Choochoo from Qufu
September 27th, 2004 stevel
Yeah. Lame title, but it has nice alliteration when you pronounce Qufu in Chinese (ChooFoo). Of course, the alliteration requires you to mix English and Chinese in the same sentence.
Anyway, Poorna and I were invited to accompany a couple of other Sun employees (including Li Gong, the GM/managing director of SCERI) to Qufu for what, ostensibly, was an ‘International Confucius Celebration!’ sponsored by the Tsinghua Science Park (the campus where Sun’s SCERI offices are located). I guess maybe it was made painfully clear in Chinese or something, but Poorna and I didn’t get the fact that this was half sight-seeing/half business.
The city of Qufu has aspirations of becoming an industrial and commercial hub (in actuality, they are a rather small city…. like I said… aspirations ;-)), and so are trying to both capitalise off the fact that they are the birthplace of Confucius, and attract a lot of domestic and foreign investment. They sponsored this ‘Chinese and Foreign Famous Major Enterprise Gathering and Economic Trade Fair’ which was basically just a meet-and-greet of big name companies/investors. Everyone there was Chinese, and either the head of this, or director of that, etc. etc. Poorna and I (or should I say “Pooma and Stephe” as they misspelled our names) were listed as ‘foreign experts’. At first I misunderstood when someone was trying to tell us our title and for a little while I was confused as to why we were listed as ‘foreign exports’. Though, I guess that’s also true.
Anyway, trade show and annoying business crap aside….the weekend was…. well, pretty much almost a waste of a weekend. Poorna and I hoped to learn a lot about Confucius’ teachings, his wisdom, etc. Instead we were given a first class example of capitalism at work. The city government tried very hard to make us VIPs (including giving us VIP badges, and having drivers drive us around, with a police escort and everything). It was the little things though like having a shower filled with mysterious wood shavings, and no shower door, a hotel room with dead flys/mosquitoes everywhere (which somehow managed to survive the daily “cleaning service”), eating at the same restaurant for every single meal, said restaurant smelling like rotting meat on Sunday, and oh yeah, the cockroach I found crawling by my bed. Yummy.
It would be an understatement to say I was underwhelmed by the hotel and its accompanying restaurant. I felt even worse for Poorna…. every meal was pretty much the same for him (being vegetarian): eggs, rice, and bean sprouts. Needless to say, when we got back to Beijing, we ran to the first “Chinese Burger Home” fast food restaurant and got burgers, fries, and onion rings.
What was worse though about the whole weekend experience was just seeing how the whole damn city was capitalising off of Confucius’ name. It was really kind of disappointing. You could buy Confucius hard liquor, Confucius wine, Confucius cigarettes, etc. etc. We went to the Confucius Amusement Park for god’s sake (we rode the Confucius train, and walked by the Confucius nightclub/bar). Somewhere in the Confucius Family Cemetary which we went to on Sunday (and you can too for only 30 yuan!), Confucius is rolling in his grave. Actually, the cemetary was the coolest part of the weekend. All 4000+ of Confucius’ descendents are buried here (well, the dead ones, anyway, one would hope the live ones aren’t), which made for a really cool visit. The thing I love with Chinese cemetaries is how in tune with nature they are. It’s a virtual forest which you can see from the photos, with really elaborate tombstones, and memorials erected in the middle of groves of trees, etc. They are also really really really spread out (to the point that you need a tram to get around.
We also visited a Confucius “Research” Centre/Institute (what exactly do they research?) and random temples which seemed to have mainly contrived significance. We also went to the “International Confucius Celebration” which was really just a pop concert with Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean pop stars…. yeah, go figure, I couldn’t figure out that one either.
In fact, for all it’s worth, the Confucius Temple Poorna and I visited in Beijing for 3 yuan a piece is way better, and a helluva lot more convenient.
Best quote of the weekend: Poorna, upon seeing a girl at the Confucius Family Cemetary, asking me, “so what would you say to try and pick up a girl here?”, and my reply of “So…. you come here often?”
(and if you’ve read up to this point, we took the train back home early, hence the Choochoo from Qufu title)
[tags: ChinaBlog]
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Canada | September 30th, 2004 at 01:29
I love visiting cemeteries in different countries. I think you get a certain perspective on a culture when you see how a cemetery is “used” (I know that’s not the best choice of verbs, but read on…)
In North America, at some point in the past, we decided that we need to stuff the whole concept of death and the dead into the closet, treating it like that semi-crazy uncle from Moosomin. In general, people don’t talk about death until it’s forced upon them…, kids are shielded from it…, if we do speak of the deceased, it’s in hushed, reverent tones…, the only color acceptable at funerals is black…
When I finally sell the farm, I’ll insist on no one being allowed to wear black at the funeral, there will be dance music pumping out, party hats for all, and every one will have to relate at least one stupid/funny “Alan” story, … the whole thing finished off with a toast of Guinness (or warm soy milk, if you prefer
)So anyhow, cemeteries here seem rather austere: you drive or walk in, you are expected to make no noise, you march off to the grave site, maybe place some flowers and leave.
I visited one cemetery in Magdeburg, Germany (in July 1997) that was awesome… first off, there were trees everywhere (much like the pictures Steve links in his blog), with small gravel pathways among the plots. The plots were square, about 12 feet to a side, often surrounded by a little, 1-foot-high wrought-iron fence, and you could tell that the families cared for and “landscaped” the plot, as if it were a little garden that they tended… which is probably exactly how they saw it. There were wooden benches on the pathways, and it felt more like a city park almost than a cemetery.
The coolest thing I saw there was that a family of four was having a picnic on one of the nearby manicured lawns and the father was playing soccer (oops! football) with his 3-year-old son! It really made it feel as if this were a frequented spot, somewhere that is still connected to the city and to the living, not one of those silent, edge-of-town cemeteries that we in N.A. are probably used to.
Anyhoo, just thought I’d share
- Canada
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