End of Finals

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

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

Shamelessly plagiarized from The Perry Bible Fellowship.

High Street in Early December

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

"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...

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

What Have We Done?

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

My God— It was the Mormons all along!

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

Yet Another Endorsement

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

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

An Overgrown Song for the Middle of the Night

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

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,

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

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

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

On Bush Doctrines

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

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

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

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

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

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...

...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

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

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

aus Jost Ammans Ständebuch, III

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

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

At the Games, II

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Olympic Mania

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.