China, Hello

OR WHY CHINA AND I ARE AND ARE NOT ON SPEAKING TERMS

Welcome to Taigu, the city that no Chinese person I have ever met (excluding Shansi-affiliated ones) has heard of. Do you exist Taigu? Well, I can say personally, as someone sitting on their bed in Taigu, that Taigu does exist, in major ways.

Taigu is nothing like I expected. All that anxiety and worry about not measuring up to living in one of the biggest, most repressed countries in the world, and Taigu is easy.

"WHAT?!?!" says you, my dear reader. "Easy?" Yes. Yes, really. Yes, so far.

For one Taigu is a Chinese Oberlin:

1. WEATHER -- Taigu and Oberlin's weather are quite similar. Both contain extremes: snow in the winter, heat and humidity in the summer. Luckily, Taigu is even more extreme than Oberlin. The heating coming on does not coincide with when the weather gets cold (instead it takes it's precious time, and leaves too soon). And Shanxi province is one of the most polluted areas in the world, especially in winter, because of the coal burning.


2. LOCATION -- China and the USA are similar locations? Yes. SAU (Shanxi Agricultural University) is an out of the way university. Its adjacent town, Taigu, is a half an hour walk away. SAU has a similar relationship to Taiyuan (the capital of Shanxi province) as Oberlin does to Cleveland. Both Taiyuan and Clevekand are an hour away, both have resources and services that cannot be found in Taigu/Oberlin (WAL-MART in Taiyuan!), and both have pretty terrible reputations as cities. No one wants to go to Taiyuan to tour the place (not even our Lonely Planet travel guide to China) and, like Cleveland, is a pretty disgusting area. Taiyuan is the most polluted city in the province. A Chinese friend of mine said that back in the day, when things were a bit worse, wearing a white shirt in Taiyuan in the morning meant wearing a gray shirt by the afternoon. Sigh. Oh, coal pollution.


3. FREE TIME -- Neither SAU/Taigu or Oberlin has much going on. So to make up for it, students and teachers have to make their own fun. In Oberlin, for me, it was living in the Cat in the Cream coffee house because of Concert Sound, working for the SIC, patronizing the Apollo or Oberlin restaurants, etc, etc, etc. Here, it's cat loving, guitar playing, and dance parties! We have two cats to deal with a potential rat problem. A problem our senior fellows prove to us is not just a "potential problem" in their house (because they have no cats).
   
   I just bought a guitar in Taigu. I now have two instruments in Taigu, including my doumbek. (I exclude my harmonica and shakers because they're so small.) As anyone who has watched me pack for college or seen my room in Oberlin or DC can tell you, this is an impressively small number of instruments to have by my side. But I'm really pleased with them. My new guitar (unnamed) is blue with a repeating patter of bull heads around the sound hole. Total class, all the way. I love it!
   
   Last night, we had the first of the infamous Taigu dance parties at out senior fellows' house (Daniel and James). It was really splendid. With some loud speakers with a strong, pumping bass, we danced the night away, Chinese students and American students, until the late hour of 10:30 pm, when our students turned in. (The dorms have an 11 pm curfew.) After the students left, us teachers created a cozy circle of chairs and chilled to music and played...believe it or not...Never Have I Ever.
   Finally we wore each other out, and we returned home, Alexandra and I. At home, we had some heart-to-heart bonding moments, telling stories and secrets late into the night. I did not go to bed until 4 am. It was a great night.
   


4. POPULATION -- Both places have a bunch of Obies! Normally there are 4 Obie grads here. This year, there will be 5. Obies are Obies are Obies, and as niche people, coming from a niche school, we tend to (culturally appropriately) recreate our particular politics, lifestyles, and passions wherever we go. It is so nice being in that niche again.

I sure will miss Oberlin and I cannot believe I will not be moving in with the rest of you in a few days. But Taigu is not such a bad place. Like, take my house. It is so swanky. I have my own bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and study, plus a shared common room, friendly cats, an awesome housemate, and fun neighbors. And I have a double bed! I've never had this much space and cool stuff in the US. Granted it is China, so my bathroom has stopped working twice, once because I clogged it with toilet paper (oh so that's what that covered trash can right next to the toilet is for....PAPER) and once because a pipe burst (my bathroom looked like a water park -- spray was everywhere, on the ceiling, toilet, wall, floor, for 2 days straight). And the water is turned off from 11 pm to 6 am every day. But I have an indoor hot shower, which rocks (though the shower head just free-hangs on the bathroom wall...no separate shower stall for us laoshi). And my place is swanky for China too: the dorms don't have toilets, showers, or kitchens in them at all.

And the food here is great! Yummy hot pot, hot coke, dumplings, steamed buns, daily bubble tea...

I could go on for awhile (which I'll do in a later post). So this is why Taigu and I are on speaking terms.

But we're not on speaking terms! Because I don't have survival Chinese yet. I am either an illiterate baby, with no sense of what is on a Chinese menu, and few words to order, buy, or survive on. Or I'm a talking monkey puppet, repeating blindly Chinese sentences my co-fellows feed me, faking independence. Or I'm a deaf-mute, watching the lips move around me, sensing the sound waves that have no linguistic meaning to me, trapped in a opinion-less state, with a squashed, hidden voice.

Yet, I am so grateful to my co-fellows that they let me rest on their backs while they do much of the cultural lifting. And even though I fiercely love my independent spirit, I'm not as grumpy as I expected about this situation. I expected major bitterness and angst, as a rather talkative person. But it's been manageable. But we're only on day 5.

SO I'm here, I'm dealing, I'm speaking, I'm not speaking, and I plan on snatching up as much independence as my arms can carry, one baby step at a time.



p.s. I just my first work meeting, which was conducted all in Chinese. During that meeting, I nearly lost it from feeling so incompetent. But today I had my first class, which wasn't bad. More later...

Off to China!

...OR CHINATOWN, DC

Farewell Berkeley

TOOTLES FOLKS! PEACE OUT CALIFORNIA!

So, I'm a little late. I left the West Coast 3 days ago. But nevertheless, let's have three cheers for Berkeley. HIP HIP HOORAY! HIP HIP HOORAY! HIP HIP HOORAY!

To all the good times, good friends, horrid times, and strong shoulders I was given to cry on (and hey I'm counting those virtual phone, email, and skype shoulders too)...I won't forget ya.







Next stop...CHINA (or San Clemente and LA pictures...depending on how detailed this entry becomes. :) )


p.s. A final thought...

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.



Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

Living Like A Local (Pictures)

OR HOW ONE BEGINS TO SEE BERKELEY BETTER, SHINY-ER, AND MORE WONDERFULLY WORN

I knew I was in luck when I began to be able to give directions. Tourists looking for the UC Berkeley campus (my usual direction: "you're already on it."), looking for the BART station, trying to find major roads to go to some some major or minor places. Basically I have gone from a lost, confused, ill-fitting person ("What do you mean you're not a graduate student? You graduated right?" or my favorite "Why did you come to California to study Chinese? Don't they have Chinese classes on the East coast?") to a local! For about 3 weeks, that is. Take a look at the locals-only hangout spots I hit in my last few weeks in Berkeley.

Cheeseboard Collective Pizza and Cheese Shops

My favorite memory here was getting pizza with some Obies during my last week. We sat on the median eating our 2 1/2 slices a piece -- the half slice goes on top of course. The day's pizza? Mushroom, onions, goat cheese, and mozzarella.

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Indian Rock Park

I found this place by becoming horribly lost. (I was trying to find another park to see an outdoor, gorilla-theatre style rendition of A Midsummer Night's Dream.) This is a famous park on a huge boulder with a magnificent view of the Bay and San Francisco. Families and couples bring food and alcohol up to the top of this boulder and watch the sun set. Luckily sunset was exactly when I showed up.

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Berkeley Bulb

I was taken here after announcing at a Thai Temple meal that I wanted to see the "real Berkeley" (because I didn't much like living on Frat Row and hoped that other areas of Berkeley had more to offer me). This place is the literal intersection of art, trash, and nature. Throw in some pebble beaches, homeless hippies (with their own library in a shack), huge found-object statues, a tree house, rolling hills, and wild blackberries and you've got Berkeley Bulb.

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Buena Vista Park (in San Francisco)

I also found this park while getting lost. I was looking for Golden Gate Park -- in order to play in a drum circle -- and instead, I ended up here. I played doumbek in the hills of this park. It was super fun, a bit meditative, and I even got complimented on my playing!

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Chinatown (in San Francisco)

I know what you're thinking. How could Chinatown possibly be a locals-only hangout? Well let me tell you, I made it one. My personal mission in Chinatown was to find a great Chinese bakery, where I bought delicious, steamed, stuffed buns (custard and meat ones). I also found some quieter alleyways with murals and interesting locals-only spots.

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UC Berkeley Botanical Garden

I was brought to this beautiful garden in the hills behind I-House by a fellow Obie. When I visited I found the tallest cactus to take a picture with, hung out in the tropical greenhouse to remind me of DC humidity, and explored the Chinese medicinal garden, jokingly diagnosing my friend and I.

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Sutro Baths (in San Francisco)

From Berkeley you take BART all the way into San Francisco. You then take a bus until it hits the end of the line. You've reached the Pacific Ocean and, quite possibly the Sutro Baths. It's this beautiful place by the ocean, ruins of former bathhouses and lots of crashing waves. On the top of the hill we found a dinner which served warm muffins and hot chocolate. It was an awesome visit.

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Other Awesome Things I Did

(L) see Carol Queen speak & (R) get to see an awesome sunset from out of a plane window going across the country