Monday evening brought the second big snow of the year, a snow perhaps not of nature made but crafted instead by the mad scientists in the weather ministry bent on cleaning up the air a bit. Thick “fog” hung in the streets for the week preceding, and while the official measurements listed on the Chinese EPA website showed pollution readings only in the 100s, the more sensitive monitor at the U.S. Embassy was literally off the scale, reading at least 500. The snow then, was very welcome.
On Tuesday afternoon I had the pleasure of showing the friend of a friend around Beijing, and while my tour was far from comprehensive, it had the merit, at least for me, of providing an excuse to walk around some pretty places and eat dumplings in good company.
Yonghegong lama temple looked especially seasonal bearing a thin layer of snow, although it made a strange topping for all the trees and bushes that haven't yet lost their leaves.
A sight which pleased me even more was this young boy and his father hailing a taxi. The 7-year old inside me was moved to great envy by the boy’s puffy jacket, which appeared to have built in (and perhaps even retractable!) alien ears. A close up may be necessary.
In this inset, we can better see that his jacket reads “SEEK THE BABY”, or possibly “SEEK THE BADY”, both of which make perfect sense to me.
Wednesday was pleasantly cold but I assumed, based on my first winter in Beijing, that the snow wouldn’t stick around for long. I was wrong. When I woke this morning there was a fresh layer of powder outside and it was still falling steadily. Thinking I might wait it out, I tucked back into bed with tea and Middlemarch, daydreaming of the high-tech winter gear back in storage in Seattle, whose promises of “wind-stopping”, “moisture wicking”, and “thermal insulation” might act as incantations against the snowfall, if nothing else.
After lunch I went shopping with Auntie Zhang so I could carry home the groceries for Uncle Mu to start dinner preparations with after she went back to the office.It was the realization that it was really very pleasant outside (and perhaps also a little fear at what kind of dinner Uncle Mu could cook up with duck skins and lotus roots) that decided me on venturing out for the rest of the afternoon. It was a good decision. Campus, already an inspiring place, is lovely today.
Even the concrete maw of the library and the fierce lion-dogs that stand sentry in front of it look a little softer: edges blunted, light refracted, just sparkly enough to still be taken seriously.
It's that time of year again, the time when the leaves turn and flutter to the ground, when the Siberian winds start to blow, when the entire nation's attention is concentrated on my shocking, perplexing, pneumonia-courting refusal to wear pants. To teachers, friends, people at the bus stop I am consistently called upon to defend my stockings-clad gams. No, I'm not cold, NOT COLD NOT COLD NOT COLD. Stopstaring at my calves! This afternoon while I was getting dressed at the gym two women next to me began chatting about the foolishness of wearing a skirt in this weather (it was 45 degrees for pete's sake - NOT THAT COLD). I felt like a 10 year old in the presence of two old aunts and wanted to shout: I'm RIGHT HERE guys. I can HEAR you. GAWD!
I mean, do we really want to start this people? Are you really the ones to challenge me on the appropriateness of my apparel? Ma'am, didn't I see you at the Fragrant Hills last week, climbing hundreds of uneven stone steps in golden 2-inch heels? Sir, are you aware that both your jeans and shirt are encrusted in rhinestones and that you are carrying a purse? Miss, are you, or are you not wearing a t-shirt that reads: "Whip to me, can I come? Hold back. I'm gonna come" (I did not actually see this t-shirt but it comes from a very reliable source).
So can you maybe cut me some slack?
I don't know what to call it; cross-cultural conceptions of bodily warmth preservation seems a little unwieldy, but how else to explain the chasm between how most Chinese people believe one should clothe one's body in cold weather and the far more flexible ideals prevalent in other places I've lived? True, a few people in English-speaking countries have inquired after my warmth and sanity when I wear skirts on cold days, but they have also accepted my answer and moved on. On American college campuses, after all, it is not uncommon to see young meatheads wearing shorts and t-shirts when there is snow on the ground, but most of us who see them assume either their physiology permits such liberties or they haven't gone home to do laundry in a few weeks.
In China, many people seem to think it is their duty to inform me that my insufficient leg coverage will inevitably lead to illness. These ideas, as far as I understand, derive from Chinese conceptions of physical wellness rooted in Chinese medicine and philosophy, particularly as represented in ideas of balance. Mid-way through fall, long underwear sets of every conceivable color, style, and price show up in the markets and on the streets. Every single Chinese person I know personally wears these under their clothes all winter and during much of the fall and if the changing room at the gym is any indication that goes for most of the population. It seems to be seen as necessary to evenly cover all exposed parts of the body -- if not, everything is thrown out of whack. If I dressed like this I think I would pass out after only a few minutes of standing compacted on the hot, stuffy subway.
The other night I finally explained to Auntie Zhang that in America we have no such beliefs. I told her that according to medical science, the most important thing is to keep your head warm and that if it isn't warm it will "steal" heat from other parts of your body. I assured her that so long as my head, neck, and hands are kept nice and toasty my comparatively exposed calves are going to be just fine.
I also caved slightly, buying a cheap pair of black sheepskin-like boots on the street to still the clucking tongues when it really does get cold. They are ugly, and I do feel like a stormtrooper wearing them where I would prefer to feel like an elegant lady, but they will surely get dragged out a few times this winter. After all, my legs do get a little cold sometimes, I just won't give anyone the satisfaction of admitting it.
I think I was first attracted by the squawking of this bird, who belongs to a nearby resident and often hangs outside in the daytime, nicely complementing the rock show posters usually plastered on the building.
Then I peeked in the window and saw this, a full grown tree growing up through the floorboards and out through the ceiling.
Here it emerges leafily from the rooftop (where you can sit on nice days after climbing a treacherous little ladder).
And it just got better. The music was lovely but something I'd never heard before, the menu had a long list of teas and a short list of seemingly house-devised cocktails, and there was a cat, 小宝 (Xiao Bao, or "Little Treasure"), and after I unpacked my work and settled on a sofa he jumped up to fall asleep beside me, later sidling into my lap.
Here he is in a grainier photo, hunting for food on my table (I've started bringing him wet cat food once or twice a week) but finding only beer.
The Treehouse has become a large part of why I've been so happy in Beijing this first month and a half. I don't have a regular research schedule by any means and spend most of my time reviewing my Chinese alone or with my tutor, going for long walks, and doing internet research or working on establishing contacts. Most of the latter now takes place at The Treehouse, where I go at least every other day to drink tea or help myself to bottles of Harbin beer from the fridge, sometimes staying late and ordering in dinner with the employees and other regulars. I've become friends with the Chinese owner, Sophie, and some of her "co-owners" (the business has been struggling and so she says she is "experimenting with communism" and inviting others to share in the profits and the risk). One of them, I've recently found it, is studying for a masters' degree in Anthropology at a university here, and we've been very happy to find each other and learn more about the different national traditions of our field.
There are a few other regulars as well, many of them schoolmates of the owner or bilingual expats. The place attracts interesting people, in part because of the pleasant atmosphere and in part because of Sophie, a principled, opinionated young lady who works a day job translating for a German journalist. It's a swell place -- I only wish I could import some of my domino-playing friends from across the Pacific to hang out there with me.
Another favorite activity is hanging out with my former teachers from IUP. Almost once a week we get together to go out for dinner, visit markets, or go sightseeing. The pictures below are from a hike in the Fragrant Hills (香山) with my dear Zhao Jie (pictured below) and a handful of other teachers and students. The Fragrant Hills are the place to go in the fall when the leaves turn but we went a little to early to see much. The smog was about average and that impaired visibility considerably but it was still a very pleasant hike spent enjoying something that almost, kind of, approximated nature.
And thus concludes "City of Cats". Due to constraints on time and attention spans, I was unable to include all of the city's cats in this series. Honorable mentions go out to the calico kitten at my Pingyao hotel, the Stewart-like cat at the eyeglasses store on Andingmen Nei Dajie, and the bar "Hot Cat" (热猫), where I spent an amusing night last weekend drinking Black Label and playing Jenga with giggling, heavily-accessorized Chinese girls.
All is well here. I hope the same is true of you and yours, wherever you are in the world.
My new home is just a few minutes north of a big city park called 地坛 (Ditan), or Temple of Heaven, constructed in 1530 and the site of summer solstice ritual offerings of Ming and Qing emperors for many centuries following. One bright, clear day in early October (probably just after the CCP-instigated rain showers cleared the skies in preparation for the National Day ceremony), I went there for a walk and a look-see.
Although Ditan has nothing on my favorite city park, Ritan, it has its charms, one of which is that the place is teeming with cats. This ginger buddy was the first to catch my eye. I guessed he must be a stray but was surprised by how well-fed and generally mellow he was. He didn’t mind being pet but neither did he go crazy for it like most strays would.
A little farther on I saw another cat sleeping in the grass and then two more being stroked and admired by a young man and woman engaged in conversation. I approached and gleaned the gist of it: the cats were all “liulang” (roaming about, or stray) and a corps of volunteers had developed to take responsibility for their feed and care. The young man unlocked the door you see below and showed me around the otherwise unused pavilion where the cat food and milk was stored, and around which a few old couches and chairs held some healthy, chilled-out cats. I told the man I was happy there were good people out there taking on such projects and went on my way, whistling a happy tune.
I did a lot of this exploratory flâneuring my first month to regain the feel of a city alive with 18 million heartbeats. My favorite kind of wandering is the kind that is perfectly aimless but with, at its heart, the great aim of understanding and fusing with a place. My jet lag was destroyed within the first few days of striding through urban streets, delighted to be back, loving all the tiny moments that reminded me of what I missed, soaking up the humanity. This is my religion, or something like it. It’s my job too, and I am a mighty lucky lady on that count. Last week I had lunch with one of my committee members, also here in Beijing doing research. and he reminded me of something I forgot this summer in all that reading and note-writing and plodding through abstract theories and self-referential ethnographies, that anthropology is first and foremost about meaning-making, about how we humans use and interact with ideas and physical objects and each other to make sense of the world around us and to survive in it.
In that light, my visit to the “cat sanctuary” at Ditan Park, my chats on trains and at market stalls, my public transport observations (last week on a bus I watched as a white-haired old man successfully opened a bottle of lemonade for a frivolously dressed young lady, who then offered him the first sip), and all the rest, form a background and reference point for my research. My ultimate goal, of course, is to inspire students with the kind of wonder I feel at encountering ideas, traditions, cultures that are different from my own while preserving (if they still have it) a curiosity in humanity. I want them to see that allowing that people around the world eat, work, talk, and love in so many different ways doesn't make "them" a freakshow when compared to "us", but shows us that culture both constrains our spirits and allows them expression, and that there are infinite other ways, infinite other worlds.
I loved the spark of interest or perhaps of recognition when I would relate some anecdote about China to my students or when, in discussion, we would work at understanding something that seemed foreign and irrational and then turn the lens back on those bizarre but taking for granted traditions of our own culture. I hoped the students would be empowered, rather than only discomfited, by taking a new perspective, and I really believe that a few of them were.
I've tangled myself up in words a bit here but what I really mean to say is that there is merit in watching & wandering, in living in a place and understanding the language and getting to know it's people. While the small talk or phone conversation of my fellow public transportation-users in the States only irritated me when I had things to go and places to go, it is almost a hobby here where my only job is to understand. I also love when this language, with which I have struggled for so long, lays down and surrenders itself to me, and the world opens up.
Of course it isn't all heart-warming chats and humanity-confirming scenarios: I hear and see plenty of awful and sad things too, but all of it, good and bad, inspires me to learn more, to see life here as full of fears, joys, possibilities, and dizzying change. Right now, I am enchanted. I might leave this coffee shop and see a street vendor hawking miserable under-weaned animals in tiny cages or a fragile old man shuffling cross the street as cars and motorbikes zoom recklessly by him and feel like crying, but my hunger for life here will not be dimmed in the least.
And, now, to balance my trite philosophizing, some pictures of the children’s amusement area at Ditan Park, a place clearly designed several decades ago by demented, hawkish, and not particularly safety conscious individuals.
I have a bit of catching up to do and I don’t quite know where to start, so division by cats seems the natural decision. Somehow it seems to have been a busy month and a half though in that time I have done next to nothing. But that doesn’t meant that nothing has happened. In the great city of Beijing in the mighty nation of China no day is without event, particularly when one finds oneself a newly elected member of the foreign elite by virtue of one’s source of funding. If I’m not stimulated enough by the stares and curious questions, by the vast numbers of tasty and cheap street snacks, or by re-immersion in Mandarin, I’m quietly thrilled to go out for dinner with professors or meet correspondents for august English-language publications. All the small events I’ve attended, social or otherwise, are too numerous to mention, but I would be remiss in not discussing the event that cast the widest shadow over recent weeks: the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
When I arrived in mid-September the city was already going into lockdown, with increased safety precautions, beefed up security, and approximately 800,000 civilian volunteers on buses and street corners ready to report on any suspicious goings-on. I found it highly amusing that Beijingers responded to the presence of tanks and armed soldiers on the boulevards by, what else, taking and posing for pictures.
The CCP spared no cost in sprucing up the city for the celebration on October 1st, decorating everything from train stations to pedestrian overpasses in red and gold, and hanging lanterns and flags wherever they weren’t already.
Every night in the week before the big day there were huge galas on TV featuring famous performers singing patriotic songs for delighted proles and stone-faced bureaucrats (and that hasn't entirely ended; just last night I watched part of a show where families competed against each other to perform the most impressive rendition of a patriotic song extolling the virtues of Chairman Mao and the Chinese nation). In my first weeks here I spent most evenings watching television and eating exotic fruit with Auntie Zhang and Feifei the cat, a habit which both helped me to recover some of my language skills, and engaged my curiosity about modern Chinese nationalism. It didn't go far, however, in helping me to befriend the crotchety-est cat I’ve ever met.
Feifei was the childhood pet of my landlords daughter who has now settled in Australia with her husband. She is more than 20 years old, mostly blind and deaf, and totally neurotic.
Sure, she looks cuddly here, but one ought to let sleeping cats lie...
...lest they wake up and glare at you with large, dilated pupils and demonically narrowed eyes,
and howl piteously at all hours of the day and night:
(she really does this EVERY DAY, usually more than once. Inside cats are crazy)
I think we’re buds now but her howling still freaks me out sometimes. I also find it endlessly weird that she actually enjoys drinking warm water. Sometimes when she meows it is a request for someone to refill her bowl from the pitcher of hot water that sits next to it, after which she drinks enthusiastically.
In general I’m very happy with my living situation. I live with a retired couple, Auntie Zhang and Uncle Mu, in their tidy 4th floor apartment near the 2nd ring road. The area is ideal - very central and well-served by public transportation, and the building is nice, with a big central garden and benches frequented by old couples and young mothers.
Uncle Mu is a retired 干部，or cadre, who used to work in the ministry of coal. These days he spends as much time as possible fishing and the rest of the time watching tv or hanging out with his old buddies at the retired cadre center. He tends to be a man of few words, and due to his intensely thick Beijing accent (meaning he speaks Chinese like a mumbling pirate, swallowing most of his consonants), those few words are quite difficult for me to understand. It's good practice at the very least, and on the few occasions I've been able to engage him on politics he has proved to have many a strong opinion. We all watched the National Day parade on television together and ogling the PRC's greatest military display gave me an opportunity to learn about Uncle Mu's military experience (3 years flying planes in Vietnam in the late 60s) and opinions of President Bush the younger (made the world a more dangerous place for everyone). I'm anxious to learn more, but it will take some time before I can fully penetrate the murky garble of his accent.
Auntie Zhang, thankfully, speaks quite a bit more clearly. She's a charming, vivacious little woman who laughs and smiles often and only scowls when someone tries to help her with something. In her early 60s, she recently returned to her work part-time in her old position as an accountant in the same department where Uncle Mu worked. When I first got here I usually stuck around the house until the early afternoon and when I woke up in the morning I would always find a plate of sliced and peeled apples or pears waiting for me in the kitchen. She fusses over me in a motherly way sometimes, fearing that I'll catch cold or that I haven't eaten enough turnips to fortify me for the day, but she never interferes in my business, and, thankfully, her feelings aren't hurt if I decline to eat something she has served. I should add that the two of them were both delighted when I explained to them that I had filmed the cat and put it on the internet. We all get along nicely.
And now, some photographs from Tiananmen Square, where the floats from the National Day parade attracted hundreds of thousands of tourist and locals eager for a glimpse of spectacle.
56 pillars, each representing one of China's ethnic groups (55 of which make up 8% of the population, which is 92% Han Chinese) surrounded the square on both sides. During the nighttime extravaganza on the evening of National Day fireworks shot out of the pillars.
Each of China's provinces, autonomous regions (like Tibet and Xinjiang), municipalities administered as provinces, and disputed territories (hello Taiwan) was represented by a float. This one was for Tibet, and depicted the Beijing-Lhasa train apparently emerging through a Tibetan palace. No reason why that would be in questionable taste, is there?
Sichuan = pandas AND skyscrapers.
Xi'an's Terracotta Warriors as re-envisioned by Ripley Scott.
Floats glorifying the great proletarian revolution.
The Uighurs of Xinjiang LOVE to dance!
Another father blinded by the nationalism of the youth.
