Capers With Carroll

World-wide, Chinese New Year is celebrated by Spring Festival and Chūnyùn (春运), the greatest annual migration on earth. In 2008, the 1.3 billion Chinese took 2.2 billion train trips within the 40 day travel window. The celebrations include feasting, fireworks, dragons dancing in the streets, and time with family and friends. Apparently, also, they google the phrase Xin nian kuai le.

I know this last detail because over the past six weeks, this blog has been celebrating its fourth annual Capers Virtual Chūnyùn. I began seeing traffic pick up in mid December, helping to make that my most-visited month ever. Traffic continued steady through January and then spiked on Saturday the 29th. For the first time in the blog's six year history, page views topped 1,000. All by itself, Wednesday—Chinese New Year—brought 429. Five days into February, its totals now exceed all of January. Just four days this week, Monday through Thursday, out-performed the whole four month period, April to July.

Credit Google.

I'm assuming the vast majority of my traffic came from overseas Chinese. This past month, if Sweden’s nearly 13,000 Chinese expatriates went to google.com.se and searched for Xin nian kuai le, they got 272 000 results, of which my 2008 New Year’s greeting was listed 2nd. The United Arab Emirate’s 180,000 Chinese found me 3rd, and sent me 29 hits. Also at 2nd, Singapore’s 3.6 million found me 300 times. Myanmar’s million-plus found my 2008 message 4th and December 2010 update 5th. They made 139 visits. The UK’s 400,000 Chinese clicked on me 111 times. None of my visitors clicked in from China itself, but there, “新年快乐”would be far likelier to get lost in the crowd than would Xin Nian Kuai Le in the Diaspora. That and 2010 saw Google and China tangle, with a reduction of Google’s presence.

When all these numbers began to develop, my first reaction was awe over the chance popularity of an almost-throw-away post from three years ago. It struck me as random and surreal. Then, as I studied the source locations, I was transported back forty years, to a time in my life before marriage into a Spanish-speaking family, nine years living in Colombia, and 20 years teaching recent immigrants from Mexico. My focus on Latin America and its immigrants had interrupted an earlier interest.

I mentioned in my recent post on Fred Korematsu Day that I took at class at Pasadena City College called Sociology of the Asian in America. I took it because, even in high school, I had an interest in immigration and the mixing of cultures. Over the course of completing a history major, whatever class I might be taking, I wrote about Asian immigration into the Western world. I wrote about Japanese in Mexico, Cuba, Peru, and Brazil, and especially, I wrote about the Chinese in Europe. During three quarters of independent study at UCLA, I wrote what I believe was the longest treatment of the Chinese in France that then existed in English (it has since been surpassed).

As blog hits came in from Holland, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, and Sweden, I was once again looking at the Chinese in Europe, and a Diasphora that now includes places like Dubai and Nairobi (I showed up 4th at Google Kenya).

I’m not sure yet what conclusions to draw, but I find myself thinking again on this subject after many years away from it. I am also beginning to read When a Billion Chinese Jump, by Jonathan Watts. Stay tuned. My thoughts in this Year of the Rabbit may turn increasingly to China, and its Diasphora. Watts’ premise is that any race to stave off global warming and worldwide ecological disaster will be won or lost in mainland China. The same may be true in a wide variety of human activities. I am fortunate to have friends both inside and outside of China, and about two months of Chinese travel experience. That doesn’t rank me yet as an expert, but it gives me a place to start.

Happy Year of the Rabbit

Notes:
On Chūnyùn. On the Chinese Diasphora, and the Chinese in Europe.


Disclosure of Material Connection: The link above is an “affiliate link.” This means if someone clicks on the link and purchases the item, I will receive a commission. This has never happened yet, and would only be a pittance if it did. For this reason, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The Westmont College website has photographs of damage from the fire that raced through campus last Thursday evening. Few colleges offer the kind of beauty that Westmont does, nestled in the oak-covered hills of Montecito. I first visited Westmont when my daughter Aileen was a high school student trying to settle on a university. She did not submit a backup application to any other institution.

The downside of that beauty is a vulnerability to the windswept flames that almost yearly burn somewhere in Southern California. This fire approached from the woods north of campus and cut through Clark Residence Halls (a collection of 17 separate buildings: Aileen roomed there 1995-97). It took some parts of Clark and spared others. Then it descended through the center of campus by way of the wooded strips that make Westmont so distinctive. Flames destroyed math and physics buildings that had already been marked for demolition, the psychology building, and over a dozen faculty homes, but no one was hurt.

I last visited the Westmont campus in December. Aileen and Eduardo held their wedding in Santa Barbara and we used Westmont as a backdrop for their wedding photographs. We took most of our pictures in the formal gardens that stretch downhill from Kerrwood Hall.

The gardens mostly survived, though the fire took the woods in the right side of this view. Aileen also wanted pictures outside the small white chapel that is flanked on both sides by oak groves, and then a playful series with Aileen and Eduardo playing peek-a-boo around the trunk of a nearby giant.

The Westmont website pictures show that while the groves on both sides are cinders, the chapel still stands, and the peek-a-boo tree looks scorched, but alive. In fact, that’s a pretty good summary of the 47 photos in the series: Westmont is scorched but alive.

Well, we powered it up this morning to find that while we slept, five visitors stopped by to put Capers over the one thousand mark, but none of them left the required comment to make them eligible for the big prize. Fortunately, all those who entered our contest are closely enough related to the author that they are already on the short list for autographed copies of Friday 10:03 when it is finally published.

However, if this may seem a disappointing conclusion to our big contest, our disappointment probably pales compared to that of googlers who come to Capers hoping to find the music video Itsy Bitsy Spider and instead found this. We have managed to frustrate 14 such searchers in the last three weeks alone. So, our next contest: an autographed copy of my novel (when it finally gets into print) to the one thousandth person who visits The Ittsy Bittsy Spider, thinking they'll see EliZe (with thanks to arachnomusicologist Mataikhan for identifying this artist) singing Itsy Bitsy Spider (and leaves a comment).

I noticed today that I have traffic coming to this blog from a link posted by CNN at the end of their current article on yesterday’s Colombian marches against kidnapping. CNN has a nice feature at the end of their stories, called From the Blogs: Controversy, commentary, and debate, which offers a survey of blogs that mention the topic at hand. Once before (May 16-17), when I commented on the Sichuan earthquake, CNN listed me in its queue, thereby introducing my thoughts to two readers in Hong Kong, one in the UK, and one in the USA. Four readers may not seem like much, but it indicates that someone out there believes that as you, the reader, search for free access to content, and I freely provide it, the go-between can sell advertizing and turn a profit.

I knew that.

And maybe for young people this is so du jour that it’s no cause for rumination, but for a guy like me who took my first journalism class while JFK was president, I can marvel at both the news (like the amazing upturn of events in Colombia) and the way that news is delivered.

Simply as a case in point: Last night, in a few minutes before going to bed, I wrote a quick couple of paragraphs and added links to an AFP newswire story and two You-Tube videos, one a week-old interview of Ingrid Betancourt by Al Jazeera and the other a Colombian TV report from a concert earlier yesterday. Then, while I slept, CNN found my quick paragraphs and made them available to the world. The Internet has both enabled a million people, world wide, to organize themselves into a demonstration—a remarkable feat of mass democracy—and then allowed individuals to sort through the chattering-class reactions of thousands, and for one single comment to be read by anyone who is looking. In part two of the Al Jazeera interview Betancourt talks about how the Internet reduces national boundaries. But she does not speak as if a Rip Van Winkle, returned to see the Internet’s growth over six-and-a-half years. It seems obvious that even as a hostage in the jungle, she was able to look over some guard’s shoulder and see the world.

I’m still processing that, both the good and the bad. I won’t get to the bottom of it tonight, especially with an essay that is trying to run in three different directions. I will see which direction it’s looking for tomorrow, and maybe continue.

  I have an international mystery for which I would very much like some visitor from South Africa to help me. On February 8, I posted this picture of a Colombian crab spider, and titled my post The Epicadus heterogaster of whimsey. Suddenly on February 19, I began to get hits from South Africa (15 so far), all from people who had Googled "whimsey eyes." I did mention in my post that Charles Darwin thought this spider had ten eyes, but I cannot believe this is the reason for the sudden South African interest in Colombian crab spiders. Is Whimsey Eyes a new band in South Africa? Or a new song? I would love for one of my South African visitors to leave a comment and explain this mystery.

This page is slowly evolving. When I began Capers with Carroll, I was both new to blogging and newly back from a summer of teaching English in China. I was looking for a way to keep in touch with the students I had enjoyed having in my class, and to even share pictures. Unfortunately, from the very beginning, Blogger was being blocked. For that reason, this page languished unused. Meanwhile, I began a second page, The Occasional Visitor, for the purpose of sharing with members of my family. Now, as I attempt to get a career off the ground as a novelist, I again need a second blog, as well as a website. Therefore, Capers with Carroll will become my professional blog, and will link to my website http://briantcarroll.talkspot.com/. Obviously, this will not happen all at once, but little-by-little I hope to get there.