A Return to Poetry

After my holiday hiatus from writing, I am finally ready to come back to the blog and back to poetry. It was the feeling of being too overwhelmed with Christmas bustle and so many events within the past week.

The first three days were designated Christmas shopping days. We stopped at silk and clothing markets and I eventually made the rounds in my new neighborhood in Beijing.

A new discovery: the Bookworm café. It will undoubtedly be my new hangout for the next six months. It is a combination café/bookstore/library. Membership is cheap, the atmosphere is cozy, and the coffee is strong. The first book I checked out was Marquez’s Memories of My Melancholy Whores.

Christmas Eve consisted of baking cookies and pie. Afterward, we all went to the Kro’s Nest for pizza and beer. I had a pint too many and the next morning, halfway through opening presents, I slipped into the bathroom for an hour-long spell of sickness. After a half-hour lie down, my episode was over. The rest of the day I was in the kitchen with my aunt, preparing a holiday feast for ten people.

My favorite Christmas presents included two woolen pleated skirts and a grey woolen poncho. Perfect for the cold Beijing weather. The winds have picked up, coming down from the Gobi Desert, and I feel like I’m back in Wyoming.

Boxing Day was as lazy as I could get. I never changed out of my pajamas and never bothered to shower. I sat on the couch with Little Women and leftover apple pie. Today was more of the same.

Tomorrow, however, it is back to work, so to speak. The job hunt continues. Down the road, within walking distance, is a middle/high school that might be looking for new teachers. A friend of mine teaches science at the school and said he would set up a meeting for me. Prospects are promising.

If that works out, I’ll devote the rest of the day to poetry. I’m looking forward to working the words again. I still have a few more errands to run over the next few weeks – getting gym membership and buying a two-day train ticket out of the country to renew my visa – but in the meantime it all feels like a vacation.

The Train and Beijing

Soft sleepers really are the best way to travel.

After I hauled my two over-sized suitcases up the platform, then dragged them on to the train, I found my berth on the second car. There were four beds: two bottoms, two tops. I had the lower left and an older, middle-aged woman had the bottom right. The two tops were to get on at the next stop. Both men. Obvious jokes came to mind.

I read for the first hour while the woman across from me watched me with a strange interest. At one point, she actually reached over, grabbed one side of my book, and twisted it towards her to see what it was. I knew she couldn’t read English, but she could immediately recognize by the form of the writing that it was a book of poems.

“Poetry,” I said. She nodded as if she understood, then went back to staring while I continued to read on. It didn’t occur to me until after I finished the book and set it down in front of me that her interest might have had something to do with the cover of the collection, which prominently features an ink-brush drawing of a nude woman embracing a larger-than-life-sized penis. I was reading “Harlot,” by Jill Alexander Essbaum.

After the hour with the penis-book (which is what I’m sure the woman was secretly calling it to herself), the two men arrived and our berth was full. It didn’t take long for my three train companions to fall asleep, so I switched off the light and sat in darkness, watching China float by in the night.

What I saw passing by were rail-side homes, shops closed and locked up for the night, concrete highway bridges, so many factories and their adjoining barracks, street lamps in their amber sentry, night-rider taxis, and enormous high-rises that looked like monsters after midnight.

There is something incredibly soothing about trains. The hum, the roll of the tracks, the slight rocking, and the steady pace of the railway as it pacifies your voyeuristic desires, all easily lull you to a trance. I’ve never been so comfortable when traveling as I was last night. And the most surprising thing of all may just be that the toilets were western and not squatters.

When my train finally arrived in Beijing, the sun was shining in the early morning traffic. I have not seen sunshine in over two months; Hangzhou has been consistent in its rainy season. Now that I am in the north, I can enjoy colder and drier temperatures along with more of the natural vitamin D. The feeling was incredible and made the twenty-minute taxi ride all the more likable. I sat in the cab, amazed at the sheer size and volume of this city. Beijing goes on and on.

Arriving at my new accommodations (my aunt and uncle’s apartment), I plopped my bags in the street and stared up at a Pepto-Bismol Pink building: home for the next six months. I have my own room at the end of the hall, adjacent to the master bedroom. Two twin beds and a mattress softer than any mattress I’ve felt in the south of China. Down the hall, on the other side of the living room – now decorated in Chinese red ornaments and white snowflakes on a six-and-a-half foot tree for Christmas – and next to the biggest kitchen I’ve seen in China, is my cousin’s room that he shares with his girlfriend. This apartment is a great size and feels like home already.

The neighborhood is its own foreign city central. Just around the corner is a delightful little market called April Gourmet, where I promptly snatched up the best food I have seen since my two-week visa stint to Wyoming in September. Across the street from this was a little Italian restaurant where we all had lunch. I’ve basked in the goodness of a palate cleansing and it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet. Already, I love this city.

My aunt M and my cousin’s girlfriend, J, took me shopping in the silk markets this afternoon. Our goal was a specific Christmas-shopping list. I had a few things in mind. The main events: a sweater for my cousin Z, and his brother, JET, who will arrive from Canada on Christmas Eve. I bargained with every stall in the first, second, and third floors of the market. Today was not a successful bartering day. I did manage, however, to buy a nice Hilfiger knock-off for my uncle E. One present down. Four to go. Tomorrow I’m going to work on the others.

As I suspected, life in Beijing is far better than it has been in Hangzhou. Compared to this capital city of twelve million people, Hangzhou may as well have been the countryside. It’s a whole new ball game.

At The Grandma's

Sunday evening, the girls took me to a famous Zhejiang province chain restaurant to celebrate the end of the semester. In a few more days, I will be moving to Beijing, Reena will go back to Korea, and Tina and Lucy will finish out the rest of the school year here in Hangzhou.

The name of the restaurant is called “The Grandma’s.” Not “Grandma’s” but “The Grandma’s.” The Chinese characters refer to going to mother’s mother’s house and eating food more delicious that what you can receive in your parent’s house. The food was delicious and there were a surprising number of vegetarian dishes on the menu. I stuffed myself with cauliflower, eggplant, spring rolls, and fried tofu (not of the stinky variety, thank goodness) with nuts, honey, and cucumber.

The girls had Szechuan beef and raw salmon, while Lucy and I shared a large bottle of Xi Hu (West Lake) beer and toasted past, present, and future.

Doing My Part for the Chinese Economy

It was another gloomy, rainy day. My remedy? Shopping. I needed to spend some money. Lucy told me about a street not too far from where we live called “Garbage Street.” I walked. I was on a mission to find dark brown boots. There were dozens of shoe shops. A girl’s paradise.

I couldn’t believe my luck. The first pair of fake Uggs I found was only 145 yuan (about $20). They are a deep chocolate brown and come halfway to my knees. They’ll go with everything and they’re extremely comfortable. Bonus. I know guys aren’t particularly fond of these boots, but we girls are all over them. The beauty and convenience of these babies knows no limits. I’ve had several pair over the past couple of years, but made the mistake of buying the tan-colored ones, which get dirty very quickly. Now, with the rich chestnut, I’ll be able to hide their age when I’ve had them for a while. The scruff won’t show as much.

I also found a slightly overpriced pair of tall fake leather-ish brown boots that are perfect with my jeans and, because the fake Uggs were so cheap, I decided to splurge on these second pair of boots. You cannot understand the sheer joy of finding these. I didn’t care that I was paying too much because I have always had problems with finding stylish boots to fit my calves. I have big calf muscles and it isn’t easy to get snug high boots to come around them.

The beauty of these boots is that they have snaps along the side, which means I can pull them up over the thicker part of my calf and snap them snug when they are all the way on. Voila! They also have versatility. I can leave them unsnapped and roll the tops down to show the not-too-leopardy print on the inside. For the most part, though, I think I’ll keep ‘em snapped and snappy.

After my good fortune on Garbage Street, I decided to head into Hangzhou to Wu Shong Guang Shong (the Night Market) and buy parting/Christmas gifts for Lucy, Reena, and Tina. I found each of them a different color beautiful scarf and hunted down handcrafted/hand-painted wooden bracelets that were a similar shade to each scarf. I coordinated.

I also found a cute black hat for myself at a street vendor. Across the alley from the vendor was an expensive scarf shop that I probably shouldn’t have entered. But I did anyway. The material was, by far, superior to anything else at the market and I couldn’t resist an oversized woolen scarf that I could use as a wrap on the cold winter days. It was too much, but I bought it, nonetheless. (But because of the price, I got free gloves to go with it. At least that’s some consolation for spending too much money.) Its base is black, with a houndstooth plaid in brown, tan, and charcoal gray, with a touch of deep blue between the plaid-ish pattern. It will look amazing over the grey coat I bought at Carrefour.

After dawdling through the Night Market, I headed to the Carrefour center on Yan’an Lu and found a charcoal grey winter coat for only 149 yuan. Who can say no to that? In addition to the coat, I bought some deep wine-colored nail polish.

The best buy of my day, however – the one that makes me feel triumphant over all China – is that I finally found a pair of black Chinese jeans to fit my big western ass. Even in the States, I have what you’d call a ghetto booty. But here in China, it might as well just be called colossal. Victory is mine!

The Ground Beneath Our Feet

Today I ran into a woman I frequently see at Starbucks. She’s a cute and petite Malaysian woman who is living in China with her husband. We sometimes chat about what’s new in our lives because we both happen to speak English.

We both love hiking and being outdoors and this afternoon our conversation shifted from trail-blazing talk to the difference between city-dwellers and country folk. We were encompassing all such people of every nation.

I told her about living in Wyoming and she gave me a general idea of what it was like growing up in the Malaysian countryside. We’ve both spent a great deal of time in big cities, and in countries foreign to our own. However, we agreed that knowledge of both urban and rural living is naturally a good thing to experience.

She said something to me that stuck out as an interesting observation, not to mention an interesting turn of phrase. She said, “People who live in cities do not know what the ground feels like.”

I haven’t yet figured out how I am going to use it in a poem yet, but I know it will find its way into one, somehow. She referred to the joys of being outdoors, of having harmonious connections with nature and the slower temperament of the environment beyond a concrete metropolis.

Ain’t no sidewalks in the Snowies. No pavement in Medicine Bow. No asphalt at Vedauwoo. I have felt the ground under my feet and I miss it.

Temporarily Defective 临时地 不适

My first experience with Chinese cold medicine. A drink that Lucy bought for me in the Chinese medicine store because she feels guilty that I caught her cold.

The name is 感冒灵颗粒 or gan mao ling ke li. Roughly translated: “Cold Excellent Powder.”

I wouldn’t call it excellent, at least not for taste. Naturally, it is like the underneath of a rotting tree: bitter, earthy, and a soil brown. The next time you’re in the forest and it starts to rain, bend down and lick the base of a dying tree. You might get an idea of what I mean.

The powder itself was like cracked ginger crystals, darker than raw brown sugar and less transparent. The little grains were pellets in my cup before I poured the boiling water.

I’ve been warned of a drowsing effect. That suits me just fine. I’d rather sleep through a cold anyway. For two days now I’ve tried to ignore the sore and swollen glands, the stuffy nose, the sneezing, the coughing, the headaches, the foggy dizziness; but now I think I’ll admit that I’m sick. 不适. Bring on the bark-rot liquid.

Where are the Basics?

Yes, professor. What do they teach them at these schools? Tomorrow Tina must hand in her final research paper for her senior project. Her topic: why Christians should be more tolerant of New Age music.

She’s had this project since the beginning of the semester and, up until today, has not let me help her with her paper. Why? I have no idea. I taught 5 consecutive semesters of freshman college composition and yet she didn’t want my input until this evening. Unfortunately, it is now too late.

I read her paper this afternoon and noticed some egregious citation problems, as well as lack of credible sources in general. I eventually looked up from the paper to ask her, “Have they taught you how to research at your school?” I got the deer-in-headlights stare. Of course they haven’t taught her how to research. How silly of me to think that, before assigning them a research paper, they would instruct them on the fundamentals of research methods.

I began at the beginning – a very good place to start, says Julie Andrews. Keywords. I am astonished that this was a new concept to Tina. A simple Google search of key phrases and words produced over a million sites related to her topic.

Next came the issue of source credibility and substance. Oh my, how the young ones love Wikipedia and the dictionary. Her reluctance of revising her essay was based on the fear that new information would change her claims. That, I told her, was all part of the research process. If you find evidence to suggest your claims to be wrong, maybe you need to rewrite your claims. This was met with whines and groans.

This brought us back to the matter of showing me her essay so late in the game. With only tonight to make these major discoveries, there is no way she will get her paper to the level of where it needs to be. I’ve written comments in the margins, given her helpful research tools, steered her in the right direction, pointed out organization flaws, confusing and contradictory statements, even corrected all of her grammar. Now the crunch begins.

When, oh when, will they learn? But an even better question: Why aren’t the schools teaching them what they need to know in order to do the lessons that the school assigns in the first place? Where is the logic of the curriculum?

Mmm's the Word

I have recently discovered a liking for sliced pumpkin. It has that nice gord-y taste and with a bit of salt it is nearly like combining the taste of squash with the texture of mango. And, I admit, there are some Korean foods that I have dared to try and ended up liking – Korean pancakes, for starters (safe enough). Rice cakes. These are not the rice cakes you and I are familiar with – the Quaker Oats, I’m-on-a-diet-and-I-need-a-snack-that-tastes-like-cardboard rice cakes. No. Korean rice cakes are long tubes of compressed rice. They look like mozzarella cheese sticks. In the frying pan, with a little bit of honey, they’re not bad. Korean curry is something else I don’t mind having every few weeks. It is rather fruity and not very heavy. However, I still prefer an Indian curry to any other.

I try to be open about food, but I have a certain distaste for things that make me squirm. Packaged dried squid. Vacuum-sealed dried fish that you can rip apart with your teeth like jerky. The brains of any animal. Chicken feet. Stinky tofu. Fruit that looks like a Nerf ball. There are some things regarding food that I will never understand.

And somebody please tell me what is so great about Sushi. It has become this craze, this trend, this popular dish that everyone raves about. They hunt through cities to find the best sushi restaurant. They go out of their way to spend outrageous money on such a simple meal. They consider it a treat. Seriously, people. It is raw fish and rice with seaweed.

Unless it is traditional fish ‘n chips a-la-U.K., I’d rather not eat fish at all, much less raw fish. That said, I’m going to go ahead and be a hypocrite and say I love raw oysters on the half-shell. Really cold, just a squeeze of lemon. But honestly. Sushi? Someone explain that to me.

I’m sure that now that I’ve made this speech about sushi, in a year or so I’ll develop a taste for it and become on of those sushi-loving snobs. But for now, it’s not for me. So, I am a bit of a picky eater. Not too picky, I don’t think. Not enough to annoy people completely. But picky enough to be called “a bit of a picky eater.” Quintessentially, I’ve learned to accept that my taste buds are not inclined to many Asian foods, but favor rather more Mediterranean or Middle Eastern cuisine. And, of course, I am desperately fond of Mexican food, too. Really, anything starting with an “M.”

The Midnight Disease

Michael Chabon’s well-named alias for insomnia. And I’ve got it. For about a month now I haven’t been able to fall asleep before dawn. I’ve watched the sun rise nearly every morning now - or at least I have watched the haze over Hangzhou get lighter by the hours.

Part of the problem, I’m sure, is that I’ve resumed my old addiction of lattes and cappuccinos. One thing I would never recommend is taking up the habit again after four years of java abstinence. Sometimes I slip and forget to order decaf. It’s like coming back to heroin.

The coffee isn’t all to blame, though. I have no discipline when it comes to switching off my brain. I construct emails, I draft poems, and I make lists, all in the dark while my head twitches on the pillow. I do this for a routine hour or two every night before I realize sleep just isn’t going to happen. I give up, turn on the light again and read (or come back to writing).

It is fear that I will miss out on some profound line of poetry coming to me, that I will be laying in my bed with my eyes closed and a poem will slip into my head and, if I don’t get up and write it down immediately, it will slip out again.

In Wyoming, I got into the habit of falling asleep with a pen in my hand and a pad of paper just underneath. If a line or a thought came to mind, I’d simply scribble it down in the dark, sometimes without ever even opening my eyes. In the morning I’d have to transcribe my own downward-slanting chicken scratch onto the computer. This seemed a good method and I might return to it.

Another problem, not surprisingly, is the constant noise and interruptions of the apartment and those girls with whom I live. They leave their cell phones and their organizers and their messenger thingys all out in the living room to beep beep beep all night long.

For four nights in a row this week, I have jumped up to an alarm going off just outside my door. Today I asked them, “Did you hear it?” They answered yes. Why, then, was I the only one to emerge from my room to silence the darn thing? They are not my belongings. I don’t know how to work a Korean internet phone, nor an electronic Korean dictionary/organizer.

I thumbed the small machines in the dark, trying to find off switches. At one point, I considered simply chucking them out of the window, but thought better of it. It is currently 3:30 in the morning and I have already switched off one machine. I wonder how many sounds and bells and whistles I’ll wish to break in the next few hours to come.

Then, invariably, there is always the girls’ morning routine. They rise at 6:00 am and the unremitting noise only ends when they are out the door at 7:45. I hear singing, yelling, screeching, shrieking, and cries of Korean morning clangings.

Peace finally comes at 8:00 am and I am able to sleep until around 11:00. At this point, the housekeeper bangs the laundry poles against my window, hanging up the morning’s washings. So, I rise. I check the weather. Then I walk a mile down the road to Starbucks and have the latte that will keep me awake again.

Coming Through the Rye

Tina and I finished reading The Catcher in the Rye today – a book I haven’t read in about ten years. I’m happy to revisit it. Unfortunately I think the cynical and trite voice of Holden Caulfield may be sticking in my head. For one, I’ve felt like swearing a hell of a lot more than usual.

I think reading this book has been a good turning point for trying to teach Tina to start thinking more critically about literature and how it applies to us all outside the world of novels. She has led a very sheltered existence and there have been many fits and starts during our readings and analyses where I’ve had to bite my tongue and remind myself that she has not been subjected to many of the nuances or idioms or ironies of life. In short, she just doesn’t “get it.” Everything must to be explained.

The hardest, for me, was getting her to make certain connections for herself, instead of pointing them out for her. There are things I consider obvious, and had done even when I had read Catcher at Tina’s age. I also wonder if there is something to be said for the reader’s own sexuality when reading this book. Not preference, mind you, but sexual maturity, in general. I see Tina as still being a very, very young girl, despite her actual age. This book, I believe, lies a bit beyond her own years, even though she happens to be the same age as the main character. Some of us grow at different rates.

I pitied Holden Caulfield in high school and I pity him now. It is unfortunate that I can also see something of a female counterpart in Tina. It is also unfortunate that I would say Holden was less pitiable than Tina, since we all assume he eventually gained some sort of self-awareness through it all. Regrettably, I believe Tina may still be a long way off from this.

On the other hand, Reena is only 14; but I enjoy teaching her because she has a quick mind and interesting ideas. I can talk to her about how one views the world and what sort of questions to ask to become a critical thinker. We read a few books together this semester. One of them called BreadWinner, about a young girl, struggling to survive in Afghanistan under scrutiny of the Taliban and forced to disguise herself as a boy in order to provide for her family. Reena made wonderful discoveries while she read the book. She has the gift of insight.

We also read a book called Speak. It was a good thing for her to read, I think, because she is soon to come upon the same things the young girl encountered in the book - although I hope to hell her high school life won't be as tough. But we discussed teenage emotions, rape, boyfriends, high school social life, and the social-political hierarchy of popularity, etc. These are the times when I really like teaching.

My time with these girls is almost up and I worry what will happen to them in the future. However, I must admit that I am far less concerned with Reena than I am with Tina. Reena is independent, self-starting, motivated, intuitive, and curious. She’s strong and has no problem figuring things out on her own. Conversely, Tina is the one who will be a college student next fall. I wonder if she’ll be ready for it all, or if it will suddenly overwhelm and confuse her. I can only hope there exists some safety net, wherever she ends up – that maybe someone will act as sentinel, that she finds her own catcher in the rye.

Christmas Kick-Off

My younger student, Reena, had a choir performance this evening in Hangzhou for the Tree Lighting Ceremony at the Hyatt Regency on West Lake. The tree was beautiful and filled its branches from floor to vaulted ceiling in the lobby. The kids all wore Santa hats and sang carols. Tone-deaf middle and high schoolers belted out a not-so-Silent-Night while the parents (yes, Lucy and I included) shut our ears with free mulled wine, passed around by cute little Chinese waitresses in Mrs. Claus costumes. This, of course, was the best part for me, since mulled wine is my favorite. I kept the cinnamon stick.