This teacher gave us another book, it was by David Grossman, English title was See under: Love. And none liked that either. It was a good book, but really experimental – we were still young and stupid- and the themes seemed a bit far. I mean, I could see the beauty and value, but could not really grasp it. This winter I was in Italy and I was shopping for books to bring here. So I noticed another book by Grossman, Someone to Run With, and the words of the teacher came back to my mind, so I bought it. I have been reading much, especially e-books, but I have been taking this one slow, for no real reasons. Anyway, yesterday I could not sleep, and read a good part of it. At this point I am dragged into it, and I hope I can finish it during the weekend. And I am liking it, because good teachers are never wrong, and because it is a good book. I don’t know about the finale, I am not there yet. I also don’t want to spoil it too much. So far, it is about people who grow up and get hurt, people who sing in the streets, people who pickpocket the audience of the people who sing in the street. There are people with extremely long and slim fingers. And the girl who sings in the streets, her first song is Suzanne. And you have always been her lover.

I will be 25 years old in 8 days, still I feel already old. We came here full of hopes and everything got eroded, frustration after frustration. I will renew my resident permit soon, and will keep doing so year after year. I am done hoping I will move out of here sooner or later. China will take the rest of my life, weekend after weekend. It is amazing to think it took my youth in just one year.

{The server to edit messages is blocked, this message is sent through a mail address. It is why the formatting is lame, tags and categories are missing. Due to these limitations and personal reasons, my postings here will be discontinued for some time.}

Now, for the joy of all of you, I copy-pasted the turtle thing from Wikipedia’s list of Mandarin Chinese profanities.

Turtles and eggs

The 中文大辭典 (Zhōng wén dà cí diǎn (Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Chinese Language)) (something a little like the OED), discusses 王八 (wáng bā) in vol. 6 p. 281. “Wáng bā” is the term that is usually written casually for the slur that means something like “son of a bitch.”

A “wángbādàn 忘/王八蛋” is the offspring “laid” by the unvirtuous woman. Why “laid”? Another meaning of 王八 is 鼈 biē, fresh-water turtle. Turtle heads reemerging from hiding in the turtle’s shell look like the glans emerging from the foreskin, and turtles lay eggs. So a “wang ba” is a woman who has lost her virtue, and a “wang ba dan” is the progeny of such a woman, a turtle product, but, figuratively, also a penis product.

“Wáng bā 王八” originally got switched over from another “忘八 wàng bā” (one that referred to any very unvirtuous individual) because of a nasty piece of work with the family name Wáng 王 who picked up the nickname 賊王八 zéi Wáng bā (“the thieving Wang Eight”) but for being a dastard, not for being a bastard. The dictionary doesn’t say, but he may have been the eighth Wang among his siblings. Anyway, he became “crook Wang eight” and the term stuck and spread just as “Maverick” did in English. There is a pun here because of the earlier expression 忘八 wáng bā used to describe (1) any person who forgets/disregards the eight virtues, (2) an un-virtuous woman, i.e., one who sleeps around. The first meaning applied to the dastardly Wang, but the family name got “stuck” to the second, sexual, term.

Before lunch: forecasting the worse, I try to sneak out before the lunch starts, but am rather unsuccessful. I am dragged there against my will. The guests do not fail to arrive much earlier than supposed and gives us a phone call about them being waiting. The 3 men over there wear gray sweaters with lines of different colors, giving me the effect of having crushed a pijama party. The forefather wears a gilet on the sweater, anyway.
As we enter the room, a huge fake fight take place on who seats on the best place. The best place in China is the one that best defends you from an invasion, being the invaders Mongolians, Manchu or Japanese. You have to be far and in sight of the door. We have a small dedicated room, with the door on a side. Also, the table is fucking round, making the best-seat issue a geometry problem before an education matter. The issue does not involve us youngsters, confined in the worst seats. I shake hands with the girl, who replies to my “nice to meet you” with a delicious accent, and I think I might even be lucky enough to have a conversation. No way, we will barely talk anymore the whole lunch. Fear of confronting someone in English must prevail the desire to show off in front of mom and dad. Before ordering, she is nevertheless nice enough to inform me that her grand-dad finds my eyebrows “really beautiful”. I would like to reply that her grand-dad looks like a giant turtle, and the gilet does not help. I somehow refrain from doing so. In case you were wondering, my eyebrows are rather thick, but well-shaped, and are neither a source of pride nor of shame to me. The eyebrows of the old man were rather invisible, but enough with that.

Lunch: it starts with a giant dish full of salad. From now on, we will receive an amount of vegetables that would make the yearly production of my grand-dad back home get pale. Old people here consider vegetables heathy and basically only order those. When the only pork based dish arrives, nevertheless, old turtle guy literally throws himself at it. Useless effort, since the meat is rather dry and the sauce really ketchup-y. Anyway, people who get the best seats are also the first to touch food, in good-mannered tables. Waiters are bullied and underpaid and give a shit about the whole thing, so they put the food on the table as convenient as possible for themselves. Remember where is the door, and you know that the ones who get the food in front of themselves are the ones who are not supposed to eat. So the food is either moved to the VIPs, so that they can grab the first bite, or looked with disgust until the table is so full of food that even the important ones must have a dish at reach.
As soon as we sit, anyway, the girl pours some tea at my wife and tries to do the same with me. It is actually chamomile rather than tea, but Chinese language is rather poor in defining the various herbal beverages. Scared of the whole servile mechanism of providing tea to others around Chinese tables, not to be served I declare I would not drink tea – which I would instead have rather enjoyed in other occasions – and put the whole table in a worrisome mood, until someone is able to get me a can of soda water.
2 minutes and 27 seconds after we have seated, anyway, the real intentions are revealed, and my wife is thrown the résumé and the list of the exams taken by the girl. In Western world, you would have waited a bit longer, or looked for a coffeehouse after lunch. So the elder amuse themselves in conversation, my wife and the girl talk about this damn job, the dad of the girl acts as her advocate, and her mom does not say a word the whole time. The whole list of papers is given to us. At home, I take a glance at that, and notice that the only word in English, Windows – referring to the operative system, probably- is misspelt.
I am rather unprepared when the time for the toast arrives, as my can of soda is still untouched and not opened. To be quick, I grab an empty cup and think it would be alright, but no, it is rather deluding people. I try with the soda water can, but it is still not a success. At the end, I need to open the soda, pour the water and proceed with the prosit.
Attention is being paid on me trying the food, as if I was not living in China or had eaten in that same restaurant dozens of times. They remember to ask where I am from relatively late, and my father-in-law leads them on a discussion about Italian food, probably risotto. Renaissance or other prides of my homeland are not mentioned, apparently. At least, this time, Marco Polo is not mentioned either, as far as I have noticed.
The kid is being praised for her cooking skills. You would think of other qualities, in the end she is finishing a master’s on the other end of the world. Instead no. But she is a wonderful cook, especially when it comes to baking.

The first thing we stumbled across, outside the restaurant, was a Czech flag. It was kind of natural, since that was the Czech Embassy. I had been to that area, but the embassy is a bit inside, and I never noticed it. It brought me back, a little. I miss Prague and its buildings, all these styles mashing each other and yet making perfect sense. Prague has the cruel beauty of a woman who is out of your league. So stunning that you know your passage will leave no wrinkles, no memories. And these styles close to each other destroy the sense of history you might feel somewhere else. It is the same beauty of museums, objects taken out of their time and context and rearranged. Yet making perfect sense. Only that in museums we talk of paintings and pots, here of bridges, castles, cathedrals… Nostalgia was washed away when, in the same building, we saw the Slovak flag. They probably just split the building, together with Czechoslovakia, in 1992. The two embassies being very close must be a common thing everywhere in the world. Yet it was funny to picture them as (un)friendly neighbors.

We continued our walk in the Embassy area, which is huge. Each Embassy has a garden inside, so you can imagine a rather diluted space, rather than the ordinary crowded Beijing. Saturday after lunch, it was rather peaceful. The walk was pleasant, although the barb-wires, the guards at every gate and the cameras filming everything gave the impression of a giant, open-air prison. But if it was a prison, we must have been the ones outside of it. Or eventually, just visiting. So it was fun. We walked until the Silk Market. Exotic name, but we talked of it, it is the market for fake brands. Behind it, there are a series of buildings, painted in a dark salmon color. My Chinese guides lamented that the price in that area must have been very expensive, although the houses were “old” and uncomfortable. We debated. Those houses were not that old, the maintenance was very bad, though. The total absence of a garden, facades needing some fresh paint, boxes for the air conditioners at every window, dust and wires in the open air. Not pretty. This idea of relating to houses is pretty typical in here – I don’t want to say it is typical of China, because for example Shanghai is really different. But the idea that you build something, and then you just live in it until it decays is not healthy. I was told, maybe they pay very little to their management to do the maintenance. But the same idea that you are NOT responsible for the beauty of your own house is somehow poorly grounded.

Yesterday, instead, we felt Japanese and we went for cherry trees. I kind of wanted to go to Japan and assist to the cherry blossoming thing, since although I have no gardens anymore, my gardening instincts are still alive. The tragedy hitting Japan made me change the plans. And sincerely, the working schedule I have would not have allowed me anyway. So we went local. Flowers must be flowers anywhere, maybe. Naturally, there is a park specialized in cherry trees. So, one hour by metro, people everywhere, long walk in the traffic and along a dirty canal (where someone was swimming, maybe looking forward to some kind of mutation). Finally the park. People everywhere. More people than blossoms, in my opinion. The total trees blossoming were 10 to 15, I guess. But maybe we went there too early. We brought books, but the crowd was too much, places to rest were nowhere to be found and we had to give up reading. The idea to install huge drums so that kids could play shall give the idea of the quietness of the whole area. Eventually, Beijingers might be too busy to contemplate beauty.

It might be like that, if it is, it is well hidden. For you guys, ZhongGuanCun=(Large Electronics Mall)³. With the same old system of the 3000 small retailers under the same roof in constant cut-throat competition with each other and at the same time trying to get the price as high as possible. Often, goods from there are imported, so 3G was easier to find. The whole process of going there, buying the stuff, coming back took us only 7 hours. Already, the shop is 1 hour away by metro from our place. The other 5 hours are browsing, listen to the nonsense of at least 3-4 salesmen, picking one, asking him the iPad, waiting for him to get his hands on it (more difficult than you’d say). Plus, 1 hour because they need to jailbr configure it and they don’t know where to start. Yet, it is probably the best place to go. Take a deep breath… Picture the other places. They describe China as the next frontier in IT. It might well be. But if we start from retailing, there is a long way to go.

The nuclear power plant incident is nevertheless getting concern, both for human feelings of condolence and for the efforts of people who might sacrifice their life for the safety of many of us. As I speak the situation is evolving – media report that the next 24/48 hours are critical, but I have the feeling I heard of next critical hours for some days, I guess, and I am wondering whether all hours are critical in the same way before we reach to a blast or a permanent solution.

As I speak, there are efforts to cool down the power plant and avoid the meltdown, which is the worst scenario, apparently. Water has been sprayed from helicopters and pumps might be started soon to refill the pools and cool down the whole thing. Japanese Government and media seem more optimistic than the US one, for instance. It is hard to get the real size of the events. As far as I know, embassies of foreign countries are inviting their citizens to escape from Tokyo and Northern Japan and head abroad, or at least towards the South. No such invites have been extended to people living in China so far, since there is no evidence of radiations. The radiations emitted from the power plant so far are being moved towards East, through the Pacific and should reach America rather than us.  Their impact should be really low, since the get diluted during the travel.

I am not an expert of physics or nuclear power plant, but what would happen to run the risks of a contamination in China depends on two variables. One is a major leakage of airborne radioactive material, which means the failure of the rescue attempts. The other is that winds will move these particle towards West. Here, the Coriolis force and the air circulation mechanisms of Earth should help, since winds generally go East to West at our latitude. It is uncertain, though. Other conditions might cause winds to blow in our direction. Wind from West to East and airborne particles together might be very bad news.  For now, there is no reason to be alarmed – careful about the news yes, alarmed not yet.

My Italo-Chinese family: my parents and grandparents started mildly, but they are urging me to go back, especially if the events of radiations become heavier. I thought the most harmonious thing to do was going to the Embassy, insisting for some visa to Italy to be released quickly and get my wife and parents in law on a plane. It was not an immediate thing to do, but I wanted the path to be clear in case of emergencies, without having to lose time in discussions when it was too late. My mother in law said she’d rather stay in China, and if she had to die, so be it. It is peculiar for a woman who does not want you to drink cold drinks. Coke with ice, no… Radiations, yes. I was shocked when I read of a Japanese woman who decided not to leave Tokyo and said basically the same exact words. That son of a bitch of Confucius. My wife kept me pondering for a day, and she decided to stay in China as well. She said she wants to stick to her parents, it’s like her obligation. None of them seems to grasp that it’s not a wave that kills you, it rather cripples you by giving you cancer. As a Westerner, I think this is insane, but many things look insane in China. Anyway, my oath to her is valid, and if she decided to stick here, I will stick to her. I wonder what is worth a marriage where your wife does not feel the minimum obligation to try to be healthy for you or she loves you more than she loves her parents – and all our lives are running the risk of becoming much worse.

Chinese Media are what are convincing the Chinese part of my family to make the very well informed decision to stay in China. I would like to point out this article. It is self-contradicting. It says to take iodine in case of radiations, and that is true. How much? An adult 100 milligrams and a pregrant woman just 50 milligrams. Wonder why?

Q: What are the risks to pregnant women?

A: Pregnant women are more likely to absorb radioactive iodine than other people. Moreover, greater measures should be taken to protect the thyroid of an unborn child.

A good reason to take half of it, no?

I believe there was a way of operating in Zen philosophy that worked in this way:  I give you a sentence, and then another one. Both of them might be true, but they are contradicting each other. So in the end you are puzzled and cannot find the real one. Ok, now look at this:

Q: Will the radiation leaked during the nuclear plant blast in Fukushima in Japan have any impact on people outside Japan?

A: It depends on the weather conditions (the wind direction, wind speed and rainfall, among others) and the amount of radioactive substances. But it will not have any significant impact on Japan’s neighbors, according to the latest information.

There you go. Maybe, but definitely no. Really helpful stuff to make a decision that might change your life. I believe Zen masters have descendants among Chinese journalists. At least, at the old good times of Zen, there were no nukes.

Bees were considered to be color-blind, until Karl von Frisch proved the opposite. He thought: if bees cannot see colors, then how come flowers are colored!? It was the right intuition, bees are not color blind at all, and flowers evolved into beautiful shapes and colors to attract them (and other insects).  Interestingly, the colors range insects can perceive is a bit different from what humans can see. They do not see red (which is the low-end of the spectrum of colors our eyes can perceive, but they see some “colors” which escape us. The high-end frequency of our spectrum corresponds to violet, while they can see some ultraviolet frequencies. Now, we cannot see ultraviolets with our naked eye, but we have tools to reveal these frequencies, and find out that flowers developed stripes or dots to literally guide or attract bees – although we just perceive a plain color with no patterns at all. You can see it yourself, just googling something like “flowers UV” will reveal a new world – and a new garden. Now, I am wondering how does a bee see my new gardenia blossom…

PS. if you are interested in this topic, the work of Richard Dawkins should interest you. This story shamefully ripped off from his book The God Delusion. As you might guess from the title, the book is mainly about something else – it is a justification of atheism – but nonetheless good material to read. Always by Dawkins, I am aware that there is a lesson on Youtube about this. It is called the Ultraviolet Garden but I could not see it so far (also, Youtube in China? ahaha!)