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