[Oe List ...] Salmon: Posters part of "legacy" conversation

Wed Dec 8 05:07:22 CST 2010

Yo Pastor Bill:

Two years in Saskatchewan did not prepare me for Dong Bei China by the Amur River, especially after the blizzard that hit central Asia (and Europe).

Here's a reflection that the Saipan Tribune carried.  The usual caveat: if curious, you are welcome; not, see you at the next bend.

(Looking forward to getting the poster.  Now I do not have to tack 9 separate sheets on the wall!)

LIFE & STYLE
Saturday, November 27, 2010

DONG BEI TREK 10:
Frolicking with bears

By Jaime R. Vergara
Special to the Saipan Tribune

Right next to the Nationality House where Hu Jintao and wife Liu Yongqing (classmates at Tsinghua University and professional colleagues prior to Hu's political ascendancy) would billet the Obamas is a massive statue of a woman lifting up a child in pride and celebration. The two-character Mu Qin (mother) marking the sculpture represents inter alia the source of life and name for the province, Heilongjiang, aka Amur River; it is very telling about the culture's affinity to nature and its forces.

Western cartoonists represent Russians as bears, usually in a pejorative sense of a burly beer-gutted, pot-bellied Paul Bunyan with a vaudevillian tragicomic innocence of a Fred Simpson. Along the Amur River promenade are statues of five figures-a Papa and Mama bear who I named Ivan and Katrina, with three children, a girl hanging on to Mama bear I called Marushka, and two boys right behind her, Igor and Boris. This was my favored Russyan statue at the park where in a rare two hours of sun and blue skies, Mother Nature was kind enough to give us a break from the cold. 

Snow had pretty much defined the ambience of this sojourn in Heihe. The place was blanketed by snow the day I arrived and I was pleasantly surprised to see couples-male and female-working as a team scraping the tamped snow on sidewalks and streets. 

I ran into a retired travel agent with basic English proficiency driving an unmarked taxi outside the train station, meeting travelers and offering local accommodations. Because he spoke recognizable English (Russian and Putunghua are the native tongues) and guaranteed a taxi flat charge of 5 Rmb (less than a dollar), I consented to his offered assistance. A former officer in the Army, he explained that since I did not have the requisite national I.D., I could not check-in to the inexpensive hostels. He said that if the hotel he was taking me to offered a lower rate than the published one as long as I did not require a receipt, he would look the other way. Screwing government revenue seems to be a universal pastime!

As we previously wrote, Changshun in neighboring Jilin is the automotive center of China. Slip control systems are tested in Heihe, along with cold weather engine performance. But pollution is high in the winter, evident in the photos I took of Blagoveshchensk's skyline during the two-hour clear sky window of opportunity. We've hammered the fact that China uses tons of coal but to its credit, it is investing heavily in carbon capture technology, inviting others to do the same in the upcoming Cancun UN Conference to follow up the Kyoto Protocol. 

I planned in the late '60s, after finishing graduate school in the United States, to take the Paris train to St. Petersburg on to Moscow, and then get on the Trans-Siberian rail to Vladivostok, catch a ferry to Japan and return to Pea Eye to begin a professional career. I got married instead, dropped out of school, and ended up cleaning out some ancient cobwebs in my mind. The journey has been an unconventional one ever since.

When I discovered that the needed Russian visa to cross the border was not readily available in Heihe, I resigned to the fact that sighting the Trans-Siberian rail will have to wait another day. I received these words from a Suihua University grad who was eager to exercise her dormant memory of six years of English studies, and is currently learning Russian at Amur State University: “You'll regret going through the process of going to Russia from Heihe, and if you get there, you'll regret it some more.” Though not evident from a distance except at night when Heihe is gaudily carnival lit while Russia across the river is dark, it appears that the frequent cross traffic is of Russkyes to China, more than the other way around. 

Growing up with the “eat your dinner, dear; think of the starving kids in China” words that my mother picked up from the missionaries, I really had this stereotyped image of poor frontier China in mind. I suspect I have the same with regards to far eastern Russia but mistakenly more so of northeast China. With the visa contradiction, I dropped the intent and explored Heihe instead. China of today is not just modernizing; it is thoroughly modern. The Manchuria of Moscow and the Manchukuo of Japan are long gone. Dong Bei is alive and polluted like the rest of the planet in the 21st century.

The big surprise was being confronted by the piped music at the downtown shopping promenade. Beethoven's Fur Elise is universal, and Kenny G had done traditional Chinese music in his soprano saxophone so hearing his standard played in public was no surprise, even a couple of pop tunes from Whitney Houston and an unfamiliar star did not raise a hair, but when the theme to the movie Chariots of Fire was played, I was bowled over with emotions since this was our processional and recessional music during the 6th Grade ending ceremonies at SVES. Already I sensed, I had not wandered too far from home! This proved true as I frolicked at the park by the river. Then the penultimate symbol of the “craziness” of the area emerged: a swimming pool (inset) carved out of the ice on the Amur Oblask where Putin's bears and Hu's pandas out-machismo each other in plunging into the icy waters to radically charge their metabolisms!

In an appropriate bookend, the snow dusting last night that sent us off back to Shenyang was pristine to the naked eye, though our particular knowledge of carbon residues made us aware of the heavy toxicity in the air. Heihe is a glocal city, mu qin, warts, and all.

“Going home?” my ex-travel acquaintance hollered when he saw me at the train station. I smiled and without telling him I was not too far from home, I responded loudly with my only Russian: “Da.”

****

If you got this far, you are one of the curious.  The accompanying photo is larger on the web: 
http://www.saipantribune.com/newsstory.aspx?newsID=104978&cat=4

and if you have time, check out the other trek reports and if you have not have enough ESL punctuation and grammar peculiarities, mosey over to the Opinion section.  Check out the one on "Responsibility".

Jaime

For all that was, thanks; for all that will be, yes; for all that is, let it be.

-----Original Message-----
From: William Salmon <wsalmon at cox.net>
To: OE at wedgeblade.net
Sent: Wed, Dec 8, 2010 10:17 am
Subject: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Posters part of "legacy" conversation

    Speaking of conversations on "our legacy!"     
    Today, I received the 20th poster request. Fortunately, I have one of mine I can send until I can replace it at the printer. They were mailed last Saturday, so I'm assuming that between now and Wednesday everyone will have their copy. 
    Every one is paid up! Oh, well, Jaime is wandering off somewhere almost in Russia but on the other side of the Amur River. He says he is freezing his . . . ah, well, he'll return eventually to Saipan and get warm again. When he gets home he can open his poster and remember to send me a Chezk. 
    I purchased 28" X 22" frames at Hobby Lobby for $9.00 each. The posters will need a little trimming, so next time I'm going to ask the printer to size them before I take them home. Sorry about this.  
    In the event you like what you see, share the news with your colleagues at OE. The printer keeps things on file for 5 years! So, colleagues, celebrate our legacy by having a copy of these beautiful charts. 
    Pay Pal is a useful, and a quick method of payment. People can sign on really easy, and this organization provides a method for assuring delivery and to settle disagreements. It costs the sender nothing while the recipient pays a small fee to cover the protection. Go to the web and write in "Pay Pal."  
    Of course, sending the checks by US mail gets the job done too; even for Jaime
    Inner Peace, yaw'al.
    Bill 

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