So soon?! This one better be good...

All dressed up with no place to go

I know what you're thinking - "Didn't he just upload a post only a few days ago?" And, yes, you're correct, I did post something a mere four days prior. But next Friday will be the Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节, followed by National Day 国庆节 on Sunday, the first of October. The latter occasion segues into what's known in China as "Golden Week" 黄金周, when many students and workers receive an extended holiday lasting up to 7-8 days*. My daughter will have a total of ten days off, while yours truly is looking forward to a six-day weekend. We have plans to go out of town during part of that time (provided we don't get mired in any of China's epic traffic jams), so expect a detailed blog post to follow once the holiday period ends. In anticipation of having something more interesting to write about later, here's a brief roundup of what has been happening since the last time you were perusing this blog.

We're fortunate enough to live not far from one of Beijing's 北京 most pleasant public areas, the Liangma River 亮马河. If I'm not running late, I like to stroll along the pathway on my way to the office. I also take the river route home on occasion, which is when I snapped these shots:

Currently there's an outdoor art exhibit extolling the charms of the Liangma through photographs and artworks**. Here a few examples on display to the public:

"Blue Water Clean the Liangma River" 蓝水净, Qiao Jian 乔健

"Overlooking the Liangma River" 俯瞰亮马河, He Li 何丽

"Liangma Harbor" 良马港湾, Zhao Rui 赵瑞

"A Place for New Internet Celebrities to Check-in" 新晋网红打卡地, Wang Guobin 王国斌

“Liangma Riverside" 亮马河畔, He Yongliang 何永亮

The management of our housing compound has put up these neon-red lights in observance of the upcoming Moon Festival. The effect is somewhat akin to that Seinfeld episode where a Kenny Roger's Roaster opens up across from Jerry and Kramer's apartments. Fortunately for us only the guestroom is affected: 

This past Saturday evening (last night, to be more precise), my increasingly active spouse suggested we drive to one of the city's most famous sightseeing spots, the Temple of Heaven 天坛, to see it lit up in all its first-night-of-autumn glory. It was quite a sight, and Shu-E in particular took a lot of shots (most of the following images are from her cell phone camera):

The overall cost of tickets to get inside to see the lights was low, namely because only my wife had to pay. Amber and I were free, as one of us is too old, and the other still too young:

By the light of the silvery moon...:

In case you're wondering why we haven't yet visited the imperial religious complex in the daylight, we have...way back in December of 2013. We made a couple of trips to China's capital while posted in Shanghai 上海 around a decade ago. During that time we did a lot of sightseeing in this country, operating under the assumption we wouldn't be returning following the end of our tour. Little did we know...

Driving home on the East 3rd Ring Road. The strange-looking structure on the right is the CCTV Headquarters building. And, yes, that is the Beatles you hear in the background while I'm driving:

Something I neglected to include in last week's blog entry was the T-shirt I picked up in Mutianyu 慕田峪 last Sunday:

Clad in my tourist tat, and with no special plans for this afternoon, and in conjunction with the already-cooling weather following the official end of summer yesterday, I dusted off my bike and made a tentative first attempt at getting some long-overdue, much-needed exercise. My modest goal was the 25-minute ride from our home to the Beijing Workers' Sports Complex, aka Workers' Stadium 工人体育场. I didn't go inside, but did make a circuit of the outside of the extensive grounds:

Media presented the old-fashioned socialist way...:

...and utilizing that newfangled technology:

Old men gathering to watch other elderly gentlemen play games, a very Chinese sight on holidays and weekends:

My trusty steed, which I've had since our time in Shanghai. I'd like to use it more now that the humidity is abating. But I first need to figure out where to lock it when not riding, as Beijing has a serious shortage of bike racks and other similar facilities. The municipality's convenient share bikes just lock in place wherever riders choose to park them, but my Trek isn't equipped in that manner:

As stated above, we will most likely be heading out of town for a few days during the upcoming holiday. The wife is doing all the planning, which means that I'll get all the blame should anything go wrong. Until then, remember that the love you take is equal to the love you make:

*Before you start feeling envious of the Chinese, note that some of these days off have to be made up by working or going to school on a following weekend. Fortunately, this barbaric system doesn't apply to me or my daughter. 

**My apologies to the artists and photographers for my poor attempts at translating their works. 

Going to hell in the PRC and the only thing that can save me is a YouTube video

The Great Wall at Mutianyu 

What is it about Formosa? Or, to be more specific, what is it about Taiwan that transforms more than one expatriate that I know from being a relatively open-minded foreign resident curious about their adopted mother/fatherland into a Fox News-watching negative paranoid taking the plunge down a far-right rabbit hole, and emerging into a world of ridiculous conspiracies that any sane person would just shake their heads at and keep moving along? 

This intellectual trap befell a Canadian acquaintance of mine more than a decade ago. From time to time, out of curiosity, I have a look at some of his recent Facebook posts, only to see him sharing the latest anti-vax fixations, or the threat posed by "wokeness", or whatever the current threat de jour that's getting Tucker Carlson all worked up. Speaking of the latter, our reactionary Canuck was passing along the latest diatribe, this one being the alleged cover-up of Barack Obama's closet homosexuality and crack cocaine addiction. I commented about this on my FB page, expecting maybe a few chuckles from friends who long ago gave up trying to understand what has happened to rational political discourse in the United States. 

Only one American Facebook friend didn't see any humor in this. JCR wrote that he believed the story was probably true, and that my disregard of what is just the latest in a long line of unproven politically-motivated allegations aimed at getting the MAGA hat-wearing morons riled up was evidence that I am "brainwashed". Of all the things I put on social media that should annoy the alt right crowd to no end, why was it this particular post ("Gay Obama!") that persuaded JCR to come out from under his rock and try to show the online world how "smart" he was for recognizing as "probably true" what most of the rest of us would think is another sad indication of the decline of the American education system*? 

If it isn't evident by now, JCR has been in Taiwan a long time. How long? When I first met him on a beach in Tainan 台南 sometime in the mid-aughts, he mentioned at that time he had been living in Taiwan for the past 19 years. Assuming he's never returned to his native California, and seeing that it's now The Year of Our Lord Two thousand and twenty-three, that would mean he's been in the country for a period going on 30 years or more. 

I've spent roughly a quarter of a century living in either Japan or Taiwan. During that time I've encountered countless numbers of Westerners, most of whom had points of view on current events that were unremarkably normal. A few have been conservative when it comes to political matters, but they tended to be of the rational variety that used to be prominent before Fox and Donald Trump came along. And while I do know an American living and working in Japan's rural Niigata Prefecture 新潟県 who would espouse the "white culture is under threat" claptrap spewed out by the likes of Glenn Beck (despite being married to a Japanese woman, and having two bicultural, biracial children!), all of the expats I know of who have gone from reading Ayn Rand and quoting Jordan Peterson to agreeing with the craziest of the nutbar commentators and their delusions have spent considerable time living and working in Taiwan.

Why, I can't figure out. According to one of the best Taiwan-based bloggers, it might be because they "are discontent with their lives, trapped in Taiwan in an unhealthy marriage with children, burnt out from teaching English, and no prospects for ever being able to leave". But I'm sure that applies to many expats in Japan as well, and yet I haven't seen the same drift to the (alt) right there that I've noticed in the Taiwan-based blogsphere. Perhaps Japan offers more opportunities to break out of the English-teaching trap. Or it could be I pay more attention to what is going in the ROC, seeing as I started blogging while living and working in Taichung 台中. Whatever the reason, it does seem to put to the lie the notion about traveling broadening the mind. 

Oh, and one more thing. JCR seems to think I'm going to burn in hell. In his eyes, I must be an atheist, because I "seem to  project some leftist ideals with (my) ridicule of Tucker Carlson". Which is odd, in that Jesus himself comes across as a "leftist" who would probably take issue with a lot of what's being said on Fox News and other alt-right media - I'm left with the impression that JCR's Christ is akin to that of Bill Maher's "Supply Side Jesus"!. Despite the fact that whether or not I'm an atheist, agnostic or a believer in "God Almighty and what his son has done for humanity" is no one else's business (unless I choose to announce it a public forum), JCR** felt "compelled" to share a YouTube video with me. To quote, "it's on (me) if (I) refuse to watch it, but if (I) plan on dying some day, (I) would be wise to learn about what happens before it happens to (me)." Which is pretty goddamned (pun intended) arrogant of him to do - isn't pride one of the seven deadly sins? 

I have no intention of watching it, of course (perusing the comments was enough!). The peculiarly conservative American take on Christianity is radically different from the Anglican-rooted theology that I'm more familiar with. But that's a topic for another blog post at another time. The most meaningless thing anyone can do is to "send hopes and prayers" to someone experiencing hardship, so I'll leave the likes of JC(!)R and the Montreal Canadienne alone, and write about what's been happening here in this officially atheist state. 

For most of the past week I was out with a bad case of strep throat. I was no doubt struck down with this bacterial infection by a vengeful deity, and certainly did not randomly catch it from respiratory droplets containing said bacteria. Thanks to what must have been divine intervention, I felt well enough last Saturday to go through with the weekend itinerary my wife had worked up for us, namely an overnight excursion to that most iconic of Chinese symbols, the Great Wall 长城. 

One of the most accessible sections of the Great Wall from Beijing is that located in Mutianyu 慕田峪. It was initially built in 1404 by untold numbers of laborers whose souls have been writhing in eternal damnation in the fiery pits of hell ever since, as few if any ever accepted Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. Restoration work began in 1983, and the wall was opened to visitors in the spring of 1988 (Mutianyu was chosen as a UNESCO World Heritage Site the previous year). 

The hotel where we stayed on Saturday night - Shu-E chose this establishment because it was the closest spot to the entrance to the wall where we could park our car:

For dinner the wife ordered fish. This gentleman below proceeded to use a net to capture one unlucky aquatic creature from the pool out front, clubbed it to death with the instrument held in his right hand, and then proceeded to cook it on the grill behind him. It doesn't come any fresher than that:

There was a "Mutianyu beer" on the menu, but the server said they didn't have any in stock, so this is what I had to settle for:

After dinner we set out on the short walk uphill from the hotel to the cable car station:

Approaching the wall:

We were greeted at the top by this performing duo. It was impossible to ascertain if they believe in God Almighty and what his son has done for humanity. Based on the tepid reaction they unfairly received from the visitors, I would guess the answer is "not yet":

We were deposited at the No. 14 Watchtower, and spent time exploring the ramparts in both directions:

A self-portrait:

Back at ground level, we learned that none other than Mike Tyson had taken the cable car on the 24th of May, 2016. One of boxing's greatest champions is doomed, having abandoned his Catholic upbringing to convert to Islam. There's still time, Iron Mike. Save yourself!:

The Great Wall of China is awash with millipedes. We would see hundreds of them the following day as they were naturally more visible in the daylight. It's a bloodbath on Mutianyu as the ramparts are covered in squished millipede bodies:

Sunday morning breakfast. Chinese cuisine is some of the finest in the world, provided you're eating it for lunch and dinner:

他是谁?:

On this morning we approached a different section of the wall via a chairlift, arriving at the No. 6 Watchtower:

One of the resident felines admires the view (even if it was a little on the hazy side):

There were a surprising number of foreign visitors making their way up and down. Surprising not because they were there (Mutianyu has always been one of the more popular sections of the Great Wall), but because I wasn't aware that tourist numbers in China were beginning to approach their pre-COVID numbers. I live in an expat ghetto where most waiguoren 外国人 are connected to foreign diplomatic missions, so admittedly I'm ignorant on what life is like outside my Chaoyang 朝阳 comfort zone:

I'm not the climber I used to be, so even on a mild September morning I was working up a sweat while running out of breath. My present health status is such that I may be meeting my maker sooner than I have anticipated:

Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic...whatever, cats don't give a fuck:

Shu-E struggles up...:

...and up:

End of the line:

For the return trip back to our starting point, we employed the traditional toboggan mode of transport first used in the 15th century by those Godless Ming soldiers guarding the empire's northern frontier against the equally doomed to burn for all eternity barbarians:

 

For a populace supposedly seething with anger over the Second World War and the release of treated water into the sea off Fukushima 福島, Japanese culture remains stubbornly popular:

Our otherwise enjoyable weekend ended on somewhat of a sour note, unfortunately. Leaving Mutianyu, we stopped to have lunch at one of those trendy cafe restaurants you find in tourist zones - this one featured outdoor seating, a faux waterfall, Western dishes and a staff composed entirely of college-age women. My daughter and I both ordered the hamburger, while my wife opted to have more fish. Our drinks arrived quickly, followed by Amber's burger, but Shu-E and I waited, and waited, and waited for our entrees. Mind you, I ordered the exact same hamburger dish, and yet after 30 minutes of getting hungrier and hungrier, I was told it was still being prepared. One hour later, and still so sight of either beef or fish (and Amber having long before finished her meal), I did something I've never done at a restaurant before - we told the server to cancel the rest of our order, refund us for what hadn't yet been brought to the table (not an easy thing to do when all ordering was done via a QR code on the table), and then walked out.

We didn't even get an apology from any of the staff for the long wait. Divine retribution?:

All things considered, however, it was an enjoyable weekend outing. Assuming we don't suffer heaven's wrath in the next few weeks, more trips are on the schedule as my wife seems to have rediscovered the joys of travel.

The following are few scattered pics taken since the last post, like these from a lunch I had with some of my colleagues:

水:

A moth takes refuge during a downpour:

A local charity shop called Roudabout recently held a book fair to which I brought Amber, who unsuccessfully tried to get me to buy this title and discover my "personal flower":

Sorry, JCR. I should've purchased this for Shu-E. Instead, I picked up an idiot's guide of sorts to Buddhism. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned:

Making a statement:

Despite being stuck at home with the aforementioned strep, the weather one afternoon was just too nice to stay indoors and recover, so I took a stroll through Chaoyang Park 朝阳公园:

The wife lately has been ordering some local brews to sample over dinner:

Serving the one true god:

*The evidence of which lies in my use of run-on sentences

**The surname rhymes with a certain automatic pistol