Mazu's birthday

Mazu is a Daoist deity that is highly revered among Chinese immigrants, largely because she is considered a protector of fisherfolk and other seafarers. Apparently, she was the daughter of some official in Fujian province in the 10th century A.D. I think she's a big deal in coastal provinces like Fujian and Guangdong, as well as Southeast Asian countries with substantial Chinese populations, such as Taiwan, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

Anyways, Mazu's birthday is something like the 23rd day of the 3rd month (using the lunar calendar), which happened to fall on April 18 this year.

Mazu is a huge deal here in Taiwan, they have all sorts of festivals where villages bring their Mazu image to commune with the mother image, which is usually at some big temple. These photos are from Chaotian temple, one of the oldest and most important temples in Taiwan in the town of Beigang.


They had these huge floats with kids dressed up as Chinese gods throwing candies at adults. It was like Halloween, in reverse.


I've been telling people that the entire festival was very pyrotechnic and bloody. Yes, bloody (I'll get to pyrotechnic later). Some was fake blood, like in the two images below, where this handicapped guy would put these young guys into a (fake) trance.


This guy, pictured below, was actually using a sharp metal spiky thing and pounding it on his head and back. In other words, real blood. And I'm pretty sure he went into a real trance, if there is such a thing.


Tattoos are big here.

Now we get to the pyrotechnic part. Firecrackers, lots of them. If you go to a Chinese street celebration, definitely bring earplugs. This bit almost seemed a bit masochistic: a guy would run around in circles in a costume as about 5 to 10 other guys would literally throw firecrackers at him. When the smoke had cleared, most of the costume was burnt.




The music was pretty cool, very loud trumpet-like horns that actually sounded a bit like bagpipes. I've got a sound recording somewhere.
Annalisa says, "Taiwan never ceases to amaze me." Exhibit 7c: One village decides to bring their Mazu image decked out in disco lights, dancing, and playing disco music.

Some photos from Brazil I like

Riocinha favela, Rio de Janeiro. November, 2008.


Sometimes I am boggled by what is considered "good" photography. I often don't understand a lot of the commentary on what I consider bad photography, where it seems to me what a critic or the photographer says is given equal value to the photographs themselves.
I used to consider most portraits dull and uninspired, and could never understand why great portrait photographers were considered great. But maybe this is changing; over the course of this year, I've begun to take more portraits, because I find so much can be said in the way people compose themselves, either deliberately or candidly. And although I haven't become completely comfortable with taking portraits, I've realized that my main interests in photography lies in photographing people (this was partially realized when, after telling a Chinese construction worker in Ethiopia I was a photographer, he asked me "do you photograph scenes or people?" "People," I answered.).

I guess what I am interested in is how people interact with their environments. I tend not to take "isolated" portraits of people in front of a monochrome background, but to somehow convey a relationship between people and the spaces around them. My favorite photos -- my own and those of others -- are almost always of people and their environment. That all sounds pretty general and squishy, which is probably why I have avoided talking about photography on this blog in the first place.

Here are some of my photos I took in Middletown, Connecticut, during my junior (third) year at Wesleyan University in the autumn of 2006. Incidentally, this was the last time I shot entirely on film. I actually miss using film, something I hope to change once I get back to the States. The smell of toxic chemicals in the darkroom, the magical appearance of images on the paper, and satisfying click and subsequent winding my camera after each exposure -- these are things I miss.

Sometimes I feel my job is pretty hard (well, not the actual fellowship job), because I don't get to photograph things that are obviously beautiful. People sometimes ask why am I photographing this and that, like dorms in a construction site, which might seem mundane. But photographing something like a construction site to me is far more interesting than something like Iguazu falls, where one can find enough pretty pictures on Google images.

Sao Paulo, November, 2008
Sao Paulo
Sao Paulo
Curitiba, Brazil. October 2008

China in Ethiopia

If you ask Ethiopians what the Chinese are doing in Ethiopia, they will most likely answer that they build roads and buildings. Huge housing projects are being put up around the capital, Addis Ababa, with many contracts given to Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOE's). One major corporation, China Road and Bridge Construction (CRBC), has come under fire from the World Bank after some shady dealings in the Philippines.

One CRBC employee told me that he hated the corruption of Ethiopia -- and Ethiopia is supposed to be better than many other African countries in this regard. Nonetheless, collusion with the local government is often considered necessary to get things done.









"I respect the Chinese because they are willing to do things that other foreigners aren't willing to do." Whereas many Western organizations and corporations in Ethiopia are not willing to get their hands a little dirty, the Chinese seem willing to work alongside the Ethiopians, in poor working conditions, often living in temporary tin shacks put up next to construction sites.

The Chinese have been put in charge of constructing the new African Union building, perhaps a symbolic move of China's growing influence in Africa.

Chinese workers are paid two to three times the amount they would normally make in China. Many Chinese workers have worked in other African countries, such as Angola, Nigeria, the Congo, and Algeria.




Unlike in most other countries, many of the Chinese in Ethiopia were young, educated, single men. In a way, we had a lot in common -- we'd just graduated university, had a thirst for some adventure abroad, and were open-minded to new places.

Perhaps in testament to the excellence of Ethiopian food, many Chinese people remarked that they'd rather eat Ethiopian food, than try to eat Chinese food all the time.

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

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

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

Qin-Qi! (Relatives!)

This post is probably an inaccurate description of my relations, but that doesn't seem to matter because however tenuous the relation, we're somehow relatives:

Today I met up with distant distant relatives; I think it goes like this: my mom's dad's distant cousin's child married a woman, whom I call Goy yi-yi, who is also a distant relative of my mom's, but has a different last name (Li as opposed to Rong, my mother's maiden name). Apparently the government moved Goy (Li) to the "Wang" village after a dam was constructed flooding her village, and the "Wang" village shunned her, and she asked my mom's family (Rong or the Wu's... my maternal grandmother's family) to get her out of China. My mom's family in the U.S. had a distant relative who was willing to marry Goy and thus bring her to the United States. They now live in New York City; Goy sells fruit on the streets.

Goy is close to my mom's family, she shows up at all of the family gatherings in NYC. She is an extremely generous person, despite what little has come her way. Goy's younger brother's wife is the younger sister of a woman who I am staying with her. So there you go. We're Qin-qi (relatives)!

I think I've complained here more than once how conservative and "closed off" the Chinese community is, just about anywhere. I'm not saying they aren't nice, but in general, they aren't the sort of people who will let acquaintances or even friends into their personal lives easily. I've found this insularity is both somewhat lessened and exacerbated within the diaspora. For instance, one family in Curitiba was extremely open to me, even after knowing me for just a couple hours. I'd hypothesize that it might have to do with the relatively small Chinese population in Curitiba -- to see another Chinese person was cause for great excitment. When I insisted on paying for a drink and they refused, they said "You're Chinese! Chinese people must help one another!"

On the other hand, in a big city like Sao Paulo, where there are many clans and subcommunities within the Chinese population here, people tend to be more suspicious. You can't just be "Chinese," you have to be "Li," "Wang," "Xie," and not only that, but from the right clan of Li Wang or Xie. Throw in the recent violence (and the likelihood of complicity within the Chinese community) against the Chinese, and everyone has slammed the door, and probably locked it, on the gringo-Chinese dude who popped out of nowhere with the funny accent. And the funny last name (Bien is extraordinarily rare... as is Rong, my mother's last name).

On the other hand, if you have Qin-qi, you're golden. Even if the relationship is as unclear as it is to them as it is to you, most Chinese people will treat you like a long-lost child/sibling.

(No) photos from Paraguay (yet)

I apologize for not posting any photos from Paraguay yet. The main reason I haven't is that my internet connection is very slow here, and I can't resize my photos to make them smaller in my new camera, like I could with my old camera. That makes posting photos online very difficult. If I can figure out a way to resize them -- or get a decent internet connection -- I will.

The project is coming along quite well here, I think. I've been able to follow several individuals and a family. Here are some sketches:

Mr. Yu is the owner of Dou Jiang Dian, or Soy Milk restaurant, which advertises vegetarian food and Paraguayan food. Mr. Yu came to Paraguay twenty-six years ago, spurred on by a failed business venture in Taiwan. He apparently tried to open up a business here in Paraguay, but that failed, and for the past ten years, has run Soy Milk Restaurant. The restaurant appears quite successful.

Soy Milk Restaurant is special and therefore successful, I think, for two reasons. Firstly it is the only Chinese restaurant that specializes in breakfast food and vegetarian food. I'd contend the former is more vital for business than the latter; although there are vegetarians here, there aren't many, while everyone needs a good breakfast, especially when you have to wake up at 4 or 5 am. Soy milk restaurant has tons of Chinese breakfast pastries, congee (rice porridge, delicious), oil sticks (also delicious...), and pretty much every other traditional Chinese breakfast food. The Chinese business community here loves it.

Secondly, Soy Milk Restaurant sells Paraguayan food as well. I'd argue that the restaurant is beginning a process of gastronomic syncretism (thanks to my liberal arts degree from Wesleyan, I am allowed to make up obnoxiously complicated phrases for simple concepts), that is, it is beginning to mix Chinese and Paraguayan food. Along Avenida Avay, there are five or seven (depending on how you count a restaurant...) Chinese restaurants, and as far as I can tell, the only one that regularly attracts non-Chinese customers is Soy Milk Restaurant. They sell Paraguay soups and mains, with a little Chinese ingredients and flavors added in.
I think this may be the first step toward a greater melding of cuisines that you'd see in Peruvian-Chinese chifa cuisine or American Chinese cuisine, such as chop suey.

Mr. Yu wakes up every day at 2:30 am to begin preparing breakfast by 3:00 am. I had the sleep-deprived pleasure of accompanying him last week at 3:00 am. For some reason I doubted he'd be punctual for our date, but then I realized that this was his job, whether some American was there to photograph him or not. He prepares the soy milk, the porridge, everything, until his workers start coming at around 4:30 am.

People start calling and placing orders as early as 5 am, and business is open by 5:30. Mr. Yu's wife comes in around 6, and Mr. Yu then retires home.

Hopefully, I'll be able to post some photos of Mr Yu, and continue the sketch, since there's more!

请客 (qing'ke), or, the art of invitation

It is one of the first lessons in college-level Chinese, something described as an indispensable part of Chinese culture, and something I actually attempted to describe in my fellowship interview. My concise Oxford University Press Chinese-English dictionary defines "qing ke" as the following:
"stand treat; entertain guests; give a dinner party; play the host."

I think I described it in my Watson interview when posed the question, how exactly are you actually gonna get to know all these Chinese people? I tried to describe how during my times in China, as well as with my family back home in the U.S., relationships are made and cemented through "qing ke." Basically, one asks another (or a group of people) for a lunch, a cup of tea, a beer, or really any other social activity. I'm not well versed in the specifics, but I'm pretty sure some sort of monetary exchange is necessary, in order to demonstrate that one is actually treating the other person (So, inviting someone for a walk in the park doesn't count, but paying for the post-walk teahouse does). When the bill eventually comes, the appropriate parties spend a good amount of time fighting over the bill. If one is particularly determined to treat, he or she makes prior arrangements (with the restaurant staff, for instance) so the bill doesn't slip into the wrong hands.
Of course, once one has treated another, it is the guest's unspoken duty to treat the host the next time.

I should mention that I tried to "qing'ke" the second day in Lima, with a chain-smoking Tianjin guy with stained yellow teeth, a leather jacket, and a thick Northerner accent (which stands out against the Cantonese-inflected Mandarin that most others speak here). It was like I was in Beijing all over again -- visitors of the Chinese capital have probably all noticed the large groups of such men in restaurants rowdily downing beer after beer, shirts rolled up and faces red, cigarette stumps littered across the floor. After noting we were living in the same neighborhood, I invited him out for a beer, as befits this seemingly stereotypical northerner. He politely agreed, but nothing ever came of it, and for some odd reason, I haven't seen him in his shop since that first day.

It's now been nearly two weeks since I got here, and I finally had my first two "qing'ke" exchanges in the past three days. I failed to pay both times, perhaps reflecting my novice bill-fighting abilities. I would like to note that I was also quite clearly playing against a home-field advantage: the first time, it was the restaurant owner who was treating me. I tried to force the ten soles bill (about $3.40) into her hands, but it simply wouldn't take. It's amazing. I tried a couple times, but she refused and simply said "next time."


The second time happened today. Roxane, who I think I mentioned in a previous post, invited me and her son (who is the same age) out for lunch at Chifa Canton. The food was delicious, a great vegetable dish with my favorite mu'er, a fungus literally translated as "tree ears," and a local fish steamed in classic Cantonese style with a healthy amount of ginger and scallions. I kept thinking, there is no way I can let her pay for this. Unbeknownst to me, however, Roxane had apparently made previous arrangements with the restaurant owner (who is her good friend) to pay for the lunch, so when I asked for the bill, they said it had already been paid. Even worse, Roxane had slipped out to work, so I couldn't even fight with her for the bill.

But I think that these two "qing'ke" incidents are good signs. They may have treated me this time, but no matter how much they fight for the bill next time, eventually I'll win, and I'll pay. It's an unspoken rule. And it signifies that at the very least, a kind of personal relationship is forming.

An introduction to El Barrio Chino in Lima, Peru

"Chifa" is the word used to describe Chinese food in Peruvian Spanish, a slight corruption of the Chinese compound chi-fan, literally translated as "Eat Food." Chifa seems to be ubiquitous in Lima, even outside the Chinatown area. In my district, Miraflores, there are two Chifas only two minutes away from my apartment building. It appears as if the Chinese influence in Peru has at least permeated its cuisine, and foods such as sopa wanton and chaufa (fried rice) are found everywhere. Often after attempting to explain my project to Peruvians, I ask them if they've had Chifa, and if so, if they like it. I have yet to meet a single Peruvian (or more specifically, someone from Lima) who isn't aware of the Chinese population here, or who hasn't tried Chinese food. They have all said that they like it, but that may be a different matter.


The Chinese have settled in Peru for over hundred years, and continue to do so today. Lima's Chinatown is one of the most established in the Western Hemisphere, and is perhaps the most famous Chinatown outside of the United States. Geographically, however, "El Barrio Chino" (the Chinatown) is quite small -- it is composed of only two perpendicular streets, Calle Uyacali and Calle Capon.

I arrived in Lima one week ago, and I quickly obesrved that the Chinese community here in Peru isn't really a unified entity. Similar to the Chinese community in, say, New York, the Chinese community in Lima is an eclectic mix of recent immigrants, first-generation Chinese (such as myself), and descendants of Chinese immigrants who arrived here as early as the mid-1800s.
Cantonese immigrants were the first settlers in Peru. Many of their descendants are already well-integrated into Peruvian society, no longer speak Cantonese, and seem to separate themselves from the more recent immigrants. These different groups don't necessarily interact on equal terms, either.

Roxane Lok, who works at a foodstuffs store, arrived from Guangdong less than ten years ago. She was friendly with me on my first day in Barrio Chino, and was willing to pose for a photograph with her boss, Julia, a Peruvian-born woman of Chinese descent, called tusan, another Peruvian Spanish term that is derived from the Chinese tusheng, or locally-born.

Roxane appeared quite aware of the disparities between these two groups. I asked the two where they live, and Julia replied San Isidro, a posh suburb where private guards and electric fences are the norm; whereas Roxane replied El Barrio Chino, which despite its touristy veneer, is the first stop for many newly-arrived immigrants. Roxane simplified the difference between these two groups as symbolic of her relationship with Julia, "La duena y la trabajadora" (The Boss and The Worker).

Most recent immigrants have also arrived from Guangdong, but many more have come from another southern coastal province that has historically sent many immigrants abroad, Fujian. Mr. Lu, an acupuncturist in the Barrio Chino, estimates that within the past eight years the Fujianese population here expanded from only 200 to over 5,000. I don't know whether that is true, but many of the new Chifas that are popping up around the two main streets of the Barrio Chino are run by Fujianese.

Mr. Lu

Mr. Lu, however, does not fit into either of the two predominant categories of Chinese here; he is neither a part of the recent migration from the southern provinces nor is he a descendant of early settlers. Mr. Lu is from Shanghai, and at the age of fifty-five, he managed to get a visa out of China in 1987 (do the math... I did). Unlike most of the other Chinese here, too, Mr. Lu seems enamored of his adopted country and highly critical of his country of birth.

Mr. Lu almost immediately began describing to me the great freedoms he had in Peru, that although China's economy has opened up, its government still hasn't, and that the Chinese are all after money whereas the Peruvians are much more humane. More than once, Mr. Lu grandly described the "libertad" in Peru, which he asserted was near-absent in China.

Mr. Lu's age already hinted at the fact that he undoubtedly lived through some of the most traumatic periods in Chinese history -- the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution during the 1960s and 1970s. Mr. Lu's iconoclastic comments further contributed to a suspicion that he must have endured unspeakable hardships in China. One common theme that will undoubtedly run through this project is attempting to understand why people left China, and perhaps more historically, under what conditions they left.

Because of my thesis work on China's barefoot doctors (Chijiao yisheng) during the Cultural Revolution, I was interested in whether Mr. Lu had trained any doctors, since he had already finished medical school (in Chinese medicine) by 1961, at the Medical University in Anhui province. While writing my thesis, I learned that China was able to rapidly train over 1.5 million "barefoot doctors" -- minimally trained rural paramedics -- largely through the help of forced rural conscription of urban doctors.

He said that he was "sent down" (xiaxiang) to the countryside in the late 1960s, which was quite common for urban residents with the wrong politics, and yes, he trained many barefoot doctors in rural Anhui, as well as "worker's doctors" (gongren yisheng) outside of Shanghai. During the Cultural Revolution many political undesirables -- intellectuals, "capitalist roaders," teachers, doctors -- were forcibly sent to the countryside to engage in grueling manual labor.

Mr. Lu also indicated that he would not have been able to go to medical school later on, because as he put it, his parents had a "hacienda." The nice thing about talking with these Chinese-Peruvians is that when my Chinese fails (i.e., I had forgotten had to say "landowners" in Chinese), we can often switch to Spanish. Both Chinese and Spanish are currently occupying the very small space my brain has allocated for foreign languages, so mixing up the two is inevitable. Back to the Hacienda. Shortly after Mr. Lu must have entered medical school in 1957, class struggles would have made it impossible for Mr. Lu, the son of landowners, to attend a medical school. On the other hand, those who had grown up as peasants or landless laborers would have had a far greater chance at higher education.

Mr. Lu is spritely and in good spirits at 75, and seems to have adapted to Lima quite well. He has a Peruvian wife and his three children (I assume from a previous marriage in China) are scattered across the world -- one in Canada, one in China, and one practicing acupuncture in you guessed it, Cote d'Ivoire. I told him that this was a little strange, going to Cote d'Ivoire, and he goes "Yes, it's hard there, but it's still good."