o, the things i will miss

i should be packing and cleaning my apartment. but it's raining and i'm lazy. so, here are lists i've been compiling mentally and finally getting down in the blogosphere...

what i will NOT miss about shanghai:

- the awful air quality! pollution, pollution, pollution.
- "yellow plum season." aka "rainy season" aka "moldy time."
- pushing. shoving. spitting. cutting in lines. in other words - the masses practicing self-centeredness and total oblivion.
- terrible, terrible drivers. every man and woman for his/her self on the roads.
- strange identity of being an asian-american here - not fully american, not fully chinese. very tired of being the designated go-to person for servers whenever i'm out with non-chinese friends (even if these "waiguoren"/foreigner friends speak chinese fluently). definitely tired of having to explain why i'm american with a chinese face. immigration, people. c'mon!
 
what i will miss about shanghai:

- an amazing community of friends with vision, passion and authenticity. i have really, really been blessed.
- the folks in my neighborhood: the kind but gruff shanghainese men who work as the guards at my building, the sweet couple who run a vegetable stand at the local wet market, the two hilarious sisters who run a fruit stand with their family, my slightly forgetful and chatty cleaning lady ("ayi")....
- food. oh my goodness, the food.
- street food. i know this is really a subcategory of food but it deserves its own bullet point. really.
- chinese new year and fireworks!!!!
- motorcycle taxis!
- split pants. 9 years later, they still crack me up. (no pun intended)

i truly am going to miss this city. the labyrinth of streets winding through towers of metal and glass. noises that never cease from early morning until late, late night - squeaking of bike brakes, blare of car horns, loud bass booming from speakers balanced precariously on the back of motorcycles, sharp chatter of shanghainese (punctuated by the occasional yell and crescendo of argument).

i am going to miss the glitz and the glam, the swagger, the fantasy being lived in sharp contrast to heartbreaking realities. i am going to miss living in the obvious tension of this city - hopeful for all the potential that is good, learning to hold on to hope in the midst of all that is frustrating and unjust.
  
the past 9 years have gone beyond my meager expectations.... thanks, shanghai.

cups of coffee: 2

mood: sleepy

classifieds

in preparation for my move back across the pacific, i thankfully only have a few items to sell. my brother and sister-in-law are moving into my apartment, and they kindly decided to buy all my furniture and most of my appliances from me. which means i only have a handful of big things that need to be sold, namely a printer and a mini-trampoline.

while placing my items for sale on a popular classifieds site here, i couldn't help but read through the personal ads - this website has some of the funniest, most outlandish, but sadly real personals. here are a few that caught my eye:


It's raining and i am bored.
I like playing cards, you?
seek a tall and fun person.

(what exactly is the correlation between raining, playing cards and height...?)


I am a nice guy. I am bored and alone in Shanghai. I am normal.
Yet, I am lonely in Shanghai and would like to have an "exciting" conversation with someone.
If you are bored, and want some excitement, please feel free to give me a call AnyTime.We can have an "erotic" conversation if you like, or we can talk about the weather.

("erotic" or the weather. huh. "what are you wearing?" "boy, i wish it would stop raining already.")

I like to find a great girl/women who like to leave China together with me when I go back to Europe.

(hmmm.....i like europe....)

as funny as these ads are to read, they were penned by real people, individuals lonely and starving for love and connection in this massive city. i shouldn't forget that.

the hard thing about leaving a place isn't the packing. it isn't the purging of stuff and figuring out what to do with years of belongings amassed. it's the relationships, the people and community i've come to love and cherish. there aren't enough hours in a day to spend with these people i love, not enough words adequate to express my sincere appreciation for who they are, and all the hopes and blessings i am praying for them. all my articulations and gestures seem to fall short of what i really mean and what i wish i could put words to.

so i smile and hug, use words like "love", and hope that somehow, these dear friends feel the intangible deep from my heart.


cups of coffee:  2

mood:  fare thee well.....

waiting. *smile*

i spent a couple of hours this afternoon playing with c, the recently adopted daughter of some friends, so her parents could clean and pack for an impending move. with rain coming down all day, we opted to go to an indoor playarea, where c's mom had signed up for a pass (smart move).

i was hoping to squeeze in a workout before watching c, but then i remembered that i would be spending the afternoon chasing after a high-energy toddler. i opted to skip the workout (smart move).

c is this adorable and amazing three year-old girl. up until about six months ago, she had spent most of her life in an orphanage. she was one in a sea of children, given minimal care and little affection. when my friends first brought her back home, she was a wild child - throwing things, kicking, grabbing... an unpredictable, albeit a very cute tornado.

the transformation she has gone through in even just a few short months has been remarkable. she's a quick learner, grasping vocabulary in english rapidly. though she is still high-energy, she's actually quite an obedient and thoughtful child. but wow, does she have energy!

at one point this afternoon, c really wanted to sit in this little swing - the only swing in the whole play area. a little chinese girl was swinging with her grandma, and when c approached and tried to commandeer the swing, the grandma barked at c in shanghainese to wait. i explained to the grandma that c doesn't understand shanghainese. i then turned to c. "we have to wait," i said. "wait."

c broke into a wide grin. "wait!" she said exuberantly and then clasped her hands and stood there, happy to wait.

and wait she did, for a couple of minutes, until the little girl got tired of swinging and c merrily claimed the swing for her own.

i have never been that happy to wait - for a swing, for most things in my life. after we returned to c's home and i recounted the experience to her parents, they told me that when they've told c to wait, they've granted her the very things she was waiting for. "wait" never meant "no," and c has learned that. for her, to wait is not a negative thing; it's a delightful anticipation of what she knows is coming.

if only i waited with such certainty and joy at what my Heavenly Father promises me and asks me to wait for. if c's parents are so good at caring for her, who am i to doubt how my God cares for me?


mood: pensive

cups of coffee: 2

neighborhood

one month from today, i board a plane with a one-way ticket to america. 30 days to pack, sort, and tie up loose ends. 30 days to say good-bye to the city that has become my home.

i arrived in this city a young, idealistic, borderline-naive girl carrying large dreams and ambitious hopes of changing the world. i carried my presumptions and assumptions, tidy boxes of how i thought life, love and the world ought to be. all the challenges, joys, disappointments and victories of the past 9 years here have forced me to unpack those boxes and re-sort--really, redefine--all that i thought i knew. and i'm the wiser for it, i hope.

the past few weeks have been blasts from the past as visitors have trickled in as through a revolving door. friends who used to live in shanghai, friends who have made shanghai a frequent stop in their various travels....all folks who have come to love this city as much as i do, in all her complicated nuance.

though i'm excited about my upcoming move to another amazing city, i am going to miss shanghai dearly.

one of the top things i'll miss? my neighborhood. i love my neighborhood. i love the building guards who sit outside in lawn chairs on balmy evenings, smoking their cigarettes and chattering in sharp slices of shanghainese with the other tenants in my building. i love that they always ask, "are you going out?" as i hurry past them (usually running late for something), stating the obvious with concerned affection.

i love the fix-it man who comes to repair my lights and stove, stern except for his cheeky smirk, always giving me unsolicited fatherly advice.

i love the husband and wife duo who operate my favorite vegetable stand at the wet market on the corner. i love her gentle demeanor, his smiling but often fatigued face. i love that the wife and i trade recipes as we discuss how we prep and serve different vegetables. "do you fry this with garlic?" "no, i usually eat this raw." i love that they are always a bit aghast that i eat vegetables raw.

i love the street food vendors, working all hours of the morning and night, their gestures sure and memorized as they churn out soups and dumplings and delicious dan bing. i love chatting with them about their business that day, their hometowns and the television show they are usually watching as they work, hands swiftly moving while their eyes are fixated on the small flickering screen.

i love the people in my neighborhood. i confess that in the near-decade that i've lived here, i haven't always liked chinese people: the masses with their spitting and shoving, the masks of their apparent indifference, the nonchalant shrugs from customer service workers and the words "mei ban fa" (there's no way) rolling languidly from their lips without a thought...drives me mad.

but the peng you men (friends) in my neighborhood. oh, i will miss them dearly.


cups of coffee:  1 1/2

mood: lazy

precious days

births, deaths. weddings, funerals. events that are personally extraordinary yet universally ordinary: simultaneously momentous and mundane. in the past couple of months, i have mourned the death of a friend, celebrated the births of friends' babies, rejoiced with loved ones uniting in wedded bliss. all the while facing my own transitions and thoughts of change as i prepare to leave 9 years here in shanghai to return to the states.

life is this strange current of constant change. the days, when lived one by one, seem quite ordinary - waking, eating, working, talking... but the compilation of these days, the story threaded through the weeks, months and years - remarkable.

the shock of glen's death still washes over me in cold, unexpected waves. while celebrating at a friend's farewell party the other night at karaoke, my heart got sad amid the loud singing and rambunctious dancing. life felt so full, so rich, so young. to take that away abruptly...tragedy.

these are precious days in so many ways. i have six weekends remaining in shanghai. 47 days to wrap up nearly a decade of relationships, dreams, regrets and good works constructed in this city. in light of glen's death, these days seem even more precious; each day to live and love is, in truth, an extraordinary gift.


cups of coffee: 2

mood: pensive

things that disappear

we held our final SHAC exhibit at our studio space yesterday. by the end of this week, all the tenants of 696 wei hai road will be evicted and the buildings will be razed down or renovated to sparkling newness for whatever bars, cafes and boutique shops will occupy their spaces.

to mourn this loss, our last exhibition was appropriately titled "things that disappear", and all selected pieces wrestled with the reality of insistent disappearing in our lives - from buildings to people, memories to relationships. special attention was given to installations that embodied an act of disappearing; most works were scratched, painted, carved into the walls with maximum use of negative space and intentionally designed to remain in the studio and disappear with the building when it is demolished.

i debuted as an installation artist, collaborating with a couple of other friends to create a "confessional tent." draped in black cloth to form a black box-like room, the confessional tent served as an installation the prompted participants to release the burdens they carried inside: grief, bitterness, regrets, heartaches. the tent was dark inside except for a shaft of light that fell through a hole cut at the top to illuminate a paper shredder, painted black and suspended from the ceiling. the walls were bare and dark except for one quote scrawled in white chalk on one long wall:"when i kept silent, my bones grew old through groaning all the day long."

participants were invited to write their burdens on pieces of white paper with charcoal pencils or publicly declare their burdens by writing it in chalk on the walls. if they wrote on the paper, they would then step up to the lighted shredder and put their paper through the shredder. pieces would fall directly to the floor beneath - a pile of white, shredded confessions.

i also collaborated on another piece, one that was much more personal. at our 'urbanity project' opening, my friend glen had come to show his support. a photograph was taken of him in deep conversation with our friend oli, amid the art and other attendants. as glen recently passed, it seemed an appropriate memorial to pay honor to him somehow in this exhibition.

my friend faith, a very talented artist, reproduced the photo onto the very same wall where glen and oli had leaned. using ink and actually removing pieces of plaster from the wall, she created an exact life-size replicate of the photograph. with layers of the plaster and wire beneath the walls showing through, the whole reproduction had an eerie feel to it - glen as the only fully drawn person in a sea of negative space.

original photo

reproduction

 

faith asked if i would write a poem in lieu of an artist's statement. i agreed but it was much harder than i'd anticipated. i had to remember. i had to think about details - his voice, his face, the way he carried himself. i had to force my mind back into his presence - or his presence back into my mind. i had to wrestle with the undercurrent of grief and the continued aftershock. i had to consider how i think about death. and i had to do it all under time constraint for the exhibition.

the process was both painful and cathartic. in writing it, i was trying to force some sort of closure by the poem's end - more so because i feel like i should have closure, not because there was any real sense of closure. it was good to receive feedback from friends and come to terms with not having closure, with letting questions remain unanswered.

anyway. here it is.

Letter to the Dead

You occupied this space, once. Your voice carried as a warrior’s call, clear and brassy. Your speech – clipped and precise, a rapier slicing the air. Your endless spouting on politics, on love, on how tea ought to be drunk. Your hands – strong, athletic – never shaky, never fumbling. Space widened around you, aura rippling like a golden globule of oil in water. Every ounce of you, grounded.

Until to the ground you fell. Body flat, a forgotten plank. Gravity.

You disappeared without trumpets or kisses. No last glance from a twinkling eye, no wave from the closing elevator door. No letters, no cards, no sentences scribbled in haste on the back of some ripped note. Just sudden vacuum.

How does space become negative? How does nothingness become so unbearable?

We pressed our Sunday best. We spoke in measured tones and weighed words, dishing comfort like winter’s stew. We shuffled down corridors, fear dressed as sorrow. All the while muffling wails that would quiet a banshee.

Do we pay penitence now or are they coins too meager and too late?

Memories of you burst like sudden light - aurora borealis. Flash of brilliance, then pitch black.

Are you the dust and we the breath, or is the other way around? Perhaps you are here, waiting quietly in the dark. Are you touching the walls, pacing the floors, reaching out to brush our skin, missing bodies once warm and familiar?

Perhaps you tread with ghosts, drinking bowls of wine, pouring libations to the living. The silly, silly living. Perhaps the eyes of the dead see so much more than what the living will ever know or comprehend.

Or perhaps we squint, through darkened glass, searching for dappled sun to guide our trembling steps.  

In memory: 

Glen Camille El-Hayek

February 7, 1978 – March 22, 2011

cups of coffee: 1

mood:  thankful

ah, cambodia!

over china's labor holiday last week, a few friends and i took a quick jaunt down to cambodia. we hired a van and driver who shuttled us between phnom penh and siem reap (a little over 5 hours each way). good eats, great conversations, gorgeous scenery, absolutely lovely people....i was completely enraptured by the place...

 exploring the magnificent temples of angkor

inside angkor wat

 door-to-door monks

fish massage and pedicure - the little fish eat the dead skin off your feet. yech.

life has been moving at a million miles per minute. my mind has been fixed on high speed, and there is so much to process. meanwhile, the days are ticking by....less than two months before i leave shanghai...

cups of coffee:  2

mood:  pensive