Rent was due this Saturday. I went to the bank to stock up on cash while Katie cleaned the apartment in advance of our landlord's visit. I made Nancy some tea when she arrived, and we visited for an hour. This quarter conversation turned to Taiwan.
Taiwan is always an issue in China, but recently we have discussed it more and more. Last week a professor brought it up in class and noted that many Party officials in the middle echelons believe that a conflict with Taiwan would result in "true" independence of that island from the Mainland, but that only the highest officials can actually do anything about it. Our landlord started telling us about how about 90% of Chinese men are worried that conflict is coming soon, so they are making arrangements that would allow them to leave the country in the event of war, like getting green cards from Singapore. Why?
There's two reasons, really. In March, the Taiwanese will vote on whether to seek membership in the United Nations under the name "Taiwan." And in May, Taiwan will swear in a new president. The former date is problematic because the Mainland government would treat such an application as akin to a declaration of independence. The latter date concerns the Mainland government because outgoing Taiwanese leader Chen Shui-bian has proven to be a bit of an anti-PRC maverick, and most Chinese people think he's going to do something memorable before he leaves office. So, a lot of people have been talking about it. It even came up at dinner last night.
One Dinner
The dinner was actually a continuation of an earlier party. A few months ago we helped our friend Judy organize an outing for some LL.M. students from Qinghua and Peking Universities. Along with some folks from Qinghua, we managed to get a bus-load of people to a banquet and the symphony for the evening. But Judy wanted to cook the organizers a meal as thanks for helping her get things put together. The problem, however, was that Judy's apartment does not have a dining room table, so she asked if she could cook at our place. So, last night we had seven people sharing six dishes of Malaysian food in our dining room.
One Line-Up
This morning, after breakfast, we managed to get video of some workers lining up for a daily "yelling." I'm not sure what they're yelling, but I bet it's something like "stop making us line up out here every day!"
One Laugh
We studied language at a coffee shop for a little bit. We're presently learning the Chinese words for different types of clothing and the related verbs, so we sat there for about an hour, quizzing one another. At one point Katie prompted me to translate the following sentence into Chinese: "I'm not wearing any underpants." And I almost forgot that if I said it in Chinese, as opposed to English, everyone in the coffee shop would do a 180. Thank goodness I realized what she was up to before I became the source of entertainment.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment