When things die

I was in Chengdu for the past two days taking care of some business and I went to check out my old home in Three Gods Village. I have posted here about it earlier -- the place is getting torn down to make way for high rise buildings and the people are forced to move out for two years.

I went there at night to pick up my cats and a few last things. When we pulled in to my neighborhood, it was 11pm and there were two people, an old man and a young kid with a flashlight, roaming through the houses picking through the wreckage. Everybody had moved out already and the houses were dark with gaping black holes where the windows were. The scavengers reminded my of grave robbers, the neighborhood of a graveyard. My courtyard was strewn with blankets, broken window frames, bamboo mats, piles of rubbish and paint. I smelled vinegar -- someone had thrown a bottle against my kitchen door and black vinegar dripped down. There was a framed picture of Thelonious Monk lying amidst the refuse and I found my old house shoes covered in paint chips.

My cats were roaming around the house. Stony, Crackhead and Gimpy. The other two kittens, Champy and Fuzz, have been MIA for two days. It was a horrible feeling, looking at this place of life and beauty reduced to a collection of dying homes, remnants littering the area, cats wondering around.

Our cab driver stuck around to help us collect the cats and he left his headlights on. I stopped and looked around at my old home by the light of two beams and saw nothing but death. Not even decay left a lingering trace of life ...

We tried to get the cats in, but they fought us and scratched me all over my hands. We tied them, grabbed them, cajoled them and eventually .. left them.

I managed to grab Gimpy and take him with us. The two adult mommas, Crackhead and Stony, might stand a chance on their own and they were too strong and wild for me to get them in the taxi, so I decided to let them live free. But for reasons I can't even understand, i took the kitten and now he is in my new apartment in Chengdu. Beanmilk will be living there while I am in Beijing and back to the US.

Last night Gimpy yowled and cried throughout the night. All the kittens have been skittish about humans, and I am very worried that Gimpy won't ever accustom himself to inside living. But from what other cat owners say, it is only a matter of time.

I dreamt of hundreds of cats and kittens in my room, my own and others, crying and wailing through the night and waking me up. When i awoke, i heard Gimpy.

We call him Gimpy because as a newborn, he had a badly deformed left front leg. At the time, I was worried that he would not be able to make it, he limped heavily, so I considered drowning him. My friends thought i was crazy. But he is strong and spry now and is the only one to make it to the city, the only one that represents the days in Three God's Village when I sat in my courtyard, inspected my flowers, drank tea and watched the sun move across the land.

Last night, after we discussed the fact that the kitten I wanted to drown is the only kitten that "survived," Beanmilk said:

"Never in my life have i experienced so many events that were connected like now. These past few months have been very strange ..."

Beijing 2008

I am finally in Beijing. After several months of talking about it and changes to the plan on a weekly basis, I am now officially part of the whole "one world one dream" experience in Beijing.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. The sun shone all day, the sky was blue and white lazy clouds hung in the still air. The dozens of new glass buildings sparkled. I saw some of the crazy buildings they put up here for the big party: the birds nest, the CCTV Tower and a few others on Chang An Blvd where the heart of the party will be. I live right off of Chang An Blvd in a pimp pad on the 17th floor.

Today i bought more dress clothes and some shoes and such. I bought some already, but I guess i have no sense of suit-class cuz my boss took one look at me, shook his head and took me to the genuine copy market down the road to buy some almost real threads. I got two pairs of geek pants, three nerd shirts and some dork shoes for about USD140. I blabbed with the Anhui girls that run the market and convinced them i wasn't gay. I think i did anyway. They kept bringing these shy young boys up to me and saying "try on! try on!"

Peep it:




Today is a typical China day: gray and oppressive, slightly drizzly, stankin, humid, hectic. My preliminary perspective is that Beijing is a big Chengdu. There are a lot of Westerners here and they have a Hooters, all the restaurants of the world, all the banks etc. but this city is still a huge small town. I have to say, Shanghai has Beijing beat in terms of worldly pimp-ocity and straight baller-ism-fication. (translation for non-Americans: shanghai is better.)

but let me just say here that I am down with Sichuan and the Dirty Du for life. I represent peasant pimps in the SW hills. I ride with sichuan hua spittin, sunflower seed splittin, hot booty hittin, moonshine sippin, funky pipe hittin players from the Land of Abundance. Chengdu is the bomb. Its a village and such and provincial and all that and everybody is a damn farmer no matter what they do or what they drive, but I am down with it. If i could throw up gang signs in Blogger I'd be reppin right now, fo real. Shit. I am ready to jump out of this cubicle and kick a Beijing-er in the jaw for actin funny and not respectin Chengdu like he should.

Ahem. Excuse me. Just had to let ya'll know how it is.

But for now I have to listen to this garble they call "Beijing Hua" and wear super dork clothes for a while. Its a small price to pay for bein in the middle of the mix in 2008.

here is a good lil blurb about the complexities of life and the importance of history.

My Neighbors

Here are some pics by photographer Andreas Mueller of the village i live in and some of my neighbors:

Three God's Village and The Hakka - lil Update

I have gotten a glimpse of the historical record of the Hakka that settled in Three Gods Village where I live. They arrived in Sichuan during the reign of Kangxi -- first in Longquan (not far from where I am) then eventually in this village. The trip took 4 months from Guangdong where they are from and the original Li Clan is now split amongst 12 generations and "middle names."

The generation that has children now -- the adults of the village -- are Clan Li, middle name "Guang." My neighbors are Li Guang Wen and Li Guang Xi. Their older brother is Li Guang Cuan.

But the middle name only extends to the male heir, so any girls are "exempt" ... so Li Guang Wen's daughter is Li Tian Tian. And Li Guang Xi's younger brother eschews the whole thing altogether and named is son Li Chun Tao. They barely speak the old language -- they might claim to to impress visitors and emphasize being unique -- but the truth is that after 1949 the culture began dying and as of 1980 it was almost completely dead.

In 2007 one of the elders put together a description of the family history and laid out a map of their travels and pointed out the location of the grave of their common ancestor, near the Technical College in Chengdu.

I will meet him tomorrow and give you a transcript of his essay and a pic or two.

The Gov's Side of the Story

So the meeting between the local government officials of Three God's Village and the villagers took place today at 10am. The meeting was held in a bed and breakfast inn, one of the largest, across from the local Party Secretary's house. WE sat under peach tree in bamboo chairs as the officials explained what was going on.

The mad land grab I described in earlier posts -- in which the gov gives land to appease the peasants, then slowly takes it back -- is still in full effect. In fact, the farmers of Three God's mentioned 1978 several times, in reference to Deng Xiao Ping's reversal of the past 20 years, when he gave land back to the peasants.

The government is taking the land back and consolidating it under one owner (the State) so it can be developed according to a central plan. With peasants scattered across the land, the gov has to negotiate with each and every one before they decide on a course of action.

With high rise buildings closing in on Three God's from all sides, the local gov decided it was time to get with the program.

The plan is to get the peasants to move out for two years, while the gov hands the land over to developers. Developers will build high rises for the peasants that once lived here and another developer -- run by a consortium of artist/entrepreneurs -- will turn the rest of the land into a modern park area with houses and workshops designed for artists from Chengdu and the rest of China (and the rest of the world).

The artist developer wants to have an incubator from which things like "Harry Potter" might emerge. The regular developer wants a big building full of tenants.

The peasants have two choices:

accept roughly 8000USD over two years and at the end of this period get 30m2 per person (usually 90m2) which is enough for 2 small apts in the high rise building

or

roughly 100,000USD cash and that's that.

I gave my speech. Everybody clapped. Then it quickly went to furious haggling between the peasants and the officials about exactly hw much money is coming to whom, when ...

the numbers I have above are, naturally, subject to change without notice.