The world does watch China — investors look at the growth of the economy, business looks at the rise in domestic consumption, governments watch its growing political power, and the rest of us watch as more than a billion people are slowly lifted out of poverty. But the Expo probably isn’t the best example of the world watching China — rather, it was the rest of the world hoping that China would have a look at us. Countries and corporations paid huge amounts of money to build extravagant Expo pavilions, all in the name of promoting trade, introducing new products to the huge numbers of Chinese consumers and potential business contacts who have already visited the Expo, or simply just improving — or creating — a brand image for that country in China.

Some countries, like the US, didn’t need the Expo to build on its brand image, and built the most basic pavilion that saving political face would allow (and even though it was, according to reports, nothing special, the line to enter was still more than three hours long when we there). Smaller and less wealthy countries either contributed with a tiny stall in one of the larger buildings, or went for something simple — like Cuba, which essentially set up a large box with a bar selling Cuba Libres, Mojitos and Daquiris, a backdrop of Havana painted on the wall, and salsa music playing in the background. North Korea’s pavilion was also essentially a simple box, with replicas of a small bridge and water fountain, the text “Paradise for People” on the wall, and a small bookshop selling the collected works of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

But many countries had gone all-out. One of the longest lines was more than four hours and was for the Saudi Arabian pavilion, a huge structure complete with an IMAX theatre inside. Japan and South Korea also had huge pavilions with huge lines. Our first stop was the Swedish pavilion, which had a (moderate) wait of one hour to get in. The focus was very much on Swedish industry and how it can be of benefit to China — which seemed like a good use of the huge investment that goes into this sort of event. Larger countries that had the funds and placed a high priority on building closer economic ties with China took the investment very seriously.

Each pavilion tried to out-do the others in terms of creativity. One of my favorites was the Spanish pavilion, which we didn’t have time to visit, but is apparently bringing in a chef from a different region of Spain for each week of the Expo, and the chefs together have a total of 49 Michelin stars. Many Westerners associate “Chinese” food with the small selection available in Chinese restaurants in the West, and don’t necessarily realize what an incredible diversity of cuisines there are in different regions in China. The same goes for Chinese perceptions of “Western” food, and given that for many people outside of the Beijing and Shanghai, Pizza Hut and McDonalds essentially represent Western food, I’m glad that Spain has used the Expo as an opportunity to introduce the rich variety of Spanish food to its visitors.

The highlight, of course, was the amazing architecture, and that alone made the Expo worth visiting. Unfortunately everyone else in Shanghai felt the same way (and everyone working for a state-owned company was sent on a company field trip to keep the visitor numbers high), and so the lines are ridiculously long. But all in all, it was still very much worth the visit, and whether the Expo really was “the world watching China”, at the very least it was another step on the path to closer ties.

Chinese pavilion

By the entrance

A Dala Horse in front of the Swedish pavilion

The somewhat surreal seed-themed British pavilion

The hike was pretty intense — I thought that after doing a few short hikes in other parts of China and wearing a pair of brand-new hiking boots bought in Beijing, 5-6 hours of hiking per day would be manageable. I was wrong — the first day was relaxed, but the second day, which had us at the highest altitudes, was exhausting, and by the end of the day I needed oxygen to recoup after Martin and I staggered into camp with hail raining down on us (I was clearly the slowest in the group). By day three we were descending, and there was more oxygen in the air, but also vampire bears in the woods — they kill children, and suck blood from adults — so we kept up the pace and then stayed closed together once we had struck camp. I later realized, seeing the pictures from the afternoon, that we were all extremely swollen at that point — I looked like I had gained 10 kgs — and I’m not sure if it was because of the altitude, or because of the salt water we were drinking to stay hydrated, but either way it was all very extreme. But also incredibly beautiful — and by Day 4, we had left the stark rocky landscapes and snow-capped mountains, descending into green fields and flowers. The yaks, and even more impressively, the yak-herders, turned around to do the journey back, up-mountain, in a day and a half, as we were bussed onwards to Samye monastery and then home to the luxury of our hotel.

We had a wonderful experience overall, and our tour guide was amazing — if anyone reading this is planning a trip to Tibet, send me an email and I’ll pass along their contact information.

A Tibetan mastiff that would eat me if it wasn't tied firmly to its pole

Yak dung drying on a wall

The puppy version is friendlier

A nomad family's tent, this one without solar panels

Martin, looking cool

Tony, looking cool

Snow-capped pass

Chris, looking cool

Beautiful views

A nomad family gave us surprisingly delicious salt tea, and now have my walking stick

Frosty morning views

More beautiful views

Flowers

Martin, looking handsome

Yak

Prayer flags in the wind

Travelling to Tibet

For a foreigner, even just getting to Tibet at all was cumbersome. In addition to a Chinese visa, foreigners need a travel permit to visit Lhasa, and another permit to visit other parts of Tibet, which both require a local travel agency and the accompaniment of a guide at all times. The government wants tourists (who bring in money), but doesn’t want journalists and activists (who bring trouble), and so the travel agencies are put in charge of issuing permits, and are responsible for the behaviour of their charges while they’re in Tibet. Some people find ways around the rules or sneak across the border (which is very difficult and dangerous to do), and wandering around Lhasa on your own is fine, but most people don’t want to get their local guide in trouble, and therefore stay on their best behaviour.

And so the Tibet that a tourist sees is a tightly controlled version of reality. We walked in and out of the old streets of central Lhasa, where old men and women walk clockwise around temples in prayer and the markets and shops are filled with pilgrims and tourists. We took pictures of the buildings and the people, but were strictly instructed not to photograph the soldiers — difficult to avoid, since they were everywhere. The military uniforms with huge guns and full body armour felt excessive in a place filled with religious pilgrims, and sharpshooters on the rooftops of temples and mosques seemed mildly inappropriate, but on the whole people seemed to get on with their lives, and the soldiers just mixed in with all of the rest of the colors and sounds of the market.

I had read a few books on Tibet before coming, and I knew that at least some people were sad that the Dalai Lama couldn’t return to Tibet, or frustrated that the new railway meant an influx of immigrants from Sichuan and fiercer competition for jobs. But I can’t remember anyone we talked to expressing any kind of anger or frustration. Our guide was very friendly and extremely professional. He answered every question we asked him, but never with any hint that he was unhappy about Tibet’s situation. Which makes sense — even if he did have other opinions, why vent frustration to a tourist who can’t do anything about it and will leave in a few days, when informants are everywhere, and saying something negative means risking everything?

And so, other than the overwhelming presence of soldiers in the Tibetan parts of Lhasa (and lack of soldiers in the newer, Chinese parts), which to me gave a feeling of being in a place under martial law, it would on the whole have been easy to come away with the feeling that things in Tibet aren’t that different from in the rest of China — a place with restrictions on things that Westerners see as important freedoms, like speech and religion, but people work around the restrictions, and for most, everyday life feels relatively free.

Tibet in the news

For someone who wants to get a sense of what the situation in Tibet is really like, turning to newspapers and magazines doesn’t necessarily give a simple answer either. The Chinese government has been very active in promoting its narrative of Tibetan history, and at the same time discredit Western reporting on current events. An old woman on a train in Shandong province, in northeastern China, saw that I was reading a book on Tibetan history, and told me about a documentary she had seen that told the story of how Tibetans had been freed from slavery by the Communist Party, chains literally removed from around their feet, and informed its viewers that now all Tibetans were happy and well-fed. Western media is accused of reporting on the actions of a few “extremists”, falsely implying that the majority of Tibetans would prefer for Tibet to be independent when only a small group of “separatists” hold this view, and exaggerating the brutality of crack-downs against demonstrators by cropping pictures and video clips to show police beating protesters but cutting away protesters attacking the police.

The idea that critical reporting on Tibet is a part of a Western media bias against China plays well with the nationalism that’s alarmingly common, especially in people of the post-80′s generation. The fact that it’s difficult for Western journalists to travel to Tibet to research reports only increases the chance that what is reported will contain mistakes or be one-sided, and makes the reporting even easier to discredit.

A complicated history

Central to the public debate, it seems, has been the issue of whether or not Tibet is “inherently” a part of China. The Chinese side cites a long history of contacts between Tibet and China — Tibet was once an empire of its own that exchanged tributes and princesses with the Chinese empire — and then a closer relationship that began with the Qing dynasty Qianlong emperor (a practising Buddhist) in the 18th century, during which time the emperor sent in the Chinese army to prop up the Dalai Lama’s government, in return for spiritual guidance and blessings from the Dalai Lama. Tibet was invaded in 1904 by the British (who wanted to hold this key position between Russia, China and India) but they withdrew once the government back in London found out about the invasion and realized it was a stupid idea. With the fall of the Qing dynaty, Tibet then enjoyed a few decades of de facto independence before being invaded once again, this time by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, who made it a part of the modern Communist State.

Long before the Communist Party took power, “liberating” Tibet (along with Taiwan and Hainan) was a part of the CCP’s agenda — a matter both of strategic military importance (the highlands of Tibet could serve as an entry point either for Indian or Russian armies), and as a matter of nationalist pride (the British invasion put Tibet on the list of areas loosely belonging to the Qing empire that had been invaded by imperialist forces). Later Western activism for Tibetan independence was seen as just the latest reincarnation of imperialist meddling with Chinese territory. The Chinese government often states that it freed Tibetans from what was essentially a slave society, and Tibet in the early 1900s probably was in need of serious reform, which the ruling elite at the time was too slow to deliver. But what followed under Chinese rule was certainly not better.

Tibet, like mainland China, suffered terribly during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. It’s sometimes said that in mainland China, the Great Leap Forward mainly affected the countryside, while the Cultural Revolution affected the cities, but Tibet, despite being mainly rural, most certainly suffered hugely during the Cultural Revolution, and probably felt the pain of the Great Leap Forward as well. In fact, in his book Tibet, Tibet, Patrick French cites someone who claims that the Cultural Revolution lasted for a full 20 years in Tibet, starting in 1960 and not ending until 1980.

During the reform period in 1980s, conditions in Tibet improved, and Hu Yaobang, one of the reform-minded politicians in power in the 80s, famously visited Tibet, apologized for the pain inflected on the region, and promised two-pronged reform, both political and economic. Tibetans, like many in mainland China, wanted more, and increasing demonstrations eventually convinced the leadership in Beijing that political reform had been a mistake. Since then, the strategy has instead been a “one-pronged approach”, full focus on economic reform.

Tibet today

The Chinese government has in the past two decades invested huge amounts of money in developing Tibet’s economy. There are policies in place to help Tibetans (and other minorities from poorer parts of the country), most notably extra points on the college entrance examination to make it easier for young Tibetans to get into university, and exceptions to the one-child policy. But critics say that economic development isn’t benefiting Tibetans, partly because low-level jobs go to Mandarin-speaking immigrants from other regions of China (like neighbouring Sichuan province), and higher-level jobs go to people with the right connections, who tend to be Han Chinese.

Critics of the Free Tibet movement sometimes claim that foreigners who say that they’re fighting to protect Tibetan culture really just want Tibet to remain a quaint, rural and essentially impoverished place. Change inevitably benefits some and hurts others, but for most Tibetans, economic development would probably be a good thing. The problem, in my opinion, isn’t economic development per se, but rather who gets the rewards of development (currently those with connections in government), and who pays the price (currently the environment, and local communities who depend on it). The official line seems to be that the majority of Tibetans are happy with the focus on economic development, and that the demonstrations and riots of the past few years are the work of a small number of extremists — but writers who do try to dig deeper seem to find widespread unhappiness with the lack of religious and political freedom, and frustration that the fruits of economic development for the most part don’t go to Tibetans.

Which brings us to today, and what needs to happen. To be honest, I don’t know what the answer is. The Western “Free Tibet” campaign seems to have been not only ineffective but directly counterproductive – the Chinese government’s response has been an appeal to nationalism, and it has essentially locked itself into a position that now makes any kind of negotiation with the Dalai Lama extremely difficult. But the current situation is clearly unacceptable (see here, here, here and here for coverage of some of the most recent crackdowns on Tibetans, and here and here for coverage on recent examples of the government asserting its control over the religious system in Tibet).

In my eyes, the basic problem in Tibet is the same as in the rest of China – a lack of basic political freedom that leaves local officials free to exploit their positions for personal gain without being held accountable for their actions, and silences any potential opposition from the public. To me, there doesn’t seem to be an inherent problem with Tibet being a part of China – the Chinese people I know are proud that this beautiful and culturally rich region is a part of their country, and if political rights were protected and economic rewards shared more fairly, there are potentially benefits to being a part of a quickly growing economy (in this article from ten years back, Peter Hessler, who is one of my favorite authors, points out that China has invested huge amounts of money in building basic infrastructure in Tibet, investment that might be difficult to attract if Tibet were an independent country). As for protecting culture, if Tibet were an autonomous region not only in name but also in practice (as things stand now, autonomous regions in China tend to be under tighter and not looser control from the central government), then it might even be possible to permit a role for the Tibetan language in the political and business spheres, beyond the role it currently has in local government, which seems mostly to be in decorating non-essential signs.

When I got back to Wuhan and talked to Chinese friends there about my thoughts on Tibet, they laughed at my suggestion that Tibet and the rest of China need political freedom, and they told me “that will never happen”. The trend during my two years in China certainly seemed to be in the wrong direction; James Fallows noted in his blog the irony that just as the US was leaving it’s Bush era, China was entering its own — he was referring to international relations, but I think this applies more broadly to the Chinese government’s hard-line approach of the past few years. I don’t know what I, as a foreigner, could, or should do to make a difference – foreign meddling in Tibet in the past has only made things worse. Talking about the issues at stake is important, and I can do so more freely than Chinese friends can and certainly more freely than Tibetans can, but even this blog would be blocked in an instant if it began to get enough of a following to make a difference.

And so, it’s complicated. I don’t think the issue at stake in Tibet is one that’s fundamentally different from the issue at stake in the rest of China — at heart, it’s a question of protecting the rights of those who are politically and economically weak everywhere in China — but the repression in Tibet (and Xinjiang) seem more extreme than in other parts of China, maybe because those two regions have an added racial and religious dimension that make the difference between those with and without power even more blatant, and so the whole situation is more urgent. China is by no means unique in having this type of issue in its history — the way in which the US annexed its western regions and its treatment in the past of Native Americans, and past British treatment of Ireland and the Irish, are just two examples of issues that are today seen as shameful aspects of these countries pasts — but the fact that other countries have committed similar crimes in the past is no excuse for a country to continue committing those types of crimes today, as difficult as finding a solution may be (as the US has painfully learned in its attempts to make things up to the Native American population). For now, visiting Tibet is a mixed experience — like so many other places in China, it’s a beautiful and fascinating place, and it’s easy to ignore the problems that are there, but they’re very clearly still there, under the surface.

Further reading:

For those of you who would like to read more, I like Peter French’s book Tibet, Tibet. It’s billed as “a personal history of Tibet”; French was active in the Free Tibet movement, but later became disillusioned with the movement because of its failure to contribute to any kind of progress in political freedom in Tibet, and so he travels to Tibet to research his book and understand the different sides in the debate. Abrahm Lustgarten’s China’s Great Train is an interesting account of the building of the railway line into Tibet, although some simple mistakes and an obvious sympathy for the Tibetan independence movement undermine the author’s credibility. A professor of Chinese history who we met at the airport on our way out of Lhasa also recommended Dragon in the Land of Snows as a good account of the events the past few decades.

The last few weeks of travelling have left me behind on blog updates; more thoughts on Tibet to follow soon.

Yak butter

On the roof of the Jokhang Temple

Painted box

Door in Lhasa

Spices

Selling chongcao

Despite the remote location, people in Songpan told us about how quickly help arrived when the earthquake hit – by the next morning, tents and food and been flown in, and foreigners who had been resting after their horse treks when the earthquake hit got discounted tickets on flights out from a nearby airport within a week. By the time we were there, most of the towns and villages we passed through seemed to have been rebuilt — in Wenchuan there were no hints that this has been the epicentre of an earthquake that killed more than 68 000 people.

Rebuilding the road through the mountains and valleys seems to be a much more difficult task. The dirt road that stands in for now was clearly not designed for buses, and in places disappears into a muddy slush. But our bus, the Golden Dragon, fought on bravely. The ride came with sound-effects: “Waaaaah” went the passengers as we passed a tipped-over PetroChina truck; “Waaaaah” as we stood by the side of the road and saw the bus gain a deep dent in its front fender as it struggled out of a particularly deep ditch; “Waaaah” as we drove over what can only be described as a waterfall. At one point, the bus’s engine gave up, but half an hour or so of prodding from the driver convinced it to struggle on. Most of our time seemed to be spent in “traffic jams”, places where long lines of trucks stood waiting to slowly pass by a particularly difficult section of road.

There was one rest stop, and then a little after 7 pm we finally stopped for food, the first bite to eat our driver had had for at least 12 hours. But life has to go on and tourist money has to keep coming in, and so he and the bus will have to turn around and do the whole journey again. Hopefully he had a chance to rest in Chengdu before the time came for the Golden Dragon to start the journey back.

Traffic jam

Even though horse treks are the thing to do for tourists coming to Songpan, there’s only one trekking agency, which has been around for 20 years – back then they charged 30 rmb per day for treks, and now it’s 200 rmb per day. After our guide had led the horses on a slow walk through the hills to a Tibetan monastery in the next valley, he cooked us a noodle soup and complained about how little of what we paid went to him. A few years ago, there had been a rival agency as well (started by a couple of guides from the original agency), but the two companies fought with each other (bad for harmony) and cut their prices to win over customers (bad for business), so the local government presumably decided things would be simpler with just one trekking agency, and they were forced to merge. Now only the merged company has a license, and is free to charge as much as it wants from customers, and give as little as it wants to the local farmers who raise the horses and act as guides. 80 rmb out of the 200 per person goes to the guide (who is responsible for providing the horses and most of the food), and presumably another chunk goes towards things like taxes, insurance, and fancy dinners, but that should still leave quite a bit for the people at the trekking agency, who spend their days gambling on the second floor and evenings signing up the next round of tourists for treks. Not a bad business model.

We got the story of the trekking agency from Sarah, the owner of one of the two backpacker-oriented restaurants next to the trekking agency. She doesn’t have a monopoly, and clearly has to work hard to compensate. She’s our age, born 1984 to a Tibetan mother and Han Chinese father, and opened the restaurant seven years ago. After leaving school at 16, she moved to Chengdu and worked in the kitchen at Holly’s Hostel, where she learned to cook. She got married to a man from Chengdu when she was 20, and now she has a son who’s five years old and who goes to school in Chengdu, where he lives with her husband’s parents. She told us that she misses him, but her parents-in-law refuse to move to Songpan. When she opened the restaurant, the only words she knew in English were “Come, eat”, but through talking to customers and reading in the evening, she worked herself up to a level where she spoke to us maybe not with perfect grammar but with amazing confidence and fluency. She worried that tourists weren’t coming to Songpan as much as before because they were worried about earthquakes, but it probably has more to do with slow progress on rebuilding the road from Chengdu.

For those who haven’t found a way to get a slice of the tourist economy, there’s construction work and farming. Our guide on the horse trek was a Hui Muslim farmer from near Songpan, and he complained about the burdens of providing for three sons and a daughter. When I told him he was xingfu to have so many children, he replied that sons were’t a blessing at all, they only meant more mouths to feed, and he wished he had only had daughters. He blamed the trekking agency for taking too large of a cut for the treks, and then blamed the size of the Chinese population, which seems to be the catch-all explanation for poverty.

Once the road to Chengdu has been fully repaired, it will become that much harder to escape from the tourist trail — and the people we met in Songpan probably won’t mind.

Saddling up

We shared the park with urban Chinese dressed head to toe in North Face hiking gear, which I guess is the look for these things — but in this case was by no means necessary. In return for an astronomical admissions fee (310 rmb, 260 for students), roads have been paved all the way up to each of the scenic spots, raised wood paths have been built along the lakes and across the waterfalls, and shuttle buses drive visitors out to the lakes and then back to the restaurant and shopping centre where the roads meet. The valley is named after the nine Tibetan villages that lie there, and when the final touches were put to the park, most of the villagers were reportedly forced to move out, with a few staying on to work as park attendants in their now brightly painted former homes.

The whole park is very tastefully designed, and Chinese parks seem to be particularly good at building wood or stone paths along lakes and mountains in a way that makes them almost completely blend into the background. A part of me felt that seeing these lakes and waterfalls after having earned the privilege by hiking to them, rather than simply being driven there by bus, would have made the views seem even more breathtaking – but at the same time, this type of tourist infrastructure makes the views accessible to so many more people, including people who wouldn’t have the time or ability to see them otherwise — and there’s still lots of open wilderness in northern Sichuan, like in the area around Songpan, were travellers really do have to earn their views, so maybe losing this park to the tour groups is ok. I wonder if the Tibetans who were moved out of their villages felt the same way.

Clouds roll over a mountain overlooking Arrow Bamboo Lake

Following the narrow wood road

Turquoise waters in the Five-Coloured Pool

Waterfalls and a former village

Some logistics for fellow travellers: Guidebooks recommend starting early, ideally at 7am, when the park gates open, which is good advice – both to escape the tour groups and to catch the beautiful views of clouds clinging to the mountain in the early-morning light. Best route in my opinion is to take the bus all the way up to Swan Lake (天鹅海), get off briefly to look at the view, and then get on the bus again before it leaves to go back down to Arrow Lake (箭竹海) (Swan Lake was closed off when we were there, and the walk down from the top is very long). From Arrow Lake, you can walk all the way down to the Nuorilang Waterfall (诺日朗瀑布) along the wooden path across from the road, which takes around 3 hours. Most tourists just get off at the scenic spots and then get back on the bus, so for most of the walk, you’ll have the very peaceful path to yourself. There are lots of food options at Nuorilang, both expensive and cheap-ish. And after lunch, you can either take the bus up to the Five-Coloured Pool (五彩池) and Long Lake (长海) and back, or just begin the walk down towards the entrance from Nuorilang, which is also very beautiful. There are several points along the road back where the bus stops to pick people up, so it’s you can easily walk until you feel tired and then cross back over the lakes to take the bus back.

The way up is dotted with temples (both Taoist and Buddhist), and with inscriptions in the mountain left behind by rulers who have reached the top. On the way down, I stopped next to one written in what seemed to me to be particularly squiggly and illegible calligraphy, and realized that it was signed 毛泽东, Mao Zedong. Another (to me equally illegible) was signed 江泽民, Jiang Zemin – I assume Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao are up there somewhere as well.

Some say (perhaps jokingly) that in China’s history of rising and falling dynasties, the People’s Republic of China is simply the latest incarnation, destined like all others to rise, fall and be replaced. Dynasties usually fall when corruption becomes endemic and inequality grows to a level that is unsustainable, but also because they grow bankrupt. China’s government is far from bankrupt, so if this dynastic analysis of the rise and fall of power in China is accurate, the PRC still has some time to go. And in the meanwhile, its leaders continue to climb Taishan, prove to all that they still have the Mandate of Heaven, and leave behind inscriptions for posterity and for photo-happy tourists.

A long way left to the top

A long way back down

Money -- still bearing Mao's face -- tied to a tree near a temple as offerings

Mao's calligraphy on an inscription near the summit

Incense burning at the Confucian temple

At lunch on our first day in Qufu, the restaurant owners sat down to chat with us while we ate. The wife asked if we were Christian, and seemed disappointed when I said I wasn’t. It turned out that their daughter had been converted to Christianity when she went to university, and had in turn converted her father – his wife claimed not to be Christian, but still peppered her speech with phrases like “the Lord’s children” (when she tried to convince us to book a guide for the Confucian temple and mansions through her, and insisted that she could get us a better price than the official ticket price, she tried to reassure us by saying, “You’re the Lord’s children, I wouldn’t trick you”). They attend church in Qufu, and told me that there are a fair number of Christians in the town.

Confucianism is a more of a system of morals than a religion per se, and has existed alongside Buddhism and Daoism for thousands of years – so it only seems appropriate to throw Christianity into the mix. Before we left, he gave us a souvenir: a long red strip of paper with the words 人能弘道, a quote from the Analects, written in his calligraphy. From what I’ve heard, the Analects seems to be a lot like the Bible in that it’s filled with statements that are vague and open to interpretation, and provide fodder for a lifetime of contemplation. I’ve also been told that Confucianism, which is all about going out into society and being a good citizen, is a philosophy appropriate for guiding one’s life while young, while Buddhism, which is all about withdrawing from society in the search for inner peace, is a philosophy for the old. I’m not quite sure what 人能弘道 means (or the full phrase, which I happened to spot written on a lamppost in the center of the town: 人能弘道，非道弘人). But given that learning enough Chinese to be able to tackle the Analects will probably take the next 60 years, contemplating the deeper meaning of Confucian thought will probably have to be put on hold for my rocking chair days after all.

Until then, my favourite Confucian line seems fairly straightforward: 有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎？: “Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar?”

Mythical animals stand guard on the roof tiles of the Confucian temple