Future, Fame, and Writing a Sitcom

Everyone has those friends—the people you grew up with, went to school with, or perhaps even dated—regular people by all accounts, who have somehow gone on to make it big in the very same time it's taken you to lead a decidedly normal existence.  I first learned of the phenomenon when news came in two years ago that a couple of old friends from high school started a clothing company selling neck ties and pendants that have become increasingly popular in my fashion-forward hometown.  Additionally, two acquaintances at Oberlin, in an attempt to beat out the recession, have begun a self-produced weekly online cooking show that is garnering thousands of views a week.  Lena Dunham, a former classmate in one of my creative writing workshops has gone on to write, direct, and star-in a feature-length film called Tiny Furniture that is winning accolades at some big film festivals nationwide, and—according to me—looks to be the Juno of my generation of jobless college graduates.  A fellow intern of mine at Popular Mechanics last summer (and indirect subject of a rant on my recent nixing from their website) has settled into her own corner of the internet as an intern at another techie blog site.  And even fellow Oberlin grads living in China, Jordan and Maia, are getting a crack at music stardom by playing shows all around Beijing as the duet La Loupe.

Thinking about those people fills me with a certain helpless admiration, of staring longingly from afar at accomplishments that are not mine to savor.  It doesn't matter that I'm happy with the decision I made to come to China and enjoy the life that I've made for myself here in Taigu.  In fact, when I stop to think about it, there's really nothing that I would want more from life than to be exactly where I am right now.  I enjoy my job, have enough free time to pursue other interests, found a great community of people that I never feel bored with, have enough money to lead a lifestyle where I am able to travel and experience new places—all while acquiring valuable life skills that will help me immensely in the real world (independence, responsibility, communication, leadership, etc.).  It also helps to know that this is a relatively temporary position—that after the next year I will be returning home to take on the next chapter of my life.  But when exciting events are happening elsewhere, when weddings or birthdays are being celebrated by loved ones, or when pictures of friends having fun together surface on the internet, I can't help but wish that I was somewhere else.

All of the benefits withstanding, it's still sometimes hard to feel completely positive about the choice I made to come here.  Any glimpse I have at a potential future that I previously didn't consider leaves me feeling that I'm somehow not doing enough or that there is something out there better suited for me.  It's not that I myself am yearning to become rich or famous, but rather, simply having the knowledge that others my own age are excelling in one or both of those fields that leaves me feeling ineffectual by comparison.  Why can't I have a regular spot on an internet news wire, or be written up by major publications for my achievements, or be given an award as a token of my meritorious contributions to making the world a better, more artistically-inspired place?  In spite of all of the fame, though, when I begin to think deeper, I am actually happy that I don't have to face some of the hardships of my more “successful” newfangled icons—the risk of failing as an internet celebrity, stuck writing for yet another website or magazine not suited to my interests, or devoting a lot of time and resources to producing a semi-autobiographical film about my quarter-life crisis.  Of course, what I eventually ended up pursuing in Taigu would have shocked my more rational self by comparison too.

Dan's Ex-Wife from Daniel Tam-Claiborne on Vimeo.  Before Gerald did any actual shooting for his movie, he wanted to test the capabilities of his new CGI software, and thus needed an actor.  This, as well as the next video, were each done in one take, and were a result of a painstaking number of hours of method acting training on my part.

By the time me and Gerald sat down to start writing the script to the sitcom, we realized that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.  Though Gerald had co-written (and directed) a film project in his college days, and I had written the 20-page screenplay to an imagined short film as a creative writing assignment my freshmen year, neither of us had any experience with this form of writing nor knew the best way to approach learning how to do it.  Aside from a laughable (pun intended) stint in high school stand-up club, I have never done comedy, nor do I ever really write strictly comedic poetry or non-fiction.  But given that I was coming from a writing background, Gerald wanted me on board for creative input and direction, not to mention general companionship, in the script-writing process.  The only thing we did have going for us was that we had both watched an obscene number of sitcoms in our youth.  Gerald and I, in addition to most of the foreigners here, have wistful memories of the TGIF line-up on ABC, featuring the likes of Family Matters, Boy Meets World, Step by Step, and Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, among others.  And though I contribute most of my comedic upbringing to Seinfeld, I confess that I only began watching it in syndicated form well after the series ended.

The likes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had already been established as a long-standing joke with my friends back home, owed largely to the Sunday afternoons we spent watching Will Smith's antics on TiVoed reruns of the show in Tahira's apartment.  But the recent re-fascination with Family Matters is owed almost entirely to living in Taigu.  It all started with one of our Saturday night dance parties back in February.  During the party, Gerald sneaked about a half-dozen songs—the theme song to the show included—onto the master playlist on Anne's computer and by the time I played it at the end of the evening, all of us unexpectedly, but almost instinctually, converged in a group hug and broke riotously into song.  That rendition was quickly followed up by two encores, and every dance party since, it has been a nightcap staple.  Finally, when it was revealed that Dave and Matthias would soon be living together (after Dave and Gerald's old house was slated for renovation), Nick joked about how hilarious it would be to film an Odd Couple-esque sitcom featuring the two mismatched roommates using Gerald's new camera.  That suggestion quickly snowballed into our idea for a Family Matters spin-off about our lives in Taigu.

In the Kitchen with DTC from Daniel Tam-Claiborne on Vimeo.  This week's specialty: Oreo milkshakes.  Additional thanks go to Gata Mane Boy Boi for creative inspiration.

Like most bad ideas that sound good at first, the focus of our sitcom changed dramatically.  Instead of focusing strictly on Dave and Matthias, we decided the sitcom would encompass all of the foreigners as well as some of our Chinese friends, and speak more to the comedy in cross-cultural misunderstandings as a result of living in China.  We'd have dialogue in both English and Chinese, but the focus would be on our experience as teachers here—in some instances using snippets from actual conversations and jokes to give it a hint of authenticity.  Me and Gerald wrote the majority of the script over the course of three weeks, on weekday afternoons in the hour-and-a-half of dead time between when lunch ended and when I had to teach again at 2:00.  In the pilot episode, we decided to have the plot center around James' character as he tirelessly attempts to secure a date to the big dance party over the weekend.  More drama ensues when the audience discovers that two separate parties are scheduled for the same night.  Along his quest is a fair deal of hi-jinx where we also learn a lot about the other main characters.  Sketching out archetypes for all of the characters was a project in itself, but one that paid off in dividends when it came time to write the script.

It would seem that we got most of our bases covered—James, the straight man; Nick, the wise-cracking know-it-all; Dave, the well-meaning, but slightly dense friend; Anne, the girly, yet gutsy female; Gerald, the mysterious, advice-giving neighbor; and me, reviving my 12th-grade role as the hapless playboy.  In doing the actual writing, the first shock was in how difficult the entire process was, but relief came in knowing that there was someone else there to bounce ideas off of.  Some lines came naturally as holes in the plot gradually got filled, but there were moments where Gerald and I spent twenty minutes trying to decide the punchline to a single joke.  It's amazing when you consider how many directions a joke can go—with possible responses ranging from sarcastic, crude, biting, or excessive, to literal, cheesy, misinterpreted, or downright ignored by a character.  We tried to employ everything in our combined humor toolbox to make the show as believably witty as possible, without being self-consciously so.  It doesn't hurt that we are also employing actual laugh tracks extracted from old sitcom episodes to bolster those sections that inevitably fall flat.

It's Not Jackie Chan sitcom intro from Gerald Lee on Vimeo. The opening scene of our sitcom, complete with authentic turn-and-smile introductions reminiscent of the original Family Matters, masterfully shot and spliced together by Gerald.  He captured footage for the first frame through the window of a plane on our return flight from Shenzhen to Taiyuan.

We finished the script on a long weekend trip to Hong Kong—something I admit, knowing fully well that everything about that statement reeks of being smugly pretentious.  We went to a bar on Sunday night and didn't leave until we had finished drafting the final scene over a pair of imported beers.  It was as close as I'd been to feeling like a laptop-toting Starbucks-sipping young professional, since, well, being back home.  All told, what we eventually put together was a 20-page script, enough to field a full-length episode.  We finished revising and printing out copies of it the week after we returned and immediately got to work shooting.  The initial shooting was slightly haphazard—what Gerald would call “guerrilla”—owing largely to the fact that he was still getting used to the immense amount of equipment he had accrued and had not fully developed a method for how to efficiently shoot each scene.  Though most of the scenes were quite straight-forward given the nature of the project, they were made more complicated because of scheduling conflicts and the inability to shoot group scenes together with the whole cast.  Continuity issues have also posed a concern in the shift in people's clothing and the general placement of objects in the scene.  But barring minor difficulties, the shooting gets easier and more fun every day, and the sitcom is shaping up to be the most interesting project we've taken up since being in Taigu.  The final product is still in the works, but I will certainly be posting the video in its entirety as soon as it's completed!

*

As for my own future fame, I might need to put it on hold for a while.  Recently, I've come up with a four-year plan for my next moves after my fellowship ends next July—all of which involve absolutely no chance of stardom.  Though I've known for a while that I want to go back to school, I didn't know what kind of grad school program would best fit my interests.  Recently, I was introduced to the idea of doing a Master's in International Relations (IR), through a program that former Shansi Fellow Morgan is currently enrolled in at Yale.  Researching it on my own, I discovered that you can also complete a three-year joint-degree program in IR and Environmental Science, two subjects that, too my discredit, I have close to no background in whatsoever, but have nonetheless become extremely passionate about since moving to China.  Before I came to China, I had narrowed the scope of my potential graduate school study to four fields: poetry, environmental science, journalism, and Asian American studies.  But considering how my interests have changed in the time since, I feel that doing a program like this would combine some of my life's biggest goals: to travel the world, be able to speak and write critically about world politics and history, and find solutions to solve the biggest problem facing the globe today. 

Aside from the obvious issue of finding a way to pay for it all, the big problem now is that both degrees require a substantial number of prerequisites, and aside from the language requirement, I have completed none of them.  Thus, my plan first involves applying to become the Shansi Returned Fellow at Oberlin, which would allow me to take those required course for free, all while working and earning a salary at my beloved alma mater.  During that time, I also plan to take the GRE and apply to grad schools with the hope that I can enroll for the fall 2012 semester at Yale or (perhaps more realistically) anyone of a handful of mid-level schools that offer the program.  All that being said, I still have my doubts.  Every trip I make out to Beijing leaves me feeling that I want to stay in China a little longer.  The journalism industry here is in much better shape than in the states, and I'm relatively confident that I can hold down a job doing that—or in the worst case, keep teaching English—in addition to continuing to pursue other interests like writing and becoming fluent in Mandarin.  Either that, or this sitcom will become so successful that TV stations county-wide will be clamoring to get us to sign lifelong contracts.  Regardless, I'm extremely glad that I still have another year to sort it all out.

An Offer I Couldn't Refuse: Dispatches from 长治 (Pt. I)

Sometimes it's the simplest, most benign pretenses that can change everything.  For me, it all started with a knock at my door.  Max, a former student of mine, came over to my house one Saturday afternoon along with a man I had never met before.  He looked to be a little older than me, stocky and not particularly handsome, with thick-rimmed glasses and a protruding stomach that practically begged to be rubbed.  Max, to his credit, was none of those things—a slim, athletic build, who wore designer dress shirts, kept his hair in a fashionable pompadour, and was unmistakably a hit with the female undergrads.  As they shuffled into my house—each putting out their cigarettes in the ashtray on my front porch—I realized that something felt different.  As an English major—and a good one at that—Max had spoken with me before on many occasions outside of class.  He always had a playful, jocular air about him when we talked or went out to eat together, occasionally transitioning to more controversial subjects when the mood dictated: his desire to leave China, his stance on the Middle East, or his strong dislike for the Communist Party.  This time, however, his attitude was all business.

I had known about Max's background in entrepreneurship before I had even met Max himself.  He had certainly made a name for himself on campus, at least in the foreign circle, for founding the first and only bar in town.  Located in North Yard down a tiny alley catty-corner to some of our most-frequented restaurants, it has been a popular spot for the teachers, and the occasional graduate student, ever since its inception two years ago.  Furnished with space-age chairs, silver-sequined wallpaper, and stocked with foreign alcohol purchased at the Walmart in Taiyuan, the admittedly shoe-box sized establishment gets the most mileage out of its limited real estate.  In the time since last semester, Max sold the bar—which he had co-owned with a fellow undergraduate—in order to make back some money for his next enterprising venture.  Despite his relative youth—he is one year younger than me—Max was the only person I knew in Taigu to have started his own business.  That was until I was introduced to the portly fellow who had accompanied him to my house.

By way of introduction, the stouter man—whom I soon learned was named Han—extended a hand and a curt “nice to meet you” in his best English.  Max was familiar with Han because of their mutual celebrity as young businessmen in Taigu—Max with his bar and Han with an electronics store that specialized in selling computer parts and accessories on campus.  Since the business world in Taigu does not run particularly deep, it didn't take long for them to develop a mutual acquaintanceship.  Han, like me, graduated from college last May, and has since transitioned to the working world.  In addition to pursuing a full-time job in his hometown of Changzhi, he decided to pair up with a couple of other professionals for a new venture—starting an English-language school specializing in having foreign teachers.  The only problem was procuring said teachers.  But Han, ever-industrious, remembered his old buddy who was friends with the foreigners at his alma mater, and first tried to employ his guanxi with Max to recruit us for the school. 

Once we were all seated in my living room, Han was content to let Max do most of the talking.  Having had a limited knowledge of English, the best he could muster was the occasional nod or shrug after a translation from Max, or a follow-up comment or question directed at me in Chinese.  As me and James tried to flesh out all of the details, Max and Han made it clear that we were the last group of foreigners they had talked to that day.  After having traveled from Dave and Gerald's house to Anne and Nick's and finally on to ours, their bag of swag gradually got depleted, leaving small gifts of friendship bribery in their wake: crates of expensive packaged milk, cured Pingyao beef (a Shanxi specialty), and a number of plug-in USB microphones—almost certainly holdovers from Han's last entrepreneurial venture.  The details of the entire operation were still being worked out, but we were able to gather this much: the school was willing to pay for all of our transportation, lodging, and food for once-weekly weekend stays in Changzhi, in addition to a salary of 1000 yuan—effectively doubling our current monthly pay at SAU.  The trade-off, of course, was having to teach four extra classes a week and effectively losing all of our weekends for the rest of the semester.

James and I in front of the old Changzhi city limits.  A weekend spent as sole English speakers in a foreign place certainly brought us closer together and made for some interesting bonding experiences.

In a move that can either be chalked up to utter desperation or lucrative brilliance, James and I took them up on their offer, irrespective of the fact that all of the other foreign teachers had conclusively turned them down.  Our interest effectively locked ourselves into a spoken-contract as teachers with the Changzhi school as soon as we got the green light that everything was up and running on their end.  We both figured that though we would miss out on a good deal of R&R in Taigu, this would be a great opportunity to make a little extra money on the side to save up for unforeseen expenses.  As a show of gratitude for our pledge to their endeavor, Han and Max took us out to celebrate at a fancy hot-pot restaurant in town a few weeks later.  While there, we were introduced to the two other main players in our cast of characters: the headmistress of the school, a remarkably gorgeous and powerful older woman, and her husband, a cool, level-headed gentleman in his own right.  It was then that they requested for us both to come to Changzhi the following weekend, not to work, but so that they could treat us to an all-expenses paid tour of the city where we'd be spending two days out of every week from then on.

*

We arrived on Friday night after a three-hour bus ride from Taigu, upon which we were immediately swooped up by our three protagonists—Han, the headmistress, and her husband—sans Max, who was taking a national exam that weekend back in Taigu.   They arrived in a nearly impossibly garish Italian sports car that they would later use to chauffeur us around town at every available opportunity.  Though I'm rarely taken with cars, even I had to admit that this one was nice—automatic-sliding seats, sleek leather interior, and shocks that made even the shoddiest Chinese streets feel smooth.  As might be expected from a group of well-to-do professionals trying to entice their new clientele, we got the celebrity treatment.  First stop was dinner, where we were treated to a lavish multi-course meal, complete with polite banter, insistent urgings for second helpings, and facts about some of Changzhi's points of interest.  Next was the 4-star hotel where we would be staying.  In all of my travelings in Asia up until that point, I had yet to stay in nearly as nice a place.  James and I took our time admiring the big-screen TV, the real-life shower-head (boasting 5 jet streams), and the two gigantic queen-sized beds, not to mention all the free toiletries we could handle.

The ensemble cast of characters (from left to right): the “fun” friend, the headmistress' husband, the headmistress, and Han.

After we put our bags down, we were whisked off to a club for a continuation of the evening's festivities—just another in a long line of efforts the school's staff was making to whet our appetites for all of the fun opportunities we had waiting for us in Changzhi.  Inside, we got our own private booth, and it wasn't long before cases of imported Heineken beer, two bottles of Red Label, and plates brimming with hors d'oeuvres began to fill the table.  At the club, we were also introduced to two of Han's buddies, one a quiet, brooding man who had studied abroad in Australia, and the other, a wise-cracking twenty-something who was married with a wife and child at home.  The “fun” friend and I hit it off right away, doing a couple of shots together before hitting the dance floor—a whiskey iced tea in one hand and a plate of banana chips in the other.  Admittedly, though, the entire club scene did feel more than a bit awkward, first because James and I didn't know anybody our own age there, and second, because it felt like our new bosses were testing us.  We felt more like performing monkeys than usual—dancing blithely in our carefully-tailored fun-house, but never truly safe from our bosses' ever-vigilant watch.  We left the club, tired and bleary-eyed, and made a beeline back to the hotel for a rest.

The next day was slated for sightseeing.  The only thing I knew about Changzhi before I arrived was that according to some tourism survey, it was rated as one of the top ten cities in Northern China—a pretty significant distinction, especially one that sets it out among cities and towns in Shanxi Province.  After sleeping off the previous night, we helped ourselves to the hotel's complimentary buffet breakfast and were on our way.  Though we hit a fair deal of what might rightfully be called “tourist attractions,” there was nothing especially spectacular to report.  Many of the sights were regrettably things I had already been previously subjected to in China—a scenic mountaintop partially-demolished to accommodate an amusement park, crumbling old-style city walls and pagodas, heinously gaudy monuments with little actual substance.  But despite the general lack of noteworthy displays, the staff certainly went out of its way to cater to our every need.  All the meals were provided at fancy restaurants, we were escorted around in expensive foreign cars, and even the music was carefully selected to put us at ease—they played Lady Gaga on repeat, presumably the only Western music they owned.  At one point we went to a store to buy snacks, and it seemed that anything we so much as looked at the wrong way, Han had already ordered a pound of to be bagged and purchased at the front register.

I would be crying too if the shining beacon of Changzhi's most highly-regarded ancient district was ensconced in animal droppings.  The statue, nothing more than a glorified hollowed-out steel facade, empties out onto a small observatory overlooking an entire city cast in gray.

But all the while, there seemed to be a less-than-subtle turf war going on between Changzhi and Taigu, and our hosts made it very clear which they thought was better.  Taigu was dirty, poor, underdeveloped, backwards—a place where the people and the students alike had few, if any, redeeming qualities.  Changzhi, on the other hand, was just the opposite—the environment was cleaner, the food was better, and the people had a higher quality of life.  In some ways, what they said was true.  Changzhi is a thoroughly modern city by Chinese standards and Taigu is certainly not without its faults.  But in many ways, it can't help its own shortcomings, and it's certainly not a fault of the people, many of whom—students included—I respect and admire greatly.  It would be a gross understatement to say that our new bosses were trying to impress us with their wealth.  While in America I would have hardly batted an eye at their excesses, having lived in Taigu for so long and been rarely exposed to such ostentation, I was definitely sold, and even found myself buying into it a little myself—adopting an air of carefree luxury and entitlement when it came to the money being spent on me and James.  Money corrupts as absolutely as power, and, as I would soon learn, everything comes at a price.

*

At the end of dinner that night we toasted to our future success.  Had the story ended there, there would have been little doubt about my future with the Changzhi school.  Having just rounded out another thoroughly pampered day, I was excited to return for future weekend trips as a respite from the drudgery of Taigu.  But neither I nor James were prepared for what would await us the following morning.

Oberlin a No-Go: Disappointments Come in Threes (Pt. II)

Morally confounded, and pressured both by time and the Chinese around me, I consented, feeling like Ariel after she traded her soul to Ursula in exchange for a pair of legs.  As the man predicted, out went all of the data on my hard drive, and—to my great surprise—in went a steady stream of internet, but not before he booted up a new operating system.  Within a matter of minutes, I became the proud new owner of a Chinese version of Windows XP, which (given that I'm living in China) I soon learned was also pirated.  It was little consolation that a man I had befriended in the store (who was also getting his computer fixed by the same guy) told me that nearly every copy of Windows XP in China is illegal.  I felt like a man who spends his whole life playing by the rules only to be swindled on his death bed.  Though I'd used Windows all my life, I even considered switching operating systems to Linux, first, because it would be a legitimate copy, and second, because it would be in English.  But according to most language experts, one of the best ways to improve your fluency in a language is to be constantly exposed to it.  My cellphone is already in Chinese, and considering that I use my computer more than any other machine in Taigu, it made sense for it to be in Chinese too.

In fact, by the time I got back home, and went about the lengthy process of copying all of the old files from my external hard drive back on to my computer, I realized that some benefits came with the process.  My computer was running two and three times faster than it used to, given that much less of the memory was being used, and I got to selectively decide exactly what to install this second time around instead of hanging on to programs I no longer use.  Another plus was that included with the pirated copy came a couple of Chinese programs that allow me to watch and download tons of free music and movies online.  But the inevitable downside was that I had to make some changes to my choice of software—eventually seated with using OpenOffice.org and Foxit Reader over their more famous counterparts (Microsoft Office and Adobe Reader) because of copyright restrictions.  For more elusive reasons, I can also no longer use my computer to write in Japanese, and navigating error messages in a foreign language has been exhausting to say the least.  However, I began to realize just how useful some free knock-off software is—as I type this using Open Office Writer, there are very few (if any) sacrifices I've made in functionality since making the switch.  In some cases, these versions are even lighter and more stream-lined than their bulky equivalents.

The disappointment came when just a few weeks after I finished installing and updating everything on my computer and finally felt happy with the shift, the same problem happened again.  Once again, I was forced to back-up my data and contemplated making the long, roundabout journey back to Sai Ge to have it checked out.  However, on a complete whim, I decided to first run over to the local electronics store near my house.  Once inside, I was greeted by a couple of students who were in the business of selling computers, speakers, and other accessories, but I asked if they could first take a look at my computer just to see if they could diagnose anything that was wrong.  Within minutes, a young man had booted up my computer and located the problem—something faulty with my network connections—and after two more restarts, my computer was connecting to the internet perfectly with all of my data still intact.  I was appalled to think that with such a simple fix I could have spared myself the weeks-long ordeal of completely reconfiguring my computer had I just been able to find an English-speaking repairman at the onset.  However, given that it is now in Chinese, it will do me well to know that in the next year-and-a-half, I will have no trouble finding people to assist me with troubleshooting new problems as they come up.  That presumes, of course, that my computer will make it through its sixth and seventh years first—fingers crossed.

*

I never believed I had a great deal of luck.  Granted, I have been fortunate to have taken advantage of many opportunities in life, but I feel that few (if any) of them—aside from my birth—were due solely to pure dumb circumstance or chance.  But that's not to say I have never been graced by a stroke of good fortune.  My big break came in 4th grade.  My family and I went to Burger King for lunch, and I caught myself flipping through one of those colorful brochures they used to advertise to kids full of games and facts using mascots from the restaurant.  The particular one I was reading was Pocahontas­-themed in conjunction with the recent release of the Disney film.  A contest on the back urged participants to correctly count the number of Meekos (the raccoon in the movie) on the page, and submit an answer for the chance to win the grand prize—a huge crate full of Pocahontas toys and memorabilia!  By the time we got home, I had already mailed in my answer to Burger King corporate headquarters.  It wasn't until months later—long after I had forgotten about the contest—that a knock on our door late one evening was greeted by a delivery man struggling to heave a giant box up three flights of stairs to our apartment.  Inside was just as the contest had advertised—enough Pocahontas action figures, stuffed animals, and play bow-and-arrows to last an entire childhood.  Miraculously, and against all expectations, I had won the contest.  And up until a few weeks ago, despite countless attempts since, it remained the only thing I had ever won my whole life.

Being fully aware of my track record when it came to winning contests, I hardly thought twice when I entered my name into an alumni raffle for two tickets to see Stevie Wonder perform at Oberlin.  It was almost like an instinctual reflex, as if my brain were telling me: you may win something for free, therefore you must apply.  It hardly mattered that the concert would be held thousands of miles away or that it happened to fall smack in the middle of teaching obligations at my university.  I had heard about the whole celebration last May from VP of Communications at Oberlin and my former boss Ben Jones.  Even then, I was lamenting the fact that there was no way I could possibly have been able to attend.  It was a concert over a year in the making, as a grand opening and dedication to Oberlin's Litoff Building.  Not only will it be the new home for the Conservatory's Department of Jazz Studies, but it also intends to be the first music facility in the world to attain a gold LEED rating.  In addition to a concert performed by Stevie Wonder (along with members of the Oberlin faculty and student body), Bill Cosby and his wife would also be on campus to give a talk the day before.  Never before had I more strongly wished that I was still a student at Oberlin and had the opportunity to attend the ceremony.

But just like my 4th grade-self, after a few weeks the contest had all but slipped my mind.  So you can imagine my surprise when I received this message in my inbox:

Dear Daniel,

Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have won two tickets to "An Evening with Bill Cosby" at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, April 30 and two tickets to the Litoff Building Celebration Jazz Concert featuring Oberlin's alumni, faculty, students and Stevie Wonder on Saturday, May 1. Both events will take place in Finney Chapel in Oberlin, OH.

Please acknowledge receipt of this message and confirm your availability to attend the events in Oberlin on April 30 and May 1 by sending an email message to alumni@oberlin.edu with “Litoff Tickets” in the subject line by midnight PDT on Sunday, April 4. Tickets are non-transferable and will be distributed on campus prior to the events that weekend. Tickets for both events are in high demand; if you will not be able to attend the events, let us know so we can offer the tickets to another alumnus/a.

I look forward to welcoming you back for this exciting celebration!

The initial rush of excitement was soon followed up with feelings of regret.  By the time I started realistically thinking about the trip and charting out logistics, in the end, I decided I couldn't go.  It was a combination of a few factors.  The first was the cost—over $1200 round-trip, not including all of my expenses once in Oberlin, including lodging and food (though I'm pretty sure I could have managed to stay with someone or another and mooched food from my dear old co-op).  The second was that since I'm planning to return to the states this summer for a couple of weeks in July, it didn't make sense to fly all the way to America, just to finish my semester in China, and then fly back to America a month-and-a-half later.  The third was the potential backlash from family and friends in New York.  Here, I am, gone for nine months already in a foreign country, and the first time I make a trip back to America, it's not to see them, but to see Stevie Wonder.  I felt that there was little I could have done to cover my tracks on that one.  Lastly, was the prospect of reverse culture shock once I returned to Oberlin that would have made it difficult to go back to China.  Being in Oberlin in the spring would have been magical—perhaps, too much so—such that I may have regretted not spending another year there with underclassmen friends (including my then-girlfriend) and putting my life on a completely different trajectory.

Back before I even left Oberlin, I had promised the class of 2010 that I would come back for their Commencement in May.  That was of course before I discovered that the school year here in Taigu doesn't end until June 30th, making that something of an impossibility.  Thus, an excuse to go to Oberlin in May (though admittedly not for Commencement) would have been the perfect alibi for canceling a week's worth of classes, as well as a great opportunity to have seen old friends and familiar places again, at a time when spirits were high and the pressure of finals had not fully sunk in.  Needless to say, I'm extremely disappointed that I won't have another chance to see those friends before they, like my own class almost one year ago now, inevitably disperse to places of residence all over the country and the globe.  Of course, I also regret not being able to attend what is sure to be an amazing concert with a larger-than-life celebrity too.  For those who are curious, here is some information from the Oberlin website on the week's events and how the whole ceremony turned out.  And for the lucky alum who got the tickets I couldn't use: you're welcome.

The Bad Luck Club: Disappointments Come in Threes (Pt. I)

Sometimes I feel that my life is destined to be a chapter out of The Joy Luck Club.  For better or worse, Amy Tan's most well-known exemplar of Asian American literature was also my coming of age novel growing up.  So it's not hard for me to imagine years down the line taking credit for my daughter's prodigious chess talents, marrying a well-meaning—but culturally-nescient—woman who insists that all household expenses be divided equally, or somehow becoming haunted by the ghost of a long-deceased relative.  Thankfully, the only glimpse I've gotten so far is the off-handed wisdom mined from either Waverly or Lena that “trouble always comes in threes.”  In 5th grade, it happened during playground recess after lunch, and by the time I finally read the novel in 8th grade, it started cropping up in almost every other aspect of my life.  Fights with parents, bad test grades, disputes with friends—nearly every trouble landing within a week's span of two others, so that I always knew to brace myself before the worst was over.  Even in the greater world at large, things like celebrity deaths and natural disasters (just to name a few) seem to echo this “trouble in threes” sentiment.  I've realized that the same can also be said of disappointments over the last few weeks in Taigu.

*

In the wide world of competitive journalism, timing is everything.  From getting a lead on a good story to tracking down the perfect interview, or networking with the right person to get your foot in the door, everything seems to be a matter of chance.  Everything, perhaps, except for experience.  The way I see it, experience in journalism can be boiled down to three factors: publications, references, and clips.  Publications are the number and relative diversity of magazines, newspapers, websites, etc. you've worked for and references are what your old bosses say about your work ethic.  Clips come in all shapes and sizes, and quality cannot be understated—a clip that generates sizable buzz can single-handedly put a website on the map.  But when a lack of experience doesn't dictate enough cracks at quality pieces, sometimes quantity is all you've got.  As a bottom-feeding intern for four years on the magazine editorial staff totem pole, I know just how valuable such clips can be. 

When I first started out in publishing, I was mostly given the sorts of work reserved for, well, interns.  That included no shortage of copying, scanning, fact-checking, researching, transcribing, and other “character-building” grunt work.  When I became a little more established in the organization I was given the opportunity to contribute my own ideas and do some writing for front of the book pieces (FOB for short).  These are usually the short “quick hits” that draw the reader in and offer a snapshot of some aspect of the world at large, depending on the target niche of the publication.  During my latest gig at Popular Mechanics, I was especially fortunate to have been given a weekly feature to write that appeared on the front page of the website.  The advent of blogs and 24-hour news wires on the internet opened up a whole new world of clip-writing possibilities, and I jumped at the chance.  I cherished these opportunities more than most earthly pleasures.  On one instance, when an assignment of mine was given to another intern because of a time crunch, I nearly had a break down.  It was only after a long, rambling letter to my boss and a smoothing-over at the local Starbucks that I was able to feel positive about the publishing industry again.

One of the weekly "Time Machine" pieces I wrote for Popular Mechanics last summer.  For one glorious week during the summer, it was the most-viewed article on the website.

Thus, you can probably imagine my feelings as rather less of shock and more of grievous disappointment when I received this email message not too long ago:

Hi Daniel -

Some not-so-great news. PM is doing a big site relaunch in two weeks, and a lot of stories from the past couple of years are going to up and disappear (I know, that is terrible and bad Internet protocol, but I am not in charge of [...]'s attitude towards the Internet). Most of your stories will almost certainly not be preserved--we're migrating stories based on volume of traffic over time.

Sorry about this! I thought we were migrating everything from the past two years, and was horrified to discover yesterday that that's not the case.

Hope you're well -

As if it weren't bad enough that my stories would be disappearing, I wasn't able to speculate on those of my cohorts at the time—the fellow interns who worked alongside me during the summer.  Had their stories garnered enough page-views to be spared in this thoroughly modern form of layoff or was it unique to me?  My competitive side, which really only comes out during clip-grubbing, playing basketball, and picking up females, was in full force.  I've always felt that journalism on the whole represents this weird balancing act—of being supportive of your coworkers for the greater well-being of the industry, while all the while looking out for your own self interests.  I suppose the same can be said of winning an Oscar.  Luckily, the sender of the email (who shall remain anonymous) gave me some good leads on screen capture programs that allowed me to take still images of scrolling web pages and save them as picture files.  Using the program, I was able to save copies of every article I wrote for the magazine on my computer with a surprising degree of ease.  Sure, it won't be as impressive as sending over a link to prospective news agencies in the future, but at least it won't look half as bad as forking over that crinkled sheet of paper torn from my only copy of the magazine.

*

After returning to Taigu from two months of winter vacation, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my computer was still intact, exhibiting no signs of the wear and tear that I had subjected it to by lugging it looped around my shoulder for hundreds of miles over three countries.  God knows that my computer has had its share of problems over its five-year lifespan in my care, but in the usual vain of not appreciating technology until the moment it stops working, it came as an utter shock to me when a completely new issue emerged.  Much to my dismay, about a week after I returned home, my computer would not connect to the internet.  The Ethernet capacity on campus, though admittedly quite unstable and the go-to scapegoat for most problems in the past, was not the culprit, nor was a cable issue to blame.  Pretty soon, my USB ports stopped working too.  At first I thought it was a software issue, but after doses of trial-and-error, I decided it must have something to do with the hardware—an over-heated fan that burned through to the port, surely a result of old age.  Needless to say, I know very little about the internal anatomy of a computer, but what I did know (or at least thought I knew) was that the most important machine to my day-to-day livelihood was ready for its last rites.

But before the messy ceremony of disposal and the reluctant inquiry into a possible replacement, I thought the best thing to do was to get it checked out, to be sure that there was no possible way of salvaging what was otherwise a fully-functional piece of machinery.  After backing-up my data to an external hard drive, I took a trip to Sai Ge, a computer and electronics mega-store located about an hour away in the capital city of Taiyuan.  It was the same place that previous Shansi Fellow Beth went to take her computer two years earlier when the USB ports on hers stopped working (apparently Taigu has a reputation for destroying electronics, to which I blame the excessive amount of dust in the air).  Once there, I was shuttled to one of a dozen repair counters and set about trying to explain what exactly the problem was, armed with only my broken Chinese and an electronic dictionary at my disposal.  Eventually, I was able to get my meaning across, but in spite of my relentless probing as to whether it was truly not a hardware issue, the man behind the counter waved me off, assuring me that it was a software problem.  However, inherent in his assertion lay a greater dilemma.  My computer was in English, and the man, like every other employee in the complex, was unable to read it.  These guys are virtual wizards when it comes to fixing electronics but the language barrier was enough to test their mettle.  The only solution he could muster was reformatting the computer's hard drive.

(More on pirated software, Pocahontas, Stevie Wonder, Oberlin's Litoff Building, parallel universes, the thrilling conclusion, and, well, disappointments in Pt. II of this post).

Flash Fiction for Easter

Easter in Taigu reminded me of a memory from my past.  Part fiction, part non-fiction, this story is the latest in my efforts to follow through with my creative goals for the semester.  It's also a story that I am submitting to NPR's “Three Minute Fiction Contest,” which is looking for original flash fiction stories that are 600 words or less.  The deadline is April 11th.  Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

*

Marzipan

I was in China the last time I'd had it.  Matthias took the package out not long after his English majors left to make curfew.  Something about them not appreciating it the same way.  He said it'd been two years for him too.  Two years ago I was still fulfilling major requirements and boycotting bottled water.  The marzipan was the last of the original stock he'd brought over from the States—left hibernating in a Chinese cupboard for 22 months, waiting for the right time to make its entrance.

It came in a crinkled foil wrapper, marked with plain script across the front.  Its contents were more enticing—sweet almond paste cradled inside a shell of dark chocolate.  I sliced off a thick sliver and bobbed it in my palm, a lopsided boat navigating every crease and crevice.

With the first taste, I knew the moment exactly.  It was Easter time, and I was eleven.  My father brought me and my sister to a specialty chocolate shop in Midtown.  The inside was brimming with every sweet you could imagine: decadent fudge bunnies, bejeweled Fabergé eggs, miniature figurines made of marshmallow, chocolate animals wrapped in colorful foil.  We bought a little bit of everything, but my favorite was the tiny box of fruit-shaped marzipan we started eating in the store.

Back home we made a game of it.  We each took turns hiding our share of the loot around the house and had the others try to find it.  Winners kept what they found.  My father was determined to find the most creative hiding places, and some were damn near impossible.  It wasn't until an hour or two later that I found the chocolate truffles—disguised as soil clumps—sprinkled in with the potted jade plant on the windowsill.  The windowsill with the giant mildew stain that stretched all the way down to the floor.

There was always something funny about that stain.  It was the same place I had spit three years earlier.  Just upped and spit, with hardly any warning.  Back then it was during another game—freeze tag—and my dad and his new wife were in the midst of starting a clothing company.  The apartment was littered with shirts and dresses, pleated in plastic wrap and hung along aisles of clothing racks that ran lengthwise across the apartment.  Me and my sister darted over the hardwood floors, weaving in and out of the racks—terrified of getting caught.

When my father saw it, he stopped me mid-stride by the collar, and forced my head over the floor like I was flying.  “What is this,” he asked me.  “Don't you have any respect at all?  Isn't this your house too?”  I thought back to the divorce, to that other home where my mom lived, the house where I wouldn't dare to spit.  I could barely look at the stain on the floor.  Instead my eyes gravitated to the buttons on my father's shirt—each made from polished stone, the very same that lined the backs of the dresses on the racks.

I wanted to scream: “This must be a trick!  If I stopped the game—even for a minute—to get a tissue, you might never play it again.  We're going back to mom's tomorrow, I don't know the next time we'll see you.”  But I couldn't say a word.  It was just like the rules.  He had caught me, and I was frozen.