of angels and afterglow

my yoga practice this morning was disrupted by a swift and startling hail storm. it arrived so suddenly. it was overwhelming and fierce and gorgeous. the universe's hurling reminder to live to the point of tears, to pay attention, to be really whole and let the world come to you. or at least that's how i interpreted it. i stopped my practice and ran to the into to watch it pound us with perspective. i contemplated dancing in it, celebrating it somehow - life's secret outpouring (outpouring of life's secrets?) at 6:58 am. but reason (dancing in a hail storm in yoga clothes would likely bring my cold back) won over passion (dance!). for some reason, writing this is reminding me of one of my favourite brian andreas quotes - "most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable & fall asleep & miss your life". angels appear in all sorts of unexpected places.

speaking of unexpected places, i found myself translating an interview about china, nationalism, and identity with mao's secretary. for real. he's 90, but still very lucid, thoughtful and engaging. he was sporting the elder comrade commifabulous modern mao suit, think glasses and a shock of white hair. we met in the gui bing lou of the beijing hotel and after our meeting his black sedan with white plates (=party member) was waiting to escort him back to his flat which i realized afterwards must be in zhongnanhai (the compound for the party leadership) and explains why we couldn't meet him there. the circumstances of how i ended up translating for two millenials** is frankly insulting. and the girls themselves were less than inspiring. (aside: they want to take me to dinner to thank me for my time / doing their homework for them, but i don't think i care to spend anymore time attempting to connect with them. once upon a lifetime, a former self was willing to endure dull conversation for good, free meals (that was called "dating"). but i'm no longer willing to waste precious time (hailstorm! tempus fugit! don't sacrifice!) just for the sake of a nice meal. of course, my courtesy will likely win out in the end and i will probably go to dinner with these gals and try to be kind and see the good in them. for luckily i've found that i can see the good in just about everyone.) circumstances aside, i was intrigued by the opportunity to meet this man and here his perspective on the 60 years of the PRC. he started off in yen'an during the japanese resistance movement, found himself as mao's secretary, was disgraced, imprisoned and tortured during the cultural revolution (& wrote about about it), and was then redeemed by deng xiaopeng. (ahh, to have fallen from grace and to have been rescued by a multi-coloured cat!) he was thoughtful about china's past (and said he thought mao got arrogant after the nation was formally established, but i think he was being polite and towing the party line, while honestly had more critical things to say about the great helmsman.) the millenial and her roommate asked obvious, not particularly probing questions. and they didn't show - or weren't prepared to show - the level of respect i think the circumstances dictated (look up how to say "it's an honour to meet you" or ask me in advance). i inserted the appropriate niceties as best i could. because i did think it was an honour to meet him. i am fortunate enough to have two grandmothers in their 90s and feel that i have so much to learn from people who have seen so much.

though i still have much to learn, i feel as though i am getting closer to mastering the dinner party. i made my mum's vegetarian chilli yesterday (secret to the deliciousness: raisins, cashews, beer!) and had some friends over for dinner. i also, because i am an obsessive baker these days (what is that about?!?) made wholewheat honey bread to go with it. and oatmeal raisin cranberry dark chocolate chunk cookies. somehow it all just came together very nicely - the food, the company, the feeling. (the music was a little odd, but my ipod is strangely possessed. also, little trouble has tampered with it a lot.) it felt liberating in a curious way. i love feeding people. and i love bringing people together. but in some corner of my mind i think i still associated dinner parties with something i would do with a partner (and have done so only when little trouble is in town in the past). and i don't have completely matching tableware or such, but am clearly not getting married and likely to get it anytime soon. but i realized in the warm afterglow of saying goodnight as the guests stepped off into the crisp cold and i turned to the soapy warmth of washing up to loud music and the last sips of my wine, that it's not about a partner or plates. that i can create community and spread love on my own. and indeed, have been doing so for many years (always?) without realizing it. it was a nice quiet realization. especially because i have been feeling a bit burned by the distance lately and a little troubled about things with little trouble. but i am tired of trembling with the strain of worrying too much or trying not to worry. so am just living my life, looking for love and joy each day and finding angels in hailstorms. i finally feel as though i am building a real life here, and am enjoying that. i only wish that little trouble could be a part of it. and i hope we find a way to be in the same place before the distance becomes toxic (if it is not already).

on a more positive note, i am concluding this day marveling at how life can unfold, content after a meal with a friend, and full of poetry and possibility. i'm not sure that angels could ask for anything more.


**my preferred term for the current crop of college students, recent graduates, and even law students who just seem to not have much of a clue and have a sense of entitlement that is frankly frightening. i confess this is something i may have something of a soapbox about. it just always baffles me. who do these kids think they are? and why does it seem that there is little to no conversation about, for example, how to approach an internship proactively and consider your role as adding value to and learning from the employer? why does the emphasis always seem to be about what the intern expects to gain and not what s/he hopes to contribute or add? there is a real selfishness that i've observed in young people perhaps half a generation behind me. it's always shocking. in this case, it was particularly so. the coed who called me to do this (confession: yes, i just wanted to use the term 'coed' and yes i know it's ridiculous) is the daughter of a woman who is basically on the board of my ngo and who has deep connections in china. the board member's parents (millienial's grandparents) had a connection with mao's secretary and his family. millienial and her roommate are both in beijing studying this year (incidentally at the same university my brother taught at years ago which has a soft spot in my heart because his time in china really marked the blossoming of our relationship which is something i truly cherish). as part of their program they are taking a 'chinese culture' class (taught in english) and they had an assignment to interview a chinese person about nationalism and the 60th anniversary and all that jazz. millenial and roommate decided they wanted to interview wang zhongfang, mao's secretary. she had her mother send me and my partner-in-crime (maybe i should call her my work wife? i had a work husband once (my comrade and go-to for emotional support at the office; i still call him that), but in this case it's an even more apt description) an urgent email asking us to help her. these two basically can't speak any comprehensible chinese even though they've been studying the language for more than a year at an ivy league university plus three months in beijing. so i had to call this respected elder statesman and arrange the interview and then take them there and then basically conduct the interview - he couldn't understand their questions and they couldn't understand his responses. it was an interesting exercise in simultaneous translation for me. but, as i was reflecting on the fact that a board member thought this an appropriate request to make or that her daughter thought it an appropriate use of her mother's connection, i realized that it all smacked of what drives me crazy about certain millenials. she would have had a broader learning experience if she had had to stand on her own two feet and find someone she could actually speak to (it's not exactly hard to find a chinese person to talk to in beijing), rather than fall back on privilege and mummy's guanxi (connections). but that's just it - the millenial essence. this sense of entitlement or idea that the entire world can bend to satisfy your whims rather than being satisfied with doing what you can do on your own. then again, i contributed to that idea by disrupting my work week to help her. but did i have a choice given her mother's position in my ngo?

red china blues

so a sweet message from a sweet old beijing tongxue now in south africa inspired me to tooter once more to the brink and consider collecting my thoughts. naturally, i questioned again (and then again) about who or what this is for. but i've decided that’s no matter. there is something lost in me when i am not writing, or creating, in some small way. i’ve recognized that. and i can’t always find that place through work, or even through witty emails, or poems about imaginary pets. not even yoga brings me there (that’s a journey of a different, albeit related, sort). so, i’ve decided to just write. and not worry about whether anyone’s reading. or whether i make insightful or instructive comments about justice or whether i spend too much time getting lost in the stirrings of my hummingbird heart. (though isn’t personal narrative what makes justice worthwhile or interesting in the first place?)

personal narrative. it's what makes the world go ‘round. or at least allows us to relate. ‘red china blues’ was the title of a memoir about china i read several years ago. it was the typically cultural revolution tale, told through the eyes of one woman. (when we lent the book to my auntie jung, she covered it with newspaper so that if she was seen reading it on the bus, no one would know.) it feels belittling to say that in a way – “the typical cultural revolution tale” – because how could the intensely traumatic and brutal experiences of that one young women ever be “typical”? but they are. like that one woman, millions of teenagers saw their families torn apart or destroyed, witnessed the humiliation, brutalization or murder of their parents, were sent to remote areas of the country to work punishing hours in fields and factories without compensation or food. these individuals, each of whom suffered unique and terrible traumas, are now in their 50s. some fled and wrote best-selling memoirs detailing the horrors they experienced. i hope that they found some release in that. but for those who have stayed behind, there has never really been any public katharsis. and to speak of your own pain seems strange in a nation where nearly everyone your age has a similar story. how to you privately heal in such circumstances? one close family friend of ours provides economic support to educate the children of the village that he was “sent down” to during the cultural revolution. he says he is alive only thanks to the generosity of this impoverished tiny community that spared two potatoes a day for him for three years. as smart as he is big-hearted, this friend secured a coveted spot in the first class at beijing university when it reopened after the cultural revolution crumbled. i wonder if finding a way to give back is somewhat more than an expression of gratitude. perhaps it is part of a healing process, acknowledging those years of hardship and the six years he was unable to contact or locate his parents or three siblings. perhaps it is just kindness.

i recalled the enticing title of that book recently because i’ve had a case of the red china blues. although i think i may be recovering. i was quietly happy to be returning to beijing last night (although i am writing this en route to hong kong and then chiang mai, where i’ll be visiting little trouble and spending a week considering environmental legal advocacy in the mekong region, respectively). this case of the blues, if you can call them that, is a broader consciousness and growing concern about china. i am perhaps more
critical now of this government than i ever have been. i think this is healthy because i spent many years to enamoured with or protective of china to see clearly or think critically about the implications of this regime or its polices. (it is hard to clearly see things that we are too close to.) with time, distance, education, adulthood, travel (take your pick), my perspective has shifted. whereas once i was the one always singing china’s song, i know find myself cast as the shadow of doom in china conversations. the world seems so ready and willing to embrace china without question these days, and it frightens me. this is not a benign government. and they are quietly amassing power in subtle and complicated ways. i worry about china becoming the dominant superpower in the world. (and for those who say she lacks the creativity to do so, who needs creativity when you have seemingly limitless (opaque) markets?)

i had a rewarding two weeks back in the states. personally, i was able to connect with friends and family. professionally, a study tour i had helped to pull together for chinese judges on domestic violence and civil protection orders was just fantastically successful. so much better than i had even imagined. but my partner-in-crime (an anti-violence advocate and a researcher at the institute for applied jurisprudence, a think tank attached to the supreme people’s court) and i had to be all cloak-and-dagger about my involvement and obscure our relationship. she and her colleague even had to sneak out of their hotel to attend a meeting i arranged with one of the experts who will be part of our upcoming judicial training on domestic violence. the night before the group left, the foreign affairs bureau informed them that the tour they were going on, organized via the state department’s international visitors program, was political and was an effort by the united states government to brainwash them. they were given strict marching orders about how they were to conduct themselves while on the tour. when this was recounted to me, i couldn’t help but wonder when the cold war became chic again. oh, and just to be safe, the foreign affairs bureau planted one of the participants who was surely a spy (and none too subtle about it!)

my blues – professional frustrations and personal reflections – will dissolve, however, in moments that some how go beyond them. the study tour coincided with labour day weekend, so the state department planned on arranging a “home hospitality” program with an american family as part of the program. naturally, i volunteered my parents. so we had the group of nine judges and scholars over for a pool party and bbq. perhaps the best part was when one of the judges was admiring our yard, and my father responded by saying, “yes, but in china you don’t have to worry about cutting the grass.” the judge replied by saying, “but we want to cut grass; i have always wanted to cut grass.” ba immediately jumped up, saying, “you do? come on. follow me.” a few moments later we heard the sound of the lawnmower starting and soon judge luo was pushing it, or more accurately being pulled by it, around the back yard. two more judges then ran down for turns cutting the grass. it was a classic cultural exchange. one man’s chore is another man’s great new tourist experience.

the most fascinating cultural exchange of the trip happened in boston. among the many excellent program activities in boston was a meeting with the founder of common purpose, a local batterers intervention program. the founder, mitch, arranged to have a few facilitators from the program accompany him and also put together a panel of men who were in the process of going through the program because they had been sentenced to do so by a judge. when they walked into the room, there was a great pause in my thoughts for a moment. in all my anti-violence work, we toss around terms like “abusers” or “batterers” without thought to those labels. and suddenly, here they were. real, live “batterers” walking into a sunlight side room in the dorchester district court. they were a curious combination of swagger and shame, testosterone and nerves. i measured my own reaction and noted the moment of fear. but that fear quickly gave way to empathy, “batterers” or not, these were people and worthy of compassion. i made a point of introducing myself to and shaking the hands of each man, thanking them in advance for their willingness to participate. for participating in that panel, sharing about the deeply personal, painful, and shameful process of being ordered to participate in this program and how it is influencing them, cannot have been easy. the chinese side was at first a bit shell-shocked and i worried for a moment that they would not engage. but once they did, the exchange was fascinating and, i hope, meaningful for both sides. the judge who boldly asked the first question was a complete surprise to me. a conservative sort with a terrible combover, he usually seemed more interested in videotaping than asking questions. but he asked the men about the methodology the program employed, explaining that in china, they value balance – yin yang – and that anger is a natural human emotion, so if the methodology of the program was to teach them to suppress their anger, he thought that might eventually lead to problems or illness, but if the methodology was to help them to develop other means of releasing their anger, he wanted to know what those were and whether they were effective. my heart smiled to judge yi in that moment because that question was the perfect opening for a thoughtful discussion on anger and so much more, but it also was respectful of the assembled men. the group gave each of the program participants chinese stamps depicting the longest bridge in china, and the men seemed genuinely please with the gifts. i hope that in some small way their experience with us in that sunny room helps them constructing their own bridges to better places. bridges which, like those in stamps, i imagine must be very long.

so now i am full of hope, watching lazy clouds out my window. maybe i don’t have the red china blues after all. or maybe, just maybe, a moment of reflection is all i need as a remedy.