Allies and Foes Alike

You notice when you can see stars around these parts.  Between the urban night glare and the pollution we don’t view to many stars. Last night the big dipper was clear as day and today there isn’t a cloud in the sky.  Our cat has decided that reaching over and biting my foot, which is shaking next to her face would be too easy.  She has dashed across the kitchen floor and taken up a position six feet away to stalk my foot from a distance.  She better not. 

The kids staycation is definitely over.  They’re both back at school today.  I was glad to be back up early in the day.  Made it to the gym and got them off.  Had my conference call just like every other Monday morning.  I’m not so sure about the rest of China though.  I believe most people are carrying on with the holiday mode today, and will be for much of the rest of the week.  I was thinking about Lunar Holiday and how this land has taken a break at this particular moon for a few millennium’s worth of time by now.

I caught an Orville Schell clip yesterday.  My wife had sent it along and I clicked on it.  I’ve followed his commentary for the last two decades or so and I’d grown tired of his curmudgeonly and oft repeated slant that China had pulled up all its culture by the roots during the Cultural Revolution and not much of anything ine remained.  He’d suggested as much in a Global Business Network report I’d read in 1998 and when I saw him speak a San Francisco in 2005 he reiterated the same line, almost word for word.  It seemed dated and disingenuous to write off the generation or two’s worth of change that had happened since that particular period.

                                                                  

His clip is catchy and I’m sure making the rounds well beyond me because he compares Trump to Chairman Mao.  A revolutionary, a populist, and egoist, one who delights in turning over the established order and thumbing the nose of allies and foes alike, making “great disorder under heaven.”  The parallels can only go so far, but as a way of putting this phenomenon in a context that is intelligible to China, it is extremely helpful.  I’ve notice a few more clips and a recent article in the New York Review of Books.  I’ll reengage then and see what else prescient he has to say about contemporary China.  It reminds me that I've been reading way too much about the news about the news about the news of the President.  

Monday, 02/06/17