Scottish Pine Marten: Is the Harbin Gatehouse, where people check in upon arrival, like the bridge of a ship? And steering a kind of Taoist (wu wei – non action) tack toward independence?, There's freedom in soaking meditatively in the Harbin warm pools ...

Harbin conjures up many metaphors in people's minds ... recently it occurred to me that the Harbin Gatehouse, where people check in upon arrival, is like the bridge of a ship, with the whole Harbin Valley as a very large sea-going vessel ... but which isn’t going anywhere. So when I saw the person checking me in last evening, looking out the front windows of the Gate, with another person whom I don’t know, I was amused, because in a sense they are both on watch, and steering also a non moving ship …

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I was going to ask jokingly at the gate as I arrived, “are there any hookah smoking caterpillars here?” per Grace Slick’s singing of the Jefferson Airplane song which rifs on Charles Dodgson / Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” (1865:40) but the opportunity didn’t arise.

And per the Harbin folks at the Gate as pilots of the stationary good ship Harbin … are they taking or steering a kind of Taoist (wu wei – non action) tack toward independence (thinking also a little of the Scottish Independence vote this autumn) in this pretty little valley?  

There's freedom in soaking meditatively in the Harbin warm pools ... 

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