We shall see how far I get-

I’m going traveling next week, hopefully to Yunnan again. If the government doesn’t let me get up to Zhongdian then I want to go to Xishuangbana. It is my hope that one of these two places will feel my feet upon it. Just as likely I’ll get to Kunming, bulbs of puss will sprout from my face, I’ll get cut open, and convalesce in Old Man Zeng’s apartment again. The mysteries of the yet-to-be!

I don’t know if there’s anything people want to know about my life that I haven’t snarked at already (I’ve been in a weird way). Probably yes, if you’ve come all the way out here to read this.

Well, my term project: I’m writing what amounts to a fancy book report on “The Madman’s Diary” by Lu Xun or however it gets translated. It’s fun now, because I have discovered that not only can I do research in Chinese, but that who knew, I like reading stuff about literature. You’d think I ought to study more lit. … I guess it’s a measure of how long I’ve been in the language learning ghetto (no soup for you! only sentence patterns!) that I’ve forgotten that there could exist more…engaging academic subjects. Stunning insight: I like learning about literature, philosophy, history. I do not enjoy reading articles about domestic violence (today’s homework) or the death penalty (tomorrow’s) as much. They have their moments. But really, they don’t grab a clump of my hair and pull my face down into the book.

Interesting fact: I can access my VPN from Starbucks, but not from my apartment. There is no good reason for that to be the case, but it is.

LoZ: Link’s Awakening

Anyone else annoyed by how all non-fiction books in America have ridiculously long subtitles that have to work in both a “how” and a “why”?  This has been going on for a while, but I feel like it’s getting worse or something.  They mentioned it on Crooked Timber and it occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t the only one who was annoyed.

In any event, here are sweet, sweet links–nector to be sucked through a thin proboscis and enjoyed: 

Art!
Chinese Think Tanks!
Ergodic Literature!

That’s me: Living the Interwebs, So You Don’t Have To.

Bring up your words, bring up yourself.

It occurs to me after looking back at my old blog that on many levels this blog has been a failure.  But that’s depressing and self-fulfilling talk!  Say stuff like that and the terrorists win.  Also, I blame authoritarianism. (see Great Firewall of China, The and related works). 

I am enjoying my Lu Xun project now — the same project that drove me to despair mere days ago.  But I spent an inordinate amount of money on thick (and thin) books of Chinese lit crit, and I wallowed in the internet, bobbing like a corpse in the hot mangrove slums of political blogs, Baidu, and Wikipedia, and now I face the future like a man!  Like WFB (who against all reason I have decided to emulate in certain very very specific ways)!  I am alive and happy!  There are worse things to be. 

Things that both make my friends squirm and have influenced me recently: The Fountainhead, WFB’s infinite eulogies, Lolita, To Live (the book, not the movie).  But I count them all as positive influences.  Progress towards up!  Haven’t forgotten that one. 

I may not get to go to Tibet because there are problems there.  This is deeply annoying to me, in the way that only the sudden revoke of undeserved privilege is annoying.  How am I supposed to develop as a human being if I can’t travel at will to the moral equivalent of a giant Indian reservation on a plateau 4,000 meters above sea level?  That is the best way to think of Tibet, I think, as well as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and all other pockets of China inhabited by significant numbers of ethnic minorities: they are Indian reservations as Indian reservations looked several decades ago in America (read: worse than now).  This is a good article on the subject.  

Last thing: I’ll just mention my trip to Sichuan of a couple weeks ago.  Ate hotpot, drank tea, saw baby pandas, got bit by a monkey (didn’t get through my awesome jeans), climbed a mountain.  The long version is more exciting, but I’m way too snarky to type much more without beginning to hate myself.  Adios for now!

Rock and Roll on the New Long March

The father of Chinese rock is a man named Cui Jian, who became famous in the late 70’s and remains an emminence grise in the world of Chinese rock, jazz, and indie music.  The title above is a song of his.  A song of his that I like more, called “The Last Gun,” rolls forward, slowly pulling up a rumbling swath of sound that is both powerless in a terribly Chinese way, and with the eruption of trumpets, ironically celebratory.  It’s a song that probably wouldn’t work as well for me if I hadn’t listened to it while staring out the window of a train crackling down snowy rails from Harbin at flat brown fields, dead trees, and a cold sea sky.  

Beijing, as is often overlooked, is the home of Chinese independent music, which is to say every kind of music that isn’t Mandopop, Cantopop, or classical.  The scene’s a small village of people living in some few clubs and popping out for tours when they can — everyone knows everyone else, and the fans and players live almost side by side.  I imagine that music might have been like this in New York or London in the 60’s and 70’s, but now CBGB, The Knitting Factory et al are more myth than real.  A lot of life here, and a lot of movement.  In music like in everything else.

I started class again on the 21st, and now I’m in the thick of it.  I live in an apartment now, with an American and a Chinese roommate.  There’s an elevator operator until 11:30 every night, and a “sun room” for drying clothes, even though it’s below 0˚C every day.  I read articles about the economy, migrant workers, and the psychological effects of globalization for homework, and plan to write my term paper on Li Bai, the most famous poet in Chinese history.  It may not be terribly original, but man if I don’t want to really learn something about Chinese lit in Chinese.  But then again, doing a more modern Chinese intellectual like Hu Shi or Chen Duxiu might be even more interesting (I’m pointedly not considering Lu Xun because my friend Scott’s already doing him).  Must decide!  

 

Hi everyone!