The China Journals, Home Sweet Home, Chapter 2

Luoyang, China, Sept. 2010

We are in the ancient city of Luoyang, one of the oldest cities in China and now populated by more than six and a half million people.   As with everywhere in China, the air is saturated with  gray smog, limiting visibility in the extreme.  It is almost a palpable substance in the air. 

We have a full day of sight-seeing—the Longmen Grottoes, a Chinese Opera, and a visit to an elementary school. 

In between, we are to have lunch in a family home.  Our bus driver maneuvers the rattling bus through narrow streets of a nearby agricultural town and lets us off on a narrow dirt lane.  He will have to park elsewhere.

We approach two white concrete block buildings with red trim and bars on all the windows.  The two buildings face each other.  We separate into three groups, each going to a different home.  Hue, our group leader, goes with us and greets the woman of the home with an affectionate hug.

 

The woman’s baby girl is dressed in pajamas, open at the crotch like all the young children we see in China.  It is done, they say, to facilitate toilet training.  The husband is at work, and her mother-in-law helps her prepare and serve.

This time I know we are dining in a living room.  It is spotlessly clean, only a toddler’s toy or two visible.  A low glass table is set with cold appetizer dishes, and we seat ourselves around the table on tiny plastic stools.  Beer, tea, and juice are served, and an impossible number of excellent hot dishes follow.  We feel guilty about leaving so much food until we learn that the left-overs will feed the family for several days. and that they are given a stipend to purchase food for our lunch.

I peek into the kitchen before we leave.  It is spotless.  I see only a hot plate for cooking.  The bedroom is Spartan, the floors are polished.

The TV has been on the whole time, but no one pays any attention to it until there is a pause in the translating-and-re-translating conversation.  

Then:

Ee-e-e-um-um-a-weh.

Ee-e-e-um-um-a-weh.

We turn towards the screen where a young man sings:

                In the jungle, the mighty jungle,

                The lion sleeps tonight….

It appears to be a talent show, much like American Idol, and the TV audience cheers for the young man and his group.  The song, so familiar to us, sounds incongruous and yet at the same time somehow provides a cultural connection in this circumstance.  

While the lion sleeps in the quiet jungle, we walk past corn drying on the concrete walkway to a nearby schoolyard for a performance of a Chinese Opera, where it will not be quiet at all.

Scene along the walk to schoolyard.

The China Journals, Home Sweet Home, Chapter 1

(I am at that time in my life when I want to rid myself of possessions and find that I am compelled to watch the TV series called , "Hoarders, Buried Alive"  for inspiration.  During every episode I want to rush home and fill large black garbage bags with stuff and haul them off to wherever.  Just get them and their contents out of my house.   Because I'm in Halibut Cove and unable to do that, I think about living simply, much like the homes in China and Tibet that I visited last fall.  Simplicity in the extreme.)







Beijing, China, Sept. 2010

Dining in the Hutong

The rickshaw man peddles us into a narrow alley, known in Beijing as a hutong, and parks along a wall.  Commerce bustles in the small shops interspersed with residences along this lane, which is wide enough for a vehicle to transit, but would cause consternation if two cars met.

We follow our guide into a narrow passageway, past mops hanging to dry, to the non-descript entrance of a small building.  We step over the high threshold that prevents legless ghosts from entering.

 

Inside we find two tables pushed together and set with Zen-like simplicity ̶ a small luncheon plate, chopsticks, and a paper cup in a plastic holder.   So far we have been dining in luxurious hotels and nice restaurants.  This experience is new to us.

There are 14 places set and we number 16, so the tables are separated to make room for the last two.   Plates of rice, duck, pork skin (delicious), sprouts, potatoes, cabbage, bok choy, and dumplings are placed on the table, all of which we wash down with beer.  We are learning that to request bottled water means receiving a glass of water, not the whole bottle.  Chinese beer, cheap and tasty and shared with others, soon becomes the mealtime beverage for many of us.

I focus on the room.   Mounted above a table is a flat panel television set.  

 Through a glass partition I see a stark room with a bed, extra stools, and a small cabinet.  It suddenly occurs to me that we are in their living room, not their restaurant.  The tables we occupy are the only two in the room.  

Later our Chinese leader explains that Road Scholar chooses dining places for its clients carefully, and this couple was located through word of mouth and more word of mouth.   They are introduced and we thank them for a delicious meal. 

 

On the way out, we pass their tiny kitchen.  It is about the size of an American closet, but the dishes that come from there are memorable.

Woman in side alley in hutong

Hutong

My Separation from Alcatraz

During my late teens and early twenties, my life was heavily involved with crime.  Not as a participant, mind you, but as an observer of the legal process that followed crime.  I was a newspaper reporter who wrote almost exclusively about trials and such.

Though I am far removed from that arena now, I still have the interest.  So when the Sunday night football game proved to be a bore-fest, I scrolled through the television programs and found a documentary called Alcatraz Reunion.  I switched to that channel.

That program was very few degrees removed from my previous career, and names I recall from history and current news were spoken aloud.

An Alaskan criminal named Frank Weatherman was the last one off it when the prison was closed in 1963.  Trussed in handcuffs and leg irons, Weatherman was shuffling toward the boat carrying the final cons when he was asked how he felt.

“Good,” he said. “Alcatraz was never no good for anybody.”  

Another Alaskan, but before my time, was Robert Stroud, who was convicted in Juneau, Alaska, of manslaughter and sent to the federal prison at McNeil Island, Washington.  Alaska was a territory then with all crimes prosecuted in the federal courts.  Stroud was far from a model prisoner and received an additional six months on his sentence for assaults.  

He was transferred to Leavenworth prison, where he stabbed a guard to death.  That earned him a death sentence.  Eventually, President Woodrow Wilson commuted the sentence to life in prison.  While at Leavenworth, Stroud took an interest in birds, which he was allowed to keep in his cell.  He became a renowned ornithologist.  

His transfer to Alcatraz in 1942 meant he could not keep birds.  By then he was already known as the “Birdman of Alcatraz.”  

Stroud spent most of his time in solitary confinement.  He died of natural causes in 1963, the day before John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  He was 73.  Forty-two of the 53 years of his imprisonment were served in solitary confinement.

On a visit to Alcatraz in the early 1970s, I, a fellow bird lover, stood outside Stroud’s cell when I visited the solitary block and thought of his many achievements.

As I watched the documentary last night, my ears perked up at the name Leon Thompson, better known as Whitey Thompson, a prolific armed robber, who also served time at Alcatraz.  Thompson, so the story goes, could see the lights of Berkeley from his cell.  He claims he only looked out at them twice, but watching the cars moving and seeing the lights ignited something in Thompson that led to turning his life around.

He authored several books, one of which was titled, “Deadly Litter.”  It is the story of a man who hated litter so much, he turned into a serial killer, hunting down the people he saw littering and killing them.  Then he carved “litter is bitter” into their foreheads.  Thompson had his books set on a table at Alcatraz during the alumni reunion and was happily autographing them for his former ex-cons.

“I haven’t been this popular,” he said, “since I was on the 10 Most Wanted.”

I remember Frank Weatherman, remember seeing newsreels of him leaving Alcatraz.  I learned about Robert Stroud from the movie Birdman of Alcatraz.  I remember many of the names mentioned during the documentary, including Whitey Thompson.  All I can say about him is that I empathize with hating litter, but I’m no serial killer.

Sweet Saltwater Ballet

During a brief spell of temporary insanity in the mid-1980s, I signed up for SCUBA diving lessons in Hawaii.  Me.  Non-swimmer, afraid of the water, terrified of sharks.

This was no swimming pool introduction to diving.  This was right out there in the salt water where those critters higher on the food chain looked on me as an entree.   

I laid awake nights, sweating in fear, at the thought of sharks and barracudas coming after me.  I knew I would forget everything about breathing underwater and die of pulmonary embolism if the shark didn’t get me first.  That was the longest week of my life.

I have never lost my fear of sharks.  

Turns out I should have been watching for danger elsewhere.  Not killer whales, sea lions, crocs, or gators, either.   I should have been looking for those semi-amorphous blobs called jellyfish.  Especially when I was merrily snorkeling in Australia, where the box jelly kills more people annually than any other marine creature.  Its tentacles contain enough toxin to kill 60 humans in three minutes.

Lion's Mane jellyfish

I saw my first Lion’s mane jelly this week on my afternoon walk to the dock.  I was watching the tiny moon jellies drifting by when an enormous orange-red blob caught my eye.  Its bell appeared smooth, but underneath was a mass of what looked like semi-masticated raw meat with white threads hanging from it.  Despite that image, it was beautiful and graceful as it spread its eight-lobed bell then contracted it, thus propelling itself through the water.

Under the bell with tentacles trailing.

Today, I saw three of them around the dock, a red and two large pale ones, of which one was an even larger specimen than the first I’d seen.  Given that water magnifies things, this one could have measured almost two feet across with tentacles trailing behind that disappeared in the deeps.  Those I could see appeared to be eight feet long, but I never saw their ends.

The bell seems to be almost two feet across with tentacles at least eight feet long.

The eight lobes of the bell.

Lion's mane jellies live only in cold waters, usually north of the 42nd parallel.  The Arctic Lion's mane jelly can grow to eight feet in diameter with tentacles 120 feet long.  The box jelly of Australia, however, dwarfs the Lion's mane with a growth potential of 12 feet in diameter and tentacles that break away and float.  Even then they are just as deadly.

Moon jellies

Lion’s mane jellies, so named for that mass beneath the bell and its resemblance to a lion’s mane, live only a year.   They are carnivorous, eating zooplankton, small fish….and sometimes moon jellies.  Conversely, jellies are eaten by sea birds, large fish, other jellies, and sea turtles.

Moon jelly

Another moon jelly.

And now, the sweet ballet of a Lion's mane jellyfish.

Words to Live By

Miles and Moonrise in Mauve

I don't have any photos to go with a story about my neighbor Miles, so I'm posting this one I took a little while ago.  Didn't want you to miss it.  Or the story about Miles.

Moonrise in Mauve

 Now, for the story I ripped off from Erin's Facebook page.  She is Miles's mom.

Flight Response

I was hiking up Mount Healy Overlook trail in Denali National Park in August, accompanied by a young man named Simon.  He had joined me after stashing his mountain bike in the woods when hikers coming down told him the trail ahead was too steep for a bike.

Simon was from Bulgaria and was working two jobs at lodges in the commercial zone outside the park entrance.  He asked me about bears, saying he’d been told to run downhill if he saw one because bears couldn’t run downhill very well.

“Don’t ever run from a bear,” I said.  “It triggers a chase response and they might go after you even if they hadn’t intended to do so.

Fast forward to Saturday night in Moose Pass.  

My 16 year old neighbor Miles had five of his buddies at his house Saturday.  The boys were playing flashlight tag in the dark around the house and creek.  One of them pointed the flashlight at what he thought was another boy.

The boy turned out to be a large brown bear looking for spawning salmon in the stream about 30 feet from them.  That’s about 1.5 seconds in bear speed.

“You never saw boys move so fast,” said Miles’s mom Erin.  “They got to the house pretty fast.”

I can imagine.  Miles and another boy are state champions in  cross country running, and several others are members of a state champion running team.

“So much for not running from bears,” said Erin.  Miles and his younger sister Kara have lived with bears in their yard and looking in their windows since they were born.

Incidentally, Miles won another race Wednesday, posting a time of 16:54 in the USA Track and Field Alaska Klondike Advertising 5K run, beating the second place runner by 7 seconds.

Elsewhere in the 'hood, someone saw a black bear.  It's that time of year.  Berries are about gone and the bears are porking up on spawning salmon, which just happen to be in our neighborhood.

Hot Time in the Old Cove Tonight

I'm what you call a cheap date.  Simple lunch.  Afternoon matinee at senior prices.  Half a mai tai and my face starts going numb.

It also doesn't take much to entertain me.  For instance, consider that I've been in Halibut Cove house-sitting and opening the door for Geri the Cat on command (hers) for almost three weeks.  Not once have I felt the need to catch a ride on the twice weekly mail boat to hit the big town shopping (Safeway) or see the night lights (the Salty Dawg) in Homer, some five miles across the bay.

Nope, I stay right here in Geri's house, entertaining myself as I see fit.  Once a day I walk around the grounds, which takes about ten minutes.  More if I stop to take photos.  While life in the cove can be quiet and peaceful, it can also be downright adrenalin pumping.

Consider the day the robot ran wild in the house.   Yes, I said robot.  With much trepidation, I removed it from where it was locked down, then punched the on switch.  Suddenly I was heading in the opposite direction as it began spinning and twirling and generally running amok.

It started after Geri but she was much faster and managed to escape unharmed, or rather un-vacuumed, as the case may be.

For about a half hour the Roomba robot bounced around the room like a ball in a pinball machine, all the while vacuuming the carpet..  Geri retreated to her chair, where she was not amused when it approached.

Once I determined the robot wasn't going to rape and pillage or eat my computer cords, I left it alone to do what it wanted.  And then, miracle of miracles, when it tired of its sport, it went home and took a nap.  Docked itself, it did.

Whew!  I wiped the sweat from my brow.  After all that excitement, I decided a nap was appropriate.



This afternoon the sun came out after a few days of mostly rain.  I went down to the dock on my afternoon rounds, where I peered over the side into the aqua water of the cove.

Then I reached for my camera.

I understand the gals from Moose Pass were out on the town in Seward Friday where The Help opened at the Liberty Theater.  According to a source who shall remain anonymous, the gals went wild--something involving flying popcorn and the Yankees.

Well, Skip and Marie at the Liberty don't  have anything on the cove.  Just look at the exciting movie below, Jellyzilla.  You can click on it to enlarge it and get the full impact of a true drama.

That was exciting!  Now, hold onto your chair.  Here's the worldwide premier of Revenge of Jellyzilla.

I'll tell you, (sniff) those true life adventures get me every time.  Eat your heart out, Steven Spielberg.

By the way, there's a full moon tonight.  I think I'll stay in.  I'll be 70 next month.  Don't think I can handle the excitement of night life in the Cove under a full moon.