Processing Japan

Cherry blossoms in full bloom.


The ubiquitous old ladies of Japan. On the streets, in the marble malls, on the trains, and in the parks, they were everywhere, teetering around in Minnie Mouse shoes, wearing woolen suits with long, slender skirts, and matching tailored jackets, printed silk blouses showing shyly at the collar. Many sported hats, some elegant with silk flowers demurely attached to a satin ribbon that circled the base, some utilitarian and discordant with the rest of the sartorial splendor, oddly reminiscent of what my father used to refer to as “old man fishing hats.” Their faces were perfectly painted, with ruby lips creating a bow, salmon-colored cheeks, covered with white powder; they looked like apparitions. Frail, thin, these old ladies of Japan looked as if the smallest breath of spring wind might blow them away. They reminded me of the fragile pink petals that had already pulled off from the sap of the cherry tree, waiting for a nine-year old boy to shake the branches just to watch the velvety snow to fall.

That is one thing I noticed immediately in Japan: there are lots of old ladies, and very few children. Indeed, the birthrate is very low; one of our guides told us that each woman might be expected to produce only 1.3 children. She also told us that many professional women in Japan choose not to have children because they impede the development of their careers. Many of those same professional women end up living in apartments with their aged mothers. Housing is brutally expensive in Japan, and their aged mothers need them. I saw those duos everywhere: a middle-aged woman wearing a dark business suit shepherding her mother through the crowds. One of her arms was burdened with a briefcase, and the other with a wraithlike mother, turned out to perfection. A sturdy crow in designer glasses, with an elderly, delicate sparrow on her wing.

Kimonos of Kyoto.

Japan seems to be obsessed with germs and cleanliness. I couldn’t get used to all the white crinoline face masks that many people in Japan wore. When asked, a variety of answers came my way, all of them related to one form of pollution or another. One answer: the people in face masks have bad colds, and don’t want to spread their germs to others. Another: the people in face masks are worried about getting bad colds, and don’t want to breathe in the germs of others. Another: Too many cedar trees were planted after World War II, and the people in face masks were suffering from cedar allergies. Whatever the reason, it gave the population in the streets, in the trains and train stations, even walking in the parks, a distinctly ghostly, non-human appearance. I saw one young couple in Kyoto, strolling under the cherry blossoms, hand in hand, both wearing white crinoline face masks. I wondered how they kissed. Do they kiss? He stopped and posed the object of his affection in front of a particularly splendid tree, and she removed her mask for the photograph, and then promptly put it back onto the front of her face, arranging her hair deftly around the stretchy elastic that held the mask on. Hand in hand, the noseless, mouthless creatures disappeared from my view, their faces an odd combination of furrowed brows, dark eyes, and an expanse of smooth, sterile fabric that looked like a codpiece.

The toilets in Japan were utterly wild, and not only carried out this theme of cleanliness, but suggested a national obsession with private functions. In the hostel that we stayed at in Nara, sleeping in a communal room on tatami mats with some Semester at Sea friends, there was a toilet that was so high tech, I had to fetch Jo to show me what to do. The seat was heated, and had a dial that regulated how hot you wanted to bake your butt. (This feature was terrific; how primitive our chilly toilet seats on the ship seemed when we returned.) There were two different sprays of water that one could select, depending upon what geographical region you were aiming for---a whale spout effect from down below, and then another stream of water that came at you directly from the rear of the toilet. These too had dials that regulated the strength of the streams. Then there was a dial for what turned out to be the equivalent of a hair dryer for the general region, presumably to evaporate all the warm water. (This feature was alarming.) When you were duly dried, you were supposed to push the button that said, in English and Japanese, “Super Powerful Deodorizer,” that blasted you with some sweet smelling noxious chemical that I disliked enough to start pushing all the water spray buttons once again. My favorite of all, however, and a feature in almost every public toilet I used in Japan, was a button that masked the sounds of one’s elimination with either a faux flushing sound, or the sound of a rushing waterfall.

I was totally fascinated and repelled by Japan. The cities were ferociously dense in population; the train stations teemed with well-mannered, well-groomed, efficient, restrained, obedient, hard-working, and distant people. Of course, I generalize. Many acts of kindness, complete with full waist bows, were showered upon the bumbling, illiterate Americans who couldn’t figure out the Byzantine railway system. Courtesy abounded, but Japan offered none of the warm embrace of India, none of the sweet, shy curiosity of the Thais, none of the open-heartedness of the Vietnamese, even any of the rough and ready---but always friendly---brusqueness of the Chinese.

Tokyo from on high.

The streets of Tokyo.

Perhaps it was the documentary I’d seen the week before on the Hikikomori children that colored by perceptions of Japan. The term “Hikikomori” means “withdrawn,” and applies both to the social condition and to the people who suffer from it. The Hikikomori are adolescents, usually male, who collapse under the pressure to succeed in school, to be the best and the brightest, to fulfill their family’s high expectations---they fall apart and refuse to leave their bedrooms for months, sometimes for years. They sit in darkened rooms, and surf the internet and play computer games. Our Japanese lecturer on the ship told me that she knew two Hikikomori who haven’t been out of their bedrooms for over a year. One of the families is so ashamed of their son’s withdrawal from society that they have told everyone he’s studying in the United States. He is violent towards his parents, and only comes out to go to the bathroom; they feed him by leaving trays of food at his door. The other child has been living for awhile in a half-way house for Hikikomori, slowly coming out of his self-imposed exile. There are some instances of Hikikomori in Korea and in China, but it is mostly a Japanese phenomenon. As I walked past groups of young Japanese men in the train station, wearing tight jeans and black leather jackets, their hair dyed red or blonde, in a style reminiscent of Rod Stewart of yore, I’d ask myself: Who are these children? And what kind of culture creates a social category like the Hikikomori?

Part of my problem with Japan was me. I’m not a big fan of shame, and in Japan, the avoidance of shame motivates a great deal of behavior. I would see commuters on the train, perched circumspectly, anxiously on the green velvet seats, and I wanted to lunge across the aisle, grab them by the lapels, shake them, and yell, “Smile! Whatever it is, it’s not so bad. You’re doing just fine, or at least good enough. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Stumble on a little joy. Have some fun!” Of course, I just sat there in silence, but my repressed outburst worked its way down into my very core, and before you knew it, I’d be sad and depressed. I’m not sure Japan and I could spend a lot of time together.

We did have a magical day in Nara. The weather was splendid---a little chilly, but sunny, and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. A whole group of Semester at Sea families arranged to travel a few days together, and we generated our own fun and our own joy. The first capital of Japan, Nara is famous for its free-ranging deer who stroll through the city parks, begging for food, and posing for photographs. It was molting season, so their coats were uneven and patchy, but they had such sweet, trusting faces, and I loved the confidence with which they walked among us. We did most of the sights in Nara, but my favorite was the Todaiji Temple, the largest edifice in Japan, and one of the oldest, having been built in 743 C.E. Perhaps it was the sweetness of the deer faces, but for some reason in the Todaiji Temple, I was feeling very sad about the loss of our cat, Sweetie, right before we left for Semester at Sea.

Our Semester at Sea friends.

The deer at Nara.

Jo feeds a deer.

You may wonder how the loss of a cat relates to Japan, but it does. Sweetie had been with us for about ten years. She was never an easy cat. Beset with medical issues, a constantly snurfling, snot-laden nose, obsessive compulsive licking, the shivers and shakes, Sweetie was a trial. For a decade, she dominated our household, with her bed on the sofa, her kitty heat lamp, her constant supply of hot water bottles because she was always so cold. But that said, Sweetie was the only grateful cat I have ever known. Cats usually approach the world with a sense of entitlement, but not Sweetie. She knew that she was a burden, and she lavished affection upon us. It was impossible not to love her. And then one day in October, she took a stroll out onto the driveway, and disappeared. Nan and Jo scoured the neighborhood, put up flyers, registered her at the pound, but to no avail. Sweetie had vanished into thin air. The vet opined that a hawk had taken her. Hawks were in the neighborhood that week, and had made off with a number of small pets. We were utterly devastated.

Anyhow, the deer in Nara reminded me of Sweetie, and I was feeling blue. Then our friends, Bill and Joan, told us about a program at the Todaiji Temple. The priests were raising money to replace the roof, and for ten dollars, you could buy a roof tile, and with a brush dipped in black ink, dedicate the tile to whomever you pleased. Bill and Joan were going to memorialize their beloved dog, Sabaii, a soft-coated Wheaton Terrier who had lived with them for fifteen years, and had died in 2007. We loved the idea, and decided to claim the tile next to theirs so that Sabaii and Sweetie could hang out together in pet heaven---surely located somewhere in the eternally blooming cherry trees above the roof of the Todaiji Temple. It was our way of saying goodbye to Sweetie, and we signed the tile “Louise, Nan, Kate and Jo” for the sisters who were also mourning her loss. Sweetie was a very maternal cat, and would surely lick Sabaii’s head, and he would, we were assured, valiantly protect her. I would never have anticipated that we would lay Sweetie to rest in a Buddhist temple in Nara, Japan, but we did.

A priest at the Todaiji Temple in Nara.

Our memorial to Sweetie in the Todaiji Temple.

We did so many other things in Japan in the nature of seeing sights: Kyoto, also in full cherry blossom bloom, and Tokyo. The former was lovely; the latter overwhelming. We took a full day tour of Tokyo, and aside from a visit to a really stunning Shinto Shrine built in the 1920s, the Meiji Shrine, it was too new, too shiny, too fast, too impersonal---too much for me. I did grow very fond of the Shinto shrines in Japan. Usually located right next to a Buddhist temple, the Shinto shrines house the indigenous, local gods---the kami---who inhabited Japan before Buddhism was introduced in the sixth century C.E. The shrine itself is almost always surrounded by a quiet woods and pebbled paths; you enter through a large wooden gate without a door known as a torii. The torii marks out sacred space from the mundane, and is meant to purify you from the top down; as your crunch through the pebbles, you are purified from the soles of your feet up. Before you enter the Shinto shrine, you stop at the purification trough and wash yourself in an elaborate cleansing ritual. You clap hands loudly before you go in; you clap hands loudly as you finish your prayer, all to let the kami know that you are there. I loved that the kami had jurisdiction over the day-to-day problems of life: getting a new job, becoming pregnant, doing well on an exam. Nothing was too small to bother a kami with, unlike the Buddhist temple usually looming nearby that was devoted to death and eternity. Shinto shrines were all about the business of living, and we saw many Japanese couples bringing their newborn babies to be introduced to the kami. Outside the shrine, you could buy amulets and other trinkets blessed by the priests. At the Meiji Shrine, I bought a medallion in a white silk bag to ward off evil, and for all the administrators at Touro, I bought a “success pencil,” guaranteed to bring good luck to its wielder. Everything was open in the Shinto shrines; you could never tell if you were outside or inside, or somewhere in between. That was true of much of the architecture. Subdued, elegant, organic---the aesthetic was the best feature of Japan.

The wash basin outside a Shinto temple.

Priests inside a Shinto temple.

I wish I had loved Japan more. If I understood why I didn’t love Japan, I might know more about myself. My response wasn’t due to any lack of beauty, that’s for sure. Maybe some day I’ll return, and be able to see Japan through new eyes. Maybe I’ll find something there to compel me, or to pull at my heart. Nara---now there’s a place I’d love to visit again, and of course, I’ll have to go back to pay homage to the spirit of Sweetie, and her faithful companion, Sabaii. LH

Jo in Yokohama.

At Sea

Morning view from Deck 7.

I am ensconced in my little cave. As I lift my eyes from my laptop, my window is cut in half: below, an endless expanse of restless, pewter water; above, an endless sky of billowing, brooding clouds. The relationship of sea to sky changes with each sideways roll of the ship. From my vantage point, my window is a receptacle that fills up with grey sea; we tip backwards, and the sea drains out. Suddenly there is more sky, more clouds; we tip forward, and the receptacle fills up with grey sea again. I’ve grown used to this rhythm, this rocking and almost imperceptible rolling, so much so, that when we get into port, I miss it. Indeed, I don’t suffer from any sea sickness at all, but when my feet take those last steps off the gangway, I am land sick. My inner ears are still at sea, my legs are full of lead. Too much gravity.

Most of the time, I love sleeping on the ship. My theory is: Before birth, we were all rocking gently back and forth, up and down, sea horses adrift in a maternal sea. The ship, on a good night, repeats that lulling motion, although I like things a little bit wild. My favorite nights are when the ship is rolling enough to lift my arms off my body as I lie in bed. I do have my limits. My least favorite nights are when there’s a storm, and the ship has gone beyond rolling, and is lurching, up and down, and then a crash, up and down, and then a crash, up and down, and then a crash…This particular rhythm is not soothing; no one sleeps well on those nights for fear of falling out of bed. A nocturnal visit to the bathroom---only about fifteen steps away---can be perilous. One gropes. One hangs on. One bruises. I wonder: do some babies in utero also sail in choppy seas? Do they spend nine months, lurching, up and down, and then a crash, up and down, and then a crash? Odd to think about journeying as in inchoate, vulnerable, water-born creature, although that’s how it feels, drifting off to sleep at sea.

This blog is about our life at sea. Most of my writing has been about our ports, and with good reason. That’s where the travel is---the Hindu and Buddhist temples, the muddy rivers, the sprawling Asian cities, the delicious food, the funky hotels, and all of our adventures. But the fact is more than half of our time is spent at sea. Semester at Sea is an academic community, crammed into a very small space, not unlike a hotel, and we eat together, drink together, study together, hang out together, make music together, play cards together, whine together---you name it, we do it together. It has all the accoutrement of a campus: a Union where the entire community convenes; a library; a book store; coffee shops and bars. But the space is small, and there’s no escaping students, night and day. I would advise anyone who thinks they’d like to teach in this program: you absolutely must love college students. If you don’t love college students, you may as well walk the plank. Teaching at Semester at Sea is akin to those early, unremitting stages of parenthood: your young are huddled around you, and they don’t go away. I happen to love college students, but if I didn’t, I’d have gone round the bend. A few have.

Students leaving the Union.

The library the day after the final Global exam.

Students, faculty, administration, staff, crew---about a thousand of us are on the M.V. Explorer, and at the moment, we’re surrounded by water with nothing on the horizon. When we’re at sea, classes are held; there are no weekends on board. Because we have no school when we’re in port, we teach every day in order to make up a semester of classes. That means no one on the ship ever knows what day it is. Monday or Thursday? It doesn’t matter at all. What matters is whether it is an “A” day, or a “B” day. On A days, I have two classes, Biomedical Ethics at 8:00 a.m., and History of Immigration Law at 10:45 a.m.; on B days, I have Classical Asian Philosophy at 8:00 a.m. Every day, we all take a course called “Global Studies,” in which we study the country we’re about to explore.

Classical Asian Philosophy Class.

Here’s my routine on board. I’m up by six, and go right to Deck Seven where the weights are, and where you can walk on the deck, although not romantically all the way around the ship as I’d dreamed it would be. Imagine this: hamster peddling mindlessly in her wheel. I stride back and forth, forth and back, the small expanse of Deck Seven devoted to what is called the “Wellness Center.” (Gag.) In my Long Island life, I swim at the Y every day, but here I’ve had to settle for a regime of weights, stationary bicycle, and mindless hamster peddling. There’s a frigid pool of salt water the size of a postage stamp that I got into once. (Twice, if you count Neptune Day when Jo and I, holding hands and covered in fish guts, jumped in together.) When I’m done working out, I treat myself to ten minutes of tai chi on the uncovered portion of Deck Seven. That’s my favorite time of day: there is nothing in my life but an empty expanse of deck, sea as far as I can see, wind blasting in my ears, a sunrise that never fails to surprise me, and the slow meditative movements of tai chi.

I grab a quick breakfast before class. There are two dining rooms: the Garden Lounge on Deck 6 which has an outside deck, and some pretence of elegance; and the Fifth Floor dining room that is dark and cavernous. After classes, Jo and I meet every day for lunch in the Garden Lounge at 12:30, and if weather permits, we eat outside with the same movable feast of friends: Joan, the ship nurse, Ann, the ship doctor, and her husband, Dale, the dependent’s school coordinator, Dee, a marketing professor, Jodie, a communications professor, Joan, a retired government administrator, a “life long learner” (someone who travels independently with Semester at Sea), or if the weather’s bad and we’re inside, we might eat with Nassim, an Islamic scholar, and his wife Nilo, or with Beth, the librarian, or with any random combination of faculty, students, or staff who might be around. The afternoon, at least for me, is spent preparing for class or writing; Jo studies for her Advanced Placement exams. A nap must be had every day. Then often around 5:30, I often go up for drinks with our good friends Bill and Joan, both faculty in sociology and education. On their deck, a motley crew---always the same, always different---drink wine, eat weird little crunchy Japanese things, gossip, complain, watch the sun set, and listen to the tenor lap, lap, lap of the waves against the hull of the ship. Two nights ago, three huge boobies were soaring around right next us, and we tried feeding them some dried wasabe from the balcony. That didn’t work.

The Garden Lounge.

Beth and Nilo in the Garden Lounge.

Dinner is always on the Fifth Floor, this time with a totally different set of friends, our Dinner on the Fifth Floor Friends---Bill and Joan, Joyce who teaches history, and Bob who does audio visuals and IT, and sometimes Jodie. On rare occasions, there’s a mingling of the Outside Deck of the Garden Lounge Lunch Friends and the Dinner on the Fifth Floor Friends, and then we have to squeeze around one of the larger tables. Jo and I almost always eat dinner together, and then she goes off to have her social life, and I go back to my cabin not to have mine.

After a day full of people, I desperately need solitude. In my cabin at night, I get ready for class, or work on my article, or watch wonderful movies they put on TV, or write nasty little short stories, or mess with my blog, or catch up on my email. Sometimes, there’ll be a program in the Union at night. A faculty member or “life long learner” might give a talk on something that amuses him or her---the importance of the Battle of Midway, the genesis of the Gregorian calendar, the engineering of the Panama Canal, recognizing the correct fork with which to spear your shrimp cocktail, the latest teaching of Guru Somebody-or-Other. Being an education junkie, I almost always go. Jo almost never goes; she’s seventeen. The evening is her time to socialize, sometimes up at the Pool Bar, sometimes in the Garden Lounge Bar, but more often in a college student’s cabin where they hang out at night in groups of ten or twelve, crammed in on the beds and the floor like the seals on the shore in Walvis Bay, sleek skin to sleek skin. Monica, Molly, Erin, Erica, Michael, another Michael, Peter, Holly, Heidi, the list goes on. Jo and I sometimes see each other across the Garden Lounge later at night, when I am filling my hot water bottle for my freezing feet, and she’s with her herd, waiting for the snack the kitchen puts out for the students at ten. (I swear, college kids EAT all the time.) She waves at me across the room, and I wave back, but we don’t speak. I can’t imagine how it must be for her to have the her mother intruding on the fringes of her social space, but as with all adversities, Jo bears it with grace.

Louise's little monk cell--Cabin 4091.

Then I go to bed, and it all starts up again. I’ve just re-read this description, and it sounds like a very little life, some might say, a monotonous one, repeating itself over and over again, clouds and sea, exercise, tai chi, classes, teaching, food, friends, students, writing, emails, naps, drinks, hot water bottles, movies, sleep, more clouds and sea. That’s about it. Note also what is not in this description: no traffic, no commute, no making the bed, no trash to put out, no lines to stand in, no cooking, no grocery shopping, no bills, no money, no cell phones, no news, no meetings---the list goes on and on.

Life at sea drives some faculty crazy. They can’t stand having nothing on the horizon, or living in a close community. They’re claustrophobic. They’re sea sick. They’re tired of pasta and ice-berg lettuce the color and texture of ivory alabaster. They’ve lost patience with the energy, the noise level, the persistent, cheerful foolhardiness of the young. Why can’t the students be more serious? Why do they spend all of their time on the deck, half naked? Why aren’t they more interested in things that matter? Why aren’t they more interested in me? What makes Semester at Sea a fabulous experience for them is their time spent on land---the sights, the sounds, the tastes, the smells of foreign ports of call.

I too love those foreign ports of call, but for me, there’s no greater thrill than the rumble of the ship starting up her engines. She shudders, she lets loose the ropes that tie her to the land, and we head out of the harbor for open sea. Jo and I are both convinced that we must have sailed in a former life. We’re too good at it, and we love it too much, for this to be our first time living and working on a ship.

I’ve also learned this on this voyage: I like a very little life, a close community, and nothing on the horizon. If I just had a cat with me… LH

Jo and her friends outside of the Garden Lounge.

Hong Kong and Shanghai

Hong Kong from the Peak.

For me, Hong Kong was not new. Touro’s summer law program spends its first few days in Hong Kong, so I’ve been four times before, most recently in May 2008. On that trip, I had Nan with me; on this trip, I had Jo with me. The way I figure it: I now owe Kate a trip to Hong Kong, under the perverse logic of sibling parity.

We decided to sail for three days with the ship from Hong Kong to Shanghai. By sailing with the ship, Jo was deprived of a trip to the Great Wall of China, but for the two of us to have made that journey would have cost more than a thousand dollars. I’ve been to the Great Wall four times already, one of them last summer, and while it is a great Great Wall, I was more interested in the two days in Shanghai where I’d never been before. Neither of us had ever been to Japan, and our friends were lobbying for us to join them in Nara and Kyoto. So we spent two days in Hong Kong, had a quiet three days sailing on the ship with the hundred or so of us too broke to fly around China, and then had two days in Shanghai.

Hong Kong is one of my favorite cities. This was also the first time I’ve ever been to Hong Kong when it wasn’t dreadfully hot. In late May, the tourist is dependent on Hong Kong’s over-achieving, and ubiquitous, air-conditioning. Walking outside of your hotel in the morning is like moving from a freezer into a bowl of pea soup; your glasses steam up. On this trip to Hong Kong, however, it was early spring, cloudy and grey---sweater weather. The air-conditioning was gratuitous, and sometimes not on at all. It reminded me of when Eileen Kaufman and I made our first trip to Delhi in December, having been there many times before, but always in June. In June, the night air in Delhi is like a tandoori oven. In December, the night air in Delhi is cool and crisp, and full of the fragrance of jasmine. What a difference 30 degrees Fahrenheit can make.

Jo and I made a deal in Hong Kong: she’d go her way with her friends, and I’d go my way with mine. The poor thing---four days alone with her very sick mother, trapped alone in a hotel room in Bangkok, has probably scarred her forever. Besides, since February, she’s part of a protean group of college kids, and I knew that she’d have more fun exploring Hong Kong with them. I spent my first day with our friends Joan and Bill, both faculty members, and we did all the touristy things since Bill had never been to Hong Kong before. That was fun for me, and truth to tell, I hadn’t been up to the Peak on the cable car since 2000. The view was still stunning, but the entire area around the Peak has been enclosed, and made into a multi-storied mall. This meant that you couldn’t get outside on the Peak without purchasing a second expensive ticket, so we decided to eat in one of the high-end restaurants that had a view. Just what Asia needs, we grumbled, another multi-storied mall?

Bill and Joan dining on the Peak.

But let me say this about the malls of Asia: you have to see them to believe them. Some of the other faculty on Semester at Sea are critical of our students who visit the malls of Asia, but not me. Malls are the market places of our century, and if you want to see the Chinese enjoying their leisure time, and the fruits of their capitalistic labor (which they have embraced with a vengeance) then you go to the mall. If you want to see the Japanese out and about, strolling, eating ice cream, drinking coffee, with their children and grandmothers in tow, then you go to the mall. We’ve also discovered that the malls of Asia have fabulous, ambitious food courts offering delicacies from around the world, and the price is a third of what you might pay in a restaurant. Many of our best lunches on this trip have been eaten in the malls of Asia.

Aesthetically, the malls of Asia put ours to shame. They have eight and nine stories, shiny marble floors, polished brass railings, glass-encased, neon-lined escalators, indoor fountains and creative landscaping, and pristine bathrooms with an amazing array of hand-drying machinery. I suppose too, there’s shopping. Actually, we didn’t shop in the malls of Asia because we can’t afford to. Jo and I used the malls as palatial pit stops, and perhaps for the urban Chinese in particular, the mall is a kind of palace---except in this case, the palace is not Forbidden; it is open to all. All are free to window shop at the mall, and in the muggy summer, to enjoy the air-conditioning. Indeed, that may just about sum up the individual freedoms in China. Don’t get me started…

Ok, just to be clear: I am not proposing that our students should only visit the malls of Asia, but they can be a lot of fun.

On our second day in Hong Kong, Jo and her friends took off for Stanley Market, and I spent the day alone, my second day of blissful solitude in almost four months. I walked up and down Nathan Road, had lunch in Kowloon Park and watched geriatric tai chi, and spent most of the afternoon at the Hong Kong Museum of Art. I never miss a visit to this museum because it has one of the best book stores in town. (I’m usually on the hunt for books in English on Chinese art and culture.) On this trip though, I lucked out with the art. The exhibit was of the paintings of Ding Yanyong (1902-1978). Ding was from Guandong, but had studied modern art in Tokyo in the twenties, and later became a part of the western painting movement in Shanghai, adopting a style reminiscent of Matisse. In the 1930s, he became interested in traditional Chinese art, and from that time on, his work synthesized the art of the West and the East. I particularly loved his ink on paper scrolls, and the playful one-stroke paintings that he did as an old man. The museum played a film on a loop from the 1970s of Master Ding performing these later paintings, and interacting with his students who were oozing filial piety. I watched it three times, all alone in a dark room, collapsed on a museum sofa. His personal life was tragic. Ding migrated in 1949 to Hong Kong, leaving behind his wife and four girls; he was never reunited with them. All of his art work in China was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution; his family was sent to re-education camps as “feudal bourgeoisie.” Living a bare-boned existence alone for years in Hong Kong, he was alienated from his country and from his family. Even Ding’s humorous, satirical pieces---of which there are many---betray a palpable loneliness.

Here was something new in Hong Kong: at eight p.m., there’s a laser show between and among the sky scrapers on Hong Kong Island. Our ship had a fortuitous mooring spot---I could see the Star Ferry from my window without lifting my head off my pillow. While we waited to set sail for Shanghai, we sat on deck seven with a gaggle of students and watched huge flood lights scan the darkness and green laser beams zig zag from building to building. It was like watching someone play a computer game across the Hong Kong skyline. I love the way the Chinese understand the dynamics of light. It was whimsical. Why can’t New York City muster some whim?

Hong Kong's laser show.

The MV Explorer at night.

After two quiet, cloudy days on the ship, we came into the harbor of Shanghai. As we chugged up the Huangpu River, I leaned over the railing with two colleagues who were in a state of shock. They hadn’t been to Shanghai for over twenty years. We were gazing at the urban panorama of the area called the Pudong. Twenty years ago, the Pudong had been boggy farmland. Now it was Shanghai’s bustling financial district, with the most amazing and eclectic cluster of skyscrapers and architectural anomalies, including the Oriental Pearl Tower that looks like space ship on a tripod. Later in the day, Jo and I and another faculty family took something called the “Bund Sightseeing Tunnel.” It connects the city with the Pudong via a train that conveys tourists through a tunnel of pulsating, spiraling lights, with a god-like, booming voice in the background announcing the various themes, “Now we are in volcanic lava….now we are in heaven…now we are in hell.” We had three kids with us, ages 17, 12 and 9, and they were enthralled. (Well, ok, I was enthralled too, but I have a weakness for neon and flashing lights. It’s one reason I love China.)

The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel.

I only have Beijing to compare Shanghai to, and let me say this: Shanghai is not Beijing. Beijing is laid out in a predictable, rational design; Shanghai is not. It’s difficult to navigate, and none of the city maps makes any sense whatsoever. Beijing is international and cosmopolitan; Shanghai feels more parochial, and is distinctly Chinese. Its population is far more homogenous, and I was impressed by how big the people were, many over six feet, with broad-faces and eyes that looked quite different from the eyes of Beijing. Beijing has many stunning tourist sights, but the rest of the city was torn down to make way for rows and row of monotonous, shiny glass boxes. Shanghai has very few stunning tourist sights, but has preserved its historical heritage. The Bund, and the French Concession, are stunning, and south of the Bund, you can find something that no longer exists in Beijing: an Old Town. We spent several hours in that Old Town, walking through the maze of narrow lanes, ducking under laundry hung in front of and between the closely packed houses, dodging bicycles, our eyes stinging from the smoke of small, local temples and open fires where food was cooking right on the street. I much prefer Shanghai to Beijing, and look forward to spending more time there. If I never went to Beijing again, it would be just fine with me.

Shanghai's Old Town.

On one of our afternoons in Shanghai, I took a small group of students to a neighborhood center that provided a wide range of services to the community----health care, music and dance for senior citizens, public education, and family planning services. We met with two sturdy, middle-aged women who ran the family planning clinic. Our translator, a young man of about 25, did his best to translate the questions and answers about China’s One Child Policy. (In China, since 1979, an urban couple is only allowed to have one child; second children must be paid for. The policy is relaxed somewhat in the country, and the ethnic minorities are not subject to it, but in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, most couples only have one child, and more than likely, that one child is a boy.) Our translator got flustered on more than one occasion. I asked him whether the clinic offered the “Morning After Pill,” and the trio was clueless. I had to tactfully explain the circumstances under which a woman might take such a pill, and he had to translate into Mandarin, “After the night of unexpected, or unplanned-for intercourse.” That wasn’t as difficult as having to explain to us: “The young women are taught the time in their menstrual cycle when they should not be having sex.” It was a challenge for him. They were mystified when a student asked whether free birth control was also available to unmarried women. Apparently the thought of an unmarried woman needing birth control just wasn’t part of their mental sky.

Representatives from the community center.

By and large, the two women were forthright, although I’m fairly sure that we were not only getting the party line, but that the neighborhood center was something of a showcase for westerners, evidence of enlightened social policy. Upstairs, we watched a very elderly group of musicians playing Chinese traditional music, although when they discovered their audience was American, they played a rousing rendition of Jingle Bells. In another room, a group of elderly women were rehearsing a somewhat flamboyant dance that entailed flapping fans in unison, and dipping and bending in ways that I no longer dip and bend. They also sang for us, and then demanded we reciprocate by singing a song to them, so we performed our own rousing rendition of Row, Row, Row your Boat---in a round, mind you. Luckily, we’d all been to camp.

I was sad to spend only those few days in China. China has grown on me. The first time I went to China and lived in Xiamen for a month, I found it fascinating, but it did not call my name---not the way India does. India is a large, rowdy democracy where anything goes, and often does. China is a totalitarian state. Censorship keeps their population ignorant of their government’s policies, and few feel free to speak out. On a tour of Tiananmen Square, one of our students asked how many were killed in 1989 in the military’s forcible---and deadly---dispersal of student protesters, and the young tour guide responded, “Oh, not so many as they say, only a few. Most of those photographs you see are ‘photo-shopped.’”

That answer makes me weep. The Chinese government has “photo-shopped” their recent history, their record on human rights, their appalling excuse for a criminal justice system, their planet-threatening pollution, their repression of religious groups who threaten their authority, their rampant consumerism and energy consumption, their myriad intrusions into the lives of their citizenry---uh oh, you got me started.

But I’ll stop. The truth is: Regardless of how I feel about the Chinese government, I still have a deep affection for the Chinese people, for the perpetuation of their ancient culture under extreme adversity, for their industry and tenacity, and at least in my dealings with them, for their great kindness.

The students at Semester at Sea have experienced a lot of anti-American sentiment as we’ve traveled around the world. We’ve talked about it repeatedly in our “Post-port Reflections.” To have someone in a foreign country blame you personally for our war in Iraq (which you didn’t support) or for dropping a bomb that killed 90,000 civilians (when you weren’t even born yet)---those accusations hurt. Some of the students have responded with anger; some with shame. Here is where travel educates. You learn to distinguish the people from the government. It’s possible to love one, and not the other. By someone covering you with a careless stroke of a brush, you learn to paint your own canvas with more care. LH