Having New Eyes

OR THE REAL VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY CONSISTS NOT IN SEEKING NEW LANDSCAPES BUT IN HAVING NEW EYES. --Marcel Proust

Hello from India. I was going to use this post to tell you about how I've grown in and with China. I would have pointed out that my painfully intimate relationship with the (tied-for-) third (-with-the-US) largest country in the world is starting to pan out in interesting ways. I was going to analyze the below pictures I saw in a gallery in 798, Beijing's contemporary art district. Take, I would have said, this first picture of a man. Maybe just a few months ago I would have gawked at this portrait of an Asian man and a rice cooker. How essentialist, I would have said. How orientalist. Now, after living in China, I see the picture two ways. First, I see my above description. Second, I see a real Chinese man painted truthfully by a Chinese painter. For when I look at the portrait, I see my rice cooker in my severly under heated Taigu kitchen, I see my water cooler from my cosy living room. I see my life and the lives of the people around me in these paintings. The American in me is disgusted by this painting; the Shansi fellow (or ex-pat, anthropologist, explorer, honorary Chinese) in me sees truthful familiarity. All my students have their favorite NBA star (ranging from Yao Ming to Kobe Bryant) and watch more American basketball than I ever have. Finding groups of adults playing cards in public places is common -- the rundown airplane is a common sight at kid's parks. This double view, or "craziness", is a concept I discovered in Bill Holm's Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of China Essays...and I'm a huge fan. After teaching English in China for a year, he could never see anything one way. Instead his whole life was seen in craziness because only he could see in double view. For example, his modest American home became both spartan (US view) and frivolous (China view). Multiply this example by every common, routine, usually trivial experience, and you can begin to understand how I see these paintings and how I will see America when I return. Now I can look at Chinese art and see both foreignness and familiarity, which excites me to no end.

I could have talked about my emerging connection to the community. I played in Nong Da's New Year's Party. A "party" here means nothing party-like whatsoever. Instead what they meant is somewhere along the lines of a high school talent show, with all the enthusiasm and talent that goes with it. Much as I tried to explain that this "party" was in fact a concert, I couldn't change the term. There seems to be a campuswide misunderstanding of the vocabulary term "party"; I eventually gave up and started using their definition too. At Oberlin, every job and most every extracurricular activity I did involved acting, improv, and tech theatre. Since May and graduation, this "party" has been my first gig. To represent myself, I decided to play a well-known song in the folk and queer communities, "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls. At the "party", I played "The Closer to Fine" according to the hosts, gave a Happy New Years speech to a huge audience (in Chinese no less), and watched blue bubbles float on by while I sang a song 5 people in the audience could understand (apparently the English is too fast for our Chinese students to follow). It was epic.

I was going to say how this experiences gave me hope for the future. But instead I'll talk about the Taj Mahal and my first few days in my 2-month India trip. The Taj was epic, awe inspiring, and perfectly amazing. Yet getting to the Taj tested me in every way possible. I had to get on the tourist bus at 7am on 5 hours of sleep; sit through 6 hours of slow driving, cows blocking the road, and stops at gross eateries; shiver all day because I though India would be warm; be charged for every little thing I did all day long; be charged 750 Rs. to see the Taj, when Indias pay 20 Rs.; be given less than an hour to actually see the Taj; be left behind by my tourist bus when my friends and I decided 1 hour was not long enough; shiver the whole ride back (after we had finally caught up with the bus with our expensive taxi); hope I wouldn't get frostbite in India; get home to my hotel at 2am to a cold, cold room.

Yet I also had one of the best days possible. If any Shansi fellows are reading this...do you remember the day it was mentioned that traveling for one day would feel more rewarding and amazing than hanging out at our sites for months at a time? My Taj visit was that amazing day. I made the best of friends -- 2 ethnically Indian sisters from Tanzania and one of their husbands (who is originally from Germany). They stuck up for me and each other when we got ripped off, when the tour guide wouldn't speak English on the tour (he later came up to me and snottily remarked "Where are you from?" When I answered "America", he asked "Do you understand English?"), and most importantly, when the bus left us behind. They made sure I had a good time and that I got home safely. They were also really enjoyable people. We giggled the whole day, and made sure to share our negative (or rarely positive) opinions with the annoying bus drivers, salesmen, restaurant employees, and trinket sellers who bothered us. I learned many new things about Tanzania and my concept of an "Africa person" became more complex and friendly after meeting them (just as I hope I expanded their concept of an "American person"). I felt true comradery with these people who had never been to America: a successful go at cultural exchange and intercultural respect. We traded storied about America, China, and Tanzania. We giggled over real brownies and real lattes. We took photos of each other squeezing the top of the Taj into oblivion. Perhaps, needless to say, I was sad to get off that freezing tour bus and say goodbye to my new friends.

Now let's compare this to Taigu. I never realized how heartbreakingly, soul-crushingly, mind-bogglingly hard my decision to accept Shansi would be. To date I still don't have friends in Taigu that I feel that I have as much in common with as with these friends I met for one day. In fact, the depth of the conversations I had with my African friends I don't even have the luxury of having in Taigu: few to no people's English is that good. (My Chinese, being at food and light bulb ordering level, doesn't help yet.) Certainly Taigu is not as mesmerizing or as beautiful as the Taj. But where is, honestly?

So where does that leave me and Taigu?

I don't know. That is a question I hope to answer in the next coming months, during this trip and beyond.

At the least, I hope to come home to China with new eyes.