Monday 13 October 2014

Book Review: The Hobbit

I finished reading J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit to Mulan last night.

Once again, Mulan has thoroughly enjoyed the story.  And once again, ideas from the book spilt over into everyday life.  Mulan liked to tell Miya about what was happening in the book, and every once in a while she liked to recall the names of all 13 dwarves in the story (sometimes we missed a pair!).  Miya now knows some of them too, and if we start to say “Thorin”, she will finish his name “Oakenshield”!

Since The Hobbit is about wizards, magic, mythical creatures and the fight between good and evil, and, moreover, it is told from the perspective of the title character (who is an honourable, childlike, everyday person) it is tempting to compare The Hobbit with Harry Potter.  Or, more accurately, The Hobbit could be compared with the first few Harry Potter books, while The Lord of the Rings could be compared with the later Potter books.

When it comes to excitement levels invoked in Mulan, the winner is clearly Harry Potter.  But The Hobbit is not a far distant loser; it is just that Harry Potter was extra-special in how it took over general daily conversation for a while.

With respect to the writing style, The Hobbit is very, very good, and I have no doubt that it was exactly Mulan’s level right now.  I think this was a good time to read it to Mulan.  But as I have said countless times before, the writing style of Harry Potter is brilliant, in being perfectly attuned to children.  I think Rowling is much more sensitive to her readers’ psychology and is much more child-friendly.

How about the story?  The plot of The Hobbit itself is mostly rip-roaring adventure—fighting trolls, goblins, wolves, spiders and a dragon.  There is never a dull moment.  It is simple and direct and exciting.  There is not so much everyday life stuff like with Harry.  Tolkien is a little less sensitive than Rowling, and there is much more violence and death than in the first few Harry Potter books.  If parents are worried about protecting young children from violence, than Harry Potter would be much better than The Hobbit.  But I don’t think Mulan was too bothered by it all.

And the themes?  As I say, both books are told from the perspective of the title character, who is, importantly, the moral centre of the story.  The central character of both books is, essentially, not a physical or intellectual hero who surpasses the abilities of the other characters.  In fact, both are often a lot weaker.

In this sense, these two books are very different from many other sci-fi or fantasy books, where the central character typically has exceptional abilities (such as in Dune or Ender’s Game).  Both Harry Potter and Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit, don’t take charge to dominate.  They are often much more passive to let things happen to them.  And yet, when everything else is chaotically going on around them, they maintain their solid, moral cores.  When needed, it is their moral cores which allow them to quietly come to the front and lead, at least for the time it is needed.  It is these moral characters which, I think, are supposed to set the uplifting and encouraging tones of the books.

What then, is the moral centre of The Hobbit?  The important point is that Bilbo is supposed to be the one who doesn’t lose his head in the face of power or riches.  Pretty much everyone else around him, when offered the chance of power and wealth, gets greedy.  But Bilbo, even when he could have it, and even while clearly enjoying it, doesn’t get too carried away by it all, and is just as happy to not have it.  Bilbo, then, centrally, is not at all ambitious and is not much interested in building, or leading or acquiring stuff.

Bilbo, also, is polite and hospitable, though he also likes his privacy.  His sense of justice, which he sticks to even when it might bring him great harm, is focused on honest, open exchanges and no deviousness (his acquisition of the ring is the one big exception to this).  He is not at all prejudiced against other peoples or social groups, and is happy to make friends with anyone who doesn’t offend this basic honesty and decency.

But along with this, Bilbo still likes his simple creature comforts, of a bed and good (and frequent) meals.  He likes singing and dancing, and has a taste for poetry and books.

These three aspects—lack of ambition, politeness, and enjoyment of simple creature comforts—are the values which Tolkien is clearly advocating in the story.

But just as importantly, while Bilbo is loyal to his friends and acquaintances, he seems not much interested in social justice (unlike Harry Potter).  He stands by his principles when he encounters stuff in his everyday life, but nowhere does it seem that he goes very far out of his way to get involved with others in need.  He is content to keep himself to himself in his comfortable life.  It also appears that Bilbo doesn’t do much to earn a living, and he lives in the home that his father built.  He appears to have mostly inherited his simple, comfortable life, rather than earned it.  Bilbo, then, represents the somewhat self-satisfied, socially unaware and unmotivated middle classes, who might have one big overseas adventure and then return home again.

Throughout Bilbo’s one-year journey in the story, he maintains this central moral core.  The main change in Bilbo’s character, from beginning to end, is that he begins to know himself more.  That is, rather than remaining naively simple, simplicity shows out as a conscious choice of character.  He also grows in self-confidence from his initial flustering and complaining to his later calmer acceptance of things.

In many ways, then, The Hobbit is a very good morality story for children.  Towards the end, when the dwarves, men and elves were lining up to fight each other over the gold in the mountain, Mulan (as I sure was intended by Tolkien) very rightly pointed out, in a very determined voice, that they should not be going to war over the gold.  Similarly, her sense of justice was clearly with Bilbo when he risked great personal harm in his attempt to broker peace between the sides.  And I am sure that she agreed with him about enjoying home and a comfortable life.

But because Bilbo is, basically, a lazy, self-absorbed, elitist lump when it comes to wider social issues, I think Harry Potter is far superior as a moral teacher for children.

The Hobbit is an awesome book, and essential reading for all children.  But it is still nowhere near as good as Harry Potter.

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Note: when Mama read this she said that Bilbo sounds exactly like me.  I immediately protested, and said it was more like her.  I’m not sure who is right.  At the very least, I like to think that I am more socially aware!  But, like Bilbo, I suppose I do have a very British outlook on life, and similarly, my almost-ten-years adventuring in China has clarified to me my central moral core.  Now, like him, I am returning home.

Saturday 4 October 2014

Moving to New Zealand

For those who don’t know, the countdown has started for our move to Auckland, New Zealand.

Mama has already officially quit her job, and we are now a no-income family.

Our cats will depart first.  They are scheduled to be picked up and moved to Hong Kong quarantine on the 6th of November.  They will stay in Hong Kong for six months, before moving to New Zealand and staying in quarantine there for another two weeks.

We have booked our one-way flights, and we leave Guangzhou on the 12th of November.

Until then, we will be flat out (like lizards drinking) continuing to box our belongings.  (One of the hugely helpful things that my parents did while here in Guangzhou was to get us started with the packing.)  Sometime shortly after the cats leave, we aim for a truck to come and pick up our stuff and deliver it to a shipping container, which will hopefully carry everything safely to New Zealand.  With any luck, we will start to unpack in our New Zealand home before Christmas.


All this means that I will not be posting much (if anything) on this blog for the next couple of months.

Beijing

We have just got back from a two-week trip to Beijing.

My first time in Beijing was in 2006, and since then we have holidayed up there for a few weeks most years.  I think, on balance, I prefer Beijing to Guangzhou, though I still doubt I would want to live there permanently, with the (literally) killer smog.  (While Guangzhou pollution has visually decreased in the several years I have been here, Beijing seems to just get worse and worse.)

I especially like that Beijing is a more international city than Guangzhou, with all the diversity and pluralistic acceptance that that brings.  I like that I don’t feel quite so noticed, there.

One obvious visual difference is that there are more foreigners around.  In a (typically) packed subway carriage, we might see one or two other non-Asian faces every time, unlike in Guangzhou where we may go several journeys without seeing another foreigner.  We also see far more diversity amongst the Chinese faces, with a far greater display of Chinese ethnicities.

At one modern outdoor cafĂ©-spot that we stopped at with friends, I took the girls to play in the nearby public space, where there were several other children playing around.  At one point, a Scandinavian mother asked a Chinese boy if her children could please play with his toys.  She spoke to him very slowly and clearly in English, first asking if he understood her.  Her English was fluently excellent, but obviously not native, as she spoke to her children in another language.  He replied to her with a strong, native-level, American accent!  Pretty much all the children in the area were chattering to each other in standard American English.

Another sign of the international feel is that in my two weeks there I even saw, separately, a dozen or more adults on foot-powered, adult-sized scooters.  I like to zip around my local area here in Guangzhou on my scooter, but in my years of living here I have only ever seen a couple of other adults doing the same thing, and when I go scooting by I always get plenty of curious stares.  Apparently not so in Beijing, where adults on scooters is more normalised.

On two separate occasions, too, I saw small groups of cosplayers socialising in the public spaces.  I have never seen that in Guangzhou.

There are also plenty of adults out running in the evenings in lycra outfits.  Even the local Beijing men don’t seem to have a problem with wearing their tight, buttock-hugging, lycra leggings in public.  Here in Guangzhou, I am almost too shy to wear my lycra leggings outside, for all the staring it causes from the locals.

I also prefer the Beijing weather to that of Guangzhou.  Or, at least I have preferred the weather during the times I have been there.  I have yet to experience a Beijing winter, though that is definitely on my future to-do list.  (I find it so intriguing to read on the signs by lakes “no swimming, fishing or ice skating”.  Wow, frozen lakes and outdoor ice-skating—that is so outside my experiences!)

Local Beijing food is much better, too!

But closely following the smog problem, the next killer issue with Beijing is the cars.  Each time we go there, it is worse, in my opinion.  I remember when I visited Kaohsiung in Taiwan many years ago being surprised to see that motor scooters used the footpaths like car parks.  They would ride up onto the footpath and park, side-by-side, by the dozen, along every street.  In Beijing, it is the cars that use the footpaths as car parks.  If the footpaths are wide enough, they drive along them like roads to find their preferred spot.  If the footpaths are narrower, then they just turn in and mount the curb, covering the entire width of the footpath.  This time in Beijing, we felt that this has all become too much.

Why were we up in Beijing?

Mostly, it was for the oldies.

Firstly, it was for Mama and the girls to say goodbye to Laolao (Mama’s mum).  With us soon in New Zealand and her in China, we won’t see much of her for a while.  Mama and the girls stayed at Laolao’s place for the entire time we were there.

Secondly, it was for Nainai and Yeye (my mum and dad).  They have just returned to New Zealand after a month here in China.  They spent half their time here in Guangzhou, then they took the fast train up north for a bit of stereotypical China-sightseeing.  They stopped off in Xi’an for a few days, visiting the terracotta warriors in their pits.  Then they had a week in Beijing.  I was their tour guide to the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and Temple of Heaven.  I had a day off when one of Yeye’s old students took them to the Summer Palace.

For the week that my parents were in Beijing, I stayed with them in a two-bedroom apartment about 30 minutes’ walk from Laolao’s home.  I visited Mama and the girls each day, but it is still the most I have been separated from the girls in their lives.  After Nainai and Yeye flew back to New Zealand, I moved back into Laolao’s crowded home with them.

But truth be told, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Beijing, too, and it wasn’t just a duty trip for the oldies.  These iconic Beijing locations are still breathtaking to experience, even though it was my third time on the Wall and to the Temple of Heaven, and second in the Forbidden City (and about my dozen-th time in the big T-Square—where the security gets tighter with every visit).

I think my most enjoyable times were spent in the Olympic Forest Park.  Laolao lives within walking distance of the 2008 Beijing Olympic centre, and I went three times to the park—once with the girls and twice on my own.  Each of those three days were clear, blue-sky days, and the autumn weather was very mild and pleasant.

It was a great feeling, of course, to walk past the “Bird’s Nest” stadium and “Water Cube” swimming centre.  (Though in my opinion, the area is now, six years after the event, starting to look a little rundown, with rust, weeds and broken bits.)  But the best bit by far is the little slice of heaven of foresty-park in the middle of the city.  It really is quite remarkable.

The park itself is huge, and one can walk for many hours along the paths, beside the lake and through the trees.  (I wouldn’t quite call it a forest, as the trees are planted a little too regularly and with big gaps between them.)  The park can get pretty crowded, but often I was still able to find secluded spots out of the way to lie down and read in peace and quiet.  One time I saw a chipmunk scurry past me as I sat quietly on a rock.  (At the Temple of Heaven, my parents and I watched a squirrel for several minutes as it darted around up and down trees.)


In the Olympic Forest Park, I finally understood why the sports shops in China sell tents.  I have always wondered, because I have never known Chinese to be big campers.  But the big grassy fields in the park were an eye-opener.  In the weekends and public holidays, hundreds of locals set up their tents for the day, side-by-side like a camping ground, where they relax, picnic and play games.  I have never seen this happen in Guangzhou.


In our two weeks in Beijing, we experienced the change of season, from mid-high 20s autumn temperature, to slightly more icy hint-of-winter weather.  While we were on the Great Wall the temperature dropped to 14 degrees, and the mist closed in around us.  In our final few days there, I swapped my shorts for longs, and I even appreciated the sweatshirt I brought with me.

Back here in Guangzhou, we are back to summer again.  It will be nice to have two Chinese autumns this year.

Friday 29 August 2014

Book review: Harry Potter 7

My review of the sixth and earlier books is here.

The seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series, The Deathly Hallows, is by far the most complex of the books in the series.  It is about adults, and for adults, though of course teenagers will still love the story.

Once again, I haven’t bothered to read anyone else’s reviews of the book.  What I write here is purely from my own thoughts.  And if anyone wants to tell me I’m mistaken, then I would be very happy to be corrected.  Please feel free to comment.

As I read the book, I saw at least four different levels of meaning.

The first level was the direct story itself.  It’s a great story.  As you can probably guess, it is un-put-down-able.  These final few books in the series I have been zooming through in a couple of day each.  (My excuse is that I have been feeling a bit under the weather lately, and so wasn’t up to doing much real work anyway!)

While for the most part the story hung together well, there were a few things that slightly bugged me.  I don’t know whether this was because I missed something in my reading or whether there are genuine plot holes.  Please let me know if I have missed something.

One thing that bugged me slightly was the second to last chapter (the one before “Nineteen Years Later”).  As I read it, I couldn’t help feeling that it was written with a movie in mind.  It was a movie-style ending, and not a book-style ending.  I can only assume that by the time it was written the movies were big successes, and there was more of a movie-mentality to the book, too.

More specifically, I felt it a little strange how all the “stars” had conveniently moved into the Hogwarts school Great Hall, for a final battle.  It was as if we could imagine a movie camera panning around and zooming in to the fights.  Why did they not spread out to other places around the school?  Why all squeeze in together?  Further, why did all the minor “stars” stop fighting and stand back against the walls to watch the two big battles (I won’t say who)?

And further, why did Voldemort get so angry when one of his main underlings was killed?  Up until that point he was completely cold-hearted about everyone, often, in a Darth Vader-ish sort of way simply killing his underlings when they made mistakes.  This seemed out of character for him, though more understandable for a two-dimensional movie baddie.

Also, I wondered why, at the end, some of the baddies who had already been beaten earlier had returned to the fight (I won’t list them by name, but anyone who had read the book will surely be aware of who I am referring to).  Surely when they were beaten they would have been permanently incapacitated for the rest of the battle (particularly given the one-hour pause in the battle).  Again, this just gave the feel of needing a movie-style ending rather than a more thought-through book-style ending.

I was a little puzzled, too, about how the sword of Gryffindor had ended up in the goodies possession again at the end.  Did I miss something?  I thought the goblins had reclaimed it.  When did they give it back?

One of my bigger puzzles, though, was the logic of how wands choose their wizard masters.  If it was simply by the wizard being beaten at any time, and even being beaten when not using that particular wand, then wands would be changing their masters all the time.  This would especially be true at school, where Harry and his schoolmates were often duelling and beating each other.  It would be an everyday occurrence that wands were fizzing and refusing to be used against other people.  So, surely everyone would know the rules of wand ownership?  It shouldn’t be such a mystery to Voldemort.  Since Voldemort’s inability to understand was the whole issue at the end, I was left feeling a little dissatisfied with the logic of the ending.  Was I mistaken?  Can anyone correct me on this?

But whatever the case about these sorts of story plot holes, it is still an excellent story.

The second level of meaning was, as I expected after reading the sixth book, the theme of coping with young adulthood.

This showed up particularly when Harry and his two friends were together independently camping out for months using the magical tent.  The inside of the tent seemed exactly like a cheap student flat, and the disagreements between the three of them seemed just like what goes on between young student flatmates fresh from leaving home.  Naturally, Hermione, the only girl, had to ask why she was the one who always had to do the food.  And naturally, the boys replied that it was because she was best at it (though in this case she was the one best at doing magic).  Naturally, too, after living together for long enough there was a big argument between them and one walked out.

The third level of meaning was a continuation of Rowling’s commentary on social and political issues.

One key theme was expressed by Harry when he said that parents shouldn’t ever leave their children, unless they have to.  The story itself gave evidence of this, as we began to understand the background history of some of the key characters.  Repeatedly it was the characters who had had bad childhoods who were the most flawed or challenged as adults.  Ron’s family, the Weasleys, was clearly intended as the model good family—lots of children, chaotic and messy, somewhat poor, but full of love and fun and loyalty.  The Weasley’s messy, rundown home was contrasted with the spotlessly perfect home of Harry’s horrible uncle and aunt.

It was interesting, too, that one of the first things that the baddies did when they gained political power was to ban homeschooling, and require all children to attend the centrally-controlled school.  Previously, attending the school had been optional, though still chosen by most families.

As I have already mentioned in earlier book reviews, there is a strong egalitarian theme running through the entire book series.  An important part is the equal acceptance of all races and types of people.  The story emphasised that a lot of the current social problems were because of the ongoing generational oppression of minorities by those in power.

The book also made clear that this conflict is made worse because of a failure to properly understand cultural differences, and how these cultural differences impact on everyday interactions.  There was an interesting intercultural miscommunication moment when it was explained that what one culture sees as a permanent purchase another culture sees as a temporary loan.

A further political issue raised particularly in this book was the idea of “the greater good”.  That is, should political rulers knowingly cause suffering to others if it is for the greater good?  The book treated this in a very complex way, and it was not entirely clear what the right conclusion is (which I think is the right approach to take).

The book was very clearly against three types of “greater good” defenders.

Firstly, it was against those who are just mouthing the words but not really applying them—rulers who are really doing it for themselves.

Secondly, it was against young adults who, in their idealistic fervour, wish to change the world.  We meet up with a couple of young, brilliant university-undergraduate-aged men who think they have the answers to all the world’s problems and want to take charge by force to correct things.

Thirdly, it appeared to be against an anything goes (including torture) style of “greater good” (act utilitarianism?).  The details of this were fuzzy, but it seemed to be suggesting that there should still be a set of non-negotiables, which ought never be violated.

But, the book most definitely wasn’t obviously against a “greater good” mentality that is wiser, truly for a greater good, and properly bounded.  I won’t spoil the story for anyone who hasn’t yet read it, but there is a definite grey issue about grooming and manipulation towards a tragic and foreseeable ending.

This links in with the topic of power.  The book asks the question of whether, if we have the choice, having more power is a good thing.  Without giving the story away, clearly the author’s opinion is that stronger (military) power is rarely the answer.

The fourth level of meaning was theological.

It is obvious, in retrospect, that a book series that is centrally about wizards and magic would have to touch on some theological issues.  But I was very surprised about how strongly Christian this series turned at the end.  I don’t see this turn as a bad thing, even though I disagree with a few of the suggestions made in the book.  This is because I think it was very well done.  At the end of the day, what is most important is opening up a dialogue on these sorts of topics.  This, very clearly, is what the book was doing.

One theological issue raised was that of knowledge.  Like many other well-known literary theological works, we have an ongoing dialogue between two fundamentally different types of characters, with other characters taking different views around them.  That is, Hermione represents the reasoning position, while Harry takes the faith position.  Clearly, given that the book series is called Harry Potter, we are meant to see that faith is superior to reason alone.

Hermione is definitely the smarter of the two characters, the harder worker, and the more observant of people.  Thus, by the time they reach adulthood, Hermione has a far better knowledge of the world around them, and is far better at getting things done.  But Hermione is not merely a cold, rationalistic robot.  It is Hermione who is the most sensitive to the needs of others and understand them better, and it is Hermione who initiates a lot of the equal rights for minorities stuff.  Clearly, the author is saying that human rights, equality, and so on are completely within the realm of reason.

Harry is a bit more of the everyday person.  He is just so-so smart and so-so good looking.  He studies a bit, but not that much.  He likes his sport.  He is decent and honourable (as most people like to think they are!).  Importantly, he acts on his intuitions, which, even when he examines them, he is unable to explain reasonably.  But he mostly trusts these intuitions.  Even more importantly, it is Harry who initially has faith but has a crisis of faith, before returning to his faith in a stronger and more complex way (I won’t spoil the story by explaining too much).  Harry represents the Christian pilgrim.  Unsurprisingly, Harry sees Hermione’s outlook as narrow and limited.

But Harry’s intuition/faith-based outlook is strongly contrasted with what we might call a more crazy form of faith.  This is most clearly represented by Luna Lovegood’s father, who publishes a mostly-nonsense newspaper that in our world would be filled with alien abductions, pyramids, moon-landing conspiracies and tin-foil hats.  Occasionally Lovegood hits on a truth, but for the most part his crazy idea are, well, crazy.  He also sees Hermione’s outlook as too narrow.

I think the point of the contrast of these three types of characters is that Harry represents faith supported by, and not in contrast to, reason. Hermione is Harry’s best friend, and he says she is like a sister to him.  The author is telling us that reason is essential, but we need to go that little bit further and accept things that reason alone won’t get to.  And yet, what we get to through our faith is still reasonable.  It is not against reason, as Lovegood’s position is.

There is also the question of how to understand mythical stories, that at first glance appear to be children’s fairytales.

What about theological metaphysics?

The school divination teacher, who teaches palm reading, crystal ball gazing, astrology, tea-leaf interpretation, and so on, represents another form of crazy.  In the wizarding world, wizards look down upon these types of activities.  Importantly, they call them “unreliable” magic.  Furthermore, the divination teacher is seen as a fraud, and most people (especially Hermione) have little respect for her.

In other words, as I see it, the author is saying two things.

Firstly, that most people who claim to have special knowledge of the occult are frauds.  Yet, just like some of Harry’s fellow students believed the divination teacher, there will always be some gullible people who believe these frauds.

But secondly, in the book the divination teacher had, importantly, two moments of genuine prophesy.  Rowling is saying, I think, that even these frauds may occasionally, accidently, have genuinely supernatural moments.

This final book also has a lot to say about the soul and death.  The book takes the standard Christian position about the literal existence of souls, which continue to exist after a person’s death.  What happens after death is a mystery, but the souls appear to pass over into another world and continue to exist.  Moreover, without giving the story away too much, we learn that when a person murders it literally damages their soul.  Too much of this and the damage will be permanent.  Damaging a soul, or losing it, is worse than death.  This moral dimension of souls, and the contrast between love and murder, is a central aspect of the series.

Finally, self-sacrifice, with love, is in there (repeatedly), along with the protective force from evil that it gives to others.

I’m sure I have missed some other, important themes in the book, but I’ll stop for now.

Overall, then, what do I think of the Harry Potter series?

Martin Heidegger, in some of his later work, writes about the nature of a work of art.  We might identify three necessary components of a Heideggerian work of art:

(A lot of what follows here is copied and pasted from stuff I wrote over 15 years ago!)

1.   The artwork brings “world” out of background inconspicuousness into foreground salience.
2.   The artwork allows “world” to be transparent to “earth” in such a way as to allow the former to appear as “holy.”
3.   The artwork gathers together an entire culture to witness this numinous salience of “world.”

What does this mean?

A “world”, for Heidegger, is a fundamental epochal horizon of disclosure; it is a particular way of seeing things for a particular culture.  It is both ontological and ethical.  That is, when we understand our “world” we understand both who we (and others) are and also how we ought to act in relationship with others in our “world.”  Heidegger acknowledges that there are many possible ways of seeing an object (many “worlds”), but we are only ever able to see it in one way at one time (our “world”).  He introduces the term “earth” to signify all the other possible ways of seeing objects.  “Earth” is the background set of all possible, mutually exclusive “worlds.”  “Earth” is unsayable, ineffable, ungraspable, and unmastered.  To use an analogy, “world” is the lighted disc of the moon and “earth” is the hidden spherical depth that cannot be seen.  When we look at the moon all we see is the lighted disc, although in reality the moon has a far greater depth to it.

Hence, an artwork, according to Heidegger, does three things.  Firstly, it shows us who we are and how we ought to act, secondly it shows us that there is a deeper reality than what we can superficially see, and thirdly it does this for its entire culture.  An object may be an artwork for one culture, but not for another.  Heidegger’s favourite example is the Greek temple, which was a Heideggerian artwork for the Greeks.

How does this fit with Harry Potter?

Firstly, as I have been showing in my book reviews, a big part of the book series is that of teaching children important lessons about how to live in the world.  Harry Potter shows us who we are and how we should act.

Secondly, Voldemort exemplifies the failings of modernity, for Heidegger.  The sort of magic Voldemort chased after was of a single type, which was only based on power.  Repeatedly, he failed to see other sorts of magic, such as love and relationships and choice.  In other words, he only saw the lighted disc of the moon, and forgot that there was a greater depth behind it.  Furthermore, Heidegger criticised people who saw everything as mere “resource”, as a result of failing to see this greater depth.  Voldemort again exemplifies this “resource”-based attitude to the world.  Reading the books enables us to get a sense of the deeper things, by showing us how Voldemort could only see the surface.

Thirdly, Harry Potter has become a modern cultural phenomenon.  Everyone knows about the series.  Importantly, as I linked to in an earlier review, academic research is now telling us that young people’s political views have been directly influenced by the books.

It seems to me that all three requirements are satisfied, to make Harry Potter a Heideggerian artwork for our time.

Tuesday 26 August 2014

Book review: Harry Potter 6

My review of the fifth and earlier books is here.

In this sixth book, The Half-Blood Prince, the whole wizarding world knows that the Big Baddie Voldemort is back.  They are getting pretty nervous about it too, and the odd mysterious death is not helping things.  Security at Harry’s school is beefed up, but the school remains open and life goes on.

Harry and his classmates are now in their 17th year.  In the wizarding world, the 17th birthday is the important milestone when they gain the legal rights of adults.  For one thing, at 17, teenagers may sit the test for the wizarding equivalent of the car drivers’ licence, the licence to magically travel by disappearing and appearing at will.  Harry’s classmates are very excited by this, and the freedoms that it will give them.

Clearly, then, the main theme of this book is the transition from teenager to adult, and the consequent good and bad things that this brings.

We learn of freedom in another sense, too.  An important part of the ongoing story has been a prophecy made about Harry.  In one of the teaching moments, Harry learns from Dumbledore that, in the wizarding world, people have the freedom to turn their backs on prophecies.  Prophecies are not set in stone, and they don’t dictate what will happen.

Clearly, this is intended as a teaching moment from author to reader as well.  Rowling is telling her readers, too, that we don’t have to do anything, and what we do in life is always our choice.  We have our moral freedom.  This is even if, as Harry notes to himself, the choice is only between holding our head up high as we face death or meeting it while being dragged kicking and screaming.  But we are informed that this is not a trivial choice, and there is all the difference in the world between one and the other.

There is also a deeper message in this book.  This is that adulthood, and freedom, is not merely a liberation.  The other side of the coin is the loss of certainty.

Harry has learnt that as long as he keeps returning each summer holiday to his uncle and aunt’s house, and treating it as his home, he is protected.  But at 17, as an adult, he loses that protection.  He loses the certainty of his childhood home.

With adulthood, too, comes the loss of certainty that a parent, or mentor, will be there to have the final say.  This is a chilling freedom to have.  As an adult you have got equals—friends and advisors, but you no longer have the reassurance of an ultimate corrector to step in and take over if things go too horribly wrong.  There is a sense in which you are on your own.  Without giving the story away, the final hundred or so pages of the book hits this message home pretty hard.  As always, Rowling does an awesome job of telling a can’t-put-down story, while simultaneously teaching her message.

The answer to the mystery of who is the Half-Blood Prince hits quite hard, too.  It is a lesson about the perspectives we might have of other people.  Seeing someone in writing can be very different from seeing them in person.

I’m starting the seventh and final book now (review here).  If the other books are anything to go by, I imagine it will be about young adulthood.  About having to do things for yourself, and not having the certainties and protections of childhood.  I’m sure it will be a great read, too.

Sunday 24 August 2014

Book review: Harry Potter 5

I have just finished reading the fifth Harry Potter book, The Order of the Phoenix.  (Here’s my review of the fourth and earlier books.)

In this fifth book, the big baddie, Voldemort, is finally back.  The main problem is that most people, including the wizarding political leaders, don’t believe (or don’t want to believe) Harry that Voldemort is back, and so for most of the book Harry is fighting against the political forces who wish to silence and discredit him.  The politicians appoint an overseer to Harry’s school, Hogwarts, who forces on the school some very strict and repressive rules.

Harry is also fighting with his emotions.  The main theme of this book is clearly that of learning how to deal with the two very different, but equally difficult, emotions of anger and love.  Clearly, once again, the book has an age-appropriate and nicely integrated moral to teach its teenage readers (and perhaps their parents, too).

Harry is now 15, and he is struggling to control his frustrations.  He is angry at the world for not understanding him, and the unfairness that he feels different, and he is taking this out on the people around him.  He is basically a decent person, and he is working hard at being reasonable and understanding, but all too often he can no longer control himself and he explodes at his friends.

In a very clever little plot device, it turns out that Harry’s emotions are connected to the Big Baddie Voldemort’s emotions, which means that Harry feels angry and hatred whenever Voldemort has those feelings (and since he is a baddie, he hates a lot!).  This gives us more sympathy towards Harry, and we accept that in some sense the emotions he is feeling are external to who he really is.

It seems to me that this is intended as a parallel to how hormones are a challenge to teenagers.  In some sense, it is useful to say that hormones are an outside influence on teenagers.  Even when teenagers explode, we can still be sympathetic and not see these explosions as who the teenagers really are at heart.  Hormones are any teenager’s Voldemort.

But acknowledging that Voldemort (i.e. hormones) is external does not excuse Harry when he explodes.  We can be sympathetic and understanding when Harry fails, but Harry still needs to learn how to deal, in socially appropriate ways, with his anger and frustrations.  It is not good enough to yell and throw things around, or sit stewing inside his head.  This book is, at heart, an examination of how Harry struggles to work through his anger.  It is a good teaching tool for its readers.

The other emotion is love.  There is love lost.  There is the discovery that those who you lovingly look up to are not quite so perfect.  And there are issues of how to deal with existing love.

In this book, Harry’s has three quite different moments of love lost.  One is a first girlfriend, one is the death of a close family member, and one is the absence of a mentor.  Each of these three sorts of lost loves challenge Harry in different ways, and he needs to work through each of them.

Harry also discovers that his father, who died when he was one year old, was not so perfect.  It turns out that Harry’s father was a bit of an arrogant bully at school, and not the decent guy Harry thought he was.

The side-issue of Harry’s first girlfriend is a teaching moment for teenagers about first love.  Harry, of course, is a typical boy, and he is clueless about how to interact on a date.  The wise advice on dating comes (in perhaps a slightly plot-inappropriate way) from his long-time friend, Hermione, who give some pretty good explanations of what girls are expecting and how Harry should have responded.  Hermione’s advice is a must-read for any teenage boy.

But the most complicated issue of love is raised towards the end of the book.  Love is, by its nature, partial.  When we love, we have favourites whose happiness and wellbeing we prioritise above that of others.  But sometimes others, who we don’t love, need our help too.  The question raised is how to balance this.  Harry’s mentor, Dumbledore, explains (in another example of how admired elders are not always perfect) that because he cared for Harry so much, he prioritised Harry’s immediate happiness too much, and consequently other people suffered.

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As I am reading these books, another piece of academic research has been reported in the media.  A political studies professor has published a book looking at the political views of millennials who read the books as youngsters and are now of voting age.  To quote:

[T]he evidence indicates that Harry Potter fans are more open to diversity and are more politically tolerant than nonfans; fans are also less authoritarian, less likely to support the use of deadly force or torture, more politically active, and more likely to have had a negative view of the Bush administration. Furthermore, these differences do not disappear when controlling for other important predictors of these perspectives, lending support to the argument that the series indeed had an independent effect on its audience.

Alright then.  Another good reason to get our children to read Harry Potter.

(Update: my review of the sixth book is here.)

UPDATE 21/12/2016: At age 9 3/4, Mulan is currently reading Harry Potter number 5.  I expect she will finish it in the next day or two.  She says that it is no problem for her and she is enjoying it.

At the moment Mama is also reading the series in Chinese, for the first time.  She is also up to number 5, and has enjoyed the previous four.  But Mama is not finding this book so pleasant going, and says she is skipping over some of the more emotionally negative parts.  While she can appreciate the skill and accuracy of the descriptions of the emotions, and can see important teaching points, she is still feeling that as a book the reading is not so enjoyable.

Happy Birthday Miya!

Miya turned four on Friday.

This is the first time she has had a birthday at home, and she was very excited.  For her first and second birthdays we were on holiday in Beijing, and for her third birthday we were on holiday in London.  So, for the first time, she got to have a real birthday!  On Thursday night, after Miya went to bed, we blew up balloons and stuck them up all around the lounge.

Mulan had given herself the duty of wrapping all the presents, so during the week presents had been slowly piling up in the lounge.  On Friday morning, Miya opened them all.  Mulan gave Miya one of her old, first chapter books, some coloured pencils and a drawing.  Mama gave Miya pencils, a rubber, a pencil-sharpener and a T-shirt that she had bought in Taiwan.  I gave Miya the books I bought the other day [blog entry lost] and some jigsaw puzzles.  A letter had arrived from New Zealand earlier, with lots of little things from the cousins, including a “4” badge.  Miya was very happy.

Yesterday, we had the traditional birthday party.  We invited a few friends to come in the afternoon.  I made a cheesecake (it seems to be our family tradition that I make a cheesecake for the birthday cake), Mama made fairy bread (homemade bread with hundreds and thousands on), and we all jointly made homemade pizzas.

We had planned to have some traditional party games (pass the parcel and pin the tail on the donkey), but just before the party started Miya was sick and had a slight temperature.  We are still not sure whether it was excitement and nerves that caused it, or whether it was a bug, and we were strongly considering postponing the party until next week.  But we couldn’t get hold of people and the friends started arriving, and Miya seemed okay, so we continued.  However, we decided to keep things simple, and just let them have a free play time rather than organising the party games.

Miya crashed into bed last night, one very happy big four-year-old.

Sunday 17 August 2014

Book review: Harry Potter 4

I feel like I am more than ten years behind the rest of the world in discovering Harry Potter.  And I know there is probably not much need for me to say anything more about the series, since almost everyone else in the world has already either read the books or watched the movies (or both).  But, just coz I feel like it, I am going to continue to say a few words anyway, as I finish reading each book.  Each review here is just my immediate response after reading the books.  I am too lazy to do a Google search to find out what other people have said.

(Who knows, maybe in a few more years I will discover and write about Twilight … and then Hunger Games and Game of Thrones next decade.)

The first Harry Potter book is 223 pages [my book review is lost].  The second book is 251 pages and the third is317 pages.  Startlingly, the fourth book, The Goblet of Fire, comes in at a massive 636 pages.  It is as if the book has finally hit puberty, and has had a huge growth spurt.

The book’s content, along with its characters, has hit puberty, too.  The first three books, while getting progressively more mature, still retain a childhood innocence and simplicity to them.  But this fourth book is a much more mature read.  I am guessing I might have been 12 before I was reading books of a similar topical maturity.

(Mulan, who has now completed the third book entirely by herself, is satisfied with not continuing on to read the fourth book.  In her words, she will read the fourth book “after her eighth birthday.”  In my opinion, it probably shouldn’t be too soon after that birthday.  But she has surprised me before, so we will just wait and see.)

In this book, the wizarding world widens … well, slightly, anyway.  Instead of just being primarily an English thing, we are introduced to a more Europe-wide wizard community.  It is the year of the great sporting event, the Quidditch World Cup, and the final is between Ireland and Romania (England, of course, has had an embarrassing defeat!).  We also discover that there are other wizarding schools besides Hogwarts, with at least one in France and another Germanic one.  After the World Cup is over, the three schools get together to have their own “Triwizard” student wizarding competition, and it is this competition that dominates the story.  Each school has its own champion, as selected by the Goblet of Fire, and it is these champions who compete against each other throughout the school year in a series of tasks.

Once again, just like the first three books, the story is filled with plenty of mystery, as we slowly discover whodunit (who done what?, you ask), and a bit more about the history of Harry’s world.

Unlike the first three books, I did not see in this fourth book any single overriding theme.  But perhaps this, in itself, was the theme.  Maybe the theme is the discovery, on reaching adolescence, that the world is more complex than can be explained by a single theme or story moral.  Instead, there were several ideas coming out in different parts of the story.  Many of these ideas were criticising or commenting on aspects of modern society.

One repeated idea was a criticism of the media, and especially celebrity gossip columns.  This was clearly intended by the author as a little teaching opportunity to help her readers to be more sceptical of what they see and hear in the media.  The final few pages of the book was a laugh-out-loud moment, when the true nature of the gossip columnist, Rita Skeeter, was revealed.  This was a delicious little dig at the nature of gossip reporters.

Another repeated theme was the danger of procrastinating when one has a task.  It was again a little teaching moment from author to reader, on the need to start one’s tasks earlier rather than leave them to the last minute.

A third theme paralleled and satirised EU unification difficulties.  The Department of International Magical Co-operation produced lengthy reports on standardising cauldron thickness.

There were also some sensitive discussions of initial, clumsy, boy/girl attractions and interactions.  I think the author, once again, did a wonderful job of presenting the characters in a realistic way, complete with awkwardness and misunderstandings.  But unlike some teen novels, it wasn’t presented in a negative, embarrassing way.  Rather, it came across as a positive, encouraging, affirming and non-preachy piece of well-written, sensible advice for young teens.  There was a first formal dance, with the need to find and ask partners.  And then there was the clear difference in thinking between girls and boys on the formal event itself.  Harry and his friend, Ron, did what I remember myself doing at that age at forced-to-attend dances—they sat off to the side ignoring the girls and chatting together the whole time.  Their dates naturally got a bit huffy.

Finally, in this book we were confronted with the first, direct, death of a character.  In previous books we had learnt about people dying in the past (Harry’s parents, etc), but no one had actually died in the direct telling of the story, and with the consequent emotional heaviness.  All the action in those earlier books had been clearly written with some child-friendly protections in place.  But here, towards the end, one of the secondary characters dies directly, as part of the telling of the story.  A fair bit of what follows is how the characters deal with the death of someone they personally knew.

So, all-in-all, once again, some thought-provoking themes tied together by a cracking good read.  It is not a young child’s story, but anyone from tween upwards will appreciate, enjoy, and quite possibly even learn from this fourth Harry Potter story.

(Update: my review of the fifth book is here.)

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Note: Mulan has now finished Peter Pan, and has started What Katy Did.  I haven’t read any of the Katy Did books, but I recall hearing that they were good.

UPDATE 5/11/2016: Mulan read Harry Potter 4 several month ago (maybe around her ninth birthday), and enjoyed it a lot.  She is still satisfied not to read number 5 just yet.

Tuesday 12 August 2014

Hong Kong

We have just come back from four days in Hong Kong.

Crossing the border from Mainland China to Hong Kong always feels as if the desperation in the crowds just eases away.  Strangers in the streets, on the whole, seem far less tense in Hong Kong than they do on the Mainland.

In Hong Kong, people seem much more relaxed about queuing and waiting.  They leave bigger gaps and they (far more often) wait their turn for others to go first.  Instead of rushing desperately into a train the moment it arrives, they pull back that split second and enter calmly.  Rarely do people try to jump the queue.  On one occasion, there was a seat free next to me on the train.  There was no desperate rushing by people to grab it.  Instead, a rougher-looking older man smiled at me, and with a gesture asked me if the seat was taken.  I smiled back and gestured that he could take it.  This sort of stranger-to-stranger interaction almost never happens on the Mainland (at least in my experience).

Similarly, people on the street are much more likely to acknowledge strangers.  Our building security guards smiled and said hello, with a cheery wave, to everyone passing.  It is hard to imagine a Mainland security guard doing this.  And you don’t see those blank, stony faces on strangers in the street nearly so much in Hong Kong.

When we were on our way back to the Mainland, at the final train station at the border, Mulan pointed out that people were no longer standing on the right hand side of the moving footpaths.  They were standing all over the place, selfishly blocking people from walking.  In contrast, in the middle of Hong Kong the escalators and moving footpaths are very well ordered in that people only ever stand on the right hand side.  The left hand side is always left free for people who are in a hurry to walk.  I replied to Mulan with a sigh, and said, yes, it is clear that we are almost back on the Mainland.

All in all, then, I enjoy the feel of outside life in Hong Kong much more than I do in Mainland China.  There is a humanity to Hong Kong people that Mainlanders, just a short journey away, seem to have lost.  (I think one of the few things that Mainland strangers do better than Hong Kong strangers is that Mainlanders are much more likely to offer their seats to young children on the public transport.)

From my perspective, we were in Hong Kong for two main reasons:

Firstly, we were there to escort Mama off the Mainland.  Mama is in Taiwan at the moment.  She decided to have a women-only holiday with one of her friends (and without me or the children).  She said bye-bye to us in Hong Kong on the 10th, and she will arrive back home here in Guangzhou on the 18th.  So, the children and I are on our own for eight days.  If I get around to it, I may write here about my solo dad-ing experiences.

Secondly, while in Hong Kong we had a look at the cattery that we are going to put Maggie and Kitty in.  For those who don’t know, we have decided to take our two cats with us when we move to New Zealand later this year.  It is a bit of a complicated procedure, and they need to spend six months in Hong Kong before moving to New Zealand.  Hence the need for the cattery stay there.  If I get around to it, I may write here about the details of how we are sending the cats.

Another thing we did was meet up with one of Mama’s old friends, who works in Kowloon on the 75th floor of a very fancy building.  The girls loved getting visitor cards each, which we needed to swipe to access the lifts.  Needless to say, the view from Mama’s friend’s office was spectacular.

Also, while we were there, Mama took the girls to do a bit of sightseeing.  (I didn’t go with them because I was feeling a bit adrenal fatigued.)  From their reports, it sounds like they had a very nice time.

On our last day in Hong Kong, after Mama left, the girls and I played a Hong Kong version of Monopoly.  Mulan loved it, and Miya willingly played for a couple of hours before gradually getting bored.

Tuesday 5 August 2014

Book review: Harry Potter 2 and 3

Mulan and I have been a bit sick lately.  For most of the day yesterday, we lay side-by-side on the big bed, silently reading our books.  I had the third Harry Potter book, The Prisoner of Azkaban, while Mulan had the second book, The Chamber of Secrets.  We both finished our respective books last night.

After completing the first Harry Potter book [my book review is lost] a few weeks ago, I had been reading a chapter of The Chamber of Secrets to Mulan most days, and we had got about two thirds of the way through it.  But while in Hainan Island I got a cold and so stopped out-loud reading for a while.  Instead, while sunbathing on the beach, I sneakily finished the book on my own.  Meanwhile, impatiently, Mulan had also read a couple more chapters on her own.

After reading one more chapter out loud to Mulan yesterday (with lots of coughs and pauses), I asked her if she would like to finish reading it herself.  She said yes, and reassured me both that she could understand it independently, and that it was not too scary for her.

So, yesterday, Mulan read (with no problem) the final four chapters by herself, and is now keen on starting book number three.

If the theme of the first Harry Potter book was love, friendship, loyalty and family, then the theme of the second one is the fight against discrimination and the acceptance of those who are different.

In this book, we are introduced to the idea that some wizards come from ancient and continuous wizarding families, while others have been born to non-magical parents.  In addition, occasionally a non-magical person is born into magical families.  For some people in the wizarding world, there is an elitism that comes from being a wizard with a long wizarding family history.  They look down upon non-magical people or families.

With this as the background, tensions run high when the Chamber of Secrets is opened and there are “racially” motivated death threats and discrimination against those who are not from pure wizarding families.

Harry Potter and his friends, naturally, fight against this discrimination, in the same exciting and dynamic way that made the first book so enjoyable and not-put-down-able.

Coincidently, a few days ago, this article came out in the news.  The article tells us that there has been a series of academic studies done on the attitudes of children to gays, immigrants and refugees, both before and after having had parts of The Chamber of Secrets read to them.  Apparently, after several weeks of listening to this story there was a reduction in the children’s prejudice, and their attitudes to these groups of peoples improved.

With the Harry Potter characters being a year older (and the presumed reader also being a year older), the writing style and storyline of this second book is also slightly more mature.  There is not quite the same amount of silly physical humour as was in the first book.  There are the first hints of girl-boy attractions.  And the more tensely exciting parts of the story last longer and are more intense.

In my opinion, it is the mark of a brilliantly aware writer, to be able to make clever and subtle adjustments to the writing style to acknowledge and reflect the gradual maturing of the readers.  Most series of children’s books don’t do this, and they all carry on at the same level.  I think this was a wonderful idea for readers when the books first came out, and obviously it worked well to maintain the readership and turn the books into bestsellers.  But in our case, with a young reader, it complicates things a little.  Mulan is very eager to keep reading more books in the series, but I still don’t know how far to let her read before the maturity of the books has gone beyond her developmental level.  I can understand it will be a little frustrating for Mulan to have to stop at some place.

The third Harry Potter book, The Prisoner of Azkaban, tackles yet another social issue—that of justice and the criminal system.  We learn in this book that the wizarding world is sometimes corrupt.  Judges and political decision-makers apparently sometimes ignore the evidence and are swayed by those who use blackmail and money to achieve their power.  So, we learn, it is likely that sometimes the innocent are wrongly found guilty.

We also learn that the prison system is pretty horrific in the way the prisoners are treated by the guards.  At one point one of the characters asks Harry if even the truly guilty deserve to be treated in this way.

Harry and his friends are drawn into the issue of justice when one of the prisoners escapes the previously inescapable wizard prison and seeks out Harry at school.  In parallel to this, one of the beautiful and exotic school animals hurts a student during a lesson, and there is an investigation as to whether the animal should be put down.

Reflecting on these two incidents, the storyline pushes Harry and his friends to make decisions about whether to themselves break the rules, to help protect the innocent.  It raises the question of whether, when society is unjust, one is justified in breaking the rules of that society.  How much loyalty should we have to an unjust system?

In contrast to this, Harry and his friends, as young teenagers, are starting to be inclined to rebel.  For the first time they are starting to yell back at adults, and they continue to disregard the rules to do their own thing.  But Harry is gently rebuked by one of the good teachers when he breaks the rules to sneak out merely to have fun.  The teacher points out that the rules were there to protect Harry, and he is letting everyone down when he puts himself in danger just for a bit of silly fun.

So, the underlying message for the reader is about the appropriate questioning of authority and when to go so far as to break the rules.  It is about gaining the wisdom to understand why the rules are there, and learning to following them when they are just, even if they are personally unpleasant.  But it is also about gaining the wisdom to know when the rules are unjust, and knowing when and how to break them if doing so helps the innocent.  It takes time and the occasional mistake to gain this wisdom, and one needs to be helped along the way by good and wise teachers.

I have said to Mulan that she can independently read The Prisoner of Azkaban after she has finished all 48 Magic Tree House [my book review is lost] books that we have got here.  At the rate that she is reading them, this will be in the very near future.  Mulan agrees that this third Harry Potter book will be her last one for a while, and she won’t try the fourth book just yet.  I’ll read the fourth book in the near future, and have a think about when to reintroduce the series to Mulan.

(Update: my review of the fourth book is here.)

Book review: Chrome Yellow

For those of us whose sense of humour is a bit drier and somewhat pointed, Aldous Huxley’s ChromeYellow is an amusing little read.

It is a story in which not much happens.  Eight main characters, and a few more occasional visitors, sit around, in post-First-World-War English countryside comfort, eloquently expressing their feelings and thoughts about life, the universe and everything.

The story follows things from the perspective of Denis, an existentially angst-ridden 23-year-old poet, as he arrives from London at a countryside manor for the summer, stays for a time, expresses his unrequited love for a fellow guest, and then departs back to London and his future.

But by chapter three we know that even this innocent, gentle little English genre isn’t going to come out the other side unscathed:

For some time past Mary's grave blue eyes had been fixed upon him [Denis]. "What have you been writing lately?" she asked. It would be nice to have a little literary conversation.

 "Oh, verse and prose," said Denis—"just verse and prose."

 "Prose?" Mr. Scogan pounced alarmingly on the word. "You've been writing prose?"

 "Yes."

 "Not a novel?"

 "Yes."

 "My poor Denis!" exclaimed Mr. Scogan. "What about?"

 Denis felt rather uncomfortable. "Oh, about the usual things, you know."

 "Of course," Mr. Scogan groaned. "I'll describe the plot for you. Little Percy, the hero, was never good at games, but he was always clever. He passes through the usual public school and the usual university and comes to London, where he lives among the artists. He is bowed down with melancholy thought; he carries the whole weight of the universe upon his shoulders. He writes a novel of dazzling brilliance; he dabbles delicately in Amour and disappears, at the end of the book, into the luminous Future."

 Denis blushed scarlet. Mr. Scogan had described the plan of his novel with an accuracy that was appalling. He made an effort to laugh. "You're entirely wrong," he said. "My novel is not in the least like that." It was a heroic lie. Luckily, he reflected, only two chapters were written. He would tear them up that very evening when he unpacked.

 Mr. Scogan paid no attention to his denial, but went on: "Why will you young men continue to write about things that are so entirely uninteresting as the mentality of adolescents and artists? Professional anthropologists might find it interesting to turn sometimes from the beliefs of the Blackfellow to the philosophical preoccupations of the undergraduate. But you can't expect an ordinary adult man, like myself, to be much moved by the story of his spiritual troubles. And after all, even in England, even in Germany and Russia, there are more adults than adolescents. As for the artist, he is preoccupied with problems that are so utterly unlike those of the ordinary adult man—problems of pure aesthetics which don't so much as present themselves to people like myself—that a description of his mental processes is as boring to the ordinary reader as a piece of pure mathematics. A serious book about artists regarded as artists is unreadable; and a book about artists regarded as lovers, husbands, dipsomaniacs, heroes, and the like is really not worth writing again. Jean-Christophe is the stock artist of literature, just as Professor Radium of 'Comic Cuts' is its stock man of science."

Each chapter is similarly packed with delicious little digs at ideas, social conventions and personal idiosyncrasies.  The absurdities of life are satirically held up, showing us how ridiculous we are, how seriously we take ourselves, but how unable we are to change, even when we cringingly see them in ourselves.

Chapter 24, showing Denis’ reaction after opening Jenny’s private diary, exemplifies one recurring theme in the story.  After seeing Jenny’s private thoughts on display, Denis finally realises the rather obvious, but all-too-often forgotten, fact that other people are as fully conscious and deep as we are ourselves.  And yet, even while articulating it, and priding himself on his discovery of this fact, Denis still fails to practically act according to this obvious truth.  His conversation with Mary, where he expresses this fact, but fails to apply it, is especially amusing.

And Chapter 20 is a laugh-out-loud moment.  It helps if you don’t know the meaning of the word “carminative”, and so, at the end of the chapter, have to look it up in a dictionary.

Chrome yellow is not a book for children.  I wouldn’t bother suggesting it to Mulan or Miya until they are at university.  But I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys literature and can appreciate, and laugh at, the absurdities of life (and can laugh at themselves).

Friday 1 August 2014

Ten years

Ten years ago today, Mama and I met for the first time.

It was in Malaysia, on the island of Penang.  I was there doing a bit of a post-university holiday OE.  Mama was there for a short holiday break during her teaching work in Thailand.

The previous day, I had already noticed Mama while wandering around George Town.  She stood out because she looked like a very competent and confident solo traveller, with her backpack and Thai-style pants.  I only noticed her for a minute or so as she walked in front of me before she turned a corner and I continued on straight ahead.

So, I was surprised when I saw her again the following day.  I had caught a bus out to the funicular railway that goes up Penang Hill.  I had gone to a nearby temple first, and was walking up to the railway entrance when I saw Mama in front of me.  When I got there, I discovered that the railway was closed for repairs, so, after looking around the station for a bit, I wandered back out again.

Outside, once again I saw Mama in front of me, so I walked a little faster to catch up to her.  As I drew alongside her, I smiled at her, but I couldn’t think what to say.  Luckily, Mama spoke first, and we started chatting as we walked.  She asked me about the nearby temple.  Since I had already been there, and I wanted to keep talking with Mama, I told her it was just so-so.  I said I was planning to catch a bus to Batu Ferringhi, which was supposedly a nice beach area.  I can’t remember who said what, but Mama decided to come along with me.

After spending the rest of the day together, we decided to meet up again the following morning to do a 20 km walk along the length of the island.  By the end of the day, Mama had impressed me with her strength and quiet confidence.  Catching the return bus, I think I was the one whose legs were aching the most.  During our walk, Mama informed me that she was a university academic.  I concluded to myself that here was the perfect woman.  (Clearly, I still didn’t know her that well!!)

We spent the next few days together, before I had to catch my flight back to New Zealand on the sixth.  Needless to say, we kept in touch.  Mama came to visit me in New Zealand a few months later, and less than a year later I had moved to China to live.

Two years to the day after we first met, or eight years ago today, we returned to Penang Hill together.  This time the railway was open.  At the top of the hill, I proposed to Mama, and she accepted.

Hainan Island

We’ve just recently returned home from a one-week tropical island holiday.  And to rub it in a little more, we spent two of those nights at a luxury holiday resort right on a beautiful private beach.

There and back, between Guangzhou and Hainan, we took the overnight train.  It is mostly comfortable this way (ignoring the disgusting, overused toilets, the smelly, cancer-causing smokers, and the second-hand, unchanged, beds from passengers who alighted at Guangzhou).  We chose trains both ways that left after dinner, so after boarding we jumped straight into our hard-sleeper beds (which are not at all hard, but rather are three-layer bunks and in contrast to the soft-sleepers which are only two-layered) and drifted off to sleep as the train gently rocked out of the station.  Waking up in the morning, we just had time for breakfast and a bit of scenery-watching before rolling into the station at our destination.

For those who are puzzled about how a train can take us to an island, for the over water part our train is split into multiple sections and pushed side-by-side onto a ferry.  We stay inside our carriages and, deep within the ferry, we don’t even get to see the water.  It is smooth, too, and unless we are observant we may not realise that we are on the water.

We spent four nights at Mama’s uncle’s home in Haikou, which is the main city on Hainan Island.  This was the real reason for us travelling to Hainan—when we move to New Zealand we won’t get much chance to see our Chinese relatives.  So, Mama and the girls spent as much time as possible with Uncle, Aunt, and Aunt’s soon-to-be-married daughter.  Since most of the conversation was happening in Mandarin or, even worse, Cantonese, I was mostly excluded from the family socialising.  Consequently, I got to enjoy some relaxing me-time sightseeing and sunbathing on my own.

If you have read the news lately, you may be aware that just before we arrived in Haikou there was a huge typhoon in the area.  It had moved on by the time we arrived, and the weather was perfect the entire time we were there, but we certainly saw a lot of the destruction and the middle stages of the cleanup.


Trees had been knocked about very badly, and quite a few had fallen over.  But interestingly, it was the foreign trees that had suffered the most damage, and there were comparatively few local tropical trees lying down with their roots up.  The local trees had mostly just lost some of their fronds and were looking a bit roughed up.



Signs, too, had been knocked over.  While in the car, we even saw one huge three-sided motorway billboard that had completely toppled over and crushed itself into the ground.  Most other billboards were bent out of shape and had had their advertisements ripped off.


At Uncle’s home, his building lift had been damaged and for the first couple of days we had to use the stairs.  Luckily, his home is only on the fourth floor, so we weren’t as inconvenienced as many people.  I imagine that it can’t have been too pleasant for those on the higher floors, especially when, during the typhoon, they had no water and no electricity (I hear they took water from the communal swimming pool to flush their toilets).  Sadly, too, the swimming pool at Uncle’s apartment complex was still being cleaned the whole time we were there, so we couldn’t get the use of it like in previous visits (this was my third time in Hainan).

We visited soon-to-be-married daughter’s future apartment.  It is in a new building, and is still just bare concrete inside.  Water was ankle deep in some parts, blown in during the typhoon.

But overall, the typhoon didn’t affect us too much.  Most importantly, we got in lots of beach-time, and, much to Mama’s disappointment, got a bit of colour to our skin.  (What else is there to do on a tropical island?!)  Uncle’s apartment is less than ten minutes walk from one beach.  To be honest, it is a pretty disgustingly polluted beach, but beggars can’t be choosers and us Guangzhou-ers certainly are beggars when it comes to beaches.  So down there we went at every opportunity.  I took a book down there once and sunbathed on my own for a couple of hours.  The girls and I had swims there each day, though Mama didn’t bother.

The local bathers, who looked a little more working class, were intrigued by us foreigners.  I people-watched them, too.  It was interesting to see an old fishing boat come in each afternoon.  One time, a very fit and strong young man was exercising at the beach, energetically pushing the rubbish into piles on the sand before diving into the water, doing underwater headstands and punching the water.  The local children, too, looked like they have a wonderful life, splashing about in the warm water every afternoon.  Most didn’t bother with proper togs, but just wore their usual clothes in or, if they were young enough, stripped off naked.

A somewhat cleaner, but also more crowded (and middle class), beach was a bus ride away, and one day we went there for a very pleasant afternoon swim and picnic dinner.  We heard later that the following day a 20-year-old young man drowned in that same area where we were.  We know nothing about the circumstances except that he was swimming outside the patrolled area.

Our final two days were spent at the previously-mentioned luxury resort.  If you want to know the name, it is Horizon Resort and Spa, in Hainan’s other main city of Sanya.  It is a very child-friendly resort, and many of the guests were Chinese families with a young child.  From what I understand, one of Mama’s connections provided us with two rooms for free for those two days (Uncle and Aunt came along with us, too).  The walk-in price for our non-beach-facing room would have normally been 3500 RMB per night (though Mama tells me that we can book online for about half that price).

(Coincidently, Mama tells me that she has been to Horizon a few times before.  One time was New Year’s Eve 2000.  The funny thing is that during New Year’s Eve 2000, while she was frolicking about in luxury, I was working as a security guard (when one is a poor university student, one grabs any triple-pay opportunities).)

The drive from Haikou to Sanya took around three hours.  On the way there, we got caught in a torrential tropical downpour.  The rain was so thick that we could barely see past the end of the car bonnet.  I probably would have stopped and waited the short time for it to pass, but, once again, the local Chinese proved themselves to be car-driving Jedi masters and we continued on, all making it through alive.

Our room at the resort was nice, but in my opinion it was no better than 200 RMB hotel rooms elsewhere.  However, it was the service and location that we were “paying” for.  On our bedside table there was a little note saying that we can request any one of about a dozen different types of pillow (we were tempted, but didn’t bother).  More importantly for us, the swimming facilities were outstanding.  We probably spent about eight of the 44 hours we were there literally in the water.


Of course, the resort was right on the beach, so a lot of the time we swam in the sea.  The water was warm, clean and very clear.  The swimming zones were patrolled and seemed very safe.  There was a bit of a sand bar that took a lot of the force from the waves, so that it was very gentle for children and inexperienced swimmers (and a bit disappointing for body surfing).


Up from the beach there were a couple of big swimming pool areas.  One of these had fairly gentle water slides, which both Mulan and Miya loved (and Mama even grew to like them, too, once we had pushed her on).  A third pool area, which was supposedly seawater, was dusty dry.


During our time swimming, Mulan gained so much in water confidence and ability.  She can now confidently float and kick along unassisted with her head under the water, and she spent a lot of her time happily ducking down under the water and up again.  When we had to leave, she was so very sad.  Miya, too, loved it, and she kicked herself easily around with her swim ring on.

One of the more curious aspects of the resort was the way they were so strict with the swimming times and places.  We were not allowed to swim in the sea between seven at night and eight in the morning (the lifeguard informed us that the resort was merely following the local government rules, but he couldn’t explain the reasoning behind the rules).  The swimming zones were also very narrow, compared with the available beach space, which meant that at peak times it got very crowded.  Sometimes it was impossible to body surf with the waves, or even swim parallel to the beach, as there were too many Chinese tourists standing around and bobbing about with their swim rings on.  I don’t understand why the resort didn’t widen the patrolled swim zones.  And then not only did they rope off the sides of the swim zone but they also roped off the far end of it.  When the tide was out, as it was on the afternoon we arrived, it wasn’t even waist deep at the end rope!


The resort had a few animals in cages outside, including parrots, peacocks and what looked like llamas.


On the morning we departed, I woke up at about 5:30 and wandered on down to the beach on my own.  When I got there it was still dark and I think I saw only two other people on the beach.  People slowly arrived to see the sunrise and less than an hour later it was completely light.  When Mama and the girls woke, we swam for over one hour before going to breakfast (which was a pretty decent free buffet meal in the resort restaurant).


The return car journey to Haikou was uneventful.  We rested at Uncle’s home for a few hours before catching the overnight train back to Guangzhou.  Just as we did previously, we got three hard-sleeper beds, so Miya slept with Mama.  The train was a little late getting to us (it started in Sanya) so by the time we arrived in Guangzhou it was a few hours behind schedule and we’d had to buy lunch on the train.