I Need To Know Definitively

It’s Monday here.  Been Monday all day.  The U.S. is waking up to its Monday right about now.  That squares us at the beginning of the final day, before the election.  I’ll be traveling but I’m trying to keep my Wed morning free so I can watch the results come in.  I need to know definitively that he is defeated. 

What prolonged fifth act! This drama does have an end.  We all know when it will occur, and it has been on the horizon for nearly two years now . . . until tomorrow.  Is there anyone besides the people who derive ad revenue from news programs who isn’t ready to see this thing put to rest?

I am so fatigued by this routine of checking up on this contest.  I invest nearly an hour every morning reviewing different news sources.  What is the narcissist’s latest gaff?  What is the latest assault against HRC that has suddenly made the impossible seem possible again?  What has each of the major papers said about this?  I usually take time to search out detailed China news.  I haven’t in months.  This nonsense is all consuming.

Even in the darkest hours of this campaign, I’ve had a core belief that Trump would never be elected.  While I acknowledge the possibility and the risk therein, my read has always been that he was ultimately unelectable and that there would be tissue rejection from the body politic.  Even deeper, I have quietly marvelled that the U.S. system is strong enough to endure this challenge, albeit an absurd sort of possibility that the people who designed the constitution could never have anticipated.  And yet they did.   This is a rough turning of the soil, but its important to aerate things this way and stare at who we are.  China is not allowed to do so and, is the Party rule is ultimately weaker as a result.

She Still Cuts

My mother-in-law’s come by for an indefinite number of days.  This sounds like the set up for a Henny Youngman joke.  But I’m very happy to have my daughter’s lao lao here with us in Beijing.  She’s in town from Shandong and she has, as always, brought enough crab apples, sweet potatoes and cabbage to last the winter.  And most importantly, she has brought a sack of steamed boazi. I've already had one, smothered in spicy bean sauce.  I'm telling you, Baozi will one day compete with pizzas and burritos in the US of A.   We’ll restart our Atkins effort some other week.

She lived with us for my first year of fatherhood, in a small apartment in San Francisco and it is a remarkably cyclical feeling to see her with my older daughter who she helped to raise during that critical year.  She’s a tall, stately woman with a full main of long black hair and though she doesn’t do Tai Chi in the back yard with a sword any longer she still cuts a mean figure.  And by now my daughter, whom I can still see crying in her arms, towers over her.

When she comes we break out the mahjong tiles.  I have an antique set that I bought in a flea market fifteen years ago.  I’d venture it’s from the 30’s or perhaps earlier.  The wood on the case is a bit moulded but the pieces are wooden with what might be ivory caps and they have remarkable old patterns painted on them.  It isn’t difficult to imagine someone throwing these around during the Japanese occupation or sitting beneath Jiang Kai-shek's portrait and the Kuomintang flag.  I don’t think we’ve had the set out since the last time she visited. 

And once again, the girls and I try to learn to play.  We all turn our tiles to her and ask if this three of a kind or that pairing is workable.  But my mother-in-law’s Mandarin is especially difficult to understand.  Shandong is part of the greater, northern China Mandarin belt, so it’s more of an accent than a dialect difference.  Perhaps like a Chinese person with strong English-as-a-second-language skills trying to make sense of a discussion in Glasgow or in Montego Bay.  She patiently tries to explain how different combinations can mean two-times or three-times the money were we to be playing for keeps.  I nod politely, and say “right” but I’m lost. 

This was how it was back-in-the-day in San Francisco in 2001.  My wife would come home to find us talking, laughing, doing the dishes and would interrupt us to say: “She’s talking about the weather, you’re answering about the traffic.  You’re not having the same conversation.”  But we were.  And perhaps it's the secret to our success.  It’s the subtle things, beneath our breath, that often lead to annoyance or regretted rejoinders.  If they happen here, neither of us are the wiser.  A big smile’s been good enough for us.

Away From Zherkov

Tolstoy has Field Marshall Kutuzov retreating up the Danube.  Napoleon is on his trail.   Things have suddenly gone bad.  We all know it’s going to get a lot worse.  I’m catching a few pages of the adventure with my older daughter before she heads out shopping with mom and sis.

Kutuzov retreats to Melk.  “Hey do you remember Melk?  You’ve been there!”  “Was it in Ireland?”  Oh dear.  I pretend to pray to a deity. “Please.  I tried hard.  I meant well.” She laughs.  “It’s in Austria.  Remember the place were we went up to the monastery and momma didn’t want to go up, but we went up together and it had those beautiful . . . “  It’s drawing a blank. 

 

“Charlemagne was the last one who pulled it off.  He gets Western Europe unified and then it falls apart when his son Pippin takes over.  It takes about one thousand years before someone is audacious enough to do it again.  But Europe doesn't hold the way China does."  Her sister needs to discuss something with her.  And then we're back along the Danube.  We learn that Prince Andrey is heading to Krems.  “You’ve been there too.  We ate in that outdoor garden there and . . .” Prince Andrew thinks he has good news.  But he will soon be told otherwise. 

I don’t know how to pronounce the standard Romanization of Russian, but one character, a hussar is named Zherkov forces me to make assumptions.  Presumably Americans at least would pronounce that ‘zz-erkov.’  I however have lived in China too long.  The default pinyin Romanization of Chinese language renders the ‘zh’ sound as an aspirated “j” sound.  It appears daily.  “he walked away from Zherkov, leaving him at a loss for words.”  I look at her after pronouncing it.  I show her how its spelled and we laugh.  The cab's here.  They have to go now. 

The Phalanx Will Cross

Some people enjoy driving.  I suppose I enjoy driving out on some adventure somewhere.  But driving around town, that suburban aeration compelling us to use cars for distances of more than one kilometer, is deadening. 

There’s nothing to stop me from biking to the grocery.  I could even phone in an order.  But once someone (my wife) says: “drop me off and then you get the kids and swing by later and pick me up,” which is a reasonable, suburban thing to say, you’re well beyond what’s workable on a bike. 

I drive over to the traffic light on Tian Bei Lu.  The on coming traffic eyes me suspiciously.  My wife eyes me suspiciously.  The light turns.  I have the right of way, but who cares, the on coming traffic in the left turning lane will try now to form a phalanx of leftward motion that will arrest my progression until they are all through or till I advance far enough to stop one of them from proceeding.  That, or veer hard right immediately as the light turns and advance quickly to thwart the first car coming.  If your angle traverses his or hers first, the unwritten law suggests he or she will stop and you will have secured the right to advance. 

This is how we cross our intersection, every day.  I drop the Mrs. off and head back over to get some money out of the ATM from the HSBC machine near the place I'll buy things for dinner.  Ahh, but my card isn't in my wallet.  That'll slow you down.  Now I must return to get this card at my wife’s studio.  This time I approach Tian Bei Lu from the same direction, one block down.  I am the first car to approach the red light.  I advance well beyond the proper place.  There is no oncoming traffic here, only the vastness of the New (and already hopelessly weathered) International Convention Center.  One again, traffic turning left, this time from the eastward direction turning into my lane, while I’m waiting at the light, will be my concern.  This time, the phalanx will cross in front of me well past the turning of the light.  I can discipline this line by sticking my car out just far enough so that a two-lane scrum can’t form before me. 

The light turns green and now my objective is to proceed cautiously until I can legitimately interrupt an on coming car’s progression and proceed through, to make my left turn.  I've made it through and accelerate onto the empty road.  My eyes are drawn down to the gas gauge, which was below empty this morning on the school run.  Slowly, I master the urge to ignore it and leave it to the next driver.   Up to the big roundabout and down to the right to the gas station then, where there are still gas attendants who filler-it-up for you. On the air is Herbie Nichols who asks and answers wonderful questions.