*When I ask question I really am asking. If you think I'm totally on or off base tell me.*
Midnight in China:
Yesterday at midnight i watched Chinese babies setting off fireworks and it made me so happy. On every street people were lighting big, July Fourth, Disney World, explosives. Grandmothers were there cheering under the rockets. People have been setting them off all week and it can get annoying because they are so loud. However, it was not so different then a good loud rock show and at some point last night the noise and explosions overwhelmed me. As the explosions reached a peak i felt kind of small and playful but also rebellious in the best way. This was running around naked when I was four, sliding down banisters, and sneaking to kiss girls at camp.
The amount of fireworks themselves brought out the adrenaline and awe but the communal aspect of it all really took the experience to a more special place. I loved the fact that despite a little danger, at least it seemed that way to me, there was no violence. The grandmothers and babies made the whole thing seem natural, and peaceful. The Chinese New Year reminded me of what New Years felt like a kid. When staying up until midnight and still felt rebellious and yet sanctioned at the same time. That's a difficult spirit to balance with a family party and in America it fails when the kids hit adolescence. I don't know if generations can party together better in China but I know that I felt more like a kid at midnight in the China New Year then I have for a long time.
A Train Of Thought
Maybe this is obvious or repetitive but celebrating and exercising that kind of power and spirit communally without violence or enemy's seems really healthy. I think it must have been the first fact I ever learned but fireworks came from China and became weapons in the West. That is so messed up and amazing. China invents a kind of magic and Europe turns it into gun powder.
Briefly - Why does this fact have so much meaning for me?
For me the story is about enemy's. I grew up in a world that viewed reforming the world as valuable and other activities as superfluous. A world that needs reforming is a world filled with enemy's - with good guys and bad guys.
To me, the Chinese culture that invented fireworks and didn't see it as a weapon is the same culture that valued sitting alone and meditating for long stretches of time. I would argue that appreciating the good in the world is at least as valuable as reforming the world. As Alan Watts says, "Perhaps a peaceful mind is the best solution to a world in turmoil."
Fireworks. Yeah that's what I'm talking about. It works. Point it at the sky and it works. Throwing some of our energy away into the air and watching happily works. Creating a world with less enemy's takes practice.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Travels Six: Two people in Chengdu are named Jesse Levine
This is a story that must be told. First a back story ; www.couchsurfing.com is a social networking website like Face book designed for travelers. The idea is to connect people with "couches" or empty beds with travelers looking for a place to stay for free. It works and most travelers use couch surfing - some of my best experiences in the last four months came from connecting with people via couch surfing.
About three weeks ago, in the end of December, I realized that I could email people in Chengdu, through couch surfing, and ask them about teaching English there. Its a fact that many if not most of people on Couch surfing are English teachers. In this search I came upon a girl named Jessie Levene. She's from America likes music and film and teaches English in Chengdu. Since my name Jesse Levine this was pretty surprising. So I told my friend in Dali, Jye Yang, who runs the Smile Cafe' and guest-house where I stayed for about three weeks. I tell her I just found a girl named Jessie Levene in Chengdu. Jye Yang says, she knows Jessie from Chengdu because she came to stay at the Smile Cafe'. "Really?!"
I write Jessie Levene to tell her all these coincidences and she writes back enthusiastically. She knows Jye Yang, she's amazed we have the same name, if she can help me she will, but she's leaving Chengdu and traveling for about over a month.
Moving forward a few weeks to several days ago. After a long struggle I finally pull myself together and plan to leave Dali. It's my last day in Dali and I'm kind of scared of moving to Chengdu. As I'm brewing on my unknown futures and eating some dumplings I notice a White guy with a Chinese girl lock their bikes and come into the restaurant. I was kind of taken by them because the boy reminded me of my old friend, Max Gold, and she was cute - so i was interested. And when they he made a comment in my direction I quickly struck up a conversation. They, it turned out, were teachers in Chengdu. As they were giving me some advice the subject of couch surfing came up. I mentioned Jessie Levene in Chengdu and the Chinese girl gasped. "Are you Jesse Levine?" she said. I AM! Jessie Levene had been so excited by my email she told her friends about it. Her friends were now sitting in front of me in Dali the day before I was planning to go to Chengdu. So I sit down next to them and we go on talking a while. About midway through the meal the Chinese girl, who I assume is the boys girlfriend, says that since she is not using her apartment, I might as well stay there. Her neighbor has the key and here is his telephone number.
Last night, my first night in Chengdu, I spent in a furnished but empty apartment. I have a key and will stay in the apartment for a few weeks until she comes back. Her neighbor is a nice dutch guy who is opening a bar. I met a couple other white guys last night at his bar liked them well enough. They play music out, are in bands, and seemed interested my keyboard playing.
Today, I woke up so happy to have my own place for a little while i spent most of the day at "home" watching movies. The girl whose apartment it is, Xiao Yu, has quite a DVD collection and I watched "An Inconvenient Truth" and "The Good Sheppard" before leaving the apartment.
That's the story. I realize coincidence stories can be boring second hand but I needed to share this one.
About three weeks ago, in the end of December, I realized that I could email people in Chengdu, through couch surfing, and ask them about teaching English there. Its a fact that many if not most of people on Couch surfing are English teachers. In this search I came upon a girl named Jessie Levene. She's from America likes music and film and teaches English in Chengdu. Since my name Jesse Levine this was pretty surprising. So I told my friend in Dali, Jye Yang, who runs the Smile Cafe' and guest-house where I stayed for about three weeks. I tell her I just found a girl named Jessie Levene in Chengdu. Jye Yang says, she knows Jessie from Chengdu because she came to stay at the Smile Cafe'. "Really?!"
I write Jessie Levene to tell her all these coincidences and she writes back enthusiastically. She knows Jye Yang, she's amazed we have the same name, if she can help me she will, but she's leaving Chengdu and traveling for about over a month.
Moving forward a few weeks to several days ago. After a long struggle I finally pull myself together and plan to leave Dali. It's my last day in Dali and I'm kind of scared of moving to Chengdu. As I'm brewing on my unknown futures and eating some dumplings I notice a White guy with a Chinese girl lock their bikes and come into the restaurant. I was kind of taken by them because the boy reminded me of my old friend, Max Gold, and she was cute - so i was interested. And when they he made a comment in my direction I quickly struck up a conversation. They, it turned out, were teachers in Chengdu. As they were giving me some advice the subject of couch surfing came up. I mentioned Jessie Levene in Chengdu and the Chinese girl gasped. "Are you Jesse Levine?" she said. I AM! Jessie Levene had been so excited by my email she told her friends about it. Her friends were now sitting in front of me in Dali the day before I was planning to go to Chengdu. So I sit down next to them and we go on talking a while. About midway through the meal the Chinese girl, who I assume is the boys girlfriend, says that since she is not using her apartment, I might as well stay there. Her neighbor has the key and here is his telephone number.
Last night, my first night in Chengdu, I spent in a furnished but empty apartment. I have a key and will stay in the apartment for a few weeks until she comes back. Her neighbor is a nice dutch guy who is opening a bar. I met a couple other white guys last night at his bar liked them well enough. They play music out, are in bands, and seemed interested my keyboard playing.
Today, I woke up so happy to have my own place for a little while i spent most of the day at "home" watching movies. The girl whose apartment it is, Xiao Yu, has quite a DVD collection and I watched "An Inconvenient Truth" and "The Good Sheppard" before leaving the apartment.
That's the story. I realize coincidence stories can be boring second hand but I needed to share this one.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Travels Five: Dali City Forever
I arrived to my new home today. Chengdu City is grey, and bleak! I think I love it. My twenty two hour bus ride somehow lasted only fourteen hours. I love China's mysteries when they are to my advantage. I don't know much about Chengdu but the following are descriptions and thoughts about my home for a month and a half - Old Dali City, China. It's longer than most of my posts have or will be. Love To Those Who Want It.
It would be hard to leave paradise and go look for a job in dreary cities. Some people don't even even leave Dali City. Once a capital of one of China's specialest provinces, Yunan, then later captured by Kubla Kan, then maybe 1000 years later in 1998 it was rebuilt to look old. On New Years night I sat next to a stylish white guy from San Fransisco who calls Dali the best place in the world. I had no idea what that meant. I know that when I left three weeks ago I felt depressed and was back a week later.
Dali's mountains are a source for clouds. I think of them as big white hands and the they reach over and through the peaks and threaten to storm. The storm never materialized and while i was in Dali it never even rained. The clouds dissolve above Dali - constantly.
Speaking of clouds, my experiences of clouds in Japan verses China kind of mirror my general feeling for nature in the places - if not the places more generally. In Japan I saw two very distinct cloud processes. At the top of a mountain in Hokkaido I watched from within feet as thin clouds blow over the ridge and immediatly dissipated. This was clouds dying at close range. Much further south I saw the wind sweep mist laying on the trees and bring them into clouds. The clouds were being born. So in Japan my general impression was that things were very distinct. Mountains are triangles, the forest is filled with bizarelly straight pine trees. Hiroshige was barely exagerating.
In contrast to Japan in China, in Dali, I really don't know what to think about the nature I've seen. It's bizarrly impressive, and casual at the same time. The mountains look rugged and high but are mid height, the clouds look like they'll rain but they don't. In Japan I had a feeling of clarity and here that I'm being told powerful secrets in a language I don't understand.
In Dali the woman are stronger than the men and their bright headwraps are glowing. The fish jump out of the pink resevoire and roll on the surface. The man with a machine reels in two parrallel lines from the depths of the lake. Young women take photo's of each other wearing a wedding gown. I make the first soccer goal I can remember scoring.
Dali is between mountains and a big lake. The population includes a bubble of young travelers and settlers who run and feed the tourist infrastructure. Mostly though, these buisnesses make enough for the owners to continue living here and no more. Living is cheap, the weather is nice, the travelers generally unoffensive. The local people are famously diverse, industrious, friendly and the fresh and proud inheritors of a rich, colorful, humble, and extremely old culture.
Farm lands spread out from the mountains and surround the giant lake and moslty woman from the Chinese minority group Bai People work the land - the men have moved to factory towns. There is a big city 30 minutes away which also feeds the life of Dali. My feeling is that the area's 3000 year old culture survived the transition to modernity with integrity intact - the economy does not rely soley on tourism but allows and supports tourism. Because of the self sufficiency and self respect of the local people here it is possible to say the scenery is beautiful but the people are more beautiful and its the same with mystery as with beauty.
The strong backed women working the farms, and a functional Chinese city gives the place roots and stability. It's within this context that the bubble of Dali life can exist. The atmosphere is relaxed. Educated Chinese dudes, male and female mix with westerners and create cafe's with sophisticated DVD collections. You can sit around drinking tea and watching movies, playing ping pong, strolling the streets, playing soccer, making day trips around the lake, or whatever.
It's not unusual or unpleasent to let day after day pass by eating good food, sitting around with other travelers, reading and playing on the internet. It's not even unusual for several years to pass by in the same way. Like the other aspects of life in Dali its hard to get a feel for time. For example, yesterday I said, "maybe I'll leave Dali the day after tomorrow." I wont. Maybe I will leave the day after tomorrow.
The traveler community is by and large transient so its not so unlike Williamsberg Brooklyn or a college town. There is a neighborhood with roots somewhere, everywhere around you but it's ultimately not for you. Where did we come from and where are we going? What are we doing? The common bond of the Bai people might stretch out 3000 years but what do the travelers and settlers share? In Dali it might be something like wanting to escape modern life - to live simply and beautifully. They seek the experience of an authentically peaceful life just as the college grads in Brooklyn want a fresh vibrant city life. We share a search and the findings are tenuous.
We look to eachother to see if we foundit. At the good party in Brooklyn or Berlin, in the cafe' of Dali, we look at our neighbors and wonder if they are satisfied - we never know. The culture we share is of searching and not of finding, of traveling but not arriving. We all remind me of the Japanese tourists who would dress themselves in arctic gear, take a bus to a mountain, take a gondala to the top, take a picture from the top, look to eachother for the next move, and hustle back to the gondala, the bus, the next stop.
With the photo we hope to prove to ourselves and to others that we have found something. The 35 year old women have husbands and they travel to mountains in Hokkaido, the 20 year old boys have girls around them. But satisfaction and contentment are so evasive.
Dali city gives a small taste of what it might be like to be rich. It's a place where you can be rich for cheap. You don't have luxury or elegance really. You won't find a much of a park avenue crowd here but for college graduates, travelers, middle class citizens of the world, it can be a kind of honeymoon.
Also, there is no real presence of rich people here so travelers are close to the top of the economic ladder. Finally, you don't have much to do, you are not making, growing, taking part in something which you need or believe deeply in, except maybe oneself. All this leads to the regretable conclusion that despite the countless qualities of Dali, for the foriegner, be her Chinese or Israeli, life here can lack meaning.
I'm finding that the brilliance of things can confuse and even alienate me. I am surrounded by beauty and peace and am not satisfied? Why? Sometimes I think its easier to blame ourselves than to listen to the strange advice of our heart. "Leave this beautiful place" says mine. This is a fact which I really struggle with because there is so much I love here.
I have some ideas about solutions to the meaning problem but that doensn't mean I've incorporated them - and there are so many problems. Meaning must be grown and built. For me right now this means accepting city life. Meaning requires a culture that values work but a culture that values work doesn't value living. Good taste requires a culture that values good taste, but these cultures get so stuffy it's hard to keep caring about the music, art film itself. Fuck!
I've still never tried to live, with a job, somewhere really beautiful and peaceful - maybe it's possible for me get what I want in Dali or San Fran, or somewhere. But something is pulling me away - and its not just that I can't make as much money as I need here. Its the edge! The documentary about Joy Division, and Manchester in the late 70's I sawon my birthday a couple days ago gave me the inspiration i think i need.
It must be a romance with modern life, suffering, grey sky's, misery, and cold, science fiction, durability; 1980, Manchester, Ian swinging from a rope, the bleakness! And from this ground the hope for the return of Brian Eno, gems growing from sewers and future magic. This is all to say that I hope my teaching job in Chengdu City China allows me enough time to start a sweet band!
It would be hard to leave paradise and go look for a job in dreary cities. Some people don't even even leave Dali City. Once a capital of one of China's specialest provinces, Yunan, then later captured by Kubla Kan, then maybe 1000 years later in 1998 it was rebuilt to look old. On New Years night I sat next to a stylish white guy from San Fransisco who calls Dali the best place in the world. I had no idea what that meant. I know that when I left three weeks ago I felt depressed and was back a week later.
Dali's mountains are a source for clouds. I think of them as big white hands and the they reach over and through the peaks and threaten to storm. The storm never materialized and while i was in Dali it never even rained. The clouds dissolve above Dali - constantly.
Speaking of clouds, my experiences of clouds in Japan verses China kind of mirror my general feeling for nature in the places - if not the places more generally. In Japan I saw two very distinct cloud processes. At the top of a mountain in Hokkaido I watched from within feet as thin clouds blow over the ridge and immediatly dissipated. This was clouds dying at close range. Much further south I saw the wind sweep mist laying on the trees and bring them into clouds. The clouds were being born. So in Japan my general impression was that things were very distinct. Mountains are triangles, the forest is filled with bizarelly straight pine trees. Hiroshige was barely exagerating.
In contrast to Japan in China, in Dali, I really don't know what to think about the nature I've seen. It's bizarrly impressive, and casual at the same time. The mountains look rugged and high but are mid height, the clouds look like they'll rain but they don't. In Japan I had a feeling of clarity and here that I'm being told powerful secrets in a language I don't understand.
In Dali the woman are stronger than the men and their bright headwraps are glowing. The fish jump out of the pink resevoire and roll on the surface. The man with a machine reels in two parrallel lines from the depths of the lake. Young women take photo's of each other wearing a wedding gown. I make the first soccer goal I can remember scoring.
Dali is between mountains and a big lake. The population includes a bubble of young travelers and settlers who run and feed the tourist infrastructure. Mostly though, these buisnesses make enough for the owners to continue living here and no more. Living is cheap, the weather is nice, the travelers generally unoffensive. The local people are famously diverse, industrious, friendly and the fresh and proud inheritors of a rich, colorful, humble, and extremely old culture.
Farm lands spread out from the mountains and surround the giant lake and moslty woman from the Chinese minority group Bai People work the land - the men have moved to factory towns. There is a big city 30 minutes away which also feeds the life of Dali. My feeling is that the area's 3000 year old culture survived the transition to modernity with integrity intact - the economy does not rely soley on tourism but allows and supports tourism. Because of the self sufficiency and self respect of the local people here it is possible to say the scenery is beautiful but the people are more beautiful and its the same with mystery as with beauty.
The strong backed women working the farms, and a functional Chinese city gives the place roots and stability. It's within this context that the bubble of Dali life can exist. The atmosphere is relaxed. Educated Chinese dudes, male and female mix with westerners and create cafe's with sophisticated DVD collections. You can sit around drinking tea and watching movies, playing ping pong, strolling the streets, playing soccer, making day trips around the lake, or whatever.
It's not unusual or unpleasent to let day after day pass by eating good food, sitting around with other travelers, reading and playing on the internet. It's not even unusual for several years to pass by in the same way. Like the other aspects of life in Dali its hard to get a feel for time. For example, yesterday I said, "maybe I'll leave Dali the day after tomorrow." I wont. Maybe I will leave the day after tomorrow.
The traveler community is by and large transient so its not so unlike Williamsberg Brooklyn or a college town. There is a neighborhood with roots somewhere, everywhere around you but it's ultimately not for you. Where did we come from and where are we going? What are we doing? The common bond of the Bai people might stretch out 3000 years but what do the travelers and settlers share? In Dali it might be something like wanting to escape modern life - to live simply and beautifully. They seek the experience of an authentically peaceful life just as the college grads in Brooklyn want a fresh vibrant city life. We share a search and the findings are tenuous.
We look to eachother to see if we foundit. At the good party in Brooklyn or Berlin, in the cafe' of Dali, we look at our neighbors and wonder if they are satisfied - we never know. The culture we share is of searching and not of finding, of traveling but not arriving. We all remind me of the Japanese tourists who would dress themselves in arctic gear, take a bus to a mountain, take a gondala to the top, take a picture from the top, look to eachother for the next move, and hustle back to the gondala, the bus, the next stop.
With the photo we hope to prove to ourselves and to others that we have found something. The 35 year old women have husbands and they travel to mountains in Hokkaido, the 20 year old boys have girls around them. But satisfaction and contentment are so evasive.
Dali city gives a small taste of what it might be like to be rich. It's a place where you can be rich for cheap. You don't have luxury or elegance really. You won't find a much of a park avenue crowd here but for college graduates, travelers, middle class citizens of the world, it can be a kind of honeymoon.
Also, there is no real presence of rich people here so travelers are close to the top of the economic ladder. Finally, you don't have much to do, you are not making, growing, taking part in something which you need or believe deeply in, except maybe oneself. All this leads to the regretable conclusion that despite the countless qualities of Dali, for the foriegner, be her Chinese or Israeli, life here can lack meaning.
I'm finding that the brilliance of things can confuse and even alienate me. I am surrounded by beauty and peace and am not satisfied? Why? Sometimes I think its easier to blame ourselves than to listen to the strange advice of our heart. "Leave this beautiful place" says mine. This is a fact which I really struggle with because there is so much I love here.
I have some ideas about solutions to the meaning problem but that doensn't mean I've incorporated them - and there are so many problems. Meaning must be grown and built. For me right now this means accepting city life. Meaning requires a culture that values work but a culture that values work doesn't value living. Good taste requires a culture that values good taste, but these cultures get so stuffy it's hard to keep caring about the music, art film itself. Fuck!
I've still never tried to live, with a job, somewhere really beautiful and peaceful - maybe it's possible for me get what I want in Dali or San Fran, or somewhere. But something is pulling me away - and its not just that I can't make as much money as I need here. Its the edge! The documentary about Joy Division, and Manchester in the late 70's I sawon my birthday a couple days ago gave me the inspiration i think i need.
It must be a romance with modern life, suffering, grey sky's, misery, and cold, science fiction, durability; 1980, Manchester, Ian swinging from a rope, the bleakness! And from this ground the hope for the return of Brian Eno, gems growing from sewers and future magic. This is all to say that I hope my teaching job in Chengdu City China allows me enough time to start a sweet band!
Friday, January 2, 2009
Travels Four: Nightmarkets and Roosters in Laos
I took to describing Laos as Asian Mexico. With darker, different looking people, some who live in tiny primitive villages, with palm trees, amongst south asian hills, its a very different environment and culture. I found it somewhere between, boring, peaceful, friendly, reticent, and primitive and lovely. There has not been much tourism in Laos and the village that my tour, you have to pay for tours, went through was fairly new to tourism. White people were amazing for the kids who despite being poor by any standard were very quick to smile and say "Sabadee!" The village was 200 people living in shacks in secondary forest. There were seven year old girls with babies on there backs next to five year old boys with machete's and lush green hills everwhere around them. It was amazing for me to walk through a village like this.
My days in Laos began at about 5 am when the roosters all over town began screaming at me. I tried to sleep untill about seven and then gave up. The Laos people are known to westerners as being some of the nicest people in South Asia. There is an expression; "Vietnam grows the rice, Cambodia watches the rice grow, Laos listens to the rice grow." This is just to say that they are
pretty relaxed in Laos.
My two favorite activities in Laos were drinking boat loads of tea from the balcony of my hotel overlooking a small street, sleeping dogs, roosters, an old couple, palm trees, and then the hills and sky. The other was going to the night market. The market was for three days lit by candles because electricity was out between 5pm and 7:30 - this was pretty normal. The night market was all food and it was beautiful, cheap and so good. I have no idea what i ate. Mostly i think it was weird vegetables and pork with hurbs, a lot of different rice cakes, and man I miss it. It was not so different from very good thai food from New York.
The bus ride from Laos back to Dali was very long but I had a bed which made it way better then my 48 hour ride on Greyhound a few years ago. We stopped for food and I slept and the 26 hours passed quicker than you'd think.
I'm back in Dali now and would love to write more about Christmas in Lao, and New Years in Dali when I have the chance.
My days in Laos began at about 5 am when the roosters all over town began screaming at me. I tried to sleep untill about seven and then gave up. The Laos people are known to westerners as being some of the nicest people in South Asia. There is an expression; "Vietnam grows the rice, Cambodia watches the rice grow, Laos listens to the rice grow." This is just to say that they are
pretty relaxed in Laos.
My two favorite activities in Laos were drinking boat loads of tea from the balcony of my hotel overlooking a small street, sleeping dogs, roosters, an old couple, palm trees, and then the hills and sky. The other was going to the night market. The market was for three days lit by candles because electricity was out between 5pm and 7:30 - this was pretty normal. The night market was all food and it was beautiful, cheap and so good. I have no idea what i ate. Mostly i think it was weird vegetables and pork with hurbs, a lot of different rice cakes, and man I miss it. It was not so different from very good thai food from New York.
The bus ride from Laos back to Dali was very long but I had a bed which made it way better then my 48 hour ride on Greyhound a few years ago. We stopped for food and I slept and the 26 hours passed quicker than you'd think.
I'm back in Dali now and would love to write more about Christmas in Lao, and New Years in Dali when I have the chance.
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