* Two days ago I visited Mount Song, a couple hours by bus from the capital of Henan Province, Zhengzhou. This mountain is famous as the Central Peak of the five ancient sacred mountains of China, with each peak corresponding to a direction. (Tai Shan in Shandong is the greatest.) Emperors would fulfill their greatest duty by coming to each to sacrifice. The traditional Chinese religions are represented by three great temples: the Song Yang ("sunny side of the Song") Academy near the bottom of the peak, where some of China's greatest Confucian thinkers taught, perhaps under this tree, a Buddhist temple further up whose name escapes me at the moment, and Shaolin Temple, which in theory is Zen.
* The best as far as I'm concerned was the Confucian academy. Quiet after noisy Chinese cities, peaceful with bamboo groves, and holding an ancient cypress said to have been promoted (feng) by Han Wu Di some century before Christ, one person there told me it was 4000 years old. The tree still had many healthy limbs, though its thick branches were supported by pillars in places, and surrounded by a field of clover. Very lovely.
* A girl on the bus volunteered to help me with Chinese, assuming, of course, that as I foreigner I didn't speak any. She went to cooking school in Shenzhen, and has been living in Australia for 5 years, but has an American boyfriend. She was traveling with her family, whom she doesn't see often, and was obviously delighted to be with her parents again. I probably only understood 60-70% of the tour guide's rapid explanations, with a touch of a local accent, so was glad of a little help. (She didn't really explain much, though.)
* The tour guide at the Buddhist temple rounded on her sharply for (he supposed) taking pictures inside the temple. "Didn't I say at the very beginning of the tour not to take pictures? Are you a foreigner?" (And therefore, implicitly, lovably or contemptibly stupid by definition?) Being a man of strong natural authority, this must have felt crushing; the girl explained to him that she (a), didn't know much about Buddhism, and (b), to me later that she was not taking a picture, and (c), people in temples in Thailand never objected.
* His Chinese was easier to follow, and he gave a good, highly evangelical, explanation of Buddhism along with the temple's peculiarities.
* Shaolin temple is the star tourist attraction here. It is surrounded by hotels and gongfu schools, where thousands of boys (saw no girls) dressed in red run through their fighting exercises in smaller groups. It is a little intimidating. But I walked past Shaolin, which is overly commercialized, skipped the show they put on of fighting monks, and headed up the hill behind it, ignoring the trams, wanting to experience the mountain itself. I could still hear the sacharine sounds of Buddhist Muzak on a loudspeaker most the way up. But I enjoyed the autumn trees, of which there was a large variety, till the trail finally ended at the top of the tram, below a high cliff.
* I talked with a Buddhist monk on the way down. He was about 70; he said he'd been a monk since he was 9. How about during the Cultural Revolution? I asked. "We hid in the mountains and they couldn't find us," he answered. "What kind of Buddhist are you? Pure Land? Zen?" "Acupuncture," he said, showing me his needles.
* The hotel I stayed at was in a derelect little village about a mile from Shaolin Temple. The hotel was peculiar because it was run by a bossy local who seemed more like a farmer, and kept on trying to get me to order a meal, as if I had no choice but to eat there, and I was his only support (though there were other guests), then tried to get me to order a bunch of expensive stuff. (I just ordered noodle soup.) I had to ask for a towel, and got two skimpy pieces of cloth that didn't do much. The owner tried to get me to order a taxi the next day, and pay about three times what I ultimately did pay to get to Zhengzhou by buses. The hotel was clean enough, though, and the air was clearner than in polluted Chinese cities.
* Waiting for the bus, a little dog sits in the middle of a four-lane highway. He is attentive to a large yellow dog about 300 yards downstream, but ignores all vehicles. Trucks loaded with machinery and vans honk at him, and he reluctantly picks himself up and sits in another lane, or -- his favorite spot -- on the line between two lanes. Vehicles that merely swerve to avoid him are not spared a glance, any more than the orc chieftain attacking Gondor to flying missiles. This seems to work for him, at least in the short run, and is no great aberration in China, where driving is a much less linear activity than in the US, at the best of times. (Crossing a street, one wades through each lane of traffic in turn, circumnavigates buses, motorcycles, etc.)
* On the bus, I gave my survey to a self-educated young lady of the Tujia minority who engaged me in conversation. When she was growing up, she said, she sometimes heard the cries of female infants who had been thrown out to the wolves or bears. Some accused her mother of doing the same with one daughter, though she didn't buy that. Given this attitude of despising girls, I understood her choosing We Ze Tian as one of her favorite Chinese rulers on my survey, as many women do. She admitted the stories of what Wu had done to her own children gave her pause, but she didn't believe them: "No mother would do a thing like that. I can't believe it." This struck me as ironic, but she told me, "I'm an optimist. I don't pay attention to the bad things." She was a very sharp lady, who had read many books in English, including Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything, and gave me advice about publishing in China.
* The best as far as I'm concerned was the Confucian academy. Quiet after noisy Chinese cities, peaceful with bamboo groves, and holding an ancient cypress said to have been promoted (feng) by Han Wu Di some century before Christ, one person there told me it was 4000 years old. The tree still had many healthy limbs, though its thick branches were supported by pillars in places, and surrounded by a field of clover. Very lovely.
* A girl on the bus volunteered to help me with Chinese, assuming, of course, that as I foreigner I didn't speak any. She went to cooking school in Shenzhen, and has been living in Australia for 5 years, but has an American boyfriend. She was traveling with her family, whom she doesn't see often, and was obviously delighted to be with her parents again. I probably only understood 60-70% of the tour guide's rapid explanations, with a touch of a local accent, so was glad of a little help. (She didn't really explain much, though.)
* The tour guide at the Buddhist temple rounded on her sharply for (he supposed) taking pictures inside the temple. "Didn't I say at the very beginning of the tour not to take pictures? Are you a foreigner?" (And therefore, implicitly, lovably or contemptibly stupid by definition?) Being a man of strong natural authority, this must have felt crushing; the girl explained to him that she (a), didn't know much about Buddhism, and (b), to me later that she was not taking a picture, and (c), people in temples in Thailand never objected.
* His Chinese was easier to follow, and he gave a good, highly evangelical, explanation of Buddhism along with the temple's peculiarities.
* Shaolin temple is the star tourist attraction here. It is surrounded by hotels and gongfu schools, where thousands of boys (saw no girls) dressed in red run through their fighting exercises in smaller groups. It is a little intimidating. But I walked past Shaolin, which is overly commercialized, skipped the show they put on of fighting monks, and headed up the hill behind it, ignoring the trams, wanting to experience the mountain itself. I could still hear the sacharine sounds of Buddhist Muzak on a loudspeaker most the way up. But I enjoyed the autumn trees, of which there was a large variety, till the trail finally ended at the top of the tram, below a high cliff.
* I talked with a Buddhist monk on the way down. He was about 70; he said he'd been a monk since he was 9. How about during the Cultural Revolution? I asked. "We hid in the mountains and they couldn't find us," he answered. "What kind of Buddhist are you? Pure Land? Zen?" "Acupuncture," he said, showing me his needles.
* The hotel I stayed at was in a derelect little village about a mile from Shaolin Temple. The hotel was peculiar because it was run by a bossy local who seemed more like a farmer, and kept on trying to get me to order a meal, as if I had no choice but to eat there, and I was his only support (though there were other guests), then tried to get me to order a bunch of expensive stuff. (I just ordered noodle soup.) I had to ask for a towel, and got two skimpy pieces of cloth that didn't do much. The owner tried to get me to order a taxi the next day, and pay about three times what I ultimately did pay to get to Zhengzhou by buses. The hotel was clean enough, though, and the air was clearner than in polluted Chinese cities.
* Waiting for the bus, a little dog sits in the middle of a four-lane highway. He is attentive to a large yellow dog about 300 yards downstream, but ignores all vehicles. Trucks loaded with machinery and vans honk at him, and he reluctantly picks himself up and sits in another lane, or -- his favorite spot -- on the line between two lanes. Vehicles that merely swerve to avoid him are not spared a glance, any more than the orc chieftain attacking Gondor to flying missiles. This seems to work for him, at least in the short run, and is no great aberration in China, where driving is a much less linear activity than in the US, at the best of times. (Crossing a street, one wades through each lane of traffic in turn, circumnavigates buses, motorcycles, etc.)
* On the bus, I gave my survey to a self-educated young lady of the Tujia minority who engaged me in conversation. When she was growing up, she said, she sometimes heard the cries of female infants who had been thrown out to the wolves or bears. Some accused her mother of doing the same with one daughter, though she didn't buy that. Given this attitude of despising girls, I understood her choosing We Ze Tian as one of her favorite Chinese rulers on my survey, as many women do. She admitted the stories of what Wu had done to her own children gave her pause, but she didn't believe them: "No mother would do a thing like that. I can't believe it." This struck me as ironic, but she told me, "I'm an optimist. I don't pay attention to the bad things." She was a very sharp lady, who had read many books in English, including Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything, and gave me advice about publishing in China.
* I'm in Zhengzhou now, the capital of Henan Province. It's a huge city, and it took some searching to find a hotel at a reasonable price that accepts foreigners. One I stopped at was called "Friendship Hotel," with a sign saying that in English, but inside they said "We don't accept foreign guests." Some friendship.
* I wandered all day through the streets of Zhengzhou, passing thousands or tens of thousands of people. Late in the afternoon I came across a young western man with a full head of curly hair in the company of a Chinese woman -- the first westerner I'd seen all day. "There goes another one," said a Chinese man to his friend as I passed, in the tone of a man who had seen two bad omens in a row.
* After some searching, I stopped at a Chinese fast-food restaurant for dinner. The young man at the next table tried to explain the ordering procedure, but I somehow wound up with fried rice instead of noodles. I said, "No problem! This will do just fine." Someone behind the counter came in for recriminations anyway.
The man at the next table asked what country I was from. He then asked if I believed in Jesus. He turned out to be an evangelist from another part of northern Henan. He grew up as a Christian, but was "very bad." When he injured his leg, an evangelist came to pray for him, and he was able to sleep, finally. This renewed his faith, and he became an evangelist. He knew all about Reinhold Bocke's crusades in Africa, and about the churches in Korea -- he had a passport, and the countries he most wanted to visit were Korea and Israel. Almost every town in his country has a church, he said, looking at my map and going through towns printed on it one by one.
I got the feeling, talking with this young man, that I was being evaluated, that my foreigness was secondary (for once) to the quality of my faith. He also made no effort to speak any English, and obviously didn't care, as most Chinese young people do.
He told me of miraculous healings to people he knew, and asked me about my own experiences.
Zhang was also a fan of Yuan Zhiming's sermons, which he had heard on CD. "I'd really like to hear Yuan preach," he said. We had a wonderful conversation, and parted, hoping to keep in touch.
* This morning I went in search of Shang Dynasty remains. Some of them turned out to be in a little park I'd passed through the night before, whose bushes a couple men had mistaken for a public loo. This morning, the huge faux bronze set on a pillar with scribblings of scenes from (obviously slave, fitting the Marxist storyline) Shang society in faux Shang style, is surrounded by qigong and badmitten enthusiasts. There is no further explanation about the little hill in the park, and what was found there, other than the legend "Shang Dynasty remains," plus the modern art in Shang style. (Well-done though. If only public art in the West were so good.) All this one pedestrian overpass from the modern outdoor mall that seems to have become the hub of the city for stylish young people . . . dancing over the graves of their ancestors, no doubt. Well, the Shang emperors deserved it, the cruel SOBs. Long live the slaves!
I also found a vast "inner wall" of the Shang about half a mile north, running several city blocks long, and being reconstructed, with tin screens around the work, which had gaps in it occasionally, so one could peek through. This wall encloses a huge space within modern Zhengzhou, which was once one of five Shang capitals, before the time of King David. Two others were at Shangqiu and Anyang (both also in northern Henan); I'm not sure if the other two have been found. One document in the Book of History tells how the emperor divined to decide whether or not to move the capital, against the opposition of some significant political faction: it was after this that the capital was moved to Anyang.
The city of Luoyang, a few dozen miles west of here, also has a long history as capital of China in later dynasties, and was said to have been founded by the Duke of Zhou in the early Zhou, where he gave a brow-beating speech to the conquered nobles of the Shang, and told them to man up, sacrifice for the new dynasty, accept their subservient status, and they would get along just fine in the new order, thank you very much.
The Zhou would prove a much more human rule, ultimately, with the help of Confucius and Lao Zi & Co, but human sacrifice was still common in the early Zhou.
This is, indeed, the "Cradle of Chinese Civilization."
* I wandered all day through the streets of Zhengzhou, passing thousands or tens of thousands of people. Late in the afternoon I came across a young western man with a full head of curly hair in the company of a Chinese woman -- the first westerner I'd seen all day. "There goes another one," said a Chinese man to his friend as I passed, in the tone of a man who had seen two bad omens in a row.
* After some searching, I stopped at a Chinese fast-food restaurant for dinner. The young man at the next table tried to explain the ordering procedure, but I somehow wound up with fried rice instead of noodles. I said, "No problem! This will do just fine." Someone behind the counter came in for recriminations anyway.
The man at the next table asked what country I was from. He then asked if I believed in Jesus. He turned out to be an evangelist from another part of northern Henan. He grew up as a Christian, but was "very bad." When he injured his leg, an evangelist came to pray for him, and he was able to sleep, finally. This renewed his faith, and he became an evangelist. He knew all about Reinhold Bocke's crusades in Africa, and about the churches in Korea -- he had a passport, and the countries he most wanted to visit were Korea and Israel. Almost every town in his country has a church, he said, looking at my map and going through towns printed on it one by one.
I got the feeling, talking with this young man, that I was being evaluated, that my foreigness was secondary (for once) to the quality of my faith. He also made no effort to speak any English, and obviously didn't care, as most Chinese young people do.
He told me of miraculous healings to people he knew, and asked me about my own experiences.
Zhang was also a fan of Yuan Zhiming's sermons, which he had heard on CD. "I'd really like to hear Yuan preach," he said. We had a wonderful conversation, and parted, hoping to keep in touch.
* This morning I went in search of Shang Dynasty remains. Some of them turned out to be in a little park I'd passed through the night before, whose bushes a couple men had mistaken for a public loo. This morning, the huge faux bronze set on a pillar with scribblings of scenes from (obviously slave, fitting the Marxist storyline) Shang society in faux Shang style, is surrounded by qigong and badmitten enthusiasts. There is no further explanation about the little hill in the park, and what was found there, other than the legend "Shang Dynasty remains," plus the modern art in Shang style. (Well-done though. If only public art in the West were so good.) All this one pedestrian overpass from the modern outdoor mall that seems to have become the hub of the city for stylish young people . . . dancing over the graves of their ancestors, no doubt. Well, the Shang emperors deserved it, the cruel SOBs. Long live the slaves!
I also found a vast "inner wall" of the Shang about half a mile north, running several city blocks long, and being reconstructed, with tin screens around the work, which had gaps in it occasionally, so one could peek through. This wall encloses a huge space within modern Zhengzhou, which was once one of five Shang capitals, before the time of King David. Two others were at Shangqiu and Anyang (both also in northern Henan); I'm not sure if the other two have been found. One document in the Book of History tells how the emperor divined to decide whether or not to move the capital, against the opposition of some significant political faction: it was after this that the capital was moved to Anyang.
The city of Luoyang, a few dozen miles west of here, also has a long history as capital of China in later dynasties, and was said to have been founded by the Duke of Zhou in the early Zhou, where he gave a brow-beating speech to the conquered nobles of the Shang, and told them to man up, sacrifice for the new dynasty, accept their subservient status, and they would get along just fine in the new order, thank you very much.
The Zhou would prove a much more human rule, ultimately, with the help of Confucius and Lao Zi & Co, but human sacrifice was still common in the early Zhou.
This is, indeed, the "Cradle of Chinese Civilization."
 I also found a vast "inner wall" of the Shang about half a mile north, running several city blocks long, and being reconstructed, with tin screens around the work, which had gaps in it occasionally, so one could peek through. This wall encloses a huge space within modern Zhengzhou, which was once one of five Shang capitals, before the time of King David. Two others were at Shangqiu and Anyang (both also in northern Henan); I'm not sure if the other two have been found. One document in the Book of History tells how the emperor divined to decide whether or not to move the capital, against the opposition of some significant political faction: it was after this that the capital was moved to Anyang. The city of Luoyang, a few dozen miles west of here, also has a long history as capital of China in later dynasties, and was said to have been founded by the Duke of Zhou in the early Zhou, where he gave a brow-beating speech to the conquered nobles of the Shang, and told them to man up, sacrifice for the new dynasty, accept their subservient status, and they would get along just fine in the new order, thank you very much. The Zhou would prove a much more human rule, ultimately, with the help of Confucius and Lao Zi & Co, but human sacrifice was still common in the early Zhou. This is, indeed, the "Cradle of Chinese Civilization."  |
| "When you snatch the tourist souvenir from my hand, glasshoppa, it will be time for you to leave." Shaolin temple, money machine. |
I admit, I haven't read any of your books yet. But I hope you write in your books the way you write these entries. You have a very pleasing, down to earth manner of writing and communicating while still conveying interesting information. Surprisingly rare, really.
ReplyDeleteHow many languages do you speak anyway?
Thanks, Crude. Sorry for the slow response -- I couldn't access the blog in China. I'll be adding more reports in the next few days, probably.
ReplyDeletePlease do read my books! There's a good chance you'll enjoy them. Probably the style of True Son of Heaven is closest to that of these recent blogs, if you like that way of writing.
My best languages, in descending order, are English, mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Russian, classical Chinese, and Koine Greek. I actually had a chance to use my very spare French in China -- ran into some tourists whose English was even worse. Languages have always interested me; I did a bit of cramming with a book on basic Korean on the ferry from China last night, and managed to get a useful answer to the question, "Where is the train station?" Now I forgot how to say it, again. : -)
No rush at all, I figured it may be spotty. Should have realized China would be a problem in particular.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's quite a spread of language knowledge. Sometime I'd like to hear your thoughts on proselytization in Japan.