What Goes Around

A rundown of just the last two days.

As previously mentioned, I led a large group of Chinese university students in dancing the Electric Slide and the Funky Chicken. This was all part of a large dance party put on by the International Students' Association. Chinese university dance parties are more similar to a middle school dance in the States than anything put on by, let's say, ASU, except they are even more formal. There were MC's. They had a planned set list of dances to do. Lastly, and certainly the most disconcerting, even the tall, good-looking basketball players everyone oohed and awwed over couldn't do one single dance correctly. I believe that since Chinese students spend their teenage years in a constant panic over their "gao kao" (college entrance exams), they don't get a lot of chances to just let loose. Actually, I don't know if letting loose is something one must learn--seems contradictory--but, at least in the U.S., even a planned activity has an air of spontaneity. Compare, for example, the way a set of moves is learned at a typical school dance in the States. Someone saw it on TV, learned it from someone else, or came up with it on the spot. As they dance, others watch and follow. They then begin to react to one another. I don't know how many times I explained that the Electric Slide is a line dance. It's the same set of actions over and over. "Just watch and learn," I said. "But how do you do it?" they continued to ask, the looks on their faces exuding something akin to panic. In the end, however, it was them who had the last laugh. As I danced the Electric Slide, I observed everyone behind me stumbling over each other, more interested in watching that getting the moves down. #Disappointed. But afterwards, they told me the dances made everyone very "high." So I guess that means success in China.

I hit a Chinese man. In public. To be fair, the young twenty-something nearly knocked me out of my seat. He was drunk. His friend was drunker and sitting behind me. "Come on, let's go!" he shouted, along with another friend. He began to pull the man out of his chair. One strong tug and the chair behind me slammed into mine, pushing me forward onto the table. Without saying a word, I gasped and slapped the drunk man's back. As if not realizing anyone was there, he looked down only to find me giving him the stink eye. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" he said in impertinent English. I looked away. After getting his friend up, they walked past me towards the door. With one more look back, the man said, "This is China!"

Today, while walking to a foreign goods grocery store, I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to reply to a text. I don't know why I did this, as it is a pet peeve of mine, and something I constantly complain about in China. Actually, I wasn't right in the middle. I was next to the curb, giving those on my left plenty of room to pass. At one point, an elderly woman walks suspiciously close to my left elbow. I then feel something short on my right. Looking down, I realize the grandma is trying to catch her granddaughter's hand. The pig-tailed girl pauses in her walk, looks up at me (with the same look I gave the young man, I might add), and forcefully nudges me off the curb she's been trying to balance on. She and her grandma pass. I watch the girl get back on her curb, her hand back in grandma's. I guess what goes around comes around.

Remind Me: Why Am I Here?

Traveling creates memories. Think of your camera sitting in a drawer or on a shelf. The last time you probably used it was on vacation, when its memory card was filled with hundreds of photos. These memories are the spice to our everyday lives. These mental souvenirs are the excuses we use to break out of our everyday routine in the first place. We do this so that when day runs into day, and monotony threatens our imagination, we can look at those photos with a travel buddy and recall those experiences we definitely wouldn't have had at home.

What happens, though, when you live in the postcard? Of course, it's never as ideal as that, but it's definitely what people think of your living abroad, and let's face it, what you'd like your overseas life to be like, too. But hey, life is life, and monotonous routine inevitably settles in like a snotty-nosed neighbor kid who insists on following you around. That's when you start to forget your memory. The vacation period is over and you find yourself living in a sub-zero, eight-month winter eating rice and/or noodles every day. There are some days that you'd just rather forget about, to say the least.

The thing is that along with my day-to-day memory slipping away, I can also feel the asphalt of my long-term memory cracking under the pressure of all the memories it's been creating over my years of living abroad. So many of the people I've made those fantastic memories with aren't around to remind me of the fun we had and the amazing things we did. This also means that they're not around to make some new memories that would serve to add texture to the original few. Furthermore, those people who are around now will all leave at some point. At the moment, I feel rather like a rug that hasn't been and won't be properly tied. A lot of loose ends are starting to make the whole thing unravel and this concerns me. I see myself not learning from mistakes. I notice I talk a lot and yet do not always keep my word (often because I forgot what I had said!). It seems that I've become so used to existing in the moment that I've forgotten how to purposefully plan for the next phase using what knowledge I've gained from the past. This can't have good consequences. I can't help but wonder, "Has it been a mistake to live abroad alone this whole time?" 

So what can remedy my memory-loss situation? Even as I'm writing this, the sun is coming up over the buildings outside my window. Another day is beginning in Changchun and I'm struggling to remember what I did in the previous twenty-four hours. Didn't I just wake up? Yet, in another twelve hours, with hopefully some sleep in between, I will be teaching American line dances to Chinese undergraduates and today will feel like a vintage postcard. I can only hope someone wrote me some advice on the back before they posted it my way.

The Priesthood in Chinese Terms

I have a friend who is not a member of the same church as me, but is the most spiritual being I've ever been in close contact with. He is a tall, sturdy, basketball playing, one-eighth Native American black man from Suriname. He speaks English with heavily rolled Dutch "r's." One might often find him lying on his bed in Lying Buddha Pose meditating to South African gospel tunes. In reference to his own spirit's abilities, he often holds up his writing hand as one would hold up a piece of chalk. "These days we're learning how to use the wand of creativity," he'll say with a crafty look on his face. "Someday we'll be able to control it even without hands!"

In regards to this friend, I've seen his faith at work in his life, those around us, as well as in my own. He is a defender of the weak. His hope and belief in the power of love is unshakable. The authority of the priesthood is not with him, I suppose, but these qualities that make him so amazing is surely the stuff that priesthood power is made of. Speaking of the priesthood, I wanted to know how to say it in Chinese. More specifically, I wanted to know the characters and their inherent meaning.

The first word I came across is 神职 shen2 zhi2. Shen is the word for god, deity, the supernatural, and spirit. It's used in many other words such as 神经 (nerve, as in the body) or 精神 (vigor). Zhi, on the other hand, means duty or post. I like this very literal translation: spirit post. Another way to say priesthood in Chinese is to say 祭司职 ji4 si1 zhi2. This is where my friend comes in. Ji means to offer a sacrifice or to wield, as in "wield a wand." Si means to take charge of something or to manage. I read that to mean that the priesthood, then, is to take charge of the offering of sacrifices. At the very least, I believe, it means to manage the way one gives oneself to God with all the sacrifices that would entail. 

I'd like to go back to the character 神 shen. The word 精神 has two pronunciations and two meanings. In the first, 神 is the fifth or neutral tone as in the original word I mentioned--vigor. In the second word 神 is pronounced with its original second tone. This changes the word to mean spirit, mind, or consciousness. Interestingly enough, the character 精 jing1 in this word also has many meanings, one of which is "essence," and is used in the word 精子 jing1 zi3, meaning sperm. Without getting too graphic, after conception the 子 then lives in the 子宫 zi3 gong1, or the uterus. Looking at the character 宫, one might think it looks like the imperial palace in the Forbidden City (or 故宫 gu4 gong1) and you'd be right. It simultaneously refers to both the imperial palace and a heavenly palace, or a place in which supernatural beings dwell. 

Let's retrace our steps. We started with 神职 shen zhi, or priesthood, also taking care to point out its creative abilities with its synonym 祭司职 ji si zhi. From there we learn that 精神 jing shen, 精子 jing zi, and 子宫 zi gong are all interrelated in the process of creating life. In English, the words feel like distinctly separate entities, but as we can see from the Chinese characters, our spiritual and natural inheritance is all connected to each person's ability to channel one's own divine nature. When one uses the forces behind all these words to take charge of one's supernatural destiny it's magic. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.