Every Girl's Dream

I was trolling Facebook this morning when I stumbled upon this lovely gem of an internet meme:

Click "Like" if you think women have more options than this. I'm not getting into who posted this because I'm not interested in finger pointing (that doesn't solve anything) but all I imagined was that this person - this woman - must get out of bed in the morning and think, "Hm...should I have a bagel or the Slim Fast? I should probably have the Slim Fast so I won't get fat so I can be more attractive to men."

As if women don't have any options outside of worrying about men and their weight. Not to mention how conflated the two ideas are. This meme advocates a very clear patriarchy in which men imagine women dream about falling in love and women claim to dream about staying thin. But why would they need to stay thin if it weren't for being appealing to men? And stop it with this "every girl" thing as if we all share the same values because we have vaginas. And, this is petty, but if I need someone to click "Like" to agree with my opinion, I don't think my perspective is strong or valuable enough to last.

I guess if I had to work within this dichotomy, I would choose to make every girl's dream: "To exist in a mindset free of weight and gender stigmas."

But really, women - astonishingly enough - have the capacity to dream, worry, wonder, and otherwise verb about many things apart from these two societal norms. Here are some potential dreams of some women (feel free to add your own!):

To solve world hunger.
To have a family.
To be millionaires.
To start and run a successful business.
To learn karate.
To bake a three layer cake.
To go sky diving.
To touch her toes.
To run a marathon.
To write a book.
To teach math.
To cure cancer.
To sew a quilt.
To never ever see another meme like this one.

Movement and Me

Lately I've had a prolonged case of the Februaries. The general apathy mixed with a kind of overwhelming funk. I tend to get the Februaries every year, but this year, so far away from everything I love and amassed in an almost constant, chronic phlegmy-cough inducing smog, it's been particularly bad. 

When March comes, I normally like to get out and take a few deep breaths of the hint of spring hanging high in the air. But when I did that here I just coughed on the fumes.
A bit like a caged lion, I've been pacing around the apartment, loathe to go outside and loathe to stay in.  

Today, Jake went to to play basketball with a friend and for a bit I sat around feeling sorry for myself and generally bored. I thought about doing Pilates, but I'd done it for three workouts in a row. I thought about doing Zumba, but every time I do worryingly large chunks of hair fall out. So I sat in front of the computer and sighed.

Finally, I opted to do something I don't normally do: kickboxing. I did two kickboxing workouts, then a light weight/high repetition Tae Bo. I was sweating a lot and chunks of hair were, as expected, lining the floor, but I was feeling really inspired, so I created four new Zumba routines. Two and a half hours later, my muscles were shaking and I smelled like sewer, but I felt fucking awesome.

That was a really roundabout way of saying this: movement rocks. I wasn't a kid who liked movement for several reasons. Firstly, my own preferences; I preferred to do something else than be active. Secondly, I only ever moved with the intention to lose weight from the ages of probably 10 to 20, and the results were minimal. Thirdly, other people. I didn't feel comfortable moving because I got made fun of when I did it. As I've said before: hypocrisy is ugly. You can't tell me I'm unhealthy and then ruthlessly torment me for practicing healthy habits. Make up your damn minds! Anyway, at least in this department, I've decided that those people, to put it crudely, can suck it. They do not have any jurisdiction any longer on my relationship with movement.

I know a lot of you are either going to roll your eyes or want to rip out my throat when I tell you that I actually enjoy working out. Sure, there are days when it's a struggle or a chore, and there are days when the couch is more alluring than my sneakers or my yoga mat, but most days I love the  feel of sweat beading on my forehead, the feeling of my heart pumping blood through my veins, my muscles contracting and pulling, the oddly sweet rush of water that quenches my dry mouth. More than that, I love how relaxed and accomplished I feel afterwards. 

Now, at the end of the day, I firmly believe that your health is your own business and nobody has a right to tell you what you should and should not do with your body except you, but I strongly encourage you to find a movement that you like. I know a lot of you are like me and have had a bad relationship with movement because of other people and because you've only ever worked out because you want to be skinny. If you can get past these things - for me, the first came pretty easily, by joining Curves and an African dance class, but the second required (still requires) a continual reminder that my health and my body size ARE mutually exclusive - your feelings about movement and working out might have a complete overhaul. Especially when you keep on mind that all movement is good movement. We get told quite a bit what movement we should do, and those change about as fast as diet trends. So I say find a movement you love. Find many movements you love. And throw away all your Jillian Michaels workout DVDs (unless you really like being bullied while you workout. In which case, why are you reading his blog?)
I'd also like to share some advice I recently read. In this culture, we're bombarded with misinformed and financially-motivated messages of health and beauty, most of which encourage us to give up things In order to achieve what the proverbial "they" think is the gold standard. No cookies. No cake. No chips. No pizza. No wine. No.. If you believe in reverse psychology (or you've ever dieted) you know that every time you look at that candy bar/bag of chips/whatever it is you want and say to yourself, "I can't have it," you want it more. AND THEN you have it and feel GUILTY,  which probably makes you want more. The advice I read turned that around and suggested that we try adding things. Have another glass of water. Have another piece of fruit. Have another serving of vegetables. Add another 5, 10, 15 minutes movement to our day. 

As I said, ultimately your health is your business and you can do whatever you want to do. As for me, I'm really sore, so I'm going to park it on the couch and rummage through the fridge for something for dinner. You can choose to sit here and read more of blog. You can go out and take a walk. You can dance like a champ to your Paul Simon album. But remember to move for you and not for anybody else.

Harbin: A History and a Reflection

Harbin is cold. Mind-blowingly, thigh-freezingly, toe-numbingly cold. Relatively near the Russian border -- wild Russia, not the European side -- Harbin was, for a while, actually part of Russia, and has the architecture to prove it. People come to Harbin in the winter not for its winning climate, but for its renowned ice festival. Located in three separate areas of the city, the Ice Festival is a massive tribute to ice art and certainly celebrates something this region has in abundance. By day, the sculptures are impressive -- clear and smooth, like thick, weeping glass -- but by night they transform into a neon Narnia. Lights that I think China borrowed from one of the last parties of the 1990s and never returned illuminate the structures and, in some cases, are actually embedded within the ice itself.

The Russian influence in China came with the emergence of the China Far-East Railway, which was an extension of the Trans Siberian Railway. By 1913, the census showed that the roughly 70,000 citizens came from 53 different nationalities and spoke 45 different languages. History enthusiasts among my readers will feel their ears perk up when hearing about Russia and 1913. What happened? What happened? Anyone? Bueller? The Russian Revolution and World War I, correct. Following the relatively tame Revolution of 1909, the 1917 Revolutions - there were two, one in February and one in October - toppled the Russian monarchy and brought the country under the once-exiled Lenin. And the rest is Soviet history. But, during this time, as many as 200,000 "white émigrés" or first-wave immigrants fled into Harbin.

However, in 1935, things got wonky again, when the Soviet Union sold its shares of the China Far-East Railway to Japan, who had occupied Manchuria and redubbed it "Manchukuo." The Japanese takeover received mixed reviews from Harbin's Russian population. Some sided with the Chinese to the extent that they wanted the Japanese out, while others believed that the Japanese occupation could help them deal with Soviet oppression as well as the growing opposition among Chinese who were scrabbling to regain sovereignty. Many Russians left Harbin in 1935, were captured upon entering Russia, and were killed in the Great Purge, accused of being spies.

Many of those who didn't leave stayed and formed the Russian Fascist Party, a party vehemently opposed to Communism and Jews. They harassed the Jews so much that the majority of Harbin's Russian Jewish population was forced to flee the area. In the interim, the Japanese had formed their own little puppet government for their pseudo-state of Manchukuo, and Harbin's remaining Russians had two options: return to the Soviet Union or remain stateless and under Japanese control.

While many of Harbin's Russians are long gone, their presence remains. It lies in the architecture, the shops that sell Russian nesting dolls, flasks that read "Russia" in large, imposing letters, and the blueberries. China is not a country for blueberries. I don't know why they're aren't grown here, but in Harbin, there's blueberry jams, blueberry candies, and sweet blueberry wine.

I'll admit that we didn't venture into the "Chinese" part of Harbin. We were very content to lose ourselves in the European architecture, the coffee, and the relative cleanliness and quiet of the pedestrian street, whose length we must have walked five or six times.

Harbin is still China, though, and at 6:00 p.m. you can walk outside and be covered in an industrial haze. When you breathe in, you wonder if it hurts because of the cold or because of the air quality. You'll wonder why the authorities have allowed every single gift shop to sell fur and stoles. But mostly you'll wonder why you can't just buy a carton of blueberries.

#unapologetic

In a surprising turn of events, modern history's most desired and accomplished woman has made her
debut on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. A teacher/yogi/astronaut/cowgirl/business woman/doctor/CEO/president, complete with a 39 - 21 - 33 frame, Barbie has been plaguing (or inspiring, if you're an optimist) young girls for decades.

Her maker, Mattel, paid Sports Illustrated to feature Barbie on their cover because, according to Mattel, Barbie, along with legends like Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, and Christie Brinkley, is a role model who should be proud of everything she's accomplished and should be, to use the edition's hashtag, unapologetic. Mattel goes on to say that Barbie is "under constant criticism for how she looks" so her cover feature is well-deserved for the 54 years of body shaming that Barbie has endured.

What with the who now? Yes, it is true that Barbie's body has come under attack because of its sheer lack of reality and the correlation between lower self-image and playing with the anatomically disproportionate doll. But this play, this idea that we're going to take Barbie's "adversity" and turn it into a positive - the same as Tyra Banks endorsed Special K's doing with lack of diet language in their still obviously weight loss endorsing Special K challenge - is manipulating the idea of body and size acceptance. Yes, body and size acceptance is about acceping all bodies, which I suppose would include Barbie's, and working to project images of untraditional beauty in the media, which would certainly not include Barbie. It's also about acknowledging thin privilege and challenging the message that has long been perpetuated: that girls should look like Barbie.

Moreover, it is, in my humble opinion, a giant step backwards to replace living, breathing women - however steeped in health and beauty tropes they are - with an inanimate piece of plastic. Because that's what Barbie is. All we are is dust in the wind, and all Barbie is is a lump of rubbery plastic. Despite whatever human qualities Mattel may assign her, Barbie has never actually worked as a doctor/astronaut/veterinarian/teacher, as is apparent by her grossly negligent career habits, nor has she felt the lasting sting of body shaming in her solid plastic heart facsimile, and any words said about her and her body - positive or negative- fall deaf on her tiny plastic ears. What kind of message are we sending that this plastic doll can buy her way onto a cover an elite, objectifying magazine that most actual women could never even dream of modeling for? I'll tell you what message I hear loud and clear: If you're rich and thin, you can do whatever the hell you want.

In case this wasn't slap-your-face-with-a-stupid-fish obvious to you, this flies in the face of Mattel's size acceptance facade, as does the fact that the magazine they're paying to feature Barbie is Sports Illustrated, for an edition that profits heavily from featuring scantily clad, stereotypically beautiful women while simultaneously shoving down our throats loaded messages about health and beauty. You'll note that Mattel isn't trying to get Barbie a cover on Bitch or Ms. Next thing you know, though, they'll want her to be in Good Housekeeping because of how she flawlessly decorated her dream home without the use of opposable thumbs.

How is it that, in 2014 Barbie is still a role model? More importantly, how is possible that a plastic friggin doll continues to wield such power and influence? This is scarier than all the Chucky movies combined.

Bucket Listed for 13 Years: Becomes a Reality

Bangkok was a letdown. A tent-city now, occupied by people whose adorned Thai flags and semantics make it difficult to construe which side they’re actually fighting for. Filled with rats the size of small cats and sex sold on every corner – cheaply or nor, depending on where you look – Bangkok has, I think, a very specific niche. By day: history; but the history closes at 4:00. By night: debauchery. “Ping pong” shows and self-proclaimed Lady Boys and as many shades of bawdiness as you can think of. The older white men in business suits and younger white men in trendy fashions are nearly countless. And Bangkok knows exactly what they’re buying.

But a 12-hour train ride and a four-hour bus/mini-van ride later, we landed in nothing short of paradise. Here, monkeys big and small – some friendly, some rather aggressive and demanding – roam the white sand beaches. Touristic, yes, but amazingly still unsullied. If Phuket is the Jersey Shore, Ao Nang is Old Orchard, quaint, quieter, and charming.

On our first day, surviving on two or so hours of poor train sleep, we walked into town. Typical, I would say, of a beach town, with restaurants and shops selling towels and hats and sun cream everywhere you look. People bronzed to perfection and others reddening, searching desperately for shade under the relative shade of a coconut tree. And suddenly, there was no more town, but sprawling in front of us was sapphire and turquoise and the kinds of ocean you only ogle in someone’s Facebook photos. (Please feel free to ogle ours.)

On our second day, we woke to a late breakfast of boiled beef and garlic for Jake and flat noodles in a thick vegetable and seafood sauce for me, washed down with iced tea and coffee, then spent eight hours exploring the unbelievably remarkable islands just off Ao Nang.

Piled on a long boat with about 30 people, we crashed through the calm surf. In some areas the water was so clear that we could see straight to the bottom. The first beach, Railay, is fabled for its natural beauty and with good reason. High, white cliffs, soft, white sands, and turquoise water that seems too perfect to be true. Then to Poda Island, where we snorkeled. Below us, coral reefs that boasted dark, purple plant life, and schools of Admiral fish that swarmed us for pineapple, and the amazing Parrot fish whose scales flash pinks, purples, blues, and yellows, and whose lips are pouty and pursed moreso than any model’s. Then to the Seven Islands, where we swam through a natural hollowing of one of the islands, which is really more like a big ocean rock, which is not to make it sound any less incredible. Then, we went to Chicken Island – named for its natural shape, aptly, a chicken’s head – where we did more snorkeling in waters so unbelievably clear that we could see patterns in the coral even as the waves rippled, and finally we landed on Tup Island where we had our sunset barbecue.

I’m fairly certain I’m correct in saying that, as long as you like beaches and oceans and boats, our tour guide has the best job in the world. Every day he gets to motor around what I think is easily one of the most picturesque places in the world – every view is a postcard – then he gets to eat barbecued chicken and seafood that tastes distinctly like peace and sun and joy, then watch the sunset. Now, this is not any normal sunset: this is a sunset in paradise. The sky itself is smeared with precision in hues of fiery oranges, calming violets, bright blues, and hazy pinks better than even the finest roses. The sun hangs proud and heavy as day dies over Thailand, watching its reflection in the rippling ocean, narcissistic and vain, but undeniably beautiful. 

I stood in the water as the tide was rising in juxtaposition to the sun. The soft sand swallowed my feet as the water lapped at my toes, then my ankles, then pooled around my calves. I looked up at the one solitary star in the sky – bright, but lonely – and then another appeared. One by one they emerged in the sky, the eyes of gods and wisdom, until the sky was a smattering of shimmering jewels. There was no moon – the stars had the whole sky as their own personal playground. At that point nothing, nothing could be more beautiful.

Night fully surfaced and the tour guides swirled fire batons deftly and lit cigarettes on their ashes with just as much precision. Their fire blurred the sky, but was only a tease for the light that would come next.

Back on the boat, the land air warm behind us and the cooler sea breeze gnarling or hair, we headed back towards Ao Nang, but not before stopping a few beaches down from Railay for one of the most amazing experiences available on Earth. There in the water – blue-green by day, but pitch black by night – swirled schools of bioluminescent plankton who would illuminate the water like a million tiny flashlights every time I swirled my hands or feet. I haven’t been so fascinated by my own hands and feet since infanthood. It was like natural magic emerging from your own body and coming into the world as unsurpassed, mesmerizing beauty. When I looked up, stars twinkled magnificently over white cliffs. When I looked down, the water sang light.

The People You Meet in China

The wind blows colder here than it does at home. It whips between the concrete buildings and sinks its icy teeth beneath your jacket, under your skin, and into your bones.

Outside is a serenade of car horns, coughing, spitting, and creaky bicycles, and people conversing in a language where love an anger can be indistinguishable in sound.

It is halfway around the world, maybe more. It is far from anything familiar, where ordering a coffee is a challenge, and where nothing ever feels entirely as it should.

But in between the remnants of concrete Communism and beneath the layers of filth, lies something tangible and oddly comforting, even though it, too, is strange and unfamiliar. A language you speak. A joke you can share. An accent your recognize. A word you do not have to explain. A shared memory of a life put on pause.

In that world we were an hour away: Albany. Westfield. In that world we shared our stereotypes: Florida. In that world we understood a different kind of cold. Minnesota. In that world we walked upon the cobblestones: Edinburgh.

In this world, I do not know what we are and if we are different than we are in that other world that's hanging suspended like an alternate reality that someday, someday we'll return to. We talk of it like a pretend world, like an imaginary dream we shared as children in a sandbox, inventing a land far, far away.

The world is so close and we are outsiders. Outsiders on the periphery of two existences, straddled over a wide, choppy wake. We share what we can; we give what we can to each world: a story here, a photography there, a pool of memories we can collect in a scrapbook, let gather dust, and never fully return to.

The photographs and stories offer a glimpse through half an eye. But all that I've seen is not all that I've seen. The smells, the sounds, the sticky wetness that glues itself to the bottom of your shoes as you walk down Dead Dog Alley, sunglasses on, earphones blaring, and the disgustingly beautiful way the sewer bubbles over like a Lilliputian waterfall even when it hasn't rained for months.

The world isn't as small as it seems, and yet it is smaller.

Here is a temporary. Here is a rose petal, a dish of oily vegetables, a cake with tomatoes, seven people with mops, a bowling lane that never works. And here will be gone. In the long, drawn-out blink of an eye, here will be gone.

Good? Bad? Judge yourself and find your own answer, but the wide, wide world has seen that we cross. So, when you walk that way and I walk this way, and the noise fades and the sights and sounds once so familiar now see, foreign, I know the road you're walking.

Androgyny Makes People Learn Better and Other Lessons Kids Are Taught in China

I want to begin this blog by saying that I feel that, as of late (and by late I mean October/November, as I have been extraordinarily lax about posting) my blog has been coming off as anti-Chinese and inadvertently pro-American. I want to make a couple of things absolutely clear: I am not anti-Chinese, but rather a frustrated tourist stuck in the anger phase of culture shock. I am certainly not pro-American, but rather a frustrated citizen stuck in the anger phase of citizenship. Now that that's cleared up, we may continue.

As you all know, I am teaching over here and predominately what I do is 1:1 classes in 3-hour blocks. As painful and tedious as that can be sometimes, I do learn a lot of interesting things from my students, which I am posting here. Disclaimer: while I have absolutely asked some of these questions directly, I haven't asked all of them in these words, but they have been answered indirectly via other questions. And, no, the bulleted lists aren't choices for answers but rather different answers I've received.

1. Why do all Chinese middle and high school students have short, cropped hair? 

• Long hair sucks out your brainpower. 
• Girls with long hair spend more time thinking about their hair and less time thinking about their school work. 
• Girls with long hair are less attractive to boys so they don't have to worry about dating. 

2. What is beautiful? 

• Pale skin. 
• Big eyes. 
• Very, very thin. 

3. Follow up question: How do you become very, very thin? 

• You have to eat only a little meat and lots of fruits and vegetables. (To which I said, "You know, I eat no meat and lots of fruits and vegetables." And my student said-->) 
• Drink some tea. 
• My mom has this thing, like a hammer. You hit the bottom of your foot and it makes your leg look thinner. You know, it's not actually thinner but, wow, it works, you look thinner. But it hurts, so I just try to eat a little meat.

4. How do you fix traffic jams? (All my students say traffic jams are a big problem in their "small" city of 3-million, and most students suggest more public transportation, but one gem of a student suggested...)

• Make the bicyclists cross only when the light is red.

5. How do you fix pollution? (Most of my students say pollution is a big problem throughout China.)

• The big cities need to have less cars. 
• The government should fix it. 

6. Follow up question: Is it ever an individual person's responsibility simply not to litter?

• Yes, but that's not the real problem.
• No. It's the government's job to clean it up.
• Yes, but we have people who clean up.

7. How do you get tall?

• You have to drink milk. If you drink milk you won't be tall. (Said by a student roughly my height who claimed to have drunk a lot of milk.)

8. Do animal rights exist in China? (I then explained about animal rights in America, such as dogs and cats without homes are often "taken off the street by people" who then bring them to shelters and people who abuse animals are subject to the law. Most students said no, there are no animal rights here, but one student said...)

• Animals are taken off the street by people here, too. (Me: To shelters?) No, to eat.