Ennui & Decadence

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248 posts

[ennuianddecadence]

I spent some time today looking back on this photo blog that I haven’t updated in a couple years. I realized the lapse was because of the changes in technology (cell phone cameras, photo sharing platforms) but also because my life had become routine and intensely (but happily) productive. I’d been mostly keeping to myself in Shanghai, running my magazine, working on some writing projects, teaching at university. Especially looking back on photos of China, a lot of those firsts - first holidays, first explorations, first traditions - have become a part of my life now. 

9 months ago, we fell pregnant with our baby girl. And these days I’ve got to thinking about how I might celebrate her, document her, and record thoughts about parenting her. I remembered this dusty photo blog / journal. A new sense of wonder has reappeared in my life, and will likely soon blossom even more after her arrival. I may have thoughts and insights to record. Maybe I will even bring out my old clunky cameras again. Above is a photo of me these days. Waiting for my baby... 

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Wanting to go back to Korea with my mom. Here we are last February, sitting down for a quick lunch. 

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Somehow, Tumblr marked this as NSFW, though I can’t really figure out why - here we visited Mu LiJun, the sister of modernist writer Mu Shiying - active during the 1930s and famous for stories like Shanghai Fox Trot, and for being generally handsome and debonair and a fantastic dancer. Ms. Mu is now 100 years old, and lives in a likewise 100-year-old apartment of two rooms. She was close friends with my mother-in-law’s mother. She had fresh flowers in her apartment, and her mind was razor sharp. She has never used face lotion a day in her life, and I think she had better skin than I do.

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Annual Chinese New Year lights at Yu Gardens, Shanghai. This is the year of the Rooster. The silliest things for sale - like tiny hair clips that have small bouncy yellow chicks attached to them, for $1.50. Of course I got one. 

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Chinese New Year 2017 in Jiading, Shanghai with Haidong’s paternal family.

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Decided to be a Shanghai tourist and went to go see Era, the acrobatics show in Shanghai. It was fairly good, with some thrilling views of motorcycles circling around in a small sphere. Double date with the in laws. 

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My lovely friend Marguerite, who has since moved with her family back to Paris, let us stay at her beautiful lane house on Yuyuan Road for a few days while they were away during Chinese New Year. With four floors of that old and gorgeous house with rooms surrounded by glass windows, all to ourselves, we were...cold! 

Shanghai is freezing during the winter, since the humidity makes it almost impossible to get the cold out of your bones. This experience made me realize that although old, historic houses have their charms, for day to day life, I’ll stick with modern packed with all the amenities.

Last two photos were taken on walks around the neighborhood. Standard Shanghai street sights. :) 

[ennuianddecadence]

I’ve been so busy I haven’t posted in a while, so the next several posts will be filling in the gaps. Here’s another set from our Xian trip last year, when we visited an entire village that had been renovated into a series of restaurants.

One had been used for a wedding ceremony, so was covered in confetti and mad decorations. Persimmon trees were full of ripe fruit everywhere in Xian when we were there, late fall/early winter. 

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Some photos that weren’t selected for the final publication of my article on street foods at the Muslim quarter. 

If you’d like to read the full piece over at the South China Morning Post, find it here.

[ennuianddecadence]

What is empire? It is the idea that a man or woman can rule a nation, even the world. It is an idea built on maniacal belief, faith, and denial, on force and on the backs of blind followers. It is a like religion, its strength almost as mighty and its faith almost as poetic. 

The Great Mosque of Xian, built in the Ming Dynasty style. The oldest mosque in all of China. Can you feel the place, living, breathing? It had an effect on me almost like hypnosis, like love. 

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Climbing up Xian’s old city wall - on one of the most polluted days i’ve experienced in China. We took a bike ride along the wall, stopping here and there to read about the myriad strategies enemies used to attack the wall - like the ant colony, where men scramble up on top of one another to climb over the gate, or the water attack, where water is pumped into the moat to weaken the gate’s foundation and flood the city open. 

Despite the smog, Xian was one of the best trips I’ve taken in China. The museums were unique and world class - very well maintained and a pleasure to visit. The historical sites were on a scale (size, history, grandeur, beauty) I hadn’t yet encountered in China. And almost everywhere we went, detailed and fully translated English text provided me with background and context - something that is often missing in Chinese museums that cater often to the domestic tourist. 

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One of China’s four beauties, Yang Guifei, was known both for being very beautiful and for being very fat, a desirable trait in the Tang dynasty.

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I was in awe, made speechless.

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Must try to incorporate Japanese precision and attention to detail into my clumsy, messy life. 

Tofukuji Temple, Kyoto, Japan

[ennuianddecadence]

After the serenity of Kyoto, Osaka was like a shock to the system. We arrived in Namba at night, when the streets were full of young people, drunk and snacking on ramen and fried squid balls. That was us, we were there, the young (at heart) and easily excited. 

The lights and the massive restaurant signs - inflated squid, sushi, blowfish - produced a feeling of crowded vertical space above as well as below. It was so loud, so frenzied, so cute. So different from Kyoto, of the serene temples and walking paths, cleanly dressed and fashionably simple people ambling along on colorful bikes. In Kyoto I felt like a happy grandma.

In Osaka I was so electrified by the sensory stimulation, the night felt young and so did I. For the first time in a long time I felt the urge to step into a club and feel bass pulse through my body. To run and trip over my heels and shout and dance. 

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Eating crab meat on a stick @ dusk

Yasaka Shrine, Gion, Kyoto

[ennuianddecadence]

Kyoto, Part II

At Fushimi Inari Shinto shrine, vermillion gates are donated by private donors or by companies. They snake up the mountain and then back down by another route, manicured and pristine, like everything else in Kyoto. 

On one side of each vermillion gate are the characters that mean “donation,” and on the other side are the customized messages that have been requested by the donors themselves. Some write to wish for luck with a new business venture. Some write of prosperity and blessings for a family. 

One stone piece along the path was a testament to everlasting love, with two names inscribed underneath.

I bought my a little wooden fox from the stand midway up the mountain, and wrote a wish to leave hanging there. I didn’t do that at any of the other temples we visited in Kyoto, but this place was different. 

The mountain, the uphill walk, feels sacrosanct. Not because of the religious elements, the small shrines and stone Shinto foxes lining the path, but rather because you feel surrounded by hopes and dreams, symbols of optimism and yearning, some that have stood there for many, many years. Each vermillion gate is placed back to back, a new one squeezed into every opening along the path and thus the pieces blend into a union, one massive wish gate. You feel the strength of this collective wishing, as if standing in the center of a thousand silent, praying men.

And so it is a happy place, a mountain adorned with hope, and because of that, one of the most beautiful places I’ve been.