Thanksgiving Dinner and friends
Food left to right: boiled veggies, sweet potato casserole, green spiced lentils, roasted chicken
People left to right: Blake, Charlotte, Lhamo
Indeed I cooked Thanksgiving dinner this year since I don’t believe there are any other Americans in this little town. Not bad for my first time!
Time bought, organs missing…??
UPDATE: So now it seems like these stories aren’t true in the least. After hearing numerous versions from all kinds of people, I’ve decided that there is little to no credibility to these claims. Consider them debunked until further notice. Skeptics rejoice.
It almost seems like this should be a Halloween post or something. I was recently informed, to my horror, that several students from Rebgong have been kidnapped, murdered, and their organs harvested in this last month. The majority have been teenage girls who were found dead along the riverside, their organs expertly cut out - barely even an incision mark. It sounds like something out of a 60 Minutes special, but apparently its happening here and now in this small Tibetan town located not far from the middle no nowhere China. My students speculated that the perpetrators are in fact skilled doctors who, realizing they can make 100K US on one viable heart, have turned to murder to fill their pocket books. Whatever the reason, color me scared and unpleasantly surprised. Is there no where safe in this world?
In other news, it seems my visa will be extended until the end of the year, thank goodness. Will report once I have said visa in hand. Now I must huddle in my bed, hiding from nefarious organ poachers…
Not to wallow in visa troubles, I present my Tibetan teacher’s absurdly cute son learning a cultural staple: the prostration.
Well, staying here next semester has been all but ruled out. Today, I talked with the headmaster who very clearly stated the impossibility of me getting a work visa in Qinghai. What is still to be determined is whether or not I can stay here until the end of the term, or if I must high-tail it out of town next week. As of right now, my visa expires in 12 days…and counting. Tomorrow the Fates decide.
Funny that today marks 3 months in Rebgong.
Also interesting to see that when you are in trouble, your friends really do help you. Its nice to see that perhaps I do have more friends than I thought.
And this is the week that broke the yak’s back
I think I remember saying once to someone that “life is constantly unpredicatable.” That’s exactly what it is.
On tuesday, the same day that I was suffering from a bad case of food poisoning, my boss gravely mentions to me that the school (after three months of endless paperwork, medical forms, and other bureaucratic non-sense) cannot in fact get me a work visa - that I likely will not be coming back next semester to teach. Subsequent attempts in the last two days to appeal to friendly contacts have also proved fruitless. In my frustration, there are a lot of people I wanted to blame (including myself for putting myself in this position), but in the end, if this is how the situation is, then I can only look at look in front of me and not behind. Nothing else could have been done anyways and I’m not one to agonize over the past. Perhaps I’ll go to a university on a student visa, maybe i’ll do organic farming in Japan, maybe i’ll sit a long retreat in Burma, maybe i’ll try to get a job in Beijing and learn proper mandarin. But, if there is still a chance that I can stay here and teach (and there’s always a way in China), then I think I would. I think I’m starting to feel responsible for these students.
And to mimic another friend’s blog, these are the best, the worst, and the most surprising things about my Tibetan experience:
the best: climbing mountains, rich nomadic pastures, more stars in the night sky than I have ever seen, riding a “wild” yak, teaching, not being looked at funny for having a bad mandarin accent, being normal by not showering for 2 weeks, my own apartment, living next to the monastery
the worst: having very few Tibetan friends, feeling like everyone wants something from you (i.e. English lessons), DSL in my house, Tibetan bread, not learning much Chinese, communication barriers, food poisoning, feeling like I haven’t understood anything about Tibet or Tibetan culture since being here, Tibetan food, the very dry and very cold winter
the most surprising: watching my Tibetan teacher and her relatives eat the faces off lambs (cooked), the many nightclubs of Rebgong, that even in a 90% Tibetan town speaking Chinese is still more useful than speaking Tibetan
And finally to complete the Tibetan dancing trilogy, I present Tibetans breakdancing…or rather my students breakdancing. Amazing how pop culture finds a way into almost every nook and cranny of the known world…”everywhere the light touches”. Currently reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman….scary scary book.
Perhaps “vanishing” isn’t the right terminology as I never really had a work visa to begin with, only a lowly 30-day travel visa that has long since expired. This school I work for (namely, the headmaster) apparently is either incompetant or enjoys making life very very difficult for all parties involved. This is my visa story.
Before I came, I was promised that the school would take care of my visa, while all other costs (housing, salary, etc.) are handled by private funding source. My thirty days past, nothing was done, but I was assured that the school would take responsibility and that I would not have to pay the fine (which could be up to 5000 RMB). A month after my visa expired, the school finally attempted to get the visa (an effort which was not facilitated by the new visa regulations this year that required a medical exam at a government facility and other innane materials). When that was finally done, the Public Security Bureau figured out that I had been here illegally for a month, and proceed to fine me personally 2000RMB, money that I don’t even have. So, my boss Charlotte paid for it (although its the school’s responsiblity) with the verbal promise of the headmaster (a sketchy dude) that he would pay her back at the end of the term (very unlikely). Oh, this visa oddessy isn’t over yet. So after we paid the fine, we had to get a “Foreign Expert” visa which would supposedly transition smoothly into the ever elusive “work” visa. But, beauracracy being as it is, because I am merely a college graduate and have no teaching experience, they refused to give me a foreign expert visa (although I have already been teaching for 3 months). All I know is that I am leaving the country on December 24th for Hawaii and I will be lying on a white sand beach on X-mas day, vanishing visa and all!
Films: The Corporation, Inside Man, Why We Fight, Mission Impossible III, The Island, Kekexili
Books: 1984, Brave New World, The Universe in an Atom, The True Story of Ah Q
What do all these films and novels have in common? Well, overt in many and hidden in the rest is a voice of social critique, images of a dire future, an alternate present, or just a plain commentary of the many wrongs of the world. Each one seems to offer another puzzle piece to a larger vision - a vision that I have yet to fully realize. For example, The Corporation links themes from Inside Man and the Island by 1) showing how many corporations profited heavily off Nazi Germany just like the rich philanthropist in Inside Man who built his wealth on such an enterprise 2) how in The Island clones have become a vehicle for harvesting body parts which relates to the fact that since the 1970s in the US living organisms can be patented and licensed for profit. The link between MI:3 and Why We Fight is a bit more clear: the villian in MI:3 uses Ethan Hunt to create “terrorists and wars” in order for large governements to subsequently invade and rebuild those countries for the benefit of sustaining the millitary industrial complex.
1984 and Brave New World however focus mostly on governments and ways of governing and controling societies and people, Both authors have incredible vision and imagination, their narratives continuing to be relevant to modern society. Anyways, I feel that finally I’ve begun to come back to society at large, trying to construct for myself an image of how governments, societies, individuals, environments, and economics interact on a global basis, to struggle to understand how we as a civilization came to where we are and to see where we might be headed.
Traditional Tibetan Dancing…in nightclub
Since my other post of Tibetan nightclub dancing was so popular (500+ views on youtube), I figured I might post a follow up. This time, you can actually see what’s going on! Traditional dancing in non-traditional clothes, Tibetan style. Don’t you feel so much more cultured already?
