All I Can Do

where ever you are, there you are

2012-02-10T15:11:00.001+08:00

Back in Harrisonburg and opportunities have come and I have rolled with them. Suddenly I'm hanging out with a crazy old innkeeper and three young Belarusians in a big old house built in the 1880s. Ian, Stas, and Kristina are all in their twenties and funny and smart. For the time being, they are my community, and that feels alright.

I have gone back and forth for two weeks about applying for a co-op marketing job that scared the shit out of me. Tonight I decided it's enough to just bake bread for now. To build slowly. Prove to myself first what I'm capable of . . . and then go prove it to others.

I have said goodbye to my grandmother, and shared in her funeral. I have gone hiking . . . snowboarding three times. I have danced to live bands. I have baked. I have shared beer with friends. I have laughed. It's good to be home.

not every day is sunshine

2011-12-14T20:01:00.000+08:00

We had to search abit for a place to stay when the rain stopped us hard. We werea good hour from Lakes Entrance where there'd be shops and hotels.Orbost was a tiny town with barely a supermarket open. We boughtinstant noodles and a can of soup, dancing to stay warm in thefreezing aisles. The little motel we found didn't have microwaves,and the newly installed free wi-fi (a real rarity in Australia) musthave been weakened by the rain. We couldn't pick it up at all.

It absolutelypoured down all night. I dreamt strong and realistic of driving outthe next morning and getting caught in a nearby town by floodedstreets. In my dream a local family took us in and we becameembroiled (and indebted) in a day of their lives. They owned a smallstore that sold stockings and hosiery.

This morning wasnot sunny, but it had stopped raining. Also, I finished a poem that Ihad started back in June (in my tiny little apartment in the city,with Chloe, the gorgeous Garfield cat).

One Attitude to Have

(started June 3, 2011 - finished December13, 2011)

Another cockroach scuttles across thetiles and

the cat's sprawled lolling on her back- legs flung out

in two directions. I send her a look.Just now, though

she watched the thing for a whole longminute

even took two slow steps toward it, asif hunting,

before stopping, turning, meowing backat me like,

Now what do I do? the question we allask, sooner

or later in a cold brick and cementapartment when

it's just us, the spiders, and a fewfifteen watt bulbs.

Replace the light bulbs. Scrub hard atthe dirty floors

when it's day, and bright. Spray thehell out of the corners

at night sit, knees drawn, in thecenter of the bed.

Learn to ignore dark corners and jumpless often. Let them

crawl on certain walls. Then, remove aslipper from one foot

and cooly smash the ones that come tooclose. Or

Vow to do no harm. Like anotherAmerican teacher

friends once whispered, his house wasfull of bugs. They

were horrified because he refused tokill the spiders. Though

he was no Buddhist. Teacher Li tells usthe rat running

up along the shelves in her tea shopusually appears

about this time in the afternoon andonce in the morning.

She pours wine-colored tea into ourtiny, rounded glass

cups. We watch, wait, drink, listen,

hoping to learnsomething of her grace.

the long coastal route

2011-12-13T19:53:00.000+08:00

On our second day driving South thereare still 600 kilometers to Melbourne. It's still overcast and the car proves to be too much forme; I keep insisting we stop. I summon up dreams, aided by glossytravel magazines and the shops that line the two-lane road, of thelittle side-tracks that will make the trip.

In Tilba, we buy apple box smokedcheese at the ABC Cheese factory, and talk to a cat with a biground face. Tilba is a Trust Village. That means the government helpsto keep it cute, we decide. It was one of the gold-mining towns thatstayed around, mainly because of the cheese industry.

It's Noomora, however, with the slogan,“The Way Life Should Be”. We find it a little presumptuous anddrive on.

In Cobargo we have coffees and scones,which are what I would call biscuits. These are not at all shabby,but melt in your mouth, with whipped cream and strawberry jam. Thecafe is part old train car, and run by straight-forward, big-bonedwomen both abrupt and enthusiastic about their service and theirfood. Grudgingly, they draped colored tinsel garlands across adoorway here, and an electrical box there, joking about being merryhos.

We also buy books there. Christmas presents some, and poetry by an Australian woman poet.

here are a few of my favorite

2011-12-09T19:57:00.000+08:00

New Zealand things. Apart from mountains of course, and sheep! and my beautiful friend Catherine.

There are hot water dispensers!

Just like in China, where every home, every hotel and petrol station, and every workplace provides hot water for drinking, New Zealanders love their hot drinks.

This is teacher's lounge in Catherine's workplace. She's making a cup of tea. Waiting in the lounge for Catherine, I was invited to have a cup of tea by teachers that I hadn't met. I was offered a cup of tea in every house that I visited. A "cuppa" . . . anything really. They show you the pile of choices. Teas, Milo, Coffee. This is part of the reason that for Justin and I, New Zealand, like Australia, feels very British. Much more so than Canada, Justin assures me.

Also, coffee in Australia and New Zealand is rarely drip. It's either espresso based (an Americano is a "short black" while a "flat white" is like a latte. If you want skim milk you ask for a "skinny") if you're out. At home, it's either instant or French press (plunger in New Zealand). Yeah, hot water!

Catherine's flat mate Cynthia has a cat named Ivan. He's the kind of cat that manages both independence and affection without compromising either. He follows Cynthia outside when she goes to garden. He wiggles belly-up in your arms. He disappears for long periods of time on his own adventures.

But as soon as I entered the house for the first time, and every time after, he ran to nose at my knee and demand attention. He slept on the foot of my bed. I loved him.

I was also impressed with his little cat-sized door. Justin claims that North America has them too. I'll believe it when I see it.

Every house also seemed to have these spinning square clotheslines. I'm sure they exist in North America, but not like this. They have lots of sun, so they mostly don't have dryers. A lot of the houses I was in also did not overheat . . . so we wore sweaters inside. I loved it. And the most genius thing of all . . .

the bathroom's heated towel rack. I could live in this country.

scotland for a day

2011-12-08T19:30:00.000+08:00

Weborrowed the smaller of the McKinlay cars and drove out onto thepeninsula. At Catherine's suggestion we took the tiny winding coastalroad out and a tiny winding high road (through steep hills with stonefences which, in Catherine's words, is “the closest thing toScottish highlands outside of Scotland”) back. It was beautiful. I enjoyed driving the little car - my first experience of a manual transmission on the left - and pulled off the road at every patch of gravel I saw so we could take pictures in the wind.

We drove to visit a little ceramics shop that Jen wanted to visit. I had no idea how much I liked ceramics. I cursed baggage weight limits (only 20 kg on the Sydney-Guangzhou leg of my journey) and bought a little apron instead of the plates and pitchers and salt and pepper shakers and tea sets I wanted to buy. I can't wait to have a place of my own to fill with things!

we did not go white water rafting

2011-12-07T20:48:00.000+08:00

Atthe last minute, Justin and I decided not to go on to Queenstown, the hub of tourism in the South Island. We did not go kayaking. Wedid not go bungee jumping. We didn't even hike to a glacier. We didsee a lot of sheep. We did have “hokey pokey” - the icecreamflavor that seems to be a national favorite. We did wind through a lot of small towns and villages.

Wespent our last two New Zealand days (very happily) in Dunedin, at theMcKinlay house with its mismatched gift-hangings evidence of theirfamily's love spread over oceans and races.

Primary-schoolCatherine didn't understand what her friends' parents meant when theytalked about the Asian Invasion. She was excited about the newclassmates who would become her friends.

Weexperienced well the hospitality they've practiced 'til it's part oftheir family culture.

Comein, it's soooo good to see you again. Would you like a cup ofsomething hot? Biscuits? Where are you staying tonight? (We thoughtwe'd just find a hotel downtown somewhere). Well, why don't you juststay here? We've got plenty of beds. I'll just go make up the bedsnow. (And when I did go to bed later, a sign on my pillow that read,“Welcome Holly. We're glad you're here.”)

look how pretty

2011-12-06T21:25:00.000+08:00

All the serious trampers wear waterproof boots. Catherine and I do it in tennis shoes. Here's the footwear lined up outside the hut.

We are somewhat refreshed in the morning at the Iris Burn Hut, ready for our third day of tramping.

Justin and I do the extra jaunt into the forest to see the waterfall.

The ferns were literally blanketing the forest floor, and huge. I love how they curl into this nautilus shape. We never saw a silver fern, which is the official symbol for the All Blacks.

The last hut looked out over this lake. Some of our fellow trampers made a bonfire and we swatted sand flies into the night, enjoying each others' stories.

the second day is always harder

2011-12-05T20:38:00.000+08:00

On the second day, there is snow . . .

. . . and gorgeous landscapes sweeping away from us.

The path follows the ridge for hours.

We try not to fall into metaphors about “the path” or “the journey.”

There is lunch on the top of the world.

and Keas, the cheeky birds of the high places.

I attempt handstands somewhere high.

And eventually we descend into this temperaterainforest, and keep descending . . . and descending . . . anddescending. At a low point, we thought we'd missed the turnoff forthe cabin, we'd been at it so long. It was our least favorite part ofthe climb. That night we slept well.

on the Kepler Track!

2011-12-04T22:26:00.000+08:00

Our first day on the Kepler.

My intrepid climbing companions Catherine and Justin.

The weather is perfect. We take our time. We arrive at the cabin in the golden light of the hours before sunset.

my kind of time

2011-12-03T19:48:00.000+08:00

With Catherine, travel has been rich in time. We sleep until we wake up. We stop for the coffees I need, andto visit the aunties and friends of hers we're passing by. Both of usstruggle in other parts of our lives with feeling slow anddisorganized. Together, it's relaxing to be ourselves, to go aboutthe day without worrying about efficiency.

Church of the Good Shepherd on Lake Tepako

When I flew into Christchurch,Catherine picked me up at the airport and we made our way slowlythrough the center of the South Island and around to Dunedin on theSouthern part of the East Coast. We covered a total of perhaps 600kilometers. It took us three days. I made this list of why it was sogood.

we accepted hospitality

we changed our plans

we made space for food

we did not overeat

we let time get away from us

we talked with strangers

we stopped the car to take walks

This morning we finished our packingfor the hike and, on our way out of town, dropped off Cynthia's catIvan at the cattery as a favor to Cynthia (Catherine's flatmate) whowas leaving for the weekend before the cattery opened at nine. Shementioned that we should be there before 10:30, but not beingtime-oriented people, we forgot. We showed up around 11:30. We pulledup the gravel lane into a circular drive with a large house to theright, a long shed (which we assumed was the cattery) in front of usup a little hill, and an open larger shed to the left. Three smalldogs flew from the house and bounced alongside the car, barkingfuriously. A strange welcome to a cattery, we remarked. We were infine spirits, as the day was beautiful, and we were off on a drive tothe mountains. Just the cat to drop off and we'd be on our way. Butwe weren't quite sure what to do. There were no signs, and no one butthe dogs about. Catherine tried pulling up the little lane that ledto the long shed, but stopped just in front of it when she realizedthat it was not wide enough for a car.

Then suddenly a woman came from thehouse, screaming obscenities at us. She hadn't lost a bit of her furyor indignation when she'd rounded up the dogs and marched over to ourcar. By this time we'd gotten out of the car and were waitingawkwardly with the cat.

Our humility-filled apologies didnothing to dissuade her anger. “I have to lay some ground rules!Those are the hours and people have to respect them! And then comingin here and trying to drive over my footbridge! I have to lay someground rules!” She repeated these key points (we were dumbfoundedand silent) over and over as she took Ivan and then marched him upthe hill, ignoring us completely. We stood awkwardly for anotherminute, not sure if we were done, beforeclimbing in the car and driving away. We were both a bit shaken, butfor me disdain weighed stronger. Some businesswoman. We figured theremust have been previous incidents that had built to a breaking pointfor this poor woman. We shook our heads, reminded ourselves we'dnever see her again, and drove on.

preparation day

2011-12-02T20:23:00.001+08:00

We leave in the morning for Te Anau, where the Kepler Track begins. We'll be hiking Sunday to Wednesday, carrying all our stuff. I will "blog" in my notebook until we get out to internet again next week.

My last day in Dunedin was full. I visited the art gallery, witnessed a parade of primary kids learning about traffic safety which was led by a Scottish marching band, met Catherine's students, had lunch in the botanical garden cafe with Catherine and friends, did tons of food prep for our tramp, helped Catherine's flatmate carry a wardrobe upstairs, hiked at Tunnel Beach, and visited one last time with Catherine's parents. I would post pictures, but I'm fighting with the automatic password generating software I've recently installed. Can't get to my pictures.

Anyway, here are some of the things I've learned today.

1. The "fanbake" setting in a New Zealand oven (is that like convection in terms I'm familiar with?) cooks way faster than the regular "bake" (or the time given on the recipe, for that matter).

Granola bars for the hike are a bit dark, but still tasty.

2. When the Salvation Army thrift store volunteer is clearly over seventy, hair in a tight white perm, lips creased inward from years of sternness . . . maybe suggesting as a solution to the many-shoppers-one-changing-room problem, "Hey, I'm not shy. Any place back in the back where I could try these on?" not the best approach.

I still had to wait for the woman ahead of me to try on her gazillion items of clothing . . . while growing surer by the minute that volunteer lady, who I had to brush past, apologizing, every two minutes in the ridiculously cramped shop, thought I was a complete skank.

3. The regular supermarket does not sell dehydrated mushrooms. The Asian supermarket just across the street does. They both sell lots of cheap ramen packets.

4. Choosing a sharp curve halfway up the hill home to set down heavy shopping bags and shake out aching arms might convince some sucker to stop and give you a lift home!

It was not as calculated as it sounded. She was very nice. Her car was filled with bales of hay. Literally filled. She lifted her bags off the seat so I could get in with mine, then put her bags on my lap and drove me home. I was very grateful. My arms hurt.

sarah kay and ten things I know

2011-12-01T06:48:00.001+08:00

This morning Seth Godin introduced me to Sarah Kay. She is my age, feisty, warm, and wise, and performs spoken word poetry with nice winding metaphors. It's heart-warming kind of stuff. Here's (the short version) the poem "B" (or "If I should have a daughter . . .")

Here's (the long version), a Ted Talk that ends up just under 20 minutes. She talks about her own journey to spoken word poetry, about teaching it, about connection, and shares another poem at the end called Hiroshima.

She talks about using lists to teach poetry and asks the audience to make a list of ten things they know to be true. Here's mine:

Ten Things I Know to be True

My mother loves me.

Procrastination of one big thing sometimes helps little important things get done.

Kneading bread is therapeutic.

Melted butter and lots of brown sugar make chewy chocolate chip cookies.

Cynicism is easy; belief takes courage.

It's sometimes possible to speak an idea into existence.

Appearance (and aesthetics in general) matter . . . alot.

As children, almost everyone has dreams of flying.

We all ought to be singing together a lot more.

Tomato, basil, and mozzarella make a delicious pie.

What are ten things you know?

when women sit together praying

2011-11-30T19:19:00.001+08:00

I was a bit reticent about attending a women's Bible study. I don't actually read the Bible, or pray much . . . and it's been years and years since I've thought of myself as a Christian.

Not that it's hard to do the motions. They're familiar and easy enough. But, really, I feel bad pretending participation while secretly making observations and judgments at nice emotional distance. That's what I usually end up doing. So I wondered if maybe I shouldn't go.

But Catherine kept talking about her Wednesday morning group. She does not take for granted the chance to share deeply in the lives of women close to her age. This is one of the things in her life she's most excited about. I wanted to meet these women. I decided to go.

They were amazing! The host was this brilliant and bold mother all dressed in purples and lipstick, and nose ring. She was steady and funny and very much herself, it felt, but also let us know that she was lacking in sleep, and not able to do much more these days than take care of her family.

Another mom with a gravelly voice, hard laughter, and less-polished language gave me the impression that she knew how to party. She and I made faces when Paul warned people of the light should remain awake and sober for Jesus' coming.

The woman who led the study part of the bible study was all business and let's get this started but with a gentle edge, and you could see she loved herself, and quietly loved as well.

An ex-journalist really seemed to empathize with my crises of confidence and transition. She said to me, "you have to learn the art of contentment", which I've always thought I knew. I began to think again. Maybe I could use a bit more peace.

There were others, all strikingly different in personality . . . and they all touched me a bit. I didn't pull back the way I thought I might. I engaged, and enjoyed them.

As I listened to them talk through the big (and little) issues and decisions of their lives, I realized that I could also use a return to prayer in my life. I could use some women like this, who are making space to listen for God/Wisdom/Universe/Our Own Souls to speak. Who are holding life gently, understanding that it's not really ours, but something we move through. Loving the people we have the chance to love. Encouraging and engaging.

a little bit of extraordinary

2011-11-29T18:49:00.000+08:00

This morning when beautiful Catherine went to work, I walked toward the "Octagon" at the center of Dunedin . . . into a lot of stores that sold jewelry, pottery, gifts, and merino clothing . . . and then out again, empty-handed, every time, despite the fact that Christmas is coming, much of it was very nice, and some even locally made. But my suitcase space is limited, and (are we paying attention?!?) everything is just so much cheaper in the US. I assured myself I'd buy nice, locally-made things back home, but only what I need, and what will last. (Thank you, Patagonia, for your initiative.)

The last store I walked out of was on a corner across from the train station.

Dunedin train station

On the sidewalk in front of me I saw a Chinese student who, at least from the back, looked a lot like Jeff, a friend from Nanchong. This guy was waiting at the stoplight, so I had a moment to decide whether to walk up behind him and awkwardly peer round at his face to confirm . . . or just walk away. I knew Jeff was on working holiday in New Zealand, but this guy looked a bit too clean-cut. A bit too run-of-the-mill-Chinese-tourist with his backpack and jeans. I remember Jeff wearing a colorful cloth bag from Thailand slung over his shoulders, and his hair slightly long. It didn't seem likely, but I checked anyway, just to be sure.

It was him, of course.

You know when something so extraordinary happens that you struggle to even acknowledge it? As if you know any reaction you produce will not measure up to the moment, so you just sort of shrug, and walk down the street. It was like that as Jeff and I hugged, found a place for coffee, caught up on travel and plans, walked back through the Octagon, bought strawberries on the street, shared a plate at the Chinese fast food restaurant, wandered through the Cadbury factory free exhibit, until we eventually parted ways. Every so often during the afternoon, one of us would remember, and exclaim a bit, because it felt like something to be exclaimed at, and we'd just shake our heads and laugh.

It's not like he's just another student from Nanchong (he was never my student, in fact). Jeff was an ultimate frisbee player, a volunteer, one of the only Chinese students I know who's actually interested in working with NGOs, he carried bags from Thailand! He spent his summers during university connecting with other students in international camps. He even held a fundraiser (unheard of in Nanchong) to send himself to one.

Since moving to New Zealand in July, Jeff has worked selling pies, washing dishes, cleaning fish, and making Christmas cookies. He hitchhiked from Christchurch to the Southernmost tip of the South Island and says he's not worried about finding the next job. He's found that it's mainly luck and timing anyway. When his friends back home say they're jealous of his life of adventure he asks, "then why not join me here?" So far, none have taken him up on the suggestion.

At some point during the day, Jeff had reminded me that I could be working to help connect Chinese students with Western language schools and universities eager to have them. It's an idea I'd been thinking about when I first moved to Sydney, but hadn't acted on much since. With his reminder, I got curious about the idea again. . . and mentioned it to Catherine when I got back to her workplace . . . the language learning center attached to the university. She promptly went and knocked on some doors and within an hour I'd been introduced to the CEO, met with the head of marketing, and as it happened that the woman who manages the Chinese market is in New Zealand for the week, I met her too, and learned all about their system for recruitment. It was all a little overwhelming. It was that kind of day.

thirty days to thirty

2011-11-28T12:54:00.001+08:00

While many of my students in China wished they could be eighteen again, I've always felt happy to be as old as I happen to be. I'm grateful for the years and experiences that have twisted and taught me until I can hardly believe the changes. And I would not trade any of it for fewer wrinkles and gray hairs. I like my wrinkles and gray hairs.

So here I am at 29 with thirty days to thirty and counting. And I want to DO something. Something to mark the occasion. Something to remind myself that life is there for the taking. Something to make me little more like this baker-blogger. Except maybe not quite so ambitious as thirty different things. Just thirty of one should do me fine. For thirty days.

So . . . thirty days of what? Should I give hugs to strangers? Write emails to old friends? Learn new songs on the guitar? Give away cupcakes? Study new Chinese idioms? Yes, yes, and yes.

And write blogs. One a day, for thirty days. With the vague theme of "things I've learned" - today, last week, last year, in the last almost-thirty years. It's a broad theme. I sometimes have trouble with narrowing. But I'll try not to dwell much on the things I have trouble with (I spend enough time doing that already). Instead, I want to write about what inspires me, what excites me, what has challenged me to become better and different and still curious.

Like today, for starters. Catherine my beautiful New Zealand host went to work and I went to the Otago Museum. Otago is the name of the southern region of the South Island, where she lives. At the museum I learned things about cultures of Polynesia. There are 700 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea. The tatooist held an important place in the feudal hierarchies in Hawaii and Tonga. In the Santa Cruz islands, tumeric was believed to have supernatural properties. Yams were treated like currency on another island, and all Polynesians, it seems, ate breadfruit, a fruit that tastes something like bread?

I learned about Sir Edmund Hilary, the first person to climb Mt. Everest. Even though he was born and schooled in Auckland (in the North Island), the Otago Museum claimed the former beekeeper as a New Zealander. I learned that not only did he get to the roof of the world first (thanks to a mixture of ambition, planning, and talent, and lots of sugared lemon drink for hydration), but he went on to do a whole of lot of humanitarian (and diplomatic) work in Nepal and India. He continued on to ten more Himalayan summits, an expedition to the South Pole, a jet boat trip the length of the Ganges . . . all the while seeking approval of local Buddhist leaders when adventuring in their land. According to the exhibit, he was well-known and respected by the Sherpa people, and he returned each year to continue his work there with the Himalayan Trust for fifty years, until he was 86.

I hope I may have a tiny bit of his dedication. And sense of adventure.

zoombike

2011-10-12T17:26:00.001+08:00

A man who may or may not be the owner of this awesome bike is sitting under the black umbrella. He's a bit dirty, is wearing sports sandals, an overcoat too thick for the warmth of the afternoon, and slowly rolling a cigarette from a paper pouch of tobacco.

I may work fifty-hour weeks . . .

2011-08-27T15:22:00.008+08:00

But I still have two days off.

The big park near our apartment where people play soccer and do group work-outs. I walked across.

Climb up into the Glebe area, and you know you're there. All cute and fancy, these houses. This patio caught my eye.

And these windows.

And this tree.

I read in the sunshine, by the harbour at Glebe Point.

There's a boat that has pulled out across the water toward the bridge. A small boy, watches, and says, "Dad, let's get on that boat!"

things are different alright

2011-08-23T18:52:00.005+08:00

One difference in language I've noticed in Australia: instances where I would tend to say "woman" or "female", it's normal here to say "lady".

I took this picture in the bathroom stall at the opera house just before we saw Scott McCloud give an awesome talk about comics and the importance of visual communication. Justin is trying hard make me love comics just a little. One graphic novel (Persepolis) and one volume of something closer to what I think of as comics (Sandman) in, I'm happy to keep reading.

When the talk ended around 4, it was drizzling out. We bought coffees and stayed 'til we got annoyed at the conversations around us.

I can't stop taking pictures of the Sydney sky. After years and years of blah-skies-Sichuan, even something as "ordinary" as this takes my breath away.

good day to be friends with the savory chef

2011-08-16T18:03:00.006+08:00

Paul is our one savory chef, and so far my closest friend at Patisse. He's in his early thirties and has been a chef since he was twenty. It's hard being the only savory chef in a kitchen full of pastry chefs. Paul makes his job look easy. His soups are tasty, his plates always look beautiful going out, and he's teaching me his side dish-by-dish, so I can help out once in awhile when things get hairy.

Paul's wife is Australian. He is from England. She lived there for seven years, then decided it was time to move home. They spent a year traveling the world before buying a house on the beach outside of Sydney. And now they're pregnant. Yay! I can only hope the new baby situation doesn't prevent me from finagling an invitation to their house (and the beach) in the next few months . . .

Paul likes to talk. Not a lot of talking happens when the Big Chef is around, and a lot of the time, the rest of us are too busy to talk anyway. But I try to listen when I can. Sometimes it can feel like Paul and I (and just a few others) are afloat on the English island in a river of French. The head chef, the two cheeky chefs I answer to, and a number of the front people are often resorting to French for the all the good stuff (the jokes, gossip from the weekend, the nitty gritty of how to pipe a nice eclair).

Sometimes he needs to let off some steam or out bit of grumbling when we meet in the cool room. I listen. In return, he grabs the square tins off the top of the shelves for me. I help him chop vegetables when I can. He shows me the fastest way to break down the box when my only instructions from the other chefs are, "put away the eggs." I laugh at his jokes (most of the time) and he has often taken my side when I was blamed for something. I try to be on good terms with everyone in the kitchen. With Paul it feels more like an ally. If he's looking for an extra hand I'm the first to volunteer. And I know I can count on him for help when I really need him.

But this post is supposed to be about my lunch. Which on days when I am lucky enough to get a break, is usually a wrap, a sandwich, or some days just a big salad with lemon dressing and pine nuts. There are meat pies if I want them (as there seem to be all over Sydney) but I don't get excited about meat pies . . . or quiche pies really anymore (that I bake them every day may have something to do with it).

But this Moussaka, which Paul whipped up for a Saturday special, had me all lusty-eyed from the moment he started cooking the beef Friday afternoon. This morning I was only half-listening to his out-loud thinking about the specials for this week, when I suddenly heard, "I've still got some in there. You can have a piece for lunch if you want."

I did not forget. And oh it was good. Layers of grilled eggplant and bechamel sauce on top of that meat that had wooed me as it cooked. And oh, I ate it in the sunshine. A lunch very much worthy of the sunshine. Thank you, Paul.

all day, all day, amazing food

2011-08-15T13:23:00.011+08:00

I had to work at 11 this Sunday, so Justin and I tried to squeeze a bit of lazy Sunday in the few hours between waking and then. At the awesome Bourke Street Bakery. The coffee was the kind that makes you sit up and take notice. And my chocolate croissant (and, apparently, Justin's raspberry-chocolate muffin, too) was everything I'd hoped it'd be.

Patisse (like a lot of places in Sydney) is closed on Sunday, but there are sometimes events. "High Tea" on the last Sunday of each month. And yesterday, a special "French Safari Cooking Class" with Maeve of the Food Safari show on Australia's Special Broadcasting Services. So I had to work on Sunday. It was very different, however, from the daily work of display, display, mis en place, run, run, tired, tired. There were only four dishes in the "safari" demonstration - chocolate fondant, lemon madeleines, creme brulee, and raspberry souffle. Simple, yes, and I knew in theory all about these dishes (I've even watched online videos) but had never made any of them myself. So I was a bit nervous about my role in the kitchen, which was basically to do the last minute prep on the food that the participants would try after watching a demonstration.

The chef was nervous too, and couldn't quite figure out how to time things so that the souffle (which was meant to be the wham-bang piece) would come out right at the end (since I wasn't much help). The idea was to have as little down-time as possible between recipes. So he's out there demonstrating, demonstrating, cute french accent, laugh, laugh, done, and ooooo, aaaaaa, wow, here come the fondants for everyone to try. They were beautifully presented with an orange slice, raspberries and a blueberry on each small white plate next to the dark chocolate. Unfortunately, however, I overcooked the fondant (by about a minute-and-a-half, Chef guesses). So they were more like brownies than the exploding pockets of chocolate river that they're supposed to be. Sigh. I didn't have to do much with the madeleines, the creme brulee was caramelized to Chef's standards on the second go-round, and fortunately, the souffles (which I had to pipe and then smooth into the beautiful little copper pots) rose beautifully, and I only managed to puncture one of them with the handle of another pot. Here's what they look like when he makes them. (Picture from: http://www.gourmetsafaris.com.au/)

Then I met Justin at Central and we took the train to Lisa and Lee's apartment out in West Ryde. Lisa cooked an amazing dinner of 干锅鸡 and 红烧肉 for us.

why to stay

2011-08-02T19:52:00.006+08:00

On the way home from work last Saturday I tore off contact info for an apartment ad that was pasted on the light post. Even though I knew that Justin signed a six-month lease when he moved into our room in May. Because that's how tend to operate - always on the lookout for something better. We tolerate the blah-bland color and high rent for the great location (he's a ten-minute walk to work, and we're central to wonderful neighborhoods, a couple harbours, Chinatown, and downtown) . . . and, I'm beginning to realize, for our wonderful housemates.

Late that Sunday morning we went to look at the apartment, which was one of hundreds in a renovated, 100-year-old wool storage building, and apart from the modest oven in the kitchen, and the pool I guess, less attractive than our current place. And in the back of my mind I felt a sadness that surprised me at the thought of leaving Carola and Javier.

The others are nice as well. But it's Carola and Javier who've we gotten closest to so far. On my second day in Sydney I woke up to her singing over breakfast, and knew we should be friends. I told her I liked her singing. She said she thinks singing makes her happy, and why not be happy?

Carola and Javier are a couple, and both here on Chilean government scholarships. She's studying social work, he - engineering. They've had to do English supplementing first, and that was a half-year of hell. They grumble about the English hurdle, and we can feel too that they are amazing people. She's sweet and caring and friendly, and passionate about the land and the politics of her home. She has spent hours showing us pictures from Patagonia, and groaning with real pain over the tragedy of the hydroelectric dams soon to be built there.

She comes from the southern part of Chile, and her family is in Argentina, which feels as much like hers as Chile does sometimes, because it's so close geographically. Still, people from skinny Chile envy fat Brazil and Argentina. Envy their economies and their futbol, and maybe their culture too. They and their friends party all the time, but they don't compare to Brazilians, she tells us.

One Friday night we all find ourselves drinking vodka in the kitchen with Carola, Javier, Luciano (another Chilean), and a couple of their classmates (Korean Jessie and Chinese Sharianne). We laugh and laugh, because Javier is clever and witty, but soon I start making rumblings about bed. Then the Chileans teach us a party song that involves thumping on the closest surface (it was cabinets and countertops for us) and singing "don't go, Holly, don't go." Very persuasive when a whole room of your friends is beating a please-stay rhythm with their hands and voices. Unfortunately I work at 6:00 on Saturday mornings, and that's the morning you don't want to show up late or slow . . . so it only pulled an extra half-an-hour or so from me.

july 26

2011-07-27T18:00:00.012+08:00

Tuesday I spent the afternoon at Sydney Harbour with Polleah, a friend from Nanchong. Meeting Polleah, who flew in from Gold Coast in the morning and to LA the next day, for a lunch date planned in early June, seemed fantastic, and had us both bubbly.

We had trout salad (some of which was stolen right off our plates by the gulls) and pizza with potato and rosemary. We ordered nothing else and happily lounged for more than three hours.

On the walk there and back I took pictures of the boat show at Darling Harbour.

I was so happy to see the sun.

Last week it barely peeked out its face. Most of the days that just meant drizzle and wet trees and grabbing Justin's raincoat and an extra pair of socks for the walk to work. On Thursday morning, however, the water dumped on me almost the entire 35-minute commute (and rushed in torrents down sidewalks, and bounced up and veered in sideways 'til I was soaked up to the knees). Not fun. There aren't really direct buses, at least in part because the as-the-crow-flies route passes through the mass of train station - city and country trains verging in one place - that is "Central". Fortunately there are underground tunnels that take people in and through the station. I love that part of my walk in particular. In the morning the echo of footsteps - the few of us passing through before six. In the evening the varied multitudes that make cities so wonderful. Business folk all pointy-shoed and still talking work on their way home. Couples draped and laughing on their way out. Folk ragged and slow with a cigarette. Women with head coverings and men with dreadlocks. Men in paint-splattered uniform and boots. Fathers with children, mothers with strollers. And buskers, without fail. I walk with my headphones, but pause the music in the tunnels so I can hear theirs.

as long as it lasts

2011-07-21T16:38:00.003+08:00

I thought I was excited about cooking in Australia. With a second person to make the effort worthwhile, the end of Sichuan food easy and cheap and all around, and outrageous Sydney food prices instead, I was going to turn over a new leaf. Then I discovered that Justin is an excellent cook. He experiments and has a good feel for what spices will work together, while I have recipe-dependence issues almost as serious as my mother's.

And then I got this working-woman's job, which has me out of the house around 5:15 am, sometimes 5:00 'til I get back, and my feet so tired. The last thing I feel like doing is spending another hour in another kitchen when I get home. Justin, on the other hand, has spent the entire day (in most cases) in front the of the computer doing nerdy-smart things. He (I assume) is happy to do something a bit more active. So he makes dinner, I wash the dishes (and he dries), and then he massages my sore feet before I fall asleep at 10 (psssttt, Justin, I don't think this is a deal for you, exactly).

trees

2011-07-19T18:58:00.007+08:00

Justin said that it's the trees (and sports) that make this place feel different. That remind us that we're not living in Vancouver or DC or some other international North American city. I think he's right.

When I saw this bush I thought at first that someone had placed dead pine cones in it. Then I realized they were attached. Growing there!

The bark on this tree is thickly-layered and almost as soft as paper. I wonder if anyone is making clothing with it.

how I got a job

2011-07-17T18:13:00.005+08:00

Into my second week in Sydney I was starting to get really anxious to find work. My money was gone, I was borrowing from Justin, and I was getting bored.

Monday was full of nerves emailing back and forth with a manager at a bakery where I wanted to work. I was thrilled to hear from them at all. But when she set me up for a trial on Friday morning, I figured I'd better get some other irons in the fire, just in case.

As cynical as I claim China has made me, I still feel bad manipulating my advantages over employers (i.e. lying about how long I'm staying, agreeing to overlapping trials, aiming for multiple offers and taking the best one). But Justin and our housemates were saying, "no, that's what you do!", so that's what I did.

I answered more ads on gumtree in the "chefs/cooks/kitchenstaff" section and dropped CVs around. I know from how we hired people in Nanchong that most of the time it's just the luck of walking in at the right time.

Late on Tuesday afternoon I headed down Harris (the street where we live) toward the tiny cafe where Justin had taken me on my first day. The manager was nice, took my CV, said he'd call if anything came up. At the next cafe I poked in and around, feigning confidence as I've learned to do, and asked about a job. The place was a little crazy, people and things spread out around the tables, and it didn't quite feel open even. I read a newspaper while I waited for the manager to finish her phone call. She was warm and personable, shocked to learn I'd just walked in off the street, ecstatic to learn I could drive a manual. She'd been advertising for days; I was the first person to walk in. And I have experience! (sort of). They'd been in business for ten years, had moved that day from the old cafe to a newly renovated cafe next door, and she was due to have a kid the next week (with a four-year-old at home). She kept talking about timing and coincidence and how great it was I'd walked in and stuff. I was to show up at 7 the next morning for a trial. It felt like a done deal. I called Justin with the good news.

For three hours the next morning I raced around behind Maz and Caz (the crazy pair who it seemed had been working there cafe forever), learned on the fly how to punch prices into the register, asked for the names of things again when they had a different pronunciation than I was used to (Australian English is somewhat different), over-vegemited one guy's toast ("You'll kill him!" Caz complained) and didn't put butter on the next one (it's an assumed under-layer for vegemite, I learned). The credit card with the chip took me a few extra seconds to figure out, and I may have stared a bit too long at the coins, which to me are bafflingly ill-proportioned, with tiny $2 pieces and silver-(American)dollar-size 50 cent pieces. Once I cut raisin bread instead of banana bread, but Maz caught me before it was too late.

In general, however, I thought it went fine. I started worrying when Kate the manager didn't get back to me in the afternoon like she'd promised to. I was surprised (I was still hearing the ring of promise in her voice), but by Thursday afternoon, I was pretty sure they weren't going to call. So on my way by the cafe I decided to seek some closure. The look on Maz's face when I marched in was enough confirmation, but I still waited around for Kate to come tell me they'd found someone else (he'd come in after me). I enjoyed forcing a little bit of discomfort on her. But I also completely understand how she didn't get around to calling. I've never been a mother, but I have opened a cafe. I also understand hiring the person that suits them better. It took me a few hours to find my self-esteem again, but all in all it was a fine distraction from the looming Friday appointment. Which was a whole other kind of scariness.

Patisse is a serious French bakery with a serious chef and a serious kitchen. I was told to show up with full chef's uniform, including hat (which is another long story). I'm not sure I would have gone through with the whole thing without Justin's encouragement, I felt so far out of my league. And Friday morning I certainly felt out of my league, and Saturday still, and I'm sure I will for a couple of weeks. It's tiring and scary and scary. And did I mention tiring? The place is out of control busy, with a cafe and catering orders and birthday cakes and pastry training classes. It's high-paced and demanding and it all seems we're stretched a little beyond our abilities and experience. Which is good, right? On Saturday I was there 7-5, and I think ten-hour days are going to be pretty standard. We'll see how things go. For now, it's an exciting new environment, with lot so learn, and people who seem like decent folk. I love being in a kitchen. Even though we work harder than waitstaff, we also have more fun, or at least we will when we're all more familiar with our roles and the place. I hope.

Rob the genius barista part II

2011-07-10T14:17:00.005+08:00

He sat down at the piano and started flying scales up and down the keys, with all that boyish drummer-energy, and with talent so raw it took your breath away. I stopped reading. It took me a long time to realize he was just playing scales with a few variations, they were so beautiful. He seemed to hear beats in his head, and then challenge his fingers to keep up. There were changing rhythms and little add-ins and pauses when he was searching for the next note. Some of it was practiced, but some of it was experiment. All of it was gorgeous. I couldn't believe I'd just stumbled into this.

An older couple with two teenage boys came in and ordered lattes and churros with chocolate sauce (turns out it was a Spanish coffee shop). They sat down at the corner table with an extra chair from my table so there was barely room for Rob at the piano. I was afraid he'd be too shy to play so close to them, but when he'd served their food and drinks he sat back down and soon they joined me in my astonishment and delight.

The woman asked him how he'd learned to play like that. He attempted humility, kinda shrugged and answered, "I taught myself. Too much time on my hands, I guess." He explained that he's a drummer, and he figured, "the piano is kinda like drumming, you just beat on it." We all laughed. And he played on.

Justin came and I made him get a coffee. He read the newspaper clippings on the wall and reported back that not only was Rob amazing, but the coffee shop - Hernandez Cafe - itself was as well. Hernandez, the owner, was credited with bringing coffee to Sydney in the early 1970's. Before that he was doing quality control in the coffee industry in Spain. The cafe does their own blends and their own roasting on the premises.

It felt like a gift, stumbling upon Hernandez Cafe and Rob the talented barista-musician.

As we sat journaling and listening, a couple different customers came in who knew Rob, including the guy in the background of the picture. It almost seemed as if it was routine, that he came specifically to hear the music. He left a tip, which inspired us to do the same later on.

We stayed for at least two hours, and the longer we stayed, the more Rob talked to us. He told us how thrilled he'd been when he discovered a chord he could play the whole way up and down with three fingers. "People think music is really hard," he said, "but it's not, it's easy." He saw the music in the keys, the shapes and patterns. He didn't play with the graceful full-fingering of a trained pianist. In fact, he did kinda beat on the keys. Maybe that was part of the effect. Along with very open personality. Whatever it was, we never made it to happy hour. But the night had turned magic. I walked out a lot less concerned about my job search (and the feelings of inferiority that accompany it), a lot more settled in the moment. I left thinking, dear god, I hope that boy makes music everyday of his life, and that's enough. If he wants to party all night long, and serve coffee all day, that is fine by me. As long as he spends a part of each day sharing music with people, he will fulfill his purpose in the world. What more can any of us ask than to find that thing for ourselves?

Rob the genius barista part I

2011-07-07T20:00:00.007+08:00

I have a bag of coffee beans I carried all the way from Harrisonburg, but no coffeemaker . . . or stovetop, or french press to make it with. I do have a whole lot of tea from China. There's Tie GuanYin (a type of oolong tea) and Pu'er, both some of the top teas in China, both gifted to me by amazing friends in amazing quantities before I left.

Apparently Sydney used to be mainly a tea-drinking place, though coffee has certainly found an important place. That's always one of the first things that I notice when I fly from China into a "Western" country. Walking out into the airport terminal the smell of coffee is so strong (and so nice). Here in Sydney cappuccinos, lattes, long blacks (what I would call an Americano), and flat whites (what I would call a very low-froth latte) are everywhere . . . and they pretty much start around $3.50. So until we buy a french press or repurpose an old sock (Jeanette's trick) for coffee making, we're doing tea.

But then there are times when you've been out offering resumes to every cafe and bakery on the street, and it's windy, and Justin will be off work in 45 minutes and could just slip over to meet you for the happy hour at the bar on the corner. Cold and windy.

And then I saw a sign for $2 drip coffee, which I actually really like, sometimes, so I walked in to the tiniest, simplest of cafes for a humble cup of gas-station-style coffee. As such, the coffee was black and oil-thick, and obviously had been sitting there for a few hours. The very friendly boy behind the counter took pity and let me "tip a bit out" so I could fit more milk in. He was jumping around and drumming on the counter and just so full of energy I asked if he'd had a lot of coffee that day. "I've had a few," he said. "I'm feeling so musical today."

A woman in her early forties maybe, dressed for business, came for a latte. He asked if she was having a good day. It was alright, she laughed. And you? "Pretty good," he said, "nothing exciting has happened yet today. . . but it could, you know? That's how life is. Unexpected things are always popping up. Life is an adventure." Did he actually say that? Something like that. This was the kind of guy who said things that other people might sound really stupid saying. Somehow it worked for him. Especially after he sat down at the piano. Then we really started to listen.

outside of the apartment, my first friend in Sydney

2011-07-05T15:15:00.003+08:00

I joined Justin and his boss Edmund for lunch. The Thai curry was delicious, and sweet enough for a Western palate. And Edmund was absolutely delightful. He's cheery and polite just like my stereotype of a Brit. Mid-forties with teenage children and I swear the man giggles. He talked a bit about the harbour walks and the wine valleys around Sydney, but really got excited he started talking about a trip his family took to Italy last year. I'm pretty sure he used the words "magnificent" and "magical."

happy birthday, America

2011-07-04T16:11:00.003+08:00

The History of America

- for Paul Metcalf

A linear projection: a route. It crosses

The ocean in many ships. Arriving in the new

Land, it cuts through and down forests and it

Keeps moving. Terrain: Rock, weaponry.

Dark trees, mastery. Grass, to yield. Earth,

Reproachful. Fox, bear, coon, wildcat

Prowl gloomily, it kills them, it skins them,

Its language alters, no account varmint, its

Teeth set, nothing defeats its obsession, it becomes

A snake in the reedy river. Spits and prays,

Keeps moving. Behind it, a steel track. Cold,

Permanent. Not permanent. It will decay. This

Does not matter, it does not actually care,

Murdering the buffalo, driving the laggard regiments,

The caring was a necessary myth, an eagle like

A speck in heaven dives. The line believes

That the entire wrinkled mountain range is the

Eagle's next, and everything tumbles in place.

It buries its balls at Wounded Knee, it rushes

Gold, it gambles. It buys plastics. Another

Ocean stops it. Soon, soon, up by its roots,

Severed, irrecoverably torn, that does not matter,

It decides, perpendicular from here: escape.

A prior circle: a mouth. It is nowhere,

Everywhere, swollen, warm. Expanding and contracting

It absorbs and projects children, jungles,

Black shoes, pennies, blood. It speaks

Too many dark, suffering languages. Reaching a hand

Toward its throat, you disappear entirely. No

Wonder you fear this bleeding pulse, no wonder.

------------------------------------------------------------

From the Poetry Foundation, "I Hear America Singing."

Alice Ostriker, "The History of America" from the The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998. Copyright 1998 by Alicia Ostriker. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, upress.pitt.edu. Used by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.

just a few things

2011-04-10T20:49:00.004+08:00

I sang in the sunshine. And napped in it, on the couch at Sea Turtle, from 1:45 to 2. Dongbo made us lunch. His sister says he never cooks at home. They saved me the last apple and I didn't have to plan anything. During the break the children all made guns with connecting plastic links and chased each other wildly around the hall, screaming.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thirty fast approaching and Justin's friends are having babies. We keep talking about it - parenting - with a lot of doubt. In general, it seems very difficult and all-consuming. So the other day I saw this parent-couple walking down the street making it look easy, and it made me smile so hard. The stroller was a cheap plastic-wicker thing without padding, the handle just a curve pushing a straight line up from the back of the basket. It was meant to be pushed, but the woman was pulling it beside her with one hand, waving the other as she talked with her husband. They weren't talking to the baby, they weren't carrying bags of things for the baby, they weren't even looking at the baby. They were just walking down the street with the baby in a stroller beside them. It was beautiful.

women's day

2011-03-10T15:03:00.004+08:00

March 8, 2011

(100th Anniversary of International Women's Day)

Sometimes I know there's song

bursting out of me - not words

but what I feel, I know I can do.

It's spring and the new black skirt

fits well. At lunch my mind pulses

with the day's challenges and fullness.

Why, when I think there's nothing

innocent left in me, do my eyes

still dance? I laugh all the time.

I asked my class of forty-six

females (plus five boys in the back)

“Do you like being a woman?”

They all said yes but not much

about why. Except the clothing

is more colorful. And we can cry.

I told them feminists are just people

who want freedom - for women and

men - to be anything we want to be.

I told them sometimes freedom comes

when you choose the right path

and say, “to hell with being good”

I told them when you start doing that

you also end up with fewer excuses

and a lot more reasons to celebrate.

I told them I have no idea why

we keep trying to be younger,

when each year we have more.

I didn't tell them about the song

bursting out of me. But the way it was

pulsing, I'm sure they saw heard it.

happy new year knot

2011-02-11T12:42:00.001+08:00

i did not buy this, though I did hang it

all the wrappings

2011-02-11T08:17:00.012+08:00

So, jiao zi. Little boiled meals in a wrapper. Sometimes steamed. Or fried (reverse order for deliciousness).

In the north of China, where people are serious about things made of wheat flour, jiao zi come in all sorts of different flavors, are wonderfully thin-skinned, and (everyone agrees) just much better . . . than our southern China imitations. Here it's all standard pork-and-green-onions, mainly, but such a TRADITIONAL spring festival food that EVERY SINGLE person and family must must must eat jiaozi on the eve of new year. It represents union and unity for the family . . . especially if you sit around jovially wrapping them together.

What I hadn't thought about before this year, was all the wrappers that get made and sold in the noodle shops on THAT ONE DAY. There are people who make the simple (flour and water) dough at home, roll it into logs, pinch off small pieces, roll those into neat circles - homemade jiao zi wrappers . . . but A LOT of people will be buying the wrappers pre-made.

The shop across from the bakery was already going full-force at 7 pm on the 29th. They had four people working together - rolling out sheets, cutting, packing, feeding scraps of dough back into a machine that tore them up, and then another to start the process all over again.

When I left the bakery after 11 pm I stopped by this little noodle shop and asked if I could take some pictures. I asked them how long they'd work that night. They said they'd be there 'til daybreak.

This machine rolls out sheets and sheets of dough:

The sheets are stacked up maybe 20 thick or so, and he uses a can-shaped metal cutter to slice down through them for a pile of perfect circle wrappers.

he's literally going to be doing this all night . . .

grandpa, who was sort of dozing outside, got called inside to help with the packing.

outside I counted six more plastic-lined crates like this one, empty and ready to be filled by dawn

a removed participation

2011-02-03T17:55:00.003+08:00

On the last day of the Chinese new year, I abandoned Chloe and all the kind invites from friends, and spent ¥158 for a small room in the four-star hotel near my apartment downtown. I opted against the cheapest option in the place, which supposedly had no window. In my room the window was about ten feet wide and the remaining wall just a foot or two beyond that. The bed was so wide it looked square, and made me wish I had someone to share it with. Okay, the someone was specific, and memories from the birthday stay with Justin at Fengyashan ringed my evening.

When I'd showered and warmed my body in the luxury of central heating, I wandered down to the basement-level Uni-mart to push unhurriedly through the last-minute new year shopping crowds. I bought the candy I was supposed to buy, and wasabi crackers to eat with cheese. For a few minutes I considered a smallish bottle of Great Wall at Uni-Mart, but decided I didn't want to drink wine alone. I ended up with apple juice, Sprite, and a Heineken that a girl in the 21st-floor teahouse opened with her teeth just after eleven.

There were many episodes of Deadwood, as planned, but I paused Al Swearengen's rant at ten-minutes-to-midnight so that I could open the window and fully take in the explosions ping-ponging back and forth across the city. There were loud, booming displays that made my heart race. There were smaller and more-distant pops that were perfect circles blooming from behind this building, from the edge of the river. There were the slow, rhythmic shoooms and sizzles of the try-this-at-home cardboard tube fireworks . . . arcing up from unseen hands, from windows and rooftops in tight housing compounds. I thought of Sam last year scaring me to death by shooting his at the apartment buildings fifty feet away.

It all came through my window in a great crackling rain, this exuberant celebration. I laughed and then cried as I looked out over the city which I, in Justin's words, “have complicated feelings about.” All these millions of people, unified for these few moments by these blasts of light and sound by which they welcomed the new year. I thought something about how ghosts and devils would be scared far from this city tonight, and then, of americans god blessing the usa and how we're all so sure we've got this stuff covered.

From the hotel's western windows I could see other fireworks watchers at the complex across from Nangao. They were still silhouettes in the full-length windows of their balconies, backlit by yellow light, and in the reverberating city they seemed warm and quiet - like I felt.

I went barefoot and pajama-bottomed back up to the teahouse to look out their floor-to-ceiling windows. But onto the wooden walkway and across the shallow little pond, there were two feet below a curtain-wrapped figure in the shadowy section near the windows - probably an employee sneaking time on his cellphone - so I retreated.

The forty or fifty guests that I'd seen before midnight were gone (back to their rooms, I suppose) and the employees were playing pool and pulling chairs round to watch TV, so I padded back down the stairs. The fireworks went on steadily . . . it was 12:15 by the time I got back to the plague in Deadwood . . . and they were still going after 1:00.

out of the gray

2011-01-26T09:58:00.002+08:00

There's something nice about repeating to yourself,“It's my day off. It's my day off,” as I did all day yesterday, and then spending the day like it really is something special. The whole afternoon in SPR, which still has a warm place in my heart from the early years. The manager still calls me by name, and they still sell great big espresso drinks for (foreigners-only) nine yuan.

Karen and I with our vastly different personalities, still find plenty to connect over. I am excited to tell her about the new hot spring resort on the top of Fengya Mountain, knowing it's her kind of indulgence. We sit in fat sofas beside the window, ignoring the cold, gray, half-rainy day. She's just come from three weeks in snowy Lancaster, PA and says the fresh comparison make Sichuan winter seem all that much worse. Her mother had complained while she was home about one overcast day, and Karen replied, “Mom, this is what it's like everyday where I live.”

I'm grateful for how the weather matters less to me now than it once did. I still grumble at the dark, damp winters, don't get me wrong, but I am capable of going out, getting things done, and being happy even, when it's gray and cold. I add layers, put up my hood. I eat more, sleep longer, and spend more time on the computer . . . guilt-free. And when sun shines in Nanchong, or I have a few weeks in Virginia, the beauty is all that much more startling. I expect Vancouver rain to be more than tolerable, backed by mountains and pierced through with sunshine as I've heard it is.

sabbath fruit

2011-01-25T13:59:00.006+08:00

What I'm still working on, is the quality of life bit.

I am blessed enough to still love the work -

the beauty of the labor and of the final product -

even on the long days.

What I'm still working on, is the quality of mine bit.

Like if I were to squeeze a glass all for myself today

because the oranges are across the street for 2.55 a kilogram

because they're all health and sweetness and, yes,

beauty that's for me too.

how I'm becoming old fast

2011-01-24T22:44:00.003+08:00

I keep laughing to myself about how back in October when the bakery got unprecedentedly busy during National Day week, a 700 yuan day seemed like something special . . . like we'd SERVED SOME CUSTOMERS. I would come home at night and soak my feet (which would still hurt in the morning), and think with awe of all the money we were making. At this point, of course, 5, 6, and 700 days seem normal. And then suddenly, last week we're breaking 1000, which is a new unprecedentedly busy, and it's all the three of us can do to keep up. I lock the door around 11:15, and am usually back by mid-to-late morning. My feet hurt sometimes when I wake up. Sam's mom tells me to soak them in hot water and ginger before I go to bed. Maybe I will tonight.

Earlier when I strolled out onto the street to breath some cool air, I started chatting with the woman who sells soy, peanut, and other-bean milk. She said, as a way of making conversation, "haven't closed yet?" "nope" I said, and asked her what time she normally closes. Depends on her mood, turns out. Yesterday she closed at six in the evening. You know, when you're just not in the mood, right? But then the customers are there the next day, asking, "where were you last night?" and doing business is supposed to have an element of freedom, but it sure doesn't feel like freedom! At this point I'd joined in and we were laughing back and forth about how tired we get, closing late and opening early (though she starts early for real, not 9 or 11 "early" like we do.) How it's hard getting out of bed in the morning, especially in the winter.

On Sunday before ZY left, the three of us turned about eight would-be customers away and kicked another two out early so we could close and get to the massage place by 10. It was worth it, giggling between ZY and TL, with the massage workers, who know my history in Nanchong. That and having all those hours of hunching over the coffee machine worked out of my shoulders.

on my own

2011-01-16T10:42:00.004+08:00

Yesterday it was just me in the bakery since ZY was taking the graduate entrance exam and TL home to make food for her, support her emotionally and such. MY, our beloved part-timer of three months has gone home for the holiday, and neither QY nor ZJ are available this weekend.

But deep in the cold, dark days of winter in Nanchong, the bakery is not a bad place to spend the day. I am not busy now. English classes ended before the new year, and I finished up with my last class of 7-10 year olds last Sunday. But the long Saturday and Sunday with Sam my only responsibility outside of the bakery - feels a bit surreal. The slow morning. Unexpected conversations with Katrina and Riaz, one podcast while I worked on gluing together cloth and cardboard menus, and then the steady flow of people and cakes and coffee from 3:30 til closing. I must have steamed thirty pots of milk at our little espresso machine, leaning against the counter, until I saw nothing but the swirl of the milk and foam. When I woke up this morning, I knew I had dreamed of doing dishes.

Katrina, a student I taught in church English classes when she was fourteen, is now a college freshman, studying English, and distressed about how little she's learning in class. She was waiting for me when I came to open the door in the morning. She talked for an hour or so about teachers who play movies instead of teaching class, and classmates who prefer it that way. She says she's one of the rare students whose spoken English is better than her written, but she has no opportunities in class to speak. She wasn't really asking me for anything but to listen (which is always a relief). I lent her some of the simpler, more fun novels that foreign teachers have left in the bakery, and she came back in the evening to wash dishes - which turned out to be a small miracle in an of itself. I might have thrown up my hands and walked out if she hadn't been there - it would have been that busy. Thank god I volunteered those first few years at the church, I told Justin when the night was over, and somehow all the customers got their coffee.

stupid rules

2011-01-14T14:11:00.002+08:00

I met on the corner an old colleague, a girl I saw almost everyday back in 2007 during my last semester at the medical college. She might be a year or two younger than me, but always acted like a little girl. She giggled a lot, maintained excellent rapport with all of the students, and was famous for her love of Japanese cartoons. I remember her actually patting my cheeks in unexpected enthusiastic affection.

I barely recognized her today as we walked towards each other on the street. Her face, which used to be pleasantly plump and pink, was now thin and a little sunken. But when I'd stopped her I still followed form and said, "Long time no see! You're so thin!" and meant it as a compliment.

She seemed please, did a little half-curtsy in her long down coat, and responded with, "Yes, but not thin enough. I have to keep working hard. What are you doing over here?"

You haven't heard that the bakery is over here? I asked, and she had, sort of. "So how are you?" I asked, genuinely excited to see her.

"I'm still searching for a partner," she said, and shook her head to show how hard the search was.

"Take your time," I said, and she laughed a short laugh. "It's important to find a good person; you don't want to find the wrong one," I insisted.

"The main thing is my mother is giving me lots of pressure," she admitted. "I really wouldn't care, but she is in a hurry, and pushing. So I came out here to go shopping and forget it all." She signaled the end of the conversation and moved a bit in the direction she had been headed.

"Well, good to see you," I said, and that was that. I walked on feeling sad for her, and the other women like her stuck suffocating in this town with it's (mostly) crappy men and rigid expectations.

november students

2010-11-12T12:31:00.003+08:00

For the first half of the semester I was lucky enough to be assigned a tiny classload of six hours a week. I taught Monday and Tuesday and had the rest of the week off. But I was holding my breath the whole time, so last week when our dear Ricky Martin informed me that I would soon be teaching ten more periods, my heart only sank a little. I was prepared. Then it all turned into a mess that ended yesterday evening with Dan and I flipping through the schedules for eight different classes of English majors and deciding on our own class times. This morning I took the schedule into the very professional and kind Mr. Liu, and taught a couple of first-lessons for the new students. Despite being in their last (third) year and generally a bit more world-wise than the four-year English majors on the new campus, they are sweet and generally excited to have a foreign teacher. They're all from Sichuan and most have never been out of the province. The kind of students that make me want to give everything I can.

亲爱的

2010-11-09T19:31:00.006+08:00

Justin says no one cares about blogs anymore; everyone's on Twitter. But something in me nags that I should be sharing part of this crazy day-to-day. Last year for a time I was writing 750 words a day. I hope I can write a few here. And then there's this fabulous VPN that allows me to pretend I'm surfing the internet from San Francisco. There are no excuses left. I will write.

The last few days it's just me in the bakery. TL our super-baker went back home to get her winter clothes. I miss her like crazy. She called me from inside the new subway in Chengdu, complaining about the strange system of exits, but mainly just wanting to brag. 洋气不? she joked, using a phrase she has made part of my everyday vocabulary. Literally, it's "Western-feeling" or, more loosely, "trendy, cool." I was 洋气 when I drove the electric bike (and wearing sunglasses, no less) to pick Justin up from the train station. She's 洋气 when her new winter hat and face-mask (do people even wear those in the West?) arrive. WY is 洋气 when she goes abroad for the second time in six months. Shelley is 洋气 with her silvery-sleek Mac and her silvery-sleek beauty. TL and ZY are 洋气 when they invite us over for a full table of dishes in their big new apartment. I doubt that lunch in the bakery kitchen - she and I hunched over rice and warmed up dishes on the wooden chair/table - counts as 洋气. But those are my favorite moments with her. The ordinary times. Volunteering to do the dishes and arguing over how much chocolate sauce goes on top of the mocha. Singing "遇见" and "我爱你" and "I've gotta have you." It's "You are in my way!" as we work around each other in the small space and "Please notice my baby!" when one of us is too busy to check the cake almost done in the oven. Her complaining about my messiness and me laughing at her fake-anger. Weathering the bad moods and exhaustion and conflicts and knowing the strange love between us is deeper than that of employee/employer, and won't break easily. I don't understand it. I don't understand why this tiny little Sichuan girl has come to matter so much to me. I don't understand how or why she came, but I am grateful, and I would do it all over again just to know her all over again.

cheers for telling

2010-08-31T01:52:00.004+08:00

The bakery opened, and as far as I know (I am now very, very far away), is doing okay. As in, so far, looks like we may survive, financially.

Funny though, how the last anyone on this side of the pacific had heard about the bakery was that it was in need of prayers because only friends were buying things. A reminder that "doing" is not always enough. How it's the telling that really shapes reality.

At church on Sunday they're talking about "story" and so is NPR this morning. Humans, turns out, like to tell stories. The show promised that good story-tellers have an edge in evolution, too.

Here's one: I come back to Harrisonburg to find that most of the little coffeeshops scattered along it's streets a year ago (The Daily Grind wasn't a spectacular coffee shop, but at least it was locally owned, and trying) have disappeared. I drove all over the south side of town searching (so far I've managed to avoid Eastern Harrisonburg Hell) for wi-fi, until I finally remembered Greenberry's, a great little place that originates in Charlottesville, and has giant, oat-y cookies. It's freezing inside, but they don't give me dirty looks when I buy a coffee and stay all day.

So here I am. Admiring toned female legs and eavesdropping on conversations. A few tables away the two middle-aged yuppie women owners are sitting with the SYSCO guy, ordering next week's pesto. It reminds me of the sign Justin saw when we visited Mondragon (vegan-anarchist cafe-bookstore) in Winnipeg. In the window by the sidewalk, it said something like, 'It has come to our attention that a SYSCO van occasionally parks in front of Mondragon when delivering to [nearby business]. We would like to assure our customers that we DO NOT buy from SYSCO.'

See, that's principle, and not easy. The tiny bit of information that makes all the difference in the world. That makes me prefer that place to this place (though I'll come here when I don't have a choice). And somebody's gotta tell the story, or it won't make a damn bit of difference where they're not buying from. Don't forget.

first step

2010-05-29T22:35:00.000+08:00

It's my third night to spend at the bakery. The first night I still had the van and picked Johnson and FDS up when I dropped off WY and Libby. The second night Johnson tricked FDS into staying instead of himself. Tonight I told them all to stay home and get a good night's rest. I've slept like a baby so far, and I'm certainly not afraid of staying by myself.

We were anxious to get started with the decorating. We didn't plan a lot, just started in with the obvious first step. We had to have a way to enter that didn't include traipsing through the teashop next door. We needed a doorway cut into the giant piece of glass that was the front of the shop.

WY and I secretly delighted in the way the glass-cutters came in a gang, leaning against their motorcycles when we arrived. There were five of them. The leader had a big belly and a lip that might have been clefted, or maybe a fight. They charged us too much, but what were we to do? Duan still down in Southern Sichuan with Rod and Lao Huang chasing government officials around. Later, in the van we talked about how we secretly enjoyed their good natured jokes and schemes to make more money off of us.

another day is done

2010-05-27T01:48:00.001+08:00

Okay, so I'll have much nicer pictures when either A) Justin gets here or B) I decide to buy a camera. For now I make do with the camera built into the Macbook. Hope the gorgeousness of the bread shines through.

Cranberry-walnut celebration bread from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice, the exception that might be made to our no-bread, focus-on-desserts rule for the first few months.

Lao Duan (Leah's husband) is in Southern Sichuan working to set up an MCC water project. Which means I get to drive the little mini-van around. Leah calls and asks if I'd mind driving it home, and well, no, actually I wouldn't mind at all. She has her license, but isn't comfortable driving. The right thing to do would probably be to encourage her to practice more while her husband is gone, to try to get used to driving ... or maybe the right thing to do is just enjoy the damn van.

Duan is very good at cars, and has switched it to run on natural gas . . . so the fun of having a vehicle for a week comes almost completely guilt-free. And it doesn't hurt that it rained heavily the whole afternoon. After classes I called Karen and insisted on picking her up. Stopped to pick up noodles at the gate and then slowly rolled through the crowds of students back up toward home. (I like how unnecessary excessive speed seems when you're used to walking or biking everywhere.) There was even the struggle of the defrost against the encroaching window fog. We giggled like little girls.

I couldn't agree with you more!

2010-05-25T23:07:00.001+08:00

The teaching-Chinese-as-a-second-language majors (my delightful freshmen) debated today. It was hard to get the old "dogs or cats?" debate going because, for 99 percent of my students, it's hands-down for the dogs.

Should high school students be required to wear uniforms? There were ideas about school unity, about focusing on studying, about cutting down distance between rich and poor students, and about how a uniform makes it easier for teachers to look out for student safety. But no one can stand the baggy sports-suit that passes as a school uniform in every high school and college in Sichuan. What about the Japanese-style school uniforms? Fashionable, but the skirts are a little too short. If it's not modesty that stops you, it's fear of "cold-knee" disease.

Should smoking be allowed in public places? The side that I assigned to support the statement gave great groans of protest, obviously feeling it was the harder argument (even though smoking is still allowed in most public places here?). Justine argued that limiting smoking in public areas would just make people smoke more in their homes. "Hurt your family or hurt strangers?" she asked, and we all laughed hard.

a good start

2010-05-25T22:31:00.002+08:00

On Monday, Sam's mom brought to the shop a friend of a friend who helped her with the interior design of her restaurant ten years ago. Later she claimed that she knew he was the perfect person to help me. I think it was just luck. Or the universe. I am starting to wonder. Like today when I asked Jeff's friend, who was trained in making Western desserts, and worked at a big hotel in Beijing, what she's doing now, and she told me she was job hunting. I'm not sure why I didn't offer her a job on the spot. But the next time I talk to her (and hopefully tomorrow) I will.

The decorator, Mr. Gou, understood immediately the style we need to create, and gave extensive, valuable, and free advice. A few times he raised his voice a bit to shut the rest of us up and plead, "let me finish," but mostly was just really patient and cool. After a few hours we went to pick up his wife and visit his amazing office, which is decorated in real, exposed brick!!! and big slabs of dark wood for tables, and an old embroidered picture of Chairman Mao.

yesterday's news

2010-05-16T23:17:00.001+08:00

Friday night we went out for hotpot to celebrate Sam's birthday. We asked Austin (the EMU student who's being hosted by Sam's family) how things were going with Sam, and he said, "Oh, we're good. I like KFC. He likes KFC. I'm not sure why we're not there right now." Turns out Austin is funny. And seems just about perfect for Sam. Shelley and I oversaw the hotpot ordering and kept it to beef and vegetables mainly (just shook my head when duck tongue,and chicken intestines came up.) Rumor is that the one girl who refused to go back to her host family on the second evening got pig brains on the first.

After dinner we went to watch Terminator 2 - the first English version American movie I've ever seen in a Nanchong theater (though I saw Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Taking of Pelham, and Avatar in Chinese). The slight discomfort at the glorification of violence aside, I enjoyed the movie immensely.

independence day

2010-05-12T23:56:00.001+08:00

My fierce little tiger watches the open balcony door for mosquitoes that she can hunt. I am watching Daily Shows from the first of April. The eighteen EMU students arrived in Nanchong tonight and I was pleasantly surprised by how, at least, they ate the tofu. Have my expectations really fallen that low? It's always so good to see Papa Myrrl, and I was swept with warm feelings of pride sitting in the back of the room while Leah introduced the school and gave a short orientation. As Myrrl said later, it feels a bit like family. Libby pushing herself around in the office chairs and Johnson leaning in to share the day's gossip.

At lunch Jeff talked about the NGO he's volunteering for - Raleigh International (the one Prince William? famously did a stint with). Jeff hopes to do one of the month-long leadership, community, and adventure "expeditions" this summer. He said some of his classmates worried that it might be a pyramid scheme, brainwashing thing. I felt slightly moved when he talked about his passion for students to "just know that there are people doing things other than just studying and getting a job" . . . he was inspired by a Nanjing student who'd taken a year off of college (something that's INCREDIBLY rare) and traveled to India with the program. But I felt removed from his excitement, and noticed how much my worldview has shifted these years away from NGO's and straight-up volunteering stuff. I get much more excited about the idea of gathering people around a viable business (and I'll soon find out if it can work) . . . or maybe it's just that I distrust and dislike working with anything that resembles an institution. Freedom in some form (though I think we usually end up sacrificing one kind of freedom for another).

Today is Sam's birthday. He turns thirteen. It's also the two-year anniversary of the earthquake, and the one-year anniversary of my liberation from a wrong relationship. I think I'll make a cake.

feel so loved

2010-05-12T10:54:00.001+08:00

Sunday morning Ricky Martin dropped by with mail. A big box from my mother with chocolate (homemade and otherwise), coffee and craisins (that I'd requested), and a pile of knitted dishcloths for the bakery, among other things. By strange coincidence, there was one from Justin as well. I left both of the packages untouched until I got home from Sam's in the afternoon. Then I tore off the paper and threw it on the floor like Christmas. I do not take days like these for granted.

Justin sent the China Mountain book he promises is good, and a cd - another mix by which I could count the years we've been friends. He says I started it, and I believe him, because I am good at starting things. I am less good at the continuing. When I visited Nanjing last spring retired kindergarten teacher Chen took me aside to talk about our common personality. She told me the story of her youth - how at 16 or 18, when they were being sent to rural areas for "reeducation", she chose the farthest place she could. She said her husband still doesn't really get it, and we laughed together at how we're drawn to risk. The drawback of our personality, she told me, is that "we've got a tiger's head, and a snake's tail." We're all enthusiastic and gung-ho at the beginning, but later our energy and commitment wanes.

And I think that's why I'm still here, sticking out this language and this place, and this bakery idea. There's the fun of the adventure, but also I'm trying to prove something, mainly to myself, about how I can follow through. Even if it's just in the sheer stubbornness of waiting it out.

Last week we finally found a shop to rent. Three different friends had told me to go check out this little milk-tea bar for students, and when Charity left Nanchong on the third (and final day of the labor day holiday) I finally did. The current owners have it decorated in low-key browns and black, with an almost-Western feel, and in the back I saw an unused tiled room begging to be a kitchen, so I started scheming. Sam's mom came back with me in the evening and we found out it was up for rent. Three days later we'd agreed on a price, and barring some major glitch, it will officially be ours in less than ten days. And then we start measuring days by money made (or lost).

In a strange coming round full circle kinda way, the bakery-to-be, on "Fish and Rice Alley", is just down the street from the medical college and from my first Nanchong apartment. All those bowls of pulled noodles with seaweed during the first lonely few years in . (The beautiful woman boss still nods at me when I walk by.) And on the corner just fifty feet down is the little bakery where I begged cheap margarine for years. (They used to be the only place open when I would come walking home from ZX's after midnight.) Directly across the street is the new thirty-three story apartment building - the construction of which I had such ambiguous feelings about when all the market vendors got kicked out onto the street and old women held a sit-down on the corner. Funny how easily ambiguity disappears when you start thinking in terms of profit. The development has turned the street into a much more attractive place. Three years ago we would never have considered it as a location for what we hope to do. But now it's there, and here we go.

simple foods and xuanchuan

2010-02-24T23:12:00.001+08:00

I make a beautiful bowl of noodles for lunch. Take the styrofoam boxes from the fridge - leftovers from a jibao dinner exactly one week ago. Sniff at the glob of chicken, mushrooms and fat to be sure it has not gone bad. Plop it upside down into a ceramic bowl and microwave for 30 seconds. It still holds the shape of the box, but begins to smell like something delicious. Start the water boiling on the stove and then completely forget it while you write a birthday email to a friend. Remember, and return to the kitchen to slide a pinch of dried noodles down into the water. Nibble on a broken piece of dried noodle, register the taste of "jian" - baking soda. Finish heating up the chicken mixture 'til it steams and juices run. Pull out a few noodles at a time and dangle them into your mouth to test for doneness. Turn off the heat and pile the noodles on top of the chicken. Mix it all together. I think I will eat exactly the same thing for lunch tomorrow.

My benefactor-family most recently gave me a soymilk making machine. And a bag of dried soybeans and brown rice. I'd seen the machines sold, but never really paid much attention. They're very specialized, and very specific. Certain levels of water, and certain levels of beans. You can do banana shakes and stuff, but mostly, you just make soymilk. It's quite wonderful first thing in the morning. These days my mind spins with pictures and instructions for lemon layer cake and chocolate souffle cupcakes. The simplicity of the thick, warm drink is a welcome change. I find myself agreeing more and more when people tell me, as they have been doing for years, how much better the Chinese diet is than the American. Friends have suggested that I can increase bread sales by convincing mothers that wheat is better than rice for their kids. Will help them grow strong and smart like westerners.

Johnson and DB spent seven hours today sitting in the center of an apartment complex with a table, a turtle suit, a couple of signs, and a whole bunch of brochures. I showed up at 5:30 and left at 6:00. Most of the families are still away for the holidays, we were told. Two-thirds still gone, they said, which surprised us. The few kids there were came to try on the turtle head, and to see me. I spoke to them in a mixture of language, and they whirled to ask Johnson, in the turtle body, what I'd said. They were skeptical about DB's status as a teacher, when they figured out he doesn't know English.

Dinner with CJ, and we talked, as is usual recently, of traditional culture and all she is excited about - Taoism, Fengshui, and the Book of Changes. When their teacher is back from Shanghai, they eat lunch in his house with his mother, father, wife, and child, then sit around drinking tea and talking about these things. He is teaching them a standing meditation pose. She is a new driver, and I try to ignore her ignoring the traffic lanes on the drive home. We listen to a cd of Sigur Ros, Regina and The Weepies that I made for her.

one good turn

2010-01-08T21:26:00.001+08:00

On the street of the wholesale market yesterday a man pulled the wallet out of my small bag. I immediately sensed what had happened, and grabbed a fistful of his coat as I yelled. He threw the wallet on the ground and calmly walked away while my heart beat with receding fear and growing anger. There were no police or guards in sight; all I could do was watch him continue down the street and fade into the crowd. No doubt he would succeed before the afternoon was up.

In September I lost about 1000 RMB on a Chengdu bus. I felt the bump, but the bus was absolutely packed, and I thought nothing of it until we got off and I found my bag gaping open and the money gone. The other passengers must have watched as the thief opened not one, but two zippers to reach the wad of money. I have no idea how he knew it was there. After I shed a few tears back at the hostel, I swore to Justin that I would make the money back by selling bread and cakes in Nanchong. On National Day we made a few hundred selling bright red Chinese flag sugar cookies, but still my vow goes unfulfilled.

The woman who sold me the cake pan and decorating turntable peppered me with questions about what I would use them for. When she knew that I was seriously considering a bakery she joked about how I, "plan to make money off the Nanchong people," and I joked back that that was exactly my plan. "Good!" she said, "then I'll make money off you!"

"好！可以!" I laughed.

side ventures

2010-01-04T18:22:00.001+08:00

On the last day of the year I winterized my house. A quilt hung over the big bedroom window and pages from old MCC calendars taped over the bathroom door vent. The kindergartners had New Year's performances, so I got to sleep into the dense morning fog. At midnight we toasted Karen with Phil's crappy sweet red wine. We sang Auld Lang Syne, badly, in the hallway, a terror, as always, to our neighbors. Then we sent Shelley off to party like a cool kid and we watched a movie.

On the first day of the year there was sun, and groups of fathers and children playing badminton by the empty apartments. It's good to be a teacher, we all say. Two long vacations a year, and the work in between still leaves you plenty of time to hang out with your family. Or possibly open a business on the side.

Fish was to come to Nanchong at Christmas. Then it was New Year's, then today. He called yesterday afternoon to push it to Friday. He'll spend his real two days off helping a friend. Something about preparation for the graduate entrance exam. He'll have to take two extra days off from work, but this is the friend who gave him answers so he could pass the dentist licensing exam.

baby oranges

2009-12-11T21:18:00.001+08:00

I hope that the pen that I accidently stole from the kindergarten yesterday came from the same classroom where I accidently left the big apple and the big orange. Big apple as compared to small apple. Big orange, small orange. Big book, small book. Is it big? Yes, it is! Is it big? No, it's SMALL! So much fun.

Nearly three months in I can still say I love kindergartners. Most of the time. When I walked into the first class of three-year-olds yesterday I caught my breath at their adorableness. They are so adorable. Every Thursday morning I see six different classes on two different campuses within the space of two hours. It's quite a rush. I'm still figuring out the best way to entertain, control, and hopefully teach something to twenty or thirty (and sometimes even forty) 3-5 year olds. Those teachers are saints. Though you can feel a few are harried, and the difference when you walk into a classroom exuding warmth and calm.

Nanchong Baby

2009-12-02T23:38:00.001+08:00

It's been heart-achingly beautiful out, when the morning fog clears, and I've slipped down the steep muddy banks of the river to watch the sunset, and ridden my bike all around the campus looking for love. Shelley and I arranged to meet for a short (but wild) frisbee toss. Mmmm, Sunday afternoon. There were nine boys playing volleyball like they knew how, and I made ten. They let me serve a bunch, and every one flew true, but I didn't get close to the front row, apart from my faithful block-covering 马步. I may as well not have been there since they missed few hits. They set high and the outside hitter cooly switched his cigarette from his hand to his mouth before the approach.

A yoga teacher from India talked about smoking that evening in a first-floor classroom decorated with pink balloons. He confirmed that we (and the boys especially, since they're the smokers in China) know it's bad for us, and then asked why we still do it. Like all the other things we know are bad for our bodies and still do. Like the delicious cranberry scones that I made this morning and shared with Shelley and Phil and Hainan coffee. Two and a half teaspoons of margarine, almost a teaspoon of sugar, and a whole lot of cream in each one. For five years I've been listening to Chinese people, and mainly middle-aged woman, talk to me about food, and health, and I'm starting to listen.

When Kathi came from Beijing we talked about eating whole foods instead of the derived nutrients and "enriched cereals" we Americans try to pass off as healthful. This time of year people in Sichuan eat a lot of sweet potatoes. Street vendors roast them over coal in a fifty-gallon barrel and sell them when they're so soft and caramelized you eat them walking home straight out of the little plastic bag. People cut sweet potatoes into chunks and steam them along with the rice, piling them into the bowl with the reminder that they're very "nutritious". And rarely more than that; there's no explanation of vitamins or minerals, or fiber, just, "Yogurt helps digestion. Dates are good for women. The chicken broth is full of nutrition. Bitter melon is good for you. Here, have more."

brewing

2009-10-31T02:48:00.001+08:00

This is a start.

In the afternoon I drank tea. Really, really good 铁观音 from high on a bedroom shelf in Sam's house. His mom insisted on sending it home with me a few weeks ago when she found out I liked it. After this incredible search to find the right stuff. She climbed up on the ladder and pulled out all the boxes. Fancy gifts in fancy oversized packaging, tea and alcohol and who knows what else, all of it looking appropriately expensive cradled in the red and gold fabrics. Five minutes in, I found she and the aiyi in the unused bedroom juggling boxes. I instinctively jumped to catch the one that fell to the floor, and made a few attempts to dissuade them from the trouble . . . but in the end I left them there because I could see that's what she wanted.

Then coffee with Johnson at SPR so we could go over his IVEP application.

These are probably the reasons that I'm still wide awake at 3, surfing baking websites and trying to keep a promise.

last saturday's joy

2009-05-02T13:42:00.004+08:00

Shuai Ye

2009-04-30T11:26:00.000+08:00

It's better to walk to the yoga place - find yourself five minutes away at 10 when the class is to begin - and back, than to not go out at all, I think. In the park I met Teacher Liu with his wife and granddaughter, and another erhu player who urged me to pick the instrument up occasionally so as not to lose the skills. I think I've already lost the skills, I told him. Nonsense, he said. You can't lose them, they're still there in your head.

nothing wrong with that

2009-04-25T11:13:00.003+08:00

Yesterday I bought an electronic (sorry Tim, but I AM still grinding my coffee by hand?!) scale. Back at the tiny shop that I'd found before. The exceptionally friendly boss recognized me right away. Her husband was there this time, and funny! He thought I was English. I said US. He said, mmm, the US and England "耍得很好" (play well - the way you talk about the relationship between close friends or a couple). I laughed hard with them and found myself opening up when they asked the usual questions. I'm not married, but I have a boyfriend. He's from Nanchong. "Does he treat you well?" the immediate question from the woman. And then the usual about how Sichuan men “下厨房” (enter the kitchen) and are "怕耳朵" (fear being pulled around by their ears). I avoided the potential extent of that conversation, and let myself delight instead, in how she loved his jokes. I didn't really get any more after that first one, but I enjoyed them all, watching her eyes light up as she laughed.

we two both foreigners here

2009-04-24T22:09:00.002+08:00

I take it as a compliment that the couldn't-have-been-13-year-old (he claimed he was 15) overdid the grilling of the two tiny lamb kebabs . . . we were having such a fine time chatting. American movies and such. When I climbed up out of the underground Uni-mart, he had taken off his belt and was swinging it like numchucks, but quickly held it down beside him when he realized I was going to be a customer.

We talked, me open and gently prodding, his curiosity getting the best of him. He was born here, but it's obvious that Mandarin is not his first language. Mine neither. It took us long minutes to try to communicate simple ideas. At first I mistook his shyness for disgust; he would turn his head down and away when I utterly missed the point. . . . but I was in that mood where laughter comes freely, and in the end we were friends.

every American has a dream

2009-04-21T15:56:00.006+08:00

My students still don't have their textbooks, so I'm scrapping the whole idea of loosely following the content. I'm searching online for that poem about sweeping. How it is the cure for every ill. Justin had it scrawled on his kitchen, white tiles in Wanzhou.

The other day Phil and I were trying to piece together our memories of the Wanzhou trips . . . piece together enough to separate the train rides and bus rides, tacos and icecream turkeys, sleeping on Justin's couches or where did we stay? a Thanksgiving, an Easter, hikes to the mountains, a terrible awkward birthday party we never wanted to attend, the Tujia pizzas, that time I cried the whole weekend about making Johnny move out. Memories that involve Scott and Emily, Jen, Christina. We never went after Justin left, did we?

Couldn't find the sweeping poem, but I found this one. Which I like very much.

Like Lilly Like Wilson
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

I'm writing the poem that will change the world,
and it's Lilly Wilson at my office door.
Lilly Wilson, the recovering like addict,
the worst I've ever seen.
So, like, bad the whole eighth grade
started calling her Like Lilly Like Wilson Like.
ŒUntil I declared my classroom a Like-Free Zone,
and she could not speak for days.

But when she finally did, it was to say,
Mr. Mali, this is . . . so hard.
Now I have to think before I . . . say anything.

Imagine that, Lilly.

It's for your own good.
Even if you don't like . . .
it.

I'm writing the poem that will change the world,
and it's Lilly Wilson at my office door.
Lilly is writing a research paper for me
about how homosexuals shouldn't be allowed
to adopt children.
I'm writing the poem that will change the world,
and it's Like Lilly Like Wilson at my office door.

She's having trouble finding sources,
which is to say, ones that back her up.
They all argue in favor of what I thought I was against.

And it took four years of college,
three years of graduate school,
and every incidental teaching experience I have ever had
to let out only,

Well, that's a real interesting problem, Lilly.
But what do you propose to do about it?
That's what I want to know.

And the eighth-grade mind is a beautiful thing;
Like a new-born baby's face, you can often see it
change before your very eyes.

I can't believe I'm saying this, Mr. Mali,
but I think I'd like to switch sides.

And I want to tell her to do more than just believe it,
but to enjoy it!
That changing your mind is one of the best ways
of finding out whether or not you still have one.
Or even that minds are like parachutes,
that it doesn't matter what you pack
them with so long as they open
at the right time.
O God, Lilly, I want to say
you make me feel like a teacher,
and who could ask to feel more than that?
I want to say all this but manage only,
Lilly, I am like so impressed with you!

So I finally taught somebody something,
namely, how to change her mind.
And learned in the process that if I ever change the world
it's going to be one eighth grader at a time.

2009-04-19T22:14:00.003+08:00

Trying to meet up with Charity in the big station is the first exercise of many during the trip in challenging cell phone culture. My "little smart phone" only works in Sichuan province . . . and we ain't in Sichuan anymore. I use a public phone to call Charity and tell her I'll wait at the Northeast exit. But when I climb up and out the exit is complicated, with three floors. I choose the middle one, and wait. The weather is much colder than I brought clothes for. Wind. I watch the other waiters play with their many-featured cell phones, wonder if I could charm them into letting me send her a message.

When she doesn't come I wonder nervously downstairs to see her (I think it's her) squinting at a map of the station. She begins to walk away, and I follow after, disturbed by how unsure I am that it is her. When I touch her shoulder to turn her around, our reunion is underwhelming, like meetings of loved ones here are. I don't hug her, though I want to.

She has come more than an hour to the train station to meet me, but she dismisses her own hospitality, saying, "I've never seen the Shanghai South Train Station" - a backwards excuse we delight in making to our friends. No one ever means exactly what they say and you're not SUPPOSED to take anything at face value.

We bus back out to the outlying district of Shanghai where she is stuck in (forgive me) nothing of a life. Just work (and nothing to hold her there) and trying to make it another year or two when the college loans will be paid off and she can return to Sichuan. An older cousin and his family but she doesn't see them often. No money to go out on the weekends. No ping-pong in the common room because someone would call her boyfriend and tell him she's hanging out with other guys. You could mistake the place for any small city, China. We spend two days between the hotel room they have rented for me and the restaurants where we eat lunch and dinner with her boyfriend, who is nice, and gentlemanly in every patronizing way. She stays with me at the hotel and finally we have someone to whom we can tell everything.

On the second night we gang up on her boyfriend about the dinner choice. We want dumplings. He wants to go back to the same Sichuan restaurant where we had (granted, a very tasty) lunch. We win. The dumplings are terrible. I buy microwave popcorn and we go back to the hotel to watch TV.

losing trains

2009-04-10T16:34:00.007+08:00

I once loved trains. The rocking sleep, the instant noodles, the intimacy of strangers taking turns at the window seat and stumbling on each other's shoes in the night. I've crawled all over this country on her trains (though only twice outside the comfort of the hard sleeper).

Dr. Wang hates trains. He took too many as a student, back when you had to fight your way on and maybe even through the windows. He'll drive himself, and take the cost and stress and inconvenience over those emotional memories any day. I always understood . . . but also felt no small self-satisfaction at my preference for trains.

And this time it was supposed to be the same. I bought puffed rice cakes, oranges, bottles of tea, packed the sudoku bathroom reader and study materials for the settle-in. I didn't fear the stretching out hours, though everyone but ZX and his parents said I was crazy. A few hundred kuai more and you'd be there, they said increduously, when they'd done the math.

But I chose thirty-eight, and a five-minute walk around the corner to the station. ZX argues with the woman guarding the gate to let him in, too stubborn to buy the platform ticket. But the whole place is remodeled, shiny; there are free-standing boards with the new rules posted, and she is staunch. I am sure he is just letting off the unsettled tension of me leaving for tend days and neither of us feel good, or even sure about it.

The train came from Chengdu and the boarding was sweaty and trying. All of us from Nanchong in two or three cars, no empty bunks, and everybody trying to shove their three or four big bags under the seats or in the small space overhead. I had to wait to get into my compartment. Then there were two small babies.

I reacted badly, said something sarcastic aloud about how great it was that there were two . . . and later felt bad because they turned out to be really great babies, nothing like the five-year-old spoiled boy one compartment down. They were three and five months, and their mothers were sister-in-laws. True country folk. Great patient women.

At seven o'clock in the evening on the second day it's all a haze. The stainless steel food car coming by again. The babies feeding again. The little boy is a man at three years old. He wears grey long underwear and brown man's dress shoes in his size. Mama follows him to the bathroom. Outside the window the yellow flowers of the youcai everywhere. The graduate student is traveling to Shanghai and Suzhou to spend a few months. She and her mother, who wears skin-tight pants painted to look like jeans. She does her make-up on the second day for no one but us.

It's the third morning that gets to me. We are all ancy as it is, and the spoiled little man argues for a hotdog until, and even after, it's promised. I haven't talked to the other passengers like I used to when my Chinese was crappy. I feel so alone, like I'm floating suspended in between yet more of these worlds, and will never belong. I know the three mothers are having a conversation about the suffering of women, but they are down on the bottom bunks talking too low for me to hear. I can't remember it ever feeling so long, and think I'll not take another long one like this alone.

so mom knows where I live

2009-04-09T13:24:00.008+08:00

For a few days we thought maybe we'd have to move out of this apartment. And if I haven't made it clear, I love this apartment. Especially in the spring. And summer and fall. The big open air windows. The street down below. I literally can lean over the balcony railing and look down upon the vegetables that I might consider making into dinner. The landlord's mother, who was going to move in, will now stay with another daughter. I am left with relief, and an even deeper appreciation for this place.

The view from the front balcony (and some cinnamon rolls).

february

2009-04-08T21:10:00.000+08:00

This is what I will remember of late February:

opening The Land of Women each noon.

slipping into the mist-swept fields and emotions.

discovering Fiona's trembling hunger as my own.

The irony of this book of deepest longing

in this month of longest waiting.

a Lenten discipline unspoken and barely conscious.

It is his, not mine.

I am left with only this desire,

doubt, and emptiness to hold.

sunday tulips and table tennis

2009-03-25T19:56:00.006+08:00

Sam (the boy I tutor) and his parents took me out to West Mountain on Sunday morning.

My adorable student . . . and the flower he eventually found for me.

He looked for a really long time for a fallen one.

I got creamed by the long-underwear-clad twelve-year-olds.

The girls were shy, and apparently just delighted to be watching.

When I got tired of table tennis, I went back to the edge of the lake to drink tea with Sam's mom, who, it turns out, used to run a teahouse/coffeeshop that served Western food. Helpful conversation. And she's just nice. Father is also gentle and kind. He works for city planning . . . and manages to squeeze his car pretty well between the commoner folk hiking on foot up the not-so-wide mountain roads. They're good parents, and demand of Sam an above-average level of consideration for others. They have a woman who cooks and cleans for them, Sam's mom tells me, but she still asks Sam to wash his own clothes. She wants him to learn to 动手 ("move his hands").

saturday

2009-03-08T22:31:00.003+08:00

Cinnamon rolls in the morning and Phil's birthday hotpot in the evening. And in the middle there was the strength of a three-legged skype conversation and the leisure of long sun on the balcony as we chatted and shelled peanuts. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of those.

I just sit back and enjoy

2009-03-04T13:33:00.008+08:00

I quickly learned that the eight AM class needs SOMETHING right away unless I just want to stare into sleepy faces for the first half an hour of class . . . and this morning, the "ice-breaker" role-play worked nicely. The girl with the big spiky hair was easily my favorite, as I think she might continue to be. Her eyes crinkle closed when she smiles or laughs and she was doing a lot of both when her partner - a male classmate with a much smaller measure of both English and confidence - wasn't quite understanding the details of the situation. At "Sarah's birthday party" she asked, "Is she your cousin, too?" and laughed with abandon when he gave a confused nod. But not without kindness. Between the bursts of mirth, she coaxed him, "You should say, 'No, she's not my cousin. She's my co-worker.'" I watched from the edge of the deskrow, scattering supportive smiles and nods with my own barely-reserved laughter. And again, when the same girl, acting in front of the whole class, leaned up against the wall with a fake cigarette. The class was delighted with her audacity (smoking is much more a man's thing in China) and, I think, the sense of "cool" that emanated from her nonchalance. They laughed harder when she offered a cigarette to the other girl in the roleplay, though I doubt they were laughing, like me, at how she'd asked if she needed "some fire." I forgot how fun this can be.

为了梦中的橄榄树

2009-02-25T18:07:00.008+08:00

There are (relatively) cheap new apartments way out in the middle of nowwhere going on sale at the end of this month and ZX's parents want to buy one for him. Which is pretty normal; parents buy apartments for their kids if they can afford it. But ZX's mad about the high prices of the housing market in general and says even if he had the money, he wouldn't buy a house, on principle. And he doesn't want them to buy one for him. You could start ten businesses with that money, he says.

And when we meet HF (who buys and sells houses for a living) for tea in the park, he's on our side. Don't buy a new house, he says. There's the added cost of the interior decoration, and the location's terrible. Buy a used apartment downtown - a good location, and already decorated, for a sixth of the cost.

When they ask me what I think, I say, "I'm a wanderer, what do I want with a house?" At the price we're renting now, it would take us 100 years, literally, to make even a low-priced apartment pay off. And for now we're happy with our open-air, plaster-peeling, pull the lights on with a string little place. Homemade strawberry jam tastes just as sweet here, and it's still no chore to squeeze by him to get to the sink.

high hopes for this one

2009-02-23T17:55:00.002+08:00

The boy is relieved that his tutor will be a woman. Because they're, you know, not as "fierce-stern" as men. He is not shy but also very smart, and that makes me happy because it will be easier. His mother is obviously rich but also very sweet, and that makes me happy because, while I have and will work for real jerks, I prefer nice people.

The father is not present, and I guess he will likely remain a mystery. When we're exchanging info the boy whispers to his mother, "Don't give him my dad's number," and later when we leave the teahouse together he tells me - in Mandarin - how his father takes him to school and picks him up everyday in the car . . . and how he envies the classmates he sees walking home by themselves.

He promises to teach me to skateboard. Then he tells me that he thinks I speak the best Mandarin of any foreigner. I think he probably means "in the world." He's twelve. (His frame of reference includes one foreigner who taught in the English training school last summer). But still, who says I don't like kids?

early fruits

2009-02-21T15:32:00.007+08:00

The tiny kitchen where I'm learning to bake bread.

My second attempt at ciabatta. I felt more comfortable with the wet dough, and it did turn out a bit better . . . but still a long way to go!

Almost everything possible is broken on this old, stolen, well-traveled oven. But it still bakes!

The poolish baguettes made me proud. Textured flavor, cool crumb, crispy crust. Yay!

I would've bought all the lemons for one picture

2009-02-19T20:53:00.008+08:00

The bagels turned out less than perfect. But they're bagels, I tell myself. My first try. And look at the oven I have to work with! A real bakery with a real oven, ZX and I agree, is going to feel like heaven after three bagels at a time in the boiling pot and the baking pan.

Meanwhile the freshman are so easy and fun that I'm asking for more classes. Willingly hanging around after the bell with patient smiles and the expected advice . . . but in the end I sail back into my anonymous life in the city. Where every day people I meet - the McDonald's workers waiting in line in the women's bathroom, the teenage girl and her father come to Nanchong to visit relatives, the girls selling dried snacks on the street - are friends for a few minutes. But it's not like I can invite them over for dinner.

On the busy market sidewalk this evening, one basket held less than ten lemons, and some ginger root. Behind the basket, the seller sat, but he was half-turned away, fully absorbed in a game of chess (or something like it) with another old man. Normal street activity. Like the crowd of seven or so clustered around the regular game down the street. They'll be there all day, only thin out later in the evening, and the die-hards will stay into the wee hours of the morning. Down the street they've got a real board though, and stools, to go with their real players and their real audience. Here behind the lemons there are just a few scratched lines on the sidewalk, and torn bits of lemon and orange peel to serve as pieces. Just two old men, but no less a game of chess.

it'll grow

2009-02-17T19:03:00.007+08:00

ZX was invited over by the American (and Canadian) students for dinner, but I felt weird crashing the party again (even though it means third night in a row eating alone). So after a scary ride home after class in the private (read: illegal) van-taxi-bus thing and not buying fake perfume by the gate of the old campus, I ducked into the 送包子 by the school for some xifan and cold dishes.

It was busy and they plopped my metal bowl down beside a mother (her son across the table) who had some sort of relationship with the money-collecting aiyi. There was a slight scene when mom wanted to pay that involved aiyi forcing the purse back down onto her lap and lots of discussion about who would be more embarrassed . . . In the end there was a five-yuan compromise - so she'd at least be left with enough face to come back some other time.

Meanwhile the little boy (he's in second grade) has been scooping loads of xifan into his mouth, and has emptied the mushroom plate. He's picked up the plate and looks like he might just march over to get more. Argument done. The mother fakes embarrassment but laughs affectionately, with the aiyi, who's taking the plate to get it refilled. Aren't kids great? Later he asks me how to spell his name in English and what places I've been to. I tell him Thailand (that's a country) and Beijing and when he prompts me to keep going his mother says, "She's been to lots of places that you've never heard of. Now keep eating." Earlier she'd been telling him not to lick his fingers. "This foreigner is going to see you doing that and say, 'this is what little Chinese boys are like!'"

The other day I was checking out a bakery near the center of town, one of the nice ones, and suddenly this bagged roll falls off it's plexiglass shelf and onto the floor. There was no one near it, so we all kinda laughed quietly, and the fuyuan put it back. One minute later, it falls again, and we (I, at least) laugh loudly. And this time when the fuyuan puts it back she mutters with perfect dry humor, 它不给我面子 - It won't give me face!

I've been making it my habit to stroll through every bakery I see. You know, research. Since I am newly poor (relative to before, at least, when I was a "volunteer") everything seems ridiculously expensive and I manage to restrain myself. I prefer the little misshapen cakes from ZX's market street. The ones you buy by the pound, or for one yuan, instead of five. The crispy sesame cookies that get tossed in one of those thinner-than-thin plastic bags (production of which was supposedly stopped a year ago) instead of coming all hard plastic binned or shiny plastic bagged.

On the other hand, it's encouraging to see a growing diversity of baked goods being produced (and bought) in Nanchong. When he was in high school, says ZX, there were just a few bakeries in the whole town. Now there are bakeries - and nice ones - on every corner.

And oh, Regina Spektor. Oh my, she sings pretty.

friday night there were roses

2009-02-14T08:22:00.008+08:00

Up at five and six to manipulate hunks of dough make it feel like I'm working hard, but then at 7 and 8 I'm back in bed with that giant tattered gray sweatshirt that once was Robbie's and the laptop, appropriately, on my lap.

As expected, the teaching schedule has been changed one week in and Tuesday I will have an unknown percentage of new students and never see again an unknown percentage of the old ones. They rearranged everything so the classes are thirty-some rather than forty-some. Which is really good. The slightly more questionable detail is how one class gets four straight periods on Thursday afternoon. That's 2:30 - 5:30 and a heck of a lot of oral English. We're going to have to do yoga in the middle or something. I can't really imagine that it will work well. I pushed a bit to see if schedules could be switched, but Mr. Z the secretary wasn't budging.

LW and a cousin talked and talked and talked over tea by the river. ZX listened, mostly, and occasionally wondered over to stare at the water. I pulled my chair out into direct bright sun and studied radicals. Thought I should like to tell Tim about 思, which is a field over a heart, and means to consider or miss deeply.

After xifan at ZX's parents' we lingered a bit longer than usual in the dining room drinking in the warm, scented air of spring by the window. The TV showed long shots of HuJintao being greeted in Mali by great cheering crowds. The Chinese expats and then Malians dancing on the sides of the street. We didn't actually hear how much money had been loaned, only that it is interest free, and probably includes plenty of infrastructure projects (for Chinese contractors and workers to complete, of course). ZX's father said with humor, "My money goes to Africa, and your money goes to the banks in the US" . . . then tied on the apron and moved into the kitchen to wash the dishes.

all these good things

2009-02-12T20:50:00.004+08:00

My sweet boy cooked dinner and washed the dishes after we got back from the mountain tired, and put on the new headphones he bought exactly for this reason, so while he is on the computer I can enjoy the night sounds, and the sound of the erhu somebody is playing drift in the open door.

And this morning he and ZG went out and bought a wireless router and set it all up for me. I hugged ZG, who accepted it gracefully, and took us over to the medical college in his car.

It was a gorgeous day, once the morning fog burned away. I especially loved the return bike ride after the afternoon class. The street shared with other riders and walkers. The green off the sides of the little bridges. The first class went well, though, as always, there's a steep remembering curve about how to speak slowly and how much less they can handle than you imagined.

new path

2009-02-10T20:41:00.001+08:00

An old racing bike, a destination (and a purpose) of my own, and sun after two days of none. We went to see the old bike guy on YiXueJie (though the shop is a new one I didn't know, down the road). He's worked on at least four different bikes for me, and always works for almost nothing. Raise the seat and they both think it's too high. But it's just how I like it. And there are curved handlebars and all. The hole-in-the-wall jewelry shop owner stopped me to say hello. Explained that her shop was closed for the holiday until next week but wouldn't I come by? And could she have my phone number? I told her I didn't have on yet, my first lie. "What if she asks again?" I worried for a minute. Then I realized that she won't.

In the afternoon I loaded mildew-smelling clothes into a duffel bag and headed out on the bike for Karen's apartment. She had soft cushions on the coach and stories of spring festival travel to laugh to.

in my new life, I blog every day

2009-02-09T20:33:00.000+08:00

The apartment is smaller than I remember, but there's a freezer full of xiangchang, and it's so good to be starting the new life, finally. By this second morning the suitcases are unpacked and coffee is going. I set the school desk out on the balcony where the sounds of the street almost manage to overpower iTunes at full volume. Classes could begin as early as tomorrow, but I haven't been in touch yet with Y at the foreign affairs office. ZX's mother says I can buy whole wheat flour from the little cart at the gate of this building. She calls ZX's cousin back to try to convince her to come to the house to see us. We laugh at her enthusiasm, and again later, when SanJie calls us to say we should go out instead. She and her husband are near forty, roosters like me, but look so much younger. Except for his eyes, where you can see the work harder than he wants to at his research job with the oil company. They were classmates in elementary school. They live in Shandong but come back each Spring Festival to see their parents.

planes and things

2009-02-08T20:22:00.001+08:00

ZX sleeps, burning off the cold I think I brought from the plane. How do you travel twelve hours in that tiny space with a couple hundred other people (some of them sneezing) and not pick up something? The tiny Chinese woman in the seat in front of me bounced constantly (to keep up her circulation, I'm sure) leaned forward and swayed back and forth until I wanted to smack her. I was trying to watch Sex and the City and then The Banquet. I listened surreptitiously to the couple who shared the middle four seats and thought I might go the whole way without speaking to them. the woman alternated between sudoku puzzles she'd clipped from newspapers and sleeping stretched out across the empty seat between she and I, her own seat, and her husband's lap. They were affectionate in a way that I'm not used to seeing in China. When the man finally asked me if I was going to Beijing to travel, I answered that no, I was going home, without explanation. He and she were both Beijingers, who led tours for Americans, and so kind. the winter season isn't that busy, so they'd spent three weeks traveling in the US.

ZX was at the Chongqing airport, along with his friend ZG, who had driven his old black sedan. He stepped from the crowd saying, "Laoshi hao!", his hands jammed in the pockets of his trench coat, and his eyes that are never quite serious. They'd come up on the two lanes, ZX explained as we tried to navigate the maze of concrete that would point us toward home. Like my father, ZG prefers the back roads, and they don't have to pay the tolls. The natural gas tank takes up most of the room in the trunk, so I slept beside my big suitcase in the backseat and it only cost 25 yuan to fill up when we stopped halfway home. So ridiculously cheap. ZG asked why we don't use natural gas in the US? "We don't have that much?" I suggested. ZX said, "because Americans like to spend money."

one home for another

2009-02-07T20:11:00.000+08:00

Ryan and Christen took the morning off to take me out for breakfast and drop me off at the BART. I shouldn't have been surprised at their selflessness - the characteristic that has surprised me over and over again these three weeks that I've squatted in their kitchen, pulling out the foldout couch mattress at night, hopping up on the bed and squaring up my shoulders with theirs to watch Jon Stewart and the Office on the laptop.

Christen shifted her day off to today, and after we hugged goodbye drove then the hour with Ryan to work, where they would spend the night and she'd have the commute in the morning for a change. I love this couple who have learned, as much as anyone I know, to think outside the boxes. Move into the VW van for the two interim summer months. It snowed the first night, but later htere were plenty of sky blue lakes to reward long hikes. They hosted evne in that small space, and still seem to think of the Sierras as "theirs." Ryan, eXpecially, loves the land. Like John Muir and Wendell Berry, with a sense of stepping into the slow movement of centuries.

At Holly and Andrew's we all fit onto the wide couch with mugs and cookies and turned off the lights to watch Being Caribou with proper awe. As a twelve-year-old, I thought nature documentaries were so lame, but last night it was as exciting as any feature film, maybe more. The story of a sweet young couple and their six month trek in Alaska wilderness after the migrating caribou. The calving lands near the coast - threatened by US oil-hunger - still looked quiet and remote in their footage. There was warped time and dreams that held in reality, and when canoeing out they bumped into the Gwich'en hunter who'd sent them off, and I felt flare in me the desire to believe. In DC no Congressperson seemed to care, but at least a small George W. had been there to see it all.

slow ferment

2009-02-03T01:28:00.005+08:00

It feels good to sit in the kitchen waiting for the ciabatta loaves to finish their final proof, and the onions for tomorrow's "Roasted Onion and Asiago Miche" to finish roasting. Ryan and Christen do food like I want to - bright vegetables from grocery stores that feel like markets; oatmeal and flour and dried cranberries scooped from the big plastic bulk food bins. Homemade salsa and homemade hummus. The food processor stays out on the tiny counter that wasn't big enough for a toaster.

Fresh bread we sometimes buy and slowly I've been attempting to make it. I created my own wild yeast (the Bay area's supposed to have an extraordinary strain) starter, and after babying it for a week, it's finally ready to start going into bread. The first sourdough loaves will be ready to shape within the hour.

Christen's off for most of the afternoon, and we catch a few NPR shows between job-searching and cooking and laundry and dishes, but nothing to Ryan's seven hours each day. We laugh at his intensity over dinner. Last night we went back to the class on suffering at the Presbyterian church. It was suggested that the kingdom of God might be built with a lot of laughter. We all thought we ought to work on that.

Another glitch in the visa-getting. John from the visa-service in DC said the embassy sent it back to them asking for the original documents . . . which were attached. He said he's submitting it again - this time for one-day service. I think about the prayer in Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, which was actually a petition to the Universe, and think I might try. I'm signing you all on.

up, up, and up

2009-02-01T11:36:00.007+08:00

Three out of the last four days on the hill to watch the sun set over the bay - not too shabby, even if it did take me 'til this week to get up there. This afternoon there were all sorts of people out. A wild and gray-haired auntie talking adult with the not yet teenage girl who held onto the back of her shirt as they hiked. Two men and little matching black and white speckled dogs, one of which was scared of me. The golden retriever puppy ignored my outstretched hand and got reprimanded by his owner. "Luca, come back here and say hello to this girl!" he scolded. Later we passed again and he said, "Look Luca, it's the girl you ignored before!" The shirtless man who jogs in hiking pants and boots and long gray hair and beard greeted me when he passed. On Wednesday evening he was the tiny figure picking his way down into the jaws of the great gorge. The bigness of the trees and the hills, and the littleness of the man. The scene was a Chinese painting. On Friday I saw it again and Ryan said he could see it too.

This afternoon I came from around the hill and scrambled down and down near the big tree and down into the cover of the brush and then up just as the orange sun was being squashed into the city haze by the line of smog overtop. I hurried up the path past the blanket holding members of multiple small-kid-families. Past the guy set up with his camera and tripod on a boulder facing out over the city. I liked that he gestured meaningfully toward the horizon, concerned that I was just going to walk on by. I smiled and sat down to watch.

C.S. Lewis wrote we are kids who refuse a trip to the beach because we're content making our mudpies. He was thinking about sin, and grace, and GOD!!! I think. I'm just thinking about life, about every day that I wake up and the world's offering me these chances, but it's just that - an offer - and no one's gonna make me do anything at all. There've been a lot of those days recently. Sometimes I choose to go out and see. Sometimes I fail.

I realized recently though (with surprise) that I haven't done a single Sudoku since I left Harrisonburg. Nope, not true. None except for the one I found on the single sheet of newspaper on a street near Chinatown. It had been used for sitting and was dimpled all over with the sidewalk impression. I bought a $1.00 bottle of fake orange juice to sit in the little bakery and filled in the numbers easy while I tried to figure out what language they were speaking.

Chinatown, as expected, was significantly not-familiar, because everything there is Cantonese, or dialects a lot like it. I did buy a bag of fresh green beans for $.90 at a tiny little market-grocery. Smiled to myself at being pressed in the line for the counter with all the aiyi's.

Today I almost convinced myself it'd be just as good to sit in the little backyard soaking up the sunshine comes in just as hard. With Zantu on my lap, stretching into every caress. (I thought, "I want a husband who craves my touch like this cat.") Reading about biga, poolish, sourdough again. I could have stayed contented.

But I put on my Chacos and found Arden steps and climbed up and up and up, and then up the steepest, sharpest hill in the history of everything, I'm sure. Lots of other people climbed up there too, but that didn't stop me from feeling pretty great about it. When I stood at the top and breathed my weight down into my feet-roots, and up through my straight hard back, stretching, breathing, it wasn't even happiness like a surge but happiness like underwater don't move and feel the water quiet around your legs.

Is the first line of Regina's "Samson" not the most beautiful line in such a long time? It floated just under my breath the whole walk. The towering Eucalyptus dropping it's bark reminded me again how different this place feels. Different from the American landscape that I know.

and here I am

2009-01-28T02:31:00.004+08:00

It's New Year's Day and I'm wishing I could be on a plane back to China (as the plan went) instead of wandering another afternoon down the hill toward gorgeous blue bay water (what is wrong with me?) and into lively downtown Berkeley.

I haven't even kicked my butt in gear enough to get into San Francisco, though I will, I will. There was a "dragon-awakening" ceremony in Chinatown on Saturday. The parade on Feb. 7 is supposed to be pretty big. Alas, I will, hopefully be on a plane by then.

I searched for signs of people celebrating the first day of the lunar year, and saw an under ten year-old boy and his grandparents boarding the bus. And up by the college a young man holding his mother's hand as they wove down the busy sidewalk.

The bustle of this place, at least, is comforting, not to mention all the ethnic and vegetarian food, the coffee, the Obama buttons, the artsy bookstores, all the liberal leanings. I could stay for awhile. If ZX, and so-long-awaited language study, and a city I have called home, an so many unexplored possiblities, were not waiting.

At Peet's by the bus stop on Shattuck I remember how much I love public transportation - the encounter with PEOPLE and LIFE. A heavyset man with baggy jeans and a striped toque on the slightly raised sidewalk landscaping box. He smiles and gestures to the street like he's giving a speech, or a tour. A skinny man with a black duffel bag, a red plastic five-gallon bucket, and a caulking gun. He sets them on the metal bench with green paint but does not sit down.

I also love that Ryan and Christen have driven me to Sonoma County to climb rock faces by the coast, camp in a damp forest, and walk through giant redwoods, to Marin County to hike overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and yesterday, to Yosemite for six hours of snowshoeing. Their piles of gear cheap from REI used gear sales. Even though I felt slightly ridiculous about our ski poles when we passed other snowshoers, I was grateful for them while my hip flexors groaned the last three miles. And the waterproof gators wrapped round my ankles were so nice.

didn't make myself a last cappucino

2009-01-13T05:14:00.003+08:00

On my last day of work Josh made a delicious modified sierra turkey with extra soup and extra sides. I ate every bit (because that's what we do), even though it made me uncomfortable and sluggish.

Carl told me about how the Bible is coming true. And about how he sprayed a mothball mix at the copperheads that had nested in his yard.

Another coworker told me how her last boyfriend broke up with her with a badly disguised, "I don't want to a slut for a girlfriend." How she drank too much afterwards, she said, and slept with too many guys. How her new year's resolution was less of both.

Rhoda and Jill showed up and we went next door to peruse the fifty percent off stuff at the bookstore. Rhoda bought a ball of guilt and I wish I could joke like that. I bought a journal that got purged on the first round of packing. They'd thought to take me out for dessert, but I took a ride home instead. I'd left the lights on in the car again. Oh how will you ever make it on your own?

weekend people

2008-11-21T04:21:00.005+08:00

The people at the retreat in Pennsylvania made me want to be a Christian like I haven't in a long time. Not because of their piety . . . but because they listened, and like it came from some place deep. Sherry on the way up "Peter's Mountain" where we would shiver in the fog on the rock at the top, and her husband Larry on the way down. Katie, in our small group, and in her consistent counselor's insightful prodding. Esther at meals, in the circle of chairs, and late into two nights, later than I've stayed up for a long time. Like we were supposed to, we found surprising commonalities in our experiences. I can't stop talking. I am starting to heal.

Karl Bartsch asked, "what is your burning bush?" and taught us again about centering prayer. Harvard medical researchers found that meditation lowers blood pressure and raises metabolism. Twenty minutes is the time generally accepted as most beneficial. We tried five, sitting cross-legged against the thin wall that hid the diligent clarinet student and the teenagers playing carpetball, but not their sounds. My body, more than anything, settled quickly into the familiar position, the focused breathing, missed it.

Eunice, as warm as always, stirred Sunday dinner in the oven while her roommate from Shenyang cut turnips slower than I've ever seen any Chinese person with a chopping knife. I sat on the radiator and loved their mixed language and attention to each other, and the old wood floor of the Philly flat. She and Julie guided me through traffic between them. Nearly an hour at nearly a standstill near I-495. The dullness of a nice car, the music and temperature I choose, and enjoy only so much, alone. I will return with mixed welcome and dread to the shock of the snow flurries in my face biking into town on Tuesday, the surprise of the sun when I make the turn onto Kratzer.

what makes it real

2008-11-13T05:57:00.004+08:00

I read during my break at work. My green apron beside me, toasted blueberry bagel, raspberry cream cheese from the expired samples, and this morning, tears. I am hiding back in the wi-fi user's cove, lost in the cruel world where Maryam will not have Ali, no matter how strong her spirit or beautiful her eyes. In a time and place women best marry and then develop their cunning, she suffers the for the dreams her father will not have her pursue, and the man. And he for her.

Then at night Laila and Mariam are brought back to Rasheed. I lay the book face down on the sheet and sob like a child - like a protest against all that is not just in the world - knowing that my emotion does nothing save build awareness in me, and resolve for change. The roller coaster of hope and terror, then we come to terms - both they and I - with the reality of the horror they cannot escape.

There is a third story, this one told, over the dinner table on Sunday. Another woman, another mother, another person who falls on the hard side of power and choices. Law in this country can protect her, but cannot force respect from a son, or the man who has taught him that women don't deserve it. This story, the most real of the three, somehow seems the least; there is no emotion on which we ache our way in. We hear and consider the practicalities - money, housing, where the children will live - and only thinking about it later do I detachedly remember how she must suffer. So unlike the fiction, where the colors and smells and the touch of true love torn apart grabs our hearts by both hands and shakes, saying, "This is her, this is you, this is every woman in every town on every continent. Pay attention." I do.

back in September

2008-11-09T04:50:00.010+08:00

Every once in awhile, a favorite aunt or someone reminds me that people actually read this blog sometimes, and inspires me to write more, and more often. There is so much that got lost this summer and fall when I was away from internet and out of a routine. It's hard to write about life that happened months ago, but I'm gonna try.

In late September I spent two weeks with my brother Tim on the small organic vegetable farm where he's been interning since May. It was the kind of place you just sink into, and I could have stayed for months. Not just a place, not just work, but a whole way of life. We worked hard sometimes, but always pleasant, with others. Each morning I helped Tim haul water from the creek for the animals. I learned to coax the first streams of milk out of the three goats he milked each morning. I learned that "Castor" was nervous, but not strong; you could hold her leg away from the pail with your left arm.

I learned that, theoretically, one can reach under a roosting hen to pull out eggs, but I only got up the nerve to try it once. I learned to speak "rrrr-bit" with Phoebe (the four-year-old daughter of the couple who own the farm), and which rules of frog world are non-negotiable. I learned that she likes stories involving pigs and princesses and can switch in and out of a Kentucky drawl.

I learned how to identify the "sticky amaranth" plants, and to get them, carefully, near the root, before they got me. I learned to be picky about what we harvested. Checking the underside of the bell pepper to make sure it had completely turned from green to red. Culling a bunch of cherry tomatoes for just one black spot. Only the slimmest string beans are sold; the others we fry with olive oil for dinner. Throwing out all the vegetables we can't eat.

"This is what it is to live with a spirit of abundance," I thought more than once to myself. Talking and talking and talking in the shade of the tool shed. Two afternoon hours dedicated to the fiddle tunes we would play at the art exhibition on Saturday. Swinging Phoebe on the handle of the shovel. Walking slowly down the hill to the house to pick raspberries from the vine before dinner. Offer them by the handful to Phoebe, who says, "chubby bunny, chubby bunny" between fits of giggles. Eating quiche and Spanish frittatas three times a week. The chickens have been laying more than we can sell.

I learned that commercial fertilizer is petroleum-based. So not only is your typical grocery produce soaked in the oil of transport from California or Wisconsin, but in the oil used for production as well. Who knew? Not me? My brother reveals this in our, um, "discussion" about how we all could be educating ourselves better, in general . . . and specifically, about what we eat (as if we need more reasons to eat local and organic).

Because Tim makes just about enough to pay off his monthly college loans and to buy sugar, and because he is passionate about reducing personal oil consumption, he lives a life that rivals the "simplicity" of mine in China. I enjoyed it. It felt like home.

I found an old typewriter in the trailer, and clacked away at letters to friends until my brother couldn't stand it. Most of the time we curled on the sofa and read companionably, with tea in the afternoons.

For breakfast, Tim made coffee, toast, and eggs. When the bread was all, we made more. We made homemade chutney out of the last of the tomatoes that Tim and Krista had planted . . . and discovered the difficulties of collaborating in the kitchen after four, six, eight years apart. There were spicy mustard greens with homemade balsamic vinagrette. Biscuits with homemade strawberry jam. Scones from "Crumb and Crust", which I'd brought from the Rockingham Public Library.

In the cool of the morning before we left for the fields, we'd roll down the thick blankets that were hung over the windows. Then when we came back at noon to broil slices of sweet potatoes and red peppers, the small trailer was blessedly cool. Later it got chilly, and Tim would sing out his excitement for the smell of fall as we cut across the creek to report to the barn for another day of work.

I was hungry for the physical labor. It's something I've always enjoyed, and four years of "English expertise" in China haven't held enough. My first afternoon at the farm my muscles were yanked awake on the top of the hill digging fence post holes. Tim and David, neither of whom are built especially big, could go at it for five minutes or more. I lasted for a minute before I was breathing hard and my shoulders were screaming. Tim's friend Micah, another organic vegetable farmer, taught him that you never need a gym to "get into shape". You will develop the muscles to do whatever work you need to do. "We're getting strong," we said to each other. "Soon we'll be strong enough to build a fence."

The flat rocks we flipped up out of the soil were imprinted with fossils of shells and sea creatures. These hills once lay along an ocean bottom. A closer history is tobacco all over these hills, and grown until the soil couldn't hold it anymore. We pile loads of manure from a neighboring farm onto one of these old fields, in some places five inches deep.

OBAMA!!!

2008-11-06T05:01:00.002+08:00

It always delights me to discover a bunch of cultured rednecks. The kind who choose their hunkering, who build their houses out of recycled material way back off the roads, who serve grilled sausage and avocado dip, who teach you about the civil rights act over the second bottle of beer, and yell wild curses at the TV when bad politicians appear on the screen. We cheered so hard when they called Ohio blue. And Virginia. We had barely dared to hope, I think, and this new feeling of PRIDE - in my country, in my state - is very nice.

windy days

2008-10-30T04:32:00.005+08:00

The wind is tougher than the cold. The cold you can beat with layers and exertion. The wind you can't. Beat. Just fight . . . and survive, in little ways . . . you keep going, you don't cry. The whoosh of a dump truck flying down the hill as you struggle up, and your momentum is sucked away just like you hit the brakes. Then on the next hill there's a big truck going with you, and you feel the pick-up as it passes. Your eyes scan the face of the land with new eyes - measuring the dips and turns - seeking the tucks where there will be sudden peace.

You breathe ragged so long you don't notice anymore, and try not to curse halfway up a slow incline. You see, impassively, the cloud shadows on the mountains, the subtle fall colors sharpened by the wind, and smile to yourself, but don't really understand how you feel or where this fits.

Then, finally, a right turn and it's quiet. The stretch is steep, but blessedly still. The white house on the climb with four cars outside. A girl in camo sweatpants and a bright yellow jacket walks with a tiny dog on a leash, into the yard, with movements and a scowl that scream impatience, maybe anger. The little dog shivers with excitement, oblivious to her mood. I am almost home, still breathing hard, wondering what made this girl's day so bad, and whether mine is good or bad.

The next two days the wind stays strong, the bike stays overnight at the shop, I stay at my parent's house, and accept rides from them and from my aunt, from Alex. We stand outside for two hours and don't make it inside to see Obama. Others wait five hours or more. It was good, even so, seeing the crowd, if not the man himself. In the end we sat on the floor of a student lounge and watched the speech on the TVs on the wall. He talked about "choosing our better history." And I hoped.

somewhere near the edges

2008-10-23T03:09:00.007+08:00

We listen to the daily worsening economy news on NPR, wonder vaguely if the demigods who run this country have ideas ingenious enough to prevent loss of homes businesses, jobs, a way of life. Suddenly the conservatives are all behind regulation . . . even something that looks like a partial nationalization of the banking sector. ZX jokes that while China and Russia move toward a privatized economy, the Europe and the West are moving towards socialism. We laugh with the freedom that comes from youth, and the knowledge that we don't need much.

The other day I went through the cedar closet at Mom and Dad's. It was packed thick with blankets and clothes, and the thought crossed my mind that if I needed to, I could easily clothe and keep myself for the rest of my life with the contents of this four-by-four closet. The blue polyester pants that my mother sewed thirty years ago I will wear, but not the velvety white skirt and sweater set. I tried on the yellowed lace wedding dress, and found the high neck and long, tight sleeves unbearably constricting. A concession for conservative relatives at the wedding? I wondered, but Mom says it was the style then.

Last night on "Fresh Air" the Nobel prize-winning economist admitted there is a sort of glee in being here in this place, this time, and getting to watch all the shit go down. Before he said, he had to fly to Indonesia or something to see crisis of the moment; now he just takes the subway downtown. (As a citizen, though, he's "terrified.") I don't really know enough to be terrified, but I know what fascination feels like.

getting there on skinny tires

2008-10-21T04:49:00.002+08:00

Too much chocolate and sitting around this weekend; I gave up, got off the bike and walked up the top of a hill for the first time this morning. It was the first really cold day I've biked, but not as bad as I had dreaded from my barely-warm bed in the drafty upstairs of the farmhouse.

Trying to cross 33 from Sterling to Reservoir I discovered the helplessness of a biker facing a light triggered by a magnetic sensor. Tim had warned me. He said they sense metal at two places, so the only way to get a green on a bike is to lay it down wide across the area. Slightly inconvenient. Who knows what the woman behind me would have thought if I'd done that this morning. When she pulled up I'd already watched the cars opposite me get a left-turn signal, and the 33 traffic get greens twice. We waited through another cycle together and I realized that she needed to pull up to trigger the sensor. She'd (very kindly, I suppose) left a good ten feet between me and her. I motioned for her to pull up, and we finally got a green on the next go-around.

Sigh. It's those kind of things that are discouraging, that make you feel small and like you're struggling with just a few allies, against a very large beast. But the people at the Blue Ridge Cycle Shop are helpful and friendly, and Wayne Teel said making this statement with our lives (by biking) is the way we start moving to lower carbon-dioxide production.

And every afternoon when I bike back into this sloping land of Melvin and Betty's and the sun is lying all golden on the fields and the cows are rustling in the barn, I swear I'll stay here until there's actual ice on the road and I'm absolutely forced to move in close to a bus stop.

slowing down

2008-10-19T14:49:00.003+08:00

Small leaves drift down Bruce, along with me and the bike. I'm glad to have started building on a paycheck, but it barely seems worth even going in to work for four hours on Wednesday and Thursday. They teach me how to make iced chai lattes and then two hours of "e-learning" on the dusty computer in the back of the kitchen. I laugh aloud at some of the test questions that come, but admire in a detached way the efficiency of the system I have entered. Food safety, dining room awareness, the "Panera Way."

It's the "business model" approach that another group described in a recruiting meeting I attended on Wednesday. A more efficient way of making money than the time-for-money formula of a traditional job or small business. They started with an assumption that everyone wants more money. And time. But what good is time if you don't have money to spend enjoying it? Funny, I've found a whole lot of enjoyment out of watching the sunset clouds outside of Jill's window. Doesn't take a lot of money. I'm not opposed to earning money, but I'm cautious, wanting to take the slow way. The slow ferment that makes good bread, good cheese, good wine. Slow transportation that makes me notice the faces of the places I pass. Maybe even a slow approach to economic growth, Wayne Teel suggests in sunday school last week, might do us some good.

sweet ol' harrisonburg

2008-10-14T18:10:00.004+08:00

I'm a sucker for color-splashed downtown. For the little potted flowers tucked in the curves of brick buildings on which you can still see the old names in fading white paint. For the people and the breads and the greens at the farmer's market. For the folks who take the bus, and walk, and bike.

It's my second early morning in a row parked at this coffeeshop with my new macbook, and yesterday I got spotted over on benches in front of the library by the same person who'd seen me here in the morning. He called me a transient, and I took it as a compliment. There are bikes all over this city, and a vibe I don't remember being quite so strong or so cool.

________________

I applied at Clementine and saw the "eat fresh, eat local" poster and felt the warm afternoon camraderie of the staff, and decided that's where I want to work. But they want commitment, and I am still young - commitment comes hard. I went back out to to think in the sunshine, then leapt, and felt as if I was answering life again, same old formula, new freedom. We (women, mostly) have marveled at focus and a narrowing of interest that leads to "success and happiness" perhaps. I want that, or the passion at least. The women I was asking said for awhile they had wanted that too.

_________________

It's been barely three days of biking, but so far it feels good. There are sunsets and rolling hills north of town. There are burning thighs and the old questions about how much I can push. There are shops that I notice, and explore. The eight-dollar Keens at Granny Longlegs.

There are the hazards too. Glass shards scattered wide on the bridge on Reservoir. So wide I have to pick up my bike and carry it over them. Those damn train tracks on Country Club. So far I've swung wide to hit them at close to perpendicular. I hold my breath when the dumptrucks go roaring but, but Kratzer feels safer than 11, like Dan said it would. Sailing down that big hill out on Kratzer for the first time, I placed my fingers on a bee which had settled on my handlebars. I can't remember the last time I was stung. My finger swelled and ached. Somehow though, the fall air on my face and the view of the rolling hills lessened the sharpness. And Jill is waiting for me in the white farmhouse with walnuts in the yard and a hundred cookbooks on the shelf. There was a shorn field that I passed going home - I wrote this:

Round bales lie on the field

rolled so smooth they shine.

In the second afternoon I see

the tractor moving, the front fork,

the fast reverse, effortless lift, a line

made neat at the edge of the field.

Beyond it all - behind the bales

and the field and the tractor and

the invisible farmer, back behind

the mountains, the sun is setting.

I don't know this girl

2008-09-01T09:31:00.005+08:00

While sitting for five hours of hair straightening treatment - wash, blowdry, apply softening chemicals, wait, wash, partially blowdry, apply straightening cream ("Dang you've got a lot of hair!"), keep applying, still applying, okay, wait, wait, check, wait, check, done, wash, blowdry - I read every word in the June issue of National Geographic. The vestige perks of belonging to an organization. In the mountains just northwest of here, snow leopards and their protection programs built out of Snow leopards hidden in the mountains just northwest of here. A little farther north, and a little farther west, heated indoor kindergarten swimming pools built from oil boom money and how long, exactly, will our cheap oil age last. The question everyone is asking, and even I, who swear by a bike or public transportation, dread a little the answer.

During my five hours at the hair place I also got really hungry, finished the candy I'd bought earlier and chugged water to fill my stomach until sweet ZX brought me bread from the apartment at 9:30. He settled back into the couch he'd tired of earlier and I settled back in to wait.

I asked the girl doing the last wash when they usually close. 10:30, she says, but when I apologize she points out that I'm not the only one still there. The woman with straight black hair (remember the old joke trying to identify one of our students) is having her hair curled. The white girl with thick waves is having hers tamed. There are cell phone snapshots at every stage, taken by the assistant, at the slightly sheepish and covert urging of the main stylist. When I think we're finally done the head stylist is there flipping through a very glossy, very European hairstyling magazine. I think at first that he is showing us how most Westerners have nice, soft, fine hair, and I am ready to agree. My hair is a whole lot of mafan. But he actually is pointing out that my hair straightened looks bad so long. I need one of these bobs. "I'll come back tomorrow," I promise when they continue to tsk-tsk over my unflattering style, "I gotta go get some sleep."

2008-08-20T14:04:00.009+08:00

So it's about time for me to say that despite all my previous negativity towards China's event of the century, I have enjoyed the Games, from that crazy opening ceremony to the adorable weightlifter Chen Xiexia who won the first gold medal for China (which now has over forty, the US, less than thirty), to Tuesday night, when we packed in three hours of soccer and volleyball quarterfinals after dinner. ZX loves Nigeria Men's Soccer because they really "play" soccer as we say in English. Everything's one touch and go, and Belgium had a solid defense, but you just can't stop such incredible skills. Brazil and Argentina was a little rougher, a little closer.

But the highlight of the night for me was the women's volleyball in between the soccer matches. They played Russia, who they beat out in Athens for the gold, and it was breathless every point. We wandered out to a BBQ and beer garden and found the women into the thick of it. The second game they were down and Russia had matchpoint and they came back to vie back and forth for a close win. The channel got switched to soccer before the third set started, so I found an old couple in the back of their little corner convenience store who happily pulled up a stool for me to watch the final set. It was fun cheering beside them.

Obviously, they're good. But I also love the China team because they really act like a team. They seem to enjoy each other, and the talent is spread out all over the place. The energy feels really positive, they laugh, and laugh off mistakes, almost like little girls sometimes. The tall hitter Zhao Ruirui has a smile so kind you almost wonder how she made it so far in athletics. The coach too is known for his positiveness. Even when they're behind or he's protesting a call, he always looks like he's smiling. The difference between their open faces on the China side and the stern Russian women was almost humorous. I'm not one to get crazy about watching sports, but I think this is one team that has won me over.

The scores of the quarter-final against Russia were 25-22, 27-25, 25-19. Last Olympics China beat them out for the gold. Tonight at 8:00 they compete in the semi-final match against Brazil, who's supposed to be awesome. US beat Cuba, who had been undefeated in the other semi-final. I'll be cheering so hard for China tonight, partly because it'd be so fun to have it be the US and China playing for the gold on Saturday, and mostly just because I'm a fan.

2008-08-13T22:35:00.008+08:00

Walk home the wrong way, the long way, on the dark, quiet street, under a perfect night sky. They say it'll rain again tomorrow and the next day. Turn, when suddenly the corner appears. I knew this town so well; the new angles are refreshing. Two tiny girls squatting at the edge of the curb, leaning over the street to brush their teeth under their mother's instruction. Walk slowly, against the pull of the new tight jeans. Too tight I said, but Amy said they looked good. I paid too much, went back later in the afternoon while the others slept. I like feeling cute. Anne Lamott said women shouldn't wear tight pants. Or maybe she just said she never would. Normally I'd listen, but part of the thrill of living is breaking the old rules, even when they're your own.

Buy a soft white loaf of bread for breakfast inside the warmth of the bakery. The other customer is uniformed, young and open-faced - a guard going off duty. He complains about the prices good-naturedly to the tired old woman. She's baggy eyed and unimpressed, a veteran of too many decades of giant baking sheets of breads and cakes. She says, "you want good stuff you gotta pay." She made icing flowers while we watched and then let me come into the tiny windowed cake-decorating room to add, "Happy Birthday Dan" to the tiny cake that night everyone was acting strange, but we kept acting, out of duty and habit and the warmth of old friends even strangers. The elevator shivered a bit on the way up to the 23rd floor, and those who still carried great fear from the May earthquake shivered too. There are tremors every other day or so still, but barely detectable. I had no idea they could last this long - four months now, and up to thirty years they say. In Chengdu Amy and I were in side-by-side showers on the second floor of the hostel when a 6-point something came. We weren't even sure it was an aftershock, but when I came out the conversations downstairs were all a-buzz with it and ZX couldn't bring himself to continue his nap.

The photographer we met at the next hostel commented with surprise about how the aftershocks were still such a center of conversation in Chengdu. And he was here, there, in Mianzhu, within 24 hours of the first one. It was he himself who convinced his boss that he and a writer - the standard team - should go. They were short on clothes, ate instant noodles like everyone else, had no place to sleep, but in the end, a week or so later, it was his boss who called him back to Chongqing; he would've stayed longer.

The night before he had to go to Mianyang to cover the torch relay he sat with us in the hostel courtyard, and we talked of China and the West over beer, and steaming water in my plastic travel cup. I was the one girl, the one westerner, the one faltering in the language, but we were all born in 1981, brothers and sisters of this generation inside China looking around, and out. I cried when I tried to talk from a very personal perspective about in and out-groups, that dark desire to see China fail that is so recklessly projected on every Western action and word, how it does exist, maybe, but it's not so simple, but deep and subconscious, and only a part of a complexity of values and understandings that come into play when we approach each other. Everybody was talking about all the trouble the Olympics were bringing to their daily lives. The highway between Leshan and Chengdu was closed for the whole day before the torch arrived in that small city. A friend who works in scientific research said Olympic-related regulations have made it tough for them to get the supplies they need for their experiements. Anyway, "this Olympics doesn't belong to us, it belongs to Beijing," I heard one person say. Tourism in Sichuan is a fraction of what it would be in a normal year . . . partly because of Tibetan riots, partly because of the earthquake, and partly because of the way it's gotten harder to get a Chinese visa.

The hostel people were complaining about their lack of business, and according toZX, Kangding, which is sort of the gateway to Western Sichuan, was a completely different city from the last two years he was there. We still had our Tibetan yak butter tea and met kind and generous ethnic Tibetans (and one lama who tried to con us out of our money). The sky was still gorgeous clear blue between the steep mountains, and the valleys and rushing streams deep and sharp and breathtaking. But the place had an almost deserted feel. The owner of the hostel where we stayed had left the place in the hands of another tourist - a college student from Inner Mongolia; there were only two other guests besides us. And military police were everywhere. It was obvious that they were extras since they were living in tents, and I was impressed, in a heart-skip-a-beat kinda way, by their large guns, which they shouldered in their little booth-stations. ZX couldn't stop talkign about how they wore bulletproof vests even for regular just-standing-there duty.

All the normal activities, including the big horse race/market/regional gathering in Litang, were cancelled. An Australian traveler told me he'd gone anyway, and so had hundreds of local people, many of whom had started out before news of the cancellation reached them, and traveled days or even weeks. They gathered, and traded anyway, he said, and many were angry. He saw a group of lamas in a central place grow into a huge crowd until they were loaded onto two of those big blue trucks and carried away. Probably taken out somewhere and left to walk back and walk their energy off, we both guessed.

packing

2008-07-05T09:28:00.005+08:00

Up until yesterday my negative feelings towards Beijing's big summer 2008 event were general. Then they seriously got in my way. I know in the US it's the same thing with the removing of shoes at airports (not to mention fingerprinting at customs) but I complained hard about those too. Fear, mmm . . . it makes the world go 'round.

So I'm almost completely packed - books, clothes, cooking stuff, small furniture and appliances (including my precious little toaster oven that has to be at least ten years old) - we get in touch with five different offices for shipping five different ways . . . and find out that I can't send liquids or powders or electronics with the shipping company I used to move ALL my stuff ten months ago . . . or through the post office, or through the big, popular company Wuliu . . . so we frantically repack (which leads to Amy and I having our first fight) and then the next day she helps me drag the bags with all the dangerous materials into a taxi and then down the train station to the big cargo place and I send them away . . . where they will be "tossed around like pillows," my friends tell me. For the other four bags the nice guys from last year's company pul up in a van by our house, weigh them right there, and they're done. Everything's going to ZX's apartment, which feels really strange since it rested there for a few days last August too. More or less all the same stuff. I'm dealing with too-much-stuff blues, but also feeling relieved now that it's all done.

There was an earthquake this evening. Amy said she felt it and heard the roaring. I didn't. I was outside watching the new bikes we had just bought. It was an exhausting three hours at the used bike market to buy a bike for me, Amy, and Catherine. We're supposed to be leaving in the morning. It's been rip-roaring hot lately, so we're wanting to start at six.

searching and finding

2008-06-16T16:36:00.010+08:00

Up until Tuesday, the only place I could find in Nanjing for bike-renting was the Fuzimiao youth hostel, where there are four big fat mountain-bike tired things leaned up against the wall by the pool table. The electric bike belongs to the boss; you can't rent that, the desk girl says, and then we laugh like it is a great joke . . . she turned friendly in a real way when I switched to Chinese. It's embarrassing how excited people can get about me being able to communicate with them in Chinese. Last night two guys smoking in a black car on the road called me back when I made some smirking answer to their half-greeting from the window as I passed. I gave my phone number, laughing at their forwardness, but I don't have much time to go out in the next few weeks, sorry, it's nice to meet them though. There are the ones like them that make a big deal as a power thing, and then there are the ones like the girl at the hostel, who really was just excited. People like those who work in a tourist area. In the bike store some European-looking woman smiled real big and said hello to me and before I was knew was doing I'd "ni-haoed" her back. She laughed and repeated the greeting, "ni hao", like, ha that's a good one.

It took my roommate searching online and then me biking through 新街口 and then all the way over to the 夫子庙 area to finally find the Giant shop on 太平南路 that sells bikes. It was huge and beautiful but they don't rent like Willie Gee thought they might.

The sleazy sellers at the sleazy secondhand market will rent, they said on Friday when I went. I may have been the first person to ask; I got estimates from five to twenty yuan a day. I was surprised at how easy it would've been to sell the bike that I was pushing. (At first I'd left it outside, but even with a lock I didn't trust it there. These people are professionals, I reminded myself, and when I went back out to retrieve it there was a man squatting next to it, maybe studying it intently. Or maybe he just needed a place to smoke.

When you see the stickers on the crossbar you try not to think about the kid who put them there the week before his bike disappeared, and you try to pretend the guy selling the tallest bike on the floor is not sleazy, because I have a friend - he's this high (measure with my hand way above my own head) - who might need this bike. I smile, and talk long, with the best mix of sweetness and toughness I've got. I learned a long time ago (when I was a waitress and had regular customers) that people can sense when you don't like them, so it pays to try to convince yourself that you actually do.

Finally yesterday I found two sweet shops that were both renting bikes, and seriously professional about it. And next door an outdoor shop where the guy answered all my questions about thermal sleeping bags and I bought two 10 kuai woolen caps.

Sunday morning I left the city in a taxi with a friend and went to the most beautiful temple I've ever been in. Guanyin tipped her delicate pitcher and poured love and mercy in the center of a small lake, and CXJ told me that she only looks like a woman on the outside, inside she's a man (and still looks like one in India). In Buddhism there is no differentiation between man and female. And man, I think, that sounds nice. Really?

Two of those trees that look like money grew huge and framing the main part of the temple. Back in the back there were carvings in hill's stone, and a big one of a sitting Buddha. We stepped inside to see the Guan Yin on one side and the old women didn't care that we weren't gonna buy incense.

CXJ's friend the monk I think was the maybe the top monk at the temple. He left home to become a monk after high school, and that must have been at least twenty years ago. His face has crinkled up around the eyes and he's the most genuine-feeling monk I think I've ever met in China. He has his own room for meditation and calligraphy and one with the happy Buddha and a whole bunch of Guanyins for burning incense and praying in private. We sat in the wooden chairs on either side of the tea table and he served us before returning to his place by the altar, doing some sloshing of water that led to a tiny mouthful worth of tea, but tasty. He is patient, and answers my questions and talks with me about the things I'm interested in. There are different ways to talk to every person says the Buddha, and this guy had that kind of wisdom.

Out of rhythm, crazy world

2008-06-03T10:57:00.004+08:00

Last week I came across a girl who referred to those in her blogging communty as "blogren", which caught my attention since in Mandarin "ren" (人) means "person". Turns out that Chinglish hasn't taken over the world yet (it will though, it will), they're "blogren" is just a combination of "blogger" and "brethren" . . .

Reading other fine blogs about life in China translates into me writing less, for whatever (could it be confidence-related?) reason. And ZX doesn't help with his complaining about bloggers (mainly girls, he says) who write about what they ate for breakfast, and expect people to care.

This morning I did not have the best baozi in the world, as I'd planned - the place was closed for Dragon Boat Festival (and quite rightly, who would eat anything but zongzi anyway?) Instead, Starbucks mocha in a mug is my reward for working straight through this three-day holiday. Pleasurable work though, for the most part, a lot of it coming down to organizing - the files on the laptop, good teaching materials I've collected, the pile of papers on which half-finished poems are scratched sideways between a row of my practiced Chinese characters. Which stack do those go into?

It feels strange to be all collected and put together. It is not me, yet it is. I am pleased with myself, though I realize the trade-off is being out of rhythm with the life outside. Early on the morning of the third day, when I walk with my laptop towards wireless at Starbucks, the streets are nearly deserted. The exception is the piles of nearly round watermelons - on four different corners - and their squatting sellers, and buyers. If you're not still lounging in bed you're supposed to be preparing for gathering with friends or family. The watermelon is insanely cheap - under one kuai for a jin - but I will ignore them. Later I have a twelve-kuai cranberry-orange scone heated in an stainless-steel industrial size oven that bings when the allotted heating time has passed.

Outside the Starbucks an old man in a purple dress shirt stands on the sidewalk pointing and yelling at the bikes that come toward him in the fenced-off bike lane. I ask one of the workers if he often comes here, and if she knows what he's saying. She thinks I'm pointing to the American guy in khakis who's reading his little travel Bible under one of the green umbrella-d tables outside. "Do you know what he says?" I repeat, and she says, "Yeah, he speaks Mandarin, so we can understand him. He comes often, always drinks coffee and reads his book."

I point again, "No, the guy out there!" She hadn't noticed him, and doesn't know what he's ranting about. "I can't figure out if he is saying something specific or if he ..." I trail off, and she finishes for me, "has a sickness of the mind." Silently, we watch him yell for another half-minute, then he gets on the bike he is standing beside, and pedals away.

The moth that was fluttering pitifully around inside escapes with the couple that leaves, pushing the creaky glass door wide in their awkward slow exit, she hanging on his arm held limp. As they shift around the door, the jazz music playing on the sound system and the weaving of her hips in the silky dress make me think of that sexy Hong Kong movie all in smoke and mist and silence. (Damn, what's the name?) The moth flies just in front of them until they reach the street, and the beauty of it makes my throat tight.

Closer to lunch the place fills up. The couple beside me lay their sleeping four-year-old daughter face down on the soft chairs by the big windows while they comment on a magazine in a mix of Mandarin and English. But when she wakes up they add German? Is there a fourth language as well? No way. That'd be crazy.

The next couple is also caucasian guy-asian girl. When she goes to pick up his sandwich from the counter he jokes with the friend (who talks about how busy she is dealing with customers from Egypt and Russia and Norway) about the other English word for wife: "slave." Then the two girls do the standard "Can you understand when we speak in Chinese?" He can't.

He seems like a nice enough guy, but I am secretly pleased when the businesswoman answers his "You don't have an easy life!" attempt at conversation with an impassive "No" and then turns back to his wife and back to Chinese, to complain about the crazy training schedule at her work. The wife is sympathetic. "Wow, that really is too much," she coos before they briefly switch back over to English to joke about husband being like a character out of Prison Break.

(Though I will not renounce my pride about last night's delicious homemade tortilla chips and salsa), I am aware that I am, um, judgmental and arrogant. And I knew that even before I overhear that the blundering can speak Swedish and German. Knowing language impresses me . . . and businesswoman, who says, "Oh my God, it's a huge potential market!" (One of her associates evidently wants to set up some kind of deal focused specifically on Scandinavia!)

But he begs to differ and because the biggest city in Sweden is only 1 million people.

Businesswoman talks about how empty the streets are in Europe. Especially after five or six in the evening, you almost can't see a single person out and about. Yeah, everything closes pretty early, they all agree.

"How can the people go buy things?" businesswoman wonders.

"Saturday," he says.

"But what if they forgot to buy something? Say I forgot to buy, I forgot to buy an ... onion?"

"Oh, the food markets are open," he says.

"No," his wife disagrees. "Even the grocery stores close at five or six. Only 7-11 is open. If you're hungry, you have to go to 7-11 and get a sandwich or something."

Even the bars are closed by one or two o'clock, they say. What a crazy world.

these fears of conscious

2008-05-29T17:32:00.006+08:00

ZX slipped the gateman a crumpled one kuai bill for letting us out so late-early in the morning. I like these departures done at unreasonable hours; the exhaustion is numbness that makes the goodbye bearable. The private car that was to take me and three strangers to the Chongqing airport was platinum-colored (like every third car in China) and plushy. Still, by the time we were halfway there my bum was tired enough of the middle seat in the back that it was almost enough to keep me conscious.

I held my bag on my knees and elbowed the fat girl beside me when she squirmed into a better sleeping positionon on top of part of my leg. The girl in the front seat talked loudly. It was 3:00 am, 4:00 am, five. I tuned them out and slept with my head stretched straight back. At some point the radio was playing the long song/recitation tribute to the good earthquake rescue effort.
Yesterday parents from Mianzhu started marching to Chengdu to find somebody to protest to. Their kids died because government officials stole the money that was supposed to build strong schools. Sometimes there's no steel rebarb at all. Sometimes the sand/concrete ratio is 7/3 when it's supposed to be 3/7.

It's no wonder that nobody trusts anybody, and especially the officials. It's no wonder that their attempts to ensure their own safety seem to me seem so random, and so wildly out of proportion with reasonable risk. They see dangers that people who grew up in Japan or the US would never dream of, ZX tells me. They know that a building (or a bridge) doesn't even need the slightest of tremors to collapse, they're built so bad. Like "tofu" they say. When a paper rustles on the wall his head jerks alert, and by the end of my time there, I begin to imagine, like lots of others, that I feel the floor, or the bed moving beneath me all the time.

Teacher Xie gathered with her middle-aged friends outside the cross stitch shop. The park, the streets, and the riverside are packed, and have been since after lunch, when the whole city rushed outside as soon as they were done eating. Except for those that have to work, says Teacher Liu, who've gotta be inside (poor suckers, his tone says). He says when the experts and the people both listen to each other, they CAN predict it.

He carries his three-month old granddaughter, and he cradled her when he ran down the first time from the fourth floor. Teacher Xie lives on the fifth, and she and her husband stayed in the bathroom on that Monday afternoon. Two weeks later, it's four o'clock in the afternoon, the end of the 1:00-4:00 timeframe that was supposed to bring another tremor, but she won't go back because her younger sister told her that there's supposed to be one after four. She whispers to me that you only pass this information on quietly, and to close friends and family, because the government has warned them about spreading rumors, and they could be held responsible for creating panic. I don't feel anything for the rest of the evening except the kind that you think are probably your imagination, or it's him rocking the couch.

The car got to the airport right at six. The driver was talking to another guy from his company, and I asked the three women, "aren't you going to get out?" The dumb girl beside me jumped and half woke-up, "what, we're at the airport?" I don't know what was wrong with the other two, they weren't even sleeping. I slept until 6:45, checked in, found the gate, and slept again until we boarded, still numb.

hometown stories

2008-05-27T09:04:00.005+08:00

In Nanchong when you want a taxi around nine out by the west river, you saunter into the middle of the intersection and wave down the one making a wide arc around the corner, though he will pull to the curb for you to climb in. Tiny mutton kebabs near the back alley movie theater where ZX and his friends met their teacher one day skipping class. He can't believe that in high school we were free everyday at 2:45. Though not really, I explain, because there was always a sports practice to be at, or a club meeting, but he is not impressed. In high school they went home at 9:00 every evening, and had homework.

HF's parents' have flown to Nanjing, so he and his wife host us for Sunday dinner. Sausage that is a million times better than in Nanjing, and homemade grape wine. HF was a wide-eyed baby with a parasol, a soldier so skinny we barely believe it's the same boy, but when the building begins to shake he drops the picture album and bolts out the door. ZX is right behind him, and neither with a word, though I know, of course, that we are running out of gathered fear, that it doesn't matter that the shaking stopped before I'd made it down one flight. We slip down six floors of cement stairs in our house slippers. The old woman in front of me almost falls on the last landing in her hurry, though if there had been real danger she would have been too slow. Todd says later that there are lots of broken bones to be set in the hospital these days. Later HF's wife chastizes him for running first, for abandoning his guests.

In the courtyard another thin, gray-haired grandma shakes visibly, though she has a seven-year-old girl to comfort. She sits at the cement picnic table and clutches it strong across the wide part, not even a glimpse on her face of the self-depreciating humor that might lighten the situation. There were screams as everyone in the two facing apartments fled down the stairs and into the courtyard; ZX predicts that many people will sleep outside tonight. When we wake at four, or six in the morning and to fierce thunder and lightning, and rain in sheets that will drive down for hours, I feel sorry for the ones protected by their makeshift tarp tents. The next evening Dan and I see people working on their temporary shelters out by the west river. It seems the storm hasn't persuaded them to return to their homes, but only to make their shelters stronger, drier.

XXF used the word 后怕 which means something like "post-fear." Like how you wanted so badly to go on the art fieldtrip that you begged to be allowed to join class one, and did ... how you shake when you hear the news of your school collapsing. And on the others side, the tragic stories of those who should've come back a day earlier; they had a few more things to get done, and postponed the return. How a new branch had just been opened in that city; so many became managers ... but what is a promotion when you lose your life? The regret in her eyes is so honest, because she too put off, waited, lost, is realizing now what's important in life. It wasn't worth putting off a baby for a career . . . especially when hard work and talent don't earn you anything in the end anyway. There are certain ways these things go, and that's just how it is.

XXF told me too of a mother who kneeled to shelter her nursing baby, and gave her life. They found typed on the cell phone a message to the infant: "If you live, don't forget that your mother loved you."

2008-05-22T10:29:00.003+08:00

I had no idea that Japan's constitution limited military spending to 1% of the GDP. Guess who's pushing them to make it more?

This weekend there's a Japanese "peace poet", Yori Yaguchi, hosted by our small organization in Chengdu. I'm going there to hear from him, and my colleagues who have been living this week of earthquake mess a lot closer to it. Then I'm going to Nanchong to see some people that my heart yearns to see.

Yesterday a bunch of the counselors from our center attended post-trauma counseling training, though only one is, that we know for sure, going to Sichuan to help. The others barraged him with advice and support. What about the dialect? He's got a talent for languages he said, and he had a professor in college that taught in Sichuan dialetct. Should he take a sleeping bag or will they be sleeping together somewhere? They give extra phone batteries in case there's no way to charge his. Calls are free right now for anyone with an out-of-province phone in Sichuan. Thousands and thousands of volunteers like him have swarmed to Sichuan to help. A bunch of

Last night on TV some dumbass young reporter stopped three Sichuan men who were making their way along a mountain road to find out things like they what they were carrying in the buckets balanced on a bamboo pole across their shoulders and that their children and homes were gone. They answered her with a lot of quiet dignity, and maybe that was the point, but I was so annoyed at her there in her army pants and sporty shirt, pity ooozing out through her "慢走" and token assistance as they again shouldered their loads and continued on. The camera remained on her for a full ten seconds as she covered her face and burst into sobs. I'm sure being there really is hard, and that her emotion was true. I'm just saying it's a poor excuse for news, and pity is a lot less pretty than real empathy.