Holy Smokes! Where did the Year Go?

It's new years eve and we are trekking to Shanghai for the festivities. So where did the year go? It is at this time that we all want to remind ourselves about what our year was like and what we want for the new year. We cringe at the want to forget stuff and laugh at the funny stuff. Hopefully there were more laughs then tears last year. I know the last two months for me have been amazing! I think though, leaving the past in the past is a great way to start the new year. What ever has happened to this point is where I am now so there is no point in dwelling on it. The only thing I can say is that I feel very fortunate to be doing what I am doing. I think I made a good decision coming here. I look back at where I was and I get motion sick.
The holidays for the foreigners are pretty much a done deal at this point. The chinese have celebrated Christmas with us and now are wishing us a Happy New Year. They are happy for us. We are happy for them. We are all happy people together! Having a holiday to celebrate gives everyone a chance to relax. I had a student call me up this morning to inform me that only two people will show up to the afternoon class. It's new years what the heck! She was right. Two people showed up. I sent one home and Lily and I went shopping for some meat and eggs. We held an informal class in the street. As we were walking and talking who should we see but the student who called me this morning. How serendipitous! She told me over the phone this morning she was going to Nanjing to see her brother. Hmmm. It's two and she is still here. I wonder how many other students just skipped. It's a conspiracy!! That happens once in a while. This is a college and these kids can skip if they want. They are young adults and when they decide to skip... they all skip. I love group activities!
In the meantime, Lily and now Emily and I are holding class on our way to the market to buy some meat and eggs.
We are all a little tired from the night before. The foreign language students held a new years party for the foreign teachers last night that was a blast! There was singing, dancing, humor and play acting. The english teachers got up to sing auld angst signe. We were awful. The kids loved it. Then we performed a hip hop line dance from the Hannah Montana movie with several of our classes and we were awful! It was the hoedown, swrodown! Chinese translation. The kids loved it! It was fun for all. One of the really special things about the chinese is that they may not all hang out together or like each other but they will give their undying support to each other when they need to. Some of the acts were good some were not... Who cared. We had fun. So now it is on to Shanghai. Every time I say Shanghai it sounds sooo...exotic. It reminds me where I am. It is totally very cool. So let me be the first to say... xīn nián kuài lè!! Happy 2010...,May we see the end to all wars. May we all be healthy and content. May we love and be loved by all.... See you all on the other side! These images are of the old canal of Wuxi, and a baby from the open market where I but my food. Both are taken with my old Rollei

A chicken in every pot!!

Since coming to China I have tried things I never thought in a gazillion years I would ever eat. Things like snails and bamboo shoots (quite good, snails were too!). I have slurped seaweed in all shapes and sizes. I have crunched on boiled jellyfish with a soy hot sauce. I have choked down boiled quail egg, and then came down with an attack of the hooha's. I have winced at boiled fish heads, goose gizzards, duck brains, and pig thing a ma bobs. I have already tried and eaten with delight several kinds of mushrooms. I have created dishes out of things I didn't know existed several weeks ago. Sometimes with grand success! Culinarily speaking just eating here is an adventure in itself. I have learned to wok eggs both omelette and fried. Truth is, I have wok cooked just about everything I can think of. I even tried to wok a pork roast, go figure. But what takes the cake to date is the waitress of our hot pot restaurant bringing a chicken over to the table live, and saying something like dinner...ah something hot pot soup. Not knowing what she was alluding to we said yes, enthusiastically! Fifteen minutes later, there was our chicken a cookin'! Now that is about the freshest meat I have ever eaten...

Three days before Christmas and my friend Wang Jun is going shopping. I wanted to scan some images I took with the Rollei of the old section of the great canal. Not today. Wang Jun is shopping. He shops more than anyone I have ever met. He is shopping not because it is Christmas but in spite of it. With the new open policies of the government, the Chinese have discovered an economic freedom not seen for the last millennium. With this freedom has come affluence and entitlement. We Americans know very well what economic freedom brings. To the Chinese it is like a drug. Shopping has become a mantra to many young chinese adults who now have the means to a better life. Money can buy many things. It is not the end all to a healthy life but it certainly improves ones lot quite a bit. Yet, we all know the downsides to the idea of "too much". For the time being though we will focus on only the good stuff. Heck it's Christmas, and even though I personally do not believe in Christmas I am always up for a good party. So right now in China things are very affordable. That is all things made in China and China makes pretty much everything. Companies from all over the world have come to China to take atvantage of a cheap, hard working and dedicated work force, several hundreds of millions of people work force. Wuxi, has become one center for manufacturing based on the silk factories that once existed here. At four million people though it is hardly considered a city. Most cities here like Shanghai and Beijing have 4 to 5 times the population of this quiet bedroom community. Add 6 or so other cities like Shanghai and you have China. Chinas greatest resource has always been it's people and when the people decide to shop... look out! It's cheek to jowl every where. Good times. Which reminds me I need to do some shopping.

Life now in China is taking a turn for the surreal. I think now that I have settled in life seems more normal to me though I know it's not. I spend an enormous amount of time digging though the dictionary looking for words to string together to try and communicate my wants and needs. I always seem to come up a bit short. People look at me as if to say what? Did you say you want to sleep with fish? Or, this is a bowl of rice not a yaks hooves...But... I am determined to speak. That's the fun of it all. I do end up meeting wonderful people who are very kind and patient. They are more than gracious to try and get me to pronounce whatever I am saying correctly. So on one hand life has a normalcy to it if I keep to myself. Allow myself to delve into the world and anything could happen. The other day I was on the bus on my way downtown. I chose to plug into my little I pod and zone out the madness of bus 105 on a Sunday afternoon. Blues, Jazz, mixed with a touch of old Rock and Roll, normal. Having everyone stare at me and giggle or sneer is surreal. Expats say, get used to it, it happens all the time. I am here now what, six weeks and it still unnerves me. Though I am getting used to public transportation here. Cheap and always on time. The only indignity is more often than not you must share your space with about 200 other people packed into this rolling sardine can. They are also looking for some normalcy as they stare at me to kill time. In some kind of strange way it is one of life's little pleasures. Those of us who drive everywhere miss this moment of humanity. It is grounding. There is a serenity about how everyone allows everyone to be. In a car you don't even know if anyone is alive. Not that you would care. Isolation has it's perks too. But you end up missing little moments like the nurse that gives up her seat to help an elderly woman sit there. Or as the rain is coming down a woman paralyzed from the waist down is piggy backed on her husband as they try to board the bus crammed with people. Rushing to the back door of the bus, the doors shut on them denying them refuge from the rain. He turns away from the bus with his wife still clinging to him with a puzzled look on his face streamed with rain.
China is a puzzle. It is not all it seems to be. Underneath all the wealth and affluence there is the grit and the grind that most people experience day to day. Little kindnesses mean everything. That's just the way it is tonight, December 15th 2009.

There are no Weenies Living Here

Tough, That is a good way to describe the lifestyle here in Wuxi. When it is cold outside it is cold inside. In China, so far as I can tell, there is no central heating anywhere I have been. Everything is made with stone and concrete. It is beautiful in a very austere way, but butt freezing cold. Everyone wears layers and never takes them off no matter where they are. In a restaurant the matr`e de never asks to take your wrap cuz you'd freeze... cocktails are always served warmed and then are cooled down in your hands. The school sits right off of lake Tai. Tai is the size of Delaware. It is a very big lake. When the winds wind their way through the mountains in the north from the steps of Mongolia they pass over this lake on their way to Wuxi. The end result is fog most of the time mixed with intense pollution and freezing cold rain and wet wet wind. Yet when the weather breaks Wuxi can be fairly pleasant with temperatures in the mid 50s. That doesn't mean you don T shirts and go running around in shorts and flip flops. That only means you can take a layer off if you dare. Needless to say us westerners with our creature comforts are no match for these living conditions. Either man up or turn the heat on! In the end though I seem to be the only one concerned with the weather. It's a so what matter. So what... who cares how cold it is. Bundle up!

The other day I decided to walk over to Jiangnan University. I wanted to find the post office. I have been remiss in sending postcards to Libby. I start walking and asking questions but no one seemed to understand what I was saying. Funny, for a moment I thought I was in Texas. I found instead the school for the Arts of Jiangnan U. I thought maybe they'd have a darkroom or at least a photo studio where someone could lead me to a darkroom. The idea of sending my film overseas to be processed does not appeal to me though I have an arraingment set up back in Albuquerque. I was not even sure anyone shot film or did photography at all in China. There is so little I know. What I found poking around is that the arts are alive and well here in Wuxi. The arts are taken very seriously. In fact I met the graphics arts teacher who also happens to teach photography at the school with his wife. Wang Jun is a very talented, kind and generous person. Though he speaks very little english and I speak basically no chinese we talked about my needs through a student interpreter that I brought along with me just in case we had a communication issue. I was able to tell Wang Jun what I needed and he told me I could use the darkroom at his studio since the schools facilities were pretty non exsistent. Here is someone that doesn't know me from Adam and he offers his darkroom to me. We exchange information and I leave. to make a rather long story short he invited me for tea. Wang Jun lives on the 19th floor of a 30 something story apartment building in a studio loft apartment with his wife and 5 year old daughter. The apartment is tastefully furnished with antique chinese furniture along with some other things I don't know what they are for... An eating table made of what looks like mahagony is tucked underneath the loft next to the kitchen counter. The view from his landing is of a section of Wuxi overlooking the great canal and other rather large apartment complexes. His bathroom has been converted into a darkroom with one of the coolest contraptions I have ever seen. It is a mini water bath for keeping soup at temp. Or in english. it keeps all the chemicals at 68 degrees. The coolest part of this mini water bath is it has a rotator that you can put a jobo developing tank on an let the machine gently rotate the film.All this in a bathroom the size of a closet. So cool! This is his darkroom. He uses a changing bag to roll film and a cedar colset to hang film in. totally dust free! So you ask where is the Robert Capa that moved to China to be the grand adventurer... Well that is what I was asking myself after seeing the possibilities. Though I would be hard pressed to have brought the film scanner he has. Yes times have changed since the Spanish Civil War. Wang Jun is a photo god! After a tour of the darkroom and processing center, we shared our cameras and talked about what we used what for and then we sat down to tea. The tea came from I think Binhu just to the south of us. Wang Jun tells me that many areas grow their own tea and are famous for it. Wuxi has a special tea they grow that is very aromatic. The tea we drank though was ambrosia. We drank a lot of tea served in special ceremony teacups of porcelain. It was awesome and Wang Jun and his family are great. So now I am a tea snob. No more of the cheap stuff from China Wall Hell. I only drink the good stuff. We talked books and other photographers who are our personal inspirations and he showed me someone I am not familiar with but her work is world class stuff. Mary Ellen MarkCheck her out.. 4 hours later we finish and he brings me back to campus... ps I cannot forget the great job our interpreter did for the afternoon, FanBing, psychology major at the university with a minor in advertising... Hmmm think there is a career waiting for him when he gets out? Bright, intelligent, and funny... what a dude! Wang Jun and I are going shooting on Saturday. He wants to show me Wuxi. I can't wait. Fan Bing though will be in exams. Yes here in China Students go to school sometimes all week. Fan Bing has a blog if you want to check him out.. it is Wang Juns blog is Catch you later

Steve