Stefan Molyneux and free speech

Suppose we were in a crowded movie theatre and I jumped up and yelled "fire", when there wasn't a fire.  Suppose I was a good actor (I'm not) and lots of people believed me.  Maybe lots of people would rush, panicked, towards the exits.  Maybe there would be pushing, shoving, falling -- bumps, bruises and worse.

You ask me why I did it, and I say "free speech."

You would be right to criticise me.  While free speech may be a value, it is not the only value.  Avoiding physical harms to others is also a value.  And in this case it is obvious that avoiding those harms is much more important than my free speech to yell "fire."  We have two competing values -- avoiding harms and free speech -- and in this particular case avoiding harms clearly outweighs free speech.  Speech of this sort, by me or others, should be banned.  I should not have complete free speech.

I take this as the starting place.  I would be very puzzled if anyone seriously thought that free speech always outweighed all other values.

(When I teach this topic to my teenage students, I work through this excellent video with them.  I highly recommend it as a starter to any general conversation about free speech.)

And this brings us to Stefan Molyneux.

While I was away in China, the big New Zealand news was that Molyneux and Lauren Southern*** planned to visit New Zealand to speak.  They were booked to speak at the Bruce Mason Centre, a venue just a few minutes drive from where I live, which is owned by Auckland Council.

Auckland Council decided not to allow Molyneux to use the Council-owed facilities (and so the talk was cancelled), on the grounds that it was likely to significantly harm others through the stirring up of religious and ethnic tensions.

(The Powerstation, a privately-owned venue, has also more recently backed out of hosting them.)

It seems that some people thought that this was a violation of free speech.  Simon Bridges, the leader of the National Party, opined that Molyneux should be allowed to speak in New Zealand, even though he disagreed with Molyneux's views.

In other words, what we had was a more complicated version of my "fire in the theatre" story.  Most of those defending Molyneux speaking in New Zealand didn't try to say he was right, but just argued for his right to speak (this is a pretty weak form of defence to start with!).  The debate was then about two competing values -- free speech and avoiding harms to others -- and the task was to weigh up which outweighed the other in this particular situation.

Figuring out possible future harms is a tricky business.  And it is possible that people of good will are going to disagree about the answers.  But this is exactly the job of our political leaders, to make these sorts of judgment calls.  Did Auckland Council make the right call, or was Bridges correct?

Personally, I am inclined to think that Auckland Council made the right call, though I think it is a complicated one.

Firstly, I think the loss of freedom of speech in this case is minimal.  New Zealand is not like China, where certain views are completely blocked from being heard.  New Zealanders who are interested in Molyneux's views can freely hear them online on his YouTube channel.  And his books are freely available to buy/read.  New Zealand Immigration is freely allowing Molyneux to enter New Zealand, and he is free to speak with anyone while he is here.  That the Auckland Council is declining to let him use Council-owned facilities is a fairly weak restriction on his speech.

Secondly, I think the possible harms are serious enough.

To start with, quite clearly Molyneux gets a lot of things wrong.  He gets many facts wrong, and he is bad at reasoning.  I get the impression that most people who have thought about this sort of thing full-time for more than a few years immediately spot the howlers in Molyneux's thinking.  Some have been patient enough to step us through his many problems, including:

• David Gordon (a libertarian who one might think shares many of the same political views) sets out many of Molyneux's errors in ethical theory here, and in a follow-up reply here.
• Cian Chartier focuses on Molyneux's confused and wrong understanding of reason and logic here.
• Joshua Stein focuses on Molyneux's errors with respect to political philosophy here.
• Alexander Douglas is amusingly critical in his review here.
• Brian Leiter calls him a charlatan here and here.

But just because Molyneux's views are wrong, is his repeating these wrong ideas in a public setting bad?  That is, is his saying these wrong things to crowds of people causing harms that outweigh the value of his freedom of speech?

If Molyneux was merely doing an "Intro to Logic" tour (with his confused and wrong ideas on logic), then we might think that this is not serious enough to warrant cancelling him at The Bruce Mason Theatre.

But the heart of the problem is that Molyneux's real crowd-pleaser is (unsurprisingly) not logic, but the superiority of Western Civilisation over other cultures.  This is what draws the crowds, and this is what causes the problems.  He also, secondly, has quite a few bad things to say about women.  We can assume that this will be a fair chunk of Molyneux's talk, and what the crowds will come away buzzing about.  Simon Wilson writes a decently nuanced piece on this.  The video I linked to above, at 8 min 20 sec, is also relevant.  On this basis, it seems to me that should Molyneux talk, he would likely do what Auckland Council claimed he would do -- that is stir up too much religious and ethnic tension.

All this means that I think the Auckland Council was right to not let Molyneux talk at Council-owned facilities.  I am pleased that the owners of the Powerstation cancelled Molyneux, too.

*** I focused this discussion on Molyneux rather than Southern, because Southern is less defensible, and so less interesting, than Molyneux.  Southern appears to intentionally try to offend people and was refused entry into the UK for her racist views.  I understand that Molyneux is more subtly a Western-supremacist, whereas Southern is more simply a white-supremacist.

China trip: Part 2

(Continuing from Part 1)

Tuesday 10 July

The Chengdu area has been populated by people for quite a while.  Apparently, some 3000 years ago there was a pretty decent civilisation in the area, called the Shu.  These people were around at the same time as the Shang and Zhou civilisations in the northern plains, and apparently they helped the Zhou overthrow the Shang around 1100 BCE.

The Jinsha Museum, in north-western Chengdu, sits on an ancient Shu site.  There is a museum building containing Shu artefacts, as well as a building covering an archaeological dig site, where the artefacts were found.  It is all set in a pleasant park environment, and we spent about five or so hours wandering around the area.

To get there, we caught the metro to the Jinsha Museum metro station.  Chengdu metro stations are often decorated according to their location, and this station had a very beautiful gold and jade look.  Before going into the museum we had lunch at a restaurant opposite the entrance.

After lunch, just as we were about to enter the museum, several bus loads of school children (maybe about Mulan’s age) drove up.  We raced in before them, entering the archaeological dig site building, but about ten classes soon, one by one, caught up and passed us inside the building.  Mulan and Miya seemed more interested in sociology than archaeology, preferring to watch the school children rather than the pits.

Despite the sudden crowds, looking at the archaeological dig was fascinating.  It seems like it is still an ongoing dig site, and they know there is still a lot more buried in there.  After seeing the dig site we walked around the park area before heading to the museum to see the artefacts.

The star find of the site, in the museum, is a gold foil disc, depicting the sun and immortal birds.  This gold disc is used as a symbol on a lot of local stuff, and now that we know it we saw it everywhere.  A gold mask is also significant.

Wednesday 11 July

We stayed at home all day resting, reading and writing — we needed a break.  The morning was quite rainy (though not especially bucketing down), and apparently it was the wettest in ten years in the area.  With the unseasonably bad weather, transport and various activities in the city seem to be stopped and closed sometimes.  We ate dinner at the yummy bin-bin restaurant under our apartment.

Thursday 12 July

            We’re off to see the pandas,

            The wonderful pandas of China,

sang Mulan and Miya.

We left home at 6:30 am to beat the crowds to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding (yep, that long mouthful is its name).  We caught the metro to the Panda Ave metro station, where, around 7:30 am, we got a panda bus to the gates of the park.  It was already pretty crowded, and we were beginning to think that everyone was trying to beat the crowds as well, but it turned out that later in the day it was even more crowded.

The weather forecast said it would be a fine day so we didn’t bother with rain gear, but no, it was raining as we entered the park.  Mama and the girls bought 10 RMB disposable plastic raincoats each, but I toughed it out (I’d rather a little drizzle wetness that contribute to the throwaway plastic problem).  But luckily someone had thrown away their slightly ripped raincoat, which we retrieved for me from the (hopefully clean) bin.

Amusingly, along with the disposable raincoats, many visitors also wore disposable plastic booties to cover their shoes.  It seems that the fashion-focused locals think it important that their foot coverings are themselves covered and protected.

The park consisted mostly of pleasant outdoor walks along paths between bamboo clumps and other plant-life, seeing the occasional panda in fairly decent zoo-like enclosures.  Panda activities we observed included a bit of bamboo eating, a bit of playing, and a lot of sleeping and stretching.  There were also two nursery buildings, where we could see panda babies in their incubators.  This was by far the highlight of the park, as the smallest of the babies had only just barely got their darker colourings.  It was also by far the most crowded, and crowd control consisted of guards with megaphones screaming at us to keep moving as we walked in line past the windows of the panda nurseries.

(Red pandas too.)

We ate lunch at a restaurant in the park, choosing a bamboo shoot dish, and left the park around mid-afternoon.  Despite the crowds, this is definitely a must-see place to go to while in Chengdu.

Friday 13 July

We were out for over 12 hours this day, though it almost failed at the beginning due to more train station mistakes.  The problem was that Mama misjudged when we needed to leave home, and we arrived far too late at the hugely busy intercity train station.  Initially we thought that we had no chance to get through the massive crowds, but Mama managed to politely push to the front of queues and, by running, we boarded the train five minutes before it departed at 11:40 am.  (Miya, who hates changes to plans, was pretty stressed out by it all, though.)

The place we went to for the day was the nearby city of Dujiangyan, just 30 minutes away by fast train.  The significance of this city is that around 256 BCE an amazingly innovative flood control and irrigation system was built there, which is still in use today.

Apparently, before this, every spring the area would flood from the excessive water coming down the mountains and overflowing the river.  This was a problem that needed to be solved, but they didn’t want to build a dam as they still wanted to use the waterways for military transport.  So, the governor Li Bing was tasked with the complicated engineering project.

With a team said to number in the tens of thousands, and taking four years, Li built a levee in the river out of rocks and bamboo that diverted a portion of the water flow.  Taking a further eight years, he then cut a channel through the mountain (cracking the stone with water and heat) to discharge the excess water onto the plains.  Apparently it was all built and angled just right to get the right proportions of water down the right channels at all times of the year.  Problem solved, and no more flooding.  Additionally, this helped irrigate the plains and made Sichuan the most productive agricultural region in China.

Wikipedia tells us that this has helped to create a local culture in which the people are more laidback — for a couple of millennia they must have had a relatively comfortable life with an abundance of food.  This, it seems to me, may also partly explain the fashion-focus mentality of the region.

When we arrived at the Dujiangyan train station, to get to the river sightseeing park Mama opted to buy bus tickets from the State-run company, which had an office right at the train station exit.  It was a military-mentality organisation, the way they organised us customers onto buses and into the park.  But maybe it had to be, with the numbers of tourists arriving.  The staff were certainly impressive in their organisational abilities (Mama told me that for instance each girl in charge of each bus-load, who also acted as their tour-guide around the park, also handled the park ticket-buying for their passengers — remembering everyone’s specific needs with the complicated pricing system, where those from different regions of China pay differently, eg Shanghainese pay less because Shanghai helped significantly after the huge earthquake ten years earlier).

After we bought the tickets, the megaphoned girls ordered us customers into a long snaking line, before taking us group-by-group out to our waiting buses.  This procedure must happen at every train arrival.  We were near the front of the queue, having got our tickets relatively early, and, as luck would have it, we were the last to go to the first bus — those immediately behind us in the queue were stopped and told to wait.  Consequently we were the last on our bus and we had to dot ourselves separately around on the last four bus seats.

The last non-peopled seat in the bus (the one I survived my Bolivian bus crash in), which was my intended seat, was already occupied by several plastic bags of stuff.  No one seemed to want to move them, and, after standing there for several seconds with not much happening, I asked the man sitting next to them if he had bought an extra ticket for them.  He mumbled that it wasn’t his (oops, sorry!), and eventually our megaphoned girl came over, huffed a bit, and moved them into the stair area.  I have no idea what she was expecting me to do otherwise (she seemed to be gesturing me towards the back of the bus), and I guess I will never know whose bags they were, but at least I was not the only one standing for the 20-minute journey.

At the park entrance, after getting off the bus, we had to wait another several minutes while our megaphoned girl sorted out our park tickets.  It was pretty crowded there, with buses coming and going, dropping off more tourist groups, each with their own megaphoned girl (or occasionally boy).  Each tour-group leader either had a flag or a small soft toy on a stick — ours had a pikachu.  Eventually we got our tickets and we went through the gates.  We had the option of continuing to follow our tour-guide megaphoned girl, but chose instead to go our own way.

We probably entered the park around 1 pm, and left about 7 pm.  For most of that time we were walking, and for a lot of the walk it was up and down steps on the mountainside above the river.  The girls survived remarkably well, though Miya had occasional moments throughout the walk of not feeling so happy with it all.  (The next day, Mama and Miya said their legs were a bit sore, whereas the sides of my tummy were slightly sore from swinging my hiking poles.  Mulan, with all her ballet training, was as perky and pain-free as ever.)  If I was to redo this day, I’d reduce the amount of walking we did, as it was pretty tough for Miya.

On entering the park, we walked a few minutes before finding a quiet pavilion in the bushes and overlooking the river to eat our lunch.  It was very pleasant and peaceful.

After eating, we walked down the mountainside to the river, passing through some temple complexes on the way.  It seems that the waterway builders and various others have been elevated to the status of gods, and the temples in the area are there for their (and other gods’) worship.  More importantly for Miya, there was a little kitten in the temple area that needed a greeting.

On a sign by the temple, it explained that it was Taoist (Daoist).  Mulan wanted to know what that was, so I briefly explained as we walked.  The Daoists were reacting against the Confucians.  And Confucius was reacting against the pop culture of his day.  Confucius, around 500 BCE, was unhappy with the laxness of the current people.  He was a conservative who wanted to return to what he thought of as the good old days of several hundred years earlier.  This involved, amongst other things, lots of strict rituals and elaborate ceremonial activities.

The original Daoists (in particular the mythical Laozi’s text Daodejing and Zhuangzi) wrote laugh-out-loud stories often poking fun at the seriousness of the Confucians.  Their texts are often multi-layered ironic works telling stories about simple craftsmen and labourers who, without conscious thought, exhibit their superior expertise.  In part, Daoism was a reaction against the artificialness of rituals and a return to normal, practical life.  But as often happens with teachings that catch on, over hundreds of years the later Daoists themselves have turned their practices into elaborate rituals, as we saw in the temple.

Miya observed that the candles burning at the temple and dripping onto the ground were a big waste.  I pointed out that Miya was thinking like Mozi and his followers, who were also reacting against the Confucians.  Mozi thought that all these elaborate rituals were highly wasteful, both in time and resources, and they should be abandoned or simplified.

Arriving at the riverside, it was as if we had walked into an air-con-ed room, such was the sudden coolness of the river air.  It really was amazing to feel, and we experienced it several times in various places along the river.  The brown river water was rushing by, with lots of swirls and whirlpools, at a fairly quick pace.  I certainly would not have wanted to fall into it.

With Mama leading the way, I didn’t try to understand the poorly-designed tourist map, just enjoying the walk and scenery.  We walked approximately anti-clockwise around in a loop and eventually back to our original entrance.  On the way we walked alongside the river, up and down mountainsides, through ancient gateways, up a mountain-top pagoda and to a long two-part outdoor escalator.  This escalator, at something like 150 metres long and with a 50-odd metre elevation, is a pretty sizeable rest from walking, and Miya was looking forward to it for quite some time.  Most people walk the trails so that they go up the escalator, but we went down it.

(I couldn't resist the Chinglish!)

While walking, we were intrigued by a girl wearing old-style Chinese clothes.  She was accompanied by a few people periodically taking photos of her posed in various spots.  Mama said that it is starting to be a thing for Chinese girls to want to wear traditional clothing, since Japanese have their kimono and Koreans similarly have their traditional clothes.  The Chinese qipao, from the 1930s, is too modern.

Back at our original entrance, our walk wasn’t nearly over.  Instead we repeated our walk though the temples (no kitten this time) and down to the river.  The purpose of this was to cross the river over a swing-bridge and onto the levee island, then over another bridge and towards a different park entrance/exit.

But before continuing, we had an afternoon tea break at a restaurant overlooking the river.  Mama and I had chrysanthemum tea and the girls had an iced jelly dish each.

While resting it was drizzling a bit, and continued to do so as we crossed the swing bridge (fortunately we had brought our wet-weather gear this time).  Miya was a bit worried by the swing bridge, but holding my hand and with lots of assurances that it was all safe, she made it across.  Mulan wanted to bounce across the bridge and had to be restrained from making it swing too much.  By this time, around 5:30ish, there were far fewer tourists around and the tour groups had finished.

There were two more bridges in the park after this — one solid one and another swing bridge.  Miya was much more confident on this second swing bridge, walking across it on her own and standing there for photos.  We took our time with photos, as there was almost no one else around.

At 7 pm we exited the park into a large paved public square, where many locals were enjoying their evening social activities.  The girls shook hands with a Monkey King entertaining the crowds, alongside a panda (lots of panda-themed things in this part of China) and a few other dressed-up characters.  We ate in a local restaurant, listening to the cook at the next restaurant sing out of tune to accompanying music.  We applauded his genuinely happy attitude, if not his singing abilities.

Around 8 pm, we caught a local bus back to the intercity train station.  Mama didn’t have any change with her, as China is mostly cashless these days (most people pay by WeChat or AliPay from their phones), and the bus driver very kindly let us on for free.  We caught the 9:17 pm train back to Xifu, a different station in Chengdu, meaning we had slightly further to travel on the Chengdu metro.  We finally got in home around 11 pm.

Saturday 14 July

Tired after our long day, we spend this day resting at home.  Miya quietly informed me that she has decided not to eat meat.  She feels sorry for the animals, she said.  I’ve been vegetarian since 2003, so it seems that for now half our family is vegetarian.

(Part 3 here)

China trip: Part 1

Sunday 1 July 2018

With a morning flight departing Auckland at 10 am, we had an early start to our day, leaving home around 6:30 am.  We packed most of our things the afternoon before, but we still set our alarms for 4 am.  The flight, which took about 12 hours, was on time and mostly pretty smooth.  Since it was a daytime flight none of us slept much, and we all watched two or three movies each.  But unfortunately this meant that we were all exhausted before the end of our journey.

We landed in Shenzhen and caught the local metro to the intercity fast train station.  The timing wasn’t so great, as the next available train to Guangzhou didn’t leave until 10:30 pm (China time), meaning we had about an hour and a half to wait.  We decided to eat while waiting, and found a restaurant in a mall by the train station entrance.  Weirdly, with trains still coming and going, and people still everywhere, they locked up the mall just before 10 pm and the restaurant staff hurried us out while we were still finishing our last mouthfuls.  As we got to the mall entrance, we met a guard with keys, having just padlocked the door, who told us to go around the other way to exit.  Mama asked him to unlock the padlock, but he said no.  So I tried in English, pointing to our huge suitcases (carrying about 40 kg of pressies for family and friends), and he reluctantly obliged (white person privilege!).

The girls slept for most of the 30 minutes on the fast train, and we arrived in Guangzhou just after 11 pm, where we quickly grabbed one of the last metro trains for the day.  This got us partway to our apartment, but metro line 8 had already closed, so we couldn’t go all the way.  After several minutes we managed to hail a taxi, into which we all squeezed tightly for the 5-minute ride.  We got to our apartment (Mama’s friend Kane’s apartment) around midnight.  Mama's Aunt Ada was already there (she was staying with us), and she let us in.

Monday 2 July

Our apartment, on the 25th floor, is in our familiar home area of Guangzhou, only about 10 minutes walk from our old apartment home at Sun Yat-sen University.  It’s only two bedrooms, though, so it was a bit squishy with the five of us (Ada slept on a sofa-bed in the lounge).  In the morning, we walked to our old Park n Shop supermarket, which we must have shopped at hundreds of times before, rediscovering the old sights.

(From our apartment balcony, looking towards Xiaogang Park)

Mama had lots of her own things to do, so we separated for lunch.  The girls and I took the metro to Decathlon, to buy a few needed sporty things, eating our picnic lunch there just like old times.  Coming out of the metro station on the way home we bumped into Mama's friend Limei — just like old times again!

In the late afternoon, Tongyi and family (who we did a campervan trip with in New Zealand in 2016) visited, and we played for a bit at the local playground underneath our apartment.

Tuesday 3 July

Once again, Mama was busy with her own stuff.  So, in the morning, the girls and I walked to the riverside, past Mulan’s old kindergarten and towards the playground we used to go to a lot.  The playground had been pulled down and the area is now bare, but they have built a new old-person-style playground just nearby, which we played at for a while.  Having just come from New Zealand winter, we were finding it very hot and sweaty (a typical Guangzhou summer, though not as hot as sometimes), so we didn’t do too much exercise.  On the way home we stopped off at the pet shop that we used to visit, watching the dozen or so kittens in the cages.  The girls wondered what happened to the kittens who didn't get sold -- we didn't want to think about the answer to that.

Mama's Uncle (who lives in Hainan), Aunt and their grandson (Danny) arrived in the afternoon, and we all walked to Xiaogang Park to play at the amusement park (again, just like old times).

Walking around the local area, which we hadn’t been to for a couple of years, I felt that the traffic users were a little more considerate of others than before.  Intersections and pedestrian crossings didn’t seem quite as chaotic, and people seem to be following the lights more now.  It is not quite so much that size rules now, and cars actually slow down more often for pedestrians.  This is partly enforced by traffic officers with whistles at intersections, and partly it seems to be a cultural change.  Also, queuing for the metro trains is much more normalised, and it is just the occasional oldie who still thinks they can push in to the front (it was just ten or so years ago that queues didn’t exist, and everyone standardly pushed).

All metro stations I have seen in China now routinely have security at their entrances, with bag scanners and water bottle checking.  This was never the case several years ago.  As I observed to the girls, this is visual evidence of the worsening of society in China, where the authorities have to use more force to dominate increasingly unhappy social subgroups.  International Internet connections also continue to be patchy, with most overseas sites, when not directly blocked, slowed to the point of being practically unusable (for example, I often had to wait about 30 seconds or more for each of my emails to show, and I couldn't access the New Zealand government website to deal with my tax paperwork).

Wednesday 4 July

In the morning, we said goodbye to Ada, who was going back to her home.  We then packed a picnic lunch and headed off to the Guangzhou zoo with Hainan Uncle and family (the same zoo that we went to a few times when we used to live in Guangzhou).  The zoo was very similar to before, though it was a nice family outing.  It was another hot day, and Mulan, especially, felt the heat.  We probably spent the most time watching the monkeys on their rock hill.  They have a new pool, into which the younger ones repeatedly dive from the rocks and chains above — it looked very comfy and fun, and we wished we could do that too!

I was intrigued by the "core socialist values" propaganda sign in the zoo, which listed out 12 values. As I understand it, socialism is, at heart, an economic/political system in which the means of production (factories, farms, etc) is owned collectively by everyone, rather then owned by an elite few (as is the case in most societies, including in China).  For this reason, socialism, by its nature, requires complete democracy -- we cannot have socialism without a democracy in which everyone gets their fair say in the running, and profit distribution, of their assets.  Rule of law, freedom, equality and justice are also requirements of socialism, for this same reason.  (The other values -- prosperity, civility, harmony, patriotism, dedication, integrity and friendship -- are not so much specifically socialist values.)

I was delighted by the timing of my photo.  Perhaps the lion represents the Chinese Communist Party, and his actions represent their attitude to socialism.

The first (Guangzhou) part of our China holiday was already over.  For the rest of our holiday we would be sightseeing new areas.  In the evening, we repacked our bags, storing our suitcases at the apartment and prepared to travel light with backpacks each.

Thursday 5 July

Our next destination was Chengdu, and we left our Guangzhou apartment at 6:10 am, catching the metro to the fast train station.  But we had a huge shock when we went to show our tickets at the station.  We had wrongly gone to Guangzhou South Railway Station, instead of Guangzhou Railway Station (trusting Mama was a mistake!), and there was no way we could get to the correct station in time before the train left at 7:30 am.   We raced to the ticket office to get a refund and buy new tickets.  With the new departure time being 1:18 pm, we returned to our apartment to rest for a few hours before trying again.

Next time we got it right, and boarding the train went smoothly.  The journey took around ten hours, going at up to about 250 km/h.  We passed through Yangshuo and Guilin (at two hours and two and a half hours respectively), which we had visited before with the girls (in those “olden” days (2012), there was no fast train and the train journeys there took several hours).  Most of the time we travelled through mountainous regions, with many and long tunnels.  With the later train start, we got to Chengdu very late, and Mama's friend Grace’s father picked us up from the train station in his car.  Once again, we arrived at our apartment (Grace’s parents’ apartment) around midnight.  This apartment is much bigger and newer, and with three bedrooms the girls got a room each.

Friday 6 July

After a late morning start, we had lunch at a restaurant just over the road from our apartment, sitting outside at tables on the footpath.  The weather in Chengdu was cooler that Guangzhou, and the temperature was pleasantly in the mid 20s.  Our apartment, on the 21st floor, is above a large multi-level shopping centre, with a mix of office and apartment buildings all around.  It seems that this area is a newly-built commercial hub, and our metro station’s name is “Incubation Park”.  The 6th floor of our apartment building complex is mostly outdoor, with a (dirty) swimming pool, playground, tennis/basketball court, trees, paths, etc.  About half a dozen or so apartment/office high-rises sprout from this 6th floor open area above the shopping centre.

(The entrance to our apartment is on the right -- number 6.)

I think this is the first time we have lived in this sort of more modern apartment building area, and surprisingly I found myself thinking that the lifestyle is not too bad.  Living here, I could almost understand the attraction of choosing to live in an inner-city apartment.  (Though, of course, I’d still much rather live in a house with a backyard!). The thing is, with most Chinese apartments I have lived in over the years — even the fairly decent ones — the outside environment is typically one or more of dirty, rundown, dark, narrow or crowded.  It is simply not pleasant or relaxing to get out and about outside, or often even to look out the windows.  But, at least in my opinion, the outside environment here is none of that and so fairly peaceful in feeling.  The biggest problem here that I can see is that the footpaths are so wide that cars park and drive on them, to the extent that often walking areas are still crowded out of existence.  Chengdu is also a bike-share city, and in many places hire bikes line the footpaths to the extent that we have to walk on the road to get around the bikes.

After lunch we caught the metro to get a new battery for Mama’s computer.  While out, we tried the latest fashion drink of cheese-tea.  It was surprisingly yummy!

We had dinner with Grace’s parents at a restaurant about five or so minutes walk from our apartment.  I am beginning to understand that Chengdu people are “even more Chinese”, in the sense that a lot of the usual cultural things us Westerners notice about Chinese seem even more extreme here. For example, at a restaurant meal, Chinese typically order more than the people could possibly eat, but here Grace’s parents ordered about 12-14 dishes for the six of us (including Mulan and Miya).  Of course, there was a huge amount of food left over.  Apparently, also, Chengdu people don’t doggy-bag the extras (Guangzhou people typically do, which apparently other Chinese think is stingy).

Another “even more Chinese” aspect is the generosity to friends.  Grace’s parents have been amazingly kind to us, not only with letting us stay in their apartment but also that they have gone out of their way so much for us.  I hear that they drove six hours from the neighbouring city to help us here.

Just before bed, we found that Mulan had got a large boil on her side under her arm (obviously the super-sweaty Guangzhou conditions got to her).  It was after Miya was asleep, so Mama and Mulan went to the hospital about 10 pm (they were away about two hours).  Mulan needed antibiotics, and the boil was cut, so she needed to go back to the hospital each morning for several days to get it checked and dressed.  With no painkillers, from what I hear the cutting was extremely painful for Mulan.  We decided to keep things simple for the next few days, and sadly it also meant no swimming for this holiday in China.

Saturday 7 July

Keeping things a little more simple, we spent the day wandering around our local area.  First, we ate lunch at the shopping centre under our apartment.  The restaurant we chose focuses on selling more up-market middle-class versions of a street-side takeaway breakfast food we love to get in Beijing (we call them yummy bin-bins).

Next, we walked around the open-air playground on the 6th floor of our building.  It wasn’t a bad little park for the local residents to do their outdoor strolls and exercises.  A gardener was there keeping it spotlessly tidy, but bigger things, like the swimming pool and courts, were getting a bit run down.

Next, we went down to the ground level and outside, walking to the nearby Jincheng Park, about 10 minutes away.  It is a fairly decent-sized park, and it reminded me a bit of the Olympic park in Beijing, though much smaller and simpler and quite overgrown/unkempt.  There are lots of walking tracks, including a 650m walking/biking fitness trail.  We just walked around a small part of the park before returning home.

The park is next to a massively huge building, The Global Center, which is supposed to be the biggest (not tallest) building in the world.  We looked towards it, but didn’t go in.

Sunday 8 July

This day was taken up, for the most part, with activities with some more distant relatives — Laolao’s cousin and her family.  Much of that time was spent travelling in the car, seemingly to opposite ends of the city, although I really have no idea.  A lot of the day, too, was rainy.

The first stop was to visit Laolao’s cousin’s mother (ie Laolao’s aunt), who is 96 and in hospital.  Apparently, she has been in that hospital room (which looked like a standard-style hotel room) for about ten years, though sadly, she would now seem to be in a persistent vegetative state.  At the hospital we met several other family members, including Mulan and Miya’s third cousin, who is about Mulan’s age.  The children were all very quiet, and didn’t interact much with each other.

Secondly, we had a restaurant lunch with the family members.

Thirdly, we went to a cemetery to see the grave of Laolao’s cousin’s father (ie Laolao’s uncle).  While there we also saw the grave of Laolao’s cousin’s brother (ie another cousin), who sadly died in a car accident in 1995.

For a lot of the day Miya was feeling carsick with the traffic and bumpy driving, and so on the way home we said our goodbyes and got out, catching the metro the rest of the way.  Apparently, Chengdu people like their cars, even though their public transport system is excellent.  Once again, they are “even more Chinese”, and this would seem to be an example of an increased face-culture, where they would rather have their face-gaining cars and be stuck in traffic than use the much-faster metro system (Chengdu metro trains never seem very busy, compared with Guangzhou and Beijing).

Monday 9 July

We walked to the huge Global Center building, to have a nosy around inside.  We arrived at the Jincheng Park side of the building, and struggled to find an entrance.  Doorways inwards appeared to be to either lift-lobbies, construction zones or abandoned massive concrete darknesses.  It was a rainy day, and not so pleasant to be walking along the massive side of the building looking for a way in.  All in all, the building looked too big for the area, as a lot of it is unused and becoming run down.  Finally, towards the other end of the building, we found an entrance.

Most notable inside was a water park complex, with a wave pool, slides, stationary surfing, fake beaches, rafting rivers, etc, etc.  There is a glass ceiling above the swimming complex, but it has quite a few leaks with the rain coming in.  They had dotted around buckets as well as large sponges on the fancy floor, to collect the rain water.

Inside the building there was also an ice skating rink, movie theatres, a hotel overlooking the water park, and (of course) lots of shops and restaurants.  Miya, who is very sensitive to noises and other sensory stimuli, really didn’t enjoy all the indoor walking (she also wanted to go in the water park and ice skating rink!).  We ate lunch at a jiaozi restaurant.

Compared with Guangzhou folk, it is very noticeable that Chengdu women are quite fashion-conscious, and many wear makeup.  Mama tells me that within China Chengdu women rank behind only Shanghai women for their fashion-focus.  Fashion this year is apparently ripped jeans or frayed denim skirts.  Short shorts or skirts (again often frayed denim) are an option.  Another common look is longer see-through skirts over shorter skirts.  Most men still seem no different from the past several years — striped polo shirts continue to be as popular as ever, or white shirts and black trousers for the office-look.  Rarely, more fashionable young men opt for the ripped jeans look.  Happily for us easily-amused foreigners, weird Chinglish phrases on tops is still popular with both sexes.  Occasionally we also see young adults with tattoos — both men and women.  To me, this is a new thing in China.  Some are temporary, and I saw the occasional market stall doing fake tattoos for the young and fashionable.  But more than a few are obviously permanent.  There is more coloured hair about, too — often blue.

For a change in scenery and to get outside, we decided to catch the metro to a supposedly old bridge and street area.  Getting out at the Niuwangmiao station, we wandered around and crossed the bridge, but it really didn’t seem all that special to us.

So, as a second choice we walked to Wangjiang Park, which is apparently famous for its bamboo gardens, with many bamboo varieties collected from around the world.  The park overlooks the river, and there was a longish walk alongside the river from the bridge.  It was still raining on and off, but it was nice to be outside.  The bamboo was indeed beautiful, and the park was very pleasant.  The park also has a children’s amusement park (a bit like Guangzhou’s Xiaogang Park, but maybe twice the price), which the girls played on.  With the rain, it seems that we were the only customers all afternoon, and the woman in charge videoed the girls on a ride with her phone.  We caught a bus then the metro home.

(Part 2 here)