Wind over Water

The Post-Student Era: Moving Forward in the Working World

2011-11-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

It's been over a year since my last post. Since then, I've graduated and am slowly adjusting to not being a student. Even though I'm no longer living in China, an awareness of all things associated with China still informs my every breath and thought. Will I end up working in China? Most likely. Will I live there permanently? Only time will time.

Friends tell me the transition to living in the US should be easy, but it isn't. I have lived in China for a total of 3 years, by coming back to the US and setting down in a city I have not truly lived in for over a decade, I have left many friends and a familiar way of living behind.

The most difficult part of the reintegration process was finding a US based job/internship. Considering the terrible state of the economy and other factors, I'm sure I'm not the only one that has struggled with this. So here are a few things I learned as I weathered this transitional period.

1) Unless a job or internship has requirements clearly marking it as out your range of experience (for example if you don't have work experience, your chances of hearing back from a job posting labeled as mid-career or advanced are not very high), you always have a shot. If you think an opportunity will help your career goals and you are interested, apply and see what happens. Maybe you don't think you possess all the qualifications the posting asks for, or you don't think your chances of getting a response are good, however, your chances of finding a job/internship are zero if you don't submit anything at all.

See this link. Don't overestimate the competition, don't psych yourself out.

2) Set realistic goals for how many job/internship applications you will send out. Are you madly writing your thesis and juggling classes while working part time? Then you probably won't have enough time to send out job applications every day. Try to aim for one quality application a week, set aside some time every day just for job hunting.

3) Research, research, research. Read each posting carefully to understand what is being looked for. Then, DON'T START writing your cover letter yet. Go to the company/organization's website, dig around and learn about what they do. Have friends working similar jobs, know someone working at the place you're interested in? Go talk to them to get some insider information. After arming yourself with all this knowledge, go write an awe inspiring cover letter. Feel free to use words or phrases from the job posting or the company's HR webpage to make yourself look awesome on paper.

4) Just submitted your CV and cover letter? Good job, now go relax. Go outside, take a walk, hang out with friends. Do not obsessively check your email. In fact, forget about the job you just applied to. Response time can vary greatly from organization to organization. Once I received a reply within half an hour after emailing my CV. However, more often than not, I had to wait anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to receive any response at all. Waiting, not knowing where you'll be next month and what you'll be doing can be stressful. Find ways to keep yourself occupied. I used exercise as a way of venting stress and regularizing my schedule while I was in transition.

These are just general tips for making the job hunting process less painful. Would anyone be interested in seeing a post on resources for finding China related work? I would also be happy to make a post about my experience as an intern working in the nonprofit sector.

Visions of a Shanghai Expo

2010-09-14T05:18:00.000-07:00

While beautiful pavilions and seas of tourists have entrenched themselves as the defining emblems of the Shanghai Expo, I would like to present a different vision of the Expo, one that is my own.

I enjoy watching the play of light and shadow, even with something as seemingly simple as a single light:

I couldn't keep myself away from the beautiful lights and their sprawling shadows in the Hungarian Pavilion...

...And thoroughly enjoyed playing with all the pretty colored lights...

A herd of hands:

More fun:

For all the people and crowd hate associated with the expo through the media, many of the beautiful lights and their inky shadows would not have been possible without the help of many human hands, including visitors, as one can see in this picture:

Salivating

2010-08-11T23:58:00.000-07:00

The majority of my conversations with expats inevitably turn to food, specifically foods that one misses from home. These conservations have a tendency to surface during the holiday season when bustling, well-meaning friends and family members happily communicate the details of their culinary preparations. Last December during a particularly forbidding week before Christmas, a student had the aplomb to bring up a website full of Christmas dessert pictures during a break in one of my classes. As we ogled, we unconsciously sighed in sync. We did not need reminders of things we couldn't have: authentic Christmas dinners, touches from loved ones and vacation time. The ensuing conservation dripped with the frustration as the class collectively drooled the virtual pleasures in front of our eyes while griping over the fact that we would be attending classes on Christmas Eve. However, that day, an even older and more intense food longing reawakened in me. Ever since I had arrived back in China in June 2009, I had not baked.

In China, the majority of people do not have ovens in their homes. Therefore baking becomes extremely difficulty as only bakeries, other professional institutions and the wealthy possess them. Last Christmas, a friend with a particularly strong cooking and baking streak cajoled the kitchen staff at HNC into let her bake enormous quantities of sweet potato pie for the school Christmas dinner. Since then I have been thinking of alternative ways to indulge my baking desires beyond buying out the contents of local western style bakeries in Nanjing and stuffing my face.

A few nights ago, my desperate pleas were answered in a small way, I came across a recipe for a rice cooker cake.

I plan to try this recipe once I am settled in Nanjing again.

Has anyone ever tried this recipe? Any other suggestions for this oven-less cake maker?

Reflections

2010-07-29T01:39:00.000-07:00

Recently, the majority of my posts have been heavily picture oriented. Digital photography has brought a great deal of joy to my life; they are a deluge of moments showing the bewilderment and amazement I feel as I face life in mainland China. I didn’t really think too much about it before but my recent focus on photography reflects my avoidance of using more conscious language essential to introspection and how little thought I've given to where I’m going with my future. I haven’t had a lot of time to reflect on my experiences while in school. Consequently, trying to plan out what may potentially be my last year ever as a student this summer hasn’t been much of a success as I had hoped.

The fragmented nature of my summer has not been supportive of convention or planning of any sort. Moving from one shell of a living space to another has given me barely enough time to catch my reflection in these places and deepen my understanding of place and how it relates to where I am going physically and mentally.

Unfortunately, I am no sage or oracle, the could-have-beens, the future could-bes are veiled in cloud to me.

All I can do offer sketches, brief glimpses of various presents.

Guangzhou

I’ve wandered through South China Normal University a number of times while passing through Guangzhou. Aside from having one of the best university cafeterias I have had the pleasure of eating at, as an academic institution, it appropriately presented itself as a environment for thought and inquiry this time around. While strolling through SCNU’s basketball courts, I spotted a 50, 60 year old woman dressed in a Rockets uniform playing basketball with a group of young male college students. As the players gathered to start a friendly scrimmage, she divided the boys into two teams with a sweep of a hand. Her eyebrows knitted with concentration as she played rock paper scissors with the opposition’s team captain in order to decide who would possess the ball first. During the match, she hollered, heckled and hustled like any other players on the court. The singular nature of her energy and enthusiasm reminded me of my own struggles to maintain a enjoyable but competitive demeanor in China’s casual sports scene dominated by men. I am glad I am not the only woman on a quest to challenge the naturalization of gender differences so widely touted in China.

Shanghai

The glitz of downtown Shanghai overwhelmed the quieter sensibilities of my wind-blown brother and I when we first arrived. We found the ever sparkling rainbow of lights and hullabaloo of constant traffic grating on the senses. However, Shanghai eventually won our hearts one night with music. A strain of boss nova drifted into our apartment with the moonbeams of a rare clear night. We ate cold slices of watermelon as wide as the Cheshire cat’s grin; our mouths stretched to mimic the infamous aforementioned cat as we heard old favorites like the girl in ipanema.

Subsequent exploration of Shanghai revealed further riches. A jazz bar aptly named “The Melting Pot” tugged at my heartstrings and made me reconsider: perhaps Shanghai’s dabbling in internationalization will not necessarily just result in the crass facades of modernization so prevalent in commentary on the China of today. One day, perhaps Shanghai will be a platform for multiculturalism for all sorts of people beyond the strict necessities of international business and finance.

Nanjing

My initial experience with Shanghai was so jarring I decided to go back to Nanjing for a weekend. I stayed with my great aunt who lives in a 社区, a local walled in community filled with rustling willows and old Chinese men cooling themselves with paper fans. Her flat is located in the very back of the compound so the rumbling of local traffic never makes the carrots in her garden tremble. One morning, I woke up to the sound of laughing children going to school. It was at that moment I finally understood the meaning of 地气 which refers to the innate spirit of a place. Traditionally, 地气indicated a place which was good to settle down on and plant crops. China's newer generations do not hope to be peasants, but this agriculturally oriented understanding of place still resonates with those who have never experienced village living. In the context of modern China, I think it points to a sense of belonging regardless of place of origin and the potential to nurture new and existing communities. 地气 represents a feeling that any person, traveling or not, hopes to find somewhere during their journey through life.

Innards of a Shanghai Expo

2010-07-06T16:48:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday my brother and I decided to have a gander at the infamous Shanghai Expo. While its marvels were nothing short of wondrous, hopefully. this selection of photos will not convey the soul crushing seas of people we were forced to navigate through in order to have a glimpse of the treasures within.

Here is the majestic Swedish pavilion:

View of the Turkish Pavilion while standing tantalizing close in line to its entrance:

Taking respite from the swarms of people tramping through the expo...with ice cream!

French, Arabic and Berber text greeting visitors at the entrance of the Algerian pavilion:

No pavilion worth its salt would be complete without a trinket or two for sale!

Nigerian jewelry:

At night the expo becomes another world with sparkles and shadows abound. The delicate lattice cast by this doodad on the exterior of the Slovakian pavilion caught my eye:

Ladder up the side of one of the pavilions:

The ambiance of the Hungarian pavilion took my breath away, I didn't want to leave:

My brother and I spend most of our day looking at the African and European pavilions. There was so much more that we did not have enough time to see. I plan to make another trip to see more of the expo before I leave Shanghai.

Flying with Dragons

2010-07-03T06:41:00.000-07:00

For the months of April, May and June I got up at 5:30 am two times a week to learn how to row for the annual Sheraton-Nanjing dragonboat race. At first the idea of rising so early every day seemed impossible to accomplish, but with the encouragement of my teammates, who were also learning to row for the first time, dragonboat practices became my favorite part of the week.

I had the pleasure of spending time with a group enthusiastic and wonderful people, which culminated in a fantastic series of heats on June 5th, 2010. We placed first in both of our heats and placed 6th out of 30 teams and missed the finals by less than a millisecond(4th: 2'13''12 5th:2'13''46 6th: 2'13'62) and won Best Out of Town Team!

While our race times were far better than anything we previously imagined, what was more important was the consistent sense of humor and positivity instilled in our team which you can see here:

Here we are, practicing bright and early a few weeks before the race(I was feeling particularly energetic that day and thus you see me waving my oar around in the air with both hands)!

"Warming up" before the semi-finals:

After a heat on race day:

Here a last image for laughs:

Credits: The first and third pictures are taken from The Hopkins-Nanjing Center's Flickr Stream

Teaser

2010-06-10T19:37:00.000-07:00

This is the head attachment of one of the dragonboats used in the race I participated in last Saturday:

More Excuses!

2010-06-02T08:10:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the lack of posts, between exciting things that have been keeping me absurdly busy, such as...

Arranging housing and internships for the summer (those of you that will be in Shanghai, I would love to meet you!)

Dragon boat practices 3 times a week at 5:30am (more to come on this!)

and the occasional graphic design gig...

...I have not had a lot of time to blog.

Additionally It is once again that time of year when students like myself are panicking over final exams and papers.

For those of you interested in my humdrum academic life, I have the following to finish:

Chinese Criminal Law Paper (1,700 characters)
Fieldwork Paper on Chinese Rural Education (this one is in English, 4,700 words)
Modern Chinese Society and Culture Paper (2,900 characters)
Paper on Minority Education in China (still haven't written this one)

and last but not least, I have a thesis proposal to write in Chinese!

I will probably begin posting regularly again around June 20th.

Nostalgia

2010-05-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

China's modern cities are constantly reshaping and reforming the sprawling urban landscape which slow extends its reach across China's varied terrain. My great uncle who grew up in China and hasn't gone back in over 20 years told me he would not recognize his hometown of Kunming (the provincial capital of Yunnan) which I think is sad. However, the Chinese have a great respect for history, which really shows when one explores the Presidential Palace in Nanjing. While the focus of this post is the architecture of the palace, I wanted to show you a little bit of natural history which was preserved along with the man made structures making up the 总统府。

This is an extremely tall tree in the back of the Presidential Palace. You will not see such things in a normal Chinese cityscape. Heavy emphasis on modernization has made Chinese urban areas shiny and new looking. But as someone who loves old things, it sometimes makes me feel as if I have lost my sense of place and time.

As mentioned in my last post, the Presidential Place was absolutely breathtaking. I loved the way its architects combined a mixture of Chinese and Western styles.

This particular part reminded me of Spanish missions that are in my home state of California:

The red roof tiles, warm yellow paint and arches and palm tree all made me miss home!

A more "Chinese" bit:

The lighting was really glorious that day:

This little guy was keeping me company when I was enjoying the afternoon light:

I lack the words to explain how surreal it felt to be in China but also feeling as if I had somehow gone home at the same time, so these pictures will convey my sentiments for me:

Odds and Ends from a Bygone Era

2010-04-29T11:17:00.000-07:00

One of my teachers was lecturing about the Taiping Rebellion （太平天国）today, which just happened to have its headquarters in Nanjing from 1850 until 1864 when the Qing government succeed in suppressing the movement. It also served as KMT headquarters for a bit during the 1920's and 30's.

So I decided to go downtown and see this bit of history for myself.

The Presidential Palace was quite spectacular, here are a few pretty things that caught my attention:

A pair of these lions stand near the entrance of the palace, people rub their heads for good luck.

A baby lion clinging to its mother, perhaps a larger cousin of the first lion I photographed.

One of many richly decorated roofs in the palace complex.

Another example of beautiful lattice work, this time in window form.

These tea mugs were in many of the receiving rooms within the palace. Chinese people like to drink tea while managing diplomatic relations.

Old fashion elevator buttons! There is actually quite an interesting mix of Chinese and Western architecture in the 总统府 even though that reality is not well represented with today's collection of baubles.

More on the the history of the Presidential Palace and pictures to come!

I spy a doodad or two (in Hong Kong!)

2010-04-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

I love looking for unusual objects when I travel.

Here are the locations of last week's objects of interest:

1. Elements Mall, Kowloon

Before:

After:

2. The Landmark, Central

Before:

After:

3. The Galleria ,Central

Before:

After:

The numbers on that clock are the fancier version used on Chinese checks and banknotes in order to prevent alteration or mistakes.

Exploration

2010-04-11T01:02:00.000-07:00

I was walking into downtown Hong Kong one day...

when I spotted something I hadn't seen in a long time:

I had walked through St. John's many times before, but this was the first time I noticed their charity thrift shop/bookstore. You do not see thrift shops at all in most places in mainland China because there is a stigma against wearing old clothing, especially if it use to belong to a stranger. I however have no such notions in my head and very much enjoy the grand pastime of thrifting.

After poking around for a bit, I was shocked to see how much nice clothing people were willing to discard. I picked up a few formal button down shirts and a wool jacket for less than 100 HK. All of the proceeds obviously went to the church which has a positive impact on the Hong Kong community especially on the lives of Filipino migrants, so I felt as if I had contribute to a good cause.

I decided to look for more doodads as I continued making my way through Hong Kong:

A gold star for anyone that can figure out where I took these. I will post answers and the original photos so you can see them in all their unphotoshopped glory within the next week.

Protests in Hong Kong

2010-04-07T00:23:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of a protest against Citibank that's been going on for awhile in downtown Hong Kong:

One would never see anything like this today in mainland China.

This post is a companion piece to Democracy in China?.

Democracy in China?

2010-03-31T21:17:00.000-07:00

While I was at the Fulbright conference in Hong Kong, I attended a very interesting forum on Hong Kong-mainland relations. The relationship has been fraught with tension since the handover in 1997 over the various issues including the push for universal suffrage, which would allow Hong Kong's citizens to democratically elect Hong Kong's Chief Executive(essentially the highest ranking politician presiding over Hong Kong). Hong Kong enjoys a high degree of autonomy due to the one country two systems policy (一國兩制) in most affairs with the exception of foreign policy and defense. While Beijing and Hong Kong have been at odds, the issue of universal suffrage has become a greater internal debate among Hong Kongers about Hong Kong's conflicting image as a part of China and as an autonomous area with distinctive way of life.

The analysis of the subtle shifts happening within Hong Kong political groups and the overall political mood during the forum was especially interesting to me. There are two main factions, the Democratic Party of Hong Kong (民主黨) which is pro-Beijing and those making up the pan-democratic camp such as the League of Social Democrats (社會民主連線) and Civic Party (公民黨). The pan-democratic camp is much less organized in comparison to the pro-Beijing faction which has been pushing for closer ties with Beijing and promoting pro-Beijing economic interests in Hong Kong. There is serious doubt by both politicans and the public that universal suffrage will be achieved by 2017 as agreed to by Beijing because of the severe disagreements among the various groups on how democracy should be implemented in Hong Kong and whether it is even possible(check out this article here). The Beijing government does not want to give moderate democrats any concessions; it would certainly oppose the referendum plan which Hong Kong democrats have threatened to invoke, but at the same time it must respect Hong Kong's autonomy during the 50 years after the handover.

The definition and scope of Hong Kong's autonomy has morphed as a consequence of the changing political landscape. While the activity of civic groups in Hong Kong clearly demonstrate the Hong Kong public's vested interest in politics, speakers at the conference noted that the current political mood has become surly and even outright angry. Civil discourse in Hong Kong has a history of being...civil. In comparison to the pan-democratic groups, post 1980's student and NGO groups have been increasingly showing their frustration with the collusion between big business tycoons and the central government to consolidate the interests of elites and economic interests which aggravates societal inequalities. At the other extreme, the increase of nationalism for the mainland highlights various cultural, political and economic paradoxes within Hong Kong society. Within these contrasting and conflicting features emerges an image of a Hong Kong with an uncertain future. How much autonomy should Hong Kong have? Does this include political autonomy and a high degree of control over it's political affairs which have international ramifications due to Hong Kong's special history and current sociopolitical structures? How does Hong Kong maintain its autonomy while balancing the mainland government's goals for Hong Kong and China's future as a whole?

For more information on the debate for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, please take a look at this article.

Practical Matters:Hong Kong to Shenzhen and back again

2010-03-16T08:02:00.000-07:00

I have been asked a lot of questions about the best way to travel in and out of Hong Kong, so I decided to make a short post detailing my experiences:

I flew out of Shenzhen for the first time after the Fulbright forum in Hong Kong ended. If one is flying into the mainland from Hong Kong, it is much cheaper to fly out of Shenzhen than it is out of Hong Kong's airport (I saved 500 RMB or 73 US dollars this time around). To get from Hong Kong to the Shenzhen airport, first take a look at Hong Kong's subway map and try to find a station closest to wherever you are staying. Your goal is to get to the Kowloon Station which is a part of the Tung Chung line (Yellow). After arriving at the station, take Exit C which will take you up to the Elements mall, then follow the series of "China Bus Terminus" signs posted around the mall until you reach the ticketing counter where you can buy tickets to the airport for 100 HK. Once you cross the border into the mainland, you will be required to get off the bus and go through customs before continuing. I don't remember how long the trip was but it took me about 2.5 hours in total to reach the airport.

I hope this was helpful!

Absurdly Excited!

2010-03-03T03:19:00.000-08:00

This picture expresses my current mood:

While you cannot see the expression on my face in the picture, I am grinning like a giant maniac! The cause of my current bout of giddy happiness is the exciting fact that I will be attending the 2010 Fulbright Research Forum which is being held in Hong Kong this year!

Posts on Hong Kong-mainland politics, Hong Kong night life and other fun things will be coming up!

Competitive Spirit

2010-02-25T08:17:00.000-08:00

Chinese New Year is usually defined by copious amounts of eating, garish red decorations adorned with gold and the racket of firecrackers. However, every area has its own special traditions. For example, this town(镇) hosts a basketball tournament every year among the different villages it is composed of:

The tournament is outfitted with food vendors selling delicious hot dogs, referees, scorekeepers, announcers and of course there is an enthusiastic crowd of spectators!

Some teams even have their own "cheerleaders":

Any excuse to make more noise during Chinese New Year is encouraged because it scares away bad spirits. This trio was happy to add to the lively atmosphere every single time the Upper Village（上村）basketball team scored a basket.

Every team is funded by a village "老板"，a well off local businessman that usually contributes a few thousand RMB to buy their team appropriate equipment, water and provide a lavish dinner after the conclusion of the tournament. This particular 老板 has some skill in Chinese calligraphy and is making a sign telling all which teams will be playing the first match:

All eyes are on the basketball players who represent some of the best and brightest in every village:

The villagers grin and cheer proudly as they point out their sons or perhaps relatives. Younger children gaze with envy and admiration, perhaps one day they too will capture the attention of so many. However, only the best players from every village make the team and to have the time to develop such skills requires more than what natural and human capital the village can provide.

The boys' shiny basketball shoes, sports uniforms from school teams and skill on the court area are the trappings of the area's small number of educated elite.Almost every player is currently in the process of or already has completed his undergraduate studies. These players do not only represent the local area's best sportsmen, but also hope for older and younger generations that the future will bring better lives for all the villagers.

Traditions

2010-02-20T08:02:00.000-08:00

During Chinese New Year, the most important holiday celebrated in China, thousands of individuals light lanterns as a way of greet the new year with new hopes, for love, for luck and many other things. I light lanterns twice a year as a way of celebrating my father's life. For a more detailed explanation, click here.

I chose to light another red lantern:

The wind was rather strong that night, so it took a few tries to get the lantern into the air without lighting nearby houses on fire.

Apologies for the sub par quality of the pictures. I do not own a professional camera and nor did I have a tripod in my possession at the time.

Razzle Dazzle

2010-02-07T01:22:00.000-08:00

Aimlessly wandering around Hong Kong this time eventually led me to the dizzying streets of Mongkok where great streaming hordes of people shop and shop and shop. I entered one of local "malls" which have no food courts nor spacious fancy designer stores. Most of the products sold at the Mongkok" New Town Mall" are geared towards female users.While I appreciated the variety interesting things that were for sale, my first thought was that if there was a fire in the New Town Mall building,, no one would escape alive from the upper floors. This mall was a death trap, literally and figuratively. Every floor only had one way up and down and was crammed with numerous little shops and stalls, leaving only narrow in between spaces for shoppers to wade through. However as a member of the female sex, the shops' contents held more danger for me than any fire hazard. Clothing, acessories and beauty services representing the pinacle of feminine Asian street fashion, promised a whole new look and personality for the right amount of cash.

I managed to ignore the stores selling shoes and clothing unfitting for someone of my larger build for more unusual fare. A store tucked away in the recesses of the 3rd floor selling a smattering of odd products meant for female usage such as cookies claiming to provide the consumer with "f-cup" sized bosoms along with body piercing services caught my eye and made me chuckle. In the back of the shop, a middle school student held her white button down shirt open with skinny arms bent like chicken wings. She was flanked by two school friends with long black pony tails that switched back and forth in excitement. Her shrill squeal made me wince with pain that wasn't mine. After buttoning up her peter pan collared shirt, she flipped up the bottom, revealing a smooth bit of curved metal ending in a red starburst nestled above her navel. As if she had just completed a trial by fire, the two friends congratulated her.

In search of new and novel ways to modify and change one's appearance, the overwhelming number and variety of options available in just one building poffered the dazzling hope that one can be transformed by a change of clothes, eye color or even by the pain of a new piercing. I personally do not have the courage to endure the pain and nor am I daring enough to show off a belly piercing. But in the end, perhaps my admiration was misguided. It later occurred to me as I watched the same trio of girls drift from one makeover parlor to the next looking at pearl studded acrylic nails and hair extensions that these girls were exactly the same as myself, just looking for something to fill time until something else needed to be done.

A Guest at Home

2010-01-20T15:31:00.000-08:00

Winter break has finally arrived and I am curled up with a large blanket in a creaky old house in rainy, foggy San Francisco. This is the first time I have been back in about half a year and it still feels unsettling to be home, the loudest noises here are the sounds of birds chirping outside my window instead of the constant hubbub of traffic flowing through the veins of Nanjing's heart. The sheer number of people inhabiting China came be overwhelming. Literal seas of students rush through Nanjing university at all hours of the day, the streets are even more crowded: one cannot ever stretch one's arms out without knocking a fellow pedestrian down. However, learning to organize my life to operate in such close quarters has been an unexpectedly pleasant experience.

The Hopkins-Nanjing Center(HNC) provides carrels for its master's students. When I think of a study carrel, I usually think of an enclosed room with a single desk where a student can study in peace without distractions. So unsurprisingly, my privacy loving American self blanched at the 3 stalls to a room setup that greeted me when I opened the door to my carrel for the first time. How was sharing space with two other people I knew not well at all beneficial to my studies?

I did not receive my answer until the week of midterms. I had been preparing for some unimportant assignment or another when I simply could not sit still any longer. Half an hour later after making strong cinnamon tea and consuming large quantities of Chinese dumplings, I found myself sitting in another carrel with a friend singing songs while she played the guitar. One by one by, the occupants in the master's wing of the library all crowded in to watch and sing along. I slept well that night and attacked my assignments with renewed fervor the next day.

The setup of the carrels provided opportunities to create closer friendships with other students, friendships that have proven to be the crucial element in persevering the rough spots of my first semester of grad school. I owe my modest understanding of academic Chinese to every whispered joke, scrumptious tidbit of chocolate or cookie and long conversation I've had with the wonderful students of HNC.

In comparison to the constant activity of the Center, I find the comparative silence of home deafening. It is with some relief and just enough sorrow that I will check out of my lovely childhood home next week and hurrying back to China to spend the remainder of winter vacation with my friends that are currently inhabiting that part of the world.

Excuses, Excuses

2010-01-05T04:39:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the severe lack of posts, but I have been quite busy with finals and various term papers that are refusing to write themselves.

Done:

Master's Tutorial Paper #3 (2,500 characters)

Contemporary International Politics Term Paper (4,200 characters)

Sino-American Relations Paper (1500 characters)

To do:

US China Comparative Economics Final

China's Social Problems Term Paper

Doing the majority of my research and writing in Chinese takes eons, if I could only write all my term papers in English, I would have gotten everything done much sooner.

However, I have a month and a half of vacation after I finish this week, so expect more posts coming your way soon!

For those of you that are interested in learning more about the curious institution I attend, which requires international students to take academic classes in Chinese and Chinese nationals to take academic classes in English, please click here.

Bookworm's Paradise

2009-12-12T01:15:00.000-08:00

There's a lovely bookstore on South Taiping Road that I enjoy perusing when I have spare time:

The management's decision to preserve features of the bookstore's parking lot predecessor gives it with an unusually spacious interior which sharply contrasts with the busy crowd packed street just outside its doorstep.

Here are pictures of some of the doodads displayed at the front of the bookstore:

I bought a few books as Christmas presents for some friends, I'll probably make another trip before Chinese New Year to add a few more Chinese novels to my gargantuan collection of books at home.

Waste not, Want not

2009-12-09T09:02:00.000-08:00

Last Monday I had the opportunity to visit Nanjing's repository for the city's trash, as a part of a class field trip for one of my sociology classes. As our bus pulled into the entrance, I noticed a drastic change in terrain, the suburbs around Nanjing are fairly flat and suddenly there were sloping hills adorning dusty plaster office buildings clustered around a tired looking tollbooth where we stopped and picked up our guide for the day, a Mr. C.

We descended into the valley and passed by a large plastic sign simply marked as "Lot #1". After disembarking, I was shocked to learn that the "hills" of Lot #1 were the remains of Nanjing's first landfill. I had been unknowingly gazing at the final stage of a landfill's metamorphosis from arable farmland to desolate pit of waste to almost normal looking but utterly artificial landscape.

In contrast to Lot 1, the literal mountain of trash towering over the end of the road half an hour away from the entrance of the landfill depicted a colorful and surreal world utterly different from the drab brown of the valley. This mountain possessed an ever-changing terrain shaped by a small bulldozer while its denizens picked through the mountains ever-turning innards for recyclable materials such as plastic bags, glass and various other materials. Gloved hands grasped sharp hoes which nosed through endless mounds of trash. Men and women waded through rivulets of rain water from last night's storm, navigating soft sinking texture of the mountain with large rubber boots and pants covered in a collage of plastic packaging which used to be wrapped around rolls of toilet paper or perhaps a large box of baby diapers. The red cheek of a peasant glowed in the morning sun as one of the mountain's workers turns to stare at us. These trash collectors were the leftovers, the forgotten of China's less prosperous parts who take the jobs that no Nanjing resident would consider. A student in my group whispered, "I guess a job is better than no job, especially during the financial crisis". As I gawked along with my innocent Chinese and American classmates, I wondered at the trash collectors' ability to withstand the mountain's overpowering assault on the senses.

From my perspective, the mountain threatened to topple over the flimsy wire fence standing between it and our little group to whom our guide was lecturing to about the current problems facing the management of the trash dump. The vast pit only half filled with the mountain's bulk apparently only had sufficient space to store Nanjing's trash for the next three years. According to our guide, since it takes three years to build a landfill and local residents are naturally opposed to having a landfill built nearby there homes , this poses serious problems for the city's ability to dispose and deal with its residents' waste. Although the management of the trash dump has been trying to pass a bill which would build a trash processing plant based on burning trash at high temperatures, local residents have vetoed the bill every year. The proposed plant would in theory burn trash at a temperature of over 800 degrees Celsius(this prevents dangerous dioxins which are also carcinogens from being released into the air) and would cut down on the environmental hazards of landfills and circumvent the severe land shortage that plagues not only Nanjing but China in general.

As he spoke, his eyes wandered up to the sky. The mountain in its florid glory could neither shock him nor overwhelm him with the pungent wind gusting through its peaks. The intricate web of human relationships our guide wove with words created a lasting impression on me. While following his lilting Nanjing accent depicting the complicated relationship between state, local government and Nanjing resident, I almost forget about the unreality of the mountain. In the midst of the gnashing of teeth caused by China's local and national level pollution problems, the distant promises of new technology and the ongoing drama between the landfill and city residents, is there also a place for the concerns and well being of the rural Chinese residents that traverse the mountain and bear the burden of driving the growth of modern Chinese society on their backs?

No Need for School

2009-11-25T22:38:00.001-08:00

Instead of eating a quick dinner at the local cafeteria, the professor decides to eat at one of the small restaurants lining the road outside of the school. Strolling down the sidewalk, he has set his eyes on a shabby establishment at the edge of the horizon. His gaze has pressed an invisible switch and like a clockwork soldier, a young boy pops out of the restaurant and waves excitedly, pin-wheeling arms guiding him in. The professor is a regular at this restaurant. One of his students helps out his family by serving as a waiter at this restaurant across the street from the college. But today that student isn’t here.

Tonight is a school night and all middle and high school students in the district are attending extracurricular classes with one exception. As the professor enters, the young boy drags him to a table where hot tea and a tea cup sit waiting. Standing tall, his student’s younger brother prepares to take his order.

Clumsy hands attempt and fail to properly take down the professor’s order. Smiling kindly, the professor takes the pen and pad of paper and slowly shows the boy the proper stroke order for the character 酸 and writes the remaining characters for sweet and sour pork noodles in neat script. The boy watches intently with glowing black eyes. Before the bright cerulean of the boy’s primary school uniform disappears into the dim kitchen with his order, the professor calls out, “Are you still studying for the middle school entrance examination?” The boy shakes his head and grins, “I like helping out here better!”

Smile growing wider which each pat and compliment from the restaurants patrons, the boy weaves between the tables serving tea, rice, relaying additional orders for fish head soup and fried noodles heaped on platter sized plates with dizzying quickness. The professor scowls, he cannot recall the last time he has seen any of the college’s students attend to any tasks, academic or otherwise with such vitality. The boy’s eager eyes and sincere smile draw warmth from everyone around him; creating the intimate environment compelling the professor and others to come again and again.

Raise the Red Lantern

2009-11-12T07:13:00.000-08:00

Nine years ago on November 6th, my father passed away from colon cancer. I was rather young at the time and it took me a long time to figure out how I would process his death. A flurry of well meaning friends and therapists encouraged me to use words to express my feelings, but I had little to say. Even highly inappropriate compliments admiring my austere black funeral garb from my bewildered classmates failed to elicit much response from me at the time.

Death changes life in such a sudden fashion that sometimes all one can do is keep going through the motions of daily life in order to eventually find a place to start comprehending what happened. I insisted on going back to school the weekend after the funeral. After a few months, I stopped seeing the flame headed therapist who nodded and smiled at my words. I seemed to have moved on.

Paper thin walls of even the most well built dormitories betray the sounds of our most private moments. The sweet soprano of a girl singing happy birthday to her father settled heavily on my shoulders one night, waiting for me to shake it off and continue writing an essay. It wasn't until years later I realized that there was no way right way to grieve over the death of a loved one. I would never have the opportunity to sing happy birthday to my father ever again but that did not mean I could not actively celebrate the positive impact my father had on my life. So last year while I was in China, I started a tradition of releasing a paper lantern into the winds on my father's birthday which is during the winter and on the anniversary of his death. My father loved exploring the vastness of the universe through our battered but beloved telescope and somehow I think he would approve of watching a lantern floating out into the night sky. Last year's lantern was blue with the character "福" written on it with red paint. This year's lantern was red like the ones I've seen in Nanjing.

Old Farts and Crotchety Old Ladies

2009-10-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

Every day when I run over to Nanjing University's main campus to play volleyball, I am surprised by the sheer number of elderly people I see chasing after their grand children, playing badminton and generally enjoying themselves. A circle of wheelchair ridden seniors surrounds a bench where their spouses and friends are sitting. The group's lightening quick responses to various jokes told in the local dialect fill the air with laughter. In contrast to some of the American stories I've heard about grown up children sending elderly parents to nursing homes and elderly abuse, this idyllic scene seems to exude a sense of inner peace and harmony. However the active presence of the elderly in normal social life in Nanjing also illustrates serious social and financial pressures borne by seniors and their families due to the deficiencies of China' welfare system.

China does not have an extensive or reliable welfare system for its growing proportion of elderly, which by the end of 2004 accounted for 10.97% of China's total population and is only going to continue to rise(If I remember correctly, if people ages 60 and above account for 7% and or more of a country's total population, that country is classified as a country as an aging society). Consequently, an elderly individual's family becomes almost wholly responsible for his/her welfare. A stooped over man with great shocks of white hair grasps the handles on the back of his wheelchair as his wife slowly leads him around the exterior of the Nanjing University's basketball courts during his daily walk. While the wife's dedication to her husband is heartwarming, a glance into the basketball courts themselves illustrates a slew of completely different reasons for such dedication.

Many basketball players like to bring something to drink with them. When they finish their drinks they do not walk over to a trash can and throw the bottle out, instead they place the plastic bottle on the ground. In a few minutes, An old woman carrying an over-sized white plastic sack automatically walks over and collects the empty bottles. A player on the sidelines chugs the last of his water and places the bottle in the woman's waiting hand. The elderly that do not have developed family networks to depend on have minimal to no support from the central government. Without sufficient education and other resources accessible to younger generations, there are few options for these seniors to choose in order to support themselves. Therefore these elderly men and women spend their days combing local institutions and dumpsters for plastic bottles they can exchange for money. While bouts of elderly abuse that occur in the US depict the potential for ugly conflict within a family unit, the consequences of not having a stable family unit at all are much more dire.

Although respect for the elderly is a fundamental component of Chinese culture, the lack of a mature welfare system has placed great pressure on both China's younger and older generations alike. Without the support of their children and other family members, the elderly in China really have no one else to depend on.

Too much History

2009-10-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

Tasting the familiar bite of baijiu, the man toasts his friend and congratulates him on finding a new job which allows him to spend time in Nanjing again. Years ago, they lived together crammed into a room with four others like sardines in a can. The man no longer sleeps on board with the ceiling a mere two inches from his face, instead he turns restlessly on a soft mattress complete with a wife and soft pillows. Back then, restlessness seemed like a natural state of being. Sleepless nights were spent on the roof with feet toeing the night sky, speculating over the mysteries of the female sex, what it would be like to fly a rocket to the moon and everything in between. He smiles blearily at the memories, after glasses touch again he says, "Only when we drink together like this are we able to speak honestly about our lives".

Faces glow red with the night's revelry. With little effort, the man teases out a tale of books thrown with deadly accuracy at one's head and a fickle lover. Hidden behind miles of text messages, a tide of neatly boxed woes finally overflows onto the table. Text has concealed the subtle tremors cracking the friend's troubled voice. Words fail to convey the heavy weight of loss cupped in trembling hands. No wonder the friend has taken on a job that allows him to make many business trips away from Taiwan. The sky's no longer the limit, time unrelentingly flattens young lives into linear paths, only allowing them to look backwards while feet march perilously forward.

The man's gaze drifts upwards to the wall where portraits of Mao Zhedong, Zhou Enlai and Liu Shaoqi stare listlessly at the restaurant's patrons. The friend admits to only recognizing Mao Zhedong. Indignant snorting accompanies sharply expressed doubt of the integrity of Taiwanese education, how could any Chinese person not know the most visible figures in modern China history? Dogged by the specters of history, of the ethereal faces of previous lovers and peasant revolutionaries calling for unseen blood, an awkward silence settles deep into the lines of the two men's tired faces.

The Morse code of tapping fingers spell out a belated apology. Heaving another shot of baijiu into the air, the man bombastically declares that one only needs a good job, supportive friends and family to happily live life. But time for telling truth has run out. There are some things that best friends do not need words for, creases carved between eyebrows and sleepless eyes explain themselves. However, there are just some things that even the closest of relationships do not allow words for. With smiles screwed on too tightly, glasses clink just a little bit too loudly.

Fluency

2009-10-16T05:06:00.001-07:00

I stood gaping, I had no idea how to respond to someone insulting me in a foreign language. For a fleeting moment, the urge to spit a particular biting insult back flared. But frenzied sifting through my pitiful arsenal of Mandarin insults amounted to nothing more than a giant blank. Although others told me I was the better person for ignoring him, I stayed quiet because I did not have the vocabulary to express my indignation.

I believe one has to develop the capacity to express the vast spectrum of emotions embodied in human interaction in a foreign language in order to be considered fluent in that particular language. While having the ability to read academic papers in a foreign language demonstrates a high level of learning and knowledge, what good does it do me to have the ability to discuss the dangers of nuclear war when I have no ammunition of my own to address the skirmishes of my personal affairs? Perhaps I would have decided not respond to the insult even if I had the resources to scrap together some sort of a response, but in this case it would have been a choice to act in a more mature manner and not the result of having no words to use to describe my emotions.

I know how to say I am happy in Chinese (开心). I also know how to say I am mad(生气) or sad（伤心） or feeling bad（难过）. But these are only the most basic of emotions expressed by human beings. So when I speak Chinese, my words struggle to describe things more complicated than my child's vocabulary. I am just beginning to learn the social rules of a new environment with the hope of growing up really fast. One day I'll be able to read the name of every dish on Chinese menus and pester restaurants' waitresses with the air of a regular. I'll be able to howl with despair when I burn my breakfast in the morning and appropriately vocal when China's soccer team finally wins a match on tv. Most of all I hope I'll have the right words to express my sincere thanks to those have helped me along my way during my wanderings in China. Without the patience of numerous friends, teachers and relatives who have pushed me to persevere, I might have permanently given up the choice to be a person in Chinese at all.

Bitter Heart

2009-10-14T22:37:00.001-07:00

My politics class had been assigned to read three papers for the day's class, one of which was written by the Chinese professor teaching the class. As he organized his notes and open his books he opened the day's lecture with the following statement:

As an educator I am required to say I hope you all complete all the assigned reading for every class. But in case you all didn't have enough time to finish everything, I hope you did not read the paper I wrote because it does not express any views I believe in except for one particular paragraph in the conclusion which goes a little bit into what I really think about this particular subject.

I suddenly realized why my politics professor taught my class of international students with such a palatable air of despondence. As a politics professor in China, there are a lot of topics he is not allowed to broach within the normal constraints of the public Chinese education system. He is required to teach according to materials and subjects approved by the central government. While he may have found a convenient outlet for his opinions in my class,he is painfully aware of the ephemeral nature of speech. Words have no staying power without some way of recording and disseminating them. Without the ability to publish many of his opinions, his words merely shimmer in the air like heatwaves, only to evaporate when class ends and the next group of students rush in.

From the perspective of local Chinese students, many have written off the subject of politics as useless based on their experiences with required Marxist thought classes. One student told me, "The point of those classes is not to help us have a better understanding of Marx but to tell us that there is only one school of thought that can provide an ideologically correct account of history". History and politics majors in China encounter existing political restraints referred to opaquely by my politics professor early on in their academic careers as they traverse the deeper realms of China's stifling political system. A history major told me she was not allowed to criticize Mao in her papers. Another spoke of having to rewrite her phD thesis proposal based on her adviser's assessment of her former topic as "too politically sensitive". These Chinese students are obviously not silent and have something to say, but when there are no channels for their thoughts, those opinions stay hidden inside their heads and whispered behind closed doors.

With so many binding constraints on politics in China, it does not surprise me that my politics professor feels so embittered. He does not have the freedom to use his higher faculties in a way which he can freely express his ideas. When looking at himself through the lens of his students, a sea of cynics stares dully back, without the will to ask questions he wishes he could ask. While I hope I won't be one of his apathetic students, I probably won't remember my professor's opinions on the Cold War ten years from now. However, my memory of his assessment of his own work will continue to stay with me.

Don't Fight the Sun

2009-10-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

Peddling furiously down a narrow path,a blur of legs and sliver whizzes by. The cantankerous whine of the girl's bike announces her presence to pedestrians long before she bursts onto the main road. Frilly umbrellas peel away from her shoulders. She admires a particularly delicate lace parasol and the crisp spun shadows it casts on a wall. The girl on the bike wishes she had reason to buy one just like it.

The girl screeches to a stop in front of gymnasium complex fenced in with green wiring. Hazy heatwaves rising from the tar black track make her scowl. Her best friend suggested that she buy a bicycle with an umbrella stand built into the handlebars so she would be able to avoid damaging her skin while biking. If only such a ridiculous contraption could magically turn her skin into the beautiful milky white of legendary beauties in books and magazines. But the reality of spending 2-3 hours daily under the blazing sun has burnt her skin to the color of peeling skin on roasted ducks which hang in windows of butcher shops. Regardless of her regrets, her bronze hands automatically screw in the spikes of her sprinting shoes and tie up the laces.

Dragging feet deliver her unwillingly to her older brother's dorm on the edge of campus. When the security guard in the lobby saunters off to take a call from his wife, she flies quietly up the stairs to the third floor. Heart murmuring nervously as if anticipating the beginning of a race, she knocks on the door of room 304. Shoulders sag with relief when she realizes her brother's roommates are not there. He hands her his shiny squared-toed leather shoes which she quickly shoves into her backpack. Closing the door quietly, he whispers, "Good luck out there". She knows he isn't referring to her track meet but to the graduation ceremony she is required to attend as an usher the day after.

The P.E. department could not find a red chipao, the traditional uniform of ushers attending major school events in the girl's size. After a prolonged stake out in front of the department head's office and a subsequently long round of bargaining,she was given permission to wear her own chipao to the ceremony. Some vaguely not too distant time ago, her mother insisted that she have at least one well fitting dress and whisked her off to the surreal domain of a local tailoring shop filled with bolts of cotton, and flowing rivers of silk clouded over with organza, ribbons and pins. A few days later, she found herself wrapped gold cloth embroidered with dragons winding up her hips and bust.

The sight of her brother's loafers jutting from the bottom of the dress rudely interrupts her reverie. Staring head and shoulders over the crowd flowing in, she hopes no one looks at her feet. When the ceremony begins, she closes her eyes, savoring the memory of a first place finish in yesterday's 100m, glowing golden with a smile.

Bribes and Hard Decisions

2009-09-25T07:05:00.000-07:00

Rising from his computer, a man turns to stare out the window of his office. He watches a peasant adjust young rice plants in a field hugging the low wall separating the college from the outside. Spring attracts flocks of newly minted graduates desperate for teaching jobs even in the boondocks of this province. Slumping, the man's rotund belly settles on top of his belted slacks as he remembers his main task for the day: today brings another new graduate with a master's degree coming from some no name city in some distant province wanting to fill the opening for a history teacher.

Guangxi province's towering mountains seem particularly suffocating this morning; their looming presence over the city's buildings serve as a constant reminder of the region's lack of development and therefore the utter insignificance of the man's post as a department head at Hechi Teacher's College. He paces back and forth at the front entrance of the college and stares at the road, impatiently waiting for this morning's applicant to arrive. While watching dusty trucks flowing east laden with oil, people and vegetables, he catches himself a split second before he starts wishing he could hop on the back of one of those trucks and just leave.

Her soothing voice almost lulls him to sleep. The man doesn't even remember what the smartly dressed girl was lecturing about as he walks up to her afterward and says, "You have a very good accent. But last month we had two students from your school interview for the same position and they were better public speakers than you. However I don't want to hire them because they were from the Hubei province, and people from that province are not trustworthy". The girl's face remains impassive as she nods in response. Round dimples framing her smile have flattened into faint lines and the man ends the conversation by suggesting they disperse for lunch. She understands.

Run up the stairs, don't step on the dead cockroaches, skip over the cracked step second from the top of the final flight. A pair of pink sneakers tumbles out onto the cement foyer after he opens the front door. Comma shaped creases turn his mouth into a frown as he remembers how he paid a month's salary in addition to normal tuition fees in order to get his daughter into a mediocre school in the closest prefecture level city. Rumor has it that a month's salary in the neighboring province is double what he makes now and 4 times as much as the starting salary of a new teacher at the teaching college. If only his daughter would study hard like that pretty girl from this morning. But to have his daughter study so hard to potentially end up back where she started is an unbearably depressing thought.

The wife gnaws on a roasted chicken leg and motions for him to come over and eat with her. His elbows bump gently on whitewashed walls as he gets up and helps himself to hot food. When the wife begins worrying out loud about the family's future, he begins shoveling rice into his mouth at an even faster rate. He's heard it all before, financing the daughter's education, supporting aging parents, looking for a bigger house. While he actually agrees with her assessment of campus housing as providing inadequate space for families, he has no comforting words to ease her concerns. He grunts a goodbye as he leaves; her rambling is not a litany but a chant of a single word: money, money, money. Money he hopes to collect from the morning's interviewee.

He meets the pretty girl in front of his office and escorts her out to the front gate. She says she will find a place to stay in town and come back for the next part of the interview tomorrow. But her face and voice have none of the softness from this morning. The blazing sun cuts sharp creases into her youthful face and turns it into stone as she waits on the side of the road for a taxi. Her mouth is set in a permanent line refusing to bite the bait. As she stands on the road looking east, he knows he's already lost her.

Intimacy

2009-09-19T11:14:00.001-07:00

A girl with a Yankees baseball cap drawn over her face joins the stream of arrivals flowing through the Nanjing airport with her life packed in a suitcase, wondering about how this sweltering city is suppose to be her home for the next two years. Glimpses of Nanjing through dusty library archives has given her a healthy respect for its position in Chinese culture, but none of this historical grandeur resonates with the soft comfort of the word "home".

A Chinese man in his early 30's hopes that his sign won't be missed by the cousin he has never laid eyes on. Hands clasped around a large stick mounted with a square red cardboard inscribed with carefully printed English letters bobs up and down in a sea of Chinese characters as he waits in silence. He sighs as he remembers the oral English exercise books he transported from his parents' basement to his apartment that still lay scattered across his floor. She's a stranger from a strange land and stepping into her shoes still seems like an impossible task. But at the same time, custom dictates that he cannot comprehend any alternative to establishing close bonds with family members.

The overwhelming din of hopeful Chinese shouting for the attention of their friends and family provides a sharp contrast to memories of echoing arrival halls ramming the sounds of the rolling wheels on her suitcases back into her head. Sound and color translate into words; recognition of her generically American name on a makeshift banner causes her to instinctively hone in on its bearer.

An old woman tells her son pull down a large tome for the cousin to look at. He helps his mother put on her reading glasses. Gnarled fingers trace the bloodlines connecting the names of a hundred strangers that the American cousin does not know how to read. He watches her struggle to find her own name and eventual surprise fills her eyes when she finds her own name at the bottom of the chart, denoting the youngest generation of the family.

Words tickle out of her mouth at an infinitesimally slow and irregular drip drip of snow melt from a glacier. Sometimes the flow of words freezes inside her brain. She kicks herself every time she sees that blank look on her cousin's face and mentally scolds herself. Why can't her feet be as nimble as they are on the soccer field when they tread the waters of language? She tells herself, "Wipe that blank slate clean again and again until every word is written with perfect clarity".

Pictures bring out a torrent of words from his younger cousin as she helps him carry his gear from his latest photography gig. Tonight the event of note is a wedding; a lively discussion of how much parents should be able to meddle in their children's lives ensues. For the first time, he finds himself pausing before making a decision to speak, "My parents don't know that I think this, but...".

No Face

2009-09-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

I would like my face back sometimes. Sometimes the Chinese students I interact with in my program look at me with confusion, how is it that I have a Chinese face but speak for others with faces different from mine?

I respond to the curiosity of Chinese students about every quirk, scar, and odd feature that appears on America's global ever shifting face. The voice of a Jewish mother worrying about whether her sons will marry Jewish girls rises through me as I explain the difference between Christianity and Judaism. My Californian accent slowly morphs to match the tones of the Spanish and Mexican legacy of my home state. Perhaps there is space for my face after all.

I am far less successful in conveying the twisted origins of black history in the U.S. when my information giving mouth tires and resorts to humming strains of Gospel Music accompanied with clumsy footnotes in Chinese. The image of a nimble device diving into a vast repository of information hardly applies to me. I am not a machine, you can not push my buttons by asking questions and expect concise answers delivered in a timely manner. The biggest culprit for my lack of machine like efficiency is language. One mistake is all it takes for my Chinese audience to truly understand that I am not a student from the Chinese side and therefore a student from outside China.

There is no face in learning language, the social mistakes and stumbling of my tongue emphasize the inadequacies of learning Chinese for all my life. Yet this allows my audience to see my all the things that have made my face though they are not necessarily representative of it. I don't know whether I like this though. Sometimes I wish I just could be considered as a normal "朋友"(friend) without the qualifier "外国" (foreign) and have my face, my interested eyes, my smile to be seen simply as what they are.

A Bit of Cloth

2009-09-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

Riding a public bus late one night a few weeks ago, I saw something rather unexpected as I got off the bus. A group of college boys jogging in a single file line wove around the metal fences surrounding the bus stop and trooped across the street. At the front of the line a boy held a makeshift flag of sorts. Hanging from two pieces of bamboo tied together at a 90 degree angle was thin white rag that was so gray that I could not make out the characters denoting their school or team in the dim light. Suddenly one of the boys fell down howling, he had pulled a muscle in his calf. As he laid down on the sidewalk, another boy came over to help him stretch his leg and the rest of the boys waited around him in a circle, including the flag bearer.

It's strange to see how strongly we associate bits of cloth or certain images as representative of so much more than they actually are. That night, it didn't matter that I could not determine what organization the boys represented, the image of these boys running in a single file line led by a flag in my mind immediately classified them together as a group, as a team.

Symbols have the power to bind individuals together as well as break those same bonds with equal effectiveness. As a high student, the debate over whether a South Carolinian student should be able to hang a Confederate flag in her dorm room escalated into a heated school-wide discussion. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the passing of the Patriot Act some thought it would be unpatriotic to display the flag as it referred to a period of history where the U.S. was weak because it was being torn apart by the Civil War. Others thought she had the right to display the flag because it expressed her pride in her state and her family's participation in the war.

All of this denotation of boundaries and turmoil was initiated over a bit of colored cloth. Why is it we bow down and give so much power to symbols; and give such complexity to objects of such simple construction?

Family

2009-08-30T07:22:00.001-07:00

There exists a house with an eternally unfinished third floor in the Chinese countryside on a busy road where big trucks filled with pigs and melons and such things go by everyday. The first floor is home to a small family style restaurant claiming to cook the tanks of squirming eels and fish sitting in the front yard in the most scrumptious of ways. The second floor has four bedrooms. The third floor is more roof than living space; scattered remains of construction tools and a single wall overgrown with creeper plants divides the area neatly in half.

A husband and a wife issue orders to a platoon of six waitresses and one male cook that sleep in rooms on the second floor that used to house the three children. The rooms still show signs of their previous inhabitants, a poster of a pop idol the daughter use to love, a small pile of graying textbooks lie in a bookshelf of the oldest son's room. A sprawling heap of diplomas lie on a table in the youngest' room.

The smell of dust and decay from these objects surround the mother as she sighs and walks in and out of the empty rooms. She remembers when she use to heckle her husband about finishing expanding the house, "It would be so nice to have the children and our future grand children living with us, don't you think?". The husband would snap at her for daydreaming, "What are you talking about? If we do what's best for our children, hopefully our grandchildren will never have to live here!". For emphasis he would often grumble, "Who would want to live out here?" and gesture out the window to the vast fields of vegetables just mere yards away from the highway.

The house is more of a business then a home now. As the husband predicted, the children succumbed early to the spell of the glittering cities. As children they gravitated towards the promise of a better education. As adults their thoughts orbit around these promise lands, who would want to stay in the countryside, where there are no opportunities? The husband still scolds the wife when she asks about the unfinished third floor. However, his voice is no longer laced with anger. Instead, it quietly echoes his wife's sorrow.

Traveling from Hong Kong to Shenzhen

2009-08-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I made a trip to Shenzhen and was amazed by how easy it is to cross the border from Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, one can just ride the subway to the Lowu station which is where people can cross into the mainland. I exited Hong Kong using my Hong Kong ID card in a contraption much like a fare gate you would find at a metro station. The card contains a chip with one's personal information and fingerprints and there are two gates checking these two types of information installed in the machines facilitating the unmanned immigration process. First I stuck my card into a machine that processed my information, I entered the space between the two gates and pressed my right thumb on the corresponding fingerprint scanning machine and continued onwards to have my papers checked by Shenzhen officials.

Cantonese is the lingua franca of Hong Kong. Although the provincial language of the Guangdong province is also Cantonese, knowing how to speak it is less of asset then it is in Hong Kong because the CCP has made successful efforts to enforce the use of Mandarin even this far down south. As I crossed the bridge into the Shenzhen side, I noticed the advertisements changed from using the traditional characters of Hong Kong to the simplified ones of the mainland.

Strains of conservations in Mandarin drifted into my ears. Without thinking I asked an immigration official in Cantonese what time the Luohu port closed. She looked at me with a puzzled face until I switched to Mandarin. I had not felt the pressure to speak Mandarin in over a month while in Hong Kong. In my momentary lapse of judgment, I had forgotten that Shenzhen attracts mainlanders from all over China because of its booming economy. I should not expect everyone to be a local and also speak Cantonese. I should speak Mandarin in order ease the process of communication while in China.

My experience with Shenzhen's immigration department was much more like most of my previous experiences of going through immigration, I filled out an arrival and departure card and walked up to a booth where someone checked my visa and other papers. As I walked out into the Luohu station, I heard a young male Hong Kong citizen complaining about all the paperwork that needed to be completed in order to finish the immigration process. He peevishly asked his grandmother why people coming out of Hong Kong and into the mainland have to have their papers checked twice, once as they are exiting Hong Kong and again as they are entering Shenzhen. He queried, "Isn't Hong Kong part of China? Why are we treated like we come from another country?".

Bound and Unbound

2009-08-26T00:22:00.000-07:00

Every morning, my grandma watches tv for no less than 4 hours a day. She isn't watching her favorite soap operas, she's watching the stock market tick by, watching the daily rise and fall depicting relentless rhythm which the Hong Kong financial sector and its patrons moves at. When the price is right, she immediately calls her agent. She no longer travels because she is afraid to let her investments sit untended.

The constant ebb and flow of the money through Hong Kong's gates displays its paradoxical identity as a city dedicated to constant transition and change. The Hong Kong Airport holds numerous awards for best airport in Asia or worldwide. Its efficient check in and shuttle system make getting in and out of the city an easy task even if one is only staying in Hong Kong for a few hours. Yet despite the reputation Hong Kong has gained as a smooth middleman of resources and people flowing in and out of its harbor, change and the desire to control it binds my grandma to one place.

A lack of expertise in finance relegates me to the most transitory of positions when in Hong Kong, to that of the visiting relative, just a grade above the tourist. Although Hong Kong has slowly become more familiar to me due to a sharp increase in the number of visits I have and will continue to make, I am not welded to Hong Kong the way age, habit and upbringing has bound my grandma.

My possession of a Hong Kong identity card implies that I now occupy an odd space between the permanence of a Hong Kong citizen and the fleeting presence of a tourist. I can come and go out of Hong Kong as I please, but it is the more lasting conditions stating that I may study and work in Hong Kong which intrigue me. Living out of one's suitcase has lost a bit of its romantic edge after years of thinking "Well, I only have a few days/weeks/months here before having to move on from this place, why bother actually moving in?". Finding a non-finance job in Hong Kong will probably remain an unattainable dream as it has for my local Hong Kong friends who have studied abroad. But one day I think I should like to move my clothes into a closet and put my favorite books onto bookshelves that reach the ceiling.

Distance

2009-08-22T07:44:00.000-07:00

" 'My sister has had a baby girl. By the time I see her, depending if Mr. Sen gets his tenure, she will be three years old. Her own aunt will be a stranger. If we sit side by side on a train she will not know my face.'She put away the letter, then placed a hand on Eliot's head.'Do you miss your mother, Eliot, these afternoons with me?'

The thought had never occurred to him.

'You must miss her. When I think of you, only a boy, separated from your mother for so much of the day, I am ashamed'.

'I see her at night.'

'When I was your age I was without knowing that one day that I would be so far. You are wiser than that, Eliot. You already taste the way things must be.'"

- Interpreter of Maladies 122-123

For all the stereotypes that suggest people in Western countries are more independent than their Asian counterparts, Americans seem squeamish about giving their children more independence, especially if it is through the idea of boarding school. At the end of my 8th grade year I excitedly announced to my classmates that I was attending boarding school for high school. In response, my classmates' faces turned white and they asked me, "What did you do to deserve that? Did you commit a crime or something? Do your parents not love you?". My then round chubby face adorned with coke bottle glasses gaped in surprise, I had willingly made the choice to go to boarding school and I most certainly had not done anything that would classify me as a juvenile delinquent!

For a time after that particular incident, I was reluctant to talk about my future school. I thought of myself as abnormal as I was the only one not staying in state for high school. The image of the term boarding school in the mind of the average American carries a stigma originating from silly shows like MTV's Boot Camp(don't quite remember the exact name of the show) which depicts the lives of troubled and out of control teens that are sent away to be "fixed up" among many other sources. Even now, I have to explain to new acquaintances(of the American sort) that my school was actually for normal kids. And in the end, boarding school thankfully turned out to be nothing like boot camp.

In contrast, ads in Hong Kong promising better English, better test scores and all sorts of services promising to help children go to school abroad in the UK, USA and Australia are liberally scattered through the region. A particularly large one in Central features a couple dressed to attend a fancy evening affair denoted as the 2009 Charity Ball hosted by Overseas Students. Going abroad is a symbol of wealth, status, education and a brighter future in Hong Kong. While I'm not really sure if developing independence is considered a quality of primary importance when Hong Kongers consider sending their children abroad, boarding school certainly conjures up a more positive image here than it does stateside.

There are times that I wonder what it is like to be an international student, studying so far away from home and how Hong Kongers cope or don't cope with the many types of distance resulting from sending their children abroad. I can only vaguely conceived of the magnitude of these distances as I consider the state of my own relationship to my family. I wonder if my own awkward adolescence would have been easier if I had the support of my family around me and whether I would be as nonchalant about not seeing my family for long stretches as I am now.

My only knowledge of "authentic American high school life" was through cheesy shows on the Disney channel and movies like "10 things I hate about you". School and "home" at boarding school lacked the separation creating unique environment that depicts life at a normal American high school. There were no locker room dramas, or going home after school or begging my mom to let me drive my own car to school. In comparison, I lived a bizarro world, half college and half English boarding school. It was a more constrained yet freewheeling version of my experiences as a university student;a blurry vision of what was and is to come as I wait to start school again in Nanjing.

Not Belonging

2009-08-20T20:34:00.001-07:00

In March, I received 10 pages of legalese telling me why I was only eligible for a limited type of HK identity card. In so many ways, I was told what I have always known, I am of Chinese ethnicity and not a Chinese national. After translating the last paragraph of the letter and finally understanding that my application had not been rejected, I quickly sent in the documents the immigration department asked for. Some sense of belonging is better than none.

At the time, a short research paper's worth of words on why I was not legally Chinese weighed heavily in my hands, but their weight was no more than that of a stack of papers should be after I remembered the dreaded conversations I had with Chinese nationals, where I was prompted to answer the simple question, "Where are you from?".

My sister and I often indulge in Hong Kong's most popular pastime, shopping. Yesterday I was tempted into a shop run by a very observant shopkeeper by a trendy looking blazer. I complained to my sister as I discovered that the shoulders were far too small. Did I speak English to my sister in a voice just a hair too loud, or was it the half second pauses that creep into my Cantonese when I have the premonition of being cornered that gave me away? The inevitable question I hoped to avoid in China's most modern city reemerged. First she asked, "你地系边度人嘎？". She knew we weren't from Hong Kong already, so I replied, "我地系美国人". Then she asked my sister if she understood Cantonese. My sister said yes. The young shopkeeper laughed and flung the word "鬼妹仔" at us. I recovered enough to asked how much the jacket was with an even voice. Without thinking, I dropped the jacket and we left.

I told myself later that I left the store because the jacket had been outrageously priced for the quality of the material. Quietly my sister and I considered the inherent ugliness of "鬼妹仔" and the paradox of being openly judged in a language so called "foreign girls" are not suppose to understand. Despite readily accepting the identity of Chinese American in our lives, something in both of us felt deeply insulted. There are many different ways to define people who are from outside China in Chinese. Some words are not inherently insulting like "外国人"(foreigner) or “华侨”（overseas Chinese）, but the contempt expressed in"鬼妹仔","老外"(old foreigner)，"鬼佬"(foreign devil)，“白鬼”(white devil)are apparent to anyone.

Actions speak louder than words, yet words have such power over defining identity. They express the boundaries of citizenship, ethnicity, language and the many different boxes human beings seek to stuff themselves into in order to belong. I often hear"我们都是中国人" (We are all Chinese) from Chinese nationals in response to my questions about my own identity, but I sense an undercurrent of doubt as to whether I deserve the label "insider" or "outsider" as Chinese citizens routinely ask me if I am accustom to life in China. Openly expressed contempt like that of the shopkeeper's goads me into trumpeting how I am proud of my status as a person relegated to the gray areas of the Chinese conception of the world because I am not easily categorized.

But I would still like to belong...somehow...

Loaded

2009-08-18T01:41:00.000-07:00

I wanted to open a Chinese bank account separate from my American one because I will be in China for a while and want to avoid paying an extra 10-15 USD every time I need to withdraw money in Hong Kong or China, so today I went to the Bank of China in H.K. thinking I would be able to open a bank account usable in China and Hong Kong with my assortment of identity cards and papers. Instead I was told that first needed some documentation proving I lived in Hong Kong or China because I had never opened a bank account in Hong Kong before , meaning I have to wait until I get residence permit in Nanjing to open a BoC account on the mainland.

Although I was annoyed, I thought this was reasonable requirement until I remembered that the RMB is a closed currency. Even if I open a bank account at BoC, my relatives in Hong Kong cannot transfer money directly to my account, I have to physically get the money from my family and then deposit it myself. In response to this recitation of regulations, I sighed and the customer service lady speaking to me apologized again, saying that she did not want to make things difficult for me, she was only following the rules.

Until I open a bank account in Nanjing, I will be doing what many traveling between Hong Kong and the mainland do, I will be carrying a brick size stack of 100 RMB bills(the largest bill in circulation on the mainland) in a pouch hidden underneath my shirt when I go to Nanjing to start school. This idea sounded absurd to me as multiple representatives at the Bank of China suggested it. After I returned to my relatives' flat, my aunt confirmed the prevalent use of this method with stories of her coworkers who had carried hundreds of thousands of RMB earned from the Chinese stock market into Hong Kong, and I slowly realized that the people at the bank had been giving me serious advice. Previously when I was studying abroad in China last year and needed to withdraw money to pay rent for my room, I felt like some sort of smuggler while carrying a reasonably sized wad of RMB bills from the bank, but apparently this was nothing in comparison to the suitcase sized amounts of money some Chinese transport. And here I was thinking you only see such things in movies when smugglers or kidnappers ask for ransoms!

While Nanjing is not that far from Hong Kong, and Hong Kong is a part of China, apparently Hong Kong is literally a completely different world from the mainland. In trying to integrate Hong Kong with the mainland, one would think that the mainland government would at the very least try to make managing assets in the mainland and Hong Kong easier for Hong Kong citizens. While I am only a permanent resident and cannot vote in Hong Kong, my experience shows the least of the striking systematic differences between Hong Kong and the mainland, one still cannot even easily exchange or transfer HK dollars and RMB between both places in any sort of meaningful amount without going through a great deal of trouble.

Play me a song Piano Man

2009-08-16T07:16:00.001-07:00

Wandering aimlessly today throughout multiple levels of inviting shops on the Peak led me to a common sight in upscale malls and hotels; a pianist providing live music for the enjoyment of the Peak's visitors. A woman dressed smartly in a black suit fed requests to the pianist sitting at a grand piano situated on a raised platform surrounded by a ring of fake greenery. The pianist's choices reflected the constant ebb and flow of her audience; classical pieces like "Fur Elise" and "Fugue in D minor" came first, pleasing the adult majority which witnessed the beginning of her concert and then left. Flowery rendition of English children's songs like "Old McDonald had a Farm" appeared for the clapping children forming an increasingly solid ring around her as the number of songs she performed grew in number. At the end of each song the pianist announced the title of the song she just finished playing in her microphone and cheerfully thanked the audience for listening.

The Peak's pianist struck me as unusually well equipped to attract the support of her patrons, both passive and active. Not only did she have a microphone to alert visitors on the Peak of her performance, she also had an assistant soliciting requests from the audience. The pianist I saw today engaged her audience in a very active manner in a context which I conventionally defined "active engagement" as a quick conversation with the pianist to request a song.

A little over a year ago, I found myself watching and interacting with another pianist in a similar situation. I was wandering through Pacific Place, another mall in Hong Kong. Music for the benefit of the buyers has always been a part of such establishments, as natural as the rhythmic beating of shoppers' hurrying feet. But that day, some vaguely conceived awareness of the difference between live music and recorded music seeping out from speakers tweaked my brain awake from its previous interest in finding the best summer sales as I realized the strain of jazz reaching my ears was from a live pianist and not some through some machine perched over my head.

I found the pianist at the center of a busy tangle of escalators and walkways leading from Pacific Place to other commercial buildings. I walked up and requested "Fly me to the Moon", one of the first jazz pieces I heard as a child. The pianist rapidly transitioned his snappy interpretation of "My Romance" into a slower version which sounded like proper accompaniment for a lounge singer. He told me he was English and asked me where I was from and how I had come to be in Hong Kong. I replied I was American and told him I was here for a few days visiting relatives. He began another piece with a meandering introduction, telling me he had only worked in Hong Kong for a few weeks and although he was reading books on China, he felt like there was a lot he still didn't understand about his new home. I suggested a few books on China I liked and wished him good luck.

Riding the escalator to the upper levels of the mall, I watched and wondered how many requests he had gotten in this venue, planted in the middle of vast crowds all on their way to somewhere else. He seemed a bit scared and lonely in such a new environment despite the familiar way music accompanies people throughout their lives throughout the world. In comparison to the musician I saw on the Peak, the music he played during the late afternoon was resigned to the background, to the back of people's minds.

I decided to take the stairs instead of the escalator out of Pacific Place despite the humidity. A syncopated and spirited rendition of "Fly me to the Moon" floated up and I grinned.

Exploring Gilded Cages

2009-08-14T02:49:00.000-07:00

There is an aviary on Hong Kong Island which is home to 600 birds (according to the sign above the entrance way). As far as I can remember, admission into this lovely home for tropical birds of all kinds has always been free and I try to make a trip there every time I come back to Hong Kong. Located near the center of the Hong Kong's financial district, this quiet haven seems extremely removed from the hustle and bustle Hong Kong is known for.

As I walked in, I spotted fat gray pigeons staring listlessly with beady red eyes. Moments later, a screeching blur flying past my face startled me. Two white birds with blue patches circling their eyes chased each other in the treetops. Pheasants scampered across the clearing below the suspended walkway directing the movement of the aviary's human guests. To my left bright red and blue-green lorries pecked at the remains of a papaya hanging on a nearby branch. These lorries then proceeded to do something most caged birds do, use their beaks and claws to crawl up the metallic boundaries penning them in.

For some reason watching these birds explore the farthest reaches of their world seemed rather odd to me at first. Plenty of people's pet birds climb their cages, but seeing these birds awkwardly climb from one side of the aviary about 10 feet away from me to its barren apex over 40 feet head overhead against seemed like too much effort in comparison to flying to the top of the habitat instead. Perhaps birds are like people, there are all kinds. Some actively explore their physical limits while others stay comfortably below, where a familiar environment furnished with food beckons.

The aviary's construction, a combination of metal mesh held taunt by a skeleton of metal poles provides a unique perspective off the city. The transparent gray mesh allows for the juxtaposition of a grove of trees belonging in a tropical rain forest over Central's vertically impressive cityscape. From my position inside the aviary, the upside down lorries were "perched" on the Bank of China's mid section. The illusion of seeing these caged birds "climb" a skyscraper reminded me despite the limited space they had to occupy, they could take in the city from a vantage point few humans could ever claim to experience.

Despite the limitations the aviary imposes on the birds, I'm still glad that such a visually interesting place still exists; tucked away in the heart of Hong Kong Park.

A Modicum of Respect

2009-08-10T08:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a performance of High School Musical 2 at Hong Kong's premier center for performance arts, The Academy for Performing Arts in Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island. When I first heard that this was a paid performance, I was a little doubtful that a bunch of kids and teenagers could put together a show reflecting the expectations of a professional production. I have a close friendship with one of the kids in the show which gave me some insight on what motivated her and so many others to put in so much effort to produce professionally choreographed full length musical.

For three weeks 50 some children ages 8-21 worked hard to put together the dance moves and memorize song lyrics. My young friend Erica age 9, whose father is a professional dancer has been dancing as long as she can remember. But what made this experience so different was that for the first time in her life, she was treated as a professional. She told me in the days preceding this weekend's three days of performances that she was excited to attend 10 hour rehearsals every day for 3 weeks because the professionals directing the show believed in her ability to participate in a show which provided an environment asking for higher standards from its actors.

As I walked into the theater, I took a look around. The theater exuded an air of professionalism with it's complex lighting system, array of sounding boards and colorful set. Soon after the show began, I found myself pleasantly surprised; the most important elements of the show, the actors themselves, did not disappoint. The lead actors and the dancers transitioned effortlessly from dialogue to singing. Every move of every dancer down to the youngest child was executed with purpose; displaying ease and confidence only gained through countless hours of hard work.

I was really inspired by what these kids had achieved. I could nitpick and say perhaps not every note was sung in tune or maybe some of the dancers' moves might have been slightly out of sync, but what is really important to note is that a little respect can seriously go a long way. It's really amazing to see what a positive effect a little encouragement and the right environment can do to really motivate a person. I know I would not have found my passions in life if the handful of wonderful teachers and professors I was lucky enough to meet had not had the patience to listen to me and guide me. It makes me feel very happy to see kids receiving the same sort of respect and confidence which is rarely bestowed on young people by adults.

Holy cow, it's a super typhoon!

2009-08-08T22:36:00.000-07:00

A few days ago while eating dinner with a classmate's family, her father received a phone call from his younger brother warning him that a level 8 typhoon announcement had been made. As soon as people heard the word "typhoon", the whole table became very quiet. In Hong Kong, employers are legally obligated to let their employees go home before the storm hits. Dinners with families and good friends tend to be slow leisurely affairs no matter what country or culture, but not tonight. The typhoon was about to hit the island in about an hour or two and we all hurried back to our respective places of residence as quickly as possible.

The scale used in Hong Kong rates tropical storms from 1-12. A level 1 warning was issued that afternoon before I went out to dinner, there was some light rain and wind strong enough to play tug of war with me over my cheap umbrella. I have personally never experienced a level 10 or 12, but when I was young I once experienced a level 9. There was brown water flowing over the windows of my relatives' apartment that was so thick that I could not see the buildings outside. I stayed inside for three days watching tv and reading books.

When I think of the way some Hong Kongers hoping for a level 8 warning to be issued when they know a storm is coming in, I think of kids on the American East Coast hoping for a snow day so they don't have to go to school. When a level 8 warning is announced, everything in Hong Kong closes down and everyone stays at home until the storm passes. However, unlike the one or two inches of snow it may take for a state to declare a snow day, a level 8 typhoon is no joke. Although the people at my table spoke of it lightly and were a little disappointed that the typhoon was suppose to be gone by the next morning, which meant they would have to go to work; a level 8 or above typhoon has winds strong enough to turn over buses, destroy houses among many other frightening consequences.

Hong Kong normally conjures images of its booming finance sector with tons of hardworking people and its nonstop nightlife in my mind. But with the coming of a big typhoon, the whole island shuts down, not even the workaholic businessmen dare to venture out to work, which truly showcases the absolutely terrifying power nature can have.

Real Surround Sound

2009-08-07T01:45:00.000-07:00

Thousands of Filipinos flock to Hong Kong to work as maids for Chinese families in order to earn money for their families at home. Hong Kong claims to be "Asia's World City" and certainly has a prominent display of non-Chinese residents going about their daily business, but in the case of the Filipinos, little cultural exchange seems to have happened. Prejudices against Filipinos in Hong Kong due to language barriers and the types of jobs available to them seems to have widened the cultural gap between both groups into a gaping gorge.

Cheryl works as a live in helper for a family of 4 living on Hong Kong Island. For 6 days a week she mops floors, takes the two children to and from school and cooks dinner for a family that she does not eat with. She has Sundays off and makes enough money to go home to the Philippines every 2 years or so.

Sundays are when she has a whole day where she does not have to be a maid. On Sunday mornings she attends mass at the church across the street. I first met Cheryl while riding an elevator up to my relatives' flat. We chat whenever we happen to bump into each other in places like elevators and front lobbies and have nothing better to do while waiting for other people. The family she works for lives a few floors below me. On Sunday mornings when I am in Hong Kong, I like to sit in front of the large window facing the church in the flat and listen to the parishioners sing their hearts out from 20 floors above the tallest steeple of the little church. Their singing is so powerful that I usually can make out the words to the hymns they are singing.

My family is made up of what you call "Bad Christians", we only go to mass occasionally together as a family. The little church is packed with people on Sundays and comes close to collapsing with the hordes that come on holidays such as Christmas. Last time my family was here for Christmas we went to mass on Christmas Day. Cheryl was sitting with her friends on the 2nd floor balcony and she waved to me as we came in. The crowd was composed of mostly Filipino women sprinkled with the faces of a few local Chinese families and some non-Chinese. Together we went through the ritual of mass and together we sang familiar Christmas songs. I was surrounded by a cocoon of sound so vast it seemed to be coming from everywhere as it reverberated from the church walls. I added my tiny voice to the singular wave of sound, feeling our voices becoming an entity forceful enough to reach the rooftops of the nearby apartment buildings.

This feeling of oneness quickly evaporated as the crowd realized the last song was in Tagalog and as I looked around me, non-Filipinos stumbled through the unfamiliar sounds or just gave up, waiting in silence. I managed to butcher the first two-thirds of the song badly before singing the last repetition of the chorus passably well (well...in comparison to my previous attempts!).

In actuality, how I sang really didn't matter. For around 40 minutes Chinese, Filipinos and non-Chinese had been engaged in the same activity which brought these three socially disparate groups together in an environment where the social expectations related to work assigned to each group had little influence their ability to participate as parishioners. I wonder how self-conscious the local Chinese families felt during the last moments of that mass. Tongues clumsily moving over twists and turns of an alien language, I wonder if it felt strange to switch circumstances with the Filipinos, even just for a few minutes, to sudden become the minority on an island, in a country where Chinese are the vast majority.

Empire of Lies

2009-08-05T20:57:00.000-07:00

During my last semester as an undergraduate, a professor asked the students in one of my seminars on China to bring in a quote which really changed the way they thought about China. Although it wasn't a quote from some fancy academic book, the following quote made me rethink the way I looked at China because I think its basic message can be applied to the way a person looks at another foreign country in general:

"I think to write about China is meaningless. You can write about some Chinese people you meet, but a book about China is like a book about a book about Western civilization...I have tried to give a voice to the voiceless people in China, because you hear a lot from the regime leaders, from the business people, and they get a lot of coverage. But what about the poor people, the peasants and the poor workers, and the people in the remote areas, and the so-called minorities?"

-Commentary from Guy Sorman, author of Empire of Lies: The Truth about China in the 21st Century

There are a lot of blogs and news sites that can churn out much better commentary on the upper echelons of Chinese politics and economy than I ever could with the right training. I don't want to imply that I will write in such a way that will avoid larger, serious issues about China that apply on a national or international level, while writing about China, I have invariably crashed up against plenty of political issues. But I want to write about them in the context I experience them in; in connection to the people I interact with from day to day.

A close friend told me he thought, "The soul of a place is not found in the grandest monuments, but in the tiniest details". Articles on politics and the business world don't tell the whole story, watching how the people move, eat, discuss their futures, observing Chinese undertaking the most mundane tasks has revealed a lot to me about China and I hope to share those things on this blog with other people. If issues of politics become involved in those experiences, you'll be sure to hear it from me, but I want to resist the urge politicize all my experiences or portray them as representative of China as a whole.

Swearing like a Chinese sailor

2009-08-04T20:06:00.000-07:00

A friend majoring in Japanese Literature once remarked that different parts of a person are emphasized depending on the language he or she is speaking to the point where an individual may seem like a completely different person in one language versus another. When he was abroad in Japan, the American T.A. teaching a portion of his language classes maintained a strict teacher-student relationship in Japanese. However when they spoke together in English after the language program ended, they found out they both loved to play jazz and had a close friendship from then on.

Sometimes these differences are a result of vast differences in language ability or environmental factors requiring one to play a certain role, which occasionally produces some hilarious encounters. Last time I was in Guangzhou, I accompanied my friend who is a history professor to find a particular professor from a different university to review a research proposal she wanted to get funding for from the province. The professor needled her about the specifics of the project for about an hour in Mandarin heavily accented by a Cantonese accent. Although he knew all three of us could speak Cantonese and he obviously preferred Cantonese to Mandarin, for some unfathomable reason he didn't switch to Cantonese.

The reason for this became clear after he had signed her proposal and walked us to his school's front gate. As he began walking back to his office he began to talk to some friends on the phone, swearing and making fun of them in Cantonese using language that even made my friend, a local, gape. As we walked she began to laugh and said, "No wonder he insisted on using Mandarin to discuss my proposal. He may be the head of the history department here, but in Cantonese, his mouth is even dirtier than the worst behaved college students I have taught!"

Perhaps this professor thought it was more appropriate to speak in Mandarin when attending to business related to work even though my friend also preferred to speak the provincial language. Although he was very helpful in Mandarin and suggested some ways in which she could begin research that she had not thought of, we did not get a glimpse of his "real" personality until he began speaking Cantonese, where he felt most comfortable expressing a larger variety of emotions.

Stung!

2009-07-31T05:13:00.000-07:00

In Cantonese slang, policemen are called "bac zha" meaning jellyfish and when one is pulled over by policemen for some sort of petty traffic violation, you have been "zha" meaning you've been "stung" by the policemen. I never thought I would live to see the day where I would get to use or even think of these words in the context of my experiences in China. I've never been particularly afraid of Chinese authorities during my travels throughout China. Official laws governing everyday life like traffic and business seem to be bent if not broken all the time. However this morning when my friend and I were riding a bus carry passengers from the suburbs to the heart of the he city, the driver of our bus was pulled over for speeding on the highway by a policeman. Pulling someone over for speeding or for some other traffic violation is extremely common in the states, but this was the first time I had ever seen anyone fined for ignoring traffic laws in China.

For a moment I was grumbling with the rest of the passengers about needing to get where I was going on time, but afterwords I felt a bit ashamed of myself. I among many other critics have complained about China's lack of enforcement of all sorts of laws including intellectual property, corruption, human rights...the list goes on and on. However it seems my time in China has had a bit of a corrupting effect on me. This morning I needed to buy my train ticket to go visit my relatives in Hong Kong and I wasn't sure if the train station had sold out of the particular ticket I wanted. My friend also had something urgent to take care of.

When one's needs are urgent enough, be it hunger, cold or something seen as important that needs to get done quickly, they have a way of simplifying life. When I was complaining about the policeman that had pulled us over and was going to make my friend and I late, I wasn't thinking about Chinese traffic laws or that it was a good thing that China wasn't as lawless as it's reputation portrays it. I was just thinking: if I couldn't get that ticket, my plans for the next week would be completely ruined and I would be very very angry.

Booming Voices

2009-07-27T07:21:00.000-07:00

I found out something very amusing tonight as my friend and I began the long trek up to the 7th floor after dinner. The motion sensors that control the lights on the stairway of the dorm are sensitive enough to be activated by sound. Under normal circumstances, this little detail would not catch my attention as I normally clapped my hands loudly in order to turn the lights on. However tonight, my arms were full of groceries, so I decided to try singing my way back home.

As we began marching up the stairs, I began singing one of my favorite folk songs "My Bonnie lies Over the Ocean" at the top of my lungs. To my surprise, my voice lit up the second floor hallway before I had even walked halfway up from the entrance on the bottom floor. Emboldened by my success, I began singing at the top of my lungs and marching up the stairs.

Whether it was because of my excessively loud singing, my stomping feet or my friend's howling laughter, we did not encounter any lights which resisted the power of our collective ruckus until we reached the 6th floor. Crossly I bellowed at the light sensor on the top of the stairs to no avail. Eventually I admitted defeat and put down the bags of groceries to slap the sensor with my hand.

Perhaps my voice is not as reliable of a tool as my hands for turning on lights. But it was fun to find an unexpected excuse to sing as loud as I please for a short while and turn a normally arduous process into something much more enjoyable.

Dragonflies and Rain

2009-07-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

It was ridiculously humid and hot today, so my friend and I decided to pay a visit to the local market and buy ourselves some seafood to cook for lunch. According to my friend, seafood like crab and clams are really "liangqi" and help keep a person from overheating during the summer.

I have no idea how to buy seafood at all, so I sat back and watched. I learned that crabs with a lot of "gao" (don't know how to translate this) which is a fatty yellow substance are more expensive than the crabs that don't have this. By squeezing the crab's shell a certain way, you can see how much is inside before you buy. I also learned that winter melon, clams and pork thrown into a pot with some salt makes a good soup.

As we walked out of the market, I looked up at the sky. Dragonflies drifted lazily back and forth in a hazy cloudy sky promising to bring rain later today. The dragonflies looked so weightless and airy in comparison to my profusely sweating self, weighted down by bags of squirming fish and crabs. I was much like seafood I carried, a fish out of water, not accustomed to the environment I was in at all.

I prefer extreme cold to extreme heat. I grew up in a city which is foggy and the temperature rarely reaches what could be considered normal summer temperatures and still haven't gotten use to the crazy heat that defines China in the summer. I spent my high school and college years in the American northeast where there would be snow on the ground for most of the year. Unfortunately, these experiences have left me ill prepared for the heat I found here. However knowing it won't last forever is enough and knowing myself, I will probably find myself wishing I was living in a desert when I'm attending school in Nanjing during the winter.

Lightning Storm

2009-07-24T07:51:00.000-07:00

So I was treated to the appearance of another beautiful lightning storm tonight which made me really happy. Although cities in China are stereotyped as having lots of pollution, I saw something awe inspiring tonight, the usually flat and somewhat dismal urban sky was transformed with flashes of light.

The gray smog of the evening didn't make me grumble tonight, it only set off the beauty of the rising storm even more. As I described to a friend, brilliant masses of orange and yellow lit up the clouds transforming patches of the night sky into bits of swirling color that could have come from a brilliant sunset.

I think this is one of the first times I've been able to see something beautiful out of something like pollution, which is considered generally awful.

It's a strange contradiction, isn't it?

Slowing down time in the boomtowns of China

2009-07-22T19:02:00.000-07:00

I experienced a really wonderful moment when I decided to visit the bustling heart of the city yesterday for lunch. The noodle shop I dropped by was completely overflowing with people so my friend and I found ourselves sharing a table with a gregarious old man. I knew I liked the old man when he stood up and declared to the whole shop that the waitress that had just served him a cup of hot tea the most beautiful and hardworking person in the whole establishment. He then proceeded to heckle the waiters into getting our food to us as quickly as possible and cautioned me to eat my congee slowly because it was hot. It almost seemed as if this old man was looking out for me.

Despite the din inside and outside the restuarant, I felt time slowing down to match the slower pace that the old man was enjoying his lunch of fish and rice at. Though there were many practical reasons why he ate his lunch so slowly, rotten teeth, no job to rush back to after a short lunch break, his warm and wisecracking attitude depicted the image of someone that really knew how to enjoy his time well, by reaching out to other people.

Perhaps in the boomtowns of China, known for their rapid growth, high concentration of people and money there still exists places where people lead slower, steadier lives in a fashion that I have not seen since I left the Guangdong countryside. When my friend and I finished lunch, I told the old man that we were leaving first and that he should finish his lunch slowly. With a giant grin on his face he replied, "Come back anytime, I'd be happy to have lunch with you again". And I think I will go back again sometime before I leave this city, just to see if he is there.

An unfiltered rant on cultural identity in China and America

2009-07-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

Some of my thoughts from a thread about the role of heritage in an Asian American forum:

The argument over roots in America(in the case of the topic Asian vs. American) illustrates one of the funny paradoxes about being American. If we want to talk about the "roots" of American citizens, with the exception of Native Americans we are or at one point were immigrants from some other country, including the founding fathers. So one of the ways that American citizens are tied together is by the free expression of those differences in ethnicity/race/religion etc which is why there are such a huge variety of views on those issues. Obviously this creates a lot of turmoil over the issue of ethnicity in the U.S. but the huge variety of people and passion put into the discussion of race shows a growing acceptance of the widening definition of Asian American.

I don't really see why being "American/citizen of a Western country"="losing who you are" if you happen to be an Asian American of some sort. American culture is an equally valid identity to any other Asian culture. So while I personally like participating in Chinese culture, I don't see Chinese Americans that don't as inferior.

Gaps in cultural knowledge that happen within a single culture can be as vast as the ones Asians born in Western countries experience if not more so. Experience has taught me that the notion of being "Chinese" is deceptively solid. For example a I have a colleague who was born and raised in Guangzhou and has never been outside of China. But since his extended family is from an isolated part of the Chinese countryside(they only speak their village dialect), he has a hard time communicating with his grandparents to the point where he even has problems understanding simple sentences said in dialect because he only speaks mandarin and cantonese. In comparison I can speak to my grandparents with no issues at all because they+my parents all worked in Hong Kong at some point in their lives. While I realize that this doesn't represent the situations of all Chinese people or Asian Americans, I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the divides within the "non-American" culture that an Asian American associates with. In China, the number of prejudices defined by language, appearance, height which are attributed to rural/urban, province, city, Hong Kong or Taiwan vs. mainland China divides are extremely cruel. I've witnessed numerous occasions where Chinese from one province will speak badly of or deny jobs/privileges to Chinese of a different province or even city solely based on where they are from. When I've been in Hong Kong I have witnessed equally hurtful comments about mainlanders. If we are talking about discrimination in China and America, I think both countries are equally guilty and no one culture is "superior" to the other.