navigating difference in beijing

Above are photos I took from my room on the 6th floor of Building 19 on Tsinghua's campus. I have since moved across campus to a very new building where I share a lounge and a bathroom with a Chinese student called "Candy."

Navigating cultural differences on the Tsinghua campus and around Beijing is something I never actively considered before coming here, but - instantly - on arrival in China’s capital it has proved to be something I must consistently think about it.

As a white, western (young) woman maybe I didn’t think about this because of a deep and naive affinity to my own privilege. In New Zealand, I never truly stood out and could, on the whole, be part of the crowd and hide within it. I also am part of a socio-economic class that afforded me more control and freedoms. If I felt drawn to “a cause” (political or social), I could unquestionably find a group to be a part of or I could freely write about it through any medium. Although I am often anxious and over-analytical, in New Zealand I had a relatively straightforward identity. I had freedoms. I had a voice. I had a hopeless attachment to the myth of the individual.

And as much as I could, I tried to be aware of my freedoms and, simultaneously, be aware of what I still could not have as a female (like control of how my body is perceived, compartmentalised and commodified by different parts of society). However, daily life in China has both forced me to adopt an outsider status, temporarily restricted certain liberties (for example, we were explicitly warned that organising any type of religious gathering on campus is a punishable offence) and exaggerated what I could not have as a woman.

Without wanting to victimise myself and appear to lament for these new statuses, I have been trying to put together different pieces of these realisations, but I still have a puzzle in front of me rather than an idea of what the end picture could look like. I really am not the heroic lone male traveller like Kerouac’s Sal Paradise or Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, who we so readily allow a “great” story and our enduring adoration. Instead, I am an anonymous female who has to write to create a narrative and therefore protect myself (thanks Adrian for that link to Vanessa Veselka’s wonderful essay).

I am currently working out whether to use this blog as a space to put things together as well as share my experiences of Beijing. So, for now, perhaps consider this a pre-post announcing more musings to come?

xx
Lou

max makes six million

My brother Max hadn't read any of my Critic articles. Because I have held this above his head for the entire year Max decided to rapidly skim through some of my features and reply to them. Here is a lightly edited version of the barely coherent/poetical email he sent me (also I don't necessarily agree with what he has to say [laugh]):

Hi Loulou, 

Talking about your articles. I like the funny titles you give your headlines and how you're not afraid to explore into the deep end.

1) Summary for your interview with a musician: The cool music guy. This is so "in", so cultural, so interesting. All you are thinking when you interview him is, "yeah, tell me more about this 'lucid state you enter' (while I lucid up myself). It's not about the reward, it's what you can't see, what's inside you, it's the experience. Now look into my eyes." 

2) Summary for your article on the Dunedin music scene: Dad's life was fucking legit etc. Your feature has paragraphs with typical messages like: "Back in my day, things just happened"; "You didn't have this and this and this"; "While you have this advantage now in your generation, at the same time it's redundant because of how fucking awesome my generation was".

3) Summary for your polyamory article: Investigation into group orgies and how people have been misrepresented in their group orgies. 

"Each person will have his or her own subjective interpretation about what polyamory is, but I have always understood it as that lack of physical ownership in a relationship. We’ve been conditioned by society to feel territorial over our partner’s body. It’s a removal of that body territorial idea."  

This grinds my gears. The interviewee has inserted the theory of post-modernism into his sex life and now all he has left is skepticism. Everything is just "interpretations". Don't buy into the whole liberal love affair, with the kind of "grass is greener on the other side" thought process. Labeling sexual orientation/sexual ideologies are attempts to give meaning and significance to our actions. Also, jealousy and rivalry are things that make us work to justify our value to each other.

From,

Max

room to grow

aps xx

auckland II

Thanks Charlotte for the most magical time in Auckland. I want to live there. Badly. I  absolutely can't wait to get back. If you're from Auckland and looking at this post, try guess the places these photos were taken! Talk soon my blogger friends. I miss you Aps.

xx
Lou

in loving memory of marion

She often had a necklace of pearls on and loved to smell good and look good.



Almost every week she went to the hair salon to get her hair plaited. Just before she passed she had her hair up in two little pigtails tied with ribbons. It was the sweetest thing to see and brought tears to my eyes.



She loved her television and scandal and gossip. Her favourite TV adventure was, of course, Coronation Street. It kept her giggling and reminded her of her home in England.



This is not her but I know she and Grandpa loved tennis. They played at their tennis club until quite old. If I was addicted to tennis a big part of that would be bcause of the cute uniforms in white and how great they look with tanned legs and arms.



Grandma was English and I think always had a connection with it. She was always on the phone or writing letters to family in friends there. I liked to write letters to Grandma while being in Dunedin. It's so charming.



She had a dedication to ribbons. They were always the final touch to her look.



I am not sure if she adored lemonade or fizzy drinks but their fridge always was stock full of drinks. Such a treat.

 

Their house was always neat and quiet and their garden filled with hydrangeas. Peaceful and quaint.  

 

Marion loved, loved her food. And she loved her family.

Rest in Peace my darling Grandma.
xx
Lou

get happy

1. Songs by The Beatles, always a mood lifter

2. Pretty dresses (from twentyseven names)

3. Chai tea, spicy or hot and sweet

4. Happy Socks! I'm so in love with the quirky patterns. My package from their Sweden headquarters arrived yesterday and wearing them I feel so... happy

5. Knitting

Doing all five of these things at once make me quite happy (knitting while wearing a pretty dress with happy socks, drinking hot chai, and listening to the Beatles)!




aps xx

nollywood at the dunedin public art gallery

I love the perfect aesthetics of printed photos in lovely white frames mounded neatly, in linear rows along gallery walls. I also love humour captured in art. Currently the exhibition ‘Nollywood’ at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery fufills both these loves. This photo exhibition by Pieter Hugo focuses on the world’s third biggest film industry found in Nigeria. Its title ‘Nollywood’ reflects the obvious influences and in some ways it (in its blatant name adoption) embraces the cliche with a huge, crooked smile.

Hugo has captured either singular or groups of Nigerian actors recreating some of the most legendary moments in their film history. The results are bizzare, ridiculous and at times guresomely realistic. We see Nigerian versions of Jesus and nude Darth Vader. We see the tolken Nigerian Dwarf. We also see blood, white glazed eyes, death juxtaposed with everyday Nigerian life continuing on in the background.

This photo series goes beyond the material presentations of gore of the depicted violence and the cheap horror tricks. It portrays a fascinating history of a film community where I believe many would hardly know about.

In one of the photos is a white man with a mask, this is actually the photographer himself. I think this shows the fun-ness and accessibilty of the world of Nollywood and the allure for outsiders to involve themselves. In some ways too, though, it indirectly questions the copious amounts of money and time that is put into other film systems like Hollywood. To round off the cliches, perhaps these money consumeing industries are where the horror so obviously lies..DEAR ME. Too much?
xx
Lou

For more information and a better description, see his website!

much love monday: great dames

In New Zealand we seem to be living in the time of choice so why do we limit our outfits to clothing that will blend into a crowd? Why do girls enjoy oversized off the shoulder knits with black tights; why do boys save up for their Lower jeans and black tshirts and that’s it? It seems that there is such a thing as too much freedom. Perhaps we are lost. Thank goodness there’s a solution. When the little sheep are lost and frightened who can they look to but the wise fashion shepherds?

These shepherds are NOT the quick to come quick to go IT girls - no. They are the old dames who dress because they love art, they love style and most of all they love wearing what they can dream of. Vivienne Westwood is one of the greatest designers of our time but it’s not solely for her fashion label she created, it’s not just because she clothed the punk sub cultural wave, it’s because all she creates, she is herself. We see a now 70 year old diva with a tangle of orange hair, painted lips, laughing in an advertisement with her good friend Pamela Anderson. She slaps judgment in it’s pink flushed face but she also sets a style standard that many of us crave or obsesses over.

The website and my visual shrine ‘Nowness’ recently posted a short video of alive and beautifully aged woman who the fashion world bow down to. When my friend and I watched it we fell in love with their way of being, how they costumed their day to day performance.

There is Iris Apfel who’s eyes blink at you behind her famous huge owl spectacles. There is artist Ilona Royce Smithkin looking charmingly eccentric with extended orange eyelashes. I think what is central to these women’s layered, elaborate and beautiful dress is that each piece is stitched into them with its own little stories. Their outfits are creative certainly but what is most important is that they are wearing their lives AND they are consistently doing so every day.

Fashionable older ladies adorned with glorious brooches, tailored coats, ironic prints, token glasses are the people that we should pause, consider and be influenced by. We don’t necessarily have to worry about dressing as near to the oddball line as we can without crossing it, it’s not about that balance. But it is about being bold and slightly more eccentric when dressing and being slightly more individual. Avoid splurging on cheap nothings and wear outfits that carry your stories within them.

xx
Lou

at seventeen

 

 

things going wrong for me for my birthday:

1) loulou having a test and staying in

2) raining all week

3) critic not publishing our article

4) favourite necklace breaking

5) having an assignment the next morning

6) pimple on nose

7) needing dental work