Out of the Way Back Machine

In the midst of working on tonight's stream of conciousness post, I came across a blast from the past.

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!

Lovely.

It's ok. Crisis averted. Passport located.

I know you were all terribly worried. Couldnt sleep. Hives. Nightsweats. I'm glad to be able to to soothe your worries and calm your fears.

but more to the point...you all totally dropped the ball. i mean, i leave an engaging conversation sparking topic, tell you that i'm giving away huge hugs for the first person to form and leave a thought out opinion, and what do i get? nothing. I mean, really people. Not one of you left something? What, you think this blog is a one way street? (for those of you who are answering either A) "yes, i do think it's a one way street. thats why its a blog and not a forum, jessie." OR B) "no, i dont think its a one way street. I think it's a webpage. Nothing to do with traffic or cars." you are both correct. but thats not the point.)

you may be curious about the advancements that I've made on uncovering traditional chinese philosophical views on female orgasm. you might not care. either way, you're going to learn. And youre going to learn in installments.

Fleshing out the Myth, Part One

From my perspective, this issue of avoiding orgasm is extremely interesting (and the issue of specifically avoiding female orgasm even more so). It comes to me, at this time, from the Chinese philosophical tradition of males avoiding orgasm to preserve their ‘jing’, their essence, an immutable and irreplaceable energy (one of three kinds: jing, qi, and shen). Built into this are the obvious complications that arise in applying the same practices prescribed for males to females, and the complications in considering spiritual or intellectual ramifications of such applications. The difficulty in truly exploring such an issue lies in separating the massive weight of cultural and social opinion from your rational mind, and considering the situation from a stance hindered by nothing more than common sense. In this global society, we are all so bombarded with opinions and ideals about sexuality from such early ages that coming to a place of clear minded un-blinkered consideration is extremely difficult, in fact, I’ve often argued that it’s impossible.

I’d like to start by saying that the reason that my exploration of this is so involved is that I don’t believe any one thing can exist without consideration of all the things that came before it- each concept and idea we hold today is shaped by the myriad of opinions and climates (social, political, environmental) that predate it. Those ideals of our parents, our respective cultures, those of conquering foreign lands and domineering religions play a large role in the perceptions that are subsequently formed by us as individuals. Hell, even the whispered utterances of the kid next door effect the opinions of the matured mind. All these influences leave an indelible mark on personal theories, whether it is realized it or not. In this way, pre-conceived notions contribute to the evolution of theories and the actions of the people those theories live within. This is why as I consider the concept of male orgasm as a release of non-renewable energy sources, a dilution of the seed, even, and the connotations of this theory on female orgasm, I insist on first acknowledging the primary influences on my own sexual knowledge.

You dig?

In re-reading this, I realize that one thing I like about blogging is that I can get away with the kind of rambling that no self-respecting professor or editor would allow into a term paper or article. Take that, sentence cutters! Hoho!

And that concludes our lecture for today. Stay tuned for more riveting forays into the deep, murky universe of withholding orgasm. To come or not to come, that is the question.

Haha, ha.

jess

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

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."

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

Where was I?

Ah yes, the shopping adventure.


Needless to say, Beijing’s electronic center is both massive and daunting. Matt Damon and I price checked and wandered through several of the seven buildings before I settled on a Chinese brand called “爱国” which directly translates to love country, and more figuratively means patriotism. Camera + all of the fixings came out to somewhere right around 150$. Year long warranty, ten days to exchange for whatever I want.

It’s a good thing it comes with ten days, cause the little bugger started acting up on me and I’m hauling it in for that exchange tomorrow. Shame. (I'm taking Mongolian homeboy with me to make sure it gets taken care of the right way. huzzah!)


Next on the fateful shopping day was a trip with the lovely Risbeth to the Silk Market. Not so much a market as an enormous building with floor after floor of well done knock off goods at cut rate ghetto prices, the place was packed. Now, not all the goods were knockoffs. Though the bottom most floor was filled with fake Sevens and True Religions (and Joes, R&R, Citizens..) and the floor after that the same, there was an entire floor dedicated to silk, above which was the jewelry floor- fully half of which was jade.

Just a comment on the fakes: really, really well done. I’m not sure they’re so good they could have gotten past Shane back at Nordstrom, but I definitely would have let a couple slip past me without noticing. [then Shane or Rose would have found them in the return pile and scolded me for not paying more attention, but that’s ancient history now :) ]


What did I buy? Oh, well, I picked up a gorgeous silk scarf, pale and creamy with scenes of provincial life, enormous envy green D&G knock off shades, flats, a guanyin bodhisattva jade necklace, and a jade bracelet akin to the one Alea gave me (small jade discs connect by string).
Let me dwell for a moment upon the importance of bargaining (and of using your Chinese when you bargain. I am utterly convinced that you can get a lower price in Mandarin than in English)

Scarf
Asking: 160rmb After Bargaining: 20rmb
Shades
Asking: 180rmb After Bargaining: 30rmb
Flats
Asking: 260rmb After Bargainig: 60rmb
Necklace
Asking: 250rmb After Bargaining: 50rmb
Bracelet
Asking: 140rmb Paid: 30rmb


Total I spent 190rmb, which equals roughly $27. For everything.


So, what is the lesson of today? When in China, bargain. Hard. Be prepared to walk away if they won’t match your price. If they say 160, counter with 16 and go up from there. Why were the flats so relatively expensive? I don’t know, all the shoes I price matched were priced that way. But that was my Sunday in a nutshell. How did i feel about the enormous building dedicated to the spectre of consumerism? Well, i liked it more than shopping centers im used to because the exploitation was more thinly veiled. If I'm going to be participating in consumerism I'd like to see my exploitation upfront- not only does it cut down on middle man costs but it allows me to own up to the fact that this great machine called capitalism is a living, breathing, human relfection (cause lets face it, Communist or not China is one of the biggest hitters on Capitalism's starting line). I'd like to look this demon in the proverbial face. When you shop in a big department store (or the dainty specialty shops) it's easy to ignore everything that goes into your end product. It's easy to ignore that human stain on the products you buy. At the Silk Market, not so much.

Does that make sense, or is it all socialist drivel?

I'll expand later. My bus is leaving for the Great Wall.
Yea, I'm pretty disgusted by that too. I'll talk about historical sites being turned into amusement parks when i get back.

<3