a few 'tings (oh wait, that was Jamaica)

ah! things have been awesome here, but very busy. Napatra and I went to Suzhou this weekend, I had my final oral exam about 18 hours ago, my final written test in 5 hours, and I'm leaving for Beijing in approximately 15 hours! It's going to be rad--especially about seeing the ridiculous architecture for the Beijing Olympics and going to the Night Market to eat a Scorpion on a Stick !

I wanted to post something here that my roommate, Cuisang (PONG), wrote for our weekly newsletter last week. It describes a trip we all made two weekends ago and is really quite good--I hope you enjoy. It is pasted below with permission, and the picture shows Napatra and I (kind of dark) with the traditional architecture and river in the background:

"XiTang (西塘) is an ancient canal town in Zhejiang province replete with preserved Ming and Qing dynasty-style architecture and gardens. A two-hour bus ride from Hangzhou (杭州), it has been called the "Venice of the East," although this has been said of the other similar canal towns in China in Suzhou（苏州）and elsewhere. Bus trips to more remote ancient towns like Xitang seem to be almost completely monopolized by domestic tour companies, as the drive there is too inconvenient for most individual tourists to make alone. Large signs advertising Xitang started in Hangzhou and continued to appear along the highway to Xitang. The trip along the highway was a glimpse of modern China outside of the big city—large-scale industrial development sites were located alongside hand-tilled farmland.

"Traditional towns and neighborhoods like Xitang that are tagged by the government preservation are heavily advertised for their cultural and historical value. Tour groups come and go and eventually help finance, in the wake of camera clicking, a new lifestyle for those who live in the towns. As a result, what used to be a sleepy, poor fishing and farming town on the outskirts of a large city soon becomes a tourist trap, a place where visitors can take pictures, buy overpriced goods, complain about how touristy the place is, and learn a little about how the town used to be during ancient times. By one measure of the word, this is success—culture has been preserved, the economic well-being of the townspeople has been enriched. On the other hand, this is a big failure—nothing but the façade of buildings and a few cultural relics in display cases has been preserved. Xitang's long-standing lifestyle of poor self-sufficiency has been replaced by opportunistic and also opportunity-giving tourist-dependency. In fact, it is neither a complete success nor a complete failure; it exists as another example of old vs new, government vs people, preservation vs progress; or any other dichotomous view of China. Xitang is full of culture yet lacking in culture, a relic and a model, a success and failure, an allegory yet also reality. "

And now something to perhaps lighten the mood: translation difficulties! Cuisang and I recently came across some tasty 休闲饼干，which roughly translates as "Leisure Biscuit." But the true rough translation exposes itself on the wrapper. The one and only English sentence--that is not even accompanied by a Chinese sentence (apparently having English words is just "cool")--reads as follows:

"Increase into the real object material of original flavor, through dispensing of science, in really ideal good product that enjoy of delicacy."



Happy Father's Day!