Regarding the Plagues and the search for the land of Milk and Honey.

This is arguably just a minor detail, but something else I'm intrigued by is that as God metes out the plagues on Egypt he repeatedly steels the Pharaoh's reserve.

He doesn't go down and talk to Pharaoh, but does this through his Godly ways. It isn't exactly clear how he does this, but he doesn't seem to be having a chat, it seems to be a much more supernatural thing. Pharaoh would have actually caved after just a few plagues, but God keeps him stiff.

The motivation behind this seems to be that Pharaoh would have in all reality changed his mind once the Israelites left. Maybe not immediately, but eventually he would decide to go get them back. So he forces Pharaoh to learn in the hardest way possible, so that it sticks.

He even does it right at the end. He allows Pharaoh to give the go ahead and dismiss the Israelites, then goes on to change Pharaoh's mind and give chase through the sea of reeds. But then he protects the Jewish people and closes the sea on the Egyptians.

Side note here: In movies and things the bit where they walk through the sea of reeds is a mad dash. In the Bible this event takes at least a few days.

...

Then the Jewish people have to get to the land of milk and honey. This takes a very long time. I'm not sure how old Moses is when they leave Egypt, but it takes right up to his death at 120 years old. And during that time these people repeatedly screw it up.

The most well known bit seems to be that when Moses goes up to receive the commandments from God, they make a golden calf to worship. They thank the golden calf for getting them out of Egypt, even. But then God shows up and they come back to him.

Then of course there's the deal where they aren't themselves permitted to enter the land, but only their children may, and so they have to wander the desert for 40 years.

This actually happens repeatedly in various ways. They won't go to war because of the enemy's superior numbers, so God punishes them. And when they try to go to war without his go-ahead they are punished, too.

At one point some of the Israelites who are not descendants of Levi decide that they want to be priests, and they follow all of the directions, but God doesn't like it and sends a plague that kills 14,700 people (I think that's the number).

I can't think of the other times this happened, but I'm pretty sure there are a couple more. 

God calls the descendants of Jacob a "stubborn people," but I have to wonder. Maybe he did the same thing to them. Maybe he decided that the lesson to stay loyal to him, that he would protect them, wouldn't really stick unless he put them through quite an ordeal. It's not said explicitly. It's not even suggested, really. They just seem... honestly kind of dense to not catch on to how things work.

But that's my hypothesis about the Pentateuch. I'll let you know when more cool stories come up.

Perception of the West

The Chinese seem to have very few reservations when it comes to smoking. Even right under the signs that say NO SMOKING even in the elevators. Maybe especially in the elevators. It seems they think it a courtesy to go to the restroom to smoke if they are in a building. But even then they don't bother to throw the butts in the urinals or the toilets. They simply drop them on the ground. Even on carpet.

And they have traffic signals, too. Big bright ones. They even have timers on them to say when the lights will change. And just like most places the roads have lanes.  But these things are not important to the Chinese. The general rule of thumb is that you need to honk if you are passing someone, and otherwise just kinda go with the flow. Especially the various ebikes and scooters and bicycles.

So when they see the lao wai (direct translation is 'old whitey', just really means westerner. Kind of a lighthearted insult like calling an elderly gentleman 'old timer,' but this applies to all westerners regardless of skin-tone or age) never smoking indoors, driving inside the lines, etc., they get the impression that we are a very law-abiding people.

They also love English words on their clothing, the way folks in America get Asian stuff tattoo'ed on them without any way to check what the word means. One kid at my school, maybe 8 or 9, had GO TO HELL on his shirt. A guy in the elevator last week had a great big American flag on his back and then GREAT BRITAIN.

On the Tower of Babel

So I mentioned a couple of posts back about the Tower of Babel, I wanted to kind of ramble and explicate my thoughts on that to you guys. I'll be doing this with the parts of the bible I find particularly interesting. If you'd like to, then you can find the story about the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9. It's really quite short.

The Tower of Babel (though never called that exactly) was built by some folks who wanted to either sneak into Heaven (though it doesn't say this; it says "the heavens", not the plural form and the small h), or to get in on some godlike powers. Depends on who you ask.

The exact reason they built this tower isn't so important to me, really. What's more important is the cause-and-effect of the parable. The humans want something that they shouldn't have, and that would upset the (for lack of a better phrase I'm going to call it) natural order of things (would God/gods be considered natural? Purely hypothetical.) And in response they are punished in an interesting way, by splitting them into separate peoples by giving them separate languages.

This story is amazing. It's a two-birds/one-stone kinda parable. One of those birds is hubristic. The other is etiological (I just learned that word and had to use it). Which is to say, it's both a warning and an explanation of a phenomena. And it's only nine verses long.

It's a warning against trying to be like God/gods (God says 'let us,' make of that what you will), and at the same time an explanation of a phenomenon (that's what the word etiological means). The phenomenon in this case being multiple languages.

The Pentateuch

I'm also going to keep you updated on the Bible. So ignore this post, Eric Collier.

I've finished the first five books. And so far the Bible is a wild ride. I have a fancy pants scholar's bible from Oxford. Fourth edition NRSV, with the apocrypha, something like that.

There were several stories that I knew of and that I knew were in the bible, but that I had no idea where they really were in the timeline. Like the Tower of Babel, for instance. It's in Genesis. Babel is/was a place where they built the tower. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah, also in Genesis. I had no idea that Lot and Abraham were related at all.

I was terribly confused about the differences between the story of Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah and the story of Abraham and Isaac. The basic gist is that God comes up to Abraham and says that the sin and inequity and etc of Sodom and Gomorrah are calling out to him and he's real upset about it and says he's going to smash the cities. Abraham talks God down, and says that woah woah woah, there's gotta be some innocent people in there, so you can't kill all of them, right? and God kind of takes a deep breathe and says he'll spare the city for a bit if Abraham can find fifty people and then Abraham haggles with him for a few verses and God finally says that okay, if Abe can find at least ten people (I think ten, maybe five?) in those two cities then He will walk away.

So God has a temper and Abraham is the voice of reason.

But then not very much later in the book God says to Abraham: You gotta kill Isaac. Abraham doesn't say word one in the way of protest. Just nods and accepts it. Especially screwy when Isaac is Abraham's only son and God promised to give Abraham and heir (if certain conditions were met, which they very much were).

God seems to be the more consistent of the two between these two incidents; He's got a temper, he wants everything to be his way, he's testing people all the time to make sure they are up to par.

But Abraham seems like two completely different people. I don't get it.

Trip to Shanghai

Just spent a week in Shanghai to get properly certified to teach here. It turns out that teaching without two years of experience or without going to (and passing) this week long class is illegal and the PRC will ship you home if you don't have the certification.

Everybody in the class had already been teaching. I'm an illegal worker and I'm taking jobs.

Seriously, one guy in the class had been here three years, and had never once had a problem. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

I'm getting settled into my apartment. When I got back to Suzhou after the class I met my roommate, who is Australian and who is not insane, which is a quality I look for in a roommate.

There are no open container laws here. It's so strange for a guy from a dry county (no alcohol sells period) to see people walking down the street in suits drinking clear alcohol (possibly baijiu) at 10:00 AM.

They don't have wishing wells here.

These two pictures are from when I was lost in Shanghai.

First Impression

The flight was just about hellish.

But then I got to Shanghai. Customs was easy enough to navigate. I was asked on both sides of the flight by official looking guys how much money I had on my person and did I know that it's illegal to carry more than 10,000 USD cash out of the country. I told them the honest answers to both, and that I'd never had 10,000 in general, let alone on my person, and went on with my day.

Day One:

I had to get my money changed from USD to RMB. There's some sort of racket going on where certain individuals will 'buy' your foreign money. I got a free few Yuan for trusting this guy and giving him my money. I assume he then sells the foreign cash for very little Yuan? Not sure.

After this I hopped on the bus to get back to my apartment. I was eating a mango ice cream, and enjoying the sites, paying careful attention so that I would get off at my stop (had no phone yet). At the second-to-last stop a mother and child get on and the mother sits down before gently pushing her kid, five years old tops, over in my general direction. I realize he's going for the trashcan at my feet. He gets over to the trashcan after the bus driver has decided on a speed, and drops his pants to his feet and begins to urinate into the trashcan. Nobody says a word.

Welcome to Suzhou, China.