Sleepy...

Were you wondering what kind of cool places I've been so far on my trips around Southern China? Well, the above picture is a perfect example. Thats right, I got taken to the exact scene that graces the back of the 20 RMB bill. Not only extremely beautiful, but pretty cool for novelty's sake too, eh? The days lately are filled with driving around the all manner of gorgeous backdrops for this movie that is being shot- if Guilin is full of anything, it's full of gorgeous backdrops. I have even been involuntarily nominated "English exclamation checker lady" as I'm the only English speaker on set and the main character in the movie is supposed to be an ABC (American born Chinese). Every scene or two he has some kneejerk English utterance, which is now run by that English teacher girl (aka yours truly). I am resisting the urge to give him extremely odd things to say, though if my resolve breaks the first thing they'll get is a 'Holy Cow, Batman!'.

In other news...what is my other news? Not much. Stuck down here in Southern China through the holidays. I never thought i'd miss Christmas, but I do. I enjoy being around my friends and celebrating the relationships that i've cultivated in all realms of my life. I enjoy cooking and especially baking, neither of which I'll get to do down here in my swank Sheraton hotel room. Swank as it may be, I'd much rather trade it in for the cold and rickety existence that is hutong life. Sigh. Hopefully I'll get flown home sometime around the new year, if only for a day or two...

Since i have no outlet down here in the business center (my room has no internet, so the lobby it is for me), my low battery life is telling me i have to go. Emails would be appreciated, since I can't get to a fast enough internet connection to call anyone at all, and the solitary Southern Chinese lifestyle I am becoming accustomed to could use a little breaking up by friends and family.

Love you guys
Jessie

Lovely,

Seems like all my blogs lately start with the words 'It's late and I'm tired so...'

And who am I, really to break the trend? After all...it is late, and i am tired, so i might as well be honest with you all. This post may not be the most interesting, socially aware, or imaginative, so bear with me.

I'm still in Southern China and will have business here for about a month. Hopefully I'll have time to slip slip back to Beijing to see a friend while she's in town, but one never knows. I'm slowly going insane without access to a kitchen- I haven't cooked for myself in almost three (3!!!) days. tears. i have a feeling its only going to get worse from here.

I miss you all, and i love you.

Jess

Hello lovelies.

I'm sorry i don't have much for you today, its very late and i'm very tired. To make up for the lack of my own content on the post, I'll give you some interesting things to look at. And a quick update or two.

First off in the last few days I went to Guilin （桂林）, in Guangxi (广西） province. Guilin is one of only four cities in China whose historical and cultural protection are listed as a top priority. Well, thats what Wikipedia says anyway. What I learned on the way there is that there is a common saying in China that goes "桂林山水甲天下", which translates roughly to "Guilin's scenery is the best under heaven" or, "Guilin's scenery is better than heaven". And, from what i saw, it was rather majestic indeed. I got to hike up into the mountains and see the mist shrouded terraced rice paddies. They looked like this:

More or less, cause thats not actually my photo.

I also went to Guangzhou 广州 in Guangdong 广东 province. Guangdong is that province waaay down south, where, like in Hong Kong, they speak Cantonese in addition to Mandarin. In fact, Guangdong is a hop skip and a jump away from Hong Kong, which makes sense seeing as they speak the same language. It's also where most of the goods sold in China (and those sold around the world that bear the stamp 'Made in China') are produced, and where a lot of Chinese movies and commericals are shot. Guangzhou is filled with banyans trees, bustling street markets, and tall graceful hotels that peer down, down at clustered city slums. Like a lot of China it is a city filled with double standards and dichotomies. I enjoyed walking it's streets and seeing the trees and fruits that remind me of home, as well as feeling the closest thing to island air that i have in months. What was really nice about the trip down south was getting out of the icy terror that is Beijing.

Guangdong is, you guessed it, the yellow province. Guangxi is right next to it to the left- quick lesson, dong '东' means east and xi '西' means west. Get it? 广西 and 广东? Kind of like North Carolina and South Carolina? Wow, I never thought that I'd be 20, sitting in Beijing in the winter writing a blog post comparing 广东 and 广西 to North and South Carolina...odd the ways that life turns...

Anyway. This is whats stuck in my head:

Kisses and love to everyone. Talk to you soon, about adventures and ideas.

jess

Oh yes.

It is Christmas time in the Jing, complete with a decking of the halls and more than a few jingling bells. Ironic, isnt it, that the most 'traditional' Christmas I'll be having will be in the capital of a Communist country?

The bite of winter wind and settling of snow somehow makes all of the carols more palatable for me. These things, these trappings of festive-ness, were difficult for me to handle growing up in Los Angeles...a city even farther removed from the homeland of these traditions than early colonies like Plymouth or New York. At least in New York the felling of pine trees and songs about 'dashing through the snow' are pertinent- in Los Angeles they seem down right silly. Forget all of the other issues i have with Christmas (Christmas being a commercialized Christian holiday- and commercialization and Christianity being two of the things i agree with the least), but celebrating reindeer and snowmen in a desert climate has always been despicable to me. I mean...couldn't the holiday have been tweaked to at least fit the local community celebrating it? Yea, I know, i've heard of the whole palm tree in place of a pine tree thing, but who really does that? I can understand that people living all over the nation want to celebrate the holiday, but I think that if we look to the deeper meaning of the season it becomes apparent that we don't need the exact same decorations and songs everywhere. What is being celebrated is the birth of a savior, not a fat old guy in a fur trimmed suit or the first snow of the season. I mean, moving Christmas back and into winter was originally done to sync it up to Winter Solstice, no? As a way to make it more palatable to pagans? I mean, I feel like we could have at least kept up with the theme of adapting the holiday to suit it's new celebrants- right? Or is that just too hopeful?

Anyway, it is thus that i find myself tolerating rather than despising the Merry Christmas signs and songs that bedeck Beijing at this time of year- at least songs about snow and sleds are relevant in Northern China. That is until I remember that I'm in China, and this is a Christian holiday, and all the Santas are Caucasian, and the only reason Christmas exists here is as a consumerism extravaganza. Then I cry a little on the inside.

And on that note, I'm going to get going. I have to fly down to sunny, warm Southern China in a few hours and there are some Buddhist confection shops that need hitting up for inflight snacks. I'll be in Guangxi for a few days, the southern province that borders Canton, Hunan, and Vietnam. It's purported to be mountainous and beautiful, full of wild expanses and ancient culture. Hopefully, hopefully hopefully i won't be stuck in a city the whole but will have the nature break that i so desperately need. Then again with a projected temperature of 72 degrees farenheit, I'll be happy to just stand in the street. I'll give you the scoop and let you guys know how it is once I'm home.

love&luz
Jessie

Oh god.

THERE IS FROZEN WATER FALLING FROM THE SKY.

I REPEAT, FROZEN WATER. FROM THE SKY. FROZEN.

who would have guessed my first white christmas ever would be in China....

What? Snow? No way.

Hello to everyone.

I know that its been a few days since i last hopped over here and posted, but now that i'm well I've been rather busy. You know, working, trying to find jobs, trying not to freeze, trying not to run away to the airport and fly myself on home...the usual.

Beijing is becoming progressively colder, and as such, progressively greyer. I'm knackered tonight from running around teaching and shopping for all the grains and seeds that i require for happy living. It's lucky for me I live a five minute walk from the largest Lama temple in Beijing, so in addition to living near lots of really interesting buddhist shops, I happen to live near one of the few purveyors of organic grains and legumes. It's an adorable little shop, lined with bins and jars of grains, flours, seeds, and beans- when I get my camera I'll be sure to snap some pictures. It's always bustling and has a small bakery in the back, a bakery whose goods i hope to sample. In addition to the Buddhist shops and organic grain store I also live a stones throw from quite a few vegetarian restuarants- again, thank you to the Lama temple. In case youre wondering what it looks like, the pictures flashing on the side of this page were taken there.

I'd like to type up a little more, but the Norwegian is leaving tomorrow to go travel, so we're all going out to dinner. That, and the pipes in our kitchen have cracked and there is water spraying all over everything. I think I might need to help with that...as its supposed to snow tomorrow, and we dont want to start running a small ice skating rink, we need to water to stop gushing onto our frigid floor. Sigh.

love&luz

Mrrr.

I'm listening right now to a few tracks off the new John Legend CD. How thatll affect the tone of the post, I dont know. If, in the middle of reading this, you feel the urge to push away all the worries of the day and admit that you love me, and only me, will love me for the rest of our lives and want to spend everynight slow dancing in the middle of our apartment in candlelight, chalk it up to John and not to my writing skills. And put the roses away, I'm not into that romantic stuff.

If, on the contrary, you feel the urge to make banana pancakes and pretend like it's the weekend now (we could pretend it all the time!), I'm down for that. Cause, we all know things fall apart and tend to shatter, but I'm like that shit dont matter.

Ok, enough of this tomfoolery. No more song quotes. I'm not perfect, but I'm this that and this.

So Beijing is a beautiful city. Beautiful in the way that everything is beautiful, so long as you push yourself to see it. I'm becoming masterful at this. I thought that i was before, but 'before' i lived in Hawaii...not hard to see beauty in everything you see there. Beijing in the winter when you miss your family, miss not freezing, miss sunsets and sunrises and clear skies and clean air and beach runs with your friends...this can test even the most seasoned beauty seeker. It can seem a little, *gasp*, bleak. Luckily there are things that like hot sweet potatoes roasted fresh and whole over burning coals in little concrete drums on wagons in the streets. There are similarly roasted chestnuts in shops set up against the dower buildings, warm sweet finger thawing. There are fresh mandarin oranges in the mornings, peeled under a warm comforter in a cozy room, hiding from the hazy sunny gnawing frost. There are the dolled up girls, prancing in high heels short skirts thick leggings and fat fat waist length winter coats. They spit in the streets, the subways, and they make me stare when they walk past. Me in my knit hat, thick scarf, and long baggy dark blue coat. I make no one stare, save for the color of my skin and texture of my hair.

There is a crescent moon, pale orange through the haze, gracing the sky tonight. I look at it and i remember all the places i've looked at it before. LA streets lined up in the cold, Frisco pavement on the way home, Oahu park with a blanket and a bottle, Big Island beaches chilly and desolate. So beautiful, all. When I add to that list my current dark beijing hutong, icy dark and bustling, nothing seems quite so bad.

Tally for today:
2 kaui 3 mao for a bag of 6 mandarin oranges.
I think that puts me at 95.6 kuai spent so far.
Not bad.

love&luz

A little rest, A little movement.

So, as i mentioned in the last post, things have not been the easiest in China. I've been sick since I arrived and experiencing the kind of shock only someone who was raised in a LA and made their home in Hawaii can experience upon their first introduction to a real winter. Much to my dismay, the changing of the seasons involves something more than a 20 degree shift in temperature...

But all that aside, all that in stride, I've had things pretty easy. I have somewhere to stay, I have good friends who I am fortunate enough to also live with, and I have food to eat. My health may not be the best, but its still much better than it could be. I've got electricity and I've got internet access (though both are a little tempermental...). Right now is just about shifting my proverbial weight until i hit the comfy spot on the couch that is Beijing. It'll come. At the moment I'm looking to move into a different spot, something a little less expensive than what I have right now. In addition to being a tad pricey, my current locale has me speaking English, and lots of it, on a daily basis- as such my Mandarin is rapidly deteriorating. I also need to get over the BeiHai park and enroll in their Taiji Chuan courses- 2400 rmb for the first 76 postures, as many classes for as long you want until you get them all down. I am stoked on this. I also need to either get a private tutor or enroll in some Mandarin courses. Since I can get a visa extension through a school, I'm leaning towards taking that path, but depending on price and convenience we'll see. I might have to take a jaunt down to Hong Kong come February to sort out visa business.

Still, Beijing is lovely. I've got a fresh produce market right around the corner, and a nut hut a few yards beyond that. I love the nut hut. Partially because when i see it i think 'Nut hut!' and partially because, well, i can get lots of raw nuts and seeds for cheap. Yay cheap!

How is the 200 kuai per week going, you ask? Heres a break down of the past two days.

Bag Oatmeal, bag each dried apricots, dried dates, dried something-tangy: 40 kuai
Bag Carrots, Spinach, Cucumber, Parsely, Oranges, Bananas; 9 kuai
Bag Raw Walnuts, Roasted Peanuts: 43 Kuai

So far I'm at 92 kuai. Not too bad, as the oatmeal will be food for at least the whole week. I'll keep you guys posted.

Jess

In memory.

My family is not a very religious one, nor are we beholden to many traditions. Holidays pass by with maybe a phone call or two, a dinner with the family members living closest, but no reunions or trans-America flights. We have never, in my remembering, had a large Thanksgiving dinner or a house piled high with relatives on Christmas morning. Most of us prefer a quiet celebration with those closest to us to a large, raucous party. In this respect, we are all remarkably similar. Reclusive and private though this may seem, in my mind it has always belied the fact that we are always in each others hearts, and no distance can separate us.

My mother has 5 brothers, and my father also 5 and 2 sisters, most of whom lived within a half an hour of each other in my childhood. There is no lack of family to go around- my life abounds with uncles in particular and two loving aunts. Visits to Portland (where mother and father met and married) were always full of rushing around trying to see all the family before I had to go home to LA. 10 uncles, 2 aunts, a great aunt and two grandmothers that you see twice a year will do that to your vacation. Even though we don't get together on holidays or birthdays, though all of our family members are not physically present, we all know we're together in spirit.

Now, as I mentioned in the above paragraph both of my parents come from large families. My grandmother on my mother's side came from Oklahoma, then moved to Portland with her four sisters and brother. I'm not sure what growing up with that many siblings would be like, let alone that many sisters, but I can only imagine that it would have been both difficult and rewarding. For her part, my grandmother came out of it with a fighting spirit, one that she passed on in a lesser portion to all of her children, and if i'm any indication, her grandchildren as well. I say in a lesser portion not to play down the saucy boldness we all seem to share, but rather out of reverence to my grandmother's unflinching, insurmountable moxy. The woman made things happen, she made things work. With 6 mouths to feed and husbands that were in and out of the picture, I suppose she had to. My grandmother was a woman you didn't cross, if you knew what was good for you. That being said, she made sure all of my uncles and my mother had what they needed growing up- they may have been poor, but had food, they had clothes. They had someone to drive down to the station and bail them out of jail after a failed underage cross country attempt or a fight with a police dog (see what i meant about fighting spirit?). She was a strong, tough woman. With 6 children and a constantly moving Aleutian lumberjack husband, she would have had to be.

I loved my grandmother. She would sass me, she would tease me and joke, and she was an ornery old lady. Wiley and belligerent, not to mention a reputed fox in her youth, she was a force to be reckoned with. I remember visiting her as a little girl, being subjected to the usual cheek cupping and hugging. My grandmother loved jewelry, and what most stands out in my memory, like many people's memories about their grandmothers, is her hands. Soft, wrinkled and covered in rings. Emerald rings were her favorite, and she had them in spades.

This post is for my grandmother. It's for my mother, it's for my uncles. I'm in China right now, and when i called home last night and the first thing my brother said was 'Mom's flown to Portland', i knew something was wrong. I wish i could be with all of you, but I can't. I wish I could be with you all to celebrate her life, but I'll be having my own celebration for her in China. I don't think there is any more appropriate way to honor my Grandmother's spirit than to keep on the way she would have- making things work in the best of times and the worst of times. Things are far from easy right now in China, but if I learned anything from my Grandmother, it was that you can make things work by sheer force of will. She may not have been an apple pie style grandmother at home in the kitchen all day, but she was her own woman, strong and resilient, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

My family doesn't celebrate the way most families do. We don't do large holidays, we don't like memorials either. We live in the vein of celebrating the life, not mourning the passing. I love you grandma. I'll miss you. You were beautiful, and you were strong. I hope that I can always be as strong and capable as you were. I know when things are difficult for me, I can think back to you, and know that you, like my own mother, knew how to make things work. This part of my spirit i can trace back to you.

All my love to all my family,

Jess

Oh, no.

I saw it yesterday.

My first "Merry Christmas" sign in Beijing. It was disturbing. It was 12 feet high. It was glowing.

I'm not sure I can handle this.

Mmm, sleep.

I need to update, and thusly, I am updating.

See, I do this thing whenever a thought occurs to me that I want to blog about, or whenever I see something that I want to make mention of- I make up a little outline in my head of how the blog post is going to go. The problem with this is it makes me feel as though I've already blogged for the day. And I haven't. But I think i have. It's a vicious cycle, especially when I start to do little blog outlines in my head that detail how I haven't been blogging lately. I've done this for the past two days.

In the past week or so since I've blogged I've gotten better (Sicksies no more!) And gotten a little more work. A lot of things that I've wanted to comment on have also happened (like Transgender Victims of Violence Day, Thanksgiving, and finding out that I make more in a month than the Chinese girls i work with make in a year), and I haven't commented on any of them. But I'm going to. At least, the last one. And there is a new J.Filth Challenge. By new, I also mean first.

I just wrote a long paragraph talking about why it is that I'm doing the challenge I'm doing, but then i read it over and realized that I'm too tired right now to write it in the proper, analytical way it needs to written. If you don't believe me, read over that sentence I just wrote and then imagine an entire explanative paragraph full of ones just like it. No good. So I'm going to settle for telling you the challenge and then giving you one sentence on why, with more to come tomorrow or the next day. Probably the next day. I have a lot of classes to teach tomorrow.

I'm going to be living, for the next month at least, on 200 kaui per week. Relatively speaking it should be easy, since every trip to the market costs between 4 and 7 kuai (for a bag full of veggies) and the oatmeal i make every morning (including the dried fruit i buy to go into it) costs about 40 kuai per supermarket trip. It's easy to get into this habit on converting prices to dollars in your head, but thats no good. I want to start counting a kuai as a kuai and not as a fraction of a dollar. This also means little (or at least price concious) going out, no frivolous taxi rides, and no spending anything without thinking about it. I'm going to update on here, everyday, about what got spent on what.

Why? Cause I know it's possible and i'm looking to both simplify and be more concious of exactly what it is i need to get by (i have a sneaking suspicion it's not much, and much less than what I currently consume). I want to cut back my consumption to things I actually need.

Now I'm going to do something else I actually need, like sleep. I'll be cool and analytical on my next post. Swear!

love&luz

tiredjessie

sicksies

It's bloody cold.

It's nice to know, from things like the comments on the last post, that there are people out there in reader land. I assume that some of you are lurkers, but commenting to say hi makes me want to keep on posting to say hi back :)

This post is going to be short and sweet cause it's rather late here and i'm rather sickly and tired. My fingers are in the process of defrosting. For those of you who have never lived in a cold climate (those of you like myself, spoiled and privileged to have only ever lived in sweet sweet seasonless bliss), let me give you a small window into the trials and tribulations of an LA bred, Honolulu relocated winter-that-is-actually-cold newb like me.

I washed my clothes today. In China, people have come to realize that if you wash your clothes and then you hang them or lay them outside, they will dry. Because of this, people in China do not use clothing driers (people in places like America would do well to take note of this Eastern ingenuity). Now, sloven and lazy being that i am i only washed my clothes because of a lack of both clean underwear and clean second pants ('second pants' being what the norwegian has got us what in the States we call 'thermals'). As such, tonight at 1:30am on my way to bed, I realized that tomorow i would be hard up indeed if my clothes were not dry by daybreak. This is how the 1:30am freezing cold hanging up of freezing cold wet clothing in the freezing cold courtyard came about. My fingers have never been so cold. You cannot wear mittens or gloves to hang up wet clothing. You can only use your poor, warm blood, unprotected fingers. They will never forgive you. You will type funny for a few days.

I feel like now that my readership has blossomed (kind of, sort of, a little) i should do things like follow through on my promises, go over my posts before i post them, and maybe hit spellcheck.

Instead I'm going to do things like say 'trials and tribulations' and then only give you one story, not look over my post at all with sincere conviction that i am always flawless, and shrug off spellcheck just cause i can.

love you.
jess

Brrr.

Fatigued.
I'm tired.

So, a lot of people on the vegan blogsphere are making posts about their 'go to' foods, or their comfort foods. I thought i'd go ahead and share mine with you all, since i've been eating it rather often of late.

Now, let me preface this by stating that I am an 80 year old woman, and you cannot judge little old ladies on the things they eat. Not many of you know it, but deep down inside i'm that little old lady who cringes at roller coasters and microwaves, the one who rinses out ziplock bags to use again. I'm rather proud of this, and I think it's rather sexy (just cause theres snow on the roof doesn't mean theres no fire in the oven, eh? eh?).In this same vein, my Oma (another small, old lady) has two sets of things she cooks- one set for other people, and one set for her. She constantly claims that the things she likes to eat no one else likes- they represent the strange and unmarketable culinary misfits that she deems good enough for her but not good enough for anyone else. I can sympathize with her, because i feel this way about a number of the foods i like to eat. This is why i do not offer them to people. I, like my Oma, know that i can cook 'better', but 'better' is not necessarily what i prefer. Case in point, my comfort food.

Boiled Sweet Potatoe.

Unseasoned, rather mushy, still in tuber form, boiled sweet potatoe.
Lately the one's i buy from market fit perfectly, cut in half, in the rice cooker pot i throw on the table top burner in the kitchen. I boil these suckers, shucking peanuts while watching the pot in my below the knee cashmere coat (the kitchen is inhumane amounts of cold), and then retire to my room with two plain halves of a boiled sweet potatoe in a bowl.
It's sweet potatoe heaven.

Then i take out my dentures for the night and crawl into bed.
But seriously, what can match the pure unadulterated delight that is warm, mushy, boiled sweet potatoe? Skin all soft though still adding that toothsome edge to counteract the soft and yielding sunset hued flesh? Okay, maybe i do enjoy them too much. Fuck it.

What else has been up lately? More job searching, bearing little though some fruit for my labors. The roomies and i have hauled a concrete block onto the rooftop patio above my room for a makeshift fireplace. We fill it with logs and huddle around it under the darkening, pollution tinged winter sky. We roast things in it. We are hunting for a cast iron so we can make baked goods. We shall be triumphant beijing gods of winter.

On a side note, while i wait for scottie to boil us some tea, i'll tell you what happened between the last paragraph and this line.

Scottie came home, hollered ahoy across the courtyard and shambled off to his room. Shrugging on my coat I went after and stole some of his ever so potent (it's got the taste and consistency of congealed jager) chinese herbal throat medicine stuff. Then we shambled over to the kitchen and did what two sick room mates suffering the Beijinger pre-winter weather do: downed raw cloves of garlic. Ohad, le Israeli roomie, insists this will make us better. I took mine, like a little 80 year old lady, unadulterated and pure. Scottie had to do his in glasses of water. Pansy.
Now what we refer to as "the garlic shivers" are descending, so i'm going to go to sleep. For those of you who have never munched your way through a handful of raw garlic cloves, the stuff makes you feel really, really weird.
l
ove&luz

jess

Excelllent

This post comes to you from my insulated and well heated room, in the middle of a dark hutong in Beijing.

I'm sorry i haven't been posting too much of late, but ive been running around town trying to get work and trying not to freeze and trying not to be sick.

So far only one of those has been accomplished, and it's only been kind of sort of accomplished halfway. I've got a little work but not a whole lot- thats something that will hopefully change soon enough. I've definately frozen many times over, and only truly manage to defrost moments before i am forced to re-submerge myself in the icy outdoors that currently compromise all of northern china. as for the sicksies part, well, i'm not as sick as i could be! hurrah! i'm going to keep saying that until the day i get another kidney stone. to me that will hold as the epitome of horrid, horrid illness.

on the upside i'm having a swanky coat tailor made for me in a lovely dark, dark blue. it's going to come down past my knees and once i have it HOHO! look out world. Jessie just might be warm. All i need now are gloves, socks, and boots. Yahtzee!

So as much as i love you all and miss you, im going to lay down now and go to sleep so that i can work on eradicting the last of my jetlag and attempt to overcome my illness before it gets too nasty.

love&luz
jessie

The jing.

Oh goodness.

Lets start off by giving a huge round of applause to Korean Air, which provided me with the most enjoyable 10 hour flight i've ever had. Not only did i have a row of 5 seats all to myself (ALL TO MYSELF), but i had two correctly vegan meals, a warm and large blanket, headphones provided, a travel kit including thick woolen socks, a toothbrush, and a mentholated (MENTHOLATED) eyemask graciously given me, free alcohol (only some wine to help me sleep, nothing like what went down that first flight to china...) but the bathroom was huge and included a full length mirror. Yay for Korean Air.

The layover in Seoul was grey and uneventful. I was accosted by some Christians in the Seoul airport, which was a little alarming. Besides that, the airport was much like both Beijing and Narita. More like Narita, cause the new portion of the Beijing airport is so large and cold feeling, but both Seoul and Narita feel cozier and have more bustling shops.

Getting to Beijing I took the new subway train from the airport into the city (so convenient) and then with a few transfers was being met by Scottie at the trainstation. We navigated through some seriously serious hutongs, and then found ourselves at his little home away from home. It's so beautiful. You walk into a courtyard through red double doors (which are standard in Beijing hutongs) in the middle of which grows and immense oak tree. The rooms all radiate off the courtyard, including a kitchen and two bathrooms. Theres Wifi. Theres heating. Theres lovely peace and quiet in the middle of Beijing. It's beautiful. I'm so pleased- theres even a rooftop patio!

Sigh. When i'm feeling more up to it i'll describe how the walls in the courtyard are covered in Indian-esque murals of various Goddesses and the rooms are filled with antique wood furniture (the owner, apparently, used to run an antique shop). I can't imagine a more lovely place to be staying.

Well, maybe if i could ship a few certain someones over from Hawaii, and set up a similar flat for my folks across the way, then i could. But then i wouldnt be making new lifelong friends and i'd be mired in the comfort of familiarity, so i suppose this is better anyway :)

miss you guys and love you
jess

Jessie Goes to Beijing

Not a take off of Debbie Does Dallas, I assure you.
So the news is in, I'm returning to the motherland, and that means that this blog is going to get more play than it has been lately.

Unlike me, who will be getting less play than i have been lately (sorry dad, oma still can't read the blog...)

Yes, I'm aware that the blog's most avid fans will likely be my parents, but as they are two of the most important people in my life I'm okay with that (hi mom, hi dad *geeky wave*), and as theyre the two that like to hear from me the most it's only apropos.

Now on to what i've been contemplating today while packing (by packing i mean, sitting at my laptop with a cup of tea stealing glances at my pile of things, spread across the floor of the apartment). In saying my goodbyes I've come to value silence over words. When i begin the whole "like, im leaving and want to tell you how much you mean to me" thing, I flounder about and never really get at what i'm trying to say. I try to build up to the big thing that i want to say with other 'clarifying' explanations of my feelings, and then end up stuck in the 'clarifications' without ever reaching what it is i'm attempting to clarify (pointless much?). So I've come to feel, why muck about trying to move ever so tactfully through the mire of emotions when focusing on the moment and companionship will likely bear better fruit? Can we ever really impart to another individual an exact meaning anyway? Words that hold specific emotions for me may hold a completely different set of emotions for someone else, regardless of the broader meaning. If i verbalize an emotion it's not guaranteed that what my listener hears will hold my intended meaning, will make them feel whatever way i want them to feel anyway. In that regard I've also come to feel as though my attempts at telling my loved ones that i love them is a little selfish- not all the time mind you, but at least currently. I feel better, more secure, more validated even if i feel i've made it clear to those i love how much i love them. It's almost as if i'm trying to elbow some room for myself inside of the people i love. Lame.

Which is why i've opted for some silence, which i like a lot. When it comes down to it after all of the mitigating emotions that make me feel as though this relationship or that relationship differs in this way or that way (blahblahblibbityblah) all that i'm really trying to say to anyone is "i appreciate you, and i know when i see you again i'll be happy".

jess.

Stereo

killed the live performance artist?

anyway, this little quickie is coming at you directly from the inner sanctum of an overly air conditioned (life is better refrigerated, goddamn it!) coffee shop in honolulu. It comes to you as i wait for someone to return with a car and then take me to a different food selling type place. As such, this post may end abruptly. Oh the spontaneity!

What is going on lately, you ask? Not much, I answer. On the short walk from the bus stop to my current location, I began to think about my frame of mind when iʻm working my ass off for my money (which is different and better than working my ass for my money) and when iʻm lolly gagging (which sounds like a dirty dirty past time) about. Its much easier to think that the world is made of rainbows and...oh god. the ride is here.

this will be continued and expanded at a later date.

Books

Are better than looks.
They are also what i read a lot of, lately.

Somewhere i fell out of the habit of reading for pleasure (save the rare piece of erotica...heh, get it? its a pun.). From elementary school through middle school and onto the middle segment of high school I was a voracious reader. Couldn't leave the house without a book on me, always looking for something new, constantly in middle of at least three different novels. And then it ground to a halt.

It ground to a halt around the time, if i recall correctly, that the writing stopped. By 'the' writing, I mean my writing. And now i find all of these things coming back to me.

and thusly i rejoice.

I think it had something to do with China. Trapped in a world with which i could communicate in only the most basic ways (food and sex being the two things i could easily procure) my conciousness turned in towards itself and began once again to produce. To reproduce, perhaps, in vain attempts to re-surround myself with the familiar. After all, writing and painting created an oasis of familiarity in foreign world. And now that I'm back home, I find these urges not only live on but flourish. Yay.

It feels as though something that had been pinned in place has now been let loose, and can circulate itself through out my system. Honey being stirred into hot water, warming and expanding, separating into translucent golden strands suspended in clear liquid. Thats it is, and i like it. It's good to be back in a place where i seek to create and experience with equal intensity. Having taken a step back and allowed time to drift past, drinking in emotional, physical, temporal and ethereal experiences my will is at last ready to drop back into the hustle and bustle of artistic energy. I am once again an active participant in the collective unconcious, up from a brief break by the sidelines.

Aren't you so happy to hear it?
blaow.

Guns and Cigarettes

Are what I'm cooler than.
It's been awhile, hasnt it? I doubt that anyone checks this dry shell of a blog, but oh well, blogging is nothing but masturbatory anyway right?

Let's get some updates going on hurr. The last blog as about...well, i think it was about being back from China was it not? I don't believe it was overly informative. I think i promised you stories that I'm not at this time prepared to deliver. Let's sidestep from those musings on the past and make this blog about what is really going down now that it so happens i'm back from China.

The first thing i'm doing is getting involved with things that i can be proud of, and living my life according to all of those beliefs that i have. What that means is, I work for Greenpeace and for a friend's landscaping company. You know, saving the world and preparing for the revolution. Don't tell the government i just said that (but the boats will stop coming someday...and at that point, well, i'd like to have a breadfruit tree or two). I'm outisde all day long no matter which job i'm at, working with either people or plants. Between me and you, I prefer the plants, but i guess that wasn't such a big secret anyway. Life is good on the island, and yet i still contemplate returning to china. Why? Persuing a personal journey, I suppose. I can either stay here and get over my inability to stay in one place for longer than 6 month at any given time (I haven't done that since i graduated high school) and continue to delve further and further into a sustainable and outdoorsy kind of life, or I can go back to China, make loads of money teaching while (and learning to become one with myself), and then travel down through Southeast Asia interacting with curiously foreign and intoxicating energies. It is a dilemma, if you will, of the physical over the spiritual.

Oh, conundrums. How skilled you are at pushing the dueling energies within me to points of unrest.

On the other hand, I'm taking up my art in ways i havent in quite a while. Writing, creating, growing and starting to silkscreen. Which is sexy. Yay for that. Yay for the place that i'm at for the time that i'm at it.
I love you guys, I'm going to go pee. Then get my things together and walk over to the intersection that I get to canvas today. Yay for accosting people about enviornmental issues (that 'yay' drips half-feigned half-real enthusiasm tinged with sarcasm, if you couldn't hear it through your computer screen).

Love&luz
jessie

Onion...tasms.

Oh, Onion, how i love thee.

Olympics

this article made my freaking day, cause its oh oh so true. 

it also, oddly enough, made me really really miss beijing. 

i think being on the big island so far away from all asians is having adverse affects on me. i'm having withdrawals. i havent seen the asian squat in a full week. a full week!

tears.

in case youre wondering why the recent inundation of blog postings, it's because i want to get you all amped up and excited before i disappear again tomorrow for a week or so. my access to the internet is only temporary, tomorrow i will leave alea and her loverman and rejoin with my camping crew. for how long? that remains to be seen. i may fly home to the small island of oahu early or i may stay here on the big island till the weekend. which will it be?! no one knows. oh the suspense!

kisses

love&luz

jessie

mongolia revisited

I'm on the way to a beautiful tan.

The big island so far has been much more condusive to me being naked in the sunshine than oahu ever was. Maybe i should have hiked more on oahu and laid out in the koolaus, but still. its just so easy here. open door, lay down in hammock. smile at alea and jonah when they wake up. repeat.

its rather nice.

i wish i had pictures to show all of you from china and from the past few days, but alas and alack i wont be back to them until i get home next week sometime. youll just have to let your imaginations run away with you until then. 

i dont think i ever fully explained the unexplainable beauty of Inner Mongolia to all of you, but suffice to say it left me utterly breathless. 

We took the train up on Friday evening, an adventure in and of itself. I'm sure we all recall how much j.filth loves trains, and this train was no dissapointment. It was about a 10 or 11 hour train ride from Beijing to Inner Mongolia, and in order to pass time before bed Kalinda and I did flashcards for shots. Fun, and educational! I slept well that night.

Next morning we rolled on into Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia. From there it was straight out to the grasslands...just a note, i would be giving you all the Mandarin names of these places, but as previously mentioned I'm not on my own computer and the one I'm using doesn't have characters on it. Such a shame. Anyway, the grasslands. Sexy, alluring, rolling, grasslands. Home to sexy matou players and horsemen. We slept the night in a yurt after a day spent being shown various facets of traditional mongolian culture. some people went horse riding, while the vegan in me wouldn't allow me to do this and thusly i wandered the grasslands on my own. so lovely. a storm came upon me in the middle of my wanderings, and drenched me down to my bones. it was beautiful. the men were beautiful. they had long hair, and were mongolian. we smiled at each other across stretches of open plain. that is, until i pinned one to the ground and did a victory dance in the first drops of a grassland storm.

yeah, so i wrestled one of the herdsmen. they were doing some kind of demonstration showing traditional monoglian wrestling antics, at the summation of which i somehow ended up insisting on attempting. after much laughing, i was strapped into some kind of leather vest (i shudder to recall it..) and found myself squaring off with a small, wiry, sun kissed mongolian. We went two rounds, the first of which i was taken down in. The second of which i somehow managed to end up on top of my adversery, in the dust, victorious. i've got the pictures to prove it :)

having made a name for myself with the herdsmen, i was approached all night long with shots of the white pungent liquor synonymous with china in general and inner mongolia in particular. yay for getting toasted under the full moon on the mongolian grasslands.  

The next day we awoke and feasted on rice porridge and various pickled vegetables. it made my day. The previous night's dinner had been typical Chinese fare (at least for me, the others had mutton), embellished with yak butter and yak milk tea. While it was exciting for everyone else, it held little interest for me- this is why the breakfast of rice porridge and pickled vegetables (a rarity in pastry and rice heavy beijing) made me so happy. then we hopped onto the bus to go explore Hohhot.

This post is becoming lengthy, so i think im going to take a nap and relate my exploits at a later date. love you all.

jess

Re-Update

Accomplishments of the Day: 

Waking Up.

Preparing breakfast of fresh pineapple, noni, bananas, cherries, oranges, jackfruit, cashew nut milk, and granola.

Getting out of the house and running errands in Hilo (yay farmers market!)

Picking a Coconut, hacking it open, and having a fresh drink.

Feasting on the meat of said fresh coconut.

Swimming naked in the rain.

Vegan Lunch at the 'natch (Natural Foods Market)

Sitting here typing this.

Accomplishments of the my Return:

Thursday

Arrived, after 12 hours of travel. I then had to pay 40 dollars for a cab to Justin's house, which is where all my stuff is living while im on big island. Could i have had someone pick me up? Yea. Did i? No. Was there any reason to this? No, i'm just weird and wasteful sometimes. After dropping my stuff in his room I myself dropped onto his bed and passed out for about 5 hours. I then met Alea, got an acai bowl, took a hot shower, and slept.

(Note: ALL my stuff consists of my laptop and my large green duffel. As in, thats everything I own. And that fact makes me smile a big minimalist smile.)

Friday

In all honesty, I don't remember Friday super well. I awoke, Alea and I had breakfast, then I think we slothed around for a while. We met up with B-rad later for some lunch and then pranced to first friday in Honolulu. No big, same 'ol same 'ol.

Saturday

Yo! Big Island day. Miss my early flight cause i don't think I have my ID with me...and then find out later after I've arrived it was in the bottom of my bag. Grrreat. Spent an extra hundred cause i missed my flight into Kona and had to buy a new ticket into the Hilo airport. Shrug. At least i landed...After this I rendevous with Kalinda and say goodbye to Alea (who flew in with me to visit with her lover man) We went to Kalinda's house and then down to the blacksand beach at the end of her street. Beautiful beach, right next to a fresh water spring and an old, abandoned, rusted sugar mill. It hurts its so pretty down there. Then we collected the rest of the camping crew, drove to some water falls, climbed said waterfalls, and headed to our camp site to play house.

Sunday

Woke up, packed up, bought a big cheap mexican breakfast, hit the farmers market, and then hit the dirt roads of Puna. We took a lovely morning in the natural steam caves, hit a different beach, and then stopped for the afternoon at another blacksand nude beach for the hippie drum circle. After this we showered off at some rest stop and then headed to Jah Pizza, this weekly free pizza/ drum circle night at one of the hippie communes. Lots of crazy hippies running around doing crazy hippie things. They made me join hands and 'Ohm' before we could eat. Cause theyre crazy hippies.

Monday

Once again, woke up.  I don't know why i feel it's necessary to add this into each day, but i guess it's true since i did it...On Monday I think we did a combination of waterfalls, beaches, and...oh yes, hot ponds. We also saw lava, cause the big island has an active volcano and stuff. Then we slept. 

It was fantastic, and punctuated with nakedness.

Tuesday

Woke up, beached it in the morning, injured my foot standing naked on the lava rock cliffs being pummeled by the waves, pranced around the volcano for a while, went off roading and met Alea at a green sand beach. Was kidnapped by Alea and her lover man and carted off to his two story rambling home in the Hawaiian countryside. Slept in a bed and took a hot shower- oh so good after days of camping. 

I've gotten sleepy typing all of this, and obviously lazy with my descriptions. I swear, everything is full of beautiful fantastic adventure! I'm just worn out from all of it and therefore doing a poor job describing the vibrant luciousness that is my Big Island trip. You all should feel blessed that my ass is even sitting in front of a computer long enough to type this out when ive got all of big island beckoning me.

Love you, and i'll get at you about the last days in China next episode ;)

Love&luz

jess

She lives!

So, I'm home from China.

It's been an incredibly busy past couple of weeks and i know that i havent kept you guys up to date on ANYTHING.

its cause im a loser.

totally.

inner mongolia was beautiful, and the week i had after that in China was filled with rushing about attempting to smash all of my prancing into the small amount of time i had left. i got back into hawaii last thursday, spent two days on oahu, and am now on the big island.

the past four days ive been camping around doing a whole lot of nothing. it's been lovely.

and guess what! no pictures cause im not on my own computer.

i havent even been in cell phone range the past half a week, so what can you expect?

but no worries, i'm getting on posting again and once im back on oahu and with my lovely lover of a computer youll be inundated with naked pictures.

i mean, with pictures of my adventures.

most of which are naked.

ho ho!

hows big island? fantastic.

id love to five more details but we're getting ready to head out to farmers market and, well, farmers market is more alluring then sitting typing on a computer.

much love

jess

She never updates...

I'm not dead, I'm just busy.
I swear!
Last weekend i went to Inner Mongolia.

I:
A. Wrestled a Mongolian herdsman
B. Rode a Camel in the Gobi Desert
C. Rode an ATV and almost killed a group of tourists in the Gobi Desert
D. Went sand surfing in the Gobi Desert
E. Had one of my piercings removed
F. All of the Above

This week I've got four papers due and a huge test tomorrow.

I promise that soon I'll update with pictures and elaborations on the aforementioned activites.

(ps. the answer is F)
(....duh.)

All my muscles hurt and i've eaten too much, i'm very tired and would greatly like to go to sleep.
Alas and alack, i've got a presentation to prepare.
And now that i've checked my email, myspace, facebook, each and everyone of the vegan blogs i read, and looked up the most popular traditional remedies for yeast infections (i recommend the garlic, not the yogurt), i'm going to bother you all on here. Let's make a list.

Random Mildly Entertaining Things That I'm Putting in a List

1. I've learned the importance of toilet paper here, as well as become a toilet paper thief. I'm sure we're all aware of the differences between eastern and western toilets (excepting japan and their propensity for combining water fountains and human excrement), but you may or may not know that in China toilets do not supply toilet paper. Neither does my dorm- at least, not on a regular basis. The result of this is if i happen into an establishment that has rolls stocked in their bathroom, i take them. Depending on the size of my bag, i take two. Hell, my new messenger fits six. Thats right, six. Self preservation at it's best.

2. Australians don't know what Cheese-its are. In addition to this, you will only realize how ridiculous 'Cheese-it' sounds when you're trying to explain it to someone who's never been exposed to it before.

3. As far as the country of china and all of it's inhabitants are concerned, I'm french. I don't even like making people guess where i'm from anymore, because invariably the answer is 'France'. The hell?

4. In china, it's ok to call someone the day after you met then and ask to see them again. There is no 'i cant call the next day even though i want to because then itll seem like i have nothing better to do when in actuality all i want to do is call even though i do have better things to do' syndrome. And that is both off putting and cute.

5. People in China are exactly the same as people in LA. As in, I met a guy who dresses exactly (EXACTLY) the way an ex of mine dresses back home. Same brands. Same colors. Same music. Creepy.

6. In Beijing, I am safe wandering the alleys at any time of the night. Safe. As in, my new favorite past time is hutong wandering in the middle of the night, and i don't even bother to bring my knife. I feel safer in a dark alley in beijing at 3 in the morning than i do in most of LA at 12 in the afternoon. Sexy.

7. If you say you can sing, theyll make you sing. Don't say you can sing.

Now that i review that list, it really wasn't that entertaining. Whatever, it's two in the morning and i can't be funny all the time. Love you!

jnessie

Still hurr

I love you guys, and I'm alive.

I've been extremely busy lately, with my days passing more as cycles then as differentiated time periods. One day's night runs directly into the next's wee morning hours, so it's difficult to ascertain whether three in the morning belongs to the night before or the following morning.

On average, if we look at my day starting at 9 in the am, i have three hours of mandarin class, break from 12-2 followed quite directly by a lecture from 2-4. At this point i have an hour until they start serving dinner (at 5), which i bolt and then catch a bus to the subway line 5 taking that to line 2 and then line 16. Then i work for an hour and a half/two hours and meet up for either A) drinks B) a punk show C) sitting around wasting time with cute beijing indie kids who i swear to god look just like those kinds from echo park (cheap mondays and all) outside of their friend's clothing store D) tibetan food + barley wine or E) (insert different musical event here). I usually engage in one of those activites until about 2 in the morning, return home hose down and hit the sheets (by myself! [lately])...then we start the cycle again.

And thats why i havent been blogging.
Plus it's hard to justify blogging when i have four rather large papers due two weeks from now...none of which i've started.
But, hey, my dad said to post to he knows i'm alive, so here you go.
I'll put something interesting up in the next week, with pictures.
<3
love&luz
jessie

ps. my health is returning

So much love!

So, today is a special day.
In fact it's a day like no other.
It's the day on which my mother's mom
Gave birth to my very own mother.

Happy birthday momma.
Everyone else go and tell your momma you love her, cause she no doubt deserves it.
I know mine does. I put her through a lot of nonesense over the years (jesus, i still do), but she loves me anyway. Yay for undying affection! And not only does she love me, but she's beautiful and charming and witty and understanding. How lucky am i?

Sorry for rubbing it in all your faces how awesome my mom is, but i just had to let you know. Yea, thats right, she IS better than your mom, and no you can't have her cause shes mine.

Adore you <3
jess

ps. don't forget to tell your mom how fantastic she is. sliding scales of one to ten are good for this (as long as you give her something like an 11).

Dim Sum Girl, you rule my world.

It's raining a lot in Beijing lately.
A lot as in, everyday.

Blogging is never quite as enticing as when I really should be doing other things. Like stretching. Or writing my reflection paper. Or my other reflection paper, the one in Chinese. Or my research paper. Or making up a lesson plan for next week's classes. Or, you know, doing anything more productive than filling space with words on this big distraction of a site.

Oh well. A few posts ago when i was talking briefly about Beijing's nightlife, Mike Fury asked about the hiphop in the city. It's like he's a mind reader or something, because the next addition of Jessie Describes Beijing was going to be on the hiphop scene here. And it was going to be short, because theres not much of one.


So far I've been to two separate horrendously mainstream clubs where i was forced to watch the mindless drones prance to 'Superman that Hoe' (or whatever the hell that song is called) from over the rim of my screwdriver. It made me really sad to see that the same drivel that passes for rap in America is what passes for rap in China. At least in China the excuse exists that not everyone can understand enough english to grasp what's being laid over the generic factory farmed beats. Needless to say, I haven't returned to either of club. We all know how poorly I fair in straight clubs, let alone straight clubs that insist on spinning the misogynistic and tactless theme songs of my generation. Sigh.


Maybe I shouldn't be so pessimistic, for not all hope is lost. I have heard tell of one club that has a hiphop night every last Saturday worth going to, but I've yet to attend. As we recall, last Saturday I was busy prancing in the rain next to the yellow sea. Hiphop culture has been scarce, but I'm hoping to flesh it out soon (haha, i said 'flesh'). When I went down south (hahahah, i said 'went down south') for that teaching job I did come across some bboys doing a show in the street, so there are glimmers of hope. My next goal is to find some Chinese hiphop, and the goal after that is good chinese hiphop. I mean, as much as i love The Notorious MSG (yo, this song goes out to all you sexy girls...who push the dim sum cart all over the world...), i'd like to get my hands on something a little...well, a little more Beijing.

As I'm writing this I turned on Dim Sum Girl from the link above and, well, it just made my night. Since I'm going for a run in the morning to counteract the effects of a week and half of straight partying (as opposed to, you know, gay partying) on my girlish figure, I'm going to turn in early tonight.

Peace!
jessie

Yeah, that was hot.

"The bus driver would like me to tell you all that he's selling beer for 5rmb a can."


It's 10:00am and I'm freshly out of a steaming hot shower. 15 minutes ago I arrived home, soaking wet, shoes sand encrusted, quite fragrant (somehow rainwater doesn't counteract the pungent aroma that characterizes all night dancing), and rather satisfied.


I spent last night at the intersection of the Great Wall and the Yellow Sea dancing until the sun came up beneath a canopy of thunder, lightening, and beautiful blessed rain. On a small courtyard of sand sandwiched between the wall and the sea and at the mercy of the storming Chinese sky, we 500 (give or take a few French girls) from all over the world pranced about as hard as you possibly can. At this point, if you haven't surmised this for yourself, I would like to say that last night was utterly and incomprehensibly fantastic.


Near Beijing University theres this place you can go for a really good pizza and a Draft Guinness. At this place, for the past 3 weeks or so, there have been fliers for an all night long beach party at the Great Wall for 200rmb (+/-30 dollars), including entry and roundtrip bus fare. Now, the words 'Great Wall' and 'Beach Party', when separated, hold little allure for me. To me the Great Wall equals hoards of tourists and after living on Oahu beach parties not held in the state of Hawaii don't sound very enticing. When inextricably combined, however, those two phrases become quite irresistable. So I, along with two lovely ladies named Kalinda and Any, bought some tickets. And a few Guinesses, but that doesn't really have bearing on the story at hand.


Our busride ended up being about 5 to 5 1/2 hours long, and absolutely fantastic. With the addition of the beer so thoughtfully supplied by our bus driver, the ride turned from dull and gruelling to lively and enjoyable (as a number of situations, when supplied with alchohol, are wont to do). As a nod to not only how small but also how vast our globe is, directly behind me was a guy celebrating his graduation from UCSB and my seat partner had just flown in from Paris. The bus itself was filled mostly with expats, and was oddly balanced in representation- in addition to our representation of rowdy americans, there were rowdy french, germans, australians, brits (who thankfully were not soulless tory scum), belgians, and spaniards. The bus was long, it was pleasant. We had drinking songs, my contribution to which was the drunken sailor song (of which i know quite a few verses). The best drinking song, however, erupted towards the end of the ride. It had no words, and only a tune. Somehow, everyone knew it. I don't think anyone had heard it before, and i'm not sure from whence it came, but it arrived none the less and persisted longer than any of the others. Yatta for that.


Arriving to find not only the Great Wall but also the stormy Yellow Sea was amazing. None of us partygoers had really known where we were going (or for that matter the length of the ride- in China people don't really like to tell you things and most of us had heard is was going to be about 2 hours), but the payoff was stunning. Lining the Wall were various food stands (of the Beijing street vendor variety), as well as beer and mixed drink stands. Adjacent to these a rather large stage stood on the sand, upon which DJs spun their wares from dusk till dawn. The juxtaposition of ancient grandeur and modern festivities was quite interesting. Down the beach from our stage one of the Wall's watchtowers jutted into the sea and further up traditional chinese homes formed a little cluster on the shore.

The night unfurled with lots of music, food, drinks, and fun. I haven't felt such a sense of comraderie and community since the last time I was on Oahu amongst close friends. The vibe of the festivities was extremely open and friendly, and was a balm to any irritations i've had towards humankind lately. Strongly reminiscent of the wholeness I feel in Hawaii, it was lovely. The night started strong with lots of dancing and carousing, and inexorably as the night began to turn closer to day people paired off and scattered across the shore near the water. Lightening had been gracing the sky with promises of rain that for a while seemed false, but around 2am the sky opened and let her bounty fall. Dancing with two beautiful french sisters in the rain next to Great Wall and the Yellow sea, seeing the crowd enthused by the rain rather than dissuaded, i couldnt help but feel the world grab me by the shoulders and yell, "snap the fuck out of it! dont you see the beauty?!"

And the rain fell steadily for the next two hours, the lightening grew heavier, the dancers more vibrantly ecstatic.

I climbed onto a bus at 5:00am, and made it home by 10.

love&luz
jessie

To Elizabeth Regina.

There are some things in China that just flat out amaze me.
I'm not talking about things like 长城 (Great Wall) or 颐和园 (Summer Palace), which are of course in and of themselves splendiferous, i'm talking about things like blatant and unabashed racial discrimination.

Let me, for example, give you a direct quote from an email I just receieved from a potential employer:

"Only white-skinned teachers will be hired."

I'm not really even sure that I can make a comment on that stipulation. All I really have is-wow, nice. Bravo and round of applause. The balls on that statement sincerely impress me. In fact, they (in all of their elephantitis induced glory) almost impress me as much as the business call I took today in the midst of which the mother of a prospective student suggested that I use a British accent when i teach her son. Cause, you know, it sounds nicer. And because that is so not absolutely ridiculous and bordering on rather insulting.

At this request, as you can only imagine, my silence was thunderous.

But then, ludicrous as the request was, it briefly crossed my mind that it might be incredibly fun to spend an hour faking a british accent for pay. Of course, it would be horrible for the student, who would probably come out with pronunciation like the love baby of Sean Connery and The Crocodile Hunter (which is what i sound like when i try to do a British accent) but hey it'd be kind of fun. And then I came back to my senses and told her to maybe find someone actually from the United Kingdom. I refrained from asking her if maybe she could start speaking to me with a Shanghai accent. Or better yet, in Cantonese. I mean, Mandarin and Cantonese are really just dialects of the same language, so if she can speak to me in Mandarin she should be able to manage Canto too....right? Oh, thats not how langauge works? Oops. My bad.

Speaking of the United Kingdom (and switching trains a little), I got into a barfight last night. With two British guys. Which i may or may not have incited. Our interaction started out nice enough with a toast towards Queen and Country (hence the title of the post), but then I said something about Margaret Thatcher and Great Danes. Followed closely by something about Tories and black holes where your heart should be. Now, you guys may or may not know this, but one of my favorite activities when confronted with British people is to commence Tory bashing. Usually this goes over alright because, well, most people I know are communist tree hugging lefties (which is what the Brits from last night dubbed me) and wouldn't be caught dead helping a Tory from a burning building. Unfortunately for all involved, the Brits I met last night were coddled right wing soulless Tories (which may or may not be what I called them) and didn't take well to me insulting Maggie.

I think at this point, lest you all get the wrong idea about my political savviness, I should mention that everything i know about Margaret Thatcher and Tory party i learned from this . Don't judge. It's very informative film.

I think I should also mention that one of the guys had just graduated from Cambridge (major, political science) and the other from Kings (major, you guessed it, political science).

Luckily i'm good at fooling people into thinking I know what I'm talking about (this blog, case in point) and so was able to sustain a half an hour to hour long (rather passionate) debate about welfare reform in England circa 1995. And it probably didn't hurt that it was about 3 in the morning and we'd all been out for quite a while. It most definately didn't hurt that I'd spent the previous half an hour talking up the bartender, who kept sending incindiery beverages our way, slowly but surely steering us away from coherent trains of thought.

And I may or may not have ended it all by throwing my clutch down, pushing up my sleeves, and declaring that the only way to show an illegitamte tory his place was by arm wrestling.

Cause I'm an idiot like that.

love&luz
jess

*note: i don't really have anything against tories, its just really fun to rile up british people. they're so cute with their quaint and outdated english!

Not dead yet.

Hello one and all!

It's been about a year and half since i updated, my apologies. In this post, let's explore the nightlife in Beijing.

First, a word about something interesting i've encountered recently. Beijing is a vibrant city and attracts all kinds of people. This being said, the thing about Beijing is that if you want to surround yourself completely with english you really can. It is possible to get along in Beijing with very few mandarin skills. As a matter of fact within the last week I've met 2 different people who have lived in beijing for over a year and barely have the language aptitude of a year 1 mandarin student. And they do just fine. They know enough to tell a cab driver where they want to go, order a beer and ask for the check. And thats about it. They have their own apartments and full social lives, all while speaking about 50 words in Mandarin. Suffice to say, the expat scene is quite full and quite sheltering.

What do i think of this? Well, I think it's a waste of an available and valuable opportunity. To me the best part of living in a foriegn country is that you have access to what is, for all intents and purposes, a free education. I think it's a shame that someone would move away from the familiar and into the unknown only to, once arriving, isolate themself from their very surroundings. But, in all fairness, that's only my opinion. Not everyone comes to China with a cultural curiousity and an eye towards integrating (to whatever extent it is that you can integrate as a non-ethnically chinese person in china, that is). I didn't come to China to continously rotate between the same english speaking expat hang outs, but apparently some people did. And if thats what they want, so be it. I'll be down the street at the Chinese punk bar, thanks.

Now, about the nightlife. Beijing is a huge city, and there is something to do at all hours of the night. In this way it reminds me of LA, except that in LA clubs close around 2- in beijing they go until 7 or 8 in the AM. A few are even 24 hours. This is dangerous. It is also fantastic, though mostly dangerous. It lulls you into the idea that being out at 5 in the morning really is ok, cause after all the club you started at at 10pm is still open.

This is especially dangerous because on a tuesday at 5 in the morning you will most likely find yourself wanting to believe anything that tells you being awake and tipsy is acceptable. Whether it really is or not is an entirely different matter. In terms of selection, there are some tastes i have yet to adequatly indulge. I've yet to be to a good jazz club, but Vegan Mos Def says that he knows a couple of good ones. Have I introduced you guys to vegan mos def? Suffice to say, he's a vegan i met who looks like mos def. The gay scene is not what i'd like it to be, but then again i haven't been able to make it out the any of the les bars that i've looked up. This friday i hope to check out one or two and though ive been saying that for a couple weeks i'm pretty set on it going down this weekend. It'll have to be friday, cause saturday is a party at the junction of the Great Wall and the ocean. Yea, i'm even a little jealous of myself, don't worry.

Love you guys, another update later on. My stomach, it rumbles.
Jess

Make Love!

I want to take a moment today to express just how proud I am of my home state.

With LA's Pride just a couple of weeks in the past and San Francisco's Pride fast approaching, I think it's only fitting that a few days ago equality rang clear in the vows of couples up and down my golden state. I'm fairly confident that everyone that takes the time to read this blog needs no preaching to on the subject of gay marriage, so let's all take a few minutes together to be thankful and renew our faith in human equality. It really touched me a few weeks ago when I read that gay marriage had been legalized, and it made me absolutely overjoyed to hear that it was, of all places, in lovely California.

Yay for love that is love. Yay for equality and understanding and celebrations. Is heterosexual love any different from homosexual love? What is it that makes a marriage a marriage? Is it the ability of the couple to procreate, is it one penis and one vagina, is it the perpetuation of heteronormative behavior? Marriage isnt about sex, it's about emotion and understanding. I have never been able to understand why certain people want to focus on the kind of sex a married couple has instead of the strength and tenacity of their union. Preserving and strengthening family is something I'm all for, but as for separating and labeling the kinds of sex in allowed in a 'marriage', i'm sorry but i'll have to pass. The government can issue all of the little slips of paper it wants, but without the love of those whose names it bears, that piece of paper is meaningless. Conservative heterosexuals cannot hold the monopoly on sanctioned love forever. It's taken over 200 years, but Separation of Church and State is finally becoming less bark and more bite. Those key words are so often left to collect dust.

Do we remember that Separate is not Equal? Today, we do.
The battle is not over, but this victory tastes divine. Now we've just got to keep on working to spread equality and love to all corners of our country, of our world. Like one big blanket of love, together we can bundle the world up and soothe our respective wounds.

Today I'm going to celebrate the beauty that is pulic recognition of private love. If you're lucky enough to be in SF, go out next week and party a little bit for me. If you're in Cali at all, I envy you. I love all you guys.

Soundtrack: God-dess and She JaDa

Look ma, no medicine!

So today I'm finally feeling better. In the world of jessie, a four day recovery is nothing short of a miracle.

As is usual when i come down with something, my friends and family urge me to either go see the doctor or go buy some medicine. I, of course, never do either of these things. I prefer to let me body heal itself naturally. Thats just how I do. If my body can surmount an illness using only it's own defenses, then after that illness passes it's that much stronger. Plus I don't really trust all those medicines and the odd things they have in them...but that's a different tangent. And of course, it's not the same for everyone. We've all got different opinions and different bodies :)

So, for the past three days I've been languishing in my congestion, feeling incrementally better each day. Last night came around and I went off to work for a couple hours, and when this morning dawned I was feeling much better if not quite one hundred percent whole. yatta!
So, of course, I'm taking today as my last day off from school to get back into my routine. Some light stretching, and some serious studying, and by the time tomorrow comes around I should be ready to get back into the swing of things.

Thank you guys for your love and well wishes :) Soon we'll be back to posts that have more substance that "OMG I'm SICK *whine*"
I promise!

love&luz
jessie

Sigh.

You should go and watch Before Sunset

Then you should catch the next flight to Beijing, flag a taxi, throw your things in the back, and wrap your arms around me.
We can sip tea and watch the sun rise.

love
jessie

Still Sicksies

There are a lot of activites in which i could be enaging to pass my sickness time, but i think blog posting is as good as any of them.

Firstly, it lets you guys know that I'm still alive.
Secondly, I get to feel like i accomplished something throughout the day other than improving my relationship with my unconcious and the tiles on my shower floor.
Thirdly, it's in English, so I get to feel literate and well spoken.
yay for that.

Today and yesterday have both been spent mostly sleeping. I've got a little den of darkness and solitude, and I put up the 'please do not bother' signage on the door so the maid won't knock and ask "打扫房子吗？" cause when she does that i invariably have to holler back, "不要！谢谢你！" which hurts my throat and causes me to awake from my congestion induced slumber. I am thinking that by thursday I'll be back in class, because goddamn it i'm china and i'm going to take my time getting better.

When this blog post is over I'm going to turn on either Noah's Ark or Before Sunset. I think it'll be Noah's Ark, since it makes me remember West Hollywood and the young and free days (cause im so old and restricted now, right? ha.) whereas Before Sunset makes me contemplate a life of longing for someone i don't have. It's for me to try to remain as positive as possible when unhealthy, or at least so i've discovered over the past few days. I tend to be more susceptible to depression when every inch of me aches and phlegm is my only constant companion (gross).

On that note, I'm really sad that I'll be missing all the Prides. I already missed LA Pride and I'll be missing San Francisco Pride next week. I'll just have to start up a Beijing Pride to make it for it, but that might interfere with my mother's request that i not get hauled into jail for political/social demonstrations while in China. It would, however, be fun and make for a good story. And those are two of my main criteria for deciding to do something (level of fun and potential for a good story). Hmm...

And now i'm going to go make a cup of tea and curl up in a hazy fog of sickness.

love&luz
jessie

ps! do you guys like or dislike the newly added slideshow of pictures to the right? does it make your browser too slow? lemme know. <3

Wicked ill, homegirl.

This post comes to you courtesy of my sick bed.
I'm sprawled out right now, blinds drawn and windows closed, my only companions a large cup of hot soymilk and waaay too many used tissues.
Gross.

So I thought I'd take a little time in between naps to keep you guys up to date on whats going down in Chinatown (....haha, get it?).

I've been pretty busy the last few days and as such haven't had any time to get on over here and be charming and witty. Well, I guess its more like try to be charming and witty, right? I think the last actual post was about refrigerators and my crazy hippy opinions on them, so i think i'll give this post a little more mass appeal.

I got my first actual chinese foot massage yesterday. I've since decided I'm not ever going to leave China, I'm just going to stay here and blow all my money on massages. 6 months from now I'll probably be on the street panhandling just so i can get a fix- me love you long time baby. Now, off colour jokes aside, it really was fantastic- the thing about this whole foot massage business was that even though its called a 'foot massage' they start out by working on your neck and back to loosen you up. Feet in a steaming wood tub full of tea, my back got the works before the real foot massage even started. Neck, back, shoulders, arms, even some slight spinal adjustment. And they did that thing with the glass cups and the fire. Talk about fantastic. I will definately be back for more. And more, and some more after that. (Thats what she said! haha, ha.)

On to the second bit of fantasticness. Now, I know this is going to sound a little chauvinistic, but one of the best parts was how extremely attractive the masseurs were. I mean, as if having my muscles kneaded and drummed upon wasn't nice enough, i got to be kneaded and drummed upon by an incredibly attractive asian man. Big fat (or, rather, cut and trim) yay for that. If only he had been vegan...

Oh, what? How much was it? Yea. It converts to something like 7 dollars.
For an hour and a half.

Yatta!

And on that note, im going to go curl up in a fetal position on my shower floor and waste copious amounts of hot water before I pass out (again) from congestion and the aches. Hopefully this knowledge of my misery will temper any jealousy about the ridiculous fantasticity of my foot massage access, unless of course you're just being jealous of my shower floor :)

love&luz
ill jessie

like goodness falling from the sky!

It's pouring right now in Beijing.
There is thunder, there is lightning.
It's just all so damn exciting!

There are few things that renew my faith in the world.
Rainstorms are one of them.
I went outside and pranced in it until i was soaked through and violently shivering.
The natives look at me like i was crazy. Which i was. Crazy rain dancing lady. They loved it.
You know they did.

You love it too.
<3<3

We've go to move those, refrigerators.

I have the air conditioning on, it creeps me out.
I feel really uncomfortable about how preservation obsessed our society is, and I always feel like the air conditioner exemplifies that. I always feel like im in a refrigerator when in a room with AC, as though people are trying to stop the progression of time (and age) by retarding the growth of bacteria.
You know, like the general premise behind refrigerators.

I feel like it fucks with my senses and gives my body a false read on the actual environment.
I know that’s really weird, but its always how I feel. Especially the whole refrigerator-air conditioner comparison. I view refrigerators as the epitome of our culture’s uphill battle against nature. With a refrigerator you can stock pile food for days, weeks, in some cases even months. It gives complete control over your most vital resource, your food source. We as a society have lost hold of only getting enough food for now (and maybe tomorrow) and once that’s eaten, getting some more (not to mention how far we’ve regressed from actually producing the food we eat ourselves). The refrigerator is the essential tool of the society that has ‘progressed’ past the hunter gather stage. It’s the shiny gold star sticker on this third grader’s lapel. We’ve made it. Screw you mother nature, with your seasons and unpredictable fury, on the one hand fey and the other favorable- we don’t need to search for your bounty, we’ve taken matters into our own hands. We’ve cleared your forests and cultivated crops, we’ve created preservatives and additives to keep our spoils from spoiling indefinitely!

If we hadn’t come to this point of control over our food source, none of society as we know it would be possible. This is no new news, I just think about it a lot. Once a society reaches the point where its no longer necessary to follow a food source across the plains or scavenge daily for fresh growing bounty the society can begin to build in one place. Buildings rise, a concept of land ownership develops. And really, everything that our society is most proud of has been produced because people have had the excess time to invent and create. If we were still out hunting for food, we wouldn’t have time to develop all of the useless technology we have today.

I think that is where the majority of our society’s developmental problems come from. I’m referring to the environmental problems, the oil problems, and the poverty/starvation problems. We use resources in a way they were never meant to be used. I don’t necessarily think that humans are meant to have the level of control over their food source that we have. It frees up too much time, allows idle hands to prosper. A concept of ownership deveops, people begin to think they own land when in reality no one does. No one being ever can. Land belongs to all beings and to one, and we’re supposed to share it. Only thing is, humanity has claimed all the land and all the water for itself, and acts as though it is kindly allowing other creatures to take out leases.

Sad.
This turned into a tangent. I’m going to go turn the air conditioner off.

Excuse me.

I have a few brief questions for you folks stateside.

A) Why is it that when i log into the LAtimes.com to read up on the sanctioning of same sex marriage in my home state that within the last month i find one meager article?

B) Why is this man allowed to be any city's assemblyman, let alone one so close to my hometown?

"Marriage should be between a man and a woman, end of story. Next issue," insisted Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy (R-Monrovia). "It's not about civil rights or personal rights, it's about acceptance. They want to be accepted as normal. They are not normal."

Wanderlust

I am turning into my father.
Evidence at the end of this post.

Before that, though, a quick concern;
I bought a pinky ring last night.
It fits not only my pinky, but my middle toe as well. Is that abnormal?

Anyway.

Last weekend I had a business trip down south to a different province.

We left Beijing Friday night at midnight, spent the night sleeping on an uncharacteristically uncrowned train. My train ride was a thoroughly refreshing seven hours. The rattle of the undercarriage beneath my head eased my concious into a deep and renewing rest. No joke, no sarcasm. I was enamored. That one night’s sleep was enough to make the entire weekend worthwhile . Glimpses of unadulterated mobility assalted me, tantalizing in their simplicity. It awakened an echo in me of nomadic experiences before this incarnation, packing up moving on and starting new with the dawn. There was something so sexy, so alluring, overly familiar, about the prospect of a transient existence. Sleeping with no worries because as each track passes below my head I slip farther and farther from all my conflicts. No matter how fast they run my issues can’t quite grasp the door of that last train car.

I fancy it.

I woke in the morning time in the province of Henan (河南 ) in one of it’s two large cities, Shang Qiu（商丘). I spent all of Saturday at a elementary school talking to and playing with little Chinese kids, testing the English level of each. Most had no English experience at all and they were all so cute and sweet! We all know Jessie’s weakness for little asian kids (eclipsed only by her weakness for charming asian men and sesame seeds), so there way really no way I could have disliked my work. On top of it, my boss (who accompanied me) took me out to the best lunch and dinner I have had since I’ve been in China.

There is one thing I can’t describe to you though. Remember how I said the Great Wall was indescribable and then took it back? I’m about to tell you that henan’s night markets were indescribable, and I’m not reneging on this one. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes. The night markets were crammed with so many tiny mobile stalls of so many tantalizing foods I am salivating just thinking about it. They were multi ethnic and multi talented.

Some of them had minature clay ovens on the backs of horse drawn carts filled with red coals from which sesame encrusted rounded baguettes emerged, ashy and piping hot.

Some of them had carts where, in tidy lines, bowl after bowl was filled with different pickled, steamed, or fried vegetables, which were then wrapped in huge crepes to make a southeastern Chinese style burrito.

I can’t even describe to you to how sexy it all was. All I know is I became more and more excited as I came upon each new edible wonder, and I ate some of everything (almost everything- most of them were vegan!). It made me feel complete, and happy, and renewed my faith in the world.

The fact that food can do that to me, and just how much food I packed away that night, is what makes me know I am my father’s daughter.

All in all it’s not such a bad thing to be.

Love you poppa.

Rubbish

Usually what I'll do when i blog is write up a rough, go out to class or tea, and then the following day or so edit and subsequently post. I'm always concerned about the tone and subject matter, and my ability to grasp your guys' interest.

Usually the first bit of what i write is rubbish.

That being said, tonight you're going to get unadulterated rubbish, as i'm in the mood to just post something up.
I've got a few already edited posts sitting in the wings, shiny and pretty (all dolled up and tricked out with witticisms and criticisms) but they'll have to wait till tomorrow to take center stage.

I'm listening to Atmosphere for the first time in a few weeks right now. (4 weeks, nearly)
Tomorrow i'm going to start on a whole foods diet, and i'm also going to start working out more.
My goal for my time in China is to gain five pounds in muscle. (biceps, thighs, abs, triceps)
Another goal is to improve my flexibility, physically and mentally.
(Verbally too, obviously.)
I was described earlier, in passing, as unwilling to show my emotions.
I've got a gnarly scar from where i fell in the river before i left honolulu.

Chicks dig scars, right?
Maybe I can get a girlfriend.

too bad i'm too busy working on myself to work with anyone else.
famous last words.

love&luz
(this past weekend was exciting, so look forward to details on the morrow)

Minidate

Our blog post today comes courtesy of The Dragon Boat Festival.

It was quite the nice treat to wake up friday morning and walk to class only to realize that there was no class to be had. yahtzee!

Since I owe my newly found free time to said festival [it having freed up my friday for study time and opened weekend time for leisure], i suppose i should take a moment to talk about it. What is the dragon boat festival, you wonder? Well, first off, it's today, Sunday June 8th. It's a holiday whose festivites take place mostly in Shanghai where, amongst various other festive things, they race dragon boats. Why? I don't know. I've gotten lots of answers to this question, mostly pertaining to a poet who, a long long time ago, tried to warn the emporer about dangers to the country but, when ignored, threw himself into the river and drowned. Kind of a downer of a holiday, except for the whole no class part. That part rocks.

Whats going on in Beijing besides holidays? Lots more construction. The kind that starts outside my window at about 2 in the morning and continous, uninterrupted, till about 2 in the afternoon. Yay for that.

What else? Well, I'm hungry. I went out thursday night with Mongolian homeboy who apparently has a plan to open a restaurant with lots of vegan options. Whether he is genuinely interested in presenting healthier, kinder, enviornmentally concious food or is just attempting to get into my pants through my 'religion' (as harumi would call it), i don't know. It really could be either. Or both. Or neither, for that matter.

I digress.

Mongolian homeboy is a nice guy, but the majority of our conversations take place in english [with some chinese interspersed]. This is not optimal for the improvement of my Chinese, however, and next time i see him im going to tell him that we have to speak more chinese. Which actually might be today, as he wants me to go and buy his car with him, and eat zongzi, which are sticky rice triangle things wrapped in bamboo leaves and filled with savory meat or sweet fillings. Theyre really, really good, and part of the whole dragon boat festival thing. Not that people dont eat them everyday, which they do. Why theyre special festival food if they are sold everyday in the cafeteria anyway, i'm not really sure, but who cares cause theyre tasty. Back to the Mongol and his friends. I'm a pretty firm believer in the idea that you are who you surround yourself with, you know, the whole 'lie down with dogs' thing. The mongolians i've befriended are all very sweet and very motivated (and talented- we all watched the matou playing video from a few posts ago, right?) so it makes me happy to have found positive friends. In fact, all of China so far has been really good to me, but thats going to take a long time to detail and will be mused upon at a later date.

love you guys!

Just a little in between class quickie.

It's raining right now in Beijing
Cool Calm Pete's spittin game on my laptop
Open bag of almonds to my left
Hot tea to my right
Interview at 5 oclock
Dinner with these guys? Perchance.

Love you guys.

(pictures of the lama buddhist temple and mongolian homeboys up on flickr)

Great.

I really like dried apricots.
This post is about the Great Wall.
A few days ago, I traveled there. I bought dried apricots, and they are tasty.
[edit: I started this post yesterday and have since finished all of the apricots. I am sad.]

The wall itself was amazing. Breathtaking. It really cannot be describe in words.
Scratch that, were that true, my writing this and your subsequent read of it would be wastes of time. It can be described, albeit poorly, in words.

Mao’s famous quote about no Chinese man being a man until he has visited the Great Wall may be stretching it (we all know how I feel about gender related heteronormative generalizations), but something definitely resonates when you get up there. It is a truly amazing, mammoth construction. As far as you can see along the mountainsides, the wall continues. And the view. Amazing. The Great Wall is about an hour and a half outside of Beijing but it seems like much longer. The landscape is still very wild and peaks recede into the distance as far as you can see. After living on an island for so long (the panorama of my hikes on oahu concluding in endless cerulean blue) it was really powerful to see such a gorgeous untamed mountain landscape. The wall is also outside of the grey woolen bowler hat (which is how I have decided to henceforth describe Beijing’s smog, GWBH anyone?) and the air is crisp, clear, clean. Parts of the mountain side could be the Pali. Parts could be up Chantry. Parts could definitely be out near Rock Creek. (I think I hit up all the hoods I’m beholden to, with those three wilderness references). It’s pretty fucking awesome.

All in all, honestly, I really wasn’t that stoked on going. I had images of tourists and touristy things on some wall that thousands died to erect. And we all know how Jessie feels about touristy attractions. She loathes them. I envisioned one more marker of mankind’s desire to draw a line in the sand between what is ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ (which, honestly, it was, it was held more of tangible impact than I imagined). Plus I had heard there was a Starbucks, and that I think would have been too much for me to bear (there wasn‘t one, thankfully).

There was, however, a slide. A huge sheet metal slide that you can take from the top down to the bottom. Now that, that was awesome.

Now go look at it, over on my flickr (cause I hate uploading to blogger)
Flickr.com/sinksync

Love&luz

Rewind that, once.

My belly is full.

My dinner tonight, comprised of two hot cups of fresh soymilk, one big portion of rice, two portions of bok choy with sesame seeds and one red bean bun cost me a total of 43 cents. It’s more than I usually get.

The is air warm, sticky, and damp. On my computer playing is G. Love and Special Sauce, before which was the Sound Providers (who instead of soothing my headaches now make me melancholy), before whom was Cool Calm Pete (because what else do I listen to, really?). On my mind is irritation at the dichotomy, the two sides of life in China, presented to me unmistakably by my campus everyday. This and the beautification of the city of Beijing.

Let’s start with a little rundown of my daily sights and sounds.

My campus is beautiful. The parks in Beijing do the parks in America to absolute shame. Nature here is holistic. Thriving, they exemplify the carefully studied, articulated green thumb of China. The style is overgrown and interaction between nature’s creation and man’s is the goal. Paths made of irregular stone, through whose gaps thrive lush and vibrant grass, meander through slopes and valleys while sun light is filtered through the overhanging leaves growing so low as to grace the heads of passing admirers. My brief description does these lovely parks no justice- I could go on for a good few pages at least and still tickle the top of the subject (and I’d dip into too many trite similes, so I’ll save us all). Theyre all over, easily accessible, well used. The walkways around campus are mainly wide, tree lined boulevards, shady and European inspired. They show students exactly the face of Beijing that China would most want to present to foreigners and leave a lasting impression on those Chinese students working towards travelling abroad.

What the campus doesn’t let us see are the slums and shanty towns our construction workers live in. Their sounds, however, belie their existence. At all hours (all. As in, two in the afternoon and two in the morning) the construction and repairs upon various campus buildings can be heard. Currently on campus, as around all of Beijing, a process of beautification is being pushed to breakneck speeds. With the Olympics around the corner buildings are being refurbished, fences painted, fines for loitering and littering imposed. This brings in the need for additional workers, many of whom live within spitting distance of those whose businesses and homes they work on. On my campus, the workers lodgings are often within 200 feet of any given path, though disregarded and out of view. Walking around campus they appear suddenly as you turn an unexpected corner, and vanish just as quickly as you continue on to class. These meager abodes are hidden behind the large tarp walls that do double time shielding construction areas and construction quarters. They are in the farther corners of the school, away from the main gate and the foreign student housing. They are often tents made of canvas propped over a pole, three cots to a tent. Sometimes less, and sometimes the conditions just cannot be hidden. Case in point, the view out a class buildings window:

Of course, I can see examples of this when I step into the roads around my school to buy fruit or go for a bubble tea. The streets are the homes of hawkers and laborers, squatting between jobs for a cigarette or proffering wares to all who pass. I want to make it clear that I in no way disdain these people of the city, in fact I have much more respect for them than the people who zip past in dark tinted imported mercedes and bmws. These people, they work for their living. They are the living, breathing soul of the city of Beijing. And they are unapologetic. I think one of the things I love most about Beijing is the human feel of the city. The dirty, hand built, human feel. This feeling has long since been washed away from most American cities- they’ve been disinfected, air cooled, sprayed with febreze and checked for child safety. But now that’s what Beijing wants too. The Olympics are coming, and Beijing is busy waxing away those unseemingly hairs and putting on it’s best party dress.

As this is getting lengthy (or, at least, I feel like youre probably getting tired of reading it), I’m going to treat it as the prep in an installation on my opinions of the beautification of Beijing for the Olympics. Now you have a basic understanding of the dichotomy presented everyday by my university, and the tactile flavors of the streets. Ruminate on that. Dust in your nose, hot honey textured air on your skin, and the crack sizzle of raw meat grilling over a setup propane griddle to your left- you should buy one. When homeboy closes down his 4x6 foot grease covered kitchen for the night, he pulls out his cot, business becomes bedroom, and he catches some rest before the morning starts the cycle over.

Love&luz