Salacious to Read In

I’m very lucky as my daughters still allow me to read to them.  Someday it will end.  But we’ll have logged in more than a few shelves by then.  And tonight I find myself flipping between two notably different worlds.  With my older daughter it is the charmed salons of the early nineteenth century Russian aristocracy.  Pierre, bereft of spine, has tossed his resolutions to the wind and is drinking wildly; gambling with abandon and hugging live bears in the opening scenes of War and Peace.  We’ll be with him for some time now, as he slowly, painfully and memorably matures.   How immediate, and familiar, how Western European, Russia feels among the overeducated elite of the nineteenth century. 

Usually it’s me that gets sleepy but I’m pacing myself pretty well this evening having invested in a nap a few hours back.  It’s my daughter who calls for lights-out.  The little one demands I read to her as well.  “I’m still up!”  “OK, OK.”  And now, it is some hundred and forty years later and I’m in a boy’s dormitory, with Holden Caulfield at his prep school he’s been thrown out of, somewhere in suburban New York. 

Now we’re dealing with boogers and farts and lots of swearing that must have been really salacious to read in 1945:  “You God damn moron.”  “What the hell happened?”  "About me for Chrissake!"  "All that David Copperfield kind of crap."  I am finding this at odds with my more recent memories of “Franny and Zooey” and “Raise High the Roof Beams Carpenters” where the Glass prodigy children are similarly dissatisfied with the world, but complain in much cleaner prose.  Each child is frighteningly intelligent and it feels like a rare pleasure to be amidst them as they complain their way through life after “It’s a Wise Child.” 

My little one is asleep before Holden can get out of his “lousy” conversation with his loser roommate.  I’ll stick with it.  I was only twelve when I read the book for school.  As I recall they made me get a note from my parents, which meant I would absolutely read it. I seem to recall things get better when he gets out of Pencey Prep and up into New York City.

Out. Again.

 Power’s out.  Again.  Fortunately I was on a Skype call that was being routed through the 4G network and not my home wifi.  So my call wasn’t dropped, but the computer shut down and all the lights were suddenly cut.  Its mid morning, so the interruption is minimal.  We don’t have to run for candles and matches to see.  I’ll finish this call then take stock of things.

Without raising perceptible noise, I gestured to the ayi who poked her head in the door, that it was a charging issue.  I did this by running my hand back and forth and back and forth, to suggest what I’d do when I got the card:  I'd swipe it in the power meter.  She looked confused, as usual, so I muted the call and tried to explain verbally.  Standing, I took my call into the bathroom and shut door.  As I did I realized that the light switch I’d automatically flipped when entering wasn’t working any better than anything else that relied on a current.  I pulled the door ajar and considered how to relieve myself discretely. 

Once again, the burden is on us to go out and monitor our electric usage so that we anticipate when it's getting low.  I don’t know if that’s what everyone else in the neighborhood does or if that’s what my ayi does.  We don’t.  And so, at approximately six to eight week intervals, we look up and notice the power has gone off again, like today and run off abruptly, to deal with it.

The Mrs. has gone out to secure cash from the ATM so she can go to the front desk to pay the management company, in cash to charge up the card.  I look around for things I can do off line.  Writing then, for a few more minutes at least, is one way to be productive.  I’m racing against the computer’s clock, as it will announce its intention to shut down, shortly.  (Twelve percent remaining!)  Dozing off, I’m reminded of another fine, traditional way to kill time when there is suddenly nothing more to plug into.  Rest seems more appealing than typing emails with my two thumbs into my phone. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Interdependent Development

Today, old friends will visit.  My classmate from grad school is a diplomat, with the Chinese Foreign Service, currently stationed in Berlin.  Back home, we insisted he and the family come by for a visit.  He thinks very quickly and speaks even faster about China’ international relations shifting constantly between Chinese and English. And I always come away from our discussions exhausted and feeling so much better about U.S. China relations and China’s future, in general. 

Our families drew close to one another when he was stationed in Japan.  I got to visit him a number of times and together we made sense of the regular kerfuffles in Sino-Japanese relations.  He was there with his family during the Fukushima disaster and his wife and kids were understandably nervous.  They came and stayed with us in Beijing for a number of months while things were sorted out in Tokyo.  And today the whole family will join us for this sunny Sunday.

We go at it back and forth for hours.  Is this rift I’ve read about between the president and the premier really irreparable?  Which of your immediate neighbors do you think China has made the most progress with towards establishing something trusting?  Do you see the TPP as an opportunity or a threat to China?  The answers are always candid, plausible, and err on the side of mature, interdependent development between the U.S. and China.  I always wonder if he is an outlier within the Ministry of if all the diplomats trend toward this philosopher-sage comportment.

Vietnam keeps coming up.  My friend and I think much of his countrymen have a deep if somewhat paternal respect for their indigestible southern neighbor.  He fully expects to see Vietnam but not necessarily many other southern neighbors, develop self-sustaining industry.  He makes a not too subtle face when we suggest a Pakistani lunch spot and so, perhaps appropriately enough we wind up at our local Vietnamese restaurant for Pho. 

Back home, his wife presented us with a painting she did of a plumb blossom, to match my wife’s Chinese name.  Simple, majestic, she explains that her teacher could do it in just a few minutes but that it took her more than an hour.  Their daughter has grown and suddenly become very talkative.  My daughters smother her with attention, recalling how they used to play when she was younger, only a few years ago. 

Tasty, Boney, Riverfish

My brother-in-law is part owner of a fish restaurant.  Don’t think “Legal Seafoods”.  He’s got freshwater, river-fish, served on a plate with tons of spicy toppings and lots of little bones.  I associate all that spicy, ma-la taste to the Sichuan, but my brother in law is from Shandong.  He and his Binzhou mates have put this operation together. 

We roll up to a mall in the nearby exburb of WangJing.  There are dozens of restaurants all around, each with flashing lights, glaring menus.  I wouldn’t normally think of a restaurant as a smart business bet in China.  Restaurants are manifestly popular.  Young Chinese love to go out and spend money on food.  There are apparently next to no barriers to entry though, with everybody in China seemingly capable of making Chinese food.  Why would anyone want to go to your place, in particular, amidst all this neon?

We are shown to our table by a nice young lass who leads us through the floor.  The place is packed.  We are taken to a small little bao jian room, where everyone has been waiting for us with the spread on the table.  We pile in, exchange greetings and begin to sample the delicacies that are all laid out. Everything is spicy.  Fortunately there is a large decanter of dry red wine at the ready.  And after a moment, the fish arrives, on a large raised platter.  It’s dark in the room, but the presentation is appetizing and the taste . . . is lovely. 

My older daughter is a vegetarian.  My brother in law graciously suggested that it wouldn’t be a problem, as she could have fish soup, instead.  She picked at the spicy snacks and the fried bread.  But mostly it was all about the fish.  If I had opened a restaurant, I would have figured that having lots of things to suit lots of tastes was best.  But what do I know?  He’s got a fish restaurant, serving nothing but tasty, boney, river fish, and it's stuffed to the gills.  

Bring the spicey river fish to New York.