I’m always a little late in the game when it comes to reading books, especially since I’ve been on a classics buzz for years and, by definition, one doesn’t know what is a classic until time has passed, but I finally got around to reading the infamous Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.

I had really mixed feelings about it. I’d be thrilled if my kids became world class musicians, but would it be worth the shouting matches? If I wanted to raise kids the hard work ethic way, I’d rather raise them in China than in America, because then the kids would be surrounded by other kids raised by work ethic parents, too. Working hard to excel would be normal instead of exceptional. I think Americans are too attached to the “natural talent” idea, which might apply to one percent of the population, and even they have to work their ass off to really excel. I’d like to think that I could raise hard working kids by example and positive reinforcement instead of being a drill sergeant. And I’d rather have my kids turn out to be like the students I have at Nanjing U. than most of the kids I remember from my college days…including myself. I was not a happy camper, and most of my students here seem so cheerful, even if they complain about being over worked.

A part of me has long wished that I’d never given up on the violin. I just couldn’t stand making mistakes so close to my ear. I doubt I would have ever been great, mind you, but sometimes I wish I could break out the old fiddle and play for people’s entertainment. On the other hand, while I never gave up chess, I’m glad I didn’t make it the center of my life. That’s done weird things to people.

One of the most interesting parts was in the afterword, where she’s writing about the interviews she suffered through on television. Three newswomen admitted to her that they had “tiger mothers,” too, then once the camera was on those same journalists turned on her. Those journalists knew the key to their success in competitive, dog eat dog world was parents who drove them, but the sake of the audience pretended otherwise, for the sake of lively television pretended making kids work hard made her a bad mother. The more I learn about TV news the less I trust it. Their much maligned weathermen have better prediction rates than their political experts, that’s for sure.

I’ve had flashes of envy of harder working people all my life. People who can study a foreign language two hours a day, or the tireless capitalist heroes of Atlas Shrugged dedicated to their work, which was not the shell game capitalism of Wall Street but building railroads and pouring steel and inventing cheap, clean energy, or the Olympic gymnasts who spent their after school hours throwing themselves across mats instead of going to the movies. At the same time, prose writing friends have told me they admired my writing productivity, churning out three novels a year like clockwork, and I was told I intimidated a lot of the poetry scene because my dedication was apparently too intense for some of them. Funny how I envied them for having lives (and sex, but that’s another story).

And when I look back at my life, the twists and turns seemed to have more to do with life choices than how hard I worked or how smart I was. I’d certainly be a more successful man today if I’d liked computers when I was a kid (I didn’t even like video games that much) or gone to law school instead of grad school, but no telling if I’d be happier. Money for me has always been something you need to get through life, but not an end in of itself.

And the room at the top is getting smaller, thanks to everything from concentration of capital to technology making bestsellers bigger sellers, sucking book dollars away from the other writers. Newspapers laying off staff, TV and movies shoving aside community theaters, radio and records meaning fewer people going to fewer concerts so fewer musicians get hired…it hardly seems worth it, really, to have ambitious dreams. But at the same time, if you stop running on the treadmill it will throw you off and the landing will be a harsh reality.

Ah, well, tomorrow is another day, when I’ll be searching the Internet to see if any of my students plagiarized their papers. Sigh. If nothing else, at least I can teach those kids how easy it is to be caught.

While I was at the hotel in the morning I did a little channel flipping. While most of Chinese television is entertainment (brightly colored variety shows, kids’ cartoons, war movies, soap operas), I did find an English language news channel. It included a TV talk show called “Africa Talk” in which a reporter interviewed a professor and a politician, and all three of them were African. They were discussing Somalia, and the Somalian politician blamed government officials for treating their departments as fiefdoms instead of as a public trust, while the professor talked about how the clan system created small scale unity at the sacrifice of larger public life. There was also some talk of how Somalia would never work unless they gave up top-down solutions (imposed either by native or foreign powers) and adopted down-up, democratic solutions.

This was followed by the regular news, which was an expose of the problems with cigarette smoking in China, and what the government should do to decrease smoking. The first thing suggested by the guest was that the department responsible for decreasing smoking should not be the same department that sells them. The present Chinese government is in the same fix as the Soviet Union was with vodka. Both governments had major revenue streams from these sales (one third of the USSR’s revenues by the time it fell), and yet are both aware it is not in the public interest. My big surprise is that the argument was on a government run news channel. Mysterious are the ways of back door political maneuvering, I guess.

I went on a weekend trip with the English Department to Huaiyin, what the Chinese consider to be in the fourth rank because it only has a million or so people. Cities that are big enough to be their own administrative districts like Beijing and Shanghai are rank one, provincial capitals like Nanjing are rank two, and other important developing cities (Wuxi, Suzhou) are rank three. The hotel had better food than accommodations, and after a day of museum hopping we had a big banquet and I learned a Chinese card game called “Beat the Eggs,” the latest and most complicated version of the original “Beat the Landlord.”

We visited a museum dedicated to Zhou Enlai, the People’s Republic’s first foreign minister, and the Zhou Enlai city park. It really was a pretty park, with this strange tree that flowers bloomed right off the branch, so it looks like a tree without any leaves, but with purple flowers outlining its shape. Since I didn’t understand anything the museum’s guide said, the only thing I learned is that his wife was also prominent in politics, the ideal first lady by American reckoning, judging by some of the panels that had been posted in English.

I learned more at the Opera Museum; while the official tour guide was lecturing the professors in Chinese, one of the other museum employees and I eased into a conversation and, with the help of the dictionary in her phone, she explained some of the opera to me. The thing I found most interesting was origin of unusually long sleeves. The longer the sleeves, the more it indicated that the wearer did not have to work for a living, since some of those sleeves would make it impossible to even write, never mind do physical labor. I recall at least one culture that felt the same way about letting fingernails grow to unusual lengths as well.

We went to a museum about Huaiyin cuisine that went all the way back to the invention of rice. The only part I understood was this machine I found where you play a food pyramid game. If you pick the percentages of four categories of food to feed the computer illustration character, it shows the result as too fat, too thin, or just right. On the other hand, the building did include a lot of interesting paintings and carvings from ancient times of cooks, bakeries, and so on.

There was a Museum of Urbanization, illustrating the glories of urban development, mostly with images of real buildings from around the world and illustrations of their future plans for Huaiyin. I noticed that none of the illustrations included the smog, which is usually bad in China. Outside the Enlai park, a couple of teenage girls wanted to take photos with me, and then I offered to use their camera to take a photo with both of them in it. I do this a lot, actually, since Chinese people love taking photos of each other at famous places but the person with the camera is often left out. When I framed up the photo of them, I included the main building of the park just to the left, but the smog was so bad that the building wouldn’t show up. It freaked me out.

Then was the Museum of Marriage History, which had almost nothing inside it except for a giant bell you could bong for good luck, and the “Journey to the West” Museum, dedicated to the various depictions of this Chinese epic novel. It’s really dozens of folk tales tied together by a scholar about a monkey that drank from the waters of enlightenment, gained the intellect of a human and the powers of a minor god, but retained the basic attitude of a monkey. He was kicked out of the Heavens for drinking all the wine at a party he wasn’t invited to, and eventually allowed to redeem himself by protecting a Buddhist priest on his way to India to find the original Buddhist scrolls, defeating quite a number of demons and monsters along the way. I realize India is to the south of China, but given the terrain, at the time it was safer and probably faster to go around the mountains instead of straight through. The stories have been turned into operas, movies, television serials, and children’s cartoons. The Monkey King has also shown up as secondary characters in a movie played by Jackie Chan and a paranormal novel …

I never learned the name of the last museum we visited, but it specialized in photography. At first I thought the main exhibit was about women in the revolution, by which I mean from the beginning of the civil wars up to the introduction of color photography, since all but one of the photos was in black and white, but not all of the photos matched that theme. When I asked one of the professors, she explained that all the photos were taken by a Chinese general who not only loved photography but was also unusually fond of his wife (who was also in the army), so by extension lots of the photos were of women’s revolutionary groups in both the army and civilian life.

A side exhibit was of photos of rocks, which is more interesting than it sounds. I found it a little disorienting to realize that without context I had trouble telling the size of the rocks or the distance the lens was from the surfaces. It’s not that hard to imagine a rock you could hold in your hand made ten times the size that would look exactly the same if you were ten times further away. It says something about the patterns of nature that I don’t feel qualified to speak upon.

I’ve been reading Wai-Yee Li’s opinions of “The Dream of Red Mansions” and am exposed to yet another opinion of the main character, Jia Bao-Yu. I’ve heard of Jia referred to, by Chinese writers, as a great romantic lover, a wimpy milksop, and a sexual Peter Pan. The situation is complicated by the author dying before he finished the book, including deciding just how old Jia is, a factor that varies throughout the book (from six to sixteen). Wai-Yee’s take on the issue is that Jia represents “lust of the mind” (an unfortunate way of translating the concept, I fear) instead of “lust of the body.” “Lust of the body” is self-explanatory, while “lust of the mind” means a man appreciates the qualities, including the beauty, of many women, without necessarily intending to have sex with them (I suppose the concept could be applied to a variety of sexual orientations). Jia symbolizes a strange way station between romantic love and enlightened, universal love.

Unfortunately, his position as a lover (platonic or erotic) of all the women he knows (he refers to men being like mud and women like water), is only possible within the walled garden world of his family’s mansion. He is freed by wealth from earning a living or even going to school, and raised by women relatives and servants, with men, even his father, being only occasional intruders from the corrupt outer world. His life is one of sensitivity and poetry, not money and politics. That the women around him have other ideas for him besides attaining enlightenment through love (seeing him as the future heir to the family wealth) complicates his life and leads to many misunderstandings. The women around him are good people, but in a normal way instead of Jia’s metaphorical way.

I have swung back and forth on whether or not to adopt Bao-yu as my Chinese name, depending upon with of these theories I have most recently read. This one swings me back towards the idea, since living in China it is easy for me to appreciate the qualities of the women I meet. For me, friendship and love exist on a sliding scale, not across a divide. I’ve often been attracted to friends and remained friendly with ex-girlfriends. My ESL job is a little like the walled garden of Bao-Yu that makes it possible, relieving me of dealing with the often nonsensical, corrupt real world. My bosses generally leave me be, and I have plenty of spare time for the life of the mind.

I know some people find that strange, but the only difference between what I want in a friend and a girlfriend is the sexual attraction, so it makes perfectly good sense to me, and people who agree with me seem to have better romantic relationships than those who don’t. I would also say fewer relationships, which is in this case a compliment since the reason they have fewer relationships is because they lasted longer.

T’ao Ch’ien’s “Fu on Stilling the Passions”

I wish I were the collar of your dress,
On which lingers the fragrance of your beautiful head.
But when darkness falls, the silken garment is put aside:
I grieve that the autumn night is too long.

I wish I were the girdle of our skirt,
Which binds your gracious, slender body.
I sight that as warmth and chill vary,
You may shed the old one and don the new.

I wish I were the gloss on your hair,
Which brushes the dark tresses on your sloping shoulders.
I grieve that the fair one bathes often,
For the glass fades and spends itself with water.

I wish I were the tai dye on your eyebrow,
Which follows your gaze as it rises and roams.
I grieve that rouge and powder must ever stay fresh,
For elaborate make up renewed will be my unmaking.

I wish I were the kuan reeds made into the mat,
On which your delicate body rests till autumn.
I grieve that my place will be taken by the patterned quilt,
And it will be another year before I am sought again.

I wish I were the silk made into the slippers
In which your white feet are shod as they tarry.
I grieve that walking and stopping each has it moments-
In vain will I be discarded at your bedside.

I daytime I wish I were your shadow
Constantly clinging to your form as you go east and west.
I grieve that tall trees cast too much shade,
And lament the times when we are not one.

At night I wish I was your candle
Illuminating your jade like face between two columns.
I grieve that as the sun spreads its light,
My own is in a trice extinguished, my brightness hidden.

I wish I were the bamboo made into the fan
Producing a keen breeze in your soft clasp.
I grieve that come the morning when white dew forms,
I will look at your lapels and sleeves from afar.

I wish I were the wood of the wu-t’ung tree
Made into a resonant ch’in on your lap.
I grieve that music – like joy- when intense must turn into sadness,
And you will ultimately push me away and stop the music.

I just had an annoying teaching experience. Jasmine came over asking for help with her textbook, and things were fine until it became apparent that what she really wanted was for me to do the work for her. She is hardly the first person to try that on me, so I dodged it with only mild irritation. The real kicker was that after I showed her how Thackeray was using actions, adjectives, and dialogue to reveal character, she wanted to know what techniques he used. “Action, adjective, and dialogue,” I said. “Yes,” she said, “but what are the techniques?” As it turns out, she wanted to know academic jargon for using actions, adjectives, and dialogue to reveal character. I was flabbergasted, because not only did I not know such words, I did not suspect that such words might be necessary. I’m fairly certain that there is some sort of “rule of writing” against using more complicated words than necessary, but if anyone is going to break that rule, it would be English professors and therefore their unfortunate graduate students. I was also surprised because usually when students as me to explain something, it is because I can explain ideas without the confusing code words their professors use.

I’ve been reading about marriage in China. Apparently in China they have a new word “shengwu” which means leftover women. These women have been so busy becoming successful that they age out; Chinese men find women who are over thirty unattractive and women who are too successful intimidating. They also have a word for men who are too poor and stuck out on the family farm so they can’t marry either; it translates as “bare branches,” but I forget the Chinese word.

China apparently also has the highest percentage of self-made woman billionaires in the world. I suspect this is because our economy was already relatively mature by the time feminism hit the workplace, while in China capitalism and feminism have been expanding apace. I also suspect that when Western investors come to China, they don’t care very much about the gender of who they are dealing with, because while they were raised in an economy with less room to let in the up and coming, they were also raised by feminists.

One of my Chinese friends said her grandmother would teach me some simple Chinese dishes, but when I met her at the café to walk to their apartment she told me that when her grandfather found out he insisted on treating a foreigner as an honored guest. This would mean a lot of work for the grandmother making a big feast and the dishes might be too complicated for me to replicate in my simple kitchen.

Apparently a compromise couldn’t be reached, so instead I spent a couple of hours in a café with my friend just chatting. When my friend found out that I had a kitchen, she said she’d get some recipes and teach me herself. We also chatted about her cousin, who likes flaunting money to attract women and then dumping them for just liking him for his money. Based on that and some other things she told me, I suspect some deep insecurities in this guy. We also talked about exercising, and it turns out when she goes to the gym she likes to spend an hour running, an hour in body combat class (the gym’s version of Tae Bo, kicking and boxing to music), and then an hour taking some other class, and sometimes this is on top of teaching little kids all day, which is exhausting in of itself. Since she knows how to swim and bike, I suggested she try a triathlon. I know I would if I could exercise as long as she does.

more than I do justice to.

One of my American colleagues has managed to alienate almost American I know and a few of the Chinese (who can be very patient with their foreign colleagues). She said something racist about Chinese to a Chinese-American professor (no one will tell me what), had a shouting match a couple of nights ago with an American (two of my friends heard it through their bedroom wall), and then, in front of other students, told a female student with a masculine name that it was okay to be a lesbian as long as she knew about HIV. Now granted, the student can be a bit of a tomboy, being captain of her basketball team, but even if the teacher had jumped to the correct conclusion, she shouldn’t go around outing students’ sexual preferences. Then she “changed” the student’s English name to a woman’s name, at least in her records.

Homosexuality is becoming more and more acceptable in China. I’ve only lived here six years and can see the change. I knew a man of my generation who I think became an alcoholic suppressing his sexuality; his marriage is not a happy one. But my students use homosexuality more and more as a theme in their class skits, experimenting with their feelings about it, I suppose. On the other hand, I don’t know anyone who has “come out” in Nanjing University.

The biggest cultural block against homosexuality in China right now might be the one-child policy. If parents can only have one child, they want that child to marry and have a child; there’s no Social Security system here, so people are more dependant upon their children and grandchildren in their old age. Ironically, that same policy has probably pushed feminism, since only having one child means the urban parents will invest in that child whether a she or a he.

Last quick point: I told my students to write essays giving bad advice but to make it sound good. Their two most popular topics involved becoming popular and finding a place to sit down (in the cafeteria, on the bus, etc.). That’s life in China.