This little (and by little i mean lengthy) gem was drafted on 1/19/2009, from the reaches of icy cold beijing, from the grips of a life consuming 24/7 personal tutor job.
For your nostalgic reading pleasure:
Alright lovelies, it's a little late and I'm a little tired, but just for all of you i thought i'd dash off a quick little love note before i tucked myself away for the night.
I'm still in Beijing, which means I'm still more distracted and less contemplative than i was when i was away from home. To me, this is both nice and a little irksome. In about 10 days though I'll be packing myself back off to the Southern reaches of China, so I think I'll enjoy this respite at 'home' while I can. I've just gotten myself a load of fantastic books from the tiny tiny book store up across the street from the Lama Temple, which is making work much easier to deal with. Sinking my teeth in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is helping me to relish all those hours that I'm sitting around CCTV amidst hectic preparations for their Spring Festival Extravaganza.
Had I not mentioned that yet? My current student is envolved with it, and as I go where she does I now spend a significant portion of my time holed up inside the claustrophobic, smoky interior of CCTV. They have some truly beautiful and amazing things lined up for this Spring Festival show, and some truly bizarre things as well. They have pandas on unicycles, panda contortionists, and even pandas on yoga balls. It's like Chinese stereotype land met the college of preforming arts and had a springtacular love baby.
To wrap this up, I've been doing a lot of reading lately and have been getting more solid information and facts about those things I believe in the most. Mainly, veganism, environmentalism, and eating/consuming/producing locally. To me they all tie into one another, and are things that i try my best to incorporate into my life as much as I can. A lot of the time, since I am living in Beijing currently, these things are ideals. A lot of the time, though, decisions I can make everyday keep me on the right track. Always taking my own bag to the grocery market, not purchasing any packaged foods, and sticking to my vegan diet are all things that help me get there. I had a close moment earlier today when i set my first foot into Jenny Lou's on the way home. For those of you unfamiliar, Jenny Lou's is a chain store in Beijing (maybe in all of China?) that specializes in imported goods and markets to those expats starving for a taste of home.
They have everything I thought I'd never find in Beijing and more- granolas, baguettes, jams, peanut butters, candy bars, the list goes on- and theyre all the same brands i'm used to seeing at home. I felt overwhelmed, excited, and dumbfounded. They even had all those ridiculous prepackaged cake mixes from brands like Duncan Hines and Sara Lee- ridiculous because not only is making up your own cake mix minus preservatives a cinch but because 99.9% of Chinese people do not (and I feel I can say this without being racist because I've had a number of Chinese people say it to me themselves) ever EVER bake things at home. ever. They also have the largest and most comprehensive cheese section in Beijing- I've often heard the Cheese section at Jenny Lou's discussed in reverent tones at parties when Beijing's culinary differences to Europe pop into the conversation. These things having been said, it was the granola that was my downfall. With no oven of my own, I cannot make my own- which makes me want to cry. I love granola. It's so beautiful, so versatile, such a perfect meal anytime of day. Cereal in and of itself...don't get me started.
I could spend an hour easy perusing the cereal aisle of almost any store, and a good 2 hours on the ones in health food stores. My love of cereal and granola I had put away until returning home...but then, in Jenny Lou's, I saw a spectrum unlike any i could have imagined in China. They even had (though I wouldn't buy it and do not prefer it) Honey Bunches of Oats. Insanity. And then, THEN, a box of Amaranth clusters on sale for a fifth the price of all the others. I grabbed it. I grabbed two. I would have grabbed three, but a third there was not. I was exhilarated. I imagined myself in bed, with a bowl, a spoon, fresh soy milk from around the corner and my darling sweet amaranthy goodness. Then i thought about the distance it had traveled to reach me. The processing. The workers. The ridiculousness of eating something whose source was so utterly unconnected to me when I could just as easily eat the unrefined oats with corner store dried fruits from inside China- not to mention that the latter would be much better for me. I waffled. I sulked. I put the cereal back, in a show of epic and unheard of self control for this granola loving beast. The environmentalist/locally dedicated being inside me lived to see another day.
When I started that paragraph, it had a totally different aim than where it ended up. Since I'm so tired, I'm neither going to split it up to edit it nor revisit my original target. And I'll leave you with that.
love!
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