According to Google Stats these are the top ten "search keywords" that landed readers on this site in the last month:

1. lebron james
2. public occurrences
3. lebron james pictures
4. cultural revolution china
5. lebron james miami heat
6. wang guangmei
7. lebron james devil
8. lebron james heat
9. lebron james pic
10. pics of lebron james

Oh my god, just take me. I want a slow, painful death.

                                                                 
Oh my god, it's one of those with sunsets in the background, or eagles soaring.

Swine Bob Perks. 

What?  So I'm an idiot, BIG DEAL.  Idiots are people...We have feelings.

"I Wish You Enough" (More)

...Or it may be that that is a story written by an American inspirational speaker named "Bob Perks" and has nothing to do with the soul of China. And it may be that I am an idiot.
Damn, that thing sounded so Chinese to me. Damn it. 

"I Wish You Enough."

This story below was forwarded to me from a friend in China.  In the West, emotions like sorrow and joy are opposites.  It may be that in the soul of China they are mixed together as in the story, akin to yin and yang. 

願你足夠

最近在擴音器通知起飛的機場,  我聽到一對母女最後一刻相聚的對話.

  Standing near the security gate, they hugged and the mother said,

 "I love you and I wish you enough."

在安檢門邊, 他們擁抱在一起,  然後那母親說: " 我愛你.  希望你足夠." 

  The daughter replied, "Mom, our life together has been more than enough.

Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, Mom."

女兒回答道:  "我們在一起共同分享的生活己是足足有餘了.

你的愛是我僅有的需求.  我也祝望你足夠." 

They kissed and the daughter left.

The mother walked over to the window where I was seated.

Standing there I could see she wanted and needed to cry.

I tried not to intrude on her privacy but she welcomed me in by asking,

 "Did you ever say good-bye to someone knowing it would be forever?".

親吻後,  女兒就離去了.  母親走到我坐的窗旁,  我可以看出她很想,也需要放聲一哭 . 我不想打擾她的私事,但是她反而歡迎我加入似的問道:  "你有過和一個人道別 ,  而且心知肚明這是今生的最後一次嗎?"

Yes, I have," I replied. "Forgive me for asking,  but why is this a forever good-bye?".

"有的." 我回答.  "不好意思, 可不可知道為什麼這是永遠的道別呢?"

  "I am old and she lives so far away. I have challenges ahead

and the reality is - the next trip back will be for my funeral," she said.

他說:  "我老了,  她又住的遠, 我有很大的挑戰在面前.  事實是, 她下一次回來將會是參加我的葬禮."

 "When you were saying good-bye, I heard you say, 'I wish you enough'.

May I ask what that means?". 

"當你們說再見的時候,  我聽見你說:" 我希望你足夠."  可不可以告訴我那是什麼意思呢?"我問道.

She began to smile. "That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations.

My parents used to say it to everyone".

She paused a moment and looked up as if trying to remember it in detail

and she smiled even more.

"When we said , 'I wish you enough',

we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them".

Then turning toward me, she shared the following as if she were reciting it from memory.

 她笑了起來: "那是一個傳了許多代的祝望. 

我的父母以前常對所有的人這麼說." 

她停頓了一會兒,  然後凝視上方好像是想記清楚細節. 

她笑的更燦爛的說:" 當我們說:' 我希望你足夠',

我們是要那個人的生命中有足夠的好東西去維持它." 

然後她轉向我. 好像從記憶中背誦似的,念出以下的句子 .            

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright

no matter how gray the day may appear. 

"我祝你有足夠的陽光, 使你在不論多暗淡的日子裡也保有明亮的心態,"

   I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more. 

"我祝你有足夠的陰雨, 因而更加感恩陽光的燦爛."

  I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting. 

"我祝你有足夠的快樂, 來保持你的精神常青."

I wish you enough pain

so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger. 

"我祝你有足夠的苦難, 以至生活中最微不足道的開心也顯得巨大."

  I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting. 

"我祝你得償宿願, 滿足你的慾望."

I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess. 

我祝你有足夠的失落,去感恩你的擁有."

I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good-bye. 

"我祝你有足夠的問候, 來協助你走過最後的再見."

She then began to cry and walked away. 

然後她開始哭泣並離去.

The Soul of China

This is Mr. Wang Yi's email. I thank him for I always learn something from him. Among other things it was Mr. Yi who correctly steered me away from an earlier focus on Legalism to Confucianism, of which Legalism was an offshoot, as more fundamental to understanding the soul of China. 

It is interesting to read about your response to Henry Kissinger's "On China". You commented on Deng  Xiaoping's 16-character directive by saying: "I can think of no more compelling evidence than these statements by Deng that the soul of China is survival." I define the word "soul" as spiritual world, either of a human being or as a nation. It reminds me of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs which I learned in my college psychology class. The hierarchy is 1) physiological needs as the lowest, 2) safety needs, 3) love and belonging, 4) esteem, 5) self-actualization or self-transcendence. I am a strong believer in the hierarchy. If China's soul is survival, that means they only want to satisfy the lowest two or three types of needs. That, actually, means there are no soul needs. Unfortunately, we do see a lot of evidence in reality that it is true.

Remember shortly after China opened its doors and about two decades ago, the renowned movie director Zhang Yimou made a movie titled "To Live." The movie tells a typical story of how ordinary Chinese struggled to survive in adversity. Maybe that is the sad but true answer you have found for your question. When human beings hardly have any of the four freedoms as FDR stated, searching for the soul is like chasing a mirage.

To me, the soul exists in a society's arts, literature, religion, etc. In the case of

China, you may see some sparks of the soul in some people for now. When it is

lost, it is so hard to nurture and recover.

The Soul of China

I will publish shortly an email I received from a Chinese-American friend on the recent posts here under the above title. The email refers to a hierarchy of values and that reminded me of some research I had done a year or so ago.  When I began writing on "seeking the soul" I thought of what the basic human emotions were...love, happiness, fear...but was love, for example, an emotion or did it involve "too much" cognition for my purposes?  I wanted to hew close to the Western distinction in philosophy between the mind (Descartes, Socrates) and emotion (Homer, Nietzsche).  The inchoate idea I had at the time for "soul" was closer to an emotion.  It seemed to me that "soul" could be reasonably considered a constellation of emotions. So what did the professionals, psychologists and psychiatrists, consider to be the basic human emotions. That's what I researched and this is what I found:

Joy(5)+Happiness(3)+Elation(1)+Pleasure(1)+Love(3)                14

+Tender-emotion(1)

Anger(7)+Rage/rage&terror (4)                                            11

Surprise (5)+Interest(3)+Wonder(2)                                            10

Disgust(6)+Contempt(2)+Aversion(1)+Hate(1)                            10          

Fear                                                                                              9

Grief (1)+Sadness(5)+Sorrow(1)                                                   7

Distress(2)+Pain(1)                                                                       3

Anxiety(2)+Panic(1)                                                                      3

Hope(1)+Expectancy(1)+Anticipation(1)                                       3

Desire                                                                                           2

Shame                                                                                           2

_______________________________________________________

Acceptance                         1
Courage                              1

Dejection                            1

Despair                               1

Guilt                                    1

Subjection                           1

This is a "frequency of appearance" list based on different lists. There was a URL on the saved document I had, 

http://changingminds.org/explanations/emotions/basic%20emotions.htm. It may be that the different lists appear there or at least links to them. 

I'm sure there was a "methodology" that went into the compilation of the different lists (they were after all professionals) but I don't remember what; for my purposes it was enough that reasonably serious people gave some thought to it and used whatever methods occurred to them to use.  

The grouping of some emotions into one category is my own, partly owing, I own, to my despair (only one appearance) at having fear as the most frequently listed emotion and other negative emotions, anger, disgust, sadness, dominating the top of the list, partly also because I did think that the same idea was being expressed near synonymously by different professionals. That is to say, the groupings are the product of my own (non-professional) subjectivity. The happy (three) result is that a group of similar positive emotions is number one. 

The list is still despairing. Eight of the eleven entries are clearly "negative;" there's no getting around that; there just isn't any reasonable understanding of anger, disgust, fear, grief, sorrow, etc. that would put a happy face on them. 

Maybe I didn't post this before because it was too depressing. 

Is this really who we are? The only ringer on the list (to me) is "desire," and that sounds "positive" but not clearly so. Like sexual desire?  That seems too glandular to be a basic human emotion. Desire in an obsessive-compulsive sense?  That's a chemical imbalance or something. One could question "love" on the grounds mentioned above. "Pain" too, as a sensation, not an emotion but these lists were compiled by shrinks not biologists and there is a psychic pain that we are all familiar with. Anyway, the point is, aside from desire, the rest of the entries ring reasonably true to me; I can't think of any others and some, like the "surprise" grouping, are insightful. 

This is painful to write.

I think I wrote one time here that every Chinese I know is in pain. That is not a scientific sample of the population.  More broadly than my personal contacts, the reading I've done is consistent with my personal observations. I know I wrote that in my opinion fear is at the center of China's soul. I believe that that is true.

I cannot go on.

Seeking the Soul

The Pilgrim's Progress is considered a classic in English literature and the most important book aside from the Bible in Protestant literature. I did not like the book. Nonetheless it, or at least one small part, has stayed with me going on seven years. Yesterday there were four pageviews of the post published on July 4, 2004 that quoted this passage:

"I only thought to make
I knew not what; nor did I undertake
thereby to please my neighbor; no not I,
I did it my own self to gratify.
Neither did I but vacant seasons spend
in this my scribble; nor did I intend
but to divert myself in doing this,
from worser thoughts, which make me do amiss."

The Soul of China

                                                                 
Whoa! Not so fast. Above, the statue of Confucius boxed up and being removed from Tienanmen Square in April. I bet somebody got a time-out over that.

I think it was in Henry Kissinger's new book, if not somewhere else recently, that I read of a Chinese government official lecturing an American official over American outrage at the Tienanmen massacre and saying, "You think you know Chinese people better than Chinese people do."  Well, sometimes actually the hardest person to know is oneself; more likely though, of course, an American will understand Americans better and Chinese will understand Chinese better. Chinese don't understand themselves. They have had an extremely difficult time adjusting once they determined to their satisfaction that China was not the center of the universe (about 300 years ago). They don't know how to deal with who they are in a world context, they don't know how to relate to the rest of the world, they don't know how to interpret their past. They don't know themselves. 

The Soul of China

                                                                   
So much for smashing the four olds.

At top, the statue of Confucius installed in January in Tienanmen Square, where Mao Zedong's mausoleum rests.  

The Soul of China

                                                           
And Deng was the upbeat one.

The Soul of China

Okay...all right...okey-dokey.

Psychologists, psychiatrists, analyze those statements for us.

Shrink #1:  ...That's classic paranoia.

Shrink #2: Sig, it's not paranoia if they really are all against you.

(general laughter)


Shrink #2: Seriously, it is paranoia or certainly deep fear. Paranoia is irrational fear.

Shrink #3: I would be deeply concerned for a patient who made statements like that.


"By the time of his death...he had become a recluse."


"As he receded from the scene, [he] decided to buttress his successor by leaving behind a set of maxims for his guidance and that of the next generation of leaders. In issuing these instructions to Communist Party officials, [he] chose a method from Chinese classical history.  The instructions were stark and succinct. Written in classical Chinese poetic style, they embraced two documents: a 24-character instruction and a 12-character explanation restricted to high officials. The 24-character instruction read:


              'Observe carefully; secure our position; cope with affairs
               calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at
               maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.'


"The 12-character policy explanation followed with an even more restricted circulation among the leaders. It read:

            'Enemy troops are outside the walls.  They are stronger than
            we.  We should be mainly on the defensive.' "


Deng Xiaoping in On China by Henry Kissinger (437-8). (1)

I can think of no more compelling evidence than these statements by Deng that the soul of China is survival.

1. Dr. Kissinger's endnote 40 reads in full:  "Deng Initiates New Policy 'Guiding Principle,'" FBIS-CHI-91-215; see also United States Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, "Military Power of the People's Republic of China: A report to Congress Pursuant to the National Defense Authorization Act Fiscal Year 2000" (2007), 7, http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/070523-china-military-power-final.pdf.

Seeking the Soul

"Observe carefully; secure our position; cope with affairs 
calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at
maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership."


"Enemy troops are outside the walls. They are stronger than
we. We should be mainly on the defensive."

The Soul of China

                                                                 
Henry Kissinger's new book, certainly his last, is On China.  There is professional support there for certain amateur assertions (based on other professionals) made here on the fundamentals to China's soul: the absence of influenceof Western-style religion; the importance of Confucianism; the lack of Western-style imperialism; the related, not identical, lack of exploration; centralism of authority. I address this last first.

In Law and Modern Society Professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger contrasted the fractured power structure that developed out of feudal Europe with that in China. Key to the emergence of the rule of law in Europe was the development of Third Estate, the bourgeoisie, as a power locus. This came as the Roman Catholic Church was under assault from Protestant reformers. China never had anything like a Roman Catholic Church or the bourgeoisie as power loci.

Dr. Kissinger notes the importance of geography too. Europe was fractured geographically, which contributed mightily to the development of separate languages, ethnicities, and nation-states, and hence power centers. China was not as fractured geographically. The Gobi Desert in the northwest, the Himalayas in the southwest, the seas to the east and southeast, these were natural geographic boundaries to the Chinese empire. The sheer expanse of this land area--larger than all of Europe combined--and its variety of terrain and climate provided support, facts on the ground, to the idea that China was all that mattered, very nearly all there was, a self-contained, self-sustaining civilization that was the Middle Kingdom in the universe with an emperor who ruled with nothing less than a Mandate of Heaven. Why explore?

China today is 95% ethnic Han, a homogeneity incomprehensible to an American. It's written language, so important that the meaning of "writing" in Chinese is "when civilization began" has changed so little, Dr. Kissinger points out, that millennia-old classics, are eminently readable today. Why change?

Geography, ethnicity, language: it's hard to think of any other factors as fundamental to the creation of a distinctive people, and they did combine to produce a distinctive people in Chinese.

Geography made China hard to invade and made China wealthy. China was the wealthiest, most advanced civilization on earth prior to the Industrial Revolution in the West. That made it tempting to invade. And so the invaders came. Professor John Head relates a metaphor used by a colleague, of China as a giant with his back to the northwest, inward-looking, protective, defensive, fearful. Time and again in Chinese history the invaders came on horseback from the northwest.

Unity against the threat, real or imagined, of invasion was viewed by Chinese as key to survival and it is survival that I argue is the soul of China. The primordial survival "instinct," more pronounced (and less rational) in my view in the soul of China than in the souls of some other peoples produced the desideratum of unity which produced the incredible centralism of Chinese society throughout history and down to the present day. Kissinger argues that Confucius' Analects worked as both religion and Constitution for China. However that may be, Confucius' message to Chinese was "know your place." The individual was a cog, a "rustless screw,"  who legitimized the Emperor and the Mandate of Heaven, rather than civilization legitimizing the individual.

Unity's near opposite, chaos, is the dirtiest word in Chinese. Chinese had everything they wanted in China. There was no need to explore, no need to conquer. China was not nearly as imperial as were so many Western peoples. If it could remain unified it could survive and since chaos was the great horror China would sow chaos among her enemies. Kissinger points to the the maxim, barbarians fighting barbarians is good for China. The Chinese theory of war is indirect, defensive; the West's direct and offensive. When it failed on the battlefield, it won in the peace. China absorbed the conquerors, converting them to the use of the difficult Chinese language and putting the vast imperial bureaucracy at the new ruler's disposal. China survived.

Unity, grounded in survival, brooked no competing power loci. Confucianism was certainly not a religion in that sense and, as Unger and Head both wrote, so would have been a brokering rule of law. China is, in Kissinger's wording, a "singularity," more unified geographically, ethnically, linguistically, and in its power structure, than other civilizations, "a civilization pretending to be a nation-state," in his quoting of Professor Lucian Pye. Why compromise?

With no competing power loci and with a Mandate of Heaven, the Chinese emperor never had to compromise with internal groups, not with a Church, not with a burgeoning middle class, not with an aristocratic Second Estate, not with the rule of law. Compromise is the essence of democracy.

Image:  Zhongnanhai, "The Center."

China's Great Wall of Silence

Received the following email from China today which I publish under the above title since it relates to the PRC's congenital lying to its people and the world. I do apologize to the writer and to non-Chinese speakers (like me) for the atrocious Google translation. One can still get the gist though. 


Huang Lianhua, Huang Xiao branches raw cold, dry glass put Moin life & the past year, the official repeated recently under the pressure of public opinion, and finally try to cover the Sichuan earthquake to publish a number of students in 5335 death of the missing. However, the authorities claimed, "After repeated  checking, "the number one came out, that line of people had beenwidely questioned. In the nearly hundreds of thousands ofearthquake victims in number, "including primary and secondary schools, kindergarten children and colleges students, " how could account for only 5%? Is it possible? Beijing artist Ai Weiwei, said the Sichuan earthquake killed more than 5,335 students, is far from complete official figures. Ai Weiwei that the Government is very reluctant to publish a list of the students killed in the earthquake, which released the list but forced by the great socialand international public opinion pressure. Mr. Tan Zuoren peoplewho Sichuan earthquake 64 primary schools on the statistics is that teachers and students for the 5781 death of people.According to the Sichuan Education Minister Tu Wentao, May 21 last year, the provincial education system in the internal meeting,informed the education system in Wenchuan earthquake killed 6581 people in total, of which 6376 students were killed, 1274missing, 1107 people were buried. Authorities realized that the earthquake death toll in the primary and secondary students in China and around the world have become the focus of attention, so they put it as "state secrets. " Because of this, independent investigation of the earthquake of civil and human rights activistHuang Qi Tan Zuoren, of course, violated the confidentiality of thebottom line was on suspicion of "subversion of state power"charges framed prison. & to know more, you can see I give you a zip file, inside a whole variety of top-secret information, an eye-opener. 


黄莲华,黄菊枝头生晓寒，人生莫放酒杯干 &一年来，官方最近在民间舆论的一再压力下，终于遮遮掩掩地公布出四川地 震学生死亡失踪人数为5335名。但是，这个当局声称“经过反复核对”的数字 一出笼，即遭到线民的广泛质疑。在地震中遇难的近十万人数中，“包括中小 学生、幼稚园孩子及大中专院校学生”，怎么可能只占5%？这可能吗？北京艺 术家艾未未表示，川震死亡学生人数不止5335，官方公布的远不是完整的数字 。艾未未认为政府非常不情愿地公布地震中遇难学生的名单，其公布这个名单 乃是迫于巨大的社会和国际舆论的压力。四川民间人士谭作人先生对震区64所小学的统计是，死亡师生为5781人。据四 川省教育厅长涂文涛在去年5月21日在省教育系统内部会议上通报，汶川地震中 教育系统总共死亡6581人，其中学生死亡6376人，1274人失踪，1107人被埋。 当局意识到，地震中中小学生的死亡人数已成为全中国甚至全世界注目的焦点 ，所以他们把它作为“国家机密”。正因为如此，对汶川地震进行独立调查的 民间维权人士黄琦和谭作人，当然就触犯了当局的保密底线而被以涉嫌“颠覆 国家政权”的罪名构陷入狱。&要知道更多，可以看我给您发的压缩档，里边 各种绝密资料具全，大开眼界。& 

Seeking the Soul: Happiness

                                                                          
Today are added (at bottom) similar rankings from Nationmaster, which only lists a top 50 (Germany is not in their top 50), the World Database of Happiness, and the World Vaules Survey, whose map is above.

The pursuit of happiness was one of the "unalienable" rights that America's Founding Fathers held the "Creator" had endowed all "Men" with and which that "Tyrant" King George III had deprived them of.  Happiness, pursuit of, or captive, was not put in the United States Constitution by the F.F.'s (nor was God or other Creator-like synonyms).

So how happy are Americans compared to other peoples?  Here are two sets of rankings. The first is from Professor Adrian White of the University of Leicester. The map, a marketing stroke of genius, is also Professor White's.

                                                                         

Top 10 happiest (Prof. Adrian White):

1. Denmark 

2. Switzerland 

3. Austria 

4. Iceland

5. The Bahamas

6. Finland

7. Sweden

8. Bhutan

9. Brunei

10. Canada

Other:

23. USA

35. Germany

41. UK

62. France

82. China

167. Russia


Top 10 happiest (Forbes magazine):


1. Denmark
2. Finland
3. Norway
4. Sweden (tie)
4. Netherlands
6. New Zealand (tie)
6. Costa Rica
7. Canada
8. Israel (tie)
8. Switzerland
8. Australia


Other


14. USA
17. UK
33. Germany
44. France
73. Russia
125. China

Top 10 happiest (Nationmaster)


1. Iceland
2. Sweden (tie)
2. Denmark
2. Netherlands
5. Australia
6. Ireland (tie)
6. Switzerland
8. Norway
9. UK (tie)
10. Venezuela

Other


13. USA (tie)
13. France
29. China
46. Russia


Top 10 (World Database of Happiness)


1. Costa Rica
2. Denmark
3. Iceland
4. Switzerland
5. Finland
6. Mexico
7. Norway
8. Canada
9. Panama
10. Sweden

Other


21. USA
29. Germany
32. UK
47. France
59. China
91. Russia

Top 10 happiest (World Values Survey)


1. Denmark
2. Puerto Rico
3. Colombia
4. Iceland
5. Northern Ireland
6. Switzerland
7. Netherlands
8. Canada
9. Austria
10. El Salvador

Other


15. USA
20. UK
34. W. Germany
36. France
48. E. Germany
53. China
88. Russia

Private Occurrences

I went to the library.
I went to the men's room in the library.
I placed my file on the edge of the sink in the men's room of the library.
I stepped to the urinal.
I heard running water.
I stepped away from the urinal.
I looked at the sink.
My file had slipped off the edge of the sink.
The edge of the sink was sloped toward the drain.
The sink had a motion-activated faucet.
The faucet activated when my file slid off the sloped edge of the sink toward the drain. 

What?  No, actually that was not hard for me to say; I can be generous, I can be nice...Yes it was.

Thank you Amazon for putting up relevant book ads. Thank you Google for putting up better ads.

Africa Magnifica

A friend from Beijing sent me a slideshow of photographs of Africa taken by photographer Nick Brandt. These are about half the total number in the slideshow. I have never seen more stunning photographs. Click to enlarge.  My thanks to my friend who I would name except for the swine Chinese internet police who do not like me or this blog...and probably wouldn't even like the Poznan if they knew what it was, and Hosannas to Mr. Brandt. A Poznan for Mr. Brandt.

                                                                   

The Poznan

"It is not that it is done well, the surprise is that it is done at all."
                                                     -Dr. Samuel Johnson (on a woman preaching (with analogy to a dog walking on its hind legs)). 

The Poznan

It is one thing to see photographs, it's another thing to see video. 

The Poznan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKOE8ic6y08

Seeking the Soul

Who are these people and what are they doing.

It is a foundational belief of this series that there are meaningful differences between the peoples of the world.

That sounds like too obvious a point to waste time asserting but it is not a point that is made as...pointedly in books as in blogs because people who write books are smarter than people who write blogs and to make that point pointedly is to risk making value judgments about peoples, e.g. Americans are quiet, Muslims are pacifists, Chinese are extroverts, Swedes are musical, and you had better be right about that or you'll look stupid and even if you're right in making positive value judgments, as above, about some peoples it sounds like you're implicitly making negative value judgments about others and that sounds like nationalism, or racism, or ethno-centrism, or related hurtful isms and who are you calling un-musical, HUH?  All of which I am* sincerely sensitive to because I don't like to make hurtful statements and because I don't like to look dumb but I will make value judgments upon sufficient foundation and risk sounding hurtful and dumb.

The people in the picture are Englishmen and they're doing the Poznan. I hold there sufficient foundation to assert that there are meaningful differences between Englishmen and other peoples.

I hold that there are only two peoples in the world who do the Poznan, not that other peoples can't do the Poznan, just that, as with Muslim Arabs and democracy, they choose not to. Those are still differences. I hold that there are only two peoples in the world who do the Poznan because, well, I know that actually, that is a statement of fact, not the product of deductive reasoning on my part. The English are one. The other are...the Poles. Ahh, well of course, the Poles--no, you didn't think that.

There is an eccentricity that is part of the stereotype of Englishmen, it is a charming, humorous eccentricity. One sees it in Dr. Samuel Johnson, in Sir Winston Churchill, in Charles Dickens' characters. And one sees it in the fans of Manchester City Football Club who do the Poznan.

In October 2010 Manchester City played a two-game series against Polish club Lech Poznan, one game in Poznan, one game in Manchester. When Lech (Poznan?) scored a goal, their fans turned their backs to the field, put their arms around each other's shoulders and jumped up and down...

Yes they did, I am not making that up. Yes, that is preposterous. No, I don't know why they do that. Neither did City fans. If this had happened in the American popular culture, if say, the Green Bay Packers were playing a game of (American) football against the Lech Poznan...Panthers, let's say, and Poznan (Lech?) had scored a touchdown and their fans had turned their backs to the field, put their arms around each other's shoulders and jumped up and down...well, the police might have been called or Army helicopters might have been summoned to douse the Poznans (Poznanians?) with Prozac but however that may be I am sure--I hold--that Packers fans would not have done what City fans did, which, according to the Daily Telegraph, was to "politely ask" (No they did not politely ask) the Poznanians what they were doing...and then emulate it.


"Aye mate, look at those blokes, what the 'ell are they doing?"
"I 'ont know, they daft."
"Hey Polack, what the 'ell are you doing?"


To me, to other Americans, to 99.9999% of the readers of this blog, there is no answer to that question that would have led to behavioral changes in us. To (blue) Mancunians that day however, and since, and to at least some other Englishmen (West Ham United supporters) it did; the answer to that question--whatever it was-- was inspiration, it touched that eccentric, batty, hilarious part of the soul of Englishmen.

There has been a lot of dancing of the Poznan in blue Manchester this past week. Last Tuesday at the City of Manchester Stadium, City qualified for the Champions League competition for the first time in its history. And yesterday at Wembley Stadium in London, City won the Football Association (FA) Cup, it's first since 1969 and the club's first major trophy in 35 years.

* "acutely and" removed May 18.

Notice to Readers

Blogger had some kind of major malfunction last night. We (bloggers) got a notice that something had happened and some posts published after the bird hit the air pump were lost...but that they'd be found and republished. Didn't happen here. Swine Blogger. Or it's a Swedish conspiracy. Swine Swedes.