Spain, United Kingdom, Vietnam, Taiwan, China

Although I probably won't go to all these countries, and don't know how much time I will spend, I now have approval to visit these countries for my project. Okay, Taiwan isn't a country. Sorry Taiwan!

I crossed New Zealand off the list. I feel like I just got another Watson with this important approval. The Watson Fellowship is largely about independence and flexibility -- an acknowledgement that plans change and that as a fellow with few outside requirements, I must constantly re-evaluate the trajectory of my project.
All in all, I'm very happy about this change. The only reservation is I am only allowed two weeks in mainland China -- having spent six months in Beijing before, I am not supposed to return to a country I have spent time in before. This policy is a result of the Fellowship philosophy of having new experiences and thrusting oneself into unknown territories. Indeed, I will be spending my time in Taishan county, the county that I have often written about -- the hometown of my maternal grandfather.

*There's an interesting topic in what exactly counts as a country. Is Taiwan a country? Well, not really, but it is enough of a country to be counted separately from China. More controversially, I once was browsing through past Watson Fellows project abstracts -- which list their initial country list. Someone listed "Tibet" as a project country. Of course, I do not support China's current Tibet policy, and believe everybody would be better off if Tibet had real autonomy. But nobody recognizes Tibet as a country, not even the Vatican City/Holy See, which doesn't recognize mainland China diplomatically (and is under no economic pressure to do so, unlike many small countries...) , not even Taiwan, not even India, which hosts Tibet's government in exile.

No lump of coal for Christmas, but...

A PINK SPANDEX SHIRT FOR GIRLS!!!

Yes, yes, this was indeed my only present during Christmas this year. I'm not bitter (I'm really not, I promise), after all, I'm in a new country with no family. And being on the road means that I don't want to be carrying lots of stuff.

At any rate, I wasn't exactly expecting presents. And I'm not really keen on gambling, in any form, so I wasn't going to buy 10 bingo tickets in hopes of winning some prize at the Chinese community Christmas party (skimming over the last four words, "Chinese community Christmas Party," I think I just read "Chinese Communist Party." Maybe I spent too long in my thesis carrel in college). But the father of the Chinese Catholic church in Milan was nice enough to give me one of his bingo tickets, so I could participate. There were tons of prizes, maybe fifty in total, so pretty much everyone could win something (or two or three somethings). All the stuff was donated by some of Chinese wholesalers, so it was a melange of trinkets, clothes, basically a random sample of things you might find in a Walmart. All of course, made in China.

Epilogue: A woman who was trying to be nice offered to switch my present, and I said "no, no, it's fine," but she insisted. I couldn't exactly insist further on keeping a pink spandex shirt for girls -- which might raise some eyebrows -- so now I have a nondescript black hat instead.

Merry Christmas from Milan

Milan, Italy, 2008.

Buon Natale, Feliz Navidad, Feliz Natal, 圣诞快乐, Merry Christmas.

Food (x) versus Photos (y)

I came to the conclusion a while back that the quality of Chinese food I was eating was quite interestingly correlated with the quality of my project photos.

That is to say, the better Chinese food I was eating at the time, the better my projcet photos were. This relationship is shown below:

You will notice that the relationship is not strictly linear. I believe there are several reasons for this:

1) While the quality of Chinese food can keep going up and up, unfortunately, I don't think I can say the same for my photos yet. I'm trying to be critical of my own photos, after all, how can I expect to get better?
To paraphrase a photographer I admire, "To take good photos isn't hard, to take great photos is very difficult, to take exceptional photos is almost impossible."
Maybe the same can be said for Chinese food, but I must have lower standards. Yum.

2) With a small increase in the quality of food I eat, I get great returns on my photos. After a while, I begin to reach my asymptotic line. Sorry large banquets, I'm getting diminishing returns on your delicious food. In fact, when great Chinese food is served, the quality of project photos might even go down as it is usually in a formalized setting with poor light and too many people too nervous to act natural.

So why is there this relationship?

1) I think most kinds of good documentary photography rely on access. If you can get good access to things, your photos will improve immeasurably. Perhaps my project has strayed from street photography in Peru toward documentary photography in Paraguay and Brazil, back to street photography in Italy. This is largely because of my difficulties with access in both Peru and Italy.

2) In general, most Chinese immigrant communities are relatively insular groups that aren't welcoming of outsiders. If they don't invite you to eat delicious food, you won't be snapping away happily. If you are a welcome presence, you will be offered food and you will eat it. This has proved all too true in six months of project.
2a) As a sidenote, I find it interesting when food gets in the way of photography. Sometimes I'm enjoying a delicious crab (I LOVE CRAB), my hands are all dirty, and I see a good photo pass before my eyes. Shouldn't have been slacking off!

Notes:
a. This only applies to Chinese food
b. This is a preliminary study, results may change with more data points

College, seven months later

I think this comic pretty accurately describes my college years:



From xkcd.com

Get me away from here, I'm dying

The title of the post is just a joke, or more correctly, the name of a song. Anyways, after two weeks in Milan, and unrelenting rain for almost a week now, I need to get out for a breath of fresh air. Frankly, I need a day or two to not think about my project.

Actually, I've been in cities nonstop since I arrived in Ciudad del Este more than three months ago, the only exception being two days on Ilha do Mel (Honey Island) in Brazil. The more time I spend in cities, the greater the urge to get as far away from cities as possible when I take a breather from my project. In fact, while in Brazil, I was planning on having my two day vacation in Florianopolis, a beautiful beach town in southern Brazil. I eventually decided against it, because it seemed too popular and too big. I was happy to hear that Ilha do Mel was "màs salvaje" -- more savage, or rustic -- than most other islands along the southern Brazilian coast.

Now, my project revolves exclusively around cities, and though I've come to appreciate urban living, I do need an escape. I didn't grow up in a city. In fact, Beijing was the first city I felt like I knew intimately after spending about six months there. Since then, I can claim knowing, at least somewhat intimately, New York, Lima, Ciudad del Este, Sao Paulo, and to a lesser degree, Cape Town. Note that I'd probably leave Boston out of that list, despite growing up only thirty five minutes away.

All of which is to say, I decided late today that I'm gonna hop on a train tomorrow and get to the Italian Dolomites mountain range. I've always wanted to see it, and now is a great time -- during the week just before all the Italians go on Christmas vacation and flood the region with tourists, raising price levels. I just need a breather, something refreshing before I jump back into my project, head first.


A few sublime images from my time in South America:

Geysers at sunrise near the Bolivia-Chile border.
Ilha do Mel coast, Brazil


View from the train to Morretes, Brazil, where you then transfer to Ilha do Mel.

Cycling along an incredible lunar landscape in Chile, near Bolivia. The landscapes changed at every corner. Wouter, the Dutchman in front, and I seemed to be the only cyclists braving the winds that day.


My precious time out of cities I want to spend in the most remote, most naturally beautiful places. Perhaps one unexpected side effect of this project is that I'm becoming a naturalist.

America is difficult, English is difficult

"You're from America? Life there is really difficult, isn't it?" An unemployed, single man from Fujian asked me this today in Milan.

I was almost relieved to hear someone say this.

I've been outside of the United States for nearly six months now -- the midpoint of my journey -- and up until today, no one from any of the Chinese communities seemed aware of the many hardships that confront immigrants in the U.S.

To many people, the U.S. is Disneyworld; even some Italians said they were surprised how different New York City is compared to how it is portrayed in Sex and the City.

Is it the influence of American culture and media? Maybe: one bored day in Sao Paulo I spent with a first-generation Chinese family watching American music videos from Mariah Carey to 50 cent, and then watched the first two "High School Musical" movies. Mind you, I had never seen any of the above, and considered the day well spent if for purely ethnographic purposes. One of the kids later told me that when he was in China, Michael Jackson was hugely popular, and he had bought a couple music videos of "Thriller" and "Billie Jean" when he first got to Brazil. American movies, television shows, music, have an enormous influence everywhere in the world, which undoubtedly help create a certain idea of America.

To be clear, I'm not saying that the "American Dream" doesn't exist. I know it does -- at least for a lucky few -- like my family. But it is this fantasy that the U.S. is paradise that is especially striking. Perhaps Europe may seem less appealing to Chinese immigrants, since Europe has only recently become an immigrant destination. Maybe, for poor Chinese immigrants, America's culture of individualism and capitalism are more promising than Western Europe's more socialist-leaning tendencies. I don't know.

Oh, and about English being hard: I got asked a bunch of English grammar questions by a first-generation Chinese immigrant, who at age sixteen, has only been in Italy for three years. The questions were mostly about distinguishing prepositions such as on/above, on/over, through/across, etc. As a native speaker of English I know instinctively what is right and what is wrong, but found it nearly impossible to explain these differences. I took comfort in the fact that the textbook was in Italian and I was trying to explain it in Chinese. But nevertheless, it made me remember how hard teaching English is. I did it for a few months when I was eighteen, in Nicaragua, and ffter that informative experience, I decided I could never do it again.
Kudos to my friends teaching English as a second language!

Living in a Buddhist Temple, Sao Paulo

As you may know, I lived in a Buddhist temple for nearly three weeks upon my arrival in Sao Paulo. The temple, 中观寺 (Zhong Guan Si), celebrated its fifteenth anniversary during my stay there. It was opened by a monk from Taiwan; now, it is run by four nuns. Three are from Taiwan, and one is from Buenos Aires, Argentina. The temple is located in an upper middle class district of Sao Paulo, Vila Mariana. Almost all of the people that go to the temple are Taiwanese -- the first large Chinese group to settle in Sao Paulo during the 1960s and 1970s.

Sao Paulo, first generation

Shopping Center, Mogi das Cruzes, Sao Paulo

Li Jinwang's apartment, Sao Paulo

Cantonese Fish market, Sao Paulo

Senior Citizens Dance, Sao Paulo

Senior Citizens Dance, Sao Paulo

Mogi das Cruzes, Sao Paulo

Rain and snow

Today I had my first snowfall in Milan. I love snow and rain (in small doses, of course). People who have grown up around snow know there is a special feeling when you wake up to a world of white.
My apartment when I woke up. You can see the snow on the building across the street; this is a color photograph, no joke.

The tram-tracks by my apartment.

Snow has a way of cleaning things up, before making them all dirty again.
I love the sort of moody film noir feeling one gets when photographing rain in low light. Rain creates new worlds, through reflections, puddles, raindrops on windowpanes. Now if only I had a weatherproof camera and could shoot at ISO 3200 or 6400.... maybe Christmas??

I like to photograph in the late afternoon and early evening, when light is subdued, when people are subdued, when natural light mixes with the artificial.


Curitiba, Brazil

Next time it rains, go outside and pay attention. Just look and see, look for patterns, for light, for the way light hits raindrops. Sometimes beautiful things appear.

Can anybody figure out who this is?

Monochromatic Milan (Where I live)

Remember how I was saying how Milan has no colors, and everything is black and white, or in between? I was being serious.

Exhibit A: my beautiful, if monochromatic apartment.

From the entrance to the apartment: bathroom and wall. Notice black scarf on the right.

Plant life always manages to mix things up and reaffirm the existence of the color palette.

The bedroom. Look closely and you'll realize it's a color photo, although the same can't quite be said about the apartment.

The kitchen in the afternoon.

My awesome apartment mate Sergio. Sergio is a furniture designer for Antonio Citterio in Milan, but is originally from small town in Puglia, in the south of Italy. Note the white clothing (weekends), which is contrasted from the black clothing he wears to work (weekdays). Also note the video projector that he uses to project movies onto the white canvas he has painted on the opposite wall.
Me, being monochromatic and preparing for the cold. This is Sergio's black jacket against the white wall.

Me on the balcony. In an act of restrained rebellion against the Milan fashionistas, I am wearing my red Oktoberfest shirt (from Blumenau, Brazil) under a black v-neck sweater.

Samba in Sao Paulo

Sorry about the high-compression images; my mini-computer can't handle anything else.

Retired Chinese people dance samba

Daude from Bahia performs on Black Consciousness Day
At the Ó do Borogodo bar in Sao Paulo. Samba group at right.

samba

Multicultural Milan

The first Italian restaurant I walked into was owned by a family from Wenzhou, China. The second one as well. The third, a pizzeria called "American pizza" (but my Italian host assures me they have great pizza), is run by Egyptians. The hostel I stayed at is run by Lebanese youth.

These are just my direct direct experiences, which doesn't include the many West Africans and South Asians I see on the streets selling various things. On the city trams, I see ads for "migrart.it," a site apparently where immigrants can post art relating to their immigrant experiences. Europe is changing, and the face of Milan, the economic heart of Italy, is changing as well.

This was perhaps the most startling observations upon my arrival in Milan, Italy from Sao Paulo. I was expecting Milan to be quintessentially European, if not Italian. To a certain degree, it is: beautiful buildings, art, parks, a clean and orderly city (at least in comparison to many South American cities!). But as immigrants begin to stream into European cities, the face of Milan will change noticeably.

Sao Paulo to Milan

I was thinking of all sorts of witty things to say, all kinds of astute observations to record on my transfer from Sao Paulo to Milan. It's now 11:30 pm in Milan, and although only 8:30 pm in Sao Paulo, I'm really tired. Slept about three hours on the twelve hour plane ride, after dealing with Brazilian bureaucracy/airport security.

Apparently the immigration officer in Foz do Iguacu in Brazil only gave me forty days in the country, even though my visa explicitly states I could stay for ninety days. As a result, I "overstayed" my visa by about two weeks, which amounted to about a $50 USD fine, payable on my return to Brazil. Either that, or I can petition it at a Brazilian consulate here in Italy in the next five days. Both options are less than ideal.


Anyways, I am now in Milan, where I feel safe walking around alone at night with my camera. But I must say, Milan lacks the kind of vitality that is pervasive in the streets of Sao Paulo, for better or for worse. Everyone in Milan walks around in monotones, in different shades of black and brown. They just walk, almost nobody hawking anything, no music, no colors. Nevertheless, it is still beautiful in that kind of elegant European way, and the cathedral is awesome. Witness:


I walked down the main Chinese street, Via Paolo Sarpi, and chatted with a little eatery owner. To my surprise, she also insisted that the U.S. was infinitely better than Italy. What is it about the mystique of the United States?