The Middle Kingdom (Pictures)

The map I grew up with.



The way the world looks in China.

Which is better: Anglo-centrism or Sino-centrism?

The first map is from http://geology.com/world/. The second is a photograph of the map in my living room.

Competing for 气 (Qi) in Rural China

OR THE 101 REASONS TO STUDY 太极拳 (TAI CHI)

They asked me if I wanted to compete. I took it as a compliment. But in a land where competitions don't measure skill, union leaders keep their job by changing nothing-ness, and tai chi is used to politically pacify; I had much to learn. Not knowing any of this, I accepted the offer. This is the story.

Since May 2010, I have spent my mornings at the track near my house, affectionately known as the "little playground", though there is no playground in sight. I have progressed from 24 form. I have since learned 49 form, and 3 forms of tai chi sword. Every day, I end my workout with a steaming bowl of wonton soup or sugary porridge and some lao bing, a flat bread, full of egg and green onions.

One day, in early fall, our leader asked, "Would you compete in Nong Da's schoolwide tai chi competition?"

Of course! How could I not? I was honored. They made me promise to come every day. The leader of our tai chi group made me promise. A coordinator from the Foreign Affairs Office, the department where I work, made me promise. My friend, the woman who translated for me sometimes, made me promise. This competition seemed quite serious.

Soon, morning practice turned into morning rehearsal. Our morning group of 20 or 30 swelled to 50 or 60. We took over the entire field, breaking up into groups, repeating 24 form over and over, holding this pose or that. At first it felt good. Then I started looking around. These newbies, these greenhorns, these grown men and women, were falling over themselves! We weren't bringing together the campus's wide array of tai chi practitioners. Oh, no. We were asking people with seemingly no experience to compete. (Later I was told that all Chinese learn tai chi in school.) Turns out we would be competing in 24 form, the simplest form, only. It has a very small number of poses. It's sans accessories. None of this made sense.

So, I started asking questions.

How would you define "competition"? Turns out, I was not ready to hear the answer. We were not here to show off our skills. Everyone knew that most of the participants didn't play tai chi in their daily lives. "Why then? WHY?" I wanted my first competition to mean something. What could it all mean? "Well, it is all about the workers' union, actually," said my translator.

The workers' union? Why? What does recreational tai chi have to do with unions? Oh, ye of little faith. The connections between everything and everyone are tight and tightly felt in a Chinese community.

Our competition was meant to prove that one guy on our campus was doing his job. Hundreds of Nong Da employees were forced to spend many hours on training just so the leader of the workers' union looked good.

Fucking A.

It all started with Mr. Duan. He leads the workers' union. A workers' union? In China? Oh, yes. But don't get too excited just yet. What does Mr. Duan do? Well, he doesn't attempt to change the intense redundancy and inefficiency rampant at our school. He certainly doesn't bother trying to fix the near constant infrastructure issues (water, electricity, heating, internet fail biweekly). Oh, no. He does his job by changing nothing. Well, nothing-ness to be exact. If he really did nothing, he would be fired. So he makes petty changes, and (I'm sure) some party member places a gold star next his name in some folder in some back office somewhere. It's just that simple.

Mr. Duan leads the morning tai chi group. Mr. Duan has found Nong Da's biggest problem. Mr. Duan will fix it.

What Nong Da needs, he thinks to himself, is fitness. Higher quality of life. "I will bring tai chi and all of its health benefits to all the workers of Nong Da."

Everyone agrees, a stronger focus on exercise is truly what the teachers' of Nong Da need.

Fast forward. Welcome to the preparations for the tai chi competition. A competition where every department must send a certain percentage of its members, or get fined. I was asked to compete merely to fill a quota. To save some office employee, who barely sees the light of day, let alone a field full of tai chi practitioners at 6:30 in the morning, from forcing their untrained body through the slow twists and turns.


A compliment, huh?

Soon, in addition to morning practice, we had afternoon practice too. We practiced in different groups, department by department. I was put into a special interdepartmental group. I was part of the administration! (I and the other American teachers have no connection to the English department whatsoever. I have never found a satisfactory answer as to why.) We did 24 form, at best a 5-minute routine, as many times as possible, for an hour. Daily. Week after week. People were falling around me. The high kicks were hard. The balancing was hard. The instructions were hard. For them. Since I had been able to do 24 form for months already, this whole thing seemed like a joke that no one was laughing at, except me. Now, I took the time to memorize every music cue, to perfect every stance, to do anything during these rehearsals that would stop them from being complete wastes of time. Sometimes I would just close my eyes, feeling the flow, ignoring the commotion around me.


Funny thing was, no one else seemed to care about flow. We were saving the face of Mr. Duan. That was the point of learning tai chi, right?

The day of the competition came. Carl, my American boss, as he is affectionately known to my Chinese friends, was coincidentally visiting Taigu that weekend. (I have no doubt the "coincidence" was purposeful.) All the teams got together to warm up with 24 form. The foreign teachers and Carl, along with a small Nong Da and Taigu audience looked on. Together, we then watched some hired professionals do 24 form. They wowed us with the depth of their bends, the sureness of their stances. They pulled out a couple other routines, and then it was our turn to shine. Two teams competed at once. The music for 24 form repeated itself indefinitely as the 20 or so teams cycled through.

What do you call a competition where the worst team wins? My team, the one with the highest number of greenhorns, tied for first with 2 other teams. We had only marginally improved with our daily rehearsals. I wasn't watching, but I would not have been surprised if some of our members had fallen over during the competition.

I stopped going to tai chi after that. It was now November. The weather was nippy. Our group practices outside all winter. (No heated gym for me! At best we have an unheated, covered room. At worst, we keep playing outside in the darkness before winter's dawn.) It took me a few months to regain any desire to perform 24 form, or even hear the music.

Things have changed. I can finally hear 24 form music without flinching. I have won the respect of Mr. Duan and the other regulars. The admin people love me, and tell me so on a regular basis.

And I have a reputation. Forever after, I will be that "tai chi (competition) foreigner". Carl tells me this will probably stick for life. I can come back in 20 years and I will still be introduced with this description.

People will recognize it.

And probably, remember.

A Note On the Multimedia. The video is from May 2011. The pictures range from May 2011 to March 2012. To see pictures from the competition, click here (http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2966481361001.2127739.1230660239&type=3&l=1b680f30d6). The competition took place on October 23rd, 2012.

A Long, Long Time Ago / I Can Still Remember / How that Music Used to...

OR WINTER TERM 2010, SHANSI FELLOWS...THE BAND.

Traveling through Summer 2011: Java, Thailand, Cambodia, & Yunnan (Pictures)

DO YOU LIKE THESE PICTURES?

This is just a small sample of the photographs

I took this past summer

while traveling in Southeast Asia.

Please check out the rest of the photos...

by following the links

below.

My travels in Java, Indonesia & Bangkok, Thailand

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2443246400454.2116661.1230660239&type=1&l=3ee6de87e5

Adventuring in Angkor, Cambodia

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2443327762488.2116664.1230660239&type=1&l=7a82068ac3

Globe-trotting through Bangkok, Kanchanaburi, Shangre-Li La, & Dali

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2443411004569.2116667.1230660239&type=1&l=b481d2a4de

Reckoning, Thanksgiving-style

OR ON FAMILY, FOOD, AND SELF-DISCOVERY

It all started with an email. An email I didn't want to write. It started with a joke about cooking an entire turkey in a wok, and it ended with me inviting myself and a bunch of other Obies to the recipient's house for Thanksgiving weekend. To a Thanksgiving party he had yet to know he was hosting. I quickly wrote the email, and I quickly sent it. Suffice to say, I was nervous. This email led to an amazing chain of events, involving a trip to Beijing, a two-day cooking marathon, a great Thanksgiving party, and the possibility of an invite next year. But Thanksgiving ’11 was more than just traveling, cooking, and partying. Amidst all the chaos, it became oddly self-reflective. Beautifully so. Let me share with you what I came up with while making my first green bean casserole, sans my loving aunts.

Thanksgiving is about family. Blood, chosen, adopted, makeshift. Whatever. Some family we love. Some we loathe. Some we avoid. Some we don’t name. But around family, the kind of family you want surrounding you, you are you. You are yourself. You fit. You don’t put on airs. And you can finally…relax. See, I’m an interesting person. I feel like I can fit in almost anywhere. You drop me anywhere, without any friends, without any language skills, and I will make friends. My fit is decent almost anywhere. But where is it great? Where can I…relax?

I can fit almost anywhere because I’m flexible. Adaptive. And I’m a hybrid. And I now think that the only people who will truly feel like family to me will have to be hybrids too. Let me talk you through all my roots, and then you can come to your own conclusions.

Wisconsin. The land of my fore-bearers. For at least 5 generations. My parents grew up in the same tiny town in southern Wisconsin. Understandably, we visited as often as we could, going to Beaver Dam maybe 3 or 4 times a year from my birth until I left for college. Once a factory town on the edge of the prairie, it's now a commuter suburb to Madison or Milwaukee, and also an unofficial retirement home. The town is full of babies and old people, and has no one from the ages of 18 to 30 still living there. Regardless, it is a nice place to hang out – somewhere where local shopkeepers would ask how your grandparents were ("They're no spring chickens" was a popular comment), and who would tell you funny stories about your parents when they were kids. By the time I was in college, 3 of my 4 grandparents had died, as had most of my parents' friends and relatives still living in Beaver Dam. During college, my final grandparent died, and suddenly we didn't know anyone who lived there anymore. I haven't been back since.

I like people from this town. But don't get me wrong. I'd never want to live in such a small town permanently (though my housing record for the past 5 and 1/2 years might say differently). But the people there are good, unarguably so. They are very down to earth, don't put on airs, and genuinely want to be nice to you. They don't fake it. They value a person’s word. They follow through. They value self-sufficiency and humility. I remember when my late aunt was just beginning to get sick. When we'd come to visit, she pretended that everything as still the same. That she wasn't sick. That she didn't need any help. That she could handle it. To this day, I still don't know what kind of cancer she died of. She never talked about it. Her attitude was this: whatever comes, comes. And as it comes, I’ll deal with it. Without complaint. All the people who make up my Midwestern family take life on life's terms. They don't try to paint it another color. They live life honestly. This too is how I like dealing with the world.

Washington, DC. The land of my upbringing. Could anywhere be more different from rural Wisconsin than the hotbed of American politics? Washingtonians make a point of painting everything a new and different color from its original. They've made “faking it” a fine art. The contrast is so severe that I normally define my self-conduct in opposition to DC’s. I am this way despite the fact I grew up in DC. Yes, it is that bad. In DC, everyone just smiles and smiles at you. But the second you step out of the room, people pull out their claws and rip your name to shreds. Honesty is not valued. Anyone who follows American politics knows that DC is never good at following through on its promises, regardless of which party is in charge.

DC has some redeeming qualities. I grew up thinking eating Chinese, Indian, Italian, and Midwestern American food all in one week was normal. I grew up thinking it was easy to see a doctor, even a specialist. Easy to get a visa. Easy to see a concert or a play. Easy to go to an art museum, and when you got bored, go to another one. DC is a very segregated place, but it began to show me that many types of people live in the world, and when they come together, they can create a beautiful, delicious place. It took living in Oberlin, where our exotic food binaries between take-out Chinese and take-out pizza, or living in Taigu, where I'm lucky if I can find food originating from outside my province (forget international food besides oreos and knockoff KFC). I'm staunchly cosmopolitan, and proud of it.

Taigu. Oh Taigu. My home for the past year and a half. I've lived and visited many places abroad, from Ghana to Mexico to England to Germany, but you, my friend, will leave the longest impression. Who was it that said two years was a long time? Whose face did I laugh in when they said that? By definition, by duration, by sheer shock value, Taigu will leave a lasting impression. And for all the trouble it's been, I do believe the impact will be a positive one.

Taigu has things that bother me. Perhaps this in an understatement. This makes it so that this place could never be a home for me. It kills me how un-cosmopolitan it is. And I could never emulate the interpersonal skills of the locals here. You must always speak so negatively about yourself, and always say “no” when anyone offers you anything. You know what? I’ve been there, done that. And when I do behave in these ways, I start believing what I’m saying, start feeling very depressed, feel like I have no close friends (since I’m rejecting their offers all the time) and that I’m experiencing less of China than I could. For example, if someone invites me to their hometown to have a meal with their family, should I turn it down just so I come off as polite? (Some say you should turn down things three times before you say yes.) No! That would be stupid.

But there are some things Taigu-ren (Taigu people) have gotten right. I love the way people deal with problems here. My problems and projects become my friends’ problems and projects, and vice versa. I can count on my friends always looking out for the answer to my queries, and are quick to tell me, if their do find out the answer…even if it is months later. And whenever I can, I love having something to give back, like speaking English, knowing how to play music, and being familiar with some hidden places in Nong Da and Taigu.

In short, this Thanksgiving, this time of being with and focusing on family, has given me a blue print for the style of family I want to build when I settle down in the States (if I ever settle down). I want a community of people who will give me the space to have Wisconsinite / Washingtonian / Taigu-ren tastes. And I won’t settle for anything less.

A Taigu Winter Wonderland (Pictures)

OR HAVING NOT SEEN IT IN TWO YEARS, SNOW HAS NEVER BEEN MORE FUN...OR HAZARDOUS

I love snow. In DC, every time snow was hinted at in the forecast, school was canceled. In Oberlin, it could snow anytime between November and May. Snow kept things lively. I could always count on finding an igloo on my way to class, or seeing some friends jumping off the Dascomb 2nd floor cafeteria roof onto a big snow heap. Last year in Taigu was just not the same without snow. The world was brown, coal-filled, and lacked all forms except the mildest of flurries. This year, all of the sudden, and without warning, we had a snow storm! A proper snow storm! Within 4 hours we had around 4 inches of snow! Luckily my students had invited me out to lunch. We still went, driving over unplowed roads in a rickety taxi cab. We ate a HUGE meal, complete with bai jiu (Chinese hard liquor...or as I like to call it, Chinese rubbing alcohol). I came home drunk to 4 inches of snow, and immediately decided it was snowman time. I then walked around taking pictures. The next day, some students invited me to their snowball fight, where they preceded to pick me up, drop me in a snow drift, and pile as much snow as possible on top of my uncovered head. Don't worry, I got them back. ;-)

Our campus has turned into a winter wonderland.

Everything looks prettier in the snow.

Even my rat-filled, drafty house.

On the first day of snow, I built this guy. I decorated him with unwanted Chinese candy and compost.

Rain or shine, you can count on the Chinese being out and about.

With umbrella galore.

And even biking around in a blizzard.

I was ecstatic about the snow.

Others were not so happy.

Welcome to the Third World, boys and girls. We apparently have no snow plows at Nong Da, so every last street and sidewalk was hand-shoveled (if it was shoveled). The best part is they don't salt the roads here, so every walk or bike ride outside has neck-breaking possibilities! Fun!

On the second or third day, the ice on the trees did something really cool. Way to stick to yourself, water.

Days later, Taigu is still the slippery, beautiful wonderland the blizzard bestowed upon us. Death by ice slip and all, I would still take snowy Taigu any day.

Cupping and Scraping

OR FORAYS INTO CHINESE MEDICINAL PRACTICES

I was feeling sick. Feeling stressed. Anxious. I had just started an antibiotic round to cure my G.I. disease of the week: Giardia. (I started the semester with a three-month case of intestinal worms, then had such bad food poisoning that I was put an IV drip at the campus hospital. Fuck you, natural pesticides.) In under 2 weeks, I obsessively watched the entire first and second season of The Vampire Diaries. Something was terribly wrong. So when offered a chance to make things better, I jumped on it. Even if it meant taking a knife to my back. Or being covered with perfectly circular hickie-like marks, as if I had made love to a giant octopus just the night before.

My roommate was off to cure her cold with some good, old-fashioned cupping and scraping. This balances the "wind" and "fire" in your body. By returning your body to its proper balance, you're returned to health. Or so I was told. I didn't really understand the treatment. All I knew was that if anyone was out of balance, I was. So I prescribed cupping and scraping to myself. And joined Alexandra under the knife, fire, and glass fish bowls.

My limited knowledge of Chinese medicine involves my fascination with "hot" and "cold" food. Food that, irregardless of its scientifically-measurable temperature, is always hot. Or cold, as the case may be. Cold foods include rice, soy beans, watermelon, and ice cream. Hot foods include noodles, mangoes, chilies, and potatoes. You must eat the correct ratio of hot to cold to stay healthy or to regain your health...which is all based on what condition your body is in at the current moment and what the weather happens to be doing. If you ignore this balance, your body reacts...badly. For example, during your period, you shouldn't eat cold foods because they cause cramps. (I still find this hard to believe.) I love it when my Chinese friends say, "OH my cramps are so terrible! I must have eaten too much ice cream."

Chinese medicine is not just pills or smelly herbal concoctions, it's a lifestyle. So off to the masseuse, I went. For around $4 or 25 RMB, I got 45 minutes of her attention. I didn't get to see a second of the procedure. I was just told to take my coats and shirt off, lie on my stomach on a cold massage bed (in front of a fan-turned-heater), and stick my head through the hole. I tried to relax. She pulled out some sort of knife, and then went to town on my back. It felt like someone was scratching me with their nails, not softly but not hard either. And with a fair bit of pressure too. The feeling was mildly annoying, but easy to tune out. Each scrape came with a loud sound of dry skin against blade. She never made me bleed, but as you can see from the pictures, she brought a lot of blood up to the surface. She stretched my skin this way and that to get better scraping angles. She really loved scraping my shoulders. All and all, it was mildly entertaining, constantly wondering when this was supposed to hurt. (All Chinese medicine seems to be painful in one way or another.) It never was.

She was finished, and so brought her fish bowls over in a giant plastic crate. OK...they weren't really fish bowls, just tiny glass globes with a end lopped off that I loved imagining the tiniest of fish calling home. Picking up an oil-soaked, lighter-lit cotton ball, turned ball of fire, with metal tongs, she heated up the air inside one bowl. It was time for the cupping to begin. She started with my left shoulder. SLURP went my skin into the bowl. As she put more and more on, I felt my back becoming tighter and tighter, until I was sure I could not move. The skin stretched so tight, I felt like I was being laced into something, like a corset made of the strongest bubbles. It was nice feeling being so secure.

But a few minutes passed. I swear my skin was being pulled bit by bit, a little more and a little more into the bowls. And even when I thought there was no way my skin could be sucked and stretched any more, even then, the suction kept going. It kept going on and on. I was in so much pain that I was twitching on this table...when moments before I swore I could not move. They had draped a blanket over my bumpy, glass back, and I felt like a monster going through some terrible transformation, slowly. Ever so slowly.

I broke. I lay there strapped into my secure corset of glass, and no one could save me. I just started floating. Mentally, I was just gone, and there was only peace with a background constantly awash with pain. Somewhere after reaching this place, the masseuse came back. She took the globes off, one by one. Starting exactly where she had started. Under her fingertips, the bowls easily popped off my back, as if I had made up the feeling of complete bondage. By the time she got to my right side, the pain building up there was threatening to consume me. Those cups did not come off as easily as the ones before.

I put my shirt back on, took a taxi ride home, ate dinner with friends, then passed out early. Deeply. That peace stayed. At the price of a purple/red-spotted, useless back. (I couldn't sleep on my side or back for 3 days.) The bruises stayed longer. Two weeks later, I could still see faint circles on my shoulders.

The days after the procedure were strange. I felt like I had the flu. I was exhausted and weak, though calm. I ate little. When I told my Chinese friends, I was universally reprimanded. "Why did you get that?" I had not had a cold. Cupping and scraping are supposed to cure very specific illnesses, not just balance a person. They looked at me as if I had casually mentioned I had played with fire, and believed that to be a good cultural learning experience. Be careful, playing with culture. Or, as I did, play away.

A NOTE ON THE PICTURES: The first two pictures were taken a few hours after I was cupped and scraped. The third picture was taken 24 hours after. The forth picture was taken 48 hours after. The last picture was taken 4 days afterwards.