I Fan the Echoes

I was bouncing around this expo center earlier in the month.  Huawei owned it two weeks ago.  Their banners have been folded up and bundled off.  Today the venue is owned by Microsoft.  I presume many of the people inside, like myself, are the same. 

Two weeks ago this was the wrong building.  I’d cabbed it over, the driver couldn’t go down a blocked off street and I piled out here at the large building bedecked with Huawei regalia.  It must be the back of the building I was at yesterday, I reckoned.  I went through security, wandered around and realized I’d reckoned wrong.  This was a side venue and the main event was fifteen minutes across the plaza.  Yes.  Over there..

Naturally I was suspicious once again today, as I cautiously exited the car.  “Are you sure?”  “Yeah.  This is the address you gave me.”  Lots of Microsoft signs, and none that I could see at the “other” building across the plaza.  Soon, my colleague is out with me, in the main hall with my badge that lets me enter.  We cross an bridge-like flourish down into what strikes me quickly as a much smaller hall than the one Huawei had hosted.

Later, riding to friend’s I allow myself to sink into the sophistication of Shanghai’s urban evening.  I gaze out at the lines of plane trees and pedestrian traffic and feel like I’m alone once again, with an old flame and I fan the echoes of our old love story:  I remember why I used to adore you.  I’ll never love you that way again.  But I remember. 

It was probably around that time that I first read the “The True Story Of Ah Q” by Lu Xun.  I’m not sure that I’ve read it since then.  But I probably should.  I’ve forwarded to one and then another China-hand friend the article by Kerry Brown in the Diplomat entitled: “Trump, China and Ah Q” which is powerfully explanatory.  Trump’s unerring ability to find the weakness in others has, it is argued, has caught China off-guard and challenged the nation to confront what he calls “this complicated, half-envious, half-admiring attitude” towards the United States as it finally finds its opponent who has been soft is turning the tables on them.   https://thediplomat.com/2018/10/trump-china-and-ah-q/   It is possible, I think, to hate Trump and yet be fascinated by what his unpredictability has meant for a Chinese leadership that desperately needs stability.

Wednesday 10/24/18