We’re married! Mr. and Mrs. Adam and Yuri Morris, in the flesh, with Father Steve.

Like my MC Hammer pants?

The ceremony was wonderful, we had a full Catholic mass with communion, where I learned that you have to really tilt back your head to drink the wine. I also learned that the sight of your bride walking down the isle really is one to cherish, I teared up, and I’m not ashamed to admit that. The other part I teared up was when my long-time friend sang her rendition of Ave Maria. Wow. And if you couldn’t tell, the happy couple wore traditional Korean wear, hanbok, instead of the tux and white dress. It made it that much more special.

The reception afterwards was pretty typical. Yuri got me good with the cake and I could hardly eat anything, although everyone else told me the food was stupendous. We chose a local Italian eatery and had some Italian elements to it as well. (I’m a quarter Italian.) One was we went around giving cookies to everyone one by one, insuring that everyone got a chance to see us personally, and the other was everyone tapped their glasses with their silverware upon which we had to smooch. I also took it upon myself to DJ my own reception using the iPod my sister bought me as a gift.

My favorite parts of the entire day were: Seeing Yuri in her pink gown at the other end of the church for the first time, when everyone kept singing the words to our song “Let’s Stay Together” even though the amps shorted out, and dancing with my mother-in-law to Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me.” I’m so glad she couldn’t understand the lyrics, but that everyone else did made it a hoot and a half.

We’re now back from the honeymoon, staying at my parents house for the time being until we return to Tianjin late next week. My dialup connection forbids me to post more pics (the one above and the one it links to took ten minutes to upload!) but rest assured I’ll have the entire collection up eventually. I should get the entire collection from the photographer on Monday.

I’m taking a break from blogging, an indefinite one at that. If you’re looking for Chinese-area news, ESWN is the place to go. Peace out.

With the oratory power of Clinton, you wonder how the Republicans ever managed to gain any votes at all.

Even my father, a staunch Republican and Bush supporter, and experienced keynoter himself, said outright that he’s the best. As speaker only, of course, but still the best.

Wow.

Okay, well, back to wedding preps.

Cute! I, or more accurately, we, got a thoughtful message from Micah that was taken below the TV tower in my home base of Tianjin. It says “gongxi,” Chinese for “Congrats!”

To all of those who have wished us well in the start of our future together, we appreciate it, and if the timestamps of my posts were in EST you would find that I’m not sleeping all that well due to the excitement of it all. There’s just nine eight short days left! Can’t wait!

(I just hope Micah didn’t waste 50 yuan going up the tower. There’s not much of a view. :)

60 chapters. 70 characters each. It’s novel, but is it a novel? Via Supernaut I learned that a guy named Qian Fuchang is going to publish a book that will only be available in text messaging form that’s extremelly popular on cellphones. Finally a book in Chinese that I might actually finish!

Kind of makes you think that e-books are already being displaced.

Jiang the Hero faced them down. The eminent whistle-blower has been released after a month and a half of military detention, and everything indicates that the CCP failed to infiltrate his thinking. Jiang Yanyong is becoming the embodiment of the quiet Confucian moralist that the modern PRC is helpless to control:

Yet the decision to allow him to return home appears to amount to a rare victory for an individual who directly and repeatedly confronted China’s Communist Party leaders. In a letter released in February, Dr. Jiang pressed government leaders to admit that the Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 1989 was wrong.

It sounds like the CCP just gave up. Regarding the self criticisms that are required of prisoners, he only sounded “confessional in tone.” That’s not what the Party tries to get out of people:

The statements as described would appear to fall short of the full self-confession that the authorities sometimes require before releasing an opponent.

So what’s next for Jiang? First it was SARS, then it was the Tiananmen crackdown, and next it’s AIDS. One vice after another confronted.

“When I get out, the next thing I will direct my energies to is the problem of AIDS,” he wrote.

It should also be noted that this at around the time that a new critical voice has emerged in Lu Yuegang. I’ve skimmed the open letter he wrote a few times, and like usual, was daunted by the Commiespeak involved, although I left with the distinct impression that he’s extremelly shrill in his voice and tact. It’s a far cry from Jiang, but with these two events you gotta wonder if the Hu/Wen faction has regained some credibility behind the doors of Zhongnanhai.

Multimedia Wish List. When I return to Tianjin in early Aug, I’m going to have about two weeks before I start work again, and in that time I’m hoping to spruce up the apartment and make it a multimedia play house. The following is what I’d do under ideal circumstances, i.e. that I had an unlimited amount of moola:

Purchase a 15-inch Powerbook, which would replace my current iBook as my personal computer. I would then use the iBook as the center of my multimedia collection, using it as the DVD player, music player, phone dialer, and whose hardrive would hold my photo collections. The purchase of a wireless keyboard with a built-in trackpad would serve as the ultimate remote control.

Purchase a front-end projector (probably from Toshiba) that would serve as my HDTV, and would be hooked up to a satellite connection so I can get Korean news broadcasts (for my wife-to-be), and the Cartoon Network for me. Watching DVDs through my iBook on the resulting 50-inch screen would of course be a priority.

Cheap speakers that can be had around China will come in handy when I want to implement Surround Sound, especially finding minature speakers to hang on the wall behind my couch. (I’ve got a small room.)

One of those new 12-hour iPods that would hold my entire music collection, serve as external harddrive, and can attach itself to the home’s sound system for easy playback.

And, last but actually the centerpiece of it all would be the Airport Express which would allow me to play music and surf online wirelessly, and it could all happen without ever seeing any wires.

My final word on the Will China attack Taiwan question that so many commented on recently. I wrote this in response to the mini-discussion over at Winds of Change in the comment section of a superlative round up of East Asian blogs courtesy of Simon.

You’re right that submarines are the key factor in the logistics in any possible war that may happen, and it’s pretty clear that the PRC is realizing that as well, but then how can Summer Pulse be aimed at China when there aren’t going to by any boats in the Pacific?

That doesn’t mean Beijing won’t interpret it that way, but overall they’re pretty placated by Wasthington right now, their biggest problem being the power struggle going on with the Jiang faction and the Hu/Wen faction. Policy formation is taking a back seat these days in preparation, no doubt, for this fall’s showdown at the next large government conference.

I’m glad to see such a variety of opinions expressed on this question, and in particular that Simon is able to sum up blogs from an entire sub-continent so well, but to me the topic is really a distraction. Interesting times lay ahead and almost no one realizes that the PRC, Taiwan, and the US will be very much affected by the loggerhead struggle they’re now having, not by how able or unable China is able to attack. If Jiang wins, the war gets more likely, if Hu/Wen win, the war becomes next to very unlikely.

For more on that power struggle search for “Jiang”.

The final stretch of the wedding planning is here and is taking time away from the computer. Although I’m past and finished the floral arrangements/dress buying phase, we’re now at the program making and favor hunting stage. Plus a stag do on Saturday! (That’s bacherlor party, thank you.)

Posting from now until July 31st will be unpredictable at best, and after that nonexistent for the two-day honeymoon. Who knows what’s in store after that, but I’ll have pictures of the event posted as soon as humanly posssible.

Big Hominid is the leader, it seems, behind Korean bloggers against the Typepad block.

He says in an interview with OhMyNews:

“There’s a PRC (People’s Republic of China) theme going on here: two dodges, the bureaucratic dodge with no accountability, and the semantic dodge which says it’s not really censorship,” he told OhmyNews.

Spot on.

Typepad, Blogspot, and other numerous sites have been blocked in the PRC for months, even years now, but why has no one has come out against it the way Big Hominid has? Maybe a few posts here and there, a short-lived protest, the result of which changed my template permanently and got a Salon.com write up but that’s about it. Nothing like the raging anger. Why not? Probably because protest itself is useless from where we stand. I understand that there’s even been some effort from Korean bloggers to meet with government officials over the issue. I wouldn’t even dare think of that, nor likely would others, out of fear of calling attention to myself, as well as a fear for how much baijiu one would have to suck down. For me, it’s confirmation that even the most open minded among us are really just censoring ourselves. In other words, that we’re assimilating to the complacent Chinese view of things. When entering a Roman village…

Makes me wonder if I really have the kind of freedom I think I have here.

Git us da Chianese! Via the Marmot I found an exemplorary article that discusses the rise of the East, with some perceptive comments on the station China is currently occupying. One line in particular stuck out. When discussing ways for the US to maintain its influence in the Asian hemisphere, author James F. Hoge, Jr. mentions:

Training in Asian languages for U.S. government officials has been increased only marginally. As for the next generation, only several thousand American students are now studying in China, compared to the more than 50,000 Chinese who are now studying in U.S. schools.

I would only add that the US really really needs to take the lead in training people with Chinese, since China doesn’t do the greatest job themselves. I’m not talking about methods in educational institutions or language centers (although that could stand for substantial improvement) I’m talking about the Chinese society employing street sinologists in useful ways. Whereas countries like South Korea and their relatively free press employ foreigners who know Korean to copy edit their articles (The Marmot, I understand, is one of them), one glance at the China Daily reveals that they don’t even bother. As for myself, I gave up long ago trying to use my language skills to find a job in a town like Tianjin (although I likely could in Beijing). I imagine that if one did a survey of Chinese-speaking expats living in the Middle Kingdom 99 percent of them are somehow connected to teaching or developing the ESL industry — a worthy pursuit but the society’s choice of how to incorporate laowais is clear.

The only other thing I would say is that the article comes out as being pretty rosy about China’s future than I have been recently. I have reason to be believe that China’s political development is lagging seriously behind its economic one, a subject I hope to come back to again in the future.