Amanda Nadelberg
What has happened. There have been fried bees, the sounds of a pig
behind a wall before dinner, the discovery of a favorite dessert (a
green disc with bean filling and a circumference of sesame seeds), a
four course tasting of tea in the rain in the Stone Forest,
improvements in chopstick skillz by all (and subsequent compliments by
the Chinese delegation), more poems and delightful conversations with
our wonderful translators from Beijing, a gecko in the room, a sun
shower this evening during dinner while the Americans discussed the
writing assignment we will present to the Chinese during our final
work session, tomorrow (happy 4th of July), a tiny boat ride in the
rain (see photo), another gecko in the room, an incident with the nice
lady in the cafe in which I tried to ask for cold water sans bubbles
and, when making a tzzzzz noise while crossing my arms in the form of
an x, (in my mind, to indicate “no bubbles”) she must have interpreted
the gesture to mean sans coldness, as she placed the cold can of
seltzer in a bowl and poured boiled water around it, after which this
smiling protagonist walked back to her little room with a paid for
luke warm can of seltzer water (delicious it was not, but a good
story, maybe), 4 caves, 4 cats, 2 cable rides, 3 electric carts, like,
65 dogs, a lot of stairs, dragon fruit (omg!), oxen on the road,
stinky tofu in disguise and the most beautiful (hairpin turning & hair-
raising) bus rides ever (see other photos).
Kyle Dargan
For our third work session, we American writers decided that each delegation should offer two starting points for the free-writing of new work. One item was a title we felt might be a typical title for a poem or book in our respective cultures. The second was an idiomatic phrase or concept we believed might not translate well into the other delegation’s written and cultural language. The Chinese writers offered up the title “Tea House” and the concept of being “Tu” (pronounced “too”). “Tu” means “soil,” but when used to describe someone’s aesthetic or appearance, it can mean unfashionable. Below are a verse poem and a prose poem I wrote in response to the Chinese writers suggestions.
THE GREAT AMERICAN PEEP SHOW NO.5: Found in Translation
Pt. 1: Tea House ( 茶室 )
The character for tea
looks more like a cottage.
The character for house
looks like tea leaves
that have been crumpled in a palm.
There is wisdom in this—
the body of each character
resisting its meaning
just like tea leaves
initially resist the hot water
before beginning to give in
and blend, making a drink
richer than the two parts alone.
Pt. 2: Soil ( Tu / 土 )
I have developed a bad habit of referring to men over the age of sixty as “old spice.” By “spice,” I mean “style,” or possibly “flavor,” which is newfangled slang for “style.” But I say “old spice” because the styles and manners of these men strike me as soiled—things we’d expect to dig from the earth and have to clean before we could see them clearly, things fragile and, if cleaned thoroughly, might disintegrate and join the dirt of their capture.
Kiki Petrosino
At the Teahouse
I can’t understand anything with this mud
& the pieces of silk & peacocks singing. Here’s a whole
farm painted orange on a Thursday, & here’s a tricycle
at the brink of a scream. I have things, like the sugar jones
I can’t help a-bringing to every lunch. This village is rad & huge
as smoke. Look at my flat gold feet chattering over mucky stacks
of roof tiles. No one yells at me in the light. Once upon a time
I had enough anger in me to crack crystal. I boiled up from bed
in my thousand-pound nightdress, with my lungs full of burning
chrysanthemums. Now just imagine the color of the sky
in my brain-case. I’m capable of drinking tea with diamonds in it.
My blood cells race like star-clawed kites over every knuckle
of the roof of this pavilion. Everyone I have loved is gone, except
when I balance them on the edge of my chopstick. I lean back
to yell for the sun the sun the sun the sun–& a small cup of tea arrives
whose Chinese name is “Pieces of Shreddedness.” Dear Mother
yesterday love resembled a rockery of accumulated refinement, & today
it’s a donkey named Goodbar dipping out from a doorway. I can’t
simmer down, & I won’t simmer down. Some people make
a life of straw. Some people get holy
on not much at all.
Matt Hart
1.
Arrived in Kunming, and it’s beautiful—everywhere green and the mountains in the distance are actually mist/missed/mysterious. It’s like something out of Tu Fu or Wang Wei. Finally, I get the endless fascination the Chinese poets have with mountains, especially after the chairlift in the Western Hills (2nd day in Kunming), the mist swirling around us and the tree tops at our feet, the ground nowhere in sight—to the right, the mountain, to the left an actual abyss. I have now without a doubt experienced what the Romantics must have meant by the sublime—natural beauty so gargantuan and overwhelming that it induces both a kind of terror and awe inspiring pleasure. “Our thoughts begin where words end.”—Po Chu-i//”Richlier burn ye clouds.”—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
2.
1st work session in Kunming: Kiki and I proposed that each delegate contribute one constraint that we would all the writers from both delegations would have to include in the day’s writing. We thought this would be a unifying sort of exercise, bringing the two delegations (and their various individual voices) together over common ground (images, phrases, prompts) provided by the delegates themselves. The idea was that by using the prompts each delegate would produce a piece of writing that shared some images, themes, and/or phrases in common with those of the other delegates, creating family resemblances among all the work.
The delegates then came up with the following prompts (these were to be interpreted liberally/loosely):
Copper (reference to or image of)
Flying/Flight—as in travel by plane, birds, escape
(the phrase) “Record Player”
A personal fear or phobia
(the image of) a young girl drinking tea
Rain
Flowers
Soccer
Petrified Wood
Aridity vs. Humidity (Drought Vs. Flood)
The name of a person or thing from home
Each delegate then spent one hour writing with the only stipulation that they had to somehow address each prompt. Here’s a draft of the poem I came up with:
ADDRESS TO THE CHINESE POETS
Chinese poets, I am sitting in your chair, and it is amazing
The grass is green, the houses are green
And when I squint weirdly enough
I can see my own green house in the weird green distance
My own green reflection in the weird green mirror
I can eat a noodle bowl for breakfast with red chilies and scallions,
and nobody knows the difference
There is no difference and there is every difference
I don’t have to be afraid of the ghosts in my ski mask
The petrified wood in my backpack of blood
Not even the girl drinking green tea beside me thinks it’s strange
that I am thinking about noodles at 9:30 in the morning on a Tuesday
I ask her for her autograph,
but she looks off blankly, then disappears in the catatonic mud
That’s okay, she’s still terrific in my book of Chinese poetry
where “I am an exile of yellow blossoms smiling”
appears and disappears, itself a mistranslation
Argentina beat Mexico 3 to 1
It is raining or it has stopped raining
There is a fish called a crocodile, and last night I ate its belly
I think I understand now all the mountains in your poems
I think I understand getting lost in your horizon,
and one hour later I’m a lithium-powered hybrid
But listen, Chinese poets, I miss my wife and daughter,
And the dog at my feet whose coat is copper
And I know it’s really weird, but I also miss so much
my record player
I miss my record player,
which is green
I think this exercise helped bring all the delegates closer together both as human beings and writers, while connecting our actual writing in very tangible (thematic, imagistic and linguistic) ways. In each piece, the references to the individual prompts created family resemblances, not only between the works of each delegation, but also within the delegations themselves. At the same time, the pieces were wildly different from one another as well, since each writer brought his or her own artistic vision (not to mention personal experience and interests) to bare “against” the initial set of prompts.
3.
Time out for walking in the rain, among massive stones and inside caves, and a wonderful tea that tastes bitter at first, but slowly (like magic) turns sweet in your mouth. In the end, another chairlift—up the mountain, down the mountain. Then this morning, in Xiaoshuijing Miao village, we were treated to a performance by an amazing choir of self-taught musicians in a ramshackle Protestant church in the middle of the world and mud. It was really so moving—alive with faith and humility and joy to burn. I was reminded, once again, as I have been many times before that music is a universal language—purely expressive, no translation is necessary. If you’re a human being, you get it.
However, you also get the extreme poverty and remoteness of the village. All the chorus members are farmers, and we were told that most of them join when they can no longer afford to go to school. Dogs, oxen and chickens live literally side by side with their human handlers. The floors of the houses are packed mud with fire pits. Everywhere one looks there are flies. This is a place where people struggle daily to survive—certainly more than I ever have to. I can’t really describe it, and even if I could, I think many Americans would find it hard to believe. It certainly was a shock to our young Chinese translators, who, being educated and from the cities, had never been to a village this remote before.
Clearly, everywhere one goes there are the “haves” and the “have nots” (in America we certainly have a similar dynamic) and it’s really unclear what to do. I mean, as an individual, if you’re lucky enough to find yourself in the former category what is your responsibility to those who are in the latter? Certainly the people in Xiaoshuijing Miao village are proud hardworking people, and they don’t want or need our pity. But their opportunities for education, for better tools and facilities, for a life that’s less about survival and more about the joy of expression (which they so clearly love given the way they sing) are limited to say the least. Hearing the choir and seeing the village itself (which wasn’t on the agenda by the way, but the villagers were certainly happy to show us around) is an experience that will resonate with me for the rest of my life. I will be haunted by the poverty I saw, and I will be filled with hope about the intensity and power of the human spirit. But what to do…?
4.
Huanglian Shangqing Keli: Herbal medicine for my raggedy throat (looks like coffee, tastes like smoke. Mix it with hot water and drink it ’til you float). It turns my stomach angry.
As for my throat, I can’t tell any difference.
5.
2nd work session: Our Chinese colleagues proposed a writing exercise where each writer would be given another writer’s name at random (all the names were written on pieces of paper, and we drew them out one by one). Then we would spend twenty minutes writing a piece describing the person whose name we drew. This was really an excellent opportunity to get clear about the people we’re working with here. It’s funny how many of our impressions remain murky until we are forced to speak them out loud or write them down. Of course, writing about someone else is also always writing about oneself as well; it points as much to the writer(‘s vision, sensibility, aesthetic and interests) as it does to the subject.
I drew Lu Qin’s name, which was great because I didn’t know here very well, but now I feel like I know her better. She’s a very quiet introspective and serious person, and I tried to get that into my piece while also staying true to my own blast site sensibility. Here’s a draft of what I wrote:
QUIET SISTER
When I am alive I am alive
and when you are alive you are also alive
and the air is with its serious expression of everything
plus ten thousand thousand things going full blast into
blossom. If a lion could speak, we couldn’t understand
him, is a quotation, and I have no idea—or maybe only
a little one—what it’s doing in this portrait of you as a portrait
of me. See, the portrait always says as much or more
about the person who makes it as it does about its subject,
and if the walls of this place cave in and everyone’s here with us
will anybody hear the ending as it falls into its August?
Through all our good wishes, I am listening
to you listening, and what I am hearing is terrific,
only mystery, and some ways of being better
by paying a particular kind of attention
to whatever things there are to pay particular attention to,
for example, the blanket of mountains beyond us,
the abyss in every one of us. Something green
Or gracious. Or flowers, pink and blue ones. By the way,
I’ve been loving eating flowers, inhaling red peppers—excuse me
I’m choking—in China, and I realize I’m not letting you get a word in
edgewise, my apologies, but there’s a moon in my mouth
that needs spitting. If I were drawing instead of writing
the lines would be shadows. The marks would be
full with I know not what. The very best marks
are the ones one can’t describe. I clear my throat
and raise my voice. The birds outside
keep talking about summer, their words
a rough jumble of erasers.
I really loved doing this piece, and the works produced by the group were really inspired/inspiring. It seemed like afterward our conversations with one another were livelier, and I think it had everything to do with us getting to know one another better via descriptive, expressive, anecdotal means.
6.
Soundtrack:
I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One—Yo La Tengo
American Slang—The Gaslight Anthem
Heaven Is Whenever—The Hold Steady
Kiki Petrosino
The village of Xiaoshuijing emerges from a bend in the road somewhere in the mountains of Fumin County, about 30 km from Kunming. At the center of a constellation of mud-brick houses, toolsheds, and workshops is a Christian chapel where the town’s inhabitants, dressed in brightly embroidered robes, gather (after a long day of farming) to sing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiahin impeccable four-part harmony. This choir, formed entirely of villagers from Xiaoshuijing, has existed for some 70 years in this remote corner of Yunnan, where people still plant corn and potatoes by hand, and where a typical living room contains a stall for the family ox. The villagers of Xiaoshuijing are members of the Miao minority group, and the choir’s repetoire includes several songs in the local dialect, as well as selections from the European and Chinese canons. Though no one in the choir, not even the conductor, has any formal musical training, the 50-odd members of the group treated us to a half-dozen masterfully realized arrangements, achieving a crystalline harmony that made the simple rectangular chapel building seem like a mountaintop cathedral. These were holy people lifting their voices in a holy place. After the concert, the Miao singers invited us to ask any questions we wished about the choir, the town, and the Miao culture. They had only one major question for us Americans–how large are our chapels? What are our choirs like? We answered as best we could, saying that America is a place of many chapels, many choirs. It felt good to say this, and to shake hands with these singers, who had given us such a remarkable gift.
Kyle Dargan
THE GREAT AMERICAN PEEP SHOW NO. 3: Expectorating off the Great Wall of China
I bend over the edge
on one of the topmost towers.
Three feet my liquid travels
before a staunch wind
pushes the glob back into the stone.
I hoped it, I would, drift farther
and land somewhere
among the mountain shrubs—
leaving some DNA to join
the genetic mosaic of all who have
sweated and pissed and bleed
while trudging the steps to this height.
But maybe I am not meant
to be preserved. I’ve climbed
this dragon’s spine of stone.
I lift my head, straighten
my own backbone. I imagine
this poison particulate haze
is merely a lower rung of heaven.
THE GREAT AMERICAN PEEP SHOW NO. 4: Ten-Tongued Dragon
(Based on the prompt by Matt and Kiki)
There is no math true enough to total
the hours my body has now given to the sky.
How dry my lips were in Beijing.
How humid the air that surrounds me in Yunnan.
When the travel nurse’s syringe
touched my skin like a record needle,
there was no song. I was leaving behind
my vegetable garden
during D.C.’s season of brutal heat.
I fear no rain will fall in my absence—
that the sprouts will wither and resent me,
the cucumber blossoms dried to
crumbs. Here, smiling girls
drink tea in the commercials.
Here, I cannot sleep—watching
futbol four hours in darkness.
The beds feel like slabs
of ancient wood, petrified with time.
My eyes have reddened, but still
it is not quite the copper red
color of the too-rich Kunming soil.
