Up until yesterday afternoon, this post was most likely going to be as peppy as the last one, as this week was going really really well. But then, yesterday at around noon while I sat outside at a cafe, having a coffee and reading my book (yes, I am reading Crime and Punishment), my purse was snatched from where I had put it on the ground between my legs. I was so distracted (Crime and Punishment is a really good book...) that I didn’t even notice that my purse was gone until the thief (a young man with a couple other goons) was already running around the corner and away. This was obviously super unfortunate. I lost my wallet (which was beautiful and irreplaceable as it was a gift and was from somewhere in Asia), all the cash I had (luckily only like $30), my debit card (quickly cancelled so no harm there), all my IDs (driver’s license, international student id), the Argentinean cell phone I had just bought, both my Buenos Aires guidebooks (luckily there are a bunch of free ones in the volunteer house left behind by people), my Spanish-English dictionary, a sweater, the purse itself which had served me so well on my gap year and was perfection but luckily not valuable to anyone but me, a new pack of gum (the little things which are still so frustrating...literally an unopened pack of gum that those thieves now get to enjoy! “•$%&/), and my chapstick.
From that litany you can probably tell many things (mainly that I carry lots of stuff around with me...and can be a little materialistic/attached to my possessions), but I think the most important facts are these: I didn’t lose anything indispensible/super valuable like my passport or camera or American cell phone with all my contacts, and for that I am super grateful. And the most important/jarring thing that I lost was a (false) sense of security.
Basically, the honeymoon ended yesterday, and that’s not entirely a bad thing. I’ve spent the last day keeping busy and enjoying the city, and trying to regain my sense of equilibrium. This was the first ¨bad¨ thing to happen to me during my entire gap year (please re-read that and reflect on how lucky I am). And it wasn’t even that bad. I wasn’t mugged or threatened, didn’t lose anything super important or valuable. But despite those clear facts, I still feel unbalanced. First, there’s the feeling of being incredibly frustrated with myself—why did I put my bag on the ground when I know to never do that and usually keep it on my lap? Why did I let my guard down and get so absorbed in my book that I had no idea what was happening around me? Aren’t I more savvy than that? I don’t like to think of myself as someone who has been duped. Then there’s the feeling of being violated, of anger—How DARE anyone think it’s OK to take what belongs to someone else? There’s the feeling of unfairness, of frustration at the inconvenience. There’s the feeling of loss, because as anyone (particularly, honestly, anyone female) knows, things like purses and wallets and baby blue sweaters from H&M don’t actually MATTER but they do matter to me because they are connected to so many memories and experiences.
Also, I must admit that there is a part of me laughing through my metaphorical tears...I mean seriously. I was reading Crime and Punishment while I was robbed. The irony is deadly.
So suffice to say, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (erm..moping? well, trying not to mope but instead ponder...) today and yesterday. Because while I lost stuff yesterday, I don’t have anything to mourn unless I let this happen again and don’t take a lesson from it. And on the other hand, I’ve only lost something really really valuable and irreplaceable if I lose my ability to love and enjoy Buenos Aires. And I’m really trying to make sure that doesn’t happen! Because that would be a true shame.
OK so there’s the major update. I have so much more to report but unfortunately this little event has hijacked this blog post....BAH! *Shakes fists at heavens* Even so, I’ll try to report the highlights from last week, although it was a truly highlight-filled week.
Starting with my birthday. Which was INCREIBLE. Really really good. Highlights within the highlight were the community celebration in La Boca, and this AMAZING AMAZING drum show. The community celebration in La Boca was for a guy who had helped start the community center where I work and was your good old-fashioned community organizer. He was killed during the riots after the economic crisis in 2001, although I don’t know the details. Every year, the community center/surrounding community celebrates his birthday, which is March 22. Like mine! There were all these cool performances that sort of made me think of a 19th century union picnic or something. Speakers rallying the populace! A master of ceremonies who evoked allegorical characterrs who then came onto the stage to perform songs or skits (ie ¨The Earth¨ or ¨The Mother of the Hero¨ or ¨the Spirit of Community¨)! Children playing, people singing, chants, food, etc. It was actually like something out of Dickens, and it was super interesting/inspiring to see so much community solidarity. Then, after the La Boca rally, I and three other volunteers went to La Bomba, this super awesome open-air drum show that takes place in this renovated factory in the middle of the city. It happens every Monday night during the summer (tomorrow is the last one and I’m SO THERE), and was absolutely incredible. Seriously, I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday evening. It’s like (not to get too self-referential here) a rock concert, Beatnik, a contra-dance in the Greensboro grange, and Woodstock all rolled into one. Basically: PURE BEAUTY. Every type of hippie you can think of, plus just tons of mainstream young people from so many countries, plus these awesome drummers, plus this amazing space, plus yummy empanadas...oh gosh. So good.
Then on Wednesday there was this HUGE march/rally which I went to in the Plaza de Mayo and on Avenida de Mayo (the street where I live) to commemorate the tens of thousands of desaparecidos from the years of the military junta. On display at this march were every type of left-wing CRAZY you can think of. SO ENTERTAINING. Of course, there were some really inspiring/legit community and labor groups, and it was interesting to read all the signs and literature they had...but there were also a whole bunch of student anarchists/socialists/socialist utopians, different factions of various Communist Parties, and, my personal favorite, a group waving a giant flag emblazoned with Mao’s face (NOT OK MY FRIENDS, NOT OK....they don’t even do that in CHINA any more...China’s crazy-ass parade didn’t include Mao ANYWHERE. Idiots.). Also these people waving a giant flag reading ¨Stop Bush¨. Stop him from...what? Building his presidential library? A little late my friends.
Thursday I went to the Recoleta Cemetary, one of BA’s top tourist attractions, and that was really cool. It’s a pretty big cemetary, but no one is buried underground...instead there are all these family crypts owned by various wealthy families, all built above ground, and highly intricate/decorated/beautiful. Lots of awesome sculpture. And it was fun/peaceful to just wander around. A little weird/morbid...but cool.
Today was also really fun. After church I walked through this huge market in San Telmo, a very old and quaint part of the city. Then I went to this beautiful rose garden where there was a free live jazz concert. I walked a ton and am really tired and a little sunburned, but it was a really good day.
Goodnight my friends! Sending lots of love to all from the Southern Hemisphere!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
¡Hola Buenos Aires! El placer es mío…
SO THIS IS EXCITING. I’M IN BUENOS AIRES. I’VE BEEN HERE FOR FIVE DAYS. IT’S AMAZING. AND TOMORROW IS MY ¡¡¡¡¡BIRTHDAY!!!!!
Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system. But actually, life is so good right now. I arrived in Buenos Aires last Tuesday in the middle of the afternoon, and was met at the airport and whisked into the city by a very friendly driver named Victor, who over the course of our drive informed me that he is one of 15 children in his family. And then he listed them. On his fingers. Which required his taking both hands off the wheel. On a five lane freeway. Yesss. ¡Bienvenido a Buenos Aires!
I survived the drive into town, thankfully (I guess being 1 of 15 sort of gives you a pretty good survival instinct, right? If 14 brothers and sisters haven’t killed you, driving with no hands on the freeway doesn’t stand a chance! Right.). In case you have no idea what the heck I’m doing in BA, let me explain (Mom, this is for you....KIDDING. Mostly). I’m here in Buenos Aires for eight weeks, until May 15, volunteering with an Argentinean organization called Voluntario Global. VG, founded in 2005, supports social organizations in different working class neighborhoods in Buenos Aires by providing funding and foreign volunteers. I’m staying in the VG Volunteer ¨Club¨, which is basically a hostel for the VG volunteers, complete with kitchen, common room with TVs and computers, etc. There are no other Americans staying here, and I haven’t met a single other American while I’ve been here, which is cool but kind of weird. The other volunteers are from Europe...England, Scotland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany. Everyone is pretty young, probably between 19 and 25, but it’s hard to tell. I’m definitely on the younger end.
So, how am I spending my time? I’m doing two, hopefully three projects. Three afternoons a week I’m helping out at a community center in La Boca, a working class but pretty interesting/vibrant neighborhood (famous for its brightly painted houses), where they have an afterschool program. The program’s stated purpose is homework help, but not all the kids bring homework to do so it’s a lot of playing educational games/ just having fun with the kids...to provide a fun, wholesome, hopefully somewhat educational place for them to be. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons starting this week I’ll be tutoring a couple high school kids in English...the classes are supposed to be for adults but a few highschoolers keep coming looking for help with their homework so I’m going to be their point person. I’m excited. And then I think Monday and Wednesday mornings I’m going to be helping in the community kitchen in the community center. Sophia, a super nice British girl who is also volunteering at the afterschool program, is also working in the kitchen those mornings so I’m excited for that. BUT tomorrow is a special memorial event (not sure what that means...I think it’s a march?) in La Boca so the community center activities aren’t happening but I’m going down to the center anyway to take part in the festivities. And then Wednesday is a national holiday, the Day of Memory for the military junta. So stuff is cancelled again. So I won’t start in the kitchen until next week I guess.
The community center is SO COOL. It has a sewing factory cooperative run by people in the community, where they make and embroider T-shirts, uniforms, etc. They’ve also just started screen printing. Also the kitchen, a big space where different community groups gather, the after school help...it’s a hopping place. Lots of Che Guevara memorabilia everywhere ... which would normally sort of bother me but they’re the real deal Guevarians, right? Without the armed guerilla movement thing. No worries, Mom.
Other than volunteering, I’ve been doing TONS of sight-seeing/ exploring. SO MUCH walking around the city, and this weekend I’ve been riding this double-decker tourist bus all around town. It’s a gorgeous city (a bit grimy, but in a cute way I guess?), the architecture is INCREDIBLE. FOR SERIOUS...every single style you can possibly imagine, which makes walking down the street slightly hazardous because I’m always looking at the buildings, not where I’m going. Like Boston (and Shanghai, to a certain extent), BA is a city of neighborhoods, which makes it a real pleasure to explore. Even though I’ve barely scratched the surface, I feel like I already have a feel for the city because I understand the different neighborhoods. I seriously just can’t wait to keep walking and walking and walking. And I will be doing lots of walking probably until I figure out the bus routes, which are horribly complicated. And the metro is a bit of a joke...like the MBTA, except slower, without AC, and with about a third of the service area. So not like the MBTA. Much worse than the MBTA if you can believe it. But again...WALKING. LOVE IT.
You know what I also love? Leather. Boots, bags, jackets...drool. The big question is brown or black? These are the things I worry about.
Other highlights include the Oscar-winning Argentinean film ¨El secreto de tus ojos¨ that I went to with some other volunteers. Very good but definitely a thriller. Also, cooking for myself has been pretty fun. Also, cafes. Every day I have my cafe con leche in a different place and read my book. It’s an integral part of the gap year growing experience, I swear.
Today I went to El Museo Nacional de los Artes Decorativos, which is a BEAUTIFUL mansion in the French style filled with superb pieces of art. Every room is a different, exquisite style. Kind of like the Isabella Stewart Gardner but a little less over-filled and you can tell that the owners weren’t as crazy. Just crazy rich. It’s much more just this rich family’s house, filled with their beautiful things, NOT a rich eccentric pack-rat obsessive groundbreaking woman like Isabella’s house. But very cool. Also have fallen in love with this bookstore-slash-cafe in Palermo (my favorite neighborhood so far...chic but not kitchy, filled with cafes and bookstores and boutiques...LOVELY). Also this health-food vegetarian cafe where the waitresses where these awful floral uniforms...WITH CAPS. Poor them. But the food is good.
OK I think that’s all for now. I have lots to say. But I have to go to bed so that I can wake up and HAVE IT BE MY BIRTHDAY. WOOOHOOO. Yay turning 19...the most insignificant birthday of my life so far. But still, it’s a birthday.
Oh one more thing...just want to apologize for the excessive number of times I used the word ¨Ishkabibble¨ in my last post. I found it quite irritating when I just re-read it. I guess, as usual, I was over-enthusiastic. Slash desperate for a unifying theme? Yes. That too.
Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system. But actually, life is so good right now. I arrived in Buenos Aires last Tuesday in the middle of the afternoon, and was met at the airport and whisked into the city by a very friendly driver named Victor, who over the course of our drive informed me that he is one of 15 children in his family. And then he listed them. On his fingers. Which required his taking both hands off the wheel. On a five lane freeway. Yesss. ¡Bienvenido a Buenos Aires!
I survived the drive into town, thankfully (I guess being 1 of 15 sort of gives you a pretty good survival instinct, right? If 14 brothers and sisters haven’t killed you, driving with no hands on the freeway doesn’t stand a chance! Right.). In case you have no idea what the heck I’m doing in BA, let me explain (Mom, this is for you....KIDDING. Mostly). I’m here in Buenos Aires for eight weeks, until May 15, volunteering with an Argentinean organization called Voluntario Global. VG, founded in 2005, supports social organizations in different working class neighborhoods in Buenos Aires by providing funding and foreign volunteers. I’m staying in the VG Volunteer ¨Club¨, which is basically a hostel for the VG volunteers, complete with kitchen, common room with TVs and computers, etc. There are no other Americans staying here, and I haven’t met a single other American while I’ve been here, which is cool but kind of weird. The other volunteers are from Europe...England, Scotland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany. Everyone is pretty young, probably between 19 and 25, but it’s hard to tell. I’m definitely on the younger end.
So, how am I spending my time? I’m doing two, hopefully three projects. Three afternoons a week I’m helping out at a community center in La Boca, a working class but pretty interesting/vibrant neighborhood (famous for its brightly painted houses), where they have an afterschool program. The program’s stated purpose is homework help, but not all the kids bring homework to do so it’s a lot of playing educational games/ just having fun with the kids...to provide a fun, wholesome, hopefully somewhat educational place for them to be. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons starting this week I’ll be tutoring a couple high school kids in English...the classes are supposed to be for adults but a few highschoolers keep coming looking for help with their homework so I’m going to be their point person. I’m excited. And then I think Monday and Wednesday mornings I’m going to be helping in the community kitchen in the community center. Sophia, a super nice British girl who is also volunteering at the afterschool program, is also working in the kitchen those mornings so I’m excited for that. BUT tomorrow is a special memorial event (not sure what that means...I think it’s a march?) in La Boca so the community center activities aren’t happening but I’m going down to the center anyway to take part in the festivities. And then Wednesday is a national holiday, the Day of Memory for the military junta. So stuff is cancelled again. So I won’t start in the kitchen until next week I guess.
The community center is SO COOL. It has a sewing factory cooperative run by people in the community, where they make and embroider T-shirts, uniforms, etc. They’ve also just started screen printing. Also the kitchen, a big space where different community groups gather, the after school help...it’s a hopping place. Lots of Che Guevara memorabilia everywhere ... which would normally sort of bother me but they’re the real deal Guevarians, right? Without the armed guerilla movement thing. No worries, Mom.
Other than volunteering, I’ve been doing TONS of sight-seeing/ exploring. SO MUCH walking around the city, and this weekend I’ve been riding this double-decker tourist bus all around town. It’s a gorgeous city (a bit grimy, but in a cute way I guess?), the architecture is INCREDIBLE. FOR SERIOUS...every single style you can possibly imagine, which makes walking down the street slightly hazardous because I’m always looking at the buildings, not where I’m going. Like Boston (and Shanghai, to a certain extent), BA is a city of neighborhoods, which makes it a real pleasure to explore. Even though I’ve barely scratched the surface, I feel like I already have a feel for the city because I understand the different neighborhoods. I seriously just can’t wait to keep walking and walking and walking. And I will be doing lots of walking probably until I figure out the bus routes, which are horribly complicated. And the metro is a bit of a joke...like the MBTA, except slower, without AC, and with about a third of the service area. So not like the MBTA. Much worse than the MBTA if you can believe it. But again...WALKING. LOVE IT.
You know what I also love? Leather. Boots, bags, jackets...drool. The big question is brown or black? These are the things I worry about.
Other highlights include the Oscar-winning Argentinean film ¨El secreto de tus ojos¨ that I went to with some other volunteers. Very good but definitely a thriller. Also, cooking for myself has been pretty fun. Also, cafes. Every day I have my cafe con leche in a different place and read my book. It’s an integral part of the gap year growing experience, I swear.
Today I went to El Museo Nacional de los Artes Decorativos, which is a BEAUTIFUL mansion in the French style filled with superb pieces of art. Every room is a different, exquisite style. Kind of like the Isabella Stewart Gardner but a little less over-filled and you can tell that the owners weren’t as crazy. Just crazy rich. It’s much more just this rich family’s house, filled with their beautiful things, NOT a rich eccentric pack-rat obsessive groundbreaking woman like Isabella’s house. But very cool. Also have fallen in love with this bookstore-slash-cafe in Palermo (my favorite neighborhood so far...chic but not kitchy, filled with cafes and bookstores and boutiques...LOVELY). Also this health-food vegetarian cafe where the waitresses where these awful floral uniforms...WITH CAPS. Poor them. But the food is good.
OK I think that’s all for now. I have lots to say. But I have to go to bed so that I can wake up and HAVE IT BE MY BIRTHDAY. WOOOHOOO. Yay turning 19...the most insignificant birthday of my life so far. But still, it’s a birthday.
Oh one more thing...just want to apologize for the excessive number of times I used the word ¨Ishkabibble¨ in my last post. I found it quite irritating when I just re-read it. I guess, as usual, I was over-enthusiastic. Slash desperate for a unifying theme? Yes. That too.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Ishkabibble
Ishkabibble is what we call a brownie sundae at Highland Lodge, where I've been a waitress for the past five weeks. An ishkabibble is sort of the Lodge's signature dessert, mostly because of its name; it is a delicious, but not particularly unique, gooey combination of a brownie, vanilla ice cream, and hot fudge sauce. Today was the day of the "Great Ishkabibble", when people could get a free Ishkabibble if they completed the "Great Circle," the outer edge of the Lodge's cross country ski trails, 19 km in all. When I got home from work this evening, I curiously googled the word Ishkabibble to see if I could find what it means. What I found made me think that it would make a great title for this blog entry. Basically, Ishkabibble is a nonsense word of unknown origin, maybe a bastardization of a Yiddish term, maybe of a German phrase, meaning either "Don't worry"/"No worries", or, according to Urban Dictionary, it's "A word to use when something is indescribable, or when there's nothing else to say." Trying to sum up six weeks of living at my own pace, of skiing and working and having fun and eating well and feeling good and thinking my own thoughts and exploring and living in this beautiful rural place I love so much? Ishkabibble.
Worried that this blog post isn't going to go anywhere, that after six weeks I will prove even more incoherent than usual? Ishkabibble.
I do have a lot more to say than just "Ishkabibble," however. No worries. Ishkabibble. The reason I haven't posted in so long is that I have, as surprising as it may seem, been quite busy, particularly during the last two weeks. The inn has been really busy during the last couple weeks, and I've been working a lot. For example: I worked 45 hours in six days last week, and Friday (yesterday) was my first day off in ten days . So in the hours when I haven't been working, I've been watching movies and reading and skiing, and I haven't been inclined to update my blog. Sorry! I guess it's a hermit thing. You probably wouldn't understand (grumpy hermit?). Ishkabibble.
Working at the Lodge has been absolutely great. Being a waitress is tough work, requiring excellent multi-tasking skills, complete focus, physical and mental efficiency, as well as people skills...so it's never boring. Making money is also excellent, especially since I've made a lot more than I expected too. Yay. I'm rich! Not really. But sorta. Ishkabibble.
The people at the Lodge have been incredibly patient and welcoming. I'm definitely in a completely different place in my life than most of them, especially since this is but a transient stage (seven weeks) within a transient stage (a gap year) for me. Since I'm transient, a newbie, going to a "fancy college" (not a quote from anyone at work, but from a girl I met somewhere else in Vermont), AND a flatlander, I expected to be on the outside to a certain extent, and while I am certainly not completely integrated into the Lodge community, it is almost entirely because of the first two reasons rather than the second two. Happily, I seem to exhibit enough of a willingness to work and a decent enough allowance of common sense to have been mostly accepted by the more exigent members of the Lodge staff. Ishkabibble.
The other major component of my time up here has been cross country skiing, which I have done in abundance. On average, I've probably been skiing four days a week, and every time I go I'm blown away by the beauty here. Seriously, every time of the 25-30 times I've been skiing, I've experienced one of those "Oh my ISHKABIBBLE" moments of awe at the beauty of creation. One of my favorite spots is a trail on the Lodge's ski trails that offers a view of the "Snow Angel," a set of fields on a hill opposite that from a distance look like a snow angel. Today I skied right at dusk, just as clouds were moving in and it was starting to snow; the grey of the hills, the white of the snow angel, the light blue of the sky right above the hills, then a strip of dark grey clouds, lightening up to a blue-lavender-grey overcast sky. Somehow the combination of colors and the quality of light reminded me of the my day at Xi Hu in Huangzhou back in November. So beautiful. Ishkabbible.
Most of my deep thinking from the last six weeks has centered around the beauty around me, my personal ponderings as Lent has approached and the movies and books I've been watching and reading. For Lent, I've given up meat and Facebook...it's going to be tough, but I hope that I'll have the willpower to persevere, and that I can spend the next six weeks focusing even more on living well spiritually and connecting with myself and those I love and with the God I love, basically taking care of my body, mind, soul and relationships. I figure I'll never have an opportunity like I do this year to spend Lent really engaging and living intentionally. As far as books and movies have gone, I want to talk about three movies in particular, and how they've made me reflect on my "retreat" from "society" (to which I say: Ishkabibble). These three movies are "Into the Wild", which is based on the true story of a young man who, after graduating from college, gives away all of his money and possessions and begins a two year long odyssey to Alaska, where he intends to live purely in the wilderness (see: Thoreau) and escape the poison and hypocrisy of society. **Spoiler alert** It sounds uplifting, and some cool wilderness-y things do happen, but he dies in the end of starvation after spending three months in the Alaskan wilderness. No longer afflicted by the hypocrisy of society, yes, but also dead. Another movie was "Motorcycle Diaries", about the journey a young Che Guevara took with a friend by motorcycle from Buenos Aires (yeee) thousands of miles across South America. And the third move was "Seven Years in Tibet", also based on a true story, about an Austrian former Nazi who escapes from a British POW camp in India to wander through Tibet, before making a new life for himself in Lhasa and befriending the Dalai Lama. Cue 1949, the Communist Chinese army, and general destruction and tragedy. I loved all three of these movies, and highly recommend them to any audience, but particularly to young adults such as myself. They are all about journeys of self-discovery, and while these odysseys all involved harsh conditions in the wilderness, slogs of thousands of miles through mountains, exotic locales, and isolation and loneliness on the part of all three protagonists, in all three movies I saw elements of my own journey over the course of this gap year. I also saw depicted the arrogance of youthful rebellion, the arrogance of the young who think they are invincible, or who think that their suffering has some higher meaning or puts them on a higher plain than other people, or who think that they see or know something that no one else does. This theme made me sit back on my heels a little bit and consider my own journey, my own odyssey in search of a deeper sense of myself and, yes, my quest for a higher purpose for myself and my year off. I also saw that all three protagonists pushed away emotionally from, while also physically abandoning, their loved ones. Maybe I betray my own arrogance by claiming to see any aspect of my own experience in such amazing, lofty, completely unique stories; I am, after all, settled and not on an epic physical odyssey, and, furthermore, settled into a beautiful house surrounded by breath-taking views, in perfect comfort, completely content. I am also not seeking to break away from society, but rather to make a space for myself to reflect and grow in order that I might find my place in society. That being said, all three of the these movies--especially "Into the Wild"--have niggled their ways into my mind, into my thoughts and reflections, and I can't escape making comparisons. To a certain extent, all three characters fulfilled the role of "the voice crying out in the wilderness", of the prophet crying for truth, for justice, for the holiness and sanctity of the self in the face of society's power. I am no such voice. But I cannot help but ask myself--am I so drawn in by the pull of these movies because of a sense of jealousy? Because I want to be or--or, worse, style myself after--such a voice? And then my mind turns to Jesus, to his 40 days in the wilderness battling the devil, to his role as the ultimate prophet, as the ultimate just judge of society--and to his youth. Jesus was young, too; he, too, underwent a journey of self-discovery that led to a retreat into the wilderness. Jesus suffered, and his suffering has exquisite meaning; Jesus pushed away his loved ones; Jesus acted like he knew something that no one else did, but that was because he did know something, something of the most tremendous importance. The most poignant moment of "Into the Wild" for me was when the protagonist, Chris, writes in the margins of a book that he reads during his final days "Happiness only counts when it is shared." What I think he's referring to, in a meta-sense, is to the primacy of love over all else. Which is also a huge theme in all three movies, and which is, to my mind, the crucial center of Jesus' message and story.
Friday, January 15, 2010
An Overdue Update: Three Continents, Four Countries, Two States, One Much-travelled, Irregularly Blogging Girl
It's been almost a month since I last posted, and what a crazy month it's been! I've come home from China, spent four whirlwind days in Boston, travelled in Jordan and Egypt with my family for sixteen days, spent another eight days in Boston, and now I'm in Vermont. I have so much to write about--leftover stories and thoughts from leaving China, impressions and experiences in Jordan and Egypt, feelings about being home in Boston, and hopes for the next seven weeks, which I will spend living up in Craftsbury, Vermont, where I am right now!
Let's start by travelling through time and space (oooh trippy) back to a month ago in Shanghai. My last week in Shanghai was so busy that it's basically a blur at this point. Predictably, I spent a lot of it rushing around saying goodbye to different people and to the city. CIEE did a great job facilitating discussions about re-entry and things to keep in mind when processing our experiences abroad. My goodbye weekend was dampened substantially by the sudden death of my host mom's grandmother; my fancy "goodbye lunch" at a nice restaurant ended up being just me and Judy, my ten year-old host sister, as my host parents both spent much of the weekend with my host mom's family. So that was a slightly different goodbye than I expected, and I was sad to have to say goodbye to my host mom at a time when she was clearly very upset. However, one highlight of those final days was my afternoon-long endeavor to bake a cake in our rice cooker, something I had promised Judy I would do at some point in my final month in Shanghai. I purchased Betty Crocker cake mix and frosting at Carrefour, the Western supermarket; with Judy's "help" I mixed up the cake mix, and poured it into the non-stick insert of our rice cooker. The struggle came when we (me, Judy, and my friend Katherine) couldn't figure out how to get the rice cooker on a high enough setting, so....cooking the cake took seven hours. Really, the cake only started cooking in the final hour, after my host dad came home and adjusted the setting for us. But once (finally) finished, the cake slid out of the rice cooker beautifully, I frosted it, and my host mom, my host dad, Judy, Katherine and I stood around our kitchen eating it. Afterwards, hopped up on sugar, Judy insisted we do a prolonged photo shoot, and I was happy enough to oblige, because now I have tons (read: literally hundreds) of really cute pictures of Judy. A wonderful way to spend my final evening in China!
Coming home to Boston wasn't really the jolting experience I thought it would be. In fact, I felt almost as though I had never left, which, while cliche, is really how I felt. I think this feeling might just be part of being on a gap year, as I left under much the same circumstances as I came back: I didn't come back to jump into classes or some other sort of intense experience, but instead resumed my schedule of cleaning my room, seeing friends, doing laundry, and packing, which had characterized my final days in Boston in August. Plus those four days at home (and in this case "at home" is merely a technical term, as I spent most of those four days running around Boston, Cambridge, and Milton....) were so incredibly crazy that I didn't really have time to feel anything except for exhaustion and happiness at being home and back with my friends and family.
And then, four days after coming home from Asia, I was off to the Middle East and Africa (Jordan and Egypt, to be specific) with my family! What a life I lead. There's obviously so much I could say about Jordan and Egypt, as it was a two week trip, and each day was packed with activities, ancient site visits, and opportunities for observations and learning moments. BUT I really don't have the energy or will to go through Jordan and Egypt in great detail. Or at least not as much detail as the trip deserves. Here are some choice thoughts/observations:
- Jordan is an absolutely beautiful and fascinating country. I really didn't expect to love Jordan as much as I did, thinking instead that it would be a sort of get in, see Petra, get out experience. In reality, we were only in the country for three days, but those three days were enough for me to know that I want to go back. The desert landscape is stunning, the ancient sites are fascinating and wonderfully preserved (specifically, we went to Jerash, an AMAZING Greek/Roman/Byzantine city that is probably the best preserved, most multi-faceted, most interesting Roman ruin I've ever seen, as well as Petra, the deservedly iconic necropolis and city carved into stone cliffs), the people are friendly, it's bustling but not chaotic (at least by Shanghai standards), the food is delicious. Of course, it helped that we stayed in jaw-dropping hotels and certainly didn't suffer (particularly during our day at a Dead Sea resort, probably the most luxurious hotel I've ever stayed in), but I would say that the good impression I got from Jordan wasn't just from the tourist stuff. It just seemed like an interesting, beautiful country, if complex and with its own problems, of course.
- Stuff is really old in Egypt. Duh, you say? Yes, of course I'm stating the obvious. But it's true! And it's incredible to see it, even if it's a fact that you've been aware of since first grade. 5000 year old wooden boats! 5000 year old pyramids! 3000 year old temple complexes! 3000 year old tombs! Those numbers are CRAZY. And it's crazy to be standing inside a temple or pyramid or looking at a perfectly preserved 5000 year-old wooden boat and think about HOW MANY YEARS THAT IS. AH.
- Fun story: After climbing inside the biggest of the Great Pyramids on Christmas Day (a difficult and athletic feat, let me add), my siblings, cousins and I found ourselves, eventually, in the chamber that at one point held the pharaoh's sarcophagus. It's now empty, and very dark, and very tall, and very echo-y, located as it is in the center of a massive pyramid. Inside this room, we found not only ourselves and the stone box that once held the sarcophagus, but a friendly middle-aged Egyptian man who I can confidently label insane. In the best possible way of course. Upon entering the center chamber of the pyramid, I, obviously, began acting like a zombie-mummy, lifting my arms out in front of me and making moaning sounds, which, obviously, echoed quite satisfactorily. Our new pyramid-dwelling Egyptian friend got very excited when I started doing this, and began doing the same bizarre motion and sound. Then, he changed to different fun Egyptian-inspired dance moves (classics such as Walk Like an Egyptian, as well as the Egyptian Shuffle--a sort of mummy bunny hop, an original creation, I'm sure--the Egyptian Congo Line, and the Egyptian Macarana--think the Macarena, but mummified) and very explicitly encouraged us to copy him. We did this for about two minutes, even joining him in his congo line, until we decided it was time to go. But even as we left, our Egyptian friend persisted, running in front of us and showing us even cooler dance moves he had up his sleeve. Such a nice man. Such a nice, pyramid-dwelling insane man. My guess is that the insane asylum from which he most certainly escaped doesn't think to look for him there. But they should. He's nutso.
- Columns are cool. The Greeks and Romans are known for their columns, but the Egyptians should get some credit, too. I loved taking pictures of all the beautiful, massive, carved columns in the ancient temples we visited.
- Ancient Egypt is incredibly removed from Modern Egypt. In China, Ancient and Modern still feel incredibly connected, and even with all the upheaval of the last two hundred years, you can still feel the weight of thousands of years of cultural heritage in modern Chinese culture and life. In Egypt, on the other hand, Ancient Egypt feels much more like part of European history--as its story, as it's told in museums, seems to be peopled as much by characters with names like Tutankhamun and Hatshepsut as it is by characters with names like Jean, John, and Johann--than Egyptian history. Maybe because the ancient sites have become almost entirely tourist attractions, with very few native Egyptians visitors (in contrast to ancient sites in China, which often have many Chinese tourists there as well as foreigners), and maybe because Egypt feels like such a Muslim/Coptic/Arab/Turk-formed country at this point, but it doesn't feel when you're there like Ancient Egypt bears any connection at all with Modern Egypt. This cultural/historic separation also emphasized how isolated we were as tourists from Modern Egypt; unlike my incredibly immersive experience in China, I don't feel like I got much of a glimpse at all of everyday life in Egypt, nor could I tell you any more now about how Egyptians feel/look at the world than I could before I went there. Example: I didn't realize Cairo had a metro until we were driving in our private van to the airport to fly home.
- I love hummus. And baba ganoush. We knew these things before we went, but still. Worth noting?
- Religion is obviously really important in both Jordan and Egypt, but it was by no means as omnipresent/overpowering as I expected (re: being more immersed in ancient Egypt than modern Egypt). I learned more about what roles Amun, Osiris, Isis, etc, played in people's lives/psyches than the role Allah plays today...but all the more reason to go back, right? And I don't want this to come across as grousing, because it's not. I LOVED learning about Ancient Egypt. It was just a huge departure from my experience in China.
OK I think that's enough about that, for now. SO, what am I up to now, you might be wondering? Well, I'm currently happily settled into my grandmother's house in Vermont, where I'll be cross-country skiing and waitressing (the official activities) as well as sleeping, reading, watching movies, photography-ing, cooking, and doing yoga (unofficial activities) through February. I've been up here for four days and I'm SO HAPPY to be surrounded by nature and outside. It's beautiful up here, and I really missed it this fall so it's lovely to be back. I will certainly keep updating, never fear! Because even though I'm back in Eastern Standard Time, the gap year adventures never end! Muahhaha.
Let's start by travelling through time and space (oooh trippy) back to a month ago in Shanghai. My last week in Shanghai was so busy that it's basically a blur at this point. Predictably, I spent a lot of it rushing around saying goodbye to different people and to the city. CIEE did a great job facilitating discussions about re-entry and things to keep in mind when processing our experiences abroad. My goodbye weekend was dampened substantially by the sudden death of my host mom's grandmother; my fancy "goodbye lunch" at a nice restaurant ended up being just me and Judy, my ten year-old host sister, as my host parents both spent much of the weekend with my host mom's family. So that was a slightly different goodbye than I expected, and I was sad to have to say goodbye to my host mom at a time when she was clearly very upset. However, one highlight of those final days was my afternoon-long endeavor to bake a cake in our rice cooker, something I had promised Judy I would do at some point in my final month in Shanghai. I purchased Betty Crocker cake mix and frosting at Carrefour, the Western supermarket; with Judy's "help" I mixed up the cake mix, and poured it into the non-stick insert of our rice cooker. The struggle came when we (me, Judy, and my friend Katherine) couldn't figure out how to get the rice cooker on a high enough setting, so....cooking the cake took seven hours. Really, the cake only started cooking in the final hour, after my host dad came home and adjusted the setting for us. But once (finally) finished, the cake slid out of the rice cooker beautifully, I frosted it, and my host mom, my host dad, Judy, Katherine and I stood around our kitchen eating it. Afterwards, hopped up on sugar, Judy insisted we do a prolonged photo shoot, and I was happy enough to oblige, because now I have tons (read: literally hundreds) of really cute pictures of Judy. A wonderful way to spend my final evening in China!
Coming home to Boston wasn't really the jolting experience I thought it would be. In fact, I felt almost as though I had never left, which, while cliche, is really how I felt. I think this feeling might just be part of being on a gap year, as I left under much the same circumstances as I came back: I didn't come back to jump into classes or some other sort of intense experience, but instead resumed my schedule of cleaning my room, seeing friends, doing laundry, and packing, which had characterized my final days in Boston in August. Plus those four days at home (and in this case "at home" is merely a technical term, as I spent most of those four days running around Boston, Cambridge, and Milton....) were so incredibly crazy that I didn't really have time to feel anything except for exhaustion and happiness at being home and back with my friends and family.
And then, four days after coming home from Asia, I was off to the Middle East and Africa (Jordan and Egypt, to be specific) with my family! What a life I lead. There's obviously so much I could say about Jordan and Egypt, as it was a two week trip, and each day was packed with activities, ancient site visits, and opportunities for observations and learning moments. BUT I really don't have the energy or will to go through Jordan and Egypt in great detail. Or at least not as much detail as the trip deserves. Here are some choice thoughts/observations:
- Jordan is an absolutely beautiful and fascinating country. I really didn't expect to love Jordan as much as I did, thinking instead that it would be a sort of get in, see Petra, get out experience. In reality, we were only in the country for three days, but those three days were enough for me to know that I want to go back. The desert landscape is stunning, the ancient sites are fascinating and wonderfully preserved (specifically, we went to Jerash, an AMAZING Greek/Roman/Byzantine city that is probably the best preserved, most multi-faceted, most interesting Roman ruin I've ever seen, as well as Petra, the deservedly iconic necropolis and city carved into stone cliffs), the people are friendly, it's bustling but not chaotic (at least by Shanghai standards), the food is delicious. Of course, it helped that we stayed in jaw-dropping hotels and certainly didn't suffer (particularly during our day at a Dead Sea resort, probably the most luxurious hotel I've ever stayed in), but I would say that the good impression I got from Jordan wasn't just from the tourist stuff. It just seemed like an interesting, beautiful country, if complex and with its own problems, of course.
- Stuff is really old in Egypt. Duh, you say? Yes, of course I'm stating the obvious. But it's true! And it's incredible to see it, even if it's a fact that you've been aware of since first grade. 5000 year old wooden boats! 5000 year old pyramids! 3000 year old temple complexes! 3000 year old tombs! Those numbers are CRAZY. And it's crazy to be standing inside a temple or pyramid or looking at a perfectly preserved 5000 year-old wooden boat and think about HOW MANY YEARS THAT IS. AH.
- Fun story: After climbing inside the biggest of the Great Pyramids on Christmas Day (a difficult and athletic feat, let me add), my siblings, cousins and I found ourselves, eventually, in the chamber that at one point held the pharaoh's sarcophagus. It's now empty, and very dark, and very tall, and very echo-y, located as it is in the center of a massive pyramid. Inside this room, we found not only ourselves and the stone box that once held the sarcophagus, but a friendly middle-aged Egyptian man who I can confidently label insane. In the best possible way of course. Upon entering the center chamber of the pyramid, I, obviously, began acting like a zombie-mummy, lifting my arms out in front of me and making moaning sounds, which, obviously, echoed quite satisfactorily. Our new pyramid-dwelling Egyptian friend got very excited when I started doing this, and began doing the same bizarre motion and sound. Then, he changed to different fun Egyptian-inspired dance moves (classics such as Walk Like an Egyptian, as well as the Egyptian Shuffle--a sort of mummy bunny hop, an original creation, I'm sure--the Egyptian Congo Line, and the Egyptian Macarana--think the Macarena, but mummified) and very explicitly encouraged us to copy him. We did this for about two minutes, even joining him in his congo line, until we decided it was time to go. But even as we left, our Egyptian friend persisted, running in front of us and showing us even cooler dance moves he had up his sleeve. Such a nice man. Such a nice, pyramid-dwelling insane man. My guess is that the insane asylum from which he most certainly escaped doesn't think to look for him there. But they should. He's nutso.
- Columns are cool. The Greeks and Romans are known for their columns, but the Egyptians should get some credit, too. I loved taking pictures of all the beautiful, massive, carved columns in the ancient temples we visited.
- Ancient Egypt is incredibly removed from Modern Egypt. In China, Ancient and Modern still feel incredibly connected, and even with all the upheaval of the last two hundred years, you can still feel the weight of thousands of years of cultural heritage in modern Chinese culture and life. In Egypt, on the other hand, Ancient Egypt feels much more like part of European history--as its story, as it's told in museums, seems to be peopled as much by characters with names like Tutankhamun and Hatshepsut as it is by characters with names like Jean, John, and Johann--than Egyptian history. Maybe because the ancient sites have become almost entirely tourist attractions, with very few native Egyptians visitors (in contrast to ancient sites in China, which often have many Chinese tourists there as well as foreigners), and maybe because Egypt feels like such a Muslim/Coptic/Arab/Turk-formed country at this point, but it doesn't feel when you're there like Ancient Egypt bears any connection at all with Modern Egypt. This cultural/historic separation also emphasized how isolated we were as tourists from Modern Egypt; unlike my incredibly immersive experience in China, I don't feel like I got much of a glimpse at all of everyday life in Egypt, nor could I tell you any more now about how Egyptians feel/look at the world than I could before I went there. Example: I didn't realize Cairo had a metro until we were driving in our private van to the airport to fly home.
- I love hummus. And baba ganoush. We knew these things before we went, but still. Worth noting?
- Religion is obviously really important in both Jordan and Egypt, but it was by no means as omnipresent/overpowering as I expected (re: being more immersed in ancient Egypt than modern Egypt). I learned more about what roles Amun, Osiris, Isis, etc, played in people's lives/psyches than the role Allah plays today...but all the more reason to go back, right? And I don't want this to come across as grousing, because it's not. I LOVED learning about Ancient Egypt. It was just a huge departure from my experience in China.
OK I think that's enough about that, for now. SO, what am I up to now, you might be wondering? Well, I'm currently happily settled into my grandmother's house in Vermont, where I'll be cross-country skiing and waitressing (the official activities) as well as sleeping, reading, watching movies, photography-ing, cooking, and doing yoga (unofficial activities) through February. I've been up here for four days and I'm SO HAPPY to be surrounded by nature and outside. It's beautiful up here, and I really missed it this fall so it's lovely to be back. I will certainly keep updating, never fear! Because even though I'm back in Eastern Standard Time, the gap year adventures never end! Muahhaha.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Some Final Adventures
Hi! Sorry it's been so ridiculously long since I've posted. I am now back in Boston, but I'm definitely not done talking about China! I started writing the post below a week ago, but got too busy/lazy to finish it and post it. It's about my second to last weekend in China. Enjoy...
That title is rather dramatic, but I guess things are getting a little dramatic here, in terms of how quickly time has flown past, and how much I have had to do before leaving. For example: I started writing this post Tuesday, but now it’s Sunday, and I’m in the airport waiting to board my flight to Toronto. For the sake of having some semblance of focus, this post is going to be about last weekend. Then, once I return to Boston (AH!), I’ll post about what it was like saying goodbye here and sort of try to wrap up my China experience. If that’s even possible. But first, let’s rewind a bit to the weekend, because it was absolutely marvelous (and adventure-filled).
Saturday morning I got up early to go meet up with my friend Douglon Tse (fellow member of the Milton Class of ’09, currently a student at the University of Hong Kong), who was in town for the weekend to see his dad, who works in Shanghai. Douglon had invited me (because he’s absolutely crazy awesome) to go along on a private, very very special tour his dad had arranged of the Shanghai World Expo site. The Expo, in case you don’t know, is the current incarnation of the World’s Fair; it happens every 10 years, and features pavilions from most countries, and provides a tremendous opportunity and a tremendous amount of prestige (and responsibility/expense) for the host country. Kind of like the Olympics. Except the Expo is even bigger because it runs for 6 months, and involves building basically an entire city, not just an Olympic village. So the Chinese government has set aside (read: seized and razed?) a huge piece of land on the eastern side of the Huangpu River (aka Pudong) and has been busily transforming it into a sort of ideal “world city” filled with futuristic buildings, examples of urban best practices, pavilions, and a whole infrastructure of its own. It’s just an incredibly enormous project. China is also busily rebuilding Shanghai in preparation for the millions and millions of visitors they’re expecting to get. The Expo doesn’t open until May, so I was a little bummed that I was going to miss out on seeing it, since it’s such a big deal. And Douglon, per usual, came to the rescue! I got to spend a morning touring the Expo site, and it was amazing, for many reasons. The most obviously striking part of the tour was how completely un-ready the site is. It’s a massive construction site, filled with debris, scaffolding, construction equipment, construction workers, piles of dirt, cement, steel, etc etc. Certainly not a place ready to be descended upon by tourists anytime soon…and yet May 1 is not that far away. Getting an inside look at a Chinese construction site was really cool in and of itself; tens of thousands of workers from all over China have migrated to work on the site, and seeing them and their temporary housing was interesting (overwhelmingly men, but I did see a couple female construction workers interestingly enough). The other highlight was, somewhat obviously, seeing the pavilions. The Chinese pavilion has become something of a national icon, much like the Birds Nest, as its image appears everywhere—posters, advertisements, TV, etc. I think it’s a really striking, beautiful building that deserves to become a classic. Built to look like a modern pagoda, it’s bright red and absolutely massive. The other iconic building that we saw was the flying-saucer-like performance stadium. I have a feeling that that one’s aesthetic might be a little more short lived than the China pavilion. My other favorite pavilions were the Scandinavian countries’; they’re all well thought-out, interesting buildings, that show a commitment both to showcasing the country, and to adhering to the spirit of the Expo and highlighting some sort of “best practice.” The American pavilion, on the other hand, does not yet exist…uhoh. In our defense, the recession hit, and our government decided it wasn’t going to spend any money on the pavilion which I think was a good choice. But we have failed at finding private or corporate donors, so we have yet to start to build our pavilion. I think we should just set up a hot dog stand. Or maybe put some voting booths out on display that people can go into to practice voting. The Chinese government would love that!
After our tour of the Expo, we went to look at Douglon’s dad’s latest development project, which is renovating the former headquarters of Justine Matheson (the largest opium importing firm) on the Bund. It’s an absolutely INCREDIBLE building, with beautiful detailing and a breathtaking view. I can’t wait to go back when the project is finished, because it blew me away in its unfinished state. So cool, particularly for a history buff like me. At this point, that building basically embodies the historical irony of the Bund—former center of commerce in Asia, now completely irrelevant, supplanted by its new neighbor, Pudong, across the river. After an amazing (lots of superlatives when it comes to describing this whole morning…but it was really superlative) lunch, I made my way to the train station, where I caught a train to Nanjing for a 24 hour solo excursion.
I’d been looking forward to getting to travel on my own for a long time, and the trip was a wonderful chance to just hang out with myself. My hostel in Nanjing was well-located, right in the middle of the Confucian Temple District, which is a mostly pedestrian area that was lit up and bustling on the Saturday night I spent wandering around. Sunday, I first went to the Taiping Rebellion (or Taiping Heavenly Kingdom as the Chinese still call it) Museum. This museum was remarkable, not because it was particularly good, but because it sort of (accidentally) summed up all of the Chinese neuroses about the 19th century. For instance, the plaques in the museum implied that the Taiping were practicing communism even before Communism existed, while at the same time they laid the foundations for modern commerce in China. What?!? My other favorite quirk was that the museum never once mentioned Christianity or the Taiping’s pseudo-Christian basis (the founder claimed to be Jesus’ younger brother). Not once. According to the museum, the Taiping were just another righteous peasant rebellion against corrupt masters and a broken system…not slightly crazed messianic cult-members genuinely inspired by Christianity. Ah well. They were both, so I guess the museum gets a 50%. From this perplexing (but slightly funny) museum, I went to the very thought-provoking, very disturbing, very emotionally involved Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. The Nanjing Massacre took place during 6 weeks in December 1937 and January 1938. When the Japanese army invaded China and finally captured Nanjing (then the capital), they went on a raping, killing and burning spree that left 300,000 people dead, and many hundreds of thousands more scarred and scattered. The Nanjing Massacre was a horrible, violent act—one that still exacerbates Japanese/Chinese animosity, especially since members of Japan’s Right Wing claim that it never happened. Ugh. The museum is incredibly detailed, filled with artifacts, interviews with survivors, photographs (of executions, dead bodies, a ravaged city, etc…), and even a viewing platform over a mass grave site. Most of the time, this heavy-handedness feels appropriate, or if not appropriate, it doesn’t feel like it goes too far over the line. However, I definitely experienced moments of intense discomfort with how the museum was handled, in particular with how it often seemed to be egging on anti-Japanese Chinese nationalism (if that term makes any sense…). For instance, upon leaving the main exhibit halls, you walk through this area that’s all about “Peace” and how we must all never forget the past so that it can never be repeated, and how every one on earth should join together to forge world peace. Good stuff, right? And then in order to exit you have to go through this “separate” exhibit about the “glorious” victory over the Japanese and how the Chinese triumphed in the war even though the Japanese were incredibly savage, etc. And it goes military victory by military victory, up until the Japanese unconditional surrender…without once mentioning Hiroshima and Nagasaka. Again: What?!? This unnecessary, untruthful aggrandizing of Chinese military “might” left a bad taste in my mouth, and reminded me why the animosity between China and Japan is one of the potentially most explosive nationalism-fueled feuds of the 21st century.
After leaving the museum, I spent about an hour or so figuring out how to navigate Nanjing by bus to go across the city to the other major site, Purple Gold Mountain. The mountain dominates the eastern part of the city, and is the site of Sun Yatsen’s tomb, the tomb of the first Ming emperor, and a beautiful scenic park. Sun Yatsen’s tomb is incredibly grandiose, and I don’t think he would be particularly happy with it if he knew, as it was built by the Nationalists in the style of a Ming Emperor’s tomb. Hmm. Maybe not appropriate for someone trying to start a republic. But you have to walk up like 400 steps or something to get to the tomb, and the view is beautiful. The Ming tomb is also really cool (it’s a World Heritage Site), and in the late afternoon light, it felt melancholy and abandoned and beautiful. The mountain is just gorgeous in general, and, with the autumn leaves (a soft yellow) but dark branches (purple) it really lives up to its name, as it looks purple from far away but yellow when you’re there. From Purple Gold Mountain, I then took the bus back into the center of the city to see Nanjing’s ancient city wall and the city’s largest gate, Zhonghuamen. By this time, dusk had set in, and wandering around this ancient city wall (wide enough at the top for 3 horses to walk abreast, and four layers deep, it’s more like a castle in the middle of the city than a gate) in the dark with the city lights twinkling below was a little creepy, but also striking and beautiful. It was such a moment of feeling the intersection of ancient and modern in China.
After that, I hopped on the metro and caught my train back to Shanghai. It was an amazing weekend!
That title is rather dramatic, but I guess things are getting a little dramatic here, in terms of how quickly time has flown past, and how much I have had to do before leaving. For example: I started writing this post Tuesday, but now it’s Sunday, and I’m in the airport waiting to board my flight to Toronto. For the sake of having some semblance of focus, this post is going to be about last weekend. Then, once I return to Boston (AH!), I’ll post about what it was like saying goodbye here and sort of try to wrap up my China experience. If that’s even possible. But first, let’s rewind a bit to the weekend, because it was absolutely marvelous (and adventure-filled).
Saturday morning I got up early to go meet up with my friend Douglon Tse (fellow member of the Milton Class of ’09, currently a student at the University of Hong Kong), who was in town for the weekend to see his dad, who works in Shanghai. Douglon had invited me (because he’s absolutely crazy awesome) to go along on a private, very very special tour his dad had arranged of the Shanghai World Expo site. The Expo, in case you don’t know, is the current incarnation of the World’s Fair; it happens every 10 years, and features pavilions from most countries, and provides a tremendous opportunity and a tremendous amount of prestige (and responsibility/expense) for the host country. Kind of like the Olympics. Except the Expo is even bigger because it runs for 6 months, and involves building basically an entire city, not just an Olympic village. So the Chinese government has set aside (read: seized and razed?) a huge piece of land on the eastern side of the Huangpu River (aka Pudong) and has been busily transforming it into a sort of ideal “world city” filled with futuristic buildings, examples of urban best practices, pavilions, and a whole infrastructure of its own. It’s just an incredibly enormous project. China is also busily rebuilding Shanghai in preparation for the millions and millions of visitors they’re expecting to get. The Expo doesn’t open until May, so I was a little bummed that I was going to miss out on seeing it, since it’s such a big deal. And Douglon, per usual, came to the rescue! I got to spend a morning touring the Expo site, and it was amazing, for many reasons. The most obviously striking part of the tour was how completely un-ready the site is. It’s a massive construction site, filled with debris, scaffolding, construction equipment, construction workers, piles of dirt, cement, steel, etc etc. Certainly not a place ready to be descended upon by tourists anytime soon…and yet May 1 is not that far away. Getting an inside look at a Chinese construction site was really cool in and of itself; tens of thousands of workers from all over China have migrated to work on the site, and seeing them and their temporary housing was interesting (overwhelmingly men, but I did see a couple female construction workers interestingly enough). The other highlight was, somewhat obviously, seeing the pavilions. The Chinese pavilion has become something of a national icon, much like the Birds Nest, as its image appears everywhere—posters, advertisements, TV, etc. I think it’s a really striking, beautiful building that deserves to become a classic. Built to look like a modern pagoda, it’s bright red and absolutely massive. The other iconic building that we saw was the flying-saucer-like performance stadium. I have a feeling that that one’s aesthetic might be a little more short lived than the China pavilion. My other favorite pavilions were the Scandinavian countries’; they’re all well thought-out, interesting buildings, that show a commitment both to showcasing the country, and to adhering to the spirit of the Expo and highlighting some sort of “best practice.” The American pavilion, on the other hand, does not yet exist…uhoh. In our defense, the recession hit, and our government decided it wasn’t going to spend any money on the pavilion which I think was a good choice. But we have failed at finding private or corporate donors, so we have yet to start to build our pavilion. I think we should just set up a hot dog stand. Or maybe put some voting booths out on display that people can go into to practice voting. The Chinese government would love that!
After our tour of the Expo, we went to look at Douglon’s dad’s latest development project, which is renovating the former headquarters of Justine Matheson (the largest opium importing firm) on the Bund. It’s an absolutely INCREDIBLE building, with beautiful detailing and a breathtaking view. I can’t wait to go back when the project is finished, because it blew me away in its unfinished state. So cool, particularly for a history buff like me. At this point, that building basically embodies the historical irony of the Bund—former center of commerce in Asia, now completely irrelevant, supplanted by its new neighbor, Pudong, across the river. After an amazing (lots of superlatives when it comes to describing this whole morning…but it was really superlative) lunch, I made my way to the train station, where I caught a train to Nanjing for a 24 hour solo excursion.
I’d been looking forward to getting to travel on my own for a long time, and the trip was a wonderful chance to just hang out with myself. My hostel in Nanjing was well-located, right in the middle of the Confucian Temple District, which is a mostly pedestrian area that was lit up and bustling on the Saturday night I spent wandering around. Sunday, I first went to the Taiping Rebellion (or Taiping Heavenly Kingdom as the Chinese still call it) Museum. This museum was remarkable, not because it was particularly good, but because it sort of (accidentally) summed up all of the Chinese neuroses about the 19th century. For instance, the plaques in the museum implied that the Taiping were practicing communism even before Communism existed, while at the same time they laid the foundations for modern commerce in China. What?!? My other favorite quirk was that the museum never once mentioned Christianity or the Taiping’s pseudo-Christian basis (the founder claimed to be Jesus’ younger brother). Not once. According to the museum, the Taiping were just another righteous peasant rebellion against corrupt masters and a broken system…not slightly crazed messianic cult-members genuinely inspired by Christianity. Ah well. They were both, so I guess the museum gets a 50%. From this perplexing (but slightly funny) museum, I went to the very thought-provoking, very disturbing, very emotionally involved Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. The Nanjing Massacre took place during 6 weeks in December 1937 and January 1938. When the Japanese army invaded China and finally captured Nanjing (then the capital), they went on a raping, killing and burning spree that left 300,000 people dead, and many hundreds of thousands more scarred and scattered. The Nanjing Massacre was a horrible, violent act—one that still exacerbates Japanese/Chinese animosity, especially since members of Japan’s Right Wing claim that it never happened. Ugh. The museum is incredibly detailed, filled with artifacts, interviews with survivors, photographs (of executions, dead bodies, a ravaged city, etc…), and even a viewing platform over a mass grave site. Most of the time, this heavy-handedness feels appropriate, or if not appropriate, it doesn’t feel like it goes too far over the line. However, I definitely experienced moments of intense discomfort with how the museum was handled, in particular with how it often seemed to be egging on anti-Japanese Chinese nationalism (if that term makes any sense…). For instance, upon leaving the main exhibit halls, you walk through this area that’s all about “Peace” and how we must all never forget the past so that it can never be repeated, and how every one on earth should join together to forge world peace. Good stuff, right? And then in order to exit you have to go through this “separate” exhibit about the “glorious” victory over the Japanese and how the Chinese triumphed in the war even though the Japanese were incredibly savage, etc. And it goes military victory by military victory, up until the Japanese unconditional surrender…without once mentioning Hiroshima and Nagasaka. Again: What?!? This unnecessary, untruthful aggrandizing of Chinese military “might” left a bad taste in my mouth, and reminded me why the animosity between China and Japan is one of the potentially most explosive nationalism-fueled feuds of the 21st century.
After leaving the museum, I spent about an hour or so figuring out how to navigate Nanjing by bus to go across the city to the other major site, Purple Gold Mountain. The mountain dominates the eastern part of the city, and is the site of Sun Yatsen’s tomb, the tomb of the first Ming emperor, and a beautiful scenic park. Sun Yatsen’s tomb is incredibly grandiose, and I don’t think he would be particularly happy with it if he knew, as it was built by the Nationalists in the style of a Ming Emperor’s tomb. Hmm. Maybe not appropriate for someone trying to start a republic. But you have to walk up like 400 steps or something to get to the tomb, and the view is beautiful. The Ming tomb is also really cool (it’s a World Heritage Site), and in the late afternoon light, it felt melancholy and abandoned and beautiful. The mountain is just gorgeous in general, and, with the autumn leaves (a soft yellow) but dark branches (purple) it really lives up to its name, as it looks purple from far away but yellow when you’re there. From Purple Gold Mountain, I then took the bus back into the center of the city to see Nanjing’s ancient city wall and the city’s largest gate, Zhonghuamen. By this time, dusk had set in, and wandering around this ancient city wall (wide enough at the top for 3 horses to walk abreast, and four layers deep, it’s more like a castle in the middle of the city than a gate) in the dark with the city lights twinkling below was a little creepy, but also striking and beautiful. It was such a moment of feeling the intersection of ancient and modern in China.
After that, I hopped on the metro and caught my train back to Shanghai. It was an amazing weekend!
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Random PS to Best Week Ever
Things that I just thought of that I can't BELIEVE I forgot to mention that contributed to making this the Best Week Ever:
- I sent in my absentee ballot and VOTED in the MA Special Election! For Alan Khazei, of course (endorsed by The Boston Globe, The Worcester Telegraph, General Wesley Clark, Mayor Bloomberg....alanforsenate.com...GO ALAN!).
- A letter arrived, snail mail, from my friend Sarah Diamond, meaning that I exchanged letters with someone from China! The process just took almost 3 months, no big deal...I sent her a letter in the beginning of September, it got to her at the end of October, she sent her reply then, it got to me at the end of November. I sent her a reply, we'll see how long that takes. I thought that was pretty nifty, so I'm sharing
- I had a CRAZY conversation with my tutor, and I don't want to repeat it here because, you know, I'm still in China and she's still going to be here when I leave. If you're a Chinese official and you're reading this, Hi! Let's just say it was really sensitive and interesting and her family has definitely been caught up in China's turbulent recent history, and she's definitely NOT the Western media assumption of a brain-washed, disengaged Chinese upper middle class young person. Nope. Not at all. I'm obsessed with her a little bit (which is good, it's probably a good thing she has a friend outside of China, just in case...or whatever).
OK. Now I'm seriously done. This has officially been the longest update ever. Goodnight!
- I sent in my absentee ballot and VOTED in the MA Special Election! For Alan Khazei, of course (endorsed by The Boston Globe, The Worcester Telegraph, General Wesley Clark, Mayor Bloomberg....alanforsenate.com...GO ALAN!).
- A letter arrived, snail mail, from my friend Sarah Diamond, meaning that I exchanged letters with someone from China! The process just took almost 3 months, no big deal...I sent her a letter in the beginning of September, it got to her at the end of October, she sent her reply then, it got to me at the end of November. I sent her a reply, we'll see how long that takes. I thought that was pretty nifty, so I'm sharing
- I had a CRAZY conversation with my tutor, and I don't want to repeat it here because, you know, I'm still in China and she's still going to be here when I leave. If you're a Chinese official and you're reading this, Hi! Let's just say it was really sensitive and interesting and her family has definitely been caught up in China's turbulent recent history, and she's definitely NOT the Western media assumption of a brain-washed, disengaged Chinese upper middle class young person. Nope. Not at all. I'm obsessed with her a little bit (which is good, it's probably a good thing she has a friend outside of China, just in case...or whatever).
OK. Now I'm seriously done. This has officially been the longest update ever. Goodnight!
Best Week Ever?
It’s now December, and I can’t believe I go home so soon—10 days! The past week has maybe been my best week yet in China; before I get into the details, I think the overarching reasons for this week’s awesomeness are that I actively sought out adventures/awesome experiences, plus I sort of sensed my Chinese coming into its own, in terms of my being able to communicate and understand what’s going on around me. Ok, so the details: why was this the best week ever?
For starters, Thanksgiving was great—not the homesickness fest I sort of expected it to be. I definitely missed seeing my family and being in Vermont, but the more than sufficient Thanksgiving festivities here definitely took the edge off. Thanksgiving day itself, I skipped class. I went to the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, which I had not yet been to, and walked around Renmin Square and East Nanjing Road, taking pictures and enjoying a lovely warm and sunny day. The art museum is housed in a really cool building (it used to be a greenhouse), and while the art wasn’t so great (Chinese contemporary art is still sort of coming into its own) it was definitely worth going, and it was nice to get out into the central city again with my camera. It was cool to feel at once awed by Shanghai (Nanjing East Road is a pedestrian only shopping street and it’s crazy…even at lunch time on a weekday it was absolutely packed with people), and like an old hand, as I could make my way around with ease.
Later that afternoon, I met up with my friend Katherine, and we went to Zhongshan Park, which, even though it’s near my house, I had never been to. After wandering through the park for a little while, we eventually found our way to this big center grassy area. This place was bustling; there was a ballroom dancing class going on, tons of old people standing or sitting and enjoying the day, and a bunch of old men flying kites. Old men really like flying kites in China; in fact, I have yet to see a child flying a kite, but every day see old men flying hawk-shaped kites on the field outside our classrooms. I think they may actually be hired to fly kites to keep sparrows/other birds off the field (a strategy I think Milton should definitely incorporate into its anti-goose efforts…just make flying kites part of health class or force kids in detention to do it or something…or offer boarders yummy food in return for their kite flying efforts…). We eventually find the field’s kite seller guy, and buy a small kite off him for an exorbitant price. There were so many people crowding around watching the young laowai girls buying kites that we kind of just wanted to get out of there, so we didn’t really bargain that much. BUT we did get an absolutely excellent kite, not in terms of its flying ability, but in terms of its design. Our kite was adorned with three images of Haibao, the blue toothpaste smudge (slash wave, which is what he’s supposed to be) mascot of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. Beside a large central Haibao, two smaller Haibaos frolicked, dressed in Santa Claus suits. Perfection. The large grassy area was actually blocked off (TIC?), so we wandered for a bit trying to find a place to fly our kite before giving up and deciding to walk back to ECNU, which we know (from watching every day) has a couple good kite-flying places. This was a good choice, and we spent a lovely 90 minutes or so flying our kite, watched by a couple wide-eyed toddlers and the students walking by. It was a great way to spend any sunny, warm day outside—but especially Thanksgiving Day.
That evening we went to Thanksgiving dinner with the rest of the gap year students, our teachers Huang Laoshi and Yang Laoshi, Lynn the student intern who has taken us on excursions, and four UPenn students whom we didn’t know who are also in Shanghai with CIEE. The hotel we went to had an endless and varied Thanksgiving buffet. No stuffing (I know, what’s up with that?), but the turkey was INCREDIBLE. I guess in China because labor is so cheap they could probably pay someone just to be in charge of basting the turkey, because that bird (or birds, I guess, since there were definitely multiple) was moist and perfect. Yum. We all seriously over-ate, but that’s necessary for Thanksgiving, right? After dinner, it was go home, food coma, bed.
Friday afternoon I went to my second Thanksgiving, which was definitely even better than the first. I had been generously invited by Dru, my friend/former youth mentor Judith’s cousin, to their home in Pudong for their Thanksgiving party. It was SO delicious, and really interesting and fun to get to talk to a varied group of American expats. Everyone was super welcoming, especially considering that I was so young, and didn’t know anyone there. We watched the Pats/Colts game from the Monday before, which at first I was really excited about…until I remembered that it was a spectacular loss on the Pats part. Blergh. Oh well.
Saturday was another adventure day, as Ben, Katherine, Cindy and I, and Katherine’s super cool friend Olivia who is also going to Stanford after a gap year and is in Beijing for the semester (she was in Shanghai spending Thanksgiving with her brother who works here), went to Suzhou. Suzhou is a small city a half hour by train outside Shanghai, famous for its canals, historic city center, and gardens. Here’s what I would say about Suzhou: I’m glad I went, but it is definitely overrated. There isn’t too much to do, and the city center, while definitely different looking and vaguely old, is still very much a city center (traffic, modern shops, plenty of nondescript buildings, etc). The canals were sort of hard to find and not particularly easy to enjoy as they are usually just the median between two lanes of traffic, and the gardens, while beautiful and peaceful, are very constructed and in a certain style that’s very different from what I expected. All that being said, it was still a very enjoyable day—I’m just glad I didn’t decide to go for a weekend or anything. I think the most interesting aspect of the day trip for me was getting to see another example of what urban China can look like; this semester, I’ve now been to the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Xiamen, Hangzhou, and Shaoxing, and Suzhou, and they’ve all been completely different. Just another example of how China is most definitely not monochromatic, in any respect. Next time you hear the phrase “urban China,” keep in mind that it can mean an infinite number of things; it’s not all white tiled highrises, or old whitewashed buildings with tiled roofs, or rundown hutongs, or Pudong modernity.
Sunday. Sunday was epic. Sunday was the day of my special secret activity. What was this secret activity? Well. Elizabeth Campbell (JUCCCE star, Milton ’05, Yale ’09, and my mentor/friend while I’ve been here, in case you’ve forgotten) and I went on a photo tour of Shanghai. But not just any photo tour. A photo tour of us, decked out in Yale gear, with Elizabeth’s “For God, For Country, and For Yale” banner. You can check out the pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028885&id=1237920519&l=abcc6e47c4
Other than being an amazingly silly/ridiculous/fun afternoon, it was also a great way to say goodbye to Shanghai (*sniff sniff*). Interesting insights/ experiences: going to the “Meat Market” in Renmin Square where parents/grandparents with grown children meet up to do some old-fashioned match-making and set up their single children; feathers+fans+Yale=crazy fun (see the pictures); if you hold a banner with English words up in a public place in China, people will try to read it, and will ask you what any words they don’t know mean, specifically what “Yale” means, and then when they find out that it’s the famous university in America, they are really surprised that these crazy laowai are associated with such a place; you can buy a hat shaped like a panda head on the promenade by the Bund for 10 RMB, instead of the original price of 30 RMB, if you try it on and giggle a lot and then walk away (that being said, we didn’t actually end up buying the hat, don’t worry); spending hours being utterly ridiculous is super tiring. Other than that, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves….
After the photo tour, I went to Shanghai’s “fake market,” located in the bottom of a metro stop. There I bought myself a (highly necessary) pair of fake Uggs, so now my feet are warm, and a fake Longchamp bag (not at all necessary), so now I can feel like a tool, but at least a frugal one. I spent about $30 total, so if you consider that a real pair of Uggs and a real Longchamp bag all together would be like $250 (ish? right?), then I really “saved” a lot of money, right? But I actually feel a little accomplished, as I did some hard bargaining and got both of my items for about 1/4 – 1/3 of the original asking price. Sunday morning (pre-photo tour) I also picked up the blue dress coat I had made (the dream was realized!) at Shanghai’s fabric market. It’s beautiful, I’m obsessed. When I first showed my host family what it looked like, my host dad tried for like 5 minutes to communicate something to me that I could not understand at all, until, through a series of charades-like guesses and motions, I figured out that he was trying to say that my coat makes me look like Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday.” Win.
Sunday evening (it was a very busy day…I wasn’t really home at all between 8:30 am and 10 pm), Katherine and I and Huang Laoshi went to a modern dance called “Unbound,” an interpretive dance about foot-binding. Interesting, but also appropriately short (at just 70 minutes, one could even say that it was appropriately stunted in length…hmmm insensitive much…).
Tuesday, we had our last class teaching English at the migrant school. The kids were SO CUTE when we said goodbye and took some pictures, it made me so sad to be leaving. Even though we only spent an hour a week there, and we missed a bunch of weeks because of scheduling conflicts (on our end and their end), it was still sad to think that I was never going to see any of those kids again…I’m endlessly curious to know where they’ll all end up. This is really the first big generation to grow up with migrant worker parents, as the numbers of migrant workers really exploded in the last 15 years, and I’d be interested to see how successful the government is at helping these kids overcome some of the obstacles/inequality facing them, and whether they end up being migrants themselves, or settling in cities, or what. Teaching these kids has definitely meant that I’ll always have faces in mind when I think of Chinese roughly my own age (well, 8 years younger), and we’ll always have in the back of my mind a sense of the challenges (and opportunities and social upheaval) that are part of living in China today.
Wednesday was another epic day. Our “core class” on current issues in China was a lecture on China and the Environment, my favorite topic. The readings we did to prepare I had actually all done before in my Topics in Modern World History class with Ms. Wade last fall, a funny coincidence, but a cool one, as I got to re-read them thinking about how my impressions had changed over the course of a year. I would say that reading them now, I had less of a sense of panic and unease about how China is going to deal with its environmental challenges, but also more of a sense of the realities (and the enormity of those realities) here in China. My sense of hope stems from what I’ve seen first hand of how quickly China has changed, and how amazing that change has been—in 30 years, China has had more success in pulling people out of poverty and improving living standards/quality of life than any effort by anyone in history. It’s transformed itself at an incredible pace. So my hope comes from the knowledge that China can do basically anything if it focuses on it, and that environmental awareness is increasing at an incredibly rapid pace, and hopefully China will over the course of the next 30 years apply its energy and abilities to increasing efficiency, cutting emissions/rate of emissions, and eliminating pollution. All my fingers and toes are crossed. And will remain so for the next 30 years. So yeah…the lecture was very interesting, as our speaker, Matt Koon, focused on coal in China, which is so important but I had never really heard comprehensive facts about. Scary stuff (but the hope…the hope must remain…).
Wednesday night. Oh, Wednesday night. Wednesday night I almost died, multiple times, but it was so totally worth it: Katherine and I went on a nighttime guided tour of Shanghai, on bicycle. 14 km in 3 hours, through the French Concession, Old Shanghai, and Pudong. Definitely in the top 5 of most fun things I’ve done in China, and definitely a very memorable experience. Our guide, Patrick, was amazing—I think he found us very amusing, as we conversed with him in Chinglish, freaked out as we biked through intersections, obsessively rang our bell (well, Katherine did…), bought ice cream, sang Christmas carols, raced, and basically had a marvelous time. I HIGHLY recommend doing this tour or another bike tour of Shanghai or anywhere…go to chinacycletours.com if you happen to be in China or if you will be ever. Totally worth the money (150 RMB). Just totally awesome in general. Like riding a roller coaster, except more dangerous, and we weren’t ever hanging upside down (luckily). Katherine definitely thinks I have a death wish now, as I convinced her to come with me, and apparently I’m “fearless” (she was riding behind me the whole time, as I dodged cars/motorcycles/pedestrians…). We got to see Yu Gardens lit up at night, navigate the narrow alleyways of Old Shanghai, cross the Huangpu River on the ferry, bike around Pudong…SO FUN. AH.
Today, Thursday, Katherine and I had lunch with Jenny, my Chinese friend, and then we watched a Chinese romantic comedy. Very interesting…completely unsexual romantic comedy, supposedly “comedy” but yet someone tries to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff, almost entirely consists of people talking to each other in coffee shops (pacing is definitely different for Chinese v.s. American movies). Also very hard to understand, haha. But good for my Chinese, and fun to see a glimpse of Chinese pop culture. Will definitely have to seek out more Chinese movies this winter so I can keep practicing my Chinese.
Alright. If you’ve gotten to the end of this epic post, you know why this was an epic week. The best week ever. Now I head into the home stretch—AH—and I have some awesome stuff planned, which I will definitely post about here. But for now, I will sign off and go to bed. Peace.
For starters, Thanksgiving was great—not the homesickness fest I sort of expected it to be. I definitely missed seeing my family and being in Vermont, but the more than sufficient Thanksgiving festivities here definitely took the edge off. Thanksgiving day itself, I skipped class. I went to the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, which I had not yet been to, and walked around Renmin Square and East Nanjing Road, taking pictures and enjoying a lovely warm and sunny day. The art museum is housed in a really cool building (it used to be a greenhouse), and while the art wasn’t so great (Chinese contemporary art is still sort of coming into its own) it was definitely worth going, and it was nice to get out into the central city again with my camera. It was cool to feel at once awed by Shanghai (Nanjing East Road is a pedestrian only shopping street and it’s crazy…even at lunch time on a weekday it was absolutely packed with people), and like an old hand, as I could make my way around with ease.
Later that afternoon, I met up with my friend Katherine, and we went to Zhongshan Park, which, even though it’s near my house, I had never been to. After wandering through the park for a little while, we eventually found our way to this big center grassy area. This place was bustling; there was a ballroom dancing class going on, tons of old people standing or sitting and enjoying the day, and a bunch of old men flying kites. Old men really like flying kites in China; in fact, I have yet to see a child flying a kite, but every day see old men flying hawk-shaped kites on the field outside our classrooms. I think they may actually be hired to fly kites to keep sparrows/other birds off the field (a strategy I think Milton should definitely incorporate into its anti-goose efforts…just make flying kites part of health class or force kids in detention to do it or something…or offer boarders yummy food in return for their kite flying efforts…). We eventually find the field’s kite seller guy, and buy a small kite off him for an exorbitant price. There were so many people crowding around watching the young laowai girls buying kites that we kind of just wanted to get out of there, so we didn’t really bargain that much. BUT we did get an absolutely excellent kite, not in terms of its flying ability, but in terms of its design. Our kite was adorned with three images of Haibao, the blue toothpaste smudge (slash wave, which is what he’s supposed to be) mascot of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. Beside a large central Haibao, two smaller Haibaos frolicked, dressed in Santa Claus suits. Perfection. The large grassy area was actually blocked off (TIC?), so we wandered for a bit trying to find a place to fly our kite before giving up and deciding to walk back to ECNU, which we know (from watching every day) has a couple good kite-flying places. This was a good choice, and we spent a lovely 90 minutes or so flying our kite, watched by a couple wide-eyed toddlers and the students walking by. It was a great way to spend any sunny, warm day outside—but especially Thanksgiving Day.
That evening we went to Thanksgiving dinner with the rest of the gap year students, our teachers Huang Laoshi and Yang Laoshi, Lynn the student intern who has taken us on excursions, and four UPenn students whom we didn’t know who are also in Shanghai with CIEE. The hotel we went to had an endless and varied Thanksgiving buffet. No stuffing (I know, what’s up with that?), but the turkey was INCREDIBLE. I guess in China because labor is so cheap they could probably pay someone just to be in charge of basting the turkey, because that bird (or birds, I guess, since there were definitely multiple) was moist and perfect. Yum. We all seriously over-ate, but that’s necessary for Thanksgiving, right? After dinner, it was go home, food coma, bed.
Friday afternoon I went to my second Thanksgiving, which was definitely even better than the first. I had been generously invited by Dru, my friend/former youth mentor Judith’s cousin, to their home in Pudong for their Thanksgiving party. It was SO delicious, and really interesting and fun to get to talk to a varied group of American expats. Everyone was super welcoming, especially considering that I was so young, and didn’t know anyone there. We watched the Pats/Colts game from the Monday before, which at first I was really excited about…until I remembered that it was a spectacular loss on the Pats part. Blergh. Oh well.
Saturday was another adventure day, as Ben, Katherine, Cindy and I, and Katherine’s super cool friend Olivia who is also going to Stanford after a gap year and is in Beijing for the semester (she was in Shanghai spending Thanksgiving with her brother who works here), went to Suzhou. Suzhou is a small city a half hour by train outside Shanghai, famous for its canals, historic city center, and gardens. Here’s what I would say about Suzhou: I’m glad I went, but it is definitely overrated. There isn’t too much to do, and the city center, while definitely different looking and vaguely old, is still very much a city center (traffic, modern shops, plenty of nondescript buildings, etc). The canals were sort of hard to find and not particularly easy to enjoy as they are usually just the median between two lanes of traffic, and the gardens, while beautiful and peaceful, are very constructed and in a certain style that’s very different from what I expected. All that being said, it was still a very enjoyable day—I’m just glad I didn’t decide to go for a weekend or anything. I think the most interesting aspect of the day trip for me was getting to see another example of what urban China can look like; this semester, I’ve now been to the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Xiamen, Hangzhou, and Shaoxing, and Suzhou, and they’ve all been completely different. Just another example of how China is most definitely not monochromatic, in any respect. Next time you hear the phrase “urban China,” keep in mind that it can mean an infinite number of things; it’s not all white tiled highrises, or old whitewashed buildings with tiled roofs, or rundown hutongs, or Pudong modernity.
Sunday. Sunday was epic. Sunday was the day of my special secret activity. What was this secret activity? Well. Elizabeth Campbell (JUCCCE star, Milton ’05, Yale ’09, and my mentor/friend while I’ve been here, in case you’ve forgotten) and I went on a photo tour of Shanghai. But not just any photo tour. A photo tour of us, decked out in Yale gear, with Elizabeth’s “For God, For Country, and For Yale” banner. You can check out the pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028885&id=1237920519&l=abcc6e47c4
Other than being an amazingly silly/ridiculous/fun afternoon, it was also a great way to say goodbye to Shanghai (*sniff sniff*). Interesting insights/ experiences: going to the “Meat Market” in Renmin Square where parents/grandparents with grown children meet up to do some old-fashioned match-making and set up their single children; feathers+fans+Yale=crazy fun (see the pictures); if you hold a banner with English words up in a public place in China, people will try to read it, and will ask you what any words they don’t know mean, specifically what “Yale” means, and then when they find out that it’s the famous university in America, they are really surprised that these crazy laowai are associated with such a place; you can buy a hat shaped like a panda head on the promenade by the Bund for 10 RMB, instead of the original price of 30 RMB, if you try it on and giggle a lot and then walk away (that being said, we didn’t actually end up buying the hat, don’t worry); spending hours being utterly ridiculous is super tiring. Other than that, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves….
After the photo tour, I went to Shanghai’s “fake market,” located in the bottom of a metro stop. There I bought myself a (highly necessary) pair of fake Uggs, so now my feet are warm, and a fake Longchamp bag (not at all necessary), so now I can feel like a tool, but at least a frugal one. I spent about $30 total, so if you consider that a real pair of Uggs and a real Longchamp bag all together would be like $250 (ish? right?), then I really “saved” a lot of money, right? But I actually feel a little accomplished, as I did some hard bargaining and got both of my items for about 1/4 – 1/3 of the original asking price. Sunday morning (pre-photo tour) I also picked up the blue dress coat I had made (the dream was realized!) at Shanghai’s fabric market. It’s beautiful, I’m obsessed. When I first showed my host family what it looked like, my host dad tried for like 5 minutes to communicate something to me that I could not understand at all, until, through a series of charades-like guesses and motions, I figured out that he was trying to say that my coat makes me look like Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday.” Win.
Sunday evening (it was a very busy day…I wasn’t really home at all between 8:30 am and 10 pm), Katherine and I and Huang Laoshi went to a modern dance called “Unbound,” an interpretive dance about foot-binding. Interesting, but also appropriately short (at just 70 minutes, one could even say that it was appropriately stunted in length…hmmm insensitive much…).
Tuesday, we had our last class teaching English at the migrant school. The kids were SO CUTE when we said goodbye and took some pictures, it made me so sad to be leaving. Even though we only spent an hour a week there, and we missed a bunch of weeks because of scheduling conflicts (on our end and their end), it was still sad to think that I was never going to see any of those kids again…I’m endlessly curious to know where they’ll all end up. This is really the first big generation to grow up with migrant worker parents, as the numbers of migrant workers really exploded in the last 15 years, and I’d be interested to see how successful the government is at helping these kids overcome some of the obstacles/inequality facing them, and whether they end up being migrants themselves, or settling in cities, or what. Teaching these kids has definitely meant that I’ll always have faces in mind when I think of Chinese roughly my own age (well, 8 years younger), and we’ll always have in the back of my mind a sense of the challenges (and opportunities and social upheaval) that are part of living in China today.
Wednesday was another epic day. Our “core class” on current issues in China was a lecture on China and the Environment, my favorite topic. The readings we did to prepare I had actually all done before in my Topics in Modern World History class with Ms. Wade last fall, a funny coincidence, but a cool one, as I got to re-read them thinking about how my impressions had changed over the course of a year. I would say that reading them now, I had less of a sense of panic and unease about how China is going to deal with its environmental challenges, but also more of a sense of the realities (and the enormity of those realities) here in China. My sense of hope stems from what I’ve seen first hand of how quickly China has changed, and how amazing that change has been—in 30 years, China has had more success in pulling people out of poverty and improving living standards/quality of life than any effort by anyone in history. It’s transformed itself at an incredible pace. So my hope comes from the knowledge that China can do basically anything if it focuses on it, and that environmental awareness is increasing at an incredibly rapid pace, and hopefully China will over the course of the next 30 years apply its energy and abilities to increasing efficiency, cutting emissions/rate of emissions, and eliminating pollution. All my fingers and toes are crossed. And will remain so for the next 30 years. So yeah…the lecture was very interesting, as our speaker, Matt Koon, focused on coal in China, which is so important but I had never really heard comprehensive facts about. Scary stuff (but the hope…the hope must remain…).
Wednesday night. Oh, Wednesday night. Wednesday night I almost died, multiple times, but it was so totally worth it: Katherine and I went on a nighttime guided tour of Shanghai, on bicycle. 14 km in 3 hours, through the French Concession, Old Shanghai, and Pudong. Definitely in the top 5 of most fun things I’ve done in China, and definitely a very memorable experience. Our guide, Patrick, was amazing—I think he found us very amusing, as we conversed with him in Chinglish, freaked out as we biked through intersections, obsessively rang our bell (well, Katherine did…), bought ice cream, sang Christmas carols, raced, and basically had a marvelous time. I HIGHLY recommend doing this tour or another bike tour of Shanghai or anywhere…go to chinacycletours.com if you happen to be in China or if you will be ever. Totally worth the money (150 RMB). Just totally awesome in general. Like riding a roller coaster, except more dangerous, and we weren’t ever hanging upside down (luckily). Katherine definitely thinks I have a death wish now, as I convinced her to come with me, and apparently I’m “fearless” (she was riding behind me the whole time, as I dodged cars/motorcycles/pedestrians…). We got to see Yu Gardens lit up at night, navigate the narrow alleyways of Old Shanghai, cross the Huangpu River on the ferry, bike around Pudong…SO FUN. AH.
Today, Thursday, Katherine and I had lunch with Jenny, my Chinese friend, and then we watched a Chinese romantic comedy. Very interesting…completely unsexual romantic comedy, supposedly “comedy” but yet someone tries to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff, almost entirely consists of people talking to each other in coffee shops (pacing is definitely different for Chinese v.s. American movies). Also very hard to understand, haha. But good for my Chinese, and fun to see a glimpse of Chinese pop culture. Will definitely have to seek out more Chinese movies this winter so I can keep practicing my Chinese.
Alright. If you’ve gotten to the end of this epic post, you know why this was an epic week. The best week ever. Now I head into the home stretch—AH—and I have some awesome stuff planned, which I will definitely post about here. But for now, I will sign off and go to bed. Peace.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
