JISHOU, HUNAN — It’s taken me a few days to internalize all that I saw while in Hefei. So, here are few reflections on the Chinese concept of “ancient cities.”

As tourist attractions, they are somewhat over-rated. Stand anywhere in China, pick up a rock and throw it as hard as you can. Chances are, you will hit an ancient city. I mean, China’s civilization is at least 5,000 years old, and people have lived here since the Stone Age, so of course there are going to be ancient cities helter-skelter all over the countryside.

Some are more or less in their original state, having changed little outwardly in hundreds of years. XiDi is one of those cities. Although people still live there, in buildings that are perhaps a thousand years old, it has not become a tourist trap. We walked around XiDi (and Sanhe and Shexian) free from the hawkers and street vendors that haunt places like the Great Wall at Badaling and the ancient city closest to Jishou, Fenghuang.

Each ancient city has its own architecture and history, which the attentive tourist can perhaps enjoy more than the casual observer, but as attractions they are definitely low-key. Dare I say, they can be boring.

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed visiting the places our hosts took us. Since I’m interested in history and architecture, and in the way people lived long ago, I could appreciate the winding streets and alleys, ornately carved wooden structures in homes, the protective walls around some of the cities, and the general atmosphere of great antiquity in them.

August 15th, 2010 | Category: China, Commentary | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — The Rifqa Bary saga continues, but I fear there will be a tragic ending to an already tragic story.

Bary, the Christian convert teen who ran away from home last year alleging her Muslim parents would kill her, apparently is rejecting chemotherapy for her uterine cancer, claiming she was cured by a faith healer. She is also rejecting a reunion with her family, whom law enforcement officials say pose no threat to her safety.

The teenager became a poster child for the anti-Muslim and/or born-again religious crowd after she ran away from her Columbus home to Orlando, Florida, claiming her parents would kill her because of her conversion to Christianity three years before she fled. She eventually ended up in foster care back in Ohio.

In May, the 17-year-old Sri Lankan native was diagnosed with uterine cancer, and has since had three operations.

According to news reports, documents filed by her parents in Franklin County Court state that Bary is refusing chemotherapy because she claims she was healed at an event in Youngstown last month. She was allegedly taken there without her parents’ consent, and her parents want the court to force Bary to undergo chemotherapy if she needs it.

A judge will decide on the parents’ motion today.

Meanwhile, Bary, who turns 18 next week, has refused to meet with her family. Her lawyers say the girl fears her parents still.

[Oh, ye of little faith. But I digress.]

August 3rd, 2010 | Tags: cancer, Christian, Islam, Muslim, ohio, religion, Rifqa Bary | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, religion | Leave a comment

[UPDATE: THE LANDMARKS COMMISSION DID INDEED DENY LANDMARK STATUS TO 45 PARK PLACE. THE NEWS HAD IT RIGHT.]

Like I said already, New Yorkers are not stupid bigots.

According to the New York Daily News, the City Landmarks Commission will not block the razing of an old building to construct a Muslim-financed community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site.

Fire-breathing opponents to the project, led by dragonmasters Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, were banking on the Landmarks commissioners to put the kabosh on Park 51 Project, a community center that would include (oh, noez!) a mosque. Geller, Spencer and other Muslim haters were pressuring the commissioners to protect the historic value of the existing 152-year building at 45 Park Place in Lower Manhattan.

But it has none. It’s nothing special. From the News:

The Italianate building on Park Place, two blocks north of Ground Zero, simply does not meet architectural criteria for protection from the city, sources with knowledge of the issue said.

 
“The building is not worthy,” a source said. “It does not rise to the level of an individual landmark.”

The new building will probably be a better looking landmark than the heap that’s there now, if this conceptual drawing at right is any indication.

The commission is expected to vote unanimously at its meeting Tuesday morning to let the project continue.

August 2nd, 2010 | Tags: Cordoba Institute, Ground Zero, mosque, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, World Trade Center | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, religion | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — One of my Facebook followers left me a message, complaining that she hadn’t heard much from me lately. So, this one’s for you, Angela!

The spring term ended here on July 15, but I gave my exams much earlier than that, on July 1 and 2. While my students prepped for their other exams, I read their research papers and composition exams. For a solid week. After reading several second and third drafts of the papers, I finally handed in my grades on July 14.

But I was not entirely free yet. The parents of some of the students I had been tutoring during the fall and spring wanted me to continue their lessons for the rest of July. Fortunately, not everyone wanted the summer classes, so I only had eight students in all, and most of them could come to my apartment for lessons. Some days I taught for three hours, others for four; and Sundays I was free.

I’ll tell some anecdotes about these kids now.

Marike is 9. Her daily schedule during the summer included an hour of violin lessons, two hours with me, and two hours of writing (calligraphy) lessons. She did not get a midday nap. (During the school year, Marike had “panda eyes” when I would see her on Sunday mornings.) One of our summer lessons was a two-person dialogue about shopping. I thought it was pretty easy, but our insistence that Marike (a shy girl) do the dialogue with her friend made her break down in tears. She was just too tired to put up with it, she said. For the next lesson, we played Scrabble, which was less intimidating and the kids really enjoyed.

August 2nd, 2010 | Tags: China, english teaching, high speed rail, Teaching, travel | Category: China, Commentary, Teaching English | Comments (3)

JISHOU, HUNAN — According to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has what President Obama doesn’t — balls — because Brewer dealt directly with the state’s illegal immigration problem.

Since “balls” is too rude a word for such a God-fearing woman as Señora Palin to use, she instead used the Spanish slang, “cojones.” Or maybe she was trying to show off how street-wise she is. After all, Obama used “Sí, se puede,” during his campaign.

Of course, Obama was trying to appeal to potential supporters who speak Spanish natively. Palin used Spanish slang to criticize Obama’s supposed inability to deal with undocumented Spanish-speaking immigrants.

Was she even aware of the irony? Or the fact that Obama, as a man, is more likely to literally have cojones than Brewer (a woman, btw)? Or was she trying to make a joke? I doubt it.

Here’s what she said on air Sunday, referring to the controversial Arizona state law SB 1070:

Palin said on “Fox News Sunday” that Arizona’s female Republican governor has “the cojones that our president does not” when it comes to securing America‘s borders.

 
“This is a temporary suspension of some of the key elements in the law that Jan Brewer pushed hard for Arizonans and for the rest of the country to have the result of us being more secure,” said Palin.

August 2nd, 2010 | Tags: Barack Obama, cojones, immigration, Sarah Palin | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, Random rants | Comments (2)

JISHOU, HUNAN — The developer of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” sat down for an interview recently with a blogger at Beliefnet.com. Compared to the frothing-at-the-mouth demagogues opposing the project, Sharif el-Gamal espouses true American values: rational discourse and freedom of religion.

His interview is worth reading, because it contradicts the wild assertions made by the likes of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, co-founders of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA).

Geller and Spencer consistently object to proximity of the project, which includes a mosque, to the former site of the World Trade Center about two blocks away. They claim the Muslim-backed center will somehow “desecrate the sacred ground” of the ruined buildings which entombed about 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

el-Gamal’s response:

We are not at Ground Zero. In fact we’re as close to City Hall as we are to Ground Zero. Lower Manhattan is pretty small. You can’t see Ground Zero from our current building and on completion of our planned building some years from now, there won’t be any views of the Ground Zero memorial from the building. To honor those who were killed on September 11th, we have planned for a public memorial within our future facility as well as reflection space open to all.

He also mentions that there are two other mosques in Lower Manhattan, which are too crowded. He doesn’t mention that there two strip clubs also near the “sacred” WTC site.

July 24th, 2010 | Tags: 9/11, Islam, Manhattan, mosque, Muslim, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, WTC | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, Random rants | Leave a comment