秋思

 秋思  一

仲秋雨后日光暖

遍地落叶赛灿烂

赤橙黄绿青蓝紫

对对簇簇不做古

谁怕衰华秋节至

有道绕远定然复

Journey Home 4

July 13th, 2012 Q woke up in the early morning, at probably 3 a.m. and thought it was 5 a.m. and so still too early to move around and stir up the hostess. He resorted to his iPod to kill time while I lay awake pretending to be still asleep. It might be another two hours before he got up, and I followed suit. Immediately did L and T even as the latter had stayed in a different room. T in his jogging outfits suggested in a whisper that we go out with him for a walk, which we were also thinking of. On tiptoe we left the apartment where our hostess QH was still sleeping. We each guessed what hour it might be in the elevator and discussed the necessity to adjust the times on our cellphones and wristwatches as we reached the ground floor. To our surprise, the clock in the hallway told us that it was earlier than all of us guessed: it was just turning five a.m. as we stepped out of the building. T quickly jogged away after promising his Dad that he would just follow the pedestrian and so wouldn't lose himself. Q, L and I sauntered along, taking in every noticeable objects. Q comments on the little flower gardens and L looked excited to be on a street so different from what she had ever seen. What really caught Q's attention was some peddlers peddling little two-wheelers with "Fry Cake" shining in red on the greyish white boards. That was one of Q's favorite foods before he left Ch, and for a decade or so, he had been missing it. He followed the carts, and we followed him until the carts stopped two hundred meters away in front of a hospital. Despite his watering mouth, Q decided not to buy anything because he thought those address specifically to the patients could not be high-quality on top of the fact that he had already read too much about food safety in Ch. before he landed--indeed, Q restrained himself from taking any street food and so no "fry-cake" at all during his whole journey in China. We moved on, past some decent-looking gym, some grand hotel, and a very smelly public restroom in between. We'd smelled it at least twenty feet away. L asked what it was that smelled so yukky and Q asked why this grand capital city could not even got its sewage system straight. "It might take another half a century for Ch. to catch up with Am. in this aspect," commented Q. I indicated for him to be calm. He probably did not need my suggestions; for as soon as we were out of the smelly area, he was happily chattering about what traditional northern breakfast food we could have: fried bread stripes, steamed dumplings, soy milk, millet porridge, wonton soup, bean curd jelly with black mushrooms marinated in the mixture of soy sauce, vinegar and green-been flour. As he talked about this, I suggested that we return; for suddenly my stomach ached for all those things he mentioned. Q agreed that we should walk any further away but walk slowly back so that T could catch up. By the time we were near the apartment building, T emerged in front of us, as if out of nowhere. It was a few minutes less than six, though, when we arrived and checked the apartment building clock. We decided to go quietly in and try to sleep another hour or two. As it turned out, we lay awake chattering quietly for another hour or so and happily got up at the sound of our hostess stirring up. Soon

Procrastination

Procrastination looks like a failure of will but is in fact an emotional and physical mechanism to cope with two imposing forces: On one side is the hubris that what one's going to do is so great that it cannot be done in a less-than-ideal environment but must await the ever-receding best starting point; on the other is the unacknowledged depression that is quick to enjoy but slow to accept a routine job done superbly, such as a just comment on a student's paper, an appropriate administrative email, a sweet gesture to please an acquaintance. The mechanism is modern in the sense that it comes with the invention of the linear time that hinges the meaning of life on the future, on the seemingly common sense that the distant is nurturing a new thing, a new relation, a new self. In other words, what is at stake is the modern idea of hope. Back in the village, when things come and go in a day-night and then seasonal cycle, what matters is what is at hand. What's going down with the wheel can be brought up again; there is not yet an outside where one can be dropped. Whoever invents this outside is talented but doomed, doomed to run continually away from the shadow of the past--with the only salvation loomed in the illusion of the future.

Journey Home 3

YY's apartment, located in the western part of the town, should be, as the name of the building suggests, the "light of the city." Indeed the security-guarded entrance, the marbled ground floor, and the front-mirrored elevator were quite imposing, but when we were taken in by YY's wife, we were a bit surprised by the scanty-furnishment there. Other than a plain couch, a small wooden table in front of it, a marble-surfaced table to its right, and a TV stand to its front at the other end, the living room was bare. Not that it did not send off some elegance and taste of luxury from its fancy lights on the ceiling; it was just that for our undertanding of the scale of YY's business, the apartment looked a bit undeserving. We were soon to learn that this was just a dwelling place for his wife, whose working unit was nearby, and that they had bought a house somewhere else. Still, this supposedly three-bedroom luxury apartment was a bit disappointing, especially after we had used the bathroom, which was a bit smelly even as the western-styled toilet looked decently clean. There was a white porcelin tub, too, two feet away from the toilet, unlike in the usual Chinese water closet. The bathroom floor was wet, though,because there was no curtain to the tub and indeed no possibilty to install one due to the crude way the shower head was connected to the water tank above the toilet. While I was managing to shower L, she whispered: "Mom, why some part of Auntie's place is so dirty?" At her first comment after landing, I had to invent something: Auntie's place would be much nicer once we woke up in the morning when we were less tired." And that's all my eight-year American PhD training could invent upon an urgent call.

Journey Home 2

“You have not changed much/a bit”--this turned out to be the most frequently said and heard on the journey—as a compliment meaning one was still young, as an icebreaker between those who had obviously been estranged by the years of separation, and as a substitute for what was meant to be said in fact: “Much has changed.” As soon as he saw to it that all luggage was safely stowed away in the trunk of his driver's minivan; T and L in the van; Q, L and I in his car, LW exhaled an a-ya- and said,"you haven't changed a bit, still as slender as you used to be.” “But the hair has turned gray, that's why I am wearing the hat!” Q was apparently pleased with LW's compliment and voiced the hair imperfection in a brisk tone that made nothing but a delightful fact of it. “Mine, too, but I have dyed, haha,” said LW in a light tone as well. The air in the car was now much less pressing and pleasantly cool; still LW asked in earnest if the air-conditioning was functioning properly for L and me in the back. "How's business? We are all proud of you, YY and a couple of others in our cohort who had the courage to "go down to the sea" and set up your own companies," said Q. "All right, all right, small business, though. Not unlike YY, whose company is big. You communicate more with YY, though? We are not often in touch, even as we are both in Beijing. Do you still remember QWC? He is probably in America now, but I haven't heard from him since he called from the airport, saying he's going abroad. Nothing, no news at all. He's made a fortune, though, you know, financial business conducted together with his brother-in-law. Three boys, all gone with him, I guess, but no news, no news at all. Strange. Strange. He could have sent us a brief note specifying his whereabout as you did for our cohort renuion, but not a word." LW sighed and adeptly passed a giantic truck that seemed to be verging onto his lane on the crowded high way. "Aha,can't it be that he is hiding, like other corrupted," said Q jokingly. "Who knows what, nowadays," LW seemed to have taken Q's joke seriously, "Based on you two's experience, is it better to send a kid abroad for school? And what's the best timing, high school, college, or graduate school?" LW was trying to pull me into the conversation. To prevent Q from voicing any extreme view as he would on this issue, I jumped in quickly:"While exposure to another culture is certainly helpful, it really depends on the character of the kid as to when it is best to go abroad; if one is independent and strong willed, it won't matter much probably to study away from home earlier; otherwise it is probably better to wait till later since studing abroad does entail tolerating much lonliness and self-discipline." I was surprised at my own cautiousness but relieved that Q now could no longer say, "the earlier, the better." LW called to confirm with YY that we were to gather at a restaurant near YY's apartment, and it was close to 8 p.m. when we arrived there. LW ordered a huge bunch of food and drinks but we failed to be good guests enjoying most of them due to jetlag. Q wanted to suggest that the leftover be packed up and taken away, but seeing no such intention on the host's part, he did not voice it. And it was late into the night when jetlag brought me awake in an small hour of the morning that I saw Q staring at the ceiling and murmuring: "As regards eating, much has changed."

Journey Home 1

Something is remembered because it is constantly recalled and relived in the mind. That the recent trip back home should still come alive to an agitating heart in the depths of night suggests its recordable quality. So here are attempts to take down what still lives of the journey back to Ch from July 11th till August 10th, 2012. July 12th, Thursday. The plane from Seattle to Beijing was half an hour behind the schedule, and so when we presented ourselves at the International Arrivals, we did not see Q's nephew or college classmate who was supposed to meet us there. I surveyed each expectant face leaning over the steel frame that zigzagged around the exit. Q did the same but with more anxiety voiced by repeating: "Traffic jam maybe, traffic jam." I went to a counter where two girls seemed to be selling phone cards. The cards they sold could only be used on public telephones like those ancient black ears hanging on the wall behind them, and the least payment for a card was 50 yuan. I was to buy one when Q closed up and said "no need". The girls immediately erased whatever had remaimed of a rigid smile on their beige faces and did numerous invisible frowns at us perhaps, judging from their obviousy managed air of all-rightness. I walked towards the crowd to the right of the International Arrivals and found it to be people waiting for domestic arrivals. As I returned with determination to buy an IC card anyway, I heard Q cry out, "Here they are." Walking towards us was Q's nephew, a junior in an engineering institute in Beijing, and right behind him was a tall man in his prime. Q ran to hug his newphew briefly before he took up the hands of the man,saying, "you have not changed much, LW."

The Daughter of the Sea

My two-year old daughter Lianne has developed the habit to listen to recordings in the car. Whenever she gets on her safety seat, she would say, "Daddy, play "The Little Red Riding Hood." Her father would put the CD on, and we would all listen to the tale with her. Somehow,that tale often fails to stay with me while the next one, "The Little Mermaid," always does. Whenever I hear the latter, I cannot help being deeply touched by the tragic life of the daughter of the sea, and I always have the urge to rewrite the tale so that it will convey different notions about gender.

Whether it registers male fantasy of what a woman should be or reflects certain historical truths about women, the tale presents a woman's life as extremely miserable. In order to be able to stay close to the prince, the mermaid has first to lose the freedom to swim in her own kingdom and to walk with such pain as if there were a knife pierced into her heart. She also has to lose her tongue so that she can never really speak to the prince about her feelings and thoughts. She is to save the man only to be forsaken by him. She tragically collapses down to bubbles while he happily starts his honey moon. Can there be more personal miseries than hers?

If Anderson is laudable in having some insight into the tragic elements in the life of a woman, he is not so in idolizing a woman who willingly submits to all the miseries and turns herself into a heroic martyr. He is being whimsical in letting the mermaid choose to die for the man instead of having his blood. What historical and male psychological needs does it satisfy to imagine a woman of such great obedience and such huge capacity to sacrifice?

Indeed, the little mermaid does not have to die. She should take up the witch knife and wield it carefully on the man. Drops of blood will incur pain but not death to him. Pained, the man will, hopefully, see the woman as she is for the first time. For the first time, then, the man may learn to live with the woman--rather than an image of her--or his.

For my daughter, I will have the tale rewritten.