evans update #4

Thursday, March 10, 2011 Shanghai

Dear Family and Friends,

I woke up many times in the night, but the one at 4:00 am had me worrying a lot about my lecture today. Would I be able to answer questions adequately? Was my talk too religious? I was beginning to wish that they had never arranged the lecture, but I kept assuring myself that God was in control and would be with me.

So we got up and got showers before we went out to the KFC for our egg/burger breakfast. The best part of KFC is watching the crowd outside dance. The men are older than the women. One comes dressed to the 9’s in red blazer, vest and tie. Another is so old that he and his partner just hold hands and just shuffle their feet. I love it. This group is distinct from the tai chi group down the mall.

I worked on my paper, marking smooth transitions until 9:30. Then I demanded that we leave, even though it only takes 10 minutes to get to the university and we knew exactly where we were going. We arrived very early. No one arrived before 9:58. Xiang Huang was the philosophy faculty member assigned to chair the session and take us to lunch. The door to the room was not open so he managed to find the secretary to make that happen. It was a gorgeous room with an oval mahogany table and more rectangular tables on the edges for an overflow crowd. There was no need. By 10:15 it was clear that no one was coming to my lecture. I was disappointed, for sure. I had worked like mad on the translations of the quotes and then at the last minute adding a 3 page introduction to Unamuno who was probably unknown to the audience. It was my chance to learn a lesson in humility and be gracious. Our chair, Xiang, was very chagrined that no one came. He was very interested in the talk, even though he is a philosopher of science and technology, because he lived and worked in Mexico for 16 years and had read Unamuno under the mentorship of Mexican friends who nonetheless had little patience for Unamuno’s religiosity, having imbued Ortega y Gasset’s attitude toward Unamuno entirely. We chatted for more than a half hour and then determined that it was a losing cause. We agreed to meet for lunch at noon.

Xiang plied us with a hundred questions at lunch. I had given him my paper and a copy of my book. We first talked about Kierkegaard and Unamuno—more specifically Kierkegaard and San Manuel Bueno, mártir, which he had read a long time ago. We talked about everything from Spanish history in the late 19^th century and early 20^th century to evolution, evolutionary ethics and Jorge Luis Borges. He is incredibly well read for a philosopher of science! He told me that he regretted the fact that no one came to my lecture but he knew the chair of the Spanish literature department at Beijing University and he would be contacting him on my behalf. He was sure that they would want me to lecture there. Lunch was the usual Chinese affair of multiple dishes, from fish to veggies and pork. Most were edible (the tiny fish was only bones, no flesh) but we were given grace to use a knife and fork instead of chopsticks.

We found out later that there were at least a couple of Steve’s present students who had wanted to come to my lecture but whose schedules prohibited it. I’m going to believe that the lack of attendance was just poor scheduling and the fact that no one is interested in Spanish anything here. I was tempted to think in conspiratorial terms about the fact that I had sent my paper ahead of time to our host and I had worried that he would find the themes too religious for Chinese tastes. I will never know, but he said that he had just been overly busy the day before and had not even opened the email that had my text.

Steve will speak at the same time tomorrow morning. He has worked very hard to develop a brand new paper for this audience, which he sent to be duplicated this afternoon. We’ll see if he has anyone to listen. Our host assures him that there will be much more interest in Kierkegaard and in Unamuno.

This afternoon I took some time to go shopping while Steve taught. I’m amazed at the prices of things--$75 for a basic blouse, $150 for a simple skirt. It seems to us that there are so many people that have menial jobs that can’t pay much. Who buys this stuff? I also spent some time looking for a place for us to have supper. We could have tried to get another taxi out of the university area, but that’s relatively expensive and time consuming, so I was determined to find a restaurant where we could eat something other than Chinese in pleasant surroundings. I found a restaurant called the Bullfighter Steak House that had beef tenderloin or lamb chops for 98 RMB, about $17. The beef was ok, but not HEB good. The lamb was tasty but full of a lot of gristle. The saving grace was that it wasn’t expensive and we could walk there.

So now we wait to see if folks will show up for Steve’s extra lecture tomorrow. After his afternoon seminar he will be completely done and we will look for a nice restaurant in which to celebrate. WE hadn’t decided entirely what we will do with Saturday. We’re both wishing that we had planned to go home, but we can’t change the reservations now, so we need to enjoy.

Thanks for your prayers on our behalf. They certainly were with me this morning as we dealt with an awkward situation.

Love, Jan