epiphany

One Day Down & Case Closed

The first day of finals is over for me. Most of the students seem to have done well, and I'm quite proud of a few of them who obviously studied very hard and did much better than some of my more advanced students who didn't prepare too well.

Also, after my first exam this morning I arrived at my desk to find a note from Julia, my Chinese teacher, saying that the guitar case had arrived. I ran downtown (with my guitar this time) and bought it. They charged only twenty kuai more than for the smaller case, so I was pleased. I figured it wasn't even worth it to bargue with them since they'd been honest with me and it was a price I was willing to pay.

Now I just have to pack up and ship one of my other suitcases, because there's no way that I can haul my two suitcases, a guitar and a backpack to a taxi, much less through an airport all by myself.

Oh boy.

I start giving my first final in roughly twenty minutes. I'm looking forward to the end of the semester, but last night during a friend's end-of-the-semester party, I developed a case of "spicy stomach," although I haven't eaten anything spicy in a while. It and a mosquito kept me up on and off throughout the night. I took a couple of bismuth tablets this morning and will keep them and toilet paper handy throughout the day. At least today I have only two classes. Hopefully I'll be feeling better before tomorrow's marathon of three classes.

For Sunday

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery [to law]."

Galatians 5:1

You want some pain and swelling with that?

As I was walking to the bus this morning after buying groceries, I noticed a lady with a bucket full of little squirming critters.

Now, seeing ladies selling small creatures along the sidewalk isn't unusual, and the animals are often moving, bubbling or squirting various juices. Dalian is a seafood town, after all, and the second character in the Chinese word for seafood is "fresh." But I'd never seen anyone selling these particular critters before. Normally you see turtles or fish or clams or snails. But these were an unusual color, and they were moving in a more creepish-crawly manner.

She was not selling seafood. She was selling scorpions--a whole bucket full of live scorpions.

When I was in Beijing, I saw a snack booth with a bunch of scorpions, cicadas, seahorses and starfish on sticks, but I figured that they were just there to draw in the curious crowd. Apparently I was wrong. Apparently scorpions are edible, though you shouldn't expect to find me trying them. I don't think I could figure out how to get past the legs, let alone the pinchers and stingers.

However, the thought of eating scorpions leads me to some questions and ponderings. Are scorpions meaty inside like crabs? Maybe you can buy scorpion sized shell crackers. Maybe you just fry them and chomp them down whole. How do you cook them? If you boil them, do they whistle like a lobster? Would the whistle be higher pitched because scorpions are smaller than lobsters? Were the ones I saw in Beijing killed by cooking or impaling? Do you have to wear leather gloves to cook them? Do they taste like chicken or beef? Does the poison add a spicy flavor, or will eating the stinger kill you?

Import life questions, questions to which I never expect to learn the answer.

Truth

"The truth is, being a Christian isn’t about having it more spiritually together than the next guy, or even necessarily sinning less. Rather, the Christian life is about repenting more. We must learn the language of repentance. We should pray that the Lord would grant us repentance—repentance from our failings and for the wagging of our finger in God’s face, and also repentance from our strivings and our self-righteousness. But mostly we must repent from our belief that anything but Jesus is sufficient to save us from any of it. . . . The gospel exalts the humble and humbles the exalted. It first bring us all to an awareness of our need for Jesus, and then it gives us Jesus. The Gospel not only meets our every need but also ruins the plans of those who would seek to sell us the idea that we have needs that are not met in Christ, because in Him we are truly free. We are free to do as Martin Luther once said, to “sin boldly so that we might repent boldly,” and all because we believe the Gospel."

--Derek Webb

Time vs. My Guitar

When I returned my guitar case on Monday, the store manager told me that a larger case would be arriving on Thursday or Friday of this week. Since I didn't want to make a futile run downtown with a guitar on my shoulder, I got my Chinese teacher to call the music shop for me today to see if the cases had indeed arrived, but the guy she talked to said they haven't arrived. She gave them my, her and our head office's phone numbers and indicated that the store would call when the case came in. I guess I'll just assume that if I get a phone call from a Chinese speaker, that means I should head down to the shop.

The problem is that it isn't very polite to tell someone a straight "no" in Chinese culture, so I don't know if the store is actually getting the case or if they're just trying to be polite, stringing me along in the process. If they're not actually going to be getting the case in, I need to go to the other guitar store in town to see if they can order a case for me before I leave for America.

Time, always the enemy, and always in limited supply.

Charmed, I'm Sure

Last night at my Thursday foreigner's Bible study, someone asked for prayer regarding his future, that he would be where God wants him to be. I teased him about it a little because I firmly believe that, apart from willful sin, a person is always where God wants him to be. One of the older ladies chided me, saying that maybe I just lacked experience because she had certainly been places where she shouldn't have been.

Still, looking at what I can remember of my life (which isn't much, to be honest. My sister can clearly remember things from when she was two or three years old; I'm lucky when I remember things from a month ago), I can't avoid seeing God wherever I've been.

When I was a small child (I must have been in kindergarten or younger), I remember riding in our old Plymouth back from one of my mom's weekly bowling matches. I had been playing in the back seat and wayback of our station wagon when I decided to climb into the front seat. In typical little boy fashion I kind of flopped over the seat and began playing up there. Minutes later, if that long, the rear window of the car exploded for no apparent reason, filling the wayback, where I had been playing, with glass shrapnel. I remember Mom asking me why I had climbed into the front seat. Maybe she was wondering if I had seen something to warn me that the window was having problems or if I had done something to the window. I only knew that I needed to play in the front seat. (And if any of that memory is wrong, you can correct me, Mom.)

The summer of my sophomore year at Bob Jones University, a friend and I drove to Alaska to find work in a cannery. After being flown out to Dillingham, I ended up working a twelve-hour night shift. Toward the end of the season, my hours had changed a little bit, and I was going to be early (around 2:00am, I think). I heard some people talking in a tent near me and had an opportunity to give them the Gospel over the course of the next few hours. Had I not had the night shift before, I never would have been able to speak with them that long or that late. Had I not been chosen to live in a tent instead of the dorms, I never would have heard them talking. Also, had my friend not been called out to work on the boats and left me alone in the tent for three weeks, I probably wouldn't have begun reading my Bible. It wasn't until I was alone in the Alaska wilderness that I realized my true need to seek God.

When I was a senior, I really wanted to go on the Musical Mission Team, but I missed the tryouts for various reasons, including my own forgetfulness. At the end of the semester, well after rehearsals had started, one of the other tenors dropped out of the team, and I "happened" to be the one Dr. McCauley asked to go.

In the Spring semester of 2001, I dropped out of grad school to help my parents because of my dad's cancer. While home, I got connected with a team from Maranatha Baptist Bible College and ended up going to Kenya that summer. Both the Musical Mission Team and that trip to Kenya contained pivotal moments in my life, directing me in ways I never would have headed apart from those experiences.

I wouldn't have gone back to school in the fall of 2001 if I hadn't called my former boss to see if I could have a job the following January. He said I could wait, but they had a spot open right then that they really wanted me for. I took the job, and that semester I took two of the most influential classes of my educational career: Schenkerian Analysis and Aesthetics. Due to their rotational schedule, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to take either class had I not returned to school that fall. Schenkerian Analysis introduced me to an analysis method that explained exactly how I hear music and solidified my love of theory. Aesthetics introduced me to the book Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, which began to open my eyes to the Gospel and freedom in Christ and began to break the chains of my self-made legalism.

In the Spring of 2002, I began visiting (attending) a small Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran church near BJU, largely because of a Poetry Writing assignment, "Do something you've never done before and write a poem about it." I had never been to a Lutheran service. I was looking for a church anyway. Why not give it a chance? I could at least get a hopefully decent grade out of it and understand some of my home state's religious culture a little better. It turned out that the sermons focused aspects of the Bible I had never seriously considered before. The pastor's continual emphasis on the simplicity and living of the Gospel and the completed work of Christ furthered my growth and provided a solid foundation in the faith.

Later that semester, I fell headlong into my old sins and knew that I needed to find some help. I couldn't ask anyone at BJ to help me for various reasons, including pride, so I went to North Hills Community Church because I'd heard that they had a good counseling ministry (which has since become its own organization) and a reputation as a church that was doing good in the community. I had visited their services several times before I found out that I wasn't allowed to go there, so I was a little bit familiar with the place. The counselor and mentors that I met there helped water the seed of God's truth that had laid dormant and--up to that time--even molding in my life, furthering the foundational work that had begun through the Rookmaaker's book and Abiding Peace, the WELS church. God used them to help me in the battle against sin and in the strengthening of my faith.

I believe that all of that, including allowing me to fall as deeply into my sins as I had, was part of God's work in preparing me for my father's death that November. Had I not read Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, I never would have begun to question my understanding of the Scripture and my false philosophies about life and faith. Had I not attended Abiding Peace Lutheran Church, I never would have recognized the simplicity of the Gospel and the full measure of God's forgiveness. I never would have learned to walk in faith and forgiveness. Had I not unintentionally broken the school rules (well, I did go to one service after finding out that I wasn't supposed to; I had already been going for around six weeks) in visiting NHCC and soon after fallen back into my sins, I wouldn't have asked for their help and received a fleshing out of the foundational truths about Christ and his work. Without that background and groundwork, I have no idea how I could have survived--much less thrived--following my father's death and the grief surrounding it.

I graduated in December of 2002 and went home. After a few weeks at home and a consistent lack of employment from the group that had said they wanted to employ me, I headed out to Seattle to join some people I barely knew plant a church. Well, the group that was supposed to be coming kept bumping the arrival date, and I quickly connected with Mars Hill, thanks to renting a room from a deacon and having a community group in my living room every Tuesday night. It was the next perfect step in my spiritual growth, continuing the process that had begun in Kenya and grown through the following year and a half. Unfortunately, I couldn't find work, and being a Midwestern boy through and through, deeply missed my Wisconsin landscapes. After four terrific months in Seattle and despite God continually providing the money, food, friendship and shelter that I needed (which I knew he would continue to do), I knew it was time to leave. It was time for me to go home.

I loved the plains and hills dotted with forests and farms as I returned to my Land (even mountains hold no majesty comparable to the inland sea of grass and its the time-frozen rolling waves). But I still didn't have a job and wasn't sure what to do about getting one. I didn't have to worry, because a week or so after I arrived home, I received the phone call that caused me to end up typing this blog entry on a computer in Dalian, China. So I do think I have some experience in seeing God's hand, and I still can't think of a time or place where I wasn't where he wanted me to be.

But now the future lies ahead and looms before me. Some of it seems clear, but a fog has rolled in, obscuring many things I thought I knew. I do not know for certain where I will be next--I never have known these things, though I think I have a path in sight. But wherever I do go next, I know that God is guiding me, and he is the one who will have me where I must be.

Rolling up the Sidewalk (and Other Highlights)

Classes are over for me. I have finals next week, but my actually teaching days in China have come to an end. I gave my last class, who are my favorites, peanut butter and chocolate Oreos to celebrate (yes, you can buy those here).

In other life-shaking news, I think I figured out why Chinese sidewalks are all made of decorative brick instead of concrete slabs. This should have dawned my me earlier because I'm constantly annoyed at the digging up and re-laying of sidewalks here, but I think the reason that all the sidewalks are made of brick is that they're constantly digging up and re-laying the sidewalks. Apparently the ground under the sidewalk is choice territory for cables and pipelines, and rather than laying those before constructing a new building or neighborhood, it makes better sense to the Chinese to put them in as needed. That being the case, it definitely makes sense to have easily removable sidewalks rather than having to lay concrete and smash it up again every few weeks or months.

I went to sanda again last night, and the Mini-Boss was as brutal as ever--more brutal, if that's possible. He had me do 200 kicks on the bag per leg, and when I had finished that, I had to do 200 sit-ups. Normally when I have to do a lot of sit-ups, I hold onto the back of my thighs cheater-style to help me get a complete and thorough sit-up. But the Mini-Boss saw that and came over and whacked my arms. "No!" he shouted. When I would pause too long sitting up to rest, he would push me down forcibly. As with my kicking, his mantra was "faster!" When I got to the point where I couldn't sit up, he shouted at me to keep going. I told him I was trying, and he said, "Try harder!"

Shu Li is a bear as a teacher, but it's really good. He's a nice guy and will do all the things he's asking of you himself if need be. His intensity makes you hate him as you're working out, but once you're done, you're really pleased with how much more you were able to do because of his help (or forcing). He makes you want to come back and prove yourself.

Class Over (Almost)

It's the last week of classes, and I have only three left to teach in my time at Neusoft. All we're doing is reviewing the exam topics and idioms. Next week is finals. The week after that (weekend, really) I'll be heading home.

Innocents and Fools

People have told me several times recently that I'm very lucky. I'm starting to believe it.

Yesterday morning I went to put my guitar in its new case--purchased last Friday--and discovered a problem. Although I had checked the case out using a guitar that looked just like mine and cost the same as mine, it was not in fact the same. The lower body of my guitar was actually around an inch or half an inch wider than the one I used in the store. The store guitar fit into the case perfectly. My guitar would not fit. And the store hadn't given me a receipt.

I spent a lot of time praying that day.

I asked a couple of advanced Chinese-speaking teachers from my department if they could help me out in the morning, going down to the store with me to back up my beginner's Chinese. Unfortunately, they all had Chinese class when I was free. One of them said she could help me after our faculty meeting in the afternoon, but when the meeting was over, she said that she had something else she needed to do right away. I asked another teacher, and she said she could help me.

As I was explaining the situation, someone said that in China, the rule is "buyer beware." He didn't think that I'd be able to exchange the case, and he said that there was no way I would ever get my money back. The girl who was going to help me said that I might be able to exchange it, but to forget about my money. Frankly, the money didn't bother me because I want/need a case!

It took a while before she was ready to go. We didn't leave for downtown until 4:45. I wasn't sure when the store would close, so I paid for a taxi. I took the case and my guitar with me so that the store could see that I wasn't just being stupid or fussy: the two guitars really did look the same.

The store was still open when we got downtown at 5:10. I actually did all the talking, though I couldn't understand what they were saying to me. The lady who had helped me was there, so she knew that I bought it on Friday. The boss was there, too, and he came over to help. He told us that a bigger case should be coming in three or four days, and then he offered to give me my money back! He asked how much I had paid. I told him 180 yuan, and then he went and got my money--no fuss, no arguing; I didn't even have to ask to exchange or get a refund! Talk about thankful. I'm planning on going back down on Friday of this week to check out the bigger cases.

No oof my friends here seem to know the saying, but with my train and Beijing adventures and guitar-related escapades, "God watches over innocents and fools" sure rings true in my life.

Not Your Mother's Headline

This morning, one of my coworkers opened his new copy of the Shanghai Star, a weekly English newspaper, to find an amazing headline.

Mothers, check it out!

Sanda-daism: or A Glutton for Punishment

I picked up a guitar case and a capo on Friday afternoon. Now that I'm set to take my guitar with me to America, I need to figure out how much it would cost to have it as an extra piece of luggage on NW. If it's too pricey, I'll probably ship a suitcase home.

Beyond that, I went to sanda two nights in a row, Friday and Saturday. I am very sore. On Wednesday night, the teacher was sick (at least I think that's what the other students told me when I arrived. They definitely indicated that I should leave). When I came back on Friday, the main teacher was working with several of the advanced students, who have a match today. So I got lots of personal attention from Shu Li, a new younger teacher, who I'm going to call the "mini-boss" in a tribute to the video games of my youth.

The Mini-Boss is very fit and strong. He also speaks a decent amount of English, which is quite helpful for me. He started me out hold pads for another student to punch and kick. That was going ok, but then he made us switch. I'm not terribly coordinated, so it wasn't working too well. After hurting myself several times in the same way and not getting my leg straight enough during my kick, the Mini-Boss sent me back to the punching bag, which I appreciated. I was tired of hurting my toes because of my poor aim.

He then told me that I had to kick the bag one hundred times with each leg. I started doing it while he went to work with some of the other students. But soon he was back, telling me that I needed to make my leg straighter. "Where is your power?" he kept asking.

I wanted to say, "I don't have any!"

He tried showing me what to do and explained a little bit more of how to do it. I understood the concepts but was having trouble putting them into action. After quite a while, I finally started getting it. He went to work with the other students, and I kept kicking the bag.

A little while later he came back and still didn't seem too pleased. "Faster," he said. I was having trouble going faster because the bag was swinging too much for me to aim. The Mini-Boss decided to hold the bag and give commentary on the validity of my kicks.

BAM! I kicked the bag. "Good," he said. BAM! I hit it again. "Faster!" BAM! BAM! "Faster!" BAM! Bam! Bam.

"Where is your power!?!"

Again, I wanted to say, "I can give you one or the other. Both power and speed are not an option at this point!" But I actually said, "I'm trying!"

After I completed the one hundred kicks per leg, the Mini-Boss told me that my left leg was much stronger than my right leg. I've always felt that my left arm is much stronger than my right arm (despite being right-handed), so that didn't come as much of a surprise.

Then he pulled out one of the many session-end torture exercises. We unhappy few had to do a kind of frog jump across the length of the mats several times. The Mini-Boss did them with us, demonstrating his remarkable skill and physique. I came in last (out of the three of us who did them)--way, way last. At the end, the Mini-Boss came down the mat and tried to correct my poor jumping skills. "Don't use your hands. All the way down when you jump!" It was miserable.

Toward the end of the evening (before the torture session, I think), the Mini-Boss came back to me and said something in Chinese. When he asked if I understood, I said no. (I'd picked up the words "no," "middle" and one or two others.) He then said that it was a saying that basically meant doing something one time won't help you become strong. I think it was his way of saying that I needed to come to class more often.

Earlier that night Charlie asked me, "Why are you studying sanda?"

At the end of the session I would have told him that I really didn't know. I was exhausted and would probably die on the way to my bus. At the time, though, I said, "I think it's a good way to exercise."

He asked me why I didn't exercise some other way, so I told him that by having a class to come to, I'm more likely to actually go. If I didn't have a class, I would think that I could come any time, but then I would never end up coming. I asked him why he's taking sanda.

"Kids at school hit me," he said, "but I can't hit them back. If they didn't hit me, I wouldn't be here." He paused, and I felt really bad for him. Apparently he found the idea he was looking for and added, "I am studying sanda for justice."

Why do bullies always pick on the nice, intelligent kids? But the bullies had better start watching out. Charlie's arms may not be too strong, but from what I've seen, his kicks are getting pretty nasty.

Anyway, I spent most of Saturday downtown with friends but because of the Mini-Boss's urging decided to come to class again that evening. He taught several of us a new side kick. We had to stand near the windows, tip over (holding onto the window ledge, of course) and kick straight out. He checked to see if our legs were straight enough and high enough and then had us repeat the move, pausing with our legs out, whenever he clapped. One of the other guys who has complained that I shouldn't be kicking the bags because I don't have the form quite right yet said that his leg was hurting from holding it up. The Mini-Boss said, "That's right! It should hurt!" He then made us hold the kicking position for a minute before giving us a rest. After a short break (which involved having to kick one of the bags with our new technique), he made us do the one minute hold again.

After a while of doing the hold-kick and practicing with the bags, the Mini-Boss had us line up down the mat and practice the new kick while watching ourselves in the big mirror. Every time he clapped his hands, we had to do our kick as quickly as possible. I discovered that if you do the kick correctly, it doesn't hurt. If you don't do it right, it feels like several muscles are going to detach at the ends. Unfortunately, I did it wrong quite often and was in a significant amount of pain. I slowed down my kicks, reestablishing the form, and was able to speed up again as he started clapping two or three times in a row.

Later in the evening he had me back on the bag for the previous night's style of kicking. This time I had to do it only 50 times per leg. He held the bag again and gave commentary. "Faster!" "More power!" "Faster!!!" This time, however, I had a bit of a break because Luke was there, and the Mini-Boss didn't seem too impressed with his kicks either. So I would do a set, and then Luke would have to do a set. Interestingly, Luke's right leg seems to be stronger and maintain a better form than his left leg. His left leg seems to work about the same as my right leg. (Luke was also the one who translated the other student's complaint and the Mini-Boss's answer.)

For Saturday night's torture, the Mini-Boss had us line up down the middle of the mat and do pushups with long holds in between. The pushup part wasn't too difficult for me--I was actually a lot quicker than the other guys. But the holds were agony, not on my arms, but on my lower back and stomach. Toward the end of that, I honestly thought I was going to throw up. The Mini-Boss kept fussing at me for going to my knees, so I tried to explain to him the problem. "You need to make it stronger," he said.

Yes, there are a lot of things I need to make stronger. I don't know how strong I'll make any of them in three weeks, but I am hoping to keep going to class more often during my last few days here. The sessions with the Mini-Boss are a little shorter than the ones with the main teacher, but they've been much more difficult and a much better workout. It's almost like having a personal trainer.

For Sunday

"But by His [God's] doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, "LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD."

or the same passage from another translation,

"God alone made it possible for you to be in Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made Christ to be wisdom itself. He is the one who made us acceptable to God. He made us pure and holy, and he gave himself to purchase our freedom. As the Scriptures say,

"'The person who wishes to boast
should boast only of what the Lord has done.'"

I Corinthians 1:30-31 [emphasis added]

From Today's Class

"I didn't see you a long time. I want to miss you very much."

--from a student dialogue this morning

To Pass Along

I noticed this article on someone else's blog and thought it was intriguing. The publication is unabashedly right-wing, but the thoughts are worth considering, even if you differ from the author politically.

Chinese t-shirts

Some of the most intriguing Chinglish on the planet comes from clothing. I really want to go down to one of the local markets and stock up on shirts and jackets with phrases and sentences you'd never find in America (maybe some of you will get them as presents).

Often clothing has sayings, phrases or words that we Westerners simply wouldn't think of putting on a piece of clothing. Like who in America (outside of Wisconsin) would have the guts to sell a red hooded sweatshirt with the giant white letters "MILK" emblazoned across the front? Punk bands would have a great time collecting jackets over here. Last week as we were walking to a friend's house, another of my British friends noticed someone's shirt saying, "Well, aren't you a dollybird!"

In today's class one girl was wearing a pink shirt that had puffy, cloud-looking letters saying, "Good 'n Hysteric." Another girl's tye-dyed shirt said, "things should be made as simple as possible but not simpler." This was word-wrapped around a large "On eday" in a slanty, somewhat elegant font, with "On" set tastefully above the "e" of "eday."

But probably the most unusual of all for over here was a girl I saw last week. The lower front corner of her shirt said, "Jesus saves."

Troubling Day

I have a class on Tuesday mornings that I call my "horror class." I think we've had one week together this semester where I didn't have to yell (and most of the time that's a literal yell) at them for misbehaving. Today was no exception.

I suppose part of the trouble is my attitude going in. Calling them the "horror class" doesn't exactly set me off on the right foot. Today I really blew up at them. I feel bad about it, but I don't know what to do. When you have to shut multiple computers per class period (normally the same students from week to week) and take away students' mobile phones because they're text messaging, your patience wears less than thin. We have only one period left together before the final exam. Part of me is thankful that it's almost over. Part of me is dreading that last period. And part of me is upset and disappointed with myself because their misbehavior bothers me so much and I end up being a bad example.

I'm frustrated with them. I'm frustrated with me because I get angry with them. I'm frustrated with several other areas in my life.

"When I Look At The World"

When you look at the world
What is it that you see
People find all kinds of things
That bring them to their knees

I see an expression
So clear and so true
That changes the atmosphere
When you walk into the room

So I try to be like you
Try to feel it like you do
But without you it's no use
I can't see what you see
When I look at the world

When the night is someone else's
And you're trying to get some sleep
When your thoughts are too expensive
To ever want to keep

When there's all kinds of chaos
And everyone is walking lame
You don't even blink now do you
Don't even look away

So I try to be like you
Try to feel it like you do
But without you it's no use
I can't see what you see
When I look at the world

I can't wait any longer
I can't wait 'til I'm stronger
Can't wait any longer
To see what you see
When I look at the world

I'm in the waiting room
I can't see for the smoke
I think of you and your holy book
When the rest of us choke

Tell me, tell me
What do you see
Tell me, tell me
What's wrong with me

--Bono

Whence Time?

I don't know how it is that I don't have any time. According to my mental schedule, I should be able to get everything done. According to reality, nothing's working out.

I have less than a month left in China. Several students now want help outside of class improving their English (since there are only two lessons left before the final--one of them an idiom and exam topic review session--it seems a logical time for a linguistic boost). I'm trying/wanting to work on some editing for a friend's book. I ought to be practicing my guitar. I need to write some music for my sister. I'm going to have to do some packing and probably ship a box home in order to avoid the too-many-pieces-of-luggage surcharge on the airplane, thanks to my guitar.

What I do get done is a little bit of blogging, sanda two times a week, and a little bit of shopping when necessary. Once a week, I watch some TV for an hour or two total.

What's happening to the rest of my time?

For Sunday

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To God's elect, strangers in the world, . . . who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

I Peter 1:1-2

"Grace And Peace"

All the weary, tired souls full of hunger
Needing something that fills
All the thirsty that heard about living water
Need a way to the well
It’s a strange crowd
But still somehow
The lost have been found
By the One in whose Name we come

Grace and peace to you through our Lord Jesus
Times like these we need that kind of love
To take these things coming in between us
And wash us clean with the body and the blood

Early that night just before he was taken
He broke of the bread
So we could taste that He has died, He is risen
He is coming again
And it’s much more
Than we could ask for
To be made pure
By the One in whose Name we come

Grace and peace to you through our Lord Jesus
Times like these we need that kind of love
To take these things coming in between us
And wash us clean with the body and the blood

--Jill Phillips and Andy Gullahorn, from the CD Writing on the Wall

Congratulations, Maxwells!

I'm a couple weeks late with this, but

Congratulations to Drew and Lisa Maxwell on their marriage! I love you guys!

(I stole the pictures from Drew's website.)

I Am Not Naive.

I often get the impression that other people think that I'm naive. It drives me crazy and frustrates me to no end. Undoubtedly that is the fault of my own pride, but it does bother me nonetheless. I can think of two reasons for this idea about me.

First, some people I know seem to think that because I am a Christian, I am automatically uninformed about world events or the nature of mankind. Think what you will, I may have a deeper understanding and reasoning of the sources of evil behavior in our world because I am a Christian. The other day when discussing the recent abuse cases from Iraq, someone dismissed my concerns and ideas because the problem is "systemic." Yes, it is indeed systemic, but it doesn't end with the Secretary of Defense or the Bush administration, like I'm guessing that person thinks. The abuse is systemic because of the nature of man himself, not just because of control structures above him. Apart from external pressure and intervention, any one of us in that situation would eventually fall and degrade ourselves to the same extent that the prisoner abusers did. That is called Sin, and humanity is helpless against it.

(That said, I also believe that responsibility is inherent in the living of life, and the abusers should be punished severely. In my opinion, they ought to be tried and sentenced by the Iraqi people under Iraqi law since the crimes were committed on Iraqi soil and--in part--in the name of not only the USA but also law-abiding Iraqi citizens.)

More annoying to me, though, is when Christians give the idea that I'm naive. I have as much cynicism and sarcasm in me as anyone else, but my (overall) rejecting of those behaviors doesn't make me naive. When I willfully choose to find and hold onto the good in something, it isn't because I'm naive. I know that there are bad things out there. I know that just about everything can be misused. I know that people can't be trusted and sometimes try to use me. I know these things not just intellectually but experientially as well.

Am I blinded because I choose to focus on goodness? I'm sure I sometimes am. Don't I know that by trusting I'll end up being hurt? I have been hurt over and over again, normally by the same people or organizations. Yet I choose to keep allowing them the freedom to hurt me, not because I enjoy it or have some sort of emotional-masochist syndrome, but because I hope and desire that they will change. And change cannot be either proved or solidified in a person or organization's life apart from having another opportunity to do wrong.

The only way I know to fight life's creeping cynicism and bitterness is forgiveness. And in the process of forgiveness, one must be willing to trust, even when the other party is untrustworthy. As a child of God, I choose to imitate my Father. He offered his unconditional forgiveness to mankind through Jesus. It's as real and present as the air we breathe. Some recognize it and breathe deeply. Other's clench their fists and suffocate themselves. Me--I have asthma. I've never been good at holding my breath.

If that's naivety, then fine, I'm naive. But I'm not so naive that I don't know when people are thinking it about me.

Beijing: The Two Temples

My last day in Beijing (Wednesday, May 5) started a lot later than I had planned.

I wanted to catch up on my journal, which I tend to keep only during special events or short trips, so I spent quite a while on the hostel's deck, writing. When I came back inside to finish my packing, my roommates were awake. Michael, a Christian from Nigeria, and I started chatting. We finished about two hours later when I had to check out or pay a late fee. It was a great talk.

After storing my bags behind the hostel's desk, I started walking north, trying to find a big Lama Buddhist temple that I had read about. The walk was a lot farther than I expected, but I enjoy walking. I found the temple, but finding the way in was more difficult.

The Lama Temple is an active Yellow-Hat Buddhist temple, so as you wander around, you'll see a lot of monks and many people burning incense and bowing to the idols. And the idols are horrendous. Some of them are the standard peaceful Buddha statues. But many of them are monsters, some with skulls hanging from their necks or emerging from their foreheads. Most have a cartoony aspect to them, but it doesn't take away from their hideous nature. In some ways, it enhances it as you realize that the stylization may be an attempt to make these demons more endearing somehow. And sometimes the demon gods aren't alone in their statues but are "imposing" themselves upon naked women. While I've never been a fan of Buddhism, that temple made me a pretty strongly opinionated opponent.

After my disgust at the Lama Temple, I decided to try out a Red Guard lunch at a restaurant that the guidebook said was nearby. As with the Great Wall information, my book appears to have been out of date yet again. So instead of grass and fried cicadas for lunch, I had some beef and potatoes at a normal Chinese restaurant.

Once I had finished my meal, I headed back toward the Lama Temple, not to see it again (I've seen enough of that to last a lifetime), but to visit the Confucius Temple about a block away.

The Confucius Temple was the center of the Imperial Exams for the last four- to six-hundred years of the Chinese empire. In it on a "forest of stele" are the names and hometowns of more than 51,000 men who passed the top exam, qualifying them for the highest levels of political and administrative responsibility. This temple was a lot smaller, or at least a lot quieter, than the Lama Temple. In a side hall I looked at a display of recently hand-made cut-paper scenes from the life and legends of Confucius. Some of the translations were hilarious: "Five immortals and two dragons fell on his house at his birth."

Confucius was into "decorum" and music. There was quite a collection of ancient instruments in the main hall, and a small group of performers played some of them for us tourists. But as I read some of the other placards in the hall, I was disappointed to discover that the emperors had sacrificed to Confucius as a god. Not only that, but their sacrifices and ceremonies for him were as elaborate and important as the sacrifices to the "God of Heaven" at Tiantan, the Temple of Heaven park. Some people here try to tell me that the ancient Chinese were monotheists who worshipped the true God, but as I tour the imperial parks and temples, I find that difficult to believe. For monotheists, they sure had plenty of false gods.

When I finished touring the Confucius Temple, I headed back to Tian'anmen Square to get some food for the train ride home. I had found a great little Chinese bakery on one of the back streets. They didn't try to cheat me and always gave me a fair price. And was their food ever good! Once I bought my munchies I slowly wandered back to my hostel, picked up my bags and went to the train station.

The ride home was completely uneventful. I slept really solidly, thanks to my earplugs, and woke up with plenty of time to watch the countryside as we worked our way toward Dalian. I was home and unpacking by 8:15am.

I'm really glad that I went, and I'm thankful that Julia forced me to get on the train that Thursday night. Despite and difficulties along the way, it was a fun trip--probably because of the difficulties, actually. They make for great stories. Also, I think it was a good thing that I went alone. I imagine that anyone who went with me would have been frustrated with my putzing around the sides of all the "big" sites, trying to get a feel for the details. And it was nice to be able to come and go as I pleased, especially since that normally meant early mornings that probably everyone I know would have objected to.

So here's my summary advice for those of you who want to visit Beijing:

1) Take the audio tour at the Forbidden City. Stop in at the Starbucks for fun.
2) Have tea at Jingshan Park (this is a must-do!). The gate to the teahouse is on the side of the peony garden.
3) Don't take the audio tour at the Summer Palace. While it's informative, the locations are poorly marked, making it difficult to know which number to listen to at what time. But do go to the Summer Palace.
4) Make sure you go to the Temple of Heaven park early in the morning so you can watch the people doing Tai Chi. This is almost as enjoyable as the tea at Jingshan Park.
5) Try the roast duck (Beijing kao ya).
6) Skip the Great Wall tour buses #1-5.
7) Do visit the Great Wall some other way. There are plenty of other options for getting there, including renting a minibus or going with an English tour from your hotel.
8) Eat the street food, but be careful that the vendors don't overcharge you. Few if any foods should cost more than 3 yuan on the street. Most of it should cost much less.
9) Wander around the hutongs (back streets) for a while. They have a lot of character and will make you forget that you're in one of the largest cities in the world. Sometimes you'll think you're in rural Kenya.

That's about it.

Beijing: Tourist Trapped

Last Tuesday I went to the Great Wall with two older men that I know, Gary and Ken. Ken was just here visiting for two weeks or so, and Gary (and his wife, Barbara) have been teaching in Dalian longer than I have, though I actually speak more Chinese than they do. Barbara had been to the Wall a couple of times and didn't feel like going, but Gary and Ken were both game.

We decided to take one of the tour buses that leave from the south end of Tian'anmen Square, Qianmen. According to our apparently out-of-date guidebooks (or our combined gross misunderstanding), the ride wouldn't be too expensive, and we could spend a nice day at the Wall. The books said that buses #1 and #5 went straight to Badaling, the most famous section of the Great Wall, and the one probably most accessible to seniors. But when I found #1, the sign said "Ming Tombs (Badaling)." We didn't particularly want to go to the Tombs, but we figured that, hey, it's a bus, so we'll spend the time we want to at the Wall and get a later bus back to town. I had found the pick-up spot for #5, but the sign was all in Chinese.

We tried asking the bus ladies about the Tombs thing but didn't get very far with them because of the language barrier. As Gary and I were paying for bus #1, a girl told Ken that #5 wouldn't go to the Tombs, but it was too late at that point. We all boarded and were underway by roughly 6:45am. When we were paying, I think both Gary and I started to get inklings that this wasn't just a fancy normal bus but was more of a real tour bus. As we rode along, that suspicion was confirmed. Everyone else on the bus was Chinese. The bus didn't leave until all the seats were full even though the schedule said 6:30. And the bus lady began to give a tourist-y sounding talk. We, of course, didn't understand a blessed thing (as Americans, we only understand cursed things ;-) ), but it was funny to watch the entire bus full of people swinging their heads in unison left and right, craning to see the latest sight out the other side of the bus.

We arrived at Juyongguan, the section of the Great Wall nearest Beijing, at 8:00am. The bus lady told us to be at the bus by 9:30. Everyone got off; the bus pulled away to the distant lot on the other side of the park. Only then did I realize that we were going to have to pay to visit two sections of the Wall that day. We sort of muddled around taking photos down at the lot level for a little while before taking a look from the Wall itself. Once we got onto it, Gary and Ken decided that they didn't want to go too far in order to keep from tiring themselves out before seeing the main section of the Wall at Badaling. I decided that I wanted to wander.

So a half-hour into our time at Juyongguan I took off up the Wall. The steepness really can't be described. Just saying, "It was a 70 degree angle," doesn't do it justice. The height of the steps ranges between two or three inches and well over a foot, often from one step to the next. Since this section has been restored for the sake of tourists, there was often a helpful (and necessary) handrail. I don't remember how many towers I passed, but it took me half an hour to reach the end of the restored section. I had to use my hands to help climb the stairs in the last tower. And was I ever sweating. It reminded me of climbing the Muir Snowfield on Mt. Rainier last summer, only without the snow. Few tourists had ventured up that far, so I had a minute or so of (mostly) private rest before I had to head down for the bus.

Unfortunately, during my time at the top, quite a few tourists had come to the Wall, and the lower reaches were desperately crowded. I had a lot of trouble forcing my way through the crowds and made it to the bus at exactly 9:30. But when I got on, Ken and Gary weren't there.

I got off the bus, thinking I must have been on the wrong one, but the bus lady urged me back on, asking (in Chinese), "Where are your friends?" I responded (mostly in Chinese) that I didn't know where they were. I had gone to the top, but they hadn't come with me.

The bus began to pull out at 9:35, just as I saw Gary running for the exit. We stopped. Ken and Gary got on, and we headed onward to Badaling.

At Badaling, the bus lady told us that we had only one hour and twenty minutes. I thought that was brutally short, but we didn't have a choice. Gary wanted to take the cable car to the top, so we followed the signs that said, "Pulley." We bought our tickets and began to be a little suspicious. The picture on the ticket was of a small roller coaster. We followed the signs to the "pulley" and discovered that it was indeed a kind of small roller coaster.

Gary said, "I'm getting my money back."

We turned around and headed back for the booth when a Chinese sales lady asked us (in English) what we were looking for. I said that we had wanted to take the cable car, not the roller coaster. She told us that the cable car was about five kilometers away on the other side of the park. "The buses can't go there during the holiday." So we turned around and took the "pulley" up the Wall.

It wasn't as bad as we expected. Going up was just like climbing a long hill on any roller coaster. You're leaned way back, listening to the clunking of the gears, watching the back of the car in front of you. It even had a tunnel reminiscent of Great America's old "Demon" ride.

At the top, a soldier helped pull us out of the cars, which don't actually stop. They just keep on going whether you've gotten out or not.

The Great Wall at Badaling is spacious and wide, maybe 12 or 15 feet across. But to get onto the Wall, you have to crowd through a two-foot-wide stone doorway with about a hundred eager Chinese tourists. After squish, squish, squishing your way through, you pop up the stairs to be greeted on the Wall itself by a bunch of peddlers trying to get you to buy useless trinkets, some--but not all--of which are emblazoned with pictures or sayings about the Wall.

The part of Badaling that we visited wasn't as steep as the Wall at Juyongguan. However, you could see the nature of the Wall much better. When you hear the word "Wall," you probably think of the kind of thing that surrounds your living room, even if you've seen pictures of the Great Wall. Well, if your living room wall is thirty or forty feet tall and twenty or thirty feet thick, you might have a decent idea. But your living room would also have to be pretty big, twisting around, back and forth, over a series of mountain tops and ridges until you can't see it in the distance anymore. The Wall is wind-y. Again, trying to describe it doesn't do it justice. As you look over the hills, it seems like you're facing a series of Walls, one ridge after another until vision ends in haze or horizon.

After not long enough at the top and not being able to wander far because of the crowds and time limit, we took the roller coaster back down. There was a worker riding in the first car using a hand brake to slow us all down. Personally, I thought we could have gone a little faster. We made it to the bus on time (I think the lady told us an earlier time than she told everyone else because we were among the first passengers to get on the bus). Once everyone was there, we headed to the Ming Tombs.

As we drove, I got a good look at the Chinese countryside and had to agree with my students: it's just plain dirty. It reminded me a lot of Kenya's farms. The farmers don't keep things very clean or orderly; the side roads are basically dirt paths, and the soil was more of a sandy clay than anything else. Being from Wisconsin and having an agricultural background, I thought of how miserable it would be to try to make anything grow out there.

Then the bus lady distracted me with her latest talk. I'm still not sure if I was hearing it correctly, but it seemed like every three to five words, she said, "beer" (pijiu). It didn't make any sense at all. "Blah blah blah blah pijiu blah blah blah pijiu blah blah. Blah blah blah pijiu blah boli de pijiu blah blah." You get the idea. (And "boli de pijiu" makes no sense either: "plate glass's beer;" or possibly "homosexual's beer.") I felt like I was some kind of Chinese Homer Simpson. When we got back to Dalian, I asked my teacher if there was another word that sounded like pijiu, but she couldn't think of any. She thought that maybe the lady was trying to talk people into buying beer at the next stop.

The next stop was a jade factory. As we got off the bus, the bus lady was very concerned that we would know the right time to come back. "San dian si shi wu," she kept saying (3:45). Then she found an English-speaking Chinese tourist to translate for us--3:45. I thanked her and said that I had understood. We were more than a little bothered though, because that gave us two hours and forty-five minutes at a dinky little jade factory when we'd barely had that long at the two sections of the Great Wall combined.

After ten or twenty minutes of walking through the factory (they let you watch a little bit of the jade carving process), we worked our way through the vast selection of expensive merchandise back to the outside. The day was getting warm, so we started looking for some shade. As we wandered, we discovered that we actually were at the Ming Tombs. The bus had let us off quite a distance from the gate since they had a deal with the jade factory.

I had read that the Tombs were inexpensive to visit, and you only had to pay if you actually wanted to wander inside one. However, like the information on which buses to take to the Wall, the books were sadly mistaken. It cost as much to enter the park as it had cost to tour the Forbidden City. After having spent too much money visiting two parts of the Great Wall that day, I decided that I wasn't going in. I told Gary and Ken that they could go in if they wanted, but I would just wait outside. They said they weren't really interested, so we found a big rock underneath some trees and sat down to wait for the next couple of hours.

At 3:35 I started moving us back to the parking lot. We got there at 3:40 and began looking for the bus. It wasn't there. There was a bigger parking lot next door, so we checked every bus in that lot as well. No good. We found another bus lady and told her that we couldn't find our bus. She said, "Well, it's 3:45. Your bus is here. Go find it," but she didn't actually try to help us at all.

We checked both lots again. I noticed several #5 buses in the lot, despite the fact that the one girl had told Ken that none of the #5's go to the Tombs. At 3:50, we found a group of bus ladies and told them about our problem. One of them decided to help us, so she ran off looking. I later saw her talking with a different bus lady who had a cell phone. She came back, found yet another bus lady and said, "Go with her." That lady, who spoke no English whatsoever, led us to a #3 bus (which would take us back to a different part of the city) and indicated that we should wait there. It was scheduled to leave at 4:20. We waited at the door, afraid to miss yet another bus. Once everyone else was on board, there were exactly three seats available for us.

As we drove back to Beijing, I did my best to chat with the people around me in Chinese. A couple days later I figured out that I was using the wrong word for "difficult," but oh well. Suddenly the bus turned in at an amusement park. Everybody groaned. Our new bus lady said something over the speaker including the time "6:30." We Americans weren't too happy since we just wanted to get home, and the Chinese weren't exactly thrilled either. I don't know if they wanted to stay longer or what, but I suspect that they didn't want to go in since many of them tried to stay on the bus. The bus lady got off and soon came back on. She said something else and made everyone clear out.

I stepped off the bus, and who should be waiting for us but our previous bus lady. She wasn't happy. She indicated that we should follow her, and as we walked, she told me that they had waited for us until 3:50 and asked where in the world we had been. I told her that we had come back at 3:40 but couldn't find the bus anywhere.

When we boarded our bus, everyone was waiting. Apparently the #1 buses don't regularly stop at the amusement park (yet). I apologized to the people sitting near us. Once we were seated, the bus lady came back with the English-speaking tourist and very loudly asked, "Where were you? We waited for you until 3:50."

I started answering in English but then realized that our defense probably wouldn't be translated nearly as loudly as her question. "San dian si shi, women hui lai," I said so everyone could hear. "Women kan, he kan, he kan, he kan, he kan--gongche mei you!" ("We came back at 3:40. We looked and looked and looked and looked and looked, but the bus wasn't there!" Side note: when I told my teacher about it, she said my grammar was perfect.) Everybody laughed. The bus lady looked a little embarrassed. She went part way up the aisle, then turned and said something I didn't understand in Chinese. Everyone applauded, and we took off. I'm guessing that she said something about the ingenuity of the people rescuing the poor foreigners, though I could be wrong. As for the time differences, I think the bus lady told the Chinese people where to meet but forgot to get the girl to translate that part.

We arrived back at Qianmen around 6:30, met Barbara at their hotel, and went out for a supper of Beijing roast duck. The way they cook a duck in Beijing somehow loosens the skin so most of the fat melts into the meat and the skin ends up crispy. You take some of the skin and meat, dip it into a plum sauce, place it on a small, crepe-ish pancake with some spring onions, wrap it up like a mini-burrito and eat it. It tasted great and was a good way to end a somewhat rough day.

Watch out for Beijing waitresses, though. When we paid, ours tried to keep ten yuan of our change.

Beijing: Sunday and Heaven

Two Sundays ago (May 2) while in Beijing, I visited the services of the Beijing International Christian Fellowship. Due to "local regulations," only those with a foreign passport may attend the services. They rent quite a large auditorium. The first service of the morning is fairly full, but the second service is packed out.

After the first service, an older man by the name of John Mark introduced himself to me. He asked where I was from and where I had gone to school. When I told him BJU, he said, "We have a teacher in our group that graduated from BJU in 2003." I told him that I really didn't know many undergrads my last four years there, but when he said, "His name is Daniel Routh," I was shocked. I sat by Daniel in my Poetry Writing class, and we had become pretty good friends. I had heard he was in China, but I didn't realize he was near Beijing. John Mark gave me Daniel's phone number, and I later called him and set up a lunch appointment for Monday.

I didn't do a whole lot the rest of the day. It was rainy, and I wandered around some of the hutongs near my hostel and down Wangfujing Dajie, a big and horrendously expensive shopping street.

I should also mention that one of my greatest surprises in Beijing, apart from running into Daniel, was that one of my roommates in the hostel was a Christian. Michael is from Nigeria and appears to be a really strong believer. We had some great talks and rode home together from the BICF's second service.

On Monday I decided that I would check out the flag raising on Tian'anmen Square, which many of my students said was a must-see. I walked (40 minutes) down to the square, arriving at 5:50. When I came out of the pedestrian underpass, directly in front of me I could see the flag plainly flying on its pole with no crowd of eager onlookers in sight. My students had said the flag goes up at 6:00. Unfortunately, the flag goes up at dawn, which was sometime around 4:00 or 4:30. When I found that out, I decided to pass on catching the flag-raising.

Since I was in the area, I took some nice early-morning pictures around Tian'anmen. The sky was amazing with long strips of ragged clouds left over from the previous day's rain. When the sun broke through some of the lower clouds, the older buildings were stunning, all of their gold decorations blazing in the morning light.

I soon headed to Tiantan, the Temple of Heaven, which is a substantial walk from Tian'anmen Square. It took me about an hour to get there, but it was worth it. The area around the Temple is a large park, and it was full of older people practicing Tai Chi and other martial arts. I sat and watched a group of thirty or forty elderly people all doing Tai Chi in unison while in the next small plaza on either side were people practicing with swords and nunchucks. White flowers rained down in the breeze.

I toured the three major sites of the Temple grounds: the Altar of Heaven, a large circular stone used for sacrifices and prayers; the echo wall and small temple within it; and the Temple of Heaven itself, dedicated to the God of Heaven. The God of Heaven would receive the most elaborate sacrificial festivals of any god, although I don't think this is the same God that Westerners think about. Both of the temples had halls on either side to the "attendant gods," better known as the sun, moon, planets, weather phenomena, and the emperor's ancestors. The complex was impressive, but I enjoyed watching the Tai Chi more than anything else.

Between my visit to the little temple and the main temple, I watched a small group of ladies doing Tai Chi with fans. They would do the same slow movements as the regular Tai Chi-ers, but at certain points, they would snap open hand fans. After moving a bit more, they would slowly close the fans only to "shwop" them open again. While beautiful and intriguing to watch, it sometimes made me want to laugh. All I could think about was turkeys showing off to each other.

After spending a few hours at the Temple park, I headed for the train station where I was to meet Daniel. We found each other around 1:00 and went to lunch. He had to leave at three, but we covered a lot of ground in two hours. It was great to see him again.

My next stop was Beihai Park, another imperial retreat near the Forbidden City. Like the Summer Palace, Beihai is built around a large lake. The island in the center houses a large white "stupa," a pagoda in the style of Tibetan Lama Buddhism. I didn't really have enough time to spend at that park, although I did get some nice pictures of it.

For supper I headed to the McDonalds on the southeast corner of Tian'anmen Square (there's also one of the southwest corner of the square) to meet with Gary and Barbara, an older couple who teaches in Dalian, and their friend Ken. Gary, Ken and I were planning on going to the Great Wall together on Tuesday. Barbara had already seen it twice and wanted to do other things. After pretty much settling our plans, I saw them to their hotel and then went back to mine. They had arrived in Beijing via the night train from Dalian that morning and were pretty tired out. It was getting late, and since we were going to be meeting early the next morning, and I figured I'd better get to bed, too.

Chinglish Attack

I saw some pretty funny signs on my trip to Beijing. My friend sent me the two pictures. The first one was posted on the Great Wall; the second speaks for itself.

I have photos of some of others, but that roll isn't developed yet. And not having a scanner available, they just might have to wait until I'm back in the States. However, I can at least tell you about a few of them.

At the Ming Tombs, most of the fences (which surrounded every blade of grass on the premises) had a sign reading "Don't throw rubbish away."

On a warning sign by a strongly angled sidewalk near the train station I read, "The slippery are very crafty."

Over the radiator in the bathroom on the train I saw, "No stlashing!" And at either end of the sleeping compartment was a small sign above the radiators saying, "Do not blot out!"

For Sunday

"When there's something that you want and believe in so much--trusting that God will do it--and for some reason He chooses not to give it to you, that's when you walk by faith. You decide to still trust that God knows what He's doing."

--Jeremy Camp, reflecting on the death of his 21-year-old wife

"Walk by Faith"

Would I believe you when you say
Your hand will guide my every way?
Will I receive the words You say
Every moment of every day?

Well I will walk by faith
Even when I cannot see
Because this broken road
Prepares Your will for me.

Help me to win my endless fears;
You've been so faithful for all my years;
With the one breath You make me new;
Your grace covers all I do.

Well I'm broken--but I still see Your face.
You've spoken--pouring Your words of grace.

Well I will walk by faith
Even when I cannot see
Because this broken road
Prepares Your will for me.

--Jeremy Camp

Beijing: the Adventure Continues

My eventful train ride ended around 6:00 in the morning on Friday of last week. I had been given instructions of how to find the foreigner's ticket desk at the Beijing train station (Beijing Zhan, for those of you familiar with the various stations). I headed straight there to get my ticket, but the lady, who didn't appear to speak any English despite the fact that it was a desk for non-Chinese people, told me that I'd have to come back on Sunday because tickets for Wednesday wouldn't be available until then.

I left the station and found my hostel about 15 minutes north (walking). I checked in, dropped off my stuff in the room of still-sleeping guys, brushed my teeth and headed for the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City is massive and actually used to cover a bit more area, now preserved as various kinds of parks. I spent five or six hours there poking around and taking photos with an older Nikon I borrowed from a friend. Nearly everything is named the Hall/Gate of Harmonious [something or other]. Apparently after the somewhat foreign Qing dynasty violently displaced (aka: overthrew) the local Ming dynasty, the rulers wanted the people to feel that there was still a good sense of order and they weren't really changing things, so they renamed everything using the word "harmonious." Of course, all the renaming was done inside the palace where the people couldn't go. Maybe the renaming was for the sake of the nobles.

Additionally, everywhere you turn--not just in the Forbidden City but pretty much everywhere in Beijing--you'll see the hand of Qianlong, China's apparently favorite emperor and mad graffiti artist. Honestly, it seems like anything older than a tube of toothpaste claims to have been written on it "in the hand of Emperor Qianlong." There are a few other "emperor's hands" lying around, but Qianlong definitely wins the cake for most prolific enscriber.

After visiting the Forbidden City's various Halls and Gates of Harmonious [Peace, Harvests, fill-in-the-blank], I stepped over the threshold of the Gate of Economic Imperialism to the Hall of Benevolent Beverages and Caffinated Contemplation. In other words, there's a Starbucks inside the Forbidden City. That's right, a small but real-live Starbucks. I'm not a coffee lover, but the iced chai was a nice treat.

Later in the afternoon I crossed the street north of the Forbidden City to Jingshan Park, which used to be one of the imperial parks. In its center is a large hill made of the ruins of the previous palace and the dirt from the substantial moat around the Forbidden City. The hill sides are well coated in old vegetation, and it's capped with a Buddhist pagoda/shrine. Around the base are various gardens, including a large peony garden that was blooming. As I was enjoying the flowers, a lady in a fancy dress and a name tag started chatting with me. The Imperial Teahouse was right there, and she invited me to come in for a tea ceremony. I wouldn't have done it in Dalian, but the price wasn't too bad, and I thought, what the heck, I'm on vacation. I tried seven different kinds of tea, all of which were absolutely fabulous. The girl's English was excellent, and we had a really nice conversation. She explained the different water temperatures and kinds of pots necessary for making the best of each kind of tea. I had never before tasted such good tea and seriously doubt I shall ever do so again. My "flavors" included ju-pu (Chrysanthemum and the Pu plant), green tea, peach, monkey tree (a clear bitter tea made from leaves that only monkeys can get high enough to pick), lychee/rose and peony. My favorite was the lychee/rose, which tasted like it had honey in it even though we hadn't added any kind of sweetener at all.

Having tea in the park was probably the highlight of my trip.

I didn't eat or drink anything for several hours after visiting the tea house. I didn't want to cancel out the flavor memory. When I finally did have supper, I foolishly broke one of my cardinal Chinese menu rules: never order meat unless I recognize the character immediately following the animal character. I was hoping for some kind of sheep soup, and I got "some kind" all right: sheep organs. I definitely saw stomach and liver in there, and I think some of the other parts were heart and lungs. For those of you who have never had the privilege of eating sheep stomach, I can tell you that it tastes a lot like what comes out of stomachs. Upon seeing my supper, I quickly ordered some additional dishes to help me through. There's nothing like sheep-on-a-stick and shredded potatoes to fill you up when you're trying to avoid innards!

On Saturday I wandered around Tian'anmen Square in the morning. I toured the Great Hall of the People, China's version of Congress, which is a massive building. I tried to visit the Maosoleum, but it was closed (the entire time I was in town!). After wandering some of the back neighborhoods, called hutongs, for a while, I took a bus to the Summer Palace.

I have never been so crowded in my life (well, OK--maybe once in a small landrover in Africa with seventeen other people), and I've ridden quite a few crowded Chinese buses. I noticed one lady in a seat pay a lesser fare, so I knew that she would be getting off somewhere before my stop. I stood by her chair and let other people crowd around me. Eventually, there were so many people on the bus that I had full body contact with the guy in front of me from my knees to my upper chest. My arm was being pushed off the handrail. My side and a good portion of my back were being pressed upon as well. Eventually the lady got up, and I took the seat for the last 20 minutes of the hour and a half ride.

The Summer Palace was nice, but if you go, don't take the audio tour. While the tour at the Forbidden City is nicely marked, it's really difficult to tell where you are and what clip you should be listening to at the Summer Palace. I think I would have enjoyed my time there more without the tour (or the time pressure to get the machine back to the desk by 4:00).

The Summer Palace is yet another imperial park/retreat set along a large lake north of Beijing. The lake is big enough to keep things cool along its shore and to provide a decent breeze. The buildings were largely open and decorated in a traditional style. There was also a large Buddhist temple on the main hill. On the far side of the hill was Suzhou Street, a fake shopping street that the emperor built so that he and his empress and concubines could go out for a day as "normal" people. Due to traditions and imperial protocol, the emperor was rarely allowed to leave his various palaces, and the ladies almost never got out. So on their fancy riverbank-straddling Suzhou Street (based on a street in another city), they could wander and buy various things that they'd like.

Although being the supreme ruler of a powerful nation would definitely have its perks, I'm really glad that I wasn't an emperor of China. Talk about a frustrating life. Yes, when people think you're a kind of god you're treated as well-nigh all-powerful, but you're still stuck inside certain overly-confining rules and geographical limitations.

That's just about it for Friday and Saturday of last week. Once again, I need to get going, so the adventures will have to continue later.

Coming Home

No, China hasn't invaded Taiwan yet (to my knowledge). But I did arrange my return flight to America yesterday.

I had contacted the people who helped me come here to see if they could get the return part of my NorthWest ticket lined up, but they e-mailed saying their travel agent couldn't get anything for June 27-July 1. They gave me the Beijing number for NW, so I called it.

The lady's English was excellent, and overall getting a seat was much easier than I had expected. I told her the dates I thought would work best. After a longish pause during which I could hear the clicking of a keyboard, she told me that all the flights on those days were full, but there was a seat available on June 25. Unfortunately, the way our school contracts have turned out and the amount of time it takes to get to Beijing, that couldn't work for me. Due to the oddly timed ending of the school year (my exams will be done on June 3), the school has decided that we can leave either on June 12 with a partial month's salary or on June 26 with the full month's salary (no one's quite sure what kind of work we'd be doing during those extra days); no matter what, we must be out of our apartments by July 1. While June 25 doesn't seem like a big deal, I didn't want to be the one who opened the can of worms by saying that I'd like to stay longer but can't quite do the whole time how much money will I get or lose with this alternate leaving date sorry Kate but that's the airlines for you.

Additionally, the airline lady told me that open-ended round trip tickets may not be used during the months of January, July or August. So that definitely shot any plans of staying a few days longer. Especially since my visa runs out on July 7.

I asked if they had anything for June 13 or sometime soon after. Following a shorter pause and some clicking, she said that there was a seat available on June 13. I went for it, figuring that even though it's two weeks earlier than I had wanted, I'd better just get a seat. So I'll be heading for Beijing on June 12 and staying in a hotel that night because the flight to America leaves too early to make it on a morning flight from Dalian. On Sunday, June 13, my plane leaves Beijing at 9:20am and arrives in Tokyo at 1:45pm. My next flight leaves Tokyo at 4:00pm and arrives in Detroit at 2:35pm the same day. And the flight to Wisconsin leaves Detroit at 5:04pm and arrives in Madison at 5:17pm.

That's not quite as good as my flight in January that arrived in Madison only one hour after leaving Beijing, even with a connection in Chicago.

Five weeks from tomorrow, China will be in my past, and I'll be home. Weird.

Beijing: the Adventure Begins

As I said yesterday, I'm back from Beijing. I had a great time and am really glad that I went. And I had several adventures along the way.

Those of you who've been reading my blog the past few weeks remember that I was having trouble finding someone to go with. I ended up going by myself, which was a good thing because most people probably wouldn't have been interesting in spending time looking at all the little side details of the various important sights in the city. Once my friend had picked up my train ticket, everything seemed to be going smoothly. My last-minute organizations and packing were a bit rough, but there were any big problems.

Since I had never been on a train before, my Chinese teacher went to the station with me to help me out. We arrived about an hour and a half early and found a seat in the big waiting hall. When it was time for my train to board, music started playing, and the teal-uniformed ticket attendants all walked out in a line, assumed their positions and opened the gates in unison. Although we all had assigned seats, everyone crowded toward the gates like they were hoping for the best seat. Julia (my teacher) had bought a platform ticket so she could show me to my car and see me off. I went through the gate, and the lady punched my ticket. Then she said something to me in Chinese that I didn't understand. Julia pushed me through, grabbed my ticket and her purse and ran off somewhere.

It turned out that my ticket was for Wednesday night, and I was trying to leave on Thursday night.

Five or ten minutes later, Julia came running back, showed the lady the ticket, and said, "I got you permission to board." We had only a half hour from the time the gate opens to when the train leaves, so there wasn't a whole lot of time to get to my car. We rushed along as quickly as we could, Julia's stiletto heels slowing her down a bit (Chinese girls seem to love super-high heeled shoes). We got to my car, and the lady said that with the adjustment to my ticket, we had to go to the last car on the train.

We got to the last car with maybe five minutes to spare. Julia spoke frantically with the attendant and said that she got me onto a waiting list for a bed, but I was number 6. She told me to get on the train, but I didn't quite understand. I thought I had to wait outside for the attendant to call my name or number. Julia kept talking quickly with the attendant and turned to me again, saying, "Get on the train!"

I told her that I thought I had to wait for a bed. She then explained that my adjusted ticket was for standing-room only. The train trip from Dalian to Beijing takes about ten hours, and it was leaving at 8:20pm. "Get on the train!"

I told her that I couldn't stand that long, but she kept telling me to get on. I told her it would be better for me not to go than to have to stand all night. She told me to get on the train. She talked to the lady some more, and I heard her saying my Chinesified name. She ushered me to the door and said, "About an hour into the ride, the attendant may come and get you to give you a bed. You'll have to pay a little money." I still protested going, but she more or less pushed me on. "It'll be fine!" she said, forcing me through the door.

I stood in the very crowded seating area of the train. All the seats were taken, and there were quite a few of us "standing room only" passengers lining the aisles. The girl standing next to me spoke English, and we were chatting a little. Julia was standing outside the window and kept mouthing, "It'll be fine!" I would look at her doubtfully. She then banged on the window, getting the girl's attention, and told her to take care of me.

Several more passengers got on the train. One man patted my shoulder and said something that I couldn't understand. I asked the girl what he said, and she told me, "He said there are no more beds." The train started moving, and I knew I was stuck for sure.

I talked with the girl on and off, and another university student about her age began chatting with us as well. Every so often, an attendant would force her way down the overcrowded aisle with a cart of food and drinks. People around us were eating various stinky snacks. One man lit a cigarette, but another attendant quickly came and made him put it out. He complied but complained loudly after she left. Time crawled by. It was past my bedtime, and I was getting sleepy. I kept praying, begging God for a bed. I told him that he knew I couldn't stand all night, and if I was going to have to, he was going to have to help me out.

About an hour into the ride, an attendant came by, followed by a conductor. She tapped me on the shoulder and said something in Chinese. I asked the girl, and she said, "Follow her." We headed to the back of the train, where the conductor and attendant entered a small room. I waited in the tiny hallway with a small crowd of other people. The conductor stuck his head out, pointed at me and motioned for me to come.

Inside the little room, the attendant took out a small, hand-held machine, kind of like a label maker. They asked for my ticket, which I gave them. They looked at it a bit and said something about "300." I thought that was what I would have to pay. I thought it was a bit steep, but being exhausted, I didn't really care too much. As I got my money out, they printed off a new ticket. Then the conductor looked at my and said, "122 yuan." I gave it to them gladly, grabbed my new ticket and headed off to bed.

When I was in Seattle, the pastor at Mars Hill would sometimes say that Christians should always look for the best seats and parking spots and not settle for crumby ones without trying to get a good one because we would end up giving praise to God whereas an unbeliever would just be happy with himself. Well, God got lots of praise from me that night. I ended up with a bottom bunk, which was significantly better than the top bunk listed on my original ticket. Bottom bunks have enough headroom to be able to sit comfortably. They have storage directly under the bed instead of on a rack on the other side of the hallway. The ceiling lights don't shine in your eyes. There's a small hook for a jacket at the head of the bed, away from the walkway (I put my keys, wallet and glasses in my jacket pocket and didn't have to worry about them being safe).

All around, I was far more thankful for my bed when I didn't expect to have one than I would have been if everything had gone smoothly.

I need to get going, so the rest of the Beijing adventures will have to wait for another entry.

Back from Beijing

Just wanted to let my few faithful readers that I am indeed back from the trip to Beijing, and yes, I survived quite well on my own. Highlights included getting a bed on the train, tea in an imperial garden, having a Christian roommate from Nigeria, climbing the Great Wall (along with an additional adventure for that day, which I'll get into later), and running into Daniel Routh, an old friend from my Poetry Writing class.

I'll definitely go into more detail on these and other experiences later. I don't know when I'll get to post photos: all I have right now are six and a half undeveloped rolls of 36 exposures each.