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Friday, June 29, 2012

Part 1: Who Has The Power? The Li Family


The five major players in China's electric power generation industry, and their listed subsidiaries are all state-owned enterprises directly administered by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. Their listed subsidiaries are substantially independent, hence counted as independent power producers, and are major power providers in their own right. Typically each of the big 5 has about 10% of national installed capacity, and their listed subsidiary an extra 4 or 5% on top of that. They are:
According to an old article (2007), three of these companies were in the top five power companies responsible for the most carbon dioxide emissions in the world. Updated information from the same source shows that China Huanneng Group now tops the list and China Huadian Group is third on the list. China Datang Corporation is now sixth on the list and Huadian Power International Corp. is now ninth on the list, followed by China Guodian Corporation at tenth. China Power Investment Corporation has fallen from fifth place to twelfth place and this story will be told below. The only American companies that are worse than China Power are Duke, AEP, and Southern Company.

Of the states and provinces in the world, the Great State of Texas is the only place worse than China's Provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu, Henan, Guangdong, and Shanxi. Put another way, Texas is the single biggest carbon producing province ("state") in the world and these Chinese provinces hold second through sixth place.

China Power International Development Limited

China Power International Development Limited (the "Company" or "China Power") was incorporated in Hong Kong with limited liability under the Companies Ordinance (Cap. 32 of the Laws of Hong Kong) on 24 March 2004 and is the flagship company of China Power Investment Corporation ("CPI Group"), one of the five largest power-generating groups in the People's Republic of China (the "PRC" or "China"). The power plants of CPI Group spread across 28 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the PRC with a controllable installed capacity of approximately 70GW.

China Power's executive is Li Xiaolin, daughter of Li Peng (aka "the Butcher of Tian'anmen" and the man who initiated the construction of the Three Gorges Dam on December 14, 1994). She was the center of a controversy recounted in an earlier post of mine. She was also featured five years ago in a Forbes piece: Chen, Jean (January 3, 2008). "China's Power Queen". Forbes (Hong Kong)

Her brother--considered a "Princeling"--is the vice-governor of Shanxi Province and a graduate of Beijing's North China Electric Power University. He is the former chairman of Huanneng Power International, China’s largest independent power provider.

This is the structure of Xiaolin's CPI Group:

Much of this information is taken from Wikipeia and carma.org.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

My Summer Plans and the Expansion of E-Vehicles in China

When I received this nice note from a fellow member of the the Beijing Energy Network, I jumped at the opportunity.
Dear BEN friends,

I am YAN Mi, from EU Delegation to China in Beijing, and am writing to invite you to the China Energy Trip 2012, which we are organizing for the third time this summer. 

The purpose of our program is to help young people from other countries to get to know the development and huge potential of energy markets in China by visiting government bodies, companies and universities. 

This summer we offer two modules (August 8-17, or August 19-27), covering renewable energy, cleantech and petroleum development. Participants can choose Modules A and/or B according to their interests. Also, some officials from the EU Delegation to China will participate in Module B.

Last summer, 18 foreign students from 11 countries and universities such as MIT, UC Berkeley, University of Oslo, IE Business School, SCIENCES-PO, and Dresden University of Technology participated. 7 graduate students from Harvard, Yale and University of Tokyo participated in 2010. 

The brochure with more details about the China Energy Trip 2012 can be downloaded here: http://sdrv.ms/KQJPPa


Thank you very much!
Kind Regards,
YAN Mi 

Please comment on the hyperlink to the description and let me know what you think I should glean from the experience. Also, if you want to make a gift to help underwrite this trip and my concomitant blogging, please click the Donate button on this page! The more I raise, the more I will write.

This article from Bloomberg is also an exciting development about more local (Changchun) efforts. Ecotality and China’s Changchun Eco-Power Technology Co. formed Tianjin Eco-Power Technology Co. to install chargers across China, according to a statement today. “China is rapidly expanding its leadership position in the electric vehicle market by implementing fleets and public transit applications that require high-power charging solutions,” Jonathan Read, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based Ecotality, said in the statement.


Saturday, June 23, 2012

Dragon Boat Festival and Calligraphy

The Dragon Boat Festival (or Duan Wu Festival in Chinese) is on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. It is a day to remember the great poet Qu Yuan, who was a loyal official in the State of Chu in ancient China and deeply loved by his people.

Qu Yuan drowned himself on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 277 BC due to being unable to save his country. The local folk did what they could to search for him in the river, meanwhile they dropped dumplings of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves into the river in order to prevent the fishes from eating Qu Yuan's body. Since that time, it has been customary on this day to eat zongzi (glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves) as a memorial to the patriotic poet.

Nowadays, zongzi is not only made for the Dragon Boat Festival. It is available at any time of the year, with a wide styles and varieties of dumplings. The main ingredient of zongzi is the glutinous rice, and then the bamboo or reed leaves -- the wrapping that makes zongzi taste distinct. The usual recipes include dates, sweetened red bean paste, meat, chestnuts, lotus seeds, dates, and yolk of egg. (See http://www1.chinaculture.org/library/2008-01/08/content_29449.htm)

The meat ones are my favorite, but are more common in the South. Here, dates are the most common filling and I am not wild about them. The other tradition is to wear five-color string bracelets. You can learn more about the traditions of Dragon Boat Festival at http://www.chinaculture.org/focus/focus/2010duanwu/2010-06/12/content_382549.htm.


A week or so ago, I finally purchased (for 100RMB) a rack for drying my maobi, or calligraphy brushes. This desk is dedicated to my calligraphy now.



More Stories from the Tea Market

“I feel my heart become so sympathetic, That I must have recourse to black Bohea…….”
                                                        - Don Juan, by Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Today, for the festival, I slept late and then my girlfriend and I went for a late lunch at my favorite restaurant, which serves mushroom hot pot. Then, we walked to Qing Yi Fang, the tea market that also sells plants and goldfish. We had a wonderful time and I was oblivious that they were supposed to close, but when we emerged, the hallway lights were out and most of the other stores had pulled down their shutters. I learned a lot. For instance, I learned about Ru Kiln which, during the Song Dynasty, produced pieces of porcelain for the emperor. The Emperor Huizon would "select 36 pieces of porcelain as his imperial products, and the remaining porcelain, whether good or bad, would be crashed to pieces without exception, with all such pieces buried deep in the earth, and might not be carried down by folks." (See www.gzhengfu.com)

The following entry from the Encyclopedia Britannica tells more of the story.
Ru kiln, Pinyin Ru yao, or Wade-Giles Ju yao,  kiln known for creating highly prized Chinese stoneware. The Ru kiln produced ware for a short period during the years when Northern Song emperors Zhezong (1085–1110) and Huizong (1110–1125) ruled.

No more than 60 intact pieces from the kiln were known before the discovery in 1986 of the original kiln site, which is in the village of Qingliangsi, in Baofeng county, Henan province. This site has yielded at least 37 more examples (22 of which are intact). The undecorated bluish or greenish gray glaze of Ru wares was cloudy and opaque, often with a slight lavender tinge and a fine, irregular network of cracks. The glaze typically covered a gray stoneware body that had a simple, elegant shape. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
I also learned about Lapsong Souchang Black Tea, or BOHEA (recall an from earlier post that what we call black tea in the West is called red tea in the East). This tea was popular in the 1600s and an ad from 1705 in Edinburgh purports to have sought 30 shillings for a single pound of the stuff. In the 1870s, production was quite high and then it trailed off to nothing by 1949. The company trying to sell me this kind of tea is certified organic in Japan and by the Germans and Americans. They have 120 staff who help to process 900 tons per annum. Of the 6000 mu in their plantation, 5000 are certified organic and the additional 1000 are under transition.

6,000 mu? Chinese still use many traditional measurements for distance, acreage and weight.


Monday, June 18, 2012

Abort the One-Child Policy?

A friend with whom I am not particularly well-acquainted asked me, today, a rather personal question, "Does being Catholic affect your view of the [one-child] policy? If so, how?" In case anybody else is curious, here is my considered answer. 

The local abortion hospital
Being Catholic affects my view of everything! The Church on Earth seems to think it has a special mission to focus on abortion and contraception, which I think is sexually deviant. The fullness and beauty and sanctity of life is preserved, consecrated, and respected in so many other equally important ways.

Over-population is one of the great pressures on the climate and natural resources that allow us to live healthy, happy lives. By any measure, China's confrontation of this great human predicament (i.e., climate change and environmental degradation) is a hundredfold more earnest than anything the United States' broken democratic system has been able to implement. This statement from the concluding remarks of a white paper, written in 1995, captures the Chinese government's intent behind the One-Child policy:
China is home to more than one-fifth of the world's population. It thoroughly understands the responsibility it bears in stabilizing world population growth and the essential role it should play. Family planning as an effective solution to China's population problems is more than just responsibility towards the well-being of the Chinese people and future generations; it is a duty owed to maintaining the stability of the world population. Working for the common interests of all of humanity, at the same time working for individual interests of each nation, the international community and each nation should work together to solve the population problems facing individual nations and the entire world. This will promote development and progress in every country and throughout human society.
Changchun's "family planning" hospital
I do not fault Vice-President Joe Biden (aka Gaffer-in-Chief) for his comments--"You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I'm not second-guessing -- of one child per family. The result being that you're in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable." The bold part--er, not so bold part-- is often taken out of context and used by the right-wing media.

States--and the Church agrees--are sovereign and, therefore, China has a right to establish its own policies. I think pushing the Chinese government to abandon this ineffective and sometimes inhumane policy is only likely to make them dig in their heels and turn it into an issue of sovereignty and self-determination. One needs to understand ones opponent. To make stopping this draconian policy a principle goal of our foreign policy and central to the diplomatic discussions that the US has with China seems fool-hardy and not constructive. Although there is nothing more important, no more enduring value than the sanctity of life, we have other fish to fry in these consultations between our embassies.

On the other hand, I think presenting the Chinese leadership with well-reasoned and scientific data about the failures of One-Child is not likely to fall on deaf ears. One of the strengths of a state that is run by a clan of people who are actively atheistic is that they cannot rely on superstition or faith for the support of their decisions; they must rely on reason and logic.

Feng Wang of The Brookings Institute is only one thinker at one think-tank who has cogently made the case for relaxation of the policy.

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine, now almost seven years old, further outlines the weaknesses of this policy. The most interesting statement of these authors was, "First, relaxation of the policy can be considered only if fertility aspirations are such that a baby boom will not result." This is a brilliant, clear conclusion. The trouble is that we have no way of accurately measuring what they say in the next sentence, "There is now good evidence that China is becoming a small-family culture." The survey of almost 40,000 people upon which this inconclusive statement relies are inevitably poisoned by the inability of Chinese citizens to tell their government what they themselves want instead of what they think their government wants to hear.

Actually, the question that fascinates me is how China will use more social engineering to extricate itself from the problem that it has created for itself. Central planning is the hallmark of the Chinese communist system. One has to believe--with faith--that there are analysts, engineers and bean-counters wrestling with the big questions of gender balance and old-age dependency. One must also hope against hope that they will continue to crackdown on family planning officials who coerce women to make tragic choices. Forced abortion is illegal in China, even if a couple is in violation of the family planning policy.




Selected Bibliography
 
Therese Hasketh, Li Lu, and Zhu Wei Xing. 2005. "The effects of China's One-Child Family Policy after 25 Years", New England Journal of Medicine, 353, No. 11 (September 15): 1171–1176.

"China’s One Child Policy at 30". Brookings. 2010-09-24. Retrieved 2012-06-18.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

New sheets and a new addiction to 圍棋

New Dragon and Phoenix flat sheet, duvet cover, and four pillowcases for 380RMB. Not bad!

I have started to play a lot of Capture Go! on-line at www.gokgs.com. I was turned on to the site two weeks or so ago when I spoke with my college adviser and dear friend, Professor John Elder. He has been playing weichi for years. I forgot to ask him what his most recent rank is, but I think retirement has been generous to his game.

I am thoroughly amused by the accidental condescension of the KGS website that states:
Now you have learned enough about go to play a simpler version of [the Game of Go/WeiChi], called "capture go." In capture go the two players play until one of them has captured a stone. The first player to make a capture wins! In real go, you keep playing after a capture, but for now let's just play until a capture is made.

On the board below, you can play your computer at capture go. The computer doesn't play very well, so after a few tries you should be able to win. You can play as many times as you want; once you think you really have capturing down pretty well, move on to the next page of the tutorial.
I have not found it easy to win every time. I have definitely played my first 100 games by now, I would guess, but even if I get good at this tutorial, which shows you the last move and any place where you are in 打吃 (aka atari [Japanese] or check [English]), when I play in real life there will be no computer to mark the stones thus. 

The porch of the fancy tea place near my house in Changchun.

Can you say, "Dork!"

Lifting two white stones in defeat.
 These are not my own pictures, but were taken by a friend.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Helen Caldicott, MD: China Nuclear Policy and Fukushima

Dr. Helen Caldicott
Dr. Helen Caldicott is one of the world's leading voices in opposition to the civilian and military use of nuclear material. The founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility (in 1985, PSR shared the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to IPPNW for building public awareness and pressure to end the nuclear arms race) and a mentor of mine, she gave a speech that prompted me to start Project Laundry List in 1995. She lives and gardens in Australia, but still travels extensively to speak to large audiences about the threat of nuclear power and weapons. She had the longest private meeting with Ronald Reagan during his time in office and reports that he frequently became anxious as she corrected him during the 75-minute conversation.

I sent her a list of questions and what is notable is the large number of times that she had to say, "I don't know." It is a reflection on the opacity of the Chinese government and the whole industry.

Since writing to Dr. Caldicott with these questions, there have been a couple major developments.

In today's New York Times, the International Energy Agency's executive director Maria van der Hoeven says, “Let’s be honest. If governments want to phase out nuclear power, they have to replace it with something else. If they’re going to replace it with renewables, that’s fine. If they are replacing it with coal, that’s not fine.”

China's top propaganda chief and a member of the 9-person Politburo, Li Changchun, has made a visit to the State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation in an effort to force the media here to "to assist the spread of common knowledge on nuclear power to foster an amiable environment for its development."

Also, the Wall Street Journal reported last Thursday, "China National Nuclear Power Co. said it is planning a Shanghai initial public offering that will go toward financing part of five power projects worth 173.5 billion yuan ($27.2 billion), in a multibillion-dollar deal that signals that the country's ramp-up of nuclear power is moving forward."

It also appears that Japan is moving too quickly towards reactor re-starts at Fukushima in a 'feudal' manner. The Boston Globe and The Guardian, as well as numerous other international newspapers of some repute have run articles about the strident plea of Prime Minister Noda to maintain Japan's standard of living by restarting nuclear power plants.

Anyway, let's get to the interesting part. Here are my questions and Helen's answers:

Visitors walk past China's second nuclear missile on display
as they visit the Military Museum in Beijing
    Photo: GETTY
1. A. Where does the chain of command end in China?

Have no idea. Why don’t you find out?


B. Is Hu Jintao the only person who can order a nuclear strike? Is it technically possible in China (or any of the other nuclear powers) for somebody lower in the command chain to give the okay for a nuclear attack?

Don’t know any of this.

2. The Wikipedia article, People's Republic of China and weapons of mass destruction, offers a quite thorough assessment about what is known about China's nuclear arsenal. Is there anything you would like to add?

No, I know nothing more except at one point not too long ago they only had 20 missiles that could hit the US.
3. China is the only nuclear weapons state to give a security assurance to non-nuclear-weapon states, "China undertakes not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon States or nuclear-weapon-free zones at any time or under any circumstances." What efforts have been made to see the other four nuclear powers agree to something like this?

I don’t know, but they all reserve the right to use them and most are on hair trigger alert.


4. This article [Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris (November/December 2011 vol. 67 no. 6). "Chinese nuclear forces, 2011". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. pp. 81–87.] also declares that, "Today, China is the only one of five original nuclear weapon states that is increasing its nuclear arsenal." Do you find this alarming?

Yes I do, but they are all in the process of “modernizing” their nuclear weapons. Why, I don’t know.

5. "The US government has complained for years that China is too opaque regarding its military forces and budgets and that it needs to be more open. It was therefore surprising and paradoxical that in its 2011 report on China’s military—one of the most widely used public sources for following Chinese nuclear developments—the Pentagon decided not to provide a detailed breakdown of the Chinese missile arsenal, as it had done in previous volumes. The Pentagon’s omission inadvertently assists Chinese nuclear secrecy." [Ibid.] Why do you think the Pentagon failed to include this and do you think it aids China with secrecy?

I would think that they do not want people to know so they can kind of demonise and invent stuff re the Chinese
6.  Lt. Gen. Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff, reportedly acknowledged to American officials in 2009 that there were “areas of China’s nuclear program that are not very transparent” and declared, “It is impossible for [China] to change its decades-old way of doing business to become transparent using the US model” (Dorling, 2011). Do you agree with General Ma?

I really don’t know enough to comment, Alex.




7. This article explains the current reality here pretty well, China Doubles Down on Nuclear Power. Mainland China has 14 nuclear power reactors in operation, more than 25 under construction, and more about to start construction soon. China is rapidly becoming self-sufficient in reactor design and construction, as well as other aspects of the fuel cycle. Do you think that the Chinese leadership can be convinced to abandon these plans and embark on a safer course for their energy needs? Which leaders do you think are likely to guide the nation in a nuclear-free direction?

Don’t know any of the leaders, but I do know that China has developed deep reservations about nuclear power since Fukushima.


8. I arrived here a couple weeks before the tsunami in Japan and iodized salt was gone from the grocery stores in a matter of hours. What are the risks to Changchun, PRC, and the continuing world from the Fukishima Nuclear Reactors?

Well, if Building 4 collapses, god [sic] help everyone because the whole site will have to be evacuated, and it will be a radioactive catastrophe such that the world has never before see.

9. A. Will you be attending http://www.wna-symposium.org/

God almighty, no.

B. Is there any conference or event planned that can serve as an answer to this delegate rich symposium?

I think not.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Dining with the 1% & D-Day

Last night, I more than tithed myself to pay for dinner for two at Z-Space Steakhouse; it cost two to three times what I paid for Beijing duck in the original Beijing duck restaurant. The food was very good, but not extraordinary. The service was strange, punctuated by a couple of highly awkward moments, which I will describe below. I have often walked by this city's fancy restaurants--many are alongside or near the park, which abuts my neighborhood--and I have wondered who the clientele are.

Their fancy cars are parked neatly on the sidewalk--BMWs, Audis, and more VWs than you can count. The lousy Chinese drivers are generally directed by men, usually dressed in paramilitary uniforms, who bark their parking directions like drill sergeants. (My favorite is the place with the men in FBI vests and garb, who in other seasons or different weather are sometimes dressed in knock-off 101st Airborne uniforms replete with American flag arm patches and a scraggly version of the official insignia.) For the less-connected, perhaps less-educated sociopaths who could not join the vast police forces or actually join the PLA as a drill sergeant, I guess this a great job, but in their Napoleonic great coats come January, it does not seem so to me. At this place, the parking attendant was dressed more like a bell-hop or chauffeur, which struck me as more normal and classy. Maybe the Chinese elite like bumping up over the curb (kerb in British English) before eating some pricey hot-pot and feeling like they are storming the beaches of Normandy. Z-Space, if it does one thing really well, parks cars in a genteel manner.

Aside from a lanky ShiDaFuZhong student in her uniform, I saw nobody I could place so I guess you could say that I have no more idea about who these diners are now than I did yesterday afternoon before this impulsive extravaganza. I asked my dinner partner if they were government employees and she smiled, "Maybe relatives of government employees." "Maybe they work in the banks?" I pushed, but this topic was done.

Later, snuggled on our own banquette just far enough apart to keep others from feeling uncomfortable, we did wave, like baseball fans at a stadium, to the cameras on the ceiling in lieu of kissing one another. We did not discuss whether they were necessary, although I assume we were not being listened to. Being watched is just part of life here.

Our table was the one nearest the excellent pianist and violinist's stage. The only other couple that I could see clearly from this vantage point was lounged, er, positively slouched, in such a leisurely fashion on their plush banquette, looking at an IPad together and casually drinking their red wine (starting price per bottle about 350RMB) that I could only deduce they were regulars. During the dinner, the only other patron who we watched with joy was a little girl, who pulled herself up on to the stage after the musicians had left and peered into the innards of the grand piano with glee and fascination.

As I watched my dinner partner struggle with choosing the right fork and deciding how to hold it, I imagined my unsympathetic mother judging her over some future dinner and my defense: "But Mom, she grew up with chopsticks." Instead of the gigantic white napkin on her lap, she used the Kleenex on the table to dab at her lipstick and then left it crumpled on the table. A server noticed this and came back a minute later with some silver tongs, squirreling it away on a silver tray. How well-trained! "So un-ladylike!" grouses a voice in my head that sounds surprisingly like the woman who raised me (so well).
N.B. When you go to a mid-priced Chinese restaurant, you always have a little package of tissues that you can slip into your purse or pocket after the meal is over. If you are eating meat, especially any number of concoctions that include gristle, fowl heads and necks, or fish-bones, it is not impolite to pile them on the table in the area around your plate, soiling the linen if you are eating in such a fine establishment.
I had blueberry juice and she had cucumber lemonade.
I am smitten and we (both, I hope!) passed a couple hours easily in each others company here. We did not order wine. She does not like the way she feels after imbibing the red stuff and I was feeling a bit Scotch after seeing Kobe beef for more than 1000RMB on the menu. The servers did a half-decent job of filling the water glasses when they were drained. In their defense, my unquenchable thirst for water at fancy dinners is legend in our family. Many times, my father has embarrassed me, the way that fathers do, by announcing to a pretty waitress or a too-busy-to-care waiter, "My son is a waterite." (I think it was a Sniglet from a 1980s Word-a-Day calendar.)


You can see that table was well-appointed. The candelabra--its middle stem stuffed with monogrammed ribbon--was elegant. The featured prix fixe meals for this month were listed on a menu-ette that stands, in the picture above, behind the aforementioned box of Kleenex. Each of the three choice meals was linked to a European country's cuisine--French, Italian, and Spanish. The prices seemed to be relative to how well their economies are doing. Naturally, I should have assumed, despite any obvious indication, that this bottle of fine olive oil was for display purposes only, but the bread was good and the butter patties were gone so I cracked the seal. This sound attracted the attention of a passing waitress who reappeared moments later to explain that my mistake would cost us 100RMB, but we could take the bottle with us at the end of the meal. We had a good laugh over this indiscretion and talked about how we would not leave the bottle on the windowsill, but would hide it away in a dark cabinet. The waitress was gracious and soon appeared with demi-bowls of olive oil infused with ten year-old balsamic vinegar (from some opened bottle in the kitchen.

The advising chef, Clement, is an acquaintance of mine. He is French and a lovely man, who loves his job. Among his responsibilities are carving the beef table-side and improving the menu. He came out three times during the evening to chat with us. The first time, I said, "This is our first time here." His response made us chuckle later. He said, "I can see that."  Did we look like kids in a candy store? Were we improperly attired? We had made an effort to dress up a bit. Perhaps, he meant nothing and was struggling for the right thing to say in his second language.

The second time that I spotted him, I motioned him over and said that it was my dinner partner's birthday. He said, "Do you want a cake?" We were full and tried to decline, but between the three of us and our three separate languages, the message was not adequately conveyed. We sat there for five minutes and he reappeared, talking with the Chinese manager off to our left. "Can you wait twenty minutes?" Again, we tried to decline graciously and, again, the message was not received. We bantered about how what we were really celebrating was D-Day and he said, "But isn't that July 4th?" I smiled and reminded him about Normandy, 1944, being different than the Declaration of Independence, 1776. He laughed at himself and said in his French accent, "Oh, yes, I have heard of that. There is some cheese there or something." I might have smugly thought, "There would be Germans in Cherbourg if it was not for Omaha Beach." He could, of course, have been thinking, there would still be British regulars in Virginia if it was not for deGrasse and Rochambeau.

Not sure whether we were waiting for a cake or not, we motioned for the waiter and I paid the bill on a table-side credit card machine. We got up to leave and were told, "Don't leave. You have a cake coming." It came out with Clement and we thanked him again. It was tasty and too big so we carried the bulk of it away...along with our olive oil.
__________

The following evening, which was the real D-Day and the real birthday, I lead a two-hour educational discussion at The Culture Club about a History Channel special on Sun Tzu's Art of War. I have spent some time studying this book and own a very nice copy. The History.com blurb says:
“The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.” So begins The Art of War, a meditation on the rules of war that was first published in China. Historians don’t know the exact date of the book’s publication (though they believe it to be in the 4th or 5th century); in fact, they don’t even know who wrote it! Scholars have long believed that The Art of War’s author was a Chinese military leader named Sun Tzu, or Sunzi. Today, however, many people think that there was no Sun Tzu: Instead, they argue, the book is a compilation of generations of Chinese theories and teachings on military strategy. Whether or not Sun Tzu was a real person, it’s clear that “he” was very wise: The Art of War still resonates with readers today.
The film talks extensively about the mistakes and successes of several important campaigns. I chose to show it because of its extensive review of D-Day--the blunders of Hitler and the successful strategy of Eisenhower.

I also chose it because it uses weichi (the Game of Go) as a way to describe the thinking of Sunzi and his subsequent followers, who include Colon Bowel [sic], Robert E. Lee, Mao Zedong, Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh. I spent an hour speaking with my college adviser this week (I am missing my 15th college reunion) and he has reignited my interest in learning Go. I have already played hours of Capture Go at http://www.gokgs.com/tutorial/ and joined another website that will send me a weekly email with training exercises.

Dwight David Eisenhower's letter to his troops who he threw on to a beach with no place for them to run and nothing to do but fight to live appears to the right. On D-Day, I think always of Frank Whelden, the quiet old man whose wife was my fourth grade math teacher and who, himself, ran the bookstore at The Fessenden School. As a budding history student, I interviewed him about his experience in the 82nd Airborne. These men were amazing. We ought to pause to honor their sacrifice.


This post is dedicated to the Clendenning-Poiniers and gourmands and foodies everywhere, as well as the men and women who gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy, especially the 101st Airborne.