"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. :)

Words = Powerful

So, updating this blog during the semester has proven more difficult than I thought. Especially amidst the insanity of last week where three events that I had been helping to coordinate happened. As a result, I basically put a hold on all of my schoolwork. Yet, I choose to update this instead!

I've pretty much confirmed the dates for my China trip this summer. Getting into IIPP (Institute of International Public Policy) complicated the planning, since I now have to participate in a 7 week program in Washington DC as part of the fellowship. This rather unexpected turn of events shortens my China trip, and I will probably be going from July 26 to August 29th, basically right after my summer program ends. I'll be returning to California directly from China.

I've been looking at a recorder for the project, and realized that online shopping is like a potentially hazardous black hole for productivity. Several days after sifting through reviews/product descriptions/etc, I still haven't ordered one and keep getting distracted by other aspects of Amazon. Ultimately I don't think equipment will matter THAT much, since it doesn't seem like I can go wrong with the recorders I'm looking at. I am considering the Olympus Digital Voice Recorder DM-520 plus microphones. Or maybe the Zoom H2.

Updating after so long is overwhelming, because so many happened only within the last week that I want to reflect on. On Wednesday, Angela Oh, civil rights attorney and basically the voice behind the Korean American community during the 1992 LA riots spoke at HMC as a part of the Asian American Heritage Month programming. I wish I had more time to reflect on this, but this entry would be entirely too long. She was extremely humble and multifaceted - she started playing the piano in the Green Room before the talk started. And then, she had everyone put the chairs in a circle and we had a seminar style discussion. She spoken a lot about the role of spirituality and Zen Buddhism in activist work. My favourite quote from the night - "Everything is nothing, and nothing is everything."

The Scripps Asian American Student Union had our large community event of the year this past weekend. Spoken word artist Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai facilitated a workshop around the topic "Defining Asian American Feminism" and performed at the Motley later in the evening. Overall, it was a fantastic experience and those who were free on Saturday got to hang out with Kelly for dinner, the workshop, and before the performance. Kelly was incredibly cool and down to earth, and just fun to hang out with.

The performance brought up so many questions that I would love to reflect on, but don't have time. Therefore I will leave with a video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvpCW2N7VO4

Yes she is amazing. :)

Extra(ordinary)

Prompt: what is (extra)ordinary about your grandmother? write a 3-stanza prose poem of max. 18 lines per stanza. writing in columns is encouraged. each of the 3 stanzas should tell a story about your (extra)ordinary grandmother.

1.
After a lifetime of service you remain completely
selfless. Perhaps selflessness became a habit for you,
like breathing, folding the summer clothes that I let fall
carelessly strewn about on the floor, or heating congee and
eggs on the stove before anyone else wakes. That morning when
you left for the market and returned, carrying a ripe watermelon in
thin papery arms and a proud smile, mother scolded you
gently, firmly. 都这么大年纪了, people will think we don’t take
care of you. The dangers outweigh your love for us.
And I said nothing, because I was supposed to rise
before dawn and go with you, but I failed you. It would have been
too heavy for me to carry anyway.

2.
You raised me, that much I know, but did you ever mention
those who came before me? My uncle and aunt you dragged to
adulthood in 河南, through the Cultural Revolution. Then came my mother,
the youngest daughter to be lumped with the next generation of
first grandchildren. Who had time for stories then, when the women
warriors fought with butcher knifes and sewing machines to
feed and clothe the extra children who they never expected to come
but took in anyway. Grown, they scatter to better things in the wide
expanse of the great world—America, 美国, beautiful country.
Back then, who had time to sit and rest,
or think of anything but survival?

3.
You were at peace with the idea of dying, or so I believed.
My answer to your rhetorical questions of 姥姥还能活几年？
was always 万岁, ten thousand years, a phrase I must have picked up from
TV dramas featuring imperial China, with emperors who demanded
eternal life and glory from their subjects and God, these warrior men who
could not face their mortality. And I (foolish imaginative child I was) believed
that you, with your wondrous stories and wise freckled skin that never grew
more ancient than it already was, would defy time’s passing.
and the world would stop here with me,
the youngest and last granddaughter of this generation.

************************

Some comments on form--

I love free verse poetry. When given no guidelines, it's the form that I default to, hence the form I feel the most comfortable with. Because there are no rules for rhyming or number of syllables, I have the freedom to craft my own sentences. Not that I don't pay attention to how the words are arranged or how the syllables sound--I tend to turn the sentences over in my head until they make sense and sound natural to me. But maybe what sounds natural to me isn't necessarily clear to others, or purposefully unclear. I know that there are still many elements of free verse that I need to refine in my writing, like the intentionality of line placement and word choice. But for now, it remains my favorite poetry form because it liberates me from restrictions.

My writing professor said that when students ask him if they have what it takes to be a writer, he asks them if they like sentences. If you don't have a passion for sentences, then the joy of writing is lost. Interesting theory. (at least I can say that I do like sentences and don't find the question strange.)

Cavities

At this particular moment I believe that perhaps the fatal difference between real life and artistic representation is thus: In real life, struggle is agonizing and draining and ugly. But life spawns art. And in art, struggle is still painful, perhaps more so, yet emotionally cathartic and moving--therefore beautiful.

***************************

Cavities

After putting the goggles on, I become like
an obedient young scientist awaiting dissection—
the eye of a cow or worse, cat carcasses, trembling with tools in hand and
avoiding her lab partner’s confident gaze

instead it is she who does the science
to me, it seemed more like destruction
drills whirling in the deep cave shaving off pieces (you never
know when you're strapped to the chair and gaping like a fish)
then construction, the molding of pearly gates in darkness
and the wads of cotton lay passively under all this
to soak it all up

she tells me to think of distractions when I’m
squirming because the cotton has slid from
under my tongue when I think too much of
silence and numbness and the tools spitting out water light and air

after it is all over I run my tongue across the geography
of everything to make sure what I can’t feel still exists
despite the numbness and the persistent feeling that the flesh that was
once so familiar was not, and has never been mine.

-from a half drugged and numb Heidi after a trip to the dentist for fillings

it was an old theme even for me:/language cannot do everything--

-Cartographies of Silence, Adrienne Rich

I just watched the Disney Pixar film "Up", and I was crying within the first ten minutes. I realized that very, very few movies make me cry. Seriously, out of all the movies I've seen over the years, I can count all the times that I actually got emotional on one hand. And then when I thought about the movies that actually made me really cry rather than just tear up, (that I remember), I only came up with these: "Persepolis", "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", and "Up", all animated films.

I'm not sure why animated characters affect me so much more than real life actors. For a long time, I thought of myself as coldhearted and closed off because I couldn't cry during classic tear-jerkers like "Titanic", and I was the one sitting dry-eyed during movie nights/sleepovers while my more sensitive friends and their mothers were in tears. But then I found myself shedding tears over Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on the plane to Louisiana and fighting to hide my embarrassingly public display of emotions from people sitting next to me, thinking, these characters are not real! I find that I'm most affected by profound relationships between pixar characters, maybe because their faces are so expressive. And when their expressions are joyful, I feel it so much more too. The scenes from Carl and Ellie's life together were so adorable that I wanted to cry whenever he mentioned her during the rest of the movie. The special effects in Up were also so imaginative and evocative. In recent years, it's been hard for me to take special effects in big-budget fantasy films seriously because they're so ridiculously extravagant. But maybe because the characters and settings aren't supposed to be real, but childlike and fanciful, Pixar is able to utilize new technology in a way that's fantastical but not overdone.



I couldn't help noticing that the Pixar films I've seen recently, Wall-E and Up, both incorporated underlying themes of environmentalism, which was really interesting to analyse (Yes, I can't seem to escape from analyzing all elements of pop culture that I come in contact with, blame it on my liberal arts education). Up revolved around this theme of nature, and what it meant to be in touch with nature as an explorer. Of course, these are all mainstream themes of environmentalism focusing on preserving nature, rather than the global effects of Capitalism and overconsumption, but that's another issue.

Up was also the one of the only mainstream films pf my memory that actually features an Asian American main character, Russel, a chubby, coddled kid of the technological age who gets caught up in an adventure.

All in all very satisfied with the film, and now I feel the need to stuff my mind with more cutesy Disney films meant for children. I finally made it to the library today and greedily grabbed a giant pile of books that I'm not going to be able to finish, even though I know I should have restrained myself more. I managed to get English and China Witness, and hopefully I'll get through part of those before break ends. But I'm now caught in reading Alice Munro's collection of short stories, "Too Much Happiness." I also have Lorrie Moore's new novel "A Gate at the Stairs," a collection of Adrienne Rich poems, and Issac Asimov's "Foundation." Going to the library to pick out books always makes me really happy, and the Germantown library has a fantastic collection, and I couldn't refrain from borrowing too many as usual. So even though I love books, I never thought about getting a Kindle because the experience of trips to the library and browsing for books is so integral to my love of reading, and as I really read only a small percentage of what I borrow.

在那遥远的地方 (In that far away place...)

Urumqi （乌鲁木齐） skyline, Summer 2008. Taken atop a mountain in Hongshan Park （红山公园）.



My grandmother and I at the People's Square in downtown Urumqi, 2008.

As a child, I lived in a largely Han community in Urumqi as a descendant of ethnically Han migrants. My grandparents moved to Xinjiang in the 1950s so my grandfather could work as a water resource engineer for the government. Even though I'm the third generation to be born in Urumqi, it's still common for people to ask, "where is your hometown?" (你们老家在哪里？） Which leads me to question, when does a place become home? Is it only based on length of residence, the permanency of residence, or something more than that? (In traditional Chinese culture, it was rare for people to leave their extended family, and home was the place you and your ancestors were born and buried.)

Last July, a series of violent riots between the Han Chinese and Uyghur ethnic minority erupted in my hometown Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province in Northwestern China. According to official reports, the riots resulted in at least 197 deaths with many more injured.

The details of the riots are hazy. On the first day of the riots, around 1000 young Uyghurs (some from the university? ) assembled to protest discrimination connected with a factory incident in Shaoguan that turned violent. But it is unclear how the protest escalated into chaos, violent attacks on mostly Han Chinese bystanders, buildings, and street vehicles. The violence had torn apart the city and irrevocably impacted communities in Urumqi. Some who are not tied to the land, who want to leave and have the resources to do so (like my aunt and uncle who left for the US) have already left. But others, like my grandmother, who have lived in the same community for more than 50 years with the same people, call Urumqi home and are reluctant to leave. And still others don't have the economic resources or connections to leave.

In the aftermath of the riots, the initial government response was to deploy national police forces to maintain order in Urumqi. Now, information flow to and from Xinjiang is strictly controlled. International calling is limited, and internet access remains largely restricted to a few websites. As a result, only government sanctioned news websites are able to report updates of government action and policies. According to Chinese news sources, further state action in Urumqi is now comprised of increased security forces (Patrol vehicles, surveillance cameras) monitoring communities, particularly migrant communities comprised of poor Uyghur migrant workers. The government blames unrest on Uyghur separatists, terrorists, and extremists, as well as foreign influences -- namely a Uyghur leader in exile Rebiya Kadeer, president of the World Uyghur Congress based in Washington D.C. However, this analysis of the problem only glosses over the root, social and economic causes of the conflict.

Recently, the international community has been both enthralled and intimidated by China's economic progress. Particularly after the spectacle of the 2008 Olympics, which captured China's desire to awe the West, and the Western world's ambivalence about China's success. The economic boom in China has not only transformed the face of a nation, but also widened the wealth gap and accelerated ethnic tensions between the Han majority and the diverse minority groups. As China transitions from a command economy to a market economy, independent corporations flourish, creating a wealthy business class. However, the conditions of life for the majority of Chinese citizens have remained the same or worsened. In large cities such as Urumqi, the landscape is being revolutionized. Skyscrapers are constantly being constructed. Downtown, high end department stores replace clothing stores with more reasonable prices and discount food shops. When I was in China in 2008, the prices in designer stores were pretty much equal to US department store prices converted, which is high for us as privileged American residents and ridiculous for the average Chinese person. But as Urumqi rapidly modernizes on the outside, we don't see the invisible people who are swept away with the old, unwanted structures and customs.

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Politics.
you'd say, is an unworthy name
for what we're after.
What we're after
is not that clear to me, if politics
is an unworthy name.

-Adrienne Rich, Rift

what in fact I keep choosing/are these words, these whispers, conversations...

...from which time after time the truth breaks moist and green.
-Cartographies of Silence, Adrienne Rich

I've been thinking about why people make art. There are so many reasons why people would write, paint, make music, create. Perhaps some do it for fame, money, or the illusion of future fame and fortune. Some people do it to survive, as their only means to earn a living. Some do it for survival because they would die a metaphorical death without art. And for some it's both.

People create with a particular objective in mind, to expose injustice and to politicize (For some reason Ayn Rand comes to mind, perhaps because her description of the human condition is so lyrically beautiful that I'm compelled to forgive her politics). And perhaps people create because it's inexplicably beautiful. Art for art's sake.

I create because I see a piece of myself and my experiences in every piece of art that I appreciate. This sounds like narcissism, but I find comfort in seeing myself reflected in others, especially when I feel like my life is a mess and that I've lost that sense of self (So I gather the identifiable pieces from other people's work and attempt to piece together something recognizable?). As Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project resolves, "Think about myself so I can forget myself." Art allows me to reassemble the broken pieces of myself. Good writing rearticulates my thoughts perfectly when I'm too crippled by confusion and emotion to do so myself. So I write in the hope that I may replicate that feeling, that sense of connection with someone else in the audience, if the audience exists.

I create because I am secretive and being too direct and rough with my words and emotions seems too painful. So I circumvent the issue, hope that someone will mistake my sentimentality for originality. Wanting to be original, innovative, and yet understood by everyone, yet terrified of being understood. Wanting mutually exclusive things at once (that are burning up when they are bottled up and will explode when they aren't reconciled) and wanting to make sense of the complexities of a world that encompasses so many contradictions. Wanting to say things a certain way because it's impossible to say them any other way.

Of course, I create because I want to make something beautiful.

(And I have romanticized the idea of art as a life or death matter, a matter of survival, I suppose.)

But are any of these reasons either-or, mutually exclusive? Is there a commonality that encompasses all of these reasons, besides the human element?

Maybe the capacity for art is a part of humanity, and to maintain our humanity we must tell our stories with some desperate hope for understanding and connection. History books say that all the great civilizations must have acquired some sort of capacity for language. But these standards for qualifying civilizations is according to our modern, extremely linguistic and visual culture. Though, it would be extremely difficult for us to conceptualize a great civilization that didn't prioritize language, visual art, or representation (because it would be lost to our tools of interpretation?).

Maybe in order for art to be politicizing, its message doesn't have to be obvious. The very act of storytelling can be empowering because it allows someone to reclaim their humanity by redefining a representation of hirself. In a world infiltrated with violence and coercion, art can be a subversive force. For all of society's attempts to silence voices that have stories to tell, there are those who will rebel. For a woman like my grandmother who has told stories despite the wars waged to keep her silent, her art has power.

Why do you create art?

They are, they have always been outside history

I'm beginning to look for books, videos, and other resources that might help me gain background information for my research. I realized that I have no idea where to start, because I've never done any sort of independent study with Chinese history. I'm heading to the library tomorrow and will hopefully pick up a few books to start reading over break. (I tried going today but I woke up at 4 and by the time I got to the library everything is closed. But I'm nocturnal AND on California time...not a good combination.) So I'm going to list a few books that I'll try to get ahold of and read, before school starts and life gets hectic again.




The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang is pretty much the only book about 20th century Chinese history that I've heard of, because it's been popularized in Western culture. My friend Jenny also recommended it to me as one of her favourite books, so I intended to read it eventually but never got around to it. The book is a history of the Japanese occupation of Nanjing (then the capital of China) from 1937-1938 during WWII and the Sino-Japanese War. I don't know how helpful the book would be for my research, but I know that my grandmother was affected by the war and Nanjing was not far away from her hometown, so this may be a good place to begin.



English by Wang Gang is a novel translated into English about the protagonist's experience growing up in Xinjiang during the Cultural revolution. This is the only novel about Xinjiang written in English that I know of after Far West China blogged about it, but maybe I just haven't looked hard enough. I'm vaguely skeptical of this novel, but since material about Xinjiang is so rare, it might spark some ideas and be helpful.


China Witness by Xinran also seems to be an interesting read. The author travelled around China to interview men and women who have survived the Cultural Revolution, including political prisoners, an acrobat, and a teahouse news singer (According to the library catalogue - what does that even mean?). And there's a chapter called "New discoveries in Xinjiang, the World's Biggest Prison." Sounds fascinating (especially since people who write about China tend to forget about Xinjiang).

I have to include a disclaimer that though I'm excited about reading new materials about Chinese history, I'm skeptical of the books I listed, which may be part of a certain narrative about the east. Chinese history translated into popular Western nonfiction is often sensationalized and exoticized. (i.e. foreign culture with fascinating, strange traditions, oppressive communist, conformist government, backward, third-world, primitive cultures etc etc) Of course I'm not saying that Chinese history and society isn't inherently oppressive and shouldn't be criticized, but I believe we should be critical of a particular narrative concerning "the Third World" that the West perpetuates in popular culture and scholarship. This discourse often implies that "Third World" citizens have no agency and must be rescued from their oppression, by either escaping their conditions and immigrating to a better place, or by some sort of Western interventionist rescue. As a result, the people represented are seen as "objects" of oppression rather than "subjects."

My articulation of this critique of historical narrative and representation is still vague. But throughout this process, I hope to be thinking about these questions. In writing about those who have been left out from history, how do we represent an accurate portrayal of the east without sinking into the dominant, established narratives that disempower certain people? How do we examine and critique social oppression in the "Third World" without adopting Eurocentric superiority or falling into cultural relativism? In my storytelling, how do I craft an alternative narrative of liberation, rather than a narrative that is a part of the dominant culture?

A note on blogging: since I haven't blogged in so long, I'm amazed by how much things have changed since I used livejournal so many years ago. Back then we actually memorized the HTML tags for everything! Now it's just all incorporated into the posting options to make things simpler. o_O And I've forgotten all my HTML tags so I have to actually use the automatic options!

I should stop here for now and work on my IIPP application. The deadline is so soon! Hopefully I"ll have better luck with the library being open tomorrow.

On Writing, and Falling in Love with the Concrete

For a long time, I wanted to be a writer. I thought, talked, and dreamed about writing the Great American Novel or the memoir that would be raw and honest and lead to a kind of catharsis about myself. I wanted to be revolutionary rather than sentimental. A couple weeks ago, I went to a writing workshop with Warren Liu, Professor of Literature. He said that poetry was in itself subversive, because it's regarded as childish and worthless in society. And by valuing poetry, by making a living from literature, your existence is subverting societal standards. That stuck with me; I loved it. I loved the idea of rooting my self-worth in writing, creating beauty from a medium that is so illusive, where the line between uselessness and greatness is versatile.

Then I realized that I was in love with the idea of being a writer rather than the reality, the essence of writing. I romanticized a lifestyle to find out that I didn't have what it took to be a writer because I hadn't fallen in love with the subject, and the subject of writing is inevitably the human condition. I don't write because writing enables my survival. I don't even write to be honest because I choose to hide behind an image that I've crafted for myself. I couldn't bear to honest and carve permanent words that speak truth because those words would transform my reality and I didn't want to face reality, so I preferred to hide behind academic language. Safe, only understood by an elite group of people with very particular beliefs, distant, impersonal.

In life, I spend a lot of time being infatuated with ideals. I fall in love with love. I love humanity. Sometimes I have so much love bottled up that I could burst with all that passion, pain, and sacrifice. But somewhere along the way I've stopped falling in love with the subject, what is present, concrete, What exists outside my narrow conception of who a person is, what a place is like. Really I've just holed myself in a narrow cell fantasizing about what living the experience is really like, hiding behind the language of abstractions, and loving the void between walls of substance.

The other day we were given a piece of chocolate and asked to hold, smell, feel, taste, and see the chocolate in order to write about it. And I never really realized how I don't particularly like the smell of chocolate (it's odd and not sweet exactly). So the idea is, you have this concept of what chocolate is, but how would you know really, unless you've experienced every aspect of it?

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All my life I waited eagerly for rain
because of the way passing streetlights reflected
in water-on-glass shined like glitter
from a fairy godmother’s wand,
or unknown galaxies, or a broken mirror.

Grandmothers and Granddaughters Project - First Post!

This blog will focus primarily on the progress of my research project, which is centered on documenting the oral history of my grandmother's life. The blog will detail my process, from the preliminary research into gender and the Chinese Republic, the history of the Sino-Japanese war, and China pre and post Cultural Revolution, to the experience of living in China with my grandmother to document her story through recording, video, and photography. I intend to culminate the project in an artistic representation inspired by the materials that I will gather. So hopefully through this process, I will grow as a writer, record my grandmother's story, and learn about my family history in a socio-historical context.

The blog will also include my musings on the art of writing, oral history, and storytelling.

I will also post selections of poetry/prose from the Asian American Studies Grandmothers and Granddaughters writing workshop occasionally. This workshop was the inspiration for this project.

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Now that I face making my project a reality, I have a million questions. There's the logistics of the project: Am I really going to transcribe a lifetime of stories into Chinese and then English? (No use doubting my competency now, it will be done anyway.) How will her words retain their original meaning after being twisted and distilled to fit in the mold of a foreign language (that she's only seen on TVs and heard on telephones and from her granddaughter's awkward mishaps?) Will I even have enough material to transcribe? What if she doesn't really want to talk to me? What if she doesn't want to remember? What if it changes my memory of her forever? What if it doesn't?

I'm apprehensive, glad, grateful that I'll have this opportunity to get to know my grandmother because though I believed I knew her so well, I was never close enough to learn what she loved, what she was like as a young girl, what made her cry, if she was happy with her marriage, what gave her joy. Though I suppose I'm luckier than many who don't know their grandmas because I know things like what her favorite fruit is (peach), and that she would recycle the water from the shower three times before throwing it away and wouldn't turn on the heat in the winter to save money. I knew that she's seen and brought up three generations of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. But I don't know if she got presents from her parents, if she loved her mother, if she was scared to leave home as a teenager, if she was resentful that she was born a girl (though I'm pretty sure she was), or if she was angry that the war, and then the revolution came to her door. Or did she rejoice secretly?

I don't know if the project would mean as much to her. I don't even know if she's especially happy to talk about her life with me (though I know that she's willing and excited about my visit, which makes me happy). I don't know if she'll hide secrets from me, if she would want to seem strong, if she would give me her version of the truth rather than carefully crafted stories--or if that truth even matters? After all, the process of oral history is giving the subject/interviewee/whatever you call the person the chance to dictate her own life. And for my grandmother, whose life seems to revolve around serving others when it could have been so much more, isn't it finally time for her to dictate her own life and determine her own truths?

But hasn't she been dictating her life for the past few decades? Hasn't all the choices that have been made been completely her own? (Was she ever afraid?)

(What were your dreams? What advice would you give an insecure, selfish, unoriginal young woman? Did you ever find out who you truly are amidst the violence---and silence? Were you lonely once? Now?)