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.