SPINNING MY WHEELS IN SHANGHAI

The fact that I've spent almost two and a half years in China doesn't make me any more immune to the glamorous connotations of certain names and places. I may lament that I am stuck in Shanghai, having been unable to get tickets out of here until several days after I had planned to leave, and I may really mean it, but even writing the words out makes me shiver a little at the exoticism of it.

The thwarting of many my initial travel plans led me here and the insanity of getting train tickets during the October 1st National Day holiday has kept me here for 8 long un-exotic days. While I did manage to meet and interview a new contact I've haven't done much else and that has been quite frustrating. Tomorrow I head to Guangzhou to deal with another fiasco: in its eternal wisdom the Chinese consulate only gave me a 30-day visa so I have to leave the country to renew it. It was either Hong Kong or Mongolia and the former won out because I have a lovely friend I can visit in Guangzhou just over the border.

I came here mostly because my friend Dan (of panda suit fame) moved to Shanghai a few months ago for his fancy new job. He lives on the top floor of this charming old building in the former French Concession, a part of the city still characterized by wide tree-shaded boulevards, cafes, and profoundly European residential architecture.

There are still pretty art deco stylistic elements on many of the buildings in this part of the city, though from a survey I've conducted from the back of Dan's scooter I believe the composition of the Concession is roughly 65% high-end ladies boutiques, 15% high-end children's boutiques, 10% high-end home furnishings, 8% cafes/restaurants, and 2% practical goods and services for the common folks. I find most of it incredibly vulgar. About 100 feet from the gate of Dan's building one can have a custom Ermenegildo Zegna suit made then cross the street, genuflecting to the luxury vehicles speeding past, to purchase a gilded table and real fur throw blankets for your parlor.

Walk a block in the other direction and you will come upon these obscenities. Yes, those door handles are made of beveled violet glass, and yes, those chairs with red velvet cushions have glass backs etched with swans.

It isn't too much of an exaggeration to say that the whole city looks like this, or at least that it wants to.

Some of the cafes are nice, and I can't complain about the fresh fruit crepe I had my first morning here but I can and will complain that a single normal cup of coffee typically costs about $6. And I wouldn't be so bitter about that but for the fact that this cafe in particular attracted a stream of tourists, both foreign and Chinese, who wandered around taking pictures or sat down and ordered beverages and then took pictures of each other "enjoying a cafe in Shanghai" taking from the place a product rather than an experience.

I am not innocent of the fact that my assessment of this city has something to do with my own cultural preference for a certain authentic experience but that does little to dampen my disdain. Last Sunday afternoon I went for a long walk in Dan's neighborhood, telling him when I returned that "I just walked until I found China," meaning that I went searching for my image of China, not posh boutiques and Sephora but bright noisy chaos: people riding bikes with tiny dogs in their baskets and haggling over vegetables in their pajamas.

I'm also biased against this city for the simple fact that I've never believed that having lots of money is worthy of admiration in and of itself; I hold quite the opposite view. As Dan said over dinner last night, this city aspires to the lowest possible shared aspirations: wealth and status. There are surely exceptions hiding out somewhere: artists, intellectuals, and other trouble-makers, but the general feeling of the place, its present geist, is the desire for money and the things it can buy and so like all the other places dominated by consumer capitalism it feels hollowed out by the homogenizing power of perpetual want.

Of course there is plenty of wealth in my beloved Beijing but it is still relatively contained in certain parts of the city (ahem, Sanlitun). I'm always happiest roaming around the older parts of the city, the places that are human-scaled and bursting with life, and I worry about the hutongs being demolished not only because of my desire for a "real China" where everyone does Tai Chi and plays checkers on the sidewalks but because their disappearance will mark the total ascendance of the belief that if a place is not profitable it has no value.

Dan and I also prefer the Beijing expat community, full of students, journalists, and various do-gooders genuinely interested in the country and its culture; Shanghai expats have a reputation for enjoying the city precisely because many parts of it don't feel like China. It may feel so familiar to foreigners because so much of it was built by and for them. The history of 20th century Shanghai is fascinating but frequently ugly - the division and settling of the city by foreign powers in the treaty port era, the Japanese occupation, the persecution of Communists when it was a Nationalist stronghold... my glancing knowledge of that history was why I was so bowled over the first time I came here and was treated to views like this.

I still find those views stunning. Standing on the bank of the Huangpu river you can look to one side at the beautiful limestone buildings of The Bund, the site of foreign banks and hotels from the 20s and 30s, as well as clubs that infamously refused to admit Chinese nationals as members.

The Bund formed a celebrated 20th century cityscape and represented to a large extent European hopes for colonial expansion. But now it is dwarfed by the skyscrapers of Pudong across the river, ambitious, absurd, and all built over the last two decades on what was farmland 50 years ago. It's two kinds of hubris facing off and it's fantastic.

I am also an unabashed fan of all the other batshit crazy buildings and skyscrapers scattered across the city. It's not enough to make a building tall and shiny in Shanghai, you have to make it weird. Unfortunately you can't see most of the detail in this pictures, but trust me, it's worth the risk to walk around town with your eyes facing skyward.

This one (detail from above) is one of my favorites. Let Gandalf out of there Sauron!!!

And finally, here is proof that Shanghai has at least one feature of the "real China" I know and love: its residents will sleep anywhere, anytime. Bless.

SEAGULLS AND OTHER SIGNS OF RIGHTNESS

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

- T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets (Little Gidding)

Though I'm heading back to China in nine days and won't be settling down here in Seattle until November this return already feels different. It's never mattered how long I've been away -- the beauty here has always astonished me -- but this time I feel it more deeply. My skin and bones seem to have their own memory of home: the angle of the light at this familiar latitude, the cool mornings and long sunsets, trees tall or stout with leaves coarse or pliant whose names I never learned but to whom something in me turns in happy recognition.

It feels like all of the accumulated wrongnesses of the past few months, all those times I felt hounded by unnameable anxieties and fears (rather like what Holly Golightly so memorably referred to as the mean reds) that only multiplied as I reflected on the oppressive heat, the smallness of a small town, my own considerable limitations as a scholar and a human being; it seems those wrongnesses melt away in the face of mountains and water or when a seagull squawks overhead and I think yes! this is right! there should be seagulls flying overhead! that's what was missing!

Of course it's not just seagulls that I've needed. I've needed my friends close, close enough that we can take for granted mundane moments together, without the pressure of squeezing a year of triumphs and catastrophes, lessons and mistakes, old memories and new dreams, into a few hours of "catching up". I've needed to stop living out of suitcases and learning new kitchens (at least for awhile) and not be forever planning the next move. And most recently, I've needed to accept that trying to write one's dissertation can make you entirely too aware of your own shortcomings but that is no excuse for not getting the mother done. I've needed to accept that if most people were confronted with the prospect of writing something worthy of ~6 years of intellectual labor, capable of meeting the expectations of a respected council of academic elders, and completed on self-determined schedules and deadlines, than most people too would wake semi-optimistically then watch the day dissolve into errands, e-mail, and endless tiny projects, and give way to a night of angry self-recriminations, nameless fears, and troubled dreams.

By which I mean to say I think I've realized that my slow progress at writing does not indicate moral turpitude, but merely shows that I, like most people, need structure and support to face this beastly challenge. And that's a nice mental vista to make a fresh start with as I enjoy the view from home.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo to you all. 十一月见！

HAVE BOOT, WILL TRAVEL

A few months back the lovely people at Fulbright invited me and a few other alumni to share our experiences as grantees with the incomings at their orientation in DC and I accepted with pleasure. The ego-stroking was not the only perk; I also got a free flight to the east coast, where I had already intended to travel this summer, and lodging at the Grand Hyatt, mere blocks from the White House and home of one of the biggest flags I've ever seen.

Once again my room faced inward, with a view of not only the rooms across the atrium, but the magical lagoon on the mezzanine (the little island at the top of the lagoon is a piano, and though I never saw a pianist there I truly hope he wears flippers and swims to and from each performance).

The orientation was great fun. We presented on living and researching in China to the whole cohort then broke into smaller groups with students matched to our regional and academic areas and fielded their many questions. They fed us wonderful food and at every mealtime we had opportunities to meet more of the bright and enthusiastic young scholars. It was a great pleasure to be surrounded by people I share a passion with and to feel as if I was helping them to have a better Fulbright experience: to engage more deeply with their communities and carry out successful research.

In the evenings I met up with a few of my Beijing friends who now have jobs in interesting places in DC, going one night to an awesome bar called Church & State, with a stained glass window, a built in confessional adjoining a private room, and a menu fit for the most discerning nationalistic boozehound:

This is not a church

DC is not a state

But every bottle here, whether heavenly or devilish, comes from the United States, its territories, or its possessions.

We invite you to be free and brave.

I had a mint julep and a Rooster (tomato vodka, vermouth, orange liqueur, basil syrup, lime juice, and sriracha) and very nearly had another when we had to wait to leave because there had been a stabbing in the club downstairs. Yes, DC is truly an American town.

I also spent heaps of time booting it up in the museums with friends. The National Portrait Gallery was only a few blocks from the hotel and had a beautiful exhibit of Alexander Calder's sculptural wire portraits (as I left agog one of the guards told me the pieces had a similar effect on most visitors) and this piece by the Korean-American artist Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway.

The piece was inspired by the artist's first few years in the U.S. in the 60s, when the interstates (and television) were still new and provided an intoxicating way to try to apprehend the enormity of this country. Each state had its own looping videos, and the more cliche the better (Indiana was footage from the Indy 500, Kansas was The Wizard of Oz), as they communicated how difficult it is for even a natural born citizen, let alone an immigrant, to have anything approaching a sophisticated conception of all our 50 states given the limitations of our time, attention span, and reptilian brains.

I loved the piece so much I sought out Paik's exhibit at the National Gallery but I didn't like it nearly as much. Still there was much to love: the I. M. Pei designed East Wing, the sculpture garden, this Magritte:

and a whole room of Russian Constructivism (I think this one is Rodchenko)

I stayed another 2 nights in DC after the orientation, hosted by my dear friend Aaron, and on my final day we went shopping for supplies at the 亚洲超市 in Rockville so I could add a 5th city to the list of places I've cooked Chinese dinners since being back from Beijing in December. My comrades, all of whom have eaten many meals in China, dutifully gobbled down the dishes and I was proud as a peacock to have stuffed them silly.

I didn't see half as many folks as I'd planned to in NYC, but I had known in advance that my usual habit of walking around Manhattan for hours wouldn't suit the boot, and it turned out Marybeth and her tornado of a toddler Avery didn't mind me hanging around their Sunnyside apartment in the least.

Resident pug/Yoda-lookalike Bruce also seemed pleased with my company. Did you know that pugs were once bred as bedwarmers for European royalty? I'll be requesting a team of them the next time I try to endure a Northern Chinese winter.

We took the dog and the tot to the park, where regretfully, I did not buy an ice cream.

And we took the train out to Flushing to explore a Chinatown more like contemporary China than any I've ever visited. They had delicious food (Marybeth boldly ordered 八宝冰, a sort of sweet bean sno cone and I snarfed a red bean sesame ball) and wonderful crap, featuring Grade-A engrish:

And inexplicably animal-festooned household goods.

On my final day I had a brunch at Popover with a beautiful actress and walked to the Whitney to meet Marybeth and Avery. We had high hopes for a video artist by the name of Cory Arcangel, said to be inspired by Christian Marclay, but I was much more taken by the gorgeous retrospective of Bauhaus painter Lionel Feininger who lovingly rendered social grotesques in vibrant colors. I irresponsibly ponied up for the exhibition book and didn't regret it afterwards for a second.

Of course then we had to go lie in Central Park, where I admired the turtles on the banks of Turtle Pond stretching their necks towards the sun,

The flowers in the Shakespeare Garden,

And all those small lovely details one comes across ambulating through that great park.

Avery enjoyed himself as well.

Marybeth took my picture with the boot, which I have since been freed of. I'm sure I'll feel tremendously nostalgic looking at this in a few years.

The last item on the agenda was a visit to what a friend in DC had told me was a large room in an office building in Soho filled with nothing but dirt. Some research revealed it to be "The New York Earth Room", an installation by Walter De Maria that has been on display since 1980 and with the very same docent/security guard/keeper for most of that time (it was in fact he that I was told by the friend I had to meet).

I arrived just one minute past the closing time but I didn't much mind not actually getting in to see it. Thinking as much as I do about economics and culture and value (too much? no, not enough!) it did my soul good to know that somewhere in Manhattan is an office full of dirt, a space of no productivity but what creeps up from the soil (to be removed by the diligent keeper). I'll go next time, to be certain, but I've taken a certain sustenance from it already. Lovely art, spectacular friends, intellectual engagement. It was a nourishing trip indeed.

TWO AND A HALF DAYS OF TERROR, or RYAN DOBOSH VISITS BLOOMINGTON

Do you want to visit Bloomington, Indiana? No? Oh. Is it because I keep saying what a terrible place it is, how this class-divided, topographically banal, socially unsatisfying place leaves my soul sundered? Sorry about that; you should totally come!

It took quite a bit of pleading, bribery, and promises of streets teeming with young tarts firm of buttock to get my dear old friend Ryan Dobosh to make the trip out from Austin for a visit. I was especially keen for him to spend a bit of time here because I'm leaving Bloomy in a few short months and I don't want to do so with any bad feelings towards the town. I wanted an accomplice to roam the streets, tour the campus, and make fun of children with me, forging some happy memories in the process, because the best times I've had here have been with friends, and those times have made certain places here dear to me. His visit was also a (temporary) last hurrah for fun-times and general mobility as I had foot surgery the day after he left and have been mostly laid up since.

I also looked very much forward to Ryan's documentation of the town, because most of us never get around to taking the pictures of people and places we'll miss and besides, Ryan takes far better pictures than most of us. Witness:

The lovely Georgia kindly drove me up to Indianapolis to pick Ryan up at the airport.

The first order of business was introducing Ryan to Archer, my roommate's new-ish dog. He is very handsome and likes to fart.

On the morrow we visited campus, here the main pedestrian entrance, the Sample Gates, with my department's building framed between them.

Taking in the fascinating wall displays in the anthropology building.

The graduate student lounge, where I made Ryan pre-read all of my students' evaluations, fearing to do so myself (they were mostly excellent).

Outside a very pretty building, the name of which I always forget.

The campus chapel and graveyard.

A piece from the campus' massive collection of impressively creepy statuary.

Another, this one of famed chancellor Herman B. Wells.

The oldest bar in Bloomington, Nick's on Kirkwood.

Nice face asshat.

Old wall downtown.

The county courthouse on the square.

Chinese dinner for 11.

Roommates Zarko & John.

Eternally hopeful Archer and his best pound face.

Dessert at the Chocolate Moose.

We went to the Atlas to play Skee-Ball, one realm in which I could be confident of victory.

In the morning we played dice at a local cafe where victory was, as usual, elusive.

[goddamn you Dobosh you cheating whore]

In Indiana, we trust god, though with what I am not sure.

Display case at the Antique Mall.

Where Ryan bought me a crown on the condition I wear it for the rest of the day.

Outside the Kinsey Institute, chock full of smut.

Journeying to the townie part of town;

for bowling....

(you can only afford to be this smug when wearing a crown behind a bowling alley, trust me)

...and roller skating.

Ryan got way into four square.

Archer and Ryan had one last magical night together.

And in the morning, I escorted him to the airport shuttle on my way to get my foot cut up.

Oh buddy, I know just how you feel. Now get the hell off my bed and let a gimp put her feet up.