Human by Design by Gregg Braden

With his new book, Gregg Braden had me with this line:  "Modern humans arose suddenly on earth approximately 200,000 years ago." The few traces of evidence we have suggest the ancients were no different from us. Intrigued to hear this view from a scientist, I was more intrigued by the proof that we didn't descend from Neanderthals. This came to light in 2000 at the University of Glasgow: a 30,000 year-old Neanderthal infant yielded mitochondrial DNA.

The Human Genome Project yielded a further blow to the old Darwinian surmise that humans evolved gradually. Here's a recent finding. Shared by chimps and humans, the FOXP2 gene suddenly and rapidly mutated in humans. This gene is located on Chromosome 2 and implicated in organ development and brain growth. It's also essential for the human capacity to feel compassion.

Moreover, we are creatures of irreducible complexity: this means a whole host of complex organs, systems and functions need to co-exist in order for our bodies to function. Increasingly, scientific evidence suggests that our species arose suddenly "with no evolutionary path leading to our appearance." Our crucial capacities for emotion, empathy and compassion connect us to one another and to other life forms in a unique way. We are separate neither from fellow-members of our species nor from other life forms. In old age, Einstein hypothesized a unified field, "an underlying order of information...in the universe," likening this to a distant and mysterious piper's tune that causes us all to dance.

Astronomer Fred Hoyle and mathematician Chandra Wickramsinghe have calculated the likelihood of our species having evolved through accident based on the number of enzymes necessary for life and the chance of their appearing randomly. They came up with a ludicrously small number: 1 to the power of 40,000. Hoyle suggested that this is about as likely as "a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747 jetliner from scattered debris."

Our thought process is hampered, says Braden, on the one hand, by the baggage of creationist religious doctrine, and on the other, by that of scientific "zealots clinging to fundamentalist evolutionary theory," unproven and even discredited though it may be. We must open our minds to new possibilities.

The brain filters its assessments through past memories and ego considerations, but "the heart knows immediately." Many of us have experienced this in moments of critical decision-making, when we receive the sudden compelling heart guidance to make the right choice. The Heart Math Institute, HMI, has researched the mechanism for this. Deep and conscious breathing creates coherence between heartbeat and brain waves; this leads to optimum cooperation between head and heart, balancing and maximizing human powers of discernment.

Many of us seek to evolve and experience a life of purpose. According to Einstein, "our task must be to free ourselves from this prison [the illusion of separateness] by widening our circle of compassion to all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." This lofty goal, shared by mystics from ancient times, may be unattainable. Yet in striving towards it we find liberation and inner security.

Long a student, proponent and practitioner of heart math, Braden offers exercises, including the Heart Math Institute's set of five simple steps to be used by those who wish to ask questions and receive the wisdom of their own hearts. We need to become more aware, he says, that we affirm or deny our life force through the myriad choices we make daily about food, exercise, words, thoughts and beliefs.

Key to vital longevity is the health of the telomeres that protect our chromosomes. It is within our power to nurture these vital elements of life force, thus maximizing the number of times our cells can achieve the healthy division that keeps us alive.

To heal the problems we see around us today, says Braden, we must give up our basic disrespect for life. Contemporary societies believe in scarcity and competition. Many see difference as a threat, and act on this belief. Economies too. But we must change our thinking and go another way -- the path of cooperation and collaboration. Braden considers growth in the sharing economy, exemplified by Uber and Airbnb, to be a hopeful sign that such a change is taking place.

As individuals, we all matter deeply. We can and must make positive changes, says Braden, and to change our erroneous thinking comes first. "How," he asks, "can we make room for the new world that's emerging if we are clinging to the old world of the past?"

As Einstein knew, and as spiritual practitioners from many ancient traditions have long been aware, one important answer lies in cultivating compassion, which is "both a force of nature and an emotional experience that connects us with nature and all life."

A Long Way from Home by Peter Carey

With this new Booker-winning novel, Australian-born author Peter Carey has gone off the map. This story hinges on maps. After all, how could Mr. and Mrs. Bobs compete in the 1953 car rally around Australia without them?

After fifteen years of marriage and two kids, Irene is still in love with her natty Titch. After the race, she sees her "born salesman" husband another way. As he poses with companions "dressed like criminals and racecourse touts," his teeth seem "a perfect echo of the Holden's grill."

Willy, the next door neighbour, is a schoolteacher and radio show quiz champ. While he believes he's German, a "phantom homesickness" lends his soul "a distinctive colour." Finding out his true identity evokes "a searing pain" of panic that washes over him "like sheet lightning."

Having just lost both his jobs, Willy agrees to be navigator for Mr and Mrs Bobs in the Redex race, and he does so for a time. The revelation of his undreamed-of origin takes place in remote Quamby Downs, where he's arrived apparently by chance. Finding himself related to "a mob of Aborigines," Willy too must learn to think another way. He does his best to understand and befriend his aboriginal relatives, though he's not yet confident Lochy (aka Dr. Battery) "would not hold me responsible for the sins of my biological father."

Willy is kept a virtual prisoner in Quamby Downs, all but forced to accept the job of teacher there. The school board pays him "twenty pounds a week to erase the past, to...make [the Aboriginals] as white as possible in the hopes that they would grow up as stock boys and house lubras and punkah wallahs." Instead, unbeknownst to his distant employers, Willy learns how to enter the map of the "blackfellahs." Even so, he wants nothing more than to escape back south to town life. Instead, a desperate bid to help someone else get away from Quamby brings trouble down on his own head.

By the end of the jaw-dropping story, the reader too must reassess, and think in new ways. Early on, certain details are dropped to prepare the way for the revelations to come. Where the sheep graze over vast tracts of land, once the plains were covered in shoulder-high kangaroo grass. As well as foreshadowing the Willy's discoveries on the road, this was for me a chilling echo the Canadian prairies before and after the buffalo were wiped out, the people displaced and subjected to brutal attempts at assimilation, and the land plowed up for farming.

Told alternately through two engaging voices, this story rings with the deep truth that the best historic fiction can convey. Irene, the feisty 1950s housewife and mother who remains supportive of the vain and egoistic Titch came fully alive for me. She refuses to internalize the sexist and racist frontier society values that surround her, and her natural sympathy for the tragic figure of the shy and gentle Willy Bachuber brings her into conflict with her husband, who grows in confidence until he resembles his destructive and boastful father, whom Irene could never stand.

As Titch takes pride in his slick radio ad fame and devotes himself to earning more money through car and tire franchises, Irene finds herself unable to ignore Willy's tragic family situation. Also, she can't forget the horrific discovery she made about Australia's history of colonization during the rally. In her own way, she comes to terms with her heavy knowledge and takes appropriate action.

This book is an excellent choice for anyone willing to open the lid on the violent history society has a way of keeping hidden. In the era of Reconciliation, the first and most necessary act is to witness the past on which our lives are founded.

I found this portrait of 1950s Australia chillingly evocative of the same era in Canada. As a young child in a prairie town, I felt the bewildering sting of knowing that adults around me disrespected people they didn't know for reasons of race and background. They spoke and behaved in ways I recognized instinctively as wrong.

The China Song

On our Culture Path tour in China, we heard other choirs and learned The China Song. Audiences knew this and sang along, and a children's choir joined us onstage to belt it out. Looking at the translated lyrics, I was chuffed to see what wasn't mentioned. No swords borne aloft, no crosses, no battles or bombs bursting in air, and no pleas for God to save the monarch on the throne. Just lot of stuff about being happy to be part of an enormous country, working together in spite of challenges. But then it's just a folk song, not a national anthem.

Symbolism in the Forbidden City of Beijing

Today tourists pass through the imperial gate, once exclusive to the Emperor. His wife was allowed to use it on her wedding day, a special exception to the rule. Represented by rows of brass studs, the number nine means power.

Along the eaves of the numerous palaces within the forbidden city, we see animal figures. Their numbers reveals the building's function and importance. A roofline displaying five animals signified use by civil or military officials, who regularly petitioned the emperor.

The garden pot above contained not plants, but water. In the absence of a mechanical system to fight fire, the palace grounds contained a number of these in strategic locations. The practice arose from feng shui (literal translation: wind water), and the placement of pots of water at strategic locations was believed to prevent fire.

Below we see other examples of symbolism. The lion on the left is an expression of the ancient Chinese idea of yin and yang, which combine in a balanced harmony. Representing yin, a sleeping cub rests beneath the paw of the female lion. On the other side of the doorway, a male lion (yang) rests his paw upon a sphere. The high threshold that must be crossed to enter the palace is a symbolic (and practical) reminder to bow the head humbly before going in.

 

Chinese virtues and "the Mao Dynasty"

The shot is poor as I took the picture through the window of a moving bus. The virtues and ideals are Prosperity, Democracy, Civility, Rule of Law, Harmony, Freedom, Equality, Justice, Patriotism, Dedication, Integrity, Friendship.

Modern China, like any other society, is founded on its past. Yet I was surprised to hear Chinese use the phrase "The Mao Dynasty." Below, the palaces of the Forbidden City and the remaining portion of moat that runs behind it stand as reminders of earlier times. 

Today Mao's picture is prominent, above the Imperial Gate that was once reserved for the most august emperor.

Better city, our duty

Before I visited, I knew China, I knew it had a gender imbalance, a consequence of the one-child policy and an earlier historic preference for male children. I wondered whether any effects of this would be apparent to a casual visitor but saw none. In the five cities I visited, the people I met and those I observed seemed calm and happy. I saw no evidence of crime, homelessness, bad driving or drug abuse.

The slogan on this truck expresses the value Chinese place on group social responsibility.

Sadly, in the background, the sky beyond Mao's tomb is seriously polluted, something I witnessed not only in Beijing, Shanghai and Shijiazhuang, but from the train window as we passed through the countryside between those cities, and from the air as we approached Xi'an, a "small" city by Chinese standards, though it contains the equivalent of the population of Sweden. [Combine the populations of Shanghai and Xian, and you get the equivalent of the Canadian population.] China has 160 cities with populations over a million, and the struggle to reduce pollution is ongoing.

Initiatives include obliging new drivers in Beijing (and possibly elsewhere) to enter lotteries and compete for the privilege of car ownership, and banning licence holders from driving on more than four weekdays, based on the final digit of the number plate. There are also many motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles on the road. Nobody wears helmets, but these smaller vehicles have their own dedicated sections of road to drive on. Hordes of yellow and orange bicycles in the cities can be rented with the simple swipe of a phone app, and left anywhere the user finds convenient.

Seeing silk at the source

I love wearing silk. Made of strands of protein, a layer of this queen of natural fibres provides warmth in winter, and maintains coolness in summer. Light in weight, silk, especially when knitted, is flexible and easy to care for. Using complex looms, it can also be woven into light or heavy fabrics from raw silk to the most intricately designed and colourful brocades.

On a recent visit to China, I learned a lot more about silk. Production begins by feeding silkworms on the leaves of a special type of mulberry.

Cocoons are then produced on frames made of plastic or straw. Once complete, they are heated with water and to kill the worms and make the silk easy to harvest, then graded for quality. The most symmetrical white ones are destined to become yarn, while the less perfect ones are formed into silk batting for clothing and blankets. A single silk thread is made by simultaneously unwinding together several unbroken strands of thread. To accomplish this, the cocoons float in water while unreeling under the watchful eyes of factory employees, who introduce a new strand to replace each one that runs out.

Once the thread is formed, it is re-reeled into skeins as seen above. This re-reeling helps to dry the thread while ensuring consistent elongation, strength and elasticity. Below we see silk brocade being woven on special looms, and a picture embroidered on silk with silk thread.

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

Embarking on our choral tour in China, I packed Lisa See's tea book: perfect timing to read it. While the Dragon Well Tea Plantation we visited is in Hangzhou, this story is set in Yunnan Province, close to the borders on Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam. The tea-growing Akha people who live in the mountains, comprise one of China's fifty-five ethnic minorities. Geographically, Yunnan is a Global Biodiversity Hotspot. With only 4% of the nation's land mass, is "home to more than half its mammal and bird species, as well as twenty-five...ethnic minorities" along the Tea Horse Road.

The story opens in a remote Akha village in Yunnan, where rigid social rules, superstition and unbridled passions lead to tragedy. The unfolding tale reveals enormous changes faced by tea growers in recent decades. The action happens in Yunnan, Thailand, California and Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, as we travelled, our Chinese guides told us a bit about China's ethnic minorities. One detail that fascinated me was the fact that unlike the majority Han people, minorities have never had the one-child policy applied to them. On the tour, I was also learning about various Chinese government campaigns -- for instance, against smoking. In the book, I was astonished to read about the campaign "Fifty-five Minorities; One Dream." Until recently, the Akha feared the birth of twins. Yet before the Beijing Olympics, the central government sought out fifty-five sets of twins, one from each minority, and created a spectacle to make the nation proud.

In the rare moments I was able to snatch for reading my novel, I was learning more about the Akha. A tribe with animistic beliefs, they believe that "Everything on earth has a soul, even a single rice kernel." Their rigid adherence to rituals create intense conflict within our protagonist, as well as among villagers, and between her and the many non-Akha she meets along the way. Another fascinating aspect of the book is the wealth of information on tea culture. See's many pages of acknowledgements thank an impressive array of scholars on both these topics. I was astonished to learn that "the Pu'er Tea College...has a GPS system that can locate every tea tree over a thousand years old on Yunnan's twenty-six tea mountains."

Following from the first story line, a related plot moves forward in California. An adopted Chinese daughter grows up enjoying the love and privilege provided by her white parents. Yet she can't get over wondering about her real parents back in China. And she's not alone. Many other Chinese adoptees have arrived in the US; they and their adopting families share similar challenges. The young people feel the combined need and the fear of discovering who they "really" are, and why their birth parents gave them up. Were they among the estimated 30,000 to 60,000 Chinese children illegally trafficked and exported? Can organizations like Roots and Shoots Heritage tours help them come to terms with their dual cultural identities?

On the Chinese side, the book alludes to some of the side effects of the One-child policy that was in effect for many years and prevented an estimated 400,000,000 births. At one point in the story, "there are 30 million more young males seeking mates...than there are prospective brides." In an echo of this idea, our Beijing guide Amy tells us, only half-jokingly, that girls now get to pick and choose husbands with education, money, homes and cars. Speaking of cars: if you live in Beijing, you have to enter a lottery for the privilege of buying one. It used to be held every two months, but now will take place only once a year. This is one of the many initiatives to control the number of vehicles on Chinese roads, and thus alleviate the congestion and air pollution they create.

Before travelling to China, I got an app called WeChat to keep in touch with family, since I knew a lot of the apps we use here would be inaccessible there. Chinese use WeChat for communication, and for all kinds of shopping. You can tap and ride a shared bicycle (and they're everywhere), or buy an ice cream in the Dairy Queen at Shanghai Market. Incidentally, even though I saw several Starbucks outlets in China, I was astonished to learn from Lisa See's book that coffee is now being grown in Yunnan Province. She also mentions the ubiquity of WeChat app, and describes a tasty and simple dish I enjoyed a couple of times while I was there: scrambled eggs with tomatoes.

See's tale of tea and trouble is dramatic, indeed quite harrowing in places, but not ultimately tragic. After Li-yan's  many adventures and misadventures, our Akha protagonist is able to express the universal message "Suffering has brought clarity into my life."

In China, John Crozman and Dean Marshall were our Culture Path musical guides and arrangers. They've brought groups of musicians to China many times, and have long-term relationships with their Chinese counterparts. "They have their own way of doing things here," says John. "And once they decide to do something, it gets done. Every time I come, something else is new."

Finally, I'd like to express my gratitude to Vancouver novelist Janie Chang for introducing me to the work of Lisa See. Without Janie's recommendation, I may not have discovered this wonderful author whose work I've found so educational, especially as I travelled in China. Like Janie's, Lisa See's words cast much light on that enormous and fascinating country that is both incredibly ancient and incredibly modern. I admit I knew relatively little about China until I was granted this unexpected opportunity to visit and learn more.

Rediscovering green tea in China

Recently, my fellow choristers and I went to China on a Culture Path tour. We shared a cultural exchange with a local choir, and performed in five cities with two Celtic fiddle groups and renowned tenor Ken Lavigne.

Our group leaders also created many wonderful opportunities to see and experience some unique aspects of Chinese culture. Long before we visited the Dragon Well Tea Plantation, I noticed how delicious was the green tea we drank on our visit to China.

This made it all the more delightful to visit a place where the tea is grown and processed. By luck, we arrived shortly after the first picking of the new buds in March, the best part of the crop. Green tea, I learned, contains no caffeine as unlike black tea, it is unfermented. In fact, explained Mr. May, who studied tea at Zhejiang University, it contains many substances that are good for health.

Left: tea bushes in foreground, with terraced hills of tea behind them. Below: a glass of freshly brewed green tea.

Tang Dynasty show and dumpling banquet

Xi'an (direct translation of the word parts means west harmony) is the historic and cultural capital of China, our city guide Judy told us.

This gracious performer greeted theatre-goers arriving for the Tang Dynasty Music and Dance show. We sat at tables to watch dancers and singers in exquisite costumes on gorgeously coloured sets. During the show, we were served an amazing variety of tiny and delectable dumplings. The sesame duck was modeled on that bird, and the goldfish dumplings had fan tails and green peas for eyes. Taste-wise, my fave was the purple sweet potato dumpling.

After performing in the choir with various musicians in five concert halls in five Chinese cities, it was a relief to sit in the audience for a change.

The Terracotta warriors of Xi'an

These authorized contemporary replicas of the terracotta army of Xi'an are made of clay, bronze and even jade. Today wealthy people can commission a statue with their own faces. Originally, the artists also based each figure on the face of a real man who lived back then. Many have open hands like the kneeling archer in the foreground; the warriors once carried real bronze weapons.

The clothing and hairstyles reveal the different ranks. For instance, the simple topknot worn by the ordinary soldier is positioned to give the right-handed archer (the majority) easy access to the arrows from the quiver on his shoulder. Generals wear beards, and body armour over cotton robes, square toed shoes and flat backward-sloping masses of hair. Chariot drivers wear special gauntlets as well as padded armour to protect their necks.

Enormous terra cotta army of Xi'an

The terra-cotta warriors of Xi'an were ordered by the Qin (Chin) emperor after whom the united China was named. Rank upon rank of cavalry, infantry and chariots were created to guard the emperor's privilege and power in the afterlife. It is estimated that it took 720,000 artisans forty years to create the terracotta men, weapons, chariots and Mongolian horses. Behind the haunting beauty of this art lies a story of profound violence. The Qin emperor was so cruel that he the killed the creators when their painstaking works were complete.

After his death, a general who had served him took revenge on the former boss who had put his father and son to death. The general first had his army take the real bronze weapons from the warriors. When they then attacked the tomb, figures were broken and the pit filled with ashes.

The first part of the tomb was discovered in 1974 by a farmer drilling for water, and the remainder came to light in 1976. The site was opened to visitors in 1979. Today, archaeologists from seven  nations work as teams in a few pits. It can take three archaeologists nearly a year to reconstitute a single statue and set it back in its original place. The relatively small number of figures in the photo have taken forty years to restore. Vast numbers of others remain untouched below ground.

Aboriginal women poets read at Canadian Authors event

In celebration of National Poetry Month, we heard readings by three poets, hosted by Kevin Spenst. Jonina Kirton's latest poetry collection, An Honest Woman, has just been nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Prize.

We sampled her wise words: "My turtle mind, slow, steady, walks me to the dance floor, where my snake self dances me," alluding to "a trail of marooned memories."

Joanne Arnott shared these deep truths: "Our bodies are what we are good at and unconscious of," and "Watching the earth breathe can become habit forming." She also made us laugh a lot, once with her quip, "I have poetic licence."

Joanne closed her presentation by singing an altered version of Rockabye Baby, with an ending in which the narrator promises to catch the baby and cradle, if they should fall. What a relief. I've always hated the brutal ending of that traditional nursery rhyme.

Wanda Kehewin shared work from In the Dog House, as well as her upcoming collection. "I heard the word forgiveness, and I asked myself, in what language does forgiveness begin?" A new poem, "My Brother," evoked the deep pain of an elder sibling's helpless concern for her brother in an abusive foster home. Moments later, Wanda's zany humour had her audience in stitches.

Though some poems carried sadness that was hard to hear, in other moments, poets and audience laughed together in joyful unity. Overall, a stellar evening.

The Lingering Garden in Suzhou

The Lingering Garden in Suzhou, China is a UNESCO heritage site. We were there at the best possible time, with magnolias, redbuds and other flowering trees in bloom. More time to linger would've been nice!

Remembering Dr. Hanna Kassis

This is what Dr. Kassis looked like when I met him in 1967. A seventeen-year-old from a small northern town, I was almost as fascinated by the crimp of my prof's hair and his foreign-accented speech as by his lectures and stories.

My residence buddy Rena recommended his class. I learned about the city from her, and she depended on me to keep pounding on her door till she rose for her 8:30 class. I was interested in archaeology, and she assured me I'd love Dr. Kassis's class. I did.

I learned eventually that Rena was Jewish; her mother had escaped from a death camp, and my friend kept putting off a promise to take me to her house for a visit because her mom was having another bad day.

Today the funeral of Dr. Kassis was held in the Anglican Cathedral on Burrard. I was surprised to learn he was a Christian. Back in 1967, I had only the sketchiest notion of the background of this Gaza-born Harvard-trained professor who went on to spend so many years teaching at UBC. A professor emeritus, he taught Hebrew language and Religious Studies as well as archaeology. He was a great member of the UBC and wider community, and will be sadly missed. An obituary by Douglas Todd in The Vancouver Sun calls him a "Canadian pioneer in Islamic Studies."

Rest in peace, Hanna Kassis.

In China motorcycles, not riders wear the biker jackets

In the Chinese cities we visited on our recent choral tour, many scooter and motorbike riders use these padded bike jackets to guard against cold and wind. They come in various patterns, including Hello Kitty (left). I saw one woman riding in heels and a short skirt. The wall of fabric in front of her knees kept her legs warm while protecting her modesty. Jackets are left unguarded with the bikes, as are the contents of bike baskets. Nobody seems to worry that others will take their belongings.