Around the time I busted my laptop in November, my site mate and I were told we would have a few days free as students would be busy testing. With the pleasant prospect of a long weekend ahead of us, we decided to travel to the Western part of Hunan and see Fenghuang. The train ride was surprisingly pleasant, none of the smoking and crowded feeling I've come to associate with riding hard seat on the train. An assertive man walked up and down the hall hawking blueberries. With my limited Chinese all I could really make out were the words "Ao Bama" (Obama), "zhen de" (real/really), "meiguo" (America), "lan mei" (blueberries). We politely refused his samples, and about hours later we arrived in Fenghuang (without verifying if the fruits were really Obama's true blue American blueberries). Since it was around election time in the US, we alternated between focusing on our vacation and the way presidents seemed to keep coming up throughout our time in West Hunan.
This year I've been meaning to make a minimum of one blog post a month but have been away from here due to a lot of unforeseen circumstances. One of those circumstances was biding my time until payday to get my laptop monitor fixed after it was accidentally knocked off the teacher's desk in class. Thankfully for both me and my classes, my tablet is able to run apps for powerpoint and word so though I couldn't easily update my blog I was still able to carry on my classes as usual (I just needed a little extra time since it was hard to work with a tiny screen). But now I've got my laptop back and finished grades for the semester. With all the trouble I've been through for the past year, my laptop has become a work of art. Since my first one was stolen around spring last year, I had to buy my current one in China and spent some time with the man who sold it to me getting things mostly set up in English. Microsoft office is still all in Chinese but some of my error messages come up bilingual. Since I had to replace the monitor, they had to dismantle things a little and now the little plastic bit that covers the hinge where the laptop opens up is loose and falls off or gets stuck if I'm not careful while opening my computer. Apparently they found water inside too when they went to repair the screen and had to drain it all out. But everything is in working order again. Around the time I busted my laptop in November, my site mate and I were told we would have a few days free as students would be busy testing. With the pleasant prospect of a long weekend ahead of us, we decided to travel to the Western part of Hunan and see Fenghuang. The train ride was surprisingly pleasant, none of the smoking and crowded feeling I've come to associate with riding hard seat on the train. An assertive man walked up and down the hall hawking blueberries. With my limited Chinese all I could really make out were the words "Ao Bama" (Obama), "zhen de" (real/really), "meiguo" (America), "lan mei" (blueberries). We politely refused his samples, and about hours later we arrived in Fenghuang (without verifying if the fruits were really Obama's true blue American blueberries). Since it was around election time in the US, we alternated between focusing on our vacation and the way presidents seemed to keep coming up throughout our time in West Hunan. Fenghuang, as you can see from the photo above, is a beautiful ancient town on the Tuo Jiang River known for its beauty, the Miao and Tujia minorities who live in the area, and as the hometown of writer Shen Congwen who nearly won the Nobel Prize in literature but died before he could receive it. With all the lights, the bars, the shops, and the people lined up along the river offering the chance to dress up in traditional Miao clothing or get your hair braided with ribbons, it was undeniably touristy but still quite beautiful. It was something to see that the green water wasn't just photoshop. Despite our focus on the trip, I could still at times hear snatches of the election here and there. Once we were waiting to get on a boat down the river and I heard a group of men discussing "Chuan Pu" (Trump) and "Xi La Li" (Hilary). As if we hadn't had enough of presidents, when we left for a fast trip to Hongjiang we found Clinton waiting outside an old brothel. A lot has happened in the months since my last post and a lot of nothing at all has happened too, and I'm sorry to make such a short post. I've been trying to work out what's next from here so I'll try to post more often but I sense my time in Zhuzhou is coming to an end.
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It's one month into my third year in a city I thought I'd live in for no more than two years, tops. We just received a new schedule for the rest of the term but otherwise I find I'm feeling pretty settled in. A lot has happened in the past month as things get sorted out and people meet and catch up. Every year, I promise myself I'll go out more and so far I seem to be doing good on that. I have no intention of becoming a boozier person, that takes even more recovery time than just hanging out with groups of people for one night but I do want to make sure I'm spending more time with other human beings. I'm not great with people, but I'll keep trying. I finally made my way to Yanling with a group of other foreign teachers who teach in Zhuzhou. Every year, the city puts on a few events where foreign teachers go to teach at a school where students do not have a foreign teacher leading an oral English class for a day. This year was the first time they did an overnight trip. We went sightseeing for half a day in Yanling and taught classes the next morning after the opening ceremony and requisite speeches and photos. I was excited to see Emperor Yan's mausoleum, though being the important figure he is I doubt that this is the only place with claims to him. None of it looked very old, but that's not so strange here despite China's 5,000 years of history and culture. For one, wooden buildings require more maintenance than other materials and the Cultural Revolution has also taken its toll. The reconstruction, rebuilding, and refurbishing that comes with old sites in China is a product of history in its own way. Yet Chinese culture seems to find a way to make its comeback. Emperor Yan/Shennong is still an important figure as the one who brought agriculture, pharmacological knowledge (via trying plants out on himself), and the use of tea as medicine to China. As in Zhuzhou, there were many images of him with grains or plant life, though in the temple his accomplishments seemed to further include music and pottery. Perhaps it's the way he's carved into the walls that remind me of red and black Greek pottery scenes or that his name "Yan Di" means "Flame Emperor" but I often find myself thinking of him as something like a Prometheus figure lately. An ancient figure who brings key developments and knowledge to a civilization that radically changes things for thousands of years.
Being the town where Emperor Yan's bones are kept, Yanling had appropriately agrarian names throughout. Our super fancy hotel (I guess the combination of city officials and foreign guests made it impossible for the organizers to look for anything less than Yanling's best) was on a road that ran next the "Mi Xiang", "Rice River". When a couple of foreign teachers and I went out for a walk with a local teacher in the evening, she explained that the name came from the color of the water which resembled water after it's been used to wash rice. There was also a small market on a dirt lot nearby our hotel too which looked like it was selling local grown snacks. All in all, it was a good time. The fresh air was a welcome change, Yanling was pleasant, and students were slow to warm but full of questions. I also had the opportunity to pop in and say hi to some of my former students when their school held a sports day on our school's large field. Last year, each class was asked to dress in the national costume of a different country. This year, they were asked to dress as different minority groups of China. As someone who grew up in the American racial context and has a background in liberal arts, I do find it problematic though I realize too that for my students it's just what they were asked to do for a school event. I have to admit, I was really impressed when a few of my students rode down the track on real ponies with "Kalinka" playing in the background. It was good to catch up with them and remind them to be nice to the new teacher working there this year. Aside from school and travels, I've been sitting down to think about where to go from here. I'm not unhappy and I've grown a lot from this. Public speaking doesn't make me sick like it used to, I'm more comfortable with the idea that it's OK for me to take up space and make noise as much as anyone else in this world. Teaching here the past few years has helped me see more clearly all the ways in which my lack of confidence has really affected me. When you're leading a classroom, you really have to remember your power as a teacher which is something I've struggled with at times as someone who generally has been most comfortable at the back of the room or as someone who would rather write an essay than stand and speak in front of a room of people. Which is partly why I came. China could continue to offer challenges, but because I'm finding I'm more capable than I gave myself credit for I can't help asking myself: "What else could I try?" As it stands now, I have a list on the fridge of things that have crossed my mind in further studies and other lines of work. I've also started up a notebook with little tabs as I dig into these things further and ask myself what it is about these things that appeal to me and what I might contribute in the future as a result of these decisions. There is, admittedly, the part of me that continues to feel rather lost and think "Whatever it is, it's a life" but I'm coming to better accept that lost is everyone's condition to some degree. Just keep moving. No promises any which way, but it's something. The weather is cooling off so I suppose I'll have time to sit down with a hot cup of Tie Guan Yin/ hot chocolate/instant coffee/Earl Grey and mull it over during the coming months. I've also got a few China related goals like building up my Chinese since I got lazy last year and paying a visit to Hangzhou, Taipei, Putuoshan, and a few other places. I wouldn't mind trying to find my way to Taishan either. I've been reading more China travel books lately. I finished Ella Maillart's "The Forbidden Journey", which was already really interesting as an account of traveling around 1930's China from Beijing to Kashmir but especially so for Maillart's rather anthropological attention to the people she meets and the things she sees. Her travel companion, Peter Fleming, wrote a book of his own which is stylistically quite different. Where Maillart was happy to stay a few extra days and look around, Fleming largely wanted to be on the move. Fleming's writing, I can't help noticing, is brisk and exciting but since I read Maillart first I can't help feeling it's short on detail (but as someone who has taken a number of writing classes and learned the importance of writing what is needed and no more, it's not a move I necessarily find wrong, it just takes some adjustment). I grouch about 30 hours on a slow train from Hunan to Sichuan, while those two made it across the country with train, camel, horse, and cart. Strangely, even from this distance about 80 years later there are some things that are painfully familiar as a traveler in China. I've also decided to come back and finish the last third of Marco Polo. I had to put it down because I was sick of reading the same opening line about Saracens and Moslems over and over again and how many places seem to have a tradition of letting guests from far away sleep with their women. Still, I can't help seeing it as something of an ur-text for those who travel and write about China and it has been pretty interesting to slowly work through all these layers of China books from Marco Polo to Ella Maillart to Paul Theroux to Peter Hessler to Jen Lin-Liu and other more contemporary writers. A different little slice of life in this country in different periods. I think of the 10 different layers you can see when you go to visit the site where Troy used to stand, but I'm creating it through travel accounts inside my head instead. No trouble with getting a valid visa, no boxcutters, no unauthorized charges on my card for shapewear and lingerie that leaves me at -1000 something dollars, no lighters in class. I've finished the first day of my second week of school and so far I'm pleased. When I go through what how previous years have gone I realize that this is the best start I've had yet. I need to stay firm and clear, but there are ways in which high school seems to suit me a little better. It comes with its own challenges but suddenly I'm in a position to try some new projects that I've been mulling over (Podcast? Newspaper? Short film?).
I made a short 2 week trip back to the US this past summer. It was good to see everyone, but a little strange too. On my second day back, I went to a party and realized my cousin was starting middle school when I left for Switzerland as a college freshman and I was heading into my 3rd year in China and had no memory of what happened between the start of his middle school years and the start of his college years. Frozen food aisles are as wild to me as ever, sure you can find frozen food in Europe and in China but not on quite the same scale. And gallons. I haven't seen a gallon of milk in forever, so it was weird to go shopping with a friend and stare at gallons of red food coloring and vanilla flavoring. Went to breakfast that day too and blanked when the waitress asked me "What kind?" after I told her I wanted toast as a side for my order. My friend reminded me that there are different kinds of bread and things were quickly resolved. Toast in America, toast in the Italian speaking world, toast in China...a slice of hot bread with butter, a ham and cheese sandwich, or soft sweet bread. How lucky I am to hold so many worlds inside me, though it leaves me at a loss sometimes. Overall, it was good. Friends, family, a chance to check in on where people's lives have taken them. I was disappointed that my phone, not having been upgraded in about 6 years, was unable to download anything and I couldn't join the PokemonGo fun but I did get people to marvel over a phone with a slide out keyboard and the realization that Blockbuster once released an app and for some reason I downloaded it. As happy as I was to see everyone, it was a relief to catch up with another WorldTeach friend. It's hard not to go to extremes when talking about China, if people care to hear at all about this thing that took a year or so of your life. I heard some strange things about Switzerland sometimes when I came back from school, but being asked about the Swedish language seemed kind of quaint compared with other personal or misguided questions I got about China. After one day of answering questions like "So with the gender imbalance you must be really popular, right?" or "I hear English teachers make good money over there so you must be doing pretty well" I started thinking that if I had to answer questions about money and boyfriends, I might as well be back in China. And here I am on round 3. I do not know that I will stay after this third year, I'm not always sure the choice I made was well reasoned but I don't regret it. I find myself thinking that I'd like to challenge myself with something new though I'm not unhappy here either. In the meantime, I'll try to keep up with weekly updates so that you can continue to enjoy classroom antics and my little slice of life in China (and that's what makes going back to the US so hard, realizing that you made a life somewhere else with its own shape and habits and people and having to do it over again, but I've done it before so I know I can do it again). Please enjoy what may be my last run as a Zhu in Zhuzhou. Buddhas big, Buddhas small, Buddhas big and Buddhas tall, you want Buddhas we've got them all at the Longmen caves! Although the Longmen caves were not my only stop during my week in Henan province, this thought has certainly crossed my mind in view of many places I visited there. The Longmen caves (of which you can see a small section above), Shaolin temple, Zhongyue temple, Kaifeng with its silk road and imperial history...well, maybe not Nanjiecun where I started my week in Henan. Said to be the last Maoist collective in China the images decorating the streets and the parks are those celebrating the working man, Mao, Marx, Engels, Stalin, and Lenin. It was very quiet and clean. And very empty when I wandered through. There's a guided tour but it's all in Chinese and I don't think my Chinese is good enough to justify an 80 yuan tour I can't completely understand. After nearly 2 hours I made my way to the bus station to get to Zhengzhou. Henan was relatively easy to get around by bus so that's largely how I got around with the exception of getting lost on the edge of Zhengzhou after (I think) I got on a bus from Nanjiecun going in the right direction but at the wrong time so it didn't go to the city center. After one anxiety-ridden black cab ride I didn't really want to take but kind of got hustled into while trying to find my way to the main bus station, some misunderstandings and crying, I arrived in Kaifeng 500 yuan lighter than I had planned for. I still hate myself for that. There was one point in the trip where we had to stop for gas and he said "Ni jia you wo" (Roughly, "You add gas for me") and I got ticked off because I thought he was demanding I get out and gas his car for him after I already gave him hundreds. I told I him "I already gave you money" and then he made the comment repeatedly that "Ni gei wo qian. yi bai..." and I started to get really angry and anxious. I didn't hear him add a "le" that would have told me he was saying I gave him money and that he used 100 to gas up, so I thought he was speaking in the present tense. I got pretty pissed off that this guy would just keep asking me for money after asking me for so much when I was stuck and I screamed in English "Fine! I'll go!" and began plotting when the best time to open the door and run out would be. Then I screamed "Wo gei le si bai!" (I gave you 400!) and started crying instead. Then he sounded upset as he said "Ni bu dong wo de yisi!" (You don't understand my meaning) and proceeded to tell me off for being a 24 year old woman and crying. It turns out he was just saying that the money I gave him was going to pay for his gas but between my mediocre Chinese and his accent I interpreted wrongly. He kept telling me there was no need to cry and I flat out refused to answer or respond and told him I didn't want any tissues thank you very much. After over an hour of playing out all the ways this kind of thing goes wrong in my head, Kaifeng greeted us with some fake towers. He pulled over to the side of the road, called me a cab, gave the driver 20 yuan to help me find my way and said goodbye. I felt bad, because I cried and had been rude and he had turned out to be honest and got me to Kaifeng. Then I realized if he was actually honest, he would have returned the money I had used when trying to get on a bus back in Zhengzhou that was supposed to go to city center and would have let me pay 25 yuan for a bus ticket instead of taking 500 and looking at me in disbelief when I said I didn't have that much cash in my wallet (and of course, this argument taking place on the side of a freeway). I didn't feel as bad when I realized that I was just fast money to some guy with long nails and too many questions on the edge of Zhengzhou. Then it got funny because either he had to leave me with a taxi because he didn't know Kaifeng well or I scared him pretty bad by screaming and crying. I don't think he understood that I didn't understand everything he was saying until that outburst. So there I was anxious for over an hour while this guy probably didn't know what to do with some wailing laowai in the passenger's seat. I still feel kind of bad about that... After that madness, Kaifeng was probably my favorite out of the places I went too. I was a little outside of the city walls, which was inconvenient only because I insisted on going everywhere by foot. The walk itself wasn't bad, but the heat was and I've come back from Henan noticeably tanner from being out in the sun so much. The main street, Gulou jie, was very pretty at night and it was hard to walk with all the street food booths and tables out at night. Kaifeng was actually my main motivation in coming out to Henan. First as the capital of the Northern Song dynasty but in flipping through a guidebook I'd also seen a note about a Jewish community that established itself in Kaifeng reaching back to the silk road. Though there's not much of a strong community today after China's changing winds, intermarriage, and as with many, incentive to go to bigger wealthier cities has dispersed China's Jewish people. Some families didn't tell their children or openly practice either so it's likely a number of people don't know if they have Jewish ancestry. I did find that there was one family still living near the site of where the synagogue used to be located and that there was a guide who spoke English and could provide information about the Kaifeng Jews. In walking down Gulou jie and walking onto Shudian Lu before making my way towards the hutongs and the former site of the synagogue, it became clear that Kaifeng didn't have money to go around quite like Beijing, Shanghai, or even Xi'An where people go to see the terra cotta warriors. The bright lights, modern shopping malls, lines of food carts, underground walkways gave way to pavement and stores more geared to necessities than brand names or slick posters. I did see a few things under construction and in progress while wandering, but the money and lights seemed pretty heavily concentrated into one space. I arrived early to meet my guide and wandered around her neighborhood for a bit. All throughout the city, there are signs advertising halal food and it seems that the Muslim community is still pretty sizeable. One door surprised me by having a red paper square turned on its point and except for the Arabic writing, looking like any other kind of new year decoration. In a nod to the no longer standing synagogue, alleys have names like "Teaching the Torah Alley". Crawling around "Teaching the Torah Alley" brought me to a mosque that looked more like it was used for living than prayers, though one room was free of laundry or furniture which lead me to believe it was still in use. The hutongs were of course narrow, the living space looked a little tight, it was a bit dusty and dirty and I saw a few woks and pots set on what looked like old brick or mud stoves. When I passed some of the hutongs I was startled to find a big white Catholic church that looked rather pristine and recent. It was certainly a neighborhood with character and I liked it a lot, but that's easy for me to say as a traveler. I hesitate to romanticize when I sense that it wasn't the poorest part of town (no one was starving or begging or struck me as desperate), but neither was it the wealthiest. My guide later told me that part of the mix I saw was because the foreigners from the silk road lived together in one part of the city and that a Catholic group in communication with the Jewish community had built the church. I can honestly say I've never been to a corner of China quite like it. I made my way back downtown where I visited Da Xiang Guo Si, a large Buddhist temple. I normally really enjoy temples and taking time to study all the different details but this time I just kind of wandered and didn't really look. I saw nothing of the big thousand armed Guanyin so I missed out big time or timed things badly. But in the following days I'd make up for it in sheer number of Buddhas seen in the course of a day at the Longmen caves. After Kaifeng, I made my way to Luoyang. Luoyang is also a key city in Chinese history but it hasn't retained much of its imperial structures (though the city museum has some really cool things). I should have taken the time to see more, but most of my time was spent at the Longmen caves. I had my fill of Buddhist art, paid a visit to the poet Bai Juyi, and then began to make the trip towards Dengfeng where I planned to stay for three nights and explore the area after seeing Shaolin temple. I had something of a strange greeting at Dengfeng and the hostel overall seemed safe and the staff was friendly, but it was sort of weird too. I had a moment at the bus station where I was trying to convey where I was a going and a man told me it was going to cost 30 yuan for a ride. I'd read that it should only cost 7 yuan, so I kept insisting otherwise but he seemed firm. I started going with him, worried that after working so hard to convey what I wanted it would be rude to step out of things. Then I heard one of the other guys laughing and I turned around and glared. He waved and told me to go. I began to realize that if someone is ripping you off, you actually may not owe them anything and wound up leaving him and asking one of the cab drivers. The driver wouldn't turn on the meter and charged me 15. Not 7, but not 30 either. (30 is the flat rate that all drivers charge for going to Shaolin temple from Dengfeng, but I was trying to find my room in Dengfeng and felt it was ridiculous to get the same rate I would have for going out of town.) Losing that 500 yuan on the way to Kaifeng really hurt and made me realize I waste too much energy believing that people will compromise and respond well to politeness. There's nothing wrong with saying "That's not what I want" and walking the other way or not responding at all. I've been kicking myself lately for all the times I've struggled to say "no" to people who honestly don't deserve any other response (ie, some guy touching me in a Swiss train station talking about how much he misses his good obedient Japanese girlfriend and asking about my virginity, I'm getting frustrated with how I'm running out of ways to politely suggest I'm not interested when I should really be screaming "NO"). It's not selfish or rude. It's assertiveness and looking after myself. I can't believe I still have to work at fighting off that part of myself. I have to admit, one of the joys of learning tai chi this year has been tui shou. For an hour or two, my teacher gives me permission to and asks me to push him or throw him. It's better than being passive aggressive, it's really fun, and I guess it's one way I've begun to quietly assert myself. As someone who's spent some time nerding out over the philosophical side of China's martial arts, I was excited to finally be at Shaolin temple as not only a sightseer, but as someone who now had some experience in a martial art. I wanted to see what I'd pick up on in Shaolin that differed from what I learned with tai chi. I also really love images of Bodhidharma/Damo, the monk said to have meditated in a cave above Shaolin for 9 years and have developed exercises for the Shaolin monks who were a little out of shape after largely focusing on spiritual matters. He came to China from India as a result, has a very distinct visage as tends to happen with foreigners in Chinese art. You'll find him around Chan/Zen temples throughout China. The crowds weren't as bad as I thought they would be, though there were a number of tour groups coming through, easy to see with their yellow flags and headsets which ensured everyone could hear what the guide was saying. It tended to be most packed directly in front of the temple, everything else was pretty mellow. I was surprised when I was able to walk right up to the pagoda forest and take pictures until I realized I was standing out in the sun and that all the other Chinese tourists were nearby under the trees. Pale skin is the ideal here, so most likely people were trying to avoid getting a tan (which I didn't bother thinking about while wandering around and as a result, am now in two tones, might have the second sunburn of my life, and came back to people practicing the words "Do you use sunscreen?" when they saw my face). So I had a big sunny patch all to myself to look around and take photos before moving on to some of the other sights around Songshan. I kept looking up at a big statue of Bodhidharma a few kilometers up the hill behind Shaolin temple. I kind of wanted to see it, but I wasn't sure what would really be waiting for me at the top other than a cave. After lunch, I decided to go for it and buy a few bottles of water for the walk up. I think the hardest part was when I got really close and asked a nun who was selling a variety of goods if I could sit for a bit and she just repeated "Wu fen zhong"(In 5 minutes) while pointing up the mountain. So I made my way up sweating and tanning as people stared and commented on the state of my face. When I did get to the cave, there wasn't much but there was a sense of peace not found below at the temple. A few of us sat down in the shade just outside of the cave and two men sat inside the dimly lit cave meditating as Bodhidharma supposedly sat there staring at a wall for 9 years. (One story has it that his eyes closed for a long period of time and to ensure that it never happened again while he was sitting there, he cut off his eyelids and they became tea leaves. The tea was useful for keeping monks awake and focused.) I took a peek inside at the pink and green lotus shaped lights and as my eyes adjusted, I was able to make out Bodhidarma's facial features rising out of the shiny yellow robe covering the rest of him. As someone who doesn't really identify with any religion, I didn't feel right stepping into the middle of the meditating men and poking around too much so I just went outside, bought another bottle of water and rested. I gave up on going all the way to the statue since the cave was my primary interest and I didn't want anymore stairs. It's been a while since I've gone on a hike. It felt really good and being surrounded by trees, rocks, and bugs was kind of like home though the obvious lack of oak trees and douglas firs combined with the humidity reminded me I was in China. When I got to the bottom, I rested some and grabbed a few things to eat. People kept asking if I was a wushu student. Maybe it's because I was a sweaty mess. There were students of all ages and all nationalities who would pop up around the area. I was surprised when I ran into a whole American family wearing the loose grey pants worn by all the monks and again when I saw two tall Americans holding weapons and posing with tourists (it looked like they lived at the temple and had been asked to do this). The idea of coming back as a student rather than a sightseer is tempting. I made my way out and picked up a few souvenirs before heading down into Dengfeng and making my way to the hostel. I wasn't sure if I'd have energy for the next day, but I figured out the buses and made my way to Zhongyue Temple and Songyan Academy (Songshan, where Shaolin is located, is actually a really important Taoist mountain and it seemed right to visit both the famous Chan/Zen temple and the Taoist temple). Zhongyue was also a tourist site, but much less so. It was very empty, more a place of worship than a place for sightseeing but I did see a tour group on my way out and had to pay about 30 yuan for admission. People saw me alone and I felt bad turning them away when they told me I could get a tour for 20 yuan since I was alone but then I remembered that it's kind of ok to say you don't want the things you don't want. I felt a little shy about going inside the halls since people kept calling me in to pray and I don't really identify strongly with anything, so it seemed kind of wrong for me to come in and start posing (though I know China is a sort of fluid place when it comes to religion). After quietly slipping in and out and trying to politely step away from women calling me to kowtow, I went to the hall of 60 gods where people find the god of their birth year and pay their respects. A woman working there followed me in, told me to get down and pay my respects to Buddha and the god for 1991 (and other years, the traditional Chinese calendar has 12 animals for each year as many know and in addition to this, there are 5 elements, so 60 years makes a full cycle and that's why they had 60 instead of 12 gods). I had to pay 10 yuan for a charm that I put in my wallet too. I walked away trying to figure out if it was super disrespectful for me to not pay my respects to all the other main gods or wrong for me go through these rites without any claim to Taoism aside from practicing Tai Chi. I finally decided that the temple probably needed the money to support itself and if nothing else, I was helping the temple with my small contribution. It was a really nice temple, older than many I had seen and I studied the peeling paint and designs that told me they either didn't have the money to restore or had managed to preserve a lot. In one hall, there were 4 impressive figures, all carved out of wood and elegantly dressed. One was an emperor, as indicated by his bright robes, one was a concubine (and she had a beautiful headdress with wooden pearls hanging in front of her face), and there was an elegantly dressed girl on either side of the pair. They were smaller, so my guess is they were serving the much larger two in the middle. In the courtyard, there were some metal soldiers dating to the Song dynasty. Aside from visitors, guides (most of whom were sitting and talking without much to do), and myself, there were men with top knots quietly watching over the halls, altars, and the fires that burned for offerings. It was quite a contrast to the crowds and shops at Shaolin.
I made my way back to Zhengzhou to catch the train to Zhuzhou with my charm from Zhongyue in my wallet and another charm from Shaolin, feeling confident that I'd make my way home without issue (and except for the train running an hour late, I did). It's not really my style to speed through a place, but in order to get a little sightseeing in this summer after waiting for my visa and still squeeze in time to go home before school starts again I didn't have much of a choice. Thanks for sticking it out with me this far into a long post. This week was a little wild at times, but it taught me something important about asserting myself and saying "no" in between letting my nerd self indulge in old capitals and temples and learning about Henan's unique place in Chinese culture. And at the other end of things, Nanjiecun's focus on the working man over gods. It was a satisfying week and now I'm happily looking forward to two weeks back in the mountains where I grew up before getting into another school year and more China adventures. Till next post! After a long wait, I finally have my visa inside of my passport. There was a little confusion when I went because I forgot which side of Shennong City the immigrations department is on so I got lost, and then I forgot to identify myself specifically as a foreigner getting her visa. But when I got to the counter and the woman looked at my lost face and I told her I didn't know what she needed she said "5" and pointed to the correct desk. I walked around for a bit, treated myself to a burger to celebrate, thought about going to a movie (I briefly considered a Jackie Chan film or Tarzan, then realized I wasn't really in the mood). Came back to my new home at the high school I'm teaching at this next year. Since today wasn't the hottest day, I sat under an umbrella with a cold soda, a bottle of water, and my Nook and worked my way through the end of "Americanah", but one of the women who work in the cafe/noodle shop came out and told me off for sitting outside on a hot day when I could be inside with the A/C and insisted I move. I finished "Americanah", pulled out my journal, wrote for a bit, then grabbed a bowl of noodles. After a while, this fall's first year students came by walking in lines and in sync as part of their military training, all dressed in new green camo clothing. About half of the students went to the school I worked at before and it's funny to see the recognition, the waving, the excitement. I didn't think it would be such a big deal if I were here. Then again, just a few weeks ago they graduated from middle school. At their middle school, they shared a classroom with the same 50-60 kids all day long. They were classmates for all 3 years, and the teachers went up a year with their students. Maybe it is kind of a big deal to see someone familiar and realize that they have another shot at oral English this year, which they didn't have as 9th graders preparing for the zhongkao. Speaking of the zhongkao, I also can't help thinking that even if the kids here did well enough to get into a good high school, that's no guarantee of their friends coming with them. I can only imagine what a tough experience that must be. It broke my heart when a student who used to invite himself into my office and excitedly speak English (he was good at spoken English) all the time messaged me to say that he hadn't done well enough to get into high school and that his mother would now have to call around to arrange for his high school education. He said what hurt most was that he didn't do well in his favorite subject. In America, there are certainly debates going on about education but you do get more room for second chances. I've heard a rumor that it's possible to retake the gaokao, but I get the feeling that a number of people look at the time and money they would have to invest into preparing for a second gaokao to get into college and feel that option is blocked to them. I don't know if it is possible to retake the zhongkao. The best I could say was something weak, "Test scores can change with many things. How you're feeling when you take the test, the particular questions, the wording, a lot of things. I know you are an excellent English speaker". He said he was going to study harder and do more to improve his English. I have not heard much from him since and I feel a little sad when I don't see him with the marching students, thinking about how much he wanted to be here with his classmates and certain of getting a good education for his future. I knew this was the system when I signed up my first year here, I've known for a while that there's a lot of competing in China. I know it's not my place to change what is in place right now, but it is hard to now have a name and a face for someone who has not come out well so far (I keep my fingers crossed for other options that may come his way). Before I first came to China, someone said "You're not going to change the world. You're just going to teach English". Sometimes I bear that in mind as the thing that keeps me sane, on other days the part of me studied intercultural communications remembers that meeting someone from another culture is one of the most effective things against prejudice. It's not really in my power to hand each kid a round the world plane ticket but having traveled myself it is in my power to bring pieces of a different life to my students in some way. If nothing else, they have a class where for 40 minutes the zhongkao won't be the teacher's primary concern. In my new apartment, I am no longer in the city center. I'm a ways out and it's taken some adjustment. Strangely, with the wide roads and the farms I sometimes think of going out to Fairfield minus the strong winds. The quiet is nice. But I find myself with a lot of time to fill on my own since there's not much to do. It's good. It's a chance to write, read, catch up on a show, go for a walk and get a feel for the area and get to know some of the people I'll be seeing this upcoming academic year. It's also been a lot of time to think. People have told me before that I need more confidence, or that I should be more confident, but I don't think the consequences of a lack of confidence have stood out to me quite as much as in my time in China. It's in the classroom when I doubt the actions I take or think I should take. It's when I look at positions and disqualify myself by saying "I'm not enough ______ " (or even just, "I'm not enough"). It's when I do something worried about inconveniences to others or causing trouble when really I just need to get things done and do things for myself like anyone else in the world.
Sometimes I think back to elementary school when I was worried about how if I got up to sharpen my pencil, then the chair sliding back might be noisy, my feet on the floor might be distracting, the pencil sharpener wasn't always quiet (or reliable), then I'd have to walk back and make more noise as I got into my seat and the idea of distracting people or being a nuisance when everyone was focused on classwork bothered me. I bought my own portable plastic sharpener, which was quiet, so I wouldn't have to get up and cause trouble. I know how weird that is now, and sometimes I wonder how many choices and actions I've made so I could design my life around not making noise, not taking up space, not bumping into or causing any inconvenience to others. China has changed me. Sometimes I worry about table manners when I leave China because I've gotten comfortable asking kids about their day in the cafeteria where the goal is to eat as fast as possible and go study or play. More seriously, in a place where people seem to sense how many other people are trying to get train tickets, are driving cars to somewhere, and have other things to do I find myself becoming more assertive. Not aggressive, but certainly the kind of physically assertive where I stand with my nose practically in someone's hair because I have a train ticket to buy and I have waited. The man trying to shove his way in from the left side to get to the front will have to wait too. Sometimes I worry I've become too self-centered, but I guess I'll just have to spend more time sorting out the difference between assertion and ego. I'm getting better at accepting that I take up space in the world and that it's not wrong for me to do so. It reminds me of my first year back from college when I thought I had become impatient, but I realized that I had new experiences and saw a different life. I expected different things, there were things I no longer had to tolerate the way I used to (and maybe I never should have). In sum, things are well here. I'm adjusting and preparing for the next year. Despite what people say over and over about how I've never changed in all my 24 years, I have changed and I think I'm beginning to understand what it means to be more confident (more than understand, begin to live it and put more faith in myself). I wish my students the best, though there's much out of my hands. I still think it'd be nice to go back to California, but suddenly the desire to go doesn't burn as badly as it did during this last semester. It's summer vacation and I think of how much China I still haven't covered now that I'm free to move around with my new visa. I think of the north, other central provinces, the East coast, and sometimes I think of going back to Zhongshan to probe around the Pearl River Delta a little more on family related things. Reading some of the family documents has become my new language goal, but it's going to be a hard one to meet. It's my last week of school and things are winding down and leading into the next year. I'm finishing up all I need for my visa (I have to come back for orientation since WorldTeach is changing some things for next year, in some ways it's a pain but in other ways I'll know who's working in Hunan next year) and preparing to head out in a little over a week. I felt like I needed the break, but now that the time is approaching the feeling isn't quite as acute. Certain conveniences and frustrations seem to shrink away as I remember all the time I spent reading about China off and on since high school and how fascinating it was for me to go to different Chinese communities in Europe. It wasn't just that each country changed the context, it was also the differences rooted in the provinces people came from. London and its connections to Hong Kong, San Francisco and its connection to the Pearl River Delta, Milan and Zhejiang, Silicon Valley and Taiwan (I know there are more from the mainland in recent years). China is a weird place I came to for the first time just after college, but saw in flashes and never seem to have been completely away from to begin with. Which is a weird thing to say afer 4 years in Europe made me intially feel more Chinese, then very American. Especially on days when I walked around in a sweatshirt and jeans (which was often) surrounded by elegant Milanese women in capes or wraps, hats, and understated fine quality clothing (or occasionally a fur hat). I didn't grow up speaking Chinese, I'm at a remove from China generations and many changes later. Then of course, when I got here there was so much to see in provincial differences and the things that shaped everywhere I traveled. China has its frustrations, but exploring it and seeing its many facets makes up for it. A cheese sandwich and a whiskey is a short-lived pleasure in comparison to being in the homeland of Chan Buddhism, originator of tea, and a place that despite its changes of fortune throughout the years has exerted such strong influence culturally. I often think of ancient Rome's reach as a point of comparison.
Although I know by now that the best way to go ahead is to make no promises and hold no expectations (because that's the surest way to save yourself from disappointment and getting lost in "should be"s) I find myself mentally tracing out the cycles of reverse culture shock, what past experience has taught me about going back after being away. The familiar faces, the possibilities with the time laid out in front of you, the growing number of people you realize you need to see while you are back, the people who aren't there anymore, the things that happened while you were gone and the rhythms that everyone has fallen into that you seem to impose on, the frustration of not having your own apartment...the things that add up. It's no one's fault, it's just that everyone has lives to attend to and I know that I made my choice the first time I got onto a plane to Europe and again when I went to China. Since I'm not leaving quite yet, I've been thinking of some of this year's highlights. These include:
With the year closing up and my departure for the summer approaching, I find that as I write this post about the last stop I made (somewhat on an impulse) I'm also thinking of California and how I learned to situate where I came from in relation to the rest of the world. In part, this is because I feel that Xi'An doesn't get the recognition you might expect for a city that's been the capital many times over and situated by the famous terra cotta warriors. On the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, someone mentioned the terra cotta warriors, someone else asked where they were located, and then I was asked if I knew how long it took to get there by plane (I had no idea). When I first arrived in Lugano, the natural question all the students would ask each other was "Where are you from?". I quickly learned that "Saratoga" or "Santa Cruz mountains" doesn't ring bells too often, but that "San Francisco" or "Bay Area" were good points of reference. Once, a classmate surprised me when I mentioned that I was from around Silicon Valley and he mentioned Cupertino. It turned out that when he got his iPod, the clock/timezone was set to Cupertino and he'd always assumed that Apple was located there. (1 Infinite Loop!) Anyway, I'd really been looking forward to Xi'An. I wasted a year telling myself I'd go and finally reasoned with myself that a 20 hour train ride back to Zhuzhou was worth it. Any memories should outlast a 20 hour train.I was on major nerd mode thinking about everything in the area: Wu Zetian's intact tomb (the sole woman in all of Chinese history to actually take on the title of Emperor for herself and currently subject of an expensive drama starring Fan Bing Bing), Qin ShiHuangDi sealed up under a hill with his mercury rivers and supposed model empire (tomb to be opened in 20 years, not sure what they'll do about the mercury), Ming dynasty walls, the Muslim quarter and its beautiful mosque (so different from what I've seen in Turkey or Morocco), and the endless supply of lamb. The Tang dynasty is at times referred to as a golden age of Chinese arts and culture, something tourism certainly tried to capitalize on with Tang dynasty shows and trinkets all around, but I spent more time dreaming on than shopping. This was the city that Kyoto, the old capital of Japan, was based upon, where the Qin emperor who gave his name to China was buried, where Yang Guifei distracted the emperor from his duties, a key point on the silk road, a city with Ming dynasty walls and a subway system. I only had a few days before running back to Zhuzhou. I hated that I couldn't do it all, but I wasted a year trying to find an entire free week to see it all and I would have kicked myself for not going after two years. I went with a group arranged by the hostel I was staying at. I generally prefer to go on my own time, but in this case I didn't want to lose a day by trying to figure out buses and other things on my own. As we wandered from through the 3 pits that they've opened, I found myself trying to grasp the scale of it all. Sometimes I wonder if the special place numbers seem to have in Chinese culture isn't partly trying to navigate such a big place with so many people and so much history. As I was preparing to come to China last year, a lot of people said "China is going to be the opposite of nice clean Switzerland". They talked about the cleanliness of the streets and the things that are done just so. But for me, it's scale. I looked at all the little labels on pieces of shattered clay men and thought of "Ozymandias": "Look on my works ye mighty and weep". When I look at those labels and think of the archaeologists coming in to work after the tourists have gone for the day, it seems fitting. Ozymandias is about the fall of empires and the emptiness of those words in the desert, but I could see the Qin emperor shouting that line at the ones who dig, sort, clean, and label the things they find around his tomb. His daily dose of mercury cost him the immortality it was supposed to give him, but in death all these years later he is not alone or forgotten. After making the obligatory stop to the terra cotta warriors, I paid a visit to the Big Goose Pagoda where Tripitaka translated the things he brought back from the West. "Journey to the West" was one of the books we read during my freshman year of college, though it was the Arthur Waley translation titled "Monkey". I loved digging through the notes and understanding what conventions Wu Cheng En was making fun of. It seemed fitting that I had come to Xi'An during the year of the monkey, though the pagoda and surrounding temple had little about monkeys. It was really about the scrolls and Tripitaka/Xuan Zang's journey. I also couldn't help thinking about the previous year when Modi paid a visit. The ties with Xuan Zang going to India and coming back to China were obvious enough, but I've also heard rumors that Modi's hometown is somewhere near where Tripitaka visited. Tripitaka has inspired others before me to travel, I felt a thrill of pleasure while reading Ella Maillart's "The Cruel Way" and Peter Hopkirk's "Foreign Devils on the Silk Road" and finding how many others I'm connected to through this man's 17 year journey. The Monkey King tends to steal the show in the story "Journey to the West", but I've been learning to appreciate the flesh and blood man who set out on that journey.
Xi'An ultimately seemed like a place where a lot of things I'd seen or picked up on or read about came together and I sorely wish I'd had more than 4 days at the end of break to take things in. Perhaps I will go back someday and visit Wu Zetian's tomb and the springs where Yang Guifei is said to have ruined the emperor and weakened the Tang dynasty. So many powers, so many stories. With the conclusion of my spring festival travels, I resolved that the next round should help me finish off the capitals seeing as thus far I've made my way to Beijing, Nanjing, and Xi'An. Hangzhou and Luoyang stand out as the next big places, and thankfully for me, Henan province where Luoyang is located is also home to Shaolin Temple and Kaifeng (a little pocket of Jewish history in China). Go north (and west)! As this year begins to come to a close, (for once I'm not scrambling to finish exams, we've been relaxing by finishing the last 20 minutes of "Enchanted" which as gone over well despite initial concerns from students) I've been asking myself why I'm here in China. I thought I was going to go back to California after this year, but I kind of panicked and asked for a 3rd year. Right or wrong? I can't tell you. But as I prepare to teach with WorldTeach a 3rd time in a high school in this city, I've found myself thinking about what I want from that year. I feel like I should be moving onto something else but I can't define what it is. When I first decided to go to China, it just seemed like a lot of things fell into place around the same time. As I was finishing my thesis in March, the anniversary of a friend's death rolled around and whenever I sat down to work I couldn't help thinking "One year later, what does any of this mean? It's nothing" which didn't help me much. A lot of meaning had fallen away from a lot of things and I felt stuck. It didn't feel right to call everything useless, it had clearly had value for me, I learned a whole new way of thinking. But the abstractions seemed to slip through my fingers as I grew anxious about having anything valuable for any sort of job. China came at the right time, I suppose, because I was looking to better live in this world as I grew dissatisfied with the limits of what words could really do. A lot of writing involves sense-making, even if you want to fight that you need to know how you're going to go about that. I had reached a point where I couldn't make sense, even if I knew from a some technical standpoint that the sentences I wrote were grammatically correct I felt no connection to them, they always seemed wrong. Everything was arbitrary. I didn't want to hear anything more about "Well when artists hit on hard times they often come back as even better artists than before" because it struck me as a poor exchange: a person's life gone and all these gaps that were left unfilled for me but at least I'd be a better writer? Such an easy narrative. The things I couldn't stand began to add up: no more fate, no more promises, no more easy narratives. I needed something different, and China's hyper practicality appealed to me. As I got to the end of my time in college too, I'd begun exploring more of Europe's immigrant communities and puzzling over the differences between growing up Chinese-Italian, British-Born Chinese, and Chinese-American (after a lot of time spent telling myself that most people don't go to Europe for Chinese people). But immigration in Europe was a growing concern and topic and with my comfort level in Italian and Spanish, I started thinking I might be in a good place to dig deeper. Wouldn't China be a natural step for me given that side project? It seemed to be the biggest missing piece of my puzzle.
That was 2 years ago. I still love talking to people on the move. I think it's an interesting time for China, at least from my own perspective having heard the stories about leaving so many times over. After people leaving China for so many years, there were people coming to teach English (and sometimes staying!). I wanted to know why. There are people on the move within China too, more than I realized at first and I always find it interesting to ask if people I run into in Zhuzhou are really from here. Sometimes they come from nearby small towns like Baiguan or from as far away as Hotan. They probably find it a strange question to ask. There are so many reasons for someone to leave home. Lately, I've felt that dissatisfied feeling off and on again. I feel lonely, but I remind myself that I bring it on myself by not going out to bars and socializing like I probably should (I tried going to one in this city a few times, but for some reason I just stare inside and freeze up, trying to figure out if it's wrong for me to just order a beer and be alone or if people will see a sad drunk or if I order food will that be weird or what if what if what if what it and irrational anxieties begin to stack up which is weird given that I've been in bars by myself before, maybe it's the accumulated experiences of my insides not quite matching my outsides, racial blot test that I am). I'm not sure what I'm accomplishing since I don't seem to be traveling that much. I'm doubting myself again. Asking myself if I've done everything I can. Remembering that this next year, I can do better. It may just be the moment, it may pass like when I spent my summer back in California talking about how crazy China was then I came back to China and remembered what I loved about being here. I'm certainly ready to take a break and have been making a mental list of places I'd like to finally make a road trip to. I'm also looking forward to seeing a few familiar faces, though they too have their lives and responsibilities to look after. Maybe after the first year being so positive and the second year being so difficult, the third year will be a chance to move at a more even keel. On a happier note, as of the past two weeks I've been filling up a notebook with all kinds of things. I'm writing again! It's like I'm waking up from some long sleep or something. I definitely feel how I'm out of practice, but the fact that I've been happy with some pen and paper for an hour (or more) everyday makes me feel that I'm really recovering something. Creating, not just feeling stuck with "this is nothing" everytime I say "today I will write". I think I have learned a valuable lesson in the limitations of language and words from that dry spell, it's not something I should forget, but I'm remembering the small power of reaching someone somewhere unexpectedly as well. I'm excited too, because when I'm having fun while writing everyone else seems to have fun reading and there's nothing that makes my day quite like thinking I've made someone laugh. China still has a lot to explore and I have some questions I need to mull over over the next year, it's not been easy and I still have a lot of ways to grow. But undoubtedly there are some things I've handled better this year and so by next year I hope to have done even more. I'm sad to leave my comfortable place here near downtown, but it's because I'm comfortable that I should probably change things up. I'm looking forward a break from here even as I think about all the possibilities now available to me with more advanced English speakers (podcasts? student newspaper? book reports? skits? ballads?). Each in its time, I suppose. A long time ago, I was recounting my spring festival travels and had just left off from Hanoi and was on my way to Osaka. With Osaka, I made the mistake of thinking about Kyoto which is close by but definitely not the same city. Never go to Zhuzhou expecting Shanghai, don't go to Osaka expecting Kyoto. One of my favorite things in Kyoto was all the temples and spaces where you could stop for a bowl of matcha and a sweet. Osaka as a more commercial city wasn't quite the hotspot for temples that I had envisioned and remembered from my week in Japan over the summer. It took me a while to warm up to the city, I guess in part because I don't generally go out much at night for drinks or anything like that. But night was when I learned to really enjoy Osaka for the city it was. I like many things about the historic old capital, but there were ways in which Osaka seemed a little more casual. Also given Kyoto's image and the heritage its trying to protect and live with, I don't imagine the lights and large sea creatures of Dotonbori sitting well with the soft light, lanterns, chirimen, the entrance to Yasaka shrine or the rare geisha sighting of Gion. Lonely Planet said Osaka was great for Blade Runner nights. On nights it rained I certainly thought of Deckard on crowded streets though Osaka nights didn't seem quite as heavy as the constant darkness in Blade Runner. I stayed in a room that was exactly what I needed and no more (which was immensely satisfying) near a part of town called "Shin Sekai", or "New World" in English. More than a few guides I read suggested staying away from that part of town at night as it was full of strange characters. I wandered at night anyway. If I felt uncomfortable about a group of guys hanging around a convenience store, I just stepped away. The oddest person I saw out there was a rather sad looking man in a wedding dress in an arcade filled with mostly closed shops. Out of all the neighborhoods I saw in Osaka, Shin Sekai seemed to be the best place to entertain dystopian ideas. Built early on in the 1900s, Shin Sekai by the time I arrived in February 2016 was an old idea of a new world. The font alone told me I'd be stepping into a place unlike anything I'd seen while staying around Kyoto's temples. The air was filled with the smell of frying and the signs filled with my favorite characters from both Chinese and Japanese: 烧 and 串. Shao and chuan. Yaki and kushi. However you say it, there's something good waiting on the other side. Surrounded by beer and fried food, clothing shops, t-shirts, and big glowing figures inviting people to walk in. Everything in this neighborhood was in strong contrast with the Japan of kaiseki, tea ceremony, machiya, and grand temples and gardens meant to make statements about the families that lived there or funded them that I knew from Kyoto. In a very narrow okonomiyaki shop, I found a couple who were happy to talk me to while they set up the grill on the counter despite the language barrier. They had an English menu so I can't have been the only person from out of town to stop by, but I couldn't recall anyone in Kyoto who had been so warm with me in the same way as they teased me about coming to Osaka to teach English instead. Though my Japanese is pretty basic, I had the good fortune of being in conversation with two people using a lot of loan words. They laughed at the very assertive way I said "check" as they tried to stop saying "chekku" to mimic me. People were very kind to me in Kyoto too, but I recall more formalities and efficiency than sharing laughs about how I talk. I still can't believe a woman decided to come up and help me when I was lost in Kyoto last year and after feeling a little lost between her limited English and my limited Japanese, we communicated best with each other in Italian. Classics nerd that I am, I did initially think of taking a day to run back to Kyoto but instead made a day trip to Uji. Uji is suspiciously convenient as a day trip spot when you realize everything is in walking distance from the train station and there are signs everywhere to guide you to the main cultural points of interest. I walked and listened to the Ujigawa rushing by, wondering if the train station was placed where it was because of all the other sites or what might have been built up around the station. But many things in Uji outdate the trains so perhaps I shouldn't have wasted my time on that. You don't have to go to Uji to hear its name. If you are shopping around for green tea while in Japan, you will see a number of products with origins in Uji and you'll run into a number of tea shops where you try sencha, matcha, gyokuro and other popular green teas and you can try your hand at proper brewing with the help of the staff. It's also the setting for the ending of the Tale of Genji, a part of the book that follows the next generation after Genji's death and there is a small museum where certain scenes are played out with an audio track, lights, and faceless mannequins. There are sections of poetry on the paths as you walk from site to site. From time to time, I thought about how ideal it might be to live in a place with an abundance of tea, sweets, and poetry but I should know better than to judge a place solely by what you find on a short walk from the train station. I almost missed the Ujigami shrine at first, a recognized heritage site. It didn't quite announce itself in any grand way, but I was pleased to see a well-dressed family with a baby who had come to pay a visit and on my way down towards the river, I passed a man and woman who seemed to be in traditional wedding attire coming up towards the shrine. Amazing to think that it still seemed so heavily used after all these centuries. I took a short break for tea and sweets at a small shop near the river and then made my way to Byodoin, a building you can see on the 10 yen coin. Like Genji, this too dates back to Heian Japan and the name "Fujiwara", a large family in the court during that period, made me think of UtaKoi, an anime drawing inspiration from Heian poetry (specifically, the Hyakunin Isshu, a collection of 100 poems a Fujiwara chose to decorate a villa but that a friend of mine has also referred to as a collection of one hit wonders of Heian poetry). The anime went into love stories behind some of the poems (the majority of which were about love) and it seemed especially appropriate to think of all the women in Genjimonogatari or those related to the Hyakunin Isshu on Valentines Day. By the time I got to Byodoin, I think I was ready to rest. I liked looking at all the different arhats in the museum but didn't seem to retain much information about why the building was constructed. I also had to hurry a little to make sure I didn't miss my time to go inside the hall. On my way out and back to the train station from Byodoin, I had a brief flashback to Kyoto, mostly from recognizing the tea shops and souvenirs that seem to fill roads leading to especially significant places of culture and tourism. Green tea ice cream was advertised everywhere, small chirimen accessories, tengui...I can't help noticing that in Asia, I seem to accumulate more small souvenirs than I did in Europe. I don't know if its just that I've changed over time or if it isn't also related to cultures where small gifts are a more regular part of relationships and exchange, so there's more of them and they tend to be more appealing because businesses know you'll want something for family, friends, and colleagues. Or maybe my particular aesthetic tastes just lean towards the things I see while traveling in Asia.
I couldn't help noticing one thing during this quick trip to Osaka and that was while I had enjoyed the efficiency and orderliness of Kyoto after getting off a train in Changsha (where a man sang loudly, another man screamed at him and waved threateningly, men smoked between cars, a guy spit on the floor and the railway staff tried to sell things), this time it made me nervous. I was used to people standing right in front of the elevator door and walking straight ahead the minute it opened in China, in Japan I had to consciously remind myself to wait in line and was anxious about committing any number of faux pas and being disrespectful. China is frustrating, but I guess it's also somewhat my comfort zone. Lots of people with things to do, places to go, and no time to wait for you to figure things out and risk getting lost in the billions isn't always the nicest feeling, but at least I knew what to expect there. I had to keep adjusting in Osaka. I left early in the morning thinking about the other side of Japan that I'd been introduced to during my brief stay and how I'd enjoyed it, but I was ready to make my way back to the mainland and for the last few days of my vacation. On to Xi'An. I'm at this crossroads again where I have to decide on something. I said I was going back to California, but the moment I said it out loud I started thinking "Really? Am I done here?" I feel like I haven't been as happy this year, but next year could be different if I stay again. I don't seem to be burning strongly to go either way, and both have their problems. Perhaps it's no mistake then, that this image I first saw on JList's facebook page a while back has been circulating through my mind: I like this picture a lot. It's very accessible and thought provoking to see the simple things that overlap and come together to create "ikigai", or life purpose. It makes the whole thing seem less new age-y than what I seem to hear about fate, destiny, and purpose when I talk about jobs with other people. There's something very sensible to remembering that while you need a job and a way to live in the world, there is a space too for what you are good at and what you love. I've had a hard time with red threads and true life's calling and the words everything happens for a reason for the past few years. Sometimes, I get up and see nothing at all. Or I get up and see chaos. Or I get up feeling that I've looked away from the road and found myself in open fields, it's liberating but comes with no ready path. Or maybe it's a forest since I can't seem to see the end of it, but that's to assume I move towards an end. But with this, it gives me some way to think about work in relation to the wider world while giving myself a fairer assessment. In my time here, I've learned that one of my strengths is accessibility and breaking things down so that everyone can understand. It's a great skill for a teacher. It's a great skill for a writer. It's not something I ever considered nor really considered to be a strength of mine until the final semester of college and my time here in China. Sometimes I wish someone along the way had told me that was a real skill that people valued much sooner, but I got the message eventually so maybe it doesn't matter. But I think knowing this now, it should be taken into consideration as I try to figure out where my needs can meet the world's needs. I remember too at the end of college that as I asked for resume help I was told repeatedly that what I needed to remember was that I was a good person too, I just tended to forget sometimes. And I needed to learn to give myself more credit. I guess it still holds true.
Other words have been haunting me too. When I was 15, I attended my first writers conference outside of the Jack London writers camp for kids that I went to a few times. It's an intimidating thing to be 15 at a community college writers conference. One of my first sessions was with a man who talked about how creative writing out of all the arts is one that can never have child prodigies (which was such a relief after being surrounded by 12 year olds who wrote rather mature short stories that had been published already and often made me feel I actually didn't have it in me to write after all). I remember him saying "You need experience to be a writer. You need to know what it's like when someone dies, to spend time saying to yourself 'If only I'd spoken to them, if only I'd made love to them, if only I'd done things differently'". Being young myself, I laughed because some of it seemed absurd. "Ah, see. You don't believe me. That's the point." The writers conference is gone, that man passed away a few years ago, and now I do know about the crazy things you will think after someone dies and all the things that you could have done differently and the multiple universes you tell yourself about where it doesn't happen that way. I have not been the active writer I should be, I ask myself if I still wish to write, what for, and how. I find myself asking questions about experience, about the weird moment I live in where teaching English isn't only a job but a valued enough skill for people to sign up as volunteers to teach overseas. What will they say of this in the future, will they write about the time when lots of young people went abroad to teach and include some quote in a textbook? One of the weirdest things I ever read about travel writing was to stay away from the cliche of teaching in China for a year unless you had something new to bring to the table. I had to wonder when exactly it became a cliche, what drew so many to teaching in China for a year, and what could be made of that trend. The social scientist in me never really dies I guess. Is China part of my personal ikigai? I don't know, I was certainly drawn to it because there was much that was ideal about coming here and exercising the skills I learned. I would read about it off and on in what seemed to be a side hobby for someone largely familiar with Western classics and romance languages but I wasn't sure I'd ever go as something other than a tourist. I think I should leave because it sounds like the responsible thing to do, but then I can't articulate what I'd do if I did. Perhaps it's because I'm in this place right now too that I can't help noticing how many books about China have been written by young adults. Peter Hessler was 27 when he went to work in Sichuan with the Peace Corps. Jen Lin-Liu had just been married and was trying to figure out what the future held when she planned her trip to look into the history of noodles. Michael Meyer not only used Manchuria to think about changes in China, he was thinking about his own state of limbo with family and career while he spent time in the Northeast. I know better than to romanticize or make too much of China in transition attracting young people who are themselves in transition, but I have no doubt someone could make a paper out of China memoirs related to that pattern. It is a good place for me I guess, because having spent so much time in school being on the other side of the classroom is a new experience but not so new that I feel completely out of my depth. I just fear that I'll find I've become a teacher less from thoughtful and engaged process and more out of complacency. I get enough free time to just chill out with my Crunchyroll account catching up on anime on a lot of days instead of looking at other work or grad schools like I probably should. There's a part of me that says this is a job and if I'm not unhappy, I should just keep going. And there's another part of me that says it really isn't a job and I can't fool myself about financial independence on 3000RMB/500 USD a month (though I never spend all my month's earnings anyway since I'm not a big shopper, food and travel tends to take it). When I think about how I feel at this moment, I can't help thinking of Hunan's own writer, Shen Congwen during a particular passage of "Border Town" when he writes, "He may never come back or he may come back tomorrow!" I'm sure he knew his fair share of change, but it is a little scary how such a simple sentence could apply to me so well right now. |
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