Xiongmao

So my hit in the face resulted in a couple of small black eyes (Xiongmao is Chinese for "panda." I am half xiongmao right now.) and a sprained wrist that has 1/3 of my hand a gross purple color, I still can't type very well so I'll briefly tell you about my friend, Pierce.

Pierce is a Chinese-American from Ohio. His family came from Taiwan to the U.S. and he speaks fluent Chinese. His Peace Corps time is a return to his roots of sorts, and he has family near Shanghai, on the east coast He has invited me to his village early next year and I look forward to going. Here is some writing from him about his trip to his home village over the October break for his great-uncle's 90th birthday, and some of his family history. If you want to get a window into what "real" China is, it is an amazing read:

(A warning to younger readers: Pierce uses some colorful language. In the interest of literary integrity I have left most of it in. I hope you are mature enough to enjoy it! I unfortunately had to edit some parts of his letter. I hate having to do it but cultural sensitivity is very important and I don't want to cause an incident.)

the house is at the back end of a small village with a nice but filthy pond on one side and glistening rice fields on the other. really a beautiful place. the house itself is a concrete stalinist monolith but makes up for its sheer ugliness by being surround by nice weather, nice air, and general a nice atmosphere. once over the initial suprise of me being there (they didnt know i was coming), everything 'settled' down into more or less a controlled whirlwind. my great uncle's birthday celebration involved a two day affair. the first night only family was invited and numbers were kept at a manageable 6 tables (or 60 people). dinner was served and i sat with relatives in my age bracket, mostly 25-28 yr olds. and i got to watch and laugh as they all got drunk off not-that-much beer. conversation was interesting though, the younger generation in china has a much much different view of the world and of history than the older generations. it will be an exciting time when these kids come into power. i was also treated to my uncle's drunken attempts to relive the glory of his younger days. now well over 50, he got PISS drunk off of BaiJiu (literally translated as white licqour, a potent ass chinese spirit) put his arm around me and preceded to give me a run down on an inter-village basketball game he played when he was in his 20's. i mean, he was animated, making dribbling motions, reliving the game like a chinese marv albert on ESPN classics. everywhere the world is the same. you put his ass in texas and he wouldve been telling me about the state chamionships they lost at the last minute cause Boobie Miles got hurt.

the next day was where the real fun began though. they woke my ass up at the crack of dawn cause thats what country ppl do all around the world and served me these gellatinous balls with some weird vegetable wrapped in the middle. definetly not the best breakfast i've ever had. after breakfast a marching band/dancing troupe came in setting off fireworks, banging gongs and generally creating a defeaning ruckus. these old ass ladies dressed in pink with flowers in their hair pranced around like little girls, singing off key and concluded their fine performance by straping paper mache horses to their torsos and doing a horribly unsynchronized dance. the best part was the conductor who was dressed in a mismatched suit in the heat, waving a baton around like he was fighting off barbarian hordes with the most serious expression on his face i'd ever seen. everyone else is laughing and having a good time and youd think he was coordinating both open heart surgery and having planes land at the same time.

lunch brought even more people, this time 12 tables or 120 people though it was more relaxed than the previous night. no drinking, and eating noodles. its a tradition in china to eat noodles on someone's birthday, the long strands representing a continued long life. so when eating you cant bite them in half, gotta grab a mouthful and slurp em all down. made for some serious (and loud) slurping action.

dinner was the real fun. the cooking crew that had done both lunch and dinner previously suddenly trippled in size and so did the number of guests. 30 tables, and 300 people packed this small village house, spilling onto the crop-laying patio, along the tiny road and into 3 neighbors' houses. the liquor was pouring and general chaos reigned supreme. it was a hell of alot of fun though. everyone was pouring shots for each other, handing cigarettes around, children were screaming and women were bitching at their husbands to drink less. not much more you can ask for in a banquet. i was a designated helper, and was allowed to serve cake (which was cut into huge slices and placed on each table in the middle and eaten with chopsticks chinese style which humored me to no end). so i went around dropping cake off and drinking a shot with the men at each table when i got there. and once people figured out i was from america they all started shouting the same questions at me and trying desperately to fanagle a way for me to sit at their table. really makes you feel special when that happens.

i'll now give you a run down of the important movers and shakers. my grandfather's brother is 90 and sharp as a tack. he cant hear shit anymore and is missing most of his teeth but he is on top of everything. he usually totters around the house like a penguin generally doing whatever he wants to do because he is old as hell. his favorite pastime seems to be cornering me, speaking to me in a dialect i dont understand, not being able to hear my responses, and then slapping me on the back as hard as he possibly can. and he was the one that spotted my tattoos peeping out from under my shirt cuffs. despite what i had thought, he found them hilarious and amazing at the same time. kept trying to rub em off and laughing in glee when they wouldnt. i can only hope that at 90 i'll have the energy to giggle like that.

the next day after the festivities we visited the small graveyard nestled behind the fields. my grandfather, my mother, my aunt and my uncle (it was the first time my uncle, aunt and mother had been back to the village) all went along with some relatives from the village. the graveyard itself is a small family plot located on a tiny bump of a hill about a half mile behind the house where my great grandfather is buried. my grandfather told stories, both on the way to the graves and at the tombstones, and they got to be plenty intense.

i'll give you all a quick run down, now writing this is for me as much as for any of you, so if you stop reading here i wont take it personal. my grandfather grew up very very poor. i saw the house where he was born and he lived till he was 14. relatives lived on the bottom floor, he and his parents and 4 other siblings lived on the second floor all 7 of them in two bedrooms. the house was built in the traditional style of the times, gray mud baked bricks and traditional shingles that still reflect sunlight (those that are left). he was the second oldest, and the favorite of his mother. in fact she liked him so much that she refused to allow a distant relative living next door to adopt him (they had a son a month younger that died when he was 2) despite the fact that the family couldnt feed them all. when he told me stories of when he was young, scooping the last kernels of rice from the bottoms of buckets and going next door to secretly beg for more food. his parents were proud people, and never tolerated that though it was probably the only way they stayed alive.

my great grandfather was an educated man by village standards though not educated enough to make a living of it. as a result he never worked and instead studied in the vain attempts to become an provincial official. it never happened, he died broke. my grandfather spoke of that time fondly though. the village was tight knit and they made it through.

when the japanese invaded everything changed. my father left at the age of 14 to join the army and fled with the nationalists when the japanese took nanjing and the rest of jiangsu. he will not talk about what happened to relatives from nanjing or the village, though its safe to assume the absolute worst. they never speak of it there. the most hes ever said was that they were "bullied", and told me the story of his uncle, who had amassed a small fortune, that was forced by the japanese to hang himself. the money, consisting mostly of gold, silver, and jade jewelery was never found and most likely disappeared into the hands of japanese officers.

when the civil war erupted loyalties became split. the communists liberated the area and most of my relatives supported them. my grandfather however had risen in rank in the nationalist army and continued to fight. when the nationalists were defeated he fled along with the remainder of the army to taiwan. his family stayed. and endured. my great grandmother died of starvation in her sister's arms during the Great Leap Famine. she had grown to hate my great grandfather was thus buried on an opposite hill from the family plot.

my grandfather being in taiwan caused a world of trouble for his family. they endured 'criticisms' and interrogations everytime a letter came from him. and for nearly 40 years he was not allowed to return. he sent as much money as he could get through, and as many letters as possible though it is tough to say what got to the village and what didnt. (Sentence removed by me.) its hard for me to imagine that feelings at the time. i think that there was a real sense that the family was split and that was it. my uncle from the village broke down in tears at his grandfather's grave, talking about how the rest of the family had come home, and how my uncle from taiwan had come to see him.

my grandfather's youngest brother fought with the communists and eventually became a member of the military intelligence division. coincidentally my grandfather had a nearly identical post with the nationalists. they somehow both got posted in hong kong playing spy games and were able to meet just one time on a railroad platform. it was the last time my grandfather saw him and he died a few years later.

with china's opening in 1989 my grandfather was finally allowed to visit, and the situation has become easier in recent years. there is talk of finally opening direct flights from taipei for good, instead of forcing flights to reroute through Macau or Hong Kong.

theres far more stories from both sides of my family that are hilarious and absolutely horrible all at the same time.

So that's it. Quite a story if you get through it. His family's story is intertwined with very important parts of Chinese (and therefore world) history.

Pic 1: A fuzzy picture of Pierce at our swearing in ceremony.

Pic 2: Pierce, me (with my bum hand), and Wondering (an English student) at the "Pink Party" we attended in Lanzhou. To get in you had to wear something pink. I wore a pink sash around my waist and pink socks. I put my sash on my head and we were all being ninjas together. I look more like a bad-80's-movie ninja.