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Semester is over but the job’s not done…I’ll be heading off for a one-week trek to the northern reaches of Inner Mongolia (Manzhouli, Hulunbeier) to hang with the Evenki people and possibly get trampled by reindeer. Should the latter not come to pass, then I’ll be back in Beijing next week. The program I teach for in Beijing had their ‘graduation ceremony’ last night, followed by the usual hijinks of ‘China Night.’ Most of the highlights involved inside jokes so I won’t bore you with them here except to say that if my performance in the program-specific parody of “American Pie” winds up on YouTube, I’m hunting people down… The best part of the evening though, was an extremely kind and gracious James Fallows, who despite an insanely hectic schedule agreed to come and speak to our graduates. It was touch-and-go for awhile when — how’s this for karma? — despite a map and address the taxi driver took him to the wrong school. But he made it on time, and proceeded to give a delightful speech combining insights and inspiration and even throwing in a few good old fashioned commencement-style nuggets as a nod to the occasion. Afterward, he joined our teachers and students on the patio for some refreshments. Jim was so generous with his time, and the students, many of whom had read his articles over the semester, really enjoyed meeting him. He was a class act in every sense of the word, as well as an all-around Just read an interesting — if grisly — article in Der Speigel on torture in the ancient world (“The Worst Ways to Die“). It’s a catalog of all the various punishments and execution methods from the usual suspects: Romans, Assyrians, and the like. For example, the Assyrian kings used a technique known as ‘staking.’ “Staking involved the executioner hammering a stake through the victim’s lubricated anus. The goal was to place the rounded, wooden stake so carefully that it only just pushed the internal organs aside. Many victims lived for days skewered like this.” Yikes. But the real winners are the Persians. I don’t know what it is, but the Persians…they got creative. Seriously. They make the “Saw” movies seem like “Bedtime with Elmo.” “And the punishment of “sitting in the tub” saw the convicted person placed in a wooden tub with only their head sticking out. The executioner would then paint the victim’s face with milk and honey. Flies would begin to swarm around the victim’s nose and eyelids. The victim was also fed regularly and fairly soon, they would virtually be swimming in their own excrement. At which stage maggots and worms would devour their body. One victim First Elizabeth Edwards, now Ζhao Ζiyang…if you really want to screw over the people who wronged you, there’s nothing better than a tell-all book. Prisoner of the State, The memoirs of Ζhao Ζiyang, the result of hours of taped conversations smuggled out of China (excerpts online here), will be published this summer…just in time for June 4th. Possible embarrassing sections: “So this one time, Hu Yaobang, Deng, and I are kicking it Gangster style in NYC, and Hu is blowing coke off of this hooker’s ass, and this other girl comes up, this smoking hot black chick, and Deng says, black ass, white ass, so long as she’s smoking hot, who the f–k cares?” “When Wen Jiabao came to me for a position on my staff, he offered me sex.” “Deng Xiaoping wore lifts. Really. He’s like the unmentionable offspring of Verne Troyer and Frodo. Dude makes Tom Cruise look like Yao Ming.” “I banged Chai Ling.” “When Deng found out that we had invited the students into the Great Hall of the People, he lurched from his bed, screaming ‘This is NOT what I WANTED!’ So Deng goes to the Golden Globes later that year, posing as Jackie |
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Copyright © 2012 Jottings from the Granite Studio - All Rights Reserved
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