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第三十六 中华人民共和国*
我要用中文写这个博文。我的中文很不好，可是 我需要尝试。笨? 疯了？不好意思了！可能是。不管了，我得练习！ 2007 年我第一次来到中国。我是一个南京大学（或称“南大”）的老师。我不会说汉语的， 可是我是想学汉语的。十二年以后，我还是想会说汉语！ 南京是一个很有意思的地方；很老， 又很长的历史，我在南京吃到的薯条，也是我迄今为止吃过最好吃的。因为我非常爱南京，所以我知道，我得回来。 可是苏州是我最爱的中国城市。苏州也得古老，也有很悠久的历史。苏州的食物是非常好吃。有一个很有名的菜叫“松鼠桂鱼”，很甜可是好吃；别一个菜是鸡头米。秋季大家吃阳澄湖的螃蟹。这三样东西我都吃了，都很好吃！ 我在代顿大学中国研究院（UDCI）任教。我教了中国学生和美国学生；在我任教的最后一年，也有一些学生来自尼日利亚、保加利亚、巴西和韩国. 因为代顿大学很笨，代顿大学中国研究院第三年就关了。 代顿大学中国研究院关闭后，我获得了一个学者奖，叫“Fulbright”。这个奖让我有机会选择一个中国的大学任教。我想过去南京和杭州，但最后我选择了苏州。因为我想，苏州是中国最好的城市。于是我成为了苏州大学的一个客座教授。 我朋友问我“为什么你那么爱中国？”那是一个很好的问题，可能我的回答不好。我的主要原因不太好：我不需要工作很多。我有很多空：我可以读书、写作、弹吉他、走路锻炼、在中国观光。当然，有很多很好吃的饭。我朋友很有意思, 我想跟他们聊天。我也会游泳。去年我去过北京、西安、成都、贵阳和黄山。今年我会去上海的，可能还会去昆明或者张家界。 当然，是因为新型冠状病毒（COVID-19）。我知道这是一种很危险的病。可是我待在苏州比坐14个小时的飞机要安全。我无法自主决定，我得回家，要不然就得不到我的钱。 所以现在我在代顿。我希望我在苏州，我想回苏州。我不知道我能不能再回中国。但现在，再见，苏州的朋友；再见，苏州；再见，中国。我很伤心。 我在苏州最后的晚餐： [*With apologies to other six-year-olds, this probably looks like it was written by a six-year-old. I tried. My first draft had some problems: a couple of major ones, a couple of medium ones, a couple of minor ones.… Read more
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#35 谢谢啊！
Frequently, the athletes in a winning competition will thank God for their success. No one in the losers’ locker room ever blames God. I would. Or I would blame Emma (long story). Ideally, the upcoming NCAA basketball tournament will conclude with the ethically-challenged Kansas Jayhawks beating the University of Dayton (Go Flyers!) in a close,… Read more
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#34 哭哭了
This is my friend Nick. He used to work in Suzhou with me. He misses China. I miss China. We miss China. This blog entry will be about what I miss most. If Nick wants to tell you what he misses most, he can do his own damn blog. I miss the beauty of China,… Read more
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#33 代顿大学中国研究院
The China Institute at the University of Dayton was a bold and ambitious project. The University decided to close it. I did not agree with the decision, as I explain in the following letter. I sent this letter to someone pretty high up the food chain at UD, but I saw no reason to include… Read more
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#32 费城
The Fulbright is over. My expectation of being in China until July 2020 is over. I have nothing to do, as far as I know, until August, when The University of Dayton (Go Flyers!) Fall courses begin. If you have nothing else to do in the Fall, pop by for a little symbolic logic or… Read more
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#31 再见苏州
Kicking and screaming (figuratively, for the most part), I left Suzhou on February 10th. I assumed this day would be long and full of bureaucratic snafus, missed flights, long lines, minimal food, and an excess of coffee. Sometimes, one’s predictions turn out to be exactly correct. But, in all honesty, it wasn’t as bad as… Read more
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#30 死成
Somewhere around January 28th, all the Fulbright scholars in China were told to leave the country. If we stayed, we would lose our Fulbright status, and our funding. (But as I tell my Introduction to Philosophy students, it is not as if the Catholic Church did not give Galileo a choice.) We were also told… Read more
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#29 特朗普/川普
It is very likely that the blog entry below will have salty—saltier, saltiest—language, inappropriate for younger readers. You know: readers younger than me. Deal with it. I taught in the Spring after President Whatshisface™ was elected. I told my class that some students were bothered by my cursing in class. I do so, I realized,… Read more
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#28 新年：第二
Part Two of the New Year’s Holiday report. You want quiet? Come walk around a large Chinese city on New Year’s Eve. Or New Year’s Day. I’ve been in louder libraries. I live in a town of about 10 million, and this is what my street looked like New Year’s Eve at about 8 o’clock… Read more
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#27 新年：第一
In about a week, it will be next year here, and everyone is getting prepared. We leave the year of the pig, and head into the year of the rat. I do not like rats. I really do not like rats. Conveniently enough, the Chinese word for “rat” seems to be the same for the… Read more
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#26 食
Classes have concluded. Grading has concluded. Nothing happens until after New Year/Spring Festival. So it is, naturally, time to eat. I’ve mentioned before that the easiest introduction to Chinese culture is food. Food is everywhere; there are probably 50 restaurants within three blocks of where I live, and the blocks are not especially large. Many… Read more
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#25 小队目标
My daughter Emma, bless her heart, is good at introducing to me current lingo (although by the time I write this, it will all be, no doubt, out of date): “lit,” “HAM,” and, importantly, “squad goals.” If I understand “squad goals” correctly, it is the idea that one’s group has certain aspirations, either to be… Read more
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#24 中国观察随笔
I’ve already offered some of my observations about China, and about people I’ve encountered in China. This blog entry is just a bunch more random observations about the Middle Kingdom and some of its residents, a few of whom have appeared here before. Since the first picture I post is the one that shows up… Read more
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#23 节日
I realize I don’t write all that much about the actual Fulbright experience. I seem to write about what goes on while I take advantage of the actual Fulbright experience. So be it. I’m about four months into the ten month stay, and I know I won’t want to return to the US. I especially… Read more
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#22 北京
Thanks to my pals at the State Department and the Fulbright program, I was asked to help interview 80 Visiting Research Scholars who are trying, more or less, to do what I am doing in China, only in the other direction. The candidates we interviewed were in all sorts of disciplines, from linguistics and law… Read more
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#21 死亡
This is not a happy blog entry. If you are here to be entertained, well, you might read #4 or wait for #22. I am in Beijing, helping the Fulbright folks interview Visiting Research Scholars to see if they get their projects funded for a year’s research in the US. (More about that later.) I… Read more
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#20 音乐
In Madrid (and, to a lesser extent Rome) there was pretty constant music: buskers, groups of classical musicians playing various popular classical tunes, the occasional want-to-be opera singer belting out an aria. For a while I wondered why the Spanish loved Elvis so much, since I kept hearing “It’s Now or Never.” I then remembered… Read more
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#19 黄山
I’ve been to some pretty scenic spots: the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, the Camargue in the south of France, the beaches of Barbados, Cabo da Roca in Portugal. I’m not sure, but Yellow Mountain in Anhui Province, PRC, may have them all beat. Hence, there will be many pictures offered here.… Read more
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#18 通讯故障
One of the difficulties of speaking to someone in a foreign language is that they are speaking in a foreign language. Hey: if you spoke it, it wouldn’t be foreign, would it? Traveling to Huang Shan, the famous “Yellow Mountain” scenic spot of China, has been a case study in communicative perplexity. I was a… Read more
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#17 公交
I spend a lot of time on public transportation in Suzhou. Most of my Chinese friends have cars, although personally I think one would have to be slightly insane to drive in Suzhou. (One would have to be completely insane to drive in Shanghai.) Some of my expatriate/老外 friends use DiDi all the time (the… Read more
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#16 糊涂
China can be confusing. Chinese can be really confusing. “了” is sometimes (often) “le.” But sometimes it’s “liao.” Confusing. “长” is sometimes “zhang.” But sometimes it’s “chang.” Confusing. The saintly, wise Yoda from Star Wars, in Chinese, is “You da”[尤达] while the very unsaintly guy who sits in Satan’s mouth in Dante’s Divine Comedy is… Read more
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#15 棒球
This blog entry will have very little to do with the Middle Kingdom, and will have a great deal to do with baseball. When I was 10, in Kansas City (technically, Independence Missouri, home of Harry S Truman), there was no major league team. The A’s had departed for Oakland, and the Royals had yet… Read more
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#14 螃蟹！
It is crab season in Suzhou now—the famous “hairy crabs” from Yangcheng Lake. People come from pretty far away to eat these. This Sunday, some friends were nice enough to invite me to join them in a crab extravaganza. The star of the show was, of course, the baby: Xu Liman, or 徐黎曼. Her mother… Read more
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#13 西瓜汁
“Watermelon Juice” may well be what my audience thought I was providing at my talk. In any case, this week was a talk to philosophy students and some philosophy faculty, on Kant and Rousseau. I know those reading this are dying to know the basic claim, so here it is: in On the Social Contract,… Read more
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#12 黄金周 Golden Week
The Seventieth Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China was this week (October 1, for those keeping score at home.) Lots of businesses close, people travel; there is a big parade in Beijing although, from what I understand, the proletariat generally has to watch it on TV. Most people I know just… Read more
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#11 太忙了！
I don’t know. I seemed pretty busy this week. I gave a talk, taught four classes on Friday and four on Sunday, went to an official dinner to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, walked around a bunch, and had to wear a tie. There are no pictures… Read more
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#10: Yak Yak Yak
I’m giving a talk this week, so most of my time has been preparing for that. Details about all of that will be the topic of next week’s entry. Since that entry will be mostly words, this entry is mostly pictures of the few things I managed to do, with captions. (My apologies if some… Read more
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#9: Bureaucracy
As noted in the previous blog entry, my schedule is, um, forgiving. I met with my students and taught my classes on Friday the 13th (in spite of my being a recovering triskaidekaphobe). Then MidAutumn Festival arrived: along with many mooncakes and threats of more mooncakes, school was closed Friday, so I had the day… Read more
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#8: Overworked
I live and work in Suzhou, a town a lot of people in the US have never heard of. It has a population of a little more than 11,000,000, making it bigger than Chicago and a bit smaller than London. That would make it the 16th biggest city in China (although demographers and other sensible… Read more
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#7: DO(H)!
One of the hazards of taking (or teaching) logic is wondering about things from a particular, possibly idiosyncratic, perspective. No one else seems to care about the paradox (antinomy?) of the Vatican Museum: as mentioned before, what if everyone buys a “jump the line” ticket? Similar kinds of questions keep appearing: since the Fulbrighters had… Read more
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#6: 再见美国
There is a trope one sees on social media; someone does something quite badly (this often seems to be Donald Trump) as if to dare others to do worse. To indicate that someone else is up to the challenge, one identifies the original screw up, and who can surpass that level of incompetence, along with… Read more
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#5: Firenze, Venezia, America
A couple of trips outside of Rome took us to Florence and Venice. Everyone loves Florence. We were there for much too brief a time (e.g., I didn’t get to see Michelangelo’s David). Climbed Il Duomo, toured the Uffizi, ate some gelato. Sounding like Douglas MacArthur, with a different attitude: “I will return.” Everyone hates… Read more
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# 4: Roma
People asked me what I did in Rome. [For those not following along, I taught in Rome after leaving China, and before returning to the US for my Fulbright orientation.] I could say I did a bunch of things: saw all four of the famous Basilicae, toured the Vatican (twice), ate a lot of cacio… Read more
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#3: Between China and Rome
I finished teaching in Suzhou (PRC) in late April 2019, and then started teaching in Rome in late May. I didn’t really want to go back to the US, get jet lag, and then turn around and head for Rome and get jet lag again. So I had to find some interesting place between Shanghai… Read more
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#2: So, What Do YOU Know About China?
Not that much. I mean, if I asked a random person sitting in a random waiting room with me “So, what do you think about the Taiping Rebellion?,” I’d probably sound informed. But, generally, I started the China game pretty late in the day—not advisable when trying to catch up on 3,000 (4,000 or 5,000:… Read more
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#1: Controversy
I’m not all that comfortable blathering on about myself, but this seems to be standard operating procedure for this kind of thing (a blog). This week’s entry will be a little background about what I will not be talking about. Those who know me also know that there are few things I’m unwilling to discuss,… Read more
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