Go A Roving

The Beat Goes On

Over coffee at Salt Lake Roasting Company, my friend Bo expressed to me that I should carry on my blog because it’s funny and awesome. So here goes…

What to write about for my first non-travelling blog? Clearly, something that is always close to my heart, either religion or sports bras. I’m gonna go with religion this round.

So anyone who has poorly chosen Salt Lake Roasting Company as their traditional first coffee date knows that this coffee shop has many faults—the plethora of maps not being one of them. If you have a problem with maps, click out of my Tumblr now; for this is a sacred space where maps are praised and valued.

No, SLRoco’s faults include only having uncomfortable, boxy wooden chairs, only warm water coming out of their water fountain, and only shitty music coming from the speakers. At this very moment, I am listening to a harp and being forced to relive the time I went to a quite lengthy Episcopalian wedding as a child.

If coffee shops are like queer churches, then Roco is Westboro Baptist of the great state of Kansas. Side note: Kansas is also the same state that received “Beecher’s Bibles” aka rifles from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother. A history of violence and religion from the beginning.

But back to present day, there are people with Bibles aplenty here. Gold tabs on the sides of thin, wispy pages—I’d recognize those anywhere. Overhearing key words like faith, grace, love, the cleansing power of the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ—sounds devout. I’ve heard Jesus pep talks in other languages, Chinese once. Worse than the Bible study groups though is the music.

Christian contemporary music.

Take a moment to imagine the horridness. And for those not familiar with this genre of music, there are indeed songs worse than “I Can Only Imagine”. Hard to believe, I know, but true. So some may come to this coffee shop and not take notice of what is playing, thinking to themselves this is just really bad pop music, perhaps a collection of songs that never reached the radio.

For these people who do not have the energy or patience to pay attention to the lyrics—lyrics that could be written by a slightly creative nine-year-old who is given a prompt to write about something positive and to include as many synonyms for and allusions to heaven as possible—the key to detecting Christian contemporary music is in the drums. If Rock Band ever produces a training edition for the drums (face it, they are the toughest part), they should use only Christian contemporary music.

Drums in Christian contemporary are repetitive and monotonous. They are reflective of sermons, using only one snare to grab the congregation’s, I mean, audience’s attention.

But sometimes, the coffee shop gives you a break, spices it up with some worldly goodness. Oh yeah, can I hear three cheers for Natalie Merchant “Kind and Generous”? I’m pretty sure they are playing this song because the lyrics include fruits of the spirit. (See Galatians 5:22)

So yeah, if on a sunny afternoon or a rainy day, you find yourself missing Jesus camp, WWJD bracelets, the wisdom of the proverbs or the beauty of the psalms, the feeling of a skirt hovering over your ankles, come to SLRoco. It’ll uplift your spirit and remind you that Ke$ha is not the worse “singer” out there.

Soon and Very Soon

Flight 1139 from Portland, Oregon. Leaving Portland at 6:10P and arriving in Salt Lake at 8:59P. Ah, excitement building. That or the effects of the two cups of coffee I recently drank. 

I hope someone is catching all of these hymn references in my blog. I just can’t get away from that Baptist upbringing.

Bittersweet

I am so excited to come home. Once I see my queers standing near the luggage area, I have plans to run down the escalator. It will be a glorious moment. Like the quality of “Love, Actually”. There will be tears and the sound of The Beach Boys will flow from the airport speakers. Then, we will commence into one large group hug.

Of course, once I am safely settled in America, I’ll be missing the sounds and smells and people of China. Just can’t get no satisfaction. No matter where I am, I’ll be one discontented B.

In China, I want Italian pasta. In America, I’ll want shaobing. In China, I want one non-humid day. In America, I’m pretty sure I’ll still want non-humid days. Ok, so that was a bad example. In China, I want to watch 30Rock. In America, I’ll want to watch overly dramatic Chinese shows and dating shows. In China, I want to hear the Carpenter’s. Though there is Mr. Zhou’s Live Show, his sound is not the same. His version of “Love Me Tender” was a bit strange. Once back in America, I’ll miss the sound of the pipa and the sound of Chinese pop songs when someone’s cell phone rings.

I wish I’d either win the lottery, China and Canada swapped spots on the globe, or that plane tickets were buy one get one free.

Alas, you can’t always get what you want.

On long trips, I like to imagine that I am competing in The Amazing Race. I’m so cool like that. Perhaps, see you at the next pit stop, Portland, or the pit stop after that pit stop, Salt Lake City.

The Fatted Calf

So in my bout of depression, between the sweating a pail of water a day and eating one meal a day, I lost some weight. When I arrived in Tianjin train station, my professor, Dong Fang, immediately noticed that I looked a little thinner. I swear she then whispered to her mom to fatten me up during my stay in their home.

The food begins in the morning. A plum, egg custard, milk tea. Then ice cream. Then a type of Chinese melon. Then tea. Then rice and veggies for lunch. Then more fruit, a cucumber. Then jiaozi. Then more fruit, some ice cream. I try to say no. Have you ever tried to say no to a Chinese mother? It’s tough. She is persistent.

I’m pretty sure I ate more food today than I have in the last four days.

And here I am eating some of the jiaozi I made with Dong Fang and her mom. My jiaozi aren’t as beautiful as Dong Fang’s mother, but at least, my dumplings did not fall apart once boiled. Small steps, small steps. In America, I’ll work on my technique. Over time, they’ll become more beautiful. Let’s have a dumpling making party!

Anonymous asked: Hey Ashley, it's me, Natalie. Wow, that was a beautiful piece you wrote about the massacre. I'll never be able to wrap my mind around how low our species can stoop. What was the Japanese army's reasoning?

Just as with World War II in the West (Germany on the Russian front), war in the East was total war. British bombs, American bombs, German bombs, Japanese bombs, they all were used to kill citizens. Also, at the time, Nanjing was the capital of the Republic of China. Japan wanted to make an example, show the other cities below the Yangtze what would happen if they did not surrender. The Japanese army had given the city of Nanjing an ultimatum, surrender peacefully or face what the army had planned. The massacre is what they had planned, and when those who led the massacre returned to Japan, some were awarded the highest medals of honor.

For Chinese men and young boys, any sign that you may be associated with the Chinese army meant certain death. Were you aiding the army? Was a farmer wearing an old army shirt that he had had found? All must be executed. One survivor told of how his forehead looked as if it had a helmet marking, so Japanese soldiers took him to a mass pit with others and set them all on fire. Luckily, he had fallen into the pit first, escaped being lit on fire, and eventually crawled out into the woods to hide.

As for the women, rape was a form of humiliation to Chinese men, a way to show how dominant the Japanese army was. Chinese men had no way to protect their women and daughters. Sometimes, they were forced to watch as their wives or daughters were raped. Possibly, even their grandmother. Blunt objects were used as well. There is a picture of a woman dead with a pipe thrust between her legs.

These women were trophies. Before raping women, some soldiers would force them to dress up and take pictures with them. Perhaps, make them pose together. These pictures were later used as evidence in the Nanjing War Crimes Trial and now are included in the memorial’s exhibit.   

Do not think this is a circumstance exclusive to Nanjing. Similar horrors happened to the citizens of Shanghai, Wuxi, Suzhou, Zhanjiang, etc. The Japanese razed and raped wherever they went, in whichever cities that did not surrender peacefully. Also, Japan had conquered Korea much earlier and created comfort houses, essentially forced prostitution. They might tell a Korean family that there are factories in Western Korea near Manchukuo (Manchuria), and that if they send their daughter to work in this factory, she could help support the family by sending her salary each month. These factories happened to be close the army’s headquarters. These young girls were kept in sheds, and outside, soldiers lined up, rows of men waiting to rape.

As well, this behavior of the Japanese army predated Nanjing. During the Boxer Rebellion, soldiers photographed themselves beheading Boxer rebels, who often were only Chinese peasants assumed to be rebels. This time, the allied forces of America, England, France, Germany, Italy were there to witness it. There are pictures of Japanese beheading rebels with Western soldiers as an audience. They watched from afar and by not speaking against it condoned this behavior.

The holocaust of Nanjing is so sickening and sad. To this day, the Japanese government has not issued an official apology to the city of Nanjing. Though, some single soldiers have regretted their behavior, apologized for their actions, and donated their journals and pictures to the memorial for those murdered, and families of soldiers have donated to the memorial. Throughout the memorial, the message of unforgettable but forgivable is given.

For me, one unforgettable part are the quotes on the statues. One that I will always remember, “only to die to wash the filth away.” For so many survivors of rape or comfort houses, the shame was so great that they did kill themselves or that to their families they were dead. How could one tell their family what had happened? It was too filthy, too shameful, too terrible to retell. Even, Iris Chang, the author of Rape of Nanking, years later committed suicide. Her grandmother had suffered Nanking, and through her research, she had relived it. In the end, she too died to wash the filth away. After surviving such a horrific experience, some still killed themselves rather than live with the shame and the memories.

If You Think You’re Bulletproof

You’re not.

Sorry Jenny Lewis. I had to change those lyrics.

So far, my time in China has been wonderful. Sure, there was a quick moment when I missed queer people. But overall, not too homesick.

These last few days have been rough. Besides Kai Jie from Taiwan, whom I met in Suzhou, also with whom I tried to speak mostly in Chinese, I haven’t had a conversation in English with anyone. That was Sunday afternoon.  It is now Tuesday night. I know that seems like a short time. You’re probably thinking buck-up Ashley, be strong, be tough. Stop being such a wimpo. Listen guys and gals, not having one conversation in your native tongue for more than 48 hours is damn lonely. So damn lonely.

Sure, I’m surrounded by people. I’m in China. All the time, I am surrounded by people. And yes, I can have a conversation with people. But I’ve only studied Chinese for one year. My conversation will only go so far, and it will move at the slowest pace.

This last week of travelling, my introverted-self and my extroverted-self have been fighting. Normally, I would be extroverted, chat with strangers, jump into the linguistic unknown. But now, my introverted-self is kicking the shit out of my extroverted-self. In short, I’m giving up. I am a turtle reverting into its shell. The I in my INTJ is beginning to shine.

Also, I’ve sort of stopped eating. Buying food requires talking to someone, and I don’t feel like moving my mouth. I just want to become invisible. So I eat approximately one meal per day. Damn, this sounds super emo.  I expect to be thoroughly mocked in person once I return to Salt Lake.

Prior to this evening, I had been withstanding the turtle-syndrome. Barely withstanding but still withstanding. And then my iPod was stolen or shall we say found but not returned to the hostel front desk.

The time I’ve been in China I haven’t really used my iPod. It’s been background noise for doing homework. That’s about it. These last two weeks though, travelling alone, my iPod has been my best friend. Wow, that sounds so hetero. See what I just did there? In a place where some might say “that’s so gay”, I placed “hetero”. I’m depressed yet still clever.

So yeah, I’m ready to come home, and for now, Tianjin can be home. I know the streets better, understand the dialect better, and have one friend, my professor, waiting for me. Being alone in spurts is nice but long periods of solitude wears on you.

It sucks.

For my 26 hour journey back to America on Saturday, suppose there will be a lot of sleeping and daydreaming. A whole lot. I was planning on listening to Bossy Pants again, but looks like there is a 100% chance that won’t be happening. Sorry, Tina Fey, I was really looking forward to spending time with you and your crotch biscuits.

Oooh, anyone have an old iPod you’d want to sell me?

和平

In my tiny Christian school, they didn’t really talk about China a lot. Wasn’t a country to be covered in my history books. Let’s be honest, prior to the opening of China to western countries again, China wasn’t really in any history books. Maybe kids knew about Nixon playing pingpong and The Great Wall, but that was about it. After telling people what I am studying in graduate school, sometimes people ask, “Why, China?” I get this question a lot. Three years ago when I studied in Qingdao, my family asked, “Why, China?”

My senior year of high school, I read Rape of Nanking. Iris Chang wrote about the Nanking Massacre of 1937-1938, a time when Japan razed and raped the then capital of the Republic of China. Prior to her book, there were plenty of books about the Nazi holocaust but none about the holocaust of Nanjing. Six weeks, 300,000 Chinese killed. 20,000 women, old and young, raped, most often gang raped. Somehow, I had never heard of it.  After reading Rape of Nanking, I began to recognize how euro-centric our history is. My high school mind wondered—what else had my teachers not told me about?

I decided to come to the city of Nanjing because I wanted to come to the place, for me, that started this interest in China. Today, I went to the memorial. The memorial included an exhibit, two levels of artifacts, pictures, newspaper clippings, journals, weapons, clay figures reenacting scenes of slaughter in homes. The historical evidence was astounding. So much proof. Journals of Japanese soldiers and foreign doctors and nurses. Recordings of survivors retelling their experience, their endurance. So much footage of this massacre. Pictures taken by Japanese soldiers.  Pictures of pregnant women, raped and killed, their insides strewn open. Pictures of men’s faces burnt my kerosene. A decapitated man’s head stuck in between barbed wire, half of a cigarette butt shoved in his mouth. A Japanese joke.

One Japanese soldier’s journal wrote that because Japan viewed their invasion of China as an unofficial incident the rules of war did not apply, prisoner of war treatment, protection of civilians did not apply. This was not a war crime. They were simply “mopping up”. So many ways soldiers executed the citizens of Nanjing. Chinese men were roped in bundles of one hundred people and set on fire. They were buried alive. Thrown into the Yangtze River with their hands tied. Some dug pits with their hands or with a shovel, finished, turned around, and faced a machine gun. Women and children shot or stabbed. One woman survived three stabbings to the back of her neck. Soldiers were trying to behead her but became tired and quit the job, leaving her to bleed on the floor.

One section of the Japanese army decided to have a contest—which soldier could kill one hundred people first. The saber tournament began; however, they could not figure out which soldier had won. They had reached one hundred people so quickly. The lieutenant in charge decided to create another contest, this time to one hundred and fifty. These contests were published in Japanese newspapers, pictures of soldiers preparing to decapitate Chinese men included. Some of the soldiers were proud of their feats, of how fast they could slice off a head, of how precise their swing could be.

There was one room with all of the names of the victims engraved into the wall.  300, 000 names. In another room, every twelve seconds, you heard a drop of water. In six weeks, Japanese soldiers killed 300,000 Chinese. One man, woman, or child dead every twelve seconds.

When I left the exhibit, I walked toward another building, followed the stairs below. I was underground. Here, I saw skeletons of those killed, a mass grave. Outside the city walls, the Japanese forced men, women, and children to march. Bundled them into groups, aimed their machine guns, and tugged the trigger. The bodies fell back to where they were today. I could see some of the bullet holes in the bones. I could distinguish the men from the children.

From the artifacts exhibit to the graves, I had been talking with an elderly man from Jiangsu Province. We walked together from the graves to the next room, a room lit with tiny lights all over. On the wall was a poem about the fragility of life, about forgiveness and peace. As we stood before the poem, reading it, he in Chinese, me in English; he held my hand.

In China, there is never a moment of silence. Always car horns honking, the sound of construction, of occasional fireworks, of people talking. Today, I heard silence. I saw tears as a woman read the captions and listened to the survivor’s stories. I held hands with a stranger as we both absorbed the sickening images and saddening history we saw today.

We walked out into the sunlight, to a small park outside the exhibit. There were women sitting on coolers selling cold drinks. There was a statue and inscribed on the pedestal 和平. I took a picture. I said goodbye to the man, and then we went our separate ways. He with his daughter and granddaughter, and I alone.