Blogaround

Graffiti on Focus on the Family HQ says "Their blood is on your hands. Five lives taken." Image source.

1. How Asexuality Is the Quiet Queer Revolution (November 11) "What if we start decentering sex? This is the radical question we are forced to confront once we start recognising asexuality as a real identity deserving of space in this world – one that makes it queer for how it subverts normative sexuality, and dares to imagine a world where we free ourselves of its baggage entirely."

2. Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic: Southern Baptists still arguing over women pastors (November 6) Kind of shocking to me, reading this, how openly these men just hate women pastors. I know I used to be in that culture, and I used to believe there was something to the concept of men being leaders more so than women, but now it just seems incomprehensible to me. And these men believe in a "this doesn't make sense but God wants us to do it anyway, and obedience to God is the most important thing" God, whereas I believe in a "you're gonna stand before Jesus someday and She's going to be like, 'what the hell were you thinking???'" God.

3. How the pandemic took the toxic out of my Turkey Day (November 23) "Thanksgiving was the one day of the year that I knew was going to suck. Not just for me, but for my son and husband too, the two most important people in my life. They rode out that horrible day with me every year."

4. The few, the loud: How ‘very online atheists’ differ from other atheists (November 21) "Most atheists are pretty quiet about it, but a few people drive most of the online discussion of atheism. This creates a potential mismatch between typical atheists and the most visible atheists, to the extent that there are predictable differences between the two groups."

5. Do the rich pay their fair share? (November 15) "Billionaires in the US pay a smaller tax rate than most teachers and retail workers. Thanks to a tax code that favors income from wealth over income from work—and a slew of tax-avoidance strategies—the richest among us end up paying a smaller percentage of their income to the federal government than most working families."

6. Stochastic terrorism and the Colorado Springs Club Q shooting (November 21) "In the US this weekend, Club Q in Colorado Springs joined a long list of places struck by concrete violence informed by a broader cultivation of hate. The term for this terrible outcome is 'stochastic terrorism': when an act of public violence is individually unpredictable (i.e. in terms of exact date, target, perpetrator), but also statistically predictable, based on a series of preceding factors, such as sustained hate-mongering from prominent media sources."

7. Catholic hospitals are wrecking reproductive health care (October 11) "But doctors at a Catholic hospital won’t do that. They will perform the C-section, sure, but that’s it. They are forbidden from tying a woman’s tubes thanks to Directive 53."

8. San Francisco launches new guaranteed income program for trans community (November 16) This seems very weird to me. A government chooses one specific marginalized group and picks some people in that group and gives them money. Yes, it's great for the people who receive the money- but it feels weird to me that a government would be doing that. Seems like the sort of thing a charity should do? A government is supposed to do things that benefit society as a whole.

I don't know, perhaps there are other examples where local governments have done this sort of thing, just focused on one specific disadvantaged group, and the result benefitted society overall, and now San Francisco is kind of modeling their plan on something like that?

And, please note, when I say a government is supposed to do things that "benefit society as a whole", I don't mean like, everyone should directly benefit from every government program, or some nonsense like that. If, for example, the government gives money to low-income people to lift them out of poverty, I do count that as "benefitting society as a whole" because a society which helps people get out of poverty is a better society than one that doesn't. But I'm not sure about just focusing on trans people, because there must be a lot of low-income cis people who are in need too. And this program is just giving them money, rather than addressing specific trans issues. (Addressing specific trans issues would also be an example of "benefitting society as a whole"! A society which helps people get transgender-related health care, for example, is a better society than one that doesn't.) This seems more like "here's a good thing that happened one time to a few specific trans people" but it doesn't go any farther than that.

But anyway, the important thing is to see the results of this program. It will definitely be a great thing for those people who receive the money, but my question is, does it make sense from the government's perspective to focus on them specifically?

9. "Anti-science" is a meaningless phrase (2021) "People honestly SHOULD be skeptical of any human-related science."

10. Here’s why vandals sprayed graffiti at Focus on the Family headquarters (November 27) When I heard that the Focus on the Family sign had been vandalized, I was like, "GOOD." I grew up reading and believing their propaganda, all their books that take the Lord's name in vain and bear false witness against their neighbors. I read "The Homosexual Agenda" and "Marriage Under Fire"- books about how "homosexuals" are trying to destroy marriage and destroy society and must be stopped. It was all lies. And now I'm queer, and I'm mad.

"I'm Thankful That We Live In A Country..."

An employee in a hazmat suit helps a man with something on his phone. (Photo taken in Shanghai.) Image source.

Last week on Thanksgiving, I saw an article shared on WeChat (Chinese social media) that had some quotes from international people living in Shanghai, where they shared what they're thankful for. It was all the usual stuff- family and friends and whatnot- but one stood out to me. One person had written, "I am thankful that we live in a country which took steps to stop the pandemic."

It shocked me because, as an American, I've always heard people saying things like "I'm thankful we live in a country where..." fill-in-the-blank, usually about how we have money and resources and opportunities and freedom and democracy. And the unspoken part is "unlike those poor countries in Africa and Asia." It was mind blowing to me to read "I'm thankful we live in a country..." and it's about China. And the unspoken part is "unlike the US and Europe."

China has indeed controlled the pandemic. Every now and then there's a new case in the news, followed by IMMEDIATE lockdowns and contact-tracing. China doesn't play around. Actually, in Shanghai we never had any local transmission at all, until mid-November when, over a period of a few weeks, there were 7 locally-transmitted covid cases, all related to workers who handle imported goods at Pudong International Airport. 7 cases- and everyone in Shanghai is talking about it. HR at work sent out an email with the guidelines about what you should do if you live in the areas that were locked down or designated as medium-risk. I heard of some events in Shanghai being cancelled. People are reminding each other to keep wearing masks and using hand sanitizer- because in all these months of no local transmissions in Shanghai, we've kind of all gotten lazy about that.

All of this over 7 covid cases. 

(Oh, and if you see anything on social media that says "all of Pudong is locked down" or "they're testing everyone in Pudong", that's NOT TRUE. Pudong is a huge district in Shanghai. I live in Pudong and I was not affected by any lockdowns or required to be tested. It's only a few apartment complexes way out near the airport that are locked down. But yeah, all kinds of false rumors spread on social media.)

(Please note that Shanghai also has had lots of imported covid cases. "Imported" means people who travelled here from other countries. Everyone who enters China has to get tested and also do a 2-week quarantine- so the idea is, you catch all the imported cases before they go on to infect anyone else. Please note that this is a REAL quarantine. This is a you-cannot-open-the-door quarantine. Apparently in the US, travel-related "quarantine" is more like "well, we hope you don't really go out much for 2 weeks, ya know, if you can" and then no one actually checks. ...?)

But yeah, here in Shanghai we've been basically "back to normal" for months. We go out and do stuff. I go to work- in the office, not working from home. We wear masks and don't travel, but besides that, we're pretty much normal. (Oh, actually my husband has travelled to a bunch of Chinese cities for business trips. So yeah, people do travel.)

So. I am lucky to be in China- rather than the US- during this pandemic. And wow, mind-blowing to see an "I'm thankful to live in a country where..." that's an example of how China is BETTER than the US, rather than the other way around.

--------

Related:

Homesick 

Well *now* I'm glad I stayed in China

Blogaround

A baby wearing an Ironman costume. Image source.

1. TobyMac’s Oldest Son, Truett, Has Died at Home (posted October 24) Oh no.

2. Why I Was Forced to Resign from Southwest Church (Indian Wells): Pastor Gerald Sharon’s Story (posted October 24) "One of the people who had signed up was a gay man, which caused panic among the elders and leadership staff. ... So they instructed the staff to put his name at the bottom of the list and to tell him, 'There is a long waiting list and we just haven’t gotten to you yet.'"

3. theological foundations: trauma theology (posted August 8) "Trauma theology helped me see all that, revealing it all in an intuitive, natural way. I can see it everywhere now, too– in every single one of Jesus’ healing miracles, when Moses flees Egypt, the interactions between Paul and Barnabas, or Mary Magdalene at the Tomb."

4. Trump Tweets Faked Photo of Hero Dog Getting a Medal (posted October 30) This is odd.

5. This tweet from @ToriGlass:

This is extremely important.

If you have a food or travel budget for Thanksgiving, you need to be giving at least an equal amount to Indigenous people or orgs

Otherwise just don’t participate in colonizer holidays. I’m not even kidding. https://t.co/ULvhWqFf4O

— Tori Williams Douglass (@ToriGlass) October 21, 2019

6. John Piper: Scare the Bejesus Out of Your Children (posted October 29) Ah yes, my reaction was the same as Libby Anne's: "What in the blazes is this."

Blogaround

Baby goat. Image source.

1. Cold Reading, and the Christians Who Told Me All the Things I NEVER Did (posted November 13) "I had a strong reputation for spouting remarkably-accurate cold readings of people. None of us called it that, of course. We called it prophecy."

2. Why Most of America Is Terrible at Making Biscuits (posted November 22) "If you’re on the West Coast, forget it. Displaced southern bakers have been known to stuff a bag in their suitcases when visiting home. You can order the flour for delivery on Amazon, but it’ll cost you anywhere from $10 to $15 for a bag, many times the in-store retail price of around $2.50." Ha this reminds me of living in China and having SO MUCH TROUBLE finding "normal" things like vanilla extract or a meat thermometer.

3. The obsession with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s finances only amplifies her power (posted November 21) "After her win in November, Ocasio-Cortez said she couldn’t pay for a Washington, DC apartment until her congressional salary begins in January."

4. Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction, You Should Too (posted August 21) "In fact, they cite numerous studies showing that even feeling like you struggle to control your porn use doesn’t actually predict more porn use. What that means is that the people who report great anguish over controlling their porn use aren’t actually using more porn, they just feel worse about it."

5. 3 Children’s Books about Thanksgiving from Native Perspectives (posted 2017) Cool!

6. Why You Should NOT Choose Operation Christmas Child (posted November 26) Good post- and the point about kids in other cultures literally not knowing how to play with some of the toys blew my mind. I can't believe I never thought about that before. Simple little objects that are so familiar to us and immediately bring up feelings of childhood nostalgia may be completely unknown to people in other cultures.

I'm in China, and recently somebody from the US visited the company where I work and brought candy from the US for everyone. There was a big pile of mini Reese's cups. I wasn't even aware of the steps my mind went through to identify them as Reese's cups- little foil-wrapped things in that certain shape, obviously they are Reese's cups, I didn't even need to think. But then some of my Chinese colleagues came and were looking at them curiously, absolutely no idea what kind of candy they were. I said "it's chocolate and peanut butter" and they were like "ohhhhhhhhhhhh" like this is completely new information for them.

Same thing must happen when kids get their Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, with little toys we think are so normal that of course everyone understands how to play with them and no explanation is needed. I never realized that before. Back when I lived in the US, I couldn't *really* understand what cultural differences were.

And another thing: Chinese culture doesn't celebrate Christmas. The concept of a huge gift-giving holiday just completely DOES NOT EXIST in Chinese culture. So if Operation Christmas Child is running ads about "isn't it SAD how these kids are too poor to have Christmas gifts", well, no, maybe it's not sad. Maybe they don't feel bad about not having Christmas gifts because there was never any cultural expectation that such things should even exist.

7. Party Rock Anthem = Trading My Sorrows Wow what a fun video!



8. The kingdom of heaven is like: A Dutch church has been conducting religious services for 27 days to protect a refugee family (posted November 21)

9. Unheard, Unimportant, and Untreated: Why We Need to Talk About Vaginismus (posted November 22) "I went to several doctors for help with my problem, feeling stupid, and got palmed off with a number of excuses: that it was normal for first-time penetration to be painful for people with vaginas, that I was probably just inserting the tampon wrong. That the fact that it felt like someone was trying to prop me open with a brick was normal, somehow."

10. The COMPLETE Pixar Theory (posted October 30) Personally, I don't believe in the Pixar theory, but I LOVE it because this is EXACTLY how apologetics works. Take a bunch of different works, produced for different reasons over a long period of time, claim that all of them are happening in the same universe and telling one giant logically-consistent story, spend tons of time and energy making up convoluted explanations for the contradictions, absolutely refuse to abandon your theory no matter what new evidence comes out, and end up with a bizarre understanding of the material that the creators certainly never intended... all the while believing you understand it better than anyone else because you got there by treating every single tiny detail as irrefutable fact.

On "Being Thankful"

A hand turkey. Image source.

A strange thing happens whenever I teach about Thanksgiving in China.

I ask the students to discuss this question: "What are you thankful for?" After letting them talk among themselves (in English, this is in the context of an ESL class), I do a little bit of error correction. Because most of them didn't catch that being thankful for something has a different meaning than being thankful to someone.

"I am thankful for..." and then you list the good things in your life. Your job, family, home, etc. "I am thankful to..." means you want to say "thank you" to someone. Your parents, your friends, God, etc. (Somewhat confusingly, these can also go on the "thankful for" list.)

Anyway, in the end, the students come away with this message: the meaning of Thanksgiving Day is to go thank people for everything they've done for us. And indeed, this week on wechat (Chinese social media app) I saw a post in Chinese which said basically "Today is Thanksgiving in western countries. Thank you to our parents, for giving us life. Thank you to our teachers, for giving us knowledge. Thank you to our friends, for giving us friendship." and on and on and on, all the people we should thank. It was really beautiful and poetic, in my opinion.

The problem is, that's not the meaning of Thanksgiving at all. Or, at least, it's so completely different from the way I've always understood Thanksgiving.

I remember in school, we used to have to write an answer to the question "What are you thankful for?" (Sometimes this answer was in the form of a hand turkey, obviously.) And my family has a tradition where we go around the dinner table and each person says what they're thankful for. But you can't repeat what someone else said. (And then sometimes it became a game, and we just kept going and going and you're out if you can't think of anything when it's your turn. Until someone says "I'm thankful for quantum tunneling" and that prompts everyone else to quit the game because it's been completely overrun by nerdiness. Yeah that's how we roll.)

Yeah, we always talked about what we were thankful for. But did we ever think about the "thankful to" part? Did we ever think about who we were thanking?

Aha! Yes, we did! The correct answer is God.

Except, not really. The whole "it's about being thankful to God" thing is more about a culture war than about actually thanking someone. It's about Christians getting all upset about how Thanksgiving is a Christian holiday, and isn't it terrible how our culture has lost sight of that, and kids in public school are writing "I am thankful for" but the lesson never mentions the name of God and isn't that the most horrible thing, it robs Thanksgiving of all its meaning, etc etc etc.

Thanksgiving, as I learned it, was about me having a vague feeling of thankfulness. Vaguely in the general direction of God. It's about me being happy about the things in my life. It's about "being thankful." It's NOT about actually thanking anyone. Yeah, they say it's about thanking God, but does anyone actually talk about what that means? Do we believe these good things were given to us personally by God? Or just because God made a world full of good things and the potential for happiness? Did God cause those good things only in a general sense, or actually with you personally in mind? And what about the bad things in our lives, or in the world- did God cause those too?

No, the average Christian (in US evangelical culture, at least) doesn't think about those questions. "Thanking God" is just a vague label that gets applied to positive things in one's life. Does it actually mean anything?

So I'm always a little bit shocked when I teach Chinese students about Thanksgiving, and they decide they're going to actually go out and thank someone. But I never tell them "no that's not what Thanksgiving is about" because, geez, that SHOULD BE what Thanksgiving is about.

(And if you're wondering about whether I totally omit the part where "Thanksgiving is a Christian holiday" in my lessons: I tell them the story about the pilgrims, and how the pilgrims were Christians and they thanked God. I tell them that Thanksgiving is about being thankful, and so for people who are religious, they would thank God. But most Chinese people aren't that religious, so I don't present it like "this is the entire point of Thanksgiving and if you're not a Christian then this holiday has no meaning for you." That would be ridiculous. And mean. And also not an accurate representation of the place that Thanksgiving holds in American culture- which is what I'm supposed to be teaching.)

It just shows how selfish and individualistic American culture (or American Christian culture) is, that we've created a holiday all about thanks, and yet it never occurs to us to actually thank someone. It's all about you and thinking about your own life. It's about "being thankful"- just a warm feeling, but not related to relationships between people or anything like that.

My Chinese students got it right though. Go actually thank someone this Thanksgiving.

My Chinese Thanksgiving Dinner

China doesn't have Thanksgiving, but I cooked a special Thanksgiving dinner with my boyfriend anyway. Behold!

For the turkey: Actually, China doesn't have turkey. Well, I heard a rumor that there's some kind of foreign grocery store that will sell you a fully-cooked Thanksgiving turkey with a side of gravy for 800 kuai (about $130) but, yeah I'm not doing that.

So I got a chicken.

This is China, so when I opened up the packaging, I discovered the chicken still had a head and feet. (The feet were actually tucked inside the body of the chicken.)

So, content note on the next 4 images. If you don't want to see a dead chicken head, then skip them.

Yeah Chinese culture is a lot less shy about the fact that meat comes from dead animals.

----

----

----

Here's a dead chicken:

My boyfriend decided to boil the chicken head and feet and give them to his cats. (But people in China totally eat chicken feet. Probably the head too.)

We followed this recipe, put a ton of butter, salt, pepper, and onion/garlic/ginger powder on it, and put in the oven.

Someday I will tell you more about ovens in China. For now, I'll just say they are SO not part of Chinese cooking, so you won't find one already installed in your apartment. You have to buy one. And it's really just a giant toaster oven. Here is mine, with a cat for scale:

Next were the sweet potatoes. I followed this recipe, and they turned out fantastic. However, the only marshmallows they had at the imported grocery store were these:

With pastel colors and slight hints of fruity flavors. Excellent. Didn't affect the taste of the sweet potato dish though.

Anyway, here are the finished sweet potatoes:

And the mashed potatoes (using this recipe):

I bought dinner rolls from the bakery section of the grocery store. They were just normal [to an American] dinner rolls, which is incredibly lucky; usually when you buy something in China that just looks like regular bread, it has an odd sweet flavor, or a secret hotdog inside, or red bean paste... it's always something.

And a pumpkin roll for dessert (this recipe):

So, to sum up*:

*your mileage may vary based on luck and what part of China you're in

Things that are used in Chinese cooking and therefore very easy to buy:

whole chicken
salt
pepper
potatoes
sweet potatoes (China has both orange and purple sweet potatoes. Purple, huh? Who knew?)
celery
milk
flour
eggs
pots/pans
oil
sugar

Things that aren't part of Chinese culture but still reasonably easy to find at a big store like Walmart or Carrefour (a chain that's similar to Walmart and comes from France):

oven
butter (couldn't find margarine though)
cream cheese
dinner rolls
cinnamon
nutmeg
baking powder
baking soda
fork

Things that I really had to look for:

measuring cups
measuring spoons
vanilla extract (paid over $10 for a little bottle, ai ya)
brown sugar
powdered sugar
marshmallows
canned pumpkin (bought it from Taobao, which is the Chinese equivalent to ebay or amazon)
electric mixer

Things that I could not find:

turkey
meat thermometer
cloves
wax paper (is this not a thing in China? I used aluminum foil instead, for baking the pumpkin roll, which was fine)

Hope you have a happy Thanksgiving! ^_^