Here are some mostly recent photos from China, mostly Shanghai and mostly walking distance from my home. This collection is part 18 of 18. I’m starting at the end. Part 17 will come later. Then Part 16, and so forth. Sort of a first shall be last and last shall be first scriptural kind of thing.
Did I ever tell you that I really love China? That it’s an incredible privilege to be here, to work here, to make friends here, and to relish the culture, the people, the food, the beauty and the increasing freedom that is found here? China also includes Hong Kong, sort of, where there is wide-open religious freedom and a Temple of the Lord. Wonderful! But it’s surprising how much religious freedom there is in mainland China also, though with restraints that we respect. It’s Christmas season here and guess what? They play real Christmas music, religious Christmas music honoring Jesus, in stores and elevators I have been in recently. Try doing that in the United States without being sued to death! Greetings from the surprisingly free and beautiful nation of China. (Click to enlarge.)
I love the markets of China and the people who make them possible. Here is the famous little antiques market of Dong Tai street in Shanghai, just barely a block from where I live. What wonderful friends we’ve made there.
This is a painting we just bought for our home from an artist friend on the Dong Tai antiques market street. He does custom work if you’d like to have yourself or a loved on painted. Very gifted artist, surprisingly affordable. And such a sweet family. We have four of his paintings in our home.
Jeff, lovely photos which I enjoyed seeing.
You're right: Shanghai is a wonderful city in many ways.
Hey, Jeff, did you get my email? I didn't receive a response so I assume you didn't. Perhaps I emailed to the wrong email address. It was regarding the Lehi Trek. Check out my latest blog post to see it. (Just click my name to view the post.) I think you may be interested, given that you are now in Shanghai.
"They play real Christmas music, religious Christmas music honoring Jesus, in stores and elevators I have been in recently. Try doing that in the United States without being sued to death!"
Ah, yes, the War on Christmas. The poor oppressed Christian, for whom the United States is more oppressive than Communist China!
I wouldn't bother to respond to Jeff's snarky and delusional aside (a blot in an otherwise interesting post), except that I just got out of a Penneys store that was playing "Away in a Manger," little lord Jesus and all.
Quick–get me a lawyer!
— Eveningsun
Nice pic of the Hong Kong Temple. I thought that looked familiar, so I looked it up.
Thanks, Jeff. Great pictures.
Not wanting to drink the kool-aid and believe everything is so much better in China and America is the land of opression.
Another story of freedom in China this week is Christian Bale,getting himself filmed by CNN being roughed up by Chinese security agents during an attempt to visit Chen Guangcheng, a famous human rights activist who has been under house arrest for the past 15 months. Mr. Chen, whose village in eastern China has been locked down by plainclothes security men for more than a year. Diplomats, journalists, and ordinary Chinese citizens have been violently turned away whenever they have sought to visit the blind lawyer who helped alleged victims of forced abortions. A self-taught lawyer, Mr. Chen crossed the line from celebrated lawyer to persecuted dissident after he took on the case of thousands of local women who had been the victims of an aggressive family planning campaign that included forced sterilizations and abortions.
Sounds like the Utopia Jeff describes.
What does "I [heart] SH" mean?
The pics I like most are the latter ones taken at night time. I like the doark contrasting with the brighter colors. Also, the color saturation is done so well. Whomever chose the light colors of those scenes did a very good job.
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I [heart] SH = I love Shanghai. SH is a common abbreviation for this city. Thanks for the comments on my photos, Darren.
Anon, I'm sorry if the positive things I've said about China make you think I say that it's a Utopia. No nation is. There are plenty of problems and concerns here. For the record, it's a Communist nation and no, I do not advocate Communism, socialism, or the various forms of unconstitutional Big Government that leaders in both of America's leading parties advocate. I'm a big believer in small government and expansive individual liberty. However, the trend in China in recent years has been an increase in individual freedoms, still with many restraints and concerns. That trend is the opposite of the trend in the US, where individual liberty is increasingly limited.
In spite of its problems, China is a country with remarkable accomplishments, fabulous food, delightful peoples, vast and impressive culture, etc.–well worth a lifetime of study.
…the US, where individual liberty is increasingly limited.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic as all that. As always, there are gains and losses. On the one hand, our Congress seems intent on doing away with habeus corpus for terrorism suspects, even when they are U.S. citizens, a troubling prospect indeed. And the U.S. still has the highest per capita incarceration rate of any industrialized nation, in large part because of the failed Big Government program known as the War on Drugs.
On the other hand, taxes (which are a kind of infringement on liberty, albeit self-imposed) remain at historic lows. And the last decade or so has seen a tremendous increase in the individual liberty of lesbians and gay men. Here I'm not necessarily talking about things like gay marriage (thought that is part of it), merely about the fact that gay people can be "out" without fear of being fired, beaten up, and so on. This, too, is liberty.
Of course, on the negative side of the ledger I should add the indisputable fact that department stores cannot play "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful" without being set upon by a phalanx of atheist-appeasing lawyers, and that our nation's poor oppressed Christians cannot so much as whisper the name of Jesus without being herded off to Obama's concentration camps… 😉
— Eveningsun
In spite of its problems, China is a country with remarkable accomplishments, fabulous food, delightful peoples, vast and impressive culture, etc.–well worth a lifetime of study.
I had a college roomate at BYU named Jerry. He told me his Chinese name and right there and then i decided to…keep calling him Jerry. ;>)
Anyway, Jerry's goals were to study biology and return to China and make tons of money in the scientific field. There's no way he'd have such lofty goals if China were not moving towards a more free-market nation. Yes, authoritariansism is still strong there but there should be no doubt that it is moving away from that. Perhaps they will never recognize individual freedom to the extent that the US traditionally has but, yes, as we're moving away from individual freedom, China is moving towards it.
Both parties are guilty but frankly I don't see a viable third party tro "solve" that problem (including the third party we've mentioned on another thread).