Chinese stories

Americans love reenactments (in Chinese 重演活动), and spend lots of time and energy in making them as realistic as possible. Europeans also do this, I think, dressing up as Napolean and such. China had a civil war from ’45-’49, but they don’t seem to like to reenact it. I can think of a few reasons:

1. The war isn’t really over yet – i.e. Taiwan.

2. Not enough time has passed.

3. No one would want to be the Nationalists.

I did find a Taiwanese group that does WWII reenactments, and there are some pictures of their latest reenactment on flickr here. They seem to have mostly Nationalists fighting Japanese (and maybe even a few Germans?).

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孔子哭子路於中庭，有人弔者，而夫子拜之。既哭，進使者而問故。使者曰：“醢之矣。”遂命覆醢。

Confucius was crying over Zilu’s death in his hall. Someone came to mourn, and the master thanked him. When he was done crying, Confucius had the messenger sent in, and asked about Zilu’s death. The messenger said, “He has been chopped into mincemeat.” Confucius had the mincemeat they were about to eat poured out.

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This is how Jack Nicholson’s famous line “You can’t handle the truth!” from A Few Good Men is translated in the Chinese dubbed version.

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Normally I wouldn’t pay much attention to this story, as they are a dime a dozen in China, but I used to live on Songling Road where these villas were when I taught for 2 months at the Qingdao International School. I don’t particularly remember the buildings, though. The story reminds me of a big half-completed building that has sat empty by the Huilongguan Badaling Expressway exit for years. I don’t know what’s worse – half-completed buildings left standing everywhere or abandoned buildings on every other block like in Detroit.

Article in translation:

Qingdao’s Edinburgh Garden Villas Finally Demolished after Sitting Empty for 11 Years

With the roar of bulldozers, a small 3-story villa in the “Edinburgh Gardens” on Qingdao’s Songling Road collapses with a crash. Edinburgh Gardens will completely disappear from Qingdao, and will be replaced with a high-end scenic residential area.

In 1994 Singapore’s Huanyu Group came to Qingdao and set up Huanyu (Qingdao) Development Co., Ltd. as a sino-foreign cooperative. In the Laoshan district in eastern Qingdao they built “Singapore City” — Edinburgh Villas, Vancouver Gardens, International Capital Gardens, and Monte Carlo Plaza were all newly developed “products” at the time.

On October 4th, 1996, Edinburgh Gardens began its first phase of construction, but since the distance between the villas was too small, they were called “pigeon buildings.”

After the main parts of the buildings were completed, since the surrounding water, electricity, gas, and heating facilities were not installed, and since underground piping networks could not be connected, the Edinburgh Gardens could not be sold. Afterwards, sales of the villas were stalled for various reasons, and in the end they became a dilapidated, desolate group of “rotten tail buildings.” Source: CFP

In the discussion thread most people express anger over the prevalence of such projects.

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天子，視不上於袷，不下於帶；國君，綏視；大夫，衡視；士，視五步。凡視，上於面則敖，下於帶則憂，傾則姦。

When looking at the son of heaven, one’s gaze should fall between his collar and his belt; for state lords, one’s gaze can fall slightly above the collar; for senior retainers, one can look them straight in the face; for elects, one’s gaze can also wander to within five paces. Gazes falling above another’s face show arrogance, gazes falling below another’s belt show heavy worries, and sideways gazes show improper intentions.

From 曲禮下第二.

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Actually I’ve technically lived in Beijing for 3 years, they all were spent in Changping district, north of the fifth ring road in the suburb Huilongguan. When I first got there in 2002 there was no light rail, and the only way to get into the city was to take a taxi, a really slow and crowded bus to Jishuitan, or a probably unsafe  小巴 to Madian. Since then the university I used to teach at more than doubled in size, eating up the farmland around it; the light rail opened; and the suburb of Huilongguan grew out of nothing. One of my former coworkers told me the apartments there were originally built for low-income families, but in the end were sold to the middle-class and wealthy. Nobody has really lived there for more than a few years. A lot of people have cars, as the streets are wide and uncrowded.

But it made it hard for me to work in the city, so we moved to the Dongcheng district. It feels like I’ve moved to Beijing for the very first time! Outside my window I can see hutongs, I actually live next to local Beijingers who speak Beijinghua, and I can actually stay out past 11:30 without having to spend 70 or more yuan on a taxi ride home. In Huilongguan I could look out the window and see the mountains, but here I can watch people kind of like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. In Huilongguan there were all kind of chain stores including a Dominos pizza and new shopping malls, but here there are small stores serving traditional Beijing dishes, and blind massage parlors with actual blind masseuses. It’s also nice to be located between the older part of the city with more character, and Chaoyang district with its westernized culture that I like to taste from time to time.

Oh, and within a week of moving I had my first bike stolen, U-lock and all. Now I’ve really arrived in Beijing.

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Even though we were only there for 2 days, it’s probably the most relaxed and pleasant place I’ve been to in China so far. Maybe it was just that after so many months in Beijing, just getting off the plane and realizing there can be Chinese cities with fresh air and blue skies was enough to hook me.

The first day we took a bus around the island, where we saw lots of beaches that appeared to be laid back and not so touristy and packed as Qingdao’s beaches can get. Although we didn’t see anyone really in the water, and when we got up close at one part it looked kind of dirty. The second day we went to Gulangyu island and walked around for a while, actually managing to get away from the May holiday crowd. Unfortunately taking the ferry back made me feel like refugees fleeing a war-torn country, there were so many people pressing to cram on to it. Even though there didn’t seem to be a whole lot to do other than relaxing and taking in the sights, that’s all that one really needs. The people were very nice, and the handmade wanton soup in the 沙县小吃 was really good too.

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