Chere voyageuse

1 What a fine story you tell. Of course, I admire proficiency with chopsticks and the speed with which you (evidently) became proficient. Perhaps there will be risotto with chopsticks at Haulcon? Or rather your proficiency is an aid to your blending with the local settings. As your sticks twirl so it will be evident that you are both 'old China hands'.

1.1 Yes, the swirl in a city. The local way in which people and vehicles combine. Remember the seeming madness of the combination in an Indian city or, for that matter, in an Ethiopian one. (I recall the railway tracks which, unguarded, pass through villages. Still, I also recall the slow speed of the occasional train.)

1.2 And the question about the cessation of technological development within China; ah, the question. Like you (and like your Chinese companion) I have been conscious of that question, one of the grand, global questions. I'll seek a relevant programme in the In Our Time archive.

1.3 The mean, the middle, the place between the extremes. Yes, the Greeks talked about the Golden Mean (and they were not distinguishing the mean, however golden, from the median or the mode). The balance between the humours. The equilibrium to which men, and women, should aspire.

1.3.1 As I key I think of what we understand as the manners of a person, the extent to which we applaud a mannerly person, being one who is well-spoken, who is well-dressed (that is, whose dress is not exhuberant, whose clothes do not clash). In well-ordered society in the 18th and early 19th centuries there was a disapproval of Enthusiasm. Nowadays, we too look askance at the person, with a wild look in the eyes, who propounds 'extreme' views. Indeed, we can fear the extremist.

1.3.2 We are generally familiar with the merits of taking the balanced view, of keeping a balance in our lives, that sort of thing.

2 The notion that technological development must come from without rather than within echoes the policy in 1920s and 1930s Russia to import technologies from the West whilst seeking to guard the local people from contamination by Western political and social ideas. Remember, when I was teaching in Eastern Europe and elsewhere it was the ideas which were being imported, the ideas and the way of propagating them. I think too of the technological development of Japan in the second half of the 19th century. However, the guards against contamination were in place. (But the pace of technological development was astonishing.)

3 And the Wall. Think more about (everything and) the Wall.

L'homme qui reste à la maison