Moving Along

Hello world.

I hope you are all doing well. I have received some lovely little notes from you all, and am glad to hear of all the fun things you are doing. It's good to hear that people are still smiling during a week in which the the whole world seemed to be having terrible problems.

Luckily, I have not run into problems as serious as Somali pirates or quasi-civil war. I have only entered that period of the year in which I develop a chronic (but harmless) asthmatic hack. I'll be taking wagers to see who can guess the month I'll stop coughing. Who ever wins will receive a high quality Chinese product. 

Other than this annoyance, the effect of me having this cough is that I cannot go to bars for a while, and have to watch my smoke intake, which is quite hard to do in China. Especially because all the places for fun are usually hidden in the plumes. 

This last week really wasn't anything exciting, other than having the experience of making Thanksgiving dinner in China.  First of all, this country doesn't have ovens. So it was fun faking oven baked food with the stove top. It was a pseudo pot-luck thanksgiving with 11 or so different dishes prepared by groups of people. I was working on the stuffing, baked potatoes, and purchasing the Peking Duck (which I will take as a replacement for Turkey anyday. Turkey is far too lean.) All of the dishes were quite successful, including my stuffing (made from scratch of course) made with a combination of mushrooms, white onion, leek, garlic, thyme, oregano, parsley, black pepper, salt, some seasoned  baguette  from the French supermarket, a can of Tsingtao beer, and some thick cut pieces of pork fat. It was an adventure trying to make  the soggy stove stop stir fried bread not taste like soggy bread and taste like stuffing. Not having a sense of smell was also a bit of a challenge. But after contemplating whether or not I wanted to milk the excess liquid out of the bread, I settled with the long process of constantly stirring the concoction in a dry wok until it regained bread like consistency. 

The potatoes were also a bit of a challenge. I ended up putting them in a pot suspended above the bottom of the pot with a little bit of foil. Then after covering the potatoes again I consistently added water to the bottom of the pot to try and mimic the dry heat of baking, and avoid the best I could, the wet heat of steaming. Though, in the end, I failed and ended up steaming the batch of potatoes because I didnt wrap them well enough. But a steamed potato isn't that far from a baked one.

The other dishes were: a type of eggplant with a flavor somewhere  in between sour and spicy eggplant, chicken wings in a coke sauce, a homestyle fried tofu, Japanese curry, rice, candied sweet potato mash, steamed broccoli and steamed carrots,  and an assortment of fruits and nuts. 

Everything was delicious, despite the fact that cooking it was almost like cooking while camping--trying to improvise and repair when some disaster struck. It was good to cook like that again thought. It had been a long time since I took on a cooking challenge, and I feel quite reenergized now.

 

And! after this upcoming week, I can relax for a little. The semester will officially end for me next friday, and then I will be off on another excursion through China. This time, I will be headed toward Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou. I'm excited to see the South of China again, and especially to have my accent blend in with the locals. I am really excited to taste food from the south again. While I appreciate all this salty, oily, stir fried northern food, I am ready to taste all the sweet dishes of China. 

Once I get back, Ajla will be visiting!! I'm really excited. She'll be a good motivator, and it will be fun to go exploring China with her. Then, I will start the long march of prepping for the HSK and interning. 

I've set a new goal for myself in this whole Chinese proficiency test business. Instead of aiming to take the intermediate level test, I think I'm going to take the advanced level test. I figure, if shoot high enough, maybe the arch that I get from shooting high well give me a decent score. That being being said, the month of January is going to be a fun filled month of cramming chinese while it snows. 

Which brings me to something I've been thinking a lot about in my attempts to understand Chinese culture. It's been remarkable how many words I've found to describe intense struggle or burden. Moreover, these words are regularly used in regular conversation. The more I live here, the more I realize how stoic this society is. One bears his or her burden and lives on. To fail would be to considered weak, and I don't think I've really had a chance to many of "society's losers" but the work ethic in this country far outpaces the US. I hear of students who go to school 7 days a week, combining their regular lessons with outside English classes and other academic activities. The well rounded education isn't really focused on here, because one's admission into college is completely dependent upon one's test scores. Hell, students here have to have at least reading proficiency in English to get into college. 

While this system may not be the best for students lives, it has created a generation of students with incredible stamina. On the flipside, it also creates a really tricky social environment for students.

One thing that unifies so many students now is this unified experience of struggling through Chinese education in order to succeed. However, social interaction tends to be a little different that how Americans or Europeans would interact with each other. Not only do these students have to deal with the social effects of the one child policy (that is to say, being an only child and being the focus of their parent's attention), but such a rigid education system heavily impacts what Americans would usually consider to be organic social development. And on top of that, there is no...celebration for graduating high school. After all, its just part of the burden that Chinese people are supposed to bear. Our teacher even told us that some parents, when writing their children birthday cards, write "Have a lot of fun on your birthday AND study hard." I put the and in caps because that and is a very special form of Chinese "and" used to express a conjunction between two things that the speaker believes has a very close relationship. 

Chinese students make me feel like I am wasting my life away. Of course, I don't really believe that. But interesting to see this new "work ethic" that doesn't relate with "The American Dream" or protestant influences in the spirit of capitalism.

okay

I love you all.

it's time for me to get back to work now.

george

thisentryisdis jointed

It's a grey Sunday. The air is cold, and I've started wearing gloves outside. The sun makes occasional appearances, peaking its head around the smog banks and sky scrapers to beam a smile or so at the people below. I wave to hello, and smile back. In some ways, my life in Beijing isn't that much different than my life in Seattle. While I may write here about my adventures, 85% of the time, I'm sitting in a warm cozy room, with some soft music playing in the background, studying.

Thats essentially the scene right now. I'm Listening to Jay Brannan (who, I discovered recently, and subsequently fell in love with. He's 26, gay, and beautiful, which makes feel like I have a chance. Oh, one can dream.) I'm cuddled in my blankets because I don't want to start the day.

and in proper fashion, the warm cozy reality I was just experiencing was just shattered by the lady who comes sporadically to check the water meter. Sometimes I wonder if I attract irony.

Well, I suppose I have to reset the scene now. I'm sitting grumpily on my couch, and I'm a little chilly, but thats my own fault, because it's not cold enough to motivate me to move and grab a blanket or turn on the heater. I am longer motivated to write. I will finish this later.

* * *

So it's later now. Specifically, Monday evening. And I'm relatively comfortable again--propped up on my couch with my feet on the coffee table. I ate a sandwich for dinner, and I am now procrastinating on words I should be learning how to write. But it's toasty in my apartment, and I have a stick of Toblerone. I laugh, because this is the same way I would procrastinate in Seattle. Except in Seattle I would usually be propped up on JoEllen Koester's bed satirizing Emily Holt on the other side of the room.

I've actually started thinking about home and my friends more so recently. Not in any nearing-depression sort of way, but in the, itwouldbereallynicetohavelunchwithsoaendsorightnow kind of way. Skype has given me my friend fixes and things are going well. I suppose it's finally hit me that my life in china doesn't involve me working with every social network within a 5 mile radius to institute some sort of project amidst my other responsibilities (as my life in Seattle did). I'm here, learning Chinese, and learning it well. It's just strange now realize...that I am not doing any extracurricular activity other than tutoring English on the side. 

(which might I say, was rediculous today. My student, this really wealthy business woman, wants to be fluent in English in two months. Apparently, Zhang Zi Yi became fluent in two months, and she wants to do the same. I think I responded with something like. "Only if you study really really hard." )

I spend my weekends relaxing, and/or casually working on homework, and I am sane. Chinese has gotten much easier after I've built my foundation of characters, so that pressure is gone. Now, I have constant manageable amounts of stress, and I feel like something is wrong. I probably shouldn't jinx this. It's actually quite nice. Having free time just made me think of home. But not in the way that I'm direly missing home, but because I was just revealed another aspect of how my life in China is different that my life in Seattle. 

This is this most obvious, unexciting an obvious revelation I've had just yet. Walking around the Summer Palace didn't give it to me. Wandering through the mountains of Yunnan didn't give it to me. No, the full realization that coming to China has the opportunity cost of not being in Seattle, gave it to me. Maybe I'm seeing this as more powerful than it actually is. I just can't seem to place my finger on that feeling of truly knowing that I'm doing something different. Maybe its because studying in Seattle is pretty much like studying in China. It's cold outside and I curl up with my notebooks . But its this complete understanding that the rhythm of my daily life is actually different that so gently and bluntly hit me over the head. 

and well, after this revelation-I feel no different. That's a sort of anticlimactic ending to a period of self reflection. 

anyway, in other news:

exciting things in my life happen on the weekends. Yesterday night, when I should have been doing homework, I decided that I would go out to “The Boat.” The Boat has queer Sundays, and every so often, has a screening of a local documentary film project currently being funded by a Forbes Foundation Grant. It’s name is something along the lines of “Queer as Folk: Beijing.” It explores the different facets of gay culture in China and somewhat resembles the “Sex and Seattle Series” that is held at the Hugo House, with the exception that its is more journalism than fictional relationships acted out on stage.

The episode I saw last night focused on the state of HIV in China. At the center of the film was a series of interviews with Edwin Cameron, HIV positive Supreme Court Justice of South Africa. He visited China recently to speak to students and the Health Minster of china. As of now, China’s cultural attitude toward those who are HIV positive is not the least bit accepting. People have been fired from their jobs, and there is still an irrational fear of the disease present in much of the population. However, it is reassuring to know that after Edwin Cameron’s discussion with the Chinese government, the Government is cognizant of the problems that arise from HIV stigma, and how HIV stigma only perpetuates the spread of HIV.

I hope to go back in the future.

I guess I should stop procrastinating now.

It Started with Avenue Q

So my weekend began with me listening to a lot of Avenue Q. I think I looped "What do you do with a B.A. in English?" a few too many times for my health. I think I listen songs like that when I'm either melodramatically tired or feel like I'm caught in some state of apathetic torpor. The question of what my genuine state of being is when I'm listening to Avenue Q on repeat is not a question I can answer. But whatever state of mind you think such an action would require was probably present in me last friday as I nibbled on cheesecake and debated what I was going to do during the weekend. 

It's so hard to be motivated to do anything when lacking sleep. So hard. I am one sleepy sleepy boy. It takes a lot of energy to be a twittery young sprite, and the week sure takes it out of me. I'm sure many of my friends already realize this about me. I miss my first grade afternoon naps and am often in a dizzy haze trying to stay awake in Chinese class. If I had a "fundamental mood" that would rule over my perspective of the world, then sleepiness would definitely be it. That being said, I was reluctant to do anything on Friday night. 

But- I decided that I it would be healthy of me to stop eating cheesecake and listening to Avenue Q so I grabbed high school classmate, Andrew, and went to the Armin Van Buuren Concert at the GT Banana. 

First, there are far to many clubs in the Beijing that involve the word, "Banana." Second, Chinese clubs have the worst dance floors ever. It's almost like the designers of these clubs purposely make the dance floors so small because they know that this society is so socially awkward and compartmentalized that it takes an enclosed space with a strobe light and a smoke machine to loosen people up. 

Other than these two idiosyncrasies, I had an okay time. Though, I have to be honest, trance gets a little repetitive for me, and well, dancing by myself in a crowd of chinese people next to Andrew only really amuses me for so long. Andrew and I talked about this afterwards. He misses his girlfriend, and dancing alone in China for half a year doesn't exactly make the distance between him and his partner any closer. His girlfriend called while we were talking once, and that boy turned into a puddle. I have a soft spot in my heart for people like that. Maybe its because I secretly am a mushy, sappy, pathetic little puppy trying to play the part of toughened grungy mutt to mask color of my soul. Or maybe I'm just a fountain of melodrama whose experience with Romantic comedies is interfering with his personal psychoanalysis. Either way, Friday was not the most motivating day for me. The combination of malaise, a mediocre club, and seeing andrew turn into a puddle (though, andrew, know that you can turn into a puddle anytime you want), did not bode well for 小明.

Saturday though, was much better. After a semi-productive day of memorizing characters, my roommate Cat, and I went to a drinks party in Chaoyang. It was hosted by a genial expat from San Francisco named Ming. I ran into Ming one night at this loungebarthing that I now frequent on thursdays. The man is wonderful host. My heart nearly stopped when I saw a western hors d'oeuvres so beautifully set upon the table. It reminded me so much of home. After tarrying there for a while, some new friends, Cat, and myself moseyed over to Destination.

Now, the Gay sweatbox that is Destination had slowly lost much of its appeal to me since Halloween.  But, it was much nicer this time. Having fun friends with you makes such a big difference especially when one is part of an enclave of foreigners in a Chinese sea. I've discovered that I can officially handle about half of a Long Island ice tea before entering into a delightfully trashy state, and that I sleep so wonderfully afterwards.

Sunday began fantastically. I woke up to the warm sun tickling my face, listened to music that wasn't Avenue Q, and started writing this. Unfortunately, this fantasticism only lasted until my computer decided to die. At about 1:00pm this afternoon, my computer decided that it wasn't going to start, and I had to make another pilgrimage the apple store and hung out there for about 5 hours until my computer was fixed. Sometimes, I wish I lived in ChaoYang district. It would make trips like this so much more convenient. Maybe its a copout that I want to live in the more western district, but thats where many of the things that I require to live reside: gays, the mac store, and good restaurants. 

Oh, maybe I'll move there this summer. Meanwhile, I dont mind living in the district of cheap food and college students.

Goodnight, world.

George

Holidays in the Pre-Holiday Season

I've had an exciting last couple of weeks here in the Beijing. Despite the fact that the days are getting shorter, people are still out celebrating various occasions into the night. It began with Halloween. I'm fairly certain that most Chinese people had no idea why all the Westerners were dressed in funky costumes and wandering around in groups. I overheard many a confused conversation and had many a local confused as to why someone, who looked like one of their own, was in costume. I'm also fairly certain that my neighbors were a little confused about this holiday in which one was supposed to wear a costume and beg for candy. Nonetheless, it was great. I think my favorite costume of the evening was my old high school friend, Andrew, who slapped on articles of clothing from various decades, donned some goggles, those running shoes (that aren't really shoes, but are those toe-sock things with hard rubber soles that you run in), and attached a fanny pack to himself, and called himself a time-traveler.

What was even more exciting than my time traveler friend, was that before going out we ate at this Brazilian BBQ place in the neighboring district. For 16 Dollars I had an unlimited supply of delicious appetizers, steak, pork chops, sausage, lamb, and chicken. I must admit, I felt a little bit gluttonous, but I forgave myself quickly because it was a holiday. The rest of the night involved me dancing with zombies, animals, and locals who felt a little awkward dancing near zombies and animals.

The following night I got to see Kanye West at the Worker's Gymnasium in Beijing. That was really exciting. It was weird to think that only a month or so ago, Kanye's performance space was filled with Olympians. The only downside was that the sound quality wasn't all that good. Though, it was worth it to watch him perform "Stronger," as I have had that song on my "practicing Chinese characters" playlist for a while. Kanye has been part of the reason why I am now slowly becoming literate in Chinese. Thank you, Kanye. Thank You.

A few days after Kanye was the election. 99.8% of China supports Obama, and nearly every US expat I have met is also an Obama supporter. I don't think China was nearly as excited as Seattle was (people flowing into the streets and all), but many cafes and restaurants had parties and were giving out free drinks. Other than that, China was relatively quiet.

A couple days after the concert, I also got the chance to go to a simmered lamb restaurant over by the Forbidden City. Dare I say, while Kanye was exciting, this was more amazing. I’ve had hot pot before, but this was just a little bit different. Hot pot generally involves a large pot of broth set at the center of the table in which people toss in pre-chopped pieces of food. It’s like French fondue or Japanese shabu shabu. But simmered lamb, unlike other forms of hot pot, is a Beijing specialty. The lamb has no aftertaste and it’s all so tender. And occasionally, one is also served roasted lamb skewers dusted with Xinjiang (a western region of China influenced heavily by Islam) spices. One is also given the option to have fresh green vegetables, Chinese radishes, seafood, or sesame sauce (which is almost like peanut sauce) to accentuate one’s meal. I left the restaurant quite satisfied.



Most recently, I went to go see what I've been told was the 2nd drag-show in Beijing. I was really excited to go especially after working so hard to organize the second ever drag-show to happen at SU last year. It was really fun. The LGBTQA community in Beijing has really formed an interesting foundation. First of all, there are two communities: the Chinese speaking community and the English speaking community. It's interesting because I've been weaving in between both when I go out. There's usually a "Chinese side" and then the "not so Chinese side." It seems like it’s mostly a language barrier that keeps the two sides from coming together, but there are also really big cultural divides in terms how people interact. When Chinese people go out, they tend to sit down in closed groups while the expatriates tend to walk around making small talk. Nonetheless, the drag-show was a success.



The drag-show was primarily attended by the expat community, but it was fantastic. It wasn't like Julia's, but it was one of the most spirited events I've been to in Beijing. It gave many of the expats a little taste of home that they had been missing for a long time. I even met some new friends. It's hard finding LGBTQA people in everyday life in China unless you actively seek them out. This is nothing like living on Capitol Hill. But, I'm glad I've found them. Beijing just became that much less foreign to me.



Until next time,

George