The main reason for this is that it's re-enrollment time at my school. That means I am supposed to deliver evidence of significant progress to my adviser... by the end of this week. I think I have made some significant progress, but there is precious little evidence of it, alas! So I have been scrambling.
My initial plan was to deliver my dissertation framework document to him just for a quick check--really to see if there was anything he thought didn't fit or wasn't worth doing--then forge ahead and see how much of the previously written stuff I could refit or reuse. The result would be no whole chapters, but at least number of sketched out chapters, with some large sections written.
This plan went awry because my adviser (finally, uncharacteristically) decided to give me detailed feedback on my framework. Well, I'm glad at least he had something to say, but it was a little untimely. It caused me to spend lots of time rethinking the framework, and not much time writing. This will pay off in the end, but the re-enrollment makes it stressful.
As it stands, I have not done that much writing. Shrug. They may say nasty things about me, but I hope they will decide to re-enroll me anyway.
Regarding this blog, I think I'm going to go for the whirlwind catch-up strategy again, even briefer than before just so I can get myself up to the present.
Monday: I went to the ZM's class on the Song dynasty poet Su Dongpo. It was really superb--again. We heard all about his life and background, and it made me think how much I would like to write a novel about the guy, for he was truly an extraordinary person. Ha, maybe in another life. Maybe when I retire.
After class I also bravely asked ZM for some advice on a sources for something I'm working on. He was kind and obliging. I was flustered, but it helped.
What a cold day it was. Snow had partly melted, but then there was some that had been caught by the freeze and hardened into rigid lumps on the concrete. Apparently spring cold is a long-recognized phenomenon here. Just before the official beginning of spring it has been getting warmer and warmer--then spring begins and there is another cold snap. I find this very peculiar weather, but everyone here seems to expect it.I went to the great kebab place for dinner. Everything I get there tastes so good. It is only sad to have no one to share it with.
Tuesday is my long day, which is to say that on odd weeks I have three classes in a row. I forgot that my first class was only an odd week class (this is an even week) and showed up for the empty classroom experience. I quickly dashed over to catch a class that I hadn't been able to go to before because it conflicted with the one. It was HORRIBLE dull. I left after one hour, but I really wanted to leave sooner.
I spent the second hour far more productively, sitting in a coffee shop and editing a little story I wrote when I was sixteen. That seems like a funny thing to do, but HJ was really taken by a description of some farm animals I sent her in a recent e-mail and wanted to read some of my non-scholarly writing. There hasn't been awful much of that, and what there was from college was too depressing. So I sent her this cute little story I had written in high school. But first I cleaned it up a bit, suffering from that funny feeling of doubleness. I felt so proud of the story at the time, but looking at it again--well, it is still an anomalously good story as far as my fiction writing goes, but the language is so awkward! not nearly as good as my adolescent pride made it out to be. I smoothed it out a fair amount. It's still no literary gem, but at least it's not an embarrassment. Ah progress. I felt oddly tender toward my past self, even as I was impatient with her unwarranted conceit.
I had a quick lunch and then went off to my next class. Interesting. The first session, last week, I had noticed another foreigner in it, sitting on the side of the room near the door. I always sit on the side of the room near the windows, so I sat there as usual last time. Now this time, the foreigner was sitting on the side of the room near the windows.
Actually, I vaguely recognized this one. He had been in one of the classes I'd sat in only once, the first term. As I recalled, he is actually doing a PhD here, I mean, the real thing. This is amazing and kind of freakish. To make it even odder, the PhD is in philology. Here's a guy so out of step with his time that it makes me look like a hard-headed realist.
In any case, I hadn't talked to him before. Some of the really hardcore China hands I know aren't interested in other Westerners at all, and I am not too into having my poor attempts at socializing be rebuffed. But I thought, by sitting over by the window maybe he was showing that he wanted to be talked to. Anyway, my normal seat was just behind where he was sitting, so I went and sat there. He was writing in his notebook. I noticed that he was writing all in Chinese, in a hand that was a marvel of neatness compared to mine. So (just in case he was a non-English-speaking foreigner, or was so hardcore he was unwilling to speak English) I said to him in Chinese, "Your handwriting is really nice."
He seemed startled and shy under a veneer of cool. He told me (in English) that he was actually taking a class. To improve handwriting? said I. I want to go!
"It's for foreigners," he said, "so I thought I might meet some other Americans. But it's fifty Koreans and me."
I decided this meant he wanted to meet other Americans, despite being such a hardcore China hand, so I said, "Well, you can meet me. I'm Zapaper." And I stuck out my hand to shake. Funny ritual! Can't remember the last time I shook hands with someone, but somehow we instinctively know when the moment calls for it.
He remembered me from back in September. I was totally impressed that he remembered my Chinese name.
This whole exchange sounds a little flirty but it totally wasn't. No chemistry whatsoever. His manner was a mix of friendly and diffident. As for me, I felt rather proud of my behavior in this situation. I started a conversation. I started an acquaintance. I even sealed it by giving him my name card so he would have my contact info. I felt like a real grown-up, or a normal human being, you know?
For reasons I'll not disclose, I'll refer to him as Hammer. Good common word, presumably google won't turn make trouble for me on that account.
I learned several really useful things in the class. YHz is an awesome teacher, not so much for her lecture style--which is much drier than ZM's--but because she is great at preparing interesting, solid, useful stuff.
Army Gal was there, and I talked to her just enough so as not to be rude. She opted not to come to the next class with me, though, and I was glad.
By the next class I was kind of brain-dead. Tuesdays are going to be hard, I can tell. On the other hand, though, it was rather interesting. The professor had an extremely Western approach to the material. I am going to have to ask her sometime whether she studied in the West or something? It was very contextualized, very much keeping the bigger picture in mind, not especially detail-oriented, and delivered in an easy to follow, informal, extemporaneous, colloquial style. Interesting. Even though it's going to be hard to make myself go to this one, I think I will try at least for a while.
Tuesday night, a tiring end to a tiring day, I also had the dissertation support group. So I rode Lincoln down to Zhichun lu and took the train to Yonghegong. I thought fleetingly about the Lama and hoped I wouldn't run into him and his girlfriend. I'm not sure why I hoped that, except for that somehow it would be awkward. Not going to reflect on that one anymore.
The diss group was relaxing, four girls having dinner in an Italian restaurant, buried in a little Beijing hutong (tiny alley full lined with courtyard-style houses), next to a Buddhist temple. There's almost something surreal about that. We talked shop. I misordered, but oh well. Live and learn. It was fun to chatter. I got some pretty useful feedback on my dissertation framework too.
On the way home, I accidentally got out of the subway on the wrong side of the enormous street. Crossing back via an overpass, I saw these icicles, lit up by the headlights. Icicles, in March. Go figure.Wednesday, I must confess, was a pathetic loser-ish day.
I didn't have any classes. I planned to just do a full day of work. Instead, I did a couple hours work on an e-mail to my adviser at home. Sent it off, took a shower, and got a response back almost right away. Tone: no you idiot, that's not what I was talking about. Zapaper's productive work day: completely shot. It is easy to be over-sensitive when you're in my situation. I knew I shouldn't, but I just couldn't help myself. I also knew if Pocket of Bolts were here, he would roust me out of the house and make me go out and do something distracting. But he wasn't here. So I moped and sulked and hardly managed to do anything.
That's pretty much all I have to say about Wednesday, except Hammer called. If I really wanted to go to the calligraphy class, perhaps we should get together and go get supplies together? So I said sure and we set a time for the next morning after my class.
Thursday: I woke up at 5 with anxiety-insomnia. The really crazy thing was that I didn't get back to sleep until my alarm went off at 6:30; at that point, in my total irrationality, I felt very relieved to think that I could totally rely on the alarm to go off every five minutes (I have a five-minute snooze). Since there was something that could be relied upon, I should have no qualms about finally getting some rest. So unlike the way most people would feel doing half an hour of five minute snoozes, I felt luxurious. I know, I'm a freak. I laughed at myself when I finally woke up all the way. Of course I was a bit late to class, and had to have my morning tea in a thermos instead of a tea-cup.
The class was good, despite being at 8 AM. I have decided to get up at 6:30 AM every morning, not just on Thursdays. That way, it won't be such a nasty shock to do it once a week. Of course, I decided this ON Thursday, so this week it didn't help. But next week, I'm totally going to be on top of things.
I met Hammer and we went to the campus store. Yeah, they have calligraphy supplies at the campus store. It's China, what do you expect. Then we had lunch at Shan Yao. It was fun. It's hard to imagine, but Hammer has been living in China for more than six years. My mind boggled. It was really interesting to hear his story. He is oddly diffident with me, but I think he is actually just a little shy. Again, I had the feeling that the rude and tough exterior was kind of a front. He was amusingly rude, though. He had a perfect rude Chinese guy restaurant manner, antagonizing the waitresses and such. I am not as uptight about such things as I was at first, and just thought it was funny. He said that when he goes back to the States to visit his parents, they don't like eating in restaurants with him. "I tone it down," he said in an injured tone, "but apparently I'm still too rude. I guess I do spit things on the floor and stuff."
Hammer is funny. He started out as a kungfu Asia geek but turned into something else, almost by chance. He turned into something real. The kind of stuff he studies--I mean, I wouldn't want to study it, but it's impressive what he's managed to achieve. Completely outside the realm of Western academia, he has skills that a lot of Western sinology professors can't claim. It's really interesting.
So anyway, that was neat, and put me in a decently good mood for working. I won't say I got all THAT much done the rest of the day, but at least I was in relatively good spirits.
Friday was eventful so I'm going to save it for tomorrow. Stay tuned!
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