Spring wonders

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It wasn’t quite a fistfight, but the dudes were shoving each other over by the garbage can. The old men caught my attention this morning when I was sitting by the lake listening to John Friend on my iPod. This famous yoga teacher was instructing students to open to grace and be grateful for the ability to practice yoga. To my right, a 70ish man in a suit coat sprinted, as well as he could, to the trash can. Only he took second place to another old man wearing a winter jacket. They were both carrying plastic shopping bags, the kind that the wealthy get with every $10 shirt. Only these guys were filling theirs with leftovers garnered from the lunch crowd who were chucking food scraps. The first guy was pushing the other, trying to claim dibs on the remains, but nothing doing as the second man pulled up six greasy boxes. The fight then over, each retired to opposite corners and lit up cigarettes.

Perhaps it takes being in a foreign land, largely languageless, to really get a good look at human nature. But this poverty mentality is shared everywhere here, not just by the poor. Sean returned the other day from Thailand, bearing 11 pairs of Thai fishermen’s pants, the kind that cost $2. He brought them out at a staff meeting and the office manager charged him, wrestling the bag out of his arms. “Just let it go,” I told him when he looked up. Safely in her hands, she ripped the bag apart, then got in a tug of war with the sales manager as the other employees scrambled for their own. There were enough pants for everyone, but that didn’t seem to matter. Nice behavior in a yoga studio, eh? Worse, they didn’t leave any for the cleaning ladies, the ones who make the least money.

I’ve noticed this ‘me-first’ approach in other places. On the subway in Shanghai this weekend, the herd rushed an empty car just to be first into a seat. The behavior makes me wince all the more because I recall all the times I’d acted the same way back home. Here though, it can be defensive. I willingly shoulder into someone when they try to jump ahead at a payment window. I’m not gonna be that patient.

But thinking poor really is built into the culture around here. Some things really are scarce, like spots at good schools. I was interviewing a Chinese journalist the other day named Eva Woo. She writes economics stories for the Washington Post and has applied to grad school at UC Berkeley, the same place I studied 17 years ago. She said she most admired a TV producer here who examined the pressure that Chinese students face in the 12th year of school. It is a make or break year and like in Japan, can largely determine a person’s future. She appreciated how the producer took a multifaceted approach to the work and in so doing, helped get things past the censors. I’d like to tell you more about our time together and the things she said about being a reporter, but I’ll be circumspect. I have to assume Big Brother is watching. It’s pretty clear the government spends a lot of effort restraining freethinking. I wasn’t able to log onto the Journalism school’s web page to administer Eva’s writing exercise. It’s blocked, probably because the J-school has on its faculty at least one dissident Chinese journalist. It’s not like I get a clear sign either, like a notice saying “this page is blocked” but instead the pages just don’t load. Same thing happened when I tried to read Tom Tomorrow’s cartoons on Slate.com. Even though he takes the piss out of the American government, such behavior might catch on, so ya can’t see the site from here, at least not officially. I dropped him a note to which he responded saying he was wondering how many readers he has in China. Precious few, I suspect. All is not lost, though, as I hear there are many web savvy Chinese who write censor-evading code and pass it around.

To hear creative people tell it, there is a precious lack of creativity here. I was talking with an artist at dinner the other night. He is Chinese and is teaching only he was having to take a few steps back before actually teaching technique. “First I have to teach them meaning,” Ming said. (I’ve changed his name.)
“Um, sorry, I don’t quite get it,” I admitted.
“They don’t understand meaning. You know,” he said pointing at a candle on the table. “Sometimes a candle is not always a candle.”
“Ah,” I said thinking of Rene Magritte’s piece about the pipe that is not a pipe. “They’re all too literal.”
“Yes,” Ming said. “The students are technically proficient, but they don’t know how to think. They can copy anything, but they don’t have any meaning in their lives.”
A bit bewildered, I asked again for clarification.
“If you ask them about a meaningful book all you get are blank stares,” he said. “Or a meaningful part of their lives.”
Really?
Students are largely one-dimensional. “Like the ones who study English for ten years. All they can do is say “Hello.” Or all they can do is speak English. There is nothing behind it.”
That made me think of one of our employees named Esther. Her English is good, but she has few aspirations. She’s the one who so easily adopted the dream of travel I suggested early in my life here. She is a keen learner of English and we often trade words, but she doesn’t have much desire. That is why Sean and I named her our Director of Inspiration. We’ve asked her to compile a book of helpful yoga-related reading that our members can browse. We’re also hoping the title rubs off a bit.
It also reminds me of Norman, my Chinese teacher. He asked me the other day to explain the differences between dual, duplex and diploid. That was a head-scratcher. I managed with explanations of car exhaust pipes, buildings and biology. “Just use double,” I said. But he is the one who gave me a couple books, in English, detailing the character of the so-called Chinaman. I’ve just cracked the covers and will write about them in more detail some other time.
My conversation with Ming continued and I suggested that I come to a class and offer some suggestions on creativity. He’d already thought of that.
“They want to meet you,” he said. “I already told them about you. I told them my yoga teacher is a disturber.”
Yes, I did admit such in a casual moment after a yoga class. It was a name that a friend gave me about 20 years ago when I was working at Beyond War. He said, “John, you are a shit disturber.” Some things I have not outgrown.
I’ve agreed, that when classes resume, I will come in as a guest lecturer and bring with me a plastic dinosaur and horse, going away gifts given to me by my housemate’s kids, Clay and Emma Griffin-Derr of Denver. And we can do some role-playing or something. And maybe some Zen Improv that I picked up from Craig Zablocki. If nothing else, it will be an hour of laughing at the foreigner. In exchange, Ming is coming over next weekend for the first Xi Hu Salon in which he will lead a discussion around the dinner table about Contemporary Chinese Art. It comes right on the heels of a similar sale at Sotheby’s which should help the discussion.

Speaking of disturbing shit, the other day there were three guys dressed in green army fatigues armed with a shovel and wheelbarrow, lifting something from under the concrete slab in my apartment courtyard. The smell explained it all. Apparently shit doesn’t go far around here, but collects down at street level. I had no idea who these guys were and I wondered why the army would detail guys to shovel poo. “The gardeners all wear cammo,” a friend explained. Perhaps I am making more of a contribution than I thought. It certainly explains why everyone puts TP in the trash next to the commode.

For ten bucks you can get a guy in a suit coat to come over, dismantle the range hood and make a wicked mess in the hallway. I learned this a couple weeks ago when the fan began making a bad noise. Actually, Zhou Aie heard the noise. She is our cleaning/cooking/shopping lady whom we pay $80 a month to work a couple hours a day, six days a week. The guy brought all his tools, wrapped in a cloth and spread them out on the landing and in two hours, had cleaned and reassembled the whole fan unit. Zhou helped him with pans of grease-cutting hot water but the guy makes a living doing this. It’s no surprise. Since Zhou began cooking here, all the bottles stored next to the stove now wear a sticky oily coat. It’s kinda gross and Sean has had enough. He’s just returned from fasting in Thailand, his third visit, and is making more effort to eat raw. So she no longer cooks, but instead does the prep and cleanup the next day. Just for the record, he passed a load of Candida and feels better than ever. No one leaves the dharma healing center without leaving something behind. No idea if it becomes fertilizer there.

For my part, I’ve been a bit sick. I went to Shanghai on Saturday to teach a hand standing workshop to 30 students. That was a real kick. But by Sunday the tummy was funny and by Sunday night I was inducing vomiting. I’m still feeling some swollen glands. Doctor Hu says it is the change of seasons and I am not dressing well enough. Before sticking me with needles she offered some advice: “Hangzhou people say ‘dress warm in spring and cold in autumn,’” she said.
The good doctor came to a Hot yoga class the other day and sat through the whole session in her street clothes. She told me this mixing of hot and cold isn’t good for me. “You have received a cold wind in your spine. Many people in spring also have many diseases,” she said. I nodded, resigned that there’s not much I can do. It’s an occupational hazard. A cross that I must bear. Boo hoo.

I often draw comments about what I am wearing, not so much the quality, but the quantity. The other day I was out walking with He Yin the old fella and he warned me about not having enough clothes, just as I was pulling an extra shirt out of my bag. Today the office ladies told me I was wearing too much because I had a hoodie under my coat. It feels good to know so many people care. My question though is, when are the seasons NOT changing? No one has answered that one yet.

Mr. He has invited me to a short trip to the American Missionary School. I have no idea what that is, but he was talking about it the other day when we went for a walk. He invited me to go on Saturday and if I can handle it, I will go. The thing about He is that even though I am an adult, he treats me like a kid. During a recent hour he warned me several times:
“Where have you left your bicycle? I want to make sure it is properly secured.”
“Perhaps you should wear more clothing, you will catch a cold.”
“Be careful of your money, there are pickpockets everywhere.”
His warnings are a bit tiresome though entertaining. I wonder if he lives in a completely paranoid world. I can understand it. The government for years has warned citizens about us evil “foreign devils” and training like that doesn’t go away easy. They still trot out the warnings whenever local devils or officials are looking for a scapegoat. But He can also see through much of the fear mongering.
“Shall I not put food in my mouth for fear of choking?” he asked. “Shall I stop walking for fear of falling? No. I am an old man. I am going to enjoy the last years of my life.”
I’ll let you know what I find at the missionary school, long as I get over this cold he and everyone else warned me about.

Spring is indeed a wonderful time here in Hangzhou. It’s kind of the calm before the coming storm of 100-degree temperatures so forgive me for not wearing coat. The willow trees at the lake all have new growth as do the sycamores lining the main road to the studio. I even learned that Chinese have two words that mean green, one is the green we see on the trees in spring. The other is darker. Norman told me the other day that the Chinese rainbow has seven colors: Red, orange, yellow, light green, dark green, blue and indigo. Not that I have seen a rainbow. Strong as the sun is, it is no match for the haze. Still the temperature is warming and I hear bird song every morning. I’ve not worked the ID’s yet but there are lots of finches and wrens and chickadees flitting about. I was visiting with a student named Ann at her apartment the other day when she remarked about all the birds. She’d never seen so many around here. “And a squirrel,” she said pointing excitedly at the trees out her window. “We have a squirrel!”
Having shot several, eaten many and cursed hundreds of squirrels in my time in the US, her excitement surprised me. “There were never squirrels around here,” she said.
This explains the excitement I see among Chinese when they spot the squirrel living in the trees by the studio. They all point their phones up in the tree, capturing images of a fuzzy brown dot. Squirrels are nature running loose, something no one here sees much of. I’m still looking for a Chinese squirrel expert to confirm this, but I think they are an indicator species of a community’s wealth. If there are enough trees to make a canopy, a place can support some wildlife. Long as the locals aren’t so hungry they eat the breed stock. Contrast that with Denver’s Washington Park where parents defend their children from the bushy-tailed vermin.

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