Alice’s Adventures in China

Today is 端午节 (duān wū jié), China’s Dumpling Festival, or Dragon Boat Festival. In class, we learned that long ago lived a man called 屈原 (Qū Yuán), who committed suicide by throwing himself into a river. People then threw rice wrapped in leaves into the river for him, and now we celebrate this festival, and eat 粽子 (zòngzi), rice wrapped in bamboo leaves. I’m guessing there’s also something to do with dragon boats. I’m not sure if this was what the teacher was teaching, or if it’s what the rest of the class learned, but it’s what I got from the lesson!

We have a long weekend off because of it, and my homework for one of my classes is to write a short essay on how I celebrated. I didn’t think it was going to be much of an essay because I wasn’t going travelling or doing anything in particular to celebrate, like a lot of my classmates, but it actually turned out to be quite an interesting day. If I can translate the following into Chinese with better grammar than the English version, I might not get a bad mark.

So, this morning I wasn’t feeling well. There’s something up with my left eye, and although I can’t see anything in it, something’s obscuring my view, and made me think I was getting a migraine. I think because I thought this, I started feeling other migraine symptoms that weren’t actually there. By late afternoon, my imaginary symptoms had died down, and I went to Mazagran Café for a bite to eat. It turned out they were closing in an hour, so I just got a coffee and a cake, and they apologized profusely (which they really didn’t need to do.) While I was eating, one of the staff came over and gave me 2 cinnamon pinwheels in a bag, and said “这个面包…送给你。” (This bread… something something something… give you.) So 2 enormous, free, inexplicable, cinnamon pinwheels. Not bad! A little while later she came over again and asked if I could write a sign in English to say that they were closing early, which I did. Not very well though. As a native speaker, my English is obviously good, and I can often understand things perfectly in Chinese, but can’t translate them into idiomatic English. That’s something to work on. I finished my drink and left, getting a cheery “thank you” and “goodbye” from the staff. They’re all ridiculously nice in there!

I don’t know if it’s because of the holiday, or because the Olympic flame is getting close to Kunming, or both, but there’s been a sudden proliferation of T-shirts, flags and stickers with “中国加油！” (Go China!) and the like on. After passing at least 6 people selling such merchandise, I stopped at the end of the overpass, and bought some flags from a girl. What kind of Chinese person would I be if I didn’t!? Oh yes, that’s right. I’m not a Chinese person. Anyhow, now I have a little Chinese flag and a little Beijing 2008 flag, and I think I made that girl’s day. As I wandered home, I wondered what reaction I’d get if I set up camp in the middle of all the vendors and tried to flog Union Jacks and London 2012 flags? You wouldn’t believe how tempted I am to try it.

My last stop before home was the supermarket, to get some milk and apple juice. They had no plastic bags left, so I had to put the milk in The World’s Smallest Handbag, and carry the apple juice in my arms along with the peedie flags and The World’s Largest Cinnamon Pinwheels.

So if anyone spotted a bemused looking 老外 (foreigner) sweating like crazy, with a bulging handbag and an arm full of random objects heading up 建设路 (Jianshe Road), that’ll be why.

Talking of the Olympic flame, I seem to have been calling it the “奥运会火鸡” (Àoyùnhuì huǒjī) or Olympic turkey, instead of the “奥运会火炬” (Àoyùnhuì huǒjù) Olympic torch. Nice one! And talking of “加油”, it literally means “add oil”, so a petrol station is a “加油站”. But I learned “come on!” first, so everytime I see a petrol station, it seems really encouraging.

Tags: China, chinese, olympics

For anyone who’s not aware, Bahá’ís in Iran have been suffering a great deal of persecution from the government, simply for being Bahá’ís. Most recently we recieved the news that:

“Six Bahá’í leaders in Iran were arrested and taken to the notorious Evin prison yesterday in a sweep that is ominously similar to episodes in the 1980s when scores of Iranian Bahá’í leaders were summarily rounded up and killed.” - Bahá’í World News Service

My friend Rory has been gathering together a number of articles on the issue here and here, and pointed me in the direction of As if Natural Disasters were not Enough!, which mirrors just what I’ve been thinking these last few days. For the last few months I’ve been fairly out of touch with world news, but after the earthquake, I checked BBC News and was glad I hadn’t done it more often. It’s so depressing to see so many people inflicting pointless suffering on other human beings. It really hit home, seeing a story at the top of the Scottish news page that day about a murder in Orkney, where I come from (though reassuring that murders are so rare there that one that happened in 1994 is still news.) Natural disasters like the typhoon in Burma and the earthquake in China really put it in perspective. There are so many natural causes of death and suffering that we have little to no control over, why do we add more? Our petty causes of war and dissention shrink into obscurity in the face of massive natural disasters. Who cares if our skin colours, beliefs, customs are different? Earthquakes and typhoons don’t. They transcend national borders. It doesn’t matter what you look like, where you come from, how much money you make, if you’re in their path, you’re all in the same boat. I’d really like to see something positive come out of these horrific events, namely that more people will realise that we’re all the same. All human. And that our man-made divisions are actually non-existant.

A week ago, I was going to write about how some people here in China have reacted to the attack on the Olympic Torch in France, and other events (there have been protests here in Kunming against French supermarket Carrefour), but I just couldn’t get my head round the extent to which logic went out the window in the face of national pride, in some cases. A lot of people fail to see that the views or actions of a few individuals do not reflect the views of all those in the same non-existant category, eg. Not all French people hold the same opinions about China, and not all Chinese people hold the same opinions about France. I saw one reply to a blog post urging the boycott of Europe, listing, amongst other human-rights offences, the Holocaust. Do I even need to point out that the victims were also European? Apparently I do. But the fact that all those involved were European is insignificant. These categories don’t mean a thing. That’s a clear example that all Eurpeans don’t hold the same views, just because they’re European. I’m certain that not all Nazis or Jews hold the same opinions on everything. It’s like an international game of generalisation pingpong, but there can be no winners.

“An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” - Mahatma Gandhi

“Anger breeds anger, and bitterness will destroy my family if I’m not careful - and I won’t allow that to happen.” - Margaret Mizen, mother of a 16-year old boy murdered in London earlier this month.

“When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love.” - ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

I’d strongly recommend reading ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Paris Talk, “The Pitiful Causes of War, and the Duty of Everyone to Strive for Peace”, which can be found online here. It’s amazing.

Tags: Bahá'í, Burma, China, earthquake, Iran, persecution, typhoon

Yesterday afternoon, there was a major earthquake in China. It hit in Wenchuan County, Sichuan and was felt as far away as Beijing, Taibei and Bangkok. Here in Kunming, I could hear the windows of my 6th floor flat rattling. I hate to say my first thought was how cool it was to have experienced an earthquake, but then the numbers of dead and injured started filtering through and it sunk in just how serious it was. The BBC are currently reporting 12,000 dead.

I don’t know much about earthquakes, but what struk me was not only how far away it was felt, but how quickly it travelled. It struck Wenchuan at 2:28pm, and was felt in Kunming at 2:35. Apparently it’s 445 miles away. That’s incredibly fast!

My prayers are with everyone affected.

Tags: China, earthquake

One year old on Monday. I declared on May 12th 2007. I’ve experienced so much in that time, and grown immesurably. Sometimes I’m so glad I became a Bahá’í before I came to China, because it’s helped me cope with all the challenges and get so much from my time, and sometimes I’m glad I came to China after becoming a Bahá’í because it gave me all the challenges I needed to grow spiritually. Whichever way round it is, it worked out kinda nicely. :)

edit: I also got a mention on Bahá’í Views. :)

Tags: Bahá'í, China

The Festival of Ridván (April 21 - May 2) has just ended. It is the most important Bahá’í festival and commemorates the 12 days Bahá’u'lláh spent in the Garden of Ridván, during which he announced his mission as a manifestation of God for this day, the one who’s coming was foretold by the Báb. It is during this time that the Bahá’í elections take place.

I’ve been studying a book about the history of the Báb and Bahá’u'lláh and learned about the significance of the festival just before it started, which was nice timing.

Here is a lengthier article about it.

Tags: Bahá'í

In my first attempt at procrastination this evening (the second being facebooking and the third being writing this), I had a look in a book shop on the way home from dinner. I started flicking through some English-language books and realised how long it’s been since I read a book. I read Bahá’í books, and things related to my course, but it’s been years since I read a novel. So I decided to read at least one novel before the end of the summer, and bought a Haruki Murakami novel which I intend to read on my way back to Britain. I think I’ll have enough time on planes and in airports to read the whole thing. Then I might attempt another one while I’m at home. I’m pretty excited. I’d start reading it right now if I didn’t have mountains of school work.

I was just out buying erkuai and a couple of guys walked past and exclaimed, “it’s Paris!“. I wonder if they were implying Kunming’s dusktime ambiance is reminiscent of the French capital, or if they were noting that I share my ethnicity and hair colour with the Hilton hotel heiress? Neither are terribly accurate observations. Amusing none the less.

The other day, I passed a girl on the street with “HERPES” in huge, sequined letters on her T-shirt. I’m gutted I didn’t have my camera with me.

Tags: China

Months and months ago, I bought El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth), on a whim, and this week I finally got round to watching it. A plot summary on IMDB describes it well:

“In 1944 fascist Spain, a girl, fascinated with fairy-tales, is sent along with her pregnant mother to live with her new stepfather, a ruthless captain of the Spanish army. During the night, she meets a fairy who takes her to an old faun in the center of the labyrinth. He tells her she’s a princess, but must prove her royalty by surviving three gruesome tasks. If she fails, she will never prove herself to be the the true princess and will never see her real father, the king, again.“

A lot of reviews I’ve read say that it’s a film about finding comfort and strength in imagination, and one Christian review says, “Ofelia finds no comfort or help from religion, for the clergy in Vidal’s company are clearly corrupt. She turns instead to another source of understanding—the light of imagination.” This may well have been the intention, as the review goes on to describe director Guillermo Del Toro’s disenchantment with Catholicism, but I think religion (the way I understand it) is exactly what Ofelia finds comfort in. Ofelia endures a number of tests and hardships in the physical world, and through the strength of her moral character, she achieves immortality in “the kingdom”. If that doesn’t make you think of “Heaven”, I don’t know what will. To begin with, she is motivated by a desire to escape her present situation, and to be a princess, but at the end, she is willing to sacrifice it all -her physical life and the chance of being an immortal princess- to save her newborn brother, which in fact is the final test, and wins her immortality. The fact that no one else believes in the fairystories she believes in, but she is steadfast regardless, risking her immediate safety on a number of occasions, also seems to be very relevant to religion.

In the end Ofelia dies physically, and it’s rather hazy as to whether her soul actually did live on or if it was all her imagination, which begs the question: if it was all her imagination, if religion is all make-believe, is it better to live in hope of something better in the world to come, with a morally upright character, and sacrifice your life for the good of others, than to… I don’t know. Whatever the opposite is. To believe that the sufferings in this world are all there is to life, and to try and block them out with methods harmful to yourself and others? I think the former is better.

I think sometimes people are too attached to literal interpretations to see beyond them. The film may have literally portrayed the Church as corrupt, but clergy aren’t the be all and end all of religion.

Personally, the film brought all kinds of things to mind, and made me reflect profoundly on the enormous sufferings and sacrifices of individuals in the name of the betterment of the world, and put my own hardships into perspective.

My mind’s a bit of a muddle and I’m going to make even less sense if I keep typing. I hope that made a little bit of sense to someone though.

Tags: films, Pan's Labyrinth, spirituality

…involve a minimum of textbooks and a maximum of food. Recently it was the Songkhran festival, or water splashing festival, which is the Thai and Laotian new year. The Dai minority here in Yunnan also have a water splashing festival around about the same time. We have lots of Thai and Laotian students at my university (my class has 2 Thais, 2 Laotians, 1 Swede and me), so we had a wee do on Monday morning, with free food and a little bit of water splashing. It was also one of my clasmates’ birthdays so after starting class late, we stopped for birthday cake. I’m doing well with my mission to celebrate a new year every month.

Today another of my classmates bought ice creams for everyone, and we got to watch a film about the Dai minority instead of a vocab test. Wo0H!

Tags: China, Laos, school, Thailand, water splashing festival

These last 3 weeks, I’ve been travelling around China with my mum, dad and younger brother, Eoin. We went to Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, Xi’an and Beijing, did the touristy things, did some unexpected things, and met some friends. It’s been totally fantastic, and totally exhausting!

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Tags: Beijing, China, Dali, Kunming, Lijiang, travelling, Xi'an