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The Dujiangyan Weir–Civil Engineering that Lasts

Posted on May 18, 2015 | Leave a comment

The Dujiangyan Weir: Civil Engineering that Lasts    —by Jinny Batterson

Civil engineering is not one of my skills. Even trying to understand basic maps, diagrams, and schematics can leave me scratching my head in confusion. So I’m sure that I cannot appreciate, in the same way a trained engineer would, the elegance of the design of the Dujiangyan Irrigation Projects site (also translated into English as the Dujiangyan Weir). A “weir” is a manmade structure to redirect a river’s flow. It is less restrictive than a dam, allowing water to flow over or around parts of it. I’ve visited the site twice during travels in the area—in 2004 and again in 2009.  I did, through a guide’s explanation and through direct observation,  develop a sense of awe for the crafters, builders and maintainers of this irrigation system built over 2000 years ago. The Dujiangyan weir is now the only remaining no-dam irrigation project in the world. It continues to provide both irrigation water and flood protection despite nearly 2300 years of wear and tear, countless downpours and droughts, and numerous earthquakes, including a very serious one in 2008.

The project was first built starting in 256 B.C., during the Warring States period that preceded China’s unification. It was masterminded by area governor Li Bing and his son, with financial and manpower assistance from the state of Qin (pronounced “chin”), which a generation later consolidated its power over the country we now call China. The aim was to relieve the periodic flooding of the Min River, at the same time providing irrigation water to farms in the fertile surrounding plains. The system includes three main parts: a “fish mouth levee,”  splitting the river into two parts at the head of a fish-shaped island, one part a deep, narrow inner channel, the other a wide, shallow outer one; a broad opening, “flying sand weir,” that allows excess water, plus silt and sediment, to swirl from the inner to the outer channel; and a “bottleneck channel” that distributes irrigation water through a narrow aperture toward area farmland, while holding back excess water to prevent flooding.  This final channel was constructed before the availability of dynamite. It was hewn out of its surroundings by successively heating and cooling its rock walls, probably through bonfires and drenching with river water, until the walls cracked and could be chipped away. Digging this part of the channel took eight years.

During dry periods, about 60% of the river’s water flows through the inner channel and bottleneck channel, providing much-needed irrigation water. During heavy rains, the proportions are reversed, with about 60% flowing harmlessly down the outer channel, protecting surrounding areas from flooding.  Although I do not understand all the engineering involved, I’m impressed at the combination of natural and artificial features that have kept this system working through earthquake, fire, and flood.

Since the project’s initial construction, several surrounding temples have been built to honor Li Bing. Several pedestrian bridges now span the river to make it easier to take in the scope of the project. In 2004, I visited the site with a group tour on our way back from mountainous northern Sichuan. On that trip, our tour bus was partway down the mountainous slopes when lightning started flashing around us. Thunder boomed closer and closer, echoing off the surrounding peaks.  Our bus driver hurtled through the gorges upstream of the weir down bumpy roads at the highest practical speed. When we reached the flash-flood-safe area of the irrigation project before the rains hit, everyone heaved a collective sigh of relief. We cheered our driver, who was the most relieved of all. In 2009, a local friend drove me out from her home near Dujiangyan to see the weir. Damage from the 2008 earthquake to the temples and to one of the bridges was still being repaired, but the structures in the river itself were completely restored after only minor impact. The Dujiangyan Irrigation Project is an important tourist destination for both domestic and international tourists.

My lasting impression of the dikes, levees and river are of clear, rushing water, and an engineering feat that continues to show remarkable beauty, practicality, and endurance.

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The May 4 Movement

Posted on May 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

The May 4 Movement—Beginning of China’s Modern Evolution?

—by Jinny Batterson

This post lags May 4 by a week,  but may have some relevance even so.  What has come to be called the “May 4 Movement” was a series of demonstrations by students and workers in China, starting on May 4, 1919. It was part of a broader “new culture” movement that arose in China during and just after the First World War.  Both New Culture and the May 4 Movement played out during the ferment in China after the fall of the final dynasty of Chinese emperors, the Qing, in 1911.  The immediate trigger for the May 4 protests was news that during international negotiations in Versailles, France, to establish treaty provisions at the close of World War I, China had been denied the return of portions of Shandong Province that were occupied by Germany during the war. Chinese claims were dismissed despite China’s entry into the alliance against Germany in 1917 with the express claim of regaining German-held territory.  Instead, the territory that many Chinese thought was rightfully theirs was temporarily ceded to Japan (which had also fought opposing Germany, and was more advanced industrially than China). The Chinese students felt this was a betrayal, and demanded that China refuse to sign the Treaty of Versailles. According to the Wikipedia description of the May 4 movement, the students, gathered the morning of May 4 in Beijing, also wanted:

—to draw awareness of China’s precarious position to the masses in China.

—to recommend a large-scale gathering in Beijing.

That afternoon, several thousand students assembled in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) in central Beijing, shouting slogans denouncing the terms of the treaty and demanding the resignation of three Chinese officials that they felt had sold out China during the Versailles negotiations.  Some of the students marched to the home of one of the despised officials and set it on fire.  They were later arrested and severely beaten.

The larger context for the protests and movements was a sense that China had fallen behind Western powers and Japan in its industrialization and economic growth, and that basic changes needed to be made in Chinese society and culture if China was to resume a central role in the world order.  Some Chinese intellectuals and writers talked of needing two “doctors” to help cure China’s ills: “Doctor Science” and “Doctor Democracy.”  As May turned to June, protests spread throughout the country, with workers and merchants joining in.  The Chinese government of the time eventually dismissed the three reviled negotiators. China also refused to sign the Versailles treaty, though Japan retained de facto control of portions of Shandong and some Pacific islands.

Some historical sources claim that the ferment of the May 4 Movement, its short-lived partial success, and the eventual rejection of many of its broader demands were factors leading to the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai in 1921. Others indicate that the behavior of the Western powers at the time of the Versailles Treaty in 1919 helped persuade many Chinese to reject Western-style democracy as self-serving and hypocritical.

The debate about the appropriate balance of tradition and of change has never been resolved, either in China or elsewhere. Perhaps it cannot be. Subsequent Chinese political figures as diverse as Mao Zedong and the student leaders of protests in 1989 have claimed the May 4 Movement as part of their inspiration.

This May, demonstrations have continued in some American cities to protest low wages for fast food workers, the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in Baltimore, and other police violence against civilians. Are we all, in a sense, inheritors of the May 4 Movement?

 

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Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage

Posted on April 27, 2015 | Leave a comment

Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage     —by Jinny Batterson

China probably does not have a “National Poetry Month,” as is celebrated in the U.S. in April, but poetry is taught in schools across China from an early age.  Most university students can recite some of the most famous Chinese poems from memory. China reveres its poets, especially ancient ones.  During some of China’s more turbulent periods, poets gave voice to people’s hopes and concerns. They wrote about nature themes; they wrote about history, about dreams, about loss, about transcendence.  Du Fu, an itinerant poet who lived during part of the Tang Dynasty (712-770), was witness to one of its most disastrous episodes, the An-Shi Rebellion, which started in 756 and pitted the emperor at the time against several powerful warlords.

The rebels captured the capital of Chang’an (modern Xi’an), forcing many, including the emperor and the poet, who’d been living there for a decade, to flee.  Du Fu later moved to Chengdu, where friends helped him build a modest thatched home near a small stream.  There he wrote many of his most famous poems. His life was difficult. Bouts of relative poverty plagued him and his family. Social conditions continued to be unsettled in many parts of the country. He lived in several other locales after Chengdu, and was often on the road for extended periods.

In 2009, I had a chance to visit Du Fu’s cottage and the park surrounding it with one of my best students of English.  Having her to serve as translator increased my appreciation of the poet, his poetry, and the park.  The existing cottage is a replica, reconstructed several times, most recently during the 19th century, I think. It is a modest dwelling, with an actual thatched roof. The furnishings are sparse. One room is devoted to a gift shop/library with collections of poetry and calligraphy for sale.  I bought an English translation of some of Du Fu’s best known verse, but have since lost it in a move. I don’t know any Du Fu poems by heart, not even in translation.

As I recall, the cottage is a fairly small part of a larger oasis of greenery in this part of Chengdu. There is a hall of poets, with statues and inscriptions describing the life and work of other leading Tang and Song dynasty poets, including Li Bai, Wang Wei, Su Shi, and Lu You. In one section of the park, the sidewalk has been inlaid with short quotations from some of China’s most famous poets.  “Rebecca,” my student, tried translating a few of them for me, but poetry is notoriously difficult to render into a different language.

A number of Du Fu’s poems have been posted online in English versions.  One of my favorites is  “Lone Wild Goose,”  a poem he wrote near the end of a life disrupted by war, poverty, and frequent relocations:

Alone, the wild goose refuses food and drink,
his calls searching for the flock.

Who feels compassion for that single shadow
vanishing in a thousand distant clouds?

You watch, even as it flies from sight,
its plaintive calls cutting through you.

The noisy crows ignore it:
the bickering, squabbling multitudes.

There’s ample evidence that Du Fu’s troubles in later life made him more empathetic toward many of China’s peasants, whose lives had also been disrupted by the fighting and chaos of the period. But life was not uniformly severe. There’s also evidence that Du Fu and Li Bai (701-762), his slightly older contemporary, the most famous Tang poet, were at times able to spend evenings together among their fellows, drinking wine and challenging each other to poetry competitions.

 

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Earth Day in China

Posted on April 20, 2015 | 1 comment

Earth Day in China   —by Jinny Batterson

During the several years when I was in China in late April, I never noticed any hoopla about Earth Day, celebrated in the U.S. around April 22.  This holiday, founded by environmentalists in the United States in 1970, has yet to catch on in China.  A couple of times, I’ve broached the subject of environmental activism to some of my Chinese students and colleagues.  Over the past generation or so in China, there has been increasing interest in ecological education, as the Chinese economy begins to mature and its natural environment becomes more polluted.

I have mainly benefited from industrial progress in the U.S. for much of my lifetime, so I can find it awkward to discuss “earth friendly” development with Chinese friends.  After I’d given a somewhat glib critique of China’s polluted air at an evening Q&A session several years ago, one younger Chinese colleague retorted:

“Your country spewed great plumes and spurts of toxic chemicals into its air and water for over a century before you began efforts to clean up your dirty industries. What right do you have to criticize us when we’re still just getting started on our development?”

Reaching a consensus on steps our respective governments and cultures can take to reduce our harm to global air and water resources can be tricky.  The trade-offs between economic development and wise resource stewardship are not always obvious.  Citizens in both countries register alarm at some of the damage we’re causing, but what we can do to reduce the harm is not always readily apparent.

Progress toward mutual efforts to reduce some pollutants in our two countries, greenhouse gas emissions, got a boost in November, 2014, when Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama signed a historic agreement with ambitious emissions reduction targets for both countries. The U.S. pledged to reduce its emissions by at least 26% below 2005 levels by 2025; China promised to cap its emissions by 2030, and earlier if possible. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, coming from industrial, residential, and vehicular sources, are leading contributors to air pollution, as well as likely facilitators of global climate change. If early progress is made toward achieving these goals, it will help further advance broader international agreements at a global climate summit to be held in Paris in December, 2015. (You can read more about the U.S.-China agreement at http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/china-us-agree-to-limit-greenhouse-gases/2014/11/11/9c768504-69e6-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html.)

A non-governmental boost toward paying attention to China’s environment came recently from a former CCTV (Chinese state television) reporter, Chai JIng, who in 2015 produced an independent hour-plus documentary about air pollution problems in China. Chai’s TED-style documentary, “Under the Dome,” also provides historical context from different parts of the world. It cites Britain’s “killer smog” of 1952 (4 days of heavy air pollution in December that year that killed an estimated 12,000 people). It also chronicles Los Angeles’s smog problems. In the period just after World War II, smog in Los Angeles was just as dense and harmful as Beijing’s smog is today. A photograph taken of one of L.A.’s freeways on Christmas Eve, 1948, shows extremely limited visibility. Strict emissions standards strictly enforced have lessened smog there, even as the number of vehicles on area roads has increased.

Chai has said she produced her documentary out of concern for her young daughter, who was born with a benign tumor that may have been caused by pollution. Chai’s presentation was posted to the Internet and had received over 100 million views in China before it was removed from Chinese websites.

It may be slightly ironic that two high-profile recent public events in Beijing—the 2008 Olympics and the 2014 APEC summit (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), at which Obama and Xi signed their historic agreement—contributed to increasing expectations among Beijingers that cleaner air is possible.  For both events, polluting industries in surrounding areas were temporarily scaled back or shut down entirely.  Motor traffic into the city was severely restricted. Officials wanted to have “blue sky days” while Beijing was in the international spotlight.

When Earth Day comes around this year, I’ll do my part by increasing my efforts to be more sparing in my use of a car.  I’ll invest more in carbon offsets to reduce the impact of my airline travel. I’ll eat lower on the food chain more often.  I’ll revel in the “blue sky days” that still predominate in the part of the United States of America where I live. In addition to personal lifestyle changes, I’ll work harder toward public policy modifications in my town, county, state, and country to help protect the environment. I’ll think of Chai Jing and her daughter, of my own children and grandchildren. Each of us can do something to move toward a more livable planet for future generations of humans.

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Sandstorms, Yellow Air in Xinjiang

Posted on March 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

Sandstorms, Yellow Air in Xinjiang   —by Jinny Batterson

When the weather finally began to warm during the year when my husband and I taught English at a small desert reclamation college by the desert in far northwestern China (2006-2007), at first we rejoiced. The days grew longer. Siberian iris began poking up along the edges of campus walkways. After months of bundling up in layers of heavy clothing whenever we ventured outside, we could finally wander our campus with only a light jacket. Spring was just around the corner, and not a moment too soon. Earlier in the year, some of our best students as well as some of the veteran teachers had warned us about spring’s 6-8 week period of “yellow air” in our oasis town in western Xinjiang. We still were not prepared for dust storm season.

March winds in Xinjiang pick up dust from the Taklimakan desert and blow it around, occasionally in strong storms. The year we were there, we heard about a severe dust and wind storm that had derailed 11 train cars negotiating a mountain pass. Over thirty people were hospitalized. There were several fatalities. Dust storms stir up a ubiquitous haze that can last for weeks, until an infrequent rain comes through to settle the dust.

By Beijing time, the sun in late winter and early spring rose about 9 a.m.  It was typically 11 or even noon before sunlight pierced the haze enough to form shadows.  The red disk then shone weakly for a few hours before disappearing into the westward haze bank about 4. We only experienced two dust storms directly, both of them mild—the first came up suddenly in early afternoon while we were in our apartment preparing for afternoon classes.  The school’s alarm system sounded, followed by an announcement that our Foreign Affairs Officer and minder soon translated into English for us via phone:

“Afternoon classes are canceled today. Please stay indoors.”

At the height of the storm, our efforts to take pictures out our apartment windows were fruitless. The camera’s flash went off, but all that showed in the resulting photograph was a foot or so of murky brown air. We couldn’t even see the willow trees in the quadrangle between our building and the apartment blocks maybe a hundred yards across the way.  The storm abated nearly as quickly as it had come up. By sunset, the air, though still somewhat murky, had returned to stillness.

Before the year we spent in Xinjiang, we’d only seen a sandstorm from a distance. On an earlier trip to parts of northern and central China in 2002, we’d just boarded an airline flight heading south out of Beijing when one of that season’s storms rolled in from the northwest. We could see an orange-brown haze spreading toward the capital, but were well aloft and further south before it began to affect the city. On the following evening’s television news, we saw that the storm had briefly cut visibility to a few yards, had left a heavy coating of grit on cars, buildings, and roads, and had caused respiratory problems.

Sandstorms have long been a feature of springtime in northern China. According to some sources, they have gotten worse in recent years, despite large-scale efforts to plant shelter belts of trees and grasses to stabilize the soil and sands of the Gobi and Taklimakan deserts, whose surfaces are stirred up by spring winds.  Another multi-decade effort has been to transfer massive amounts of water from China’s southern provinces toward the more arid north. One phase of this effort, bringing water to Beijing, went online during the winter of 2014-2015. In our small town of Ala’er, Xinjiang, responses to the storms seemed to be a combination of resignation, irrigation, grass and tree planting, and staying indoors.

On an afternoon in early May, the skies darkened once more, but this time they brought thunder and rain. I was amazed at the number of umbrellas that suddenly sprouted in this place of rare downpours.  After a couple of hours, first of drenching showers, then of gentler drizzle, the skies cleared.  That evening, the sunset featured streaks of rainbow colors against a crystal blue background. The season of yellow air was finally over.

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Voyeur

Posted on March 20, 2015 | Leave a comment

Voyeur   —by Jinny Batterson

February—not just endless, but endlessly fickle.
One day teasing with early warmth.
Later freezing with near-zero chill.
As a departing insult, dumping three storms’ worth
Of ice, sleet, snow, freezing rain onto roads,
Trees, and power lines grown brittle with the cold.
Finally exiting, unlamented.

March blows somewhat warmer, yo-yoing toward spring.
Along parkways, Bradford pears pop open their pearly baubles.
Magnolias simper in front yards, flashing creamy white flesh.
Everywhere, daffodils lift their jaundiced cups to Saint Paddie.
On medians, apricots, plums, early cherries flounce their inverted tutus.

Abandoning these floozies’ displays, I stalk quieter innocence.
One morning, I spy four deer browsing in a nearby woods.
Nuzzling beneath fallen leaves, intent on tender twigs and shoots,
They pay me no mind.  After a while, they wander off.

Adolescent pines, some bruised and bent, line the wood’s edges.
Hollies stand stolid here and there, berries mostly gone.
In the understory, tucked back among oaks, maples, poplars,
Beeches cling to leaves bleached pale, worn thin by winter’s abrasions.

If I am quiet as the deer, if I am vigilant, always watching, watching,
I may get a glimpse, before later greenery masks their deshabille,
Of the young beeches, blushing, shedding their paper skirts.

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Beach Time in Sanya

Posted on February 2, 2015 | Leave a comment

Beach time in Sanya     —by Jinny Batterson

The first time I traveled to China, in 1980, there was little concept of vacation or of visiting distant natural wonders among Chinese workers, many of whom had survived the famines and upheavals of previous decades by the skin of their teeth. Most were happy then to be alive, reunited with family members, and not starving. The industrial workers I saw during that visit worked six days each week. Days off were staggered. There was no such thing as a weekend. If the weather was pleasant, groups of workers from the same factory or work unit might visit a nearby urban park together on their one day off—anything further afield was unimaginable. Transportation infrastructure was minimal. A basic national rail passenger network existed between major cities, but getting around for long distances in the countryside was difficult to impossible.

By my more recent visits, much of that had changed. China’s booming economy had created a huge middle class—more than the entire population of the United States. Road, high-speed rail, and airport infrastructure was being built out at a breakneck pace. Many middle-class Chinese now owned private motorcycles or cars. Trips to exotic locales, along with advanced education, were the two luxuries most sought after by Chinese with newly available discretionary income. Nearly every middle class Chinese urbanite has a dream vacation spot, either in-country or overseas. The increasing in-country tourism infrastructure in China has made it possible for them and for me to see regions that were previously off-limits or just too hard to get to.

Some of my Xinjiang teaching colleagues in far northwest China in 2006-2007 were the Chinese equivalent of “snowbirds” (a term used to describe people in the northeastern U.S. or eastern Canada who spend at least part of the winter where the weather is warmer).  I discovered, as our long winter holiday break approached,  that  several teachers at our college had previously been to Sanya, a former fishing village on Hainan Island in the South China Sea now dubbed the “Hawaii of China”  and “Forever Tropical Paradise.” Their recommendations that I travel to Sanya, too, fell on willing ears—the chill winds blowing around our edge-of-the-desert campus and through cracks around our windows and doors made this tropical resort sound especially appealing.

My husband and I arrived in Sanya late one night, very tired from a long set of plane flights clear across the country.  We would spend most of our stay at an elegant 3-star guest house that was built into a hillside several blocks from a public beach.  Over the course of our several week holiday, this seaside town became one of my all-time favorite locales for “beach time.”  Our visit started with a first night’s sleep lulled by gentle warm breezes. The following day, I went shopping for a bathing suit—not generally needed in Xinjiang at any time of the year.  I found, though I am of average height and fairly slender size for an American woman (5 feet 5 inches tall, size 10), in Chinese sizes I’m an extra-extra-large. Nearly everywhere we went, we saw cascades of bougainvillea, most often in vibrant shades of pink, red, and purple. Twenty different varieties of the trailing shrub, with its three-sided blossoms, grow in the area, I was told. The flowers have become a symbol of Sanya, whose Chinese character name starts with “san,” or three.

We met other native English speakers in Sanya, but by far the largest international group in late January were Russian tourists. Most hotels, restaurants, and tour locations had signage in Chinese and Russian, with occasional English.  One was just as likely to hear a rendition of “Midnight in Moscow” in a local nightclub as a version of Elvis’s “Love Me Tender,”  as likely to find beef Stroganoff on the menu as hamburger. Sanya tourism officials had encouraged the influx of Russian tourists and their tourist spending, providing on-arrival visa services and several weekly direct flights from northern Russian cities.

Of course, Sanya was not totally paradisiacal —there were occasional signs of urban blight and of the boom-and-bust cycle of construction that seems to plague tourist destinations even more than other cities and towns.  Parts of town were off-limits, home to an extensive naval base. Some fishing boats of the former fishing fleet lay at anchor, gradually rusting and/or rotting away. Shops and attractions could be just as kitschy as beach towns anywhere else on the planet. Still, the town had all the amenities to provide a comfortable, welcoming, affordable stay.

A little east of the main part of town was an area of curving white sand beach called Yalong Bay. Site of the poshest resort hotels, the neighborhood was mostly gated and somewhat beyond our tourist budget. However, partly courtesy of a local government official who’d lived with us in the U.S. many years previously, we had a chance to visit one of the luxury hotels briefly and to share in a complimentary lunch on the terrace of the Sheraton Sanya.  Its widely traveled general manager plied us with excellent food and drink and regaled us with stories of famous guests he’d had and crises he’d averted. The view of the bay, the wide pristine arc of the beach, and the graceful rolling waves beyond was as beautiful as any I’ve seen.

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Puppies–Pets or Protein?

Posted on January 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

Puppies—Pets or Protein?    —by Jinny Batterson

First, a couple of disclaimers: 1) I have never knowingly eaten dog meat while in China;  2) No Chinese restaurant in the United States would risk serving dog meat to its customers.

That said, I have seen dog meat on restaurant menus in China. I have also seen, in meat markets in rural China, both caged live puppies and singed dog carcasses, though I wish I hadn’t.  I’ve been frightened several times while walking in the countryside by coming across an unaccompanied, unleashed dog—not sure if it was a tame dog whose owner was careless and let it run free, or a feral animal.  I’m lucky that I have not been bitten, since rabies is a serious problem in China, and most human rabies cases there result from bites by rabid dogs.

Dogs have a long and mixed history in China. Dog remains have been found in graves beside human ones in archeological excavations of Chinese Neolithic sites dating back about 7,000 years. There is a fair amount of evidence that dogs were domesticated early, used in ritual sacrifices, and also as a source of animal protein (along with pigs). China’s earliest emperors kept hunting dogs. Also since the earliest Chinese dynasties, small dogs have been used by noble families as pets. The “Pekingese” breed even bears the name of China’s capital city. There is speculation that these snub-nosed fluffs were bred to resemble Chinese fantasies of lions, which do not exist in China and were not photographed or imported to Chinese zoos until recent centuries.

Estimates of the total number of dogs in China vary widely, with most in the range of 100-200 million. The vast majority of dogs in China are unregistered. In rural areas where public health infrastructure and public health funding are limited, controlling dog populations by encouraging rabies vaccinations, administering spaying and neutering programs, enforcing fencing or leashing requirements, and minimizing exposure to feral animals remains difficult. Chinese researchers reported over 3,000 cases of human rabies exposure in China in 2006, most resulting from a child or teenager being bitten by a dog. Increasingly, major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai require the registration of pet dogs, limit the size of allowable pets, limit the number of dogs per family (typically one), impose a registration fee, and require up-to-date rabies vaccinations. In Beijing, annual dog registration is handled through the Public Security Bureau, the same agency that deals with registrations and permits for its human inhabitants.

Dog fanciers in China can be just as elaborate in providing for their canine companions as dog owners elsewhere—I’ve seen pets outfitted with bows, bangles, elaborate collars, sweaters, even booties to protect their paws from the cold. I’ve seen pet dogs riding in cushioned comfort in baskets at the front of owners’ bicycles, peeking out from carrying cases or elaborately embroidered bags, or being carried in owners’ arms across muddy streets to avoid their getting dirty.

Once we asked a Chinese colleague whether dog meat was served in the dining facilities at his school, hoping to avoid eating some by accident.

“Oh, no,” he answered.  “We can’t afford it. Dog meat is expensive.”

We were relieved, but never verified the pricing part of his response.  Other Chinese friends and acquaintances have told us that there are lots of folk traditions associated with dog meat—in some areas, dog meat is considered a strengthening, warming food during cold weather. In other places, certain organs or parts of the dog are reported when eaten to help cool the diner’s metabolism during extreme hot spells. However, as China becomes more urbanized and as its younger generations become more globally connected, the overall trend is toward vaccinating, petting, walking, playing with, and cleaning up after Rover or Fido, rather than chewing on his remains at a banquet.

 

 

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Silent Night in China

Posted on December 22, 2014 | Leave a comment

Silent Night in China  —by Jinny Batterson  

The Thanksgiving I spent in Ala’er, Xinjiang, China as a foreign English teacher at a desert reclamation college was one of my most memorable (please see post from November 24, 2014 for more detail).  Buoyed by the good feelings that holiday celebration generated, I started making plans for Christmas. I checked with the school administration and got permission to rehearse and conduct a student winter holiday chorus as part of a larger program by the school’s English department near the end of the solar calendar year. As December advanced, many shops on campus and in town put up Western-style Christmas decorations. (You’ve probably noticed that most holiday decor these days is manufactured in China.) Because American friends with experience in China had cautioned my husband and me to avoid any appearance of religious proselytizing, I picked out three more or less neutral holiday songs for our chorus numbers:  “White Christmas” (on honor of a light snow which fell in late November and  lingered in shady areas for weeks), the Latin round “Dona Nobis Pacem (Give Us Peace),” and as a finale, a rousing version of “Deck the Halls.”  I tried scheduling four weekend chorus rehearsals—I think two actually took place, with a different set of student singers at each.

The English program, coincidentally held on Christmas Eve, found our chorus of about 60 singers, rehearsed or not, standing in uneven rows on three sets of steps at the front of the school auditorium. Most of the students owned or had borrowed red or green clothes to wear. I had a red elf’s cap from a local shop, and wielded a long chopstick as my baton. Our singing was lusty, mainly on key, and well received.  Other acts by some of the Chinese teachers of English got great reviews, especially one by a half dozen young women skimpily clad in black who did a jazzy dance to a hit English-language song in China that year, “God is a Girl.”  As a program finale, “Santa Alex,” one of the school’s best English students, explained a little of the secular part of the legend of Santa Claus. Alex was dressed in an improvised Santa costume, scrounged and adapted from one of the local shops. We’d supplied him with a sack filled with the red envelopes most Chinese children get at Chinese New Year, each containing a few hard candies and a small-denomination Chinese coin. Everyone got a small gift. No one, not even the laziest student, got a lump of coal.

Christmas Day was not a holiday in Ala’er. In fact, most students were extra busy studying for end-of-term exams, which would start soon. However, the older brother of one of our students, who lived in town, invited us out to dinner.  Asajean, whose name roughly translates as “Jesus,” was ethnically Uyghur, member of a largely Moslem group that had lived in this arid area for centuries. He ran a small private English tutoring business, and had often phoned us with questions about English vocabulary or grammar.  We joined him for a “big plate spicy chicken” evening meal at a local restaurant.  Afterwards,  Asajean walked us back to our campus apartment. It was a cold, clear, starlit night, with the stillness that only comes when most people are indoors and motorized traffic is non-existent. As we neared our apartment block, some unexpected music started playing over the campus loudspeakers—“Silent Night,”  complete with four-part harmony and English lyrics. For one brief moment, this juxtaposition of a Chinese-administered university, a Moslem dinner host, and a Western religious Christmas carol seemed the most natural thing in the world. Happy holidays, all!

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Mutton Dumplings for Winter Solstice

Posted on December 15, 2014 | Leave a comment

Mutton Dumplings for Winter Solstice  —by Jinny Batterson

The first time we spent the winter solstice in China, we were in far western Xinjiang in northwestern China.  By December, it was really cold in our small town of Ala’er. The temperature in the central ground floor area of the campus market near our apartment block was often at or near freezing. All fall, multiple small vendors had arranged their fresh vegetables, fruits, and meats for sale on trestle tables in this large open area. There was a wide doorless entryway at one end of the cement-floored market, and the roof, though covered, was more than two stories up. As winter approached, a few of the fresh market vendors persevered,  lighting small fires between market stalls to help keep their produce from damage, covering their products with quilts and blankets at night. Most vendors, though, just gave up for the winter.  In contrast, the restaurants along the edges of the market nearly all stayed open. Most were only big enough for a few tables, with a kitchen at the back—glassed-in single story enclosures with the sort of plastic flap doors that drop back into place once someone goes through them. When the heat in our apartment was dicey, even if we had enough food on hand to cook at home, we’d sometimes head for an evening meal at a market restaurant just to stay warm. Many of the restaurants specialized in dumplings and dumpling soup. Both steamy variations got more appealing as the weather got colder.

Early on December 22, the day of that year’s winter solstice, our Foreign Affairs Officer, Mr. Ma, brought a surprise gift to our apartment: two large bags of frozen mutton dumplings, to be stored in our smallish freezer, then reheated batch by batch for as many meals as we could make of them.  He explained in somewhat halting English that we should boil some of the dumplings that evening, and also eat our fill of the dumplings throughout the winter to help keep warm and to protect our ears from freezing.  He said that since the dumplings were shaped roughly like ears, people had come to believe that eating dumplings would help prevent chilblains or frostbite on one’s ears.   As it happened, we didn’t try our dumplings until a bit later in the winter because that evening, the head of the English department invited us out to a huge meal of mutton hot pot.

Since our arrival in Ala’er several months earlier, we’d found a number of local restaurants that specialized in mutton dishes.  We’d sampled lots of mutton kebabs and several varieties of mutton stews, sometimes invited by students or in-town friends, other times on explorations of our own. Our experience in Xinjiang was the first time in our China travels up to then when we were keenly aware of dietary differences between Han Chinese and some of China’s other ethnic groups. Much of the local Xinjiang population is Moslem.  Many of the inhabitants of rural Xinjiang are sheep-herding pastoralists of the Uyghur nationality, one of 55 non-Han groups officially recognized in China.  Moslems do not eat pork, which plays a substantial role in the traditional Han diet.  Han and Uyghur restaurants in Ala’er were distinct.  At the Uyghur restaurants, the menus were always pork-free. A few Han students and faculty (including the chair of the English department) would occasionally eat at a Uyghur restaurant. The reverse never seemed to be true.

Some of the less tolerant Han students and school officials, including the Foreign Affairs Officer, looked askance at our eclectic restaurant choices.  So a gift of mutton dumplings from someone who did not seem to us to be very sympathetic toward Uyghurs seemed a little odd.  Why not pork dumplings?  We did not ask, chalking it up to just one more local Xinjiang custom that we might never understand.

Two years later, after a year’s interval back in the U.S., we were again teaching in China as the winter solstice approached. This time we were in a small city in Sichuan province where there were almost no Uyghurs—the proportion of Han Chinese was likely above the national average of over 90 percent. It was quite rare to find a mutton dish on any restaurant menu, and we never saw mutton for sale at any of the local markets near us. So it was a surprise when our Foreign Affairs Officer at this second school invited us out for mutton dumplings on the winter solstice. When I did some later research, I found that mutton is one of the meats most closely associated with “yang,” or warming energy, in Chinese medicine. An early Chinese physician is said to have cured peasants in his village from winter chills with a hearty soup laced with mutton dumplings. In much of northern China, mutton dumplings or mutton hot pot are traditional dishes at the winter solstice. I’m not sure how much truth there is to the legend of the physician’s cure. My Western mindset has not yet fully absorbed the concept of food as medicine. However, any excuse to eat dumplings, especially mutton ones, in cold weather, is fine by me.

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