Sing, Beijing.

A poem for the Year of the Dragon

2012-01-22T14:51:00.000-08:00

This is the first year that I've celebrated three new years, from the typical Gregorian (watching fireworks under the Big Ben) to the Old Orthodox (courtesy of my Russian friend) and the traditional Lunar. I couldn't find any decent stock phrases that really epitomized what I think of when I think of dragons, so I just wrote a poem to commemorate the year of the water dragon. The translation is rough (it rings a little better in four character cadences), but hope you get the message.

從今不肯守株待兔

要龍至門必志荀言

積水成淵蛟龍生焉

人人事多如濤之沙

未必而去如沙之散

今行水也故趁其力

透君之沙使强於干

然為龍神至人心道

祝親祝友無悔之年

龍年快樂萬事如意

Don't wait for the rabbit by the stump anymore.

Let the words of Xunzi guide the dragon to you:

'Deep in collected water, the jiaolong lives.'

Our problems multiply like sand on the beach

Unfinished, abandoned, like scattered beads

Let Water guide you - use its strength

Hold your sand together, connected and united

This is how dragons enter human souls

I wish my friends and family a year of no regrets

A happy year of the dragon - may you attain all that you wish.

Fear-laden thoughts on traveling

2011-04-01T21:43:00.001-07:00

With the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, civil unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, and economic stagnancy throughout the world, I must confess that I have been growing more fearful, more insular, more quiet, and feeling less adventurous. Tonight, however, I came across an essay in the New York Times by Paul Theroux on the importance of travel. One passage stood out to me:

But the prevailing quality of war is not noise or gunfire. It is suspense, something like boredom; nothing happens for long periods and then everything happens at once in indescribable confusion.

News media today repeats itself so many times through multiple syndicates that it seems we skim over the articles in search of change and ultimately lose track of time. We associate more content with more time. Ten articles on Colonel Qaddafi from papers including the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and the San Francisco Chronicle must mean that this event happened during and filled up all those hours that we weren't glued to News Google.

That's not true. Those articles simply compound the "indescribable confusion" within our minds, which depend on the phantasmagoria of pictures to fill the imagination void that we fear filling up with real experience.

Of course, if everyone acted as Theroux had, then those who lack his common sense will inevitably face all sorts of ridiculous perils and sadnesses that seem newsworthy. (Maybe the world will be better off without them.)

The "laborious" kind of traveling, the kind that feels like work, the Joseph Conrad brand - the work that you hate but makes you "find yourself" - that's to travel.

Goo goo ga ga: Early Language Acquisition

2011-02-16T16:08:00.000-08:00

A TED video on how babies love language. "It takes a human being - not a TV, not just audio - for a baby to take statistics to learn a language."

Pacifiers and Rattles - To Learn Languages, Start Off as a Kid

2011-01-31T11:10:00.000-08:00

I really enjoy reading Cal Newport's blog Study Hacks. He writes on effective strategies that high school, college and graduate students can use to improve their academic performance and stand out in the deepening sea of competition today. I went back through his older posts, and found out that he had compiled an entry on studying foreign languages.

The tips that Cal highlight are more applicable for students in academic institutions taking semester or year-long courses, but some are broad enough for any language enthusiast to employ. The second tip - "expose yourself everyday" - is a no-brainer. It doesn't just mean cracking open your old textbook and rememorizing set conversations - it can mean watching a movie or television show in the native language, or listening to a music through Youtube or Grooveshark.

I believe in mastering languages according to one's linguistic age. What do I mean by that? Take, for example, a 40-year-old man learning Italian by reading formal conversations and newspaper clippings. The man will pick up phrases and vocabulary words here and there, and one day use them in a talk to give the listener a sense of his fluency. But this is superficial. If he really wanted to master Italian, he should start from scratch - I mean from children's books and short stories. Of course, you can accelerate through works that befit younger audiences to material more appropriate for your real age, but I think one important part of speaking a new language is to construct arguments and narratives as native speakers do. There is a difference between speaking fluently and talking intelligently - you can convey your intelligence by using foreign vocabulary too big for your mouth, but you can convey fluency by engaging native listeners with the imagination that they have created through exposure to local cultural media.

Assume that when you start a new language, you are a child. What would native speakers of the language read in their infancy?

Benny the Polyglot

2011-01-17T08:18:00.000-08:00

I think mistakes are good. In fact, I think studying languages is the best way to accumulate as many errors and slip-ups as possible. I'm not endorsing the pursuit of German or Chinese strictly for the sake of being an idiot. The mistakes you make at the risk of sounding idiotic, however, will eventually reap larger and larger dividends in your speaking ability.

Benny the Polyglot seems to disseminate the same idea, along with many other ideas on learning languages, on his website, Fluent in 3 Months. Benny started off with English, but expanded into Irish, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Esperanto (what?!). He is currently studying Tagalog. His tips on awakening your latent multilingual potential are wacky and unorthodox - if you've tried various methods to master some difficult tongue but still feel like a novice, consider some of his experience-tested remedies.

A personal note: All of the languages he learned are very similar (romantic languages, especially). I wonder if his reflections on acquiring languages will change if he leaves his linguistic comfort zone by studying something like Hungarian or Swahili.

Voxy: Learning English through the News

2010-12-23T08:01:00.000-08:00

My mother's dream is to speak English as fluently as I do. I enjoyed teaching her during my few breaks back home, but after a while I started feeling tired. I was sick of reading through the textbooks that her awful ESL classes at the local community college forced her to labor through - what middle-aged student of English cares about the difference between past imperfect jibbers and future perfect jabbers? I started to amass different language learning sites mainly because I wanted my mother to use them and for me to remember them, but there was something flawed in those sites' curricula as well. They were teaching languages as systematically and academically as her textbooks. I wanted my mother to learn English as naturally as possible so that she could use it as quickly as possible.

Then I heard about Voxy. This is the pitch that its "About Us" says:

Voxy is about learning from what’s around you. From your life. Our unique bite-size language lessons use fresh, entertaining, topical content of your choosing, whether that be a story about your favorite team, some juicy gossip that just came out in the tabloids, or current events like politics and business. We then deliver these lessons to you wherever you want them, whether that is on your computer, in your email inbox, or via SMS. Finally, we make the quizzes, questions and practice fun, rewarding you along the way for becoming a better English speaker.

I forwarded it to my mother immediately. (My mother has been grasping the basics of the computer, the Microsoft Office Suite, and the Internet.) She is testing it out now, but I think Vconcept is brilliant. For now, it focuses on ESL learners (like my mother!), but it plans to expand into another languages. I can't wait until Voxy provides learning tools for East European and Southeast Asian languages!

20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World

2010-10-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/20-awesomely-untranslatable-words-from-around-the-world/

Why do other languages sound more poetic and succinct than English? Either I haven't read enough English literature to lament appropriately, or the grass is always greener on the other side.

I found the final two paragraphs of this article particularly relevant for all language learners. I've tried to answer this question as well in my blog - What does it mean to really learn a language? The author below borrows culinary verbs to express his frustrations on mastering different tongues, concluding that "time and emotion" are the critical factors to absorbing meaning in language. Vividly speaking, everything we learn demands a period of percolation - time for reflection and incorporation. Studying abroad creates this time for you. Abroad, you (hopefully) leave your multiple courses and extracurricular responsibilities to focus on one item alone - the language. The language will take you to places and to people unfathomable now, but perhaps that's what we study abroad for in the first place - to find visual associations to the words and grammar on our textbooks, and to allow them time to sink in.

"For myself, the hardest part about learning a new language isn’t so much getting acquainted with the translations of vocabulary and different grammatical forms and bases, but developing an inner reflex that responds to words’ texture, not their translated “ingredients”. When you hear the word “criminal” you don’t think of “one who commits acts outside the law,” but rather the feeling and mental imagery that comes with that word.

Thus these words, while standing out due to our inability to find an equivalent word in out own language, should not be appreciated for our own words that we try to use to describe them, but for their own taste and texture. Understanding these words should be like eating the best slab of smoked barbequeued ribs: the enjoyment doesn’t come from knowing what the cook put in the sauce or the seasoning, but from the full experience that can only be created by time and emotion."

Context and Meaning

2010-07-24T02:13:00.001-07:00

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/07/writing_chinese_ctd

I'm not sure that the writer is drawing the right conclusions from Professor Mair's article. Yes, 622 characters make up 90% of Rickshaw Boy and, according to some, only 1500 characters make up 90% of major Chinese newspapers (even less in Chinese newspapers published outside of China), but that does not necessarily mean that memorizing those requisite characters will lead to 90% comprehension. To master a character, one has to see it in either every single context possible, or in its most common environments.

Take the character 然 for example. Students of Professor Zhou's first year Chinese program at Yale will learn 忽然 or 当然, but the former is almost never used in colloquial Chinese whereas the latter is used in virtually any conversation that demands an affirmative declaration. Stepping higher into academic papers, students may come across rhetorical questions, such as 你以为然否？Walking back in time, we come across 然 used as the modern-day 是(yes) or 对(correct/right) in Mencius's treatises. Of course, knowing the meaning of the character is important - 然 means “like this, in this manner" - but learning definitions are useless without practicing the usages.

At least based on my conversations with my friends, Chinese students don't strive to memorize every single character's usage, but feel for what characters frequently surround that character. In this sense, the 1000 or so characters that make up 10% of Rickshaw Boy are grouped and learned together with those 622 more common common characters.

Learning Chinese takes time because mastery requires the observation of each character's various contexts. Sometimes, the connections are not obvious. Learning the word "is" and "are" in English doesn't mean that you know what will accompany those verbs all the time, but at least those words link the subject and object in a specific way. In Chinese, depending on what part of China you are in (and depending on what book you are reading - Rickshaw Boy was written when Mandarin was getting standardized), characters can take on various meanings

你以为然否？

Sealed Management - what????

2010-07-16T00:40:00.000-07:00

I had been slowly traveling through cities from Suzhou to Xiamen to Shenzhen, meeting and building relations with migrant writers. Up in Beijing, it seems that some migrant villages are experiencing what the Beijing government has called "sealed management" - in other words, curfew regulation. Quite possibly the most ridiculous piece of news on internal migrants I've read so far. I had to use a VPN Client to open these webpages - I have not seen an article on this "feng1 bi4 shi4 guan3 li3" published on Xinhua, China Daily, or any other domestic media.

http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/10/7/15/n2967021.htm

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gDiiVrk8JJHVS4gIkB8AMDPmS4BgD9GV5ONO0

Migrant Beats: Observations on a Slow Train

2010-06-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

There are four classes on a typical train in China – the soft bed (ruanwo), the hard bed (yingwo), the soft seat (ruanzuo), and the hard seat (yingzuo). The soft isn’t as soft it could be, and the hard isn’t as dreary as its lower price suggests. The Lonely Planet quotes most of its train prices by hardbed prices because the soft beds and seats have to be reserved sometimes several months in advance, preparation that most intrepid travelers do not want to do. Not that I’m brave or think very far into the future. I

did buy my train ticket to Suzhou as soon as I got to Beijing, and found two yingzuo tickets, one on a slow train (manche) for 88 RMB and the other for 700 RMB taking a seemingly aerial time of less than 12 hours. I wasn’t in any hurry to arrive in Suzhou, so I bought the former.

I passed through railway station security and found my seat with time to spare. The night before, a friend in Beijing kept on warning me I should lie that I lived in Liaoning or some northeastern province should any fellow passenger curiously ask my origins. “It’s for your safety – those yingzuo can be full of sketchy people,” he said. I was pleasantly surprised to find seating in my booth instead three old ladies on their way home to Jinan, a high school teacher, and just one teenager who carried a punkish air of rebellion that I was instructed to watch out for. After a few greetings, everyone slowly settled into states of hibernation seen only on long train rides in China.

Some immediately broke out their snacks of apples, cucumbers, sausages, breads, ramen noodles and sunflower seeds. Some fiddled with their cell phones or handheld Playstation players. Some just looked outside at passing trees, factories and railroad tracks. Some struck up conversations – parents on their children’s education, elders on gifts of medicine and sweet delicacies for their family back home, students on their summer plans, migrant workers on the increasingly stifling summer heat. Electric fans hanging overhead buzzed forth pockets of cool air. The sun eventually rendered all eyes droopy, and heads rested on small booth tables and strangers’ shoulders. Besides the occasional click of some cell phone or whimper of a hidden baby, the train fell silent.

An hour later, the hibernation resumed. Aromas of salty noodle soups filled the cramped train car, sliced by frequent slurps and burps. A few returned to sleep, content from the warmth of the soup in their bellies and of the sun on their skin. The man next to me sighed while enviously observing a couple of kids playing card games. “Xiaomo shiguang,” he said, “why is it so hard to burn time on a train…” The elderly grandmother trio in my booth chuckled.

The man turned his attention to me. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Suzhou,” I replied.

“Ooh, that sucks. Are you going back home?”

“No, just to see a few people and take in the sights.”

“I see. Where are you from?”

“Um,” I paused. “The northeast.”

“Really? Which province?”

“Liaoning.”

“Interesting. What were you doing in Beijing?”

“I’m in college.”

“Which one?”

“Tsinghua.” (Well, this was true, when I was still attending IUP.)

“Whoa, one of our national geniuses. What are you studying?”

“English.”

“Whoa! That’s a good major. I have a kid in high school who…”

I’ll end this pointless dialogue of lies here.

There is another class that I forgot to mention. The cheap standing ticket offers some sort of spot on the train, whether in the smoking sections between the train cars, a crouched space on the ground, or a lucky seat departed by a passenger. I woke up sometime around nine in the evening to find new personalities all around me, including a corpulent teenager to tired middle-aged man searching for a comfortable sleeping position on the way down south. In other booths and on the car floor, unfamiliar faces sat munching on ramen noodles. Many took off their shirts and rolled up their pant legs to allow more of their sweat to catch some sort of breeze.

We’re still twelve hours away from Suzhou.

We are now at Nanjing. Changjiang swirls below.

Agh, almost got off at Wuxi in my drowsy hurriedness!

Never again.

Migrant Beats: Skin Village

2010-06-21T22:57:00.000-07:00

“Where’s bus number 641?” Fangrong asked himself as he glanced through the bus schedule plates. We arrived at this bus station after pulling out a complicated list of directions from Sanyuanqiao to Picun. A street cleaner in an orange jumpsuit passed by. “Excuse me, is this where take 641?” I asked.

“641? 641…It’ll come,” the street cleaner replied, not looking up from the pile of dust he swept into

this portable dustbin.

“But there’s no sign here,” says Fangrong.

“It’ll come.”

Twenty minutes later, the mystery bus actually came. Past the fourth and fifth ring roads in the northeast of Chaoyang near the border of Beijing and Tongzhou, it took us to a small country stop called Picun, literally Skin Village. At the stop, the assistant curator and manager of the museum, Mr. Zheng Zhixi, awaited us.

“Get in this van and it’ll take you directly to the museum,” he said, handing the driver a small

bill. “I’ll follow behind on my bike.” He walked over to a pink and white bike parked in front a barley field.

The van stopped at a small neatly paved square with buildings colored with paint drawings done by children’s fingers. The Beijing Migrant Arts and Culture Museum, as I found it online, was more peaceful and less-visited than its pictures suggested. Mr. Zheng opened the museum door. A wave of trapped stale air went up my nose. The artifacts and documents spread throughout the exhibition quickly aroused my attention and ignore the dead scent.

The museum seeks to cover the history of the migrant worker, from its identity as the nongmin (farmer), to the nongmingong (rural migrant worker) and finally the xingongren (the new

worker). It started from the establishment of the household responsibility system in 1981 and the development of the special economic zones in the south, and fades into a bittersweet conclusion on the current hardships that new workers face through discussions on recent grassroots NGO development and changes in Chinese labor laws. I tried to take pictures of letters written by migrants to their factory bosses that they promise never to be late and work hard even after lasting through 22-hour shifts, but Mr. Zheng prevented me doing so. Instead, I bought the museum’s periodical, aptly titled Xin Gong Ren, and a qualitative/quantitative survey called “Research Report on Migrant Workers’ Residential Status and Future Perspectives.” The poetry contained in the periodical will be pertinent later on. The research report seems more relevant for those inclined to a social science essay, but it still contains valuable details on migrant life.

The basic layout of most migrant villages is similar. A grand gate with the village name in flowing xingshu calligraphy stands before a long road of small produce and butcher shops, clothing stands and secondhand electronics stores. Branching off from the main artery, vessels and veins of brick and cement houses that are hot during the summer and cold during the winter form a surveyor’s nightmare. Open waste containers piled with garbage and feces rot under the Beijing sun. And, even though the villages are all set to be demolished within two to three years, landlords continue to build houses and offices.

“The local landlords get compensated by the government for every usable square meter that is taken,” explained Mr. Zheng. “If they build, then the extra floors of usable space a

lso count. That’s why the walls are so thin – to maximize space. It costs about 500 RMB to build something per square meter, and compensation is around 1000 to 1200 RMB per square meter per floor… it’s a destructible investment.”

Migrant Beats: Back in Beijing

2010-06-18T21:49:00.000-07:00

I like airplane cabin weather better than Beijing weather. I felt like I was sluicing through a jelly of warm air, fighting my way through the customs gates and to the baggage claims. The terminal still hasn’t changed – unfortunately. While passing through the departure terminal in the electronic tram, I noted that the gates were still numbered in disarray, so that gate 1 is next to gate 72, 23 to 45, and so on. How many other people missed their flights because of the airport’s inefficient layout, I do not know.

This time in China, I am beginning field research for my senior thesis on literature written by internal migrants. As early as during the 1980s, rural migrants to major special economic zones like Shenzhen and Yanhai had recorded their reactions to the strange urban environments, their thoughts on migrant life and, and their witnessing of cruelty upon and discrimination of migrants. Described to “write while surviving” to accent the initiative that some have taken to jot passing thoughts and events despite the exhaustion from working long hours, the initial diaries and short stories created an entire “migrant literature” genre and the diverse physical forms of expression, from novels and poetry to expository essays and movies. During the 1990s, the genre died with a wave of younger migrants who did not care to write. At the turn of the century, literary prizes specified for migrant literature injected new interest in the genre, with award-winning works published in major domestic literary journals. Because migrant writers still lack connections with major publishing houses, some upload their works directly onto literary forums, while some print and distribute independently. With the support of the Robert Bates Fellowship at Yale University, I will interview writers and major literary critics of migrant literature in cities around China while collecting periodicals and books for my senior thesis in Chinese literature. In this blog, I will record my visits to museums and interviews of curators, migrant workers and writers.

For now though, I am still soaking in the changes in my old neighborhood. Wudaokou has changed again. Houbajia Village is completely razed, a microcosm of thousands of migrants reduced to white cement chunks and broken bricks. Northern sections of it are being turned into a park, while the rest of the area will be redeveloped into another residential zone with 20-floor apartments for Tsinghua’s professors and students. However, because the village stood on what was originally a graveyard back in the Ming dynasty (I think), the superstitious elderly of Tsinghua refuse to move out, even if the apartments there will be better. Two more 25-story buildings now stand across the west gate of Dongwangzhuang. Late at night, the shouts and gurgled vomits of Korean students complement the occasional taxi honk.

Tea, Cha, Chai: LiveMocha!

2010-05-29T22:52:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me a link to a random site called LiveMocha. I thought it was supposed to be some sort of online order espresso delivery site, but it turned out to be a language study site. Naturally, I have to feature it on this blog!

www.livemocha.com

It offers very comprehensive lessons for 38 languages, including Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese. (It even offers Esperanto!) I've been testing the lessons for those three languages, and have pleasantly been rewarded with grammar and pronunciation corrections. The virtual teachers' recordings sound natural, and the lessons truly build with sufficient repetitions to drill in key grammar patterns and vocabularies.

Like Lang-8, previously discussed in this blog, other members in the LiveMocha community who are native speakers of the languages you study can correct your recordings and writings - and they will. I got a response on one of my recordings in less than 5 minutes. In order to access higher level lessons, you have to accumulate Teacher Points by leaving constructive comments on other users' assignments. Pretty nifty setup.

Essentially, LiveMocha is to the Rosetta Stone as Open Office is to Microsoft Office. So far, I'm enjoying it a lot. I'm waiting for the site to roll out with lessons in Tagalog though. If you give it a try, friend me at runinmusic!

Technical Intermission: Linking Blogger to Facebook

2010-05-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

You just spent hours crafting your blog entry, resizing and arranging your pictures and changing fonts so that the world (namely, your friends) can read about your life. You've put your link in the "websites" box on Facebook in hopes that your friends will click and check in once in a while. Alas, they don't. When you upload photos of your travels on Facebook, your friends all say, "Whoa, that's so cool! Where did you take that?" And all you want to say is, "stfu. I wrote about this - go read."

Fortunately, you don't have to exclaim profanity. And no, it's not Facebook's fault that you're ignored and isolated from your social network (especially if you're in places like China - can people access Facebook in China now?) All you need to do is built a bridge that will allow your entries to be posted directly on everybody's news feed.

This way, at least your friends will be able to read the title and maybe the first few words of your entry.

So how do you do this?

1. Under the Layout tab on the back-end of your blog, click on "Edit HTML."

2. Check "Expand Widget Templates."

3. Click inside the box with all the code, and find (by pressing Ctrl+F or Apple Sign+F) the text "".

4. Right below that text, copy and paste the following bit of code:

share on:facebook

5. Click on "Save Template." View your blog. Below every entry, you should see the text circled below. Now, you can click on the blue-highlighted text to share your entry through facebook.

I hope this helps!

Eminem's "Without Me": Back to China!

2010-03-30T21:49:00.000-07:00

I got news from the Office of Fellowship Programs at Yale that I earned a research fellowship to travel throughout China for the summer! Wooo!

I will share my project proposal and rough itinerary soon.

DigiLanguage: Using the Web

2010-01-31T18:13:00.000-08:00

I wrote around New Year's Day on different dictionaries that I use to study East Asian Languages. The New York Times published a cool article that highlights some paid and free options to learn all sorts of languages. The BBC language site is very fun (I use it to study Polish), but here are some sites that you can use to hone your Korean, Japanese or Chinese language skills.

http://rki.kbs.co.kr/learn_korean/lessons/e_index.htm

KBS World created this a while ago. I read and listened through the dialogues - I think this would be a great supplement to anyone studying anywhere from beginning to intermediate Korean at Yale.

http://chinesepod.com/

Chinese Pod is great in that once you can listen and understand some of the intermediate-advanced recordings, the creators consciously select the latest vocabulary used in China and choose topics that are of immediate interest to its students. Unfortunately, it's a paid service. If you have an iTouch, you can download its recordings for a low cost.

http://www.japanesepod101.com/

I haven't tried this site out, but according to its homepage, all of its material is free. I'll test it over the next few days.

Happy studying.

Cymbals - Random realization

2010-01-21T17:11:00.000-08:00

As a freshman, I thought I'd be swallowing biophysics, biochemistry and biotechnology courses by now. Funny how I'm savoring seminars on Chinese, Korean and Japanese language and literature instead.

If only I read faster.

Zoom Zoom Zoom: Electric Bikes

2010-01-19T09:01:00.000-08:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703657604575005140241751852.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_lifestyle

I wonder if Mr. Oster has observed the increase of electric bicyclists in cities other than Beijing. I didn't think that traffic was as bad or accidents as frequent as he proclaims. For instance, in Kunming I noticed many more electric bikes in downtown streets back in January 2009 than on those of Beijing. However, what was different was that there were patrol officers who guided traffic and ensured that bicyclists stayed within their lanes, especially in two-way streets. At intersections, the officers fined or stopped anyone who would run the red light.

The rise of electric bicycles in Beijing and other major coastal cities highlights yet another issue on material necessity. I can see why a city like Kunming or Chongqing would have more electric bikes than Beijing - those cities are hilly. Those cities' residents need electric bicycles in order to commute within reasonable time limits. Yet coastal cities like Beijing and Shanghai are relatively flat in the central areas - the only hills are the highways and ring roads, man-made. What convenient obstacles. I suppose the electric bicycle industry has the urban infrastructure department to thank for its growing success. In a sense, the electric bikes are necessary to maneuver the long, rising curvy exits that break off from the main highways like bad hair. But ultimately, the change in the cityscape adjusted residents' needs to be dependent on unnatural additions.

I wonder where my bike is now. If it hasn't been stolen, it's probably still outside my old apartment in Dongwangzhuang, gathering dust next to the 80 year old man and his two flappy-eared dogs.

NYTimes on creativity and Green Revolutions...in China

2010-01-10T11:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/arts/design/10expatsweb.html?emc=eta1

An article about the importance of China for artists. I recommend this read for anybody interested in finding room for creativity and innovation without feeling squeezed by money.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/opinion/10friedman.html?emc=eta1

An Op-Ed by Thomas Friedman. Apparently, China is serious about leading the world's Green Revolution. I'm not so convinced, considering China actually seemed to weaken many of the Copenhagen proposals, but an interesting outlook.

Mad World: Chinese = Job?

2010-01-03T21:17:00.000-08:00

My friend forwarded a very interesting blog entry called "Does learning Chinese lead to a good job in the United States? No." Though its argument creates quite a discouragement for all those who believe that Chinese language skills are an asset, it does have valid points. On campus, we often hear exciting stories of exotic escapades and wild adventures in East Asia, and dream of living it big without really understanding the opportunities created by understanding another world's culture, language and history. This entry grounds language ability in economic reality.

"I have been following Ben Ross' blog since its inception. He is an interesting chap who provided excellent insights into living in China when he worked in a Chinese barbers - long story.

His discussion on what it means for a Westerner to learn Chinese and spend three years in China is interesting. I admit I probably fall into the "wow - you speak Chinese - you must be able to walk into a high paid job".

The problem I now see clearly is that there are so many native Chinese who speak excellent English so the average westerner will never really be able to compete however much they try to learn Chinese.

This is a great quote. To most of my friends the "spouse" bit would be more than enough encouragement.

Rather than a fortune and a new career, most expats seem to return home with little more than a thicker waistline, a prodigious collection of DVD’s, and possibly a new spouse.

Ben speaks a lot of sense and shows some natural ability as an economist as he argues the case why his friend is ultimately doomed. His bleakness is refreshing (to an economist).

Ok, So you learned Chinese…Now where’s that dream job??? [Ben Ross's Blog]

Earlier this week I received an e-mail from an American friend of mine who had recently moved from China back to the US. My friend had spent three years in the Middle Kingdom, taught English, studied Chinese, and even worked a “real” job in Shanghai for half a year, and had now been back in United States for three months. His Chinese was solid, as it should be for anybody who spends three years in China, and good enough to be used on an occupational level. In his e-mail, he explained the frustration he was experiencing trying to secure a job in the United States which could build on his experience in China.

“I thought learning Chinese would be a hot commodity when I got back, and didn’t expect it would be this tough to find a job,” he expressed.

His sentiments are not out of the ordinary. In fact, the post-China unemployment funk is practically unavoidable for former expats upon their re-entry to the Western World, even in times when the economy is healthy. Part of the funk is due to the natural difficulties in transitioning back to American life. However, these frustrations are often aggrandized by high expectations, which are predicated on a fallacy that seems to follow any Westerner who has spent significant time living in China. It usually goes something like this and comes from the likes of parents, grandparents, teachers, generally anybody who is in a natural position to give you advice:

“Oh, you’re learning Chinese? China is the world’s next super-power, you know. You’ll be in high demand when you get back home.”

(Notice how people who make these comments never seem to be in the position to make use of your services. Yet they are confident others will be lining up to do exactly that.)

Chinese people provide similar, unsolicited life coaching. The line I hear most is:

你会英文也会中文。你应该做生意。 “You speak English and Chinese. You should start a business.”

(As if that’s all it takes.)

The funny thing is that most of the people dispensing this kind of advice have never actually been in the situation which would require testing it out in the first place. They’ve never been an expat in China. And they’ve never looked for a “China job” in the US. However, they have heard all about it in the news, and they all seemingly buy into the axiom that: China is the next world superpower, and therefore there is no better way to cash in than to study Chinese.

The simple fact is however, mastery of Chinese, no matter how good you are, is NOT a golden ticket to employment in the United States.* That is, of course, unless your career goals are purely linguistic in nature (i.e. Chinese teacher, interpreter, or translator). More often than not, expats who learn Chinese and return home, find their way back into the same career (or school) path they had before they ever left for China in the first place.

Big money, international trades, product sourcing…these dreams are all in the trajectory of the scores of Tom Joads who show up annually in the Middle Kingdom. Everybody comes to China with a plan to strike it rich. Rather than a fortune and a new career, most expats seem to return home with little more than a thicker waistline, a prodigious collection of DVD’s, and possibly a new spouse. While China certainly is the current land of opportunity, capitalizing on this fact is not simply a matter of learning the language.

Although Chinese may in fact be in high demand, what’s equally important is to factor in is the supply of Chinese speakers. According to the US census, in 2006 there were 2.5 million** people in the United States who speak Chinese at home. That’s more than any language other than English and Spanish. What this means is that not even counting the hundreds of thousands of American currently studying Chinese as a second language, there are already over two million Americans, who by virtue of growing up speaking Chinese, speak the language better than you ever will, regardless of how much you study. From international traders to insurance salesmen to delivery boys at the local chop suey joint, most of the “China jobs” in the US are filled by Chinese Americans.

On the other side of the ocean, English proficiency in the Middle Kingdom is spreading like SARS in a Chinese train station during Spring Festival. Every year Chinese universities are churning out millions (literally) of graduating English majors, a large percentage of whom don’t find jobs with their bilingualness either. Those that do, tend to start out in the 1000 RMB per month range, about 170 USD. In short, there is no bottleneck in communication between China and the United States. And in a capitalist world governed by the laws of supply and demand, there is little justification for hiring an American and paying him an American wage solely because he can speak Chinese.

That being said, it certainly is possible to create a career out of your China experience, but here are some points you should consider.

-A decent “China job” is best attained by using Chinese to augment a pre-existing skill set. While the language alone won’t procure much in the way of employment, Chinese should give a competitive advantage to individuals who already have existing qualifications such as an engineering degree, a background in biochemistry, or experience in the financial sector.

-There are a substantial amount of career-oriented positions available which will make use of your Chinese skills. The thing is, most of them are in China, particularly Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. If your goal is to base your career on Chinese, you should be comfortable with the idea that you’re going to be spending the majority of your time in China.

-In order to secure a job using your Chinese, you’re going to have to be pretty good. Basic conversational skills and “knowing the culture” aren’t going to get you squat. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly, but you should be able to sit in on a business meeting, soak up the details, and contribute to the conversation without falling too far behind. We’re talking a pretty advanced proficiency level here. Being literate helps too.

-But most importantly, finding a good China job relies much more on your actual skill set than your language skills per se. This is where people tend to kid themselves and hide behind their HSK scores. If you’re a poor communicator, disorganized, or can’t create an Excel spreadsheet, these traits are going to hurt your chances at employment much more than your inability to properly pronounce the third tone. Regard the bulk of your China job search as you would any other job search which wouldn’t pertain to your China experience. Your Chinese language chops are the gravy.

Now all of this is not to say that learning Chinese is a waste of time. Learning a foreign language, especially one spoken by 20% of the world’s population is, provides access to a wealth of knowledge and experiences unattainable to monolinguals. The ability to speak Chinese will allow opportunities for personal and intellectual growth to which it would be impossible to attach any price tag. But in terms of paying dividends measured in annual salary, the rewards of learning Chinese will likely never exceed the time and effort put into it. If you do decide devote the time and energy to study Chinese, do so out of a desire to further your own personal curiosities and intellectual development, not under the pretense that it will directly boost your career. For that, you’d be better off getting an MBA.

*I am assuming the same would apply to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or Western Europe, but since I’ve never lived in any of those countries, I’m going to limit my direct discussion to the US.

**I’m willing to grant a significant number of that 2.5 million speak a dialect other than Mandarin (Unfortunately the census lumps all Chinese dialects together). However, current trends in immigration indicate that a) Chinese immigration to the US continues to increase and b) the vast majority of recent immigrants are proficient Mandarin speakers."

Source: http://china-economics-blog.blogspot.com/2010/01/does-learning-chinese-lead-to-good-job.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ChinaEconomicsBlog+(China+Economics+Blog)

Watch me.

2009-12-31T10:36:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!　新年快乐！새해 복 많이 받으세요! 　新年おめでとうございます！

Schubert's Moment Musicals: A summer? A year?

2009-12-30T01:06:00.000-08:00

(Standing in front of Tiananmen, New Year's Eve 2008).

I recently had a Google Chat conversation with a friend at Yale. For privacy reasons, I'll call him Dough. Dough studied Chinese as a Light Fellow this past summer, and was seriously considering going to China for a longer period of time. However, he asked me for advice on when and how long he should go. This summer? After I graduate? This summer and another academic year?

Dough loves all that is China, from the characters to its bicycles, from its natural wonders to its women. He is thrilled by the idea of fending for himself and carving a new identity in a foreign environment. He read my blog (yay!) and said, "I want to have the experiences you had." I am flattered.

However, Dough admitted that he participates in many extracurricular activities on campus and has friends across the classes and faculty. How could he leave everything just to study a language? He would be leaving behind friends, advisors and organizations that will need him.

Dough raised interesting concerns. He at once wanted to leave and remain in his network. Allow me highlight some of the savory bits of our discussion:

-- "I don't want to leave my friends, my campus job, my positions, etc."

Simply put, your friends and your commitments will be waiting for you when you get back. Your friends won't desert or forget about you. After talking with other alumni who had taken leaves of absences, and experiencing for myself, I found that organizations in which you were a member will want you back because you're know more globally aware and knowledgeable. However, you'll probably want to leave them and find new activities that suit your newfound tastes. Also, by being a part of society abroad, you can pursue much more interesting junior/senior research when you're back at Yale.

-- "I want to have the experiences you had."

Sorry, but you won't. I'm not saying this with any sort of pride - rather, I say it with jealousy. Your experiences will be more exciting and awesome, guaranteed. In countries as confusing, bizarre, exciting and insane as China, Japan and Korea, you can walk down a street, talk to ten different people the same question and hear widely different responses. East Asia is changing rapidly - my blog attempted to capture, in several hundred word bits, brief moments that I found amazing. I want to go back and continue being a part of the change. If I had the choice of either finishing my Yale degree or going back and submerging myself in any of those countries for another year, I'd choose the latter in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, Yale only allows leaves of absences with a maximum length of one year. I guess I'll just have to read your blog until I graduate.

-- "I had a lot of fun during summer, studying and partying."

The academic year experience can be very different. Many of your summer drinking buddies will probably go back home, and you'll have to find new ways to keep yourself occupied. You'll probably feel homesick, alone, depressed, annoyed. You'll probably complain often. (Complaining, though, is something we have to do anyways in order to learn languages.) But think of the good things: you'll experience the other three seasons. You can use your solitude to seriously reflect about your life - assuming we all will live until we're 100, you've already lived one-fifth. How will you live out the remaining four-fifths? You can build more intimate relationships with local friends. You can visit more exhibitions, participate in club events far more interesting than the ones at Yale, attend events you'd never go to - and in the process, you can begin understanding your own passions. At Yale, most people don't really allow themselves the peace and serenity necessary to find their interests.

-- "The idea of being a foreigner excites me."

Read this piece on being foreign by The Economist.

Dough, I hope you ultimately make the decision that you won't regret.

Silent Night - 이야기

2009-12-25T00:28:00.000-08:00

An exercise in English-Korean translation. English passage from John Welwood's Journey of the Heart, pages 25-26.

어떤 상황을 알게되는 것은 간단해도, 있는 그대로 알게 되는 것은 쉽지가않다. 우리는 현실의 식상한 견해를 유지하고 촉진하는 것들에 익숙해져있어서, 어떤 상황을 사실되로 보는 능력이 저해된다. 특별히 사랑에있어서, 우리의 한정된 희망, 두려움과 여러 선입관, 믿음및 의견들이 우리의 눈을 멀게한다.

“세상은 이렇게 돌아간다” – 이런 주제의 물든 반복적인 이야기들을 통해서 세계를보는 한정된 시각들을 영속하게한다. 이런 이야기들은 사람들이 아는 체계에다가 실제적사건을 해명하고싶은 허구다. 우리는 평소에 이런 이야기가 자신의 꾸밈이라는 것을 알지 못하고 그것들이 대신 현실을 표현한다고 믿는다. 이런 이야기들은 정신의 배경에서 기계처럼 작동해서, 잠재의식을 통해서 우리에게 영향을준다. 그것들이 우리를 지배하는 것을 자각하지 못하면, 그 것들은 우리들을 식상한 행동양식에다가 더 묶여지게 만든다. 성숙한 인간관계의 제일 큰 장애물은 대개 인간관계가 어떻게 되야 된다는 “이야기” 들이다. (누구를 사랑하면, 그를 영원히 행복하게해야한다…그를 반듯이 지켜야한다…자기의 화를 꼭 억 눌러야한다) 그런 이야기들은 우리의 선택과 자유를 적어지게하고 꼭막힌 상자속에 갇혀있게 만든다.

이런 믿음과 이야기들의 구성은 자연스러운 의식의 투명성과 유동성을 여과기 처럼 불투명하게한다. 이 구성이 너무 두텁고 얽혀서, 우리는 자신이 구성의 이야기를 꾸미는 것을 발견하고 간파하고, 그리고 실제로 일어나는 것을 볼수있는 간단한 기본적인 의식으로 회복하는 방법을 찾지못하고있다. 우리는 언제든지 사상에서 의식으로 옮길수 있다는것을 이해해야된다. 그러므로, 악기를 연습하면 더 아름답게 연주할수있는 것처럼, 우리는 의도적으로 자각을 “연습” 해야 그상태를 더 쉽게 접근할수있다. 더 큰 의식을 갖으면서 우리의 행동을 제어하는 “이야기”들도 버리고 우리의 삶에서 더 큰 자유과 투명을 발견할수있다.

While becoming aware of what is happening is simple enough, it is of course not always easy to do. This is because we have an investment in maintaining and promoting an old familiar version of reality, and this prevents us from seeing what is actually going on. Especially in the area of love, we are blinded by conditioned hopes and fears, by cherished preconceptions, beliefs, and opinions of all kinds, both personal and collective.

We perpetuate these conditioned ways of perceiving the world through repetitive stories we tell ourselves about "the way things are." These kinds of stories are mental fabrications, judgments or interpretations that put what is happening into a familiar framework. Usually we do not recognize these stories as our own invention; instead, we believe that they represent reality. Stories often operate in the background of the mind, as part of an ongoing stream of subconscious gossip that we keep up with ourselves. The less conscious we are of how they control us, the more they keep us locked into old patterns of behavior. The greatest obstacles in relationships are often our stories about how we think relationships should be. ("If you love someone, you should always keep them happy...you should always want to be there...you should set aside your anger.") They narrow our options and keep us stuck in very tight boxes.

This dense fabric of entrenched belief, stories, and reaction patterns acts as a filter that clouds and obscures the natural clarity and fluidity of awareness. Because this web is so thick and entangling, we need to find ways to catch ourselves in the act of constructing these stories, see through them, and return to a basic, simple awareness of what is immediately happening. We need to discover that we can, at any moment, make a shift from thought to awareness, which is the larger space in which thoughts and stories arise. So, just as practicing a musical instrument allows us to play more fluidly, we must at first intentionally practice awareness before it can flow more fluidly and reflect more accurately on its own. With greater consciousness, we can begin to dislodge the stories controlling our behavior, thus developing greater clarity and freedom in our life.

Jingle Bells: Online Resources to study East Asian Languages

2009-12-21T13:10:00.001-08:00

This past semester, I began studying Japanese. Because I am familiar with Korean grammar and studied Chinese for a bit, learning Japanese has been a very smooth and fun experience. Occasionally, I had to learn how to write certain characters differently, or rearrange words to conform Japanese structures, but overall the language is interesting. It has been particularly interesting to find linguistic similarities and go on small etymological quests to understand the history of related words. Sometimes, I confuse pronunciations and add onomatopoeia using the wrong languages: "その車は、ちょっと。。。那个那个那个。。。비싸, no, 高いですねえ！”

I noticed that if I was aware of all the internet resources to study the East Asian languages earlier in my Yale career, I probably would have enjoyed first-year Chinese more (though, Zhou Laoshi's lectures were always fun and second to none). I'll try to compile a few sites I use to study Japanese now, including a few other sites that I use to review Korean and Chinese.

First of all, I'd like to highly recommend a blogging site called Lang-8. You can write entries and have native speakers correct them for you. The website has fairly large communities of Japanese, Chinese and Koreans. This is one of the few social networks online that I've found to actually be effective in learning languages.

Chinese

nciku - Back when nciku was still in beta, there were lots of expats trying to build this site and make it as organic as possible. The result today is impressive - you can write in characters that you cannot pronounce, or write in pinyin for the characters you can't write, and find definitions quickly. The example sentences are especially helpful to understand the contexts for word usage.

zdic - All Chinese interface, for the advanced learner. This site is excellent for understanding classical definitions of characters and finding fun chengyu (成语). It uses Kangxi Zidian and Cihai (kind of like OED, but Chinese) to explain character etymologies.

wenlin - translation and dictionary software. You can copy and paste anything Chinese into the interface to find quick definitions of characters. Whenever I write essays or translate articles, I usually have this open in the background for quick cross-referencing. Wenlin also offers flashcard programs to help you memorize pesky words and difficult phrases. Unfortunately, Wenlin is not free. For a free, but not as resourceful, software similar to Wenlin, try Chinese Practice.

Japanese

jisho - Pretty basic layout, with search engines for hiragana, katakana and kanji all on the main page. You can even search/translate sentences!

naver - The major Korean search engine designed this dictionary for Korean speakers learning Japanese. It allows you to write Japanese on the screen to find definitions. The example sentences are extremely helpful. If you look up grammar words, the site also offers grammar explanations written and approved by bloggers.

wakan - like the Wenlin for Chinese learners. Built-in dictionary is a bit cumbersome to use, but the translation and pronunciation features are awesome.

Korean

naver - This one is a no-brainer. This site is not just a Korean-English dictionary, but also offers Korean-Hanzi, Korean-Chinese, Korean-Japanese, H-K, C-K and J-K dictionaries. Other major Korean search engines, like Nate (originally Empas) also offer dictionary services, but they are nowhere as comprehensive as Naver's.

Hope this helps. Happy holidays!

legend of ashitaka: musings in the rain

2009-12-13T11:13:00.000-08:00

天門點灰雨柔下，

坑卻映白松鼠跳。

忘舍鍵立於架下，

盼冷而感暖為何？

Gray dabbles the sky as the rain softly falls,

but the puddles reflect white. The squirrel skitters.

I forgot my dorm key and am standing under the door rail——

I see cold but feel warm - why?

Street Stomping: MRN

2009-12-01T08:32:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months, I have been developing an online knowledge platform called the Migrant Resource Network. This initiative was started by Compassion for Migrant Children. While I was designing the health education program, I learned about this project and decided to contribute, knowing that it would encourage me to stay update about migrant-related issues.

The best part about this project is that I know this database is necessary, significant, and will bring change to how migrant support NGOs communicate in China. Most NGO work is fairly decentralized in China; fundraising for local non-profits is always a difficult issue; and there currently exists no core Wikipedia-like website that addresses one of China's greatest social problems. The purposes of the site include 1) facilitating NGO communication; 2) attracting more donors; 3) functioning as encyclopedia on all things migrant-related; and 4) functioning as consultancy that will aid grassroots NGOs with capacity-building.

I suppose it is something akin to what Cal Newport over at Study Hacks calls "a grand project." Even though I have a reading-intensive course load completely different from my previous studies at Yale, I have been able to work on MRN weekly by blocking out specific times from Thursday to Sunday. I've found the three to four hours after dinner and before college nightlife to be golden hours to research new material, skim over the database for technical updates and have video conferences with other team members abroad. The database is still under development, but I envision it will be ready very soon.

If anyone is interested in the website, please visit http://www.mrn-china.org.

The Star-Spangled Banner: What do Chinese people think of Obama?

2009-11-13T19:26:00.001-08:00

Just last year, Obama seemed as popular in China as anywhere. A survey by the U.S. embassy in Beijing late last year and reprinted in China Daily showed he was popular among 75% of Internet users who participated in the survey.

Recently, however, similar polls have signaled a steep drop. In the latest issue of Oriental Outlook, an article called “Chinese people’s view on Obama” indicates that there is plummeting support. The publication conducted informal polls and interviews, resulting in a sober prognosis. After slapping tariffs on Chinese products, the magazine found that, “In many Chinese people’s eyes, he hasn’t been able to maintain a positive image.”

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/11/13/is-barack-obama-unpopular-in-china-2/

“Chinese people’s view on Obama” (in Chinese)

Source: http://focus.news.163.com/09/1109/16/5NMM7P7V00011SM9.html

On Love... from the Yuan Dynasty

2009-11-09T20:31:00.000-08:00

This poem was written over 700 years ago by the only famous female artist from the Yuan Dynasty - Guan Daosheng (管道升).

我儂詞

你儂我儂，

忒煞情多，

情多處，

熱如火。

把一塊泥，

捻一個你，

塑一個我。

將咱兩個，

一齊打破，

用水調和。

再捻一個你，

再塑一個我。

我泥中有你，

你泥中有我。

與你生同一個衾，

死同一個槨。

Married Love

You and I

Have so much love,

That it

Burns like a fire,

In which we bake a lump of clay

Molded into a figure of you

And a figure of me.

Then we take both of them,

And break them into pieces,

And mix the pieces with water,

And mold again a figure of you,

And a figure of me.

I am in your clay.

You are in my clay.

In life we share a single quilt,

In death we will share one coffin.

Written to the Tune of Shan Po Yang and Depression

2009-10-27T23:05:00.000-07:00

What does clinical depression mean?

Depression ranges in seriousness from mild, temporary episodes of sadness to severe, persistent depression. Doctors use the term "clinical depression" to describe the more severe, persistent form of depression also known as "major depression" or "major depressive disorder." Signs and symptoms of clinical depression may include:

Loss of interest in daily activities
Persistent sadness or feeling of emptiness
Sleep disturbances
Significant weight loss or gain
Loss of concentration
Fatigue
Suicidal thoughts and behavior

Now here's the money question: If a Western doctor was dropped in the middle of premodern CHina, how many Chinese poets would he diagnose as clinically depressed?

Rain

2009-10-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

今天晚上去了巴赫音樂會。聽眾都給管弦樂隊和指揮鼓掌時悄悄地離開了，外邊仍下瓢潑雨。撐著雨傘回宿舍時，我在回收紙上寫了一些潦草的詞。

今雨下般千珠斷

紅葉挨打樹無奈

天蓋週末時落雨

唯蚯蚓載玩載笑

Rain falls today like a broken pearl necklace;

Trees look on naked as their red clothes take a beating.

Why must it rain on weekends?

Only the earthworms come out and play, smiling.

嚎丧者 (Professional Mourners)

2009-10-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

最近上中國古代史課的時候需要讀的材料比較多。我們的教授喜歡說中國是一個自古以來一直接受外來文化的影響，甚至說一些與中國緊密相連的習俗和政治系統是從古代鄰國那兒”進口“的。比方說，很多傳統歷史學家認為均田制可以追溯到唐朝，而事實上它來源於北魏的Feng皇后（不知其姓）。這位皇后和北魏人都並不是漢人，而是拓跋人。除此之外的例子雖多，但現在我介紹一下另一種和我的博客有關的主題：音樂。今天讀了一位嚎喪者的受訪錄，我所讀的是翻譯成英文的，不過在網上百度了以後就找到了以下中文版。據我所知，中國不是嚎喪的發祥地，它也是從北方進口的。一下就是一位有名的嚎喪者李長庚的採訪。作為一個21實際的年輕人，我個人在讀李先生的回答的時候感到一種文化與情感上的鴻溝，他對嚎喪那行業的解釋和我所想的完全不一樣，有些說法真是令人哭笑不得的。

老威：老人家，您做这行多久了？

李长庚：47年了，我18岁就已经是方圆几十里出名的吹鼓手了。以后断断续续干了这些年，为乡里乡亲操办红白喜事。改革开放以后，我又时来运转，红火过一阵，可现在，人们讲究新事新办，请我吹唢呐的人家越来越稀少。
老威：昨会呢？您这行当是永远不会失业的。

李长庚：原先我也这么想，可时代不同了。城里刮什么时髦风，乡下很快就会下什么时髦雨，年轻人看多了香港的录相，就跟里面学。当然，农村没举行西式婚礼的条件，但至少可以免去花轿坐花车，一个电话打到江油，披红戢绿的轿车队就租来了，那排场，比吹吹打打迎孚的旧俗要风光多了。
老威：拜堂呢？拜堂还是要唢呐闹一闹吧。

李长庚∶移风易俗嘛，许多地方不拜堂了。搞婚宴时，就顺便推举一个节目主持人，笑一笑，闹一闹，父母、亲戚、朋友都可以上台讲，学学做领导。

老威：也不完全是这样，结婚请吹鼓手的人家肯定有，只是不太时兴而已。可办丧事呢？灵堂辞亲、孝子开路、夜半招魂都离不了唢呐，因为这种乐器悲调比喜调更动听。小时候我在农村呆过，给我留下的印象太深了。

李长庚：先生您是内行，可不太憧市场经济。我们这个乡，离江油才20多公里，交通又方便，哪家死了人，只需打个电话，搭灵棚的班子一会儿就赶来了，包括租花圈，请乐队请歌星、送葬开路……一条龙服务。死人也是热闹的事，过去要请和尚念经做道场，吹鼓手陪伴孝子；现在兴开音乐晚会，大唱通俗歌，亲戚朋友也争着为死者点歌。通俗歌曲内容五花八门，只要歌星出口时随便改改词，就嬴得满堂彩了。至于送葬，也用不着孝子扶棺，有车队呢，有西洋管乐队呢，大喇叭一放，十里开外都晓得死人了。
老威：既然形势这样严峻，您的生计昨办呢？
李长庚∶只有远离城市，到山里面乱撞找活儿。这很难，因为谁家的红白喜事，也不会先打招呼。唉，人老了，出趟门也不容易。
老威：您没收徒弟么？
李长庚：过去收过好些徒弟，都改行了，现在风气变了，没人学唢呐。
老威：可惜离得太远，要不我就跟您学。老人家，您能不能讲讲您的故事？您春风得意的时候？

李长庚：我从来不编故事。不过春风得意的时候不少，虽然已很遥远了。年轻人，吹鼓手在以前可不是下贱的行当，纨绔子弟瞧不起我们，是因为肤浅无知。其实这一行的祖师是孔夫子孔圣人，他早年为了供养母亲，不仅为人吹唢呐，还给死者披麻戴孝、扶棺嚎丧。所以吹鼓手的家里都供奉着孔圣先师的牌位。
老威：这样说来，吹鼓手不光是吹吹唢呐，也要嚎丧？
李长庚：当然。
老威：这咋可能？您自己的亲人又没去世，怎么嚎得起来？

李长庚：这是一种职业，就像演电影，演着演着就人戏了。电影有台词，嚎丧也有曲调。我刚学吹鼓手才12岁，唢呐调和嚎丧调，师傅都逼着反复练习，有了基本功，临场发挥才会惊天动地，样子做得比孝子还真。那些年，国共两军打内战，难民如潮水一般涌，可我们与难民不一样，那里死人多就往那里去。我是河南人，你从我的口音能否听出来？唉，变了，什么都变了。我16岁就到四川了。四川比中原好，没打什么仗，红白喜事办得漂亮，没多久就出名了。

与九＋年代一样，那时候也兴搭班子，我爹是班主。他原是唱河南梆子的，而我师傅是吹唢呐的。中原连年烽火，民不聊生；劫道土匪、散兵游勇太多，谁也没心思听戏，所以我师傅就在我爹走投无路之际，建议两个班子合并，因为活人可以不听戏，但死人不可能不出丧。我爹同意了，两人原是结义兄弟，啥不好说？再说合并了的大班有十几人，结伴谋生，胆子也大一些。我爹不吹唢呐，但嗓门刚猛，平地吼一腔，数里外也能听见，再说唱戏的，要记那十几种嚎丧调，简直小菜一碟，比戏文容易多了。
老威∶哪些嚎丧调？
李长庚：《送魂调》、《追魂调》、《安魂调》、《唤魂调》、《辞亲调》、《大悲》、《小悲》、《封禧》、《渡亡》、《陪葬》、《下葬》、《回头》、《撕心裂肺调》、《呜呼衷哉调》。这些调式都是前人经过千锤百练，一代代传下来的，哪高、哪低、哪哑、哪扬、哪该干嚎、哪该湿嚎，哪该全身哆嗦出不来声，都很讲究。一般的死者亲属，一见尸体就控制不住，大放悲声，没几下就坚持不了，痛极攻心，还会昏迷、休克。而我们一入情绪，就收放自如，想嚎多久就嚎多久。如果场面大，收入可观，还能临场发挥。
老威：您最长嚎过多久？

李长庚：两天两夜吧。唢呐把开场调一吹，我们全班十几人，就全都扔下家伙，披麻戴孝，齐刷刷地向死者牌位三拜九叩，分作两、三轮，哭、泣、嚎。乱作一团。其实表面乱，只要有心，细细地旁观个把钟头，就能看出不乱的门道。比如你泣我嚎，相当于你休息我劳动，而哭只是过渡，准备劳动或者准备休息，嗓门是我们这行的本钱，哪怕猛一声撕心裂肺，也绝不会蚀本的。
老威∶你们这不是喧宾夺主了吗？哪有假孝子压倒真孝子的？

李长庚：唢呐也罢，丧调也罢，都是调动情绪，造气氛的。人与人之间的喜怒衷乐就象传染病一样，很快就蔓延开了。当然，孝男孝女是主角，但他们经常是一动真情就软下去了，往往到后来主角都退场了，配角好像才刚刚人戏，说白了，坚持到最后的都是假孝子。过去不像现在，灵棚一搭，几桌十几桌麻将就摆开了，守灵的人一心想着赌钱，连表面的哀悼文章都忘了做。

老威：过去也不可能一嚎到底吧？那不把人弄昏过去？再说现在人的居住密度大，你的响动搞得超过了别人的承受能力，四邻就会提意见，噪音污染嘛。
李长庚：可见人心不古，过去就没这一说。连80年代，也兴通宵打围鼓，唱的都是鬼戏。
老威：不错，观众也不少，那时一次丧仪就是一次群众集会。

李长庚∶我们这个班子也得学唱川戏，总之，要把丧事从头办到尾，才有竞争力。刚才说到嚎丧……为啥我反复对你讲到嚎丧，一是因为它的难度比吹唢呐、唱戏更大，是表演又不露表演的痕迹，二是它牵涉到这班人能否生存，挣钱多少都得看它的效果。从收殓、最后告别、封棺到下葬，每次众亲属与死者相见都是高潮。我置身事中又是旁观者，我瞟一眼就晓得有的人是真想扑过去抱住死者，有的人是做做扑的样子。这时，我们不仅要卖力气地哭嚎，而且要充当保镖，一次次地拖住别人。待他们都告别完了，我们就上前延长这悲恸的气氛，按规矩，封棺之前，我们当中至少有五、六个人扑棺三遍，被其他人死死拖住，待盖子一扣，大铁钉崩崩下去，才暗自松口大气。
老威：你们中也分主唱与伴唱吧？

李长庚：主嚎与伴嚎，对，有些选拔赛的意思，一次丧事就是一次选拔。事后，大家会聚一块，认真地评比，嗓门大还不行，还得会处理，吟诗都讲究起承转合。收、放、脸、手、肩膀都重要，全身都重要，节骨眼上的转弯更重要，从“你的一生勤劳俭朴哟”到“苦日子熬到头你却去了哟”，大伙几乎每一句都要提意见，以便改进。

老威：你说你们的班子解放前就入川了，不知怎样站稳脚跟的？按理说，四川人办红白喜事是很讲排场的，传统的民俗也不少，一个外乡的吹鼓班子……

李长庚：我晓得你的意思，开始是这样，人们习惯请本地的丧事班子。大户人家，还一边请人打川剧围鼓，一边请和尚念经超度亡灵。成都呆不住，我们就一路撤下来，途经绵阳，也不行，连江油也呆不住，只好离城20里地，在这个破乡场上扎营。为了活命，我们先分头找活儿，不挣钱，只图一日三餐。48年，这地方发生过一场瘟疫，路边都能见着死人，这瘟疫救了我们。生病是不分贫富的，再加上本地的吹鼓手都是子承父业，—脉单传，有人请，他就夹上唢呐去了，这就难以抵挡人多势众的我们。况且，北方人个头大，气血足，唢呐也吹得比本地那些痨病鬼精神。长期下来，我们几乎包揽了江油周围的红白喜事。
老威：你们的势头这般猛，为何不重振旗鼓，再进城发展呢？
李长庚：当地有袍哥组织，惹翻了就三刀六洞，哪个敢与他们挤生意？光地皮税你就交不起。
老威：乡下没有袍哥么？

李长庚：当然有。被我们抢了饭碗的本地吹鼓手曾联合找到袍哥的红旗老五，他在青莲镇上开茶馆。红旗老五叫手下人传话，要么滚出江油地界，要么被打断腿扔出去。幸好我们在这一带已有了一定名声，有一个信佛的地主，雅号张圆外，出面为我们求情，并垫付了20块大洋。于是龙头老大才发话，让双方一对一公平较量。我爹问：
“没死人怎么较量？”老大回答：
“这好办。”第二天早晨，一个叫化子就横尸在我们门口。于是只好把乞丐当王爷，隆重收殓。寿衣寿材置办好，抬到乡场上，双方才按事先协商好的搭台。本地吹鼓手、职业嚎丧户和他们的亲戚朋友，都不惜血本，凑足银元到外地请来名头响亮的高手，准备决一死战。不过半天，台搭好了，两台高耸并立，足有十丈高，而敞开的棺材就搁在两台之间。这阵式惊动了方圆百里，自从盘古王开天地，吹鼓手打擂台在当地还是头一回。

先是比赛唢呐，曲子一样，都是《大悲调》，煺尺之外的看台上，分几排坐着袍哥大小管事，乡长保长，各方乡绅名流。我年轻好胜，要先登台比试，不料被师傅拉下。那阵，他老人家已50多岁，长得虎背熊腰，但见他一身漆黑孝服，孝帕在阳光下白得耀眼。他口咬唢呐，噌噌几下就上了云梯，站在台顶，与此同时，对手也上了台顶。

看台上白旗一招，唢呐就双响了，简直像大刀在人们脑袋顶乱砍。他们都是久经沙场的高手，斗了半个时辰仍不见胜负，激烈之处，眼尖的人甚至能瞅见喇叭口喷出的口水和血丝。但是我爹还很镇定，因为他晓得我师傅不仅底气足，而且脾气拗，老人家的小名叫“二蛮子”，有股宁死不认输的劲。

斗了一个时辰，对手就只有喘着吹的份了，眼看胜利在望，不料师傅的唢呐嘎地断了。看台上白旗又一挥，这下完蛋了。只见我师傅满嘴鲜血，原来有人用弹弓暗算他。
我人小反应快，来不及多想，就已攀上高台；我爹也向上爬，台子撑不起这么多人，摇晃起来，我急忙喊：
“师傅快下！”全班的人都守在台边，爹上不来，就急得跳脚。喊：
“小狗日的，找死嘛！”话音未落，对手又上台了。这次是比嚎丧。对手猛一擂胸，嗓门粗得如牛叫，台下喊好声不断。可我想的是，这回完蛋了，师傅受了伤，失去了帮手，爹也支撑不住。离乡背井跑这么远；为多少活人笑，为多少死人哭，但自己却落得如此下场！受欺负的日子何时才有个头？况且，这只是为了个叫化子，就搞得班子要散了。散了咋办？哪里去谋生？当不了吹鼓手，就只有要饭，说不定哪天和台下的叫化子一样下场……就这样越想越丧气，越想越不想活，就哭起来。向天，鼓着两只牛眼睛，满眼太阳晃也不眨一下。我啥也不晓得，啥也听不见，嚎得不成人形，还一拳一脚地乱打，像要和老天爷拼命。弹弓又瞄准我了，啪啪几下，挨一下脑袋轰一下，我尽量把脸朝上，只要脸不出血……。就这样，台下我胜的白旗已招摇几回，可我就是看不见。后来我才晓得，对手早哑了，我独自一人多嚎了十几分钟，搞得满场黑压压的哭成一片，连袍哥们都抹泪了，连连叹息说：
“我们也把外乡人欺负得太惨了，上头娃儿太惨了！”
老威∶真是惊心动魄！老人家，您也算是从少年英雄过来的。

李长庚∶英雄谈不上，既然做了这一行，就只有背水一战。唉，好不容易挣来的地盘，总不想随便让，全国解放那年，爹亡故，埋骨异乡，不久，我相了亲，入了当地的户，就走不了了。
老威：这么多年也没回家探亲？

李长庚：回去过好多次，老家有一大堆亲戚呢。不过我已经变成土生土长的四川人了，这方山水养人，虽然时代变了，现在我们这行走下坡路了，但是这几十年苦中作乐也算有滋有味。
老威：解放后你改过行没有？比如破四旧、文化大革(和)命之类的运动中，你还能干吹鼓手？

李长庚：没有改过行。只是改过调。迎解放，扭秧歌，我们的丧事班子就摇身一变，唢呐齐奏《解放区的天是明朗的天》。跟着来的政治运动也一样，发动群众，少不了文艺演出。领导定什么调就吹什么调，艺人嘛，日求三餐，夜求一宿，哪有那么多不满情绪。告诉你，三年自然灾害饿死人一片接一片，我也照吹天下太平调，孝子当多了，人就没啥心肝，这世道，干万来不得热血奔腾，今天大鸣大放，政治宽松，该你“奔腾”，好了，“奔腾”够了？劳改去吧，尾巴一夹就是几十年。所以，为人就是要没心肝。
老威：你们的班子也散伙了？

李长庚：51年就各奔东西了。以后口子就像本地吹鼓手一样，平时在家务农，方圆几十里有红白喜事，人家自会找上门来请。因为我有名气，一年四季总不会断了财路。曾经有人建议我重新拖个班子，到处找活儿，我仔细琢磨，认为不要，因为这也算个民间组织，它归哪儿管呢？没部门管的组织，在中国就是非法的，非法的下一步就是反动，我可不沾这个边。
老威：老人家，您是人精。我自愧不如。另外，我还想向您打听一件事。
李长庚∶请讲。
老威：小时候在农村，我曾听爷爷讲过吆尸人的传说，是否真有其事？李长庚：你爷爷咋讲的？
老威：他说吆尸人在过去是一种职业。这种职业就是受人重金托付，把客死异乡的尸首从百里或干里之外搬运回家。
李长庚：对，过去是有专门的吆尸人。他们一般是晚上赶两人结伴，一前一后，像抬轿子一般牵引着尸体，行走如一路还发出嗬嗬的吆喝。
老威：死人也走路么？

李长庚：看上去，死人与活人步调完全一致，这样才能保持一种惯性节奏。如果你走夜路，与吆尸人不巧碰上，就只能闪开，要不，他们就嗬嗬嗬地迎面撞过来。这种三位一体的走法不仅别扭，而且不能转急弯。
老威：您亲眼见过吆尸人吗？

李长庚：白天见过，晚上没见过。49年，本地的一位客商，在江西做生意时被乱兵打死。那时，水陆的交通都极不方便，他的朋友又不忍心就地处置，只好重托吆尸人。大约过了一个星期，尸体果然被吆回家乡，并且面容如生。
老威：没有腐朽？简直是神话。

李长庚：这位客商姓陆，经我的手出的殡，因此绝无半句虚言。吆尸人都是白天睡觉，我们年轻好奇，舔破窗户纸去看，黑咕隆咚，只闻鼾声如雷。而到了晚上，他们就已经没影了。我们班中的小伍，想把吆尸的棍子偷出来看看，因为大伙都猜测棍上有魔法。不料刚一动门栓，里面呼地一个黑影扑过来，定睛一认，原来是只黑猫！吆尸人随行都带着猫，上路时，他们像取门板一样，把靠墙而立的尸体搬出房外，前后夹定，放猫在尸体上溜几遍，叫“过电”。过完电，三个人还要如练操一般，原地踏步一会儿，方嗬嗬出发。
老威：您这段经历，算虚实掺半吧？老人家，您可谓见多识晚辈佩服。
李长庚∶你到了我这把年纪，比我更见多识广。你的嗓音不错，很适合做这一行呢。

创造自己的音乐 (Making your own music)

2009-09-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

夏天时很想继续更新这个博客，可是由于工作的原因，所以没能把每个故事都写下来。现在已经回到耶鲁了，时差已经倒过来了，可是文化冲击（culture shock）实在太大了。到处都是消毒液和各种肤色的人。耶鲁本身也焕然一新了，每天在路上走路的时候可以听到改修建筑的那铿铿之声。

前几天跟久违的朋友们聊天的时候发现我个人的变化也相当明显。据一哥们儿说，我的思维和言行变得比他更“成熟”。确切地说，我变得比他更“老，”而我还没到21岁。

以后再说朋友所注意到了的变化——这篇博文的题目是“创造自己的音乐。”关注我的博客的网友们也许注意到，我的每一篇博文都有和音乐有关的题目，可以说，像古代诗歌里所描述的自然现象

代表诗人的某种心绪一样，我也会选些恰当的词来抓住并总结整篇博文的内容。这次，我之所以起这么一个题目，是因为我想讨论一下写博客的一个关键矛盾——我们不可能将生活中所有经历的每一个细节都志于纸中，只能把精髓与大家分享。这次，我会试图把我夏天所做的一切都解释清楚。

不过，这个博客毕竟是给不会看汉语的耶鲁同学们以及我的母亲看的，所以从此我会回到英语。

Sometimes we have to make the decision whether to write or live the blog. I apologize for not writing over the past few months, and will do my best to summarize.

Over the past year and a half, I have been traveling and studying in China as a Richard U. Light Fellow of Yale University. I learned of a nonprofit organization called Compassion for Migrant Children in late December 2008, and began working there in April of 2009 to develop its health initiatives. With the support of the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute, I have been able to establish a health awareness and education program and expand outreach and awareness on China's internal migration issues.

As those who do not have an identity under the current hukou (household registration) system, migrant children and their communities face many challenges, including substandard education, inadequate healthcare and unstable residency. A needs assessment survey conducted at the now-demolished Dawangjing village in late 2007 reveals that many migrant children and parents are not aware of many hygienic habits and health facts that could decrease the frequency of preventable illnesses such as diarrhea and dysentery. Negative images of migrant communities are reflected in media, even in community health stations, where doctors describe migrants to be poor and dirty, a stain on what were originally “pure” villages populated by Beijingers. Migrants realize this and simply go to unlicensed clinics in migrant neighborhoods. As one man I spoke to over a couple bowls of beef noodles related, “Any medicine that ease the aches sold without the (urbanite’s) discrimination is better than service provided with disdain.

After working with migrant teenagers, local organizations and fellow workers, I drafted the health program manual for CMC, outlining health curriculum development and implementation procedures for CMC’s core programs as well as procedures on developing healthcare projects with outside organizations.

I approached and negotiated with several organizations on providing preventative medicine workshops for migrant youth, including corporations such as SOS International, Vista Health and United Family (

China

’s only foreign-run hospital). However, I found my proposals heard by another Beijing-based NGO called Prevention through Education (PTE), an organization which seeks to spread HIV/AIDS prevention education throughout

China

. While the teachers’ primary topic of expertise was sexually transmitted infections with emphasis on HIV/AIDS, PTE’s medical representatives realized the value and importance of providing a comprehensive preventative health curriculum for migrant youth after understanding their major health concerns and needs. Today, PTE’s teachers have already developed classes to be taught to our young migrant trainees that will cover essential topics including personal hygiene, diet, drug/alcohol abuse and sex education. Because the migrant teenagers who lived at CMC’s community center were familiar with me as a teacher, I ran trial awareness seminars in Chinese on sample topics, including H1N1 flu awareness and human anatomy.

I also began discussing projects with United Family’s philanthropy director in early June to provide free immunization service for the migrant youth of the Dongba community. However, following the economic crisis, United Family’s board of directors fired the philanthropy director for engaging in projects “that do not comply with currently changing development plans (of the hospital).” The projects have not been discussed since the director’s dismissal. This was among the earliest of my several encounters in Beijing with corporate social responsibility (CSR). Though I accept the fact that many businesses today may never be socially responsible and comply with CSR for the sake of window-dressing, my work to provide health education at CMC’s community centers has taught me how to negotiate in order to leverage resources that benefit a greater social good.

Demolition mandated by district and city government officials constantly threatens CMC’s work in migrant communities. Government officials realize that migrant workers literally have built the physical infrastructure of major coastal cities and continue to create economic wealth for

China

. However, policymakers worry that unmanaged growth of migrant villages will result in formations of nonstate migrant power that threaten government rule. Therefore, the ultimate goal behind demolition acts is not to completely erase migrant communities, but to create regulated regimes of private capital. Without a doubt, restructuring both the physical landscape and social hierarchy in migrant communities has major consequences on the lives of migrant children and their families, but in the race for survival on urban territory, migrant workers sacrifice their health for socioeconomic security. A lack of healthcare awareness coupled with a biased healthcare system that serves only those with urban hukou discourages the typical migrant worker from investing time and money learning about local healthcare services. For the migrant worker, a couple pills of acetaminophen may mean comprehensive healthcare. To ameliorate the ill-effects of policy concerning internal migration, the nongovernmental sector in

China

must persevere in its efforts to provide evidence of successful alternative programs that respect the migrant individual as a human being. At the same time, players in the nongovernmental sector must learn how to rangbu, or make way, for government. Though the health program is far from complete, the foundations have been laid for greater and more meaningful projects to come. I hope to return to CMC next year to continue overseeing the development of the health program as CMC’s community centers expand, face new political obstacles and interact in new migrant communities.

Truth be told, I leave Beijing dissatisfied. I leave a program to which I dedicated the second half of my life in China, and wander around Yale from class to class, still wondering ways to alleviate China's internal migration problems. I left behind relationships in the migrant communities, friends my age who are braving the real world for less than minimum wage. For now, there are only two things that help me put this program into perspective.

The wise Charlie, the former Director of Operations at CMC (now studying at the London School of Economics), advised me, "You're not going to fix the world in five months. The program who design will guide the people who come after you - think about the work as a mission where you have allies there to support you. Interventions and short-term projects are great, but ask yourself - what is the point, and will it make a long-term irreversible positive impact?"

Second, I read a book recommended to me by the founder of CMC, Jonathan, called Pathologies of Power by Dr. Paul Farmer. In his book, Dr. Farmer says that the claim that some people are born unlucky is a fallacy - simply put, there are socioeconomic and political roots to health issues that have caused concentration of wealth and fortune in the hands of few. These problems must be addressed in order to maximize our current efforts in global health.

Indeed, after working at CMC, I realize that there are poisons in this world whose antidotes, though we possess them, are difficult to distribute. However, if we have the ability to imagine a future where, as Dr. Farmer incessantly says, Articles 25 and 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are observed, can't we also create it?

古琴 (Guqin) or 吉他 (Guitar) - The Chinese Language, Evolving?

2009-06-13T10:59:00.000-07:00

About a month ago the New York Times discussed the simplification of the Chinese language and invited experts to debate the shift from traditional to simplifed characters on the mainland and the preservation of traditional characters elsewhere. Professor Eileen Chow of Harvard University acknowledges that while the simplification of the Chinese language has led to increased literacy and ease of communication, to be ignorant of traditional characters is "to close oneself off to Chinese tradition and arts before the 1950s." Professor Eugene Wang, again of Harvard University, argues that simplified characters are justified by the amount of information that needs to be absorbed everyday. After all, a week's worth of information in the NY Times today contains more information than a person would come across in lifetime during the 18th century. "The first step is efficiency, the second is for cultural refinement," Professor Wang says, “That is why every society has the division of labor between bankers and poets." A columnist for the World Journal Weekly mentions that classical philosophers "exploited the full range and expression of traditional Chinese characters" and concludes that simplified characters is merely the solution for politics, not culture.

Over a year ago, three-time Light Fellow and friend Angel Ayala wrote an opinion column for the Yale Daily News in response to an email that instructed all Chinese lectors and professors to place more emphasis on traditional characters. This column basically summarizes everything that the experts said above, but is written from a student's perspective.

As novices to the world of Chinese, we often cannot tell the difference among traditional and simplified characters in the first place, not to mention the different computer fonts that can vary stroke placement, number and order. To confirm Angel's point on newspapers in the States, I have not found one publication that is printed with simplified characters. However, I also noticed that the specialized diction and tone used in American Chinese newspapers are different from mainland newspapers, from the use of certain chengyu to the structure of the sentences themselves.

History versus Professor Chow's linguistic "utopia," elitism versus populism, traditional versus simplified characters - I find the defenses of each side of each debate strong and, frankly, I do not intend to attack any of them. Western readers new to the entire debate may associate the argument that art and culture are lost with the decline of traditional characters to George Orwell's essay on Newspeak - "It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words" - but have changed the words Newspeak and Oldspeak to simplified and traditional characters and the word "heretical" to an adjective that at once embodies "cultural, historical, artistic." I do not find the debate has distinct and dire as Orwell has written, but I do agree that the complete death of traditional characters will trigger the slow deletion of ancient Chinese history and culture. Fortunately, I believe that will never happen so long as this Earth has historians and artistic souls who look back in time and dare to reflect on past life. However, as we cannot all be fulltime professional historians, for the sake of communication and development, I suppose language does have to change its shape and form.

For the simplified character readers who suddenly find an interest for Confucian and Daoist philosophy/history but have no interest in studying traditional characters, I suppose Yu Dan's lectures will do, albeit her shallow and skewed interpretation of the texts.

For the reader who really doesn't understand the cultural and history gap between traditional and simplified characters, I decided to compare the character 藝 (艺), or yi, in this entry. In the picture to the left, the simplified yi is to the left. This character means "skill" today. In modern Chinese, 藝術 (艺术) means art. However, originally this character meant "to grow." (艺，种也。 ——《说文》)

The traditional character is a pictograph of a plant growing. On the left side, a plant (圥) in soil (土) is cared for by a hand (丸,凡). To this, grass was added (艹) and cloud was added to water the crop (云). Later this character was used by Confucius to mean "strive for, seek" (求也藝。——《論語·雍也》). The development of this character from "grow" to "strive" suggests a historical shift from agriculture to specialized craftsmanship.

The simplified form is just grass (艹) over the 乙 (yi) phonetic.

我站在门槛外

2009-06-12T18:52:00.000-07:00

我站在门槛外。

地上覆盖着我曾写过的笔记和作文。我蹲下捡起一张布满折痕仿佛从笔记本中撕下的纸。纸上写着我第一次跟出租车司机一块聊天时的对话和我的感想。老师在作文上留的红叉使我以前所犯过的语法和用词错误一目了然。我应该认真复习这篇草稿，可是回想起刚开始学习汉语时的天真无邪，我不由得笑起来。噫…逝者如斯。俯视，一些纸张的页边记着我所闻所见的好词好句，如“蔷薇红”和“有一日未死之身，则有一日未闻之道。”然而，这些笔记好像是在匆忙中写的，因为其字迹太潦草了。

我的记性很差，所以我早就决定了把回忆和想象寄托于自纸墨字。我能写什么就写什么，在墨水用光时，我便会再灌继续写字。我偶尔会重读我的所写来享受想象之果并使往事浮于眼前，然而我总觉得我写的一切都如同因缺几块而未完成的拼图游戏。

我站在门槛外。

透过门，能看到一片沙滩。这不是一般的海边浴场。沙地是一片无垠的白黄——它没有菅茅草，也没有干枯的海草。虽然见不到海鸥，它的鸣叫却仍传到耳朵里。一股凉爽和畅的风使我的精神振奋。从这儿，我能看到气势雄伟的大海，听到大海的沙哑的低语，闻到大海的那刺鼻的咸味。谁在搅动海面并形成波涛？波涛一潮潮地向沙地滚滚打来，缓缓冲激。
在沙地和大海之间那固态和液态紧紧相连的汇合处，被打湿的沙子大喊：“不服!” 它们勇敢地面对大海，以自身连成一带深褐色的前线。
大海哗啦作响，溅起泡沫，如鼓声阵阵。
此战奚始？物类之起，必有所始——唯有挂在遥远天空的太阳知道其始，而且只有这个旁观者才能猜测其终。莫非太阳是使大海与沙子永远不停地交锋的魁首？莫非大海和沙子只能任当傀儡，给太阳消遣？

在沙滩上游目骋怀，凝视脚下八万四千的沙子，遥望起伏不定的大海。我要描绘周围的景色，可是口袋里没有笔。我用手指在沙地上写字，一个“中”字没写完而大风便已刮过，使沙子填满“口”，但一竖的痕迹还能看得清楚。
这是否太伟大了？以往的作家警告过我不要以毛笔挑战大自然，但我已走上了写作之路，现在不能望洋兴叹，视沙感燥。尽管在一千句只有一句能体现沙滩之美，如果我能间接地同他们相遇而且相融了，即使只有一次已足够，我就心满意足了。为此而夙夜匪懈是值得的。

投干沙一把于海而投者见击者，盖沙顺风而散，逆行而击也。湿沙者，为涛所透之沙也。投湿沙一把于海矣，假于吾力而加疾，因之而填于海也。是故干湿二沙，固而同质，投而异向，涛之透使然也。

我站在门槛外。

六月三日。

金健佑

Bangu (板鼓) - End of Fellowship Thoughts and Transitions

2009-06-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

(Writer's Note: The following blog is the final part in a series of entries that will summarize my life as a student at the Inter-University Program at Tsinghua University (IUP).)

After submitting my final essays to my tutorial teachers, I felt dizzy. Shouldn't one feel free after finishing school? Shouldn't one feel at ease? Instead, I felt even more confused and lost than when I had begun studying Chinese.
Maybe my mind is trying to reflect on everything that has happened since my first day at IUP. Maybe my mind is trying to prepare to leave an environment to which it had accustomed, to leave dear teachers and friends. I gained thousands of words and lost seven pounds (in all the wrong places), made friends throughout China and lost a few memories.

In this series, I've talked of bikes, my apartment and my thoughts on education at IUP. For future Light Fellows, if you wish to save time, just read the following few grains of advice:
1. Live off campus.
2. Ride a bike.
3. Read out loud.

Besides this, I can offer no constructive advice. I can offer one deconstructive piece of advice however -

Be independent.

We are all part of the social media generation - we live in a world where are friends and family are a few clicks away. Networking has a good reputation. I'm not saying any of this is bad - friends will miss you and mothers will worry if you don't reply back to their emails and wall posts. Networking also fails if you don't respond. I'm just saying isolate yourself from the western world. There are plenty of temptations in Wudaokou to allow you to revert to your comforts - English this, English that - but if you

came to China with the intention of mastering Chinese, a year's period of seclusion will not impede your English speaking ability. Complete cultural immersion happens only when you delete AIM and download QQ, when you refuse to speak English or mother tongue and when you dare to travel independently. Find Chinese friends on your own by attending random events, meeting random people and following them to other random events. Ignore the classmates that want to complain to you in English, or passively listen to them. Travel independently as often as possible or with no more than three people. After a year of struggling to abide by this one rule, my Chinese has improved faster, my appreciation of Chinese culture and politics has deepened and my perspective of my own cultural identity has changed greatly.

Though my studies in China have concluded as a Richard U. Light Fellow, I will continue to learn and work in China. With the support of the Yale Global Health Initiative, I will work at a Beijing-based nonprofit organization called Compassion for Migrant Children (CMC). I will organize health awareness workshops and investigate the relations between community health centers and migrant workers. These workshops will be designed to help improve children's hygiene habits and correct their parents' misconceptions about various health-related topics, including breastfeeding, STDs and the role of antibiotics. I will continue blogging my experiences working with migrant children and interacting with health officials in Beijing.

I am forever in Dr. Richard Light's debt. While I'll be working this summer to understand public health in China, the opportunities that build up this summer project would not have even appeared before my eyes had I not left Yale and lived in China. I sincerely thank you.

Pipa (琵琶) - Studying at IUP

2009-05-26T16:37:00.000-07:00

(Writer's Note: The following blog is the third part in a series of entries that will summarize my life as a student at the Inter-University Program at Tsinghua University (IUP). In this entry, I will write about my Chinese language program in Beijing for Light Fellows.)

When one first crosses into the realm of IUP, one will see a work of caoshu calligraphy hung on the opposing wall. One may make out the very first character, xue, 學. The rest looks like gibberish in print. Kind of like the reflection of the tree on the Tsinghua river - colorful and vibrant, but blurry.

IUP was created originally for scholars who wanted to research Chinese art and history and for future officials who wanted to discuss policy and economics. Now, the student population at this program is diverse, accepting undergraduates, graduate students, professors, investment bankers, consultants, journalists, curators, doctors, lawyers, musicians, to name a few. The students at IUP come from very different life backgrounds - a SAIS graduate fluent in Thai and strategic studies, a Harvard Chinese philosophy postdoc interested in green energy who worked as lead cook in Kyrgyzstan, an ex-engineer-cancer-survivor planning to teach English to children in Yunnan, a filmmaker with crushes on Three Kingdoms military strategist Zhu Geliang, a public health researcher who's smoked marijuana in Burma - to describe a few. And then there's that undergraduate who's having a mid-college crisis and seeks escape in Chinese. The learning is not just in the classroom.

Class size and textbook design are the pillars of IUP. Class size is limited to three students per teacher. The textbooks are designed so that vocabulary is purposely repeated. While the ambitious student may criticize this tactic as a cheap way of repeating words, it's actually repetition that reinforces and consolidates your mastery of the language. Most intensive programs constantly list new vocabulary without allowing students adequate review time - in IUP's textbooks, review is built in. Once your Chinese language level is high enough, you can take independent tutorials, where you select your own reading material.

The teachers are at once your educators and friends. The teachers at IUP are young (relative to your average Chinese language teacher back in the United States) - most are somewhere around 25. The older ones either act unbearably young or outrageously old. They are also female (except for the one male teacher in the picture above). They are very approachable but cliquish at the same time, especially the older teachers. But don't let the way they group together intimidate you. If there's anything that psychology books and Sex and the City has taught me, women coagulate so that they can be approached. A seemingly self-defeating dilemmic answer, but true. Eat lunch with them, hang out in their offices, make random jokes - eventually they all change.

Studying for classes varies from student to student. Lots of students enjoy Wenlin, found on all computers at IUP, as well as various dictionaries in the library for the usual vocabulary search. Some students rely on flashcards and rote memorization, associating English translations of words to their Chinese counterparts. While this strategy works for maybe through third-year Chinese, I feel that to really make a leap in Chinese learning you should graduate the cards and rely only on recordings and incessant reading of the text. Chinese is learned best when learned as native Chinese students learn it - through memorization or deep familiarization of entire passages. Also, the sooner you can exclusively use Chinese-Chinese dictionaries instead of Chinese-English dictionaries, the better.

After a few modules of hard studying at IUP, I looked down at the river and saw the trees' reflection in the water. I was pleased to see the outline of the trunks and clumps of leaves and branches - an improvement from the yellow green mixture from before.

Dizi (笛子) - Bikes

2009-05-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

(Writer's Note: The following blog is the second part in a series of entries that will summarize my life as a student at the Inter-University Program at Tsinghua University (IUP). In this entry, I will talk about biking in Beijing for Light Fellows.)
Traffic is a constant in Beijing, no matter what mode of transportation you select. This means that even if you drive, you may not get to your destination faster than a pedestrian. However, as shown in the picture to the left, many people bike. Bus and subway are popular for cross-district or cross-city commute, and trains are for cross-province travel. In Beijing, getting around any where is rather arduous and time-consuming without a bike.

Even the illustrious leader of IUP, Li Yun, rides a bike to and from IUP.

A few differences between biking in Beijing and the United States:

1. No one wears a helmet. (Unless the bicyclist is very accident-prone.)

2. No one gets ticketed for not wearing a helmet.

3. Talking on the cell phone with one hand and eating ice cream with the other while cycling is not uncommon.

4. Bikers often compete with buses and horses for road supremacy. This is especially true at intersections - no sane Beijing driver will stop for a slow cycler unless said driver is a sex-deprived male and said cycler is a woman with a very short skirt. (Said driver is common. Said cycler is rare.)

5. Honking does not immediately lead to road rage in China. Rather, it's ignored by the biker.

6. Bike repair spots are ubiquitous. Repairmen vary in honesty and skill.

Old man Shang in the Dongwangzhuang neighborhood is hands down the best repairman in Beijing. The repairman near the Wudaokou station is an overcharging fart who takes a million years to change a broken basket. Old man Shang lives less than a minute from my apartment, so I just go over and talk to him about Zen and the art of bicycle maintenance. (No joke.) His Mandarin is very unstandard but musical in a Shaanxi sort-of way. He lost a couple fingers on his left hand because of an accident back in his farming days, but doesn't let that stop from reviving bikes.

For Light Fellows - learn to bike. ("Accident-prone" is a poor excuse. Get a helmet and some pads if you're that scared.) Biking may be the only form of exercise that you'll get if you're going to devote yourself to studying Chinese. If you'll be in China for a year, consider investing in a decent sturdy bike with a strong lock instead of buying the cheap 160 RMB model. For guys who can't spread their legs high enough to clear the bike frame from the back, the female models are designed so that bikes can be mounted from the front. Black, gray and dark blue bikes are less likely to be stolen than bikes of any other color. If biking really isn't right for you, get an electric bike. Beware of speeding - like I mentioned above, ticketing isn't a problem. Crashing into other cars and pedestrians is. A strong electric bike will be good enough to take you throughout Haidian district and even to Chaoyang (a 30 minute commute on local roads).

二胡(erhu) - Dongwangzhuang

2009-05-12T10:34:00.000-07:00

(Writer's Note: The following blog is the first part in a series of entries that will summarize my life as a student at the Inter-University Program at Tsinghua University (IUP). In this entry, I will talk about accomodation in Beijing for Light Fellows.)

Tsinghua University offers dormitories for foreign students around the campus's northeast corner. Foreign students are still not allowed to live with Chinese students. The dormitory offers singles and doubles. I selected the single, but the living conditions were far from ideal. My single was right next to the laundry room, which forced me to bear quite a few sleepless nights listening to the washing and drying machines go off. The walls and curtains provided by the dormitory services are both thin. I wake up to small sounds and small rays of light, so I bought some dark bedsheets, punched holes in them and hung it over the curtain to block out light. After a few weeks, I realized that my ceiling was leaking water from the broken air conditioner, which after a few repair sessions still was not repaired. Eventually the damp ceiling tiles turned moldy and began to change the air quality inside my dorm.

Near the end of my summer term at IUP, I saw an ad up on the school bulletin of an apartment in Dongwangzhuang.

Dongwangzhuang (东王庄) is located east of Tsinghua University, south of the Forestry University and north of the Language and Culture University. The former resident, Wiley and Richard, wanted to keep the apartment for IUPers because it had already been passed down by IUPers for many years. After meeting up with Wiley, seeing the apartment and meeting with the landlord, I decided that looking at other apartments was a waste of time and agreed to sign the lease agreement.

Fortunately, I found a wonderful roommate, Jillian, through IUP's group email before I signed the lease to split the rent. I packed my luggage back in Tsinghua's moldy dorms, hired a "black car" (黑车, the driver who was so nice that he helped me with the luggage throughout the move and had white liquor

(erguotou 二锅头) with me), and moved in early August. A few nights later I invited IUP students for a housewarming party, wine and snacks complimentary of IUP.

Dongwangzhuang is a cute neighborhood with just the right amount of conveniences and culture. During early morning, street stands sell meat-stuffed buns, bowls of spiced tofu, strips of fried dough, seaweed soup and egg pancake sandwiches. Old ladies practice their sword or fan dances in the concrete parks while the men waddle around or play ping-pong.

During the evening, the street stands are stocked with meat and vegetable shish kabobs, boiled, grilled or roasted. A supermarket is available for people who enjoy cooking (I like to watch people cook and help peel onions). There are as of late May four fresh fruit and vegetable vendors. Back on the concrete yard, the red ornament lights and Chinese ballroom dance music are turned on. Couples young and old practice their swing, waltz and salsa at the same time. I've seen an American couple do some southern ditty to some classic Cultural Revolution tune. The old men crowd around tables smacking cards onto crude wooden tables, waddle around or play ping-pong.

Outside the neighborhood gates, Korean restaurants line the streets. Wangzhuang Street has perhaps three Chinese restaurants, total. The rest are all Korean.

For Light Fellows who will study at HBA, PiB or CET-Beijing, accomodations are provided by the programs.

Fellows who elect to study at IUP have the option of living on campus, but I strongly suggest living off-campus simply because there is much to see beyond the campus bubble. I've heard complaints from previous fellows that they haven't been able to see the cultural phenomenons described in their textbooks. I've also heard previous fellows wail that they haven't been able to really connect with the people who live in Beijing except through language partners and teachers.

They all usually say this while sitted in a coffee bar tucked away on campus.

Dongwangzhuang is by no means the only place to live in Wudaokou. The Huaqing Jiayuan apartments, the Xiwangzhuang apartments, the Dongshengyuan apartments are just a few neighborhoods in which IUPers have lived. Some students commute from districts as far as Sanlitun and Dongzhimen. Generally speaking, the apartments further from Tsinghua are cheaper and less furnished. Huaqing Jiayuan Apartments are perhaps the most expensive apartments in Wudaokou because of its central location, close distance to Tsinghua University and to all the shops, restaurants and bars on Chengfu Road.

For IUPers - Don't panic about housing. There are plenty of apartments that can be found. Many IUPers before or after finishing classes will post ads on the IUP panlist to ease your search. Some will even post gym memberships and bike offers. You can respond to ads while still in the States or another country, but I strongly recommend that you apartment-shop once you get to Beijing. You can personally observe your future housing conditions and choose among many selections rather than binding yourself to a place that does not satisfy you.

Stravinsky's Firebird Suite - Rebirth

2009-04-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

Winter is beautiful from a distance or when still in photographs, but burns your face and freezes your hands as you bike against its winds. Spring is beautiful up close or when dynamic in reality, but makes you sneeze and question your age as you see life renew all around you.

The beauty of that period between winter and spring when Mother Nature stops her strip dancing is perhaps more praised than autumn leaves. We'd rather see objects breathe with life than see life in its last moments - the same reason we like to hang around pediatric hospitals rather than hospices.

Nevertheless, whether spring or winter, be it leaves or snowflakes, we praise the immortal, that which never stays the same but always exists, the omnipresent.

Either everything I am writing is making sense, or I'm reading way too much classical Chinese. Damn those daydreaming philosophers - if only I had bottles of liquor and pavilions like those bearded dreamers millennia ago.

Slide - Skiing and the Ministries

2009-02-21T02:09:00.000-08:00

A telephone call.

"Wei?" I say.

"Wei. Is this the boy that I met at the Kunming Airport a few weeks ago?" replies an old female voice.

"Oh, you must be Zhao Ayi! Thank you for calling me! Are you still in Beijing?"

"I'll be here for a little longer than I thought. In any case, will you be busy this weekend?"

"I don't think so..."

"My daughter is going up to Miyun with her husband and friends to ski. Why don't you come? I'm sure you're a good skier."

"Zhao Ayi, I've never skied in my life."

Four days later, I am waiting for Zhao Ayi to pick me up at the Shangdi subway station. While I listen to Chinese weather and traffic reports through my mp3 player, an silver SUV pulls up in front of me. The tinted windows slide down and I see a familiar face from Yunnan.

"Zhao Ayi, hao jiu bu jian," I greet her.

"ni hao ni hao, get in the car quickly!" says her daughter in the driver's seat. "The police haven't seen us yet."

I rush into the back seat. A young white man with glasses already in the back seat looks at me. "Hello."

"Huh?" I reply. I correct myself with a "hi."

"This is my husband, Mr. S, a guy I met when I was studying abroad in Canada." says the driver. "My name is Mrs. C. Nice to meet you."

For the next forty or so minutes, we all exchange life histories. Mr. S came out to China with Mrs. C because of his childhood fascination with Taoism and Chinese women. He wooed Mrs. C with deep discussions on the meanings of 有 and 無. He hasn't finished his bachelor's degree yet, but he's working on it through online classes with his college back in Quebec somewhere. His Chinese isn't good enough to converse with Zhao Ayi, but he's working on it.

"I try not to live by rules," says Mr. S, "I like to look for new ways to beat the rat race."

Zhou Ayi, a elderly woman I met at the Kunming airport, works as a high level 公務員 in Hainan. Mrs. C used to work for CCTV, but after a few years of confusion and frustration with the state of journalism in China, she decided to pursue a masters in international relations in Canada. While working at CCTV and through her mother and wealthy father's connections, she has quite a few connections in the political echelons.

"Oh, I'm bringing a few of those friends with me," Mrs. C says. "Don't worry, we'll have fun!"

"Uh huh." I nod.

"By the way, do you play Dungeons and Dragons?" asks Mr. S, "I've been looking to level up my character in Beijing...."

We pass through Miyun (密云), a growing town north of Beijing. Looking at the facial characteristics of the people walking on the street, it seems there is a mix of Han Chinese and southwestern minorities living here. In the distance, I can see outlines of the Great Wall as well a few miniature fakes. The highway is lined on both sides with leafless trees and banks of frozen snow clumps mixed with dirt. Soon, we pass by huge villas in suburban neighborhoods and chemical factories. The suburbia here looks like California's suburban towns if they were relocated to arctic regions. Arctic Irvines and Orange Counties - hmm.

We meet with Mrs. C's friends at the ski resort. After a few minutes of hellos and introductions, we head inside led by one of Mrs. C's friends, the one with the free tickets. I start chatting with one of the guys. “So what do you do?" I ask.

"Uh...I work for the Ministry of Inspection." Guy says. "Are you familiar with the Chinese government?"

"I remember reading that the Inspection Ministry is responsible for judging corrupt officials.” I reply.

"Oh good, then I don't have to explain."

"How often do you deal with corrupt officials?" I ask.

"That's classified."

"Come on, I'm foreign. Nobody's going to believe me if I share what you've said with anyone else."

"Uh...I inspect at least a hundred profiles per day."

"Profiles?"

"Cases, people."

"Just you?"

"There are a few other government workers who inspect similar cases."

"How many?"

"Around ten."

"So...that's at least a thousand profiles per day."

"...Right."

Apparently, when you want to slown down as you ski down a slope, you're supposed to adjust your skiboards into an arrow shape and lean into your heels. I made a V-shape instead, which while skiing downslope slid out and forced me to split my legs. My groin skied into a small kid's head.

Perpetuum Mobile: Halfway

2009-02-08T04:22:00.000-08:00

The sun rises at 6:22 each morning, later sometimes. An old 80-something woman comes out bundled in handwoven scarf, beanie and winter jacket to perform her morning calisthenics. A late middle-aged man joins her. Another middle-aged woman comes about ten minutes later, then another. "来了," says the elderly woman. "来了，来了，I've come, I've come," the others reply.

The magazine pile in my room is reaching a critical level, and needs to be recycled, but I'm still undecided as to whether or not toss the periodicals. Lots of underlined words and notes are scribbled and would be worth reading again later on. The bookshelves are already crowded. I'd rather be a packrat, but the walking space in my room is shrinking.

Another two modules left at IUP. I'll be studying at the last level of Chinese designed by the program along with the second classical Chinese course. Looking back, I'm fairly pleased with my progress since I've started studying at this program. I read, speak and write at a decent level of fluency and feel a stronger sense of belonging in this country after every television program, conversation with a friend and bike ride. The occasional grammar mistake is inevitable, and I can only hope with practice I will express myself with more beauty and eloquence.

Silence: 玉龙雪山

2009-01-26T21:46:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, many Chinese tourists do not get to explore much beyond the beginnings of a nature path. The tour guides take them from one “pretty" zone to another (the number of times, as a traveler in China, that you hear “哇，太漂亮了!" or "太美了!" or my favorite "美死了!" from others will quickly exceed the sum of your toes and fingers) like dogs on leashes.

Fortunately, that leaves me much freedom on the path at the Jade Snow Mountain to do as I please - so I walk off the path. A couple miles of trekking later, I realize that I only had a dozen dumplings for breakfast and am hungry. I rummage around my backpack for leftover crackers that I bought in Beijing. After chewing for a little bit, I stop. I'm the only human being making a sound. In the distance, the white Tibetan-style temple is the size of a penny. Horses and cows make dots on neighboring hills. I hold my breath - it's too loud, even though I was only breathing in shallow gulps. My brain is talking with thoughts suddenly surfacing to fill the silence. I wonder if this is what walking in outer space is like...no sound, the only sensation anchoring you to life your heart beat, memories reminding you that you existed, exist and will exist.

A faint cowbell rings, the mountain exhales, ushering clouds over its head onto mine.

Firecrackers, Dying Chicken Sounds and Dramatic Opera : 春节, a photoblog

2009-01-25T21:44:00.000-08:00

I was fortunate to celebrate the Spring Festival with one of the teachers at my Chinese language program, Sun Laoshi. As a foreign student, I am an explorer of culture. In textbooks, we read about customs and traditions. If the textbook is good, it may provide illustrations or pictures, but more often our Chinese textbooks are black and white and forces our imaginations to fill in the blanks. In Lijiang, I compared the images that I conjured with the actual Chunjie preparations and activities of the Sun family.

The day starts early - after a simple breakfast of tea, cheese and ant mushrooms, Auntie Sun is peeling and cutting vegetables (left). Sun and Ding Laoshi head out to the local supermarket to buy chunlian, red couplets hung on door frames (right). Everyone has something red on - Auntie has her sweater, Uncle has his shirt and socks, Sun Laoshi with her dress, Ding Laoshi with his underwear (he said).
While Sun and Ding Laoshi clean the house, Uncle Sun and I go to the backyard to prepare the chicken. "In the south, the chicken is traditionally prepared by each family on their own," explains Uncle as he sharpens the butcher knife. "The feet are especially important - we eat the feet to grab more fortune in the future. 新年抓财." He grabs the chicken's wings and feet and slits its throat, draining the blood into a bowl of water below its head. Suddenly, the chicken jolts erratically, surprising Uncle Sun to loosen his grip on its feet, which kick the blood bowl and splash its contents all over me and him. "Damn it," he says, "That was one of the best parts of the chicken!" Auntie Sun has me change into some of Uncle Sun's old military clothes to wash the blood drops off my pants. Uncle and I strip the chicken of its feathers, using hot water to make the "defeathering" easier. I nearly rip into its insides to take out particularly annoying little needle of a feather, but realize that I was slightly blinded by the blood crusted on my glasses. Uncle takes the chicken by its legs into the kitchen and tosses it around on top of the stove. The chicken's skin crackles and gets taut from the fire. Inside, Auntie is preparing the fish while Sun Laoshi is preparing a few side dishes. "Next year, I'm retiring from all of this - Sun Laoshi is going to do everything. She has to start learning now..." Sun Laoshi silently makes an expression at her mother while she lines a bowl with orange peels to make 八宝饭, or eight-treasure rice pudding. “Fish is also important - 年年有鱼，吉庆有余 - every year have fish, fortune will be abundant."
The dinner before Chunjie itself is a very important meal - to reflect and to celebrate the accomplishments of the year and to exchange wishes among family members for the new year. "Every family celebrates this meal by themselves - for the fifteen days following the new year, we will go to our relatives' houses to share meals and wishes with them," says Uncle Sun.
"And money," I add.
"Ah yes, hongbao. Fortunately, a lot of the younger ones in my family have already started to make money, so I don't have to give them red envelopes anymore."
"So Sun Laoshi has to start giving hongbao now?" I ask.
"Yes," says Sun Laoshi from the kitchen.
"On New Year's Day, we will all go to our ancestor's graves to saomu (扫墓, dust the graves) and wish for blessings from the ancestors." Uncle Sam's cell phone beeps. "Ah... the new year text messages are starting to come in, one by one..." A few minutes later, my cell phone also rings with incoming messages full of blessings and "Happy 牛 Year" lines which soon become hackneyed.
At last, dinner is prepared and set on the backyard table. Uncle Sun breaks out red wine and Auntie ladles soup to everyone. Everybody at the table warns me to eat slowly and pace myself. Every few minutes, everyone also raises their glasses to me for a toast and wish - blessings for good health and good grades, wishes for greater fortune and happiness are shared and downed with a clink and ganbei.
We get up from the table slowly - I am the last to get up after having to finish all the bits of food that Auntie put into my bowl. After clearing the table, Uncle Sun pours little cups of puer tea for everyone as Ding Laoshi shuffles cards. "Do you usually stay up until midnight like my textbook says?" I ask.
"We're all too old for that," Ding Laoshi says, "After a few hours of the New Year show on television, we'll all start to go to sleep."
At eight in the evening, we all make ourselves comfortable in the living room in front of the television. Nuts, fruit and drinks are piled on the center table to refresh ourselves over the course of the variety show. We watch, laughing and chuckling during comedy segments, taking bathroom breaks while performers sing. It seems that digesting the dinner meal is taking its toll on everybody's energy level. Auntie and Uncle Sun go off to bed two hours into the show. I try to make it to the end, but after the fifth singer trying to reach high notes ungracefully, I express thanks to my teacher and leave.
Outside on the streets, I grab a taxi back to my hotel room. At every few light poles, locals are hanging and tossing lit firecrackers, which pop and crack in a mess of white balls. Fireworks burst over my head from building roofs, the sparks and colors comparable to fourth of July fireworks. In the western world, we split celebrations by time zones, but in China everywhere is Beijing time. The view of China from outer space must be dazzling, to see the entire country blinking with white light. Scraps of red firework covers litter the streets and alleyways and the front of stores. I sure after fifteen days of fireworks, fish and chicken, the Nian monster will be scared enough and allow humans to live a peaceful year. For now, I just want a peaceful sleep without fireworks.

Tang Dynasty Pipa: Lijiang, or 心旷神怡

2009-01-24T21:25:00.000-08:00

5AM plane to Lijiang. I couldn't sleep at the hostel again, thanks to another round of drunk people, this time Chinese drunks, outside my window. How do you yell crazily for hours without needing to throw up or sleep? Even on the bus from Lijiang Airport to downtown Lijiang, I couldn't sleep. Acre after acre of elevated farmland in sunrise with the Jade Snow Mountain in the background passed by. A couple toddlers were sitting behind me, glued to the window as well. The bus windows fogged up because of the car heater. I used the window curtain to wipe off the moisture. The kids followed suit. I couldn't help but eavesdrop on their conversation:

Kid 1: Is that the Jade Snow Mountain?
Kid 2: Duh, it's the tallest mountain around here, didn't you hear uncle say that?
1: Yeah, but why isn't there much snow on it? Isn't the Jade Snow Mountain supposed to have snow on it?
2: Uh...maybe it's because of that, um.... "global..."
1: Uncle, is that Jade Snow Mountain?
Uncle (in the row behind them, talking on his cellphone): Huh? Yes, yes, we'll get there soon...
1: No way, that can't be!
2: Is too!
1: I'll bet with you.
2: What do you want to bet?
1: If I'm right, you have to call me 三大哥(Big brother, a term of high rank in gangs).
2: Fine. If I'm right, you have to call me that too.
1: I'm not going to call you that! You're already younger than me.
2: Then why are you sitting on me like you sit on your mom?
1: Because I want to see the view.
2: Ugh... uncle, are we there yet?
(Uncle continues to talk on the cellphone. The kids continue to squabble.)

I finally meet Sun Laoshi (Teacher Sun). She picks up one of bags.
"Oh, you don't have to help me, I'm fine on my own." I say.
She hands my bag to an older tanned man behind her. He smiles at me.
"My dad," Sun Laoshi says.
They have the same nose, eyes and chin, but their skin tones make a huge contrast.
"Haha..."I try to laugh my doubts off. "Nice to meet you Uncle Sun." (In China, you are part of one big family, whether you are foreign or Chinese. Anyone old enough to be your parents is either an uncle or an aunt.)
Inside, Aunt Sun and Sun Laoshi's boyfriend, Ding Laoshi, greet me. We have a slow breakfast of local Lijiang pastry, cheese, pickled ant mushrooms (mushrooms that grow only around ants) and salty buttered tea. "Don't be so formal," Aunt Sun says, ladling more buttered tea into my cup. "We Lijiangers don't have many formalities - all you need to do is make yourself at home." I nod with a mouthful of ant mushrooms.

The Old Town is a cobweb of streets, with more hotels and self-proclaimed inns than souvenir shops and restaurants. It seems that as long as you're a resident inside the Old Town, you can just make a sign saying "客栈" (Inn) and make money. Sun and Ding Laoshi are taking a million pictures of themselves together. Feeling like a third wheel, I wander on my own through the streets. Further south, I slosh into a huge open air market, busy with locals frantically buying supplies for their Spring Festival dinners - odors of live chicken, cabbage, fish and scents of spices and roasted nuts mix, spiked by yells by sellers and buyers debating prices. The locals carry large weaved baskets on their backs - environment-friendly grocery bags with culture, methinks.
Weaving backwards through smaller streets, I hear a djembe somewhere. I follow the beats to a street laced with stone and wood bridges. The man sitting across from a small instrument outlet bangs irregular beats. I sit down next to him. He just hands me the djembe and tells me to beat something out. (Sound like The Visitor anyone?) Hearkening back to my marching band days, I just hit the drum as rhythmically as possible. I was never a percussionist - my hands wear down as quickly as my inconsistent beats. Tourists walking by stop to take pictures of me. Some toss a few mao, which the drum seller swiftly picks up. After a while, Sun Laoshi calls - time to go.

Words from Uncle Sun:
Sun: I've been a high school teacher, and if there's anything I've learned from my two decades of teaching, it's that young people need time, much more time beyond their time in school. You don't learn anything in structured things like school - you need time out there. School doesn't give you a road with a direction - it just give you a paved road complete with asphalt. You can do anything, no matter what your passion is, no matter what you study. It's all for perspective, a gate you pass through to get true perspective. Only then do you have a direction, something to actually strive for. Everything else is background, something to form your conscience.

(Note: the rather ominous looking wooden gate above is used to dry corn.)

postscript from my notebook: majiang, wow why is sun laoshi so good, forgot to take pictures because 1 i was so mesmerized by rate at which my teacher was making money off her relatives 2 because i got so bored by it that i couldn't bear being in the same room

Stone percussion: 石林

2009-01-22T20:04:00.000-08:00

The Stone Forest is about an hour and half northeast of Kunming. Apparently, it's as big as a tourist attraction as the Over-the-Bridge Noodles. At the bus ticket station, I wait for an hour, watching commuters, tourists and travelers rush on and off buses to their destinations. On the bus, we're still missing one person, namely the person supposed to sit next to me. People in the back yell, "Just leave, that person's already paid but isn't showing up." In a few moments, a girl gets on the bus, and a few passengers grunt and shuffle. The girl takes her seat, and the bus takes off.
Azuneshi is also a student studying abroad from Japan in Hangzhou. She surprised I'm not Chinese. During the bus ride up to Shilin, we talk about our reasons for being in China. She likes Chinese tea - I guess Japanese tea ceremonies were boring to her. She's in Yunnan to observe and survey the local tea factories and fields, hoping to get some inspiration for her master's degree thesis. She mentions that she's traveling with a group of Korean students, all staying at a hostel run by a Korean man who only lets Koreans stay at his hostel. "I'm lucky," she says.
The Stone Forest is much bigger than I thought, and it's nice to have someone to converse with while walking around the park. Some areas of the park have a Jurassic Park atmosphere,

creating imaginary fears that a pack of velociraptors may be hiding behind boulders and behind bushes, watching me. While walking around, we come across a tourist group from Guangdong, asking us to take pictures of them. Ten digital cameras and way too many victory signs later, they all guess our nationalities. They get mine right, but when they try to guess Azuneshi's, they stumble. "Korean," Azuneshi says. They all smile, saying, "I knew it" as they walk to the next photo op. She looks at me and says, "I'm kind of hesitant to say I'm Japanese, especially since I've been to Nanjing." I decide not to press the conversation further and just enjoy the scenery.

Rushing Scooters: Kunming

2009-01-20T19:04:00.000-08:00

Observation: I'm tall. As I wait for a taxi to get to my hostel, I suddenly realize I'm looking over the entire line over everybody's heads to see Kunming. The person next to me in line (nobody really stands behind you in a line in China) is also from the Beijing area. The same sense of belonging encourages us to share a taxi downtown. In the car, we go through a routine of basic introductions, and start making basic observations about Kunming, starting with the traffic. There seems to be only one two-lane street connecting the airport to downtown. Both sides of the street are half-finished lanes, highways and construction debris. The Beijing person in my car says, "This is like Beijing in the 90s." I don't think I've stepped in a time-machine by going west, especially after passing by a huge Walmart and a couple McDonald's.

At the hostel, I ask the front desk for a dinner recommendation. They just point downstairs to the noodle restaurant. To travel in Yunnan without having eaten Over-the-Bridge Noodles (过桥米线) is to not have traveled in this province at all, they say. The plate - I should say plates - are interesting. The cooking is done yourself, at the table. The ingredients are all on small separate plates, ranging from pork slices to cilantro to red peppers to a small quail egg. All these are in thrown into a huge bowl of steaming broth, whose high temperature is maintained by a layer of oil and fat on the surface.

After a night of wandering through streets and alleyways, I wind up back at the hostel. In my dorm, a short buff guy from Hubei is lying on his bed. Another guy from Shanghai is getting dressed, preparing to go to the mini club-bar alleyway for "another night of mayhem." By the time I get ready to sleep, he is gone and a woman is arranging her bed. The Hubei guy, the woman and I chat a bit. The Hubei guy is in town partly for business, mainly to accompany a traveling friend. The woman is using Kunming as her gateway to Laos. At one point, the conversation turns dead, and she suddenly says, "You're a Virgo, right?"

"Yes..." I reply.

"But you're like a Libra." she says.

"I'm born on a cusp."

"Ah. I knew it!"

"How did you know that?" the Hubei guy asks.

"Just from the way you talk and what you say." she says matter-of-factly.

"It seems like you're pretty versed in astrology." I say.

"You're such a perfect Virgo-Libra." she says excitedly.

"How so?" Now I'm curious how this person I've talked to for the last twenty minutes can tell my personality from a brief conversation.

"You live optimistically but think pessimistically." she replied.

I laugh. I laugh a bit more, and then think for a bit. She sees that I'm thinking. "You're focused and get what you want out of life, but you're always thinking in extremes, thinking mainly for the worst," she explains.

I'm not sure where I can buy that. I think I laughed mainly because her first reply was so catchy and rhythmic.

"You won't be satisfied with your life unless you're sacrificing yourself." she goes on.

Now I'm silent. What sort of life is a sacrificed life?

Song Without Words: The Beijing Exodus

2009-01-19T18:47:00.000-08:00

I can't find my cellphone. Not that I really need it right now, but it beeps every now and then, notifying me that I have a new message - probably the daily news digest. It's somewhere in the pile of magazines, newspapers and books next to my bed. Nobody's calling now, unless they're in Beijing. But with the Spring Festival coming up soon, everyone's preparing their luggage and tickets to get on the next train or plane out of the capital.

I realized how dramatic this annual event was when I tried to place my usual delivery order for some lunch. The usual tired attendant's voice didn't pick up the phone after I called three times in a row. I went outside to get a to-go order of some street meat and vegetable shish-kababs. Not a single stand was in sight. For the first evening since I've been in this neighborhood, the little curving streets around my apartment were empty, quiet...and clean. Even the local restaurants were all closed. The delivery people, the waitresses, the cooks, everyone has gone home.

I made some convenient noodles.

A few people still linger around, walking in and out of the area pulling their luggage around. The happy ones go, with airplane tickets reserved online or with train tickets bought months in advance. The sad ones return, resting another night in their apartments before waking up again at three or four in the morning to rush to the train ticket booths, hoping to buy a ticket to get them out of this place. A walk by the Wudaokou ticket booth at eight in the evening told me the ones sleeping had no chance - some people are camping outside, armed with noodle bowls, blankets and mp3s to fight for the last few hard seats.

A few early birds are popping firecrackers somewhere.

Drumbeats and Guqin Plucks: Three Quarters Later

2009-01-15T08:01:00.000-08:00

My bike has changed. Dark grit-covered bike chains with frozen grease, slanting basket, tire frames with occasional dents and bents - the wear and tear are obvious. My pant legs get dirty every time I bike from my apartment to school. Though the bicycle only has one gear, every time I bike it feels as if I'm cycling up a hill, sixty-degree incline. To be honest, I didn't notice the increasing resistance. I prefer to walk now - I don't feel the anxiety of racing against crazy taxi drivers and dodging other cyclists when I just watch others get into accidents.

I used to be able to recall where I learned every character, sentence structure or chengyu, but now all the hanzi just swim in my head, randomly making an appearance at the tip of my tongue rather than on call. Before, I struggled to find the right word, but now I struggle to find the best word. Limited vocabulary is a damper on expression, but a rich vocabulary itself is a bottleneck as well when you are trying to find the best synonym among a group of words that have the same meaning. However, I realized the only reason I couldn't find the best word was because I was in a hurry to express my thoughts, resulting in sentences that when crafted look like magnets held together and split apart by string. My progress reports at IUP reflected high test marks, but one comment united all the teachers - I am rushing this language. My classical Chinese teacher is skilled in calligraphy, but the other day I realized he was also skilled in graphology - "Your characters are hurried and impatient, just like you." According to my Chinese astrology forecast, the Ox year will be a year that challenges the patience and perseverance of those born in the year of the dragon. It seems that the zodiac is harmonized with my Chinese education. This past semester at IUP, I was blessed to be studying with some of the program's most experienced teachers. I hope that during my last two semesters I continue to study with the program's best teachers and build my love for the language and culture. Along the way, it wouldn't hurt to find this Patience thing that everyone says I don't have.

Deck the Lanterns: Christmas and New Year's

2009-01-01T06:52:00.000-08:00

Christmas trees are everywhere. Every website, every shopping center, every restaurant - seeing a green plastic pine tree laced with blinking lights next to small golden Daoist statues was interesting - even IUP had a decent sized Christmas tree to greet everyone who climbed up to the fifth floor. Not many students nor teachers at Tsinghua or IUP seemed to get into the holiday spirit - "it isn't my holiday," they say. I wonder if advertisers really know their consumers' thoughts when they decide to buy huge trees to park in front of shops.

At IUP, we get one day off for Christmas day. On the night of Christmas Eve, Jill (my roommate) and I met with friends for dinner, and what Christmas dinner is complete without Korean barbeque? I somehow became the designated cook. No matter - listening to my older colleagues' high school stories of sniffing coke and clashes with the police while slicing up the meat to fry in the center charcoal pit is more interesting than bringing up cheesy holiday stories and jokes about chestnuts roasting in an open fire. Afterwards, classmates and some of the younger teachers got together for spiced cider and treats at a student's apartment.

Life doesn't stop on Christmas in Beijing - the streets are still crowded with glove-sellers, corn-sellers and jianbing-sellers. After Wudaokou's streets were renovated during the Olympics, the number of illegal vendors on the streets have increased, led noticeably by jewelry sellers from Qinghai and Tibet. It's hard to walk up the stairs to the subway station without stepping onto the yellow rug and torquoise trinkets of these westerners. During the evening, vendors begin to sell sparking sticks and puppies barely a month old. Elderly men shake porridge tins as I walk by, mumbling coarsely, "Shengdan kuaile, shengdan kuaile" (Merry Christmas).

Five days later, IUP let its students and teachers rest another day to celebrate the new year. A former IUP student hosted a party on the east side of Beijing, The party reminded me of frat parties - dim lights, living room floor slightly sticky because of spilt beer, unfamiliar faces - a small American microcosm in the middle of China. I left half an hour before midnight,

taking a taxi to the center of the Chinese universe - the Forbidden Palace. The taxi stopped a good 300 meters away from the entrance because of police blockade. In front Mao's huge portrait, foreigners and Chinese gathered, moving around while taking photos to prove to the world that they stood in front of the palace on New Year's Day (like I did). I forgot my watch, but conveniently a circle of expats started yelling the countdown for everyone to join in. Ten minutes after the cheers and hugs and moos, cars and buses started whizzing across the palace as usual, the police and guard cautiously looking about for potential bombers or terrorists.

Formula Pop with Predictable Melody: Koreans in Wudaokou, Sketches

2008-12-05T07:41:00.000-08:00

Taxi driver:
Are you Korean?...Oh, Korean-American! Interesting. No, no, I just noticed it from the small accent you have. Not like most Koreans, but interesting. I pull around a lot of Korean kids in this neighborhood. I know, they're rather loud, aren't they?... Oh, I didn't realize Koreans took the bus around here. Do you like taking the bus in Beijing? Hey, I hope you don't mind me saying this, saying you're America and all, but I think the Korean students here - you know why they aren't welcomed by the Chinese here? --- their suzhi (素质) is just so low. All they do is skip class during the day, drink during the night, fool around with boy or girlfriends, throw up in my car... actually, I can't really tell Koreans apart from Chinese people, but I know when I have a Korean in my car -- they're just so damn loud, all drunk, you know what I'm saying? Suzhi is just so low in those kids - they come to China and go back to Korea without having studied our language well at all, all they do is hun rizi, loaf through their days. Their taking Wudaokou down into a drain. Oh, here's your stop. 18 kuai. I hope you didn't mind listening.

IUP classmate, while eating lunch:
I live in Huaqing Jiayuan. Lots of Koreans there. It's kind of hard to study when there are drunk Koreans throwing and falling outside my apartment door. I know Koreans are the Irish of Asia, but it's awfully annoying to hear Korean swear words (they yell the same words, and I don't have to study Korean to know that some dude is calling his ex-girlfriend a bitch) while trying to memorize characters. That was my initial impression - really drunk ethnicity. Then, my Chinese friend told me that most of the Koreans in China, in Wudaokou at least, are the students who couldn't get into college or succeed according to their parents' standards in South Korea, but too poor to study abroad in the States. The average joe student who drowns his parents' ambitions in beer and soju - I look at the drunk kid at my doorsteps, and he seems to fits the demographic.

Musicology student at the Beijing Conservatory of Music, over a beer:
I'll try to be as detached about this. No, I don't really have a clear opinion about Koreans - you don't even count to me as Korean because you're too American. I'm just saying you don't think like the typical Korean boy that I've met in China. I'll just talk about Koreans from a cultural perspective - I believe that most Chinese people are angry at Koreans for stealing bits of its culture. For example, the Duanwu festival is part of Chinese culture, but Koreans are now celebrating like it originated from the Korean peninsula. Every country is trying to protect its traditions and customs, but I think South Korea went too far by celebrating Duanwu (Festival). That's not to say I complete hate Koreans - it's like how I hate the Japanese government for its actions half a century ago, but not its people. I think that generally, Koreans seem to fit mold of beauty that appeals to more people around the world. I mean, think about it - why do you think Korean dramas are seen around the world more than Chinese and Japanese dramas? As much as you argue about how the acting quality is among the countries, I think it still comes down to looks.

Korean-Chinese (Chaoxian, 朝鲜族) hairstylist:
Most of my friends are Chaoxian - I don't hang without the actual Koreans. Our cultural backgrounds are just too different for any meaningful conversation. They do come in for haircuts every other week - it's much cheaper to get your hair cut in China than in Korea. Your hair is perfect for perming. 300 yuan. Come on, just try it. The latest Korean styles have to involve perming.

Note: The opinions in this blog do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the author. The author did not get a perm.

Charlie Brown Theme Song: Post Thanksgiving

2008-11-30T00:03:00.000-08:00

It is cold in Beijing.
Well, it's been cold for the past couple of weeks. As soon as I got off the train from Shanghai, I saw everyone trekking in large overcoats and fleeces. I bought a new jacket and some new clothes to replace some of the shirts and pants that I brought from home. China's laundry machines, though good at cleaning, are horrible at preserving clothes.
This module at IUP, I am studying classical Chinese. I'm glad that I went to Hangzhou and Suzhou - classical poets refer to specific objects and scenes that can only be found in southern China. My teacher is having me memorize every lesson character for character. I feel like I'm back in Elementary Chinese when I prepare my classical Chinese lessons, but without the agony of encoding grammar patterns or the pressure of preparing for different classes. I am also studying from a book designed by IUP called Academic Topics. It is basically a collection of speeches by professors from various professional fields. We are learning to speak more like the writers themselves. In a nutshell, we have to prepare the lessons as if we are experts on the topic at hand.

I really enjoy the course so far - the topics are much more engaging than those of previous books, and the vocabulary is much more useful.
Yesterday, IUP hosted a student-alumni mixer event at the Element Fresh restaurant bar in Sanlitun. Unfortunately, I felt sick and nauseous throughout the mixer and didn't really get to speak to many of the alumni. Director Laughlin didn't feel great as well - in fact, a lot of people were feeling aches and cramps. I need to go to the hospital and get that flu vaccine.

Autumn Leaves sung at Presto: The last nine weeks

2008-11-17T23:44:00.000-08:00

November 8th ~ 16th
After the final exams of the first module, I headed south to Suzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai. I do not dare to recap all my experiences, I think the reader will read to death about temples and gardens.
Hangzhou's West Lake was a nice change of scenery from the gloomy block buildings of Beijing. I rented an orange tourist bike and biked all around the stone bridges and gardens surrounding the water. It reminded me of home - the blue skies, fair wind, open roads reminiscent of Main Street. North of West Lake, I visited the Yue Fei Mausoleum, erected for one of China's greatest patriots. His grave is a huge mound like those of deceased Ming dynasty emperors. Across from his grave were the statues of Qin Hui and his wife stripped naked, kneeling as if begging for forgiveness. Yue Fei was a general for the Southern Song dynasty that could have potentially united China a very long time ago, but because of Qin Hui's desire for wealth and power, he was executed with no reason given (莫须有). History punishes and condemns anyone like Qin Hui, "traitors" to the country, or 卖国贼. Yue Fei was such an important patriot that the Chinese government requires that students must read at least one book about Yue Fei and study his poem Man Jiang Hong (满江红).

Suzhou, in a nutshell, is a canal town filled with gardens. Frankly, I only enjoyed the city museum designed by the architect I. M. Pei, whose wealthy family once owned the Lion Stone Forest here. Besides that, I found the city to be rather cramped and dirty. Perhaps the weather or the large number of tourists was too much of a contrast after visiting Hangzhou. The gardens make Suzhou famous. Mirrors are hung at specific locations around the garden to give the illusion that the garden spills out into other chambers. In ancient times, poets sat on benches among shrubbery and pagodas, musing nature and society.
Shanghai is a mixed bag. Skyscrapers and three story cement remnants from the sixties and seventies stand side by side, expats roam the streets like locals while Chinese tourists take pictures madly like foreigners, one-legged or extraordinarily crippled beggars open taxi doors while shaking coin cups in the faces of passengers donning the latest fashion from Louis Vuitton and Dior. I stayed in a cozy little hostel behind the Tomorrow Square, a skyscraper that mixes the design of tesla coils and buildings from the Jetsons. Shanghai is an easier city to walk and explore than Beijing. From my hostel, I walked all over the French Concession, Nanjing Donglu, the Bund, the Old Town and Pudong. During the day I experienced street food in the coiling alleyways of Old Town, while during the evening I sampled homemade cocktails in Lounge 18 on the Bund. Though I love Shanghai as a city, it feels anti-foreign. Sure, expats work in the companies in the special economic zone and live in corporate apartments that look over the city, but the locals keep to themselves, yelling in blurs of Shanghainese. I know that the city government is working furiously to prepare for the World Expo in 2010 - in the central People's Square subway terminal, they even have a huge green digital clock reminiscent of those posted all over Beijing counting down to the Expo day. Government officials hope that by 2010, the city population will be "5% foreign." Only then is Shanghai "a true international city." I wonder if the Shanghainese want that.

October 31st
Speech day. At IUP, we have to prepare speeches on the sixth week. The following is a speech about globalization (全球化), discussing how to globalize oneself in a globalizing world.
虽然我们经常用全球化这个词，但它给社会带来的莫大的影响并非人人都清楚。全球化的发展意味着人类社会将被重新构建。有句歌词说得好：“这世界变得越来越小。”随着传媒技术的高速发展，互联网以惊人的速度遍布整个世界，经济全球化日益现实。网络不声不响地进入了每个城市，想在如果没有它人们似乎无法生活下去。在时下的世界里，可口可乐和麦当劳的广告铺天盖地。在每个城市的大街小巷都可以听到英文。虽然大家似乎对全球化所带来的物质享受感到欣喜，但还有一些为传统文化的未来感到忧愁，尖锐地批评它所带来的不良的影响。所以，各个国家也在尽量保护其传统文化遗产。为了消除传统和现代建筑的冲突，建筑师在千方百计地设计一些融合这两种建筑的特色的高楼大厦。为了让这一代的年轻人了解过去的习惯，各市政协会举办特殊节庆活动来让大家亲身体验不同的文化。有的城市甚至为了所谓的“保护”抵制外国文化融入人民的生活，生怕全球化使我们丧失个性。 “全球化我不怕，可怕的是找不回自己。”我们似乎把这句口头禅作为了一种生活方式。但何必如此呢？我想，越来越多的人在国际商店购物或者喝星巴克咖啡反映出了大家都迎接全球化的态势。为何我们只能在所谓的“文化”中找回自己，而甘于在全球化的生活中迷失呢？在我们的现代汉语词典里，文化的意思是“人类在社会历史发展过程中所创造的物质财富和精神财富的总合。”换句话说，文化是一种形式，可以是多种多样的，不只是我们想保留下来的遗产。文化本无国界之分，只能在缺乏创造力的人们的脑海中受到了限制。全球化也并不是一种新的现象。虽然这个词直到1962年才出现，但事实上，原始人类的迁徙和繁衍过程完全可以被视为早期的全球化。大约五万年前，我们的原始祖先最先出现在非洲东部，他们慢慢分散到包括南北美在内的世界各个角落。那时候，由于人类交通技术有限的缘故，全球化发展得比较慢，但现在已经可以用先进的技术以迅雷不及掩耳之势改造世界了。我们“找不回自己”的恐惧的根源也便在这儿：我们没有时间习惯千变万化的社会。所以，一个星巴克牌子出现在故宫，我们不由得感到突兀。我认为文化中的精神财富比人类更易于全球化。我们在美国的华尔街上可以用中国的红砖绿瓦建成高楼大厦。许多生意人可能会吃惊，但我却不然。只要我们有足够的资源，我们可以把任何东西从一个地方输送到另一个地方，可是人的思想却难以改变。当我们跟不同文化背景的人聊天的时候，我们会不会乐意接受并使用对方的思维方式？我承认我不会——我看，老师和同学们也都深有同感。我想问：我能否把自己全球化？很多社会学家已经预测，在全球化的影响下，各个国家的文化势必会融合成一种文化。我们所保留的历史遗产无非是一种日记而已，让我们回忆或者学习人类的精神和奇妙之处。王国维在他写的《人间词话》说每个学者得“必经过三种之境界。”旨在让每个人系统地全球化，我想出了一些境界。其一，“对他客观，对他宽容。”“他”是指不同的文化。在我们从小形成的对世界的成见的阴影下，我们不可能理智地对待某一现象。只有我们以客观的态度来面对世界才能变得宽容。其二，“追他而迷，为他而创”我们不能只当一个旁观者，我们也得亲身经历文化才能理解。当我们理解的时候，我们也可以创新，为文化做出些贡献。其三，“纵观颜色千百度，蓦然回首，原色犹在，独形异矣。”在我看来，文化不是为一个群体所拥有的，而是人类共享的。即使文化是人的精神的表现，但也得承认不同的群体会因生活环境不同而使用不同的方法来创造文化。如果我们将来在故宫或者在其他的名胜古迹和古典园林里看到洋快餐或者现代购物中心，我们不用觉得突兀，其实我们是少见多怪。当我们看惯了必胜客挨着一家传统茶馆的时候，我们看到的是文化的现代形式，一种文化，一种颜色。文化和全球化不是不容互相的，是息息相关的。当我们觉得两种文化存在时，两种文化就存在。但我们习惯了文化的融合，那就是一种文化。我们的任务就是达到只看到“原色”的境界。如果你会看原色，我会向你多多指教。

October 29th
Outside the main gate of my apartment, an old man sits, passing time by looking at passersby and taking care of his two white dogs that get dirty in the grass easily. One of the dogs likes to smell my pants and lick my index finger - the other bitch just nips and barks at the former dog to get away from me. The old man is in his 80s, wearing a simple V-neck with worn black dress pants and vest, throwing on a light blazer for the wind - I just call him "老爷," or grandfather. I occasionally talk with him, trying to discuss some of the colloquial phrases I've learned. The man can't write characters, but he knows so much about Confucius and Chinese history from a working man's perspective. He doesn't like to play Chinese chess or poker with the men around the apartment corner - he just smokes the day away, steadily going through a pack of cigarettes as he watches the willow trees. The weather is getting cold these days, and he spents more time couped in his room, like the pigeons and sparrows that he shelters outside his window.

October 25th

I feel like I've hit a critical point in learning Chinese. Synonyms are bumping into each other, sentences are getting more complex and the line between formal and colloquial Chinese is getting blurred. I find myself thinking unconsciously about the fine differences between two words with the same meaning but different characters. My ideas and arguments are understood by my teachers and friends with more ease and less hiccups, but I'm getting unnecessarily wordy. By taking a class on colloquial Chinese this semester, I've been able to talk more like a regular Chinese person among my friends here. But, I find it harder to talk with taxi drivers, my first intermittent conversation partners in China. Yes, they understand what I'm saying, but when they ask me to repeat a very formal academic word (书面, as the Chinese say), I find myself watering down the beauty of a sentence that I took time to construct into simple sentences. I don't think the fact that I have a bigger vocabulary makes me better or more Chinese than them - I think that studying professional Chinese desensitizes you from something my colloquial Chinese teacher calls "language environment" - that is to say, I should know not to say among my friends that a girl may a protuberant butt when I can just say her ass is big, or that talking about Confucianism or Chinese medicine isn't something that everyone prepares for. To develop this sensitivity to the surroundings is still a work in progress, but by thinking about the words that I learn beyond their fixed definitions, I find myself more sensitive, or “敏感."

October 12th
Music never seems to escape me in this city. A couple research students that I met at the Beijing Language and Culture University invited me to attend a rock concert called the Midi Festival on the outskirts of the fourth ring. Aside from getting lost and asking a million people how to get to the concert, we comfortably arrived at the concert arena, a small music college geared for churning out China's rock artists. Clusters of students in surplus military gear stood outside makeshift tents, an outer ring of cigarette butts growing thick around them. On stage, a French alternative rock group keeps its listeners' heads nodding and hands waving. A couple of kids waved large red flags saying "Independence for Rock Music! Rock Revolution in China!" while running into people all over the place - perfectly raucous.
On the either side of the arena, a smaller stage was set for Chinese rappers freestyling to the beat and melody of Kanye West's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." I'm not exactly sure what they were rapping about, but it had something to do with making money, buying bling, getting girls and beating any other crew that would dare challenge them. The sight of them with fake gold necklaces, oversized sweaters and fake Nike Air Force Ones was enough excuse to leave.

September 22nd
A couple days earlier, I helped plan my roommate's dinner birthday party. In her search of traditional fried duck in a local hutong, I found a lovely restaurant south of Tiananmen Square that has somehow maintained its hutong integrity and duck taste compared to the Quanjude crap.
As for me, I needed any food resembling homemade food - namely, Korean food. I haven't celebrated my birthday with my family for a few years now - during high school it was because of band competitions, during college it was because of the distance. I found a restaurant that served close to authentic Mee-Yok-Gook (미역국, seaweed soup). Traditionally, Koreans eat this soup to remind themselves of the pain that their mothers endured during pregnancy and to thank them for giving them a life.
I've never felt more homesick.

September 16th

I got a call from a friend if I wanted to see Avril Lavigne in Beijing. I thought she was joking, but in a serious voice she offered a VIP ticket to watch the Canadian rock star in a private booth. I ended up at the Wukesong Basketball Stadium a few hours later.
Nobody actually buys the VIP tickets individually in China - they are all bought up by corporations and companies seeking to give their employees bonuses that extend beyond a lump of cash. So, my fellow Lavigne fans were composed of Chinese men in their fifties and expats from Texas and Kentucky working for major oil companies. I think they just came for the champagne.
About fifteen minutes into the concert, the floor in front of the stage was crowded with the real fans - the college and high school students and pop rock enthusiasts dressed in proper gear and laced with glow sticks. Suddenly, the security turned on the lights, the stage manager came on stage and commanded everyone to return to their seats before the concert got canceled. "This is for the safety of the performer and for everyone else's safety."
Since when was Avril afraid of having her fans a few feet away from her? And what does the stage manager have to fear? She is no Cui Jian - revolutions are not start by songs about skater boys and muddled infatuation.

September 14th

Zhongqiu Jie, or the Mid-Autumn Festival - the day for family and friends to get together, to find a place to see the full moon when it is closest to the horizon and to enjoy mooncakes. Nobody wanted to go with me to Houhai to actually see the moon, so I went by myself. Unfortunately, I had to share paths with other couples walking slowly, nibbling mooncake crusts, talking about sweet nothings. A girl looked at me with pitiful eyes as I asked her boyfriend to take a picture for me. Fortunately, the scenery was beautiful. Though the photo that I've uploaded was taken later at night, the moon was red only minutes before, truly 朦胧.

September 12th

As a reward for her hard work as an intern of the 2008 Olympic Games, Danni got a couple tickets to go see the Paralympics from her boss. Not really interested in the Paralympics and already caught up with academics, she offered me the tickets to see the powerlifting finals. I sat among a sea of Chinese flags and red plastic clappers. When the Chinese competitor came out, everyone just rose to their feet, the stands shaking with their cheers. On the television, I heard the familiar cheer "Zhongguo Jia You" (Go China!), but instead I heard a chorus of children led by an enthusiastic teacher yelling "Yundongyuan Jia You" (Go athletes!). Very fitting - to see the blind and the wheelchair-ridden athletes pump more than 300 pounds into the air is not something to cheer based on nationalities, but based on the human spirit.

Sun YanZi's annoying high-pitch songs played during breaks: Back at IUP

2008-09-08T05:01:00.000-07:00

The transition back to IUP was smoother than I had expected. The weather in Beijing is cooler, not nearly as humid as when I had left it. All the trees on the Qinghua Campus are in post-summer bloom. I completely missed orientation, so the faces that I passed by between breaks were unfamiliar, except for the faces of a few Yalies. However, the teachers all say hello as I pass by - I'm glad I haven't been forgotten.

For this module, I am taking courses called "Participation," Broadcast Chinese and Colloquial Chinese. The vocabulary lists are simpler than I had expected, so I spend less time preparing for each class. I find myself reading more Chinese magazines, especially Shenghuo ZhouKan (Life) and Jinrong (Finance), and talking about the things I read with friends and teachers. My Chinese is getting more fluent and my responses to questions are getting longer, but in the midst of all I want to say I drop little characters like 就 or 都. I try not to get extremely excited or angry when I express my thoughts, even if what I say calls for such emotional outbursts. Feelings cloud grammar.

Concerto: Basan Part 13

2008-09-02T03:22:00.000-07:00

"Why are we stopping?" I ask. We are driving back to Lhasa along the Friendship Highway instead of through the Kamba-La Pass and the old southern route. The Friendship Highway is not really conducive to building friendship - the cracks and huge holes along the road forces Laba to swerve from one lane to another. Laba's soft swears starts to change his eternal facial expression.

"To prevent car accidents along the highway and to prevent traffic, the government forces all cars to stop at checkpoints if the cars have reached the checkpoints faster than their allotted time limit," explains Laba.
We all get out of the car to wait out the remaining twenty minutes. Laba sighes as he sits on the ground to smoke a cigarette. Other drivers and travelers are waiting too, eating corn or watermelon, drinking butter tea or kicking dirt to pass the time. The river down the gorge that we just crossed reminds me of the dirt water in the river streaming down from the Himalaya mountain range, but the huge concrete bridge juxtaposing the natural landscape takes away the natural beauty of the area.

"Come on Basan, let's go," says Laba.

"What?" I reply.

Tsekey says, "You're Basan."

As I get into the car, I ask, "What does Basan mean?"

"Umm... in Tibetan, it means Friday." replies Tsekey.

"Friday, as in the weekday Friday?"

"Yes. Though, it means more than Friday."

"It means something like smooth sailing (specifically 一帆风顺) and good luck," says Laba.

"Why did you call me that?" I ask.

"Just by observation," says Laba.

"What did I do that deserved such a nickname?"

"Everything you've planned and executed, it seems, has been blessed by luck. Think about your trip."

I cannot really see the "luck" that Laba mentions as much as I see pure chance - the clouds around Everest were gone by chance, the travel permit to get into Tibet was by what I think was chance. The real luck that I can see is that by coming to Tibet, I avoided the earthquake that devastated parts of Yunnan and southern Sichuan province a couple days ago. I am truly lucky, however, to be able to visit a region of the world and to see its culture and society, which may be completely warped in the next few decades as the Chinese government pursues its own Manifest Destiny, exploring and exploiting its western resources. I fear that I will be disgusted on the train ride back to Beijing as I see the skies thicken with the hazy gray mixture of fog and smog and airborne coal.

Concerto: Basan Part 12

2008-08-31T01:26:00.000-07:00

The headache is back with a vengeance. Eleanor, Genevieve and Jeff have already washed and are having breakfast. I feel like a hammer is pounding my head faster and faster as I get up. I shove some cold medicine and several vitamin C pills down my throat and grit my teeth as I get up to join the others. Over the roofs of the small houses, Qomolangma is completely covered by thick mountain fog. The sun is out, but the fog that bounces red and purple all over the surrounding mountains also hides the yellow ball - or maybe I'm just too high in the world for the sun to be out at this time.
After a breakfast of flour pancakes and butter tea, we drive the first kilometer to the base camp. Mud green tents form a large rectangle. In front of each tent are signs identifying the tents -"Happy Hotel," "Everest Hotel," "Yak Hotel," "Qomolangma Tacky Hotel" - along with rings of heavily tanned Tibetans drinking butter tea. The locals stare at us as we pass through. The base camp seems like a tourist trap for people to say that they "slept at the base camp," but I see no actual climber.

After Laba parks the car, we begin our trek to the base camp and the mountain. The clouds begin to clear as the sun rises higher. I walk up ahead with Laba to avoid scowling at everyone - the pressure of the headache is beginning to lighten, but the lack of oxygen makes talking and breathing painful, which Laba seems to do comfortably as I struggle to keep up with him. He lights a cigarette, the fumes thankfully blowing to his right and not over me.
"Laba, you're almost forty, but not only are you kicking my ass on this hike, you're also smoking," I exasperate.
"Haha, your body isn't too bad," Laba replies, blowing out a swirling whirl of smoke. "You have a headache, but you're still walking ahead of everybody else."
"How do you know I have a headache? I didn't tell you."
"You're not the first tourist that I've taken to Qomolangma."
By the fourth kilometer, we reach a small plateau. To our right a river roars, the pure water saturated by the mountain dirt. I stand up straight to breathe more deeply. Laba lights another cigarette. While waiting for Eleanor and Jeff to catch up, I browse through the pictures of Qomolangma that I have taken on my camera. How is it that the mountain looks exactly the same in my pictures no matter where I take the picture?

We reach the final checkpoint to get closer to the mountain. Unfortunately, we need yet another permit to get closer - this one costs about $1000 per person. Instead, we climb the closest prayer flag and rock stupa covered hill to gaze at Everest. The clouds have almost completely cleared save for a few lingering white strips. On a nearby rock, I see a Sanskrit phrase carved into a rock.

"Tsekey, what does this mean?" I ask.

Our tour guide walks over and glances at the script. "In Chinese, that says '六字真言 (Six True Words),' or in Tibetan 'Ah Mane Padme Hong.' It is repeated by pilgrims and all prayers to prevent pain, death and punishment, to live longer and to get rich."

"I've seen this phrase written on mountainsides and all over Lhasa."

"Yes, it is written everywhere, like ceilings, stone utensils, mountains and doors. It's like 'Ahmitofo' in Chinese Buddhism - to say it will bring it will comfort you and others, to repeat it will bring fortune and good luck."
The monastery across the guesthouse runs this business, using the income to pay for more butter to worship Buddha and more food for new guests. The only locals that visit the girls are young teenage soldiers stationed at small checkpoints along the road to Everest. The soldiers gather around the windows that let in sunlight, slapping playing cards onto the table, yelling "Wo Cao (Fuck)" or "Chi ba (Eat some)" every now and then. The guesthouse that is maintained by two teenage girls, who prepare our meals and keep the bedrooms tidy. The girls are by the other window that lets in sunlight, knotting each others' hair into tidy braids. They have worked here for about three years, taking care of travelers that come and go. Their lives remind me of my experiences as a waiter in San Francisco - they cannot travel, but the world comes to their doorsteps seeking food and shelter while it takes in the local scenery.

Concerto: Basan Part 11

2008-08-30T01:38:00.000-07:00

The scenery along the highway to Mount Everest is simple - green fields along the road, gray green mountains in the distance with the occasional snow-covered peak, mixed blue sky with white clouds wafting towards the horizon. The car CD stereo plays amusing Indian songs that combine kindgergarten lessons with mature themes, or compliment women excessively:

"ABCDEFGHI...JKLM...NOPQRSTUVWX....YZ.... I love you."

"Lalala, lalala, you are my sonya, lalala, lalala, you are my sonya."

In the backseat, I hear Jeff softly humming the sonya song. When the ABC song is played again, Genevieve starts to sing: "ABCDEFGHI....JKML....wait a second..."

At the first checkpoint of the Mount Everest National Reserve, everyone displays their passports for the Chinese guards to inspect. Afterwards, we drive on dirt road that snakes up a mountain. Slowly we drive, slowly we climb. At the top, we stop to look out into the distance and see four of the highest mountains in the world on the horizon - Qomolangma (Mt. Everest), Kangchengjunga, Lhotse and Makalu. Qomolangma's peak hides behind clouds. Tsekey says, "That's typical...tourists have to wait usually three days, sometimes up to a week, to see the mountain clearly." Fortunately, ten minutes later, the cloud formation blocking our view of Qomolangma moves east. Tsekey says, "You're lucky." The fast winds almost knock us off the rock wall that we stand on - we all huddle back into the car and drive down the winding road.

Three checkpoints and four hours later, we finally see the peak of Qomolangma without a trace of cloud. A single star shines high above the mountain, stained violet in the evening.

At our guesthouse, I start feeling nauseous and my head starts to pound like a migraine. Is this altitude sickness? I sit closer to the firewood stove in the center of the communal room, but excuse myself to get some medicine from my bag in our bedroom. The air outside hits me like a football that bounces off my chest. I look up at the sky. I've only seen Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn in my constellation books, but the sky is full of the white dots. Stars I don't remember seeing in my books appear along the Big Dipper and Casseiopeia. Star clusters and specks of galaxies are so distinct in the black background. The Milky Way rips through the night, its violet red trench cutting the poisonous tail of the Scorpio. The headache is gone, but my breathing rate is spiking. I madly take pictures, but no manual exposure, no special mode can capture that elusive Milky Way. Damn this weak digital camera.

Concerto: Basan Part 10

2008-08-29T00:49:00.000-07:00

In Shigatse, we decide to have have Indian food for a change from yak meat and yogurt rice. A few curries and naan later, we walk towards the central monastery. At the ticket booth, the old monk looks at my shorts and says I must change into pants. I ask for some cloth to cover my legs - fortunately, he finds a nice festive orange skirt with which I can wrap myself. While walking around the temple, my stomach churns uncomfortably, and run around the temple halls seeking restrooms. Damn curry. I clutch my water bottle, emptied early along the walk. Oh yes - traveller's diarrhea is torture. Unfortunately, I forgot the medicine that Yale provided in my apartment back in Beijing. Fortunately, Genevieve buys a 7-Up for me. It's amazing and magical how a bit of sweet carbonated water can calm a stomach.

Concerto: Basan Part 9

2008-08-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

Kamba-la Pass takes us south beyond Lhasa to an elevation of 4794 meters above sea level. Yaks eat grass in the distance, their herdsmen specks in along the horizon.
"From here," says Genevieve, "the yaks look like overgrown ants."
At Yamdrok-tso (Blue Lake), we stop for another rest. Yamdrok, Tibetan for the color blue, is one of the three largest sacred lakes in Tibet. According to mythology, the lake is a transformation of a goddess, so nobody is allowed to set foot in the waters. I guess the yaks that feed along the water do not count. A Tibetan ornament merchant woman hounds me as I hike up a little hill to get a better view of the lake. "Two for sixty" starts the merchant, dangling necklaces and brooches in front of my face, forcing me to walk around her. By the time I make it down back to the car, she yells "two for ten" in my ears.
Nangartse is a small village more than a town. Downtown is made up of two streets interseting in a T-shape, with the highway to Everest cresting the streets' outer edges. After a dinner of cheese-stuffed dumplings and rice with yogurt, we go for a walk, avoiding the skinny starving dogs that lay passed out (or dead) along the street. A few minutes later, light rain mixes with the dust-caked road, evolving into sizeable drops. We hug the building walls, the colorful banners over doors doing little to protect us from the rain.
We proceed down the street and come across a family huddling inside a fabric store. While Genevieve and Jeff take pictures, the teenagers and children inside the store look in wonder at their cameras. Genevieve hands her digital camera to a curious girl, teaching her how to press the capture button. The girl runs around the front of the store, taking pictures of the little kids eating snacks, pictures of the adults smiling in wonder at the strange little device that freezes their faces for a moment in time, pictures of old housewives with their children looking at Jeff and Genevieve, seeking money in exchange for the pictures that they are taking. I have never seen anyone so fascinated by a digital camera.
As we walk back to our hotel (which, albeit providing thick blankets for the night, offers communal concrete bunkers with holes in the ground for toilets), I hear thunder cracking the air. The rain falls harder as the clouds seem to roll and coagulate over the town faster.
"Did you see that?" Jeff asks.
"What?" I ask.
"The rocket."
"I heard thunder."
"That wasn't thunder - that was the sound of cloud-seeding."

Concerto: Basan Part 8

2008-08-25T02:51:00.000-07:00

Eleanor and Genevieve are recovering from the flight in their rooms. Jeff and I meet on the roof of our hotel, from which we look down on Beijing Road cross into Bahkgor Square. Potala Palace pierces the clouds like Pride Rock in the The Lion King. The pace of life here is as fast as that of Beijing's, but there are less people. Chinese soldiers guard intersections and march in brigades, toting Russian rifles and heavy armored shields. The monk riots that occurred a few months ago still seem to worry the government, but these soldiers instill no sense of security. I feel wariness, restlessness. Down on the street, I take a picture of a bicycler. While judging the picture on my camera's digital screen, a solider confronts me and asks to see the picture. I ask why. No pictures of the security forces may be taken, he says. I show him the picture of the bicycler, fearing for the life of my memory card. Fortunately, the background shows no rifle, no green camouflage uniform, no trace of Chinese military occupation in Lhasa. He nods his head and walks away. While on the roof of Jakhong Temple (大昭寺), Jeff took a picture of me - I didn't notice the Chinese military sniper looking down at the market behind me.

Potala Palace - the former residence of the Dalai Lama, now converted into a money-making cultural relic by the Chinese government. The steps up to the White Palace, or the Potrang Karpo, are blocked by steel gates. All stairs lead to the Red Palace, or the Potrang Marpo. Red powder dyes the packed mountain wood walls. As I climb the uneven stone stairs, I use the battlements as support, red grains and splinters accumulating on my hand. I find myself breathing heavily, and sit at the next rest bench. The others continue moving up the stairs with the tour guide. I had just come from climbing Emei Mountain - how could a little less oxygen in the air be affecting me so much?

Up the stairs behind me climbs a skinny old man in Lama monk outfit. His royal red outer cloth and orange shirt are lined with black dirt at the creases. His yellow beanie is like that of Tsongkhapa without the sideburn protectors, though worn from lack of wash. He clutches a small bag of butter, humming softly while climbing the steps one by one. He sits down next to me.

"Hello," I greet.

He nods. I wonder if he can speak Mandarin.

"Are you here to worship?" I ask.

He nods.

"I see."

He looks at me and smiles. "I prayed all the way from Qinghai," said the Lama in accented Mandarin, "to kneel in front of the Dalai Lama."

I smile. Finally a break. "But my tour guide says the Dalai Lama isn't here," I say, "In fact, he hasn't been in the palace for almost sixty years."

"Nonsense, he is here. I have butter."

"What's the butter for?"

"Are you a tourist?"

"Yes."

"Where are you from?"

"America."

"Ah! amerigha amerigha!" he exclaims. "Ok, I am rested. Let us go."

"Huh?"

He clutches my hand, forces me up, and proceeds to almost drag my body up the stairs with a vigor almost supernatural compared to his state before he sat down. As I pass by Jeff, I smile weakly, still trying to breathe. Jeff looks taken aback, his eyes moving from the Lama to our hands to my face.

"I'll see you guys up there," I say, the Lama pulling me up at an even faster pace.

Inside the chamber of the Dalai Lama, the Lama rummages his pockets and takes out two little black peas that could pass for lint. He quickly swallows one and puts the other in my hand.

"Eat," he commands.

I smell the pea. It vaguely smells of ginseng and ginger. A Lama wouldn't try to kill anyone, I think. I place the pea on my tongue and swallow. The Lama walks through the gate preventing tourists from stepping on the royal carpet and prays in front of the empty throne of the Dalai Lama, his old body flat on the ground with palms raised to the ceiling.

"What was the pill I just ate?" I ask to the man who had sat next to the Lama.

"A piece of Sakyamuni Buddha's body."

"I just ate Buddha?"

"Yes."

Concerto: Basan Part 7

2008-08-24T01:49:00.000-07:00

The mountainpeak pierces the clouds - through the small round window of this airplane, these peaks are like icebergs in the Atlantic, hiding their weight and power under the water blanket. I wonder if any of these peaks is Everest. The plane has rows of empty seats. I find a row without any passengers and stretch out, sleeping out the last half hour before arriving in Lhasa.

When I got back to Chengdu before I left for Jiuzhaigou, my guesthouse service attendant, Mary, informed me that the Tibetan travel bureau approved our residence permits as acceptable visas to travel in Tibet. During the Olympics, the Chinese government revised all of the original rules to limit the amount of foreigners entering Tibet. Had the Chinese government not approved my residence permit, I would probably be on a bus right now, heading south to the Tiger Leaping Gorge and Lijiang. I will have to save Yunnan province for later.

The first breath off the plane catches me off guard - the dry cabin conditions and the oxygen-deficient air makes my nose bleed. I roll a tissue and shove it into my nose. The white clouds swirl in the clear blue sky like oil colors on a painter's palette. Brown-tanned guards stand with hands behind their backs, black sunglasses reflecting the sun and my tissue-stuffed nose. I feel my breathing rate increasing. I still don't feel like I'm in a place called Tibet.
Outside, a middle-aged man with a yellow shirt, gray pants and jacket, and a younger looking woman with a red hat and striped-shirt stand holding a sign bearing our names. Enter Laba, our driver, and Tsekey, our travel guide. We toss our all of our luggage into the trunk of Laba's Toyota 4500, and head towards Lhasa. Aside from the basic introductions of "My name is" and "Where did you study your English" and "Your Chinese is nice," the ride is silent. I sit with my mouth half open as we drive through this world of blue skies, green fields and black mountains.

Concerto: Basan Part 6

2008-08-22T00:16:00.000-07:00

The raindrops on the huge glass panels of the airport terminal does nothing to suppress my frustration as I wait for the sixth hour in the Chengdu Domestic Airport. Weather in Jiuzhaigou is not favorable for air travel, says the flight attendants. Chinese travelers scatter newspaper leaves on the ground as makeshift seats, sit in rings and play cards, smacking poker hands down in traditional Chinese poker fashion, full of power and anger. The instant ramen noodle cups in the airport stores are sold in bundles by the hungry who expected to have their morning porridge on the plane.

Genevieve and I met up with Eleanor and Jeff the night before. Unfortunately, Jeff is down with a cold. Today he is lying on the airport seats passed out under layers of coats. The flat-screen televisions broadcast the championships of the Olympic ping-pong competition and of the beach volleyball competition. I can't tell what the middle-aged men sitting around me are staring more at, the flat abs of the Brazilian women or the concentrated face of the Chinese ping-pong athlete.

If wonderlands exist, Jiuzhaigou Valley must be one of them. The sceneries evoke images of fairytales in dreamlike eloquence - so natural, so pure. The unnaturally blue and green lakes, waterfalls, verdant forests, snow-covered mountains, and the folk customs of the Tibetan and Qiang peoples are overwhelming. Its name is due to the existence of nine stockaded villages of Tibetan origin, and it is always regarded as a holy mountain and watercourse by the Tibetan people. Oddly enough, in order to preserve the antiquity of the Valley, the Chinese government forced the native Tibetan minorities to move to other villages. The nine gullies in the valley were almost completely deserted, save for the few merchants selling scarves, necklaces and toilet paper.

Blue, sky blue, celadon, kingfisher, green blue, blue green - the colors of the water are created by the minerals that wash away from the local rocks into the lakes and rivers. The water is so saturated in minerals that dead logs fallen in these waters sustain new life.

After two days in Jiuzhaigou, the guesthouse service attendant recommends that we explore Zhongchagou, a village not too far away from the Jiuzhaigou National Park. After a rough taxi ride up rocky dirt paths coiling a mountainside, we find ourselves in a quiet little hillside village. We barely walk two hundred meters and come across three children holding plastic bags filled with colored paper and prayer sticks.
"Would you like a tour of our town? We can take you to all the fun places," says one, smiling.

How could we refuse such innocent looking children? We walk through piles of wheat and walls of firewood. Wheat seems to be a municipal affair - all the townpeople lend hands, including eight-year-old children, who heave eighty pound loads of wheat on their backs. The firewood is necessary for the long winter. In one day, the entire town will burn enough firewood to build a house.

The children take us up the hillside to a grassy opening littered with colored paper. Prayer flags weave together among the trees to form a web of sorts, the center of which is a prayer stupa. At this point, the children look down at my feet as they rub their feet together, both hands clinging to their bags.

"Will you buy some colored paper? You should pray for your happiness. Buy some prayer sticks, prayer for future fortune! How about some prayer flags?" they plead. I cannot say I didn't expect this to happen. We buy several packs of paper and bundles of sticks to burn and place inside the stupa.

"What do I do with the paper?" I ask.

"As you walk around the stupa, throw it up in the air three times while repeating your wishes to yourself. This way, your wish will come true," the children explain.

"When did prayers become wishes," I mumble.

I wonder, as a traveler, if I change these villagers' view of the world as much their lives change my perspectives. I feel guilty for tainting this valley by treading all around it in my worn shoes, guilty for bursting this cultural bubble. I wonder if these children, selling so much prayer paper to so many passersby, see the world differently from the villagers to harvest wheat and collect firewood. Is their world made up of school during the fall and spring, and business during the summer? When they are of age, will they join the ranks of wheat cutters and wheat transporters? Or will they refuse, having seen the luxuries of travelers, seeking the excitement of travel for their own? I fear, as a traveler, that I exchange cultural deconstruction for cutural enrichment.

Concerto: Basan Part 5

2008-08-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

5:30AM again. This time, we rise for the sunrise. Cold mountain air greets me as I struggle to get up from my head. I search half-blind for my beanie, borrow Genevieve’s jacket to wear on top of all of my other clothes and rush outside. The sky is already turning a shade of ultramarine. We rush to the Sea of Clouds, our cameras dangling on our wrists. By the time we get there, we see Chinese tourists in huge thick overcoats flocking towards several feet towards the cliff fence. Nobody seems to want to get within five meters of the edge. Lying Buddha’s face is covered by a thin white blanket. To its right far into the horizon, the sun burns red. The clouds strangely seem to cling to it, encircling it to form a gray halo. The sun gains speed while shedding its red skin, changing quickly into burnt sienna. In minutes it is above me colored in blinding golden yellow. The challenge is too much – the sun needs a kick.

We decide to take a bus down the mountain. After an hour of swirling through curvy paths at the back of the bus among bamboo walking sticks, snoring men, crying babies and crammed hiking bags, we’re back at the main bus station in Emei town.
“You’re having lunch with us,” Xinyue commands.
“What?” I say.
“My aunt (mother’s friend) is treating us. Don’t say no – my grandmother is coming to talk to you as well. She really likes foreigners who like Buddhism.”
“I never I liked Buddhism.”
“Well, baichi, why’d you climb Emei Mountain then?”
“For the scenery?”
“Don’t tell her that.”
“But—”
“Don’t make me lose face.”
At the bus station’s main office, Xinyue’s aunt, the transportation manager, greets us and takes us to a local restaurant, ordering plate after plate of delicacies I have never seen in my life from potatoes deep-fried to the form of cotton-candy to every possible dish with the slightest hint of spicy red pepper. “Eat as much as you can!” says the aunt, “Eat more from the plates, less from your rice bowl!” I guess that phrase is universal among all Asian people.
Xinyue’s grandmother led us afterwards to Huibao Si, or Reciprocity Temple, the central site where monks pray around the clock for the victims of the recent earthquake. As we walk through the temple grounds, the grandmother explains karma, yinguo in Chinese.
“What a person does in his past will affect his next life in the present. What a person does now will affect his future life. If during the past or the present he commits many sinful actions, like stealing, raping or murdering, it will reflect in his future. Look at this man. In his past life, this man killed this innocent man by pushing him off the cliff. In his future, the case is reversed - the innocent person is the city official, punishing the man who committed murder in his past life. Everything happens for a reason, but the relation between cause and effects transcends one life - it is connected between the past and the present, the present and the future. How you act now influences what you receive later.”
We walk over to the giant Past, Present and Future Buddha statues in the back temple. Xinyue’s grandmother nudges me and asks, “How heavy do you think each of those statues are?”
“Judging from the size, I’d say each is at least five hundred kilograms,” I say.
“Try less than 5 kilograms,” she corrects, smiling.
I look at her as if she’s crazy.
“It’s true. Ask the monks.”

The bus ride back to Chengdu is silent. Liu Chang and I chat about video games, Chinese politics and the differences between Chinese and American girls. Genevieve and Xinyue are deep in discussion about something, but I can’t hear a single character over the noise of the bus engine and passing cars. The roads are badly destroyed everywhere. In the mountains, landslides force the driver to make wide turns around heaps of rocks. In rural villages, piles of wood planks, concrete blocks and red bricks lie next to tents reading “Emergency Use.” In cities close to Wenchuan, red banners hang from five-story office buildings’ roofs covering small cracks – “This building is dangerous. Stay Away.” Along the highway, billboards flash by, every fifth or sixth one shining the same four characters – “Many people, one heart.”

“Where are you all going after you return to Chengdu?” Xinyue asks.
“We’ll go to Jiuzhaigou. A couple of our classmates from Beijing will be flying to Chengdu and meeting us to go together.” I reply.
“And after?”
“Well, hopefully we can get to Tibet using our current residence permits. If not, we’ll break from Jiuzhaigou – a couple of us will be headed south to Yunnan, and a couple of us will head north to Gansu.”
“Wow…you guys are seeing a lot of China’s most beautiful places. You’ll love Jiuzhaigou. My dad and I went there once. In fact, when we get off the bus, I’ll let my dad know you’re going. He can probably help.”
“Oh, by the way, we need to pay you for all the meals and guesthouse fees we accrued along the hike.”
“No!” says Xinyue. “That would be rude. As a guest, this is my duty.”
“And as a friend in deep gratitude,” I retort, “this is the least I can do.
The bus ride concludes after more than twelve hours on the road. The rain outside doesn’t discourage any of the passengers from rushing towards the exit and breathing fresh air, despite the air pollution. In the short walk to her father, Xinyue and I squabble about money. In the end, she finally shoves the money Genevieve and I had given her into her bag. Xinyue leads me and Genevieve to her father. Most fathers ask daughters returning from long trips about their health, their adventures – here, it’s the opposite case. Xinyue bullies her father to tell her everything about her mother, her health, her father’s activities and his health. After a round of shaking hands, Xinyue tells her father of our travel plans and her father immediately brightens.
“Eh, let me make a few calls to Jiuzhaigou to see if I can get you some places to stay inside the park!” he says.
“You really are too kind, but you don’t have to do this. We can finally guesthouse around the park.” I say.
“Nonsense,” Xinyue says, “My dad works for the Forestry Reserve in Sichuan. He knows everybody who works in every park around here – it’d be a disgrace if he didn’t do this for a friend of mine.”
Speechless, we walk silently, guided by Xinyue for the final few minutes to a local restaurant.
“Are you going to miss me?” Xinyue says furtively.
“Well, of course!” I reply, “How can I forget all the kindness and generosity that you’ve given me over the past few days? I can’t imagine how the trip to Emei Shan would have been without you to help us through it all. When I go back to Beijing, I’ll look at my pictures and think of what I’ve left here.”
I don’t think that’s the reply that Xinyue was expecting. She immediately looks another way and slows down while I walk up ahead with her father, recounting her hike briefly with him.
“Whenever you’re back in Sichuan, be sure to give me a call. I’ll make sure that wherever you go you’ll always be in good hands. The parks here all know my name, so you’ll be covered.”
“I don’t know how to you thank you, or your daughter.”
“Nonsense, this is as it should be. We will stay in contact. Xinyue, say goodbye.”
Xinyue has caught up from behind. I can’t tell if that’s rain on her face.
“Zaijian,” I say.

Concerto: Basan Part 4

2008-08-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

I hear drums. A soft rhythm in the distance – no, make that downstairs. The old wooden walls, though, draw the monk’s beating of the drums far away. I glance at my phone – 5:30AM. So early, yet the ceiling, the walls and the floor are already creaking.
Outside, the mountain fog is thick - the statues and prayer fountains I saw the night before are barely distinguishable, visible because of light bouncing in the air. People bustle around - the resident cooks run to the kitchen to make breakfast, monks speed-walk to the temple to beat more drums, fellow hikers hobble to the bathroom to brush teeth. Some temple guards hold sticks prodded with apples as tribute to monkeys who terrorize the temple roofs.

After a quick breakfast of sour and spicy noodles, we are off trekking once more. At some points, we must rely heavily on our walking sticks to hike up because the stairs are destroyed by rockslides. Signs reading “Caution: Wild Monkeys Roaming - Do Not Display Food or Act Dangerously - Use Common Sense” appear every few kilometers. Xinyue slows at each of these signs, glancing warily into the surrounding vegetation as if a monkey might suddenly jump out of nowhere and steal her bag. Unfortunately, we see none of our curious relatives.
Within two hours, we hike up about nine hundred meters to Jieyin Temple. Xinyue talks with the trolley car manager, who turns out to be her mother’s best friend from high school, and tells me and Genevieve that we can take the trolley up to the summit for free. Genevieve and I exchange glances.
“We came up this much on our own,” Genevieve says. “It’d be a shame to say we cheated the last five hundred meters up.”
I agree – I don’t think Emperor Kangxi had an electric trolley at his convenience to ride to the Golden Summit.
“Alright,” Xinyue says, “But it’ll take about two hours – the trolley takes five minutes.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say.
“Fine. Baichi.”
The final few hundred meters seem more painful than the first 2500 meters. Is the oxygen quantity in the air already different? Why didn’t I just take the trolley? A middle-aged women walking down to the trolley station voices, “Kid, you’ve got more hell up ahead of you.” The stairs are drastically steeper and longer, with flat checkpoints drawn out further. The sun shines brightly through the trees and fog, the wet steps glistening. I see Genevieve about fifteen meters down. Over to the side, viewing platforms look out over the sky, neighboring mountains lost in clouds with the occasional cliff poking out every now and then. The ageless untrimmed trees along the stairs beckon as flies from nearby trashcans start to swarm around me.
After about two hours, I see Xinyue up ahead with the rest of the hiking group.
“About time,” she whines, “We’ve been waiting for you for so long.”
“Where’s the Golden Buddha Pagoda?” I ask, panting.
“We’re two minutes away. But first, you should check in at this guesthouse.”
After Genevieve and I stretch our muscles and crack our backs, we haul our hiking bags into our room at the guesthouse and head back out to meet Xinyue.
“Let’s go!” Xinyue says.
Without the hiking bag on my back, the hike feels feather-light, almost joyful. We come to a flat concrete-paved path lined with hotels and souvenir stands selling long-armed monkeys in yellow and pink shirts. Above the hotels and the trees, a golden statue stands in contrast to the clear blue sky. A few more minutes of walking takes us to the main ceremonial steps to the Golden Summit.
“Wow,” I whisper.
The Multi-Face Buddha Avaloskitesvara sits on a lotus flower supported by four golden elephants with multiple tusks. The statue faces’ expressions are empty, serene, neither smiling nor frowning, all the eyes half-closed looking down to the earth below. Ivory white elephants bearing golden wheels line the steps up to the golden statue, while smaller stone elephants circle around the statue facing clockwise. Behind the statue sits the Golden Summit Temple, the final prayer site for Buddhist pilgrims. Workers use thin metal slabs to force orange red wax off of the candle fountain in front of the temple.
Behind the temple, we face the Sea of Clouds, the name a literal translation of the Chinese name, Yun Hai (云海). White mist forms in my eyes, blending with the sky blue into other shades of white, gray and blue. The only mountain clearly visible poking through the clouds seems to outline Sakyamuni Buddha lying down in the clouds on his back.
Looking out into the distance, I feel a rush of ecstasy mixed with a moment of fear as a bout of wind rushes through me from my back but nearly carries me into the clouds. I look down into the sea of clouds – it’s too thick to notice people walking around. Not that people would be walking around – they’d drown in cloud. It would have been interesting to see people though, to see people walking around the pools of cloud like tadpoles in ponds on Earth.

Concerto: Basan Part 3

2008-08-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

“Do you know how to get to Emei Mountain?”
The middle-aged lady stares back puzzled. Was there something wrong with my question? Did I say it wrong? I repeat.
“Do you know how to get to Emei Mountain?”
She smiles, says a jumble of sentences in Sichuan dialect, and points to a younger girl next to her. The two switch seats.
“She’s not very good at standard Mandarin,” the girl says, “But I can help.”
I repeat my question.
“You’re on your way already,” she replied, annoyed. “Is that all you wanted to ask?”
I am taken aback by the directness of the question. I clarify, “After we get off this bus, are there other buses to get to Emei Mountain itself?”
“You can the taxi or take another bus – but they’re all expensive.” She glances at my hiking bag. “You definitely are a foreigner. I’m Xinyue.”
“I’m Jin Jianyou. Wait, you said your name was Xin-what?”
“Ugh, baichi. Xin Yuuuuue,” she exaggerates. “Understand?”
“What’s baichi?”
“Huh? How do I answer that question… wait, what did I learn in school… it means ‘idiot.’”
I don’t think I’ve ever been called an idiot by a stranger during a conversation that lasted less than five minutes. She seemed to joke as she said it though – I think. We introduce ourselves more – she’s the American-equivalent of a senior in high school, hiking up the mountain to see some relatives and friends who work at the summit. I say I’m just studying abroad in China.
“Ugh, so you are a baichi.”
“What?”
“Everybody who studied abroad in my family was a baichi. I don’t think you’re much different.”
“Great. Thanks for the classification.”
“No need to thank.”

The Lonely Planet: Hot & Spicy
The Chinese have a saying, “China is the place for food but Sichuan is the place for flavour.” Flavour starts with mouth-singeing peppers. With such fiery food the Sichuanese themselves have a reputation for being a little hot-headed and the local women are even referred to as là měizi (spice girls).

Xinyue is curious where I’ve been throughout Chengdu. As I show her pictures from my camera, I describe Wenshu Monastery, the main temple for Manjusr Bodhisattva, and Wuhou Si, a military temple built apparently by the characters of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. She wasn’t as interested my photos of statues and architecture as much as she liked the photos of the pandas and red pandas at the Panda Reproduction Research Center north of Chengdu. While looking at the picture of me holding a red panda, she asked, “Why didn’t you hold a baby panda?”
“To hold a baby red panda costs 50 yuan,” I explain, “to hold a baby panda costs 1000 yuan.”
“Oh,” she whispers as she scrolls through more shots of red pandas.
“You know, we’re both climbing the mountain to the same destination, so why don’t we climb it together?” she suggests.
“That sounds lovely. I’ll just have to ask Genevieve about it, but I don’t think she will disagree. I also heard that traveling in big groups will help us get by the monkeys.”
“Who said we’re going through the monkey path? That way’s dangerous.”
“But monkeys are cute, not to mention our closest biological relatives.”
“Not the ones on Emei Mountain.”
“How bad can they be?”

After we get off the bus, her uncle greets us. After introducing Genevieve and me, we all cram into his small truck and head for the Qingyin Lake entrance. The Emei city is unimpressive, the gray hue in the sky reminiscent of Beijing and Chengdu. At the entrance, nothing is really visible more than fifty meters away due to the thick fog. I hoist and fasten my bag securely on my back, buy a sturdy looking bamboo walking stick and start the climb.
Plenty of pilgrims make their way up to the summit every year, so the entire path is made of stone stairs for hiking comfort. Though, looking up at an empty staircase that seems to continue at the horizon seems to sap more energy than the act of hiking itself. We cannot take the monkey-free path (“Oh no!” says Xinyue) because the fog has made it too slippery and dangerous. At the first monkey zone, a few mountain guides stand around with skinny bamboo whips and packets of corn kernels. I try to feed the monkeys the red peanuts that I bought in Chengdu, but as soon as I take the package out the attendants yell at me in unison. Apparently, past hikers who have fed food not sold on the mountain were not only fined by the mountain authority, but also followed by monkeys seeking more exotic food for the duration of the climb. I reluctantly buy a couple packets of corn. As soon as I buy one, a young monkey snatches it out of my hand and hobbles away, stuffing corn kernels into his mouth while perched on the wooden fence. Annoyed, I open the other packet and throw a few kernels at it. The monkey catches them mid-air and eats them.
Monkeys.

I rush up the steps beyond the other climbers. Soundless echoes of coaches and runners from high school cross-country yell, "Don't look up, just get up, get up, don't look up!" Along the torturous climb, workers fix the fences, slabbing clay onto nailed oak planks. They shout words of motivation as I pant, grasping on my bamboo stick. One worker stares at my bird's-nest-excuse-for-a-hairstyle and says, "Are you from Hong Kong?"

"No, I'm from the States," I reply.

"You certainly don't look like a white man."

"Well, I was born in Korea."

"I knew it!" he yells at the others, "the moment I saw you I knew! You look like those actors in all those Korean dramas my wife watches! You know 'Full House,' right?"

"I think you're confusing me with somebody else then."

"Come now, I'm just joking. It certainly gets boring making fences all day."

"So the red clay on the fence is just to make the wood planks look like real wood?"

"This? Oh yeah, we just use the nails to run them through the wet clay and make it look like peeling bark."

"Ah."

"Yep."

The mountain is already starting to get hazy as the fog thickens. After a couple hours of hiking, I finally arrive at Xianfeng Temple, the rest stop for the night. I barely make out the stone gate in the fog. Near the door into the main prayer hall, I sit on a bench and wait for the others. My shirt, boxers and shorts are completely drenched in sweat, cooling me quickly in the mountain air. Thank goodness I packed three pairs of boxers.

The rest of the group arrives later broken in pairs. Xinyue yells, "Can't you wait for the rest of us? You could have at least helped me carry a bag. Agh, I'm so exhausted..."

After a quick austere vegetarian dinner of monk grub, we take showers and collapse on bed, barely exchanging words. Before sleep, I try to imagine the scenery at the Golden Summit, motivating myself to get over the soreness in my quads.

Concerto: Basan Part 2

2008-08-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

The plane ride is unusually quiet – I suppose everybody on this flight isn’t used to waking up early for check-in. Genevieve, my travel partner, is also asleep, tired from staying up with a few IUP students. Surprisingly, Li Yun laoshi, the education director of IUP, sat next to me for the trip to Sichuan. After an aerial Chinese breakfast of white rice porridge with ham/cucumber and mayonnaise sandwich, we reflected on the summer session in Beijing. Li laoshi confesses she misses teaching. The administrative side of education means filing paperwork and scrutinizing over teacher salaries and sick day leaves, never really any contact with the students. For this summer, I have definitely attained my goal – to improve my Chinese fluency. I am much more comfortable and confident living in China. I can survive on my own while conversing with others about everyday topics. While traveling, I wonder if I can put everything I’ve studied this summer to test.
For the remaining time on the plane, I forced Li laoshi to teach me some Sichuan dialect. The differences are not very distinct – instead of saying “wo bu zhidao” for “I don’t know,” it is “wo bu xiaode.” However, profanity is on a different aesthetic plane.

Concerto: Basan Part 1

2008-08-15T01:10:00.000-07:00

My travel itinerary is complete. Unfortunately, I have not reviewed my Chinese textbooks for the final. I’ve been passively listened to the text recordings while perusing my Lonely Planet guide – anyways, language can’t be crammed, so what’s the point of glancing through thousands of words to stuff into my short-term memory? My ideal plan is explore Sichuan province and then travel through Tibet. However, my Chengdu travel guide is arguing that I cannot be granted a travel permit into Tibet using my permanent residence permit. In case I cannot go to Tibet, I will travel south to Yunnan province, but I sincerely hope that I can get in. My hiking bag is half-packed – I’m still debating whether to take two or three pairs of boxers.

“中国加油”Cheer: 8 years in 8 hours

2008-08-10T02:27:00.000-07:00

Every morning on the way to IUP I bike past a neighborhood park equipped for elderly ballroom dancing sessions, pick-pong matches and young late-night forbidden kisses. The red countdown board stands at the entrance informing everyone how much time is left before the opening ceremonies down to the second. I feel a surge of excitement reading "0000 days, 3 hours, 9 minutes and 53 seconds" - finally I'll see the fruit of years of preparation by China's Olympics Committee. However, the polluted sky suggests rain - where are the silver iodides that were supposed to rend Beijing's sky clear?

Jason and I take a taxi to Hardy's hutong near Yonghegong and Nanlouguxiang. Through narrow cobbleways and past stained windows we find a traditional siheyuan (four-corner roof hutong). We walk to the entrance with a row of empty imported beer bottles lined outside a window. The ambiance inside is beautiful, but I see no air conditioning machines. Two electrical fans swing its heads back and forth, weak breezes cooling sweat beads on everyone's noses. Hardy brings out a few cold beers.
"How much do you pay a month for this place?" I ask.
"1500," he replies.

As more people arrive and crowd the hutong, I escape outside for fresh air. An old man with a towel swung over his neck watches me as he cools himself with a paper fan. Untrimmed shrubs, two yellow parakeets and four red-eyed turtles surround him.
"Old man (courteously said), how long have you lived here?" I ask.
"About six months." he says.
"Only six months? You look like you've lived here much longer than that."
"Oh yes, I used to live north of here where that big building now stands. The government razed my hutong."
"Did the government give you enough compensation?"
"Meh," he chuckles, "it'll do, I suppose."
His wife brings out a bowl of green beans to snack on.

The group finally starts walking towards Ditan Gongyuan, a park about fifteen minutes away from the hutong. As we walk across an overpass, I notice the highway below is completely empty. Red and blue lights on top of police cars blink along the highway every fifty meters. I rest my water bottle and umbrella on the stone fence and prepare my camera, but a guard in full military regalia approaches me and tells me to take my belongings off the fence. "I'm just taking a picture," I say.
"Please remove it, or we will fine you." he warns. "And please don't take a picture."
"But when will I ever see Beijing's highways empty like this during rush hour?" I complain.
After staring at me for a couple seconds, he says, "Take it when there are no cars in the highway then," he instructs.
As he watches me carefully, I hold my water bottle between my legs and snap a photo. "Why are you guys here anyways? Why is this highway empty?" I ask.
"Government officials are passing through here. The officials from Austria just passed by. We cannot allow anyone to take pictures of these officials. Anyone taking photos of officials will be suspected as a terrorist."
"Did the officials from the United States pass by?"
"Yes."
While musing the thought of President Bush passing under my feet, we continue to walk to Ditan Gongyuan. Under the park gate, we see lit-up Fuwa mascots on a roller coaster made of flowers. Hardy and a few guys buy pizza and champagne from a local restaurant for everyone for dinner. After a few bites and gulps, we hurry through the park to the big TV screens. The gate to the closed TV area is already packed with people. Onlookers begin to cheer as the red countdown board next to the screen reads "5 minutes." Everyone quickly squeezes through and finds patches of grass to sit on. The TV darkens as the stadium lights go out. The drum countdown show excites everyone to yell in mixed unison, "Ten, nine, ba, qi, liu, five, si, three, er, yi..."

After Zhang YiMou's 80,000 cast show, portions of the crowd break into modest to crazy applause for various international athlete delegations. When Taiwan comes on as "China Taipei," the park breaks into cheers and claps. As soon as the camera pans to Chairman Hu, the claps die down to smatterings. When the American athletes come out, the audience goes nuts as some people swing American flags and shirts over their heads on top of fences and platforms. When the screen shows President Bush, the audience splits into claps and boos. Finally, when China's 1,600 delegation enters the stadium, the watchers all stand and roar for Yao Ming and the athletes donned in red and yellow suits (tomatoes and eggs, as my Chinese teacher calls them). As soon as Li Ning lights the scroll torch, everyone cheers as they runs toward the gate. I hear some people complain in pain about cramped legs and tired eyes. My friends invite me to a bar in Chaoyang - I refuse. Four hours of looking at a 10 by 12 TV has drained me.

On the subway back to Wudaokou, we share plans for the upcoming weeks.
"Are you going to see any of the events?" Anjli asks.
"No, I don't want to go to them," I say.
"What?? What are you going to do after your program ends?"
"I don't want to be in Beijing...I think I'll head south toward Sichuan or Tibet."
"Can you get into those areas? With the protests and disasters, will you be allowed to travel there?"
"Meh, better now than before the cultures there are China-fied."

David Bowie, Damien Rice, and Dave Matthews Band in a mixed whirl: Dongwangzhuang 东王庄

2008-08-02T22:53:00.000-07:00

"你好. Please show us your student ID," says the service attendant.

"I'm just going to my room," I reply.

"We still need to see your ID."

"I don't have mine on me."

"It's for your safety."

"Against what?"

After a few more seconds of haggling with the attendants, I climb the three flights and tread the hallway down to my dorm room. The aftersmell of an overused mop lingers. As I take off my shoes, a droplet of water from the ceiling soaks into my shoulder. The air conditioner is still not fixed. The ceiling panel is darkening with spots of black and green. After a swig of Pocari Sweat (a popular beverage in Asia, also known as Monkey Sweat), I lay down on my hard bed. It is moist.

On the fifth floor whiteboard, someone has put up an advertisement - "2BR Apt in 东王庄, 3000approx./month, if interested call Wiley!" During my hour break, I call Wiley. Immediately we set up a meeting to look at the apartment and meet the landlords. The landlords are an old couple who live in the vicinity. The wife, Ai-yi, reminds me of my grandmother - the way she wields her fan threatens her timid husband, who doesn't collect money until Ai-yi spreads her fan.

Outside, I hear the hooting of pigeons and chirps of sparrows on the first floor balcony and overworked air conditioners groaning. The elderly yell at each other - the accent is too strong for me at this point. With the smack of a playing card on a makeshift wooden desk, a man showing off his round Buddha stomach yells "Wo Cao!" (Profanity) Around the wastebins, ladies squabble over the ownership of a few plastic water bottles.

As soon as I sign my lease agreement with the landlords, I bike back to my dorm and scramble to pack everything before the Foreign Student Affairs Office closes for the night. After an hour, everything is squeezed in two pieces of luggage, two bookbags and two boxes. Unfortunately, no taxis are around. A white unmarked car drives up.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

"Dongwangzhuang. I need to move a few stuff as well. Will your car handle the weight?"

"No worries."

The man looks like he was part of some Chinese gang with his huge tattoo on his deltoid enlarging every time he flexes. We quickly stuff all of my clothes and books into his trunk and are on the road. If all unmarked cab drivers are like this man, then I don't know why I'm still riding state-regulated taxis. He gives me recommendations on the best restaurants, best markets to buy household goods, and best places to meet Chinese girls. "My neighborhood has too many of them. Come by, we'll have some baijiu (vodka, but not really) and I'll introduce you to a few." We exchange phone numbers. He promises to call.

The first few days in the apartment I furiously organize my library, clean the kitchen, dust my bedroom, mop the floor and pay the internet bill. I have announced that I will hold a "happy hour" at my place for IUP students to mingle and bond over wine and snacks. Fortunately, I am sponsored by IUP with an allowance of 500RMB. After running around the Lotus Center and only finding disappointing Great Wall red wine (a soury excuse for vinegar), Jason and I head to the Carrefour store in Zhongguancun. The Carrefour store in Beijing is the size of Costco, but nothing is sold in wholesale. That doesn't seem to stop the locals from taking advantage of the lower than average prices and the wide selection of imported goods. Fortunately, in the evening lots of IUPers come to warm up the apartment. I'll admit it - the happy hour was a good cover for my housewarming party. Over Alcantra and Merlot, we pass the night identifying Chinese emperors and government officials on playing cards. I was hoping for a rowdy game of Kings.

As with any new environment, time is necessary to adapt. My daily commute to IUP has doubled. I actually have to learn to cook, force myself to go the market and buy cheap packaged noodles, or drag myself to the restaurants in the area - the cafeteria is no longer fifty meters away. Over Skype, I've asked my mother for a few recipes. Apparentely, to make a good stew, all I need is some vegetables, ground meat, cooking oil, spices and water. I've also been pestering the teachers to teach me some Chinese plates. In any case, would anyone like to be my foodtaster?

While at one of Beijing's best jazz clubs called the OT Lounge at Jianguomen, Carol told me of a doctor who learns another language to see life from another perspective and wrote a book about her reflections. I suppose I am attempting the same thing - to approach life from a younger perspective, to force myself in a strange environment that changes as fast my vocabulary and thoughts change. This past Friday, IUP held its Speech Day. I related my years working as a waiter in San Francisco. I expected the speech to be difficult because I was using Chinese, but because I was speaking about bundles of experiences and emotions buried in my mind and heart, the speech wrote itself on the podium. I am surprised how much clear my thoughts are when I speak Chinese now - perhaps its all due to more subtle adjectives and verbs that are now in my vocabulary, but I do not feel the need to memorize anymore. I speak from the gut.

Suite: No Hands （无手）

2008-07-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

The library – an easy haven for a student after hours of Chinese class on chairs that uses your sweat to glue you to the seat. Air-conditioner, big tables, plenty of books, magazines, dictionaries and movies on Chinese history, culture and medicine, cold drinking water fountain, fellow classmates to remind you that you’re not the only one confused between synonyms – the library is an easy haven. But for all its amenities, it asks you to pay a price that Chinese cannot do without – a voice. Silently writing characters is important for memorization, but not practicing the recordings with your voice and reading the textbook only allows for visual understanding of a language that depends on tones. The library is a false haven.

Saturday, July 12th 2008

Tony and a group of IUP students suggest a trip to Panjiayuan (潘家园) for a change of scenery. After train-hopping at Xizhimen and a quick taxi trip, we end up in front of a huge outdoor market. Scrolls, calligraphy brushes, paper posters from the Lei Feng, monuments and miniature dolls of Mao Zedong, statues of Buddha, and antiques from the turn of the 20th century are organized in neatly filed rows throughout the market. Rows of merchants sit leaning on walls or big statues, or if they’re unfortunate to be on the sunny side of the row, madly swoop their fans across their faces. I approach one stall to find a motley of broken Buddhas, rusted Cultural Revolution hair clips for women, old bronze coins, and a stone dildo flanked by two miniature forms of goddesses that remind me of India. One long aisle in the back of the market features millions of books sprawled out on the ground, including plays about model CCP children and love lost for the glory of the Party and countless copies of The Outlaws of the Marsh and Dream of the Red Mansion. Unfortunately, this aisle has no roof, and sellers are forced to rest on small stools or a sturdy stack of books squeezed in metal closets that every seller has.

The same evening, I rush through subways to meet my friend Danni (丹妮) at a famous hutong (胡同，the northern way of saying alleyway) called 南楼鼓巷，or Nanlouguxiang. I get off at the wrong subway station, and ask countless passers-by, elderly people and police officers, running through narrow alleyways with classical courtyards saved from bulldozing. Old men crouch together in front of small stores yelling at each other – the accent was too strong for me to figure out the conversation’s main points. Children run in the opposite direction, kicking a soccer ball amongst themselves and against the walls of the alleyway. Finally, I find 丹妮, and together we browse through the hutong, lined with restaurants, tea shops and specialty stores geared for tourists. Over dinner, Danni reveals that she is an intern at the Olympic Rowing competition site, and hints that she can get me a seat at the finals for a ticket price of about four dollars. As an Olympics intern, she gets to wear the red uniform. Volunteers wear blue, judges wear gray – I’m still trying to figure out who can wear green, yellow and orange.

Friday, July 18th 2008

The midterm is today. The weeks of not having tests to prepare have allowed me to relax and just read poems from the Tang Dynasty and listen to random radio broadcasts about classical music, the dangers of walking with flip-flops and love stories. A couple hours after I am finished with the test, I talk with all of my teachers to discuss mistakes I’ve made on the test and possible improvements to my study methods to make greater leaps of progress.

After the test, I meet with Zhou Laoshi, my first-year Chinese professor, and Dean Marichal Gentry, the Dean of Student Affairs at Yale. Fortunately, the rainy weather broadcast is wrong, and we enjoy a humid but still pleasant afternoon walking around the royal playground of the past dynasties. The scene isn’t different from last year – hundreds of people and local elderly circle Kunming Lake to glimpse at Empress Dowager Cixi’s stony vision of the Chinese navy (in the background, right). To avoid the tourist crowds, Professor Zhou buys us tickets to ride a boat to Suzhou Jie. Suzhou Jie reminds me of Venice, but with a broader waterway, more trees, stone bridges and oriental architecture that do not float. We wander into a store covered with Guilin fabrics. Dean Gentry buys an orange cloth with two dancers, reminiscent of African tribal dances - pity he couldn’t bargain for it.

In the evening, we meet the Light Fellows at the Duke Chinese program and IUP, Yale alumni in China and Yale-China Teaching Fellows at an amazing roast duck restaurant. The Duke Light Fellows have tests every Friday…I’ve forgotten that I had to endure the same torture while at the Harvard program.
I won’t see Professor Zhou or Dean Gentry for an entire year – while I am curious what China will be like after the Olympics, I wonder what I’ll be like after a year in China, what Yale will be like in a year. It’s more than a year away, but I wonder if I’ll be ready for the culture shock that Kelly talked about.

At Sanlitun, I lounge on a rooftop bar with Jason, a classmate, and a few of his friends from the States. Upon asking him what China will be like after the Olympics, he responds in similar confusion, “Thinking what China will be like after the Olympics is like thinking what life will be like after having sex with Madonna.”

Saturday July 19th, 2008

IUP hosts its second field trip to 798, the modern art “factory” of Beijing. The area was originally a weapons factory zone built using money from East Germany, but eventually factory owners rented the area for artist seeking studio and exhibition space. While there are still some active factories, it has become more economical for owners to rent out space to the artists than to manufacture products.

I never really learned how to appreciate art, but 798’s art seems to have two paradoxical purposes – to criticize China and to praise China. Some exhibitions clearly try to preserve classical art techniques, but juxtapose Western motifs like Salvador Dali’s melting clocks with calligraphy. Other exhibitions express frustration towards the government. One painting features a few Chinese men with similar shirts that have a logo modeled like Tiananmen Square, but their smiles are horribly exaggerated, simply fake. The only common thread throughout all the works is confusion – everyone knows the country is developing, but nobody knows where the country is headed. Repeating the title of a famous Chinese history book, everyone seems confused where to search for modern China.
The only exhibition that really stood out and related to my thoughts on China “The Dustproof Cloth” by Yao Lu. Yao uses dustproof cloth manipulated by computer art editing programs to form poetic images of beautiful green mountains that remind one of an ancient mystical China, but upon closer inspection, the green dustproof cloth covers mounds of shoveled dirt and disaster sties – it covers the ugliness. The mountains, mounds of dust and theft, is Yao’s symbol of contemporary China.

I met with Danni in the evening to go to 王府井, or Wangfujing, to enjoy the street food. Wangfujing is like the Times Square of Beijing - lots of lights, huge TVs covering building walls, lots of people. At one point, the TV played the Chinese Olympic cheer. All of a sudden, the children around me clapped and cheered in unison along with the commercial. Even the adults around me muttered the cheer under their mouths. After wandering around the huge bookstore and specialty stores around the plaza, we went to the street food stalls. I had legs of octopus, lotus rice, and strange balls filled with fish, sticks of candied grapes, and coconut milk. According to one of my teachers, eating scorpions is beneficial for skin quality. I don’t know about the scientific proof behind that relation, but the scorpions were delicious. They tasted like potatoes. Jason says that Xian has better street food – I wonder if I’ll have an opportunity to go there in the future. The scorpions are supposed to be better there. The seahorses looked at me with these pathetic eyes, so I skipped them for today.

Since I bought a bicycle in China, I’ve been practicing to ride without touching the handles. After nearly crashing into speeding cars, actually crashing into a couple pedestrians and replacing one ripped tire after a nasty crash into a tree, I can now comfortably bike without hands. My experiences and reflections in China can be, I think, summarized by my bike. While talking with Dean Gentry, I realized how confused I still was about what I wanted to study at Yale and do later in life. I’m done with my premedical studies and MCAT, but I’m not sure if I want to pursue medicine. Throughout sophomore year, studying Chinese was an escape, a source of procrastination, from studying organic chemistry and physics. But here, all I do is study Chinese. As Dean Gentry summarizes, “You can think of the path you’re biking on as your Chinese education. In the beginning, you’re getting used to the environment, your studies, so it’s completely understandable that you hang on tight to your plans, to the handles. Everyday, the people who you come across encourage you to try their jobs, to try new experiences. As the let go of what you’ve considered as your life plan, it’s natural to feel uncomfortable, so you’ll force yourself to refocus on your original studies, on your original path – you’ll hold the handles. But as you grow confident in your ability to communicate and relate with the people around you, you let go of your own plans – you let the bike curve as the front wheel curves about. However, you’re still moving on one path – Chinese. No matter what job you pursue, in China you have your Chinese education as your foundation, your path.”

Biking back to my dorm late at night, I see nobody in the street, so I let go of the handles. I’m still uncomfortable if the wheel turns too much, and to be honest, I’m still not sure what to do with this language that I’m dedicating a year to, but at least I’m experiencing and learning something new everyday.

An American Sings the Olympics Theme Song: 北京欢迎你

2008-07-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

Mondays are never great. After a weekend of not having someone hound over my grammar, my danbanke(one-on-one) teacher rips my sentences to pieces and assigns pages of grammar assignments, topping off with a note of encouragement, "Your Chinese is a little better."

Tuesday are awesome. I review everything the night before, I make sentences without missing predicates or objects and without confusing nouns for verbs or adverbs for adjectives. The teacher is more benevolent with the compliments: "Not bad."

Thursday is unusually unusual. On the white communication board, Cui Laoshi (teacher) has a message, "Are you interested in talking to elementary school students? Contact me!" Hey, I love kids. I leave her my cell phone number, and by five in the evening, a man calls me to plan the event. Plan? What plan? I'm just talking to elementary school students, aren't I? Regardless, I agree to meet - anything beats the studying routine. At the Tsinghua East Gate, I am greeted by the man, Mr. Shang and the host for the event, Ms. Danni Zhang. Together, they explain I am talking to school students about American high school life, how to study English and my opinions on the Olympics. They want me to prepare crafted responses ahead of time "to avoid misunderstanding." Mr. Shang further requests that I sing. I don't know many songs, so I blurt out the first song in my head, "What a Good Boy." They finally mention I need to memorize the Olympics theme song, "Beijing Welcomes You." I figure, hmm, still nothing much - a few questions and a couple songs for a few students. Mr. Shang says he will give me 300 yuan for my efforts. It's just a small talk, I say.

The next day, I excuse myself from class and head for Beijing Transportation University (北京交通大学). Mr. Shang leads me to a big building, and soon I find myself in the backstage of a large auditorium. I cannot see the seats in the audience, but the raucous noise of impatient children echoes to the back. "Didn't you say I was talking to a handful of students?" I ask uncertainly.

"Yes, a few students selected for their English speaking levels. They are the only ones asking you questions," says Mr. Shang. "Danni, quickly introduce Ricky!"

In seconds, I walk onto the center stage of the lecture hall, facing hundreds of students and teachers. I stand next to Danni for a bit, and then she hands me the microphone for me to introduce myself. Well, what the hell, I think, might as well make the best of it.

The entire activity seems like a TV talk show - cameras and camcorders near the stage click and flash, while the audience laughs and applauds. After going through the prepared questions, the students ask their questions in accented English: "Why are there so many presidents from Yale?" (Because Yale is awesome) "Where have you been other than Beijing? Where do you want to go?" (Henan, desperately want to go to Yunnan) "Do you have a girlfriend?" (Next question - "Your English is very good," I compliment)

We play a guess-the-word game, themed around the Olympics. I do well, except for one phrase ("Citius, Altius, Fortius" - do all Chinese kids know this too?) I give a less-than-thrilling performance of "What a Good Boy," but everyone claps anyways. As some sort of sick joke, Mr. Shang plays some incredibly fast Indian-Chinese fusion rave music and asks me to show everyone how Americans dance. (Note: I graduated from the only high school in the San Francisco Bay Area that banned freak-dancing.)

Finally, the students on stage and I sing "Beijing Welcomes You." Fortunately, Mr. Shang hands me the lyrics. After Danni formally announces the conclusion of the event, the students in the audience stand up in relief. The students that I spoke to push me to give them my email address, but Mr. Shang points me from camera to camera to pose for group pictures. Junior high school girls seemed especially eager. (Yay?)

I related all of this to Mr. Laughlin, the program director, over lunch. "Typical," he says, "for the naive foreigner to get caught surprised by the grandiosity and scale of Chinese affairs."

Hardly typical, methinks.

The Yankee Doodle Theme Song from Barney: Let's go to Class - Everywhere

2008-06-29T04:35:00.000-07:00

This cold is not going away. Runny nose, fever, hoarse voice complicated by constant Chinese practice everyday, has made the cold drag on.

The first week of Chinese was appropriate for my sickness. The first two lessons basically covered health. By the end of the week, I was able to tell everyone exactly what symptoms I had, the details of a restless sleep and my sensitivity to light.

IUP is thorough. At HBA, I remember covering hundreds of words, knowing definitions of characters but glossing over usages. Here, the teachers grind each word's usage into you. For example, I know about ten ways to express going to sleep. Each term is used in a slightly different way. While the locals will understand what you want to say, they will not correct your words with the correct synonym. Fortunately, all the IUP teachers are patient and eager to help, whether I take their class or not.

Yesterday, a group of students and teachers went to a village preserved since the Ming Dynasty called 爨底下, or Cuan Di Xia. The village is shaped like a round bowl filled with rice, with the landowner's house on the highest spoonful. Most of the structures were maintained for more than 400 years. Tourists come to eat the local cuisine, which is supposed to be unique. My hunger didn't detect anything outstanding, to the cook's disappointment. However, I saw an old lady making cornbread in a great big metal bowl over an open fire. Her hands must be like insulated gloves - she would touch the bowl to flip the patties with her bare hands! Although the fresh bread was meant to be served to the awaiting customers in her restaurant, she sold a couple for the IUP troop to share. The unsweetened bread was the best thing I've had since living in China. The American southern cornbread cannot compare.

Everyone explore the town on their own. I found myself with the teachers, talking in Chinese throughout the day. Had I been with the other students, I don't think I would have appreciated or understood the town's culture, religion and geography deeply. The local geography is confounding - some places are labeled "Eight Mysteries Pool" and "Nine Meditation Stones," but when I actually hiked to those areas, all I found were cesspools dark with algae and nine boulders. I bet if I made a sign that said "Tree of Richard" next to anything resembling a branch, someone would take a photograph. Others areas were breathtaking - river-cut passageways with caves and cavities, single bell temples surrounded by vast green mountains.

Back in my room, I can only imagine my hike through fading memories preserved by these photographs. Outside, I hear American students in drunken stupor. There are a lot of foreign students on campus now as the actual university students leave and summer language program students move in. My opportunities for a Chinese-only environment dwindle in Wudaokou - with English in one ear and Korean in the other, hearing Chinese is a luxury. Maybe if I willingly try to not understand English and Korean, I can get by. Realistically, however, I have told other Koreans and Americans who see me as foreign that I am Chinese. It works - unless I'm talking with another Chinese.

Etude: Nuts and Bolts

2008-06-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

Finally I am able to log onto my blog. I wrote a test message lest my entire entry gets deleted by clicking on "Publish Post."

The Ministry of Public Security in China has changed their internet traffic monitoring methods over the past year. I am not only hopping over the Great Firewall, but over three other hurdles, collectively coined "The Golden Shield Project." From DNS address redirecting to mirror sites to site-by-site regulation, the government is really bottlenecking the flow of information. I can't help but think of Professor John Wargo in the School of Environmental Sciences ingraining the adage "Whoever controls information controls fear and security" when I think of the measures that the MPS has taken to prevent me from accessing this blog.

For any Light Fellows and Yalies in China, this is how I am accessing the internet:

1.) Download and install the Cisco VPN Client (Ver 5.0.01.0600) from the Yale Software site.

2.) Connect to "Yale resources and home networks." You may have to log onto your school's network site before you connect through the VPN Client.

3.) In the statistics box, you should see no packets discarded under "Packets" and Transport Tunneling "Active on UDP Port xxxxx."

To test, I've tried Wikipedia, BBC, NYTimes, Facebook, Youtube and other sites traditionally blocked. I haven't had a hiccup.

This entire week I've been in transit or in bed. My flight, though long, was merciful. Every few hours, I looked outside the window to see the world below - Canadian forests, Alaskan mountains, Siberian tundras, Japanese islands, Chinese farm fields - and looked around the plane, which was filled with anxious high school students wearing bright orange shirts reading "Explore China Camp" and sleeping tourists from Philadelphia and San Francisco.

At Tsinghua, I've run around all over the campus, the Haidian area, and Wudaokou to get a cell phone, books, toilet paper, medical checkups and a bike. Yes, a bike. Last summer, I thought bike-riding was suicidal in Beijing because of everyone's disregard for traffic regulations (imagine a taxi skimming your back wheel while a pedestrian walks across you and a bus honks at you to get out of the legal crosswalk area). However, Tsinghua's campus is at least five times the size of Beijing Language and Culture University's, which hosts HBA. Granted, I've gotten the cheapest strolling bike I could find and had to repair it twice already (the damn seat kept bending and pushing into my thighs). I've been hit by a taxi and hit a few old ladies because the brakes are a joke, but the bike is wonderful. I'm not quite ready to hold an umbrella in one hand and talk on the cell phone with the other, but I'll get there.

The students at IUP are all, to some degree, crazy about Chinese culture, philosophy, history, literature and/or food. I'm one of the very few who's interested in public health in China and North Korean refugees, but even so I find myself enlightened by conversations with my classmates over meals. Almost everyone has just graduated college, is pursuing a M.A. or Ph.D., or already in the workforce as a journalist, film critic, historian, lawyer or consultant, looking to refine their Chinese skills. Though we are all united by our love/hate relationship with China, our life experiences define us individually. One guy who was in the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan had to work at a U.S. Air Force Base as a head chef when the government failed in 2003. He didn't have to know how to cook - he just had to keep the Kyrgyztani ladies away from the American soliders, and vice versa. Another classmate, a recent graduate from Georgetown's famous International Relations program, has traveled the world, has no upper tolerance for spicy food, and knows more about the Korean media star Rain than most Koreans know.

For now, I can't wait for classes to start. My textbooks, called Thought and Society and Frankly Speaking, seem very interesting. My room still needs some furnishing, but whenever I'm in here I feel like I'm in jail, with the cold floor, hard bed and stale air amplifying the sense of entrapment. I'd rather be outside, bike around town and breathe in polluted air. Unfortunately, a sore throat from the pollution and a night of karaoke with Yalies leaves me no choice but to watch some Chinese soap operas and chew Vitamin C pills.

Test

2008-06-21T22:07:00.000-07:00

Cisco VPN Client 5.0.01.0600

Connected to "Yale resources and home networks"

Second Prelude: 机不可失，时不再来

2008-06-15T04:32:00.000-07:00

My flight leaves for Beijing in about seven hours.

I had hoped to spend the days leading up to today thinking about where I would like to visit, what I would like to experience. I had a taste of Chinese culture by trying to rent an apartment close to Tsinghua University through emails with the landlady. My Asian neighbors offered contact information of their relatives in China and bordering countries. I perused through the Lonely Planet travel guides and Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China as much as I could. However, I'm still clueless. Perhaps I'm better off not planning at all. After all, I made my goals - to master the Chinese language and to understand Chinese society and culture - purposefully broad in order to force myself to travel and try everything while I am abroad.

I wonder what the next twelve months will bring. Will the silver iodide pellets bring clear skies on 8/8/08 for the opening ceremonies? Will Liu Xiang, the reigning world champion in the 110m high hurdles, take the gold again? Will Beijing change drastically after the Olympics? Will I drastically cut my hair? Will the winter snowstorms and spring snowstorms be short? Will Wenchuan and the surrounding areas recover from the earthquake by next May? Whatever happens, I hope I'm there to witness it.

The sun is rising.

A Techno Rave: Shift Happens

2008-06-07T19:00:00.000-07:00

I remember having a conversation with a few Light Fellows about why we applied for the fellowship in the first place. Yes, it's an all-expense covered study abroad session - yes, the Olympics are happening - yes, Japanese pop culture is amazing - yes, Korean boys are cute (not really) - but everyone agreed that East Asia was the new metropolis to experience, that it was important now to understand the cultures, politics and economies there while we are still in college to prepare ourselves for a globalizing world. "The West has shifted"... East Asia is the new "West," as hackneyed this phrase is getting nowadays. After a summer in China, a semester's worth of writing about globalization and cosmopolitanism in China and a couple years of Chinese language, I'm still confounded as to what this shift is. I found this slideshow and TED video appeasing (and aggravating, ironically) my confused mind. I hope you enjoy.

| View | Upload your own

A Poorly-rehearsed Musical: Love during Earthquakes

2008-06-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

I was perusing my feeds on Chinese blogs, and came across this post by Mr. Wang Xiaoshan on a love question made by one of the entertainment section editors of a newspaper.

Here is my rough translation of the question:

"An earthquake can test how you express your love. When an earthquake first happens, what is your first reaction?
A: Hide under a table in panic
B: Open a window
C: Drop everything and run outside
D: Stand in place out of fright.
Analysis: Individuals who selected A are rather alert and protecting of their love. If their love is revealed, they become nervous. They get so nervous about their individual partner's devotion that if they can't relax, they'll just get weary. Individuals who select B are stable, steady lovers. After they fall in love, they become more steadfast and more confident about their charismas. For those who select C, once they fall in love they are crazily filled with energy, as if everything on their minds has just been liberated. For those who select D, they fall in love like diving into a river headfirst. Other than their significant loves, they don't think of anything - their grades and work all suffer, and everything else is just in an awful mess."

So, since we students across America are taught to hide under their desks to protect their spinal cords from being severed by falling debris, are we protective nervous lovers?

Mr. Wang notes that the editor was sacked. "I don't think he should have been sacked," he argues. "This editor was just more heartless than the others."

How can any newspaper try to comfort its readers by comparing love to tragedy? (Unless you're one of those melancholists in a permanent pre-Juliet Romeo state or Peter, my friend who has given up on dating) A disaster and loss of life calls for grief and support, not amateur psychology. Since China has an unprecedented amount of domestic press coverage on the earthquake in the Sichuan area, it has been amazing to see the solidarity of the Chinese people in pictures of bright-eyed children holding candles and volunteer workers digging through rubble. Now is a time to connect broken families, through radio programs like "Phone-in for Peace"; to reestablish the education system and get students back in school; to get to rid of earthquake side-effects that threaten more lives, like quake lakes. Albeit the question's attempt to distract worried minds from the death and destruction caused by the earthquake, its humor points only to remind its readers of lost love and unnecessary self-criticism.

New (or should it be old?) Sounds: Chinese Neighbors

2008-06-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

I don't talk to my neighbors. Actually, all the families in my neighborhood are fairly self-contained, limiting all communications between houses to formal greetings when a couple neighbors coincidentally check the mailbox at the same time, or when one walks by another mowing his or her lawn.
I live in those edge city phenomenon houses built by KB Homes, in the planned labyrinths of suburban houses that look identical every two or three doors down. My community is ethnically diverse - white, Hispanic, Asian, Indian, Russian - but before I digress I'll focus back on the theme of this entry - my Chinese neighbors.
The Chinese neighbors coagulate. When I leave the window open, I can hear them from as far as five houses down. Before I studied Chinese, I subconsciously blocked out all the raucous unintelligible gossip out of my head, but after finishing Chinese 150 at Yale, their furious shouts started to make sense:
"Wife, you've cut the bushes too much!" says a husband.
"Just go to work, I know what I'm doing," replies the wife, the sounds of bush scissors snipping.
I worried that I would have to resort to textbook recordings and Youtube videos in Chinese to consolidate my Chinese before going to China, but listening to the everyday conversations of my neighbors, at last understandable through all the tones and phrases, I decide to venture out of my room and talk to them.
Fortunately, I don't have to initiate the awkward hello, knock on their doors or wait by the mailbox until they come out of their houses. My mom, being the ideal neighbor, actually talks with them, so she just calls one, relates my desire to speak Chinese and sets up a date for me and a neighbor.
Jenny, a middle-aged Taiwanese mother, lives next door. The first part of our first conversation together consists of my apologies for not even saying hello after living next to each other for more than three years. Jenny, instead, just waves it all away and compliments the fact I could express apology in Chinese. After her first flattering statement, I just start from Chinese 115's "您过奖了" and enjoyed our talk.
While she was differentiating 丢掉，失去 and an assortment of other synonyms related to "to lose," she teaches me "丢掉脑袋." These characters mean, literally, to lose your brain. If you say something that's considered offensive towards the government, you can 丢掉脑袋. It was a pet phrase in Taiwan when Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-Shek) was still around, censoring the media and the press. I'm not sure if this 俗话 is used on the mainland, but still a useful colloquialism, no?
Hours go by in a flash, and soon she has to pick up her daughter. She criticizes her daughter's poor Chinese, wistfully voicing her regrets, "If my daughter can at least recognize characters, I'll be happy!"

A Couple of Staccatos

2008-05-31T20:41:00.000-07:00

The Northeast Blackout of 2003

China's Cyber-Militia

An Off-Broadway Show: A Place to Live.

2008-05-29T00:23:00.000-07:00

April 7th : Ms. Jia, the housing assistant at IUP, sent a short email with a long attachment. With Tsinghua University Foreign Student Affairs Office’s lack of immediate response on the availability of dorms for IUP students, Ms. Jia urged all students to find off-campus housing as soon as possible. The attachment, The Renter’s Handbook, reads like Moses’ commandments - “When negotiating with the landlord, thou shall demand accompaniment to the police office to file for the residency permit” - “Thou shall demand the landlord to operate all appliances to ensure proper usage.” While I was still at school, I didn’t have time to find an apartment, so as soon as I got home I went through one housing site after another, my Chinese electronic dictionary in one hand, the mouse in the other, searching for an affordable place. The Olympics hype cranked up rent rates up to twice the usual rates at most places.

I found an apartment in the Huaqing Jiayuan complex, not ten minutes from my university campus. Fully furnished, safe, close to the market and school - for twice the price of the university dorm (6500RMB per month). Considering that it was the lowest price tag I had found within such close proximity to my Chinese program, I sent an email to the landlord, agreeing that I will live in her apartment for a year and requesting wire transfer information as well as the lease agreement, on which I would send her a scanned copy of my signature. I informed the Light Fellowship Director and asked for a increase on my summer housing budget.

May 20th: Ms. Jia sends another email: “DORMITORIES AVAILABLE! Reserve quickly!”

Frustration.

The next few emails I exchanged with the landlord to cancel the lease, at least the ones she sent me, weren’t pretty. A Chinese neighbor told me that the first affirmative email I sent was as good as the lease agreement or any red Chinese print seal. I was lucky, the neighbor said, to not have been demanded some fee for canceling everything that I had negotiated.

As much as I enjoyed exchanging letters with the landlord in Chinese, the days of this pleasant-culturally-ignorant-and-naïve-American-student-studying-Chinese personality ended. I feel as though the landlord let me go not just out of her kindness but because I didn’t know the subtle formalities in Chinese business.
Chinese business lesson #1: Know the customs.

On a brighter note, my visa just came today. The visa company even gave me a plastic cover for my passport.

Nocturne: Mothers

2008-05-11T23:39:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of my sophomore year, I secretly planned to stay at school until the dorms closed. After a couple weeks of hanging around with the family, I couldn’t accustom myself to the slow pace of home. College was moving, exciting. Funny how I ended up being the first person back home out of all my suitemates.

If we decided to wage a war against our moms, moms would win without using nuclear bombs or using unmanned surveillance technology. No, their strategy is much more fundamental – it attacks basic needs. Cut off the homemade food supply, let the mundane college food collect its toll. Keep communications to a minimum during exams so that your child doesn’t know how you are and cannot use you as a source of procrastination.

Surrendering wasn’t hard. No one can live without food and love.

That’s my mom – reeling me in with 돼지보쌈, 된장찌개, and the latest gossip on the antics of Korean housewives she meets at her English school (the gossip is worthy of a blog entry – stay tuned). With mouthfuls of 김치 and the assortment of 반찬 that she has prepared, all I can do is nod to her sarcastic criticisms of Korean mothers. Defeat is tasteful and enjoyable.

I found this rather touching article about single mothers in China dealing with their own set of hardships.

“When we argue that a woman owns the uterus, and it’s her right to decide whether to deliver the baby or not, people won’t buy it,” said Yuan Xin, director of psychology at the Consulting Center of Nankai University. “If you are a woman, your personal choice is monitored and supervised by a lot of others, and they expect you to do what everyone else does.”

How frustrating it must be to be a strong woman in China. If you’re trying to make yourself into a 职业女性，society calls you 女强人 or 三八。 We can all remind ourselves through the lyrical genius of Oveous Maximus:
“Picture 270 days – 270 days where bones lift and organs shift to make room in the womb for you and I the future generation ‘cuz when you’re born it’s appreciation…‘don’t cut off the hand that feeds you,’ but we do when we oppress women on so many levels, our perceptions of them less than equal…a woman’s leche is pure…pure like my mother for raising two boys single with two jobs trying to make singles just to put food on the table…the way I see it, this will always be a man’s world, under a woman’s supervision.”

Some suggestions to all Light Fellows and travelers: Get a webcam. Set up Skype for your mother and teach her how to use it so that you she can worry less about you while you’re in China. Hug her…and eat her food while you can.

Allegro: Farewells

2008-05-05T08:22:00.000-07:00

I thought I had reading and finals weeks scheduled perfectly. Hours of studying punctuated by meals with friends and occasional daydreaming in the Sterling Memorial Library courtyard, daily packing of some luggage as I take my finals.

The problem is, one meal is not enough.

Scenario: We meet. Surprisingly, we both arrive on time, not on Yale time. At salad, we'd start to remember random, recent memories of us together. At roast chicken or some New Haven-fied Lo Mein, we move further into the past, reflecting on how we first met and ridiculous first impressions. At dessert, we're so deep into memories we hardly have to time to say goodbye. Hastily, we promise each other to meet at the next Harvard-Yale tailgate, or that he/she'd visit me while I'm abroad. After a handshake or a hug, we each take what farewells and wishes we can offer and walk away.

Half an hour into my physics and environmental politics notes, a text vibrates my cell phone. The friend wants to meet for coffee before I leave.

Honestly, I don't know when I'll get the chance to meet all the juniors and seniors I've grown close to since my freshman year. All I have is a one-way ticket to Beijing, return date unknown.

Maybe I'm overexaggerating.

I find adopting Athabaskan language near the conclusion of every year useful. Athabaskan is a language spoken by Natie American tribes in parts of Canada, Alaska, Oregon and California. After most conversations, closing remarks are exchanged with a final "goodbye." Athabaskans, however, feel no obligation to say "goodbye," or any closing remark. In fact, Athabaskan languages have no word that means "goodbye."
Mary TallMountain is more eloquent than I am to express my thoughts:

What do you say in Athabaskan
when you leave each other?
What is the word
for goodbye?...
We always think you're coming back,
but if you don't,
we'll see you some place else.
You understand.
There is no word for goodbye.

Ode to Smoke-free Joy

2008-05-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked the first of a hundred days before the Olympics festivities begin, but today BBC World News reported something even more joyous. China will ban smoking in Beijing in most public buildings. The government authorities say that they want to present China as a healthy, modern and clean city, but ironically the ban still allows smoking in restaurants and bars. Oh well – at least non-smoking areas are mandatory in cafés now. Although a sunless gray white sky will depress me, at least I won’t have to worry about environmental tobacco smoke clogging my lungs and arteries.

“For every three cigarettes lit worldwide, one is smoked in China.”

Although the ban gives me reason to anticipate China even more, something tells me that people will still smoke in public areas, paying off the enforcers 1 yuan at a time or something. 毕竟，关系扮演重要的角色。Let’s hope that 100,000 enforcement members are enough to lower ambient nicotine levels in Beijing. I also hope that Beijing will maintain this ban after the Olympics, but I doubt that the Chinese tobacco industry will stay quiet…