home again

A single smile and 2.5 years vanished before my eyes: again I was poised before my sophomore year of college suffering the summer heat and humidity, the mosquitoes, the toxic herbicides, poison ivy, ticks, cat tails reaching far over my head working with John Johnson, an angry botanist and collector of antique furniture of a specific period in history. He smiled the way he did 2.5 years ago with his features all scrunched up and the glint of his small circular glasses. I was in a brewery in an old industrial park, very inconspicuous place, drinking with former coworkers from the natural resource crew of the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County. I was most excited to see John Johnson with whom I worked in tandem for the majority of those muggy summer days. It was cold now, winter time and we both had a perspiring pint in our hands of locally-brewed. My face was warm from the alcohol, and my mind was heavy from jetlag... had it not been just a few days prior that I made my 30 hour trip home from Nanjing to Chicago, a trip that took 4 planes? And was it not just the beginning of that day of departure that I hugged my closest friends of 4 months or less goodbye on the messy and disordered street, got into the taxi cab headed for the airport and looked back at them as they all stood waving, figures growing dimmer with the early morning smog and the fogginess of the cab's rear window. And I missed these few individuals, but in a happy way and not at all in a longing way. My whole four months had already beginned to make sense in my mind, that is to say, how I appreciated it so. And in the taxi ride to the airport, through the time I was first home, standing in the bar with John Johnson, all of this appreciation was setting in quickly like the water you sprinkle in soil to grow the plants.

winter sun

These last waning days in Nanjing have been quite nice, mild winter days with clear skies and sun and that certain air in the afternoon that leaves you happy and content. Maybe it's the excitement of leaving and starting a new chapter that has roused my memory of all the good and interesting experiences I have had here, and allowed the duller moments to recede into the back. In the end Nanjing is not the greatest city, but it's not entirely bad except for the food. Nanjing is the kind of place someone would tell you "is a nice place to raise a family," and you would instantly think, that place must be pretty boring. One thing Nanjing has is history, and a long string of it to boot. Furthermore, for a city, people are much friendlier in Nanjing compared with Beijing and Shanghai. So many cities in China are more and more resembling each other as they develop and share each other's flavors. Nanjing will most probably turn progressively more modern and dull. Beijing is already doing the same. Shanghai just sucks all around.
I want to come back to China again in a few years simply to travel. I would really only want to go to the cities to visit friends, otherwise I am more interested in going to more rural areas in the west and southwest. My cousin Renzhi mentioned that he and his girlfriend may get married in a few years. It would be fun to return to Hunan for that, spend more time in the 故乡, see Leiyang and Hunan's holy mountain, and then skip around a few other places. For now, these are just idle thoughts that keep me entertained. The reality of starting a career will give fewer opportunities to return, so I will make a list of the places I want to go most, and think practically of how I can plan a trip sometime in the future.
China is a wonderful place to explore, though not always the greatest place to live. With a daily pollution index in the hundreds in these major cities, I am excited for the relatively fresh air that America, the northwest in particular, has to offer. Beats inhaling two packs of cigarettes each day.

a simple meditation

sometimes a feeling strikes me, and it's not often, but I instantly forget what it is, and it bothers me. It is a thought that is very saddening, it plagues me even after it is gone and it never stayed long enough for me to recognize.

want to go to qinghai someday

Good news came the other day in the form of part-time employment. Originally I was planning on trying to squeeze time into my winter schedule to be a TA in the anatomy labs again, but I think I've decided to trump that for a position working in the organic chemistry lab instead. I talked to my former boss Gary through e-mail; he hadn't forgotten about me, in fact he was expecting me to come back and work. I would get paid, whereas working in the cadaver lab wouldn't earn me any money. Furthermore, one of my coworkers happens to be one of my favorite people in Eugene, Mike Lyons, a former roommate of mine in the Mill St. 8.
I caught another cold right after I recovered from the last, so spent a couple hours today at my favorite teahouse around town called 一路思雨 which I guess can be translated into something like "thinking/longing for rain all along the way." Fitting for my life since I always end up back in the rain.
Last night I watched one of the coolest Chinese movies ever called "可可西里kekexili" concerning a true story spanning the mid-90's about a Beijing reporter who goes to Qinghai Province in order to cover a story about a vigilante band of Tibetans trying to enforce law on illegal poachers of an endangered Tibetan antelope. The cinematography is awesome and the movie is composed well... some crazy shit goes down. I recommend it.

selected photos

798 Galleries in Beijing
Me making 糖醋鱼... they gave me two fish
烧烤
798 in Beijing
Natan and me in Yunnan

thanksgiving 2008

Two weeks left in Nanjing, it is cold here and I just caught one from my roommate so I am sitting in pajama bottoms I long-term borrowed from Shawna and my recently-bought zip-up sweater that looks a little gay reading about the varying inadequacies of health coverage in rural China. I have to do this for a presentation on Wednesday with a few other classmates. Everyone in my program practically just started working on this project. Our topic is street vendors, and for my own research paper and part I am focusing on health care and using street vendors as a case study. We've interviewed a few here and there, but street vendors are getting more and more sparse as the city tries to clean itself up in the name of civilized manners (as the countless red banners throughout the city proclaim: 让南京更美好).
Generally speaking, many of the stories are quite similar: there was no work to be found in Xinjiang or wherever rural place, working hours go from 6am to 10pm, there is no health insurance for them since they come from the countryside. And then there's the "rugged adventurer" kid from Aspen, CO in my group who asks in broken Mandarin: "你喜欢你的工作吗？ Do you like your job?" There's a pretty obvious answer to that, especially when someone spends every day burning their arm to move coals around at the bottom of a stove to bake bread. But I am pretty surprised at how open some of these vendors will be. One fruit seller said he wished the Taiwanese government would take over. When someone asked the Uyghur people who sell skewers how much money they make in a weekend, they looked confused: “周末？ 周末是什么意思? Weekend? What it is the meaning of that?"
Anyway, I came back from Hunan last weekend feeling a bit lonely. Spending time with my relatives there reminded me of that warm feeling togetherness of family brings. It felt like a holiday, it was my surrogate Thanksgiving a week before. So I had a taste of family warmth I hadn't experienced in a while. I miss eating dinner with them, and then sitting on the couch watching Chinese soap operas while entertaining little Ziyi 子依. When I said goodbye to Ziyi and tried to press my forehead against hers, she slapped me across the face and laughed at me. Later on I was inspired with an idea to make a children's book in Chinese, but I'm gonna keep that idea secret since this blog is public ;)
This last picture I've posted is one of my favorites from last weekend...

长沙 day 3

RenZhi and I at our grandfather's middle school
me and the brothers
RenGuang and his daughter GuZiYi (谷子依）
On the eve of my departure I'm looking back on this weekend with a lot of joy. Although I didn't know what to expect before coming to Changsha, I've had such a wonderful time these past few days with my cousins, and never really felt distant from them after the moment we met. Today I ate breakfast consisting of doujiang and youtiao (豆浆跟油条) with RenZhi and afterward, with he and his girlfriend strolled around the city's center which is essentially the same as all other Chinese city's commercial districts. We played pool in a cold dark pool hall for a while and then met with RenGuang and ate so much Hunanese dishes (湘菜), including the specialty and a personal favorite of mine 臭豆腐. It was so delicious: not too foul, nor too salty, just the right amount of spiciness, and black as a beetle's back.
After eating I took a long walk around with RenGuang. We ended up at 天心阁, a part of Changsha's old city walls. It's been turned into a public park, and is actually where RenGuang and his wife took their wedding photos back in 2005. RenGuang is the most talkative of these cousins I have met, and I understand his Mandarin the most. As we stood up on the tall pavilion in the park, he was telling me a bit about the city's history and eventually we talked more about family history. He described to me his father's situation in China when the rest of the family left and he said it certainly isn't anyone's fault, but ultimately a matter of how history shaped the family's various constituents. He told me his dad once tried to go to America to visit his family, went all the way to GuangDong to get a visa, but his visa was denied bc the Chinese gov't saw that all his siblings lived in the U.S, and they thought if he were to go there he would not want to return. So for this reason my uncle never had the chance to go to America at all. RenGuang furthermore told me that because of their family circumstances they did not have connections in high places when the time came for he and his siblings to find work. He said they had to rely on their own resourcefulness and abilities, much like us in the US (since familial connections aren't as important there as they are in China). As we leaned over the railing of the pavilion and talked, looking over the bustling city I felt really happy. It had been a long time since I'd felt this inspired and awakened. I told RenGuang how happy I was for all of us to have this chance to meet.
We then strolled around a bit more, sat down to have our shoes shined while I told him about my career option specifics and what my family has been up to. RenGuang told me about his job more in full. He started as a Chinese major, but switched into things like sales and then ended up where he is now working in an office for Changsha city government. He writes various documents and speeches for government officials, helps with the organization of various meetings. He said his job is very high-pressure, but he seems content.
I've felt very at home here, even since I arrived and that feeling increased over these short days. I am so glad to have had this opportunity, certainly is among the most meaningful in my abroad experience.

谷家

I've really been enjoying my stay in Changsha quite a bit. I was nervous as hell on the flight over here from Nanjing; although it was only an hour flight it felt substantially longer. Then I wandered around the arrivals gate looking for people who would recognize me as the only foreign person in there and eventually up walked three people all with eyes set on me and I knew. It was RenZhi (任芝） and his girlfriend and RenXiang (任祥), we introduced ourselves and quickly went out to the car that my other cousin RenGuang （任光）was driving. I quickly got over my nervousness in the car as we drove back to their apartment, driving over the big Xiang Jiang river with a nice view of the city on both sides. Since I have arrived they have been very hospitable towards me, eager to provide me with food, sight-seeing opportunities, and even a hotel room since their apartment is too small to fit everyone. RenGuang lives with his wife, 2-yr old daughter, and his mother (late uncle's wife) in that apartment and he works in an office involved with Changsha city governent. The other two cousins who showed up came from Shenzhen where they work in 外贸 foreign trade involving a product that helps people to quit smoking. They took an 8-hr train ride to get here. Two other cousins live in Leiyang, my father's own hometown, but were too busy to make it to Changsha this weekend.
They've busted out tons of photos of when my grandfather, aunt WenLing (She pulled the trigger?!) and WenQi (UNCLE JIM!) came to visit them many years ago. They have pictures our grandfather sent them over the years and they seem to hold him in high regard. Ironically enough, he even sent my cousins here in China those family reunion t-shirts from 1995 that has every single Ku family member's signature except for theirs. And my cousins had pictures of themselves wearing those shirts on a different occasions in China. Tonight I was given a copy of the family tree book our grandfather had had bound way back when. I saw it once before when I was younger bc my dad has a copy, but now I have my own.
Yesterday I went with a few of them to Hunan University (our grandfather's 母校) as well as the small mountain that hugs it. We hiked up the mountain and came back after dark. It was such a peaceful and relaxing place, with nice autumn colors and not too many people. It's been interesting spending time with them. Sometimes there are long moments of silence bc I can't really think of things to say when my language capabilities are so limited and I barely know them to begin with. When they speak with each other it is almost entirely conducted in the Leiyang dialect of which I understand essentially nothing. The brothers translate their mother's words into Mandarin for me since she does not speak standard Mandarin. Sometimes I don't understand their standard Mandarin either and I either make a guess as to what they are saying based on context or I just pretend I understand and later probably ask a question that they've already explained the answer to. In this sense, my lack of listening comprehension ability as well as proper grammar when I try to speak sometimes makes me feel really embarrassed, but they know I've only been studying a little over a year. Sometimes I have an easier time than others... I think my language capabilities are actually quite dependent on things like the weather, the time of day, how hungry/full I am, how tired/awake I am... so my ability seems to fluctuate.
All in all though, I've had a great time here so far. My cousins have been incredibly warm and welcoming. RenZhi is very friendly and amiable, RenXiang quiet and sweet, and RenGuang talkative and buddy-like. As for mistakes or other discrepencies in my Mandarin oral-audio skills, I can only really learn from those. Our family here seems quite happy in spite of the unfortunate circumstances their father (my uncle) was left in during the Cultural Revolution when the rest of the family went to Taiwan. But I mean, they are Ku's after all, of course they're going to prevail in the face of hardships.

长沙远方堂兄

from left to right: 谷任之, me, 谷任光
任光，他老婆跟女儿，伯母，任之跟他女朋友，任祥 RenGuang and his wife and daughter, Aunt, RenZhi and his girlfriend, RenXiang

我跟谷任祥，谷任之 在湖南大学 RenXiang, RenZhi and me at Hunan University

彩虹里

Played a drinking game with a few friends while watching a ridiculous Japanese zombie movie called "Wild Zero." The days are flowing by like a river, each one the same yet totally different. A month left in China, a period of time that once seemed relatively long to me, but I know how these weeks go. And on Thursday I am taking off for Changsha 长沙... nervous, excited, not knowing what to expect.
I finally bought a pair of pants I like at a local Walmart-like super market. My other pants are far too baggy and ratty looking. The weather is quite cold these days, something I haven't really experienced in China before. Every late morning we open the window to a view of the haziest smog and a bleak set of tall buildings. Certainly there are prettier parts of Nanjing. I still have not gotten around to walking around the old city walls, what's left of them anyway.
I do like the 3-day weekends, sleeping in is so nice especially with the curtains drawn and the room is cast in that certain light, perfect for sleeping when you are simply so exhausted. I am needing to take advantage of opportunities for naps from time to time. Naps can just be the best thing in the world as long as they dont exceed 2.5 hours, for me anyways. I took a nap last week at one point and in two hours had a plethora of dreams I actually remembered. I haven't remembered a single dream practically in the longest time.
Of these dreams, most remarkable was one in which I was in 青岛 and I heard on the news that Bill Gates had commited suicide.. the news was saying 盖茨自杀了 and I felt like a dope for not knowing about it until exaclty 24 hours later. Then another dream included me noticing that another program member Tim had a copy of the Tribune's TV guide with a picture of Marv from Sin City on the cover and I was like, "Tim, why do you still have a copy of that TV guide, that is so old." Perhaps the most eerie and visually stimulating dream I had involved Shawna and I together again in some strange town. In this small village everyone was playing some sort of games. There was a lake that kids were hovering and flying over with kites using the wind's force. This was in the distance, then further off to my right was a small castle where a long line of couples in wedding attire. Couple by couple would take their turn to race up the castle wall which was like a climbing wall as fast as they could and had to be holding hands the whole time. The men wore top hats and the women white veils. I had to pee so I found an abandoned bathroom, the interior dark and dank with squatter toilets just as in China, and they were very reminiscent of the more rural toilets where you have to pay 1元 to use. I looked out a crack in the bathroom wall and saw a woman in the distance whose back was turned and she was facing a big opaque lake. I left the bathroom and heard whispers with the wind and I thought maybe it would be Shawna, but no one was around. The sky became so gloomy and dark like one day when I was working for the Forest Preserve and we were collecting seed as an epic storm rolled in. I went around the other side of the bathroom looking for Shawna and said aloud that we hadn't made love in a long time. In the distance there still stood the woman facing the vast lake and I felt afraid. It reminded me of a ghost story my dad told me when I was little about a woman without a face in a rice field. So I went back to the area where I could see the lawn games taking place and I felt comforted again, but I was still searching for Shawna.
What do I do in lonelier moments? Watching clips of Across the Universe, the renditions of Beatles songs often calms me and brings me to a place.

5 weeks

The weekend is quiet, of which only 5 remain before my return to the States. And that fifth weekend I still need to make it to Beijing to fly out to Vancouver then Toronto and at last Chi'town. It will be a long day of travel. These days are lazily sliding by, inclement weather turned me indoors this weekend watching "Goodfellas" and "Heathers" and trying to cram a bunch of useful Chinese vocab in my head that will be necessary to employ when I meet my cousin(s) in a few weeks. It's becoming more and more apparent that my time here is quickly drawing to a close and so now I'm shuffling to learn with a restored motivation, so to speak.
Tonight I went out with Masatoshi looking for 米酒 at any local Korean restaurant but they were all closed so we settled on beer and skewers at the regular place I typically go to. It's notably cold out so we more or less jogged to the restaurant, until the big red neon sign appeared at the slight curve in the road. For me, eating skewers is only really palatable any more with a nice cold 雪花 beer. We sat and talked about the program and how it's end is near. I also thought about an afternoon in Beijing with Shawna back in late August when we met up with this kid named Gavin who is a friend of my Cantonese friend Simon. After meandering thru that network of insane modern art galleries called 798 in far NE Beijing, the three of us went to a roadside hole-in-the-wall skewer place where we ate a ridiculous amount of skewers and drank a good amount of 雪花. That was a good afternoon, passing the time by talking and eating for like 3 hours. That's the way an afternoon should be.
Anyway I like hanging out with Masa; for one thing, he prefers to speak Mandarin in most cases since he doesn't always understand my English (I talk too fast and I mumble a lot). I'm not sure what we talk about come to think of it, and I guess I still really don't feel like I know him well even though he's one of my only friends here.
I feel a little frustrated thinking about how I'm building up a stronger basis for both spoken and written Mandarin only to have it inevitably degrade to a substantial degree when I once again drown myself in the science books. No matter what anyone says it is difficult to maintain the pursuit of a language once you are removed from the host country, removed from opportunities to speak (Eugene is not the place to learn Chinese), and removed from the subject altogether. Soon I will be transplanted to a molecular evolution class, among a hoard of other ridiculous ones. When I return I will be a biology major without a single connection in the department, which is scary. I will graduate 6 months after I return to Oregon. I feel it would be a strategic move for me to simply strengthen my relations in other depts like human physiology by being a TA again, or chemistry by getting hired in the lab again. I can just build on these relations, no one says I absolutely have to have biology dept references when I'm looking for jobs and whatnot. Maybe someone will, but if they think I am not good enough it is their loss. My loss of course until I do find a reasonable job...

smog and roommate

我同屋，樊星 My roommate Fanxing "Funstar"
窗外：污染很厉害

Obama wins! Off to 长沙 !

Today is legendary, but for me it is November 5th that I found out America elected its first black (biracial technically) President. I woke up from a nap and my roommate Funstar said, "did you know Obama won?" and that's the memory I will recall when people ask me far down the line, "What were you doing when America elected its first black President?" I'll say Funstar just came back to the room dressed fancy from an important interview and asked me if I knew. Well I was really happy to hear that, you know, because now I have another reason to come back to the United States. Just now watched his acceptance speech on Youtube from Grant Park in my beloved Chicago, IL. On Facebook a lot of 'friends'' status reads: "Yes We Did!" And I am sad I missed out on the whole thing, all the time leading up to the election and especially today now that I know Obama for sure won and I don't have to worry anymore. The acceptance speech was very moving. I heard Sen. McCain had a very good concession speech which I will try to catch as well. Although I am completely late, I may well go back and watch all the VP and Presidential debates (all of which I am embarrassed to admit) I did not watch here in China.
I went to dinner last night with my Chinese friend 炫霖 and he told me he loves Obama, not only because he is good-looking and black, but also because he knows how to fight for his cause. He also told me Sichuanese girls are of spicey temperament like their food around the time I was relaying my brief travel experiences in that area. I thought that was hilarious, especially because he was very wide-eyed as he said that.
The most exciting thing to happen these last few days was finally tracking down my long-lost cousins with the help of my dad. We had been trying for quite awhile but had turned up no luck. Then randomly the other night I was talking to Ba on Google Chat when suddenly he said: "Good news, I got through to Changsha!" And it all sort of fell into place there. The following evening I placed a call given the new cell number for my cousin living in Changsha. I was really nervous about making the cal actually, not only because I wasn't sure how well I'd conduct a conversation in Chinese over the phone, but also because even though it was a blood relative he was essentially a perfect stranger. But I found him quite amiable over the phone, and he welcomed me to come to Changsha in a few weeeks, saying he would contact his siblings now living in Leiyang (Ba's hometown) and Shenzhen to try to bring them all together for my visit. When I thanked him for his hospitality he said there was no need because we are brothers. That was an interesting response... So I am really looking forward to this opportunity, I imagine it will be among the most valuable experiences of this whole study abroad trip. The plan is to fly there the weekend spanning the 20th-23rd. I will start planning this weekend.

14,15,16 in Monte Vista

The later summers I spent in Colorado got to be pretty lonely, now that I think back. I mean as an early teen, and not when the relatives from Oregon and Texas came booming in, but after they left and I was shipped back to Monte Vista. There it is beautiful, silent and rugged terrain, everything someone would need as a vacation from the noise in his/her head, and although it was great it didn't always suit me well. I spent my days painting shitty paintings and trying to tame the latest baby horse in the pasture, staying up late to watch chilling Discovery Channel programs about lesser-known serial killers in places just as random as Monte Vista and then I'd sleep in til well past sun-up.
I ate a lot of Ramen noodles and sometimes would gather a whole box of empty Shasta Cola cans and carry my little .22 rifle 5 minutes down the dusty road to the Sheriffs' range for target practice. I often sat in the gazebo and watched giant mosquitoes helplessly trying to get through the screen from the inside, so occupied with trying to escape they didn't smell me, and I would gaze out at the horse pasture and put my feet up and listen to CDs, write short stories that have long since been tossed (for the better anyway). I didn't put on a swimsuit and jump into the ice-cold water hole unless Dave or Seth or Brian was there for a visit. I used to go with Sammy to Alco which was just outside of downtown Monte Vista and buy notebooks that I could fill with my 14-15-16-yr old insights for real cheap, or random movies like "Dawn of the Dead." That one cost $8, I remember very vividly actually. It was fun riding in the passenger seat of Sammy's massive truck used to pull horsetrailers down Highway 160, my arm tanning against the window and the mirages on the road over and again appearing and going away.
Every week I would glean the San Luis Valley local paper to find out what big movie would be playing at the drive-in theatre 2 miles down the road. It would always be movies like "Doctor Doolittle 2," which Dave and I went to see when he came to visit once. There was also a very small theatre in the town that I enjoyed going to as often as possible. My mom took me there quite a bit, and it made some evenings so much more exciting. Otherwise, Monte Vista did not offer much, and even less so Del Norte, the closest down going the other direction. I spent several hours late into the night at the hospital in Del Norte suffering from some brief flu-like ailment. It was never quite defined and was so excruciating they injected my butt with such a powerful opiate I slept through a whole day of my life.
I have better stories to tell about Colorado of course since it is practically a second home for me, but these were the ones I was thinking of: many aimless days I spent living in my head and often wondering what my friends were doing all summer back in Illinois, missing Alexei whether he was helping the cause to prevent wildfires in Durango or hanging around Boulder, and Julian who was always elsewhere, the summer I'm thinking of he was living in Pilsen in the Southside of Chicago with Joe Hake in that seemingly ill-fated apartment. It wasn't all bad though, I got used to being alone, had time to read books and stuff... I had much opportunity to just think and reflect and that was probably more valuable than I'm willing to give credit.

动画。。。Halloween in 昆明

石卡雪山
云海
普达措国家公园
松赞林寺
虎跳峡

I am glad to be back to Nanjing, even though I've grown pretty sick of polluted cities. Spending time in Yunnan was very appreciated, especially when the weather turned fantastic in our last two days of travel. The landscape there, especially around Shangrila reminded me much of parts of Colorado and Oregon, in essence it is quite similar to the American West. I thought about how much my family would love it; aspects of it reminded me of being up at West Lost with Sammy, and others of tromping around eastern and western Oregon with Julian the year before last. So imagine the American West, but instead of cowboys there are Tibetans (西藏人). We were able to spend quite a bit of time outdoors those last two days which was nice after all the cold and rain.
Traveling back to Nanjing was a long process and I am glad to be back because now I am on less of a strict schedule and can enjoy a substantial amount of privacy. Halloween (yesterday) was spent partially on top of a mountain (石卡雪山), on a bus zipping through winding roads with ridiculous techno music playing, on a plane and in Kunming a bit offset from the city center. Suffice to say, it wasn't much of a Halloween at all with one exception, a Halloween-themed animation that Shawna had made for me. And that brought the feeling back. This morning I called Julian from Skype in my hotel lobby in Kunming and found out he was Cat in the Hat for Halloween, which made me really happy for some reason. En route back to Nanjing, my friend Jake (who is also a U of O student) and I were trying to describe how ridiculous the people in Oregon, specifically Eugene and Srpingfield, are and it struck me that I have literal handfuls of weird Oregon stories. I actually miss it, the everyday oddity you see there if you step off campus long enough. And I thought about Oregon Country Fair, how that is the epic pinnacle of Oregonian weirdness.
Today is Nov 1, giving me 1.5 months remaining in China. I know what I need to do and how I should utilize my time, no matter how much I get to missing the States at times and all of my loved ones there. I will be back soon.

Pseudo-Tibet

Now we are in Shangrila, far northwestern part of Yunnan province not far from the Tibetan border. And here there resides quite a bit of Tibetans, and thus their cultural influence. The landscape here is stunning and something very unlike what I have been accustomed to seeing in China. That all the different places I have been to constitute one nation is truly amazing; it is difficult to conceive of how variegated and diverse a place China is. Yunnan is beautiful, but this time of year rainy and intolerably cold (Oregon has softened me, Chicago winters are much worse). I came unprepared for this weather so just now purchased long underwear that has left me duelly satisfied. I had to leave behind the special privelage of my own bedroom with a king-sized bed and heating blanket in Lijiang (Pingping hooked me up with that) for an even colder place and a shared room in Shangrila.
There is a lot on my mind these days, thinking about the future. I am specifically concerned about graduating on time, figuring out housing, searching for jobs both for when I am at school and after I graduate. Meanwhile I am focusing on now, on learning as much Mandarin as I can of course, and then missing Shawna a lot. Distance is far from easy, but no part of me has any doubt that it isn't worth the wait and the longing. Mainly these last couple of days all I can really concentrate on is how cold and wet I am. On a side note I am celebrating Halloween a night early (tomorrow) by going to a Tibetan family's house to eat, drink, dance, and be merry. Our teacher said the family would slaughter two sheep for us. Today I bought a homemade alcohol from a roadside restaurant near Tiger Leaping Gorge that was brewed in all sorts of plants, fruits, spices, snakes, and deshelled tutrtles, among myriad other unknown entities. It tastes good and will be suitable for our "Tibetan party."

成都

余怡和我在成都天府广场
masa and christine with 钵钵鸡
大熊猫繁殖研究中心... shawna in animal form :)
me, Pingping, christine, and brittany

Aboard the flight from Chengdu (成都） to Lijiang (丽江) I listened to Christmas music and felt warm and chuckled to myself thinking about how quickly the remaining month and a half will slide by and soon I will be once again home for the holidays. And two weeks after that at long last I will be reunited with my love. I still have at least 6 flights before I get to that point unfortunately, but it is keeping me running.
This time in China I've really experienced the feeling of "cultural isolation," as it's sometimes referred. I should say it has been valuable for me to go through this though in the long run. What's aggravated it is how bad the food in Nanjing is. As well I practically have no friends in my program. I mean have a few I'm becoming better friends with, but I don't feel much connection with the lot of them. I get along fine though and can carry on a semi-respectable conversation. I would like to say however, that as a group these kids can get pretty strange. Amidst this 9-day sojourn quite a bit of drama has been stirred that was fermenting for weeks, enough to fill a mini-soap opera to keep me entertained. I am in the perfect position: on the outside looking in, without even the least bit of involvement. Group travel is quite a pain, and so our stay in Chengdu was mostly such. But I did have a few golden times that made it worth it... such as at a small restaurant the other night with a group of friends; we ordered several dishes including something specifically Sichuanese called Boboji (钵钵鸡）. When we finished eating there was a very awesome moment of relief when we found out that the boboji we ate was left over from the customers before us who had ordered it, and that which we did not eat was destined for the next customers to order it. Afterwards, going along with one person's desire to go meet up with others in a clubbing district, instead of going to dance, I along with myriad other bystanders watched a man beat himself up, crawling across the ground moaning and crying and wallowing in his own blood. Shortly thereafter I went back to the hotel.
Chengdu otherwise is a pretty chill city; they say the people here lead quite laid back and enjoyed lives and I believe it based on my initial impressions. There isn't much exciting going on there though, but the food is amazing. I ate hotpot with so much huajiao (花椒) my ears literally went numb. Today before leaving the city for Lijiang I met with my dad's friend 余怡 early in the morning. She took me to a nice Buddhist temple, followed by two meals at different restaurants back-to-back, coffee and the public square 天府广场 at the city center. It was a great time though because I spent the entire day speaking Chinese, and not just the basic practical stuff, but actual discussions about a wide range of topics such as graduate school, relative housing expenses, places in China, random experiences and opinions, eastern medicine, food, 等等. With such comprehensive discussion I was able to practice my listening and speaking skills over a very broad range of vocabulary.

midterm distraction by "Casino"; One-year anniversary overseas

Things are picking up rapidly around this time surrounding midterm exams and the group trip to southwestern China. At the moment I am taking a break from studying for a massive written (汉语） exam that will include, among other sections, two impromptu essays and a dictation covering 160 words, some of which are essentially completely trivial for me to know how to write (such as 招聘，燕子，汗珠）, but I am chugging through it nonetheless. I do like my teacher for that class quite a bit... among the Chinese students he has a reputation for being pretty intense. In class he is really animated and acts so ridiculous at times I just laugh and eventually he laughs with me, regardless of whether or not he knows why I am. He's one of those people whose mannerisms I can just think of and start laughing on the spot. I remember one time, a vocab word of ours was 吸毒 (to take drugs) to which he discussed by using the example of frequent drug use in the U.S. Then he went around the room and put a few of the students on the spot and asked each of them one after the other with a pointing finger: "你吸大麻啊？" ("Do you smoke weed?")
My other class is speaking for the most part, and that teacher I enjoy a lot as well. It's a much easier class to follow and moves considerably slower than my other, but I do appreciate the ability to have chances to talk more, and much of the grammar we learn in it is more applicable to common speech. Whereas in the other class Cao Laoshi will be going way into depth on a given grammar pattern only to reveal later that it's strictly used in written Chinese and not spoken. As for the speaking class, we generally have at least 2 speeches to give in front of the class each week, and that is good compared to the 1 or 2 oral speeches I was required to give each TERM back at the U of O.
Yesterday/today was the one year anniversary for Shawna and me which we conducted quite well with an ocean between us. She sent the absolute most sweetest thing that she had put together. I finished downloading it around 2 or 3 last night. At the time my roommate Funstar was asleep and I was pretty absorbed in watching the movie "Casino." I remember feeling really good as I turned off my computer and crawled into my bed, excited to see the gift in the morning and putting off the stresses of studying for another day.

You don't know about my additional pythons

Things suddenly looked up for me today when I was taken in as a tutor to a sweet 7 year-old boy who grew up between NZ and China and whose parents want him to retain the bilingual capability. The people upstairs wanted in on it too so I agreed to tutor their children on Wednesday evenings as well. Although I am teaching English, I can speak Chinese to both of the mothers who have limited English capability and two of the three kids who also have a lower level of English knowledge. So with those two at least I can use Chinese to teach English in some instances. I make far beyond any job I've had in the U.S. which is nice and will also be provided with a home-cooked meal since I take a public bus to their apartment complex directly after I get out of class at 5:30. This was just the kind of arrangement I was looking for to keep my hands out of the bank account for a time, and so I can save up for a plane ticket to Changsha 长沙 and back. The home-cooked meal is the real cherry on top since the lack of decent food in my immediate surroundings has actually depressed me quite a bit. I can't help but think of food in Beijing which I think is a lot better.
Getting out today and conversing with those mothers about arrangements made me feel quite a bit more confident about my spoken Chinese. More often than not I get stuck into the rhythm of spending all my time studying, which in particular entails a lot of reading and writing exercises, and at moments like those I think about how little I must have progressed in the 2 months I've been here already. When I have the chance to go out and about however, sometimes that frustration is rapidly alleviated (and sometimes not) by actual interactions with Chinese people. Putting up with so much frustration and effort to hear people say such compliments of my ability is indeed a rewarding feeling. For instance the way the two mothers jokingly conversed between themselves about me "His pronunciation is such that he should teach our kids Chinese" or at the restaurant owned by a guy from Anhui and his wife with whom I've become acquainted, when one of their staff asked me where I was from, before I answered the wife said: "He's Chinese."
Of course all of this is nice, but I never get too caught up in it because I know very very well that to be proficient in Chinese takes worlds more than what I have now. There is always so much to learn, and I feel the digger I delve into Chinese the more fascinating, confusing, and overwhelming of a language it seems. It's interesting too from the perspective of learning Spanish in high school, a language so closely related to English, and then to study Chinese a language whose structure and grammar at times can literally be untranslatable to a significant degree. And I try to imagine what it is like to think in Chinese, what every sound and expression of body language indicates, and how it is connected with the written language which for all foreigners is like a separate language in and of itself.
I feel language really represents the way people think, and so it is fun to compare my eastern and western heritage in relation to each other, specifically now, the language difference and how that determines the way one observes the world around them. And if only all those kids I knew growing up who loved making fun of the way Chinese people speak English could see how they would look trying to live independently in China and wholly incorporate the language into their lives, they'd realize it's far far away from their comfort zone as well.

More notes on autumn

Today the weather was clear for once with a nice broad and blue sky and a very crisp, but not too cool airflow going through the city. The sunlight cast everything aglow in a very autumny manner that made me miss the autumnal turn of places like Illinois and Oregon where I know them best. I remembered days at the races, the way the earth shook with hundreds of runners in a stampede competing for the finish line three miles away beneath the spotty shade of sparse forests whose leaves had been all but flushed with my favorite hormone, ethylene.
I miss even the rain that lights up those autumn leaves, giving them a psychedelic glow on a still and gloomy street in Oregon.
I miss walking home from school in Illinois as leaves fall like a slowed-down contemplative scene in a movie, or the way the pumpkins used to ripen in the back field, seemingly floating on that open sea of grass and dirt at a glorious sundown like buoys spread out all across the waters. I miss the golden hue the setting sun would cast upon the prairie and the pick up of winds that shook the house at night while I was bundled up reading a book, babying my sore legs after an intense cross-country practice. I miss walking up the steps of the Mill St. Shithole to my attic space, turning on the computer as soon as I slopped off my rain-drenched clothes... reaching over my bed to plug in the Christmas lights and then keep putting off my studies to have flirtatious, intriguing AOL Instant Messenger chats with this girl named Shawna.
I miss perusing the video store with Seth looking for a suitable couple of horror films to watch in the preceding excitement of Halloween, which to this day remains a favorite pastime of mine whenever I return home, regardless of the date's proximity to October 31st. I long to take a permanent marker and trace out a foolish design on a big orange pumpkin and then systematically disembowel it and carve it, just as I would a cadaver in the anatomy lab (it always comes back to that, you see). And then with the assistance of my mother to butter and salt all of the seeds and bake them in the oven, waiting for my brothers to come home from school marking one less day until Halloween.
Today, walking along a city street flashes of these sorts of memories struck me in succession and I thought about them a little bit. In conclusion, I love the autumn, and I really do miss the experience of it in the places with which I'm most accustomed. Autumn should be okay here, an experience at least, a growing one so to say. One thing though, I will be spending Halloween in Shangrila... more on that to come of course.

Overdue Pics

Shawna, XiaoHu, and me
Baby elephant in Bangkok
BK Buddhist temple
Temple of Dawn seen from the Chao Phraya river
Forensic science museum in BK, it got creepier from here, this was only the beginning...

手术

I'm beginning to get my second wind after a few days feeling down-and-out in old NJ. I still have quite a while before returning to the U.S. and really need to get out of my comfort zone even more to improve my Chinese as best I can. I was exhausted by 8:30 this evening after spending the entire afternoon translating into English a triple bypass surgery record from 南京鼓楼医院. The surgeon was none other than my one-on-one teacher's father. Translating surgery records into English every week and then discussing them with my guy is pretty challenging, but he is patient and after these grueling sessions he and I usually discuss the difference between the U.S. and China's medical care systems (using Mandarin of course :) ).
Anyway making local friends is key; I have my roommate 樊星 "Fun-Star" who is a character, as well as campus bad-ass Xiao Hu and my recent addition: "Henry" who is a party member. He seems excited that both of our fathers come from Hunan. And then there is "Sugar Ray" Tang Le, another strange one from Beijing who just seems incredibly chilled out every time I see/talk to him. I definitely should seek out some more contacts with whom I can practice speaking. Or at least going out and about can afford some practice as well. Then again sometimes not. Though the coming weeks are packed, I still have a few independent travel plans up my sleeves..

秋天终于开始了

Autumn has finally arrived and quite suddenly too. When I got back from Bangkok I found the weather to be much chillier than before. And finally it is setting in that autumn has begun. I've felt as though I was living in a perpetual summer, when in reality this academic year is quickly going to pass and I am graduating at the end of it.
I need to say now that food in Nanjing is terrible. Since food is a large part of my livelihood, it depresses me that I have yet to find a single restaurant that I can say is actually entirely palatable. Every nutrient in every dish is sapped by the method of cooking and flavor is only a factor of how much MSG was added. Even the Sichuanese food served here is nothing special. It's like the quality of water very far from its high altitude source: shitty. So the act of eating has become a part of my day that I dread.
Today I learned two insults in Chinese that I thought were hilarious:

你生儿子没屁眼
Ni sheng erzi mei pi yan
You will bear a child without an asshole.

操你祖宗十八代
Cao ni zuzong shiba dai
F--- 18 generations of your ancestors.

Seth

From time to time I get to missing Seth. I'll be thinking about the old Illinois boys and I never forget that he is the one who tries to keep in touch with me most. And I'm proud of him too, for he's come a long way and been through a lot growing up, having conquered all sorts of demons I am sure. In spite of it all too, Seth still has his frank sense of humor and positive outlook on things that always brings me to smile.
Once in a while I think about how two years passed in the middle of high school where we didn't talk at all, and though it seems regretful at first, perhaps it was a necessary break where we had some time to grow as individuals before reuniting as close friends again.
Seth does what he does without the fear of others' judgmental scrutiny, yet he has about him a set of morals that always makes him a very good person, even if he doesn't always see it himself. It's comforting knowing that he would never pass judgment onto me. Seth is the only kind of true friend I need in life. I can say that with assurance about any of the Illinois 6 which other than Seth would of course include Dave, Ryan, Brian, Erik and Eric. I would not ask for better friends.

Another Day in BK

Second to last day in Bangkok I decided to go to a forensic science museum as well as an anatomical museum obscurely hidden away in a big hospital campus. I took the river taxi on the Chao Phraya again, enjoying the big brown wake and the loud, studdering engine as the boat slams into the side of the dock and passengers hurry on and off. Found the hospital and within it these two museums which were insanely gruesome.
First off, I went to the forensics museum where I saw the mummified corpses of 4 Thai serial killers standing upright in telephone booth kind of structures, as well as uncountable babies in jars. Aside from the babies were severed limbs from traffic accidents and plenty of liver, brain, heart, lung, skull specimens as they are affected in any of the three following ways: gunwound, stabwound, traffic accident.
As though I hadn't my fill of babies in jars, I went to the anatomical museum afterward, walked up the old wooden stairs passing the dissection floor on the way and smelled that sweet distinctive scent of formaldehyde and formalin. Instantly took me back to the anatomy lab in my memory, but I walked on and reached the tiny exhibits on the 3rd floor of this old school building. There I saw skeletons with curly deformations (arm and leg bones like curly fries) and every possible type of conjoined twin babies in jars, including the most intense: the condition of cephalothoracopagus (Google that). I also saw some other creepily preserved bodies and whatnot; it was a lot like how you'd envision Gunther von Hagen's adolescent imagination would be. So I had my fill of the morbid, which was nice. I always come back to anatomy in the end, it's nice how that works.
I did almost die laughing trying to explain that I saw upwards of one hundred deformed babies in jars to my mom and aunt over a Skype video chat. My mom only made me laugh harder, it's kind of funny if you think about it, there was something absurd about describing it over a video chat while I am so far away.

Muay Thai

The other evening I went to a boxing match at Ratchadamneon Stadium and watched several pairs of tiny Thai men go at it no holds barred. The matches would start slow and build; the soundtrack was a live percussion band. Before the brutal carnage began both fighters would perform a prayer dance simultaneously. The crowd was like the stock exchange floor, everyone calling out odds and flashing all sorts of hand signals to place bets. The punches and kicks to the face, the knee jabs to the abdomen, all were accented by a resounding roar coming from the spectators, growing louder and more unified with each one, until a single blow of several hundred knocked one boxer to the ground, rendering him unable to get up again. The crowd exploded in fanfare, bills of cash like butterflies fluttered into and away from people's hands as the man was taken off on a stretcher.
Then today I played 2 hours of badminton with 9 middle-aged women, wives of very wealthy business men who live in Bangkok and join all sorts of wive's clubs to keep from getting bored and feeling isolated in the city. Afterward we went out for Mexican food and margaritas, which was interesting. I remember one particular bit of conversation that I thought was funny. Imagine one of these in an Australian accent and the other in British:
"I've been bad... Today I bought fruit from a street vendor."
"Oh, no, I've been bad: lately I've been eating lunch off the street!"
So that was a slice of life I did not expect to see while I was here... haha
As a sort of addendum I'd like to note that the formal name of Bangkok is actually:
Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit
or
กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยามหาดิลกภพ นพรัตน์ราชธานี บุรีรมย์อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยะวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์

厉害!

First home-cooked meal I've had in over a month, though simple, absolutely wonderful and caused my feeling of well-being to increase tenfold. After that my uncle and I went to an upscale gym for a two-hour workout. My uncle and I walked through the underworld to get there, him smoking a cigarette en route and back.
Yesterday I went up and down the Chao Phraya on a river taxi, wandered lonely through ornate temples and palaces when suddenly I remembered I am in the land of M. Bison and Sagat from Super Nintendo's Street Fighter II. I made it back to central port and found my personal driver Pornthep awaiting me, after which we went to buy some fruit.
I noticed that bicyclists are non-existant here, and traffic is 落后. For one thing, traffic lights are not computer controlled, but police controlled via a little tiny station at every light where a couple of officers sit and decide whether a light will stay red for 3 minutes or 35. What that means is, a commute that should be 10 minutes can often take 2 hours during the rush hour or inclement weather conditions.
In some ways it is nice to have this break to let all the Chinese I have been learning to sink in a bit; the academic program at Nanjing U is a bit 厉害, so I am constantly bombarded with more and more material without much time to actually absorb it. Now I physically feel some of that hardening in my brain like a thermosetting polymer. A thermosetting polymer such as that created by formaldehyde and melamine put together, the latter of which has grossly contaminated milk products coming out of China. Sometimes when I want to speak, Mandarin words come to my mind before English. That's a good sign, but it doesn't help me here, and the discovery that I actually don't know any Thai language is always a new one...

"Off to Bangkok"

It's nice to take a break from Chinese food, and coffee for that matter, for a time, and hang around with someone who appreciates the finest coffee and freshest food. My Swedish uncle and I talked about coffee and sailing, as well as other things upon my arrival in Thailand. Although I rarely see Tomas, he feels like family to me. We talked until late, whereupon I got hungry so decided to go out and explore the neighborhood a little...
Bangkok is ridiculous, at least what I've seen of it so far. I wandered out down the street to the place Tomas had recommended for a bite to eat. As he had described to me, I knew I had found the place because there were lady-boy prostitutes all done up and keeping keen eyes on customers. I was eating a really good plate of Pad Thai that cost around $1 USD, when I caught a glimpse of a real life elephant walking through the street amongst the taxis and I was like, what the hell?
After eating I went to track the elephant down and on the way passed all sorts of street vendors selling food and clothing and random trinkets, colorful Halloween masks, DVDs, etc; smells were shooting off in my brain like fireworks, going from the smell of automobile exhaust and sewage to jasmine and other flowers being sold on strings, to overripe exotic fruits, multitudes of Thai spices, sickly sweet hookah in the Middle Eastern alley, and perfume of the rows upon rows of prostitutes lined up along the way as I passed. Indeed, Bangkok is a city for the nose if nothing else; a five-minute stroll down a given street gives more aromas than one could accumulate in a whole month. Nearly every foreigner in this neighborhood at this hour is a creepy-ass-looking white guy with a prostitute around his arm or fishing for one. Discomforting is a way to describe the sight. And I thought I had seen it all until I walked by a group of deaf-mute lady boys communicating in sign. And then I decided to go back home for the night and sleep. So that is what I'm going to do now.

I just studied a leg amputation procedure, but...

I just studied a leg amputation procedure, but the catch is that it was entirely in Chinese. That took some time to interpret. Now I have a quiet moment where I would like to relay last weekend's trip into words.
The crowds in Xitang's old town died out by Monday morning. Shawna and I spent our last night in a pricey inn that provided us with a balcony right beside the canal. The canal, though pretty in its own right and romantically lit with lanterns by night, was quite foul. The same water that people used to wash their faces and clothes was the same water used to dip dirty mops, rinse food, gut chickens, and urinate. Very vividly I recall a boy peeing into the canal while less than 15 ft downstream a restaurant worker was washing snow peas. In all though, the place was fun and romantic, and altogether different than the big city style.
Leaving Xitang we hopped on a rickety bus bound for Jiaxing. The tiny bus, like a clown car, was filled far beyond its intended capacity. In Jiaxing we found all the bus tickets back to Nanjing were sold out so we took a bruise-colored cab to the train station in order to try our luck there. It was shortly after 1pm when we bought the only train tickets available which would have us leaving Jiaxing at 8pm, having to go thru Shanghai. Stranded in the small city for much time, Shawna and I were chased into a dimly lit restaurant by nasty nasty storm clouds quickly fronting. There we ate and watched a young woman who was very much insane silently talk and make twitching movements. Monstrous rains were hitting the area meanwhile. The rest of the afternoon was spent at a surprisingly inexpensive all-you-can-drink teahouse.
The train station was a little sketchy seeming, and resultingly the train itself. It was such chaos getting on and having to yell at some folks who took our seats, exiling them to the "no seat" ticket holder designated area.
On the train people were so bored they would be fascinated in watching anything anyone was doing: what got me most was some adults tinkering with a toy spin that played a high-pitched squeal of the Happy Birthday song over and over and over and over and over, nonstop for maybe an hour and a half. Somehow, what could be a three hour train ride turned out to be double that, allowing our arrival into Nanjing to be approximately 2am Monday night.
Most of those midnight train riders were farmers; it was an interesting blend of people to say the least.

Watertown

After a few days spent in Suzhou (苏州) wandering about without a plan, Shawna and I caught a bus to Xitang (西塘), one of a few Venice-like water towns in this area of Zhejiang Province. We had to transfer in Jiashan to a small rickety bus to take us the rest of the distance. Jiashan was a rundown more rural city, if that makes sense. In Xitang we were randomly dropped off in the non-water area and had to make our way through traffic messes to the old town.
Once here we have found a nice inn to spend the first night, positioned right beside a waterway. At night the noises of passersby below our window can be heard and the narrow alleys are all lit with red lanterns. It's a very pretty place. On the bus I heard the tune to a song from the movie "Love Story" play over and over again as we careened past goose farms, etc. Just now I heard the same song being played on a flute outside my window.
What I will remember most of Suzhou was a cheap, but epic late night hotpot (火锅) experience as well as breakfast this morning consisting of mind-blowingly good dumplings (小笼包), soymilk (豆浆) and youtiao (油条). Both of those meals left me reeling in Cloud 9.
As for how I feel after being in China about a month now... living here is frustrating at times and others a real joy. Sometimes I'll be embraced for my mixed heritage and sometimes I am a complete outsider. The most I am capable of now is some small talk, conversational kind of things, but I still have an overwhelming amount to learn, and that gets me down periodically. I still need to work on stringing longer, more complex sentences together. Some things come quite quickly as though I've programmed it already, but then it can take a while to express myself in other moments. I still have 3 months to focus entirely on Chinese, so my goal is to do just that, and not get caught by the feeling of being overwhelmed too much.

大屠杀

The Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum (南京大屠杀纪念馆) is unarguably one of the most profoundly unsettling historical museums in the world. I went there a few days ago after I had gotten out of class. Situated in a desolate, far-off area of Nanjing, the museum was very well-planned and organized, with sleek architectural design. The exhibition was quite flowing, providing a very thorough, very circumspect rundown of the series of events, key players surrounding the atrocity known as the Nanjing Massacre.
It has taken a few days to allow the content I learned from all the eye-witness accounts and graphic photographs to fully sink in. A period of six weeks under which the Japanese army invaded Nanjing "peacefully," by performing a multitude of horrific acts far too numerous, far too disturbing to write about here, surmounting a death-toll of over 300,000. But it was not just mass murder, it was prolonged torture and rape of individuals. Try to imagine the most humiliating and viscous things that could be done to a human being and then multiply that by ~300000. That an entire army of people could act without conscience in a way that displayed no moral structure in any way whatsoever, while writing home about how quiet and serene things were in Nanjing is completely baffling.
The ultimate message of the museum was of course to forgive, but never forget.
Outside the museum was a field of water representing bloodshed, as well as an actual burial ground referred to as the Mass Grave of 10000 Corpses where one could view piles upon piles of human skeletons as they had been ruthlessly laid to rest in the ground.

In the Cup of Tea

Spending this late Monday evening with Shawna in a very comfy tea house off of 湖南路 drinking a bottomless cup of "Invigorate the kidney to maintain the skin" tea, I wrote a 643-character essay in Chinese about Nanjing people's perspectives on local housing. We were here a few nights ago eating snacks and drinking tea for hours, enjoying the atmosphere as little packs of business men filed in with flushed cheeks to end their work day with a cup of tea and a game. Opposite us sat two very focused, very well-postured men playing Chinese checkers, while another friend of theirs, a penguin-looking guy came barging in, and found himself quite uninterested in his friends' quiet affairs. He sat and occasionally poured them tea, and seemed to call every single person in his cell phone to yell in completely incomprehensible Nanjing dialect. He would cover his mouth at times to be quieter, but yell even louder into the phone to make up for the muffling effect his hand over the receiver made. I like this tea house a lot.
The other say Shawna and I went to an older, more run-down area of Nanjing that was right beside the big huge commercial district of Xinjiekou (新街口). Here we wandered through a narrow street full of food stalls and various other abodes/shops. We stopped in at an underground "fresh" food market where we were amply greeted by by far the worst smells I have ever experienced. Here they sold everything from live, de-shelled turtles to ducks and geese and chickens and pigeons in cages next to stacks of their butchered fellow inmates, they had fruits and vegetables abound, and tons of pork cuts and other seafood, live or dead including eels and shrimp and random no-name fish. Once we had re-emerged from the marketplace out into daylight once again we meandered some more through the same area as before, passing along the way a very out-of-place dentist office in the middle of this mess.

爬泰山

Shandong Cuisine

Before I knew it I was in Shandong Province(山东省) once I had awoken from a light slumber. I survived a cramped 7-hour bus ride with nothing to eat but vacuum-sealed dog meat on digestive wheat crackers. As dusk approached the sun was a faint smear of a bloody orange, illuminated through layers of indiscernible cloud and smog. It was that perfect time of day, plenty light out to catch the scene as it quickly glided by.
And by the time we reached Tai'An (泰安) it was night time and the tiny town was all quiet and still. A rather large group of us 老外 went venturing out for some sort of nightlife that was essentially nonexistent. I broke off from the group early on with a few others to eat a few dishes at a dirty open square managed by a street vendor. On miniature stools we ate and played Crazy Eights on a miniature, wobbly table.
Meanwhile, back in our hotel lobby some 10-15 local gangsters were kicking the shit out of one other Chinese guy who rubbed them the wrong way, breaking a plate and an ashtray over his head. All of this was caught on videotape which I watched the following morning over breakfast.
Contrary to the preceding story, I found in general Shandong people were very friendly. I spoke to a few locals here and there as time and opportunity saw fit. Luckily those I did talk to for the most part didn't use their Shandong dialect on me, otherwise it would have been a mess. While the people were seemingly quite friendly, their cuisine was a another story. Confucius as I mentioned earlier is of Shandong and so there is a dish named after him, perhaps the most famous, most expensive. It is called Kong Men Doufu (孔门豆腐), a type of tofu that tastes exactly like a cigarette-smoke filled motel room. The taste captures the very essence of the stale smoke entrenched in the furniture that is preserved over time, the wallpaper and bedsheets of your standard Super 8 motel.
Now I am trying to recall what it was that I ate that tasted like the cadavers in my lab smelled? Shawna and Thuy should know...

Bats flying around in 曲阜

泰山： At 4:38 a.m. I received a wake up call and groggily arose in the musky, damp air of my hotel room on the top of the mountain. I put on a heavy overcoat provided by the hotel and walked out to catch the sunrise. I sat on a rock and silently watched the giant mass of clouds marching past like a funeral procession in the valley below me. I thought about a lot of things. And the sun did rise quickly, magnificently, bringing a new day to throngs of people waiting for it in military-like overcoats.
I spent the next night in 曲阜 (Qufu)where Confucius is from. It was pouring down rain not long after we had arrived and a group of us went out into it quite unprepared looking for a meal. We wandered into a very impoverished area without a road, but just a muddy path with garbage filled ditches on the sides, peppered with restaurants and vendors all vying for our business. Walking past a dirty cart with dog meat(狗肉)inside, skulls and ribs visible amongst the mass of meat piled up on itself, my clothes were saturated and muddy, rainwater pouring down my face from my hair and the song "Videotape" from Radiohead's latest album "In Rainbows" was playing on repeat in my head. It was a very wonderful and haunting scene in my memory.
In Qufu I was told I looked like I was from 新疆(Xinjiang)by a restaurant worker, which I assumed was an insult since a lot of Han Chinese look down upon minorities.

北大楼

Nanjing University: North Large Building

The Shoes I Passed Up

At a small DVD shop a CD caught my eye: a two-disc set of Chinese actor Leslie Cheung's greatest hits. This actor is famous for such emotionally intense and epic movies such as "Temptress Moon" and "Farewell My Concubine." Openly bisexual in the later years of his career, though surprisingly still reknowned by Chinese people, he committed suicide by jumping off of a tall building in Hong Kong in 2003. Everyone was shocked. So I bought the CD set and it's pretty corny Cantonese pop. The cover has a tagline that says: "Each song all is the Peru system glistens in each all to have the shining sunlight the shade." But I like him as an actor quite a bit.
Here is a vignette of my time in Beijing:

On our last day in Beijing, Shawna and I wandered around some smoggy, rainy streets in a strange stupor. Our third of four inevitable goodbyes was yet another heart-wrenching trial run for the big 3-month goodbye at September’s close. Hopefully we will be well prepared for that when the time comes since we have had so much practice. That last day in Beijing we really didn’t know what we wanted to do, and the weather was amply oppressive. For the first time we slept in that morning and had a late start, which took it out of us as well. (Late as in 9 am instead of 8 am). But as down-and-out as the both of us felt, I was still very happy walking by her side, hand in hand. I wanted to kiss her every moment and hold her close like a warm fire on a cold night.

As we lazily meandered like two parallel creeks through rows upon rows of fake goods at the market, a pair of bootleg BAPE shoes stood out to me. They were green and white and very plastic in appearance. On the sides of the shoes was a little cartoon Santa Claus holding a court-order. I should have stuck around and bargained them down to a reasonable price, but I just didn’t have it in me that day. And I am a foreigner after all, a foreigner in Beijing during the 2008 Olympic games. That means a lot to a Chinese shopkeeper, let me tell you.

"Insectual"

I took a nice cool shower to strip myself clean of the elements of this new city, feeling both lonely and content. I spent the evening in the company of a few of my classmates, three other friendly students with whom I shared a meal of soup dumplings that exploded with every bite in spite of the warning signs put up on the walls of the establishment. Then I drank another Snowflake (雪花) lite beer and ate lamb skewers (羊肉串); I sat on a stool at a small roadside table with my fellow cohorts, soaking in the muggy night. I was very warmly invited to sit outside the little kiosk where I bought the beer by the woman shopkeeper, but decided I needed skewers to accent this beer. Thought about Nanjing, my impressions after two days here. I was never met at the airport by CIEE program staff when I arrived so I hopped on a shuttle bus that took me to some place in the city center unbeknownst to me and from there I hailed a taxi to take me to Nanjing University. The taxis here are mostly an emerald green color, with the hard plastic guard wall separating driver from passenger. A few other cabs are a sleek marlin blue, but I chanced upon a green one. The driver swept through the hectic streets, heavily congested with bikers, mopeds, pedestrians, buses and the like. We pulled onto a large avenue called 北京西路 and passed down through it smoothly like a blood cell through a major vessel. It was by far the most beautiful street I have ever been on; lined uniformly on either side with towering planetrees whose thick overhanging branches with the scaly bark created a canopy tunnel over the road. My jaw must have dropped, taking in all of the scene at once, the imagery so overpowering. Nanjing is a good city. Dirty, pretty, and raw just the way I like them.