http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2 ... footprints in time by a traveller between worlds Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:49:35 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The deal was 8am. I’m a just-in-time guy, but here she was knocking on the door at 7:15. Jeez. Can I offer you some breakfast? We sat looking at each other across a big wooden coffee table, the golden drapes suffusing a soft glow of early sunshine. She’d never tried ... http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2/archives/36 Winter morning light had broken clear and cold, so early that night's shadows were still about and a wispy moon hung in the sky. A small collection of street food vendors had already parked their hand carts by the college gates, and by this time there was usually a crowd ... http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2/archives/16 The Decider announces the end of triumphalist capitalism. Whose zoo do these simians belong in now? (International Herald Tribune 19 September 2008) The Soviet behemoth with its official fantasy of the communist brotherhood of man looked after by apparatchiks who could make a million shoes to fit the wrong foot and keep everyone ... http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2/archives/15 All the world art mad but thou and I. So it seems. The collective mind of peoples as nations expressed either through the ballot box or by the voice of the emperor ( L'Etat c'est moi) seems erratic at best in most locales. Right now Americans are making up their ... http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2/archives/13 On the wrong side of the railway tracks in Zhengzhou city, central China, you can find some ugly old concrete classrooms built around a small paved sports ground. It is a railway technical college to train nurses and logistics students, 19 year old kids mostly from the country. Last term ... http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2/archives/12 Centre country scene: A thousand miles of desert, Ten thousand miles of shimmering heat. In and out the Dead Heart, Only one great vastness; Up and down the Diamantina, Sand torrents stopped and stilled. Hills dance like rainbow serpents, Mirages race like shadowed giants, Trying to vie with the sun in their reach. A wild eye is needed To view this ... http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2/archives/10 The earthquake: I was running back to my apartment from the classroom for something, and didn't feel a thing. The other foreign teacher here staggered out of her apartment and said she thought she was dying. I told her to put her head between her legs and I'd get a ... http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2/archives/9 My own first introduction to Chinese thought and political economy was a university course in New Zealand in 1974. I especially recall one book, Mark Elvin's "The Pattern of the Chinese Past". If you are not familiar with the arguments in this book already, there is a reasonable summary at ... http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2/archives/8 Each evening I walk for an hour or two, and sometimes one of the students tags along. This is wonderful, since she can bring meaning to the blur of Chinese street life around us. Yesterday, she pointed out a tragedy that I would have walked right past: continue reading http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2/archives/7 The Chinese Post Office continues to excel. We've had scraps before. This was the outfit that wouldn't let me send Christmas cards in different sized envelopes, or send copies of my thesis to an Australian university in any box but their own. continue reading http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2/archives/6