Halloween Funeral, Another University, Dissertation Support

Tuesday was October 31, Halloween. Other people were busy putting up ghost stories on their blogs, some with enough verisimilitude to feel chilling. Halloween is not much of a holiday here, though there were a few costumes and carved pumpkins in stores. And I don't have any ghost stories to post. I hesitate to mention what I did do, which was only coincidentally appropriate to the date, because I don't want you all to think that I've gone off my rocker.

But it was like this: by about mid-morning, it was clear to me that Yojo was not indeed deceased and not just in a torpid reptile coma. But living in a high-rise as I do, there are no convenient pet cemeteries, not even any land that would serve such a purpose. Every inch of earth that hasn't been paved over--and all of the paved parts as well--are simply crawling with people who would, I think, look askance. And given that toilets here are too temperamental even to handle toilet-paper, I felt that burial at sea was also not a viable option. Really the only way of disposing of things is the garbage. But it didn't seem right to just throw him away. He was a good pet, even if for not very long. So I thought at least I would give him a semi-final resting place.

I had bought some fish some time ago to try to tempt the turtles' appetites, but when they showed total lack of interest, I had frozen the fish (probably a month's supply of food for them at least) in a good plastic container I had. So I put Yojo on the bed of frozen fish and on top of him I put a yellow origami table I had folded, because it reminds me of the many turtle sculptures around here, turtle a tall tower on its back, turtle holding up the world. Then I filled the rest of the container with some strips of newspaper, and wrote an epitaph for him. You may think I am silly, but I was really quite sad. I folded up the epitaph and put it in the container, and that was the end of Yojo's funeral.

Of course I don't believe in the immortality of the soul, much less of the turtle soul, or that grave-goods serve any purpose whatsoever as far as the deceased is concerned! But somehow it is comforting to send something along with them when you bid them goodbye. It makes it easier to understand the extravagant funerals of Chinese antiquity, which I studied in archaeology class, though they went so far as to sacrifice people as grave-goods, which is pretty awful any way you look at it. I mean great works of art are one thing but...

The rest of the day, I hasten to assure you, was pretty ordinary. I got up very early to go to the class at a neighboring university, which had been recommended to me. I didn't have the text, because I wasn't quite sure which part of the massive ten volume history the professor would be discussion. Even so I was able to follow along well enough. He used Powerpoint, which was both a blessing and a curse! On the upside, I didn't have any trouble reading it, as I do with people's handwriting. On the downside, there was so much information, I had no way of copying it all before he changed the slide, let alone understanding it. All the more reason to practice writing faster!

It was interesting being on a different university campus. I had been anxious about finding the right building, but I had been able to locate a map on the internet, and took a picture of it, then brought my camera and was able to navigate by zooming into the digital image of the photo. Cool huh? The woman who had recommended the class, WW, was also there, and sat with me, and generally took care of me in that cute way that Chinese classmates do. After class, she chattered to me for about half an hour, all about the many different classes she goes to at all the universities in the area. She is what we would call a non-traditional student--is considering getting her PhD in what I would estimate to be late middle-age. She is someone who knows how to get her way, that's for sure, and has no hesitation to express her opinions. An interesting person to have as an acquaintance.

I didn't do much of anything until evening, when I went out for the inaugural meeting of our Beijing "dissertation support group." It devolved into dinner for four at a Thai restaurant, and not much talk about dissertations but one or two organizational comments. As usual lately when meeting Westerners, I felt like I said too much and afterwards felt strangely drained and wasteful. It's not that they weren't interesting people--they were--just that I had a weirdly strong feeling that I wasn't spending my time in the right way. This is not what I'm here for, is the thought that kept popping into my head.

It didn't help that I live much farther away than everyone else, meaning my commute time is at least half an hour longer, perhaps as long as two hours depending on where we meet. But I will try to stick with it for a while. It might come in useful. In fact, it did come in useful in an oddly unrelated matter, which was that they explained to me how the public transportation "swiping card" works. Like everything here, it's a declining balance card, but can be used on buses and subways both, even at a discount on some buses. And no more need to buy tickets since all you need to do is swipe it over the appropriate panel, just like a Chicago Card. Pretty cool!

Well, we'll see how this group goes and whether it will prove worthwhile. I know I should at least give it a try.