a pagoda and an escalator

Shanghai and Hangzhou

I need to pass out into a blissful sleep in our hostel here in Hangzhou, after a long day of going to train stations (two, since I led us to the wrong one first, accidentally) and hiking around. Our trip has been good, though frigidly cold so far. Here are a few photos and some movie clips. I'll write more here further down the road.

a very small tour of the Forbidden City

A few months ago, when Erin and I started planning what to do over the New Year holiday, we decided to go to the Forbidden City in Beijing. I've always wanted to go, and even though Erin has visited it before, there is still a lot that she hasn't seen. I think this is a place most people feel they should see if they are close to Beijing. The scale reminds me of the Louvre; it's huge and impossible to see adequately in one trip. So, for this, my first trip to the Forbidden City, I decided I would only take pictures of small details. I actually think this more effectively conveys the intense amount of effort that went into constructing the place, and the surreal sense of an entire city within a city, where secret things happened for a very long time.

I don't know if this necessitates its own lonely spot on a sidebar

You may have noticed that I filmed everyone but myself making New Year's resolutions. One of my resolutions is to make time to submit poems to places this year. I have been absolutely miserable at sending things out during the past twelve months. I sent something to this website after one of my KU professor's linked it on his blog, and my pastiche/cut-up/flarf is on the site. I'm going to continue to submit things as much as I can while I'm in China. If more than just this one thing gets put somewhere on the web, then I'll make a sidebar. I think if anyone who reads this blog is interested in submitting things to 3by3by3, they should.

the surreal soundtrack of China (for Shannon)

Shannon asked me what I've been listening to, in the new year, here in China. So, in the spirit of authenticity, here are the first 25 songs that are playing randomly from my Itunes library this morning as I choke down Chinese cold medicine. My favorite random ordering from this list? Moonlight Sonata followed by Sly & The Family Stone. Enjoy.

Honey Child What Can I Do? Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
La Strada del Bosco Luciano Virgili
You Know I’m No Good Amy Winehouse
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before The Smiths
Rick Kick Shaw Cecil Taylor
Tell Me in the Morning Cold War Kids
Ran Kan Kan Buena Vista Social Club
I Wish I Was the Moon Neko Case
Mo ve’la bella mia de la muntagna Matteo Salvatore
Black Satin The Raveonettes
Tell It To Me Old Crow Medicine Show
Gigantic The Pixies
Modern Romance Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Cheap and Cheerful The Kills
Uncle John’s Band Indigo Girls
Rebel, Rebel David Bowie
I Guess That’s Why They Call it The Blues Elton John
Textbook Love Fleet Foxes
Hospital Beds Cold War Kids
Moonlight Sonata Beethoven
If You Want Me to Stay Sly and The Family Stone
Serenade for Piano & Violin Schubert
Dusty Wreath Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Stay Cool The Roots
Pretty (Ugly Before) Elliott Smith

further resolutions

Today was my last day of teaching for this term. Aside from the three hours of mind-numbingly boring number-crunching figuring out grades required, I had a lot of fun filming my students and hanging out with them when they finished their exams. Here are some pictures of my students and a few of their resolutions. My favorite response might be "Abraham's", where he says that his resolution is for me, if I want, to invite him to come to America. I'm going to make an entirely new set of resolutions for myself that involve telling people that my resolution is for them to, if they want, do something that I would like. In fact, my first new year's resolution is that you, if you want, could actually leave a comment on this blog post, thereby reducing my nihilism and intermittent ennui. Yup. That's my first resolution of the new year.

"I am a star!" or "You are a star!"

Here are some things that happened on the first day of the first month of the two-thousand-and-ninth year:

1) I walked by the frozen canal with Erin and remarked on two men ice-fishing. I thought that the darker part below the bridge didn't look as frozen as the rest of the canal, most likely because the water is deeper there.

2) I ate lunch with Zhou You's parents, Sam, Zhou You's grandmother, and Erin. The chicken dish with cilantro was my favorite.

3) Erin and I went to the book building here in Tianjin to buy prizes for my students. In my World History class and American History class I've been passing out these little pieces of paper to my students all semester long, each time we have an open-ended conversation and they participate. The pieces of paper each say "You are a star" and have a red star on them. I think it's funny that they have red stars on them. The stars have almost mythical status in Meijiang School now. There was a lot of discussion about the stars each week this semester. Who has their stars? Where do people keep their stars? What if their stars get stolen? How often should they count their stars? Why did I switch from writing "I am a star" to "You are a star" at one point in the semester? I have no answer for this last question, at least, not an answer that doesn't make me seem a little crazy, or that made sense to my students.

At the beginning of the semester, I imagined the students looking down at the stars, and then reading "I am a star" and the phrase acting as a sort of positive reinforcement, as if the pieces of paper might convince them that they were stars. Then I realized that this could also be interpreted as me giving them a red star that says "I am a star", as some kind of bizarre, occidental coupe to garner their esteem, or convince people of my innate star-quality. There is a lot of hilarious cultural miscommunication in my daily life. The idea of a western teacher passing out pieces of paper that say "I am a star!" on them to a group of Eastern students is not that far off from some other bizarre ideas of westerners I've encountered from my students and in my daily life. For example, in E-Mart today, a girl yelled "Hello!" and then "McDonalds!" from the make-up counter when Erin and I walked by. Try to figure that one out. I'm not sure if were were supposed to rub our tummies and give her a thumbs up, or do some kind of dance. What would the McDonald's dance look like?

In the end, I'm not sure which phrase would code most appropriately, but I opted for the "You are a star!" instead of the "I am a star!" I could so strongly picture my students, in my mind, looking down and then seeing "I am a star!" written on the little pieces of paper, but I decided that the act of giving them the star would make "you are" and not "I am" more appropriate.

Enough of that, though!

4) When we were all eating lunch together I thought it would be fun to ask people what their resolutions were for the new year. So, here are Sam's, Erin's and Zhou You's resolutions. I might try to get some of my students to tell me their resolutions tomorrow, on my last day of teaching this semester. I'm going to miss my students over the long break. My students are the people I communicate with the most here in Tianjin, except for Erin. I think that we're "tight." They are my friends.