Of Shanghai, Shoe Designers, and Pop-Culture Philosophy.

*note: in reference to my recent post, I want to clarify my comment about the one-child policy, in case my sarcasm went unnoticed: thanks to the one-child policy, my two younger brothers have not been able to gain citizenship because they are the 2^nd and 3^rd children in this family. As a result, they go unrecognized by the government, and for all legal technicalities, do not “exist.” This fact is one I deeply am moved and angered by. These two children, though only 4 and 6 years old, have enough brain-power and energy to run their own country. They deserve more, and I’ll stand by them with all the strength I have. Just wanted to clarify…

Anyway…

…Christmas finally came, and with it, adventures in a Chinese amusement park. That’s right. My family and I spent our Christmas Eve day in Shenzhen’s famous (apparently) Water Mountain Park, complete with roller-coaster and zoo. I guess I had originally imagined that we’d somehow be spending the day with my Chinese family, doing Christmassy things like, say, opening gifts… or spending time as a family (well, families), talking to one another about Christmases come and gone… I think I’d imagined a fireplace somewhere in there…

But, no! We spent the day at an amusement park, chatting, laughing, eating, drinking, roller-coaster-riding… Not your typical Christmas. We had an absolutely marvelous time, and the day will always remain a wonderful memory.

On Christmas day itself, my cousin Rachel joined my father and mother and I for a day in Hong Kong. It was fantastic, just to sit and talk about all things China, to catch up, and to learn a few extra Chinese phrases from Rachel, who happens to be taking Mandarin lessons. Family is a wonderful thing, and it takes leaving your loved-ones behind to truly realize just how much the words “I love you,” (words we often take for granted, especially in a “family” context) really mean. I’m so, so incredibly lucky, and I wish from the bottom of my heart that each of my friends could know the joy and the preciousness of having a family that shares love the way mine’s been blessed to. I’m blessed to grow up with people like this. I’m just utterly blessed. I’ll put it that simply.

So, I’m sure, you can understand that it was quite difficult for me to wake up the next morning and realize that I’d be leaving them. Again.

But, adventure called, and I had another train to catch. Rachel and I would leave Hong Kong that morning and travel to Shanghai. So, the morning flew by in a flurry… packing and repacking and breakfast and travel itineraries and phone calls… and suddenly we were in the lobby and we were hugging our farewells…

…a mere 6 hours later, I was in a taxi with my cousin marveling at the Shanghai skyline.

Shanghai. Now that’s a city. If Beijing is Washington D.C., Shanghai is New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas all rolled into one intriguingly tumultuous bundle of fascinating architecture, fashion, taxis, art, coffee-shops, hotels, party-goers, drug-dealers (sadly), antique-markets, peanut-ice (delicious, I promise!), high-prices…

The list goes on.

Shanghai is the type of city one has to spend years in to truly get the feel for. I was only there a week, and felt so overwhelmed by the end of it all that my brain nearly popped. But Shanghai itself can’t seem to leave my mind; there’s definitely an energy to that place that’s intoxicating.

Rachel and Kyle, her brother, are my cousins. Both live and work in Shanghai, and I can’t even begin to describe how inspiring they are as human beings. Rachel deals in advertisement for luxury brands in China, and Kyle works for an architecture firm… the same architecture firm that recently finished designing (with his considerable influence) the new Shanghai tower. Look it up. It’s quite impressive!

Most of our week together flew by in one high-energy, caffeinated blur. (I mean caffeinated quite literally. In addition to being brilliant and hilarious, my cousins both have an almost worrying obsession with coffee, and I suspect that their cappuccino-craze is contagious.) As for the high-energy… oh, the stories I could tell! So many interesting people! So many interesting places!

We spent one of the first nights of my time in Shanghai at a dinner party in a posh shoe designer’s flat… complete with professionally graffiti-ed walls, a techno beat, low lighting, strange furniture (the dining table, for example, was composed of brightly colored mannequin legs), cigarette smoke, and an incredibly spoiled pug-dog named Pooka… or Pucci… or Charles… I can’t remember. Either way, the dinner party itself was an experience. I met such fascinating people (one of whom I’m pretty sure is connected with the Chinese mafia… but that’s a story for another time) I met people who spoke with accents from anywhere between Brazil and London… Vancouver and India…

I loved it. It was a new world. Not one I desire to live in, but I certainly don’t mind dropping in for a visit now and then.

The following nights of my time in Shanghai (including a wonderful and memorable New Years Eve) passed similarly among brilliant and infinitely interesting social artists. At 16, I was exposed to I lifestyle I’ve only ever seen on TV, or read about in airplane magazines… people dancing, drinking, smoking, gossiping for the camera… all with a vocabulary denoting something enchantingly intellectual underneath the makeup or the martini, depending on who you talked to. While there’s a certain charm to the lights and the drama, this is a lifestyle I’d never choose for myself… I don’t think I could handle it… it’d be like trying to flamboyantly dance a tango while balancing four books and a teacup on my head. Throw my faith in the mix, and you’d have a disaster.

I am glad I was exposed to this type of lifestyle now, rather than later. I feel like, as a young person out and about in the world, I’m able to grasp a different perspective on things… like… the high school party scene, for example. At home, I just accepted it. But now, at the risk of sounding cynical, I feel as though I’ve learned, in a very realistic sense, that there’s truly “nothing new under the sun.” People utterly intoxicated by pride, fear, scandal, and yes, even alcohol, are the same whether they’re 16, or 65. The only thing that differs is perhaps the amount of elasticity in the skin around their eyes.

Shanghai taught me so much. And perhaps the most important thing it taught, or rather reminded me of, was that it doesn’t matter. All I need to do is see beyond all of that. To see beyond the outward show, beyond the drinking and the clothes and the intellectual lingo… to think and act beyond that, and think on the heart of a person, even if that heart happens to be broken.  Because, a person’s heart, who they really are, is the only thing that matters.

Because the heart is where God lives. And loves. And what could be more important or exciting than Love?

Well, to put it simply, Shanghai was an adventure. (I think you can probably tell that clearly enough by my long and impassioned tangent). Among the art galleries and the New Year parties and the architecture and the coffee shops and the long taxi-rides… I think perhaps my favorite part was merely spending time with my cousins. I loved getting to know them both better, getting to watch them interact with each other and those around them, seeing their depths and joys and strengths and loves and hates… You should know that I’ve grown up with Rachel and Kyle, but our time in Shanghai really showed me their personalities and their spirits in ways I’d never seen before. I made some marvelous memories, and came away knowing each a little better. I love them both dearly, and without them, my time in Shanghai wouldn’t have come even half as close to the marvelous pack of escapades I remember. So, thank you Rachel and Kyle, and thank you God, for that grand new chapter in my Chinese epic. I won’t ever forget it. 

(P.S. Also, thank you, Stenson and Wynston, for making my second day in Shanghai the most hilarious of my life!)

(P.P.S. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I met some family friends of my cousins while I was in Shanghai, and I thought it fair to give them a shout out. I know that this little blog isn't exactly Facebook, but I couldn't resist)

Year of the Dragon

I am a terrible blogger. I’ll just say it like it is.

It’s been a month and nine… check that, ten days since my last post…

Wow. Sorry about that.

I guess it just goes to show how busy things can get. Goodness, how many stories I have to tell. Stories of date-orchards and Japanese hippie drum circles… home-made Christmas decorations and Hong Kong bus tours…  Shanghai shoe-designers and sausage-making… of purple dumplings… of my youngest brother’s current lack of clothes.

(Yes, he is, at this moment, running around the house. Naked.)

Some of you who have siblings are probably used to this display of otherwise unseemly behavior, but I view the practice as… well… let’s just say I still have a mild heart attack whenever the villainous child kicks open my door and stands there utterly unclothed. Which he does quite… often.

Anyway.

The stories I have to tell are numerous and full of most-likely unnecessary detail… too many to fit into the posts of an obscure Google blog. It’s strange, sitting here and typing away, as if I had any hope of being able to relay to you my adventures and misadventures… if only I had a movie camera in my brain… what a cinematic experience I could create!

But the truth is, I haven’t been creating the experience… I can honestly say that no happening, since the beginning of this grand chapter in my life, has been self-stimulated. I can only (and gladly will) give credit to Him for all the insane and wonderful occurrences that make life here as sweet, strange, and extraordinary as it is.

Another year has come and gone, and I can honestly say that each year of my life thus far has been better than the last. And 2012, the Year of the Dragon, seems to glimmer ahead of me as brightly, if not more so, than 2011 did. So much to do within the next five months of my time in Beijing, an already I’m feeling the creeping sense of impending end. How can this be? I’m not even quite halfway, yet!

Either way, without further overblown ado, I give you December.

December existed purely as a blur for me…

Most of the first half of the month consisted purely of Chinese Christmas songs… songs which all of the kindergarteners would sing for a host of enthusiastic parents as part of the Annual Kindergarten Christmas Performance. I found myself thoroughly involved in correcting the pronunciation of “jingle” and “bells,” while busily encouraging the youngest students not to leap off the makeshift stage at the first sight of Daddy (or as we say, Baba) with a camcorder. Altogether, the kindergarten’s Christmas performance was a success and truly a cherished memory for me, as it allowed me to grow and strengthen my relationships with some of the other teachers.

The other teachers who work at the kindergarten… describing them…where to begin? One thing I can say is that I deeply admire them all… No, more than that… I can honestly say that I have never met a group of people so soulfully beautiful and fearless in their love of other people, especially the children they are entrusted with day after day. The beauty of their hearts, and Christ’s presence therein, is evident in everything they do. These teachers and their lives have changed and spoken to my soul.

And I can’t even understand their language. That’s amazing in and of itself… that, for the first time, I have actually seen actions speak much louder than words. Something that we, in the Western world, could all learn a little more about, I think.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. There’s a power moving here. A power moving in the lives and hearts of the people, and whether you believe in God or not, no one can deny that China is on the brink. I’m not sure of what brink exactly, but, then again, who am I to know? I’m just glad to be here, feeling the ground shudder with the intensity of it all.

            With that said, I’m so thankful that I’ve had the chance to travel a bit, and actually see this amazing country in action. Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai were my three December destinations. The first, to meet my parents for Christmas, the second, to visit my also-travelling Chinese family, and the latter, for a week-long adventure with my cousins, Kyle and Rachel.

            I made my way to Hong Kong via train. An overnight train ride from Beijing… quite the experience! If you enjoy small spaces, the smell of insti-noodle, a lack of privacy, secondhand-smoking, Chinese opera, and enthusiastic, small monke- I mean, children, then I definitely recommend the ride!

Actually, in all honesty, I’d have to say that I truly enjoyed the experience… it was fun to be with my Chinese family, to see the countryside, to get a feel for real China, untainted by the comforts of city life or the internet. It was just me, my little bunk, and the constant chug, chug, chug of train engine as the tracks led us around rice-paddies, through villages, over rivers… all the while, the sounds of my brothers leaping precariously from bunk to bunk above me, and the smell of instant-noodle and cigarette smoke adding character to the air.

When we reached Hong Kong station, I reunited with my Daddy-o, and waved farewell to my Chinese fam, who’d be spending their holiday in Schenzhen, Hong Kong’s neighbor. (Thanks to the one-child policy, my brothers aren’t citizens, and therefore cannot be allowed off mainland China).

Dad and I made our way to the hotel in downtown Kowloon, right across the bay from Hong Kong island. While still a part of China, Hong Kong seems a world fully a part. With a largely foreign population, an insane economy, historical British influence, not to mention freedom, Hong Kong definitely stands apart. The islands’ mountains, ocean, and crowded city skyline seemed somehow to all fit together without any hint of incongruity; the tropical air, endless malls, shining buildings, palm trees and island ferries all seemed to somehow flow together in one grand sweep of bustling city. (Some of you may remember a scene in The Dark Knight where Christian Bale takes a theatrical dive off a huge, blue-lit building and swoops around like… well, a bat? Well, fun fact: the featured building happens to be the highest tower in Hong Kong!)

It was wonderful to spend time with my family, touring the city together, taking every chance we could to soak up all the familial love we had to offer… which was considerable. I seriously adore my parents.

Christmas finally came and…

…to be continued. It's 1 am, and I have some kindergarteners to teach in roughly 7 hours… wouldn’t do to fall asleep mid-lesson… but, stay tuned; like I said, “to be continued.” Love from Beijing…