Pas Douce - Passing Shot

French film directed by Jeanne Waltz.

Passing Shot is a surprisingly complex emotional drama of a woman who, in a failed attempt to kill herself, ends up shooting an innocent teenage boy. The protagonist, Frederique, in an ironic twist of fate ends up having to nurse the boy back to health at her hospital. As the movie progresses, the reluctant and enraged boy begins to develop a soft spot for Frederique; the sentiment is reciprocated by Frederique as she gradually overcomes her inability to be near the boy without fainting.

What made this movie particularly engaging for me was the psychological complexity of the characters. Frederique is a nurse who is eerily unafraid of the dead; she also happens to be a champion marksman. From the beginning of the movie she is portrayed as a character that is emotionally distant. She has a broken relationship with her father, the person who taught her how to shoot; and her boyfriend tells her that he has found another woman, which is what prompts her to attempt to take her own life. The audience never really gets a complete picture of her emotional state before she shoots Marco, but we do get a sense of how her relationship with Marco brings her to the point where she willingly admits to the police that she was the shooter.

Marco is an emotionally sensitive teenager whose mother moved from France to Portugal to start a career of her own; when she finds out about her son’s condition, she rushes back to be by his side. However, Marco outwardly rejects his mother’s love and affection. He lashes out at Frederique and all the other nurses that attempt to take care of him. Despite his attempts, Frederique eventually manages to get through to him and earn his trust and affection.

The plot seems extremely staged in the sense that the same woman who randomly shoots a boy in the forest ends up being the nurse that has to take care of him. However, the strength of the movie lies primarily on a relationship that is borne out of seemingly unrealistic chain of events. The uncertainty as to whether or not Frederique’s secret will be found out becomes the driving force of the plot. This uncertainty is what gives depth to her relationship with Marco. Throughout the movie the audience is wondering to what degree Frederique’s guilt influences her relationship with the boy Marco.

The movie has a number of exceptionally well acted scenes. One scene that I found particularly moving was the scene right before Frederique goes to confess to her crime. Marco has already found out about her secret and angrily tells her to get out of his room as soon as she tries to enter. She walks over to his bed, with Marco in bed and his friend by his side, and begins to apologize and explain her actions. At the moment when Frederique says that she was attempting to shoot herself, Marco’s face changes from one of anger to one of compassion. Tears fall from her eyes as she realizes it was her luck that Marco took the bullet instead of her, because she did not want to die. At that point she goes to leave and Marco tells her that no one is forcing her to confess. She acknowledges that and she walks over to hold his hand; the moment seems to last forever and it is in that moment that we understand that Marco has forgiven Frederique and that she has accepted.

Berlinale - Film Festival Day One and Two

Today was the second day of the film festival. Yesterday I watched four movies and today I watched three for a total of seven. I was going to try and watch five today, but then I realized that I have to get up at six in order to get tickets for Sunday. The Film Festival is overwhelming. There are movies playing in like fifteen different theaters at any given time. On top of that, the films tend to be of different lengths so that sometimes I'll have no time to get from one film to the next, while at other times I'll have anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. All the films that I've watched have been pretty good, aside from these two documentaries that I watched, one about this artist Nikki Lee and the other one about this amusement park/carnival in Vienna called Prater. I think documentaries are tough to watch if you aren't really interested in the subject matter, whereas a narrative film usually follows a set pattern that the audience is familiar with. So far I've been staying away from the big Hollywood blockbuster's and have been focusing mainly on International films that I wouldn't be able to see back in the States. Anyhow, I'll keep this blog posted on the movies that I watch and try to provide reviews of some of them.

On a side note, it has been snowing these last couple of days; as a result, Berlin has been incredibly beautiful, kind of like a winter wonderland.

Cyprus !

Here’s an update on my life. Last week our entire group had the opportunity to visit Cyprus for a few days. The trip was more of an educational trip than a touristy one. The alumnus that generously pays for the entire trip is named George Will; and he allows the Stanford in Berlin campus to travel to a newly admitted EU member country each quarter. So Cyprus, the island is a divided one, in that respect it resembles Germany; Northern Cyprus is Turkish and Southern Cyprus in Greek. It was controlled by the Ottoman Turks for about 300 years until the Ottoman Empire fell around 1911 and Britain took control. It remained a British colony until 1955; one thing that I found incredible was the English fluency throughout the island. Perhaps it is the result of being colonized for over forty years or perhaps it might have to do with the fact that tourism is one of there main sources of revenue, but whatever the reason everyone from the local deli owner to the local pizza guy down the street can speak enough English to get you where you need to go. Amazing. Since 1955 the island gradually escalated into what my good friend would call a “hot mess.” Once the British left, all hell broke loose. The Greeks started vying for Enosis, which is the Greek term for unification with Greece, their assumed motherland. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem if the entire island were Greek, unfortunately there is a sizeable Turkish population living in Cyprus that did not and still don’t care to be reunited with Greece. To make a long story short, in 1974 there was a coup where a military junta overthrew the legitimate government in the South and started wiping out Turkish Cypriots left and right. It got to the point where the entire Turkish population was forced onto about 3% of the island (the island itself is only 40x100 miles) Eventually Turkey’s military intervened and stopped the rebel group and reestablished order. All was well and good until Turkey decided that it wasn’t going to leave; the Turkish Cypriots, with the protection of the Turkish army, established the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a border was put up and it was only in 2005 did they allow Cypriots to cross the border. When we were crossing from the South to the North we got to walk through three military blocks: first came the Greek military, next came the UN military and finally was the Turkish military; kind of like a multi-colored Oreo. The UN tried to negotiate terms for reunification in the last decade or so, but what became known as the Annan Plan failed to be adopted by both sides even after five provisions. The North wants a guarantee that they will have a federation where they are essentially partners with the South in all functions of the government; the South wants the Turkish military to leave because they see it as an illegal occupation and will not settle for anything less than that. What made the situation even more complicated was that Cyprus joined the EU as a divided state; basically the South, recognized as the legitimate government, gets all the trading benefits of being in the EU, while the North gets no international recognition and trade blockades that have severely hindered their tourism and resulted in a total halt in their citrus exports—the effect is an overabundance of oranges lying around on the streets, I kid you not.

Having heard impassioned representatives from both sides, I am at an impasse in deciding which side to root for. I’ve come to the conclusion that the political situation is just way too complicated for it to be simply about one side being right and the other wrong. But aside from political matters, the nation is gorgeous. They have summer-like temperatures literally three-quarters of the year. Cypriot food is like a mix of Turkish and Greek food with a little of their own kick to it. They have amazing cheeses and also do quite a number with pork and lamb (I only tried a little, I’ve pretty much given up eating meat) I would definitely recommend the country if your into touristy stuff and you want to visit a beautiful island that is also really interesting and culturally diverse. We got to visit this Greek Orthodox nunnery that was apparently visited by Barnabus and Paul the prominent Christian Apostle—their trip to Cyprus is actually recorded in the Bible which was really fascinating to read and then experience.

I have quite a few pictures to put up but I will put them up tomorrow.

The Berlin film festival is starting on Thursday. I am basically going to be living in Potsdammer Platz, the place where all the action is happening. It is like a film lover’s heaven. I will try to remember to eat and breathe. Wish me luck ;)

Mountains beyond mountains

So I just finished the book Mountains Beyond Mountains and I would like to make a recommendation to everyone: Read this book! After reading Tracy Kidder’s narrative nonfiction account of Dr. Paul Farmer and his mission to serve the poor and fight for justice in our world I feel convicted to find a way to follow in his foot steps. I raced through the book gulping down this amazingly encouraging and at the same time discouraging story about one man’s effort in fighting a battle that, in the world’s eyes, is doomed to failure. Perhaps the strongest message that I was able to extrapolate from this book was Farmer’s own theory on the connection between the 1^st and 3^rd worlds. The belief that most citizens of the 1^st world have—either consciously or subconsciously—is that the two worlds function in parallel; that is, what happens in the 1^st world bears no relation to what happens in the 3^rd world. Farmer’s entire philosophy, what he calls O for P or Opting for the Poor, is founded on his unwavering belief that what happens in the 1^st world is directly related to what happens in the 3^rd world. To put it more bluntly, the relatively luxurious and privileged lives that we live in America come at the cost of the lives of people in places like Haiti.

After reading through the book, I am finding it incredibly difficulty to digest it all. Perhaps the hardest part of getting through this book is facing the moral imperative that Farmer embodies in his life’s work, that is: the value of life is the same regardless of who it is and what country they happen to reside in and if there is something you can do to change it then you have a moral obligation to do something about it. This message is a particularly hard one to swallow because responsibility and blame cannot be so easily shifted onto some third party—we are all responsible because the world is inevitably interconnected. This moral challenge has forced me to rethink the way I live my entire life, from the things I choose to eat to my choice of future career. To think that there is someone like Paul Farmer out there who basically lives and breathes so that he can fight poverty by combating the diseases that afflict them is both comforting and unsettling. It is unsettling because his life is a statement in opposition to the majority’s resignation, “You can’t save the world even if you wanted to, plus it isn’t our responsibility anyways.” Once I was able to get past this simple defense mechanism I realized that his example proves that what he can do I can do; the challenge is whether or not I am willing to step up to the challenge and bear some of the responsibility.

I am in Berlin, Germany right now ruminating over the simple, yet uneasy to digest, wisdom of a humble doctor. I have gone to see some museums and performances, but in light of what I’ve just experienced through this book, I can’t find it in me to write about them. I suspect that the rest of my time in Germany will be spent soul-searching, trying to discern my calling in life and searching for my own answer to this moral dilemma of extreme poverty and extreme wealth coexisting in the same world. Boy... who said living was easy?

On a side note, after much deliberating, I have decided to stay in America upon graduation and to find work near home or perhaps near school. As of now teaching is looking quite attractive to me, but nothing is set in stone. My time abroad has revealed to me my own physical limits and has forced me to downsize my own overreaching ambition. It has been and will continue to be a very humbling experience.

A Cultural Revolution

I’ve been thinking lately that if I were born during a different time and under a different set of circumstances, my relative moral position could be quite different. I have never been forced to make any real decisions regarding a specific moral stance. At least not like the decisions people were forced to make during the chaotic times of the Cultural Revolution. I ask myself, “Am I lucky?” and this begs the question, “if so, then why?” I have not had the misfortune of being born during the times of a great upheaval, during the time of political strife and uncertainty. The closest thing that I’ve ever had to deal with was 9/11 and the impression it left on me was shallow. It’s hard for me to contemplate a life that is so wrapped up in the movement of the time that things like philosophizing and thinking are considered bourgeois privileges.

The more I think about it the more I am convinced that in the direst times, the most unjust and inexplicably irrational of situations, what we need most is an immutable moral ground from which we can draw support and strength from. Without this ground, we are prone to the iniquities of human nature, which include corruption, jealousy, dishonesty, and vengeance. For example, during the Cultural Revolution, under extreme pressure from the general social unrest that dominated the lives of every Chinese, people from every social strata were forced to take sides and point fingers. Reading through Wild Swans, a biography and autobiography of three generations of woman that spanned through the beginning of the 20^th Century to the beginning of Modern China in the 80s and 90s, I was struck by the extremity of change that characterized China throughout the 20^th Century. Reading through the account like a piece of fiction whose ending I already know, I found myself wishing that the author would move through the years faster; the reality of the times was difficult to digest.

If I had to sum up the authors opinion on Mao, I would say that the author would have had no qualms with likening Chairman Mao with Satan. His iron grip on the nation was intensified by his childish insecurity. He commanded nothing less than absolute power and control; deification was merely a means to this end. Mao had no moral grounding; to him, moral grounding was bourgeois—his actions and thoughts became the epitome of moral and ethical conduct. And as expected of any morality based on human action—it vacillated according to his mood.

In order for me to really comprehend life under Mao, I need a complete paradigm shift. Ten years of every Chinese’s life was spent in a cultureless vacuum. If someone told me today that I had to give up ten years of my life, I would scream high treason at the mere thought. Trying to wrap my head around the situation of China during the Cultural Revolution made me realize how much effect one’s government has on one’s livelihood.

Perhaps the saddest part of the story is that most Chinese were powerless to change the situation. Even the top leaders that propagated the deification of Mao were at the mercy of the tyrant’s bloodthirsty quest for complete dominance; if the only people capable of standing up to Mao lacked the courage to do so, what could the people hope for? People sincerely believed in Communism, but they failed to realize that their Chairman was interested in Communism insofar that it gave him the justification to lead and unite the people to fulfill his purposes. I’m still not sure what to make of the Cultural Revolution, meaning I don’t know what to take away from it as an American citizen who has lived a fairly privileged life. I’m not satisfied with just thinking that I was lucky to have been born in America ten years after the event; I think there is something to be learned from it all, but I’m just not quite sure yet what it is.

Money = Happiness ?

Today I met with two different Beida friends. Ironically, both conversations ended up being about the emphasis students seem to put on money making. It astonishes me how common it is to find students applying for jobs simply based on the amount of money they can be expected to make or how it might make them look if they land a job with such and such a company. I think it is really unfortunate that so many talented students can’t think of anything else to do with their lives than how to make a lot of money. There is so much more to this world than money and yet it seems that all modern society seems to emphasize is consumerism and wealth acquisition. In high school, I remember my math teacher telling our class that each and every one of us was smart enough to make a million dollars if we really wanted to; so rather than spend our time thinking about how to make money, we should think about what we were interested in doing or how we could contribute to society.

I brought the issue of contributing to society up with my Beida friends and their response was that Chinese people in general just don’t have the concept of social responsibility. Chinese people are used to following the crowd 随潮流走; because by following the crowd, the chances of bringing harm to one’s life are minimized. Now that way of thinking is inherently flawed in my opinion. But I don’t blame people for thinking that way, at least the majority of people. However, when it comes to the well educated elite, I feel there is a greater responsibility to society that few of this class seem to share.

Thinking about my own school, I realized how this is equally the case at Stanford as it is at Beida. Students care more about prestige and wealth than about making the world a better place, because after all, who cares if the world is a better place so long as you are happy. But I guess that begs the fundamental question: “Can money and prestige bring you happiness?” or put differently, “Can one equate money and prestige with happiness?” What makes me a bit depressed is that I think one can equate the two in our modern society. Why? Well because from a very young age we are shown images that money and prestige put smiles on people’s faces, particularly your parents—which is really important in Chinese culture—and it seems to be what every dream is made of both in books and in movies. It is so ingrained in us that there is little hope for us to develop a counter argument somewhere along the long and complicated road that leads to adult maturity. Even isolated within the comfort and well protected boundaries of a university, one is hard pressed to withstand the onslaught that is modern society. It is even more so today what with the advent of the internet and high speed broadband.

I personally feel like I shouldn’t have to worry about money, but when everything around me seems to say otherwise, I must admit that it is hard to stay steadfast in my beliefs. After all human beings are weak and the eye is easily enticed by shiny things.

You know, the more I think about it the more I realize how hard life really is. Thinking about stuff makes life harder; if you just follow the crowd, then life becomes pretty simple. But on the flip side, if you just follow the crowd— are you really living?

Dreams...

Dreams… In the span of our entire life, how many dreams do we have? How many dreams are conjured up and then forgotten only to wither away into the abyss of lost and neglected dreams? Today I chatted with another Beida student, her name is luo ying, and she is finishing up her MA in Indian studies at Beida; she just came back from Pakistan after spending 10 months there on a government exchange program. She came back early just so she could look for a job. We talked for an hour about the importance of having a dream and a goal in life. I asked her why she was thinking of applying to Deloitte and other top accounting firms, and she told me that it would be a good opportunity and a safe job. After probing further, I realized that she had no real plans for her life; she wanted to teach and continue learning languages if she could, but the prospect of using Hindi and Weigur in a job were slim so she figured her best bet would be to work at a large company that would give her good training and other opportunities to expand her career potential.

After talking it through with her, we came to the realization that the choice wasn’t such a bad one after all considering that she might have the opportunity to transfer to a location that could utilize her specific language abilities if she entered a multinational company. I thought it was ironic that we ended up coming to the conclusion that sometimes our dreams are not fit for reality and so we must make the next best choice. She said that it isn’t so easy in China to find a job that you like or one that will make your dreams come true; I told her that it was the same in America even though the competition for regular jobs doesn’t seem nearly as competitive as it is in China.

I’ve just spent the last hour or so trying to fall asleep; tossing and turning in my bed, I’ve been thinking about the future and the uncertainty that I will have to deal with in the coming months while I try to find work that is both meaningful and along the lines of what I want to do. The last thing that I want to do is to do something that I don’t care about. I’ve already decided that so long as I have the choice, I will choose to do something that I love and am passionate about. The only problem is that you can’t really find out what that is until you do it. I wonder if it is an easier choice to make for me because I am an American as opposed to my friend who is Chinese.

I also made a very important realization today while I was walking around with my friend Takeshi Nakamoto. I was telling him about my dream of being a film director—one that I’ve been throwing around for quite some time now, but for some reason still feels a bit ethereal. He asked me what kind of movies I wanted to make and I told him I wanted to make international movies. I then started thinking out loud and as I was processing my thoughts while speaking to him, I realized that one important goal of being a film maker for me was to create stories that I could relate to. It was one of those feelings that you get when as you are talking, you realize how much sense you are making. Ever since I was little I’ve enjoyed watching movies and reading books, but it wasn’t until I reached high school that it finally dawned on me that most of the movies I had watched were ones featuring white people and black people and other ethnicities other than one I could identify with. The issue of race became unavoidable when I thought about why I felt distance from the stories of my favorite movies.

There are no protagonists that I can really say I identify with because when you watch a movie on screen race is no longer something that can be overlooked; this realization hit me pretty hard on the head and has gotten me thinking. Lately I’ve been looking for my motivation to keep working at filmmaking, but it has been hard because of a number of factors.

I also managed to mention to luo ying that I really felt like I have no home; she corrected me by saying that I probably felt like I had no home country. I’m not sure whether she was right, but I explained to her that what was missing was a strong sense of identity with America. The America I identify with is one of ideals; it is one that exists in my mind becomes real in so far as I speak the words that I am an American and feel the surge of patriotism and nationalistic identity that come with the phrase, “I am an American.” But it really only goes that far. I suppose for some people it is enough but for me it isn’t. I’m looking for something more, I don’t know what exactly, but I know that I whatever it is I don’t get it while I am in America. I told her that was the reason I’ve come to China and why I’ve spent so much time in Japan. I think it fundamentally has to do with culture. I am searching for a culture—one that I can call my own.

That seems like a good answer to the question why I don’t want to work in America after I graduate.

But the bigger question seems to be: Why is culture so important to me? I think this question is a lot more complicated than it my seem at first glance.

too busy? be like a snail!

Today I talked about a number of interesting topics with Chika. We ended up talking about how our value system is based on constant comparison with those around us and with society as a whole. It seems to me that everything we do is based on this habit of comparing our lives with those around us. Somehow he tied this into the part in the book of Matthew when the phrase “Do not judge lest ye be judge” pops up. Basically the tangent we went on with this one is that the intrinsic value of human beings is the same regardless of how you evaluate them. But when it comes down to it, society doesn’t seem to think so; Ghandi will always seem like a much better person than say, Hitler.

Society moves forward because of this value system based on comparison; value is assigned comparatively. Thus my life and the choices I make for myself are either relatively good or relatively bad based on the comparisons I make with other people. When you think about it, everything from choices about what we wear, what jobs we take and who we marry are affected by this tendency towards comparison.

In Chinese class we are reading this essay that compares modernization to a snail. The main argument of the essay seems to be that present day society suffers from an excess of work and a loss of free time—in short, people are too busy. This business manifests itself in this never ending yearning for increased speed and efficiency; faster computers, faster information and faster methods of consumption are some examples. The author marks two important time periods in the history of modern civilization: the first being the industrial revolution and the second being the electronic and digital revolution. Though these two revolutions increased efficiency and production, they did not increase our amount of free time; on the contrary, they seemed to have caused a decrease in the amount of free time we have.

Because we are constantly looking for the next best thing, be it a new home or gadget, the need to work more hours to earn more money develops. It is a vicious cycle in which humans are the horses that chase the carrots on sticks (money and social status); we cannot escape it, because as society moves, we move as well motivated by our own fear of being left behind. I was surprised to find how true this seemed to be and how much of what I do and choose for myself is governed by this comparative value system.

I need to get back to reading some Thoreau… I’m looking for a Walden Pond in a barren wasteland.

moral responsibility

Just finished watching this movie 活着 (to live) by Zhang Yi Mou. I think the movie was two parts, I've only watched one of them, but that was enough to give me a strong impression of the director's intended message. The story is about a Chinese family during the Cultural Revolution. The family consists of a mother, father and a mute daughter. The parents worry that their only daughter won't be able to find a husband, but in time their fears are allayed when a strapping young man comes to sweep their daughter off her feet. I use the terms "strapping" and "sweep off her feet" loosely, because, after all the movie is set in China during the Cultural Revolution. Appropriate to the time period, the husband and wife wear very conservative PRC clothing: the husband is in what looks like a blue workers uniform and the wife wearing a jungle green one with red stars that symbolize her loyalty to the Communist Party. The wedding itself is a very modest affair, with the husband and wife to be pledging their allegiance to Chairman Mao and bowing before a newly painted red portrait of him on the wall outside their house.

As the movie progresses we see more and more instances of the effects of the Cultural Revolution, for example on the day of the expected birth of their child, the mute daughter's parents go to see the village head; in one room they chat about the fortune and great luck of the grandparent's to be, while in the other room, the village head's wife is weeping hysterically while she packs her husband's belongings. As they grandmother and grandfather to be are walking out of the village head's house, he explains to them that he is being summoned in for questioning by the party. During the Cultural Revolution such things were common—one's loyalty to the party was something that could be brought into question at any time. When they get to the hospital, the parents notice that there are no elderly doctors, the only people walking around where young girls wearing red armbands. In class we learned that during the Red Guard Movement—the first two years of the Cultural Revolution in which Mao called upon the youth to excise the bad elements (landlords, rightists, capitalists etc.)—Red Guards wore red armbands in order to show their status as participants in the revolution. The parents are not convinced that the young girls know what they are doing so they ask their son-in-law to go find an older doctor. He comes back with the doctor that had once delivered babies at the hospital that they were at; around the doctor's neck was a sign that labeled him as a bad element. The father noticed that the doctor was famished so he went out to get some mantou(buns) for him to eat. The hunger stricken doctor devours the buns in an instant, which leaves him in a state of delirium offset by the occasional hiccup. The father brings him some water to drink in order to help down the buns that he had eaten too fast. The camera then switches to the room that their daughter is in; the cry of a baby signals that their daughter had given birth. Everything seems perfectly find until the nurses try to clean up; in a series of dramatic cuts, the situation turns from happy bliss to dire desperation. The nurses were unable to cut the umbilical cord properly and as a result, the mother continues to bleed profusely; they try to get the experienced doctor to help out, but due to eating seven mantou and drinking water that caused them to expand in his stomach, he was completely incapacitated.

I found the last scene to be incredibly ironic: because the doctor was being publicly denounced and punished by the Red Guards, he had not eaten for three days—his inability to assist in the situation was determined as soon as he was given the mantou to eat. Because the young nurses had taken over the hospital, the mother to be was at the hands of people far too young and inexperienced to be delivering a baby. Thus the mother had almost 0% chance of survival. Perhaps the greatest irony of all was that the very Chairman Mao that the family had be praising and pledging their loyalty to was the cause of the Cultural Revolution that ultimately brought about the conditions in the hospital that caused their daughter's death. And yet the Chinese people still seem to praise him like a savior.

This Monday I went to learn how to cook 肉饼（roubing –also known as meat pancake）. While the meat pancake was the reason behind my nonstop throwing up and diarrhea five hours later, the conversation that came up while we were eating was quite insightful. My cooking teacher's husband and I started to discuss the Communist party and Chairman Mao. I can't quite remember how we got started on the conversation, but I do remember that he believed that Mao was a great leader because he was able to unite China; I have heard this argument many times before so it wasn't surprising in the least. Ah I remember now how we got into the conversation. It started with us talking about roubing—ironic how the topic starter eventually came back to have the last laugh with me running to the toilet to apologize for looking down on it. Roubing was the type of food that poor peasants ate, except without the rou because back in those days when uncle Hu (teacher's husband) was living in the countryside, as most young people did, meat was scarce. He said back in those days you had to eat your meat fast because if you didn't it would be gone before you knew it and then you would have to wait months until the next holiday. This conversation got us talking about the state of peasants in China and the fact that they sell their food at such a low price to the government that they can never really escape the poverty line.

Uncle Hu made the point that despite the widespread poverty in China, the peasants were not going hungry nowadays. China was united under Mao and has forever been better because of it—so believes Uncle Hu and millions of other Chinese like him. In his opinion, Mao was a true political genius. Using the concept of Communism to unite the predominantly peasant population, Chairman Mao was able to bring the entire country under his control—a feat that none were able to accomplish prior to him. During the period of land reform, farmers were given land from the government to ensure that they had a vested interest in the new government. With the peasants content, Mao could work on securing power and strengthening China. Eventually I had to mention the Cultural Revolution and the 30 million plus lives that were lost as a result of the violence and widespread hunger. Uncle Hu's response was: not everyone's perfect, by then Mao was an old senile man bent on securing power for himself; but in his opinion, Mao had undoubtedly had led China onto a path of prosperity by the act of uniting the country under him. When I think about it now, I can see why Chinese people are able to revere him so highly; after all he did unite China, even if it cost millions of lives in the process.

After a moment to think over Uncle Hu's argument, I decided to ask him why the loss of life didn't seem to matter to him. This spawned into a larger debate about the difference between American and Chinese politics which essentially differed on the issue of moral responsibility. The Chinese perspective is that a country should deal with its own issues before it goes and meddles in another country's issues. When I asked him about Darfur, he said that the situation was unfortunate, but that it still wasn't the responsibility of any country to step in; his parallel analogy was that of a Chinese father being reprimanded by the police for disciplining his child with violence. In Chinese culture, the father has dominion over his family's affairs, no other person has right to interfere; in a nutshell that's the Chinese approach to world politics. People that are born in times of unrest and chaos are unfortunate, but that doesn't mean we should go save them. His bottom line was: "If everybody began to interfere in the affairs of other countries, where would the world be?" At that point I had nothing more to say, I realized that they had a good point in denouncing America's tendency to meddle in the affairs of other countries. But at the same time I could not give up my belief that life is sacred; people have a responsibility to protect it.

In the end he chalked it up to a difference in upbringing and values. It seems so trivial a distinction, but I guess our individual cultures do have very different value sets and thus the environment in which American and Chinese children are fundamentally different.

Is the world really flat?

This last week has been a bit of a blur, my apologies for not posting anything recently.

Yesterday I watched a surprisingly rich movie called Waking Life. The whole movie takes place in a dream, or at least I think it did; it was actually quite confusing because it was one of those movies that challenged the way you think and view the world. I definitely would recommend the movie; I will have to watch it again when I have the mental capacity to digest the complex dialogue that runs throughout the movie.

Today I went to a talk given by Thomas Friedman author of The World is Flat. We arrived at the bookstore about two and a half hours before he was scheduled to speak. Although it was a long wait, the talk was definitely worth it. Having not read the book myself, it was great having the author break down the major pieces of his argument in a easily digestible form. The basic premise of his book is that the world has gone through three great eras of globalizations: the first was the period from the 1400s to the 1800s, which was characterized by imperialism and a movement of a large world to a mid sized world motivated by specific countries (e.g. Spain and Portugal); the second major era of globalization was the period from the 1800s to 2000, which was an age dominated by company and corporation driven globalization; the last era was from the 2000 to the present, which has brought the world from small to tiny, one that is centered around individuals that are connecting, collaborating and competing with one another.

Friedman then went on to further elaborate on the specific points in time that led up to the era of globalization that we are currently in today, what he calls globalization 3.0. The invention of the personal computer, the development of the internet browser interface and the widespread investment in fiber optic lines created an environment that essentially leveled the playing field; or in Friedman's words "flattened" it. The flattening of the world has removed the barriers to entries to many different areas of business in addition to creating a competitive labor force that is not constrained by physical boundaries.

What I appreciated most about Friedman's talk was the optimism with which he shared in his assessment of this phenomenon of 21^st Century globalization; he said that, although his critics often snub him by saying that globalization is simply a means for the gap between the rich and the poor to widen even further, globalization has in both China and India, been the single most effective means of bringing millions of people out of poverty at a rate that no other method can boast. Personally I think that globalization is a good thing, even though it may result in a loss of jobs in America; the reason I think it is good is because I believe in the fundamentals of a free market economy and I believe that globalization will continue to increase the scope of the free market. Digital media, fiber optic connections and the internet has created a world in which people can do business directly with other individuals. This freedom has the potential to allow almost anyone to be an entrepreneur and find a way for themselves to make a living that is not limited to their physical locale.

Something to think about…

Show me the money

So today was a fairly uneventful day; owning to the power outage in our dorm last night, I was unable to fall asleep at my regular time; the power went off at midnight and then it came back on again at 2am which woke me up and rendered me unable to fall back asleep for another two hours. The day started with me waking up at a very unusual hour: 11:37 am. I got up and headed straight for the baozi place.

As I was walking around campus, I noticed that many of the trees had lost most of their leaves to the persistent autumn winds. It made me a little sad realizing that each day the trees would lose a little more of their auburn colored leaves; the color of my surroundings is much more important to me than I realized. Sometimes I wish I could just stay in autumn forever, it is by far my favorite season.

I met again with my language partner, Shelly. We started talking about the difficulty of finding a job in China, even for Peking University graduates. She seemed unusually perturbed today so I decided to press the direction of the conversation a little more to get a better sense of what kinds of things she was worrying about. Shelly said that she was dealing with the pressure of trying to find a job that would allow her to stay in Beijing. In China there is a system called Hu kou, which kind of serves a purpose similar to ones social security number; one’s Hu kou serves not only to identify the person, but it also designates where certain benefits, such as for health and education, can be accrued. Upon entering a university, one’s Hu kou changes temporarily for the duration of one’s time at the university. Shelly’s problem was that she was graduating soon, which meant that she needed to find a company that would sponsor her for a change of Hu kou from Guilin, her hometown, to Beijing; she said that the likelihood of finding such a company was slim. So she is studying hard to pass the governmental office test.

Shelly asked me whether Americans were restricted in where they could live and work. I told her that such a thing would never happen in America—it would be against our freedom to live and move as we please. After a few minutes debating this topic, we somehow jumped onto the subject of money and the common belief that the most important thing in getting a job is having a high salary. I told her that this was totally against what I believed in and that was one of the reasons I was in Beijing—to get away from the campus recruiting at Stanford that tends to be focused on high paying jobs in management consulting and investment banking. This is when I started getting into the discrepancies in wealth between those who come from wealthy families, have a privileged background in terms of education and opportunities and those that come from poor families with no such privileges. We both consider ourselves fairly privileged although neither of us come from wealthy families; however we were both attending elite universities, which definitely counts a great deal in the professional world. The conversation gave me the opportunity to through out some of the irreconcilable dilemmas that I have been having with regard to future goals and plans. I told her that I felt that people like us, who have received a first class education, have the responsibility to make use of that education to help those less fortunate. Helping people and bettering society should be the end, not money. She agreed and sad that most college students at Peking University care only about securing a Hu Kou in Beijing, getting a high paying job, or studying abroad that will allow them to get a high paying job upon return to China.

The conversation went back and forth; it felt good to get it out of me, but it left that unsatisfying taste kind of like when you eat something tasty but you realize that you want more but there is none to be found. My wish for my peers is that they would find something meaningful to devote their lives to, not just securing a comfortable life for themselves, but finding a career that truly pushes them to the limits in not only skill and talent, but in social awareness and generosity as well. People should be bold and unafraid to see and do things that they have never done before. The question that seems pretty obvious to me is: Why would you want to live otherwise?

I will always be the dreamer, forever the idealist. Sigh.

Chewing the Cud

Book that I am currently reading: Spider Eaters by Rae Yang,

I have spent the last four hours reading the memoirs of a woman that lived through the Cultural Revolution. It was refreshing to read something so engrossing and moving. In many instances I felt that the author’s thoughts and feelings were ones that I had experienced before. I felt a strange familiarity with Rae Yang’s thoughts and emotions even though they were from a time and context that I am at a loss to imagine. Weaved through her personal memoir are the stories of people in her life that have suffered through China’s history of reoccurring misfortunes. Stories of mother’s losing their husband to disease, and then after working hard for many years to support her children, lose them to the war. Embedded in her story is a sentiment that is piercing enough to break through stereotypes of Red China. My own impression of China has changed significantly since I’ve come to China and begun to learn more about its history.

Ever since I can remember, though it probably started sometime during middle school, the image of China being a Communist state has been hard wired to my brain; and since Communist was associated with backwards and wrong, I never thought of China and its history worthy of any further investigation. Though I do remember reading a biography of Sun Yat Sen in elementary school, I was too young to make much of it; for me it was simply a wonderful story of revolutionary triumph. I find it a bit ironic that I considered myself Chinese without really having even a cursory understanding of Chinese history; when I refer to Chinese history, I am not talking about the facts that I was taught in school, but rather the narratives that Chinese families passed down to their children about the harshness of the revolutionary period and of the Cultural Revolution. My father often told me stories about how poor he was as a child, how they had nothing to eat except rice and some pieces of boiled cabbage for days at a time, but without context, it was just another story about the old days when my father had a perpetually empty stomach. In the past few weeks, hearing stories from people that lived through those tumultuous times and reading memoirs such as Spider Eaters, has brought me closer to China and my heritage as a Chinese American. Working hard, honoring your father and mother, obedience, these were tenets of my upbringing as a child that I took for granted; I assumed that every parent would stress these points, it didn’t occur to me that these tenets were my link to my heritage, to a place and a people that was thousands of miles away separated by a sea of ignorance and indifference.

Chinese people suffered greatly; whether it was from foreign invasion or internal strife, the people lived through years of tumult. I was talking the other day with my language partner and somehow we started talking about the costs of education. She told me that she was the only one from her village of 400 to go to college. Even more shocking was the fact that her family had a annual family income of 2000 yuan a year (less than 300 USD) On my plane ticket alone I had spent nearly three times their annual income. And yet despite the difference in wealth between America in China, the current state of China is infinitely better than what it was back during the 40s through the 70s. The more I learn about China and the egregious differences between the environment I grew up in and the one that most Chinese peers grew up in, the harder it is for me to justify anything that I have been given in my life. My parents were lucky enough to flee China during the harsh times and I was lucky enough to have been born and raised in this country where opportunities and resources are available for the taking. (of course this is a bit of an exaggeration, but I believe that in essence the sentiment is true) I am no better, just luckier, if you can call it that. As someone who tries his best to believe that the world is essentially fair and just, the more I learn about China, the more I get slapped in the face with a reality that would beg to differ. I haven’t quite figured out how to resolve these tensions yet, perhaps I may never be able to do so, but I will leave the discussion here and allow myself more time to ruminate.

I find it a bit ironic that China adores Mao as their hero and beloved Chairman when he was probably the sole cause for nearly three decades of suffering. Perhaps no amount of reading will ever render me capable of understanding China's adoration for Mao.

new blogger beta

Xin Jiang - a place of unexpected beauty

This past weekend I traveled with the rest of my Stanford buddies to Xin Jiang. The plane ride took only four hours, which was just enough for a short nap. We arrived at Xin Jiang at noon on Friday. As soon as I stepped out of the airport and into the crisp cool air, a giant smile spread across my face. The sky was blue and the air was clean enough to take in gulps at a time, it was a nice change from Beijing’s pollutant saturated air. Our first stop was lunch at a local hotel. Our hotel was located in Urumqi, one of the major industrial centers in Xin Jiang; its population consists primarily of non-Han Chinese ethnic minorities. There is a contingent of Moslems living in Xin Jiang; as a result of the Moslem dietary restriction against pork, arguably one of the primary meat staples of the Chinese diet, we were given a hefty serving of lamb at almost every meal. Over the course of the weekend we had: lamb soup, lamb chops in lamb soup, sweet and sour lamb, fried lamb, roast lamb, smoked lamb, minced lamb and a few other dishes that were lamb based. Lambalicious…mmm mmm.

Our first stop was to a small village on the border of China and Kazakhstan. The traditional Uyghur people lived in these small huts spread out along the beautiful plains along the border of the two countries. We were invited in to their huts to have some milk, try some of their snacks and to have a little dance party with them. Apparently when it got too cold they moved their huts to the far side of the hills where the wind was not as strong. After we finished the tour of their huts, we were given the option to walk around or to ride their horses; after a few urgings from our eager hosts, I decided to mount one of their tamer horses. Riding through the plains with nothing but blue skies surrounding you was enough to make me forget the who, what, where, why and how of the moment—my senses took control and they soaked it all up. My riding companion was a 28 year old man that looked like he was 45—I gathered that he spent more time in the sun than was healthy for his skin; but secretly I envied him for being able to enjoy the awesome beauty of the place everyday of his life. He had two children and a beautiful wife—it seemed to me that he had succeeded in finding the good life; of course I was a bit envious, any person in their right mind would be.

The following day was jam packed with a trip first to the ancient city of Jiao He. The entire city looked like ti was constructed with dirt and sand; if an earth quake or a hurricane came by, the entire city would be turned into a giant sand box. Afterwards we went to see the irrigation system that kept Turpan, the city that we were in, the oasis that it was. Apparently the system had been intact for 2000 years and is still functional to this day. Because of their irrigation system they are able to grow some of the tastiest grapes and raisins in the world. We had the opportunity to visit a private vineyard to taste some home grown grapes and raisins; the tastes were so complex that we had to eat one after another after another in order to sufficiently compare them all. The owner of the vineyard had seven children, five daughters and twin sons; this was before the one child policy in China, nowadays they would only be allowed three under their status as both an ethnic minority and as farmers. The owner was so very old, but he looked so happy. Every time I looked at him he smiled and I smiled back as if my face knew of no other way of responding aside from smiling. Like the family that we visited by the border, this man also looked incredibly happy with his grapes and his family. His smiles seemed grounded in a life of happiness, but as the deep marks on his hands and dark spots on his face shown, his life was one of many hardships. I suppose happiness never comes easy.

Our last adventure was on Sunday; We were taken to this beautiful lake, called the heavenly lake 天河（tian he）. We hiked for about two hours and got lost many times along the way but eventually we made it to the top; we were greeted by the majestic beauty of the heavenly lake. It was so satisfying to make the climb up having some great conversations along the way and making it to the top to be greeted by a sight that we could never have seen coming. It was great because there was no swarm of red-hat wearing Chinese tourists to mar the beautiful landscape.

It was ours for thirty minutes and we enjoyed every minute of it.

Our trip to Xin Jiang was bar none, the best weekend trip I have ever had. Thank you Bings!

And now for a week of catch up and studying…

Off to Xin Jiang

Forgot to mention that I am off to Xin Jiang today. I'll be back on Sunday evening so I will post again when I return.

Chester

Ma ding lu da jin - MLK in China

Today was another one of those hectic Thursdays. I woke up at around 9ish to get ready for our interview session at 10am. I am working on the Martin Luther King Jr. Project in China which is headed by a Stanford Alum. So my part in the project is camera man and documenter; I and another student are working on a five minute promo piece for the whole project; the piece is going to be used as a means for fundraising. As part of the video, one of our tasks is to interview some Chinese people on the streets to get a sense of what typical Chinese people know about MLK. Today was our third time shooting and this time we decided to get off campus; we didn’t it expect it to be nearly as easy as it was to get people to respond at Beida (Peking Uni), but we also didn’t expect it to be nearly as hard as it ended up being.

So our motley crew consisting of myself, the assistant to the project’s producer named Miao, and Ryoko set out for Beida’s West gate. The idea was to find a place that looked visibly Chinese and to position the shots so that we could get the interviewees in front of the very Chinese backdrops. We approached a few men that looked like Chinese tourists, blue suit pants and jacket, a dark farmer’s tan and the standard Chinese haircut—it’s the kind of haircut that you would get if the only thing your barber used was clippers. The three men were unresponsive and after a few attempts, we got the message and just moved on. Eventually we were able to get a few people to respond to us, but most were pretty cautious about what they were willing to talk about; as soon as they heard that we were doing research on an a Black American, most of the interviewees shifted the conversation to being about America-China relations. After a while at the West gate, we decided to hop on a taxi over to the Summer Palace; there we met quite a few Chinese men interested in the fact that we were shooting, but unfortunately they didn’t know anything about Martin Luther King so they weren’t very helpful. We did happen to chat with these to old men that happened to be in Beijing during the time MLK was leading marches at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. They said that they were to old to be involved in such discussions about equality and civil rights—a comment which I found amusing—but nonetheless they said that his teachings were important for China.

After some more interviews we headed back; I was pretty exhausted at that point so I decided to go back to take a nap. At four we had our Red Guards Class; the Red Guards happened during the first two years of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to the end of 1967. It was considered to be the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, when Chairman Mao denounced the bureaucrats that had become in his eyes, nothing more than counterrevolutionaries. The Red Guards were students that had taken Mao’s call for a Cultural revolution throughout China to prevent the country from following a similar path towards phony socialism, as was the case of their once ally, the Soviet Union. We watched a documentary about the Red Guard movement which I found to be shocking on multiple levels. Essentially, for two years, all senior high schools and universities became student headquarters for revolutionary activities. The students would continue living in their dormitories; they would continue to receive food and their stipend while they took part in the revolution. During this period students committed heinous atrocities against their teachers and officials in the party that were considered to have lost touch with the revolutionary spirit and were given into the devil’s capitalist spirit. Anyone that was middle class or bourgeois/intellectual were hunted down, humiliated and sometimes beaten to death. Students trashed cultural landmarks, burned books and generally wreaked all kinds of havoc. Because Mao had decreed that no one should interfere with the students’ revolutionary experiences, they were not stopped until Mao himself in 1967 decided to disband the Red Guards due to his dissatisfaction with all their in-fighting. What I found most interesting about our discussion was the point that Professor Walder brought up about the effect that the group has on personal decision making. He said that in most cases students that had initially been opposed to the violence eventually gave in due to peer pressure; and once students started, they became addicted to the rush of beating people. But on the flip side, he said that all it took was one right person to stand up for what they thought was right in order to confirm that notion of moral rightness in everyone else in the crowd; essentially the group needed one person to confirm the feelings that everyone else had been feeling but had been to afraid to admit. I’ll throw out more about this topic later, I still haven’t processed it all yet.

After the class, I made it over to the Foreign Studies Institute to have our first discussion about MLK with Chinese students. The room was packed, there must have been close to a hundred students present. I was impressed by the fluency of the students’ English and their understanding of world politics and history; one student asked about why some people in the south still continue to wave the Confederate flag—I had no good answer for that one except for that everyone has got the freedom to believe and act as they wish so long as it doesn’t infringe upon the well being and rights of others. Most students really admired MLK and his teachings and thought that it was important to understand and learn about, but I didn’t get a good sense of how they thought it might be applied in China. Racial discrimination isn’t much of a problem in China; the main problems are class, job and gender discrimination and these problems are more of an issue in the western, more agricultural provinces. The students that we talked to summed up the problem as a problem of economics; though lately it seems as if all Chinese think that all of China’s problems will go away as the country advances towards becoming a modern economic superpower. And then there is the issue of religious freedom, but apparently China is pretty liberal about that too; people are allowed to believe what they want, at least that is what the Chinese students told us—it’s just that most Chinese don’t care very much to believe in anything but the government. But I’ve been finding that that is even changing in China right now. So much to think about, but so little time…

A full stomach and a few words of wisdom

So today I we went to our first Chinese cooking class. It was an awesome experience to say the least. The two dishes that we watched Lu A Yi (The equivalent of Auntie in Chinese) make for us were Tomatoes mixed with Egg and Green Peppers and sliced pork—two dishes that my mother has made at home many times, but it was still fun to watch her cook them. Throughout the process, Uncle Hu, her husband, would comment on her technique; sometimes he would shout out, “Wait! Let it cook for a little more! Or he might say, add some more sugar! Less Salt

!” The back and forth dialogue between husband and wife was touching, you could tell from there banter that they had been through a lot together and as a relationship was quite strong. I couldn’t help feeling a bit homesick for my own parents and at the same time I was surprised to find that their interaction seemed strikingly similar to my parents; “perhaps all seasoned Chinese couples act the same,” I thought to myself.

Dinner was a humble but delicious feast; there were three other dishes in addition to the two she made in front of us—apparently there was one more fried chicken dish, but she thought that that might be overdoing it so she didn’t put it on the table. There was a shredded red radish that had a sweet and sour tangy taste; it added a nice balance to the other dishes allowing one to clear ones palette of the fairly strong pork and egg taste of the other two dishes; there was also a dish of Chinese style pork chops and cooked green beans and garlic. Aside from blue, the other two primary colors were represented at the dinner table; Lu A Yi said that in Chinese cooking, color combinations is just as important as smell and taste—one cannot mix colors haphazardly and hope to create an appetizing dish.

The first five minutes was characterized by a rapid rate of food intake; afterwards, the rate gradually decreased until we had almost completely cleared the two dishes that Lu A Yi had made for us. After we had finished eating, we continued to chat with the couple for another hour and a half. They had two sons, both of whom still lived at home; the younger one had studied in Japan for five years and was now working in advertising. The conversation really got interesting when the father started to talk about their life during the cultural revolution; at that time they had finished high school and had already begun attending college when Mao decided to put the entire country on hold; as a result, colleges classes were halted and for a period of two years, from 1966 to the end of 1967, college students engaged in what is known as the Red Guard Movement. The way Uncle Hu described it, the Red Guard Movement was nothing more than two years of name calling; students fought for the right to be called true revolutionaries, which was in response to Mao’s call for reform and for the country’s youth to experience what real revolution was about. Uncle Hu and his wife decided that they would move to the north east tip of China, to the rural farming villages, to taste the hardships of rural life (chi ku 吃苦) Hearing about how they devoted ten years of their lives to back breaking work in a place that could get as cold as -38 degrees Celsius made me ask the question: “Looking back, Do you regret your decision?” Uncle Hu responded resolutely, “No.” In those ten years, he learned how to live by his own to hands and he also learned how to deal with people; he said that because of those years out in the bitter cold of the north eastern China, he was an extremely good judge of character. “When you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, nothing gets past you and nothing scares you; when something that would scare any normal person away came my way, I wouldn’t think anything of it.”

As he was telling the story of their time during the Cultural Revolution, I couldn’t help chuckling to myself in amazement at the similarities between Uncle Hu’s perspective on life and my father’s.

He said that when you do something that you really want to do, in the end you won’t regret it; even though life was physically hard and the living conditions weren’t superb, they were still happy. He told us that everyone has their own hardships: even though your stomach and wallet may be full, emotionally you might not be content. I resonated with those words and started thinking about the idea of happiness being relative.

The night ended with us leaving on account of having to get back to study. I walked away from that dinner with my small notebook full of Chinese dishes, phrases and notes reminding me of the conversation. Not only did leave their house with a full stomach, but I left also with a new sense of confidence for the path that I am charting out for myself.

Ｍｙ ｎｅｗ ｇｒａｎｄｍｏｔｈｅｒ

So this week has been quite hectic catching up with work, deciding what classes that I would take for sure, in addition to meeting some new people. On Thursday, I went out with a few classmates and started our first segment of filming for the Martin Luther King Jr. project in China. In order to increase awareness of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ideas and teachings, those of us that are interested are helping out in various aspects. I am focusing on documenting the cross-cultural discussions about MLK in addition to working on a five minute promo video to explain to potential donors what this project is about. Thursday evening, myself and a couple of the students that volunteered to help teach Negro Spirituals to the Chinese singing group, went to the Foreign Studies Institute not too far from Peking University. We spent two hours working with the students. At first they seemed really apprehensive about singing this foreign style of music, but after repeating Wade in the Water and We Shall Overcome a number of times together, the group began to loosen up. By the end of the evening we were able to convince two students to try the pieces solo and we were even able to get the teacher, who spoke no English, to do his best to sing the pieces in front of everyone.

The Chinese students started with a look of bewilderment on their faces, which then turned into fascination and concluded with eager determination. As I watched these transitions I wondered how much of the essence of the music was able to transcend the language barrier. But even if the only thing that made it across was the power of the music and the rhythm, I believe that counts as a significant milestone.

Fast forwarding to today, I spent the greater part of the morning and afternoon at the house of my newly adopted grandmother. I was introduced to her and her daughter through her son, who is my mother’s co-worker. On Saturday they had taken me to see a Chinese dermatologist; they woke up at 7am to take a person they have never met to the doctor! As if that weren’t enough, they invited me over to their house today to have lunch with them. After they invited me into their home, they told me to sit down and watch television, but being the nosy person that I am, I couldn’t sit still; I got up and walked over to the kitchen to ask if they needed any help. In typical Chinese courtesy, she answered, “No, why don’t you go rest and watch some televison?” Since I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to watch an elderly Chinese woman cook, I made a compromise with her and told her that I would sit in the kitchen and watch her cook.

As she continued to prepare the dishes, she began to teach me about the four main styles of Chinese cooking. As she listed them, her daughter, who was in and out of the kitchen, but carefully listening to the entire conversation, would occasionally challenge her mother’s explanation; the two would playfully banter in a way that seems almost too cute to be real—but real it was. By the time she had finished preparing, I had already jotted down a brief introduction to Chinese cooking in my little notebook as well as a couple of names of different dishes that she was preparing. Within fifteen minutes, three quarters of the meal was cooked and the daughter and I commenced with the feast. As we ate the delicious food, Gao nai nai (her last name is Gao and nai nai is the equivalent of granny, which is what you would call someone that is old enough to be your grandmother) continued the conversation about the history of Chinese cuisine. As our chopsticks moved swiftly back and forth between our plates and our mouthes, I managed to pass around my little notebook and have the both of them take turns writing in the Chinese characters of the dishes that I couldn’t write. By the time the chicken soup came out, four pages were already full. After we had overstuffed our stomachs, Gao nai nai and myself made it over to the sofa; there was a girls Badmington match currently underway, two Chinese woman that battled it out match point after match point. For the next few minutes, the flow of the conversation followed the flow of the game. After the match was over, Gao nai nai decided asked me what I wanted to do when I graduated; I told her that I was planning on going back to Japan. Both her and her daughter seemed a bit disappointed; when she asked we why I told her that I wanted to go back to solidify the language. A few moments passed and then she asked another question, this time about my identity an Chinese American. She said to me, “Kevin, don’t forget, wherever you go, whatever work you end up doing, you will always be Chinese.” She got up and demonstrated what it looks like to be able to be able to communicate with everyone around you but to have your two feet firmly planted on the ground; the ground was China, and everything else was the world.

She continued to question me about my identity and I ended up saying that I didn’t think that I was either wholly American or wholly Chinese. Her response was, you probably think that way because you think American = White. I nodded; even though it doesn’t mean that to me and many other people I know, I am willing to believe that the stereotype holds true in many cases. She said that a man should know his identity, it doesn’t matter what he chooses so long as he is consistent and firm; I can be Chinese or I can be American, but I either way I need to be firm in what I choose. I agreed with her and ruminated over her words of wisdom.

After chatting for another hour or so, I finally managed to convince them to drive me home; I think if I had let things go, I would have ended up eating dinner there as well. But on the drive back to campus, she said, “You know, you can be my grandson.” She was satisfied after calculating our difference in age that we could indeed be grandmother and grandson. Pulling up to the small west gate of Peking University, I stepped out of the car and said goodbye to my new grandmother and my new auntie and I for the first time in a long time, I felt proud to be Chinese.

Back to School in Beijing

So for the last few months I’ve been trying to keep a blog about all the stuff that was going on in my life while also keeping a written diary—I like the feel of hand written stuff. But what has ended up happening is that I haven’t been keeping up with my blog and as a result people have no idea what is going on with my life. So I think from now on I will try to write first in my blog and anything else that I feel more for personal viewing I will write in my diary; I think my diary will be a little sad, but I guess as with all things in life sacrifices must be made.

Today was the first day of classes after returning to school from a week long vacation. I started out the day getting all my errands out of the way. I managed to get a trip to the bank, grocery shopping (bottled water), laundry and getting my beloved palm fixed after I fried it because I forgot to get a 220v to 110 charger; the guy that I gave my palm to get fixed also happened to be the same guy that replaced the screen on the phone I borrowed from my sister—apparently he can fix almost anything electronic, I’ll wait and see when my palm pilot back.

Chinese class was a long two hours; the class itself is very interesting, but very challenging—it is even harder to remain focused if the time is lengthened by an hour. We are currently learning about how ancient Chinese scholars systematized the set of Hanzi or Chinese Characters. It is really fascinating how it is constructed: there are the characters called 象形 xiang xing, which are basically characters that are pictographs; the most interesting ones are the xiang sheng, which are the characters that are made up of one part meaning and one part sound that in turn dictates the pronunciation. The latter group makes up more than 90% of the characters in the set. With such an intelligent and systematized structure built into the characters, it is a wonder why Chinese teachers don’t take advantage of it more as a replacement for rote memorization. I saw somewhere that students in China study some 3000 hours for Chinese writing by the time they graduate middle school. Unless you can devote 3000 hours to studying Chinese there seems to be little reason to learning Chinese the way Chinese students learn it; but hey, if you have 3000 spare hours, I’d say go for it.

When I said that I had only one class today, I lied, I actually had two today but I forgot the other one; guess I am getting older faster than I thought. The other class I had today was my linguistics class. Cognitive Science is really a fascinating field of study; thinking about how we think! So today we talked about Prototype effects which serve as the limiting constraints to any future theory of categories. Okay this is going to be quite nerdy, so if you want feel free to skip this paragraph. Basically, from what I gather, scholars in cognitive science were debating whether or not Aristotle and all those other fun Greek philosophers were right in thinking that categories are objectively meaning that they exist apart from the world we live in; an example of this would be Plato’s theory of forms: objects have ideal forms whose essence exists outside the real and tangible world. To make a long story short, we were presented with this systemization of categories that leads one to believe that the objectivist theory may not hold true. The interesting example that was used was for the word bachelor; while there is a concrete definition for bachelor, if you start thinking about examples of what might constitute a bachelor you start to realize that certain things would be considered more true to the essence of the meaning for bachelor than others. When asked: “ Is the pope a bachelor?” I had to sit and think for a bit. In the end I decided that I would consider him a bachelor, but would not hold him to be the quintessential bachelor. The example showed that the category bachelor entailed cultural cues and understanding that determined a stereotype which affected how we judged whether or not something fit a particular category. Dr. Patent, our teacher, then made this interesting claim about how all languages are inherently cultural and that to truly master a language, that is, to be able to use words and understand their nuances, like bachelor, one would really have to come to a mastery understanding of the culture. I agree. Fascinating stuff.

In the evening we were taken to watch a Kung Fu show which turned out to be more of a Kung Fu dance—with the occasional loud grunt followed by someone bashing their head into a piece of iron to show that their body had been tempered like iron. The show was pretty bad but it made for some funny conversations on the bus ride back home.

On the ride home I started thinking about what I was going to do about my post grad plans. Actually I think about that whenever I give my brain a chance to rest from all the stuff that I force it to do in the span of a day. Right now I am in a strange place in that I am really excited about graduating and finally being able start doing stuff, but at the same time I have no concrete idea of what I want to do. I know what I don’t want to do and that is go to grad school or work a typical nine to five job; yea I am a bit eccentric and very picky about my life, but hey I only got one right? I’m half hoping something will conveniently pop up that sounds interesting; but since I’m a big believer in making your own opportunities, I am just waiting to get motivated enough to take the plunge and start looking into some cool opportunities for after graduation. Life is hard; it is especially hard, in my opinion, if you don’t give yourself time to think about what is going on in your life and what decisions you might want to make. I feel as if too many people in the world just go with the flow and end up doing the same thing their whole life because they never take the time to think about what they would like to do. I don’t want to be that kind of person, so I’m going to try to find time to do that. Wish me luck!

Thoughts from Beijing

Today I returned back to Beijing. After a week’s long vacation, I am ready to begin the quarter. This past week traveling around China with Jesse and Tom was a chock full of good learning experiences. I learned first that even if things are less than perfect, if you change your perspective and focus only on the good things, stuff just seems to turn out better. On the trip I also was pleasantly surprised at the number of people that were unnecessarily kind and helpful. Chinese people might be loud and pushy, but at the heart they seem to be good people, kind hearted, and honest. Deceptiveness and trickery are not to be confused with the Chinese people’s tendency to try and squeeze as much profit out of you as possible; once I was able to make this distinction, things became a lot easier.

For example in Gui lin we met these two women that introduced themselves as sisters; they were not actually blood related, but in Chinese culture, it is common to refer to a good friend as a brother or sister. The older sister was actually an employee of the hotel; we had asked for a cab from the airport to the hotel and so she asked her sister to come pick us up. When they had arrived at the airport to pick us up, we were surprised to find that they had both come to pick us up. It was fairly late at night, and yet the two women came to pick us up. They charged us about 10 USD for a car ride that took nearly an hour and a half. They took us to the bank and then to the ticket counter to buy the tickets for the boat ride up Li Jiang, a creek that was recommended to us by a number of people. After getting our errands out of the way they asked if we were hungry, being a party of three guys, the likelihood of one of us being hungry was quite high, so the two brought us to the hotel first to drop off our stuff and then to a wonderful little restaurant called the Congee City of Gui Lin.

I can’t quite explain why the two ladies were so nice to us; paying 10 dollars isn’t enough in my mind to justify going out of their way to take us around and to find a place for us to eat. Perhaps I’m making too much of the situation, but either way I was really surprised to find them so willing to go out of their way to help us out.

One of the taxi cab drivers that I met a few days ago explained to me why Chinese people are nice to foreigners; he said that after all the people that foreigners meet inevitably end up as the sole representatives of the country thus those few representatives have to put on a good image so that others can have a good impression of the country. Though that might seem somewhat less sincere than saying that Chinese people are nice because they are simply nice people, I came to the conclusion that for me at least it doesn’t matter what their reason for being nice is—the fact that they are being nice to me is enough to give me a good impression of the place.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule: I’ve run into cab drivers that have driven me around in circles thinking that I wouldn’t notice. I guess it doesn’t matter where you go there will always be some rotten apples, but the abundant number of good ones more than make up for them.

I’m looking forward to understanding more about the place and the people here I guess deep down I do feel a strange sort of affinity to them; Perhaps it is because I am of Chinese ancestry or perhaps it is because I feel I can understand why they are the way they are, but either way I enjoy being here and interacting with the locals. Everybody is a character here.