Memories of Nanjing, China

As many of you know (or may not), I love to illustrate my blog with my own images of my travels as I go through this world.  I hope you enjoy the images and get a sense of what I was feeling along the way.  Nanjing is a very special city for me because I felt the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Many of these images was from my daily life.  From the Garden of the 12 Heavenly Gates where few westerners went (I never saw any, but I would frequent there to watch the couples dance under the moonlight), to images from the campuses of Nanjing University of Astronautics and Aeronautics which was built on the grounds of the ancient palace of Nanjing.

Enjoy the walk with me.

Settling In During Unsettled Times

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

 Dr. Martin Luther King Junior

The day before I left Nanjing, I went back down to my favorite park, as if I wanted to thank it for all of the simple lessons I learned when I would come down here to walk on the Palace Grounds ruins.  The old palace that once stood here with the ming lions standing guard.  Often I wondered why I just seemed to keep coming back to this place.  Nature had grown over these ruins that had been set aside to simply show that dynasties do collapse, what was once too big to fail had fallen all because there was a simple man who observed the actions of the elite, not caring about the welfare of the people.  A lion, that held the flower of life, the chi ball, displaying the power, which many are not aware that resides in each person.  China, holds still, the belief of the Mandate of Heaven.  If things need to change, then they will. I kept going and decided to go within the city.

As I walked around and looked at the crush of advertising and western images come in from all of the MNEs, telling them how badly they needed their products to have happy lives, I stared.  Microsoft showing their images displaying two different realities, is just one example of how fear is a factor in product marketing.  The false images that seems to just push forward a message that reads, "you are not good enough unless you have our products in your life."  I remembered my messages to my students, reminding them that they are fine just the way they are.  You don't need your teeth whitened, your skin doesn't need a pile of makeup, the clothes you make are your self expression, and your hair is beautiful as it is.  There is a fine line between taking care of yourself and turning into a photo-shopped image that is just like everyone else along the way.

It was early the next morning as I looked at the rising sun at the airport getting ready to leave.  Yes, it was both hard and easy to go.  It was hard, because I learned how I had been so afraid to come here.  I was swimming with my own preconceived notions about how I would 'fit in'.  I had so little knowledge about China.  I was completely ignorant about their lives, culture, and thought about how I watched each myth and preconceived notion shattered along the way.  Whenever I would hear news about human rights violations, I would laugh and think of all of our actions.  We sank to a level of targeting people, which because our 'enemies' would do it, that all of a sudden made it OK for us to do the same thing.  We used to be better than that.  We ignore what we do to each other, and find it easier to tear apart other countries, often not realizing that we are often the worst offenders on the planet.  We use the most resources, and yet have still to stand up to the corporations to demand change.  We stay divided, and yet the one thing I learned in China, that right or wrong...they stand together as a unified people.  Something the rest of the world has to learn how to do.  They don't let religion divide them.  They don't let their differences divide them.  They learn how to change from within.  They work together to solve problems and they have not let money be their god.  There was a lot I learned when I came here to teach English.  I thought of myself more as a student, than a teacher.  Where I was not able to go in the world, students from those parts of the world came to me.  We honored each other, respected one another and made great efforts to understand our mutual desires of wanting to create a world together of peace, collaboration, and to not give into the message of the "world is going to end in 2012."  The world is what we ALL make it.

I knew that I had a bigger pit of fear to overcome, and that was choosing to return to America.  Here with our SUVs, traffic jams and decaying urban environments.  Here the wealth is drying up, but our wealth has been misspent.  Our wealth was never supposed to be about money.  Our wealth was always around us.

As we drove through and I saw vacant buildings matched the vacant faces I would see.  The once grand New York City seemed to look like a has been, pretending to be something more real.  People afraid of each other.  What a contrast to where I had come from.  In Nanjing,  a city of 7 million people and it felt like I could go anywhere.  In New York, I will have to see if people are ready to see more.  Politicians only see the governments and interact on that level.  No, this is a far different view, this is a view from the weeds of life at the street level, where it really matters.  

As we headed towards the Lincoln tunnel, I thought about the inspiration a Chinese man had taken from the words of Abraham Lincoln, a man who had many personal failings in his life.  Yes,  to see Abraham Lincoln so revered for changing our nation, even though it did not want change.  I looked and saw not what one man did, but what need to do as the people of our own nation.  I had been angered by what I saw in our country.  No peace messengers, just war mongering to bail us out of economic depressions.  Stirring up strife in Korea, in Iran, in Isreal, in Afghanistan, Iraq and much of it at the behest of oil companies.  We the people, at the street level have had our heads down.  Good people that look at our large decaying cities wondering what we can do.  We don't seem to be able to put aside our differences long enough.  We erect more walls, gated neighborhoods, being bought off, and some people have gone off and decided to go ahead and profit off of the fear.

I looked up at the windows and wondered how many people even know their neighborhoods in the land of the 'free', home of 'the brave'.  I guess the easy way is just not to look at each other because that is the easy or safe way.  We don't make each other laugh anymore.  More often, we are making each other cry.  However, we all hear and know it just doesn't have to be this way.

I looked at the skyline.  This is America.  One port city that has been here, representing the American Dream around the world.  We sue each other now.  We have to be careful now of everything.  I looked at what they teach our children now, and I thought of all of the lessons I taught Korean children in English who were only 5 and 6 years of age.  They were writing, doing mathematics, science, and having fun.  I stared in horror as I looked at the homework of a child in one of the 'best schools' in New Jersey, the assignment was how to tell analogue time on a clock.  She was in the second grade.  I shook my head.  People, dear people, don't let this continue.  It may be legal, but it isn't right.  It's time to change the dream.  No one person changes our system.  We change our system.

What's Your Source of Power?

Upon my return to Nanjing, I had felt the pull to go back and see the Museum again, as though I may have missed something along the way. We often go to museums to learn something about the culture and past history of a culture. To see what life was like in a time called, 'before'.
As it is commonly known, China celebrates the image of the dragon. Often a dragon is closely associated with wisdom and isn't feared. However, in the west, the common approach is viewed with fearful appearances.   Our mythologies abound with dragon slayers, heralded for their 'courage'. I viewed the stark differences, as almost as if the west would embrace knowledge and sacrifice wisdom.  Actually, there is a lot more to that view.  How many centuries did the west go through telling the people that the 'world was flat?'  Flat or round, the 'discovery'  was little more than a person that was celebrated for having the elite acknowledge what was already in existence.  The world comedy of discovery and declaration comes down to this.  It already exists, but is not universally accepted as truth.

There is a difference between application and information. We can be well-informed, but at a total loss with how to use the information we have. Having all the information in the world and not knowing how to use it, makes a person not more intelligent, but foolish.
As I looked at the ancient symbols and methods of communicating we had at the time, such as chimes for distress, we seem to be ringing a lot of bells...so much so, that no one has any senses that are not disturbed. So we try to silence them along the way. Everyone is shouting that the sky has fallen, but no one knows what to do about it. People have seem to have forgotten how to live and rely on others to tell them how to think, feel, and listen. These basic survival skills, which have fallen away for many due to relying on others instead of being able to listen to one's own voice has been costly for many who relied on systems to make their way in life.
As I looked adoringly on these pieces of art, I noticed the screens used for concealment, but walls always have ears. Thousands of years of monarchy rule over many differing cultures, telling them, they must serve their rulers. People did serve them, and often people desire to be ruled, but when will people desire to rule themselves and not entrust themselves to systems? We have societies, but flawed when it comes to the responsibilities of power.
I went back to look at a throne. The interesting thing about the throne was the seat of power. The image of a red dragon, that was normally carefully concealed with a seat cushion. Had the dragon given the monarch their power that was hidden from the people? Or had the people given the monarch their power? So often we don't see the real source of our own power, that comes to us naturally when we refuse to slay dragons of wisdom that come into our lives. If we only favor information then we remain foolish and slay the dragon that could have given us the wisdom of the world.

Then again, that is still aiming too low.

In the Garden of War and Peace

Before Veteran's Day approaches, I thought I would ask instead of celebrating wars and the rumors of wars, or the stories of war heroes, what if we forgot our reasons for war for a moment?   I think I found a wonderful reason to forget them all. It is through remembering them, often hatred persists. We never seem to go forward, only told that we are supposed to hate our enemies and fight everyone and soon we forget why we are all fighting to begin with. There are wars that have lasted centuries, and some, since the beginning of time. Some in the name of peace. Some in the name of revenge. Some for no apparent reason at all, except to profit from it or to secure seats of power.
I have been to many war museums that proudly displayed their conquests over other nations. To record the past battles and victories along the way. Often these museums display the conquered with war trophies and stories that go along with them. However, hidden away, in a corner garden, I found the relics of warfare here. With nature growing all around it. Letting all of it go into the past, with the stories buried in the earth.
It seems ironic find such a peaceful setting. A conflict of seeing such beauty with the cannons now silent and still after taking so many lives along the way. I saw the wisdom of the silent weapons. Neither elevated for patriotic purposes or to be used to rub salt in the wounds of those who may have been defeated. Silent cannons raised and not aimed at another, but raised in a silent disuse.
Instead, they are a dark reminder of how stones were launched against each other. This is no fear of them ever being used again against another life.
As I looked at the inscriptions and saw how other nations may have interloped with this one in the past for their own financial gains, I thought this age, where others try to gain from those who seem less fortune along the way.
Proudly silent they remain in a garden not as a symbol of war, but of what peace looks like. A nation that celebrates peace should be as such and never proudly display weapons of warfare. With silent cannons and birds making their nests in the trees above them.

Overcoming the Hardness of Life

The softest thing in the universe

Overcomes the hardest thing in the universe.
That without substance can enter where there is no room.
Hence I know the value of non-action.

Teaching without words
and work without doing
Are understood by very few.
The Tao Te Ching - 43rd Verse
Jane English Translation

I had written in an earlier entry of a find of a tree growing through a boulder, located at a museum in Nanjing. While on my sojourn in Zhongshan we came to a little oasis in a park. It isn't often I get drawn to do strange things, but I felt compelled to climb in to and area where I just felt like I would find something similar. There it was, the seemingly impossible, another tree that come up through a boulder. The one above in Zhongshan, the one below in Nanjing.
I reflected on my journey, how the softness in my own life seemed to open more doors than with a hard stance. Often with the hardness, it went against my nature, making the pressures of life seem unbearable at times. When I looked at these trees I thought about the journey from a small seed to go through where no light existed, by a force of faith, that some amount of space came and it reached up towards the light and water. As its roots expanded, the softness made way up and out of the rock.
Should it be an impossible journey? Should it be so hard? Often I wondered about the times I needed to have just a little more patience, just a little more strength to push through. At the same time I looked and actually could observe the action and nonaction at the same time. They may not be perfect trees out there on their own, growing without opposition.
But in this oasis of calm, I saw the harmony of how life can actually be soft even when it appears to be hard.

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