Tag: personal

Birthday in Quarantine

Yesterday marked my 19th birthday. It was the first birthday in a while that I spent with my entire family. Mom, Dad, Karen, Grandma. Since my birthday falls well into summer vacation, we’re usually split between China and the US. I have to thank quarantine for keeping us together this year.

I don’t usually attach much significance to my birthday. I do try to treat myself, and it’s a useful landmark to get friends together. Otherwise, I’m one day older than the past day, and I see no special reason for me to be happier or more celebratory than normal. 

I wouldn’t say that birthdays aren’t special. They can be. Rather, I like to think that all days can be special, holiday or not. I had a habit of looking forward to “special” days — birthdays, Christmas, New Years. The day would come and I’d be disappointed if I didn’t feel strongly, like I’ve reached an important milestone or was in the midst of a fond memory. Nowadays, I realize that I don’t need to feel a certain way. Emotions are a finicky thing, and having expectations of them opens up more possibility for disappointment. There’s nothing inherently different between holidays and non-holidays. Once I’ve accepted that, I let go of expectation and can better accept the way each day unfolds.

My birthday this year was a pretty good day. The night before, I made myself a cake, which happened to be one of the best I’ve ever made. I followed Stella’s red velvet cake recipe from Bravetart, finished with cream cheese frosting. It was delightful. The cake turned out rich and firm, although it did not turn out red like expected. Usually I find frosting to be cloyingly sweet. The cream cheese frosting was a welcome departure, with just enough sweetness to balance out the tang.

I also roasted a chicken. My dad busted out an air-fryer as a special tool, after my last attempt at roasting a chicken turned out undercooked. The verdict was that my second attempt is much tastier than the first. Much safer to eat as well.

I had signed up for a Chinese dance masterclass that so happened to fall on my birthday. A teacher taught a Dunhuang dance combination from her Beijing living room. For the uninitiated, Dunhuang dance is inspired by cave paintings found in the Mogao caves. The caves hold a wealth of Buddhist art, spanning a thousand years. Many body and hand positions can be traced to Buddhist influences. This was my first time trying Dunhuang dance and it’s unlike anything I’ve tried before. The style demands a great deal of strength and balance to steady one-legged positions. 

Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China's Silk Road | The ...
Scene from a Mogao cave painting, courtesy of https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/cave_temples_dunhuang/gallery.html

I went to bed around midnight feeling like I had learned something, and also content with the way I spent my day. Nothing too exciting, just a more intentional version of what a normal day looks like. I’d like to spend more days like this birthday, which is to say I’d like to spend more generally pleasant but not life-changing days doing things I like to do.

Summer @Home

Abstract expressionism is an American art movement, developed in New York in the 1940s. Like the surrealism movement in Europe, abstract expressionism emphasizes spontaneity, an attempt at visceral expression of the subconscious. 

Here we have a drip painting by Jackson Pollock, one of the leading figures of the movement. 

What I like about this painting is that it is dominated by chaos. The colors clash, at times violent, at times neutral atop each other. The threads mix together, stand apart. Each individual element doesn’t try too hard to be part of a cohesive. What greater emotion or understanding of our world does the painting provoke? It provokes: disorientation, perhaps confusion. Depending on your tolerance for messiness: excitement, nausea. 

Then you look at it as a whole. Far from beautiful, the painting is still meaningful. There is a difference that comes out of every before and after. I feel slightly shifted, a little bit altered, after viewing the painting. Because, despite its haphazardness, there *is* an underlying truth or meaning, tucked in there subconsciously. You keep looking and patterns emerge – the swirling eddies of black in the background, white wisps shaped like shrimp antennae, is that a red crab? It’s an exercise of imagination. I’ve freed my mind from my immediate surroundings. Within the liminal space of imagination, the chaos distills into meaning. 

Or not. That’s my interpretation; there are many equally valid interpretations. Therein lies the beauty. Discussion, critique. 

In response to Pollock’s art, critics were divided. Some loved the immediate quality of creation, others panned the nonsensical, seemingly random composition. 

— 

Life has fashioned itself into a Pollock painting ever since I returned to the US in March. It’s been streaked with random, unconnected events and plans. Some of it comes from the inherent uncertainty of coronavirus outside, some of it is of my own design.There are so many things I want to learn: cooking, driving, dancing, drums, math, French, patience, empathy. In each moment that I dedicate to them, I feel content, like I am progressing. When I pause to reflect on the larger painting of my life in this moment, I struggle to find a common theme. 

There’s a point to be made about the importance of flexibility. For one, it leads to less-stressful living. It leads to a more accepting attitude towards any situation, including a chaotic one. While it’s not necessary (or even wise) to seek out chaos, being open to the possibility can make life fun and spontaneous. This year I’ve become more accustomed to “going with the flow” — doing things not out of obligation but because they bring joy or meaning to my life. 

Still, as much as I love living life on whims, I don’t want to lose sight of time. College begins in three months, bringing with it structure, rigor, and new faces. I will be asked by classmates or teachers to summarize my summer, to verbalize what I’ve made out of time. 

I want to stop thinking so much about college. That’s in the future. In the present, I’m enjoying what’s likely to be my last summer at home, spending time with family, working on hobbies. Yet, paradoxically, the only way for me to stop thinking about something is to think it through completely. Usually this happens through writing. I can begin to process my time home into words. I can also go a step further and verbally commit to some goals. 

I have many, many goals. Too many, I know. It’s likely I won’t accomplish them all. I don’t expect to accomplish everything, and won’t be disappointed if that happens, because I’ll have something to show for attempting them. And, since I’ve been pursuing activities that bring joy or a sense of richness to my life, the act of attempting will itself be an enjoyable thing.  


~a few~ GOALS

Health & Fitness: 

  1. Dance in some form everyday, stretch everyday
    • Turn in video homework for Chinese dance class
    • Branch out into new styles: hip hop, lyrical, jazz, modern
  2. No electronics after 9PM
  3. Record food intake every night before bed, reflect if nutritionally it was a good or bad day

Personal Growth:

  1. Educate myself on American history, with an emphasis on minority history
  2. Practice patience with my family. 
  3. Journal 3-times a week, or more

Skill-building:

  1. Practice drums daily for 45 minutes. Emphasis on daily!
  2. Cook dinner on weekends.
  3. Try a new baking recipe every week.
  4. Learn 50 new French phrases daily, one module in grammar workbook

Writing: 

  1. Write a short story for the July 15th Nimrod New Fiction Writer’s Contest
  2. Post a blog every Sunday

I anticipate that these goals will shift as the days pass. I might let go of some if I find that I’m introducing too much structure. I might add things as I discover more endeavors that are worth pursuing. Either way, I’ll report back sometime before school starts. Half the fun of setting goals is the reflection that comes with meeting or not meeting them. 

These goals apply Monday through Friday. I want weekends to do whatever. Read random magazines, books, watch TV, movies, play board games, to name a few things. 

Goodbye, hello, goodbye, hello again: Home

In the past year, I’ve called Herndon, Kunming, and Yilan, Taiwan my home. I have lived in Herndon for six years, Kunming for four months, Yilan for three weeks. These places span countries and continents, and are distinct from one another in character and culture, but I’ve found a sense of belonging in each of them. 

On March 18th I returned home. My Herndon, Virginia one. My family welcomed me with dumplings. I ate at the kitchen counter. My mom, dad, grandma, and little sister ate at the kitchen table. I hauled my luggage to the guest room, where I would closet myself for 14 days in self-imposed corona exile. My days were spent reading, catching up with friends (so much easier when we are all in the same time zone), and, most of all, thinking about the past year.

I’m really bad at goodbyes. I always expect them to be more significant than they are. In the end, I taste a cloying disappointment when life goes on normally, without the people who were just recently a part of normal life. At the San Francisco airport, friends I spent the past six and a half months with boarded their return flights, one after another. To Newark, San Diego, Atlanta, Houston. Everyone left with a hug and a “we’ll see each other again in six months”. I rummaged my mind to find something of interest or importance to say, something that will last through those six months. Eventually, I gave up. There’s a 100% chance we see each other in college next year, and what needs to be said will come up naturally. Right now, it was “see you later”. 

We left Yilan, Taiwan on a dime’s drop, which is to say abruptly and sharply. All of Princeton’s Bridge Year programs were cancelled, two and a half months early, because of coronavirus. We had less than a week to say goodbye to the city. I spent my last weekend cruising around Luodong with my homestay parents, eating every item on my bucket list, going home extremely full and content. I watched anime and Taiwanese opera videos with my homestay siblings, then woke up for one final group day, then one final work day. We had only been in Yilan for three weeks. A short time in the grand scheme of things, but the town was extremely welcoming and I wanted to say goodbye properly. Not as a harsh, final thing, but as an open-ended, let’s keep in touch, I’ll be back. Because I will be. I will be back in Taiwan, it’s just a matter of time and circumstance.

I can say the same about Kunming. We had an even shorter amount of time – one day – to assemble our belongings and say goodbye to our homestay families. There was more uncertainty. My last day, I ate lunch with my homestay parents and little sister MiaoMiao. Over sweet and sour spare ribs and julliard salad, products of the spare time that comes with self-quarantine, we said uncertain goodbyes. We didn’t know how the coronavirus would pan out, or if I could return home to Kunming before the program ended. Either way, my homestay family were cheerful and confident that we’d see each other again. I reassured them that I would be back. 

The last night before we departed Kunming for Taiwan, I slept on the window ledge of our twelfth-story program house. That last night, I fell asleep gazing into the cityscape. I felt close and intimate with Kunming, like I was cuddling with a well-worn lover, feeling vertigo and dizziness and above all a sense of comfort.  

That’s the comforting thing about home, you know you’ll always find a way back.

Christmas in Kunming

This is the second Christmas I celebrated in China. My family doesn’t really celebrate Christmas seriously back in the states; we’re all atheist, so Christmas assumes a cultural role more than a religious one. We *might* set up a Christmas tree that doesn’t come down until March. That’s the extent of our Christmas traditions.

My homestay family does not celebrate Christmas to the same extent. Besides a cheery acknowledgment of my “Merry Christmas!” greeting, the day passed by like any other. Shops are keener to take on Christmas than any family. There are light Christmas decorations sprinkled throughout malls, bakeries advertise cute, seasonal snowman cakes and Santa Klaus breads, and two-for-the-price-of-one snow globes twinkle and wink at shoppers. 

In Kunming, there was a tradition for townspeople to spray one another with fake snow and hold spontaneous rubber hammer fights on Christmas Eve. A few years ago the police cracked down on fake snow and rubber hammers. The streets were quiet yesterday. 

My classmates and I prepared a Christmas Eve dinner together. It was the best Christmas dinner I had. Flaky spring onion pancakes, washed down with rich pumpkin stew. Roasted chicken and vegetables, baked mac & cheese, and veggie lasagna. There was also a Salvadorian corn flour pancake with cheese tucked into its belly, enjoyed with tomato sauce, that I forgot the name of. I and my stomach were impressed with the spread of Christmas foods. It was a little slice of home. Side note: I wanted to contribute sugar cookies but forgot to thaw the butter from the freezer. So no sugar cookies. Womp-womp.

We exchanged Secret Santa gifts — I bought antlers hair pins, a snow globe, and made a Christmas collage card for Jesse. I snipped the Christmas-themed images from a noodle shop advertisement. The white rabbit candy wrappers … I bet you can guess who ate the candies!

My original intention with the collage was to capture the feeling of celebrating Christmas away from home. Chinese Christmas, while retaining a lot of the same jolly symbols, is set in a separate cultural backdrop that shapes Western customs into something unique. When I finished, I looked at the haphazard clutter of images and felt like I was beginning to understand something. 

This gap year is the first time I’ve been away from my family. I find myself clinging, proudly and tightly, to reminders of home. Pizza, for one. Christmas, for another. The irony is that I don’t even like pizza that much. I’d eat it if it was the only thing available during lunch at a Saturday quiz bowl tournament, but never from my own initiative. I never liked Christmas that much either. Past the beautiful Christmas lights and Christmas trees is the ugly shadow of Christmas consumerism. But I still find myself craving pizza, celebrating Christmas to a fault.

In new places, the familiar is comforting. Maybe pizza and Christmas are a part of my identity. Maybe I am more American than I thought. Lingering thoughts.

Not to make you think my Christmas was heavy. Well the food was heavy, but my mood was definitely not. Ben gave me the squishiest avocado pillow, a cute plushie, and a light pink scarf. I watched my first ever Star Wars movie, in an empty theatre at midnight. I called Fred. I stayed up until 4:30 in the morning, giggling and playing cards with Ben and Jesus. The holiday season always has a way of making me feel light, excited, and wistful.