Red Cross Ready, a note

“Dear Witeny, I know you will back to America. So I send you a small gift made by myself a week ago. I remember one day, when I take 28 bus go out of school, I saw you take 10 bus to school, your face seemed sad, blank, and complicated. I hope you can be happy when you back to America. I love your smile :-). Also home is the most warm place for everyone. You must be happiness in the future.”

The first time I saw the note that would become my Red Cross cubicle’s first decoration, I put it away quickly and tried not to cry. But I kept pulling it out again and again, amazed that one of my youngest and least advanced students was able to articulate a few basic observations so succinctly. I was pretty sure I knew the sad, blank, complicated face she referenced. I agreed with her suggestion that I should be happy when I [went] back to America, but facing the prospect of a new city and another start from scratch, I wasn’t sure I could follow her command. “You must be happiness in the future.”

Turns out it’s difficult to avoid being happiness when your friends make you laugh until you cry on a regular basis, your job is fun, and an 11-month-old beams and shares his first word with you when you come home at night: “Hiiii!” Plus, I get to drive a Swagger Wagon pretty frequently, and that should make anyone happy. I’ve had the chance to enjoy live music, including my current favorite band, go to free museums and my first (pre-season) pro football game, and start a book club with some of the coolest ladies in Seattle.

The note is folded in half in a picture frame on my desk, reminding me to enjoy every moment.

When I grow up, I want to be a grown-up.

A couple weeks ago, I went to the bank with my mother, the goal being that I would never again have to go to the bank with my mother. We went intending to remove her name from my checking and savings accounts. Without saying so directly, the teller implied that unless I was getting married, there was no reason to mess with things. I don’t have a man to will my money to, so I might as well leave it to my parents in the event of some tragedy.

Her point was valid. After all, I don’t want the $8 in my checking account to get all tied up in red tape, right? Still, I left the bank feeling a bit stuck in the middle. I’m certainly not a child, but the bank teller (of all people) wouldn’t extend the “independent adult” moniker just yet.

Currently, the most-emailed story on The New York Times is titled, “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” The story mentions our society’s “scattershot approach” to marking adulthood. We’re old enough to choose our leaders and give our lives at 18, but not responsible enough to decide what we ingest until 21. There’s a full 10-year gap between the moment I could legally drive a vehicle alone and the day (not yet here) when I can rent a car as an “adult.”

The story focuses on the research of Psychologist Jeffery Jensen Arnett, who suggests that the 20s be re-branded as their own distinct developmental stage, “emerging adulthood,” because we clearly don’t have our shit together like all those grown-ups with houses and jobs and whatnot. The story is really thought-provoking, even if I don’t agree with many of the primary assumptions being made. If you’re in your 20s (ahem, most of you) I’m really curious about your thoughts on this.

For example, the author lists several activities such as traveling, competing for low-paying community service opportunities, staying single, and continuing education, then suggests that these amount to “forestalling the beginning of adult life.” This is based on the traditional sociological definition of adulthood, which according to this article is marked by five “milestones”: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child.

The steady pursuit of these milestones is far less uniform than it was a generation ago, the author concedes. “It implies a lockstep march toward adulthood that is rare these days. Kids don’t shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity.” So far, so good. But then, this: “They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace.” Later, it is suggested that 20-somethings haven’t “braced themselves” for “the trappings of adulthood.”

I don’t know what it looks like, but I am not “forestalling the beginning of adult life” by traveling, serving in AmeriCorps, or pursuing higher education. I am not slouching toward my adult life. This is my adult life, and all of the choices I have made were not made because I am running away from the inevitable reality of a mortgage payment.

I think Arnett’s study of adults in their 20s has a lot to offer society, but I have to disagree with the idea of rebranding our 20s as some kind of pseudo-adulthood. Perhaps it is adulthood that needs to be redefined to reflect modern realities.

The tone of the story suggests that adulthood comes when you’ve made all the important choices that will ever be made, and you’ve reached that blissful moment where you just get to live with them. If “adulthood” means the day you wake up and there are no choices to be made, only motions to go through, I hope I never get there.

Growing

My first thought was that not much has changed. My friend’s dad responded to this observation with, “Well, we’re all ten months older,” which seemed to be about it. But I’m starting to notice a few things. Pop’s gone so country that Jaron of Evan & Jaron is praying for tragedy to strike his ex-girlfriend. Country’s gone so pop, Reba is covering Beyonce. I saw Toy Story 3 in 3D, which blew my mind. Also, I get to drive past Des Moines Golf and Country Club every day, and for the first summer in three years I’m not serving drinks there. Yeah, unemployment makes me feel so grown up.

I’m daily amazed by how flat and open my home state is, how the blue sky goes on for miles and the stars are all visible at night. A while ago, Jason and I used Google street view to show Des Moines to a Chinese student. Wide-eyed as we showed him our former houses and favorite parks around the city, he said, “Wow, America must be like one big garden!” Drawing the distinction between “America” and “Iowa” for the millionth time, I conceded that there is a lot of green space in Iowa. Seeing it now, in contrast to “gardens” built on top of cement in my Chengde neighborhood, I understand why what he saw was so fascinating. Des Moines just has so much grass growing everywhere, shrubs and flowers wherever they’ll fit.

Of course, how and where things grew was my dad’s primary concern—well, secondary concern, after navigating chopsticks. My parents spent ten days with me in China before we flew home last week. I packed the schedule with as much must-see China Stuff as possible, from Shanghai to Xi’an to Beijing to Chengde. Me taking charge was an interesting role reversal for all three of us. I planned, I booked hostels, I mapped bus routes… I stressed.

And in the same way that a parent is really proud of a nice gift, and the child is more interested in the huge cardboard box it came in, they derived the most pleasure from things I hadn’t counted on, like our bus driver’s road rage battle with an eighteen-wheeler (wahoo, China!) and, would you believe, the fact that the Chinese grow corn in the mountains. It’s true, folks. All these years Iowans thought we had a monopoly on putting corn everywhere. But in dry, mountainous Hebei province, corn is growing out of cliffs and valleys at every turn, water and constant sunshine be damned.

And, er, speaking of sunshine be damned (forgive me for compressing three blogs into one), I have formally accepted a position working for the Seattle Red Cross, beginning at the end of August. My official title is “Capacity Building Grant Coordinator.” I’ll be doing a combination of research, grant requesting, and conducting interviews with people the Red Cross has helped so I can write those heart-wrenching stories that make people want to donate money. The position is through Americorps, so I can continue my streak of being moderately impoverished but satisfied with my job. Thankfully, I have the awesome opportunity to live with my brother and sister-in-law and their two little boys, just a couple miles from work! Rumor has it I’m paying rent in dishwashing.

Going

Until a mishap stopped me in my muddy bike tracks yesterday, I hadn't stopped moving since I woke up last Thursday. My student's mom and her sister taught Jason and me how to make dumplings and a couple of other dishes. After lunch, I set to cleaning my apartment slowly and steadily, with Rosie's help/moral support. Including breaks for mixing cocktails, it was an all-day event.
 
Friday, Mr. Lei took us to Sledge Hammer Hill, a prominent feature of Chengde's surrounding landscape that looks more than a little phallic. Appropriately, touching it is supposed to add years to your life. Army crawling through the cave in nearby Frog Crag, which we did, is supposed to make your immune to disease. So, I will live forever and never get sick.
 
After a farewell feast with Mr. Lei, I gave my last batch of finals. Highlight: Two girls worked a dialogue about how much they love me and my beautiful smile into their final presentation (suck-ups, I know! But it was sweet.) Low Point: In my final act as a teacher, I had to tell a boy he's lucky I'm not failing him--only because I'm not allowed to--because he slacked off all year and then failed to prepare a final presentation.
 
I hunted down Chengde's foreign liquor supply, a shop curiously connected to an elementary school on a leafy side street, to buy Cuervo for my farewell fiesta. I went home to email information to the Seattle Red Cross (my future employer!), organized my apartment, packed a bag and headed to la fiesta. I even slept in a hurry, and left Chengde at 5:45 a.m. I spent the afternoon in Beijing with Daisy, and took off on the overnight train to Guilin at 4 p.m., plummeting forward as I read Jack Kerouac's On The Road, which suited my pace, and convinced me that moving is the only thing to do, really. I plowed forward even as I slept.
 
Within an hour of arriving in Guilin, I hopped a bus to Longsheng, where I missed a connection by five minutes, crashed in an ugly hotel reluctantly recommended by Lonely Planet at a last resort if you end up overnighting in this "decidedly ugly" town. The showerhead was positioned directly over the squat toilet, the whole place precariously perched above a coursing, muddy river. It's always raining down here, strange to see rivers with water after a year in the dust-stormy north.
 
Up early, I caught a bus away from decidedly ugly into arguably the most fascinating manipulation of landscape humans have ever pulled off, the Dragon's Backbone rice terraces in Longji. There I spent some of the best few hours of hiking, through soggy mountains of muddy, shimmering pools, little waterfalls pouring into the pools below all the way to the bottom, the water and me in constant motion.
 
Busses. Back to Longsheng, to Guilin, to Yangshuo. I walked 90 minutes in the twilight to my current dwelling at Yangshuo Outside Inn, past several tiny villages, amid perhaps the most interesting landscape on earth. Towering limestone peaks covered with greenery, grown up from shifts in land otherwise as flat as Nebraska. So I walked and walked and walked, slept, and leapt out of bed to rent a bike and traverse the countryside. Thursday to Tuesday, I barely stopped to eat and sleep.
 
It started sprinking as I left the hostel on my brand new Giant mountain bike, the Crayola color of burnt sienna, accented with deep maroon. A beautiful bike. Soon it was pouring. I hate to turn around, and I hadn't stopped yet, so I plowed on--almost Chinese as I futilely held my umbrella with one hand, navigating puddles and sharp rocks with the other.
 
I biked all day, stopping only for lunch under a tent restaurant during a hard downpour. The proprietor's child was curious about me. She also had a huge glob of thick green snot under one nostril, and while her mother smacked her hands and arms repeatedly for unseen offenses, she never wiped her nose. The little girl seemed as unphased by the beatings as her mother was by the snot globule. I sat until I could sit no more, and rode to visit a cave.
 
Foolishly, I assumed two things. 1: Caves are natural wonders. 2: It doesn't rain in caves. China sometimes has a way of taking naturally beautiful places and exploiting them in the tackiest possible way. So this cave's stalag-tites and -mites are lit up like a Saturday night disco, and photography teams take portraits and show them on computer screens--inside the cave--like it's Adventureland or something. Also, I had to pull out my umbrella a few times to dodge the dripping roof.
 
I tried to loop back to the hostel, but some conman  (or maybe he was legit, but it was a scam regardless) wanted to charge me to bike through his "historic village" situated conveniently on the main path. I hated the idea of just going back the way I came (why? why?) so I turned and took a side road from the village, going going going as the path tapered into more of a stream, until I was walking my bike on a narrow stretch that wasn't actually a path at all. I wouldn't turn around, because I was at the river and knew my hostel was just across the water, if only I could find a bridge. And I wasn't about to stop moving now.
 
But I looked back and realized my umbrella was gone. I'd rigged it over my basket to cover my camera bag. My heart sank--the umbrella was given to me by a sweet couple from California on Easter Sunday at the Vatican in 2008, when they noticed me next to them, umbrella-less and soaked to the bone. Since receiving that umbrella, I've never forgotten it on rainy days. So, finally, I turned around even knowing there was no chance it hadn't been claimed by the next passerby.
 
Here I am, frantically peddling up muddy, rocky slopes in the most beautiful place in China (did I mention this? It's beautiful. No, really.) going and going because I don't want to stop going. At once, it starts to sprinkle again, and I hear a dooming metal-on-rock sound. scrape-scrape.
 
The back tire on my brand new, burnt sienna Giant mountain bike is completely flat. And of course it starts to rain harder. This bike is really heavy, so I can carry it about seven steps before dropping it in a puddle. Going the long way around, the only way I know how to get back to the hostel, I figure it will take me approximately the rest of the week. I wanted to cry. Or maybe I did. In the rain, who can tell?
 
Two guys passed on their motorcycles before a skinny little man in an army surplus jacket took pity on me. He surveyed the situation, shook his head slowly and chuckled a little, and finally made a phone call to a bike repairman. I tried to communicate that I'd like to call the hostel, but eventually just plopped down on a rock to wait. If there's one thing I have learned this year, it's that things just happen in China, at a pace and through a method that I haven't yet managed to grasp. Usually, the thing to do is be still and wait anywhere from 60 minutes to 60 days longer than I imagine a thing should take. And so I did. Finally stopped after five days of going, I surrendered to the situation.
 
My rescuer was kind, but couldn't hide his amusement at my situation. I took off my shoes to ring out my muddy socks. He grinned and shook his head some more. Don't you have an umbrella? Mei you. He shook his head. Slowly, to rub it in. Then he pointed to the bike and shook his head grimly some more. The repairman was an hour arriving.
 
He found no fewer than five holes in the tube (how?) and I finally did call the hostel manager to negotiate the price of a new tube. (He found the holes or he made them?" she sighed in typical ex-pat fashion.) After a few more calls, the mechanic left, came back with the tire, and had it fixed up in three minutes. He also donated his old poncho to me for the ride back.
 
My savior squatted under a nearby roof, shaking his head still at the turn his afternoon had taken. And, again, I went.

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"The World Spins Madly On"

I recently finished reading an edition of The Best American Travel Writing, an annual collection of noteworthy travel pieces from American magazines. In one story republished from Gourmet magazine, William Least Heat-Moon recalls playing copilot for his father as a child, and something his father often said on trips. "From a mere vacation, one goes home older, but from true travel, one returns changed by challenge."

 

Beginning today, I can count down to my homecoming in days rather than months. It must be time to reflect on those challenges that have shaped me this year. Although some days it feels like it's just beginning, it also feels like it might be simpler to list the experiences and emotions I haven't had since August.

 

My passport was lost in the mail until the day before I left. I celebrated my 23^rd birthday on the Great Wall. I saw the Dalai Lama, and the sunrise at the Taj Mahal. I learned how to say, "I am cold!" in Chinese, and celebrated Christmas at a nightclub. I wrote a 50,101-word novel, and ate holy food off the floor while recovering from food poisoning. I rescued a puppy, and a monk who thinks we should love pigs as much as we love dogs taught me about anger. I taught, and learned, and taught some more. I really loved that part.

 

Some of my experiences were rather mundane. My toilet overflowed. I cried a lot. I went to the gym. I cooked.

 

Last night, my friend Cate and I climbed into the mountains above Chengde just before sunset. A network of trails crisscrosses away from the city's neon lights (lights that make it look much more glamorous than it actually is), and we've been saying for weeks that we wanted to spend the night out in the open, above the noise. We camped under a pagoda, watching the sun sink behind the western mountains on its way to rise over my friends and family, as the gleaming full moon ascended from the east.

 

We talked the night away, and got a few amateur photos of the brilliant moon, before the sun lightened the horizon again around 3:00 a.m. Watching the sky's rotation like that, it's impossible not to comprehend just how fast the world is spinning. As Cate said, "Look at this sky moving. How could anyone ever have thought the world was flat?" (I told her about Iowa.)

 

It's difficult to quantify what I'll miss when thirty more of those spins land me in the U.S. The food, my students, my friends, my own space. Will I miss the thrill of being on a bus careening toward a bicyclist and swerving at the last minute? Or seeing children relieve themselves by the sidewalk? The deep, guttural sound of a man cleaning mucus out of his lungs to launch it into the street? Perhaps.

 

Simon Winchester, author of "Welcome to Nowhere" in The Best American Travel Writing, quoted his tailor's comment to him upon his return from an incredible journey. "You know, you are a very, very lucky man indeed. Lucky to be in such a place. Lucky to see such things. And luckiest of all to meet such very kind people. I envy you. Everyone must envy you. Wherever would you be—have you ever wondered—without all their kindness and without all this luck?"

 

There may not be ubiquitous envy for my experiences or living conditions, but I do consider myself indescribably lucky to be in such a place, to have met such kind people, to see the sky turn pink and orange with the moon still high in the sky over Chengde. 

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"Life Would Be Perfect...": Want Less, Have More.

The past nine months have afforded me more free time than I've had in years (and far more than I hope to have again prior to, or even in, retirement). It was a time to develop hobbies. While I wish I could say I learned to juggle, or took up the offer for belly dancing lessons from the teacher at my gym, the truth is… I developed an obsession with National Public Radio. Which is how I stumbled upon a recent interview with author Meghan Daum, whose book, "Life Would be Perfect if I Lived in That House," chronicles her hobby—obsessively hunting for the perfect living space.

 

The interviewer, Rebecca Roberts, said in her lead, "It's a uniquely American phenomenon, this house lust, this fantasy of the perfect life in the perfect environment." I glanced at my surroundings and mused at what these uniquely house-lusty Americans would think. My kitchen has two food preparation surfaces: the top of a 4-foot-tall refrigerator, and the (broken) lid of a (functioning) washing machine. I cook on a hot plate that sits on top of my microwave, and I wash my dishes in a sink conveniently angled to elevate the drain. I don't lust for a house, but most days I do lust for an oven.

 

With Daum's interview in the background, I landed on this Foreign Policy story about China's housing bubble. Its author debunked Roberts' claim in the first paragraph. "Last fall 80 percent of respondents to a China Youth Daily online poll said that home ownership was a prerequisite for happiness." In the unlikely event that Americans ever were the only people in the world who associated happiness with square footage, it certainly isn't true anymore.

 

The article reports that China's successful young generation, beneficiaries of the spoil-inducing (and its less desirable cousin, unreasonably high expectation-inducing) one child policy are struggling to attain homeownership, the last rung of the success ladder they're told they deserve to ascend uninhibited. On the flip side, wealthy Chinese with a lack of places to invest excess cash are holding multiple, empty apartments now poised to crash in value.

 

About compulsively changing houses, Daum said, "I really felt that where I lived was a direct reflection of who I was. My house was really a mirror of my soul. And until I found sort of the right mirror, I just wasn't going to be settled." Young Chinese women seem to agree. They're unlikely to pursue a man whose virtuous soul isn't reflected in his walls and his wallet.

 

Scanning the rooms of my charmingly filthy, disintegrating hovel, with its perpetually broken furniture and a variegated wooden bathroom door shedding soggy splinters in my entryway, I'm inclined to disagree with the notion that where you live is in some way a direct reflection of who you are. Then again, I signed up for this dwelling. More unbelievably, perhaps because it's the first place I've lived on my own (or because I have impossibly low standards… or because I can listen to npr for hours without annoying anyone), I know my busted toilet seat and blown outlets will always hold a revered place in my storied housing history.

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Spring, Storms, & Sequins

Spring lasted about two hours in Chengde. I think I was asleep. Bundled up in my turtleneck and winter coat until the last bitter days of April, I glared at the stick-trees, beseeching them to grow some damn flowers already. When I returned from Qingdao last Tuesday, it was nearly 90 degrees, and blossoms were blowing off the trees in a fierce wind as though they had been there all along, and were now tired of announcing spring. Grandmas and grandpas play mahjong around tiny street-side tables well into the evening, barbeque joints stay open all night long, and Friday night beers can be enjoyed to excess by the banks of the river. It's like it wasn't 20 below a mere two months ago.

 

Dust storms are one of the more interesting experiences that accompany Chengde's spring/summer. Saturday afternoon while reading at a table by the river—shortly after some guys cracked open foaming beers which the wind splashed straight against my back and hair—the sky began to turn a hazy yellow. As I walked to the grocery store and then home, to change out of my beer-scented garb, the Saturday afternoon crowd continued to go about its business in the increasingly yellow/orange air. Severe drought and deforestation caused an increase in storms this year, so small clouds like this one don't merit much reaction—they happen all the time, and are sometimes almost indistinguishable from regular industrial haze. A more severe storm can look like this—Chengde had one of these back in March. Around 5 a.m. on Sunday morning, wind rattling my windows woke me to another storm. Street sweepers were out with their straw brooms, trying to make the dust disappear even as it swirled and settled on top of them.

 

Decidedly less of a global calamity, The springtime fashion sweeping Chengde's sidewalks also keeps me guessing, and wondering if I should just stay inside. It's a tragic fact that I cannot wear my flip-flops ("slippers," as they're known here) outside the apartment. They're considered house shoes, and honestly bare feet after an afternoon on the town are too filthy to describe. This rule I understand, but others are more difficult to decipher.

 

It seems your legs should always be covered, in some fallacious show of modesty. Evidence suggests it would be perceived as scandalous if I wore shorts around town with my bare white legs showing, yet women can wear shimmery dresses that barely cover their (small, flat) butts, with sheer black tights and high heels. I see them wearing dresses cut similarly to halters or strapless dresses that I own, but I know I couldn't wear the same dresses without repercussion.

As a woman who didn't develop beyond knees and elbows until I was nearly 17 years old, I finally feel some empathy for those "early bloomers" trying desperately to cover their extra, curvy flesh in front of their girlish peers. Except I'm trying to feign modesty in front of 30-year-old women who can wear sheer tights and sequins and look more like a 5-year-old in a dance recital than a soliciting trollop. Exasperated, I default to jeans and old Houghton softball shirts, pretending I, too, can still pull off the sweetly pre-pubescent look. 

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Window Clings

For the past five years, my mother has kept me in window clings. Every college dorm or old apartment window donned pumpkins at Halloween, Santa and snowmen at Christmas, and turkeys in between. Currently, chickens and bunnies on my kitchen window proclaim spring. It seems small, but my mom's window clings and the boxes they come in—full of local newspaper clips and American snacks—make me the grudging object of envy among fellow vagabonds. "Your mom is so cute," they always say. I know what they mean. My mom is the best.

 

She worries about me, but in a practical, hands-off way, shaking her head and saying prayers (and sending provisions) while I traipse around the world. She did contact a family friend who occasionally does business in China to ask him to check up on me when he's "in the neighborhood" of a country with 400 million people. Against all odds, she's convinced my father—whose words around this time last year were, "CHINA? Why on earth would anyone want to go to China?"—to spend ten days here with me before I go home next month.

 

I think my mom would be impressed with the women I've encountered this year: A Tibetan nun in India, who called me "teacher" but treated me like a daughter, pumping me full of rice, vegetables and cookies, insisting that I borrow her gloves for my eternally frigid hands, and grinding up my food poisoning medicine with concerned, motherly diligence; My student's mother, who keeps her cell-phone dictionary on hand solely to translate the names of the food she's sending me home with, who forecasts the weather for me and admonishes me to wear more clothes when it's chilly, who gave me a bottle of cough medicine and the classic Chinese prescription to "have a good rest" when I was sick.

 

In addition to my mother's care stretching across the Pacific, and all the willing proxies I've encountered abroad, so many women have filled a maternal role this year. My aunts sent me prayer-filled Christmas cards (and one pesky glitter-filled card, whose remnants are still being swept up) and the right words at just the right time. My sisters provided books, pictures and even a Christmas tree. My bosses are wide-eyed at the amount of mail I receive from someone as "distant" as my brother-in-law's grandmother.

 

No matter how independent we are, we always appreciate being taken care of. Window clings from America and flimsy black gloves from India remind me that good mothers are everywhere, and it's a good thing.

 

Happy Mother's Day!

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Qingdao

On the slowest trains in China, there are no trash receptacles, the squat toilet usually has a lifetime of stains, disguised only by the fresh ones on top of them, and, like pre-smoking-ban bars, there's no way to emerge from them without smelling like an ashtray. The next class of trains uses washable seat covers and offers a tin plate for accumulated trash. Finally, the luxurious new fast trains are more comfortable than airplanes, with adjustable seats, a free bottle of water, and music that, mercifully, isn't the annoying, easily downloadable tune that everyone uses as their cell phone ring-back.

 

Traveling to Qingdao and back last weekend, I experienced all three carriers, and was amused to note that the passengers don't really differ—they just behave differently depending on the setting. On slow trains, they spit sunflower seed shells on the table or the floor. Disgusting, maybe. But someone has decided riders on the slow train aren't civilized enough to use receptacles. The same seed devourers on the fast trains gingerly place their seeds in their own personal trash bag, supplied on the train.

 

Of course, in all three settings no one feels compelled to stand in a line when entering or departing. Crushed in the huddle for the train back to Beijing, I mused about my earliest lessons in "waiting your turn." I remembered my line buddy in kindergarten, a kid named Jeffery who picked his nose and was obsessed with singing "Take me out to the Ballgame." Fortunately, he moved away. But while he remained, I was trained to stand still next to him come hell or high water. I've seen the kids lined up in neat little rows at the primary school near my apartment, but as bodies swirled around me, pulling my backpack one way and my camera bag the other, leaving me stranded in the middle, I had to wonder if behind closed doors they don't give their kids lessons in throwing elbows as well as waiting patiently. There are some things I won't miss.

 

Chinese people have an uncanny ability to fall asleep instantly, almost anywhere. I admire and slightly resent them for this trait. I always notice babies and toddlers being lugged around in the most uncomfortable positions, bundled and resting on their mothers' arms, being jostled about through busses and train stations, or even hiking mountains. As I tried to contort myself a million different ways to sleep sitting up on the train home, I observed fellow passengers hunched over luggage in the aisle, or sitting on a stool with their head in a fellow traveler's lap, that traveler draped on top of the unconscious torso of their companion. I wondered sleepily about the benefits of sprawling out in car seats and strollers as a baby. Perhaps I was robbed of this basic instinct to become unconscious at will, regardless of spatial realities.

 

Our hostel in Qingdao was built in China's first observatory, an interesting, narrow building with a rooftop terrace and a huge telescope next to the bar (I shudder to think about the demoralizing things that telescope has suffered at the hands of intoxicated expats.) I traveled with Daisy, my student from last fall. Now, hostels are a scary concept for many people who haven't stayed in them—those of us who frequent them know they can be a blast, even if you do room with the occasional weirdo or the jerk who insists upon turning on the lights when they stumble in at two a.m., or stumble out at six. But for Chinese girls like Daisy, the fact that a foreign man slept in the bed next to her is almost too much to stomach. Even though he slept with his shirt off, she somehow hadn't noticed it was a guy until I told her later. A 28-year-old woman who took a day trip with us to Mount Laoshan was so shocked that she was sharing a room with some foreign men, she was thinking about staying at a different hotel.

 

The 2008 Olympic sailing competition was held in Qingdao, and it is rated one of the best places to live in China. While it doesn't escape the smoggy plague of most large cities (The Haier electronics factory is—proudly—stationed here) it is overall a pleasant city. Laoshan and the parks and streets within the city itself where covered with the pink and white blossoms of late spring. Dozens of couples taking wedding photos (formal photo shoots that happen with many matching costumes and cheesy poses, long before the wedding takes place) filled the parks and beaches. Germans occupied the city for a time, introducing beer and German architecture. The structures around the sea thus have a unique heritage, and one of the most popular beers in China is still brewed here.

 

The people were unbelievably friendly, which Daisy could not get over. She would ask someone for directions, and if they said our destination was five blocks down on the left, she would walk two blocks and check with someone else just to make sure we were still going the right direction. When we arrived at the turn, she would again ask, just to be sure, that we should turn left. Every time she spoke to someone, she would return to me wide-eyed and smiling. "These people are so nice!" She shook her head every time. I don't know if she ever needed directions—it was more of a social experiment, to see if 100% of the sampled population truly would answer her questions. After talking to an especially handsome man in a nice suit, she skipped over to me and remarked, "Ah! I am going to marry a man from this province!" 

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Even the melons were good.

"Ah, America! Bruce Lee! Wo ai meiguo. I love America!" This shirtless Chinese guy greeted me at the hostel front desk, where he had been doing his best to impress the cute receptionist with goofy antics and a mediocre body clad in moose-patterned boxer shorts. I acknowledged my undeniably close relationship with the great Bruce Lee, and fell into my bed dreaming of the beach.

 

A few freezing nights after the heat was turned off in my apartment weeks ago, I sat at my computer under layers of cotton in various forms—clothes, robe, blanket—and pointed my mouse at Sanya, China's southernmost city on its only tropical island. Last week, while my students participated in an intramural track meet at the university, I landed in Sanya for three days of sun, seafood, oogling fat Russian tourists, and Chinese women going to great lengths to keep the sun from darkening their precious skin while they enjoyed the beach view. 

 

Dadonghai Beach must be the most tactfully developed place I've visited in China. Curvy boardwalks and stone passageways, outdoor barbeque restaurants and classy bars ringed the bay, offering an endless supply of seafood, fresh-squeezed juice, and cold beer on tap. (Cold beer! On tap! It does exist!) Adorable couples in matching Hawaiian-patterned shorts and shirts, clinging to each other under umbrellas to deflect the sun, did add a charmingly tacky twist that reminded me I hadn't left the country. (And then, of course, moose-boxer boy, who wore said boxers and a fanny-pack-inspired man purse when a few of us went out for a drink Thursday night.)

 

Perhaps it was because I traveled alone, but this was by far the most social experience I've had in a hostel. The crew assembled for a Friday night out included a couple of Indian-English guys spending nine months traveling in Asia, two Swedes and three Americans studying with different programs in Shanghai, another English teacher from Holland, and one of my Chinese roommates. I hate to generalize about entire nations… but they're small, so I don't feel too bad about it: Swedes and the Dutch are my favorite people to meet while traveling. They're impossibly nice and genuine, and always up for a good time.

 

For good or for bad, the chain-smoking hostel cook acted as our bar guide. "I'll take you to a place where the floor bounces," was the pitch he made to us after we'd downed a bottle of 100rmb Absolut playing drinking games at the hostel. The club, which did indeed have some sort of spring-loaded floor, was pretty normal—with Chinese characteristics. A remix of the "McDonalds, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut" round was worked in with a techno "Glory, Glory Halleluiah," followed by "Take me Home, Country Road." And then a slender, tan, scantily clad transvestite danced to Michael Jackson.

 

And then I ate a watermelon, and liked it. It's true what they say, I just hadn't had a good one yet.

 

 

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Making memorable the phrase "aspirate on vomit": All in a day's work

Our friend and colleague Mr. Lei is acutely aware of the fact that foreign teachers are a goldmine of the English language (if I do say so myself.) In addition to making chapter recordings and reading vocabulary for his classes in the Overseas Nursing department, Jason and I have been writing dialogues so his students can practice talking medically in casual conversation.

 

The instructions are to work the textbook symptoms and procedures into short, memorable dialogues. Want to learn about bacterial meningitis? Read about how "Friend 1" almost died when he was a kid!

 

Unit 44: Bacterial Meningitis

 

A conversation in which one friend tells another about the time he almost died from meningitis.

 

Friend 1: Hey, want to hear a crazy story? When I was younger, I almost died!

 

Friend 2: Really, how?

 

Friend 1: I had bacterial meningitis. It's a potentially fatal disease that can rapidly lead to death. First, I just had a cold. Then, suddenly, I had a really severe headache, drowsiness, delirium, irritability, restlessness, vomiting, and fever.

 

Friend 2: Oh, that sounds awful!

 

Friend 1: Yeah, that's not even the worst part. My parents knew something was really wrong when I resisted flexion of my neck, and I started to have convulsions. That's when they took me to the hospital.

 

Friend 2: You had convulsions? I don't believe you. You're making this up!

 

Friend 1: No, it's true! I received antibiotics intravenously for rapid effect. Nurses had to work really hard to save me. They kept the room as quiet as possible, put padded side rails on my bed so I didn't hurt myself during convulsions, and helped move my body around so I didn't aspirate on vomit or catch pneumonia.

 

Friend 2: Wow. I'm really glad you survived.

 

Friend 1: No kidding. For a while I was monitored for a slow pulse rate, irregular respirations, and increased blood pressure. But I recovered eventually.

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Eating like a grown-up

So, it's true that frozen dumplings make up at least 14% of my weekly meal count (yes, I used my GRE-refreshed elementary math skills to figure that out.) Instant oatmeal accounts for a full third of my intake—with various fruits or honey to shake it up each morning. But what do I put into my body the other half of the time?

 

Last week, my mother informed me, her 23-year-old baby, that all of her "adult children" made corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day. I have to take the exclusion with a grain of salt, because an uncle in his mid-thirties is still considered the baby in my dad's family, despite being by far the largest of ten siblings. His girth is cited whenever I'm indignant about the fact that my parents should, at some point, have to concede that I'm an adult now. Then again, they still file my taxes, answer my mail and pay for my health insurance. What is adulthood, anyway?

 

Still, this exclusion from the mythical adult-land where people cook real meals daily, combined with a desire to stop eating at restaurants so frequently (thanks in no small part to this story—more details and pictures—about recycling cooking oil from sewers being a common practice), has sparked an interest in cooking more of my own adult-grade meals.

 

One of the biggest issues I've encountered trying to cook for one is that it's almost never practical for me to have adequate ingredients on hand. If I buy vegetables without a specific recipe in mind for them, they're likely to sit neglected in my refrigerator while I make pb&j or boil a handful of dumplings. Thankfully, it's finally looking like spring up here—if spring is a snow storm followed by a gigantic dust storm followed by wind and rain—so fresh veggies are again on the street mere steps away.

 

I'm trying to build a repertoire of recipes I can file under "easy" in my mind, so I'm more likely to turn to them than a street vendor when hunger calls. Not surprisingly, the first winner involves a hearty scoop of peanut butter:

 

Peanut butter noodles – This was so delicious, and because it's an Asian dish, I didn't have to improvise on ingredients I can't find here. Peanut butter, honey, soy sauce, and hot chili paste!

 

A second dish that went well, and made more than enough to replace restaurant forays this week, is actually a version of a really common dish we ate in India, Aloo Gobi Masala. Fun fact, I learned the Chinese for "cumin" in assembling these ingredients. They call it "little fennel."

 

My student in India taught me how to make naan, or Indian bread. It was so easy when I cooked with her, but something went terribly wrong when I tried to make it myself yesterday. I ended up wasting most of my flour, making a doughy mess of my kitchen, and cooking something more along the lines of a bland pancake. Another hurdle for me is that mishaps like this make me want to swear off any interaction with a cutting board/rolling pin for a few days. Thankfully, I'll be working through Aloo Gobi leftovers for at least that long. 

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Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

Charles Dickens became one of my favorite authors sometime after I read A Tale of Two Cities in high school—this despite the fact that he couldn't create a plausible heroine for anything. I took my amour far enough to read David Copperfield, nearly 1000 pages of impoverished Victorian English glory. I have a new tutoring student whose English name is David. When my most recent tutoring acquisition, an audacious 14-year-old boy, asked me for a unique English name, I drafted a short list of movie and literary character names, and he chose Oliver. This adds a Dickensian twist (pun?) to my days, and makes me smile. Speaking of names, Oliver also has a huge pet mouse named "xiao jing," or "little king." I think it's adorable.

 

My former student Daisy, who first appeared in my stories as a meek character who seemed to be at the whims of the men in her life, has proven to be an especially strong woman (the anti-implausible Dickensian female!) determined to do something different with her life even as all of her friends and family pressure her to settle. She recently moved to Beijing to find a better job and continue to improve her English. It has improved greatly, but still has a touch of China that makes it musical to read.

 

Regarding her desire to leave China and pursue anything somewhere else, she sent me this line in an email: "I think it more like a dream than an aim. Life will become boring and hopeless if dream is considered as a luxury. For me, the aim or dreams like a kind of support. I just try my best to let them come true." I think she could have a career as a greeting card writer once she cleans up that grammar.

 

Lately her friends, like mine, have started to get married, and she's feeling the expectant stares and parental toungue-clicking. Her response to my suggestion that when she moves to America we can go out and find husbands together: "I smiled when you told me we can find our husband in America together, because that moment I felt life can be colorful." Life can be colorful. Write that down.

 

A friend and fellow Drake journalism grad, Alexa, is currently teaching English through a Fulbright Grant in Indonesia. She recently wrote an incredibly honest blog about the stress of planning the next step after an experience like this—essentially, you think you go abroad to find your calling, to "take a year off" and get it all figured out, but most of our species only end up more confused and with less direction by the end. I've been thinking of saying something really similar, and I invite you to check out what she has to say.

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Lhasang Tsering, Dissenter

This is the other piece I wrote for Contact Magazine while in India. It is a short profile of one of the most interesting men I've ever met. This man turned down an opportunity in his youth to study medicine in the U.S., instead choosing to join meager guerilla efforts to force the Chinese army out of Tibet. While the Dalai Lama, and thus the majority of Tibetans who follow him, champions a "Middle Way" policy in which Tibet remains part of China but is a fully functional autonomous region (free to elect their own representatives for deciding on local issues), Lhasang Tsering insists that the world is suffering as long as Tibet is occupied by China:

Lhasang Tsering runs one of the most successful bookshops in Mcleod Ganj. Yet, when he speaks, he keeps one eye trained in the direction of Tibet. An outspoken critic of the Tibetan government-in-exile's Middle Way policy, Tsering uses poetry to express the pain he feels for his homeland and its people, and his unwavering belief that Tibet must be a free, independent nation.

 

"What you call poems, I call my pain in words," he says. Those words reflect the pain of a lost home, a thwarted freedom struggle, and a feeling that no one is doing enough. On the wall behind his desk at The Bookworm is a plaque declaring, "The world without Tibet is not complete."

 

Another poster behind him reads, "I have something to live for. I have freedom to fight for." No, Tsering doesn't participate in demonstrations, marches, or hunger strikes. But he sits ready to fight if he is asked. "When freedom was a goal, I led the demonstrations. Now, I'm not interested in taking part in rituals," he says.

 

Tsering, the former president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, left government service because he disagreed with official policies. He sold his watch, a nice pair of shoes he received as a gift, and most of his clothing in order to purchase books for his first small store. "Books were the only things I knew and loved," he explains. Well-versed in what it takes to run a successful business, he says a business-oriented attitude is one of the flaws in the current negotiations with China.

 

"The matter of independence for Tibet is not like a game, or a business. Unlike this bookshop, which is a business where I try to make money, and I change something if I'm not, the Tibet issue should not be about winning and losing. In my humble view, winning and losing are important, but they are second to right and wrong. Always."

 

As he speaks he keeps his eyes on Tibet. It may be on the other side of the mountain, but he knows exactly which way home is.

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Tibetan National Uprising Day

In the exiled Tibetan community, where I spent most of my winter vacation, March 10th is National Uprising Day - a day when Tibetans execute hunger strikes, protests, and rallies to keep the cause of equality in Tibet alive. I wrote the following story for a local publication in Dharamsala before we left.

Because the piece was written for Tibetans, it doesn't delve into a lot of the history necessary to fully understand the day. You may remember (although, to be honest, I certainly didn't) that there were massive uprisings in Tibet in 2008, when many Tibetans were killed or imprisoned. If you were alive in 1959, you might remember the scandal surrounding the teen-aged Dalai Lama's covert escape from Tibet into India in March of that month.

As long as the Chinese government continues to oppress traditional Tibetan culture, which is fundamentally different from Han Chinese culture, the Tibetan community will observe March 10 as a day of mourning the oppression and impending loss of their culture. This is the little bit that I learned about the day from being in Dharamsala (Originally published in Contact Magazine, March 2010 Issue):

For the exiled Tibetan community, National Uprising Day isn't about going hungry, picketing the Chinese embassy, or shouting slogans in the streets of Dharamsala. While all of these things will happen on 10 March, the day remains truly focused on the plight of the majority of Tibetans who remain in Tibet.

 

"Our brothers and sisters have suffered for speaking their minds and exercising their basic human rights. They have to pay a high price for basic freedoms," says Tashi Choephel, a researcher at the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy. This year marks the two-year anniversary of the March 2008 uprising in Tibet, which was the largest and most widespread since the Dalai Lama went into exile in 1959.

 

For those in exile, the events of March 2008 sent a powerful message that Tibetans continue to believe in and to fight for their rights in the region. "The sense of identity for exiled Tibetans became stronger [after the uprising]. There was unity among the exiled community like never before," Choephel says. He finds the continued resistance encouraging, and believes the issue will be solved in time. "I would tell Tibetans inside Tibet not to give up hope, because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. They're an example to Tibetan people outside Tibet to continue to fight for the cause."

 

According to TCHRD's 2009 Annual Report on the Human Rights Situation in Tibet, fast track courts in 2009 issued the death penalty to five Tibetans for their participation in the spring 2008 protests. The governmental organization states that torture is endemic in Chinese-administered prisons and detention centers. Several cases of torture and inhuman treatment have been reported since the protests, when the TCHRD estimates that around 6,500 Tibetans were arrested.

 

China refuses to admit international regulatory bodies to inspect its prisons. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was denied access to Tibet after March 2008, and the International committee of the Red Cross, which is mandated to visit detention facilities and check on the wellbeing of prisoners worldwide, isn't allowed in, either. A joint statement by six United Nations Special Procedures mandate holders calling for an increased flow of information in and out of Tibet continues to be ignored.

 

Although the Chinese authorities deny the use of extreme force upon Tibetan demonstrators, the reality is that they continue to oppress both the religious and lay communities who protest peacefully. "Earlier, activists and political prisoners were mostly monks and nuns, but in 2008 a large number of civilians were arrested, sentenced, even given the death sentence for peaceful protests," says Choephel. 

 

Always focused on the reality of the situation inside Tibet, those in exile will use 10 March as a day to advance the Tibetan cause and to send a message to their countrymen who remain oppressed. "As Tibetans outside Tibet, we have a moral responsibility to speak out, because we have the facilities to reach the world with our message. We need to let the Tibetans inside Tibet know that we still have a desire to go back," says Sonam Dorjee, Dharamsala regional president of the Tibetan Youth Congress.

 

The 40-year-old TYC, the largest and most active exiled Tibetan NGO, will facilitate protests in March not as a ritual of habit, but as a promise to their fellow Tibetans who continue to resist. "The issue is still alive because of the Tibetans inside Tibet. The Chinese failed to invade the hearts of the Tibetan people. Even though they know they're in danger, they speak out," Dorjee says.

 

Dorjee, who hasn't missed a 10 March protest since he was 10 years old, when he sneaked onto a bus with his father to attend a march, experienced the most memorable moment of his life when the Dalai Lama greeted him during a 10 March hunger strike in Mcleod Ganj. Although these experiences are personally gratifying, he reiterates the importance for exiles of remembering those inside Tibet when they protest. His father is missing half of a thumb, shot off by a Chinese border guard when he fled to Tibet. "To me, this has always been a reminder that we have a responsibility to the people inside Tibet to remember their struggles," Dorjee says.

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The Taj Mahal

  It was no accident that we went straight to Mcleod Ganj and stayed put for five weeks. Transportation in India is more terrifying by far than its Chinese counterpart. And that's saying something. The day we traveled to Agra, we received a crash course in all the things we'd missed out on thus far. The inside of our sleeper car on the train looked a lot like my dad's old grey van—it even had huge, dusty fans attached to the ceiling, maybe 6 inches from our bunks, so I was able to share with Jason the story of how my sisters and I always got our hair caught in the van's rotating fans on long road trips. Throughout the 6-hour trip, children hopped on to try to sell things, or to sing songs for money.

 

In Agra, we had to negotiate with rickshaw after rickshaw to get to the bus station. Then, successfully not getting ripped off too badly, realizing we weren't at the correct station, we had to negotiate all over again. Some guy tried to push an offer to drive us there in his private car for nearly $80, to which I finally responded, exasperated, "Look, I know you see our white skin and think we're rich, but I honestly do not even have that much money in my wallet right now." We arrived at a bug-infested hotel near the Taj Mahal around 11 p.m., crashed until 5, and then rose to see the Taj before the crowds.

 

Like the Golden Temple, the Taj Mahal is so picturesque as to be cliché. What can I tell you about it that you haven't seen in elementary school history books? It's big, it's beautiful, and when you think about the fact that the whole thing is one great big tombstone, it really puts cremation in perspective. The space inside is really austere, just marble floor to ceiling, and a wall around the two tombs—one slightly higher than the other—ornately decorated with carvings and intricately painted flowers. In an empty side chamber, I broke the no camera rule to capture a bat sleeping peacefully in a corner.

 

There are gardens to walk through all around the main mausoleum, but I hated to turn my back on the shining mass of marble in the perfect, post-thunderstorm morning light. As the sky turned from purple to crisp, clear blue, I wanted to walk backward away from it to lock it in my memory. I worry that my brain will file this perfect image as something it saw in a book, and the memory of really standing there in awe of the whole thing will fade.

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