About Government Manipulation

I am staying with an American family for Christmas this year. I am from China, so this is my first authentic Christmas. during the holiday, we opened gifts under the Christmas tree; we had socks full of Santa's presents; we had traditional American supper. All in all, I have been treated as family. Family members were: John, the father; Anna, the mother; Lily, the daughter; Georgie, the dog.

Yesterday before breakfast, I skyped with my parents who are in China now. They were happy to see me. They could not speak English, and the American family does not speak Chinese. My parents wanted to meet my American friends, and the American family wanted to say hi to my parents. I acted as the interpretor. When they saw each other, they were so excited. My parents waved and waved; Anna was asking me to translate how great it was to have me for Christmas; Anna was busy carrying Georgie; John was amazed at how my parents were wide awake since it was 11pm in China. Even though there was nothing much to say, I felt the friendliness and genuine curiosity people had towards other individuals floating in the air. 

Humans are all so nice and pure. Why cannot the government be like that? Chinese government manipulates the media to portray Americans as greedy and nosy; the American government pictured Chinese cheap and threatening. What's wrong with the whole system humans have worked out?  

Why cannot all the countries, all the people unite, and fight together against poverty, disease, natural disasters? What would it be like if there are no borders and division of countries? Humans are too self-seeking to benefit others even though he/she himself/herself could be benefited.

IMAGINE

About The Americans Who I love So Much

I am an international student in New York City. Originally I came from China. I have been in New York for over a year now. This Christmas I went to a local American family in lancaster, PA to stay with them for a week. Actually, I am sitting on the bed in their house writing this post right now. I enjoyed their friendship. I just love the family. They have been so considerate, easy going, optimistic about life, thankful to God, satisfied with everything they have. I love love love them.

They are a typical American family. The father, John, is a driver for a truck manufacturing company; the mother, Anna, works for a psychiatrist for cleaning and administration. She works for minimal hours so she can take care of her daughter, her husband and her mother who lived next door, and now has moved to a nursing home; the daughter, Lily, is an adopted Chinese girl. She is just so sweet and adorable, a little shy.

I am having a great time with the family. They has done everything to make me feel comfortable. I slept two whole afternoons yesterday and the day before yesterday. I am not sure if this is considered impolite in the American culture, and normally I wouldn't just be so self-willed, but I was just so comfortable around them! The family made me very nice meals, home-made muffin, apple sauce, French toast, BBQ hamburger, potato sauce, taro soup etc. I love the countryside life. Such a quiet and peaceful life. I can literally feel my soul healing from the hustle and bustle from the city.

I have been planning to write down all the ideas I have now in case LIFE FUCKS ME SO HARD that I do not even remember I have been so happy and filled with so many interesting ideas. However, New York makes me busy with people and parties all the time. I do not have either the time or the mood to sit down for an hour and calm down myself to write a blog. Peaceful soul, peaceful mind are what I need, and the country life grants me them.

In NewYork, people have too many entertainment options. Bars, Karaoke, delicious cuisines, shopping malls, movies, Broadway shows, strip performances, etc. Here in the countryside, what the family do is playing numerous board games, buying DVDs and watching them together on an unbelievably comfortable recliner, learning new dishes from a cooking book, doing Origami, drawing, reading newspapers, etc. John, Anna and Lily have spent a lot time together. They are more like friends rather than parents and kids. Lily bought John a red Angry Bird pajama and a colorful Angry Bird boxer foR Christmas. They joke around each day. The other day Lily and Anna were saying John was stealing sweets, and then we all started giggling. John smiled and said, I don't know why you guys pick on me so much.

Isn't that just sweet?

They are so warm hearted and lack the sense of defense that I am worried about the little sweet girl Lily. They just assume the world is so good and healthy, but bad things happen to good people. My philosophy is, life is a bitch and you have to bitch back. What got me worried is I watched an American documentary in the summer, Bullying, talking about the flaw in the American education system. Some sweet kids committed suicide because of peer pressure. I have the feeling that Lily cares too much about others' feeling to stand up for herself. I believe I myself am a strong person who speak up a lot, but sometimes the American crowd is so ready to chim in with who they think is "cool". I have been isolated in a couple of discussions and group meetings. I felt bad and helpless at those times. I am not sure what the world has ready for Lily. I hope life does not fall on her hard.

John and Anna have friends in Guatemala. They are an middle-aged American couple, both in their 50s. They used to be neighbors with John and Anna. One day the couple just decided to help people in Guatemala, and sold all their properties. John has been helping with their financial stuff in America, and John, Anna and Lily skype with the couple half an hour each week. What a sweet thing. I cannot help but thinking their Chinese counterparts. Chinese folks in the countryside cannot even feed themselves well, and absolutely do not care people in other countries.

One day when I was having lunch with John, Anna and Lily, our dialogue led to for which candidate John and Sonda voted. It was when I found out that they paid a lot of attention on government issues. John said the health care system that Obama proposed would hurt the working class who are shouldering the tax, and benefit the homeless and lazy by abusing social welfare. John and Anna thought this system is not fair, and Obama did not do a good job in the previous term of office, so they did not vote for Obama. They gave me good arguments why they voted for Romney. I do not care so much about who voted for whom, since America is not my country and how I wish Chinese citizens could have the right to know what is going on in China. John and Anna have been paying attention to the news. They read newspaper each day. The reason they care so much is out of their love for America. On the other hand, Chinese guys have stopped caring. The downfall of a very powerful Chinese figure did not even stir much of a discussion in the country, since the citizens did not know what had happened, how this would affect them, and what to expect out of it. The government is always so mysterious and unpredictable.

I read Country Driving a few months ago. It is a novel written by an American journalist in the Beijing headquarter of the New Yorker. He observed China, both the urban and suburb area, from a spectator's perspective. He went to the countryside in China, and he said the villagers' lack of knowledge in politics shocked him. There were villagers who didn't know who was the current chairman of China, even though the loudspeaker had been barking each day about what the chairman said, what he did, where he went. The indifference comes from the desperation.

I am a person who has witness two societies. Frankly speaking, I prefer democracy. But, China, I love you so much to give you up and stop caring about you. However, each time I read the news about how our government abuses its power, corrupts public funds, hurts its people, my heart dies time after time. Please do not drive me away. Please do not corner me to get an American green card. I have always loved you, so much. 

为什么我的眼里常含泪水？因为我对这片土地爱得深沉。

We Are all Trumans

For human, the hearing range is 20Hz to 20,000Hz. For dogs, it is 40Hz to 60,000Hz. Dolphins have a much higher pitch than humans. If you have watched the fantastic documentary The Cove, you would understand what a torture dolphins are subject to in the aquarium.

Our other senses, such as smelling, seeing, as well as touching, similar to hearing, have limits. This means there is a great deal of things we cannot sense in the world. There might be a giant tiger-shaped thing right in front of me but I can not sense it at all.

This got me to think, there might be many layers in our world, animals, plants around us are the things located within our range of senses, and there are a whole bunch outside of our range. I'll call these different layers "dimensions". Among all the dimensions, there must be one with creatures whose sensing zones are beyond us. This means they could see us, hear, and touch us, but we could not see them, hear them or feel them. What we do are movies they watch each day. Each one of us is a Truman, like the guy in the movie The Truman Show.

The Jewish proverb goes perfect here----Men Plan and God Laughs.

Unsettling? It is just a start.

Picture Source: The Truman Show

Aiweiwei: Never Sorry

I cried a lot and was heartbroken when I was watching the documentary. As an educated Chinese citizen, I didn't know Chinese activists were subject to government abuse like that.

I saw a couple of his works before I watched the documentary. In one photo, he dropped a Chinese antique vase that was made in the Ming dynasty. He also painted some other precious antique vases with paint. These works did not leave me a good impression. I assumed he was trying to play to the gallery, like many eager artists. I did not see any alternative explanation for his destruction of antiques, and I did not get useful searching results from baidu, the popular Chinese search engine. I found out later that he and his work were censored by the government. His purpose of that art series is to bring into light the Chinese government destroying historical relics. Now I think about it, what an impressive way to let people be aware of the issue!

I love the way he has been expressing his anger: his middle finger pointing anywhere and write "FUCK" anywhere he feels like. When I first see the photo of him pointing his middle finger to the Tianan Men Square three years Now that I have watched the documentary, every time I saw his work, I felt the pain behind his anger.

What is the Point of Life?!

I went to the movie 1942 the next day of my first overdose. I was a little dimmed and intoxicated. The movie got me think a lot.

I like the director. He is one of my favorite directors. He made a lot of comedies in his early years, and then he stopped to commercial films. I love his wife, Fan Xu. She seems to have carried a lot of stories.

Basically, 1942 is To Live in a different set. They both are about how people struggled to avoid death  regardless of what happens to them. I would just die if all my beloved ones were dead, and I had nothing to look forward to. I would not let life fuck me like that.

What is death like? How can we be sure death is a more horrible thing than what happened to people in famine in 1942? To me, the most depressing thing is to be stuck in sorrows and never see the end of it.

In the movie, Fan Xu sold herself to a man who said he would "use her as a wife". She did not know where she was going, what was going to happen to her. Everything is unknown, out of control, empty.

During the movie, a strange feeling came to me. Human body is just another object, a host that our soul finds. Body is made from different parts, like a doll or a toy, if you like. Instruction for use of human body is: do not cut with knife; do not expose to hot or freezing temperature. Everything has a manufacturer's guideline, so does human. We are nothing special.

Picture Source: Facebook:  Aliennatus: the truth is out there

So I Felt the Detachment of the Soul from the Body

The other day I overdosed. It was terrified at first. It was my first time to overdose and I didn't know what was happening. In panic, I went to my roommate Sela for help. I was not sure if I need to go to the hospital. He said the feeling I had would soon pass. Now I want to share what I saw and felt when my soul detached my body. It was amazing.

I was on the phone with my best friend when the drug finally took effect. I eagerly kept telling him to talk to me, otherwise my soul would leave this world and get to another dimension. The bond between me and the universe became clear. At some point I thought I was the whole universe; my heartbeat was the rhythm of the universe.

Then I sensed death. I couldn't stop talking about suicide. I was very curious about what would happen after death. I stared at the computer and cup on my desk, and they seemed all so strange and out.

Everything became illusory. My body, my relationships with my parents, friends were imagined and built by simple powder. A blow of wind could destroy everything and my soul would be the only thing left. Language, knowledge, and equations became meaningless. They are just imagined by humans. Anything could be calculated. At one point my brain started to calculate Chinese characters, for instance, I tried to figure out "所以 (so)” plus "苹果(apple)” equaled what.

Not only did I see the universe, various planets and the vast unsettling infinite space, but I heard things too. I heard the low hum from interstellar dust. It was like a deep buzzing symphony.

Then I felt the suffering of each individual on earth. I understood all the unwelcome looks ugly guys received and the prejudice disabled guys got. I was them. Everything is a circle. I circle around and I circle back. I am pretty now and I will be ugly in the future.

I realized, now that everything is circling around, what was the point of life? What are we fighting for? Why do we struggle?

I was so small. My existence is so random. Everything I had, my relationships, my philosophy, were material. They could be touched by hand, and materialized.

Then I lost control of my body. I started shaking. Sela told me it was normal and a typical of overdose symptom, and I need not to worry. He kept talking to me, making my brain occupied. He said he experienced the feeling of losing control, and it was not a result of any kind of drug. He just passed out for no reason. How dreadful is that! He thought he was going to die. I asked: am I going to die? Will I be like this forever? Will my mind get peace again? Will I be a phyco from now on? He said no, you won't. I promise. They are all illusion.

Sela went downstairs to throw out the garbage. It was the garbage day. I was alone in the kitchen. With nothing to distract my attention, I got deeply absorbed in panic. I tried to embace the universe but it just scared me. I didn't even dare to look back, literarily, because I believed behind my back was the universe. If I turned back and saw it, everything would be proved, and I would leave this beautiful world forever. Then my best friend started to yell at me over the phone, and an amazing thing happened. I was dragged back to this world. My surroundings started to become real. There is an old custom in China, "叫魂 (jiao hun)". It is performed by a witch who can bring someone mad back to normal. Someone might has behaved weirdly, eyes lifeless, because his or her soul was taken away. The witch should take the soul back. I had thought it was BS until the point my best friend's yelling brought me back to this world.

When I was sitting in the kitchen, I was totally convinced that my upper body is in the physical world, but my lower body is in space. My feet were dangling in space. When I got time and the right mood, I would draw what I saw on a paper.

Picture Source: Facebook: Aliēnātus: the truth is out there