Posts by Chris Waugh
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Capture: Roamin' Holiday, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Wow. Something about Titan and the bird hit my brain hard and made me do at least a double-take before I figured out what was happening in that picture. Maybe it's the way my eyes approached the picture, but my first impression was that something large was falling from Titan. Funny how the most innocent images can play those tricks on you some times.
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Hard News: It's In the Kete!, in reply to Sacha,
Don't most wild animals prefer their meat as fresh as possible, to the point of having got to know their prey quite intimately just before dinner? (hmmm.... reminds me of many a restaurant in Changsha).
I guess 'goes off faster' would be a huge bonus for vultures and others of their ilk that prefer their meat rotten.
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Hard News: It's In the Kete!, in reply to BenWilson,
begin with the offal, eating the animal from the belly. Maybe it’s just easier that way, or maybe they like it most.
Stronger flavours and more nutrition? Seems to make sense.
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Hard News: It's In the Kete!, in reply to Islander,
sufficient fat/blubber
I seem to remember reading in the old National Geographics I collected in my early teens (oh how I wish I'd kept a hold of them - I had editions dating back to the late 19th century which were fascinating reads) that seal and whale blubber contains vitamins that are normally only found (at least in sufficient quantities) in fruit and veges, and that therefore marine mammals are an essential part of the Inuit diet, the only other option being to import fruit and veges from hundreds of kms to the south.
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Capture: Two Tripods, One Night, in reply to JacksonP,
Have been missing the Roamin’ thread, TBH,
Me too, that one was fun. And I was planning on having a Roamin'-themed picture to share. See those pink characters on the map there that say 西胡林天主教堂 (Xīhúlín Catholic Church)? That's been intriguing me ever since I bought that map book. What's a Catholic church doing in what seems to be a small village on the southern edge of Beijing? And marked as a tourist attraction? Surely it must be one of many built by missionaries back before 1949.
And so off I went. Took 45 minutes to drive to the area. Drove around in a circle then back on to the highway. Accidentally crossed the border into Hebei (the grey area in the map - and no, that blue line is not the Yongding River; it's the Yongding River bed. Rivers have water in them. This riverbed had a lot of dried-up long grass, and no, the Gù'ān urban area is no longer limited to that little splotch, but stretches up to the riverbank), turned around and was very grateful to the cop who decided a foreigner didn't need to go through the rather strict (as in checking every car very thoroughly) compulsory (as in the road was blocked so we had to drive through) checkpoint and waved me through, otherwise who knows how long I would've been stuck there. Back over the riverbed then a few more circles through the area this church was supposed to be in. Still no luck, and get very frustrated with the bizarre near-total lack of road signs. Back home, via a petrol station and the weirdest supermarket in Beijing (only 1 customer - me - and a few imported brews, but no milk).
And now, after Baiduing not the church's name, but the website of the Beijing Catholic Association, I find what I was looking for (all in Chinese, but scroll down for a picture).
Well, it would've been early evening NZDT when I was driving in fruitless circles.
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Hard News: It's In the Kete!, in reply to Islander,
why yes, I have tried seal-meat thank you
Any good?
I remember seeing in a fish seller's cart down near the waterfront of Trondheim a very ordinary-looking meat labelled 'hvalbiff', or something like that. I was kinda curious, but for some reason didn't check that it was in fact whale and didn't try any.
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Hard News: It's In the Kete!, in reply to Kumara Republic,
I am reminded of a (maybe Northern) Chinese quote that says the Cantonese eat anything on four legs that isn’t a table, and anything that flies that isn’t an airplane.
Very apocryphal, and there are several variations, but I've tried it on my students, and even those from Guangdong agree. One from Guangdong recently even took it a few steps beyond my comfort zone, and I 'grew up' in Changsha, where there's a similarly broad range of 'edible' and I saw many a critter whose species I could not recognise sitting in a cage outside a restaurant or in a butchery market waiting to be eaten.
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“Be Prepared” Addendum – “It’s better than being a burden to others or dead.”
Well, yes.
My car isn't anywhere near as well equipped as yours, but then again, I don't live in a remote area and if I got stuck up the mountain range I cross regularly, it'd be only a short run downhill to the nearest village (population density has its benefits) - still, getting the baby through Beijing's thorny bush unscratched wouldn't be easy. In addition to the minimum legal requirements (which include an accident warning triangle and fire extinguisher) I have a torch similar to what you describe, a multitool and a Beijing map book in the glovebox, all of which have been useful even in my uneventful life, and a sponge, chamoix, and at least one bottle of wiper fluid (you wouldn't believe how much of that stuff you go through up here, combination of a naturally dry, dusty environment and unnatural air pollution, and I do like having as much visibility as possible when driving). My Justin Case bag, which comes on every trip outside the city, has a larger map book - one can never have enough maps, each has their subtle differences, and therefore advantages - tummy trouble medicine, and lots of chocolate (umm, y'know, that skinny bastard fast metabolism problem).
Every time I step out my front door my pocket contains an asthma inhaler, and, in the summer, hay fever nasal spray.
And no matter what lesson I have prepared, I'm always ready to go low-tech blackboard and chalk. Too many times the power's gone out or the classroom computer wouldn't cooperate.
Maps? One time I was dropping a cousin-in-law off at his workplace on the way back to Beijing. First time I'd been to that particular corner of Beijing, and I'd studied my maps in advance then worked off memory, dead reckoning, and the occasional quick check of the maps as traffic lights allowed. "Don't you have GPS?" he asked. Well, no. Heard too many stories of people blindly trusting their GPS and finding themselves on a dirt track up in the mountains in the middle of a forest, wolves howling, hours after they were supposed to arrive at their destination. I'm not blindly opposed to GPS, but there's a hell of a lot to be said in favour of maintaining basic old-tech skills, cos technology has its limits and breakdowns.
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Muse: The Good Word, Bad Numbers and The…, in reply to chris,
It's interesting that over the time I've been in China China has moved to an understanding that each President/Prime Minister team will serve two consecutive 5-year terms then retire (to continue to pull strings from retirement, of course). This is vastly superior to the old system whereby the death of the paramount leader (even if his only official position was president of the All-China Bridge Club) led to a long power struggle. I'm struggling to get my memory in order, but it seems to me that the imminent transition is the first to go the full cycle (Deng died in '97, didn't he? which would've given the Jiang-Zhu team only five years?)
[Sorry. Disrupted by a short walk that I thought would help me gather my thoughts, but that was marked by a strange encounter with a semi-colleague (same university, different department) - why would anybody talk about taking their trousers off on campus, even to deny doing it in a joking fashion?!]
oh yes...
...So I remember a few years back reading a story about an imprisoned dissident and his under-house-arrest wife and infant daughter that included the phrase 'world's youngest political prisoner' and realising, holy shit, I've cycled through that area, this 'world's youngest political prisoner' lives not 20km up the road from me!
Before I came to China I heard one or two people saying that the ideal government would be a benevolent dictatorship, and thinking, well, where are you gonna get a truly benevolent dictatorship? Then last time I was in NZ I heard somebody close to me express a similar view and, for the sake of preserving a harmonious society I decided it best to bite my tongue, but my instinct was to point out to this person that they had never lived in a country where one could be jailed (or worse) for expressing the 'wrong' ideas or objecting, even in a perfectly reasonable fashion, to government policy.
China's experience shows the capriciousness of autocratic/authoritarian rule (and that stretches back way before Mao Zedong was but a twinkle in his father's eye) and the value of a system that allows for stable transfers of power to the next generation. China's leadership also does a much better line in long-term, strategic thinking than their counterparts in any 'Western' country. China's experience also shows, in a negative sense, the value of maintaining a healthy and vibrant democracy. When government can ride roughshod.... well, problems occur.
China seems to be slowly moving towards a more people-centred, dare I say it, democratic approach to governance (it obviously still has a hell of a long way to go). New Zealand (and the whole 'Western' world) seems to me to be moving in the other direction. This disturbs me.
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Muse: The Good Word, Bad Numbers and The…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I’ve got no interest in any sort of feud or pissing contest with the paper, but, really, c’mon.
But some facts are worth feuding over.
I recently came across a video on one of the big Chinese video sites from some British news programme (I'm sure no copyrights were harmed in the process of uploading it) reporting on the water spouts over Auckland. I don't know which channel, because as soon as I heard the reporter say, "New Zealand's capital Auckland" I closed it. But that was just a silly filler story. TVNZ7 seems to me to be much more about the possibility of public service broadcasting in New Zealand - and I use the word 'possibility' for good reason. This is worth fighting over, because public service radio and telly is free from commercial pressure and therefore a great platform for all that high quality content that the commercial channels don't want, and I don't see how we can have a healthily functioning democracy without an informed, educated populace. Commercial radio and telly is just circuses. Nothing wrong with a bit of light entertainment, but it doesn't help inform or educate the public. This fake fact the Herald is pushing is all about undermining the case for public service broadcasting.
And I am really worried about the authoritarian streak I see in the current NZ government...
