another suitcase in another hall

After a long back and forth, I am going to Shanghai this weekend. This week is one of the Golden Weeks for the PRC, so 1.3 billion Chinese people and a handful of us foreigners all have holiday at the same time. Figure that one out. If you've ever seen busyness in an urban setting, you could take that and multiply it by let's see... NYC is approximately 8 million people. Now double that (Beijing is over 17 million), and make them all switch places with out-of-towners. You can only imagine the beauty of the traffic on Second Ring Road outside my window. There was a wreck this morning, but I was not here to watch it go down. I walked by later, though, and the back window of a hatchback was smashed in by the front bumper of a Jeep. The little dog inside the Jeep (there's always a dog in BJ) barked at me as I walked past.

So anyway, I'm meeting up with the Professor, Cowboy, and another friend in Shanghai tomorrow morning. I'm taking an overnight train there. I'm really looking forward to it, because a change of locale even for a couple days could no doubt be useful. I think even in the Shanghai madness it will be refreshing.

In other news, I learned how to say, "Just kidding!" in Chinese yesterday from Jill. She's so useful! I mean, we discuss more important things than that, but how cool is it that she taught me that? Actually, I'd heard it, but I didn't know what it meant, so I asked, and lo and behold, it's a good one.

So, I need to get a few things packed for the weekend. And I should pay the maid before she heads out. Here's hoping things are decent in other places. I arrive back in 47 days.

T

My midterms are now officially over. I had my oral exam in conversation class, and it actually went really well. I had to read a few paragraphs aloud from my textbook. Then I had to tell my teacher a story about one time I went traveling. I told her all about going to Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. She told me that it was interesting, and she asked what the differences are between China and those countries. I told her that they are a lot less concentrated on time, and a lot more relaxed. I also told her that I was worried about thieves, and so I held my backpack tightly while I was out. I explained that that presented a problem when I wanted to go into the water at the beach. I also informed her that we had to fly back to Beijing from Hanoi because of too much snowfall causing there to be no train tickets. My favorite place was Cambodia, she now knows, because I got to teach English to a bunch of cute kids.

My teacher told me that I speak well, and that I ought to speak in class. She said that it's just reading that I have problems in, and I agreed. I just get embarrassed to speak in class because in contrast to all the Indonesians and Koreans, my Chinese is pathetic. (I promise, being Asian is a total unfair advantage.)

Tomorrow I'm supposed to
1. Go to class from 8-11:35
2. Meet w/Jill for tutoring
3. Let the maid clean the house
4. Meet the younger American teacher-woman (I really should assign Butterbean's mom a nickname) so she can take me to a place to buy a bunny cage
5. Pretend not to be tired

I took video of this old man playing the erhu and keeping time with his foot/shin clacker. I gave him 10 kuai and took a bunch of pictures. he was in the steps to the subway at Tian'anmen. Sorry that it's sideways!


T

Saturday night I went with the Professor and Cowboy up to Wudaokou to have dinner at Pyro's Pizza. All was well, and on the way back to the subway terminal, we decided to check to see if the fish-waffle man was out. Fish-waffles are mana from heaven. They are waffles filled with melted chocolate pieces. They also just so happen to be made in the shape of cartoon fish. It's China, don't ask.

Anyway, among all the normal ethnic minority street sellers were the usual: jewelry, books, potted plants, girls' clothes, small toys, maps, cologne, dvds, granola, coffee cups. But there was also my favorite street sales cart ever. Pets! The cart had a big bowl of goldfish, some red-eared turtles, and bunnies.

Might I take a moment to say that everything cool to be bought in Beijing is bought on bridges and sidewalks. Everything.

So a while back the Professor had promised to buy me a bunny so that I'd leave him alone more. Anyway, he ended up buying two bunnies; we each picked out one. The one I chose is black, the one he chose is white with black ears. They are adorable and still babies.

Here's where you come in-- they need names! We don't know the gender for sure because they are still babies and they haven't exactly "shown" yet, but we think the black one is a boy and the white one is a girl. So we're welcome to suggestions. Hit us with your best bunny names.



T

I have been taking some more pictures here in Beijing.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=18928&l=0305e&id=573182167

Today at the Temple of Heaven was fun. But now I'm tired.

T

I did pretty not-terribly on the test this morning. Subsequently I ate lunch, went to Starbucks, and then went and hung out with a crew of Chinese kids all evening. These guys are so much fun. Their English names are hilarious, and it's part of why I like them so much. It would be much less fun hanging out with guys named Ted and Jack and Steve.

Tomorrow, I'm planning on going to the Temple of Heaven, which in Chinese is Tian Tan. I'll be like my roommate for a moment and give you the Chinese for it: 天坛. Don't you feel smarter?

I played with this photo not too long ago (well, this one and a few others, actually), and I really like the way it came out. So here's a picture from Phuket, Thailand.



Happy weekend!

T

The Professor came down last night with the same affliction I had not too long ago. It was a fantastic night. I got to listen to him moan and explode periodically be sick. All night. And so this morning I got up early to get to school on time for my 8 a.m. midterm. And the Professor asked me to get him some drinks for the day, and of course I agreed. But little did I realize that the tiny shop beneath our building isn't open early. Nor is the grocery store on the corner. So I had to make a mad dash to a cigarette and booze shop at 7:35 this morning (don't you love the priorities of China?), then back up to the apartment, and finally departed the homestead at about 7:47 (you've never seen my legs pedal so fast...). I arrived in my testing room with about 3 minutes to spare. It was a bit like Speed Racer: Beijing. Except not Japanese, because I'm hated slightly less than the Japanese. I'm just American.

Anyway, my Reading/Writing class test was at 8 this morning, and it went. Not well, but it is over. My teacher (this wonderfully short, late-twentysomething Chinese man) occasionally came by and patted me on the back while I looked desperately concentrated upon not going down in flames. Then, when I went to hand in my paper, he smiled and gave me a half-taco, man-appropriate hug. It was a form of super-linguistic condolence, and it made me laugh in retrospect.

Then I went to brunch with my American sojourning friends. I took another test at 1, and it went really smoothly. It was much, much easier. Just a listening test. I hate that class with all the passion I can muster against a 54-year-old Chinese woman. She's grandmotherly, but not in a good way. And her class is frustratingly boring and unuseful.

When I got home from all this midterm induced fun, I started on the pile of disgusting sick-covered laundry. It took several hours and a few different methods of cleaning to get it all out. I am expecting some sort of eternal reward for this.

Really.

Tomorrow I have another test at 8, but by 9:40 I am free as a bird. Woo!

T

Today the Aiyi (that's what a maid is called in Chinese) came. She did amazing things. I have a desk now. And it turns out the floors here in my bedroom are not supposed to be grey carpet. Rather, they are reddish hardwood. Who knew?

I think it's time for a picture upload.


These little creatures are the guards of buildings against evil spirits. Without going into it too deeply, the more tiny beasties on the roof, the better. They scare away the bad guys. And the slant of the eaves, of course, makes the bad guys slip right off. Evil spirits aren't very smart in China, you see. Also, each creature is a specific thing, and he protects the building in a specific way. I don't know enough about them to give examples, but you see smaller sets of these things on almost every old building here. There are so many of the little statues on this building because it is part of the Forbidden City complex. The Emperor needs more protection and harmonious...ness than anyone else. And he was supposedly afforded it by more guardians.

Court eunuchs only got one beast. Some guys just can't get a break.

T

Everybody ought to have a maid...

Well, friends and family, I've been scolded before for going too long without an update, so I'd like to clear the air.

I am still alive and well.

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Lately I've been sort of struggling with where I am and where I'm going personally. I hesitate to say that on here, because I know that I've said it before, and it makes people internationally raise their eyebrows. But to be honest, I wonder how people don't constantly fight and struggle and reevaluate. I know that part of this is the whole process of becoming a mature Brother. But part of it, I think, is what could be summed up as the human experience. There is a lot of unrest, uncertainty, and very scary progress to be made in a lifetime. In short, it might surprise you all how much I've been striving lately, but it's not always like this, and yet I don't think it's a bad thing. I'm looking at this year abroad as a time of refinement and refocusing. It would be easier to let inconsistencies go, but it is better to wrestle with these things that don't always make sense. Let us never settle for the good and give up the best.

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We hired a maid. The apartment is not filthy or anything, and for three bachelors I think that's pretty good. But there are the day-to-day cleaning things that we just don't seem to find time for, so in comes our new maid. Her first visit will be tomorrow afternoon. I basically want her to sweep and mop the floor, empty the trash (if there is some), dust, and basically tidy things up. This is not a tall order. I know that mouths around the world are agape at the idea of college students hiring a maid. But you have to realize that in China domestic help and manual labor are (monetarily) very, very cheap. We're paying this woman $1.43/hour. That's standard. So for about $6/week she will come and clean the apartment up. She works several people's houses, and I only hired her because she works for a family of friends I met here, and they recommend her highly.

Anyway, I thought that progress might interest the world at large.

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Midterms are this Thursday and Friday. I've been trying to study, though I'm afraid I've been a bit preoccupied with reading books in English. I have studied a good bit, though, and I think if I keep it up I will be prepared to a decent degree. The content of this semester has been a lot more complicated than the stuff we learned last semester. We're working on a lot of phrases composed of words which, if you just translated them, would mean absolutely nothing. English does that too, but I don't think to the same degree as Chinese.

T

You know how sometimes you get in the mood to hear a certain song, and it's really random because you haven't heard it in forever, but it won't get out of your head, and it makes you sing snippets and write run-on sentences? Yeah. Lately and completely out of the blue I've been needing to hear "Out of My League" by Stephen Speaks. Talk about a random song to need to hear. I honestly don't have those kinds of feelings going on, but something of the melody of the song is drawing me. Anyway, I got on iTunes to download it, because I still have a few dollars from a giftcard a while back. Seached "Stephen Speaks" and up comes a page with two albums released in 2008... and nothing else. The old stuff has disappeared! No "Out of My League" or any notice of where it went. So I read some reviews, and one was cranky and said that this band wasn't the Stephen Speaks he was looking for, and that he found what he wanted under the singer's name, TJ McCloud. So I searched that way and found what I was looking for, but I'm confused. The album from which I have bought this same song before (thanks to computer problems and the stinginess of iTunes it disappeared a while back) is no longer available. Or in existence.

I just thought that was weird.

I am now registered-- courtesy of my academic advisor and his department secretary-- for 17 hours next semester. I'm taking:
Classical Film Theory
Cinema History 1
Honors (Every Other and Their Brother: A History of Anthropology)
Chemistry in Society
Chinese

I decided to make the change to take Chemistry this next semester so that I'd have a better balance in the Spring. Anyway, I'm excited about this semester's schedule. I think it'll be good. I have taken two of these professors before, and I've emailed another one of them a few times. I'm assured that my Chemistry professor is good, as well.

_____________

Lately things on a more serious level here have been interesting. I can't go into it, and I don't want anyone to worry. But I think that there have been events in the past week or so that have been insight-bringing. And to a large part, I have to be thankful for the friendship that the Professor and I share. I'm afraid that even after all the supposed disdain I hold for him, he knows me more closely than anyone else probably ever has. And that's not a bad thing. Actually, he's being used to shed light on the skeletons I didn't know were in my closet. Or at least had glossed over.

So now people are all going to be trying to figure out what I might be talking about and probably worrying about me, and I don't want that. I probably won't ever tell you this content face-to-face. It's not all that important that everyone knows everyone else's business. But it is healthy that you, my friends see that I am working on these things. It is important that you can be aware that I'm working things out, and that you can be thinking of me. And I'd appreciate that a lot, actually.

T

Today I went to class like a good boy.

I went to two classes, lunch, tutoring, a birthday party, and dinner today. Now I am ardently avoiding the living room where my roommates are being retarded and discussing the purpose of learning Elvish, Eugritic, Klingon, Hindi, and other languages. They just made up a word in English. These inanities are clashing with my current mellow, introverted mood, and I am therefore hiding in my bedroom telling you, friends, all about it.

Oh, I've created a tentative schedule of classes for next semester. I sense your curiosity.
Script Analysis (for Digital Film)
Cinema History I
Classical Film Theory
Honors- Every Other and His Brother: A History of Anthropology
Chinese 2.5

I need to take Chemistry, as well, so I may swap Film Theory for that if I can figure it out. And if it works well with my currently-figured schedule.

Also, I might take a moment to talk about books. Right now I'm reading Faulkner's Light in August as well as The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions by Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright. Both are interesting, though I admit that I'm a bit more intrigued by the religious book. There is a handful of books I'd really like to get my hands on in the near future, but you can ask if you're in the mood to meet those kinds of requests.

T

Today in China was a holiday, so I was out of school. The holiday is Sweeping Out the Tombs Day. You're supposed to go to your ancestors' tombs and clean them on this day. I guess it's kind of like Dia de los Muertos for Latinos. Anyway, in addition to cleaning the tombs, paper money for the next world is burned en masse on the sidewalks for the dead to be wealthy in whatever lies beyond. I personally hope everything is free where I'm headed.

Also, today I watched the flag-lowering ceremony in Tian'anmen Square. At the end of the day the PRC flag is lowered by a squadron of army men. They take the flag off the flagpole, put it on a smaller, portable pole, and march it into the gates of the Forbidden City. The flag never stops flying, actually. It just moves. I find this interesting as compared to flag tradition in the States, where Old Glory is meticulously folded and put away each evening. In China the dust is whipped off the tails of the flag and it keeps on flying into the night. I have no idea what these symbolic differences show us about the mindsets of the two countries. You can do that work.

I purchased a stamp with my name on it today. It has my name in English and Chinese on it. The stone is a couple inches square, and the top is a tiger. Now I can do official things in China; I can put a big red stamp on papers.

T

a mess of a post about messy life

I thought of something to write about. I actually got out of bed to write this. Feel honored.

Over the past month (or two), I've been struggling to wrap my head around who I am, why I'm here, and where the incompatibilities in the ways I think, behave, believe, and live lie. I could very easily point fingers at this, that, and the other for why such problems exist, but there is a degree of futility even I won't entertain.

I've realized recently that there is something greatly lacking in this world, and a polite word for it is not readily in mind, so I'll call it what I would if we were talking: balls. What I mean by this is a bold, informed, intelligent, daring, unflinchingly decisive leadership with integrity. That list might not seem a single thing, but it all works together. With a well formed mind comes the courage to make decisions without worrying that it will need to be retracted because of faulty planning. There is a lack of decisiveness in my culture. Every opinion is considered equal, and questions are celebrated. I am certainly not anti-questioning; heaven knows I ask a lot and think more. The problem is that there is no standard to which we hold opinions and questions and thoughts. I realize that opinion is subjective, but some things are simply not true or right or good. Why can't we as a culture say that?

As I am writing this, I realize that my appeal is focused on the wrong group. The culture is a pluralistic and devout mass of worshipers clambering toward the shrines to the pantheon of celebrity, youth, money, and (it would seem) volume.

No, my appeal should be to my brothers and sisters. When will we decide that enough is enough? Emotion is not a good indicator for decision-making. There are beliefs that I hold which I do not like, but they are true nonetheless. Is that a cognitive dissonance? Perhaps. Perhaps it means that there is work to be done in realizing the nature of what is true. Perhaps I can learn why things are, and what that means about Who made them that way. I am frustrated at myself now, though, because I want to be well-informed. I want to be a member of a group of people who have the balls to engage with that blind and absurd culture and shine light.

The thing I've learned this year is that it is all related. All those little, disparate (disparate, not desperate) beliefs are related. They stem from a core. I am learning that we by and large have grown the little things with a core that is not stable at all. No wonder we are tossed by every wave of teaching. Where is the core? Where is the anchor? Where are the balls? We need to learn to think well, to debate and stretch our perspectives, to entertain ideas without accepting them. We need to read books that we might not always get. We need to figure out what it is we truly believe from the base up. We need to ask tough questions that might not be answered in a pamphlet or sermon with alliterated points. Dialogue is a great thing in this situation, but it's not enough, and it certainly doesn't hold all the answers. Don't just ask someone. Read people who disagree with each other and with you. Figure out why they can't all be right. Find heresy and know why it's classified as such.

You know what? This way you approach the world--your world-view--is in your hands for shaping and moulding. First you have to realize that it exists, that it's malleable, and that it blinds you to some things and highlights others. Then, go for it. Get discontent. Get upset. Get frustrated with the status quo. But don't stop. That's where I am... frustrated and discontent. If I stop here, I'll wallow and be mired forever. Push forward. I must keep going. I know that the process of change is a never-ending one, but I'm certain that without change I will never be a person worth listening to about life, much less engaging in life with as a friend. Why bother with someone who only believes in the little stuff but is full of fluff?

I am beginning to see that it is worth the battle.

T

I'm much better now than I was.

Tuesday I had an amazing hair day.

I am positive I had something to say here, but I've forgotten completely.

T