To Autumn

Fall in the cementery.

It is important to feel the crinkle of autumn leaves beneath your shoes. It is important to step bravely forward, one foot behind the other. It is important to also pause, note the years that have passed all around you—1877, 1944, 1965—death by fire, loving parents, war veterans.

American cementaries are neighborhood parks. My high school faced one across the street. I'd imagine that like me, many kids have skipped a class or two for a rendezvous among tombstones and shapely willow trees. In Brooklyn it's no different, except Greenwood Cemetery feels like it unwinds on and on to destination unknown.

It's a pastoral scene, like you suddenly fell into a poem by Keats and all the leaves burn a bright orange red, and all the birds come alive, and all the deaths make such a splendor of life. It's nothing like the scene, you see, of driving two hours away from the city to a gravesite composed of neat rows of identical gray slabs of cement—to where grandfather was buried in China.

1.3 billion souls. 1.3 billion deaths. But it's quite a staggering scene when it's laid out in front of you, row after row of stones in a sea of gray. In the patch of space in front of Grandfather's tomb, auntie burned the fake money notes and places fruits and flowers.

I thought about how in the third grade, an essay in our textbook decried against superstitions and ancestor worship, and yet there we were still burning paper during the "day of the dead." Auntie took out a small broom and cleaned the dust off of grandfather tomb. It's a solemn affair in an even more solemn setting. There were no trees, no grass, no birds, no colors, just a heavy pall of tradition and ceremony in an atheistic country.

Back in Christian country, I am touched by the gothic architecture, the romantic curves of the stones and obelisks, and I think, just as the Ming and Tang poets have written about landscapes to death, is this what inspired "because I could not stop for death"?

Rally for Something

So this year, I’m opting for sanity instead of the absurdity that is Halloween. Though how sane it will be for 11,000 people to gather at the Shea Citi Field Stadium at 5AM to get on a few hundred busses sponsored by Huffington Post on a four hour trip to  join a million more at the National Mall is well, absurd at best. It’s hard to articulate what my exact reasons of wanting to go to this thing are, but as I stare hopelessly awake at a monitor screen at 4AM listening to Rufus Wainwright wax lyrical, “I’m so Tired of America,” there’s really no better time to sum up these ruffled feelings.

1) I’ve never loved Halloween.

Yeah, I said it. As a child of immigrants, Halloween had always been one of those inexplicable holidays unceremoniously shoved at me. My parents were never ones to put up pumpkin decorations or even gave out candies at the door, though dad did stew pumpkin for dinner since they were on sale for a month. Ever since an incident at age seven with a whole bag of candies consumed in a day, and subsequent PAIN and cavities, I’ve learned there were consequences to sweet things, even if you staggered them every five minutes. Candy was out, and what was left of Halloween were my less-than-creative costumes, horror flicks, brisk fall winds, and in more recent years, drunken people at drunken parades.

Don’t get me wrong, the New York Halloween parade is quite the occasion to witness, but I think you hit a certain point at age 25 when you’re not a kid and not quite 21 and Halloween just tries too hard, and so it is with my apathy for the Holiday that I’m going to a perhaps even stranger parade.

Before I start to sound like a hater, I give thee reason number 2.

2) I’ve always loved rallies, gatherings, rock festivals, lots of people in a big space

There’s a phrase in Chinese that literally means “watch commotion” (kan renao) or in more fluid terms, “to be a on-looker.” This proclivity is seen from China to Chinatown, when Chinese people inexorably gather around a scene of an accident, a fish monger, an argument, or a Chinese chess match, some scene of commotion, if you will. In a few words, I’m conditioned to think a million people gathered around a scene will satisfy my urgings on this end.

3) Cuz you can’t do this in China, can ya?

Cuz the last time a rally happened on Tiananmen Square, things didn’t go so well, did it? I always marvel at that Square whenever I’m there, you know, at its vastness and flatness, its monuments, and the history that moan at your heart and at your ear a peddler tries to sell you Chairman Mao watches. Architecturally, it really is a space meant for gatherings, for the people—the People’s Republic of China, the People’s Square, the People’s Congress, the People People People—and at the end of a string of hopeful labels, it really really is fundamentally a precious thing to be able to march on a square and have a discourse about a nation and government. No matter what spats and sides there are, no many how many nutters and how much righteousness are thrown around.

I would like to participate in this novel idea.

4) And then there’s Jon Stewart

We’re a generation brought up by this man. In college we gathered to watch him eleven on the clock religiously. Today we stream him during dinner the day after. We’re used to his prevailing sense of humor and humility, and it is this man’s voice, more than anyone else’s, that has been the voice of this generation.

I think it says a lot about the democratic system that a so-called comedian is the “voice of a generation” rather than a political figure. Where the hell are the Franklins, Madisons, and my favorite, Hamiltons of our generation? Why does it take satire to get at the heart of a country? I don’t have an answer for these questions. All I do know is that feeling in my gut that where this man leads, I goes. There’s something to that.

Strangers in the Night

So this chick sitting next to me at the Korean café turns to me all of a sudden and goes, "hey, I don't want to be rude, but can I get your. honest. opinion. on something?" She's the one sitting alone with a bottle of sake, but if I had a bottle in my hands, I would have set it down without missing a beat, "yes, let's hear it."

I was a firm believe in the power of saying "yes," and seeing where that might lead to, and so I set down my imaginary soju and turned to her, "sure thing."

The chick's Asian (aren't they all in K-town) with long hair (again, don't they all) and had an air about her that was straight-up New Yorker. She tells me about her boyfriend, their relationship, her feelings, his actions. What it boils down to and what you can take away from the story is basically he dumped her because he was looking for fun and she wanted a relationship. Now she's hung up and sitting alone in a crowded café on a Friday night, drinking to her own misery and spilling her guts at a stranger.

When I cleared this hurtle I said, "Oh, right then, so it's not mutual."

She replied with a "of course not" that sounded more like "no shit" and waited for me to relay some sage advice as if I could pull out a Chinese cookie fortune out of my ass. I wished for both our sakes that it was my friend the psychologist who ended up sitting next to her.  As it was, all I can say now is that while my answer referenced Will Shakes, it precluded the sprinkles of idealism that permeated the story life of fair Juliet and her Romeo. Love is about communication, girl. You've been with dude for a year. You should know what he wants and what you want out of it.

Or something like that.

I'm no Abby after all, and seeing her eyes glisten with tears kind of made you aware that she might have taken your words too seriously when you only knew 1/100 of the story. What you really should have said was "hey it's gonna be all right," so you try to say it with your eyes when your friends say it's time to party, let's go go go go. You give her the biggest smile you own for situations just like this, and leap into the night.

We're all going to be all right.

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.

Beijing, Beijing

My one-liner assessment of Beijing since being back has been, "Beijing is becoming a giant concrete mall." In so many more words, the buildings are stumpy, the streets are wide. The wide (and looong) streets don't help the incessant traffic, nor do they aid the pedestrian. The pedestrian now thrives between mall A and mall Z, but not in the hutongs you'll find in the newest Karate Kid. No, in fact, Chinese developers were known to have said "I'll bulldoze the Forbidden City if I could make money. It's prime real estate." My architect friends lamented about this over the weekend. Unfortunately, it wasn't the first time that someone has lamented to me about poor urban planning in Beijing. I believe it was a taxi driver back in 2007 who first told me about Liang Sicheng, a famous Chinese architect (and incidentally, Maya Lin's uncle) who wanted to preserve Old Beijing:

From wikipedia: ....With such a deep respect for tradition and the nation's cultural heritage, Liang came up with his biggest ambition: preserving Old Beijing in its entirety. Under the Communist government, he was named Vice-Director of the Beijing City Planning Commission. In his early recommendations for transforming Beijing into the new national capital, he insisted that the city should be a political and cultural center, not an industrial zone. He later put forward a proposal that a new administrative center for government buildings with a north-south axis be established west of the Forbidden City, far away from the Inner City. He also advocated that the city walls and gates be preserved. He even published an article entitled "Beijing: a Masterpiece of Urban Planning", hoping to win the support of the general public. Very regretfully, these dreams of Liang were not realized, ending only in frustration. Despite his best efforts, most of Beijing's ancient gates and city walls have been torn down, depriving the world of a spectacular example of cultural history.

Liang's name lives on in China today, but his legacy is more ellipsis than period. It seems to be a common trait of the famous and influential in China --- Zhang He, Lin Zexu, Baogong, Deng Xiaoping, Mao --- they were giants, and they embodied all that was wrong. Zheng and his treasure fleets, Lin Zexu and his lost Opium war, Baogong the uncorruptable, Deng Xiaoping and his Tiananmen, and Mao, well, and there was Mao. It's all the flawed men when you simply need a Washington, an Edison, a Jobs.

But no, if history books reflect the truth, Liang Sicheng will be remembered as the man who tried to save us from ourselves, and failed. So it plays on, 5000 and one year later, we are still hellbent on destroying and making, making and destroying. We will not pause. We will not reflect. We will rise and we will fall, and we will rinse and repeat (and our soccer team will still suck). We are not the French, and we are certainly not American. We will keep on building --- Great Walls to Great Fire Walls. We will keep on re-writing. We will keep going, and that is all fine and good, and that is all great and well.

Because you see, to me, Beijing is nothing more than a love story. Perhaps we all find that beyond the exteriors of a city, what moves us about a place are the people. So be well guys, be well.

It's Good to Be Home

So despite a pretty successful first day of battling jet lag—Thank you Unisom sleep gels and Wahaha U-Yo Milk Coffee with the tagline, "filled with the sentiment of urban romance and appeal"—here I am alert as a black cat at four in the morning again. Reminder: take sleeping pills AT LEAST until the second day. Wish: I should just be a copywriter for Chinese companies trying to break into the west. Unfortunately, New York coffee has spoiled me, and the Wahaha concoction was more cream and sugar than coffee with cream and sugar. China doesn't do coffee well, here is a nation of tea. 《Tea & Cigarettes | 茶烟道》

If I said coffee and cigarettes, you might conjure up an image of a hip East Village struggling artist type, a world weary fashionista, the movie with an eponymous title, or maybe Rufus Wainwright (to which I would remind you, chocolate milk).

To substitute coffee for tea, you'll have to change your film reel from New York art-house to...well, actually, who the hell knows where this image of "tea and cigarettes" exists in modern cinema. I'm talking about this image in China specifically, but when the Chinese export films for a foreign audience (shall we say state-sanctioned), it's often done in beautiful calligraphic strokes--the emperors, the martial artists, the vagabond heroes--one doesn't see the everyday images of China in Chinese cinema packaged for the west (all right, it's fine if you go to MoMA and IFC to watch Jia Zhangke, I'm still saying the latter Zhang Yimou and Jackie Chan dominate the Chinese cinema aesthetic). There are no business men with a bit of a belly, holding onto his briefcase in one hand, and shooting rapid mandarin into his cellphone. There are no guys perched at the curb, perfecting their squat while smoking listlessly. Moreover, there are no uncles and grandpas gulping down green tea (with thick tea leaves floating like a seaweed bed on the bottom of their water bottle), only to blow all his antioxidant points away with bellows of cigarette smoke.

Health and damage. Health and damage. Welcome to China.

《White Day | 白天》

As for the weather, and inevitable pollution, I asked my brother (cousin really, but like a brother) while tilting my head toward the white sky that fained a little blue at the edges, "is this sky considered blue?" "No," Cousin Wengang quipped back, "this is bai tian (white sky)." In Chinese, white sky literally means daylight time. Unfortunately, these days, most of China have taken that literally. It's a little eerie. In the environmentally urgent sense, the Chinese are a perfect example of how much humanity can endure while they are slowly being killed off, like frogs slowly being boiled alive. I'll admit it, the pollution this time is staggering worse than before. The sky darkened yesterday around six at night, and I thought the world was going to end. I was so afraid of the impending acid rain and bellowing wind as I jetted off, sunglass still on not to protect myself from the sun, but the dust dammit. The sun at sunset the day before wasn't any better--like a sick glowing wound trying to penetrate the smog.

Daddy could not stop bashing northern China's environment any opportunity he gets. Of course, even in beautiful southern Xiamen, they are getting the occasional dust storm from Beijing.

Yep, now that we are done impressing foreigners with our manufactured skies during the Olympics, domestic citizens bite it. But alas, we're used it, and deep down inside I know I'm just a weak frog pampered by New York's gorgeous skies (yes, I said gorgeous, GORGEOUS) and ridiculously good tap water.

《Freedom? | 得了吧》

Two footnotes:

1) The woman who sat next to me on the flight from NY to HK worked as a journalist for Sohu. She said, we (Chinese journalists) have always been so jealous of American journalists who can say and write about whatever they want.

2) Went to Xuehai yesterday to stock up on books and magazines, the owner said mainlanders who travel to Hong Kong and Taiwan these days get their luggages checked if they have a lot of books. Any books that are outside of the Communist agenda gets throw out, and only two books are allowed. Additional note: a lot of mainlanders go to Hong Kong/Taiwan to stock up on books that are banned in China, more probably go for the cheaper Louis Vuitton though.

Fuck, Louis Vuitton symbolizes everything that's wrong with Asia. I really hate LV.

《My Hairdresser | 董桂明》

Of course, I always visit my hairdresser when I come back to Tianjin. Two years later, Dong has a tattoo and is getting married in 10 days. He still works 13 hour days, with only Mondays off. I hate to blemish his character by repeating this part of our conversation:"If you look at the top designers in the world, L'Oreal, Gucci, Louis Vuitton... they are all men. What are women good at? Making babies."

The whimsical grin he had on almost, almost had me thinking that he was joking, then I remembered myself for all the Chinese men.

《The Game of Love | 非诚无忧》

Saw the most amazing TV show ever. I mean. W.O.W. WOW. Yuan Lai Shi Ni (literally Fately You, a play on words for "it turns out to be you"). The first ten minutes of the show has me aghast, and I mean the American in me gasped at the lack of political correctness, the shallowness, and the incredible lack of human kindness all celebrated by this show. To understand this show, first, some cultural context, Chinese parents still play a major role in their child's choice of a mate. In modern China, the guiding rule for many women to find a spouse is "he must have a car and a house." In short, he must be rich.

This show is essentially a "marriage interview" (xiang qin), a traditional Chinese custom somewhere between an arranged marriage and dating that involves the whole family. It's a lovely show really. One of the more original shows I've seen on Chinese TV that doesn't copy an American one. Indeed, this kind of show can only exist in China.

Twelve mothers and their eligible daughters are introduced to male contestants/possible mates, and in a sequence of video self-introductions, opinions from friends of the dude, they discuss (scathingly rip the guy apart) whether he is an eligible choice. The first guys was a 34-year-old who made a shit-load of money, but was deemed problematic because he was still unmarried at 34. The second guy was a crazy comedian who was "not taking the show seriously enough" with his antics. The third guy was a reasonably good looking guy who "looked like a piece of paper from the side" (he too skinny), and a little weird because he owned a makeup shop. The fourth guy was "much too narcissistic and I hate types like you."

Many mother-daughter couples have stated their criteria for the daughter's possible mate. They range from money, ability to assume family responsibility, money, looks and money, a kind person, and money...

So I'm digging myself a hole here when I say after 15 minutes of being shell-shocked, the show really made me think. For a country that many assume the media would be rigid and rehearsed, this is one of the most brutally honest show I've ever seen in my life. The people are real, they announce their opinions without any reservations for social kindness. I've given the worst of the examples where people were looking for mates with money, but there were also mothers who criticized the man for announcing his high salary in his intro for being too materialistic, and girls who roared they were feminists.

Anyway, this show is staggeringly interesting because the lack of political correctness. I am absolutely impressed by a species of mankind who can withstand constant harsh judgments from society that they are too thin, they are too fat, they are not rich enough, my daughter is far too pretty than you are, and I'm only half sarcastic. The Chinese side of me wonders, if these pre-judgments are how one feels, why bother trying to hide it, or does "hiding it" make up a kinder, more compassionate people?

I know it's difficult to understand why I think there any salvation in this show, but it's in the same vain that I appreciate, to an extent, that people tell me I'm "fatter" or "skinnier" than before whenever I come back to China. There is a frankness that exists here about body image and social norms that is at once shallow, and at once light-hearted because if you talk about it, it's not a big deal anymore.

All in all, let me try to salvage myself by saying that this is a land of opportunity for social change, but Chinese people present a very interesting world view that is.... thought-provoking.

《Love | 爱》

I'm a bit scathing here to China, but I still... love it. The energy here is raw. The people are at once great and off-putting. The food is still whoa good. The potential of opportunities are good. The pressure from the lack of social justice and a fair government is momentum for more change.

I guess this makes me crazy.

A Matter of Gifting

It used to be, 15 years ago or so when I first came to the US, that everything from abroad is a little rare. My parents spent three years in Japan, and when mom came home she bought back the family the microwave, and I remember all my aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, and myself crowding around the magical box that instantly made food. When a foreign friend of my dad's visited us in China back in the early nineties, their gift was a jar of peanut butter. I spent the duration of their visit circling and ogling at the foreigner's beautiful little blonde daughter with half of my cheek stuffed with "peanut sauce," the most magical concoction that first gave me a taste of America. Years later, when I became "the daughter from abroad," I brought home chocolates, fish oil, vitamins, and floss (which no one understood). Today, I bring back organic soap. I bring back organic soap because dammit, China is now a land of commodities and materials, a market flooded with Dove chocolates and microwaves and peanut butter and Lays chips and Pepsi campaigns and "everything foreign shall be embraced." It is instead me going home to gobble up as much goodies as I can. The food, the snacks, the service, the tennis shoes that I like. Every overseas family seems to have trouble finding things to bring back from America.

And so, soap it is. I'm bringing back soap because everyone needs soap and because it is not ostentatious and ridiculous (Louis Vuitton, for example, a bag that my aunt mistakenly thought they sold in America for $200-300... fuck LV man, and every HKer with an LV. I say this as I plan on buying lots of Shiseido, but I'm for fashion democracy, not mindlessness like what it's happening in China.). I'm bringing back a little bit of the organic movement where things are handmade instead of on an assembly line. I'm bringing back a mentality that counters China's mighty army of man-labor, where man is treated as a machine. I'm not sure my relatives will get it. I'm sure I'm being hypocritical as I plan on going to a fancy hair salon that will cost me half the price in the US because labor is cheap.

BUT.

Soap is sure as hell healthier than chocolate.