A Dwindling Love Affair

When I first arrived in Xining two summers ago, I fell in love.

At 2,300m above sea level, it is referred to as the "Summer Capital" where emperors came to escape from the heat of the east coast. I felt like an empress taking a much needed respite from the heat, noise, lights, glamour of Beijing. Xining is the capital of a poor western province. It has all of life's necessities (reliable electricity, Internet, transportation) and none of its amenities (martinis, coffee, Mac service). It is slow paced where people walk aimlessly on the streets, stop and chat, eat long lunches. I liked walking in the markets, watching old Hui and Tibetan women haggle over vegetables, smelling roasted yams, listening to the Qinghai-accented Mandarin that is as foreign to my ears as Portuguese.

I recently spent another two weeks in the same city. But this time, I saw none of its charm. The streets are dusty and dirty. The hills surrounding the city are bare. Bad music is every present and blaring. Respite is nowhere to be found.

Men walking aimlessly in their polyster suits actually hurt my eyes. I looked in another direction only to see more walking polyster suits. Suits are by definition well-fitted, elegant, making any guy (tall or short, fat or thin, old or young) look sharp. Polyster suits are ill-fitted, displeasing on all the senses, making any guy look...cheap. But it is not just the fashionista in me that is indignant, it's the developmentalist in me too. Why do you try to look Western? Even worse, why do you add in a Chinese touch to Western dress, which adds nothing but cheapness? Why do you disdain traditional, comfortable, or practical clothing for any foreign style that turns out to be ill-fitted and displeasing? I understands it is near impossible to develop your own sense of style and being when every single man wears polyster suits. I lament that the environment in which these men reside does not allow them exposure to other possibilities and suppresses actions deviating from an imposed norm.

This long tangent is meant to show that the polyester suits that grit on my nerves now were completely lost on me before. Hence once I get past the preliminary introductions to a city, how I feel about it is almost entirely based on my moods. I find that I can no longer say I love or despise a city. I can only say that under certain conditions and times where the city (sunny, no construction) and I (lack of stress, desire to have fun) were in sync, I liked being there. It is with sadness that I lost the romantic notion of identifying and feeling myself a part of a place. I realize that I'm not one who can feel a city's energy, feel it in me, make a judgement on whether I like that energy or not, and conclude decisively that I love it or not.

Much as I'm an admirer of Romanticism, I'm not a romantic. Much as I admire carefree spirits, my thoughts are governed by careful rational, calculations, risk-aversion...

Customer Service

We go into a restaurant in Xining, the capital of Qinghai, a Tibetan province in western China. It's the usual loud pop music, musty, smoke-filled atmosphere. I order vegetarian soup and my friend beef stirfry as I'm not a meat-eater and he is.

An hour later, we have yet to see our food. I walk up to the 4 waitresses sitting and chatting. There are few customers. I ask: "Is our food ready?"

Our waitress looks up at me, innocent and no trace of ill-humor: "Yeah, it is ready." There are no signs of movement.

"Hmmm, will you bring us the food then?"

"Oh! Ok, sure!" Goes to the kitchen.

She brings back a plate to put the dish on, but no food. I also wondered why only one plate holder if we ordered two dishes.

Five minutes later, she brings out the one dish: "Here you are: one beef soup."

Fearing we will not eat until morning if we don't eat what's in front of us, we dig in.

So Funny and Sad and True

1. My friend who is a Hui Muslim, an ethnic and religious minority, does development work for an international organization in Xinjiang, the western most province madeup of mostly people who are Central Asian descendents and strict Muslims and speak a Turkish language. It's as contentious a region as Tibet just not as much in the news (for a variety of reasons of course, but perhaps one of them is that the West is more sympathetic to Buddhism than Islam).

A person my friend has worked with is a professor at an Irish university teaching human rights and invited him to do a MA in human rights at her uni, all expenses covered of course.

His response: "You want me to study HUMAN RIGHTS in Ireland?! All my family in China will disappear!"

2. We don't realize how much trust there exists in the States where we trust that someone will do something that she said she will do. In academia especially, grants and awards are given on the basis of a proposed project's merit and the only substantial check is the result at the end of the study; or more accurately, the bad rep you will have by failing to publish a substantial result. In China, where the checks and balances and a tradition of general rule following fostered by a strong legal system (not as much as the Germans and Japanese of course, but still existing) are easily subverted, trust even in academic partnerships is elusive.

At a meeting where a National Science Foundation funded project's principal investigator (PI) is meeting with the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS):

CAS: Show us the documentation that shows you have the NSF grant.

PI: I forwarded you the email that said we received the grant, and I sent you our approved proposal.

CAS: How do we know you didn't just write that email and approve that proposal yourself. I do not believe that the most prestigious research institute in the US just gives you an email to say your proposal is approved. You must have some certification, or your university must have it.

PI: Well, I only have the email, and I also know I've gotten it because the award is in my bank account.

CAS: So you need to either prove to us you have the money in your bank account or give us a certificate from your university.

PI: Would I really come all the way to Qinghai to try to form a research partnership with you if I'm pretending to have the money? Expenditures are in USD, which is 7 times rmb. But I'll try to see if my university has some more formal agreement from NSF. Realize that in the US, we don't stamp things.

The document that the university received from NSF is...?

An email.

Tomb Sweeping

Today is Tomb Sweeping Day, a national holiday, we go to sweep the tomb of my dad's grandmother. It's no easy task. She was buried without a tombstone and nowhere near a cemetery. The only recollection my dad has of her burial ground is that it is next to a railway track outside of Gaoliying, a village under an hour’s drive from central Beijing.

But it may as well have been any village in the country’s undeveloped interior instead of the developed coast. Faces are sun burnt and wind blown. Men kick the dust with their synthetic shoes while twirling grass between their teeth. Youngsters whistle pop tunes while watching passing girls dressed in imitation designer jeans. Young mothers watch their babies play amongst thick dust and exhaust smoke. Matronly shopkeepers count change behind shelves of ramen, candy, and other past expiration date, non-perishable foods. Old men chat and smoke in heavy blue overalls dating to the communist era. Looking down at my T-shirt, I am reminded that heating in their homes is not central; they salvage their own wood or coal.

Like all country sides, Beijing's is all things to all people. Existing alongside are subtle charm and blatant poverty, green fields and brown sewage, four-star resorts and one-roomed huts, open skies and closed roads, where dirt paths rarely lead into city roads.

It takes numerous detours before we find that railroad track. Gaoliying, like the rest of China, has bloated in the last 20 years to beyond recognition.

“There it is: the circle of stones I made as a marker all those years ago. I can’t believe we found it.” My dad says softly.

It is a restful place. The sun makes a warm spot of it, nestled amongst peach blossoms in full bloom this time of the year, broken out of its tranquility by the occasional passing train. My dad pours baijiu on that circle of stones. The sweet fragrance of the 56% alcohol hits my nose and I cry.

My great-grandmother’s image immerges before my eyes. Tolstoy's Anna was born out of a friend, Kundera's Agnes out of a gesture, Laolao was born out of my dad's stories. She was a shy young bride, given as a concubine to a husband with daughters her age. Not coming from a wealthy family, becoming a small landlord’s concubine, i.e. a titled servant, was among the better options. She still had to work day and night, but it was mostly in the house instead in the house and on the farm. When she settled in the routine of serving her husband and children, as all women settled then, the Cultural Revolution came. She was publicly humiliated and chastised as a landlord’s wife though she had little more choice than a chair does in belonging to a man. They were both property. Her grandson watched helplessly as a crowd of people enclosed her, taunted her, and threw things at her. She survived, but parts of her died. In her old age, she moved from east to west China to live with her daughters’ families. In a foreign environment, she raised all her grandchildren. It was a life endured in silence; one spent taking care of others but not oneself. I cry not for her death, but for the life denied her.

I cry for the farmers and migrant workers in Gaolinying, for the lives they will never know. Beijing is an hour away, but it may as well be several life times. I cry for my illiterate grandmother. For her, every outing is composed of indescribable insecurities and fears. All the world’s a stage, and she's never a player. 

“Life is like this.” My dad breaks into my tears. “You never figure out its meaning. Once you do, it’s all over. To live is to seek, to be free to seek.”

I don’t quite comprehend his meaning, but I’m okay with that for now. I’ll seek it out by and by.

The alcohol evaporates, along with my tears. I place another stone in the circle and pray that my great-grandmother knows how loved she is by her children and children's children. The sun sets. I put my arm in my dad’s and we walk away amidst the peach blossoms.