Contrasts

Another busy week. I started a WUISS Linux User's Group (hopefully to expand into a Wuhan Linux User's Group) and the WUISS English Club.

At the former I pretty much organised it all myself and did the keynote speech ("What Is Linux and Why Would I Want to Use It?") since Linux is so rare in China. I had about 18 people attend with 14 staying through the whole meeting. One small problem developed when my laptop's CD drive refused to burn anything. (That's about the fourth laptop in a row, from three manufacturers, whose built-in CD-ROM screwed up. I hate laptops sometimes.) More people will probably show up at the next meeting in two weeks.

At the latter I was smarter. The goal here is to give the students their own English Corner -- one made for and by the students and run by the students. I'm acting in a strictly advisory capacity and as the teacher who gives them credibility when they're asking for funds, equipment, locations, etc. I'm doing as little work as possible there because I want the students to find out for themselves how hard it is to organise things. Yesterday was the first activity they ran and it went reasonably well. The only thing that really got screwed up was the advertising, something we'll be talking about next meeting.

Spring is finally springing here in Wuhan and I can finally answer a question that I'm frequently asked. "What is it that keeps you in China?" Nowadays the answer is more obvious in the form of Joan, but I was in China two years before I moved to the city Joan was in and four-and-a-half years before I married her. What kept me here all that time?

The answer is a single word: contrasts.

China can be a profoundly ugly country. Buildings look dilapidated less than two years after they're built. Everything is dirty and grimy. The air is so polluted I rarely see blue in the sky, and when I do it's a blue with an unhealthy brown tint. Yet intermixed with all this deep ugliness is equally profound beauty. I don't just mean my wife, either!

Consider for example the photo (taken by my lovely, talented wife) at the top left of this blog entry. This is an example of the profound beauty I'm talking about. It doesn't show, however, the contrasts I'm speaking of. For those you have to look to the photo to the right (taken by the significantly less lovely and less talented me). Here the cherry tree in full bloom (part of a long line of them along an alley you can see in the photo below) is stunningly beautiful. The photograph simply doesn't do it justice! Yet around it is a wall that's crumbling, a building that's falling apart and just general signs of decay and unpleasantness. It's the kind of contrast that makes me swoon (nearly) and keeps me interested in this place. Somehow the juxtaposition of ugliness next to beauty makes the beauty more mysterious and captures my imagination.

So I stay.