The Paper Tiger

Good Luck with that...

2008-06-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

"China announces Olympics stability drive after riot":

Over the past decade, the number of petitioners journeying to provincial capitals and to Beijing has swollen. Nationwide, petitions and complaint visits grew from 4.8 million in 1995 to 12.7 million in 2005.

"Our most fundamental demand that is that zero go to Beijing, zero go to the province capital and there are zero mass petitions and mass incidents," a county official in the southwest province of Sichuan said, according to a local official website (http://www.scpc.gov.cn).

Many changes in my life right now. I hope to blog about them soon.

Why I Love California Pt. 1,999

2008-06-16T22:55:00.000-07:00

Today, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin were married after more than fifty years of partnership.

Gavin Newsom, you rock.

A Conversation with Xujun Eberlein

2008-06-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted at Peking Duck.

Xujun Eberlein grew up in Chongqing, China, and moved to the United States in the summer of 1988. After receiving a Ph.D. from MIT in the spring of 1995, and winning an award for her dissertation, she joined a small but ambitious high tech company. On Thanksgiving 2003, she gave up tech for writing. Her debut story collection Apologies Forthcoming won the 2007 Tartt Fiction Award and was published in May 2008. You can buy the book here.

The stories in Apologies Forthcoming deal with the Cultural Revolution, which defined the generation now coming to power in China. Xujun departs from the more typical "victim literature" about the CR, and the stories show a broad range of perspectives, actions and responses to the turmoil of the period.

Lisa: Tell us about the title of your collection, "Apologies Forthcoming." Why did you choose it?

Xujun: I had considered calling the book Men Don’t Apologize, but some writer friends objected. They pointed out that people would probably expect a feminist treatise, while I'm not a feminist at all. And the stories don't actually have any agenda other than realistically portraying human behavior and psychology at a particular time. While that namesake story is about several men and a woman, the idea of apologizing for, or even acknowledging participation in, activities during the Cultural Revolution cuts across the sexes. Apologies Forthcoming was actually the publisher’s suggestion and I like it, though I am not sure we will ever see the apologies. ☺

Speaking about apologies, two years ago I interviewed a few ex-Red Guard leaders in Chongqing, who had been in jail for more than a decade and now are businessmen. I wrote a short journalism piece about this, which you can read here.

Let me just quote one of the men here – he said, "We castigated the capitalist roaders for two years. They punished us for many more." He didn't think he ought to apologize to anyone at all, and you have to acknowledge his point.

Lisa: Related to this question of apologies…my first time in China was in 1979, so the Cultural Revolution was still very present in peoples’ lives. At the time I felt like the country suffered from a massive emotional depression from the after-effects of so much mass trauma. And a number of Chinese people I met told me about some of their experiences during the CR – some very traumatic and personal things. I’m guessing this was because I was a young foreigner, not involved and therefore safe to confide in. Did you talk about your experiences with fellow Chinese? To what extent did people feel they could honestly speak about what had happened to them and what they had done during this time? Did you talk to anyone about your own experiences?

Xujun: Oh, plenty of people talk about their sufferings, but few mention their roles as participants. One representative example is the memoir Wild Swans. I admire the book's writing, but as I mentioned in my Amazon review for it, I wish the author were more honest. Readers relish suffering stories, but suffering stories alone provide limited insights into human behavior.

It also occurs to me that few westerners know the subtleties and nuance surrounding the participating parties in the CR. I once did an informal poll among writers I workshop with on what they thought of the Red Guards, and the answers were pretty much uniform with the representative one being "pretty much the same as the Hitler Youth." This is quite baffling and at the same time very interesting. As we know (I'm aware of the pitfall of generalization) Americans hate the communist government of China; but did they know the biggest thing the Red Guards did was to break China's state apparatus? Should a communist hater applaud or condemn that? There is just no simple black-and-white answer.

Another thing is that the Red Guards consisted of an entire generation of students from middle school through university, and though viewed as a collective by westerners, there were many different factions emerging, converging, breaking down and reorganizing over times.

The Red Guards did have a hand in lots of violence, yet the individual members were often idealists. This complexity seems beyond the average outsiders' comprehension. It is very hard for someone to understand another culture without actually experiencing it. But the real problem is not the limitation in understanding – everyone has limitations; it is failing to recognize limitations. Too many people are vocally righteous about other cultures they know little about, that is the problem.

As a writer, however, I am more interested in human behavior and the mentality that leads to it. I'm not interested in pointing fingers because what does that do to increase understanding? I think as realistic fiction the story "Men Don't Apologize" departs from the usual victim literature and takes one step further in exploring human nature and the different behavior that manifests between ordinary and extraordinary circumstances.

I don't want to digress too far on this topic, let's just say that, as far as political conflicts are concerned, victims and victimizers can easily switch positions. The distinction between victims and villains is very unclear and my stories show a broader range of behavior beyond suffering.

Lisa: “Snow Line,” the opening story in the collection, is set in Chengdu, a city I’ve spent some time in and really love. Even in the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, it felt a lot more relaxed and open to me than most of the cities I visited. It’s surrounded by a lot of natural beauty, and places like Qingchengshan, which is considered one of the birthplaces of Daoism.

I notice that flowers are a recurring motif in “Snow Line,” and I’m curious if this is something that connects specifically to Chengdu.

Xujun: Yes, Chengdu! My favorite city of all! (I hope my Chongqing townsmen will forgive me for saying this.) In the north it is Beijing and in the south it has to be Chengdu. Do you know a saying, "少不入川，老不出川" - "When young don't enter Sichuan; when old never go out of it"? In this saying "Sichuan" actually means its capital Chengdu. Chengdu is such a relaxed and cultured city, a young man would only be spoiled there and never work hard, is what the saying means. But it is heaven for a relaxed and richly cultured life. Every year I go back for a visit, I can't help but wonder how such a free and at leisure population make their livings. Yet they live leisurely on. All my close friends from Chongqing have moved to Chengdu by now.

And yes, Chengdu is a true flower city. Everywhere on the streets and in every season you see flower girls and flower stores. Even Chengdu's air is fragrant and colorful. You don't see or smell this in Chongqing for example. Don't get me wrong, I love Chongqing, too, but that's for its ragged hilly paths and two legend-filled rivers.

You can probably sense my love of Chengdu from descriptions in "Snow Line." But the reason I placed "Snow Line" as the opening story is because of the artwork, "Dandelion." The artist, Mr. Wu Fan, is a renowned "literati artist" in Sichuan, a very classic kind. "Dandelion" was his signature work and won a gold medal in the 1959 international block prints competition. During the CR the gold medal became a criminal indictment for him and nearly killed him.

Mr. Wu is a friend of my parents, and his daughter and I are friends. The genesis of "Snow Line" actually came from the daughter; she had modeled the little girl in "Dandelion." I thought the artwork would add a nice dimension to my story, so I asked for permission to include it from Mr. Wu Fan, and he generously agreed. I ended up using three works from him, each fits nicely with one of the stories. His daughter did the sketch for "Men Don't Apologize."

When I was in college, every summer I would go to Chengdu and spend time with the Wu family. The mother, an oil painter, would bring her two daughters to paint from nature in Huanhua Xi – Wash-flower Brook, and I would go with them. Those were some happiest times of my youth.

Lisa: The first time I was in China, one of the phrases I learned right away was “work unit.” The idea that so many decisions about one’s personal life could be made by one’s place of employment was very foreign to me. “Snow Line” presents a typical situation in the China of the late 1970s to early 1980s, where a woman lives in the factory in which she works. The whole notion of privacy and personal space is very different from the West. So a two-part question – when you moved to the US, was this a difficult adjustment to you? And do you think that China as a society has moved towards more “Western” notions of privacy?

Xujun: Hehe, the phrase is still there, on everyone's lips. And you ask an interesting question. When I am writing stories I wear the hat of the times, and this all seems perfectly natural. However, when I think about actually doing something like living in a printing factory it does seem pretty strange. It is curious how quickly I became accustomed to the easy (and private) life in the US. I don’t think I could make the adjustment in the other direction nearly so quickly. There is a Chinese word for that – xiguan – that would be used only in one direction.

China has changed a lot since the early 1980s, when I was in college. There is surely more privacy in people's lives now. For example the question "How much do you make?" was as common as "Have you eaten?" in conversation when I lived in China. Now you hardly ever hear the former spoken. ☺
However I don't think Chinese will completely adopt the Western notion of privacy - that would be very sad anyway. Neighbors still love to "chuan-men" (drop-by) without having to first set appointments, for example.

Lisa: “Feathers” tells the story of a girl losing her older sister. In a way it is a typically “Chinese” story, a Cultural Revolution tragedy. But on the other hand, the family dynamics transcend the cultural particulars and deal with universal themes of loss, denial and suffering.

Xujun: I think that is an important observation, and I think it may apply more broadly than just this story. People have a lot in common with one another, and a lot that sets us apart. “Feathers” is about family and dealing with tragedy, and this is an area where similarities are much stronger than differences. Still, the story tells a Chinese way of dealing with things, for example making up stories so the grandmother wouldn't know about her grandchild's death. I remember workshopping the story and some American friends just couldn't understand why the lying was necessary. Some things that might stand out to a Western reader would simply be background to a Chinese reader.

You know, this story is close to my heart. And go back to your question earlier if I talked to anyone about my own experiences during the CR, I was a child when the worst thing happened to my family – my big sister's death. She was a 16-year-old Red Guard. I had to safeguard my 75-year-old grandmother from knowing the bad news, just like in the third-person story "Feathers." Imaging a 12-year-old girl running around bare her teeth like a fierce cat hissing at any gossipy neighbor who dared to mention the incident. That practice trained my habit of silence; for more than three decades I did not talk to anyone other than my diary book about the incident. I never shed tears either. I cried for the first time in 2002 when I began to write the memoir piece "Swimming with Mao".

One question a reader raised was if my loyalty to my sister might have impeded my condemnation of the Red Guards. However, though my sister was both a participant and a victim of the CR, she foremost was my dear sister and no political identification could change that. This became never so clear after I started to write about her.

The story also reflects my aversion to heroism. When my sister died, her comrades called her a "hero." As a child I was very confused by the notion that a life was tradable with the title "hero." I just wanted my dear sister back – who cared what her title was?

Lisa: I particularly liked “Watch the Thrill,” with its two bored neighborhood boys who are looking for excitement. It’s not that they are bad or evil, they just seem to lack the capacity to make moral choices, and there are no adults around to guide them. This had a lot of resonances to me, both to kids growing up here and now without adequate parenting and to figures in classical literature – “Lord of the Flies” comes to mind.

Xujun: It is interesting you should mention this. There is a broader belief that youth and innocence should go hand in hand. In this story I wanted to portray not that the boys were bad, but that they really weren’t concerned about the concepts of good or bad, but just interesting or boring. Becoming invested in good and bad requires some reasonable landmarks of this type of judgment, and those landmarks were missing when these boys were raised. This makes the emergence of any sort of morality difficult.

Random thoughts of a jet-lagged brain

2008-06-01T23:13:00.000-07:00

So I guess I am officially middle-aged. Since I lack a lot of the typical cultural markers (i.e., kids), it's a hard thing for me to grasp. I don't feel all that different. I exercise a lot. My energy is good. The gray hair and the gut, well, those are a little alarming. Worse is losing some of my Trivial Pursuit memory — I flounder for words at times, forget things that I used to remember. I'd give an example, something that happened yesterday, but I forgot what it was.

Apparently some of the changes in the brain that happen with aging are not a bad thing. According to some recent brain research:

for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.

“It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”

Be that as it may, the main thing I've noticed lately is my inability (or unwillingness) to split my attention.

Was a time when: I wrote fiction, played in a band where I was writing the songs and arranging the gigs and singing and playing the bass, and studied Chinese. And oh yeah, worked a full-time job.

Now? I can't imagine doing all that. I can't even manage to post more than once a month on my increasingly sad little blog. No posts for the entire month of May? This is pathetic.

It's not that there aren't plenty of interesting things to post about. The news coming out of China in recent months has been voluminous, important and fascinating. Politics in America...well, there's a lot I could say, but there are a lot of folks saying it better than I could. I've added a few of these new voices (some of whom are only new to me) to my "comments" section. I've purged others. I'd like to give a particular shout-out to TalkLeft and Anglachel's Journal , TalkLeft for its tireless coverage of politics and wonderful commenters, and Anglachel for the impressive intellectual scope and erudite commentary on politics and political theory. I read the stuff there and am so impressed by the use of language and clear expression of ideas and concepts (check out this recent post on libertarian paternalism for an example). I have no idea how people write like that — I certainly can't.

Maybe it's true that my "attention has widened" as per the research cited above. I'm not sure. What I do know is that what I'm really good at — where I've really put my attention — has narrowed.

It's the collapse of the probability curve, in quantum physics (oh yeah — that was one of the things I was trying to explain to somebody the other night, and couldn't remember, either then or now). Observing the phenomena brings it into existence.

Except, I'm not sure if that's what I really mean.

When you start making decisions about what you want to do, about where you want to focus your attention, all those other possibilities that your life once held begin to collapse. You can be a writer or a painter or a ballerina or a ballplayer or a brain surgeon or a quantum mechanic — you probably can't be too many of those things in a single lifetime.

This narrowing of possibilities happens as you age, whether you make conscious choices or not. At this point, I'm not going to birth babies, in all probability. Nor am I going to be a ballerina. Brain surgery is probably out as well.

So, better to choose, because it's going to happen to you anyway. The process of living will make choices for you.

I've chosen to write fiction, above everything else. In a way I wonder how much of a choice it really was. I've always wanted to write, have always been compelled to write. It's hardly been a decision at all, more of an acceptance of an existential fact. It's who I am, it's what I do. It's why the scorpion stung the frog that took him across the river. It's my nature.

Years of focus and practice have trained my brain to be good at this particular activity. I'm slow at times and struggle to express myself, but when I finally do, I look at what I've written and think that it's pretty good, and that over the years, I've gotten better.

I pretty much suck at just about everything else.

May Day

2008-04-30T23:57:00.001-07:00

from Stefan Landsberger's collection

My book went out to publishers today. Which is actually April 30th, but May Day is easier to remember, and it's almost midnight now.

It's been a long and interesting process getting to this point. I queried the agent with whom I eventually signed on July 5th of last year. Many months of rewrites followed. That part was mostly fun. There was some stress involved — mainly, was I up to this?

The agent at one point picked out a line I'd written that he particularly liked. His note was "More, please!" I'd thought it was one of my best lines too. Did I have more of those in me? I really wasn't sure.

But working with this guy was fun. His feedback was an ego boost, even when it was critical, because what he said told me that he really got what I was trying to do with this book. This still amazes me, given how many directions I'd gone in the earlier incarnations. Take a bowling ball, a chain saw and a chihuahua and juggle them. That's sort of what I was working with.

There was a real give and take and creative exchange that energized the process for me, when I'd thought that I'd wrung every idea out of my own tired head that I possibly could have.

After a few rewrites, I was pretty sure that I was going to get representation, so no more stress on that front, other than my wanting to really make the book as good as I could make it.

Getting the contract felt every bit as wonderful as I'd ever imagined it would. There was just no downside. Having a professional whose job it is to sell books decide that my book was something he wanted to represent was a validation for me beyond just about anything else I can think of in my creative life, particularly given the thought and care he'd already put into the project.

So, smooth sailing, right? Heh. What happened next is something that I would love to post about in great detail, but right now I really can't. I'll just say that it held up the book's going out for nearly two months, and of everything that has happened in this story thus far, it was the most stressful thing I've had to deal with, on a lot of levels. Probably the worst for me was the self-doubt. The longer I sat in this strange limbo, the more I began to doubt the book, myself, everything. At times I went to the bad place, where everything was going to go wrong and all that I'd worked for would be for nothing. I told myself that I was being paranoid, and I knew that I was, but that didn't matter, because all the paranoia could be justified by real-life horror stories, and I knew damn well that things just don't always work out.

Thank you, Agent X, my friends and family and writing buddies, for holding my hand during this period.

Now the book is out in the world. I don't know when we'll hear back from this initial round of publishers, whether the response will be good or bad. But I do know that I've done everything I could do to get to this point, and that for now, my job is done.

Guadalupe Dunes

2008-04-20T01:58:00.001-07:00

Guadalupe Dunes

My rule for making the Los Angeles/San Francisco trip is, I try to see something I haven't seen before each time I make it. This trip I accomplished a two-fer — hitting "Taste of India" on the way up and the Guadalupe Dunes on the home stretch.

Going home, I took the 101, and when I got to Pismo Beach, the Mini Cooper decided on its own to peel off onto Highway 1. There was a sign calling this stretch an "Official Scenic Car Route," or something like that. The signs do not lie. The road runs though dramatic green hills, sharp against the sky this time of day, late in the afternoon. On the right, the ocean, now and again, glimpsed through the towns and then receding as the road pulled further away from the shore. I drove through a strange little town called Oceana, a place with a ramshackle, working-class edge that has mostly disappeared from California's beach towns but was very familiar to me growing up.

The gap between beach and highway widens, taken up by croplands, open fields surrounded by hills and groves of eucalyptus. Then, the town of Guadalupe, bordered by the highway, fields and dunes. Cecil B. DeMille's "Ten Commandments" was filmed here, the original sets buried somewhere in the sand. Mostly Guadalupe is an agricultural town, a few historic buildings here and there, tacquerias, a modest subdivision of terracotta-colored tract homes that edges up to the fields on the town's southern boundary.

Between that subdivision and the fields is a narrow road that leads to the state beach. Again, the Mini wanted to go there. I was along for the ride. The road was deserted, the fields empty of labor; it was the end of the day by now, but there was still plenty of light.

At the end of the road was an open car gate, a guard shack, a sign indicating that this was Guadalupe Dunes State Park and suggesting that a $3.00 fee per car was appropriate to help support the place. But no one was in the guard shack, and there wasn't anyplace to leave the suggested fee, so I drove on.

The road, which had been narrow before, faded to nearly a path, and as it wound into the dunes, blowing sand covered it from either side, and I found myself wondering if this had been such a great idea on my part. I hadn't seen another person, another car. Just dunes, sculpted by the wind, crazy blue sky, golden light.

Finally the little road emptied into a parking lot. About half a dozen other cars were there. Gusts of wind kicked up the sand, and the ocean was slate-gray and ripped by whitecaps.

I got out of the car, stretched my legs, stood a while. Then drove back the way I came and continued on my way.

I have this response to overwhelming natural beauty at times: I obsess on what it means, what's the purpose? More to the point (because it is, after all, all about me) what is my purpose?

Somewhere south of Lompoc, the Obvious Fairy hit me over the head with her magic wand and said: "You're supposed to be writing, dummy! How many times do I have to tell you this?"

Road Trip! Or, Why I Love California

2008-04-15T00:28:00.000-07:00

I'd had a stressful few weeks, and though I'd planned a long weekend's road-trip, put it on the calendar and everything, I was really tempted to cancel. It just seemed too hard. Everything seemed too hard. Especially writing. Even a blog post. I couldn't summon the energy or enthusiasm to compose anything beyond emails here and there.

I started wondering, am I losing my mind? Is this early onset Alzheimers?

Maybe I'll never be able to write another thing. I sure could not imagine sitting down and starting something new.

On Friday, the day I was to leave, I managed to accomplish a little business in the morning, enough to lift the exhaustion that had been sapping my enthusiasm like some sort of vampiric shroud. Well, okay. I packed a bag and fed the cats and got in my car and started driving.

Because I'd gotten such a late start, I decided to take the 5 North to San Francisco. Lately I'd been taking the coast route, exchanging speed for beauty. But I was tired, I had a pinched nerve in my back, and I was late. So, the 5.

If you've ever driven this route, you know what I mean. The Great Central Valley is one of those landscapes that is so featureless, it almost defies description. Flat. Endless. Dust. Broken up by cattle feedlots now and again, with their characteristic smell. Truck stops. Denny's. Fields stretching to the dust-obscured horizon.

Well, not the first hour or so, leaving Los Angeles. The Grapevine and Fort Tejon are dramatic enough, stark hills and crags, trucks and older cars struggling up the incline, burning transmissions and brake pads and radiator fluid. The pass was particularly beautiful this week, thanks to the rains we've had this winter. Not a lot grows on some of these hills, they are not forested, like in the north; there is scrub, chaparral, grasses of various sorts — to be honest, I'm not really sure what it all is. My knowledge of plants and trees is pretty sketchy. But on some of the hills, there's very little beyond grasses, and whether this is their natural state or the aftermath of brush fires, I couldn't say.

This spring, these bald hills are covered with swaths of color — purple lupine, golden poppies, green grasses, undulating in the wind like some massive natural acid trip.

Once you go down into the valley, you have to expand your notion of scenic. There's not a lot to draw the eye, especially because what there is tends to be washed out by the omnipresent haze.

When I drive this route, what I usually do is stop at Harris Ranch. Or, as I like to call it, the Cattle Concentration Camp. The feedlots come after the Ranch, proper, and I guess they really aren't so bad, but it still sobers me, seeing all those cattle standing around, crowded together in fields of dirt, shielded by tin roofs and cooled by misting sprinklers. The smell is pretty bad too.

But Harris Ranch is a nice place to stop — a complex of pinkish "adobe" buildings, crafted in a vague "Ranchero" style, several cuts above your typical truck stop or Days Inn. They have a great bar, a casual diner and a nice restaurant, with good food, especially if you're partial to steak.

I wasn't particularly in the mood for steak that day, but the options on the 5 are few if you don't want a burger.

So I was intrigued to see the hand-painted signs for "Taste Of India — Wraps to Go — Authentic Indian Food — Everything Cooked Fresh!" as I approached the McKintrick/Buttonwillow exit.

I could see "Taste of India" from the freeway. Housed in a typical chain-restaurant building, like where you'd expect to find a Denny's, except with a blue roof (maybe they'd taken over some defunct chain gone bankrupt?). What settled me was the adjacent Starbucks. I needed a cup of coffee.

I was reassured by the "A" rating on the door. Inside, "Taste of India" is a big, open room, with cheap, moveable tables covered by plastic tablecloths. Faded silver striped wallpaper with posters of Indian women, a cooler filled with Indian beer, and a counter where you could order "To Go" Biryani wraps.

Best of all: a flat screen television mounted on the wall that played some absurd Bollywood musical that I couldn't begin to describe.

I had Lamb Korma (spicy), garlic Naan and a Yeti Premium Beer. All delicious. Complimented the waitress (owner?), an Indian woman. Caught sight of another worker, in a yellow turban (her husband? Who knows?) taking orders at the "To Go" counter.

After I ate, I went outside, passed the Super 8 Motel and the truck stop and grabbed a fresh Starbucks coffee (the new Pikes Blend).

I love California.

Interesting Times

2008-03-15T22:54:00.001-07:00

I really wish I could have been in Beijing this week. My San Diego Padres played the dreaded Dodgers in the first MLB game ever played in China (for the record, it was a tie - typical for a spring training game, which this essentially was). I would have loved to have seen a 棒球赛 in Beijing. I'd have been there with my Caminiti jersey and Tony Gwynn cap, cheering on my team.

As it is, I probably won't get back to Beijing until this summer for the Olympics. I'm going with a good friend who is sort of an Olympics junkie; we already have our plane tickets, hotel reservations and events. It's something I have to see, the latest transformation of what was once funky Beijing to...well, whatever it will be. In my book I described it as looking like the set of some bad, big-budget science fiction movie.

That's just one piece of it, of course, the part that's China's leaders building their showcase to China's aspirations: to be a great power, to once and for all retire the last hundred and fifty years of history, when China was a victim, the "sick man of Asia."

But you know what they say about what comes along with great power. Great big pains in the ass. International scrutiny. Massive protests in Tibet, the biggest in 50 years, that began with Buddhist monks protesting restrictions on the practice of their religion and have escalated to Tibetans attacking Han Chinese and Chinese security forces now pouring into Lhasa. I direct you all to the Peking Duck, where you'll find a comprehensive post on the situation and a fascinating discussion by Americans, Europeans and Chinese from around the globe. Just about every shade of opinion is represented there.

I found one overseas Chinese' sentiments particularly poignant. He talks of the dream of a modern, multi-ethnic China, how he'd contributed to Tibetan students' funds, and how now, he feels betrayed by the explosion of ethnic violence, by seeing Han Chinese "ethnically cleansed" from Lhasa.

I don't exactly want to laugh. I think he is sincere and well-meaning. I more want to say, "Hey, welcome to the Imperialist Club!"

I'll meet you in the library for a cigar and a whiskey.

This is what happens. Those "ethnic minorities" just don't appreciate your enlightened attempts to bring civilization to their "backward, medieval, superstition-ridden society." Oddly enough, they don't like becoming minorities in their own country.

I know, it's tough to understand. Manifest destiny can be a bitch.

Another sentiment running through this discussion thread, expressed by some seriously pissed-off Chinese: Restore order. Send in massive force. Take an example from America and treat the protesters as terrorists. Shoot the bastards. And fuck the Olympics.

This last notion I found particularly interesting. The Chinese government has put so much stake into these Games. The Games will demonstrate to the world that China is a modern superpower, harmonious, friendly and formidable. But the Games draw attention to China's failures as well. Everyone with a grievance knows that with all attention focused on China, it's a chance to air their issues on the world stage, right next to the pageantry and prowess.

As for ordinary Chinese, I wouldn't presume to speak for their sentiments with any certainty. I'm guessing that a majority are proud of their country and excited about what the Olympics represent for China. I figure a sizable minority think there are far better things to do with the however many millions of Renmin Bi it's cost to put on this show. And then there are those who would rather "kill the chicken to frighten the monkey" and restore order at all costs, and if that means risking the Olympics, so be it.

It's going to be an interesting summer.

Update: Padres beat the Dodgers, 6-3, in the second and final game in Beijing.

Update 2: Good summary from Time Magazine, and protests spread to provinces outside Tibet.

Really Done...

2008-03-08T23:27:00.000-08:00

No, really.

I did a little polish last week, emailed the book on Monday, and it's done, baby. Next up —

Well, that's a little complicated. The short version is, we start submitting. Rather, my! agent! does. The long version has to do with the intersection of my writing and my working in the entertainment industry. I'll leave it at that.

Mainly, my work on the book really is done for the time being, and it's up to the agent from here. I trust him, and I'm happy to have the MS off my metaphoric desk (which in my case would be my lap) and on his.

Being done is interesting. I did a lot of drafts of this book. Some were a lot more fun than others. Some felt like I just dragged myself to the end, to the point where I was so utterly exhausted by it that I couldn't possibly change another word.

The last major revision,when I finished, I was, for once, relaxed. For one thing, I already had the contract at that point, so I wasn't stressing out quite so much about how it would go over. Mainly, I knew I'd nailed it. Almost. Whatever wasn't quite right would be easy to fix. And it was.

But still...those few things I tweaked and moved and polished...those little things weren't quite right, and it wasn't until after I fixed them that I finally felt done.

It's hard to explain, and honestly, I'm not always good with words. I'm not an essayist, and I swore that I was not going to be one of those bloggers who writes a lot of narcissistic posts about my feelings; I'm not sure they are all that interesting to anyone, not even to me.

But being done is interesting. Feeling that sense of completion, like a bunch of tumblers in a lock finally clicked into place; it's done. I'm open.

Which begs the question, what now?

I have a really hard time starting new projects. Once I finally get going, I'm pretty consistent and obsessive. I don't write fast but I write hard, and I don't stop till I'm done. But starting...ugh.

I have a couple of ideas for new books but haven't done the prep to really start either of them, and in any case, I'm told it would be smart to wait for some feedback on the Book That Is Done before I commit to the next project.

I have some stuff I could work on in the meantime. Trashy Novel 3, I could finish that. I have an old screenplay that I still think is funny and relevant at its core, if I totally tore it apart and reworked it, that is.

Plus, I have this blog. If I'm fortunate enough to sell the book, I need to look at ways to promote it and myself as a writer. I've been looking at some writers' blogs, and they are really impressive — a lot of consistent work and thought, and many more bells and whistles than this one.

The focus of this blog has never been my writing; it's been a catch-all for China topics, political musings and the occasional post about how the novel has eaten my brain. I'm not a China expert, and as mentioned, I'm not an essayist, so it's not clear to me that I should focus exclusively on China-related topics. On the other hand, I might want to start a different blog that's only about my writing. One that uses my full name. Or the name I decide to publish under. I'm looking for pen-name suggestions, by the way...

So, do I build up this blog? Start a new one? What kinds of things do I need to add and consider if I want to promote my writing?

In Case You Were Wondering...

2008-02-23T20:44:00.000-08:00

From the Asia Times:

The Iranian oil bourse - the first oil, gas and petrochemical exchange in the Islamic Republic, and the first within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) - was launched on Sunday by Iran’s Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari, flanked by Minister of Economy and Financial Affairs Davoud Danesh Ja’fari, the man who will head the exchange...

...Transactions at this early stage will be in Iran’s currency, the rial, according to Nozari, ending worldwide speculation that the bourse would start trading in euros. The Iranian ambassador to Russia, Gholam-Reza Ansari, has said that "in the future, we'll be able to use the ruble, Russia’s national currency, in our operations". He added that "Russia and Iran, two major producers of the world’s energy, should encourage oil and gas transactions in various non-dollar currencies, releasing the world from being a slave of the dollar."

Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said last week that "the ruble will de facto become one of the regional reserve currencies"...

...The trillion-dollar question is if, and when, most European and Asian oil importers may stampede towards the Iranian oil bourse. OPEC members as well as oil producers from the Caspian may be inevitably seduced by the advantages of selling at Kish - with no dreaded middlemen. Europeans, Chinese and Japanese will also see benefits if they can buy oil with euros, yen or even yuan - they won’t need US dollars – and the same applies to their central banks.

It would take only a few major oil exporters to switch from the dollar to the euro - or the yen - to fatally bomb the petrodollar mothership...

...The symbolism of the Iranian oil bourse is stark; it shows that the flight from the US dollar is irreversible - and so, sooner rather than later, is diminution of Washington's capacity to launch wars on credit. But at this early stage in the game, only one thing is certain: the empire will strike back.

And what form might the empire's actions take?

Well, back in 2000, Saddam Hussein insisted that Iraq's oil be paid for in Euros. By June 10, 2003, after the US invasion of Iraq, the transactions were switched back to dollars.

(cont...) Football, My Secret Shame...

2008-02-22T23:03:00.000-08:00

As previously mentioned I love football (the American version). I'm a little embarrassed by this at times. The culture surrounding it (the frequent misogyny), the horrific violence (there's a reason football players tend to die young), all those stupid beer and Viagra commercials...

But I still love it. The strategy and athleticism. The soap opera. There are "story lines," with heroes and villains. Defeat and redemption. Destiny.

Plus, I've always been amused by the sorta repressed homo-erotic aspect. You know. The male bonding. The tears. The ass-slapping and talk of penetration.

But none of my mild snarking on the topic prepared me for Michael Silver's hilarious article about the NFL scouting combine:

Walk the halls of the Indianapolis Convention Center adjacent to the Dome, and you’ll hear scouts and coaches throwing out compliments like, “That guy’s (expletive) pretty, now.” You’ll see write-ups lauding a prospect’s “big, bubble ass” or “great explosion in his hips.”

Go to the bars at night, and you can’t walk five feet without encountering a 60-something-year-old man with a gleam in his eye who’ll talk about how he has “fallen in love” with one player or another...

...For NFL prospects, the ogling begins at the Shrine Bowl, then continues later at the Senior Bowl when participants are trotted into a Mobile, Ala., hotel ballroom and weighed and measured while wearing glorified Speedo swimsuits.

“I’ve seen guys with some horrible physiques,” agent Gary Wichard says. “One big guy this year, I kid you not, had C-cups. I’ve seen man-boobs before; these were woman boobs. They looked like implants. I felt so bad for the kid, having to walk around that room with 650 people looking at him and gasping.”

Conversely, the excitement that an exceptionally cut prospect provokes is unnerving in a different way. Two years ago at the Senior Bowl, Wichard’s client Brodrick Bunkley, a former Florida State defensive tackle now with the Philadelphia Eagles, practically had people drooling as he cat-walked through the middle of the crowded ballroom.

“They talk about ‘Winning the Beauty Contest’ – that was Brodrick Bunkley,” Wichard says. “When he weighed in, there were murmurs throughout the room. His legs were exploding out of his shorts, and it looked like his skin was swathed in Saran Wrap. You had a bunch of grown men who acted like they were at a strip joint outside of town. I thought they were going to offer him money for a lap dance.”

Yeah. I love this game.

Testing the Waters...

2008-02-19T23:06:00.000-08:00

Howdy all!

Another draft in the can. I feel pretty good about it. I know I fixed some problems, am not sure about a couple of other spots. But whatever is left to do won't be too much. I don't think.

I'm still really really happy about My! Agent! (okay, thrilled), who has made a difficult process, well, pretty fun, actually. Now I'm at the point where most of the hard work is done, and the stress associated with rewriting and hoping that I was getting it right and going to get signed is pretty much over too.

I celebrated signing the contract and finishing the draft by taking a road trip up north to visit my sister and other assorted cousins. I really like it up there. Somehow the Bay Area seems like a better fit for me than image-obsessed Los Angeles. Plus, I like seeing the Chinese street and shop signs all over the city. It makes me feel at home.

Right now, however, I'm happily settled on my couch in Venice CA, cat on my lap, fighting for space with the laptop. Life ain't half-bad...

So, no more excuses. Back to blogging, I hope with more substantive posts than this one.

Oh Yes....There Will Be Rewrites...

2008-01-19T00:59:00.000-08:00

I kinda figured I wasn't quite done.

The good news is, I now have an agent. A great guy at a storied, top-flight agency.

More on this later...but I'm psyched.

Paper or Plastic?

2008-01-09T23:29:00.000-08:00

When I read about things like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it does my heart good to hear news that China has cracked down on plastic garbage bags:

China launched a surprise crackdown on plastic bags on Tuesday, banning production of ultra-thin bags and forbidding its supermarkets and shops from handing out free carriers from June 1.

China uses too many of the bags and fails to dispose of them properly, wasting valuable oil and littering the country, China's cabinet, the State Council, said in a notice posted on the central government Web site (www.gov.cn).

"Our country consumes huge amounts of plastic bags every year. While providing convenience to consumers, they have also caused serious pollution, and waste of energy and resources, because of excessive use and inadequate recycling," it said.

Good for them. I'd like to see the U.S. do the same.

For those curious, yes, I have finished my book. Sort of. I wouldn't be surprised if more tweaking lies ahead. I'll keep you all posted.

Why I love Star Trek

2007-12-21T21:25:00.000-08:00

Classic Trek only.

glumbert - Star Trek follows the White Rabbit

(HT to my friend Deb for this gem)

Traffic Crashes Chinese Anti-Corruption Website

2007-12-19T22:32:00.000-08:00

From the Associated Press:

BEIJING -- A new Web site created by China's anti-corruption bureau crashed after barely a day because too many visitors tried to log on to register complaints, state media said Wednesday.

The National Bureau of Corruption Prevention was formed in September to tackle mounting corruption scandals involving government and Communist Party officials.

It set up a Web site Monday that allowed the public to leave comments about its work, but the strain of too many visitors brought down the site Tuesday, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

The site was back online Wednesday and had 16 pages comprising more than 250 comments, which ranged from complaints about the promotion of public officials to criticism about the Web site itself.

I'm too sleep-deprived to say anything very intelligible about this, except to comment that when a government opens itself up to take complaints, it had better follow through — but by following through, it also empowers citizens who see by their participation that they are able to change things.

Okay, that was knee-jerk profundity at best.

Al Gore in Bali

2007-12-15T18:04:00.000-08:00

Here's some much needed inspiration from Al Gore. I'm finally starting to accept that he won't be President — because he's found something more important to do.

Done...for now...

2007-11-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

Some of you know that I've been working on a novel...and working...and working...

I just finished another draft. I sincerely hope this is the last draft, or at least if I have to do another one, it will be because some publisher wants to buy the thing.

It's been a long process. Frustrating, satisfying, exhausting, invigorating. Sometimes all at once.

I'm going to sit with it for a few days — maybe even a few weeks — before I send it off to the agent who requested the rewrites. No guarantees. We'll see. Depending on how that goes, maybe I'll blog about it some day. This agent really changed my perception of what agents do and the passion at least some have for their work — and this particular individual has been a joy to work with, regardless of the outcome.

In the meantime, here is a great piece on how provincial interests frequently trump Beijing's attempts to control environmental problems and conserve energy. It illustrates something I've talked about here on many occasions — the fragmented nature of power in today's China and the challenge of creating a consistent rule of law even as the central government attempts to continue monopolizing political authority. Have a look.

Picket Fences

2007-11-07T22:21:00.000-08:00

For the first time in my life, I've had to cross picket lines, and I'm not liking it much. The Writers Guild of America is on strike. There's no threat or expectation that non-Guild members shouldn't cross; it's not that kind of picket line. Yet there is an odd resonance with labor movements past that I hadn't expected. The picketers wear snappy red T-shirts with WGA logos; there are special "strike" editions that I wish I could buy. The signs are good too, especially the 30s style with a lightning bolt ending in a fountain pen and the word "Strike!" superimposed over it. Reminds me of the old RKO logo.

The writers ask for drivers to honk in support. All day long I hear the horns, and when I have to cross the street, I see who is responding: drivers in Prius and MINIs and even BMWs. Toyotas and Focus and all variety of beaters. Truckers in particular blast their air-horns. The writers cheer.

I'm on the writers' side too, and I've honked when I've driven past. How could I not? The writers look like me. If my life had gone a different way, I could have easily been one of them.

Most of the people I work with support the writers as well. We all know what's at stake. As one Guild spokesperson put it, this isn't about the Rich versus the Richer, and there's a reason that truckers are honking in support.

Hollywood creates a lot of wealth, and what's focused on in the popular media are the extremes — the mega-salaries, the superstars, the cartoon excesses. What gets lost in such stereotypes is the reality for most people who work in the Industry. Hollywood creates a lot of decent-paying jobs that allow for reasonable middle-class to upper middle-class lifestyles. That's the bulk of the industry.

I found the following numbers in yesterday's Dead Tree edition of the Los Angeles Times and am thus far unable to find a link, but have a look:

Total paid in DVD/VHS residuals to WGA members in 2006: $56.6 million.

Severance package of Viacom's outsted chief Tom Freston: $60 million

Average production cost (excluding marketing) of studio movie in '06: $65.8 million

Compensation paid to CBS chief Leslie Moonves in 2006: $28.6 million.

Needless to say, it's tough to take management's pleas of poverty seriously when they pay a guy more than the annual total of all residuals paid to the WGA — for fucking up.

The writers' strike is about being fairly compensated in a very lucrative industry. It is about having some small ownership over the fruits of one's labor.

I've watched with increasing dismay, anger and outright horror the economic trends in this country. No less an expert than Warren Buffet feels that there is fundamental unfairness in our current tax structure. And this fundamental unfairness goes well beyond taxes.

We live in an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy. It's a rigged game, designed to funnel money out of the middle class (and upper middle class for that matter) and divert it instead to a handful of very wealthy people. Once you have that much wealth and power concentrated in so few people, it becomes very difficult for "ordinary" peoples' interests to be represented in any meaningful way.

Marx's notion of "wage slavery" seems all too descriptive these days.

I've never been a Marxist, and I believe in capitalism as an efficient mechanism to organize a society. But there's another necessary component, and that is social justice. There are as well values that transcend the marketplace — abstract notions of community that are not always easily quantified. I've never understood why so many social conservatives are market fundamentalists when unfettered capitalism is so destructive to traditional values. There are communal interests that both consist of and transcend the aggregate of individual ones.

So, go Writers Guild of America! Strike a blow for decent wages and the ownership of one's own labors! And let's all hope the strike ends soon. Otherwise we are faced with a season of "reality" shows like Farmer Takes a Wife and Clash of the Choirs.

Really. No one wants to see that.

A final note on disasters...

2007-10-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

This Christian Science Monitor article details some of the things that California and specifically San Diego has done right to deal with living in disaster-prone areas. As the piece points out, we've still got a long way to go. But, as an example:

Not only has California allowed higher insurance rates to send signals to homeowners who live recklessly in risky danger zones, it is also imposing tougher property standards. In San Diego County especially, officials have learned many lessons from the 2003 wildfires – the largest in California's recent history – that killed 16 people and destroyed 2,458 homes.

In a new defensive policy known as "shelter in place," the county set construction and landscape codes in 2004 for new homes in fire-prone areas. These included the use of noncombustible roof materials, indoor sprinklers, fire-resistant vegetation, and a 100-foot-wide protection perimeter.

The result? In five new subdivisions that met those codes, this month's wildfires raced by them and not a single house was lost.

In addition, San Diego County has removed much of the area's fire-vulnerable underbrush. It set up a mass notification system that helped quickly evacuate more than half a million people in danger of the fast-moving flames.

Note that aside from allowing higher insurance rates, all of the effective measures taken are government policies — not some libertarian fantasy of individual ownership and the invisible hand of the marketplace.

And as a final p.s. — Go Chargers!

Enough already

2007-10-26T20:44:00.000-07:00

It really pisses me off to see how right wingers and idiots are holding up the differences between the fires in San Diego and Hurricane Katrina as some kind of proof that, well, white people are more civilized than those black folks in New Orleans.

Tbogg, The Rude Pundit and Steve Lopez of the LA Times put this better than I could (even if I did have time to write a proper post), but just to be really clear about things, you simply can't compare the fires, which burned in the suburbs and left the city center and infrastructure intact, with a hurricane that pretty much took out everything.

Further, far from an example of Republican efficiency at work, the fires in San Diego were made worse by a tax-cutting mentality that refuses to do what's necessary to create a county fire-fighting force and the developers and the bought politicians who have run the city for years building in places where they shouldn't (e.g, combustible chaparral-covered hillsides and canyons).

I do think California handles disasters better than Louisiana. Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not an expert), but Louisiana does not exactly have a reputation for good, clean government. California, meanwhile, has a lot of experience in dealing with large-scale disasters. We have these huge fires nearly every year and a big earthquake every decade or so. We should have a better idea how to cope.

California Burning

2007-10-22T23:03:00.001-07:00

Horrific day today in Southern California. Much of my hometown San Diego is on fire, including local landmarks like the Wild Animal Park — the smaller animals, including cheetahs and condors, have been evacuated to a fire-resistant shelter on the premises; the larger animals, the elephants and lions and giraffes, are left to their savannah-like habitats, which have large ponds they can escape to if necessary...but still...

Visualize San Diego County, up against the ocean. Picture the city proper, surrounded by a crescent of suburbs and back country. Nearly that entire crescent is on fire or under threat, with fires threatening to burn to the ocean in places.

Solana Beach, Leucadia, Del Mar, being evacuated. I can't picture it.

I grew up in those beach towns, back when that's what they were — unpretentious surfer havens. Cheap Mexican restaurants. I've never been able to fully accept the changes there, the condos, the housing tracts, the influx of money. Seeing these places in recent years makes me feel like a refuge in my own hometown. I'll never go back. I wouldn't be able to afford it. And I no longer want to.

But watching these fires, I feel the pull of where I was born. This was my place. This is where I came from.

Here's San Diego for you: Qualcomm Stadium has been pressed into service as an evacuation center. That's home of the Chargers, former home of the Padres (who moved to much nicer digs downtown).

So many volunteers showed up at Qualcomm with pizza and sandwiches that the authorities are telling everybody to wait until tomorrow to come, because they have too much food, and it will spoil. Meanwhile, some of the concessions at the Stadium have opened up to feed the refugees.

Meaning, fish tacos will be served. Because you can't go to the Q without having a fish taco.

We do pretty well in California with disasters — sure, we had the LA riots in '92, but look how well we handled the Northridge Quake in '93.

The corruption and incompetence of San Diego government in recent years could fill several books, but there still seems to be some basic ability of the government to function and for people to feel that they have some connection to each other. Yeah, there's folks looting the burnt-out shells of houses in Rancho Bernardo; there is righteous anger over the lack of coordination, of fire equipment — why the hell isn't the Navy out there with their infrared-equipped helicopters? No one seems to have a good answer.

But there will be fish tacos.

UPDATE: And massage therapists. Only in California....

Back to the salt mines...

2007-10-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

Or the chain gang...or whatever lame metaphor you'd like to use for going back to work on a project that never seems to be finished.

Yep, it's a new round of rewrites for the Book that Ate My Blog...and it may sound like I'm bitching, but I'm really not. It's an opportunity, and my only real worry is that I won't be up for the job, because I've got a lot of work to do, and some of it won't be easy.

A lot of the stuff I normally blog about — China, the staggering crimes of the Bush Administration, stuff like that — has been subsumed (is that a word?) into this novel (which I nonetheless promise is NOT didactic!). So I haven't been as driven to blog about it. But I'll try to at least put up pointers to great articles you might have missed while I once again lose myself in rewrites.

Creative transfusion, STAT!

I'm baaack....kinda

2007-10-06T23:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, so my hiatus was a tad bit longer than a couple of days...but the novel I've been complaining about is sort of like a vampire. It's sucked nearly all of my creative energy dry. Not that I'm complaining. Much. I'm still working on it, and it's getting better.

I just need a couple transfusions before I'm back blogging again...

Back in a couple days...

2007-05-27T09:34:00.001-07:00

Yelapa Beach
Originally uploaded by Other Lisa

The book is done (for now); the query sent, and I'm taking off for a few days of beach and margaritas. Enjoy your week!