Wang Xiao Tong, Jeanette, Jing Li Chang, Sheng Kai, Xu Su Bin
Tianjin, China
May 20 to July 20, 1985
On the way to China, I stayed overnight in Vancouver with my former Toronto communal-house mate, Blair Shakell. Around the time I went east to St. John’s, he went west to Vancouver and set up a company called Scribbler’s Inc. His house was full of cats, books, and 1950s memorabilia collected in garage sales.
The next day at the Vancouver Airport, the people in the waiting room for the flight to Hong Kong were nearly all Asian. I felt I was already there. Late at night we arrived. The runway for the Kai Tak airport was a narrow peninsula of landfill jutting out into the sea attached directly to the densely-built Kowloon Peninsula. We flew so low you could see people in the windows of the apartment towers eating their supper. Someone told me no flashing lights were allowed in the city in case it confused the pilots.
I arrived on May 16 and spent a few days in Hong Kong for my first taste of Asia before going on to Beijing. I had a room at the YMCA but only slept a few hours a day; I was too excited to sleep. I had never seen such intensity. Strings of shops laced the streets. These were not chain stores; they were family businesses beckoning to the river of people on the narrow sidewalks. Occasionally, between the shops, small door openings allowed residents access to corridors, that led to elevators, that led to the towers above. In the warm morning, eddies of children in school uniforms, carrying book bags on their backs, joined the dense, black-haired flow of humanity rubbing against the shops. Anxious cars honked along beside them. Although most of the upper windows had thief-resistant metal grilles, still it was safe enough for these children, in this compact world, not to be accompanied by adults.
Above the shops were twenty or so floors of housing or offices, and sometimes factories. A few buildings had all three, with a factory immediately above the shops, followed by offices, and finally housing on top, identified by long bamboo poles of laundry reaching far out over the street. Jane Jacobs advocated mixed-use in cities; I wondered whether she had ever seen this degree of vertical integration.
I met some of the local Baha’is, including Herbert Lee, who had lived for a while in Nova Scotia, Canada. He took me out for supper. “If you want more tea, leave the pot lid upside down. If you want to pick your teeth, pick with one hand and shield what you are doing with the other”. After supper, a 5 cent ride on the Star Ferry to Hong Kong Island, a light “glissade” between two shores of towering lights reflected in the water, then a cable-car ride to the top of the mountain, and a visit to the Poor-man’s Nightclub. This was a crowded open-air market with restaurants. Every day, gasoline generators kept the lights on until 1:00 am when the whole place was dismantled, hosed down, ready to be used, by morning, as a parking lot.
May 19
A one-day peek at Macau. I visited a Baha’i family, Bijan and Sheedvash Farid, for a swim at a local beach. Lots of people at small tables playing Mah Jong.
May 20
On my last day in Hong Kong, I changed all my Canadian cash into Hong Kong dollars thinking they might be easier to change inside China. I felt conspicuous unbuttoning my shirt to pull out my secret money pouch. At Kai Tak Airport, I caught a 12:30 pm flight to Beijing. Quite a few foreigners were on board, but by the time we passed through customs and baggage in Beijing, they had all dispersed into the crowds. They seemed to know what they were doing, or were in organized groups with people to meet them. There was no-one from Tianjin to meet me, and there were no signs in English except a banner that said “Welcome Youth from Around the World”. I saw a place to change money and changed all my HK dollars into Chinese Foreign Exchange Certificates (FECs), a special Chinese parallel currency that was exchangeable. The local currency was not.
With a pocket full of money I turned around to look for a taxi. There were twenty men facing me all saying, “Ta-ke-see!” No-one spoke English; of course, I did not speak Chinese. I approached one driver and said “Beijing Railway Station”, made noises like a train, and off we went. A two-lane country road led into town. Rows of closely-planted trees on either side were painted white, up to a meter or so. We rode in the shady tunnel for a long time with a few other taxis, not many cars, and some horse-drawn carts. Is this really Beijing, the capital of China? Am I in the right city?
Sketch of arrival at Beijing Railway Station
At the railway station I got out and mixed with the largest group of people I had ever seen in one place. The broad treeless plaza in the late May sun was very hot. There were islands of families, old people, students, children, packages, suitcases, and babies, sitting, squatting, or lying down. Streams of travelers flowed around them. I went into the cool, dim stone interior; no English signs. I went up a huge escalator. I kept saying “Tianjin” - at least, that’s what I thought I was saying. I didn’t understand anything they were saying.
I remembered John Evans’ story about the “Beijing Hotel”. I retreated and found another taxi outside. The driver understood, because soon we were there. Sweating and feeling helpless, I sat down in the lobby and bought a soda. A California woman, Sonya Marchand, recognized my condition and invited me to her table. This Good Samaritan was trying to establish business connections in Beijing, had been there a while, was calm, spoke a little Chinese, and was soon helping me find a hotel room. There were none available at the Beijing Hotel but there was a room at a hotel a few kilometers to the east.
At the Beijing-Toronto Hotel, my room cost 166 yuan, way over my budget. I had 2000 yuan to last ten weeks in China. After supper in the hotel, I got in a taxi and said, “Tian An Men Square”. In those days taxis were allowed to drop people off at Tian An Men Gate. I paid the driver and got out of the car, but did not let go of the door handle. I took a look at the huge square. Years of photographs I had seen turned into the real thing. I looked up at Tiananmen Gate, the podium from which Chairman Mao announced the founding of New China. Afraid I wouldn’t find my way back, hand still frozen to the door, I got into the taxi again and said, “Hotel”.
Later that evening, I walked north of the hotel into a residential area, at that time composed of China’s ubiquitous six-story walk-up flats. There was very little street light; most of the available light came from the windows of apartments. In the darkness, my foreignness was hidden; and I could freely enjoy my first glimpses of real, local people in the ground floor apartments.
At breakfast in the restaurant, a group of Texan business people were talking at the next table. One of them was sharing his first experience that morning of the China 220V electrical system. Referring to his hair dryer, he said, “When ah plugged it i-in, the gawd-dayyam thing may-l-ted”.
At the front desk, they spoke some English. I asked them to write me a note in Chinese saying, “Take me to the Canadian Embassy”. At the Embassy, on San Li Tun Street at Dongzhimen Wai, they wouldn’t help me phone the University of Tianjin, but they helped me write notes in Chinese saying, “Take me to the Railway Station”, “Where is the ticket office for foreigners?”, and “I want to go to the Tianjin University Foreign Affairs Office”.
Back at the train station, I walked through the crowd again on the large plaza in front of the station. With my notes I found the place to buy a ticket, beside the Soft Seat Waiting Room. A Chinese man who spoke no English greeted me and showed me his ticket; I showed him mine. They were the same. He stuck to me like glue, helping me drag my bag with no wheels, like an anchor, through the pinching crowds, to board our train. Our quiet, padded “soft” seats wrapped in white cotton - with doilies on the chair backs - faced tables with hot tea. Out the window I could hear the clamoring din of the “hard” seat section where suitcases were being passed through windows. In our soft white ride, with gentle Chinese fiddle music on the PA system, there was only one other occidental. There were only two women in the car; the rest were men. My new friend told me his name was “Mark” Chen.
The farmland outside the city was open and flat, here and there rows of trees framed fields of yellow-green. Villages with water towers and one-story brick farmhouses rested in the hazy air.
Mr. Chen came with me in a taxi to Tianjin University. I had a copy of my invitation letter from Liu De Jun, the Head of Tianjin University Foreign Affairs. The taxi stopped at the bottom of a wide staircase at the very-symmetrical, main administrative building on campus.
Trusting I was at the right place, I said goodbye to “Mark”. He said the fare was 32 yuan, which I gave him. I learned later that the fare should only be a third of that, but I didn’t mind; he had gone out of his way, and he had guided me “home”.
Tianjin University (Tian Da) 1985
At the top of the stairs, I pushed on heavy wooden doors with spring hinges that groaned. Inside it was dark and cool, a terrazzo floor, the smell of antiseptic. I went along one corridor to a room with an English sign on the door, “Foreign Affairs Office”. Inside, it was full of desks with one person at each. I said who I was, and held up my letter. Liu De Fu, its author, came over to me. I wanted to give her a big hug and squeeze her tight. But I held back. I listened as she welcomed me, in English, and then kindly explained that my group had left that day for Beijing. I should rest for a while and then someone would take me to join them.
Liu De Fu and Joe Carter 2017
Liu De Fu assigned Ms. Ji Hong Ye to escort me on the 6:00 pm train back to Beijing. We went to Beijing Normal University where our group was staying in a student dormitory in the north part of the campus. These were simple rooms with concrete floors and common washrooms in the hall. The cots were covered with quilts inside an embroidered cover. Big thermoses of hot water everywhere.
I shared a room with Professor Jin Qi Min, who, I learned, was a prominent author and educator in China. I showed him a photograph I had of the Whitbourne Clinic I designed near St. John’s. “It looks Chinese”, he said. It was along, low building with a big, hipped roof, not unlike a Chinese temple. He and two other professors were our tour guides. A few people from the Foreign Affairs Office (the Wai Ban) were our “handlers”, taking care of travel and accommodation arrangements. For the first time, I met the other foreigners. Most of them were from Oklahoma State University; their group leader was Professor Cheryl Morgan.
Jin Qi Min and Joe Carter 2017
May 22 Yong He Gong and Temple of Heaven
Breakfast the next day was rice porridge and deep-fried dough strips. In one day, we visited The Lama Temple, the Temple of Heaven, Qian Men Street, and the Liu Li Chang Art Street. At Qian Men I went into a store and, to buy what I wanted, drew a picture of toothpaste and a tooth brush. The Liu Li Chang Art Street was a reconstruction. It looked old - with wood columns, trellis windows, clay tiles roofs, and carved brick decoration - but was entirely new. None of the traditional construction skills had been lost.
Members of an extended family at Temple of Heaven Park, Beijing 1985
Three men at Temple of Heaven Park, Beijing 1985
May 23 Ming Tombs and Great Wall
The next day, the country road to Ba Da Ling, a section of the Great Wall, was so narrow that convex mirrors were installed at sharp blind corners to see what was coming. In our new Japanese bus, Cindy Lauper was on the sound-system singing, “Girls just want to have fu-un.” At the Great Wall, the song, “Tie a purple ribbon on the old oak tree”, was oozing out of the loudspeakers .
Prof. Jin said, during the 1950s, he learned Russian. He learned English later, studying translations of Chairman Mao. No buildings were designed during the Cultural Revolution; instead, he painted propaganda billboards. The Department of Architecture will soon build a new building; he would like our group to work on some design ideas while we are in China.
I was getting the flu. Feeling a little dazed, I wanted fruit. That evening I walked up to the Third Ring Road with a Chinese note in hand, looking for cold medicine at a drug store. On the way back a crowd assembled around two cyclists. A young man had hit a young woman’s bicycle, bending her peddle. She held a constant determined expression. The onlookers assessed the damage and offered advice. The young man pulled out some money. The crowd made scolding sounds and laughed. When he had given her enough money, the crowd let him leave, and comforted the woman.
May 24
Fragrant Hills Hotel & Park, Summer Palace
At night I heard horse hooves and bells outside; in the morning I felt much better. Today was a visit to the Fragrant Hills, including I.M.Pei’s new hotel, and the Summer Palace. With Professor Jin as our guide we were helped to understand the garden arrival-sequence that compressed you, then released you; alternating dark and light, covered-uncovered layers of space that prepared you for a climax. In a temple, a long axis with a shish-kebab of spaces and pavilions leads progressively, not suddenly, to a throne, an altar, or a statue of the Buddha. In the Forbidden City, the climax is the throne room of the Emperor. At the Summer Palace, after a twisting narrow entrance sequence, it was the explosive view of the Great Temple of Gratitude and Longevity, on the slope of Longevity Hill, overlooking Kunming Lake. A 700 meter long covered corridor embraced the lake at the foot of the hill. The earth dug out to make the lake was used to build the hill. View of pagodas on distant hills were “borrowed” to accent the view from inside the huge garden-park.
Summer Palace: Temple of Gratitude and Longevity, on the slope of Longevity Hill
Clusters of pavilions made courtyards - spaces with finely-composed scale and proportion. The empty content of these ‘vessels’ had weight. Gates exactly framed views of the pavilion in the courtyard ahead. Courtyards were not tightly enclosed; its space went around corners where you couldn’t see, making them indeterminate. The composition asked you to be content with not knowing everything all at once.
Ornament was married with function. For example, the columns of these wooden structures are partially embedded in masonry walls. The moisture from the wood must escape, otherwise the column might rot. If you look at the side or back walls of a traditional Chinese pavilion, you will see breathing holes that align with the base of the wooden columns. This is not just a simple ventilation hole. With millennia of refinement, it is also a beautiful pierced stone carving, often a flower. How many centuries did it take to develop this language, this degree of coherence?
Prof. Jin seemed pleased with I.M.Pei’s Fragrant Hills Hotel, nearby. The architect had drawn on his heritage to make this design. It was one of the early efforts to make a modern building that is also Chinese.
Fragrant Hills Hotel
May 25-27
Chengde
The next day, we went by train to Chengde, about 200 km to the northeast of Beijing. At the hotel, the question came up, “Do we eat together - we foreigners and our Chinese host group of Wai Ban and professors?” I think they wanted a rest from looking after us, and did not resist a hotel regulation that put foreigners in a separate dining room. At a nearby table, a foreign couple was eating with their young child. The man spoke Chinese! They were flying solo! I was very jealous.
Near Chengde, we toured a group of buildings that were started in the mid-1700s by the Qing Emperor, Kang Xi. This was the Chengde Imperial Mountain Resort, used by the imperial family to escape the summer heat of Beijing. Around the royal resort was an array of eight buildings built for outlanders, for Mongolian, Xinjiang and Tibetan Buddhists, including monasteries and a temple called Pu Le, or Temple of Universal Joy. The main pavilion of the Pu Le temple, Dawning Light Hall, has a Buddhist mandala altar. Above it, in the ceiling, is a dragon - symbolizing the Emperor - hovering under a roof not unlike the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. The Chinese Dragon was positioned above the Tibetan Buddhist mantra altar.
Here was a Qing Dynasty model of China-hinterland relations; a model-metaphor of Chinese suzerainty. It was made, however, by a man who was not Chinese. The Qing Dynasty was founded by the Man (Manchu) people who themselves were former hinterland people and had moved south to assume control of China from 1644 to 1912. The Last Emperor was not ethnically Chinese.
“Qianlong's Manchu ancestors had long aspired to a prominent position in the Buddhist pantheon, with the first leader of the Manchus, Nurhachi, declaring himself to be an incarnation of the Bodhisattva Manjusri (from which the word Manchu may have been derived). Qianlong continued this tradition by publicly declaring himself to be a reincarnation of Manjusri. This enabled him to exert the spiritual authority necessary to depict himself as a dragon overarching the Buddhist world, while allowing him the temporal authority to claim sovereignty over the Tibetan Buddhists tribes at the western limits of his empire--the very subjects Pule temple was intended to placate.”[ http://www.orientalarchitecture.com/china/chengde/pule.php]
After dinner, I walked passed a theater playing “Comin’ at Ya!” a violent Spaghetti western in which a priest is shot, women are molested, and a man is eaten by rats. How did that get past the censors? In the streets, families strolled and children sat on little chairs at the outdoor book store. For a few pennies they could sit and read small, hand-sized comic books. Deep-fried food was for sale in mobile kitchens. There was sidewalk shoe and bicycle repair, and for a few cents you could shoot a light-gun at noisy owl targets with blinking eyes. Taking pictures I feel like a voyeur; drawing pictures I feel welcome. The latter attracts interest, even congratulations.
I calculated I was spending 30 yuan per day on average; I have to keep it down to 25 yuan. Average local salary around 300 yuan/month; about 10 yuan/day.
Professor Jin told us Chinese architects and students have been coming to this royal resort for years to do measured drawings and sketches of its buildings. When he came in the 1950s he had to wade across the river, up to his chest, to get to buildings on the other side. Now the river is dry. More people and more industry has lowered the water table, he explained.
On the way back to Beijing, he and the three people from the Wai Ban all rode hard seat, while we foreigners went soft seat. I tried to see the farmhouses from the train. These compact villages were all aligned south and each house had two small chimneys one at each of the gable ends.
Back in Tianjin I share a room with Jim Harris from Seattle. We have a free day and together explored the town. I asked him how he knows so much about Tianjin. “I read it in the Lonely Planet Tourist Guide”, he said. I wonder why I hadn’t thought of that; am I adverse to help? We find a dumpling restaurant called “Dogs Don’t Care”. The downtown is composed of the colonial urban design and architecture of several occupying countries. England, France, Russia, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, and Japan each had their own district called a Concession Area.
Map of Tianjin 1931
That evening, on my own, in Quan Ye Chang, a big department store on the corner of Heping (Peace) Road and Bin Jiang Dao, I was looking at Chinese fiddles (Er Hu) thinking of buying one. A young Chinese man, speaking English, came up to me and offered to help. He was a surgeon and his girlfriend, hovering in the background, was a student at the Textile University. His gestures were contained, hands cupped at his chest, occasionally an index finger jumped out with a clockwise twist for emphasis.
“I suggest we go to a better store”, he said. “My father is a retired jing-hu player from the local Beijing Opera troupe; he can help us.”
“Thank you so much for helping me”, I said.
“It is nothing; these are trivialities”, he replied.
We agreed to meet next Thursday evening at the old French Catholic Church at the end of Bin Jiang Dao. He was there with his quiet girlfriend and his father, almost blind with cataracts. In a store nearby, I bought a larger fiddle called an er-hu and from there we walked to his home in the Five Big Streets area of Tianjin, part of the former British Concession. It was dark now, and in these residential streets there was almost no street light. A few cars and trucks went by with headlamps off; they just flashed them a few times. “They want to avoid glare in the eyes of the cyclists” explained Hou Chen.
On a street lined with two-story, western row-houses, Hou Chen led us into a small unlit outer yard, pushed through a dark door into a dark corridor, and finally a room lit with one bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. There were two beds in the room that served as sofas. I was invited to sit in one of the two chairs; his father sat in the other. Hou Chen and his girlfriend sat on one bed; and his sister and mother sat on the other. Hou Chen translated. Tea was served, and apples. His father agreed to play something on his Jing Hu called “Deep into the Night”. The piece came from an Peking opera called ”Farewell my Concubine”(Ba Wang Bie Ji) a tale from the end of the Qin Dynasty around the year 200 BC about a romantic, double suicide.
At the end of the evening, I gave him a copy of “Who Has seen the Wind”, by Canadian author, W.O. Mitchell; and he gave me a small sculpture made out of sea shells. I assumed the visit to his home was scheduled after dark to avoid inquires from neighbours. I felt an air of caution around person-to-person Chinese-foreigner relations; this feeling was reinforced when he walked me back to Tian Da [“Tian Da is short for “Tian Jin Da Xue” or Tianjin University. Tian means “heaven” and represents Beijing, the home of the Emperor. “Jin” means “ford”, a shallow part of river where you can easily cross. A place where cows cross such a place could be called “Ox-ford”. “Jin” also signifies Tianjin’s role as the “ford” to the capital “Beijing”. “Da” usually means “big”, but in this case means “advanced”. “Xue” means “study”. “Heaven Ford Big Study” is the literal translation of Tianjin University.] He brought me within sight of the main gate of the campus and stayed, at a distance, in the shadows, to say goodbye.
The next night, Mr. Shao Xi, President of the University, hosted a banquet for our group. We also met two other professors who would be giving us courses in Chinese Garden Design and Watercolour Painting, Professors Zhang Wen Zhong and Zhang You Xin. We were seated in order of social importance, with the president at the head of the room. In the middle of each table, a large turntable laden with dishes allowed us to pick up the amount we wanted of whatever we wanted; social eating.
Left to right: Name, Name, Name, Prof. Jin Qi Min, President of University,
Prof. Zhang Wen Zhong, Prof. Zhang You Xin
Reunion of friends in 2005
Left to right: Zhang Chi, Zhang Wen Zhong, Jin Qi Min, Joe Carter, Zhou Zu Shi, Liu Bin, Chen Laoshi (language teacher), Liu Tong Tong (Vice-Head of School of Architecture and my former student)
May 29
In the morning, a watercolour class:
Commenting on my work, Professor Zhang You Xin, in his accented English, shared his saturated wisdom,“Subject not placed in center. Two subjects need major, minor relationship. First sketch lightly in pencil, very little. It is enough. General relationship more important than parts.”
Red Lotus Island in the Tianjin Water Park
In the afternoon we were asked to begin the design of a Chinese pavilion in a park. The site was Red Lotus Island in the Tianjin Water Park, south of Nankai University. The design should be presented in watercolour. We went to look at an exhibit of student design work hung in a wide corridor; all done in watercolour. Although the lights went out - every week on Wednesday afternoon the power was turned off to conserve electricity - we saw enough to know that Chinese student watercolour ability is very high. I knew I could not do as well.
May 31
A Friday evening party - snacks and orange soda pop. We meet many Department of Architecture graduate students: Yu Mao Lin, Xu Su Bin, Lin Ning, Lan Jian, Wang Xiao Tong, [张弛] Zhang Chi (Kerry), Sheng Kai, Li Jie, Jeanette, Zhu Jian Fei, Sun Li Ping, Sun Yi Lu, Chai Chao, Liu Heng Qian, and Jing Li Chang.
They all wanted to practice their English and they all wanted to study abroad. While I was talking to Professor Jin Qi Min, I noticed a student a short distance away, hovering. Several minutes later he was still there. When I had finished talking to Prof. Jin, the student came over to Prof. Jin to ask him some questions. That student, out of respect, had waited until we were finished and did not dare interrupt.
June 1
In the studio we work on our Garden-Pavilion designs. The graduate students come and go; we get to know each other.
Student Bicycle Parking at Building No. 22
Lan Jian, Sun Li Ping, and Jing Li Chang
June 2
The Wai Ban (Foreign Affairs Office) arranged a visit to a carpet factory. They were probably disappointed to find that American students and a Canadian like me could not afford to buy carpets. As we left, the children from the factory kindergarten all waved to us.
I had one more visit with Hou Chen and his girlfriend. We walked around the newly-built Food City near the old town; in some streets people lived in single rooms with a small coal storage space beside the window and a small coal-fired cooking-heating stove. I asked Hou Chen if I could take a picture of him and his fiance. “Must find suitable place”, he said. They posed stiffly, with no smiles, in a nearby park, in front of a beautiful tree.
June 3
Prof. Zhang Wen Zhong, gave a lecture. “Today, I shall introduce some knowledge about Ancient Chinese Gardens”. He told us about Imperial Gardens and Suzhou Gardens. This was not “Design with Nature” a la Ian McHarg; this was Design of Nature a la “Nature is my Pallette”. He said the starting point of a garden could be a poem or a painting. The abstracted cloud and lotus motifs in Chinese gardens and architecture came from Buddhism. Gate openings should only give a glimpse. “Hard to see helps want to see, ” he said. He showed us images of parks called “Heart can not Listen to the Noise”. A pavilion called “Who with me sit down together?” Primary space, secondary space; first see secondary, then primary is a surprise. A door opening in a wall that only one person can go through.
June 4
Professors Jin Qi Min and Zhang Wen Zhong introduced us to the building design and construction process in China. Resources are limited, especially human resources. Untrained workers from countryside; severe shortage of architects. Design professors are usually graduates of the same university; lack of fresh ideas. No private property; housing allocated by work units according to your rank. Heavy pollution. Housing area per person can be as low as 3m2. A new residential area in Tianjin will introduce a rental fee of 10 cents/m2/month; an 80m2 apartment would cost 8 yuan per month. Ten years ago, during the Cultural Revolution, there were no Schools of Architecture in China. Tianjin has no private design offices; Beijing has one.
In Tong Lou Park, I sat with a group of old people watching and listening to an old man playing bamboo clackers to accompany his song. Later, I bought eight books in English about Chinese literature and history, for a total of 14 yuan at the Foreign Language Bookstore.
June 5, 6, and 7
Three days of the flu. Someone took me to the Tianjin University campus clinic and I came away with four kinds of medicine.
Receipt for Flu Medicine
Having to rest gave me a chance to read my books, including “Poetry and Prose of the Tang and Song”, and to make notes. I drew a China History Time Line and a Chart of Scale and Density of Cities and Large Public Spaces. Our rooms have coloured TVs. Behind the people reading the news was a map of the world, Pacific-centered instead of Atlantic-centered.
Chinese History Time-line to the end of the Han Dynasty
Chinese History Time-line from the end of the Han Dynasty to 1985
Rise and Fall of Civilization 2200 BC to 0 AD
Rise and Fall of Civilization 0 AD to Present
Sizes of Urban Settlements
Section and Plan of a Bed
June 8
Back in the classroom-studio we worked on our Chinese pavilions. I did not do a plan, elevation, and section, as requested, but a three dimensional, axonometric instead. Prof. Jin took interest and said, “In ancient China, design was done this way”.
Garden Design for Red Lotus Island in the Tianjin Water Park
In the afternoon, I went with two of the American students, Keith and Carl, and with Yu Mao Lin, a graduate student as our guide, on a bicycle trip. We went first to a construction site nearby where they were building 6 storey walk-up housing, then followed Ying Kou Dao and Nan Jing Lu, to cross the river into the former Russian Concession. We stopped for some bicycle repair and forty people gathered to look at us. Yu Mao Lin mixed with us freely in full view of everyone; he did not have the same caution around foreigners as Hou Chen. We saw large residential areas, one story high, with one cold water tap per house and public lavatories in the street. It was dusty but swept. It felt very safe; if you smiled, they smiled.
June 10
Morning lecture by Tony Vacchione from Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM), one of the worlds top architectural firms. He is now a Managing Partner in their New York Office. He had been living at Tian Da teaching design for a year and was trying to drum up some work for SOM.
Tony Vachionne (2020), now retired,
former Managing Partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP
Some notes from his talk:
“Instead of the more typical concentric growth, Tianjin grew from multiple centers, the foreign concession areas, lined up along the river, the water highway to the rest of the world. From 1860 until 1950 the foreigners occupied their enclaves and built as though they would stay forever. Japan arrived in 1898 soon after their victory over Russia. The Russians, Italians, Belgians, Germans, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire set up concessions in 1901. The US took over part of the German Concession after WW1. Each country spread from the river, building according to their own planning tradition. Before 1949, they each had their own electrical and plumbing systems. France and England, side by side; had Metric and Imperial dimensions respectively. The roads radiating from the French Parks met the avenues of England.
In 1949, Tianjin had 2 million people, now it has almost 6 million including the suburbs. It has the most bicycles/person in China. Many buildings in Tianjin and Beijing have exo-skeletons, concrete reinforcing added after the 1976 Tang Shan earthquake. Concession Areas full of every architectural style, from Classical to Art-Deco, to Modern Movement."
Afternoon Watercolor class: Prof. Zhang You Xin explained something to me with his arm around my shoulder.
June 11
AM: My Pavilion Design is basically finished; now I must transfer the image to watercolour paper stretched and dried on a drawing board.
PM: One of the rooms at the Department of Architecture had a full-size model of a Chinese bracket; the structural element that connects columns to roof beams. I had worked as a carpenter in Newfoundland; but this was not carpentry, this was cabinet-making. I spent an hour drawing it in my sketchbook.
June 12
Tony Vacchione took us on a bicycle tour. We went to the Italian Concession Area to look at the urban design of Marco Polo Plaza in the Italian Concession, and to the British Concession Area to see housing for bank employees on Chong Qing Dao.
Marco Polo Plaza in the Italian Concession
Wang Xiao Tong, Jeanette, Jing Li Chang, Shen Kai, Xu Su Bin
June 13
While sitting on the toilet, I extracted a 40 cm. long, pale white tapeworm from my rear end.
June 14
In case I had not pulled all of it out, we went to campus clinic to get tapeworm removal medicine; “Sorry no pills for that today”.
We all stayed up very late applying watercolor to our pavilion designs. I named my pavilion the Dawn Breeze Pavilion, and designed it as a voyage of discovery.
Dawn Breeze Pavilion (north at the top of the image)
The journey was in stages:
1. When you look at the island from the opposite shore, or even closer in a boat, the pavilion structures are not visible; trees obscure them almost completely. At the east of the island (at the right side of the image above), two Chinese stone lanterns identify a place where a boat can pull ashore. From there a wooded path wanders along the north side of the island, then curves toward the south.
2. A small Entrance Pavilion comes into view (at the left of the image above). It leads to a wooden corridor, wide enough for two people. It winds above water pools making footstep sounds that echo from a wall that obscures the main garden. The wall has a few openings that give glimpses of what is to come.
3. After passing through the wall, the main space becomes visible. This space has an east-west major axis, and a north-south minor axis. One can linger at the East Pavilion to absorb the view. The covered path continues through the rectangular pavilion on the south and ends with a gate facing a large stone box, like a coffin. Here we leave our mental burdens, our old self, and walk on an open stone path, now only wide enough for one person.
4. A narrow stone bridge leads to an Island Pavilion. Here you sit alone, facing east and feel a little breeze. Now you can see two cypress trees on a bluff behind and above the East Pavilion. Between them at the Equinoxes, the sun rises at dawn.
When it is time to leave you can go back the way you came or pass through a hole in the stone that leads back to the entrance Pavilion.
The feeling of the design was not unlike my Bird Dream in Montreal. I wrote it out as a poem. Zhang Wen Zhong translated it into Chinese, and then wrote it in characters on my watercolor painting.
I designed a chop, based on the bird dream, with four symbols representing the stages of the bird’s journey. Looie took my chop design and carved one for me in stone. The upper right corner has three lines that represent heaven, horizon and the earth. Lower right is the bird. Lower left is no bird. Upper left is the union of the bird with heaven, horizon and earth.
Bird Dream Chop carved by Looie
Jing Li Chang, Looie, and
June 16
Looie went with me on our bicycles to a nearby hospital to see about my “snake” problem. The doctor, an older woman, heard my story and then said - Looie translated - “It must be a Canadian worm. You haven’t been in China long enough to grow one.” She started shaking a thermometer and told me she was going to take my temperature. I opened my mouth to receive the thermometer and she stuck it in my armpit. Then she said she was going to take a blood sample. I stuck out my arm and she pricked me in the ear lobe. She gave me a little bottle and said, “Bring me a stool sample”. In the men’s washroom, I couldn’t get a sample out. The snake made me dry, I guess. This was a squat toilet with no partitions. We men were in a crouched row all looking at the opposite wall, like birds on a wire. The men’s washroom looked directly into the corridor. Passersby could see us easily. My belt was tight behind my knees and pinched my folded legs. During the long wait for a sample, my legs went to sleep; the circulation had been cut off. I couldn’t stand up. The man beside me, an older man, must have understood my predicament; because he helped me get up. No sample. The doctor said my blood test was normal and prescribed some medicine.
June 16
We took a Sunday night train to Tai Shan in Shandong Province; we were close to one of China’s holy mountains, Tai Shan, and to Qu Fu, the home of Confucius. In those days some rooms of the Confucian Mansion had been opened up as guest rooms. We stayed, four or five to a room, in various pavilions of the mansion. There was no air-conditioning and the windows were open for air. Mosquito netting around the beds and Tiger Brand repellent incense kept the mosquitoes away.
Repeated bird cries, “Mi-Do, Fa-Do”, woke me up. I went out and followed the sound, imitating, calling back. I was good at it, and the bird and I took turns. I felt I had made an important, secret friend. Then I wandered into a new hotel under construction across the road. Professor Jin told me it was designed by a famous Chinese architect called Dai Nian Ce.
In 1948, a direct heir of Confucius, the first born son of the 77th generation of the Kong family fled to Taiwan, breaking a 2500 year chain of residence. Outside on the west side of the mansion, on a side road, farmers were using the flat asphalt surface to winnow wheat. They tossed it in the air to let the breeze blow the chaff away. The perimeter wall was pock-marked, as though hit by bullets. Perhaps still there from the “Criticize Lin Biao; Criticize Confucius” campaign.
Carved Stone Column at Confucius Temple
Using buildings to make space
June 18
After a visit to Dai Miao Temple, we climbed Tai Shan. No chairlift in those days. We stayed in a simple hotel on top of the mountain and got up at 4:00 am to watch the sunrise. We all huddled in the cold, wearing big army coats loaned for the occasion. The hope for sunrise remained obscured by a fog so heavy you couldn’t tell people from rocks, until they moved.
June 19
In Jinan, we stayed at the Foreign Students Dormitory – quite empty in the summer –at the Shandong University Teacher’s College. I made a sketch of students sitting and studying in the shade of poplar trees in a green space. I also drew a site plan of the space in which they were sitting. A young female student came up to me and asked if she could look at the other sketches in my notebook. Most of them were of ancient Chinese architecture. She rebuked me for being interested in old things. The Cultural Revolution, not long before, had attacked the Four Olds: Old Thought, Old Traditions, Old Habits, and Old Culture. Perhaps her parents helped put those bullet holes in wall of the Confucian Mansion.
Sketch at Shandong University Teacher’s College
June 20
Tour Jinan Daming Lake. In the evening take the night train to Tianjin; saw a beautiful 100 year old German railway station (later torn down). It dramatically shattered the illusion that we were the first to be here. Since the mid-1800s, for a hundred years, many foreign countries occupied China. We are a tiny second wave.
Jinan City: Sketch in Gardens at Daming Lake
Jinan City: Sketch in Gardens at Daming Lake
June 21
Back in Tianjin, I made some study sketches of the site for our next project. It was a School of Architecture to be built at the head of the main axis of the long pool at the center of the campus. At the edge of the plaza, an old woman wearing white work-clothes sat beside a box wrapped in quilts and called out “Bing Gun(r) Wu Mao!” (Ice Stick Fifty Cents). The ubiquitous campus speakers - that played “help-you-get-up-and-exercise” music in the mornings, followed by news - were now playing a symphony. I sat and listened, and was moved to tears. I felt deeply happy. Later I learned the piece was called, “Butterfly Lovers”, inspired by the story of the same name, a Chinese legend of tragic love in which a couple commit suicide rather than submit to marriages arranged by their parents. After their suicides they turn into butterflies.
June 22
I had prepared for the possibility that I might find a way to stay longer in China - I had a resume, name cards, and slides for a lecture about St. John’s – but there never seemed to be an opportunity to raise the subject. After spending some time in China, I knew I wanted to make this my new home. Fear held me back from asking; fear they would say “No”. Also I feared I would be making them embarrassed if they had to say, “No.” Today, magic was afoot; Professor Jin approached me. He said he had spoken to the Head of the School of Architecture about inviting me to come to teach for a year. He invited me for that Fall but I said I couldn’t come until the Fall of 1986. That was alright with him. And that was alright with me. I felt great, great relief; a new direction, a place to be! My joy so deep; difficult to describe.
Zhu Jianfei
[Zhu Jianfei has taught at the AA, the Bartlett, University of Tasmania, and University of Melbourne, in the past 26 years. Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne, Guest Professor, Peking University. He recently moved to Newcastle University in the UK.His primary area of interest is the relationship between design, form, space, power, ideology and geopolitics, with a special focus on China, East Asia and the Pacific world. ]
Sheng Kai and Zhu Jian Fei
Sheng Kai 2021
Sheng Kai, Founder and CEO of Archilier Architecture since 2009
In the afternoon, Looie helped me get more worm medicine. In the evening I attended an on-campus “English Corner” where students come together once a week to practice their English. As a big-nosed[ A friendly name for foreigners who, by comparison with Chinese people, have prominent noses; their faces not so flat. ] native speaker I was soon surrounded by a shy, eager group. For three hours they asked questions about social life in North America. The topics included: family relations, equality of men and women, social services, climate, transportation, religion, city life, pace of life, cost of living, national aspirations, reaction to Japan’s adoption of western ways, and more.
June 23
I went with Xu Su Bin to visit the Guandong Province “Embassy” (Hui Suo) in the old town. I talked – Xu Su Bin translating - with construction workers doing renovations. The building had been badly damaged during the Cultural Revolution and was now being repaired. It was a typical courtyard building except that the courtyard had a high roof sitting on top of a line of clerestory windows. Xu Su Bin told them I had been a carpenter in Canada. Excitedly, they started giving me their tools to let me try. I declined; my skills were so much rougher than theirs.
Later, Xu Su Bin gave me a list of questions for her research. She wants to demonstrate the similarity between modern psychological theory and ancient Chinese theories especially about the impact of the environment on people. She shared with me something she wrote in English. I shared it below, in her original English:
“In Chinese traditional dwellings, the importance of connotation levels was emphasized for meeting the basic needs in inherent psychology, such as the meanings of wealth, good luck, auspicious, joyousness, and longevity, etc. These meanings almost contain all sections of Chinese culture. Through these substantial contents, we can view Chinese architectural cultural function throughout thousand years, and explore this great treasure-house. From this we can understand the resident culture and traditional sense of Chinese national tradition, and further get direct to our architectural creative practice today. Let architectural cultural treasures of Chinese nation shine more splendid lustre.”
June 24
That evening I took the window of our room off its hinges with Jim’s Swiss Army Knife. I lay the window flat, supporting each corner with a chair. I put the desk lamp under the window and “Voila!”, I had a light-table to sort slides for my talk on July 2 about Newfoundland.
Chinese Stamps 1985
June 25
Tony Vacchione took all the foreigners and Chinese graduate students for another outing, this time to re-visit the 1920s Art-deco British bankers housing on Chengdu Dao. A happy flock of geese we were; a chance to get to know each other. The students help reassure the occupants we are not dangerous; eventually welcoming us inside to look around.
June 25
A lecture by Professor Wu: Chinese Structural Design. He talked about the earthquake of 1976. “Like a devil dream in our life.” He told us the Li Hua Building on Jie Fang Lu in Tianjin was designed by a foreigner in the 1920s. It was built on 8 meter long wooden piles. Thanks to its irregular structural grid, it withstood the 1976 earthquake very well. The radio mast on its rooftop, for a while, was the only link to the outside world.
June 26
A day trip on the train to Beijing with Lan Jian. We caught a 6:00 am train, rode hard-seat and caught the 8:00 pm train back to Tianjin. We saw a photography exhibit at the National Art Gallery of China, another building designed by Dai Nian Ce (check this); strolled along the crowded shopping street, Wang Fu Jing, then a narrow street; visited the History Museum at Tian An Men Square; and I bought a Beijing Opera beard at a theater supply store on Qian Men Wai. We arrived at the Beijing Railway Station a little early, very tired. No benches. I joined an island of squatters in the square. My new straw hat protected me from the sun. Lian Jian was inside buying tickets. Hungry, I ate sunflower seeds and spat the shells on the ground. A whistle blew, and a female plaza guard came over, shouted at me, and fined me 50 cents.
June 29
The Chinese cities I saw, although low-rise, looked dense. Comparing the total population to the gross area of the built-up city, I found the population density to be roughly 100 people per hectare. Canadian cities had 20 to 40 people per hectare. Buddhist temples were sprinkled throughout the original Tang Dynasty (roughly 600-900 AD) city of Changan, like spiritual infrastructure. I shipped a box of Chinese odds and ends to Canada.
June 30
Visited an exhibit done by Columbia architecture students, a very disciplined analysis of some Suzhou Gardens. Very analytic; they made separate drawings showing just walls, just structure, just window openings, etc, to see the elements of the language. I admired their strength of perception and wondered whether Canadian students of architecture would ever look at China that well. So, we weren’t the only foreign students of architecture in Tianjin.
July 1
Visit Machang Dao housing in the British Concession with some graduate students.
Some students made a poster for my slide show and translated my brief introduction:
“A Slide Show and Talk by Joe Carter on Newfoundland, Canada.
Characteristics of a Region: Its geography (land form) economy, social life and the resultant settlement patterns, particularly housing. Some examples of my attempts to reinforce local urban characteristics and housing vocabulary will be presented.”
July 2
My evening talk was in Building No. 8, Room 306. I was facing an audience that was expecting to see modern western architecture. They also expected to see large-scale projects. However, I was going to talk about St. John’s, the vernacular, about settlements relating to the landscape, about heritage preservation; including some of my small-scale - and not very many - projects. Yu Mao Lin was the translator.
We were standing on a small platform at the front of the room; a big white screen hung behind us covered the blackboard. The hundred or so seats had been full for over an hour. Foreign speakers were rare. Everyone wanted to get a glimpse of the world outside.
Yu Mai Lin, Joe Carter
Mao Lin and I were up at the front, ready to start. He was very nervous so, in front of everyone, I gave him a culturally-inappropriate hug. Everyone laughed. I had a ghetto blaster. For the finale of my talk I played a few minutes of a Harbour Symphony. Just as it was finishing, there was loud crack of thunder, the power went out and someone lit a candle. Hurried applause and everyone headed for the exit. A sudden summer storm was moving in quickly. By the time we packed up and got out, there was 10 cm. of water on the ground; we hopped home from high place to high place.
July 4
The American students hosted a little party in honour of Independence Day on the terrace roof of the Foreign Experts Building. Lan Jian found some fireworks. He lit a long string of fire-crackers, suspended it at the end of a bamboo pole, and revolved slowly with the exploding red paper bursting around him. He looked like a giant smoky flower. I was engrossed in a conversation with Sun Li Ping but then looked at Prof. Jin. I said to Sun Li Ping, “Professor Jin is alone”. She said, “Yes, you must go.”
July 9
We invited the Chinese graduate students who had been especially helpful and generous with their time to have supper with us at a Peking Duck Restaurant downtown where Mao Ze Dong had once eaten. The amount we should pay was agreed beforehand, 380 yuan. When the time came to pay the restaurant wanted 480 yuan. The male Chinese students said “No” and a long discussion, sometimes heated, ensued. They offered to come down 40 yuan. “Not enough”, said Sheng Kai, who encouraged everyone to stay put as a sign of solidarity. I was sitting beside Sun Li Ping, who didn’t really want to stay; she had written a response to my Dawn Breeze Pavilion design and was anxious to share it with me.
Lan Jian and Sun Li Ping
On the way home her bicycle broke down, so we walked slowly together. She spoke about herself and her boyfriend. She thought it would be ten years between their meeting and their marriage. On the steps of our dormitory- it was inappropriate to go inside - she shared with me her eight-page analysis full of neat handwriting and beautiful explanatory sketches. I still have it. According to Chinese symbolism, the circle represented Heaven and the square represented Earth. She thought my main, round pavilion should have a square base, not a round one. I said round felt better, in order to contrast with all the square shapes in my design. “What about the Temple of Heaven?” I asked, “It has a round base.” I think I was overly defensive.
July 11
AM Our Graduation Ceremony
The rectangular room was set up like a court. Furthest from the door, at the head of the room, on a long sofa, sat Tianjin University President Xi, and on his left our leader, Cheryl Morgan.[ http://www.cadc.auburn.edu/soa/index.php/people/faculty/cheryl-morgan/] On her left, in a separate large sofa chair, sat Professor Wu, Head of the Foreign Affairs Office. And, on the President’s right, sat Professor Xu, the Dean of Graduate Studies. The president and Cheryl looked down the central axis of the room. On one side of the room, in a long row, sat all the American students, and me. On the other side - also in a long row - sat our Chinese professors. At the “bottom” of the room, closing the square, on more long sofas, sat members of the Foreign Affairs Office. The middle of the room was empty.
Prof. Cheryl Morgan
Sketch of cicada, a gift from Cheryl gave me a cicada
The president and Cheryl both made short speeches; then each of us went up, as our names were called, to receive a graduation certificate, in a red binder. After a group photo we all sat down again. Now what? In front of the line of Americans and in front of the line of Chinese professors there was an end-to-end row of coffee tables laden with fruit, candies, and orange soda pop. There was a moment of silence; the foreigners, slightly intimidated by the formality of the space and the event, hesitated. Suddenly, Professor Zhang You Xin, the watercolor teacher, grabbed a peach and hurled it across the room at the Americans. One of them deftly caught it and Professor Zhang cheered. The room burst into laughter and the formal part of the program was over. Everyone dug into the refreshments in front of them and the room dissolved into pools of conversation.
Noon Banquet
At our last afternoon together with the graduate students, Yu Mao Lin turned out page after page of beautiful calligraphy as souvenirs for each of us. Sun Li Ping said “Let’s make art!” Instead of using a brush, she took watercolor paper and rubbed it onto the tablets of colour in the paint box, making abstract shapes on the paper. At five o’clock, we had to go to the dormitory, leaving at 6pm for a 7pm train. Some students said their farewells at the dormitory, but most of them got on their bicycles and went to the railway station to see us off. They bought platform tickets to stand right beside our windows as we pulled out. These were the days before sealed, air-conditioned train-cars. We could see each other and talk to each other through the open windows. As the train started to pull out, our crowded hands mingled with theirs. Touching. Touching. An angry train official on the platform tried to separate us. I was weeping.
We were riding hard-sleeper, starting a 26-hour ride to Xian. I sat on a fold-down seat in the corridor by the window. A Chinese man sat facing me. We started to chat. He said, “I saw your goodbye; I hope you come back.” He was a railway engineer and helped design the first major bridge over the Yellow River designed by Chinese engineers. Earlier, others had been designed by German and Russian engineers. During the Rightist Purge he had spent several years in Inner Mongolia. We exchanged addresses. He had gone to an English school in the Concession Area of Shanghai in the 1930s before the Japanese took over. He said, “Five years ago, I would not have dared to speak to a foreigner. I have not spoken to a foreigner since 1948”. His English was very good.
July 12
We arrived in Xian and stayed at the Foreign Language Institute in the south part of the city.
July 13 and 14 we visited typical tourist sites, Ban Po Village, Terra Cotta Warriors, Big Goose Pagoda, Hua Qing Mineral Baths, Small Goose Pagoda, Shaanxi Provincial Museum, Drum and Bell Towers, and the Grand Mosque. I didn’t know there was mosque in Xian. It’s the largest in China, is mostly a Ming-Qing construction but mosques on this site date back to the Tang Dynasty. How did it get here?
Sketch of Big Goose Pagoda, Xian
Big Wild Goose Pagoda is a Buddhist pagoda located in southern Xi'an, Shaanxi, China. It was built in 652 during the Tang dynasty and originally had five stories. The structure was rebuilt in 704 during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian and its exterior brick facade was renovated during the Ming dynasty. One of the pagoda's many functions was to hold sutras and figurines of Gautama Buddha that were brought to China from India by the seventh-century Buddhist monk, scholar, traveller, and translator Xuanzang. The monk Xuanzang (602 - 664) a Chinese pilgrim to India translated the sacred scriptures of Buddhism from Sanskrit into Chinese and founded in China the Buddhist Consciousness Only school. He journeyed to India 629-645 to study at the fountainhead of Buddhism.
July 15
Fly to ChongQing and stay at the Southwest China Teacher’s College in the Bei Bei District up the Jiang Bei River.
July 16
PM We visit North Hot Springs Park, on Jin Yun Mountain near the town of Bei Bei. A cool rain. A graduate student from the College accompanied us. She studies poetry; her favorite is Wordsworth. She has translated over 500 poems from English to Chinese. Her thesis is on the death image in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. We took a small bus up the mountain, a moist darkness, a slate-green mossy gate and stairs, a temple roof with leaping curved corners. A gauzy strip of pink cloth, tied in a little girl’s pigtails, ran like an orchid through the blue pines. Sculpture from another realm invited us to join them.
I met a teacher, Zhou Wen Qing. He named his daughter, Zhou Qiao. “Zhou” is his family name and “Qiao” means the peak of a mountain. “Zhou” is also a homonym for “boat”, and “Qiao” is a homonym for “bridge”. Her name, with references to mountain, boat, and bridge reminds Chinese people of a popular saying, “Meet a mountain, open a road; meet a river build a bridge”. Her father’s hope for his daughter is that she will have determination and perseverance in the face of difficulties.
At night, we enjoy a view from a tower looking out over the two rivers that meet at Chongqing. The junction made it easy to find in the moonlight, easy for Japanese bombers from February 1938 to August 1943 to make 268 air raids, dropping 11,500 mainly incendiary bombs. The targets were usually non-military targets.
[Insert Image: Sunflower seed wrapping paper is part of Mao’s eulogy for Bethune.]
July 17
We get up at 4 am to drive into town for the 7:00 pm departure of our boat; the beginning of our trip down the Yangtze. The high cliffs we saw would be much reduced in 2003 by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. The sun comes up on the river revealing ever paler, receding silhouettes of hills. Our boat has about 1000 passengers with no first class accommodation, only 2nd to 5th. We are in small rooms with triple bunk beds on either side. Ours is the last deck to have windows; just above the water-line. Ate rice gluten wrapped in bamboo leaves, a gift from a passenger. Anchor that night at Yun Yang.
Professor Jing told me his son’s name was Jing Hao. The given name “Hao” means “vast”. He wants his son to have an open mind, to see “wholes”. It is also the name of a famous Song Dynasty painter.
July 18
We pass through the Three Gorges.
July 20
We stayed in dormitories at the Wuhan Medical College. Take in a indoor circus show that night. I feel weaker and weaker; frequent diarrhea increases the dehydration. Walking around downtown taking photographs, I left one of my notebooks on the steps of a bank. People sleeping on cots on the sidewalk; it’s too hot to sleep inside. Wuhan is referred to as one of the three furnaces of China.
July 20 to 27
A blur, in Wuhan: Hubei Provincial Museum and Botanical Garden, Wuhan Institute of Botany, China Academy of Sciences; in Wuxi: Ji Chong Garden in Shi Wei Park.
July 28
In Shanghai we stay at the Foreign Languages Institute. Late at night I went to the white tile bathroom at the dorm. When I was about to leave, I fainted and fell on the floor. No-one saw me and I was not conscious enough to call for help. I remember thinking “Maybe, this is the end.” I remember telling my heart to keep going. After a while, I woke up and crawled back to bed.
They told me my missing notebook was in Tianjin; someone had found it and mailed it to Tian Da. It was safe; they would mail it to me from Tian Da to my home in Canada.
The Americans students all left today. I had booked a flight a long time ago in Newfoundland, for July 31. The Wai Ban could not leave Shanghai until I left, so they all stayed an additional three days. No-one complained to me about my making them extend the time of their trip.
July 30
Last day. Take Photos in Lu Xun Park. Tried to reach Beth McKenty (a Baha’i I had met in Toronto) at the Jiao Tong University, but she was gone for the summer. About two years ago I attended a meeting in Toronto where she shared her experiences in China. She gave each of us Chinese stamp as a small gift.
Gift from Beth McKenty
Took No. 18 bus to Nanjing Lu, walked to the Bund and took the same bus back.
For the first time since I came to China, I ate supper alone. My excrement was soaking wet.
July 31
One hour taxi ride to Hong Qiao Airport, no expressways. Fly to Tokyo and change planes for Vancouver, Canada. In Ottawa, my mother recognized the signs of dehydration; her medicine was: in a litre of water, add juice of 4 oranges, seven tablespoons of sugar, and one teaspoon of salt. It worked very well.
St. John’s, Newfoundland
August 1985 to August 1986
In a Bugden’s group taxi on the way from the airport into town, I realized I didn’t have enough cash to pay for my ride. While I was wondering what to say to the driver, he was engaged in a lively conversation with the dispatcher and the other drivers. They were all linked by radio.
“Did you hear about Garge?” he said.
“No, what happened?” came a voice.
“He went to the ‘ospital”.
“Really? What for?”
“A hoperation!!”
“A hoperation??”
“Yes, bye! It was a hamputation!”
“Go on! What did he get hamputated?”
“He had to get his sofa cut off his back”.
(teasing George for being a coach-potato)
Fortunately, I was the last passenger. I explained my problem to the driver; I said I could pay later. He said, “Never mind, just give me what you got”.
Having committed to work in Tianjin beginning in the Fall of 1986, I had a year to spend in St. John’s before I went back to China. There was time to go through the Baha’i Year of Patience, a year to attempt reconciliation in an estranged marriage. I would try to sell our house.
Soon after I returned to St. John’s, I rented the LSPU Hall for a night and stapled posters on telephone poles around town to advertise a presentation about China. I gave a talk with slides from China shown on two screens. It was well attended; curiosity about China was high.
I found a student at Memorial University, Chen Jun Yi. We did an exchange; he wanted to practice his English. I spent two hours with him every Saturday morning; one hour in Chinese, and one hour in English. There was a big box of instant noodles under his bed in his dormitory room. At least one meal per day was a beaten egg dropped into a bowl of Chinese instant noodles. On a limited scholarship, he had managed to buy a very nice camera.
In Shanghai, I had bought a tape with all the Chinese sounds, in all the tones, arranged in matrix-like order. Every night, as I was going to sleep, I would play the tape beside my bed and chant along:
ma, ba, la, sa, ta;
me, be, le, se, te;
muo, buo, luo, suo, tuo;
and so on –
Each one was pronounced four ways: flat tone, rising tone, descending-rising tone, and falling tone. An illustration in the accompanying booklet showed a cross-section of your head to indicate how the tongue should be placed for three particular sounds that did not exist in English; the Chinese version of ‘ch, zh, and sh’. In English, the tongue barely touches the roof of the mouth; in Chinese it curls upward as in the middle illustration below to get a distinctive breathy sound. It worked!
Cross-section of Mouth
[http://www.china-learn.info/Hanyu/FSIC02.html]
The Committee for the Education of Children
I continued to help Elizabeth Rochester and Joan Rendell prepare materials on the education of children. These included a document called “The Peace Curriculum” with lesson plans, and a small newsletter for the Baha’is of Canada. When I told Elizabeth about my experience in China, she said. “You were with your peers”.
1985 November-December
Wind and Water, Stories of the Newfoundland Chinese
I worked on a play at the LSPU Hall. "Wind and Water, Stories of the Newfoundland Chinese" was performed Nov. 27 to Dec. 8, 1985. The play was initiated by Rick Boland. I suggested the name, “Wind and Water”. In China, I had learned something about “Fengshui”, a combination of science and folklore that guides the location of things in space; from cities and towns to doors and windows in a house. “Feng” means wind, and “Shui” means water. These elements, “wind and water”, felt particularly appropriate for Newfoundland. I was invited to join the cast. The play was collectively written, with Rick Boland as the first director, later replaced by Janice Spence. I acted a few minor parts. We were not well rehearsed when we opened at the LSPU Hall and got properly panned by the critics.
1986 February
Youth Project
I had made a proposal for a Youth Urban Awareness Project and presented it to Susan Jamieson at MUN Extension in 1985. Unfortunately, not enough students applied and the project was canceled. However, a modified version of the program, with most of the basic ideas intact, became the Youth Urban Awareness Project, June to August 1987. The Project Coordinator, was Sheilagh O'Leary. A booklet about it, including my original proposal, was called "Report on Youth Urban Awareness Project, June - August 1987”. It was prepared by Susan Wood and published by MUN Extension Arts, Division of Extension Service, School of Continuing Studies and Extension, MUN, 1988.
1986 March
I received a formal invitation from Tianjin University to teach in the School of Architecture. On June 23, I received a notice from the China State Education Commission saying that my employment in Tianjin had been approved. I mailed this to the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa to apply for a visa. On July 11, I phoned the Embassy; they said my visa is coming. On July 30 I sent a telegram to the Tianjin School of Architecture telling them my arrival time in Beijing. I said I hoped someone could meet me in Beijing to help me get to Tianjin.
1986 March-April
Map Collection/Exhibition
The St. John's Map Project with Peter Pope was a very satisfying collaboration. We prepared an exhibition of maps of St. John’s, most of which came from the Provincial Archives in St. John’s or the National Archives in Ottawa. The exhibition of maps, in chronological order, and collateral images - sketches and for later maps, photographs - was held at the Newfoundland Arts and Culture Center. This project was also funded by the Canada Council.
1986 April 20 - May 9
Vancouver Expo 86 (May 2 to October 13, 1986)
Based on the feasibility study I had done in Vancouver the year before, Bernie Bomers invited me to come back to produce a harbour symphony in Vancouver Harbour for the May 2 Opening Ceremony of the Canada Pavilion. Prince Charles and Princess Diana would be among the audience. The Canada Pavilion, a large hotel and exhibition center built on a cruise ship pier jutted out into the water, provided an excellent vantage point to watch the performance. Hildi Westerkamp composed the symphony. In addition to the cruise ships, and tug boats, there was a small fleet of Haida drummers in canoes, and a flypast by two small planes, an Otter and a Beaver.
One of the rehearsals was with the tug boat captains who I had to invite to use their voices to make honking noises. Seriously manly men, they were reticent to make honking sounds at the rehearsals. The seaplane airport near Stanley Park was shut down down during the event. The next day, when it was over, I was so exhausted I wandered around downtown for a while. Suddenly my back gave out and I collapsed on the sidewalk. I had to pull myself to a bench to recover. I went to Tom, my brother, and Marci’s place on Lasquieti Island and slept for a couple of days.
Vancouver Harbour Symphony, 1986
1986 July
Garage Sale
Back in St. John’s, to raise a little cash, I sold nearly all my possessions. In the newspaper, I advertised a three-day Garage Sale at my home, Friday to Sunday, July 4 to 6. Crowds came. “How much for the tools?” - my carpentry set in my Peter Munro toolbox. “How much for the candlesticks?” - a wedding gift to Cathy and I. Most things were gone in the first day. Gloria and Michaela Kent came on Sunday afternoon. We sat on the floor in the empty living room and read Dylan’s “Fern Hill" from the one book not sold, a book of poetry. Later at the LSPU Flea Market, I persuaded the actor, Rick Boland, to buy my remaining foundry casting molds. “What am I going to do with these?” he asked. “Great Christmas presents”, I suggested.
1986 July
Sound Symposium: “Courtyard”
I received a small Canada Council Grant to do an audio-visual portrait of St. John’s called "Courtyard". The piece was about one of the important patterns of the urban form of St. John’s. The shape of the city blocks were very ergonomic; the town has a well-tuned, logical fit between pedestrian and beast-of-burden energy on the one hand, and the landscape, on the other. Row housing, with only a small setback from the street, lined up tightly along the edges of these city blocks creating large common “courtyards” spaces in behind.
St. John’s was such a windy place; these “courtyards were more protected from the wind than the open-ended treeless streets. The micro-climate of the courtyards allowed large trees to grow, making the town, from a surrounding hill, look like a family of salad bowls. It was difficult to give a back yard to the house on the corner, so these were often corner stores.
To make the soundtrack, Jim Rillie and I spent a few days, at all times of day and night, recording in the streets, in the houses, and in the courtyards. The visual part of the presentation was to have been a slide show of aerial photos of the old town. Foggy weather made helper flight over the city unsafe, so I presented my piece as sound only, and took the pictures in August. Ed Riche, Justin Hall and I went up with Justin leaning out the side door on a harness so he could look down with his camera.
1986 August 15
Keynote Speaker: Atlantic Planning Institute Annual General Meeting
At the Atlantic Planning Institute Annual General Meeting I had an opportunity to share some of things I had learned about the evolution of St. John’s urban form and its unique relationship to the harbour. After the talk, I took everyone on a walking tour of the old city.
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After a year of abstaining from new relationships and failing to overcome the alienation between us, the St. John’s Assembly granted our divorce. Cathy told me she was moving to Paris, France. I could not afford to buy her half of the house, so I had to sell it. She also asked that I not contact her directly. My knuckle had grown since we married; I couldn’t get my wedding ring off. I used a hack-saw to remove it. On August 14, I attended the court procedure for my divorce. Cathy did not attend. I had deep sense of failure.
The week before our divorce court appearance, I went to Ottawa to attend my mother and father’s 40th wedding anniversary. The parish priest attended along with a 100 or so old friends. In my parent’s generation, the shame of divorce was very high. Also, in their case, the sanctity of the marriage vow was so important, couples had to dig deeper into their reconciliation reserves before they could just walk away from marriage.
While l was in Ottawa, I visited the China Desk at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) office; they had a grant program for formal graduate studies or for private research. I would apply for it. Teaching positions in China were not long-term and I was looking for alternate ways to stay longer in China.
1986 August
Leaving Newfoundland
Before flying to Tianjin, I had a last visit with Chen Jun Yi (my Chinese teacher) and Deng Lang Tuo, at John and Margo Evans’ home. Our house on Cochrane Street did not get sold. A week before I left St. John’s, I found a tenant to rent it. The night before leaving I hosted the Baha’i Nineteen-Day Feast (August 19) in the attic floor of my house and said goodbye to the St. John’s Baha’i Community.
1986 August 20
Fly to Toronto/Vancouver/HK/Beijing.
The flight to China - this time to live there - included stops in Toronto and Hong Kong. Ann Wilson picked me up at the airport in Toronto and drove me to her King City home for a lunch and a spiritual pit-stop. Usually the routine at her home included meals in a skylit stone-floored patio room overlooking the lawn, the trees, and a bird feeder. One of my lino-cuts was on the wall. Today, though, was a summer barbecue - roasted tomatoes and corn.
The next day I left Toronto, then Vancouver. Somewhere over the Pacific I felt very afraid. I was almost forty, still wandering, alone, with a resume that looked like a patch-work quilt. I had shrunk my life to nothing for a chance to be in China. Somewhere out over the Pacific I was crying and afraid. “Please God, help!”