"utopia in four movements"

So yes, I've been neglecting writing and reflecting on this project...and this post isn't explicitly about it either. Mostly I'm just terrible at blogging, but I hope to craft a better narrative eventually...

Utopia is a concept that I've always been fascinated with, because it captures a perpetual idealist spirit, an insatiable yearning for something beyond the flawed present. So when I heard about the film "Utopia in Four Movements", I was captivated by the promise of the title - An idealist paradise combined with four movements of...poetry/art/music? Beautiful!

From the film's website, it's difficult to get a good sense of what it's actually about. But the unconventional format of a "live documentary" was intriguing. Basically, the film is a slideshow of a series of photos and videos, narrated by film maker Sam Green on stage. Dave Cerf facilitates the background music, also live in accordance with the narration (unfortunately they did not bring the band to Scripps!).

The content of the film is interesting, spanning from the beginning of the Twentieth century and the invention of an universal language of hope called "Esperanto" (it's real, I looked it up on wikipedia), to the modern reality of Capitalism sweeping across practically all corners of the globe except for Cuba.
The stories portrayed provoke many thoughts, and explored questions that I've wondered about for a long time (particularly after doing research on 20th century China, more on that later perhaps). How did a century that began with such optimism descend into the global capitalist society that exist today? What happened to the Utopian socialist movements? Did they come upon the indestructible barriers of human nature?

But beyond the immediate content, it was truly astonishing how the format of the film interacted with the concept of utopia, dialogue, and the limitations of humanity. Utopia exemplifies subjective experience as a film that interacts with the audience and has the potential to shift forms with each new performance. During the Q&A, Sam and Dave touched upon the concept of belief in human kindness and love as a form of social change. Utopia as a live performance has the potential to inspire the subjective experience of people in the theatre, and each experience is unique. The film pushes the boundaries of documentary and in some ways, transcends the limitations of media in our technology-obsessed age. However, the format of the film is also limiting. It cannot, as a conventional documentary, be mass-produced in theatres and video. It cannot really be transmitted through the web. Its reach is limited.

In some ways this dilemma seems to embody some of the contradictions of idealism and human limitations in ways that I've never thought about before. What is the relationship between subjective experiences of utopian ideals and the limits of human nature? During the Q&A, I brought up this question and people sort of looked around and laughed, because it encompasses so much philosophy and speculation that it's kind of like asking, what is the meaning of life? But I thought the filmmakers gave a pretty satisfactory answer that just raises more questions...as all good answers tend to do.

So this film inspires me to think about the presentation that I will have to do in a couple months about my summer research. Presenting the topics my grandmother discussed will be a difficult task. The methodology of oral history is subjective experience, and there are certain merits and potential problems associated with that. Oral history can be an empowering tool for marginalized women (in this case, my grandmother) to tell stories in their own words. On the other hand, when I present her story to a mixed audience, one individual's experience may be essentialized to represent the extremely diverse experiences of women in 20th century China. How do I recognize and avoid this possibility in my presentation? Perhaps as in Utopia, I could alert the audience to the significance of selective experience through the format of my presentation. Maybe instead of having a stereotypical lecture style powerpoint, I can have a few pictures and audio from the project. The rest...will be a narrative that I will have to construct. More on this later...

Interview Transcription, Part 2

I: When did they start binding girls' feet?

S: From 4, 5, years old, back then.

I: How?

S: Use this rough woven cloth, stretch the cloth till it’s 3 (che? Less than meters but longer than feet) long. Stretch the cloth to bind feet. When they inspected girls’ feet, I was four or five.

I: Who inspected girls’ feet?

S: It was a leader. Unbind feet...when liberated, they told us to unbind women’s feet, and enforced it, [the state] told [the regional leaders] them to inspect feet. When I was 5 or something, when they came to inspect our feet, immediately took off the bindings and quickly put on…back then no one wore Western-style socks, but when they came to inspect feet we immediately had to wear Western-style socks, so inspectors saw we were wearing Western socks. When the inspector left, they bound your feet again.

I: Were you ever angry with your mother?

S: Of course, but back then society was in that state, it was all like this. Girls all had to bind their feet. After your feet were bound, your feet burned. At night when you slept, you have to stick your feet outside of the covers, burning pain. It just was like that. Just women had to have bound feet. Then, when you get married, they first look at your feet, they don’t look at your face, first look at whether your feet are large or small, the smaller the better. “A pair of small feet overcomes the entire body,” it was said. It was just like that. Women were not considered people. “Noodles are not considered food, women are not considered people.” If someone came to your house and asked you, “anyone home!” “no one!” The women were not people. They were not considered people. You see how unequal the value placed on women and men was? Now people say men and women are equal. Back then your grandfather said, women occupy the lowest level. Weren’t they the lowest level? (pause)

I: In your house aside from your uncle, sister, and mother, was there anyone else?

S: My two uncles. My father was older, the eldest, my father passed away, back then passed away early. Before he died there were three brothers. Afterwards they split the home. My mother, I didn’t have a father then, my mother and I were given this building. It was an empty courtyard. My third uncle was given this court, and my uncle was given this other court. My mother received this building, and had to…only after it flooded did she move into a taller building. When it flooded, there was that building, the flood made the walls collapse. My mother alone looked after my sister and I, later my second uncle built a house for us, later after the Liberation they lived there, said they were landlords.

I: Why were they called landlords?

S: If you had more land, that no one could plant, you would ask other people to help plant, if you ask other people, you become a landlord.

I: How much land?

S: It doesn’t matter how much land, as long as you hire people, then you’re a landlord. If you work on the land yourself, you are a farmer. If you don’t work yourself and hire people, you’re a landlord. Back then, to brand people as landlords was after Chairman Mao came, then people were branded as landlords.

I: That was…the 1940s?

S: I think so. After I’ve already married, I was already 16, 17 when I married. Your grandfather was only…14. He was three years younger.

I: You married when he was that young?

S: He was 14, I was 17. Then people were particular about this. “If the woman is three years older, riches will come.”

I: What does that mean?

S: It’s good! If the woman is older by three years, riches will come.

I: What does the saying mean?

S: Just that you’ll have fortune and riches.

I: Why does the woman have to be older?

S: Then women were older. But “If a woman is older by 5 years, your lives shall be bitter.” Then people were particular about being 3 years older.

I: You were three years older?

S: I was three years older. Your great-aunt in Zhengzhou, she was also older, their ages were all separated by three years. Later people weren’t so particular. Back then, the matchmaker who evaluates women, they first look at your feet, not your face, not how you look, nor do they talk about education. Back then my grandfathers all sent the boys to school, but not the girls.

I: Then you wanted to go to school, but they wouldn’t let you?

S: All didn’t go to school. Women couldn’t go to school. Only boys went.

I: Did you ever ask?

S: Then…no, I didn’t really, I only wanted to go to school later. Later after the Liberation, I went to night school, school for farmers, went for a few years. When your grandfather was in Beijing, I could even write letters to him. I lost it all when I went to Xinjiang. You can’t remember things you learn halfway through life. Then I could even read the newspaper. Back then you always had a book, novels, after I went to Xinjiang I never had time, I had to cook and look after children, I never studied again and forgot everything. Now there are books at home, but I can’t read the words anymore, I don’t know any of the words. You can’t learn things halfway through life, you must learn starting from elementary school so you won’t forget. I remember everything from when I was little. Now, learned things from halfway in life, studied for a few years, went to night school, studied, studied for a few years, 2, 3, years maybe? 2 years? I even knew how to write letters. Now I’ve forgotten everything. After going to Xinjiang I never read again. After being alive for a lifetime, I said, back then women were too oppressed. “Noodles are not considered food, women are not considered people.” Then what were they considered? Even you can’t consider yourself as a person. When people ask, anyone at home? No one! Even in your answer, you are not considered a person.

I: What do you do on a typical day at home?

S: What do I do? I told you, embroidery, weaving cloth, making clothes, there’s always work to do. House work during the day, and needlework by moonlight at night. You know, needlework, weaving…you see, your grandmother is not a stupid person, weaving cloth, it was flowery cloth. I used to weave cloth that required four feet to weave, weaving flowers, I knew how to weave every type of cloth. You pedal on the machine like this, for slanted patterns you have to slap the paddle. For flowers (cherry blossoms?), you have to tap the machine.

I: You use your feet to pedal?

S: Use your feet, and your hands are responsible for the machine on top.

I: Do you sell the cloth, or do you wear it yourself?

S: At that time, when you get married, your mother-in-law gives you three kilograms (jin?) of cotton, and tells you to earn money for what you wear.

I: What do you mean?

S: She tells you to weave the cotton into cloth and sell it! If you sell more, you earn more, for your own clothes. You see how much work it was for me in this lifetime? You sell the cloth you wove, then weigh the cotton that you buy, if you earn more you’ll have more to make clothes with.

I: What do you use to make clothes to wear?

S: After you sell the cloth, when you get married, with your mother-in-law, she distributes it, she gives you three kilograms of cotton, you weave the cloth, sell it, and buy more to weave with. It was like that. Later it was better. You plant the cotton yourself, harvest the cotton yourself. Your aunt, when your aunt was born, I was picking cotton all afternoon and I came home to cook, after I finished cooking I said, you all eat, and then I had your aunt. I did work all my life, wove for your great grandmother, for my mother-in-law, I dyed cloth. Then it was all black dye, and I used the cloth to make a winter jacket. When I had your uncle, I also dyed the cloth black and made a winter coat for him, you made everything yourself. Make thread, weave cloth, and make into clothes, after that you can wear it.

Heidi's in China and can't get on blogger...

...so this is Annie, updating on her behalf. Heidi emailed me the following transcription of one of her first interviews with her grandmother. She says, "I've been working on the Chinese mostly and haven't been translating, so this is all I have for now - I have probably 4 pages of Chinese to translate still, and about 2 hours of tape to transcribe." Hopefully we'll get to see more of that soon!

S: Talk about when I was younger?
I: Yes, talk about when you were young. Who lived in your home when you were young?
S: Who lived at my house? Then it was just us and mother. I didn’t have a father, father died early. When I was one year old, father had already died…then my sister and I lived with our uncle and his family, we were all in the same court. When you went outside and you were four or five years old, when you went out to play, uncle would bar the door and ask “where are you going?” and not let us go out.
I: Then your uncle and his family all lived in that same court?
S: All in the same court. My mom, my father passed away, so we all lived with that uncle, my mom and sister, we couldn’t go to school, women didn’t go to school, only boys went to school, women didn’t go to school.
I: When would you start school?
S: When you’re 7 years old. My grandfather said to my sister and me, I said, my sister can’t go to school, can I go to school? “women can’t go to school!” They all said that boys can go, but girls couldn’t.
I: When you saw that your older sister couldn’t go to school, and you couldn’t go to school either, what did you think?
S: Back then, you all had to bind your feet, stay in the house and you couldn’t go out, couldn’t leave the front door. Girls can’t go out and run around outside. I learned how to embroider when I was 7, embroider cotton.
I: What did you sew?
S: Embroidery! The cotton we grew had to be stretched for 72 times before it can be made into cloth…we embroidered and made cloth.
I: (confused) what do you mean by 70 times?
S: 70 times! You plant the cotton plants, pick cotton, use a machine to crush the cotton, and turn the cotton into thread, after kneading the cotton 72 times, can you turn the cotton into fabric. Then, you dye the fabric yourself. To dye the fabric, it’s all…you use pomegranate skin. You steam the pomegranate skin, add black powder to the pomegranate skin, to dye black, dye that fabric. Older people always wear black.
I: How did your family make money?
L: We relied on land. Back then, why did they brand us as landlords? We didn’t have anyone to plant, so we had to ask others to plant. Then we gave the workers some of the food we produced. Girls couldn’t leave the house. They bound your feet, and didn’t let you leave. All day you do work at home.

The Music of Departure

I have my supplies (1 microphone, recorder, a couple of oral history technique books - Valerie Raleigh Yow's Recording Oral History and Women's Oral History, the Frontiers Reader, many articles on gender and Chinese history, battery charger) and a round trip ticket to Shanghai. I leave in a week. Am I ready?

My mindset has changed significantly since the last time I left for China, right after high school graduation after a ten year period of no return. This time, I think I know what to expect. I will not expect to find people, buildings, culture as I've left them. I won't even be going back to my home initially (though there is a chance that I may be going to Urumqi...we will see.) Yet, I'm still apprehensive about meeting relatives who are basically strangers to me.

In the end, seeing my grandmother is really what I care about foremost. Who I am is tied to our relationship and my perception of her legacy, and every single thing that I fight for in my life now stems from her. On this trip, I hope to explore the fierce love and connection that stem from her strength and my heritage. At the same time, I hope to be grounded in reality and accurately interact with the material world (i.e. show love through service/material care), rather than getting lost in my head as I often do.

Here I come. Will attempt to update more but IIPP is somewhat intense now. Probably won't have access to blogger in China but I'll be keeping a journal, as well as the oral history transcriptions of course.

Peace and love,

H

Time and again, we are forced to make choices...

"I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Making choices is difficult. I don't think I'm very good at it, even though in the past I've made decisions without looking back. For example, I've never agonized over whether I should have gone to Scripps. And I've definitely made decisions that were not necessarily right, or the best, but stuck with it stubbornly because of some sense of loyalty to the decision.

But when it comes down to what I want to devote the majority of my life doing, I start to doubt myself. Should I study international affairs? Should I have dropped everything and gone to art school? Sometimes I think we're all born with infinite amounts of potential. Our potential is embedded within, like little seeds that need to be cultivated. In daily life, we make a myriad of choices that cultivate different aspects of that potential. But one day, does it come to a choice, at a point of no return? If we choose to cultivate one single aspect of our potential, do the other plants wither and die away from neglect?

At her talk last semester, Angela Oh gave us some advice. She said, don't worry about what you choose. Make up your mind and choose one thing, anything, and it will not matter in the end. I believed her partially. Maybe it doesn't matter what you choose, as long as you pour your soul wholly into all your endeavors. Then, everything you've touched, everything you complete, will reflect your deepest passion, the essence of oneself. Maybe the essence that is a person's reason, life-source, identity...only springs from some fierce, intense devotion.

But like Esther's character in The Bell Jar, I'm trapped by greed, I want only the best of everything in the world that I've ever known without the grief, the mundane, the weariness. I don't know how to make the right decisions. But from now on, I will make more conscious choices. I will listen to my feelings. I will follow the rare and exhilarating feeling of liberating joy and openness, and never settle for less than being whole.

what I am to you is not real

- Volcano, Damien Rice

Writing fiction is a process that I'm trying to become more familiar with. I'm writing my first short story as a final project for my creative writing class, and creating original characters has been fun! I think writers must become attached to their fictional characters by the end of a story, because their back stories have to be so richly imagined and fully fleshed out to make the characters believable. Finishing a novel must be quite depressing then, because the author is forced to say goodbye to the characters that have followed them in their head for day and night.

On the other hand, you have to be careful to not get too attached to fictional characters. When tragedy has to happen in a story, the author's sentiments can't get in the way of the inevitable ending. It's hard to take away happy endings from characters though, especially as I'm writing, I feel emotionally close to the people in my story. Sometimes I feel like I could be close friends with these people, if they actually existed. I've never had the experience of writing a novel, of course, but I imagine it must become a much more extreme attachment. I also find myself spacing out a lot more in my daily life because I'm dreaming about imaginary people. Hmm. Maybe I'll attempt to do NaNoWriMo again next year, not that I have the discipline to write a novel!

I always manage to take on too much. My goals for this summer are starting to seem overambitious. I got a letter from the IIPP program, and apparently I'll be taking classes from 9-5 for seven weeks, with mandatory evening activities on some evenings. I don't know when I'll have time to paint, research, and write fiction! I'll manage somehow. Optimism! <3

Only what we manage to do/lasts, what love sculpts from us;

-Marge Piercy

In an ongoing effort to merge art with progressive politics and to make literature more central to my life, I'm going to be an English minor. Somehow, I ended up signing up for three literature classes for next semester. It will be different and challenging, as I've only taken one literature course in college and I think it was an exception in that there were no analytical papers involved. So next semester, I will be taking:

Intro to British Lit - with Aaron Matz, clearly brilliant, and slightly intimidating.
Travel Narratives - with Jamaica Kincaid. I couldn't resist the opportunity to take a seminar class with Jamaica Kincaid, a writer who is practically a household name.
Asian American Literature: Gender and Sexuality - with Warren Liu. Love! He is adorable, and extremely affirming.
South Asian Politics - With the new professor in the Politics department who specializes in India. Will be my first comparative politics class!
Painting I - Yay. :)