Today is our last day in China (9:37 AM Saturday morning local time, that’s about 7:30 PM back home). We had a wonderful visit to Luo Ping which is a four hour bus ride away. The sights we saw were an indigenous village of one of the many Chinese minorities, a breath taking waterfall and fields and fields of fascinatingly laid out yellow rape seed flowers (a sparing selection of online pics will follow later).

We will probably spend today shopping and preparing ourselves for the flights home. So far, so good.

We’re having a great time in China of course.

We went the open air market which was fabulous. I took many pictures. Then we went here and enjoyed the hike up (with frequent rests) to see several Daoist temples. Very idyllic.

We ate out last night and the meal was fabulous. Squirrel fish (so named because of the presentation of the boned fish looks vaguely like a flying squirrel in mid-flight) in a sweet sauce, mint and beans, soft tofu in sauce, eggplant and sauce, and fresh corn. I requested the corn because I saw so much at the market.

The internet is a bit slow to connect with this site in China. So I’m keep it brief for me.

We are at Elizabeth’s and Jeremy’s apartment where I am using the internet. Eileen and I stayed in a nearby hotel last night. Very interesting to be put in a hotel where no one speaks English. thank goodness Elizabeth and Jeremy are here to help us.

We are getting ready to go to the market. All is well.

So we made it safe and sound to the airport this morning. However, the ticket lady told us our flight had been canceled. Actually it was the Newark to Beijing flight which was delayed due to heavy winds.

So we called Mark and he started back to pick us up. On the way, he got ill and pulled over. Apparently, having a reaction to some drug he is taking.

He finally got back to the airport and we came on back to his house.

Our flight leaves tomorrow very early. Hopefully that one won’t be canceled.

In the meantime, we (I) get to rest up a bit more for the journey.

I had a grueling High School musical rehearsal last night. Many kids were absent so I had to constantly try to cover parts so it made sense enough so that the people there could attempt their part. The piano kept cutting out. The director let us out fifteen minutes early. Whew.

Got up this morning and put a homework key online for my students since I did not return their corrected homework yesterday (it was sitting on my printer).

Ironic how much I’m looking forward not only to seeing my daughter Elizabeth and quasi-son-in-law Jeremy but also getting AWAY.

I don’t have much I have to do today: meet with the priest, make sure check requests are in for my subs, teach a couple of lessons this evening.

I came home last night and Eileen was madly packing and was trying to figure out what carry-ons are allowed. We are flying on both Continental and ChinaAir and they seem to have some mutually exclusive policies. Like ChinaAir says lock your luggage and Continental says do not.

Also we were hoping to just have carry on luggage but ChinaAir only allows 11 lbs worth and we have some stuff that is a bit heavier than that, heh. So I guess we are going to check on bag.

I am planning on attempting to travel very light.

The problem of course is books. Heh. I am taking a history of china to Elizabeth. I want to take my Oxford Beginner Chinese dictionary. I would like to take one book to read. How much do these all weigh? Heh.

Anyway. I’m sure it will all be fine in the end.

So let me get this straight.

An Arizona man’s sentence to 200 years in jail for possessing 20 kiddy porn pics is not a constitutionally excessive punishment….

But punitive damages to Philip Morris are…..
Read about here (Arizona case) and here (Philip Morris).

I forgot to bring the corrected homework to class today. This necessitated laboriously going through the answers with people not having the questions in front of them. This took a huge chunk of my class time. Moved on to review. Then finally the topic for the day of human song as found in Schubert lieder, A Schumann song cycle, a Sudanese indigenous sounding song and an example of Pygmy polyphony. By the time I reached Pygmy polyphony I was dieing.

Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you.
It definitely ate me today.

O well.

But there is an
upside:
there was
a package
in my box
with the
new edition
of the
text I use (that’s
the cover on the
right).

Hey.

I’m credited in
the list of
“battle-scarred
music-ap-prec
instructors”
who made
suggestions.

It says
“Stephen Jenkins,
Grand Valley State University.”

Maybe it’s silly,
but this cheered
me up a bit
today, since
I died in class.

Another funny thing
is that I as I teach
I continue to think
of things I meant
to point out to them
about this text and
failed to mention
in my report.

The photographs from China were excellent. The one above was from the “Shanghailanders (series)” by Lu Yuanmin. It was a series of portraits in sepia tones with excellent subjects and composition. That’s one of his at the top of this entry. It is in light sepia tones…. notice the people in the mirror. Very cool.The picture in my Feb 25th entry below is huge! The people are almost life-sized. It was a collection of several photographers from the late 20th Century.

Eileen especially liked this one.

Again, it’s a huge photo. Taken in the nineties Eileen wondered where this sixteen year old
was now.

Got up early this morning and transcribed string parts out of a Thomas Tallis choral anthems.

Church went pretty well this morning. The secretary once again left something out of the
bulletin (a line of hymn…
making it impossible to use).
No big deal. We just left it out.

I am relieved to have my
final church service before
China done.

Eileen and I are going to
walk over to Hope College
and see
the Smithsonian Traveling
exhibition of photographs
from China.
The new American Guild of
Organist Magazine (yes
I still read it) had an Oxford
U Press ad which offered single copies of five anthems. There were about ten on the ad so you had to indicate which ones you wanted. I got online and researched it a bit and decided which ones to circle.

Today I rest. I need to take some time off. It’s been kind of a crazy week for some reason. I guess it’s partly the extra service on Wednesday evening. Also I had musical rehearsals on Monday and Tuesday evening. Last Sunday, I had a dinner engagement which left my head spinning a bit. This was all extra stuff in an already hectic (for me) schedule.
I got up more rested today than I have been. Still very tired but a bit better. I put Pablo Casals recording of the Bach Cello Suites on to sooth me a bit.

I first heard these while watching an old Inmar Bergman film. This would have had to have been in the late sixties or possibly early seventies. I mention this because I have a poignant association with these pieces. I subsequently became interested in Casals and read his autobiography. He influence my understand and love of Bach quite a bit.

So sitting in my kitchen years later listening to a dead man play music written hundreds of years ago and sipping coffee has a soothing effect.

I sat down and played through several movements of Bach’s first English suite this morning as well.

Elizabeth called from China. She and Eileen chatted until it was time for Eileen to go to work.

Then I got to talk to her awhile.

While sipping coffee this morning I was working my way through the New Oxford Begginer’s Chinese Dictionary exercises. It got very interesting this morning as the exercises walked me through understanding how Chinese words sometimes mean combinations of other words or syllabic meanings and sometimes they are adaptation of Western sounds.

For example: the word for train is really a combination of the words for fire and vehicle….. the word for the chinese violin, er hu, simply means “two strings.” The er hu has two strings. Whereas the chinese word for internet combines the word for network with two syllables that sound like the first two syllables of the english word [yin(1) and te(4) + wa(3)ng network or netting ] And so on.

It got me so interested that I started looking up words that weren’t in my little dictionary and ended up finding a very good online resource. Unfortunately, I think it combines traditional and modern characters….. but still very interesting. This dictionary also shows the Chinese (mandarin?) pronunciation and also the Cantonese and the Japanese Kun and Japanese Kin.
Not sure exactly what the Kun and Kin are but can surmise they are Japanese variants.

So when I looked up the chinese for piano, I found that the characters really mean “steel lute.” Glancing over the “lute” character information I see that the Japanese Kun pronunciation for this same character is “koto.” Koto! Hey I know what a koto is…. it’s one of them thar Japanese zithers….

Anyway. I am finding this fun if not rententively informative.

Elizabeth and I chatted about this kind of thing and other stuff like the bombardment of western culture in China and how it is often misunderstood in funny ways.

I am beginning to really look forward to this trip. Not the least of it will be conversations with Elizbeth, Jeremy and Eileen.

Good article in a recent Nation: “White History 101” by Gary Younge

Regarding Black History Month, he writes about the passive voice as used by people who describe the history of racism: “Leaders ‘get assassinated,’ patrons ‘are refused,’ ” and so on.

He points out that the perpetrators of racism (i.e. white people) are largely left out of the discussion. And that it would benefit us to have more exposure of this side of the equation.

I particularly liked this:

The very notion of black and white history is both a theoretical nonsense and a practical necessity. There is no scientific or biological basis for race. It is a construct to explain the gruesome reality that racism built. But logic suggests you cannot have black history without white history.

It’s 9 AM and I have my lecture for today pretty much prepared.

I am frustrated because I am having to fight the emotional hangover from last night at church. The service went splendidly. I got lost once in playing and conducting the Brahms motet but recovered quickly. We performed a movement from my old cantata “ash Wed.” I’ve never done this piece in liturgy before and I found it satisfying.

The Hindemith postlude went surprisingly well. (It’s not all that easy). And we did a spanish type Taize piece with guitars, conga and flute…. I thought it was cool.

Before the service a couple of choir members were very angry with me. One of them left during the service.

This stuff drives me a little nuts. I hope it’s not inappropriate to at least mention it here. I woke up at 5 AM this morning and lay in bed and couldn’t get my mind off these people’s anger. I think this is “old guy” stuff. Ever since my forties I have found it more difficult to shift gears emotionally. It seems that all I can do is wait it out. Good grief.