Those times when I hear bad news of people dying from a part of the world I know and think “There? I could have been there! I could have died!” are often times when I feel alone. International news so emotionally distant to local people. On the other hand, I felt rather emotionally distant from Hurricane Katrina. I’m not entirely sure why, but one explanation is that I live so thoroughly in a world of distant proximities that I’m just that lacking in patriotic fervor. I may simply feel closer to 北京 (Běijīng) people or 重庆 (Chóngqìng people than New Orleans people, because I conceptualize belonging nearly completely in a transnational, abstract space. It’s always hard to analyze yourself, but this might not only be an example of Pollock and van Reken’s properties of TCKs, but it might also connect that property with experiencing distant proximities strongly and living in Rosenau’s Affirmative Global world.

Maybe I feel for the earthquake victims more than Hurricane Katrina victims because I am very aware of that my life has intertwined with 四川 (Sìchuān), but not with New Orleans. My repatriation has made me keenly aware of the fallacies of assuming commonality because of shared language, partially shared culture and shared genes. I see myself, others and my own identity playing out in a space of emotional connections which are distant proximities. I do not automatically feel connected to people because they superficially ’seem’ like me. The most bitter moments of my life were caused by such people, and in contrast, some of the best were with people who were not superficially like me. I am committed to a global identity in ways that I doubt many expatriates are.

Perhaps our reactions to international news regarding our old homes or places we visited a lot locally is just the visible indicator of what really sets us apart from expatriates or other international-minded people. If I’m anywhere near typical, I just don’t care about people (above and beyond fundamental human dignity) just because they look like me, talk like me, dress like me, or have the same passport as me. All of those have been shown to be poor indicators of real similarity to myself. I feel connected to anyone I’ve met who is open-minded and open-hearted, and I continue to feel that way no matter how far away they are from me at the moment. The strong emotional reaction to bad international news is a natural consequence. 

It is very sad, what has been happening in Tibet. Like in Burma, it takes quite a lot to abuse monks. I’m not sure whether the Party leadership really thinks anyone outside China will believe that those Tibetans are just making trouble for no good reason. There wouldn’t even be any 汉族 / Hàn people in Tibet if the Party hadn’t made it so profitable for Chinese to move there. The Hànification of Tibet is very similar to the Russianification of Estonia. It is being done to dilute one ethnic group with another, to get pesky demands of independence to cease, to make it seem futile to lay claim to your country. Perhaps China also has to learn the lesson that in a even moderately globalized world, outsiders tend to poke around in what you might have thought of as your internal affairs earlier. No one particularly said anything about colonization when it started or about the subjugation of minorities in China before China opened up, mostly because there was nowhere to say it so that it was widely heard. However, colonialization pointed out the need to say something, not just about European takeover escapades, and now the Dalai Lama has a social space to make his message heard. What brought you the WTO now brings you nosy foreign journalists. C’est la vie.

It would be easier to have a teacher, but there aren’t many 太极拳 (tàijíquán) masters where we live. The course I took earlier was given by an American who was taught by a Korean. The teacher counted in Korean, which confused me endlessly. I get confused if 太极拳 (tàijíquán) is presented clearly outside a Chinese cultural context. Some sort of fusion or third culture context works too, but if the keynote isn’t Chinese I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do or how I’m supposed to relate to the teacher. It seems easier to put myself mentally in China and remember without support than to associate another culture with 太极拳 (tàijíquán). (I’m sure this is how cultural mismemories among immigrants and expats are formed.) But nonetheless, having been foiled by PAL video on an NTSC TV, we’ll just have to use distant proximities to imagine ourselves in the room where we practiced with fog and green bamboo outside in the valley, or in one of our parks with new concrete paths and sculpted landscapes, or on the roof of our building with the 扬子江 (Yángzǐ Jiāng) flowing beneath us, visible through the special fog- and pollution-mediated light. It’s surprisingly easy sometimes.

给大家新年快乐!

春节快乐!

Happy Spring Festival!

The other day, I had planned to run some errands in the grocery store after class. I didn’t think about that I’d be wearing my 太极拳 (Tai4ji2quan2) clothes – very old-fashioned indeed. As I’m walking through the supermarket, trying to be quick, feeling like everyone’s looking at me thinking, “What’s a modern young woman doing in those clothes? And she’s a Westerner to boot, shouldn’t she be a little more with it?”, I realized that the clothes don’t look old-fashioned here – they must look exotic.

I remember Li, one of my father’s business partners, telling me about what happened. She was there as a student, and spent the next two weeks in the countryside hiding. It’s amazing when you think about it, how much the world has changed since then. Now she’s an overseas Chinese. She changed her citizenship, so now she has what she was fighting for then. But many millions don’t.

I also remember speaking with a good friend of mine, whose name I will not type out on the vauge chance that I could get them in trouble. We were speaking about the massacre (good friend with open heart indeed, as you can see), and I mentioned the iconic picture seen all around the world except China itself, of the lone man standing in front of the tank holding up his hand in a ’stop’ sign. My friend looked confused, and I realized they hadn’t seen it, they hadn’t seen any pictures or footage of something that happened 30 minutes from their home.

But the grip of the Party will corrode, sooner or later. There were good reasons to be so suspicious of foreigners. My friend now knows that there is footage that was seen worldwide, they know there are pictures, and they know from my face and my words that everyone abroad knows. They know there is such a thing as “the” picture from 天安门广场 (Tian1an1men2 Guang3chang3, Tiananmen Square). I don’t know how far that knowledge might spread, but some young people do know. I told one myself. Looking around on campus, there are a lot of overseas Chinese here. Some of them will see the footage, and some of them will go back. The knowledge and memory will be preserved here, until China is ready.

The authorities are still very jumpy about gatherings on 天安门广场 (Tian1an1men2 Guang3chang3, Tiananmen Square), especially after the Falun Gong incidents. A police van followed me around when I was rollerblading on the square once, but that was in June. I’m not sure how someone rollerblading might be a threat, but it’s apparently not out of the question.

It’s so unfair. I wish my friend had the same freedoms and opportunities as I do. They deserve better. They are not a cog in a machine, they are a person. They are not some cretin that has to beg for a visa or a potential sacrifice for the glory of some leader or party or country. They are a person with their own personal sorrows and joys, their special smile, and their own hopes and wishes. I wish they could look at anything they like, discuss anything they like and had more chances for a better life than they do. There is no reason why they couldn’t, and they shouldn’t have to leave their country to get it. I hope we will meet again when China is completely open and rich and look back and say “Wow, things changed since we first met. Remember?”