09.02.2003

<noah>

a trip to see the pandas turned out to be quite a dismal discovery of

animals living conditions in beijing.

the lonely planet did say something like - all zoos are prisons for animals but this one is like a death row

the animals look sad.

the giraffe looks wistfully out of its cage, the elephants can't move,

the polar bear lives in a rubbish hole and the chinese think the grizzly bears like orange juice.

coincidentally, i was reading a parody of noah's ark

in julian barnes' <a history of the world in 10.5 chapters> (very funny!)

and a discussion with tom about an interesting aspect of noah's descendents came up:

so, word has it that we are decendents of noah who had 3 sons. ham, shem and japheth. one day, noah got super drank and konked out naked in his tent. ham saw the old wrinkly naked body of his father ( i think noah was a few hundred years old by then, so u can imagine what a sight that was), whereas, shem and japheth walked backwards into noah's tent and covered his naked body without looking. when noah woke up, he found out ham had seen his naked body, got pretty mad, and cursed ham's children to slavery. ham's children were - canaan, cush, mizraim and phut. and most of them populated africa. so, some people have used this as a justification (?) for slavery in africa.

well, i was curious enough and did a search on google on the topic. was amazed with the outcome, and several interesting discussions re the question of race. so, one argument was that noah was cursed only canaan, not ALL of ham's sons and besides, canaan went to phoenicia, palestine and canaan.

anyways, many many many websites of churches, and religious entities - it's impossible to tell which has the most 'authorised version'. i haven't seen any site that says why noah sent pandas to china, but as far as beijing zoo is concerned they are a profitable business, charging visitors an extra 10rmb to catch a glimpse of the bamboo-munching (20kgs a day!) bear-cats.