grace over glamour

so it has been some time. and i feel as though i have lived entire years since my last post. i wonder sometimes whether there is one of me or whether i am multitudes. that sounds horribly self-aggrandizing, but i don't mean it in any self-important or precious sense. i was simply utterly and entirely exhausted after my two weeks in meiguo and found myself wondering how it was possible that all that occurred actually happened in such a short amount of time and that i was there for it all. i honestly don't think i had ever been so tired. of course, i am somehow not sleeping again. i can't ascribe this latest insomnia entirely to any one thing. i am wondering whether i am simply just not a good sleeper anymore. i am writing early on a sunday morning. entirely unglamazon in a robe and with coffee, watching the morning light gather in the courtyard. i've been up more or less since 3:00 am, but finally gave up on trying to sleep around 5:00 or 5:30. went for a walk around houhai to watch the neighbourhood awake. (it's remarkable how many people are out and active at 6:00 am on a sunday in beijing. neighbours letting their dogs play together and chatting away as if it were a tuesday afternoon. intense badminton matches. tourists charging around on hutong tour pedicabs or following loud ladies in tight jeans with too much hairspray waving tour-group flags. workers smoking as if their life depended on it before the heavy lifting starts.) showered. had breakfast. made more coffee. and it's still only 8:00 am and I have four hours until brunch (now lunch). so here i am.

when i first sat down to try to reflect these last few weeks, i became overwhelmed even thinking about trying to express myself or describe those days at all. and yet. i sat for some time watching the blinking cursor, knowing that writing is kathartic for me (even though i don't do all of it here, dear readers). and then i gave up. now, with the skies brightening and the vines climbing up the courtyard walls, maybe i can commence.

the professional opportunity i wrote about in my last post continues to be promising, although not certain. this potential opportunity is all the more enticing after returning to beijing to discover that there are a number of serious threats to our continued capacity to work here. i cannot describe, but was and remain quite alarmed about these challenges. i suspect a transition of some sort will be in store for me before too long regardless of how this particular opportunity unfolds. as usual, i am relying on grace. and remembering that there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. (thanks, leonard cohen.) i am hoping that these cracks will eventually allow for light to flood into my lives and those of my colleagues and the brave women and men committed to legal reform and authentic rights protection in china.

i have been think about grace a great deal these days. and have determined it is more essential to me by far than glamour. although there were some quite glamourous moments during my time away - including wearing a gorgeous bridesmaid gown that made me feel like a grecian goddess and having my hair and makeup professionally done for the first time (amazing!) - there was tremendous, amazing grace. i didn't die in a fire that erupted in the friend's flat i was staying with in nyc (thankfully we weren't there and no one was hurt). a minor surgery went smoothly. i was able to spend time with my beloved nephew, who is a beautiful and brilliant and wondrous child i love so fiercely it's hard to describe. i also had some relaxed time with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law. i saw dear friends in nyc. and i a most beloved sister-friend got married over a weekend that can only be described as magical. i have never seen her (or her also beloved now husband!) so happy. i felt as though i were floating with joy all weekend. so, so much grace.

i realise as i write all of this that i am not documenting the details, the many tumbling moments and stories that i could scoop and pour and shape on this screen. perhaps that's for the best. for now. i have a birthday approaching and am contemplating a new writing project that is related. maybe i'll unfurl it here. maybe not. for now, i am counting my blessings, gracious and graced.

glamazon

so first i was too glam for guiyang. and now i am just plain too glam. in fact, glamazon. so i am sparkling away from these grey skies tomorrow for two full weeks of joy and sunshine, good french fries and lambrusco, snuggling with the world's most wonderful nephew and laughing with my dearest friends, running on the beach and escorting one of my heart friends down the aisle. so, so excited. watch out, meiguo.

when i was recently with one of my sisters one of us remarked that i might just be too glam to be a human rights lawyer. at least in the long run. (the absolutely atrocious and appalling air quality and residual grey of the last few weeks literally has my inner diva ablaze and wanting to dress like a bollywood j.lo every morning. it's all i can to do contain it and tone it down to a respectable level.) anyway, even though i can't recall who said it, i am recalling the remark now. within the last week, a potential new direction has whirlwinded into my life and i am most intrigued. have literally found myself waking in the middle of the night thinking about it. and, as a recovering insomniac, it has been just terribly wonderful to find myself sleepless with excitement over a professional opportunity rather than heartache or over-thinking about a boy. terribly wonderful. (though it takes the same toll on my skin. unfortunately the substance of reason for sleeplessness does not influence form of resultant poor skin.) not sure how this will all unfold, but i am enjoying being in the midst of it for now. watch this space. and watch space. there's so much room for more love and beauty and joy in each and every day. i'm about to go cram as much as i can into the next two weeks.
don't cry for me jingshan park, i'll see you soon. and suspect that i'll still be too glam when i get back.

too glam for guiyang

i am too glam for guiyang.* although that is not saying much. and i am not exactly in guiyang. (i’m in qingzhen, outside guiyang (guizhou province), just off of hongfeng hu (lake) for a work program in which the local host is the two lakes and one reservoir environmental protection foundation.) even though the last two days – focused on environmental legal advocacy – have been substantively interesting and the participants have been very engaged and all’s well on the guizhou front, i have found myself uninspired. and i don’t say that i am too glam in a self-aggrandizing way. it’s more frustrating or funny than anything else at the moment. i don’t intend to terrorize small children when going on a morning run. or frighten the water buffalo and their keepers. but i can’t help it.

i also am officially over the charming sometimes honesty of chinese culture. i say sometimes honestly because there is a true art of lying and avoidance which is also very crucial. but straightforwardness about one’s appearance, weight, age, bodily functions, and ailments is quite acceptable. and context doesn’t seem to change or alter this honesty. i am always reminded of this during work programs where i will be called “beautiful” or basically be told by an elderly male Chinese judge or civil society activist that i have a slamming body. not in a disrespectful or harassing way, but merely as an observation. women will say the same, but usually elaborate. instead of just saying ni di shencai hen bang – your body is really great – they’ll usually add hen miaotiao – very long and willowy. this used to make me blush. by now, i’m accustomed to it and just say thank you.

these sorts of comments are totally not remarkable in a culture in which it’s permissible to be candid about the fundamentals. it is fine to call someone fat, or inform them that they have become fat since you’ve last seen them. or to say you’re late because you had diarrhea. in fact, when i was at the waijiao xueyuan (foreign affairs college: the training school for the chinese foreign service where i studied for a year after high school) i showed up for class one day only to be informed by an office assistant sitting at my professor’s desk that class was cancelled because teach pan had really bad diarrhea. not much to say in response, really. i nodded knowingly, turned and went back to my dorm.

the good thing about all the time i spend in second tier cities (or countrysides) – even in places where the weather is milder and the air is cleaner – is that it makes me very excited to return to beijing. i cannot wait to go back. and this is a successful program! which makes me wonder about my own level of engagement. rather than, ‘meiling, you have a slamming body,’ perhaps a more astute observation from a workshop participant would have been, ‘meiling, you are slamming bored.’ sigh.

in more exciting news, i think i’m finally settling into a more sustained writing project. something i have been circling around for some time, but am finally getting a sense of. it feels good. also, i had an epiphany the other day. something i have felt and known and held deep inside the me within me for some time, and which has surfaced amid my chatter about needing to continue and complete my conversation with beijing, but never really realized or articulated or accepted. i came here for love. not for love of one person or for china, but in order to wholly and complete learn to love myself. perhaps part of that is laughing at being too glam for guiyang and the qingzhen water buffaloes.


* also writing that i am too glam for guiyang reminds me of when, once upon a lifetime i was a young competitive swimmer and showed up for practice with a teammate having decided in the carpool ride over that we would serenade our coach with our own remix of the then popular “i’m too sexy” pop song. we paraded around the pool, strutting about and singing, “i’m too sexy for this pool, too sexy for this team, so sexy it’s cool” and such. he was not amused. i think we swam a 400m butterfly for time as a warm up. ahh, to be young and foolish.

football fever and hot summer nights

so beijing is officially hotter than hades. and i have football fever. which has resulted in long, sweaty nights watching the world cup at questionable sports bars until dawn. so much fun, but not especially smart. i need my beauty sleep. i can report without remorse that i have recently transitioned to using "anti-wrinkle anti-blemish" facial cleanser. it was time. that such a product even exists says something profound about the state of being a woman in the twenty-first century. what that profound something is, i am not certain. but i have faith that i'll have worked it out by the time i get to the end of my optimistic tube of facial cleanser.

in other news, it seems that the state security and PSB are possibly asking about us. i felt a familiar constricting in my chest yesterday afternoon as i faced yet another one of those personal and professional moral conundrums so peculiarly and particularly chinese. sigh. all part of the "chinese context". i alternatively love and loathe that expression. and yet. it's so useful.

the fan that is meant to keep our kitchen cool is decidedly not useful. i discovered this while cooking last night. i do so enjoy simple summer meals with friends in the courtyard. but i am consistently surprised when the temperature doesn't come down as darkness embraces beijing. so be it. life's a fire. we're meant to burn.

letting him say his lines

a dear sister-friend just departed. she was only in beijing for a few days, but they were full of adventure, authentic conversation, laughter, and love. so good for the soul. and for perspective. on everything. it was magic.* there were a few recurring themes among our many musings. among them was the importance of letting those around us say their lines and play their own parts in our dramatic lives. in particular, letting the men around us say their lines. rather than construct scripts so compelling we can't help but suck them in. easily done, but unwise. for those of us fascinated by narrative arc, and with the capacity to create scripts or scenes compelling enough to subterfuge those close by, it's an important consideration.** another recurring them was the significance of authentic communication. and its incomprehensible seeming lack among certain of our peers. how is it possible that people can really coast along without truly being open emotionally to others around them? or too fearful of the vulnerability that comes with intimacy to let their hearts loose? or caught in a confused vision of commitment as suppressed captivity and unable to see the absolute freedom therein? and yet, inauthentic communication happens all the time. and much energy is expended on cultivating false intimacies.

we contemplated starting a revolution against this state of affairs in which we would cultivate and share slower, deeper, more meaningful exchanges. this would be a strike against the pop intimacy of twitter. (yes, i realize the irony of writing about this on a blog. but at least it's not a microblog.) we tried to think of what the opposite of "tweeting" would be, or what we would call this movement. my friend suggested "om", but i noted that was taken. then she suggested "slom", but it sounds a bit too much like something you'd find in a dirty shoe. also, when we thought about what would actually be involved, it didn't make much sense. a blank website page where we say nothing.... slowly? we discussed writing letters to one another. i recalled how inspired i was reading the letters exchanged between jane austen and her sister at the 'a woman's wit' exhibit i'd seen at the morgan when i was last in nyc. but we realized that although something is lost - the processing and filtering and presentation of information (narrative!) - in our world of instantaneous communications, we doubted we'd be able to resist emailing while letters were en route, which kind of defeats the purpose. so we're still looking for another project. and we'll leave the om / slom revolution to someone else.

it's always nice to see your life through another's eyes. although this particular sister-friend thinks that my life ought to be a tv show.*** not sure i agree, but i do feel lucky to be pinned down by this star's pin here and now. yet another recurring theme of the last few days was how true happiness transcends outer experience or, more precisely, how happiness truly is a choice. and one we choose, consistently, without great efforts. there is so much beauty and joy in the world sometimes i can't stand it. actually, that's not true. i can always stand it.

we went hiking on the great wall with my chinese parents a few days ago. it was a wonderful trip. we were there on a wednesday, so we had the wall to ourselves and were literally the only people we saw for a few hours. that may also be because it ended up being more of an adventure than any of us anticipated. my chinese parents are sixty and after consulting with them about the day's plans, i was thinking we'd putter about on the wall for about an hour or so, take some pictures, eat an early lunch, and call it a day. instead, after about an hour and a half of good hiking on an absolutely beautiful unrestored section of the wall (not actually open to the public, mind) we mad a critical decision. rather than go back the way we came to get off the wall, we decided to climb down from the wall to the reservoir visible far below. my chinese parents "knew a path" that we could follow down the mountain. only after we were hopelessly lost an hour and a half later and literally bush-whacking our way through a ravine did it come out that they had last used this path four or five years ago in the autumn or the spring (when the vegetation was less lush).

my chinese parents have a bickering banter that largely sustains their relationship, so there was much back and forth about whether it was in fact four or five years ago and in the autumn or the spring when they had last followed this path. there was also a lot of discussion about who had led us astray or lost the path in the first place. (i personally am not sure that there ever was a path.) at one point when my auntie zheng was insisting that we couldn't climb down the slippery rocks before us and we needed to retrace our steps and climb back up and find the path, i finally intervened. auntie zheng, i said, we simply cannot head back now, we have no choice but to push ahead. (a profound mantra for life, really.) i reasoned that we were heading generally in the right direction (down) so eventually we would reach the reservoir, or at least civilization or some sort. my visiting friend recalled that she had just remarked the previous day that we can no longer have any real adventures now that we have gps and if need be we could rely on that. not so fast, i replied, the chinese government blocks gps. so we could only get off the mountain with wit and intuition. which we did. but it was arduous going and there were a few moments of serious concern about our capacity to survive. at one point, i overheard my chinese parents worrying about what to do if anything happened since, with the two foreigners in tow, it would be an international incident. i told them not to worry, we were both making peace signs in many of our photographs which makes us asian enough not to cause a fuss. in any case, we made it safely down somehow and all felt very close for having shared the experience. then we were immediately faced with the more pressing crisis of it being 12:30 and our not having had lunch yet. we eventually managed to eat as well. and make it back to beijing.

that evening my friend and i went to a foreign policy talk on china's rise on the world stage given by a professor from beijing university. i found just about everything he said offensive or trite. it somehow really irks me when academics base their assessment of china's inevitable rise to world dominance on sheer numbers. i think political and economic might, moral authority, and justice involve much more than that. or at least i'd like to think so. i also find it frustrating when academics hid behind coy, alliterative devices and jargon rather than articulating a coherent theory. but maybe that's simply part of how they dance.

speaking of dancing, i realized this morning while enjoying a blue sky day and going for an early morning run that whenever i listen to music, i am still constantly choreographing in my head. i think i need to limit my theatrics to that. and keep letting others say their lines.

*we also both believe in it. how can one not, really?

**in the interest of full disclosure, the "let him say his lines" line comes from another sister-friend whose wisdom and love we were channelling from nyc.

***she would not be the first to have suggested as much, as those of you familiar with 'the mattie show' theme song are well aware.