Countdown to Christian: 16 days.

The wisdom's in the trees// Not the glass windows

I have been stressing a bit recently. I have not been having a bad time. I have already, in fact, celebrated my birthday twice. Shirin's birthday was on Monday, so on Saturday she and Rong Fan and Xiaoxuan and I ate hotpot. Hotpot is, I think, from Mongolia, and involves a pot of boiling water (kept boiling by a burner in the table) in the center of the table and ordering whatever ingredients you want to eat. I really like mutton and tofu "skin" (羊肉 and 豆腐皮). Shirin and I then got hour-long oil massages for about $10. On Monday Shirin invited me and two other friends to her place and we made curry and drank tea.

Today I am bringing chocolates to my first class, since today may be the only time in my life that I have class on my birthday and I have never had the opportunity to be the kid who brought birthday treats before. I have been waiting long, but I won in the end.

Then I'm going back to the bookstore where Xiaoxuan and Xiaochun took me and gonna buy myself an idiom (成语) dictionary, and perhaps something else. Got sweet mugs there. We'll see.

The weather here is quite nice. It is a sunny 50 degrees for my birthday today. I miss snow, but I'm hopeful we'll get a bit sometime in the next few months. We are very lucky to have central heat in our buildings, which was not permitted when most of the buildings in Nanjing were built, so many people are very cold in the winter.

Anyway, to stop the stressing, today is going to be a day for praying and meditating and eating chocolate and not worrying about school. Hopefully this will help me to be clear and focused enough tomorrow to make real progress on papers again. It will definitely make me happier about whatever I do.

I love you!

Today's title brought to you by Breakdown by Jack Johnson

As I face my final papers

You should imagine me standing in whatever intimidating martial arts pose you choose, sword in hand, ready to cut them down, with This Song playing. The only martial art I've been studying is Taiji, however, so to be at all realistic you'll have to imagine the subsequent beat-down happening in a slow and relaxed kind of way.

In any case, here I go.

If I turn into another// Dig me up from under what is covering// The better part of me

I am still working on being open and present, in my day to day relationships and in the deeper relationships with friends and family that may only surface in too-infrequent emails and phone calls and holidays, but offer a mirror of my progress and a reminder of who I am.

I am still working to put all the pieces of myself together. To see who I have been and who I am and who I want to be. I struggle sometimes with the self I see reflected in others. For instance, after my parents' divorce it was hard for me to interact with quite a few people who'd known me for a long time. They (you) saw the same person they had seen before, but all the pieces of me had come apart and I didn't know for a long time which ones to keep. I had defined myself by my family's life together, by our house and neighborhood, by the fact that I homeschooled, by the time I had for my friends, and I lost those things. It took a while for me to get my feet under me again, and even after I did old relationships were often a sharp reminder of how much had changed. This has been true of other transitions since then, though to a lesser extent. I change and want to move on, and don't always know how to interact with people I knew before.

I don't want that to stay true. I don't want to see my own struggles in your faces. I am learning to define myself as the intersection of all of your lives, as this beautiful point of opportunity to learn from you and share something of what I see. I am learning to look forward to the worlds of people and experiences I have ahead of me.

One of the clearest things I feel about my own identity is the necessity of travel. I didn't apply to ISU because I grew up in Ames, I grudgingly stayed in state for the tuition, and did not even consider staying in the US after I graduated. I don't have anything against the US, but it just felt wrong to be there last year and seriously added to the stress of my last year at UIowa. As much as I am struggling with my classes and my self this semester, I am definitely on the right continent.

In school news again, yesterday I wrote almost 1,000 characters of my civil law paper on the way that the Stubborn Nail House owners (钉子户） (who refuse to move when the government licenses their land for development) and their treatment in the media signal the recent developments in civil society in China. Woohooooo. I have done very little today.

Today's title brought to you by Dig by Incubus
Today's almost title #1 brought to you by 23 by Jimmy Eat World (I felt for sure last night// That when we said goodbye// No one else will know these lonely dreams)
Today's almost title #2 brought to you by Wasting Time by Jack Johnson (Nobody knows anything about themselves// 'Cause they're all worried about everybody else)

Countdown to Christian: 24 days (24, Christian Yetter! Fools round down!)

Instant coffee and coconut milk. It's working for me.

As I try to stay motivated through my final papers (they are each 3,000 words long, one in English and three in Chinese), I am looking forward to future adventures! I will be crashing in Korea on January 10th. "Crashing" here is probably pretty literal. This semester has been a challenge, and I am already very much in need of a break. There isn't really much of a plan between arriving and leaving in February, but I don't really think anything needs to be added to a month and a half on an island south of Korea with Christian. Hopefully this thought will propel me through 12,000 words and two languages of papers (though I should say that while 3,000 words of English is about 10 double spaced pages in English, 3,000 Chinese characters is only 5 or 6).

And THEN, next semester, my mother and friend (there's a better word for you in Chinese than English, dear- 阿姨, friend who counts as family）and aunt are coming during my spring break in April. I am really excited to show them around, and to see more of China myself.

AND THEN, next summer Nicole is coming! For two weeks. This will also be excellent times.

After that, Xiaoxuan has invited me to stay with her family in Hebei province for a little while, and then I'll fly out of Beijing and finally see North American again! Hopefully by that time I will know what I'll be doing in North America. I'll be getting decisions from grad schools in February and March, but may deferring to spend some time in the real world before I dive back in to more grad school. It's a little crazy in here.

Xiaoxuan and Xiaochun took me to a fantastic book store on Saturday. I wanted to buy some things to read over winter break so that my Chinese doesn't atrophy. I have the first in a series of books about Ming dynasty history, which are written in a novel-like manner and are some of the most popular books in China right now. Xiaoxuan also recommended a book about a man during the Cultural Revolution (文化大革命）who gets sent to the countryside of Inner Mongolia to be re-educated. She says that both she and her father like it very much. It's called 狼图腾, or Wolf Totem. All by myself I picked out the most recent issue of an academic journal, which Xiaochun later told me was quite influential. It has a couple dozen articles, mostly having to do with deciding where China is and should be heading as a country.

I am going to go back and buy a dictionary of Chinese idioms, or 成语，because I hardly know any right now and they are necessary for understanding Chinese and not sounding very unsophisticated and awkward when I speak. Then I will have way more than I can possibly ingest over the next couple of months, and will call it good.

Countdown to Christian: 26 days.

"Say 'hello' to all the apples on the ground"

I am reading Dinesh D'Souza's "What's So Great About America," which has actually been very timely for my international politics class- I read his summary of Huntington's theory of the clash of civilization's the same day a classmate presented on it (though D'Souza and I feel differently about its ability to describe reality). I am working on articulating my thought on it. It has, at the least, pushed me to put my thoughts on my own American-ness as someone who has spent time in Germany, Egypt, and especially China into words.

I am reading another excellent article by a scholar (John Lewis Gaddis) which is tugging at similar strings of my identity. And a historian from the State University of New York at Buffalo was here last week and gave an excellent presentation on his current quest to understand world history and China's place in it. I am hoping to write a coherent post on my American identity when all of these things have percolated in my mind a bit longer, but I am thinking I will probably wait until I get to Korea after my semester ends and post then. I have started writing it three times now and am still struggling.

The essence of what I want to say is this: America has been the center of world civilization for at least half a century, and it's Western predecessors for centuries before that. D'Souza spends a lot of time on why this is justified, and makes a number of important points. However, a central civilization, a model nation, are not what the world community is looking for. As far as the principles of science, democracy, and capitalism (the three principles that D'Souza argues are Western civilization's greatest contributions, and justifications for their leadership) are concerned, they have found a model. What we are trying to find is not the country that everyone wants to live in, but a way for all of the countries in the world to work together.

I know that my voice is a very recent addition to the academic conversation on these topics, but I simply do not believe we are living in the same world as we were two centuries ago, and I don't think that my perspective can be dismissed entirely as naive. We are not living in a world where any one civilization or nation will be The Source of learning and progress- D'Souza is right in saying that in many ways that is the role the West has been playing. Humanity is developing to the point where we are learning how to function as a whole.

... I'm definitely gonna post on this again when I am not painfully aware that I have a lot of other homework to do.

In other updates: I am loving my International Politics class. I am learning so much. I am loving the many perspectives and the deep thinking in our readings and after every lecture I feel like my brain is on fire with thinking. Shi Bin is a fantastic professor. My other classes are all decent.

My Chinese is improving, but slowly. My vocabulary is still frustratingly limited but in my conversations, especially with Xiaoxuan and Rong Fan, I am finding myself more and more able to at least describe a word or concept, even if I don't know the translation.

I am going to Shanghai with Shirin tomorrow (so yes, I should really be doing homework). I love train rides. I'm very excited.

I have had a lot of lovely conversations, in English, in Chinese, through Skype, through email, and in person, this week. It has been really good.

Today's title brought to you by The Nurse Who Loved Me by Failure

Countdown to landing in Korea and seeing Christian Yetter: 29 days.

Funny ol' world, enit?

Berkeley emailed and asked for a one sentence summary of my research interests. I gave them this:

"Rural voice in Chinese environmental policy, social geographies in post-Marxism."

and I feel rather pretentious for my vocabulary. Also, had I not sent this immediately after waking up and reading the request on a Saturday morning, I might have thought more carefully and not said "post-." Though Reform and Opening starting in the 1980s has ended the 'collective period' of China's social (and especially land) organization, a number of banners in the National Day parade proclaimed that Marxism is still the official line ('马克思思考万岁!'－'May Marxist thought last ten thousand years!').

Did any of you watch this parade? I watched the soldiers march and the banners wave for a couple of hours, but I couldn't last the whole thing through. National Day is October 1st, so I'm a little behind on talking to you about it.

Here's a video of the first ten minutes: President Hu Jintao Reviews Chinese Troops
Interesting country, I'm living in.

It's, like, open source microfinancing!

Guys guys guys guys!

I just discovered this awesome awesome site called Kiva.org, that works with micro-finance organizations around the world. You can sign up and make a small ($25 minimum) loan to an entrepreneur. Many of them are in developing countries. You get your money back (98% of the time, in the site's history) and you help someone to work their way out of poverty. Sweet deal.

I'm gonna test it out with one small loan and see how it goes. I will report back.

also: working on Minnesota's application. Then I need to write a paper in Chinese on the equality of women and men in Chinese society, and work on one in English about Tai Lake.

Walking around town, lyrics solidify as titles in my mind, but they don't always stay

Jon Huntsman, the US Ambassador to China, visited our center today. He spoke well, and it was nice to have another Important Person tell me that I am doing something smart by being here at the Center studying China. He said some interesting things about the history of Sino-US relations, nodding to some of his ambassadorial predecessors, but the thought that is most stuck in my mind right now has to do with US politics. Mostly.

He was appointed by president Obama earlier this year (and has just been in China for a few months). He was happily serving as governor (of Utah, I believe) before that, and talked about his phone call and subsequent conversation with Obama. He said that he knows why they built the Oval Office: because it is impossible to say 'no' if the president asks you to do something while you are in the Oval Office. He mentioned being honored and humbled by being asked to serve. He also mentioned that, despite his being a republican and Obama a democrat, that they have very similar ideas and goals when it comes to China. He said that relations with China have involved thirty years of bi-partisan cooperation.

That made me very happy, on the one hand (though, thinking about it, I suppose many developed international relations HAVE to be bi-partisan, or they are simply incomplete). On the other hand, it again underscored to me how foolish partisan politics are. And I don’t think I’ve formally recorded my thoughts on that in super-official blog form, so here I go!

I guess I should start by saying that what the ambassador said really is true, and I have felt it in this Center. The terms “conservative” and “liberal” have some small meaning, but they are usually more useful describing differences between countries; the words “republican” and “democrat” have almost none (here referring to my interactions with other students). China itself does not have a political line dividing its citizens into opposing camps (that is also not to say that I’d trade the US political system for the Chinese one. I definitely wouldn’t).

I get very worn out very quickly in political debates, and I appreciate that many of the folks that I know realize that they are not a good base for relationships, and even when y’all talk about political things, try to keep it from being personal. But it is silly bordering on ridiculous in my mind that people are divided up based on what they think the best political decisions might be. As if we don’t already have enough differences to sort through, enough veils separating us from each other. I mean, of course we have different opinions. There are, in fact, upwards of 6 billion human brains on the planet. Hopefully we have different thoughts. I don’t think that they can even be grossly summarized into two camps, and I think that dividing ourselves into groups and slapping labels on each other does a lot of harm.

What I mean to say is, I love you all very much, and I hope that you have your own ideas. I’d really like to hear them, especially if we can agree that having different ideas doesn’t make either of us less human.