What I like about you (from the other side)

Only one day left until I leave Beijing, and already the apartment is getting echoey. I’ve given away a bunch of stuff, and packed other things. The movers came yesterday and took away many boxes – I’m really glad I didn’t have to do it all myself.

Before I left Seattle, I made a list of things I thought I would miss and not miss about the city, so now it’s time for the same list about Beijing.

Things I will miss about Beijing

• My friends.
• The food, both in quality and price. And it’s cool you can have roast duck without planning ahead.
• The ancient culture that is never far away.
• Ease of transportation. Between my bicycle, the subway, and buses, getting around is generally quite convenient, even with the ridiculous traffic.
• The chance to practice speaking Chinese with native speakers every day.
• How amazing it can look after a good rain.
• The sense of freedom you have when you don’t have to worry about crime.
• How cheap things are if you’re looking for cheap things.
• Having someone come clean the apartment twice a week.
• The challenge of trying to think of ways to explain English words and expressions.
• The vibrant music scene and all the great bands here, plus the ones I haven’t discovered yet.

Things I will not miss about Beijing

• The quality of the air, and I’m not just talking about the odd odors that sneak in occasionally when the breeze changes direction.
• The bone-chilling winter temperatures.
• The energy-sapping summer temperatures.
• The Great Fire Wall.
• The ridiculous traffic.
• Office politics.
• The hideous desk my landlord provided for my computer.
• The hassle it can often be to deal with seemingly simple things like electricity, mobile phones and internet.
• Having to register with the local police station so they know where I am.
• The feelings I have on the occasions when I do think about politics.
• Never really understanding what’s going on, even when I think I do. Not that this is necessarily different from the situation in the US...

In a very unusual bit of luck, I have never really experienced one of the famous Beijing spring sandstorms, so that didn’t make either list.

Final note

I created this blog when I found out I was coming to China, and now that I’m leaving, I’m not sure what I want to do. In the interest of keeping it to its topic (not that I’ve stuck to it strictly so far!), I don’t really want to continue writing about my life as it involves things other than China. However, I still have lots of China experiences and pictures I haven’t shared, so there’s material for many posts waiting for me to have the time to take care of it.

Teach your children

As I continue my journey down the list of Beijing sights, I find myself at Kong Miao (孔庙), the Confucius Temple. It’s actually pretty close to my old office in the Gehua building, just a couple blocks from the Lama Temple (which I’ve been to twice but apparently never written about), but I never got around to it until last week.

I went with a Chinese friend who was very surprised that an American knew anything about Kongzi (孔子 551 BC – 479 BC ) at all. But I told her that while we don’t really study his teachings, we know his name and the cliché “Confucius says...” And since I’m interested in China, I know that Kongzi was a very practical philosopher who concerned himself almost entirely with down-to-earth things like how to get along in society, ethics, and how a country should be governed, not with supernatural things like gods and demons.
Anyway, Kong Miao is a relatively small complex originally built in 1306. It has been renovated recently, and has many exhibits about the man’s life, teachings and legacy, though they are not anything like the impressive museum at Jinsha in Chengdu.
Each of these structure contains a carved stele commemorating some event, like an emperor expanding the temple or rebuilding part of it.

The temple grounds are home to many old trees.
I think they are more than 300 years old.
And the vines hanging from some of them work as swings.

There are many exhibits covering the Master’s life.
This one illustrates his travels from kingdom to kingdom trying to spread his ideas.

Music is very important in Kongzi’s philosophy.
The smaller instruments in the front are guqin (古琴), the larger ones are a fancy version of either se (瑟) or guzheng (古箏) (without the bridges that tune the strings), and the tuned bells hanging behind are called bianzhong (編鐘) – I think, the ancient names of the instruments are sometimes not the same as very similar looking modern ones. There is also another instrument arranged like the bells, only with tuned slabs of stone that are struck with mallets.

That covers the photographic highlights of Kong Miao. Most of the exhibits didn’t lend themselves to picture taking. Although Kongzi’s teachings fell into disfavor – violent suppression, even – during the Cultural Revolution, there’s been a resurgence lately, with modern Chinese seeking to restore some of the traditional values they find lacking in modern society. And honestly, if you look more at the actual writings rather than some of the religious trappings that were later grafted onto Confucianism, it’s pretty hard to fault the values contained in the Analects. One of the things it is widely known for is respect for authority, both within families and in government, but that is tempered by two additional teachings. First, underlings are obligated to speak up when they feel leaders are going astray, even to the point of justified rebellion in the case of tyranny. And second, authority must be earned, not inherited, so leaders have their positions due to virtue, not just lucky birth or force of arms. It is these caveats that caused the kings he spoke to to reject his teachings. And in later centuries, when his teachings did become orthodoxy, the focus was often more on submission than virtue.

One of Kongzi’s prime teachings is the same as other philosophers around the world have come up with, though it is stated differently:

己所 不欲、勿施於人
jǐ suǒ bù yù, wù shī wū rén
Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.

That’s the translation of David Hinton. It should sound familiar to everyone, I think. And stating it as a negative, rather than the positive statement we’re familiar with as the Golden Rule, has the advantage of avoiding some of the problems that more modern thinkers have found with it. To divert into philosophy, the problem with “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is that it leads to silly things like, “I would love for someone to give me some bacon, so I should give my neighbor some bacon,” when the neighbor is a vegetarian. To be fair, Kongzi actually does encourage proactive reciprocity in other places as a means of enhancing the public good.

And the other thing we have to remember is that Kongzi himself never wrote down his teachings. Much as with other ancient religious and philosophical teachers, the writings we have were compiled after his death by his followers, and there’s no way to know what Kongzi himself actually said.

Anyway, back to ancient Beijing.

Next to Kong Miao is Guozijian (国子监), which was the Imperial College, and the same ticket (Ұ20) gets you into both.
In the center of the main yard is this lovely building:
If I understood correctly, it was only used when the Emperor visited the school. He would sit at the elaborate desk inside...
...and lecture the students who stood outside all around. The water was drained from the circular pool around it while one of the bridges was being repaired, but I can see it would be really pretty when it is filled.

There’s another statue of Kongzi.
And a mock-up of what an Imperial classroom looked like.
The professor is at the center desk, and the students would have been at tables on the two sides of him, outside the area of the picture.

The College’s main function was to prepare civil servants for the massive Imperial bureaucracy, which theoretically (by Confucian ideals) was open to students from all social strata, though in practice it catered to the aristocracy. Sons of poor families were needed to support their households and couldn’t afford to spend time on such things as studying.

The whole system started to decline a bit before the end of the last dynasty, and the College fell into disrepair until its recent renovation.

This is another of those Beijing locations I would not recommend unless you’re a Confucius buff or really into history. Or are small in stature and like to swing from trees.

Happiness is...

I know for a fact that not everyone in China adores pandas. But even those who aren’t smitten with them are supportive of preservation, and after the earthquake in Sichuan this spring, the wellbeing of the pandas was of great concern, much talked about in the media.

Some of the animals from the damaged preserve were relocated temporarily to the Beijing Zoo, and not long afterwards a new advertising campaign appeared in the subways stations. Of course, the “cute” factor is played up. The Chinese love “cute” almost as much as the Japanese.
I think the point is to encourage people to visit Sichuan to see the pandas once their preserve there is reopened. Naturally, one of the themes is that the pandas will be happier and better off in their native territory than in Beijing, and having seen the zoo here, I can certainly agree. I’ll eventually get around to writing about my zoo visit.
I can’t help thinking that this slogan applies to more than just pandas.

Duibuqi, Eeyore

This post will be mostly about food. Apologies to those not interested in this topic. And a question: why are you not interested? What could possibly be more important than food? Sure music is important, but it’s pointless if you starve to death. And since you gotta eat, you might as well enjoy it.

Anyway.
A few days ago, tired of eating out at restaurants and tired of cooking for myself, I compromised and bought a roast chicken at this little shop. For about US$2 I got a small, very tasty bird that lasted me a couple of dinners. Not a bad deal at all.
And then yesterday, on the recommendation and encouragement of a surprising number of people, it was time to try lunch at this little place. Just inside the glass door, there is a cooler chest partly straddled by a cutting board where meat is carved up. As an added bonus, it was a nice sunny day.

Those who read Chinese might recognize the fifth and sixth characters in the rather long restaurant name. They are lü and rou. Rou means meat; lü means donkey. And that is their specialty, in the style of the province of Hebei.

It’s a pretty small place, though larger than it looks from the entrance. The little shop on the left only goes back as far as the wall you can see, and there’s an extra room to the restaurant behind it. The place was busy, and the only table we could find was in the back room, surrounded by ordinary working people. One of my companions was originally from Hebei, and she confirmed that the workers were from there – they were speaking in Hebei dialect rather than Standard Chinese.
The first part of the meal consisted of lürou soup, featuring a fair amount of liver as well as other parts I’d just as soon not speculate too closely upon. There is also a mushroom dish featuring mu’er (wood ear) and yin’er (silver ear) fungus along with carrot and a touch of dried hot red pepper. The other dish is bean curd strips with onion, carrot, green pepper and boiled peanuts.

The broth was very good, and the more meaty bits were fine, though I left behind some of the pieces that were just fat or chewy organ. The liver tasted pretty much like any other liver.
When we had nearly finished all our food, the other dish arrived. It’s very popular, and they sell it straight out the door (which is why the cutting board is out front), so we had to wait. It’s chopped donkey with onion tucked in a toasted bun, and it seems to be the specialty of the house. People were eating it at every table. It was served with little dishes of chopped garlic that you spoon onto it as you eat. Wonderful for the breath.

Aside from being a bit greasy, it was quite good, and I would definitely eat it again. I might skip the soup, but the other dishes were good. The meal was a little expensive by neighborhood standards: the three of us paid around US$6 total.

On the way back to the office after lunch, we encountered a little clump of people on the sidewalk.
It was a guy selling fish and other pets off a three-wheeler.
I was a little saddened to see he had little tiny bunnies, chipmunks, turtles and so on as well. I’ve heard stories about the rabbits dying within a week of purchase because they were taken from their mothers too young.

And now for a topic completely unrelated except that I took the pictures this week...

I walked home through Nanguan Park one evening and saw one of the park cats out in the drained “lake” getting a drink from a puddle. I paused to get out my camera, and it headed for cover.
It hopped up on one of the rocks, looked at me, and then disappeared. I went closer.
Somehow I had never noticed that the rocks were artificial. But with all the holes in them now, it was kind of hard to miss. Nice hiding place for cats.

Continuing my backwards journey through the last week, and returning to the subject of food, I find a picture of a new restaurant that just opened not far from where I live.
It’s called The Saddle, and you might guess it’s a Mexican place. You would be correct. So far, I’ve only had a margarita there, but I’ve been told the food is good as well. It’s run by a guy from Ohio. Go figure.

Enough for now. Cheers!

Of Steven Spielberg and Jesse Owens

The news that Steven Spielberg has ended his association with the Beijing Olympics seems to be all over the international news, though not surprisingly hasn’t got much attention in the Chinese media as far as I can tell.

Certainly Mr. Spielberg is a free human being and allowed to choose his business and artistic endeavors by whatever criteria he wants. And it is also certainly true that the situation in Sudan is a monumental human tragedy. It is also true that China has many ties with Sudan, though it is far from certain whether China’s connection is a help or hindrance to the situation in Darfur. It is also far from certain whether China could do anything different that would improve things; if external factors like that were effective, surely the words and actions of dozens of other countries would have done some good by now – which doesn’t appear to be the case.

I know that historically, the modern Olympics have been used for political purposes. We’ve had countries boycotting the competition because of attitudes toward the host country quite a few times, but did the USSR pull out of Afghanistan because some countries wouldn’t go to Moscow in 1980? I think other factors caused their retreat, and the main result of the boycott was to deny worthy athletes their chance on the world stage. If Jesse Owens had refused to go to Germany because of the Nazis’ racist views, the world would have been denied the far more powerful statement he made by winning there.

But just because politics has intersected with the Olympics in the past doesn’t mean it should continue to do so. The whole ideal of the Olympic movement is that when it comes to sporting competition, everyone can come together without regard to relations between their homelands. Of course this may be an impossible ideal, but that doesn’t mean it should be abandoned. And let’s face it: if there was a boycott by every person and every nation that had a grievance with another nation participating, there would be no one on the fields at all. The world is far from a harmonious place. And I firmly believe that you gain more by engagement than by silence – when did “we refuse to talk to you until you agree with us on everything” ever solve an issue?

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games is an actual government agency here, so I can’t argue that dealing with BOCOG is not the same as dealing with the country’s leadership. But I would be dreaming if I felt that BOCOG has any influence over China’s foreign policy. Spielberg’s statements perhaps embarrass China’s leaders a little (very little, I’m guessing, in spite of what Western media say), but it would be still more dreaming to think that a little embarrassment is going to change their policies. They’re so used to Western media badmouthing them on any number of issues that they’ve developed pretty thick skin. Spielberg could make just as powerful a statement without quitting; he would put China in the position of continuing to deal with him in spite of his statements or the embarrassment of firing him (which might be greater than that caused by his quitting). His withdrawal makes it easy for China and BOCOG to take the high ground:

"Some people are attempting to link the Darfur issue with Chinese government policies in Sudan, even with the organisation of the Olympics. If they don't know the Chinese policy, I can understand. But if they have got some objectives, especially political objectives, we cannot accept that." – Liu Jianchao, Foreign Ministry spokesman. Read more.

The bottom line, of course, is that none of this makes one whit of difference. The Opening Ceremonies will start on August 8, 2008 at 8:08pm with or without their famous American consultant, and will no doubt be spectacular. Putting on an impressive show is something they know how to do in this country. Spielberg’s statements will not change China’s policy and will not help ease any suffering in Darfur. Maybe it will assuage his own conscience a bit, but in the world outside of his head, nothing is accomplished.

OK, that’s enough ranting for now. I sincerely hope someone can come up with words and actions that really do matter.

The mice are taking over

It’s quite apparent when going anywhere in Beijing that the Chinese New Year, also known as the Lunar New Year or the Spring Festival, is coming up soon. The basic decoration strategy seems to be to leave up the Christmas decorations and add Chinese symbols into the mix. So Santa and the reindeer and the sparkly trees are still hanging around, and the good luck characters and mice have been added. The upcoming year is generally called the Year of the Rat, but as it happens, Mandarin doesn’t really distinguish between rats and mice (laoshu or haozi for both), and mice are cuter, so from the looks of things, it will be the Year of the Mouse.

Last night we had our company New Year’s party. I’ve looked back through last year’s blog posts, and it seems I didn’t really say much about that party. Well, we were a much smaller company then, and it was a pretty minimal affair. We took an afternoon off and walked to a nearby party facility, where we had a meal and some karaoke.

This year’s party was bigger in all respects. I think the planning committee had some difficulties, because the event was rescheduled twice from other days due to the unavailability of any decent facilities. So we ended up on a Sunday late afternoon at The Sixth Club. It’s one of thousands of party venues around town. And remember that in a city this big, saying “thousands” is not an exaggeration. It’s a whole industry that hardly exists in American cities.

TG, SJ, and I ended up being the last ones to arrive, and everyone else was already eating and drinking when we walked in. We found some seats and hit the buffet. It was decent if not outstanding, with the roast duck being the standout. No surprise, this being Beijing and all.
Each table was labeled with a famous mouse character.
I’ve been trying to get over a nasty cold for a couple weeks now, so I only had a few sips of beer, but some of my coworkers were having a great time with their beverages. No embarrassing breaches of etiquette I’m happy to report.
People were encouraged to participate in the festivities, and somehow TG and I got talked into take part. RR was supposed to join us, but he was stuck back at the office all evening and didn’t make it. There were several karaoke performances, one of which was preceded by some sort of skit that I didn’t understand at all, but got lots of laughs.
And we had a dance routine, complete with costumes.
There were a number of games, including this one that I never caught the rules to. The men sat in the chairs with baby bibs, and the women bonked them on the heads from time to time. I think it was part “Simon Says” with some strange domestic overtones. There was a second part where the women gave the men baby bottles full of beer and the winner was the one to suck it down fastest.
There was also a round of Musical Chairs and a Three-People-Four-Legs race that nearly resulted in serious injuries.
I am seriously out of order here, but what the heck. TG and I took the stage for a painful take on “Hotel California” with lyrics I rewrote to fit our company, full of in-jokes and Olympic references. I called it “Hotel 2008” (“Hotel Er-Ling-Ling-Ba”). It got off to kind of a slow start, but once someone stuck a mic in JW’s face and got him to sing, it improved a lot.

There were some very nice prize drawings, including a Wii and a digital camera and a bunch of portable game systems and iPods. I didn’t win anything.

At least not in the drawings. TG and I got an award for The Best Courage for our performance. Which translates as being really bad but sticking it out to the end, I suppose. There were also two other trophies, one for the dancers and one for the IT department for the skit and song. And everyone got a big stuffed mouse to take home.
Now, I suppose all of this might sound kind of silly. It’s definitely different from any office parties I’ve been to over the last ten years in the US. I hope I’m not inadvertently echoing some kind of stereotype, but what it comes down to is the fact that my colleagues here are not as cynical and jaded as most Americans. Most of us hate to participate in silly games, hate to risk looking foolish, and would rather stay home than play Musical Chairs. But as far as I could tell, everyone had a great time. Perhaps the lure of prizes and the free-flowing beer helped, but for each game, there were people eager to play. Our modern “sophistication” seems to come with a price: we can’t relax and act like kids for a few hours with our coworkers.

Milestones and musings

Some photos by me, some by D.

This Tuesday was my one year anniversary of moving to Beijing. I had planned to write an entry that day with some sort of thoughts upon reaching that milestone, but it turned out to be a ridiculously busy week at work, and I’ve been at the office until after 9 almost every night this week. As was announced just today, Phase 2 Olympic ticket sales start next week, and people in China will be able to walk into a participating Bank of China branch, or call the phone center, or go online, and purchase tickets without having to go through a lottery.
It’s astounding how much preparation goes into such an event, especially when you have as many moving pieces as we have here. There’s the software used at the bank branches and the phone center, which is different from what Ticketmaster uses in the rest of the world even aside from the Chinese interface; there’s the web site, which also for various reasons is different than TM standard; there’s making sure payment authorization works, making sure the money is reported accurately, making sure the internet connections work to all 1000 banks spread across one of the world’s largest countries, figuring out how many phone agents are needed, making sure there are procedures to deal with problems, making sure all the documentation is available in two languages... you get the picture.
So now it’s Saturday and I have a little quiet time before tonight’s indulgence in one of those odd culture clash experiences that seem to come along so often here. SJ has proposed a group dinner at Hooters. Yes, Hooters Beijing. More on that after I’ve been there.
What are my thoughts after one full year here?

• I’m tired. It’s been a lot of work, especially this week. If I think hard (or refer to past blog posts) I can see that I’ve obviously had some spare time to take in the experience. All of the excursions I’ve written about have been squeezed in between flurries of work.
• China is too big and too varied to sum up or even really wrap my head around. I suppose the same would be true of any large nation, but even among large nations China is in a class by itself (India probably comes close). And the country has such a bizarre (to Western experience) history that the obvious surface differences are the least of it.
• Most of what foreigners know, or think they know, about China is wrong. I’ll elaborate on this in a bit.
• As morally reprehensible as you might consider the One Child Policy, it has saved this country from almost certain disaster. There are plenty of places in the world where you can look to see what uncontrolled population growth does in an economy that cannot support it.
• My brain is still working its way free of the language rust built up from years of not speaking anything but English. It’s taking me much longer to pick up Chinese than with French or Spanish back in high school, or Russian in college. Admittedly my time was more dedicated to learning back then, and with only two classes a week things move slowly.
• Maybe it makes me a heretic to think this, but I don’t think American style democracy would work here. I think the Chinese people will find their own way to a better system, and if they can avoid the kind of money-grubbing political influence peddling that runs our government, they’ll be doing really well. For this country, most of the major decisions coming out of the top levels have been quite reasoned and sensible, and if they can knock down the rampant corruption at the lower levels, the future should continue to improve.
• Pollution is a massive problem. As I mentioned, the highest levels of the government seem committed to doing the right things, but those policies seem to run up against a lot of momentum in the form of old-guard party appointees and corrupt managers. Of course, similar momentum (powerful lobbyists and right-wing pressure) hinders clean-up efforts in the US and Europe as well. Do not think the planet is getting cleaner just because LA isn’t as bad as it used to be. Air does not respect borders.
• The filtering of the Internet is really annoying. I’m all for a harmonious society, but I can’t see how protecting people from Wikipedia or Rocket to China contributes to it.
• Chinese people are generally sociable and cheerful. They’re always gathering in groups to play cards, do tai chi, practice ballroom dancing, sing folk songs, sit along the sidewalk chatting, and so on. They laugh a lot, and I don’t always understand their sense of humor.
On the subject of Everything You Know Is Wrong: The other day I came across a piece written by famed Euro-travel guru Rick Steves about his trip to Shanghai in 2003, and I was struck how different his impression of the country was than mine. It’s only been a few years, and he was in Shanghai instead of Beijing, but even that can’t account for the disparity. He wrote:

People seem docile and resigned to follow the rules. Schoolteachers carry bullhorns. Workers don't organize. Cabbies give you back all the change.

Notice how he says the cabbies give you correct change as if it's a bad thing.
I don’t know how anyone who’s seen traffic in Shanghai could say that people follow the rules.

Here’s a typical example. You get into a taxi at the airport, and the driver heads out onto the expressway. There’s a big sign in Chinese and English telling you to buckle up. The driver is not wearing his seat belt. As you approach the toll booth, where police are stationed, the driver reaches over and pulls the seat belt across his lap, but does not latch it. From outside the car, it appears as if he’s wearing it. Only twice in the hundreds of taxi rides I’ve had did I actually see a driver with the seat belt latched, and only once has one asked me to buckle mine. And while the legitimate taxi drivers have for the most part been scrupulously honest, there are plenty of bogus cabs around, and when the police see them, they just ignore them. At the Summer Palace, D and I waited for a taxi to go home, and there was an officer managing the queue. When we were next in line, a bogus driver tried to coax us into his car, right there in front of the policeman. The cop looked at me and wrote the jing character (as in Beijing) and the letter B in his palm; I replied “Wo zhidao (I know)” – legitimate Beijing taxis all have license plates that start Jing-B, and that car was Jing-E. Other impatient foreigners got in, and the cop shook his head with resignation. We got in the next real cab.
In general, rule-breaking is developed to a fine art here. Obviously, there is a large police presence here, and soldiers can often be seen around the city (it is a capital, and there are guards at all the embassies), but everyone seems to instinctively know just how much you can get away with.
Littering is so common that it seems the norm rather than an aberration – after all, there will be a person with a broom along in a few minutes to clean it up. People cross the street at virtually every possible spot, even climbing over barriers to dodge between cars. City buses run red lights and block intersections all the time. Getting away from traffic, no one lets the NO PHOTOS signs in temples or stop them from snapping away. You often see people barging past ticket takers without having proven they paid to get to the subway or the temple or whatever. And they yell and argue with policemen who try to tell them what to do.

And then there’s the bootleg CD and DVD situation.
• On the street and in small shops, CDs and DVDs cost the equivalent of $1.30 or so per disc, and most of them have quality equal to what you’ll find in the rest of the world. You occasionally get a bad one, but at the price, you just toss it and try again.
• In the major shops, many CDs and DVDs sell for about twice the street price, though some approach the price you’d pay in the US. I assume these are legitimate – what else can I do?
• Given the average income here, if DVDs cost $15, very few people could afford them.
• Given the fact that the “legitimate” copies have all been subjected to government editing, most people prefer the bootlegs, which are the full international versions.
• Maybe an expert can tell the difference between a good copy and a legit disc, but I can’t. They’ve got the little holograms and everything.
• Given all these factors, it’s no surprise that the vast majority of Chinese people prefer to buy bootlegs over legitimate products.
• What kind of massive, repressive police action would it take to thwart the honest preferences of a billion people? Might the cure be worse than the disease? It’s ironic that western business interests, while they purportedly champion freedom and democracy, are actually encouraging the Chinese government to increase its control of citizens.
• How will it work out, and what would be the best solution? I don’t know, but maybe the real future of intellectual property policies will be decided here by ordinary people rather than in corporate boardrooms with investments to protect.
And that’s about as much trouble as I want to create today. I’ve been sitting at my desk all morning catching up on these posts, and I feel the need to do something else for a while. One final thought: it is again that time of year that is after the weather turns cold but before buildings can turn on the heat. Just as it was when I first moved into this apartment almost a year ago. Time to get out the long underwear and flannel pajamas, drink hot beverages, and walk around with a blanket draped over me.

I bought that DVD fair and square!

Warning: This entry is probably only of interest to science fiction fans. I won't be offended if you skip it.

On the schedule it said that The Solitary Planet would start at 10am, but when I got to the room, the signs said 10:40. I wandered over to the Exhibition Hall to see if anything was going on. They’d had the art auction the night before, so you couldn’t even look at the pretty pictures.
As I mentioned before, the play was based on Stanlslaw Lem’s book Solaris, which has been the source of two movies as well. In this case, it was in Japanese of course, though they had English projected on the wall next to the performing area. In general, the basic themes of the novel were intact, and the main focus was on the character conflicts and questions about who was crazy and who could figure out what was going on. It’s really a worthwhile book, so I don’t want to give too much away. The setup goes like this: a psychologist is called to a distant research station in orbit above the mysterious planet called Solaris. Most of the research staff has been called back to Earth, but three remained behind, and one of them summoned the doctor. Once the psychologist arrives, he finds the station in a shambles and the three scientists behaving very strangely and not explaining anything. Then he starts to see things, namely his dead wife. She is not a hallucination; she is solid and can talk with him, though she does not seem to have much memory of the past. Each of the others has a comparable visitor. From then on out, the characters try to solve the mystery and face the demons brought up by their “guests.”
All in all it was quite well done, with a set consisting of one desk, two chairs, and a curtain for actors to go behind when they were not in the scene. A technician with a laptop provided the subtitles and music as well as controlling the lights.
The play finished a little after noon, and I rushed to a panel called “Defending Public Domain from Corporate Copyright Maximalism,” which again featured Cory Doctorow (it seemed I was following him around), along with Patrick Neilsen Hayden, Inge Heyer, and Naomi Novik. Doctorow expressed dismay at the arguments used by some of his compatriots in the electronic right arena. When they talk about information being free as a moral issue, they only confuse the matter and turn away people who might otherwise be convinced. Doctorow is against strict copyrighting on digital media because it is inherently impossible. Once information is in a digital form, whether it’s music, pictures, movies, books, or whatever, it can be copied, transformed, and distributed, and any attempted protections will only slow that process down. And any country that tries to mandate adherence to such inherently impractical restrictions will find that certain types of business move elsewhere, to countries with fewer restrictions. The American policy in this case has been to try to force other countries to accept to legal strategies that lobbyists for major media corporations have pushed through our legislative branch.

Doctorow, as part of his work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has been a part of some very interesting conferences. He told of meetings held by the European Union about future media regulation. On the subject of providing on-demand video, they were proposing rules, and the basic idea was that any service or feature which provides value to the consumer should have a cost associated with it. Therefore, if a viewer wants the ability to pause or fast-forward the video, the owner of the content has the right to set limits on that. So the player and the distribution technology have to be able to turn off the fast-forward function. There was also a discussion about pausing. How long should a person be able to pause a video before they have to pay for it again? How long would a person normally need to pause a video? How long would a nursing mother need to care for her child before she can get back to the watching she paid for? Do you remember the old days where if you bought a video tape or a DVD you could just watch it in whatever manner you wanted? The industry representatives were also trying to devise a payment scheme for multiple players. What about the child of divorced parents who buys a movie at mom’s house, but doesn’t finish watching it and wants to finish it over the weekend at dad’s place? Their solution? She can call the copyright restriction office of the content owner and explain the situation (just like you have to do sometimes with Windows licensing on your PC). They would then unlock the movie for her to watch on a second player.

The situation is already somewhat ridiculous. If you’re an American and you take a vacation in Europe, where you discover a European movie you like and buy it on DVD, when you take it home, you will find that even though you paid fair price for a legitimate copy, you are not allowed to watch it on your American DVD player (even if the movie is not available in the US). Does this make sense? Whom is it protecting?

My plan for the next session was one in which Silverberg was listed to participate along with several Japanese authors. I went by the slated room, but it was packed and Silverberg did not seem to be there, so I picked an alternate: “Upcoming Books from Tor.” Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Tom Doherty went through their calendar and talked about forthcoming titles, most of which seemed to be part of fantasy series.

After that, I checked out a little bit of anime at the Rocket Girls panel. It was almost all in Japanese with no interpreter nearby (or maybe there was, but I sat near the back because I intended to sneak out early). After a little introduction, they showed what seemed to be the first episode of a series. It was one of those anime shows that’s a frustrating mixture of good and stupid. In any case, the story was just a setup for the real action that was to come, and maybe someday I’ll see more of it. I certainly would give it another chance.
My final panel of the con was “Living with Another Writer” with panelists Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber. As I expected, the audience was fairly small, a dozen or so people in a large room. They talked a while about their accommodations for each other’s schedules and habits. Before they married, she had actually had a regular job where she went to an office and so on, something which he has never done (by the time he graduated from college he was making enough money as a writer that he never had to get a “day job”), and he insisted that if they were to live together, she would have to work freelance. He was much too attached to his lifestyle where he can on the spur of the moment decide to go to France for a month or whatever, without having to get the approval of her boss. She agreed and made the big jump into the uncertain waters of self-employment. They discussed their schedules (he’s a morning person, she is not), and the degree to which they pass work by each other. They also ended up talking a bit about their three cats. After the panel finished, I got a chance to chat with the two of them for a bit. Silverberg told me how the previous panel (the one where I didn’t see him and left) had actually been the most interesting one of the con, because he had a chance to interact with some Japanese writers. I got a couple of books signed (one of the Chinese ones plus a Japanese copy of Nightwings). We talked a little about China and the changes taking place here. We are all concerned about how their headlong plunge into modernization might be damaging the planet’s environment, and I related some of the statements I’ve heard from the government here indicating they are seriously trying to alleviate the negative impact.

I made one last visit to the Exhibition Hall to get a couple of pictures.
This is a glider that was built by some fans of the movie Nausicaa by Hayao Miyazaki. It’s patterned after the one-person jet wing in the movie.
This one has actually flown. I took a picture of the picture that proved it.
And the Japanese are pretty keen on robots. Here’s a demonstration of some toys.
I saw some more interesting characters on the way out.
And there you have it. One big science fiction convention. Somehow I got through the entire thing without attending a single room party, and caught neither the masquerade nor the Hugo Awards ceremony. But all in all it was fun, and I’m glad I went. Next year’s WorldCon will be in Denver right in the midst of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, so I won’t be able to go. I think 2009 will be Montreal, which could be nice, since I’ve always wanted to visit there.
Random thought: Even catgirls have to check their email from time to time.

Seattle in 2011!

I have some more photos around the city of Yokohama, but they'll have to wait for another post.