meanwhile the world goes on

so i've moved. the new place is wonderful - a gorgeous renovated hutong just north of jingshan park. the space is embracing. i adore my roommate. i love being in the very heart of the city. the move went smoothly - i packed my things like meticulous thangka paintings, the movers were efficient and careful (even if was bigger than all three of them and my efforts to make friends with the driver failed), and i have designed ecological and lovely furniture for my new room. it snowed on my first night in my new home, which also happened to be yuanxiao jie - the lantern festival making the first full moon of the chinese new year - so there were fireworks exploding all around me as the snow softly collected on my discarded cardboard boxes in the courtyard. my roommate left on a work trip just before i arrived, so i was unpacking on my own. which was nice for reflection (no move is complete without it) and for emotional moments considering beginnings, endings, the falling snow. a friend brought some dinner, including the traditional tang yuan one is meant to eat on the eve of the lantern festival so the night was complete. the fact that it snowed on my first night is very auspicious and somehow seemed to be the heavens confirming this choice. i drifted off to sleep content, confident that the year of the tiger will bring roaring wonder, and watching the snowdrifts collect on the courtyard bamboo garden outside my floor-to-ceiling bedroom window.

that was sunday night. this is an accounting of last night (monday night):

number of ill-disciplined, untrained, obnoxious puppies i had to handle: 1
number of times she peed on me: 2
number of poos i had to clean up: 1
number of chinese drama queen girlfriends who came over to cry about boy troubles: 1
number of bottles of wine we had: 1
number of times my cat peed on my bed b/c he couldn't get to his litter b/c of said puppy: 1 (well, either that or he was acting out, but he seemed pretty upset about it)
number of layers of bedding it went through: 4
number of phone calls from depressed and still in love / all talk no action ex-boyfriends: 1
number of hours of sleep i got: 5 (actually an improvement from the previous night when the fireworks kept me up)
number of times i was woken up during the night by one or both creatures crying: 5 - 7

i am now bleary-eyed at the office and unable to focus even though i must. (truth is, i am exhausted. last night's escapades, while unique in the animal antics are not in terms of my sleeplessness.) i am ruminating on love and choices, commitment and feeling, freedom and priorities. connection.* and have visions of new bedding and closet storage units dancing in my head. (work will consume me for much of the rest of this month so i am attempting to get as much as possible about the new place sorted before then. and somehow focusing on the tangible seems to ease the emotional.) and the consistent arc in my inner conversations over the last week has focused on how to love and let go. and meanwhile the world goes on. a line from a mary oliver poem that is always good for perspective. ahem:

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

meanwhile the world goes on. i had lunch with my flatmate, my new landlady and a friend of hers (both chinese women in their early 50s) on saturday. my new roommate is another expat. we took them to a rather swish western restaurant (they didn't even have chinese menus!), which was a treat for us and fun for them (they braved the cheese plate like pros). our landlady is quite a character - smart, outspoken, joyful. she and her friend asked me about my work. i explained that i work on rule of law issues and gave some examples of the issues we focus on. they then engaged me in a conversation about the legal system in china, colouring their points with case studies - anecdotes about the experiences of friends and friends of friends in the courts. one of the cases was even a domestic violence case. they plainly stated that there is no rule of law in china and that power and money control all the court decisions. by the end of the conversation, i wanted to bag my head against the trendy exposed brick wall next to me. or at least return to our exchange about why western people like to wear so little clothing at the beach. it was much more fun to hear them wonder about why americans wear bikinis even if they are fat. or to see their faces as i extolled the great joy of sunbathing and swimming topless in europe. this conversation about the courts, like all those of its ilk tend to do, left me questioning if this work is simply futile. my chinese mother is always telling me i should stop wasting my time and either go make money or become a diplomat. beats banging your head against a brick wall (even if an aesthetically pleasing one).

it didn't help that i returned home to discover this great quote from tom friedman: "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages." i almost lost my lunch. then again, tom friedman makes my stomach turn even on a good day when he's only saying something completely obvious and not egregiously offensive. oh well.

futile or not, here i am. fist-bumping against the iron hand of the reasonably enlightened authoritarians that run this place. still a little heartbroken whenever i allow myself to be still. and getting peed on. meanwhile the world goes on.


*only connect!

living lei feng

i have adopted a cat. somehow after a few hours in the bitter cold at a shelter past the sixth ring road (which may as well be another province) with a light coating of snow on the ground, i left with a tabby-coloured, long-haired boy whose name at the shelter was jingzhang or policeman. i am now finding that this is a rather surprising turn of events, even though i have been talking about adopting a cat for a matter of months and launched a 'hapless furball campaign'* a few weeks ago. talking is a rather different prospect than having a terrified beast staring down at you from atop the refrigerator. during the unbelievably long taxi ride back from the shelter, i considered new names for my policeman. and i am thinking of calling him lei feng.

lei feng was a soldier in the people's liberation army who was lionized after his death during the 'learn from comrade lei feng' campaign initiated by mao zedong in 1963. lei was characterized as a selfless and modest person who was devoted to the communist party, chairman mao, and the people of china. lei became a symbol of national propaganda and an enduring cultural icon symbolizing selflessness, modesty, and dedication. after mao's death, people began to question lei's life - the feats attributed to him and in particular his purported diary (200,000 words of flowery language primarily praising mao and the party) - were scrutinized. it has been suggested that the diary was a fabrication. indeed, much of lei feng's life may have been fabricated to fit the needs of mao's campaign. during 1964, the campaign shifted from encouraging the youth to learn from comrade lei feng and do good deeds to a cult of mao. for example, lei's diary apparently exhorted young people to "submit unquestioningly to the control of the great leader". chinese leaders since mao have continued to lean on lei feng as a symbol of altruism. zhou enlai, deng xiaoping, and jiang zemin have all written about lei feng. these days the term huo lei feng - living lei feng - describes someone who is seen as selfless or goes out of her or his way to help others. here is a description of lei feng from an editorial published in the people's daily in 1993:

When Lei Feng died in the line of duty, he was only 22, but his short life gives concentrated expression to the noble ideals of a new people, nurtured with the communist spirit, and also to the noble moral integrity and values of the Chinese people in the new period. These are firm faith in communist ideals, political warmheartedness for the party and the socialist cause, the revolutionary will to work arduously for self-improvement, the moral quality and self-cultivation of showing fraternal unity and taking pleasure in assisting others, the heroic spirit of being ready to take up cudgels for a just cause without caring for one's safety, the attitude of seeking advancement and studying hard, and the genuine spirit of matching words with deeds and enthusiastically carrying out one's duties.

i am thinking of calling my policeman kitty lei feng because i realize that i expect equally herculean tasks from him - not to shed too much, to coordinate nicely with my furniture and my art, and, most challenging, to heal my broken heart. poor beast. i am a little concerned that given his performance so far, he is going to be yet another male who disappoints me. although perhaps the policeman's lesson for me is to adjust my great expectations and do my own lei feng living.

though perhaps adopting him was mild altruism. he was, after all, rescued from the shelter. i almost adopted a sweet little girl kitty with one eye and two teeth, but recalled the last time i was looking to adopt a cat and my friends gave me grief for always been drawn to the neediest cases (three-leggeds, one-eyeds, etc). my impulse is always to reach for the creatures most in need of love. lei feng has four legs and two eyes, but so far i have not been able to give him much love. i could have adopted, from a friend-of-a-friend, two sweet little fluffy white kittens named bunny and honey. the six-year-old girl in me leaped with joy at the prospect! and would have promptly renamed them rainbowheartdiamondstarcrystallove (which incidentally was also the name i suggested to my parents for my youngest sister) and snugglemuffin. but i thought the sweet fluffy kittens would have no trouble finding a home. a scruffy three-year-old with skin disease or missing body parts is another story. however, now that my charity case is not accepting my love, i am reconsidering this strategy.

so anyway after a seemingly natural light dusting of snow, it is now coming down heavily and the courtyard outside seems to be getting lost. strange how the overwhelming whiteness can overwhelm the senses if you allow it. i may attempt to wander the muted streets later, leaving fraidy-cat lei feng at home, to appreciate the clean snow and muse about what else this new year might bring.


* 'hapless furball campaign' was the nickname i gave to my plan to adopt some unsuspecting furball to smother with love to ease the pain when things started to get tough with little trouble. unfortunately the campaign soon became overwhelming - i had maybe eight cats being offered to be from strangers and it was too much. (perhaps i have commitment issues of my own.) so i abandoned the campaign and fled to california for christmas. the adult human version of hiding wide-eyed on top of the refrigerator.

dancing on the inside

in the weeks leading up to thanksgiving, i have decided to be grateful each day. akin to my borrowed love,love,love agenda (being open to falling in love with three things in life each day)*, i am aiming to start each day giving thanks for something. maybe these two projects are cousins who like to walk hand in hand and swing on the playground together. they are certainly related.

one thing i was not thankful for this morning, however, was the snow. yes, it is snowing again in beijing. this is the third big snowstorm since halloween! i just cannot believe that this is natural and am convince that the furious ballet of snowflakes i'm seeing out my window is courtesy of the weather modification office. i couldn't find any people's daily articles affirming that the last 'gift' of a storm was the result of modification. but there was thunder so loud i thought we were being bombed the night it began, which makes one wonder. aside from the eerily disturbing and strangely sinister idea that the government is tampering with the weather on a weekly basis, it's a bit of a logistical nightmare. this city is just not equipped to handle this much snow.

a recent article in the SCMP on the nightmarish conditions at the beijing airport during the first storm demonstrates this well. mind you, as per usual, you need to go outside of china to get the real story. local coverage commended the airport staff for handling the situation so smoothly. the article:

man-made chaos, but no man-made solution
*****************************************************

Source: South China Morning Post (11/9/09):
Wang Xiangwei

On the morning of November 1, when my parents set off for Beijing Capital
International Airport for a flight of less than three hours to Guangzhou,
little did they know they were about to face more than 30 hours of hell.

Both in their late 60s, they were stranded in the cold airport waiting area,
then boarded the aircraft, then were kicked off the jet back into the cold
waiting area. When they finally took off, it was the afternoon of the next
day, last Monday.

Like tens of thousands of passengers that day, they became hapless victims
of the massive man-made chaos triggered by a huge man-made snowstorm.
Ironically, highly respected Conde Nast Traveller magazine had just named
Beijing's one of the best 15 airports in the world for its layout and flight
information, among other things.

My parents' horrible experience says a lot about the mainland's
crisis-management mechanism, lack of co-ordination among government
departments and utter failure to put into practice the government's much
trumpeted motto of "putting the people first". The cash-rich mainland may
have the best facilities, including gleaming modern airports and new jumbo
jets, but its soft power, as projected in services, is still way off.

When my parents arrived at the airport more than an hour before the 11am
scheduled take-off of Air China flight 1315, the snow was already heavy. But
the airline's ground staff mentioned nothing about a potential delay and
checked them in.

Lacking the wisdom of frequent fliers, they then began a long wait in a cold
waiting area. They were given no food or drink, contrary to state media
reports of such a service provided to delayed passengers. And they were
stonewalled when seeking flight information.

At around 5pm, they were told their flight had been cancelled, and they were
bumped to another flight. Then they were taken by bus to a Boeing 747 along
with more than 300 other passengers. From 6pm to 2am, they sat in the plane
before being told the flight had been cancelled and they had to leave.
Confused, hungry and angry, my parents, along with other passengers, engaged
in intensive arguments with the airline ground staff, who refused to say
when the next flight would be available and would not take them to a hotel.

At 5am, the airline staff relented and put them on a bus to a hotel nearby.
Then my parents were told to get ready to meet a bus going back to the
airport at 8am, but the bus did not turn up until three hours later. They
finally managed to get a China Southern flight to Guangzhou at around 4.40pm
last Monday after more than 30 hours.

To their great dismay, one Beijing newspaper they read on the flight was
full of articles praising the airlines and airport staff for initiating
emergency systems and going out of their way to help stranded passengers. A
weather forecaster at the Air Traffic Management Bureau was quoted as saying
such an early snowfall had not been seen for 22 years, and it was totally
unexpected.

But it was not. According to the state media reports, the snowfall - which
dropped more than 16 million tonnes of snow on Beijing, delayed air travel
and left city residents shivering - was man-made. From 8pm on October 31 to
2am on November 1, the Beijing Weather Modification Office blasted 186
sticks of silver iodide into the clouds to induce snow to help ease the
drought in the city.

But the officials apparently failed to notify other departments, including
aviation authorities. A China Daily commentary fumed that "this arbitrary
government decision disregarded the interests of the people".

The Beijing weather office was not the only one. The airport and airlines
may have launched their own emergency management systems, but there appeared
to be little interdepartmental communication. The result was total chaos,
with little information available from anyone.

The bad service made the situation even worse. For instance, Air China
offers a toll-free hotline, which was understandably jammed that day, but in
this age of the internet, its website provided no updates on the status of
flights, leaving anxious passengers and relatives in the dark.

As well, even after the flights resumed on the afternoon of November 1,
airport controllers cleared the backlog of flights not according to the
length of their delays, but by the ranks of officials on board, according to
insiders.

A week has passed, and nobody has come forward to take responsibility or
apologise for the made-made chaos, let alone learn any lesson. Future chaos
can be reduced if Beijing learns from other countries by setting up an
interdepartmental task force to handle airport delays resulting from unusual
weather.

As the Beijing weather officials yesterday forecast more rain and snow on
the way today, and over the next few days, passengers need to brace
themselves.

**************

a friend who was travelling through beijing en route to wuhan that day spent 10.5 hours on a plane without food as they beijing airport staff struggled with the de-icing equipment and refused to feed the captive passengers. i am so thankful i arrived at the airport that afternoon, took one look, and left. perhaps my most brilliant decision this month.

whether any of these decisions to blanket beijing in snow are brilliant, alleged drought or not, remains to be seen. apparently the weather modification office finally admitted that today's snow is their doing, but had previously stated that tuesday's was 'natural': http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26335967-23109,00.html. i suppose that depends on what your definition of 'natural' is.

in this moment, i am thankful for warmth. i no longer have any urges to rush out and dance in this. instead i will be dancing on the inside (as always).

* borrowed from a lovely friend started a blog in the spirit of a poet she heard at a conference this spring. the poet said that in order to write poetry you must be open to falling in love at least three times a day. i love that concept! and my wonderful friend with her thoughtful blog: lovethreethings.blogspot.com.

a world changed

i awoke to find a world changed. there is a deep blanket of unblemished snow stretching forward from my doorstep and tightly containing the world. quite lovely really. and almost appropriate. there was terrible, ominous thunder and lightning last night around midnight. at the time i was in the midst of a difficult conversation with little trouble and it was a curious accompaniment. the strain of distance was crashing all around us with the thunder, and we agreed to take some space and time to think and feel through things. but i awoke this morning and while staring at the snow*, realized that i do not know how to actualize this. how to find the necessary space and navigate this unfamiliar terrain. the white world reflected back at me didn't have any answers. and i'm not sure that i do yet either. i am sure, however, that difficult though this may be, we will both grow. and love.

of course it is all more subtle than that. and the snow is a simple concept to capture the strangeness that seems to be holding me this morning. mercifully we are moving offices this morning, so i was going to be working from home anyway. so i have the space at least to consider the subtler aspects of this not-a-separation and take stock of my heart. and i can stay in my pyjamas, drink too much coffee, enjoy the brightness of the morning light thanks to the snow, and listen to jazz.

making coffee was the one constant this morning. there is such solace in rituals. i think i love the ritual of making coffee - with my tidy french press, the crack of the tin, scoop of the grounds, the rush of the water, the waiting, the sweet nuttiness of catching the last drop of soy milk with my finger as i pour it, the swirl of it - perhaps more than drinking the coffee. each of those moments mattered this morning. each moment was a soft nudge towards the center of myself. i need to fully fall into that center and stay there for a spell. (for always?)

i am of course frightened (though i cringe even to give voice to that word because i usually feel as though i am afraid of nothing (toss of my cape bravely over my shoulder!!)) of being in this city alone. that is, without an emotional mooring of my heartstrings to someone who though distant, is close in spirit** and who is the shore to my oceanic passions and also my ocean. but perhaps this is what brought me to beijing in the first place. to fall into myself completely finally. confront that and other fears, learn to love my quirks and foibles, and relinquish the nonsensical and punishing quest for perfection that i seem to have been on for too many years now. and at many points along the way (just last tuesday, and yesterday, for example), i like to tell myself that i'm there. i will remind myself to 'be really whole and the world will come to you.' but you can't tell yourself to be really whole. you simply have to be it.

last night during the dramatic crashing and thrashing of the skies and then again this morning as i was gazing out at the beautiful, harsh, astringent white world unfurling from my doorstep, i was reminded of a mary oliver poem. (i again almost rushed outside it to embrace the coldness and feel deeply alive, but reason beat passion again so i stayed in the warmth.) ahem:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

this is perhaps a bit much for the present situation, and might sound melancholy, but i see it now as a reminder that all i can do is be my best self, fall into the center, be really whole. i think what i appreciate most about the idea of 'the journey' at this point in my life is accepting that we need one. and that it never ends. trust, wholeness, self-knowledge, acceptance, clarity, love - they do not come easily. they need to be earned. but the effort - that work - even the brokenhearted sobbing in the corner*** bits, are necessary and enabling. it is in those vulnerable moments when we come closest to ourselves. to the divine. to faith. and which allow our hearts to open further. so this too shall pass - the snow, the ache, the caffeine buzz. but i will not rush through. i know that great beauty and joy are waiting. (they always are.)


* why am i relating my emotional landscape to the weather so much these days?!? is it just more of my overly emotive nature / efforts to see connections everywhere? query.

** channeling goethe: "the world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers, and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit - this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden."

*** i prefer crying in corners when i can. not sure why.

a 'gift' of snow

for the first time ever on halloween, the weather seemed to be coordinated with my costume. a friend and i were 'little white lies', which involved dressing all in white (including faces and hair (which was a curious preview of what i'll look like in my 70s!)) and bedecking ourselves in 'lies' (they included: "it's not you, it's me", "i'll call you tomorrow", "dark chocolate is a health food", "i'm 29", "i'm almost there, 5 mins", "that dress looks great on you!", etc). we looked fantastic, even if it took people a few minutes to sort it out.... little white lies began falling from the sky around midnight on all hallow's eve, a highly unusual occurrence. it had been quite warm in beijing in the preceding weeks and snow, which is itself rare, very rarely falls in november in the northern capital. it was so unusual it seemed, well, unnatural, pleased as i was that it matched my costume.

the snowflakes were, in fact, little white lies. the snow was induced by the beijing weather modification office in order to combat beijing's "lingering drought. the office seeded the clouds starting at 8 pm on saturday using "186 doses of silver iodide". the snow kept up through the night was falling nearly all day on sunday. this was also serious snow - thick flakes with staying power such that the city was properly blanketed. i have never seen so much snow in beijing. it was beautiful to watch fall, although attempting to fly out of beijing that afternoon was less beautiful. (i am still in beijing and ill. sigh.)

the beijing airport was insanity that day. although the people's daily online had a more positive spin, noting that "the snow brought unexpected fun and joy to tourists in beijing". the same article did concede, however, that beijing might find it challenging to handle the "more the 16 million tonnes of artificially added snow". the paper observed, "the snow, which local media called a 'gift', however, is expected to bring troubles to the city's traffic". but we can all overlook a little duche (traffic) for the gift of a white halloween!

when i searched online to confirm my suspicion that the snow was unnatural and stumbled across this article, i couldn't help but smile. it's kind of surreal to watch the snowflakes fall in a freezing flat (the heat in beijing isn't turned on until nov. 15th, although thankfully they turned it on by sunday night!) in the capital of a country with a 'weather modification office' where the main paper can dictate the conclusions of the local media. i just suddenly felt as though i was in a novel or curious short story, a feeling that was exacerbated as i was unable to get any information via phone or even in person at the airport about when or whether my flight was going to take off.

falling snow makes me thoughtful. and as i contemplated it, i realized that this is the city i have lived in longest on this earth. and yet, it is not home. or cannot be. i realize that my commitment to being here this time around is perhaps not complete. because i only think of it as "for now" or for a few years. or perhaps more accurately because i am still struggling to find a real community here. or perhaps even more accurately because something of the messy, complex, scrappy beijing of my childhood has been lost in this new, shiny metropolis. and i miss the unsophistication and the innocence of that china. convenient as life here has now become, it's less fun somehow. or maybe that's just because i don't have the appropriate people to share it with. that being said, i am so fortunate to have such wonderful colleagues and to be able to do such compelling work. work is, of course, not enough. but it will have to be for now. i also keep wanting to pick up one of the 12 writing projects i have squirreled away in various corners of my mind and on my laptop. but i have a hard time knowing where to begin. (the trick, of course, is simply beginning.)

the 'gift' of this snow has at least forced me to slow down. i never did make my flight and ended up canceling my trip as the cold weather finally gave the cold / cough i was fighting off a chance to completely floor me. being sick and stuck at home is also good for contemplation. or perhaps it's not. i'm rather fuzzy-headed and, let's be honest, probably do too much thinking.....