What do I like about China? (other than low taxes, cheap beer, and the availability of fried chicken.)

The stories.

In a country with 5000 years of recorded history there’s a tale or two to be told. While the Europeans were living in caves, a movie character once memorably said, the Chinese were building cities and sailing the oceans.

I mentioned double happiness in a previous post and promised the whole story. Let us look back to the days of the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 CE). The Tang Dynasty is considered a renaissance of sorts, the golden age of Chinese painting, poetry and architecture. So, without further adieu:

Once upon a time…

…there was a young man, a student, on his way to the capital to complete his final examinations. The best and brightest, the students with the most outstanding exam results, would become ministers in the emperor’s court. The young man fell ill while making his journey and was taken in by a family in a mountain village. Lucky for the lad, the head of the household was a doctor. The physician and his pretty daughter treated the ill scholar and he soon recovered.

The doctor’s daughter fell in love with the ill young man as she tended to him. He, likewise, fell for his pretty, young nurse. After regaining his strength, it was hard to say goodbye. The girl wrote the right hand portion of a Chinese couplet for the student to match.

Green trees against the sky in the spring rain while the sky set off the spring trees in the obscuration.

The boy was stymied and told the girl it would take time for him to write the second part of the couplet. He promised to do so after his examination.

The formerly-ill student set out again for the capital, wrote the examination, and won top spot. While being interviewed by the emperor the lad was tested again. Finish this couplet, the king told the scholar:

Red flowers dot the land in the breeze’s chase while the land colored up in red after the kiss.

The student realized the matching part of the emperor’s couplet, the right side, had been given to him by his love. He wrote it down and gave it to the ruler.

The emperor was pleased and appointed the young man as a minister in his court. He was given leave to visit his hometown before taking up his post. Love-struck as he was, the lad returned to the girl’s village and told her of the emperor, the couplet, and his new job.

The pair was married. Using red paper, they doubled the Chinese character, xi, and hung it on their wall to celebrate two events, double happiness for their wedding and the young man’s new job.

They probably lived happily ever after.

The Chinese character 喜 (xi, pronounced she) translates to: happy. The Double Happiness, symbol often used in calligraphy, is a pairing of the character xi (see images). It is commonly used at weddings, and in the homes of newlyweds as a decoration. (There are three still hanging in my apartment. The one on the door is useful in giving directions. ‘Look for the door with the big red thing on it,’ I say to would-be visitors).

The hong bao, the red envelopes containing money, given at weddings, often feature the double happiness symbol. The symbol is most often red, but sometimes black. It is never white, as that is the color of death, and used at funerals.

The inspiration for this came from Carrie at My Several Worlds and her great post on the Chinese Cinderella.

One of the best things about traveling, about teaching ESL, is the things I see and the students I meet. Summer camp is a misnomer compared with North American summer camp. There are no tents, campfires, marshmallows, or canoes. There are English lessons, games, and contests.

After a day in the classroom the ESL teachers and students go for broke in an Olympic-style relay. What was lost in grace and finesse was made up for with intensity.

Teaching ESL is not an easy job. But the rewards, like seeing (and capturing) the above, are immense.

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There was a short break in the never-ending rain this week (above). Like all good things, it didn’t last. Last Friday the storm set a record, dumping more rain in one day than any in the last 50 years. The road outside my school flooded, denying access to the buses that ferry the students home for the weekend. They were not amused. A weekend at school, in class?

I am never without an umbrella.

From the CBC

Soldiers scrambled to shore up soggy levies with sandbags Tuesday in southern China as forecasters warned that heavy rain in the central region could trigger more flooding on the country’s second-longest river.

At least 63 have been killed in the past month, the official Xinhua news agency reported, noting that flooding has killed 171 since the beginning of the year.

This year’s flooding in 20 provinces and the western Xinjiang region has forced 1.27 million people to flee their homes, while crop damage was reported on nearly 1 million hectares, Xinhua said.

Read the entire story at CBC News.

While some countries are dealing with too much water other have enough to wantonly destroy it. From Canadian news:

CBC News has learned that 16 Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly “reclassified” as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland.

Environmentalists say the process amounts to a “hidden subsidy” to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat.

Under the Fisheries Act, it’s illegal to put harmful substances into fish-bearing waters. But, under a little-known subsection known as Schedule Two of the mining effluent regulations, federal bureaucrats can redefine lakes as “tailings impoundment areas.”

Read the entire story at CBC News.

I was walking home after work. It was hot, my shirt stuck to my skin. I wanted a drink, a shower, and air conditioning, not particularly in that order. We had been practicing for Parents’ Day for more than a month. The next day was “go time.” Everyone, me more than most, was tired and nervous.

As a coworker and I headed across the parking lot I heard my name. The Vice Principal was waving me over. I cringed. Beyond him, from the waiting area on the first floor of the administration building, I could hear teenage laughter. Give me a room, nay, a warehouse full of Grade 1 students and I’m a happy man. Teenagers? Ai ya, as we say in China.

The group, I learned, were visiting Grade 7, 8, and 9 students. They were visiting from Sichuan, from May’s earthquake ground zero.

They mobbed us when we arrived at their party: Twenty Sichuanese middle schoolers, twenty students from my own school, principals, various leaders, and the round little women that are present, cooking, at school events around the world. The TV cameras and newspaper photographers shot images. The students laughed and brought us food from the small buffet table set up in the corner. Durian, apples, zongzi were passed to my full hands with promises of deliciousness. A laughing young woman fed me dumplings from chopsticks, telling me to open wide.

They were typical teenagers, asking questions, telling jokes, laughing and smiling. Earthquake survivors? Maybe there school wasn’t affected. They were too happy.

My Vice Principal translated their Principal’s words. The main teaching building at their school was leveled in the quake. More than 240 people were trapped in the rubble for nine hours before being rescued. I didn’t ask how many were dead.

They were laughing and happy, because they were alive. And for little while, an evening party, a day at the beach, a trip to an amusement park, they could be teenagers and forget what they had experienced. I laughed with them while wanting to cry.

My thoughts of drinks, showers and air conditioning suddenly became unimportant.

Nancy is comically short.

Grade 1 students are small but Nancy’s proportions place her in a different visual class than her contemporaries. I nicknamed her “The Ewok” out of affection. If she was hairier she could easily be one of George Lucas’ Return of the Jedi characters.

I was standing on the stairs between classes. The classrooms are on the 4th floor and Grade 1 students need a little assistance getting to their lessons in a non-tardy manner. A cavalcade of things can distract a seven-year-old: A rowdy classmate, a puddle, or a nearly invisible piece of lint can cause the young ones to stray from a path a straight forward as a flight of stairs.

Nancy stopped beside me. I ceased my shepherding.

“What’s this?” Nancy asked. Read the full story

A serious-looking student leaves his afternoon English class. Shenzhen, China.

Captured: April 14, 2008.