Take yourselves back…

 It’s hazy green summer in Beijing, and I’m still living at Beishida, going to summer school,  listening to cicadas in the trees, and my roommate talk about his girl.  This is August 9, looking back over the whole program so far:

 

Not posting, lame, sorry

 

Let me try and get this all strait:

 

After dinner, played Go with Sam in the “Cafe” by the wangba.

Longqingxia, Great Wall Beach Party

Day of Nothing (reading and internet)

–(week 4)

Break!

Midterm, Wangfujing, in theory early to bed but not as early as planned

Gugong, Sanlitun Nanlu, first time there (China Doll, Bar Blu, Kai, that place in the street), made the mistake of staying with the two girls who only wanted to flirt with the Dutch guys instead of going with Jenny and her hot friend

Got up *really* late in the day, read, did nothing, ended up pulling an all-nighter to finish zuowen

–(week 5)

Acrobatics, Max/Steph to Dong’an Kafei

Sunshine Village, dinner with Sam and Scott, Max/Steph to Sanlitun Nanlu, The Tree

Day of Nothing (reading and internet)

–(week 6)

Reading and Go.

Tuesday, singing class

Wednesday called ACC had Chinese phone conversation for reals, really wanted to write

Thursday

Friday saw Jason Chase for dinner at Silk Street fujin, then went to meet Max, Steph and Kendrick at East Shore Jazz Café.  Saw Golden Buddha Jazz Unit (talked to Izumi after the show — Japanese drummer with hand).  

Saturday slept through Yingshan Pagoda trip, went to dinner with Max, Steph, Kendrick at Dadong Kaoya dian in Chaoyang(?), really really yummy, then went to Bookworm on Sanlitun South street.  Sunday woke up to talk to Justin but no go.  Puttered around instead of sleeping again, did no work, finally hung out with Max, Steph, Kendrick around Beishida.  Bought Harry Potter for 35 kuai, went to upstairs kafeiguan, played Go while talking, went to “dinner” at Issin, then left to go meet Sam and Scott to go to Wudaokou to dinner (again) at this awesome kafeiguan/fanguan/tushuguan, then went to D22 to see Red Hand Jazz Band.  Talked with sax player after first set, he said we should jam, and no reeds in Beijing.  Came back to Beishida, got almost no sleep while doing no work and instead talking to George, Justin, then Miguel, and finishing Max’s first novel.  

–(week 7) 

Worst week ever.  Thursday night, still haven’t done lots of homework, including essay.  Koutoubaogao is tomorrow along with test.  Hopes not high.  Wednesday was the Big Chinese Table, singing, playing that word game, watching Sam get into a pseudo fight with B during Tong Hua over _ Laoshi(!)  Been practicing every day except Wed. with Sam for the Beijing Zhiye on Sat.  Latin piece that we named [forgot]. 

And here I thought I had no way of getting back…

Proxy servers stopped working, and a lot of other things were going on.  Just now, I finally realized VPN gets me back on this blog.  Also, I’m on break, so I have time to post — although my family’s coming to see me for the holidays and I’ll be a little busy while they’re here.  Anyway, everybody (that’s still around): I’m going to start posting again.  At the very least it’ll be once-in-a-while. And so first up, we have a few things I’ve written in the interim. 

Continuity; the Basics

There are obviously quite a lot of other things I did besides going to the East Shore Jazz Café. I do in fact have a record of most of the things I’ve done here. I don’t know that I’ll post it, though I might still. In the future I will likely at least mention some of the things I’ve done. Now I thought I would explain how my life usually works, instead of hitting the highlights.

Right now I’m going to a summer language program where we pledge to only speak Chinese (although most students, including me, have by this point broken the pledge many times). During the week, my schedule is as follows:

7:30-9:20am
–Lecture Class (8 students, 1 teacher)
9:30-11:20am
–Section Class (4 students, 1 teacher)
1:30pm, 2:20pm, or 3:15pm, depending
–Independent Tutorial
8-10pm
–Office Hours

Two days a week we have Chinese Table, which means the teachers take us out for lunch and we chat while we eat. On Friday we have a weekly written exam, and either Thursday or Friday we have an oral exam. Mondays we have an essay due. Every other day we have written homework and a dictation in the morning. There are optional field trips, and extracurricular activities in the afternoons. After our fourth week we had a three day weekend, and this Saturday we’re having a talent show. Unless something untoward happens, I’ll be playing some jazz with my friend Sam on piano.

Any questions? Ask them in comments. Incidentally, I have to approve comments before they go up, so sometimes there’s a delay before you can see them. But they are working.

In which I crave pardon but dare not ask.

How is a month in this city? I’ll do my best:

I walked in from Di’anmen Waidajie, I thought, but the neon I wanted wasn’t there. I slid through couples, behind a car as it pushed into the last space in the lot, up to an ankle-wall of concrete, and stepped up. Men in button-down shirts and slacks and women in evening dresses strolled alongside the foreigners and the kids with sharp hair and black cell phones, cut through by bicycles and rickshaws. The greens, yellows, and reds of characters, roman letters, and lines without meaning hit the water through the trees, pushing the shadows into thick pools.

There is a string of lakes just northwest of the Forbidden City in the center of Beijing, around which are strung glowing bars, clubs, karaoke decks, restaurants, and massage parlors. Generally people tell the cabby, “Houhai,” because that is the de facto center of this nightlife district — though just south through the channels across the road is the famous Beihai Park, with its White Pagoda and temples. Houhai is better than Sanlitun, people say, depending on what you want. I was scanning the lights for “Jazz” in green. After a few minutes I called out to a man with his wife and son:

[Excuse me, do you know what lake this is?]
His roundish son, [Hey, a foreigner!]
The corner of my mouth turned up. [Yeah, a foreigner. I'm a foreigner.]
Dad laughed. [This is Houhai.]

He told me how to get to Qianhai, just south, and I walked off in the crowd. Fuwuyuan stood outside their buildings across the lakeside path, stepping beside foreigners, with “You want drink?” or “Pretty girls!” or “Bar, bar!” Music pounded out of open windows, and glasses glittered in the light.

A bridge looked familiar, finally. Through a cloud of cigarette smoke I saw the cafe, and climbed the stair three steps at a time. Steph, Max, and Max’s old friend Kendrick had been waiting for me for a while, but their champagne was still chilled and the band was just tuning up.

I love the East Shore Jazz Café, and I love it because of that second time I went. The Golden Buddha Jazz Unit cut it up, and the four of us laughed and talked when we weren’t leaning back into the sound. We almost (well, they almost — I wouldn’t have) left before the second set, but we stayed, and a Brazilian singer climbed out of the audience. He told stories in the middle of his songs, in a voice that was about to be hard but changed its mind as it left his lips. He played Girl from Ipanema for an encore, and disappeared. Then I remember the piano player’s reflection in the window.

I’m in a romantic way; forgive me. It bears mentioning that the single bottle of champagne the four of us shared cost half a month’s salary for a schoolteacher in Anhui, or forty-odd dollars American. I am the son of empire, and this is still a far province.

After the set Max, Kendrick, and I talked to the drummer, Izumi. He looked like Johnny Depp minus fifty pounds, and the two smallest fingers on his left hand didn’t work. “You play sax?” he smiled. “Bring your horn, jam with us!” It is a small jazz community here; when I went to D22 to see the Red Hand Jazz Band a week and two days later, their sax player said nearly the same thing.

I can’t remember if I’ve said it here, but Beijing is exactly what I need right now.

Momentous Events! (as scattered sentences)

Roger Federer, Man-god!

Last night and this morning I felt sick, so did not go to five out of seven hours of class today. Now I feel better, and have done some good work. Towards up, indeed.

I have been reading Jonathan Spence’s “In Search of Modern China” and am struck by certain parallels between the late Ming/Qing and today. This goes only so far, naturally; take it with a grain of salt. There is continuity of socio-political substratum: an overpowered local authority, a rooted, hanging-ivy corruption, a whirlwind of ineffectual (at least on the surface) intellectual responses. Beijing’s grasping hand clutches at the shoots and leaves of this country. Some are crumpled, some are crushed, some fall away; those in the middle, one might say, keep growing. Haruki Murakami (now first on the list of people I need to read and but already admire), used the most poignant metaphor that I have yet heard. According to his Chinese translator Lin Shaohua: “…human rights are to be highly respected, like an egg smashed colliding with a wall. If [I] had to choose, [I] would be on the side of the egg.” Today however, the population is pliant. There will be no revolutionary change — nor should there be, if past revolutionary changes provide any indication of what consequences might arise. Good things: Perhaps the environmental crises will pull up the grass roots (those very same that Mao exploited to create this, the PRC), and the ensuing popular war against pollution provide a model of sorts for collective responsibility. Perhaps the environment will simply collapse in certain areas, and the ensuing devastation will prompt meaningful reform. Perhaps a new, strong leader (more likely a cabal) will emerge and effectively attack the rotting limbs of government. Perhaps one of the above is happening right now. I am an optimist, but not such that I think the situation should be left alone. Careful, creative individual initiatives and careful, creative diplomacy. Realpolitik blustering is preschool crap. International politics is not a zero sum game.

More anecdotes later, I suppose. For now, here is a Chinese sentence that sounds funny to people who also speak English:
“Wo3-de wang3 bu4 hao3.” [My internet isn't working.] Sounds like: “My wang isn’t good.”

It has been too many days

On Thursday I skipped out and tried to meet Max at a well-known tea house in Qianmen.  On Friday we had our weekly exam, I slept, we went to the Beijing Opera, we went to Mix, in Sanlitun.  On Saturday I slept through the field trip to the Marco Polo Bridge and Sino-Japanese War Memorial Museum, searched the Qianhai shores for a jazz club, went to a Karaoke birthday party.  Today I slept into the afternoon, and have done little else.  I ought to explain each of these in its turn, but I think I will come back to it later.  Now the light is fading.  I have put some pictures on facebook (we call it 脸书 [lian3shu1]).  I will try and deal with pictures here later.

Independence Day is very cool when you’re not home in the States

This is the second year in a row that I’ve spent July 4th outside America during an extended stay in another country. With luck, next summer I will also be abroad. It’s almost better being away.  The farther afield you get, the bigger your home becomes, until it’s not a neighborhood, not a city, not a country, not a state, and even not quite a country (though more that than anything else). If you are in the zone, the hoop gets bigger.  There is your metaphor.

Getting along with people is easier for me when I’m from home, in a certain way and for reasons that remain unclear to me. Far from home also tends to be different from home, but maybe at a certain distance difference collapses and people are people. It isn’t the distance, though, that I felt tonight; I think it’s the fact of traveling. It opens you, and makes other people open to you. There is a transcendental pleasure in being alone in a place, and engaging a stranger. The desk clerk at the hotel gave me a bunch of unsolicited advice. Two women from poor farming regions complained to me about Beijingers. A man from French West Africa told me about that region’s development over the last fifty years.  I had one conversation that used all three languages I know, with an American living in Beijing, the African, and the Frenchman from before (who has shaved his head, and worries about the effect it will have on his chances with girls).  It gets easier, and it gets easier.

Today was my first calligraphy lesson. Over the course of a couple hours I listened to an old man give a long and at least half-indecipherable explanation of the development of Chinese characters, then ogled my roommate’s work. His characters were, as they say, 活泼有力 [lively and forceful]. Calligraphy is as hard as I’d suspected. Read: extremely hard. If you wish to master an art such as this, it needs constant, undivided attention. It was a lot of fun, and now I have my own “Four Treasures of the Study” — brush, inkstick, slab, paper. Next week I will improve! Progress towards up!

For Independence Day, we thought about ordering Domino’s, but it’s waaay too expensive (100 kuai for a pizza?) . So we got MacDonald’s, and it was good. Though I didn’t get any, ice cream was later passed out by our resident awesome guy, TK (I guess his position is something like an RA’s). After dinner I worked in the Kafeiguan, then interviewed several people for my next essay, which I mistakenly thought I needed to present orally tomorrow. After class tomorrow I will hopefull see Max.  Now yet again it is very late and I still have work left to do.  I average 4-6 hours of sleep a night here, which I know for many people around the world is normal, but for me is not at all.  I survive by the strategic application of short naps.

In which my teachers are totally awesome

Not a lot of time to post today; sorry.

Wang Laoshi suggested that, since I had lost one of my school books (I later recovered it) I must “坐这个特别车” [ride the short bus (to class)]. This same Wang Laoshi also suggested that my saxophone playing would propbably give anyone who heard it nightmares. I gave a couple of my teachers the address of this blog; if you’re here reading this 您们好！

Here are some gushy, romantic words:

“…Fait couler le rocher et fleurir le désert
Devant ces voyageurs, pour lesquels est ouvert
L’empire familier des ténèbres futures.” (from Les Fleurs du Mal, XIII) translation

“…But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?

How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Moeonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young…” (J.E. Fletcher, from “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence”)

Yeah, I know, I’m insanely pretentious.

One evening ago

While I was writing my first little Chinese essay (“write a letter to your friend in America”) I had a long conversation in French with a man from Paris, and hurt my brain trying to switch between French and Chinese. I discovered that in fact I do still know how to speak French, and that I may well speak more fluidly now than I did when the summer started. Of course I forget odd words, but I’ve found that not speaking a language for a little while either a) allows the language to sink into the folded coral of your brain, or b) makes it seem like it did. I imagine that past a certain point this will cease to be true.

Samis, I think his name was, d’origine algerienne. He told me my French sounded like a German’s. I didn’t really hear him speak English, but I think his English wasn’t too great. He was cagey on what he was doing in Beijing, and professed to know little of America. He was surprised that a guy from the west coast of America could speak French. He described Americans as “northern, like Anglo-Saxon.” He told me that the octopus is the symbol of the mafia, though I don’t know which mafia he meant. He took a while to remember the French word for octopus (une prieuve). He wanted to know what astrological sign I was. I told him the story of my trip to Marseille, and we talked about social unrest the world over. He can’t wander around his neighborhood outside Paris anymore, he says (though he didn’t say, it was obvious he lives in a lower-class banlieue dehors la peripherique). He was reluctant to propose ideas to improve the situation so many disaffected, socio-economically disenfranchised people find themselves in, but finally came out for a policy of eyes for eyes. Il faut reagir avec la force, c’est la seule chose ce type de gen peut comprendre. I asked him, what happens when they meet your violence with more of their own? He was reluctant to consider the question. He seemed to feel that the entire situation was incredibly unfortunate, but that his was the only way. He had been mugged, he said. He was thirty.

I’m writing this in TextEdit while sitting in a Kafeiguan at 2:30 in the Monday morning. The attendants in this building are here all night; that is, the group of male night watchmen and the group of female store clerks. One of them just came over to my table and gave me two big slices of watermelon, for no reason at all, dripping that sticky popsicle juice all over the table. Lots of black seeds. The night watchmen act like 3rd graders around the girls, swaggering over ever now and then to flirt, but never daring stay. The girls don’t leave their stores, except for once, to push one of the guards, and then squeal when he pushed back. An hour later they’re having a slow, winding conversation. Such is the night: long, and without a flat narrative shape.

Big Mac Dreams

I went to 麦当劳 (MacDonald’s) like a chump. As I sat with my two dollar meal (anyone remember when a Big Mac, fries, and a coke cost two dollars in the states? I don’t think I was alive then.) I watched a woman across the room clutching her stomach. In my head, there is obscure alchemy with new vocab:

Out of the crowd, a lone foreiner walks up to her.

Me: 那，你的肚子不太舒服吗？ [So your stomach's not feeling too good?]

Confused Woman: 。。。？

Me: 没想到， 我有这个 “从来我没病法子”！ 跟在电视上看到的不一样！ [Unexpectedly, I have the "I've never been sick method!" Not like what you saw on TV!]

I hand her a cheerfully packaged drug of some kind.

CW: 啊？[eh?]

Before she can move, I’m walking out the door, but turn back at the last second.

Me: 别问我。。。来问问他们！[Don't ask me...go ask them!]

I gesture to everyone else in the MacDonald’s and they all yell:

All: 成功！我从来没病过！ (Huzzah!  I’ve never been sick!)

Apologies for my fantasy Chinese. If you can read it, you can see how bad it is.