This past week our good friend Jon visited us from New York City. We had a blast while he was here, showing him and his friend Mark all around Chengdu. We went to the Sichuan Opera. We also took two trips out of town. The first, to see the pandas, is recorded below. The second, to see the Big Buddha at La Shan, will be documented soon. In the meantime, this photo of Jon observing a sign on the way up the hill to see the Buddha, is indicative of several we encountered along the way. More, even funnier signs, have been posted on the Signs page, listed in the column to the right. Enjoy!
January 7, 2008
January 4, 2008
On a cold morning just after the 1st of the year, we visited Chengdu’s Pandas. Set amidst a dense bamboo forest, the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, as it is known, is divided up into several enclosures containing Red Pandas and Giant Pandas. Each morning the pandas are feed fresh bamboo leaves, which they spend an hour or two eating. The following photos give you a peek of what we saw.
The Red Panda
The Giant Panda
Baby Panda born in 2006
December 18, 2007
Our alarm went off last Monday at 6:30AM and I reluctantly climbed out of the warmth of bed. The sun comes up at ten-to-eight these days, although we rarely actually see it. It’s in the forties here, but with the lack of heat and the damp, it feels colder. I hadn’t slept well, my head filled with thoughts of attempting something I haven’t previously done. I climbed into the heat of the shower, feeling excited to start teaching. I had a foolproof lesson plan put together by Lara and was ready to go. At 8AM I would teach the first of seven English classes to a total of 150 students over the next three days.
The classrooms are not heated, so the first thing I did upon arriving was to close the windows. Students start filling in, I say hello, acting casual, being friendly. At 8AM I introduce myself, telling them Glavin is Irish, but that I come from the US. I tell them about Chicago, and New York, and Portland. I explain that I do Chinese medicine, but that their teacher’s father is sick, and he had to go back to the US to care for him. So here I am, to help. I tell them my father and mother and wife are all teachers, so I come from a family of teachers, as though that somehow qualifies me to also be a teacher. They smile and nod their heads. Some of them giggle and whisper in each other’s ears. Although graduate students, they seem very young.
I’ve only taught one class before in my life, and that was a Green Studies Seminar in college. I’ve given my fair share of public talks and workshops, but teaching a University class is something new. Like most people I’m not a big fan of public speaking, but here I am, in front of a group of eager and seemingly appreciative Chinese students. It’s early in the morning, and cold. I teach in my winter coat, with a scarf around my neck.
Teaching the same lesson seven times made things easier. I could relax more after the first couple of times, knowing what comes next, interested to see how each new group responds. The lesson concerned asking questions of someone when you first meet them, and the two main categories of questions: simple Yes and No questions, and WH questions, or those starting with Who, What, Where, etc.
I asked them to give examples of what one would ask someone when you first meet them. Silence. You know, you’ve just met someone, and you want to get to know them, so what do you ask? More silence. For example, you might ask, Where are you from? I write it on the board. Eventually they start offering possible questions in slightly broken English. Most of the questions they proposed where questions they really wanted answered about me: Why did you come to China? How old are you? Are you married? Do you have any children? What do you think of China? I tried to broaden the scope of questions by proposing various scenarios in which they might meet someone, and want to ask questions, but they stay fixated on me. One class was somewhat nationalist, asking me How many Chinese words do you speak? and Do you understand Chinese?
Next I had them tell me the names of famous people. The reference to famous people seems particularly Chinese. So and so is very famous. One hears this all the time. It’s something that remains unremarked upon in the States. An American would never say, Oprah is very famous. But here, it’s always pointed out. We made a list on the board. Every list included Bill Gates.
I had them break into pairs, becoming famous people, and asking each other questions to get to know each other. Then they formed small groups to introduce their new famous friends to each other, and finally I called on several students to address the entire class.
Towards the end of class, I had them stand, and the only way they could sit down was to ask me an original question. The most frequent were: Do you like the Houston Rockets? and What will you be doing for Christmas? I told them No, I’m from Chicago, and I’ll be here, teaching class, respectively. One student asked me what I thought of the Iraq War, another wanted to know if I liked Metal, and a third wanted to know if I did Tai Ji Quan. I started to wonder if they had been briefed. It felt really energizing to be up in front of class, and pacing the aisles like Phil Donahue asking a reluctant audience questions.
Some of the students’ English was very good. All they wanted to do was talk. Others could barely understand me, and only speak the most rudimentary sentence fragments. Some of them were very attentive, while others would spend the class text messaging, or talking to the person next to them. The last class of the week was the worst in this regard. I had to tell them to put their cell phones away, and to pay attention when other students were speaking. One guy in the back actually had his earphones on, listening to music. Hey, take the earphones off, I barked. I hate when a class turns you into the type of person you don’t want to be.
This week they’ve begun their final exams, for which they have to get up in front of the class and deliver a three minute talk, followed by two questions asked by either myself, or someone in class. This is the format decided by the teacher who I’m taking over for. It’s not the best method of evaluation, but I’m trying to make the best of it by engaging the students in conversation.
Two weeks of finals, and then I’m done, in time for New Years. This is a good introduction to teaching for me, as I prepare to have my own classes for a semester beginning in February. It’s turning out to be a fun and energizing experience which is giving me more insights into what it means to be Chinese.
December 16, 2007
The following is a talk I gave at the US Consulate General in Chengdu, China on December 12th, 2007. Despite the hassle of getting through security, about sixty English speaking Chinese students and one old man who comes every week to get out of the cold attended. They were a bright group that asked very interesting questions after the talk. The two most interesting concerned the differences between Western and Chinese medicine, and the relation of traditional Chinese culture to Chinese medicine. I may write about these in the future.
I am a Chinese doctor. Or at least I practice Chinese medicine. I went to school in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, graduating in 2004 from the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine in Portland. The weather in Oregon is quite similar to Chengdu’s. It’s often cloudy, and sometime you don’t see the sun for weeks at a time, although I never thought I’d live somewhere where one sees the sun less often than in Oregon. But here we are. Chengdu is also similar to Portland in the way people rely on bicycles as a form of transportation. In Portland we ride bikes, and rarely drive.
I went into Chinese medicine because I’ve always been attracted to Chinese philosophy and culture. I’m drawn to Taoism and Buddhism, martial arts, and Qi Gong. In High School I first started using the I-Ching, or The Book of Changes. I wanted to learn a craft which I wouldn’t get bored with. I felt that Chinese medicine was something which would keep my interest the rest of my life. Because it’s so vast and varied, I thought that there would always be something new to learn. I wanted that kind of life-long engagement with my work.
The fundamental orientation of Chinese medicine is towards Qi, or vital life force. We all have Qi. It’s what makes us go. According to Chinese medicine, when Qi gets stuck, or doesn’t flow, we experience discomfort and pain. Other times, we may not have enough Qi, and we feel tired. Sometimes we have other internal imbalances, and we can’t sleep, or we develop allergies, or have digestive distress. For all these situations, through the use of needles and herbs, a Chinese doctor can get one’s Qi moving again, or through herbs can give you more Qi to overcome fatigue, or help restore imbalances so you can sleep.
There are twelve major meridians, or pathways for Qi, which correspond to twelve internal organs, which each has its own functions. For instance the Spleen, among other things, is responsible for transforming food into Qi. It’s meridian starts just off the nail of the big toe, travels up the inside of the leg, and ends up in about the middle of the rib cage, on the side of the chest. The Lung does many things, but one of its main functions is to transform the air we breathe into Qi. It’s meridian pathway starts in the pectoral muscle on the upper chest, and travels down the arm out to the thumb.
The basic idea is that the human body, when working correctly, is healthy and disease free. Chinese doctors tune the body so that it works well, thus eliminating problems. In addition to acupuncture and herbs, Chinese medicine also includes things like cupping, moxabustion, gua shua, and electro-stimulation.
Chinese Immigration
Although various forms of Chinese medicine have been used in China for thousands of years, it is very recent that these practices have come to the US. It is most likely that Chinese medicine first came to America with the Chinese immigrants of the mid-1800s.
Many of the first wave of immigrants from China were skilled artisans, hotel and restaurant owners, fishermen, and merchants. This was followed by thousands of unskilled workers. At that time some 25,000 Chinese immigrants were working in California, mostly as part of the “Gold Rush.” Another 10,000 worked on building the Central Pacific Railroad.
In 1882 the US Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first in American history to place broad controls on immigration. The Act suspended Chinese immigration, and required all Chinese people to carry documents identifying themselves and their line of work. It was not repealed until 1943.
Many Chinese came to the US to support their families back home. They would work for less pay than non-Chinese workers, and this caused tensions. Chinese and non-Chinese laborers were pitted against each other. This resulted in anti-Chinese discrimination and violence. For instance, in 1887, in the Snake River Massacre, 30 Chinese miners were murdered near the Oregon-Idaho border.
It was around this time that a young man named Ing Hay moved to John Day, in Eastern Oregon. Ing Hay was born in China and came from a family of herbalists. Know as Ing ‘Doc’ Hay, or the China Doctor, Ing Hay is probably the most famous early practitioner of Chinese medicine in the US. He and his friend Lung On opened a store called Kam Wah Chung along The Dalles Military Road. They supplied canned foods, tobacco, and bulk goods from China. Kam Wah Chung also functioned as a social center and hiring hall. This is where Doc Hay established his medicine practice. He treated not only other Chinese immigrants, but also local cowboys and miners. Doc Hay had a reputation for curing blood poisoning, a common problem for Oregon ranch hands.
Doc Hay was primarily an herbalist. He practiced in John Day from 1888 until 1948, and died at the age of 89 in 1952 in Portland, Oregon. When the Kam Wah Chung building was reopened in the 1960s, over 500 Chinese herbs were discovered, some of which have yet to be identified.
Doc Hay relied primarily on pulse taking for diagnosis. In Chinese medicine there are three pulses on each wrist at the radial artery, and each of the three corresponds to different internal organs, and in turn has three levels. For instance at the top, near the wrist crease on the left is the Heart, below this is the Liver, and at the bottom is the Kidney Yin. On the right at the top is the Lung, under that is the Spleen, and finally the Kidney Yang. This is one of several schemes. A well-versed pulse reader can diagnosis a great deal about the state of a person’s health simply by reading pulses. Although Doc Hay is the most well-known, there must have been other doctors amongst the wave of Chinese immigrants to the US in the 1800s, although their stories are yet to be told.
Chinese medicine first came to the attention of the Eastern Establishment when acupuncture was mentioned in the medical literature in 1822, and was endorsed by Sir William Osier for the management of lumbago, or low back pain, in his text. The Principles and Practice of Medicine, published in 1892. Unlike France, however, where acupuncture was incorporated into mainstream medical practice in the 19th Century, Chinese medicine didn’t make it into the mainstream in the US until the 1970s.
I think there are three main events which propelled acupuncture and Chinese medicine into the mainstream in the US.
Acupuncture in the Headlines
Acupuncture was first brought to the attention of large numbers of Americans by a New York Times reporter named James Reston in 1971. Reston was in China covering the opening up of relations between the US and China, when he suffered an attack of appendicitis, and had to have an operation. In the Chinese hospital he was administered acupuncture to treat his post-operative pain. He was amazed and intrigued by the effectiveness of this approach, and wrote an article on it for the Times. This caused a stir in the US, generating a great deal of interest. For the first time millions of Americans heard about using needles for health.
Miriam Lee’s Civil Disobedience
At the same time, a Chinese immigrant named Miriam Lee was living in San Francisco, working in factories. She was a trained acupuncturist. Although acupuncture was not at that time a recognized form of medicine in the US, she was convinced to use her knowledge to address a friend’s illness. Her treatment was so effective that her friend told her friends about it, and before she knew it she was treating lots of people. She found a sympathetic MD, and set up her practice in her office, and soon lines were forming around the block. Ms. Lee was subsequently arrested for practicing medicine without a license. But she did not desist from helping people. Through a kind of one-women campaign of civil disobedience, in which she’d break a law she felt was unjust, the state of California eventually relinquished its punishment, and instead recognized acupuncture as a legitimate form of medicine. This was only thirty years ago, in 1976.
Lincoln Hospital and Acupuncture Detox
On the East Coast in 1970, in New York City, a group called The Young Lords Party was agitating about the terrible conditions at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. The Young Lords were a group of Puerto Rican activists that came together to work for the rights of Puerto Ricans specifically and poor people generally in New York and Chicago. A coalition emerged, including the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, hospital workers, and community people to bring about improvements in conditions.
Despite recording hundreds of grievances, the hospital administration refused to acknowledge problems and talk to the activists. Lincoln Hospital was in a building that had been condemned and was both understaffed and under-financed. After mass demonstrations were also ignored, the Young Lords occupied the hospital in the middle of the night. The next morning the media publicized the occupation and the issues that led to it.
During the occupation, a preventive medicine community clinic was set up. One result of the occupation was that an historic acupuncture-detoxification program was established, with licensed doctors, acupuncturists, and staff members hired from the community including members of the Young Lords Party and Black Panther Party. Ahead of its time, for years the Lincoln Hospital Detox Program served as an international model of treating heroin and alcohol addiction with acupuncture instead of methadone, before it was eventually closed down by Mayor Koch later in the ’70s. None-the-less, it became the model for acupuncture detox programs around the country.
At Lincoln Hospital a Five Needle Protocol, or 5NP, employing five acupuncture points on the ear was developed to treat addiction and is now the cornerstone of detox programs around the US. Out of the experience at Lincoln Hospital, an organization called NADA (National Association for Acupuncture Detox) developed to promote education and training of chemical dependency clinicians in 5 NP. NADA has trained 10,000 people.
As a student intern, I worked at the Portland Alternative Health Center, or PAHC. PAHC combines acupuncture, herbs, Western medicine, counseling, housing, and other modalities, while serving a homeless addict population. They were successful in 89% of their efforts at getting people off heroine after six months. It was great to be able to work at PAHC. People would come in and sit in chairs. We’d talk to them about what else was bothering them, in addition to battling withdrawal symptoms. We put five needles in each ear, then a few more for various ailments, such as knee pain, or neck problems. The people who came to PAHC were very thankful for this service.
As a result of the efforts around the Lincoln Hospital takeover, NADA, and institutions like PAHC, acupuncture has had a positive effect on thousands of members of an otherwise underserved population. Acupuncture has become a very effective and widespread component of community detox programs around the country.
TCM Schools and Varieties of Chinese Medicine
In the late 1970s and 1980s, people began establishing Chinese Medicine schools. One of the first to be established was the New England School of Acupuncture in 1979. My school, OCOM, was established in 1983. It was one of the first Chinese medicine schools to offer a Master’s Degree, and in 2005 began offering a PhD, or Doctoral Degree.
Most schools in the US teach Traditional Chinese Medicine, or TCM. TCM is a system of Chinese medicine put together under Mao, following the Revolution. This is the style of medicine practiced here in China, and is the standard for the national certification exam in the US.
Other forms of Chinese Medicine popular in the US include Five Element and Dr. Richard Tan’s system. Five Element was primarily developed in England, and is more psychological and esoteric in its approach. The people who developed it claim it’s more based in the way Chinese medicine used to be practiced, long before the development of TCM. The five elements – Earth, Metal, Water, Wood, and Fire – each have different characteristics and personalities. For Five Element practitioners, each person has a basic type, either you are Earth, or you are Water, or you are Wood, and so on. Once your type is determined, you can be treated by points related to this element, as each element has two organs associated with it, which in turn has meridian pathways and points. The points can then be needled to bring about a change in consciousness or a physical condition. For instance if you are an Earth element, you would primarily be treated on the Spleen and Stomach meridians.
The third major type of Chinese Medicine practiced in the US is that developed by Dr. Richard Tan. Dr. Tan has developed an interesting system in which the body mirrors itself. For example, if someone is suffering knee pain, Dr. Tan suggests treating their opposite elbow. For hip pain one would treat the opposite shoulder, or vice-a-versa. And this works! Basically one is looking at which meridian is affected, then looking at the paired meridian on the opposite side of the body. This style of acupuncture is very effective for pain management, and is used frequently in walk-ins clinics and in detox centers because people are sitting in chairs and are clothed. Therefore a doctor will want to choose distal points that can be accessed easily, usually from the knees down, or the elbow to the hand. This is the primary system we used at PAHC.
Some acupuncturists choose to specialize. Some of the most popular specializations include gynecology, fertility, allergies; and musculo-skeletal pain. Most of my patients tend toward this last group, perhaps because I am also a massage therapist.
Increased Acceptance and Insurance Coverage
In 1996 acupuncture needles were designated an “accepted medical instrument” which both recognized acupuncture as a form of medicine, and laid the basis for insurance companies to start covering acupuncture treatments. In the last several years that’s just what is happening, as an increasing number of insurance companies are paying for acupuncture.
The medical community in the US is also becoming increasingly open to acupuncture. Doctors can do a several week training to learn the basics of acupuncture to incorporate it into their practice. This is good and bad. On the one hand it’s good MDs are learning about the Chinese system of health. On the other, they are learning it at a very basic level. Basically, if the patient has knee pain, use these points. They thus avoid learning all the complex theory which would lead one to choose those points. It is still a positive development to have doctors incorporate acupuncture into their practices.
In addition, hospitals sometimes now have acupuncturists on staff to treat patients. As an intern I worked at a hospital alongside MDs. We were very busy, treating patients that the Doctors believed that Western medicine was inadequate for, mostly patients with chronic pain. It was a great experience, in which doctors actually deferred to me, an acupuncturist, in diagnosing and treating patients. We had a great deal of success working in this hospital, and hopefully there will be more of this in the future.
Community Based Acupuncture
An exciting recent development in the US is something called Community Based Acupuncture. The motivation behind Community Based Acupuncture is to make acupuncture accessible to more people. From this perspective, acupuncture in the US is too exclusive because it costs so much. A typical acupuncture session in the US runs between $60 – $100 dollars. Many people can’t afford that, and the price also makes it difficult to get the type of regular treatment that acupuncture requires. Here in China one typically goes for acupuncture every day, or every other day until the problem begins to resolve, then you can start going less frequently. In the US, frequent treatment is more often once a week, sometimes twice. The price makes getting treatment more often prohibitive. In community based clinics, the cost is usually $15 to $45 per treatment, sliding scale.
There is also a critique of the isolation of the treatment process in the US, in which patients are brought into a room by themselves. In contrast to this, people who come to a community based clinic are treated in one large room, together, the way acupuncture is practiced here. The idea is to create an environment in which people will feel comfortable, and which they can afford. Having the cost cheaper both allows more people without a lot of extra money to come in for treatment, and to come in more often.
There are now several community based acupuncture institutions in Portland and about fifty around the country. There is also an organization of clinics and practitioners called the Community Acupuncture Network.
This development is very important, as a significant percentage of the population in the United States lacks health insurance, and therefore has little to no access to health care, or if they do, the bills haunt them for decades afterwards. By setting up Community Based Acupuncture clinics, affordable health care is being made available, and acupuncture can fill an important need for potentially millions of people. When I return to the US, I plan to work with a Community Based Acupuncture clinic, and eventually open my own clinic.
The emergence of Community Based Acupuncture is very exciting as it points acupuncture in the US in a direction more in line with the way it’s practiced here in China, and also in a way that will make it available as a form of health care to larger numbers of people.
December 4, 2007
Yesterday I received a phone call from Mr. Yang, head of the Office of International Education, which happens to occupy the second floor of our apartment building. He’s Lara’s Foreign Affairs Officer, and our primary institutional contact at the University. He said he wanted to see me in his office right away. I didn’t know what this was about, but in the back of my head I thought ok, someone in the government has taken exception to something I wrote and now I’m going to hear about it. This is a background preoccupation of mine here, not knowing the degree of surveillance and thus always wondering what exactly is going on. I never quite know where the lines are, what’s tolerated, what’s not, and if they even care all that much. I went downstairs ready for anything.
Mr. Yang is a well-meaning bureaucrat, who speaks in halting English, considering every word before he says anything. He does translation work in addition to heading up the office which overseas the foreign teachers. From time to time I help him with this. He’ll call me into his office, sounding all official and serious, then show me something on his computer about “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” or proper procedures for washing gem stones, wondering how best to translate the Chinese into English.
After helping him with an awkward phrase on the document on his computer, he told me the reason he had summoned me. It turns out an American English teacher who we know had to go back suddenly to the United States because his father is ill. He teaches seven English classes to graduate students. I looked at him, knowing where this was going.
He told me there are three two hour classes on Monday, two on Tuesday, and two on Wednesday. It’s a group of 150 students, from several different colleges, all taking English because it’s required, and none of them are English majors. They need a teacher for the rest of the term. He said he thought I could do it.
I said, You know, I’m not a teacher, I have no experience teaching. You asked me to teach three classes starting in February and I am planning on doing that. This gives me two months to learn as much as possible how to teach English from Lara and plan my classes. Mr. Yang now wanted me to start not next February, but next week, first thing Monday morning. I told him I’d think about it and tell him the next day.
We met some of the students this morning, and they are very friendly and made me feel at ease. It seems like it would be a fun experience to work with them, plus it’ll be a kind of trial run for my classes in February. They are very eager to learn and seemed so happy to met me. How could I say no?
It turns out the class only has three weeks to go, so I’ll be done before New Years. This will be an interesting way to interact with a large group of grad students, learning more about China in the process. So no interrogations about my blog or anything else. Just a request for help, and an opportunity to immerse myself deeper into China.
November 29, 2007
For the last four days straight the sun has come out. This is truly unusual, as in over three months we’ve only seen the sun about five times. In addition to the sun, yesterday I saw blue sky. I’m not lying. You never see the sky here. Usually one can see a couple of blocks, then things recede into the smog. There’s a constant haze which envelopes Chengdu, so it’s disappearance is notable.
It’s amazing the affect weather has on one’s spirits. When it gets nice, it’s like a weight lifting off your shoulders. Things don’t seem as bad. A sense of optimism returns. A fundamental happiness is revealed beneath the hard exterior. It’s like cleaning a dirty window. Not only has the sun been out, but it’s been in the 60s.
We’ve taken full advantage of this unexpected turn of events, doing tai ji in the outdoor sports complex, alongside students playing basketball and practicing choreographed dance moves; walking through the many gardens on campus, which are still lush this time of year; and talking to members of the Tibetan students association, who set up a display on a plaza and were eager to talk.
Suddenly it’s May in late November, and everything is alright.
November 25, 2007
Here we are in the belly of the emerging beast, witnessing a whole new set of problems inside a potential future superpower, while looking from a new perspective at the now familiar problems of the old superpower. It feels good to get some distance on the harsh political realities of life in the contemporary U.S. I don’t know what continues to astound me more, the blatant transgressions of those in power, or people’s complacency. Americans have come to accept actions that in an early period would have brought down governments. America is a country which appears to have run out of ideas.
So here I am in China. This is a big place. I only have a very tenuous grip on the language, and only a few Chinese friends to talk to. But after three months, I can convey some basic impressions of what’s going on here. It seems that the biggest issues are the ongoing ecological crisis, the exploitation of people’s labor, and the lack of democracy.
China is an economic powerhouse, with a capitalist economy which is growing at about 11% annually. As has been clear from our experience in the West, capitalist growth destroys ecological health. This is happening here big time. Rivers are dying, lakes are dying, people are dying of lung cancer and other diseases related to the poisoning of the environment.
The air quality in the cities is atrocious. There is a constant haze here and in Beijing, the two major cities we’ve visited. In Chengdu, there is a natural inversion layer, but this simply traps all the auto and industrial exhaust. It’s truly appalling how overwhelming the pollution is. Beijing doesn’t have this sort of inversion layer, but it suffers from extreme levels of smog. More and more Chinese consumers are buying cars, which only adds to the problem. The explosion of private car ownership is about five years old in Chengdu. Traffic is bad and only getting worse. Car drivers think that they own the roads, and that pedestrians, bicyclists, scooter rides, and electric bikes are all secondary and in the way. They just drive right through crowds and groups of non-motorized drivers. I’m amazed we haven’t seen more accidents.
China’s CO2 output is a major contributor to global warming, and we have a worldwide ecological crisis driven in part by the Chinese economic machine. Per capita, the U.S. puts more than twenty times as much CO2 into the atmosphere as China, but China, with so many more people, is in the process of overcoming the U.S. in total emissions of Greenhouse gases. The people of the world have to choose between continued economic growth and a future.
There is currently a huge migration of Chinese people from the countryside into the cities, estimated to number 100 million in the next decade. It’s similar to the period of the enclosures, when the common land in England was privatized, forcing peasants off the land, and into the cities, where they were forced to work in the factories. This period marked the birth of capitalism in England, and is being replicated here. The cities are huge. Chengdu, where we live, has 11 million people. That’s New York, plus three Portlands.
The question for China is how can it develop in an ecological fashion and address widespread poverty, while avoiding the mistaken path of the capitalist West. There is an assumption that in order to eliminate poverty, the environment and people’s health have to be sacrificed in the name of economic growth. This is a form of madness, perpetuated by Western economists and business interests. Unless China can promote democracy and ecological sustainability, along with the rest of the world, there’s little hope of a future that resembles anything other than a dystopian nightmare. The results of global warming are everywhere we turn, and will only get worse unless we fundamentally change society. The ecological crisis is a social crisis.
Gross levels of consumption in the U.S. drive production in China. Almost everything one buys in the U.S. is made in China. The ecological disaster here, which affects the entire planet through climate change, is not only the problem of the Chinese. It’s to a large degree Western Capital which motivates Chinese production. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to speak in terms of problems confined by the borders of nation-states. What goes on in China is affected by, and in turn affects, the West. Consumption habits in the U.S. affect production in China. And those habits are conditioned by corporate advertising, driven by a base profit motive. The tentacles of capitalism are reaching – as depicted in old Chinese Communist propaganda posters – into the furthest corners of the globe.
Within the borders of China, there is a problem, namely the lack of empowerment of anyone other than those with Capital. If one has money, and wants to make more money, one has all the freedom one wants. New buildings and shopping centers are being constructed here everyday. Billboards and advertising are everywhere. Money rules Chengdu, more than the Communist Party.
If you don’t have money, you have the freedom to choose who you want to work for, often at long hours for low pay. It’s ironic, but the Anarchists had to struggle in Chicago at the turn of the last century to achieve an eight-hour work day, while here in an ostensibly Communist country, people typically work twelve hour days, at least. Factory shifts sometimes run as long as twenty hours. However, not everyone has work. The less fortunate lay out pieces of cloth on the street, displaying their wares: a few vegetables, DVDs, socks, watches, whatever. Spontaneous street markets pop up all over.
Incongruously, China has the stark contradiction of a ruling Communist Party overseeing free market capitalism of the most base and exploitative form. It’s really the worst of both worlds: an authoritarian State, and a ruthless capitalist market.
Walking around Chengdu, one might have no idea this is a Communist country. The only thing communistic that we’ve encountered since being here were the free carts for our luggage at the airport. Since then, nothing. You even have to pay to use a public toilet.
The market has run amok. Most of Chengdu resembles 14th Street in Manhattan, meaning lots of shops selling lots of junk. There is a push to turn the Chinese more into consumers, beyond their current role primarily as producers. As this continues, more and more junk is consumed, more waste is created, and the worse things get.
How members of the Central Committee reconcile this from a Marxist point of view, I don’t know. I’d be interested to find out. Which position paper justified this and how? It all started with former Chinese leader Deng XiaoPing, who first promoted capitalist development in the late 1970s, and it’s gotten to the point where To Get Rich is Glorious is now a Communist Party slogan. The red flag and Communist imagery are kept merely to hold the whole thing together. It’s the glue without which this country might come apart like the Soviet Union did.
Before arriving we read about the level of social unrest, of demonstrations and riots going on everyday, but as of yet China seems to be living up to its rulers’ emphasis on the importance of “social harmony.” The most popular political t-shirt is of Che Guevara. You see him on young people’s shirts, and on bags and magazine covers. Next to that we’ve seen maybe three or four circle-A shirts, and one F*ck Police, Ireland Rules jacket – we’re not sure that jacket wearer realized the import of the message he was displaying all over town. Otherwise there are no signs of political opinion anywhere. No one here has bumper stickers or political buttons. The only people handing out flyers are those advertising stores’ promotions. You never see anyone tabling, much less holding a rally or protest.
A surveillance camera in Kanding.
China is leading the world in employing surveillance technology, supplied by Western companies. They have cameras everywhere, and employ tens of thousands for monitoring and censoring the internet, including this site. They even have a new technology utilizing cameras and computers which monitor peoples’ movements which, when detecting signs indicating people gathering for a possible protest action, notifies local police to be dispatched. We saw plenty of cameras and police in Kanding, where there is a large Tibetan population.
Lara and I have talked about China being the future of the planet: heavily populated, filled with lots of stuff, most of which doesn’t work, dead rivers and no sky, dirty air, congested streets, ugly buildings, inhabited by people living a drab and largely meaningless existence ruled by the market. I tend to be generally optimistic about the future, but being in China is really testing that. Often one can put ones’ hope for the future in young peoples’ hands. Here, most young people have an energy similar to that of those in American shopping malls. The main orientation seems to be toward fashion and consumption. There’s a real infantilization of people here: lots of cheesy cartoons on the TVs on the public buses, lots of school kid fashion and “cute” things everywhere; little mouse ears on all the children; cartoon characters on products and in advertising. Mickey Mouse is very popular. You get the idea. It may be that this will run its course, and people will realize they’ve been had. Perhaps at some point the spirit of ’89 will return, and people here will want more from life than Starbucks and McDonalds. Only time, and what people do with it, will tell.
November 25, 2007
I recently passed through a Dark Night of the Soul, in which I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of here. Lara assures me this is a normal part of culture shock, that there are whole theories of how this happens, that it’s one stage in the process of adapting to a new culture. She told me how when she and her good friend Audrey were in Morocco, when they each reached the three month mark, they both wanted to buy tickets home. I’ve reached that mark.
Now don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of good, positive things about living in China, foremost among them the fact I get so much time alone with Lara Lee. There are some very cool things here, including spicy Sichuan cuisine, the bicycling infrastructure, some great Chinese friends, older temples and monasteries, the Chinese Medicine Hospitals, the lush vegetation, and an awesome group of expats.
Despite these things, I was feeling so unhappy, we actually discussed the possibility of going home. Lara was very good about it, saying that it was intolerable that I was so miserable, and we had to figure something out, and if that meant leaving earlier than planned, so be it. I was thinking, well, we can make it through this semester, have a month to travel, then head back in late February, early March. I can hold out that long, no problem. Just don’t ask me to stay another eight months, no way, I can’t possibly do that. Another month or two, sure, no problem, but close to a year, you have to be kidding me. I’m feeling antsy about getting my practice going again, about finding a house in Portland, about having kids. I miss my friends and family and I want to get on with things.
This came at the end of the month in which I was without my hand, setting me back in practicing characters and studying, and preventing me from riding my bike and going to the gym. It was the culmination of weeks of thinking of going home almost every day. It became obsessive. When China was upset with the US for honoring the Dalai Lama I thought to myself, maybe this is it, an escalating crisis between the US and China, resulting in all the Americans being expelled. Not only would this be our ticket out, it would also be fairly exciting to be in the middle of an international incident. They’d probably give us 48 hours or something to get our things together.
Another time I was in the shower, and there was a knock at the door, and I heard Lara speaking with someone, and the discussion sounded animated and somewhat strident, and in my mind I’m thinking, that’s it, they found out something about us they don’t like, something about our political beliefs or opinions, and they don’t want us here anymore, especially mixing it up with young people every day: we’ve been asked to leave. But no, no such luck.
This feeling didn’t happen when I spent five months in India, so I find it quite confusing. While I feel somewhat reassured that my feelings are predictable and to be expected, I’ve identified several reasons for my angst.
One of the main factors is my inability to communicate with the society I’m living in. A big part of being human is being part of a group of people with whom one shares ones’ life, and not to be able to communicate leads to an extreme form of alienation. Being surrounded by millions upon millions of people with whom I can only speak on a most basic level if at all, plus not being able to read signs, newspapers, and very few printed words, is very isolating. We are studying Mandarin, but it’s been rough going. So far, I’m picking it up slowly, and this is quite frustrating. I find it a very difficult language to understand and speak.
I found the people of India to be very warm, open, and compassionate. The Chinese are anything but. It’s hard to get to know them, to find out what they really think, who they are. Perhaps from years of living in an authoritarian political system (or is it totalitarian Ms. Kirkpatrick?), they’ve learned not to have opinions, or strong views, or if they do, to keep them to themselves. They are very reserved and, for the most part, seem cold and distant.
Another aspect of my funk is being so far from everyone I love and care about, not being with my family and friends, not being able to see anyone. On a more basic level, when living in another country, all one’s usual supports are removed. I rely heavily on the news, one might say to an obsessive level. I can’t get a daily newspaper that I can read, I can’t listen to KBOO or NPR, put on Democracy Now! or CNN. And then there’s the comforts of life in the West, which we take for granted: the ability to go see a movie, or watch the World Series, or a Bears game. And it’s very difficult to get cardiovascular exercise. Theses are all simple things which we miss when they are gone.
Finally I’ve been frustrated in fulfilling my reasons for coming to China in the first place. I’ve found that Chengdu University for Traditional Chinese Medicine is very difficult to work with. I attended one two week seminar, and several other talks, and have been to their teaching hospital for Lara’s treatments on many occasions, but my attempts to arrange more in-depth study have so far proven fruitless. It’s next to impossible to get information on study opportunities there. In talking to several other foreign students, it’s the same experience for all of them. Mostly it seems the University is interested in making money. The real money for them is from the groups which come to study for a month, not in individuals like myself and several others who come for extended periods. An Israeli friend told me that the head of the foreign affairs office actually told him that she would rather he come and study for four months and then leave, than stay the full year which he planned on. Another friend, who had arranged private tutoring with an instructor, had the arrangement terminated by the University when they found out about it.
They don’t like to share information. We had that crazy experience with the proposal for their Herb Garden when we first arrived, when I was asked to edit something only to find out they actually wanted to record me reading an 18 page text. Three weeks ago they tried to pressure me into giving six hours of talks to over 100 students who were training to be interpreters. This was with one week’s notice, and with hardly any information on what they wanted me to do, who it was for, and what the objectives were. They just wanted me to say yes without having hardly any information on what I was saying yes to.
I was in the middle of thinking through what I could possibly do for them with such short notice when the heater exploded in my hand, making preparing six hours of lectures a near impossibility. Even the news of this didn’t stop the head of the foreign affairs office however, and she continued to flatter me and use every persuasive tactic she could think of to convince me to agree, saying how sure she was my hand would be healed in time. That’s not really the point, I thought.
Despite all this, in the days since it all came to a head, I have found a new peace in being here. I’ve found that it’s only in exploring the depths, in really experiencing a bad day, or a bad period, can we transform that messy emotional stuff into something else. I thought about the very real possibility of bugging out, going back to Portland. I had to get to the stage where I could express my feelings, and talk it through. In looking at the possibility of leaving I was able to truly assess my options, no longer feeling trapped. If I want, I can leave.
Being here with Lara makes all the difference in the world. If it wasn’t for her, I’d be on a plane tomorrow. I don’t really like China, and I have a difficult time being here. Despite this feeling, there are plenty of awesome things about China, and I’m taking advantage of being here and making the best of it.
I’ve come to recognize that leaving now would be giving up too soon. Everyone who’s been here a while advises patience, that things take time, that you have to ask again and again and again, in several different ways. It seems to be part of a cultural process. One needs to bring things up over and over, approaching topics from several angels, until they’re addressed.
Sure enough, recently things have begun to change. I’ve been asked to teach three classes of conversational English to University Freshman next semester. Without dwelling on my lack of teaching credentials, I’m looking forward to this opportunity. It’ll be good to interact with a group of students on a sustained basis, plus teaching will bring in some extra funds, which in turn will allow me to hopefully spend more time working in the hospital than I had expected. Originally we could only afford my interning at the teaching hospital for one month, but now I’m working on setting up clinical work for the last four months that we’re here. I’m starting now to arrange this and I’m hoping to begin when we return from the semester break, when we’re planning to visit Thailand and India. So I feel better, more at ease, more accepting of our circumstances, making the best of being here.
Lara and I were having hot pot the other day, and I thought about all of you, and how this excellent dining experience was not available in the West. Lately I’ve been thinking that someday I will be back in Portland, looking back on my time in China, putting myself in that future place, thinking about all the things in my life right now that I’ll miss.
November 18, 2007
Someone, or some committee, or work unit, or automatic process within the Chinese State Apparatus, has determined that this Blog should not be seen in China. As of two weeks ago, although I can access the WordPress site just fine, I can no longer access my own Blog. This means, of course, that not only the 1.3 billion inhabitants of China can not see it, but neither can yours truly. This is turn makes maintaining this Blog that much more of an adventure. It takes on the dimensions of a Spy Novel, or Espionage thriller. Well, not really, but it makes it more interesting to think so. Frankly, I have no idea why this has happened and, although I wear this censorship like a badge of honor, the actual reasons for it are probably fairly mundane, routine really. Which is how State repression works most of the time.
So this explains the delay in postings this month. Fortunately, a comrade in an undisclosed location has stepped in to help, so this Blog will in fact continue, despite the feeble attempts of the Chinese government to stop it. I actually do not think they are trying to stop me from expressing myself. Rather, they want to make it more difficult, more of a hassle, which is what huge State bureaucracies thrive on, right? It’s a hassle to do anything in this country, so why should maintaining a Blog be any different?
This censorship actually turns me in a new, more free direction. Dialectically, the Chinese should have seen this coming. Now that I no longer have to worry about being censored, because I already am, I can speak more openly about what I think and what I see. I have nothing to lose now. Stay posted.
October 30, 2007
Last Monday evening it was getting a little chilly. There’s no heat in China, except for portable heaters. We have the type which resemble a radiator. I went to plug it in, and the plug blew up in my hand. It turned my whole right hand black, and hurt like hell. I immediately went out to the gate outside our apartment, and broke off an aloe vera leaf. Lara was at the gym, but when she got back I showed it to her, and she moved into Medic mode. I ended up soaking it in ice for a couple of hours, and Lara cleaned it and applied some burn cream. I went to the Doctor the next morning, and have been back several times in the last week. They gave us some Chinese herbal burn cream which is working really well. The highlight of the treatments was when they decided they had to drain the blisters, and cut off the skin. That was sweet. But in the long run, I think it was a good idea, as it’s speeded up the healing process. Yesterday and today is the first time I can type with both hands, and it will be another couple of days before I can write with a pen.
That being said, I want to let you know about a new addition to the site. Like the page Signs, which is an on going cataloguing of humorous signs from China, the new page Peculiarities will chronicle, as the name suggests, unusual social and cultural phenomenon. Like Signs, it will be periodically updated, so check it out.
Views from Inside the Hot Pot 