The Election in Beijing

Here is a little piece a filmmaker put together about a somewhat crazed Obama supporter during the lead up to the election.

(If you're having trouble viewing, you can go here.)

I wish I could have been in the U.S. during the run-up to the election—I would have liked to have canvassed, talked to neighbors, etc.—but I have to say that living in China during this time has given me an interesting vantage point. I hope my blog does not get censored for saying this, but Chinese people don’t have a clue about how democracy works. They’re not even cynical about it—imagine that. I was showing a Chinese roommate a video of an earlier Obama speech, and she became awestruck: you mean a politician who doesn’t bore you to tears with officious speech giving? Things work differently here. I won't go into details...

The events of the last couple weeks, indeed the last year or so, brings to mind for me a certain Leonard Cohen lyric:

"It's coming to America first / The cradle of the best and of the worst / It's here they got the range and the machinery for change / It's here they got the spiritual thirst. / It's here the family's broken and it's here the lonely say / That the heart has got to open in a fundamental way. / Democracy is coming to the USA."

Scenes From a Village South of Beijing

New Neighborhood, New View

I recently moved to a new house, in one of the older parts of town, a neighborhood of rambling alleyways and vestiges of an older, pre-modern community life. It lies just north of the Drum Tower, a gorgeous edifice and the scene of an unfortunate incident during the Olympics. Back in days of yore, before wristwatches, the Drum Tower was the city’s grandfather clock. First utilizing mechanized water clocks which would beat a gong every quarter hour, it eventually moved onto, you guessed it, drums.

[North side of the Drum Tower (no, not my new house)]

The traditional courtyard houses populate this neighborhood. It just so happens that, directly in front of my bedroom window sprouting out of one of these courtyards, stands a 300-year-old (oak?) tree, whose life has spanned two dynasties and has survived into the modern era. Wouldn’t you like to ask her about all that she has seen?

[View from my window]