So far my experience in Qingdao has been mostly boredom, frustration, and loneliness punctuated by random but wonderful experiences that make it all worthwhile.
I started hanging around with David, a really nice German guy in my Chinese class who is known for being hit in the head with a beer bottle by a Russian guy in a bar. That's another story...David then asks me if I am interested in meeting his German friend Maren who wants to find a English speaking language partner for her coworker. I say, "Yeah, sure thing." without much interest to be honest. Next day we arrange to meet up and I hit it off with Maren and her Chinese friend Michelle. Michelle met Maren by chance on a bus a week before. Maren and Michelle become my weekend friends because they satisfy
Elliott's New Criteria for Friendship:
1. Smart.
2. Kind.
3. Not full of bullshit.
Next thing I know, Michelle invites us over to her hometown of Gaomi for dinner. I jump at the chance because it's one of the things I want to do most in China. We head out last weekend by train, and it's everything I hoped for: super kind parents, shy cousins, delicious food, wonderful hospitality, and incomprehensible dialect. I felt grateful and humbled to be given the chance.
But it all ends abruptly. Maren is going back to Germany next week and Michelle is going back to school in Qufu. I'm left in Qingdao now trying to see what random people will walk into my life next.
I have a feeling it will be more Germans. I seem to have good karma with them. Of all the nationalities here I get along best with them. They are smart, honest, and dark humored. I ask them about David Hasselhoff and they ask me whether all Americans are such dumbasses. It's really hard to justify electing Arnold Schwarzenegger as your Governor. Try it.
I get brownie points when I try to speak to them in German from the 4 years I took in high school. They seem very pleased that any American can speak their language. Interestingly there are very few Americans in Qingdao. I think it is because Americans are very uninteresed in China compared to the rest of the world. A shame considering the next century will be a Chinese/American one.
From my experience so far I think Chinese people understand America much better than Americans understand China. The Chinese I've met have been very candid in saying that they think America is trying to use Tibet and Taiwan as a tool to keep China divided and politically weak. At first I thought this was Chinese proproganda. But on second thought, I think they're right. Just as much as they are raised on Chinese proproganda, the West has been raised on it's own. Ok enough of my stump speech. I'm just saying, give the Tibet thing a rest. Are we giving back America to the Native Americans? I think not.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Qingdao
I've been in Qingdao for over 3 weeks now. My daily routine is thus:
7:30am Wake up.
8:00 Go to class where the teacher speaks too fast and I learn inane words like 超声波 Ultrasonic Wave.
9:00 Break 1, I go for a smoke with my Japanese friend Honda-san, a retiree who I like chatting with in my broken mandarin.
10:00 Break 2, I talk to Ian, a fellow American. Ian is very popular among the Korean girls here as he is 1/2 Korean himself and can speak with them. They generally wave and say hi to me, but they can't speak much Chinese and I don't speak Korean so it ends up getting old fast. The Korean guys just smoke a lot.
11:00 Break 3, I avoid Phillip, or as I call him the Polish Asshole. All the guys hate him in class. A royal turd of a person who is arrogant, rude, and stupid. The girls seem to like him as they think he's funny and cool. Says a lot about something.
12:00 End of school. If I am feeling good I go eat with someone. We head to 青大一路, the local food street for students where we eat very well for $3. On special days I get drunk at lunch. On depressed days, I order some noodles and ask myself what the hell I am doing in China.
1:oopm I go back to my room and nap for an hour.
2:00 I wake up and avoid studying by blogging or calling someone back in the States. Why don't people call me?
6:00 I try to figure out my dinner plans. The school cafeteria is monstrously big, loud, and not too appetizing. I've eaten there once so far, but most foreigners avoid it. I think tonight I will go with the Indonesians. They like to eat well and I don't have to talk too much with them.
7:00 Study the endless list of Chinese characters that all sound the same. I am feeling better that I can read more and more, which keeps me going.
10:00 Call my girlfriend in Shanghai. She's just moved there and is not liking it too much. We speak in Mandarin now which is pretty cool. Mainly it's her speaking and me going through my pat set of 200 phrases. Then I watch some TV. Chinese TV is pretty awful full of bad state produced media or hilarious chinese infomercials. Korean TV is pretty awful, but the people look nice and the characters are reassuring in their 2 dimensional way. Japanese TV is much better and relaxes me. I like to watch their cooking shows. Thank you NHK.
12:00 Sleep on a rock hard bed that is killing my back. What's up with the beds China?
On weekends I hang out with the motley crew of friends I have here to avoid the nagging sense of loneliness and confusion that creeps into my mind when I am alone.
7:30am Wake up.
8:00 Go to class where the teacher speaks too fast and I learn inane words like 超声波 Ultrasonic Wave.
9:00 Break 1, I go for a smoke with my Japanese friend Honda-san, a retiree who I like chatting with in my broken mandarin.
10:00 Break 2, I talk to Ian, a fellow American. Ian is very popular among the Korean girls here as he is 1/2 Korean himself and can speak with them. They generally wave and say hi to me, but they can't speak much Chinese and I don't speak Korean so it ends up getting old fast. The Korean guys just smoke a lot.
11:00 Break 3, I avoid Phillip, or as I call him the Polish Asshole. All the guys hate him in class. A royal turd of a person who is arrogant, rude, and stupid. The girls seem to like him as they think he's funny and cool. Says a lot about something.
12:00 End of school. If I am feeling good I go eat with someone. We head to 青大一路, the local food street for students where we eat very well for $3. On special days I get drunk at lunch. On depressed days, I order some noodles and ask myself what the hell I am doing in China.
1:oopm I go back to my room and nap for an hour.
2:00 I wake up and avoid studying by blogging or calling someone back in the States. Why don't people call me?
6:00 I try to figure out my dinner plans. The school cafeteria is monstrously big, loud, and not too appetizing. I've eaten there once so far, but most foreigners avoid it. I think tonight I will go with the Indonesians. They like to eat well and I don't have to talk too much with them.
7:00 Study the endless list of Chinese characters that all sound the same. I am feeling better that I can read more and more, which keeps me going.
10:00 Call my girlfriend in Shanghai. She's just moved there and is not liking it too much. We speak in Mandarin now which is pretty cool. Mainly it's her speaking and me going through my pat set of 200 phrases. Then I watch some TV. Chinese TV is pretty awful full of bad state produced media or hilarious chinese infomercials. Korean TV is pretty awful, but the people look nice and the characters are reassuring in their 2 dimensional way. Japanese TV is much better and relaxes me. I like to watch their cooking shows. Thank you NHK.
12:00 Sleep on a rock hard bed that is killing my back. What's up with the beds China?
On weekends I hang out with the motley crew of friends I have here to avoid the nagging sense of loneliness and confusion that creeps into my mind when I am alone.
Friday, February 27, 2009
And so it begins.
I sit here in my single simple dorm room in Qingdao, a sunny cold city in Shandong Province that borders the sea. Here I have no friends yet as I have just arrived earlier today off a red eye flight.
It's always a strange feeling to know no one in a place...it''s as if the fact of my invisibility hightens my own sense of myself and my thoughts. Here I have no memories. Here I practice my habit of slowly walking around a new town, getting used to each street to build familiarity, increasing my radius each day until I feel more at ease. Here I realize the Putonghua is familiar but strangely accented as I struggle to order a simple 3 Yuan meal of noodles off a menu three months ago I could not read at all. Here I'm too tired to make friends right now and too lonely to not want to make them. I know that this feeling is natural, comforting me to know that things will be fine. Here the signage is in Korean too and more than half my classmates are Koreans, as Qingdao happens to sit directly across from Seoul. A city that is used to straddling nationalities, Qingdao was once held by the Germans who were granted a concession at a time when China was forcibly opened and exploited by foreign nations earlier this century in a humiliating chapter of its history that resulted in the Cultural Revolution. Of the more positive remnants of colonialism, they behind their architecture and beer, of which one is much more popular.
Here my dorm room is so simple as to highten my appreciation for every single thing in it. I can literally count the things in it with my fingers: I have a TV, a desk, a bed, a bookshelf, a nightstand, and an air conditioner. That's it. I add my own flavor to this room with my own possessions which can fit in one suitcase, a backpack, and guitar case. "Who really needs anything more?" I think to myself.
Priori to this, I had just spent the last week in Wuhan having a love affair with a girl 12 years my junior that I had met online 3 months ago while practicing my Chinese. One thing led to another and I decided to visit her before coming out to Qingdao. She's a pretty, sweet, funny, and clever girl who sings semi-professionally a la Mariah Carey, works at Century 21 Real Estate as a graphic designer (I think), likes Lychee flavored potato chips, and has only one boyfriend before me. It occurs to me that what I represent to a lot of girls in China, is a channel for them to escape the dreary oppressiveness of old China as they struggle to sort out their own place in this country that has gone through so much monumental cultural shifts. Women have a hard life here. Actually life is hard here. Period. Girls here often comment that I feel very Chinese to them, which I take as a compliment now. From the outside looking in, I can see why they find me so interesting. The guitar doesn't hurt either. I've said before that being in China is like an episode of Star Trek where the Enterprise's crew finds themselves in a parallel universe where things are familiar yet twisted as they struggle to survive until they can find a way back. Except in my case, I don't want to go back to my former reality. Now she wants me to move in with her either here or in Shanghai but I am not sure I'm ready for that as I am just beginning a new life in a new city. A good dilemma to have I think.
So here I am, a southern Cantonese speaker who grew up in America, now in a city built by Germans and now surrounded by Koreans to learn Chinese at age 34. Life is strange. I settle in to my stiff bed to know that all that lays before me has not happened yet..that each intersection of time, place, and person still lays open and uncommitted. And so it begins.
It's always a strange feeling to know no one in a place...it''s as if the fact of my invisibility hightens my own sense of myself and my thoughts. Here I have no memories. Here I practice my habit of slowly walking around a new town, getting used to each street to build familiarity, increasing my radius each day until I feel more at ease. Here I realize the Putonghua is familiar but strangely accented as I struggle to order a simple 3 Yuan meal of noodles off a menu three months ago I could not read at all. Here I'm too tired to make friends right now and too lonely to not want to make them. I know that this feeling is natural, comforting me to know that things will be fine. Here the signage is in Korean too and more than half my classmates are Koreans, as Qingdao happens to sit directly across from Seoul. A city that is used to straddling nationalities, Qingdao was once held by the Germans who were granted a concession at a time when China was forcibly opened and exploited by foreign nations earlier this century in a humiliating chapter of its history that resulted in the Cultural Revolution. Of the more positive remnants of colonialism, they behind their architecture and beer, of which one is much more popular.
Here my dorm room is so simple as to highten my appreciation for every single thing in it. I can literally count the things in it with my fingers: I have a TV, a desk, a bed, a bookshelf, a nightstand, and an air conditioner. That's it. I add my own flavor to this room with my own possessions which can fit in one suitcase, a backpack, and guitar case. "Who really needs anything more?" I think to myself.
Priori to this, I had just spent the last week in Wuhan having a love affair with a girl 12 years my junior that I had met online 3 months ago while practicing my Chinese. One thing led to another and I decided to visit her before coming out to Qingdao. She's a pretty, sweet, funny, and clever girl who sings semi-professionally a la Mariah Carey, works at Century 21 Real Estate as a graphic designer (I think), likes Lychee flavored potato chips, and has only one boyfriend before me. It occurs to me that what I represent to a lot of girls in China, is a channel for them to escape the dreary oppressiveness of old China as they struggle to sort out their own place in this country that has gone through so much monumental cultural shifts. Women have a hard life here. Actually life is hard here. Period. Girls here often comment that I feel very Chinese to them, which I take as a compliment now. From the outside looking in, I can see why they find me so interesting. The guitar doesn't hurt either. I've said before that being in China is like an episode of Star Trek where the Enterprise's crew finds themselves in a parallel universe where things are familiar yet twisted as they struggle to survive until they can find a way back. Except in my case, I don't want to go back to my former reality. Now she wants me to move in with her either here or in Shanghai but I am not sure I'm ready for that as I am just beginning a new life in a new city. A good dilemma to have I think.
So here I am, a southern Cantonese speaker who grew up in America, now in a city built by Germans and now surrounded by Koreans to learn Chinese at age 34. Life is strange. I settle in to my stiff bed to know that all that lays before me has not happened yet..that each intersection of time, place, and person still lays open and uncommitted. And so it begins.
Friday, January 30, 2009
10 Things I Learned About People By Selling My Things on Craigslist
Over the course of the last few weeks I've been selling everything I own on Craigslist except my soul. It's liberating learning how little you really need. In addition here's what I learned about human nature:
- Haggling is done not for money's sake, but because it makes people feel better. They feel like they got a deal. Therefore mark up your items by 10% and let them feel better. It's a win win.
- People basically will look like what you think they will look like from their emails and phone conversations.
- 50% of people are flaky and don't show up when they say they will.
- Most people have decided they will buy your item when they arrive. If they come, they will buy and will hand you the money precounted out in 20's.
- There are some people who try to appeal to your compassion (mostly young women) and appeal for you to sell your $600 bike for $400 because they don't have the money. Tough nuts lady. If you can afford a $400 bike, you can afford to pay the $600 I asked.
- Men with trucks are the saints of the world, and are under appreciated. Thank them.
- Pretty girls with baby voices get their way with men with trucks.
- I'm glad I have music as a hobby. It has great resale value too. But strangely only men seem to buy music equipment. I have never sold any music related item in all my years to a woman.
- Smiling and being polite go a long way in life.
- People are basically fair, honest, and nice.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Power
Power. I thought about this word the other day while riding my bike home from depositing a fat check into my new IRA at E*Trade in downtown San Francisco. I had talked to the middle aged portly E*Trade Account Executive, and I quickly got the sense that this person was treating me with a higher level of regard than my shabby blue hoody and rolled up pants would have deemed appropriate. On the outside I looked like a student or bike messenger, but ah! hand over a check with some zeroes on it and the world bows to your feet.
When we sat at down he asked "What do you think of the market now?"
I bluntly said "I don't listen to the talking heads on TV or take advice from Financial Advisors. They don't know what they're talking about. This is the beginning of a long painful downturn of historic proportions. Sometimes the best thing is to do nothing with your money."
With measured sincerity he agreed "Sir, I totally agree..."
I have a feeling he would have agreed to anything I said...
In that piece of paper I handed to him was 3 1/2 years of 401k savings...of waking up everyday when I did not not necessarily want to, of financial calculation, of hours of boredom staring at a compute screen and making small talk, of comfort and stability, of trading my time for their money. Why did I do that?
Because Money is Power. But what is Power then?
Power is the ability to impose your will on the outside world. I can buy material things, services, a smile, even flesh...I can make people do things they would not do other than the fact that I have power to trade. I have earned my money by sacrificing my own time and energy for that end. I have given up four of the best years of my life doing something I did not care about to earn this money, and handing it over to the smiling E*Trade broker, it seemed so ridiculous that so many of us go about our days smiling at strangers to get some more of this stuff.
But money can also be used to resist outside influence. This is how I saw money for a long time. By having it I can avoid control by others. I am not beholden to their expectations, their wants, to do things I do not want to do. It is a way of saying no, I don’t want to. No, I won’t go to work today...or the next, or the next. No I'm not living in this country anymore. I'm checking out of your stupid system for awhile.
When one looks through the lens of money as power the strange world that we live in suddenly seems clearer. In the end money is just the most obvious, easy, crass way of exercising personal power and value. There are less obvious ways that are not valued in today's world:
Peace of mind
Real Freedom
The Truth
Self belief
Talent
Knowledge
Action
Courage
Character
Determination...
I think these are things I've been searching in myself for a long time; and now I see that the real markers of personal success are not what I thought them to be at all.
At this time in America’s history, we are seeing the diminishing of our power. We have literally spent our way to financial, political, and moral poverty. President Obama’s gift is his appeal for us to nurture other aspects of power other than purely tapping into innate human greed.
Hope, honesty, listening to myself...these are my new wages.
When we sat at down he asked "What do you think of the market now?"
I bluntly said "I don't listen to the talking heads on TV or take advice from Financial Advisors. They don't know what they're talking about. This is the beginning of a long painful downturn of historic proportions. Sometimes the best thing is to do nothing with your money."
With measured sincerity he agreed "Sir, I totally agree..."
I have a feeling he would have agreed to anything I said...
In that piece of paper I handed to him was 3 1/2 years of 401k savings...of waking up everyday when I did not not necessarily want to, of financial calculation, of hours of boredom staring at a compute screen and making small talk, of comfort and stability, of trading my time for their money. Why did I do that?
Because Money is Power. But what is Power then?
Power is the ability to impose your will on the outside world. I can buy material things, services, a smile, even flesh...I can make people do things they would not do other than the fact that I have power to trade. I have earned my money by sacrificing my own time and energy for that end. I have given up four of the best years of my life doing something I did not care about to earn this money, and handing it over to the smiling E*Trade broker, it seemed so ridiculous that so many of us go about our days smiling at strangers to get some more of this stuff.
But money can also be used to resist outside influence. This is how I saw money for a long time. By having it I can avoid control by others. I am not beholden to their expectations, their wants, to do things I do not want to do. It is a way of saying no, I don’t want to. No, I won’t go to work today...or the next, or the next. No I'm not living in this country anymore. I'm checking out of your stupid system for awhile.
When one looks through the lens of money as power the strange world that we live in suddenly seems clearer. In the end money is just the most obvious, easy, crass way of exercising personal power and value. There are less obvious ways that are not valued in today's world:
Peace of mind
Real Freedom
The Truth
Self belief
Talent
Knowledge
Action
Courage
Character
Determination...
I think these are things I've been searching in myself for a long time; and now I see that the real markers of personal success are not what I thought them to be at all.
At this time in America’s history, we are seeing the diminishing of our power. We have literally spent our way to financial, political, and moral poverty. President Obama’s gift is his appeal for us to nurture other aspects of power other than purely tapping into innate human greed.
Hope, honesty, listening to myself...these are my new wages.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
One Way Ticket
I bought my plane ticket. A one way ticket to China.
I'm a firm believer in intuition...and my gut is telling me to get the hell out of here. Sometimes you make a decision because it's logical...sometimes just because things you feel a rumbling in your gut that tells you it's the right thing to do. To stay in San Francisco would be a death. I'm sick of it. I'm done with it. I'm restless. And I'm ready to take a leap of faith.
I do feel like I'm running away, but in the best sense of the word. A reset. An opportunity to learn a new language. A chance to live in another country. A chance to live simply out of one suitcase with nothing but my wits. A chance to meet new friends and have stories to tell. A chance to wake up with fresh eyes. A chance to step off the treadmill that powers the machine.
I don't really know what is gonna happen. But this is gonna be fucking awesome.
When I was booking my ticket online I was trying to decide when to leave. Then I saw a flight on Feb 8 at 12:01AM. That's my birthday. It was a sign.
I'm a firm believer in intuition...and my gut is telling me to get the hell out of here. Sometimes you make a decision because it's logical...sometimes just because things you feel a rumbling in your gut that tells you it's the right thing to do. To stay in San Francisco would be a death. I'm sick of it. I'm done with it. I'm restless. And I'm ready to take a leap of faith.
I do feel like I'm running away, but in the best sense of the word. A reset. An opportunity to learn a new language. A chance to live in another country. A chance to live simply out of one suitcase with nothing but my wits. A chance to meet new friends and have stories to tell. A chance to wake up with fresh eyes. A chance to step off the treadmill that powers the machine.
I don't really know what is gonna happen. But this is gonna be fucking awesome.
When I was booking my ticket online I was trying to decide when to leave. Then I saw a flight on Feb 8 at 12:01AM. That's my birthday. It was a sign.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Fuck it.
Elliott, why a blog and why one now?
This blog is my stake in the ground, my declaration that I am checking out of the system. Job, house, country, car, family, girlfriend I renounce thee!! And therefore I renounce all the things that come with you which is what all the above is really about: respectability, status, safety, comforts, money, goals, certainty...I will fail in this renounciation ultimately, but oh what fun it will be!
The peculiar thing is this seems all very calm and rational...like something one decides while choosing which brand of toothpaste to buy at the supermarket.
How did I get to point? I have spent the last 2 months (or 4 odd years really) staring into the abyss. Let me explain it this way - there's a book I like where the main character, for no particular reason other than that his life is completely dissolving around him, decides to go down a deserted empty well. He descends with no food or water and in this well he decides to sit until something happens. He sits, in the complete stillness and darkness waiting, and as his sense of time dissolves he dissolves until he reaches a single point of clarity. I am sitting in that well now. (Yes I come out of that well to have dinner with you nice folks occasionally but mostly I sit in that well and wait.) And a clarity is almost here.
Except that clarity is not clarity at all! It is neither an answer or a direction. Actually it is the total unravelling of any direction. And in the confusion lies the answer! I am a Zen monk solving a koan. It is just a intuition, an instinct of seeing a life based around fear, and of fear being a undercurrent of most of our lives. Of the profound mental/emotional/societal BS that I am not going to participate in anymore.
Above all else I feel sincerity, which one of my favorite things. And what is sincerity? It is another term for truth. And actual truth is what I am after.
So what does this mean in real tangible terms? Not much. Yet.
This blog is my stake in the ground, my declaration that I am checking out of the system. Job, house, country, car, family, girlfriend I renounce thee!! And therefore I renounce all the things that come with you which is what all the above is really about: respectability, status, safety, comforts, money, goals, certainty...I will fail in this renounciation ultimately, but oh what fun it will be!
The peculiar thing is this seems all very calm and rational...like something one decides while choosing which brand of toothpaste to buy at the supermarket.
How did I get to point? I have spent the last 2 months (or 4 odd years really) staring into the abyss. Let me explain it this way - there's a book I like where the main character, for no particular reason other than that his life is completely dissolving around him, decides to go down a deserted empty well. He descends with no food or water and in this well he decides to sit until something happens. He sits, in the complete stillness and darkness waiting, and as his sense of time dissolves he dissolves until he reaches a single point of clarity. I am sitting in that well now. (Yes I come out of that well to have dinner with you nice folks occasionally but mostly I sit in that well and wait.) And a clarity is almost here.
Except that clarity is not clarity at all! It is neither an answer or a direction. Actually it is the total unravelling of any direction. And in the confusion lies the answer! I am a Zen monk solving a koan. It is just a intuition, an instinct of seeing a life based around fear, and of fear being a undercurrent of most of our lives. Of the profound mental/emotional/societal BS that I am not going to participate in anymore.
Above all else I feel sincerity, which one of my favorite things. And what is sincerity? It is another term for truth. And actual truth is what I am after.
So what does this mean in real tangible terms? Not much. Yet.
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