A Dangerous Thing

Prayer is a dangerous thing. As I was thinking about things this morning, I thought about the Katrina disaster and then I though about the earthquake in Pakistan. I thought of the many prayers and much mindfulness given to New Orleans last month. Then I thought about how little I am reminded to pray for Pakistan, though its deaths are between 20-3oK people, with 2.5 MILLION homeless (without hope of refuge or comforts as we have). By comparison, it makes Katrina look like a trivial event. What a horrible thing to happen in Asia! Yet, I wonder what leads to less mindfulness and decrease in prayer....perhaps prejudice, apathy, hatred in the heart? Certainly they're far away, but 30K dead voices are very loud. 2.5 million homeless are louder. It comes down to simply being unloving for we are plainly told by Him, "Love as I have loved you." May we find mercy and forgiveness from Him and press on to love without partiality (see James' book among others on this).

Selah the Flower girl

This past week, Selah got to strut her stuff down isle of a friends wedding. This is not a traditional Chinese wedding thing to have, but this friend wanted her and two other foreign girls to be included in the festivities. Her and the five year old ran down the isle, each launching the flower petals as if it was game 7 of the World Series. They were on a mission.

The wedding was a beautiful union of a brother and sister who are living faithfully and sacrificially on a minute by minute calendar. I've been fairly depressed at the state of marriages here, so it was encouraging to actually be excited for their union. Most marriages are a social arrangement with important economic ramifications, that's it. Very little relationship acutally goes into the marriage. If the boyfriend cannot provide a proper dowry upon marriage, the marriage will not be blessed by the parents. Most parents also are anxious to marry off their daughters so that they can have kids and the grandparents can take care of them. All that to be said, the wedding was wonderful and Selah loved the center isle.

a few China facts

We at ELIC had a nation wide quiz and these are the answers. We thought they were interesting and thought you might enjoy 10 quick China facts.

1. The gold star on the flag reprsents the Chinese Communist Party. The other 4 stars represent 4 categories of people referred to by Chairman Mao in one of his essays: workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie, and bourgeoisie. The stars are yellow to imply that New China belongs to the Chinese people, a "yellow race." Red is a traditional color of happiness in China, and is also associated with the Revolution. The flag design was adopted by the soon-to-be new government on September 27, 1949, and unfurled and hoisted at Tiananmen for the first time on October 1, 1949.

2. The name of Beijing in the years just prior to 1949 was Peiping. Here's the story. The two characters for the name of the city (Bei jing) mean "northern" and "capital." The current standard pronunciation of these two characters is Beijing. Many of us are aware that the city used to be called Peking. But Peking in Chinese is not a different name for the city, just a different pronunciation of the two characters. It is the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters, and it is that pronunciation that made it's way into English. In the 1970's the government decided that the official Romanization (English letters) should be Beijing instead of Peking. That's when we English speakers made the switch. Ok, so where does Peiping come from? When the Nationalists were in charge, the capital was moved to the city of Nanjing (which means Southern Capital). At that time, since Beijing was no longer the capital, the name was changed to Peiping (southern pronunciation of "northern peace"). It was only when the Communist Party came to power, and moved the capital back up here that the name reverted back to Peking. Prior to 49, it was Peiping.

3. In Mao's first review of Red Army troops in Beijing he rode in a US Army jeep that had been captured from the Nationalist Forces.

4. The name of the famous Canadian doctor who cared for Red Army soldiers was Norman Bethune. Perhaps you Canadians have been bombarded with questions about him from your students. He's considered a hero.

5. Shenzhou is another name for China. It's a poetic name, meaning "divine land." Hanguo is the Chinese name for South Korea.

6. Following their defeat by the Communists, the Nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan. (Everyone got that right!!!)7. The American official who made a secret visit to China in 1971 was Henry Kissinger, who was President Nixon's National Security Advisor. At that time, the US and China had no formal diplomatic ties, and had, in fact, never even "talked." The following year, Nixon made his historic visit to China.

8. OK, this was the slightly tricky question. Information Technology was not one of the original Four Modernizations. Technology was, but at that time IT was not yet a developed field.

9. Deng Xiao-ping was the first Chinese leader to visit the United States.

10. Chairman Mao once worked as a librarian at Beijing University.

A week off

This week is China's National Day week. It celebrates the founding of the country's present form of establishment, from when Mao Ze Dong set up the present government in 1949. It's basically their 'independence day'. The school's around China shut down for a week. It's a good time to catch up on stuff, like grading. In light of the holiday, I suppose, Selah and her class got to raise the Chinese flag and sing the national anthem. We didn't hear about it unti after the fact, but all the kids rotate this job apparantly. The school threw a banquet for the foreigners (us). Yep, it's a little bit weird for people to ask, "So how did you spend National Day?" We're like, "Uhh, we didn''t....It's not our national day" Of course, we wouldn't say it like that but, with all the hoopla recently, you would think we were Chinese citizens.

MP3 Player

Someone on our team bought an Mp3 player recently hoping to get with the new technology and listen to music and talks when going about campus. After getting a moderately nice one, they began purchasing and downloading some songs from some States' companies (Walmart, Windows Media, etc..). Enter Problems....For some reason the Mp3 player wouldnt play the songs. Error messages prohibted transfers of songs of their computer. Theproblem persisted with each MP3 player in the store.

After some experiementation, it was found that the MP3 player would accept songs downloaded from Chinese sites, whic are are pirated copies (basically, like Napster used to be). In short, the Mp3 players here accept only illegal copoes of songs, even REJECTING legal copies!! Wow, talk about the world working against you. As we thought about it, what a picture of our flesh....it loves everything unlawful and has no place for righteousness.