China Musings: Views from a Different Well

Posted on June 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

China Musings: Views from a Different Well    —by Jinny Batterson

Last September, I set out to post a weekly blog entry about some of my experiences and impressions of China. Now, as June begins, the school year is winding down. I have only a few weeks to go before I stop posting as regularly about China. I’ve tried to write what is true to my experience. I expect that once the year’s posts are complete, I’ll revisit some entries from time to time to update them and clarify them. Perhaps I’ll expand or prune some further as my experiences change. As this school year draws to a close, I’m nearly as puzzled by the vastness of China as I was at the year’s start, and just as intrigued as ever. Early on in my attempts to set some impressions on paper, I remembered a Chinese folk tale that some of my students in China had told me about a frog:

This frog lives at the bottom of a well. She finds there all the nourishment and beauty she needs.  From her vantage point in the well, it’s possible to see a small disk of sky. This is what she knows of the world above. One day, a large turtle happens to hear the frog croaking as he passes by the top of the well. He stops to chat with her.  The frog invites the turtle to climb down the well to share in the bounty she has found there, but the opening is too small for the turtle’s shell.

The turtle then tries to describe some of what he has seen to the frog—wide expanses of sky stretching to far horizons, a sea so broad and deep that it maintains its level despite the most massive floods or droughts. The turtle invites the frog to climb out and travel with him to view the wider world. The frog considers, then decides to remain in the security of the well, enjoying a more predictable life and viewing the sky she can see from the well’s bottom.

I like to think that, like the turtle, I’ve seen a bit of ocean during a fairly long life so far. However, I’m aware that, like the frog, I can still see just small parts of a larger sky—my views have been colored by my culture, my “American well,” and the times during which I’ve lived.

Most Americans and Chinese I know tend to view the world from different wells, shaped by our respective cultures and histories. My aim with this year’s set of “China W(a/o)nderings” has been to show the small disk of sky that I can see, perhaps to broaden its edges a little, and to nourish conversations that may over time broaden the edges of other wells, too. Happy June!

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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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Lantern Festival in Yangshuo, 2009

Posted on March 2, 2015 | Leave a comment

Lantern Festival in Yangshuo, 2009    —by Jinny Batterson

Lantern Festival marks the end of the formal Spring Festival holiday. It occurs on the night of the full moon, two weeks after Chinese New Year (Spring Festival).  In 2009, for me it came near the end of a travel-filled interval spent in various parts of Sichuan, Chongqing, and Guangxi.  Lantern Festival in Yangshuo would be my last hurrah before retracing my steps to return to my teaching post in Sichuan for second semester.

Yangshuo, Guangxi is a “backpackers’ paradise,” a formerly smallish town along the Li River south of Guilin that has over the past couple of decades gotten a huge influx of tourism.  The town sits among lovely karst formations that have started to attract serious rock climbers. Having benefited (or suffered, depending on your perspective) from successive sets of outdoor-oriented expatriates who came, saw, loved, and settled in it, Yangshuo has a much more international flavor than most Chinese towns its size. While wandering its streets one afternoon, I even saw and heard at a distance a dark-skinned American man, a most unusual sight in any Chinese town I’d been in before.

My husband Jim and I spent the night of Lantern Festival in Yangshuo, at the West Street Hotel, a wooden structure with balconies overlooking the main tourist street. The previous spring, Jim and a hiking companion had lodged there briefly and found it adequate and reasonably priced.  It was sort of a “Trapp Family Lodge with Chinese Characteristics.” Our room came with a Western-style bathtub, with exposed pipes running to it from the solar hot water heater on the roof. Yangshuo, in addition to its rock climbing appeal, is also the site of several backpackers’ hostels and a center for area hiking and bicycling. It is the southern terminus of most Li River cruises. Cruise passengers may opt to stay overnight and get a “Western” breakfast at one of the local restaurants catering to tourists, but most board busses for a same-day return to Guilin. Any foreign visitors, however long our stays, got to run a gauntlet of souvenir hawkers and local craft shops. We could view a staged demonstration of the early stages of silk production. We could attend concerts or dramas. Nearly everywhere, there was an abundance of English signage.

As dusk fell on Lantern Festival Day, the streets filled with revelers, the sky once again filled with fireworks. Nearly every building had decorated lanterns hanging from its eaves. Some were plain spheres of red paper. Others were decorated with riddles, or crafted into animal shapes. We watched from our balcony as two small “wishing lanterns” rose amid the fireworks displays. They were not attached to anything, and were dwarfed by the other displays as they drifted skyward.

Later in the school year, a student would present us with such a lantern as a gift, so we got to see one close up.  Our gift lantern was collapsible, with thin metal rings at the top and the bottom. Each ring had several slots where straight pieces of metal or wood could be inserted to form something like a lampshade. The exterior was made of shiny red paper, which covered the sides and the top. The bottom ring was open, with a smaller ring at its center, into which the wisher would insert a stubby paraffin candle. To use a wishing lantern, one first made a silent wish, then lit the candle and held the lantern up to the sky.  After a little while, the air inside the lamp would heat and draw the lantern upward.

During our Spring Festival travels, we’d seen other wish lanterns here and there. The greatest concentrations, though, came closest to the evening of Lantern Festival. I’ve heard that use of the lanterns has lately been discouraged because of fire danger and the dangers to structures and livestock—no one can ever be sure where a lantern will come down, or whether its candle will have burned out by the time it does.

Had I lit a wishing lantern in Yangshuo, I’d have wished for a peaceful end of life for my mother-in-law, who was in her late 90’s and suffering from a variety of illnesses and ailments. Earlier in the holiday, my brother-in-law had emailed us that she was suffering from pneumonia and had again been hospitalized near their New England home. Perhaps some benign spirit heard my wish anyway—she died peacefully a couple of weeks later.

 

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Beasts of the Chinese Zodiac, More New Year…

Posted on February 23, 2015 | Leave a comment

Beasts of the Chinese Zodiac, More New Year Celebrations

—by Jinny Batterson

Anyone who’s ever been given a place mat at a Chinese-American restaurant likely has seen pictures of the animals of the Chinese zodiac:  mouse/rat, ox/bull/buffalo, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep/goat/ram, monkey, rooster, dog, pig.  Unlike the roughly monthly zodiac familiar to readers of American newspapers, the Chinese zodiac works in lunar year increments, generally running from mid-January-to-mid-February of one year to mid-January-to-mid-February of the next.  To further complicate matters, the Chinese zodiac also cycles through five “elements” (some claim it’s really the “ten heavenly stems”) of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, so a complete cycle takes 60 years.

The first time we spent Chinese New Year in China, we ushered in the “Year of the (Metal) Golden Pig,” an especially auspicious year, according to China fortune tellers. When we returned two years later, we experienced the transition to the “Year of the Earth Ox,”  a more middling kind of year. Fortunes have been made and lost over the interpretation of the various Chinese zodiac signs.  Some years are reputed to be luckier than others, and slight ripples in the overall birth rate can be attributed to parents working toward having a child born in a “good” year. A chart of a 20th century cycle of years, with their attributes, is part of the China travel website http://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/astrology/60year-cycle.htm.

Most of the animals of the Chinese zodiac are familiar to anyone who’s ever spent time on a farm or lived in the countryside.  One exception stands out—the dragon.  For Chinese, dragons are good, rather than the evil creatures portrayed in much of Western mythology.  Chinese mythology credits dragons with inhabiting and taming major rivers in China, the northernmost being “Heilongjiang,” or “Black Dragon River.” Being born in a dragon year (which most recently occurred in 2007) is considered lucky.  Emperors of China’s dynasties often had dragons embroidered on their clothing. Only the emperor’s residence was allowed to have dragon symbols on its rooftops.  As a guide explained to me on an early tour in Beijing, a dragon is considered to have the attributes of nine different animals:  the head of an ox, the horns of a deer, the eye of a tiger, the teeth of a leopard, the antenna of a shrimp, the mane of a horse, the scales of a fish, the body of a snake, and the claws of an eagle.  A royal beast, indeed.

Our New Year celebrations in 2009 were spent in various parts of Sichuan. Our friend Jean Wang and her husband were able to meet us in Ya’an a few days before the year’s new year celebration, which would occur on Monday, January 29.  Jean was just getting over a bad cold, and I seemed to be coming down with a similar infection.  Despite health and weather concerns, we all went to see the pandas at nearby Bifengxia, then spent the night in our Foreign Teachers’ Guest House, where there was a spare apartment for Jean and her husband due to the holidays.

At New Year, we spent a couple of days visiting lots of Jean’s in-laws, necessitating most of a day’s journey by bus and then taxi. One contingent of relatives lived in a compound high enough in the hills to be off a car-friendly road.  We carpooled in an uncle’s van as far as we could go.  Afterwards, several of the younger cousins roared the remaining half mile on the motorcycle one of them had parked at the foot of the last hill.  The rest of us walked. The noise level and the smoke density from firecrackers were less intense than what we’d experienced two years before, but we got to see more of the traditions of a Sichuan countryside Spring Festival—curing and cooking sausages, sweeping out the house and family compound, burning paper money to bring good fortune, visiting first the male relatives, then the female side of the family. What did not change from our previous experience was the quantity and variety of food. A Thanksgiving feast may be the closest American equivalent.  Any notion of vigorous physical activity during the day or two after Spring Festival is pretty much a lost cause.  Sadly, we did not get a chance to meet Jean’s family at the holiday. One of the casualties of the increasing mobility of younger generations of Chinese may be the chance to see everyone’s relatives each year.

We made up for the fact that we could not visit Jean’s family by visiting one of Sichuan’s best tourist sites, not far from where her in-laws lived.  We spent a day in Leshan, Sichuan, home of the world’s largest pre-modern statue, a seated Buddha. Even in midwinter, the “Big Buddha” of Leshan is impressive. It is over 230 feet tall, overlooking the confluence of several rivers of southern Sichuan.  It was built more than a thousand years ago at the insistence of a Buddhist monk who had seen a vision of a Buddha to protect sailors, many of whom were drowning in the treacherous currents where the rivers joined. So much stone was moved and thrown into the river during the lengthy process of excavating the site and carving the statue that the river currents were changed, so the area did in fact become safer for boats. On the blustery day when we visited, few other tourists were in sight. We took pictures of the four of us at the fence overlooking the Buddha’s massive head,  then threaded our way carefully down the cliffside stairs to the Buddha’s base. There we took another picture—Jean beside the Buddha’s big toe, which was taller than she was.

 

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Spring Festival in Lipu

Posted on February 16, 2015 | Leave a comment

Food, Food, More Food, Firecrackers, Dragon Dances: Spring Festival in Lipu

—by Jinny Batterson

The first time we spent Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) in China came at the end  of a long mid-winter break during our year of teaching in far northwest China. We’d lounged away most of our holiday at the beach resort town of Sanya on Hainan Island, the “Hawaii of China” (see post from February 2, 2015),  but a Chinese friend who lived in the neighboring  area of Guangxi had invited us to spend New Year’s and a few days surrounding it with him and his family.  Getting to Liang’s town took a short plane ride to Guilin, then a slightly longer bus ride on a comfortable long-distance bus.  One of our fellow bus passengers lent us her cell phone to alert Liang to our arrival in his town, Lipu.

We pulled in on the evening of Valentine’s Day, several days before that year’s actual New Year. Liang and his brother met us at the bus station, and loaded us and our luggage into his brother’s pickup. The brother, despite a bit of alcohol-induced weaving, managed to drive us without major accident to Liang’s new townhouse, where we hastily unpacked. We then hailed a “tricycle taxi,” a motorized partly open conveyance, distant cousin to a riding lawnmower, for a brief ride to a dumpling feast. Classmates of our mutual former student had gathered at “Mark’s” aunt’s house to celebrate his 21st birthday. The occasion was a chance for the high school chums to spend some time together—most were now enrolled in universities far from Lipu. We ate delicious homemade boiled dumplings, drank tea or beer, swapped stories of student days and of everyone’s adventures since they’d last been together. Finally we were too stuffed and tired from feasting and travels to stay awake. Liang phoned for another taxi, we shoehorned the three of us into its single seat, and sputtered our way back to his house, where all of us fell into a satisfied sleep.

The following days were crammed with New Year preparations.  We bought red envelopes for money gifts for the children. We bought lucky couplets, large-character Chinese calligraphy on long red paper streamers, to paste beside and above the doorways of homes. The day we put up couplets at Liang’s was windy. Our exertions with couplets, ladders, saw horses, glue and brooms were worthy of the best slapstick comedy. Luckily, no one fell off a ladder and got hurt. We bought local delicacies. Liang’s wife cooked pork with taro, a regional dish—rich and a bit greasy. We bought or made pyramid-shaped envelopes of sticky rice with fillings, fried tofu, fresh water chestnuts, several varieties of winter greens, eight treasures rice pudding. On New Year’s Eve, the extended family gathered in early evening at Liang’s mother’s house. We ate and ate and ate. A neighbor took pictures of the dozen or so of us—Liang, his wife, his sister and brothers and their spouses, each with a single nearly-grown child.

After the feast, Liang, his wife, and we two foreigners retired to Liang’s house, while Liang’s son stayed on with his grandma, closer to Lipu’s “downtown.”  Liang told us it would be good to take a nap before it got too close to midnight. We awoke about 11, just as the first of the fireworks went off.  We turned on the Chinese television New Year’s Eve gala, broadcast from Beijing.  By midnight, the local fireworks were so deafening that we could no longer hear the sound track of the televised gala, nor could we hear each other.  Though it was a clear night, the sky was obscured by a thick haze. Periodically, the steady din of strings of firecrackers bursting nearby was punctuated by a louder burst of overhead fireworks from downtown. We got a little sleep between 1 a.m. and 6, when the fireworks started up again.

Toward midmorning, dragon and lion dancers maneuvered along the streets outside, bobbing and weaving amid the heaps of red paper detritus from the previous night’s spent firecrackers. Still more firecrackers went off around them.  Liang and his wife presented us with matching piggy banks in honor of the advent of the “Year of the Golden Pig.”  Too soon it was time to start the succession of taxi, bus, and plane rides that would return us to our teaching posts. Our ears would eventually recover, but subsequent fireworks displays on American Independence Day would always seem muted by comparison.

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