On Work

Giorno buon, dormito bene

New Year’s resolution, check. Not bad for March 13. Sense of accomplishment, almost none. Funny how life works. Lesson therein, if you’re going to have a New Year resolution anyway, at least set higher standards, make them count, make them the ones that take discipline, time, and commitment instead of a whimsy derringdo. Time now for a spring diet plan, say goodbye to the wine and dine and conversations made of riddles. Time to stray from the beauty, the decadence, the caprice. Bring out the austerity measures, the sun at seven in the morning, for kisses to mean something and to not stare despairing at the computer screen. Granted, tomorrow when I'm between traffic and four projects at once, I’ll say fuck all and go on my bumbling ways, but at least today, I say curse less and be more ladylike.

Hours in Moments

I'm losing myself in the hours: noon time at work on a Saturday, three in the afternoon, seven o’clock dinner, 10pm banter with co-workers, by the time 1am, 2am, 3am rolls around, things get a little quiet and everyone a little antsy. I play a sad, dream pop song from co-worker R for the 10th time and ask Q and Y if it’s driving them crazy. When I finally step out of the office, a feeling that I may have just stumbled out from hutong dance party flashes before me. That’s the story of late. After maybe two weeks of unsettling sanity at work, it's back to proposal madness, back to missing people. I think it's the opportunity cost that drives me from drifting party to party, people to people. In the end, the transformation of a girl who can’t hold her liquor and who loves those damned day activities in New York City is somehow morphing into a drunkard, junkie, a night-owl, and a little careless with people. None of the above labels are true, even if half of my friends half mean it, but it is what it is.

These obvious changes, on a superficial level, does unnerve me a little bit, like having everything you knew about yourself turn inside out, and you're looking into a world of yourself that doesn't seem quite you. Yet, underneath it all, I know I'm just fine because I still burn. I burn with a rage to succeed. To pull overtime for things that I care about, for people I care about. I just want it all. I want the rush of all nighters. The pride after a successful presentation. Friends who move me. Conversations that go deep. Dances on roofs. Beijing, and all that it stands for.

Mostly, I just want to calm down, do laundry, lay down on my bed, stay there, so when I wake up I'll have enough energy to love a great deal in an overly emotional, enthusiastic, thankful way.

Grapefruits, 10AM

“It’s like all you’ve ever known is a grapefruit, and grapefruits are great and delicious, but one day you discover cherries and strawberries, and you realize that hmm, they are pretty good too.” “What’s the other way of looking at it?”

“That I’m fucking awesome and irreplaceable.”

---

Everything is almighty weighty here. The pauses that go on and on in the dark, the stares quieter than silence, the heavy sighs and quick strides. It's easy to stuff hours into minutes, days into hours, weeks into days, and BOOM all of a sudden, three months gone, six months gone, and you feel like a lifetime has gone by. I love sitting in a cab, watching the city glitter by, talks of 1984 and how to tell a good story and moments of empathy. I'm beginning to think possession doesn't really matter. I think if anything, all we need to possess are moments like this: a city on the move, friends freaking out, boy drifting to sleep, grapefruits and gold.

At the end of the day, when I finally collapse in a disastrous heap on my own bed, listening to fucking "Careless Whisper," I try to convince myself that it doesn't matter at all.

2AM, Summer Night

My co-worker said: “You’re becoming a junkie.” I waited for the smirk to curl into a laugh, a statement to unfurl to a joke, but when there was none, when I think he’s half-serious, I could only sputter incoherently. He goes on to say, “see, no way are you an introvert” also in reference to my lifestyle habits.

I think of how I used to like cats until I started to like dogs more. I think of how I’d always get an “I” on my Myers-Briggs test until I keep on getting an “E” when I took it two days ago (ENFP!). I think of how I'm starting to like both cats and dogs now and what this all means to the universe. I don't see how any of this would result in a junkie comment, unless by junkie he means I'm gulping down as much excitement as I can. If by junkie he means I'm never home except between the golden time of 9-10am. If by junkie he means I'm alive with every fiber of my being.

Too much Cudi for my own good and raging. Just enough wine to rescue a kiss. When we take smoke breaks we end up hurling the butts from floor seventeen. Sometimes the pollution itself smells like smoke, and god knows how much worse the air here is than drugs.

On the uncertainty of life he says, “it's like having a monkey on my back.”

Better monkey than elephant.

The Aftermath of South

春风一舸绕明珠，雾作钗鬓浪作趺。 楼阁参差花正发，客来不复羡仙居。- 谢觉哉, 《乘轮绕鼓浪屿》

The aftermath of clean air, morning runs, meandering adventure, food and family, is the computer screen’s eerie glow, desperately trying to conjure productivity as the mind wanders to a certain island of the south.

We spent a total of no more than five hours on Gulangyu, a tiny island in Xiamen known as “Drum Wave Islet,” or alternatively “The Island of Music.” The ferry from Xiamen took less than five minutes, the additional half an hour we spent being shepherded with the rest of Gulangyu's hundreds of tourists waiting for a ferry. The island is home to about 20,000 residents, but during the peak tourist seasons, some 10,000 people visit it per day. This is precisely why I’d originally opted to douse my mind in tea and book at my favorite cafe, surfacing only for air and an occasional conversation with a stranger. But the island called in unexpected ways, particularly through a conversation with said stranger, who mused:

“It’s worth going after five, when tourists dwindle, and you can have a drink after dinner. It’s worth spending a night, and wake up before the herds arrive again.”

The stranger is a banker with the heart of a sensitive artist. He works every other day of the year with no weekends, and only gets four consecutive days off during the Spring Festival, where for the past three years, he spent traveling alone. He talked about politics, history, linguistics and how modern Chinese is like “grass grown on cement.” He made references to books I’ve never heard of, and spoke in idioms I didn’t understand. I’m sensitive these days when people ask, “do you understand,” or “does this makes sense?” but he only searched for simpler expressions to explain heavy ideas.

His advice seems to be the trick for successful sightseeing in China. Five years ago another traveler told me to see the ancient town of Lijiang, it’s best to wake before sunrise at five. Three months ago, a friend said the Forbidden City is ravishing at night.

When we made it to Gulangyu after five, I was faintly reminded of days spent on Governor’s Island, when friends would converge for art events and jazz emsembles. How far away those carefree days seem when I’d travel from D train to Court Street and waited patiently for the small ferry among bikes and strollers. In Gulangyu, no bikes or cars are allowed. When you get on the island, you’re almost immediately greeted by a labyrinth of windy paths, exotic plants, and gorgeous architecture.

We picked the route least traveled, ducking tourists left and right until by some miracle, an alley or nook seemed untouched. Father berated that I should “understand guoqing (the Chinese condition)” and I retorted that there should be limits placed on how many tourists can visit the island per day. I took photos of wrappers and garbage on an island that was renowned for cleanliness and father suddenly announced he wished he had a Weibo to post the photos.

But even among chaos, fruit hawkers, and tourists, Gulangyu threads beauty among its paths and plants, and when all is quiet, the stillness of this beauty consumes you. You begin hearing piano notes among the green, and the wind carry smells of eternal spring. Every photograph transforms to a painting, but no painting can capture the song of drums and birds, and longings of writers and artists who fell recklessly in love here. This is a place for die hard romantics, music fanatics, poetry lovers, and dreamers. This is a place worth living for, where dreams are stolen while you’re beating 9-5 in big cities. This is where you lose a little bit of yourself, and you keep coming back not for anything else, but to find that piece you lost, the part that means well and dream big.

My sister (cousin, who is like a sister) and I started the hike to the mountain peak after eight, when darkness wrapped its black silk around the island and not a soul was around. We passed the bell tolls of Buddhist temples and handsome rocks etched with calligraphy. My sister, a mighty professional tennis player, is somehow afraid of heights. So when we arrived on top of “sunlight peak,” she was on all fours while I zoomed around like a lunatic exclaiming “wow!” “wow!” I grabbed her by the arm until we stood together at the tallest point of the city.

She said, “let’s shout something together.”

We felt like nine-year-olds all over again, the days spent playing dress up, hiding go seek, and pretending we were characters from TV dramas.

On three, we screamed to the wind: “我们一定会幸福!!!” (We will surely be happy.)

When the echoes died, I added, 我们已经很幸福。

Far too full, far too cold

I have eaten so much food the past four days that the mere motion of opening my mouth, even for half a slice of grapefruit, makes me want to gag slightly. Eating during Chinese New Year is not only about the fish balls, the duck eggs, the crabs, the turtle soup, the swan meat, the snake soup, the snake gallbladder mixed with rice wine, it is also the endless, endless oranges, strawberries, cherries, watermelon seeds, peanuts, and candies that accompany every conversation and every bad Spring Festival tv program. True, I'm afraid I've had everything listed above in the past four days, served in large porcelain bowls, and in the case of the turtle, a gold plated ware that looks like a Tibetan singing bowl. I'm not one to feel guilty about eating rare and unusual species or indulging in extravagant affairs. Every bone in my body is hedonistic, but after a lunch banquet, hot spring, then dinner banquet, I was ready to die.

It's not that easy being an emperor after all. Can you imagine a life full of banquets, servants waiting on your every need, AND a harem of 3000 beauties?

How they must have had such self-control, I have no idea. All I know is, I'm having trouble with eating half a slice of grapefruit. I want to be a Japanese monk eating tofu and white rice for seven days to purge gluttony.

When the body dies a little, then will you feel its strength, its attachment to life. It's the feeling that consumes you after scaling a mountain in the south, careful to curse Beijing and its pollutants and unlivableness with every step you take. When you finally make it to the top, heart pounding, soles sore, dying just a little as monks waft on by in silence, then do you feel life bursting from your heart, your every vein.

Ah, what the hell. In short, we climbed two mountains in addition to eating a helluva a lot, and I'd take mountains over swan soup any day.

Hedonism is over. We head to Xiamen to break out the running shoes, to die a little more in a sprint to the ocean.

Onwards, lusty babes.

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.

Exploding City

I have no sense of direction in Beijing. There is no Empire State Building to direct me north or City Hall to the south. The skyline here stretches on for an eternity. Giant, homogenous blocks imprisoning so many human beings. You start to wonder what would happen if all the inhabitants start screaming out loud at that exact moment. Screams from anger, screams from stress, screams from sex, screams from pity, screaming laughter. You wonder if it happens at the same time, might the decibels shatter the buildings one by one by one, from window to floor to earthshaking foundation.

This is what I thought about when standing on the roof of non-descript building #143. It took us forever to figure out what direction our homes were because there were almost no topographic change from one direction to another. All I remember thinking was how great if all this would end in Fight Club style. I thought please let me take a stab at the fugly CCTV tower first. It looks like a bad dream from Vegas, lit up 24 hours a day without soul in it.

But there is a soul here, limping here and shining there, beating wildly, screaming along with the rest of us.

The other day my father said to me, his voice rising to a volume I'm unaccustomed to: "America is a much much better country than China." I was riding in the 144th taxi since moving to Beijing four months ago when I replied, "yep, I know, and?" My face felt like porcelain and my tongue automatic nonchalance. I think seeing beauty in an explosion of ugly is worthwhile. I think father knows best but this daughter is a lost cause, a zombie walking into chaos and feeding on it. I think all the dreams and frustrations this city carry really might shatter glass if we all screamed, and I remind myself that that's why I'm here.

I think it's funny how everything I write in here of late is an affirmation and explanation as to why I'm here. Don't worry about me. I'm just ecstatic.

The moon is being eaten, blood spreading across its face

Listen, I never thought the first lunar eclipse I'd ever see would be from Beijing — standing on cold, hard cement from a temple theatre in a Hutong no less. Later, when the long-haired man next to me at the bar said he'd seen too many eclipses in his life to get excited, the second-guessing began. Surely this couldn't be the first lunar eclipse I'd ever seen. Surely I was romanticizing it as I walked away from the lit up theatre into a darkness unimaginable in New York City and craned my neck until my head almost rolled off. Surely this was only the most beautiful eclipse I'd ever seen, framed by the oldest wooden theatre in China built during Kangxi's reign over 300 years ago. If my life were a wuxia movie, I would have leaped to the roof with dainty feet and scaled the city with the moon burning behind me. Ordinary me could only stare hungrily, dropping all 21st century pretenses. There were talks of omens and auspiciousness, but mostly, there were people unceremoniously dropping matters at hand and tilting their head toward the sky. What a scene we made, dwellers of the ancient city, gazing at an ancient wonder that so many hundreds of years ago would have brought on whispers of the moon being eaten, ‘blood' spreading across its face.

In Beijing, it's these moments of calm that move me. When all that is said and done — the traffic-fatigue, the concrete jungle, modernity chipping away at the soul, something manages to steal you away and make you wonder if there was something in your blood that steer you toward the moon, waxing lyrics like giant poets forgotten by time:

花间一壶酒,独酌无相亲。举杯邀明月,对影成三人。 月既不解饮,影徒随我身。暂伴月将影,行乐须及春。 我歌月徘徊,我舞影零乱。醒时同交欢,醉后各分散。 永结无情游,相期邈云汉。

-《月下独酌》【唐】李白

Job's Tears

Work is constant: in front of the computer, meetings, emails, tea breaks, whiskey breaks, phone calls at midnight, texts seven in the morning, weekends, overtime, undermined. Everything here happens in mindnumbing Chinese speed -- from the nearby almost ready highrise apartments that were barely built just three months ago, to projects squeezed in an unmentionable amount of time. It's like the entire country is under the spell of Steve Job's reality distortion field, only unlike the pirates of the Silicon Valley, we're just not too sure exactly what we're working toward. I only know that while watching the Adventures of Tintin and seeing the amount of detail and craft and care given to every subtle movement, every scene, almost made me cry because, not yet, China will not be able to craft something like that. As for Steve Jobs and crying, there's been a lot of both. Somehow I managed to finish Walter Issacson's biography between subways, esculators, waiting at the bus stop, on the bus. For two weeks, I checked in with Steve at the Hujialou subway stop, glancing up from my book to his searing gaze from one of the many posters advertising the book in Beijing.

The biggest revelation on Steve Jobs, other than just how much of an asshole he was, is that he was a crier. He cried at meetings, cried during negotiations, cried when moved, cried because beyond the manipulation, the genius, the charisma, the guy just gave a damn.

Here's my favorite passage from the book from Jobs himself detailing Lee Clow's campaign for Apple after Job's restoration: This chokes me up, this really chokes me up. It was so clear that Lee loved Apple so much. Here was the best guy in advertising. And he hadn't pitched in ten years. Yet here he was, and he was pitching his hear out, because he loved Apple as much as we did. He and his team had come up with this brilliant idea, "Think Different." And it was ten times better than anything the other agencies showed. It choked me up, and it still makes me cry to think about it, both the fact that Lee cared so much and also how brilliant his "Think Different" idea was. Everyone in a while, I find myself in the presence of purity--purity of spirit and love--and I always cry. It always just reaches in and grabs me. That was one of those moments. There was a purity about that I will never forget. I cried in my office as he was showing me the idea, and I still cry when I think about it.

These days, when "I don't give a flying fuck" reaches out and grabs me by the gut and flips me over onto cold cement and smashes my face until I'm bleeding and bruised like a boxer champion, I remember that faces will heal and I remember to cry, because only when we cry do we realize that blood is still being pumped from head to toe, heart to soul, only when we cry do we know for sure that there's still something there that we care deeply about.

It's easy to lose it amidst all this haze, smog, people, cranes, but I feel a little better after I cry.

Rule #1: Talk to Strangers

Andrea wore a backwards baseball cap to keep her hair from falling in the sink while washing her face. After she's done brushing her teeth, she stuck her toothbrush in the back pocket of her jeans. There was an ease about her that was so undeniably un-Chinese that I found myself staring. When I struck up a conversation with her on the train from Beijing to Shanghai, it began with a statement in Chinese and ended with a question in English. We talked for a good fifteen minutes before introducing ourselves. Of the fifteen minutes, we spent most of it gazing into the moving darkness outside the window, at the hollow buildings and abandoned roads. The occasional night wanderer would stumble by our train car hallway, and we'd press our stomach against the cool glass to make way, still carrying on our conversation.

She talked about China as if it were a lover, a very physical being. The "affair" began, she said, back at home in Guatemala, when her family frequented Chinese restaurants. Her eyes lit up when she talked about home, how her whole extended family would crowd the screen when they talked on Skype, how the Chinese in Guatemala knew how to dance and move like a Latin-lover, how she was the black sheep in the family, never thought she'd end up here, and love it here, and extending her stay.

In Beijing, she took cooking lessons from a grandma in the Hutongs. She liked a dish that she wouldn't be able to find back in Guatemala, and so she was determined to learn it from the right people. The grandma took her to the market to select all the right ingredients before showing her step by step.

I don't exactly remember why she liked it here so much, but it was evident on her face, an excitement that I wondered might still remain on my own face. Everyday between staring at my computer screen and riding my bike I uncover a little bit more about this place. I'm untying it at the seams and hoping, starving, praying that I can become apart of it cotton and fabric.

I don't exactly remember why I like it here here so much. I figure if I ask enough strangers, I'll know one day.

Let us go then, you and I

For a day and a half, I become obsessed with T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," in which Prufrock, the "shy, cultivated, oversensitive, sexually retarded, ruminative, isolated, self-aware to the point of solipsism..." representative of the modernist man is crippled by an overwhelming question. This I'm not so sure why.

Mostly, I think it has to do with pretty vowels and cold metaphors. Words like magnets in the dark, an embrace that tugs and pulls. Then life tumbles through, and when I ride my bike to and fro, when I carve out the city from road to mall, from bridge to wall, from skyscraper to the moon, leaving a trail of heavy wistfulness, I feel Prufrock weighing on me with his receding hairline, his yellow face.

"Oh, do not ask, "What is it?'"

I do not know how to respond when my hairdresser says, "you have lovely lips, did you have them done?" I do not know where I am, when I hear smatterings of Chinese outside my bathroom window instead of "hello, hipster, tea party." I do not feel the weight of slangs in either language. Like Prufrock in love — or numb to — I move, I go, I simply charge, and fumble, until—

"sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown."

LE GUN

"I only need to brush shoulders with the artists of LE GUN to be imbued with the elixir of life." - Andrzej Klimoski

In the end, the magnitude of each and every line, the space between each letter, the black and white that erupt into eyes, lips, and nose all weigh down on you like a heavy nightmare, the kind that when you wake up, you wish you could film it, paint it, conjure it again. There's beauty in the bizarre landscape of heads, bodies, and limbs tangled, and a force from the walls of ink, untouched by modern day tools, that is delicate and yet startling.

That is the work of LE GUN, and I'm proud to say, my very first project in Beijing involved bringing members of this British art collective for an impromptu window display/exhibition at the multi-brand select shop ARRTCO collection. Beyond overwhelming talent, these people were some of craziest, most genuine people I've ever met.

If you are in Beijing, do go marvel at these amazing drawings at the World Trade Tower III, B3. If you are beyond, buy LE GUN work through their website.

Thank you for all your birthday wishes...

Lots of love from the other side! I miss you NY.

The Supermarket

First it's the sound, the continuous buzz from the swelling crowd, the hollering from the fish, shampoo, cracker mongers, the giant speakers announcing sales, the flatscreens churning advertisements. Now add the tightly squeezed shelf displays, the overzealous use of color, the lack of typography, and even more ads in the form of posters and motion graphics, there you have the 21st century Chinese supermarket, a headache dressed as a "convenience store." Then there's little you, little consumer, with your giant cart, going down the assembly line, row after row, dodging carts and ladies with their sample teas and elaborate packaging like you're playing Katamari, and all of sudden you think Japanese.

You think of Murakami and his End of the World prose, like cold fluorescent light caressing memories as you wade through this Hard-boiled Wonderland. You recall your favorite Japanese grocery store on St. Marks, how you pause at the packaging because it uses all the right colors, in all the right combinations, and there's nothing minimalist about any of this, except it works, and there's care in all that noise.

When you trip back into reality, and again let the hyper-capitalism tsunami over you, you convert the scene into a MV. That's right, a fucking Music Video where the buzz becomes iridescent noise and the crowds a trick of time-lapse photography. You stand in the middle of this: frozen, prickly, unnerved,

Then you realize, fuck this, I have seen supermarkets where garlics bloom and gingers shine like fucking gold, where vegetables are piled high and mongering is an art. I have known a place where bicycles reign and middle age men drink on the curb in their pajamas in broad daylight. I have known a place that clearly only exist in my head, and everyone else must be crazy.

Miracle miles and dreamer's disease

KAO. Only here at 22:45, whizzing past the CCTV tower, the China World Hotel, the I'm-so-VIP-XYZ building, only after a week of working around the clock and a contract to sign at the office tomorrow on a National Holiday, do I gain a greater understanding of The New Radicals. You feel your dreams are dying Hold tight You've got the music in you Don't let go You've got the music in you One dance left This world is gonna pull through Don't give up You've got a reason to live Can't forget We only get what we give

I have precisely died a few too many times this week only to learn that this is how people live here. Money speed money art money gains money passion money no time. My co-worker said, "there's been one too many times when I pray to God in face of an impossible task, and I'd say to him, 'God, I cannot be this unlucky. I will pull through this... I will pull through this."

With my warped mind channeling Chinese churches back in Ohio, I asked him, "so... you religious?"

"Not at all."

"It's good to hold on to a God in times like these," I professed.

Truth is, I think I will continue to die. This is the precise feeling I get from work these days, but it is the kind of death framed like you still have 24 hours to live. So you race to the end, you crush and blow and speed until the world is your kaleidoscope.

Below is the phrase of the day. A co-worker said it, and I made him write it down.

Just hold on.

Lothlorien Beijing

If I don't focus too hard, that is, after I take out my contacts, wash my face, rub my eyes, and look out the big window from my bathroom at night, I see lights floating in the dark, like Lothlorien coming to life, a lumbering forest with lanterns walking toward me. In reality, that is, when I find my glasses, put my glasses on, squeeze my eyes a few times and look out the big window from my bathroom, I see high rise apartment buildings with their unblinking lights.

I wonder at times if it's the concrete, the malls, or the escalators that's making me see forests in the dark. Beijing is like a giant machine, its metallic heart rumbles and tin foil ears beckon. Every morning I trace a route of motor car, escalator, security check, subway, bus, elevator, office, mall, then office, bus, escalator, security, subway, mall, escalator, a long walk among neon lights. The office has become my home, the mall my kitchen, and my home my bed. It's all rock and grand and makes you feel like an abnormally small playing piece in a board game.

But there's a fragility in the grandiosity, a fear made of whispers, they say: the food is poisoned, the prices too high, the people are suspicious, and life is hard. I'm watching all this with my marble eyes, glazed and happy, and I wonder if they think I'm a little sick voyeur, watching, waiting, bating.

It's hard to say, but I'm pretty sure that Beijing, well, she's just exactly the opposite of Lothlorien, and so she should be, so she should.

The grass is always greener...

...elsewhere. 1) A 21-year-old boy from Barcelona is traveling the world. He says, in my country, if I go to college for four years, I'm going to end up with a job as a cashier. So instead, I'm going to travel around the world for five years. I was in London before, and now this is my fifth month in Beijing. I like it here. People care more about each other here, not like Europe, there people are more selfish.

2) A Xinhua reporter once based in Pakistan and Afghanistan says, it's not what you imagine to be, with bombs dropping everyday and fear pervading every corner. I'd much rather live over there than in Beijing. There's too many people, too much dust here.

The solution is to always be on the move, always see more of the city, the country, the continent. Always have two worlds in your hands. Always have guts, like boys who run from college for the world. Always put yourself in uncomfortable situations. Always eat whatever's on your plate.

Devour that durian, dammit.

Cranes, trains, and aims

A friend long ago told me once, “I drove by a hollowed out building tonight, and thought of you.” He was referring to a non-specific building on a non-specific roadway into Columbus, Ohio. The building was halfway demolished, and under that precise orange glow of American street lamps, it must have looked a bit otherworldly, a little breathtaking. Here on the other side of the world, construction cranes groan into the dead of the night like creatures from the abyss, unnerved and persistent. I must have stood in the rain for minutes, surrounded by posh apartment towers in front of a construction site operated by ghostly hands — hauling metal, dropping bricks, grinding dust. It's eerily beautiful, accidentally mesmerizing, or as a friend long ago may understand, I just have a thing for unfinished and/or half demolished buildings. I love the lightness of a massive, skeletal frame, love the unpolished cement gray, and if such a love could endure, I'm probably in the right place.

In China, gray buildings rise like rows of tombs, somber and sad. For every block erected, dozens more fall. It is a place where majestic cranes rule, their long arms reach out, like overseers to a brighter future. After thousands of years, China is extending the Great Wall by crafting towers, roads, and bridges in that same shade of gray. There's something apocalyptic about all this movement, and yet, behind the frenzy, a stillness, more serene than any Times article can prescribe, is here.

Finally I can think.