of security checks or guards on duty, but everyone seems a bit more relaxed now; sometimes if I'm carrying groceries the guards will even let me pass without showing ID.

Olympic themed advertisements are everywhere in the city; this one, at a bus stop on Chengfu Lu near the intersection with Xueyuan Lu, just struck me as particularly over the top, with its athletes standing on a podium built of... people.

All major roads in Beijing, and minor roads adjacent to Olympic venues, have had one lane reserved for Olympic venues. Zhixin Lu, at right, is only four lanes across to begin with, so traffic can get pretty bad. The government has attempted to reduce traffic by allowing only even-numbered license plates on the road on even-numbered days, and odd plates on odd days, but with half of many roads reserved for government officials, traffic can be as bad as ever.

At left is a cart built around an oversized tricycle, ridden many thousands of kilometers from Kunming by an Olympic enthusiast who has dyed his hair in the colors of the Olympic rings and had the official logos of all the Olympic events tatooed along both arms. From the little medallions atop each side of the cart, Chairman Mao looks down favorably on the whole thing; however silly Chinese support for the Olympics can get, it's nothing compared to what happened in his time.

And here's the stadium, looking a lot smaller than it actually is; in person it's as impressive today as it was when shrouded in fog. I would have liked to get a better picture, but there's no way I would be let into the Olympic Park. For 10 more days, ordinary people like this Foreign Devil will have no choice but to stand at the fence and gawk.

拍马屁

2008-07-28T05:32:00.003-04:00

The title of this post is one of those wonderfully expressive and inexplicable Chinese turns of phrase. It means "toadying" or "flattering one's superior," but its literal meaning is to "pat the horse's rump." Usually that's not my style, but I've discovered that my blog has been unbanned by the censors of the People's Republic of China, and I want to keep it that way. So:

胡锦涛是个真了不起的人。
中国队肯定会赢得每枚奥运金牌。
我一心支持中央政府的互联网政策。

If you're curious, Google will be happy to explain.

At the Forbidden City

2008-07-27T03:46:00.009-04:00

Here I am, squinting a bit, in the Forbidden City. I had often been warned that the Forbidden City was unbearably hot, but since I had already got up for church, and since today's especially bad pollution ought to shade the sun a little, I decided to head over there on my own. It was a very bright day, despite the haze, and very hot too. The picture above, taken by an obliging kid I trusted with my camera, doesn't show what a sweaty mess I was this morning. But the Forbidden City is the Forbidden City. The Chinese actually don't call it that anymore: its former name, 紫禁城——the Purple Forbidden City, has been replaced with the somewhat more pedestrian 故宫——the Old Palace.

Tourists can only see a portion of the city; now and then I would peek through the crack of a locked gate and see alleys and passages stretching off into the haze, the pavements overrun with as rich a carpet of weeds as any of the rugs in the great ceremonial halls. Whether intended by the Party officials in charge or not, there's a melancholy feeling about the whole place, more than anywhere else in the exhibits given over to the unfortunate last emperor Puyi; although much of my sympathy for him was lost when I leafed through his English-language memoirs in a gift shop and found him luridly praising the Communists. The Forbidden City everywhere hints at a decline: peeling paint and crumbling pavement and gutted treasuries all hint, like an empty church or decaying palace in Europe, at a cultural heritage that the present can't manage to equal. I am as big a fan of the Olympic constructions as any Chinese nationalist; but when you have something like the Forbidden City in town, a few new awe-inspiring buildings really just aren't enough.

In the old days, of course, there were feasts and pleasure gardens and armies of eunuchs and concubines waiting on the emperor's every need, but the life of an Emperor of all China doesn't seem to have been all that enjoyable. In room after room of the Forbidden City, here in the Hall of Middle Harmony, the Emperor would have been trussed up in ceremonial robes while all sorts of obscure rites were conducted. The emperor was not really thought of as a god, as far as I know, but he had religious duties as well as political. A sign on a minor building pointed out that Chongzhen, the tragic last emperor of the Ming, had retreated there to fast in reparation for natural disasters that struck China during his reign. Overally, the layout of the city, designed as it is for ceremonial processions and large-scale rituals, reminded me a bit of the Vatican, at least until I stumbled upon the concubines' quarters. Each major concubine had a small palace of her own; I got lost in the 后宫 or Imperatricial Palace and think I found my way into every concubine's quarters before I found the way out. Except for the names over the gates (in Chinese and Manchu, a reminder that the Qing rulers were not themselves Chinese), every alley and court in the palace is more or less identical, an obession for hierarchy and order playing itself out over yellow-roofed acre after yellow-roofed acre.

After I had seen enough of the Forbidden City (including the very pleasant Imperial Flower Garden where I completely forgot I had a camera), I decided to head out to Tiananmen Square for a walk, since I had never seen the place by day. Even since I passed through on my way to the Forbidden City, new banners, trees, and displays had been set up to welcome the Olympics. "The Five Continents and Four Seas Celebrate the Olympic Festivities," proclaims the banner at left, using a classically Chinese idiom referring to the whole world; to its right an incomplete banner was getting ready to praise the policies of the Party. Elaborate displays of trees and flowers had sprung up, where a few days before the plaza was paved straight across. The days of Confucian ritual may be gone, but the rulers of China can still pull off pomp and circumstance if they feel a need for it.

I walked a little farther, to the very south of the square, where I could catch a train back home at the Qianmen subway stop. Right above the station is the Qian Men, the Fore Gate of the ancient wall. Mao demolished the walls and used their paths for roads and subways, and the roads live on in the names of subway stops, most of which end in -men, meaning Gate. The Qian Men and a few other places were important enough to preserve, and the traffic in this city would be even worse if there were massive stone walls everywhere, but like the weeds that find homes on the roofs of the Forbidden City, the unnaturally truncated walls on either side of the Qian Men hint at something that's been lost. But it's hard to be melancholic in Beijing for long; the city just won't let you. The walls may have been demolished, but three new subway lines opened last week; the emperors may have been laid low by European gunpower and internal disorder, but it's an Olympic year. Every third person I saw on Tiananmen Square, excluding the legions of Olympic volunteers, had some bit of clothing on celebrating the Olympics. They may no longer bring tribute to furnish the palace, but the Five Continents and Four Seas are converging on Beijing again, and everybody in Beijing knows it.

理发

2008-07-22T03:43:00.003-04:00

Yalies may recognize the title of this post from the sign that always stands outside Gourmet Heaven, announcing that haircuts can be had on the second floor. I went and got my hair cut across the street from my dorm today. I cut it short enough that it doesn't curl; I've gotten sick of Chinese people rubbing it, and when a cabbie asked me what sort of product I used to curl it, it was really the last straw.

Now all this wouldn't be grounds for a blog post, except that a professor from the university showed up and took pictures of me before and after the haircut. Apparently a forthcoming Chinese textbook includes a dialogue at a barbershop, and for a textbook designed for foreigners, it seems that only pictures of laowai would do. So in the future, students learning Chinese may get to see my lovely head of halfway-cut hair on the pages of their textbooks.

Simatai Revisited

2008-07-18T07:02:00.012-04:00

The first time I went to Simatai, it was as one of the tourists who descend on the place in droves and disappear never to be seen again. This time, staying in the village for a week, I got to know the place better: my full report will be up on the blog when it's finished. For now, some pictures of the trip will have to do:

We went up to Simatai by rail, riding in a truly ancient train car through the Chinese countryside. I slept through most of the ride——I'd spent the night before learning Chinese dice games, and I'd got up at 5 to catch the train——but I was awake long enough to see some incredible views of the great wall from the train.

I had dozed off again when I woke up at a station stop, to the sound of Chinese drums and the sight of villagers decked out in traditional costumes. In a propaganda exercise for the Olympic Games, the official logo had been carved into the side of a mountain, and a crowd had been gathered to celebrate down in the village. I would have liked to take more pictures, but the train was on its way again, and I was asleep.

After settling into our rooms in Simatai, we begain our visits to the nearby villages. The first one we visited was Jijiaying, which in ancient times was a military garrison and still has most of its original gates. The impression a place like this gives is one of age——ancient peasants hobbling past ancient cottages; and the villages are aging. The youth have mostly left for Beijing, and however many satellite dishes and telephone wires may be set up in the villages are not enough to give one hope for their future.

Jijiaying may be ancient and its villagers may be graying, but the ideal of modernity has a powerful appeal there. In the local offices of the Communist Party, a shuzi yingyuan——"digital theater"——had been set up for the villagers to watch DVDs. And through a window of a storage room in the offices, I saw this thing, a 投票箱 or ballot box. Village government in China is very democratic——China has no problem with democracy making local and unimportant decisions——but even here the Party branch secretary has the last word.

We next visited Sujiayu Village, where we spent a while pretending we could understand the accents of a few old men we tried to interview. Even an hour out of Beijing, you can hear local accents even our teacher couldn't understand. I did understand the man who kept offering me youtiao (a sort of oily and unsweetened flaccid churro) until I accepted; and I understood the three girls who fled behind a grindstone shouting "Foreigner!" when I came to their part of the village. I stuck around, and they got used to me enough to let me take their picture.

Our host and guide, Mr. Huaishun Wang, showed us some of the tools used by the local peasants...

...and much to the entertainment of the villagers, sent his American guests out to fetch water.

After a few days of walking around in these villages, the back of my neck was so thoroughly sunburned that I went out and ponied up the 4 kuai for a straw hat. The locals thought it was hilarious to see a white guy wear their kind of hat, but it does keep the sun off while you're grinding corn.

We had hardly been in the village a day when Mr. Wang came up with nicknames for all of us. Holding the bag is the Professor, behind him is the Beauty. Behind me is the Spaceman, and in front of me is Wu Shouji (which means "without a cellphone"; he refuses to buy one). My nickname was Fourth-year Student, which was a bit boring and cumbersome to say, but it could have been worse. In the picture on the right we've caught the fish that would be the next day's dinner. Chinese water doesn't make for healthy fish, but Mr. Wang was a good enough cook that we put aside our worries about mercury content and the strange lesions on the fish we caught.

When I came back to the city, I went to a Yale Club event, where I discovered just how many Yalies are in the city right now, and picked up some free tickets from a promoter of the Yale Philharmonia. Absolutely anything can happen in Beijing--and in just 20 days, things are going to really get started.

家

2008-07-11T05:19:00.008-04:00

Last Saturday, I was greeted in my dorm room by Li Jiahao, my 10-year-old honorary little brother in Beijing. Every student in the HBA program was assigned to a family here, but I had the good luck to be put with a family that lives on campus. Mr. Li is an English professor here, and during the school week his family lives in the dormitory across the street from mine. On the weekend they have a much nicer apartment in Huilongguan (where I took the picture at right), but living on campus makes it easier for the Lis to get to work (Mrs. Li is a nurse in the clinic at the School of Mines next door), and for Jiahao to come over to my dormitory. He's a smart kid; he thinks my textbooks aren't difficult enough and from time to time will teach me literary expressions he thinks I ought to know. Right now he's on summer vacation, but he still goes to classes a few days a week to work on his English. When I've been wrangling with Chinese for a while it's a welcome break to help Jiahao understand the vagaries of English irregular verbs.

The Li family has very much taken me under their wing, and lavish attention on me in a way I doubt an American family would do. They've invited my whole family, for example, to come to Beijing and stay at their home in Huilongguan, and they fairly regularly invite me to dinner or bring homemade food to my dormitory. When I finish writing this, Mrs. Li has offered to teach me how to make dumplings.

In my temporary Chinese family, there are two other HBA students, both from second-year, but a language barrier even more severe than mine and a considerably more burdensome workload leave them less time to spend with our Chinese family. At the beginnging of the program, my fourth-year-classmates and I were given a whole song-and-dance about how difficult the work would be, but to be honest, it hasn't been bad at all. I'm good enough at Chinese that the language pledge doesn't mean a vow of silence, and compared to the rather insane life I built for myself at Yale, a 400-character essay a day is nothing.

And if I should ever get bored or discouraged, the Li family is more than happy to feed me. Food is tremendously important to the Chinese: I don't know whether this is necessarily true, or whether the Chinese appreciate fine dining more than other nations, but it is a stereotype that has become a part of Chinese self-consciousness. "民以食为天," Mr. Li will often say to me at the start of a meal. It's a 2000-year old aphorism: "The people regard food as heaven." Another favorite aphorism of Mr. Li's is "吃饱了, 不想家": "When you've eaten your fill, you won't miss home." Of course I miss home; I miss my family, and yesterday I went on a shopping spree for milk and cheese (cheese is phenomenally expensive in Beijing, but it can be had). But the Li family do a pretty good job of filling the gap, whether giving me the occasional piece of fruit or taking me out for a full-blown Beijing hot-pot dinner. Tomorrow Mr. Li is taking me to his co-worker's wedding; but I doubt I'll have time to post on it before I leave for the countryside Sunday morning.

The Thirteen Tombs

2008-07-10T07:56:00.005-04:00

Last Saturday I went on a classic tour-bus excursion to the 十三陵，the Thirteen Tombs of the Ming Emperors. The tombs are technically within Beijing Municipality, but they're far enough out from the city center that they're surrounded by farmland. It's a nice place, and of course one with a lot of history, but not interesting enough to be worth more than a few pictures:

The 神道 or Divine Path leading to the tombs is protected by a menagerie of stone animals, including this fantastic beast. Somewhere out there is photographic evidence of me riding one of the stone horses, but before I could get my own camera out we were confronted by a couple of less-than-amused gardeners.

Here's me in front of the Changling, which if I remember right is the tomb of the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di. The building behind me, called the 明楼 (which for some reason is usually translated Soul Tower), isn't actually the tomb. Behind the tower is an enormous earth mound, under which Zhu Di is doing whatever dead Ming emperors do.

The Dingling (however silly it sounds in English, it means the Stable Tomb), is the only Ming tomb to have been officially excavated. Unfortunately, it was excavated just prior to the Cultural Revolution, so most of its contents, including the Wanli Emperor himself, have been destroyed. Just visible in the background of this picture is the freshly painted replica of the emperor's red coffin; the official plaques, pointing out that the coffin was a replacement, somehow neglected to mention anything about Red Guards. This tomb is a little more than 50 feet below ground, so it was a cool and damp alternative to the muggy surface.

我买了车了

2008-07-02T11:41:00.004-04:00

I got tired of getting around Beijing on foot, so I am now the proud owner of a brand-new Chinese bike. It can't change speeds and it's a bit unstable on turns, but it's sturdy, and overall it's a better bike than most of the ones I've seen on the street here.

Evening at Tiananmen

2008-07-01T10:02:00.017-04:00

It was a cool evening and pleasant as I wove my way through the construction on Chengfu Rd. The friends I might have wanted to eat dinner with were away or busy or not answering their phones, and the prospect of writing an essay on one of three equally uninteresting topics was enough to get me out of my room fast. The idea had come into my head——who knows from where——that instead of getting dinner I should visit Tiananmen Square, and almost without realizing it I found myself on my way to the train station.

To get to the Square I would have to change trains twice, but Beijing's subways are clean and modern, at least by comparison with New York's, and the trip was much less of an ordeal than I had been warned riding the Beijing metro could be. As with everything about Beijing, the most impressive thing is the size: to change trains at Xizhimen, I had walk through a seemingly endless series of tunnels and passages and covered walkways, including a massive underground hall inexplicably designed in the style of an Egyptian temple. On all but the oldest line, subway announcements were made in both Chinese and English, and the whole thing felt strangely familiar, but it's hard to imagine that the delightful sign warning me not to hold the doors open with my hand could appear in New York.

When I arrived at Tiananmen West Station, I was greeted by all the minorities of China, who apparently are surpassed in their delight over Beijing's Olympics only by Wanglaoji Tea. Olympic-themed advertisements are everywhere on the Beijing subway (A video ad informed me that Snickers was the official supplier of chocolate to the Games). But this one's as good as it gets. It's a commercial advertisement that perfectly represents the party line of China's 56 races in harmony, and despite the fact that Wanglaoji is not an Olympic sponsor——the Olympic logo is nowhere on the poster, nor are the Games directly mentioned——it manages to get in on the hype of the posters all around it. The ad is a perfect fusion of politics and commercial opportunism, and may be the best summary of this country's approach to the Games that I've seen yet.

When I came up from the subway, I found out I had just missed the end of the flag-lowering ceremony. As I came onto the Square, the last soldiers were marching away from the flagpole, and the crowds of tourists and this was a Monday were slowly dispersing. But Tiananmen Square is impressive enough even without pomp and circumstance. The Great Hall of the People is designed on such a gargantuan scale that I could only tell its size by looking at the workers sweeping water off the steps with branches. In the middle of the Square is Mao's tomb, and against the fog I could make out remnants of the ancient fortifications that had survived his urban planning schemes.

As I took this shot, an elderly man passed by me, explaining to his grandson that Tiananmen Square was where Mao first proclaimed the foundation of the People's Republic of China. The car in the foreground pulled up while I was fiddling unsuccessfully with the focus, and where once Mao decried capitalism and the United States to masses of Red Guards, an impeccably-dressed businessman stepped out of a Chevy and took his own pictures.

请勿入内： Do Not Enter.

Everyone talks about how China has changed, but at least on a Monday night, the Forbidden City is as forbidden as ever.

Before I got back on the subway, I took a brief detour to Zhongnanhai, the Forbidden City of the New China, where the chiefs of the Communist Party do whatever it is they do. The Forbidden City next door distracts a lot of attention from Zhongnanhai, which is probably not unintentional, but this is where the government of China really happens:

And lastly, this lame little clip which I made to prove that I went to Tiananmen, but mainly to test the video function of my camera:

(Some of these pictures have been touched up considerably; the lighting conditions on Tiananmen Square Monday night were awful.)

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, II

2008-06-30T06:16:00.002-04:00

I practice Carpentry, the trade

You need if you need buildings made.

I'll build a house; I'll build a mill;

I'll build a castle on a hill,

Or barracks for the military.

I'll build a bridge; I'll build a ferry.
I'll build good ships and solid rafts;

Daedalus taught me all his crafts.

Dream World 2008

2008-06-28T05:32:00.009-04:00

Since the day after I arrived in Beijing, I've had a bit of a cold--nothing serious, just enough to be annoying. I blame it on the pollution here. Yesterday, since it wasn't getting better, I decided to hunt out a pharmacy. The pharmacy my teachers directed me to had been demolished to make way for new construction, but it wasn't long before I was able to find another one a little less than a Beijing block away from campus.

At this 药房, I explained my symptoms to one of the pharmacists on duty, who promptly gave me three types of pills, explaining that I had "rising fire" in my throat. I tried to get a more Western diagnosis, but the pharmacist would have none of it. I had "rising fire" in my throat, and these, she insisted, were the best medicines for it. Readers of the Foreign Devil, don't get the impression from this story that I had walked into some magician's hole-in-the-wall to buy medicine. The facility was clean and spotlessly white, with the medicines neatly displayed in glass cases. In China, there has been a very big movement to try to legitimize the traditional medicine with the trappings of Western medicine, and my "rising fire" was diagnosed by a woman in a neat white lab coat. When I got back to the dormitory, I rummaged through my dictionary and discovered that I had been sold "Antiphlogistic Tablets," "Refined Honeysuckle-Forsythia Antitoxic Tablets," and "Supereffective Cough Tablets," but unfortunately very few of the characters on the ingredients list were in my dictionary. I managed to translate them online, and to my disappointment I found the pills were mostly made of various fairly innocuous plants. I had been half expecting fillet of a filly snake or something like that. Since then I've been taking the pills and feeling better, so it may be that they've successfully put out my "rising fire."

But yesterday afternoon, I still was plenty stuffed up, and I decided to use my own way of dealing with a cough——I would go for a run. Generally I can breathe more easily after a long run—I think that a run forces my body to demand enough oxygen from my lungs that they give up the struggle and clear themselves out. And after the first block or two (where I was sounding terrifically tubercular), I was breathing fine, pollution or no pollution. I set off east along Zhixin Lu, passing one or two Chinese schoolchildren who were as proud of greeting me in garbled English as I was of responding in garbled Chinese.

And then, just after I had crossed over the Badaling Expressway, I first caught sight of it. The fog in Beijing was particularly bad yesterday, and anything more than half a block away was half-obscured by the mist. But there, dominating the horizon, waiting like the cocoon of some monstrous insect, was the shadow of the Olympic Stadium, visible even from a half-mile away. I ran up as close as I could to it, but the Olympic compound was only open to VIPs and construction workers, and thin lines of official black cars and dirty trucks streamed in and out of the security checkpoints in the fence.

But behind the fence, and behind the aquatics center, was the reason for the whole business. I've always thought the stadium was an ugly thing, and part of me still does, but it doesn't need to be beautiful. Half-seen through the fog, the building made its presence felt as something massive. There behind that fence was a great and terrible testimony to the combined might of the Chinese people and to the will of their State. I looked at it, and my jaw dropped, and I didn't care that the Chinese were watching my amazement. It was an almost religious awe, what a peasant might have felt who in earlier times found himself by chance catching a glimpse through the gates of the Forbidden City. And always there was activity: guards patrolling, credentialled persons pouring in and out, and the workers, small leathery men from the farthest corners of China, squatting with their lunches on the curb.

I turned left on Beichen Xilu and found myself running alongside a seemingly endless fence, with guards both inside and out. The guards outside the fence were what I've become used to seeing all over China. They are always slight men, and their emaciated frames are exaggerated by uniforms that are always at least a size too big. Their uniforms are dull green, in a shade that always looks dirty, and I've never seen them carry a weapon more intimiating than a walkie-talkie. The guards inside the fence were not bigger men, but they had guns, and Soviet-style military caps, and epaulettes, and gold stripes on their uniform pants, and most of them had puffed their chests out so far they could hardly breathe. They stood against the background of the mist-shrouded buildings of the Olympics, an allegory of the Games and of their country.

When after a little less than a mile in that direction I decided to head back, I found myself running by the Olympic Village, just receiving the finishing touches before the Games. Here, in a few weeks, would live the greatest athletes in the world; this was the backstage for the greatest public drama anyone will have seen in years. But now the dormitory buildings were lifeless and identical, stretching away in long forbidding aisles until they were lost in the fog. I couldn't enter this compound either; it had its own fences and checkpoints, and I had to wait till I had passed the whole Village before I could turn west. At that intersection, an inscribed stone reminded passers-by of the Olympic motto, "One World, One Dream." 同一个世界，同一个梦想: like some mantra these phrases have been plastered all over Beijing. On T-shirts, on the walls of buildings, on banners, on bumper stickers, on beer bottles, the phrase is repeated, endlessly and endlessly. Through the fog yesterday, I could see it everywhere, written vertically or horizontally, carved in stone or painted in garish colors. "One World, One Dream."

The fence of the Olympic Village was, unlike most of the Olympic construction, actually quite attractive, a sort of combination of Art Deco and Chinoiserie (Chinese architecture has Westernized to the point where it's not silly to speak of Chinese Chinoiserie). Within the fence the motto was everywhere. And on every fence post, it was alluded to. But for some reason, probably some fortuitous mistake, the order was reversed. The square and solid pillars of the fence each read "Dream / World / 2008," and the words became the rhythm of my steps as I ran through that dream world, past dormitory after dormitory and gate after gate. Long after the Olympic Village had been left behind in the fog, after I returned to my dormitory for another dose of mysterious herbs, I was still in the Dream World of Beijing 2008.

Propaganda

2008-06-23T05:04:00.009-04:00

The Chinese term usually translated as "propaganda"—宣传 or xuanchuan—has none of the sinister connotations we associate with its English equivalent. (Propaganda is also the name of a serviceable jiuba in Wudaokou, but I'll let that be a story for another time.) Xuanchuan's meaning is closer to the Latin origin of our word: propagation, dissemination, or if you like, "publicity." Xuanchuan goes on as much on Madison Ave. as in the secret recesses of Zhongnanhai. But plenty of xuanchuan is political, and the classic form remains the large red banner. At the opening ceremony of HBA's academic term, I was duly greeted by an enormous banner proclaiming that I was at the opening ceremony of HBA's academic term.

And that's the thing—most of these propaganda banners are somehow disappointing once you've translated them. I can't help but feel that some revolutionary credibility has been lost by a Communist Party goes to tremendous expense and effort to exhort the people not to spit on the sidewalk. But here, I present the Readers of the Foreign Devil with very poor photographs of some gems of the genre. Unfortunately I could not find one with the ubiquitous catchword hexie, or "harmonious," which has been the cornerstone of the government's labors to keep the people well-behaved during the Olympics. But nevertheless these photos are fairly representative of the state of xuanchuan in today's China.

I. (at the top of the post) This is a more or less standard propaganda banner, over the front entrance to the main classroom building at the university. It's composed in a peculiar jargon that really isn't used at all outside of banners like this one, but when decompressed, it reads: "Earnestly Study to Impement the Spirit of the Seventeenth Congress of the Party; Steadfastly and Unwaveringly Walk the Great Road of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics." And this translation is actually a bit less compressed and gnomic than the original banner.

II. "Honest Testing Starts with Me." This banner went up yesterday, over the rear entrance to the main classroom building, where students rushing to exams are most likely to enter. This week is final exams for every college student in Beijing Municipality, and with one set of standardized exams for the whole region, there is a tremendous financial incentive for those bureaucrats entrusted with the test forms to let a few answers slip out.

III. (Unfortunately my photos of this banner are so poor as to be illegible.) This third banner, hanging in the main dining hall of the No. 2 Cafeteria, combines class conflict and antiquarianism in a way only possible in China. It's a poem from the Tang dynasty, by 李绅:

鋤禾日當午，

汗滴禾下土。

誰知盤中餐，

粒粒皆辛苦？

And for any unchinesed Readers of this blog, I've come up with what I think is more or less an accurate translation:

Beneath the noonday sun he leads the plow;

The ground is wet with sweatdrops from his brow.

But who knows that their plate, heaped up with grain,

Was purchased—every bite—with so much pain?

And I'll leave you on that happy note.

不到长城非好汉 (second posting attempt)

2008-06-22T07:23:00.003-04:00

I tried to post this entry this morning, but since then it seems to have disappeared. So I post it again for your reading pleasure. The title, by the way, is a Chinese saying: "One who has not been to the Great Wall is not a real man."

Yesterday I visited the Great Wall at Simatai. The Wall at Simatai was first built in the 6th century and renovated in the 14th, and since then there has been very little restoration work done on the Wall, so more or less all of it is the real Ming Dynasty deal. The Chinese tend not to talk about visiting the Wall so much as "climbing it," and at Simatai where the Wall snakes over the tops of mountains, the climb is a fairly grueling one. It's a beautiful place, though. After climbing the Wall, we ate in a cafeteria where a large picture of Simatai was on display with the caption 龍入云雾 ("The Dragon enters the Clouds and Mist"), which may sound like something out of a second-rate kung fu movie but gets the effect of the place pretty well. Whether because of pollution or because of the natural climate, a white fog tends to fill the valleys between the peaks, giving the landscape the muted appearance of a Chinese painting. These pictures aren't great, but they might do something to give the impression of the Great Wall:

After climbing the Wall, I went down the easy way, by riding a zipline over the river that runs through Simatai and then taking a boat the rest of the way. I wanted to put these pictures up yesterday, but from the Great Wall I had to run to a dinner party hosted by Spencer,* a former classmate of mine, in another classmate's apartment. At the dinner party I was invited to another party hosted by Time magazine's Beijing correspondent to send off another expatriate who was leaving the city. And this party was not in any ordinary apartment, but in an ancient courtyard house in a hutong district of the city. American expatriates in Beijing seem to be having the time of their lives. I, on the other hand, have a disconcerting number of characters to memorize.

*While it's not usually policy on the Foreign Devil to use people's real names, I think it's a necessary corrective in a city where everyone, but foreigners especially, is reinventing himself with reckless abandon.

芥兰

2008-06-22T06:53:00.005-04:00

It's more or less a cliché for travelers to the East to report back on the exotic and unpalatable things they've eaten--last night, for instance, I heard about a Korean custom of eating live octopodes, and the apparently nonfictional Chinese consumption of live monkey brains. I heard about these from eyewitnesses and diners, who did their best to make clear they were not pulling my leg. But I want to report on a less exciting dish, the mysterious vegetable jielan. Among the students of the HBA program, this vegetable gets ordered at almost every meal (I just finished a plate of it myself). But what is the jielan? The shaft of the plant resembles asparagus in appearance and taste, but instead of coming to a point like an asparagus shoot, the jielan splits into two or three narrow branches that end in spinachlike leaves. The plant's name is equally mysterious. It's written with 芥 jiè, meaning "mustard," and 兰 lán, meaning "orchid." But why a plant that looks like a cross of asparagus and spinach should be called the Mustard Orchid more or less defies explanation. Nevertheless jielan is on the menu to stay. When I get back to New Haven, I'll be sure to check the Asian markets to see if I can buy it on the other side of the world as well.

Beijing is Huge

2008-06-22T04:44:00.006-04:00

Looking at a map of Beijing, you would realize it's a big city, one that sprawls out in concentric circles from the Forbidden City at its heart. What would not be obvious is the scale of the city. A block in Beijing can take 20 minutes to pass on foot, and even more if you go through the labyrinth of driveways, alleys and footpaths that wind through each one. Earlier today, when I was on my way to the gym (it's at the northeast corner of my block and is about a 15 minute walk), I passed by a building that was being torn down. Men with pickaxes were hacking away at the walls, and four horse-drawn carts were on hand to take away the debris.

But in the same city, in the same Beijing, is this building I passed by last night, the new headquarters for the main government-controlled broadcasting station in China. I had seen pictures of it before, and I generally dismissed it as something that belonged more on the set of a science fiction movie than in the middle of an actual city. But when I saw it in person, the thing could not be laughed at. The size of it (my dormitory building could fit at least half a dozen times into the hole in the middle, and my dorm is not a small building even for Beijing), and the terrifying overhang of the section where the towers join, are completely overwhelming. And of course half a mile from it are buildings that look as if they have been neither renovated nor cleaned since the fall of the Qing.

In China

2008-06-17T06:07:00.017-04:00

《洋鬼浅见》的读者们也许---(all right, if they won't let me speak English, they'll at least have to let me write it)--- Readers of the Foreign Devil will perhaps be happy to hear that this blog, this notorious source of unwholesome and subversive material, has been banned by the government of the People's Republic of China. Even if I have got caught up in the China craze that seems almost universal in colleges these days, I've kept at least enough credibility as a partisan of the free world to maintain an illegal blog. And to the moral victory of exercising my God-endowed right of free speech, I've added the technological victory of finding away around the Great Firewall of China. To be honest I'm not sure how it works (Mr. Fang would know more about such technological trickery), but it does work.

On June 13th I left my home in lovely Mahwah (at left), and said good-bye to the place for the summer. It was a very 哭笑不得 moment, but however excited I was by the prospect of living in Beijing or anguished by the prospect of leaving home, I stopped first at the doctor's for a regularly scheduled appointment, where it was found that contrary to the opinions of some readers of the Foreign Devil, there is nothing significantly wrong with me. And from there to China. I slept through almost the entire flight, which is probably the only way to spend fourteen and a half hours in an economy-class seat and emerge with one's sanity.

My room in Beijing, No. 1006 in the Seventeenth Dormitory of the Beijing Language and Culture University, is nice enough, as can be seen below:
And there's also this room, where I can take care of any necessities that the hygienic standards of restaurants in this country may give rise to. There's no separate shower; the bathroom itself serves as a shower stall: I just close the door and ducharme (or 洗淋浴, as the case may be).

Beijing is a big enough city that I can get everything I need; to the left shows the first breakfast I ate here, purchased at the No. 3 Cafeteria (in background). It was just 馒头 and 包子, and not especially delicious, but I've subsequently found the first and second cafeterias are much better. On campus there's even a 穆斯林食堂 where I can get excellent (and apparently halal) lamb kebabs, with which the program's secretary tormented some inadequately Chinesed students by telling them they had eaten rat. I've also found and joined a gym, where hopefully I can keep in shape until the fall. There's a more than adequate gym on campus, but unfortunately it is closed to students these days, since it's being used for training by the Olympic basketball teams. I haven't seen any Olympians yet, though.

What with all the work I have here (the teachers claim that we cover every day what a college curriculum does in a week, and they're not exaggerating by much), I'm more or less as busy as I was during the school year, but I will try to post updates as often as I can. I'm writing this in the dormitory lobby, where I get free internet access, and in which I get to watch the surprisingly entertaing spectacle of Koreans and Italians trying to speak Chinese. I know I speak Chinese with an American accent, but it's nice that there are some people who make me look good.

Parting Glance - 6/3/08

2008-06-06T18:22:00.004-04:00

"Nice? It's the only thing," said the Water Rat solemnly as he leant forward for his stroke. "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

"Simply messing," he went on dreamily, "messing—about—in—boats; messing—"

Move-Out, II

2008-05-31T14:54:00.010-04:00

or, Gales Ferry

Readers of the Foreign Devil, apologies are owed. This post comes late, and we hate to think you may feel forgotten by the Foreign Devil almost as much as we hate to think you may have forgotten it. I have not been killed, been abducted, or eloped; but I've had the good fortune of entering a world without internet access, about which more later.

The pictures I posted on the 14th gave the impression that L-dub was already deserted. Of course I felt deserted, but this blog is not after all a place for me to go on about my feelings--plenty of people were still around and I myself had only moved across the court. By the end of the day a new crowd of women's rowers and band members had moved into entryway F (F11 became a laundry depot), and I'd moved fairly comfortably into B21. On reflection, it was a strange thing to feel comfortable there, but I was my teammates and it was, after all, a nicer room, so I can't blame myself. Nevertheless, it just wasn't right to be at Yale without the regular cast of characters.

Some people were still around, though, and staying in town gave me the opportunity to see off the last stragglers and to say hello to the first crowds moving in for the summer. On Sunday I ran to the heights of East Rock (named for its being to the west of West Rock). I cursed myself for not bringing a camera, and was consoled by one last dinner with Dr. Manutius, who had just finished a journalistic bacchanal of several weeks which this blog will not dignify by providing details. On Monday, however, the much anticipated return of Mr. Fang for the summer was the big news. Together with the Politician we made our way after dinner (which, thanks to Commencement, and to local restauranteurs' awareness of proud parents' willingness to pay, was considerably more expensive than usual) to the top of the great Tower of the building known to students as SSS, officially called who-knows-what, where, as is seen above, even a deserted Yale had not lost any of its appeal.

My next concern was to frantically pack for the Ferry, and I'm sure with all the things I had to do I was a less than satisfactory host to the eminent Mr. Fang. Regardless, it was great to be his roommate again, if only for a single night. To the left is proof of his visit--one of the rare photographs of that elusive gentleman. In the picture he's engaged in something complex and possibly illegal on his computer. I can never understand his projects but they all amaze me. To the right is my own computer, where a posting of our very own Foreign Devil can be seen. And the next morning after practice, amidst a flurry of bustling boxes and bags down stairs and rustling them onto buses, we left for the Ferry. I was not happy to have finally left Yale, but within a few hours Gales Ferry had become one of my favorite places.

Just upstream of New London on the Thames (and in New London the river's name is pronounced as it's spelt) are two large bridges across the river. A mile further upstream is the berth of the Nautilus. Continuing upstream, as the Yale boats will when they race Harvard here in June, one passes a large submarine base, and then Harvard's as-yet deserted camp at Red Top, and then, a mile farther on, Yale's ancient compound at the Ferry. Yale men have raced and trained here since 1878, but parts of the compound date back to before the Revolution. The boathouse itself, seen to the right, represents one of James Gamble Rogers' excursions from the Collegiate Gothic so familiar to Yale students, and houses not only the boats but all the freshman rowers, on the second floor.

Everywhere at the Ferry is the sense of tradition. Crews from more than a hundred years ago look down on us in the dining hall, and rituals like the after-dinner limericks have been going on as long as anyone can remember. A week or two ago I received a gift from one of my aunts, about the American scullers training for the 1984 Olympics, plenty of whom rowed for Yale at some point. In the book were places and institutions I've come to know, and the faces of these characters look down on me from photos around the Ferry. It's close to a religious experience, without the religious content. Relics are everywhere: over the entrance to my bedroom is an oar that propelled a Yale crew to Olympic gold and to a world record.

And in the midst of this, my normal life goes on. Practice, usually twice a day, meals and sleep constitute most of it. There isn't really much else to do. Technology is discouraged at the Ferry; I can only post this because I walked about a mile to a local library. We're even discouraged from using iPods and speakers. The only authorized music sources are an ancient and out-of-tune piano or an even older and more decrepit hand-cranked phonograph, bearing graffiti from the '50s but certainly older than that. The food deserves comment as well. It's amazingly good, and especially since we've all come from a few weeks of feeding ourselves, the quantities are incredible. I've managed to ingratiate myself with the kitchen, which has got me a few extra pieces of pie so far. The cook tells me I'm also a favorite among the neighborhood children who help in the kitchen, and I have to say I was pleased when a few of them called out to me from their car as I walked up to the library. The food, despite being made on an institutional scale, has definitely something home-cooked about it, which makes me long all the more for the real home-cooked food I began to miss a long time ago.

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, I

2008-05-16T17:21:00.007-04:00

I cast type for the printer's trade;
Of tin and lead my type is made.
I keep proportions in alignment,
Designing forms with all refinement:
Both Roman and Italic faces
With Greek for extra-special places
And capitals and punctuation.
The press depends on my vocation.

Move-Out, I

2008-05-14T23:19:00.011-04:00

or, Quomodo sedet sola Lanman-Wright.

In early December of 2007, Mr. Fang put together a virtual tour of our beloved L-dub entryway F. While moving out earlier today, I took some shots of the same rooms.

Study Break

2008-05-09T16:33:00.010-04:00

As friends of the Foreign Devil may know, I've been feeling under the weather these past few days—a bit of bronchitis or something like that. It's nothing serious, just coughing and lethargy, but they tell me I need plenty of rest. Now finals week is never the best time to need rest, especially when one spent one's reading week with very little reading, but readers of this blog need not despair that Yalies will fail to overcome a little problem like the need to study. Perhaps in an attempt to add sloth to the list of vices she coddles among her students, Yale has given us the venerable institution of the Study Break. Ice cream, Chinese food, Mexican food, Korean food, Indian food both Subcontinental and American—for the past few weeks campus has become a free buffet almost every night, for those who know where to look.

Last night, however, there were as far as we knew no study breaks on offer, but where Yale would not provide a way, we would make one. To be fair I can't say I had been studying—I had been seized after dinner with a sudden urge for some extracurricular reading and had wolfed down Decline and Fall. (In retrospect, Waugh was probably among the most dangerous authors I could have chosen to read.) By the time I finished, the Russian Peasant had been bothering me for some time about going on a study break; now she reminded me that I had bought myself some peace by promising to go when I had finished the book. And for that matter I was a bit hungry, so we went through the by now familiar ordeal of rousing Mr. Fang from whatever numerical business he was engaged in, and set off.

Before we had even left the depths of Bass Library, an epic spiritual drama had begun. At first I would have been happy to grab some dirty and dirt-cheap noodles at the place down the street, but after another proposal was made (perhaps by me, far more likely by Evelyn Waugh), we found ourselves as if inevitably on the way to Samurai, over our better judgment and the Russian Peasant's protestations at every step that "We are not going sake-bombing!"

And before you, O discerning and perhaps parental reader, pass judgment on this story, know that our conversation at Samurai was mainly on Mr. Fang's religious crisis and temptations by Evangelical Ice-Cream, on our good memories of the past, and on the terrifyingly fast onrush of a future in which we will no longer be freshmen. And of course a good time was had by all.

Not so much of a good time, however, that we did not return to our books in the depths of Bass. Mr. Fang returned to his calculations, I drafted a few philosophical notes, and the Russian Peasant assured all gathered that the Study Break would not—would definitely not—cause her to do badly on the final exam that she's taking just as this post goes online.

(photo credit: YDN)

办签证

2008-05-06T20:47:00.022-04:00

Newspapers and journals, political pundits and economists, textbooks and in short everyone who wants to appear informed about China have long since raised the refrain that China's modernization makes the country ever more familiar to Western eyes. This view is correct enough, even if it's obvious, but there are a few areas in which it is the West that lags behind. When the Twelve Tables were first being scratched out in Italy, the Chinese states had already devised a bureaucratic system to make any libertarian weep.

The well-developed offspring of this system was on display on Monday, when I visited the 中华人民共合国驻纽约总领事馆 (at left) to arrange for my visa for this summer. I had a few fairly impressive-looking letters of invitation, and I had taken care to write "耶鲁大学" in large, legible characters anywhere I could find an excuse to put it on the application. The clerk at the visa desk was unwilling to speak Chinese, for some reason, and quite unable to speak English, but if several hours of waiting and copying out forms in an overcrowded and under-air-conditioned room can be considered good fortune, I had the good fortune to get a Chinese visa. Some of my friends were not so lucky; this year it's especially hard to get one.

The consulate, at 42nd and 12th, doesn't draw much attention to itself--there's only a small sign next to the door, and no Chinese flags or any other insignia. I found the building by the line forming outside the door, already fairly long when I showed up an hour and a half before opening. Falun Gong was out in force, with banners informing the gathering crowd that "Falun Dafa is Good" and calling for legal action against Jiang Zemin and a few other characters. Their protest was a quiet one: a group of a dozen or so mostly elderly Chinese meditated and performed what seemed to be a sort of simplified Tai-Ch`i, while some Chinese music played almost inaudibly. I managed to get a picture of this protest on my cell phone, as well as of the Tibetan protest I encountered when I returned to pick up my visa after grabbing lunch with my brother uptown.

Unlike the Falun Gong practitioners, the Tibetans (and the one or two white persons protesting with them) were accompanied by policemen. Most of them carried Tibetan flags or placards, which they waved as they shouted slogans in Tibetan, or in what I think was Tibetan. I couldn't tell if they were agitating for Tibet's independence or merely protesting China's actions there. The protest seemed well-organized, and had drawn many more people than Falun Gong's protest had, but it only passed by the consulate briefly once, at least as far as I saw. In any event, this protest, like the other one, drew no response from the consulate or from the many Chinese nationals waiting in line outside.

After I returned to New Haven, several interesting things happened, but I don't have time now to post on the Chamber of Secrets and the dangerous and quite illegal Rooftop Romp.

Practice Video Post

2008-05-01T00:49:00.005-04:00

Just to see if I can put video online, some footage from yesterday afternoon's practice (I'm in the 4-seat):

Carnegie Cup

2008-04-30T21:40:00.008-04:00

It was not a great weekend for Yale Heavyweight Crew, but I'll let the YDN carry that story.

The 2F had a better time of it, with a lead of 3 seconds or so over Cornell. Due to injuries this was the first time the 2F raced an eight this season, making us technically an undefeated boat. The 2F still has plenty of problems to work on, and the team as a whole didn't have much to celebrate, but it was still nice to take home a Cornell shirt.

In the picture on the right we're a couple hundred meters from the finish line. Our form (and especially mine) doesn't look great, but a win is a win.

Still at Yale

2008-04-18T21:20:00.005-04:00

The end of the school year is approaching fast, when this Foreign Devil will head off for Beijing and start up this blog for real. Until then, I've still got a week of Directed Studies to fight my way through.