News from China
by Peter Miller
We are most fortunate to have Peter provide us with some stories and information from China and we will look forward to hearing more of his life in that part of the world and about the area in general.
Peter is the grandson of Claude Bradford and Lola Culpepper McBrayer of Gadsden, Alabama.
October 18, 2010:
3rd Installment
In my last posting I said I would tell what transpired in the TV show 'China's Got Talent'. The twenty-something year old winner has no arms. His name is Liu Wei and at 5 years old, he grabbed a high voltage cable and his arms were virtually destroyed and so they both were amputated. He had an armless mentor at the therapy clinic that led him to new horizons. He learned to eat with his feet, brush his teeth, and can even put his shirt and shoes on without help. Soon he started playing the piano and practiced 7 hours per day. In the Chinese system, one can be graded by their playing abilities and Liu scored a 7 out of a possible 10. He also is a handicapped championship swimmer and competes often. A Chinese on-line Magazine for English speaking readers, Global Times, ran the story on Liu's win with the copy editor asleep. The title of their story was 'Lifeless Ordinary'. It's funny what one little space can do for English comprehension. Life Less Ordinary has a little better meaning, don't you think?
Grammatics aside, Liu beat out a 6 year old girl whose talent was dry comedy. She would scorn and mock the arrogant and haughty Ryan Seacrest-like Chinese host/judge, with not a hint of a smile on her face while the audience were rolling with laughter in their seats. She recited all this for about 10 straight minutes non-stop and just through memory of her monologue even pausing like Letterman while the audience were beside themselves. Thoroughly questioned by the judges afterward, her humor came thru and with quick ad-libbed retorts, that still had the audience in uncontrollable hee-haws. Still she was as straight-faced as a funeral director. After the 1st show, I told Yanlin that she needed to smile at least when they finished, or she would not win. Yanlin told me that was part of her 'act' was not to smile. So in the final show they did a filmed profile of her at home, and then I saw why she didn't smile. She is a typical 6 year old and lost her front baby teeth!!! I told Yanlin this was the reason for no smile, and Yanlin was adamant "No, was just her act". So then the judges asked her why she didn't ever smile. She said she smiles all the time back home, though with millions of viewers watching she did not want to show her toothless smile. I was right!! The judges finally asked her to smile. She did smile and was barely discernible as she still defiantly did not open her mouth.
My favorite was a ballet couple, though maybe they were a little too over-exposed, as I had seen them perform on TV several times before and maybe the judges thought they were a little too professional, compared to the 'off-the-street' talent they were competing against. These two performed as I had seen before, and every time brings me to tears when I watch them. You see, the lovely woman dancer only has one arm and the handsome male with just one leg. Their previous performances had the guy with one crutch doing flawless catches and pirouettes and whatever ballet dancers are suppose to do. This happy bright couple's emotions seemed to overflow mine. This final performance, he propped with a wheel chair and still a remarkable performance and unbelievable acrobatics, though in my opinion the 'crutch' performance is superior to the chair. At least to my tear streaked face.
There were 8 performances or contestants and when it came down to selecting who would go on and who would walk away, really astounded me. The show would pit 2 performers together on stage. Then "the envelope, please". The winner from the two would be announced and each time would surprise me. The winner was always sullen faced as if they had lost and the loser was always smiling graciously with teeth shining. Cultural disparities smacking me in the face, totally confused me on who won or lost!!
The moral of my story is not obvious to the western eye, I guess. Here are humans overcoming! Not perfect as we seem to choose our performers in America. The 6 year old with her missing teeth, versus the not mentioned, horizontally challenged singer that sang notes from her heart that was beyond reason and her own pitch, yet adored from and admired thru her self belief. Or the 50 year old set of lady dancers overstepping to the beat of hip-hop in short sexy dresses competing against a husband and wife love story, country folk, who are street vendors selling spicy duck necks by day and singing off-key love duets for 'China's (definitely) Got Talent' by night.
October 14, 2010 - Had some time so wrote more as follows:
2nd installment
Carl just sent me an email about my first article I submitted and added that while he was preparing it for publication on our Website, an earthquake struck Oklahoma, near Norman and he said initial reports that it was 4.5 tremor and later I read was Oklahoma's 2nd biggest ever at 5.1.
Just this past summer, one of China's famous movie directors, Feng Xiaogang, made a movie named 'Aftershock', which is the English title. This movie is about the Tangshan earthquake that killed over 255,000 people on 28 July 1976 and is believed to be the worst catastrophe from an earthquake ever. It measured 7.8. Now what is really the shocker (no pun intended) is that Tangshan, situated not far from China's capitol, Beijing (about 90 miles east), in Hebei Province, is not in a known 'earthquake zone'. There was never any tremors previous to the 7.8 quake nor since.
Not to give away the story, I'll not give the details, though the movie tells the fictional account of a husband and wife with fraternal twins, and after the husband is killed in the earthquake, the mother finds her two children alive and trapped under a concrete slab. If the rescuers try to rescue one of them, the other will be crushed. So she has to choose. A quick decision must be made. Save the boy or save the girl? A choice no mother would want to make. I recommend this movie, and though it is in Chinese, there are English subtitles. Oh, wait! There is some spoken English, and am not sure whom is the actor that plays the role, though why didn't Feng hire a real actor for this part? I think the filmmakers just picked a foreigner (American or Canadian) off the street. Not very good acting from the ONLY non-Chinese in the movie. Thank heavens he had just a small part in the movie, bless his soul.
Later in the movie and later in China's earthquake history, is a real account of the more recent earthquake that hit Sichuan Province on 12 May 2008 and measured 7.9 and killed over 70,000 people. What truly happened is a mother found her daughter alive under a concrete slab, and the rescuers could not save her unless they amputated her leg. The mother made the decision. Happily, just a few months later after the 2008 Beijing Olympics ended and immediately followed the world Paralympic Games also in Beijing, this same girl was there with a beaming smile and a heart to match taking in all the experience of other impaired athletes competing, which am sure was inspiring to her.
In a later issue, will tell you about last week's TV show 'China's Got Talent' and who won and not less interesting, who didn't. This was the final show after several weeks of elimination. Will tell you the winner has no arms and plays the piano wonderfully with his feet (a feat, pun intended, not matched anywhere in the world)!!!
My fiance's elderly father and I are not on speaking terms. Nor with his daughters or the ai yi (care giver) nor with his 4 grandchildren. He's not mad at us. He just prefers not to speak!! He has mostly a grin on his face all the time and is fed and clothed and bathed and though feeble, seems to enjoy his life. Yanlin told me a tale, when she was young (maybe 2 years old) that a relative who lived far away in another province didn't have children and wanted though she and her husband couldn't conceive. They asked Yanlin's mother if they could take Yanlin's twin, Kelly to live with them. It was agreed, as times were hard and one less mouth to feed, and who would miss just one with 3 girls still at home. So Yanlin was separated from her twin sister. Yanlin's father worked in another province far away and came home just on holidays, and the next holiday home he was informed of this, and was very angry. As usual, without saying a word, he immediately got back on a train to the relatives, fetched Kelly back home, and all lived happily ever after. Nowadays when Yanlin and Kelly get on the phone together, seems they talk endlessly and forever, and they live just 15 minutes apart and chat on-line daily. What could they be talking about? Twins + women, what communicators they are!!! I guess they never were interrupted talking to each other by their silent father when they were growing up.
(more later)
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October 13, 2010 -- by Peter Miller. I live in China. Shanghai to be exact. Pudong to be more accurate. Pudong is where the tallest building in China is, The World Financial Center and just across the street from the WFC is the 2nd tallest building in China, The Jin Mao Tower.
Now probably none of you has experienced living where BIG BIG buildings are, though to give you an idea, I live not far from these 2 buildings(about 3 miles) and they are surrounded, in Shanghai's financial district, by other relatively tall buildings, as these buildings I see from my house also. Shanghai is flat with no noticeable hills. So I can go about 10 or 15 miles away from where I live, and still see these 2 mammoths, yet I cannot see the other buildings that surround them.
I first moved to China in 1998, as the company I worked for, transferred me to Beijing. I enjoyed my time in Beijing and my daughter Laura enjoyed her culturally diverse International School. The task I was presented with in my work, did not work to my satisfaction, as the company I worked for was Swiss and my job was to promote China/USA traffic. The management in Beijing and Hong Kong were European and all they supported was traffic to Europe as all the big bosses were from Switzerland.
I moved back to Nashville, Tennessee were I lived before moving to China in 2000. Then in 2002 was offered a position with a German freight forwarding company as their Route Development Manager for China/USA. This meant I had to move to their USA headquarters on Long Island, New York.
I surprisingly enjoyed New York, as I got to play golf at the nearby Bethpage Black Course, where the 2002 and 2009 US Opens were held. Also in nearby Flushing, NY, is an all encompassing Chinatown, unlike the Chinatown on Manhattan. Wonderful food there. Plus I traveled extensively, up and down the East coast and took bi-monthly trips to China.
In 2003, I moved to a small city in China, named Suzhou, pop.6 million, which is about an hour drive due west of Shanghai, in Jiangsu Province. In 2005 I moved to Shanghai and have been living here since. I look out the window of the building I live in and am surrounded by other tall buildings that house people. I think just in my block, must be the entire 35,000 population equivalent of the city I grew up in Gadsden, Alabama, which at that time was the 4th biggest city in Alabama. Just 1 block here in Shanghai!!!
I live with my fiancee whom is Shanghainese, in her family owned home on the 7th floor,which has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, kitchen, living room and dining room and outdoor balcony. My fiancee has a 16 year old son, Tony, and elderly father whom is cared for by a live-in ai yi (maid/cook/care giver).
When I go to work, I take a very crowded bus to the subway station and takes about 15 minutes. At the subway station, which Shanghai probably boast as being the most modern and covers more track mileage as any in the world, and has 13 Lines presently, I take Line 2 to my work which is 6 stops and takes about 15 to 20 minutes. From there I walk maybe 10 minutes to my office on the 19th floor of a 30 story building.
Yanlin is my fiancee's name, though in her work she is known as Angela. She is the youngest of her family and has 3 older sisters. She is only younger than a couple of minutes from her twin sister Kelly who lives not far away with her husband and 15 year old daughter Amy. Her oldest sister and middle sister both live in Tokyo, Japan and help run the family Chinese restaurant there. Her middle sister's 2nd husband just died after just 6 months being married. He was Japanese and only 55 years old.
Yanlin is beautiful inside and out. She can cook great and sometimes surprises me with some western style dishes such as beef fillet or spaghetti or makes me delicious sandwiches or a western style salad. Most the time the ai yi cooks and she is from a different province than Shanghai. I prefer Yanlin's Chinese cooking.
Surprisingly some of the Chinese dishes are similar to what I had growing up in Alabama. Lima beans with turnip greens!!! Chinese families will have more than one meat they serve with dinner. We eat fish, and pork and chicken in the same meal. Always there is soup for dessert. Yes, Chinese don't eat sweets for dessert, though always end their meal with soup. And other than restaurant eating, when at home rarely drink anything with their meal. Maybe it is because we eat 'family style' and not one plate servings as we do in Amercia, and to get your food, a drink would get in the way of serving your rice bowl. I use 'chop sticks' called qui ze in Chinese. I do use a spoon to reap the gravy or sauce from the prepared dishes to spoon over my bowl of rice.
I think my favorite dish is called fan qi chow dan, or eggs and tomato ....served over rice or pasta (noodles). First you scramble 2 or 3 eggs. Put them aside after cooking, then chop tomatoes and cook them with a little oil and water and flavoring to your liking. In the final minute of cooking, add back the scrambled egg. Wonderful!!!
More of my life later. | |
