so, i went to china for 10 days during spring break here in japan, and it was an interesting trip. i definitely learned a lot, and possibly grew a lot as well. in some ways this trip was very much unlike past trips to china, and possibly unlike past trips to anywhere. it was the first time i travelled in a country that i could pass off relatively well for a local– and it led to many interactions and conversations that i probably would not have been able to pull off in any other country. i also went with two foreigners who had exoticised ideals about china and it helped to feed off their enthusiasm for things that had ceased to be wonderful or different to me. i don’t really want to go into a linear account of the whole trip, so i’ve gleaned a list of things that stuck out to me in the trip and are (mostly) things that i want to remember about those 10 days.
the weird, the wonderful, and the occasionally woeful
1) beijing was a place of strange and serendipitous meetings. after we landed and waited (for a very long time for our baggage to be spat out onto the conveyor belt) we spied a little japanese boy reading his itinerary. the logo printed on it was the same travel company that tsuchiya-san had bought our tickets from. because we paid a bit more for our tickets than we would have liked, we immediately started murmuring about accosting the small thing and asking him how much he had paid, but it came to naught as we were sidetracked by our baggage. so we put the little boy out of our minds and went on with our trip. on the 2nd day of the trip, we were traipsing towards tiananmen square and grabbing lunch along the way in a dinky little chinese canteen (like a zha cai fan stall). so we sit down and eat our various meals and who should walk in but the japanese boy! only d recognised him at first though, b and i were initially sceptical, but after we saw the boy miming out what he wanted and resorting to writing kanji in the air, we were convinced he was the boy. and he was. and what a fascinating boy he was. firstly, his name was asuto– the kanji of which is 飛人. yes– that does mean ‘flying man’. then it transpires that it’s because his father is a bit of a science and space geek, and names him after the katakana word for ‘astronaut’ (i.e. asutoronotto). which is pretty awesome in itself. and then, he goes on to mention that during the space race in the cold war, the americans were astronauts and the soviets called their space travellers ‘cosmonauts’. so his father goes on to name his sister kozumi (i.e. kozumonotto). her kanji is (fortunately, for her,) much more normal and you wouldn’t have realised anything was amiss unless taken in conjuction with her brother’s name.
so there you go. a little boy named ‘flying man’.
there are other adorable little details about him; how he confides in us that he just broke up with his girlfriend (who’s his junior from high school. he’s currently a sophomore in college); how he’s swinging by akihabara to buy some models for himself and his otaku father, and when pressed, embarrassedly refuses to elaborate on what sort of model figurine he wants to buy; how he really wants to go to germany, but everyone told him to aim for somewhere less ambitious, like China, where he can at least read and write if not speak. we took him around with us and aided and abetted his underage (in japan, not in china, so it wasn’t illegal) drinking.
2) that same day that we met our little space otaku friend, we had all just toured the forbidden city (exhausting) and d wanted to head up to the hilly park just behind called jingfeng park to get an aerial view of the palace. so we traipse up 330m above sea level to the top of the park, where a little pagoda sits on a flattened peak. as b takes photos of the palace, a notice a chinese policeman staring at her. worried that he might accost her (or arrest her) i stare at him staring at her– this goes on for awhile, till he seems to tire of waiting for b to adjust her focus and moves on. as he eases past b, he turns around and looks squarely into my face. and i stifle a scream.
IT’S THE POLICEMAN FROM THAT MAD ABOUT ENGLISH DOCUMENTARY BY PEK SIOK LIAN. the one who can speak many languages, and do various accents, including the new york one? the one who hilariously sounds like he learnt his new york accent from nypd blue? THAT ONE.
of course we took a photo with him. he coerced a tout in taking it for us. for free. hnah. i also have his namecard, if anyone’s interested in emailing him.
3) i think my first experience crossing a junction in beijing might have taken a few years off my life. and that was when there was a green man, mind you.
4) i think when i think back, i’m constantly amazed by our luck with taxi drivers. we were pressed for time to get to the station for our overnight train to shanghai (we boarded with less than 5 minutes to spare. pretty much every gantry we passed, the ticket staff shouted at us to run. fast.) but the taxi driver we got was really good about getting us there. he was concerned for us and repeatedly checked the time on his mobile phone and told me to take care as we sprinted away from his cab towards the station. we made the train, but i think that took a few more years from my life. my goodness, chinese train stations are like mazes. not straight-forward at all like english train stations. there are waiting rooms to go into, baggage scans to undergo, and countless gantries and passages before you even get to your platform.
5) God was also really good at providing us with people that gave us good, valuable advice. and this advice always came in pairs so you knew it was sound. in hangzhou i’d forgotten to take the wikitravel printouts i had, so we were pretty much wandering around blind. after a few fumbling attempts to find the bus, in the bus queue, a little hangzhou auntie strikes up a conversation with me, despite my initial misgivings, she seems to be sincere and helps us squeeze onto the bus, gives me smaller notes in exchange for my 100 yuan note (all the while reminding me to count twice to make sure she gave me the right amount), and outlines this detailed walking tour of the west lake area. after we get off the bus to change buses, another hangzhou lady accosts me and delivers nearly identical advice and walks us through the first leg of the trip and leads us to a longjing tea farmer that she herself buys from and we buy some tea (grown from the same plantatons emperor qianlong owned all those years ago). my only regret is that we had not enough ready case with us, and they couldn’t take my foreign credit card so it deeply limited the amount of tea i could buy and i think made the lady lose face, cos the business she brought couldn’t deliver. still the anger and disappointment were never directed at us, merely at the credit card machine so i think things were still pleasant and cordial. but that was a great shame.
i would definitely recommend taking that trip out to the tea fields around the west lake. it’s wonderfully serene and very picturesque, and the path crosses 9 springs and a waterfall. it’s definitely less trafficked than the city bordering parts of the west lake.
later at suzhou we had another problem where we were booked into a hotel in suzhou itself, and i had thought that our domestic flight to xian from shanghai would leave from hongqiao (being the domestic airport), but instead it was leaving from pudong (we didn’t know this till we got the tickets in shanghai). the flight took off at 8.15 in the morning, meaning that we had to get there by 7. but how to get to shanghai that early in the morning? the two taxi drivers we had in suzhou were super helpful with their advice and they really, really helped us think through all the options. in the end we took a taxi all the way from suzhou (because the less expensive options were just not working out; like the early train to shanghai having only standing tickets), but it worked out to only 560 yuan– which is 30 sing dollars-ish per person. and we also came in with good advice on how much the trip would cost.
6) that taxi ride from suzhou to shanghai pudong was another example of provision– because at 4am in the morning, night shifters do not want to take a 3hour trip to the airport in shanghai. but our hotel got rejected by many cabbies before the bellboy got hold of a cabbie who knew another cabbie who would just be starting his shift and would be willing to take us into shanghai. we were really lucky to have gotten that.
7) interestingly, nearly all the chinese people we interacted with– taxi drivers, hotel staff, boatmen, friendly aunties– thought i was a mainland chinese person bringing around some foreign folk. i was usually thought to be their local colleague or their personal tourguide. i guess china’s so big there’s room for all sorts of accents, so even an accent like mine must exist somewhere in this sprawl. i usually got associated with the biggest city around though, so if we were in hangzhou, i’d be thought to be from shanghai; in xian they thought i was from nanjing. it was a pretty big confidence boost to my mandarin, though it’s still not quite as fluent as i’d like it to be.
it was really nice to be treated like an insider for once, after a year and a half of living in japan– you get information or perks or even just a friendlier disposition from people much easily. a really young taxi driver (he looked 18! though i am sure he had to be older) in xian gave me his number and told me to call him if we needed a ride to the airport, he was willing to charge 20 yuan cheaper than the market asking price. but after a while, it got tiring and i hated being duplicitous and/or vague and uncommitted in my answers that i really felt like i had to leave china. it’s a nasty feeling straddling both sides and knowing that you don’t really fall into either– and that any moment now, someone might catch onto that.
8) this was also the first trip i’d been on where relationships had gotten really strained– but somehow we rode that out, and it was, i suppose, a learning experience, if little else.
9) but i’m proud i learnt how to handle touts, vendors, waiters and taxi drivers by myself. i often let my parents do the bargaining and snubbing in china, and it wasn’t as terrifying as i’d thought it to be– or perhaps by now it’s less of a learning curve than it was a few years ago.
10) i thought i’d round it off to 10 since 9 seems a bit abortive. one of the greatest things i took back from china was perhaps an appreciation for chinese poetry. especially this little gem i rediscovered (i’d heard the teresa teng song before and loved it, but it had receded into the recesses of my head for a long time)
明月几时有？把酒问青天。
不知天上宫阙，今夕是何年？
我欲乘风归去，又恐琼楼玉宇，高处不胜寒。
起舞弄清影，何似在人间？
转朱阁，低绮户，照无眠。
不应有恨，何事长向别时圆？
人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺，此事古难全。
但愿人长久，千里共婵娟。
it’s the perfect poem for this time, particularly the last two lines. there’s always parting and meetings, just as the moon waxes and wanes– nothing has ever been perfect. these are the last 3 months i have here in japan, after that another round of goodbyes, and friends scattered across the world. but we all look upon the same moon, and i suppose there is some comfort to be had in that.
there’s been so much praise heaped on sita sings the blues that i don’t really need to elaborate further. it’s pretty much the indian epic ramayana in animation, interweaved with the autobiographical story of nina (the film’s director/animator/all-in-one), whose husband dissolves their marriage through email. i’m doing a terrible summary, but it is all in all awesome. it has humour, jazz music, wonderful animation and a really powerful emotional core.
and the best thing is, it’s free here.
why something so awesome is free is a long story, if you read the articles linked above you get the main gist of it, but for more details go to the film’s official site.
so watch this film, and if you like it, donate to nina paley. she’s getting no money from this film, all she wants is for it to be seen by as many people as possible. if you work in a school (or are attending school with a student film society)– organise a screening and collect a small admission fee and donate the proceeds to her. it’s a wonderful film and it deserves to be seen, and for its creator to get some sort of financial reparation. :)
there are so many things that don’t strike you as particularly special, or particularly ground-breaking about living in a foreign country, when in fact– they are. things like having live ducks and swans at your door in york, snow in april, daffodils by the dozen. they’re things you take for granted after a while, and you forget how awesomely special it is, and how you’ll never enjoy these things again once you’ve left.
i’ve been horribly shoddy in recording my life in japan– something i regret greatly. but things that i’m really glad i’ve gone through in japan include being trapped in a blizzard on a mountain, waking up to find frost all over my car, and the latest addition to weird things that would never happen to me elsewhere– waking up to find volcanic ash all over my car, parking lot, and across the whole city, to be honest.
mt. asama, the tallest mountain in the area (that’s also an active ash volcano) which we share with nagano prefecture apparently decided to belch some clouds and ash into the air. tomioka’s not close enough to be deeply affected, so we’re not suffering from respiratory problems or fearing volcanic rock dropping from the sky, but we’re close enough to have asama leave us some souvenirs.
so incredible an occurence that i would find volcanic ash all over my car that i actually dismissed it as snow– which simultaneously goes to prove how naive i still am about the nature of snow. it wasn’t till i read online about asama that i slowly pieced things together.
doiiiiiii.
what is death?
so asked my JTE, in an enigmatic email. i replied that it was a noun that described the state of being dead, but it turns out he meant it in a philosophical sense. there’s a long story behind this question, but basically he’s talking about death for moral ed (more about that at the end of the essay), so this is what i wrote for him:
I don’t know where to start about death.
Maybe I can try to find a lesson in death. Maybe through death I can understand some greater truth about life. My brother died in a car accident in Australia where he and two other friends were on holiday. Australian roads are well known to be dangerous, and the parents of all the boys told them that they were not allowed to rent a car. They lied to all their parents and secretly rented a car. They drove even when they were young, inexperienced, and sleepy and tired. There’s a Chineseことわざ: 一失足成千古恨. The literal meaning is that one slip can create a thousand years of sorrow/sadness. My brother and his friends made one bad, bad decision. My brother paid a price (probably the highest price) for this choice, but the thousand years of sorrow are experienced by the people left behind.
Maybe another lesson is to appreciate the people in your life while you still can. The first night after my brother died, I wrote in my diary a long list of things I was afraid I would forget him. It was a long list, but it barely managed to cover 17 years of knowing him. There are so many things I wish I had treasured while he was alive; things as simple as his voice, or the way that he coughed. I already cannot remember the sound of his voice, and I wonder what else I will forget as the years go by.
Yet I cannot claim to even truly know who my brother was. At the funeral I was surprised by the number of people who knew things about my brother I didn’t know. Many of his friends wrote letters and placed them in his coffin; I was shocked to realize how important my brother was in their life. We often don’t think that people have a life outside of when their lives cross ours, but they do. For 21 years my brother had a life where he went out and made friends, and shaped their lives. I wished I knew this side of my brother. I wish I knew how he was like as a friend, a classmate, an army officer. I wish I talked with him about his life, and the people that were important to him. But there is no point in wishing for things that will never come true.
But at the end of the day do these lessons matter? I talk about mistakes and their cause and effect; because I want to say that my brother’s death makes sense in some way. But does it really? Why my brother? Why him, of all the people that drive cars in Australia? Why not even the other two boys in the same car? Ultimately, it seems so random, so nonsensical. That’s scary. Death doesn’t make sense. One day my brother was here, and one day he’s gone. There’s no logic, there’s no meaning. This is not an episode of Kinpachi-sensei, where he can find a moral in it and tell it to the kids, and teach them more about life. But life is complicated and meaningless. We try to find morals to force on life so we can try to understand why something so horrible like my brother’s death would happen, or so we can wish that something good came out of death. But it’s not enough. My friend died from cancer when he was 22 years old. He did nothing wrong, but he died. I try and try to think of an answer why, but I don’t think I ever will.
Maybe I can talk about how death is sometimes so normal, and yet it means you can never do anything normally again. You feel like death is a big event and that the world should stop, because such a terrible thing has happened. You think it is impossible that anything else in this world should even be important compared to the loss of the person in your life. Why should I go to school, why should I study and take my exams; the world should stop because nothing will be the same.
But the world doesn’t stop. The world keeps moving, there are jobs you must do, and responsibilities you must continue to perform. Yet even when the world is telling you to move on, even the smallest things in your life change. The hole that death leaves behind is like a virus that infects every part of your life, and you are reminded, even as you try to live normally in the world that nothing is ‘normal’ anymore. Simple things, like going to the restaurant as a family and having to ask for a table of 3 instead of a table of 4; things like not being able to answer people when they ask you if you have any brothers or sisters (the easy answer is to say no, but it’s like pretending your brother never existed; the hard answer is to say yes, and then make things awkward by talking about death). Everything points to the hole that’s in your life now, you can’t escape it, everywhere and everything is a reminder.
So what can I say about death? Death is horrible, death is senseless. Death is everywhere; it is meaningless, random and it will break your heart.
——–
it’s a horribly bleak essay. but i guess the more i wrote it, the angrier i got, because i felt like my JTE wanting to use death to teach his kids some moral education lesson cheapens and flattens death. my brother is not a mascot.
but this is my job.
so november came and went and it’s december, and i try to keep track of the days, and i look back on my organiser with all its boxes filled with scribbles and i suppose i must have had fulfilling engaging times but it all melts into a blur in the end. sometimes i wish i could hide under my kotatsu (table heater) safe and single and solitary– but no, it’s no good. we must go into the world some time.
always the same thoughts reiterated again and again. one can’t live in the bubble forever, somehow one must always leave and go out into the sullied world and live, and living is the bit that’s tough.
i actually wrote the above two lines in a draft and saved in on wordpress, but it ties in to what i wanted to blog about tonight, so it stays; abrupt, incomplete not properly started and not entirely finished.
but what i wanted to talk about is the site stuff christians like. it’s pretty much the christian version of the famed stuff white people like. after a recent spate of interesting posts, i finally added it to my feeds, and i trawl through the archive at school when i’m bored. it can feel sometimes like the author is trying too hard to mesh pop culture references with christianity, but there’s something in his approach that really appeals to me. he clearly loves God and is pretty immersed in Christian sub-culture, but he’s not above having some sort of third-person awareness about it and being able to laugh at himself. there’s actually a huge amount of hidden gems there; things that i read and physically laugh out loud instead of self-narrating the word ‘lol’; and also things that i read that gives me a slight shiver because i recognise something of me in what he’s talking about.
today’s post just popped up on my feed, and it ties in so well with a theme that’s been running through my life lately, i felt i had to document it here for future reference. i will probably mangle it, so it’s best to post a huge chunk of the post as it is:
But lately, as I’ve spent more time with God and really put a priority on our relationship, what’s been coming back in the glass has not met my expectations. Life hasn’t gotten more comfortable or easy or perfect. And I don’t think it’s going to, because I think if I complained to God that this adventure He is calling me on is dragging me out of my comfort zone, I think He would cry back:
“Good, I don’t like your ‘comfort zone.’ For one thing, it’s something you create and you also turn to me less when you’re in your comfort zone. I want you out of your comfort zone. I want you dependent on me and if to do that I have to pull you out of your comfort zone, then I will. I am the only one that can create true comfort. I am the only one that can give you that gift. You are powerless to be truly comfortable outside of me. The adventure I am calling you to will not be comfortable by your definition of the word.
You define comfort as ‘doing things you already know how to do, repeating the things you’ve always done, and never being nervous.’ That’s wrong. Your definition of comfortable is really the definition of ’stagnant.’ Have you ever noticed that? You don’t grow. You don’t change. You don’t learn new things. My definition of comfortable is a lot different. Mine means going deeper into who I am and who I made you to be. Sitting in my presence naked of your insecurities and masks is true comfort.”
i’m nervous and i have sweaty palms; i feel small and weak and inept; i’m, quite frankly, a neurotic mess. still, God’s trying to do something in me and i’m terrified but i yearn for the day i can sit in His presence naked of my insecurities and masks.
ずっと神の御国にいていて、神の人々と過ごしたければ、どんなに嬉しいことか。君さえいれば幸せ。しかし、自分の思うとおりに生きることは難しいなあ。私は実は最悪の人間だ。神の子のくせに、いつも我が儘に、意志力弱い生きている。自分自身の能力が足らないので、神にもたれるしかない。うちは性格の欠点はともかくとしてイエス様の光が出されたいと思っている。
自分の不安、心配事は抜きにして、この世界に生きたいのに、人生はなかなか思ったとおりにはいかない。
(this was an attempt to use JLPT 2 grammar to write a blog post that expressed something as close to my real emotions as possible)
So this is list number 2, from the second class. there’s a lot more serious advice here that is surprisingly precocious. but then there is also point 2:
1) He shouldn’t buy two cups of popcorns because he can reach for her hand.
2) At last they should sink into the sea because they will love forever like in Titanic.
3) He should go to amusement park’s Ferris wheel because it’s a private room.
4) He should go to amusement park’s haunted house because it’s dark and he can touch her.
5) He should go and watch night view because he can touch her.
6) He shouldn’t ignore her opinion because she will hate him. (Surprisingly precocious, but I think this is genuinely good advice.)
7) He should hold her bags.
8) He should hold her hags. (Hmmm.)
9) He should go shopping with her because he can know her liking. (Once again, surprisingly thoughtful.)
10) He shouldn’t be late for the first time because it will make her angry.
11) He should treat her, because she will appreciate him. (That’s right boys, buy yourself a girlfriend!)
12) He should listen to her talking because he can know her better. (That’s right boys. Because we’re worth knowing!)
Mr S. and I had a class where the kids had to practice giving their advice and/or opinion using ‘should’. So knowing what appeals to hormone-raging 15-year-old students, we gave them situation of their friend, M-kun, going on a first date with K-chan. This is the advice the first class came up with. The good, the bad, and the pervy:
- He should go to the sea with wild Harley Davidson because it’s romantic.
- He shouldn’t say dirty jokes because it will be disgusting. (Ahhhh the pitfalls of dating a 15-year-old boy.)
- He should bring 15 white pigeons and one hundred cans and three ropes, because it feeling marriage. (This is a first date, mind you.)
- He should take to her home, because she makes happy. (I don’t think they mean it in the dirty broken English way it seems. I think they meant, ‘He should take her home, because it makes her happy.’ But er, they might mean she makes er, the happy with him.)
- He shouldn’t touch her body, because it will make her unpleasant. (Don’t you know it!)
- He should watch a touching movie because he can hold her hand at the climax.
- He should hold her only. (This kind missed out the word: hand.)
- He should bring a lot of money because he can pay for everything.
Aren’t we glad we aren’t taking advice from 15-year-olds on the art of dating? My favorite advice though, comes from Gyoda Shoma, who for the last bullet point simply wrote: Good Luck.
