At the airport now, where the music overhead switches between Western and Chinese classical and Kenny G. I stopped at the kids' play section where a Chinese version of Legocity was showing, and the sunglasses/leather-jacket character was teaching English to a crowd. Lego Batman appeared at the end.
I didn't say any goodbyes. I finished packing when we got back late last night and fell asleep while I still could. I checked out quietly before the sun had risen.
But these last two days have been the perfect end to an epic trip. I wore my suit to the graduation ceremony where we sang "Beijing Welcomes You" and the other class sang "朋友们" a cappella, which was beautiful. The Beida students put on a magic show with the most cartoony leader who had only learned the trick that afternoon. We said our thank-yous, and understood the speeches in Chinese, and felt like adults.
Afterwards, we went to a classy-ass French restaurant where they would come intermittently to sweep crumbs off our tables at each person's seat. I had snail soup and got full on bread. I sat at the most antisocial table with a couple talkers who only talk to "blow water." But I bore it like an adult.
Then we went out and drank, still in our suits. Alex and I went to the Westin hotel bar where businessmen relaxed quietly to live jazz (and one great rendition of "O Holy Night"). I had my first martini, smoked my last cigarette, and let the night roll like all time does.
And yesterday, our last full day, we found that the big campus lake had frozen over and we rented skates from old men by the shore for 10 kuai each. We played with puppies on the ice. Together with the water, we froze a little, and we are younger for it.
The kid next to me just saw me writing and just told her mother that I'm a "英语人." I guess.
Wendy's leaving Hong Kong today for a week's break from her new job. Carrie is still there after all, working in the same area. The office has all the same teachers since I've left.
I'll see the ones I'm willing to see, and let my family drag me around for too much money for a few more days. But I make no final judgments about my six months in China and this is my final entry in this journal. I'm not leaving from the country the way I arrived in it; and I can't make claims other than family, which is neither beginning nor end but just continuation. It's a promise of persistence and survival despite all this.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
12.10 - 11: frost and flakes
12.10 - first day of snow
like a soft rain
melting over fingertips
12.11 - sitting in the smog in Tiananmen Square
Along the walk to the subway, a woman sells a tarpful of these shelled tre-nuts my aunt let me try once which look like glazed wood carvings. They steam like banked coals on the sidewalk, and I wonder what'll happen to her later this afternoon when the warmth is gone, when the only steam is the polluted breath from our mouths.
I keep thinking about the little snack gifts the kids gave us last weekend. Kate saved the German chocolates another teacher gave her for more than a week and brought it to plop in our gloved and chalky hands. Harry had saved four almonds--which he proudly knew to be an American delicacy--he got in Shenzhen I don't know how long ago (halfway down the country) to give us. Of course, I totally dropped them on the ground when he gave them to me. These kids have heart that a large part of the world will never come to understand.
The pollution is getting worse every day. It's as if the government officials in charge of controlling this stuff just went home once the cold started to hit. Things get gray even before a third of the way to the horizon. The sun is a radioactive color. But I'm still happy for those few minutes of super-light snow, even if its melting point never lasted past touching the earth.
--
Today was goodbye to my language partner Lindsay, 徐苏晨, my Taijiquan "哥们儿/homeboy" 邱昊, and my former roommate Maximilian the actual Austrian aristocrat. The kids in Henan (and that semi-awkward hug with tragic Harry when we were all freaking out that he hadn't gotten home yet when we had to leave him behind on the mountain only to find him geting off a bus just as we were getting on the one to leave town) were the biggest goodbyes for me.
Most people I plan on seeing again in a year or two. I like the rush of Chinese goodbyes, the unsentimentality of them. The affection is deep, the display is light. We don't even say "bye" so much as "see you again."
I will miss the barenessof that Taijiquan dojo (though not as much as the still autumn leaves when we practiced outside) in the dark, bare basement of the parking garage. I learned a lot of anatomy vocabulary and a lot of idioms I don't quite remember anymore. He told us one that really sums up the practice of internal arts: when you're young your stances are so deep and long that you can practice under the table, wen your'e old you're so stable and need to move so little you practice on top of the table.
At the end, he said to me, "抱着缘分," which is super-hard to translate. A dictionary would say, "Embrace your destiny," but he meant it as this karmic relationship between the two of us, to maintain it and keep it close so that opportunities to meet again will appear. I'll see him again next in Tibet, where he'll be teaching mathematics for the long-term.
like a soft rain
melting over fingertips
12.11 - sitting in the smog in Tiananmen Square
Along the walk to the subway, a woman sells a tarpful of these shelled tre-nuts my aunt let me try once which look like glazed wood carvings. They steam like banked coals on the sidewalk, and I wonder what'll happen to her later this afternoon when the warmth is gone, when the only steam is the polluted breath from our mouths.
I keep thinking about the little snack gifts the kids gave us last weekend. Kate saved the German chocolates another teacher gave her for more than a week and brought it to plop in our gloved and chalky hands. Harry had saved four almonds--which he proudly knew to be an American delicacy--he got in Shenzhen I don't know how long ago (halfway down the country) to give us. Of course, I totally dropped them on the ground when he gave them to me. These kids have heart that a large part of the world will never come to understand.
The pollution is getting worse every day. It's as if the government officials in charge of controlling this stuff just went home once the cold started to hit. Things get gray even before a third of the way to the horizon. The sun is a radioactive color. But I'm still happy for those few minutes of super-light snow, even if its melting point never lasted past touching the earth.
--
Today was goodbye to my language partner Lindsay, 徐苏晨, my Taijiquan "哥们儿/homeboy" 邱昊, and my former roommate Maximilian the actual Austrian aristocrat. The kids in Henan (and that semi-awkward hug with tragic Harry when we were all freaking out that he hadn't gotten home yet when we had to leave him behind on the mountain only to find him geting off a bus just as we were getting on the one to leave town) were the biggest goodbyes for me.
Most people I plan on seeing again in a year or two. I like the rush of Chinese goodbyes, the unsentimentality of them. The affection is deep, the display is light. We don't even say "bye" so much as "see you again."
I will miss the barenessof that Taijiquan dojo (though not as much as the still autumn leaves when we practiced outside) in the dark, bare basement of the parking garage. I learned a lot of anatomy vocabulary and a lot of idioms I don't quite remember anymore. He told us one that really sums up the practice of internal arts: when you're young your stances are so deep and long that you can practice under the table, wen your'e old you're so stable and need to move so little you practice on top of the table.
At the end, he said to me, "抱着缘分," which is super-hard to translate. A dictionary would say, "Embrace your destiny," but he meant it as this karmic relationship between the two of us, to maintain it and keep it close so that opportunities to meet again will appear. I'll see him again next in Tibet, where he'll be teaching mathematics for the long-term.
Monday, December 8, 2008
12.2 to 12.7 - a week of wind
12.2 - "回答" by 北岛
卑鄙是卑鄙者的通行证，
高尚是高尚者的墓志铭，
看吧，在那镀金的天空中，
飘满了死者弯曲的倒影。
冰川纪过去了，
为什么到处都是冰凌？
好望角发现了，
为什么死海里千帆相竞？
我来到这个世界上，
只带着纸、绳索和身影，
为了在审判前，
宣读那些被判决的声音。
告诉你吧，
世界 我--不--相--信！
纵使你脚下有一千名挑战者，
那就把我算作第一千零一名。
我不相信天是蓝的，
我不相信雷的回声，
我不相信梦是假的，
我不相信死无报应。
如果海洋注定要决堤，
就让所有的苦水都注入我心中，
如果陆地注定要上升，
就让人类重新选择生存的峰顶。
新的转机和闪闪星斗，
正在缀满没有遮拦的天空。
那是五千年的象形文字，
那是未来人们凝视的眼睛。
"Reply" by Beidao
Contempt is the contemptible's pathway,
virtue is the virtuous' epitaph,
look--on the gilded plates of heaven
float crooked reflections of the dead.
If the ice age is over,
why are there still icycles everywhere?
If the Cape of Good Hope has been found,
why do a thousand sails compete on the Dead Sea?
I came to this earth
carrying paper, rope, and my silhouette
to, before the great trial comes,
read aloud the sounds of judgment.
I'll tell you, world:
I--don't--believe--you!
Even if you've got a thousand challengers underfoot,
then make my name one thousand and one.
I'm not convinced by blue skies,
the echoes of a thunderstorm,
I'm not convinced that dreams are false,
that we can die without retribution.
If the seas and oceans are doomed to flood,
let the bitter waters empty into me,
if the land is doomed to rise,
let our people choose a new crest to live upon.
New change and flickering stars
are stitching the empty sky--
that's five thousand years of pictographs
that's our future of people's staring eyes
12.3 - the train station
Waiting to go back to Henan, first to stop at Shaolin on my own, then to meet with Sara and head to Wugang where the kids are. I haven't traveled in a month. This waiting and external motion are, once again, so freeing.
The only difference this time is I've made really good friends by now that I didn't get to say goodbye to. It's only for a weekend, but I feel a different sort of loneliness now mixing together with the old one.
train-stop cafe
familiar broken seat
rockin'
I don't have time to go "South of the Clouds" next week, but this quarter abroad is ending perfectly. At the farewell dinner, each Chinese class is doing some sort of performance. My class is singing "Beijing Welcomes You." I got to Hong Kong scared to death of karaoke, and came to Beijing saying that by the end, I would be able to sing one song in Mandarin. I can't even describe how happy it makes me to be singing this song with a group of people I feel so comfortable with.
These next two weeks in China I'm doing everything I need to do, getting my house in order as I prepare to go home. Fati told me six months ago to expect for nothing to have changed, for the whole other side of my life to not recognize the distance I have traveled. I plan for life to go on and persist in a massive unnoticeableness. But my being Chinese in China has not been some temporary matter to be forgotten or even to be clung to.
I told Michelle the other day that I recognize the barriers in all teacher-student relationships, that the formality of the system is a structural necessity and that nearly all the work that goes into lesson planning never communicates from point A to point B. But, I said, it's all worth it, if you work with a group of kids for weeks and have one, small, star-blink moment in which both sides relax, some sort of understanding bridges that empty space, and you suddenly become two people just existing and learning from one another. And then you get back to the blind face of structured life again. But that moment remains, like an air bubble just pressed against the surface of an ice cube until it all melts into one flow.
The same goes for my awakenings in this country.
12.5 - midnight at the Luoyang train station
No time for sleep today. Not even a seat available on this four-hour train I'm taking to Luohe. No comment on my feelings.
Also, not enough clothes either. The solstice is on the 21st, but winter must have really started today. I have never felt such a dramatic turnaround in weather, nor have I ever been so cold that my feet froze over in the tour bus.
Saw the sun rise from the train as it arrived, and the sunset from the bus on the way back from Shaolin. It was a Buddhist tour, stopping at a lot of sites like the residence and burial ground of Xuanzang (the monk in Journey to the West), who brought the scriptures from India to China. The small tour group had some fun old people who got really excited about drinking water from Xuanzang's well and taking pictures with some trees. One brave New Zealander who had just graduated and was traveling in China for three weeks, and didn't speak a word of Chinese, was with us. I did my best at translating, learning things in the process like why we put our tour stickers on the gate-wall of one temple to form 福寿 with it.
When people ask me now, "你是哪里人?" I don't ever say "美国人" anymore. I answer, "广东人" and explain the rest slowly. One woman from Hunan spun this sort of Australian accent on her speech, saying things like "Baiyjing" for 北京. They're all curious, and find the fun in meeting people, and we never exchange names or say goodbye to cheapen the shortest of time.
I got conned into my first strange cult-like experience. At I think the 白马寺, we all entered a room where a Buddhist priest gave a small lecture and sang hymns for us, then called us each up individually to bless us, sprinkle some powder, and hand us a candle. Then we went to the back room behind the deep red curtain, where they were asking for donations for priests to continue praying in our names. I wrote my name, then "全家平安," and gave up 99元 because I kept telling the guy I didn't understand but he wouldn't let me leave. In a non-religious place, I would just hit people and run and keep my cash (not really (well, maybe)). I hope my family feels the blessing as it comes.
Shaolin is culturally important because it was the first stop of Bodhidharma, who brought a new discipline to the Buddhist teachings and started Zen (禅 in Chinese). The pure martial arts come from religious principle and training. After all the burnings of the temples, it was reopened in the last century by government sponsorship in response to media portrayals of it as the birthplace of martial arts.
We saw some kids put on a show/demo, which they probably do every day, to the background music of songs like those from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which just makes obvious how contradictory the situation was, how very misinformed these people are. I was impressed by their coming out into the cold and taking off their windbreakers to do useless flips on the stage. They also showed some 气功 feats, which were genuine but also standard show-fare. I wish those kids freedom from this place one day, and understanding and cultivation for their own sakes and no one else's.
The two best moments of this day. First, sitting in the windy sun outside a small temple by a potted fire, eating noodles with these old ladies selling trinkets. The quiet of that table has been more real than the introductions of the tours. Second, the path from Shaolin to the Pagoda Forest (the prettiest tombs I've ever seen, in the sandy sunlight), where the martial arts kids were horsing around or playing soccer. The grass is so green, the mountain haze is so layered.
Oh, the tour guide was cool, too. She spit after every paragraph of explanation, and kept asking for my camera to take pictures of me. I don't think it's cause she liked me, just that she was dissatisfied with how little I smiled in the cold.
second floor
curious eyes; late train
a wind
12.7 - at the 漯河 McDonald's with Sara, studying for our final tomorrow and waiting for a train ride home to Beijing
Christmas music is playing in this overheated haven of western novelty. We made Christmas cards with the youngest students today. We've been singing "Silent Night" and "O Holy Night" in the intermittent moments of reflection this weekend. It is about that time, isn't it.
There has been nothing in my life so tragically beautiful as this town in the mid-east of China and its 不可思议 kids. We've been noticing the oddly placed, short palm trees scattered through the city, which everyone we've asked knows is imported from a warmer-weather location, yet their innocent smiles about the simple prettiness of the trees tell a novel's worth of story.
We played frisbee with shy kids at the kindergarten. We climbed the highest mountain in town and held class at the top. We went to the home of two new students, who live in a big recycling yard, and when we asked the boy Toby which room was his, he pointed to the bed in the corner with a curtain covering it. We played with their dogs and harvested some vegetables in the super-green-for-wintertime fields nearby. We taught our host family to make pizza with those greens as toppings. We played mahjong, chess, and checkers (all Chinese) together.
I talked a lot with 安老师 about education here, and the polar opposite experiences between him and Victoria as they grew up in schools here, the former hardly ever having had classes and just playing in the village, the latter never learning to play because she coudl only study. We talked about our dreams for education and for the kids here, and the problems with the system and the authorities within the system and all the money problems that make this all very much real.
In my final speech for Chinese class last week I said that these kids helped me to understand exactly what my life could ahve been like if I had grown up here instead of immigrating. The most valuable moment of this weekend and the one I'll probably memorize the most in my heart was this late afternoon walking to the bus from the bottom of the mountain, only Kate left with us, wearing her orange backpack and eatin gher endless supply of healthy snacks. She's my favorite after Jasmine, so precise but so youthful in the way she speaks. She doesn't understand me too clearly when I talk though, so we just walked side by side in silence for a while.
The moment I'll never forget is seeing her split off from us to catch a different bus, walking alone into the late sunlight on this open city street. It was an open reflection into the pure sort of quietude and familiar adventurousness I remember from that age, taking buses to school and to the dojo, walking alone in the sunlight and city shadows. I'll never forget that moment's reminder of hope and loneliness, that profundity as we passed by Kate later and I saw her pull a bottle of juice from her backpack, no particular expression on her face but just being herself, and completely herself.
I don't know if I can write poems anymore; instead, I just see them everywhere I go.
-
On the train now, the two of us in side-by-side bottom-bunk beds, some strange sort of culmination of comfort for my last train ride in China for I don't know how long. The sound of strangers--which somehow always means mothers and fathers and uncles and aunties here--throughout the car makes me wonder about the shock of returning to the states, of not having that city-wide sense of family just from the sound and tone of people's voices.
The train from Luoyang to Luohe on Thursday midnight was an enlightening nightmare. I could only get a standing-space ticket on the four-hour train from 1am to 5am. But that's not an accurate name for it; the ticket itself said 无座, which is "no seat," or "no designated space" I stood on about a leg and a half for the whole time in the conductor's doorway and inhaled everybody's smoke; the girl beside me threw up in the first hour; in the last leg of the ride, the conductor opened up the furnace beside us and shoveled in the coal, washing off the floor by splattering black water with a straw broom. Conditions were perfect for me to experience the most ground-level transportation and the most ground-level people: I wasn't sick, or queasy, had little luggage, and nobody with me to consider or worry about. I'm grateful for that. But never again.
卑鄙是卑鄙者的通行证，
高尚是高尚者的墓志铭，
看吧，在那镀金的天空中，
飘满了死者弯曲的倒影。
冰川纪过去了，
为什么到处都是冰凌？
好望角发现了，
为什么死海里千帆相竞？
我来到这个世界上，
只带着纸、绳索和身影，
为了在审判前，
宣读那些被判决的声音。
告诉你吧，
世界 我--不--相--信！
纵使你脚下有一千名挑战者，
那就把我算作第一千零一名。
我不相信天是蓝的，
我不相信雷的回声，
我不相信梦是假的，
我不相信死无报应。
如果海洋注定要决堤，
就让所有的苦水都注入我心中，
如果陆地注定要上升，
就让人类重新选择生存的峰顶。
新的转机和闪闪星斗，
正在缀满没有遮拦的天空。
那是五千年的象形文字，
那是未来人们凝视的眼睛。
"Reply" by Beidao
Contempt is the contemptible's pathway,
virtue is the virtuous' epitaph,
look--on the gilded plates of heaven
float crooked reflections of the dead.
If the ice age is over,
why are there still icycles everywhere?
If the Cape of Good Hope has been found,
why do a thousand sails compete on the Dead Sea?
I came to this earth
carrying paper, rope, and my silhouette
to, before the great trial comes,
read aloud the sounds of judgment.
I'll tell you, world:
I--don't--believe--you!
Even if you've got a thousand challengers underfoot,
then make my name one thousand and one.
I'm not convinced by blue skies,
the echoes of a thunderstorm,
I'm not convinced that dreams are false,
that we can die without retribution.
If the seas and oceans are doomed to flood,
let the bitter waters empty into me,
if the land is doomed to rise,
let our people choose a new crest to live upon.
New change and flickering stars
are stitching the empty sky--
that's five thousand years of pictographs
that's our future of people's staring eyes
12.3 - the train station
Waiting to go back to Henan, first to stop at Shaolin on my own, then to meet with Sara and head to Wugang where the kids are. I haven't traveled in a month. This waiting and external motion are, once again, so freeing.
The only difference this time is I've made really good friends by now that I didn't get to say goodbye to. It's only for a weekend, but I feel a different sort of loneliness now mixing together with the old one.
train-stop cafe
familiar broken seat
rockin'
I don't have time to go "South of the Clouds" next week, but this quarter abroad is ending perfectly. At the farewell dinner, each Chinese class is doing some sort of performance. My class is singing "Beijing Welcomes You." I got to Hong Kong scared to death of karaoke, and came to Beijing saying that by the end, I would be able to sing one song in Mandarin. I can't even describe how happy it makes me to be singing this song with a group of people I feel so comfortable with.
These next two weeks in China I'm doing everything I need to do, getting my house in order as I prepare to go home. Fati told me six months ago to expect for nothing to have changed, for the whole other side of my life to not recognize the distance I have traveled. I plan for life to go on and persist in a massive unnoticeableness. But my being Chinese in China has not been some temporary matter to be forgotten or even to be clung to.
I told Michelle the other day that I recognize the barriers in all teacher-student relationships, that the formality of the system is a structural necessity and that nearly all the work that goes into lesson planning never communicates from point A to point B. But, I said, it's all worth it, if you work with a group of kids for weeks and have one, small, star-blink moment in which both sides relax, some sort of understanding bridges that empty space, and you suddenly become two people just existing and learning from one another. And then you get back to the blind face of structured life again. But that moment remains, like an air bubble just pressed against the surface of an ice cube until it all melts into one flow.
The same goes for my awakenings in this country.
12.5 - midnight at the Luoyang train station
No time for sleep today. Not even a seat available on this four-hour train I'm taking to Luohe. No comment on my feelings.
Also, not enough clothes either. The solstice is on the 21st, but winter must have really started today. I have never felt such a dramatic turnaround in weather, nor have I ever been so cold that my feet froze over in the tour bus.
Saw the sun rise from the train as it arrived, and the sunset from the bus on the way back from Shaolin. It was a Buddhist tour, stopping at a lot of sites like the residence and burial ground of Xuanzang (the monk in Journey to the West), who brought the scriptures from India to China. The small tour group had some fun old people who got really excited about drinking water from Xuanzang's well and taking pictures with some trees. One brave New Zealander who had just graduated and was traveling in China for three weeks, and didn't speak a word of Chinese, was with us. I did my best at translating, learning things in the process like why we put our tour stickers on the gate-wall of one temple to form 福寿 with it.
When people ask me now, "你是哪里人?" I don't ever say "美国人" anymore. I answer, "广东人" and explain the rest slowly. One woman from Hunan spun this sort of Australian accent on her speech, saying things like "Baiyjing" for 北京. They're all curious, and find the fun in meeting people, and we never exchange names or say goodbye to cheapen the shortest of time.
I got conned into my first strange cult-like experience. At I think the 白马寺, we all entered a room where a Buddhist priest gave a small lecture and sang hymns for us, then called us each up individually to bless us, sprinkle some powder, and hand us a candle. Then we went to the back room behind the deep red curtain, where they were asking for donations for priests to continue praying in our names. I wrote my name, then "全家平安," and gave up 99元 because I kept telling the guy I didn't understand but he wouldn't let me leave. In a non-religious place, I would just hit people and run and keep my cash (not really (well, maybe)). I hope my family feels the blessing as it comes.
Shaolin is culturally important because it was the first stop of Bodhidharma, who brought a new discipline to the Buddhist teachings and started Zen (禅 in Chinese). The pure martial arts come from religious principle and training. After all the burnings of the temples, it was reopened in the last century by government sponsorship in response to media portrayals of it as the birthplace of martial arts.
We saw some kids put on a show/demo, which they probably do every day, to the background music of songs like those from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which just makes obvious how contradictory the situation was, how very misinformed these people are. I was impressed by their coming out into the cold and taking off their windbreakers to do useless flips on the stage. They also showed some 气功 feats, which were genuine but also standard show-fare. I wish those kids freedom from this place one day, and understanding and cultivation for their own sakes and no one else's.
The two best moments of this day. First, sitting in the windy sun outside a small temple by a potted fire, eating noodles with these old ladies selling trinkets. The quiet of that table has been more real than the introductions of the tours. Second, the path from Shaolin to the Pagoda Forest (the prettiest tombs I've ever seen, in the sandy sunlight), where the martial arts kids were horsing around or playing soccer. The grass is so green, the mountain haze is so layered.
Oh, the tour guide was cool, too. She spit after every paragraph of explanation, and kept asking for my camera to take pictures of me. I don't think it's cause she liked me, just that she was dissatisfied with how little I smiled in the cold.
second floor
curious eyes; late train
a wind
12.7 - at the 漯河 McDonald's with Sara, studying for our final tomorrow and waiting for a train ride home to Beijing
Christmas music is playing in this overheated haven of western novelty. We made Christmas cards with the youngest students today. We've been singing "Silent Night" and "O Holy Night" in the intermittent moments of reflection this weekend. It is about that time, isn't it.
There has been nothing in my life so tragically beautiful as this town in the mid-east of China and its 不可思议 kids. We've been noticing the oddly placed, short palm trees scattered through the city, which everyone we've asked knows is imported from a warmer-weather location, yet their innocent smiles about the simple prettiness of the trees tell a novel's worth of story.
We played frisbee with shy kids at the kindergarten. We climbed the highest mountain in town and held class at the top. We went to the home of two new students, who live in a big recycling yard, and when we asked the boy Toby which room was his, he pointed to the bed in the corner with a curtain covering it. We played with their dogs and harvested some vegetables in the super-green-for-wintertime fields nearby. We taught our host family to make pizza with those greens as toppings. We played mahjong, chess, and checkers (all Chinese) together.
I talked a lot with 安老师 about education here, and the polar opposite experiences between him and Victoria as they grew up in schools here, the former hardly ever having had classes and just playing in the village, the latter never learning to play because she coudl only study. We talked about our dreams for education and for the kids here, and the problems with the system and the authorities within the system and all the money problems that make this all very much real.
In my final speech for Chinese class last week I said that these kids helped me to understand exactly what my life could ahve been like if I had grown up here instead of immigrating. The most valuable moment of this weekend and the one I'll probably memorize the most in my heart was this late afternoon walking to the bus from the bottom of the mountain, only Kate left with us, wearing her orange backpack and eatin gher endless supply of healthy snacks. She's my favorite after Jasmine, so precise but so youthful in the way she speaks. She doesn't understand me too clearly when I talk though, so we just walked side by side in silence for a while.
The moment I'll never forget is seeing her split off from us to catch a different bus, walking alone into the late sunlight on this open city street. It was an open reflection into the pure sort of quietude and familiar adventurousness I remember from that age, taking buses to school and to the dojo, walking alone in the sunlight and city shadows. I'll never forget that moment's reminder of hope and loneliness, that profundity as we passed by Kate later and I saw her pull a bottle of juice from her backpack, no particular expression on her face but just being herself, and completely herself.
I don't know if I can write poems anymore; instead, I just see them everywhere I go.
-
On the train now, the two of us in side-by-side bottom-bunk beds, some strange sort of culmination of comfort for my last train ride in China for I don't know how long. The sound of strangers--which somehow always means mothers and fathers and uncles and aunties here--throughout the car makes me wonder about the shock of returning to the states, of not having that city-wide sense of family just from the sound and tone of people's voices.
The train from Luoyang to Luohe on Thursday midnight was an enlightening nightmare. I could only get a standing-space ticket on the four-hour train from 1am to 5am. But that's not an accurate name for it; the ticket itself said 无座, which is "no seat," or "no designated space" I stood on about a leg and a half for the whole time in the conductor's doorway and inhaled everybody's smoke; the girl beside me threw up in the first hour; in the last leg of the ride, the conductor opened up the furnace beside us and shoveled in the coal, washing off the floor by splattering black water with a straw broom. Conditions were perfect for me to experience the most ground-level transportation and the most ground-level people: I wasn't sick, or queasy, had little luggage, and nobody with me to consider or worry about. I'm grateful for that. But never again.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
11.28-30: spirits
11.28 - 5am, wasted, can't sleep
Celebrated three friends' 21st birthdays tonight at an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink Japanese restaurant. Sake bombs to the very end. We also drank with the guys in the private room right next to us. Drunk men in this country cannot stop hitting on me.
I threw up twice tonight, before we even got to the bar where I fell asleep on someone's shoulder. I kept getting handed cigarettes and water to wake me up; maybe it worked with a super delayed effect. I'm grateful for whoever told people to leave me alone and not hand me shots. I'm grateful for the hands that led me out to the cab. I'm grateful for not having facebook so I don't have to see the documentation of this night. I'm grateful for this first-time experience that has already taught me never to do it again. I'll call this the last hurrah of our group here.
outside, nighttime:
still life
11.30 - drinks with Michelle
Final trip to Yashow Market. This is about the 6th time going all the way across town for my second tailored suit and a frame-job for my gift to the teachers in Henan this coming weekend. These last few weeks are all about shopping; it's not my idea of a relaxing end to the whole China journey.
Michelle came to Beijing for the weekend to teach some classes (part of the company's absurd expansion plan from Hong Kong despite being still understaffed since I left and all that other business went down this summer), and I met her for some drinks and a bruschetta in 三里屯. Facing each other across that table, I recognized how much we are still the same people who sat eating Shanghai-style food one night in Hong Kong a block from the new office. I wasn't looking forward to catching up on gossip and the same complaints, but sitting in a dim room with her and talking about life and work and change was a good indicator to me of progress, of our continuing to grow and my definite moving on. I'm grateful for that.
chiseling shadows
and the slow shrinking of glasses--
adults until the sun
Celebrated three friends' 21st birthdays tonight at an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink Japanese restaurant. Sake bombs to the very end. We also drank with the guys in the private room right next to us. Drunk men in this country cannot stop hitting on me.
I threw up twice tonight, before we even got to the bar where I fell asleep on someone's shoulder. I kept getting handed cigarettes and water to wake me up; maybe it worked with a super delayed effect. I'm grateful for whoever told people to leave me alone and not hand me shots. I'm grateful for the hands that led me out to the cab. I'm grateful for not having facebook so I don't have to see the documentation of this night. I'm grateful for this first-time experience that has already taught me never to do it again. I'll call this the last hurrah of our group here.
outside, nighttime:
still life
11.30 - drinks with Michelle
Final trip to Yashow Market. This is about the 6th time going all the way across town for my second tailored suit and a frame-job for my gift to the teachers in Henan this coming weekend. These last few weeks are all about shopping; it's not my idea of a relaxing end to the whole China journey.
Michelle came to Beijing for the weekend to teach some classes (part of the company's absurd expansion plan from Hong Kong despite being still understaffed since I left and all that other business went down this summer), and I met her for some drinks and a bruschetta in 三里屯. Facing each other across that table, I recognized how much we are still the same people who sat eating Shanghai-style food one night in Hong Kong a block from the new office. I wasn't looking forward to catching up on gossip and the same complaints, but sitting in a dim room with her and talking about life and work and change was a good indicator to me of progress, of our continuing to grow and my definite moving on. I'm grateful for that.
chiseling shadows
and the slow shrinking of glasses--
adults until the sun
Friday, November 28, 2008
11.23 - 11.27: Grace & Thanks
11.23 - church in China
A couple of us went to the nearby Protestant Sunday Service in Mandarin near campus. We got there 15 minutes early and already it was packed, with standing spaces filled up all along the back. A crowd of people stood in the hallway listening during the sermon. We discussed this in a class last week, and although the Sunday attendees are much more religiously-minded than typically those in the states (I didn't see any socializing afterwards, no after-church lunch groups) the other reason for churches being so packed is that there are so few in any vicinity.
No collections basket going around here. A lot of beggars outside though, which I take note of everywhere I go but rarely give them money these days. People brought fruit though, and arranged them behind the speakers. Fruit and packaged shrimp chips.
The message of the sermon was something about (荣耀) honor and (位分) social status. We heard the sobbing testimonial of a woman who had lost her job and her husband got sick; she sunk deeper into things by turning to Falun Gong until her sister 妹妹 came back from America and told her about the Gospel. We all (祷告) prayed together, and I felt the pangs of having not been in a church service for about three years.
At the end, I hummed along to the Chinese lyrics of "Amazing Grace."
"天天感辛苦、感累、感恩," the pastor said: "Every day we are inspired to grief, to hardship, and to grace."
-
More on food. At lunch, I had hibiscus juice which actually tasted like flowers and juice. We also had a "peanut ice," 花生冰沙, the simplicity of which amazed me. We bought some wife cakes after that from the 味多美 bakery. My snacks tonight consist of 凉茶 and choco-pies because they remind me of the south, 小馒头 rice balls because they remind me of being a kid in Hawaii, and a cup of green-apple jelly that just looks monstrous when you drink it through a straw. Along the stairs at Wu-Mei, a young woman was selling Chinese bars of chocolate in a cardboard tray. "Qiaokele, yige yikuair!" Such a beautiful language.
11.27 - Days in the Sound of Short Syllables
/ Visit to a Chinese Women's Prison /
like a hostel:
frightening
only for its
openness
/Buying Finisher Spray at the Art Store /
green crumbs of leaves,
confetti whirlwind
in the wake of cars--
winter
/ Buying Chinese Books /
danger, intersection:
gray-haired ladies
on a moped, giggling,
wave
/ Lama Temple /
chasing sunlight
through auspicious clouds--
taste of winter soot
wheel of the law,
wind, flag,
bell
/ Thanksgiving Dinner /
heartburn
at the sound of non-
empty rooms
across the ocean
A couple of us went to the nearby Protestant Sunday Service in Mandarin near campus. We got there 15 minutes early and already it was packed, with standing spaces filled up all along the back. A crowd of people stood in the hallway listening during the sermon. We discussed this in a class last week, and although the Sunday attendees are much more religiously-minded than typically those in the states (I didn't see any socializing afterwards, no after-church lunch groups) the other reason for churches being so packed is that there are so few in any vicinity.
No collections basket going around here. A lot of beggars outside though, which I take note of everywhere I go but rarely give them money these days. People brought fruit though, and arranged them behind the speakers. Fruit and packaged shrimp chips.
The message of the sermon was something about (荣耀) honor and (位分) social status. We heard the sobbing testimonial of a woman who had lost her job and her husband got sick; she sunk deeper into things by turning to Falun Gong until her sister 妹妹 came back from America and told her about the Gospel. We all (祷告) prayed together, and I felt the pangs of having not been in a church service for about three years.
At the end, I hummed along to the Chinese lyrics of "Amazing Grace."
"天天感辛苦、感累、感恩," the pastor said: "Every day we are inspired to grief, to hardship, and to grace."
-
More on food. At lunch, I had hibiscus juice which actually tasted like flowers and juice. We also had a "peanut ice," 花生冰沙, the simplicity of which amazed me. We bought some wife cakes after that from the 味多美 bakery. My snacks tonight consist of 凉茶 and choco-pies because they remind me of the south, 小馒头 rice balls because they remind me of being a kid in Hawaii, and a cup of green-apple jelly that just looks monstrous when you drink it through a straw. Along the stairs at Wu-Mei, a young woman was selling Chinese bars of chocolate in a cardboard tray. "Qiaokele, yige yikuair!" Such a beautiful language.
11.27 - Days in the Sound of Short Syllables
/ Visit to a Chinese Women's Prison /
like a hostel:
frightening
only for its
openness
/Buying Finisher Spray at the Art Store /
green crumbs of leaves,
confetti whirlwind
in the wake of cars--
winter
/ Buying Chinese Books /
danger, intersection:
gray-haired ladies
on a moped, giggling,
wave
/ Lama Temple /
chasing sunlight
through auspicious clouds--
taste of winter soot
wheel of the law,
wind, flag,
bell
/ Thanksgiving Dinner /
heartburn
at the sound of non-
empty rooms
across the ocean
Sunday, November 23, 2008
11.20-22: from epic paint to epic paint
11.20
If I go back to Henan next weekend with a couple that I really despise and am uncomfortable with exposing the kids to, it will be a chance for me to face up and make positive change, even make amends. I should probably look at it the other way, too. The kids don't need my protection; in fact, they might just cleanse us all for one more weekend.
But I'm still torn about whether to go to the Shaolin Temples, which aren't even remotely Buddhist any longer and have been reopened by the government specifically as a tourist attraction in response to its popularity in contemporary fiction. I might see this degradation of the heart of the martial arts and turn to blame those too familiar to me, the ones close to home. The little girl we met last time, locking the gate of a school in the village, told us she wasn't surprised to meet a foreigner because she saw white people before at Shaolin. Wudang wasn't entirely pure, but at least it remained religious and locally Chinese.
I just went to the chuanr place on campus and got two chicken wings on skewers. Eating them without my hands and spitting out the bones, I thought of Kate plucking berries for me at the mountain. I'm going for the kids' sake, which is the only way I can make this my sake.
11.21
Went to 圆明园 today, and stopped by the local market to eat the greatest 煎饼 this side of Beijing. Once we were inside the park, Joy kept saying it was like she had gotten sucked into some nutcracker dream, it was so quiet and empty. We watched weeping willows in all the autumn colors sweep their hair across the ruins of the old Summer Palace. We sat at the bank of a lake, our feet at the ice-frosted shore, watching the wind blow ripples westward, listening to the crisp of that year's leaves like rainfall in the dry branches. We watched a lone rowboat and its lone passenger, soft in the sunlight. We saw old men fishing in streams and lowering their catches back into the water. We skipped rocks on frozen waters.
And the three of us talked, and discovered each other and that it's not too late to make friends.
Victoria from Henan sent me an email with a poem by 顾城. This is my effort at my first poem translation.
我是一个任性的孩子
I'm A Willful Child
我想在大地上画满窗子，
I want to draw a full window in the earth,
让所有习惯黑暗的眼睛都习惯光明。
turn the eyes of dark habit into the promise of light.
也许我是被妈妈宠坏的孩子
Maybe I let my mother spoil me
我任性
into willfulness.
我希望
I wish
每一个时刻
every moment
都像彩色蜡笔那样美丽
was crayon-pretty
我希望
I wish
能在心爱的白纸上画画
I could draw on the blank pages o fmy heart's treasures
画出笨拙的自由
draw the clumsiness of freedom
画下一只永远不会
draw forever-
流泪的眼睛
tearless eyes
一片天空
one slice of heaven
一片属于天空的羽毛和树叶
and one of heaven's plumes and leaves
一个淡绿的夜晚和苹果
the light green of evening's apples
我想画下早晨
I want to draw daybreak
画下露水
draw ephemeral dew
所能看见的微笑
the ability to catch smiles
画下所有最年轻的
all the youngest
没有痛苦的爱情
and painless loves
她没有见过阴云
which have never seen dark clouds
她的眼睛是晴空的颜色
which have clear eyes
她永远看着我
that always see me
永远，看着
forever seeing
绝不会忽然掉过头去
never to suddenly fail
我想画下遥远的风景
I want to paint the distant landscapes
画下清晰的地平线和水波
paint clear horizons and ripples
画下许许多多快乐的小河
paint countless joyful rivulets
画下丘陵——
paint hills--
长满淡淡的茸毛
growing softly everywhere
我让它们挨得很近
I'll bring them closer
让它们相爱
make it love
让每一个默许
make it requited
每一阵静静的春天激动
every quiet burst of rain in spring's stirrings
都成为一朵小花的生日
become birthings of flowers
我还想画下未来
and I want to paint the future
我没见过她，也不可能
I haven't seen her, I can't
但知道她很美
but I know she's beautiful
我画下她秋天的风衣
I'll paint her autumn clothes
画下那些燃烧的烛火和枫叶
paint those burning candle flames and sweet maple leaves
画下许多因为爱她
paint countlessly for my love
而熄灭的心
because she extinguishes my heart
画下婚礼
I'll paint weddings
画下一个个早早醒来的节日——
I'll paint every early-morning holiday--
上面贴着玻璃糖纸
paste candy glass on top
和北方童话的插图
and fairytale pictures from the North
我是一个任性的孩子
I'm a willful child
我想涂去一切不幸
I want to black out every misfortune
我想在大地上
on the earth, I want to
画满窗子
paint a full window
让所有习惯黑暗的眼睛
and turn all the eyes of dark habits
都习惯光明
into the promise of light
我想画下风
I want to draw the wind
画下一架比一架更高大的山岭
paint bookcase upon bookcase of mountains
画下东方民族的渴望
paint the Eastern minorities' thirsty longings
画下大海——
paint the open sea--
无边无际愉快的声音
the sounds of limitless joy
最后，在纸角上
and lastly, ont he paper's corner
我还想画下自己
I still want to paint myself
画下一只树熊
I'll paint a tree-bear(?)
他坐在维多利亚深色的丛林里
sitting in a dark victorian(?) jungle
坐在安安静静的树枝上
on a quiet, peaceful branch
发愣
in a daze
他没有家
he's homeless
没有一颗留在远处的心
no distant place to leave his heart
他只有，许许多多
only countless
浆果一样的梦
dreams like berries
和很大很大的眼睛
and enormous eyes
我在希望
I'm wishing
在想
and wanting
但不知为什么
but don't know why
我没有领到蜡笔
I haven't gotten a crayon
没有得到一个彩色的时刻
or succeeded in coloring the moment
我只有我
I only have myself
我的手指和创痛
my fingers and these wounds
只有撕碎那一张张
only shredding sheet by sheet
心爱的白纸
the blank pages of my heart's treasures
让它们去寻找蝴蝶
making them look for butterflies
让它们从今天消失
making them disapper from this day
我是一个孩子
I'm a kid
一个被幻想妈妈宠坏的孩子
a kid spoiled by my mother
我任性
I'm willful
Damn tiring. 8 pages! I used "draw" and "paint" interchangeably. I don't know what the window's about, or the victorian busines. The bear in the tree must be the poet with the big-eyed vision.
This is much prettier in Chinese. In English poetry, we strive for more imagery and less flowery language because the latter is trite, but in Chinese the imagery is already entwined in all the words, etymologically speaking or just in idiomatic usage. Triteness in Chinese becomes an exquisite hark back to a history of tradition and culture.
One more note: in English, when we say "I wish" we have to switch into the subjective tense, acknowledging we're not discussing reality (I know this from teaching thsoe poems in Hong Kong!). But in Chinese, there is no subjective tense. Your wish just is.
11.22 - "I ain't drunk / I'm just drinkin' "
My ears are still ringing from a night of live blues by Black Cat Bone (黑猫骨), self-described as "badass blues brewed in Beijing." It began with a harmonica solo in dim lighting, and then the drums and a hard Gibson SG came busting out. The guitarist clearly picked up the instrument originally just to be in the spotlight. The 50-yr-old singer is going home with more than one lady tonight. The bassman was definitely the coolest cat of all. And the harp-man, plus the Chinese guest with his own blues harp, are the reason Im' buying a harmonica when I get back to the states. The other guest with her banjo and smoky voice was very sweet too. I dug it when the guitarist tripped on his way down the stairs to jam a solo with the swing-dance club that came (not to say that I danced). I dug it when the harp player took a break during one song and had a smoke whiel bobbing his head to the music. I dug the "One Way Out" cover (from one of my earliest forays into the blues and The Allman Brothers) that hit all the notes in the solo with the harmonicas. And I dug the Muddy Waters song. And the Hendrix.
I remember my first roller coaster was six years ago in Guangdong. My first clubbing experience was last month in Shanghai. My first Jack D was in Hong Kong. My first beer, first smoke, first dance. I'm super satisfied with my first live band-show being real blues with white band members who spoke fluent Mandarin between songs, not to mention the Chinese harp player touches me deeply with ethnic pride.
Also, Peking Duck and bullfrog meat tonight. And a fried seahorse on a stick. Oh yeah.
If only all this somke and pollution weren't shrivelling my lungs into nothingness. I can hardly speaking without interrupting myself to cough. There's some assortment of healing I need to do soon.
Also, I need to stop making so many judgments. The pair I spent the day with surprised me tremendously. People are ultimately really worthwhile and enriching in all their complicated foolishness. I need to be a window in this world, turning dark habits into the promise of light.
If I go back to Henan next weekend with a couple that I really despise and am uncomfortable with exposing the kids to, it will be a chance for me to face up and make positive change, even make amends. I should probably look at it the other way, too. The kids don't need my protection; in fact, they might just cleanse us all for one more weekend.
But I'm still torn about whether to go to the Shaolin Temples, which aren't even remotely Buddhist any longer and have been reopened by the government specifically as a tourist attraction in response to its popularity in contemporary fiction. I might see this degradation of the heart of the martial arts and turn to blame those too familiar to me, the ones close to home. The little girl we met last time, locking the gate of a school in the village, told us she wasn't surprised to meet a foreigner because she saw white people before at Shaolin. Wudang wasn't entirely pure, but at least it remained religious and locally Chinese.
I just went to the chuanr place on campus and got two chicken wings on skewers. Eating them without my hands and spitting out the bones, I thought of Kate plucking berries for me at the mountain. I'm going for the kids' sake, which is the only way I can make this my sake.
11.21
Went to 圆明园 today, and stopped by the local market to eat the greatest 煎饼 this side of Beijing. Once we were inside the park, Joy kept saying it was like she had gotten sucked into some nutcracker dream, it was so quiet and empty. We watched weeping willows in all the autumn colors sweep their hair across the ruins of the old Summer Palace. We sat at the bank of a lake, our feet at the ice-frosted shore, watching the wind blow ripples westward, listening to the crisp of that year's leaves like rainfall in the dry branches. We watched a lone rowboat and its lone passenger, soft in the sunlight. We saw old men fishing in streams and lowering their catches back into the water. We skipped rocks on frozen waters.
And the three of us talked, and discovered each other and that it's not too late to make friends.
Victoria from Henan sent me an email with a poem by 顾城. This is my effort at my first poem translation.
我是一个任性的孩子
I'm A Willful Child
我想在大地上画满窗子，
I want to draw a full window in the earth,
让所有习惯黑暗的眼睛都习惯光明。
turn the eyes of dark habit into the promise of light.
也许我是被妈妈宠坏的孩子
Maybe I let my mother spoil me
我任性
into willfulness.
我希望
I wish
每一个时刻
every moment
都像彩色蜡笔那样美丽
was crayon-pretty
我希望
I wish
能在心爱的白纸上画画
I could draw on the blank pages o fmy heart's treasures
画出笨拙的自由
draw the clumsiness of freedom
画下一只永远不会
draw forever-
流泪的眼睛
tearless eyes
一片天空
one slice of heaven
一片属于天空的羽毛和树叶
and one of heaven's plumes and leaves
一个淡绿的夜晚和苹果
the light green of evening's apples
我想画下早晨
I want to draw daybreak
画下露水
draw ephemeral dew
所能看见的微笑
the ability to catch smiles
画下所有最年轻的
all the youngest
没有痛苦的爱情
and painless loves
她没有见过阴云
which have never seen dark clouds
她的眼睛是晴空的颜色
which have clear eyes
她永远看着我
that always see me
永远，看着
forever seeing
绝不会忽然掉过头去
never to suddenly fail
我想画下遥远的风景
I want to paint the distant landscapes
画下清晰的地平线和水波
paint clear horizons and ripples
画下许许多多快乐的小河
paint countless joyful rivulets
画下丘陵——
paint hills--
长满淡淡的茸毛
growing softly everywhere
我让它们挨得很近
I'll bring them closer
让它们相爱
make it love
让每一个默许
make it requited
每一阵静静的春天激动
every quiet burst of rain in spring's stirrings
都成为一朵小花的生日
become birthings of flowers
我还想画下未来
and I want to paint the future
我没见过她，也不可能
I haven't seen her, I can't
但知道她很美
but I know she's beautiful
我画下她秋天的风衣
I'll paint her autumn clothes
画下那些燃烧的烛火和枫叶
paint those burning candle flames and sweet maple leaves
画下许多因为爱她
paint countlessly for my love
而熄灭的心
because she extinguishes my heart
画下婚礼
I'll paint weddings
画下一个个早早醒来的节日——
I'll paint every early-morning holiday--
上面贴着玻璃糖纸
paste candy glass on top
和北方童话的插图
and fairytale pictures from the North
我是一个任性的孩子
I'm a willful child
我想涂去一切不幸
I want to black out every misfortune
我想在大地上
on the earth, I want to
画满窗子
paint a full window
让所有习惯黑暗的眼睛
and turn all the eyes of dark habits
都习惯光明
into the promise of light
我想画下风
I want to draw the wind
画下一架比一架更高大的山岭
paint bookcase upon bookcase of mountains
画下东方民族的渴望
paint the Eastern minorities' thirsty longings
画下大海——
paint the open sea--
无边无际愉快的声音
the sounds of limitless joy
最后，在纸角上
and lastly, ont he paper's corner
我还想画下自己
I still want to paint myself
画下一只树熊
I'll paint a tree-bear(?)
他坐在维多利亚深色的丛林里
sitting in a dark victorian(?) jungle
坐在安安静静的树枝上
on a quiet, peaceful branch
发愣
in a daze
他没有家
he's homeless
没有一颗留在远处的心
no distant place to leave his heart
他只有，许许多多
only countless
浆果一样的梦
dreams like berries
和很大很大的眼睛
and enormous eyes
我在希望
I'm wishing
在想
and wanting
但不知为什么
but don't know why
我没有领到蜡笔
I haven't gotten a crayon
没有得到一个彩色的时刻
or succeeded in coloring the moment
我只有我
I only have myself
我的手指和创痛
my fingers and these wounds
只有撕碎那一张张
only shredding sheet by sheet
心爱的白纸
the blank pages of my heart's treasures
让它们去寻找蝴蝶
making them look for butterflies
让它们从今天消失
making them disapper from this day
我是一个孩子
I'm a kid
一个被幻想妈妈宠坏的孩子
a kid spoiled by my mother
我任性
I'm willful
Damn tiring. 8 pages! I used "draw" and "paint" interchangeably. I don't know what the window's about, or the victorian busines. The bear in the tree must be the poet with the big-eyed vision.
This is much prettier in Chinese. In English poetry, we strive for more imagery and less flowery language because the latter is trite, but in Chinese the imagery is already entwined in all the words, etymologically speaking or just in idiomatic usage. Triteness in Chinese becomes an exquisite hark back to a history of tradition and culture.
One more note: in English, when we say "I wish" we have to switch into the subjective tense, acknowledging we're not discussing reality (I know this from teaching thsoe poems in Hong Kong!). But in Chinese, there is no subjective tense. Your wish just is.
11.22 - "I ain't drunk / I'm just drinkin' "
My ears are still ringing from a night of live blues by Black Cat Bone (黑猫骨), self-described as "badass blues brewed in Beijing." It began with a harmonica solo in dim lighting, and then the drums and a hard Gibson SG came busting out. The guitarist clearly picked up the instrument originally just to be in the spotlight. The 50-yr-old singer is going home with more than one lady tonight. The bassman was definitely the coolest cat of all. And the harp-man, plus the Chinese guest with his own blues harp, are the reason Im' buying a harmonica when I get back to the states. The other guest with her banjo and smoky voice was very sweet too. I dug it when the guitarist tripped on his way down the stairs to jam a solo with the swing-dance club that came (not to say that I danced). I dug it when the harp player took a break during one song and had a smoke whiel bobbing his head to the music. I dug the "One Way Out" cover (from one of my earliest forays into the blues and The Allman Brothers) that hit all the notes in the solo with the harmonicas. And I dug the Muddy Waters song. And the Hendrix.
I remember my first roller coaster was six years ago in Guangdong. My first clubbing experience was last month in Shanghai. My first Jack D was in Hong Kong. My first beer, first smoke, first dance. I'm super satisfied with my first live band-show being real blues with white band members who spoke fluent Mandarin between songs, not to mention the Chinese harp player touches me deeply with ethnic pride.
Also, Peking Duck and bullfrog meat tonight. And a fried seahorse on a stick. Oh yeah.
If only all this somke and pollution weren't shrivelling my lungs into nothingness. I can hardly speaking without interrupting myself to cough. There's some assortment of healing I need to do soon.
Also, I need to stop making so many judgments. The pair I spent the day with surprised me tremendously. People are ultimately really worthwhile and enriching in all their complicated foolishness. I need to be a window in this world, turning dark habits into the promise of light.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
11.18 - "I struggle to celebrate; I celebrate this struggle."
-me, so long ago, and just as afraid, just as confused
looking at photos, I'm afraid
to go back and let the memories
be real. I'm afraid
to go home and face progression,
see the path I walk.
bluebird in the falling leaves,
when do the questions stop?
when do we become the destination?
The word for kata is 型, xíng in Chinese. It is "shape," cut into the earth. A form you've practiced so many times the floor beneath you retains its imprint. How much of the Path is just digging down with our heels by habit, how much of it is breadth and how much depth?
The question of finding yourself is such a western matter. If we are all birds, the Chinese sing beautifully, but it's all the same song; the Americans fight to make their own songs, but some are never able to sing at all. What a shame that flying takes us nowhere, that the whole world reminds us only of home.
For the last week here, I'm planning a trip to Yunnan, "South of the Clouds." I can't say anymore that I'm going places to look for answers, because I know how foolish the idea of answers is. Mistakes and regrets and inevitable; but it's always better to do than to not. Just make sure your house is in order first. What do you really owe to yourself and to people at this moment?
looking at photos, I'm afraid
to go back and let the memories
be real. I'm afraid
to go home and face progression,
see the path I walk.
bluebird in the falling leaves,
when do the questions stop?
when do we become the destination?
The word for kata is 型, xíng in Chinese. It is "shape," cut into the earth. A form you've practiced so many times the floor beneath you retains its imprint. How much of the Path is just digging down with our heels by habit, how much of it is breadth and how much depth?
The question of finding yourself is such a western matter. If we are all birds, the Chinese sing beautifully, but it's all the same song; the Americans fight to make their own songs, but some are never able to sing at all. What a shame that flying takes us nowhere, that the whole world reminds us only of home.
For the last week here, I'm planning a trip to Yunnan, "South of the Clouds." I can't say anymore that I'm going places to look for answers, because I know how foolish the idea of answers is. Mistakes and regrets and inevitable; but it's always better to do than to not. Just make sure your house is in order first. What do you really owe to yourself and to people at this moment?
Sunday, November 16, 2008
11.16: 在中国我知道了…… (edited)
我们已经来到北京三个多月了，上了很多课，跟很多本地人和同学交流了，读了很多关于中国的书，中国的东南西北也去了很多地方。但只是我跟几个朋友自己去河南教小孩英文口语以后，我才看到中国人真正的生活。
今年夏天我在香港教书了，但是那些学生家里都太有钱，所以我教他们的经历跟我教美国人的差不多一样:学生一般都很麻木。不过，在河南省，舞钢人和附近的农民跟我以前认识的人非常不同。那里的学生真有心。跟他们一起聊天、玩儿，我就开始明白如果我是在这里长大的，我的生活应该怎么样。
我是华裔，是在广东出生的，但从一岁以后在美国长大。我以前以为我就是美国人，没想到我会回中国来。这几个月的日子让我知道了:
我是华人。说中文，跟家人一起参加活动，吃地道的中国饭，听中国的音乐，都让我觉得我是在我心里的那个家里，特别舒服。在美国，生活不错，但是在什么地方我都不是本地人，我都不是那里的人。我总是像美国人叫的"亚洲人"。在中国是相反的:其他人看到我没有特别的反应:我跟他们一样像中国人。
我觉得在小城市里教书的时候，我这个人真有用，那里的学生真的需要我。那几天我想了想我在中国出生的小农村和我父母以前的情况，因为他们也在小城市教过书。
以前我在美国的生活没有目的，没办法。但是在中国，我找到了我的家，找到了我自己。还有什么是比这更重要的呢?
今年夏天我在香港教书了，但是那些学生家里都太有钱，所以我教他们的经历跟我教美国人的差不多一样:学生一般都很麻木。不过，在河南省，舞钢人和附近的农民跟我以前认识的人非常不同。那里的学生真有心。跟他们一起聊天、玩儿，我就开始明白如果我是在这里长大的，我的生活应该怎么样。
我是华裔，是在广东出生的，但从一岁以后在美国长大。我以前以为我就是美国人，没想到我会回中国来。这几个月的日子让我知道了:
我是华人。说中文，跟家人一起参加活动，吃地道的中国饭，听中国的音乐，都让我觉得我是在我心里的那个家里，特别舒服。在美国，生活不错，但是在什么地方我都不是本地人，我都不是那里的人。我总是像美国人叫的"亚洲人"。在中国是相反的:其他人看到我没有特别的反应:我跟他们一样像中国人。
我觉得在小城市里教书的时候，我这个人真有用，那里的学生真的需要我。那几天我想了想我在中国出生的小农村和我父母以前的情况，因为他们也在小城市教过书。
以前我在美国的生活没有目的，没办法。但是在中国，我找到了我的家，找到了我自己。还有什么是比这更重要的呢?
Saturday, November 15, 2008
11.14
Another group of three went to Henan this weekend, on more or less the same day-to-day itinerary as we had last week. I find myself stopping throughout the day to wonder where they are at that moment and whether they're appreciating it as much as I did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdDIM7RQxAc
This is the video of the conclusion of our spoken English class, when An Laoshi had all the kids pretending they were Obama and expressing their own version of the affirmation, "Yes, we can!"
Meanwhile, I went out with the group for the first time in a while for pizza in the most westernized bar area of Beijing. I I drank some, but said from the start I wouldn't join them for the clubbing. There's such a crowd mentality to the whole thing, including the peer pressure and the meaninglessness of it all. With a month to go, some people are starting to feel the wastefulness of this whole experience, but nobody's going to do anything about it. I give up on the group, and I give up on trying to fit in. If you want to live your life right, you have to do it yourself.
It didn't help that as we walked in and out of bars there were beggars all over the place, some with children. And I also thought about my language partner, who's in the middle of her international grad school applications, worrying about her future and working toward a real purpose. That just made the frivolousness of our night seem so disgusting in comparison.
Even in a small group with just one othe rperson, there's less of a sense of immersion; there's the common ground of foreignness, and you can't help but cling to that. In the end, as in the beginning, I'm on my own on a path that's going to be worth the cost.
I'm a family man looking for lasting value in the moment. Can no one relate to that anymore?
I miss my guitar.
But I will also add that the other thing I've really been glad for here, besides becoming closer to my roots, is the broader perspective on things like this that really don't matter. It's such a big world. Not everyone is American, or proud to be or in admiration of its culture. And not everyone should have to be. Hallelujah for a chance to be myself and not subject to any labels. Hallelujah for another month in China. Hallelujah for the next day and the understand it will bring.
and wake up where the clouds are far
behind me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdDIM7RQxAc
This is the video of the conclusion of our spoken English class, when An Laoshi had all the kids pretending they were Obama and expressing their own version of the affirmation, "Yes, we can!"
Meanwhile, I went out with the group for the first time in a while for pizza in the most westernized bar area of Beijing. I I drank some, but said from the start I wouldn't join them for the clubbing. There's such a crowd mentality to the whole thing, including the peer pressure and the meaninglessness of it all. With a month to go, some people are starting to feel the wastefulness of this whole experience, but nobody's going to do anything about it. I give up on the group, and I give up on trying to fit in. If you want to live your life right, you have to do it yourself.
It didn't help that as we walked in and out of bars there were beggars all over the place, some with children. And I also thought about my language partner, who's in the middle of her international grad school applications, worrying about her future and working toward a real purpose. That just made the frivolousness of our night seem so disgusting in comparison.
Even in a small group with just one othe rperson, there's less of a sense of immersion; there's the common ground of foreignness, and you can't help but cling to that. In the end, as in the beginning, I'm on my own on a path that's going to be worth the cost.
I'm a family man looking for lasting value in the moment. Can no one relate to that anymore?
I miss my guitar.
But I will also add that the other thing I've really been glad for here, besides becoming closer to my roots, is the broader perspective on things like this that really don't matter. It's such a big world. Not everyone is American, or proud to be or in admiration of its culture. And not everyone should have to be. Hallelujah for a chance to be myself and not subject to any labels. Hallelujah for another month in China. Hallelujah for the next day and the understand it will bring.
and wake up where the clouds are far
behind me
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
11.4 - 11.11: early resolutions
11.4
我的心情根本太怕臭我外边的人。一定要多开我心, 做朋友, 看小叶子, 听世界的水。要真生活。
11.5
The maids here are kind and enthused poeple. I wonder what sorts of things they do in their free time. And I almost wish I had the power to set them free from this subservience, but I realize it is not up to me to decide what has greater meaning or hope in their lives, and that the work they do is neither meaningless nor unnecessary in the scheme of this society. To release someone from an already-established system without changing the system is but a favor granted from pity, and that's very far from noble. The same must be true of teaching.
11.8
I'm in Kevin's and Victoria's home in Wugang (舞钢), Henan Province with Sara and Julia, perhaps the two most 自由 of our abroad group, the most willing to experience and be vulnerable and not entangled in the drama. I made the decision to come four hours before the train left, because despite my still being sick there was every reason to come and none to stay. This has been just as freeing as Wudang was, but in a different way. I just learned the Mandarin version of the Cantonese word 补, as in 补好身体. This trip is certainly the beginning of that.
Kevin and Victoria export MP3 players to Africa and America on weekdays or relax by visiting the villages (and Kevin's 老家) a 15-minute bike ride from this city. We rode bikes with bells and baskets yesterday, Kevin leading the way and Victoria sitting side-saddle like every Chinese person here. We pulled radish plants (萝卜) and bakchoy (白菜) from a generous stranger's field. We made the burrito-like food Henan is famous for. We stood on the side of a road eating 6-foot sugarcanes that a woman hacked down for us. We passed by a primary school as a 9-yr-old was locking up, and she let us inside to have a look. We went to one of her classes at the 中曹学校, interrupting the entire school's lesson plans by being foreigners. We talked to children, and heard their perspectives.
They invited us here to teach for the weekend, as native speakers of English. The village schoolchildren were some of the most purehearted and proprietous people I have ever met. Their English is less than rudimentary because there are no available teachers. The city schoolchildren we taught today have higher levels, and are just as sweet, but their lives are simply too different from the very start. When I have my pick of choices, I will teach where there is the most real need, becaus ethat is where I come from, that is where I live.
11.10 - back from teaching in Henan
非常非常想那里的小朋友门。现在回到北京, 再开始跟同学说英语, 跟他们再上课。根本太普通的日子。上我们的太极拳课时候, 因为今天人少所以比较吃苦, 我觉得很像我家的道场。原来没有办法离开这种辛苦的情况。
住在舞钢有一些不太舒服的: 很小, 还有污染, 另外他们的河南话对我学普通话不太好。但是跟安老师的家人一起和跟他小孩们充实极了。真的有心。我住在北京两个月了, 在香港三个月, 上了很多课, 认识了很多家人也很多本地的中国人, 跟他们讲很多话, 看了很多书和文章关于中国, 却我真的想知道这里的情况的话, 我要小朋友给我了解。原来应该这样吧, 没想到。我不是说我问了他们小孩他们的生活怎么样, 他们不能说, 没办法比较。我就是跟他们玩儿, 讲话。我不会忘我们跟学生一起爬上那里的二郎山时候, Kate 告诉了我他长大以后想当一个fashion designer。是一个很自由的梦想。然后他采了几个新鲜的浆果送给我。他可能是八岁的。有一个更小的孩子拉着我的胳膊常常说: "老师,老师!"
非常难说明我跟他们的时候我有什么感觉。只说我开心根本不够了。有很重要的启发关于我自己的生活应该什么样。不会多说。先生活,再心念。
"I'm Far
AwayHome
And I've
Been Facing"
-the back of Jasmine's glittery coat
11.11
I just had lunch with 张纯 at this 米线 place hidden under a bridge near campus. It was like Vietnamese pho, but fo the Chinese. My 传统 mentality came up, and she was happy for it. Everywhere I go, the locals are overjoyed to find a traditional-minded international Chinese. I cannot say enough how at home I am in this country, how affirmed my very being now is. Individual peopel have so much history they never saw and don't nkow, but they are part of it all the same. So much of education, in any form, is learning how to become yourself.
The issue of one-night stands came up, and I used the word "self-esteem" in English. She translated it as something like "honoring your own heart." I laughed in amazement at the differences in our cultures, at the wrong creases our linguistic connotations have chiseled for us in America.
We also talked about religion. She is a member of the Communist Party (because she was absolved into it at age 12 for being th ebest student in her class), so she's not allowed to participate in any religions. But she wouldn't be able to believe anything other than this life in front of us anyway, she said. I commented the Chinese seem to be more pragmatic about life, and that Westerners are excessively concerned about what happens after death. She countered that it's just a selfish mentality that leads to the idea of a soul continuing on forever, while the focus on harmony of man and nature in Chinese culture allows death to simply be decomposition.
I came to China at the beginning of summer with a lot of questions about myself, my martial arts, my writing, relationships, family, teaching, and a lot of questions I didn't realize I had until the answers arose. I feel very ready now, for whatever is next. I've filled that void in me that never really belonged in America, not even in the dojo. I know who I am and where I come from now. I don't know where I'm headed, but I see the path before me and I see my own two feet. No language can fully express that sense of present life.
我的心情根本太怕臭我外边的人。一定要多开我心, 做朋友, 看小叶子, 听世界的水。要真生活。
11.5
The maids here are kind and enthused poeple. I wonder what sorts of things they do in their free time. And I almost wish I had the power to set them free from this subservience, but I realize it is not up to me to decide what has greater meaning or hope in their lives, and that the work they do is neither meaningless nor unnecessary in the scheme of this society. To release someone from an already-established system without changing the system is but a favor granted from pity, and that's very far from noble. The same must be true of teaching.
11.8
I'm in Kevin's and Victoria's home in Wugang (舞钢), Henan Province with Sara and Julia, perhaps the two most 自由 of our abroad group, the most willing to experience and be vulnerable and not entangled in the drama. I made the decision to come four hours before the train left, because despite my still being sick there was every reason to come and none to stay. This has been just as freeing as Wudang was, but in a different way. I just learned the Mandarin version of the Cantonese word 补, as in 补好身体. This trip is certainly the beginning of that.
Kevin and Victoria export MP3 players to Africa and America on weekdays or relax by visiting the villages (and Kevin's 老家) a 15-minute bike ride from this city. We rode bikes with bells and baskets yesterday, Kevin leading the way and Victoria sitting side-saddle like every Chinese person here. We pulled radish plants (萝卜) and bakchoy (白菜) from a generous stranger's field. We made the burrito-like food Henan is famous for. We stood on the side of a road eating 6-foot sugarcanes that a woman hacked down for us. We passed by a primary school as a 9-yr-old was locking up, and she let us inside to have a look. We went to one of her classes at the 中曹学校, interrupting the entire school's lesson plans by being foreigners. We talked to children, and heard their perspectives.
They invited us here to teach for the weekend, as native speakers of English. The village schoolchildren were some of the most purehearted and proprietous people I have ever met. Their English is less than rudimentary because there are no available teachers. The city schoolchildren we taught today have higher levels, and are just as sweet, but their lives are simply too different from the very start. When I have my pick of choices, I will teach where there is the most real need, becaus ethat is where I come from, that is where I live.
11.10 - back from teaching in Henan
非常非常想那里的小朋友门。现在回到北京, 再开始跟同学说英语, 跟他们再上课。根本太普通的日子。上我们的太极拳课时候, 因为今天人少所以比较吃苦, 我觉得很像我家的道场。原来没有办法离开这种辛苦的情况。
住在舞钢有一些不太舒服的: 很小, 还有污染, 另外他们的河南话对我学普通话不太好。但是跟安老师的家人一起和跟他小孩们充实极了。真的有心。我住在北京两个月了, 在香港三个月, 上了很多课, 认识了很多家人也很多本地的中国人, 跟他们讲很多话, 看了很多书和文章关于中国, 却我真的想知道这里的情况的话, 我要小朋友给我了解。原来应该这样吧, 没想到。我不是说我问了他们小孩他们的生活怎么样, 他们不能说, 没办法比较。我就是跟他们玩儿, 讲话。我不会忘我们跟学生一起爬上那里的二郎山时候, Kate 告诉了我他长大以后想当一个fashion designer。是一个很自由的梦想。然后他采了几个新鲜的浆果送给我。他可能是八岁的。有一个更小的孩子拉着我的胳膊常常说: "老师,老师!"
非常难说明我跟他们的时候我有什么感觉。只说我开心根本不够了。有很重要的启发关于我自己的生活应该什么样。不会多说。先生活,再心念。
"I'm Far
AwayHome
And I've
Been Facing"
-the back of Jasmine's glittery coat
11.11
I just had lunch with 张纯 at this 米线 place hidden under a bridge near campus. It was like Vietnamese pho, but fo the Chinese. My 传统 mentality came up, and she was happy for it. Everywhere I go, the locals are overjoyed to find a traditional-minded international Chinese. I cannot say enough how at home I am in this country, how affirmed my very being now is. Individual peopel have so much history they never saw and don't nkow, but they are part of it all the same. So much of education, in any form, is learning how to become yourself.
The issue of one-night stands came up, and I used the word "self-esteem" in English. She translated it as something like "honoring your own heart." I laughed in amazement at the differences in our cultures, at the wrong creases our linguistic connotations have chiseled for us in America.
We also talked about religion. She is a member of the Communist Party (because she was absolved into it at age 12 for being th ebest student in her class), so she's not allowed to participate in any religions. But she wouldn't be able to believe anything other than this life in front of us anyway, she said. I commented the Chinese seem to be more pragmatic about life, and that Westerners are excessively concerned about what happens after death. She countered that it's just a selfish mentality that leads to the idea of a soul continuing on forever, while the focus on harmony of man and nature in Chinese culture allows death to simply be decomposition.
I came to China at the beginning of summer with a lot of questions about myself, my martial arts, my writing, relationships, family, teaching, and a lot of questions I didn't realize I had until the answers arose. I feel very ready now, for whatever is next. I've filled that void in me that never really belonged in America, not even in the dojo. I know who I am and where I come from now. I don't know where I'm headed, but I see the path before me and I see my own two feet. No language can fully express that sense of present life.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
11.3
我今天去了在永安里地铁站附近的飞机公司写字楼。在很大商场旁边。我不会忘那个情况:早上没有人,很安静。带着我的书包,我一个人走过那个大厅,一步一步。我还记得老师以前说:享受你现在的情况吧,因为你是学生。近来真知道当学生是最好的因为我们根本自由极了。还有多长时间能这样过日子呢?
The three-week cooking classes at local family homes began tonight. It's not so much a class as us watching them cook and chatting over food, beer, and tea. 虽然很小班，却非常热闹。Like a real 家, but with oceanic differences and curiosities. This whole country could never be anything else to me but family.
The three-week cooking classes at local family homes began tonight. It's not so much a class as us watching them cook and chatting over food, beer, and tea. 虽然很小班，却非常热闹。Like a real 家, but with oceanic differences and curiosities. This whole country could never be anything else to me but family.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
10.28 寂寞 to 11.2 武当山
10.28
I found a village right across the street from 北大, where the ponds and streams have been dry for so long that walkways have been paved along the bottom. I traveled in a straight line alongside a tiger of a cat, who weaved his way through bike rakes and leapt atop obstacles in the path. I took pictures of the clothes hanging over spiky lawns. Nothing is sold within these gates, for once; life is only kept or given.
After that, I found the Chinatown of Beijing not too far away, where everything--mostly fruit--is sold. But modestly, and quietly, because only the locals, 本地人, come here. I was able to blend in for a while longer if I covered the flash of my watch. The smell of sweet potatoes was the closest thing to suffocation in this market. It could be a fragrant death among these people.
I see now that it's not the not being understood that makes studying abroad so lonely--because that feeling will pervade everywhere in the world at any time. Excluding the fact of family, I believe Hong Kong was not a lonely experience merely because I had real work to do, with real ramifications. here, it's just time, and schedules, and travel. If I can't justify that, I have no reason for being.
"He worked simply because there was work to do. It seems this kind is best." -The Ronin
-----
10.29: On Bargaining
You pay only exactly what you pay. THe full cost, in the end, is how much you are willing. Relative comparisons can never hold up because there is always cheaper, cheaper. You pay for the experience, you pay for the product, and you pay for the reflection. Buyer's remorse only comes from having excess to begin with.
SPIGOT - 北大 to a 华裔美国人 (for the English magazine here)
My experience of China has largely been a matter of family or a matter of crowds. Beida at night is both and neither at the same time. The campus here has a solidarity that appears most after dark, when people come out walking in slippers with shower baskets, when the stores begin to close and the canteens become quiet reflections.
The streetlamps cast tight shadows, and in places like the chuanr booth, one can stand with an idle sense of purpose, breathing mist, listening to the oil simmer. I watch the people carrying big jugs of hot water back to their rooms, and I can’t help but be enchanted by the simplicity of routine here: the earnestness of taking a walk for hot water from an old spigot, the homeliness of a television’s glow behind the fruit stand late at night. Even the fashion sense seems intended for warmth rather than trendiness.
In the stovepipe mini-market across from the Xuewu Canteen, where photocopiers are constantly at work, there is a woman who has set her bed down in what would be the front office near the entrance. This is not a luxurious position, and I’m sure the perspective is different from the inside rather than from my outsider’s view, but in such bare functionality this woman is probably living her life with more purpose and direction than a lot of the intellectuals I’ve known back home.
Maybe it’s just the charm of being in a different country and having that outsider’s perspective; maybe I’m just taken in by a society where, for once, I’m part of the majority ethnicity rather than the minority; or maybe I just haven’t spent enough time here yet to be disillusioned back into Western standards of living. Regardless of the reason, I know that when I take a short walk to tap hot water into my small flask, I notice the streaks of rust on the spigot, and it makes me feel more in touch with what it means to be alive in this world, and to be working for it. There is no idleness without meaning here.
There is much presence in this place; it is full of quietude and benediction. When the lights go out at night, whether we are dreaming or working or both or neither, we still drink from the same cup, and the stillness touches us all.
-----
10.30
On the 20-hr train to Wudang Mountain, the one spiritual destination I absolutely had to make while here. Already the experience is more real than the spoiled travels we have been going on. I'm on the top of three bunks with no door and a fly that's made a home of the air conditioner. Someone is smoking in this car. I'm anxious and a little excited about the non-Western toilet in the morning; I haven't been forced to squat in this country until now.
The train's stopped for a moment. At least here, at the platform, there is light outside the window, and people gathering within the scope of its shade. I'm hunched against the wall in a foldout seat in the hallway with some sort of military officer who's reading the newspaper. I hope someone notices my English writing and starts talking to me. I've never been good with showing my interest in people, familiar or stranger, in any language.
But by writing--and doing so in necessity, for once--I feel less lonely already. This train has set me free.
night window:
looking for landscape...
only reflections
I got a crappy, expensive, cold dinner at the dining car ten soppyw ashing rooms away. The waitress saw me reading Hemingway and exclaimed, "老人与海?!" She snatched it right from my hand when she gave me my food and sat in a spare seat, mumbling that she was too curious. She almost seemed disappointed it was in Chinese, though. Less exotic, I guess.
Back in my car, I found a handful of unoccupied seats near the middle. It's because of this one dude with a snore to drown out my cousin in Hawaii (who snored so loud one night that the sound of hiimself would wake him up at regular intervals). Also, the window's open to balance out the sound a bit; the compromise is the smell of shit that's been deposited all along these tracks.
-----
10.31
Morning. Still on the train. All farmland. I sit facing the back, watching as small people on large fields trail behind us. Almost always in pairs, either husband or wife tossing up handfuls of seeds from a basket like a blessing of grain.
There's a little girl in the hallway with a mass f pigtails. I still stand by the idea that Chinese is a much more expressive language than English, even for little kids. Their Beijing accents make them sound like a bubblegum brigade; it's not until they're older that the accent makes them sound like pirates.
When the SIM card text-messages me to say I'm in Hubei Province, I wake up and find the hall empty and silent. It's lonely again. The fields transform into lush gardens and backyard hills, in all manner of green, as we pass Gucheng. Now it begins to look like a martial arts novel. One village has its fields surrounding a big perfect square of a pond. Just off from the center of that is a small tree sticking out of the water.
Evening, at the Xuanwu Hotel, watching a Beijing Opera singing contest on CCTV. I'm so tired, and such an outsider, and so alone. This is the least familiar and also least touristy place I've been to in China. It's just a town at the bottom of the mountain, with story and history, but just a town. I walked along the main drag when the kids got out of school at 5. I saw teens hopping over the fence to practice their martial arts at the ruins of a big temple complex (but refrained myself, this time).
But i lost a day from my schedule because the Sunday train ticketsto Beijing were all sold out. I'm waking at 6 in the morning to make a mad dash up the mountain (no time to climb it myself as I had planned, or to spend a night at the time), and then rush back down again and head back to Beijing. I might never come back to this place, and I wouldn't mind returning later, except I already skipped a class to take the train out here to begin with, and our teachers have been taken advantage of more than enough by now. Sometimes gratitude and propriety are a greater cause than exploration; out here, I understand now what Sarah Witman meant six years ago when she told me that her greatest fear was being alone.
What is the cost of solidarity? What is the cost of companionship?
I almost feel like giving up and just hiding in this room with its extra bed and television. But I came this far; I ought to get a glimpse from the top of the mountain before I decide where to go next. I guess that's a metaphor for my black belt too.
-----
11.1
At the Wudang Train Station waiting to go home. Downstairs in the enormously empty room (no idea what it's used for, if the trains all stop upstairs) a dozen women in their early 30s filed in, synchronized, their arms raised in the air. Then the leader stepped out of the line and called out a moderate rhythm as they started a sort of Malaysian-looking dance. Bizarre, yes, but not with the same religious presence of the gray-haired old ladies we passed by in Suzhou at a parking lot after sunset: they danced very slowly, with tight joints and blank faces, to Muslim music playing on a boombox. Those are the moments I love about China and probably will never understand.
I missed sunrise on the mountain and missed sunset on the mountain, and skipped the free (送,用英文怎么说?) hotel breakfast to make it to the front gate early (and also didn't get to see the cute hotel receptionist who blushed when I didn't understand her yesterday). But those are the only things I've missed. I almost added not talking to the WGR [外国人] at the train station I had also seen on the mountains, but I just helped her out with some ticket stuff and it turns out she speaks German (whiel gesturing, and English to me) and is a pretty grumpy person.
On the train. This has been a real pilgrimage. I took the bus 3/4 of the way up, then took the cable cars to the Gold Peak (金顶), the walled temple which actually crowns the vertex. All along the railings up, people had bought little locks here with their names and dates engraved on them. I got the cheapest set, which say 情玄武当山,永结同心 on one side. The other side has my name on one, and 吴立芳 on the other (which is bizarre; I have no idea what it means; maybe it's the name of the woman who engraved it, but that would be awkward considering these locks were in the shape of hearts). These are locks without keys, which hold memories atop this mountain and rust slowly with the flow of wind. I found the windiest spot and locked my set.
On the way back, I took a different route out of curiosity and ended up on a three-and-a-half-hour hike winding around the mountain, encountering temple after temple, instant-noodle stand after instant noodle stand. Oh, and souvenir shops galore, but not in an absurd "Look, white man, come here" sort of way. This is touristy, but in a local, Chinese way.
Along these verdant, empty paths, there was one 9-yr-old boy in a blue windbreaker standing with hands in pockets and half a dozen cucumbers (or some sort of green tubular vegetable) on a tarp before him, 3kuai each. Deep mountain territory, and entirely worth the trek. The world below doesn't even come to mind from up here, where the only view is the precipice of other mountains; home and the rest of civilization only exist in the mind.
But at one point, when I was the only person in sight or sound for as far as I could tell, and the "Danger for falling rocks" signs started coming, I realized how dangerous it actually was for me to come here alone. I imagined myself falling or getting trapped somewhere. No one would know how to find me and tell my family what happened. Moreover, my house--metaphorically speaking--was not in order. There are apologies I have not made yet, and wishes, and decisions I need to go through with before my path ends. The people who told me life gets better after teenagedom were very right; I have so much more 充实 and purpose now than when I was dark and melodramatic.
I don't like being alone when I don't know where I'm going, though. I guess nobody does, and that's why the whole world has been built upon language and community.
There was one kid standing behind a little wooden table, selling drinks and flipping through his primary-school textbooks, hands on his hips in a power-study stance. A little girl with four pigtails toddling down the One Hundred Step Ladder with two brown hard-boiled eggs, each bigger than her hands. Men with those little emperor sedans, carrying mostly the elderly from temple to temple for exorbitant prices. The four businessmen I followed for the first leg of the trip, who stopped every person we passed to ask how much longer the trip was and sighed at every inconsistent answer. The woman at the 飞-something-something table where my endless downhill descent became a baffling uphill climb, who sold me a bottle of water for 4kuai, and when I tried to get it for 3, she said something like, "Hey, man. I'm tired too; I'm the one who had to carry these things all the way up the mountain today!"
But most of all the wind. The moment this whole trip became worthwhile was when I sat int eh cable car for 20 minutes of nothing, and then the wind hit, and I saw fall leaves blowing down the mountainside like little crisps of sun. And immediately after that, a dragon-slip of fire flew in from around the bend, and curved its way right beside me. There was one spot where the wind kept poking through, and in that empty space I swear it formed a heart, and then a monk preaching.
That's my modest cloud tale for the day. It's 8:30. I'm going to sleep, and when I wake I'll talk to the girl in the bunk opposite mine.
-----
11.2
red sunrise
ball of teacup steam
smell of feet
I know some of the trouble happening with family back in the states, and there's nothing I can do about it, not even offer help or condolence without sounding trite. It's 8 in the morning and still 5 more hours on the train. Even then, the journey won't be over.
But I have no wishes. No place I'd rather be than laying on this tight, mildly clean bed, watching anonymous city boxes and farm patches through the window, the sunlight a dusty shade of day. Despite the discomforts and worries and unfulfilled thoughts, I'm at peace. I'm asleep and in motion, the best of both worlds for a while longer before the trip comes to an end.
I found a village right across the street from 北大, where the ponds and streams have been dry for so long that walkways have been paved along the bottom. I traveled in a straight line alongside a tiger of a cat, who weaved his way through bike rakes and leapt atop obstacles in the path. I took pictures of the clothes hanging over spiky lawns. Nothing is sold within these gates, for once; life is only kept or given.
After that, I found the Chinatown of Beijing not too far away, where everything--mostly fruit--is sold. But modestly, and quietly, because only the locals, 本地人, come here. I was able to blend in for a while longer if I covered the flash of my watch. The smell of sweet potatoes was the closest thing to suffocation in this market. It could be a fragrant death among these people.
I see now that it's not the not being understood that makes studying abroad so lonely--because that feeling will pervade everywhere in the world at any time. Excluding the fact of family, I believe Hong Kong was not a lonely experience merely because I had real work to do, with real ramifications. here, it's just time, and schedules, and travel. If I can't justify that, I have no reason for being.
"He worked simply because there was work to do. It seems this kind is best." -The Ronin
-----
10.29: On Bargaining
You pay only exactly what you pay. THe full cost, in the end, is how much you are willing. Relative comparisons can never hold up because there is always cheaper, cheaper. You pay for the experience, you pay for the product, and you pay for the reflection. Buyer's remorse only comes from having excess to begin with.
SPIGOT - 北大 to a 华裔美国人 (for the English magazine here)
My experience of China has largely been a matter of family or a matter of crowds. Beida at night is both and neither at the same time. The campus here has a solidarity that appears most after dark, when people come out walking in slippers with shower baskets, when the stores begin to close and the canteens become quiet reflections.
The streetlamps cast tight shadows, and in places like the chuanr booth, one can stand with an idle sense of purpose, breathing mist, listening to the oil simmer. I watch the people carrying big jugs of hot water back to their rooms, and I can’t help but be enchanted by the simplicity of routine here: the earnestness of taking a walk for hot water from an old spigot, the homeliness of a television’s glow behind the fruit stand late at night. Even the fashion sense seems intended for warmth rather than trendiness.
In the stovepipe mini-market across from the Xuewu Canteen, where photocopiers are constantly at work, there is a woman who has set her bed down in what would be the front office near the entrance. This is not a luxurious position, and I’m sure the perspective is different from the inside rather than from my outsider’s view, but in such bare functionality this woman is probably living her life with more purpose and direction than a lot of the intellectuals I’ve known back home.
Maybe it’s just the charm of being in a different country and having that outsider’s perspective; maybe I’m just taken in by a society where, for once, I’m part of the majority ethnicity rather than the minority; or maybe I just haven’t spent enough time here yet to be disillusioned back into Western standards of living. Regardless of the reason, I know that when I take a short walk to tap hot water into my small flask, I notice the streaks of rust on the spigot, and it makes me feel more in touch with what it means to be alive in this world, and to be working for it. There is no idleness without meaning here.
There is much presence in this place; it is full of quietude and benediction. When the lights go out at night, whether we are dreaming or working or both or neither, we still drink from the same cup, and the stillness touches us all.
-----
10.30
On the 20-hr train to Wudang Mountain, the one spiritual destination I absolutely had to make while here. Already the experience is more real than the spoiled travels we have been going on. I'm on the top of three bunks with no door and a fly that's made a home of the air conditioner. Someone is smoking in this car. I'm anxious and a little excited about the non-Western toilet in the morning; I haven't been forced to squat in this country until now.
The train's stopped for a moment. At least here, at the platform, there is light outside the window, and people gathering within the scope of its shade. I'm hunched against the wall in a foldout seat in the hallway with some sort of military officer who's reading the newspaper. I hope someone notices my English writing and starts talking to me. I've never been good with showing my interest in people, familiar or stranger, in any language.
But by writing--and doing so in necessity, for once--I feel less lonely already. This train has set me free.
night window:
looking for landscape...
only reflections
I got a crappy, expensive, cold dinner at the dining car ten soppyw ashing rooms away. The waitress saw me reading Hemingway and exclaimed, "老人与海?!" She snatched it right from my hand when she gave me my food and sat in a spare seat, mumbling that she was too curious. She almost seemed disappointed it was in Chinese, though. Less exotic, I guess.
Back in my car, I found a handful of unoccupied seats near the middle. It's because of this one dude with a snore to drown out my cousin in Hawaii (who snored so loud one night that the sound of hiimself would wake him up at regular intervals). Also, the window's open to balance out the sound a bit; the compromise is the smell of shit that's been deposited all along these tracks.
-----
10.31
Morning. Still on the train. All farmland. I sit facing the back, watching as small people on large fields trail behind us. Almost always in pairs, either husband or wife tossing up handfuls of seeds from a basket like a blessing of grain.
There's a little girl in the hallway with a mass f pigtails. I still stand by the idea that Chinese is a much more expressive language than English, even for little kids. Their Beijing accents make them sound like a bubblegum brigade; it's not until they're older that the accent makes them sound like pirates.
When the SIM card text-messages me to say I'm in Hubei Province, I wake up and find the hall empty and silent. It's lonely again. The fields transform into lush gardens and backyard hills, in all manner of green, as we pass Gucheng. Now it begins to look like a martial arts novel. One village has its fields surrounding a big perfect square of a pond. Just off from the center of that is a small tree sticking out of the water.
Evening, at the Xuanwu Hotel, watching a Beijing Opera singing contest on CCTV. I'm so tired, and such an outsider, and so alone. This is the least familiar and also least touristy place I've been to in China. It's just a town at the bottom of the mountain, with story and history, but just a town. I walked along the main drag when the kids got out of school at 5. I saw teens hopping over the fence to practice their martial arts at the ruins of a big temple complex (but refrained myself, this time).
But i lost a day from my schedule because the Sunday train ticketsto Beijing were all sold out. I'm waking at 6 in the morning to make a mad dash up the mountain (no time to climb it myself as I had planned, or to spend a night at the time), and then rush back down again and head back to Beijing. I might never come back to this place, and I wouldn't mind returning later, except I already skipped a class to take the train out here to begin with, and our teachers have been taken advantage of more than enough by now. Sometimes gratitude and propriety are a greater cause than exploration; out here, I understand now what Sarah Witman meant six years ago when she told me that her greatest fear was being alone.
What is the cost of solidarity? What is the cost of companionship?
I almost feel like giving up and just hiding in this room with its extra bed and television. But I came this far; I ought to get a glimpse from the top of the mountain before I decide where to go next. I guess that's a metaphor for my black belt too.
-----
11.1
At the Wudang Train Station waiting to go home. Downstairs in the enormously empty room (no idea what it's used for, if the trains all stop upstairs) a dozen women in their early 30s filed in, synchronized, their arms raised in the air. Then the leader stepped out of the line and called out a moderate rhythm as they started a sort of Malaysian-looking dance. Bizarre, yes, but not with the same religious presence of the gray-haired old ladies we passed by in Suzhou at a parking lot after sunset: they danced very slowly, with tight joints and blank faces, to Muslim music playing on a boombox. Those are the moments I love about China and probably will never understand.
I missed sunrise on the mountain and missed sunset on the mountain, and skipped the free (送,用英文怎么说?) hotel breakfast to make it to the front gate early (and also didn't get to see the cute hotel receptionist who blushed when I didn't understand her yesterday). But those are the only things I've missed. I almost added not talking to the WGR [外国人] at the train station I had also seen on the mountains, but I just helped her out with some ticket stuff and it turns out she speaks German (whiel gesturing, and English to me) and is a pretty grumpy person.
On the train. This has been a real pilgrimage. I took the bus 3/4 of the way up, then took the cable cars to the Gold Peak (金顶), the walled temple which actually crowns the vertex. All along the railings up, people had bought little locks here with their names and dates engraved on them. I got the cheapest set, which say 情玄武当山,永结同心 on one side. The other side has my name on one, and 吴立芳 on the other (which is bizarre; I have no idea what it means; maybe it's the name of the woman who engraved it, but that would be awkward considering these locks were in the shape of hearts). These are locks without keys, which hold memories atop this mountain and rust slowly with the flow of wind. I found the windiest spot and locked my set.
On the way back, I took a different route out of curiosity and ended up on a three-and-a-half-hour hike winding around the mountain, encountering temple after temple, instant-noodle stand after instant noodle stand. Oh, and souvenir shops galore, but not in an absurd "Look, white man, come here" sort of way. This is touristy, but in a local, Chinese way.
Along these verdant, empty paths, there was one 9-yr-old boy in a blue windbreaker standing with hands in pockets and half a dozen cucumbers (or some sort of green tubular vegetable) on a tarp before him, 3kuai each. Deep mountain territory, and entirely worth the trek. The world below doesn't even come to mind from up here, where the only view is the precipice of other mountains; home and the rest of civilization only exist in the mind.
But at one point, when I was the only person in sight or sound for as far as I could tell, and the "Danger for falling rocks" signs started coming, I realized how dangerous it actually was for me to come here alone. I imagined myself falling or getting trapped somewhere. No one would know how to find me and tell my family what happened. Moreover, my house--metaphorically speaking--was not in order. There are apologies I have not made yet, and wishes, and decisions I need to go through with before my path ends. The people who told me life gets better after teenagedom were very right; I have so much more 充实 and purpose now than when I was dark and melodramatic.
I don't like being alone when I don't know where I'm going, though. I guess nobody does, and that's why the whole world has been built upon language and community.
There was one kid standing behind a little wooden table, selling drinks and flipping through his primary-school textbooks, hands on his hips in a power-study stance. A little girl with four pigtails toddling down the One Hundred Step Ladder with two brown hard-boiled eggs, each bigger than her hands. Men with those little emperor sedans, carrying mostly the elderly from temple to temple for exorbitant prices. The four businessmen I followed for the first leg of the trip, who stopped every person we passed to ask how much longer the trip was and sighed at every inconsistent answer. The woman at the 飞-something-something table where my endless downhill descent became a baffling uphill climb, who sold me a bottle of water for 4kuai, and when I tried to get it for 3, she said something like, "Hey, man. I'm tired too; I'm the one who had to carry these things all the way up the mountain today!"
But most of all the wind. The moment this whole trip became worthwhile was when I sat int eh cable car for 20 minutes of nothing, and then the wind hit, and I saw fall leaves blowing down the mountainside like little crisps of sun. And immediately after that, a dragon-slip of fire flew in from around the bend, and curved its way right beside me. There was one spot where the wind kept poking through, and in that empty space I swear it formed a heart, and then a monk preaching.
That's my modest cloud tale for the day. It's 8:30. I'm going to sleep, and when I wake I'll talk to the girl in the bunk opposite mine.
-----
11.2
red sunrise
ball of teacup steam
smell of feet
I know some of the trouble happening with family back in the states, and there's nothing I can do about it, not even offer help or condolence without sounding trite. It's 8 in the morning and still 5 more hours on the train. Even then, the journey won't be over.
But I have no wishes. No place I'd rather be than laying on this tight, mildly clean bed, watching anonymous city boxes and farm patches through the window, the sunlight a dusty shade of day. Despite the discomforts and worries and unfulfilled thoughts, I'm at peace. I'm asleep and in motion, the best of both worlds for a while longer before the trip comes to an end.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
This Is Just To Say
(for my students)
(and Muska)
I have let
the bird go free
a little while.
Its quick return
is a lesson
in smallness.
Every lonely bird
cannot be a sentry.
Every sentry bird
must not be alone.
(and Muska)
I have let
the bird go free
a little while.
Its quick return
is a lesson
in smallness.
Every lonely bird
cannot be a sentry.
Every sentry bird
must not be alone.
10.27: Shades
During 太极拳 today, my breath and energy matched the red plant I stared at while training, and the yellow leaves above me as I stretched. I haven't noticed this sort of natural presence until now, when I am out of breath, when air transforms into need and meaning. "Not my song, but yours." I don't belong here, or anywhere else among this unnoticed beauty; nor doe anyone else. One day, maybe, when we can all rediscover stillness and let our lives blossom inward rather than spraying outward.
The more fulfilled and self-understanding I am on the inside, the lonelier relations get on the outside. This is one color of 道.
"By inconsistency and frivolity we stray from the Way and show ourselves to be beginners. In this we do much harm." -Hagakure
So much of this struggle is merely seeking to belong.
The more fulfilled and self-understanding I am on the inside, the lonelier relations get on the outside. This is one color of 道.
"By inconsistency and frivolity we stray from the Way and show ourselves to be beginners. In this we do much harm." -Hagakure
So much of this struggle is merely seeking to belong.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
10.26: Beida's International Festival, one booth for every country
恩姐 mentioned that so many people have been or are going to be moving this year. I have seen this same ineffable transience and life-shifting on this side of the world as well. If you want to get superficially mystical about it, you can chalk it up to this being the year of the rat, the start of the lunar calendar's cycle and a mark of new beginnings.
昨天我们去了鸟巢, 奥运的体育场。正坐巴士时, 我跟高雅的朋友讲。他说, 对我们美国人， 他的感觉是: 我们都很活页。啊， 我以为他说 "火业"。 真的不同。他的话真的不错。我也记得苏晨一次告诉我: "When I think of Americans, three words come to my mind: freedom, creative, and crazy." 也不错。比照, 两个国家分开非常远。我那儿的家人, 我这儿的家人， 真的不能说。只有自己的心里。到时, 我也要分开, 跟我找到的道走。
To be indoors
while the wind
and the sound of wind
spin the world
like an autumn's lantern,
yes,
but one last day
is one lost day,
can you hear
the birds heading home
already, crying:
too soon, too soon
As a break from the paper I'm writing, I bought a green teapot with a filter coming through the top like a reverse chimney, for 18 kuai. I took it to the fourth-floor laundry room, washed it in some boiled water, and made some tea. The spigot is super rusted; I'm to the point now where I don't see it as beneath me as an American, or before my time as a Chinese, but rather simply as functional, and beautiful in that functionality.
Later, I walked across the shadows of campus to get some late-night 串儿, a spiced slab of 猪肉 on a stick. At the fruit stand next to it, the woman sat blocking her television softly playing late-night dramas. I ate as I walked, my shoulders high, hood over my head, breathing mist. Bicycles squeaked past, none of that old-brake screch of the daytime, no sound but footsteps on leaves and solitary conversations on cell phones. This is the urban quietude of which I always draw. At last now I feel like a student here, in this place.
昨天我们去了鸟巢, 奥运的体育场。正坐巴士时, 我跟高雅的朋友讲。他说, 对我们美国人， 他的感觉是: 我们都很活页。啊， 我以为他说 "火业"。 真的不同。他的话真的不错。我也记得苏晨一次告诉我: "When I think of Americans, three words come to my mind: freedom, creative, and crazy." 也不错。比照, 两个国家分开非常远。我那儿的家人, 我这儿的家人， 真的不能说。只有自己的心里。到时, 我也要分开, 跟我找到的道走。
To be indoors
while the wind
and the sound of wind
spin the world
like an autumn's lantern,
yes,
but one last day
is one lost day,
can you hear
the birds heading home
already, crying:
too soon, too soon
As a break from the paper I'm writing, I bought a green teapot with a filter coming through the top like a reverse chimney, for 18 kuai. I took it to the fourth-floor laundry room, washed it in some boiled water, and made some tea. The spigot is super rusted; I'm to the point now where I don't see it as beneath me as an American, or before my time as a Chinese, but rather simply as functional, and beautiful in that functionality.
Later, I walked across the shadows of campus to get some late-night 串儿, a spiced slab of 猪肉 on a stick. At the fruit stand next to it, the woman sat blocking her television softly playing late-night dramas. I ate as I walked, my shoulders high, hood over my head, breathing mist. Bicycles squeaked past, none of that old-brake screch of the daytime, no sound but footsteps on leaves and solitary conversations on cell phones. This is the urban quietude of which I always draw. At last now I feel like a student here, in this place.
Friday, October 24, 2008
10.22 & 23
10.22
One of the illegal taxi 师傅 in front of the hotel today had his trunk open as he clicked around the car in his business shoes to change the headlights. This machine is his livelihood. It started to drizzle quietly. Yes, this must be fall.
10.23
Today:
1. Sat in on a people's-court-like trial in a Chinese court near Olympic Village. The experience came with headphones with simultaneous translation, with very human translators trying to keep up. My favorite translation was "...and violation number four was sorry I forgot."
I call this the Epic Case of the Air Conditioner, in which a young guy sues his landlord over things that must be quite important to them. If China had a jury system, I would support neither side. But I learned some Mandarin in the process, and body language.
2. Beijing Opera. Sipping tea in the shadowy back, snacking on tea cakes; the shrill singing and the old-school drumming made for a very sophisticated (but not quite bourgeoise) evening. Didn't understand the story at all, but appreciated the reall connoisseurs appreciating the performance.
3. Aibosen Blindman Massage parlor (爱博森按摩院). Full-body, plus 刮痧 scraping along the meridians of my back. I just wish I asked for her name; it would make the hour seem even more communicative, rather than functional with an exchange of money. I felt like the young hero in House of Flying Daggers as she (not actually blind, this one) told me which muscles I used most and probably why. She said I should get back to my martial arts, for my health.
4. Back at Beida past midnight, eating meat on a stick and bumping into Yuland, the one of few 广东话 speakers here. A strong wind blows, the branches bow, and leaves sing sweetly down, like snowflakes of green and orange-yellow, forever falling only once. We watch the trees change color for a while.
One of the illegal taxi 师傅 in front of the hotel today had his trunk open as he clicked around the car in his business shoes to change the headlights. This machine is his livelihood. It started to drizzle quietly. Yes, this must be fall.
10.23
Today:
1. Sat in on a people's-court-like trial in a Chinese court near Olympic Village. The experience came with headphones with simultaneous translation, with very human translators trying to keep up. My favorite translation was "...and violation number four was sorry I forgot."
I call this the Epic Case of the Air Conditioner, in which a young guy sues his landlord over things that must be quite important to them. If China had a jury system, I would support neither side. But I learned some Mandarin in the process, and body language.
2. Beijing Opera. Sipping tea in the shadowy back, snacking on tea cakes; the shrill singing and the old-school drumming made for a very sophisticated (but not quite bourgeoise) evening. Didn't understand the story at all, but appreciated the reall connoisseurs appreciating the performance.
3. Aibosen Blindman Massage parlor (爱博森按摩院). Full-body, plus 刮痧 scraping along the meridians of my back. I just wish I asked for her name; it would make the hour seem even more communicative, rather than functional with an exchange of money. I felt like the young hero in House of Flying Daggers as she (not actually blind, this one) told me which muscles I used most and probably why. She said I should get back to my martial arts, for my health.
4. Back at Beida past midnight, eating meat on a stick and bumping into Yuland, the one of few 广东话 speakers here. A strong wind blows, the branches bow, and leaves sing sweetly down, like snowflakes of green and orange-yellow, forever falling only once. We watch the trees change color for a while.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
10.21
I am starting to reconsider my black belt all over again. "Today is always an exception." This just means any decisions here, in all my idleness, hold no value. I will only know the answer when the moment comes to speak and to do.
My frequent advice to others remains the same for myself: do what you feel you must.
I keep thinking that, despite the drama and the anxiety and the stuckness, Hong Kong was a much more earnest and valuable experience for growth than Beijing or even Dunhuang has been. Beijing for me as a student has been a bit mundane; Dunhuang was "gorgeously lonely," as Wendy has put it, but the trip was over-the-top extravagant. Maybe Hong Kong was just sooner in my journey and more solitary in living conditions.
Or maybe the fact that I was teaching just led to a frantic sort of quietude and sense of purpose. I wrote in my notepad then, on the same page I got my McDull On The Peak stamp: "If you treat teaching as art, then it may be possible I was born for it."
Shanghai was okay too, now that I think about it, because we were really on our own for that week, which was a bit frightening. It is always the outward frame of the poverty line of a place that most interests and enchants me. I can forget the search for the strip club and the bars, but deeply printed in my heart even now is the homeless man singing Tibetan hymns, his voice resonating through an underpass, otherworldly. I wish I had taken a picture of any number of communal water taps for running water that come out of a spigot along the sidewalk for washing bowls and utensils of personal use. I wish I could paint the dusty sight of a woman drawing water from an actual well in the city. There is a small community of artists on The Bund who draw amazing portraits of tourists for dirt cheap, each of them practicing and comparing with the one they call 大哥--big brother. It sounds romantic, and it does offer a spectacular sort of awareness of life; but then the poor grandmothers with crying babies come begging for money, and you realize the artists are only skilled workers, you realize we all have to learn to live somewhow, you realize the colors beneath this waterfront are not so clean after all.
There are so many beautiful distractions.
My frequent advice to others remains the same for myself: do what you feel you must.
I keep thinking that, despite the drama and the anxiety and the stuckness, Hong Kong was a much more earnest and valuable experience for growth than Beijing or even Dunhuang has been. Beijing for me as a student has been a bit mundane; Dunhuang was "gorgeously lonely," as Wendy has put it, but the trip was over-the-top extravagant. Maybe Hong Kong was just sooner in my journey and more solitary in living conditions.
Or maybe the fact that I was teaching just led to a frantic sort of quietude and sense of purpose. I wrote in my notepad then, on the same page I got my McDull On The Peak stamp: "If you treat teaching as art, then it may be possible I was born for it."
Shanghai was okay too, now that I think about it, because we were really on our own for that week, which was a bit frightening. It is always the outward frame of the poverty line of a place that most interests and enchants me. I can forget the search for the strip club and the bars, but deeply printed in my heart even now is the homeless man singing Tibetan hymns, his voice resonating through an underpass, otherworldly. I wish I had taken a picture of any number of communal water taps for running water that come out of a spigot along the sidewalk for washing bowls and utensils of personal use. I wish I could paint the dusty sight of a woman drawing water from an actual well in the city. There is a small community of artists on The Bund who draw amazing portraits of tourists for dirt cheap, each of them practicing and comparing with the one they call 大哥--big brother. It sounds romantic, and it does offer a spectacular sort of awareness of life; but then the poor grandmothers with crying babies come begging for money, and you realize the artists are only skilled workers, you realize we all have to learn to live somewhow, you realize the colors beneath this waterfront are not so clean after all.
There are so many beautiful distractions.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
10.18: first day alone in a while
Today: fried scorpions; imperial gardens; paint; music (Chinese blues!); equipoise; solidarity.
People kept asking me for directions or about the train or subway system. That tels me I've been spending way too much time with white people here and now it's time to, for once, blend in.
At the Beishan Gongyuan north of the Forbidden City (along my journey on foot across the heart of Beijing from East to West), I hid from tourists and followed the green to less-beaten paths. I came upon a class of schoolchildren, probably 9 years old, each one sitting in front of a potted plant and sketching. The sight was at once mundane and unusual and full of quiet pride.
the imperial garden...
Chinese boy grins, beaming--
taking a piss
The 福声 music store (translated as Free Sound, but it should actually be Blessed Sound) was the perfect end to an epic day on the move. This time, the conversation in my broken Mandarin was not rushed by corporate need, or judged by cultural standard; it was just music, and sounds, and communication. The store owner helped me find some funk and blues albums. I'm sure he understood at the moment when I just broke into a smile at the esound of a "Hideaway" cover. This has been such a long search, and something inside of me has been validated by the fact that blues and singing guitar solos do exist in this language too.
The young 服务员 with the pouty lips who takes orders at the noodle place on campus was frowning at lunchtime and again at the same window six hours later when I came back. On the one hand, there is no racial segregation of labor jobs on the mainland like in Hong Kong (Filipinos) and America (Mexicans), so there might actually be some sense of kinship if not respect for workers here. On the other hand, the jobs are just as much dead ends and "careers" for a lifetime of repetition and function. I want to talk to her, to understand her and that forebearance around the shape of her mouth. But somehow I don't think 你好 is enough to start from. I'd like to genuinely begin with "My name is..." and really mean it, though it seems to me I don't even understand all that about myself just yet.
People kept asking me for directions or about the train or subway system. That tels me I've been spending way too much time with white people here and now it's time to, for once, blend in.
At the Beishan Gongyuan north of the Forbidden City (along my journey on foot across the heart of Beijing from East to West), I hid from tourists and followed the green to less-beaten paths. I came upon a class of schoolchildren, probably 9 years old, each one sitting in front of a potted plant and sketching. The sight was at once mundane and unusual and full of quiet pride.
the imperial garden...
Chinese boy grins, beaming--
taking a piss
The 福声 music store (translated as Free Sound, but it should actually be Blessed Sound) was the perfect end to an epic day on the move. This time, the conversation in my broken Mandarin was not rushed by corporate need, or judged by cultural standard; it was just music, and sounds, and communication. The store owner helped me find some funk and blues albums. I'm sure he understood at the moment when I just broke into a smile at the esound of a "Hideaway" cover. This has been such a long search, and something inside of me has been validated by the fact that blues and singing guitar solos do exist in this language too.
The young 服务员 with the pouty lips who takes orders at the noodle place on campus was frowning at lunchtime and again at the same window six hours later when I came back. On the one hand, there is no racial segregation of labor jobs on the mainland like in Hong Kong (Filipinos) and America (Mexicans), so there might actually be some sense of kinship if not respect for workers here. On the other hand, the jobs are just as much dead ends and "careers" for a lifetime of repetition and function. I want to talk to her, to understand her and that forebearance around the shape of her mouth. But somehow I don't think 你好 is enough to start from. I'd like to genuinely begin with "My name is..." and really mean it, though it seems to me I don't even understand all that about myself just yet.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
10.14 by now -- past midnight
Here's part two from Dunhuang
We were almost pickpocketed and/or kidnapped by some English-speaking locals that Mathew got too friendly with at the night market. When Sara disappeared (to buy fruit, it turns out) I really woke up and got on the situation. I'm glad that I can trust myself to do that now. These guys were going to show us a bar, but meanwhile calling up all sorts of people we ddn't know to meet us there and bumping up against us as we walked. They offered us cigarettes that they didn't smoke themselves.
I have smoken three cigarettes now. The first was marlboro over a beer in Shanghai; I still didn't understand its appeal afterwards. The other two were Cloves in Dunhuang (a special and a black), which are so sweet on the lips. But I am a martial artist and smarter than to continue. I'll try the vanilla Cloves while stil here, and then I'm done. My life needs levity, not mist.
During our $500-US Bing dinner on the rooftop, Shen Laoshi taught us about the actual education system in China. There is a test here before high school that determines whether you'll be college-bound or vocational. It's a one-shot deal. There's no law to this effect, but the importance of the test is so recognized that construction work stops around the days of it; parents get a few days off from work; a student with the ticket to the testing room can call for a police motorcycle if stuck in traffic; and sick students are brought in on hospital beds with IVs to take the test. Something like only half the students make it to the college-bound track. Many commit suicide over this.
The students I've spoken with at Beida are remarkable, ethical, earnest, and far more intelligent and learned than most at Stanford, comparatively. But they live in rooms with four to eight bunk beds, share public squatter bathrooms, and have to go to a different building for boiled water and showers. Their tuition includes 40 showers for the year, with 5 minutes of hot water each time; any more, and they pay per visit. "中国不容易," Shen Laoshi said. It is a matter of resources; haves and have-nots all over again.
Every decision I've ever made suddenly seemed frivolous when she explained that this is the reason so many people emigrate to America or Canada or Europe: not because they need or want to or can even afford it, but for their children's sake, for a safer route of education. This is my story. There is so much about our family's small histories that I am slowly growing up to understand now.
And here, meanwhile, I'm caught up in useless gossip with our groups in school. I went to a beginners' swing dancing lesson at a jazz club in Beijing. I take walks, and I draw pictures, and all the while I hardly see outside the bubble.
I also decided today to not continue on for my black belt when I get home to the states. This is exactly the opposite of what I wrote earlier, but now that I admit this in words I can't hide from its truth any longer. The reasons are clear to me, and not intended to be written down. But I know it's right now because I felt and realized the decision more than I made it. And I'll be okay, and still myself. I'm not running away or shunning. In simplest terms, this is love but I can't have marriage. I pray Sensei can understand that. Sometimes it takes a trip across th world to realize things you've been too afraid to know.
We were almost pickpocketed and/or kidnapped by some English-speaking locals that Mathew got too friendly with at the night market. When Sara disappeared (to buy fruit, it turns out) I really woke up and got on the situation. I'm glad that I can trust myself to do that now. These guys were going to show us a bar, but meanwhile calling up all sorts of people we ddn't know to meet us there and bumping up against us as we walked. They offered us cigarettes that they didn't smoke themselves.
I have smoken three cigarettes now. The first was marlboro over a beer in Shanghai; I still didn't understand its appeal afterwards. The other two were Cloves in Dunhuang (a special and a black), which are so sweet on the lips. But I am a martial artist and smarter than to continue. I'll try the vanilla Cloves while stil here, and then I'm done. My life needs levity, not mist.
During our $500-US Bing dinner on the rooftop, Shen Laoshi taught us about the actual education system in China. There is a test here before high school that determines whether you'll be college-bound or vocational. It's a one-shot deal. There's no law to this effect, but the importance of the test is so recognized that construction work stops around the days of it; parents get a few days off from work; a student with the ticket to the testing room can call for a police motorcycle if stuck in traffic; and sick students are brought in on hospital beds with IVs to take the test. Something like only half the students make it to the college-bound track. Many commit suicide over this.
The students I've spoken with at Beida are remarkable, ethical, earnest, and far more intelligent and learned than most at Stanford, comparatively. But they live in rooms with four to eight bunk beds, share public squatter bathrooms, and have to go to a different building for boiled water and showers. Their tuition includes 40 showers for the year, with 5 minutes of hot water each time; any more, and they pay per visit. "中国不容易," Shen Laoshi said. It is a matter of resources; haves and have-nots all over again.
Every decision I've ever made suddenly seemed frivolous when she explained that this is the reason so many people emigrate to America or Canada or Europe: not because they need or want to or can even afford it, but for their children's sake, for a safer route of education. This is my story. There is so much about our family's small histories that I am slowly growing up to understand now.
And here, meanwhile, I'm caught up in useless gossip with our groups in school. I went to a beginners' swing dancing lesson at a jazz club in Beijing. I take walks, and I draw pictures, and all the while I hardly see outside the bubble.
I also decided today to not continue on for my black belt when I get home to the states. This is exactly the opposite of what I wrote earlier, but now that I admit this in words I can't hide from its truth any longer. The reasons are clear to me, and not intended to be written down. But I know it's right now because I felt and realized the decision more than I made it. And I'll be okay, and still myself. I'm not running away or shunning. In simplest terms, this is love but I can't have marriage. I pray Sensei can understand that. Sometimes it takes a trip across th world to realize things you've been too afraid to know.
Monday, October 13, 2008
沙山心里
想像月球, 继续下去,
无论有空, 无论有眼,
都会知道, 晚上和平。
惟一咱们, 各面各心,
实在一起, 适应安静,
常过时间, 听着老天。
日出时候, 又是新天,
我们讨论, 还有活动,
已经忘了, 晚上方面。
想像月球, 记得朋友。
--
revision, 2/26/09, accounting in part for how things changed:
压顶月球，宿夕看天
等着日出，忘着世界
讨论春秋，宿夕扮演
唯一的话，各面各伈
有的友谊，好的心情
实在一起，适应安静
新天以后，还有责任
需要起飞，离开之间
抱着心目，抱着缘分
回国时候，看着月球
记得沙山，记得朋友
无论有空, 无论有眼,
都会知道, 晚上和平。
惟一咱们, 各面各心,
实在一起, 适应安静,
常过时间, 听着老天。
日出时候, 又是新天,
我们讨论, 还有活动,
已经忘了, 晚上方面。
想像月球, 记得朋友。
--
revision, 2/26/09, accounting in part for how things changed:
压顶月球，宿夕看天
等着日出，忘着世界
讨论春秋，宿夕扮演
唯一的话，各面各伈
有的友谊，好的心情
实在一起，适应安静
新天以后，还有责任
需要起飞，离开之间
抱着心目，抱着缘分
回国时候，看着月球
记得沙山，记得朋友
10.13 - back from Dunhuang on the sponsored Bing trip
My camera ran out of battery the first day, but I sketched the quiet motionlessness of things in this Gobi Desert town on the far end of the country, and I wrote my poems like ravens' scratches as the tour bus squeaked and jittered over 农村 roads.
The first stop was the Caves of Ten Thousand Buddhas (Mogao Grottoes), where centuries ago Western explorers deceived the guardian monk and stole sacred scriptures and even panels off of the cave walls. Many of the caves are closed off with regularity to preserve from deterioration by circulated carbon dioxide, but we got the special treatment from head security to have special caves unlocked. None of us had asked for this sort of pedestal.
1.
I can only imagine
the scaffolding
800 years ago:
paintbrushes, smell
of sunlight, dust and
prayer. On the ground
level, the eyes
of gods are scrached or chiseled
off. When we ask why,
the tour guide says heretics
and looks away. Another wall:
W. PAUCK
19 VII 37
like a kid's tree carving;
I scratch at my own eyes,
look for the light.
2.
The lounging Buddha
entering Nirvana, his foot
the size of myself,
red pigment faded
into the desert sand...
how long now
before the next lesson?
5.
I have studied this lotus sutra
and seen its manifestations
but never imagined it
with such need.
Leaving on the bus and thinking of the love and reverence put into those paintings, I decided to continue for my black belt when I return and wrote, "One of my greater moments of comfort and belonging is the fulfilling of potential and sharing in it."
From there, I slept until we went to the Jade Pass, the remains at the end of the Great Wall. It's much shorter here because if you can't get your camel over the small wall, you'll never make it across the desert anyway. I sat atop it and looked out at the dust of cracked earth crawling to the horizon, the bowl of clouds in the sky, the whole history of my people in the classical imagination.
This is the origin of wind. I heard it like coils of silk, straightening and unfurling, straightening and unfurling.
Then back to the bus: another haze of sleep and song.
the earth...
the sky...
hakuna matata
The next day, we stood over the ruins of the Yangguan Pass, where suddenly we were dots in a scape of dunes, where the red shades of earth along its curves foretold every sunset we'll ever know. here, the wind sounded like prayer beadss rolling. In some spots, it was the sound of a bird's wind; in others, the sound of secrets from another place.
And we rode camels and saw a muggy moon above the sand dunes before the sun went down, so textured it was like seeing Earth from another star.
This place was chosen for the Bing trip because of the moment in China Road when Rob Gifford is sitting on the rooftop of the fancy-ass hotel watching the sun set over the dunes with light instrumental music in the background. We stayed at that hotel, and watched the sun's first burst and last colors.
We could be silhouettes forever in a weightless world. See the smooth curves of our lines.
The first stop was the Caves of Ten Thousand Buddhas (Mogao Grottoes), where centuries ago Western explorers deceived the guardian monk and stole sacred scriptures and even panels off of the cave walls. Many of the caves are closed off with regularity to preserve from deterioration by circulated carbon dioxide, but we got the special treatment from head security to have special caves unlocked. None of us had asked for this sort of pedestal.
1.
I can only imagine
the scaffolding
800 years ago:
paintbrushes, smell
of sunlight, dust and
prayer. On the ground
level, the eyes
of gods are scrached or chiseled
off. When we ask why,
the tour guide says heretics
and looks away. Another wall:
W. PAUCK
19 VII 37
like a kid's tree carving;
I scratch at my own eyes,
look for the light.
2.
The lounging Buddha
entering Nirvana, his foot
the size of myself,
red pigment faded
into the desert sand...
how long now
before the next lesson?
5.
I have studied this lotus sutra
and seen its manifestations
but never imagined it
with such need.
Leaving on the bus and thinking of the love and reverence put into those paintings, I decided to continue for my black belt when I return and wrote, "One of my greater moments of comfort and belonging is the fulfilling of potential and sharing in it."
From there, I slept until we went to the Jade Pass, the remains at the end of the Great Wall. It's much shorter here because if you can't get your camel over the small wall, you'll never make it across the desert anyway. I sat atop it and looked out at the dust of cracked earth crawling to the horizon, the bowl of clouds in the sky, the whole history of my people in the classical imagination.
This is the origin of wind. I heard it like coils of silk, straightening and unfurling, straightening and unfurling.
Then back to the bus: another haze of sleep and song.
the earth...
the sky...
hakuna matata
The next day, we stood over the ruins of the Yangguan Pass, where suddenly we were dots in a scape of dunes, where the red shades of earth along its curves foretold every sunset we'll ever know. here, the wind sounded like prayer beadss rolling. In some spots, it was the sound of a bird's wind; in others, the sound of secrets from another place.
And we rode camels and saw a muggy moon above the sand dunes before the sun went down, so textured it was like seeing Earth from another star.
This place was chosen for the Bing trip because of the moment in China Road when Rob Gifford is sitting on the rooftop of the fancy-ass hotel watching the sun set over the dunes with light instrumental music in the background. We stayed at that hotel, and watched the sun's first burst and last colors.
We could be silhouettes forever in a weightless world. See the smooth curves of our lines.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
10.8: Life is a mellow night
I feel like you can spend a lifetime drawing pictures for every day,b ut the only one that would ever really matter is the one you intended solely fo rourself, to be kept hidden behind a drawer and gazed at secretly over the years.
Before I leave here, I'd like to paint one good poem in the classical style, vertically and swift with personality. I'll be sure to mention 友谊 because that is a valuable lesson I have been learning here. I still feel myself drawn back to Hong Kong, not even just for family but for the survivors left at KYP, for the language, for the heat. We make so much ado about love, happiness, freedom, purpose. But those are checklists, and with or without them we tend to go on living anyway. So why not live somewhere comfortable and fresh with memories, where there is music and bluntness in the language, where simply walking down the street can carry with it a full sense of expression.
What is the meaning or purpose of life? Years ago, sitting with our legs over the water at an Oakland park, Pierre told me it's expression. Too many people have told me it's God. My roommate here, before he moved out, said family. Michelle in Hong Kong said it's about feeling satisfied with where you are and what your'e doing. My language partner said it's to not have regrets. Pa Hua told me it's about being happy and letting others be happy. At the end of one drunken night in Shanghai, I asked everyone for their answer in one word before falling asleep. Heather said contribution. Eric's was advancement. Alex said masturbation. I said understanding.
And then the sun rises and we all have places to be. It is the bravest thing in the world for all of us to wake up in the mornings and move with some semblance of purpose before our questions have even begun to be answered.
有空油画, 有事有心, 有友有意。自由诗没有语言, 是生活的真工作。
你心里的内容有什么问题?
Before I leave here, I'd like to paint one good poem in the classical style, vertically and swift with personality. I'll be sure to mention 友谊 because that is a valuable lesson I have been learning here. I still feel myself drawn back to Hong Kong, not even just for family but for the survivors left at KYP, for the language, for the heat. We make so much ado about love, happiness, freedom, purpose. But those are checklists, and with or without them we tend to go on living anyway. So why not live somewhere comfortable and fresh with memories, where there is music and bluntness in the language, where simply walking down the street can carry with it a full sense of expression.
What is the meaning or purpose of life? Years ago, sitting with our legs over the water at an Oakland park, Pierre told me it's expression. Too many people have told me it's God. My roommate here, before he moved out, said family. Michelle in Hong Kong said it's about feeling satisfied with where you are and what your'e doing. My language partner said it's to not have regrets. Pa Hua told me it's about being happy and letting others be happy. At the end of one drunken night in Shanghai, I asked everyone for their answer in one word before falling asleep. Heather said contribution. Eric's was advancement. Alex said masturbation. I said understanding.
And then the sun rises and we all have places to be. It is the bravest thing in the world for all of us to wake up in the mornings and move with some semblance of purpose before our questions have even begun to be answered.
有空油画, 有事有心, 有友有意。自由诗没有语言, 是生活的真工作。
你心里的内容有什么问题?
10.7: sewing up clothes and youtubing
Music must certainly be about harmonies: the just-rightness and matching in the atmosphere. I've felt the driving need to listen to contemporary Chinese music lately, but the only two names I even know are pop stars like Jay Chou and Coco Lee. After four months now, I finally really miss my guitar and the feel of her strings.
Monday, October 6, 2008
10.6 - informal discussion with Beida students about dating, relationships, and sex
One of the girls from the Stanford side explained that she typically dates less Asian guys because across the board they seem to be less socially confident. That cuts deep, because it's true to those standards and says a lot about the cultural and social values that have been pressures all my life. The outgoing personality in this case means a loose personality, catering to finite fun and a whole lifestyle of entertainment. I've never been able to compete with that, and when I seriously tried to my freshman year, it disconnected me from the things I really care about.
The next time someone asks if my mother tried to raise us traditionally or as Americans, I will say that she kept me as Chinese as she could, and the rest has been up to me to get back to my roots.
Some of our group went out swing dancing at a western club tonight. I've seen plenty of white leaders and Chinese girls looking for the dance, but I haven't seen a Chinese man dancing in Beijing yet. I don't know about them, but I know why I'm not dancing with strangers.
I'm looking for celebrations that come in their own right and not from fear of the lonely night. I'm looking for music that stops people, and stories that warrant longer attention. I'm looking to belong, to myself for once.
swing dance
while I go
Home.
一定要记得你是在中国, 因为你是中国人。这是你的心里。
The next time someone asks if my mother tried to raise us traditionally or as Americans, I will say that she kept me as Chinese as she could, and the rest has been up to me to get back to my roots.
Some of our group went out swing dancing at a western club tonight. I've seen plenty of white leaders and Chinese girls looking for the dance, but I haven't seen a Chinese man dancing in Beijing yet. I don't know about them, but I know why I'm not dancing with strangers.
I'm looking for celebrations that come in their own right and not from fear of the lonely night. I'm looking for music that stops people, and stories that warrant longer attention. I'm looking to belong, to myself for once.
swing dance
while I go
Home.
一定要记得你是在中国, 因为你是中国人。这是你的心里。
10.5: before I sleep
My black belt is just as much about preserving the joys of my life now as it is about moving forward from them. The thing with clinging to the idea of continual motion and progress is that reaching the goal of htat progress can be a frightening thing. Distractions are part of the path. But to abandon the goal entirely is to nullify all progress and blur the way. There are no straight lines without endpoints.
night traffic,
burbling water, fluorescence...
blanket
night traffic,
burbling water, fluorescence...
blanket
Saturday, October 4, 2008
10.4 home (in beida) from shanghai
back to
single rooms
phone calls
an internet
of letters--
one umbrella
over every head;
fall.
single rooms
phone calls
an internet
of letters--
one umbrella
over every head;
fall.
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