China Background - Charlie Soong
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Even in Houston
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

Good news - the power is back on in Houston and Miranda is okay. Happy is the mood.

         We'll get back to Big-eared Tu, but before we go further we have to talk about Charlie Soong. Without Charlie Soong the history of 20th century China would be different and COLD FRONT PASSING HOKKAIDO would never have been written.

         In 1876, a 12-year-old boy named Han Chiao-shun from Hainan Island in South China embarked with his uncle for America. What happened to the boy in the next 10 years before his return to China is layed out in captivating detail by Sterling Seagrave in his masterful work. THE SOONG DYNASTY. In that work we learn how the boy came to be known as Charlie Soong, how he became a born-again Christian and the first "Celestial" to be baptized in Wilmington, North Carolina, and how Charlie came under the patronage of Julian Carr, a private in the Confederate army who was later given the honorary title Colonel because of his great wealth acquired from tobacco and textiles, and his generosity in providing money for schooling of the children of Confederate Widows.

 

China background
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: Not Houston
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai
1921 - The first Congress of the Chinese Communist party - they met in Shanghai on Joyful Undertaking Street -  thirteen men including Mao Tse-tung, they were enamored by the success of the 1917 Russian revolution, and convinced that the doctrines of Marx and Lenin were just what was needed in China.  But guess what- they were observed by the most militant anti-communist organization in China, a new gangster syndicate called the Green Gang, led by the pure criminal mastermind, Tu Yueh-sheng - "Big-eared" Tu, who got where he was through the patronage of the great detective, Huang Chi-jung -"Pockmarked" Huang. Big-eared Tu, though ugly as a fence post with a lumpy face from childhood beatings, was a man of quick wit, energy, and resourcefulness. He was well-liked by everyone because of his easy manner, generosity, and genuine willingness to help even a downtrodden street vendor. He became a legend for his support of widows, orphans, and men who had lost everything. He also controlled the opium market, and never hesitated to assassinate members of the rival Blue Gang or Red Gang. When Big-eared Tu asked, people answered.

China background
Mood:  rushed
Now Playing: everywhere
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai
     In 1915, smack in the middle of World War I, Dr. Sun Yat-sen's rebels somehow overthrew the Manchus and a democratic Republic of China was established (read the Soong Dynasty for details). Here are a few: when the War started in 1914 Japan quickly moved to seize German holdings in Shantung province (see map of China - the Shantung Peninsula juts out into the Yellow Sea about midway between Peking and Shanghai). At the Versailles peace conference in 1919 the Chinese delegate was the gloriously named Wellington Koo, a diplomat trained in the U.S. at Columbia University. Some guy, this Koo, he kept 26 concubines. Koo refused to sign the Versailles Treaty for China because, in exchange for Japan's vote to establish the League of Nations, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson agreed to honor a secret agreement between Britain, France, and Italy that allowed Japan to keep Shantung Province. Koo told one of Wilson's aides, "If I sign, I would not what you in New York would call 'a Chinaman's chance." 

             When the news reached China on May 4th, 1919, outraged students rioted and the May 4th movement spread across China. One of the leaders of the student movement was Ch'en Tu-hsiu, dean of the College of Letters at Peking  University where a young man named Mao Tse-tung worked in the library.

I guess you can see where this is heading.

It's a sunny day
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: Everywhere but Houston
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

Houston without electricity for a week they say - Miranda, where are you? My mood will be blue until I know you are okay.

But it's a sunny day in South Jersey and we have to live with it.

So. Back to COLD FRONT PASSING HOKKAIDO. One of the main protagonists is Zeng Ming-gao and there's a story about where that name came from. In 1978, two years after the so-called Cultural Revolution in China ended, a wiry, mischievous-eyed professor from Wuhan University in China found his way to the Penn State University Hershey Medical Center to take a position as a visiting scholar in the Microbiology Department. His name was Zeng Fan-ji, and in the two years he lived with our family on Beech Avenue in Hershey, he changed our lives. When I began to write COLD FRONT PASSING HOKKAIDO 25 years later, the name Zengwas the first thing I thought of.

 

Summer down
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: Here and there
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

Until they turn the lights back on in Houston we have to push on without Miranda. So why cool? It's Howard's September stroke (see http://wildblueponder - Phillies.

Primary refences for COLD FRONT PASSING HOKKAIDO:

1982 - CHINA - Alive in the Bitter Sea by Fox Butterfield
          "Alive in the bitter sea," Ku-hai yu-sheng - an ancient Buddhist        adage about survival in a world of suffering.

1985 - THE SOONG DYNASTY by Sterling Seagrave
            Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse-tung, the Soong sisters,
            and their brothers, all here.

China
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: here and there
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

Not sure because I ought to be happy that the Phillies are tied for first with 12 games to play, but I'm really worried that the countries' financial institutions are in a free-falling mess, those supposed to know are talking 1929 crash, people are losing their jobs and I don't understand how it happened- it helps not a bit to say it's related to housing prices and sub-prime mortgages.

But I promised to talk about China. Go back 300 years or more - a new dynasty takes over - the Manchu - they have their way for all those years - a feudal dynasty - lots of ugliness in the middle kingdom. In 1839 - the British brought warships to force the Chinese to buy opium produced in British India - the Chinese resisted enough for Historians to call  the struggle a war - the Opium War. All I can say is I'm glad the British got Hong Kong in the deal, because if they didn't it's not likely I would have found Liddy.

 

  

Breathless
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: All over the Delaware Valley
Topic: Baseball

          Middle of September and temperatures still in the 90s - in baseball it's called "Hittin' weather". Pardon me if I'm breathless and incredulous over the weekend events at Citizens Bank Park, across the Delaware river from where Liddy and I live in South Jersey. We were there on a hot Sunday afternoon in section 318 when the Phillies thumped the Milwaukee Brewer's 7-3 to move within 1 game of the National League wild card lead. Then we watched the second game of the doubleheader on TV as the Phillies completed a four-game sweep to tie for the lead with 12 games left in the season. That's why I'm breathless and incredulous in spite of the long-time Phillies mantra attributed to Tug McGraw,I believe - "You gotta believe". So there it is - we do believe, but credulous was not in the mood list.

          Tomorrow after I catch my breath, I will get back to China. 

New September Day
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: 48 Lakebridge at least
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

          After a rainy September 13, shafts of sunlight pierce the early morning gloom here at 48 LBD, no more than a 30 minute drive to Citizens Bank Park where the Phillies and Milwaukee Brewers were rained out yesterday. Doubleheader tomorrow. Phils chasing another dream, details on http://wildblueponder.com

          Here it's about COLD FRONT PASSING HOKKAIDO. Where did it come from and where is it going? It came from a lifelong fascination with all things Chinese beginning, most probably, with the movie that was made from Pearl Buck's masterpiece, THE GOOD EARTH. And nudged by the childhood notion that if you shoveled deep enough and long enough you would come out in China. My old partner, Liddy, grew up in South China where, in the Hakka dialect, she was informed that if she dug long enough and deep enough she would come out in America. So there it is. Full circle. The Earth is a ball.    

Max is back
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: In a book store near you
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai

           Where has Max been for the past five years? He's had his nose to the grindstone chipping away at this Cold War novel with the odd title "Cold Front Passing Hokkaido". Here's how to pronounce it ... Ho(rhymes with show) - kai (rhymes with sky)-do (rhymes with doe, not shoe). What is a Hokkaido? It's an island - the northernmost of the Japanese home islands - Sapporo is the capitol city of Hokkaido where the 1972 winter olympics were held. It is said that on Hokkaido the skiing is magnificent. Who cares if there is a cold front passing Hokkaido? In 1955 the U.S.Airforce weather officers on the island of Okinawa cared enough to include such reports in their daily summaries and forecasts to the base commander who had the responsibility of ordering the 25 fighter-bombers loaded with hydrogen bombs to either remain lined up next to the runway, or take off and unload on the targets marked out along the Yellow River in northern China.
                In somewhere around 100,000 words, the novel unfolds with a tale of friendship between Zeng Ming Gao and George Sawyer and their wives, Chang Fong-ying and Lindsay Mae Lewis Sawyer.
                There's much more to share if anyone's interested.

       

Phillies Journal - 2007
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: The Summer Game
Topic: Baseball

What happened to the past four years? The time since my last Blog. Nobody knows. Maybe it was baseball. I know, it's nuts, but there it is. A daily limerick for all Philadelphia Phillies games. The least successful team in Major League Baseball history; closing in on 10,000 losses in the 100 or so year histroy of the team. The symbol of failure. My team.

LIEBER'S GEM

Jon Lieber pitched all nine;
his fastball and slider were fine.
He struck out eleven;
a complete game shutout: baseball heaven.
None too soon for this stalwart to shine.

Saturday, June 9, 2007. Kauffman Stadium, Kansas City, Missouri.
Philadelphia - 4, Kansas City - 0.
WP - Lieber (3-4, LP - Menche (3-6)