Final thoughts on A Loyal Character Dancer

Just finished this book. I has a sad that Inspector Chen and Catherine Rohn couldn't be together but it really would be impossible politically. It would ruin his party career to marry an American and as Yu said, given his background he could never go far in a law enforcement career in the US. As if he could leave anyways.

Even worse, they find poor Wen and she has to leave Liu (the guy who has loved her for 20 odd years in secret and united at last) to go to the States to be with her shitstain abusive older husband. It really sucks to be a woman in most of the world. If she stayed in China, the gangs were after her. The big mystery was the gangs had coerced her into poisoning her husband.

I really like the poem Liu wrote about her which is too long to copy here. He was a reporter with the Wenhui Daily (a real paper, btw, founded in Shanghai in 1938) and went to Fujian to write a story about the factories there. There in Changle (or ChangLe, also a real place in east Fujian) he unexpectedly sees Wen and writes a poem where the factory manager describes her as "as a grinder, but a revolutionary one, polishing up the spirit of our society." Which sounds beautiful for a split second. Then you think about how tragic and wasteful the Cultural Revolution was and you want to vomit.

I love Detective Yu. For one example, where in the scene where he interrogates a prostitute and she mentions two triad members forced her into a threesome he tells her she had better cooperate now as group sex is illegal. Uhm, what? WTF was going on with China. Defiantly Atheist and yet as prudish as an old Church organist. I wonder if any of this has changed (I mean, not that I'm like give me group sex or give me death but how or why would you make that illegal?) He and Pequin finally get their own place at the end of this book instead of sharing a converted Shikuman house dining room with their son.

If I ever get the urge to learn more about Chinese poetry, look up Su Dongpu.

Some things I learned from Gene Gilliom's China talk

Gene Gilliom has is a Professor Emeritus of social studies at OSU and led a tour group to China last year. He gave a talk on old versus new culture in China. He also is in Torch Club with Seelbach. He has been traveling there since the mid-1970's so he witnessed the tail end of the Cultural Revolution. It officially ended with Mao's death in 1976.

His group visited Beijing, Datong (where a lot of the coal mining is), Hohhot (the capital of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region-not the same as Mongolia. The name means "blue city" in Mongolian), Dalian, Shenyang, Changchun, Harbin, QingDao (where the beer comes from-German influence), Suzhou and Shanghai. One lady in his group broke her arm and a few ribs when her horse bolted in the Gegentala ("the place of grazing in summer") Grasslands of Inner Mongolia and had to stay in the hospital for 10 days. In China, you pay for your hospital stay and services up front. The tour company lent her money and sent an interpreter to help her. Your family provides linens and similar services, the hospital does not. Interesting but what a shitty way for her to learn that.

I also learned:

• 500 million people live in the Yangtze River Valley
• 1000 new cars a day enter the Beijing roads
• Since 1980, there are have been ~5000 buildings over 15 stories tall erected in Shanghai alone
• The name China comes from the Emperor Chin
• The migration of people seeking work from China's interior to the coast represents the largest migration in human history