Costner: Lincoln

After reading a piece of the published account of the life of our President Lincoln, I am impressed by the man's character in the face of an impoverished upbringing and an ugly visage. Not each and all of us can be pretty, and not all of us know how to develop alternate methods of attraction. I am most interested in the role storytelling played in his life and career. Until I came to the plains, the value of a good story and a good teller was unclear to me; there's no time for such things while adrift in the entertainments of city life back east. I see in my tribal friends, Stand With Fist and Lips That Move, both experts at the art of weaving a yarn, that stories are not just for passing time, not just for fun, but for history, for politics, for persuasion, for making meaning out of all the vicissitudes of life. One can see in Lincoln's gift his rearing in a place not unlike my current locale. He would fit in well with my community here.

Costner: Pollution

I awoke today to an acrid odor stinging my nostrils and eyes. The sky outside was the color of volcanic ash. There was a tasteable difference in the quality of the air here, something metallic, beyond simply the taste of dust one sometimes gets from the windstorms that pass through this area. In the distance a factory that provides us with hot water continuously belched out clouds of white vapor. Whether or not this was steam, or steam and other hazardous things, I do not know. The overwhelming feeling one received from the whole scene was that of impending, or recently arrived apocalypse. The end of the world. What kind of people would let this type of destruction occur? What horrific behavior, what continuous abuse of the land and the air could eventuate a scene like this? Perhaps these are not questions for a foreigner to ask, but after such time here, after making my life here for some years, I am also invested. It is enough to make one reconsider the entire endeavor of career-making in this country.

Costner: Andre Agassi

One cannot abide a man with no hair and such sass. He reads to me as if he is a grumpy man, unfulfilled but trying to convince others of his completeness. Suffering at the hands of his father, a horrific taskmaster that forced him to hit thousands of balls fired at him by a machine they called "the dragon," he could only know he was experiencing just a level of agony on a myriad scale. Has he ever tried to stay warm on a cold winter's night outside Pierre, South Dakota? Has he ever had to pull the shaft of an arrow shaft out through his calf? These are the problems that populate days on the plains. Family? Hah!

Tetris

Having had a chance to be sitting around the apartment all day, the TV has been getting a lot of work. Between movies and Wii, it's actually been a pretty entertaining afternoon. Tetris has been a highlight. It's amazing to see how a good, simple concept can make for a great video game experience almost 30 years after its creation. Playing feels like a brain massage. I need to practice, as I keep getting my ass kicked. I hate those freaking zigzag pieces!

Beijing fog

Before heading out to get lunch today we looked out our window to find a layer of haze so thick outside that we couldn't see past the police station building down the street, maybe 100 yards away. Hockey friends sent screenshots over Weixin showing the US Embassy's air quality index; 799 was the highest I saw. Average in American cities is somewhere between 50 and 100; on a smoggy day, Los Angeles would hit about 120. At 500, international schools tell students to stay inside. My guess would be that 700 could be downright harmful if you were running around too much outside. Needless to say, we ordered lunch in.

Costner: Inertia

It occurred to me today as I was walking across the flats in town center that folks just float through here. I will be charging hard down the street when a Chinese man will make eye contact with me, there standing right in front of my path of movement. He's moving slow and is moving in such a way that we will collide in just a moment. I slightly alter course and charge by, him looking at me, mostly expressionless but maybe grinning very slightly, content that he has ceded nothing and I have moved to make way for him. I am not sure whether this float, this kind of inertia toward which bodies in motion tend to stay in motion in China, I am not sure from where it comes from. I do know that the woo shoo arts of martial combat that in which I see the young men partake involves not so much the use of force, but the use of your opponent's force against them. Using the force from the system to beat the system: this does not seem unlike what happened with the man today.

CONTRADICTION: "Modest" and "Proud"

In trying to express to students in class that they deserve to be proud of the good work they accomplish, I received some unexpected pushback. "Chinese people are very modest," or so I've heard from several friends in expressing how the quiet and reserved nature of Chinese folks when it comes to receiving compliments puts this feature on display.

That said, there is no doubt that Chinese folks are in many ways a very prideful people, no more so than when it comes to pride in history and culture--with good reason. Five thousand years of cultureal development (albeit a development fraught with fits and starts), with one of the world's oldest continuously-existing language systems, with a capital city spotted with ancient temples and alleyways winding among modern skyscrapers... I'm proud to be a Beijinger and I'm not even Chinese! On a personal rather than societal level, the self-effacement that comes in receiving compliments has its reciprocal: loss of face in instances of embarrassment. The nervous smiles that one sees accompanying people here when they do something as simple as drop a chopstick on a restaurant floor, or stand out for having done something minimally foolish or silly, displays a discomfort that makes even the observer squirm sometimes. This nervousness about appearances associated with maintaining face, to me, reveals something about an individual pride that seems to revolve around maintaining a "harmonious" appearance and lifestyle with people and things around you.

With that said, people here go about living incredibly stressful lives in the context of a confusing and developing city and society with an ease and grace that astounds me. Everyone here is bound by a sense that life in China is very difficult; I guess expats sometimes forget that they are not the only ones getting screwed by the system and annoyed by the crowds. It's amazing that most Chinese folks, most of the time, bear this burden with a Zen-like unflappableness that I'm still trying to approach. I believe this "unflappability" comes from a healthy lack of egotism, a kind of modesty: "I am not the center of the world, and I have to accept that there are things that are out of my control, do what I can, and move on. If I don't, I'm gonna drive myself and everyone else nuts." The Western sense of individual empowerment and agency doesn't help expats in China very much in these stressful instances, because ego usually enters into things: "I am being inconvenienced. The system is screwing me."

Costner: Company food

A long ride through a harsh Chinese winter day had us hard up for some chow come lunchtime at noon today. Once again the cook made off like a Sioux bandit at our expense: some type of soya sauce-flavored dou fu, no meat to speak of and some cold vegetables. When there is meat to be had, from the texture of it one might think it is either the dou fu or one of the tabby cats that sometimes wanders through our yard. Cookie is a kind man, quick to laugh, but I am not reassured about his personal hygiene and subsequently the carry-over there may be to the makeup of our meals. I cannot complain, as cold, bad, free chow is better than no chow at all. I can only imagine the people in this land who pass their days with much less on their table than I.

Costner: Pond skating in China

The people in the more ancient parts of this city are hospitable and accepting. I am yet to fully comprehend their manners, but they regard my incredible foreignness with smiles and well-wishes. At no other time has this been more apparent than in putting on my pair of metal-heeled boots to move around on the frozen pond in the area I hear them refer to as the Ho-Hi. As I glide around, grinning and occasionally falling, the smiles sometimes turn to outright guffaws. I cannot begrudge them that; me in the steel boots on the frozen water is sight I wish I could capture with one of the new image capture machines from France. How I wish them to be here for purchase or barter in the Orient! After a long morning of perspiration and achievement with friends, we moved into the thin alleyways of the surrounding courtyard terraces for Italian bread and cheese as well as some lager beers. The afternoon will no doubt prove to be a slow and pleasant one.

What a day

Got no sleep last night chatting with a buddy who I haven't seen in a while, leading into McDonald's, transitioning to cab to Houhai Lake to knock the puck around, to the lovely German cafe Zarah in Gulou for cappucino and a pretzel, moving on to LaoMan dumplings and their amazing meat pies, into an immaculate cab maintained by the most neurotic clean freak cabbie I have ever met--he hated my hockey gear.

Have to try getting up early more often!

Ode to Longjohns

O Longjohns! how I love thee!
I love thee in a way in reverse proportion to the hate I had for you as a child
When ski trips had me wear you, itchy and scratchy and unnecessary
...I thought.
ow times have changed! How I know I need you now!
As the mercury drops through a street oyster-laden Beijing sidewalk,
As I huddle inside for warmth, trying to feel my toes again,
I understand that the only thing separating my lower body from total arctic disaster
Is that itchy, scratchy, necessary uncomfortableness.
I will never take you for granted again!

CONTRADICTION: "Developed" and "Developing"

This is the first in a series of posts I would like to write on how China is constituted by an enormous number of contradictions; it's a primary quality of the flux of this place, and one of the country's most interesting features. Let's begin would be with one of the centralmost points: China as both a developed and developing country.

The Beijing transportation authorities have just completed a subway line running underneath the entirety of the 3rd Ring Road. It's fast, clean, efficient... only time will tell how good the engineering really is, but for now it seems great. The CCTV Tower in Guomao, the so-called "pants building," is one of the most interesting architectural achievements I've ever seen. Terminal 3 at Beijing Capital airport is equally spectacular. Jinbao Jie boasts the Hong Kong Jockey Club and a Lamborghini dealership. All around you, there are constructed reminders of how Beijing has arrived as a global cosmopolitan center.

I am greeted every morning here by the crowing of a rooster outside my apartment building. I live in a typical apartment block, surrounded by other high-rises, malls, Starbucks and McDonald's. But the shop where I get my motorbike repaired still has a resident chicken from which the bike shop owner's family collects eggs for breakfast. The owner himself owns a clutch of finches, which he trains as what I think looks like carrier pigeons, to fly away and come back to him as he wills it. A good friend who visited Beijing last year observed how, despite all the modern trappings, the biggest first impression he received upon seeing the people in Beijing is the very slight remove everyone has from the rhythms and movements of a rural, agricultural lifestyle: shopping daily for fresh produce, chatting loudly to one another as if there was no one else around to hear, stolling carelessly on crowded city streets, spitting and bathroom breaks in public, extreme warmth and hospitality shown to foreign guests, a dedication to ancient medicines and practices. As built-up as Beijing may get, the countryside is never far away.

New Years 2013

The most immediately striking thing about 2013: man, it is damn cold outside. Even insulated with longjohns and multiple upper body layers, it is freezing just standing around outside. Thick bootsoles can stop the icy asphalt from creeping up into the bottom of my feet. On the bike, the gap of exposed skin between the helmet's chin protector and top of my scarf gets so cold it almost feels like freezer burn. While rubbing my hands to get them warm I had that bizarre sensation of a part of your body being separate because it's numb and you can't feel yourself touching your own skin--kinda wild. Nothing a little Sichaun dry hotpot can't fix, luckily.