an old school ost

I currently can not finish a blog (currently working on: Yunnan, starting work at a business in SH, family and friends) on anything.

For the hell of it, here is a post in the tradition of my old xanga ones. Totally inward-looking, diary style, full of raw emotions and some teenage angst stop plights, and guaranteed to bore you to tears. Well, it's my blog and I'll write what I want to.

Between a rock and a hard place. Last one to leave the office on a Friday night, make the commute that has become an always changing sea faces; changing faces that also always creates the same, gray mural.

Anger and disbelief, pride and a questioning of right and wrong. How far can I be pushed? Am I an angry person waiting to snap and hidden beneath a thin layer of the calmest frosted ice?

I am tired, semi-lonely, unfulfilled, and find it hard to believe I was happily talking with my Mom who is retiring today just a five hours ago. Hard to believe I was being doted on with fresh pasta by the beautiful girl I'm in love with just three hours ago.

Fulfillment is a day to day thing. It's in your plans you set for yourself. It is in the music you listen to and what you allow yourself to experience little by little. It is familiar often enough, but you will be surprised at how many familiar places, people, and things will brighten up your life and give you a nostalgic tug that shakes you out of the mundane.

I just chose a bad night to write about instead of a good one. Sounds like me.

Traveling to an Artist's Paradise

My friend H-dawg, who had lived in Shanghai for some four years, was once contemplating his next move in China. The night we met for the first time over beers (memorable not only for the conversation but because it was a rare instance I wasn't drinking Suntory or Tsing Tao) he told me he did not love Shanghai. He told me had a hard time seeing himself in China in the near future. The lifestyle is too fast paced, money oriented, and artificial, he said. In Shanghai, there is no nature. He was a guy who backpacked in the Northwest of the States, traveled alone throughout Asia, and who had a fresh outlook on life after spending years working for a big, multinational company. H-dawg admitted that night he was trying to figure things out, and I felt a bond between us form based on our viewpoints and circumstances despite the fact we were not peers. He would go on to give me a lot of advice about life in Shanghai and about life in general. One of these tidbits was to go to Kunming in Yunnan, his favorite place in China.

I had heard from friends about Yunnan, one of China's southwestern provinces known for its calm, chill atmosphere. I am one to happily dole out advice when I feel it will serve others the way it has served me; I recommend anything and everything that has moved me or helped me, from movies and books to basketball and traveling. Some movies, when the final song plays and the credits role, stir up enough emotion in me that I feel changed temporarily. With good books, the feeling is usually even stronger. (right now I have been getting my roommates to read The Road by Cormack McArthy, a book my father recommended to me).

But I am usually not the type to take a recommendation. I suppose this is not a very unique character trait or foible. Most of us require a trusted source, either a very established professional (i.e., Roger Ebert) or a friend whose opinion we listen to only because we know they have a similar taste. For me it is very hard. I can talk about the beauty of Guilin, the homeliness of Yang Shuo or Arizona and New Mexico, and I can go on all day about the bento box n' bonsai feeling of cultivated magic in Kyoto. But when people talk about places they've been, about the special people and sights they have seen, I hate to say that I automatically file their words away and forget about them.

I ended up traveling to Yunnan with my friend and brother, right before I started work. Originally, it was going to be the first stop on a longer journey, but because of the job that arrived rather unexpectedly, plans changed. Instead of looking at it as a shortened vacation, I approached it as a trip in between my idyll student days in Shanghai and what promised to be a 180 shift into packed scheduling. It was also a goodbye trip with my bro.

We were, and are, and always will be, very different. We both have given each other a lot of advice, and I don’t think it would be untruthful to admit that most of the time we did not follow it after it was given. Stored away like a file. But, often enough, while we may not have wanted to hear it at the time, we did reopen that file at a later date and tell the other that they were right all along.

Yunnan was as chill, serene, lazy, and interesting as it was described. The feeling of community was strong. The shop keeps didn’t haggle your head off trying to squeeze RMB out of you with a lemon juicer. The air was fresher. The families smiled more. And the foreigners, when asked what they were doing there, didn’t say “marketing, sales, import/export, trade, or take advantage of the burgeoning Chinese economy to squeeze dollars out of the situation with a lemon juicer. Chinese and Waiguoren hung out for coffee, listened to hip hop, played guitar, skipped stones, discussed books, and communicated in a natural fashion very hard for me to find in Shanghai. Certainly, it went beyond the young Chinese girl/old white man Corollary.

The foreigners we met were dressed like hippies: baggy jeans and track pants, hiking boots and backpacks, bright colors and beanies to stuff their dreadlocks in. Their style, and that of the local Chinese in Kunming City, was a stark contrast to sleek, sexy Shanghai.

We asked them what they were doing in China, what they were doing in Yunnan.

“I’m here working on my thesis.”

“I’m here on a Fellowship, studying the Hui Chinese Minority.”

“I’m on scholarship. Writing about minority populations in China and then a children’s educational book about them.”

“I’m studying Chinese and traditional Chinese music.”

“Philosophy.”

“Traveling, life, and writing about it in a book. That’s my goal.”

“I’m just chilling out, man. And there’s no better place than Kunming.”

There was a point in conversation at a small café/bar where I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I talked about love and life and philosophy and spirituality with people my own age. It reminded me of walks through China and Japan with P.Stone back in my senior year of college. It was the first time in a very long time the matter of conversation wasn’t tied to money, jobs, or a hot girl.

People find, form their own connections to places and people. One place in Dali was a great find-Joe’s Sandwich House. Soft lighting, wooden interior complete with a creaky staircase, and wi-fi high speed internet made it a pleasing atmosphere both quaint and modern. The menu had everything. I really mean everything. I was expecting sandwiches, wraps, and local Yunnan Chinese cuisine. But the scales were tipped with pasta carbonara, tacos and burritos, fudge brownies and Mango smoothies and wings and Indian curry. I was with my bro, a friend so close I had his name tattooed on my back. Everything was cheaper, too, and sometimes that is just enough icing on the cake to make it scrumptious.

Kunming, Dali, Lijiang…all in the Southwest Yunnan Region of China. With farmers, ethnic minorities, and down to earth people, this place suited me more than Shanghai. I think I came to this conclusion in my first couple of hours there. We slept on couches and in hostels. Thanks to Mike for his hospitality and guiding us around, Ahram for a late night philosophy session that made me generally intimidated by his intellect and beautiful ideas.

Perhaps I will try and go back to Yunnan for a few months on some sort of studying Chinese, reading, writing, soul purifying little journey. That area is a good one for soothing your soul, and I recommend it to you and anyone who wants to travel.

I felt like I was in…maybe not Heaven…but a mountain town not too far away. Thanks to H-dawg for helping me find it.