Wrapping things up as we await the coming of the impenitent daughter

Jiao Festival (see below for details)

It's been about a month since the last time I checked in on these pages. That post was written after yet another visit to the local international hospital to see my cardiologist, but the refilled medication has subsequently kicked in, and for the most part my physical health has been fine, that is until...well, that will come later in this entry. My mental health, on the other hand, has seen better days, and the reasib for that lies largely with the fact that I'm still awaiting an onward assignment following the end of this current tour next summer. I've ranted before in these pages about bidding, so I'll refrain about the stressful uncertainty of not knowing what lies ahead, the inherent unfairness of a process based around who you know and what they say about you, and the terrible way in general employees are treated (read here for an example of a prior rant). Add to the mix my present position, and the entitled, bubble-occupying members of the community (a minority, fortunately, but a vocal one nonetheless) I have to provide "good customer service" to in my present position, and it should come as no surprise that I often dream of handing in my resignation letter.

But the reason for why I'm going to gaman (also see below) until I reach the mandatory retirement age will be coming to Beijing 北京 later this week to spend the Christmas holidays with us, and I couldn't be any happier. Hopefully I'll have something to write about in the next blog post following our daughter's too-brief upcoming visit, but until then this entry will serve as a summary of what's been happening outside the confines of the office since the last report. So without further ado...

Fog or smog? Most of the time it's obviously the latter (though the skies of the Chinese capital have been remarkably clear recently), but one morning in mid-November stood out as being more foggy than polluted. That said, the AQI was still above 120 that day:

With home being only the two of us these days (not including the cat), the wife and I decided to forgo preparing a large turkey meal for Thanksgiving. The embassy cafeteria did its best to compensate in the runup to the holiday:

Some recently installed public art along the Liangma River 亮马河 near our residential community:

Shu-E and I enjoyed a pre-Thanksgiving casual lunch one afternoon at a recently opened brewpub called Ye Brewing 野鹅微醺 (literally meaning "wild goose tipsy"). I enjoyed a glass of the Taihang Mountain West Coast (or "Weast" as written on the menu board) IPA 太行凌云西海岸IPA, which clocked in at a decent 7.1%. A good thing I lived close by:

The healthiest part of the meal was this tofu dish, which valiantly tried to compensate for the fried chicken and fries that made up the rest of lunch: 

The two of us were the only customers on a smoggy Sunday afternoon when the AQI was 160:

Two days before Thanksgiving we had our first (and only at the time of writing) dusting of snow since last winter. At that time Beijing set records for both most total hours below freezing and most consecutive hours with the temperature below zero Celsius, though those accomplishments were eventually forgotten when last summer turned brutally hot. What will this year's 冬季 bring?:

Our MIA daughter sent us this campus photo via WeChat on Thanksgiving Day (for us): 

Without Amber present, I wasn't feeling very grateful on the fourth Thursday of November. It also didn't help my mood knowing that my wife would be departing the following day to spend a week with her family in Taiwan, leaving just me and the cat to watch over the home front. 

On the other hand, the AQI that day was only 44, serving as a reminder of what Beijing can look like when the wind blows the smog away:

These deer and llamas are recent additions to Chaoyang Park 朝阳公园: 

The temperature on Thanksgiving afternoon had warmed up to 6°C/43°F but some bodies of water remained frozen over: 

The day my wife left for Taiwan was Thanksgiving for Amber back in the U.S. She shared this photo of her holiday lunch, which she had in the dining commons near the international students dorms: 

Saturday, November 30th was the final day of the weeklong Jiao Festival held in Taichung City's 台中市 Fengyuan District 豐原區. This Taoist celebration takes place every 20 years (the last time in 2004 I was living in Yokkaichi 四日市 in Japan and obviously missed the festivities), and this time around coincided with the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Fengyuan Tzu Chi Temple 豐原慈濟宮. During the festival locals are supposed to abstain from having sex, eating meat and drying clothes outdoors (!). Shu-E shared the photos and video below via WeChat:

An example of a Shen Zhu 神豬, or a "god pig". The practice of fattening pigs to such obscene proportions has become increasingly controversial in recent years:

A rather surprising sight at a celebration in which the participants shun meat consumption:

You would think a festival of this scale that is staged only once every score would be covered extensively online, but I couldn't find anything in English about it on Google. There was seemingly surprisingly little information in Mandarin as well - this link was the most informative one I could locate. I also came across this video of a festival that happens triennially in Puli 埔里 in central Taiwan. The visuals look very similar to those in the photos and videos my wife shared:

On the first day of December I was bored and alone, so I went on an afternoon bike ride (the first in a long time) to the CCTV Headquarters 央视大楼 building. With 51 floors and a height of 234 meters/768 feet it would seem to be an ideal place for an observatory and visitor center, but I couldn't find any public access point. The CCTV building is not always affectionately nicknamed "Big Pants" 大裤衩 by the locals:

The best vantage point for taking in the trousers is from the 6th floor balcony of the nearby China World Mall:

Behind the CCTV HQ is the Beijing Television Cultural Center, scene of a damaging fire in 2009: 

Opposite the CCTV complex stands this statue called "Da Cheng Qi Xiang (Magnificent Phenomenon of Grand Accomplishment)", according to the badly faded plaque in front. The only information I could gather online was a short YouTube clip on a channel called "Karate Beijing": 

The recently clearer air combined with the colder temperatures has produced some remarkably crisp evening scenery:

It was during the week Shu-E was away in Taiwan that I was waylaid by the E.coli bacterium, missing parts of two days of work due to the frequent and sudden visits to the bathroom that was the result of catching this (confirmed by a test of a stool sample). Which led to the inevitable questions such as where did I get E. coli? During my wife's absence I had lunch at the embassy cafeteria, and dinner via home delivery from the usual establishments. Did someone not wash their hands before making my food? Around a decade ago Amber and I both had a similar nasty experience after eating at a McDonalds in Shanghai 上海. As I'm not aware of any outbreaks at work, I'm left wondering did history repeat itself this time? 

I was feeling better by the time my wife returned, good enough at least to have lunch with her at a Japanese restaurant close to the embassy with the unJapanese-sounding name of Qiaoshi Cuisine 桥仕料理. I had the Tonkatsu lunch set 豚カツ定食:

A recent addition to the walls of my office, this photo captures a scene from the Chinese revolutionary ballet opera The White-Haired Girl 白毛女. I presume that's her in the center, about to severely punish the traitorous bully Huang Shiren (according to the red banner). This used to be housed at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu 成都; when that facility was closed in 2020 as part of a tit-for-tat diplomatic spat, many of the artworks there were moved to Beijing and made available for office decoration:

This past weekend the two of us felt healthy enough to venture outside, having lunch at a Taiwanese restaurant called Du Hsiao Yueh 度小月, a business with a lineage going back to Tainan 台南 in 1895. I'd never heard of the establishment, but Shu-E said their noodles and braised pork rice were well-known in Taiwan. My wife naturally ordered the Hundred Years Dan Zai Noodles, but having eaten some lu rou fan 滷肉饭 just the day before, I opted instead for the oyster omelette 蚵仔煎, another classic Taiwanese dish, washed down with a milk tea 奶茶:

The food was good, but it wasn't the reason for driving to the Parkview Green 北京侨福芳草 shopping mall (we weren't even aware of the Du Hsiao Yueh branch until after we'd arrived and were trying to decide where to have lunch). The complex is one of China's largest sustainable architecture projects, but what piqued my curiosity enough to visit was the mall's collection of modern art sculptures, including Empty Bundle by Yang Tao. Its 628 silk threads are replaced every 1000 days:

La Grandeza del Islam, one of three Salvador Dali sculptures that caught my attention:

One of the more recognizable names among the artists (other than Dali, of course) was that of Chen Wenling 陈文令, who became famous for his "Red Memory" sculptures:

Another Dali piece, Man Riding a Dolphin, greets visitors outside Parkview Green's main entrance:

Shu-E takes it all in. She isn't a lover of modern art:

Cow Bone is a display of cows hanging from the upper rafters:

Yet another Dali sculpture, this one called Dragon, Swan, Elephant:

It was an interesting way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon, though we never entered any of the shops (most of them were on the high end side, though sprinkled with the likes of the Gap and Lululemon).

And so another post has come to an end and not on a note that could be described as "optimistic". There are times when I find myself thinking back on those days as an English teacher in Tōkyō 東京, and concluding I should've never left. Fortunately, I've recently started reading English to Go: Inside Japan's Teaching Sweatshops, by Craig Currie-Robson, a searing indictment on the Eikaiwa 英会話industry which has been serving as a sobering reminder that one should not wallow in nostalgia for a largely imagined Golden Age of English teaching (the closet there was to such a Shangri-La ended with the bursting of the bubble economy バブル景気 starting in early 1992). Whatever the struggles I'm dealing with now, at least I'm more than fairly paid for my labor, and the benefits are generous, at least in comparison to what I could (or more likely could not) receive working in cram schools in Japan and Taiwan.

And, of course, the girl will be here soon. But in the meantime somebody please give me a god damn job! You know, one that satisfies my artistic needs...

I'll end this post with yet another rant, but one with a twist - it isn't by me. This one comes courtesy of a Bloomberg Opinion columnist who covers Japan and the two Koreas. I read the article here, but I've also copied and pasted it below, using the opportunity to geekily insert Japanese where I deem it appropriate. 

Anyone who has spent time in Japan and is somewhat familiar with the country and its society will no doubt have noticed there is an exceptional amount of bullshit out there on Japan on social media. To hear many people describe it you would think the country is a uniquely clean and orderly paradise populated entirely by kind, warmhearted souls. And while there is some truth to that, I could also point out numerous examples that would indicate otherwise, and have been guilty of doing so from time to time (I generated an outpouring of abuse in one Facebook group for bringing up the topic of homelessness, and was booted from another for pointing out how an idyllic-looking image had been clearly photoshopped). To promote this fantasy vision that exists on the Internet denies the Japanese the basic human right to be assholes, criminals, douchebags etc. like the rest of us, and ignores some very serious social problems that exist in its society. 

But before I start off on another long, unhinged diatribe, I'll let Mr. Reidy take it from here: 

I have one word for 'ancient Japanese wisdom' - Bull

By Gearoid Reidy/Bloomberg Opinion

If you are looking for a last-minute stocking stuffer this Christmas, it is tempting to turn to the self-help section of the bookshop — perhaps the increasing number of tomes claiming to impart ancient pearls of Japanese wisdom.

In the past decade, such books have proliferated, claiming to teach you the Japanese secret to everything — eat less, save money, be more productive. Ikigai 生き甲斐, wabi-sabi わび・さび or shinrin yoku 森林浴 will fix what is wrong with your life.

They tend to follow a similar pattern: A word you might not be familiar with at first, with a title that hints at hidden knowledge, the idea that the Japanese are tapped into some timeworn understanding about things modern Western society — too rushed, too online, too whatever — has forgotten.

The growth has matched increasing global interest and travel to the nation. Talking to first-time tourists or perusing online forums, I often find astonishment: Why does everything work so well? How else could public safety and famed attention to detail be sustained, if not from some secret knowledge the West has lost?

Do not get me wrong, there are many things to be learned from Japan, but for the most part, it does not come in the form of trite life hacks.

A Western obsession with so-called Oriental wisdom is nothing new: From The Book of Tea in 1906 to the post-World War II interest in Zen Buddhism 禅宗, it has long been assumed that the east is home to deep knowledge.

It is not just confined to self-help — 1980s Americans became obsessed with Japanese productivity techniques such as kaizen 改善 to understand how their companies could possibly beat US ones — but the current fad for such techniques might be traced to Marie Kondō’s 近藤麻理恵 2010 book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.

Kondo promises to lift the veil on the secrets to the life we all want. While it lacks a mysterious foreign word in the title, it has everything else. As the writer Matt Alt notes, the English translation turns decluttering from mere housework to “an Art, with a capital A, echoing austere pastimes such as inkbrush-painting or the tea ceremony,” but there is no art form here; indeed, the irony is that a typical Japanese house is often extremely cluttered, which is why her KonMari こんまり method took off at home first. (Kondo herself gave up on the idea pretty quickly when she had children.)

If KonMari and her subsequent Netflix show lit the spark, what really fanned the flame was the concept of ikigai.

The word describes a “reason for living” and was popularized by the 2016 book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles. It was the right concept at the right time, with smartphones and social media increasingly frazzling our minds. Dozens of other books claiming the secrets followed, asking how older people in Okinawan 沖縄 villages live such happy and long lives. The government itself has leaned in.

That has spawned a series of publications turning everyday, universal concepts into pseudo-intellectual Oriental tosh.

“Ganbatte 頑張って is a Japanese philosophy focused on doing the best you can with what you have,” says one (it is just a word meaning to do your best.) How about hara hachibu 腹八分 — eating until you are 80 percent full, or put more simply, not stuffing your face. Going for a walk in nature becomes the classical practice of shinrin yoku, or forest bathing, and though there are scientifically proven benefits to spending time in greenery, the Japanese cannot claim to have invented it.

Tracking your expenses by writing them down in a notebook, something my decidedly Irish father has done for decades, becomes kakeibo 家計簿. How about gaman 我慢, the art of putting up with things — because, of course, this nation is the only place where people do this. Even that stack of books you bought, but have not read is in fact a time-honored technique: tsundoku 積読, the practice of letting texts pile up and somehow absorbing them by osmosis.

These days, I increasingly see these “techniques” on social media, where engagement farmers masquerading as thought leaders turn them into artificial intelligence-generated slop. Here are three different accounts posting the same “eye-opening Japanese techniques to overcome laziness,” garnering a combined 5 million views — but amusingly, they feature the technique of pomodoro, perhaps a Japanese-sounding word that is in fact Italian for tomato.

Even Elon Musk periodically posts about wabi-sabi, but what he means by it no one can say, likely including Musk himself.

We should certainly think about how to live more meaningful, purposeful lives, but is ikigai really the reason people in Japan get up in the morning, as some proclaim? For me, the reason is I want to keep my job and I think that is true for many in the nation who, for the most part, live ordinary lives.

Yes, there is much to learn from what is an extremely functional, high-trust society. It can provide insight into how some older people stay happy and healthy, but imbuing prosaic words with special knowledge and hallowed wisdom reduces insight to lazy stereotypes and tropes.

Much of what makes Japan work has more to do with mundane public policy solutions, education and social standards, rather than some secret self-help tip. Yet there appear few who want to learn how the nation dealt with economic decline while maintaining law and order, or how it managed COVID-19 without lockdowns.

Articles on Okinawa rarely note that the prefecture, in addition to the longest lifespan, also has one of the highest rates of alcohol consumption in the nation. No one is arguing that is the secret to getting up in the morning.

Do people live so long because of ikigai, or is it because of diet and portion sizes, mandated annual checkups and universal access to healthcare? Are people content because of an appreciation of wabi-sabi or because housing is cheap, unemployment is low and quality food is plentiful?

Sensible zoning techniques and healthcare funding cannot be wrapped up in a snappy catchphrase, but likely have much more to do with actual outcomes. It often seems people will learn anything from Japan except actual practical policy fixes, but the nation is not a repository of mystical hidden knowledge. So this Christmas, I suggest practicing the Japanese art of mou ee deshou もういいでしょう — give it a rest.