Faith That Never Had Been

Today is Thursday, all day long.  Up early in Japan.  The light pours in the hotel window and the day is underway.  If it were Beijing I’d probably roll over.  It’s 4:30 in the morning back home.  But here in Tokyo it’s an hour onward and we may as well get on with it.  I read a book on the plane that was disappointing.  I could have guessed. Regina Abrami, William Kirby and Warren McFarlan, a Harvard trio have cobbled together thoughts on the au courant topic: “Can China Lead?”   Any of the authors on their own, in their own milieu might have been interesting but Frankenstein-ed together as a “China book of the moment” offered nothing particularly original to support their tart disdain.  “Can China Lead?”  Well, their short answer was “no.”  Surprise.  They’re not ready.  We spend one-hundred pages to determine that succession is a weakness in the political system.  We know all this.  There was nothing new nor particularly prescient in what they had to say. 

I came upon this book and a half-a-dozen others from different professor’s syllabus, which I inherited.  It’s the second book from this list that I’ve read and I tried to read it with an open mind.  But not unlike “Will the Boat Sink the Water?” which also came from this list, this was, for different reasons, completely underwhelming.  You begin to understand why Chinese people can become so knee-jerk dismissive of foreign analysis.  Every chapter that is supposed to be examining the weighty question:  Can China Lead, ends with a “What does this mean for your company?” type summary.  “Who Are Your Chinese Technology Competitors?”  “What are their Strengths?” Business books can be so infantilizing, at times.  All the worse if you’re lulled into seriousness with a chapter or two written by a historian.    

I made it through this glorified HBR article, some two hours into the flight.  I kept hoping William Kirby, whose work as a historian I do respect would offer something interesting.  This format doesn’t suit him, at all.  I stood up and put the book back in my backpack overhead and pulled down my “Cambridge Illustrated History of China” ahh, now that is another matter.  That’s a text I’m using for my upcoming course.  This is glorious. 

Fair enough, it’s easier to offer substantive insights about the past than it is to “offer useful prognostication about the future. The “China 2034” chapter of “Can China?” taught me little beyond how not to write a scenarist’s consideration of one country’s fate.  In the ‘Cambridge History’ we’re into the Sui period between the Han and the Tang.  In the main tomb like Cambridge History of China series where each dynasty is afforded a few thousand pages, the book about this unique period has yet to be written. The Age of Division:  The Three Kingdoms, “The Sixteen Kingdoms, The Eastern Jin, The Northern Wei, the Northern Zhou . . .  It all gets rather confusing and reminiscent of European Medieval period with which it is contemporaneous.

I suppose Chinese and Westerners alike tend to disregard these periods in their civilizational past.  I like the disorder. The possibilities that never were, the introduction of a new faith that never had been.  But in Europe the pagan faiths don’t last long.  The Vikings perhaps are the last hold outs, but in China native genius and Buddhist faith will spar and embrace for the rest of Chinese time.  China is remarkable to be so resilient when we consider the fate of the Aztecs or say the Buddhist grottos of Afghanistan. 

Thursday, 4/26/18

Don’t I Look Japanese?

Time is constant.  But the perception of how much we have at our disposal can fluctuate wildly.  I went to bed sure I had an 8:30AM flight.  And I got up early so I could be ready to leave for the airport at 6:30AM.  There’d be no time for the gym.  Goodbye’s would be to people fast asleep.  I knew all this was so.  I’d checked the email from Ctrip before I went to bed.  And upon closer look I’d read an old email, from the last time I’d flown Asiana a year ago.  My flight was actually, at 10:40AM.  Amazing.  Great.  I have plenty of time.

I went to the gym.  Great to be there.  Came home and got the kids up.  Had a cup a coffee and a bowl of fruit with them all as I’d normally do.  Waved everyone off.  Got a few more emails done.  Packed up what I had to and all the while allowed a sense of broad calm as it concerned time, to govern my consciousness.  When it was time to call the car, I was considering just how I’d spend all the extra time I’d have this morning in the airport, after I arrived ahead of time.  

Cab came.  Off I went.  It was a bit later than I’d suspected but not by much.  I still had an extra twenty minutes from when I’d likely get there and when they’d say it was too late to check in.  And about four minutes after leaving my home I ran right into concretized traffic on the charming little lane I live on.  There is an automobile show on at the nearby convention center.  I knew that.  We’d be here for a bit.  Yes indeed.  My driver boldly cut up into the oncoming lane, advancing ahead about one hundred yards.  And then, had to cut back and we sat. I craned my neck and sat up in my chair.  Nothing was moving up ahead. Time now registered itself all rather differently. 

Ten precious minutes into the wait, without ten yards to our name, I told the driver to do a U-turn.  We’d try another method.  Perhaps I should have gotten out and walked the kilometer or two up passed the convention center.  Perhaps I should have tried to swing around to the north and cross Tianbei Lu and Jing Mi Lu to swing back around.  But This convention center would be tough to get around no matter what I did.  His GPS said to use Gao Bai Lu and go down to the elevated high way.  And as he turned right to do so I knew there would be no way I would ever make my flight. 

Called.  Cancelled it.  There was a one-way direct that wasn’t so expensive that would get me in earlier and to Haneda rather than Narita, which was preferred.  A happy ending except for the fact that this Friday is the beginning of Golden Week in Japan.  Everyone would be leaving.  I will need to be leaving and now all the one-way flights back home are appallingly high.  “No.  That’s too much.  Huh.  No way.  That’s insane.  What about the flight I just gave up?  Really?  No longer available?”   I’m juggling for how I’d get home.  There’s a 2:00AM fight on Saturday morning that may be the pick of the littler. 

Now I’m laptop up on the commuter rail into Shinegawa from Haneda, digging all the Japanese business traffic. “Mamanaku  Shinegawa Eki.”  I managed to get a SIM card from a Swedish lady at the Softbank counter.  I asked and she mentioned she wasn’t particularly interested in visiting China.  Befuddled I adopted a veteran’s posture, suggesting this was all rather misguided.  She asked whether Hong Kong might not suffice.  I asked her colleague where she was from in China.  I’d asked in Mandarin.  “How did you know?” She replied in Chinese. “Don’t I look Japanese?”  “I don’t know.” I replied.  I merely know that there probably aren’t many Japanese customers looking for SIM cards and if they staff an English speaker they probably staff a Chinese speaker as well.

Wednesday, 4/25/18

Truly Asinine Music

A Nihilist’s death.  A pointless death that’s fit for a poet, secured in the name of science.  Bazarov managed to survive the duel and even a broken heart.  But Typhoid has slowly, steadily laid him low.  My younger one and I finished “Fathers and Sons” this evening.  Bazarov had cut himself treating a Typhus patient.  Cool and rationale as ever he accurately predicted that he’d likely contracted the disease and would soon suffer the consequences. 

Diseases were all the rage for us this time last year.  I looked back over the Wiki page for Typhoid just now and recalled that I was familiar with all the photos of contaminated wells, spotted chests and the infamous Typhoid Mary Mallon herself, lying there, black and white in a hospital bed. We’d been preparing for a trip to East Africa and were considering all the shots we needed. We’re considering Siberia this year so we’ll likely only need mosquito repellent.

Was down in Kerry Center today to see an old friend.  He’d reached out on LinkedIn and we swiftly agreed to a lunch down near his residence there.  I remember helping him with his applications to college in the U.S. twenty years ago and the friend who introduced us at that time whom we’ve long since lost touch with. 

He suggested Element Fresh, which I always enjoy.  I had it in my mind to disregard my vegetarian regimen from the last few months and have their Greek Salad with big cubes of feta and large hunks of lamb, grilled just so.  “We don’t have it any more” she told me.  This was like someone suggesting Kosar’s no longer carried bialys.  Well, this veggie salad will do then.  That’s fine. 

We began to reconnect on the last two decades when suddenly, truly asinine music of no distinction began blaring throughout the environment.  We were in a corner with a speaker right over our head.  No, no, no.  I jumped up, automatically, entitled, and strode up to the first employee I could find and insisted they turn it down. I told three other people and reiterated the message.  Finally, I grabbed our waiter once again and said, “Turn it down or we’re leaving!”  They turned it down.  My friend was probably recalling this side of my personality that he’d otherwise perhaps forgotten.  

Tuesday, 4/24/18

What Became of Him

My mom gave the book to me two years back.  If my mom gives me a book I ought to read it and I did not wait long to begin it after she handed it my way.  I recall I was down with a stomach problem in a hotel when I was mid-way through.  The cover of the version I was given had little circular pictures of innocent British children on it suggesting something sinister was afoot within “A High Wind in Jamaica” and of course there certainly is. 

I’ve a pal who’s a bit of Jamaican ethnomusicologist.  And I knew If I was to share it with anyone next it would probably be him.  So, as I recall, I asked him for his address and sent him a copy suggesting he’d enjoy the turn of the century staging of this twisted tale from his favorite island.  That was probably a year and a half ago. 

I got a note from him this morning saying he’d lost the book. He was now two-thirds of the way through and couldn’t find it.  He’d grown extremely frustrated.  Looked everywhere, considered getting a used replacement and then, after he’d given up, he located it in his downstairs bathroom.  Loosing books can be rough stuff.  I was in Taipei last year on the high-speed rail and lost “Herzog” by Saul Bellow in the back sleeve of the seat in front of me after departing the train in Taizhong.  There goes my train.  There goes my book.  I filled out a card and showed them my I.D. and was wonderfully able to pick up the book forty-eight hours later at the Taipei station. 

I thought about “A High Wind in Jamaica” for the first time in a while.  I explained to my friend that I still hadn’t gotten over the sudden, remorseless death of my namesake character in the novel.  All the children forget about John so suddenly until their mother asks them what became of him, when they are reunited many, many months later.  I checked and it appears that Welsh author Richard Hughes and I share a birthday, which certainly explains everything.

Monday, 4/23/18