The usual caveat - hell, just trash it if not curious.
Jaime
-----Original Message-----
From: Jaime R Vergara <pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com>
To: editor <editor(a)saipantribune.com>
Sent: Tue, Apr 22, 2014 11:48 am
Subject: April 28 Monday for ST
JayVee, this rounds up my April.
Sacred space
On my last trip to Saipan, I embarked from Dalian and returned thesame way. Dalian is a metropolis ofManchuria by virtue of history and design, location and history. On the southern tip of the Liaoningpeninsula, it was priced by the Russian navy for its year-round warm water,compared to Vladivostok’s that freezes in winter. As a cosmopolitan center, it is referred toas the Hong Kong of the northeast. Afterviewing at the turn of the year what HK had done with Victoria Island, the appellationis not an upgrade.
The Tsar encountered Japan’s modernized navy built in the MeijiRestoration that was a product of Nippon's industrialization mid-1800. The event was remarkable in that it was thefirst time a non-western navy defeated a prominent western one, resulting inthe humiliation of Russia for which Stalin kept a grudge in WWII; it alsostoked Nippon’s pride in the rise of Japanese nationalism that occupiedManchuria, led to Nanjing in the infamous rape of the city and extended into Indochina.
When I left Shenyang for Saipan in March, the ponds, streams and evenrivers all the way south to Dalian were still frozen. It was no longer the case when Ireturned. Bereft of not too muchfoliage, the commercial farms were mostly colored tan with a lot of plastic canopiedfarm structures to trap humidity and heat to sustain cultivated plants.
The train I took was the electric CHR bound for Harbin ofHeilongjiang that flew off the ground at a speed of 250kms/hr. and higher. To Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping’s credit, the expenditurefor rapid transit accelerated in their watch while superhighway construction eggedby car dealers had gone the way of the tortoise.
Change has come to Manchuria in the three years I’ve lived here. Cement, iron, concrete blocks and steel,sprouted all over as domestic consumption rather than export became the engineof its economy. SMEs in free market ambiencebroadened the economic base. State ownedindustries are rapidly built, good for labor with an eye against corruptionbut they are hard on the terrain ashills and mountains are bulldozed for gravel and sand.
The west celebrates chronology. Preferred times are civilization’s Golden Age. The Parthenon stands for the glory thatwas Greece and the Coliseum echoes the grandeur that was Rome, exploited for theircommercial value in tourism. We treatthe museum grounds, the Japanese jail and the Sugar King Park at Gualo Rai, theAMP and the Suicide and Banzai cliffs similarly. Old Man by the Sea and the Grotto are turnedinto the specter of where the unwary, the reckless, the careless, and theinebriated tourists drown. We add gruesomevalue to fate.
Not the khronos but the locus is China’s forte. Communal spaces get varnished so its glitterattracts notice. Tomb sites as reveredand the ordinary is made holy. Places of adorations are protected andsanctified. In many homes andestablishments around the world, corner altars are built so individuals andfamilies remember either ancestors, traditions, or home beyond the currentfront doors. Others in their homes tendgardens indoors and out as powerful reminders of life’s infinitesimal aestheticvalue even as existentially, daily living is experienced in its chaos andturmoil.
The closest thing to a “sacred” space in my home is the sunroom wherefast growing spider plants are tended, then I put them in my tenements’staircase windows and landings as décor to discourage indiscriminate throwingof trash on the floor and warns wall stickers of ads and notices to stick withthe bulletin board. The plants alsoindirectly encourage my neighbors to attend to common space with the samefastidiousness that they give their dwellings’ interior.
China is aware of the carbon it emits into its northern skies asabundant mei (coal) is used to heathomes and to power factories. A Canadacolleague watched a TV program on the polluted skies of China, familiar to usin Manchuria where coal is dynastic monarch. In the open grasslands of Inner Mongolia were structures generatingelectricity for use elsewhere. Thehovering tan clouds in the distant foothills at dawn and dusk indicated thatmore than hot air was emitted from the plant towers.
China, like other developing economies, often finds itself defensiveon carbon emissions, treating it as a logistical issue rather than themoral-bashing it gets from the western press, as if the United States never hadits Cleveland and Pittsburg, and England, its Manchester and London. I lived in North Carolina and Washington DC,Chicago and Kentucky, and have traveled through all the contiguous States saveVermont. Smog in the 60s to the 90s wasnot uncommon in all of them. Theexperience was like what I had driving behind a smoke-belching bus on Isa Drivein Saipan early part of this millennium. Passing on that road was not an option.
Sacred space in our time is now one, coughing and belching itself as itsclimate gets adjusted to a change in temperature, and the air/ocean currentsgets realigned for mother Gaia to fix her bearings. Earth. That’s my sacred space. What’syours?
j'aime la vie
pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com
yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!
