The Moon Sees Me

Today is Moon Festival for much of Asia including China as well as for many folks of Chinese heritage all over the world.

I see from my Facebook that my fellow Families with Children From China are all doing some sort of Moony things; eating mooncakes, going out for moon-viewing, all the good stuff. Even Pobaby gets into the moon in mid-autumn.

Well, we might go look at the moon, providing the clouds hold off. But we ain't eating no goddamn mooncakes until someone comes up with one that tastes like something other than raw bean curd dough. Bleh.

My favorite Moon Festival story took place when we were in Guangzhou in process of adopting Missy. I told it six years ago but it's worth repeating.

On one of our many, many trips downtown Guangzhou to see our pals at the police station we got to talking with our agency guide, the sharp young woman who was Rob the Yob's stand-in.

"So, what's the deal with Moon Festival?" we asked her. "Oh, it's a big family holiday, all families get together and have a big meal and party." she explained. Mojo and I looked at each other.

"Lemme ask you something...are you married?" She admitted that she wasn't.

"When you go home for Moon Festival, do your mom and grandma give you a hard time about not having a man, getting too old, and not giving them grandkids?" Yep, she said, all the time.

"Does your Dad and your uncles drink too much, argue and watch sports on TV?" She said that they usually did.

"Do the kids make noise, raise hell and throw food, and does one of the auntie's kids throw a huge tantrum and/or get sick?" She agreed that was what usually happened.

"And do all the grown-up kids hang out in the back yard, smoking, and complain about having to travel to do this every year?" She just smiled and nodded. Mojo and I smiled back, looked at each other and laughingly explained that we had the exact same holiday in America only in late autumn and instead of the moon we used a made-up story about our native tribes and a bunch of white religious nuts who turned up in a boat, took the land, and eventually killed off all the natives - "Thanksgiving", we called it.

She totally didn't get it.

But she saw the similarity between the two holidays.

Regardless of what you do today, I hope the Moon Rabbit is bringing you and yours a lovely Mid-Autumn Moon Festival!

Uncle Sam and the Giant Midget?

Interesting post from James Fallows on the current enthusiasm for the "Pacific Turn" that is of recent concern in the Obama Administration's publication of "Sustaining National Leadership", the ostensible strategic blueprint for the coming decade or so of U.S. geopolitics. My fellow pubcrawler seydlitz has a nice discussion of this document here.

Central to this worldview seems to be a belief that a U.S.-v-China faceoff is inevitable.The publication states that

"U.S. economic and security interests are inextricably linked to developments in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia, creating a mix of evolving challenges and opportunities. Accordingly, while the U.S. military will continue to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region. Our relationships with Asian allies and key partners are critical to the future stability and growth of the region... The maintenance of peace, stability, the free flow of commerce, and of U.S. influence in this dynamic region will depend in part on an underlying balance of military capability and presence."

Fallows discusses this in relation to the recent work of John Mearsheimer, who seems to have an even more definite view of the degree to which this is likely to be a military confrontation.

"I--China--want to be the Godzilla of Asia, because that's the only way for me--China--to survive!"

Mearsheimer is quoted as saying,

"I don't want the Japanese violating my sovereignty the way they did in the 20th century. I can't trust the United States, since states can never be certain about other states' intentions. And as good realists, we--the Chinese--want to dominate Asia the way the Americans have dominated the Western Hemisphere."

Fallows disagrees; the PRC is too fragile, too riven and riddled with internal problems to present a genuine expansionist military threat, a factor he believes that Mearsheimer and his interviewer Bob Kaplan ignore:

"From the outside, it looks like an unstoppable juggernaut. From inside, especially from the perspective of those trying to run it, it looks like a rambling wreck that narrowly avoids one disaster after another. The thrust of Mearsheimer's argument is that such internal complications simply don't matter: the sheer increase in China's power will bring disruption with it. I am saying: if you knew more about China, you would be less worried, especially about military confrontations. He is saying: "knowing" about China is a distraction. What matters are the implacable forces."

I will be the first to admit that I don't know enough about the economics, politics, and military capabilities of the PRC to make an informed assessment, but what I know about recent history suggests to me that none of those vulnerabilities are enough to prevent a polity from embarking on a ruiniously destructive and aggressive foreign policy - we've watched it occur in our own country in our recent lifetimes.

Earlier examples abound as well. The disastrous endless wars between Byzantium and Sassanid Persia that crippled them when confronted with the Umayyads. The various military overreaches of several European states, particularly Spain in the Netherlands in the 16th Century and in general in the 17th and 18th, Portugal after the 1600s, and France pretty much throughout her history.ISTM that there is a genuine discussion on the subject to be had here; as Fallows concludes,

"I think...while we need to think constantly and seriously about China, a "showdown" would be a result of miscalculation or recklessness on either side, rather than of unstoppable tectonic pressures. On the other hand, I completely endorse Mearsheimer's (and Kaplan's) view that we should have been paying more attention to China, and been less bogged down in the Middle East, through the past decade. But his case is certainly worth considering..."

but I guess I'm skeptical that, given the current trends in U.S. politics - that tend more towards magical thinking and foreign-policy-as-domestic-politics - such a discussion of an sort of intelligent throw-weight worth having could be had, or even had at all.

Consider this a "what do you think" open thread.

(cross-posted to MilPub).

Pobaby sez: you got a receipt for that baby..?

One thing that is truly scarifying about international adoption is the very real worry about getting involved unknowingly in baby-selling and baby-napping. We're not worried that our little Baoxin was stolen or sold, but the possibility is there in many countries, with Guatemala in particular getting a bad name. In my sleepless quest to bring you all things Pobaby, here's another odd little Pobaby video that gives you an oddly comic view from China about getting "Babynapped!".
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Note: surviving orphange officials in Hunan gave this thing "two manacled-thumbs down".
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Update 7/6/07: My ever-preceptive colleague over at The Singing Bird caught something interesting in the linked Porro/Zorro/Pobaby "Babynapped" video: all the kidnapped babies are little boys (note the cute little boy bits very much in evidence - imagine that in an American cartoon, where everyone and everything since Bug Bunny has been as slick between the legs as Barbie and Ken)! Hmmm... I'm pulled all kinds of ways by this: are little Chinese girls not worth babynapping? Do only little Chinese boys get to have adventures? Is this a Chinese thing, or just concidence?
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That's Pobaby: a riddle wrapped in an enigma inside a mystery.

Things to do in Portland (while writing your daughter's referral acceptance letter)

Look up where she lives (Lianjiang City) on Google EarthTM

Find out what "polydactyly" means and what to do about it.

Watch hella freakin' wierd Pobaby "Porro/Zorro" video. Seriously, check this out. We're talking goofy translated synopsis of the plot of hella freakin' wierd Pobaby Porro/Zorro video, awesome Xiao Ya, Pobaby's baby girl inamorata, and her buttless Chinese red baby chaps (yo, girlfriend is, like, the femme Tom of Finland model of the pre-continent set), Pobaby as Crouching Diaper, Hidden-Don-Diego, and the porcine antics of Pobaby's enemy, San Jie. I find this whole Pobaby camorra intriguing. Here's more oddball Pobaby stuff: this time Ya vs. The Giant Chicken. With an NBA theme. Wierd? Ya think?

Wonder what she's gonna sleep on, how to help her get along with the Peeper, who she is and what she'll be like...

Dream.

Just Dream.

Okay. See, Mei-mei, this here is Prince Pickles and...

"Prince Pickles is our image character because he's very endearing, which is what Japan's military stands for," said Defense Ministry official Shotaro Yanagi.

Remember way back when I said that we wanted to make sure that our adopted daughter is as fully conversant with her native Chinese culture as possible?

(Okay...umm...that was actually...umm...yesterday)

This is the kind of thing I was talking about when I commented on the difficulty, as a Westerner and a non-language-speaker, of "getting" stuff about Asian culture. Just when you kick back in your ignorant Caucasian way and say to yourself: there now, that's not so different, is it...all of a sudden there's..."endearing, which is what Japan's military stands for???"

Huh?

What fresh hell is this? What military since Cain whacked Abel stood for "endearing"??? So is there a cutesy little Chinese People's Liberation Army character out there somewhere that Mei-mei should know about? Comrade Pickles? Hero of the Red Banner Pickles? Is this a pan-Asian thing? Does the PLA stand for "endearing", too? Or is this just a Japanese thing?

WTF!

Call me stodgy. Call me reactionary. But I liked it when armies were mean and nasty. Sure, they might kill you and burn your village down, but at least you knew where you stood with them.

Stuff like Prince Pickles just makes my brain itch.

There. That's better. Whew. Never mind, Mei-mei, China has nothing like Prin...

Well, damn!