Arrestin' A-Restin'

A Blogpost
By
Thomas J. Mask-on-neck

Edited By
Lisa A. Zoomy-yak

Table of Contents:

I. Confucius' 2558th Birthday Bash!
II. National Day (or is it Week?)
III. Book City
IV. Sloth: Our Favorite Deadly Sin

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Chapter I:
Confucius' 2558th Birthday Bash!

*I promise this is the longest chapter*

Thursday afternoon, amidst the crooning saxophone solo of Kenny G that signifies "class dismissed," our teacher asked us to see her after class, a request that strikes fear into the heart of any schoolchild. As we perspired from the fear that our passports had been revoked or that CCP had finally come to take us away for good, she pulled out a newspaper clipping and explained to us that the next day, at the Harbin Confucian Temple, there was a ceremony for Confucius' birthday, with traditional music, costumes, etc., and that the school would like us to go. Being good Confucians in training, we were unable to say no to our teacher and thus planned to attend. Oh yeah, and we had to meet up at 8 AM on a day when we have afternoon classes.

That night, we cursed our filial piety and tried to hurriedly do all our homework in the few hours remaining before bedtime. We had planned to do this work Friday morning, but with our new plan, all hope was lost and we failed to finish all our homework on time for the first time. It's okay, though, because homework and in-class work and participation together is only worth 10% of our grade (not that the grade even matters).

So Friday morning, we loaded bus with our fellow exchange students, including a handful of Korean girls, a few fellow Americans, a kind Polish gent, a few African guys, a smarmy (and really short, ha ha ha) American guy who's been living in Harbin for 6 years and refuses to speak English, and, of course, faculty and staff. A guy from Portland told us that they asked us on such short notice because they needed more white faces for the pictures in the papers, and we laughed that all but one of the Russians had skipped out on the excursion.

The temple we found was beautifully restored and/or maintained, with newly-painted roofs, a red carpet, streamers, slogan-banners everywhere. Traditionally-robed Chinese people stood, lined in perfect formation like imperial steles, in preparation for the festival. Groups of schoolchildren in jumpsuits and businesspeople (or teachers?) in pantsuits waited at the sidelines with baskets of flowers. It was a beautiful sight to behold on first glance.

Yet, as the festival began and on a closer inspection, all the cracks in the surface became apparent. The people standing by ancient lutes (guqin) never moved the whole time; instead, cheesy synthesizer-lute music was blared through crackling speakers at a deafening volume. The traditionally-robed dancers wore barely-concealed tennis shoes beneath black cloth foot-coverings, and half of these dancers, once relieved of their duty, were finally allowed to put their glasses on. The bringing of baskets to the Confucian altar took more than 30 minutes, and all the while, no one besides the MC was actually paying attention.

So, the ceremony itself was quite boring, but what was more interesting to me was the fact that they still did it, even though the Communist government (in the Mao era) condemned Confucianism as feudalistic and reactionary, even though you'd be hard-pressed to find Chinese youths who can recite from the Analects, even though most people here know more about Bill Gates than about Mozi, even though no one really cared. Something about Confucianism has stuck with the Chinese people, and it seems at least the form, at least going through the motions is important. The toppling of the imperial system in 1911, the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the chaotic half-republic half-warlord era of the 1920s, the Japanese oppression of the 1930s, the civil war of the 1940s, the Communist overturning of life in the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, the opening and reforms since the 1980s - none of these have been able to completely stamp out the Confucian tradition, thought now it may be burrowed in meaningless ceremonies and in the deep recesses of the Chinese subconscious.

[Editor's note: Yes, boring, and cold and irritating because people were constantly, shamelessly taking our pictures just because we're foreigners and did I mention boring? - EXCEPT for the performance of the cutest little boys and girls who did a little dance on a giant "ink bowl" and then danced with a seven foot long calligraphy "brush" to "paint" the characters for China on a giant poster. AWWW.]

Chapter II:
National Day (or is it Week?)

It seems this time of year has an abundance of celebrations: Moon Festival, Confucius' birthday, and National Day. To us, though, National Day is the only one that matters because it means we get a week off of school (this week). Also, we don't have to eat mooncakes again. National Day is a time when Chinese children carry around bright red-and-yellow flags and shops close early and students satisfy their wanderlust by traveling around. We, however, love Harbin so much that we're just hanging around the city and seeing the sites! We want to go to the siberian tiger park, some shopping areas, the temples, and just explore the city now that we have some free time.

Oh yeah, and we're almost broke. But that has nothing to do with why we're staying here. Absolutely nothing.

Chapter III:
Book City

So, we've been spending our mornings with slowly-cooked (due to our grogginess, not our culinary methods) diner-style breakfasts of hash browns or home fries or fried eggs or french toast or whatever and COFFEE. This is a wonderful little treat that reminds us of the good ol' US of A.

Sunday, we decided to go to the gigantic bookstore on Xue Fu Lu (Study-vicinity-road) that I had heard would have good English-language books. The place is a hub of all kinds of trade, including clothes, food, maps, footwear, school supplies, and more - the kind of hub that develops around any busy area in China. The bookstore consists of five giant floors, and is so large that it's not called a bookstore (shu dian) but a book city (shu cheng). The English-language stuff was on the fifth floor, so we made our climb through swarms of people, hoping for a little bit of paradise.

What we found was quite eclectic. There was a whole section of literary anthologies and books of literary criticism, which I'm guessing is a bunch of textbooks for college students majoring in English - they even had critical books on such difficult postmodern authors as Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo (neither of which I could imagine would be understandable to anyone without a near-native grasp of English). In another section, they had the entire Chicken Soup for the Soul series, plus many dozens more that were clear spin-offs from the original series (you should now be thinking, as we were, why? Regardless of how you feel about the books, weren't there plenty the first time around?), and a bunch of abridged classics. There were also poorly-translated books of Chinese poetry, shelves about Dale Carnegie and Bill Gates, and racks of books on American culture, customs, humor, etc.

After browsing though all of this, we finally found a few things that we really wanted: 1) several books by Lin Yutang, a Chinese author from the early 20th century who wrote in English about Chinese culture, 2) a table of fiction in English, from which we chose Kafka's The Castle, and 3) a series of comic books about traditional Chinese culture, from which we chose a book on Zen stories. It was a successful trip after all.

Chapter IV:Sloth: Our Favorite Deadly Sin

The downside of this trip to the book store is that it has practically immobilized us. We've become glued to our books, only getting up for the bathroom or the kitchen, and immediately re-immersing ourselves in those other worlds contained within softbound covers. Yesterday (Monday), we barely left the apartment all day, and today's not looking much better.

But I think we deserve this. We've been working hard at our Chinese language classes and have barely had time for good, creative, critical thinking. Besides, even God took a rest on his seventh day. I think I'll just consider this a good old-fashioned Sabbath.

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About the Author

Thomas J. Mask-on-neck is a self-aggrandizing blogger who grew up in Northeast Ohio as a relatively normal child. One day, a bucket of toxic waste fell from the sky and onto Thomas, burning into his spinal column, just beneath his skull, super-powers of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Gradually, the arithmetic wore off, but what remained was the makings of a hopeful literary giant who would conceal the scar on his neck with his famous mask. Currently, he lives in Harbin, China, where he studies Chinese language.

About the Editor

Lisa A. Zoomy-yak is exasperated.

Acknowledgments

I'd like to thank Lisa for experiencing all of this with me and always being there. I'd also like to thank our wonderful families for their love and support, as well as you, the readers, who make this possible.

Critical Acclaim for Arrestin' A-Restin'

"The blogpost burst like a shell over the Western world." -The New York Times Blog Review
"It cured my cod!" -Billy Graham
"You're so weird!" -Zoomy-yak
"He's got the magic stick" -50 Cent

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FACT-HAPPENING POST-SCRIPT
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We're working on a long, photographic (dare I say, cinematic?) update in comic-book style. We will publish it in parts . . . whenever we feel like it! Aww, snap!