Liralen's Adventures Through Life

Dad asked me, a while back, to actually write something about how I felt about going to China. Not just the things we saw, the history that was there, or what it was we did, but how it made me feel. I'll admit that I've kind of avoided doing that, at first because the whole whirlwind trip was pretty overwhelming, and we've had a really busy time of it since. But there's a lot more to it than that, and a huge chunk of it is tied with the fact that when most Americans meet me, they ask me, "Where are you from?" And I always answer, "Well, I was born in Ohio." The rest of my reluctance lies with the the fact that my feelings, my emotions mostly stem from value judgments. Mine are obviously different than theirs. And I know that that doesn't make them any better than theirs. Still, I'm so abjectly grateful for what I have here, for the values and mores and focus of the people here compared to there that it moves my most fundamental emotions, ...

Our very last day in China was in Shanghai. The hotel was in this middling area where it was within very close driving distance to the shopping districts, but there wasn't all that much that was withing walking distance. I got up pretty late, had a leisurely breakfast, and Dad and John had something of a plan to go see some lake or another and or just walk through town. We got everything packed, but kept the luggage for once, since we were going to have to bring it with us when we met up with Jevons afternoon. I wasn't sure how far I'd be able to go, but decided that I wanted to try it instead of just sitting in the hotel room on our last day. It was a little bittersweet in ways, as we'd done so much in so little time, and had explored so many things; but I was also completely worn out between the illness, doing all the travel, and simply having to deal with all the strange things here. Still, the morning was clear compared to the previous days, and we only had to g...

Suzhou is just West of and a little north of Shanghai, and it's on the Grand Canal, an enormous canal that was built all the way from Beijing, and was used by an emperor or another to do the Grand Inspection, a euphemism for Tax Collection. It's beautiful, though thinking about the fact that it was all dug by hand with what was essentially slave labor, it isn't that surprising that it was one of the reasons why that particular Dynasty didn't last more than a few years. The city is also the site for one of the largest and oldest private gardens now owned by the Government. The Humble Administrator's Garden is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and was originally built in the Shaoxing period (1131-1162) of the Southern Song Dynasty, but in 1513 CE Wang Xiancheng, who was an Imperial Envoy and a poet of the Ming Dynasty, took it over and created a garden when he was retired by the Emperor from Imperial life. In Chinese, the name of the garden was The Stupid Administrator...