Mike's Blogs
“Letters from China”
October 14, 2007
‘Wo bu dong’ is Chinese for, ‘I don’t understand.’ Sarah and I have set up individual tutoring with Kokui, the wife of Professor David, a kind elderly Chinese who transplanted himself to the States in 1962. I’ve learned that, compared with English and other European languages, Chinese has very simple grammar. There are no conjugations. “Dong,” to understand, never changes form no matter what pronoun it follows. To negate a sentence, you need only insert “Bu” or “Pu” in front of the verb. Chinese has no tenses. You merely add “le” to a present-tense sentence to put it in the past.
But I can’t speak this language for the life of me. My students have told me that the colloquial way to greet a friend or acquintance is to say, “Ni chi le ma? (Have you eaten?)” I know how to say the food’s delicious: “Tai hao chi le!” Or, that I’m full: “Wo chi bao le.”
But if I ask somebody how much something is, “Duo shuo qian?” I get a blank stare in response… I can’t grasp the tones. I never thought of myself as tone-deaf, but I guess I am when it comes to Chinese. All I hear are monotones… The language is beyond me.
I’m happy to say that it now sounds familiar; I can pick out words and phrases. I know more about constructing sentences. So, I’ll concede that Mandarin Chinese doesn’t seem so foreign anymore.
Nor does the country. Sarah and I have been here for nearly seven weeks. We have learned to make our way around the city. We’ve mentally mapped out the side-streets and highways that surround our campus. We live on Qianfoshan, which intersects with the eight-lane highway Jingshi Lu…
I’ve gotten used to stares from Chinese passers-by… We’ve made friends with several other westerners. There’s Howard, the quiet, middle-aged Canadian who’s traveled through both Korea and China to teach English. We ran into a couple of European girls some weeks ago, who were very eager to make English-speaking friends. Then there’s Aldo, the Ecuadorian who chose to study art in France, and is now embracing adventure in Jinan.
It’s interesting to watch him interact with the Chinese. He’s quite eccentric. I recall a moment some weeks ago, when Jackie, the head of the foreign affairs office at SUAD, found himself interrogated by Aldo on the subject of Asian chickens. Aldo was perplexed by the amount of bone, and the use of so many of the foul’s body-parts in various dishes. “Why you have such small chickens?” asked Aldo, with his peculiar accent that sounds neither Spanish or French. Jackie politely laughed off the questions.
Just the other day, Sarah and I met a Chinese student named “Lyons,” whose English is the best I’ve heard in Jinan. He was eager to show Sarah, Aldo and I about the parts of the city we knew little about. Names were given to buildings we’d passed a thousand times, and we learned of side-markets, a foreign book store, and various other treasures we’d been hoping to find.
Treasures like the tiny alley, which sits across the street from a multi-story Wal-mart. Once you enter the narrow way, your senses are overwhelmed. Chinese holler at one another, bargaining, arguing, laughing, who knows? A thousand scents, pungent and sweet, hit your nostrils as you step over puddles, or rocks, or wires stretching from neighboring buildings.
While in this place you can’t hear car horns or sirens or jackhammers. Just the sound of a very old way of life. As Aldo, Sarah and I wandered through one of the dusty streets, we found a beautiful girl, whose face appeared to have been snipped from some glamour magazine. There she stood, dripping from head to toe in mud and blood. She stood under her umbrella, and quickly reached into one of the three makeshift fish pools she had fencing her in from the street. The customer shouted something to her, motioning for another cod. She threw the one she had back into the water, and pulled out a larger one. Without hesitation, she tossed the fish to the pavement, instantly stunning it. With one swift move she decapitated it, bagged it, and measured it with a scale that was counterbalanced by her finger… The man offered her several yuan, and left. Then another customer arrived, this time asking for chickens…
- Mike Diaz
October 24, 2007
All that you can see is the bark. Its knots have been worn smooth, giving the trunk a shiny, finished surface as though it’s a kind of living coffee table. That finish gave the thing an unearthly presence; it’s a piece of living furniture. Buildings have risen and fallen around it, and now it sits, almost alive, to watch a current of tourists pass over its roots every day.
After just a few moments, you see the hands touch the trunk. Old wrinkled hands, fresh, pudgy paws, and strong weathered fingers come into frame. Most of the hands pat or rub the trunk, as though they’re reassuring a pet.
I’d been capturing hours of footage over the evening. My contacts were dry, a crook in my neck was throbbing, and a draft from the window robbed me of body heat, even beneath layers of clothing… I’d lost touch with most of the images that I’d shot.
But I couldn’t take my eyes off of the Qufu tree. I couldn’t remember a thing about what our tour guide had said when we’d wandered Confucius’ domain days before. I’d had my eye behind a viewfinder the entire time, trying to immortalize a place that can’t die.
I wasn’t particularly endeared to much I’d seen in Qufu. It was a kind gesture by SUAD to take the foreign teachers on a Saturday outing. I saw lots of monuments, graves, statues. I’ve seen monuments, venerated monuments, all over the world. I’ve seen the hordes of people before. The people who bowed before Confucius weren’t strange to me; they paid homage to his memory the way scores of tourists crossed themselves at St. Peter’s Basilica on the Vatican. I saw men and women and children taking pictures in front of tombs and treasures the way I saw Japanese tourists take pictures in front of embalmed bishops in Florence… A pretty typical tourist experience.
But I couldn’t take my eyes off those few seconds of life that had been recorded and digitized and trapped in a hard-drive that now sat on my rickety desk in a cold dormitory. The noise of life had been removed from those images. The thoughts that flooded my mind while I was at the location were now vanished, and I could appreciate the image for what it was.
What was it? I didn’t understand it, because I wasn’t paying attention to the tour guide while I was there. Instead of listen to her speech about the meaning of the tree, I tried to capture another image which was meaningless to me, but felt necessary to record.
I jumped over to the Dell SUAD provided me with, and googled “Qufu.” I caught tens of thousands of results, and chose one. The Confucian Forest, or the Kong family graveyard, is home to twenty-thousand trees. Some of the trees are quite old, dating back hundreds of years. Well, I knew that. I knew that, at least one of the trees I had encountered is over 1,800 years old… Experts estimate that there are over 100,000 varieties of trees in the cemetery. Chinese caretakers have been planting trees, some exotic, others indigenous, all over the premises. The trees carry a spiritual value, and planting anything there is an act of homage to Confucius and his family.
More noise. I had found more noise. I had found facts. I’d found western sources on eastern tradition. Chinese people love their trees. So do New Yorkers, right? That’s why they have Central Park…
I turned back to the footage. I set the in and out points, and watched those few precious seconds again. Worn bark. Worn from contact with millions of hands over generations. And then the woman’s hand comes into view. She gingerly places her palm on the trunk, and then presses the weight of her palm against it.
You can’t see her face. But her hand says it all…
I’ve seen hundreds of faces here… Maybe thousands. They all tell stories.
But I captured one precious moment on tape. I felt, for the first time, as though I’d connected with a place that has eluded me the entire time I’ve been here. Descriptions of what things mean to people doesn’t compare with seeing an event like the one I’d recorded. I don’t quite know why she liked that tree. But her hand says that there was some sort of a connection with the past there that I couldn’t comprehend. There was communication captured in that image, more real and poignant that anything I could have observed with my eyes, or read in a pamphlet, or heard from a tour guide.
It’s the little things in China that have grabbed my attention. I thought I’d find inspiration from the grandiose. History, economy, politics, art, music, literature, architecture, westernization.
But I’ve been drawn to the tiny moments while here, like when the woman touched the tree. She probably doesn’t remember that moment. But my camera ripped it from the flow of time and preserved it. The noise of thoughts and philosophy and politics are gone. Even Confucius himself isn’t privy to the moment.
All you see is one moment, within one pilgrimage.
I don’t understand China. But it’s beautiful to watch…
- Mike Diaz
October 25, 2007
She had such slender features, and her hair was tied back in a pony tail. She was taller than the rest of her classmates, and fair. She looked Japanese, or what I thought Japanese looked like. I know Chinese can pick out Koreans and Japanese based on their facial features, the way westerners believe they can differentiate between the features of Italians, French, or Germans. I had a stereotype of what a Japanese woman looks like. They look just like the student that had stumped me; tall, with high cheekbones and a creamy complexion. The corners of her lips turned upward in a slight smile, and I saw the Opium Wars in her eyes… I couldn’t remember her name.
I couldn’t remember anyone’s name. Save the few who had chosen English names: Cindy, Ice, Tracy, Crystal. All of them girls, all of them the most eager students.
I tried for the life of me to remember the tall girl’s name, as she patiently waited for my response. She grinned politely, after having asked a question that probably would have been considered far from polite in her country. “Do you and other Americans look down on the Chinese? Do you, uh, see us as poor and backward?”
I wasn’t prepared for this.
I wasn’t prepared for the first day of class, when I found myself standing in front of dozens of Chinese students who were to be my pupils for the semester. There I was, snatched out of the monotonous classes of America, now standing as an unqualified teacher in front of my Chinese peers. They looked at me like I was peculiar. I didn’t disagree with them. A tall, gawky American kid, sent to speak English with them. I looked over at Sarah, who had been eager to come offer tutoring to interested students, and help me with my classes. I was so glad I wasn’t alone. But the spotlight burned my skin. She could see I was intimidated. I didn’t know whether to tell a story, or tap dance.
I introduced myself, and the course. They answered with blank stares. Some almost seemed to be glaring. In fact, as I began to sweat, I thought I saw all of them glaring. A girl seated in the left of the auditorium spoke up. “You’re speaking too fast, please slow and speak clearly.”
So I spoke slowly and clearly. Well, I uttered what I thought was a slow and clear sentence.
It got even more awkward when I broke all the rules they know and stepped from my stage to walk amongst them in the audience. They giggled and covered their mouths as I approached. Maybe they thought I smelled funny and wanted to avoid getting the western plague… Or maybe they had never encountered an instructor who would approach them individually.
“Hello, my name is Mike,” I said, reaching out my hand. Immediately the first student stood up, and shook my hand. With a shy grin, he said, “Hello, pleased to meet you.”
Ah, they knew some English. Sarah did the same exercise on the opposite end of the huge room.
Everyday since Sarah and I have tried to engage them individually. It’s not easy; it’s a slow and tedious process. I admire their command of the written English language. They understand grammar. They’ve all been studying English for at least six years.
The hard part is getting them to speak. They’re shy, much like I was shy to speak out loud when I was studying Italian. So we start with simplicity. Introduce yourself. Where do you study? Where are you from? What places would you like to see in China, and the rest of the world?
Sarah and I continually open ourselves up for questions, on anything and everything. Usually questions come from the girls. “Why did you come to Jinan?” “Do you know Chinese?” “Do you like Chinese food?” “What do you study?” “We think you’re very attractive.”
It was quite awkward one afternoon when, after engaging in conversation about geography, four girls told me why they think I’m attractive. “Your nose is very high, and your…” She motioned to my facial hair.
“Beard?” I asked.
“Yes, beard,” she confirmed. “Your beard is very… very manly.”
This tall girl wasn’t dishing out compliments, nor was she interested in endearing herself to me. I felt like my beard and narrow Caucasian nose reminded her of the Opium Wars. Her polite, carefully calculated words screamed to me from China’s past. Frustration and anger over injustices committed to a 5,000 year old civilization had suddenly become manifest in a quiet question. I don’t think it was really a question, but a whisper from history.
In those few moments I stood as the west, as the King or Kaiser. My laptop filled with western films and music were my gunships, and my “Yankees” cap my banner… And I looked at China, smaller than my collective whole. She had no laptop, no gunships. But a few books. And she was able to engage me in my own language, a language that’s been in existence only as long as one of China’s countless dynasties.
She was bright, and my answer didn’t satisfy her.
I don’t think any answer will satisfy her. But she’s readying herself to ask a lot of questions in a rapidly changing world.
I hope that I can keep up…
- Mike Diaz
December 24, 2007
For the first few days in the United States, I couldn’t sleep. Even after I’d traveled more than 24 hours, and I was physically exhausted, I couldn’t shut off my mind. As the Floridian sun rose on December 24, and I was looking forward to a packed day filled with reunions and sudden holiday celebrations, I lay awake in bed and watched the sky turn blue for the first time in months. I couldn’t sleep, for every time I shut my eyes I was back on flight UA 850.
And again and again, I still see those precious lights. Sarah told me to change places with her, and take the window seat so that I could see the ice breaks. So every few minutes I would shift my attention from the dancing figures of the anonymous film that was distracting the 747’s insomniacs, to the silent planet below. I traced my eyes over grand mountain ranges made small, and got lost in the infinity of the ice cap. I swear I felt the Siberian wind burn my cheeks, while I searched for meaning in the vast loneliness that had lured me from the safety of the cabin to the emptiness of this forgotten stretch of earth.
I wanted to know Siberia, so I wandered along the ice flats, explored all the valleys, braved the unforgiving steppe, and fished the dead bays and lagoons, and it still felt lonely. I was sure that I had mapped this coast of Siberia, my Siberia, and marveled at the knowledge I had gained of this terrain that none of my friends or family would ever hope to own. And then I found a city.
One collection of silent lights burning on the edge of Kamchatka cracked the foundations of Siberia and took my breath away. I admired the tiny avenues and imagined the warm houses that made up this anonymous city. In a moment Kamchatka ceased to be a word and became a home, littered with nameless settlements that are indifferent to the rest of the world. I wanted so badly to feel this village, and become a part of its pulse, even if only for a brief time. I began to feel a sense of kinship to this very foreign place.
The way I became a friend to China’s family in early December. In a city older than Italy, Hellas, Macedonia, Pergamum, and the Empires of the Ptolemies and Seleucids, I touched China’s history for the first time. Beyond the terracotta warriors of Chin Shihuangdi and the calligraphy and the porcelain horses and the Tang throne, Sarah and I stumbled upon a tiny temple in Xi’an. The fog had cleared, and cobblestone sidewalks invited us behind the walls of the tiny treasure.
There was no admissions booth or guard or gates. There were no barriers, and so we wandered into a quiet courtyard. I turned to Sarah, and warned, “We shouldn’t go any farther,” and then a woman with kind features smiled from a nearby window and pointed beyond the incense burners to a pavilion hidden by pines, inviting us to China.
And so, we stepped beyond the familiar and greeted the other side of consciousness. A handful of Chinese stood just outside the building, so I hid behind a pillar and let the drum beats of the ritual lull me to peace. The tornado in my mind froze, as the past and the present melted away so that I could exist in the now, and observe the woman who seemed to be leading the event. She looked so small in her teal robe and crimson cap. She couldn’t have been more than five feet in height, and her features whispered of mixed heritage. She carefully lit the giant sticks of incense and the collection of scented candles, and when the sun went down the place was aglow with ancient light. The sounds from the string players and drummers who surrounded the altar sung of intangible things that were before China. And when the hypnotic chanting came I was called home to some other place, as the Chinese communicated to me without speaking. I watched a middle-aged woman in business attire and I knew she was in the same place as I. She turned to me and smiled, and then nation and race and ethnicity dissolved and we were all human again.
And then, once more, I was surrounded by dozens of my Chinese peers in the auditorium, and they were asking me questions about language and America and studying and then I saw the girl in the blue sweater. She had sad eyes, and her hand had been raised for what seemed like an eternity before there was a long enough pause for me to call on her. She straightened her glasses, and asked, “What do you do when you’re depressed?”
The group leaned toward me in anticipation, as though they’d all cried out in one voice, as a thousand moments of emptiness flooded my memory. I cleared my throat, and wanted the question to pass, as the loneliness and disconnect and video games and chat-rooms that held monopoly over the free time of China’s youth became an adversary in some campaign for which I’d never signed up. “I go for walks,” I said, and a tiny smile graced her face.
“Why?” she asked.
I told her that when I was sad, I would always go for long walks at night and think about my life. I said that my life was far from perfect, and that it was normal for people to be down at times, but that when the going-gets-tough, it’s important to find out what’s making you depressed. “If you figure out why you’re sad, it’s easier to make it better.” Her eyes went someplace else, and I realized nobody had ever told her to ask why.
And I realized that after all the traveling and classes and meetings and filming and reading I hadn’t scratched the surface. I had never really asked why. I’d asked why Westerners fail to understand China, and why China fails to understand the West. I’d wondered why culturalism preceded nationalism in China, why the fourth Ming emperor instituted a policy of fierce isolationism that would last for centuries, and why history and memory are constructed differently by the Chinese mind. But I’d never asked why my students seemed isolated. I had looked at China as a subject, as a singular consciousness.
But China is an illusion, as is Europe and America and Africa. China is the girl in the blue sweater, and Lyons, and the folk art team. China is made up of individuals who are beyond riddle and categorization and organization. And I had been observing the whole of China, its history and politics and superstition. I viewed the billions from above, rather than ground level.
And just as I was ready to leave the safety of the cabin on flight UA 850, to greet my city in Kamchatka, the flight attendant kept me captive and offered me coffee instead. And then the plane passed my village, and now it only exists in my memory as a collection of lights I will never hope to know or see again. I will never fully understand its culture or language or daily pulse because I was forced to experience the whole of it through a window.
The American stewardess poured my coffee, as I thought of the girl with the blue sweater. Already, the four months began to rest in memory in fast-motion; a collection of images, unrelated experiences, conversations, stress, and peace. Already they were becoming more and more distant, and home was far from defamiliarized. The previously familiar were still familiar, and I had just been asleep. So I sipped on my sweet, lukewarm coffee, and I watched our plane traverse the Bering Sea, and Asia was turned memory. The ocean below was still, and my back ached, and I realized I never really left the plane in September to become a part of China’s pulse. I had observed everything from the safety of my Western cabin, behind glass, fed by French fries and Coca-cola and CNN and Miramax.
- Mike Diaz
