Letter to Students 22 July 2008

Dear Reader

I am sitting on the plane to Japan, listening to the music by the Rolling Stones, and remembering the parties I went to at Otago University when their songs were so avante garde!  Listening to them now, they seem very mainstream, but only because I have continued to hear them for thirty five years.  In one of the interviews with Mick Jagger, when he had been playing in his band for two years, he remarked that he thought his band would at least last one more year!   It must be over forty years now, and the Rolling Stones are still going strong.  Mick Jagger gyrates like a young man, with not a trace of the middle age spread which afflicts most men his age. All of the members of the band have the lines on their faces which show a life extavagantly travelled, but they are still clear eyed and fit looking, an amazing achievement for a band which endured the ravages of drugtaking through the revolutionary seventies. The Rolling Stones were viewed as anarchic, and were even imprisoned for a month.  Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were prosecuted for drug use, a huge furore erupting in the media over their outlandish behaviour. I feel very lucky to have lived through that era, when amazing music was made which has endured the passage of time, and people challenged the accepted values of the time. I was a comparatively conservative young university student, despite my long Indian skirts and studies of Greek philosophy.  I also studied law to add security to my job options, but I never followed this through.  My mind found it difficult to be so restrained by legal statutes, and the discipline of the courts.  Teaching suited my personality, although the career path of joining the diplomatic service also appealed to me. I was accepted into the diplomatic corps after finishing univerity, but couldn't be a mouthpiece for the right wing government of the Robert Muldoon led National party era. When I visited the New Zealand Embassy in Beijing two weeks ago, and met the career diplomats there, it again reminded me of a career path which I chose to ignore, but one that has stayed close to my heart.  On these marketing trips, I feel I am using those diplomatic skills when I work with people of other cultures, and it brings me huge levels of satisfaction.  The Rolling Stones' song, "I can't get no satisfaction," does not refer to me!  When a young Mick Japper was asked if he could imagine doing what he was doing at the age of sixty, he replied without hesition, "Oh, yeah!"  How right he was, and with the same tort,( I can"t remember the spelling so please forgive me!) skinny body! I became a teacher of English in London, which I thought was a temporary career move before I found a real job, but look at me now! Thirty years later and still in that temporary job!

It is now Tuesday afternoon, and the weekend I spent in Dunedin seems rather like a dream.  I arrived back in Dunedin just before lunchtime on Friday, 18th July, and it felt so good to be enveloped in Han's arms, and hug the children.  I have to include my sponsored son, Abilio, in my extended family as he is very much one of my sons now.  I was very aware not to talk too much about my trip, as is my habit, as I knew how hard Han had worked to keep the family together, and it was more important to hear of what the family had been doing. Luckily, we had been in constant contact during the three weeks I had been away, so there were no real surprises, but filling in the gaps was important. Stories were told as we had lunch at the cafe in the Botanic Gardens, and I felt blessed that the rain had not followed me this particular day!  Auckland had greeted me with rain as I arrived late in the evening, and the following morning was grey and wet.  Wellington was equally dismal, and when most people disembarked there, I heard the typical Auckland remark that "Dunedin is too cold for people to continue south!"  Maybe the temperature is lower, but give me the glorious clear blue skies and the hot sun beaming through the windows any day to the relentless rain and colourless skies! The gardens were calm in their winter quiet, waiting for the excitement of spring when the promise of new life will be fulfilled as it is every year.  It was so good to be in the embrace of my family, and I couldn't imagine leaving three days later. Han became morose when talk came to my leaving, but we tried to stay focused on the present. It was good to get back to school, give everyone a hug, and get a better perspective on the finances of the school after meeting with the accountant. I was also supposed to meet with the landlord to sign a new contract, but I was squeezed for time, and did that on Monday.  Landlords are able to raise the rent a lot more easily than we are able to raise our tuition fees, and it seems so unfair.  However, life is not supposed to be fair!  I had asked the landlord to say why our rent was more expensive than some of the rental on new space in the building, and in the end, I signed the contract without an explanation as I realised that the question was not going to be answered.  I hate feeling in a weak position, but I truly believe in just deserts, and we are all accountable for our actions in the end.  I am not going to become bitter and twisted, but we will work within the restraints which now bind us. 

When I was in China, I ached to be with my family at times, and there was no more painful time than when the family was tenpin bowling, and they texted me to say how much fun they were having.  It is an activity I don't particularly enjoy, but I vowed to go with the family on my return.  Although Dunedin greeted me with vivid blue skies and sunshine on Friday, the mist lay heavy on the hills on Saturday, giving us the perfect excuse to go bowling inside. It was as much fun as I had hoped, and although I lost miserably, I loved the competitive nature of the afternoon.  Unfortunately, the stress of the past three weeks caught up on Han and me in the evening, but we survived to have an enjoyable Sunday.  I made bread and taught Han how to make muesli as we are now tightening our belts after spending so much money over the past three months.  We don't find it difficult to be frugal, but we had enjoyed our one month holiday of extravagance in Europe, and now have to pay for it. I suppose this is how we live our lives, and these periods of "suffering," for want of a better word, is what Hu Chen talked to me about as we walked along a busy street in Beijing one day. He said that he had learnt from Buddhism that life is basically suffering, punctuated by moments of happiness.  As much as I like to think that we have longer periods of happiness than suffering, it would be interesting to keep a record of reality! What are your thoughts on life and suffering?

However, I am not going to get maudlin as I contemplate the meaning of life. I have come on this business trip with Ayako, a dear old friend who will retire from her life of cancer research, and return to Japan after nine years at the University of Otago.  This trip she had wanted for us both, and it is the perfect opportunity to explore the "old" Japan, and hopefully find students who want to study with us and experience life in Dunedin.  Last Friday, on the descent in the plane over the glorious Otago Peninsula which is my home, I made a pledge to "pray, plan, and prosper through the power of positive thinking," and I refuse to panic as is so easy to do.So often, I tell my students that 90% of life is our attitude towards what happens to us, and 10% is what actually happens to us.  This is not my original thought, but focusing on the positive is often bandied about in seminars.  Why do we, in so called western countries, (of which we in New Zealand are included although we seem to be situated south east on most maps!) have to spend so much time getting our heads in order?  It is the luxury of the overindulgent, materialistic developed world, and I am sure that we could take a leaf out of less developed nations who eke a living out of each day, but have a much richer spiritual side. I will keep working on it!

Talking of those who eke out a living reminds me of the numbers of people I saw in China who have not been privileged to enjoy the rapid gains made in China's race to be taken seriously as a developed nation. Some wear their fluorescent orange jackets, and pick up rubbish along the sides of the roads with long tongs, carefully putting the discarded litter in large bamboo baskets on their backs.Others cycle on their old  rusty bikes, carrying either young children on the back, or old people in cobbled together carts, with not a sign of a helmet or light in the dark of night.  They are as silent in the society as they cycle home along potholed streets to their humble homes. Old women would scavange the streets for discarded bottles and cans, thanking people with a bow when given their litter, crushing plastic and aluminium carefully and putting it in their bags. Recycling is such an admirable quality, and in a country in which the consumer is spending up large, there is a lot to recycle! Most of the street vendors, who eked their living out of selling formerly staple snacks, have now been removed from the centre of Beijing, so I did not personally see the tragic upheaval caused by this so-called progress. 

Hu Chen and I did, however, talk with local Beiing people who had been adversely affected by the government's obsesssion with a clean image for the city during the upcoming Olympic Games. The auspicious inaugural date of 8/08/08, with 8 being the superstitious Chinese luckiest number, is hoped to bring the success and recognition to which the Chinese government aspires. However, the cynics will say that the gloss put on the presentation of these games comes at too much of a cost. It was after a hot day, when the sun had gone down, and a cool breeze had blown up across a small lake near our hotel, that Hu Chen and I walked past a small grey brick house with a black tile roof where we had earlier seen people preparing food for their dinner.  Three tables had been set out down by the lake, and people were eating simply cooked food under umbrellas as a light rain began to fall. I suggest that we eat there, and Hu chen by this stage was used to me asking to eat in places where foreingers seldom went.  Neighbours helped carry a big umbrella down to the lake's edge, and set up a table and a couple of wooden chairs.  I drank beer while Hu Chen had a big bottle of coca cola, and we enjoyed fried pork, aubergines, sugared tomatoes, and a tasty boney fish.  The owner of the house said that they could only place the tables out on the path when it was raining, as the local authorities would  check on other days and prohibit them "littering" the pathway around the lake! They were not compensated for this drop in income, and although obviously angry, were powerless in the face of such strong governmental control. The same control does not  extend to the roads where red lights are only a colour to follow green, and pedestrian crossings only provide work for the painters of white lines!  You take your life in your own hands when you drive or walk in China's cities!

Hu Chen became nostalgic as he tasted the home cooked food and looked at the short  rows of brick houses which reminded him of the village in which he grew up.  He said China was losing its community feel, and his parents had lost that community spirit when they were forced to go to the big city of Tianjin to find a better life for their only son.  Gone was the evening gathering of family and friends, the meals together, the sharing.  The family moved into a four storeyed red brick complex where people seldom met each other, everyone working too hard and being too tired to share parts of their lives.  I was privileged to be taken to the home in which they felt displaced, a cosy home, but humble in the extreme.  A dark stairwell led to the meshed door, and we entered to be shown into the one room which housed their bed, and acted as a living room when the collapsible table was erected, with the bed then acting as a place for two people to sit, and enjoy  the food cooked in the small closed balcony area.They has been embarrassed about inviting me to their small abode, but I felt so honored and so enjoyed being part of this amazing family who had made such sacrifices for their son. Hu Chen said that all his mother wants is a new one bedroom apartment, preferably in Shanghai because it is the city she loves in a romantic way, but it is something that they will never be able to afford to buy on their own.  I know that Hu Chen has that as one of his main aims now that he has permanent residency in New Zealand, and I will be so delighted to visit them in their precious new home in China.

There is so much to tell you, but I will close here as it is time to have some food and get a little sleep so I have the energy to navigate our way into Tokyo where we will initially stay with Ayako's younger brother and wife.  We will get our Japan Rail passes and then hop on a train with all our luggage.  Ayako, unlike me, does not travel light, and her luggage looks bigger than she is, and weighs about the same! In fact her luggage is ten kilos heavier!

I look forward to writing to you from Japan!

Love

Sharron