I'm exhausted and need a shower. I had two shows last night (and have yet to be paid...grrr) and I have two more today. Those shows were...well, it's like doing a hoe down actually. It's weird, I think our partners are trying to "learn us a lesson" again. I hate when they do that. They'll get on our ass and stop getting us jobs because they think our cola consumption is too high but keep holding off keeping up their end of getting us the equipment our contract entails or...well most of the contract they haven't held up.
Business in China is like sword fighting on a tight rope, and you're never sure if the swords are real or whether or not there's a net below you.
Last night's hoe down was really odd because they always put me in these sleazy flashy clubs their friends own or poorly put together events (where I get to sing with midgets and kung fu kids in training - it's like being a side show at the circus), so this was a little weird as I usually follow sexy dancers and play to rich audiences (though I think I had the most fun at the hoe down) .
I really do think they were trying to pull a power play, and I can't tell you how old that gets. They've not very subtle. They didn't like our spending, so one time they refused to pay us for three weeks so that we could "learn how to live Chinese". We're artists; we've got that starving artist bit covered. We've all lived off of ramen noodles at points in our life and scrounged for money between the cushions and found crazy ways to get through. We certainly didn't need our partners trying to enlighten us with a little more 'god this really sucks' experience. Let alone the fact that you can't learn anything about living "cheap" when you have NO MONEY. They left us high and dry and then turned around talking about how we're fucking family. I don't want to be a family with them; I want us to fulfill our side of the contract and them to fulfill theirs, then we can all make lots of money and we'll go get a house in New Zealand where we can finally build a lab and they can bugger off using their money for god knows what and I couldn't' care less.
It was clear they were doing this again. They came over, yelled and screamed about water usage, stormed out and told our friend Sue to inform us that we were moving to a farm house out in the boons because we used too much water and power. They did this without confronting us or asking us about anything or ever mentioning anything beforehand. I do NOT get off on being treated like a child, and I don't care what they do, they have absolutely no right to control our lives or make our choices for us, and I'm not their fucking subordinate whose just going to go along with unreasonable control freak issues. No,I'm not moving to the farm that has no internet or AC and that is so far away from town I have to ride a bike to get to town where I might find a cab. While there's cool shit to all of that, and part of it sounds nice to me, it's not doable with what we're trying to do. More than anything, I couldn't do it because it was done to show they can control us, and therefore I cannot abide by it. Had the farm hose been presented as an option and they had talked to us like reasonable people, who knows, maybe I'd have a garden and a nice big yard.
They already make work nearly impossible as it is, refusing to give us the equipment we need or time to complete work in, so we're stuck trying to run the gauntlet, doing ridiculous quality work in a fraction of the time it would take a large studio to produce, with substandard equipment! You really can't get any worse than that...unless of course you decided to move this innovative little group who lack the resources they need into a small farm house miles from town where they might be able to "commune" with the technology they need to produce the stuff they're being asked to produce!
I think I need a cigarette after that.
Anyway, the same night, they told me these were my last singing gigs (trying to say I've fucked up) and then I see that my last shows are the bottom of the barrel. They were trying to be insulting and it's really frustrating that I have to deal with such childish behavior with people I'm actually trying to do business with. I know these aren't' my last shows. I know that next week I'll have three more, and that they'll try to give them to me as little freaking gifts. They just wanted to do a power play and try to remind us that they have power over our lives.
ooooohhhh..it tempts me so much to act in ways that could......well it could end all that bullshit, but I won't...I'll be patient.
We're not moving to the farm. Like reasonable people, we found out what the real problem was and fixed it. We're now paying for the water bill (even though there are 7 people here using water and our contract states that they pay our living expenses. Of course that's just one more off the list of things they're supposed to do but don't). The answer to the fact that the water bill is too high is not freaking out and running to the farm; you simply tell the people who are using the water that too much is being used, and then they start using less and contribute to the bill. That's what a reasonable person does. Of course the wife makes all these knee jerk money decisions and frankly she's one of those women who runs things into the ground just to prove she can run anything at all.
So yes, it is MEGA frustrating to me, but we've made our decisions and we know who we're dealing with and so we deal with it. I'm just venting right now, as I'm still kinda ticked about the whole thing. Andy's plants are all dying with too much sun and not enough water now, and that I can't really fix that because people are being unreasonable about little things bothers me.
I've made my bed and I've made my decisions so really, I should stop complaining because I knew this is who we're dealing with and I knew we'd have to deal with this kind of behavior, I'm just always surprised to the extent it goes with them. I wonder sometimes if they're trying to test us, to see how much the gueiles will take before it's too much. The fact of the matter is we can work with anything. We can work ridiculous hours with substandard equipment and next to no money to do what we want to do. We're determined people and we don't often let things get in our way. No matter the problem, we will figure out a solution and we are genuinely invested in this group and we intend on reaching our goals. I'd hate it if they really did find a way to push us too far because I'd really like to see where this can go, and when we make decision we make them both with a good deal of forethought and planning, and once we decide it's done; it's done. I hope it doesn't go that way.
We've had a really bumpy start and I know we weren't what they expected so I'm sure they have their greivences too, but it's all worth it and all Meiwen fucking ti if we get somewhere with it and get to the next level.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
Stained Glass
I'm a newbie to 3D graphics and animation but I'm learning quickly....I think. I've learned some animation, a lot of design and building, some lighting and what not and some other shit that would be boring to anyone who wasn't doing it themselves. One of the reasons I'm learning so fast (actually probably the whole reason) is that I have Tabulanis right at hand. I'd give my left foot for a direct connection into his brain. Screw tutorials, help files and learning curves; plug me into Tab and I got it all worked out. (If you don't know who Tab is, you can see what he does at www.frogfaith.com/tabulanis )
Usually when I work on a project, he likes to let me go on my own until I hit a brick wall and then he'll come in, but he likes to let me see if I can figure it all out first, though my stuff wouldn't look half as good if he weren't around.
So I feel kinda good about my half win today. Tab was out all day working (modeling as an old man if you believe it), so I was on my own.
I made a pretty cool looking room (the ball is just there for...well for now), but I wanted to make stained glass windows for it. This will all be used for a music video where I paint this world into existence and then things are animated in it(so we're also talking green screen). The point was to show off my art too, but I kinda forgot about that because final renderer made everything look so good anyway, my brain no longer thought it needed a bunch of arty stuff all over it. To fix that, I decided to start by making the windows at the back of the room stained glass versions of three of my Chinese zodiac tarot card series...but I've never done stained glass before. This isn't brilliant stuff, but I looked at no help file, tutorial or forum for this...which is probably also why it's just a half win.
It's pretty simple. I did a new layer in photoshop, tracing my painting to create the in between lines, used it as my bump layer and minussed the fuck out of it (cause it's black and not white), and then tried to make the painting look as glassy as possible.
If you can't tell, there's a pyramid, a sphere and something else like a donut behind the glass...though because you can't tell goes to show how "glass like" it isn't.
Tab tells me that it was a nifty idea but I have brought it to the farthest point it can go with this technique, and that I can't actually get the light to go through the glass and project on the floor....oh! that's it! I need to project the image with a light onto the window and then it will spill through perfectly, and I'll just throw on the bump layer...and bam! I think that will work!
I could be wrong, but it's so much nicer trying to figure things out without a tutorial...I seem to be slowly working past that.
After asking him:
He tells me that would work but there is a better way.
Usually when I work on a project, he likes to let me go on my own until I hit a brick wall and then he'll come in, but he likes to let me see if I can figure it all out first, though my stuff wouldn't look half as good if he weren't around.
So I feel kinda good about my half win today. Tab was out all day working (modeling as an old man if you believe it), so I was on my own.
I made a pretty cool looking room (the ball is just there for...well for now), but I wanted to make stained glass windows for it. This will all be used for a music video where I paint this world into existence and then things are animated in it(so we're also talking green screen). The point was to show off my art too, but I kinda forgot about that because final renderer made everything look so good anyway, my brain no longer thought it needed a bunch of arty stuff all over it. To fix that, I decided to start by making the windows at the back of the room stained glass versions of three of my Chinese zodiac tarot card series...but I've never done stained glass before. This isn't brilliant stuff, but I looked at no help file, tutorial or forum for this...which is probably also why it's just a half win.It's pretty simple. I did a new layer in photoshop, tracing my painting to create the in between lines, used it as my bump layer and minussed the fuck out of it (cause it's black and not white), and then tried to make the painting look as glassy as possible.
If you can't tell, there's a pyramid, a sphere and something else like a donut behind the glass...though because you can't tell goes to show how "glass like" it isn't.Tab tells me that it was a nifty idea but I have brought it to the farthest point it can go with this technique, and that I can't actually get the light to go through the glass and project on the floor....oh! that's it! I need to project the image with a light onto the window and then it will spill through perfectly, and I'll just throw on the bump layer...and bam! I think that will work!
I could be wrong, but it's so much nicer trying to figure things out without a tutorial...I seem to be slowly working past that.
After asking him:
He tells me that would work but there is a better way.
Monday, July 16, 2007
The Hermit's Fellow
I don't have many friends, and of those I do have, I have chosen to keep in my life for good reasons. This might be why I don't have many friends. I'm picky about the people I have around me. I like them honest and courageous, intelligent(level headed) and honorable, and of course humorous and loving. I might hang out with people who I don't trust at social get-togethers, but I'll never really bring them into my life. Gossip, lies, smalltalk and validating insecurities with a like wise guilty friend doesn't do it for me and has no place in my life. I like to help people and I'll never push anyone away who needs or wants help until they are a threat to me or mine, but I won't bring you in to our close group either until I can trust you or if you just happen to interest me that much. Basically, if you're my friend, you're in my group, our little family, and I want to know I can trust you when the shit hits the fan.
I'm critical of people and waring of their motives and honesty. I wasn't born with a critical eye, I grew it over time. I'm critical of people because at one time I was naive and trusting and I saw what happens when you take someone at face value. It hurts, it sucks, but to a degree, it's avoidable. This means that I'm also not so open to new people. I'm not one to turn you away if I don't know you, but the whole time, I'll be trying to figure you out and will be careful of my decisions with you. I don't bring you in, I don't let you in, and though I wish it weren't true, most of the time I'm not excited about the people I meet and I don't have the interest in bringing them into my life anyway. I'd love to build our group up with cool, down to earth, strong willed people from all walks of life, but we're all picky, and generally the picking is slim.
So it's strange to me that I met SW and that I'm so interested in talking with her now. I don't know if she'd be cool with me putting her name up online, so for now she's a mysterious acronym...oooohh.
I met SW by accident. I was trying to send an email to a friend of mine out here, and instead sent one to her. It happens to be that she has the same name. Instead of just deleting the email, she looked me up and found this blog (Hi), and to my amazement, not only found it interesting, but agreed with my post about women. I'll drop the eloquence for a while here to properly address the oddity of this. Holly fucking shit.
When I wrote that post I expected that the only response I'd get from it (if any at all) would be angry women yelling at me for not fully appreciating the role we've played in blah blah blah, and why it's okay to do less or how the solution is making it easier for women in the workplace rather than women simply working harder to get there. I did not however, expect to hear another woman tell me it could have been written by her. This greatly increases my hopes for the future, of not only for womankind, but for my life in particular in that maybe our group won't have to be so lonely forever.
We enjoy our conversations and endeavors on theory, philosophy (if you could call it that) and self improvement and throwing insecurities and excuses to the side, but sometimes it does get lonely, and I know we've all daydreamed of being able to relate with others on these things. I'm not even talking about her relating on a philosophical level or jumping on board with one of our more out there ideas. This is actually a pretty simple subject, it's just not seen that way by the general public.
I guess I'm lonelier than the guys in this group if you think about it. The chances of finding a like minded man is far greater than finding a like minded woman and I've conceded to not having any female friends in my life, but it doesn't mean I haven't' wanted it. I remember the advantages to female friends in the past, how we can sympathize and support each other, but after a while so much other shit got in the way. I believe there can be something equally (but differently) powerful in a female friendship on that level, but I generally don't hold my breath.
I generally don't jive well with my generation or my gender, and often my species, but more so with the first two. I've given up on it, but I still have that seed of hope in there, because there are a lot of women out there and a lot of people from my generation, and wouldn't it be great if all those people woke up and pushed a little harder? That'd be a whole lot of push.
Of course, SW isn't from my generation, but that wouldn't' be likely, now would it? I do know some pretty stellar people from my generation, but take a wild guess how many of them are female?.....slim pickings.
She has her own company with her husband and from the looks of it works her ass off doing environmental work, she's a dork (always a plus), she's 55 but still in great shape, so that means she didn't take the chick excuse or the age excuse to take the easy American path of degeneration, she's intelligent, opinionated and I haven't seen any crazy yet. (Not that I don't have my portion of crazy) Not too shabby for a stray email meeting. It's very very strange to me that I'm talking with her and that I'm interested in talking with her. It's indefinably strange to me that when I've been looking and scoring for potential like-minded people, I find nothing in my line of site, but I accidentally stumble upon one while trying to send an email about canvas sizing.
I just posed a question to her that might stumble things onto a bad way with her, but I don't get that vibe from her. I don't praise her as the answer to all my questions, because that would be crazy, I've only had a few conversations with her over email and seen what her website has to say, and I'm just not that psychic, but I do find it incredibly interesting. That I've had so much fun talking with her this long has upped my hope for the future with womankind relations and possibly even made me a little less critical......nah....probably not, but I don't see anything wrong with that.
It's probably a bad thing that talking to a like minded woman is a remarkable event, though you could say it is a bad sign on both sides of that fence; negative for womankind or negative for me and my version of being social. eh.
---Sienna of TAO-SA
I'm critical of people and waring of their motives and honesty. I wasn't born with a critical eye, I grew it over time. I'm critical of people because at one time I was naive and trusting and I saw what happens when you take someone at face value. It hurts, it sucks, but to a degree, it's avoidable. This means that I'm also not so open to new people. I'm not one to turn you away if I don't know you, but the whole time, I'll be trying to figure you out and will be careful of my decisions with you. I don't bring you in, I don't let you in, and though I wish it weren't true, most of the time I'm not excited about the people I meet and I don't have the interest in bringing them into my life anyway. I'd love to build our group up with cool, down to earth, strong willed people from all walks of life, but we're all picky, and generally the picking is slim.
So it's strange to me that I met SW and that I'm so interested in talking with her now. I don't know if she'd be cool with me putting her name up online, so for now she's a mysterious acronym...oooohh.
I met SW by accident. I was trying to send an email to a friend of mine out here, and instead sent one to her. It happens to be that she has the same name. Instead of just deleting the email, she looked me up and found this blog (Hi), and to my amazement, not only found it interesting, but agreed with my post about women. I'll drop the eloquence for a while here to properly address the oddity of this. Holly fucking shit.
When I wrote that post I expected that the only response I'd get from it (if any at all) would be angry women yelling at me for not fully appreciating the role we've played in blah blah blah, and why it's okay to do less or how the solution is making it easier for women in the workplace rather than women simply working harder to get there. I did not however, expect to hear another woman tell me it could have been written by her. This greatly increases my hopes for the future, of not only for womankind, but for my life in particular in that maybe our group won't have to be so lonely forever.
We enjoy our conversations and endeavors on theory, philosophy (if you could call it that) and self improvement and throwing insecurities and excuses to the side, but sometimes it does get lonely, and I know we've all daydreamed of being able to relate with others on these things. I'm not even talking about her relating on a philosophical level or jumping on board with one of our more out there ideas. This is actually a pretty simple subject, it's just not seen that way by the general public.
I guess I'm lonelier than the guys in this group if you think about it. The chances of finding a like minded man is far greater than finding a like minded woman and I've conceded to not having any female friends in my life, but it doesn't mean I haven't' wanted it. I remember the advantages to female friends in the past, how we can sympathize and support each other, but after a while so much other shit got in the way. I believe there can be something equally (but differently) powerful in a female friendship on that level, but I generally don't hold my breath.
I generally don't jive well with my generation or my gender, and often my species, but more so with the first two. I've given up on it, but I still have that seed of hope in there, because there are a lot of women out there and a lot of people from my generation, and wouldn't it be great if all those people woke up and pushed a little harder? That'd be a whole lot of push.
Of course, SW isn't from my generation, but that wouldn't' be likely, now would it? I do know some pretty stellar people from my generation, but take a wild guess how many of them are female?.....slim pickings.
She has her own company with her husband and from the looks of it works her ass off doing environmental work, she's a dork (always a plus), she's 55 but still in great shape, so that means she didn't take the chick excuse or the age excuse to take the easy American path of degeneration, she's intelligent, opinionated and I haven't seen any crazy yet. (Not that I don't have my portion of crazy) Not too shabby for a stray email meeting. It's very very strange to me that I'm talking with her and that I'm interested in talking with her. It's indefinably strange to me that when I've been looking and scoring for potential like-minded people, I find nothing in my line of site, but I accidentally stumble upon one while trying to send an email about canvas sizing.
I just posed a question to her that might stumble things onto a bad way with her, but I don't get that vibe from her. I don't praise her as the answer to all my questions, because that would be crazy, I've only had a few conversations with her over email and seen what her website has to say, and I'm just not that psychic, but I do find it incredibly interesting. That I've had so much fun talking with her this long has upped my hope for the future with womankind relations and possibly even made me a little less critical......nah....probably not, but I don't see anything wrong with that.
It's probably a bad thing that talking to a like minded woman is a remarkable event, though you could say it is a bad sign on both sides of that fence; negative for womankind or negative for me and my version of being social. eh.
---Sienna of TAO-SA
Drugs in the Grass
Usually our lives are centered around work, and we're either sitting at the computer or, well sitting at the computer. I get to toss it up a bit, but then I'm just sitting at the easel, which is kind of a change of scenery, but I'm still sitting. The funny thing is that we're all adventurous people. We like to venture into unknown territory, climb all over things, poke around, play with Shanai, and we like to do it well. We'd like nothing else than to have a rock wall in our home with an obstacle course and sections devoted to boxing and martial arts training and gymnastics, but we don't have it and that makes it difficult because then we have to go out into the world to get it.
When we work we really devote ourselves; we're talking days without sleep and nonstop around the clock work where you forget to pee for 6 hours because you're just too wrapped up in it. And we always work. This doesn't lend too well to being active people.
So for the past two weeks or so, I've been trying to get into the habit of getting off my ass and doing anything but sitting. There's a park a few blocks away, so that helps. Of course, our last apartment was across from the stadium with free tennis courts and a full gym, but we never had a chance to go. Now that I am going, our current park is a little lacking. There's no tennis courts, so we play together against a wall which is good enough really because none of us are really all that good. There's a "gym" of sorts outside, but it's just a bunch of rusty metal toys really and I can't see ever using it. They don't even have a bar so I can attempt a pull over.
But the park is beautiful. I don't have great pictures yet, but I will soon. There's a large river that winds through it, with island pagodas and a fishing hole where you can fish for shrimp for 10 yuan an hour. The last time we went, we didn't actually do much. I wanted to take pictures of a statue so that I could make a 3D version of him and animate him in the music video we're doing right now, but by the time we got there the sun was already set. I tried to draw the statue and the lily pad filled river (complete with thousands of croaking jumping frogs) but after 5 minutes, my legs were covered in mosquito bites, so we packed in the drawing pad and went over to our trusty wall to just play some badminton before going home. (I'd never played badminton before China, but it's incredibly popular here. At any time and anywhere, you can spot someone playing. I personally only get into if there's a bit of competition to it, but most people just practice volleying).
This turned out to be a pretty cool night for me.
In our last apartment, every night the stadium would blast the same music and we could see clouds of people down there doing something, but I couldn't tell what. It turns out what they were doing was dance Tai Chi. A little while after we started playing badminton, someone turned on that same music and suddenly people started to gather, line themselves up and started all coordinated dancing to the music (in a relaxed aerobics kind of way). We moved over a little to give them room, but little by little, the whole area was soon filled with over 200 people lining up to do this so we put our rackets down and just watched for a while.
"Do they know each other?" I asked my Chinese friend Sue who answers most of my Chinese related questions. She looked at me confused.
"No."
"How do they know when to come?"
"It's the same at every park. Everyone just knows."
"How do they all know the dance moves?" (there were dozens of different songs and dances they did).
"They do it everyday."
Here's the interesting part. Apparently after SARS, the Chinese people were told that they needed to be healthy and somewhere somehow, someone said this park Tai Chi was the good way. Suddenly the whole country got into it and this is just what they do to stay healthy. It's mostly women, and mostly 30s and up, but there were also quite a few young people, children and men of all ages joining in. I'm not sure how to explain why this seemed interesting to me. There was this old woman close to me who looked like she could be my grandmother if my grandmother was a bit smaller and Chinese, and there she was, often leading the people around her by starting off the appropriate dance to the new song, and then jiving to the song (one song said shake that booty), and all around her, everyone was doing the same thing, all straight faced, none of them knowing each other, with no celebration to it. No one clapped after a particularly well done song, no one really smiled (accept for the teenage girl on a cellphone). They were just doing their thing; organized and strange. There are a lot of things I don't like about China and you can get frustrated arguing with people about superstitions and out of date medical/political/historical/artistic/technological topics, but this is one of those things I dig about China. Hundreds of people all over China line up at the same time to practice Tai Chi with strangers to be healthy. There's something to that. There's no teachers, just people who've been doing it longer. (Andy has just told me that this didn't in fact start after SARS, and that he saw it when he was in Guangzhou before SARS. Maybe it just got more organized and popular after SARS....damn)
That same night Sue told me something that made me love China a little bit more. I've noticed before that most of the parks don't have grass, instead they have this short dark leafy stuff. They also plant this at the hospitals. Apparently it's medicine, used for coughs and small colds and illnesses. The government plants it at the hospitals and parks so that people who can't afford medicine can still get well. It's in these ways that you can respect that China's crazy rules and laws are put there in a desperate effort to take care of all of it's people at once and is intent on not leaving anyone behind. Of course many are left behind and I have horror stories too, but who doesn't? Planting medicine for the public; that's just genius, and it's something America would never do because it'd rather have a sic country whose paying out their nose for medicine than give cheap or free health care.
It's nice being able to see China without a jaundiced or rose colored eye. I have the benefit of neither having the predisposition of thinking China is the villain and also not idolizing China for it's western sold philosophy or ancient secrets. From this position, I can almost see clearly, though being an outsider, I can only see so much.
It's amazing the things you can see if you get away from the computer sometimes, and hell, I've even dropped a few pounds. Of course I'm sitting here again, compelled to write from talking to a woman in Hawaii from this same sitting spot. Hmm.
When we work we really devote ourselves; we're talking days without sleep and nonstop around the clock work where you forget to pee for 6 hours because you're just too wrapped up in it. And we always work. This doesn't lend too well to being active people.
So for the past two weeks or so, I've been trying to get into the habit of getting off my ass and doing anything but sitting. There's a park a few blocks away, so that helps. Of course, our last apartment was across from the stadium with free tennis courts and a full gym, but we never had a chance to go. Now that I am going, our current park is a little lacking. There's no tennis courts, so we play together against a wall which is good enough really because none of us are really all that good. There's a "gym" of sorts outside, but it's just a bunch of rusty metal toys really and I can't see ever using it. They don't even have a bar so I can attempt a pull over.
But the park is beautiful. I don't have great pictures yet, but I will soon. There's a large river that winds through it, with island pagodas and a fishing hole where you can fish for shrimp for 10 yuan an hour. The last time we went, we didn't actually do much. I wanted to take pictures of a statue so that I could make a 3D version of him and animate him in the music video we're doing right now, but by the time we got there the sun was already set. I tried to draw the statue and the lily pad filled river (complete with thousands of croaking jumping frogs) but after 5 minutes, my legs were covered in mosquito bites, so we packed in the drawing pad and went over to our trusty wall to just play some badminton before going home. (I'd never played badminton before China, but it's incredibly popular here. At any time and anywhere, you can spot someone playing. I personally only get into if there's a bit of competition to it, but most people just practice volleying).
This turned out to be a pretty cool night for me.
In our last apartment, every night the stadium would blast the same music and we could see clouds of people down there doing something, but I couldn't tell what. It turns out what they were doing was dance Tai Chi. A little while after we started playing badminton, someone turned on that same music and suddenly people started to gather, line themselves up and started all coordinated dancing to the music (in a relaxed aerobics kind of way). We moved over a little to give them room, but little by little, the whole area was soon filled with over 200 people lining up to do this so we put our rackets down and just watched for a while.
"Do they know each other?" I asked my Chinese friend Sue who answers most of my Chinese related questions. She looked at me confused.
"No."
"How do they know when to come?"
"It's the same at every park. Everyone just knows."
"How do they all know the dance moves?" (there were dozens of different songs and dances they did).
"They do it everyday."
Here's the interesting part. Apparently after SARS, the Chinese people were told that they needed to be healthy and somewhere somehow, someone said this park Tai Chi was the good way. Suddenly the whole country got into it and this is just what they do to stay healthy. It's mostly women, and mostly 30s and up, but there were also quite a few young people, children and men of all ages joining in. I'm not sure how to explain why this seemed interesting to me. There was this old woman close to me who looked like she could be my grandmother if my grandmother was a bit smaller and Chinese, and there she was, often leading the people around her by starting off the appropriate dance to the new song, and then jiving to the song (one song said shake that booty), and all around her, everyone was doing the same thing, all straight faced, none of them knowing each other, with no celebration to it. No one clapped after a particularly well done song, no one really smiled (accept for the teenage girl on a cellphone). They were just doing their thing; organized and strange. There are a lot of things I don't like about China and you can get frustrated arguing with people about superstitions and out of date medical/political/historical/artistic/technological topics, but this is one of those things I dig about China. Hundreds of people all over China line up at the same time to practice Tai Chi with strangers to be healthy. There's something to that. There's no teachers, just people who've been doing it longer. (Andy has just told me that this didn't in fact start after SARS, and that he saw it when he was in Guangzhou before SARS. Maybe it just got more organized and popular after SARS....damn)
That same night Sue told me something that made me love China a little bit more. I've noticed before that most of the parks don't have grass, instead they have this short dark leafy stuff. They also plant this at the hospitals. Apparently it's medicine, used for coughs and small colds and illnesses. The government plants it at the hospitals and parks so that people who can't afford medicine can still get well. It's in these ways that you can respect that China's crazy rules and laws are put there in a desperate effort to take care of all of it's people at once and is intent on not leaving anyone behind. Of course many are left behind and I have horror stories too, but who doesn't? Planting medicine for the public; that's just genius, and it's something America would never do because it'd rather have a sic country whose paying out their nose for medicine than give cheap or free health care.
It's nice being able to see China without a jaundiced or rose colored eye. I have the benefit of neither having the predisposition of thinking China is the villain and also not idolizing China for it's western sold philosophy or ancient secrets. From this position, I can almost see clearly, though being an outsider, I can only see so much.
It's amazing the things you can see if you get away from the computer sometimes, and hell, I've even dropped a few pounds. Of course I'm sitting here again, compelled to write from talking to a woman in Hawaii from this same sitting spot. Hmm.
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