Rod MacKenzie's Blog, page 8

Self-pity: Hating it but owning up

Ding dong. I cringed as the doorbell rang. Usually such a welcoming sound … guests arriving! But we feared being thrown out of the apartment here in China. On the streets. At least one good Western friend said he would take us in. Foreigners, stuck in Suzhou, suddenly without jobs along with the other teachers...

Ancestry & tailors

In South Africa I My ancestor sits on a wall, smiling at me, skirt billowed out, shoes muddied in tussocks. She leans forward, waiting to step to me through the centuries. She’s been there since childhood, in words whispered by a sister or brother, in the songs shimmering on a mother’s Irish lips, when I was first...

Living with mess

Here in China you are drawn to places crumbling under the fingertips, muddy spots where people have shat or died or both. Your hands and shoes flake off plaster or bark where hundreds of hands have scraped off bits of history and caressed plaster and brick into homes. Those Chinese hands have all too often...

A sausage machine called education

The red ball bounces across the classroom while about fifty pairs of kiddies' eyes stare enthralled, counting the number of bounces, seven, eight, nine… The ball starts to roll and team three in the class roars out, "ELEVEN!" They had guessed eleven bounces and therefore their team gets points. I am teaching them numbers, and...

Oppression, disabilities and our children

Long, long ago we knew we needed words for what is truly precious in the times of oppression — and there were, and will be, many times. No one knows how, but we fashioned the following word: 滫. We took one of the characters for water, 氵and added to that a character used for the...

A beautiful squalor: photos from Che Fang

Her hand is a smile opening him to this place – Che Fang; the bitter twists of steam from oil drums used to fry dumplings and egg cakes on this nameless path to the school where he teaches … …the Chinese mist gentling the bareness of people's lives here, the threadbare clothing and shoes. The...

The weird, warm hospitality in Chinese toilet signs

I stared in awe and envy at the large sign above the public loo. "Come, easy go in rushing". Me being me, the Freudian meaning first sparkled through my mind: "Take it slowly as you build up to a climax". Well, I knew the sign could not have that steamy meaning even though loads of...

On the politics of bottom-touching in China

I recently had a fresh cultural shock here in China: seven to 10-year-old kids, at the primary school I sometimes teach at, who have a fondness for running up and touching my backside. Including in class. I tried to understand the reason why. I think it's because Westerners, by and large (forgive the pun), actually have butts. There...

Yay，Secret Santas! We just gotta give

I will never forget it. I was one of those young men back in the early eighties who had a choice: two years' military conscription or four years in jail. I disliked either option but chose the shorter "jail" sentence and thankfully ended up as a telex operator. One of the little businesses going on...

Christopher Hitchens not great, says this “atheist”

It depressed me a bit to write the title for this column, playing on one of the late Hitchen’s book titles, God is not Great. I think nothing can ever be achieved by slamming other people’s religious beliefs. Those people are going to continue holding on to their beliefs. Perhaps even more dearly. The attack...