NOT AS EASY AS YI, ER, SAN (1,2,3)

I've been in a kind of wordless state the past few days, an in-between feeling, looking back on a few months of activity, engrossed mostly in reading and videos and Chinese language study. I am a little anxious because I am starting a new Chinese painting class this week, with a new teacher, a Korean nun whose style seems to be very different from that of my teacher of the past two-and-a-half years, a traditional Chinese bird and flower painter. It looks like she may be retiring; fortunately I have access to a new venue. But whether it is tai chi or wu shu or painting, we get attached to our teachers, our shifus. Eventually one of us moves on. The student feels humbled.

So feeling a little like Xue Rengui greeting his shifu in The Legendary Warrior, my latest Chinese series, based on a historical figure, I gather my energy to move on.

I didn't feel like painting today. I have no picture in my mind, and besides I've been reading about painting too much to focus on a particular subject, and I really don't even feel like writing. So I picked up a brush to try something different. Building on a few rudimentary lessons from my former teacher, I consulted a couple of fine textbooks on calligraphy and decided to jump into it.

Learning calligraphy is painting with no subject (although that's a stupid thing to say, really, a Chinese character is a picture, though practicing strokes is like practicing scales), writing with no words...learning it is like learning to dance. I remember my teacher's advice, I follow the 1,2,3, turn, press, and lift instructions in the book, and splatter and dribble like an uncoordinated moron. Over and over and over. Until eventually, I feel the rhythm of the brush stroke. I become one with the brush, and occasionally execute a stroke that looks almost acceptable. Never mind that there are many strokes to master, and characters are built up from them like a ballet. And then characters with characters to make a phrase or a poem. I practice the basic bone stroke*, the component of the characters for one, two, and three, recalling the fluid grace of the swordsman in Hero; the old monk who paints sutras on a wooden deck with his cat's tail in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring; Sammo Hung doing kung fu calligraphy in The Prodigal Son (go to 54:50 in the video), or the water painters on sidewalks I saw in Chinese parks:

Solo Running Script

Two-Handed Couplets

And I am still stuck on the simple bone stroke. "Practice, practice," my teacher says. "Slowly, slowly." For years and years.

*A quick search on this term yielded some hits I really wasn't looking for!!!

Da Bai Tu!**

I've been challenging the temporary crown I had placed last week on pre-molar number 20 (my dentist always talks about my teeth with reference to the numbering system) with some of the curiously addictive and very chewy White Rabbit Creamy Candies I bought in Hangzhou in May during a brief and slightly pointless stop at a huge grocery and dry goods purveyor: Trust-Mart. (Perhaps "Wal" means "Trust" in Chinese?) Our expert interpreter and guide insisted we stop there to get "dunnage," which puzzled us. She said it was a word she found in the dictionary. So in addition to stocking up on bottled water and some fruit (cherries were in), I picked up a small bag of White Rabbits to complement my big solid brown Easter rabbit (da qiaokeli tu) I'd brought from home with an eye to celebrate "Year of the Rabbit" at some auspicious moment.

I never did open the bag of White Rabbits in China (although we demolished the Easter bunny in a hotel in Beijing). Only yesterday I re-discovered them among some tea snacks I'd also gotten in Hangzhou: tiny tasty dried and sugared kumquats and plums to enjoy with my longjin.

I was going to send the White Rabbits back East with the Wizard as a gift for his sister's middle school class but I selfishly broke into the bag and consumed seven of the little milky sugary buttery taffies and then thought, maybe I can buy them online (if not Chinatown--I need an excuse to go to the video store). So Googling, I find a big Wikipedia entry about the iconic sweets along with the disturbing news that, in 2008, they had been recalled all over the world because the milk powder used in them was also contaminated with melamine. I was in China when that scandal broke, but I didn't think too much about it: I was drinking tea and beer and eating mostly rice and cabbage. Hmmm...maybe not so good to send to Auntie's students.

Contemplating the little pile of wrappers crumpled on my desk (I knew enough to not eat the outer wrapper, only the inner edible rice paper one), I wondered if I'd just poisoned myself. (None of my wuxia dramas has ever mentioned an antidote for melamine.) I did learn they have just 20 calories, and most people willing to eat them agree their mild flavor is curiously comforting. Not cloyingly sweet, a whole bagful could be consumed before you know it.

Determined to save myself, I looked for a 2011 update on the White Rabbit story. It looks like the company has recovered from the incident and entered Year of Rabbit just fine. According to AFP:

The scandal bankrupted Sanlu, once one of China's largest milk firms, after six infants died and nearly 300,000 fell ill - but White Rabbit survived. The sweets, which contain 45 per cent milk powder, were relaunched in China a month later with 'melamine-free' labels and banners in stores reading 'a healthy White Rabbit is jumping back into a big market'.

I only wish I hadn't thrown away the bag, not that I could have read the expiration date. I hope these were fresh. But at least I got them at Trust-Mart!

**Big White Rabbit

POSTSCRIPT

We stopped by Longs (CVS) on the way home tonight and what did I find but a HUGE display of White Rabbit candy in the center aisle where all the weekly specials are. Was I channeling White Rabbits today or have they been there all along? Now I can do a taste test, comparing my Hangzhou Trust-Mart stash against Hawaii imports! Feed my head indeed! Get high on melamine?

And in all fairness to both the White Rabbit Candy Comapny and Jefferson Airplane, there is another story behind the Chinese white rabbit: it is part of a folk legend. We see a man in the moon, or perhaps green cheese, but to the Chinese, there is a rabbit in the moon. The mid-autumn festival involves a rabbit on the moon pounding herbs to make a pill of immortality. The Chinese found centuries ago that mercury wasn't the right ingredient to achieve such a goal..maybe try melamine?

And it is no surprise that White Rabbit did intend to market the new healthy product as Golden Rabbit, the special icon for 2011. Although the candy I just bought is classic White Rabbit. Maybe I have to go to the mainland to find the Golden Rabbit.

Okay. I know I'm beginning to ramble on about this...one rabbit makes you bigger, one makes you small....

AWAKENING ON A TWO-WAY STREET

"Holy crap!" I exclaimed to the void when thunder, practically in my bedroom, roused me out of my early morning dream. I'd been resting well, having cleared all work-related duties from my conscience and having the weekend to pack before leaving Monday morning on my Korean Air flight to Beijing via Seoul.

An odd office moment on Thursday enhanced my anticipation. Our health insurance carrier (AKA, health care provider) had scheduled a health education presentation. I usually attend these sessions about nutrition or exercise or proper self-treatment --things all promoted in the interest of "containing" health care costs, something I understand because 25 years ago I used to work for this particular carrier. The idea is that the more the health care provider/insurance company does to "educate" the policy holder, the lower costs will be. I am not sure this is a proven concept.

I was a little leery this time because the session wasn't by the usual charming, fit, and handsome young man (who usually tells us things we already know but in an engaging guilt-inducing manner). But the topic was intriguing: "Meditation: A Modern Approach to Ancient Wisdom." Modern, of course, means western and scientific, but still, it seemed like a good excuse to get away from my desk for an hour. Meditation was being promoted, with the sanction of the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (an arm of the National Institutes of Health) as a stress-relieving (and thus heart-healthy) technique. Not too many of the staff took the time for the brown bag -- desk slaves slammed by deadlines. "I would have liked to come, but...". If I was the CEO I would have made it mandatory that the entire staff participate. But the CEO didn't attend either. (But his administrative assistant did.)

It was a nice overview of something my China trips have been about, although the insurance company educator, who seemed to have some background in neuroscience, was quick to point out that this was not being presented as any spiritual exercise. (That was part of the "ancient" concept.) No slouch, the charming, fit, and energetic older man reviewed some classic techniques (breath counting, visualization, affirmations, mindfulness), citing The Relaxation Response from 1975 and the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. (No neidan or Wang Liping here.)

The health educator led the desperate little group (mostly from the accounting department) in some basic breath counting ("1 to 10 is good, if you can do 11 to 20 you have reached the meditative state," he claimed); some affirmations (I am confident, beautiful, etc., appealing to the HR staff), and some mindfulness ("Unwrap the Hershey's miniature--unless you are allergic to nuts or chocolate--and slowly savor it."). Actually, I'd never noticed how well-polished and shiny a Mr. Goodbar could be. And you can make it last a lot longer when you're not simultaneously slaving at your desk.

I had already become one of the interactive talkative persons in the group, being the same age as the presenter and the only one familiar with some of his antiquated allusions (W.C. Fields, patent medicine, Proust) when I made an observation based on something my Chinese neidan teacher had asked me last year.

"Are you meditating always?" Or maybe lao shi said "always meditating." Whatever. Though I suspect he might have meant "regularly," I have been thinking always since then of the notion of "always" meditating.

"You know," I said to the health instructor,"if you practice deep meditation it makes the mindfulness stuff come more easily. And mindfulness makes the deep meditation easier. It's like you're meditating always, these techniques become a two-way street."

"Ah," he said, "that's enlightenment! Everybody, talk to her." I don't think this decreases any of the deductibles on my health care plan, but later, the person who is revising business cards to reflect the new office address asked me to verify my title.

"Just put 'Enlightened One'," I joked. She had also attended the session.

"Like a certification," she said. "Certified Enlightened One. CEO!"

In the meantime, wandering about this two-way street, my attention was called to something I said just previously in "Miswiring," that I'd come to rely on my car radio when I was "tired of thinking my own thoughts." (Ah, the two-way street of blog comments, something not everyone likes, but I appreciate the dialogue, the observations. I suppose I might enjoy chat rooms and IMs, but that seems too fleeting and noisy, too much like the office.)

My blog commenter quite rightly pointed out that I might myself be a little "miswired" at the moment, and this made me more convinced that it is time to make this trip back to Wudang for a little adjustment. Hardly a CEO (that's just a title, a position of control and arrogance all too often), I'm just trying to meditate always, trying NOT to be thinking my own thoughts all the time.

But I do have a couple of trivial puzzling thoughts about enlightenment on this early stormy morning, awakened before dawn by thunder and, yes, lightning:

1. How do I get my health insurer to subsidize my trip in the interest of health maintenance and stress relief?
2. How do I clean under the keys of the keyboard of this MacBook Pro, across which I splashed a glass of red wine, and now the "q,w,e,a,s,d,z,x,c" section of the qwerty chiclets is dimmed. I can touch-type well enough, but the lit keyboard enhances writing in the dark. (They say red wine is good for your heart health, right?)

Time to brew the coffee, smell it (slowly, slowly), get a haircut, shop for travel necessities, prior to tomorrow's packing exercise, to be followed by the opportunity for 13 hours of meditation at 30,000 feet.

PENDING EQUINOX
Awoke this morning with my personal barometer/sinus headache caused by low pressure and rain, which will probably prevent viewing the spectacle of the full moon at the equinox tonight, not a common conjunction. Night-skygazing can be a spiritual activity, but is easily hampered by clouds, as a muddy murky mind clouds meditation.

This reminds me of my only "regret" from my last China trip, a failure to observe a particular starry night in the mountains, listening to insects and frogs, away from city lights and traffic noise. We had been out in the courtyard at the kung fu academy, watching the moon set, also noticing a passing satellite. I had washed out some underwear, hanging it on the line in the dark, then did a little qigong, a little standing meditation. I reminded myself that it would be great to come out and do some sky viewing after I had been asleep for a few hours, eyes adjusted to really appreciate the stars after the moon had gone. When I awoke at 3:30 a.m., it was just too cold and damp to leave my finally warm (if hard) bed. I told myself...tomorrow night.

But the next night it was rainy and cloudy, a condition that continued until we left the mountain. It's always better, I think, to regret things you haven't done (as opposed to what you have). You can't change what you've done, but you can always try something again, the way I finally, after several visits to Beijing, managed to spend some time at the Temple of Heaven. It had been on my to-do list for years. (Is that the "bucket list" people talk about? What is that? And the Temple of Heaven itself wasn't all that great after Wudang, though the wandering around in the park on my last day was pleasant.)

Temple of Heaven (for solar festivals)

In any case, I have already seen the Taoist mountain stars in great glory, Big Dipper and all, on a painful dark descent from the main summit of Wudangshan in 2007. I just thought it would be nice to see them when I wasn't suffering from leg pain and exhaustion. That was the real regret. But I got over it.

******
The falling barometer may also have caused some bizarre dreams for me (or it could have been a lot of really bad, if yummy, food I overate yesterday. (A chai latte from Starbuck's, a pumpkin cream cheese muffin, a Beard Papa cream puff...a Korean chili-cheese dog with jalapenos. What was I thinking? I'm fasting today, more or less, and Longjin tea has calmed my stomach.)

The dreams were only in my muddy murky cloudy mind, but they seemed meaningful. In the first, a version of the "exam in class you haven't ever attended" dream, I was among a group of peorsons to be presenting scientific abstracts for proposals. When my turn came to present, I realized that instead of a proper paper, all I had was a couple of pencil doodles on a scrap of bond paper.

"I propose," I said,"to posit an imaginary universe." I went on to discuss something about imagination, imaginary things, all fluid and fluent, it was really good, like a successful Toastmasters speech. When I was done everyone applauded. The next speaker up, said "You're a hard act to follow."

"Why don't we just take a little break, " I asked the moderator. And we did, and I woke up.

Only long enough to remember the dream and fall back to sleep again, when next I was on some sort of job interview, trying to talk to people who didn't really understand me. I was having a wardrobe malfunction, no nudity, just all tangled up, so I threw the uncontrollable bits of my costume (which may have included a sword) over my shoulder like a sari. Then as I was leaving, I met my boss on the way in. This actually happened to me once. She got the job, I got hers.

Practically everyone I know is in some state of distress over relationships, job pressure or lack of such, health puzzles...seasonal existential despair. Perhaps once past the equinox and its unusual associated full moon, things will begin to change. Partly because in past years, this is when I ordinarily would have been returning from China and I have a nagging longing to be returning (one way or the other), and partly because I am having my own share of existential despair, I hope the dreams actually mean something. In any case, "I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours."

May we all have sweet dreams tonight.

LIVER QI UNBLOCKING?
The weather is weird (voggy and rainy and humid and oppressive) but I feel great.  It could be due to some medication I was in need of, but the stagnant feeling I've been suffering just recently has evaporated.  It could be because in less than a week, I leave for a three-week spiritual/cultural vacation in China.  In any case, the energy is flowing.  Unblocked qi?  Wu wei?

Is that why I was able to score a 3G iPad just an hour after the store opened to distribute them?  The coolest toy I've seen since an Etch-a-Sketch, which I never had. (Except a teeny tiny one attached to a pen, a sort of mini version, the nano-iPod of an Etch-a-Sketch.)  And now, after a weekend of "downloading apps," (I don't have an iPhone-but-now-I-want-one, so I've never done this), I have a Mandarin phrasebook that TALKS (in a voice that sounds like Vincent Zhao), a nice travel alarm clock, a way to update my blog on the road (China willing), visit Facebook, check weather and news (BBC and China Daily**).  A little piano.  Mahjong games.  Access to a lot of free literature. (So far, a collection of "Asian Wisdom" and Leaves of Grass.) And all my music and photos and the internet and .... the world.  Just hope I can get a China Mobile micro-sim for universal wireless access in the Middle Kingdom.  Seems to be difference of opinion as to whether they will be available.   But they make them there!

Moving on from 3G to 3D, do I credit unblocked qi for acquiring a DVD today of True Legend, the Vincent Zhao movie I have been obsessing over for nearly a year?  I should be watching it right now -- real soon now, the anticipation is delicious -- but I am still reeling with knowing I don't have to waste any time searching for a cheap copy for a buck in Shanghai or Beijing.  Although, if it is on a big screen there, I may just have to buy a ticket.  I understand some scenes are in 3D...Vincent in 3D! Vincent in the mountains.

I finished Bi Chun Mu, a good wuxia series, with some surprises, although as usual, pretty much everyone dies (martyred really)  in the end.  Since I am going to be in China very soon, I decided to follow-up with something not quite so Chinese.  What could be less Chinese than...The Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency, based on the novels of Alexander McCall Smith, set in Botswana.  I love those books, but was a little leery of seeing them translated by HBO to video.  But they are perfect.  (And you learn to pronounce those Botswana words. Rra and Mma and dumela.)  Then it came to me: this is just the yin version of House, M.D.  A gifted person who has their own sense of justice, their own intuitive way of solving problems, and their own internal suffering to overcome.  I think Precious Ramotswe, a "traditionally built" lady, does it better than the skinny drug-addled doctor.  No drugs required, just a lot of compassion.

Why am I writing this?  I must go pop True Legend in my DVD player.  Now.  The African bush is beautiful, but China is calling.

**China Daily has a headline in my first look-see on the iPad,  Shanghai Welcomes World Leaders for Expo.  I have made news already!  Actually I'm hoping everyone will be at the Expo so I can roam the Shanghai Museum's landscape painting exhibit in peace and leisure.

MASTERCARD AND VISA
After my karma-cleansing haircut on Saturday, the vernal equinox, I once again braved Wal-Mart where I was able to get quick turnaround on photos for my China visa. While I waited for my photos, I stocked up on generic ibuprofen (wow, so cheap), toothpaste, dental floss, Metamucil (because I was there)...and a couple of cheap brassieres, which now I see, despite the familiar old Fruit of the Loom label, are made in China!

Also was compelled to visit the martial arts section of the DVD department where I grabbed a couple classic Shaw Brothers re-releases.

Then it occurred to me.  Since we do not have a Chinese consulate in Hawaii, maybe Wal-Mart could become a point-of-purchase franchise for Chinese visas.  It makes weird sense, doesn't it?

LANGUAGE LAB

I've been busy with the 9-to-5 work duties I must fulfill in order to finance the China trip I have planned in less than two months (all I need now is visa and travel insurance) but I still have found time to watch Chinese movies--for their language support. (Yeah right. New heart-throb -- Kun Chen, here from Hua Mulan. Yes, he's reviving her with blood from his own wrist vein. Sort of a yin take on yang vampire flicks.)

I never was much good at foreign language study, particularly German, chosen in my academic youth (for those of us planning, if not actually achieving, careers in science, or possibly, in my case, philosophy). After the requisite two years of Latin, as dry and dreadful as the teacher who taught us, I endured four of Deutsch in high school and college, and while I could now probably translate a passage with a dictionary at hand, or make sense of simple instructions, I have no fluency and can't say I much like to hear it spoken. The pre-Rosetta Stone "language lab" exercises were boring (sitting in a cubicle with earphones when I would rather be out and about, doing and talking about interesting things like intoxication or sex).  I never watched German movies -- not sure there were any available (this was pre-Blockbuster and Netflix) and if they were, they were probably dreary. The only REAL exposure I got to the language was listening to my Swiss great-uncles when they lapsed into German while smoking their pipes and drinking beer.  I had some German Christmas carols on a record I once sang along with my Swiss grandfather; tears came to his eyes. My father, like most immigrants' children, had not been encouraged to use the native language, although he had a few quirky pronounciations that clearly reflected his heritage.

I think the way we approached language studies in the U.S. was all wrong (maybe it's different now); either you should get exposure in some depth--immersion--at a young age, or there should be a kind of survey approach like the Wizard had when he was doing his master's in library science: six languages in twelve weeks, in order to translate title pages to catalog foreign materials. After the survey (replacing that old pre-req Latin) then one might pick a language that appealed or was useful.  Just a few years ago, as a middle-aged adult, I took some conversational French classes, for no reason except that I wanted to be able to understand wine and perfume labeling, to pronounce these things with some degree of grace.  I met the teacher at a party and enrolled as a whimsical challenge to myself. It was the most satisfying learning experience I had had in years, and I came away with some proficiency.  No grades, no pressure (except to not waste the considerable money I invested), no drilling (except when we had a Parisian guest teacher who complained about my teacher's Spanish accent.  My teacher was from Biarritz. The Parisian taught me how to count.)

In addition to a subscription to French Vogue and reading Le Monde on-line (although I understood Le Figaro better, maybe a lower reading level), my teacher also encouraged watching movies--the French love cinema.  I still need subtitles for French films, but it is more and more comprehensible.  So it is to film I turn to tune my ear for Chinese.

Where I have learned some likely useless phrases. If someone kowtows to me, I know how to tell them to get up. I can salute the emperor. (Wan sui, wan sui, wan wan sui!) I can say "Weishenme ni bu sha wo?" (Why you not kill me?) I have "come" and "go" down pretty well, but not quite sure if I'm urging horses on or telling my people to get out of a dangerous situation. I watch the movies with two dictionaries, three phrase books, and a guide to characters. No popcorn. I humbly refer difficult questions to my Chinese painting teacher and Mandarin-speaking classmates. (My teacher has actually offered to teach me Mandarin, but I think it's because she wants to improve her English.)

But with film, there's the problem of WHICH Chinese. Since my most recent travels are in Putonghua-speaking China, I am trying to grasp Mandarin, but a lot of the movies I watch are originally in Cantonese--Mandarin dubs just don't quite work aesthetically.  No quite as bad as the disappointment in my copy of Brigitte Lin's The Bride with White Hair, dubbed in English, with no Chinese audio track. It's a lovely movie but loses some of its charm in English. Dubbing is unnatural and awkward in any language.

So over the past week or so, not quite ready for another multi-episode wuxia fantasy epic (The Sword and the Fairy is still unopened), I brought several Asian-themed films out of their retreat in my DVD library, forgetting they were in Japanese, Korean and French.  No language lab here, but I highly recommend these:

• Zhang Yimou and Yasuo Furuhata's Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (in Japanese and Mandarin, sort of a Chinese-Japanese Love Story).
• Takashi Miike's The Bird People in China (in Japanese, and some Mandarin, extraordinary funny  sad beautiful magical realism).
• Kim Ki Duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (in Korean, nothing Howdy Doody here, a Buddhist story by a Catholic director, emotional and gorgeous, hardly any dialog).
• Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover (in French  (L'Amant), tres sexy, with Tall Tony Leung (no slouch), a period piece in early Colonial Saigon).

Not much Chinese learned to speak of, so to speak, but still lots of beautiful scenery, heart-rending emotion, some sex (in French and Korean), and ... very pretty actors. Although I should say in this recent home film fest I also watched Donnie Yen's Painted Skin, (the 2008 remake of King Hu's 1993 comeback film) and 2009's Chinese-produced Hua Mulan, (hardly Disney, see above), also featuring Painted Skin's Vickie Zhao (no particular relation to my muse Vincent, I think) and Kun Chen, (in which movie a human-heart-eating fox fairy drives them apart, in contrast to the scene above).  Perhaps he was cast because who would ever think that Ms. Zhao was actually a man unless playing opposite this ultra-attractive prince!

I LOVE CHINA

And its weirdness. If anyone gets the impression from my yang posts (the yang TAO 61) that I don't like China, please let me correct that misunderstanding. I love China -- but I hasten to add, am NOT NOT NOT sympathetic with its government, although I think I understand it. (If Sarah Palin can be VP, can I be the Chinese ambassador? Pick me, pick me!) A Chinese librarian once told me, in Idaho in ~1971, "There is always chaos between dynasties." China is in chaos, the yin-yang of development, and some new dynasty is probably forming itself. The Walton dynasty? (The biggest Wal-Mart I have ever seen was last year in Beijing. As big as the Forbidden City maybe.)

The food, the culture, the arts, the people, the geography, the tai chao (the strange blended religion of Lao Tzu, Buddha and Confucius, and perhaps now, some Jesus thrown in--it started with Jesuits and continues with Baptists), the foibles and the triumphs...China is just intriguing.

Giant live grubs for sale in Xian (qv,yang TAO 61) just a five-minute walk from a perfect caramel macchiato at Starbucks. How about that "da grande" on the street?  

And Tony Leung Chiu-wai, but that's a whole 'nother topic, explored in Hong Kong. He is the star of Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love, and Lust,Caution (and some others, DVDs of which I didn't have enough time to find). All fabulous Wong Kar Wai movies. As well as his Ashes of Time, an artistic kung fu film, although that movie has two Tony Leungs -- Chui-wai (Tiny Tony) and Ka-fai (Tall Tony) -- only in Hong Kong would you have two terrific actors with the same (English) name. TIny Tony is like a Chinese Clark Gable or Pierce Brosnan or Johnny Depp. I put my hands in both Tonys' paw prints on the Hong Kong Walk of Stars, but TIny ("Tiny" just because he's shorter than Ka-fai...) Tony is my favorite. Here he is, Tiny Tony...