Agricultural Tour in China on the Horizon

On Monday, May 26, an old college friend of mine, who just received tenure as a professor of history at the University of Kansas, will click her heels and land in Shanghai without her dog Toto. I am honored to be her travel companion and guide. 

She is coming, eventually, to a conference in Beijing that will feature William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The focus of her trip surrounding the conference is learning about agriculture and history so we are making plans to go to Guilin to see them fish with cormorants beneath the terraces of rice paddies, cut into the spectacular hillsides of that unique geographic region. 

We will also make a sojourn to a tea-growing region, quite possibly Huang Shan, or Yellow Mountain, which is not too far from Shanghai. I hope we get a chance to see some sericulture and aquaculture, as well. Sericulture is the making of silk. Aquaculture is the way a large percentage of the fish we consume are grown. 

I have coached her to read about Xu Guangxi and look for his Nong Zheng Quan Shu, an agricultural treatise that deals with irrigation, fertilizers, famine relief, economic crops, and empirical observation with early notions of chemistry. It is an enormous work, some 700,000 written Chinese characters. Although the final draft was not completed  by the time of his death in 1633, the famous Jiangnan scholar Chen Zilung assembled a group of scholars to edit the draft, publishing it in 1639.

The topics covered by his book are:

• The Fundamentals of Agriculture (Nong Ben): quotations from the classics on the importance of encouraging agriculture
• Field System (Tian Zhi): land distribution, field management
• Agricultural Tasks (Nong Shi): clearing land, tilling; also a detailed exposition on settlement schemes
• Water Control (Shui Li): various methods of irrigation, types of irrigation equipment, and the last two chapters devoted to new Western-style irrigation equipment
• Illustrated Treatise on Agricultural Implements (Nong Chi Tu Pu): based largely on Wang Zhen's book of 1313 AD
• Horticulture (Shi Yi): vegetables and fruit
• Sericulture (Can Sang): silk production
• Further Textile Crops (Can Sang Guang Lei): cotton, hemp, etc.
• Silviculture (Chong Chi): forestry preservation
• Animal Husbandry (Mu Yang)
• Culinary Preparations (Zhi Zao)
• Famine Control (Huang Zheng): administrative measures, famine flora

Guiding Ladies (?): Opening or Reform?

Today's English version of China Daily features some pictures of guiding ladies. We also frequently "get to see" airline stewardesses and models at fashion shows and car shows, etc. as the pictures of the day. Nobody is disputing the beauty of Chinese women, but I think it cheapens the publication to indulge its reader's thus. Worse, it objectifies women. 

Guiding ladies wear identical red work uniforms on the opening day of the 2nd Session of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country's top political advisory body, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 3, 2014. About 2,200 members of the CPPCC National Committee will discuss major issues concerning the country's development during the annual session scheduled to conclude on March 12.[Photo/icpress.cn]

"...will discuss major issues..." seems oddly juxtaposed with the chosen image.

Today, National Public Radio had the following story: Corruption Blurs the Lines of Chinese Mistress Culture.* It mentions James Palmer's article Aeon Magazine and anthropologist Tiantian Zheng, who spent two years studying sex workers in China and wrote the book Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Post-Socialist China. 

I am reading the Pope's first solo apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, where this celibate primate writes with compassion: 

I have always been distressed at the lot of those who are victims of various kinds of human trafficking. How I wish that all of us would hear God’s cry: “Where is your brother?” (Gen 4:9). Where is your brother or sister who is enslaved? Where is the brother and sister whom you are killing each day in clandestine warehouses, in rings of prostitution, in children used for begging, in exploiting undocumented labour? Let us not look the other way. There is greater complicity than we think. The issue involves everyone! This infamous network of crime is now well established in our cities, and many people have blood on their hands as a result of their comfortable and silent complicity.

Appearances are everything! 

*The Stitcher app, I believe, picks podcast stories that it thinks I might like to hear. How they arrived at this "suggestion" from my listening to 5 minutes of Garrison Kehler's Writer's Almanac, 59 minutes of Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!, and 4 minute hourly updates from NPR: Hourly News Summary is an open question.

When in Beijing...

The dark purple means very unhealthy and the rust color, hazardous:

On Saturday afternoon, when the weather (and the air!) was good, I took a walk and went quite far away to a big, famous plant shop that was nowhere near as large as Changchun's market. I went equipped with a list of  plants that clean indoor air, which I found on the Internet.

I ended up buying a couple of off-list items, including an orchid and a little kumquat tree like the one my paternal grandmother used to have--only mine is so small it sits on my desk now!

Two Pictures, One Window

This is a window on to the life in Beijing when the AQI (air quality index) for PM 2.5, the particulate matter that is quite dangerous and linked to lung cancer, is at roughly 500 and 50, respectively. Particles in this category are less than two and half microns in diameter.

The first picture was taken yesterday morning and the second, this afternoon from my home office window.

It was a late evening rain storm of minor proportions (a shower) that cleared the air and a switch in the prevailing winds. Somebody asked me what could be done and I, tongue firmly planted in cheek, said that the easiest way to avoid the inversions would be to fully mine the mountains until they are flat. Looking out the train window at China's mountains, they are well on their way to creating a moonscape within a generation in several parts of this gorgeous country.

Let's hope that the leaders here act before we get suffocated by another week of this "weather." While geography is king and much of the pollution we get comes from elsewhere on the "tradewinds" and then gets stuck here because of surrounding mountains, there are things that can and must be done.

The mood in Beijing today is ecstatic. One woman said to me that this is the first time that she has been made happy merely by blue sky. That is a sad commentary on how she has not heretofore derived pleasure from the quotidian; however, it is also indicative of a prevailing giddiness here at seeing the sun (unclothed) for the first time several days.

Mei Li: A Real Story

Seventy-five years ago, a book about a small girl in China won the second ever Caldecott Medal, today widely regarded as the "Nobel" for illustrated children's literature. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.

The book was called Mei Li and was written and illustrated by Thomas Handforth. The first edition was published in New York by Doubleday, Doran & Co. in 1938. At that point, China was already overrun with Japanese invaders and Europe was bracing for war. The disputed "Rape of Nanjing" (about as disputed as the Holocaust) had taken place and there were executions happening as Kuomintang forces battled it out internally with the forces of Li Jingwei and Mao Zedong, as well as their common Japanese foes. It would not be until Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941--"a date that will live in infamy"--that the US forces would be fully engaged.

While Handforth was making children smile in this hard time with his handiwork, he was also documenting what was going on around him. Some of it was whimsical, such as the acrobats he captured in their gyrations.

These, in turn, became images in the book.

Some of his images were gruesome and depressing. He made a lithograph of an execution happening outside the walls, as well, which I shall not share here today.

Over the last few months, I have been fortunate to take up a correspondence with Peggy Hartzell, a Pennsylvania denizen who is the niece of Mr. Handforth. She is the source of all this wonderful information.

In a recent dispatch, she reports, "Connie Tan has been translating [the book] into Chinese. Her mother-in-law is Mei Li's older sister." Mei Li herself passed away about 15 years ago but one of her sisters is still alive and lives in China. Her son and daughter-in-law plan to visit her this fall. They live in California.

Peggy sent me more real pictures of the real Mei Li (being held on far left). The girl holding Mei Li is still alive, maybe living in Beijing. The girls were all adopted by Helen Burton. "I think the oldest daughter's mother lived and worked at Helen's home," explained Peggy.

Helen Burton ran the Camel's Bell Gift shop in the Peking hotel and was famous for her hospitality. Her guest book at the hotel has the signatures of every culturally-connected Westerner who passed through Peking in the 1930s. After she was captured by the Japanese and interred in Weihsien for two years she settled in Honolulu.

"Born in 1891 in North Dakota, her father and brother both rose in state politics. She wanted to venture off to exotic places. She wound up in Peiping looking for secretarial work and it turns out she was a bit of an artist and entrepreneur. It was not long before she started her shop with candy, clothing, art and gifts of her design that she arranged to be made by locals. People from all over the world stopped by and signed her guest book." (from an account on the web)

The artist and illustrator Tom, as Peggy refers to him, lived in Beijing. Below are pictures of his door as it was in the late part of the 1930s and as it is in this new millennium.

Then there is the door of Mei Li's house as depicted by Handforth's talented hand. Maybe this was the door of Helen Burton. (Doors had great significance in the Qing Dynasty. You could tell the class or rank of one who lived behind it by various attributes. The Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall has a great explanation, if you find yourself there, but it is beyond the scope of this post.)

He was a gifted photographer and Peggy has shared with me a trove of his older photographs. Among the images she sent are two more of Mei Li. She writes, "[Here is] a photo of Mei Li with her book in hand and one about 60 years later with husband in hand. I heard that she gave one of her children to his brother who had none. Love how her smile is the same and that she didn't disappear during the Mao period."

Grüß Gott!

This post is being simultaneously posted to Waking Green Dragon, the personal blog of Alexander Lee.

Sent on July 22, 2010 (the Feast of Lidane), from Olyphant, PA, and received some time shortly thereafter by me in Concord, NH, is a lovely letter from a woman who calls herself Caroline of Assisi. In 2008, she ran on the "Clothesline platform" for President of the United States and so we made our acquaintance. Having just returned from Assisi myself and having carried the letter in my wallet for the last three years or more, I thought that I might finally transcribe these moving words.

Despite the fact that the mendicant Caroline would rely on the hospitality of people that NH's generous Secretary of State might know for housing, her words seem to me an antidote of reasonableness and sanity in this world--a reminder that the label of "crazy" belongs more with the warlords and the robber barons of the current era than the transient masses who line dry their clothes for need...or for Jesus.

These words above and below do not reflect the opinions of Project Laundry List nor do the words below reflect my own views entirely, but I thought them worth sharing. I hope I have shown blessedly poor Caroline proper respect in my summary of her fearless evangelizing for the clothesline and in the lifestyle she has chosen to follow. If anybody knows her whereabouts, please have her write me again.

Dear Alexander,

Thank you for writing! How is Project Laundry List doing?

Please send all of the Media you generated from Time Magazine, etc. 

Keep doing what the country needs--Solar Dryers. Here in Olyphant, I live in a pubically [sic] funded  Housing project.

Yes, there is a large clothesline--yet, most residents dry their clothes in an electric dryer--costing 75¢ for 1/2 hour--or, I don't know how much time. I never use it.

So, Alex, this mindset of the country is so warped, we have been programmed--the majority of us are now totally Hedonistic--but, the people are not conscious of any of this--

It is sad! The Advertising Media is at fault--Capitalism gone Awry!

I pray to return to ASSISI, ITALY--America is too far gone--Climate Change is ignored--by the TALK Host gurus--they influence millions--telling them Climate Change is a Hoax--

So, pray, Alex, God is still in charge--Keep doing GOOD! set the Example --+ brace yourself for the catastrophic disasters--once the food supply diminishes--we will see People take notice--+ they will begin to PRAY--Yes, I sound very pessimistic; the BIBLE is our source of TRUTH--

PRAISE GOD! His mercy endureth forever!

I don't foresee me returning to N.H. unless the Country drafts me for President--.

OBAMA is helpless--the Industrial, Media Complex tells him what to do & say.

Let's live for Heaven!

Ti voglio bene,

Caroline of ASSISI

Teatro dell'Concerto: Petite messe solennelle

I have been to exactly one opera (in Lebanon, NH) on the most tragic date of my storied dating timeline. About a week ago, I went to the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma to get tickets for a show. It happened last night, but...it was holier than opera.

The nice Italian (Roman, actually nobody is Italian) woman sitting next to me buys tickets when she wants to see something and likes Verdi best. She said this was the first time they had done a concert, as far as she knew; it has always been operas. We were about to witness Petite messe solennelle.

She pointed out the inscription above us that said in Roman numerals (natch!) that the theater had been built in 1928; it bore the names of Benito Mussolini and the last king of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele III. A strange shadow to sit in. I asked if she knew the folklore associated with the ceiling paintings. (Vittorio was also king of Ethiopia.) She did not.

This photo of Teatro dell'Opera di Roma is courtesy of TripAdvisor

I was in Row 3, Seat 3, so close that I could see the four soloists. The soprano had me transfixed for nearly the whole show. I watched her emerald and diamond earrings twinkle. I watch the cords in her neck tighten and slacken. I watched her symmetrical mouth with awe and reminded myself that kissing her passionately might be as risky as clasping hands with a pianist too tightly. I wept during the Qui tollis peccata mundi and hung on every word during the Crucifixus.

The alto was chatty, distracting, and temperamental. When her music stand was the wrong height she grew visibly agitated and held her music in her hand instead. She mouthed or sung along with the chorus, which I suppose was her prerogative. This was odd, but showed that the music was affecting her.

The same could not be said of the bass. He seemed professional and talented, but unaware that this was a religious piece of music. His passion seemed to be for infecting the notes with his talent not infecting the Mass with his music. So, too, the tenor seemed there to do his job and he did it magnificently, but without the passion of the two women. One can tell the difference, I think, but I should judge not that I should also be judged.

You may judge the soprano's beauty and talent for yourself:

I am amazed by the paucity of video available showing her talent. Maybe I am no judge, but I think she could do for opera what Papa Francesco is doing for my Church (i.e., fill the seats again).