mad men

"Then I dressed and off we flew to New York to meet some girls. As we rode in the bus in the weird phosphorescent void of the Lincoln Tunnel we leaned on each other with fingers waving and yelled and talked excitedly, and I was beginning to get the bug like Dean. He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him. He was conning me and I knew it (for room and board and 'how-to-write', etc), and he knew I knew (this has been the basis of our relationship), but I didn't care and we got along fine- no pestering, no catering, we tiptoed around each other like heartbreaking new friends...And his criminality was not something that sulked and sneered; it was a wild yea-saying overburst of American joy; it was Western, the west wind, an ode from the Plains, something new, long prophesied, long a-coming (he only stole cars for joy rides). Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn't care one way or the other, 'so long's I can get that lil ole gal with that lil sumpin down there tween her legs, boy', and 'so long's we can eat, son, y'ear me? I'm hungry, I'm starving, let's eat right now!' - and off we'd rush to eat, whereof, as saith Ecclesiastes, 'It is your portion under the sun.' A western kinsman of the sun, Dean...Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me. " - Jack Kerouac, On the Road

How many people have tasted this 'ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being'? We glorify this paean to bohemian hedonism or the beat generation, and yet few would stray from mainstream values to embrace something else. A spontaneity without conventions. I close my eyes and swing to the rhythm of Sal Paradise's underground America; the fast jazz, the heightened sensation amongst inebriated revelry, and cannot tell if my burning desire is for a life on the road or merely observing others at it. There's safety in watching the first snow through the glass.

Sometimes I would think I was born in the wrong generation. I saw Ai Weiwei's introspective at his Three Shadows Photography Centre a couple of months ago. It was titled New York Photographs 1983-1993, a deluge of prints chosen from over 10,000 that he took in that decade. "At that time, I didn't really have anything to do. I was just hanging out, whiling away my time everyday by taking pictures of the people I met, places I went, my neighborhood, the street and city." I liked him instantly. He was broke, he was aimless, he was revolutionary, he was a fucking genius. And no one saw it except the friends who rolled through his East Village apartment. People like Chen Kaige, an icon in his own right, just another face in the day, immortalized in frozen frame.

It's like the air was electric then. You could disappear to the big city, be faceless and nameless, sit in a studio apartment discussing Joyce and Eliot for hours, sleep at dawn and spend all your time chasing the intensity of an unforgettable exuberance. I found myself wishing I weren't bound by my circumstance of birth that restrains me from hitchhiking across America, picking up beatniks along the way. Even the words of Allen Ginsberg, friend to both Ai Weiwei and Kerouac, and inspiration behind Carlo Marx in On the Road, romanticizes the Beat generation to a certain degree.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at
dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the
machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high
sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz

It was not until I read parts of Kerouac's biography, that my fascination with the madness started wearing off, when I realized Kerouac's grand aspirations of one-upping Ulysses consistently produced work after work of drunken revelries at some next party, and the pubescent desire to destruct the safety of the known. Another member, George Corso, did a great job of summing up the glory and absurdity of the Beat generation. In his poem 'Marriage', he explores in his mind all the rebellions he would perform against a life of routine and suburbia, summing up all my fears as I sit here now, but playfully mocking the Beatniks for never growing up. I realize there are realities in which I live, but indulging in the poetics of Kerouac's life on the road may just be the next best thing.

I can't see it coming down my eyes, so I gotta make this song cry

Woke up this morning to the bleakest, most depressing sky I've ever seen. I guess spring has arrived, because it rained for the first time last night since I arrived. The rain hit my face as I was eating ma la tang, these hot pot style veggies and meat on a stick, the best street food on this side of the wall. It was 2 am and we had been celebrating the birthday of a friend in Shanlitun, a concentrated stretch of laid back bars where drinks are cheaper than water, people spill onto the streets, and chaos is the order of the night. We started the night in style at the grand opening of The Emperor bar, the rooftop terrace of a boutique hotel located in a hutong overlooking the forbidden city. BAAAM. It's as sick as it sounds. Atmosphere was Malibu meets Tang dynasty, people just stepped out of vanity fair. There was a free flow of champagne, wine, and martinis, with delicious canapes that I could barely keep up with. But I did. And I would have done better if every time I had a drink in my hand, the birthday boy hadn't taken it from me and pounded it back in the blink of an eye. I'll let it slide for the occasion, but you all know better than to steal blinis out of my hand!

The night got progressively sloppy as we ended up wolfing down fries and 15 kuai mojitos on the street in Shanlitun. Then we danced obnoxiously on stage at a seedy joint called Bar Blu and when our exchange theme song "I will survive" the final fantasy edition came on, the noise we made was next levz.

Yeeaaaaaaahhhh.

Some time later I got hungry and tired and that's how I ended up sitting on a wobbly stool in the rain dousing hot sauce on my skewers. I'm pretty sure everything tastes better on a stick. And when it's spicy TOFUUU and soysauce eggggggg its just stupid good. Like, honestly... you're blowing some serious mind in my mouth right now good. After I got my fill, I was sufficiently wet from the first rainfall of the year that I smelled like dog and smoke. Then I found Cat and we made the obligatory Bellagio stop to round out our evening with delicious Taiwanese shaved ice dessert goodness. Mmmm tower of finely shaved ice doused in condensed milk and showered with red beans, tapioca, and candied pineapples. Best and surest way to brain freeze.

Earlier this week I started my job at the hotel. First day was intimidating as hell, as I was passed off from manager to manager until finally I found my place in the executive club, where I was to do my first rotation. The manager looked visibly annoyed at the prospect of babysitting me and sighed extra loud as he brought me to get my uniform (Yes I wear an outfit that looks like memoirs of a geisha as a sanitation worker) and sign my forms at HR. But I worked my charms and spewed some brilliance in our conversations and he realized that I wasn't some freeloading brat who got away with 3 days at work each week just because I knew the CEO. By the end of the week he was practicing English on me, taking me on his smoke breaks, which were every thirty minutes, to ask me about management advice and getting me to interview new candidates for the job. Not a bad job, but definitely showed me some subtle and not so subtle nuances about working in China versus the west. Such as the rigid hierarchies, and the implied rather than the vocalized.

Wednesday night I went to the 2nd annual Beijing Contemporary Dance festival held by the school where I'm taking classes. It was the most spectacular display of expressive dance I've ever seen in my life, and the best part was they were all Chinese dancers. That's what I mean about this city being world-class, none of these dancers are famous on the international sphere, but they are the top class in China, and number and calibre of them blow my mind. Contemporary dance in China is also interesting because it is so emotional, and in a country where communication is supressed more than encouraged, watching the dancers express such raw emotions with fluid grace really stuck out for me. Then on the way home I met up with friends Dan and Henri for drinks at a bar for Henri's birthday, which quickly moved to a seedy student club downstairs that is infamous for being the mother of all evil hangovers this side of the student ghettos. Wednesday nights are open bar nights with a five dollar admission for girls and about 15 for guys, and no joke the booze they serve is more or less lethal. Clearly second grade stuff poured into the real bottles, but ask any of the hundreds of people mauling the bar on Wednesday nights if they care and the answer is helllls no. Somehow stumbled home and relished my glorious morning of NO WORK the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that.

Now I sit here on Sunday night, with my macroeconomic book opened to page one, thinking that I should study for my exam on Wednesday, blogging instead, and dreading the thought of WORK IN THE MORNING.

In other news, I made me a delicious meal of mung bean clear noodles, dried tofu, and pickled vegetables in a sweet and spicy black bean chili sauce today. All in five minutes and without turning on the stove. I'm such a cordon bleu chef in training. The food network is already lining up a show. It will be called The Naked Szechuan Contessa. Pay per view only. byaaaahhhhhh.

Stick to the B.E.A.T, get ready to ignite!

1. It is warm in Beijing. I thought I'd never say those words. It was last week that a thin blanket of snow covered the dull landscape just outside the city, last week that I stayed in bed for three days nursing a cold as vicious as the wind outside my bedroom window. Big brother shut off the central heat in the entire city three weeks ago, and our alternative to freezing in our own home was to turn on these electric heaters that suck up the energy bill like hideous energy goblins. Electricity is pay-as-you-go here and more than a few times we have been rudely awoken by sudden pitch blackness, cold water, and no wi-fi. Oh the things we take for granted back home. In China, everything is pay-as-you-go, and if you don't pay, the service gets cut off. Just like that. I guess that's the only way to make sure 1.3 billion people pay their bills.

2. Beggars. Panhandlers. The homeless. There are so many it's dizzying. At Wudaoko, the highly saturated student neighbourhood where I live, there are no less than ten, shaking the coins inside their tin containers with vigour at your side. The first week we got here, an American we met told us not to give these guys money because they were involved with the mafia and were being punished for wronging someone in the gang. The most creative excuse I've heard for not being charitable, but nevertheless I have not given away any change to date. Then I noticed that they all looked very similar and dressed the same. Duh you say, they're in rags, not a fashion spread, but no joke they look like they are in uniform. Second, I never see them all at the same time, some are there in the day, some at night, I'm not saying they're taking shifts but uh, it's like they're taking shifts.

Then there's the variation of old blind man and singing woman or vice versa on the subway. I encounter these duos at least every other time I ride and it is an uncomfortable 5 minutes while they sing and wail their way to the next car. I am against giving money to the poor/homeless in general as it is a unsustainable and damaging sort of charity that perpetuates poverty, but today I looked up from my book to see how other people were reacting. In three minutes, the duo had picked up about 10RMB and were moving on to the next car. Quick math in my head predicted that in the time it takes them to move from one side of the train to the other, they'd could pocket 150-200RMB. For less than hour of work, and considering how many trains they could transfer to on a one-way fare (2RMB) in a day, this is hustling at its finest.

I read on the web that Beijing's beggars are part of a large ring called the Beggars Federation, and 85% of them are professionals who live very comfortably off their earnings. Kind of like the shaky lady in Toronto. But I'm still undecided, when is it right to give to a beggar? Why do people prefer to give food over money? Does that not still encourage dependency and keep people on the streets? People use age and disability as factors when giving, but 5 dollars later, the kids and the disabled are still destined for the same life. I worked at the Scott Mission once upon a time in Toronto and can guarantee that a dollar donated towards outreach programs like that makes a much larger ripple in the pool of charity than a coin in their hats ever will.

3. I went to work today at the hotel I told you about. The CEO was the one who brought me in the company and he introduced me to the head of the Sales department, with whom I'm doing my first of many rotations to get to know the hotel. In China, everything is political, everything is about who you know, not what you know, and that scares me a little. I will be watched like a hawk, because CEO brought me in. The older people will look at me and say whothefuck are you, whatchuknowaboutthat and I will stammer to find the words in Chinese. CEO is also one of the scariest Chinese men I've ever met. He mumbles his words like he got shot in the mouth 8 times, sort of a cross between Fitty and Al Pacino multiplied by Bruce Lee. I realize I am going to get served a steaming rice bowl of whoopass, but it's too late to turn back.

4. I discovered today that I am a lump and about as graceful as Herbert the pig pictured below in the post about Green Cow Farms. I went to a dance class tonight taught by one of Beijing's most regarded contemporary dancers, and was a massive hazard unto myself and my surroundings. Granted I have never taken a single dance class in my life (other than the one time I was four and my mom spotted me in the back of the room distributing candy and distracting other girls around me- she promptly removed me from that class) and tonight's class was "Advanced Contemporary Technique". Apparently the body can move in wonderous ways that I am yet unfamiliar with, and it was a great course in human anatomy 101. But there is no excuse for the excess area codes my body is currently inhabiting, and I am newly inspired to get in shape and D.A.N.C.E! I love D.A.N.C.E! I will be pliéing and reverse turning the next time you see me.

a list

1. Saw the best of mongolian folk music live the other day. It was haunting, and throaty, and celtic, and when I closed my eyes I could smell the grass lands and hear the horses in the distance. Hanggai on Myspace.


2. Beijing in springtime is a vision in blossoms. Every street is spotted with the beautiful trees. Even the most haggardly barren branches of winter have turned a new leaf and sway in the wind with milky white petals. I want one in my room.

3. I wish I had known earlier you could perm the roots of your hair and create a lift-effect so that you never have to tease and blowdry for volme again. Only in China can you do this for under 20 dollars.

4. I love The Zombies. Colin Blunstone was the shiz in their prime. Can't say his face or vocals have aged well with time. Let me just preserve you in the golden era of Oddyssey and Oracle...
What's your name...Who's your daddy?

5. I got a job, as a special assistant to the executive director of a 5 star hotel in Beijing. Not sure exactly what I'm doing yet, and if you wonder how I got this job its all about the 'guanxi'. Hollllaaaaaa.

6. So I was on a golden age of rock n' roll youtube binge when I came across this old Del Shannon song, and it reminded me of the time in my life I was doing exciting things in music and have missed that so much since. My boyfriend at the time was a skinny emo skater who introduced me to gems like Runaway and White Rabbit, and we even formed a band covering the Jefferson Airplanes and White Stripes. I may or may not have posters from our first promos kickin around.I was singing scat solos in a jazz choir, playing drums for a band, practicing Chopin nocturnes four hours a day, and feeling energetic. I want that feeling back.

we make great success!

Clearly it didn't take very long to get back into college mode. It is 1 o clock and Cat and I just woke up. It's also been a while since I shared a double room with someone else. Everything's been great except for the fact that our washroom is down the hall, and that there's only hot water between 7 and 9 and 3 to 5 every day. We've met some pretty rad people here so far. There's been no organized meet and greets by the university so we've sort of taken it upon ourselves to socialize, creating facebook groups and knocking on people's doors guerilla style. One of our first friends was a Costa Rican who has a midwest twang picked up from university in the States. He insisted on calling Cat, Lucia because she's from Colombia, so we now call him Yoyo.
On one of our first days we tackled the biggest tourist traps in Beijing; Tiananmen Gate, and the Forbidden Kingdom. I felt like one of those yelling tour guides marching ahead, paving the way for my tourists. All I needed was a big staff with a red flag. As noone else in our group spoke Mandarin, I was their glimmering light of hope in an otherwise hopelessly vast city. Tiananmen Gate was flooded with people even though it was a biting minus 10 degrees out on the coldest day of the year.






We shuffled through the gate with the herd and proceeded past a few more gates until we got to the Forbidden Palace, the place 20 or so emperors have called home. It is called 'forbidden' because noone was allowed to enter and noone was allowed to leave, save for the emperor himself perhaps.




The number of tourists thinned out beyond the palace gates because you had to pay an entrance fee to get in. The palace itself is magnificent, massive courtyards upon massive gates. Beyond getting a feel for the size of the place, probably in direct correlation with the emperor's egos, there was nothing much else on display except for their embellished thrones and chairs. We concluded that they liked to sit a lot.



spot the frozen fish!



parents should probably not let their kids this close to me, especially if their fat and meaty







Then we went to Wangfujing, the most famous shopping area in Beijing, to get our window shopping on. The kids were captivated and engrossed by all that was on display at the food stalls down Snack Street.


yumm-o!

I bought a Mao hat and am here posing with said hat.

it's always a good idea to pose with mascots



That night we had an impromptu night out after meeting some of our new facebook friends in person. We gathered at a grad student's apartment outside campus and played Korean drinking games with Soju. None of us were Korean. They are the best ice breakers ever. Imagine sitting in a circle and screaming Bing!!! Bang!!!! Bong!!!! WAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!! while flaying your arms wildly in the air. We're all BFFs now.




Yesterday was our official Exchange Students Welcome Meeting and they brought in the head of police to brief us on the legalities of living in China for an hour. With every law, there was an accompanying anecdote that made examples of past foreign exchange students. For example, do not drink excessively, especially if you are male and have a lot of testosterone. "Last December, a foreign student from Germany drank too much, and got in a fight with a taxi driver, and later when the police came he beat up a police officer as well. He ended up in jail for 10 days." Do not engage in acts of prostitution, especially if you are foreign and female. "Last December, two foreign girls from Mongolia were found to be engaged in acts of prostitution at a bar. They were deported and black listed from border control for the next 5 years." Do not engage in gun fights. "Last December..."

Lesson learned, do not come to Tsinghua in December. I don't know if it was the worst use of two hours or the greatest two hours of my life. Me and Cat would look at eachother after each law and go Damn, you mean I CAN'T start a cult here? Shit son what am I gonna do with the guns I packed?

Oh China.

Lol, and apparently I shouldn't have taken that "Black Cab" to the health clinic the other day, since "last December" two Korean students got in one of those and got their organs removed and thrown into a ditch. Selling organs on the black market is apparantly all the rage these days. My mom called me terrified I was going to get my drink roofied for this express purpose and warned me to stay far far away from all nightlife establishments. Oh, mom.

Last night we met some more people at a dinner and went to a tiny bar that featured live music from Chinese emo punk rock bands! Totally rad. There was this Chinese guy in the bar with an AFRO, and we decided it was a good idea to ask him for a picture. Turns out he is part of a band called the Fire Balloons and Cat gave him her Ivey business card so he can tell us where their next show is.

We are going househunting today because there's only so much you can take with dictated shower times. Our dorm is also a 30 minute walk from the closest subway station as well as our classes, and we have to cab everywhere because there's no busses. It is also about the same price as renting off campus, so hopefully we can get out of here asap. Eventually we'll also have to get bicycles and then we can be true locals foreals.

Until then, zai jian!



Live update. Fire Balloon Afroman has emailed our girl Cat. We make great success!

Women only. Men stop here now.

After a couple of loooong days, I can finally let out a huge sigh of pent up tension, wiggle my toes free of fatigue and announce with semi-certainty that I'm settled in Beijing. After I last wrote, which I forgot to mention was pre-boarding at the airport, I was relieved to observe that the plane was not missing any discernible parts. I didn't know what to make of the stewardess outfits of day-glow yellow tshirts and black courdroys though... I also had an 8 hour overnight layover in Shenzhen, where to my dismay they do not have a transit lounge with open bar and internet, and woe is me I had to lie on a hard metal bench in this dingy hallway with a fellow budget traveller and someone I'm pretty sure was homeless. To add insult to injury there was a glass enclosed VIP area with inviting leather couches directly in front of us but that was locked up for the night for our viewing pleasure. And I've heard so many horror stories of luggage being stolen as the victim dozed off that I kept one eye open the entire night. But I survived with the spirit of a bona fide hustler and is that ca-ching I hear in my pockets?

Tsinghua University is like a township in itself. It is massive. I walked from the north side to the south today and it took about fourty minutes, I live on the east side and have yet to see the west. The foreign students administration thought it necessary for each step of the registration to take place in a different building, so that was really a treat. I had to pay for the dorm, which I would like to announce is 6 times the amount a domestic student pays, purchase an internet package that counts down my hours- I'm so not used to limited cyber time gahh, pay an unexplained registration fee, open a bank account, get a cell phone, pay for a meal card, and begin the process for my visa conversion from a tourist to a student. To get a student visa I had to go to some health clinic and get an inspection done so I walked into the frigid snowfall this morning to try to locate this place. Met another exchange student from Pakistan who was also headed there and together tried to flag down a taxi. Apparently this place is like in the country and so obscure that NO taxi out of the five we stopped would take us there. Just when all options seemed to go to hell this sketchbag guy in a rundown car shows up out of nowhere and offers to drive us there and back for 100RMB. I look at my new friend, he looks at me, and we jump in with the desperation of two students perilously close to deportation. There were a million other foreign students at the centre and most of them paid double what we did for similar "private taxis", so lesson learned is that good things come from trusting shady dudes promising to absolve your problems. Read up, kids!

After six hours of wandering around campus and the surrounding perimeter today I've concluded that Beijing is daunting and massive and that the campus is nowhere in walking distance of anything significant save for a sprawling mobile phone and electronics supercenter. I'm now alone in my room safely guarded by a sign on the floor saying "Women only. Men stop here now." My lovely roommate and fellow Ivey col to the league arrives tomorrow, and I'm relieved to finally have someone to practice Canadian english with again. My english has been getting progressively worse with each new Asian country I'm inhabiting. And it's not like my Chinese is improving exponentially or that I've learned any Nepali at all. I almost couldn't recognize my voice when I spoke today, spitting out some mutant crossover of fob and Singlish (truly amusing for anyone who's ever heard it). Be glad there's no audio accompaniment to this blog.

Now its off to rest for me, as I'm missing a tube of blood from my 2 hour examination this morning. I was surprised to find drawing blood no biggie, since I've built up this unnerving fear of it ever since I tried giving blood a few times in the past and was denied each time. Evidently since I have lived in England once upon a time, I undoubtably possess mad cow disease, and oh think of the unsuspecting recipients who I have potential to mentally destabilize. Don't worry though, I have other ways to go about that. The Canadian Blood Foundation ain't got nothin on me.

What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare

As my recent posts reveal, I have been consumed lately with my forays into discovering the authenticity of a locale. This obsession has extended into the everyday, my life, as well as my observing other lives of distant communities. Right now and for the definite period of the next seven months, my life will be somewhere in a limbo between those two. The minute I drift too far into the realm of possibilities of when I "begin my life" back at home, I have to snap myself back to reality, which is in the now. Left to the whims of my impatient mind, I easily forget that this is no limbo, that tomorrow rests on what I do today. Instead of a numb bystander, I need to be there, learn something new, and "look alive" literally and otherwise.

There's too many ways to do this, take 30 minutes of Me time for example, jot down a thought, but more important than having a great idea in your head, act on it. Buckminster Fuller, the extraordinary thinker and inventor probably put it best that "merely talking about ideas does not support their advancement or the development of individuals and humanity...the majority of people do nothing about their good ideas except engage in seemingly endless discussions." So instead of envisioning scenes for that screenplay in your Moleskin, get a camera and film a prototype. Walk up to that gallery curator and show her your samples instead of waiting to be discovered. Sign up for that triathalon, even if none of your friends are willing to sacrifice that weekend with you. Take that intro to improv class, even if you run the risk of shitting your pants in a classroom of strangers. All of it will ultimately lead you down the path of acting rather than waiting, which we all need more of. In my case I'm learning to come out of hiding behind the peripheral vision of my D70, speak to and touch, in a completely noncreepy way, my subjects.

Uncovering someplace's authenticity requires a keen eye for not just the exceptionally novel but also the unexceptionally mundane, sharp ears for the drones, buzzes, and trickles, a mind open to the impossible and continuously questioning the acceptable. I don't need to tell you how hard of an exercise this is in our times. It's too easy to travel Asia with the precise scheduling of a guide, or even to trace the same route to work every day without raising your head from the concrete. The idea is to be alert, but in our daily grind, scheduled down to the second, we barely have time for ourselves, let alone notice our surroundings.

I was deeply touched by Gene Weingarten's article for the Washington Post, in which he conducted a fascinating experiment testing people's perceptiveness of beauty displaced in an extraordinary context. He placed Joshua Bell, arguably the world's greatest living violinist, in a busy DC metro station during the morning commute with a $3 million dollar violin and a repertoire of Bach's most revered work. Every one of the 1000 passerbys in the next hour had a choice to make, "Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?" In the 45 minutes that he played, only seven people stopped and took notice of the music, 27 people gave money for a total of $32.17, while thousands rushed past oblivious to having been in the presence of a musician who had just played for the President the night before. Watch the video below.



If even Joshua Bell gets lost in the shuffle, what about all the smaller beautiful things that can enrich us if we only let them? Rhetoric is great but what's important is application when it actually counts. For having read this article, we are the lucky ones, because we are still on that commute. In time my goal is to not just experience the authenticity of exotic travels, but of the raw life breathing around me every day.

I leave for Beijing tomorrow afternoon. The start of another chapter and goodbye to Singapore!

like an eyedrop with turpentine

So this month hasn't been composed of much the same exhilarating tales of mountaineering, extreme sports and endangered animal sightings that my time in Nepal was chock full of. What was important for me on this journey was to experience a country, to really feel the life, embrace the people, and familiarize myself with new definitions of comfort. I did that by living the Nepali way, speaking the language as best I could, eating and actually liking dhal bhat for every meal. Here in Chengdu, I am in my birth city, so there is no doubt an elevated sense of familiarity. I am surrounded by people I not only know, but have blood relation to, so although the city is still a strange place for me, my family's presence has eased the process of reacquainting with it.

I often find myself lost in my thoughts here, must be something in the air. When I say lost, I mean its really like a splattering of letters on a NYTimes crossword puzzle, and if I don't record the fragments in my Moleskin I can't make sense of it myself. I think of family alot. My own and the concept of it. I think of fate, one's acceptance of fate, and when to question if there is more than appears to be in the cards. I think about China, and as much as I feel so disconnected from the people my age who grew up here, how much of who I am is shaped by my birth nation. All of this contributed to my exploring this country. Snapping pictures of temples and man-made stone gardens wasn't doing it for me anymore, I wasn' t feeling the country and I needed to change the way I interracted with the environment.

Just in this crucial time, someone came across my path. Let's call her Jane. Through parents and acquaintances I met this girl, roughly my age, photography enthusiast and knowing not a word of english. In discussing photography, I saw that she didn't think like the people who grew up here. The school system here has a way of breaking down its students' independent ability to reason, endorsing repetition and rigid memory excercises over developing creative thinking and deductive ability. That, with the one-child policy that's created a generation of carefully protected offspring, has resulted in many young people who are heavily reliant on their parents financially and emotionally. Part-time jobs are a foreign concept, reserved for the lowest class of society, and my cousins are shocked to learn I have made my own pocket money since I was ten. There is little perspective to be gained when so much of the world outside is still sensored. I believe Australia is the only English movie playing in theatres here, and many blogs I frequent are blocked. With these limited resources, people cannot readily prepare for the complexity of mentally adjusting to a country that is modernizing so rapidly.

What I thought was a rule didn't hold that strong after I spoke with Jane. She had a kind of world view that I've rarely seen even in a place like Canada, and could speak with depth and passion about everything from the essence of a photograph to the urban development of Chengdu. I could keep up with my rudimentary Chinese but would often be thinking OMFG that's what I wanted to say but could never put in prose like that. I was taken on a tour of Chengdu, the proper way. We were both poised, ready with our cameras. And the big revelation was that I ended up taking less pictures that day than I ever did on sightseeing trips, but felt more fulfilled than all those other times I brought home a hundred slides of digitally preserved memories.

I really felt Chengdu that day, breathing the air (less than stellar, but), watching and really seeing life as it went about around us. I felt it the most embodied in the tender scene of a child grasping his grandparents hands as they walked through the park, the sound of mahjong tablets flicked against eachother by eager hands at every teahouse in the city, the silence of pens scribbling across notepads in the city library. I didn't need a wide-angle lens to take it all in, it was the kind of experience that you couldn't capture on film, and even if you could, didn't need to. Of course, when I stopped trying to capture as much as I could within a definitive frame, in a sense liberating my experience from the press of a shutter, the photos finally came to life.

5.12

Whaa I havn't posted in seven days, which is like, an eternity in blogger years? It's as if a piece of me is missing, lost in digital space. I am like soo unstable right now.

So I've been well taken care of lately by my extended family on both sides. Read: fed at regular intervals, pampered to no end. I'm fattening up nicely like Hansel in the Witch's cage in the Black Forest, except without the morbid German children's story subcontext. I know you love my fatty analogies.

I've also learned that family is like a time warp. I now know why Mao instigated the one-child policy. What's easier, locking one (probably male) sibling out of your room or finding refuge in a two-room farm house from 11 jabbering brats and their 15 cousins twice and thrice removed? Population control was just an afterthought. Breathing space is soo underrated people!

Not to say I didn't cherish every moment with family, just wish there were 58 hours to every day so I could get a chance to do some of the things I love to do. Like finishing one, ANY one, of the 6 or so books I've started but not followed through on as I have a problem with commitment, or speed reading through the 1000+ updates everyday on my google reader since my attention devoid disorder prescribes me to subscribe to a million blogs to quell my restless thirst for information. David Lebovitz fill me with you Judaio-Californian in Paris tales of pastries and beyond! Let White Lightning strike me with the space-aged fashion sense that is soo ahead of our times! JJJound had better stop posting because his inspirations and artistry are killing me rather violently.

The only breathing space I get is in the toilet, which is the squatting kind if you must know. Not ideal for reading a book or magazine in case you lose your balance. Also not a great breathing space at all.

My cousin is so much smarter than me. He's nine years old, and looks like a cartoon character. His head is huge. And he's got the brains to match. His parents never went to university, so the fact that he gets straight A's is a source of pride for everyone in the family. He loves geography and history, and can locate any country on a globe, as well as recite ancient Chinese war stories for hours without stopping to breathe. I can't even read the Introduction to Chinese History in Lonely Planet without getting lost in the Mings and Tangs, and that's in English.

One day he followed me around the house for a whole morning as I went about some chores, determined to educate me on the ancient battles of the Three Kingdoms. Lol my cousin has a loose vocal cord or something, so he sounds like a 4 year old girl. Mean, maybe, but love is tough. So it was like having a prepubescent all girls choir sing to me in Chinese prose, rising to a strong forte when I started blowdrying my hair and with determined conviction while stooping outside the washroom door, waiting patiently for me to come back out. Now that's a kid with a future.

Onto the next leg of my adventures. I went with my parents to Dujiangyan yesterday, a town 60km northwest of Chengdu formerly known for its Irrigation Project undertaken in the 3rd century BC by famed engineer Li Bing. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The gist of it is that Sichuan was frequently subject to floods and draughts before this point and his genius ideal was to split the Min River into two and divide the force of the water mechanically to irrigate millions of hectares of land and feed millions of people as a result.

But today it is known to China as one of the places hit hardest by the fateful earthquake of 5/12/08. At least 70,000 people died in one day within a depth of 19km, and those are just the KNOWN deaths. Of those, 10,000 were in Dujianyan. There are still 20,000 missing people reported to be buried underneath the rubble that may never be found. This is my hometown, and basically my blood. I had to go there, and see and feel the force that has so shaken this nation.

I remember when I first heard. It was my first day at work this summer and I was still panting from grabbing morning sandwiches for the traders and trying to focus on all the flashing ticker symbols when a Bloomberg newsflash popped on the screen saying :"Deadly Earthquake of Magnitude 8 Hits Sichuan". I read it five times to be sure and rushed to email my parents, who had already been on the phone trying to reach our family, but to no avail since all telephone lines were down in the province. By a stroke of sheer luck, my family was spared. But the details of the aftermath haunted my worst nightmares, and I wished I wasn't so far removed from the carnage and that I could have been less useless.

What is most tragic about this earthquake is that it hit hard an area that has been completely neglected by China's economic boom. The landscape was a classic illustration of the widening disparity between the urban bourgeousie and rural poor, a problem enhanced by poor and expensive healthcare. It has also left 5 million people homeless and 7000 schoolrooms collapsed, burying lives extra precious because of the one-child policy.

I have seen a dvd of the earthquake aftermath and relieft efforts. The footage was completely disturbing and graphic, but desensitizing myself to a degree to the images was necessary for me to remove myself from this North American pedestal, one that we allow ourselves to get propped up on far too often. How often I had put down the newspaper in the summer, left a link my mother had sent me unopened, to be able to finally push the thoughts of carnage to the back of my conscience. But what struck me the most about the relief efforts was the selflessness of the surviving villagers as they rescued strangers buried under the rubble. It would often take the cooperation of fifteen people to lift a single person out of the rocks. They moved swiftly and without hesitation despite risk of strong aftershocks that resulted in further casualties. The nation I previously described where people are ruthless about cutting lines and waging road wars had disappeared with the collapse of their collective infrastructure and realization of the frailty of their individual backbones. Of this I was particularly proud.

I know this post took a somber turn towards the end, but I had to.

for the world has changed

what hasn't been blogged and dissected of Obama? The vapid media saturation had become quite tiresome leading up to the inauguration, to the degree where the monumental significance of the event was getting lost in the sea of Barak action figures, t-shirts, buttons and bumper stickers. All of this was never necessary for us to realize it's a great day for everyone the world over. His delivered vision of freedom touched me especially after experiencing countries with no such luxury. The term "patchwork heritage" was brilliantly used to indicate America's direction towards a nation of equality, whose successes and happiness are not measured by its GDP but by the reach of its prosperity. I for one believe that even a nation as powerful as America cannot affect positive change in its neighbours and our planet if it doesn't rise above the restraints of inequality and tensions among its own people first. That's where only a man like him, born of the average class and biracial no less, can lead the country out of the melting pot that has stifled it far too long.

you me and the bourgeoisie

Stop the press. I chewed gum in Singapore. Whoops, totally forgot where I was, so don't tell on me please.

After four days on the island I'm convinced Singapore is the ideal society. I mean, the city is aesthetically perfect. Even chinatown smells good. For a city known for its urban sprawl it has an astounding array of nature reserves and parks all manicured to a tee. They've thought of everything, no joke. There is a massive food court in every mall. There is a giant mall to your immediate left, and right. Its like you don't go shopping, shopping comes to you. The outdoor parks have free outdoor elliptical machines. What? There is no traffic on roads because pedestrians cross on over and underpasses. You can't even delay train traffic if you wanted to jump on the tracks. They've encased the platform in a glass cage. There are no homeless people, unless they're hiding in a tree shrub on me, cus I've been looking. It's also the only country I've been in outside of Canada where such a diverse group of inhabitants live in evident respect and harmony. Perhaps I've only brushed the surface and there exist many layered complexities, as with any country. But I.am.impressed. especially after just arriving from the polar opposite nation in wealth, standard of living, and human rights.

On the topic of societal juxtaposition. My mind has been on overload the last while, looking back in retrospect on my time in Nepal. Several people have asked me for a takeaway, and truthfully I was looking for some peace and familiarity in surrounding to be able to place my perspective again. I wrote the first couple of days at Chetana Children's Center that I felt almost a guilt, a self-serving fulfillment, in being there. At night on my hard wooden crate, I dreamed of my warm bed in Canada, the laptop with wi-fi I craved. It was all mine. A few months and a cross-continental flight away. But I was sobered by the transient nature of the kids' experiences with volunteers. We come and go, but what are we REALLY doing for these kids? Are we really helping them or are we just buying goodwill with a two thousand dollar plane ticket? I suspected the latter, I wanted to 'make a difference', but it was the feeling of self-righteousness that I sought in the reflection of the apathetic western world. Some of you wrote that its better that some good is done than no good done at all, and I'd have to agree. But at the end of my stay, just as I suspected, I learned more from the kids than they ever learned from me.

I looked at them and knew that some would never see the world beyond the peaks of the Himalayas. They will be happy within the safety of what they know, but will never brave to leap beyond the progress of their nation. Change only happens with perspective and this doesn't doesn't come easy. My aim at the begining of this journey was to gain perspective, a vague goal, but one that left retrospective clarity open to interpretation. Nepal is a country strife with political and socio-economic problems that locals don't think will dissipate overnight. With a hierarchical caste-system and failing government, promise of reform is a change noone can belive in. I compare the lack of basic rights to life in Canada, where everyone regardless of creed or status in life has access to free education and indirectly, an opportunity at advancement. CCC, as it turns out, is not an orphanage in the strictest sense of the word. Ramji, Sabina's late husband wanted to create a center of opportunity for promising children. A secondary school principal himself, he was moved by the sight of a child labouring in a restaurant one night. He handpicked each of the current six children based on aptitude and poverty. I did notice on the first day how smart they all were.

I worry that Sabina will close the center, as she has often thought about after her husband's death. There are too many expenses and not enough money. I worry that the kids will have to forego university after they graduate CCC because their families can't afford it. I told them that I will do everything I can to be an enabler when the time comes. I realize that my comforts and familiarities are not rights, but gifts. That somehow, against the odds, I made it out of the millions to land in the lap of luxury while members of my own family live in poverty in rural China. What does this mean to me? Among many things, that opening one's eyes to the world through travel is not only a privilege but a duty. To live in blissful ignorance and sheltered comfort is sacreligious when there are those who can't afford to dream up a plane ticket, even if they get passed the first barrier of fantasizing basic human rights.

Travelling makes you realize how interconnected everything is. Nation to nation, nation to human, human to environment. I know most eyes are on the Gaza strip right now. As the Palestinian death toll tops 1000, you think of what tears apart this connection in our social fabric. Its fragility shows in racial tensions, blame games, bloodshed and impasse. Does Marius Grinius deserve criticism for our lone vote on the UN Human Rights council? Was it a decision of "sound judgement"? Based on the wording of the motion's language, maybe. Was it an act of "integrity"? It's harder to say. A ride-or-die friend emailed me two days ago with an epiphanous view of the business world today.

First day of business school
Prof: what does the number 50 billion mean to you now in this terrifying state that the world economy is in? You all read the news, what was 50 billion?
Me: err the worst ever opening guess on the Price is Right?
Prof: No, this is very serious given current economic blah blah blah don't make light of it blah blah Madoff scandal blahhhhh

I also managed to infuriate Sarah when I suggested it was mildly hilarious that Bank of America can fire 35 000 people, that's a fucking municipality of people, a village. She didn't see eye to eye with me...mostly because she is short I guess.

All in all, a lot of comparatively rich people lost money, not a real tragedy, it's not like everyone in Africa suddenly died from fucking Spanish Flu. That would be a tragedy, and semi-ironic. The only downside is it's hitting ppl below poverty lines in developing nations now.

Epiphany? I think so...cash moneys just ain't that important in the grand scheme of things. It's a poisonous mind set that business school implants.


That's some true mind-reading, NPC, ride-or-die, no-holds-barred insight right there. Mad props.

Anyway, this talk about our ignorance of the social fabric's fragility holds special interest to me in the context of art. I, along with the rest of the art world, have been obsessing over Chinese contemporary artists for a long time now. They have sprouted up post-repression style and blossomed to international acclaim. The beauty of these artists lies in that their subject matter is so fresh from recent liberation and social conscience weaves heavily throughout the canvas. One in particular that I've noticed is Deng Cheng Wen and his Blind Walking series, as seen below.



His work highlights ideas critical to understanding modern China. That urbanization and westernization is leading traditional culture down the path of destruction, and that the young generation is oblivious to the adverse effects of these detrimental changes. These pieces illustrate the paradoxical nature of China's socio-environment. The country maintains that progress is only possible if there is stability, and stability is achieved when there is limited dissent. However the collective mentality of people moving in the same direction can be negative and multiplies the effect of obliviousness the individual has to his surroundings, leading to the age-old idiom , "the blind leading the blind". The great thinkers of our time have said that our narrow vision can only be restored by removing our socio-cultural blinders, and it is up to this generation to do so.

See more of his work here:
http://www.hongart.net/?option=art&collectionid=27