Coming Home

It was a sort of slow realization. First the dustied window of a regular shop appeared, the words “laundry” in the window, with pale blue siding framing torn out Chinese paper and detergent. Then, a tattered book cover came into view, surrounded by others, old worn copies with tags sticking out of their middles like belly buttons on the top of their heads, displaying the author, title, and date of this edition. It was here, on the blue LCD screen of my personal TV on Cathay Pacific airlines on my return from China, that I got my first glimpse of home.
The sense was one not unlike when I was a child, pretending to sleep in the back of the car one of my parents would drive as we returned late at night from a trip. As we curved up the steep hill of my driveway I would watch the stars flicker overhead before pretending to be asleep again so that my father would carry me back into my home. I remember the way my bed felt when I sat on it the first time after living in China for a year, the way my body sank back into it, as if the silver stars painted on my walls responded in relaxing, as if they were awaiting my return.
I have mourned the loss of that house and those moments for years and now, I can finally say, that I have found another home. It consists of Roma and Bea and Frances running outside my room and the cobblestone streets outside my apartment building. It’s tied up in scattergories on my front porch and bottles of wine by the Hudson river. It is New York, and 338 west 12th street and I could not be happier to be returning, to my home.
It was hard to lie in these past few days. I’ve been lying all summer to people, telling them I am doing education work, telling them I merely have tutors and am studying Chinese, telling them (perhaps the worst lie of all) that I am merely a visitor for the Olympics. In the past weeks, however, as I said goodbye to the security guards, restaurant owners, illegal cab drivers and the like who composed my daily life, that I planned to return to China soon, that I would be looking for jobs here after I graduate and that I was only counting the days and moments until I could return. Which is, of course, not true.
I think there are many reasons why I did not find my central happiness this summer. I don’t like to say I was unhappy because I wasn’t but, it was certainly filled with more frustration, anger and dissatisfaction than I’ve found with my incredibly blessed life in New York. To start with may be the job itself. For those who did not know I was researching access to treatment for children living with HIV and AIDS this summer. I still haven’t processed it enough to be able to adequately write of the experience, and my over active body tenses up at the thought of tackling the task at the moment, let’s just call it the single most challenging, frustrating, defeating, depressing and inspiring job of my life. Least of all because it taught me so much of who I am and what it is I want, no, what I need to be doing with my life. And that need, at this time in my life does not, I fear, involve working on academic human rights issues in China. Though a report will be written which I will pour my heart into and changes may be made or, more likely, ignored, when I graduate in the spring of 2009 I hope and fervently wish and dream that I will continue my days walking by that dusty bookshop, stopping in once in a while to peek at the inscribed words written decades ago by a memory long since made.
Before I land, however, there are certain moments that I have held inside my mind that I hope not to forget which I hope to inscribe below so forgive me my last indulgence into keeping these moments from slipping beyond the grasp before my brain once again becomes packed with case law and let me send these moments into the void of cyberspace to be perused once and again, perhaps when I am in class.

One must start with the entire story of Ryan which is a blog post in and of itself. I shall post that soon.

Other moments:

At my school in Namu, children wait for me outside the second story of my school teacher dwelling. This especially occurs following the book ceremony where the money I raised so many years ago was finally put to good use. They sit in groups, fourth grade girls stuck in between childhood confidence and teenage embarrassment, ready with pens and notebooks, drawing to soak up the time I spend sleeping or reenergizing myself. The boys sometimes come, one is particularly loud and self aware, others act ashamed of seeing me in a too cool sense, rolling their eyes upward and looking off to the right when my host teacher asks them how long they were waiting for me. Before, when I lived here for a month, it was easier. The time was not so consolidated, the first few days were madness but the novelty of myself wore off. Now however, with new school children added to the old, the impromptu English classes and spur of the moment games and wushu classes literally turn into hundreds of students trying to engage themselves. Some are disruptive, purposefully mocking the way my voice sails high in the air when I get excited, kicking their neighbors when I lead wushu exercises. Others are overeager, barreling into me in waves of black-haired school children, bags and all. At one point a game of “fishy fishy cross my ocean” multiplies, like it’s own version of blob tag. Ten children turn into 20, 50, 100, 150, as word that teacher zhang is playing games in the lunchtime break weaves its way down the main road. Finally, there are too many children and I am too tired. “Who wants to run?” I ask. “ME!” shout nearly 50 kids, more boys than girls, and I am off. Running through the school gate in my white flip flops and long green skirt, making a left out of the paved school yard into the dirt road of Namu village, 75 eager kids dancing in my wake.


I am on a bus on the way to the support center for HIV positive women who are former Intravenous Drug Users (IDU) and current sex workers. I chose a back seat on the bus so I can open the window wide and let the wind toss my hair as I blast my ipod on a chosen playlist, jam packed with upbeat poppy songs I can release myself in as I reach the last week of my fieldwork which I am grateful for but which is exausting. A family comes to sit beside me in the back seat. A father, mother, aunt and two children. One 11 year old boy and his 4 month old baby sister. The boy sits next to me, nervous and shy. I ask him a question in Chinese, he turns smiling to his mother and doesn’t answer. I turn back out the window and discreetly mouth along to the music on deck. We make a pit stop and scores of women and young boys and girls hold high baskets filled with sweet smelling wine grapes up to our window. I open in and hands and baskets fly through the gap “3 kuai, green grapes, purples grapes.” I buy a bag and share it with the family. In between seed spits the boy points to my ipod and asks what it is. I hold up one earphone and place it into his right ear so we are each listening to one half and this is how we continue the trip, me and this boy listening to Miley Cyrus and Maroon Five as we roll through the highway cutting lines through the countryside.


Of course, there are others, the conversations with my illegal cabby who brought me to work most mornings, watching Micheal phelps win his seventh gold medal, cartwheeling with hip hop dance crews in the Olympic green, but these moments with these children are what I will miss most about this country and are what make this decision particularly guilty to face. There is a raw ability to form connections here, for those who are willing to take it, a conversation, a smile, an interaction which makes an imprint like a hot iron pushed to the skin. Of course it is because I am white and foreign and new and a novelty and have a certain lack of embarrassment, but it is there for the taking. I wonder if the same can happen in New York or if we are too jaded, too hardcore, too full of ourselves to allow those moments to exist and thrive. I wonder if I miss the experiences of New York and the long lasting connections and if those outweigh the adventures and challenges that lie in China. Sometimes I hate myself for feeling like I am giving up. Sometimes I love myself for knowing where I belong at the moment and what is right for me. And I shouldn’t dismiss my NY work, a place filled with so much injustice and inhumanity squeezed packed between its cracks it’s a wonder it hasn’t yet imploded, but knowing there are solutions here and that I can use them makes you feel bad you’re not continuing for those solutions to merely EXIST in a place where so many, maybe more, need them too.

For now, however, I need to allow myself to be in New York and be where I am. A place where the work is hard but I love the life which surrounds and supports it. And that, I now realize, is and important inextricable piece to the lives that we lead.

Ryan

My first thought as I entered into the room was “I have gotten off way too easy.” While I’ve spent the past two months traveling in China, AIDS in my backpocket, listening to stories, writing interviews, viewing medicines and staying in support centers, I hadn’t been confronted with the reality of the disease until this moment. We all see pictures of those with HIV/AIDS in the news, on TV, in the papers. Well, at least we used to decades ago, when the disease was on the brink of everyone’s minds and before it was forgotten in times passing. The children I’ve met with so far, their HIV positive parents, the youth taking daily doses of medication, while their hearts were breaking and the effects of the disease had no doubt ravaged their bodies, minds and hearts, their outward appearance was much like my own. Enough muscle on the bones, even complexion, some were even a little plump, surrounding their bodies with additional nutrients and padding with which to sit on a chair. Not Ryan. Ryan is thirteen but he looks like he is eight, his skin is darkened so he looks more middle eastern than Chinese. His arms are thin and fragile, I imagine taking my hands, my tiny hands which my piano teacher always criticized for being so small, and connecting my thumb with my middle finger to create a small circle. This boy’s arms, this 13 year old boys arms, could easily slide in between that circle without touching the sides of my fingers, as if I was a large jade bracelet to slip over his skin. The skin pulls at his body, like there’s not enough of it to cover the bones that are left of his remains. His chest is larger than you would expect, like a giant robot torso connected to little arms and legs, his father tells me he is better now than before he came, when his stomach pushed out so far that he couldn’t receive the piggy back rides from his father which is how he often gets around now.
Now that the treatment has worked, however, (though what worked means in a situation like this I have no idea) , he can once again receive the back of his father against his stomach, arms clasping his shoulders. This is how he walks through the latter half of tian an men square, the exertion of crossing the great plains front half being too much for his body to exert any more energy. I have hired a taxi to take Ryan, his father, and the NGO worker who introduced us, to take the four of us around Beijing, where Ryan has never been. What he has seen most so far is the blank white walls of his hospital room, possibly the green trimmed corridors as well as he moves through them to get dinner in the hospital or in nearby restaurants. We find an air conditioned taxi, I insist on a driver who doesn’t smoke even though both his father and the NGO worker, Nick, smoke a few cigarettes each throughout the day, and we are off.
Despite the new traffic regulations the roads are still horribly blocked today, as it is three days from the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic games. My tickets burning a guilty hole in my purse, I ask Ryan what events he likes the best, he shrugs and says he’s not that into sports. Throughout the day as I ask him questions both his father and Nick comment on how he’s not the same boy as he used to be. He used to be talkative and lively and now, well, his heart isn’t good. His father keeps a small thumbnail size photo of his son on his phone. It was taken two years ago and the boy is utterly unrecognizable, his skin is fair, his head round and pudgy, mouth open in a smile exactly proportionate to his face. There is no chance I would ever place these two boys as one in the same. That is not to say he is completely despondent, he smiles waving a Chinese flag that a college age student gives him, posing in front of the Olympic bird nest from across the road as he is too tired and dizzy from the stop-start car ride to the venues. Moments after the picture is taken the girls mother remarks, clicking her teeth at his father, “he’s so skinny.” The father waves her away and shoots back a look that reads, “thanks bitch, I couldn’t tell.”
The cameras keep clicking all day. We brought our own but it is clear that we are quite the scene in Tian an men square which is crammed with people, flowers, and giant billboard type sign displays welcoming the 2008 olympic games. People stare at the boy, at me and the boy, at our odd grouping. When him and I pose in front of the Disney sized “one world one dream” sign, a Chinese photographer steps in front of his father and clicks rapid fire shots of our faces. It is awkward and uncomfortable and I can’t imagine what it is like for the father himself. People think they boy is not being taken care of, that he is being starved, maybe some realize he is sick and is that better that they realize or worse that they continue to stare? I want to smash the cameras on the ground like I have seen so many do before in this square when images are being captured of what someone doesn’t like. I want to take the legs off of the healthy boys and girls and place them on Ryan, and to let him run through the giant expanse of space. After the photographer incident, we walk in awkward silence, I ask Ryan if he wants to see a trick, he says yes and I walk on my hands through tian an men square, trying to dissuade the tension and take so many eyes off this boy who only wants to see Beijing.
I think the hardest part about this is my utter feeling of helplessness in the situation. I’ve found myself snapping more in the past few weeks, becoming more frustrated at the smallest thing, feeling a tightening noose grip on my chest that won’t go away, the blood pumping through my body filled with electric lead. I’ve heard stories before, worked with clients who have been raped, been used as slaves, been locked in rooms, been kidnapped and held for ransom with a gun pointed to their head. I’ve had clients dissolve into gasping tears in my office, in the courtroom, they shake as they tell their stories, they look away, look down, or look at me as the recall the horrors of their lives which I only experience through their words. Nothing has affected me like this, perhaps, in part, because there’s nothing I can do. Though the law has many problems, a gratifying part of being a lawyer is being an agent of change. Someone is being barred from school? Let’s get them in. Your father is beating you up? Let’s trying switching custody. These are not full solutions or perfect answers but there is a visible change in what is occurring and in that change there is hope. Here, in this situation, there is nothing to do but to listen, to make the boy comfortable as we can, to hope the liquid being pushed into his veins from an IV is doing something, anything, to let this boy be a boy again. But there is no courtroom I can bring him to to make the government ask AIDS to please stop attacking his body, there is no remedy I can take to get him the medicines he needs or to reverse the time clock that gave him the disease in the first place.
The father lifts the boys pant legs up to his protruding hipbone to show my the gnarled scar, like knots in a wood, that twists up the boys leg. His foot is covered with pie crust like skin and he is missing three toes. It’s all from an accident he had when he was just over a year old, a large bottle of boiling hot water kept in the corner, a toddler unable to keep his balance, a burn across his entire body, a blood transfusion which, seven years later, produced AIDS that riddled the boys body. The transfusion occurred 11 years ago, 1997. Didn’t we know the risks by then? Wasn’t AIDS already a problem we had under control? For every moment the information lay somewhere else, in a book, in a file, another child was infected. He went on the medications five years ago, 2003, but all they had were adult meds which they had to break into pieces, getting the doses wrong, giving too much to his small body. Didn’t we have anything better by then? Hadn’t the worlds doctors come up with a child formula, one that wouldn’t push out his belly as if it contained a hard bowling ball in its center, one that didn’t bring him to a Beijing hospital where the stay has cost years of a salary made in rural China. Didn’t someone see this coming?
There are wonderful moments in this day of course. Riding in the back of the taxi cab, answering questions about America while asking the boy to tell me about his hometown. His smile when I find an American quarter for him in my pocket is only matched by those throughout the day whenever I call him “boss” or “president”. I say to him “today you are our boss, where shall we go next boss? What would you like for dinner boss?” He smiles each time through teeth too big for his emaciated face. I read the journal notes that I asked him to write for me (similar notes that I asked other children to write but were confiscated on Nick’s trip to Beijing) and my eyes well in tears as he draws pictures of children, “all sorts of children, watching tv, jumping rope, chatting with eachother.” The story explaining the pictures says that these children, “their lives are too wonderful.”
But I don’t want to end this story on a happy note, because it is not a happy one. At the end of the day, the boy will return to his hospital bed, his father will help him push his body to sit more comfortably upon it’s slanted cushion, and the father will have to look on, watching his son die, knowing there is really nothing that he is able to do for him until the world recognizes these problems more and does more to help. Not in terms of money but medication, not philanthropy but psychological assistance, the roots of the problem are inground further than the deepest pockets and though money helps to bring the chance, a different key must be turned to restore the fates of these children and their families.

Beijing Huanying Ni?

"Beijing Huanying ni" or "Beijing Welcomes you" one of the official slogans of the 2008 Beijing games, (which comes with its own song!) has been running around in my mind like a 2 year old with a crayon. When I got off the airplane, plastered across the gate to my building, embodied in five adorable little mascots (which kick the crap out of Izzy, Atlanta's idea of a theme), Beijing is telling the world it is welcome and ready for their arrival. I've been gone a month and the changes are many and yet few at the same time. The thick cloud of gray smog still hangs in the air, blocking out the power of the sun's rays as the once blinding orb becomes a perfect orange tinted circle hanging between buildings. The smog is punctuated, however, with brilliant banners flagging the message "one world, one dream". Teams of young people in blue volunteer t shirts crowd subway stations and man desks outside hotels, helping incoming tourists find their way around the chosen city. Older volunteers (in white t shirts, not blue) sit on sidewalks doing...well I am not quite sure what they are doing but rest assured they are here for the olympics as well. New subway lines have opened, new slogans are made, the same ads play on repeat on the large televised screen outside my gym. And the new safety measures of course. The hotel in which said gym is located is now surrounded on all sides, only enterable through a small gate guarded (albeit very cheerfully and friend-ily guarded) by a team of blue clothed volunteers with metal detectors. I write my name down, they check me for any explosives (aftermath of the kunming bombings or a plan all along?) and I am on my way to the whir and hum of treadmills. I was only 12 when I went to the olympics in Atlanta but for some reason I don't remember being frisked. My host sister and I had a conversation about the lines between liberty and safety and it's hard. What are you willing to not give up to possibly save your life? It seems like such a far time away from when I was here eight years ago, relishing in the factories being turned off, clear skies of blue, ready for the delegates to see the possible 2008 olympic city. I sat on the back of my friend Matt's bicycle, searching for campaign posters adorning the walls of the city, pedaling away from police who caught us pulling them down as mementos of what could be. The time is now 10 days away and there is breathless anticipation in the city that, likewise, doesn't seem to notice at all.

Namu 1

There is a box sitting to my left, a testament to when I was here three years ago. I know it was mine because it is a box for instant coffee, properly faded over time, and I am the only one in this village who drinks coffee in the morning, as I was teased and reminded as I bought a bag of instant mix this afternoon. It helps that I am sitting in the same room, in the same apartment, of the same family as I lived three years ago. Still, parts of me linger, which is simultaneously strange and exciting. In the faded red English words painted on an embroiderers door, or in the songs and games I taught to children they have now incorporated into their own, it’s if there are secret parts of me scattered all over the world, or China at least.
I could not be more pleased that I decided to return to Namu village and I cannot for the life of me remember why I was originally planning against it. If you have known me for long enough, or well enough, then you have heard of this glimpse of my life that beats stronger than almost any other time in my heart. Originally coming to do research and leaving permanently attached to this place, even if only in my heart, I have now returned for a few days to…what really? Originally, partly due to having a large sum of US dollars burning a hole in my bank account from the calendars I sold of the students here, raising money for the school before thinking of how I would actually send it to the village. Now, I realize, perhaps for one of the first times in my life, I am also coming back because this is a part of my life and I want to cultivate that aspect and see it grow within me. I say this because instead of just submerging myself into children’s games and teaching lessons, I instead spend time talking with old students, who have now reached my height, learning about their studies and their hopes and dreams as before, but now mapping the changes of their wishes as I take in their newfound heights and language acquisition. Many are too small to remember me, the strange Laowai that lived for a month in their Dai village, but the ones that do warm my heart and the visits become a cascade of memories I assumed had long been forgotten.
“Zhang Laoshi, do you remember when you took us to the river to sail the boats we made?”
“Do you remember the aiyi who taught you to dance?”
“Zhang laoshi, remember the girl who studied so well? She will now attend school in the city of Mangshi!”
And, of course, an endless supply of “Zhang laoshi, do you still remember me?”

And the amazing thing is I do, so much of it and so many memories come flooding back, I was actually able to tell the man who drove my, how to describe it, seatbelt powered open back wagon truck to the village how to get to the school, I remember pairs of siblings and whose family owns a nearby store. I notice that trees are missing and new houses are built, the color of the schools lining is no longer red and the blackboards have been replaced. This information amazes me as it does them, even if I can only remember small pieces of the small fraction of Dai I used to speak and am so awful with names that I am ashamed to try anyone’s at all. Some things I have forgotten, the way the smell of the row of pits making a bathroom wafts over the schoolyard at night, the dead heat of the evening, and the thick accents rendering much conversation impossible. And yet, it’s all there in some way or another.

So far my days have consisted of sleeping (I caught a cold, knowingly, on the overnight sleeper bus I took to Mangshi, choosing to get sick instead of inhaling stale cigarette and sweat air through the 14 hour ride), splashing through the water with two of my dearest students, being followed in packs of children under the age of seven, screaming and jumping when I take out my camera, little girls with little sisters strapped to their backs, turning away at the flash. While spending the evening with my Aiyi, one of the women who used to run the store by my school and with whom I would spend many a weekend riding a motor bike, I blew my nose and was immediately sat down by her friends, my shirt lifted up my back, my bra undone and was submitted to “gua sha” in a rather rudimentary form involving grasping and pinching my skin as if it was silly putty and rubbing my back with the grease induced bottom lip of a hairspray can. Six deep bruises adorn my right shoulder as I am told I will sleep better tonight than previously.
I have showered in a candle light room, the flickering light making the shapes of spiders on the wall glow and change their shape in size, the teacher whose house in which I stay, who I call my Namu Mother, has heated water for me to mix with the cool to pour over my body. It is skinner than before, they tell me, and my students insist my hair was prettier longer. These changes map a relationship, proving that this connection is not one merely induced by goodwill. I feel bad that I have more meal invitations than I can entertain, but I also slip into the warmth of knowing there are people here that I want to spend more time with, acknowledging my deeper relationship and ties.
I have been asked if I am married more times than I could possibly fathom. Though I am merely 24 I am told it was expected I would have been married with children by now. Everyone wants to see pictures of the husband who does not exist, of the children not yet born (or adopted), and I promise to send them as soon as it may be. I tease them that they may be waiting decades and they tease back that it is unacceptable for by then they will already be dead.
What would have happened if I hadn’t returned? Re-reading old journal entries stored thankfully on my computer (shoutout here to google desktop) I run across promises unkept to people laying scattered throughout China. I always try to mail pictures but I am told I didn’t send as many as I remembered, and I try not to promise what I know I cannot (or will not) deliver, telling the monk who said he hoped we’d meet again (in perhaps too friendly an insuation) that we shall see what the future may hold, but there are always the promises and words that slip away from you. The phrases spoken like money spent in starbucks, I will come back, I’ll see you again.
And is it now possible that I would never return? I have now learned of new lives, of marriages made and babies born. The kindergarteners with whom I used to converse with through translators and pictures now speak to me fluently about their hopes for the future and instead of being a one time apparition I have now come back, which, in itself promises to produce the same result in the future. Can I keep it? Can I not? Simeltaneously as I want to stay I am also itching to leave, wanting to continue with my research, with my life. Sad as it sounds I now know this could never be a full time calling, though in a larger sense it may be, and my old questions of working on the ground level rise up again. If they are not my life then, what is? Can the connections made in New York be deeper because there is more surrounding them, ie are my friendships brightened by language, school, internships and broadway’s glow? If so than what is real and more authentic? What came first, the love or the fulfillment?

Vacation!

hey guys!

Thanks for reading my blog! This is to let you know that I am going on an extended vacation through August so it's Bye- Bye Beijing for now. Which also means, Bye Bye extended use of internet which also means, tear tear, bye bye blog (for now!)

Catch you all when I'm back from my travels in September!

love,

Lanlan

On Love

On Love

6-25-08

I am beginning to realize that this blog is becoming less and less about lanlan in Beijing and more and more about lanlan trips over the big questions of life. And so it goes, allow me to continue in this vein.

I just finished reading The Time Traveler’s Wife for the third time. I was standing in Wangfujing, Beijing’s notorious shopping district, despondent at my inability to find a special type of alarm clock to send children I am working on a project with. I had been trekking around Beijing for the past week, peeking in Walmart’s, tourist shops, pharmacies and the like. One was finally shown to me and I was told it was not for sale, I could receive it only as a gift….if I spent over 1000 kuai in the store.

Sadly, I escalatored to the fourth floor of Xinhua bookstore, paved with five shelves of “imported books”, none of which are categorized in any meaningful sense. I had no idea what I was looking for, perhaps The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, recommended by a professor. My hands slid past old favorites, The Red Tent, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Harry Potter boxed sets. My eyes stopped at the vision of two girls stocking feet next to a thermos and carefully folded clothes which had traveled through my mind when an old warmth mentioned reading it as well. The Time Traveler’s Wife it is. Again.

I’ve tried to make the book last over these past few days, interspersing it with Babbit, a 20^th century find. I cleverly didn’t let myself read it before 11pm, instead I’ve just been up until 2. Tonight, after returning from a UN themegroup meeting, I curled up and dived back into the glorious life of the Detambles. (Sidenote, I hear this movie is coming out in America. DO NOT under any circumstances see it unless you want one of the most moving literary moments of your life taken away. I cherish every emotion I feel while reading this book. Don’t let one of life’s delicious pleasures be spoiled by Hollywood.)

Through the tears the last 100 or so pages inspire, wrought with their beauty and despair, I could not, of course, think of anything but love. Why do we cry at love stories? I wonder. Is it because they come to an end? Are we afraid to lose the love we know we will find? For some it is so. For me, I think I am more afraid that that love does not exist, or that it does and I won’t recognize it, or it won’t recognize me. Or that I had it in my dizzying delicious reckless swirl of life-threatening love I experienced at the age of 14. And that was my love.

I think that, ever since my parents got divorced, I am afraid of falling out of love. I am afraid that what was once my picture of what love was meant to be, my source of reality outside of the fiction of Disney and picture books, ended up just being another story I was told. When that adolescent love and I both met many years later, at 19 or 20, I remember the two of us hugging each other, holding onto that feeling which had once existed. He looked at me, sadly, in despair, knowing that our love was gone and where did it go and if it was gone was it real?

I am afraid of people falling out of love with me. That I will somehow provoke it and cause it, that it will be my fault. I put men through hell when they are first with me to see if they can take it, if they will be able to stand me at my worst, demanding, full of expectations, pushing hard. I’ve decided to have a new approach to this, in love, with friends, in work. Clearly my mind will never shut off and continue to imagine new scenarios and possibilities, I’ve taken to writing them down, to allow my imagination to exist and grow in a fictional world so I can more fully live in the present.

And what is my present?

Like everyone, I am afraid of being hurt in love. And yet, then I am afraid not to be. I relish in heartache and hold onto the tears discarded from a love story like stuffed animals in my childhood. An ex-boyfriend once asked me if I would become jaded in New York. Surprisingly, that has not yet happened, instead, I feel more aware of New York and of life than I ever have before. The cooexisting forces of rich and poor, the perfume of women walking in SOHO juxtaposed with garbage cans long past their pickup date. Music opening from a broadway stage intermingling with the loud honks of 7^th avenue horns. I wonder if love works the same way, if the love I feel and have felt has allowed me to store it up inside of me, making each encounter that much more intense, each glimpse of love burning that much more bright. But I am unsure. Could pain work the same way? Do we feel it more acutely as we grow older or does it begin to wash over us and we become used to its flow, as the sand surely comes to expect the cool rush of wind over a wet receding tide. I fear the pain yet I fear it’s absence. For once I no longer feel hurt, that is the time I will no longer feel love. If we prepare ourselves for the worst it seems impossible that we could see the best. If we no longer feel the pain, I don’t see how we can experience the love.

So do I seek out pain to ensure myself that the nerve endings are still functional? Do I seek out love to find if it is real? Sometimes I feel as if I am looking everywhere, searching unlit coffee shops, friends of friends, the blank wooden tables of my lawschool and dusty offices of NGO’s. Peeking around corners, wondering if this is it, if this could be it, and wondering what it could be. Some say I am boy crazy, I keep lost loves, old stories, emails, exchanges, tucked into my soul as they are in my laptop. I think perhaps I am love crazy, waiting in excited, dizzying, breathtaking anticipation, for what could be.

Faith in Humanity

restored. (click on it!)

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

And It’s Getting Harder and Harder to Breath.

The tears choking up my throat, halting my breath and streaming in halted gulps. I reach for my phone (skype) and call the one person who can calm me down and bring faith back into my worldview, Holly Dranginis.

It all started with my friend from Lijiang from a few years back. Currently working at Pfizer, we shared a lovely and insightful drink last Monday and discussed corporate responsibility, my work, and ways to make small changes on a large corporate scale. I walked away renewed, hopeful and excited for the changes our generation can make. From calculating global carbon footprints and sponsoring office contests to see who can make theirs a little less wide, to donating part of ones per diem food arrangement to a local charity in the country they are staying. That conversation inspired my “thank you” post from earlier this week. The events of last night inspired the full 180.

This morning, as I walked out to my taxi to work. I brought a bag of garbage full of watermelon rinds, eggplant scraps and popsicle sticks just as the man who was collecting the trash, putting everyone’s remains into the open back of a large container behind the bicycle he pulled in front. The man called to me, in English, “good morning! Please leave your trash in the back!”. He smiled widely, revealing that most of his teeth were missing and his shirt and pants, both many sizes too large, were covered with stains of splashes of the garbage he collects. I told him his English was good, “I practice every day!” he exclaimed through the smile. “So that I can get better and better.”

Last week, I met a taxi driver who I helped go over English phrases from his textbook in the car. On my way back from Harbin, a train attendant asked me to check (ok well actually to do) her homework assignment for a class. Everyone, it seems, wants to learn. It’s as if there is a cultural gold rush and English is the attainable material that will bring riches if one can only focus hard enough to attain it. And what is possible for them to achieve?

Well, if you make your way to a top American company, a hell of a lot.

I will admit that I was partially relieved to be out of New York this summer. 2L summer year means that most of the people I go to law school with are working at large firms, some finally embarking on paths full of the legal research they truly love. Most of which will be lavished with goods, four course dinners at five star restaurants, bottle service at the hottest night clubs, baseball tickets and all expense paid vacations. I am excited for those who are receiving pay off for their hard work, I get a $300 travel expense account for the summer which makes my upcoming trips much more feasible, but I wonder how much excess is being wasted and if it is truly acknowledged.

I met up with the friend mentioned above last night and a few of his friends who work for the same pharmaceutical company, at a bar in Beijing. Surrounded by foreigners we made our way out to the roof deck where, on one side lights flashed exclaiming Beijing’s newfound riches and, on the other, a dirtied, tightly packed apartment building overlooked our rooftop terrace. A man stood taking pictures of the structure. A friend of my friends, wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“Uh, who would ever want to take a picture of THAT ugly building.”

As the conversation lead on that evening we talked about donating drugs to third world countries.

“Like, it’s sad that people are dying, but you can’t just expect a country to give drugs when there are no copywrite laws and they could just be manufactured everywhere without giving any profit to the company. Like, we make a lot of money but what people don’t realize is it COSTS a lot of money, and someone’s gotta pay for it.”

Someone also has to pay for the five star hotel in which corporate people are living,

“Thank god we just moved, we were at the Sheraton and maybe it was a five star hotel years ago but not so much anymore.”

Someone also has to pay for the sixty dollar per diem expense account each person receives. Which is half of what I live off of in an entire week in New York City and a fifth of what some Chinese villagers make in a YEAR of work.

I’m not arguing that people shouldn’t be rewarded for the work they do. My coworker in Beijing tells me I have to accept that people won’t come to China and do this work unless they are allowed to live in luxury.

My response? Fine, don’t come to China. Or do and live in luxury but live in it in moderation. Or appreciate it and don’t go whining to others about how your masseuse wans’t perfect or the shots that your hotel gives out for free aren’t up to your New York standard.

Later that night, they revealed how they had spent the night in Hooters, because they “wanted wings”. Hooters in China has had issues because the women aren’t culturally trained to stand up for themselves as much and to resist the advances of groping foreigners living out their fetishes in a legal way when they can say it was just for the food. I talked about exploitation and, another friend of mine, states, disgusted,

“Oh please, those girls know exactly what they are doing? You don’t think that they know? They’re using us just as much as we are using them. Come on, I’d love to live half as well as those girls.”

Notice how he uses girls to talk about women in the twenties. Notice how this is a man who is all-expenses paid to fly around the world, stay in five star hotels and, as he put it, “basically party every night of the week, put in a few hours on Thursday or Friday, make sure everyone is doing what they are supposed to be and head back out to the bar.”

Yes, you’re life sounds so much worse than the women who have to be groped to make a living. Small disclaimer, I am all for having the “female empowerment” conversation about Hooters, Stripping, prostitution, what have you. Just not with this guy who throws the words around to justify staring at Chinese women with larger breasts.

As I walked back to my apartment after having to remove myself from the conversation, trash was littered all around the waste receptacles and I thought of the man who would have to pick them up the next day. The man who wants to learn English so he can be more like us and talk to the foreigners in his country. The people, all the world over, who are working and striving for a better life, who believe it can happen and see it as attainable. And I wonder if it is when the group I met above are the people controlling the world’s companies, the world’s resources, medicine supplies, food and clothing. I think they would laugh at this man’s smile and the gap between his teeth.

Holly, my one comfort as I sat crying on my floor, wracked with guilt and uncertainty, afraid I was one of them too for my drinks and hamburgers and cab rides, tells me that things will be different in the future. That our generation has been screwed over by eight years of Bush and cynicism, of disrespect and American self-righteousness. That people will begin to wake up and corporations will have to be more civically responsible. I hope so. It all seems so easy, little choices in your daily life that can make a difference. Donating five of your per diem dollars to buy an alarm clock to tell a child living with HIV/AIDS when to take her medication, using frequent flier miles accrued while traveling the world for free to help war victims visit their homes. And it doesn’t have to be all about charity either, companies can publish these actions they take and I’ll be more likely to buy their products. I know I have a lot more respect, and say so often, for the firms that donate to Public Interest law school events. (Special thanks to Skadden who, again and again, impress me with their giving skills!)

I cry knowing that I am part of the problem, I cry more knowing that others don’t see a problem where they clearly exist. I wonder if those are the self-imposed blinders that make them able to lead the life they do. Someone once called me “extraordinarily sensitive.” I am incredibly grateful that I am still able to feel.

Holly says that it will be better, if not for our kids than their kids. Maybe American economy falling won’t be such a bad thing, if it teaches us all a little more about moderation, humility, and how to live in a world where you’re not always handed everything on a silver plate.

Maybe it will teach us to work just as hard as the man who collected my garbage, on bettering ourselves, and the world.

Thanks, (and maybe some cheese)

This is my post to say thank you.

So as many (ok a few) of you may know last night was the Tony’s and in my “I miss New York” phase realizing how much broadway I was missing had me looking up the performances on youtube, which came to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWw53LN54Qs

Needless to say, I was in tears watching the Original Broadway Cast of Rent perform in the final Tony year before they close. (Coincidentally I just reviewed the movie for my office’s monthly magazine!) Anyways, a movie about love and life and friendship, added with homesickness, plus seeing old great friends in my new city? Well, just deal with this little thank you note to the amazing ones in my life.

Thanks to those friends who have taught me about love through seeing their relationships form and blossom, those who have taught me to love myself through loving me, and for those who share my love for life.

To those who play ball with me in the courtyard, indulge me in cartwheel lessons on a beach, for the friends who share a bottle of wine by the Hudson river and who are more than willing to steal off to spend a day in the park with a pair of kids (myself included in the definition of kids). Who talk late into the night over bottles of pope wine and share bowls of noodles. Who laugh, who tease, who tickle, who poke. Thanks to those who make silly noises on my answering machines, who live in places all over the world and show me their new homes, who rush with me to a broadway show and who indulge me in hugs in an early morning class.

It’s amazing to get to the point in life where you feel (somewhat) grownup and can look around you and feel honestly excited and proud of what people around you are doing. I can’t imagine being more thrilled by the lives surrounding me, my friends working across the country for what they are passionate about, fighting for rights and rules and justice and keeping their hearts, their minds, themselves as they go along. Who still understand the importance of play time at night and camping on the beach. To my friends creating art, creating theater, dance and written words, whose lives themselves are a creation and who inspire others. To those who follow where they know their minds lead, who inspire me with their love of their work. To my friends who enter the world with (not) reckless abandon but a strong knowing of their purpose and ability to effect change across the world.

And then there are the ones with whom I share incredible moments and conversations, who I can call in tears at 3am, who I can indulge on the meaning of human rights abroad, on going to law school, on the meaning of feminism. The friends who teach me, encourage me and make me believe in resistance, to those who help me learn the nuances of making my way through this world.

To those who share my life in China, or in New York. Who I connect with every week or every few years. To those who know the wavelengths of my heart and who follow with questions, with words, with cheers, and, most importantly, with the example that their own lives have lead.

Thank you to you all,

Love,

Lanlan

Balancing

I am currently sitting comfortably, if not a bit chill-illy (gotta love AC!) in the starbucks about a 15 minute walk from my apartment. Since my last post I’ve shared dinner and a show with my Chinese host family from 8 years ago checked out Chinese vegetarian restaurants, chopped all my hair off (ok that was last week but I wasn’t sure if I had posted it) and finally gotten to see the spectacular if ominous Olympic buildings, eaten at a south African restaurant where I saw a kid I used to babysit rock out fantastically in a duet concert and made my first appearance on the Beijing nightclub scene, which is, I am beginning to realize, the most frequented of all scenes for expats living here. But alas, that scene will never be for me, regardless of what country I am in. Someone back home go to Wicked Willie’s at 4pm and order a four dollar white Russian for me, will you? J

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was painfully missing New York right now. Well, perhaps painfully isn’t the correct word, I am still enjoying my time here but it’s hard knowing how amazing NY is in the summer and feeling like I am giving one of those magical incredible times up. Beijing is great but it’s not a walking around city, it’s not a walk on the grass in your barefeet city and it’s certainly not a catch a broadway show city. I hate to talk about the pollution but most everyday is wrapped in a gray package and I am excited when I can see half a mile down a road near my house. New York, my friends, has it all and I am willing to fight to the death on this point. I feel a little bit like I’m in a relationship after my first great love, it’s all good and everything, but it’s hard knowing what you COULD be having. Though, it’s great to realize that I wasn’t just chosing that life because it was there, and that I didn’t know/experience anything else. It just truly IS the life I love to lead at the moment.

Additionally, exciting things keep on happening in my life back in New York. Two of my former client’s have their greencard interviews next week and I am sad I am missing that though excited they email me to keep me updated on their lives. Also, I am very excited about the publication and release of a report that I helped collect the data for is finally coming out on Monday, more to be posted then. So, while I struggle with being an “academic” and sitting doing research and meeting with activists in Beijing, the impacts of my work in New York are occurring. Don’t get me wrong, again I love China as well and this summer is a growing one, an informative one, even if it may end up partially being a final one. Haha, probably when I come back to NY in the fall and my report from this summer is published I’ll be feeling the same way, only in reverse. I imagine that’s got to be a hard part of constantly traveling around, you never get to see the effects of the wake you leave. Though, perhaps that’s what also allows us to travel, we never see the destruction either.

So my big question for this week (and no I haven’t gotten to it yet, kudos to you for getting this far if you’re still with me though!) is how much of culture do we accept because it is culture and how much do we stand up to because you know it is wrong. (let the conversation about what wrong and right is begin.) I got to thinking of this when I was out to lunch with my adorable coworkers (our whole office jumps ship at 12 15 everyday and we go to lunch in a big Chinese/Laowai group) and there were two men, clearly very very drunk, at the table next to us. One came up to me, tried to touch my arm, was talking loudly about how Americans are great, the stink of alcohol on his breath, after my coworker told him to leave he stared at me the whole meal, making obnoxious gestures while the people at another table wondered loudly, in Mandarin, what “us foreigners” were doing at such a restaurant. I should note this is not at all the norm, most of the time I feel openly welcomed into this country (if there is constantly the noted acknowledgement that I am different). I, unsurprisingly, got pissed at the man, and at the people at the table behind us questioning why I should bother to be in “their” country, and wanted to leave. Then, I felt guilty about leaving! Guilty because I told myself that they were right, that I was asking for it by being in their country, that it wasn’t my place and thus, I should take whatever is thrown my way.

Now, could you imagine me telling one of my clients in America that if an American treated them this way they should just get over it because they knew they would be the outsiders as they immigrated to “my” country. Of course not. So is there an inherent difference because I am from a developed country and am in a developing country? Or, is saying that there is a difference just a way to perpetuate patriarchy because only “western values” are against it. (Because clearly, we do such a good job resisting patriarchy, note my sarcasm and note this fantastic article http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/woman-in-charge-women-who-charge/?em&ex=1212984000&en=79e45b084c96a44c&ei=5087_)

There’s a great line in the Asian Charter on HR which states,

“cultural traditions affect the way in which a society organizes relationships within itself but they do not detract from the universalism of rights which are primarily concerned with the relationship of citizens with the state and the inherent dignity of persons and groups.”

I like that. That, to me, makes sense.

Next week’s topic: what the heck ARE the universal rights? And how do we know what is and what is not?

Conference in the North

Hello all!

As discussed in my last post, this past weekend I attended a conference bringing together gressroots organizations working on this issue from all over the country. I think the set up of it was so fantastic, such a wonderful idea for capacity building, that I had to share how it was set up.

This one Chinese NGO received a grant from an international org to fund grassroots orgs’ projects working to solve specific issues. The man leading the Chinese NGO solicited applications from grassroots orgs, he received 60 applications and project proposals which was then whittled down to 24 groups invited to attend the conference. Each org then got five minutes to present their proposal to a group of five specialists in the field and in fundraising. This was followed by a 15 minute question and answer period from the judges and audience, after which the judge’s gave a score and explained why they gave that score and how the organization could improve in the future. In the end, the top 6 orgs got full funding and another 4 (rounding out the top ten) got partial funding.

I thought this was such a cool way to distribute funds. Orgs then understood why they did or did not improve the funding, got positive feedback, could meet and connect with other orgs working on similar issues and really feel a part of the process (I just wish they let the audience vote and average that vote into the judges!) I especially loved this as I enter the fellowship rounds of law school and know I’ll get rejected from some (hopefully not all!) and also know I will receive virtually no feedback as to why (ah, the joys of law school).

The conference itself was great, I made a lot of contacts and it looks like I’ll be traveling more than expected this summer, also a good thing even if I couldn’t make myself sleep in the swank soft sleeper train Josh and I took back from Harbin to Beijing!

Also, Harbin = much cooler than expected. We were there over the dragon boat festival and on Saturday night the streets were flooded, FLOODED, with people. I have never seen so many people in my entire life! Literally every square inch was filled with bobbing black-haired heads, waves and waves of people. Along the way people were selling light up devil hairbands and twirling florescent glow sticks, blow up hammers and “I heart China” T-shirts. They were all headed to stairs leading down to the river, where paper lanterns were lit with fire as they floated up and into the sky. It was a gorgeous, unexpected evening. I now have a bracelet on my wrist I was told I cannot remove until it rains to remember it by…until it rains….

The next night, before boarding the train, we spent our time visiting the Russian (yes Russian, Harbin is only 4 hours away from the country) cathedral in Harbin. The city was full of lights, sort of how I would imagine Las Vegas to be, perhaps to a slightly smaller degree, and it was uncanny seeing Chinese people playing badminton in a large European-ish square, backdropped by this Russian church!

All in all, a successful, lovely weekend!

Train Travels

Train travels

I am currently sitting on a train to Harbin as Josh (my partner in crime if you will) and I are traveling to a conference for the weekend. Unfortunately, as this weekend is the dragon boat festival and thus a peak time for travel, we were unable to buy tickets to get us to the conference before it started, so we’ll be arriving midday and will only get to experience one full day of the event. Regardless, however, I am sure it will be a useful experience which I hope to write more about after it is over (perhaps on my 8 hour trainride back!)

I actually love traveling by train through China, (if only I could learn how to block out the noisy humanity around me, cell phones and coughing and spitting and snoring, one never realizes the peace and quiet having money and living in America can buy, oh well, one lesson at I time). I relish peering out the window, seeing the world creep by. Today is nesteld into a deep fog which makes even the closest hills mere smuges on the canvas. It’s mainly fields, as most of China is, despite what the bustling metropolitan images show you, dotted every now and then with lone figures working over them. It’s Saturday so there are child figures with their parents and lone motorcycles on the dirt paths between crops. The uniformity amazes me even now when the Chinese experience has become more normalized in my mind, rigid rows of cabbage and trees, meticulously covering every bit of workable land. I think of how many plants grew into my mushroom and green vegetable dinner last night.

I just finished “Mountains Beyond Mountains” about, as the jacket describes, “The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World.” I have a feeling that the protagonist may not like the way that sentence describes him and, even if it’s correct, it’s not what I got from this beautiful moving book. If anything, it’s about, as the doctor himself calls it, “a long defeat.” He says the following:

“You know, people from our background – like you, like most PIH-ers like me – we’re used to being on a victory team, and actually what we’re really trying to do in PIH (Partners in Health, the org he founded) is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat”

The books is inspiring not only because of its topic, fighting disease in the poor around the world, or its hero, the ringleader of the long defeat himself, but because it brings warmth and comfort and love and hope for everyone else engaged in a fight. Not saying that my work with undocumented immigrant kids, with children fighting disease, with those caught up in the criminal system, is the same as saving lives in Haiti, but I don’t think I had noticed the parallels that run between the age old professions of doctors and lawyers before reading this book. And for every encounter with a suited man, laughing at your client’s inability to go to school, for every fellow student asking why you don’t take the money and life awaiting just an interview away, for every person whose eyes turn down, who pat you on the head and who say in a condescending voice, “oh that’s so good of you,” it’s nice to know there are Paul Farmers in the world who understand you and inspire you to move forwards.

I just realized this may sound like I am comparing myself to this incredible man which I am not attempting to do (even I’m not that self-important) but I do think there are similar and interconnected struggles involved in working with disadvantaged people regardless of the context and the book was especially inspiring and enlightening in this regard. Especially as I consider in my life what I want to use it for and I am constantly curious as to why people make the choices that they do (or do not.)

It’s also the first book in a long time, possibly the first in years, that made me think in that wonderful question what you thought you knew sort of way.

Here are some more thoughts and choice quotes that I found exceedingly refreshing/ thought provoking/ insightful:

Paul Farmer : “If you’re making sacrifices, unless you’re automatically following some rule, it stands to reason that you’re trying to lessen some psychic discomfort. So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don’t have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence. I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can’t buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that because you should feel ambivalent.”

Tracy Kidder, author, after teasing Farmer for being moved by a banner reading “the only real nation is humanity.” “ Among a coward’s weaponds, cynicism is the nastiest of all.”

“In his mind, he was fighting all poverty all the time, an endeavor full of difficulties and inevitable failures. For him, the reward was inward clarity, and the price perpetual anger or, at best, discomfort with the world, not always on the surface but always there.”

Paul Farmer. “Look, I’m very proud to be American. I have many opportunities because I’m American. I can travel freely throughout the world, I can start projects, but that’s called privilege, not democracy.”

Jim, a colleague of Paul’s, on people saying they want to be like Paul. “Paul is a model of what should be done. Let’s celebrate him. Let’s make sure people are inspired by him. But we can’t say anybody should or could be just like him. Because if the poor have to wait for a lot of people like Paul to come along before they get good health care, they are totally fucked.”

For all those actually curious about China out there, (if there is anyone reading this, if not it’s a lovely way for me to cataloge my thoughts) I apologize this blog has focused on my own thoughts while I am here rather than the being here itself. Don’t worry, later commentaries are sure to come. J

Thanks for tuning in, read Mountains Beyond Mountains, and I’ll talk again soon! And please, if you’d like to engage in a conversation about this, I would love it. Blogging is wonderful but also forms a lonely, one sided conversation.

And….I’ve stopped counting the days: “Living” in Beijing

Apologies if this is a bit scattered, it includes topics I will certainly be exploring for awhile. Also, if you’re reading, feel free to leave a comment!  It’s my way of knowing people are reading as I can’t do any number count (a lot of the blog sites are actually blocked here and I am going through a proxy server!)

Since I’ve arrived people keep asking me what I am going to “do” while I am here. Am I going to travel around China? Will I visit all the sights? (Tian an men, Forbidden City, etc.)

The answer, honestly, is probably not. Though I do plan on traveling for work to Yunnan province in late June/ early July and I will undoubtedly run into tian an men square as I hear there is an amazing rooftop bar near the forbidden city, I’m not aiming to make this summer that of years past, meaning literally soaking up every Chinese thing I can possibly do.

This may touch on something mentioned in my first blog entry but this summer I am going to try and “live” in China, meaning carrying out life as I normally would, simply doing so in Beijing. But I have so much guilt surrounding this that it is difficult to write down or even admit that this is what I want to do.

There are a variety of reasons for feeling this way, and for the guilt it inspires. A favorite line of the director of my high school program was that we didn’t “undermine our SYA (the name of the program) experience.” Granted, I probably took this to an extreme, as I do most things, biking to school when I was sick to be sent home in a taxi because I couldn’t sit through class. But I think that part of the lessons were incredibly valuable. There are so many lives that are lived here which simply are an uprooted version of that in America or other countries in the world. Housewives with drivers who relish in the fact that they spend their hours getting massages and playing golf (I kid you not, we went to see a theater performance last night and one women’s bio read along these lines and I cannot even write them or I will throw up on my computer), speaking mainly in English, eating only foreign food. I don’t mean to judge (ok ok I do) but I want to ask sometimes “what on earth are you doing in China?!” Not so much in what sort of work are you doing (the number of foreign companies here is truly astonishing) but why are you choosing to do this in China, be American in China, be Australian in China? Granted, the lifestyle is cheaper, you are the upper upper class of society, but it just doesn’t sit right with me.

I think that part of this also comes from visiting Indonesia this past March (and various other countries throughout my life) and seeing the same pattern of western bodies being attended to (literally, on the beaches of Bali, with umbrellas, ukulele’s, manicure sets, incense and massage hands) by hands of citizens of the countries they are visited. (Again, I definitely engaged in massages while I was in Indonesia, just not on the beach while having my eyebrows plucked and ordering a man to sing next to me, does this make it different? I don’t know). The sights made me weary but then again, I think who am I to look down on something that brings people in poverty income? But then again, if this is the only source of income for these people what does that say? If you can only wait on white people to make money, than we’re perpetuating the role of those in power and the servers of that power. What happens when the tourists leave?

When I brought up these arguments to people in Namu village and Lijiang, where I lived and studied and ultimately wrote about some of these issues in my thesis people would say things like “well sure the children all want to dance for/paint pictures for/be tour guides for the tourists, that’s how they make money! That may cause a problem down the road, but what are we supposed to do about that now?”

Ah, the “ need of the now” v “ repercussion on the future” argument, very difficult to deal with in any setting, heck I still haven’t figured out the answers to it in terms of immigration after working on it for a year (and probably won’t in the next decade or so).

So here I am dealing with my own now v future dilemmas, albeit in smaller sectors than the future of the economy of a developing town. Here I am making some of these same choices and decisions as the Laowai I’ve judged (and still am) in the past. I’ve already gone out for “foreign” food twice since arriving and I have been a prisoner in my own apartment for the past three hours, unable to take a shower, because we have a woman who has come to clean, and I am currently debating spending what is a (Chinese) ridiculous amount on a membership to a nearby gym.

Am I the world’s biggest hypocrite? Quite possibly. Though my Chinese NGO working status may give me some leeway in the guilt game, what really separates me from the Laowai taitai (foreign wives) if I chose to spend a large part of my time in Beijing merely living life as I would in America. (and let’s face it, much better than I live in America, it’s much more rare there that I can afford going out to dinner multiple nights a week or even take a cab in New York City). But then again, where does the guilt really get you? If I am happier eating pizza one night and that means I am less stressed at work the next day and can learn more characters or be more involved in a meeting than is it a benefit? And am I really so shallow to feel guilty about what I EAT, believing that that of all things actually matters?


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I just got back from exploring modern art galleries with a group of expats connected through an old college friend. We took a cab and viewed art only a small percentage of Chinese will ever see. But they speak Chinese, they work at NGO’s, restoring Hutongs or introducing Chinese art to the world, they organize benefits to fund the earthquake (trendy here now but still). Maybe it’s possible to operate between the two extremes and be of use somehow to yourself and to a greater picture.

I guess this summer is my time to figure that all out.

Day Two: Up and Running?

Day Two: Up and Running?

Today begins my first full day in Beijing and the true beginning of my summer spent here. I got over the initial jetlag surprisingly well (fingers crossed) waking up at 5am momentarily before sleeping again until 8. Not bad! My rule when traveling is that I am only allowed to sleep on the plane when I would be sleeping in my destination country and though it’s not a perfect science, it’s served me pretty well so far.

First thing, after I went grocery shopping, was going to the police station to “register” me with the local police. The government has begun to really crack down on foreignors staying beyond their visas here which has made for heightened security everywhere. My roommate awoke to the PSB (local police) knocking on her door yesterday morning. Better safe then sorry. I am now a registered temporary resident of Beijing.

Work began today as well. I am in a lovely little area near enough by subway ride (or bike perhaps?) to my apartment and everyone I have met so far is lovely and warm and inviting. Most everyone is a young 20-something and I cannot wait to get to know them, their backgrounds and their ideals better. I spent most of the afternoon “reading” documents for my research and I put reading in quotations because it is beyond difficult to read anything in Chinese if you don’t recognize the characters you are working with. As you can imagine, I am dealing with some pretty specific terminology (not to mention a little jetlag and a cold kindly given from the man in the seat next to me on the airplane) so it took me most of the afternoon to get through an embarrassingly small amount of type. Let me try to explain to you all how one looks up a Chinese character, I will try to be brief and feel free to skip over the next paragraph.

Step one: Realize you don’t actually know the character you see. This sounds easier than it is as many characters look painstakingly similar. I often waste a few minutes looking up characters I think I know only to realize that the dot is a line.

Step two: Find the radical. The radical is the part of the character which is the root of the word itself, there’s really no good explanation for this in English but think the “ed” in indoctrinated. There are over 150 radicals and some characters have a few but they are only listed under one. Good luck.

Step three: Count how many strokes are in the radical.

Step four: Look up the radical based upon the number of strokes. Once you have found your radical you will be given a number assigned to that radical. Go to that section of the dictionary

Step five: Count the number of strokes in the character MINUS the number of strokes in the radical.

Step six: Look under the number of strokes section under the number of your radical. Here you will find the pinyin (Romanization) of your character.

Step seven: Find the character, alphabetically listed and then listed by tone, in the dictionary.

Step eight: Read the English meaning and decide which of the 5 or so options best applies in your case.

Repeat these steps a few hundred times, add in extra confusion for names of places and people and figuring out which characters go together (imagineallwordswrittenlikethisandyoudon’tknowwhereoneendsandanotherbegins) and you’ve got my afternoon.

After work I walked to meet a friend of mine from the program I did here in High School. It is crazy how little I remember of Beijing. I used to bike from my home to school every day for nine straight months and I could not for the life of me tell you how to go any longer. Aside from the fact that the streets are demolished and none of the sight signs exist any longer. Cute cafes, design stores and English signs litter the streets along with HORDES of Laowai (the sorta slang for foreignors word that is used by Chinese in America to basically mean whitey, think gringo in Spanish). Hordes may be exaggerating but I saw at least a dozen today just in my walk, this may not seem surprising but it really was shocking back in the day to see a laowai anywhere outside of jiangoumen (the place where the aforementioned starbucks resided) back in the day. I swear I stare at them more than Chinese people do now. On that note, I am beyond impressed with the expat scene here, especially by what some of my friends are doing, one has opened up a chain of bar/pizza lounges that is expansive, delicious and clearly popular, another just got picked up by a corporation to travel around with a Chinese band, documenting the experience and recently published a book of photographs of the Chinese music scene. It’s nice to look around at your life and think that those who you’ve interacted with are active participants in the world which surrounds you.

And on that note my jetlag just seriously kicked in and I am headed to bed. I am currently reading “Mountains beyond Mountains” which I insist anyone looking for a summer read picks up. I’ve been bugged to read it for a couple years now but ignored those voices (as I so often do) because I feared it would be preachy. It’s actually remarkably engrossing and thought provoking, honest and delightful. Just in case you need something to do when you’re done reading my blog ;)

Day One

And we’re back.

Current soundtrack: Garden State

Here are the two different emotions I felt as my plane from Hong Kong made its descent to Beijing, falling from blue skies into a distinct brown dust surrounding the plane, as clearly separated from the cleaner air as oil and water.

1) AHHHHHHHHHH TURN AROUND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2) Mmmmm, mmmm Good. Warm blankets and Campbell soup.

When I was 17, after returning from living in Beijing for the better part of a year, I declared that I would one day become a citizen of the country. Perhaps it was partially for the shock value but there was a definite part of me that felt oddly at home in Beijing, a place where I rode my purple shiny (five times stolen) bike to school and felt guilty if I sipped on mocha frappicinos on the one coveted starbucks in jiangoumen, the main Laowai district, rather than dumplings with my host family. I relished flying kites in tian an men square, got used to and then learned to expect and sometimes even adore the constant stares following my every presence. I came back special, different, the girl who went to China. Although I had missed a year of high school I had also gained experiences which were given far more deference than those of my peers, merely by uttering the words “studied abroad in China”. In the very least, I had to espout love for the country which brought me so much uniqueness in the world.

Coming back my junior year of college was….to say the least, different. I spent a month of my time before my program in Yunnan began in Beijing, during the cold gray month of February. The butcher near my apartment, which I would bike by in disgust on my way to school, was replaced with a shiny supermarket, the hutongs were new apartment buildings, my host sister had a cellphone and I no longer had a go-to group of 40 american kids with which to relish the delights and pitfulls of being a foreigner in the middle kingdom. That month was one of the most difficult of my life, and I remember calling home to my parents, crying, sobbing, asking myself why had I come back? I later went on to spend an incredible three months in my program in Yunnan, followed by a less incredible three months doing an internship in Lijiang, yet the month spent at a rural school in namu village, has got to rank as one of life’s best.

But that was Namu, here I am in Beijing, again. In the hot sticky summer leading up to the Olympics, where political tensions are at an all century high and an earthquake has just ravaged the country. Foreigners are much more common, I saw half a dozen on the way to the supermarket after I arrived this morning, something that would have been unheard of when I lived here eight years ago. My cabbie was obviously unfazed by a white girl speaking Chinese though the salesladies as I picked up my very first Chinese cellphone and air conditioner complimented me in a manner not unlike that at the turn of the century.

So why am I back here again? I’ve thought about that question so little in the flurry that was benefits, fundraisers, classes, green cards, and graduations that have been my past semester that it surprises me when I think of it to myself. My work, clearly, is what brings me here though I am plagued by worried of what it can truly be. And the hard thing to admit after spending time working at The Door in the US is that great, important and necessary work can be achieved in America as well, something my international human rights frameworked mind hadn’t really considered until I entered law school. I had always assumed I would live abroad, be abroad, and that is where I could truly do the most important work. My experiences, however, have questioned that mindset and what is more, I LOVE my life in New York, particularly in the summers. Hugging Roma and Bea Goodbye, hearing them talk of swimming lessons and outdoor movies, receiving phone calls from my clients hours before I boarded the plane, made me think if I wasn’t just ignoring how good I had it.

In high school I clearly was running away, in college I needed to feel special again, and now? I am back in Beijing caught in the moments between jet lag and new-place-enthusiasm. I will be sharing a two bedroom apartment with an American girl who has been in China on and off for the last seven years. She just got a yet unnamed cat, the smallest 6 week old brown-black kitten I have ever seen, and who I call bug in my head as she paws over my computer and crawls up my neck as I type this. My clothes are unpacked and I have meetings scheduled for this week. I want to eat dumplings tonight. And yet, I am still confused about why I am here. Not because there isn’t work to be done, not because it isn’t incredibly important, not because I am not honored, excited, thrilled, blown away to be doing it, but because I no longer need convincing that it is. Regardless, the first thing I did in my jet lagged state was buy myself a grande mocha frappicino and smile at the cashier who complemented me on my Chinese.

(blog side note: I don’t love editing my writing in blogs, I have enough of that in law school, so apologies for unclear thoughts, unedited phrases, judge away ;)

Shipping Off

Hello all!

Welcome to Lanlan in Beijing, a mini chronicle of my ventures in China this summer! This will be the main way I can keep in contact/ keep people posted of my journeys and happenings. I ship out tonight and am feeling a whole host of emotions I can't begin to explain right now as my to do list is ominously longer than the minutes left before my departure but I wanted to give a brief intoduction and say hello. Love and miss you all!

Lanlan