井底之蛙

jing di zhi wa: A frog lived his whole life at the bottom of a damp well, enjoying the puddles and flies and occasionally looking up to the small circle of sky above. One day, a crow landed on the rim of the well high above the frog. Startled, the frog asked, "How is it that you can fly around up there? There's not enough sky for a bird half your size!" The bird shouted back down, "There is more than enough sky for me. There world up here is much different and much bigger than you think. You should check it out sometime."

惊弓之鸟

jing gong zhi niao: The king loved to hunt, and one day took several of his bodyguards out into the forest to shoot down some birds with their bows and arrows. One bodyguard, a particularly ambitious man looking for a promotion, admonished the others: "What are you doing with those arrows?! There's no need for me to even shoot to bring down a bird. The mere sight of me behind a bow will scare the animal to death." A bird flapped out of a nearby tree, and as the man cocked back his bow to aim his imaginary arrow, the flying bird dropped out of the sky as if it was shot. "There! You see! Scared to death of me!" The bodyguard led the group away as his friend scampered out from behind a bush, blood on his hands from where he had broken the bird's wing a moment before.

滥竽充数

lan yu chong shu: The king of the land adored fine music, and called for an orchestra of hundreds of musicians to play at the palace. Seeing the hordes of musicians getting ready to play, a passerby asked what's going on. "They're all going to play for the king!" The passerby joined the throng, grabbing a bamboo shoot as he walked and fashioning it into a flute on his way to the palace. In the orchestral pit he sat down alongside 100 other flutists, and as they began to play, did his best to mime the flute players beside him. After the performance, he was paid for his fine renditions of the king's favorite songs, having never blown one note.

China fear-mongering

In exchanging a couple of emails with alumni friends getting prepared to visit China this spring, I am reminded of some of the conversations I have with people new to China, or who ask me about my impression of the country. "What's it like?" many folks will ask hesitantly. "It must be a crazy place..." It is a "crazy" place: in urban Beijing, I tend to think of the striking mixture of the great trappings of mega-rich cosmopolitan Chinese alongside the rural traditions of recent arrivals and the migrant masses. But I get the sense that the "crazy" meant by friends and relatives who have not spent time on the mainland circles around other factors: the police state, politics, "big brother" looking over your shoulder.

I am not an apologist for this place. The China experience particularly of an American passport holder is very very different than the China experience of some other expat communities. The biggest "experience gap" is between expatriates and Chinese citizens. Human rights violations and legal abuses here are very real. China's "have it both ways" approach of asking for recognition as a "developed" country at global political summits, but a "developing" country with an evolving rule of law doesn't do anything to help get its domestic agenda accelerating to a more equitable legal and economic situation for the majority of Chinese people.

As a foreigner, unless you really screw up, the elements of the police state that you experience amount to a dismal amount of bureaucracy surrounding visa applications and housing registration and not much else. For the relatively few who venture into Chinese-language social media, there is a more day-to-day aspect of censorship that feels more immediate. VPNs are getting better and better and allow access to international websites and other opinions. I do think, however, that you can see an irrational "Great Red Terror" in many people outside of China when they remark on their imagining of what life must be like for an expatriate living in Beijing, a fear that is not backed up as you move through everyday life in this country, interacting with people and families on a 1-on-1, face-to-face basis.

画蛇添足

hua she tian zu: A poor man was putting a new roof on his home and enlisted the help of some other villagers. After a long day of work, the man offered up a jug of wine, not enough for all of the workers. He said: "I'll give the jug to the man who can draw a snake the fastest." One of the workers quickly drew a squiggly line in the dirt and believed, for a moment, he was done. He looked at some other workers around him, working hard and perfecting their drawings. Accordingly, the fast one began to add more detail to his snake--a few extra lines, giving the snake feet like a salamander. Before he could finish, the poor man approved the drawing of another worker: a simple drawing of a squiggly line. "But that's exactly what I drew!" the fast worker said. "That's not what I see here," said the poor man. "We all know snakes don't have feet."

Thinking weather

Autumn is a great time in Beijing. The leaves change color and the wind picks up, which is good for blue-sky days. It doesn't last long--soon it will drop below freezing, and then it's time for pond hockey--but for now, the skateboard home from the subway along our back street in XiBaHe is pleasantly brisk at 9:30pm. I always find that I think better in cold weather. Less tempting to be outside, I suppose. Also, it's almost longjohns time!

Costner: Transition

I have been long in my post in the Orient. Before deployment, my expectation was for 5 years; I am now approaching 5 and one half years abroad. This place is still of great interest to me, I feel I still have a tremendous amount to learn from the people and about their language and customs. In many ways life here can be challenging. In other ways I have come to feel a great deal of comfort in my day to day existence, so much so that I could see another 5 years passing by me quickly as I move through current obligations, build other interests, and remain swept up in the dynamism of the shifting landscape of my obligations here.

Yet there is something in me that would not be content without a big move at some point in the near future. I see others here on the frontier who seem stuck; comfortable, with all their material needs met, basking in the exceptionalism afforded them by the fact that they are exotic, different, and in demand due to some luck of commerce. But there feels to be a float in the way some people move through their time here. Contentment leads to complacency.

One is inclined to think that great ideas come only so often--they are hard sought, and, once had, lead invariably to success. I have heard a lifetime of great ideas in my time here. What I have not seen is more than a handful of men or women willing to take their idea and see it all the way through to its fruition. Seeing an idea through takes more than that special gusto that comes after the second beer at the canteen. It takes discipline, organization, perseverance. I have read somewhere that greatness is a lonely travail. I believe seeing these ideas through also requires some degree of loneliness--traveling to a place that others will not go, that many do not understand. I am not sure if I am ready for that journey. Then again, I have not yet made a very good try at it.