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The War in Iraq is Over?

In 2003, I was a freshman at Wartburg College.  The media were throwing around words like "weapons of mass destruction" and "pre-emptive strike."  To me, the concern about Iraq's aggression seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.

I was taking a public speaking class at the time and decided to do my big persuasive speech on the war in Iraq.  I researched the concept of a "just war" and came to the conclusion that a pre-emptive strike on Iraq hardly seemed to qualify.  (For the record, I think a pre-emptive attack of any sort is almost always unjust.)  So I gave my speech urging my classmates to contact their representatives and stand with me against the possibility of war in Iraq.

Two days later, the war began.

Through most of the war, my opinion has been that you can't just breeze into a country, dismantle their government, and then leave.  While I didn't agree with starting the war, I supported keeping our troops there long enough to establish a new government and some semblance of peace.  I hope we are not leaving too early to have accomplished that aim.

Yesterday, the war officially ended.

Now that the war is over, and I'm not sure what to think.  I am too uninformed to have any real opinions about the situation.  But I do have one real concern:  The end of the war will be covered in the news for a couple days, the troops will go home, and the war will disappear from the public discourse.

We will walk away from a decade of costly, confusing warfare without doing the hard work of analyzing what we did.  Where were we wrong?  Where were we right?  Where did we deceive ourselves or others?  What apologies need to be made?  What successes need to be repeated?  How can we do better in the future?  What is our present responsibility to Iraq?  What is our present responsibility to other troubled countries?

I think Christians especially need to take a step back and think about this one.  I knew quite a few Christians who gave their blanket approval to the operation in Iraq just because it was started by a Republican president.  Why?  We answer to a higher authority than a political party, and I think matters like war and terrorism call for a lot more prayerful reflection than we (the Christian right) seem to have done.

I hope the end of the Iraq War can usher in a long period of humble, reasoned self-reflection in the U.S.

The Chinese Maybe

Here's a nice post called "Maybe Today is my Birthday", in which blogger Tom explains a bit about Chinese indirect communication:

Indirect communication in China means that information (usually bad news or self-boasting) is either transmitted via a third party or through half truths. I would say that despite my other experiences, this is the more common style of communication. I have seen this manifest in several ways, and it usually involves the word “maybe.”

In fact, the word “maybe” often pops up in sentences where it has no place. One of my co-workers at one point actually said “Maybe today is my birthday.” Usually though it has a more sinister usage, like: “Maybe you need to come to work on Saturday for a meeting,” or “Maybe you should redo this report,” or “Maybe it would be good for you if that student passed.”

I've experienced many of these Chinese "maybes," ranging from the very common, "Maybe it is a little inconvenient," to my all-time favorite: "My name is Robert.  Maybe I am a boy."

My roommate and I experienced a little indirect miscommunication of our own the other day.  Our Chinese neighbor, whom we rarely see and have never spoken with, knocked on our door.  He indicated a couple bags outside our door, which were things we intended to take down to the dumpster but hadn't yet.
     "Are these yours?"
     "Oh, yes.  Actually they are trash."
     "Ok."
He left.  We continued with our habit of leaving our trash outside our door until it was convenient to take it down.

A few days later, he told another Chinese neighbor to tell us to stop putting our trash in the stairwell.  It's gross and it's not a trashcan.  Apparently we were supposed to have gotten this meaning from his original question, "Are these yours?"

The article I mentioned above also discusses the Chinese phenomenon of not telling terminally ill patients there is anything wrong with them.  I believe this was the case with my former student who passed away from a brain tumor a few months ago.  To my knowledge she was not told she had cancer.  Generally the family believes a patient will just be depressed and will have no will to try to survive if they are given bad news about their health.

As a more general recommendation, the blog Seeing Red in China is awesome.  Spend some time digging around and you'll learn a lot about Chinese life.

A Moveable Feast

The other day some students invited me out for hot pot, and I was excited to arrive and realize it's one of the new conveyor-belt style hot pot places I've seen popping up lately.

You order your base broth (hot or not hot), and then veggies and processed meats circle around for you to take, boil, and eat.  Everything is skewered into .7 RMB bunches, and at the end of your meal, you pay according to the number of empty skewers on your plate.

Bottom line:  Cheap and fun, but not nearly as delicious as standard hot pot where you get plate after plate of paper-thin, delicious beef, lamb, and pork.

Total Eclipse of the Moon

Who knew I'd see my first perfect eclipse today? Not me.

At about 9:30 p.m. tonight, I was walking back from a debate competition I was judging, because that's the sort of thing we crazy, fun-loving foreign teachers do on a Saturday night.

Just as I was about to walk into our apartment, I saw the Japanese teacher outside, just standing there in the cold. I asked her what she was doing and she pointed to the moon and told me excitedly that a
once-in-ten years lunar eclipse was visible today in China and Japan.

Strangely, as I was walking home, I remembered having a passing thought that it was strange the moon was such a crescent today because it had been so full yesterday, but the thought didn't go any further.  Duh, Alison. You don't go from full to half in a single day unless something else is going on.

I texted the other foreign teachers and we waited outside for another 25 minutes, watching the bright white light get pushed off the right side of the moon as the dull gray-orange took over. Around 10:00  p.m., the full moon was totally covered with the earth's shadow -- a perfect lunar eclipse.

I think eclipses are cool not because they are necessarily visually stunning, but because of the thoughts that go through your head when you watch them. How strange that the sun, the earth, and the moon all happened to line up today, and the result of that bit of geometry is my moon went out for awhile.

Post Edit: I was told by a Chinese friend tonight that the Chinese word for "eclipse" is yue chi -- "moon eat."  Makes sense.

Beijing Smog -- Pretty Unbelievable

Northeast China is one of the most polluted places in the world.  Beijing made news last year when its pollution got so bad that the air quality readings literally went off the chart, into an unknown territory called "Crazy Bad."  Air quality in the last few weeks has also been unbelievably bad; makes me glad I don't live in Beijing.

Check out this link for some more pictures of this particularly smogtastic season in Beijing.

The 5 Best Toys of All Time

I'm not much of a shopper, but I loved this list of 5 classic toys.  Number 2 is my favorite, and I might be getting my sister Number 5 for Christmas next year.

Click here:
5 Best Toys of All Time

What's your favorite?

Monkey Hit the White-Boned Lady Thrice

A little while ago, I was asked to help judge an English drama competition.  In the past, I have attended or helped judge an English speech competition, movie dubbing competitions, and an English song competition.

I knew the drama competition would be by far the most entertaining, and I was right.  Students from 8 different classes performed a short play, and since 4 of them were my classes, I also got to see my students in a different, more dramatic light. 

The winning plays were "Plants vs. Zombies" and "Snow White."  Enjoy the highlights!

The first play was based on the ancient Chinese story of the Monkey King and his buddies.  In this play, Pig (played by the girl on the left) was trying to find a wife.  He hired a matchmaker but to no avail.  Eventually he got together with his ex-wife and then was dragged back to heaven by the Monkey King (on the right).

I was totally confused and totally entertained.

Here's a fairly standard adaptation of Cinderella:
 

Plants vs. Zombies was based on a computer game that's apparently very popular.  In the first picture, you see Bruce standing up for the rights of the plants in the garden.  In the second scene, the Zombie boss and his thugs are coming to defeat the plants, which they eventually do.  Curiously, the play ended in a love story between two people who were neither plants nor zombies.

This was another highly entertaining play that definitely deserved the win.

Here we have Beauty and the Beast.  The beast goes from the fine young man you see below to a Halloween-mask-wearing bear.  The candlestick has been replaced by a fairy, and two evil step-sisters were also introduced.

My freshmen put on a great performance of Snow White.  The step-mother was sufficiently evil and went around yelling about "Ssssssss-now White!  SSSSSSSSSNOW WHITE!"  Also note-worthy: the dwarves exited by doing the Chinese "Bunny Hop," and for once the male lead was actually played by a male.

The final performance was listed in our programs as "Monkey Hit the White-Boned Lady Thrice," and on the screen as "Monkey Hit Lady White Bone Thrice".  I can't really tell you what it means, but you can see the White-Boned Lady below in the fuzzy head scarf, and the monkey did indeed hit her thrice.

And of course, no performance in China is complete without a reference to Jack and Rose and someone singing "My Heart Will Go On."

Here I am with the Snow White cast after the performance.  Fun times!