Alice in Shanghailand

Shanghailand: Mind or Matter?

2009-07-16T20:23:00.000-07:00

Blog Clog

2009-06-03T12:56:00.000-07:00

(as posted by Su)

So I haven't been able to access this blog since the May 6 post--an anti-In-n-Out-Burger campaign? One can never know if it is shitty technology or 'purposeful inaccessibility,' but whether Shanghai or Chengdu (checked the connection on a quick trip to Sichuan and also no go), just can't seem to get to 'Shanghailand.'

I had intended to continue writing about Shanghailand, even after returning to the U.S. (in a month). Now more than ever, I'll have to. Accordingly, there is a blog clog right now, not being able to post. The next posts were to be:

Out Singing
Suntory Dumplings
Galaxy Balls
S12: Shanghai Summit

I'll post as soon as I can (seems other blogspot sites are unable to be accessed as well). Thanks for checking in, Dear Reader, and see you at Shanghailand soon.

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Quick Trip Home

2009-05-06T15:31:00.000-07:00

Got flown to Los Angeles for a job interview and gosh if I wasn't the luckiest gal in the world, getting put up at a hotel right across from the first thing that I dreamed about when I heard I was going home. Of course I was excited to see my sis Su, and her pals Juju and Patrick, and to bring my folks some of the latest Chinese movies. But the first thing that literally popped into my mind was the Double Double and Mexican food, particularly the Super Special Burrito at Gilbert's El Indio.
The interview was one of those rare events that made me feel particularly valued as an artist. Right before I was picked up for all-day talks, I stared out at the clear air of LA (c'mon, as compared to Shanghai) and felt the sway of the palm trees and the desert hues.
I was 'home'!
And I got to see the Jujumeyer take a nap with his scottie Spike...
My cousin Leon and his wife Stephanie came over with their three kids--here are two of them with the Juj, Darcy and Johnny.
That Darcy was so cute--always jumping! Like a Mexican jumping bean or something, except she always had the sweetest smile on her face and she doesn't have a lil bug inside making her jump.
Here are Darcy and Juj with Quentin, a vivacious and cheery chap.
Got to visit with my buddy Moises at the Rosses...here we are last summer, same venue...maybe I was a lil more excited cuz we used to laugh day in and day out for many a season, and now, with the distance of China, the laughfests don't translate via satellite. But we got good grill at La parilla--particularly crisp were the tripitas. Then we went to Steph and Greg's--they've been sending me goodies to China like Inca Corn and the latest tabs, you know the important stuff from home. We got to sit around and shoot the shit like before television was invented. It revived me.
Got to go to the park with Rousseau Tuan. Got to see how sportif the Jujmeister has become. First he was batter up and then he pitched some.
Then I got to see some football skills, both American and soccer-style. It was a gorgeous LA day. I inhaled every minute.
Lucky Patrick had a late call so a big chunk of the morning could be had hanging in the park. Juju loved it!
Rousseau Tuan in good form!

Did not even have a chance to snap a quick pic of my folks in the valley, because I was too busy salivating over the medium-rare steaks my pops grilled up and catching up with me mum. Yes, China has steaks for hundreds of yuan, but I just keep it bite-sized off the cafeteria menu. So when I got to the U.S.--eat meat!

Had a great quick trip home. Just as I was getting used to not completely nodding off between 4 and 7pm west coast time, I had to hop on a plane and finish up in Shanghai. Yeah, this week, I had to make up classes--with lag!-- to the tune of 32 class hours. But it was so worth it. No place like home.

YAY!

2009-04-28T15:27:00.001-07:00

I just finished a new play and sent off an application for an awesome residency for Spring semester 2010. I feel as serene and happy as this pic of Juju in Hawaii.

Work hard.

Rest hard.

Play well!

Godfather Leads

2009-04-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

This is my Godfather, Paul Chow. He's a super cool dude at 81, all spritely and youthful and quite the world traveler. He's been an edifying influence in the toughest moments of my life--like when I was a disaffected UCLA undergrad and he he sent me to Guangzhou to teach. Half-roots, half-peace corp., it opened my my suburban eyes to a bubbling world, and set me on a course of ESL, which was my performance training ground, that has since been my bread and butter when the playwriting was just getting started, or as now, it is reconnoitering. Paul Chow has the energy of herds, and is the type of person who would love to meet every person on the planet and learn their essance and help them in any way he can.

Here's Paul Chow at the Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing, when we met there in December. His grandson Ethan is there, and so he gets to China more often these days. He came to Shanghai, in February and was staying at the old Jing Jiang hotel, which was just up the street from the movie theater he first took his wife Vera on their first date 60 years ago...Farewell to Arms starring Ingrid Bergman was playing. He mentioned to me how Vera looked like Ingrid Bergman at that time, when they sat in the front row of a packed movie theater, so beautiful she was, so in awe he couldn't even reach for her hand. Did I mention that Paul Chow is a romantic?

He has also led me to Lucy Zhou Chuang Qing, who was the lovable and inspiring artista recyclista for SWAN Day Shanghai, and also the magical Dr. Ding, his brother-in-law (Lucy's old chap). They are the of the most soulful people I know and I can only hope to carry through wisdom, as they have, into their 9th decade.

So of course, when the Godfather was in Shanghai, he meets an artist named Kevin Berlin who was getting a jacket tailored and didn't have enough Chinese words to enact an exact discount. Enter Paul Chow, who not only got him the discount, but also got a better quality alteration. Godfather e-mails me immediately, saying he met a New York artist from Italy who invited him to his gallery showing, and that he couldn't make it but he would send his goddaughter instead.

So I get a hold of Kevin Berlin and make an appointment to go to the Moganshan art district where his exhibition called Double Happiness is showing. I call to get subway directions and the owner of the gallery, seems not want to give me the directions but would rather fabulously give me a ride, meet her in front of the Portman Ritz-Carlton at Jin'an Temple and she can drive me. It is very strange, I guess because she thinks I am a buyer, and also because I am to meet Kevin Berlin on this day in a coupla hours and the chanel-voiced gallery owner claims that she is closed today, she's at the bank, she'll be flying off to Florence in a couple of days.

I call Kevin Berlin and he didn't realize that the gallery was closed on Mondays, and we reschedule for Tuesday, same time. On Tuesday I get a text message from Kevin Berlin that there is a problem. I soon call and it turns out that a whole drama is being played out, where Berlin wanted to get his paintings a day before the show closed (he could because it said so in the 'contract') but owner had not shown up to unlock the doors, so technically was holding the paintings hostage. The owner wishes to hold on to them to make sales, which have not happened in the 3 weeks it has been showing.

Berlin, although American, has lived and painted in Florence Italy for the past 7 years and showed his Italian colors by operatically involving the American Consulate, having them declare the paintings stolen if the doors were not opened by so and so time, but also, in the course of waiting for 6 hours for the release of his paintings, having glasses of red wine with his friends and enjoying the day nevertheless.

No wonder his spirit had attracted Paul Chow and vice versa. The moxy to fight lives harmoniously with the enjoyment of life.

It takes me 2 hours to get to Moganshan from my school, and the artist is happy to be reunited with his paintings, as he takes them off the walls and while a pretty young Polish girl is pulling the canvas from the frames. '20 million unemployed Chinese people and I can't find anyone to help take down the show.' He is calling and calling everyone he knows in Shanghai, trying not to defame the gallery owner's name, but well, having to explain the situation, each time with the gusto and outrage of an artist who has been shown all over the world and has work in the collections of Jimmy Carter, the Clintons, Pavoratti, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and David Letterman, having to, like every other foreigner in China, understand that words on paper do not have any more weight than its ink on a scale.

In the spirit of Paul Chow, I help move huge canvases of photorealistic cigarette boxes and fake designer bags, downstairs to where the Polish gal is deframing the canvas. I ask Kevin Berlin what the cigarette boxes and the bags and the money and the dumplings all symbolize. He answers that they are all things that are ferociously wanted in Shanghai, that would cause the Double Happiness, which was inspired by 1920's advertisements of this particular brand of cigarette.

The artist must take down his own show, though he is in a hurry to roll them up and get on a plane back to Florence. There's a trick to pulling staples and pulling. I start to get the knack, but handle mostly the small paintings of mao-money yuan.

After the phone rings and rings with condolences and regrets of not being able to come out to Moganshan to help take down the show, Kevin Berlin's friend Nico comes through. It turns out that Nico is the manager for the Martini Bar on the Bund, a bar that was every inch designed and decided upon by Dolce & Gabbana. Nico can send helpers much to Kevin Berlin's relief.

So as I am on my knees pulling, the helpers arrive. At my eye level are a pair of camel-colored half-boots with a zipper in the front that is chicly opens like cleavage. I look up and a super-elegant shiny-haired blond kisses me on both cheeks and says 'Ciao, I am Carol.' Her friend, a shiny-haired brunette says 'hi'--it doesn't seem that she speaks a lot of English. What is apparent is that she is 120% Italian, as when she is talking to Nico on Carol's mobile phone, she becomes highly gestured and ecstatic, as she later tells us that Nico has access to some of the Dolce & Gabbana accessories that have 'the small defects,' the 'imperfections,' bags and belts and shoes and boots, and they have the pick of the booty gratis. She is thrilled and flushed as she continues to pull staples out of the wood frames.Kevin berlin now explains the whole fiasco in Italian, as spirited as all of the other versions. A third super chic gal comes in, and immediately gets to work. She is Shanghainese but speaks great Italian. Kevin Berlin is making espressos and cappuccinos for all. I had to pass cuz I had to get my bumpkin ass back to the ruburbs and I couldn't afford to be awake all night. I just love how artists can mobilize a party under any circumstance. My godfather has led me once again to a lively unexpected place. I hope I can drink up the world like he can when I'm 81. And to meet Kevin Berlin and sees how he coolly endures such a Chinese-type suckery, one that bullies its Chinese artists and, in Shanghai at least, has more interest in product sale. I had been thinking that my artist friend Rafael might do well in China because of the baby-fever that is showing up in a lot of the art. But then I would not want to subject him to these strange business practices of slippery trust, hifaluting promise and angsty art-hostaging. I know Kevin Berlin was a special case, but knowing now what I know of China, it is not surprising. Many of Kevin Berlin's friends that he called were not surprised either. This is Rafael's 'Pool Party,' of which I was lucky enough to bring 5 pieces to Shanghai with me. There are usually like 300 of these sapphiresque 'cells' displayed on an illuminated table. Each infant is in its own private pool party but seen together it becomes one big splash of joyous and luminescent color. It is private and public at the same time.

Ding: You Tell Me

2009-04-17T04:49:00.001-07:00

'I am blind,' says Dr. Ding.

And yet, when Rod of Paris (France) and Mike of Venice (California) and I visit his office on a crisp Sunday morning, he is with cheer and diligence, especially the part where he welcomes his visitors by having them spell out their name, which he then carefully writes out and then permanently has in his mind.

Even when I spoke with him on the phone a couple of days ago, long after Rod and Mike have left Shanghai, Dr. Ding asks, 'How is Rod Ackermann? And how is...Fairbanks?'
We sit and chat and sip tea. Dr. Ding just loves it when visitors come to his office. His English is superb, slow yet even, with pronunciation as fresh as the morning. He asks questions about his guests, his 89-year-old mind curious like a child, but sly with wry remarks. He will talk about the past, at one point referring to the 'so-called Cultural Revolution.' Wait a sec Dr, Ding...why do you say 'so-called'? His jolly disposition turns emphatic: 'Because it was a cultural disaster!'

After a good hour of chat, he asks us to sit in a row opposite him. Mike and I squeeze in next to Rod--no matter what our education, we are three obedient students eager to have class begin. Dr. Ding opens his top drawer and takes out a deck of cards. Aha, a card trick. He shuffles with them a bit; in hindsight, there is some under-the-desk legerdemain happening--it could just be that one card that was face up half way through the deck.

He mentions 'Le Rouge et Le Noir.' He asks Rod of Paris for the correct pronunciation in French and practices it a couple of times. Then, because his French is not as crisp as his English (I guess that would be appropriate for l'accent francaise) he says something muttery, and upon franco-deciphering, it is 'Proust,' who, of course, wrote Le Rouge et Le Noir, which Ding read a long time ago.

With the deck of cards firmly in his left hand, he flips over the top card and asks: What color is this? It is red. He puts it to one side. He flips over a second card: What color is this? It is black. He puts it to the other side. Dr. Ding then asks the magic question: 'What are the chances for a card to be black or red?' I beat out the boys and reply: 50-50. The answer hangs in the air.

Dr. Ding then systematically asks us to guess if a card is red or black. Ding calls his first student. 'Rod'; he guesses black, Ding keeps the card face down and places it with the black card. 'Mike'; he guesses red, it's placed face down with the red card. 'Alice'; I guess red, it's placed with red. 'Rod,' guess, place; 'Mike.' guess, place; 'Alice,' red, place; 'Rod,' guess, place; 'Mike,' guess, place; 'Alice,' red, place; 'Rod,' guess, place; 'Mike,' guess, place; 'Alice,' red, place...and so on. I always say red.

We continue, starting to feel the pace of an 89-year-old man's card trick. Perhaps this is a way to cultivate those good Chinese virtues of patience and obedience. He dutifully and correctly places each guess with its assigned pile, red with red, black with black, slowly, assuredly, nothing up his sleeves. This repeated task is hypnotic, but we can see with our own eyes that it is nothing more than this. And so halfway through the deck, a card is face up. Mike tells: Dr. Ding, there's a card face up. 'O, what color is it?' Ding asks. It's black.
With this new upturned card, he makes a new black pile. He flips over the next card: 'What color is this?' It's red, and that is a new pile too. 'Rod,' guess, place; 'Mike,' guess, place; 'Alice,' red, place; 'Rod,' guess, place' 'Mike,' guess, place; 'Alice,' red, place...Rod, though he lives in France, shows his good Swiss colors and sees that the red pile is getting unruly, and counters with some guesses of black...'Rod,' black, place; 'Mike,' guess, place; 'Alice,' red, place; 'Rod,' black, place; 'Mike,' guess, place; 'Alice,' red, place; 'Rod'...until the deck has been completely distributed.

'Now,' Ding says, 'you say that the chance is 50-50. Let's see.'

Ding flips over all of the cards in the first red pile: they are all red. He flips over all of the cards in the second red pile: they are all red. He flips over all of the cards in the first black pile: they are all black. He flips over all of the cards in the second black pile: they are all black.

We are silent.

'What color are they?' he asks. 'I am blind, I cannot see.'

'Wait a second...' I'm all vocal. 'How did you do that?'

'You tell me. How did you do it? You told me the red or black. I am blind, I cannot see.'

I can feel not only the top of my head missing, but Rod and Mike are feeling equally breezy around the cranium.
Journalist Rod, who has a pretty good answer for mostly everything, is checking to see if maybe Ding can see.
He checks out the cards: yup, regular deck.
'Marco?' 'POLO!'
Dr. Ding calls over to the restaurant to let them know we are coming over.
Um, how did you do that Dr. Ding? 'You tell me.'
But seriously, how did you do that? 'You tell me. I am blind.'
No, but really, how did you do that? 'You tell me. You all three did it.'

At one point, just to get some bearings I ask Dr. Ding: if you are blind why do you wear glasses?'O that is just for decoration.'
It might be because after a full meal of gorgeous steamed fish, light and crisply battered steak slices, garlic greens and a delicious tofu situation that we all look disturbed because we then each got our own honking bowl of dumplings with the freshest broth tinged with white pepper. But no seriously, we were all left a lil' disturbed, in that amazed way, in that I-can't-quite-wrap-my-head-around-that way...by a blind guy.

I wonder what card master Ricky Jay will do when he's blind and 89. It's so great how Dr. Ding can make 'seeing' such a literal act. That is what was in the room--the essence of seeing beyond, at least crafting a performance that causes the sighted not to be able to see.
After lunch, we return to Dr. Ding's office, back to the scene of the chime. We ask him for a recommendation for a hotel in the French Concession cuz the Einstein Room at the Astor House Hotel was booked that last night that Rod was in town. Dr. Ding of course had a couple of recommendations--he knows all of Shanghai like the back of his deck of cards. And so he insisted on getting the number for the hotels and calling to find out availability and price. And so he takes out his address book...
...which is just a big ol' stack of these handwritten numbers. 'O I can't read Chinese too well, Dr. Ding,' I tell him. 'Maybe we should just call information.'

Speaking of information, Dr. Ding...

'You tell me.'

All the Rage with the Lida Gals

2009-04-13T21:49:00.001-07:00

So when warming up the Nursing English classes, I always have them practice simple past tense. 'How was your weekend?' It was ___________. (Practice past tense of 'be' with adjectives). 'What did you do?' I __________ed. (and the myriad of irregular verbs that are not just simply teached or buyed.)

Last week, the usual replies of I slept, I played computer, I stayed at home, I watched TV was matched by I went shopping, I went shopping, I sent shopping. With each 'What did you buy' on many occasions it was 'shoes.' What color shoes? 'Yellow.' Five gals over 3 classes purchase yellow shoes. Spring!
This is an action shot, as Brandy performed her dialogue concerning a fever and what to do.

The Einstein Room at the Astor House Hotel

2009-04-09T23:21:00.001-07:00

Room 304.

When you first enter the room that Albert Einstein stayed in, there is an immediate feeling of modest grandness, that it is old yet cozy and somehow familiar. The Astor House Hotel was Shanghai's first, built in 1846, and the high ceilings and roomy width mix with the marble window sills and tassled drapes. I was in awe and at home at the same time.

It all started when my friend Mike in Los Angeles e-mailed me outta nowhere asking where I was. Last time I had seen Mike, we were driving around Venice Beach in his truck when I got a call from Victor Hsiung of Shanghai Lida Polytechnic Institute and discussed the English teaching job at his school. Mike e-mails me that he wants to visit Shanghai; I tell him to get my dear friend Rod interested--we all used to hangout in Los Angeles. Next thing you know, they're both flying into town on the first day of spring, Mike from LA and Rod from Paris.

Here Rod and I are enjoying tea upon arrival in the Einstein room. I share Rod's glee at the unexpected coolness of the room (I thought it was gonna be dank and depressing) and of course, am so glad to see dear friends in Shanghai, a kind of reminder of myself. It was Rod's idea to stay at the Astor House Hotel, being a seasoned European and in imagining Shanghai.

When I looked in my Lonely Planet guide, the AHH also advertised the rooms where Charlie Chaplin and Bertrand Russell stayed. When I called to inquire about the Einstein room, it turns out that the lady who spoke pretty good English had a special half-price rate for me--800 yuan (about US$120). Turns out, it's not tourist season; also there is mad construction happening around the AHH (as everything in Shanghai is under mass construction to pretty the place up for next year's World Expo), so it's dusty and a bit inconvenient to get to. But once inside, it is splendid.Here is the lobby from where we take the elevators. Mike didn't want to stay anywhere with fat-ass Americans--I assured him the Astor House wouldn't have anyone like that, but maybe a coupla old dusty colonials.
If you don't wish to take the elevators, the stairs are such.
This is what the elevators open up to on the third floor. Very 'Shining.'
Here are Mike and Rod in the gallery on the way to Room 304. Yup Ulysses S. Grand had stayed here too.
The odd yet endearing thing about the gallery is that it is made to look like an old English street, complete with street lamp and benches. There are some old artifacts displayed, like an underwood typewriter an old walking cane. When I told my friend Priya I was staying at the AHH, she mentioned that this was one of the British hotels that had the sign 'No Chinese and Dogs allowed.' My mother, who had grown up in Shanghai, told me of such signs hanging at the park gates in this British Concession area, but I hadn't realized that the hotels were such as well. Anyway, the Chinese staff all wear tux tails now.
So Albert Einstein first came to Shanghai by ship on November 13, 1922. The Shanghai Daily recently claimed, when a new sculpture of the scientist was revealed, that upon arriving in Shanghai, he was notified that he had won the Nobel Prize. The next day he left for Japan, but then returned a month and a half later to deliver his lecture on the Theory of Relativity. It wasn't clear which time he stayed here, but I did check in the desk drawer to see if there was an extra copy of his thesis in lieu of a bible.
Opposite of the wall where Einstein looks over the tea table and vanity is this glorious sitting area. I don't think of myself as a gal who likes baroque decor, but something about this room has huge inspiration for me--perhaps my age is showing through a sudden liking for an old world colonial aesthetic. Maybe because I immediately felt like I could hole up here for 2 weeks and just write, like Noel Coward did at the Peace Hotel down the street in 1930 when he was down with the influenza during an Asian tour and wrote Private Lives in 4 days (he plotted it for 2 weeks).
Here is the grand ballroom where the buffet breakfast is served.
It has both Chinese and Continental breakfast items and righteous coffee. I stocked up on toasted croissants and eggs over easy, since I've been pretty much eating mushroom/vegetable wontons and apples/yogurt/sesame crackers from the Lida cafeteria everyday. It's weird that my being in China has allowed me to be not repulsed by stiff colonial curlicues. I guess this is the high-brow part of a world that has become an anachronistic souvenir and has succumbed to a low-brow world (which I associate with global consumerism culture).

The hotel's fetishization of a colonial moment gives it a simultaneous lived-in historical legitimacy and an amusement park preservation. Somehow this frozen moment of British exceptionalism no longer threatens the simple American who was given a complex by Euro-superiority or the humble Chinese who were excluded from their own city. I love the thought that this building existed without media and electronics, that the luminaries who stayed here enjoyed these 'same,' shining surroundings--gosh, maybe I have been isolated in the ruburbs (rural suburbs) for a bit too long, or even more so, away from the West for too long.

This is what Einstein saw when he napped and/or formulated.
More objects to enhance my experience. The bathroom, by the way, is a room unto itself. You had enough room to do a small riverdance in it.
When I have the means, I'm booking it for a righteous fortnight.

Sweating at Shelter

2009-04-06T03:34:00.000-07:00

A coupla weeks ago, for St. Patty's day, my colleague Monica and her pal Pete threw an Irish whiskey-ladened meatfest at their pad on Jiangsu Rd. It's a very cool, renovated pad in a super Chinese neighborhood--not a foreigner but us green-whiskey-drinking revelers in sight. Monica is a bright light in my grueling teaching day....we have lunch a coupla times a week and get to debrief about life in Shanghai. Pete's a cool fella who had recently broken his hand in a barfight, when some trashed Chinese dude started hassling Monica. They're genuine peeps, that good kind of American that is Usian--they're not egomaniacs to presume that the name of 2 continents should be the name of their one country. They also, as many ex-pats like my buddy Nic do, find U.S. life boring.

I figured we'd just be grilling and drinking...but like any good Shanghai gathering, 'round 11:30pm, we were going out. To The Shelter. For DJ Zinc, a drum and bass turntablest. It was great fun to be in this former bomb shelter, walls painted black, much more low key than the other clubs I've been to, because folks actually come here for the music, not just to be seen.

Something about a sweaty room of people, jumping up and down and constantly accelerating towards a climaxing beat that opens your pores and glee. That night, I was in the mood for the organism that is the dance floor. We were in a group of about 7--4 of us Usians, a coupla French and a Brit--and we danced together in a circle, with folks moving in and out of our 'molecule,' if you will. It was crowded, but there was still room to move.

If my colleagues were not so young and spirited, I'd never choose to do this. But I'm glad once I'm there....although I forget, no matter how hardcore folks are about going to see music, there is still some meat marketing going on. I'm working up my aesthetic cardio, to the beat, and then a dude will be sauntering up and, oh yeah, we're all dancing together. But I'm not out to hook up or even make new friends in a club--I'm happy with the folks I'm with--and so dudes saunter off in about 5 minutes, my constant back, although wiggling, a somewhat clue.

At one point, I'm dancing with one of the French dudes in our group and I witness the electron phenomenon. A very lively Chinese girl with a bob and black leggings, steps in front of me and is now dancing with Frenchie, who is tall, handsome, and smells nice. She is kinetic like an electron, loving l'attention and worked up into a frenzy to the point where she starts screaming like a wild woman, in what she believes those wild western men would love from such a free and sexy-moving Chinese girl. At another point, another Chinese girl with a more angular bob, a bit more mellow, but interested in Frenchie as well, approaches with the let's-converse-in-English-on-the-dance-floor gig. She's polite, kind of looking at that first 'electron' girl askance, and wondering what my relation is as well. I've not only forgotten about the meat market of such scenario, but also the Chinese layer of free flow access and possible connection to foreigners, for conversation, for experience, for attraction. It's really quite endearing how fastidious the dancing of the Chinese girls is, how purposeful their activity, and yes, what their idea of freedom and fun is.

When me and Frenchie were getting our jackets from the coat check, we waited in line and talked about squash vs. tennis (the different wrist functions). I look to my right and two Chinese girls are agog at Frenchie, you can feel the laser attention beaming his way. Frenchie tells me he's into karate, that he's got a class in 8 hours, that he loves it. Some version of a suburban Arab dude in front of us asks what part of the U.S I'm from. How do you know I'm from the U.S., I ask. He implies that I've been shouting in his ear. We're at a club I remind, but also add that shit, those Americans are loud wherever they go. I ask where in the U.S he's from, he says he's not from the U.S. and so I ask which part he has lived in. Aha, San Francisco, of course. They look down on us Los Angelinos, yes. My jacket appears, see ya later San Francisco.

The chilly night air is welcomed after a 3-hour sweatfest. Thanks DJ Zinc. I spend the night at Monica and Pete's, and am happy to have toasted and sweated on St. Pat's.

SWANneroo

2009-04-01T17:09:00.000-07:00

Check out all of the SWAN Day activities from around the world...so far reports from Nairobi, New York, Shanghai, San Jose, Bakersfield and Miami...

SWAN Day Shanghai 2009

2009-03-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

SWAN Day Shanghai at the Downstream Garage was a blast! A great time was had from morning to night. What a great day to connect with celebrations around the world. SWAN Day truly provides a venue for generosity, for all to live a day through their better natures. I must say I was a bit anxious about the planning of the event, but both reason and process were always strengthened by the purpose of the occasion--to connect and to create.

First of all, I feel very lucky to know Martha Richards, the brain and heart behind SWAN Day. I love th epart where you can just declare a new international holiday, one that is not tied to religion or capitalism, one that celebrates women. She told me about SWAN Day one evening in New York, as inspired by WITASWAN (Women In The Audience), which is an 'informal alliance of women who have pledged themselves to help women film makers break through the Celluloid Ceiling.' Martha had basically broadened the idea of women supporting women artists, into an international realm, and to all who wish to support las artistas, even men.

Last year, for the inaugural launch of SWAN Day on March 29, 2008, I was at the Humana Festival at the Actors Theater of Louisville and Managing Director Jennifer Bielstein and Literary Manager Adrien-Alice Hansel were kind enough to provide venue and canopes for artists of the theater festival to learn from and mingle with women artists creating in Kentucky.

This year, I feel doubly lucky to have found such a cool spot in Shanghai. As you might know, in China (well anywhere in the business world, really), the best and most optimal elements are accessed through guanxiology (loosely translated as 'connectionology' or 'who you know'). And so, the awesome chain from the Global Girl Grid starts with my knowing Lucy Burns way back when from New World Theater in Amherst, Mass. When she heard I was coming to Shanghai, she introduced me to her UC colleague, the academic/choreographer Priya Srinivasan, who then knew the Downstream Garage from choreographer/dancer Nunu Kong, who was then kind enough to show me the way to the converted warehouse space. Turns out it is owned by a man who goes by King Boss, who lives in Shanghai 6 months out of the year, and provides the Downstream Garage for performances, rehearsals, meetings, all for free. The one requirement is that there should be no tickets sold, or if there are, that it is a minimal fee so that anyone can afford it.

And so SWAN Day Shanghai 2009 basks in the shine of much kindness and generosity.
Here we are en route, from bus to subway. I was met at 10 am on Saturday in front of our school--Lida Polytechnic Institute--by my new English Clinic students, about 10 of 'em, as well as my best Lida office pal Ivana Niu and also Katrin, an intern from Germany who has been doing research for the Lida Global Initiative. After a 45 minute ride on the Pink Bus, we take the Subway Line 1, for 3 stops to the Caobao station, and take Exit 4 onto Longcao Rd., and we enter towards our site at 218 Longcao Rd.
Once we arrive to the signposts, we start tagging with SWAN stickers so that our location can be better found (um...by the other 5 people who will join us).
Almost there--but all are still wondering what this SWAN thing is all about...
The front gate is swanned...
as well as a poster of Eve Ensler's ubiquitous and important piece, having just played at the Downstream Garage on March 7, the day before International Women's Day. We climb another flight of stairs to the third floor and enter into a dark theater. Soon, Xiao Zhou, the super cool caretaker of the Downstream turns on the lights. I had just visited the day before and found Xiao Zhou at the snooker table with a cig hanging from his mouth. He's got a natural serenity about him and when I asked him when the Downstream Garage closes, he replied with a smile: Never.
Today is a global day: Besides SWAN Day it's also Earth Hour, when cities around the world turn off their lights at 8:30pm for an hour to show awareness of our declining climate situation. But for this afternoon, there is light...stage light.
This is the set for the play that is running this weekend. Here Katrin and Ivana wait...
...as do our guest artist Lucy Zhou's swans, the fancy ones (in their Sunday best), made out of plastic milk cartons...
...and another more modest swan watching as Lucy sets up her other pieces, all made out of recycled materials.
Lucy Zhou immediately invigorates her audience. She was a middle school art teacher and always taught through the great Chinese virtue of thriftiness and 'fei wu li yong,' roughly translated as 'from waste make use.' After she retired in 1991, she refined her craft and kept her creativity sparked, as there are always new products in new containers with new shapes, and thus new ingenious gems to be created.
Here are flowers which she had given me when I last visited her. They are made from wire and nylon stockings...there are lilies, a tulip and a rose. A theme of hers is not only to reuse materials, but also to create beauty from discarded items. Lucy herself speaks with great vigor, with natural humor, so distinct, so affable she is, gregarious, sharp, vital. I always forget that she's 86 years old.
Lucy is a rare treasure, a creative soul who embodies living history. She escaped to Hong Kong when the Japanese overtook Shanghai, and went to middle school there, when she then saw the Japanese drop bombs on Kowloon. She could no longer study in either her home of Shanghai or Hong Kong, and so was determined to go to the interior of China, to Congqing (Chungking for you old colonialists) and finally did study art there. She eventually returned to Shanghai and taught art in middle school.
Lucy used to raise money for poor people by, for instance, making picture frames out of styrofoam trays and selling them for 3 yuan. I asked her why wouldn't people just save their own trays and make their own frames. They hadn't thought of it yet, she replied, and besides, it was to raise money for the needy. Here are some of her works along with some swanaphernalia stickers.
When Lucy heard that not everyone spoke Chinese, she started presenting by pulling out her English. We started having a little Heckle and Jeckle routine because she would start asking me how to translate something from English into Chinese (my Chinese sucks!) and I would tell her to talk in Chinese--we have a whole table of translators--but she would go back into English, which right before our ears became better and better. She was downright fluent by the time she finished. This is the kind of inspiring and heroic performance that we playwrights are always working to render (right Mamet?).
A week before SWAN Day, Lucy had called me and announced that she had done a power point presentation of all her work; then two days after that, she told me she had selected some music to go with her presentation. Turns out my computer couldn't read the music track on her power point so I played Bach's Goldberg Variations as played by Glenn Gould, which she quite liked. You can see the swans on the screen, but she has a whole catalogue of work which she was more than delighted to explain.
Watching Lucy's power point presentation/global commercial for Apple product.

Lucy told yet another great story about how her school was having difficulty after the Cultural Revolution. There was a whole generation of students who did not study, as they were either busy being Red Guards or staying away from the chaos. School was not available (the Cultural Revolution went on for about 10 years) and so there is a 'lost generation' that did not have the intense discipline and memorization training that is Chinese education, not to mention all of the anger and frustration and lack of socialization skills as their formative years were spent in anarchy.

Lucy Zhou said to the school's principal: 'give them to me, I'll teach them.' She had taught these students' parents and their older siblings and so they were willing to come to her class. Lucy showed how these gruff students behaved by herself doing a little karate kick into the air, 'bohng' she'd say simultaneously, demonstrating how they would enter and kick the door shut. She told them: 'We are not going to read books, we are going to use our hands and make things.'

She first had them draw, and said they were less talented than kindergartners (they were about 18 or so). She gave them clay and asked them to make a ball. They could do that. Then she asked them to flatten it into a pancake. They were very talented at that. She would then have them bring tree leaves to class (ones that had fallen on the ground, why pick off the perfectly good ones?) and then have the students place the leaves on the clay pancakes and use thread to trace out the shape and then fire them in a kiln and glazed. Slowly the students had something to focus their attention on, and had their confidence built by feeling productive.

One particularly delinquent student, who was a thief, exercised his ingenuity in Lucy's art class. When working with plaster, Lucy could not figure out how he could carve it to look like lace. It turns out this student had submerged the hardened plaster in water and so was able to better sculpt with precision. Lucy said that this student taught her a new technique. When the principal of the school was to visit the art class, all the students put their favorite works on display for him to see their progress. This student proudly presented his 'plaster lace.' After the principal's visit the 'plaster lace' went missing. The student was devastated. Lucy told him, 'now you know how those who you stole from felt.' She told our group that she only half-taught him, that if she had been a complete teacher, she would have asked who of the students took it, and had it given back, and thus teaching fairness. But she chose not to. She chose not to, in her mind, completely teach him.
Before completely sitting down, she read to us her own paraphrasing of a George Bernard Shaw quote: "The reason for the old people to exist is: they have a bundle of mistakes as a living example for the next generation."
Mutual swanning...
Collective swanning....SWAN Day Shanghai 2009
After Lucy Zhou's riveting presentation, we joyously snacked and then I conducted a playwriting workshop.

I read the scene that started me as a playwright. It is from Last of the Suns, which is based on my Yeh Yeh (paternal grandfather). The scene happened when I was a sleepy teenager, awoken one morning by the constant button-pushing beeps of the microwave. Turns out Yeh Yeh, who was like 90 at the time, was trying to warm his tea but could not find the start button.
Everyone brought their favorite snacks. Yup, those are cornuts in the chartreuse star, which was recently brought by a visiting friend from the U.S. CRUNCH!
After the Promptor Exercise was administered, all wrote for 30 minutes. We then had a gas reading the scenes: some love miscommunications, a few ponderings, a ride to the countryside, many secrets, all very lively readings. At 5pm we finished, applauding the generosity of the afternoon. I'm encouraging all the participants to post their scenes on the SWAN website.

Here is Emma, one of my writing students from last semester, who is not only a playwright, but also an actor and director.
So thrilled with SWAN Dan I am...
Lucy's flowers...
My new student Abigail from Guangzhou, and the ever helpful Ivana...
And Ike, sporting swanware. Ike is cool and embodies what Gail Rubin wrote--that for a truly feminist revolution to take place, the men need to be liberated as well.
We were all headed for a meal at Heji Xiaocai, one of Lucy's favorite restuarants in Xujiahui, but she had to get going. Here, while I'm calling a taxi to accompany her home, all are still ignited by Lucy's presence.
How better to finish off SWAN Day than with an awesome Chinese meal...
Jellyfish, tender beef and mushrooms, pea shoots, chicken and crispy peppers, seafood soup, sauteed baby bok choy, spicy tofu, bamboo tube rice, specialty steamed chicken, chili pepper fish (many of us like it hot!) and the Shanghai dessert called 'wine nanny.' And many ice cold Harbin beers.
The place was crowded, to the point where we ordered the 15 dishes first, so that soon after we sat, our food came. Thing about China and food, it can handle masses of people pretty efficiently. Thing about SWAN Day Shanghai, it was modest in number but felt inspiringly massive.

I didn't see any purposeful lights out on our way home, though the way to the suburbs is pretty dark since street lights are not necessarily provided. The whole bus ride home, Sarah, holding the flowers, was conducting a 'sa-jiao off' roughly translated as a 'sweet-talk off'--whoever sweet talks me the best-- because everyone wanted to take Lucy's flowers home. On the left there is Alina, who was reluctant but did finally almost pull my arm off with her particular kind of sa-jiao. The whole back of the bus was entertained by this impromptu competition, all the gals showing me their best charm. Even Ike, was deemed a sa-jiao contestant in light of this day of equality, though he only had to use his smiling eyes. I laughed with glee all the way home.

I look forward to SWAN Day 2010...wherever I may be in this great world.

SWAN Prompt

2009-03-28T14:56:00.000-07:00

No matter how many playwriting workshops I facilitate, I just never get over the thrill of a group of writers sitting around a table, pen on paper, scribbling a soulful whisper onto the page. The second part of the SWAN Day afternoon saw scenes being written from the Promptor exercise.

There were seven prompts:

1. a place

2. an action

3. anything to do with a swan

4. a secret

5. a Chinese phrase (or an English phrase if you are writing in Chinese)

6. the first line of dialogue

7. the last line of dialogue

Each person chooses a prompt which is not their own; these random elements are to prompt and guide the scene to be written.

The participants will post their scenes in the SWAN Day reports. Here, I post my SWAN scene (after basking in artist Lucy Zhou's awesome teaching glow):

A: Who are you?

B: School

A: What are you drinking?

B: The students

A: How can you drink the students?

B: They are like water...with no form...flowing anywhere...if not contained.

(B drinks.)

A: Hey

B: gurgle

A: Hey hey!

B: gurgle gurgle

A: HEY HEY HEY!

B: gurgle gurgle gulp

A: I'm, I'm a--

B: gurgle

A: Stop drinking me!

B: AHHH! (wipes mouth) Get hold of yourself, then.

(A flaps wings like a swan--white feathers flutter everywhere.)

B: I'm still thirsty.

A: Don't drink me. I must save myself...for myself.

(B accidentally catches a feather in its thirsty mouth, starts to feel uncomfortable.)

A: I must, I...so you know who I am, I must--

B: cough cough

A: I must--

B: cough cough cough

A: I must tell you something.

B: COUGH COUGH COUGH!

A: Are you OK?

B: (COUGH) No! (COUGH.)

(A slaps B's back. School coughs out a white feather).

B: (ahem, ahem, kuh, kuh)

A: Better?

B: Sorry. You were saying (pause). You were going to tell me something.

A: (Chinese) Wo bao ta (I hold her).

B: Huh?

A: I kiss her, too.

B: Ah?

A: And that is why I am like water.

B: That is why when I drink you, I cough. You are not for me to drink.

A: That is correct. You are school. You are dry. You should not suck out the liquid, the blood, the love out of the students.

B: They leak out their own treasures.

A: I hold mine.

B: They know not what to keep.

A: And so you should teach them, and not just drink them.

B: To be or not to be. That is a question.

Signpost Map to SWAN Day Shanghai

2009-03-20T20:48:00.002-07:00

Here is the front gate of the Downstream Garage/Performance Space where SWAN Day Shanghai will take place. It's a little tricky getting here, so I thought I'd lead you through a signpost map to get to this yellow gate that says 'xia he mi cong.' It's a warehouse district so if you ask for 'xia he mi cong' people can point you to it as well.
You take Subway Line No. 1 to Caobao Rd. Station and come out of Exit #4 towards Longcao Rd. Caobao becomes Longcao Rd. Here is 218 Longcao Rd, a hospital, where you will enter to find the Downstream. Once you see this, turn right.
This is the unseeable sign that gives you the actual address of the Downstream...200 Longcao Rd., but never mind. (Anti-sign posted).
After turning right at the hospital at 218 Longcao, walk straight until you see this FOCUS sign and turn right after it (you're not going into Focus Base, but onto the road after it).
There you will see the neutralish 'mecooon' sign that has a subtle arrow pointing you leftward. Go left!
And follow this...
You will see this building...it means you are very close. Look to your right and you should see the Yellow Metal Gate...'xia he mi cong'...Downstream...
Enter here...
Go up to the third floor. This is Xiao Zhou...he is the caretaker of the Downstream.

You will enter, pass a snooker table and come upon the blackbox space where we will hold SWAN Day Shanghai.

SWAN Day 2009

2009-03-14T03:33:00.000-07:00

SWAN Day is being celebrated all over the world in two weeks on Saturday March 29, 2009. It is an international holiday to fete and support women artists through a multitude of events including, readings, performances, panels, workshops, fundraisers, anything, really, that the host dreams up. Last year, for the inaugural SWAN Day, there were 160 events/house parties in 11 countries. The SWAN site helps you to plan, post, advertise and manage your event, and also check out events happening in your city, country and the rest of the world.

The swans you see above were made by Lucy Zhou Cuan Qing, an artist who makes such sculptures out of disposed materials, anything from plastic bleach containers to nylon stockings to styrofoamy apple protectors. She will be one of 6 artists SWAN Day Shanghai, that I'm hosting from 13:00-17:00 at the Downstream Performance Space in the Xuhui district. After the artists talk about their work, I will facilitate a writing workshop for both Chinese and English writers. And then us gaggle of gals will swan our way into the Shanghai night and continue celebrating.

Check out the International SWAN Day events, happening on 5 continents, from Argentina to Berlin, from Quebec to Kenya. Also, for you Usians, you can see where the U.S. SWAN Day celebrations are happening in your city--participate or host an event of your own. Think of all the women artists you love, whose work you support, and set aside March 28 to gather, toast, fete, and enjoy.

I mean really, how often do you get a holiday where the only gift you have to give is good feeling and appreciation, and where a woman can be seen beyond being a mother, love object, or the cooker for the feast? Good reason to celebrate. Women artists are so neglected and pushed into the margins that one day of good international vibration will be an uplifting miracle and something to do besides mope about the economy.

And now that more people have been pushed into the margins, what is there to lose in appreciating the strength and resilience of women who, despite all the pressures of the patriarchy, listen, follow and create their own voice? Now that the good ole boys have run the machinery into the ground, one day to listen to the gals express may yield valuable content, at least nurse back a trust for truth and alternate ideas.

Happy Swan Day!

March Forth: Usian

2009-03-04T00:20:00.000-08:00

The date March 4th has become a personal holiday for me, a day devoted to progress, to progression.

I'd been wondering what moment would bring in the 21st century.

I had been thinking movement-wise, through the arts, what would be that cultural moment that would define the genuine beginning of our century, would launch the beginning of this millennium. The 50's ended when Kennedy was shot. The 60's started with the Vietnam war. The 70's with disco. The 80's with shoulder pads and greed. 9/11 shocked us into the 21st century, but Obama, no matter which side you're on, has rung us in.

That strange effect of reading Zinn's People's History of the United States, when the result of the presidential election somehow, somehow made the words on the page resonate differently, track forward, literally making history history and not still a present reality.

I've also been wondering how the United States can solely claim the name of two continents as its own national adjective: American.

Being that the 21st century has a whole new set of complexities of its own, not quite able to be articulated with 20th century worlds, out times allow the chance to afford new labels.

Having taken the Implicit Association Test and seeing how loaded yet limited the term American can mean (it can do the dirty work of defining lots of super-mega-mentality dynamics mixed in with self, freedom, will and cash), I 'd like to try out a new word:

Usian

It takes a while to get used to anything new. Words need to be used to gather meaning, just like a language needs to be spoken to develop a personality.

My hope is that this is an alternate adjective for the United States, one that does not hog the name of two continents and starts there, onto a new trajectory of thought as to what it is to be usian.

One Child Right Upfront

2009-03-01T21:56:00.000-08:00

I just couldn't resist: seeing this kid making his way down the sidewalk with his mother's shopping bag, wanting to carry it for her. Why wouldn't he? He's number one, the only one she will be mother to. Out of pragmatism, the Chinese adopted the one-child policy in 1979, to curb the population explosion. The west would argue that it is a violation of rights, limiting how many children a citizen can decide to have. But once you are dizzy from the volume of people that inhabit a city like Shanghai, it is mindboggling to imagine what it would be like if all Chinese could choose how many kids they wanted to have.
It is no wonder the 'octomom' story of Nadya Suleman, having delivered 8 babies in one egg-planting pregnancy and now a single mother of 14 children all iwwackily conceived, a human puppy pile if you will, was not widely reported here in China. When I told my students, they were in a way more astonished, more uncomprehending than the Zhuhaiyang Virgina Tech guillotiner story. (Yes, I am their tabloid.)
The Chinese are accepting of their one child fate--it really is difficult enough with one, financially and psychically, just as it has come to be everywhere else in the world. Every kid I see on the subway, the bus, looks secure and feels super-loved. Granted this is my projection, having seen so many a kid surrounded by parents and grandparents, particularly at the bundled up infant and toddler stage, everyone aglow, strangers happily interacting. It takes a mega-village...
There's lots of distractions, yes lots of this shocking pink for the girls, whole sections of malls just for kids, a wonderland of goods and shopping distinctly for the kids.
A friend of mine, Chen, who is an only child having lived in China til she was 6 and then grown up in Texas, told me that her only-child cousins don't seem as down to earth, as natural as her sibling'd aunts and uncles. There must be the bubble effect of the emperor, one in each household, where social skills are eclipsed or excused when you are the apple of so many people's eyes. But, as always, it depends on the parent's teaching, and there are as many kinds of kids as there are parents. Also, with all of the modernizing, (busy schedules, the new materialism) stuff can replace love when everyone is so busy.

As much love and adoration that are poured onto the single kids, the same amount of pressure and expectation is demanded in return. The guarantor of the parent's legacy and keeper of their lives in old age. Schoolwise, I hear that kids are so loaded with books at such a young age that they can't even lift their own backpacks. No need--lots of adult hands can carry it as they accompany their singular hope, their one investment to school.
The society and family are so watchful and regarding of the future generation that there is, for example, no law for legal drinking age. Not 21 or nor 18, none (yet).
There are still those families in the countryside that have more than one, and still privilege the son over the daughter, as they uphold feudalistic ideas. And there are those rich enough to live abroad, if they certainly insist on more than one (they can afford it too.)
But all in all, I see well-mannered kids. Schools play a huge part of disciplining students. The downside is that kids aren't given the freedom to play--studying is their first priority, coming from teachers and parents alike. Where play is not privileged, creativity and new ideas are spurned as well. (But without discipline, no matter how original you are, the ideas cannot fruit).
And in a society where adults are adults and are not constantly chasing youth, dreams or a second career, the kids understand how important they are for the future of their country.
They are taught uniformly, by rote, through obedience, and sheltered from information and works that they government deems inappropriate or too burdensome for them to hear, to know. In this was, the government is the third parent, the fifth grandparent.

And so the social molecule shifts-- The nuclear family is China is 3. Future generations have no aunts or uncles or cousins--not bio ones at least. In that sense, family also shifts in that closer more bonded friendships, of choice, instead of assignment, can flourish where the sibling slots, where uncle and auntie spaces are not genetically determined. The pragmatism of the Chinese character is reflected in policy and so this social tinkering, like that of any scientific willfullness shifts the natural course of the human species into extraordinary dimensions.
Any way you slice it, marching first, marching forward, never alone.

Taking the Implicit Association Test

2009-02-26T21:54:00.000-08:00

Way back before the budget, the stimulus, initiation of universal health care, the withdrawal of troops, the commitment to environment, the inauguration, and the election of Barack Obama, like four months ago, Nicholas Kristof provided a link in his NY Times column concerning the Implicit Association Test. At that time, Obama being black was still a huge concern on everyone's mind, and so there was this nifty Harvard-generated test to see if a conscious-subconscious divergence kept you from speaking your (possibly racist) mind. It basically tests how you perceive social images (race, gender, sexuality) and the labels you associate with them.

Take your pick of IATs: Presidents, skin tone, sexuality, 2008 Presidental election, weapons (ability to recognize white and black faces, and images of weapons or harmless objects), disability, religion (recognizing different religious symbols, especially Judaism), Native American, race (black-white), Arab-Muslim, age (young-old), Asian American, Gender-Science (link between females and liberal arts and males and science), Gender-Career(family-females, career-males), and weight (preference for thin people to fat).
A test to prove that you are visually susceptible to stereotypes, in that you see images and press a key (i.e. left hand for black, right hand for white) without taking too much time to think, trying to make as few mistakes as possible (or the test is 'uninterpretable'). So with enough practice and a retooling of your brain, you can will yourself into the non-racist, non-sexist, non-ageist, non-weightist, non-hatist score. Lots of hand-eye coordination effort is required (like a video game?), and really having to repel the feeling that the word 'angry' seems to always precede the image of a black man, and the word 'happy' seeming to preced a white person. This may be an implicit reading into the test, but it begs to wonder are we so conditioned by the media that these automatic knee jerk interpretations abound, or is the test, by dint of taking it, making one (me) paranoid?

Full disclosure: I cheated on the Asian-American test. When given sketches of folk that were 'Asian' or 'hybrid Asian' I would train, yes train myself to press the American key. When the sketch (and does sketch allow more ambiguity than photo?) of a Caucasion or non-Asian would flash up, I would think of them as European and press the 'Foreign' key. There were 4 parts to the test--another section would flash Washington monuments or American iconography, like the HOLLYWOOD sign or the Golden Gate Bridge along with foreign monuments such as the Eiffel Tower, Stonehenge or the Sydney Opera House to determine whether it was American or foreign. Then there was mixture of face and monument together to determine whether it was European American/foreign or Asian American/American. Finally, the faces and places would all appear and the left key would be Asian American/foreign and the right key European American/American.

That was the first time I took it, before the Obamasphere started to restore Bushy America. And my result was that I greatly associated Asian American with American and European American with foreign. Yeah! I fixed it right.

Even fuller disclosure: upon refreshing my mind for this blog entry, I took the test again, and seriously, I started getting confused by parts three and four--the St. Louis Arc I froze up on (couldn't decide if it was foreign or American), and I kept making mistakes, more mistakes during the Asian American/foreign combo (part 4) than during the European American/foreign combo (part 3). Alas my score this time, to 'remind' me of the test, was that I slightly associate European Americans with being American more than Asian Americans being American. Did my explicit and conscious test-taking yield errors and paralysis that allowed my implicit associations to take over? Well, a new part of the result that I didn't get previously, when I greatly associated Asian Americans with American was this: There were too many errors to determine a result.

Alas, why the folly? Why does such test exist? To make us aware of how susceptible our perceptions are to a biased media? Perhaps. But Obama himself is himself transcending all of this assignment--I have never seen him as an angry black man filled with hate and blaming the system. Weirdly, I see him as kind of stoic, like the East Asians are usually assigned, instinctually embracing a reality-gripping outlook, perhaps too gloomy for most Americans, who want more fuzzy Reagan optimism from their leader during a time of crisis. (Isn't the fuzzy what allowed bad decision-making?)

But most importantly, Obama makes these types of tests seem obsolete--his inhabiting the office is implicitly shattering the stereotype every minute. And because he is free from the usual racial, even presidential associations, he can then act freely and boldly, for instance quickly overturning all of the morally conservative Bushoise legislation (stem cell, abortion rights) and addressing the urgent issues swiftly and explicitly to set a new course for the nation.

Maybe it is just a new level of political legerdemain--we can only judge with time--but its heartening to know that this president knows the performance the citizenry needs to gain his trust and feel like the government is thinking about them. I certainly hope he does as he means to, and continues to model a new kind of American who can ambitiously dream up the solutions, but stay clear-eyed enough to recognize the props and illusions which stand in for answers without addressing the realities.

As for the Implicit Association Test, have a go here. See if your conscious-unconscious divergence may reveal whether you 'know your mind' well enough to speak it.

Ah-Bu, a short play

2009-02-22T18:42:00.000-08:00

A road.

tap tap tap tap tap tap tap

AH-BU is typing on a keyboard. On the side of a road. There is no monitor, no terminal connected to the keyboard. He is just typing.

A bike rides by him, ding ding ding.

Ah-Bu continues to type.

A motorbike putters by, beep beep.

Ah-Bu tap tap tap tap taps.

A three-wheeler passes, emitting lotsa exhaust.

Tap tap cough cough tap tap tap.

A car whizzes by, splashes.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

A bus lumbers by, intensely honking as if Ah-bu were in great danger. He isn't. It obnoxiously continues on.

Ah-Bu stops for a moment, thinks, finds the word and then tap tap tap tap tap tap taps.

Two girls, MAY and JUNE, slowly stroll by.

May: What will I do? I love one...

June: AND you love the other.

May: It's not true.

June: Yes, it certainly is.

May: No, it certainly isn't.

June: May--

May: I never told you, June.

June: But I can tell, May.

May: I've done nothing different.

(tap tap tap tap tap tap tap)

June: O! (in Chinese) What kind of shoe horn face is this?

(tap tap tap.

Ah-Bu stops.

He stands.

He bows to the girls.

June laughs at him.

He sits back down.

tap tap tap.)

June: What a moron!

May: June, be nice.

June: Look at him, typing idiotically, just sitting there, mindlessly, like a retard. What a waste of a life.

May: He seems to be quite concentrated on his task.

June: What task? He's sitting, on the side of the road, typing on a keyboard, not even connected to anything, not a monitor, not a terminal...does he expect his words to just show up somewhere? Just, just print out on some random page, all the thoughts he's so uselessly concentrated on, all the fruits of his 'task' just...just...appear?

May: He's free.

June: You know what the definition of insane is? It's repeating the same action over and over again, expecting different results.

May: Well maybe he doesn't expect any different results.

June: You must be insane to even empathize.

May: It's not always what you think.

June: May, I know you like the back of my hand--I know you even better than I know myself!

May: Well that isn't exactly saying much.

June: I've been watching you, listening to you, about the one you love and the other one, too.

May: You've been listening, but do you hear? There is no other one.

June: I know there is.

May: How can you be so sure?

June: I...

May: You what?

June: You...

May: I what?

June: You left your e-mail message open...

May: And you...

June: You left it open!

May: You read it?

June: You left it open for all the world to see.

May: And so...

June: Ah-Bu

May: What about him?

(Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.)

June: He doesn't hold back.

(Tap tap tap.)

May: OK, June.

June: There is another.

May: There is.

June: C'mon, let's walk...

(Tap tap tap...tap tap tap),

June: ...get away from this moron.

(May does not move.)

June: Let's go!

May: No.

June: Well I don't want to stay here.

May: You go ahead, then.

June: What is wrong with you May?

May: It's Ah-Bu.

(Ah-Bu stops typing.

Ah-Bu puts the keyboard aside.

Ah-But stands and bows to May.)

May: We married.

Lights out.

New Path to Writing

2009-02-19T18:05:00.000-08:00

I don't teach Nursing English 8x a week anymore to first year Lida students who have the emotionality of high school students and low motivation to learn English. Now I have 6-8 IELTS students (like the TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language) and my main task is get them to critically think and express and argue their opinion for the writing portion of the test. When they've been taught all of their life through rote memory and being obedient. Interesting. They can accumulate all the vocabulary and grammar structures in the language--it's like working out and getting big muscles--but how to use the language and when? How to persuade and convince? How to work out the pros and cons of a smoking ban, lowering the legal age to 15, computers as teachers, mass advertising, or nature vs. nature?

So I subscribe to that old adage (that I just madeup) when making a door, sometimes you have to stop fidgeting with the knob and instead install the hinges. And so last night, I had a playwriting workshop, where I administered the Promptor Exercise and had them each write a scene off of random prompts.

Et voila!

Amazing what happens to language when you connect emotion and situation to it. I had been telling the students that if they see an IELTS writing question, and have no idea, to start thinking about how the question applies to Chinese society, to their own experience. Think about it in your Chinese mind (English is just mechanics to a goal right now) and then work it out in English. There is such thing as the language you develop your intellect in, but then critical thinking assumes a freedom of thought and the willingness or entitlement to speak it into the world.

So, each of the six students were given six little pieces of paper (6 in Chinese, I remind, sounds the same as 'flow' but this doesn't and does apply). On each piece of paper, one prompt is written:

1: an action

2: a place

3: a secret

4: the first line of dialogue

5: the last line of dialogue

6: a statement in Chinese

I then go around with all of the #1 prompts, and each writer picks one (not their own), and then the same with the #2 prompts, and so on. So each writer has 6 elements that will be incorporated into their scene, all randomly selected, all disparate, which at first seems impossible and hilarious, but then they each write with a passion, a heart, a humor, that I have never seen in their essay writing.

Three were about lovers. Sandy's was 2 office mates walking in the park, when one tells the other that he is in love with someone in their office. The girl nervously asks who. It is her. They continue to walk.

Another saw a triangle. Fran's character A was in love with L (Lady) but L has boyfriend, B. L is telling A that she saw her boyfriend naked and kissing another woman in his apartment. It turns out that B was awoken by the doorbell, and when he answered the door, this mystery woman just started kissing him and he had to throw her off. A (and I) didn't believe the story, which works into Fran's plan as A want L to break up with B. I told her then A needs to be even more skeptical of B's story and really pile on the cheating angle so that she does break up with B and become free for A's wish to come true.

The last saw two lovers at a hospital. Steven writes of an incomplete love that is declared too late--on the man's deathbed, he proposes, she accepts, he passes.

I have administered this Promptor Exercises in many a writing class, using the usual action, place, secret, first and last line. But this is the first time I used a Chinese phrase (cuz usually the students are English speaking) and this gave a more rooted flavor to the characters. I in my chicken scratch Chinese came up with an 'I don't know' (bu zhi dao) and even managed to write the last word without its two dashes on top.

The second three had distinct theatricality. The most hilarious and wacky was about a man who steals 'goods' from a shop and is chased by the shopkeeper until he loses her in the subway. There, his girlfriend is angry and has been waiting for an hour, until he tells her he wanted to get her Valentines and birthday gifts. He produces the bag of 'goods' and she is pleased but asks, 'How can you buy so many goods when we cannot even afford to buy a meal.' He tells her he has been collecting coins by singing and dancing in the subway. He begins to sing and dance when the shopkeeper approaches and says: 'Stop singing! I am going to kill you!' All is revealed, but after the shopkeeper finds out why he stole the goods, she lets them have it for free. I told Laura (or shall I say O. Laura) that she should have him sing one last song to the shopkeeper to sway her, and be more specific about the goods.

Serena had natural theatricality. An old woman sits in a park staring at an old man who is approaching from afar, staggering on a cane. He gets closer and closer until finally she says his name. Tears roll down their faces (she distinctly said she did not want them to say anything, and she had stage directions describing the approach that reflected their emotional states). Finally the old woman comes near him and says his name. He collapses. He tells her he has always loved her. He passes. Serena had also imagined 4 small episodes from the time they were small and the circumstances that had taken them away from each other. I told her in theater, you could have the slow approach of the old man and meanwhile, the small scenettes played out between them, like the memory of the old woman has she is looking afar. Theater can allow two times to happen simultaneously on the stage.

Finally, Emma, who has already written a play and had it performed, writes the most innovative scene. A beggar is declaring love in a monologue. It turns out that he has a fake left foot. It turns out that his love is a half-loaf of bread. When the beggar throws the loaf up into the air, it does not come back down and the scene is then played out with God, a voice from above. The last line is uttered by God in Chinese, about he who eventually gets his way. The bread is thrown back down.

All were a-bubbling and enjoying each other's scenes. In today's class, I will read what their prompts gave me in a scene about Ah-Bu, typing on a keyboard on the side of a road.

Virginia Tech: Zhu Haiyang

2009-02-15T17:29:00.000-08:00

Virginia Tech again?

If we glom all Asians under one label, as a shallow democracy might, then we would say that the 'Korean-born' Seung Hui Cho and the Chinese graduate student Zhu Haiyang, who beheaded a fellow Chinese graduate student at the campus Au Bon Pain with a kitchen knife, had both suffered isolation and a kind of anti-socialism in Blaksburg Virginia.

But these are separate and distinct incidents. The first got huge media attention because of its supreme violence involving the death of Americans, many Americans, 33 Americans, including the killer himself, who, despite being 'Korean-born,' was raised in America. It was impersonal as pushing a button, 33 times, on a video game, it was random in its targeting, it was deftly planned out, required the nerves of superhuman steel, and terrified us all in its implications of a parallel universe that could be so deeply steeped in anger and imbalance that it could surface into a horrifying reality.

The second has barely gotten any attention, aside from its initial report of an act so morbid one can barely get the image out of one's mind, of the police showing up at the cafe (The Pain, as some Brookline-ites call it) with Zhu Haiyang holding the head of Yang Xin in his hand with 7 people in the vicinity having barely noticed because it all went down so quietly. The reports say that Zhu had become distraught over losing money in the stock market, with the world economy flailing--so much so that on a Chinese blog (this I read from the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong) he wrote that he wanted to kill someone or kill himself.

I realize the pressure the Chinese foreign students have, in being China's future hope. On top of this, a country whose media is censored, only to report positive things about China, to keep its citizens naive and from worry, and therefore unprepared. And then, to be the only child, the only son, who the parents go into debt for, to go abroad, to go get a PhD., to return to the motherland with new knowledge, where failure is not an option. Six percent of the workers in China have higher education degrees, and now with the loss of jobs, not only in the U.S., but China too, the educated elite are unable to cash in on guaranteed employment.

And Yang Xin, only arrived to the U.S. this past January 8. It is natural to gravitate towards your own, especially in a foreign country. Zhu Haiyang was Yang Xin's student mentor. He was getting a PhD. in agricultural economics; she was getting a degree in accounting. He is from Ningpo, she is from Beijing. It seems he showed her around, really took her under his arm. A very appealing girl with a bob haircut, she was reported to be meek, and he in great control. These privileged only children have everything done for them at home. If Zhu Haiyang was already feeling powerless from the economic front, what better way to feel more valuable than to show a new compatriot the ropes.

And in the week of China's happiest time, the Chinese New Year.

With limited information, the speculation for such an act is constantly disturbing. Not only a kitchen knife, but an assortment of knives he had in his bag at the cafe. Was he prepared for rejection? A knife is a crime of passion, usually, or of convenience? It's not like it's hard to get a gun permit, but Zhu Haiyang was super money-conscious, not even paying for heat in his apartment, rather gathering piles of wood in the living room to keep the fire going (agricultural economics?). In a universally testosterized world, loss of money is castration. A pretty woman on a man's arm may restore the humiliation, comfort through the pain, stroke the only son's inflated/deflating ego...unless the pretty woman adds to it. Was it she that insisted on a public meeting place, so that the awkwardness would be easier to repel, so that strangers might be allies, or at least witnesses for a new girl alone in a new world with a svengali force desperate for connection?

There was no argument, no raised voices. How silent the Asian peoples tend to be. They are so subtextual. There is no announcement. There is just action. Love is not frilly words. Or if it is and not received, then the cast off must act, powerfully act. It's not like Zhu Haiyang might have other female prospects. When you're in a homogenous majority as humongous as the Chinese, it's difficult to picture the U.S. as majority white; and in the culture scheme, the Asian male does not have the most desirable PR, except for maybe kung fu and computer wizardry. On the romantic front, western tastes don't play up Asian masculinity, perhaps different aesthetical preference may account for this. Even so a pragmatic Chinese male may be immune or even perhaps confused by the kind cruelty of the south's duplicitous charm. Or the disaffected male whose worth is tied into the economy has no time, mood and patience for seduction. Imagine being the king of your world and then thwarted from your throne, not even from American women, but from one of your own. Facebook showed him dutifully stand next to Washington DC and New York monuments. What did Zhu Haiyang not get prepared for about the U.S?

And so, the unacceptable glomming of 'Asian American' helps capitalism's marketing and forewarning labels. But we have no idea how minds work underneath. We have no means of integrating that which is not acting in the American way. Especially now, as the collective esteem is at a wobbly low. How we 'include' Asian perspective into the American culture might deserve more sophisticated attention, not just because democracy defines this inclusion, but because these perspectives are vital to how we understand the world in the 21st century. The grey area of contradiction does not sit happy with a consumer who wants to feel empowered with definite knowledge and the high-hand of confidence in the American Way, but by gosh, Obama has triggered the transition. Power has a way of being stubborn, and Superpower, super stubborn. It's not a battle of entitlement anymore--it's how are we gonna survive the complexities of our time and evolve anachronistic attitudes into a deep democracy that puts ego aside and really pluribuses the unum.

Strangely, both China and the U.S. are similarly isolated in its culture and geography, and so have a warped sense of superiority. And both have the violent streak of capital punishment in its accepted way of life.

How much longer can we generalize about almond-eyed people, even if the Korean and the Chinese and the Cambodian and the Japanese and the Thai and the Indian and the Hmong and the Vietnamese and the Filipino and the SriLankan and the Pakistan and the Burmese and the Nepalese and the Indonesian, and the Singaporean and the, and the, are as different from each other as the U.S.? How much longer the performance and hope of normalcy, smile nicely at them and not wonder beyond their food and bear their whining historical injustices (which the U.S. usually arbitrarily provokes)? Can we really continue so much complexity under the one label of Asian American, blank hyphen American? How much more will we be suddenly shocked by such brutal, morbid acts--it came out of nowhere, they all kept to themselves, they were so nice, they were kind of acting strange, even if we saw it coming, what could we do?

That may be key. What we could do. When I was having cultural schizophrenia in college, so alienated by what was expected from the Chinese side and the freedom and pursuit of self-knowledge the west encouraged, I went to see a counselor at UCLA, my undergrad hubbub. Granted this was in the 80's, last century, when multi-culti culturalism was invented. Just needed someone to say Asian values and Western values tend to be contradictory, that immigrant parents who have been displaced from their own countries have a phenomenally huge need for child's success, to try and understand their side, the other side, maybe find a way to communicate, something to stop the bifurcation. The nice man said 'just study harder.' Thanks. Yeah. Thanks.

And the performance of normalcy continues, until, for some, the last gasket pops...

One of my critical writing students told me that the Chinese bloggers have been saying that it was Yang Xin's fault. The girl's fault. Her fault that she got beheaded. Her fault that she made him so angry. Which is consistent with one kind of Chinese male (or universal patriarchal) mentality who thinks that Nicole Simpson got what she deserved, shamelessly parading around naked in front of windows with a younger man.

Midpoint

2009-02-10T17:03:00.000-08:00

"Oh lord, here I find myself

neither with the resolve and strength of the beginning nor with the renewal of strength that comes from a sight of the end--here I am, in short, in the middle."

--Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife

Five months past, 5 months more.

There's a saying in Chinese: 'You're saying it like you're singing it.'

That's how I came to China, singing:

"I'm gonna have a looksee...

funner than a book, see

what is going on."

Well I've looked. I've seen. A little bit. Of a lot.

I inadvertently jumped on the 'China's Hot' bandwagon, not having any employment in the U.S., or any apartment, no prospects for the year. Even when sniffing out Community College jobs because life as a playwright was unsteady, I was told 'Just because you have an MFA in playwriting doesn't mean that you can teach English at the Community College level.' Snap. The Asian and Women slots of the theater season found no space for me. The U.S. just did not have anything going on for me. And then, through a chain of fateful events, Shanghai Lida Polytechnic Institute offered me a job, with housing, salary and no bills and I had a year free. Game. Set. Match.

Now, let's just say, I'm singing it like I'm saying it.

There's a reason why conquerors who had their plans for converting China, in the end became themselves converted by China. The sheer force, the mass of numbers, the longevity (superiority?) of culture, the resilience, the endurance, the thriving survival instinct. And the power of shame and groupthink. Now with the Communist past of intensive criticism, self-deprecation, starvation for materialism and the power to disseminate and distract through the internet, China is full on super Chinese. No veneer of westernization can hide its core nature. The faint-hearted, the whiners, the precious need not apply to live in China. If you ain't into China, get out.

Of course the unifying element--as always in the world now--as always has been--money. Yes that dialect. Marvelous.

I did have physical culture shock coming back from Hong Kong. I literally shriveled up and got sick. The air and haze. The smell and diz. The hackspitting. The sour faces. The crowds. The disorientation. The slow wait for taxi. The exhaust. The unclean chicken. I did not have my game face up, and I contracted. Five more months, I thought...how am I going to make it through?

Being here has made me appreciate the freedoms of the U.S. The psychic comfort of being allowed who you want to be (I'm not talking about societal, parental, religious comfort) especially in the category of self-determination. The confines here are much stricter, what you can and can't do. Not for foreigners, of course. But looking like the majority, it's hard to distinguish, to be distinguished from, so you feel the suction towards groupthink. I'm immune to a lot of it because my Chinese skills are low and because I am not a typical woman here. But after a while, you do miss interaction with originality, creativity, just the width that the open western mind can and will allow.

What I don't miss about the U.S.? Punchlines--the ability to frame everything into a joke. I know it is not the U.S. that I left at the beginning of September, and the downturn is probably having a sobering (or debauching) effect on the culture. I'm glad that Obama is an adult and can model a serious tone for a serious time without having to appear to be a dictator (yet). A break from the laugh track to get the head screwed back on has been a relief. The Chinese tend to have a more naive comic palate--they aren't jaded and they are kept like children about information about their government (all news about China is positive, all news about the world is negative ). Consequently, pop culture feels constantly like the 1980's, as does the fashion, but I'm not here to engage in trend, ahem.

Which leads to--what am I doing here?

I really did think, with all the talk of modernization and Shanghai and China on the rise, that the country was gonna be more cosmopolitan, more orderly, more thought through, like Hong Kong, or like the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. Whoa. That's still a long ways away. The U.S. can't even quite achieve what Hong Kong is...well some parts can...could.

I'm getting my head to a place--a clear place, a new place, an original place--to more astutely experience and notate the beginning of this 21st century. To provide my own media into understanding this moment. There's lots, lots and lots. As much media, opinions, talkingheads, bloggingwogs, punchlines, scandal, crisis, tragedy, history as there are skin cells in China. And despite all of the volume, it, too, all seems to feel the same. A groupthink by dint of information delivery system. I came here the first months, grooving on Shanghai like a tourist, impressed by the food like an American, digging the constant contradiction and comparison with the U.S., enduring the more bureaucratic and third-world aspects like any optimistic American super-trooper, appreciative of the time and space to write, mostly through blogging.

And now I sit in my ace apartment in the boonies of Shanghai, midpoint in my stay in China, realizing: it's kind of dire wherever you are in the world.

So--new game plan.

Do not add misery into the world.

In fact, now is the time to delight.

Last of Hong Kong

2009-02-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

Through the trees...

one last hike...
up towards Victoria Peak.
Was supposed to go up Mount Austin Rd., but only found Plantation Rd.
o, a residential road.
Through more trees...
past some monikers etched...from all over...
even the graffiti is cosmopolitan.
My water bottle has found its brethren.
Here is the mall that was at the end of my and Su's hike. It was here I found Mount Austin...
and hiked up 30 more minutes to Victoria Peak
Alas...
and with the palms...
...and then back down, where the Brits hid as the Japanese were taking the island in 1941. From the end of the walk down Hattan Rd., you hit Kotewall, and soon Robinson Rd, which brings you to the Mid-Level Escalators. Another 15 minutes down the stairs and you're at the IFC.
Last trip towards the IFC--Sundays are when the maids are off, and the IFC and thereabouts is where the Filipino maids hang, chat, snack, play cards, kick off their shoes, relax.
The Oval Atrium of the IFC, where a live Chinese orchestra plays as prosperity-inspiring goldfish dwell...
gurgle...
hang...
Connecting corridors, from the IFC toward Exchange Square...
Britular vehicles (they drive left as well in HK)
Towards Landmark mall, more maids.
Off the corridors...
Granted, dear reader, my view of Hong Kong has been as if I just showed Beverly Hills as Los Angeles, or 5th Ave. as New York, except nature and urbanity is so closely and densely situated...
...but indulge me as I experience the privilege of my last bits of efficient and civil living.
Dolphins swim at the Landmark...so underwater, it all.
And now I wait at the Shenzhen airport...
A different feeling...
as I walk through the airport corridors...
...and wait to return to China proper.

Efficiency is a Privilege

2009-02-06T23:06:00.000-08:00

A vacation in Hong Kong indeed. Where I could experience convenience and efficiency. I realize that patience is a huge Chinese virtue, and infinitely more required on the mainland than in Hong Kong (which is Chinese now, remember). But the mix of Chinese and European cosmopolitanism I kept gorging on, just taking the rides, walking the streets. Something about the feeling that a governing body thought through what might be the most convenient way for the traveler to move.

Pictured above is the Airport Express, which is at the bottom level of the IFC (International Finance Center) in Central Hong Kong. The IFC is two office towers and also a huge luxury mall. The Airport Express gets you to the airport in 30 minutes and leaves every 12 minutes. You can check in your bags before you board this train, so you need not carry anything. It is so organized that you need only arrive to your gate 30 minutes in advance. If you happen to take a taxi to the Airport Express, the taxi door automatically opens and closes (as controlled by the driver) so if your hands are full you don't need to worry about the door whatsoever. As soon as you get out of the taxi, someone pushes a baggage cart your way, so you don't have to carry it all the way 100 meters to the check-in counter. When the cart first came my way, I was shocked. I might have been in China for too long.

And maybe even used to the U.S. ways. At LAX, there is not only no one there to push a baggage cart your way, it also must be extracted from a machine to the tune of $3.00.

As I might have mentioned, Hong Kong is very steep, very vertical. It is also very high density living, so goes the urban design to keep pedestrian traffic moving consistently. The densest part of the city has what is known as the Mid-Level Escalators.
Downhill, you take the steps as the escalators are ascending for the majority of time.
There are these cool corridors that link the escalators. At the end of this corridor is a yellow machine where, if you put your Octopus (transit) card atop, you automatically get a $2.00 discount on your next subway or bus ride. For no reason, except to boost mass transit incentive and also everyone loves a discount (one way the city can make the citizen happy).
Taking these steps downward has a 'doing hurdles' like rhythm to it. You step down, take three steps, step down, take three steps... hurdles or dancing.
Because there is so much foot traffic going towards the IFC and other office centers in the morning, from 7 --10am, the escalators go downward.
If you get tired of seeing the mod corridors, you have plenty of chance to see the streetlife below.
Now going up, you can just stand to the right and hang out, or you can walk up the stairs for extra exercise and/or speed. Universal escalator protocol.
From the IFC (where I'd go work out) to where I was staying, I counted 15 escalators.
The first 3 escalators are stairless, and then the steps start appearing, though at first more shallow than the usual steps, and then it becomes full on stairs.
As you go higher, there are streets to cross between the escalators.
This is the longest escalator, the one off of Mosque Street. At the top just before the Robinson Road escalator is the entrance to a grocery store. The Park n' Shop between two escalators, how convenient.
Here's proof that Hong Kong is Chinese, no longer British, although China has a long way to go before it has the efficiency of Hong Kong. It was nice to be able to walk with a smile and not be greeted with a sour face--in fact there was much smiling in return. I guess I'm kind of California that way, and I join my warm-weather friends in friendly walking disposition.
Even the road signs are generous in tone.

New Men

2009-02-02T19:57:00.001-08:00

Competition always deems Nadal v. Federer, but epic men allow for Nadal & Federer.

Yes, yes, five sets, Australian Open final, massive, somewhat mind-blowing tennis--2008 Wimbledon was more m-b cuz Federer was not psyched out, not as pressured to be a legend and so he could more consistently deliver the shots, and even the 5 hour plus Verdasco semi-final just two days before was more m-b since it came out of nowhere, and Verdasco had nothing to lose against Nadal, so the shots and stamina were astounding.

As man sports go, the big deal was that Federer could tie Pete Sampras' record of 14 slam titles and he had an extra day's rest, whereas Nadal had never won a hard court final, had less rest after playing the 5 hour 14 minute grueler, and had never met Federer in a hard court final. (Context: Nad is King of Clay Courts, a slower surface, having won the last 3 French Open titles and Fed is/was the King of Hardcourt and Grass, previously better on the faster surfaces until Nadal took Wimbledon and now the Australian Open away).

I think the extra day off was good for physical rest but scribbled Nadal even further into Federer's psyche, particularly if he watched the astonishing semi-final match, which he probably did in the luxury of repose. Multi psyche out: that guy has to be superhuman to be able to continue playing at that level; he has never won a hard court Slam final (Context: Grand Slams are the Aussie, French, U.S. Opens plus Wimbledon); I have rested; I can more easily tire him out; Rest = physical strength = mental domination. I have won 13 grand slam titles. I have been indomitable on the hard court for the past 5 years. But then grass. Grass is different from hardcourt. Hard court is faster. I'll play him side to side. He won't keep up. I have my serve.

But it is what happened after Nadal became the first Spaniard to win the Australian Open that was the most epic. As the fans cheered Federer and his shiny metal plate, unendingly adoring him with hoots and hollers, even a distinct exclamation of 'I love you Federer' from the nose-bleed seats, Fed tried his best to keep it together, until he succinctly stated: God, it's killing me. And he wept. He wept as a man of passion does when his soul is so deeply invested into his endeavor; he wept despite all of the macho atmosphere and posture; he wept because his heart could no longer be reigned by body and mind; he wept because he is human.

I am a Nadal fan, but I loved Federer a little more. It is breathtaking, in our super electronic and mediated world when a human act as raw as crying happens in the highest of echelons, witnessed by the world. This will be more memorable than hitting 14 slam titles. It ain't a slam, but it is surely an ascent.

And then there is Nadal. With his superhuman, godlike talent, he shows that the new man will match such physical gifts with equal grace and humanity.

For the Verdasco v. Nadal semi-final, I went back to Lan Kwai Fong, to Dublin Jack, where I'd watched the Obama Inauguration at 1am with my cousin Paul. I wasn't able to locate the sports channel on Paul's TV, so I was listening to Australian Open radio for the first 2 sets, something like '...service to the outside, Nadal forehand cross court, Verdasco backhand returns it down the line, Nadal cross court, Verdasco cross court, Nadal with a sliced backhand, Verdasco forehand down the line, oo nicks the tape and it falls in. Good! Unbelievable!' When it tied 1 set a piece, I had to see it to believe it.

Over 2 pints of Kilkenny, I was glued to my seat for 3 hours, front row of a huge screen TV. Chinese new year was still in gear, so I'd hear drums coming down the street and would saunter up to the open window for a quick look at the dragon dancing, but then quickly back to watch. (It looked like a thrift store dragon with faded orange scale, rented by a church group). An American in a blazer with his office mates sat behind me, non-stop running his mouth, calling each shot, expounding on Verdasco's 'iron testicles' and how Nadal was 'not bad looking.' On and on. 3 hours, 2 tracks.

For the final, the Jack was empty. I even sat at the same booth and watched the same screen as the Inauguration. Of the blokes in the booth next to me, the main talker was an Irishman (surprise!) with a stoner's cadence--slow, lingering, with a rasp at the end of a phrase, also on and on, but more obsessed with the Korean bird that his mate was frolicking, or getting a game of hold 'em goin' on at his apartment, or catching up with a mate for a few beers after the match, and the chicks coming over with some new chicks, and that other bird he used to see, who keeps calling. Had they stayed for the final ceremonies, I was tempted to walk by and say 'tweet.'

Had they stayed for the final ceremonies, they would have not only seen Federer take a few steps back to compose himself, and him patting Rafa's heart as he went to receive his trophy from Rod Laver, they would have also seen Rafa raise his trophy, and then go and wrap his winning left arm around Roger, whispering in his ear so that Roger grinned, giving him the chance to speak first. Utterly natural and generous, light but sincere, in the best spirit of men and competition. A gesture that immediately released all the tense old men on stage from wringing their hands, who just didn't know what to do.

After Roger congratulated and thanked, Rafa, in his Spanish-inflected English, said 'Rog...sorry about today. I know exactly how you feel.' O shoot! How often do you get to see men act like angels? 'I'm sure you will improve on the 14 of Pete Sampras...' I love foreigners to English. The fact that he used the word 'improve' which is not quite, but actually, exactly. Sometimes, in a moment that requires comfort, you don't want it said spot on--in fact you might want an awkward word that opens a new door to bear new meaning.

Maybe it is just youth, that Nadal is 22 and basically a boy, a kind boy with manners and stellar tennis talent, and Federer is 27, on the brink of marriage. It's the reason why there was such a fuss about the '14 year old' Chinese gymnasts during the Olympics--youth is not as mentally encumbered and so has a competitive advantage. The way Nadal was watching Federer as he was breaking down showed a confounded look, at once emanating 'o shit, what do I say,' and also recognizing that that day will come for Nadal, when he is in the more complex stages of his life and a whippersnapper comes to snatch his trophies away. Either way, it was compassion in action, down the line, cross court, for a winner.

I know Tennis Australia has blocked the YouTube vid of Federer's weeping. It is weeping, because it is a mourning, a melancholy, a release, as opposed to crying from injury or for mommy. How manly would it have been to be stoic, seemingly indifferent, blank on the outside and crushed on the inside? Shoot, that kind of civility causes cancer. Even so, the old men, or rather, the old boys see crying as sissy, as girly, as demeaning, as weak. The new man sees it.

(The new man can also share intimate face space after having defeated/been defeated by the other. Is that just the warmth of camaraderie, of compatriots, unencumbered by puritanism?)

In the end, Nadal & Federer, the Latin and the Germanic (though the Swiss have that romance language in them, as seen by Federer conversing with and cursing the umpire in French). Though what is thoroughly modern and truly epic about this 21st century rivalry (and boy am I thrilled, even honored, to be alive for it--can you tell?) is the Latin showing steely discipline along with his agility, the Germanic showing vulnerability within his perfection. Call it Yin/Yang, where the black dot is within the white teardrop, and the white dot within the black. Call it the fusing of contradiction unto a new synthesis. Call it championship. I call it AWESOME!

Hong Kong Hiking

2009-01-30T20:10:00.001-08:00

Here is my cousin Paul. He is Hong Kong hiking. Looks pretty rough, huh? A paved trail. Wrought iron rails. Gosh if you happened to be in spiky boots, a fitted blazer, your do done just right, face full of makeup and a big Gucci purse, real or fake, you could still Hong Kong hike. How egalitarian, right?
What would a Hong Kong hike be without taking the tram uphill first? The second day I was here, out of the Shanghai cold, a week after the Nanjing chill, Paul and Tom accompanied me Hong Kong hiking by first taking the Victoria Peak Tram. Here we are on the ascent of our hike.
Can you tell we're hiking upwards because of the slight tilt? At one point, hike/tram feels like everyone is at a 45 degree angle. You really have to hold onto something during this part of the hike.
And once we make it to the top of the hike, we arrived in time for our 12:45 pm lunch reservation at the Peak Outlook restaurant. We had to rest after that grueling hike upward. It was a perfect day.
Here's one of the many trees with red envelops found all over the restaurant (and the whole city for that matter) for the new year. The oranges represent nuggets of gold. The Hong Kong folks are super superstitious but for this year, they are gonna have to turn up the lucky talismans (talismen?) a few billion megawatts.
You can see the orange bushes in the background of our perfect lunch. Tom kept telling me how lucky I was to be here during perfect weather. I'm thinking Hong Kong is always like this, just like back home in LA. I already feel more like myself here, with Hong Kong being super mod and polite and civilized and efficient. China proper is another frame of mind. I guess I was thinking that Shanghai would be more like Hong Kong. Paul says give it another 15 years.
And so, exiting the Peak Outlook, with all its good new year's tidings, Paul and I continued to hike--downward, back home toward the Mid-levels.
Here's proof that I put in the Hong Kong hiking time. The worst part was, I forgot my canteen. Good thing we were mostly in the shade.

Now when my sister Su came to visit a week later, the hike became more--mysterious. Shrouded in fog and cloud, it gave off an eerie delight. So now I understood what Tom meant. Last Saturday was perfect and this is what Hong Kong is usually like--gray like Shanghai, but with less hackspitting. Now, Su and I would take a fresh hike for Chinese New Year day.

My sister Su is unique. She is one who would rather walk uphill and then take the tram downhill. Because of her knees, she says. So Su and I do the reverse of my original Hong Kong hike. And on this particular day, it is fortunate that it is cooler, even on the brink of raining, because going uphill, no matter how well it's paved, requires some good cardio conditioning, particularly at the pace we were going. A sunny day would have taken the Hong and the Kong out of this more athletic version of the hike.

We went a good thirty minutes uphill, by foot yes, and arrived to our destination much sooner than we expected. Su is used to hiking in Los Angeles, where you hike dirt trails, step atop rocks, and when you arrive to the top, it continues to be nature. Well on this Hong Kong hike, imagine her surprise when we arrived to the top and she saw the Peak Lookout restaurant with all of its lucky orange bushes, and also saw that it was across from a huge mall that was then connected to the Victoria Peak tram where folks lined up like a Disneyland ride, with lots of cantopop blaring and happy people eating Haggen Dasz. Su was puzzled. It's safe to say that it was anti-climactic for her. But hey, that's Hong Kong hiking for ya.
Here we are at the top.

Super Superstitious

2009-01-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

I never realized how super superstitious Hong Kong is. Yes there are many dictums in Chinese culture. For instance the number '8' and '9' are good because they sound like 'prosperity' and 'longevity,' respectively. So if your bank has the address of '8' or '88' or '888,' that will get you lots of Chinese customers. But you never want the number '4,' because that sounds like 'death'...unless, well I don't want to go into that.
So this morning's headline in the South China Morning Post: Short Straw Dims New Year Glow. Turns out the chairman of the rural affairs body drew stick #27 on the city's behalf in the Taois ceremony at the Che Kung temple. A fortune-teller (yes this is front page headline news) at the temple said the short stick showed that the city could not isolate itself from economic turbulence, but Hongkongers could be 'cautiously optimistic.' Feng shui masters differed, one reading that there would be possible conflicts between the government and its people, while another reminded that 'only a harmonious society with people staying united can enable us to get through our challenges.'

That same night, one of the fireworks barges launching spectacle in Victoria Harbour caught on fire. No one was injured.

My first hint of super superstitious Hong Kong was when Tom, just Tom, a friend of my cousin Paul told me that his Hong Kong architecture firm has a fortune teller on their payroll, who makes monthly reports of what should be done. For instance, Tom was born in the year of the Goat and this new year of the Ox will be very difficult for Goats, but a golden Rat will deflect all of the bad fortune. Tom is a Belgian, raised in Sweden, and not particularly superstitious; but when all around him, when the payroll speaks, better go with the flow. Tom soon after bought a tiny gold coin with a Rat embossed on it.

Inquiring about a nicely renovated building that remained empty, a real estate agent suddenly looked glum. 'That street...' My cousin asks, '...has ghosts?' 'No,' replied the real estate agent. 'It's...' he couldn't find the word in English, but took the back of his business card and drew a coffin. 'They make...on that street. So no Chinese wants to buy that building.' He said he used to play on that street as a little boy, this real estate agent, and didn't feel anything. But the air around his telling of the story...perhaps it will remain a permanent listing, until some foreigner comes along.

Speaking of super, the ritual of this week's Super Bowl is not lost on the Brit view from here. The U.S. must be pumped, what with having two national events within 2 weeks--the Inauguration and now the Cardinals vs. the Steelers. New Franchise vs. Legendary Franchise of the 70's.

It's seen as a celebration of friendship, an event celebrated with friends instead of family. It's a moment when American becomes one, especially in this download/tivo age when a giant chunk of the nation is doing the same thing at the same time. The proof of unity comes from the fact that fewer Americans kill themselves during the Super Bowl than other Sundays at this time of year (perhaps the Inauguration too, as a national experience gives vulnerable people a sense of belonging.)

It also celebrates the U.S. of today, whereas Thanksgiving celebrates a semi-imagined rural history, Christmas celebrates Christ's history, and Independence Day celebrates the Founding Father's history. And to mark the occasion: a plethora of newly unveiled commercials, especially designed for this huge demographic--the bud bowl, the exploding tobasco fly, underdog Budweiser clydesdale high-fiving canine trainer to Rocky theme, firebreather impressing first date with lighting candles, only to be allergic to her cat.

A celebration of winners, of TV, of masculinity...'The players are gods of young masculinity, the head coaches are gods of middle age, and the cheerleaders goddesses of femininity designed for males.'

Happy New Year of the Ox

2009-01-25T22:36:00.000-08:00

Dublin Jack

2009-01-22T01:09:00.000-08:00

Went to Lan Kwai Fong, the drunken ex-pat bar section of Central Hong Kong for the Inauguration of Barack Obama. A spot called Dublin Jack. It was hosting the Democrats Abroad viewing party. Got there around 11:30pm. The Big Guy was gonna put his hand on the Lincoln Bible at 1am. As we all know, he became president as Perlman and Ma were pulling the bows unto their strings. And how auspicious is it that the Chief Justice led the eloquent and prepared Prez astray? And that Cheney pulled his one last dis, not being able to 'stand' in respect for the New Guy?
Here's my cousin Paul, the super host of Hong Kong. Everything always goes smoothly with Paul--we got to Dublin Jacks and immediately found comfortable seating in front of one of the wide screens of the Irish bar. Paul was gracious enough to accompany me--he had an early morning, but gosh, he caught the spirit of the event.

Haven't been with so many Americans in a while. I forget how loud and free they are with speech (have I become the Ugly Chinese? Oh yeah, I was in a bar, abroad, for an American event.) I forget how handy the punchlines are. Is there not a minute, a thought, not sought in laughter (have I become an old fogie?). I guess I want these types of special moments without a dude saying into his cell phone over and over again: Dublin Jacks (pause 5 seconds). Dublin Jacks (pause 5 seconds) Dublin Jacks (Pause 10 seconds) I'm at Dublin Jacks, etc. That was during the VP oath. I guess its standard American jam. I forgot about the sports tone of enthusiasm.

O - ba - ma!

Na-na-na-na, Na-na-na-na, Hey-hey-hey Goodbye!

(yeah I joined in that one to bid adieu to Bush, too).

Some folks dressed up. One gal had super red wig and a star-spangled outfit. A black dude came in with his Obama shirt. He was the one who started the O - ba - ma chant. There was lotsa bubbly around. The Hong Kongese who allowed me a spot in their booth had a coupla buckets of it. In the middle of the Inauguration speech, there was the proclamation of 'I love you Obama' uttered, because that white American needed to--

A black gal standing next to us kept telling her girlfriend not to cry. Cry, I told her, Cry! This is the time--let it out!

I feel lucky to have a president like this. Valiant, knowing how to cull the characteristics of a hero. Having eloquent words, but also showing action, compassion, clarity. Have to see how these actions hold, before he can actually be heroic, instead of just seem it. But most of all, someone to show us what it is to be an adult. To not whine. To use metaphor. To speak simple and sincere. To complete sentences with ideas. To be patient with the petulant. To be stoic in a heated moment. To be lively in an unexpected one. (Like at the first ball--How good-looking is my wife?--how dear was the First Lady to obediently applaud along until she heard the words and waved it off, embarrassed and faux-pissed at the Prez for touting her?)

We saw the First Lady's inaugural outfit in chartreuse. It was actually golden (though I thought the chartreuse looked good, bold indeed, but a bit clashing with the green gloves--ah yes, with the golden, it was fine). So the screen was off, made the subtle more severe, the color knob tampered with, the tone maladjusted. Didn't matter. Still came through.

May not be able to trust exactly what you see, but gosh you can hear when it rings.

Before Dublin Jacks, Paul's friend Cheryl gathered friends at a private kitchen on Ship St. called Ying Yang. Cheryl is originally from Texas but has been in Asia for 12 years. She is the kind of American that you don't get to see often--one who is happy to leave all the loud sports behind and enjoy subtler dispositions.

HK: 180

2009-01-19T18:20:00.000-08:00

En Route to Hong Kong

2009-01-19T04:21:00.000-08:00

Mr. Bi rings my apartment at 7:50 am. He's taking me to the Hongqiao airport for my flight to Shenzhen. By road its 120 yuan, by freeway, 140. My flight to Shenzhen is at 10:10 am.

Because of traffic, we get to chat for over an hour. This is the part where I get to improve my Chinese speaking and listening. Mr. Bi is from Anhui, the province west of Shanghai. He has 2 kids. I'm all, one child policy? He tells me that the countryside is still very feudal, and so...I finish his sentence...gotta keep trying until it's a son. Mr. Bi asks me what I think the population of China is. 1.3 bil I say. With all of the countryside activity, he thinks it's 1.6 bil.

He asks where my own family is. I tell him I'm not having one, that I'm a writer, that I need time. It's good that his phone has rung, so we can go off topic when he finishes his call. He is a very cool dude. Though as he talks on the phone, I feel like just told him that I was gay. Which lines up. Gays and solo women--they derail patriarchy's reproduction.

It's always funny how Mao gets to be a subject. Mr. Bi, like every other Chinese that is asked about it, has an opinion, an impassioned narrative of how Mao exists in China. Of which I get 60% of it. The first part of the sentence I comprehend and then the last 4 crucial words, hmm. I'm not so disclosing about being a halftard in this case--I don't ask what this and this and this and that and that and that means. Sometimes, you just wanna experience the flow of the language, the energy. Meanings are overrated, yes?

We talk about American and Chinese economy. It goes to spending habits. Mr. Bi tells me that story, you know the one about the American old lady and the Chinese old lady. The Chinese lady saves cash her whole life and when she's about to die, she can finally purchase a house. The American old lady takes out a loan and spends her whole life paying it back--she finally pays it off just before she dies.

I get to the Hongqiao airport at 9:15am. Don't worry, Mr. Bi, you only need to be there 30 minutes early. I breeze through the airport cuz I have no checked luggage (fyi, if you need to check luggage, you need more than 30 minutes). I'm worried about liquids, 3.0 oz. what what, but my bag goes through and the security dude says I have a knife in my bag. Right the black swiss army knife, engraved with Alice T. that my pal Rod gave me years back. Do I have to leave it? It's a sentimental gift. Will you be back here within a month. YES! Then register it over there. So the knife stays in Shanghai.

Nanjing de Er Bo Bo

2009-01-14T02:24:00.001-08:00

Yes, Er Bo Bo.

That would be Er (second) Bo Bo (uncle who is older brother of father). He's the uncle who is philosophical, who is traditional, who is open-minded, who is curious, who has taught economics at Nanjing University, who has endured 9 years in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, who has lived in New York City, who has now returned to Nanjing in full splendor. Here we are at the front gate of Nanjing University. The old professor visiting.
I am always thrilled to see Er Bo Bo. The accessible wiseman. A sage to hang out with. He has told me stories of our family, his father who is my Yeh Yeh, of China's radical histories, of how food doesn't taste like it used to, of his observations of the U.S. Of late he is happy to describe to me, in his high enthusiasm and booming Chinese, about how he courted he second wife, at the age of 73.
His first wife had passed away in New York and so he returned home to Nanjing. He wasn't planning on a younger woman, but I'm not surprised at all, considering the vitality that I've always known Er Bo Bo to have and since he showed me this picture of himself, climbing to the top of a mountain just before he met Teacher Lu. (You have to tilt left to view it.)
In this photo, Er Bo Bo had arrived after tour season to Guilin, so there were no more tours. He hired a private guide who showed him up one of the mountains and was able to take the photo of an exuberant man who would never let life weigh him down. He is the winner.
And so now, after 8 years of marriage (past the itch, he smiles) he and Teacher Lu have been granted a blissful companionship, where they have homes in Nanjing and Zhejiang (about a 1/2 an hour away). They also winter in the south, in Guandong, where her daughter gladly welcomes them to live during the cold months. He is now 82, she almost 70...they make fun of each other like teenagers, like the same foods and accompany each other wherever the other one goes. Their old people's passes allow them to ride the bus for free and enter museums for free or half price.
My Er Bo Bo hardly goes to campus anymore (he's hardly in Nanjing anymore, what with new digs) so his colleague, Professor Zhou, another economics dude, also teaching at the same business school, also retired, wanted to invite us for a stroll on campus leading to a most delicious restaurant, where we ate soup dumplings, tender reads, and scallion/ginger steamed fish. Here they are at the steps of their teaching grounds. Prof Zhou has a buddhic quality to him. Very quiet and peaceful. At the restaurant, when my uncle was trying to find the other chicken leg in the soup, asking where is it?, I looked at Prof. Zhou and said, maybe it ran off. He chuckled with a most glorious grin.
This lovely track, new and plastic, used to be the center for criticism for all of Jiangshu province during the Cultural Revolution. Right-leaning, bourgeoise government officials were forced to their knees by Red Guards and beaten so hard that bowels came out.

It was cold and soulful in Nanjing. As always. I had visited here 22 years ago, when I taught for the year in Guangzhou. A valley girl in the depths of Nanjing winter, I don't think I took my coat off for a week. Even so, I was finally feeling Chinese, not having spoken English for a long stretch of time, 'roughing it,' empathizing with each Cultural Revolution story, seeing my face as a majority. It was then that Er Bo Bo, one night, kept talking about 'You Americans don't save' and 'You Americans spend as you like' (this was 1986) and 'You Americans use beyond your means of resources,' and 'You Americans...' I told him then, I'm not American I'm Chinese, and he kind of snickered and said, 'Huh, you have no idea what it is to be Chinese.' Now looking back, he did me a favor setting me straight--he had no idea about this 'sensitive identity situation' that Americans usually get laughed about by the old country. It couldn't have come from a kinder person. That night, though, I still spun in disorientation and cried 6 hours 'til the wee hours of the morn.

This time I come to Nanjing, fully knowing. By dint of the English language being the form that I experience depth of life in, I am american. Also by dint of freedom. Also by dint of privacy. No matter the progress, I will always know Nanjing as being so so so so so so cold. The better to warm onself, yes?
Front of the Presidential Palace. As Nanjing (meaning southern capitol) was the spot for the father of Chinese democracy, and first President of China, Sun Yat-sen. And also the spot for Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist Government in 1948. Until the People's Liberation Army, well, liberated it and switched the capitol back up to Beijing (nothern capitol). BTW Tokyo is known in Chinese (and Japanese) as Dongjing, which means eastern capitol.
This is the grand hall running through the center of the Palace. Suffice it to say, a lotta power has stepped through this corridor. In the 1850's, during the Qing dynasty, there was an anti-feudal movement from the south, in Guangxi province, called the Taiping Tianguo (Taiping Heavenly Kingdom). Led by Hong Xiu Quan, they made their way north, en route to overthrowing the emperor in Beijing, but decided to build their own palace at this site (which was used by emperors of past dynasties as retreats or strategic pens).
Lots of gold and beauty, secret rooms, meeting places, concubine lounges, just like Tian An Men. The thing is, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (which was based on many Christian principles), never really overthrew the national power, and got distracted thinking that they conquered up to Nanjing, no prob, were happy with their successes and got cocky. After 10 years, the Qing dynasty crushed them and remained in power. So one wing of the Palace documents the Taiping...
...and other wings show the meeting rooms during Chiang-kai shek's time. Zhou En Lai, the Premiere during Mao's reign, met frequently in this room as the Communist envoy, when the Nationalists and the Coms agreed to cease fire on each other in order to fight the Japanese.

The rape of Nanjing has been documented widely, introduced extensively to the U.S. by Chinese-American historian Iris Chang. It was a particularly brutal and inhumane attack on the city during the Sino-Japanese war.
This is Chiang Kai Shek's Presidential office. It ain't oval. It's at this time I get the facts about Yeh Yeh straight. In my play, I made him a full general in Chiang Kai Shek's army. I knew he was actually a Lt. General, but didn't realize he wasn't in contact with Chiang Kai Shek. Er Bo Bo told me that Chiang had sent Yeh Yeh a photo of himself, but they had never met. Yeh Yeh was actually in command of troops as delegated by the provinces he was assigned to. My play is even more wonderfully fictional now.
This is a famous 4-word quote by Sun Yat-sen--Tian Xia Wei Gong--under heaven for the people. Sun Yat-sen and his democracy movement did finally overthrow the Qing dynasty and ended China's 4 thousand years of feudal past. Interestingly, Sun was schooled at the University of Hawaii, where Obama's folks met.
I had to get Er Bo Bo to model his hot 10 yuan gloves that had the olympic Bird's Nest stadium imprinted on them. He was also really stoked that his hat was 15 yuan.
There is this imperial tradition where only the Emperor (and Chiang Kai Shek) enters through the center doors; everyone else enters from the sides.

I kind of wanted to go to the Nanjing museum that documented the Japanese occupation, but Teacher Lu was not into it. It was a horrific time, and for those who lived through it...besides my Er Bo Bo told me, it's just pictures.

So we went to the Confucian Temple instead.
Of course when we were at the Confucian temple, Er Bo Bo would ask me about Confucius' most famous saying: When people are born, their nature is benevolent. Er Bo Bo asks if I believe this to be true, or is it that when people are born, their nature is corrupt? I think about this, as we are surrounded by a huge mall of stores and he states that the Confucian flavor at this temple is no longer present. I believe that people are born with benevolent natures.

On the way to the Imperial Testing Site, where the mandarins would take their exams, there are statues of the refined and literary figures of the past. Here is Wu Cheng'en, who wrote the famous Journey to the West that features Monkey King and Eight Pig. He was alive from 1500-1559, during the Ming Dynasty.
Here are some more scholars.
This is the front of the actual Confucian Temple. It costs 20 yuan to get in, so I just hung by the lion to get a feel for it.
This is a little theater behind the temple and down the corridor of souvenirs. Teacher Lu, who is super thrifty, sprang for some beautiful polished stones that she puts in her planters in Zhenjiang. It was 10 yuan for as many as you could grab with one hand. I bought two decks of cards: one with all of the emperors and the other with all of Mao's cultural revolution quotes.

Nanjing folks are known as Big Radishes. They are plain, not slick, actually sincere. They see the Shanghainese as slick and superficial. They say when a Shanghainese person falls, they worry not about their injury, but rather if their clothes are stained. There is something very wholesome about the Nanjingese. When I was buying some jade knicknacks, I was quite the Big Pumpkin myself. One small jade backscratcher was 10 yuan and the bigger one was 15 yuan. The shopkeeper was talking about how she didn't have room for them anymore so they were already discounted. I'm all, one small one and one big one for 30 yuan. Er Bo Bo's all, it's only 25. And then I'm all two small ones and one big one for 40 yuan. Er Bo Bo's all, it's only 35. He tells the shopkeeper, artists can't bargain. I manage to walk away with the 3 for 35. Duh.
And so here is the proper front gate of the Confucian Temple. Haagen Dasz, KFC, and Mickey D's to greet.
This is my favorite spot to chat with Er Bo Bo in his apartment.
In this room is a cabinet, where he keeps his archives: writings, recordings, all meaningful memorabilia, organized, easy to access at any time. He loves to bring out old photos, of his daughter Tina, of his grandson Peter, of the time he first visited the U.S. in 1980, when he was reunited with his mother and father, my Nai Nai and Yeh Yeh, after being separated for 30 years.

I always thought that he wanted to follow Mao. It turns out that he was already a college student and didn't want to be another mouth to feed in Taiwan. Also he was ill at the time and didn't want to burden his family. Politically, he really didn't think that the family could escape; he also didn't know that the door to China would be slammed shut by the communists. So he stayed by himself in China. His older brother was already married and in another city. Through a series of lucky turns, he was assigned to teach at Nanjing University, where he now has this apartment free of rent and a comfortable pension.
Photos of Nai Nai, and also a picture of me with Su--I was 15, she was 8. Nai Nai was so thrilled to see her son after a 30 year separation. Er Bo Bo tells the story of how he was staying at our house, and sleeping in the guest room next to Yeh Yeh and Nai Nai's room. In the middle of the night, Nai Nai came into his room and made sure the blankets were covering him so he wouldn't be cold.
Yeh Yeh at the center, surrounded by his descendants.
Er Bo Bo celebrating his 53rd birthday in the U.S. in 1980. He was assigned to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution from the time he was 40 until he was 49. At the prime of his life, he did not resist or become embittered with the simple life he became assigned. He is a jovial yet unsentimental man. He is content to be able to think things through, and as he says, put things down.
And so, even more robust at 73.
The new Nanjing train station is super cool--it is right on Xuanwu Lake. So I got to say goodbye to Er Bo Bo next to the lovely, natural, historic lake.
From the train station, there is a huge plaza leading to the lake.
And it is open, no railings. You can fall right in.
I always see more life, a clearer, brighter life having visited with Er Bo Bo.

The Guest House

2009-01-09T04:39:00.000-08:00

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

--Rumi

Past Future--Shanghai Biennale: Translocalmotion

2009-01-05T21:05:00.000-08:00

It's true: the Shanghai Biennale closed last year on 11/16, but it's been sitting in draft and I thought as a new year move I'd tie up a loose end from 2008.

'I was gonna'--I think that's past future. I took all of these photos and was gonna give you a taste of the Biennale. I had intentions and ideas, but that was 2 1/2 months into China, and now I'm at 4 months, and well, the view, the mood, the pace, the interest has shifted. Consequently, this blog'll run long, cuz I was still in 'tourist' mode--drinking up all the cool and the wow of the town. Not that I'm bitter (OK, I found out I didn't get the Creative Capital grant today) but my skin has thickened, my ears have deafened to the noise--still gasp and wheeze from the air--but can see a bit beyond the surface, into complexities that make generalization and articulation more challenging. So I'll stick to past future to tie this end.
How lovely the clock towering over Shanghai Art Museum, located within the former British racehorse-club building next to People's Park.
Yes the patriots,
next to the locomotive, the motif for the 'trans' and the 'local' that is constantly in motion.
Big shiny psychedelic ants climb down the clock tower.
The Maos welcome, beckon and bid all at the same time.
The first floor was constantly flooded with that Carpenters tune 'Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby....baby baby baby baby o baby.' It was part of a video installation that included a huge advertisement to buy African products, all the while a Chinese girl in a blond bob wig kareoke lip synched the Carpenters song to an African man who walked down the middle of a street in the French Concession in native garb, who turned out also to be a nattily dressed CEO at a desk. People were not patient to watch the whole narrative. One American tourist was impressed with the flat screen TV quality.
This was cute. This was gonna be a dialogic way of viewing the one-child personality dynamic.
Here is the Carpenters/Buy African product installation. Some were patient. The song becomes hypnotic.
In another room on the first floor, a foreign grade school is having a field trip. There is an installation of suitcases and baggage from all times and hemispheres. The lady with the French accent is asking the children to choose the baggage they connect to and tell why.
On the second floor are the super stars. One from Taiwan, one from China and Mike Kelly.
This is the installation of the China artist. I was gonna write the names down, but I forgot my notebook.
Have a look at the huge geniesque dinosaurs. More shine in a low dark space.
The next room is the Mike Kelley installation.
Architectural plans for a future city of Superman. I was gonna read all the text, but felt lackadaisical.
And felt compelled to photo this room which was probably where the brits smoked their cigars.
I did feel like a goon.
So impressed by the staircase.
I guess I kind of can't believe this is China.
This is digital art that had meaning when I saw it. It's weird how when you tie up loose ends, the ends still are kind of loose, and is it the tying that's satisfying or the need to convince the self that the time and energy were not wasted? What is art without context? The artist's name is Chen Yen and the piece is called The Moving Spirit of the City.
This is a Turkish artist name Inci Eviner. I liked all the hieroglyphic images painted in a chain around the room, like the history of an immigrant in a space.
Something completely primal and refined at the same time.
Unexpected sequences.
Exquisite doodle.
Outside of this room, there were paintings of immigrant cots. Also huge wall-size photos of the migrant Chinese and countryside commerce.
There was another series of paintings called Cheers, that showed Inner Mongolians toasting in orange glow and husky silhouettes. There was another room with an installation, all four walls being projected upon, one side of coal miners in ear-piercing action, another wall of the years of aftermath, spent in a hospital bed, trying to respirate, another wall, intimate moments of their collective shower in shared streams of water.
This was most impressive to me--Bu Hua's Savage Growth--a computer generation of a girl scout walking through Shanghai and its dizzing construction. She has her own website.

At one point, I heard some 1930's Shanghai Diva music...I went into a darkened room and saw clip after clip of an abridged version of Shanghai history. An old woman narrated to me--she seemed to be there in all the stages. 'Look how there are no women watching the Chinese opera,' she would tell me, 'even the men sang the female parts.' She would tell me how poor they were, how they had to eat these hard grains in the countryside, and look, that's when the Japanese came in. That's the temple, have you been to the temple? I tell her no. Only foreigners go there, it's 40 RMB to get in. The Chinese can't afford to get in. Foreigners, and I saw some Koreans. Koreans have money now. They can get in. I just sat there and listened and watched it loop like three times.
Then there was a whole exhibit of what the racecourse and basically the recreation ground for the foreigners when they had taken over Shanghai in the 30's and 40's. Above is the race course right next to one of the main streets. Just plopped a racecourse down cuz it was convenient to get to from the Bund.
There was bowling and golf and cricket and swimming too. When Mao came in and liberated Shanghai, the racecourse was immediately converted into People's Park.
Here is one of their first rally's converting the foreign racecourse back to the Chinese People's Park.
Now it is green and lush. Somehow, for this heathen outerhound (as opposed to innerhound) art observer, the event of the Biennale could not supercede the extraordinary history of the grounds. I was gonna try and rendit the show, but memory fragility prevented a good representation of the exhibit. A loose end tied sloppily, though a noticeable absorption into China that no foreigner can escape.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T00:00:00.001-08:00

A revelry of new year in Shanghai. The dread dissolved. The club, called Sin, was warm and inviting. The timing was smooth. Nic, another teacher at Lida, and I got to the club via taxi in time to check in coats, visit the restroom, get a libation, meet up with his pal Daniel, look to the screen, see the countdown at 27 seconds and enjoy the midnight downfall of gold snow.
The whole club was in a great mood. A fun mix of Chinese, Non, gay, straight, smoking and non, all whooping it up. There were a coupla stages that folks would hop up on to dance, but then there were also beauteous dancers with real breasts, that felt brazilian rather than vegas. The uncanny thing was that there seemed to be the exact right amount of people--comfortably crowded but not packed. There was not a wait for the loo the first 3 times I went, then around 2 or 3, it started getting crowded. The drinks were new year's prices, but Nic was slick to drink some down and ask the bartender in Chinese to add more vodka--lo and behold they do! God bless the double obedience bred by confucianism and communism. Or the hypnotic effect of a charming white dude speaking Chinese. Or both.
Daniel is Mr. Fabulous. His smile warms the heart and his wit is super hip. He is so not the typical Chinese--aka, he knows how to have fun. Lord knows the Chinese are fastidious and industrious at everything they do, but having fun requires a cool, savoir faire of non-care, and Daniel is open and funny and, well, FABULOUS!
Nic reminds me of my pal Moises in that he laughts just a little bit too loud...but that just makes me feel at home. On the way home, the taxi driver wanted to stiff him cuz he's a foreigner and Nic had an argument in Chinese--why are you so impolite? To which the driver said: why are you so implite? To which Nic says: I am a guest in your taxi and you are so impolite. To which the driver replied: why are you so impolite? To which Nic said: Hurry. Move forward. Go! A few more rounds of that including a triple jacking-up of the price. But we get home regular.
Something about the reverie in the gold snow won't let any cranky taxi cramp an evening.
New Year's Day was clear and unfussy and bode well for the rest of the year. It was a completely free day of recalling the revelry and open to the possibilities of the coming year. My resolution: astute articulation of China to the U.S., and the U.S. to China; of the world to the self, of the self to the world.

And for a proper ringing in of the year in Shanghai, what could be better than an awesome Chinese meal with Dr. Ding and his family?
That's his wife Lucy on his left (my godfather Paul Chow's sister, which makes her my godaunt?--sounds French) and his son Hengle on his right. They kind of remind me of a Sartre No Exit situation, the part where there is commentary of what is being said, while it's being said--strong personalities who have lived through all of China's recent historical stages tend to be fiery this way. It's a dynamic that I absolutely treasure and learn from. Here they are in front of their apartment in the French Concession, just down the street from the Anting Villa.
I just can't resist Dr. Ding. I sit behind him in the taxi admire his ear muffs.

We go to a Chinese Chinese restaurant in Xujiahui called He 'something' xiao cai. The Family He's Little Dishes. It is chosen because it is good and everyday they have specials. There are two such restaurants right next to each other, but we go to the one that has the elevator (cuz it's on the 4th floor) and it's easier for Dr. Ding, who can't see. Dr. Ding wears his University of Chicago sweatshirt. Obama taught there, I say to him. Yes, he smiles. He can also speak Indonesian.
Today's special: Clear stir-fried shrimp. Our New Year meal continues with tender kidney flower (one of my favorites that my pops used to cook for guests), dou miao (pea sprouts, also tender) minced pork wrapped in bean curd, special shanghai chicken, and a really, really succulent flounder, steamed with ginger and scallions. There were also wontons and a puff-pastry radish dumpling.

Best of all: the most helpful and courteous wait service I have ever, ever experienced in China. Maybe because I was with Chinese old folks? Is that the gold card? Anyway they were patient and attentive with cheerful dispositions. The only thing is that our waitress sided with the Dings when I asked for her to give me the bill. And then the onslaught of the bill-paying massacre. There is no way they will let me pay and Lucy will shout me down with her lived-through-three-political-Chinas-including-the-Cultural-Revolution fervor and Hengle will apply his Red Guard intensity, even if he never really was one. I'm American, I don't do the Chinese wrestling match of paying the bill. It's a new year, and I'm so well-treated.

If the first day tells how the rest of the year smells, then 2009 gonna be mighty mighty fine.

I hope you had a great start!

G00D 2009

2008-12-31T23:58:00.000-08:00

Christmas/Mao's Birthday in Yanshan

2008-12-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

It was the most magnificent classroom, the two full days spent in the small ancient town of Yanshan, in the district of Hekou, an hour outside the city of Shangrao, in the province of Jiangxi, literally named 'river west,' the river being the Yangtse. It was a crossing into knowledge as ingenious as building, well, a bridge on floating boats, to simultaneously learn about Chinese politics, economy, cultural appreciation, historical preservation, art, wit, the Chinese language, rural life and cadre superslicking.

The mensch Abi Basch, who I knew from Austin Texas, introduced me to her friend Li Fan, one of the rare Chinese that I have met who has an astute global perspective, having studied in Germany and effortlessly able to articulate and persuade in Chinese, German, English. (The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is to thank for granting Abi and Li theater and urban planning funds, respectively, and bringing both, and thus me, to each other's attention).

And so I was lucky enough to join Li's group of urban planners, intellectuals and students to engage with the local Yanshan government and its assorted officials/cadres in the strong urging of preserving the Qing Dynasty/Sun Democracy (turn of the century) architecture that upholds the distinct, local flavor instead of mowing it down to build nouveau riche, multi-storeyed condos. Alas capitalism's tendrils reach far and and grip tight, finding no discrimination in the shiny amnesia of gentrification.

Li gave her power point presentation with color-coded maps, text, and computer generated enhancements to provide the vision for revitalizing Hekou. Attracting Chinese tourism would be a plus, but the idea is to preserve the historical region and also better the quality of life for the citizens, instead of just building, say, a flashy, tourism street of new structures to prove (to themselves?) that money was well spent on modernization. Li gave her presentation amidst thick cadre smoke, constant chatter, discordant cellphone tunes and the endless pouring of tea. At one point I'd look at a row of cadres, sneakers, parkas, dyed hair, either talking, texting, or fidgeting with the sleekest of phones. It amazes me her ability to focus, to present passionately nevertheless. Halfway through her presentation, a cadre mentions that it is hard to hear her, and so lackeys are sent out to bring microphones in, which arrive a half an hour later and are never used.

Of the cadres, there were also heads of the department of water, of housing, those familiar with the region who would give their opinion about the plan proposed by Li. You could tell who gets respect by chatter level (E.F. Hutton?); many of them were just spouting party line: this is a good plan, we will take it to the higher ups. Others you could tell had a resistance to these academics who wanted to keep them in the old and deprive them of the chance to show modern prosperity. They also talked of the resistance people would have if the officials were to regulate what they could build with their money (and couldn't build mansions for themselves).

Li reminds me of an elegant German spy. Her ability to make quick decisions and to procure them in the most even-tempered, unflashy way triggers a loyalty in me that I understand to be egoless leadership with the good of the people in mind. A tall man with large, 1980's-frame glasses in our entourage, who I call the Intellectual Chen, makes his appeal to the cadres and throughout the trip, backing Li up on their love of country and culture, and their best efforts to steer faulty government decisions away from self-interest and disaster for a progressing, 21st century culture.

Of course my Chinese can only appreciate the astounding energy and verve behind the unrelenting pleas of the Intellectual Chen for China to be proud of her worthy traditions, and so I may be spinning a tale as idealistic as the cadres' are 'practical'. The eloquence could be so vivid that even my limited Chinese could pick up on the language brilliance, the coupling of simple words to make profound ideas, the incorporation of historical sayings that keep Chinese wisdom and mind alive. I am a follower of this brainy banter--there's no way I can find out what everything means, and so weirdly I become the woman the patriarchy wants me to be...quiet, attentive, obedient. The gorgeousness of Li as leader is that I feel the field is open for me to comment, she is our leader and the vision behind the whole meeting. It's a matter of my Chinese being up to snuff. If they talk about Taiwan and China, I mention the new Panda ambassadors. If firecrackers pop outside and they say it is for 'Christmas,' o but Christmas was yesterday, I can amend that it's Christmas in America. If they ask me about my experience in China, I can offer that it is a new feeling to be a majority instead of a minority.

I continue to watch Li at our lunch banquet (there was Peking duck!) and her continued explaining to the lead cadres of the benefits and the possibilities of setting the example for revitalization that may be exemplary for other towns to be grown with government money. The hallmark of these cadres banquets, as you may know, is the ever-present bottle of bai jiu, white liquor that turns many a cadre face red, and certainly not from blushing.

And wassail we did. The Intellectual Chen constantly pleaded how he couldn't drink because he was ill but could not sway the constant cadre persuasion of keeping his glass filled. This is a time that the Chinese man is most macho, downing glass after glass, toast after toast. I felt the need to hide my party skills, else I would have to go through the habit of toasting each cadre down the line. It's a good life for the leaders--they accompany their guests with delicious dishes and the habit of drinking and smoking. Our entourage stood somewhat impenetrable as none of us smoked and many refrained from drinking. Li herself would toast with apple juice.
Out of a table of 7 cadres (there were 7 in our group), two were big shots that attended the meeting and the lunch banquet and spoke mainly with Li and the Intellectual Chen, three were at the meeting and to accompany me, the three students, the PhD. Wong (who absolutely did not drink) and two, Teacher Wong and Mr. Jie, both born and raised in Yanshan emerged to be our touring guides.

Teacher Wong is a constant bolt of lightening. At Li's presentation, he was the one who spoke most passionately about her vision for his hometown, and the longest, as he was given the proverbial 'hook' at a Vaudeville show. Teacher Wong became a historian during the Cultural Revolution--when there was no school, he stayed at home and read history. He knows every inch of his district, every nook of history, every cranny of context, what happened to it during the Cultural Revolution, what it is used for now. Later we find out that he was a Red Guard. In fact he was representing the region at a Mao rally for the Red Guards on October 18, 1965 in Beijing. he was a pip-squeak at 13 and so he got rushed to the front and was the kid on the man's shoulder in the front. So vital and keen, to be so lit with revolutionary fervor at adolescence.

Mr. Jie did not have a father who was a cadre, like Teacher Wong, and came from the countryside end. He would go barefoot to collect wood and trade for food and eventually pay for tuition with the collected wood. He persevered in school and made it through to the ranks and now lives the cadre life.

Teacher Wong took us on two 4-hour walking tours, visiting and exploring what seemed to be every house in the district of Li's presentation. The doors are not locked. Teacher Wong walked in unannounced as families were working on their crafts, or eating lunch, or many a time playing mahjong. This must be the part of socialism that is like feudalism, where the folks don't have their own property and whoever is in charge can walk in, show these outsiders the period carvings on the beams, walk through the garden cleared with cement and clear the throat by spitting away. There is an order. There are no rights. Many invited us to sit and have tea. Many kids stared at us. A few glared and told themselves not to pay attention to us. Amidst the dirt roads, there were women in modest garb, but a couple were fashionable with spike-heeled boots. By the river, others were beating their wash with a stick.
Inevitably, huge posters of Mao, the Red Sun, hung over mantles along with deceased ancestors. Teacher Wong declared that his generation here is extremely loyal to Mao. On some walls there are quotations painted, about people having the power to rise up. One of the newer, younger cadres, who had the charisma of a superstar in the way he would describe his understanding and creative problem-solving of his district talked of a growing dilemma in the countryside. Folks would sell their dwellings to go to big cities like Shanghai to make money. After a couple of years, unable to acclimate, they return to the countryside and have no place to live. This frustration turns to violence. This superstar cadre stated: 'If the countryside is a wreck, the nation is a wreck.'

Yes, why take the Mao poster down. It's actually now predictive, as surely, in light of all this sprinting growth, a neo-Maoist movement is sure to arrive.
On the second day of touring, there was rain. Something about these old towns and rain that evoked Kurosawa movies. Down one street Teacher Wong mentions how it was used in the 1980's movie 'A Turn of the Head, A Smile.' My only reference to the towns were the Chinese movies my folks would take me to see on the weekends in Chinatown, when men with hair buns would leap up to these styles of tile roofs (precursor to Crouch Tiger, Hid Dragon) and sword fight and cut limbs off and even one time cut someone in half. Teacher Wong also repeated many times how he hated the Japanese.

There is constant discussion about the Cultural Revolution. We see so many of the historical saying that were engraved into the walls, shattered or ground away by the Re Guards during the Cultural Revolution, when Mao's huge motto was 'Destroy the old to create the new.' And so a lot of the ancient village was hit hard by the Red Guard fever. When Teacher Wong talks about his daughter, I ask if he explains all of his Red Guard experiences to her. 'No! She does not want to hear such grotesque stories. Her generation is not interested in the Cultural Revolution,' and on cue, the Intellectual Chen tells of the importance of telling the younger generation. This is not the first time I've heard it--it's like China trying to proect her young from this anomalous time in her history. I agree with the Intellectual Chen, as there is a whole generation of old folk now so completely tweaked from all the torture and curielty they had to endure at the hands of the youth. Perhaps Teacher Wong does not want to give daughter any ideas.

That second night, December 26, towards the end of another banquet (with Peking duck again!) it suddenly came to mind that it was Mao's birthday. 'We have to order longevity noodles with ribs.' it's a tradition to eat noodles for a person's birthday, and I suppose the ribs were traditional cuz it was the Chairman's favorite. The waitress informed us that there were no more noodles.

We visited many buddhist temples and the smell of incense was present, burned or having burned on the mantles to worship the ancestors. Teacher Wong brought us to a newly-build Christian church. 'Oh you should have been here last night for Christmas. It was pouring over with people.'

'Is Christianity becoming popular?' I ask.

"O yes, very popular. And Buddhism too.' Teacher Wong replies.

The Intellectual Chen has a wry smile. 'There's no more Mao to worship.'

'And you're not allowed to follow Fa Lun Gong,' Li adds.

Have Yourself a Rural Little Christmas

2008-12-25T00:12:00.000-08:00

Here we go a wassailing among the leaves so green

Here we go a wandering so fair to be seen

Love and joy come to you and to you your wassail too

and all bless you and send you a happy new year

and all send you a happy new year

A Scene by Cherry, Class 2A

2008-12-24T08:48:00.000-08:00

Alma: Tomorrow is Christmas. What do you plan to do on that special day?

Cherry: I'm not sure. Maybe I will go to a nice restaurant with my friends and celebrate the holiday.

Sherry: That sounds nice. Do you know the meaning of Christmas?

Alma: I know it is a western holiday.

Cherry: Just like the Spring Festival in China.

Sherry: Not exactly. Christmas is to remember the birth of God's Son, Jesus Christ. He was born many years ago in December.

Alma: Oh, that's right. I heard of his story before.

Cherry: That's interesting. I like all the songs about Christmas.

Sherry: Yes, they all sound so joyful.

Alma: How about we celebrate the Christmas together? It's tomorrow.

Cherry & Sherry: That's a good idea.

Cherry: Oh. Yes. Let's.

Alma: OK. We can make the plan first.

Sherry: I hope we have a good time.

Kung Fu Panda

2008-12-22T03:15:00.000-08:00

Back when it was warm, I had the chance to sub for a class called 'Western Culture.' It's a 'class' comprised of watching American TV shows like 'How I Met Your Mother' and then going over the slang and then listening for the slang during the second viewing. It's like that first time I went into the Lida office and a bunch of students were watching every episode of 'Friends' and not laughing. O, they were practicing their slang comprehension. So yes Hollywood, make your shows according to the Nielsen market and know that you are representin' in English comprehension classes across the world. Then, there is a whole other side of comprehension that may be problematic to the non-sitcom watching American.

Since I didn't have access to the 'How I Met Your Mother' discs, I showed what I did have access to: Kung Fu Panda. I had actually heard from very smart sources, like the NYC actor Debargo Sanyal whose face lit up at the uttering of the title, that it was really good. And so for the 'Western Culture' class, (which was basically my Speaking and Listening class) we heard the fat-ass voice of Jack Black go from a noodle-making panda to a disciplined kung-fu master. It is the American Dream updated for the new, economically expanding Chinese population, and laced with enough core Chinese values in its enactings to hit home with the young Chinese population and charm the pants off of the 'Western Culture' class. They really took to it like it was a really good salesperson. I really took to it like it was the perfect cultural ambassador.

The hugest thing that the students responded to, and quote over and over again:

Yesterday day is history

Tomorrow is a mystery

Today is the present

that is why it is called a gift.

Ah wisdom. You say 'fortune cookie say' but the cadence really hit home. Americans love to make fun of these little ah-so ditties, but in Chinese, they really are concise and wise this way. That was one of the remarkable things about this flick, that it could re-spin these American stereotypes into a good-natured and earnest embrace of the truism (after all, stereotypes are true; they just are not enough to represent the whole truth). Any offense taken may just be one's own self-conscious discomfort with being minority asian in majority america, or you're just a thin-skinned, overargumentative liberal who has no idea what their actually arguing for.

We had an exuberant conversation following the movie. Here are a few things the students responded to:

We all have our place in the world.

Nothing is impossible.

The word 'flabby'

The pronunciation of 'shi fu' (master) as 'she fu' (like the english pronoun for girl).

There is now a Level Zero.

'Wuxi finger hold' no such thing, American invention?

You don't belong here (in our world)

You don't belong here (in my room)

Fat jokes.

The refrain: There are no accidents.

The illusion: A peach seed can wish to be an apple tree or an orange tree, but no matter what, it will grow to be a peach tree.

Guide. Nurture. Believe.

I need you to believe. You must believe.

Trust in your Master

When you've been trained, you may eat.

He taught you well--but he didn't teach you everything.

The mark of a true hero is humility.

Continue your journey without me. I am proud to have been your Master.

Definitive article swticheroo: I am not a big fat panda. I am the big fat panda.

It seems the students responded to the wisdoms of life and the empowering belief in self which is counter to both Chinese humility and Communist bureaucracy. There were a few things I helped illuminate to them about the American psyche...and I had some favorite points too:

It was smart of Dreamworks to play off of Jack Black's movie persona. Here he is kind of a dufus schlub, dreaming of being a master and then having someone believe in him and give him the awareness of making masterhood possible. I had to inform the students that as much freedom and possibility that Americans are given, there is huge self-doubt and a constant need of empowerment. You would think if you had all of the resources and materials and power in your country, that all of the citizens would be functional and self-assured (like in Switzerland). But because the U.S. is so huge, and so diverse, with two coasts of possibility, that too many dreams diffuse focus. And perhaps the citizens are more easy to control because they are addicted to materials and do not have a focus of purpose, and so they need constantly need boosting, need assuring, need a Master to keep with them, to constantly advise (ja, Dr. Freud?).

'O,' said the students.

(They actually didn't say O. They got hesitant, or just let it gloss over).

Trust in your Master:

'I stayed, because if anyone could change me, it was not me: it was you. I can. I can. I will.'

(Panda's need for Master to continue, before he can wholly believe in himself.)

How are you gonna change him into the Dragon Warrior?

I don't know.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

(It sounds like such a dramatic retreat, but 'I don't know' is truly wise and brave. I think it deters co-dependence).

I eat when I'm upset--emotional eating.

(After I pointed this out, the students got this. And understood better why Americans are so fat. And why the Chinese are getting fatter.)

This is one of my favorite pop-culture switcheroos:

Panda returns to noodle shop. We've kind of in the back of our minds been wondering how a fat panda is the son of a neurotic duck. Noodles are foregrounded.

Panda Son: I can't believe I'm your son.

Father Duck: I have to tell you something:

(Maybe because Angelina Jolie is the voice of the tiger, we're thinking it's gonna be a touching adoption revealing moment).

Father Duck: The secret ingredient is nothing.

(Aha, once again, it's all in the mind. It's what you want it to be.)

And for the final believe-in-your-self grand slam, 4 RBI sweep:

The ever-pursued Scroll, which is the secret of the Dragon Warrior is finally revealed.

The scroll has nothing. It is just reflective. It is just you. No secret ingredient.

This is a moment when the Chinese feel like, whoa, the Americans are really really into themselves--give me some of that!

Panda: You're alive! Or we're both dead.

Master: You are the Dragon Warrior. You have brought peace to this Valley. And to me. I am at peace.

Panda: Should I stop talking?

Master: If you can.

Minority/Majority

2008-12-18T19:15:00.000-08:00

This week's lesson had to do with Studying and Working as a Nurse in the U.S.A. Before starting the class, I asked who of the students would like to study in America. A hush. A silence. A stillness. No one would like to study in the U.S.? Another hush. A twitter. Some movement. Really. That's interesting. Tell me: why?

The students are reluctant, as if they'll hurt my feelings. O, they are giving me face.

I ask with more enthusiasm: Really, I'm interested to know. Of 8 classes, the first response was: too far. Then surveying the classes, I learn: it is expensive. Then: you have to learn English. Across the board, the classline: you need so much money and you have to learn English. It's like any job, I tell them--you have to invest and sacrifice to make lots of money. I tell them, if you know you are happy in China, and you don't need so much money, then that is best for you. Some people are only happy making money, so they are willing to leave China.

Then I hear something in Chinese. I understand 2/5 of it. Wait, the life style is good but...and she says it in Chinese again. I ask what that means. O, you don't feel secure. She nods. Because you see so many guns in so many American movies. Yes. Fantesy, a boy student from Class 6 who never answers any question, responds: It is our motherland.

Yes it is. And it is at this moment that I realize I can never be Chinese, because I do not have this kind of devotion to the motherland. This frees me.

During the very dry class material, there is a statistic about how on the West Coast of the U.S., there is a larger number of minority nurses than in the rest of the U.S.: 23%.

Does everyone know what 'minority' means? The usual silence, and then a whisper: shaoshu minzu. Yes! I say. (This is the '2' part of 2/5 that I know in Chinese.) I have them say it a coupla times: Mi-nor-ity. Mi-nor-ity. And what is the opposite? Majority. Let's say it everyone: Ma-jor-ity. Ma-jor-ity.

Who is the majority in China? They answer: Han Chinese. That's right. Who is the majority in the U.S.? Usual silence, but interestingly enough, 2 of the only 6 male students in all of my classes answer: Indians. Really. They smile. Well, you know the majority of the U.S. is white. Bai ren. White People. The White People have thrown the Indians off of their land for the past 400 years. This is news to my classes.

And then I continue with the demographics: The U.S. is 65% white, 15% black, 12% latino, and 4% asian. And I make it clear to them 4% is not just Chinese, it's all of the asians: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong, Filipino. All of them together are 4%. I've struck a kind of dumbfoundedness in my classes. Although on the West Coast, in my home state of California, it is different. The majority is latino, with 60% and 10% of the population is asian. All asians.

I tell them that I grew up in the U.S., so I am of the U.S. The language that I understand life the deepest in is American English. I grew up as a minority in the U.S. seeing more white faces in the society and culture than my own. But now, here, in China, I am in the majority, and that is a very strong feeling. (The classes universally chuckle). My face is in the majority, and that gives me a kind of feeling that I have not had for most of my life.

I tell them the coasts have asian faces but in the big middle of the U.S., it is white, very white. In fact I had been to the middle, to Kansas, to a small town to teach, where they had mostly seen asians on TV or movies, doing kung fu. The people of the midwest are very friendly, and they say what they mean. It's not like they think I'm a freak, they just don't have a lot of experience with live asian faces, just like you students don't have any live contact with white people. There were some International Korean students at the school, but mostly it's white. Some might think think that asians do kung-fu just like you think that everywhere you go in the U.S. it is unsafe.

Even if there are students in my class who wish to study Nursing in the U.S., they are in the minority and will not speak up for the majority to hear.

Through the Beijing Glass

2008-12-08T10:34:00.000-08:00

Yes, with the godparents Vera and Paul Chow, us birds in front of the Olympic Nest.
I didn't suck

but didn't eat duck

had lamb from the west

and awed by Bird's Nest
The overnight train from Beijing to Shanghai is comfortable and cozy--was nestled in an upper bunk and slept to the hum of a north-bound train. Next thing you know, we arrived to the dry air and a pristine chill. The taxi ride to the Beijing Foreign Studies University passed Tiananmen, passed a colorful temple, passed a crumbling city wall. The history was clear and present; the taxi-driver's warbled Beijing accent was not.
The Center for Chinese American Literature Research was started 5 years ago by Emeritus Professor Bing Wu, whose mother is a well-known poet who was a contemporary of Lu Xun's. It is now run by Dr. Liu, who is planning an anthology of Chinese American works. I was invited by Prof. Wei Zhou, who found me on the Upstart Crow website, initially contacting me to ask for my Chinese name, since she was presenting a paper in Xian at a Chinese American literature conference.

The Center was kind enough to invite me to give a talk once they knew I was coming to Beijing. And so I tried to articulate thoughts of not just Asian American, but specifically Chinese American, to a Chinese audience. Quite a fruitful exercise. In a seminar room just below the Research Center, I delivered the talk to 20 students, mostly undergrads with impeccable English (BFSU provides 80% of the diplomats, what with over 40 languages spoken). I am the first playwright invited by the Research Center to speak to the students.
It was brought to my attention by one of the students that the contradictions I describe for the Chinese American through Last of the Suns is resonant for the 80-and-after Generation (that's what the one-childers are called). There is now the conflict between freedom, in the form of you get anything you want from a set of parents and 2 sets of grandparents, and tradition, where academic expectations and societal darwinism put a damper on that freedom. How to fly?
Before the talk, there was a lively lunch with Prof. Wu, Dr. Liu, Prof. Zhou, and Prof. Zhang, a retired drama professor. Prof. Zhang was telling of how her granddaughter is not given any free time to play--her mother has legislated piano practice so intensely, that it has become a chore. She dare not say anything, and worries that the child only follows orders and doesn't have curiosities of her own. Dr. Liu said she does not force her son to do anything--she and her husband are avid readers, and so he just follows suit and picks up books that he is interested in. I asked what Asian American means to them. Too hard to pin point, they reply.
After the talk, a hand quickly went up: When can we see this play?
I wish for every playwright to find their audience.
Sometimes, playwriting feels like flapping your arms in the dark, aimlessly waving empty hands through the night.
And when you find your audience, suddenly there is a bell in your grasp and you ring and you ring.
Looking through The Beijinger, I notice there are 24 hour bars. I meet Dan, a friend of the Moo, who has lived in Beijing for 8 years and of late makes his living playing jazz guitar for many a cafe or embassy. We meet for Xin Jiang food--that would be lamb skewers and the most awesome sesame bread from China's far west--and I mention to Dan how progressive the nightlife in Beijing is. 'Yeah, there's no last call. I would actually call it regressive.'
My last conversation with Prof. Zhou was on the bus headed towards the subway. I mention how the U.S. and China are both superpowers, one declining and one rising. She kindly sets me straight. ''Superpower' is cold war terminology. I don't think it is in the Chinese nature to be a superpower, or that would have already happened. The Chinese don't want to call attention to themselves. They wish to live simple lives. Perhaps seeing China as a superpower is more a western perspective. The Chinese nature is not to be super. But the Chinese nature is to have face.'

Highlights of the Contradiction

2008-12-05T14:02:00.000-08:00

THE CONTRADICTION OF THE CHINESE-AMERICAN

through the theater play Last of the Suns

As rendered by Alice Tuan

for Beijing Foreign Studies University

December 5, 2008

The talk was 90 minutes. Here are snippets from each of the six sections.

I. BACKGROUND

I was born in Seattle, Washington, in the northwest of the United States, to Chinese parents.

My mother is from Shanghai, from a family specializing in business in industry. My father is from Jiangxi Jiujiang, from a military family. His father, my Yeh Yeh, served as a Lt. General in Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist Army. My parents did not know each other in China.

Both of my parents studied at Taiwan University. My father came to the United States for graduate studies in Engineering and found employment in Seattle once he received his degree. My mother also came to the United States to study and also landed in Seattle. It is at this time that my parents met, and wed and started their family.

***

A kid would come over and push my nose down asking 'Why is your nose so flat?' I would say, 'Because stupids like you keep pushing it down!' Or another kid would ask 'Why are your eyes so small?' and I would naively say 'You should see my father's eyes--they're even smaller.'

It was a funny time.

When I was 5 years old, my father got a new job in Los Angeles, California. That was the first time I went to Disneyland. I liked to go on the fast rides and laughed constantly with my mouth wide open. I liked Los Angeles. It was sunny all of the time so you could be outside. I had no bothers or sisters, so I would play with my dolls and make up stories by myself.

***

My grandparents arrived 1 month before my sister was born. This was part filial, part pragmatic. Of course my father was taking care of his parents in their old age. But also my Nai Nai and Yeh Yeh would take care of my sister once she was born, and me, while my parents worked.

***

After Chinese school, we would get lunch from McDonald's to take home. Yup, even Yeh Yeh and Nai Nai. They really liked to eat Big Macs and of course, the frenchfries. Although Nai Nai would eat just a few because of 'huo qi.' That was a great site--to see Yeh Yeh and Nai Nai open sied for the Big Macs. No coca-cola, though, only tea.

When I was invited to sleepover at a friend's house, my parents wouldn't allow it. Yes they were being protective, but there was a feeling of not being allowed to have fun, not being allowed to socialize, American-style. Not being allowed to be close to friends, to participate, to feel normal. I would return home, extremely unhappy.

***

I was not a good student at UCLA. I had no Chinese rules now. I could do whatever I wanted. And why study? All of the time spent studying for entrance into the name-brand schools didn't get me into any of them. I fully embraced my American individuality and freedom. I would rather be a human than some successful machine.

Even though I had broken away from Chinese restrictions, somehow living free was wonderful but aimless. I wanted to exercise freedom through writing. I wanted to write but had nothing to write. Or what I wrote was filled with anger and confusion. Each time I would see my parents, all were unhappy. My Yeh Yeh and Nai Nai were getting older and weaker. I was made to feel insensitive and selfish. Chinese strategy on an American subject yields failure all around.

I realize Chinese criticism is for one's good, but to American ears it makes one feel like a failure. Particularly when here is no positive reinforcement. The U.S. way of teaching tends to be too generous with its praise, saying nice stuff to encourage and to not hurt anyone's feelings. This is not necessarily useful for the long run, as one might have an inflated notion of self. But the Chinese way of, 'I only tell you when you are bad and won't say anything if you are good' is realist and pragmatic and ego-checking, but somehow, inhuman. It is disciplinarian old school, vs. touchy-feely new school. It is patriarchy vs. matriarchy. It is competition vs. compassion.

***

Strangely, though, when I read the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, I felt like he was writing about my alienation. He wrote through many identities that would speak of many philosophies. But he was from 150 years ago. I needed help now. When I went to seek counseling at UCLA, the nice white man had no idea about what to do with this dual psychology, this cultural schizophrenia. I would explain my thoughts, tell of my displacement. He told me: 'Just study harder.' When there is no one to help, you help yourself.

II. LAST OF THE SUNS, the play

This plays intends to reflect aspects of one Chinese American point of view by:

--introducing dynamics between the Chinese and U.S. cultures

--relaying the stress of modern life trying to uphold old traditions

--procuring dramas of misunderstanding

In this play, I have completely fictionalized historical aspects of General Sun, in order to heighten and mythologize his character.

Yeh Yeh/General Sun--wavers in and out of past and present

Twila Sun--wavers in and out of Chinese and American

Sonny Sun--American, Valley dude

Ho Ping Sun--General's son, isolated Chinese in America, traditional

Ni Lee--General's daughter-in-law, Chinese in America, trapped between 2 eras, traditional vs. modern

Monkey King--trickster of many identities, multi-faced, fluid

Eight Pig--literal, gluttonous, the way only superpowers can breed

If one culture is clear in its value, transparent as a sheet of glass, then I will touch upon themes that accumulate to form the prism that I see Chinese American to be.

Immigrant.

Ni Lee: Here anything is possible with hard work.--Chinese discipline + American promise.

Children's success hugely important.

Doubly so for immigrant who is isolate from resident culture.

The Children become their culture, their huge center.

Conflict when children adapt American standards of free will.

Monkey King and Eight Pig reflect the immigrant isolation in that they cannot understand the western concept of 'unconscious' which they represent in the play.

This reflects a Chinese American disposition in that Chinese American know American ideas better and more directly than Chinese, so in a way, they don't know what they represent in the world.

Feminist elements.

Discarded women in the patriarchy

Unhappy modern women who 'can have it all'

Detached from maternal instinct due to need to win at all costs.

Ni Lee a modern capable woman caught in filial duty to husband and husband's family.

A huge repressed fury from the sanctioned inequality.

American and Chinese culture can agree on the lesser importance of women.

In a way Ni Lee and Twila both want to be heard but have different ways of going about it. Ni Lee, the Chinese, won't say anything, and just suffers, but longs to be heard with full attention, like a camera. Twila, the American screams for attention, 'look at me!' her strange hair and eyes, shouts to be heard with outrageous actions, goes against feminine norm by being tough and alienating. Both tactics yield deaf ears.

Hypocrisy vs. Duplicity

Hypocrisy, where word and action do not match up.

And example, the promiscuous use of sorry. Empty words. No thought before action and then just hapless 'sorry.' Not aware of inconsistency, or just doesn't care. Whatever.

Duplicity, aware of the double face. Saving face. Say opposite of what really is true to save face.

Words vs. actions--Better to say and then not do? Or to not say and just do?

If not going to do it, why bother saying it?

Can words persuade, alter mood?

This cultural barrier

(In the play, Twila was to be an Olympic champion but could not take being treated as an ice-skating machine anymore and 'defected' from her family by sabotaging her Olympic trial and running 'screaming from the rink.' The day of the play she returns after a 5 year absence)

Twila: You need other people cheering for me before you can food good about me.

How about directly? Twila wishes her mother to love her American style, to give her support and kind words.

Ni Lee: Children don't tell parents what they should say.

Twila: Then the parents have to share their life stories or their children will run screaming from the rink and find out about life from someone else.

Twila needs guidance, needs mothering. Ni Lee feels humiliated, cannot forgive her daughter for losing her face in front of the world.

The title

The family Sun

The nationalist Sun

The boy of parents, son (Sonny has run away at the end)

all revolve around Yeh Yeh, the sun

Last is another word for endure, the family's endurance

III. CONTRADICTION

Tendencies--

Chinese/American

long-suffering/pleasure

patience/instant gratification

cash/credit

saving/spending

humility/aggrandizement

homogeneous/heterogeneous

perfection/originality

obedience/rebellion

stoic/emotional

public space/private space

IV. PLAWRITING

Writing to me is the last place for freedom.

You can decide about all the things you are taught.

You can determine what your world truths are.

You can find your own voice, your natural voice.

In 1988, I saved up enough money to be able to write for 6 months without working. In those six months, I came up with the first draft of the play called General Yeh Yeh.

I didn't know how to write. I just wrote. And kept on writing.

I now know in playwriting, it's important what people say, but it's equally important what they don't say.

Perhaps this is a way into eastern and western character: the new westerners are youthful, bold, have nothing to hide--they say it all out loud, talk and talk and talk. The older easterner is more guarded, aware of appearances--they say what should be said, and there is gravity in what they are not saying.

The First Scene

My Yeh Yeh inspired this play, yes. The event that sparked the writing: his warming his tea in the microwave. I remember being awoken by the constant beeps, as he could not find the start button.

Something about an old world man using new world technology, all the power at hand, but unable to start.

And so it started, as a short radio play for LA poet Philomene Long's playwriting class, broadcast on left Pacifica station, KPFK.

Language

Language intersects character.

WHAT is said and HOW it is said tells a lot about character.

The beginning of the play starts with a child-like tone. The more we age, the more child-like we become. A full circle.

Monkey King and Eight Pig speak in rhyme and as Yeh Yeh joins in, he rhymes with them as well.

As Yeh Yeh casts his 'playmates' away, we hear his monologue as a powerful general decrying his loss to Mao, criticizing the detour of ideology towards that hairy Marx man.

When Yeh Yeh talks to Twila, we see him in the exterior world; he is indeed 100 years old, unable to hear, constantly braying 'HAH?!'

Ho Ping and Ni Lee have immigrant language strategies.

When speaking English, Ho Ping has a heavy accent--he speaks broken English, which is son uses as ammunition: 'Turn off it? Speak right!'

When Ni Lee speaks English, she speaks with a Hong Kong British accent. This gives her an imperial feel, as Queen's English garners an air of respect.

When Ho Ping and Ni Lee are speaking fluent English in the play, this signals that they are speaking to each other in their native tongue, in Chinese.

V. CHINESE AND/OR AMERICAN

The duel worlds coming together in the play is key to the success of the Chinese American psyche. And perhaps a healthy launch into a 21st century global mentality. One that does not solely embody one culture or another, but rather includes ways of living as the individual finds most meaningful, whichever culture it may come from, thus laying a path for global citizenry.

There was a time when I was completely confused by the label Asian American. What did it mean? I was like a snake, eating its own tail, trying to understand this label beyond the tidy comparisons of east and west. It must be more than Asian or American. The more I wrote, the more confused I was as to what I was supposed to represent.

In the American theater world, I am supposed to represent Asians, even though I am American. I am supposed to know about the Chinese, even though I went to American schools and was never taught Chinese history. When I attempt to show the fusion of the contradiction, the whole complexity of the Chinese American, beyond the surface comparisons, it is not easily understandable by American audiences. Or not as relevant. Or not as entertaining.

It is not about entertaining Americans with exotic or pitiable or modernizing Chinese culture, which can seek acceptance by imitating western culture. It is about forming a new mentality, fusing the contradictions, so that it is not east or west, but rather east and west.

I finally understood that Asian American is a marketing label. A tool to better sell the package. One that looks yellow on the outside, but still can explain to the white on the inside.

VI. NOW, SYNTHESIS

It is one thing to write and another thing to be heard.

You can write as you like or you can write to meet the market.

Writing practices a faith in one's own ideas:

to believe when others don't

to test the 'truth' of an idea (there are so many truths)

to question its sustainability.

In the contextualization of the label 'asian american'

for Chinese and American alike

I knew I needed to better understand the asian side of the label

and so I knew I needed to live in China for an extended time.

I not only can observe the New China

I can also reaffirm what I appreciate about the United States.

How lucky I feel to be a writer at the beginning of the 21st century. A time of two mindsets: the literalness of paper vs. the porous ether of the internet. Opposite schemes. We are in that moment where the 20th century still has its imprint on systems and values and beliefs. But the 21st century will require an evolved set of systems and ingenious comprehensions to handle the further complexities of the modern being.

It's a new time, a new way to be. The rules are changing as the borders of countries become less apparent because of our shared global culture. Now is the chance to coexist contradictions, to house oppositions within one mind, without having winners or losers, without having one better than the other. This can deepend democracy. It can uplift humanity. This is an exciting beginning for the new millennium.

A head start on thinking about, of being in the 21st century.

Alice Through the Beijing Glass

2008-12-04T19:15:00.000-08:00

Taking the night train to Beijing--11 1/2 hours yo

Got an upper, soft sleeper, chug a chug a chug

Gonna give a talk at the Beijing Foreign Studies University--

'The Contradiction of the Chinese American'

through the theater play Last of the Suns

hope i don't suck

gonna have duck

wish me some luck

Thanks Given, Psyches Taken

2008-11-27T19:26:00.000-08:00

I don't mean to be morbid, but the gastronomically sanctioned family gathering that is Thanksgiving for the U.S. is diverted and gashed upon by the terrorism and carnage in Mumbai. Strangely, this attack might bring estranged families closer together--the unbearable company you have had years of 20th century baggage with, is at least alive and cannot personally terrorize you as coordinatedly as extremist young 20-somethings with nothing to lose can on the largest, most important commercial city in India. It's a new world, greater boundaries have been crossed, old grudges may need to be dropped to conserve the psychic energy needed to withstand all the crisis at hand--micro, macro, mercurial.

If I didn't have to teach 8 class periods on this 4th Thursday, which really has no bearing here in Shanghai, I would have joined other Americans at a 4-star hotel like the Portman Ritz-Carlton for my dose of turkey and fixins. Could not muster the energy or the 50 U.S. bucks. It does hit home when low-tech terrorists don't annihilate everything at once and actually request the heads of British and U.S. nationals. That kind of personalized hatred surely resonates: your patriotism or your life? Which would you choose? Take out your passport, now!

I was gobbled up by the CNN coverage.

Despite all of the frustrations and inefficiencies and caps on freedom in my present, I've got lots to be thankful for. I'm in Shanghai, for american sakes, this strange, ancient, new, dilapidated, quickly-constructed lunar landscape.
I have a job that allows me to save most of my earnings and grants me a 4-day weekend every week.
I am thankful to have 8 classes of these fresh-faced students, all the single pride of their families, all constantly worried about the next test, some naturally gifted with an ear for language, some profoundly bored by the English language (to the impatient tune of uncovered yawns), and most willing to robustly repeat after me in a choral call and response that truly warms my cockles. The cold actually betters their attention than the lazy warmth of fall.
A few have that 'IBM nap' down where they can be sitting up straight but actually snoozing, though a few of the few can even text while seeming to be super-studious. My text-dar is getting really good, and I collect the phone 'til the end of class, which is slightly traumatic, but then they just resort to the 'IBM nap' or try to telepathically finish that last text.
And the serendipitous wonders of vocabulary visuals. I love how Martin Scorsese shows up here as the waving pharmacist.

I am thankful to be a simple gal. All I really need is a clean, well-lighted place to write and think. The more bare the better. This is my potato patch which I can so gloriously couch in.
I am thankful, as you know from blogs past, for the cafeteria, which I am given monthly credit to eat at. Here is tofu, greens and eggs, and seaweed.
For Thanksgiving, I had this seaweed and also crisp, stir-fried broccoli, which I got 'to go,' so I could eat at my leisure as I watched live footage from Mumbai. Also, so I could make my favorite whole wheat noodles with sesame oil, soy and a superb chili combo of crushed red chilis and peppercorns, and toasted sesame seeds. No triptophane this year. I make the noodles here,
which I am, yes, thankful for. Along with a super cool bathroom, where the sink sits atop a huge drawer where all toiletries and clutter can easily be stored away.
I really am so simple (or bourgeois?) that this sink combo makes me so happy. Along with my two-button flush toilet. It's a big round button on top, but split in half. Push the left half, it's a small flush, for the light tinkles. Push the right half, and it's a medium flush. Press both halves together, and it's a full flush that will keep flushing until all is cleared and gone. Why are not all toilets like this? I am thankful to be able to conserve water, but not shortchange efficiency and need.

These are the materials of my life that allow me to live as close to my core and natural mind as I ever have. The rest is time and space to wonder. I am thankful everyday to wake up to this:
To debrief last night's dream (and figure what that was all about). Or to read Rumi. Or to jot in the red book. Or figure the next blog topic. Or notice history repeat or transgress itself with Zinn's People's History of the United States. Or wonder the global toll on the modern psyche. Or think of how China's superpower personality differs from the U.S.'s superpower personality. How both places rely on either big-time money or self-resilience. How both places deny dignity in its societal care for the citizens. How if both continue to play hardball to maximize profits, and continue to strip dignity, the citizens will have nothing to lose. Or listen to the ducks. Or watch the clouds roll by. Or enjoy the silence. Or welcome unexpected visitors.

Scene 3. Shopgirl at Shanghai #1 Department Store

2008-11-24T15:03:00.000-08:00

(Based on a true story).

JANE CHANG, an American, is browsing the toy section of the Shanghai #1 Department Store. A SHOPGIRL, in a navy blue skirt and blazer ensemble sees her from afar and slowly approaches. Shopgirl, in a blunt red-guard bob, is humble and earnest, but slightly tentative, like a countryside girl in the big city.

Shopgirl (in Chinese): These cars are very popular.

Jane Chang (in American Chinese): I'm just looking.

(Shopgirl flicks the switch on one of the cars. It flashes like a disco with upbeat music.)

Shopgirl: So many people like this.

Jane Chang: Do you have something without music?

Shopgirl: Over here. All of these don't have music. This one. The doors open.

Jane Chang: That one is nice.

Shopgirl: BMW. And look, it goes.

(Shopgirl kneels on the ground, revs the car backwards and then lets it rip.)

Jane Chang: O! That's pretty. I like how it is red and a 'convertible' (in English), ah, open. Can I see? How much is this?

Shopgirl: 147 yuan.

Jane Chang: And how about this one. The VW Beetle police car.

Shopgirl: 158 yuan.

Jane Chang: I mean, does it go too?

Shopgirl: Yah, yah. Look.

(She kneels again, revs the car backwards and lets it rip.)

Jane Chang: Can I try?

(Jane Chang tries. It goes. She tries again. It goes again.)

Shopgirl: The doors don't open on that one.

Jane Chang: That's OK. I want both of these.

Shopgirl: O. They don't have lights or music.

Jane Chang: I know.

Shopgirl: I have to make sure. Because there are people who buy this kind of car, and then when they get home, there is no light or music, and then they come back and yell at me for having no light or music. (She's a li'l teary)

Jane Chang: They couldn't exchange?

Shopgirl (immediately sober): We don't exchange.

Jane Chang: Even if they have a receipt.

Shopgirl: We don't exchange.

Jane Chang: What if they call the manager?

Shopgirl: He will tell them that all sales are final.

Jane Chang: All sales?

Shopgirl: That is our policy.

(Jane Chang looks at the red convertible BMW and the VW Beetle police car.)

Jane Chang: I want one more.

Shopgirl: How about the one with light and music.

Jane Chang: It's for my nephew. He is going to be three years old, so I want to get him three cars. Or how about this truck. He likes trucks.

Shopgirl: The back opens. Or how about this oil tanker. But the back doesn't open. This one has ice cream on it.

Jane Chang: My sister doesn't want her child to eat too many sweets.

Shopgirl: This one has fruit on it.

Jane Chang: How much?

Shopgirl: 78 yuan.

Jane Chang: Good.

Shopgirl: The truck doesn't move. You have to push it by yourself. The other two can move by themselves, but the truck you have to push. By yourself.

Jane Chang: Yes, I understand.

Shopgirl: There are customers that think the truck can move by itself, and when they get home, it doesn't move by itself, and then they come to the store and yell at me, that it doesn't move by itself.

Jane Chang: I want these three.

Shopgirl. These...three. (She takes the shelf tags of each of the three.) Your nephew is lucky.

Jane Chang: I can't be there for his birthday party, so I have to send a good gift. From Ah-yi.

Shopgirl: Ha, Ah-yi.

(They walk over to the shopgirl counter. Shopgirl starts filling out forms, many forms, very diligently. Jane looks at a Mini Cooper while waiting. She picks it up and examines it.)

Jane Chang: How much is this one?

Shopgirl: O that one doesn't have a tag.

Jane Chang: My nephew knows this car. It's one of his favorites. When we are driving on the freeway, he excitedly shouts 'Look Ah-yi! Mini Cooper!' and points to it. He knows it. I want to buy this one instead of the BMW.

Shopgirl (with a bit of nervous fear): I've already filled out the form for the red car.

Jane Chang: You can fill out another form.

Shopgirl: We can't sell that one. It doesn't have a tag.

Jane Chang: Where is the tag?

Shopgirl: There is no tag.

(Jane notices that Shopgirl is sort of shaking and uncomfortable. She puts the Mini Cooper back on the shelf.)

Jane Chang: Well the Mini Cooper in real life is smaller than the VW Beetle. And this Mini Cooper is bigger than that VW Beetle. It might confuse my nephew. I'll stay with the BMW. (Shopgirl continues to fill out forms, imperceptibly sighing with relief). Why do you display the car if you don't sell it?

Shopgirl: It's new stock.

Jane Chang: You Chinese have a funny way of doing business. Someone wants to buy your new stock, which is probably more expensive, yes?

Shopgirl: The tag isn't made yet.

Jane Chang: Just because there is no tag number to copy for your form, you don't want to make money. But you still display it to show.

Shopgirl: I can't do anything. It's our instruction.

(She continues to fill out forms.)

Jane Chang: Do you have a box or something to wrap it with?

Shopgirl: O. They come in a big box. I don't have a box for each car. Only the big box which they all came in. We don't have enough room to store them if each car had it's own box.

Jane Chang: That is so opposite of the U.S. There, it's all about packaging. The prettier the box, the more they can charge.

(Shopgirl goes to the storage cabinet.)

Shopgirl: See, it's just one big box.

Jane Chang: That's OK. You are saving paper.

Shopgirl: I can give you gift bags. These.

(They are 3 Burberry-patterned gift bags.)

Jane Chang: Well, these are nice. But I just need a box to send to the U.S.

Shopgirl: I have this big bag.

(It is a large Burberry-patterned gift bag).

Jane Chang: Yes, the big one is fine. How much?

Shopgirl: It's free.

Jane Chang: For the 3 cars.

Shopgirl: 283 yuan.

(Jane hands her three 100 yuan bills.)

Shopgirl: Please take this slip and pay at that station behind the stereo case.

Jane Chang: O, ah, over at...

Shopgirl: Straight ahead, behind the stereo case. Just go straight.

Jane goes. Shopgirl wipes each of the cars and then carefully puts each in the big Burberry-patterned bag. Jane comes back. Shopgirl takes two copies of the forms and then gives Jane hers.)

Jane Chang: Can I have these three small bags too? My nephew loves to play grocery store.

Shopgirl: Do you want me to put it in the big bag?

Jane Chang: Yes, thanks.

(Jane takes the big bag.)

Shopgirl: Bye-bye.

Jane Chang: Thank you for your help.

International Play Bakeoff

2008-11-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

It's midnight in Shanghai, November 23. It's also 8am in Los Angeles, November 22. I've been invited to join a gaggle of LA playwrights in yet another Great American Play Bakeoff, as invented by ubermentor Paula Vogel. This time, though, it stretches across the time zones.

It's simple. For the next 48 hours, write a play.

The ingredients to be baked into this session's play:

mother

a song

chalk

a fall

something that is impossible to stage.

I've synchronize the Shanghai-Los Angeles times, so that I can be writing during the same 48 hours as my playwright hosts: Ken Narasaki, Sujata Bhatt, Jason Fong, Soo-jin Lee, Andrea Apuy, Howard Ho and Sharon Omi. Ken has a friend in Ashland that may be writing along, and my friend Chen Gu in New Orleans might make a bake, too.

So midnight, November 25, I will have a 'play' or a dramatic fragment, or at least something written, where 2 days before, there was nothing. That is the beauty of the bakeoff: it can be as long or as short a piece of work as you like. And, it is both pressure and no pressure, because you feel the heat to write something within the 2 days, but how 'bad' could it be? It was done in such a short time. And that recipe is what allows flashes of ingenuity to emerge: the subconscious rising to the top, revealing itself in a kindly agitated state.

So join on in!

Anyone in this world can be a part of the Great International Play Bakeoff.

Fables (not necessarily of Faubus)

2008-11-20T16:19:00.001-08:00

Besides my Nursing English classes, I conduct a 1-hour conversation class known as English Corner. It takes three to make a corner, and I usually get at least that. Those students willing to squeeze extra time to practice spoken English into their busy schedules are a brave lot, as speaking aloud, in front of their peers, in a foreign language does require a kind of courage.

It started with talking about seasons, the physical reality of seasons, my asking the students about their favorite season and then asking why. Why can be precarious. It can lead to many similar answers. It can lead to my handing them a Chinese-English dictionary, because they can say it in Chinese but not in English. Ah, generating new vocabulary. Um, not a lot write new words down. Conversation seems to be more about entertainment than retention. I eventually have the students rehash what we've talked about in the form of a 'conversation,' two at a time, in front of the class. It's a prompted performance, but it sure looks like a conversation. (The next goal is to shorten dead air time and have them face away from the blackboard where all the generated words and phrases have been recorded.)

I freaked them out talking about breakfast. American breakfast. All that meat. All those ways to cook an egg. All those starches and sugars. The mashed, fried, baked and hashed of it all. I tell them this is why Americans are so fat. They cringe and are relieved to have their rice porridge, steamed bun, and tea egg.

Two weeks ago, I hit upon gold. The telling of a fable in English. I took some text of the Meanings and Metaphor book which I had used for Speaking and Listening class and had the English Corner students read each, and then tell the fable again in their own English words. The great thing about fables is that there is that moral, and the Chinese definitely respond to lessons of morality. The fables always use animals as characters, which is shorthand in the global storytelling universe. Snakes seem always to be wicked. Foxes are clever. Dogs are dense. Rabbits impatient and cowardly. Turtles wise. Lions and Tigers ferocious and arrogant.

There were 4 fables to choose from: 2 from good ole Aesop, 1 from India, 1 from Turkey.

The quickie: A bird sings in a cage at night. A bat notices and asks, "Why do you only sing at night?" The bird answers, "When I sang in the daytime, I was heard and caught and put into this cage. So now I sing only at night." The bat flaps, "It's no good being careful now. You should have been more careful before you were caught."

The other Aesop, and least popular to rendit: Once, the hares had a huge meeting and complained about how insecure and frightening their lives were. They were hunted by men and dogs and eagles, all sorts of animals. They decided it was better to die at that moment than live their lives feeling frightened. They ran together to a pond and jumped in to drown themselves.

A bunch of frogs happened to be sitting pondside and the moment they heard the hare's running feet, they too quickly jumped into the pond with fright. When one of the calmer, more intelligent hares saw this he yelled "Stop! All of you. Don't do anything stupid. You can see now that there are creatures even more frightened than we are."

The favorite from India: A very wicked snake lived next to a road and would bite anyone passing by. One day, a holy man walked by, and as the snake rushed to bite him, he stopped, looked at the snake, and said "You want to bite me? Go ahead." The snake was surprised and overwhelmed by the holy man's gentleness. The holy man said "Listen, my friend (was it McCain?). How about promising me you won't bite anyone from now on (it wasn't.) The snake bowed and agreed. The holy man went on his way and the snake started his new life of non-violence.

Soon all the village people (in full regalia) noticed that the snake would no longer bite, and so they started to tease it badly, throwing stones at it, dragging it by its tail. The snake, transcending its usual fable stereotype, kept its promise to the holy man and, despite all of the violence directed toward it, did not bite anyone.

One day, the holy man returned to see visit the snake and was upset to see that the snake was beaten and bruised. "What's happened?" asked the holy man. "O holy man, you said I should not bite anyone but humans, they are so cruel." The holy man answered, "I told you not to bite, but I didn't tell you not to hiss."

And the most popular one from India: A lion called all the animals that he ruled over to his den. He asked them: "How does my den smell?" The dog stepped forward, eager, honest, but not too wise and said, "Your Majesty, your den smells rather unpleasant. In all honesty, it stinks." The lion became furious and tore the dog to bits. (bite/bit/bits lesson). The lion asked again, and this time the monkey stepped forward. "Your Majesty, your den smells like the beautiful roses of the palace garden." The lion was doubly furious. "For lying and flattery, you deserve the same as the dog," and the lion ripped the monkey to bits as well. Then the lion asked the fox the same question, to which the fox said "Your Majesty, for some time now, I've had a bad cold, and I really can't smell a thing..."

The students did great, renditting the fables. The next week, I asked them to translate Chinese fables into English.

A kind man walked through the snow in a forest. He saw a snake laying there, frozen and half- dead. He decided to take the snake to where it was warm. He placed the snake in his bag and went home. After a while, when the snake thawed he crawled out of the bag and bit the man. Be careful who you help.

A fox went up to a tiger one day, and says, I am the king of the land. The tiger says, how is that possible, I am the kind of the land. The fox grins: I can show you how I am kind of the land. How, asks the tiger. Follow me, says the fox. And so the tiger followed the fox all around the land. As soon as they came upon any creature, the creature would see the tiger approaching and become frightened and scram. Each time the fox, followed by the tiger, would approach, all creatures would run and hide. The tiger saw this and said, wherever we go, the creatures all run. It must be true, fox. You must be the king of the land.

There used to be English Corner Monday through Thursday; due to lack of attendance, there's only the Tuesday session now. Today, after my final Nursing English class, one of Thursday's students walked with me and asked what we were doing in English Corner today; I told her it was only Tuesdays from now on. Please come Tuesday. I can't, I'm busy...and I prepared a Chinese fable for today. Tell me as we walk.

Once there was a poor old man who was so hungry, he went up to a restaurant, and sniffed the fragrant aroma of the food. The owner charged him money. But I am only taking a sniff. The owner insisted. I have no money. And so the restaurant owner took the poor old man to court. Unfortunately for the old man, the judge was a friend of the owner, and sentenced him to a fine. The old man, light-headed from hunger, was completely helpless. A clever young man saw the helpless old man, tied to a post in front of the restaurant. The old man told him of his situation and the young man promised to set him free. The young man went to the restaurant owner and said, I will pay the fine if you free the poor old man. The restaurant owner agreed. Upon releasing the poor old man, the clever young man took his bag of coins and jingled them next to the restaurant owner's ear. What's this? this restaurant owner asked. I pay you the money, like the old man ate your food.

Faubus himself was enfabled by Charles Mingus on Ah Um, a classic jazz piece with a jaunty circus feel that stood against desegregation. It was based on Orvel Faubus, an Arkansas governor in the 50's that caused the Little Rock crisis of 1957, disallowing 9 black students from attending Little Rock Central High School. In 1986, Faubus was defeated in the Arkansas gubernatorial race by Bill Clinton.

Meeting Dr. Ding

2008-11-17T16:21:00.001-08:00

Ni hao!

(in Chinese) Is this Dr. Ding?

Yes.

I am a friend of your wife's brother, Paul Chow. He is best friends with my parents in Los Angeles. I am called Alice.

Alice?

Yes, that's right. Are you in your laboratory now? Paul Chow said that you go to your laboratory every day.

(in English) I am blind! I cannot see anything. I am in my office. I come to my office everyday. In the morning. Every day.

I'm in Shanghai teaching English and would like to meet you and your wife.

And I do. Meet Dr. Ding. But not his wife, Paul Chow's sister. Not this time. Paul Chow is my godfather. He is the one who sent me to China in my most disaffected state in the 80's, beefing up the asian side of my assigned chinese-american identity. He is my inspirator for a bubbly outgoing spirited life living in constant curiosity. Paul Chow was the first one to read 'Yeh Yeh,' on the radio (KPFK in LA) in a play based on my own nonagenerian grandfather that became Last of the Suns.

And here now, Dr. Ding, all of 87 years, reminding me of Yeh Yeh, in his modest office at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, a desk, a phone, two chairs, a huge bookshelf, a gold medal on the wall, a butterfly behind him, an electric teapot, an easy chair and a UC San Diego baseball cap hanging on the door that one of his numerous friends brought back for him. The air is crisp. The desk is next to the window. The light is friendly.

As soon as I arrive to his office, shake hands. We sit at his desk. He hands me the phone. You want to speak with Zhou Chuang Qing? He doesn't call her 'my wife,' he calls her by her full name. I do. He feels out the two buttons for speed dial, and within 3 rings, Paul Chow's sister is speaking, with a similar voice as Paul Chow, even more fiery and more spirited, if that is possible.

She gets all my info right off the bat. So does Dr. Ding, as he writes with pen and paper. My Chinese is feeling limited as I try to remember how to say Shanghai Lida Polytechnic Insititue in Chinese and try to explain that we are in Songjiang but not in Songjiang City where a whole slew of Universities reside in the new Campus district. She apologizes that she can't hangout today because she has to wait for the prepared food that is delivered to her house, a service for people over 70 years of age. She's a raconteur, just like Paul Chow, how tragic the subway collapse is, how there's nothing to really see in Shanghai (I came here to live not to sightsee), how she had to learn Cantonese in 3 weeks when they were evacuating from the Japanese and she had to move south. She herself is 84 and her mind is as sharp and constantly turning. I look up at Dr. Ding after 15 minutes on the phone:

At one point he gives me the time's up signal with his hands. After a while: enough. He's heard her speak for 57 years. I help to wrap up by making plans to visit this coming Friday, when I'll be in the city again. I get three more 'time's up' signals. (In Chinese) Yes, yes, yes, looking forward, looking forward.

Dr. Ding himself is pharamacologist and an anesthesiologist. MD and PhD, trained at the University of Chicago in the late 1940's. He is as his picture suggests: serene, centered, completely present. He cannot see anything, though when I raise my arms and wave at him, he stops and says something just moved. It must be shadows. 'I cannot see anything, but I can hear very well.' And he can. He listens very attentively, though his countenance had changed during my phonecall with his wife.

He orders up dumplings and a shrimp dish and some sauteed spinach for lunch. I want to take a picture, he reaches for his glasses. 'Do they help you to see?' I ask. 'I look smarter,' he chuckles.
Walking with Dr. Ding next door to the Cafe/diner seals my memory of old Yeh Yeh (which means paternal grandfather). Very slow steps, his cane in his right hand, his left arm cuffed around mind. It is truly zen to slow down to a completely unhurried pace, even slower than a breeze. It also reminds me of when I walk with the playwright Lynn Manning, who is also unsighted, though he's a Judo champion, and although the paces are cautious, we can move at regular speed.
Yes China indeed reveres its elderly. All the non-existent customer service suddenly blooms into attentive respect. All ages that come into our path know Dr. Ding and greet him and help him. He is beloved as the usual Professor Emeritus, but there is a warmth and simple unfussiness that eminates. A true cheer. If I may be so audacious as to hope to be in such a position when I am 87. To go to a modest office with a phone and a desk and keep in contact with all of my cohorts, colleagues, friends, relative's friends, all with open arms and curiosity and wondering, and continue to meet with students who will progress the continuum. If I may be so audacious.

After lunch, we return to his office for the pure enjoyment of conversation. He plugs in his electric pot and shows me coffee, and then opens the green tea tin. I pinch a few leaves and then pour for myself.
'American is a paradise for children, a battlefield for the middle-aged and a grave for the old.' My wife wanted me to move to the U.S. but I did not want to leave my motherland. My friends are here. My colleagues.
'Como esta usted? Bien gracias.' I had a colleague at the University of Chicago from Guadalajara. He taught me some Spanish.'

Some things are to blog. This conversation was a natural play scene.

I'm lucky enough to be participating in a Great American Play Bakeoff this weekend, where a group of playwrights in Los Angeles like Sujata Bhatt, Ken Narasaki, Jason Fong and Soo Jin Lee all spend 48 hours writing a play with given ingredients. I will join in 16 hours after the given time so the synchronicity will be real. The ingredients for this bakeoff: A song, mother, a fall, chalk, something impossible to stage. I'm not sure how Dr. Ding will fit into such a baking, but I treasure the chance to get goosed into playwriting again.

As I bid Dr. Ding farewell and promise to call on Thursday night to firm up Friday lunch, he asks if I know the way out. Sure, I'll just back track the way I came, take the No 1 subway to People's Square because I'm going to browse the Foreign Language Bookstore on Fuzhou Rd.

You can take the bus. Bus 49.

I've not taken the bus in the city before.

Very simple, just go out the other gate, turn right and walk 100 neters.

Bus 49. Like the year New China was born.

Yes.

He walks me to the door. I can't wait for Friday to meet, as he says, his 'better half.'

At the bus stop, which was indeed 100 meters from the gate, the gate that states that this campus was the former site of the French Consulate, there is a bookseller. He has Clinton, he has Buffet, he has Trump, he has Obama.
Yes, this is what I should look for at the bookstore. I had always wanted to get it on audio, with the voice of the one but I don't drive anymore, and so don't have that solitary listening sphere of my own private moving kingdom. And lately, I have been only craving non-fiction for some reason. Perhaps cleansing the palate of theatrical fiction so as to start afresh, here in Shanghailand. I am halfway through Zinn's People's History of the United States, which is such a trip to read, experiencing the epic historical progression we have recently made.

I'd initially wanted to go to the bookstore to pick up some magazine. Back in LA, I was into the tabloids cuz it was perfect reading on the treadmill, like frozen TV. And it got me to stay for an hour at a time, Elle, Vogue, InTouch, People. The tabloids are like our version of the Greek Gods, perfect, or imagistically so, but also back-stabbing, plastic, symbolic, betraying scandalous, massive. Somehow the slick and shine with Nicole Kidman, or Cameron Diaz, or Carrie Underwood is not interesting anymore. The hometown rag feels shallow, and that life is what is so idolized here, what is so expensive, its context feels foreign. And People has its big Obama issue, the new celebtrity-in-chief, and Time shows him in black and white, in a convertible, spinning 'The New Deal' anew.

The political biographies have piles and piles of Hillary, Bill, Powell, Gates, Buffet, Diana even. A noticeable blank spot, where it's just table, with no books there, the new hotcake spot. I walk away, tour the bookstore, come back, somehow hoping I missed a crevice a slot, really wanting to read Obama now. Should I get it in Chinese? Joan Didion, Arianna Huffington, John Grey, Jeffrey Eugenides, Salmon Rushdie...I try my hand at fiction (OK John Gray is like an extended Oprah article), but I can't commit 100 yuan to anything. I spend more time reading chapters of Ariana, about being fearless, passages of the Magical Thinking, do I want to read Midnight's Children, and return to the Hillary, Bill, Powell, Gates, Trump, Buffet.

There is a british book about the history of Chinese Philosophy. I turn to Zhuangzi, who is still in Wade-Giles and known as Chuang Tse. I read and read about Man and Nature, how ZZ appreciates the natural aspects of living. That a big bird and a small bird have their flights. The big bird can fly 1000 kilometers, the small bird to the next tree. The small bird need not wish to fly 1000 KM and so it is happy to fly just to the next tree. If you try to make the small bird into a crane and elongate its legs, this is unnatural and this will cause misery. If you try to make a crane into a small bird and cut off its legs, this is unnatural and will cause misery.

Who can decide what is right and what is wrong? If I think I am right and your think you are right, and we choose someone who agrees with me, or someone who agrees with you, we can never decide who is right and who is wrong. One who agrees with neither of us cannot help us either.

No mention of butterly. Cool.

I look up. And there it is.

It turns out someone had paid for it and never picked it up. It was just sitting in the back room and they just put it out. As I was reading the Zhuangzi. The sales girl continues to tell me that so many people had been asking for it and that they had sold out very fast, that they would not be getting anymore any time soon, that foreign books are slow to arrive.