Fulfillment thinking in Chinese history, Lin Yutang.

Morning meeting at ORTV.  Doris Brougham is
playing the trumpet to the right of the leader.

I spoke on that subject yesterday morning to about 170 staff at Overseas Radio and Television (ORTV).  I began with a joke about the competition.  Traveling around Taiwan, I noticed not only the old cram schools that teach the "American language," but advertisements for what I took to be a new cram school staffed by overseas Chinese, called "Cai English."  Indeed, as the staff no doubt knew, large banners for this "school" can be seen draped over buildings all over the island, with pictures of a pleasant-looking Chinese lady and then another Chinese man or woman by her side.  But in fact, she's the presidential candidate in the upcoming election for the Peoples' Progressive Party.  The people by her side are not fellow teachers, but local candidates in the same election.  Her name happens to be "Cai English." 

People laughed at the joke.  Good, because I needed encouragement to go 45 minutes in Chinese.  If I can judge by my own experience as a public speaker, I want an audience to laugh so as to establish community, the feeling that we're all in it together, it's not just me up their talking, but that they're part of the experience, too.  Asuccessful pun is also a good indication that a talk in another language is going well, since often, Chinese assume that if the meanings don't click, you've simply screwed up and / or are totally incoherent in their difficult language. 

What was a little unique about yesterday morning's talk, besides the longest talk I've given in Chinese for many years, was its focus on leading Christian thinkers in the fulfillment tradition.  I wanted people to know who they were, and what they'd accomplished, and encourage creative Chinese Christians to recognize that their own work also belongs in some sense to that tradition. 

Doris Brougham was the only person in the audience who knew who John Ross was.  She also not only knew who the great writer Lin Yutang was, as do Chinese around the world, but called him "a good friend."  It turned out they'd collaborated on some work.
 

(I visited his old house on Yangmingshan later in the morning -- which reflects his own style and love of Chinese culture (note the fish pond, where he liked to pretend to fish in the morning), combined with interest in traditional European styles and science.  More on that, later.) 

I also joked that, ten years after the typhoon that accompanied me to the island on my last visit, ten years ago, "It's still raining!"  I recognized the laugh, that time -- it's the same laugh we Seattlites sometimes give to comments about our weather, after a particularly bad spell.  But I think the weather in Seattle is better than in Taipei.  Aside from the fact that it probably doesn't rain as much in Seattle, we don't often get a rain that encourages snakes to waylay strangers.  One can walk in our rain without water dripping down our bodies from the inside, even if it doesn't reach us from the outside.

ORTV is a remarkable organization, and Doris Brougham is an amazing person.  I think I'll also introduce her and the work they do in a later blog.  She is an institution in Taiwan (the president of Taiwan is honoring her this week for her work), and somewhat known in other parts of Asia, but probably not so many people in other parts of the world are familiar with this remarkable missionary / trumpet player / educator / HONEST televangelist / successful CEO.

Notes from Taiwan

Water makes Taiwan beautiful, though. 

My last visit to Taiwan came ten years ago, the day after 9/11, as a matter of fact.  It was loads of fun getting on an airplane right when air travel had become a weapon in worldwide jihad, also having to fly around a hurricane between Japan and Taiwan.  It turned out another hurricane was bearing down on Formosa as well, which helps explain why the island is so green.  This hurricane didn't pack particularly strong winds, but it came in (unusually) from the north and kind of settled over Taiwan, creating torrential rains for some time, and flooding parts of Taipei. 

Ten years later -- it was still raining, when we arrived.  Did the sun ever come out? 

Doris Brougham and Overseas Radio and Television (ORTV) sent a car to pick me up, and helped me find a place to stay, with a kind Presbyterian dentist. (Also mountain climber and fervent supporter of Cai Yingwen in her bid for the presidency next year.) I'll be speaking to the ORTV staff, tomorrow morning.  I attended their meeting this morning, which was kind of like a cross between a TV music special, and a campfire revival.  These people are professionals, and you could easily have filmed the whole thing and made a creditable show out of it, but they also seem quite sincere in their worship.  I certainly enjoyed singing a cheerful old aboriginal song about "my help being from the Lord." 

Other notes from the trip to Taiwan so far:

* Lots of new superhighways, some under construction.  The famous 101 building, once the tallest in the world, now dominates the Taipei skyline, with nothing even close for miles around. 

* The train system is efficient, with about 5 lines in Taipei, even though it caused me to miss an important appointment today.  (One line splits and goes in two directions, and I got on the wrong train.)  Stations are decorated in a lively, friendly, and clever way.  Prices are reasonable, as with most things (except housing) in Taiwan -- far cheaper than Japan, a little cheaper than the US, about the same as Korea.

* The Japanese hamburger chain Mossburger is all over the place, now. 

* Otherwise things don't seem to have changed that much.  They still sell betel nut, the mildly narcotic nut that turns teeth purple or black.  Almost all my old favorite Taiwanese foods seem to still be available: I had a wonderful Papaya shake last night after dinner. 

* How polite and mellow everyone seems, compared to mainland China!  They even say "thank you" and "please!" 

* In some cases this has run almost to political correctness, gentrification, even chicification.  Baby changing areas are provided at train stops.  Tourists are told not to swim in the river in Wulai, for fear of being swept downstream.  In some places you have to pay for plastic bags.

* The worst is the garbage collecting system.  It used to be that people piled their refuge in plastic bags at central collection areas.  Cats used to hang and look for goods to grab.  Now when the garbage truck comes, it makes music, and everyone comes running with their trash.  This is harder if you live on the fifth floor.  (My driver on the way into town claimed they were building all 30 story buildings, now, but in fact most of the apartments seem to still be 5 floors.)  My host tells me love stories are sometimes told about people waiting to unload their trash. 

* So maybe entropy won't have the last laugh, after all.

Friendship Presbyterian
church (mainlanders) and
Taiwan Presbyterian
headquarters:
heathy competition?

* I was walking along Roosevelt Road, trying to find a Friendship Presbyterian Church on Sunday.  I felt someone tugging on my day pack.  I looked around, to find a young Chinese man, walking with a limp, and with a large scar on his forehead.  He was zipping up my backpack!  "Don't worry, I'm not going to steal anything!"  He said, though talking in a way that suggested some mental disability.  He pointed to his scar, and said something about someone having done something to him once, but don't fear, he just wanted to make sure nothing fell out of my pack!  I thanked him, and told him I wasn't worried. 

* The dogs, by contrast, are mostly pretty unfriendly.  I hiked up a mountain behind where I'm staying yesterday, and got barked at by lots of dogs of the short-haired, business-like, native variety. They seemed to live at the temples on the mountain. I stopped at one resting spot, and two dogs came at me from different sides. I worked my way to the railing and picked up a brick, and they ran off. Then a little further up the trail, four dogs were standing on top of a large grave, barking at me. I picked up a stick, and they marched down off the grave, rather gravely, in the other direction.

* I stayed in the home of my friend Joshua in Caotun, near Taizhong, two nights ago.  It's a trilingual family: English, Mandarin, and Taiwanese: their two cute girls will get quite a start in life.  Joshua recorded an interview, which I expect will be on-line some time.

* Back in Taipei, and it's raining again.  I missed an appointment today, partly because of that rain.  "Heck it could be my fault." 

* Am also looking forward to meeting the founder of Cosmic Light, tomorrow or the next day.  He's an historian, and the publisher of the two remarkable books by Yuan Zhiming that I'm researching for my doctorate.

Mount Tai: first mountain under Heaven.

Sleeper Train to the Zhou Enlightenment

My third "night train through history" was from Anyang in northern Henan Province, where the ancient Shang empire reached its greatest glory, including in human sacrifice, until it, too, fell into decay, to Tai An, in the shadow of Mount Tai at the center of the Shandong Peninsula jutting out towards Korea.  This small but more attractive city is not far from the home of a teacher whom we call Confucius.  The journey reprised the flow three thousand years ago from the Shang to the Zhou, and from harsh northern religious practice to what I like to call the Zhou Enlightenment.  (Which seems, like most true enlightenments, to have been partly inspired by faith in God.)  The original political center of the Zhou was also in the Yellow Valley, but it was as the Zhou empire split up into smaller states, and teachers like Confucius, Mencius, Mozi, Lao Zi, and Zhuang Zi poured over early Zhou documents about a just God, that Chinese civilization found its moral core.

"Insurance is even weightier than
Tai Shan" -- a proverbial analogy
for anything of special importance,
with the actual Mount Tai in
the background.

Off the train, I quickly found another light yellow "Like Home" hotel facing me, after skirting a mess of new construction in the dark. This hotel chain seems to represent the rise of the prosperous middle classes in China. It's too expensive for most Chinese, but too cheap and casual for the wealthy. It's clean, predictable, bright, and reasonably comfortable. I've consistently stayed in these hotels on this trip, and had yet to see another foreigner. (A few Italians would show up the next day.) 

As at the Like Home hotel in Hangzhou, part of the homey feeling proved to come from needing to frequently chase staff away from the computer provided for guests.  Actually other staff did the chasing. 

The first day in town, I washed clothes, walked about 6 miles through town, and realized how tired and sore I was.  It drizzled much of the day.  My feet were sore, my right leg hurt, and my back was adding its monotanous tune to the chorus. 

The next morning dawned bright, and I determined to climb as far as I could, at whatever cost to the body.  It was Sunday, and there was a huge crowd at the bus station, with about ten lines some 20 deep each.  I got in the line for tour guides, was told my mistake, and went to the back of another line.  After much waiting, then another line for the buses, we finally set off.

I calculated how much money the state must make from this mountain: $100 million a year in gate sales alone, or more?  Plus hotels, buses, food, trinkets, souvenirs . . . No wonder the town looks well-off. 

I was surprised, though, to see a few villages and plots of garden clinging tenaciously to the slopes of the mountain, here and there.  This is how people have lived for thousands of years, and in much of China, this is more the norm than the tourist industry.  I noticed a few purple morning glories on these lower slopes -- a small token of the masses of this flower I saw on my last visit, some 20 years ago, earlier in the season. 

Here are a few photos from the hike itself, along with comments on the historical and spiritual significance of some of these scenes. 

The most famous stretch of the steep and long climb up Mt. Tai leads to South Heaven Gate, some 2000 granite steps ascending towards heaven.  Here are a portion of the steps. I took a fork in the trail to the right, which proved useful, because I avoided the crowds, and therefore got a chance to interview three hikers with my survey.  (One told me his climb was a kind of celebration because he had reached the age of 30 without getting married, and therefore felt that had earned him the right to remain free!)

Along most of the route up, are numerous vendors, displaying a wide variety of wares: drinks, herbal medicines, red clothes to tie to trees for blessings, photographs.  The stretch in this picture is unusually free of them.

In a sense, Mt. Tai is a hike through a world of visual cliches.  One can hardly take an original photograph when the best sites are marked with inscriptions, some of which are ancient, and thousands of lens are trained on them everyday.  Some of these inscriptions remind climbers of the special significance of this mountain, among all those in China: "Of the five peaks, deserving of unique honor;" "the first mountain under Heaven." 

Here emperors came to report on their rule to the one sentient being whom they recognized as of greater authority than themselves: "Shang Di" (God Above), or "Heaven."  This was the most weighty and significant ceremonial act in any emperor's reign. 

At this spot, supposedly, Confucius looked at the little peaks below, and said "Under Heaven is small."  "Under Heaven" is a phrase meaning "the empire," "all humanity or the world."  Heaven can also be understood as Confucius' name for the Supreme God, whom he recognized.  The phrase, then, while taken as a commonplace, expresses both the heart of Confucius' theology and his humility, as well as describing the most obvious physical fact visible from the summit of this peak which, much like the Olympic Mountains in Washington State, while not extraordinarily tall, is particularly prominent in Shandong Peninsula.  The humility this comment reflects -- the works of men are insignificant in the light of Heaven -- is the key to Confucius' power in Chinese history, as I explain in True Son of Heaven.   

"The wordless stele."  This was erected by Han Wudi, a century or so before Christ, just feet below the mountain's summit.  It expresses his inability to fully express his feelings on the summit of Mount Tai.  It is, in a sense, like the "altar to the unknown God" at which the Athenians worshipped.  It also reflects the most famous phrases in Lao Zi's great masterpiece: "The Way that is spoken, is not the true Way.  The Name that is Named, is not the true Name."  It is a fundamental expression of humility.  As Confucius recognized, one can know some things, and humility does not mean denying that which one can know.  But Lao Zi expressed a deep sense of insufficiency in the fact of the Ultimate, which he called Dao or the Way.  (The word "Dao" could also mean "to say," so the phrase runs, "the dao that can be daoed, is not the true dao" -- it sounds pithy in Chinese.) 

The summit itself is now occupied by a temple to the Jade Emperor, a Zeus-like figure, only less impetuous and more stately, as befits the top bureaucrat in the later Chinese concept of Heaven.  This is a late corruption of belief in the Supreme God.  There are other temples to popular deities lower down the mountain. But before they were constructed, Mount Tai was the most eminent place in China where prayer was made to God long before the time of Confucius, then down through Chinese history, by some of the greatest Chinese rulers.  A plaque at the summit memorializes the spot, in the temple to the Jade Emperor, where sacrifices were made. 

Inscriptions from the Tang and later dynasties are carved on this cliff face just below the summit. Like all the most famous scenes on Tai, one has to find a window of opportunity to take a picture here.  I took a train to the coast the next evening, then a ferry to Korea, and flew on to Taiwan.  Perhaps the most interesting part of that journey was a long and revealing conversation on the train with an interesting cast of characters, largely about the nature of modern China.  I'll save that for a later blog.

Song of the South

Here are a few scenes in one of the most famous paintings in Chinese history.  Less than ten inches tall and seventeen feet long, in it, Zhang Zeduan sets out in magnificent and humane detail the "life in the city" of Kaifeng on the Qingming Festival: restaurants, people bartering, supping, working, here a boat leaving its moarings while all the city is occupied with its own concerns -- this is just a tiny part of the painting. 

This was the capital of China during the period known as the Northern Song. The Song was one of the greatest dynasties in Chinese history, not because it conquered vast swaths of territory, but for its art and poetry. Indeed, while no one doubts his talent in painting birds, or his artistic choices on which he lavished state funds, the famous Hui Zong emperor is sometimes blamed for not spending enough money on defending China from the Mongol tribes to the north. 

Mountain Path in Spring, by Ma Yuan, also called "One
Corner Ma" for his suggestive use of blank spaces.  Ma was
born near Hangzhou.

That's why the Northern Song was followed by the Southern Song, as the remnants of the ruling class (protected by the heroic general, Yue Fei) escaped to the southern city of Hangzhou, where the dynasty survived, and often thrived, another 152 years.  This was an inventive, cultured, and prosperous period in Chinese history, despite the sword (ultimately wielded by Ghenghis, then Kublai Khan) hanging over its neck.  The population boomed, art flourished, food production soared with new technologies, printing was popularized, and gunpowder was put to use against the Mongols. 

I stopped in Kaifeng, thinking to spend the night.  It was sad, though, to see what the city had come to. Compared to its Yellow River neighbors, Zhengzhou and Luoyang, it seemed a dismal, run-down place.  No cheery hotels were to be found, and really nothing of beauty: forlorn and crude restaurants, dismal three story buildings, back alleys with a lot of older people who look at you as if to say, "What is a foreigner doing on this God-forsaken lane?" 

In any case, it was clear this would not be a good place to conduct my survey, which is focused on China's intellectuals. 

So I caught a night train south to a probable city -- Hangzhou.  Geographically, this was a move from the drier northern valley of the Yellow River, to a lusher city further south, and near the coast.

For the only time on my trip, I shared a train with other westerners.  Two women and one man, all about 60, from Italy and France, were in the next alcove of bunks.  I used up much of my French trying to communicate with them, and they, their English, apparently.  How they communicated with the Chinese, I have no idea.  They shared their cheese and crackers with me -- an unexpected meal, but then traveling in China is always full of suprises.  There was also a young woman at the other end of the car, whom I took to be Russian, though I didn't hear her speak, and who could have been one of the Bond girls, by her looks.  I did talk with a Chinese graduate student from Kaifeng, who lamented how her home town had come down in the world, in its rivalry with Zhengzhou, a town which, she assured me, her fellow residents of Kaifeng despise.

One could see right away why the Song moved.  Hangzhou is everything Kaifeng is not: prosperous, mellow, modern but also preserving and remembering the old, thriving, full of sights that are worth seeing, places to walk, practice qigong, or contemplate. 

The haze which had remained over northern China for some days also reminded me that what often appears to make Chinese painting unique, often reflects genuine local conditions.  (Another such case is the shape of mountains in some paintings, which seem improbable to outsiders, but reflect the actual eccentricity of many Chinese peaks.)  Compare the sky in this photo over West Lake, for instance, to that in the painting by "One Corner Ma" above. 

One of my own favorite Chinese paintings is of a mother gibbon and baby in a tree, apparently near Hangzhou, also in this style, making suggestive use of fog and emptiness, with Zen intimations. 

There is a lot of city to my back here, by the way.  The walk along West Lake is really beautiful, full of tea houses, bamboo groves, and people exercising to someone's lead, strollers, night lights, and boats for charter to take you to an island, temples rising over the mist that surrounds the lake.  They've done a splendid, tasteful job of beginnning to restore this part of the city's glory.  The district is full of up-scale shops, boutiques, and expensive restaurants.  $20 for Teppanyaki, anyone?  Apparently that works for a lot of people, here, and by some, is more the lower end of the scale.  But the lake itself is, at the same time, a huge modern Chinese metropolis.  I went and got some noodles.

The old Song capital is to the left, and out of town: my leg was already hurting, and I didn't make it quite that far.

All this prosperity and softness does not seem to have made Hangzhou natives particularly mellow to one another, though.  I saw three public arguments break out in the day I spent in Hangzhou.  One involved some older, and obviously uneducated, women who were telling people as they walked along West Lake "Jesus Loves you," with a tape recording from the Book of Genesis playing in the background.  More sophisticated Chinese seemed to question, not their beliefs, but the propriety of ambushing people strolling in the park with this propaganda.  "But you play your music!"  It did not, indeed, seem an effective strategy in this city.

Nor did the city prove as useful for my research purposes as I had hoped.  So I did not stay long. 

Even the pollution in Hangzhou can be trendy.  Here's a Starbucks cup, floating on the West Lake.

The Tang Conquest, by train

My host and I with
the great Timothy Richard.
There was also a photo of him
in the student's cafeteria, but the
university is less kindly
disposed to those of its students
who share his faith, I learned.  Note
the hazy skies.

I didn't plan the trip this way, but in retrospect, it seems I followed the footsteps of the founders of three great Chinese dynasty -- only rather than traveling by foot, in each case I took a night train, no doubt sleeping through many battlefields.  In the next three posts I'd like to recapitulate those journeys, describing a bit of what each shows about China along the way. 

My first stop in China was Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, where I stayed for three days.  Beautiful old buildings are rare, aside from the Twin Pagodas, as they are popularly called, which we climbed.  The city is flanked on two sides by mountain ranges, which traps the air, like in Los Angeles or Taipei, making it a smoggy and dusty town when the wind forgets to blow.  This was the case during my visit, and so I was somewhat hard-pressed to compliment the city to friendly locals.  But people were so friendly and helpful in Taiyuan, and the work that I came to do was very successful.  I won't say much about the latter now (I may post later on what my results say about the New Atheism), only that it included a bit of field research to complete the chapter of my dissertation in greatest need of improvement. 

My hosts were extremely generous, along with helpful.  In fact, the food was so good it didn't require any desserts, just or otherwise.  Honestly, some of the best days of eating in my life.  (The rest of the trip, I ate more with a view to economy and convenience.)  The final night's tender white fish, cooked so succulently in red spices without losing its own gentle flavor, it practically hopped onto my chopsticks by itself, would by itself have been a superb main course.  Add delicate green balls of vegie the consistency of a light chocolate confection, dipped in a kind of strawberry sauce, delicious meat balls, a form of potato swimming in flavorful sauces that made me almost ashamed of our humble mashed potatoes and gravy, celery and peanut hors douvres, some of the best baozi I've had, added to good company and cool lanterns, made it a meal to cherish.  Remarkably, all this without a trace of ill aftereffects of holiday eating -- this stuff goes down easily.

Only the service was rather surly.

That was but one of four highly memorable meals.  My host started us off with a very expensive meal at what he claims, and I can believe, is the best restaurant in the city.  The food AND service were excellent.  Later we ate at a much less pricy noodle restaurant founded in the 19th Century.  It was nicely decorated in period pieces, and had the feel, rare in China, of an Udon shop in Japan, or an English pub.  The noodles were flavorful and delicious, hinting of spice and vinegar.  This was across the street from a school that was the old Shanxi University, founded by Timothy Richard with money from Boxer indemnities.  They wouldn't let us go in to see the inside, though. 

Finally, for lunch the next day we foraged in the dirty, messy back alley that serves the present Shanxi University as a combination "Snake Alley" (old Taipei) or "The Ave" (present Seattle).  An egg pocket sandwich loaded with lettuce, Muslim noodles (my host thinks they're more trustworthy than some other public eats), and potatoe chips on a stick, make from slicing one spud into a spiral, necessarily a little moister than conventional chips. 

Having completed my research, and cleaned some clothes, I followed the route of the Tang conquest of the Sui, rather approxiately, and took a night train south to the Yellow River Valley.  Li Yuan was a governor in the Shanxi area, under the Sui.  When it became clear the corrupt regime, bankrupt from attacking Korea and building the Grand Canal, was due to fall, a prophecy arose that someone surnamed Li would conquer the Sui.  This prophecy might have been partly self-fulfilling, since it encouraged Lis to revolt, and the government to suspect any powerful person with that name.  Eventually Li Shimin persuaded his father that the Sui would get them if they didn't act first, and the governor and his war-like sons moved south, eventually to conquer the city of Xian, then further west in the Yellow River Valley.

It was Li Shimin, now emperor of China, who greeted the first Christians known to arrive in China, the Nestorian missionaries who traveled overland and came to Chang An (Xian) in 630 AD.

Moderning China: this little doggy is NOT going to market.

My destination, admittedly, was further down stream: the city of Zhengzhou, not far from Luoyang, at times the eastern Tang capital -- the present capital of Henan Province, which would be about the 10th biggest country in the world were it independent.  (Also one of the centers of Christianity in China.)  After some searching, I found a clean hotel in my price range, managed to change to money (this all took hours), and set out to explore the city. 

Zhengzhou is not set in any dramatic natural geography, nor has it preserved any beautiful old buildings.  It's a governing center, a center for commerce, and home to millions of people -- but the town is clearly trying to make something of itself.  The modern center of life in the city seems to be a large square, with two lit pagodas constructed where it borders a major intersection, with a mass of lively shopping and eating places on the site of the square facing it.  This is a few blocks from the trainstation, but since the streets are at odd angles, it takes a bit of searching. 

You can't deny Peoples' Park in central Zhengzhou lives up to the aim implicit in its title.  Four or five heated pingpong battles are waged in one corner, fathers and sons, husbands and wives (some of the women are pretty good!), friends, the ball flying and spinning to my untrained eyes like Forrest Gump's contest in Beijing.  Children blow bubbles, and climb on rocks overlooking the canals.  Visitors photograph one another in front of late-season golden chrysanthemons and dahlias.  The dahlias in one prominent patch are probably each photographed dozens of times in a day.  (it is still a gritty city, in need of much more green to make it tolerable to a Seattlite.)  You can't say they don't get any love -- or CO2.  One orchestra plays nostalgic songs about missing one's home or the hills with about 100 middle aged people watching.  For how many does the song tell the story of their lives?  What has China lost, in being industrialized and urbanized?  What is the world losing? 

Song Shan, the "Central Mountain" of China's peaks representing the five directions, is a two hour bus ride from Zhengzhou.  I described my trip there in an earlier post.

Shaolin temple. 

If it's Tuesday, this must be Weihai

I'm catching my breath in Korea, before a flight tomorrow morning for Taiwan.  Friday morning I'm scheduled to speak to Cosmic Light in Taipei: I found out in Weihai, on the other side of the Yellow Sea, waiting for the passenger ship Golden Bridge.  (Registration: Panama, of course.)  Apparently I should speak in Chinese: since I haven't prepared this talk, and will be traveling all day tomorrow, this could be interesting.

I'm not suffering from jet-lag.  It's more like:

* Six night trains.  

* Five ancient capitals. 

* Four aching body parts. 

* Three sacred mountains (Song, Heng (恒山；南岳), and the greatest of all, Tai).  (Note: what to do if your back aches, both feet ache, your leg aches, and you've only had one night of sleep out of three?  Climb a precipitous 5000 foot mountain!  It worked wonders on all fronts, including sleeping the following evening, and even, surprisingly, the previously almost disabled leg.)

* Two + weeks on the road.

* And a hundred plus interviews left to translate.  (Thanks, A, for the help in Shanxi.)

I'll describe what is happening in China, and hopefully add a bunch of photos, as time and machines become available.

One thing that isn't happening in China, is Blogger; it seems the Chinese government isn't overly fond of American web sites.  Thanks to David Steinmetz for posting the past few blogs when I was unable.

Notes from Central China

* 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.

* 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 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. 













How Religion Poisons Everything

Except most things

Jinan, the capital city of Shandong Province north of Shanghai, was everything I remembered -- drab, grey, dreary (well it was dampish), flat, wearisome, more like the picture of hell in C. S. Lewis' Great Divorce than a mortal city should. A few newer apartments reflected the trend towards gentrification all around China -- cleaner and more nicely painted high rises, a small number of planned communities -- but fewer than usual, and the apartments looking a lot like rows of wispy cottonwood trees on the outskirts of the city, only without any green leaves rustling in the breeze. Not a single beautiful building was visible from the train, and very little that gave reign to the human instinct for creativity.

Then we passed a church, a stone's throw from the tracks. "Christian Church," is all the sign said. Simple architecture, the cross glowing in the morning twilight, a peaked roof that reached for, and did not ignore, the sky.

If a Martian visited Jinan, and saw only what I saw (no doubt there are better sights once one gets off the train), he would say whatever force created that building was all that tried to give life to that end of the city. No doubt if he saw a Buddhist temple or a Muslim mosque, he would say the same.

Indeed, while Korean cities are more lively, especially the newer brick homes with their nice compromise between straight edge and curve, the churches that pop up like mushrooms everywhere (one sometimes sees four or five in a single block) are still the most beautiful buildings.

The Martian probably wouldn't know, not speaking the language or having access to the history, the efforts Timothy Richard made in the same province to save the starving during a famine. Nor would he likely be aware of John Nevius, whose ideas about self-sustaining churches did much to get the Korean church off to the right start, and who introduced all manner of fruit to Shandong Province, giving farmers more produce for their labor, and the people better food. He might also be unaware (like our New Atheists) of the thousands of schools and hospitals founded by missionaries (I stayed last night in Shanxi University, which was founded by Richard with indemnity money after the Boxer Rebellion). And having failed to do his homework before his visit to earth, he might not have known that Richard also pushed for trains to Shanxi Province, to stave off an even more severe famine a few years later. (Donkey simply couldn't bring enough stores over the mountains to the drought-stricken province.)

Just looking around this one city, and gazing at that one building, I fancy our hypothetical Martian (so put upon in pushing lesser causes), would say,

"I don't know what ruined this city. But whatever built that building, is its greatest aesthetic hope."

It might be unfair to blame the modernist uniformity of so many Chinese cities, and the destruction of charming old architecture, on the militaristic material philosophy of those who did the destroying. Though Tokyo, where religion is also kept to a bare minimum, is also filled with functional monstrosities, and Shinto shrines are a grace, if not a saving grace. But there are few stronger proofs of the harm of looking at man as purely material beings, than a simple walk around one of these cities. Some have, admittedly, been better preserved, and some new architecture is nicer, in Shanghai and Hong Kong, for instances.

But Hitchens needs to get out, more.

Other notes from China, beginning from the port of Weihai where we landed:

* I was a little afraid of Weihai, since the last time I came here, maybe fifteen years ago, some men seemed to want to mug me.

Weihai looked more developed from the water -- buildings with Mediterranean style red tile roofs rise from the harbor in neat encircling rows, interspersed by attractive skyscrapers.

The town of about 450,000 is far enough out in the boonies that sometimes I was treated like a bit of a movie star. Two young women at KFC wanted to have their picture taken with me, and did. When I stopped to eat at a Muslim noodle shop, four or five young men surrounded me and asked friendly questions while I ate. The food was delicious -- Xinjiang noodles, thick, thick noodles like stroganoff with a bunch of mildly crunchy vegies and beef in a spicy red sauce, and a nice little soup on the side. The owner asked me if I had a US dollar, and when I showed one to him, he insisted I pay for my meal with it! I assuaged my slight guilt feelings by adding one of those state memorial quarters into the bargain. Neither politics nor religion came up, though there was a full-wall tile picture of the mosque in Xining on the far wall.

* Strange to think the "shortened" name for Shandong Province, Lu, is a Chinese character that Confucius would recognize on car license plates, were he to return. Lu was the name of his own state, founded by one of the original Zhou Dynasty relatives -- never large in size, but prestigious for its royal associations. "So, Lu has survived another 2500 years after my death!" He might think. "Some sage king must have adopted my teachings, after all!"

* It began to mist, then rain. I caught the evening train in the direction of Beijing, to the obscure town of Dezhou, still in Shandong Province.
Worse than usual sleeping, maybe two hours. Two of the five people in the six-bunk alcove were serious snoorers. (Two well-fed men.) LIttle conversation, it being time to sleep. The former soldier in the top bunk tried flirting with the girl in the bunk across from him. Bad form. He was a sharp-looking fellow, but after a little conversation, she turned her back on him. In the morning, I caught a glimpse on his screen of a mouse, then Tom Hanks and prison bars -- The Green Mile!

* The sun came out. I got off the train, got some breakfast -- three delicious Baozi of different kinds, a friend egg and fruit juice -- and caught a bus to Tai Yuan, the capital of Shanxi, one of my main destinations. A couple taxi drivers tried to rip me off, and I slammed the door on one with an angry English word. The next taxi driver was above-board, and gave me a city map, even refused a tip.

* A young professor at ShanXi University is my host. He doesn't have much teaching to do, and will help me with the final bit of research necessary for my doctorate. We worked on a survey I am doing last night, and that's the plan for today.

* First impressions of Tai Yuan: Fairly Big. Easy to understand their dialect of Chinese, which is pretty standard. Bad air: you can see it like an enveloping swamp, coming down from the mountains into the city. (On the way, saw lots of old stucco houses with flat roofs in among the hills, with corn drying on the roofs.) Very conservative, my host says -- they had 29 departments at the University when Richard was here, and they still have 29 departments.

* This is also the city where the Boxer governor had over a hundred missionaries beheaded. Despite the good works of Richard, David Hill, Gladyl Aylward, and the like, the attitude has apparently changed only in degree since then.

Korea proves full of nice people.

After the Night of the Drunks, I wasn't optimistic about my short stay in Korea.  For one thing, where would I stay? (I had tried to make contacts before I came, but without success.)

I decided to gamble on my one, thin relationship in the country: a brief e-mail exchange with the Dean (or something) at a graduate school for missions and / or ministry in South Seoul.  So I packed up my backpack full of books, made my little suitcase as light as possible (the perpendicular vector of its force on muscles already carrying a heavy load hurts more than the straight downward push of dead weight), and set out for Seoul.

The express train was almost empty, maybe about ten people on the whole thing.  The girl who took our tickets wasn't occupied, so I tried to catch her attention and learn a few words of Korean along the way.  She didn't even turn her head, deeply engrossed in her entertainment box. 

This, it turns out, is how most young people in Korea occupy their time on trains: movies and games on little screens.  Gone are almost all of the books and newspapers one used to see.

We glided over the island where the Incheon airport is located, and which still hosts a little agriculture as well, and out over the vast mud flats that the communists trusted in to protect them, underestimating Douglas MacArthur.  I noticed little mud canyons with water at the bottom, and mud uplands about six feet higher, on and on for miles -- what a place to land with heavy weapons, and artillery heading your way! 

I changed trains at Seoul station, then again, and dragged my luggage, lugged my draggage, down bumpy sidewalks for about a kilometer, turning a couple times, and found myself at Torch Trinity Graduate School. 

It's a remarkable institution.  The main buildings appear to rise about four or five stories above both sides of a wide stairways ascending a little hill.  In reality, most of the buildings are connected underground, with maybe another 4 or 5 floors of dining halls, cafeteria, classrooms, offices, below ground.  Rooms are named things like "Faith Hall," "Joy Hall," etc, the purpose of the room apparently fitting its title. 

The school is half in Korean, half in English.  Students are recruited from around the world, and also from Korea.

It turned out that was the day for Open House: 2-5 for Koreans, 4-7 for internationals, with the overlap being a public meeting with skits and a welcoming, vision-type sermon. 

The Dean was in.  She was busy preparing for the Open House, but kindly gave her unforseen visitor fifteen minutes.  She mentioned a guest house, which turned out to be part of the complex, and arranged to allow me to stay there. 

Blessed be, no drunks!  Trees, a well-stocked library with this very computer (and comrades), friendly mission students, inexpensive meals.  In the two days I've been here, I've met students from Pakistan (she introduced me to the missions prof), the Ukraine, Kenya, another African country, Korea of course, and Mongolia (whose great-grandfather, surprisingly, turned out to have been a Christian -- presumably one of the "two and a half Christians" Donald Treadgold used to say were in the country before the Soviet takeover.)  She said there are now about 100,000 Christians in the little country, about 5% of the total.        

My mission in Seoul is to sound out local publishers about Korean editions of two of my books.  The attempt to visit these companies proved time-consuming and difficult. 

I quickly learned that giving workable directions to foreigners is not one of the motivating interests of Korean culture.  An elevator at the airport said the train was on 1 Fl.  It turned out that meant 1 Fl basement, not 1 Fl prime.  Inside the elevator the legend said less about 1, and more about basements . . . Naturally I went to the wrong place, as, no doubt, have countless visitors before me. 

Addresses and street signs are almost all only in Korean.  Even in Mcdonalds, I lined up in the wrong place, and missed lunch (no great trajedy), because the signs telling people the till had closed were in Korean.  Few people speak English, Japanese, or Chinese, and if they do, they can't always figure out the directions I have in English. If they do give directions, one still can't read the signs to which those directions point. 

Furthermore, the telephone in my room was 6 stories and a labyrinth of rooms from the computer, so directions by e-mail -- the only kind that work -- involved running back and forth several times to obtain.  And I couldn't print directions out.

And that was just the start of difficulties. 

Another problem was that people confuse book stories, which I was not looking for, with head offices for publishing companies, which I was.

On the up side, many Koreans proved extraordinarily helpful in trying to point me in the right direction -- even when it was the wrong direction -- and sometimes more than point. 

So in a day and a half of trying, I visited three Christian book stores, belonging to the main three publishers in Korea, but no headquarters.  I did, however, manage to get my books into the hands of two publishers, and get to know two contact people at the right offices in the process.

Last night was a particular adventure. 

After much calling and vain computer searches, I finally procured a couple addresses for one of the companies.  (One my American publisher had recommended, as a matter of fact.)  They rounded up a girl who could speak English and was involved in the publishing end of things.  I was given spider scratches on paper which, I was assured, represented the company headquarters, plus a transliteration of a Korean address in English.  Of course I had no idea if the two matched. 

If not for the generous kindness of many Koreans, my epic journey across Seoul that afternoon would have proven a complete failure. 

Several people pointed me in the "right" direction, sometimes however wrong by several subway stops. 

An older gentleman loudly starting a conversation on the train, the kind that begins "Where are you from?  I went to New York and Los Angeles once."  In Japan, this would  likely provoke icy silence all around, indicating that the speaker was romancing the fine line between crudity and lunacy.  Here, there seems to be no such stigma attached to chatting up strangers: we had a good conversation.  Off at the wrong stop (of course), another gentleman then spent considerable time phoning and mapquesting, and got me (finally) to the correct train stop.

A taxi driver didn't know the place.  I tried to pay him for all the time he spent trying to figure it out, but he refused. 

After wandering around and asking at random (including a cop -- no English!), I began to lose hope of tracking the place down by closing time at 5 PM.  I stopped at a jewelry shop and bought an alarm clock -- the owner pointed me back the way I just came, with a flury of Korean that I could almost pretend to get the gist of.  Several blocks and queries later, a couple who spoke decent English took it into their big hearts to escort me all the way to the building on the paper, a full mile or more away.  We jogged a good part of the distance in an effort to get there on time, and they were a bit heavy. 

When we arrived, I gave them a copy of my China book to say thanks, and learned they were both novelists!  We parted friends as well as comrades. 

But of course it wasn't company headquarters, it was a bookstore, and I was late.

A little more ringing by the girl at the counter, and the girl I'd talked with at headquarters came half an hour after her work day was finished, took me to a cafeteria, and bought me a strawberry drink and desert (on company dime) and we had a good talk.  She turned out to have a background in YWAM and literature, so we talked missions, Shakespeare, Chesterton, and East Asian culture.  She recorded some of my replies to her questions.  Finding that I was interested in learning more about Korea, she then kindly bought a little Korean primer for me, on her own dime. 

Missed dinner, then went jogging along a river this morning, and missed breakfast as well.  Bought manjiu and strawberry yoghurt at a 7-11.  I'm heading to a place where I can speak the language, again, but I'm almost sorry to be leaving Korea this afternoon.

Seoul Music

I'm sitting in bed in a "hotel" room, aka "guest house," it being dark outside, not counting the street light, and no idea what time it is.  There are no clocks in the room, the TV doesn't work, and my internal clock is fowled up by the 12 hour flight from Seattle.  A car passes only very occasionally, so I guess its the middle of the night here, though time to get up back home. 

Two bulky drunks are waiting outside the door.  One appears to be English; the other mumbles too much to tell where he's from.  Now one is singing.

The first sign that they were there came when one yanked on the door several times.  I was awake, having just been jotting plans for the following day on the back of a card, so heard it clearly.  The door was stout, fortunately.  (It's a fairly spartan room, otherwise, but clean enough.)  I had slept for a few hours, earlier, which is good for the first day of a trip.  Then came the knocking. 

"Go away!  This is not your room!" 

"Where should we go?"

"Go down to the first floor (they call it that, here), and talk to the people down there."  (I assumed they were looking for their own room.) 

"Yeah, there's lots of people down there.  We talk to them, and they just mumble.  You're the first person who's talked to us like this in an hour.  Open the door!"

"I'm not going to open the door, but I will call the police." 

"Yeah, like that'll help.  You have three choices."

I waited to hear the three choices, not expecting to like any of them.  But the drunk could only recall one, got stuck on it, which turned out to be one I actually approved of.

"If I were you, I wouldn't open the door." 

He went on explaining why keeping it shut might actually be the better option, apparently trying more to reason for himself than to convince me, and ended in incoherence.

I did try calling the police.  But he was right about that, too.  There wasn't much of what you could call a phone in the room.  There's something you can pick up, without about 5 buttons and words in Korean next to them, and little lights.  The top buttom made a little alarm sound, not enough to bother anyone outside the room.  The next few seemed to do nothing.  The bottom one rang.  I tried this one with some hope, ten or so times, and at one point heard a man speaking a few gruff words of Korean.  After that, it didn't even ring much. 

I considered other options, should my neighbors find a way of openning the door.  Weapons?  I could throw the TV at them, maybe.  On further reflection, the TV stand seemed like the only remotely servicable weapon in the room, and it didn't look like it could fend off more than a very sleepy lion cub. 

Could I break the window, and escape to the street?  Kind of a last option, though we were only on the second floor -- looks like pavement down there. 

Now I begin revising my "things to do tomorrow morning" list. Ask for my money back?  Not only was my "sleep" interrupted, but even in a 4000 won guesthouse, they ought to provide a phone and a little security -- this place is like a death trap.  Go to the airport and tell the Info lady to strike this place off her list of places to stay?  All in all, I think I'll begin with the police. 

Heck of a way to start a trip.  Guess I'll just hope they eventually think of somewhere else to go, and don't locate a battering ram or a blasting cap. 

Mount McKinley was magnificent, anyway.  I've flown by it before, and drove with my cousin to the park, but never saw the mountain clearly before.  First some other alpine mass came into view, with a tall summit at the center, and I wondered at first if this might have been it.  But when Denali floated into view, there was no doubting it.  The summit was not far beneath the level of the plane.  Beneath it, lesser peaks, still sharp and snow-covered, were as grasshoppers. 

The only glaciers I could spy associated with the mountain were low elevation valley glaciers.  I wondered, is there anywhere in the world that sports a larger elevation spread over which ice rules?  A smaller but still tall  peak (Foraker?) rises to the south of McKinley, close yet distinct enough to count as part of the same mountain, or not, as your fancy leads. 

After McKinley, I spent hours in conversation in the back of the plane with Bill, a man about the build, age, and a little of the attitude of Bill Maher.  Not that he attacked religion -- he was grateful to the Christians who mended him when he got hepatitis in Pakistan or China.  His father had been CIA, so he grew up all over, and has traveled even more all over ever since.  (Preferably by bicycle.)  He said the CIA kids were the left-wingers, State and Military kids more conservative.  We swapped travelers' tales: if it was a contest, no doubt he won. 

Still singing out there.  As poorly as I sleep the first night of a trip, can I possibly sleep with those two drunks at seige?  Maybe I'll give it a try. 

I've never seen a "guest house" quite like this one.  It's on a city street a mile or two from the airport.  From the outside, it looks like an office building.  Go into the lobby, and there's a little "Travel Agency" room to the right, and that' where they sign you in.  Then someone gives you a key, shows you to the elevator, and after a long wait, you're on the second floor. 

Here the strange inner design of the building reveals itself.  There's a kind of atrium or courtyard at center, with maybe 15 stories of rooms that look like Tokyo rabbit hutch apartments rising on two or three sites, with walkways facing the atrium.  There is an attempt at a potted plant (plastic?) or two, but nothing of any charm whatsoever. 

Whistling now.  The sound of metal.  No battery rams, I hope?  High-pitched, wordless singing. 

An airplane sounds over head.  Early morning flight, I hope? 

I see this from two perspectives.  One is that of a newspaper article about something bad happening in a hotel in Korea.  The other lies in the past perfect perspective of an anecdote about a rough start to a trip.  (The bank hassle and missing camera yesterday being the harbinger of trouble.) 

In any case, I will not now be staying here three nights. 

(Postscript: I dozed off, after all.  Turned out so did the drunks.  Didn't see them again.  Someone said they were crazy, shook his head when I asked.  I told the airport girl, not the police.  Took the train to Seoul, and am now staying at a kind of graduate school / missions training center in South Seoul.  There's a hill above the center, in pine, ewe, chestnut, part of which I can see from my room, and no noisy drunks anywhere to be seen.  Korean lunch for $2 in the cafeteria!)