yes!

YAY! I found out that they have a marathon in BJ this October!!! And my co-worker wants to run it too! I thought coming to CN would mean I'd have to put off running a marathon until later - but perhaps I CAN have my cake and eat it, too. Although, the problem is running in this pollution ...

http://www.cits.net/citsonlineWeb/switchdo.do?prefix=/marathon&page=/b2c/Welcome.jsp

homesick

lonely
wo (third tone)
hen (second)
xiang (third)
I miss I miss
De duo!
wo miss bijiao so much
my jia my home
my friends peng you
safe spaces
and I truthfully shuo
speak
I miss speaking
even in English I can’t convey
wo de xin
wo de heart
my heart
well,
what of my xin?
can’t shuo it
cut off and
yuan far yuan far yuan yuan yuan
from
warm waters
tired of navigating through
turbulence and rocks
Dad baba
I know you are my boat
but how nan! how hard
when you take away what I think
I need most
to find I never needed anything at all
but you
because
if you be with me
i am jia

i am home.

conference

Yesterday, I went to a conference by Stuart and Jill Briscoe, a famous couple that travels around the world giving talks to encourage C leaders. It’s so amazing – they are in their mid-70s, and they are traveling the globe!

It’s always refreshing to be reminded of the basics. The B tells us everything we need to know, and all we need to do is believe it and do it. The problem is sometimes we forget these truths and promises – or we don’t really believe them – and so we needed to be reminded.

Stuart talked about how the lost are like “sheep without a shepherd.” How many times have we heard this analogy? But it is an amazing one if you think about it. We are dumb and crazy like sheep – we are a bleating, stubborn, and stupid mob. We try to cross the hedge the shepherd puts up for own good because we want freedom – and in this search for “freedom” we walk into the road and become mutton.

Ever since being in CN, I have had new, intimate experience with mobs. Especially on the bus. Sometimes I don’t have to hold onto anything because I am pressed up against bodies on all sides. Sometimes I’m carried by the wave of people coming in – I’ve been stepped on, squeezed, jostled, elbowed, pushed on and, in return, I have stepped on, squeezed, jostled, and pushed others. The worst thing is when you are in the back or front of the bus, and you need to get to the exit door. There are about 40 people between you and your goal. And then this mob becomes especially annoying and frustrating.

But instead of being frustrated, annoyed, or angry at mobs, J looked at them with compassion.

“When J saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” - Matt 9:36

How did he do that? How do I possibly love the mob keeping me from the exit door, and, even more, how could I possibly love the 1.3 billion people in this country?

Use J as the example.

He saw the crowd was “harassed and helpless.” Stuart had said “Behind every aberrant behavior, there is unresolved pain.” We need to realize that the crowd is made up of individuals, individuals who behave this way because they’re trapped, fallen, in pain, and lost. They push and shove, just as I pushed and shoved, because everyone else is – and if you don’t, how will you ever get to the door? If I don’t take the bribe, how will I ever get to the top? How will I support my parents and grandparents? I am their pride and joy - If I don’t succeed, how will I make them proud?

I admit that I know very little about this country – and the less you know and understand about something, the easier it is to criticize it. It’s easy for an outsider to simple-mindedly complain about how things work here, regarding such subjects like corruption, pollution, inefficiency. But Dad looks past the surface into the heart – the reasons and motives behind it all.

Take corruption, for instance. No one denies that this is one of the biggest problems CN faces. Anti-corruption is on the top of the list of the government’s agenda. “Tsk, tsk” the American says. “That’s so messed up how so many people get their jobs by paying officials.” And I think I would have said that only a few weeks ago, but I was editing this article on corruption – and it helped me see the big picture. I am not excusing corruption – I’m only saying that many of these officials and leaders feel trapped. They see it as unavoidable and necessary because the very framework of society and bureaucracy here is built on guanxi. Sometimes, it’s the only way to “succeed.” For example, one official was given a bribe by some leader of a province. The official slipped the money back into the leader’s car, but their relationship has been broken since. So if you can’t beat the system, why fight it?

I’m trying to get used to this idea of guanxi. But I guess we have it in America too – we call it “connections”, but it plays a smaller role there, I suppose. Guanxi goes against my “Protestant ethic” of being rewarded solely by hard work, capability, and integrity, and I will have to get used to it, because, really, you can’t function here without it. I got my internship through guanxi, through a friend of a friend of a friend.

But anyway, that’s a discussion for another day - back to my point. We need to look past the surface of the sweaty, noisy, obnoxious mob into the heart of the individual in order to love them as J does. I hope I can begin to understand this place – because the beginning of loving them is understanding who they are in light of who G is. People are greedy, violent, evil, but they can’t help it because they are fallen from what G intended them to be. They are sheep who need a shepherd. C.S. Lewis said we must see each person as an eternal being who has the potential of being an eternal abomination or a child of G caught up in the weight of glory.



More thoughts about the conference later.

more pictures

First, here are some pictures of food...



This guy is making noodles at the restuarant Aiyi where treated Hannah and me to Beijing kaoya (Peking duck). First, he grabs and stretches out the dough from the metal bowl on the right. He simultaneously pulls and forms the noodle from the dough. As he pulls the string out, he throws it into the boiling vat. I think if the dough didn't run out, you could have one continuous noodle miles and miles long.

Here he's making another kind of noodle. He uses a metal knife to shave off thin strips off of the slab of dough.

Here is the Beijing kaoya. Mmmm =) You eat this by taking a flat round doughy skin (which is really similar to uncooked dumpling skin) and placing the strip of duck, onion, cucumber, and sweet sauce in it. Then you wrap it up like a burrito, and enjoy =)

And this is what I had for breakfast this morning. It's called "tong yoon" in Cantonese, which makes it ... "tang yuen" in Mandarin? Whatever their proper name is, they are starchy glutineous balls of delight. These balls are prepared by boiling and are consist of gooey fillings. I've only tasted the sesame filling before in the States, but this morning there were a whole plethora of fillings, as you can tell from the different colors. All unidentifiable to me, except for the sesame and peanut filling.

And here are more pictures from last weekend when Andy, Blake and Hannah visited.

When we reached the top of Great Wall (after 500 steps of near 60-degree ascension), we had a photoshoot because Blake had brought his tripod. We were able to pose in many creative ways. Here we're emulating the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" phrase, but since we had a fourth person, Hannah became "smell no evil."

This is at the Temple of Heaven, which serves as both a historical site (where the emperors used to come to worship heaven) and a public park. At the public park section, we watched these old people throw soft, cloth loops at each other. But instead of catching it with their hands, they'd catch it with their heads so the loops would end up around their necks! Since Andy was the only foreign-looking person around, they beckoned him to join them in their festivities. Here is a cool picture of him throwing the loop. At first he threw it too low, but he learned quickly after an old lady showed him how to do it (see picture in two posts ago). He also showed an aptitude for catching it with his head. Hannah told me that the crowds around us were exclaiming to each other about what a smart foreigner he was =P

This is my favorite picture of Hannah, which was taken at the Forbidden City. We just came out of the bathroom, I think. She was still exactly the same as I remembered her - kooky, child-like, making the same cartoon-sounding exclamations. =)