Can I live with less?

Tonight KK, her husband, my mother and I drove up to SF to have dinner with the grandparents at... of course Emperor Palace. We should have made a reservation, as plenty of others had done so, to have dinner to celebrate the New Year there. We were able to get a table, but it was in the corner, and it was not such a comfortable arrangement, as they had pushed two smaller rectangle tables together, presumably to get them out of the way since a lot of large tables had been set up in the main dining room. The food there was generally good, though I heard the chicken wasn't. And my sister and her husband still prefer salt and spicy pork over the si jap gwat dish that came with the $21.95 wo choi lunch/dinner special (which my mother usually orders when she takes the grandparents to lunch).

I wouldn't consider my grandparents to be poor or destitute--but they don't have that much, and their apartment is rather simple. There is running water, electricity, heat... a small TV too. Nothing like the luxuries most Asians aspire to have these days... I wonder how many of us would be content with what my grandparents have?

Now if only they would be converted to Christ. When they lived at our home, which was a long time ago, maybe 20 years now, my mother noticed that they did not talk to each other much. They might take a walk or read newspapers, but there was very little conversation. Maybe their relationship has improved since then--I noticed that my grandfather gaap sung/grabbed food to give to my grandmother again tonight. He hadn't done this before. My mother marvelled when I mentioned it to her after the last time he did it--the change in character was quite unexpected.

At Emperor Palace there is a TV, and KCNS was broadcasting special New Year's programming from Mainland China. There were plenty of people in the audience. How many people in China could entertain themselves? Make their own music and so on? Is the percentage of people who can do so even less there than it is here? One can live the simple life but not by choice. On the other hand, the simple life is probably not incompatible with having leisure. As Wendell Berry points out, we need to learn how to entertain ourselves, rather then relying upon mass-produced "culture." But like the domestic skills and arts that we have lost, the art of singing or making music and so on must be recovered.