Eye of Modok

I had a great day skiing at Nanshan Ski Village in Miyun County, Beijing. I’m by no means a great skiier, so I didn’t really need much of a challenge to be satisfied. I was happy just to discover that the skills I picked up through the five or six times I’ve been skiing in my life were intact and my body is in reasonably good shape, so I eagerly took to the slopes, even trying to go as fast as possible down the intermediate slopes.

My single attempt at the very top black run was a disaster. The hill was quite steep, so when I inevitably fell, I slid down at least 30 meters. My ski remained up the slope. After a few attempts to even move without sliding further, I didn’t relish climbing up to get it. Fortunately I was spared the effort thanks to the benevolence of a skilled skier who kindly brought it down for me. All attempts to put my skis back in the bindings failed on a hill that steep, so I had to suffer the ignobility of sliding down the remaining 300 meters or so to the bend on my behind. Actually, I really enjoyed sliding down the hill. I really picked up speed because I had on a decent pair of Marker ski pants on that I got when I volunteered for the 2002 Olympics and Paralympics and they almost seemed made for butt-skiing. I spent the rest of the afternoon happily speeding down the intermediate slopes after that. Considering the unseasonably warm weather it was like spring skiing and I didn’t let up all day. I definitely hope to go again soon.

This morning, Salomae brought out a calligraphy brush pen she had recently acquired. She takes a moment to write her Chinese name, ??? Bai Li Ya, and the characters are utterly beautiful. Suddenly, my own memories of hours spent practicing calligraphy in Japan came rushing forth and I grabbed the pen from her and wrote my Chinese name ???, Ben Jie Ming. Hmmm, not bad, but obviously out of practice. I decided to do my favorite character from my erstwhile Japan days, when I seemed to have so much more time to devote to calligraphy, the character for love, ? ai. Ah, now that’s better!

Salomae then wrote out Ellie’s Chinese name, ?? Ai Li, which has the character ? ai in it. ?This brings to light that in the PRC, there is a fundamental difference between the way I wrote ai and the way that ai is written with the simplified characters used in mainland China. Blysse was watching us and waiting for her turn with the “brush” and I said to her, “Isn’t it ironic that when they simplified the character for love, they took the heart out it?” Salomae, ever on the lookout for conspiracies replies, “That isn’t ironic at all!” They had taken out the entire radical representing heart/mind ? xin and made a slight adjustment to the remaining radical and replaced it with the radical representing friend ? you instead. A different kind of love, perhaps, but I have to hand it to them for meeting the objective of reducing stroke count while maintaining as close to the original meaning as possible. My kids are learning the simplified characters at school here, and have occasionally encountered the traditional versus simplified characters debate before, but this seemed to drive the point home.

Generally, I approve of the notion of simplified characters, because they do require much fewer strokes, and therefore save a lot of time and effort over time. On the other hand, as I learned the Japanese version of Chinese characters first, which were based on the traditional characters, and spent a year in Taiwan, which still uses traditional characters, I appreciate that it is easier to see how and why a character came to mean what it does if you have all of the components in place, although this can lead to some mighty complex characters. I’ve met some people here in the mainland who are very disapproving of the practice, usually people who love the traditional Chinese ways and see the practice of simplified characters as a slight on ancient traditions. I even know a few who blog in traditional characters!

I went out for the day and when I came back, I saw that both Blysse and Salomae had been practicing the traditional character for “ai”, with the heart back in love.

I’m not sure how many groundhogs there are in the Chinese capital, but they surely would have seen their shadow today and jumped back into their hole, and according to farmers in the US at least, that is a sign that we’re in for six more weeks of winter. Of course, the weather this year has been so mild, I’m still waiting for winter to arrive. It’s only really snowed once this year.Compounding this is the fact that “Spring Festival” is coming up in a few weeks, a surefire indicator that we are in for at least one more huge storm before things really start to warm up. The irony that “Spring Festival” seems to take place in the middle of winter seems lost on most people I talk to about it. I suppose it is indeed a lot like Groundhog’s Day. Both Spring Festival and Groundhog’s Day mark the point where things should start to warm up, rather than the point of crocuses springing forth and blossoms bursting out.So, even if we have to wait for six more weeks, at least the end of the winter is in sight!