Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Turb_A_Lance




On the plane ride up the eastern seaboard of China.  I’m probably somewhere over Shandong or northern Jiangsu by now.   I had two delicious, monster size slices of pizza last night in Shenzhen, and I feel like they were immediately converted into some pachyderm storage hump in my stomach before me, which I am now regretfully sporting.  The gals on Shenzhen airlines asked:  “Chicken with rice, or fish with rice?”  Neither please. 

I am on Shenzhen Airlines because it too is a “Star Alliance” partner.  The food trays look different as are the staff’s uniform.  Perhaps not surprisingly the in flight entertainment is exactly the same as my beloved Air China.  It is precisely the same insipid movie I am trying to ignore as I did on the flight down.  Turbulence are, of course preventing me from using the facilities.  I used to wonder why every single flight one ever takes in China, anywhere, always has a multiple bouts of turbulence.  Every time, like clock work, and the stewardesses always pronounce the word incorrectly as if they all learned it incorrectly from the same flight-attendant school manual.  “We are experiencing some turb-a-lance.”



Last year I read James Fallows, “China Airborne” which pointed out that, because all airspace is controlled by the military, no change in flight plans are allowed.  So that, in the U.S., if one pilot encountered turb-a-lance, they would radio back and all other pilots would adjust their altitude or direction accordingly to ensure a smoother ride.  No such luck here, as we bounce and shake the familiar eastern seaboard bounce and shake. 

The Times had a good article yesterday on the situation between China and Vietnam.  Inside they quoted my former professor, David Zweig whom I studied with at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, but who has been teaching now for years in Hong Kong University.  He makes a very important point, which up till now I hadn’t considered:  China’s default position for regional relations is to keep them unilateral.  Bilateral negotiations where China is just one among many stakeholders is, for matters of core interest at least, an anathema.  Regionally China is the center and conceptually there are no true equals.  But if the older brother is supposed to evidence wisdom and high moral standards, this week with water cannons blasting leaves us a bit 难兄难弟[1]

The Philippines has a mutual defense treaty with the United States.  They can afford flatly deny China bilateral negotiations, given the powerful suggestion of U.S. backing.  Vietnam, without any such back and with no sea to protect them from a land based invasion, must be more prudent.  And China was glad to have their engagement and support for unilateral negotiations over the Paracel Island dispute.  Having abruptly asserted their claim and ignored diplomatic niceties with Vietnam this week, China has effectively illustrated the uselessness of unilateral negotiations.  Who has anything to gain by dealing with China directly if this is the result.  Every other regional player with the possible exception of Cambodia and Laos, and of course North Korea, will either decide to hang together or hang separately, hence forth.



 A bit formulaic perhaps but I aint through with stride piano players.  I went ahead an cued up another gent I hadn’t heard of before, the one Dick Wellstood.  Born, like me, in suburban New York, there in Greenwich Connecticut, Dick Wellstoood doesn’t sound like he’s from Greenwhich.  On a live album that sounds like it was recorded at a Cricket pitch, “Live at the Sticky Wicket” in 1986, we get to hear Dick Wellstood speak between songs and I’d have pegged him for having grown up in Flatbush.  Perhaps he did.  The Wiki entry is a bit paltry. 
I liked the fact that he was one of the few stride piano players who came of age during, and not before the bebop ear.  At the time of the his death in 1987 he was the pianist for the Bemelman's Bar of the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan where, as I recall, Bobby Short must have also been a regular feature.  I tried to bring him on board the plane, but the sync with Rdio that had me good for a tune or two on my iPhone, strutting through the ultra modern, moderner-than-though airport in Shenzhen, but he conked by the time I reached my seat.  Blue Mitchell is filling in for him, nicely. 

OK.  All devices must be powered off.  Over to my Kingsley Amis novel of drunken Welshman and Welshwomen. 




[1] nánxiōngnándì:  lit. hard to differentiate between elder and younger brother (idiom) / fig. one is just as bad as the other

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