The Wild East

New Location!

2009-09-02T21:53:00.000-07:00

Please go here to view new posts from The Wild East! http://thewildeast.posterous.com

Jobs for Everyone in China??

2009-08-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

If you read the NY Times, you may have come across this piece about "American Graduates Finding Jobs in China", which describes Shanghai and Beijing as paradises where recent graduates--denied entry into the job market at home in America--can not only easily and frequently find work, but also in positions of more responsibility than those they might have access to in the U.S. Of course, none of the fortunate youngsters interviewed in the article came to China knowing a lick of Chinese. Wonderful, huh?

What you might not have seen, unless you know where to look, is the response to the article on Danwei:

Danwei received email from two old China hand journalists yesterday regarding the New York Times story linked here:

Wise Hack A:

Here's one of those great stories that the ever lazy hack pack recycle every so often - floods of Yanks coming to China for jobs.

No evidence whatsoever for this but it gets churned out again every couple of years I note.

Wise Hack B:

Please please mention the NYT "no Mandarin required" article and what
an absolute crock of shit it is. Thanks.

Stan Abrams at China Hearsay concurs:

Sorry, that is some real skewed bullshit writing there.

For a more detailed response to the article, with practical and realistic advice on the subject, I suggest you read Shaun Rein's piece on Forbes.com. The bottom line:

One of the best ways to start a career in China is at a school. Apply for Mandarin language study for a semester, or see if you can get a job teaching English. That will get you a visa, you'll begin to learn the language and appreciate the culture, and, importantly, you'll begin to network and find out where the great job opportunities are.

Sound familiar?

Their dystopia is more Brave New World than 1984.

2009-08-27T00:30:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed I'm less active on Facebook these days. If you're reading this now, you may also have noticed that I'm very unactive on this blog. This is in part due to the increasingly stringent bonds the Chinese government is placing on the internet here. The latest round of crackdowns occurred in response to the unrest between Uighurs and Han Chinese in the western province Xinjiang--closely watched for its tendencies to express separatist desires...

Jeremy Goldkorn, head of the ever popular China-watcher website Danwei recently wrote a piece for The Telegraph about the Chinese internet and its controls:

Savvy Chinese Internet users know how to use proxy servers and other technologies to get around the Internet blocks: Chinese government Net censorship works not because it's impossible to open websites the government does not like, but because it's inconvenient to access those sites.

So most Chinese net users, who go online primarily for entertainment, don't notice and don't particularly care about censorship, as long as they can chat to their friends, play games, listen to music and watch videos. Their dystopia is more Brave New World than 1984.

Goldkorn reported the bold-faced line was unfortunately omitted by The Telegraph's editors. This is a recommended read for an idea about internet here. It takes a deal of proxying and VPN-ing and any loophole that works before it's eradicated to get to certain websites. In some cases, we just get use to not going to certain websites anymore. YouTube seems a long way from here these days. Facebook's block has made me renew my efforts to circumvent the internet controls, as I rely so heavily on it for simple communication with friends.

Illness and Recovery

2009-05-11T21:32:00.000-07:00

This *Will* Happen to You. by "Kendra":

Traveling in China is one thing, but deciding to live here is another thing entirely. During my rather lengthy time in China, I've met a huge array of expatriats that all go through the same process on their route to being psychologically adapted to life in the PRC.

All of them. One for one. Every single. Each and every. Myself included. Same process. I call it "The China Curve", and I'm curious to see who else has had the experience, or, strangely, if anyone has not. And it goes like this:

Months 1-3: Fascination. Your mama taught you that you live in a big wide world, where all people of all nations should hold hands in peace and harmony. There is so much beauty buried in the cracks of this exotic nation! So much fascinating culture, so much that is different. Every day's a new adventure, and you're damn proud of yourself for your spirited nature and culturally tolerant behavior. You don't understand the bitter rantings of those who've been here longer. That will never, ever be you. If you leave now, you'll never come back, and you will forever think of China in wistful, unrealistic terms.

Months 3-7: Somehow, you've become a borderline racist, and some of your days are spent in states of rage, your nights in misery. You don't know how it happened, and you really don't care. The mere thought of going to buy a pair of socks fills you with defeated dread. The shoving and pushing, the haggling. You scream at someone in public and feel first justified, then vindictive, then stupid. The simplest things are so *difficult*. You cling to the few friends you've made, though your social circle hasn't solidified, and you know in your heart you'd never be hanging out with these types of people back home. No one here knows how to eat breakfast... god, you'd kill for a decent breakfast. You tell all your friends you're going home, and you can't bloody wait. If you leave now, you'll likely never come back.

Months 8-12: Here, the path splits. You either:
1) Go home with the intention of never coming back only to discover that while your life has been upturned, your friends are doing exactly what they were doing the day that you left. Their lives, you think, will always be this way, while yours... well, you don't fit in anymore. All your sentences start with "In China...", but no one's really listening to you. It's like you unwittingly joined some kind of brotherhood, and however hard you try, you can't break the ties you made. You start plotting your return, and wonder if you're a masochist.

2) Stick it out like a real veteran, waiting excitedly for your one-year visit home. But after the first week back, when you've eaten your fill of butter and cheese, you realize that your friends are all doing exactly what they were doing the day you left. All your sentences start with "In China...", but no one's really listening to you. You realize you can't wait to get back on the plane, and wonder if you'll ever feel at home anywhere in the world ever again.

THE RETURN

You set foot on Chinese soil. At the airport and around town, you watch all the first-timers and tourists with hidden self-satisfaction and a little pity. You easily navigate the hustle and bustle, speak a few words of Chinese to your cab driver, and experience a deep contentment. Somehow, the friends you made and never really expected to keep have solidified into life-long pals, while your friends from highschool and college recede into sameness and nothingness. After so much emotional investiture and hard work, somehow, this has become Your Country.

And wherever you go from that day onwards, China will be in your blood.

On the night of September 1, 2007 I sat in the warm heat of a Memphis summer night among the lawn-chair powwow outside the Hills’ house in Cordova. Having returned just hours before from eight months abroad in the People’s Republic of China, I was strangely more than willing to entertain discussion about my experiences there despite having been traveling nearly twenty-four hours straight. Strange because my body and mind should have been weak. Stranger because for the last eight months, I had rarely broached the subject at all with parents or friends. Had you asked me that night (which someone must have) if I planned to go back to China, I would have hesitated in ambivalence. I would have thought, No, never, but I would not have had the courage to say so. Instead, I’m sure I said, We’ll see. or I have to see how I feel after some time. Right now, I’m happy to be home.

I do not think I was unprepared for China. While I studied and dreamed of ancient times, I read plenty of articles and watched many films about the issues and struggles of the modern moment in the mainland. I thought I knew it would not be pretty. That parts would be backward. That culture would be different and—shocking? Culture shock, it seems, is not something you can prepare for, despite pre-departure packets outlining symptoms and stages. Culture shock is not freaking out about squat-toilets. It’s an infection more akin to a mental illness, a side effect of some strange medicine.

Less than a week after my arrival in Memphis, I found myself back in Middlebury among old friends and classmates. I felt reticent and a little overwhelmed. I could understand everything everyone was saying. My best friends were there, to whom I ashamedly had maybe written a sentence or two if anything at all. I had not heard any of their voices in eight months—longer for some. Strangely I felt closer than ever to them. I felt warm in their company.

For most of my life, I have been fiercely individualistic. I felt constrained in group projects, impatient when others called on me for help. In China this became my undoing. I established myself early on as an independent force that travels on his own, that doesn’t depend on slow-moving, cumbersome groups of foreigners to explore the nearby restaurant, alley, or temple. When culture shock started to seep in, I realized I was alone. How could I bother these people now? I buried myself in books. My ipod’s earplugs were always in my ears. My computer was always connected to Facebook. I was shielded as best as could be against any interaction with the locals.

Underclassmen asked me about China. Was it amazing? I bet you had so much fun! I laughed and began to explain. I bet your Chinese is awesome now. Is Hangzhou nice? Did you make lots of friends? How were the roommates? I somehow perfected my diatribe of negative feelings about China into a 2 minute speech that shocked and awed any unassuming young Chinese students, turning their excitement into bewildered horror. It’s hard. It’s lonely. Everything’s off. Everyone’s out to get you. It’s dirty. You will be unhappy. It wasn’t amazing. It was not so much fun. My Chinese is awesome now, but I never made any friends. Hangzhou is boring. The roommates were juvenile and annoying. After a while, I thought I was going to die any day and never make it home. I have a hard time lying.

I talked with the head of the department shortly after my return to Middlebury. He smiled at my confusion and emotional ambivalence. That’s why we don’t let you go for more than a semester. Everyone hates it. It’s only after you come back that you start to miss it and become ready to go back. My thoughts lingered on my last memory of China: hazy sunrise in Beijing. My last days were spent in Beijing waiting for my flight home. Things felt full-circle. I had survived. I had randomly reconnected with old friends—ships passing in the night. I wondered during the silent cab ride to the airport, absorbing the pink-lit city around me—would I ever come back to this place? It becomes a blessing—or a burden. It becomes a part of you for the rest of your life that others won’t understand, he said.

After recounting a short China story one wintry night in early spring, my friend mentioned that it seemed I rarely told stories about China. I felt strange. They’re hard to tell, China stories. You have to explain so many different things, and you see people’s attention drifting so soon. By this time my most visited websites had become China blogs and vlogs. By this time, when I was asked about China—I told them it was hard, and I told them it was ridiculous. The food is so good. I tried to leave it at that. I gave them the advice I never took.

In late summer the smell of cilantro being picked was as strong as a bowl of Lanzhou pulled-noodles sitting in front of me. There is a lot of time to think working on a farm. There is a lot of time to talk working on a farm. Weeding, hoeing, picking, washing, sorting, packing. In China… this. In China… that. Green mountains and small towns. Good work. Good food. I could have stayed. But I’m young. I needed adventure. I needed real Chinese food again. I needed that part of me to be understood.

An Analysis of Beijing Traffic

2009-05-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I'm sorry I've turned into a terrible blogger. I hope I will make this up to you. I cannot promise such things you.

But here's something to interest you for now:

Beijing Traffic Lesson: Left Turn

Traffic rules-mayhem* is one of the more fascinating-bewildering-exasperating** aspects of China. I continuously assert that traffic in Beijing is comparatively tame to other places I've been in China, namely Hangzhou and Kunming. In Hangzhou taxi drivers regularly challenged oncoming traffic in opposing lanes to pass cars (in speeds in excess of 40 mph). I dreaded taking taxis in the city for the activation of danger-response chemicals in my body. In Beijing on the other hand, taxi drivers usually do not drive in speeds excess of 30mph, and everything moves in a generally more leisurely fashion. But do not mistake leisured pace for order. Crossing the streets demands awareness of maybe 4-5 traffic flow patterns--and that's when you have a green walk-light. You have to watch for right-turning vehicles on both sides, left-turners, u-turners, rogue bicycles/scooters/motorbikes crossing when they don't have the light, etc. And don't forget not to collide with any pedestrians or two/three-wheel traffic moving in the opposite direction.

* I think I'll coin this compound word for describing aspects of China...because it is really a place of duality and contradiction, where there are rules, there is also mayhem.

** another compound

Two Holidays: New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day

2009-03-05T02:13:00.000-08:00

Chinese New Year 2 from cui ruide on Vimeo.

My batteries were dying just as it was going off. I hope 5 seconds gives you some idea...

D-22 Hedgehog (2) from cui ruide on Vimeo.

Rock band Hedgehog 刺猬 playing a packed crowd on Valentine's Night at D-22.

Snow in Beijing

2009-02-17T00:09:00.000-08:00

Today it snowed in Beijing, and I walked a mile for a taxi. Apparently Beijing is the one place where a 20% chance of precipitation means it will precipitate, as it did with today's morning flurries and last week's afternoon drizzle. These two occasions I suppose signal a pause in the 100+ days of drought afflicting the North China Plain.

Other things I don't understand: how so many Chinese men go without hats in this winter weather. And why the subway is sardine-packed at 2:30pm on a Monday. Why are these people not working on my day off?

The holidays are at last over. The fifteen days of explosions ended with one final night on which I dodged low-exploding mortar shells, roman candle snipers, and the ra-tat-tat fire of those long ribbons of crackers. The Mandarin Oriental hotel burned to its skeleton in a fiery saturnalia that night.

The winter camps are over, and now we're starting the new semester. From now on, things are supposed to be "normal."

Archived

2009-02-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

I happened to make the discovery the other day that my senior work has finally been digitally archived, and to my delight, they successfully pieced together the 4 or 5 separate documents that when printed out and placed together made the entire project in hard-copy form (this was a necessary evil for two reasons: page numbering and a hard-to-explain printing issue). So now, should you desire, you are free under Creative Commons license to download a PDF version of "Studies of Women and Love," Yuan Zhen's Yanshi: Twenty-Three Translations. Please excuse the complicated title and subtitles, it looked better on paper. For a more accurate abstract (as opposed to the first paragraph as quoted on the archive page), I'll draw out one paragraph from the introduction:

In the twenty-three poems here translated, we find a world of flowers—one filled with the fragile beauty of maidens—young but fading, the enchanting figures of dancers and goddesses, close description of the ornaments they wear, the heartaches of parted lovers, and perhaps most poignantly: tender portraits of one woman left in the past. These yànshī are most accurately described as a study of women in all of their aspects, complimented with the personal meditations and experiences of one of their greatest admirers—Yuan Zhen himself.

And for a taste, here is one of the translations published in a campus art/writing magazine called The Sweatervest:

閨晚
紅裙委塼堦
玉瓜剺朱橘
素臆光如砑
明瞳艷凝溢
調絃不成曲
學書徒弄筆
夜色侵洞房
香煙透簾出

Her Room at Night

Her red skirt is yielded to the bricks of the floor.
There's jade melon and cut tangerine.
White silk 'cross her breast shines as if polished,
and her bright pupils' beauty is heavy, brimming.
She tweaks a string, but doesn't make a tune;
tries calligraphy, vainly playing with the brush.
Night-color invades the deeper room,
incense smoke passing through the screen and out.

Beijing, Beijing

2009-02-02T05:11:00.001-08:00

I’m a few days short of a month in-country, and here I am only now writing an introductory post. My time home in Memphis was at first difficult, readjusting to familial cohabitation, suburban lifestyle, and discovering Memphis life for a post-21 post-grad. Ultimately, I came to find a face of Memphis I suspected may have existed, but which I had never before experienced myself. The winter holidays afforded me a chance to reconnect with old friends and glimpse something of what adulthood in Memphis could be like. The first days of 2009 found me reeling not from a New Year’s hangover, but from an overexposure to what must’ve been the smokiest bar east of the Mississippi that night—the endearingly decrepit P&H on Madison. My physical infirmity was matched by a mental semblance, in which my January 3rd date of departure to Beijing seemed a horrible mistake. For so many reasons, I found myself unable to sleep the night before my 6:00 a.m. departure, but morning did come, and I did embark on a generally sleep-deprived but sleepy 22ish hours of travel. The journey’s culinary and celluloid aspects do not merit mention.

January 4th found me more than 12 hours in the future, and arrived to Beijing International Airport, still squeaky clean and gleaming from those glorious August days you may have remembered everyone talking about. I was met by “Andy,” a 30-something Harbin native and one of the Chinese teachers at the private, extracurricular English school I will be working at for the next year, E-Plus. A bus ride and taxi later, I found myself in an overheated and windowless 4-star hotel room, attempting to remain at least in a shallow REM state from the hour of 8:00 p.m. onward. I eventually rose at 6:00 a.m., figuring that the city would be honking and alive in the early morning light. Not having a window, however, I was surprised to find upon exiting the hotel that it was in fact still dark and absent of honking or life outside.

Nonetheless, I headed for the small supermarket around the corner I had found the night before. To my delight, this small chaoshi (literally “supermarket”) had a kitchen in it preparing my favorite breakfast item from my previous sojourn in Beijing, a jidan guanbing, best described as an egg-pancake, slathered with a salty sauce and spicy sauce, served folded with some suspicious lettuce. It was not long before I had collected a complete breakfast of water, instant coffee, yogurt, and the glorious egg-pancake. It was then, however, that I was informed that the store had not technically opened yet, and none of the cashiers had money to cash me out. I muddled about before some manager-type finally came up front with some money to ring me up. In my suffocating room, I quickly enjoyed some Nescafe and yogurt along with China Central Television’s stalwart English-language option: CCTV 9. I reemerged sometime later into the now honking and alive Beijing, lit by early morning light. As I made my way down large avenues toward the suspected location of an internet café, the doubts of previous days were absent. Somehow, that slight haze in the air, the cacophony of morning traffic outside an elementary school, and the unnerving chill of winter on the North China Plain aroused in me a sense of calm and nostalgia. This was China, and it seemed unreal that I was both suddenly here again and that I had left two years ago.

In the four weeks since that moment, I have settled somewhat into a capital city of an estimated 19ish million that is both distinctly Chinese and international—with denizens representing not only every part of China, but probably every country in the world, all the while maintaining a uniquely individual character and culture of its own. I think most everyone who has lived in Beijing for some period of time will, if not praise it, at least concede that this city has an individual character and something of a special charm despite its harsh environmental circumstance. Bitterly cold and dry winters are juxtaposed with gruelingly muggy and hot summers, all the while under threat of sandstorms from the encroaching Gobi Desert and devastating air pollution. The city manages to mingle century-old history and some of China’s most well-known tourist sites with internationally recognized adventures in modern architecture. Between gleaming skyscrapers, hide aged hutong lanes, grid-like, winding alleys of single-story, traditional housing—growing fewer and fewer under the wrecking ball of progress. In some you find a pausing silence and insulation from the bustle outside, attracting the glances of old men and women walking small dogs or various Beijingers carrying their groceries home. Others are populated by a noticeably more international and younger crowd, home to many of the hipper stores and small bars.

I spent 4-5 weeks in Beijing in the first months of 2007 at the CET Janterm program, and my first few weeks back has largely been a re-familiarization and rediscovery of the city. I have returned to many of the restaurants and entertainment spots I haunted while studying here, reliving old memories and reuniting with old classmates that are here working now or passing through on break for Chinese New Year (Spring Festival). My new coworkers have also shared their discoveries and my new explorations including such places as a hidden Mongolian bar with a horse-head fiddle player, throat-singing, and beautiful songs. China is a place of coincidences, and my first weeks in Beijing have only given me new encounters to add to the tally, including randomly running into the current group of Middlebury students studying abroad at one bar and bumping into a Middlebury grad a year ahead of me in a café on the east side. There has been no shortage of things to do outside of work whether it’s food, music, culture, or simply good company. Now if only I can start forcing myself to read my Chinese novel I picked up and get in the hang of this teaching thing…

Throat Singing, a Horse-Head Fiddle, and Balloons

2009-01-17T02:10:00.000-08:00

GiYan - Matouqin and Throat Singing from cui ruide on Vimeo.

GiYan - Matouqin and Lin Lang Singing from cui ruide on Vimeo.

Beijing Balloons from cui ruide on Vimeo.

President-Elect Àobāmǎ

2008-11-13T14:55:00.000-08:00

Sorry for getting this up kinda late:

ChinaSMACK, following the presidential win of Barack Obama, put up this post which has a video of 奥巴马　(Àobāmǎ - Obama)'s acceptance speech with Chinese subtitles and translations of Chinese netizens' response to the speech. They vary between admiration for the speech and America, the excellent translation into Chinese, rally-cries for Chinese patriotism in response, and words of hope or speculation about what will come in light of this.To quote a few:

"A peace-bringing president. His has Chinese relatives, so he will be good towards our China. I hope him taking office can make relations between China and the United States like China and Pakistan. Then we would be brothers!!"

"Such high character. So good. When can China be like this?"

"I get angry when I see this kind of mentality. Sure, his speaking is not bad, but should you not think about which country you belong to? Hearing this kind of speech, seeing another country’s citizens moved/touched, what should we do? We should work hard for our country, defeat/beat America, and support our own country, right?"

"Too 'TM'* inspirational, this speech.
My blood boiled."
*Short for 他妈的　（tāmāde - lit. "his mother's..", meaning along the lines of "fucking"/"shit"--"too fucking inspirational")

Values Americans Live By

2008-11-05T18:16:00.001-08:00

In the weeks preceding the night of November 4th, when we learned Barack Obama will be the next President of the Unites States, the media was pervaded by all the could-bes, would-bes, maybes...all the whispered words of wonder at the possibility, buzzing around the polls of late October. Among these, Nicholas Krist of the New York Times brought up the the influence an increasingly likely election of Obama would have on the American image around the world. To illustrate the power of this statement, he related a short anecdote:

The other day I had a conversation with a Beijing friend and I mentioned that Barack Obama was leading in the presidential race:

She: Obama? But he’s the black man, isn’t he?

Me: Yes, exactly.

She: But surely a black man couldn’t become president of the United States?

Me: It looks as if he’ll be elected.

She: But president? That’s such an important job! In America, I thought blacks were janitors and laborers.

Me: No, blacks have all kinds of jobs.

She: What do white people think about that, about getting a black president? Are they upset? Are they angry?

Me: No, of course not! If Obama is elected, it’ll be because white people voted for him.

[Long pause.]

She: Really? Unbelievable! What an amazing country!

Today, November 5th, the New York Times shows us reactions from around the world at Obama's successful election to the office of President. Smiling children, American flag waving, jubilation. This is a momentous event, and I am mesmerized by the intensity American politics are followed and celebrated by those beyond our borders. The BBC has its own dedicated section to the election that rivals that of any domestic news source. When have reports of UK parliamentary elections ever been delivered, blow by blow on an American news outlet? The power of both the American nation and its image is certainly something to give pause. I for one am happy that people seem to be waving the American flag with smiles.

Talking of American image and American identity leads me to my own anecdote. The fall before I set out for China, I was sent a packet of pre-departure materials and information. Among the leaflets about the program I would attend, a study abroad magazine, and various other fliers about culture shock and how to live in China, was a page containing Values Americans Live By (written by L. Robert Kohls). It's interesting to read about one's own culture from an external point-of-view. I read these with curious interest at the time, and I later came to appreciate the qualities of America more and more as I lived abroad. While I always had pride in my country, my time abroad made me a patriot, I believe. In the throes of politics and partisanship, it's not hard to exclaim with incredulity at the other side, but I assure you--red or blue, we have something special here. God Bless America. I hope you'll enjoy reading this; somethings you might agree with, others you might not. Some of it I believe is particularly important today.

The Values Americans Live By
by L. Robert Kohls

Most Americans would have a difficult time telling you, specifically, what the values are that Americans live by. They have never given the matter much thought.
Even if Americans had considered this question, they would probably, in the end, decide not to answer in terms of a definitive list of values. The reason for this decision is itself one very American value—their belief that every individual is so unique that the same list of values could never be applied to all, or even most, of their fellow citizens.
Although Americans may think of themselves as being more varied and unpredictable than they actually are, it is significant that they think they are. Americans tend to think they have been only slightly influenced by family, church or schools. In the end, each believes, "I personally chose which values I want to live my own life by."
Despite this self-evaluation, a foreign anthropologist could observe Americans and produce a list of common values that would fit most Americans. The list of typically American values would stand in sharp contrast to the values commonly held by the people of many other countries.
We, the staff of the Washington International Center, have been introducing thousands of international visitors to life in the United States for more than a third of a century. This has caused us to try to look at Americans through the eyes of our visitors. We feel confident that the values listed here describe most (but not all) Americans.
Furthermore, we can say that if the foreign visitor really understood how deeply ingrained these 13 values are in Americans, he or she would then be able to understand 95% of American actions—action that might otherwise appear strange or unbelievable when evaluated from the perspective of the foreigner’s own society and its values.
The different behaviors of a people or a culture make sense only when seen through the basic beliefs, assumptions and values of that particular group. When you encounter an action, or hear a statement in the United States that surprises you, try to see it as an expression of one or more of the values listed here. For example, when you ask Americans for directions to get to a particular address in their own city, they may explain, in great detail, how you can get there on your own, but may never even consider walking two city blocks with you to lead you to the place. Some foreign visitors have interpreted this sort of action as showing Americans’ "unfriendliness." We would suggest, instead, that the self-help concept (value number 6 on our list), is so strong in Americans that they firmly believe that no adult would ever want, even temporarily, to be dependent on another. Also, their future orientation (value 8) makes Americans think it is better to prepare you to find other addresses on your own in the future.
Before proceeding to the list itself, we should also point out that Americans see all of these values as very positive ones. They are not aware, for example, that the people in many Third World countries view change (value 2) as negative or threatening. In fact, all 13 of these American values are judged by many of the word’s citizens as negative and undesirable. Therefore, it is not enough simply to familiarize yourself with these values. You must also, so far as possible, consider them without the negative or derogatory connotation that they might have for you, based on your own experience and cultural identity.
It is important to state emphatically that our purpose in providing you with this list of the most important American values is not to convert you, the foreign visitor, to our values. We couldn’t achieve that goal even if we wanted to, and we don’t want to. We simply want to help you understand the Americans with whom you will be relating—from their own value system rather that from yours.

L. Robert Kohls, Executive Director
The Washington International Center
Washington, D.C.
April 1984

1. PERSONAL CONTROL OVER THE ENVIRONMENT
Americans no longer believe in the power of Fate, and they have come to look at people who do as being backward, primitive, or hopelessly naïve. To be call "fatalistic" is one of the worst criticisms one can receive in the American context; to an American, it means one is superstitious and lazy, unwilling to take any initiative in bringing about improvement.
In the United States, people consider it normal and right that Man should control Nature, rather than the other way around. More specifically, people believe every single individual should have control over whatever in the environment might potentially affect him or her. The problems of one’s life are not seen as having resulted from bad luck as much as having come from one’s laziness in pursuing a better life. Furthermore, it is considered normal that anyone should look out for his or her own self-interests first and foremost.
Most Americans find it impossible to accept that there are some things that lie beyond the power of humans to achieve. And Americans have literally gone to the moon, because they refused to accept earthly limitations.
Americans seem to be challenged, even compelled, to do, by one means or another (and often at great cost) what seven-eighths of the world is certain cannot be done.

2. CHANGE
In the American mind, change is seen as an indisputably good condition. Change is strongly linked to development, improvement, progress, and growth. Many older, more traditional cultures consider change as a disruptive, destructive force, to be avoided if at all possible. Instead of change, such societies value stability, continuity, tradition, and a rich and ancient heritage—none of which are valued very much in the United States.
These first two values—the belief that we can do anything and the belief that any change is good—together with an American belief in the virtue of hard work and the belief that each individual has a responsibility to do the best he or she can do have helped Americans achieve some great accomplishments. So whether these beliefs are true is really irrelevant; what is important is that Americans have considered them to be true and have acted as if they were, thus, in effect, causing them to happen.

3. TIME AND ITS CONTROL
Time is, for the average American, of utmost importance. To the foreign visitor, Americans seem to be more concerned with getting things accomplished on time (according to a predetermined schedule) than they are with developing deep interpersonal relations. Schedules, for the American, are meant to be planned and then followed in the smallest detail.
It may seem to you that most Americans are completely controlled by the little machines they wear on their wrists, cutting their discussions off abruptly to make it to their next appointment on time.
Americans’ language is filled with references to time, giving a clear indication of how much it is valued. Time is something to be "on," to be "kept," "filled," "saved," "used," "spent," "wasted," "lost," "gained," "planned," "given," "made the most of," even "killed."
The international visitor soon learns that it is considered very rude to be late—even by 10 minutes—for an appointment in the United States. (Whenever it is absolutely impossible to be on time, you should phone ahead and tell the person you have been unavoidably detained and will be a half hour—or whatever—late.)
Time is so valued in America, because by considering time to be important one can clearly accomplish more that if one "wastes" time and does not keep busy. This philosophy has proven its worth. It has enabled Americans to be extremely productive, and productivity itself is highly valued in the United States. Many American proverbs stress the value in guarding our time, using it wisely, setting and working toward specific goals, and even expending our time and energy today so that the fruits of our labor may be enjoyed at a later time. (This latter concept is called "delayed gratification.")

4. EQUALITY/EGALITARIANISM
Equality is, for Americans, one of their most cherished values. This concept is so important for Americans that they have even given it a religious basis. They say all people have been "created equal." Most Americans believe that God views all humans alike without regard to intelligence, physical condition or economic status. In secular terms this belief is translated into the assertion that all people have an equal opportunity to succeed in life. Americans differ in opinion about how to make this ideal into a reality. Yet virtually all agree that equality is an important civic and social goal.
The equality concept often makes Americans seem strange to foreign visitors. Seven-eighths of the world feels quite differently. To them, rank and status and authority are seen as much more desirable considerations—even if they personally happen to find themselves near the bottom of the social order. Class and authority seem to give people in those other societies a sense of security and certainty. People outside the United States consider it reassuring to know, from birth, who they are and where they fit into the complex system called "society".
Many highly-placed foreign visitors to the United States are insulted by the way they are treated by service personnel (such as waiters in restaurants, clerks in stores, taxi drivers, etc.). Americans have an aversion to treating people of high position in a deferential manner, and, conversely often treat lower class people as if they were very important. Newcomers to the United States should realize that no insult or personal indignity is intended by this lack of deference to rank or position in society. A foreigner should be prepared to be considered "just like anybody else" while in the country.

5. INDIVIDUAL AND PRIVACY
The individualism that has been developed in the Western world since the Renaissance, beginning in the late 15th century, has taken its most exaggerated form in 20th century United States. Here, each individual is seen as completely and marvelously unique, that is, totally different from all other individuals and, therefore, particularly precious and wonderful.
Americans think they are more individualist in their thoughts and actions than, in fact, they are. They resist being thought of as representatives of a homogenous group, whatever the group. They may, and do, join groups—in fact many groups—but somehow believe they’re just a little different, just a little unique, just a little special, from other members of the same group. And they tend to leave groups as easily as they enter them.
Privacy, the ultimate result of individualism is perhaps even more difficult for the foreigner to comprehend. The word "privacy" does not even exist in many languages. If it does, it is likely to have a strongly negative connotation, suggesting loneliness or isolation from the group. In the United States, privacy is not only seen as a very positive condition, but it is also viewed as a requirement that all humans would find equally necessary, desirable and satisfying. It is not uncommon for Americans to say—and believe—such statements as "If I don’t have at least half an hour a day to myself, I will go stark raving mad."
Individualism, as it exists in the United States, does mean that you will find a much greater variety of opinions (along with the absolute freedom to express them anywhere and anytime) here. Yet, in spite of this wide range of personal opinion, almost all Americans will ultimately vote for one of the two major political parties. That is what was meant by the statement made earlier that Americans take pride in crediting themselves with claiming more individualism than, in fact, they really have.

6. SELF-HELP CONTROL
In the United States, a person can take credit only for what he or she has accomplished by himself or herself. Americans get no credit whatsoever for having been born into a rich family. (In the United States, that would be considered "an accident of birth.") Americans pride themselves in having been born poor and, through their own sacrifice and hard work, having climbed the difficult ladder of success to whatever level they have achieved—all by themselves. The American social system has, of course, made it possible for Americans to move, relatively easily, up the social ladder.
Take a look in an English-language dictionary at the composite words that have "self" as a prefix. In the average desk dictionary, there will be more than 100 such words, words like self-confidence, self-conscious, self-control, self-criticism, self-deception, self-defeating, self-denial, self-discipline, self-esteem, self-expression, self-importance, self-improvement, self-interest, self-reliance, self-respect, self-restraint, self-sacrifice—the list goes on and on. The equivalent of these words cannot be found in most other languages. The list is perhaps the best indication of how seriously Americans take doing things for one’s self. The "self-made man or women" is still very much the ideal in 20th-century America.

7. COMPETITION AND FREE ENTERPRISE
Americans believe that competition brings out the best in any individual. They assert that it challenges or forces each person to produce the very best that is humanly possible. Consequently, the foreign visitor will see competition being fostered in the American home and in the American classroom, even on the youngest age level. Very young children, for instance, are encouraged to answer questions for which their classmates do not know the answer.
You may find the competitive value disagreeable, especially if you come from a society that promotes cooperation rather than competition. But many U.S. Peace Corps volunteers teaching in Third World countries found the lack of competitiveness in a classroom situation equally distressing. They soon learned that what they thought to be one of the universal human characteristics represented only a peculiarly American (or Western) value.
Americans, valuing competition, have devised an economic system to go with it—free enterprise. Americans feel strongly that a highly competitive economy will bring out the best in its people and, ultimately, that the society that fosters competition will progress most rapidly. If you look for it, you will see evidence in all areas—even in fields as diverse as medicine, the arts, education, and sports—that free enterprise is the approach most often preferred in America.

8. FUTURE ORIENTATION
Valuing the future and the improvements Americans are sure the future will bring means that they devalue that past and are, to a large extent, unconscious of the present. Even a happy present goes largely unnoticed because, happy as it may be, Americans have traditionally been hopeful that the future would bring even greater happiness. Almost all energy is directed toward realizing that better future. At best, the present condition is seen as preparatory to a latter and greater event, which will eventually culminate in something even more worthwhile.
Since Americans have been taught (in value 1) to believe that Man, and not Fate, can and should be the one who controls the environment, this has made them very good at planning and executing short-term projects. This ability, in turn, has caused Americans to be invited to all corners of the earth to plan and achieve the miracles that their goal-setting can produce.
If you come from a culture such as those in the traditional Moslem world, where talking about or actively planning the future is felt to be a futile, even sinful, activity, you will have not only philosophical problems with this very American characteristic but religious objections as well. Yet it is something you will have to learn to live with, for all around you Americans will be looking toward the future and what it will bring.

9. ACTION/WORK ORIENTATION
"Don’t just stand there," goes a typical bit of American advice, "do something!" This expression is normally used in a crisis situation, yet, in a sense, it describes most American’s entire waking life, where action—any action—is seen to be superior to inaction.
Americans routinely plan and schedule an extremely active day. Any relaxation must be limited in time, pre-planned, and aimed at "recreating" their ability to work harder and more productively once the recreation is over. Americans believe leisure activities should assume a relatively small portion of one’s total life. People think that it is "sinful" to "waste one’s time," "to sit around doing nothing," or just to "daydream."
Such a "no nonsense" attitude toward life has created many people who have come to be known as "workaholics," or people who are addicted to their work, who think constantly about their jobs and who are frustrated if they are kept away from them, even during their evening hours and weekends.
The workaholic syndrome, in turn, causes Americans to identify themselves wholly with their professions. The first question one American will ask another American when meeting for the first time is related to his or her work: "Where do you work?," or "Who (what company) are you with?"
And when such a person finally goes on vacation, even the vacation will be carefully planned, very busy and active.
America may be one of the few countries in the world where it seems reasonable to speak about the "dignity of human labor," meaning by that, hard, physical labor. In America, even corporation presidents will engage in physical labor from time to time and gain, rather than lose, respect from others for such action.

10. INFORMALITY
If you come from a more formal society, you will likely find Americans to be extremely informal, and will probably feel that they are even disrespectful of those in authority. Americans are one of the most informal and casual people in the world, even when compared to their near relative—the Western European.
As one example of this informality, American bosses often urge their employees to call them by their first names and even feel uncomfortable if they are called by the title "Mr." or "Mrs."
Dress is another area where American informality will be most noticeable, perhaps even shocking. One can go to a symphony performance, for example, in any large American city nowadays and find some people in the audience dressed in blue jeans and tieless, short-sleeved shirts.
Informality is also apparent in American’s greetings. The more formal "How are you?" has largely been replaced with an informal "Hi." This is as likely to be used to one’s superior as to one’s best friend.
If you are a highly placed official in your own country, you will probably, at first, find such informality to be very unsettling. American, on the other hand, would consider such informality as a compliment! Certainly it is not intended as an insult and should not be taken as such.

11. DIRECTNESS, OPENNESS AND HONESTY
Many other countries have developed subtle, sometimes highly ritualistic, ways of informing other people of unpleasant information. Americans, however, have always preferred the first approach. They are likely to be completely honest in delivering their negative evaluations. If you come from a society that uses the indirect manner of conveying bad news or uncomplimentary evaluations, you will be shocked at Americans’ bluntness.
If you come from a country where saving face is important, be assured that Americans are not trying to make you lose face with their directness. It is important to realize that an American would not, in such case, lose face. The burden of adjustment, in all cases while you are in this country, will be on you. There is no way to soften the blow of such directness and openness if you are not used to it except to tell you that the rules have changed while you are here. Indeed, Americans are trying to urge their fellow countrymen to become even more open and direct. The large number of "assertiveness" training courses that appeared in the United States in the late 1970s reflects such a commitment.
Americans consider anything other than the most direct and open approach to be dishonest and insincere and will quickly lose confidence in and distrust anyone who hints at what is intended rather than saying it outright.
Anyone who, in the United States, chooses to use an intermediary to deliver that message will also be considered manipulative and untrustworthy.

12. PRACTICALITY AND EFFICIENCY
Americans have a reputation of being an extremely realistic, practical and efficient people. The practical consideration is likely to be given highest priority in making any important decision in the United States. Americans pride themselves in not being very philosophically or theoretically oriented. If Americans would even admit to having a philosophy, it would probably be that of pragmatism.
Will it make any money? Will it "pay its own way?" What can I gain from this activity? These are the kinds of questions that Americans are likely to ask in their practical pursuit, not such questions as: Is it aesthetically pleasing? Will it be enjoyable?, or Will it advance the cause of knowledge?
This practical, pragmatic orientation has caused Americans to contribute more inventions to the world than any other country in human history. The love of "practicality" has also caused Americans to view some professions more favorably than others. Management and economics, for example, are much more popular in the United States than philosophy or anthropology, law and medicine more valued than the arts.
Another way in which this favoring of the practical makes itself felt in the United States, is a belittling of "emotional" and "subjective" evaluations in favor of "rational" and "objective" assessments. Americans try to avoid being too sentimental in making their decisions. They judge every situation "on its merits." The popular American "trail-and-error" approach to problem solving also reflects the practical. The approach suggests listing several possible solutions to any given problem, then trying them out, one-by-one, to see which is most effective.

13. MATERIALISM/ACQUISITIVENESS
Foreigners generally consider Americans much more materialistic than Americans are likely to consider themselves. Americans would like to think that their material objects are just the natural benefits that always result from hard work and serious intent—a reward, they think, that all people could enjoy were they as industrious and hard-working as Americans.
But by any standard, Americans are materialistic. This means that they value and collect more material objects than most people would ever dream of owning. It also means they give higher priority to obtaining, maintaining and protecting their material objects than they do in developing and enjoying interpersonal relationships.
The modern American typically owns:

* one or more color television sets,
* an electric hair dryer,
* an electronic calculator,
* a tape recorder and a record player,
* a clothes-washer and dryer,
* a vacuum cleaner,
* a powered lawn mower (for cutting grass),
* a refrigerator, a stove, and a dishwasher,
* one or more automobiles,
* and a telephone. Many also own a personal computer.

Since Americans value newness and innovation, they sell or throw away their possessions frequently and replace them with newer ones. A car may be kept for only two or three years, a house for five or six before trading it in for another one.

SUMMARY
Now that we have discussed each of these 13 values separately, if all too briefly, let us look at them in list form (on the left) and then consider them paired with the counterpart values from a more traditional country (on the right):

U.S. Values	Some Other Countries' Values
Personal Control over the Environment Change Time & Its Control Equality Individualism/Privacy Self-Help Competition Future Orientation Action/Work Orientation Informality Directness/Openness/Honesty Practicality/Efficiency Materialism/Acquisitiveness	Fate Tradition Human Interaction Hierarchy/Rank/Status Group’s Welfare Birthright Inheritance Cooperation Past Orientation "Being" Orientation Formality Indirectness/Ritual/"Face" Idealism Spiritualism/Detachment

Which list more nearly represents the values of your native country?

APPLICATION
Before leaving this discussion of the values Americans live by, consider how knowledge of these values explains many things about Americans.
One can, for example, see America’s impressive record of scientific and technological achievement as a natural result of these 13 values.
First of all, it was necessary to believe (1) these things could be achieved, that Man does not have to simply sit and wait for Fate to bestow them or not to bestow them, and that Man does have control over his own environment, if he is willing to take it. Other values that have contributed to this record of achievement include (2) an expectation of positive results to come from change (and the acceptance of an ever-faster rate of change as "normal"); (3) the necessity to schedule and plan ones’ time; (6) the self-help concept; (7) competition; (8) future orientation; (9) action work orientation; (12) practicality; and (13) materialism.
You can do the same sort of exercise as you consider other aspects of American society and analyze them to see which of the 13 values described here apply. By using this approach you will soon begin to understand Americans and their actions. And as you come to understand them, they will seem less "strange" than they did at first.

New Links and YouTube Ethnography

2008-11-02T12:36:00.000-08:00

Hey folks, as part of what I will cautiously refer to as the "revitalization" of this blog, I have added a couple of new links to the sidebar.

The first is a website that has garnered a lot of attention in the last few weeks from the China-watching blogosphere, by which I mean Danwei.org and Time's China Blog. ChinaSMACK tackles an interesting Chinese niche to which no other blog (at least as far as I know) has really invested more than a cursory effort in revealing to the non-native world of China and those interested in its modern moment. The site describes its focus as "Hot internet stories, pictures, & videos in China. What’s popular, scandalous, or shocking that have the Chinese talking," posting the latest viral sensations of the Chinese internet and (perhaps best of all) translations Chinese netizens' responses in online forums. Reading about both these stories and internet users' responses (I believe China is now home to the world's most internet users, but am too lazy to cite a source on that one), one hopefully will find some cultural insight. I'm personally fascinated by the internet slang found in netizens' posts and the various detours of language to express a meaning or word that might be too sensitive or vulgar for the tastes of the PRC's internet sleuths. An example I came across just now: calling someone a "hard disc person," a "hard disc" meaning "Western digital" (a company name), giving the letters WD, standing for "wai di" (外地) person...or outsider. Wow. We can thank ChinaSMACK for providing a great glossary of these sorts of terms along with all the "colorful metaphors" one needs for proper appreciation of the Chinese language.

The other link takes you to the YouTube home of Chris3443, whose videos have been featured from time to time on Danwei and even praised (I guess?) on Sexy Beijing's YouTube video shout-out. Chris' delightful home-videos feature Chinese renditions of national anthems, lip-synching of Chinese rock, original music stylings, political question and answer sessions with his Chinese girlfriend, and generally fun montages of life in a "second/third-tier" city of north-central China, watched by both foreigners and Chinese. On the YouTube page you can find a playlist of videos Chris thinks you should watch first. Look for transcriptions and translations up in the video's description area (click "more").

Furthering the theme of YouTube "ethnography" is a Sexy Beijing, now two-months old, which I just recently discovered. In Sexy Beijing YouTube Takeover our favorite, sexy Beijing laowai heroine lists out their favorite China-related YouTube videos according to category:

Music and Youth Culture
Beijing Natives by Zhang Bohong
Graffiti Shanghai by Adam Schokora and DanweiTV

Documentaries and Viral Videos
Romance China Style by journeymanpictures
Mad About English by journeypictures2008
Eye on Gay Shanghai by QAF Beijing
I'm Begging You, Sofie by Chris 3443
China's Green Beat - Rooftop Revolution by sustainablejohn
The Most Greatest Self-Made MV by Mrbombdi
Beijing Polar Bear by captainbundington
I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change by The Asia Society
Hong Kong Bus Uncle by Hello Allan

Enjoy!

Tibet - Part I

2008-11-01T22:41:00.000-07:00

(Part I, written in the summer... I hope to write Part II sometime...)

I’ve been meaning to write about the subject of Tibet since shortly after the riots this past March, and while I’ve amassed a collection of links, I’ve found the pressures of my final semester at school to be too consuming. Now that I’m graduated and faced with the guiltless downtime outside the hours of work, I can focus on revitalizing this blog—and hopefully both demystify and complicate aspects of the 21st century conundrum that is modern China.

It is hard to approach Tibet objectively, as many in the West have grown up with a popularized view of an devoutly pious and harmless people living amid snow mountains, oppressed since the 1950s by the atheistic, communist forces of Red China which have since sought to exploit this people and their home to the utmost extent, eradicating dangerous religiosity and culture all along the way. This characterization has shades of truth.

For quick and simple overview of Tibet, the BBC comes to the rescue. China and Tibet have had a long, antagonistic relationship dating back to the 7th century CE, eventually coming under Mongolian and Chinese influence starting in the 13th century. Since then, the country enjoyed effective autonomy only after the revolution ending the Qing Dynasty in 1911. The ensuing chaos of the formation of a democratic government and subduing of warlords and the subsequent invasion by the Japanese and civil war left Tibet unnoticed in the distant periphery—until 1950, when the newly established People’s Republic of China decided to bring “Liberation” to Tibet—militarily of course. Within the decade, there was open rebellion, sponsored by the American CIA, and with its unsuccessful conclusion, the Dalai Lama fled to northern India, from where he runs the government-in-exile today.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is popularly received in the West. He is the smiling face of the Tibetan cause, loveable ambassador of his people—interviewed on TV, visited by celebrities and world leaders, even co-starring Brad Pitt (sort of). The Dalai Lama seemingly has pursued without rest the well-treatment of his people from exile, but some would say things have gone astray. Despite his gregarious icon-status, Patrick French in the New York Times asserts that his political strategy of generating popular attention to the cause of Tibet in the west has actually been detrimental. The Dalai Lama has in fact become somewhat of a puppet to the larger, more powerful Free Tibet organizations that pressure for unrealistic concessions on the part of the P.R.C. The Tibetan people inside are actually suffering due to the “good-will” celebrity status of the Dalai Lama. Mistaking awards and medals given to the Dalai Lama by governments abroad, they celebrate or test the local authorities, resulting in arrests, human rights violations, and even deaths with no response from those foreign governments.

What many in the West fail to realize is the extent of Tibet and its ethnic sphere when they talk about “freeing Tibet” or separation from the Chinese state. Tibet on the map, actually the province of the People’s Republic of China known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region (or TAR for short) only encompasses what is historically western Tibet and Lhasa. Tibetan culture and population in fact fans out through four other provinces of western China (which I might add, until the riots in March did not require a special travel permit) as seen in the BBC map here. Additionally for a discussion and revealing peek into Tibetan culture, both in the TAR and Western China, I highly recommend reading Life on the Tibetan Plateau. This is not some big secret, it is in fact clearly visible to the Chinese. For instance, northwestern Yunnan Province is called “Dêqên Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture." The rest of these provinces have similar counties, prefectures, and regions nominally Tibetan. These provinces, however, contain largely diverse populations made up not only of many, many Han Chinese (the predominant ethnic group of China at 92% of the population) as well as a great range of other ethnic minorities. It is not realistic to imagine the PRC would simply relinquish control of this large territory for the idealistic independence of celebrity culture. Despite the power and influence of the western Free Tibet organizations, not even the Dalai Lama advocates independence from China, but simply greater autonomy and more religious freedom—a subject to which I will return.

We should talk about the “2008 Tibetan Unrest” or what is also known as the “3-14 Riots.” What began on March 10, 2008 as demonstrations marking the 49th anniversary of the failed Tibetan 1959 Tibetan Uprising turned into violent riots on March 14. The true extent of damage to property and human life may never be known. While western media largely focused on the PRC’s military response to the situation and demonstrations in neighboring countries, the facts coming out of Lhasa and other sites of demonstrations/riots were not very clear or concrete. In the wake of the initial media blitz, Chinese response took the internet by storm, putting up such websites as Anti-Cnn.com which systemically reveal the bias of western media in description of events, doctoring of photos, and mismatched captions often showing bloody crackdowns carried out by Nepali police on Tibetan demonstrations with captions about Tibet. It’s really worth a look. Blogs of western travelers in Lhasa and other places where Tibetans were rioting affirmed Chinese assertions that the demonstrations were anything but peaceful. Photos used in the news, when showed un-doctored, reveal the violent intentions of the Tibetans. The damage it was revealed was not so much in the Tibetan areas of Lhasa, but specifically focused on the areas in which Han Chinese lived and ran shops. When looking at videos of Tibetan violence put on the internet afterwards we see the demonstrations largely descended into unrestrained thuggery on the part of the Tibetans. Does the military response on the part of the Chinese government really seem an overreaction now?

We cannot condone the violence of the Tibetans and the damage done to innocent Han Chinese (and reportedly people of the Hui minority as well), but this violence is an indicator of something. While those outside of Tibet have accused the Chinese of committing “cultural genocide” by means of suppression of religious freedom, placing restraints on Tibetan Buddhist monks, and encouraging Han Chinese migration and travel into these Tibetan areas specifically for the purpose of diluting cultural purity/exclusivity (such as the new Qinghai-Tibet Railway). On the ground, however, the last is probably the most influencing factor. While the Chinese government claims they have liberated the Tibetan people from serfdom under the rule of the Dalai Lama and brought economic development to the province, disgruntled Tibetans claim only the Han Chinese immigrants have benefited from the economic improvements, while Tibetans are discriminated against by Han Chinese companies, run out by Han Chinese small business owners, and forced to take only the worst and most dangerous jobs available. Obviously there is something out of place if people feel the urge to take to the streets and commit violence against another ethnic group.

Entertainment and Enlightenment

2007-12-30T11:11:00.000-08:00

In the last few months, I've come across several things that have either given me joy or expressed a facet of China I found myself explaining a lot since being home. All of the following, I think, will give you some insight into the mystery of modern China.

The Dictatorship of Talent chronicles the Chinese path jumping through various hoops of education to success. The editorial has an important explanation of the Party as it is now--no longer about communist ideology, but now more like a "gigantic Skull and Bones" social network. In the end, though, the writer questions the ability of the individuals risen to success through this system, where they are not taught to question but to repeat.

I also have a couple of bits on the Beijing front:

The New York Times (if you can't tell, my new favorite source of information...) has been running a series called Choking on Growth about China's industrialization and drive towards prosperity, highlighting the disastrous environmental and societal effects. The most recent part of the series focused on Beijing's attempts to clear its skies for the Olympics in '08. Despite their efforts, you can see Tiananmen Square in the photo to the right (courtesy of NYtimes.com, AP). For comparison, I attached my own photo from this past August to show it's not always so bad (though I did suffer through a couple of days this bad last January '07).

On a lighter note, Sexy Beijing is one of my new favorite things on the internet. A spin-off show from the acclaimed Danwei.org, a blog about media and news in China, Sexy Beijing is a series of Youtube-supported videos starring Anna Sophie Loewenberg in a show opening with an homage to Sexy in the City, but quickly turning into often interesting, usually hilarious street-side interviews. "Sufei" uses her language skills in Chinese, sometimes aided by friends, to penetrate some of the more curious aspects of love and life in everyone's favorite city--Beijing. It's really a great study break, but really opens up China, specifically Beijing, culture in a very tangible way. Don't pass this up.

Don't pass any of them up.

Media

2007-10-14T12:23:00.000-07:00

For any readers still making their way to this little place...I've yet to decide what the future will hold, but I would not say an occasional return would be without reward. In time there will be more photos from my time in China--film that I'm just now developing and printing. I might also find occasion to reflect on my time in China, or at least share with you some new finds that somehow pertain to my experiences recorded in this blog. This is one such occasion.

In the post China: The Musical I briefly described Beijing's exploding performance for the Chinese New Year. Jeremy, the director of my school in Hangzhou captured a similar experience there on camera--which I hope will give you some idea of what it was like. Keep in mind--that's all shot up from your average comrade.

In other news, I've come across a NYTimes article about Kunming called China Lite which describes it as a bastion of counter-culture that possesses a laid-back atmosphere not found elsewhere in the People's Lovely Republic. The places and events described in the article pretty much describe my life this summer.

Lists

2007-08-20T02:02:00.000-07:00

So, my time left here in the People’s Lovely Republic is short. In these situations, I feel reflection is inevitable—an attempt to discern through the fog of time and emotion the moorings of fact and what will be memory. I’m also starting to think of the friends I know will be coming here themselves soon enough or even in the winter, to walk the same steps I have. I’ve found the best way to go about organizing things (for me at least) is lists. From lists, you can expand to points, and connecting points, you make arguments, manifestos, and revolution.

Things I will miss or have already started to miss about life in China:
-Chinese food, Chinese food, Chinese food
-music shows in Beijing (Jazz at D-22, seeing Iz, etc.)
-big group dinners in Beijing
-Laobian Jiaozi Restaurant—best Dongbei (Northeast-style cuisine, i.e. dumplings) restaurant ever…
-jidan Guan Bing (egg-pancakes sold by the old couple outside the gate of CET Beijing)
-the little convenience stores outside CET
-the Xinjiang food near CET
-group outings to Sanlitun’r (the bar street)
-warm bubble tea (zhenzhu naicha, ‘pearl milk tea’) in cold Hangzhou
-Lanzhou food: la mian (pulled noodles), potatoes and beef on rice, and jidan chaomian (egg with fried noodles)
-scotch and green tea (together)
-bottled green tea
-7 Club in Hangzhou—cozy little import beer bar
-the one Hangzhou Greentown soccer game I went to
-conversations on bus rides with classmates (usually about China or the people around us)
-times at the all-you-can-eat/drink Japanese restaurant in Hangzhou and our tours of West Lake afterwards
-nighttime jaunts around West Lake in general
-old people and their crazy dancing, exercising, and games
-exploring neighborhoods
-epic scenery/locations
-really smiley waitresses/store workers
-(usually) great service without having to tip
-my teachers
-a little village one mountain away from Tibet
-easy access to lots and lots of different kinds of tea
-being able to bend rules because I’m a foreigner
-the bit of unprostituted, undestroyed culture you might accidentally find somewhere
-making coffee with my French press
-75-cent DVDs
-drying my clothes on the line
-qiezi (Chinese eggplant in all its tender, gooey goodness)

Things I won’t miss:
-the staring, gawking, laowai-laowai-laowai-ing, walk-by Hello!s, and requested/unrequested photographs
-shop clerks hovering an inch behind me or trying to sell me everything I do and do not look at
-la duzi (“pulled stomach”—take a guess)
-being lectured to about my country/Chinese nationalism
-Chinese political/whatever slogans and other feihua (“nonsense”/"thief's talk")
-the ignorance—western and Chinese
-unrelenting and pervasive anti-Japanese mentality
-“cultural exchanges”—“Americans are all rich, right?”
-struggling with people who ignore my Chinese in order to speak their English—which no one understands, least of all me
-Hangzhou cabbies—may they rot in hell
-Chinese traffic/transportation impatience
-people of all shapes, sizes, and gender blowing snot-rockets and hocking their insides out everywhere
-everyone littering and the people whose job is to sweep the streets after them
-the prevalence chain-smokers
-being told my Chinese is great after I say Ni hao (Hello)
-never 100% understanding someone/never being 100% certain I spoke correctly
-seeing someone dead or dying with a group of people standing around them just watching
-people incapable of forming a line
-long fingernails
-women shielding themselves in any ridiculous way they can from the barest drop of sunlight that might touch (and darken) their skin
-Chinese train stations
-the Chinese tourism industry and its effect upon landmarks
-Chinese break-my-heart pop music
-Chinese "House" music
-white-tile buildings with blue windows
-squealing electric scooter brakes
-crossing streets

I guess that gives you an idea.

On a Theme

2007-08-14T23:38:00.000-07:00

The track on the ‘soundtrack of my life’ for Summer ’07 would have to be the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden.” I did not bring my music library with me to China, so my musical experience in China has been limited to what’s on my iPod. As you might imagine, the same old songs tend not to sustain 7 months’ listening. Thus sometime in the beginning weeks of my time in Kunming, I experimented with making a new playlist for my small musical companion. The theme of this new symphony of mine was intended to be a laid-back, feel-good background for a chill party perhaps, and I believe I’ve achieved this to some degree. And in the process of composing this playlist, I rediscovered “Beast of Burden,” which I can’t help but play to death.

And that laidback, feel-good, chill feeling I get when listening to “Beast of Burden” has really reflected the theme of my 9 weeks in Kunming. I read in the morning with my coffe; I pass the day in the office mixing work with breaks to read the New York Times; and I walk home through the cluttered streets, waving at the baozi-making family. Some days I ride a couple of buses to get some pulled-noodles and go climbing at the wall on the other side of town. Some days I hang around and watch DVDs like a lazy bum. I make peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches when I want a snack; I get ice cream for the walk back to the office or home after meals; and I drink little cans of coconut juice/milk. I’ll tell them not to put chili peppers (lazhao) in my food (because they put it in everything there; eating is no longer the great refuge it once was), and it’ll be bad or good. I’ll eat out with coworkers or I won’t. I’ll head to the university area and chill with a book, or I’ll go with a coworker and have a beer; or I’ll do all the above—and often enough, I’ll be bobbing my head to “Beast of Burden” or another song on that list.

This summer I’ve missed home, friends, and Midd more than ever before in China—but on the whole, I’m relaxed. It’s different here from other places in I’ve been in China. Maybe it’s summer; maybe it’s a different culture; maybe it’s just different music. But it’s different here. I don’t think China’s for me—the work’s unrewarding, the day-to-day uncertain and damned dangerous, and the people are just walking in a different direction—we just don’t get each other. And that’s alright I guess. I’m alright with that.

It’s over soon enough, and I got it done.

Spring/Summer

2007-07-04T01:54:00.000-07:00

It is only my third week in the Spring City, but I’ve already fallen into a routine that I believe was mostly settled my third day here: I wake up as the old ladies in the courtyard below finish their morning dancing; I read a page or two with a cup of Yunnan coffee; and I stop at the “baozi lady” to get my two sweet bean paste-filled Chinese pastries to breakfast on as I read over email and the morning’s (or should I say night’s?) headlines on the New York Times.

The end of my semester in Hangzhou proceeded without major event. It settled into the rhythms an iPod-accompanied walk between my dormroom and the various places I habited to eat, life’s reality sharing time with the fantasy provided by reading. Hangzhou provided time or at least an incentive not found at Middlebury to read for private entertainment, and I added to the aforementioned books Charles Frazier’s (author of Cold Mountain) highly anticipated sophomore work, Thirteen Moons; Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude; and am now close to finishing my rereading of Tolkien’s The Two Towers.

And so I came to the end of my time in Hangzhou. Most classmates (and I am no different), were just ready to get out. For some this meant home and loved ones, far away from the eccentricities of Chinese life. For others, it meant family or friend-accompanied travel. And for a fair number of others, it meant life moved to a new Chinese city or at least a new life in the same Chinese city for studying or working. I think everyone was confronting some form of disbelief. It seemed impossible that some of us would be home in a matter of days; that some would not be home for months; that some still had to languish through the added days and weeks of traveling when all they wanted was their own bed.

As I was just realizing that my time in Hangzhou would soon be over (what a week or two earlier seemed unending), I also realized that I had just passed the halfway point of my time in China. This discovery was aided by a time calculator on the internet, which also revealed to me that I had spent about 10 million seconds in China; another 10 million remained.

And so, for better or for worse, I moved to the wild west—Kunming, Yunnan—to begin my internship with The Nature Conservancy. But first, I decided I’d have a little vacation. Taking a day to relax and see a bit of the city with my supervisor and co-intern, I headed out with a 40 liter backpack to Northwest Yunnan: I went to see what the government calls “Shangri-La”—the corner of Yunnan nestled at the feet of the Himalayas. Once you get to Zhongdian (now officially Shangri-La, or Xianggelila in Chinese), you realize “Tibet” is not bound by the borders of the map. In fact northwestern Yunnan, western Sichuan, and Qinghai Province are all regions heavily-populated (heavily used here as a comparison, not suggesting density) by Tibetans—many nomadic.

In the course of a few days, I crawled my way by bus, taxi, and boot to Meili Snow Mountain (a range of snow-capped peaks on the border the maps draw between Yunnan and Tibet). There I spent some time in a small village nestled in a lush valley, meeting western and Chinese backpackers, drinking local grape wine, seeing a sacred waterfall, and enjoying both sun and storm. I can genuinely say it was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been and definitely one of my best experiences in China. I hiked down on a stormy, cloud-swallowed day, and we drove back to the nearest town on winding mountain roads listening to the driver’s cassette of Tibetan folk—a haunting music of women wailing in song and men underscoring with deep tones. I looked back, but the mountains and the world and our little van were all swallowed, hidden in cloud.

These short weeks in Kunming have so far been filled with exploration of its endearingly decayed infrastructure, settling into the routine of working 9-5, and finding ways of busying myself. The city feels very alive but relaxed, the old and young ambling or lazing along the streets. It is called the Spring City for its cool climate throughout the year and perhaps its bursts of rain throughout the day. To my amazement, though, it is more a rule than an exception that the day’s stormy weather will be spited by the sun breaking through at 5, parting the way for blue sky. 5 million more seconds till summer.

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

2007-05-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

I have been uninspired to write for a period of time. Nonetheless, a classmate has provided me with something that I hope should amuse some and provide insight to others:

There are two basic ways of ordering food in China. Try and guess which one I normally opt for.

Method One:

1. Enter restaurant. Listen to 16 waitresses shout " " down your ear.
2. Despite the fact that you have entered the restaurant by yourself, and there is nobody else near the establishment for another 15 miles, the waitress asks if you want a table for one.
3. Follow waitress to table. Wait five minutes while the waitress clears the mass of bones, spit, foetuses, lost scrolls, blood, and monkey claws from the table with an oily rag.
4. Place tissue paper on chair and sit down. Of the 27 waitresses who gather round your table, tell 26 of them to go away.
5. Within 0.00000000001 millisecond of sitting down, the waitress is hovering behind impatiently.
6. In impeccable Mandarin, ask for a menu. Repeat angrily when waitress giggles, looks away, and shouts to her colleagues that she doesn't understand English.
7. Tell waitress you don't want the most expensive items she is pointing to on the menu.
8. Tell the waitress to bring you a beer while waiting. When it arrives, send it back and ask for a cold one.
9. When the waitress asks if you would like to drink the beer opened or unopened, ask her to open it.
10. Choose meal.
11. Choose different meal when told they don't have it.
12. Repeat stages 10 and 11 about three times.
13. Finally choose something they have and ask them not to put any egg in it.
14. Relax. All the time, a million Chinese peasants are staring at you, spitting, and muttering: "laowailaowailaowailaowailaowai".
15. After 20 minutes ask what is happening with your meal.
16. After another 20 minutes receive meal, then send it back because it has egg in it.
17. Seven days after you entered the place, finally receive meal.
18. Pick out the stones and pubic hair.
19. Eat.
20. Halfway through your food, have your meal disturbed by the manager insisting on sitting down next to you and asking where you are from and if foreigners eat pork as well.
21. Ask to pay the bill, then tell them to check again after they give you the wrong bill.
22. Pay for meal. Waitress asks if you have the correct change which you do not. Wait another 15 minutes as she goes down the street to find change.
23. Leave when 16 waitresses shout " " at you. Waitress 17 will shout "Bye bye!" instead and everybody will find it hilarious.
24. Burn the place down. Then shit through the eye of a needle for two days afterwards.
25. Point 25? There is none.

OR

Method Two:

1. Walk into McDonalds/KFC.
2. Point at what you want.
3. Eat and get the hell out.

True more or less. I haven't given into McDonalds/KFC way of life yet, though. My solution is to go to the same 4 restaurants and alternate a handful of meals. Works for me.

News from the Homefront

2007-05-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

This is pretty great news that I just had to throw out. Last semester I was involved in the developing of MiddShift and am very proud to have been a part of it. It was really sad to leave just as things were getting going, but what can you do? This is really something to happy about though, so read on! And yes, I'm still in China.

To the College Community:

I am pleased to announce that, after reviewing a written proposal from the student organization MiddShift and supporting recommendations from senior administrators, the Middlebury College Board of Trustees has approved a plan for the College (Vermont campus) to become a carbon neutral institution by 2016.

MiddShift originally presented its carbon neutrality initiative to the board in February, and that meeting led to the formation of the Carbon Neutrality Advisory Group (CNAG). CNAG was comprised of students and administrators, and its role was to further develop a written proposal outlining the potential costs, risks, and organizational impact of achieving carbon neutrality over the next nine years.

The College plans to achieve carbon neutrality through a combination of efforts, including the 2008 completion of a biomass plant, which will be powered by wood chips; operational adjustments such as energy efficient lighting and facility upgrades; and — after all other economically feasible efforts to reduce carbon have been exhausted — the purchase of carbon offsets.

In a 2006 inventory, the College calculated its carbon emissions at 30,000 metric tons, derived as follows:

· use of fuel oil number six at 85 percent
· use of fuel oil number two at 2 percent
· college-related travel at 9 percent
· electricity at 3 percent
· landfill methane from waste disposal at 1 percent

Each and every one of us will share in the responsibility for reducing the campus’ carbon footprint, and I thank you all for your continued support, enthusiasm, and leadership in this important endeavor to reduce the emissions of carbon into our environment. I would like to extend my thanks especially to the students, faculty, and staff members who worked on the MiddShift proposal, and to those who have worked on many previous efforts to reduce carbon emissions on campus. It is you who made today’s Board vote and this major expression of leadership and responsibility by the College possible.

Ronald D. Liebowitz

There and Back Again--A Hobbit's Tale

2007-04-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

I have started reading in my spare time here in China—a shocking introduction, I know. I have been reading the aforementioned Deep Economy by Bill McKibben, which I can now assure you with more validity is worth your time to read and ponder. It is in fact a much smaller book than I imagined and makes a very reflective read. I don’t want to talk to much about it for fear of turning someone’s prejudices against it, but I will in short say this: I think this book is something every American should read. It tells us about our way of life, how it came to be, and where it can go. Whether or not you buy into McKibben’s greater vision of the future of the American way of life, there are certainly a multitude of points he makes along the way that I feel are seriously worth contemplating.

But the world and words in Mr. McKibben’s book mean something more to me, as it reminds me of what I have come to call a second home—Vermont. McKibben always brings his themes back to his community, the valley in which Middlebury sits. And that, I suppose, is where I am going with this.

My other reading has been J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. I read this series for the first time in high school with the advent of the hugely successful films, and for some reason I can’t place, I decided to take it up again, something to savor on my adventure. I suppose when one is trapped in a foreign language and foreign land, they begin to find their mother-tongue particularly beautiful. Always thinking The Lord of the Rings a work exemplary of English’s beauty, I might have longed to slowly amble through the arduous terrain of its words. But really, I think I missed Hobbits and their earth-loving simplicity. I missed Vermont and friends and merry-making, which I find might share a bit in common with the Shire. These are things very far from me here in this place.

What I found upon starting the book again was something far deeper than the shallow delight in reading about hobbits in the Shire; what I found was a bit of my own adventure in theirs’. There are many themes in Frodo Baggins’ journey from the Shire on which I reflect. There is desire for adventure and what is beyond—which is found both beautiful and foul. There is homesickness and thought of return, but there is also resolution and purpose in the face of fear, uncertainty, and difficulty. It seems every page traces this struggle of exile and maturation with which the members of the Fellowship all wrestle.

And really that is what China is for me: exile. And I am nearing a year of it, for I see it first began with language school last summer. It was my first summer away from home, confined to an unwieldy and still unnatural language, almost entirely away from any close friends—either from Memphis or those I lived with at Midd. It continued into the fall semester, living on the edge of campus in the Chinese House, most friends all off on their own semesters abroad. And now here I am, half-way-ish along my road from home. It has been a difficult year, but not unrewarding, for I find that I have been forced into a long journey through a realm of self-discovery and maturation—pushing myself to new levels, pursuing and investing myself in new activities, and coming to terms with my individuality and independence.

But the road of the Ring-bearer is not a smooth one, and I’ve found that it only goes uphill or through less appealing terrain the further you go. I have wished to turn back at many points—and now more than ever. I have just committed to the farthest exile yet with my summer internship—three more months in the East, but without even classmates to share some companionship. I was afraid of getting the internship for just this reason; it would be so nice to head home in June and say goodbye to China, but I know I can’t and shouldn’t do that. I’d feel like I’d be running away—from China, from life, from growing up.

And really—I can’t run home to hide. I’ve already selected my housing for my last year at Middlebury, and as I research classes for next semester, I realize these are probably to be the last classes I will ever take at Middlebury. Somehow, it’s all almost over, and there’s no safety left there. The only way is the road ahead.

The Wild East Goes West

2007-04-21T07:46:00.000-07:00

This past week found me deep in the southwest of China on spring break. While I had planned much for going to Yunnan and venturing about, a rather problematic series of events befell my life in the weeks following the Ides of March (the Ides having no real significance, but providing a weighty anchor to temporal dimensions of my post). I discovered I’d lost my bank card—my mainstay of funding from the beloved motherland; I overate at an all-you-can-eat/drank Japanese restaurant, fearing the resulting discomfort might be a hiatal hernia; and lastly, midterms struck in the first real week of April. My bank card, after two failed deliveries, remains a conundrum; after a series of doctor-visits, I settled with the prognosis of ‘gastritis’ and the discomfort in my abdomen after two weeks at last subsided; and I survived midterms.

In short, a complicated several weeks made the idea of seven days’ breathless traveling in hopes of taking in everything Yunnan had to offer including the Dai Minority’s Water Splashing Festival in the far southern region of Xishuangbanna a little unnerving. I instead opted for a more rooted base in the small town of Yangshuo outside of Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, famous for its iconic karst peaks. Apparently, this ‘backpacker town’ provided a western escape from the heavily-toured Guilin with more adventure and better scenery. Using the town as a base provided many exciting activities—several of which I had full intention to take advantage: rock climbing, mountain biking through karsts and rice paddies, eating western food, and seeing a light show directed by Zhang Yimou, China’s favorite of the moment, whose popular western-known titles include: Hero and House of Flying Daggers.

This was a great idea. And reality gave it a great start. I arrived on Saturday evening and secured a single room all to myself for a week at 20 kuai a night—not quite $3. That night I had a hamburger (my second real western meal, as I won’t count McDonald’s, in my three months of living in the Orient) and a homebrewed pale wheat ale—probably the only half-decent beer I’ve had in China. In this blog’s youth, I bragged about the size and cheapness of Chinese beer; unfortunately, experience yields the wisdom that all Chinese beer is quite less alcoholic (the highest at 4%, often as low as 2.5%) and all quite the same-tasting.

Over the first three days, I rented mountain bikes and explored local sights and trails, with a day of rest and laziness on the second. I enjoyed a lot of good food, good reading, great scenery, and a very nice light show—Impression: Liu Sanjie. The third day was quite spectacular, as a rode out on a good long ride to Dragon Bridge. On the way back a storm came in, and the sight was truly spectacular. The wind was strong, and the lighting was otherworldly. I road just ahead of the storm almost all the way back (man—mountain bikes in high gear can haul), but at last was caught by the rain. I triumphantly made it back, and after showering and changing into some dry clothes, I treated myself to another burger at another restaurant. And here is where the tragedy begins.

Not an hour later, I feel weird. The night proved to be a rough one indeed. I assume it was food poising, and it was a beast of nature strong enough to wipe out the rest of my week. While only the first night was ‘rough,’ my strength was significantly drained and my appetite is only now returning to normal. And so I caught up a lot on the ‘rest and relaxation’ part of the break, exhausting more of my book than I had expected.

As for Yangshuo, I would certainly recommend it. At first, I thought of giving some small caveat—letting you know it’s not the real China as people have come to say about a lot of things and places. But as I sat down to my last meal in the town, I thought better of saying that. Sure, it’s strange that you can remain comfortably insulated on (aptly named) West Street, eating western food, buying Chinese stuff, and doing completely tourist-catered activities… But really, I see it in a way as a microcosm of today’s real China. There is heavy westernization; there’s rich Chinese tourists with their new Nikons and poor Chinese farmers that live ten minutes away; there’s cheap Chinese products and westerners looking to see China and get some adventure; there’s amazing scenery and its commercialization; there’s everything that’s China today, good and bad.

And that’s the end of my moment in the west…for now.

I have for sometime now been pursuing an internship in China for this summer and during my break was at last offered a position with The Nature Conservancy office in Kunming, Yunnan. This means that The Wild East will be moving west for a longer stay.

Sipping Beer

2007-03-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

陶渊明《饮酒》之五赏析

结庐在人境，而无车马喧。
问君何能尔？心远地自偏。
采菊东篱下，悠然见南山；
山气日夕佳，飞鸟相与还。
此中有真意，欲辨已忘言。

Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian) "Sipping Beer" (Part 20)

Home built in man's busy world,
I do not hear horse-cart racket...
And how's that? you ask.
Heart afar, I'm in the wild.
Picking tea-flowers by the east hedge,
my eyes drift to southern hills:
mountain-mist in twilight beautiful,
and birds all flying home.
Here, there's something deep,
and I'd explain, but've forgotten words.

Man of the Tao and Traveling

2007-03-26T22:57:00.000-07:00

So I’ve strayed away from the usual posts on a theme, revealing my discoveries and encounters with Chinese culture for a variety of reasons. This is not to say I have not written any posts of this nature; I have in fact written a page or two on one interconnected them, but feel it’s unsuitable to post.

And why? The truth is I don’t love China. I’ve wrestled for a few weeks now with the irritability and quickly-frustrated symptoms I know to be culture shock. It set in shortly after my arrival in Hangzhou, and it has come and gone depending on existence or evasion of stimuli. For this reason, I have thought I was free of it at various points, only to be confronted with a worse bout later on.

At its worse moments, I have felt torn and tortured with thoughts that my 3ish-year pursuit of and labor in the study of Chinese has been in vain, that all of mainland China has nothing of worth, that the future of China (and perhaps the world’s in conjunction) is certainly a hopeless one. The aforementioned post detailed some of my most troubling vexations, but I it is full of generalizations rooted in my resent and moodiness. I normally detest generalizations, so I cannot allow myself to indulge such hypocrisy. In short, I have struggled internally for a few weeks with homesickness, purposelessness, disgust, close-mindedness, resent, and a plethora of other generally irritable-natured phases of contemplation.

And today, Hangzhou hits the mid-60s after enduring the last cold snap of the season. The peach blossoms are in full bloom, and today is crystal clear and full of sunshine, drying every last wet spot left from a night of long drizzling. I will not say I have escaped from the storm, but I have at least found some points of insight with which to anchor myself.

I am American, and I have never been more proud to be one. America is not without faults, but at heart I believe its spirit embodies some of humankind’s greatest qualities. At this moment, we face great obstacles and perils, but we have triumphed at so many fragile points before, I cannot believe we will not now, but we have to take initiative and the people must make the difference. Since being in China, I have come to appreciate so much the freedoms and beliefs I think we too often take for granted.

And now for the more personal, introspective insights—these I have found in the words of others. In the first post of this blog, I included the poem by Jia Dao (as translated by Mike O’Connor):

SEEING OFF A MAN OF THE TAO

When I find you again,
it will be in mountains;
this morning, I lose you
once more to farewell.

Free of attachment
in heart and mind
is it why you can go
ten thousand li alone

to places with such
little human warmth,
where, when you meet someone,
they speak an ancient tongue?

Traveling without disciples,
you have only
a white dog
for company.

Then I could only say I liked the imagery and flow of the words. It struck me with a sense of otherworldliness, and it conveyed to me a glimpse of something spiritual in this ‘man of the Tao.’ But reading it at some point in last few weeks, I realized this poem is not so much about the man of the Tao, as it is about the speaker.

This poem describes a holy man wandering alone to remote and mountainous places; he has no friends or students, and where he goes he can barely communicate. All he has to show that he is not cold and inhuman is ‘a white dog for company.’ In describing this man, however, the speaker is really expressing his wonder and admiration for a man that seems so self-assured, content to be happy in himself. The heart of this poem, two stanzas, is one long question of disbelief. The introduction shows that this self-contented existence is rarely reachable, often disappearing—that which remains hidden in the heavenly reaches of mountains.

Struggling with my own loneliness and sorrow of separation, I felt a compassion and camaraderie with Jia Dao in his poignant contemplation of fleeting happiness. Happiness, I found, is not subject to where you are or whom you are with—it is a state of mind. But being ‘free of attachment in heart and mind,’ is easier said than done.

The second and more recent moment of insight I have experienced comes actually from another friend quoting on his blog the quote one other friend often quotes. If that’s not confusing enough of an introduction, try reading this quote from Calvino:

“… because the traveler's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”

I don’t know much about Calvino, nor have I read anything of his, so I can’t pretend I know what this means or anything really. But this quote gives me the idea that traveling is as often as not (or perhaps more often) about understanding and seeing what you left behind than understanding the place you have arrived. This reassures me some, as I have often thought about the States, what I miss most, the things I want in my life, the lifestyle I want to live, etc. This is one reason I have not sought to unravel as much of China’s mysteries here as before; I think it’s connected to the ‘stepping outside’ idea, that you have to get outside of something to understand it.

And so travel seems to be the continuous pursuit of understanding the place you were last at, and the person you last were. The pinnacle of this pursuit, I would like to think, is something resembling the Man of the Tao. Ending the last real post I wrote, I said, “I may have arrived, but I still do not know where I’m going.” I now know; I’m going home—the long way.

Pulled-Noodle Boss

2007-03-21T05:12:00.000-07:00

You take advantage of the strange emptiness and the sunny, Saturday calm of the shop to sit with me. A friendly, but facetious hello to this old-outsider shifts to Mandarin, and I can hear that neither of us is using the tongue we speak with our mothers. Your home, I know from the sign and your pulled-noodles, is the Place of Orchids in the far west. Why have you come to Crooked River? The Place of Orchids, you say, is not so beautiful.

I am a lone American today on my way to the West Lake, and you say with certainty that it is a beautiful lake. But certainty fades to uncertainty, and your common tongue stumbles forward with carefulness. Does America have pulled-noodles? Chopsticks negotiate my noodles, and I tell your dreams and your young-faced cooks listening in that America’s are not as good these, and there are no noodle shops I’ve seen.

You ask me about money, how much a bowl would go for, how much to rent a place, but I don’t know what language makes it easy to describe impossibilities and uncertainties. I don’t know.

I leave for the sun, you and your dreams left behind in the shadows of your shop. Did your silk-trading forefather that first walked on that ancient road, think the itch that bothered his foot would die with him? Did he imagine that it would carry on, over deserts and mountains and rivers to the sea, where it could only go farther in your heart?

2007-03-19T05:07:00.000-07:00

Crooked River Drizzle

Crooked River is colder than I thought,
and there is a drizzle that wets streets
and shoulders and shoes and moods;
buses trudge on, rattling and thumping,
and as we stop and as we go, I hold on--
sometimes a seat, sometimes a handle,
sometimes anything.

West Bank Hope

Crooked River loses its way,
and there I found West Bank:
night lanterns bleed water red,
and folks put candles afloat--
paper boats carrying hope yonder.
I tried, and tried, but mine didn't last,
that Crooked River wind telling me what?

A Suggestion

2007-03-11T16:57:00.000-07:00

This is rather out of character, but I feel compelled to make a suggestion to what few readers I have. You should without delay go to your nearest bookstore to pick up Bill McKibben's just-released Deep Economy. Bill McKibben is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury, and this past fall I had the opportunity to read a chapter of his then unpublished work. Don't give this a miss.

Songs of Crooked River

2007-03-07T00:22:00.000-08:00

I pray you will indulge me in this new aspect of The Wild East. I will from time to time share with you all some of the Chinese poems I study, and since most of you cannot read modern Chinese, much less Classical Chinese, I have included my own translations. These poems are all from the province in which I study, Zhejiang, whose name means "Crooked River."

白居易《钱塘湖春行》

孤山寺北贾亭西，水面初平云脚低。
几处早莺争暖树，谁家新燕啄春泥？
乱花渐欲迷人眼，浅草才能没马蹄。
最爱湖东行不足，绿杨荫里白沙堤。

Bai Juyi "Spring-Walking at Qiantang Lake"

North—Lonely Hill, and west—Jia Pavilion.
Water's face is flat under clouds' feet,

and here, there, early orioles argue over warm trees;
at a stranger's house, new swallows peck spring mud.

Wildflowers one by one lure men’s eyes,
and shallow grass just drowns horse hooves.

East—the lakeside I love most and walk not enough:
green poplars' shadows and White Sand Levee.

崔护《题都城南庄》

去年今日此门中，人面桃花相映红。
人面不知何处去，桃花依旧笑春风。

Cui Hu "Village South of the Capital"

A year gone today and in this here door:
her face and peach tree flower—rosy both.

I do not know where that face has gone,
but same as old, flowers smile in spring wind.

Night Journey

2007-03-07T00:05:00.000-08:00

(2/6/07)

I wish to speak of 'the hero's journey,' a concept I find indescirbably fascinating, though I've never actually gotten around to reading its holy text, Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. To summarize the idea for those unfamiliar, it is the idea that a basic structure of events remains constant for all mythological heroes--everyone from Ulysses to Hamlet to Jesus. It also asserts that the structure is a result of human psychology, that hero stories all punch the same buttons because they get the same timeless reactions out of everyone. That's my understanding at least.

Last spring, I took John Elder's "Visions of Nature" course in which we delved into the perceptions of nature in English and American literature—Wordsworth, Darwin, artists, poets, and nonfiction writers. One aspect that remains with me is Professor Elder’s continual reference to the night journey, in which the hero finds himself adrift between worlds where the fantastical transpires.

My night journey was more literal: a night train from Beijing to Hangzhou, an experience I found more interesting (and maybe a bit fun) that anything else. Starting in the late afternoon, a dozen or so classmates and I set off from the northern capital on a 16 hour ride. The car was divided into cubicles of six bunks (“hard sleepers”) and we pleasantly passed the hours with snacks, instant noodles, cards, and the last bit of guiltless English conversation before the third language pledge I’ve taken twelve months’ time. The lights went out at 9:30.

Alex Garland’s The Beach (the book on which the movie I previously referenced) touches on night trains. The main character, Richard, says he likes night trains; whenever he rides one, he climbs into the bunk and pretends he’s on a spaceship on a deep-space journey—train-rocking just interstellar turbulence, train-noise just the engine-hum. And so I lay in the dark, watching through the curtains passing lights like stars or nebulas—lonely bodies left behind in the dark.

I awoke in the south, and it was truly a different world. The yellow-chalky fields of the frigid, barren north were replaced by the misty and lush paddies of northern Zhejiang. Beijing was fiercely dry, but Hangzhou greeted me with a surprisingly chilly humidity. The city reminds me in a way of Florida: green in the winter, and often buildings will open up to reveal water—West Lake or various streamlets, canals, etc. pervading the city. The city is filled with mist, often cloudy until afternoon, and though I’m fairly certain there’s a contribution of pollution to the air, it is mostly forgettable. Rain is the best part (I say now of course), a bit of my life I had realized I missed terribly the last week or two in Beijing. It is usually light, but I should wait a month or two.

But night journey or not, it is still strange, it is still an otherworld in which I daily feel alien and lost. For its comforts after Beijing, there are as many tribulations, inside and out. I may have arrived, but I still do not know where I’m going.

China: The Musical

2007-03-05T07:02:00.000-08:00

(2/20/07)

China is a musical place, and this is manifested in a variety of forms. Most notable is the karaoke (“KTV”) culture, the most enjoyed pastime of Chinese young, old, and everywhere in between. And perhaps this is one source from which the Chinese font of music flows. If a song plays – on TV, on someone’s computer, anywhere – someone will start singing lowly, and another will join. Most Chinese seem to be amateur vocalists, or at least practiced a far stretch from my homeland or my own ability.

But this is not reserved only to the hours Chinese will spend at a time in a KTV room – it’s often just a way to pass the time: strangers on the bus or subway grace you with the son stuck in their head at that moment. Some strangers do it for money, strumming guitars in the underground passages, their hungry notes carrying down the tiled walls, or itinerant troubadours wandering the subways, belting out the most classic Chinese pop love-songs such as “I love you like a mouse loves rice.”

And there are other acts of public musical display. Everyone in China has cell phones, all with fiercely elaborate functions and capabilities. They are constantly busied with one of these, but most often text-messaging one of their 1.3 billion countrymen. Returning from Shijiazhuang, however, I had the poor fortune to share company with someone who used of the other functions included in his handheld-beast: using his phone as an mp3 player, he shared with our immediate area 3 of his favorite musical pieces, one resembling Kenny G just a bit too much…

But if China is a musical, then the Lunar New Year was certainly the finale for me. At sundown on New Year’s Eve, Beijing exploded into a nightlong symphony of fireworks of all gunfire and bomb resembling kinds. We finally went out to watching, finding a show that puts July 4 to shame: 360 degrees of fire works lit up the sky, near and far. Looking down any street revealed group after group into the smoky distance lighting up colorful boxes. The sky burned red and the ground was littered with paper, casings, and sulfur powder. It was all amateur—every cracker, every Roman candle, every sky-burning, thundering flower chasing away bad luck and evil spirits.

Liberation

2007-02-15T22:35:00.000-08:00

(2/12/07)

On Thursday the 8th, I took my final exam and my final oral test, after which my three teachers (or laoshi: l-ow-sure) told me, “Jiefang le.” I did not understand ‘jiefang’ at the time, but I was happy to get on my way. That afternoon we were all heading up to the countryside to see an ice festival and have a grand ceremony followed by a ‘China Night’ full of performances—all taking place at a large hotel. After someone else said jiefang le in passing, I finally looked it up to find it meant “liberation, emancipation,” and for the Chinese, the added meaning of the Communist victory in 1949. I as well had now been liberated.

Starting that night, I have heard or seen fireworks booming, their thunder echoing off buildings and cliffs, echoing the other meaning of jiefang, but the fireworks are the first signs of Spring Festival (the Lunar New Year) swiftly approaching. It is a time for reunion, and all of China is clogging every mode of transportation heading home (and bumping up prices). For me, there was some reunion as I got to see classmates that studied in Hangzhou in the fall, now hanging out in Beijing.

But all liberation comes at the price of struggle, I suppose. Our dorm emptied, Chinese roommates heading home and students taking advantage of our break to travel: Harbin, Xi’an, Nanjing, Shanghai, and for me—southern Hebei, 2-3 hours by train south of the city. Loneliness, emptiness—is one of my struggles. Other struggles include discovering an even more alien city, Shijiazhuang, to which I am even more of a stranger; waiting in a ticket line for an hour or so only to realize I wasn’t supposed to be waiting; and renting a room for more than what most might consider ‘budget’ despite Lonely Planet’s guidance. But there is a saying I’ve already heard and known since being in China: “spend money to buy experience.” Experience, maturation, etc. sometimes comes at a cost, at a struggle. Liberation is not so easy.

Punishing the Flesh

2007-02-04T04:33:00.000-08:00

I suppose I’ve left everyone hanging on a low note, and I have let more time slip between entries than usual. For this, I blame acclimation; I have fallen into routine, and because of that, everything seems oppressingly normal. Like water, I have for a week pursued the course of least resistance as far as academic matters are concerned, and a new found expectation of the…undesired results in a generally more cynical, though less volatile mood.

But don’t mistake me. Though recent entries have dwelled on the low points, there are plenty of high points that just don’t fit into the themes on which I write. Like I said before, this journal is not intended as a travel record, but rather a record of exposure, a record of contact. So for the sake of everyone’s peace of mind, here are some great things that have been happening in the last week or so (most of which occurs on the weekend): seeing a variety show at a fancy teahouse; getting my own suit tailored for a bit more than $100; seeing the Temple of Confucius; seeing the Yong He Gong Tibetan Buddhist temple; seeing the Temple of Heaven park; spending hours with a Midd teacher’s husband at an unbelievably ritzy karaoke club; being able to understand my roommate half of the time; and a personal favorite of mine—learning to haggle and knocking down the price of 200 kuai leather dress shoes for my suit to 60 kuai (not even $10).

During the week, however, I have invested my free time in a new found pursuit: exercise. This past summer was the last stretch of time I was really active; as a reaction to excessive mental pressure, I turned to the sun and soccer for relief at summer school. Fall semester, however, found me rather sedentary, making short bursts to the bathroom in the library rather than across a grassy field. But now, once again in a pressured situation, I have sought some relief through physical exertion.

This is not the only reason, though… There are certainly hints subtly tucked into my previous writing, but I will now give this topic the spotlight. Experiencing China is not just sights and smells, it is very, very much food as well. Maybe it’s the culture’s liberal use of MSG, maybe it’s the shared entrees instead of single-person servings, maybe it’s something more akin to a deer in the headlights—but I’m always eating, and I’m always hungry. Food is something special to Chinese culture, and varied in as many ways as you can imagine. It’s delicious, and more often than not, the quantity is abundant despite what any mother might tell their child.

I have discovered so many new tastes and foods, and there are many I have not discovered, but eaten nonetheless. Cabbage, eggplant, various fungi, nuts, noodles, fatty meat (the fat is often eaten for its texture and sweetness), long slimy strips I think are somehow related to beans, bean paste (in small rolls, very sweet), tofu, beef, pork, chicken (which is often rather gnarly), eggs, soups, stews, pineapple-laden dishes, lotus root, spicy dry beans, and many more that just don’t come to mind right now. The strangest thing I’ve eaten so far was a purple ball a bit smaller than a golfball that seems to be the centerpiece of a soup; it proved slimy and limp, the inside of which I’m told comes from sesame seeds, but tasted like peanut butter.

I have eaten food from almost all corners of this country, and even had some home-made Chicken and eggplant parmesan made by some classmates the other night. I’ve eaten Xinjiang food, from the most northwestern province, home of the Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking culture of central Asian descent. I’ve eaten Dai food from the most southwest corner of the country, filled with jungle fruit and spices from the border of Southeast Asia. I’ve tasted a hint of Sichuan’s spicy cuisine, and most recently I ate the food that holds the northeast through its long, long winter. That’s just some of it.

But as good as the food is, everyone I think is starting to notice a little added weight to their stride, and so I find myself in the small gym we have when I can find time in the afternoon, designing whatever workout I can in effort to spend the energy of my massive consumption, to punish the flesh for its gluttony. Cardiovascular exercise, however, is the tricky part.

While the pollution in Beijing is not quite what I feared it would be, it is nevertheless a caustic presence. While there have been windy days clear enough to see mountains to the west, most days there is at least a haze, pulled like veil over distant buildings. Some days, it is more like a curtain hiding the not-so-distant buildings. Some folks have taken the initiative to go running outside, but as I neither like running on pavement nor wish to tempt my lungs’ strength to direct exposure, I must find other means. And so, I’ve been struggling through the process of learning to jump rope a proper way. To my delight, every day is a bit less awkward. Also to my delight is the fact that witnesses have so far been few or unattractive.

Cabin Fever

2007-01-27T20:16:00.000-08:00

(1/25/07)

But while I’m plagued by a tinge of homesickness, my sickness is of another kind all together: cabin fever. I’ve already touched on this sentiment a few times already – my academic weariness, the small social scene in an already alien setting, and most of all, the endless hours spent in the classroom and on campus. I would venture the assumption I’m not alone in this opinion.

But it’s the reminders that make this experience so bitter – reminders of the world outside that we came here to see. Every time I walk up to the fourth floor of the building in which we have class – a journey I’m required to make three or four times a day – I pass a fragment of a Confucian saying (that I myself studied last semester) displayed on the wall on the second floor. 学而不厌, its meaning something like ‘to study and not grow sick of it’ – an irony that fails to stir my amusement.

In the west, the image of China is a mostly homogenous picture: 1.3 billion people eating the food we know so well from our boxed take-out. Studying China and Chinese had expanded my perception of ‘China,’ but since being here it has become so apparent just how much diversity there actually exists. I can say that almost every restaurant I’ve eaten at has its own unique cuisine, some varying wildly: pineapple rice and fried bananas at a Dai minority restaurant or the spicy tofu and beans from Sichuan.

I spend my free time now reading the Lonely Planet guidebook my program sends us as a gift. People are planning what they’re doing during the break we have for Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year). One classmate is heading west to Yunnan, a province where over 50% of China’s minority cultures live. It is said the province has every terrain but arctic, and it is known for its beauty and diversity. Another classmate is heading south with her Chinese roommate to Hunan, home of Mao. Another is going to Xi’an in the heart of China – ancient capital and the home of Qin the First Emperor’s tomb, guarded by the terracotta army.

Our classrooms have maps of China, and as I stare at them, the number of places I wish to see and go grows: Yunnan, Xi’an, Sichuan, Huangshan, maybe Xinjiang, and perhaps the most intangible: Tibet. These places call out to me, luring my mind and dreams out of this city, through the veins of rails and unknown roads. I simply long for the ‘fresh’ air and movement.

Last weekend we had a group excursion to see the Great Wall at Mutianyu, on which friends and I spent hours simply walking its length and taking every ‘I can’t help but take it’-photograph. As cliché as it was, the experience was just what I needed after the first and very disappointing week of Beijing j-term. Unfortunately, it was something like taking off a tight shoe for a breather – you find it’s not so easy to put back on.

Sorrow of Separation

2007-01-27T19:43:00.000-08:00

(1/23/07)

Week 2 of classes began with an almost epidemic infection of homesickness, dissent, or culture shock -- perhaps the three deadliest plagues for this ship of ours. Before I started preparing to study abroad, I had thought ‘culture shock’ was just something people said as a joke, but the more and more I read I found it to be a very real and frightening prospect.

I suppose my first encounter, and a visceral one at that, with ‘culture shock’ was a play put on by a Chinese student at Midd my freshman year. It was an amalgamation of excerpted works and her own experiences while abroad in Taiwan; fittingly, the show was entitled ‘Culture Shock.’ The most memorable scene of the show for me was the moment of despair, with the actress alone, curled up, lonelily and despairingly asking questions of her distant family.

I would not say I have yet experienced culture shock (though sources say that it can happen up to 3 months after arrival). My feelings of discontent fall under different categories. No, culture shock falls upon others, such as one friend who very frazzled one day confessed that she was thinking of dying her blonde hair because she couldn’t bear the stares or the whispering or – in some cases – photographs.

No, I have not felt the itch of eyes on me, nor have I grown frustrated with any other aspect of life or culture here. In fact, I’ve grown quite comfortable. I know my way around, I don’t mind dodging cars or bicycles, shrugging off touts and merchants; I love drinking the giant bottles of green tea I can find in all the stores, and I’ve even begun a love affair – as many others have – with a particular breakfast ‘sandwich’ you can buy a short walk from the main gate for 1 kuai (a couple of dimes I suppose). It is a piece of bread, a bit like a tortilla in nature, cooked with an egg and smeared with hot sauce and lastly fitted with questionable lettuce. I think I may even like it more than the English muffin I eat almost religiously for breakfast at Midd.

There is a word for the feeling that grips many of us now – not quite the throes of culture shock, but subtle, or perhaps stronger for some, is lichou: 离愁, ‘sorrow of separation.’ I found this word in a poem written by an emperor in exile after his dynasty had been lost. The characters that make up this word are literally ‘separate, away’ and ‘sorrow.’ I’ve always loved this word for sorrow, its literally meaning ‘autumn (秋) of the heart (心).’

Homesickness first crept into me as a I heard a song from last semester, just some small thing that for a moment put me back in a place, happy and at east, and especially with many good friends. Though I very much like my classmates here, it’s the smallest social circle I’ve been in in years, and besides that, there are people I miss in particular. The internet woes and telephone expenses only make the distance that much more real.

Thrown out of the ‘small world’ mentality I’ve grown used to, I find myself imagining travel and adventure of the pre-1990s and deeper times. Distance then must have been tangible, some curtain or wall, some great mass – an ocean or mountain. Distance was a snow-covered pass or a rain-wrecked road; there was only waiting, waiting and words – prayers and poetry. But maybe I romanticize.

Guanxi

2007-01-20T21:25:00.000-08:00

(1/21/07)

One of the most important elements of understanding Chinese culture is understanding guanxi which can be translated as 'connections' or 'relationships.' Guanxi controls business life, brings opportunity, and defines your identity in a way. This cultural facet dates back to ancient times, but now manifests itself in the form of business cards and, as with most events in China, food.

To me it seems that just about everyone has business cards, and it's standard to exchange cards upon meeting someone. Exchanging cards is also a rather important affair here; one must inspect and admire the card (in respect of its owner) before putting it safely away.

A friend of mine, Patrick, has already had his own business cards made in expectation of an interview for summer work. A classmate coming to Beijing from Hangzhou wished he had business cards. I myself have already received business cards and had to offer a piece of paper with my name and cellphone number in exchange.

This story is a rather interesting one and is one of my first experiences of the sort. One night after dinner, I wanted to sit somewhere and have some tea and do my homework in a place other than a dorm's study room. I went to another restaurant, and upon sitting, the owner came and sat with me, effectively ruining my plans, but offering an experience of its own. For maybe an hour or so, we talked somewhat awkwardly -- as I couldn't understand him very well -- about various topics with no real fluidity. Often he wrote down things on the back of old homework pages when I couldn't understand, and sometimes a waitress would linger by and join in or try to clear thing sup. What I think I learned is this, the pieces of which vary as their veracity is concerned:

Gao Guang-mao is from Anhui province, specifically Huangshan, the location of a famous and beautiful mountain. He has some familiarity with Chinese and American history, and has written a book I think the subject of which is Chinese history. He paints, too, and some of his work is also in his book. He only recently opened this restaurant (which serves Anhui cuisine), and before he was a doctor. It was an interesting night, and I have not yet made good on his invitation to return and sit with him again, something that has become a source of some worry to me.

Guanxi, though, has a more mundane side, and that includes family and friends. Arriving in Beijing, we discovered the devastation dealt to the internet, and so my guanxi back in America fall out of touch, but I am happily surprised to be finding such great guanxi here among my classmates, their Chinese roommates, and even a Midd alum.

Studying Chinese at Middlebury has always been a strange experience. The intensity of the program and the difficulty of the language conjures a special bond among the students, and though we may not live together or hang out all the time, we are still a 'band of brothers' of sorts. I've been blessed and happy to find how much I enjoy and (I feel) benefit from being in China with the people I am with.

Middlebury has not failed me in this regard in another instance. Three of us had lunch with an alum, Lila Buckley, and for a couple of hours just talked about her work, about China, and about the life of a foreigner in China. Lila is basically second-in-charge (from my understanding) of a very interesting ngo in China working to proselytize companies and the government to believing in a future of sustainable development. Her work inspires me, and I think it's the kind that now attracts my post-graduation ambitions. It was great just to talk with her about life in a place the three of us students had studied now for so long.

And this is guanxi -- giving, sharing, and relying upon or being relied upon. In China, individuality is not what drives you, it's the opposite -- it's your relationships that define you, and they are thus such a sought-after commodity.

Acclimation

2007-01-20T21:04:00.000-08:00

(1/18/07)

16 hours, 3 strange meals of Japan Airlines' finest in-flight delicacies, and 3 recent theatre-abandoned films later, I touched down in the People's Republic, sometime in the hour between 9 and 10pm locally. I introduce my journey in a manner mimicking The Beach, a film starring Leonardo DiCapprio of debatable quality, nonetheless a favorite of mine. The movie opens with Leo's voice-over measuring the length and time of his flight in units of 'plastic meals' and shitty movies. I couldn't resist.

Leaving the protective seal of the airport, I stepped out into the air of Beijing. It smelt vaguely of lingering firecracker scent, and since then has assumed many more smells: cooked yams (vaguely sweet like sweet potato fries) and a Venetian-canal odor emanating from bathroom doors or sewer vents.

My experiences in Beijing have been mostly experiences of acclimation: not flushing toilet paper, brushing teeth with bottled water, learning public transport, learning local accents, learning names of food, and dealing (or not dealing) with the internet--a result it seems of recent earthquakes off Taiwan, or so we assume.

Just in time for class, I caught a cold which has lasted several days and has already encouraged me to acclimate to another aspect of life on the northern plains: dryness. I don't know that I've drunk so much water and tea in my life. Tea, though, has wholly replaced coffee in my life, as cafes are rare and Starbucks a ridiculousness here in which I can't bear to participate.

Conception of price everyday grows more estranged to my life of before. A cup of coffee at Starbucks costs as much as 2 meals at any decent restaurant, at least. Indeed, I'm quickly acclimating to new prices and values.

These new prices include beer -- served in 1 quart bottles -- for 2 kuai in any local shop (about $.25). Already I'm loathe to pay 15 kuai or more at a bar (about $2) and certainly not 20 to 50 kuai for a cup of coffee).

Surprising to me is the sunshine we've had everyday since being here, and the comfort I feel despite the cold I feared before coming. This, however, could very well be attributed to the long johns and multiple layers I wear almost at all moments outside of showering.

Probably the thing I've least acclimated to is the workload that traps me and that I had hoped so much to leave behind. For almost a year now, I've grown more and more weary with the life of higher education, and intensive Chinese-only experiences (such as this January-term) have driven me to frustration indescribable. I'm in China, in Beijing, discussing Chinese sights, and I'm stuck in a classroom for all but one afternoon a week. There is obviously some acclimation I've yet to accomplish in this regard.

Strangers

2007-01-20T20:34:00.000-08:00

(1/16/07)

Beijing is a city of about 13 million, most of which are undoubtedly strangers. With a European face, I am one of the most obvious examples. The Tibetan girls selling jewelry at the nearby underground crosswalk are strangers, too. The young man from the heart of China who sleeps in my room is a stranger as well. We are all strangers, but most of all, I am in particular one in this foreign land -- a novelty and an expectation.

On the subject of strangers, I will first share with you one discovery I've made in the short time I've been in China. All Chinese (language) students get a Chinese name of varying authenticity; mine, Cui Rui-de (seen in red on the banner above), I've been informed twice now is shared by none other than Rett Butler of Gone with the Wind fame: Bai Rui-de.

I could fill an entire book already with what I've encountered in just 7 days that is strange to me, but there is the unexpected strangeness in familiarity and the familiarity in strangeness that is most interesting. Already my life and friends at home and Middlebury seem distant, veiled by time, and now long-gone; already the last thing new seems sweet-tasting with nostalgia. The internet here is virtually useless for anything outside China, and the world behind is only further banished by this.

But present here are ghosts of even older worlds: people and feelings I've not known since this summer: classmates in the same program, a language pledge, and frustration at an insane workload. Some of these ghosts have been in China for a semester already, and it's strange to find their familiar faces present again.

How is that strangeness amid all the strangeness, amid all the strangers? It's familiar. It is all so familiar now.

The Third Act

2007-01-03T18:14:00.000-08:00

Days away from my departure, I feel it's about time to intoduce this blog and my 'adventure.' I say adventure because it is an adventure for me, and it was in this spirit I have named this site "The Wild East," some play on its American antithesis. In my last post I brushed over some of the reasons of why I call China--and I suppose East Asia at large--that. By now, I don't think I have enlighten anyone about the revolution that is modern China of this moment; this hundred years has been called 'China's Century' and it is hard to read the headlines without feeling the tremors from the rise of what Napoleon called the sleeping giant. China is the new land of opportunity, and it thus attracts entrepeneurs and dreamers of all nationalities with the lure of fortune, exoticism, and adventure.

I hope "The Wild East" will not consent to suffer the limits of a travel record, but instead strive to reveal some part of me and some part of China. In doing so, perhaps it will reveal something about the world, the meeting of the East and the West, and our shared future in this fragile century. But enough of this; the dreams belong in China, right? So, in the comfort of Memphis' suburbs, I will lay out the nitty-gritty. Bear with me; this is the introduction to my adventure.

With time to kill before a meeting, I found myself in the library of Middlebury College (as I so often did this past semester), sitting in a large, comfy lazy-boy in the main atrium. Zach, a classmate of mine, had stopped to share anxieties over a looming paper for a shared Chinese literature class. Conversation shifted to China, and Zach said something that struck a chord for me; he said studying abroad in China is the climax of your (a Chinese student, here) college career. And there I sat, a first-semester Junior with seven semesters (2 earned in an extreme summer program at Midd) of Chinese under my belt; Chinese students at Midd pretty much from day 1 expect to go to China, and it had come at last.

But there's another reason I dwell on this. This fall, I took screenwriting with Don Mitchell, who drove into our bones the concept of the Three Act structuture--setup, complication, and resolution. At the end of my first semester of Junior year, I found myself also at the end of my second act: the crisis moment, when all hope seems lost. I had papers and tests and no energy for schoolwork, and I also had no idea how I would make it out of this one. The protagonist somehow finds resolution at this point, though, and makes a decision that leads to the story's climax. The climax (going to China, right?) occurs in the third act. It was just a matter of getting to the next act--or so I told myself.

Well, I made it out alright--at least in screenwriting. And now I'm moving onto my third act which is divided in the following manner. From mid-January to mid-February I will be in Beijing as part of CET's January Term program. This program is strictly a language study program, where I'll be polishing the dust off my modern Chinese (which has deteriorated as I studied ancient Chinese instead in the fall semester). Sometime at the end, there is some time off to enjoy Chinese New Year (technically "Spring Festival") before heading south to Hangzhou.

Hangzhou (pronounced roughly 'hong-jo' in American) is a former capital of ancient China, which Marco Polo described as "beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world." Its beauty has earned it a place in a very telling phrase: "上有天堂，下有苏杭," above there is heaven, below there is Suzhou and Hangzhou. It is here that I will spend my spring semester in the C.V. Starr-Middlebury School in China (partnered with the aforementioned CET) where I will take 'dumbed-down' courses in Chinese (as opposed to Chinese courses)--examples include 'Modern Chinese Literature,' 'Chinese Cinema,' and 'Contemporary Chinese Social Issues' among others. The 1-on-1 course I described before is also part of this program. And then in June, I will be set free to carry out whatever plan I will design to occupy myself until August 15, the date on my return ticket home.

So, sit tight for the third act--it's about to start.

When I Find You Again, It Will Be in Mountains...

2007-01-02T16:20:00.000-08:00

(originally written Nov. 13, 2006)

I promise you this will not be a short entry, and that is all. It will be the first, and it will be lacking in more dimensions than it will be fulfilling. I hope only there will be something told. This part of the story begins with photos...

These are just two examples of photos taken by classmates standing on some mountain in Zhejiang Province, China as the sun rose. Zhejiang Province is on the eastern coast of China, just south of Shanghai, and the Zhejiang capital of Hangzhou hosts the C.V. Starr-Middlebury School in China where I will be spending my spring semester.

Before then, however, I must pass the ever-shorter, ever-darker, last days of autumn in Vermont. When I am done here, I will spend my break in Memphis--home, visiting friends and family and preparing for China. On January 8th, I begin the long journey through the night that lands me in far away lands with inverted time zones—The Wild East. The land of 21st-century opportunity, adventure, and politics. I don’t plan to wear a revolver on my hip, nor a pancho over my shoulder, but a camera and wind-resistant soft-shell might evoke a similar image stepping off the train.

But, for now, there are mountains. I fell in awe, and I fell in love with these pictures. It spurned again in me emotions and sentiments that I had set aside for sometime. They hold in them the orientalism of which I am warned and to which I am drawn. These pictures are proof, though, that there exists some magic and some great, cloudy remnant of the ancient world I have studied for the past few years.

My classmates stayed at a Daoist (Taoist) monastery on this mountain, and I at once recalled a book I had skimmed some this past January in Middlebury. I was taking Elizabeth Morrison's "Food and Eating in Asian Religions" (no, there was not that much eating), in which the professor mentioned in passing a story about Bill Porter (aka Red Pine) searching for hermits in 1989 China. Porter supposedly met a hermit in the mountains that said he was 200-or-something years old, and responding to Porter's surprise, the hermit replied that the foreigner should meet his 400-or-something year old master. Though I've tried to read Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits twice now, I've not discovered this story.

The magic, however, remained. In Hangzhou, one of my classes is a one-on-one class for which I choose a topic, and the staff hires an expert for me. In theory, it’s a very attractive dimension to the program. I decided I wanted to work with what I called “mountain poetry,” tracing the fascination of traditional Chinese culture with mountains through traditional Chinese poetry. Throughout my study of Chinese literature, mountains have pervaded works as holy places, referenced literally as divine altars as well as the more symbolic use by poets in their “in search of a sage, but unable to find him, I write this…” poetry.

From time to time, I find myself bored from work in the library, searching the Chinese poetry section. I had at the time, a nagging lure to read a bit of the most famous of “mountain poets,” Hanshan—Cold Mountain. But on the shelf, my scanning eyes fell about a handwritten spine “When I Find You…” This was a homemade hardback in which they sheath paperbacks. Cracking it, I found the true cover: an ink painting of misty Chinese mountains stretching tall, stained an emerald green. The true title was When I Find You Again It Will Be in Mountains: Selected Poems of Chia Tao (pinyin: Jia Dao). After repeated visits, I at last found this ‘monk-poet’s’ title work.

SEEING OFF A MAN OF THE TAO

When I find you again,
it will be in mountains;
this morning, I lose you
once more to farewell.

Free of attachment
in heart and mind
is it why you can go
ten thousand li alone

to places with such
little human warmth,
where, when you meet someone,
they speak an ancient tongue?

Traveling without disciples,
you have only
a white dog
for company.

Though I’m certain you will hear from me again before there are mountains, we still have farewell—for now.