Gassy Monk

and my camera is back in action. From now on I should be able to add a few pictures to my musings.

Excuse the lag in postings, I've been doing a lot of manual writing & just need to get it on the machine. More to come soon. Wishing you all a balanced yin/yang - Scott.

I had an opportunity to visit one of my former students in her home town of Gao Chun, a district of Nanjing. May was the outgoing English Club head, and she invited me to visit her & her family along with another student from my school, Tina, who is the current English Club head. Both are very skilled in English and just great kids.

Gao Chun doesn’t have much, but what it does have is old Chinese architecture & character. There is one main attraction for tourists, the Old Street (Lao Jie), which is home to some of the newest & oldest structures in town, and you’ll only find Chinese tourists in Gao Chun, which was a big draw for me. Like many Chinese cities, this one is becoming more & more modern every year. Fortunately, to date the influence of change has taken a relatively insignificant toll on the natural beauty Gao Chun has to offer.

The weekend was wet & cold enough to keep most people indoors and we had most of the sites to ourselves – a rare occurrence in a country with so many people. There were 2 scenic & memorable areas; one was a park & the other a Daoist temple complex with some ancient Chinese stone tablets & a 7-story pagoda.

I walked away from this experience with my first real taste of Chinese family hospitality. The fact that May & her family would go to such lengths to host a foreigner for the weekend is telling of their generosity & is exemplary of the Chinese culture. I realized that even asking for a bath was putting them out – they’d have to get more hot water just for me – and that this luxury I have in my dorm room is not shared by many families. I had heard of this, of course, but it wasn’t a reality in my mind until this weekend. May’s family is pretty well off and they didn’t have a water heater.

Other than that, hanging out with 2 college age Chinese girls on a weekend was pretty relaxing. They were drawn to the Internet & chatting when we weren’t singing songs, in Chinese, of course, or looking at pictures & talking about differences in Chinese & American culture.

Gaochun Dry Tofu (高淳 豆腐干子)

May’s family gave this to me before Tina & I left. Gaochun tofu is the best I’ve had here in China, so far. Other kinds are available in soups, as a standalone dish, or in other courses, but the stuff from Gaochun had the perfect texture & flavor to go with some spicy peppers. Not much more to say here; it made for a tasty lunch in between classes.

So, I’ve never studied this in a formal sense, but I’ve been thinking about nationalism much more since my arrival in China. I hope I’m fair in my consideration of this topic, although I acknowledge this is by no means comprehensive, & invite smarter & better informed people to comment. Lighter material is on the way after this post. I have several things I'd like to put up now.

Nationalism leads to a preservation of historical identity. When considered in this light there is less room for contemporary changes to influence social order. It means turning attention to the past as you move forward. In effect, this hinders the realization of a future based on the existing identity of a nation, in its place you find a bias towards the ways of the past.

Japan’s new PM, Shinzo Abe, recently pushed for a change in Japanese schools to focus more greatly on Japanese history, politics, etc., than it has in the past. This maneuver increases the likelihood of conflict with other Asian countries in the future because the sense of nationalism occurs at the expense of appreciating outside cultures. Foreign policy of this nature serves an insidious, internal political purpose and, to my knowledge, does not benefit a nation’s people in any moral or economic sense nor does it improve the international reputation of a country.

But to what end can such an Asian nation be punished by other Asian nations for taking such action? Does any one nation have the moral high ground or will to chastise the Japanese for making such a move?

Certainly China cannot comment given its history of nation building, when government was less than sturdy, and more recent permissions granted to citizens that demonstrate (riot) against the Japanese, while Russia carries no moral high ground & SE Asian countries do not have the political or economic power for their words to carry weight.

Many liberals in Japan were apparently irked by the Abe government’s proposed changes in curriculum. And while there may be some rewards for a weak government trying to shore up support & stability in the future, nationalism in this case seems nothing more than a policy substitute for a strong government short on ideas about material change. Incidentally, the current American administration has shown similar tendencies and my opinion of that is equally critical.

My insight on this subject is limited, but though I try to see how this benefits the Japanese (or American) people I just can’t. How do the citizens avoid making uninformed generalizations about entire nations when walls are constructed through the educational system? The repercussions can only come to fruition over time, making the effects of this new policy immeasurable, of course. This move just serves to increase the tension between nations.

I’m isolating one element of Japanese politics here, perhaps unfairly. Abe was just in China to mend relations soured by the former PM, Junichiro Koizumi, and the meeting was considered a political success in the press. To boot, maybe I’m looking past the obvious - maybe the Japanese have simply been too tolerant of other peoples for too long and this just brings things into balance! I wouldn’t want to make my own uninformed generalizations…