Articles & Posts

October, 2010 When Rob Mier died, in 1995, a good part of the national progressive community, in academia and neighborhoods, felt the loss.   Rob was not simply an academic – professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and head of the Center for Urban Economic Development, a research unit in public policy and community development.    “Not simply” because other teachers, at other schools, could match his academic pedigree.   But Rob was … more.   He was a professional engineer (a piece of his past that he used to great advantage in meetings and negotiations with government planning officials) and had a passion for activism in community development.   Theory, yes, but always balanced with real community action. He was also a rugby player, and that is where Rob and I met, playing for the Chicago Lions.   Several of us spoke at Rob’s life celebration, and I pointed out that his own memories of his own rugby exploits never quite seemed to match our own memories of his exploits, but I put that down to his continuing passion for life. Passion in Rob was not of the fire-breathing variety.   He was quiet, not physically imposing, and I never remember his …

PREFACE CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION – WHAT IS CHINESENESS  CHAPTER 2 – WHAT LIES BEHIND – CHINESENESS – THE EARLY YEARS  CHAPTER 3 – WHAT LIES BENEATH – LANGUAGE AND CULTURE CHAPTER 4 –  WE ARE ALL FAMILY
CHAPTER 5 –  WE ARE ALL BROTHERS AND SISTERS… CHAPTER 6 –  WHAT MANIFESTS ITSELF
CHAPTER 7 – CONFUCIAN VALUES AND CIVIL SOCIETY CHAPTER 8 –  ANOTHER CHINA METAPHOR                                           _________________ click for more detail …PREFACE      11 CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION – WHAT IS CHINESENESS   17__________________________________________________… Through a glass, darkly “If we were to characterize in one word the Chinese way of life for the last two thousand years, the word would be ‘Confucian’.   No other individual in Chinese history has so deeply influenced the life and thought of his people, as a transmitter, teacher and creative interpreter of the ancient culture and literature and as a moulder of the Chinese mind and character.”Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Trouble With Confucianism. Harvard University Press, 1996 What Chinese people worship is the family and clan, so China only adheres to the doctrines of family and clan, not to the state-nation.  Foreign observers say that Chinese are a sheet of loose sand  yipan sansha  一 盘散沙Sun Yat-sen (Sun Yixian, Sun Zhongshan)  speech on the Three Principles of  the People, 1924 ___________________________________________________How to use …

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even in China …          Spring, 2011 … although they are members of a national service, run out of Beijing, not by local governments.  So that is the reason for the army guys, not the police, doing traffic control when the local fire brigade ran through some training exercises yesterday.   But firemen are, down deep inside, guys, and high school guys at that.   So part of the training is a run, about 100 meters, with hose and connections.  At the end of the run, they have to hook up the hoses and put out a small electrical fire.  The water was already hooked up to a small pump, and came from our on-campus lake.So at the signal, everybody took off from the starting line, just as if they were doing wind sprints at the end of football practice, and of course there was a big yell at the signal, and complaining during the run that somebody got a head start, and one guy dropped the hose at the signal, so he had to run again while everybody else laughed and watched him. The pumper is equipped with axes and sledges and pry bars and lots of hose.  You can …

Spring, 2010 Some of you remember Victoria, from Taizhou.   For those of you who don’t, Victoria is- I think the east coast term is wicked- smart, clever, beautiful, and ambitious as all hell.   In other words, a dream.  Last year she put on a show for Scott and his kids and me.   You know that these trips for Scott and me are fun and we learn a lot, but there is an awful lot of showing off and maneuvering behind the scenes of every event.   There is a lot of jockeying to see who sits at the head point of the (round) table, next to the person paying for lunch.  Last year, Scott usually got to sit next to the person paying for lunch, and on the other side was the most senior or most powerful leader (this is where the personal jockeying comes in- sometimes we spent two or three minutes standing around the table, while two people fight out who is going to be the least important.  Sort of Alphonse and Gaston, with every “No, you go first,” a bluff.  First one to call the bluff wins).  To show off her power last year, Victoria disdained the standard Chinese lunch …

October, 2009 Went with Jonathan Gong Wei, one of the IIT students from four years ago, to the JZ Club, a jazz club on Nanshan Road next to West Lake.  I invited two of my fellow faculty members, Wu De Gang (Dominick) and Zheng Li, to join us.Nanshan Road is the place to see and be seen in Hangzhou.  It runs adjacent to West Lake, so the views across the river are beautiful.  Think of the view of downtown Chicago from the Fullerton Avenue bridge over the pond at night, or the view of downtown from the Planetarium. Except that the lake here is small enough to see across, and in the distance are hills lit up with lights from houses, and the moon is out, and the city has worked very hard to make this area attractive to the “gold collared workers” that my friend Bob Yovovich talks about.The upshot of it is that even though the bars and restaurants and clubs are expensive, and have a lot of foreigners in them, the lakefront is free and open to everyone.  The park betweeen Nanshan Road and the lake varies in width, but here it is about 200 feet, so there …

April, 2010 
Vicky invited me to the opening ceremonies of the 3rd Annual Hangzhou Reading Festival.   She promised me a visit to the new Hangzhou main library, a gift of books from the No. 1 in Hangzhou, dancing girls, and a chance to be on TV.    Stronger men might have been able to say no, but books and dancing girls were just too much.The new main library is in the new Central Business District, the new CBD, as everyone here call it.   Predictably wonderful.   New building, of course, with a grand interior atrium and nice blending of marble and wood for accents on walls and detailing on doors.The library floor guide is pretty cool, arranged like a book table of contents.   It is six metal pages, unfolded like a tour guide brochure, with the inner five leaves making two tents with the wood base on which it sits, with descriptions of floors and book and material locations, in English … and Chinese.Taking a book out is pretty easy.  The scanner that you put the book under tells you when it is due, prints a reminder,  and annotates your central file at the same time (this is just my guess.   (note – this was …

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