Justice and a Harmonious Society in Ruins?

I'm not making a political statement with the title of this post; please don't misunderstand. I'm simply offering a literal description of an odd scene that recently appeared next to the building I work in.

On Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, I overheard a coworker telling someone else in the office that a nearby building had "collapsed". I had seen no signs of anything unusual that day, so I figured it couldn't have been too big of a building, and if it were a disaster of some sort I'd probably hear more about it.

On my way home from work (I come in the front way, go out the back way), I saw that indeed, an old two-storey edifice was in the beginning stages of being torn down. I wouldn't say it collapsed as it looks quite purposeful, but the next day something strange appeared.

Shiny new banners strung up across the rubble, proclaiming "No matter how savage, the harmonious society cannot be destroyed" and on the right, "Justice will never bow its head to evil forces".

I'm used to banners with slogans on them. It's a central part of the government's plan to propagandize the masses and steer them in the desired direction. The city is full of pithy little things like "Be civilized", "Don't spit", "Build a harmonious society together"; the list goes on. Harmonious society has become a pet phrase of Hu Jintao's in the last several years, but these slogans are worded rather strongly and I doubt it's a coincidence that they appeared in a pile of rubble.

I asked my coworkers what it was about (who are all local), but they just shook their heads, shrugged their shoulders, and laughed. The day the banners appeared there were small crowds of three or four scattered around the area, checking out the new developments and talking amongst themselves. I'm sure it's not a big deal, whatever it is, because nobody cared that I was standing around taking pictures. I saw a local guy taking pictures the day the banners went up. Online searches revealed no news on buildings being torn down or having collapsed in that area, and searches on those phrases came up with no exact matches.

So, I'm still left to speculate.

A trip to Daoist Hell

After barely missing a train to Inner Mongolia this morning and finding myself unexpectedly still in Beijing, I decided to break out of my "But I live here" routine and do some sightseeing. It was the first time I've done so in years, aside from my nostalgic little foray to Tian'anmen a few weeks ago.

I have, after all, been to: the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Old Summer Palace, a bunch of old city gates, and more. I live inside a hutong that is right on the main stampeding path of rickshaw tours, and most days I ride my bicycle past all or most of: the Drum & Bell Tower, the Lama Temple, the Confucius Temple, and the Guozijian Imperial College.

I'm not claiming that I've seen all there is to see in Beijing, or all that's worth seeing: not by any means. But I get more than my daily fill of tourist crush, of beady-eyed vendors shouting "hallo! hallo! (insert barely comprehensible approximation of English word for whatever they're selling)." I can pretty succesfully ignore it whizzing by on my clattery little two-wheeled contraption, but it saps my will to go see other things.

But since I failed to get myself to Hohhot today, I steeled myself for whatever may come, and followed a friend's suggestion to go to Daoist Hell, more commonly known as the Dongyue Temple (东岳庙). Pedaling through wind and rain, feeling cold and uninterested, I briefly contemplated making a loop and going back home to my bookshelf of half-read and unread books instead. But I did find myself pulling up, locking my bike, and approaching the ticket window after all.

I paid my paltry ten yuan entrance fee, walked through the main gate, and was unexpectedly standing in a green, damp, peaceful courtyard surrounded by recessed altars. I was suddenly as alone as one can be in this city without walking into a room and closing the door.

It's a quite large temple complex, home to hundreds of life-sized statues that each represent some character belonging to different "departments", all of which are related to some aspect of life and/or death. There's the Department of Wandering Ghosts, the Final Indictment Department, the Department of Upholding Integrity, the Department of Wind Gods, the Department of Filial Piety, the Department of ... just about everything.

You can leave offerings in the form of dates or little red prayer tags for the deities ruling over departments you are particularly concerned with. Popular ones include those ruling over the accumulation of wealth, success in business matters, and having children. Some of these had piles of dates and prayer tags stacked on top of each other, while others seemed to be positively neglected, with what appeared to be a mandatory three dates. When there was nothing else, there were always three dates. (Except for the robbery department, where fingerprint marks in the layer of dust left evidence of the dates' theft.)

I was surprised to discover that the Department of Controlling Bullying and Cheating had not been honored with one single prayer tag, and had only a lonely three little dates. Personally, if I had had a kilo of dates I would have given all of them to that department. I would have given ten kilos of dates to that department. I would have bought twenty kilos of dates at the marked up cheat-the-foreigner price and poured them out on the feet of the deities in charge.

I was also a little surprised that the Department of Flying Birds was not better tended, as having pet birds is still very, very common among the old men of Beijing. They have pretty little cages decorated with eye-catching toys, they take them for daily walks and dotingly shield their cages with specially-made covers in the rain, but none of them see the need to make offerings to the concerned deities. The birds must be doing well.

A few other people did wander through, some devotees, some tourists but I found the place to be blissfully low-key and sparsely visited. And for any little or non-Chinese speaking people, most of the explanatory plaques were translated quite well; in this country, that means, intelligibly.

In the end, I spent the better part of the afternoon (unmolested) enjoying the at times gruesome, and at times whimsical depictions of the problems and joys of life as we know it, wondering if this wasn't better than Inner Mongolia.

Nowhere near Sichuan

I've received a number of emails from people recently who are concerned about my welfare after the earthquake in Sichuan province. It's great to get emails from so many people, many of whom I haven't had much contact with lately, but I just wanted to make a public announcement that I am still in Beijing and we were not really affected here.

However, if you were thinking of emailing me to make sure I'm still alive, send me an email anyway.

Tiananmen Sky

My first trip to Beijing was in 2001. It was also my first trip to China, and my first trip to Asia. I had been abroad in Mexico, Europe, Canada – all of the usual destinations, but stepping out of the airport in Beijing that first time, a palpable sense of something different hit me.

There was something hanging in the air, and I couldn’t help but think, They are living under a different sky. But that night there was no time to contemplate such things as there were more practical considerations like, how do we get to our hotel? Will I be able to sleep tonight? What are we going to do tomorrow?

The next day, the first shock of being in Asia faded in the light of day, and we set out on the day’s wanderings from our hotel. We soon found ourselves in a network of little hutongs (small, alley-like streets that were traditionally residential areas in old Beijing) and of course, got good and lost.

After not too long, we emerged onto a large thoroughfare. I looked up and saw an imposing-looking gate and, walking on, craned my head to see a huge traffic sign with the words “Tiananmen” and an arrow. The feeling produced by accidentally stumbling upon Tiananmen Square is one I can’t describe – it was my first real “I’m in China” realization, it was the feeling of stepping out of the airport into Asia, only from a different angle.

I’m usually not easily bowled over, so when I do find something heartily impressive, I really savor the experience and roll it over in my head again, again, and again.

But familiarity does breed contempt, so I hadn’t been to Tiananmen Square in nearly seven years until last week. I needed a reminder of the feeling of being impressed to be here, a visceral experience of some sort. So on my way somewhere else, on a horribly polluted day near dusk, I went a little out of my way to take some unre-
markable pictures, watch tourists fly kites, and remind myself that I am in Beijing.

It did lift my spirits, it did give me a tiny taste of that feeling of first being here. I was relieved to know that that thing that drew me back still exists, though in a different and significantly smaller way.

I probably won’t go for another seven years, and when I do, I hope it’s still under that sky.

Toto....

One country, two million systems.

I'm in Beijing. I've been here for two days now, and I keep getting little shocks that remind me just how far Urumqi is from here, in distance and in spirit. Some of the obvious ones are that it's more cosmopolitan, everyone is much more nonchalant about foreigners, and it's just a whole lot bigger.

Today I took a walk down the alley to the local police station to register my residence, a required procedure for foreigners in China. My housemate Kate came with me, and I noted with some surprise that she sauntered out of the house without passport, proof of registration, and assured me I didn't need anything other than my own passport. We walked into the police station around 2pm and made a quick left into a large room, completely empty aside from two officers behind a long counter. One looked up. I approached her and said "I need to register." Without a word she walked over, booted up her computer, and held her hand out for my passport.

I took this opportunity to look around at the stunningly empty police station. One of the main complaints that people from Xinjiang have about Beijing is the crowdedness. "There are just too many people", they all insist. "The subways, the buses, the streets, the stores, no matter when you go anywhere every little inch of space is crammed with people. Everything takes so long. There's always a traffic jam and don't even try to go out on the weekends."

These complaints echoed in my head while surveying the bare halls of this police station on a Saturday afternoon. In Urumqi, you'll be lucky if the guy you need is in the station any afternoon at all, much less a Saturday afternoon. Cramped little cubbyhole offices are stuffed to the brim with anxious people trying to get their household registration, birth, death, marriage certificates sorted out. People spill over into the hallways and try to quietly elbow their way a little further into the room, brows furrowed and tempers on edge. Overworked police officers seem to always be frozen in their chairs in the same stance: elbows on desk, back hunched, hand on forehead, frown on face. One by one, people are turned away with lectures, admonishments, demands to see other documents or more photocopies of the same one. Such-and-such person needs to come down here personally, and do you have proof?

A supposedly simple matter is generally prolonged into a multi-day affair requiring the personal appearance of your landlord, proof of where you've spent all your time in the country so far, multiple copies of your passport and several passport pictures. Once I was fingerprinted (not standard procedure), nearly every time I was lectured very sternly about something, and only once did I manage to take care of it in one visit to the station.

I have friends who got hauled into the police station and detained for several hours over mishandling of their papers (which were all in order, just not in the right place exactly); it's not uncommon for the police to make surprise visits to your home and see who is hanging around (even in the middle of the night), and you can basically assume that security guards in your residential compound are spying on you and reporting back to your district police. If not them, the neighbors. Maybe both.

Here in Beijing, we sat in this empty room being asked questions by the policewoman on duty. Nothing matched up. I told them the address I had been told, which was written slightly differently from what they had on file. I reported back the name of our landlord as it had been told to me, which turned out to be almost completely different from his actual name. I was registering a day late, something that the Urumqi police wouldn't let you get away with without a really good excuse and proof, in triplicate, that your excuse was valid. Then they'd let you off with lots of glares, very serious lectures, and threats of huge fines, and feel very magnanimous about the whole thing.

This woman didn't even ask me why I registered late, why I was renting a house on a tourist visa, or why I had the wrong address and the wrong name. She looked everything up, typed it into her little computer, and handed me my little slip. Voila, I am registered.

I walked home with Kate, dredging up all the stories I could remember about the police descending on courtyards to make sweeps of foreigners, arresting people, intimidating and spying on perfectly legal residents, nightmarish hours spent in stations trying to find just the right level of feigned respectfulness and remorse to appease the one with the official stamp. As I talked, incident after incident came back to me, and I realized the absurdity of it all in the face of this empty police station and not-at-all unfriendly officer who somehow, against all odds, manages to register people without treating them like criminals.

Somehow, it all doesn't seem so bad right now: squishing onto the subways and buses, standing in line at the supermarket a little longer, rubbing elbows at the noodle stands. At least I'm not suspected of unnamed but apparently heinous crimes just for showing up here.

Lusting for leather and chrome

Los Angelenos love their cars. No, they don't just have a special fondness for these vehicles that leads them to buff them on the weekends and take them in for regular tune-ups; there seems to be a bizarre, unhealthy sort of emotional dependence going on.

Many sacrifice rhyme and reason, shelling out more money than they have on a beautiful new car just because it feels great to drive. Some give little nicknames to their four-wheeled friends, and defiling another person's car can be just cause for any sort of crime of passion.

In LA, not only are you what you do, you are what you drive. Your car is an extension of your bedroom and it's not uncommon to see people on the freeway doing all sorts of things behind their panes of glass, apparently unaware that we are all flying around in see-through bubbles that can really be seen through. Yes, really, that means we can see you.

None of this is really new news, but this year I think I've stumbled upon another bizarre little story in this morass of strangeness.

Every day, after I get off the bus, the route I walk home brings me from a main street around a corner to the small residential street Christina and Alan live on, up to the top of the hill where perches their little house. About halfway up the street, every day I pass by a woman sitting in her car.

It's a large-ish white sedan, pretty clean, seems fairly new. Especially to someone who knows nothing and cares less about cars, it seems incredibly average and unremarkable. Except for the fact that every single day, there is a woman camped out in the driver's seat like it's her living room couch.

She has the radio turned up to noise-polluting levels, tuned to some obnoxious talk radio that is mostly ads and then a lot of other shouting done by the DJ's themselves. This is not enough sensory input for her, so she resorts to flipping through what look like B-grade celebrity gossip magazines, or coupon pages of the Sunday paper, or something equally riveting. Sometimes her right hand is moving mechanically from bag-of-some-crap to mouth while eyes remain fixed on the page in front of her.

She's there on the weekends, too, pretty much all day it seems. I wonder ... has she ever thought about getting out of her car and walking inside? What's so scary in her house? What's it like to be a lump of mush?

And since nobody walks in LA, not much of anyone really seems to notice she's there. Everyone flies by in their cars, protected by their own slabs of glass and metal, totally unaware.

What makes one turn into a lump of mush? What happens to make sitting in your car listening to trash, reading trash, and eating trash the most attractive option for killing the remaining time in your life?

From Scratch

Today was someone's birthday in the office.

You all know what that means: standing around uncomfortably and trying to chat over mid-afternoon cake.

Before the guest of honor even arrived we had already used up our easy chit-chat (how's work, how were your holidays, how about that rain). So, cake in hand, the conversation among this small group of people who have nothing in common naturally turned to ... cake.

Bigwig talked about a cake mix he usually gets from Costco where you only add water; however (climax to the story coming....) he bought a different brand this time. Upon getting home and reading the box he discovered you actually have to put in eggs and milk. And not only do you have to put them in, you have to whisk the eggs. So, he asked, what's the difference between that and making the cake from scratch? And then (punch line ... here it comes....) he told his kids "I made this cake from scratch!"

Everyone chuckled politely. I thought mistakenly this was a conversation I could actually participate in so I piped in about how there are so many things you can't find in China that there are expats put a lot of energy into making things from scratch. I very briefly mentioned David's cheesecake quest: how do you make cheesecake in a land with no graham crackers? No cream cheese? I'll give you a hint: you start with yoghurt, then make your own cream cheese.

I said that I make pumpkin pies every Thanksgiving, starting with an actual pumpkin. A whole, raw pumpkin. Silence followed. Then, aforementioned bigwig said, "You must have a lot of tiiime in China". Time was drawn out, slowly dribbling out of his mouth like something he didn't want inside him. His words carried a tinge of, not envy, but disdain.

Is having time a sin? Is having time a sign of laziness? Is baking bread from scratch, is chopping vegetables every day, is walking up six flights because there is no elevator, is sweeping because you don't have a vacuum cleaner, is all this somehow wrong? Or is enjoying it the part that's wrong?

It's Friday evening right now, as I type this, and I am home from work a bit early after a week where I have literally only been home in time to go to sleep, then get up before dawn and leave the house again. I'm making more money doing this than I ever did in China, but I haven't cooked a meal in weeks, I haven't managed to finish a book, I haven't gotten any exercise. But those silly things are only for people with tiiime. Not us civilized folks.

There are few things more alienating than coming home.