End of Empires
Uranus in Aries
I sometimes feel a bit schizophrenic you know – on my other blog (http://thecrazycrone.org) I post digital art of elemental nature spirits, which I can see in photos of trees, flowers, scenery, waterfalls, etc. And on this blog I bang on about matters political. I think I ought to rename it: “Metaphysics Meets Marxism 101”!
As I was saying in another post, I often wonder why half my life was spent as a Marxist and the next half as a metaphysical crystal worker and whacko artist! Perhaps it reflects the fact I’m a Libran Sun with Libra Rising which makes me able to see both sides of a situation.
Well, anyway, I find the Marxist part of my life very helpful because it’s made me curious and it’s helped me understand quite a bit of how capitalism works. I don’t buy the claptrap peddled by Western media, I like to hunt around the internet to look at what’s behind stories and what is really going on with the propaganda outlets (read: Establishment media) of Western governments.
But I also enjoy reading stuff in astrology about world events. For example, I was fascinated to read a book by the astrologer Liz Greene (The Outer Planets and Their Cycles) which records a lecture she gave where she mentioned the astrological situation surrounding the Soviet Union and predicted its collapse based on transits occurring in the national chart. This was a decade before the Soviet Union fell apart.
So now we’re looking at an astrological era where Uranus has been stirring things up with Aries and Pluto has been similarly doing a Trickster job with Capricorn. All sorts of upheavals have happened under the first duo – the Japanese earthquake happened just as Uranus was heading out of Pisces (which covers earthquakes) and into Aries which pretty much coincided with the tsunami. While these events where happening,Pluto in Capricorn has been heaving out all sorts of hidden information about governments, the Establishment, plutocrats, super-wealthy rip-off merchants, the banksters, oligarchies and huge corporations.
No wonder there’s uproar in so many nations around the world!
So, onwards and upwards, cupcakes!
“Make the US great again”.
“Make Britain great again”.
We’ve heard these words, haven’t we, with Trump running around squawking them in the US and those who voted for Brexit, leaving the European Union, in Britain?
Do you really, really think, though, that things can go back to empires past?
The reality is that there is no going back because “great” meant subjugating other nations to access their resources and cheap labour. The US and Britain are “great” because they have grown rich by ripping off/interfering in/bombing nations as the West has been ascendant.
It’s hard to lose your status as a major power in the world but that’s what is happening – we are in a uniquely historical time of watching a major power going into decline, the US, and a former great power hankering for times gone past and trying to ride on American coattails. In the process they are trying to hinder the rise of China (by having a few bob on India) and undermine Russia – resources, resources, resources!
This is reflected in demands to make Britain and the US “great” again, when in reality the “great” days are over and we are witnessing great shifts in spheres of influence.
Precisely because of that, the US is even more dangerous as it flails around trying to hang on to its former glories.
So one of the very good reasons not to get side-tracked into the good boy/bad boy Hussein argument I mentioned in my last post about control of oil being the driving force behind the Iraq war is because in the background, precisely the same arguments are being used to start fomenting war with Russia and China.
Putin’s a monster and expansionist, so the media and Western leaders say, which is a bit rich after the chaos of the illegal war in Iraq. The Chinese are control freaks because they don’t have a multi-party system (what? with the current parties in the US, Britain and Australia looking more like Tweedledum and Tweedledummer???) and are building bases in the South China seas. We are constantly told that these two nations are aggressive, expansionist and must be contained.
It’s not a popular thing to say, but China has always claimed sovereignty over Tibet. It was not a magically benign and spiritual country – it was feudal with Buddhism being used to enforce that feudalism – reincarnation was used to get people to accept their place in the order of things, with a grand time for the top dogs and misery for the serfs at the bottom of the heap. Am I a fan of everything China has done in Tibet? No. But the US and Western nations use Tibet as a propaganda tool and I’m deeply cynical of their motives. It’s also not likely that China will let go of Tibet when the US is waiting to step into the breach right on China’s doorstep.
Similarly, the reality of the Crimea is that it was part of Russia from 1783, when the Tsarist Empire annexed it a decade after defeating Ottoman forces in the Battle of Kozludzha, until 1954, it was handed over to the Ukraine by the particularly stupid Russian President, Kruschev, without asking the population but hey, when he chooses to act in a non-democratic manner, that’s okay when it favours the West!
Of course, if you say this, you’re then accused of being an apologist for Russia and China. Well, no, actually. It’s simply that if we take off our rose-coloured glasses about how wonderful the West is, the reality looks a bit different.
If you have a quick squizz around, you’ll see that the US is beefing up its proxy states, like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Ukraine, which are all muscling up to China and Russia, ignoring – in the case of Russia – a tacit agreement that the Ukraine would be neutral (and don’t forget the CIA was up to its necks in the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych leading to th
e country now being run by fascist nationalists), increasing US troops in Europe and countries bordering Russia, holding manoeuvres in waters close to China, US ships entering the Black Sea (a very provocative move) and generally encircling China and its Russian neighbour.
A lot of this information has disappeared under the welter of media coverage of the political circuses in the UK and the US. But it is a festering sore. And so I’d like to suggest that when you see hysterical reports about the expansionist goals of Russia and China, you might like to consider whether they’re truthful or not.
Because, in the final analysis, it’s the US, with backing from other Western nations, expanding towards the Soviet Union and creeping up on China. Russia has certainly moved into the Crimea but it was always Russian territory. And the Chinese are bopping around in the South China seas to protect its flank from US attempts to step up aggression on its doorstep.
The war drums are beating, albeit it fairly quietly at the moment. But don’t be fooled. The decline of one global power and the rise of another hold the seeds of global conflict. The fight for peace continues!
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Chinese Whispers – Xian, 1995 (51)
In 1995 I had the opportunity to go on a short tour of Beijing and Xi’an. I looked forward very much to seeing the differences between then and my earlier visit in early 1978.
I had an interesting start to my visit when we took off in a quite small China Airlines 747 airliner from Sydney. As soon as the plane had taken off and seat belt signs were off, heaps of Chinese people on board quit their seats, squatted or sat on the floor and started gambling. It was quite chaotic but the flight staff handled the various groups on the floor with aplomb while the gamblers had the time of their lives.
The real drawback was the smoking which wasn’t then banned. The Chinese on the plane were great smokers as well as gamblers and the cabin was soon thick with cigarette smoke which – as a non-smoker – I found very hard to handle. I was feeling quite under the weather by the time we landed in Beijing and, as with my previous visit, the city still looked grey and cold in the mid-winter weather – quite a contrast from the hot weather I’d left behind in Sydney.
Beijing today – a far cry from the city I visited in early 1978.
I did wonder how commercialised China had become and soon found the answer in the lobby of the hotel our group was staying in. I’m not a fan of Christmas and all the shlock surrounding it – too commercialised, too money-grabbing, too cynical, too many buying too much and getting in debt, and so many people looking unhappy and desperate in the last-minute rush. So I’d boasted to my husband that I’d be leaving the Christmas “festivities” behind, in a rather gloating manner. Silly me. Our tour walked into the hotel to find a dirty great big Christmas tree and the soft, dirge-like sounds of Christmas carols, quite a difference from the last time I’d been in the city when there was no sign of Western Christmas bling at all!
Being realistic, tourism had grown tremendously since my first visit in early 1978 and the Chinese obviously have to cater for visitors and their tastes. Plus the Chinese need the currency exchange tourism brings, so I’m hardly in a position to criticise from the sidelines!
I really noticed the difference when I went for a walk in Beijing. There were far less bikes – they’d crowded the streets in 1978 – and a heck of a lot more cars. In 1978 most cars were for official business but now the streets were choked with all sorts of vehicles – cars, trucks, bikes, motor bikes – it was chaotic and road rules seemed completely non-existent although people seemed to somehow cope with the bikes and cars creating a sort of mad kaleidoscope of movement.
Traffic in modern Beijing
Gone too was the ubiquitous grey and camouflage green clothing that predominated the last time I was there. Now most people were dressed in bright colours, good quality clothing and lots of swish accessories. Young people particularly looked confident, well dressed and bright. The country had obviously made great strides since I’d first visited and it was good to see.
A lot of people would like China to have stayed in the relatively backward state it was in the 1970s as people were less hurried, less sophisticated and, I guess, a bit naive. But that’s like saying our Western civilisation should have stayed stuck in the 1970s too. Change happens and I really don’t have too much patience for those who say how wonderful life was “back then”.
We did go to see the Summer Palace in Beijing and that really was quite amazing. What really 
takes me aback when I’m in Beijing is the obscene wealth flaunted by the rulers in olden times compared with the poverty and hardship of the great majority of the population. The Summer Palace is composed of lakes, palaces and gardens and is included on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. Here’s a link to Wikipedia’s coverage of the Summer Palace which gives some idea of the size, beauty and history Summer Palace, Beijing. We also admired the Marble Boat, Summer Palace, Beijing, a quite extraordinary construction which really embodies the excesses of the Chinese ruling class.
The Summer Palace was pretty much destroyed twice by Western powers, as explained in Wikipedia:
“In 1860 the British and French burned the palace down at the end of the Second Opium War (the Old Summer Palace also ransacked at the same time). The punitive action was undertaken in response to the torture and killing of a European peace delegation that included Thomas William Bowlby. The destruction of large parts of the palace complex still evokes strong emotions among some in China……
The Summer Palace was slighted a second time in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion when it was seized by the eight allied powers. The garden were burned and mostly destroyed. Many of the Palace’s artifacts were divided among the eight allied nations. These are still retained by various countries – such as France and United Kingdom – much to the annoyance of the modern Chinese government.”
I have referred to this in detail because we in the West like to pontificate on how China should organise itself and what it should do and how it should behave. This completely fails to take into account the way in which foreign, mainly Western, powers have historically interfered in China and caused immense hardship to the Chinese people. Westerners need to study Chinese history in order to understand what goes on in China today and why lectures from Western governments get up the noses of leading officials and the Chinese people.
A bit of modesty and self-restraint wouldn’t go amiss and this was re-affirmed to me when we were in Xi’an. Thankfully, when we took off from Beijing Airport for Xi’an, the fighter pilots who had flow the aircraft when I first visited in 1978 had now been replaced by modern-trained pilots, so we took off at a normal speed instead of rocketing up into what felt like space when we flew in China in 1978!
This photo is off the internet but it gives some idea of the sheer size of the terra cotta army.
We visited a museum in Xi’an which hadn’t been open long when I visited the city with its draw card, the Terra Cotta warriors and horses. It had a reconstructed version of a 5,000-year-old village which had been excavated in Shaanxi Province and our tour guides were very proud to inform us that this had a matriarchal social structure.
We looked at the most beautiful artifacts over the 5,000 year old history portrayed in this museum and it reminded me that China had a flourishing culture and creative outlets when nothing like this existed in early Europe or Britain. American Western culture which US leaders are proud to boast about only started up at a comparatively recent past, in 1776. And saying this does not include the extensive history of Native American/First Nations cultures which was ignored for so long and subjected to many attempts to destroy it completely.
Visiting the Terra Cotta warriors and horses is really a quite humbling experience. Here were ranks upon ranks of warriors, each one crafted individually, and designed to protect the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. They were buried with him in 210-209 BCE, with the aim of protecting him in his after life.
The existence of this army was forgotten until 1974 when a peasant digging a well during a time of drought hit one on the head while excavating. It is a quite extraordinary experience when you walk into the great hall housing these terra cotta figures as each one is crafted individually. In the slight haze of dust in the air, you can almost imagine them moving and coming alive. It’s estimated that more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses were buried in the area, with some still being excavated.
As you drive around Xian you see mounds all over the place which denote the burial places of ruling figures including relatives. We asked our guides why they hadn’t been excavated and they told us that, while they knew which figures were interred where, they were in no hurry to open up tombs until they had the expertise and knowledge to do the excavation work properly and efficiently. This went particularly for the tomb of the Emperor Qin which still hasn’t been opened up. They were adamant that Chinese specialists would be in charge of any excavations and it was clear that there is still a great sensitivity to the actions of foreign countries in the past as well as the plunder of Chinese artifacts which are displayed in Western museums, an affront to the dignity and self-respect of the Chinese people.
I left China on my last visit with a profound respect at what had been achieved since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. People who criticise the country forget the devastated country that existed after the end of World War 2 and the way in which the nation has pulled itself up by its bootstraps. We’re fed a diet of constant criticism in the Western media when a bit of self-examination of what’s happening in Western nations wouldn’t go amiss – particularly the huge and growing gap between the super-rich and the rest of the people.
Do I think everything’s hunky-dory in China? No, of course not. I don’t look at the country through rose-coloured glasses. But I do look with respect at what has been achieved and the great strides forward in the well-being of the people. I watch Western governments like the US and UK bang on about human rights in China but, to me, it’s simply an attempt to interfere in China’s affairs. If Western leaders were so concerned about human rights, they could look in their own backyard, take responsibility for the awful carnage that has erupted in the Middle East after the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, criticise the perfectly dreadful human rights situation in Saudi Arabia (but hey, they’ve got oil) or stand up for Palestinian rights to self-determination.
And with that final little rant under my belt, I’ll wind up my series of posts on my visits to China. I still have very good memories of the goodwill of the people I met, the wonderful sense of raucous humour and the patience with curious tourists who really must drive those in the tourist industry right around the twist on many occasions. So I will finish with a toast of “Ganbei” to the achievements of the Chinese people and memories of skulling the Chinese liqueur mao-tai which, quite rightly, was described by CBS’s anchor, Dan Rather, as “liquid razor blades”. He could also have mentioned the smell of burnt rubber!
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Chinese Whispers – Food (50)
When I started writing this post, I was reminded of one of the simplest and tastiest dishes I had in China – stir-friend green beans with almonds. It was perfectly cooked and delicious. So was the Cantonese meals dished up on the train from Changsha to Guangzhou.
Currywurst
It made me think of some of the dishes I’ve enjoyed over the years which were simple yet remain in my memory: French saucisson with impeccably cooked French fries in a small bistro in Strasbourg; Currywurst in Stuttgart: white sausage sliced in a crispy roll with tomato sauce and curry powder (sounds ghastly but was quite delicious eaten in the ChristKindlMarkt in the lead-up to Christmas on a bitterly cold winter’s day); veggie curry, alfalfa sprouts and chapattis in an Ananda Marga cafe in Perth, Western Australia; and last but by no means least, a burger and chips in Burger King in Hong Kong.
The last one sounds somewhat less than gourmet but we found it after we’d flown from the UK to Hong Kong for a stopover in 1994 on the way to Australia. I was suffering a lousy bout of bronchitis and, by the time we arrived in HK in the early morning, I was pretty ill and spent the day in bed fighting for breath. In the evening we sortied out to get a meal and the Burger King offering was absolute bliss! I returned to bed, my fever broke overnight and I woke with the bed soaked in sweat but me breathing more easily and able to travel on to Perth. So much for a stopover in Hong Kong – sleeping or staring at the hotel ceiling!
Cooked sea cucumber – I found this image on the web and it still looks disgusting to me!
Anyway, from the ridiculous to the sublime! Returning to our trip to China in 1998, soon after we arrived at the Peking Hotel and had got settled in, we were taken to the main Peking Duck Restaurant operating at the time, where we were served a full Peking Duck banquet. Every part of the duck is used in this banquet. The whacko parts first: you have never lived if you haven’t looked at the beady eye of half a duck’s head resting on your plate. And another friend got stuck with the duck’s feet! Nor have you lived if you haven’t tried one of the entrees: shredded jellyfish – it bounces back however much you chew it, until finally you wash it down in frustration with water and hope you’re not going to choke on the sticky shreds. The chap beside me gave up on manners and decorum and pulled the shreds out of his mouth as they stuck in his throat.
The other entree dish that looked decidedly dodgy was what looked like lumps of black jelly in a dark-coloured sauce. Our interpreter told us it was sea cucumber, but I hung back, it still looked pretty horrible. The same guy, however, bogged in and had a mouthful of this gunk when the interpreter suddenly said: “Oh, sorry, you call it sea slug!”. I thought my neighbour was going to throw up as his face went green, but he managed to keep eating and slumped in his seat once he’d demolished the sea slug.
Peking Duck dinner
But hoo boy, when we got the duck meat, with pancakes, hoisin sauce, cucumber and shredded spring onions, we were in hog heaven – it was an absolutely brilliant dish, one of the best I’ve ever eaten. The small pancakes are cooked facing each other, you peeled them apart, then stuffed them with the duck meat, hoisin sauce, cucumber and spring onions. And to wind up we were served duck soup from the bones and remaining flesh.
Going back to food use, at a banquet in a village in the countryside I saw another dish which looked seriously gristly, grey and yukky. While no-one was looking, I managed to whack the pieces I was served under some leftover prawn shells. It was donkey tendon which, as a tour member gleefully informed me later, was a euphemism for donkey penis – thank god I never ate it.
Peking Duck pancake
At breakfast and dinner we mainly ate on our own. At lunchtimes, however, we were served banquets wherever we happened to be visiting as we were obviously considered honoured guests, being among the first tourist contingents to visit China as it was opening to the world. The banquets we were served during our tour were really pieces of art. The vegetable carvings and the way in which everything was laid out were absolutely beautiful. The food itself was delicious and the many veggie dishes were amazingly tasty. Everything was served in a Lazy Susan in the centre of big, round tables and we were seated alternating with tour members, welcoming committee members wherever we were, and our interpreters. We could help ourselves but our Chinese friends took great pleasure in picking out food to serve us. I got very adept at waiting until people’s attention was elsewhere and then whacking suspicious-looking food under leftover bones or whatever, as I’d done with the donkey penis.
In Dalian we were shown around a fishing cooperative and then served a fish meal. Luckily for the rest of us, the tour leader had the honour of eating the fish’s eyes when a whole fish was dished up. We ate quite enormous prawns with gusto, and were tucking into the most delicious fish I’ve ever eaten with similar gusto until the head of the fishing co-operate remarked benignly: “I see you like that fish, you have to be careful in its preparation. It’s called puffer fish or fugu in Japanese.” This is the fish which can kill you rather quickly if any of its poison gets into the flesh and I can tell you, it brought us all to a rapid halt. We lowered the fish back to the plate then cast surreptitious glances around to see if anyone started looking a bit ill or complaining of tingling lips or tongue. Luckily for us, the preparation of this fish had been perfect but none of us ate any more!
When I visited China again on a shorter tour in 1995, we went to Xian, the capital of Shaanxi Province. When we arrived, our interpreter asked if there was anything we didn’t eat and I promptly said: “No dog” as I’d found out since our 1978 visit, that dog-eating was quite popular in parts of China. On the way to the hotel, the interpreter turned around to point out what I’m pretty sure was a barbecued dog on a stand at the side of the road, took one look at my face, shut up and hastily looked forward again.
The one dish I remember from Xian was a steamboat which, again, was absolutely delicious. It 
consisted of a centre steamboat with a broth, which was surrounded by various bits and pieces of meat and veggies – chicken, beef, pork, fish, prawns, carrots, beansprouts, greens, mushrooms and so on. You took whatever you fancied into your chopsticks, dunked it into the boiling broth until it was cooked and then tucked into the cooked food. The broth gradually got more intensely flavoured from the food cooked in it, and then at the end an egg for each person was broken into the steamboat, cooked and then the soup-like mixture wound up the meal. Absolutely luvverly.
In China you learn that nothing is wasted, because it has such a huge population and the many millions upon millions of people have to be fed. At the time we visited, the country had made great strides in development but was still a very, very poor nation, engaged in re-building after moving from a feudal to a socialist society in 1949, recovering from the ravages of British domination and Japanese occupation during World War 2.
All sorts of food were utilised to feed the billion-plus nation, which is why donkey penis ended up on the plate, along with ducks’ feet and ducks’ heads. It may not suit our Western tastes, I know I learned to check out everything dished up to us, but most of us in the West have never known the poverty and hunger which stalked China in its feudal times and in the post-war, rebuilding era.
Adults in 1978 mainly wore grey or green clothing, because that was the cheapest to produce. And that bit of information was a surprise to me as I thought it was a sort of revolutionary choice in post-war China, but instead it was a simple, economic measure.
In my final post on China I’ll write more about my trip to Xian in 1995 and the massive changes I saw since the first time I’d visited this enormous nation in early 1978. Changes there were but some things remained unchanged – the welcome; the earthy sense of humour; and last but not least, the ubiquitous flasks of jasmine tea waiting for us in whichever hotel we stayed in.
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Chinese Whispers – Art & Culture (49)
Chinese Artwork
I rather think our tour of China in 1978 was a bit of trial and error for the Chinese as conducting tours was a very new venture. All I can say is that we concluded back in Hong Kong, after the tour ended, that we had never worked so hard in our lives – we had breakfast at 8am, out on the road by 9am with two visits to schools/factories/handicrafts factories, back for lunch at midday, a 30 minute rest period, then off again at 1.30 for two more visits. Back for dinner at 5.30pm, and then off to see movies or an orchestra or some other aspect of culture in the evening. This went on for three weeks.
At each place we visited during the day we’d be given a tour of the school or factory or whatever we were visiting, we’d meet the people and children, if we went to schools, we’d sit down and be given a history of what we were visiting, and then we’d enjoy a cup of jasmine tea and a general chat.
The Chinese had a great cultural life which I think we found surprising as the image of this enormous nation had, up until then, always been of a rather drab and dreary culture. China had been so closed to the outside world that really we had no idea of what we’d encounter or the rich cultural life of the country.
But going into a movie was a great experience – we didn’t understand a word but the Chinese audience had the time of their life and often the movies were very gruesome which they watched without turning a hair while we Westerners flinched and shut our eyes. I mean – people getting cut in half by a sword; a concubine disappearing and re-appearing floating in a huge pot with her arms and legs removed; someone else getting beheaded in incredibly realistic battle scenes. All very colourful and also an introduction to the various ways in which people were killed in feudal China!
Zhejian Traditional Orchestra
We were taken one evening to see a Chinese orchestra and, I have to be honest, we were pretty bored. We weren’t used to the instruments or musical sounds of Chinese music but, while we sat there quite quietly, the Chinese audience had a terrific time, applauding noisily and having the time of their lives. Nevertheless, it was a great experience to see Chinese culture at such close quarters and to see the pleasure of people in the audience. We found that film, music and other cultural events were widespread, cheap to go to, and very, very popular with Chinese people.
We visited various handicrafts factories where the work was exquisite. In one pottery factory we saw mass-produced dinnerware which was an interesting process to watch, but we also saw fine, individual pottery production which required great attention to detail and a very steady hand. In one place we saw artists painting scenes within tiny glass snuff bottles. It was quite awesome as the artists had incredibly fine brushes bent at right angles so they could get the brush inside the bottle, then paint the scene from the inside. We found out that people who did this had to retire early as the incredibly close work required ended up damaging people’s eyesight. I’ve included below photos of this painting technique – I do have a painted glass bottle in a lovely lined box but my camera’s in for service so I’ve had to use images form the internet.
We visited one diesel locomotive production factory where we were struck by the pride of workers at what they were creating. They were involved in all aspects of the locomotives’ production and design, and you could feel the satisfaction they got at being part of the whole process. We got to get into the cabin of one of the huge locos (we did this in small groups) and trundle along part of a rail section – quite extraordinary to be so high up in such a huge machine and have such a wide view around the whole area. One of our tour members when I was in the cabin was poking a button and asking what it was for, and the Chinese interpreters had great fun telling her she was the one responsible for the diesel’s hooter going off continually!
Towards the end of the tour we had the opportunity to meet a group of artists and actors which was quite an honour. Except we nearly caused a diplomatic incident! One of the artists started describing an incident with the Gang of Four, a group which had been in control of China but which had been displaced just before our tour. She told us how the Gang of Four didn’t like a painting of a single huge cock. There was silence in our group and then our tour leader leaned forward and said: “Actually, in Australia, we prefer to use the words ‘rooster’ or ‘cockerel'”. However, the artist missed this completely as she was intent on her story and continued telling us about this huge cock stretching up to the sky with its one beady eye peering upwards. We were pretty exhausted and overwrought by this time and had a hard time not laughing. One of the interpreters asked a tour member who was sitting at the back why we were all acting so strange so he drew a picture of male genitals to try to explain we used different terminology, but we all decided afterwards that the sketch was pathetic, and so it took some time to explain what was going on.
In the meantime the artist was still going on about the huge cock and how the Gang of Four didn’t like the look in its one beady eye. Finally the dam broke. We started howling with laughter and on the Chinese side there was a startled silence. Gradually we calmed down after our hysterical outburst and looked at each other appalled – we’d surely created a diplomatic incident and we’d be deported and get into all sorts of strife on our return to Australia. We were actually very over-tired and over-wrought after what had been a gruelling tour which explained our cackling away like demented kookaburras.
Our tour guide had finally realised what the problem was in terminology, walked forward and whispered into the artist’s ear why we’d been laughing our heads off. We sat there frozen – then she turned to the rest of her Chinese colleagues and told them the problem with cock/rooster/cockerel phraseology and, to our amazement, they all burst into great gales of laughter, slapping their knees and rocking back and forth with glee. We were so relieved, everyone heaved a great sigh and calmed down, but it was also a lesson to us that the Chinese have a raucous, earthy sense of humour which was totally unexpected to us.
One thing I had forgotten was the honesty: if we accidentally left stuff behind when we left hotels and moved to new cities or towns, we would – within a couple of days – find the item forwarded to us and waiting in our rooms.
What we came away with after our tour of China was an abiding sense of awe at the ingenuity of the Chinese people, pleasure in their care for their kids, and great respect for their dedication to rebuilding their country. We also ended up with an abiding respect for their ability to knock back the Chinese liqueur, Mao Tai, as I said in an earlier post like drinking rocket fuel which we drank with great caution and they swigged with apparent impunity.
We also experienced great delight at their wonderful sense of humour and ability to joke around and have a damned good time, with no sign of rigidity or stuffiness. Given how nervous we were at the start of our tour, when we left China we did so with an awareness of how lucky we were to have seen the country at its then stage of development, and also how privileged we’d been to encounter the friendliness and kindness of the Chinese people.
In my next post I’ll get to the really important part – Chinese food! And then I’ll wind up with a final blog about my return to China in 1995 when I visited the Hidden Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang at Xian and saw all the changes in China since my first visit in early 1978.
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Chinese Whispers – The ‘Burbs (48)
Soapstone carving of a Chinese scholar which I bought during my trip.
I forgot to mention that, when we arrived in Beijing, we were each issued with the ubiquitous winter coat that all Chinese wore at that time – padded, long, grey-green, fur collar, fur-lined hood, quilted and amazingly warm. I say this because, when we went to an oil field on Shandong Province, there was a photo of me only you couldn’t tell who the heck it was because I was so rugged up: thermal underwear; jeans; two pairs of socks; steel-capped boots; t-shirt; jumper; thick jumper; padded winter coat; scarf; woollen beanie and fur hood pulled right down over my forehead!
I’ve mentioned it in a previous post, but just to recount: we were taken to meet a women’s brigade working on the oil field. I had enormous respect and admiration for them because I couldn’t imagine working in those freezing cold temperatures, I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold and, as it was flat, the wind screamed across the oil fields and added in a wind chill factor.We met the young women in the cabin where they stayed while working shifts on the oil field, and where they had bunk beds for their night accommodation.
We had a wonderful time talking to them, much laughter and many jokes because Chinese people have a wonderful sense of humour. We sang an Aussie song about women workers to them and they sang a song back about women workers in China. We asked why they had a separate brigade and their leader told us they’d found that the women worked better on their own where they could be more independent and not feel intimidated by male colleagues.
We didn’t stay long in Shandong Province and, when we returned to Beijing, we caught an overnight train to Changsha which really was pretty untouched at that time by foreign visitors. If you have never travelled overnight on a Chinese train, at least at that time when we were there, you have missed a very interesting experience. We were in the first class section and were served the ubiquitous jasmine tea plus a very tasty dinner. We had bunks in our own compartments to sleep in, but it was the visits to the toilets which were the most, well, interesting! The stench was unbelievable as quite often the aim by the men had missed by a mile so when you entered the toilet you were paddling in urine. Also the toilets got blocked up very easily which added to the unbelievable pong. All of us had to use the toilet the next morning and we all staggered back to our compartment looking green and somewhat nauseous!
When we reached Changsha, we stayed in a hotel which was not geared much to foreign visitors but more to Chinese people staying there which was interesting as we got a better view of China than when we were staying in a Westernised hotel. The one thing I really didn’t like, though, was the number of spittoons parked around the hotel with Chinese hawking and spitting in them as we headed to the dining room. That really did put me off my breakfast! I understand that this practice is now frowned upon as being unhygienic.
The first thing we noticed when we arrived was the chlorine in the water. Wherever we arrived, we’d head to the flask of jasmine tea which was found in every hotel we stayed in. And we all took one mouthful in Changsha and spat out the tea. It reeked of chlorine as did every meal we had in the hotel, so much so that we all virtually stopped eating as the taste of chlorine was so vile. At one meal we got quite excited to get a dish of soup, only to feel our faces fall when we tasted the chlorine again and also squared up to a fish’s head floating to the top of the soup and staring at us out its dead, black eye!
We were mainly in Changsha to head out to see the birthplace of Chairman Mao, quite a long journey to Mt Shaoshan which is about 130 kms from Changsha. It was interesting to be in a really rural location, to see the very plain conditions in which Mao Zedong had lived as a young man, and also, in the freezing conditions, to shudder when they told us of Mao’s daily routine of washing from the well outside whatever the weather. Yes, we were softie Westerners and none of us felt like adopting Mao’s routine when we got home!
From Changsha, we caught a train to Guangzhou to wind up our tour. We had told our tour guides that we were quite tired from the trip and not very hungry to explain the loss of appetite in Changsha, but the food they dished up on the train was Cantonese Chinese cooking and we descended on the food like a plague of locusts, much to the surprise of our guides!
In Guangzhou we had quite a rest as we were very tired after what was a really hectic trip, but we did get to see the Memorial Hall of the China Communist Party Third People’s Congress in Guangzhou, where we heard about the history of the CPC and its foundation meetings. To be very honest, I was so knackered by the time we got to the building that I don’t really recall much about what happened at the end of our tour.
I do know that we had a wind-up meeting with our tour guides where we were all quite emotional at having to say good-bye, as we’d become good friends during our three week tour. But all good things come to an end and finally we caught the train from Guangzhou back to the border and then to Hong Kong where we stayed overnight before flying back to Sydney, Australia.
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Chinese Whispers – Beijing (47)
We didn’t stay long in Guangzhou before flying to Beijing. In those days the domestic planes were flown by air force pilots so we shot along the runway at an amazing speed and walloped up into the sky so fast we all thought we were heading off to the moon. Similarly our landing at Beijing Airport was just as speedy but we did arrive safely, much to our relief after this white-knuckle flight.
Beijing Hotel
We stayed in the Peking Hotel, a very posh place, where we had the delight of watching Senator Ted Kennedy strutting around with his entourage – nothing like a US Senator expecting his due from the minions around him! The hotel was on the main boulevard and was centrally heated, a fact we really appreciated as it was bitterly cold in Beijing and we’d flown out of Australia in mid-summer.
The Beijing Hotel was also handy for shopping in the many little outlets we found in the old centres of the capital city. I think we were lucky as I’ve read that many of these have now been bulldozed and replaced with modern buildings, so we had a chance to look at old China before the new appeared.
I do feel nostalgic for the rather mysterious places we saw except that the people there were obviously living in poverty with very basic living structures. It’s easy for us in the West to be romantic and regret the loss of historic housing – except we didn’t live in them with their overcrowding, poverty, lack of sanitation and dirt alleyways.
We were there in winter, and Beijing looked grey, foggy and rather austere, but incredibly busy. Tienanmen square was huge with sightseers from the provinces, but it was such a big space the people on it still looked quite sparse. But all around you could see the roads absolutely full of bicycles and very few vehicles. Cars in those days were mainly for official use, the traffic was utterly chaotic but somehow cyclists and drivers managed to mesh quite well together.
The Chairman Mao Mausoleum hadn’t been open long when we were in Beijing. Mao Zedong had died in 1976 and, although he wanted to be cremated, a decision was taken to build the Mausoleum in the middle of Tienanmen Square, with it being finished in early 1977.
I looked up the history of the Mausoleum on Wikipedia and was fascinated to find that it was a collective effort from around China:
“People throughout China were involved in the design and construction of the mausoleum, with 700,000 people from different provinces, autonomous regions, and nationalities doing symbolic voluntary labour.[ Materials from all over China were used throughout the building: granite from Sichuan province, porcelain plates from Guangdung province, pine trees from Yan’an in Shaanxi province, saw-wort seeds from the Tian Shan mountains in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, earth from quake-stricken Tangshan, colored pebbles from Nanjing, milky quartz from the Kunlun Mountains, pine logs from Jiangxi province, and rock samples from Mount Everest. Water and sand from the Taiwan Straits were also used to symbolically emphasize the People’s Republic of China’s claims over Taiwan”.
Mausoleum of Mao Zedong
We were very lucky to be allowed to join the queue of those paying their respects to the embalmed figure of someone so respected and revered in China. There were long queues, people waited quietly and patiently, and it was quite awesome to finally enter the Mausoleum and see the transparent, crystal coffin with Mao Zedong’s embalmed figure inside. The Chinese people passed by the tomb with great respect and with many in tears as they paid their homage to a man who had helped establish the People Republic of China in 1949.
In the mornings you’d look out from the windows of the hotel onto cold, grey scenery enlivened by so many people practising Tai Chi on the streets. It was fascinating to see the slow, deliberate movements being performed by so many, and interesting that this was a very popular keep-fit exercise carried over from olden times. We also saw many practising Tai Chi in the mornings when we were staying in Shanghai.
We had the opportunity of visiting a farm just outside Beijing and it was a reminder of the feudal past of this huge nation. There were only dirt roads, very small houses, roofs covered with sweetcorn cobs drying out in the winter air, lots of geese, chickens and animals such as pigs. People were obviously poor as nation-building had really only begun in 1949 after the ravages of the war and Japanese occupation, plus the military action to oust the US-backed Chiang Kai-shek forces from the mainland. But wherever we went we were greeted with such warmth and friendship that my memories of my 1978 China visit remain a lovely memory for me. I might also mention the honesty – a couple of us left things behind in our hotels, but we’d find them turning up eventually wherever we’d moved to, having been forwarded from the previous hotel we’d stayed in.
Forbidden City (photo courtesy Wikipedia)
We also visited the Forbidden City, a place of quite stunning beauty and art treasures. It’s hard to describe the splendour in which the old feudal leaders had lived – the Emperors with their huge wealth, courtiers, living in isolation from the peasants who weren’t allowed into this huge complex – hence the name “Forbidden City”. We saw a huge marble staircase which some poor sods had dragged hundreds of kilometres for it to be installed in what is the biggest palace complex in the world. I could go on and on about this place, because it’s absolutely staggering in its size, history and artistic wealth. I’ll just provide a link to a longer description in Wikipedia Wikipedia – Beijing’s Forbidden City.
We were given an extended history of the Forbidden City by one of the historians responsible for the complex in one of the very ornate rooms. As we were given details of how the complex had come into being, the creation of its treasures and structural wealth, we were given the ubiquitous jasmine tea to drink while we listened. We clattered away with the cups and saucers, nonchalantly filling our cups from the very graceful teapots which were topped up continuously by helpers – that is, until the historian casually mentioned that the tea service we were banging around so unceremoniously was around three hundred years old. There was instant silence and we all froze, suddenly holding the cups with both hands, putting them very carefully on the saucers, and then giving away the tea-drinking in seconds!
Great Wall of China
I almost forgot our visit to the Great Wall of China – absolutely fantastic to walk along this historic edifice, to look at the length of the wall extending far into the distance and know that we had just a very small glimpse of this amazing construction. It was also a bit humiliating – you don’t realise how steep the wall is until you start climbing up the slope, so there we were struggling along, only to be overtaken with great ease by obviously older men in the uniform of the People’s Liberation Army cruising past us, along with other older Chinese men and women who left us in their wake! And the ache in the back of my legs the next day was excruciating as we’d been leaning at such an angle to walk up the wall!!!
From Beijing we flew to Dalian, a fishing town, which I really don’t remember much about. I do know it was perishing cold but again the hospitality was extraordinary, as it was wherever we went. People seemed delighted we were offering the hand of friendship and they were only too willing to return that friendship. I did have lots of photos but got rid of most of my whole collection – family, holidays, etc., – after we’d done some travelling, lugged big albums around with us on our various moves, and because I got fed up when my family back in the UK indicated they didn’t want to meet me when I went back for a holiday in 1994.
I will also add that the Chinese people have a wonderful, earthy sense of humour. We were prepared to be very serious and respectful as, really, when we visited China it was only just opening to the world and no-one knew much about it. But the Chinese we met loved jokes, would roar with laughter when we told them jokes and were endlessly amused by our gallivanting around the various places we visited.
We flew back to Beijing (again with flights resembling fighter jet landings and takeoffs!), and after a short stay, set off for Shanghai. It may be a fascinating city but I can’t say much about the place, because I got bronchitis quite badly so ended up in my hotel bed for most of our stay. I was treated by local doctors who provided me with antibiotics but also very interesting Chinese medicines, lots of packets of various herbs in tiny pillules which I had to swallow by the dozen. It was very effective as I was up and about pretty quickly, in time for us to set out to Shandong province and visit an oil field where we met a women’s brigade.
In my next post I’ll cover the ‘burbs, so to speak: Shandong, Changsha in Hunan Province, and finally Guangzhou again.
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Chinese Whispers – China in 1978 (46)
Enough of the childhood clear-out and back to my travels!
I saw a photo today of racks of sweet corn cobs drying in the air, and it took me straight back to the first time I and my husband visited the People’s Republic of China, aka China from now on.
In 1978 my husband and I had the opportunity to tour China at a really low price (as it was early days in the tourist industry) for three weeks. We stayed with friends in Sydney, saw the start of the Sydney-Hobart Boat Race on New Year’s Day, then flew to Hong Kong , where we stayed overnight.
We were one of the first groups to visit China when it started opening up and it was less than thirty years since the PRC was established in 1949. We did a bit of the tourist stuff in Hong Kong with all its glitz, glamour and kitsch. The next day we caught a train to the border, got out and walked across the border. Suddenly we were faced with rather stern-faced Chinese soldiers in uniform and you realised you were in a completely different world. We climbed on to another train which took us to what was then Canton and is now Guangzhou.
To say we – and all the others on our tour – were excited and nervous would be an understatement. President Nixon had visited the PRC in February 1972 and Australian Prime Minister Whitlam had normalised relations with China when he was elected in November 1972. But China was still a bit mysterious, not very well known, and really quite exciting since no-one knew what to expect.
We got settled in our hotel rooms in Gangzhou (which were lovely and comfortable, in case you’re wondering what accommodation was like in those days), and found waiting for us flasks of jasmine tea, something which greeted us in every hotel we stayed in and every function we attended. We then met our tour guides in the evening. And all our preconceptions about stuffy Chinese officials went right out the window. We had four guides – the head honcho, his deputy, a young woman obviously being trained as an interpreter and guide, and a fourth man whose interpreting abilities were brilliant. As I’ve done simultaneous and consecutive translating at university when I studied French and German I could see that this interpreter had an intuitive gift to translate Chinese into everyday English, not simply translate the words which results in rather wooden conversation. We also thought that, as there’d been a period of turmoil in China just before we went on our tour, this guy was being rehabilitated from past difficulties under the previous regime, known as the Gang of Four.
Our translators/guides entered a meeting room with a trolley of drinks and hors-d’ouevres and proceeded to talk to us, crack jokes, and dish out the booze and tucker. One of the first things we tried was called Mao Tai, a spirit which tasted and smelled like rocket fuel and had to be sculled down to avoid the stench of the drink. Our translators quickly put us at ease, were great, convivial hosts, and much to our surprise, created a really pleasant atmosphere. They also looked on with slight smiles and benign gazes as one of our number, who’d downed four Mao Tai shots in a row and who was very voluble, suddenly went silent and keeled over on his side, skittled by the rocket fuel!
It’s such a long time since I visited China in 1977 that I can’t remember all the details. We were on the go from 9 in the morning until 10 at night and by the end of the tour we were completely knackered as each day became a blur. The Chinese seemed determined to stuff as much as possible into our visit, which was wonderful as we saw and experienced so much, but it was quite exhausting by the end.
We visited Peking (now Beijing), Shanghai, Shandong Province, Changsha, Dalian and finally returned to Canton (now Kwangchou). We saw schools, factories, potteries, artistic centres, villages, communes during the day, visited oil drilling sites, and in the evenings we watched movies or other cultural events. The one thing I really remember is the way the children were treasured and cared for. Although adults had pretty functional, dreary clothing, the kids were dressed in bright colours, padded clothing, looked like little dolls in their bubble-like parka jackets and were so delighted to greet and entertain us when visited their schools.
At communes we were taken around agricultural and engineering production centres and made so very welcome. People took great pride in their achievements and opened their homes and centres for us. I do remember visiting a private house and being amazed at the bright colours of the interior – as if the functional dress most people wore was balanced out in the privacy of the home by bright red, orange, gold, turquoise, blue and green bed covers, wall hangings and so on. I also remember plonking down on a bed (all the places we visited were very compact) and feeling like I’d jarred my spine from top to bottom. There was only a mattress stuffed with straw which was incredibly hard, a far cry from the interior sprung mattresses we were used to at home in Australia!
One of the noticeable features of that early tour was how people worked together collectively as labour was plentiful and cheap. We were in a small coach in one area where a whole heap of people were pushing up a telegraph pole. It was obvious that they’d never seen foreigners before as they stopped, looked at us, dropped the telegraph pole, and ran to the road to smile and wave cheerfully at us. We felt like kings until further down the road where we saw people in the approaching village scattering from a truck in front of us. We found out soon enough why they dived for cover – it was a truck collecting sewage (night soil) which had sprung a leak gifting us and the village with a most appalling stench.
In the following posts, I thought I’d break down our visit into Beijing, and then the provinces we visited, as well as one about food in China (yummy mainly but challenging on the odd occasion!).
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The Fire of Women’s Liberation 1(30)
This post has been a long time in the making because I’ve been bogged down with sciatica again. It’s thrown my sleep patterns out, left me feeling very tired and also lethargic and aimless. So I decided to go with the flow, simply tread water and wait until I felt the urge to start writing again. Which is now. And at the same time, I’ve decided to make space for new adventures in my life by getting rid of all the shelving with my crystals on and storing all my crystals in my cupboard space. I’m focusing on my art and writing my book as blog.
New beginnings, new paths, new energy. I probably needed the break to process where I really want to work in my life right now. So now on to my adventures with Women’s Liberation in the early 1970s.
I had my teenage rebellion in my ‘twenties when I moved to Australia. Until then I’d pretty much been Ms Goody-Two-Shoes, not rocking the boat, head down and studying assiduously to get a good degree as I was the first in our family to go to university, and fairly conservative. At least, that’s the image that I have of myself but I’ve been interested to catch up with old friends from my University days who see me quite differently – organised, organising people and quite adventurous. Weird how you see yourself and how others see you!
I guess working on a kibbutz in Israel, which is what I did prior to travelling to Australia in 1972, and then hopping off Downunder could be considered quite adventurous although at the time it just seemed to me that both were interesting things to do. Perhaps I also did this bit of travelling as I had no idea of my direction in life. In fact, I never did find a direction until my mid-fifties – late starter, you might say!
I began throwing over the traces with gusto when I joined the Australian Union of Students as the organiser for Western Australia and subsequently got involved with Women’s Liberation. I had seen a news report of women in the movement handing out contraceptive advice at secondary school gates and it interested me.
Why did I become interested in Women’s Liberation?
It’s so easy to forget what life was like for women back in the ‘sixties and ‘seventies, so here are a few reminders that Women’s Libbers rocked the boat because women:
• Were denied equal pay
• Were clustered in low paying work
• Were paid less for the same work done by men
• Weren’t allowed to open their own bank accounts without permission from their husband, boyfriend or father.
• Couldn’t get a mortgage as a single woman.
• Were victimized all too often if they were raped, labeled as the “temptress”, “seductress”, or whatever, because rape wasn’t recognized as an act of violence.
• Had to leave the public service when they married.
• Had to leave the workforce when they had children.
• Had to leave the workforce when menfolk came back from war and wanted the jobs (see the move Rosie the Riveter and a documentary about women pilots in World War II flying planes around the UK to the various aerodromes where they were needed)
• Were invisible in history, the media and film. Apart from a few odd exceptions like Katherine Hepburn, women were pretty much bitches (Betty Davis) or goddesses up on a pedestal (June Allyson)
• Were sex objects
• Were forced to resort to illegal abortions because of unwanted pregnancies, often dying dreadful deaths from scepticaemia.
• Were vilified if they chose to have an abortion despite the vast majority of women agonizing over such a choice.
• Were denied free, safe contraception and planned parenthood.
• Had enormous difficulties accessing advanced education
• Were going off their rocker in the suburbs with frustration and boredom.
And we in Women’s Liberation were impolite, rowdy, feisty, hollering, rollicking, loud, raucous, marching, holding demonstrations, rejecting ideas of being “nice” and “lady-like”, and standing together in large numbers to organise for women’s right to be treated with respect, dignity and equality.
This is one of the songs from those time:
“Don’t be too polite, girls, don’t be too polite,
Show a little fight girls, show a little fight,
Don’t be fearful of offending, in case you get the sack
Just recognize your value and we won’t look back.
All among the bull, girls, all among the bull,
Keep your hearts full, girls, keep your hears full
What good is a man as doormat, or following at heel?
It’s not their balls we’re after, it’s a fair square deal.”
In early 1978 I went on a tour to China just as it was opening up. We visited a women’s brigade on an oil field in Shandong Province (one of the coldest places I’ve ever been by the way!). The women’s brigade was set up as Chinese leaders in the oil industry found that men looked down on women workers and sidelined them. So the aim of the women’s brigade was to encourage emancipation in the industry and self-respect among the women workers.
We sang the above song to them, and they sang back women’s revolutionary songs to us. Our interpreters told the Chinese women the meaning of our song, and then translated the Chinese songs to us. We had a wonderful time, laughing, singing, talking (via our interpreters) and shaking hands when we left with many waves as our mini-bus drove away from the oilfield.
“Don’t be too polite, girls” is a fighting song from the history of working women in Australia. I use the term “fighting” deliberately, because we women have never been handed our gains on our plate. We’ve had to organize, fight and stand together as sisters to achieve anything. I don’t ever want young women to forget that because, as a young woman myself, I stood on the shoulders of the mothers, sisters, grandmothers and great-grandmothers before me who took action, in big and small ways, to advance women’s interests, including the right to vote. And I honour and remember them with pride.
WARRIOR WOMAN 