HARVEST

Sunny was excited for the Halloween party in English-Ing, our neighbor, an English educational institution residing in the mid-layer between 1st and 2nd floor, where was the old location of EF before I went to Chicago. We were not their membership or student, but I thought they were doing a business promotion so they won’t refuse us to take part in the party.

Sunny completed her homework early. After supper, she changed clothes, combed hair, pined a little crown on her hair, and took a basket with some candies, we started off.

I told Sunny on the way, “Don’t hope too much. This is China, not Chicago.”

Stepped into the lobby, the light was dim and the floor was scattering pieces tissues, which I wondered if were a part of the decoration. A staff greeted us and indicated us to go inner portion.

Walking along a dark aisle with a cluster of black balloon hanged along the wall, we heard a human being’s noises mixed with some sounds made by percussion instruments, and then a flock of people were found crowding at the turning of the other end of the aisle.

In the torch light occasionally flashed out of the screens of the class room lining along two sides of the aisle, I could see some kids were peeking into the rooms through the glasses, screaming. Adults, who looked like the kids’ parents, were fussing around and busy like bees with looking for their unfound kids.

Later, a group of kids came out of a room, wearing costumes made with old bed sheets, or with rough make up on faces.

Everything looked so shaggy, shabby, and shoddy! This was a super boring event.

Sunny won’t let me go, while she was busy with exploring every room. I had not choice but standing there, leaning against the wall of the aisle, holding Sunny’s candy basket, reminding me of the old bald lady standing at the door of Starbucks in the corner of Clinton and Adams.

Last autumn we were in Chicago. To us, the Halloween was the most enchanted one in the western traditional festival. We had known a lot about Christmas, but Halloween would be a brand new experience.

From the early October, I found that at the doors of the houses near Sunny’s school were decorated by pumpkins, corns, and dead-headed lanterns. Sometimes, when I was walking down the street to pick up Sunny, I could find a squirrel jumped on the grass carrying a corn under the half yellowed trees which I could not tell the name.

On 28th, Philip invited us to take part in a pumpkin carving party in Kent, there Sunny carved her first Jack-o'-lantern.

Oh, those busy days! We devoted every weekend for the rehearsal of Nutcracker Children Cast in the Joffrey Ballet’s studio located on 1# north State Street. Thus we could not miss the events happened in downtown.

From the mid of October, the fountain in Daley Plaza was found to be dyed into orange, and then a Haunted Village was set up bit by bit within two weeks later. Pumpkins were decorated on the dark cyan walls, and ghost figures were leaning out of the windows. The Halloween smell was gathering up here.

A parade happened on October 21, 2006 at 12:00pm at the Corner of State and Randolph. Sunny dressed up as Merlin although she died for a Snow White’s costume, which I thought the price $44 was too much for such a cheesy dress. Anyway, Sunny’s Merlin character was completed satisfied me, she looked just like a real magician who was wise and well educated. We followed the parade in a circle, and stopped in Daley Plaza, where gathered thousand people to watching circus, and, for the candies.

Two girls were coveting the candies in my basket.
I announced, “trick or treat!”
They did not understand and said in Chinese to me, “Can we eat?”
“No. You give me.” I responded evilly for I had no authority to expense the candies, but I could increase their quantity, it would be fun.

The most exciting episode of Halloween was “trick or treat”, which we could not omit.

But I was hesitating. We lived in PT, a big building where inhabited mainly by foreigners, such as Indian, Korean, and Chinese. Sunny had decided to knock on every door in this building, how much did these foreigners accepted this typical western tradition and would give a piece of candy to a strange kid standing at the door? Besides, it would be a super stupid thing if I accompanied Sunny to ask for candies, but was it safe enough for a little girl roaming around the 49 floors in this towered up building? I was not sure.

After dinner, a slightly knocking and a sweet “trick or treat” penetrated into my room. We bubbled up, dashing to open the door. A little Indian with bright big dark eyes and dark skin, no more than three-year old, accompanying by the mother was standing at my door. We gave the kid candies joyfully.

Greatly inspired by the little Indian, Sunny carried her pumpkin basket and began her march. I set up a time bar, 10 minutes later, I must see her back.In the first round, Sunny was back with an empty basket. I granted her another 10 minutes, and this time Sunny was back with a beaming happiness, she had a full basket!

Purportedly, her fortune began from an old man who was holding a cat when he unloaded a handful candies into Sunny’s basket. And then, a Korean young man had not candy but gave her a heavy bucket of ice cream instead. An Indian man seemed had no idea about “trick or treat”, lazily fetch out a bill; Sunny was scared and run away.

Sunny got a good harvest in the Halloween in Chicago, 2006.

Suddenly, Sunny appeared in front of me out of a room, with several ugly strokes of make up in her face. I said, “Forgot to tell you, don’t let any make up stay on your face.”
“I know, it can be washed.” Sunny answered.
“I wait for you in the lobby.”
“Shall we go now?”
“Yes, I hope.”

Such fluent English!

I could feel that several spotlights of envying eye focused on us. I really enjoyed and I did consider that we were really worthy all of them, because we had invested so much efforts, pain, tears, and blood, which would sure gain good harvest gradually, in the coming days.

A Shame

A Shame

“Shame on you!” Philip said without turning his eyes to me from the television where two herds of man were tracing a round solid object colored in black and white named by human on this earth for soccer or football. I realized that I had made a mistake for which only an angel or a creature from the Mars could get an excuse. I just wanted to clarify the differences between the National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the National People's Congress (NPC), or, exactly, I wanted to know other person’s feeling towards such issue.

The two conventions are alike in many ways, the issues they discuss, the participants, the institutions, and the leaders; especially both of the two are paid by tax. The two conventions, if they are the same, why they are separated? If not, why they are doing the same thing? Every Chinese people are concerning this event because it is relating to the stock markets, real estates, people’s life, national development, all of which are the affairs of the state, while I am amazed to see the state issues they are talking about in this party’s convention are like something in their pocket.

I am so deficient in politics that I always have an itch to touch a button even though I know there is always a solid answer which is not fun, not surprise at all.

“Apparently, you were not a good student and you did not grasp what you should have learned in the law school.” Philip continued.

When I was in law school, I did not understand why it was named “Politics & Law”, for I was born to hope that law might be mere knowledge of law and separated from politics, at least in the portion of lawyer or Legal Philosophy. Therefore I kept a distance from a mainstream, while many students joined CPC and hope, by this way, to get a promising future, while all people in my family, my father, mother, sisters and their husbands were CPC member.

“I could understand what the NPC is by consulting the constitution, but how could I know what the CPC’s congress is?” I was striving to vindicate myself.
“By consulting the Party Constitution.” Philip spoke to the screen.
“I am not a CPC’s member. I am just a citizen of this country, why I should read the Party Constitution? Is the State Constitution not enough?” In fact, I couldn’t recollect the Party Constitution was a lesson in Chinese law schools.

“Because CPC is the governing party.”

Staring at Philip’s left side face in the dark, which was illuminated by the beam radiating from the screen, flicking with the action of the soccer men on the green field, I could imagine how stupid my eyes would be. I am suspecting that I was losing clear-headedness during these two months after coming back from the U.S.
“Governing party”, this is the solid answer which I am lured to overstep. It would be dangerous, so it would be spicy.

“Good shot!” Philip shouted. As I looked at the screen, a man in a red uniform was dancing on the grass wildly.
“I thought,” I spoke to the dancing man, “Politics & Law was an ugly name.”
“Me too,” Philip said, “I didn’t like it, but I had to learn it well.”
“CPC has its own logic which is supported by Marxism, with the addition of Jiang Zemin’s theory the three represents,” Philip recited fluently, “the Party should always represent the development needs of China's advanced social productive forces; always represent the onward direction of China's advanced culture; and always represent the fundamental interests of the largest.”
“Even Prof. Cho could understand it, but I don’t understand why you can not understand.”
“Because Prof. Cho is from Korea but I am from Mars.” This was a self-mockery.

“CPC is the boss of the country and is beyond the state constitution. NPC implements CPC’s policy and laws are just one of tools for CPC.” Philip was preceding his lesson, “you graduated from law school and you once were a Chinese lawyer, so you ought to know something better than normal people.”

“I can not understand it from the angle of law, but you can understand because you accept the reality.” My reaction was a bit hollow, for I am not sure what kind of law perspective I possess. Who could act the judger and by which rules to judge, the Western or the Chinese?

“But,” Philip paused for a second, “once I explained this to a classmate from Germany, he compared CPC with Nazi. I could not respond him at the time, but I agreed with him afterwards, the dictatorship, brainwash, etc.”

Brainwash, in Chinese, has a term called “unifying thoughts”. All of Chinese people receive Marxism education when they are young. Sunny and the South Korean kids and the blond ones in her school, like all the elementary students in China, vowed to the red flag and then became a young pioneer of CPC, marked by wearing Red Scarf. When I was twelve, I received Marxism lessons in middle school. And then, in high school, in college, this kind of lesson, Marxist dialectical materialism and the history overwritten according to Marxist historical materialism was repeated again and again, resulted in distorting the knowledge about the whole nation’s history and culture.

In the autumn of 1989, after the failure of the student’s movement in Tiananmen Square, I resumed our semester in the law school. Students were imposed to confess and declare in classes. It is at that time I discovered my potential comedic talent, because my presentation made all the class burst into laugh. But that night, when I listened to the effulgent Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 from the headphone in my dormitory, I burst into tears, for I found that the heaven was so distant while reality was so ugly.

As to the National Day on 1st October, year by year they continued the same deceit and strengthen this logic: state = motherland = CPC.

Philip’s sounds echoed in the dark, “I once hoped that Hu could do something since he emphasized reformation of political system early of this year. But after the dinner with Prof. Jiang, I understood that a person could do nothing to the inertia which has been piling up for five thousands years.”
Prof. Jiang is a rare scholar who can give keys to a lot of question on history, legal, and current society. We had a nice talk on 8th October.

I slippered across the living room to my study and check some information before going to bed. I logged on a forum which I took charge of the system operation, and a message forwarded by the forum’s owner jumped out, asking me to pay more attention on messages about Dalai Lama.

Actually, before the 17th CPC congress, by the end of September, polices had reinforced control of websites, once any unsuitable information was found by cyber polices, the forum would be closed for good. In order to avoid disasters, most forums had to take the safest way that all posts should be checked by the background processor like me before they could appear on websites.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama appeared on CNN on morning, and at night I was informed to delete any relevant information. Chinese Cyber polices will be especially busy these days.

Shutting down the computer and turning off the kitchen light, I announced, “With lonely soul, all my life,” Philip shot me a glance before he turned back to his soccer game, and I swallowed the rest words as I walked to the bedroom, squeezing my frozen left shoulder, “since this world doesn’t work in my logic.”

It is a shame that I am not smart, not crazy, not diligent, and not romantic enough, but, yeah, it is a fortune to this world that not many people are capable to become Bin Laden, Che Guevara, or Karl Marx, the human being who drove the planet to chase their logic.

Chinese Cyberpolices are Busy

His Holiness the Dalai Lama appeared on screen of CNN this morning; tonight I was informed to supervise a forum from the background process, and must to delet any relevant information before which was published.
Once this kind of information was found by Cybrpolices, the forum would be closed for good.

Chinese Cyberpolices will be Busy tonight!