Turnkey questions

People love asking questions. Can you make a question a statement? That’s a fine question.

The Turnkey people find it amusing and perhaps vaguely interesting when I tell them the first question a Chinese persona asks you.

“Have you eaten yet?”

“Why do they ask this,” wondered a mechanical engineer.

“Millions of Chinese starved during various dynasties. Many perished for lack of food during Chairman Mao’s attempts to industrialize the country. He said, 'Let them eat grass,' so they ate grass.”

It’s an old song and dance, this question, this opening move in life’s chess game of experiences people get to play.

Most people here only know about China through the media. Discovery this, discovery that.

One thing Turnkey and Chinaware share is a poor, shall we say, inadequate education system. People here in the Kingdom of thirteen civilizations are not afraid to say it. They say it straight.

“Our education system is poor.”
“Can you explain?” asked a visitor from somewhere else, from out near the eastern border where nomads grazed nocturnal beasts under a full moon inside a lunar eclipse.

The moon is red because the sky is blue.

“I can try. To begin with, it’s top heavy. Too many adminstratlords grazing their flocks of paper. They love paper. Perhaps it’s the same in Chinaware.”

“Most definitely. Writing and paper was invented in my country. Ink and brush and paper; thin, strong yet pliable silk. Have you ever tried writing on silk? It’s amazing because the ink blends in and soaks through. If your turn it over you can read characters backwards. Did you know, perhaps it’s the same story with some minor modifications, how in Chinaware every single citizen has a file?”

“Really, a file?”

“Yes, a file containing every single bit of data, every fragment of their life from birth to the present day or Now. Files on every single solitary family member; their place and residence of birth; location of their hovel complete with straw mattress bedding, iron wok, dilapidated radio, rusty bedpan which is carried outside every morning and dumped in the hutong community sewer where it attracts flies; their school records (if they are lucky enough to attend school which is usually the case in the cities, but not the extreme interior or far western lands where children work in fields and never see a classroom); their WORK unit factory, area schools and local hospitals.

“You see,” they continued, “the state government has always needed to control it’s citizens for various reasons like fear, power and propaganda and so, hundreds and thousands of years ago, a powerful solitary eunuch in the Forbidden City came up with this idea about registering every citizen.

“They ran it past the Emperor’s advisors who chopped a piece of paper with their official seal to indicate approval. It was a blood red chop engraved with a character indicating their name and position. The chopped document passed through the channels until it reached Mr. BIG.

“Wow, I imagine some have very large files.”

“You better believe it. In fact I met a Chinese teacher at a private business university and asked her about the possibility of her finding another teaching job.”

“You must be joking!” she exclaimed, or explained with pain inside her heart.

“My heart is heavy,” she sighed. “They require or force us to sign a five-year contract. Then after one year, they give us another five-year contract to sign.”

“What happens if you decide not to sign another contract and tell them you are happy to finish the original one?”

“Are you kidding me? They will make my life miserable for the next four years. They will tighten the screws. The old man behind the big brown desk will solemnly nod and say, ‘You’d better think this over very carefully.’”

“In other words, when you open your mouth and express your personal desire he will issue you a subtle threat, a warning?”

“Of course he will. He realizes I am capable of changing my mind, of making a decision, a free choice. ‘Unheard of! he will think. This one is dangerous. She can poison others with her radical counter-revolutionary ideas. She is a threat to social order and a harmonious society.’”

“It sounds like a bad dream.”

“More like a recurring nightmare,” she said, “if you want to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me Mao.”

“How now Mao?”

The Three Baboons

Then, one day he saw three baboons. They were part of a tribe living in his neighborhood. This is how it happened around dawn.

A blond corn-plaited hairy one stuck her head out of a 5th story window and spit. She watched the spittle fly past trees and SPLAT! on the pavement.

She looked around and they saw each other. She smiled. Her upper teeth were small and sharp. She started jabbering in her strange language. Her sounds, her words were questions. She wanted to know something.

Here is a rough translation.
“Where do you come from?”
“Are you alone?”

"Do you have money?"
“Do you want sex?”
She made many sounds but that’s the essence. Baboon language is simple and direct.

He just stared at her and smiled. She smiled. They smiled at each other.

She disappeared. A moment later she returned with two friends. One had dark hair, very hard eyes and big floppy breasts. She shook them side to side while speaking to him.

“Look at these watermelons,” she said.
They were heavy fruit.

Another baboon joined them. She was blond with sapphire eyes and straight hair with short spiked bangs. Her oval face smiled and she stuck out her tongue. A shiny silver post glistened from the middle. Laughing like a child, she rolled her tongue around, up and out like a little snake. Every now and then a snake needs to find a cave.  

She appeared to be the most playful one in the group.

All three stared at him and jabbered again, making suggestions and questions with their inarticulate yet clearly understood sounds.

“Where are you from?”
Blah, blah, blah.
“How old are you?”
"Do you have money?"
“Do you want sex?”

The plaited hair one got halfway out on the narrow balcony and crouched down, opening her legs. She started riding an imaginary wild mustang. Her eyes and face assumed a state of ecstasy.

The one with hard eyes started gesturing with her hand, massaging empty space. He stared at this spectacle and smiled.

They laughed. The power of suggestion.

The silver posted one kept smiling and flicking her tongue in and out, like breathing.

They were full of energy and wanted some action. Such amazing, funny and strange wild baboons!
 

A Phone

Greetings,

His first two weeks in Anatolia involved settling in; the flat, city and teaching orientation.

“A” helped him buy a DNA cell phone. “G” said it was essential. He’d never had one. It was a red Nokia E65 gadget with all kinds of buttons and functions; like calendars, tools, SMS, IM, Teams, Bluetooth, internet access, GPS and To Do, Did, and Does. Connections.

This “Instant, Everywhere You Are, Or Imagine You Are or Need To Be,” dimensional proportion suited his status acquiring mobility extreme.

One morning he and "A" took a taxi to an nursery area below a castle. They found white, red and purple roses, cactus, ten small plants, containers, and potting soil.

For teaching he bought three pairs of lightweight linen pants in brown, beige and black; five long sleeved button-downed cotton shirts in various motifs, two ties - one turquoise and one dark blue - and three pairs of very, very thin black socks. He bought an iron and ironing board for the linen and cotton fabric because he loves ironing words.

Then he knotted a tie to his red phone and dragged it through Ankara yelling, “Look! See! I’m connected to the Universe! I am now a VIP! I have Infinite Diversity Through Infinite Combinations.”

Everyone looked up from the ground with serious expressions after studying pavement (cracked and broken in places like China which gave him a sense of remembering) or their minute delicate phones cradled like infants in sleep mode and congratulated him with lilies, orchids, assorted floral arrangements and so forth.

New friends took him to a seafood restaurant. Seafood is plentiful and delicious in Ankara. Waiters in clean shirts with black ties guided them to an outdoor table covered with a white tablecloth, multiple sets of silver cutlery, water glasses and folded napkins.

A waiter brought them mineral water in a glass goblet with a thin stem. A slice of lemon floated on bubbles. He also deposited a bowl filled with green, red, and black olives lightly dusted with a mixture of chilli powder, oil and vinegar.

Everyone enjoyed a fresh green salad with tomatoes, carrots, beets, parsley, mint leaves, corn, and red lettuce in a pistachio sauce along with hot fresh brown bread with butter. The main course was braised salmon, a lightly flame seared potato and tomato, and green pepper. Thick Turkish coffee finished the meal. Grounds coated his throat.

Friendly strangers, including beautiful women with very deep dark seductive eyes flashing love's lost and found, escorted him to a crowded local cafe where they taught him the traditional game of backgammon while sharing fruit-flavored hubbly-bubbly tobacco pipes well past his bedtime, regaling him with fantastic stories about their lives and environmental survival strategies.

They had an Encounter.

Peace.

Salad days

Greetıngs,

The Turkısh keyboard takes a bit of gettıng used to because the small "i" is really a vertical line. Internet access is sporadic - no recent podcasts for the moment - as I dance around eating salad, cheese, fresh bread, salmon, olives and assorted Middle Eastern delights all washed down wıth sparkling mineral water (soda)...settling into the ebb and flow of the place, people, attitudes and all the variables.

"Where are all people?" I yelled at the top of my pitiful voice rasping fragments of sky standing along the street filled wıth emptiness. Well, for starters, there were business people knotted with ties, hiding behind shades, stern faced women dragging kids around for the summer in the heavy direct heat and flamıng red haired - nose pierced gothic counter intuitive punk rockers hanging out on corners, but, like you know, where are all the coagulating, broiling, endless MASSES...?

Peace. 

Anatolia

Once upon a time there was this traveler and he left China after three years. He’d taught English in Sichuan and Fujian. He loved writing, travel and teaching.

It was Time to leave because he’d completed all the work there he was supposed to do. He was ready to move on. He needed to make love along life’s road and give birth to new inspirations. Simple, immediate and direct.

Before leaving the Middle Kingdom he had a “going away - give it all away” party. He gifted 30 books and 40 DVDs to his English major students at a university in Fujian.

“Don Quixote, The Garden of Secrets, If On A Winter’s Night a Traveller, The Poetics of Space, Journey to The Center of the Night, Nomad, The Stream of Life, The Book of Imaginary Beings,” among others listed on his Amazon book list. He knew the students would enjoy and share world literature.

He gifted 20 plants to Chinese teachers whose destiny was established long ago. Plants he had nurtured through wind, rain, sun and lightning flashes along eastern green mountains before, during and after sunrise.

After putting 2,650 miles on a Warrior bike he sold it to a tall business teacher from Holland where the land is flat and filled with windmills and tulips. The teacher would return to China after a summer holiday and needed it for his Chinese girlfriend. Spin them wheels.

Then, the traveller went to Xiamen and got on a plane to Hong Kong. He wandered around the huge gleaming airport looking at stuff and absorbing new dialects.

In a dream about flying to Istanbul he looked out a narrow plastic window and saw a brilliant severed slice of orange and red sun inside blue and white clouds on a horizon.

He closed his eyes and dreamed he landed in Ankara where he would live, teach and explore.

A woman named G met him at the airport. Blond, positive, 40’s and from Australia. While they zoomed into the hilly capital on a brilliant sunny Mediterranean day past red tiled roofed stacked apartments and brown block styled buildings from 1930 he regained his sense of perspective in a new land as she regaled him with information. He heard it all and forgot most of it because he was tired from all the dreaming.

She took him to a fine 5th floor apartment where he met a young part-time female teacher, an artist from Capetown, South Africa, named A, who'd return home in August with her husband, a film maker.

The flat had a fine balcony displaying the sky, clouds, western hills, amazing sunsets and bird shadowed wings. Blue jays, sparrows, pigeons, starlings.

The space received red, white and pink roses and delicious plants to give it color and life.

Peace.