Shops

I took a one week trip to Beijing in early January. It was mostly to see my grandfather, but to be honest, most of my time was spent wandering various arts districts with a cousin, my sister, and my dad. I kind of have a thing about not taking pictures of pictures because I think it's tacky, so I spent most of my time creating pictures of my own...which usually means stalking unaware strangers and searching for colorful things in the dark.

Happy Chinese New Year. Not really relevant, but these pictures are from China, and both lunar and solar new years have passed.

Family

Tumen 5 - No Vons (Tumen, China; 11/2008)

The North Market was a one-stop-shop for everything from fresh fish and vegetables to fly swatters, school supplies, and tailoring services. It was one big open rectangle, with vendor spilling into vendor. Butcher tables and seafood tanks stood in the center while vegetables, grains, beans, and other dry goods flanked the outer walls. Behind those walls, there were small eateries for dumplings and noodles. And those stood alongside hidden, often unmanned shops.

It wasn't so much the eating and shopping that I enjoyed--I kind of just liked getting lost in a landscape that was so different from the sea of Del Tacos and supermarket chains in the LA burbs.

Tumen 4 - Broken Bridges (Tumen, China; 10/2008)

The neat thing about Tumen is that it's right across the river from NK. If I remember my history correctly (and I may not), the Japanese built a number of bridges over the Tumen and Yalu rivers during their occupation of NE China (mid 1930s through the mid 1940s). Their primary purpose was to provide a quick route for the transportation of looted resources from China to Japan. Unfortunately/fortunately, these bridges were destroyed not too long after they were constructed: further south along the Yalu, some were bombed by the Americans during the Korean War in the early 1950s. Far up in the NE, in Tumen, the Japanese actually had to bomb their own bridges as a means of blockading Russian attack, after the onset of the Russo-Japanese conflict.

The broken bridge along the Tumen River was never reconstructed, for obvious reasons, and remains unusable to this day. The funny thing is that you really don't need it to get to the other side (or for the other-siders to come across to China)--the river is narrow and shallow and it freezes over during the winter. Today, it's just this odd artifact of Chinese / Japanese / NK history that serves no practical purpose. There hasn't been an effort to clean up the debris and the fallen parts. It's just...kinda there.

I feel like those in the area (at least the older Chinese) passively acknowledge it as part of a past reality that they can still recall. And I feel like they look upon the first-world expats and tourists who come to seek it out so eagerly (cameras in tow) with some degree of mirth and judging bemusement.

Tumen 3 - Nothing for Kids (Tumen, China; 10/2008)

There isn't much in Tumen for young people. You can walk around the entire town in under three hours and the local economy is fueled by the outside world--a mix of tourism and foreign currency sent home by overseas workers (this included many of my students' parents) in South Korea, Singapore, and sometimes the US.

There were a few businesses that catered to more affluent local youth however. The kids whose parents sent money home oftentimes spent it playing Starcraft at 24-hour internet pubs or drinking at the bars against school rules. The kids with no money worked for their tuition by cleaning the squatters in the dorms and mopping the floors.

Tumen 2 - Students (Tumen, China; 10/2008)

I was there for three months teaching English at a vocational school for Korean-Chinese students, ages 15-24. Most were from disadvantaged backgrounds or broken homes. Some were extremely bright, but just didn't have a chance at going to regular school. Others were bad kids who were forced back into the classroom by grandparents and relatives. They were all eager for attention in one way or another.

Tumen 1 - Landscape (Tumen, China; 10/2008)

Tumen is a small town in NE China. It's surrounded by farmland on three sides and North Korea on the fourth. Sometimes on clear days, you can see people walking around on the NK side--a farmer, a child, a soldier in arms. On most nights you see the steady, soft lights of the detention center downtown.

Home (.,!,?)

Because I've moved every three or four years throughout my life I have been holistically conditioned to expect and want change. In China, I moved two or three times before the age of five, from living with one extended family to another. When I turned five, my mom and I left Beijing for the US and found ourselves in an Irish-Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY where we stayed a couple of years before moving to Queens. Between the ages of 7 and 11, we bounced from one community within the borough to another, from Woodside, to Elmhurst to Rego Park, and finally to Forest Hills, where the demographic was whiter and more affluent, where people listened to moody rock songs instead of angry, boisterous rap. This is where we stayed and where my sister was born.

By senior year of high school, my family had finally settled in to the comforts of financial stability, and I chose to leave NY for Chicago, only to move back to NY for a couple of years after graduation before selling my belongings and relocating to LA--again of my own volition. Then after two years, I felt a leading to go to China and moved out of my apartment in West LA. I gave some stuff away, and stored the rest at a friend's place before jumping on a plane with just enough clothes for three months. And when that time was up, I came back to LA wondering about when I'd go back again.

That was when my parents started to worry. They started pushing this great idea of "settling down," being more "comfortable," finding a place to call my own...which essentially meant "stay put long enough to meet someone and get married."

Who knows? Maybe they weren't trying to kill my wanderlust after all, and sincerely wanted to take advantage of the crappy real estate market. Whatever it was, they somehow convinced me to oblige, and here I am in Hacienda Heights, a relatively small community wedged between the City of Industry, with its warehouses, smoke stacks, day workers, and bad air; and Diamond Bar, with its manicured lawns and one of the best public school districts in the nation.

I guess it's okay. The area has some perks: mainly a very short commute to work every morning and an abundance of cheap Asian food.

The downside, though, is how far I am from everything else in the world and how far I have to drive to interact with the things relevant to my life: I'm 30 miles from Church, 40-50 miles from Life Group, 30 miles from a decent art studio, and at least 30 miles from the closest Trader Joes.

Slightly bothered by the notion of a real permanent residence, I stalled on buying things to fill it. I even renovated to appeal to the presumed tastes of the local demographic (for easy renting) rather than based on my own tastes. I planned it so that all my furnishings (which I did pick out to my own liking when I finally got around to buying them) would fit into one of those nice-sized storage pods just in case, you know, I had to go.

It took 4 months before I accepted that this would be where I'd be for a little while ("little" "while") and finally turned the space into something I'd actually invite people to: mostly clean with places to sit.

I've even committed to plants.