MOMVISIT, PART I: THE LAST DAYS OF WINTER

Spring Festival was way back in mid-February but Spring itself never bothered to show up. By mid-April I was obsessively checking the weather forecasts, which would promise a warming up in the coming week only to retract that promise as the new week approached. Aside from a pair of anomalous days back in March, it was in the 40s and low 50s every day. This didn't bother me enormously, as I enjoy cold weather (so long as I have a warm house to return to) but I worried that it would ruin the upcoming visit of my mother, who hates and fears the cold even more than Auntie Zhang and her cohort, lao taitais (old wives) who cluck disapprovingly over my under-clad calves. I know it is boring to talk about the weather but sometimes it really matters.

There was blustery wind and heavy pollution the day my mother arrived but two days later it was in the 60s. Fearing it wouldn't get any better than this I dragged mom out to the Summer Palace where we made our serious, beneficent-ruler faces while wearing imperial garb...

took a pedal boat out on Kunming Lake...

and climbed up the hill to admire the restored palace pagodas.

The itinerary for the next few days was similarly weather-determined. When it was cold and/or rainy we hit up museums (below, a giant oil painting of Chairman Hu visiting the scene of the 2007 Sichuan earthquake at the National Art Gallery) and markets;

when it warmed up marginally we explored temples and wandered the alleys of old Beijing

Turtle-pose at Yonghegong Lama Temple.

Running into Sophie and Wu Jie at Xiangzi's shop near the temple.

Tricycle bearing a massive burden.

We had originally planned to take an overnight train to the scenic (and comparatively southern) city of Hangzhou and stay a few days but that proved unfeasible. So to the weather I said: "you're not the boss of me!" and to the mother I said: "outskirts of Beijing here we come!"

Our first journey was to the mountains west of the city and on the way we stopped for detour at the Tian Yi Mu museum, both the mausoleum of a famous eunuch and a museum of all things eunuch-y, including some shudder-inducing photographs, tools, and clay models, a mummified eunuch, and some ancient stone dildos.

Oh, and also goats.

A two-hour bus ride took us to Cuandixia, a 400 year-old village preserved (from the outside at least) to look almost exactly like it did at its founding in the Ming Dynasty. More important than this however, was that it was SNOWING and windy when we arrived. After hiking the hill behind the village with a friendly Columbian-American fellow we met on the bus, and devouring a warming dinner, we cocooned ourselves in blankets in our spotless but unheated rooms (our "hotel" is visible in the center-left of the picture below, identifiable by its pale wood doors and two red lanterns). The wind howled all night but the morning was sunny and significantly warmer. We hiked up the hill facing the village, climbing higher and higher for increasingly dramatic views.

A typical alley in the center of the village.

On the bus ride back we passed a nuclear facility on the outskirts of the city next to a hilltop pagoda. Oh China.

It was sunny but still cold the next day; undaunted, we took another public bus three hours south of the city to see the karst towers and other curious glacial rock formations along the Juma river.

All along the hiking route there were signs calling attention to the names and shapes of the mighty rocks. Above, the five grandfathers; below, Sea Turtle Mound.

After scratching our heads a few times over which lump of stone was a crow and which was a pigeon, we were finally able to identify a new rock formation of our very own. Below, behold "T-Rex talks to Stegosaurus":

One of the more impressive features of this area was the "crack in the sky", a walkable chasm less than a meter wide and about 40 feet long. My crappy camera wasn't really up for capturing pictures of the place but this gives a feeling of its majesty:

Looking up:

Monkeying around:

The path was a little treacherous but mom and I are both part mountain goat so we made it through ok.

Back in Beijing things were looking up. According to the weather forecast it was going to be 67 the next day, and after that single day of Spring, highs would remain in the 80s until my mother was due to return to dreary Seattle. We celebrated by walking around the old city taking pictures of courtyard doorways,

envying the elderly and their incredibly cool motor-vehicles,

And eating. A lot.

But not this:

My mother loved malatang, the street dish which involves choosing a selection of greens, tofu, fish products, and other (including quail eggs, duck blood, and seaweed), then having it all boiled together and covered in sesame sauce.

Like so:

Her culinary adventurousness led me to discover a few new things too. This taro bun with lotus paste filling was especially delicious.

Thankfully, my mighty German hips had not measurably increased by the time we went back to the tailors for the fitting of my very first suit.

I'M GETTING THE KEYS TO THE TREEHOUSE

Xiao Bao attempts to disguise himself as a very small cougar when faced with his electronic likeness (no one is fooled).

I'm so busy these days that I don't make it down to the Treehouse much, once a week at most. Which is too bad because that cozy little cafe is still probably my favorite place in the city. Some expats prefer shiny Beijing, the cool, modern spaces of clubs and upscale restaurants, but I like my little hutong paradise, full of random objects, familiar faces, and one tyrannical meowhead. Allow me to explain by describing a better-than-average visit:

I went to the Treehouse last night on my way back from the office, intending to chat with Wu Jie about having my mother (who is arriving next week) bring an ipad from the states for her husband and to do a little fieldnote-writing and document translation. When I arrived, Wu Jie and Sophie had just ordered some Muslim food from a nearby restaurant. Our friend Er Ge was there too, recently returned from his travels in India and Mauritius and the recipient of a lot of teasing from the rest of us about how he had become enlightened after several days of smoking bhang in Dharamsala. Wu Jie asked me to put on some music I had introduced her to the weekend before (Florence + the Machine) and we sat down to our meal.

A few customers drifted in: a Chinese couple and later a pack of guys who are in a local band. They ordered their own food, bowls of steaming noodles delivered by a lady who lives across the street, sipped some coffee, and were treated to a slideshow of India by Er Ge.

I returned to my computer after eating and as soon as my lap was clearly available Xiao Bao jumped into it and promptly went to sleep. But I didn't get much work done. Another regular, Xiangzi, who runs the first charity shop in Beijing in a nearby hutong, stopped by for some birthday beers and watermelon and I treated everyone to my new favorite animal videos on youtube, foxes on a trampoline and standing Zorro cat. Animal videos are excellent cultural universals.

I tried to leave around 10 but Xiangzi wouldn't let me. He pleaded birthday privileges and insisted on buying me a beer to thank me for promising to pick up his kids from daycare on Friday when he and his wife will be at work. Their kids are adorable. I often visit his shop on the weekends when his whole family is hanging out on the stoop, drinking tea, chatting with the neighboring shopkeepers, and hearing the local gossip. Xiangzi's wife Terry is a red-haired Canadian and we joke that we make it look like the shops' main product is foreign women.

So I stayed for two hours more, talking with Xiangzi, Sophie, Wu Jie, and Er Ge in a mixture of Chinese and English about contemporary Chinese society, socialism in Canada and China, living a meaningful, principled life, and how much we all love Beijing and the incredible people one can meet here. And then we all made out.

Just kidding.

But I am entirely serious when I say that I have rarely been so challenged, fulfilled, and happy in all my life. I feel enormously lucky to be here and to be surrounded by such a great variety of wonderful people. And I really am getting the keys to the Treehouse. Sophie and Wu Jie have agreed to let me hold my focus groups there on weekend afternoons before they open and they have taken to calling me "san laoban" (boss #3) and saying I can let myself in any time. I own this town.

P.S. See some of Wu Jie's stunning pictures of Xiao Bao, Sophie, Beijing, Qinghai (site of the recent earthquake) and more on her blog. RECOMMENDED!

TAPE PAPER SCISSORS

It was on my first trip to China that I first starting making postcards, Carrie and I having found ourselves in untouristed parts with nary a ready-made 明信片. On that first go I bought a glue stick and some packing tape, harvested all our magazines for interesting scraps, and crossed my fingers that they wouldn't get chucked by the postman (I must concede that the idea of making one's own postcards while on the road was not originally mine but belonged to the lovely Vanessa).

I'm not sure when this little hobby turned into the full-blown obsession it is today. Some days after I've found a new source of weird quotes or usable images but find myself too busy to play with them I end up daydreaming about my little craft kit when I'm on the subway or out to dinner with friends. I am a dork. But I must say honestly that sitting down and listening to an album or two while cutting and arranging and constructing is one of the most reliably pleasurable things I know of as well as being a textbook example of Flow (I just finished the book and trust me, the wiki has all you need to know), Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's term for an optimal mental state in which you are fully immersed in an activity. I had an awful case of the mean reds the other day, depression and anger and anxiety all wrapped up together, but after a few hours with old Nancy Drew books rescued from the trash pile at the American School in Beijing (I only cut up the ones that were already falling apart), Osho quotes, and some colored pencils, I felt a hundred times better. The results, along with a sampling of all the other postcards I've made and sent this year are below.

I only started taking these photographs for my own records a few months ago and I'm sorry if the quality isn't great. If you haven't ever received a postcard from me (or if you have moved recently, MARK) and would like to I probably don't have your address -- make haste and send it to me through a secure channel. And please, if it sounds like any fun at all to you, start making your own!

Soft Rock Sutras

Penguins

Chinese Opera

Animals, assorted

The Dao of Nancy Drew

LET SLEEPING COMPUTERS LIE: NOTES ON MODERN COMMODITY FETISHISM

I like stuff. Every object, no matter how mundane, seems to me to contain a whole world. I think I’ve always been like this. I was raised going to thrift shops and garage sales, learning to find value in history and singularity, and of course in my yearly purchase of one brand new item (though my affairs with Bongo, Benetton, and International News shirts were both hotter and briefer than those I had with many thrifted items). I don’t think I’m unique in that I have intense relationships to objects, just more reflective about it than most.

Most of my early interest in consumption was socio-politically or ecologically driven; later I got excited about signs, spectacle, shifting values, and all the rest of the academic onanism. Do other people engage with objects on so many different levels, thinking about natural resources and production processes, about brands and their emotional value, about standardization, planned obsolescence, about style versus function? I know I’m not the only one.

The fact is, I feel a great affection for objects and I have relationships with them, as I think we all do. Karl Marx argued our relationships with things mask our relationships with people and camouflage our positions in the production process but he has been rightly criticized for ignoring how objects can act of carriers of meaning when they are bought, traded, inherited, or given.

The extraordinary significance of the gift is beaten into the skulls of anthropology graduate students everywhere but that is not entirely a bad thing. It is in large part through gift giving that I have established and developed relationships here, and while my intention is partly instrumental, I like to think it is primarily affective. I love connecting with people through things. A gift always changes relationships (sometimes this is not welcome, as when it reveals someone’s ulterior intentions towards you) and though the symbolic weight of the act of giving is an important part of this, it is the object given that determines the ultimate meaning of how two individuals are now differently linked.

One of my favorite academic works is Peter Stallybrass’ chapter “Marx’s Coat” in the otherwise uninspiring Border Fetishisms, the gist of which is that the concept of commodity fetishism as a practice in modern societies is “one of Marx’s least understood jokes”. Once upon a time those who studied “primitive” peoples used the term “fetish” to refer to [inanimate] objects believed to possess magical powers or to be possessed by a spirit. Stallybrass argues that what these Europeans were observing was instead groups of people who recognized that objects cannot be separated from people, the people that make them, give them, and own them; in this way they are not inanimate. The word fetish, when used by these early Orientalists to claim knowledge about “primitive” peoples, revealed much more about the societies from which they themselves came from. In Stallybrass’ reading, the concept of the fetish

“implied a new definition of what it meant to be European: that is, a subject unhampered by fixation upon objects, a subject who, having recognized the true (i.e. market) value of the object-as-commodity, fixated instead upon the transcendental values that transformed gold into ships, ships into guns, guns into tobacco, tobacco into sugar, sugar into gold, and all into an accountable profit. What was demonized in the concept of the fetish was the possibility that history, memory, and desire might be materialized in objects that are touched and loved and worn” (186).

Marx’s concept of concept of commodity fetishism then, reversed this valuation, “ridcul[ing] a society that thought it had surpassed the “mere” worship of objects supposedly characteristic of “primitive religions” (186). In his estimation, the inability of “modern” Europeans to see the real value (meaning embedded labor, personal sentiment, and natural wealth) revealed another way in which people living in capitalist societies are alienated from objects and from each other.

In my opinion this assessment still holds, but it misses the effects on society resulting from the further development of consumerism. While fetishization recognizes that every object is unique, commoditization (aided by industrialized production) insists that they can be made equivalent. At the same time, economic growth requires continuous consumption, and the marketing and advertising industry broadcast messages insisting that new stuff is unique... at least until the next new stuff comes along.

“Each new consumer product must present itself as sovereign, as absolutely singular and as absolutely desirable. Yet, in order to satisfy the desire of the consumer, the product has to be mass produced, such that, as soon as it enters into our possession we recognize it for what it is: a vulgar, common-place object. Thus, we pass from one object to the next, in pursuit of the promised land of total consumption... If it is difficult for us to know with certainty anything about a given moment in time it’s because our attention is always being directed towards the next moment, the next major product launch, the next year’s holiday, next season’s cultural highlights."

The above, from a book by Douglas Mourret about the French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard, is a summation of situationist Guy Debord's thoughts on consumer culture. Some of Godard’s mid-60s films suggest the influence of these ideas. Characters wander through a vivid landscape of mass produced consumer goods but show little emotion towards things or one other. They embody an alienated modernity: drifting in a world where real meaning has become unmoored from objects and affected people’s relationships with each other.

One line of thought suggests that the only way out of the consumerist trap (i.e. buying for the sake of buying) is to value our objects in a different way, even to fetishize them. This may sound rather abstract, especially in an era when so many of our cherished objects are shiny technological devices. On the one hand, it is easier to see an iphone as potentially animate than to see a pair of socks as such; on the other hand, it is very easy to discard said iphone when the next model comes around, or at the very least to be dissatisfied with what you have when the updated version has SO MANY NEW FEATURES OH MY GOD MY PHONE IS SO SLOW AND OLD AND BORING!!!

I think this is a good illustration of Debord's thoughts. Even when one has the very newest model one is constantly aware that it could be made obsolete next year or next month and this constant dissatisfaction and upgrading is good for almost no one. It is useful for the bottom line, yes, but it is terrible for the environment, bad for poor countries rich in natural resources (see coltan mining in the Congo), deleterious to societies, and difficult for individuals (in this time of economic downturn there is no shortage of personal accounts touching on how people psychically suffer when they lose/can’t buy the stuff their identity relies on).

One day, after a frustrating episode with my still-very-new laptop, I ran down the concrete stairwells of my building out into the sunshine, thinking that if the shiny beast just slept for a few hours maybe it would fix itself. And a charming image appeared in my mind of actually putting it to sleep: giving it a wee pillow and a blanket and tucking it in for a spell.

Ridiculous idea that it was, it made me feel a little more fondness for my machine, which suddenly seemed less a collection of interchangeable drives and cogs and wheels and I don’t know, lasers? and more like a magical creature that I should protect and cherish.

It may not be the way out, but it can’t hurt. Does anybody know where I can get a macbook sized blanket?