The Holiday

Among shopping, coffee shops, book stores, Everything and More, 1Q84, tutoring, teaching, and coaching, I find that there is very little time to be sad. Instead of burying myself in other people's content (mainly YouTube - there's no way of avoiding this guilty pleasure), I get to create my own. Even if its just in my head. Even if my mouth dries itself out from constantly making conversation. Even if I'm missing out on time to learn computer programming and SQL, whatever that is. Something feels very right about being legitimately busy in such a casual way.

My first week back from China was considerably unproductive, with the exception of Lauren, maybe twice. It was, to be honest, rather wasteful, in a way that fills you with regret when you see quotes like "lost time is never found" or "you have just as many hours in a day as beyonce does." This was my choice, and I hope to avoid making it too often. This week doesn't leave much room for that, especially with Ribfest. For this and possibly free ribs and a temporary job, I am grateful.

So this is a note, a not insignificant mark of a time (1:23 AM), that serves as a reminder. Its a reminder that staying at home with a bowl of watermelon is easy, but constricting. Its a reminder that I use way to many parallel sentences, and a reminder that I need to leave the house. Because its a choice. And there are too many good books to count and too many latte and froyo flavors to taste. And, also, that I'm a little bit in love with life, somewhat overexcited/overwhelmed for college, and desperately happy to know that people are real.

China: The Dust

If you put a sepia filter on the identical apartment towers of Chongqing, it looks like the apocalyptic opening of Wall-E. With the exception of improved vegetation, the scene is dangerously similar. The walls are stained with mold and stretch 30 stories high. Its not just the buildings either. The cranes are like monsters, straight out of slum mashing movies. They look like beasts of destruction, but they're actually the most physically powerful tools of construction. Put ten of them in about an acre's proximity, and it looks like Team Rocket is taking over. Literally, to unite all people within the nation, to extend its reach to the stars above. Dust settles on waste, and this filthy mixture buries itself into the cracks on the streets. When it rains, the mud rises and sticks to the soles of 28 million pairs of feet.

We lived in one of the oldest cultural districts, Shapingba. Its infamous prestitigious education is undeniable, but the place is exhausted. Groups of soot-covered men squat in their 45 square foot garages to sort through electrical wiring and metal trash. Yoke carriers slink around street corners, waiting for someone with too much baggage to collapse. Sweepers quietly scrape cigarette buts and seed shells into their dustbins. If any of these people are lucky, they'll make one RMB that day. 16 cents, enough for a bowl of suan la fen, sour, spicy noodles.

Here, there isn't time to care about other people. Survival isn't accepted; its seized. Every pork bun stand has its own specialties. Every farmer has a different bargain for dragon fruit, yangmei (yamamomo), litchi, persimmon. And that was my excuse to list delicious exotic fruits. Anyway, you can't wait in line to pick up your breakfast soymilk - you have to push your way to the front. Sales people step on your heels the second you enter their portion of the department store, and the only way to get them off is to be rude. Ignore their mega horn voices and the way they address you as "Mei nv," beautiful girl. Beggars are ignored and taken for fools. Many of them kneel, in the traditional position of humility, and simply wait. I have seen only one beggar who received consistent attention. He sat unclothed on stone steps, emaciated, so that his bones poked through his skin. Residents weave in between the cars and buses, knowing that if they wait, the traffic will never stop for them.

The stereotype for "Asians" is that they're bad drivers. On the contrary, they are the best drivers I've ever seen. Three cars squeeze into single, one-way lanes. Left signals are often U-turns. Five lanes can merge into one. There's no mercy or courtesy. For 14 RMB, or 2.30 USD, a taxi took us across the Yangtze River to Chiqikou, going 60 on a 40 k/h rode, slowing on the bend only because it has a history of throwing cars into the water. To park, the driver sped into incoming traffic to swerve around slow cars and switched back two lanes for a right turn. If it was legal, I would've tipped him double for the ride.

 What gets me every time I come back to China is the immensity of its population, and the monstrosity of the city's growth. In every single one of those towers, there's life in every single one of those windows. There's an emotion behind every honk that blares through the night and a story behind each wailing siren. I lived by a school, and heard hundreds of voices. Every student in that morning crowd had a family - a mother, a father, or both. Every parent had testimonies of the Maoist regime, poverty, growth, and death. Similar complexity is true for every country, but when you're crushed between strangers and see life in the darkest, dirtiest places, the reminder rings ever so loud.

China: Panopticon

What's up my people! My two people...

Jokes. This isn't even an unnatural hiatus. Anyway, I'm back from China, and I've written up some 15 pages of notes and read some good books. This and being verbally suppressed and mocked by cultural ignorance and straight up insensitivity, with cup of unsanitary and extreme weather conditions, and a pinch of negative progress, has given my mind so many recipes of words.

So I will be posting day by day, photos on Tumblr, journals and disorganized essays here. Links between the two. I'll try not to dry it up with details and keep it about ideas. This is just a commitment to write, because its summer, and I need practice. Hence and whatever, the first day:

E. Lockhart explains the panopticon: mass behavior and order based on paranoia. The panopticon is the feeling that your mother knows you've been rolling in grass with a boy. It’s the sense that someone saw you swipe your neighbor’s pansies. It’s the reason I never snuck off campus for lunch or called myself out of school. The panopticon is fear, fear that you are always being watched, so that very little actual watching has to be done at all.

On the plane, the panopticon is not the government or the security cameras. The panopticon is the two hundred Chinese people who cannot help but feel you up, head to toe, with their eyes. The privilege of international travel seems to instill a haughtiness found nowhere else. There must not be someone as well-versed in English and Chinese, French and Chinese, or English, French, and Chinese as well as you. And this is a relatively logical thought. Sometimes, affording the round trip just means that you’re better. At least, good enough to dine in the airport and chuck the leftovers.

Aside from the Asians, the plane exerts its own power. Besides controlling your life at inexplicable altitudes and speeds, it forces proximity. You breathe the same air as vomiting children and screaming infants. You deal with the seat in front of you that shakes as the passenger collapses, clearly exhausted from sitting down. You tolerate the drool and knee-touching from your family members. Because the plane is getting you somewhere.

The stewardesses try to give you options – pork with rice or chicken with pasta – mystery meat with white gel material for carbohydrates, or mystery meat with white gel material for carbohydrates? Halfway through the flight, they turn off the lights, and mass hypnosis occurs. Two hundred Chinese people promptly fall asleep and wake only when the smell of ramen – this time, only chicken flavored – awakens their native noses.

There were two saving graces on the 28 hour transit from Chicago to Chongqing. 

The first was the beverage cart, compliments of each airline that looks forward to working with you and your wallet again. This cart is diversity in cans. We choose what we want, when we want. They have it all, and no one could be denied a fresh cup of anything – Diet Coke, hot tea, or beer.

The second grace was Eddie Huang. Planes have a nasty smell, even though I’m sure even strawberry pine-nuts would reek after 13 hours of heavy exposure, mixed with human sweat and unabashed burps. Eddie wrote Fresh Off the Boat to talk about race, but he started, kindly, with sweet descriptions of water dumplings and McRibs. Nothing stopped the squirming in my stomach than imagining the smell of braised pork on long grained rice.

 Notice that neither of these involved watery rice gook, half-assed lettuce leafs, or omelettes that literally squish under your complimentary plastic utensils. I think they've started leaving out toothpicks now, too.

Dichotomy

Since I shared about my deepest insecurities in front of half of my church, two people have asked for my Tumblr, zero have actually followed me, and no one has provided me any affirmation for my deeply moving vulnerability. I am half convinced that I reek evil and repel all but friends who've gotten used to the pungent smell.

I'm kidding, but speaking during Senior Banquet really didn't change anything. More than anything, I was unjustifiably disappointed that my words were lost in a sea of apple carvings and Christmas lights. Unbaptised and self-destructive, I am a stranger to Living Water, even more so when I actively enstrange it.

But sharing has much less to do with its audience than it has to do with the speaker. Those words, the ones I managed to choke out, were not for the juniors or the parents, but for myself. I would like to live with every necessary word said aloud, every necessary letter written. It wasn't my idea, but my heart goes out to those who've inspired me to spend my energy in service instead of in indulgence.

I was becoming accustomed to being sociable and to wearing acceptable attire in public. Church wasn't so depressing. People who didn't understand the feeling of wanting to be unalive still understood the college struggle. Songs like I Lift My Hands reminded me that LWEC has once again become a refuge, even under the boring eyes of tiger and pseudo tiger parents.

Any other time in my life, I would have thought that Will's grad party was going to be my other half-life. Stories of IMSA's escapades flew like rapid fire. The rest of us listened with sickening awe. My favorite moments from North are seconds long - Mr. Ferrell meowing with his cat skin, Mr. Baird squealing with sarcasm, Mrs. Moore's parallel pipe head, the shame basket, conversations, sass, running, pretending to fly. The people from IMSA spoke about nights like they were days. They were funny, but they were also dark, in more than one way.

I've only heard about this kind of fangled insanity from television - Manhattan's elite from Gossip Girl, the Wolf of Wall Street - oh, and the macho trolls on college Facebook pages. Substance experimentation is constantly glorified. Even we giggled about the outrageous, psychotic incidents that happened in our friends' dorms. Students were never expelled because they left. No one has died from jumping on cars or puking in beds. The craving for highs and ecstasy are casual, not threatening. I would have wanted to try.

But strangely, I don't. Its not an uptight, moral feeling, and its also not a desperate, rebellious hunger. Its just acceptance, and a little gratitude, for a gathering of wildly different and open people, who maybe, just maybe, aren't so different after all.