Roof Tops

I'm starting to miss New York. The carefree days spent before I packed my bags full of hopes and dreams. I'm starting to miss the days when we snuck to secret parties and slept together on roofs, when I was 20 and had no fake ID and had been kissed once by a complete stranger on the subway. True story. Sounds like an assault now if one had actually lived in New York long enough, but as a temporary girl in a city made of forever, it was just a great scene from a movie (speaking of which, saw a GREAT kissing scene between Gosling and Mulligan from Drive today). New York was full of romance. On Union Square, I saw every person with bright eyes and wide smiles and wished them the best. What luck that our lives crossed paths, even if only for a chance moment. Thank you New York, for all the moments you gave me.

As for this new beast, thank you too, for giving me every bit of anti-romance I need. For making it hurt and making it count. Beijing. You're just the pill I need, a pollutant down my heart, flooding my lungs and choking my arteries. Only, you won't kill me. You make me stronger, and brighter, and for that, I thank you, love you, and listen to Jonsi while dreaming.

Born to Party. Forced to Work.

On the last train taken from work, a boy with a guitar belts out "Stand by Me." "When the night has come And the land is dark And the moon is the only light we'll see No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid Just as long as you stand, stand by me."

He's wearing a blue shirt with the words "BORN TO PARTY. FORCED TO WORK" spelled out in bold white letters. Half way through the first verse, he switches effortlessly to Spanish, sending meaningless syllables to my ears that wrap around the heart. I shove a one-dollar bill to his hand just as I exit. That's a one-dollar for every guitar wielding, erhu playing, beatbox jamming New Yorker I missed in the past three years. I make up a name for him in my head: Oh Jorge, where else can I find you in the world.

Jorge I won't find you in the subways of Beijing, where the flourscent light gleams off of white tiled floors. You won't be on Tiananmen Square, warbling in a foreign tongue amongst peddlers of Mao watches. Even in the tunnels where guitar players roam, you'd be out of place. Only here, hopping between New York City subway compartments, do you belong, do we belong.

Cowboy Bebop, Battle Royale, and Shiina Ringo

In "Sympathy for the Devil," session 6 of Cowboy Bebop, we see a fleeting view of the skyline. The image is doused in blood orange, but it's otherwise typical rooftop New York--the kind of typical and timeless that ends up on a postcard in a corner shop. Years ago when I watched this scene from a glowing computer screen in a small town in Ohio, the moment was lost on me. Ten years later, I'm scrutinizing the lit up, triangular crown of a skyscraper like I'd seen some ghost. If I were an anime character, the moment would have been captured in a freeze frame and drawn out with harsh, jagged lines as realization dawned. In East Village, New York, I realized:

It was the Chrysler building.

Only, it took me ten years to know it by sight, and it was the weight of the ten years. what was lost, what was gained, that made the same harmonic song all the more startling.

Ten years later, Cowboy Bebop is still genius. The tropes of anime did not detract from its sophistification, its beauty, its ability to deliver a well-crafted, complete storyline in under 30 minutes, with characters that are whole and flawed, who are more real than your best acquaintance. Watching all this again is as if I'm gazing into my fifteen-year-old self, like Faye in "Speak Like a Child," falling into a strange, lonely, lovely past, waiting, still waiting for something inexplicable.

I don't get this show anymore than I did before. If anything, I might commiserate less as I slowly tumble out of the obsessive stages left from the teenage years. Those were the years reserved for day dreams, fiction, an audacity to love and cherish deeply.

These days, I meet people who love Cowboy Bebop. Who are travelling half way across the world for a Shiina Ringo concert. Who watched Battle Royale as obsessively as I. Somehow it feels like life has come full circle, and I almost wish I could stare down every fifteen-year-old obsessed with things a little strange and let them know that it's okay, it's okay because one day, the world will grow bigger, and much much smaller, and you will meet a boy who wished he could be Spike Spiegel.

See you Space Cowgirl.

Meeting Zha Jianying

"Ms. Zha Jianying, meeting you for me is like meeting The Beatles for most people." There's always a degree of embarrassment involved in meeting your personal hero. You want to appear dignified but not too dull, enthusiastic but not too fawning — all in that fleeting moment of post lecture greetings and the speaker whisked away by her equally luminous colleagues.

Best to use The Beatles, whose fanatic legions of screaming fans did not in fact, detract from their legitimacy and, well, sheer awesomeness.

Now here comes the follow up. "My name is Chen Qing Qing. I want to be a seagull just like you."

The Seagull (hai ou), following the sea turtle (hai gui), is a neologism coined for Chinese people who travel and work frequently between China and an adopted overseas country. In her lecture, Zha used the word to describe herself, the word then tumbled out of me, kicking and screaming, while my heart thumped like techno drum beats. I desperately wished my friend, who baited me just minutes before, "you should really go talk to her you know, just go do it..." would intercept now with some offhand comment about the lecture, about China, politics, food, for godsake, something.

Nope. Nothing. The moment was mine, and as she signed my book, I told her, "it's Qing with the water radical. Qing of Qing Dynasty." Two Qings, and therefore, two explanations. I told her, "I came to the States when I was nine, but I'm going back to China soon." She commended my Chinese, then told me about her daughter — growing up in the States until age seven, schooled in China until age fiften, then back to the States.

How many of us are there now? I wondered. Happily flitting from one place to the other, or neither here nor there?

Jupiter Landing

Last night, we stumbled onto three astronomers on 55th Street/9th Ave. "Take a look. You won't be able to see this for another 12 years."

He meant the planet  Jupiter, making  its closest approach to Earth in nearly 50 years. It won't be as big or bright until the year 2022. That's ten years after the-end-of-the-world. A number that seems out-of-this-world.

Of course, in our New York nightlife ready costumes, I wasn't sure who was more out of this world. The middle-aged men who looked liked they stumbled out from the woods with a giant telescope, or the women in shoes known to shorten calf muscles.

I take a look.

Jupiter was a bright orange dot, like the thousands of bright lights that seem to send the city aloft. In the end, they were all stars in our eyes as we carve through the gridded city.

I think of Pac Man eating up the his bright dots. One day, I would like to eat up all the dots in the city. When I'm done, maybe I'll have reached Jupiter.

Thanks, star gazers in the city.

Music for the Sad Men

The transvestite I pass by occasionally near the subway (in the a.m.) is not exactly beautiful. She wore beauty on her sleeve the way some people believed in God, like it wasn't enough to just be beautiful. Oh no, it was to be bold, in platforms, and sweating Chanel #5. We named her Delilah. She was love, and when she walks her thick thighs swayed and her eyes avoided yours because she tore through the streets like a prophet. Delilah was someone you remember but she'd never be able to pick you out from a crowd of blue, lonely men.

That year we all lived in Sunset Park. On Ninth Avenue we were sandwiched between the Hispanic neighborhood up north, Chinatown around the corner, and the Hassidic Jews down south. I talk coordinates but the distances between these hoods were one or two avenues away. That was New York for you then, a world compacted, squeezed. Humanity, languages, colors, lives all swirled to one, like you woke up one morning and all of a sudden Africa and Latin America was one continent again.

We had friends named Jesus and favorite grocers for specific needs: Häagen-Dazs and pasta from C-town and everything else from the #1 Fei Long and Best Fei Long. Nobody believes me, in Ohio or New York, that Häagen-Dazs is not made in Germany. The only Häagen-Dazs store I've seen so far in New York is, of course, in Chinatown. It's nothing like the ultra posh/white/minimalist well-lit lights of Häagen-Dazs stores I've seen in Shanghai, where the nouveau riche eat it up--package, branding, the great western civilization and all. The Häagen-Dazs that every Shanghaiese girl dreams of on a first date is the treat we get 2 for $5 on sale.

Mmmn, Dulce de Leche.

Roll

Happiness is a state of mind. My roommate reminded me last night of just how happy I sounded when I called her in New York, "oh my god, you sound so happy and SO LOVING, Qing Qing." A couple days before Christmas, I was making round calls to friends while walking down 6th Ave toward Union Square. I don't think I was feeding off any specific event that made me glorious happy, rather, I think I was literally bouncing off the energy and pace of the city: the Christmas store fronts, the crowds of people. In other words, I was literally hyping up my own happiness because I believed that by being in the greatest city of the world, I ought to be happy. Maybe it's this ought that makes all the difference. Maybe it's this ought that made me a hermit in Ohio, that made me semi-renounce humanity, a bigot wearing the guise of the victimized. And so, I wager to... start listening to more pop music. That's it. I know nothing. I renounce myself.

USK, the pig, my starving stomach, and ripped to shreds

It's been really hard lately to write, whether in a journal, for school, or for work, I feel like I've finally gone and lost all my wordmarbles... all my warbles. This is especially bad, considering I have a piece due for Theme this Sunday, and I just read Rain ripping some writer to shreds. Damn it. I lost my warbles I lost my warbles and all I really want to do is drink on it. Instead my stomach is screaming hunger and lurching for all the nutrients in OXYGEN, but I will not eat I refuse to eat because it is my goal to look like a Dolce & Gabbana model - smoky eyed, sultry lips, thick thighs, tiny waist, a man under her heels - we may never get there, but we continue to pray to Photoshop. I can't believe I'm going back to New York next week.

Normally, I would be ecstatic, but... for some reason, I'm not really ecstatic, for some reason, all I really want to do is dive home to Mao&Rong. When I think about the different lives I lead here, in New York, and then in China. When I think about the way I change in these three different places, I really only just get damn confused. All I know right now is I'm due for Beijing. Winter Break in New York was dramatic enough, very admirable set of characters and plotlines that I may never exploit due to losing my warbles. Maybe... maybe I should write more in this electronic pad... write to just write without thinking. I know we're getting a little rusty, so even if it's stream of conscious shit, so what? Just do it?

The problem is, every other day, you just wanna give up, you just wanna throw up your hands and surrender to the fact that maybe, maybe you just don't have the talent, and it's high time to go the PR route, or take Microeconomics and go into accounting to make daddy happy. The problem is, every other day, you get so inflated on the idea that perhaps you do have a shred of salvageable talent, and a bloody unique story to tell... and you're bleeding from your throat to tell it, and your brain is decaying because you're too busy living to write and you're too busy writing to live and why can't they ever ever just collaborate?? Teach me to breathe words, so I know when to pause and when to punctuate and when to love and when to seize and...!

I can't believe I'm going back to New York next week. I'm really excited to see Ham Lam. I adopted Ham Lam you know, the week I met him. He has a dog named Henry Lam. He is the only Asian hipster I know. Walking with him and his dog under the orange glow of Brooklyn Heights... made me feel like a scene out of domesticity. Ham Lam made me laugh so much with self-doubt and word tripping that I desecrated.

I lie. He is the only New York Asian hipster I know.

In Australia, Ari's girl left him... and he left for booze, sex, rock n' roll. He sounds awfully happy for being awfully sad. I'm at a loss for what to think? Is love so tenuous that it can be healed by banging your head against the wall 56 times, the same state of unconscious as drinking 5 rounds and jumping up and down? Remember that scene at the club, when you turn on all the fluorescent lights? Do we look foolish my love, if I just want to go at it on the floor.

Everyone is love.

Lately, I too just wanna get wasted. I just wanna climb inside the stereo stripped naked and barren inside. I just wanna scream in there and hear nothing except my muteness intertwining with the sound of bass, jam, love, melody. I just wanna curl up in there and be raped a thousands times by the music and cry until I'm starved to death. I'm sorry I'm so emo I can't help it because it's so quiet here god it's so quiet when it's just the music and the lights low and I'm so faraway from love and NOTHING NOTHING IS ABRASIVE ENOUGH I JUST WANT TO SCREAM UNTIL THE SHARDS trash my lungs.

I still think it's cool that I dated a pimp though. I'm so wasted on love. I should probably call Geng. I know I'm cold, but it's only because I fear for myself, I just don't want to bring the awkwardness of my being onto you, it's that easy swaysey.

Ugh... let's start again. Let me tell you about my two favorite kids in the whole wide world. I met them this time last year give or take, and seven months later we were in a tent in Inner Mongolia at the foot of some beauty of a mountain. Rong calls Mao my "big white rabbit" because he's pale like a baby with wonder-some eyes. He's probably the smartest person I know. I know this, because he helped me with a translation project and I almost ended up crying with the words he used (English to Chinese... so I mean, he REALLY helped me). 500 years ago, he would be some renowned scholar at the aid of some wise emperor. 500 years later, I wonder if it's China that wasted his talent.

Do you mind if I write onto eternity? Even if it's drivel. Even if it's dramatic. Even if it lacks tension, symbolism, conflict. Even if you can't understand a thing. Do you mind? Rong is the most beautiful girl I've ever known. She has the eyes that steal your soul and cheery lips that break into the widest toothy grin. She laughs like the wind, and her long hair makes wind worthwhile. The most unconventional beauty, blood and bone and flesh and maturity and innocence wrapped into one. I'm so sick of seeing our faces in the mirror - our made up beauty, our magazine styles, our cool shoes and coats starving for mass attention while we back ourselves into a corner, lighting up a cig to say I'm too cool for you but actually if you give me five glaring minutes I'm perfectly willing to fuck in that shithole of a bathroom at this godforsaken party. I'll leave my gum on the door as a token.

I don't think I've ever cried as hard. I didn't think I was going to cry at all. I think, was it the whistle of the train going by, the cinematic scene like a music video running through my head, that when I hugged him, even my bones sacked down to my very stomach, and it's these tears welled up from the depth where you'd get stomachaches... that's where it starts, where it travels up and up until your throat clogs and your cheeks huffs and your eyes swim and I cried so much Mao Mao, I cried so much I was afraid I'd scared you and you think I'm a foolish stupid girl. That night, the last thing I did was brought him a 2 yuan drink. It was Kang Shifu green tea, lukewarm from August heat. The last thing I said to him was "Mao Mao... hug her for me please... hug her for me please..." The last thing I thought to him was "I would die for you guys. I would die for you guys." You understand? You and Rong. I would die.

You understand. Happy Birthday love. Over and over.

Tomorrow, Everything Will Change

The city is made of brave people, the cunts and the cunning. I can play the cunt for an hour or five, but cunning I still have to work on. Cunning is a bit evil because it's intentional; cunt is carelessness and then thinking too much. Here's to the second entry that never came. One of my worst fears has always been being pretty ugly. The theory behind pretty ugly is as thus. You know the friends you have who start off as physically unattractive people, but with time and your getting to know and love the person, they go through a duck to swan transformation - flaws suddenly become endearing features, asymmetry becomes character. Well, pretty ugly is when you meet somebody gorgeous, pleasant, and lovely looking, and by and by their beauty erodes because their personality cannot live up to their physical beauty.

At vanity's worst, I'm always acutely aware of my 'being' whenever I sit across the table with a friend. Playing the first-impressions game even though we've only known each other for 72 hours, and I wonder whether I'm a regressed duckling in their eyes.

Somehow, New York felt like a train ride of first impression and 72 hour friendships. There's only so much you can get to know a person an hour at a time. To be honest, there's actually so much you can get to know a person an hour at a time. It felt like I was speed-dating since day one, the endless where are you froms, what are you doing heres, and where are you goings. Oh you're a film producer and can make people cry in a minute flat, but you hate it, you hate doing that. That's all very swell...

I really love people. I love their beauty and love their flaws. I love their vulnerability and their big phoniness. I love how they are when they are drunk and how they are not when they are sober. I love my three in the mornings, dancing with drag queens (oh he was my favorite, oh was he not my favorite under the disco light bulb, oh was he not the only one I fell in love with?!), dragging my luggage across Queens, bumming around on New Years' with no destination.

But New York New York, this is my last rendezvous with you. I'm done with affairs and over deja vu. I'm leaving the wide-eyed little girl standing on the curb, and I'm dragging a life's worth of baggage and moving into Queens. Soon. When? Soon.

Soon.

Mama Roma When the Italian boys say "Ciao Belllllllllllaaaaa," I can count their every 'l' and every 'a.' I'm in love with their lethargic hellos and shamelessness. I'm in love with their love and in love with their style. I know in the streets of Paris and Roma, men drop down to their knees for beautiful women, and I know that I, Puritan and too idealistic at times, can only handle their love in the fiction world, but that in no way detracts from their art of flirtation, nor the power of their gaze, the way they possess you with hugs and kisses, even if they do wander to the next beauty in line five seconds later. I've always said Italy was the China of Europe. We're both messy cultures in love with food, big families, being loud with exaggerated gesticulations, but in truth, Italians roll in their Ferraris and are all swimming in happy hormones or something. I say live bravely. Drop down to your knees for the love of your life on the train whom you held a steady gaze with. I say do worship women but don't be a shady New York man being all predatory. I say I say Ciao Bellllllaaaaaaaaa. They were the best, these kids.

Ari My favorite Jew tells me that, in fact, he knows a dozen stupid Jewish people, but I'm less inclined to believe him now that I've met him. This kid whom I mistaken to be Adam the Australian guy after a flurry of meet and greets at the hostel, funnily enough, is now in Australia. And Ari says, -There are just slightly more Asian people here than there are in San Francisco. Y'all appear to be taking over Sydney. (Not that I mind at all... I love you guys the fucking most!!!!!!!!!!!) -Speaking of which, there is an abundance of Japanese, Chinese and Korean supermarkets. -All the shops are the same as those you'd find in NY or CA, for the most part. Thanks a lot, international mega-coprorations...! -The price of a haircut is still only $10. What A RIOT. I would say more but words are not enough to encompass all that is this kid. I wish with every fiber in my body that someday, I could live like him, that I could pick up my life for the love of my life and not be fazed one second by the airline losing all my luggage, that I could smile so genuinely over friends and pocky, at the same time. I love you kid. Thanks for being in my life for 20 days.

Ssinjin The baby was born on Christmas. Alena said it felt like she helped give birth to the kid. In a way, I think all the Theme kids feel this way. Holding the baby in my (rigid, clumsy, not-very-mommy-at-all) arms had to be the most solidifying moment of my life... He was so small, so fragile, and so waiting to be loved, and there is so much love, so love waiting for you little one.

Ham Lam My favorite snark Ham Lam and I are going to conquer the creative world one day with our super vision ingenuity and hardworking Asian ethics, that is, if he doesn't kill me with laughter first.

童童 It's three o'clock with the red light floatin'. She loved the red light in the hallway because it made the brown in his eyes glow maroon, and she took photographs because she wanted to be like Shu Qi in Three Times, shining black lights on his profile. He wouldn't understand why she got excited all over a red light. It's a dollar fifty for a red light bulb at the supermarket, he thought in his head, and if you want I'd buy a dozen and fifty for you. It was three o'clock when she jumped up and packed her stuff. She threw on loose jeans and a sweater over her pajamas. She threw on a mask and wouldn't look at him. She shook like a baby girl and he couldn't even touch her. When she went for the door, he could only whisper "what's happening? Why is this happening?" She could hear the awe in his voice and the see the hallow in his eyes. Tong Tong said, "I never know what to say around you. Around anyone else I can't shut up for the life of me, but I like you too much, don't you understand?"

But baby words words words I lived for words.

It was three o'clock when she dragged up luggage into the night, and it took two blocks for her to start crying. It was the godforsaken soap opera rain falling from the sky, and it was the dim orange street lamps that followed her shadow everywhere, and it was the thought of leaving New York and the thought of leaving that made her cry, and it wasn't the first time she cried for a guy she didn't love and it won't be the last time, but she thought about how he looked at her in the dark, smoothing her hair and kissing her as if she were a jewel.

Here we were made of loneliness, and love was never so easy for two seconds. You've made her both woman and girl, and she's made you nothing but woe and longing. I can write a book about her affairs in New York, and all it is are a series of leaving. She's always leaving. "You're always leaving," he said. Stay still and let me look at you. "Don't look at me," she says. Let's finish the porno videos and leave when it's over. She prefers the ones with a good plot and a lot of dirty talk.

Millenium Mambo Millenium Mambo... Mambo Millenium.

It was three o'clock when she said: Tong Tong, I'm sorry Tong Tong. Free again.

Disco Drag Queen The drag queen was made of beauty like no other. He took me to the dance floor under the disco bulb and we danced as if we were in love. His eyelashes were long and his eyeshadow shimmered brighter than the lights. When he spun me around and pulled me close, it was as if the stars collapsed at our very feet. I loved him as he loved me, two traveling stars streaking by one second in a lifetime. I loved him as he loved me, and we belonged to no one except the bright lights.

Conclusion, I'm too dreamy and too in love with love, too flighty to be any good. Hey woman I need you to focus and stop losing your numbers all over the place. I need you sane and not so full of yearning. I need you to not love every face on the subway, but New York, I can't do it, I'm in love with your tired and the hungry, your poor and your rich, your models and your hipsters, your every face. What can I do except nourish myself with 75 cent buns at Mei Lan Hua? The granpapas there make me as happy as a five-year-old... and if I spend all my life washing dishes there I think I will be okay.

Leave a spot on the train for me city.