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Thoughts on J. D. Salinger

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

The death of J. D. Salinger has been on people’s minds as of late. His stories and the mysterious man who wrote them have been contemplated by an untold number of Americans (and no doubt foreigners as well) at one point or another during their lifetimes. I am not one to reread many books from my adolescence, and in fact I have only read The Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories once each. I first picked up Catcher in the Rye when I was thirteen or so and was in a rented house on the coast of South Carolina with family. The book was not mine, belonging instead to the unseen owners of the house, but it’s red cover drew me to it like nothing else. Knowing only a little of the importance of the book I made the choice to steal the copy, one which my adolescent self later regretted. I didn’t actually begin to read it until later that summer on a family trip. One afternoon while reading the book as I sat in the shade of a porch I was called to do some kind of chore (what I can’t remember). At that moment an older woman, whose identity I no longer recall except that I remember her being strong and respected (some family friend, I think), called out: “Wait, he’s reading The Catcher in the Rye!” It was decided that it would be best for me to stay engrossed in the novel rather than get up and do some work. I remember thinking how I had never seen an adult give such deference to a novel. The meaning was clear: the act of reading that book is one that all young teenage Americans should live. I finished the novel that day.

Posted in Books, Personal, Reading, U.S.A. | No Responses »
Tags: Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

The Haydn Society

Friday, December 11th, 2009

My father is a lifelong lover of classical music. When he got to Dartmouth for his Freshman year in 1941 he had a piano hoisted into his dorm room so he could practice pieces by Beethoven and Mozart. After he graduated college (which happened only after he had enlisted as an officer in the United States Army, served in occupied Germany and the Allies won the war) he and some friends started a small independent recording company in Boston called the Haydn Society. During the company’s relatively short life my father was able to travel around Europe and America making some fantastic classical music recordings. While the original aim of the company was to record the complete works of Hadyn they in fact recorded works by many of the great classical composers of Europe.

Usually discussions of The Haydn Society only happen at my family’s dinner table and among my father’s friends, but as is bound to happen in this day and age information about the Haydn Society can now be found online. One of my cousins recently discovered a graphic design blog that has been posting Haydn Society album covers. The blog is written by the Graphic designer Javier Garcia and looks beautiful. Mr. Garcia’s online portfolio can be found here and all the Haydn Society album covers he has photographed and discussed on his blog can be found here. At my family’s home we still have every single Haydn Society album ever produced, many hanging on our dining room wall. They are beautiful pieces of artwork and show the fascinating graphic design that existed in America almost 60 years ago, and I’m just glad somebody cares enough to put them online.

Many of the album covers were designed by my father’s good friend, and a man I got to know very well growing up, the artist Joseph Low. Sadly Mr. Low passed away in 2007 at the age of 96. I will always remember him as a true artist with a jubilant imagination. In his lifetime Mr. Low also produced several New Yorker covers and illustrated more than a few children’s books. The unofficial art director for the Haydn Society was my father’s college roomate Alvin Eisenman, who would later teach graphic design at Yale, and he was the one that found all the artists who produced the beautiful album covers.

As if by fate while I was writing this post I learned that Shanghai is hosting a Haydn Chamber Music Festival starting today and running until the 16th at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Chamber music groups from around the world are participating and the prize money (134,000 RMB) is the largest sum ever given to chamber music group in China. I am itching to go but I don’t really know anyone in Shanghai who would like to check it out with me. Anyone reading this planning on going?

About a year and a half ago I tried my hand at converting some of the Haydn Society’s albums into MP3s. Being that I am no music technician and can barely get this blog to look decent I achieved only mediocre results. I’m going to try and put one of the song’s I managed to digitize online just as soon as I get home today.

Here are some of the Haydn Society’s album covers that Javier Garcia has photographed (again, his blog can be found here):

Posted in Music, Personal | 2 Responses »
Tags: Art, Classical Music, Graphic Design, Haydn Society, Javier Garcia, Music, Thomas Crowder

My Thanksgiving Story

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Thanksgivings in China always try their best but usually fall a bit short of the American version. Not so this year. The actually day, Thursday, was still a working day so a few friends of mine and I went out for a large extravagant meal, Chinese style. We opted for Hunan cuisine, a big favorite of mine and my friend, who is terribly homesick for her hometown of Changsha. The restaurant was high in a building overlooking Nanjing road, the busiest most touristy street in Shanghai, a place I try to steer clear from usually. We got a late start and the restaurant was a patchwork of tables finishing their meals. Since it was Thanksgiving we opted to order a Thanksgiving amount for the table. Our meal consisted of:

Cold steamed pumpkin with jujube

Cold cucumber with hoisin sauce

Stir fried celery with lotus bulb

Hot and spicy deep fried potato slivers

Red braised pork belly

“Dry” hot pot of chicken with wild mountain mushrooms

Numbing and hot shrimp

It was a good meal. A friend of mine had ordered the red braised pork belly (红烧肉) due to some genetic issue he has with eating protein, he kept saying that since the dish is mostly fat he would be okay. I wasn’t sure about that line of reasoning or whether or not the dinner needed a dish so completely and utterly rich and over the top. Good Chinese food, as usual, proved me wrong. This was by far the best red braised pork belly I’ve ever had. It would have been welcome by both the American barbecuing elite and Mao Zedong, conversly it would have made any cardiologist pale with fear. This dish, the last one to come after we had already plowed through the rest, was in a pot stuck in the top of a large cermaic flower vase and looked utterly impressive at the table. The dish was about a half dozen massive hunks of pig fat streaked with the most amazing tender meat at the bottom all covered in a dark red sauce more confouding than even the most elaboprate Oaxacan mole. Each hunk was about the size of your average paper cup, i.e. unnervingly large. They had been cooked for so long that with the smallest amount of pressure from your chopsticks the whole thing gushed molten fat like a sponge sitting in a bucket, the meat flaked off at the slightest movement and held flavors that left you at first ooohing and then in silent appreciation. It was the definition of luscious. My small bowl was literally covered in half an inch of fat after eating two hunks. A perfect dish for Thanksgiving.

The Friday after Thanksgiving I had been invited by a friend to an American Thanksgiving. The friend in question was not someone I knew liked to cook so I was expecting something more like an open bar with some cheese and crackers. In fact it turned out to be the best Thanksgiving I’ve ever had outside of my mother’s dining room. The meal was held at another friend’s new apartment. He had just moved into a grand place over looking Xujiahui (徐家汇), which can easily be compared to Times Square in New York and is the city’s premier shopping destination with about a dozen different China-sized malls in the neighborhood. At night it is a flashy capitalistic orgy and from my friends living room we looked over it all. Without a doubt the best apartment view in Shanghai I’ve seen yet.

When I arrived I found three of my friends, all dudes, working feverishly in the kitchen. It became clear that this meal would be much much more than just an open bar. I of course tried to lend a hand, but the kitchen was small and men’s kitchen egos are large (especially when cooking prized family recipes), so I stayed in the dining room with the women uncorking wine bottles and talking about why Thanksgiving is so important to Americans. Around eight or nine o’clock the dinner was ready and the guests, buzzed on wine, sat to eat. And oh what a dinner it was!

One 13 pound turkey, perfectly roasted and served with homemade gravy (I made the gravy)

Roasted cauliflower and roasted broccoli

Roasted garlic mashed potatoes

Creamed spinach with buttery crumb topping

Vegetarian stuffing

Crusty French baguette and eight bottles of fine red wine (mostly from Argentina and Spain)

Pumpkin pie

Every single dish came out beautifully and in appropriately American sized portions (they’re were only 8 of us, though we could have fed many more). The only tragedy of the night was a magnum of champagne put in the freezer to cool that had exploded while we ate, not that we needed more wine on top of all that red. The turkey was juicy and had crispy skin (this was achieved without a meat thermometer) and everything else was done well and done with lots of butter (two interchangeable comments). It was the first Thanksgiving for two Chinese women and one Catalonian woman at the table and they all loved it immensely, which made us Americans proud. We each said what we were thankful for, per tradition, and repeatedly clinked our wine glasses together in good cheer. It was all in all a perfect Thanksgiving meal among friends.

One of the most interesting table discussions was about the fruit vender who had supplied the turkey and other hard-to-find American food items. Apparently there is a fruit stand in the neighborhood that, while looking no different from the fruit stands one is used to in China, is actually a foreign gourmet’s treasure trove. The middle aged Chinese women who runs it knows which way the wind blows and keeps the stand stocked in items that the foreigners in the neighborhood seek out, and if she doesn’t have it she knows a guy who knows a guy who can deliver it. I have not been, but from what I heard that night you can not only buy 13 pound turkeys, but also mozzarella di bufala, fresh thyme and rosemary, capers, sundried tomatoes, and much more. The hilarious thing is that she doesn’t speak any English yet still has an encyclopedic knowledge of Western foods. She has a bulging heavily bookmarked book on American cuisine that serves as her bible and textbook and from which she studiously reads daily. So while she can’t talk about the weather she knows exactly what arugula and gouda cheese are and how you can serve them. I look forward to having the pleasure of meeting this woman.

Posted in Food, Personal, Shanghai | 1 Response »
Tags: Meals, Thanksgiving

Notes from Changsha, Hong Kong

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Hong Kong

Oh man, I tell ya it felt good to leave work the Friday before Halloween and hope in a cab headed to the airport instead of braving Shanghai’s Metro. Halloween weekend was my first time leaving Shanghai since I arrived here in August. As it turned out, a commute from Shanghai to Changsha isn’t all that bad, except for the bad quality and exorbitant prices of airport food in China.

When I exited the airport at Changsha around 10:30 Friday night I inhaled deeply. After living in Shanghai so long the air… well, it smelled kind of provincial. Not that Changsha or its airport (many miles outside town) has clean air, but Shanghai’s air feels so adulterated most of the time. Not only is the city covered in smog but just walking the streets and subway stations you inhale a multitude of fragrances that have nothing to do with the natural world. Whether it’s the obnoxious construction smells I find in the People’s Square metro station, the sharp cologne burning my nose in the elevator, the smell of refuse on the street or the intoxicating scents of a decadent restaurant – no breath in Shanghai is free of man-made smells. Of course it wasn’t just the smells that made it clear I wasn’t in Shanghai anymore, there was something pleasantly inland and second-tier about Changsha that set it apart from the sterilized coastal city I share with 20 million other people.

My cab driver from the airport drove at tremendous speeds (what is it with Chinese cabbies driving obscenely fast to and from airports?) and I arrived in downtown Changsha in record time. First stop was the old hangout, Folk Bar on Jiefang lu (Liberation road). My friends had thought that my cab would take longer than it had so they had already moved onto a new watering hole, but that was fine with me because I had a nice time drinking a gin and tonic catching up with the bartender Jimmy. I met Jimmy last year and we instantly became friends, he is from the city of Huaihua in far western Hunan where I spent last year teaching English. I also got to say hi to the boss of the bar, who last year in a moment of memorable exuberance had bought me and a friend a few free Belgian beers. It was all very Cheers like, going to that place where everyone know your name and yadda yadda. While walking the streets I know so well to the next bar someone even recognized me. It felt like coming home, a feeling I had over and over again during my visit to Changsha.

The rest of that Friday night, my hangover-filled Saturday and the big Halloween party Saturday night don’t really need to be discussed. It was a blast, but parties like that don’t lend themselves well to blog posts. On Sunday, exhausted and happy after a weekend of reunions and making new friends, I caught a train back to Shanghai. Why a train and not a plane you ask? Well besides the fact that I like taking trains in China, I had to lug home two big suitcases packed with books. You see, I love books. Last year as a teacher I had shipped over a box of books before I arrived in Hunan and had continued to add to my collection as the year went on and by the end of it I had a sizable library. Unlike many expats in China I can’t just give my books away or leave them for future American expats to read, I just can’t let go. So I left my books with a friend in Changsha and on this trip I just barely got them home to my apartment in Shanghai before my arm fell off.

I had one day back in Shanghai before I was leaving again for Shenzhen on my way to Hong Kong. I was lucky enough to see my old roommate from my days as a student in Kunming, which was incidentally when this blog was begun. One highlight of his visit to Shanghai were the mugs (1 liter!) of excellent hefeweizen that we enjoyed at the Bund Brewery, a spot I will certainly be returning to.

The next day I headed back to the Hongqiao airport in Shanghai and flew south to Shenzhen, the special economic zone smack dab next to Hong Kong that is home to 10 million people and is a monument to the positives and negatives of Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening. The whole city is like one big construction site; yes, that can be said for every Chinese city, but in Shenzhen the land feels even more cut up and unfinished than usual. Luckily I didn’t have to spend much time walking around Shenzhen, a city that holds onto the adjective “soulless” well. There is a bus that ferries you from the Shenzhen airport to downtown Kowloon in Hong Kong, though you have to walk through customs yourself.

About the Hong Kong customs: it’s easy. I tell you it feels wonderful walking into a part of China and getting a 90 day visa just for being an American, such a nice change from the mainland where visas are a real headache. There’s one thing about entering Hong Kong that always cracks me up. They have big colorful posters everywhere warning visitors about carrying in drugs, infectious diseases, and animal products. Naturally, a tiny island city of over 7 million people next to the largest country in the world should be worrying about such things. The poster explaining that you can’t bring in animal products has this hilarious picture of a rather short portly Chinese woman carrying a cheap plastic tarp bag (the carpet bag of China), and right beside her is this super hot Playboy model of a Hong Kong customs officer literally towering over the peasant woman (who looks mortified) and what is this Angelina Jolie of a Customs officer holding? Why nothing less than a “black boned chicken” in all is dead raw-meat glory. You’re probably scratching your head and saying “what?” but believe me, the poster is hilarious.

The bus ride from the border into the city of Hong Kong is short and takes you through bald hills covered in thin layers of concrete, like so many chocolate truffles, and past the tallest skinniest apartment buildings you will ever see. Many of these skinny towers have a floor smack in the middle that has no rooms, so as to allow the wind to blow through the anorexic building. The sheer swaying that the people living on the top floor of these places must experience, it’s enough to explain why Fengshui practitioners advocate living on the ground level.

I’m starting to think that Hong Kong is the home of my adult dreams. In fourth grade a friend of mine and I laid down plans to travel across the Sahara on a Vespa scooter, now (sadly) I dream of living in Hong Kong – wealthy and comfortable. (Hold on a second, I still want to travel through North Africa on a scooter! I can move to Hong Kong when I retire.)

The city feels less like a archipelago of islands off the Southern Chinese coast and more like a metropolis placed in the exact middle of every shipping lane that exists on this planet, like the bustling space stations of the never-to-be-realized future that I used to watch on TV as a child. It is simultaneously a place people go to on their way to another place and a destination in itself. The way I always notice the city’s oh so inviting internationalness is by going to a Hong Kong supermarket.

As I noticed last time I visited the city, the upscale supermarkets here sell absolutely everything under the sun. 2008 saw Hong Kong abolish all wine duties on imported wine and the city is now certifiably the new center of the wine world. If you want to auction off your case of 1982 Chateau Petrus, Hong Kong is the place to do it. So, when I arrived in the city, in the concrete cave of a fantastically large mall (the forum of the modern Asian city), I quickly passed by the Starbucks (somehow nicer than our Shanghai versions, but I can’t put into words why) and hit up the super-deluxe supermarket. There I perused the extensive wine collection that was, by and large, reasonably priced, unlike in Shanghai where wine prices are often jacked up like an American home before the recession. I went with an organic Australian Riesling that was a comfortable 99 Hong Kong dollars, a gift to myself in that city of self pampering. I also ordered a real cheeseburger that was fantastic.

While in Hong Kong I stayed in my company’s private apartment way up near the top of the mid-levels escalator in the land of polished Lamborghinis and private tennis lessons. I think I’ll let the view speak for itself:

The building was just as luxurious as the view. They even sterilize the elevator buttons hourly:

I managed to make it up to the top of Mount Victoria, which I had skipped on the last visit due to an interminable blanket of fog. I snapped some photos and walked slowly through the muggy forests and the egregiously expensive apartment complexes back down to the neighborhood I was staying in.

I then did the only natural thing and ordered a heaping pile of Mexican food for one. This was followed with the purchase of a full pint of Ben & Jerry’s Mint Cookie ice cream (Hong Kong is the part of China that sells Ben & Jerry’s) that I took back to the apartment to chow on while sipping my Australian wine. I had hoped to save the majority of the ice cream for breakfast (a favorite early morning meal of mine that I learned to love while studying in Burlington, Vermont), but the freezer was one solid block of ice. I had to bite the bullet and eat the full pint of ice cream and drink the bottle of wine while simultaneously snacking on the leftover chips and salsa from my diabetes-inducing cheese-covered Mexican feast. I decided to stay in and watch cable TV, so that I could more easily consume my ice cream (isn’t it interesting how TV makes eating forgettable, almost dream like?), before rolling my engorged body to the bedroom. Lucky for me the master bedroom had such a wonderful view I forget all about the extreme levels of heartburn that were burning apart my digestive system.

And that was my vacation.

Posted in Changsha, Hong Kong, Hunan, Personal, Photography, Travel | 1 Response »
Tags: Changsha, Food, Halloween, Hong Kong, Travel

Off to Changsha and Hong Kong

Friday, October 30th, 2009

qipao

General thinking is that for one to celebrate Halloween properly one needs a abundance of Americans. I mean, who else in the world grew up trick or treating as a kid before moving on to less PC non-candy-related activities. It binds us in a way. (If your un-American society also celebrates Halloween, I apologize. It’s easy to ignore everyone else when you grow up American.) Here in Shanghai there are not only an abundance of Americans but also a great big crowd of other party-loving folks wanting to get in on this holiday of badly dressed drunks. The amount of bars and clubs hosting Halloween parties in Shanghai this weekend is downright monstrous, I’ve never seen anything like it in any other Chinese city. For me though I need to leave town. I want a more pure American Halloween experience, plus I’ve been here for 3 months without a single trip out of the city. So I’m headed back to Changsha, capital of Hunan province, where many of my old American teacher colleagues still live and we’re going to throw a bombastic party. Instead of last year’s Baijiu punch watercooler (that poor machine still pumps out water that tastes like rubbing alcohol) there will be punch in a bowl, I believe. My costume will also be improved. Instead of my vile smelling Indian hair extensions and un-shaven bum look from last year I’ve borrowed a tailored Qipao (旗袍) from my Japanese roommate along with her fur scarf and fake pearls. While I’m still don’t have any heels to wear one of my Chinese colleagues just lent me her small purse, which matches the dress perfectly. I work with such thoughtful women. By the way, my coworkers are loving the fact that I’m wearing a dress for a holiday that they will all be sleeping through. They just don’t understand…

After Changsha I’m off to Hong Kong (via Shenzhen) for work. Pictures and stories will be posted once I’m back to my normal day-to-day.

Posted in Changsha, Hong Kong, Hunan, Personal, Travel | No Responses »

The Life of John Zeidman

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Americans have been coming to China for centuries and they will continue to come long after my generation has left this world. In fact, the first ones arrived in China in 1784 aboard the ship Empress of China, hoping to trade American ginseng for Chinese tea, porcelain, and other goods. I have always enjoyed reading and hearing about these experiences, whether they happened a hundred years ago or last week. Even with the great strides the world has taken and the developments these two countries have made, a trip from America to China is still an undeniable adventure. Young men and women floating along in their lives in America with no hardened idea of what they want out of life may find themselves taking the flight to China and once there a new world of opportunity opens before them, and yes, even adventure. China can intoxicate men with its vibrant cities, ancient culture, and a language that can make the most cynical of students see the beauty of learning a foreign tongue. This country can literally provide everything that some young Americans need to make sense of this world, to see the way forward.

When Mozart first sat down at the harpsichord there must have been a click in his brain, a puzzle fitting into place. For some, China can provide a similar epiphany. It was this way for me and I know I am not alone in my sentiments. While I am not saying I am destined to devote my whole life to China, I am just as sure that there was a profound click in my brain after my first trip to Beijing as a high school student. It wasn’t something I could just brush off as I headed back to America. There was something about this country that fulfilled my childhood dreams of foreign discovery in such a profound way and it gave me something useful to pursue in life. Ever since that cold January day when I landed in Beijing that’s what I’ve been doing. I don’t know where it will take me, but I know it will be worth it.

If this all sounds overly romantic, please excuse me. I’ve just finished reading the story of an American that came to China to study a full five years before I was even born. His name was John Zeidman and for him, like me and many other others, “China seemed to bring everything together.”

The story I read was written by Calvin Trillin and published in the New Yorker magazine on October 7, 1985. I found my way to this mid-eighties copy of the New Yorker by way of a journalist I respect a lot, James Fallows. You see Mr. Fallows just published a small article (all articles feel small in comparison to New Yorker articles) for the Atlantic magazine about an American couple who live in the town of Xizhou in my former home province of Yunnan. To keep it short, they are trying to keep Xizhou from becoming the tourist wasteland that other historical towns in the hinterland of Yunnan have become (I’m looking at you Lijiang). They run a community center/inn than supports the local arts and provides a more fulfilling way for visitors to appreciate that most beautiful and interesting corner of China. Something mentioned in the article stuck out at me, though. In the article we learn that the American husband, Brian Linden, came to China in the early 1980s as a student:

Soon after his arrival, he was spotted by a movie director while jogging down a Beijing street and cast as the lead in a Chinese movie. The film, He Came From Across the Pacific, was based on the tragic story of John Zeidman, an American exchange student who caught viral encephalitis in China and died in 1982.

I had never heard of John Zeidman, but I was instantly interested. For a Chinese movie to have been made about an American student who came to China at that time, when relations between America and China were just beginning to include student exchanges, it was bound to be, at the very least, a good story and most likely a big deal. Luckily for me before I came to Shanghai I packed a good chunk of my father’s “The Complete New Yorker,” which is stored on DVDs, and I had the 1984-1997 disc. So today while there was a lull at work I stuck in the disc and brought up the article. The information used in this post is entirely from that New Yorker article, unless otherwise noted; there was little more that I could find about him online and no photographs. If you have a subscription to the magazine I suggest you read the article online.

I would like to add that in writing this post I don’t want to hurt anyone by rehashing a painful story, it was just that I found this young man’s experience in China so absolutely fascinating and heart wrenching. The fact that no one I know my age living in China has heard of him is unacceptable to me. Historians tell stories worth telling and this is without a doubt just such a story

Click to continue »

Posted in America, Beijing, History, Internet, Personal | 3 Responses »
Tags: Beijing, Beijing Normal University, encephalitis, James Fallows, Japanese encephalitis, John Zeidman, New Yorker, President Regan, Sidwell Friends School, Zeidman, Zhao Ziyang

Food and the Environment in China

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

Rapeseed in early Spring, Hunan

Food is reason enough to live in China. I can eat dynamite soup dumplings right in my neighborhood and then get a chocolate filled croissant for dessert. What a world! Less wonderful is what the inescapable effect of China’s economic development, massive population, and never ending migration of young people to cities (the largest migration in human history!) is having on the environment and food systems on which we depend on here. If you have read books such as Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma or seen the recent documentary Food Inc., then you know that America’s food systems are killing us and the earth we live on, while also endangering workers’ lives and making agriculture a mundane and economically in-viable enterprise. There’s no question that we have our problems back in the States.

More worrying is the fact that China, a country about 4 times the size of ours, is willingly emulating our disastrous practices. You see it in the faces of Chinese kids begging their parents to take them to a packed KFC for some fried chicken, you can see it in the rural towns populated with only grandparents and babies where vegetables are grown using chemical pesticides and fertilizers on ancient fields that cover every available space (the young adults are all off working in factories and cities on the coast), you can even see it in the supermarkets of Shanghai, which are filled with expensive processed foods, endless shelves of soda and fruits imported from far away countries. Now, America still has a monopoly on having the unhealthiest, fattest, most environmentally degrading food systems on the planet, but the pace of change in China seems to be causing a whole lot of problems over here, many which may never be rectified.

Speaking of the utter destruction of the environment from which we will never recover, you simply MUST check out the amazing photography of Lu Guang. Lu has been documenting the effects of the rape of mother nature happening everyday in China, while keeping a keen eye on how environmental destruction affects people’s lives. Lu also won this year’s $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography from the Asia Society in New York and has been getting a bit of press because of this (hello New York Times!). Dear reader, take a minute and look at these pictures and feel horrible for the rest of your day, especially if you live in China. By the way, the water of both the Yellow and Yangtze rivers is now too polluted to even be used for agricultural irrigation, but I just got a plastic Hello Kitty toy in my box of cereal today, so no worries! Bostonians are welcome to go drink a cup of the Charles river while they ponder such environmental issues.

Now lets take a 180 and talk about something that doesn’t want to make you vomit and worry about your unborn child’s future: organic gardening. I recently read an article on the China Study Group about a host of new organic community supported agriculture programs in China, though the article mostly focuses on one based in a village outside the city of Chengdu (I gotta thank Danwei for the heads up on this). There seven families in Anyang village are growing vegetables organically (though they are unregistered, apparently it’s hard to get that in China) and they then market these vegetables to urban residents. This project was started by the efforts of a Chinese NGO, as the article says:

This project was first initiated by the Chengdu Urban Rivers Association – an NGO spun off of the Chengdu government’s 10 year project to clean up the rivers in 2003. CURA discovered that 60% of the remaining pollution was coming from agro-chemicals, so it embarked on a project to promote organic farming in the villages upstream from Chengdu, starting with Anlong village in Pi County as a pilot site. In 2005 CURA met with the villagers and began to work out a project, starting with 20 volunteer households. Originally they didn’t focus on marketing or certification, since these households farmed mainly for use, relying on migrant labor and business for cash income. But several households decided to use their organic-ness as a selling point for marketing their produce, and after a couple years of experimentation, worked out an arrangement that cosmopolitan NGO supporters likened to the North American “CSA” system, but seems to me more like European experiments with “social agriculture,” in that the farmers….are trying to make their relations with consumers more than one-dimensional buyer-seller relations by developing friendships with consumers and periodically organizing open-house events in the village, where the farmers teach the city-slickers how to farm.

While organic community supported agriculture is great, it is a very small part of China’s vast food systems, most of the country eats food that is produced in ways that are not environmentally friendly and that are often not safe or clean. One thing is for sure though, China does not waste food, or anything for that matter, the way we do in America. One common example is the way restaurants in China dispose of food scraps and leftovers. In restaurants all over the country the leftovers and scraps are put into big plastic barrels that are picked up at the end of the day by some poor soul who takes the barrels to farms where the scraps are fed to pigs, at least that’s the explanation I had always heard. So I was surprised and disgusted to find on ChinaSmack that this is not always the case.

slop-swill-oil-wuhan-china

In a story called, “Discarded Food Waste Slop Recycled into Cooking Oil,” a set of completely vomit-worthy photographs shows how some people in the city of Wuhan, in Hubei province, have been dumping food slop into big tanks where they skim off the used oil and lightly filter it for use in cooking. Don’t worry though, the people doing it say, “Slop oil is safe to eat.” I’m all for recycling and reusing materials, but this is just disgusting. There are many cases of food production in China that are less than clean, I’ve personally seen some of them, though for me this one takes the cake.

I guess, even though it wasn’t planned, this post ended up a little one-sided. While there are good strategies being developed when it comes to food and the environment in China, and though these days you will find a healthy paunch on a chunk of China’s population that makes photographs taken a hundred years ago of China’s working poor look alien, even with all of that the future doesn’t look good. The expensive gourmet hamburgers and imported Belgian beer I can find in today’s Shanghai feel less like an example of humankind’s path to a better future, but rather more like a shining example of opulence and prosperity that we may never see again, a Pax Romana for our age.

According to a gathering of agronomists and development experts in Rome this month we need to increase food production by 50% over the next 20 years just to make sure people don’t start starving to death and in 4o years we will have to feed 9.1 billion people, a 70% increase in food production (via the NYTimes). When I look out at the mountains of Hunan and see that every possible inch is being used for agriculture or when after asking my students in Huaihua if they think that the polluted river running through their home city (like rivers in 90% of Chinese cities) will be clean enough for their children to swim in or their children’s children and all I get is a dead silence, I get worried. The bad thing is its not even China we have to worry about the most, this is after all a country whose population will start to decline after 2050 (if policies stay where they are), but rather all the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The famed Green Revolution that brought super-sized rice and wheat to the world has done a lot to end world hunger and allow for the economic growth we’ve seen over the last 60 odd years, but it will only do so much. Lets not even ponder the myriad human rights, medical and military issues that a starving planet can bring up. I can’t help but feel that I’m going to see a lot of sad things in my lifetime.

Posted in Environmental Issues, Food, News, Personal | 2 Responses »
Tags: agriculture, America, China, environment, Food, food systems, organic agriculture, pollution

From Newton to Hollywood

Saturday, August 29th, 2009

I always get excited about people from my hometown (Newton, Massachusetts) making it big in Hollywood. There are more of them than you would think. Anyway, today I saw mention of my great city in a New Yorker magazine article about the famous horror film director Eli Roth.

As a party trick, when he was growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, his mother once hired a magician to cut him in half with a chainsaw. “What other mother would do that?” Roth asked the other day at a West Hollywood café. “My parents have always been supportive.”

Eli Roth is famous for his “torture porn” films (no porn involved, just ghastly, bloody torture), such as “Cabin Fever” and ”Hostel” (parts one and two). These days you can see him in Quentin Tarantino’s new film “Inglorious Basterds,” Mr. Tarantino also produced both “Hostel”s, where Mr. Roth plays a baseball-bat-wielding Nazi killer called the the Bear Jew. It’s great to see a Newton Jew – the city’s population is roughly 50% Jewish – involved in a project like “Inglorious Basterds” where American Jews brutally torture and kill Nazi officers in occupied France. I like to think that Newton would be really proud. Looks like a Newton Passover Seder even helped Tarantino with the film:

[Eli Roth] served as Tarantino’s unofficial “Jewish fact-checker.” (His mother even appears as a Nazi collaborator.) “Quentin asked me, ‘Would a Jew offer absolution if it meant ending the war?’” Roth recalled. “I told him, ‘The Jews are more angry now about shit from seven thousand years ago than we were seven thousand years ago. We never forget, and we do not forgive. But if you want a good picture of Jewish psychology you should come to my Passover Seder.’ ” Tarantino went to the Seder, and he told Roth that all the talk of Jewish traditions gave him the confidence to finish the script.

Woah! I just realized that another Newton native, B.J. Novak, is also a star in “Inglorious Basterds.” He’s famous for his role in The Office tv show, which he also helps write. And, lets not forget, The Office also stars the devilishly handsome John Krasinski, another fabulous Newton native. Give it up for Newton!

Posted in Newton, Personal | No Responses »
Tags: B.J. Novak, Eli Roth, Inglorious Basterds, John Krasinski, Massachusetts, Newton, Quentin Tarantino

I’m Comin’ Home

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Today is my last full day in Huaihua. Right now I’m sitting in the middle of a half-clean apartment trying my best to fit everything I own into two suitcases. The weather today is just the way I like it: clear blue skies. The towering mountains in the distance are visible from my school and there is just the slightest breeze. The sun is bright and my students walk back to their Saturday classes (they have classes seven days a week) along the shade path under the trees. They call out to me: “Good afternoon teacher!” I’m going to miss that.

Tomorrow I take a bus to Changsha where I will see friends for a couple days before flying back to America. There will be a little break here on the blog until I settle myself back in the States. I have so much I haven’t posted about and thousands of photos I need to upload, which because of computer problems and a slow internet I haven’t been able to do yet. I promise I will get to all of it once I’m back home in Massachusetts. So long until then.

Posted in Huaihua, Personal | 1 Response »

Shanghai: A Great City and My Future Home

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Today has got to be one of the greatest day’s of the year for Shanghai. Not too hot not too cold and with a slight breeze and a bright sun, everyone looks happy and content. The city never looked better. For me though, the city would look amazing no matter what the weather.

Today I visited the offices of my new employer. For a year (starting August 1) I will have an internship at the Shanghai office of a fabulous American law firm right in the center of Xintiandi (新天地), which is Shanghai’s answer to Boston’s Newbury street and New York’s Wall Street and Fifth Avenue. It’s really a dream come true and I can’t wait for this new turn in my life. Now, I must go celebrate.

Posted in Personal, Shanghai | 1 Response »

Shanghai and Other News

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

First up, as everyone here in China knows yesterday was the one year anniversary of the devastating Sichuan earthquake last May that killed 80,000 people and left millions homeless. While the earthquake could physically be felt here in western Hunan when it hit Sichuan the anniversary was less noticeable to me. There were fireworks – the Hunan answer for any occasion, good or bad – and I know that the speech given during the day’s morning exercise was in remembrance of those who were killed. Other than that though it was a normal school day, no parades or assemblies of any kind.

There is so much online about the earthquake and the anniversary so I’ll leave that to you to discover if you’re interested. However I would highly recommend this conscientiously made video called “Afterquake” about the devastated region and the music sung by the local children. The Shanghaiist wrote a piece about it (video included). If you are in China watch the video on Tudou instead, it’s faster.

This week has been my first full week of teaching after being sick and then recovering while showing a movie in class, which my students loved and gave me plenty of reading time. Teaching is one hell of a tiring profession, that’s a big lesson from my year here. Teaching in Hunan’s sub-tropical hot ‘n humid weather means being stuck in a sweltering BO scented room (no air con) with 60 students, often with the windows closed so we can use the projector. It gets old after awhile. I must say though, compared to showing a movie or lying in bed sick teaching is definitely more enjoyable. And now with only 4 or so weeks left of classes I want to make sure I get in all the important lesson plans I’ve been saving.

Tomorrow, after my last classes of the week (Hoorah for three day weekends!), I’m heading to Changsha so that can catch an early morning plane to glamorous Shanghai. This trip is to (hopefully) solidify my future job in Shanghai after a short summer in America. I’m getting excited just thinking about living in city of Shanghai’s caliber. Besides the insane air quality Shanghai has many modern day comforts like micro brewed beer, cheese, and quality live music (Ratatat is playing next week and Ghostface Killah is hitting up the city in June!). It should be a fun weekend.

Posted in Huaihua, Music, Personal, Shanghai, Sichuan, Teaching | No Responses »
Tags: Shanghai

A Story of an Illness in China

Monday, May 11th, 2009

Chinese hospital bed

As an American child an illness like the flu or a stomach ache often didn’t seem dire to me at all, in fact if I missed school the illness would sometimes be welcomed and enjoyed. In those times I knew I was young and healthy and that my parent’s health insurance would allow competent and well paid doctors to solve whatever problem I had. I can’t ever remember feeling terribly scared about being sick when I was a kid. Now I’m older, though certainly young enough to be slightly cocky in the way I live, and illness is at the least a big annoyance and at worse a fearful and unknown hell. In China illness takes on new dimensions of worry what with the less than perfect medical system. Though believe me when I say that the Chinese medical system is very good and has been good to me, this story was an anomoly in almost every way. I got to go down the hellish unknown road of an illness this Spring and it is without a doubt one of the most intense experiences of my time as a teacher in Hunan.

I don’t want to give away what I had just yet, the path to figuring that out is what made this long drawn out adventure so absolutely interesting and scary. In March the American woman who had taught at my school here in Huaihua last year visited for a week. It was 6 days and nights of non-stop banquets and jovial drinking with friends. On top of that I was teaching 16 lessons that week. She left on a Friday and that morning I woke up feeling miserable. I reasoned that I had blown my immune system over the course of the hectic week of partying and figured I could cure myself with a weekend of sleep, relaxation, and lots of water and Tylenol. I found myself completely exhausted to a degree I wasn’t used to that weekend, I was acting like an old who needs to stop every few steps. All of that didn’t bother me too much since I am young and figured whatever the bug I had was it was nothing that I couldn’t fix. Monday rolled around and I still felt horrible, maybe even worse than before. I had an easy lesson for my students that week, having them prep question for my sister’s visit the following week, but nonetheess teaching was an unbearable chore that left me wasted.

After my first class Tuesday my body was noticeably giving away, everything took too much energy. Even walking out of the school to eat was a massive chore and left me in bed for hours between trips anywhere. Tuesday morning was the last time I would teach for two weeks. On Wednesday I went to the local hospital, the Number Five People’s Hospital. On the way there I learned that the teachers at my school never use that hospital, it has a crummy reputation. The doctor there told me I was fine and would be okay after some rest. He gave me vitamin C tablets.

I spent the rest of that week trying to recover, my mind focused on getting better for my sister Becky’s visit. I downed an obscene amount of Tylenol, ate basically nothing (really), stayed in bed all day watching movies and went through a full water cooler’s worth of water in 7 days. On Friday I went to Changsha to pick up my sister. I was still sick but determined to make her visit as I had imagined it. I still wasn’t eating more than a few bits. Nausea and a sore throat were added to my list of symptoms. On Sunday we took a bus back to Huaihua and I still felt horrible.

That first night back home I realized I needed to go to the hospital. Next day spent all day in the Huaihua No. One hospital. Nothing was discovered until they sent me to the infectious diseases building. There they told me that I had a serious infection “in some organ” (they didn’t know which) and needed to stay in the hospital over night. I called my field director told him I wanted to come to Changsha, Hunan’s capital, for better care. My sister’s visit was unraveling at the seams. I packed enough clothes and contacts for two days in Changsha. I was hopeful of a quick diagnosis and recovery, a foolhardy belief looking back on it. My throat by this point was becoming increasingly out of whack and talking or eating (not that I did that) became a very painful experience.

We took the early bus back to Changsha, I was out of it in every way. Arriving in Changsha at noon we hiked around the busy metropolis in the mid-day sun while we searched for a hotel that hadn’t opened yet. I sat down every chance I had. Got a room at my old hotel from last summer and taxied to the Provincial People’s Hospital, my home for the next 5 days.

The first day was pretty easy, just got some antibiotics and saline solution injected into me in the emergency ward. The nurses like my plump veins. Only took 5 and a half hours too, with ample time waiting in lines to first pay and then pick up my prescriptions. Got dinner while in a lucid feverish state, but I was hopeful and glad Becky was able to see more than the inside of Chinese hospitals.

Over the next couple of days my doctors (they changed almost daily) kept changing my prescription, apparently nothing was working (Hmmmm. A warning sign, no?). Started getting daily blood tests, watched as my white blood cell count skyrocketed. Every single test they ever gave me came back with a sad looking doctor and bad news, it was almost comical. By day three the doctors were showing signs of worry and didn’t understand why the antibiotics weren’t working. My family back home was worried as well while they tryed to figure out exactly what my medicine was. My field director began to show signs of fatigue and I slept all day on my rock hard bed while my sister read books. McDonalds milk shakes became my best friend and I watched the swarms of sick people around me.

New crazy diagonisises became a daily occurrence. Strep throat became tonsillitis, and then infected lungs, which became an infected heart and then TB, finally ending in a scrapping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel HIV diagnosis (no, I don’t have that). I bought new glasses because my insufficient supply of contacts ran out and I wore the same filthy/smelly/sweat soaked clothes day after day. Two fellow American teachers, Tara and Maria, visited me sometime during the week and were a Godsend. They brought instant chicken soup and hot chocolate, filling a void I had due to complete lack of American comfort food.

Thursday night (after 3 days at the hospital) was the high tide of my misery. The hospital refused to let me take any pain killer whatever, it would affect my fever and they enjoyed watching it climb – seemingly just to see how high it would get. I couldn’t swallow water anymore because of the pain. So that night with frozen water bottles in my armpits (to lower the fever) and IV tubes stuck into my Heroin-addict-hands I slept at the hospital. At that point I was fully nuts and deeply worried about what would happen to me. Crazy scenarios popped into my head about being quarantined with Bird Flu or being evacuated to America. At that moment of sadness while my doctor thought I was asleep she talked to my field director behind the curtain saying in a serious tone that it was very possible that I had Tuberculosis. I lied staring at my IV dripping, full of despair.

On Friday with a high tide fever of 102 I flew to fly to Beijing to seek better care. The hospital was American run and, to me, was like a 5 start hotel (with prices to match). I started feeling better the minute I learned I had Mononucleosis. Yes, I have Mono. It only took the Beijing hospital an hour or so to figure that out. I kept thinking: “What the hell had they been doing in Changsha??” I flew back to Changsha the next day and took a bus to Huaihua. I was still sick, though thankfully out of my life as a patient with an unknown disease and rare bacterial infection.

The writer Katherine Ann Porter said in a 1965 interview regarding her bout of Spanish influenza, which she got while recovering from Tuberculosis in Texas in 1919, “I just simply divided my life, cut across it like that.” Now, I was never close to death but the long nature of my illness and the fact that I stayed bed ridden and insular after returning from Beijing for weeks and weeks brought a clean break from my life before my illness. Truthfully, before I was sick I had been lost. Life in Huaihua was annoying me and my job teaching at my school lacked the enjoyment it had before. My goals to learn Chinese, live in the present, and enjoy life alone in a far-off Chinese city were thrown aside and I wasted my days away. Mono gave me plenty of time to think and realize how little time I have left here. Right now I’m trying to act on those realizations. At least I have a good story to tell.

Photograph from eyeofstanley on Flickr.

Posted in Beijing, Changsha, Huaihua, Personal | 2 Responses »
Tags: Chinese hospitals, Illness, Sick in China

A Reunion in Jinghong

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

One the best parts about coming back to China again and again is that you can see old friends. Back in January when I was in Xishuangbanna, the most southerly part of Yunnan province, I was able to do just that. It was my third trip there, the first being when I was a high school student studying in Beijing. On that memorable trip in 2004 my classmates and I had arranged for a guide to take us on a trek through the rain forests. The trip was fantastic. After spending 3.5 months in the hazy, cold, buzzing metropolis of Beijing walking under a tropical sun and through Dai villages was a revelation for me. The whole experience gave me a wider and more detailed image of China and helped propel me on some of my scholarly pursuits during college.

Fast forward two years (2006) me and my old classmate Dave decided to head back to Xishuangbanna to do some more trekking in between our Chinese studies. You can read about that trip here. It was August, the hottest rainiest month of the year in Xishuangbanna. Dave and I were unable to find a guide for a 5 day trek after walking about the searing city for hours we were walking home when we made eye contact with a man who looked very familiar. It was one of our guides from two years ago. He in turn hooked us up with the other guide who had been with us. We had some drinks together with great conversation and the next day we were off for another unforgettable hike.

During that trip we all became fast friends and visited some awe inspiring places. Both Dave and I never forgot about that hike and our two friends: Lao Fang and Lao Li (Lao is a term of address used for people older than you). Naturally when I arrived in Jinghong after my trip through Laos I went looking for my old friends. For the first few days I could not find them; the store where Lao Li worked was permanently shut. Then one day I was biking back to my hostel after a day in the villages around Jinghong and I spotted Lao Li. After talking for a bit he called Lao Fang and it was all decided that we should go out for dinner together. We ate at a scrumptious Dai barbecue place, feasting on fresh vegetables, homemade chili sauces, Mekong fish, and really good barbecue.

Over the next few days I saw them at least once a day. Lao Fang and I went mountain biking one day in the surrounding countryside of Jinghong. I was also invited to a dinner with Lao Fang and his new wife (!) in their home. Having old friends in out-of-the-way Chinese cities is a great way to see what life is like for the people that live there, Lao Fang and Lao Li got me out of the foreign hostel/cafe scene and I can never thank them enough for that. It was a pleasure to see them again and catch up over some really good Pu’er tea.

Posted in Personal, Travel, Yunnan | 1 Response »

Twitter

Monday, March 9th, 2009

I was very skeptical of Twitter when it first showed up and people in large numbers began to use it. I don’t take lightly the addition of the many new ways to suck away my free time that are popping up everywhere online these days and Twitter seemed like just another one of these. I have just one email address and haven’t instant messaged with any frequency since high school, though Skpye is changing that these days, and I kind of look down on those that are hugely invested in an online life. Still, living here in Hunan my computer is my connection to absolutely everything and I use it everyday all the frickin time. I read, write, communicate with students, research, make international calls, watch TV, keep in touch with friends back home, learn Chinese, find recipes, download and listen to music, organize my calendar, make lesson plans, and do many many other things on my computer. Yesterday another American teacher here in Huaihua and I discussed this and we decided that our computers are hands down the most important item we posses here. It is a holy thing in my apartment.

So even though I would (somtimes) like to put the computer away and just live life, it’s pull is far too great and I often feel that I can’t say no. Getting back to the point of all of this, I had decided that Twitter would put me over the edge and take away any sense of a normal life I had. I already had Facebook status updates so why did I need Twitter? And who on earth would ever want to fill out another online form? In the meantime more and more smart people were signing up to Twitter and I started to think about it and ponder the pros and cons. Then The New York Times’ techno-geek David Pogue wrote about Twitter and in a flash of excitement I signed up.

Returnjon

There I am. My very own Twitter page where I will now micro-blog (I think that’s the term) my daily experiences and the interesting scraps of knowledge I find on the web. Now I just need to figure out how to show my twitter feed on this blog. I’ll leave that for another day.

You may be wondering about my Twitter user name. I got it from my esteemed relative Return Jonathan, who was my namesake. There is in fact a long line of Return Jonathans in my family tree and sometimes I rather wish my name was Return Jonathan, but then I realize that Jonathan is long enough as it stands.

To get back to this blog. I’ve been seriously slacking off on my duties here and I apologize. Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that after a certain amount of time a blogger is not as interested in writing for his blog, the blogosphere has discovered that this amount of time is one year for most bloggers. There is also the fact that after 8 months life in China becomes a bit more – though never fully – routine and daily occurrences that maybe once seemed important enough to post on a blog no longer have that eminence.

However those two excuses are not the real problem for me. Not a day goes by I don’t think of something to write on here or some photograph I want to post. My life is much busier this semester and I am happily spending more time away from my computer and this of course means that there is less time to blog. More importantly though technology is hampering my blogging. My computer is coming up to its 5th birthday and that coupled with the fact that my internet connection in my apartment is horrible blogging and uploading photographs have become very large time drains and about as much fun and cleaning the bathroom.

All of this means that Twitter, the fast and simple way to blog, will be used by me more than this blog. Where will the internet go next?

Posted in Internet, Personal | No Responses »

The Empty Seat On The Bus

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

I’m back home in Huaihua with a pile of blog posts to finish and a laziness that I’m having trouble shaking. Today I took the bus to go shopping downtown and get out of the house. I take the bus a fair amount here, it’s cheap and cuts down on walking (duh). Anyway, on the bus something happened today that happens all the time to me. Let me explain.

The nearest bus stop for me is near the beginning of the line so getting a seat is usually no problem. Today was no exception. I snagged a seat with ample leg room next to the window. As the bus wheezed down the beeping road towards the center of the city more and more people got on. It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday, when incidentally all my students are in class, so the passengers were from all walks of life. People kept passing me to nab seats farther back in the bus and pretty soon all the seats were full. That is all the seats except the one next to me. In China people often sit on the outside seat, thereby blocking the window seat, and flash you a face of annoyance when you try and take the seat next to them. That is not what I was doing. I was just sitting by the window in what is in my mind the best seat (the leg room really matters with me). As we kept moving along the bus filled with more people, people who were all standing as we jerked our way forward.

So the bus was filled with people, most of them standing, but still I sat alone in my row. No one seemed to want to get near me, like I was some diseased dog wearing an eye patch and missing a leg. Or maybe they just wanted to stare at me, as is the case with almost everyone I see on the street, and thought that sitting next to me wouldn’t give them such a good view. Finally, on the last stop before mine an old man squeezed through the throngs of people standing to sit next to me. However he used only half the seat, trying to distance himself from me as completely as possible while he fiddled with his cellphone.

I try to keep this blog from being a blog where I point out all the weird/annoying/aggravating things about China, because that is so boring and isn’t what I want you all to be reading from me. But now that I’m back in Hunan after my month long vacation (more posts coming soon, I promise!) I find myself once again exhausted, as I was back when I first arrived, being the only foreigner in a large out-of-the-way Chinese city. The staring, shrieking, pointing, laughing, and segregation does get easier to deal with but it is always noticeable and always exhausting.

On the bright side of things, Obama’s exemplary Secretary of State Hilliary Clinton will be coming to Asia, including China, in the coming week. She gave her first big speech as Secretary of State to the Asia Society in New York where she discussed why she was going to Asia before Europe and what she plans to do. It is all good news from those Americans like me who hope for good relations between our countries in the future. Definitely worth a read. Check it Out!

Posted in Huaihua, Personal, Uncategorized | 3 Responses »

Jonathan In China

An American in Shanghai.