China Diary -- Part 32 Nanjing by Day

Our next stop was in Nanjing's "Confucius Temple District" along the Qin Huai river. We had some free time to explore the area and agreed to meet again at the "Wish Tree" not far from where we entered the district. "She Who Must Not Be Named" and her girlfriends headed out for a shopping blitz. I took my camera for a walk. Here's a bit of what I saw.







Eventually we reassembled at the Wish Tree and headed off to an early dinner with the promise that we would return to experience Nanjing by Night.

China Diary -- Part 31 Nanjing

After leaving the museum we boarded buses for the airport for transport to our next destination, Nanjing. On our way I snapped a number of pictures of people we passed. Here are a few of them.




Outside of Beijing and Chongqing bicycles and mopeds are a primary form of transportation. One of our guides, who rode a moped to and from work, explained that the big problem with them was the battery. Every day when he got home he would have to remove the battery from his bike and take it to his apartment to recharge it. He lived on the fourth floor and there was no elevator. Yikes!


And, of course, in the parks we passed we saw people doing group exercises. It seems to be a national mania, especially for the elderly.

In Nanjing our first excursion was to a large park containing the tombs of the first Ming emperors and that of Dr. Sun Yatsen, the founder of modern China.


The path to the tombs was along a processional way flanked by statues of beasts and courtiers representing the power of the emperors.


There were a lot of people just hanging out in the park...


And there were even several families that pitched tents there. I don't know if they were planning to stay the night, but it sure looked like it.


And there was even another lucky turtle. "She Who Must Not Be Named" made sure she rubbed both its head and tail in hopes that it would grant her both great wealth and long life.


While "She" and her friends climbed to the top of this structure, which afforded them a nice view of treetops, I wandered through a nearby woods and found this delightful little cabin.


I then found a nice shady spot to sit and read until "She" returned from her climb. Then the group reassembled and many went to the tomb of Sun Yatsen (this guy).


Then it was back to the buses and on to our next destination -- another "shopping opportunity".

Happy Birthday Dubya!

Happy Birthday to former President George W. Bush, one of the best men and finest Presidents of my lifetime.

Gettysburg Reunion

I should have posted this back on the Fourth, but had other things to do.

Union and Confederate veterans meet at Gettysburg on the 75th anniversary of the battle there.



I can't be sure, but one of them might have been my grandfather's "Uncle Hen". He died in 1948 at the age of 104. At that time he was the oldest surviving Civil War veteran in the State of Pennsylvania. As a child I was taken to meet him. I was four years old at the time and all I can remember is that he sat in a rocking chair and had very pale hands with big blue veins. I was kinda freaked out by the veins.

Robert McNamara Has Died -- Good Riddance!

For me, he always represented all that was wrong with the technocratic/meritocratic culture that emerged as a dominant force in postwar America. A leader of the self-styled "best and brightest" generation of bright young Ivy Leaguers, McNamara brought with him the naive progressive faith that government, staffed by credentialed experts and guided by social science research and modern management techniques, could discover and implement the policies that would produce Utopia. Then, when failure in Vietnam exposed his technocratic hubris as a fraud, he lapsed into a nauseatingly moralistic, apologetic mode of discourse that cast himself as the moral guide for the rest of the nation.

What lay behind it all, of course, was a simple sense of personal and class superiority that he based first in technocratic/meritocratic achievement and then in moralistic posturing and self-flagellation. He and his associates were never the "best and the brightest", they only thought of themselves as such. I, for one, am not sorry to see him pass from the scene.

Read his obit here.

More Pennsylvania Pictures -- Tamaqua

We were up in Tamaqua a few days ago and stopped for lunch at the Railway Station. It's a lovely old building, the interior of which has been converted into a restaurant and a couple of curio shops. My wife had eaten there before, with her "lunch bunch", but it was a new experience for me.


The main dining room was open but we chose to sit in the bar area. It seemed cozier.


The food was pretty good -- basic American cuisine. We plan to return soon. After eating I took my camera for a walk while my wife checked out the shops.



Then it was back home, where I found these shots awaiting me in our front yard.

China Diary -- Part 30 Wuhan

In Wuhan we visited the Hubai Provincial Museum, a magnificent, world-class collection that features artifacts from the Tomb of Zenghouyi [Marquis Yi -- a fifth-century BC imperial official]. It is a magnificent assemblage of weapons, bronzes, ceramics, and lacquers -- one of the great treasures of the world. Here are a couple of examples:




The highlight of the exhibit, at least for me, was a collection of musical instruments including this magnificent bronze bell assemblage.


The museum also contained a fascinating anthropological display.


China is quite proud that several early hominins have been discovered there, and the state is pushing hard on an "out of Asia" theory of human origins. Several of the displays were of fossils purported to show anatomical continuities between early and modern Asian populations.

I like museums and was enchanted by the exhibits, but apparently not everyone was as taken by the experience as was I.


We couldn't linger because we were scheduled to attend a concert in which musicians played instruments modeled on the ones we had just seen in the exhibits, so we assembled and walked over to the concert hall.

When we arrived an earlier show was just letting out. Here are a few of the actors. I don't know just what they represent, but they certainly are striking.


Here's the show we saw.



Interesting, but I would have preferred a little more time with the exhibits.

Happy Fourth of July Everyone

China Diary -- Part 29 Jingzhou to Wuhan

We went ashore at Jingzhou and boarded buses for the trip to Wuhan, the capital of Hubai province.



There seemed to be an inordinately large number of people spending their days staring at the surface of the river, but considering the early retirement age and the poverty of many retired people in China that's to be expected.

Our journey took us through some of the most fertile lands in China and the peasantry are reputed to be the most prosperous in the country -- living in two- and sometimes three-storey homes that, we were told, are magnificently decorated on the inside.


That may be, but there were still plenty of people living in ramshackle accommodations such as these.


And while we saw some evidence of mechanized farming....


Most of the farmers we saw made do with far more traditional methods.


Somehow it was refreshing to be traveling across semi-dry land after several days on the river. The procession of rice paddies, lotus pools, and fish ponds however soon became a bit boring, so I dozed off and didn't waken again until my wife poked me to tell me that we were pulling into Wuhan.

Sarah Palin to Resign as Governor

Read about it here. The Anchoress is all over it, following news reports, blogs and twitter feeds. Check her out here. Gotta hit the road. More later.

Well, not really. I have nothing to add to the storm of commentary that is swelling through the blogosphere. I think that the attacks on Sarah, and especially on her family, have been beneath contempt and I never bought the argument that she was unqualified for high office. Her qualifications were at least as respectable as Obama's and to argue otherwise is simply to reveal a nasty streak of class bigotry.

MSNBC is hopefully predicting that she is out of politics for good. I hope she isn't -- Sarah Palin is one of the most electrifying political talents of our time. I will be sad to see her go.

UPDATE:

I like Mark Steyn's take on the reaction to Sarah's departure:

Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to - what's the word? - "empathize"? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you'd have to turn into under that scenario?

National office will dwindle down to the unhealthily singleminded (Clinton, Obama), the timeserving emirs of Incumbistan (Biden, McCain) and dynastic heirs (Bush). Our loss.

Read it here.

Increasingly our national politics has become a freak show. I am sick and tired of the self-styled "best and brightest". Sarah at least had a refreshing whiff of normalcy about her. It is sad to see her go.

UPDATE:

Apparently she is not going quietly -- she's taking the offensive. Read about it here.

You go girl!

Perspectives on China-US Relations -- Fallows and Ferguson

David Brooks, NY Times columnist, traveled out to some thing called the Aspen Ideas Conference [one of those silly things where over-educated fools get together to confirm for each other their elevated self-regard]. Now don't get me wrong -- I do not disapprove of such things. They are opportunities for smart people to engage in what Jacques Barzun described as "mental play" at a fairly high level. My problem with the Aspen Institute events and TED and such things is that so much of what you find there is so excruciatingly banal. What interests me most about such things is not the ideas presented by the speakers, but consideration of the thought processes and intellectual assumptions lying behind their presentations.

While at the Aspen event Brooks sat in on a debate between Niall Ferguson, historian provocateur, and James Fallows, former defense journalist, on the subject of the future relationship between China and the United States. Basically, Ferguson sees trouble ahead and Fallows doesn't. I tend to side with Ferguson, who actually knows whereof he speaks having studied the effect of finance on world history for several decades, rather than Fallows who is after all merely a journalist who currently resides in and writes about China.

The difference between the two perspectives is embodied in an exchange reported by Brooks.

At one point, while Fallows was defending Chinese intentions, Ferguson shot back: “You’ve been in China too long.” Fallows responded that there must be a happy medium between being in China too long and being in China too little. [What Brooks neglects to report is that Fallows' response was initially "And you've been in academia too long"]

Brooks, being a journalist, thinks Fallows wins, but Ferguson has a point. Understanding based in systematic scholarly study, undertaken at a distance and informed by a broad perspective, is in many ways superior to the kind of narrow understanding one picks up on the ground. All too often journalists confuse the opinions expressed by their contacts with truth. Fallows seems to rely primarily on his personal impressions gained from interviews with Chinese officials, but such contacts, as Fallows must recognize, are limited in scope and extremely biased. Ultimately Ferguson's argument is based in close analysis of the economic relationships that have developed between the two countries. Fallows' perspective relies on his understanding of the psychology of Chinese officials. It would be hard to find a more subjective methodology than that. I have to go with Ferguson. He at least bases his opinion in hard facts.

A side note based on my personal experience:

Fallows cites the example of Xi'an where American investment has brought local prosperity. I was in Xi'an myself just a few weeks ago and, like Fallows, was impressed with the prosperity of the city's middle-class who supported a thriving local consumer culture. But as soon as we left the downtown shopping/restaurant areas, I was even more impressed by the grinding poverty of so much of the region's population. There are real social problems looming in Xi'an.

Read Brooks' column here.

Here is a link to the relevant portion of the Ferguson-Fallows discussion.

Here is a short comment by Fallows on the interchange in which he recognizes that it

"illustrate[s] two different ways of approaching and assessing evidence, and two different styles of presentation and argument"

but then dismisses it with a particularly noxious form of essentialist thinking.

Objecting to Obama

The Obama coalition continues to fray. James Kirchick, Assistant Editor of the New Republic and until lately a big Obamaphile, objects to Barry's policy regarding Iran and Honduras. Writing in the Daily News, he opines:

The administration's response to the events in Iran was predictable given its obsession with "engaging" a regime that shows no interest in returning the favor.

Yet while distancing ourselves from democratic forces in Iran under the guise of respect for that government's sovereignty, we have been quite eager to "meddle" in the domestic politics of Honduras. Worse, we have wound up on the wrong side.

Read the whole thing here.

China Diary -- Part 28 The Dams

The next morning found us docked at Sandouping. We went ashore again, this time to visit China's largest civil engineering project and the largest water control project in the world -- the Three Gorges Dam. As was so often the case on the Yangtze, a dense fog settled over the river, obscuring objects and structures on the far bank.


The dam is huge -- four times larger than Hoover [Boulder] Dam.


Like governments everywhere the state took great pains to emphasize time and again how the Three Gorges Dam exemplified the wonderful things that the rulers were doing for the people, and, this being China, the point was made over and over that this was bigger and better than anything else in the world. This kind of overt boosterism reminded me of the kind of bragging competition that the United States and France engaged in a century ago, or the absurd claims advanced by Soviet authorities in the mid-twentieth century or Texas braggadocio of the same period. It's harmless, of course, and amusing, but it betrays a certain strain of status anxiety in the national culture.

Back on the boat we continued down the river toward the Gezhou Dam, affording me the opportunity to take pictures of life along the river.





Finally we arrived at the Gezhou Dam where we passed through another set of locks, then we disembarked at Jingzhow where we finally bade farewell to the Yangtze. We boarded buses and set out toward our next destination -- Wuhan.

Latest from Iowahawk

Iowahawk digs into the Cap and Trade bill which, apparently, was never read by anybody and contains a few provisions that might surprise you.

In order to secure the votes of wavering Democrats, House leaders Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman inserted several last minute amendments to the legislation, including provisions for national oxygen rationing, witch burnings, dousings, and phrenology research. But the one that has seemingly stoked a grassroots backlash is the controversial Sexually Inexperienced Citizen Environmental Volunteer Amendment. The wording of the amendment calls for all American virgins over the age of 21 to register with the Selective Sacrifice Board, for possible use as victims in nationally televised vivisections intended to "supplicate the Earth-Spirits."

Reaction, in some quarters, was swift and harsh. Robert 'Shadowfyre' Jardocki of the Wizard and Warlocks Guild called it "an affront to all Virtual America, from Second Life to World of Warcraft," and vowed his group would cast the "most powerful lobbying spell the country has ever seen." Denise 'Lady Gwynnethynn' Kelly of the American Society of Renaissance Faire Royalty decried it as "a unconstitutional attack on our members and their ladies in-waiting." The National Association of Space Fantasists made an impassioned "call to light sabers," while the Brotherhood of Sports Bar Regulars vowed a "million replica jersey march" on Washington to stop its passage. Other groups uniting to oppose the bill include MENSA, the Society for the Identification of Motion Picture Continuity Problems, and the American Association of Anonymous Comment Thread Trolls.

Read the whole thing here.

China Diary -- Part 27 The River Locks

The next stop on our river excursion was the Three Gorges Dam, but first we had to pass through the locks.


I had not realized just how long the process would be. We entered the lock early in the evening and waited and waited and waited.


The reason for the wait was that operating the lock is an expensive proposition and it didn't make sense to open it just to let one boat through. So we waited through the evening for more boats to come. Eventually a barge and another cruise boat appeared and took their places inside the lock.


It was a close fit.


Then as the hours passed and the sky darkened another barge and another, and another took their place.


Finally in the middle of the night the lock was full. The gates closed behind us, the water level sank, and when the gates opened before us we sailed on into the night.

New Firefox

Downloaded and installed Firefox 3.5. I like it, much better than earlier versions. For a detailed review go here.