Home before sunset.

When I arrived home this evening, it was still light outside - the first time that this has happened in I don't know how long.


My wife screaming in the bathroom brought me there to see what was up. Tony had thrown her face basin in the toilet. He got spanked alright. But not by me, but by someone from another culture so I had to be tolerant.


I took the photo below, using my mobile phone camera, on a street near the Nanchang Temple Market, not far from my school. I put some money in his cup, not for the music but for the opportunity to take this photo.





People interested in China will be interested to read Duff and Nonsense's assessment of its threat to the West. Living in China, I am less inclined to make a categorical assessment of it in its' relations with the West. Where I am, I see a country trying to go Middle Class and Modern. I also see a place that has a lot of problems. And I have heard so many predictions about where China is heading that I can only trust those who say they just don't know. The government here, in dynastic historical terms, is doing good by the Chinese people. But the dynasty isn't so hot by Western standards. So it may well be content with what it has and do what has to hold it. Of course, I live in a part of China that is unlikely to experience social unrest. Jiangsu and Wuxi are wealthy places in China.


On the video screen on the bus ride to work this morning, I saw video of this: meeting (as reported in the International Herald Tribune:

On Friday, North Korean generals and senior military officials met with
members of the United Nations Command at the Panmunjom demilitarized zone
between North and South Korea. The talks lasted less than an hour, according to
a command spokesman.

What was interesting about the video, to me, was that the video from taken from the South Korean vantage point. It showed these strange looking North Korean types in the distance. Yet, this video was shown by the allies of the North Koreans.

I have yet to meet any Chinese who have gone to North Korea. I have meet many who have been to South Korea. My students tell me North Korea is like China thirty years ago.