heroes in the seaweed

on friday evening i found myself stuck in a traffic jam at rush hour, facing a logistical jungle gym of evening engagements, having recently been called regarding a minor work crisis, but serenely happy and in buoyed spirits. this was because i had just come from a meeting about public interest law in china at the offices of a remarkable collection of chinese public interest lawyers who work on children's rights, and migrant worker's rights, and other issues. their offices are in fengtai district, which may as well be another province because it seems so far away. but every time i make the journey out there, i am so inspired. the commitment, compassion, and courage of these lawyers just never fails to move me. and to make me feel as though my own small piece in china's rule of law puzzle makes sense somehow, or is worth it.

i think my spirits were in need of such a lift this friday after a women's rights program i had worked very hard on was cancelled, an environmental program in wuhan did not go so well (our trainers were terrible, in a word), and i've been increasingly finding the distance part of being in a long distance relationship difficult. friday was an incredibly windy day, so as my taxi snaked through the city, the beijing smog was being gusted about, sporadically swooshing up against the window and reminding me to pay attention. those windy alerts assisted in my appreciating and holding on to the sense of purpose and calm i carried with me as i left fengtai. there are heroes in the seaweed. and i am privileged to know some of them.

the wind also cleared out the skies for saturday, when i woke up early and went hiking near and on one of the more remote parts of the wall. it was a perfect day. amazing autumn weather - clear blue skies and sunshine, crisp air with just a slight chill as the wind blue. and the leaves were just turning and falling. and the company was lovely. i found myself hopping on one leg and dancing around just because i was feeling joyful and full of life. throwing leaves around like a child. why do we learn to suppress our spontaneity (or at least spontaneous explosions of joy) as adults? so dull, really. it was grand. am now thinking of a mary oliver poem a friend shared with me recently. ahem:

Self-Portrait by Mary Oliver

I wish I was twenty and in love with life
and still full of beans.

Onward, old legs!
There are the long, pale dunes; on the other side
the roses are blooming and finding their labor
no adversity to the spirit.

Upward, old legs! There are the roses, and there is the sea
shining like a song, like a body
I want to touch

though I'm not twenty
and won't be again but ah! seventy. And still
in love with life. And still
full of beans.

not twenty and won't be again but ah! thiry-one. and still in love with life. and still full of beans. my program this week is still cancelled. and i am still not sure how to resolve the challenge of distance. but i am remembering to appreciate the way the late afternoon light filters through the trees in the fields as i walk through the chinese countryside. and remembering to notice the beauty in the yellowing leaves. and appreciating learning a new recipe for olive tapenade (add sunflower seeds for some extra nuttiness!). and feeling thankful for the chance to know some of the heroes in the seaweed.

love and beans. love and beans!

it tastes like leaf

so while i was in chiang mai recently, a group of us went to visit a local temple. it was almost sunset and there was a pervasive stillness about the place as the monks had just finished their evening chanting. i was walking along with a few others on a terrace just below the temple, overlooking the city. there was a striking embracing large umbrella of a tree with gorgeous bright purple flowers. i walked under it with a sweet filipino lawyer named bobbie, who had made me cry earlier that day in her presentation about their land rights work on behalf of farmers. i commented on our vibrant purple embrace. looking up at the flowers, bobbie said, "we eat these in my country." i asked her if they were good. she shook her head, laughing, and said, "it tastes like leaf."

i recalled this story for some reason as i watched the footage from china's 60th anniversary celebration extravaganza. perhaps because i felt that despite all the gorgeous red hoopla, the comrades-leader call and response, the more-lavish-than-the-olympics fireworks, and the PLA female soldiers in miniskirts and f**k-me boots, it tastes like leaf.

i, like most beijingers, wasn't able to attend the real deal. in fact, i made it out of town and hightailed it to hong kong just before the government shut the airport down during the parade. my cabbie had to drive with his hazards on because the fog was to dense. it's a good thing that thousands of troops, large cloud pushers and other assorted military "weather control" artillery were on the ready to secure a perfect blue sky. apparently more than $1 million RMB was spent shooting 432 rockets with iodine at any insolent capitalist roader clouds daring to mar the perfect day to prove china's great socialist rise to the world. i wonder if those terms (capitalist, socialist) have any real meaning anymore. and i especially wonder what the party's vision, as expressed by hu jintao of "a rich and strong, democratic, civilised, and harmonious and modern socialist country" really means. sure, china showed its strength. who isn't impressed by inter-continental nuclear missiles being lovingly paraded down changan jie (while citizens living along the street weren't allowed to go to their windows)? but does it ever strike you that all of the party's doublespeak is simply an effort to obscure the fact that the country and the economy are being run to benefit a handful of elite party leaders and their families? this is a community that lives in an inaccessible compound, a new forbidden city, just adjacent to the original that is in fact to inaccessible that it doesn't appear on city maps.* how much of china's rise has helped the lao bai xing - the common people - and how much of it has been, and continues to be, calculated to further enrich and empower the party elite?

speaking of the elite, among the many wonderful articles in the sept. 30th edition of the china daily was a piece entitled "grandson of maos eyes promoted". it was about mao's grandson (presumably the grandson of the entire man, not just his eyes, but the missing apostrophe leaves one uncertain). this grandson - mao xinyu, who among other accomplishments is the author of "the award-winning 'my grandfather mao zedong'", is being promoted to become china's youngest major general. he and all four of his chins. the photo accompanying the article showed a picture of his chubby face squeezed above the collar of a military uniform. in addition to jiaozi, youtiao and jianbing, his interests include promoting mao zedong thought (about which he is an expert) and little red miniskirts (a newly acquired interest).

aiyo, the relative freedom and naturally blue skies of hong kong have gone to my head. refreshing, although also kind of tastes like leaf.





*a public-minded lawyer once sued a beijing map-maker about the fact that this compound and its lakes, zhongnanhai, do not appear on beijing maps. unsurprisingly, he lost.