iChina

I know I’m not the first person who has ever thrown an ‘i’ in front of something in order to make it feel more techy. I may be a bandwagoning stooge, but at least I’m a self-aware bandwagoning stooge.

I realized today my amazing capacity to remove myself from my environment. My experience of China is so far removed from anything Chinese that I’m not sure whether I should laugh or cry. The China that I experience is as dramatic as a love story, as quixotic as an indie film, but only as real as a music video. Every street would run with the rhythm of the Arcade Fire (1), every stone wall be cut with the precision of Ghostland Observatory, every building ascend to the crescendo of Sigur Ros. This is the Beibei of my fashioning, a town that that I, and only I, inhabit. My music gives new meaning to the farmers whose contented routines are transformed to angst-filled toil by Metallica, to the daily commuters whose sleepy bus rides are subsumed by the frenzy of my “Irish Punk Drinking Songs Mix (2).” It is in this way that my iPod scores the very people of Beibei, robbing them of their own meaning and replacing it with my own.

In all honesty, some of the sounds of Beibei could do with replacing. I don’t miss the horn honks and traffic sounds that are muted by my white earbuds. I fear, though, that in my effort to sequester myself away from the cacophony of unmuffler-ed urban living, I might have also thrown out the more peaceful tones of the rural living that I claim to value. I can’t remember how long it has been since I have heard the sound of a hoe turning the soil, even though I see the sight almost daily. Now that I think of it, I kindof miss the hustle of hundreds of people moving and bartering in the same closed space, admittedly not your traditionally pleasant sound, but very typical of the China that I thought I enjoyed but now seem to be ardently avoiding.

The beauty of China comes from its unpredictability, the ever-present potential for something random to happen that transcends any rational expectation. Unfortunately I find myself sacrificing that chaotic potential for a China that is filtered through imitation Ray-bans and scored by an iPod. The ever-present battle between comfort and possibility has taken on a new form. The more self-reliant my gadgetry makes me, the less connected I become with my environment; as the local colors become muted, locations will begin to look the same, sound the same, feel the same, until they might as well be a green-screened photobooth backdrop for all the effect they have on me.

I want to change. I fear I cannot. I can leave my iPod behind, but am I willing to forgo my Skype conversations? No. Am I willing to drop the lines of connection that I am constantly cultivating with those back in the States? No. Am I even strong enough to contemplate building a life that is locally sustainable? I don’t do it with my food, there isn’t a chance that I’ll do it with my friends.

As I’ve traveled around, I’ve built up a network of support that, by necessity, transcends location, that exists and functions irrespective of wherever it is that I happen to be. As such, I move easily, but the list is pretty set, and those that can’t keep up get left behind. I don’t like any of this. Thinking about it makes me feel weak, powerless, and like a bit of a jackass. And yet I am surviving. I’m just not sure at what cost, and to whom.

(1) Stuff White People Like - Indie Music
(2) Great Big Sea, Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys

Stupid Morals...

I walked into my apartment, and my motorcycle helmet was out on the couch, mocking me. I endured its eyeless gaze as I as I bagged it up and hid it and it’s accusatory visor away. But I couldn’t hate it. I could only agree.

It seems that Beibei is filled with motorcycles. More poignantly, filled with people whose constant quest for a cheap and crappy second-hand motorcycle haven’t been frustrated at every turn. Beibei seems filled with the very objects of my obsession, but they have remained resolutely just beyond my grasp. It’s like craving a twinkie at fat camp. You know they’re there, but you just can’t find the stash.

About a week ago, I thought that Lady Luck might have looked upon me with her green-eyed gaze. I passed a motorcycle repair shop while walking around the city and, as has become my custom, I went and inquired if they knew of any second-handers. In fact, they themselves had three (1). One of them was perfect. It was beautiful. It was a 125cc Honda sportbike that was classically styled with a round headlight. Exactly what I wanted. It was also only 3 years old. They quoted the price to at 3,000 RMB, which I figured could be bargained down into the 2,000 – 2,500 range (between 300 and 400 USD). I got in contact with a student who knew about motorcycles, who came to check it out and help me bargain. Skipping a lot of painful deals, the owner wouldn’t come below 3,800 RMB, and the bike was actually 7 years old. I was heartbroken, but wasn’t going to even attempt to do business with a liar and a cheat.

Tragedy two: The very next day, my student found a motorcycle on the school’s Craigslist, and said he would scout it out ahead of time to avoid the waiguoren markup. He found something, and we arranged a meet. It would be 2,200 RMB, but only a year old, and beautiful. It was. As soon as I saw it, I lusted after it, after the picture of myself proudly zipping through the Beibei traffic, but mostly after the idea of not having to spend 30 minutes just to get a meal. I was tired of being thwarted, and here it was, the shiny red James Dean-esque reward for my patience.

There was a catch. It didn’t have a license plate. I wasn’t worried because most of the motorcycles on campus don’t have them (private property, I guess), and that’s where I’d be doing 90% of my driving. The other 10%, well, I know the police. I wasn’t worried about it. But. It also meant that it might be (2) stolen.

I tried so many mental gymnastics to rationalize that motorcycle. The thing is, I’ve always said that I would never buy something ‘hot,’ but what I meant was that I would just avoid purchasing things in back alleys or clandestinely handing someone money in a bathroom stall. This was… open, and accepted. I knew that I could buy it without repercussion, because, let’s be honest, who’s going to stop a waiguoren? I could probably stack dead bodies on the back of my stolen motorcycle and drive through downtown Beibei, and people would just chalk it up to another waiguoren oddity (3).

‘How is this different from the pirated DVDs you buy,’ I asked myself. DVDs are something I’ve just become uncomfortably comfortable with, especially after I found them sold at WalMart (4), putting another arrow into a quiver already bursting with rationalization. But the motorcycle is different, because there might be someone out there who was looking for their motorcycle, and I didn’t want to be the person to take it from them.

So I turned it down. I’m ashamed to say how hard it was, but I said no and walked past the motorcycle, walked past the realization of one of my dreams, walked past the possibility of not having to walk all the way home. Also, depending on who you talk to, possibly walking past eternal damnation, as well. Either way, I walked home.

I wish I could say that I was buoyed home on wings of angels, or that I began to notice the small things along my walk that had long since become mundane. But the only thing that buoyed me home were my legs, and all I noticed when I got there was how sore they were.

(1) This was groundbreaking. A quirk that I have discovered is that most people in China have a pretty narrow focus. While on a previous quest for bamboo (maybe another story all together), I walked all over our fair city to no avail. Please remember, this is China. Bamboo is EVERYWHERE, and EVERYONE has it. But apparently no one knows where to buy it. Not even the storeowner around the corner from the shop whose sole product was … bamboo. Back to the topic, every other motorcycle mechanic, who spends his entire life up to his elbows in dilapidated motorcycles, doesn’t know where you can buy one. How they ever invented gunpowder, I don’t know…
(2) Definitely was
(3) I’ve been watching way too much ‘Dexter.’ Although, this is old hat. I already figured that out when my first desire towards the lying cheat mechanic was to burn down his workshop. No more ‘Dexter’ for a while.
(4) Admittedly, not a paragon of business ethics, but something that I would assume is strictly regulated.

Betrayed by the Ground Upon Which They Stood

To be honest, I hadn’t thought about the May 12th earthquake for quite some time. We hear the news, we lament the tragedy, we might even pray, but when the buildings stop falling, the cameras stop rolling, and the tragedy of millions is eclipsed by the hopes of two presidential candidates. Yet, as we drove further out of the city, the earthquake slowly and incrementally took form in my mind.

All around Chengdu was the shadow of a memory; a cracked wall, a half-built house whose builders suddenly had more important things to build, small things that all hinted at … something … and yet the city ground on. Even now I sit at a restaurant with a painting of a cowboy on the wall, listening to salsa music as I wait for my biscuits and gravy. What earthquake?

We left the highways for cracked asphalt roads, and the memory no longer seemed so distant. We passed temporary houses for those whose lives had been just as rent and broken as the landscape upon which they lived, and the memory now became a present reality. The earth stopped shaking long ago. When would they?

Finally, when we arrived at our destination, the earthquake gained a face. It gained a hundred faces.

The village leader was quick to smile, but it barely touched his eyes. There was genuine joy there, but it was not like the thin joy that I experience whenever I am able to forget my problems. It was a hard-won joy that must look out every day at the senseless destruction, and still say that there are things to be thankful for. The generosity of others. The buildings now being slowly and cautiously erected. Life. Sometimes it takes death to remind us that as long as there is life, there is always something to be thankful for.

~~~

I met three brothers: the eldest, confined to a wheelchair, and two twins born a few years later. When the world shook and the house fell, the family thought the eldest crushed by the rubble, but found him 16 hours later. 16 hours, without food and water, in a body that could not save itself, and the world thought him dead. Their father, the village secretary (government representative), had a subtly different look to his eyes. They too, were eyes that had seen much grief, but they were the eyes of a survivor. He didn’t smile as much, and the tough joy of the village leader was replaced by grim determination. Life had hit him hard more than once, but here he stood, and there was work to be done. There were houses to be built, mouths to feed; there was a village that needed his resilience.

~~~

We went up to the village for the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the children were out of school. Running up and down the street, dodging trucks laden with sand, the children darted in, around, and through the rubble that was their home – is their home. They were … children, but the earthquake had left its mark on them as indelibly as it had their elders. These were children who had seen the world – once thought stable and immutable – fall down around their ears, and then woken up the next morning to live in it. In many ways, they already know life in a way that I cannot. They know it to be beautiful, vibrant, precious, but fragile. So very fragile.

Life goes on. When everything – everything – is taken away, you are forced to readjust your framework for viewing life. To say that they have lost their houses and need new ones is to skip many important steps. They need water. They need food.

One lady, bent almost double with age, stepped outside of her tent to talk to us. Five months after the earthquake, she is still eating instant noodles. The extent of the devastation is such that one must provide not only for what we would consider the most basic of needs – shelter – but must first look to the foundational elements of those needs.

I do not mean to diminish the work that has been done. Much has been accomplished. There is a makeshift water pipe bringing water down from a mountain stream. The majority of people live in government-provided tents, but peppered among these are Black Diamond and REI hiking tents that have been donated. In between the blue government tents is now a long tarp that people can use as a communal gathering ground, as well as a place to prepare food in the rain. Houses are being erected. A month and a half ago there was only rubble, but now three houses are completed and occupied. Much has been accomplished, but there is still so far to go.

As we were leaving, we passed another old lady carrying vegetables across her back. She was a classic Chinese woman – the mountain life had hardened her, and her face was deeply wrinkled by the many days out in the sun. She gave a wordless smile and grabbed my father’s arm and motioned towards me. I was holding a camera, so I thought she wanted a picture. Then she left my father and came towards me and grabbed my arm as she had my father’s. I thought she had wanted something, but the only thing she wanted was to shake our hands, to express her gratitude for what little help we brought. Then she moved on to distribute her vegetables to those in the tent city behind us. There was work to be done.

I find myself looking for a way to summarize this experience, and am at a loss for words. How can one summarize something that is yet ongoing? We left, and my father and I had dinner at Zoe’s, an American Café in Chengdu. I ordered myself a chili cheese burger, but ate it somewhat guiltily, sobered by the knowledge that that the old lady up in the mountains was probably boiling water for her instant noodles.