Paean for my lover

This is for Jenne, which is 真.
It means true or genuine in the first tone.

I live in Hong Kong. Tang dynasty poetry is from 300 years after the birth of the common era. I don't think Christ lived. He is a myth. A good one. I know the Tang dynasty poets lived; lived full lives. They write of love, to be longed for, of drinking wine, and mourning for old friends. The poets wrote of their life as they lusted after women and wondrous nature: mountains, swift rivers, tall bamboo, wine, Hanzi scriptures on the plinths in monasteries. Dew on leaves; roses bursting with colour, cold winter chill that shivers in the morn. I study politics and the sociology of lost peoples. Those who have suffered at the hands of British occupiers.

I don't know Hong Kong poets. I haven't found them. They are lost in the small history of Hong Kong. I wonder if there is a society that doesn't express itself in art and drawing? I bet there isn't.

This is from a Tang poet, Du Fu:

i am an old man, and i do not know where i shall be
heading.
i am tired from walking the wild hills, i am ever more sad at the pace.

Du Fu lived until he was 58. Only 1300 years after the birth of Buddha. Or 1244 years before I was born. He wrote about his life and the sights and sounds of the China he enjoyed; the emperors, lords, court eunuchs, his lovers, and drinking wine with good friends.

He also wrote:

the flowers she picks are not to put in her hair
and she often gathers cypress leaves by the handful.
the day is cold, her emerald green sleeves are thin;
as the sun sets she rests against tall bamboos.

I know this woman who holds many lives in her smile -- I am happy to have loved her and still do. I don't live with her now, I will.

Ai Weiwei and sunflower seeds

A Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, now sends out a twitter each night at midnight naming those children whose birthday it would of been had they survived the earthquake in Sichuan province in 2008. The names of the children were gathered by a grieving father, Tan Zuoren, who was investigating why more than 5,000 children lost their lives when the school buildings they were in collapsed during the earthquake. Tan has been sentenced to five years imprisonment for inciting and advocating for an investigation.

Fellow investigator, Huang Qi, has been imprisoned for “illegally possessing state secrets,” according to the text of the court resolution. Under the one-child policy, in place since 1979, many of the children who died were from one-child families. Think about losing your first born child.

Ai Weiwei went to Sichuan to help demonstrate with Tan. He too was beaten. He said: "art is expressing through a special channel your emotions towards something you are most interested in, not hanging a picture on a wall and thinking how much you can sell it for."

Three weeks after the beating in Germany, Ai Weiwei underwent surgery for a brain haemorrhage caused by the beating.

His latest work is Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern, London. I write of this after a late night email to my son, Stefan. He said he wanted to see more art with me in Sydney. And I mentioned Ai Weiwei. I don't know how we suffer for causes.

Slovakian Marxist Slavoj Zizeck paraphrasing Walter Benjamin, said "every monument of civilization is a monument to barbarism." This is one of those moments. Sylvia Plath's poem, Daddy, is a tense and horrid poem.

It evokes a barbaric state and those who think they can restart a society in the name of High Culture too.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--

The vampire who said he was you

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

Holding children

Hong Kong, born of English imported opium and disputed territories, is now a place where more than 7 million people strive for their livelihood. Shopping malls and fast foods abound, among the various shopfronts offering wonderful foods and street eating houses, where small owners show their varieties of fish, chicken, noodles, beef brisket, and other wonderful dishes.

Many elderly women sweep streets with large fan like brooms. Many elderly women collect cardboard and stack them high on small steel trolleys, making off with them for whatever reason. There are many people of middle and elderly age who are dependent on walking sticks and frames. It is not a society that admires prams, children are worn on the chest, or as a backpack, preferably by a mother or a grandmother. There is hardly a temper tantrum. The children in the university courtyard scream and chatter, play and bustle around. Busy in their rules of the games. Outside the Toy'r'us store, within the vast canyon of Festival Walk, there was a two year living up to western standards for a two-year-old, stamping his feet and bottom lip curled over upper lip.

Hong Kong is an island of people striving to get ahead of the other. Although in doing so they do not see that it is the social niceness and the offers of pleasantries that help to make a society and a culture lifted. A philosopher said that it is the kindness and warmheartedness of all millions of people that outweighs the outrageous acts of human unkindness such as that wrought by a Pol Pot, or a Mao.

An elderly man, in his 60s, sits in the BU fiesta canteen most morning reading his texts on Chinese medicine. He is Dao, or Tou, which means seed. Over a cup of Hong Kong style milk tea he asked me yesterday, "Will you teach me technology?'. I will, but how do I explain that we are technology and that technology helps define us. I learn about his early life, in Kowloon before the university, life under an airport, as an unemployed 60 year old, and Mandarin, from our morning talks. He sits outside and is outside the university, Hong Kong Baptist University. I bet Dao's mother bundled Dao on her chest, and Dao kept his son on his chest too.

That's me above in the green, amid a family in Hong Kong from early last century. The exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum in Tsim Sha Tsui. very interesting and worth the hours.

Czech women, Corn Flakes and the Buddha

Talking with two Czech women outside a 650 year old Temple at Fan Ling, Hong Kong, and walking around with young students from Beijing and Boston are life's delights while an international student at Hong Kong's Baptist University.

Reading of life as a concubine in the Qing dynasty [1644-1912] in China or Australia-Chinese relations during the Howard years. And learning that Red Packets can be filled with coin or something that will give your friend good happiness during the coming year. Or eating Kellogg's corn flakes while listening to Fleet Foxes and reading the Naked Buddha by the Venerable Adrienne Howley. We are global creatures in an increasingly busy and digested world.

I was born in the Year of the Monkey, Hou in the Chinese calendar. The Buddha was born in the same month 2499 years before me. The calendar didn't exist then. I've read that the Chinese zodiac was invented on the Buddha's death. Monkey's are inquisitive, prone to narcissism, intelligent [that's the narcissistic side], fleet footed, quick, get into trouble. And generally a bother from time to time. But we traverse a lot of interesting things and issues, and learn quickly. I wish Mandarin was as quick as my English. But that's an impossibility for me.

The women are from Frenstat and from Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic. One of these days I will drink a little beer with them and ask about pilsner and life in a newly born republic. [The current republic was born in 1993.] I wonder if it was a breach birth?

This is We Are always too Late from Eavan Boland, from his collection, Outside History.

Memory

Is in two parts.

First the re-visiting:

the way even now I can see

those lovers at the café table. She is weeping.

It is New England, breakfast time, winter. Behind her,

outside the picture window, is

a stand of white pines.

New snow falls and the old,

losing its balance in the branches,

showers down,

adding fractions to it. Then

The re-enactment. Always that.

I am getting up, pushing away

coffee. Always I am going towards her.

The flush and scald is

to her forehead now, and back down to her neck.

I raise one hand. I am pointing to

those trees, I am showing her our need for these

beautiful upstagings of

what we suffer by

what survives. And she never even sees me.

This is a good piece by an Irish poet who hears his language anew. Lap it up, simply read it to yourself, listen and take in its cadence. I am lapping up my life now.

Glass bottled milk and Hotel Bone

Yesterday I bought Trappist Dairy milk, from New Zealand, in small 225ml bottles. Glass bottles. It's wonderful how small things can send you back The smell of clove cigarettes immediately places me in Ubud, Bali, 1979. Fresh milk in bottles puts me back to the time when we had milkmen place two bottles of milk [pints I think they were] on your front door every morning. The cream settled on the top and was sweet to have on your porridge, with brown sugar.

I wear old suede Keens shoes. They been with me through Agen, Montpellier, Hanoi, Puymirol, Sete, Hong Kong, Amalfi, Austinmer, Hue, Nowra, Paris, Mong Kok, Fan Ling, Bordeaux, Kowloon Tong, Bowral, Castelnau-de-Medoc, Hoi An, the Montmarte, Tsim Sha Tsui, Carcasonne, and Coledale.

The soles have worn through now. The spring has gone. But they did take me to Jordan where I spent a beautiful few hours at the table with roast suckling pig, salted fried fish, gai lan with garlic, a mussel soup, some honey roasted pork, or char sui, and crab, poor spikey thing.

Talking with some new friends about Hong Kong life, communism, the movies, food, wine, and generally laughing at life's simple turns.

I also learnt that it's good to enjoy those things that you are not comfortable with, where you have to stretch yourself or take a plunge, even when the only thing you might have on is a band aid. Life in Hong Kong can be like that.

I'd like to introduce you to Samuel Wagan Watson, a strong poet from Brisbane. This is Hotel Bone from 2001. Search out his works, buy a copy, sit and read. They are a great hit on life in the hard times of Australia.

the street resembles a neck
from a wayward guitar
with Hotel Bone sitting idle on a vein,
wedged between two frets
where the bad tunes can reach her

these white stucco walls, I imagine, once carried a vision of pearl
now a gourd for asylum seekers
Iraqi, Indonesian, Sri Lankan
and one crazy Aboriginal... who lives with a typewriter
but not with the brevity of a visa on my head; no,
my longevity was guaranteed before I was born
in the 1967 referendum
the freedom to practice the voodoo of semantics
within the marrow of Hotel Bone

existence only 2 minutes walk
from some of the best latte lounges in the city
yet, white faces don’t come down here
until they’ve been classified, unfit for duty
no longer permitted upon the chorus line
of the cappuccino song
where multi-culturalism is in an airline format
first-class, business and economy seating

but those of us who submit to the chance of mystery-flights
end-up on the tar, of Hotel Bone

a haven from Saddam, Suharto, the Tamil Tigers
and One Nation
this Hotel Bone;
it is hard

it is reachable

it is home

I am not home yet. My Keens are still taking me to some different and strange places. I need more words.

Loving to learn and George

George Cole taught me a lot about an inquisitve mind and love of the stuff that warms the shoals of your heart -- learning, good wine, rugby, cricket, and laughter on those cold mornings when you walk with your head bent down. I'll miss George. He had a warmth that rose from underneath his gregarious laugh. He loved the winter swims [but not the cold water] at Austinmer in the early morning. He always had a warm smile and strong handshake for me. "Going on your morning constitutional, Lachie?" He would ask on the mornings as I passed him coming back from the morning swim, his large yellow fins sticking up like humming bird wings.

George had a truly generous and loving family. Brownwyn taught my partner jenne to drive. Jenne didn't trust me. Bronwyn has a generous smile and phrase. She probably got a bit greyer teaching Jenne. I taught his son George Cole to play football.

George used to help with the school fetes and selling badges to early morning train goers. He would raise money for young teens with cancer.

Now we are missing a friend and a good, generous man, gone from his friends at Austinmer when he was looking forward to many things in his life. I didn't get a chance to see George before I got back from hong Kong.

We don't know the time or manner of our death.

When I'm back in Austinmer I'll have a quiet peaceful swim in the cold Austinmer rock pool. And then shiver up the street. I don't have humming bird fins.

I was thinking of Robert Frost. But this is from Seamus Heaney , an Irish poet. From 1966, when I was 10.

'Light came from the east,' he sang,

'Bright guarantee of God, and the waves went quiet.

I could see headlands and the buffeted cliffs.

Often, for marked courage, fate spares the man

It has not marked already.'

And when their objection was reported to him -

That he had gone to bits and was leaving them

Nothing to hold on to, his first and last lines

Neither here nore there -

'Since when,' he asked,

"Are the first and last lines of any poem

Where the poem begins and ends?'

George loved our language too. You could tell.

Above is the big Buddha from Lantau Island. You can get a warm, vegetarian meal there included in the cost of your visit. The Buddha weighs how many tonnes? George would find out and post the question on the blackboard at Austinmer beach.

Lyrics and other gifts

Meadowlark, fly your way down,

I hold a cornucopia and a golden crown

for you to wear upon your fleece'd gown.

Ah meadowlark, sing to me.

Hummingbird, just let me die,

Inside the broken holes of your olive eyes.

I do believe you gave it your best try.

Ah hummingbird, sing to me.

This is from Fleet Foxes' Meadowlark. Such a poignant song and wonderful story. My son, Stefan, showed me this band. You don't know how much you change a person's life with a small gift such as, 'listen to this, you might like it.'

Yesterday I gave a hug to a young women who received a bad mark for a small quizz. I hope the warmth of the hug was a small gift that will change her outlook in a small way.

Stefan is completing a Masters of Fine Arts in a prestigious Australian arts school. I haven't seen any of his work while I have been in Hong Kong.

Yesterday I bought Qing dynasty [1644 to 1912] coins in a Buddhist temple, the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas in Sha Tin. I will give Stefan a 'redpacket', a small gift in a red envelope, for luck and prosperity, when I get back into Australia.

I sometimes don't realise how fortunate and lucky I am.

The picture is a little tug making its way up a busy Hong Kong harbour in front of the tallest building and the mid-Autumn sun under its veil of chemicalled sky.

Hong Kong has more malls than it does parks [the ones with grass and trees]. It's not hard to work out where the loyalties of the Xiang Gang [literally fragrant harbour] people lie.

Festival Walk is a brief five minute walk from the university at Kowloon Tong. It features all major brands, including Camper shoes, a wonderful shoe company who sells their brand, extraordinary crafts, keep walking. Camper is Spanish for peasant. Also in Festival Walk you can find a large skating rink with little Hong Kong kids twirling better than whirling dervishes. In Hong Kong in the 32 degrees. It's impressive but also quite shameful. Anyway a friend suggested that people visit the malls because of the air conditioning and its a good way to escape the heat and humidity. But it's more than that. Visit IFC, Langham Place, and any suburb and you will find a mall. The need to be with many people, the social hunter and gatherer, even if it is for shoes that you neither need or will use every day. So next time you are in Hong Kong go to a mall and watch how many of the population spend their leisure hours.

Today I found a wonderful poem by Carol Ann Duffy, a favourite. And Jenne has gone back home so this is fitting. It's called Colours by Someone Else, 1987.

Sweetheart, this evening your smell is all around

Down by the fishing-boats, the sky trembling

above the pier. Your tears have dried on my palms.

Darling, we should never have done that.

You made me your own, painted my face

into smithereens. Who can say where my tongue

has been in your dark boudoir? Soft heelprints

on my shoulder, sound of the hummingbird breathing its last.

Also listen to Suite Bergmasque [Clair De Lune] by Claude Debussy. Such a wonderful piece. I don't know how music and poetry can move you so. But it does. Makes the hackles on your neck rise. Try explaining that English to cantonese or Mandarin speaking students.

Skipping rope and Myanmar

It's quite nice how young children anywhere in the world enjoy themselves. In a restaurant last week in Mong Kok, the young boy juggled a plate with three jellies making his way back to the table where his mother, father and younger sister sat. Of course he had to try and bite the jelly before sliding into the booth.
Two young girls skip rope outside a refugee camp in Bangladesh. [Photo courtesy of Andrew Birj, Reuters]. The girls play like any other children world wide. Except they are from the Rohingya minority group in Myanmar.
Now meet Jake. He's a young student from Myanmar. He's doing his undergraduate in journalism. He's living on campus and completing six courses this semester. During his semester break he will go back home to visit his parents. They own a small plantation with rubber trees. I haven't got his photo as he doesn't want to be identified. He's from the Mon state in Myanmar.
The Myanmar government, run by a military Junta, will hold elections next month. The first elections in 20 years on 7 November 2010. There is political repression and systematic violence against any dissenting voice in Myanmar. Under Electoral Laws enacted in March 2010, no political prisoner can take part in the elections or hold membership in any political party. Also the former political leader, Aung Sang Syu Kee, will be released from house arrest about 16 November.
If Jake was to be identified and his name and image were to be connected to the new reports on freedom in Burma, it is more than likely that he would be jailed for a lengthy period.
The Buddhist monks of Myanmar protested against the military Junta in November 2007. And the suppression of human rights is real, visit the amnesty international site for background on the human rights abuses.
In Myanmar there are 135 ethnic minority groups. With many of the ethnically-specific political parties also having an armed wing.
Last month the Military Ruler of Myanmar, Senior General Than Shwe, visited China to be congratulated by President Hu Jintao. The Military General was afforded a state reception in Beijing.
Perspective is easy for me to highlight here. But it is only through the good work of investigative journalists that we uncover the unsavoury truths in daily life and public institutions. We need more young journalists trained and skilled like Jake. His education and experience will lead to far more important truths.
See the Amnesty International report for information on Myanmar and the coming elections or visit Irrawaddy.org.
No poetry today, unless you have a suggestion? Is there anything you would like to include?

Boys and tunes

Young men are dumb.

Young men without the steadying influence of young women are dumber.

Young men from Hong Kong who have left Mum at home are way dumber.

The immaturity of the Hong Kong students seems to be typical but also contradictory. They study hard, but I don't see evidence that they have a considered opinion to offer a tutorial or a Professor when asked a good question. If you wander through the library of an afternoon and count the number of students who are drooped over their books in slumber you realise that they do a lot of night work. But is it worthwhile? There's plenty of evidence to suggest that the work done late at night when tired, does not adhere to long term memory.

There is no empirical evidence to support the assertion that they are dumb. But the 2am nights when the young men on the floor run yelling down the corridor is draining.

Next time I see the young men in the library slumped over the desk at 2pm, I'm tapping them on the shoulder. The first question will be about a Philosophy of Technology whether it is warranted. The second question will be whether Karl Popper's withering criticism of Karl Marx's thoughts on historical dialeticism was warranted. I know how they will look at me.

There is a typhoon on its way, the floor security have hoisted the red / white sign, typhoon warning 1, When the number gets closer to 8 it means they batten down the hatches.

Also see The Eel's Susan's House. Great social commentary and not a dumb boy in sight.

I photographed this couple on the way to the Tseun Wan line. [This appeared in September, but I didn't refer to the actual economic theory on his t-shirt.] He wears the black swan t-shirt. Look up Nassim Nicholas Taleb's theory on financial economics. It doesn't once mention dumb boys. And she is very proud.

How is this food?

Seven weeks since I slept with my partner

Seven weeks since I've driven a car

Seven weeks since I've eaten with a knife, fork and spoon [I eat with chopsticks and soup spoon]

Seven weeks since I had a bath [only showers here]

Seven weeks since I've worn a jumper

Seven weeks since I've had tea from a pot

Yesterday I bought some Leicester red cheese at Taste in Festival Walk, Kowloon Tong. The first cheese I've had since 22 August, except for the cheese on the pizza at Delifrance when I met with Jeff. Jeff lives in Kunming, Yunnan province and speaks both Mandarin, Cantonese. He wanted to eat something different than the rice and noodles that are the main stay of his household.

I bought a bagel to go with the cheese as the bread here is somewhat different.

They also sell Corn Flakes, and with a Twinings Tea [English Breakfast tea bags] it is a good breakfast, although I do enjoy the congee with salted pork and preserved eggs. And the congee lasts tl afternoon easy. So I sometimes fit the old Colonial tastes. And I also get the Trappist Dairy milk from New Zealand. I'll have to have a look at how many Trappist monks, let alone dairy's there are in NZ.

Anyway tonight I am definitely going out for some rice. It's a staple and has been in our household for years. Love it. Mifan. 米饭.

In one of the large stores here they sell this packaged cheeses in squeeze-me tubes. I didn't buy the hot cheese fish sausage.

Signs and freedoms

This post is meant to be read following the Lui Xiaobo Nobel Peace Prize.

Just opposite the Hong Kong Baptist university campus is a large compound. A large sign in Hanzi script hangs over the driveway. It says, I think:

Wiithout the people, there's no people's army

without the people's army, the people have nothing.

The letters are gold, embossed on a red background.

The People's Liberation Army quarters in Hong Kong was once used by the Royal Hong Kong Regiment. The quonset huts are still in place, rusting near the green Hydrangeas. They must have been a nice place to be on the hot, humid Hong Kong summer.

The PLA now has a standing army of 2.3 million with 1.6 million in the Army, and a defence budget of $480 billion Yuan for 2009. The Hong Kong regiment is from the Guanzhuo military regiment, which stands at 180,000 personnel. And on a rotational bases they are deployed to Hong Kong.

The students at Tiananmen Square in July 1989 had banners claiming, No Choice! Freedom!

Interestingly current President Wen Jiabo was on the truck platform prior to the quelling of the student strike. As was Liu Xiaobo. He dedicated his Nobel Prize to the lost students. They were on the seventh day of a hunger strike.

There liberty was cut short, quite dramatically.

To also enjoy the Chinese Beijing Opera in a mash-up, see http://www.youtube.com/ and search for Chinese Beijing opera and beat it. Good for a laugh.

Living a moral life

Friday 8 October Lui Xiaobo [刘晓波] was recognised and named 2010 Nobel Peace prize winner. He is a coauthor of the Charter 08, released on 10 December on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. the Charter outlines basic ideas that the authors ask the Chinese Communist Party and ruling authorities to build into a constitution. These include: Freedom, Human Rights, Equality, Republicanism, Democracy, and Constitutional Rule.

During the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, Lui was advocating for a peaceful removal of students from the square prior to the army's intervention.

The group advocated for 19 changes to Chinese society to enable a national government, citizen's rights and social development.

For his part in Charter 08 Lui is serving time in a prison about 200 kms north of Beijing. He was arrested in 2008 and sentenced on 23 December 2009 to 11 years imprisonment.

Go to the New York Times [see http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/chinas-charter-08/]. There's a full translation. It's good reading.

This is far more important to a lot of Chinese students in Hong Kong than their mid term papers due in the next few weeks. Interesting enough when the news hit, if you were searching through Baidu [a Chinese search engine] you didn't find much at all.

Fathers and tattoos

This is mostly not about me. On 4 October I found out that my dad, my father, John, had passed away. I hadn’t seen him since the early 1990s when he came back to Australia to visit Sydney. He needed to gain details of his Australian citizenship for an application for a Green Card in the United States. He was teaching at a university in Pennsylvania at the time. He held a Doctorate of Philosophy. He was teaching Mass Communication and Journalism.
My sons and I played soccer at Bradleys Head near Taronga Park Zoo. We broke two of his ribs.
My sister in California emailed me to call her. I don’t have a phone. So I emailed back. She told me, “John has passed away.”
I was sitting in the library reading foreign relations and the Chinese understanding of their situation in an increasingly hostile world. I went to an empty room and cried.
My first email was back to my sister [in Mandarin she is called meimei, little sister]. I simply said, I cried.
Then I unfolded, crumpled.
All I could think of was a poem by ee cummings. “I carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart) i am never without it(anywherei go you go.”
I never understood how hard it was to be a father until Jenne and I had Stefan. He was born in Bathurst on 7 December 1981. He was a small blonde haired baby. I cried then too.
John came to visit us in our small apartment in the busy Bathurst Street. It was before he moved to the United States to teach. He drove down from Toowoomba in his old Mercedes.
Being a father is a lot of work. I have never known how to work through some difficult problems at times and have not always taken the right course. There’s no manual.
When I was young my father would play Prokofiev's elegant music for Peter and the Wolf. Everytime the three horns played the theme for the wolf, my father would yell and snarl at us – I have a younger and older brother – and we would scream in horror and delight.
Another poem that comes to mind is by Sylvia Plath, “Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles.”
When my daughter, Greer, was born at Wollongong Hospital, I was asked by the midwife to take her chubby body and wash her. I thought I knew how to do this. I held her lying on her back in my left hand while I soaped her and sluiced the warm water over her greasy body. She smiled at me. And Floated. She was born on 26 July on the seventh floor overlooking Wollongong Harbour.
I’m in Hong Kong to study Mandarin. Which is quite difficult. Many Hong Kong Chinese show great respect to their ancestors. They provide offerings and burn money and other things to help the Ancestor in their after life. They also name their children with the family name first.
I carry Lachlan, after a former Governor of NSW, Philip from my father’s family, Norwood from my mother’s side and Harris, my father’s family name.
My second son Nat, was born on 11 September in 1984. He was born at Manning River District Memorial Hospital. He was a round smiley baby with folds and a smile that infected all others in the room. The one photo that is constantly on our fridge is one of Nat and Stefan; Nat is smiling and grasping for the camera. Not realising that he should not grab at the picture taker. His face is one big cheer.
I haven’t talked with my father for more than a decade and yet I couldn’t think of him without completely dissolving.
I visited the International Office to make a call home and speak with my partner Jenne. And I cried.
At home we still use the old 1956 World Atlas – it still features old names for Peking, and you could probably find Prussia if you looked hard enough.
I don’t know what my father did when he first held me. Did he cry? Did he wonder how I would be when I was 10. Or did he think – as I have realised – that this is a wonderful and miraculous life, but you are alone a lot.
And one last poem, this is from John Donne, an irascible bastard from 1635. A great poem about waking with his lover on a sunny morning:
She's all states, and all princes I;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ;
compared to this, All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus;
This always reminds me of my partner Jenne.
Do fathers have tattoos to remind them of their fagility and their life travails? Sometimes life gives you tattoos, on your heart, on your body. You carry them with you. Only a few people can see the beauty in the work.

Old colonial Hong Kong and t-shirts

Today I spent four hours walking around the older parts of Sheung Wan, Central, and Soho, finishing in the Ling Heung tea house. A nice treat.

I notice more and more the beggars, the young people with profound disabilities, the young with Downs Syndrome who are being led around by brother or sister, and the men and women in their forties who have suffered a stroke; they walk delicately with walking stick, with one side of the face and body melting to the ground in a sad smile.

You also notice the inappropriate English proudly out front across the breasts or chest. Not quite Chinglish. But nearly.

Hand up my hand

Room up my room;

ARMY: Fingercroxx;

10 finger girl;

Nothing lose, nothing gain;

Sunshine happy day;

Smile happy day.

And the mature women wearing the bright pink Disney Ariel t-shirt. Shanghai is now asking all people not to wear pyjamas while outside on the street.

In the older part of Hong Kong Central -- Sheung Wan, Central and Soho -- the older markets will be gone in a few years. Old tea shops, shops selling stamps carved in stone, locksmiths, metallurgy shops, fresh wrapped hairy crab. And fruit and vegetables, with small restaurants offering meals of every style. Wonderful and fragrant. There are a good number of growing artist's venues in the Soho area. Very chic, with wine and cheese shops too. Imagine enjoying a runny Pont l'Avec with a fragrant white from Saint Emilion in Central, Hong Kong. Globalisation at its best.

Two images today. The two German students are enjoying a look at the fresh vegetables in the street market in Sheung Wan. And the second: sui mei, har gau, fresh shrimp with a quail egg, and pork liver. And strong cups of pu'er hong cha. At the Ling Heung tea house in Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong, this is an extraordinary way to finish the historical walk of older central Hong Kong.

two lovers kissing

There's something delightful in a bowl of comfort food - a cassoulet from Carcossonne, the irish stew from a mum or grandmother, or the bowl of zhou, 粥. We call it congee. I found a small place in Tsim Sha Tsui, called Chui Fat, where the zhou is sublime. Thin slices of ginger lie at the bottom, sliced shallots on the top, hardy pork balls and a small sliced fish in a salted dish. Wonderful. And it's next to a comprehensive English book store, Swindon in Lock Road, Tsim Sha Tsui. Where I picked up a good copy of Geremie Barme's, In The Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture.

I'm contemplating going back again, for the zhou that is.

These lines are from Paul Weller in about 1971. They are in response to the young Hong Kong students, who at 20 years, still all dress in pink t-shirts and try to march in unison to cheesy songs with their hands in the Lou Reed, I Wish I Was A Sailor, And Lived A Thousand Years Ago, salute.

Two lovers kissing amongst the screams of midnight,

Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude.

Get in the cab man, travelling on buses.

We don't care about slashed seats on buses,

I say,

That's Entertainment.

The two young guys were circumspect but they had style in Festival Walk, Kowloon Tong.

不听我的，看

Festival lanterns

Yuanxiaojie, Lantern Festival, falls on the first full moon of the lunar month [22 September]. Families and children visit a park to hold lighted lanterns and view the lanterns on display, and answer lantern riddles written on the lanterns.

Many of the children held plastic lanterns in the shape of the car from Toy Story, or the little battery powered lady beetle, with flapping wings. The lanterns on display are elaborate and complex, weith rotating internal designs of tigers, and figures from Chinese history. The acrobatic troupe from Hebei province put on a classic acrobatic and flexibility display in the main park at Tin Hua, Victoria Park. Also the boys from the juggling school, showed off their improvision of switching hats as the Marx brothers did in their classic films.

These two shy festival goers had lanterns like an octopus. With their Dad they were quite boisterous and fun, then I asked to photograph them.

The round glutinous moon cakes, yuanxiao, are wonderfully sweet and filled with duck egg yolk. They are quite filling, haochi, delicious.

Followed by a brief meal of octopus, dried shrimp, garlic chives, cashews, and choy sum. With the obligatory Hanjing, the premium Beer of all China. Or so the label says. And who am I to argue.

This poem is titled, Parting at a wine shop in nanjing, by Li Bai.

A wind, bringing the willow-cotton, sweetens the shop,

And a girl from Wu, pouring wine, urges me to share

With my comrades of the city who are here to see me off;

And as each of them drains his cup, I say to him in parting,

Oh, go and ask this river running to the east

If it can travel farther than a friend's love!

Comrades and village life

I've been brushing up on the ideologies swirling through Mao Zedong's life at the time of the Cultural Revolution in China - 1966-1976.

Life was miserable, nasty and cheap for millions in all stratas of the Chinese life during the years. At one stage all staff members, more than 2,000 people, were sent to the provinces of Jiangxi or Hunan for remoulding their cultural ideology. Or when you had the Premier and Vice Premier of the State labelled as "revisionist" and they needed to publicly apologise for they did not understand the intricacies of cultural revolution. These moves paralysed China's foreign affairs and embassies abroad.

It made for a decade of unwholesome public madness that enveloped entire communities, villages and towns. To also understand the times, you could look at Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang. It's an interesting look at how people who go through extraordinary communal madness adjust to life after the subsidence.

Today I discovered a Marxist writer, Michael Hardt. He quotes Herman Melville, Frances Bacon, and Joseph Conrad in his tale of Empire. And Coetzee. He's also a fine and easily read writer. Very rare in philosophers on Marxism and national identity and empire.

Today's image is from the garden joining the old campus in hong Kong's Baptist University and the basketball courts.

Marriage, milk tea, and John Donne

Studies of families in Boading show that after 30 years of socialist principles in societal planning and structuring family life through acts such as the Marriage Law and the dissolution of ownership of property, the family structure was of better quality for people aged 50 and above than for their counterparts in Taiwan.
Taiwan broke away from China and pursued a more capitalist form of society. In measures of family networking, contact with children and extended family members, men and women aged 50 and above rated their satisfaction higher in all categories than those people in Taiwan.
All of those surveyed in Boading, a city of about 600,000 near Beijing, would have had their families before the introduction of the One Child policy in 1979. The survey was conducted in 1994.
The sociologists who conducted the survey now wish to survey again following the imposition of people who have been subject to the One Child policy and the move towards more capitalist approaches and the ownership of property and business enterprises.
Anyway Hong Kong is also an interesting case where the British colonial structures that were imposed since the 1860s have greatly influenced society and people's expectations. I only wish they could get a good cup of tea right, Twinings' Russian Caravan, with milk and a good sugar. Very hot. A Hong Kong Style Milk Tea is just not right. Neither is the Thick White Toast liberally doused with Peanut Butter and then criss-crossed with
sticky sweet Condensed Milk. Something is gang aft agley.
This is from John Donne, from nearly 400 years ago. it is good to hear again. Read the whole work aloud to someone. It's a good tale.
The Sonne Rising

She is all States, and all Princes, I,

Nothing else is.

Princes doe but play us; compar'd to this,

All honor's mimique; All wealth alchimie.

Thou sunne art halfe as happy'as wee,

In that the world's contracted thus;

Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee

To warme the worlde, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art every where;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.

Vacuum packed sports shoes

This morning I saw Frozen, a US film by Kevin Green. three students scam a free ride on an uphil chair lift inthe ski resort and are then left on the lift [which closes down for five days before the next weekend]. It's a well-paced story of how things can go wrong and the wrong decisions that will affect you later in your life.

Then on to lunch at the popular Tai Hing Everyday restaurant in Mong Kok. The lunch was pork shin, goose, and soy chicken with rice and the ever popular bok choy. The ubiqituous Hong Kong Style Milk tea is a nice reminder that the English "adminstered' the territory for nearly 155 years. Three pictures today. One of the plastic vacuum packed sports shoes on display, one of the Mong Kok railway station and another of the mackerel at Genfuku, in Kowloon Tong.

9/11 is Nat's birthday. 他是我的第二个儿子。He is my second son. When he was born he was a smiley baby.

Walking home with Emmy I asked about her home town. She's from Sweden, but her parents are originally from China. She speaks English, Swedish, Vietnamese, and is studying Mandarin. 我嫉妒. I'm jealous.

I haven't heard any news from the US on 9/11.

Shellfish and Asahi

Today was a full day -- two hours of Mandarin, two hours of China and Politics, and an hour of Understanding Mainland China and Hong Kong. Also time spent in the library with other students who will presenting on the ideologies of China and nationalism and how these have influenced China's foreign policy.

I'm going to have a quick Japanese meal and an Asahi before retiring. Although not on campus as the univeristy is dry ground.

I also spoke with my second son, Nat. He's deliberating over whether to spend time in Finland or Sweden on an international exchange. A real dilemma.

Two pictures today - one of me with the Soong Hall students. I don't think I stand out that much. I didn't wear the yellow shirt. And one of shellfish and slowly drowning scampi at the Night Markets in Temple Street. Despite the fragrant surrounds, the shellfish is fresh and the dishes are quite flavoursome. The beer, Yanjing, the Premium Draft Beer of China, has a light flavour of hops. Not bitter at all.

And then it's to bed. To be woken at about 2am by the returning domestic students. And my 10th floor mosquitos. I'll buy the repellant tomorrow.

This is from ee cummings. an American poet.

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

He never used a capital. Like Cormac McCarthy doesn't use quote marks.

Looking backwards

Asked again if I'm a professor or a lecturer, many of the young students find it hard to believe that I'm doing an undergraduate degree. This is understandable given my greying, receding hair. But I do find study enjoyable.
Study here also enables you to look back on your life in Australia … step away from the daily push and pull of life. Although I do receive the Google Alerts for Shoalhaven City Council [wind storms in the city damaging council property]; a reminder that life doesn't leave you. It's just that you find a different perspective on how to look on developments and changes in your life.
Also talking with young students -- mostly from Hong Kong or mainland China -- it is a reminder that any are dealing with study, gaining life experiences, expectations of parents, looking to job opportunities in Hong Kong, and dealing with the demands of course study. And mostly they are achieving this in English, which is a complex little baby. I'm glad I won't have to conquer this language as an adult. Underneath this there is a desire to perform [much like many of the international students]; there is also a love of learning and the enjoyment of the value of discovery. They might not express it like this, but it is there.
I thought that today is a good time to reflect on my time away from the family. This is part of a brief poem from Carol Anne Duffy, a constant favourite. She is now the Poet Laureate for England. Following in the footsteps of many great poets, such as Ted Hughes and Andrew Motion. This one is for Jenne. I miss you more than I thought I would. And to explain for my three readers, Jenne has been forgiving and willing to let me go voyaging on this discovery.
If you do find the time, find Duffy's other poems, such as Warming Her Pearls. They are drops of delight in an otherwise global and increasingly financially cluttered world. Like enjoying a sweet sugary dusted Turkish delight made with rosewater.
This Shape, Carol Ann Duffy
This shape is a rose, protect it, pure, it's pure.
Preserve it. Already evening unfolds you
before me. Naked, entwined, standing
in a sheet against a wall. This shape.

My lips tremble on its delicate brim
and dare to gather the drops which fall.
Your milk swells my throat to the neck of a dove.
O stay. Rose with pearl petals, remain.

...

Sleeper, your body. This shape, extraoidrinary.
Creamy almond, star, o curled up chhild.
A tingling stir of blood in the blue departure
of evening. A naked foot sounding on the grass.

No picture. I'm posting this in the library. besides the whispering pink Hong Kong students.