Wudang Garage Sale Update – The Result

Self Portrait

Self portrait in my Salvation Army garb on break from my bell ringing duties.

[This post has been edited about 32 times in the past two months. ]

“Thank you for being here.” I kept being told.  It touched me. It was quite a trek to arrive in front of Oleson’s East grocery store in East Bay Township of Traverse City. That grocery store is across the street from the Township Hall where I was Supervisor for twelve years (80-92). We built that new hall and put a district library branch in the old one in the late 80s.  So it was like a big 30 year circle, participating as an elected official, then getting into private business, going to China ten years later, politics to real estate, then technology, then teaching in China, back and forth to the USA. I made up my mind to live in China, a semi-retired condition, blogging and tutoring the kids . It was a little later the pandemic hit, and I got kicked out of China. I also lost the room I had been renting for ten years due to pandemic fears. I came close to homeless 3 days before arrival “home”. I ended up staying in a vacant office, landing on the 24th of October. I am safe for now. Honestly, is anybody totally safe in the pandemic? I have been ringing the Salvation Army bell, raising money for them and myself ($10/hr.) at the same time.

More details of my experience with the COVID and China can be found at:
China COVID Memories

It was Tuesday, October 27 and I was newly back in the USA. China had ejected me abruptly and the hasty garage sale was over (see Garage Sale) It was almost a complete loss to me. Literally thousands of RMB (Chinese Dollars) were left in Guiyang in the apartment that I abandoned.  The “garage sale” wasn’t successful.  In fact, Guiyang People are still very cautious about moving around the city. Mainly, they don’t like to travel, but also they are afraid of getting out in public during a virus period. Even though Guizhou Province hasn’t recorded a locally transmitted virus since late March, everybody is still on their guard. People just don’t want to mix with strangers. Statistics, flawed as they may be, still indicate that COVID 19 is a threat to China, despite it’s success in containment.

I found the culture in my home town (Traverse City, MI)  to be very weird. It is almost as if people have given up. Just in the last six weeks, more masks have appeared. People seem to appreciate the danger more now, but still too many people take too many risks. Perhaps they are just resigned to the danger and just hope they survive. There was too much bad information early in the pandemic. An established culture is hard to change. Perhaps the Trump plan could still work out in the next four weeks, but I think we need a change in culture.

It seems such a shame because the mask is so easy to wear. I understand that rather than being scared all the time, some Americans have the attitude almost like “I can handle this and I’ll take my chances.”  Our Governor closed restaurants and bars, but kept the gyms open. Yesterday morning I went to a health club. Since most customers are young, they do not seem to worry (except maybe me).  I may be a bit foolish, but I kept the mask on, went early, and tried to maintain social distancing. . The pandemic was accelerating as of 11/17/2020. The restaurants and bars were closed. You could eat outdoors, but it was freezing most of the day. J&S Hamburger opened a tent and I was able to get my first real hamburger since being back in the States. In the tent it was breezy. I felt that between the wind and my Chinese N95 type mask, I felt relatively safe.

In Guiyang I moved around the city during a peak infection, but kept my sense and awareness. I didn’t catch anything. Here in the USA I study this culture and feel that promoting the discussion virus seems important. I try to see how this has gotten so out of hand. From what I have seen, it looks like the tourists and young people are driving this pandemic at this point. The tourists have pandemic fatigue, and this Trump led anti-mask culture has been major. Hopefully Biden messaging can help reverse this cultural direction.  Trump seems so foolish to me, but people still seem to follow him . . . especially the Republicans.

My Russian friend describes something similar us in Russia.  Mask rules are all around, but many are exposing the nose, maybe obeying the rules, but really missing the point of filtering the air.  It is an obstinance of not obeying the government because you don’t trust them. Perhaps you don’t like them. I suspect that a very significant part of this outbreak is driven by mistrust of the government and people disobeying even the simplest rules . . . just because they disagree. Maybe this applies to Russia and the USA.

Culture is so important. In China there was a very pro-government tone to everything. It was China against the evil virus.  Culture is very different in the USA. I was wearing my USA Flag T-shirt and an open jacket in the grocery store and the check-out lady went off on me. She talked about about how great Trump was and how patriotic we should all be.  So I didn’t pick up on it, but Trump doesn’t wear a mask most of the time. I think  that much of the potential of universal mask wearing is lost because it isn’t considered patriotic. So there are billions of virus particles circulating from those that refuse to wear masks. As the Chinese say, one small mouse turd can ruin the soup. (kind of like one rotten apple). If one person doesn’t wear a mask and he happens to be a super spreader, that is the result.

A simple example of how culture influences other people hit me in late February in Guiyang. I was shopping for veggies in the local market and I picked up a tomato to put it in the plastic bag. Now I had been wearing a mask religiously for almost a month. I couldn’t get the plastic bag open because my fingers were too dry. I looked both ways and then pulled my mask down. I then  touched my finger to my tongue. Then I could open the bag easily, but I immediately thought, “Oh my God! Am I gonna die now?”  I had contaminated my tongue. Everybody was saying “Wear the mask. Wear the mask. Wear the mask.” It is the peer group pressure and the culture of the place that was the bigger factor, not the logic of trying to avoid the virus. I looked around and when nobody was looking, When I thought the peer group wasn’t looking, I did the unthinkable. The power of the peer group (when it wasn’t watching) was more powerful than the simple logic of wanting to stay alive. The Republican peer group pressure has indeed been powerful in the USA,  overwhelming the logic of protecting each other with by wearing masks.

In my opinion, we need to change the culture in the USA. It isn’t about government leaders or policies so much as generating a positive culture. We all have the ability to change our culture every day. Don’t put that on the “politicians”. So perhaps the key to survival is a positive relationship, teamwork if you will, between each other and with our respective governments. Just be nice and supportive and it will change a culture. We all have that power, whether Chinese or American, or the world for that matter.

###### 12//20/2020
[ THE PRIOR PARAGRAPHS WERE LARGELY WRITTEN IN THE SIX WEEKS AFTER OCTOBER 29, 2020 ]

So that was the post from a month ago. As of today, the Sunday before Christmas, not so much has changed.  The “third wave” is real and more people believe it now. I am bell ringing for the Salvation Army now.  I just learned that my good college friend (70 year old Ken) has COVID. After two weeks of almost constant pain and bed time, he seems to have turned the corner. Hopefully his “after virus” ailments will be minimal.

It seems impossible to get into a discussion with an American about the election and the two political parties.  Somebody almost always interrupts you or disagrees with you, often in a hostile way and sometimes aggressively. Most people simply tune out after 30 seconds and say “I don’t want to talk about this”.  It just proves to me how successfully foreign governments and malice domestic have taken their toll on the American Spirit. It seems certain to me that when you have the country divided into roughly thirds: Dem, Rep, and Indy, that nothing good can happen. Democracy depends on consensus of representatives to secure legislation and respect for the executive authority in administration of the law. This process of government has been in force for well over 200 years in the USA, and it is enforced by  the authority of our court system. I see a much different culture (in both parties) today. In several respects the people in the two major political parties are almost identical. . .

THEY expect you to agree with THEM on all points or you are against THEM.
THEY are so sick of this subject THEY don’t want to discuss it.
THEY all agree it is somebody else’s responsibility for the troubles.
THEY don’t see the necessity of any change in their own behavior or attitudes.
THEY think somebody could get us back to “normal” if they just did the right thing.
THEY don’t see our future as dependent on a successful political system (POLITICS).
THEY don’t value good deeds or behavior in themselves but expect both from others.

So in answer to the friends that are worried about how I am doing, I can offer you the following: I have a little part time work as a Salvation Army Bell Ringer; have temporary housing; I wear a mask whenever I am near people; and I am probably OK. I seem to be suffering from some kind of reverse culture shock. It is either that, or I landed in some weird parallel universe and I haven’t found  the portal door (rabbit hole) that I came through to get here. . .

I often  think about my life in China and how much I enjoyed the people, scenery and the rich experiences.  Of course I don’t want to stay where I am not wanted and even though I have four years left on my ten year visa, I was required to leave China.  As an American I wasn’t allowed to cross the border anymore. This happened not long after Chinese students and many Chinese Nationals, with visas, were told they were no longer welcome in the USA. Perhaps there is a connection. I don’t blame them. I have been working with Chinese, for close to thirty years and have no ill feelings toward them or their culture. I have learned a lot. So I thought that living in China for fifteen years and working with their students and their projects might protect me a bit from the ill will that was building between China and the USA. For many years the two governments believed that working together was the key to prosperity for both countries. I helped the Oakland University China initiatives from the nineties onward. I visited China as a volunteer teacher in 2000. Oakland University’s Summer Institute has existed for 30 years and over that time they have probably trained 3000 middle school teachers in English. I crossed the Chinese border a good fifty times over the ensuing 20 years. These contacts share culture, friendship, and promote peace.  I published a blog about some of those experiences at www.tourguizhou.com. I hope the respective governments can find a way to work together in the future. What is happening now isn’t particularly helpful in my opinion.

It all starts and ends through the governments and I hope our leaders will be wise enough to restore conditions for sharing culture, working, and playing together in the future. If we learn to work and play together, sharing culture along the way, maybe we won’t have to fight each other like so many other countries with ambitious leadership.

When Nixon and Mao met to set up this cooperation, it was reported that Nixon said to Mao that “Our countries aren’t getting along right now”.  Mao was reported to have replied, “No. You and I aren’t getting along and our people are suffering.” I am starting a blog called “www.jaxteaparty.org” and I plan to work on this ambitious government problem in the USA. Maybe people and donors will come forward to help. My friends aren’t optimistic. I am a bit pumped up by the people who came up to me to put money in my SA Kettle. A lot of people said the same thing that one of my first donors said . . . “Thank you for being here.” Frankly, at nearly 70 years old, I am happy to be anywhere right now.

I had other options rather than coming back to the USA. Many people have asked me why I didn’t just go to a tropical climate to kick back, where COVID is controlled, —  the small tropical islands, or someplace in Southern Asia. No matter where you live, you consume the world’s resources. This is an important time in the USA. I had to come back. I am just not ready to stop contributing and not be productive. I like writing and teaching.

Why Teaching? Because its fun.

Practice Your English!

The 500

I’m afraid that my teaching days are over. We have a real bad problem in this world. Because I am deemed old, my work isn’t valued. Perhaps all that is left of my teaching is some writing. There are a lot of us old people that have a lot to give, and this resource is being wasted.

If you want these kinds of resources to be penned by me, you can support that effort through a donation to support this blog or the future.

 All help is appreciated during this difficult period:
Support this Blog

That Pesky Virus . . . Covid update 20200621

I recently had a Covid test, just being safe.  There was no line at the Medical College Hospital.  It took about five minutes. The results were available within 24 hours and  the total cost was less than 14 US dollars. The results are below:
It is troubling that in the USA I have heard of prices from $300 to $500 for tests that are not as efficient. I have heard of insurances that have  charged the US goverment  $2000 and more for such tests. Note that  there are two “genes” tested for which helps avoid false positives or false negatives.  Apparently both genes are present in the case of a positive Covid-19 test.  Because China is taking the virus seriously, and has scaled up both training and equipment,  there costs are significantly lower than in the USA.    As reported below, there has been a recent outbreak in Beijing, associated with one of Asia’s largest food markets.  I have confirmed from a Shanghai friend that Shanghai life is still relatively “normal” as is Guiyang.

In China there is a newsletter for foreign teachers, and here is their recent coverage on Beijing’s status. Taken from a Wechat Blog . . .

Beijing conducts mass testing
TheWaijiao 5 days ago

Beijing tightened measures to cope with the new cluster of local COVID-19 infections as the number of confirmed cases in the city rose to 79 from Thursday to Sunday and up to 100,000 social workers joined communities’ epidemic control work.

The capital reported 36 new patients with COVID-19 on Sunday, the majority of whom worked at or had been to Xinfadi wholesale market in Beijing’s southern Fengtai district. In addition to the confirmed cases, another seven are asymptomatic infections under medical observation.

Xu Hejian, a spokesman for the municipal government, said this outbreak is closely related to the Xinfadi market, and the government will employ the strictest investigation to find the source of the infection and curb the spread of the virus.

Nearly 8,000 people who run businesses or make purchases in Xinfadi had received nucleic acid tests by Sunday and have been transferred to isolation locations for centralized medical observation.

Up to 90,000 residents living in 21 communities near Xinfadi and Yuquandong-another market whose operations have been suspended due to the new COVID-19 infections in the capital-are receiving nucleic acid tests. All those communities are closed and under strict management.

Around 200,000 people had been to Xinfadi since May 30 based on a citywide data collection campaign. Those people will get nucleic acid tests and, meanwhile, must stay at home for self-observation.

“By 2 pm on Sunday, we had completed nucleic acid testing for 29,386 people who had visited the Xinfadi market in the past 14 days,” said Gao Xiaojun, a spokesman for the Beijing Health Commission. “Out of all the samples, 12,973 came negative and the rest are awaiting results.”

“Beijing will raise the prevention level of all communities by resuming temperature checks before entering and disinfection of public areas,” said Xu Ying, an official at the city’s antivirus leading work group. “Places for cultural events and entertainment will suspend operations,” Xu added.

He said that on Monday, nearly 100,000 social workers were mobilized in 7,120 communities and villages in Beijing to help fight COVID-19.

Won’t Eat Snakes and Bats

Considering all the Covid hoopla over the eating of snakes and bats, I have decided to ban snakes and bats from my diet, effective immediately. I think the evidence is pretty compelling that eating snakes and bats are bad for you  I have compiled all the  Covid information that I have posted to www.tourguizhou.com into one link:

Snakes and Bats 

This page has some poignant photos, commentary, links to a chronology of stories, and at the bottom there are a couple links to  videos related to the Covid situation.

Covid Update 20200512 — Not Gone, and Memories Remain.

Is that Covid Thingy Gone Yet?

These two friends know something is very wrong, and they have to watch out. Like the rest of us, they have no idea exactly what it is, if it is near, or exactly what they have to watch out for. One thing we know for sure is that we’ve got to keep our eyes open and watch out!

Here are the three iconic pictures on my hard drive that I remember when I think about my time here in China during the Covid-19 Lockdown:

This photo was taken on March 1, about one month into the lockdown. We were permitted to leave our housing developments once every other day to get groceries and supplies.  Only one person from a household was permitted to go out. We actually checked in and checked out with the security people at the main gate of our housing development.

This stairway is deserted.  It is part of the BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) system. There is a ring road (“Middle Ring Road”) circling the city. The express bus system has stations built in the median of the expressway, every three or four minutes in your bus trip. When you get off the bus, you go down the stairway, and then go through a pedestrian tunnel under the expressway to go to your destination.  This is a little used stairway, even in normal times, but the shopping center it serves was closed. It was nearly total privacy. I happened to go down the stairs because it was near my home and I had gone shopping on the opposite side of the city at the Metro grocery store (the biggest in town). I wanted to get around to the front of the couple to get a better angle, but I really felt self conscious about interrupting their privacy.

I imagine that I know the back story on these two lovers. Of course they are lovers. They are single people, living with their parents. They colluded with each other to leave their homes to go get groceries (there was no limit on how long you were permitted to go out). They met each other in the most deserted place they could think of, the BRT station stairway to the tunnel near a closed shopping center. Note that they respect each other’s health by leaving their masks on as they sit with locked arms, talking to each other.

This picture was taken February 15, a little over two weeks into the lockdown. Obviously it is in an elevator and you can see that there is plastic over the buttons. What about the Styrofoam and toothpicks? I didn’t get it either for a couple days until I got on the elevator and somebody grabbed a toothpick and pushed the elevator button.  The plastic just wasn’t safe enough. You were deemed safer if you pushed the button with a toothpick.  There was a paper cup, off camera, that you put the toothpick in after using it. We all read about a whole apartment building in Hong Kong that was contaminated by one sick person using the elevator buttons. Elevators feel pretty safe. For a few weeks the elevators seemed to always have fresh bleach on the floor. Not so much anymore.

This picture was taken March 27, almost eight weeks after lockdown. The leader of the police in my district (Poly Hot Springs) came by to check on me. He brought some extra masks. Eight weeks prior I had no masks and didn’t know where to find them. I called the Police and within an hour, Officer Wang brought me a mask.  This time he brought a couple of his assistants. I’m not sure why it took three police officers. Maybe if I was hard to handle he had some extra help. Anyway, I appreciated the attention. These police seemed a little more friendly than the ones I remember in the USA. By the way, the blury hand was that when I snapped the photo he was in the middle of a salute.

Actually, the fact that we exchanged photos came in quite handy a few days later when I got stopped at a checkpoint. I went into a residential area where I wasn’t on the listed of permitted persons. I was visiting my old apartment, which is now just used for storage. In the course of the investigation they called Officer Wang and the picture he took was delivered to the checkpoint by cell phone and it turned out to be very handy in identifying me.

This was taken on March 11 when I decided that I didn’t trust the masks that I had. It seems as if the air comes in and out beside the nose, and some of it doesn’t filter through the cloth.  Certainly if a mask takes care of 90 percent of the risk, it is better than nothing, but with some thought, I figured I could do better. I have sleep apnea, and at night I breath through a pressurized mask, with a tight seal around the nose. I cut up an old mask and tube and fabricated the mask and put it over the cloth mask. Now that really felt safe.  A pair of wrap around sun glasses prevented me from touching my eyes accidently (eyes are an entry point for virus) and I was good to go. Of course I looked odd, but as a foreigner, people stare at me anyway.

Except for the required masks on public transportation and in public stores, everything seems normal. Taxis and public transit requires a cell phone scan for access. That seems reasonable for contact tracing purposes. Restaurants are mask free after you sit down, but the schools are still not open. We hear that this should happen by the end of May.  The schools are a big deal because child care with working parents is a pervasive problem.
Finally, I got a photo from an English friend that is circulating in Britain, and I don’t know where else . . .

Recently I had pizza with an international group talking about Covid,
Dinner and Covid (Youtube)
http://Dinner and Covid (Youku)

 China and America are symbols
of Communism and Capitalism, sort of?
Communism!

The following links have something to do with Covid:

January Personal Impressions  20200131
Good News  20200226
Late February Update 20200226
March 29 Update  20200326
 Seventy Percent   20200410
Development of a Pandemic 20200413
Lockdown Over  20200428
Not Gone and Memories Remain  20200512
Just a Little Earthquake 20200604
That Pesky Virus 20200621