Day 9: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

In China, censorship is the country's best-kept secret. According to Wikipedia, Internet repression in China is considered more advanced than in any other country in the world, cited, chiefly, as a way to guard against the threat of social organizing and the spread of discordant political ideology. Certainly before I came to China, it was a concern that weighed heavily on my mind. I envisioned a bleak 1984-esque state where Big Brother, re-imagined as the Chinese government, spied on my every dissenting move up until my eventual “disappearance.” Of the news that reaches America from across the Pacific, interest in Chinese censorship a la the so-called “Great Firewall of China” is only eclipsed by the paralyzing fear that China's economy will overtake ours in the next ten to twenty years.

None has been a more recent reminder of this than the news that broke a month ago of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo receiving this year's Nobel Peace Prize. For those who are unfamiliar with him, allow me to give a brief recap. Liu has spent more than two decades advocating peaceful political change in the face of relentless hostility on the part of the ruling CCP, beginning with a hunger strike during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. His most recent arrest came at the hands of a manifesto he helped pen called Charter '08 demanding democratic reform that would end the CCP's monopoly on power. But headlines of his remarkable achievement were nowhere to be found in Chinese state media—people were unable to send text messages containing the characters of his name, and international news junkets like CNN were blacked out mid-way through transmission.

Protesters outside the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong on Friday, demanding the release of Liu Xiaobo (photo courtesy of the New York Times).

Living in America and only hearing about the vague concept of censorship and actually experiencing it first-hand are two very different things. It's amazing how many of the websites that most Americans use everyday—including Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, WordPress, and (until recently) Wikipedia—are censored here in China. To its credit, however, China has done an amazing job of drumming up enormous user support for its own government-monitored imitations of the same websites in response. I would guess that there are literally thousands of sites that are blocked in China, with more being added to the blacklist every day.

But despite what would seem like an enormous loss of personal freedom, I understand too how people here have come to accept it. If you only ever heard one news source, you wouldn't know any better than to accept it as the truth. It's as if a padded cell has been built around you, full of all the information you need to feel sated. In the days of TV, radio, and newspapers, the Chinese government was able to exercise nearly 100% control over what got published, but it is truly the advent of the Internet that is changing the game. If China knew how to control the Internet like it does more traditional media, there is little question that it would.

At the hands of unavoidable international fire, China unprecedentedly issued its own statement about Liu Xiaobo, calling him, the “West’s tool” who seeks to “destroy the progress of Chinese society and the welfare of the Chinese people.” While most Chinese will never question that assessment, many, including the younger generation, are increasingly leery of the government and are continuing to find creative outlets—as we are—to elude censorship restrictions and uncover the truth. Especially after hearing outrage from some of my own students over these sentiments, it doesn't seem long before China must confront its most ineffable skeleton in the closet.

Day 8: The Lighter Side of Stardom

Sometimes people ask me, “Daniel, if you could trade places with anyone in the world for one day, who would it be?” Honestly, I find it hard to answer that question. I can't think of a single person I'd rather be.

If you're like me, you're all too familiar with the high price of celebrity. My ascent to the A-list stratosphere was never paved—it took hard work, incredible talent, and my decision to move to a rural town in a foreign country where there are no other people like me. Doing my daily rounds on campus must be the way Bon Jovi feels at the supermarket. The persistent double-takes, hushed whispers, and jaw-dropping stares have resulted in crippling insecurity, abject fear of the public spotlight, and my recent decision to renounce all material possessions to live a hermit life in the Catskills. I guess that's what they call “the cost of fame.”

I can't even finish a game of basketball without someone offering me a complimentary bottle of water as if to thank me for the privilege of watching me play. It's exhausting really. Cell phone camera photos are the worst. There I am at dinner, ready to roll my tongue over a thick, juicy stick of chuanr, when I hear the unmistakable click of a camera shutter at the next table over. Let's see you try and sell that one to Us Weekly, pervert.

People always seem to want me to do something—sing a song, say a few words in Chinese, give them one-on-one English lessons for free at my house. Who am I—the Godfather? And what is this—my little girl's wedding reception? Oh, I'm sorry, I left my accordion and my tiny dancing monkey back at the house. Just kidding, I don't own an accordion. For occasions like this, I might as well carry around a tip jar. Sure, I already pull in a four-figure salary, but it doesn't hurt to make a little extra money on the side.

Take a couple weeks ago, for instance, when I got a call from Wendy Wang. She calls me at night from time to time when she's bored and there's no one to talk to online. That's what I call connecting with my fans. I met her in March when all of the foreigners went to see the Shanxi Zhongyu play their last home basketball game of the season in Taiyuan. She works as a sports journalist and befriended us after the game. She called to say that she desperately needed my help with something. Apparently, she wanted to write an article about the foreign community in Taigu and needed to interview me so that she could complete her assignment without getting fired. Now that's a cause I can get behind.  I've always considered myself a man of the people.

Wendy's article was actually published under the “Education” header in the October 21st issue of the Shanxi Daily, a newspaper covering the region's news.  It talks about how we as foreign teachers discuss the cultural differences between China and the West in class, and in our spare time, exemplify those shared differences with a mixture of Chinese and American food that we cook together with Chinese friends and students. In the picture from left to right: James, Alma (a former student), me, Ray (one of the new Fellows), Gerald, and Crystal (another former student who gave me a copy of this article).

For the price of dinner at a modest restaurant, I also do speeches, lectures, and improv comedy. Yesterday I played a full house—over 200 people, all there to watch me speak. I got the gig from my Chinese tutor, Francis, who wanted someone else to teach his classes this week. He thought it might be entertaining to have a foreigner up there for his students to gawk at for an hour. All of the other foreign teachers said they were “too busy,” which meant that I got top-billing. I told him that he was lucky he booked me in advance. On weekday nights I'm usually too busy lying semi-comatose in a pool of my own urine, but I told him I'd make an exception in this case. After all, I have to prepare myself for a weekend of heavy drinking.

Francis' 200-student specialized English class that I taught at his behest on Monday.  I did a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation on OSCA to give the students a sense of one of the most unique student organizations at Oberlin, followed by a Q&A session.  It was probably the biggest crowd I had ever talked in front of in my life.

It hardly mattered what I talked about—I could tell the kids were riveted. Usually when I ask something in class, students simply repeat it back to me instead of answering it. I don't blame them. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. By the time I took questions from the audience, I could barely keep the same three volunteers in their seats. After my lecture, I posed for photo-ops and signed no less than four standard-size composition notebooks as well as a manila folder. One girl even asked me to sign the exposed area between her neck and her chest, but I politely refused. “You're not that pretty, sweetheart,” I told her, just before setting off into the sunset.

So, to answer your question, no, I don't ever wish I were less famous. The life of a superstar is a difficult one, but those are the brakes that society has told us are desirable in a person. Even the guys at the pool asked if I wanted to get my skin scrubbed with them at the bathhouse—their treat. It's truly flattering. But I just don't have that kind of time.

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Just in case it's not painfully obvious, this is a parody, in the vain of McSweeney's and other similar internet tendency.  And for those sticklers out there, it also exceeds my project-allotted 600-word limit by 200 words.

Day 7: I Only Eat Tree Leaves!

It's autumn here at SAU, and the leaves have started their yearly descent. It also means that every class of undergrads has been assigned to one week of mandatory community service—delegated to raking leaves, weeding, and picking up trash around campus. The foreigners have theorized that it's not an effort on the part of the school to cut grounds crew costs (God knows labor is cheap in China), but rather, to give students a healthy work ethic, something that Oberlin, despite its “learning and labor” founding, could do more to foster. But the problem doesn't lie in who picks up the leaves, but in how they dispose of them afterward.

Once swept up and gathered in large blankets, the leaves are deposited in campus dumpsters and mixed in with plastic, paper, and other trash that is later burned in small open fires on campus. The resulting toxic dioxin contributes to local air pollution and the collective discomfort that comes with simply attempting to breath after 5pm. Of course, the most logical solution would be to compost the leaves. Even the school's administration is in favor of the idea, but is so mired in bureaucracy that it has never done anything to change. That was, until James had something to say about it. Last fall, he cleared a small, hidden patch adjacent to Gerald and Dave's old house and, with the help of our Chinese tutor Francis and a couple friends and students, constructed a modest-sized compost bin out of bamboo, string, and mesh netting to use as a test subject.

James turning the compost.  The small placard on the front of the bin reads, “I only eat tree leaves!” in Chinese as a way to discourage people from contaminating it with other waste (photo courtesy of James Barnard).

From there, things began progressing fast. While we all began to use the compost pile for disposing food scraps, James gave a couple of lectures on campus about the compost project and quickly became involved with a student organization called “Sons of the Farmers.” They agreed to work with him to collect more leaves through an extensive network of volunteers. True to their word, 30 students came that weekend to help construct a spawn of smaller bins to be placed at strategic locations around campus as a way to divert the conventional leaf-flow. In the spring following the big winter freeze, James convinced the new crop of weed-pickers and lawn-mowers to add their natural waste to the compost pile too, in the hopes that the introduction of nitrogen would help it to decompose into soil faster.

Many hands make light work.  One of the "bin-making parties" that took place last semester in an effort to get more students involved in the composting project (photo courtesy of James Barnard).

This semester James hasn't let up in his efforts. He leads weekly teams of students to move leaves from the remote collection bins to the main pile, as well as to a nearby research garden where a professor has given him the go-ahead to bring in an unlimited amount of leaves to be composted. He has been able to use his foreign “celebrity” to its most meaningful end—by recognizing a problem, understanding that he needs help, and having enough star power to create real change. By building the infrastructure and fostering leadership in the student body for the project, his goal is to move the school in a more sustainable direction even after he has gone. He said himself that, “It seems to me that people who are environmentalists should try to solve problems wherever they live. We all share the same planet, so we need to think about solutions in every part of the world.”

It's sometimes hard to feel as if you're the only person doing anything to make a difference, but really, it's just what we as Oberlin students have been told all along: Think one person can change Taigu? So do we.

Day 6: A Tale of Two Mooncakes

As any Mainland Chinese will tell you, things are just different in the south.  Before I came to China, I never realized the enormous divide between the polar halves. In fact, one of the only pieces of information I knew before arriving—and was consequently devastated to discover—was that rice is actually only a staple in the south and northern cuisine is more famous for its noodles. As it turns out, food is just the tip of the iceberg. If I were to make large, sweeping, generalizations for a minute, I would say that the stereotypes often associated with the north and south of America are flipped in China. Higher levels in education, standard of living, and overall wealth are attributed to the south, whereas much of the north is seen as farmland full of hicks with funny accents. What's more, all of China's current leadership is from the south and southern cities are well-known for their industry and rapid pace of development.

James attributes this largely to weather—that because the growing season is longer in the south where the weather is warmer, over time a wealthier culture has evolved. As most people know, the Chinese side of my family is originally from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, more commonly known as Canton in the states. While I'm sure to talk more about my identity in other posts, one of the things that struck me at the time I decided to come to China was that I would finally be able to connect with my Chinese half and reconcile the divide that has plagued mixed-bloods since the dawn of colonization. But to make a long story short, living in Taigu feels so far from my preconceived conception of “China” already that I may as well be living in another country. The best way for me to articulate these differences has been through mooncakes.

Northern and southern-style mooncakes.  I'll let you guess which is which.

Mooncakes come in a variety of textures and fillings, but the most iconic are the ones that are soft and thin, filled with either lotus bean paste or preserved duck egg yolk, and are traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. While southern mooncakes are the sweet globules of chewy, rich goodness most indicative of the mooncakes we have stateside, northern mooncakes are of another breed entirely. Northern mooncakes are wide and flat, and have a thick, flaky crust more suggestive of a puff pastry or a tart shell. Instead of sweet bean paste on the inside, they are stuffed with a filling of salty meat seasoned with spices and Goji berries for sweetness. The taste was initially hard to get used to—more savory than sweet, and better likened to a quiche or a pot pie crust than a dessert.

A box of southern-style mooncakes, gifted to me by what will surely be an A-student this semester.

During the Mid-Autumn Day festivities, I was up to my eyeballs in mooncakes. Most were gifts from students that I was hard-pressed to pass up, including a decadent box of southern-style mooncakes in ornate Chinese packaging. But I was most surprised when Crystal, a Chinese friend of mine, brought over a bag of mooncakes that her grandmother had freshly made. Eating the two kinds side-by-side put things in perspective for me—for all my nay-saying about the north, it was just like the mooncakes themselves, straightforward and understated, whereas the southern one's felt like they had something to hide. Their sweet, tasty core was coated beneath a glossy veneer of delicate lettering and served inside a packaged trim. Though I grew up eating southern mooncakes and still find them to be the best, I can't say that I have been hard put at the experience of trying something new.

Day 5: The Heart, Not the Steel

Weight-lifting sometimes gets a bad reputation. But despite the unfounded stereotypes that often get associated with it—that people who regularly work-out are unintelligent, narcissistic, fanatical, insecure, or simply addicted to steroids—I am not ashamed to say that I have a bizarre fascination with the sport. In fact, it's been such a distinct part of me that at every major, life-changing juncture since entering Oberlin, I have written about it. And so, given that it's been a year for me in Taigu already, this post is long overdue.

During my first semester at SAU, I was disappointed to learn that there wasn't anything in the way of a dedicated weight room on campus. It was only until March, when Nick heard word that there may be a place with a couple of barbells and weight plates, that we had renewed faith. After a grueling and ultimately fruitless talk with a couple of employees, we decided to do a little snooping ourselves, and eventually found a “body-building room” among a row of smaller, unnamed complexes past the edge of the track.

James demonstrates how to ride a bike and do dumbbell curls simultaneously in the SAU weight room.

The inside is nothing to write home about. In fact, it's probably the sorriest excuse for a weight room I've ever seen—charcoal-covered benches, dilapidated foam mats, and weight plates that look as if they've been deep-fried in rust. If you so much as tug on the locking bolt at either end of the barbell, you can actually separate it from the bar, and past sundown, there's only the faint beam from a single, dangling bulb that illuminates about a quarter of the floor. But bare-bones or not, it's a weight room all the same. And although it is only officially open to the track team on campus, the coach has been kind enough to accommodate us, even going so far as to give us a copy of the key to use after hours. Each time we go, there seems to be less fascination with us dressed in tank-tops and shorts in 40° weather.

But the track team is full of characters in their own right. We don't know any of their real names, so for practicality's sake, we've attributed names to them based on their physical appearance. There are our two main protagonists—Big and Little Rippy—both of whom are “ripped.” There's Twan, named after Gwendolyn's brother in “Trapped in the Closet,” who famously remarked that, “I don't have a Chinese body, I'm stronger than them!” And then there are lesser-known bit players—“ugly shorts guy,” “poser strength,” and shot put ringer “Andre the Giant,” the most enormous Chinese man I've ever seen. A couple of girls have yet to undergo the demeaning name treatment—one, who excels in the high jump, and another half my size, who I once saw—much to my simultaneous shock and excitement—squat with 135 pounds on her back.

Yours truly, getting ready to do a squat.

The track team at SAU reminds me of The Mighty Ducks—a little scrappy, a tad eccentric, but ultimately, pretty decent. The same came be said of the weight room itself. Ironically, while it may be the worst-looking weight room I've ever been to, it's the one I've been most diligent about going to every week. Having a workout partner in James who is as committed as I am has been great motivation as we continue the same four-days-a-week alternating chest/arms and legs/back schedule that I started with Nick and Dave last year. The best part of it all? After our work-out, we treat ourselves to banana-yogurt protein shakes, all while reveling in the slow after-burn of endorphins.