The Bedrock of Americanism and the Notion of Change

The New Rupublic consistently churns out poignant articles on the political atmosphere, and this one by John B. Judis offers a refreshing new variation on Obama and the phenomenon of change.

Judis cleverly lays out an America whose history is laced with a continuous appetite for not-being-the-same. He calls on the intellectual pimps of our past populace, summoning the echoes of change that have reverberated over and over in our brief but colorful history: "Change is the law of life," he quotes JFK. "And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

Our nation is ingrained in the nature of Adam, he states- that is, the biblical Adam, who is said to have lived unburdened by what came before him. He goes on soliciting words from Ralph Waldo Emerson, describing politics as a clash between "the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, " and that "Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude." It is our nation's inevitable tendency to gravitate towards change, along with Obama's diverse cultural background and deviant political pedigree, that have compelled our country's voters to yield widespread support to our beloved Obama.

Here in Shanghai, the air of political enthusiasm is as exciting as a basket of stale fries. We aren't pounded by the scandalous ho-hum folks back home get pulverized by on a daily basis. Between the Great FireWall of China, the crappy ass internet connection, and the in-and-out status of my jacked CNN, I've managed to scrap together bits and pieces together from the internet ether to compose my voter identity. Youtube takes up a chunk of the information pie, along with TNR and the nytimes, while rogue bloggers and fellow expatriate shangmongers gobble up the remaining slices. While news outlets continue to shape my political attitude, its interesting how I too have been swept up by the recent Obamania rage.

I was going to vote for the Hills. Really, I was. She possesses an armory of political preparedness that will blast any obstacle out the way quickly and swiftly. She's the one to "go in and get the job done," and has the resume that screams "I am ready." She is THE pragmatic solution. But, what's the use of pragmatism if the shoe don't fit? The question really is, who's going to take home the cake against Them? By historical standards, I still live in a misogynistic world. Yay-sayers of our Bill of Rights gave suffrage to the Black Man with the 13th before they thought about passing it to their own White women some 55 years later. And, as Thucydides would likely point out, history tends to repeat itself, with Obama more likely to get a break before Hills. Another point to make is how Hillary's candidacy seems to be driven almost entirely on pure ambition- the woman spent her whole life prepping herself for the role of commander-in-chief. And though her merits and accomplishments roll off her brag sheet with flying colors, there's something to be said about blind ambition vs. recognizing the need for change.

So, I made the switcheroo. Last minute, might I add. Ultimately, I'm just glad the choices for the Democratic candidacy are thank-god-fully promising and exciting, and I have this creepy premonition that the elusive freak-of-nature called Hope looms somewhere close. I wish I could support my decision with the same illustrious skills that Judis pounded out, but alas I'm just a statistic for another fickle voter. So what's the final kicker that confirms my bid for Obama? Homeskillet follows me on twitter.

Thai Adventure #1

monk friend
Originally uploaded by sherryworld.

Did I ever tell you about my new monk friend that's an ex muay thai kickboxing champion?

Before I start though, let me share with you my enlightening experience at my first Thai spa. Everyone must, at least once in their life, go to a free herbal sauna in Thailand run by a Buddhist monastery. Seriously. Not only can you zen out and be beside oneself, its a perfect way to detox from the snake venom your friend dared you to ingest the night before. Once at Wat Pho, one can change into a fabulous sarong before drenching yourself with dirty thai water head to toe, and then proceed into an 6'x10' oven-like sauna that's infused with citronelle, lemongrass, ginger, lavender, jasmine, and other indiscernible powders stored in colorful nameless glass jars. The walls of the sauna are built with robust CMU blocks, worn by years of mileage, with a single frosted glass square that allows that the faintest glow of natural light to seep in. Once in the dark cavern, the potpourri envelopes you, and before you know it, fierce beads gather and slippery sweat spills through your happy pores. A bit more time passes and your lungs begin to fill with a heavy vigorous air, your nostrils clear, and suddenly nirvana kicks in at full gear. Maybe not nirvana, but you are certainly struggling not to pass out from the lack of oxygen flowing to your now-mushy noodle.

Which brings me to the Monk. Across the road resides a group of monks that maintain the monastery and surrounding grounds. By some feudalistic law, every Thai man is required to go through monk-hood at some point in his life. Soontun, on the left, has been a monk for 12 years and counting, and before that, a muay thai champion for five consecutive years in the thaiboxing town of Patong. After befriending Soontun on our way out of the sauna, he invites us back for lunch the next day. That's how Alix and I found ourselves repeating Buddhist chants underneath the canopy of an obscure temple one random afternoon in Koh Phagnan. Upon arriving, the first thing Soontun did was give me a small key chain of a naw (a thai instrument), and he points to me and says, through his broken English, "You, music. You music." (I'm a musician by trade) Then he gives Alix a seashell windchime which, although wasn't the EXACT one she wanted, was a souvenir she's been meaning to buy for herself. It's strange and inexplicable, as if he had spiritual gifts and was flexing his ESP powers. He then offers to "bodyguard" us to Chiang Mai via train, and invites us to pick oranges at his family's grove in Chiang Dao. But the story does not continue and we did not meet with him again. He did, however, call our cellphone nonstop every few hours for the duration of our trip. Was that monkish of him? We didn't think so. We figured either a.) he's a psycho undercover that enjoys hanging out at wats or b.) he's painfully bored, or c.) he's spiritually gifted, but still painfully bored. Upon returning one of his phone calls, he hands his phone over to another man, who turns out to be a Dutch friend Soontun befriended as well. Apparently he received calls at all hours as well. So, final answer, b.) painfully bored.

I'm still not sure if I can classify my experience with the monk as mystical or mad. Alix thinks the latter, but I am not fully convinced. I have a feeling this is not the last I have seen of this monk. When we left, I found the little dog in the picture chewing up my shoes. Too bad the monk didn't see that coming.

Fuzhou: Inopportune Opportunities

Recently a group of friends and I took a trip through eastern China before flying into Thailand for three weeks. Though not exactly remote cities, Fuzhou and Xiamen were definitely a different cup of tea from the fast, glamorous but slightly seedy flavor of Shanghai. In the past, my experience with the Fukinese is limited to the New York Chinatown street vendors, who have established an intricate underground system of selling knock-off merchandise without getting caught by the NYPD. Walkie talkies, an unintelligible dialect, and mad guts all formulate an impressive game of Dodge the Man In Blue. But bootleg gear isn't this community's bread and butter. Fuzhou, a quiet but prosperous city of roughly 6.6 million, is the major source of undocumented Chinese American aliens residing in the United States. This particular industry emerged in the 70's to atone for China’s political repression and policies of sterilization and forced abortion. Patrick Radden Keefe of the New Yorker wrote an entertaining piece about the exciting but infamous oddyssey of New York Chinatown's most notorious human trafficker- a short petite woman named Sister Ping who grew up in Fuzhou. Aside from illegal racketeering, however, Fuzhou also has some of the dirtiest and most ill-maintained zoos in the world. A recent article in the Speigel piqued our interest in Chinese zoos. It's a typical Chinese fallacy: Jump on an idea without fully realizing the actual overhead and maintenance it takes to run it. Many zoos are opened almost overnight, most privately owned, with a large inventory of animals with the assumption that it will undoubtedly attract tons of animal-loving visitors. Unfortunately the budget is often undermined, visitors never show, and ultimately the zoo falls into human-induced Darwinian chaos- birds are fed to alligators, alligators to the lions, and the lions sold to the Chinese black-market for food. The situation wasn't quite so dire at the Fuzhou Zoo, but I've never seen a more sad, depressed and luckless bunch. Monkeys in dirty square boxes. An orangutan, unflinching, unmoving, and spiritless. A whole pack of wolves, stuffed into a series of cages no larger than 10 ft by 40 ft total. The list goes on.

But I guess its all a bit comical, even absurd, my complaining of improper animal treatment in Fuzhou. I mean, just down the street, someone probably just paid $10,000 US dollars to be shipped on a month-long journey to be illegally smuggled to the states through some of the shadiest places on earth, with a likelihood of dying on the way, so that s/he can spend the next five years of his/her life paying off the debt of the cost of freedom. "But that's voluntary", one may argue in defense of the disadvantaged caged ones. A good rebuke would be to ask, "And who are the caged ones?" Hmmm...

China Update #1

How is my mandarin coming along? I can now argue with a taxi driver if he's taking me for a spin, tell the lady at the local market that she's got to be kidding for trying to rip me off, order food at a decent pace, and, most importantly, people on the phone no longer hang up on me after 10 seconds. Can you say that I've assimilated with Shanghainese culture? Hell no. Have I made a difference in the environment? Not really. Every morning I say hello to a couple that collects recyclable materials from the six buildings in my apartment complex. Out of habit, I still separate my recyclables from my trash and set it aside for them. My impact on Chinese social progress? Perhaps 0.00000000000000000000000001% change.

Sometimes when I'm spacing out in my taxi ride I wonder what would happen if I launched a campaign to end child begging. Hell, I wonder what would happen if I threw a really insane sex party. I'd probably get a call from the Chinese government for doing either.

It's a doggy dog world out here. 4 am and people are still trying to sell flowers in the cold, cold weather to four very lonely, very straight men on the bund. Child-beggars and their supposed mothers greet you the minute you step outside your taxi, pushing, begging and sometimes stealing. There are four sex parlors (oops, I meant "hair salons"- they aren't just massage parlors, they're also "hair salons") within a 5 minute walk from my apartment. And somehow, this all has become very "normal" in just four months of living in China. What drives you? What make you passionate? What brings tears to your eyes? I guess these are question that are hard to answer when all these people around us are just trying to make it to see another day. I live in a place where the meaning of "social justice" is allowing the pedestrian in front of your car to pass first. I recently solicited some strange looks by mentioning the word "non-profit." What the hell is that? Did you just say corporate awareness? Social enterprise? Strategic corporate responsibility? Recycling??

A recent search on Google for NGO's in China yielded this article about philanthropic organizations in China. Although all organizations need to be registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China, China has still come a really long way since its cultural revolution days. From a time when the handicapped were disregarded and deemed useless, China will soon host the next Special Olympics World Game in 2007. Non-profit corporate relationship? Not anytime soon, but it is a start for the country that will soon become the most influential power that will shape the future of this earth I call home. But until then, I'll continue working on the Mandarin.

Thai Boxing

Phuket
Originally uploaded by sherryworld.

7 fights, one bloody eye, and two K.O.'s... First thing I did in Thailand was watch a kickboxing match. Remember that game Street Fighter 2? That Sagat character? The hypnotic music that goes with it? They even have girls hitting each other. I love girl flights.

Ranting on Chinese Art

Is China ready for the contemporary art world? I live in a country rich with breathtaking scenery that allows for ample creativity and imagination. Yet, present day Shanghai seems to fall behind two years in practically everything.

Generally, biennials feature new and emerging artists that have brought the meaning of art to a daring new level. One after another, biennials provide a macro timestamp to mark the progress of contemportary art and to let give us a sneak peek into its future.

Which brings me to the Shanghai Hyper Design Biennial and how it sucked ass.

The exhibition started with mediocre wood models of traditional architecture from Souzhou by Xu He Sheng and Xu Yong Fe. OK, I thought, it's a start. Wandering down the hall I begrudgingly noticed a few kitschy pieces so boring they were placed near the bathroom (why even bother then?) Oh wait- hope! Chen Wen Bo's "A Tribute to Huang Binhong" is a series of florescent lights mounted on a huge wall that oscillates on and off based on an algorithm drawn from a gu zheng note's freqency and amplification. Very Dan Flavin meets the creators of MAX/MSP meets Chinese zitherers. I then came across Joe Scalan's DIY coffin piece, which I thought was a creative politcal concept when I saw it in 2001, but come on- that's SO five years ago.

After a decent fiberglass car model by Tetsuya Nakamura, I sauntered to Wang Chin's work, a series black and white paintings of Russian intelligentsia which he titled "Portraits", (all of them were people captured in the works of Russian historian and author Alexandr Solzhenitsyn) Now -IF- the art description had mentioned any word such as "homage to" or "dialogue with" or "copied directly from" or "Gerhard" or "Richter", then I would have been less inclined to rant. In 1970 and 1971 Richter painted a series of black and white portraits of intelligentsia which he aptly named "48 Portraits." Perhaps Chin was attempting to juxtapose German and Russian creativity- I'd give that to him if he were Russian. Or the curators chose this artist because they felt copying the artwork of others exemplifies "new and emerging art" of China. Ungh. I am staring at a dialogue between this artist and his own self-absorbed interpretation of contemporary art and a curator's attempt to artify this art.

I continued on: Cody Choi's "Gone with the Wind" series drably takes digital stills of landscapes... A.D.D. A.D.D. A.D.D...
But what the hell is ART anyways? The pop art I saw towards the end of the exhibition is just as "art" now as Hieronymus Bosch's crazy paintings. Perhaps what I need to start doing is rather than treating art as a conceptual idea, a painting, or even a noun- I need to start thinking of it as a verb: e.g. "That piece really arts" or "His style of arting resembles that of neo classical painters" or "He arts in the style of post Russian constructivists" or "Such an arting idea surely deserves praise from our community!"

I finally found myself A.D.D.ing out towards the end of the exhibit- "Ah yes, this shadow box by this Indian artist draws its influence from Indonesian puppetry and is making a statement on technology in the developing world and our oooh shadowboxatExploratoriumIlovetheExploratoriumwhat aboutthosebighugebubblestheymadeIwonderwhereEdandAndreaareifthisis whatartinChinaisitsucksI'mcoldwhereareallthecuteguysthatareintoartihavetogethomeit's
12aminSanFrancisco...

Shanghai Biennial

How did I miss this? I have a few more weeks to check it out as the show ends November 5. Biennials have disappointed me greatly in recent years, showcasing trendy art rather than breakthrough art. Then again, that will bring us back to the never ending question that's racked so much neural space of recent art historians: What is Art? Update to follow.

World Can't Wait- Or Can It?

Going back home tomorrow just in time to excercise the First. Last September I protested alongside 200,000 people in Washington DC, and I swear the world barely got the memo. I recently had a conversation with a fellow American and he "seriously doubted" there were that many people. Which page in history will we be buried in this time? And why are some of these protests at 5 in the afternoon if everyone is suppose to "walk out of school, take off work?" In the meantime, I still find this quote as relevent as ever:

"All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable...If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them. All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counter-balance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army." -Henry D. Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.

My Typical Classroom Discussions

My school schedule is divided into 5 classes: Qingli, Qingdu, Yuedu, Xiezuo and Kouyu. (trust me, its all the same) Diverse classrooms are filled with foreigners from all walks of life.

In class, we'd use our newfound vocabulary and incorporate it into our everyday lives. Today's topic was Tu Tan, AKA hocking a big fat one. A lovely post-lunch discussion, the Chinese population has long since forgotten its dark SARS past that haunts them. Spitting has once again taken to the streets and have been terrorizing the likes of us newly transplanted foreigners. Sudden episodes can occur anywhere, anytime- on the streets, in narrow staircases, and, on the rare occassion, in restaurants, so beware! (Gross, but yours truly witnessed it herself.) Oh, and keep an eye out for those snot rockets too.

The Chinese Renminbi: A New Kind of Gambling

As U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson continues to pressure China to raise the value of the Renminbi, it might not be such a bad idea to open an account or two here and watch the money grow. After all, it only costs 5 kwai and a picture ID, no minimum balance required.

Not so fast though, some may say, as China's bad loans amounted to an estmated 500-650 billion dollars last year. That could spell a bad investment, considering the RMB is estimated to appreciate by a mere 3-5 percent in the next year. You're probably better off with a CD account, or, better yet, bring it to Macau. [*Useless fact #1: "The typical Chinese gambler bets $85 a hand, compared with $25 for a gambler in Las Vegas, even though per capita income in America is 34 times as high..."] Scratch everything I said above. Invest in Macau.