river town: two years on the yangtze

by peter hessler. peter is a resident of beijing whom sean met at a local book cafe. peter spent two years living in Fuling (in Schichuan Province) teaching English for the Peace Corps. The book is written as two intertwined themes. One, a story of his experiences living and teaching in Fuling, and the other are short stories of the Chinese people he meets. I liked the book because it gives an inside perspective on chinese issues like the three gorges dam, the Communist Party, democracy, america, capitalism, racism, etc. It was also good to get confirmation of my own experiences. Since I had spent the first week in china alone, i had started to wonder if the things i was seeing were as crazy as i thought they were, or if it was i who was different. Hessler's description of honking cars are a great example, and it comes as a complete shock and was one of the first things I noticed (its worth noting that the problem is compunded in Beijing where the population is insanely huge):

[the cars] were always passing each other in a mad rush to get wherever they were going. Most of them were cabs, and virtually every cabby in Fuling had rewired his horn so it was triggered by a contact point at the tip of the gearshift. They did this for convenience; because of the hills, drivers shifted gears frequently, and with their hand on the stick it was possible to touch the contact point ever so slightly and the horn would sound. They honked at other cars, and they honked at pedestrians,. They honked whenever they passed somebody, or whenever they were being passed themselves. They honked when nobody was passing but somebody might be considering it, or when the road was empty and there was nobody to pass but the thought of passing or being passed had just passed through the driver's mind. Just like that, an unthinking reflex: the driver honked. ... the other drivers and pedestrians were so familiar with the sound that they essentially didn't hear it. Nobody reacted to horns anymore; they served no purpose.

Something that i learned early on in Bangkok is that "the simple truth was that you could do nothing about either the noise or the pollution, which meant that they could either become very important and very annoying, or they could become not important at all." To enjoy your time in asia, you must decide on the latter. I've decided to make honking fun. I try to predict when someone will honk. I try to make cars honk on my bicycle. The chinese ride their bikes a lot. They also ride them very very slowly (most don't have gears). So, in comparison, i'm lance armstrong and when i use the car lanes to pass the slow cyclists, any car behind me will honk if i enter their lane. It doesn't matter that i'm actually going twice as fast as the cars (which also go slow because there are too many of them). The predictability and meaninglessness of the honk is hilarious.

Something i've noticed in the states is that the chinese exhibit greater collectiveness and generosity within a family than do americans. Growing up in San Jose, we lived next to a Chinese family where the grandparents lived with their children.

They were remarkably generous with each other, and often this selflessness extended to good friends ... collective thought was particularly good for the elderly, who were much better cared for than in America ... they almost always lived with their children ... doing what they could to help out around the family farm, business, or home. There was no question that their lives had more of a sense of purpose and routine than I had seen among elderly [in America].
But such collectivism is limited to small groups, to families and close friends ... these tight social circles also acted as boundaries: they were exclusive as well as inclusive. The most common [example] was the hassle at ticket lines, which weren't lines so much as piles, great pushing mobs in which every person fought forward with no concern for anybody else. Collectively the mobs had one single idea - that tickets must be purchased - but nothing else held them together, and so each individual made every effort to fulfill his personal goal as quickly as possible.

This behavior permeates every experience in China. There is no sense of personal space, because if you're not in the person's circle, you essentially don't exist. There is constant contact (i.e. collisions) with other people who aren't looking where they're going. When there is an accident or an argument on the street, bystanders will crowd around and watch without helping or interfering. Someone could be bleeding to death on the street from a car accident, surrounded by people watching them wail in pain. I've seen it happen.

China is indeed a crazy place for an american.

beijing

so i've been in beijing for about a month now. it has been really good to be around family (i.e., sean). i've started working at a yoga studio in exchange for free classes. so i've been doing yoga everyday, and i must be improving but can't really tell. i do know i sweat a lot. the classes are mostly flow classes which means there is a lot of controlled movement between poses. this is challenging for me as i was used to my meditative iyengar classes (in san francisco) where we'd get into a pose and sit there for a couple of minutes. there is a saying in yoga that means "fierce dedication without attachment to results." this is a great saying to apply not only to yoga, but to life in general and adopting and living it is really natural, and really freeing.

my anxiety now is almost totally gone. i think the accupuncture had a great deal to do with it. for the first time in a year, i feel like myself, but also feel totally new. different. at peace. its hard to describe, but its great.

i'm working on learning chinese while i'm here. its very difficult. the tones are a bitch to get right. and even when people say them back to back, i have a hard time distinguishing them. still, its useful and the chinese people are wonderfully helpful, generous, and inquisitive. sean's landlord is an elderly chinese woman who cooks for him constantly. being a white person (or waigouren - literally "an outside person") in china is like being the focus of attention wherever you go - even in a big city like beijing that has a huge expat population: people are constantly staring and wanting to talk to you, moreso than the other places i've been.

the chinese can't drive. i'm willing to say that with absolute certainty. i bought a bike for $20 and can cruise around beijing. and people on foot, car, and bicycle really try to hit you. there can be no other explanation. there is no such thing as private space. i was riding my bike the other day, and i was cruising along in a straight line. a woman standing on the curb on the left was going to cross the street. she looked me right in the eye, about 12 feet in front of me, and proceeded to step right in front of my bike. i swerved and just barely missed her. she just kept walking. this happens daily and i really have no explanation for it. you'd really think that people who have been living in such close proximity, in such density, would figure out a way to coexist without running into each other. but they seem completely incapable of it.

its also very polluted here. when the IOC came to check out Beijing for their Olympic bid, the government shut down all the factories and seeded the clouds so it would rain. that's how bad it is. and after a month of being here, after doing anything requiring heavy breathing (running, playing ultimate, cycling, getting out of bed) i end up in coughing fits. these really gross dry coughs. but sean and i are fighting back, creating a little oasis in his apartment of plants that are supposed to remove toxins from the air.

my books arrive soon so i can begin my distance learning classes in ecological design at San Francisco Institute of Architecture. i'm stoked.

the tipping point

by malcolm gladwell. "how little things can make a big difference" is the subtitle. this is a bestseller and i was interested to see his take on phenomena and epidemics. having recently read so many critical accounts of society, agriculture, and economics i was excited to see how things might change for the better via epidemics. recycling was one epidemic i had great experience with growing up. i remember the day that san jose instituted its rather expansive recycling program. one day we were throwing everything into one bin, and the next we had bins for every type of waste; aluminum, glass, newspaper, food waste, motor oil, metals, and yard waste were all separated and laid out on the curb in a precarious rainbow stack. san jose went from not recycling at all, to being the number one city in the world (probably for about a week). i always wondered how this happened.

gladwell breaks epidemics down into classes of people that fuel the epidemic. basically, his hypothesis is that these few people (connectors, mavens, and salesmen) spread the word about an idea or product. once this idea (and the idea has to be a "sticky" idea) reaches a certain critical mass (of typically 150 people) the product tips or explodes into the mainstream. he looks at the stickiness factor of sesame street and blues clues, the massive fall of new york city crime by tweaking very small cues in the environment, the allure of suicide and smoking, and the spread of fashion from a few to the world.

in regards to the new york city crime drop:

the criminal - far from being someone who acts for fundamental intrinsic reasons and who lives in his own world - is actually someone acutely sensitive to his environment, who is alert to all kinds of cues, and who is prompted to commit crimes based on his perception of the world around him ... behavior is a function of social context. [Crime] has everything to do with the message sent by the graffiti on the walls and the disorder at the turnstiles [of the NYC subway].

quoting the evolutionary biologist S.L. Washburn in an attempt to pinpoint the magic number of 150, the "social channel capacity" (note the interesting parallel with Manning's Against The Grain):

Most of human evolution took place before the advent of agriculture when men lived in small groups, on a face-to-face basis. As a result human biology has evolved as an adaptive mechanism to conditions that have largely ceased to exist. Man evolved to feel strongly about few people, short distances, and relatively brief intervals of time; and these are still the dimensions of life that are important to him.

Thus, the figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of people we can "know;" those who we have a genuinely social relationship with. Or, "those people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in the bar."

Gladwell references Gore Associates (makers of Gore-Tex fabric) that take this number of 150 seriously:

At Gore there are no title. If you ask people who work there for their card, it will just say their name and underneath it the word "Associate," regardless of how much money they make or how much responsibility they have or how long they have been at the company. People don't have bosses, they have sponsors - mentors - who watch out for their interests. There are no organization charts, no budgets, no elaborate strategic plans. Salaries are determined collectively.

The short of the long of it is, Gore Associates is one of the most desirable companies to work for: they have a turnover rate that is 33% the industry average, they've been profitable for 35 consecutive years, and they are innovative and they are constantly growing new product lines. Whenever they grow to over 150 people, they divide the company into autonomous divisions. This way, you can work with people you feel a connection to. You know and understand everyone's job and their function. You build a relationship because you depend on them and what they do and they, likewise, rely on you.

yunnan

after playing beijing tourguide for sean's dad for two days (note: all i know how to do is say thank you and use the subway) it was time to hop on another plane to go south to yunnan. i had ants in my pants to hike the spectacular Leaping Tiger Gorge. Its a gorge where a river runs at the base of two 4000 meter mountains that are breathtakingly vertical (that's 2.5 miles high people!). Legend has it that it is so narrow in one spot a tiger escaped some hunters by leaping across. Sean and Al seemed a bit apathetic so i cracked the whip.

After the 3 hour flight, we arrived in Kunming and spent the next day in the pleasant weather. It was nice to be in cool, relatively clean air. (Beijing is as dirty as they say - if you're not choking back sand from the recent sandstorm, you're inhaling some sort of burt coal product or car exhaust.) Being in the south, there are more minorities so people seem a bit friendlier and are more exotic looking (read: more attractive). Getting to LTG was not easy, it required an overnight bus (9 hours to Lijang). Since Al is not a standard issue asian size, we had to buy him two beds in the bus and still the beds were too short, he hung over the edge at his calfs. But we made it there and it was another 2 hour car ride to the trailhead.

The walking was spectacular. We were so high, and the drop was so steep its really hard to describe. I literally almost fainted at one point it was so breathatking. I felt connected to the world. A very small part of it. At this one point the mountain was so large and sheer, you could put your chin on your chest and look down at the river, you could crane your neck back and see the mountaintop (barely), and you could look left and right and just barely make out the ends of the peaks.

All along the way the natives have donkeys to help the tourists up the mountain (because its so steep you have to use your hands in certain parts). I think even if we were to mount the little mules, they wouldn't have supported Al's weight. No asses for us.

We hiked for two nights and stayed in nice Naxi guesthouses. The Naxi are the so called "minority" people of the region. The food was excellent. They had this bread called Naxi Baba which was like a fluffy wheat pita bread that they put all sorts of toppings on: garlic, butter, bananas, chocolate, weed. you name it. it was great. The first night we arrived in the twilight (actually it was dark) and all the beds were full because of the big holiday week in china. It was 1.5 hours to the next guesthouse in the dark, and we were all very tired. The cute Naxi girls, giggiling, made us a bed on the floor and it worked superbly.

The town of Lijang was charming. Courtyard houses and a river running through the old town corresponded to what i thought china should look like.

pictures of yunnan, here

sencha photos

from the retreat

retreat

my blitzkrieg to beijing was motivated by a yoga retreat in the mountains to the north of the sprawling city. sean had signed me up for this retreat, and i was thinking it was going to be a bunch of yoga, but as it turned out it was so much more.

first, sencha is a small village perched in the steep mountains 2 hours north of beijing. when we arrived it was insanely windy and dry, but over the next few days it became warm, green, and calm. it went from winter to spring in those few days, the apricot trees coming into full pungent blossom throughout the hillsides. the retreat was led by cameron tukapua, a kind, warm new zealander versed in the art of accupuncture, chinese medicine, and qi gong. we'd awake every morning at 6:30am with 2 hours of yoga, followed by a wonderful breakfast, a lecture, lunch, a hike and lecture, 2 more hours of yoga, dinner, a talking circle, and then meditation and bedtime. it was ideal. the people were perfect and so was the food. the teachings revolved around a model of being, life, and health that are inspired by the seasons and the ecology of the planet.

for example, the cycle of summer -> indian summer -> autumn -> winter -> spring are analagous to the 5 elements of fire -> earth -> metal -> water -> wood. each of these elements has a connection to various parts of the body as well as personality archetypes, emotions, traits, etc. when we're out of balance in one element, the model shows how it can affect the others. it was a beautifully simple system, and it was exciting to learn about in such a dreamy setting. our lecture on metal/rock was delivered on the great wall itself perched high above everything - we were on top of the world.

when i returned from the retreat i got my first accupuncture treatment by the teacher, and it was really wonderful. i've had a total of 3 treatments and they've all helped in some way or another. while in china i hope to spend more time studying more about this life energy chi which i've felt in small quantities before, but never as strongly as now. the human body is truly amazing.

now sean, his dad, and myself are off to yunnan in the south of china to hike and visit the "minorities" as they're called here.