“I feel like I’ve been here before,” I said.
“You live here. Or is this like deja-vu?”
“No, not like that –like I’ve been here in time before.”
“Where?”
“The Fourth of July.”
Even though this summer is incomparable to the last two (the people, the day job, the apartment, the food), the summers are blending together. As in, I felt the distinct pattern of “Independence Day in China” like, “Oh. I’ve been here before”. Maybe this is what happens when I’m ready to graduate and move on to something less formulaic (semester-home-semester-China-semester-home-semester China...), or maybe that’s just what happens when you get older and have more things to remember. Either way, I’m starting to see the same old patterns in this summer, but with new faces and places and snacks. Either way, it’s been completely worth it; at the end of the day, each lap of the pattern lets me learn more about the world.
For example: I learned for the hundredth time what the Chinese mean when they say to me (for the thousandth time): “If you want to learn Chinese, you need to get a Chinese girlfriend.” At first I thought they were joking, but it turns out that whether it be girlfriends or a friends you see often (in all my cases, friends), being around them can magically make your Chinese better. But even after I realized that “get a Chinese girlfriend” meant “practice Chinese all the time,” I didn’t fully realize until now that it actually means “make Chinese relevant to yourself”. That is, in discussing the little and Very Big things in life that matter to you, in listening to someone else critique and extend your own opinions, to revise and create new ideas in Chinese is to make it relevant to yourself. The things you learn in those conversations you remember forever.
But that’s not what I sat down to type about.
I finally have my suit! It’s just about exactly what I’d wanted, for whatever that’s worth. I also got custom-made ties and am having fitted shirts made, and maybe a vest (if I can manage to bargain successfully unlike the last two times). The fabric market here makes me feel like a designer. I gave an absurd amount of specifications and style and fabric demands to the tailor. It’s like having a Demres fashion label! “Maybe THAT’S what I’ll do after I graduate” (that thought pops in my head about every other moderately interesting thing I do these days).
Friday I adventured with Becca, going to a few galleries and interviews. The interviews are giving me a good feel for what the art community is like in Shanghai. One of the most fascinating things we’re finding is art galleries’ reluctance to initiate “art community events” to stimulate the art culture in Shanghai. In fact, they often don’t understand the concept of holding art events and festivals to get the entire community excited about art. “In China,” one person answered, “everybody does their own thing... if we encourage people to see more of the art in Shanghai, we lose our own customers.”
As it turns out, the Shanghai art gallery community is a dog-eat-dog business. Interestingly, this goes directly against the standard “socialist” form of thinking, where everyone contributes to the community in order to create a better common good. Under this thinking, the art community would want to work together and pool their customers, not horde them away for themselves. I have two guesses for why this is: One is Western influence: the Shanghai art community has been “mainly written by Western people in the end,” as one person claimed. But although this does have some truth to it, it seems a little Western-centric and arrogant, especially considering there are many Chinese-run galleries in Shanghai. Also, galleries in the West often hold art community events, despite being embedded in a ruthless capitalist system. Two is that (surprise) it’s a cultural adaptation. Chinese history has been wrought with change on political and economic terms; in the last century, this change became more rapid than ever, seeing the fall of the dynasty system that had been in place for some thousands of years in 1911, the quick rise and fall of Nationalist parties in the next twenty years, the shift to communism by 1949, a total upheaval of cultural norms in the 1960’s during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, as well as the rapid opening to the West in more recent years. All of this is to say: the Chinese have necessarily adapted to a volatile government and economy, and in doing so have become accustomed to holding on to what they have, be it family traditions, small plots of land, or their native dialect and heritage. In this case, art gallery owners need to hold on to their customers, lest tomorrow a foreign gallery opens up next store and takes away customers, or the government suddenly turns against art. I think this explanation resonates best with the current situation in China, and also reveals that Chinese people aren’t just products of their government. They are not, despite Western opinion, necessarily “communist” by nature, but rather part of the generational development they are embedded in. When the Western literature can better recognize this, a better understanding of culture will form.
After adventuring that Friday, Becca’s landlord took her, her roommate, and myself out to a long, busy street that sold only crawfish. Crowded into clusters of tiny restaurants, Shanghainese flocked to this street at night; I didn’t spot a single foreigner there. (That’s when you know you’re in for a good time.) We ate pounds of crawfish and I learned how to tear through them. Both Becca and her roommate (who are from the southern US) talked about how crawfish are a “local” specialty, and their landlord (from Shanghai) talked about how they were a local specialty here, and they ended up bonding over childhood experiences of netting crawfish on hot summer days. That they could relate so closely to their experiences with the near-identical “local” on opposite sides of the world was fascinating. What an outrageously globalized world.
I’m translating lots at work, and it’s become a joke that I’m the “translation department” of MoCA. Whenever someone needs something translated, they’re pointed to the translation department, located at my desk. I’m getting good at it, except for: a few days ago, I translated a foreword to a MoCA book being published next month. In the opening sentence, I misread 岛 (island) as 鸟 (bird) (what an idiot, right?), and ended up going on about the birds that make up the famous, sprawling Indonesian landscape. It wasn’t until I saw a Tsingdao beer ad the next day (the second character of Tsingdao is 岛) that I went “oh no” and ran back to my boss. He already had seen it, and laughed and asked me how birds managed to find their way into the foreword. Best of all, the MoCA book for the current exhibition, which I translated, was just published! It is my first published translation, so although I had to spend six hours with the publishers, painstakingly copy-editing last week, it was an exciting process.
I also met casually with the Chairman of the museum and he gave me some outstanding recommendations for my senior thesis pertaining to art in Hong Kong. He’s originally a very wealthy jade investor from there, so he knows the place well. Equally exciting is that I got to check out the layout of the next exhibition with him. He was complaining about the cost of the walls for it and how he didn’t like the look/feel of how the layout was going to be, and on a whim I made a suggestion to get rid of a couple walls, and drastically shorten another one both lengthwise and widthwise. It would open up the museum, allow people to see through the exhibition from the long stairway (and from outside), and save money! He and my co-worker thought it was a good idea and he said he’ll speak to the curator about this. My floor design idea might be incorporated into an exhibition, fun fun. Layouts are just like theater sets, except with more space and money.
Yummy things I have made lately:
- Meatballs. I used what I could find, which was ground pork and lamb. Experimenting with meats for texture, flavor and juiciness is highly recommended.
- Stovetop pizza. One of my best inventions yet. The dough is tricky (I’ve been making more of a pita dough), but it’s really hard to mess this one up.
- Tuna Bisque. Why make soup when you can make Bisque?
- Fried stuff. For 4th of July we had a fryfest and deep-fried onion rings in a beer batter, along with anything else in our refrigerator. There’s an excellent picture on the photoblog. This is not to be confused with Will’s and my quest to make French fries for breakfast. It’s safe to say we’ve been using corn oil like water and frying potatoes nearly every morning in our apartment.
- Creamed spinach with an olive oil béchamel. Because spinach has protein, and Davids eat protein.
Here’s a story about a conflict at work: there is a girl in the marketing department who is stuck up and nobody likes (I feel like there is one of these in every office). She doesn’t really do any work (instead does her make-up and leaves to go for shopping walks). Anyway, she somehow convinced the Chairman here that the Marketing department only needs one person, and to send the other one to another department. We were all confused as to how she was planning on getting the work done, until I figured out she planned on pinning all to me and taking credit for it (this is not my job). Long story short, I ended up calling her out in front of the entire office, to enthusiastic approval. I’ve never chewed out someone so hard in Chinese before – definitely a landmark. I should probably not make a habit of this, though for now the rest of the office is happy with me and (after getting license to do so from my boss) I get to just say “I’m busy doing Education department things” whenever she asks for help, as I go back to reading books.
On that note, I’ve made it a mission to read as many of the books as I can in the office. There are hundreds of art history books and magazines (both in English and Chinese) for the grabbing. I’ve always wanted a personal library, and this is about as close as I’m going to get.
Overall, my boss has been great. After finding out we both like photography, he’s always calling me over to his computer to check out his latest batch of pictures from around the city. He’s got a disgustingly nice Nikon camera, and takes some really great still life pictures. Now every few mornings as soon as I get into work he says, “David! Grab your camera!” and runs out of the room and I follow him to the park or wherever and we take pictures. The Lotus Flowers in People’s Park are breathtaking this time of year, and so we snap our cameras at them for a half hour or so before heading back in. Yesterday he told me to get my camera out in the middle of the day, and we went down into the kitchen and took pictures of the new menu items as the chefs were making them. Can I claim I’ve done professional food photography now? Yes? I can? Good, I’m glad you agree.
Most exciting: he wants to do dinner at my place with everyone at the office, where he cooks Chinese food and I cook Western food and we make a meal. Everyone in the office is holding their breath, I can’t wait.
Also, my boss decided that my homework for the rest of the month is to think about MoCA, analyze the good things and the bad things, and give them an honest “company evaluation” (over dinner) at the end. I’ll make sure to include that here.
Finally, Will and I are preparing for our Shanghai concert series. Stay tuned for more details (and maybe a video). And god bless whoever read this far down.
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