returning "home"

went back today to visit my grandparents in Sunning, a township within the metropolitan control of xuzhou, my hometown. my dad grew up in the area around Sunning and, today, due to an odd detour, we ended up visiting the middle school where his parents (my grandparents) used to work and where he used to live.

it's been thirty-odd years since he's lived there, and, according to him, they haven't upgraded the facilities much in the interim. the buildings are one-level, concrete, with peeling yellow paint. the insides of the rooms are dark, owing to the small-ish windows. students huddle in unheated rooms in rows of seats (even on a Sunday), with seemingly stacks of papers on their desks. and his old home was in the back of the school courtyard. it's two rooms, in the same concrete style.

how far we've come, in these three decades.

fashion in china

went shopping a few days ago for clothing in china, a whole new wardrobe, actually, given that i had to leave most my clothes back in the states.

i find fascinating how brand obsessed people in china are. maybe it's an universal thing, but the chinese have certainly taken it to an extreme, or perhaps just its logical conclusion.

for one, almost nothing that you can buy will lack for a brand prominently displayed somewhere on the article. this was most noticable w/ dress shoes: i was trying to find a simple pair of black shoes, but every shoe had a small metallic logo with its maker on it. it didn't matter if the maker was some obscure brand out of guangzhou; they had to stick their brand prominently on the shoe itself. sweaters it was a bit easier to find non-branded ones, but in general, everything had one.

which then brings in the second part of the equation: how obsessed the fashion-makers seem to be with american and european brands. polo and lacoste seem to be the most prominent. rather than be content with letting those brands be, the chinese companies have generated countless imitation brands. i can't even count now how many different variations of lacoste's crocodile i've seen in my time here. and ironically, in comparing the prices, some of the imitators have become just as expensive as actual lacoste clothing.

in one particularly amusing moment last year, i went to stand in the mall that sold "Boss Wenbro" (or something like that). and when i asked if they were related to "Hugo Boss", the clerk proudly replied, "oh, that's the German Boss, we're the Italian Boss." If only the Italians knew they had their own "Boss" brand.

i wonder how long it will be before chinese fashion stops trying to parrot american brands, and start developing indigenous luxury brands. the worksmanship is there: after all, the american companies produce here too. the designs? that will take a while longer, but even there, chinese designers are starting to make their headway in the high fashion market. so how long until chinese mass fashion and consumers stop looking for the crocodile.

-----

as an addendum, i did end up buying yesterday a suit by a chinese brand. maybe it's not as simple as i made it out to be.

an all-american story

15 hour flight from new york to shanghai. Sat next to a Mr. Chen. He was flying back to Fuzhou to visit his family for the first time in ten years. Ten years. A decade.

Why did he wait so long? Because he finally got a green card.

After a bit more prompting, he reveals more of his story. He came to the states ten years ago illegally. He went through a service that flew him around several destinations in the world: Singapore, Amsterdam, etc. That globe trotting established a record on his passport that made it more credible to U.S. immigration officials that he was a mere tourist. The cover succeeded; he entered the U.S. on a tourist visa and has never left, until today.

He first went to Chinatown, where he briefly stayed before finding a job with a hometown acquaintance. Off he goes to Albany. Starting in the restaurant business without having ever cooked a meal, he works his way up. Much as we in law go from intern to summer associate to associate to partner, so do they in the Chinese restaurant business go from bus boy to waiter to kitchen assistant to head chef. 70 hours a week: seven days a week, from 10 to 9, except on Sundays when it’s 10 to 5, and no paid vacation days. In the hot greasy mess that is the Chinese kitchen. The ultimate prize? Getting enough money to finance one’s own restaurant. So that you can be your own “lao ban.”

Bracket for a second the wider political questions that his journey encompasses. Just marvel at the willingness of this one man to subject him to a strange country, to an unknown ultimate destination, to menial labor at what was surely less-than-minimum wage, to near-complete physical separation from his family, and, did I mention, to bachelor-hood for all that time.

Something to think about for the next time I get Chinese takeout.

A journey of a thousand miles...

...begins with being turned away from the consulate.  Apparently my appointment at the French consulate did not go through, so I never made it past security when I went today.  The online appointment system did not have another appointment available till the 31st.  Had to go to the study abroad office, who, through a contact, managed to get me another interview Thursday.

The grand lesson?  It's better to know who to call than what to do. 

Moving Out, Pt. 1

Just finished disassembling my desk; someone will be picking it up tomorrow around 8:30.  I still remember buying it two and a half years ago:  my parents (back when they were still in the states) and I shopping around, finding the perfect desk, shipping it up to New York.  How much optimism did law school start with?  And to an extent, it's been fulfilled:  I find myself with the job that I'm happy with, with the friends that I'm happy with, with the life that I'm happy with.  In countless ways I've been fortunate.  And yet, still it's hard to let go of this desk, this first leap of faith into the optimism of 1L year. 

Relaunch

So let's start over again.  I'm always reinventing myself, so it's only fair to subject my blog to the same ordeal. 

In the next year, I plan to travel back to China, then to France, then graduate, then take the bar and become a recognized lawyer, and then off to the seas again, and then finally to settle back down in New York to work. 

If I stick to the plan, which I never do, this blog will catalog that journey.