January 13, 2014

View of The Forbidden City from across the moat, Beijing, China, December 2013.

Michael took this picture.

We went to China and Thailand over the winter holidays.

In Beijing, we stayed in an Airbnb place. Do you know Airbnb.com? It’s a website that manages and promotes individuals who want to rent out rooms or apartments or houses they have available for use. I used airbnb 7 times in 2013. Mostly it was a great choice. In any case, in two of the towns we visited in China - Beijing and Guangzhou - we wanted to get the experience of what it was like to live there, as a typical city-dweller. In Beijing we stayed in a Hutong apartment. Hutong is the Chinese word for alleyway - but it’s actually more than that, the hutongs are passageways that lead to the traditional Chinese homes. The hutongs are labarynthian, narrow, and full of surprises. Much like a medina in East. The apartments are all centered on a courtyard, and the entryways are purposely camouflaged for privacy (and ostensibly to dissuade evil spirits by making the twists and turns a disincentive to reaching their prey.) We stayed at “Cindy’s Place.” She’s had these apartments in her family for over 100 years. We walked down corridors of doors to get to her space, laundry hung outside, bikes against the hutong walls. Beijing is cold in December. And it was even chillier than usual. Michael, Mulan and I huddled together most of the time, just trying to find things to do in heated, indoor spaces.

One place we loved was the National Museum of China, just outside Tiananmen Square, which has a quite extensive ancient Chinese art collection in the basement. Best of all, the museum had English subtitles on everything. We spent two days there, going through at a snail’s pace. I fell in love with this sculpture of a water buffalo - c. 2500 b.c.e.

One of the highlights in Beijing was getting to see Mao. Yes, I saw Mao, or whatever passes as Mao. He is embalmed and on display (like Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Ferndinand Marcos, and Kim Jong Il.) This was a big treat for me because I’ve been reading so much about Mao (see books below.) In fact, just as I was able to glimpse dead-Mao, I had only days before finished a book written by his personal physician, Li Zhi-Sui, in which the opening chapter is about the insanity and chaos at the time of Mao’s death, and the scrambling done to figure out how to preserve his body. The part of the book about Mao’s death was farcical, funny and deeply disturbing, simultaneously. My guess is that the Mao on display today is all fake, all wax. Still, seeing him - standing in the line, watching the reverence (however enforced it was) of the people filing through the Hall was an experience I will not forget.

After a week in Beijing we flew to LiJiang, in the Yunnan province, spending several days near the city of Dali. We stayed at a place called The Linden Center, in Xizhou; a beautiful, exactingly restored merchant’s home (taken away after the Communist ascendance in 1950.) It’s now a hotel, and the proprietors are trying to document, save, and restore Yunnan culture and art. It was a wonderful place to be, a respite at the foot of the mountains (the foothills of the Himalayas) and unlike the gray muck of the bigger cities. We went hiking, we went cormorant fishing, we took a cooking class where we learned that making dumplings is an intricate and fine art, the techniques of which must be learned in childhood.

From LiJiang we flew to Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand and joined a Backroads Family Biking tour. I fell in love with Thailand and so did Mulan and Michael. Even though I enjoyed China, and feel happy to be in China when I’m in China - I always experience a wave of relief when I leave. As if the Communist Party (which is neither communist nor a party) has infiltrated your senses with a low undetectable hum, something only recognized once it isn’t there anymore. So just getting to Chiang Mai (and then later to Hong Kong - which feels more European than other Chinese cities, for obvious reasons) I felt an enormous weight being lifted from my shoulders. A giddiness set in, which I’m sure added to my instant love for both of those cities.

The food in northern Thailand - omg, the food is so un-friggin-believably good. What is it with the Thais? To me, the two best cuisines in the world are Mexican (Oaxacan) and Thai. We ate, we biked, we ate, we biked. One day we did 100 kilometers. Mulan was a demon on her bike, she wanted to bike every possible mile she could, most of the time near the head of the crowd.

Then we went from Thailand back to Guangzhou, China. This is the town from which Mulan was adopted. We visited her orphanage, and they had a nice, special, welcoming lunch for the three of us and Martin, our “homecoming” guide. We got to see some of the babies, and frankly, they seemed well cared for. Martin explained how the orphanage situation in China is changing, now that the Chinese people are making more money. There’s been a loosening of restrictions to the one-child policy. The fine that is typically levied for the second child is not an outrageous amount anymore, and the enforsement is lax. It turns out Mulan was born at this moment in time, a time that seems to be passing. We hung out for a few days in Guangzhou - staying again at an airbnb place, an apartment on the south side of town where there were no hotels, and no foreigners. We were stared at - people would stop in their tracks and abjectly stare at the three of us, completely unself-consciously. Many people came up to Mulan and began speaking Chinese - which she doesn’t understand. (Mulan looks like she’s from Guangzhou, we realized - the nose and mouth have a certain similarity in that part of China.) She would indicate that she didn’t speak Chinese, and most of the time people just spoke louder to her and more emphatically. I guess that’s a universal tendency, I could imagine people in my hometown doing that.

Mulan took it all in stride, she is a very pragmatic girl and free of sentimentality or overwrought poignancy about her unusual path into our family. I think I can say that we all had a profound and memorable experience in Guangzhou.

In some ways, it was more emotional for me than for Mulan. It was surreal for me - I took this pre-cognizant being out of a far-away place, and then took her back - as a (semi?) conscious person - and showed her, her home town. We walked and walked and walked around Guangzhou. We ate fancy dim sum on a Sunday morning with a lot of upscale yuppies. We wandered through the remnants of the Qing Ping market with its inexhaustible supply of dried mushrooms, thousands of varieties. We spent a day in Yuexiu park. We were on the subway for everything, we never took a cab anywhere.

Guangzhou is totally transformed since I was there 12 years ago to fetch Mulan. They have the most elaborate subway system, which was built since I was last there, in fact, in the last 10 years! It is now the 6th most used subway system in the world, in 2012 it delivered 1.8 billion rides. That is mind-blowing.

We ate a lot of street food, we got dumplings and fried bread and sesame balls whenever we got hungry. We went to the top of the Canton Tower, a big Eiffel Tower-like building that you can ride up (110 stories) to see the view. Only there is no view. There actually was no view anywhere in China except in the Yunnan Province. The pollution is horrendous. You cannot see anything from a tall building, you can’t even see the tops of the buildings across the street. A white, grayish haze covers everything like a blanket. My eyes stung at night.

Then we went to Hong Kong, walked with the throngs of people on New Year’s Eve, still went to bed before midnight (my tradition that I’m proud of and sticking to) and then flew back to home to Chicago.

And oh, god, I am sooooo glad to be home. 2014 - I’ve never been more excited for a new year to start. I am cutting down dramatically on my travel (only three out-of-town events are on my schedule for this ENTIRE year.) Last year I could not find traction on so many projects because I was always travelling. I went so many places to promote my book last year and I’m not convinced that this made much of an impact on sales. I did a lot of Jill and Julia shows, and we travelled a lot as a family, often visiting other family members.

Well, this year, I am dialing it all way - way - way down.

The three things I have to do are: New York in Feb. for a couple of days (actually I’m interviewing my dear friend Cindy Chupack at the 92nd St. Y about her new book on February 20th and I have some other work-related meetings) and then a benefit Jill & Julia Show in Yellow Springs, Ohio in March, and then the TED conference in Vancouver from March 17 - 21. But after that and up, until, and around those things: HOME.

Home, home, home. I love it. Home.

Okay, let’s move on to books I read and movies I watched in December 2013.

Movies:

1.) Blind Chance, 1987, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowsky

2.) The Decologue, Episodes 1, 2 & 3, 1989, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowsky

3.) Blue Jasmine, 2013, directed by Woody Allen

4.) The Shop Around The Corner, 1940, directed by Ernst Lubitch

5.) The Double Life of Veronique, 1991, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowsky

6.) Inside Llewyn Davis, 2013, directed by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen

I did not like Blue Jasmine, and I thought Woody Allen should have stated from the outset that it was a remake of A Streetcar Named Desire. Once I realized it this, I liked the movie marginally better. I even appreciated the creativity like one would about a college student doing a school exercise in remaking a classic. But it wasn’t enough to really like the movie. I thought Cate Blancett’s character was unbelievable, bigger than an SNL character parody, and I felt the writer (Allen) was hopelessly out of touch with modern life. This was a sad reaction for me because I’ve been enjoying the latest Woody Allen movies. I loved Matchpoint, Midnight in Paris, and Vicky Christina Barcelona.

I loved Blind Chance, and I must get back to Kieslowsky watching this month. I think my favorite film - of the older Kieslowsky movies, is still Camera Buff. In fact, I bought the poster on at www.polishposter.com, and had it framed in Evanston (I have to go pick that up!) In any case, I enjoyed Blind Chance - and speaking of remakes, Blind Chance was also remade as Sliding Doors, a mediocre film which came out in 1989 and starred Gwyneth Paltrow. And like Allen who did not credit Tennessee Williams with Blue Jasmine, Peter Howitt did not credit the original source movie.

Wait. To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this crediting requirement for films. My general feeling is that its mediocre movies that should be remade, movies that had a great idea or a great cast (but not both) and didn’t raise up to its rightly place. Why did we need, for example, You’ve Got Mail when we had The Shop Around the Corner? Okay, okay, I guess if the older perfect classic film is unknown to the current generation - then maybe, but… but….

I fell in a trance while watching the first three episodes of Kieslowsky’s made-for-Polish-TV series The Decologue. I must watch the remaining 7 this month. There is so much to chew on in each episode, so much to mull. I could only watch one every several days and then just think about it, let worm its way up to the front and then back of my mind.

Speaking of, The Shop Around The Corner - I’ve christened this film as my favorite of all time - or at least my favorite film made before 1959. I try to watch this film at least once a year, and this year we had our neighbors over and my niece who goes to Loyola and we all watched it together. I’ve seen this film at least 15 times, and each time I reflect on a different aspect, or moment, that I love and which is perfect. This time I was really appreciating Felix Bressart who plays Piorvitch. I think it’s because I just saw To Be or Not To Be and gosh - Bressart is soooo good in that film too. On the commentary for To Be or Not To Be I learned that Bressart was considered the stand in for Lubitsch himself. He looked a lot like Lubitsch, they were friends in Germany before Lubitsch came to Hollywood, and the characters Bressart played always had the gentle humor and point-of -view as of Lubitsch.

The Double Life of Veronique - it was my first time to see it, and I admit I skipped ahead - instead of watching the rest of The Decologue, I impulsively threw Double Life into my DVD player. It is so lush, so magical, so sad and poignant, and knowing that Kieslowsky himself died of a heart attack (one of the main characters has a sudden heart attack in the film) it was even more unsettling and spooky. The music is so wonderful, I bought the soundtrack immediately afterwards, I was in a reverie of this film for several days after seeing it.

Inside Llweywn Davis. Best movie of 2o13. So far. I know, I know, I haven’t seen everything yet.

Okay: books I read in December, 2013.

1.) “The Private Life of Chairman Mao,” written by Li Zhi-Sui, first published in 1986

2.) “The Party: The Secred World of China’s Communist Rulers,” written by Richard McGregor, first published in 2010

3.) “Mao: The Unknown Story,” written by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, first published in 2006

4.) “The Empress Dowager Cixi,” written by Jung Chang, first published in 2013

5.) “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China,” written by Jung Chang, first published in 2003

6.) “Sightseeing,” written by Rattawut Lapcharoensap, first published in 2005

Well, I haven’t read all of “Sightseeing,” it’s a collection of short stories, and I’ve read about five of them, about a third of the total. Lapcharoensap is Thai and it was fun to read something that wasn’t about China - first and foremost - and secondly, it was a delight to discover a new and talented Thai author. I’ve read so little about Thailand.

I read everything in December on Kindle, and read several hours each day while we were travelling. I read so much about Mao, as you can gather. Wow, what a despot! He’s truly up there with Hitler and Stalin and the rest. It was frightening to read about his stranglehold on the country and how many lives were ruined, and ended, because of his careless and thoughtless decisions. “The Private Life of Chairman Mao” was the most emotionally involving book of the lot. It’s written by Mao’s private physician. He was able to escape China after Mao’s death and he and his wife came here to the US. On his wife’s deathbed, she made him promise he would write this book. He did and died six months after it was published. It’s such an important book, so carefully written and so enlightening about how someone like Mao keeps people doing his bidding. I recommend this book above all others I read about China.

Then I discovered Jung Chang. First I read the book she wrote with her husband, “Mao: The Unknown Story.” Mostly I learned how serendipitously and somewhat haphazardly he came to power. And then - oh God - people don’t understand how terrible Mao was. 30 million starved to death under his watch, maybe more. 20 million may have been killed during the Cultural Revolution (which is mis-named, it should just have been called a purge.) And this is so recently. In my lifetime. Just shocking.

When I finished Mao, Kindle offered me one chapter of Chang’s most recently published book, “The Empress Dowager Cixi” and I loved it. By the way, I had no problems getting wi-fi anywhere in China, things downloaded easily and we were even able to get to YouTube, which is banned in China, too - Michael was able to do a work around so we could access it. It was easy. I really hope better information and access to that information helps to open up the Chinese media and news organizations. Sadly, I’ve found that it’s not the case - most people are still in the dark about how bad things were, and in many ways, still are - as they are under the thumb of the communist party.

This brings me to “The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Leaders” by Richard McGregor. I learned quite a bit about how the party works today - much like the Vatican, (McGregor’s analogy, not mine) secretly, underminingly, opaquely in control of everything and hounding anyone who doesn’t tow the party line. Scary.

Finally, I read “Wild Swans,” Chang’s book that made her famous. It’s harrowing. That’s all I can say. Deeply harrowing.

Now I can only think of the word: harrowing. My focus on the word is making me wonder if I’m spelling it right and if it’s even a word and how it sounds in my mouth when I say it - hare - owe - eeng.

This means I have run out of steam, people. I can’t keep writing, and I must get back to my own writing.

Until next month!