Far Away From Home

Cloudy, hot.  It’s Tuesday morning two calls in. I’ve got to head to the New York Times after looking through my emails.  There is Ivanka looking breezy with Steve Manukin who looks waxen, and Jarred with Bibi both smiling at the inauguration of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.  And in the other half of the photos are tear gas canisters raining down on protesters, headlines suggesting fifty-eight dead and over thirteen-hundred injured in Gaza.  Trump, of course, blames the disturbance on Hamas.  I can only imagine the raw reality of so many people, penned into such a small strip of land, unable to leave, unable to prosper, generations of festering.

Beijing is grey today.  It seems a warm, cloudy grey, rather than a day of smog.  Coming in from the country, it isn’t supposed to rain today.  The traffic went well, and we’re moving swiftly enough.  Off to see an old friend who is back in the city from the countryside.  He and his wife are from the revolutionary generation and even though I am gruesomely busy I will make time as we always have something to learn from them when we speak.

Driving into Dongsi, in the old Dongcheng.  A friend’s ATM won’t work.   He called the number on his card and couldn’t get a human being.  He spun round and round in a loop, cursing, demanding an operator.  It’s the same bank as mine.  “Here, call the anti-fraud line.”  I need to dial it every other week.  I inform him that he may need to wait for twenty-minutes before reaching a human being, but he will.  He did.  No problem with his card.  Just needs a different ATM.  Life, far away from home.

And it is grand to try gouji brandy with an old revolutionary who doesn’t drink but with whom I can test my ideas about Chinese history, before I teach my course, next week.  Will Confucianism experience some kind of resurgence?  When might the Party devise a way to transfer power?  What line of reasoning, if any, will China use to persuade the rest of the world, as it concerns power projection?  This was how we spent our lunch, after the stated reason for the visit was through and I’d confirmed that gouji brandy was swell.

Tuesday 05/15/18