Bryan Murphy's Blog - Posts Tagged "change"
China 2012
With all the building work going on, the crane should be China’s national bird.
In hospitals, the nurses have to pay a lot of attention to making sure the patients don’t get bed sores. One says to a hard-working nurse: “You may not recognise our faces, but I bet you recognise our arses.”
Q notes that no longer is a specific fashion followed by everyone. Individuals are starting to cultivate their own “look”.
In hospitals, the nurses have to pay a lot of attention to making sure the patients don’t get bed sores. One says to a hard-working nurse: “You may not recognise our faces, but I bet you recognise our arses.”
Q notes that no longer is a specific fashion followed by everyone. Individuals are starting to cultivate their own “look”.
China 2012
Used to Guizhou behaviour, I rarely feel stared at here, but Q does, and she does not like it at all. As a mixed-race couple, I feel we get gawped at just as much back home in England or Italy.
Hawking and spitting have also become rare. As have children with split trousers that facilitate street toileting, though we do encounter one pile of human shit.
Hawking and spitting have also become rare. As have children with split trousers that facilitate street toileting, though we do encounter one pile of human shit.
China 1991
I’ve been posting impressions of China when I returned after 20 years. The country has changed enormously, mostly for the better. Last week, the place where I lived back in 1991 made headlines, and for the worst of reasons. It is not a city, it is a small town, a speck on the map, and without some grisly occurrence like this, nobody was ever likely to hear of it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-...
Angola
On the day that Angola belatedly gets a new President, I'd like to point out a couple of good things about the old one, Josė Eduardo dos Santos, who, deservedly, has tended to get a bad press in recent times.
The first comes in the form of an anecdote. At one point while I was working in Angola (1981-84), each Ministry, and the Presidency, had to build a primary school. The Presidency, of course, had to build the outstanding example. When it came to laying the foundation for “his” school, dos Santos and his Ministers assembled on the site with much fanfare and arrays of television cameras. The cameras zoomed in on the President, who loosened his tie, took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, grabbed a spade and set to work digging the foundation. You could see the consternation on the Ministers' faces; fortunately, they all felt obliged to follow suit. A quarter of an hour later, they were still at it, following dos Santos's example of actually doing something to lay a foundation for the country's future. All the more pity, then, that, after seeing off Angola's external enemies, he himself succumbed to the kleptocratic temptation.
The second good thing is that he has actually retired: he has voluntarily given up the office of kleptocrat-in-chief. Another example that deserves a wider following.
The book which I believe best gives the flavour of Angola is "Another Day of Life" by Ryszard Kapuściński. Highly recommended.
The first comes in the form of an anecdote. At one point while I was working in Angola (1981-84), each Ministry, and the Presidency, had to build a primary school. The Presidency, of course, had to build the outstanding example. When it came to laying the foundation for “his” school, dos Santos and his Ministers assembled on the site with much fanfare and arrays of television cameras. The cameras zoomed in on the President, who loosened his tie, took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, grabbed a spade and set to work digging the foundation. You could see the consternation on the Ministers' faces; fortunately, they all felt obliged to follow suit. A quarter of an hour later, they were still at it, following dos Santos's example of actually doing something to lay a foundation for the country's future. All the more pity, then, that, after seeing off Angola's external enemies, he himself succumbed to the kleptocratic temptation.
The second good thing is that he has actually retired: he has voluntarily given up the office of kleptocrat-in-chief. Another example that deserves a wider following.
The book which I believe best gives the flavour of Angola is "Another Day of Life" by Ryszard Kapuściński. Highly recommended.
Marxism for the genteel
Penelope Fitzgerald sets her demolition of provincial life, The Bookshop, in Little England. However, I know from experience that it holds good as far afield as provincial China, and I'd guess almost everywhere in between, too.
Although her focus is on the personal, in her understated way Fitzgerald offers a devastating critique of a worn-out society that embraces change only to keep things the way they were. Marxism for the genteel.
Although her focus is on the personal, in her understated way Fitzgerald offers a devastating critique of a worn-out society that embraces change only to keep things the way they were. Marxism for the genteel.
