Today when I went to get my baozi after class, the red bean ones weren't ready yet. They told me if I hung around for eight minutes or so they'd be ready, and of course I said they were more than worth it, which was greeted with a great amused guffaw from one of the guys behind the counter.
One of the girls there, my favorite one, came out from the little shop to get some fresh air and sat down on the side of one of the bicycle carts. "Have a seat," she offered, scooting over and patting the space next to her.
The first part of my brain, the spoiled American part, the first thing it thought of was the fact that I was wearing white pants and would be sitting on a space that was decidedly not white. But then the second part of my brain, the part that loves China and kind of likes dirt and knows that logically it can always buy another pair of white pants, looked at the girl and her dingy uniform and her sweat-covered face and thought, American brain, I can't believe you're complaining.
So I sat down next to her. She said, "so when do you go home?"
"Saturday, but I'm not really sure I want to yet."
"Why?"
"We don't have baozi there." This should have been a joke. And it was, kind of, but not really. The truth is that baozi is just another one of those little slices of China that I miss terribly when I'm away, and somewhere inside my head these little steamed rolls have become symbolic of everything I have to leave behind.
"What!" She looked at me like I was crazy, like people can't exist in a place where there's no baozi. And maybe she was right. Maybe this is why Americans are a bit cranky at times, they need their red bean. And she asked, as though it was in keeping with the subject, "do you have a lot of friends here?"
"Yeah," I said. "A lot. I'm going to cry when I have to leave."
"Oh," she said soothingly, "don't be sad. Ultimately every place is home, right?"
"Maybe," I said, but I didn't mean it.
She said, "Sometimes we get homesick too. Our family's in Anhui Province, and we only go home once every few months."
"Do you like Shanghai?"
She cocked her head and looked at me. "Yeah," she said, "it's ok. But you know, we don't get much time to go out and have fun. We have to work very hard. Maybe 12 hours a day. And it's so hot in the summertime...it's just really, really difficult."
And I looked at her and I looked at the baozi stand, at the guys behind the counter shuffling huge steaming containers around in a space that has to be over 100 degrees, at the dirt on their uniforms and the sheens of sweat that cover their faces. And I looked at her eyes, so big and kind and pretty and sad. She's my age, maybe a couple of years older. We always say there but for the grace of God go I, right? But what happens when you have to think, there but for the grace of God was I born and raised and stuck in a place I won't ever get out of? It could have been me. If life was fair, maybe it would have. There is nothing that I have that she doesn't deserve at least as much, maybe more. And there she was, so quiet and sweet, and she wasn't complaining at all. She was just simply telling me the way things are.
Sometimes, every once in a while, I wonder why I decided to take the path that I did. The Chinese, the traveling; as much as my choices have baffled other people, they've confused me almost as much. All I knew was that I was following my heart. But then I have experiences like I had today, tiny little episodes that look so ordinary but fill my head with awe at life and my heart with love for other people, and I think maybe I made the right choice after all. I am so lucky, so blessed. And people are just so darn cool. It's amazing to me how people can have such a powerful impact on your life and not even know it. I will never see the baozi girl again. But I know for a fact that I won't ever forget her.
Maybe she was right, maybe every place is ultimately home. Everywhere you go there are people who want to love and be loved in return, which is really the same thing I guess. Is this too philosophical? Next time I'll stick to the funny stories.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Saturday, August 27, 2005
The Perpetual Armageddon
So the countdown has begun to the end of the world. Well, the end of my stay in Shanghai anyway, which as far as I'm concerned is really pretty much the same thing. It's Sunday afternoon on my last weekend here, and I'm really starting to feel emotional about it. On Thursday night I went to a club with James and Sig and I went out with Norman on Friday and Saturday nights, and now that I finally have a bit of time to myself I'm wondering how on earth I'm going to leave these amazing friends that I've made. And I think life is so funny, the way things are constantly changing, the way you have to keep moving forward even though a lot of times you'd rather spend your effort and your energy looking backward. Or better yet, standing still. And every time you have to be separated from someone or your life has to move in a different direction or you find yourself looking at things in a different way it's like the end of the world all over again. And no matter how many times you go through the process, no matter how many times you tell yourself that things have to end so other things can begin, it still hurts a little somewhere deep down inside in that fundamental, central core part of your soul. And the really bloody ironic thing, the thing that makes it so truly confusing, is that the fact that the ending hurts is what makes the entire thing so beautiful to begin with.
On an entirely different and far less somber subject, I've decided to write a book: 101 Ways to Get Killed in China. The concept started out as a joke between myself and James, because he kept injuring himself on his skateboard and I kept nearly losing my life when I tried to cross the street, but it's developed into a sort of a game. Every time one of us comes close to dying we make a mental note of it and add it to the list. And the list, it's getting pretty darn long.
"What are you going to do if you end up with, like, 150 ways?" Norman asked when I told him.
"I don't know," I said. "Change the name of the book, I guess." Whereupon Norman pointed out that 101 sounds far cooler than 150, and we arrived at the conclusion that I most likely will be whittling a great deal of the list down in order to keep it at its 101-item limit.
"Maybe I can lump things together into subcategories," I said. For example, at least five things on the list have something to do with taxis and/or their drivers. Another good ten or so involve being run over by something or someone. A great many have to do with food and natural disasters of the stomach. I might be able to squish some of them together, in a pinch.
The last week here promises to be rather busy, what with saying good-byes and taking final tests and packing and shopping and etc. etc. etc. As much as I'm going to miss Shanghai, I am looking forward to getting home and seeing John and Nate and Amy and all of my friends and my soft mattress again. I'm ready to start school again so I can finally graduate. And I'm looking forward to the clean Seattle air. You know how when you hit twelve or thirteen or so you start going through this phase where you can't remember what it was like to really believe in Santa Claus? I'm starting to feel that way about fresh air. Like, I know at one point I thought it existed, but now I'm beginning to wonder if it wasn't just a product of my own imagination. At any rate, I'm all suited up for my next Armageddon, ready to move on to the next thing and find the blessings in that, too.
Life is such an adventure.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
...And All of the People
I just had a thought...we spend so much time and effort trying to find ourselves. What if we get to the end of the journey and find out that there was nothing there to find to being with? And would that really be so bad?
Ah, but I digress.
Most of my friends have now departed Shanghai; Carol left early last Monday morning and Haruka, who was supposed to stay here for a year, had to go home to Japan for emergency surgery. Of course I miss them terribly. In the brief time I knew her Carol became like a little sister to me, and Haruka...well, what can I say but you know you're good friends when you don't speak the same language and you can still communicate like there's no barrier there at all.
So I've been spending a lot of time talking to and hanging out with my language partner James, who really is the coolest Chinese guy I've ever met. He's completely taken with western music - real music, too, not the syrupy love songs that dominate modern Chinese culture - he rides a skateboard, and his English, in spite of the fact that he's never had a native speaker for a teacher, is at near-native fluency. Not only that, but he is one of the more conscientious Chinese I've met as well; in this time of dramatic change for the Chinese, it's kind of rare to meet someone with a well-developed social conscience. And he's got it in spades. He's incredibly concerned with the world around him. It's amazing. He's unique not just as a Chinese, but as a person, period.
I am blown away by the people I've met this trip. I think that never before in my life have I forged so many amazingly deep friendships in such a short period of time. Is it right that anyone should be this blessed? I hardly feel deserving of it.
Last night I went to the Shanghai aquarium with James and his friend Sig and, let me tell you, if you're one of those people who doubts God has a sense of humor all you need to do is visit this place and it'll clear that right up for you. I have never seen so many strange fish in one place before. And when I say strange, it's not the kind of strange where you cock your head and say, "hm, that's kind of weird." It's more strange like "oh, that's where all the dinosaurs went" kind of strange. And boy howdy, some of these suckers were ugly. The eels made me cry, they were so gross. And they had an underwater tunnel with sharks. BIG ones.
I liked the sharks. Although after seeing them up close I have to say I find the whole Finding Nemo fish-are-friends-not-food scenario significantly less believable.
At dinner last night James gave me an amazing present: a book written by his dad. It's a memoir of his experiences during the cultural revolution, which he spent in the fields in North China doing penance for his family's capitalistic past. It's signed, dedicated to me and dated, which is especially amazing considering there are only 5,000 copies in print. James says it's an underground book. I was so touched I almost started to cry. My Chinese isn't quite good enough to read it yet, but it gives me something to work toward. In the meantime it's wrapped in plastic and sitting in the back of my closet so the cover doesn't get bent.
I am, at this moment, completely in awe of life, of the beauty it has in its transcience, of the little blessings that lump together to make one gigantic - albeit slightly messy - lump of blessings. And it just sits there in front of us waiting for us to open our eyes and look at it, and most of the time we just sit there with our eyes squeezed tight shut. I am, at this rare and quiet moment, at a near-loss for words. Almost.
Ah, but I digress.
Most of my friends have now departed Shanghai; Carol left early last Monday morning and Haruka, who was supposed to stay here for a year, had to go home to Japan for emergency surgery. Of course I miss them terribly. In the brief time I knew her Carol became like a little sister to me, and Haruka...well, what can I say but you know you're good friends when you don't speak the same language and you can still communicate like there's no barrier there at all.
So I've been spending a lot of time talking to and hanging out with my language partner James, who really is the coolest Chinese guy I've ever met. He's completely taken with western music - real music, too, not the syrupy love songs that dominate modern Chinese culture - he rides a skateboard, and his English, in spite of the fact that he's never had a native speaker for a teacher, is at near-native fluency. Not only that, but he is one of the more conscientious Chinese I've met as well; in this time of dramatic change for the Chinese, it's kind of rare to meet someone with a well-developed social conscience. And he's got it in spades. He's incredibly concerned with the world around him. It's amazing. He's unique not just as a Chinese, but as a person, period.
I am blown away by the people I've met this trip. I think that never before in my life have I forged so many amazingly deep friendships in such a short period of time. Is it right that anyone should be this blessed? I hardly feel deserving of it.
Last night I went to the Shanghai aquarium with James and his friend Sig and, let me tell you, if you're one of those people who doubts God has a sense of humor all you need to do is visit this place and it'll clear that right up for you. I have never seen so many strange fish in one place before. And when I say strange, it's not the kind of strange where you cock your head and say, "hm, that's kind of weird." It's more strange like "oh, that's where all the dinosaurs went" kind of strange. And boy howdy, some of these suckers were ugly. The eels made me cry, they were so gross. And they had an underwater tunnel with sharks. BIG ones.
I liked the sharks. Although after seeing them up close I have to say I find the whole Finding Nemo fish-are-friends-not-food scenario significantly less believable.
At dinner last night James gave me an amazing present: a book written by his dad. It's a memoir of his experiences during the cultural revolution, which he spent in the fields in North China doing penance for his family's capitalistic past. It's signed, dedicated to me and dated, which is especially amazing considering there are only 5,000 copies in print. James says it's an underground book. I was so touched I almost started to cry. My Chinese isn't quite good enough to read it yet, but it gives me something to work toward. In the meantime it's wrapped in plastic and sitting in the back of my closet so the cover doesn't get bent.
I am, at this moment, completely in awe of life, of the beauty it has in its transcience, of the little blessings that lump together to make one gigantic - albeit slightly messy - lump of blessings. And it just sits there in front of us waiting for us to open our eyes and look at it, and most of the time we just sit there with our eyes squeezed tight shut. I am, at this rare and quiet moment, at a near-loss for words. Almost.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
The Earth According to Google
Just a small aside here...my friend Chia-chi turned me on to this awesome program called Google Earth. If you don't have it yet, well, where have you been? It's a program that allows you to view the earth via satellite and zoom in on pretty much anywhere you want. I can find my apartment in Seattle; Chia-chi used it to show me his apartment in Taipei. Seriously. Get this program. I've never seen anything so addicting. It even puts solitaire to shame.
http://earth.google.com
http://earth.google.com
Monday, August 08, 2005
After the Storm
Ok, so I've never been in a tropical storm of any kind, so the recent typhoon kind of threw me for a loop. I was trapped in my room most of the day, which gave me WAY too much time inside my own head. But it cleared overnight, and the next day Carol's family invited me to go with them to Hangzhou, a couple of hours away from Shanghai by car. In the morning all the streets in Shanghai were flooded - and so was the taxi I took to get to their house.
"Hey, siji, you have a small lake back here," I told the taxi driver in Chinese, but only after I'd accidentally stuck both of my tennis shoes ankle-deep into the puddle in the back seat of the car. The driver, his only response was to turn around and say, "a lake" in English, and then give me a proud grin. We ended up practicing our English for the entire 45-minute ride to Gubei.
Shanghai truly was a mess. Half the trees at Carol's apartment complex had been uprooted by the wind, and an uncomfortably large part of the city was under at least two feet of water. We actually saw people wading knee-deep in the water, using old bicycle baskets to fish in the streets. In the middle of the city. And they were catching things. I'm not making this up.
But the storm had benefits other than providing me with my humorous anecdotes for the weekend. In Hangzhou, Carol's mother's friend told us it was the clearest day she'd ever seen in the city. It was cool and the air was blessedly clean, a welcome retreat from the hot filth of the city. I love Shanghai, and it's ever so much cleaner than Beijing, but I can still wipe my face three times a day and come away with a black handkerchief every time. Hangzhou kind of reminded me of Seattle, only a little richer - yes, I can't believe it either - and a little more Chinese, obviously. But just a little, which may or may not be sad depending on your opinion on China's recent boom in development.
But either way, Hangzhou was truly beautiful. The Chinese have a saying: in heaven there is paradise, on earth there is Hangzhou and Suzhou. I haven't been to Suzhou yet - I'm working on that one - but I can definitely see where they would get that idea. The lake there is amazing. Carol and I took a boat out onto the water and just relaxed for an hour. Could be the first time I've relaxed like that all summer, to be perfectly honest. I mean, I love my yoga, but there's really nothing like an hour in a rickety old traditional Chinese boat on a traditional Chinese lake (even if it is in a no longer-so-traditional Chinese town) to loosen you up.
Carol and I also made an attempt to feed our fast car habit by visiting the luxury car dealerships which seemed to be all over the place in Hangzhou. I got to sit in the front seat of my beloved Porsche 911 Turbo, Carol tried out a Ferrarri Scaglietti. Once again we drew confused looks from the male salesmen, who I think were utterly confused by two girls so completely into race cars. But we figured it was probably the closest either of us would get to our dream cars for a long time, so we decided to swallow our pride.
Monday saw me back at school, where my classes are getting less and less organized and more and more frustrating. They moved us up a level after the first month, so we're reading long, academic essays on things that should be much harder to wax academic about: fashion trends in Shanghai, Shanghainese food, etc. etc. The lessons are far too long and complicated, with way too much new vocabulary every day, for it to be possible to completely prepare even if one were to spend every moment of her time studying. Which one is becoming less and less inclined to do, because one is getting very overwhelmed and slightly fed up.
Friday, August 05, 2005
Under the Weather
And this time, it's not a metaphor. Shanghai is experiencing the outer edges of a local typhoon today, which means heavy rain and winds not even Nevada can equal. I tried venturing out for my daily baozi during a break in the rain, but ended up getting stuck in a torrential downpour with a broken umbrella. So now I'm confined to my room, which actually isn't so bad because I might get bored enough to actually spend some time studying. Unfortunately, it also confines my diet for the day to the culinary offerings of the convenience store in the downstairs lobby, most of which consist of Oreos and oddly flavored potato chips. The sushi and cucumber flavors have garnered the most attention here, though I can't personally vouch for them. I did try the green tea flavor - whether out of curiosity, bravery, or stupidity I can't really tell you - and found them decidedly not to my liking. They tasted like really crispy seaweed, just in case you're wondering.
Mmmm....baozi. The best food in China.
Carol and I went go-karting yesterday, which seemed like such a culturally backward thing to do in China that there was no way I could pass on the opportunity. The original plan was actually bungee jumping, but after John voiced concern as to the quality of most Chinese products and the general Chinese lack of attention to safety procedures, we decided that delivering our lives into the hands of a Chinese bungee cord didn't sound quite as intelligent as it had in the beginning. In the end it turned out that go-karting was quite the adventure in itself. The track was in a warehouse deep down a back alley somewhere in the heart of town, and the entryway to the building reminded me of an abandoned carnival in a horror movie, all peeling paint and broken statues. But once we revved those engines, man, we were hopping. We were getting funny looks from the guys who worked there; I can only imagine that, what with the slightly different cultural outlook on the separation between the sexes, they don't get a lot of business from girls. Especially girls who aren't accompanied by guys. Even more especially, girls who are wearing skirts and have to keep stopping on the track to tuck the hems up so they can keep their clothes on as they're flying around the curves. But Carol and I are both big car lovers, and we had an absolute blast. Fast cars, even the miniature ones, are super sexy.
So Kwai Mei left on Thursday morning, which makes me sad. I have no idea who I'm going to eat vegetarian meals with now. There are a few people who will grudgingly accompany me, but they spend most of the time asking, "where's the beef?" and giggling like it's a really original joke. Carol is also no longer living at school, though her parents are in town and she's staying with them at an apartment near Norman's place. But it's faaaaaaar.
Speaking of Carol, I met her parents and the rest of Norman's family when I went to dinner with them for Carol's family birthday party. It was fascinating; they have all these little Chinese birthday traditions, and it was the first traditional Chinese birthday party I've ever been to. Well, almost traditional: we did have a big very western-looking cake. I think Norman's dad had difficulty remembering my name or something, because by the end of the night I had a nickname. He kept addressing me as Meiguoren laowai: American foreigner. Or if you want to get even more literal, old American outsider.
Shanghai only continues to grow on me the longer I stay. It's not that there aren't flashes, brief nano-seconds of time, where the clean air and the personal space in Seattle seem a little too far away, but those moments are few and far between. All in all I'm fascinated by Shanghai, by the people I've met here and the experiences I've had. I'm learning as much about myself as I am about Chinese culture. I think this is what life is all about; the little experiences that make you up as a person. I am so, so blessed.
Mmmm....baozi. The best food in China.
Carol and I went go-karting yesterday, which seemed like such a culturally backward thing to do in China that there was no way I could pass on the opportunity. The original plan was actually bungee jumping, but after John voiced concern as to the quality of most Chinese products and the general Chinese lack of attention to safety procedures, we decided that delivering our lives into the hands of a Chinese bungee cord didn't sound quite as intelligent as it had in the beginning. In the end it turned out that go-karting was quite the adventure in itself. The track was in a warehouse deep down a back alley somewhere in the heart of town, and the entryway to the building reminded me of an abandoned carnival in a horror movie, all peeling paint and broken statues. But once we revved those engines, man, we were hopping. We were getting funny looks from the guys who worked there; I can only imagine that, what with the slightly different cultural outlook on the separation between the sexes, they don't get a lot of business from girls. Especially girls who aren't accompanied by guys. Even more especially, girls who are wearing skirts and have to keep stopping on the track to tuck the hems up so they can keep their clothes on as they're flying around the curves. But Carol and I are both big car lovers, and we had an absolute blast. Fast cars, even the miniature ones, are super sexy.
So Kwai Mei left on Thursday morning, which makes me sad. I have no idea who I'm going to eat vegetarian meals with now. There are a few people who will grudgingly accompany me, but they spend most of the time asking, "where's the beef?" and giggling like it's a really original joke. Carol is also no longer living at school, though her parents are in town and she's staying with them at an apartment near Norman's place. But it's faaaaaaar.
Speaking of Carol, I met her parents and the rest of Norman's family when I went to dinner with them for Carol's family birthday party. It was fascinating; they have all these little Chinese birthday traditions, and it was the first traditional Chinese birthday party I've ever been to. Well, almost traditional: we did have a big very western-looking cake. I think Norman's dad had difficulty remembering my name or something, because by the end of the night I had a nickname. He kept addressing me as Meiguoren laowai: American foreigner. Or if you want to get even more literal, old American outsider.
Shanghai only continues to grow on me the longer I stay. It's not that there aren't flashes, brief nano-seconds of time, where the clean air and the personal space in Seattle seem a little too far away, but those moments are few and far between. All in all I'm fascinated by Shanghai, by the people I've met here and the experiences I've had. I'm learning as much about myself as I am about Chinese culture. I think this is what life is all about; the little experiences that make you up as a person. I am so, so blessed.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Mission: Accomplished
Well, it's official: yes, you can buy a yoga mat in China. After traipsing up and down the greater Shanghai area for a little over a month and expending a great deal of my hippie energy points, I have finally come across the yoga mat of my dreams. I had to take a taxi across the river, get lost and found again, and climb four flights of stairs to find it, but I have it now. And actually, it's better than the one I have back in the States. I'm feeling quite miserably like a spoiled westerner at this point, but my bed is nothing more than a slab of wood with a half-inch pad on it. My back has been killing me, not to mention the fact that without my daily yoga pieces of my mind have been scattered all the way from here to Pudong. That, and it's just way too hot to be running outside every day. Gotta get the exercise somewhere.
My friend Carol had a birthday party last weekend at the Cloud Nine bar in the Grand Hyatt at the top of the Jin Mao tower, and it was pretty fun. Carol and Kwai Mei are both going home this week, which will leave me rather lonely, but at least I'll have time to study now. I've been feeling slightly under the weather - I don't know whether I'm dehydrated or the change in my diet has affected my blood sugar levels or both - and it's getting more and more difficult to get out of bed and go to class. Of course, if I went to bed at a decent hour it would probably help too. Darn Shanghai and its interesting things to do....
My friend Carol had a birthday party last weekend at the Cloud Nine bar in the Grand Hyatt at the top of the Jin Mao tower, and it was pretty fun. Carol and Kwai Mei are both going home this week, which will leave me rather lonely, but at least I'll have time to study now. I've been feeling slightly under the weather - I don't know whether I'm dehydrated or the change in my diet has affected my blood sugar levels or both - and it's getting more and more difficult to get out of bed and go to class. Of course, if I went to bed at a decent hour it would probably help too. Darn Shanghai and its interesting things to do....
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