My parents have decided that in light of the presence of our crazy neighbor who is itching for the chance to kill our dog with bear spray (a rather grumpy old woman, she has been itching to do this ever since Griffey got loose one afternoon and chewed on her rat terrier like a dog biscuit), it is time to get out of this neighborhood. We're moving not far from here in December or maybe January. Our house, which now must be fixed up and sold and then packed, will become the focus of chaos in the modern world for the next several months. I have tried to escape to the dorms, but it is too late. I am currently #68 of 68 on the UNT Housing Department waiting list.

My classes keep me busy. Art history. Introduction to Communication. I hate them for it. If it's not political science or history, it bores me. And often, I become bored even with those conditions met. I do badly in them simply because I can't muster the focus to concentrate on them. I simply won't do the necessary memorization.

This is what I've been doing for two weeks since I returned from China. I half-heartedly do some homework each night. I drive to class in the morning. I listen if I have to, but usually end up reading Harry Potter in class (I'm not the only one it seems; I noticed two other students reading the very same book in class). I come home, sleep, and occupy myself with silly movies, internet articles, and books for the much of my remaining spare time.

I haven't thought much about China. I was so glad to get home. I'm glad I went, but certainly glad I'm not there anymore.

We would pretend it was a mission trip. Some missionaries own a coffee shop in one large Chinese city. On the third floor, they hold "English Corner" nights. Here, English and Western culture are used as bait. They are the subject matter of the evening, but often the conversations are deliberately steered in the direction of religion. I took advantage of one such opportunity and before long, a girl was attempting to justify her existence to me. I had her right where I wanted her. But we had to stop talking as it was "cowboy night" and the designated activity changed from conversation to line dancing.

I have rarely seen the Great Commission carried out in such a roundabout manner. I much prefer the more direct method. But they have to be careful. Understandably, they would like to avoid being deported. And I've heard whispers about Chinese Christians simply disappearing. Americans need only worry about being kicked out. It's a much greater risk for Chinese Christians.

This being the case, it was hard for me to consider this a mission trip. I considered it a two week cultural trip. I visited Tiananmen Square and the Great Wall, purchased fancy Asian swords and bootlegged Western movies, ate plenty of Chinese food, and soaked up plenty of Chinese atmosphere. It was great, but I wouldn't have been able to handle much more than two weeks of it. It's more than a hop, skip, and a jump from Kansas to remote mountain villages in central China. It's rough traveling, and rough living. Western necessities are often Chinese luxuries.

Is China the future? I asked myself this question throughout my trip. In an article for Newsweek not long ago, Fareed Zakaria spoke of China's future with this illustration:

[T]he statistic that wins this contest, that conveys the depth and breadth of the challenge the United States faces, is surely the one about the Intel Fair. Intel sponsors a Science and Engineering Fair, which is the world's largest precollege science competition, open to high-school students from around the world. Last year was a good one for Americans: 65,000 participated in the local fairs that are used to select finalists. In China the number was 6 million.

Yes, Chinese fairs are not as good as American fairs, the standards are different, and you can't compare apples and oranges. But still, 6 million oranges!

One doesn't know what to make of China's modern cities. Modernity hit America's shores on a wave of consumer power. Computers and cars are the norm here because people bought them. They could afford them. China seems to be a nation striving to display a modern outlook without the conventional means to attain it. Few can afford cars in China. That does not mean their cities are not highly interconnected. People bike to work. Or take public transportation. No one can afford a computer. That does not mean China is oblivious to the internet. Internet cafes -- more accurately internet rooms or garages -- are everywhere. People visit them and log on and use computers in all the ways that Westerners do: they chat, watch video, listen to music, play games, everything.

They can't log on from the comfort of their own homes and they might have to bike to work. But everywhere one looks, there is evidence of a dynamic middle class willing to grind and claw its way to the top. Life is less comfortable in China. But the world does not appear to be leaving it behind.

Rural China is very different. Livestock run down the streets. One might see perhaps five or six automobiles each day. They are exceedingly rare. But they are hardly needed anyway. There is nowhere to go. People are spread out across the countryside. They do not live in concentrated masses as in cities. They have little shops in their homes, though that is a generous description. It is more like a disorganized, round-the-clock garage sale, in which people are willing to sell or barter off whatever dirty junk they don't want. There is very little grass. Vegetation grows wildly all over the place. Efforts to look civilized appear to have been made at one time or another -- there is concrete, occasionally a paved road. But for the most part, Chinese village houses are little better than garages, and their yards composed primarily of disorganized vegetation and mud. I can recall a scene in Monty Python in which a group of peasants are shown banging some mud with sticks. It was supposed to be ridiculous, as is everything in that movie. But with respect to rural China, it could be a sickeningly valid piece of satire. There are no garbage dumps in rural China, and even less evidence that Chinese peasants are aware that trashcans have been invented. Beautiful mountain waterfalls occasionally play host to collections of trash, but more often trash is simply strewn about all over the place. The rule seems to be that anything can be discarded anywhere when it loses its usefulness.

Life is exceedingly backward here. But most of those who live here seem not all unhappy. It seems to be a fairly close knit community. Peasants meet in the village square during the evenings for music and dancing. Often, it was late into the early morning before the singing at the bar next to our hotel stopped. The children to whom I taught English were all smiles, and not at all unlike American children. Some of them were exceptionally good basketball players. I watched them play on their crude netless basketball goal, and thought that maybe life isn't so different in urban areas on the U.S. East Coast.

Rural China is certainly not the future. It was hard for me to see how metropolitan China might be either. Six million oranges... The potential of China might look impressive on paper, but up close, it looks like it has a long way to go.

I think that's it's spelled anyway. The countryside is beautiful here. Mountainous, hilly, green, with a muddy red river running through it. The people all very friendly, most having never seen a big city much less any foreigners. It's a nice little country village. It's a nice mixture of modernity and backwardness in a country striving to make itself more modern. Beautiful little waterfalls along the roadside are used for garbage dumps -- a preferable option to the more widely used alternative in which people simply throw their trash on the ground whenever and wherever they see fit.

I got one of Chairman Mao's little red books in Tiananmen Square. And a Chairman Mao pocket watch. Chairman Mao, the most prolific mass murderer of the twentieth century, is a big hero here.

I'm not allowed to view my blog here. It seems I've been labeled by the CCP government. I can access blogger.com, but not my own site.

I'd write more observations, but my mind is wasted right now.