#gejiu

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Cha is a Hong Kong-based online literary quarterly journal dedicated to publishing quality poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction, drama, and reviews written in English, as well as photography and art. It has a strong focus on Asian-themed creative work or work done by Asian writers and artists. It also publishes established and emerging writers/artists from around the world.

New poem in the latest issue of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal

Meeting the Christians in Gejiu

“Grandmother, can you hear me?”

[mwfrick]

Leave the Light on for Me | Gejiu

August 1, 2010

"My daughter, Little Zhou - she's single, you know - she says she isn't happy. She wants to quit her job and become a Christian missionary. She says she has prayed about this for half a year and has made up her mind. But I can't stop crying." Little Zhou is leaving her stable job in accounting to become an itinerant Christian missionary. She will travel around Yunnan with other young volunteers spreading the Gospel. Instead of a salary, she will receive a small monthly stipend as well as room and board at churches along the way. Her mother - let's call her Zhou Dajie - feels devastated by Little Zhou's decision. She keeps encouraging her daughter to marry a nice man and start a family. "I tell her, 'If you're not happy, then find another job. Move to Kunming. Start a family with someone. You don't have to throw yourself into this kind of thing." Early in my stay here, Little Zhou told me that I should not practice Yoga. "Why not?" I asked her. "Because it is not allowed. God does not allow it." Later we had a similar conversation about co-habitation before marriage. "What do you think about living with your girlfriend before getting married?" she asked me. "I think it's required," I said. "How else do you know if you can spend a lifetime with someone?" Her eyes grew wide and she opened her mouth to say something but stopped short. Then, a few minutes later, "But if you live together, won't it be easy for...mistakes to occur?" Sticking with her euphemism, I replied: "Well...I don't see those things as 'mistakes.'" She looked dizzy as we parted ways. The last time I saw Little Zhou, I fled a bible study. The story contains too many nuances to reproduce here, but a noxious mix of patriotism and religion took the power of speech away from me. When I finally overcame my stupefication, I found myself running around Golden Lake back toward my hotel. When Little Zhou heard that I am a Christian, she expected us to profess identical beliefs. After hearing about her missionary plans, I told her mother: "I do not believe God is a God who places restrictions on people. I believe God is a God who elevates people to seek their highest potential." I hope that Little Zhou finds her highest potential. I hope that it brings her happiness.

[mwfrick]

The Four Eyes Club | Gejiu

July 24, 2010

The other day while out buying some afternoon baozi, I ran into an acquaintance - let's call him Old Dou - who invited me to dinner. At 39 years of age, Old Dou is not actually old, but I associate him with aging since I first met him at his 39th birthday party. He has never married and runs with a posse of three other bachelors, all of whom work in the accounting office of a large hospital in town and wear glasses of varying lens thickness. I think of them as the "Four Eyes Club." To be honest, I do not enjoy sharing meals with the Four Eyes Club bachelors. They chain smoke, try to compel me to smoke, and drink beer before liquor. At this particular meal, they only ordered meat dishes, with the exception of a plate called "treasures of the field." As it turned out, the "field" only contained two treasures: corn and soybeans. "Why are you eating so little?" Big Wang asked me. "You must not like Chinese food." Then, turning to his friends he repeated in a loud voice: "Mai Ke is not used to eating Chinese food!" I chose to ignore this comment and assured Big Wang that I did not need rice to fill up. I considered that Old Dou and his friends represent the antithesis of all the neurotic personal health behaviors that public health school has bestowed upon me. They smoke too much, drink too much, eat too much red meat, consume too few dark green vegetables and, I noticed, neglected to wash their hands before dinner. But this is my way of describing them - not all Chinese people. From their perspective, however, everything I do represents "America," or in the more usual Chinese phrasing, wenhua butong (cultural differences). They are eager to overcome wenhua butong, but their way of doing so just makes me feel even more like an alien. Toward the end of the meal, Big Wang asked me to describe the impact of 911 on the USA. I told him that after 911, "everything changed" and that many people date their lives pre/post 911. As soon as I finished this reflection, Big Wang surprised me by saying: "The US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, you know!" This non-sequitur stunned me into silence; I have this conversation thrust upon me about once every visit to China, but I never know to say. "That's ok," Big Wang bellowed. "WE can still be friends."

[mwfrick]

All Together Now | Gejiu

July 17, 2010

My friend – let’s call him Mr. Zhang – owns a home design business with showrooms in both Gejiu and Mengzi. He is forty years old, drives a German car and lives in the most beautiful apartment I have ever seen in China. Mr. Zhang has traveled extensively around South and Southeast Asia and collected totems along the way which he displays in back-lit wall nooks – puppets from Laos, Buddhist thanka paintings from Tibet, prayer vessels from Nepal, ceremonial tea ware from Vietnam. He and his wife are both coffee aficionados; they find “American-style coffee” (e.g. Starbucks) undrinkable, preferring to brew beans from Kenya, Cuba and Colombia in Japanese glassware. Their technique is impressive, their equipment is expensive and their coffee is just so good. The other night, Mr. Zhang invited me and several new acquaintances over for an evening of coffee and wine. Six of us sat around his large kitchen table, eating cranberry biscuits and drinking Cuban coffee and French wine as Ella Fitzgerald covers played in the background. Two friends sitting across the table from me – both in their early 30s, both serious students of Buddhism – remarked that the evening resembled the housewarming parties they had seen in American movies; I couldn’t have agreed more. One of these students – Brother Li - directs a daily radio show, the other – Sister Wang - used to sing pop songs at banquets and company parties. “What do you do now?” I asked her. “Oh, I don’t sing anymore. I stay home and study the sutras.” I wondered what would inspire a singer of pop songs to begin self-studying Buddhist sutras, all day every day. Befitting their careers, both Brother Li and Sister Wang possess incredible voices. Brother Li speaks in a placid, well-enunciated style – his voice not deep, but right down the middle. Sister Li’s voice is throatier with coarse edges, too low-pitched to be considered girly. At one point in the evening, Mr. Zhang showed us a string of prayer beads he bought while visiting Tibet. He held the garland in both hands, resting it on a square of gray cloth. “This string of beads is made from the bones of a deceased Lama,” he told us. Upon hearing this, Brother Li and Sister Wang clasped their hands together and bowed their heads toward the beads in prayer. Gently passing the beads around the table, we began to talk about religion. There we sat, two Buddhists, two Christians and an atheist talking about belief and service and volunteerism. Mr. Zhang – the non-believer among us – explained that he pursues success in business to have fun in this world; he enjoys the things that money can buy, as evidenced by his well-furnished apartment and artillery of coffee makers. But he also volunteers his time at an orphanage and provides the school fees for twelve orphans. Brother Li nodded at this: “In this life, it is important to match speech with action.” My Christian friend – we’ll call her Little Qu – remarked: “You should control desire and not let desire control you.” I felt my heart relax - there we were, people of different faiths and a person of no faith, having an easy and enjoyable conversation about religion. It was such a far cry from the forced conversion I witnessed in the countryside several weeks ago and all of the fire and brimstone talk I’ve heard from the Christian community here. Was it the coffee, the wine, the easy grace of Brother Li and Sister Wang that turned our conversation into something special? By 10:00 p.m. the table was littered with empty coffee mugs and wine glasses. We ended the night agreeing that It – whatever “It” is – all comes down to one thing: Love. Amen to that.

[mwfrick]

Saturday Night Light Show | Gejiu

July 13, 2010

Sometimes at night, if I squint just hard enough, Gejiu resembles a miniature Hong Kong. The view from my hotel room looks across the lake, and once the sun has set the combination of water framed by recently built apartment towers takes on the form of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor. The Gejiu City Government has even organized a light show on Saturday nights in which buildings ringing the lake become neon silhouettes of their daytime selves. Changing neon colors run up and down and across buildings as lasers mounted on the top of the Kunming Medical College Fifth Affiliated Hospital fan out across the night sky. Fountains on both sides of the lake shoot water into the air, and the railing of the boardwalk becomes an undulating white and blue wave. The effect is very cool. Two weeks ago, Gejiu hosted a large out-of-town business conference. Or perhaps the event was an investment tour meant to lure new money into the city economy. I never figured out what, exactly, was happening, or who was in town, but it had to be something special because the light show went up four nights in a row. Registration tables appeared in the hotel lobby, the banquet hall next door did a steady, boozy business and the karaoke lounges four floors below my window were 热闹 past midnight, off-key and drunken voices – always male – amplifying out into the night. Up late due to second-hand karaoke, I looked across the lake and noticed large characters scrolling across the lit-up facades of two office buildings. 团结拼博 together go all out! and 敢干争先 bravely seek the new! These four-character phrases seemed perfectly matched for a city courting business. They reminded me of ad-campaigns in the States – Dodge’s Dare to be different! ads from several years ago and Nike’s iconic Just do it! and maybe even the McDonald’sHave it your way campaign. I am slowly discovering that this is a town that loves its large companies, whether Hong He Tobacco or Yun Xi Construction or the tin-mining conglomerates. Never mind what everyone acknowledges – that mining strips the hills and tobacco chokes everyone’s lungs and workers at Yun Xi have an especially high incidence of lung cancer. There are these things, but there is also a new museum, a renovated shopping district, fifteen-story deluxe apartment towers under construction, temple restoration on 老阴山, car ownership like never before, a swarm of new restaurants, a new express highway to Kunming and, on Saturday nights, a light show that turns Golden Lake into Victoria Harbor. 

[mwfrick]

Coming into the Light | Gejiu

July 4, 2010

Before heading back to the city last weekend, we stopped at the edge of the village to buy popsicles from a small stand selling all of the essentials of rural life - fermented rice wine in big clay jugs, packets of locally sourced beef jerky, Hong Ta brand cigarettes and 5 mao popsicles for the village kids back home for summer vacation. While deciding between "red" and "blue" flavored popsicles, I looked up to see four people in our party surrounding a toothless elderly woman dressed against the cold despite the strong summer sun. They were shouting at her, "Grandmother, can you hear me?!" She couldn't hear them, but still they moved in closer and kept shouting, right into her ear: "Grandmother, can you hear me?!" She shook her head and smiled, perhaps pleased with the attention. Then they started praying, and when I say praying, I mean praying as beseeching. I mean praying as I have never seen in the proper confines of a Presbyterian church and witnessed only on Sunday morning broadcasts from evangelical mega-churches. I mean praying as shouting and arm flailing and total emotional investment. "God, accept this woman!" "God, we love you!" "God, give this woman hearing!" "God, we call on you!" And then they turned their attention back to the old woman: "Grandmother, repeat after me: 'God, I love you!' Grandmother, say what I say: 'Jesus, I love you.'" I could not handle this. I turned and left the small yard outside the shop and waited with a few others on low stools set against a brick earthen wall. When all was said and done, one of the worshipers approached me: "Mai Ke, that old grandmother couldn't hear before, but after we prayed to God, now she can! Now she can hear." I just stared at her, silent. Seeing that she was in earnest, I didn't know what to say. The grandmother walked by and someone asked her: "Grandmother, can you hear?" This time she nodded her head and said: "Yes, I hear you." I stayed quiet. "Perhaps you think we are all a little crazy," one of the worshippers said, a hint of embarrassment showing in the corners of her mouth. "Yes," I said. "Maybe just a little bit crazy." A week later, I would encounter more craziness, although this time focused on me...

[mwfrick]

云南特色

July 6, 2010

So many things about this picture signify Yunnan. The yellow walls, a trick of country-side mud. The same color is used for new apartment developments in cities across Yunnan. The water pipe used to smoke home-grown tobacco or dutifully bought Hong Ta brand cigarettes. The old Maoist style clothes, usually grey but sometimes navy blue. The rolled pants and the bright blue plastic flip-flops, the kind I wore to swim lessons in the summer. The swallows nests in the eaves. The low stools around a low table. The plaque above the door honoring the military service of an eldest son.

[mwfrick]

Tin Capital of the World | Gejiu

June 18, 2010

Gejiu is a town of 120,000 people living in a small valley between high mountains on one side and rolling hills on the other. Large clouds with dark underbellies skim the tops of the mountains, rushing northward to deliver the dregs of monsoon rains to Kunming, five hours to the north by car. The constant motion of clouds combined with the height of the hills gives me the sense of walking at the bottom of a large snow globe. The weather has been neither hot nor cold - somewhere on the step between summer and spring.  Gejiu experienced its halcyon days around the turn of the 20th century when the French took notice of its expansive tin reserves. The French wanted to connect their territory in Vietnam to southern Yunnan through a railroad linking Hanoi and Kunming. Unlike Vietnam, where the French left their bread, their taste for coffee, their language (for a time) and a colonial legacy that would spin-off into Cold War detente, they left little in Gejiu aside from rusting railroad tracks and a few French-style buildings. The former French concession now houses a delightful western restaurant that offers everything from Chinese interpretations of Western cuisine (fruit pizza, anyone?)to Blue Mountain coffee. A sign on the road leading into town still proclaims Gejiu as the "Tin Capital of the World." In 1950s a tin mine in the center of the valley collapsed when water welled up into the shafts, flooding much of the city. The resulting lake is a now a large park that serves as a center of social activity. At night, retirees dance in a large public square by the lake. I've heard them dance to everything from Mandopop to Viennese Waltz to Yunnan Ethnopop to Mary J. Blige and, yes, even Lady Gaga. Loudspeakers around the lake produce a continual stream of noise - music, public announcements, advertisements, radio shows, whatever - from 7:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. Since the window of my hotel room looks out over the lake, I awake every morning at seven when the sound system crackles to life. It's a rough awakening, but the lake is beautiful in the early morning