lumps of meat

In the last 2 weeks I've taken 2 separate spills on my skateboard. Each time, my whole body weight landed square on my left elbow and knee, which are both still swollen up like a grapefruit. It's been a bit less than a week since the most recent spill, and the arm is starting to feel a bit better.

The pain in my upper arm isn't a throbbing bruise pain. It's a deep, dull bone pain. Most of the time, just walking around and at work, it's easy to forget about. At the gym and playing hockey, making certain torquing motions with my fingers or wrists sets flashbulbs firing behind my eyes. I try to duplicate these special movement to make sure I avoid it next time, but something about the way I'm doing it doesn't register the same pain response.

It's strange the way the pieces of our bodies are connected together, and when the system gets disturbed how it responds to a trauma. The tendons and fibers that make us up, and how they play with one another. You forget how much has to be going right for all of these things to work in concert. The only time you remember how delicate you are is when you lose abilities you take for granted.

As a coda, I was just at the supermarket (where I couldn't believe I heard Wilco being played over the loudspeaker, how this place has changed in 6 years). At the meat counter a lady in a pink velour tracksuit was buying what had to be half of an adult cow's ribcage. Still all attached together like something you would see in the meat locker of a Rocky movie, she hoists up the ribs to the meat chopper across the counter. "Throw it to me," the chopper says. With a second of hesitation, the lady launches the ribs across the counter for a direct hit onto the cutting board. She had a smile on her face from ear to ear.

CONTRADICTION: Urban and rural

In a courtyard garden hidden between new-built art deco skyscrapers, a group of 3 old women sit on a concrete abutment screaming at each other. If you were standing on the other side of the 10-foot wall forming the other side of the yard, you wouldn't be able to see the ladies, but you could certainly hear them, and might wonder when the cops would be called to break up a fight. But there are smiles all around. One lady with short, permy gray hair makes an amazingly quick move that seems decades younger than her years, shoving her conversation partner forcefully. Nearly tumbling off her seat, her buddy regains herself and takes a swing back at the perpetrator.

There is a timelessness about the exchange: people enjoying each others' company, gossiping, soaking in sunlight which does get through the clouds sometimes here in Beijing. This is a scene that has happened every day in China all over the place, for thousands of years. Surrounded by supermarkets, malls, movie theaters, and Starbucks, it seems that most people--especially older folks and families--keep some kind of routine that feels like it has been ingrained here since antiquity. Sitting under a tree together, chatting in the park. Taking a stroll around the block after dinner. Practicing taiqi in the courtyard, late at night once the city is calm. As many Ferraris, Bugattis, and Rolls Royces as you see stteaming down the avenues, it cannot take away from the undercurrent you get than this place is so, so old, with ways of doing things as ancient as the Wall.

A friend visited here some time ago, it was his first trip ever to mainland China. I asked him what was his strongest impression, just several hours after getting off the plane. Despite all the KFCs, McDonalds, luxury brands, and news reports about China's economic explosion, the proximity people maintained to a rural way of living is immediately palpable. "Not just the way people dress, but the way people walk, the way the look at one another.." Like you're in the middle of a village in the midst of a city. There are downsides, but in Beijing there's a village's warmth and a rawness, a realness to the lifestyle here that you simply don't get in the developing world.

CONTRADICTION: Weather

This is what Beijing looks like today--65F, sunny, pm2.5 of 76... first official t-shirt day of 2014. You can visibly see the spring in people's step walking down the street. I've read about the phenomenon, in Russia, when the winter breaks and "white nights" set in, how folks get almost hysterically happy that the cold and wind has kicked out for at least a little while. This is the best time of year in Beijing, aside from the couple weeks in September/October when the summer breaks and its cool with a bit less wind. The restaurants are breaking out the tables to let diners sit outside on the sidewalk, the 串儿 vendors are moving their grills outside too. Nothing better than Chinese dining al fresco.

"armpit"

In an attempt to replace Chinglish with more native English, we go over American slang in class. Today's slang was "armpit"--as in "this place is a real armpit," "wow, what an armpit!"

After everyone got a laugh at me showing of my amazing, well-formed pits, I explained the figurative meaning of the term using a story of a town I drove through this one time where, in the town diner, the chef had nosehair down to his knees, and how the town dump was right next to the public pool. Needless to say, they got the point.

I ask for original sentences using the term, "armpit," from each of the students, most of them choosing to describe their parents' hometowns--as they described, rural places where animals and people lived together, where animal feces was everywhere, and where everything is dirty. Ivan went so far as to say, "Beijing is an armpit."

Chinese dream

Each generation of Chinese leadership adopts a mantra that is designed to represent the spirit of that administration. It becomes a refrain during speeches and public statements. Hu Jintao extolled the dual virtues of "scientific development" and a "harmonious society," highlighting the need in the last decade for expansion in Chinese science and technology, and use of that R&D in managing an increasingly connected and demanding citizenship.

In that last decade, China has risen to become the world's 2nd biggest economy, with the world's greatest number of internet users, and largest number of mobiles phones in use: 1.22 billion. Against the backdrop of China's well-publicized problems with pollution, human rights, and other issues, there is much for the leadership to be excited about as the "Chinese miracle" pushes ahead. In this spirit, it would seem, Xi Jinping has begin to use the phrase, "the Chinese dream," as his administration's calling card earlier in 2013.

"The Chinese dream" is a cryptic message with different resonances. Riffing on the dreams of other countries, such as America, how might the Chinese dream compare? One thing is clear: whereas previous leaders have emphasized more practical, pragmatic language and present change, Xi's dream is about a better future.

Construction sites are ubiquitous all over China, and Beijing is no exception. The markings on protective walls surrounding these sites are managed by local propaganda departments for display of advertisements suggesting slogans and other messages: right now, it's "the Chinese dream." When I first saw these go up earlier in the autumn of 2013, I was impressed how minimally clean and tasteful the design was, as opposed to the Hu administration's busy and less thoughtful aesthetic.

The above writing in large characters could be translated as "wish luck to the motherland," with an image filial piety accompanying to the right. Ian Johnson's analysis of the Chinese dream propaganda in the New York Review of Books points out how propaganda these days is moving from an emphasis on Communist to more traditional, Confucian values that were vilified just years before:

The difference is that while the old posters touted Communist values, the new ones largely replace them with pre-Communist Chinese traditions—drawing on traditional folk art like paper cutouts, woodblock prints, and clay figurines to illustrate their message. This is a redefinition of the state’s vision from a Marxist utopia to a Confucian, family-centric nation, defined by a quiet life of respecting the elderly and saving for the future.

Why move from espousing political values and instead emphasize traditional culture in Party imagery and language? Johnson explains the value in having the two blend together:

Almost all the art used in the posters, with its depictions of traditional dress and poses, used to be derided by the Party as belonging to China’s backward, pre-Communist past; now, these aesthetic traditions are a bulwark used to legitimize the Party as a guardian and creator of the country’s hopes and aspirations. 

One of the most interesting posters is the above, zhong guo hao qi! literally, "nice move, China!" The image is of two children playing chess. As Johnson observes, the major question here is: what is the nature of the game that China is winning? Who is the opponent?

It is easy to read especially the above as thought engineering, but to be honest it seems like most locals at least in Beijing pay very little regard. Whereas folks outside China might envision millions of Beijingers wandering city streets, eyes agog as the brainwash takes them over, Johnson's blog shows many of these posters are viewed cynically, some even defaced and ripped--a high crime that, if the vandal was caught, would certainly lead to detention or worse. Especially as a foreigner, it's easy to read the "good move, China" poster as an statement of China's aggressive intentions to "win the game," be it international diplomacy or a more domestic concern. I would instead look at it as a representation of Party neurosis that the government feels the need to manufacture a reality they are not certain is actually happening. As Jonathan Spence writes, "modern China" has not yet arrived, but the search is underway, with many trying to shape what that place may be, in word and action.