The Plan

It’s our last week in Pittsburgh. The plan was to find jobs by now. I mean, there are two of us. Two people with master’s degrees and solid resumes. But there aren’t a lot of jobs out there. And for every job I apply to, I’m pretty certain there are 200 other people competing for it. So the first plan, the plan to move wherever one of us found a job, is not going to happen.

The second plan is to move where we think we will have the best chances at finding jobs in our fields (me: international education; Jon: public policy). Take a risk and just jump in. That place is San Francisco and its surrounding cities. The past two months have been dedicated to applying to jobs in the bay area, looking at neighborhoods we’d like to live in, and planning the two-week cross-country road trip. Our plan is to leave Pittsburgh next week, drive to lots of fun places in the Midwest and beyond, and arrive in the bay area at the end of the month. Find a sublet for October, find jobs by November, and voila! Life!

But now there’s a third plan. This past week, we made the wonderful mistake of going to Toronto, Canada. We learned that the economy there is actually pretty good, and family members can help sponsor you as a temporary resident of Canada. So we’re going to look into this. We’re going to apply to jobs in Toronto, figure out what it really takes to get temporary residency and a work visa, and use this as the “back-up dream plan.”

So the ultimate plan is a hybrid plan. We’re still leaving Pittsburgh next week. We’re still driving west with our doggie and camping supplies. We’re still looking for sublets and jobs in San Francisco. We still plan to GET to San Francisco. But if Toronto can happen, we will stop everything and go there instead. Because really, who can say no to Canada?

If you have any advice about any of these plans, please share! Maybe we’re crazy, but it sure beats sitting around waiting.

will we be canadians?

or californians?

Mourning and marketing

These have been an interesting couple of days for China. Yesterday the government declared a national day of mourning for the nearly 2,000 victims of the mudslides in Gansu Province. This meant the flags flew at half-staff, all things fun were shut down for 24 hours, and the TV stations were only allowed to play footage and news from Gansu. Apparently everyone was also supposed to wear black and white, but I didn’t get that memo until around dinner time. A friend of mine had his birthday on August 15 and really wanted to go to a local amusement park. But of course, that was closed for mourning day. Clubs closed at midnight on Saturday night. Any planned concerts or entertainment venues were shut down. But for some reason the zoo was open. I don’t get that.

I spent the day at a friend’s apartment learning how to cook Chinese vegetables that have no proper English translation. She flipped through all the channels on her TV to prove to me that no other shows were on all day long. None of the Chinese people I spoke to seemed very surprised about the national day of mourning. It has happened before, they said. I think as an outsider it is fascinating to me because it is an example of how strong the central government really is here. This country is enormous, and the government was able to shut down EVERY form of entertainment (except zoos – must keep pandas) and EVERY TV show for an entire 24 hours. Can you imagine if the United States government did that on the anniversary of 9/11?

This makes me wonder about the motives of this kind of thing. Of course I have no answers. But I wonder, what does the government get out of a national day of mourning? What does it do to the population’s psyche? Why go to such great lengths to make people think about a mudslide disaster? Is there an environmental message here? A rah-rah government message? Please tell me if you have thoughts.

The other interesting day is today, Chinese valentine’s day! Also known as Double Seven Festival, for the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar. Basically there is an old Romeo and Juliet type story of forbidden love, and it ends tragically of course. Death and sadness. Oh, love. Anyway, traditionally this story teaches women how to be good wives, but that kind of message just won’t do in modern China. Hell no! Instead they take on western qualities: buy some roses, some stuffed bears, and go have dinner.

It doesn’t seem like the Chinese valentine’s day comes with the pressure and loneliness that a lot of Americans associate with 2/14. My single friends didn’t really care about today. The couples went out to dinner. That’s that. But the displays of love that I did see on the street were certainly entertaining. The flowers were beautiful, and the ratio of men holding their wives’ purses was higher than normal. But the real gems were the odd-ball and way-too-large gifts. I was pushed out of the way in line for the bus by a man carrying a teddy bear the SIZE OF ME. You know that bear is taking up a bus seat during rush hour, right? I hope the bus lady made the bear pay the whopping 0.4 RMB bus fare (about 6 US cents). The other charmer sped by me on a motorbike: a giant framed photograph of two pinkie fingers locked together…enclosed in a giant pink heart, of course! I am sure this will hang in their dining room forever, reminding them that true love comes already framed.

Again, do I really have to leave this place?

China’s construction controversy

Lucky for me, the New York Times has a similar obsession with all things China. But not so lucky for China, the news inherently simplifies and dramatizes issues. I imagine that many American readers get horrible, or at least frightening, impressions of China when they read these things. Two recent articles stand out to me, both dealing with development and construction, knocking down the old to make way for the new.

The first article is actually a photo essay depicting the massive apartment buildings that are being rapidly constructed up and down the east coast to make room for the increasing urban population. The second article is very close to home for me. It features Gulou, the neighborhood where my school is located, and the site of much demolition of the traditional Beijing housing called hutong. My school, of course, is called the Hutong School. One-story hutongs are being quickly replaced with multi-story modern apartments.

I’m sharing these two articles not because I have any answers to the construction controversy, or even any strong opinions. Instead I am sharing these because I think they help demonstrate how complicated and fascinating China really is, especially when it comes to the relationship between old and new. Many people outside of China would probably read both of these articles and react quite negatively to the urban construction boom. I’m not saying they would be wrong, but I do think their judgments may come too quickly.

I have worked in historical preservation, so clearly I am not a fan of bulldozing every old structure that’s in your way. The hutongs of Beijing are really interesting, and I love living and going to school within them. So it is really easy to find yourself saying, “No! Don’t knock down my hutongs!” However, it’s easy to overlook the reality of the hutongs in favor of a romanticized, historical image. Hutongs rarely have indoor plumbing, heat, gas, AC, etc. For some residents, a modern apartment with water and gas may be what they actually prefer. As tourists and outsiders, we can’t really judge that.

But we do anyway. We like to think that the rest of the world should keep some kind of historical genuineness, so we can travel there and witness something “different.” If you take away the hutongs, how will the tourists see the “real” Beijing?! Well, I live in a giant apartment complex that most likely required the demolition of many hutongs to construct. And I live in the “real” Beijing. Every night I smile at the same faces, the same old men sitting on their portable benches, the same old ladies doing tai chi, the same babies chasing puppies, and the same boys playing basketball. Maybe my neighbors used to live in hutongs. Maybe their lives changed a lot when they moved into apartments, for better or worse. But no matter what, I cannot say that their lives are less genuine or less “Chinese” because they aren’t living in a certain type of building.

i eat hutongs for breakfast

Any move that China makes can be criticized when it comes to development. For example, another article I saw recently criticized Beijing for having bad traffic jams and long commute times. The city has been building its subway system at an astounding rate to help combat this. Building cheap, sustainable public transportation is a good thing, right? Well, you need to build subway stations. And that means knocking down hutongs. And that means everyone gets sad. It’s a no-win situation.

Urban development attracts a lot of attention, especially when you are the biggest country on the planet. My hope is that the attention from the rest of the world can have a bit more empathy and a lot less judgment. It’s easy to write about or talk about China as a big, scary dragon that’s spinning out of control. It’s a lot more difficult to make the effort to truly understand China, and perhaps find common ground. Yes, they’re big, and flawed, and some people get hurt when development comes to their neighborhood. It happens all over the world, including another huge nation I think you all know…

Back to the easy life

We made it! I have now completely circled the globe, and I am currently in the place where everything began for me: St. Louis.  I will be in my hometown for a few months until I move to Pittsburgh to start graduate school.  Everyone asks me how it feels to be back, and honestly it feels stranger than I would have thought.  Not only have I been to places completely different from the US, but I have lived a life of movement for four months.  My favorite part of the trip was waking up every day and doing whatever I felt like doing — which is a gift something few people ever give themselves.  My only responsibility while traveling was to make a train or a plane at the scheduled time; and even if I missed those, it wouldn’t have been a big deal.  I now have to find a job, I need health insurance, and I have a closet.  These things are boggling my mind.

Yes, the trip was everything I wanted it to be and more.  And yes, the trip changed me, but I’m not totally sure how.  I do know that I now do a lot more thinking and a bit less talking, which a lot of people would say is an improvement!  I have been mulling about an idea in my brain that I am going to try to spell out now.  It has to do with national narratives and how they shape the lives of most people in the world.  Over the past four months, I visited 15 countries.  We started in Asia and worked our way to Europe; with this route, I figured the trip would get easier as time went on.  Sure, it was easier to communicate and we could drink the tap water in Europe.  But I think I was mistaken by my characterizations of easy and hard.

Everywhere we went, I heard stories that brought to life the history of the place. We visited Thailand during a momentarily cool period of their political turmoil, which has gone on since the birth of their democracy.  Our tuk-tuk driver in Cambodia took us to the Killing Fields and told us with sad eyes and limited English that just before he was born, the evil government murdered many people.  In Vietnam, talkative men would remind us that even though the Vietnamese have not forgotten, they are no longer angry at Americans.  In China, we would wake up one morning to find that youtube had been shut down, and my Chinese friends would just shrug it off as another right the government denies to the people.  In the monarchy of the United Arab Emirates, a law was passed one day stating that it is illegal to fire an Emirati — the small class of people that make up the native, oil-rich population.  On a train from Athens to Thessaloniki, a young Greek Cypriot told us about his fear that the Turkish language will become mandatory in schools in Cyprus.  At a birthday party in Germany, my friend’s mother mentioned that she had to learn Russian when she was little, because she was from the East.  In Prague, we stayed in a beautiful apartment owned by my friend’s parents, who were in New York City at the time — they were partially moving to New York, a process they began in 1989 to escape Communism.  At a dinner party in Dublin, a table full of Irish and English shared stories about times they had faced guns on roads near the border of Northern Ireland, or faced territorial men at pubs that belonged to one side or the other.

If previously asked to suggest commonalities between the Czech Republic and Cambodia, I would not have known how to answer.  But now, I have seen the way both people talk about their history: not as a time that has past, but as a feeling that lives.  A Vietnamese person, born however far into the future, will always hear stories of the time America took away the South; just as every German child will be taught about the Nazis and the disgusting outcomes of fascism.  This idea of living history struck me the most in Greece, a place most known in the US for its perfect beaches and dazzling ruins.  But ask anyone from Turkey or Macedonia about Greece, and they will have much different ideas that have a lot less to do with sun and fun.  Greece, one of the most coveted vacation destinations to Americans, is also a hotbed of deep-rooted ethnic conflict and territorial dispute.

When I try to find something similar to this in my life, I cannot.  I think for me, and for most Americans, a narrative of struggle or conflict is missing from our lives.  Any of our significant wars are too long ago to affect how I feel about my country and my identity.  The exception to this, I think, is for black Americans, who do carry on a story of struggle, of who they are and where they came from, and how that affects their place in this country.  But for me, history does not affect how I live my life.  I am extremely disconnected from it.  And in some ways, I think this is what makes Americans seem naive to the rest of the world.  We think that Europe is just like America, but with pretty castles and more languages.  But it’s absolutely not.  It’s a continent with hundreds of ethnic groups and centuries of conflict over borders.  Even today there is disagreement on who owns what, from the British Isles to the Balkans.

But in the good old USA, we don’t have to deal with that.  Sure, we have immigrants, but so does Europe.  What we don’t have is the complexity of relationships, of rivalries and hatred, of oppression and struggle, to the extent that the rest of the world does.  And for that, we are at the same time lucky and disadvantaged. We are lucky because the United States is a really easy country to live in. But we are disadvantaged because we have to work extra hard to try to comprehend the problems in the rest of the world. Why did a bunch of people shut down the airport in Bangkok? Why does the Chinese government block websites on June 4? Why is the island of Ireland split into two countries? Complicated histories cover this planet.

Except for here. And most of us never even realize how easy we have it.

Jon and I at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece