Standing Up to a Bear

VILNIUS, Lithuania - Sunday is not usually a day for serious journalism in Lithuania.

This week the main paper, Lietuvos Rytas, was filled with stories about an upcoming local election (a pop star known as Pyscho and a forest hermit nicknamed Tarzan are running for seats), and the introduction of the Euro in Slovakia. But even flipping through the Lithuanian-language paper without a translation, one picture stands out. Buried deep inside is a picture of Russian President Vladmir Putin dressed in a suit but holding a handgun, with two masked men standing behind him, dressed like Chechnyan rebels.

The headline referred to Putin's Power Pyramid, a pyramid apparently controlled by thugs. The text of the article expanded on the provocative photograph, detailing spy agency plots and connecting him to the still-unsolved death of a Putin-critic in London several years ago.

Translating the article for me was Jonas, a 22-year-old student of political science at Vilnius University, the best school in the country. As he read, it became clear how serious an issue he thought this to be.

I'm not too strong on Lithuanian history. I vaguely remember some kind of Polish-Lithuania state lurking to the west of Prussia on maps during a Western European history course. I decided to have Jonas fill me in. Was Lithuania independent between the Two World Wars?

Jonas' answer started 998 years ago, at the first mention of Lithuania in a book. In the 13th century Vilnius was founded by the man who became its first and only king after a dream during a hunting trip. After his death the area became a duchy, and at one point ruled from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. (Maps of this large Lithuanian Empire hang inside several Vilnius bars.) The duchy joined with next-door neighbor Poland through marriage, but by the 18th century the combined state was threatened by Russia, Prussia and Austria. In 1795 the Third Partion of Poland wiped Lithuania off the map. Independence came in 1918, but the Russians, then the Germans, then the Russians again occupied the country for 80 years.

What happened in 1990 was not independence, Jonas said, but a reaffirmation of what happened nearly a century earlier.

Here, Russia isn't a new democracy, but a former imperial power ready to snatch power back in the country.

Jonas talked about a trip this summer, when he travelled to Iceland for a conference on political studies in small European states. He thought there would be hysterical talk of the Russian bear, threatening to overtake Europe. Instead he was horrified to find Russia to be a non-issue among the delegates, who came from Nordic, Baltic and even former Warsaw Pact nations.

'This is crazy. They are a real threat.'

He talked about how Russia cut off the gas lines six months ago to Lithuania. The official explanation was 'technical problems' but Jonas and other international observers believe it is punishment for the country's pro-European Union policies.

How is a nation of less than four million supposed to oppose the world's largest country? Consider this. Lithuanian guerrilla fighters held out for nine years against the Soviets after World War II, the longest in Eastern Europe. In a war of words, I'd give them a long time.

Dong

ALBANY, N.Y. - High schoolers can be cruel. They mock you for wearing a winter coat with a strip of fur around the hood, even though you're a Korean exchange student.

That's why Dong needed a new coat this evening. He wanted to stop the torment of his classmates, who are obsessed with tearing down anyone who might have a different sense of style.

His host father explained the situation. Short and stocky as his guest is tall and thin, the host spoke English with a clipped Brooklyn accent straight out of the Saturday Night Live "Two A-Holes" sketches.

"Dong needs a new coat. The kids at school. [Pause] Are making fun of him."

They started trying on new jackets, mostly the North Face ones that are standard attire in richer local high schools and most four-year colleges. He put on the Denali Fleece, a $165 coat that sells buckets year after year. Then he tried on a large down jacket which is sold by local sporting goods stores and "urban clothiers" appealing to the hip-hop crowd. The host father put Dong in a size Large, which rested on his small frame like a barrel on a naked man.I suggested a size Small might fit better. They protested, and we settled on a medium.

With Dong throwing on hunting vests, hooded sweatshirts and ski parkas with the North Face logo, I noticed that Dong cared about his dress. He wore torn and purposely faded jeans, a zip sweater with a popular Asian fashion line on the front a designer T-shirt underneath. He dressed like a typical Korean teenager.

We didn't have Dong's size in the jacket, so I put one on hold in another store. When I returned I found Dong & Host in party trick mode.

"Dong, show the man a Half-Asian person."

Dong used his hand to stretch out his left eyelid.

"He's such a joker! Now show him your karate moves."

Dong lowered his knees and bent his elbows upward at a 90 angle, like Bruce Lee. Never mind that karate is a Japanese art, and Dong probably studied a different one in Korea: this was a cultural exchange, and Dong must find a way to fit in America, just like everyone else.

Porte de Elephant

BOSTON - A circuitous weekend trip means I'm back in Boston for a few hours, and I decided to see some friends I missed last week. Wanting to maximize my time, and having temporarily "misplaced" my cell phone, I sent out a mass e-mail:

"Enormous Room, 9-9:15. The Enormous Room is in Central, next to the T stop, in the same building as the Central Kitchen. It's upstairs. Look for the door with the Elephant."

Boarding the T (subway) for the restaurant, I explained to my friend Jill that I couldn't be more specific in my directions. The Enormous Room has no sign.

"I'm going to be honest, Jon," she said. "This doesn't sound like the place I'm going to like."

Me either, but the Enormous Room is probably my favorite bar in Boston. Location is a key part. It's in Central Square, a neighborhood equidistant from Harvard and MIT, which guarantees an audience of hyper-smart graduate students and young professors. They don't want dirty, dank clubs, this crowd demands funky, moderately-priced spots. Central Square provides, with venues like Boston's best performing venue, the Middle East, and a bar with a chemistry/test tube scene.

The Room flirts with the tag of pretentious hipster den. When the Enormous Room opened two years ago, it served just one dish, the Enormous Platter, which consists of "many little tastes on an enormous plate ... choose either a Moroccan spiced beef skewer, harissa chicken skewer, or a herb rubbed salmon skewer and it will be served with a variety of north African style accompaniments such as couscous & baba ganoush & picked beets & pickled turmeric cauliflower & lamb briouats & potato date briouats & marinated feta & tabouli & mixed olives & kefir sauce & harissa, etc ... etc ... creative license is involved in the platters. most things, but not always everything will appear. trust us."

The menu now has six items, but the We-Don't-Give-A-Shit vibe is still in place. Our waitress, a young woman with thick, hay bale dreads, stops over with the regularly of the hour clock. When we first arrive near the end of the dinner crowd, she advises to sit a couple of stairs and watch out for a table. She didn't plan on helping us with tables. We, of course, did decide to come through the unmarked door.

Eventually a couple of men - chemists, perhaps - leave and we inherit their place. Seating is on one of several soft mats. Most people sit Indian-style (or as my sister informs me, it is now supposed to be called "pretzel-style") lie against the wall pillows. The low-lighting, Persian style wall murals and hints of insence encourage the kinds of meaningful conversations that old friends have after a time apart.

After a round of drinks, the bar's oddities - only bottled beer, a speaker placed right next to my head - become charms. At the end of the night, the crowd's won over. They will come through the unmarked door again.

The Woes of September

WICHITA, Kan. – My last month here in Kansas began with three unpleasant surprises, all related to the calendar and all happening on the first of the month (I was too distressed to write about them yesterday, hence this entry's appearance on the second).

I have my pleasures and vices here in Wichita, the main one being fountain drinks from QuikTrip. I might have been somewhat skeptical about the place several weeks ago, but I've grown to love it. I don't take coffee breaks from work, I take QuikTrip runs. There I grab some concoction made of soda, syrup and frozen drinks and bring it to the counter. Friday, around 11 a.m., I did just that.

"That will be 85 cents," the clerk said. I was confused. I go to QuikTrip a lot. My debit card account is three-quarters under a dollar purchases from QuikTrip. A 32 ounce soda costs 63 cents with tax. I looked over the price wall for confirmation. But there, I saw that the "59 cents" sticker had been removed from the 32 oz. sign. Instead a plain-looking 79 cents was revealed behind it.

The answers came back at the office: QuikTrip lowers the price of its 32 oz. drinks during the summer. And apparently Sept. 1 is the corporate-designated end of the summer.

I came home from work, looking to celebrate the end of a long week with a beer and some "Entourage." I turn on the television, only to find Channel 15 full of static. Channel 16, Cinemax, was also dead. Then I remembered a tiny strip of paper posted on my door a couple weeks ago: "We can no longer offer HBO service. Starting September 1, you will have to make outside arrangements for the channel." And come September 1, it was gone.

I went to the gym to cool off and get rid of some of those QuikTrip calories. After I returned, I finally opened that beer and decided to read a bit. Not in the mood for the latest Paul Theroux book, I cruised over to the Economist Web site. I love the Economist. It's international, serious, funny and a great read. It also costs more than $150 a year, so I can't afford the print edition. I access it through a proxy server at my old school. I enter in my PIN number, nine magic digits that were all-important for four years, and access is granted.

But there's a problem. "That PIN is invalid."

I guess Tufts believes September 1 is far enough after graduation to close the knowledge spicket. I eventually did manage to get on the Web site, but was not happy.

That was my first day in September. I certainly hope better things are coming for the rest of the month. After all, aren't months supposed to taketh and giveth in equal measure?

To all those "Foreign Friends" out there

WICHITA, Kansas - This is a story from the book of China.

As I have already written, last month in Pingyao a young girl of perhaps 18 approached me as I was trying to make my way from the train station to the old section of town. She was annoying, pursued me and wanted to practice her English, but couldn't really think of anything interesting to say. You might recall that I eventually escaped by hailing a golf cart and telling them the name of a hostel I remembered from a tourist brochure. Everyone lived happily ever, or at least I did.

That's the plot of the story, but I want to revisit today because of something that young woman said. After about 10 minutes of conversation, I asked why she was sitting at the train station, waiting for American gentlemen such as myself to disembark, instead of say sleeping or playing with her childhood companions. "Because I like to meet the foreign friends," she said.

It's a phrase she kept returning to during our 45 minutes together. "Here's where foreign friends like to eat," she said. Then she took me in the direction of a hotel, to which I asked why we were headed that way. Even in China it seemed a little early for "massage." She told me this hotel was very famous, because "it was the first hotel in the city where foreign friends were allowed to visit."



My god, yes I definitely wanted to stay at a place where foreigners were once locked inside, paying $150 for poor service and surly looks from security guards. I was there to see a Ming Dynasty wall, not a garish hotel built in 1974. I declined the chance to hang out in a historical hangout of foreign friends.

That phrase bugs me, more so than the ubquitious 老外. Foreign friends -- a direct translation of 外国朋友 -- carries with me a sense of an exotic resource. These are people from the more advanced world, from which we need to extract services in order to accelerate our growth as a nation. This might be governmental reform, remaking the banking industry, or in the case of Pingyao, learning English. What makes it so troubling is that it reduces the encounters between visitors and residents to just a simple commodity market.

Ma Dawei addressed this in his learned talk back in April. "Always make sure you know what each person wants to get out of a relationship," he said. The Chinese won't want to be friends with you for nothing, you need to offer them something in return.

Maybe I'm naive, but I think the relationships and friendships I'm slowly making here in Kansas are different. I don't think they're based solely on acquiring skills from one person or another. I hope that's true, because I'm not in the mood to be anyone's "foreign friend" right now.

Watch Out for the Language Police

BEIJING - Two white dudes can't help sticking out on the streets of China, but what happens when you're trying to remain undercover?

This was my predicament as I met with a friend from university for a quick dinner yesterday evening. He's not with the CIA or any undercover organization. The reason for our discretion was that being discovered by an even more sinister group: his fellow classmates. Steve is on a language program here, with a language pledge.

Language pledges are a special form of punishment. With these programs, you agree not to speak English for several months at a time. Not to your friends, not while you are at dinner. This particular program had just a couple exceptions: writing e-mails, calling home and reading the Internet. That's it: no English hour or getting trashed clause (this would not be a problem for me, as the amount of Chinese I speak is directly proportional to the amount of drinks I've had). Just a hell of a lot of Chinese.

I've been speaking a fair share of Chinese these past few days; I'd even wager the some days the amount of Chinese spoken has been nearly level with the amount of English, but there was no way that our only meeting in several months was going to be conducted entirely in Chinese.

But there can be serious consequences for breaking this pledge: you get thrown out of the program.Waiting outside the East Gate of Beijing Normal University, I practiced some stock phrases to greet my friend. He appeared, speaking Chinese at the speed of a cheetah (he's in a quite high level) and wandered into a back-alley roast meet restaurant.

When the conversation switched to English, I got to hear more about the program: it was really, really hard. There's hardly any time for socializing, no matter what language. The people here (many from Ivy League schools) are really serious about learning Chinese. By the end of this program, Steve should learn a lot of Chinese, and get really good at spotting white people from miles away.

Azn Studies

BOSTON - With the graduation clock looming, I've been struggling this week to complete four years of delayed paperwork in one week. This has included applying for honors, getting lunch tickets for commencement, removing classes that my transcript shows I have been enrolled in for two years and declaring a minor. Usually minors are declared along with majors in the spring of the sophomore year. I barely made the major deadline, and sure as hell wasn't pushing to apply for a minor, which is exactly the kind of thing you can let slide.

Besides, I figured I could just complete the necessary classes for minor and then receive it naturally. Kind of like those people who are awarded honorary degrees after they're dead, or maybe not. But I kept plugging away on Communications & Media Studies (our fake journalism program) at the steady clip of one per semester.

This fall, when it was actually time to declare a minor, I was in for a rude surprise. I didn't have the right classes for the communications minor. I needed two more, even though I'd taken several, because the ones I had taken were all from the same "cluster" of the minor. I balked, and decided that I really didn't need a minor in communications. After all, people say a minor is useless anyway.

So the next thing I did was start searching for another minor. Because while minors might be useless, it did seem just a little unnatural not to get one. It took a little bit of digging, considering there was only one semester to go, and I already had three classes to take to fulfill actual graduation requirements, but I found one: Asian Studies. I've taken a lot of Asian classes, both in language and just on the culture, so the requirements were already filled. I e-mailed an art history professor in charge of the program, which is interdisciplinary (a fancy way for saying that we can't afford to hire faculty).

Here is a paraphrase of what happened over eight or nine e-mails:

Me: "I want to minor in Asian Studies."
Her: "Great!"
Me: "Do I meet the requirements?"
Her: "Sure!"
Me: " What about the independent project?"
Her: "Just use your seminar paper from your Chinese politics class."
Me: "Great!"

It was set. This week, after completing that Chinese politics seminar, I printed out the paper, and went to have her sign it. The Art History building is right next to < Sophia Gordon Hall, which unfortunately won't be completed for another three months. That meant dodging cranes, bulldozers and six or seven people in hardhats to arrive at the department's office, housed in a 19th century brown house.

The secretary was not in. Neither was the secretary's student worker. The only person there was a pleasant professor, who must teach on Dadaism or the French Revival. I asked her where the Asian Studies adviser was, and she replied: "Well, she's in Japan. Until July."

Yikes.

A great plan ruined, all because of 10,000 miles and Japanese art. What followed was a little too painful to describe, but suffice to say it involved an impromptu thesis defense, hyper-printing, and more faxing on my part that any time since 1994. But I made it: when I graduate on Sunday, my diploma will say that I minored in Asian Studies.

Actually, diplomas don't list minors. Damn. Minors really are useless.

Meeting you, I am very happy.

BOSTON - I’ve seen the light, and his name is Ma Dawei.

Ma Dawei is a fictional character with whom my Chinese classmates and I have become intimately familiar the past few months. Today I met him, and it was one of the most fascinating lectures I’ve ever attended.

A little background: I’ve been studying Mandarin for nearly a year now. The textbook my school uses for the first two years of study is the “New Practical Chinese Reader” Beijing Language & Culture University. The text consists of grammar lessons, reading passages, character maps and cultural notes, but the most important part is the dialogues. Here a set of six reoccurring characters who live in China interact in increasing sophisticated ways.

Overall the dialogues are pretty good, but there are some necessary concessions in order to introduce vocabulary and grammar at the right pace. An example, from the lesson we’re studying this week:


Lu Yuping: Where is the kitchen?
Wang Xiaoyun: The kitchen is to the north of the living room. The bedroom is to the east of the living room. There is a big balcony at the outside of bedroom.
Ding Libo: Mr. Reporter, you have already asked so many questions. You must also want to write an article to introduce Ma Dawei’s rented house.
Lu Yuping: Asking questions is a reporter’s professional habit.

Over the course of the year, these six people have almost become fellow classmates. I wanted to know what happened when Lin Na lost her bike, or why Wang Xiaoyun didn’t like the Chinese opera performance, and not just because it was homework.

Imagine my surprise when our teacher informed us two weeks ago that Ma Dawei – one of the main characters from the text - would be coming to our university. As a special bonus, the usually quite stingy-on-the-grades Chinese department would be offering a half-point on our final grade for attending. I was there.

Ma Dawei is really Brian Connors (a cartoon representation is at the top of this entry, which bears no resemble to the actual person), a slightly stocky Irish-American 28-year-old from Michigan. He’s not ugly or goofy or any of the stereotypes that sometimes are attached to foreigners in Asia, but he wouldn’t stand out in a crowd, either. He’s just an ordinary American dude, an ordinary American dude who speaks really, really good Chinese.

How good is Ma Dawei’s Chinese? Until three weeks ago, the entire Chinese department thought his voice was dubbed on our textbook’s audio and video cassette tapes (that’s a bit of misnomer, because all our materials are now online). When informed otherwise, my teachers promptly invited him for a pep talk.

“Chinese people often tell me that I speak better Mandarin than they do,” he said. “And most of the time, it’s true.”

Connors’ standard Mandarin accent is top-notch. In a three minute introduction, Connors managed to get the jaws of the vast majority of the Chinese department on the floor by speaking so quickly and fluently.

He gave tons of advice. I haven’t spent too much time in Mainland China – just two months – but it was just long enough to realize that what he was saying was absolutely true. Avoid hanging out with Americans while on your language program. Even if you’re speaking Chinese, talking with the locals will be much better. He also said to expect your relationships with Chinese people to be almost exclusively business-based at the beginning.

“Understand what you are both bringing to the table,” he said.

I dealt with this last point in Hong Kong. It felt like the locals who wanted to hang out with me only wanted to use me as a fountain of knowledge about the English language. Sometimes in order to make long lasting friendships, at the beginning they might have to be based on the tools and skills that each person brings to the table. For Connors, that was playing music with a local band (which brought in extra cash for having a white person frontman) and valuable conversation experience for him. I’m not sure what the comparable skill would be for me, but I’m certainly going to be thinking hard about it in the months to come.

Ma Dawei is a China success story. He completed the challenging John Hopkins in Nanjing program and is now enrolled at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He co-owns a café in Beijing with an attached English instruction program called Sculpting in Time. He plans to return to China after graduation and run the café full-time. It’s a long way from his upbringing.

“I’m just an ordinary dude from Michigan who likes Phish,” Connors said.

Was it worth it? I’m entirely sure from his talk. There were undercurrents, although mostly unspoken, that he wasn’t completely satisfied with his life in China. It seemed be a question of not if he would come back to America, but when.

As for the café, I hope to gather a little first-hand experience this June when I’m in Beijing. Connors set the bar pretty high in his description, so I am expecting the best.

One more thought from Mr. Connors was notable. “Living is China is incredibly strange experience,” he said. “Everyday there was a crazy event that I could have written a short story about.”

Considering my own planned future, I certainly hope that’s true.


(The title of this post is an overly literal translation from one of the New Practical Chinese Reader’s beginning lessons. I believe it was uttered by or to Ma Dawei, but I’m not really sure. The Chinese is： 认识您，我很高兴)

Mengzi Mixup

BOSTON - The path to the East slams shut at the door to Miner Hall.

This is the lesson I've learned with my recent dealings with the Tufts Philosophy department. My time here is winding down, and that means I'm take care of my final degree requirements and assorted paperwork. This has meant in the past couple weeks I've been trying to get credits from courses I took in Hong Kong approved to count toward my diploma. This has in general been an easy process: complete a form online with the course name and a short description, and three or four days later, it shows up on your transcript.

I did receive one surprise. While in Hong Kong, I took several philosophy courses. Philosophy is not my major, but I'm interested in the subject and considered it as a field of study for a time. At Hong Kong University I was fortunate to take a class in the fall on Mencius (孟子), the famous Confucian scholar. He's often referred to as the "first Chinese philosopher" or the "founder of Chinese philosophy." Not according to Tufts philosophy Department: my petition for credit was denied.

This is a school that recently flew its president, Provost and Board of Overseers for a two week schmooze-fest around Mumbai and Delhi, and is constantly releasing press releases with quotes emphasizing that Tufts is trying "“advance its international mission,"” and be at the forefront global citizenship and leadership. (You can reach more about that trip here: http://www.tuftsobserver.org/news/20051209/tufts_in_incredible_india.html)

Tufts is supposed to be a bastion of liberal thought and diversity. There is a mandatory world civilization requirement, and all students are required to take six classes on foreign language and culture. We have dozens of Asian groups -- even a Gamelan Ensemble. But too often, these initiatives aren't evenly distributed around the university. The more activists push for superfluous actions like an Asian-American Studies major and censuring Google for its operation in China, the more suspicious the rest of the university the becomes. The result is unfortunate: "traditional disciplines" retreat into their own fiefdoms.

I mentioned this to my adviser -- who is a professor specializing in Chinese politics in the Political Science Department -- and she didn't seem surprised. "They should really call it the Department of Western philosophy," she said.

I don't disagree.