on suppression and short shorts

so, clearly my post-a-day plan crumbled. i could blame the firewall or my frequent travels to second tier cities to ganbei (do shots of) mediocre hongjiu (red wine) with local partners. i could bemoan my frustrating lack of email access on a few critical occasions (june 4 / 20th anniversary of the tiananmen massacre) just after writing amazing, insightful collections of thoughts that i am unable to share. i could claim that i have been too caught up in life - pushing forward the frontiers of the rule of law (update: still no independent judiciary in china), keeping track of little trouble (takes more time than you'd think), and searching for new and interesting ways to consume red bean (latest obsession: red bean and yogurt popsicles). instead, i will not attempt to make excuses. in fact, these months of silence are liberating in a sense. i can now safely assuming that anyone who was attempting to read my musings has given up so i can write with the comfort of anonymity, knowing that i am just writing for myself. which is what i sat down to do today.

i determined that it's time for reflection in light of my recent birthday and all that has been happening in this land of late. birthdays always make me thoughtful. so does the imprisonment of human rights lawyers. and pollution. and bad haircuts. i am wearing my “inspi(red)” t-shirt at the moment, perhaps to make up for the uninspiring weather. it's as though a pall has descended on or been draped over the city for the last few weeks. the sky and air are grey, and it is oppressively hot. it’s perhaps appropriate; were i to pick a word to describe the essence of beijing this august it would be ‘suppression’. maybe that’s the name of paint colour of the beijing sky were it to be tinned: ‘suppression: beijing grey’ – looks great in bathrooms!

the suppression has been disheartening and weighing heavily on me (not unlike the polluted haze that you cannot escape breathing). i sometimes wish that i could not let it get to me, that i could not get tangled up in it emotionally. but i have come to accept that, even as i am every seeking to quiet my mind and cultivate the inner tranquility which transcends outer experience, feeling deeply is simply part of who i am. i feel the suppression of which i speak – the assault on gong meng / the open constitution initiative, a Chinese legal NGO doing public interest advocacy entirely within the bounds of the law, and the detaining of xu zhiyong, its founder, and zhuang lu, its sweet young financial manger; the announcement by the MOJ that all law firms will have a party liaison to monitor their work; the reminder from above that the role of lawyers is to serve the party leadership; and the continued and increasingly widespread control of the internet – in the same way that i feel this oppressive, pollute heat. it is all around and only seems to be getting worse. more disturbing shades of grey, hotter, and more quietly tolerated as simply the way things are.

sadly, it seems that the prevailing idea in the international rule of law community over the last few months – that this is just a sensitive time – may be misguided, a collective willing illusion perhaps. this suppression, and the party’s seeing lawyers as a threat to their power, seems here to stay. not something that is likely to abate after national day and the 60th anniversary festivities have concluded. i’m afraid this particular shade of control won’t wash away after a rainstorm like the polluted air. and i fear for what this means, not only for china, but the world. china’s power and size cannot be underestimated. astute point that, i know, but i think it needs to be said over and over again. especially when so many – individuals, artists, economies, nations, corporations, NGOs, journalists – are willing to self-censor and resist speaking truth to power in order to gain access to china. but is market access / relationship building / the capacity to do programming in the people’s republic worth it? it’s something i struggle with.

one positive aspect of this increasingly grey backdrop to my life is that it compliments my miserable new hair colour. long story short: (1 attempt to get subtle highlights before my sisters wedding + 1 inexperienced stylist who had never touched blonde hair before = madonna meets jessica rabbit strawberry bottle blonde nightmare) x (1 senior stylist who insisted he could “fix it” + 4 more hours of torture involving various shades of purple) = a head full of deep purple / brown hair best described as “ripe plum”. with time, that shade has faded to a reddish brown (goes great with suppression!). and most of my hair has now been chopped off. (as the (new) stylist who cut it said, my hair was “huai le” or broken, so had to go.) not exactly the look i was going for as i properly enter and embrace my 30s, but a good lesson in what really matters in life (spirit, love) and what doesn’t (hair, superficial form).

a word on being “in my 30s”. i am now 31. on my birthday, i sat down to compose a list for myself of 31 thoughts on being 31. (i have recently also accepted that i love lists. unfortunately only lists of impractical things – dreams, ideas, places to visit, interesting meditations or quotes, interesting words, plays i will produce one day in my political theatre, names for my future children, names for my current imaginary pets, images i want to use in somewhere in a piece of writing some day, pros and cons. lists of practical things – groceries, errands, things i need for the flat, things to pick up when i am back in north america to bring back – have no interest to me and i can never, or at least rarely bring myself to make them. instead, i make grocery lists in my head and invariably cannot find them when i am at the market. standing lost amid the spices, however, i could easily rummage around in my bag and pull out a list of 30 things to do in my 30s i made on my last birthday that is still in my diary. this is a deeply flawed system.) when i decided to list 31 thoughts on being 31, i didn’t get very far. it felt too monumental a task. i was turning all metaphysical, hippie-zen-slumber-party-theology on myself and thinking of thoughts like “there is only love” and somehow i couldn’t have that as thought number 2. thought number 1 was easy: “it might be time to stop wearing short shorts”. to avoid swimming through pools of my own existential and spiritual angst, questioning, joy, and overthinking, i decided to stop the list there. so my deep thought on turning 31 is that it might be time to stop wearing short-shorts. operative word in that sentence being “might”.

in all seriousness, i am trying not to take this birthday – and the attendant social pressures that seem to come with it – too seriously. but it has not always been easy. especially with all my brooding on and breathing in various shades of grey lately, i have found myself questioning what i am doing and where i am going – in so many senses – in a more urgent way than i did a few short weeks ago when i was a sweet, young, wisp of a girl. there’s something more substantial about being 31. time to be wholly yourself, unapologetically, and give deeply, love unconditionally, and not compromise. though i suppose we ought to do that at any age. always.