China trip: Beijing and Harbin

Sunday 30th June 2019

Another year, another trip to China.  Last year, we stayed mostly in the south, travelling from Guangzhou to Chengdu, and reuniting with old friends from our time living in Guangzhou.  This year, we decided to head up north to Beijing and Harbin, spending quality time with Laolao (Mama’s Mama).  We were last in Beijing two and a half years ago; we’d never been to Harbin.

As always, our main aim with these yearly trips to China is to maintain Mulan and Miya’s bicultural connectedness.  We want them to feel at home in China, just as much as they feel at home in New Zealand.  We definitely don’t want them to hate their time in China, and nor do we want them to feel like foreign tourists.  We want their time in China to be as normal a Chinese life as possible (whatever that might really mean!).

Laolao lives in Beijing, and Harbin is her old childhood home. The plan was to spend most of our 20 days in Harbin, staying in an empty apartment owned by Laolao’s brother.  While in Beijing we did our usual thing of staying with Laolao in her apartment.

This time, we got a nighttime flight from Auckland directly to Beijing.  The flight left at 8:30 pm, an hour later than scheduled as the plane was late getting into Auckland.  We all struggled to sleep, watching movies to pass the time.

I watched the two Fantastic Beasts Harry Potter movies.  I've said it before, I'm a big Harry Potter fan, and this was a pretty good addition to the story.  I especially liked that the main character, Newt Scamander, was different from the usual Hollywood movie heroic males (I totally agree with this analysis here), though I didn’t like that they had to include a Love Interest for him.  I also felt that the Grindlewald character was too cartoonishly baddie.  I liked how Grindlewald (and Dumbledore) was presented in the original Harry Potter books, and I think these movies dumbed down the character too much.

Our flight was mostly smooth, and we arrived safely in Beijing about 6 am China time (China is four hours behind New Zealand).  Miya was feeling sick for about the final four hours, and vomited three times.  After catching the subway (the Beijing airport subway is far too overpriced), we arrived at Laolao’s apartment about 9 am.

Monday 1st July

None of us had slept well on the plane, so we spent most of the day resting in the apartment.

In the evening, Mulan, Miya and I had a walk around the local apartment complex area.  Apparently,  it was originally the athletes' village of the 1990 Asian Games (I often wonder which athletes were roomed in Laolao's apartment).  I was first there in 2006 and have been there several times since.  The environment hasn’t changed much since we were last there in 2017.  Things are merely continuing their gradual decay, as the apartment complex managers don’t do much in the way of maintenance.  Sadly, the area is slowly turning into a slum.

Tuesday 2nd

At this time of year in Beijing the sun is up before 5 am so we all got early starts to the day (it also didn't help that the curtains in Laolao’s apartment are very thin).  Or, to put it another way, it was a little bit like still being in New Zealand time, except that in Beijing it gets dark around 8 pm.

In the morning, Mama and Laolao went out together to do some paperwork stuff.

Meanwhile, the girls and I continued our rediscoveries of the area.  This time, we walked the ten minutes to what we had previously considered the best local playground.  The playground is still mostly the same, although some equipment had fallen apart and been removed (nothing repaired or replaced).  The girls are older, though, and the playground was not so interesting for them this time.  We didn’t stay and play for very long.

For lunch, the four of us met up at a restaurant with one of Mama’s old school friends who lives in the US but was coincidentally in Beijing at the same time as us.

After lunch, and after saying goodbye to School Friend, the four of us went to our favourite Chinese sports mega shop, Decathlon, for supplies.  We spent about RMB1100 on swimming gear, bike helmets and clothes.

During our travels, we noticed an interesting change with the Beijing subway advertising.  For the first time, some of the advertising posters on the walls had pictures of families with two children.  Previously, of course, all Chinese Happy Family advertising photos had just the one child.  Clearly, this change is part of the push to normalise the idea of two-child families.  Moreover, one poster showed the family with an older boy and younger girl — again this was obviously part of the effort to normalise the idea that even if you have a boy first up, you may still choose to have a second child.

Wednesday 3rd

This was another social responsibility day for us, as once again we met up with acquaintances at a restaurant for lunch (lunch at restaurants with acquaintances is such a huge Chinese cultural tradition).  This time we were with Laolao to meet two of her old friends.

In the afternoon, while the others rested at home, I took off for a walk for a few hours, wandering over to and around the Olympic Park.  This is something I often do when we stay with Laolao.  The park, which is about 45 minutes walk from Laolao’s apartment, is a little slice of green paradise in an otherwise concrete jungle.

At one point I walked past an older couple, maybe in their 50s.  He was taking photos of her posing and as I got closer she gave a huge smile and waved me over.  As I walked up to her she grabbed my arm; she clearly wanted to have a photo taken with me.  Hubby, however, was having none of that.  He turned around and walked off in the other direction.  She called and waved to him, but he refused to acknowledge her.  Laughing, I said my goodbyes to her.  Sadly, she missed out on a photo with the Hairy Whitey.

Thursday 4th

We had an early start to the day, the five of us leaving home at 6 am to catch the 7:55 am fast train up to Harbin.

Trains are far more relaxing than planes, and the six and a half hours passed by easily.  The girls loved their instant noodles that Mama bought them.  Boxed instant noodles on a long-distance train is another core Chinese cultural tradition.  I enjoyed my usual homemade sammies.

The train arrived into Harbin at 2:30 pm, where we were picked up in two cars by Laolao’s younger half-brother and his wife (Uncle and Aunt).  Uncle reminded me so much of the stereotypical Chinese TV grandfather.  Even though I didn’t understand much of what he said, and he never spoke English, his tone of voice and mannerisms are so recognisable!  He was a career military man.

Driving from the train station in the south to our apartment in the north, my immediate impression of Harbin was that the greenery was much more lushly green than in Beijing, and they like to plant colourful flowers along the roadside.  The temperature, in the mid-20s, was perfectly pleasant when we arrived.  Overall, it was a very nice first impression.  In winter, however, Harbin gets incredibly cold — Harbin is famous for its ice sculptures.

Our (Uncle’s) top-floor apartment, in building 41 of the gated community apartment complex, was something of a shock to our Guangzhou/Beijing trained eyes.  By Guangzhou/Beijing standards it would be super-expensive — one of the elite-style apartment complexes.  Firstly, the apartment itself is huge — or at least each room in the three-bedroom apartment is huge.  The apartments even have a garage each.  Secondly, the apartment buildings are relatively small (only 12 apartments per four-story building), and there is plenty of open greenery spaces throughout the gated community.  The ground floor apartments even have their own outside garden space, which are mostly entirely converted to rows of veggies.

(This photo was not real-estate-style exaggerated!)

Surprisingly, though, the apartment complex is not very popular.  In fact, it was more like a ghost town.  Most apartments in the complex are empty, the public areas are overgrown, and the local shops abandoned.  Weirdly, the buildings all had trees growing on the sloping tiled roofs.  My guess is that seeds have blown up onto the roofs and started growing.  The buildings’ roofs are starting to crack.

(Sunrise at 4:15 am)

Over the next several days of our stay in Harbin, we realised that these ghost town areas are fairly common.  My impression is that in Harbin they are continuing to madly build apartment buildings, but so many previously built areas are near empty — even the large new areas.  So often, we passed by buildings that are sitting empty and slowly deteriorating.  In some areas they have built wide roads that clearly don’t get much traffic, and the footpaths are growing up tall weeds in the cracks.  I have no idea why they are continuing to build — maybe government subsidies to construction companies give local people jobs and allow the businesses to still make profits?

I’m told that Heilongjiang Province, where Harbin is, is now one of the poorest provinces in China.  It used to be super-rich 40 or so years ago, thanks to the oil fields which powered China’s industrial rise, but these have mostly dried up and it seems that most youngsters choose to head to the coastal cities these days.

Friday 5th

The Beijing morning sun got us up bright and early, but in Harbin we were forced up even earlier.  The sky was starting to get light soon after 3 am, and by 4 am the sun was streaming in through our too-thin curtains.  Forced up early, I noticed that a lot of the locals had their morning walks around 5 am.  In the evenings it was getting dark just before 8 pm.  The short nights and thin curtains were especially hard on Miya, as it was a struggle for her to get enough sleep.

We kept things simple this day.  In the morning, we walked around our gated community and then out to the local grocer/supermarket, which is about 15 minutes walk away.

In the afternoon, Mama and I caught a bus to a nearby shopping area, hoping to find a larger supermarket.  We couldn’t find a supermarket, just more small grocers — in fact we started to realise that Harbin doesn’t seem to have many of the big supermarkets that we are used to.  And importantly for us, not many shops in Harbin have bottles of milk — mostly, the best we could do was get 250 ml bags of milk (a hassle, since we use about 2 litres of milk a day).

Saturday 6th

In the morning, the four of us had another walk around our local area.  This time we wandered in and around a nearby large gated community, which has several high-rise apartment buildings.  Again, this fitted the pattern of large and fancy buildings being mostly unused.

For the afternoon we had arranged with Aunt to watch her dance rehearsals.  Back in the day Aunt was a professional dancer, and in her retirement she has continued to enjoy dancing with her old friends.  They were rehearsing for a concert they would be performing in a few weeks.

We were picked up in the car at 12 noon, and we watched the rehearsals for a couple of hours.  It was all very inspiring.  Aunt and her friends, most well into their 60s, all look very fit, and clearly they love doing what they do.  The leading man was especially muscular, fit, strong and agile.

The dancers kindly invited Mulan and Miya to join them when they did some ballet drills together (the muscular man leading the class).  The girls (especially Mulan) loved getting involved and dancing again.

The main problem was that (as is so typical in China) they had the music on far too loud.  Watching the rehearsal was not so relaxing and peaceful for us.  (Miya also struggled with the many dancers who were very expressive in their kindness to us.)

While the dancers continued their rehearsals, Uncle and his son picked us up in the car.  We drove to the Harbin Cultural Island, which is just a short walk from our apartment.  We walked around the Theatre building before walking home.  The Theatre building is a fascinating shape.  We couldn’t decide whether it was more like (a) a helmet, (b) the Sydney Opera House with the dishes fallen over, or (c) an Ohmu from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Sunday 7th

Our apartment was right next door to a tiger park.  Uncle decided to take us there.  We preferred not to go, based on what we had previously read about the cruel conditions at many of these sorts of parks.

The six of us spent the morning at Siberia Tiger Park.

(Back in New Zealand, a quick Internet search popped up this blog post about the Park.  It's worth reading.  I didn't know about the tiger cub petting, but the rest is similar to what we experienced.)

The main feature of the park is that we board Park buses and drive through enclosures where dozens, if not hundreds, of tigers live.  There were two types of buses — one with bars on the windows and one without.  If you ride the barred one, you get up close to some tiger feeding from the bus.  We (ie Uncle) chose the non-barred bus.

After the bus, we walked over and around various cages containing tigers (and a few other great cats).  Miya tried to take a photo of every tiger she saw; our camera is full of tiger photos.

We walked past buckets full of live hens squashed close to each other.  Mulan realised what they were for and was quite upset (if you want more details, the blog post linked above graphically describes this).

After the tiger park we drove to a restaurant for lunch.

After lunch we drove to Sun Island Park, where Uncle dropped the four of us off before taking Laolao back home.  We hired a 4-person bike (actually a quad) and biked (quadded?) around the island for two hours.  This was the perfect relaxer for all of us after the earlier activities — a bit of physical exercise together as a family in a beautiful park, and feeling free to choose wherever we wanted to go.

In the evening, we took a short ferry ride to the bus station and bused home.

Monday 8th

In the morning we caught a bus to a large shopping centre.  I was only half joking when I said, as we entered the shopping centre, that I finally felt at home again.  This shopping centre was a fairly standard modern Chinese mall, and the first we had been to this time in China.

Our main aim here was to get new glasses for me.  Sadly, I’m heading towards my twilight years, and I had to change my glasses from nerdy shortsighted to oldie progressives.  My previous frames are too narrow for the new lenses.  We decided to try to find something in China, as New Zealand doesn’t seem to have a very good range of frames — I wanted ones that also have sunglasses magnetically attached that can be put on and taken off one-handed (while driving).  The shop that Aunt recommended (and had a discount for) had a frame that suited me.

We also found a new pair of togs for Mama.

The girls merely put up with all this boring shopping.  But they were delighted with two findings at the shops.  Firstly, we had cheese teas with our sammies for lunch.  And secondly, we found an ice skating rink in the shopping centre.  We agreed to go ice skating the following Monday when the glasses were ready to be collected.

Tuesday 9th

It was arranged that on this day we (including Uncle and Laolao) would all go in the car to see the grave of Laolao’s parents and other brother.

Unfortunately for me I finally caught the cold that Mama, Mulan and Miya had all got earlier.  Laolao was worried that she would then catch the cold from me, and ordered that I stay at home and not go.

So, that is what we did.  I hear that their day went as planned.  The grave was Chinese-city-style — basically a locker containing the ashes alongside rows of other lockers in a large building.  Traditional Chinese tomb-sweeping consisted of wiping the locker door with a cloth.

Wednesday 10th

The four of us caught a bus into the city centre to have a look at the riverside and the old buildings.

It seems that about 100 or so years ago Harbin was hugely influenced by Russia.  Russia was expanding, building railways out east, including over the border into China.  As part of this expansion, Harbin city buildings acquired a Russian look.

Along the riverside we walked through Stalin Park (!), stopping to watch a local oldies band playing their traditional Chinese instruments (with one cello).

We visited one of the main Harbin landmarks, a memorial tower for those who worked to help control river floods in the 1950s and again in 1998.  And we did our traditional jumping photos in front of the huge water fountain in the river.

Perpendicular to the river, we walked up the old main street, with the old Russian buildings converted into modern fashion shops, before ending our walk at the Russian-style St Sophia Cathedral.  During our walk we tried the traditional milk ice blocks, which seemed to be sold at little shops on every block.

Thursday 11th

We all enjoyed our biking so much that we decided to go again, and this time with Laolao.  We caught a taxi to Sun Island Park, arriving just as it opened and while it was still cool at 8:30 am.

We hired two bikes, one 4-person and one 2-person, for one hour.  Miya and I shared the smaller bike, while Mulan and Mama peddled Laolao around on the bigger bike.  It was very relaxing and enjoyable, and not nearly as crowded as our Sunday ride.

From Sun Island Park, we rode the cable car over the river back to the Stalin Park area.  We refuelled on cheese teas again, before walking through the Park and the city centre.

Next, we caught a bus to Children Park.  This was a really special back-to event for us and Laolao.

Back in 1956, when Laolao was 14 years old, Harbin opened a new children's railway in this park.  What made this children’s railway special was that not only was it built especially for children to ride on, but it was also run by children.

When the railway opened, Laolao was selected to be the first child in charge of running the railway.  Her duty was to run the main “Beijing” station; others worked on the train or the second “Moscow” Station (now renamed “Harbin”) at the opposite end of the park.  Once a week, when she was not in school, for two years Laolao worked at the children’s railway.  If foreign visitors came to the park during the week she was called out of school to meet them.

The children’s railway is still running, and we bought tickets and rode the 10-minute loop.  On the train Laolao met another woman who had worked there as a child several years after Laolao.

After the train ride, Laolao got to talking with the adults working there (this was a weekday, so the children weren’t at work, and I guess foreigners aren’t special anymore).  It seems that they are in the process of setting up a museum there, and delightedly got Laolao’s contact details.

Friday 12th

Last year in Chengdu we had planned on swimming at the water park inside the world’s biggest building.  But we couldn’t because of Mulan’s untimely infection.  This year, all staying healthy, we found another water park -- Estuary Wetland Park.

Getting into the water at this park was an exercise in the absurd.  It was just one step after another in crazy admin.  The website (probably intentionally) didn’t explain the system.  Once you were there you just had to accept and follow (and laugh!).

Our online-purchased tickets were just the first step in a progressive payment system.  Once there we had to pay extra to use the changing rooms.  And then to get into some pool areas we had to hire compulsory swim rings or rafts.

And of course the park adopted, but exaggerated, the usual Chinese system of having several different ticketing offices, inconveniently located, which we had to progress through one by one.  There were even separate ticketing offices for the male and female changing rooms, distant from each other and distant from the changing rooms themselves.  The ticketing office to pay for the compulsory swim rings was far from the swim ring storage area — we were given a slip of paper when we paid, which we then carried over to the swim ring storage area.

The water park was inside a wetland area, and so in addition to the water park tickets we also had to queue for ticketing entry to the wetland area, where we were bused to the water park.

But once we were finally in the water we all had an awesome day.  It was a beautiful blue-sky sunny day, and I even got a bit sunburnt on my face and shoulders.

For the six hours we were at the park we kept busy trying out the various pools and activities.

There were a couple of wave pools.  We all needed swim rings for the large one, and children needed swim rings for the smaller one.  This made the pools not so fun, and also the waves didn’t have much force to them.  Our local New Zealand beach is better.

Mulan and I tried all the scary fast slides and rides.  If it wasn’t for Mulan, I probably wouldn’t have done them all.  With Mulan keen to have a go, I felt obliged to accompany her.  Though Mulan did admit afterwards that a few times at the top she had second thoughts.  The least fun ride was one in which we were on a four-person raft, basically just dropping for several metres down a steep slope then up the other side again, back and forth several times.

Miya was too small for the fast rides, and Mama was too scared, so they mostly stayed in the more gentle sections.  For the final hour or so I was (mentally) exhausted from the fast rides, and enjoyed a few gentle rides with Miya.

Saturday 13th

This was one of the big, important day trips for Laolao.

In the morning, the five of us, plus Uncle, caught the intercity train to Daqing, a small city about an hour north-west of Harbin.  We were met at the station by a couple of Uncle’s old army buddies.

Daqing is the centre of the oil fields in the area, and is also the home of a museum dedicated to one of the heroes of 1960s Chinese oil production, Wang Jinxi (also known as Iron Man).

Oil was discovered in Daqing in 1959, and, in a rush to make China self-sufficient, oil workers immediately headed to the area to start the extraction.  One of these was Wang who, thanks to his single-minded dedication, had recently become a hero model worker in the Yumen oil fields.  Wang and his 1205 drilling team fought temperatures below -40 degrees, and with lack of equipment were amongst the first to set up rigs and wells.

In one famous story, as they were drilling 700m down there was a blowout.  They needed to secure the well, and to do so they needed to mix cement.  To speed things along Wang, previously injured and on crutches, jumped into the well and stirred the cement with his body.

After this, Wang was a huge national hero.

In 1966, in his early 40s, Wang visited Albania for 40 days with the China Petroleum Delegation.  Laolao, in her mid 20s, was also part of the team, translating for the delegates.

Laolao tells us that Wang genuinely was a truly decent guy.  This was at a time when the Chinese Cultural Revolution was happening.  Laolao’s mum, who worked at a university, was understandably in huge danger.  Wang asked Laolao if there was anything he could do for her, and she mentioned her mother.  Personally endangering himself by associating with her, Wang took the time to visit Laolao’s mother.

When the Cultural Revolution leaders turned on the earlier leaders, Wang was tortured.  Wang died of cancer in 1970.

The Daqing museum has a display about the Albania visit.  Laolao is in the display photo with Wang and the other delegates.

Our visit to the museum was not just an important event for Laolao and us.  It was also big for the museum.  Several museum staff, as well as media, escorted us around the museum, recording Laolao’s recollections of her interactions with Wang.  At the end of the visit we retired to the museum’s VIP room, where they presented her with several books and a large Iron Man statue.

After the museum visit we had a restaurant lunch with Uncle’s army buddies.  We ate in the restaurant’s VIP room — we could get used to this VIP treatment!

Before heading back to the train station, we stopped off to look at an oil pump — seemingly hundreds of these dot the landscape all throughout Daqing.  Mulan mis-translated the name of these machines into English, and we started calling them “banging head chickens” (machine and chicken are both “ji” in Chinese, though they are different characters).

Sunday 14th

After a busy several days, we needed a rest.  I stayed at home all day.

In the morning, Mama and Mulan had an outing together, watching Spirited Away at a local movie theatre.  Apparently, a new generation of Chinese are wanting to watch the classic Miyazaki movies in real movie theatres, and they are re-showing them.  Mama and Mulan watched a Chinese language version with Japanese subtitles.

On the way home they picked up a birthday cake for Miya.  Miya’s 9th birthday is not until next month, but Laolao wanted to have small party for her since she’ll miss the real day.

Monday 15th

We returned to the shopping centre we had been to the previous Monday, to pick up my glasses.  We also bought Mulan and Miya new sunglasses, as we got 50% discounts for them after buying my glasses.

But the most important thing for the girls was that we went ice skating in the shopping centre’s indoor skating rink.  It was the first time the girls had ever ice skated, although we have got both regular skates and inline skates at home, which they often use up and down our driveway.  I’d ice skated as a teenager several times, but nothing since then.  This was the second time that Mama had ice skated — her first time was also in Harbin, outdoors on the river.

The girls and I quickly got into the skating, and were mostly doing okay around the rink.  Mama was less mobile, spending most of the two hours holding onto the side rail as she wobbled around!

After skating, we had our third cheese teas of the trip.

Finally, before heading home we noticed a curling rink/field/pitch/court (I wonder what it’s called!).  We went in and watched a boy practicing for a bit.  They tried to convince us to buy a session, but we were tired from the skating and it was a bit too late in the day.

Tuesday 16th

Sadly, I was denied breakfast in the morning.

Mama and I had booked in a medical checkup at a local hospital, and they required us to not eat beforehand.  So, we were scanned and prodded, and liquids were removed.  It seems that a floor of the hospital is dedicated to this activity.  We joined the queues going from room to room as the doctor inside performed his or her particular task before filling out the paperwork that we carried around with us.  Partway through the testing we went to the canteen where they supplied us with a cup of milk and a couple of sweet buns, to keep us going.  One immediate medical result was that apparently my liver is a little fatty.  We’ll get the full results in a couple of weeks.

After the hospital, we all had yet another lunch date — this time with Uncle, Aunt and Aunt’s mum.

Wednesday 17th

And here ended our holiday in Harbin.

We left our apartment about 9:15 am to catch the 10:43 am train back to Beijing.  Again the girls loved their instant noodles and again the ride was smooth.  We arrived into Beijing just after 6 pm, where we were picked up in a car by a friend.  The car couldn’t fit us all with the bags, so Miya and I caught the subway.

Thursday 18th

We spent the day doing traditional Chinese cultural activities.  That is, first up we wandered the shopping centres looking at shoes, stopping occasionally to eat.  (The shoes were for me — I needed new comfy walking shoes for New Zealand winter.)

For lunch we had what we call yummy bin-bins (jianbing) — one of my favourite foods that are common in Beijing.  And for afternoon tea we had yet another cheese tea each.

Meanwhile, I found a super comfy pair of shoes, which normally cost over RMB5000 but we bought for the super low price of RMB850 (yeah, it was a fake brand, but it was still a genuine comfy pair of shoes).

In the evening, we caught the subway to Tiananmen Square to watch the flag lowering ceremony.

Every time I go to Tiananmen Square I comment on how the security is increasing, and this time was no exception.  The first time I was there, in 2006, people could just freely wander across the road into the Square.  Gradually security increased, with fences, secure entry points and bag scanners.  This time they surprised us by requiring us to present ID at the security gate.  We hadn’t brought ours.  I guess we looked suitably innocent and genuine, because after a quick check with a higher up guard we were allowed through.  (Should we be thankful to the kind guards and benevolent system that flexibly allowed us in?)

The crowds were also larger than the previous time I watched the flag lowering ceremony.  It seems to be turning into quite the event, though not nearly as spectacular as the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace.  We were a few rows back behind the fences.  Miya, on my shoulders, had the best view and took heaps of photos.

Mama informed me that visiting Tiananmen Square is one of the must-do activities for Chinese in China.  She asked me if there were any similar must-dos for New Zealanders.  I suggested walking the Milford Track.  I guess that sums up the big cultural difference between China and New Zealand.

After the ceremony was over the crowds were asked to leave the Square.  This is again a new security measure, where they close the Square in the evenings after the flag lowering.  So much for our plan to eat our boxed baozi in the Square.  Instead we left the Square and walked in front of the entrance to the Forbidden City, sitting with the crowds on the garden railings.

Friday 19th

Our flight back to New Zealand was scheduled to leave Saturday morning at 1:05 am, so we spent most of our final day resting.  In the afternoon, we all had a snooze.

Mama, Mulan and Miya went out for a final special restaurant breakfast together.

In the morning, I had another walkabout for over three hours, wandering around the streets and to the Olympic Park again.

We said our goodbyes to Laolao and left her apartment at 9:45 pm.

Saturday 20th

Our flight left on time and was smooth; no one vomited this time.  We landed about 5:30 pm New Zealand time.

Knowing we were arriving home in the evening, where we could all relax and sleep, we all watched too many movies.  I got through four!  Guardians of the Galaxy was the weakest of the four, though entertaining enough as a wisecracking superhero movie.  The Adjustment Bureau was intriguing, though the romantic soulmate theme was naive.  A Street Cat Named Bob was warm and inspiring.  Please Stand By was sweet and appealing and the best of the four.

Book review: Humble Pi

For the past few years we've been watching Matt Parker on his YouTube channel StandupMaths.

Parker is an ex-high school maths teacher who now works as a maths communicator.  He's perfect for the job.  Parker has a unique way of presenting maths that is laugh out loud funny while at the same time being inspiring and educational.

Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors is Parker's second book, and was just published this year.  After a wait of several weeks I finally had my turn with a copy from our local library.  It was definitely worth the wait.  I highly recommend it.

In Humble Pi, Parker tells lots of real life stories about how maths errors have caused problems in the real world.  There are plenty of engineering problems of wobbly buildings and bridges, or crashing planes and spaceships.  There are wrong street signs and advertising posters.  There are computer programming mistakes and ancient Sumerian tablet mistakes.  There are mistakes that caused billions of dollars in losses.  And there are mistakes which are just really annoying.

Along with the fun storytelling, Parker does a brilliant job of educating us with plenty of thought-provoking maths.

But I think the most important thing that Parker does brilliantly is to emphasise that maths is about making mistakes and learning from those mistakes.  It is about putting the effort in.  To quote Parker:

Mathematicians aren't people who find maths easy; they're people who enjoy how hard it is.

Finally, I love how Parker numbered the pages in the book.  The first page is 314; the last page is 1.  Awesome!  It's with a maths book that for the first time I have to do less maths as I read.  With this book I didn't have to do subtraction in my head to work out how many pages I had left to read.  After all, that's the main purpose of page numbering, isn't it?

Netball

Miya is playing netball this winter season.  This is at Netball North Harbour on Wednesday evenings.

After much effort, and a couple of seasons without getting enough players to make a homeschool (HASCA) team at Miya's age, we have finally managed to get 8 girls together to play.

Miya is delighted!

The main downside is that this is a Year 6 team, and Miya is only Year 4.  So, Miya is playing against children two years older than her.  It's pretty tough going for her, but she is used to being the youngest in our family activities so it's not too much of a big deal for her to be the youngest on the court.

Most of the girls in the team have not played before, and many of them are still coming to grips with the basics of where to go and what to do.  But they are all improving heaps, and they all look like they are having lots of fun.

The team have already played six games this season.  These are all grading games.  So far they have won two and lost four.  It is looking likely that they will be in around about Grade 7 (of 10).  The competition games will start in a few weeks.

(Mulan is not playing netball this year, as we didn't get enough players to make up a team at her age.  I guess in a couple of years she will join the Saturday morning college competition.)

Khan Academy: Miya 4th Grade

Today, Miya finished Khan Academy 4th Grade maths.  Congratulations, Miya!

She also did a bit in 5th Grade, and will continue on with that each day (currently 15% complete).

(Mulan is now 77% through US High School Mathematics I.  We've decided to slow down a bit with introducing new skills, and are doing more review work.)

I last wrote about the girls' maths a couple of months ago.

Book review: Dune

Mulan is finally old enough to read Frank Herbert's Dune books.

A few weeks ago, over the school holidays, I re-read Dune, the first in the six-book series (Herbert's son, Brian, has also continued his father's story with over a dozen more Dune books).  It was something like the fourth time I'd read it, but this time my aim was to decide whether it would be suitable for Mulan.

I passed it to an initially sceptical Mulan, who at the time was several books into reading Terry Pratchett's huge Discworld series (Mulan had got into Discworld after we watched the Soul Music movie).  But she gave it a go and quickly got addicted.  The Discworld books were mostly abandoned; in Mulan's opinion Dune is much more exciting.

I buried my nose in the second book, Dune Messiah, trying to keep ahead of Mulan (the books do mature as they go along), but she caught up and passed me while I was part-way through the third book, Children of Dune.  Mulan finished the fourth book, God Emperor of Dune, ahead of me and started on the fifth book, Heretics of Dune.  However she said it's not so interesting and slowed down (reading other books instead).  I have now caught up and re-passed Mulan, and have just finished book five.

As I say, the books do mature.  The later books expand the thought-provoking social commentary, and there is increasing sexual content (on re-reading, I realise the fifth book is probably a little too sexually mature for Mulan right now; the fourth book was okay).  Mulan and I have agreed it would be best for her to pause in the series and maybe come back to it in a year or so.  (I first read the fifth book when I was 13.)

In Mulan's opinion, the first and third books were the best in the series so far.  In part this is because of the direct, exciting storytelling in those books, and in part because teens/children were the dominant characters.  Mulan also didn't like the way later books in the series were set in different times and had mostly completely different characters.

We also watched both the David Lynch movie and the more recent TV miniseries versions of Dune.

(The movie is a mess!  It's pretty incoherent.  And they seriously damage the plot by turning the "weirding" fighting style into merely a technological super-weapon.  But, as Mulan rightly pointed out, the TV miniseries is even worse!  They have basically turned a deeply thought-provoking story into a US-style soap opera.  It is Americanly beautiful people transparently telegraphing their every overly-emotional shallow thought.  Both the movie and TV miniseries were fun to watch for fan value only.)

I think there are at least four things that are great about the Dune books:

Firstly, it's an un-put-down-able story.  It's event-filled and exciting, with plenty of action and adventure.  The first book by far does this the best, and in my opinion it gets weaker as it goes on, but the others are also pretty good.

For a teenage reader we get an initially very relatable and likable main character in the form of 15-year-old Paul Atreides.  Paul is a nice guy -- smart, hard-working and well-intentioned.  As the son of a Duke, he's been given a great education by some of the best private tutors around (yep, he homeschools!).  While Paul has had a comfortable, secure, privileged life, he has still worked hard to make the most of his rare and lucky opportunities.

The excitement comes about because from the beginning of the book we learn that Paul's family is required to leave their comfortable, secure ancestral family home and travel to another planet to take charge of the business operations there (yes, Dune is a futuristic science fiction story).  This generates the conflict and excitement, because the previous owners of the new planet are the multi-generational enemies of Paul's family.

This leads into the second aspect of what, in my opinion, makes the Dune books great.  In my opinion, Dune is an especially aspirational and inspirational story for young adults.  It presents role models who strive to do the best they can, and to be the best they can.  Teenage Paul, as our first role model, listens to his teachers and parents, and wants to do well.  He enjoys learning, and gains satisfaction from his achievements.  He questions, challenges and thinks.  He makes mistakes, but he learns from them and incorporates the learning into who he is.

(In the second book things become more Greek-tragedy-like, in the sense that these smart, educated, well-intentioned and seemingly-right-at-the-time choices can still lead to awful outcomes.)

Soon we come to learn that Paul is part of a 100-ish generation breeding programme to create a super-person.  So, it turns out he is a little too perfect and idealised.  But nonetheless I think young Paul still remains an aspirational figure and role model for teenage readers.  Certainly he was that for me when I read Dune as a young teenager.  Dune was part of the package which inculcated my love of learning and willingness to push myself to the best of my ability.  Reading Dune made we want to get up and do challenging stuff, both physically and mentally.

Thirdly, Dune is beautifully written.  I recall reading somewhere that Herbert wrote Dune with Haiku poetry in mind.  That makes sense to me.  Dune is often like poetic prose.  It flows in a style that is unique to Herbert, inviting multiple re-readings with new rewards and discoveries.  It is the sort of style of writing that captures the emotions.  One can let the words flow, creating an overall feel, sometimes without pinning down the exact meaning of every single phrase,  To put it more cynically, Dune is an incredibly clever emotion-manipulator, which creates a certain frame of mind.

And this leads us into the fourth great aspect.  Dune is a deep, opinionated commentary on society, politics, religion and humanity as a whole.  It talks about the big questions of life, the universe and everything.  It challenges one's thinking about what is important in life -- what we are doing and where we are going.  Who are we?  What are our fundamental values?  What is the meaning of life?  The later books especially get into this a lot, with frequent deep conversations between characters or inner monologues contemplating what the right thing to do is.  Moreover, the book presents no easy answers -- characters frequently disagree and compete, but almost all of them are presented in sympathetic ways.

To me, those are the key things which make Dune great.  It is for these reasons that I passed the book to Mulan, and I highly recommend it to any thinking teens.

Nonetheless, Dune is far from perfect.  And re-reading it now as an adult shows more of these flaws.

As I see it, the biggest flaw is related to its seductiveness.

I read Herbert as having strong political views that he often promotes in his books (his other, non-Dune novels typically have similar political themes).  He brings these views into his storytelling, sometimes indirectly but also sometimes directly through authorial explanations or character conversations.  That's great.  Lots of writers are like this and it almost always adds depth to a great novel.  But I think it's important to flag this right at the beginning.  These political views are not merely entertainment that we can discard when we finish reading the books.  Readers do absorb the political views of novelists as they read their novels; it's important that we draw these out explicitly so we are not absorbing these views uncritically.

Moreover,  Herbert was a very clever writer.  Not only is his poetic prose beautiful, but he also knew how to phrase ideas in such a way so as to make these ideas more appealing to his readers.  Again, it's important to pick this out explicitly, so we are not tricked by his rhetorical force.

One common rhetorical approach that Herbert uses in Dune is one that is also used by various popular speakers in the world today (consider certain popular YouTube opinionators!).  The general method they use is to appeal to the reader's strong attraction to logic and reasoning, but without actually being rigorously logical.  To be convincing, Herbert and others rely on the fact that while their readers/listeners like the idea of logic, these readers/listeners generally haven't spent the time necessary to develop their own skills in understanding logic.  This means that Herbert and others can use superficial linguistic structures of logic, or assert that they are being logical, while at the same time use rhetorical misdirection to blur the intermediate steps between initial plausible assertion and desired conclusion.  The reader/listener is wowed and believes the conclusion.

With this in mind, in Dune (especially in the later books) Herbert created several compelling characters who are notably intended to be super smart or super knowledgeable.  This creates a plausible authority as Herbert's mouthpiece.  These characters start out by making clear and seemingly straightforward universal assertions which we might plausibly accept as true.  They also might make a few clear steps in basic reasoning.  This makes the reader feel as though they are smartly thinking alongside the super-smart character.

But intermingled with this, Herbert, through the character, also makes less clear assertions (which may or may not even be real assertions), which often use non-literal language that is multi-interpretable.  Herbert is especially brilliant at this pseudo-reasoning in seemingly-real-but-actually-nonsensical language.  This is done to reduce the reader to follower rather than active logic-analyser.  The reader is then brought along to the desired conclusion by emotion and poetic feel rather than by active reasoning.  The reader doesn't bother to try to figure out the hard bits in the supposed reasoning, assuming that since they understood the first bit, and since the character has been set up as super-smart, then the next bits should also be sound, too.

Occasionally, Herbert has another character doubt the super-smart character.  At this point the super-smart character may verbally abuse the simpleton for missing the "clear reasoning" or not being advanced enough.  The reader is also thus made to feel shamed to question the reasoning.  Sometimes, during this process the super-smart character might even wow himself, as we are told that he (usually it's a he) has reached a new high level of conscious awareness.  This intermediate-stage water-muddying may happen, with great rhetorical flourish, over a few pages, to further wow the reader.

Finally, Herbert presents the reader with his desired political claims, as if it has been reached by objectively rigorous reasoning.  Sometimes the conclusion is presented explicitly, but sometimes it is presented somewhat indirectly so as to make the reader think that they are also super-smart to have deduced the conclusion by themselves.

All this might sound silly and obvious when phrased in this way.  But as I say, Herbert is an excellent writer, and does this extremely well.  I never saw through much of this when I first read it as a young teenager.  Teenage me was Herbert's target reader -- excited by reasoning, but not especially skilled at it.  Sadly, middle-aged me is a bit more cynical, and unfortunately on this latest re-reading I am finding some of Herbert's rhetorical flourishes more amusing than inspiring.

(Mulan tells me that she was bored by parts of the books that did this, and while she read all the main text she sometimes skipped the italicised bits at the beginning of each chapter.)

Ironically, the Dune books are often precisely about these sorts language manipulations posing as reasoning.  There are prolonged discussions in the books about the uses of language manipulation to control others.  As I see it, the Dune books are themselves an object lesson in what they are warning us against.

To summarise, I think it is essential that as readers we explicitly recognise Herbert's rhetoric for what it is.  His writing is beautiful and challenging, and definitely worth reading.  But we need to also think critically as we read, so that we don't fall for Herbert's seductive writing and accept his political views unquestioningly.

Now onto the content of what I think we need to think critically about.

The central themes of Dune are about humanity and what it is to be human.  The Dune characters are human, and they repeatedly emphasise that they are human.  So it can be easy to confuse humans in the story with humans in the real world -- that is, mistakenly think that since we are all humans, what is said about them must also be true about us.  Thus, it can be easy to leap to the conclusion that the values and attitudes promoted in the story should likewise be promoted in our real world.

Consequently, I think that as we read the Dune series we need to evaluate the content of it with two main things in mind.  Firstly, we need to look at to what extent the Dune universe and Dune humans are factually and physically the same as (or different from) us real-world humans.  And second we need to look at the political, social, religious and moral claims that follow from these physical facts.  If we are physically different, then it is quite likely that our social and political values and systems will be different, too.

This, obviously, is a huge task.  There are many issues that stand out for me; I'll mention a few as examples:

One issue has to do with sex.  Not sex as in reproduction, but sex as in biological male and female.  Dune universe humans are very clearly divided into males and females (plus the genetically engineered sterile hermaphrodite Face Dancers).  

In Dune, males and females are distinctly different in far more ways than they are different in our real world.  Moreover, many of these differences in the Dune world are not merely a matter of degree, but a matter of kind.  That is, in Dune, males often have distinctly "male" properties and abilities, and females have distinctly "female" properties and abilities.  There are abilities that females have that males cannot have, and vice versa.

Herbert leaves unexplained how this could possibly be.  Given what we now know about the complexities of sex differences in our real world (chromosomes, sex organs, hormones, etc, etc), Herbert's either-or sex distinctions are not compatible with our current best scientific evidence.  I read Herbert as presenting an essentialist view of sex in the Dune universe, which is simply factually false in the real world.  That's okay in a fictional story world -- writers can imagine whatever they like.  But we shouldn't mix this up with real world evidence.  We need to remember that Dune universe humans are biologically different from our real world humans.

(For a very good quick introduction to real-world biological facts about sex, take a look at this video.)

Besides the potential for scientific confusion between fiction and fact, this may also lead us into thinking wrongly about people's roles in society.  In the Dune universe these huge biological differences between males and females result in huge social difference between the sexes.  In the Dune universe males are better suited to some roles while females are better suited to other roles.  In the Dune universe social role differences may be permissible because Herbert has written in these "factual" differences which explain it.  Herbert's super-smart characters sometimes even directly explain how these fictional Dune-world "facts" logically necessitate distinct sex roles.

In our real world this would be clear sexism and sexual discrimination.  The biological facts in the real world don't lead to these sorts of social role sex differences shown in the Dune universe.

I have no idea if Herbert really believed that these sexist attitudes were also justified in our real world.  But I think it is clear that his in-story "logical explanations" can influence the thinking of readers who are unaware of the real-world facts.  I think there is a genuine danger that Herbert's seductive language can help to normalise these sorts of sexist attitudes in our real world.  As we read Dune, we need to combat this and keep reminding ourselves that real world humans are not like this.

Related to this, homosexuality is mentioned a few times in the Dune books, and mostly in a negative way.  In the Dune universe homosexuality is typically presented either as a perversion or else something to merely tolerate in young adults as they experiment.  This is shown most clearly in the fourth book, where Herbert uses the super-knowledgeable character to lecture us on (Dune) human sexuality.

Again, it is important to remember that while this may be the case in the Dune universe (Herbert, as the writer, is allowed to do whatever he wants with his fictional characters) it is both factually and morally wrong in our real world (not to mention hugely offensive).  Again, let's not be seduced into these awful views when we leave the Dune universe and re-enter our real world.

A second issue has to do with psychology.  As I understand it, Herbert was hugely influenced by Carl Jung, and included many Jungian themes in his writings.

One theme has to do with what Herbert calls "ancestral memories".  A big part of the plot of the Dune books is the ability for humans to "remember" the memories of their ancestors.  It seems that this is (mostly) done via individual cells that are passed on from parents to child (secondly, they also have a Vulcan-like mind-meld which also passes on memories).  In the Dune world, individual human cells contain entire life-history memories, and certain humans are able to consciously unlock these, to be able to "remember" being their parents, grandparents, and so on into the far distant past.

(As a side note, a huge plot hole in the Dune books is that Herbert didn't seem to realise that this would mean that children would only be able gain the memories of their parents from before they were conceived/born.  Children would not have access to the memories of their ancestors' later life -- that is, after childbirth.  Throughout the story Herbert assumes that ancestral memories are super-wise/knowledgeable, but actually they would not be.  They would only be memories of young adults, and while there would be hugely many of them, they would not be memories of older, wiser seniors.)

Ancestral memories is, of course, complete nonsense in our real world.  It is merely fun fiction.  But we do need to remember this when we get to Herbert's discussions of how society should be.  Again, we shouldn't be seduced into preferring some sort of social system without considering how much that society requires Dune-universe "facts" that are nonsense in our real world.

A third issue has to do with what sorts of beings have moral consideration.  In Dune, Herbert always frames these discussions in terms of whether someone is "human" or not.  In the Dune universe they have various "tests for humanity," where one is typically killed if one fails to show one's humanity.  These are not biological tests of DNA or whatever; rather they are psychological tests to make sure that the being acts in what they consider to be a "human way."

In contrast to this, in our real world, conversations on this topic are typically framed in terms of "persons" rather than "humans".  This is because we consider that focusing on humans only is speciesist -- it fails to consider the moral worth of other beings who deserve moral consideration.  Defining personhood turns out to be quite complicated, but we might think it has to do more with the ability to feel, think, future plan, have conscious awareness and so on.  And it is quite clear that some non-humans may do this (it is also quite clear that many Dune-universe non-humans do this).

(Some real-world thinkers even prefer to frame the conversation in terms of "sentience", rather than "person" or "human", which is a wider category that necessitates giving moral consideration to even more beings.)

By framing the Dune conversation in terms of "humans" rather than "persons" (or sentience), Herbert immediately eliminates from moral consideration other types of beings.  So, when in the Dune universe humans come into conflict with non-human beings (artificial intelligence, genetically engineered beings, etc), there is no need for our Dune heroes to see these beings as deserving of life.  If these other non-humans are a threat (or even if they are merely an inconvenience) our Dune heroes coldly eliminate them without reflection.  Herbert repeatedly phrases the issue as a matter of political power and survival -- the opposition has no moral worth, and humans must be powerful to eliminate them.

This speciesist attitude that dominates Dune deserves pointing out.  Again, Herbert's seductive language may make readers assume that this is the right (or even only) approach to dealing with non-humans.  Instead, we need to remind ourselves that this Dune-universe attitude is morally repugnant, and deserves strong criticism.

But this human-focused attitude also fits in with Herbert's grand overall goal in the Dune universe.  For Herbert in Dune, the most important thing is that humanity survives into the far distant future.  This number one value is presented as an absolute, and never questioned (at least that I could see).

Apparently, nothing ever outweighs this future-humanity value.  In the Dune universe, trillions of human deaths is acceptable, as long as humanity continues into the future.  And as I say, in the Dune universe non-humans are considered even less.

This is clearly a hugely controversial claim, and one that deserves challenging.  As readers, we need to keep this in mind.  Are the horrific things that these main Dune characters do for the supposed greater good of humanity's survival really the right thing to do?  Is a humanity surviving into the distant future really worth more than the wellbeing of currently existing people?

(Interestingly, when I have presented this future generations argument to my students in the context of climate change, generally these students have a hard time morally connecting with humans just a few generations into the future.  They often remain unconvinced that we ought to make certain sacrifices for the sake of humans in 100 or 200 years time.  In contrast, in Dune, one of the main characters criticises another for her short-term attitude when her plans did not consider anything more than 50 generations into the future.)

One of the main methods that characters use throughout the Dune series to advance this overall humanity-first goal is to challenge individual humans to reach their full potential.  These challenges are not gentle -- they are life and death challenges that often result in death.  But the important thing in the Dune universe is that at least some humans survive and grow, and that they then breed and pass this survival on to the next generation.  For Herbert, it is about the weak being eliminated and the strong surviving and reproducing, creating a stronger humanity.  In Dune, breeding programmes are developed to encourage optimal human growth.

(My admittedly limited understanding of biology is that this is not the way that evolution works, but I won't try to get into the details here.)

This may make sense if our number one value is the continuation of humanity.  But this value absolutely needs questioning.  I would argue that a better society is precisely one in which our weakest members are protected, not eliminated.

To repeat, the Dune books are an incredibly seductive defence of the above extremely controversial moral views.  I think it's easy for a reader to come away from reading these books having the emotional mindset that deaths and abuses are okay for the sake of some ideal future goal.  Moreover, this emotional mindset will be defended with the equally emotional mindset that this is all completely rational and scientific.

Fourthly, dotted throughout the Dune books (especially the later ones) Herbert, through the mouths of his authoritatively knowledgeable characters, makes claims regarding the ineffectualness of all governments.  The suggestion is that government is necessarily a bad thing because of corruption, excessive red tape and slow bookish record-keepers who get distracted with irrelevancies. Unfortunately, no details are given beyond this caricature (in-book discussions of this topic fit the pattern of rhetoric I described above).  Herbert contrasts this with the superior effectualness of strong individual characters who trust their own instinctive judgement to Get Things Done.

Finally, here's a possible danger of the Dune books as I see it: Young people (particularly young men) who like the idea of logic and reasoning, but haven't (yet) put the hard work in to develop some proficiency in reasoning may get emotionally sucked into certain themes in thinking, justifying these themes to themselves with the thought that it is based on strict science and reasoning (when it really isn't).  These themes may be sexist, homophobic, cold-hearted and unsympathetic.  Moreover, these young men may insulate themselves from criticism by being overly suspicious of social authorities such as governments and universities and instead believing themselves to be among the superior.

To summarise my opinion of Dune in a few lines, read with a decent amount of critical awareness Dune can be an incredibly thought-provoking, inspiring, exciting, beautifully written, positive book series.  But read uncritically, through its clever rhetoric it can emotionally led one to an overly simplistic way of thinking that is dangerously harmful.  Read it with caution.  But have fun.  It's hugely worth it.