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<div class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">I've gotten used to sitting home on Christmas eve since I avoided the crowd as the west commercialized Christmas, and now, China is christianizing commerce. So I hacked my newspaper column for Dec. 30. The usual caveat: curious, welcome, not, see you at the bend.</font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br>
</font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">Shen dan jie kuai le!</font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><b><br>
</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><b>Dusting off the Year
that Was<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">It started yesterday, the white puffs flurrying down like
feathers from medieval angels molting from the stratosphere. It was not much but enough to make my
foothold on the icy ground a bit shaky while I carried the potted plants from
my classroom after my last class session.
The school shuts off the radiator on the last day of the semester until
the spring semester opens. That’s eight
weeks in the cold that even the sturdy spider plants could not possibly endure.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">I carried my plants in one of those oversized shopping bags
that boutiques like to provide. I live
only about four blocks from my classroom so I did not bother to bring plastic
or towel to cover the plants. But after
fifteen minutes outside in between warm rooms, the plants resembled weeklong
leeks in the fridge, or newly harvested kelp from the icy waters, all
desperately crying out to be cooked and consumed, or be thrown away. After two more trips, half of my study/living
room looks like a section of the Chicago botanical garden.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13px;">This dusting-off exercise in our mind is not, however, our
wilting in the Dong Bei cold after my retirement from the formal teaching
service. Rather, it rehearses my
markings and turning points of the past year</span><font size="2">, so we can move on to the next</font>.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13px;">I am a historical figure, by upbringing and choice. I love history – the facts-based reminiscing
of the past so that the future does not come as too surprising nor too
scary. I no longer live the present with
fear of the unknown, cowed and resigned; history gives me the confidence to
live </span><font size="2">freely </font>each day like it was the only day of the rest of my life! At every moment, I encounter the past,
present, and the future, all at once!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">But my gray matter is accustomed to the rhythm of a 365-day
trip of the planet around the sun so I dance with the crowd in Gregorian
patterns and come now to the completion of another earth revolution.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13px;">I made two trips to Honolulu this year to visit 93-year old
mother who was diagnosed to be frail of bones to require 24/7 attention at a
medical facility. My fealty was made
more intense by her mothering smile even in the midst of her frailty. She reminded me of the longevity that is
programmed in my genes, but I abused the lungs with tar and nicotine in my
youth, so I am prudent in my life’s covenant.
I lopped off almost a decade from my </span><font size="2">statistical </font>staying power.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">This year, I also decided that I lived too much at the edge
of hoping against hope, and adjusted my radar accordingly. Wayward was a word applied to my fidelity in
personal relationships in the past (playful was my term), and though my
monastic <i>mendicare</i> these past few
years is rooted in the understanding that being solitary is not a lonely
journey, I found myself pining for company though much more in the romance of
the imagination rather than in the plane of earthy reality. I have since distanced myself from the cuff
and cusp of illusion.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13px;">Aging got dramatically demonstrated as the jowl of a second
chin and the sag of a previously firm and rounded <i>heine</i> became more pronounced.
I experienced loss of breath while navigating four flights to my
classroom. It has become a federal
effort to reach down and sock my feet warm in the cold. My hair now blooms like Jack Nickolson's </span><font size="2">side </font>on a
bad hair day!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13px;">My residence does have an elevator, which thankfully assists
my knees. I live on the eleventh floor,
but some of my students reside in dorms that are above ten floors without
elevators. Just imagining how they strive up and down the stairs daily exhausts
my faculties. So this year, I shifted to
the last scheduled 17-year phase of my life’s odyssey</span><font size="2">, retired until really tired</font>. I no longer protest when a young thing offers
me her seat on the bus!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">The University delivered the <i>coup d'grace</i> when it decided to no longer hire teachers over 65
years old. Approaching the sunset of my
years, I signed loan papers on a dwelling with my host family; I get the use of
a room on a first floor three-bedroom apartment near the University, at a fifth
of the cost. This will be home base to
treks to Irkutsk and Tashkent in the next few years. Friends and family can also visit me should
they travel to my northeast corner of China.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13px;">As the snow flurries drifted down this morning on my way to
my last day in class, I ran into one of the grounds’ maintenance men sweeping
the snow off the walkway.
Equipped with homemade dried twigs attached to a pole, he </span><font size="2">diligently and thoroughly </font>swept the
white cover off the red-bricked pathway.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">I stopped to catch his attention, looked him in the
eyes, and said ‘thank you’ in the only Zhongwen I can decently pronounce. He was surprised that I would bother, and
recognizing me as the foreign teacher who does not speak the language, he broke
into a toothless but winsome smile. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;">I turned around and before entering the building, took a
deep breath, cast a broad look around me including another glance on the bent
but proud worker, and to no one in particular, uttered, <i>xie xie! </i>For his life and
mine this past year, I wrapped it up in Peace!
Equanimity and tranquility to all.</div>
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