been hitting the sauce pretty hard this past week or so. and i mean that with regards to both booze and actual sauce--delicious korean red pepper sauce, to be precise. i'm dipping a very large vegetable in it right now! heh heh. anyhoo, the weather has been nice, besides today's showers, which means there are outdoor places to drink, which means i spent 3 days in a row at maya, which i was actually okay with. the last visit included a shot of the top shelf baijiu with a snake in it. i'm not sure if what i drank came from the large snake vat or the medium snake vat. i guess at that point, snake size really doesn't matter. i've also eaten at a particular korean restaurant near my house 3 times in the past week and a half. the wait staff seems as excited as i am about that figure. got some free soju during one visit and have consumed a lot on subsequent trips. i think my 3 day headache reflects this.
in an effort to counteract the mini-binge, i decided to venture out and do something touristy on my pseudo-weekend. the outcome of this has always been 1 of 2 things: 1) foreigner in a tourist attraction becomes the tourist attraction and ultimately regrets the fact that he or she decided to venture out in the first place or 2) foreigner in a tourist attraction is so engrossed in the beauty of said tourist attraction that he/she is able to tune out the claustrophobia that accompanies being in an "open" space in china (i know, sounds like an oxymoron, but it ain't) with people pointing and staring at you.
my destination: lingyin temple. my mode of transportation: bike. my technology that would have been nice to have but that i forgot to bring: camera.
got a bike tune up (an anecdote in itself…later), headed out. when i got there, it was definitely a case of "hey, look at the foreigner." this usually only makes me feel uncomfortable if i'm already uncomfortable or unfamiliar with my surroundings. and then it feels like everyone's laughing at me. It’s fair to say i have some mild social anxiety issues. since i had only managed to purchase an ice cream cone and not a ticket, i was still feeling vulnerable and irritable. on my way to buy a ticket, i felt a hand on my arm (big fucking no no in my book). a woman was gesturing to me that she wanted to take my picture. i guess because i was the only foreigner on my own (not the only foreigner, saw several large tour groups of old[ish] europeans) she felt like it was fair game to accost me. so i saw what she wanted, shook my head and flipped her off. which might mean something to a chinese person, or it might not. but she didn't get her picture. and i felt vindicated.
note to people who feel like harassing foreigners (tourists or otherwise): it's all about the approach. i, for one, appreciate subtlety. If one doesn’t adopt a look-at-the-foreign-monkey manner or an i-wonder-what-happens-if-i-poke-it-or-touch-it manner, then maybe i'll oblige a photo. but there seems to be so much aggression and mockery that accompany what could otherwise be an easily granted request. or if people are taking pictures of you out of some sense of appreciation--tattoos, for example--i'm okay with that. whatever, i eventually was able to procure a ticket, relatively unscathed. woot woot.
a few years ago i went to tibet and saw a crapload of temples. Perhaps using “crapload” “tibet” and “temples” in the same sentence could be construed as sacrilige. But I guess I’ve never been very religious. Anyhoo, all of said crapload of temples were beautiful and awesome and, yes, mystical. i've been sort of underwhelmed by temples ever since then. korea had some. eh. china has lots. eh. but lingyin temple is the first temple since tibet that has actually managed to inspire any sense of calm or reverie or calm reverie. it was unexpected, and much needed. massive. teeming with people. but i was able to tune everything out. greeted by the big incense pits--fire and grime and red wrappers--these microcosms of activity, piety refined by flames.
i traded in my judgement of people for wonder instead. after tibet i wanted everyone at a temple to look like a scruffy, devout pilgrim, prostrating him/herself, bundled up in colorful rags, ruddy-faced and windburned. this time i was able to marvel at the mix of people, tourists and religious types together. women (okay, just the 1...) in stiletto heels and latex dresses kneeling next to old men sporting baseball caps. and toddlers being gently prodded to model the actions of those around them, oblivious to content or context.
went to a few other smaller temples around the area. didn't manage to make it to the cable car/peak, but it definitely warrants another trip.
'twas a good day.
the day before my excursion i ate at a new thai restaurant in town. capped it off with maya. I’m so predictable. when i got home later that night--maybe midnight—I was greeted by a vehicle blocking the only path in the parking lot. Curiosity trumped annoyance, which I thoroughly appreciated in retrospect. i could just make out people shuffling along the side of the van, pushing something. Then the back of the ambulance opened, establishing a small perimeter of light. Enough for me to see the paramedics and a gurney. They shoved the loaded gurney in, where a calm, masked woman was waiting to pin the pulse clip thing onto a motionless older man’s finger. He was still, but i thought that if he was wearing his glasses, there couldn’t really be anything too wrong with him. I was struck by the fact that he was surrounded by medical personnel, but there was no sense of urgency guiding their movements and no family members buzzing nervously/chaotically around him. it was odd and calm.
the next day, again, after maya, I biked home. there wasn’t a vehicle in the parking lot blocking my way, but there was a fire and a crowd of people. I hopped down off my bike to push it through the crowd. And as I wove my way through these people whose solemnity was becoming apparent, I got a clear view of the fire’s source: it was an effigy of a man who had died. a chair was rather stably erected on top of a pyre of broken and/or disassembled furniture. The chair had a man’s casual button-down shirt stretched over it and a hat placed on top. I could only assume that it was in remembrance of the very man I’d seen the night before. Unfortunately, I didn’t make this assumption until I’d already disturbed the peace somewhat. But to say anything (particularly when I wasn’t sure how) would have just drawn more attention to me. So I tried to shuffle through as inconspicuously as possible. And I felt sad. but I also had some highly insensitive questions running through my head, the biggest being: “was he already dead when I saw him yesterday?” I’m not sure how either answer to that question would have made me feel. Maybe something. Maybe nothing.
I do wonder how death is different here. Not in any sort of afterlife context (not a subject I want to creep into my blog. Yikes.), but just in the context of culture and mourning. Is the sadness the same as it is in western culture? what does a cline of sadness/mourning look like? yes, a horrible idea, but valid if you’re one who makes a distinction between the death of a pet and the death of a family member. if a young person dies, is it more tragic because chinese families usually only get one child? All the emotion funneled into one source that is then taken away. Or in a country with so many people in it, does sheer volume of humanity minimize the emotional trauma of one person’s death? i know these are stupid questions, but they exist[ed] anyway.
Moving away from death, and on to my most recent mini-vacation, yay! I went to chongqing for the may holiday. My school actually closed down for a month, so all the east school teachers had to move to the north school (still here now). Which means a lot of cancelled classes and a lot more arguably free time (hence this blog, typed on a very official and imposing desk in the north school teacher’s office. Somehow sitting behind a computer screen—however “compact”—translates to diligence.). part of that meant a few extra days off that some teachers were owed anyway around may day. So I had 5 days to spend in chongqing. Of course I like hangzhou (or at least most aspects of it), but it’s still nice to get to eat good food and to see people who I don’t feel I need to explain myself to or feel guilty about hanging out with. These things are viable in hangzhou, just not as viable. And that was chongqing last time too—respite from hangzhou. I know it’s not challenging to be with people who agree with you all the time, but it’s also nice to be with people who don’t turn everything into a point of contention. that seems to characterize a lot of my current relationships, work or otherwise. And it’s exhausting.
I could spend time writing about a very cute 5-year old at a bike shop. But one could probably gather from those minute details that I had a fun time with her and her few english words while I waited to get my bike fixed. Yup, that’s pretty much it, but it made my day memorable, the first in monday’s chain of events.
And now back to cleaning up all the music files on my external hard drive. Tedious, but space-freeing. I have entire discographies of people I’ve never heard of…
