"River Town" [.]

[fiefoe]

<Historical Materialism through Hessler's eyes:>

• (Crossing of Dadu:) The situation appeared hopeless. Thirty Red soldiers volunteered. Under machine-gun fire they crawled across the bridge, hand over hand, iron link by iron link, and against all odds they succeeded in capturing the enemy gun nests.
• Stalin's first Five-Year Plan couldn't compare-and according to some estimates, the Third Line did more damage to China's economy than the Cultural Revolution.
• The development of central Sichuan province was originally sparked by the construction of Dujiangyan, a brilliantly designed irrigation project that was constructed twenty-three centuries ago and even today still functions perfectly, turning the Chengdu Basin into one of the most fertile rice-growing regions in the country.
  
• "Xitel-Hitler! Very good!" Out of curiosity I often asked the Chinese about him, and many people said the same thing - that he had made some mistakes, but he had been a great leader who did some fine things for his country.
  
• ... simultaneously they had a deep respect for the Jewish people. Jews were the next best thing to the Chinese - they were an extremely intelligent race.
• I felt so strongly that there are two types of history, nature's and man's, and that one is a creature of cycles while the other, with mixed results, aims always at straightness - progress, development, control. And I sensed that on the Yangtze it was a particularly dangerous violation to force these together...
  
• Everything I had learned about the Chinese suggested that they would be particularly bad colonists. They tended to have strong ideas about race, they rarely respected religion, and they had trouble considering a non-Chinese point of view.
• Most famously, Jiang Qing pointed out that (Michelangelo Antonioni's) shot of the Nanjing Bridge included a workers' laundry line in the foreground.
• Most of the people (in Xiangjiang) followed a more practical schedule, based on a mythical local time zone that was two hours later than the one in Beijing, but all of the government offices and state-run transportation followed the official standard time.
  
• In turn I found myself developing strong feelings about (Mao, Zhou & Deng). It was like living in a new land and coming to grips with the gods they worshiped there.
  
• In Chinese, the Korean War is known as the "War of Resistance Against the Americans and in Support of the Koreans," and it is difficult to discuss a war with that name and make the Americans look good. And the Chinese use personal pronouns when they speak of national affairs - it's "our China" and "your America." I found this to be a small but critical quirk in the language;
  

__ After the beginning of a race there is always that moment of disengagement, when the euphoria of being a part of something massive is over and you realize that you are alone, and that you have your own race to run.

__ "Qing Dynasty," the people always say knowingly. They realize it's a safe guess-the Qing ruled for nearly three centuries, from 1644 to 1911. Paradise Lost is Qing Dynasty..., and the most recent Chicago Cubs World Championship is Qing Dynasty.. Often what they seem to mean is: It's very old, but not as old as many other things.

__ "Introibo ad altare Dei, " responded the priest. "I will go in to the altar of God." <> "Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam, " my father said. "To God, Who giveth joy to my youth."

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