Wife is in the other
room looking over the news on her iPhone.
Xi Jinping will apparently launch a new effort to revive moral
development. This, as the country can’t
be strong by money alone. I asked if it
suggested precisely which vein of Chinese moral thinking would be called
upon. I think this will remain a general
call for moral betterment, rather than a specific Confucian or Legalist
revival. Respect your parents. Respect your teachers. But you can only go so far before you have to
reckon with the gent who overlooks Tiananmen Square. Perhaps the neo-leftists, the neo Maoists are
still reeling from Bo Xilai and now Zhou Yongkang’s demise.
My wife then read off a list of the safest airlines in the
world, compiled by a German publication, which differed substantively from the
tally I’d read recently, elsewhere. Regardless,
air safety is clearly a topic de jour
in the Chinese press and no matter whose list you look at Chinese carriers tend
to come out looking safe. Then she
shared with me a string of things that read like negative counter jabs from the
world, as Chinese soft power makes itself felt globally: Most woman having babies in the American
island of Saipan are Chinese. There is
restaurant now Paris that doesn’t allow Chinese. The city of Changmai in Thailand isn’t
welcoming Chinese people. Some rich
Chinese kid smashed a Ferrari in Singapore and killed some people. Singies are up in arms. Some other fuerdai smashed a car in Canada killing some people. The parents showed up and paid the $2M in
bail, which, as depicted in the Chinese press, shocked the locals.
I’d like to share the link to the Chinese summary of all
this but it is merely a pasting in a WeChat message to me. My wife received it and sent it on. I asked her if she sent it on to others even
though it isn’t verifiable. “It doesn’t
matter if it’s true. It’s reality.” She suggested. Depending on how you look at it, that’s a
complicated statement to get your arms around.
There is and always has been an art to reading through Chinese news to
find the truth and the requisite skills involved are still beyond me. So who is to say? My instinct tells me that perhaps a waiter
was rude to a Chinese patron in Paris, rather than there being a sign somewhere
in town, prohibiting Chinese guests.
But, as my wife intimated, in many Chinese mind’s the prior is “the
reality.” Now she is one more person 奔走相告[1]
Had a great run in with Odean Pope at the gym. I don’t always have a lot of bop on a running
mix but one tune that always takes my mind and my breath away is the live
version of "Mantu Chant" from Odean Pope’s Saxophone Choir’s live disc “Locked
and Loaded” recorded live at the Blue Note in 2006. He simply sheds and sheds and sheds for
nearly nine minutes in that tune.
There’s one vista he reaches where sheets of notes just descend inhumanely
out in unfathomable patterns. I can’t
say for certain but I would imagine that he must have mastered the technique
where in you breath in your nose while simultaneously blowing, because there
are long periods in that tour de force, where he doesn’t otherwise appear to
breathe.
There was a time when I had a challenge finding music by the
man. I’d always had one other album
called Embioto from 1999 I’d liked but that was all I could find. Rdio though, had four albums at the ready. The one I’ve got on is fabulous, recorded the
year after “Locked and Loaded” and is much more ambient and spacious like
something Caetano Veloso, or A Tribe Called Quest might have been involved in,
than the full lunged assault on the live disc.
“The Misled Children Meet Odean Pope” was recorded in 2008. There are apparently a ton of earlier
recordings of him with Max Roach, which I’ll try to dig into as well.
I asked my wife, before heading off whether there was any
mention of Michelle and her visit over here with the girls. Apparently people mentioned her speech, but
didn’t have anything good or bad to say about it. In the western press it was reported that she
focused the theme on the importance of protecting freedoms, which would otherwise
be sure to stir some controversy. I will
have to see if her presentation was only selectively translated. Regardless, I hope she comes away with a
softened, human perspective on the place.
At least we had descent wether for most of her visit.
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