I’ve been intentionally quiet lately because, to be honest, my stay in China has been resting on a bed of nails.

My visa was up on the 22nd, and until its replacement arrived in the mail the other day, I wasn’t entirely confident I’d be enjoying this sweltering Suzhou humidity much longer.

When Maggie called up the local PSB a couple weeks back and asked about the special travel/L visa issued to folks like me married to a Chinese national, or indeed issued to any foreigner visiting a close family member here, they informed her that it could only be issued for a 30 day period.

This was quite in conflict with what the Entry and Exit Bureau (I swear, I’m not making that title up – it’s printed in big letters on a likewisedly big building) had told us 6 months ago when we asked about the visa. Then they had explained that it would be no problem for us to get a 1 year multiple entry visa.

Understandably, Maggie asked the officer why the change, to which he replied, “Special Circumstances”. My wife, the smart jiaozi that she is, questioned the officer on whether or not the “special circumstances” had anything to do with the rather global sporting event about to take place in Beijing. He, rather stoically, and with no elaboration, simply stated, “No, just special circumstances – but it should be better after September.”

It’s enough to make a guy contemplate the amount of force required to drive a chopstick through his skull.

Later in the week Maggie paid a visit in person to the Entry & Exit Bureau and asked for more details. She was told by a very kindly girl there that it shouldn’t be a problem to at least get a six month visa, despite the “special circumstances”.

However, as we’ve recently moved to a new district, the downtown Entry & Exit Bureau is no longer where we need to go to renew the visa. Now out in the rather ritzy SIP, we need to go to the local office, which evidently exists in its own visa regulation dementia dimension.

The 笑里藏刀 of a woman at the desk grinned politely for the foreigner and treated Maggie like she just stepped off the slow train from Ningxia.

She basically told Maggie she had no right to request this type of visa for her husband because she had no right to live in Suzhou (Maggie, for those that don’t remember/know, is from the north-eastern part of China). Despite Maggie displaying that she had the proper identity card showing her registration in Suzhou, and despite the downtown bureau explaining that’s exactly what we would require, this woman wasn’t having any of it.

Finally, just a hair before Maggie ripped off the woman’s face and fed it to her, the woman caved and told us to fill out the application, maybe we could get a 30 day visa – and that we were lucky she was feeling so benevolent.

After filling out the application we had to wait for our number to come up, which was made confusing as there were two separate number systems going depending on what you were looking to accomplish – normally no problem, but in this case the numbers were running in the same sequence.

I passed the time watching another foreigner hopelessly try to figure out why the woman under the #194 LED was refusing to help him – despite is #194 ticket. Two booths over #194 came and went.

Eventually we got back up to the counter to submit our application to a young girl sitting right beside our Mao’er than thou application hander outer benefactor. The young girl seemed a bit confused by Maggie being from outside of Suzhou, but not at all as hostile as her neighbour. When she wasn’t sure what to do they looked it up in a book and made a couple of calls. Apparently it was entirely possible to get the visa we wanted, but only for a 3 month period – special circumstances and all.

In the end we left the visa office feeling good about things, but dreading what might change between the application being processed and the visa being stickied into my passport. Fortunately the visa arrived by courier the other day and I’ve 90 days before I need to worry about things again – just enough time to catch the opening ceremonies of the Special Circumstances, and then to watch as the whole event withers and fades, leaving everyone with a “what the fuck was the big effin’ deal?” look on their face.

Additionally, this week marks another anniversary of sorts. It was November 11, 2003, that I left Canada and began travelling for five months living out of a backpack and on various kind souls couches, spare beds, backyards and floors.

The recognition that it’s been four years since that fateful day has led me to take a moment and consider exactly how I got where I am.

So, lets see how my memory does:

The Magazines

Somewhere in my first or second year of college I got it in my head that I wanted to travel to Thailand upon graduation. A lot of things got in the way of that, the least of which – I’m certain – being that once graduating college few people have money and I was no exception. However, the big stopper was that before I even had my diploma in hand and hat in air, I was working at a magazine publisher spending my days pointing out other’s mistakes as an assistant editor.

With what was quite an awesome gig for a recent grad – interviewing some of my favorite musicians, getting backstage at concerts, and making more money than I’d ever made – the Thailand plans were swept aside as something to be done in the rather undefinable “later”.

I worked at the magazines for a few years, and what was exciting and fun at first quickly became stale and painful. I was tired of writing the same things over and over again, just changing the names. Tired of meeting the same fake people, listing to the same “new” bands, playing with the same “new” music gear.

Somewhere in there echoes of former plans began to swell up again. I became a bit obsessed about wanting to leave it all and travel. However, as much as it doesn’t seem like it should be, your mid-twenties are a tough time to jump off the ladder you’ve been told you need to get your ass up and have, however reluctantly, begun to climb.

It took me the better part of a year to get up the nerve to quit, and I stayed on three months past that as a grace period.

UK, Europe and an Aussie

I’m not really sure why it was that I left in the second week of November 2003, but there it is. I had spent endless hours on LP’s Thorntree forums and lots of time connecting with various people via GlobalFreeloaders so that I felt at least somewhat prepared for what awaited me on the other side of the Atlantic.

Actually, looking at my apprehension now, it’s damn amusing to me just how nervous I was. I mean, it’s England. But for this small town boy who had only travelled around the safety of his own country and the mixed up place just south of it, the UK couldn’t be more foreign.

I travelled England and Scotland for November, ending up in Belfast at my cousin’s for most of December. Spent New Year’s in Dublin with friends and was on the Mainland (of a Western kind) and in Paris at the start of January. In the 30 days that followed I thoroughly used and abused a comped Eurorail pass my “journalist” credentials had gotten me. Paris, Venice, Rome, Amalfi Coast, Athens, Olympia, Barcelona and Florence were all (far too brief) stops.

Upon arriving back in London for a couple of days to await my flight to Thailand, I ended up returning to a Globalfreeloader’s home that I had befriended (and remain good friends with today). It was there that I met Cass. An amazing Tassie that had me at “noi”.

It’s strange thinking of those three days with her now and realize how short that time actually was. Certainly a lot shorter than the number of times in the following two months that I got drunk in Thailand and blabbered on about her. Or wrote songs about her.

Thai Smiles, An Intro to Asia

Whatever bits of my young heart I didn’t leave at Heathrow, Thailand stole. The country that started the journey, and I was finally there. Everything about the place appealed to me. The people, the culture, the food. Everything.

Now, with the perspective that comes with time having washed the memories a great deal, I approach the country with a slightly different feel, and it saddens me. The memories I made there, though dimmer now, still flicker in my mind and give off chemicals that remind me of those initial tastes.

From taking cooking classes and volunteering at an orphanage in the North, to full moon parties and camping on a lonely island in the south – there is very little of those two months that I don’t wish I could repeat again and again. Even the scar that marks my arm, from experimenting with motorbikes and inertia, is something I took from Thailand and still hold dear.

I’ve returned several times since, and each visit was great – but when it comes to all the travel I’ve done since and all the travel I’m likely to do in the future, it’s hard not to think that perhaps those two months were the high water mark.

A Return to CNN and on to BC

After returning from travelling I landed back on North American soil in the Boston airport. While waiting for my connecting flight to Buffalo I couldn’t escape CNN. I had spent five months avoiding the news that most people busy themselves with, and getting such a strong and forceful dose so quickly left me feeling ill.

For the next several months I lived in a bit of a limbo, happy to be home but unsure how to fit back in. Five months isn’t long in the scheme of things, but it’s enough to disconnect you from your life. It’s enough to give you opinions outside the scope of those that have never gone. And it’s enough for the presumed pretentiousness of that fact to distance you from those that were close only six months before.

And so, when given the option to move across the country and live at my Aunt’s in British Columbia, I jumped on it. Leaving, it appeared, was becoming a bit of a hallmark for me.

BC was a mixed bag, but stopped me from getting too cozy and complacent for staying in one place. I still had a nagging desire to get to Australia. Unfortunately I wasn’t saving much money in BC and so not a month after arriving I began planning my departure – to China.

Eight Months To Oz

After typing various random things into search engines, a planned developed whereby I would go to China and teach English as a Second Language for eight months, all the while saving like a fiend to eventually end up in Australia on a one year Holidaymaker visa.

Though my infatuation with the quirky Aussie had cemented itself into one of the closest (and at the same time furtherest) friendships I’ve ever been fortunate enough to have, I was still extremely eager to see what this big island where the water drains backwards and mammals lay eggs was all about.

The eight months in China passed pretty quickly, and everything was going to plan; got my health check, got my Aussie visa, saved enough cash, finalized my itinerary…

But then something unexpected happened. I couldn’t leave. While it’s easy to summarize these eight months in a sentence or two, it’s harder to explain all the things that were going on behind the scenes – particularly between myself and a quiet, semi-English-speaking receptionist at my school.

The one thing you have a lot of when you’re an English teacher in a small Chinese town is time. This was time I was more than happy to spend chatting with random people, and ecstatic to spend chatting with a bright and beautiful Chinese girl. Falling in love with her was an unexpected side-effect.

And one, in the end, I was quite willing to trade my best laid plans for.

Now, looking back on those initial feelings of what it was to leave my home and enter an unknown world of different cultures, languages and people, it amazes me to see how much that experience snowballed into what I now call “my life”. It also acts as a reminder of the excitement and anxiety my wife must feel about heading to Canada next month.

Seeing my own country as a foreigner is a trip I can’t wait to take.

Not at all to marginalize the deaths of those unfortunate to get in the way of the Burmese security forces’ “warning” shots (incl. Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai), but I do hope the movement pushes ahead.

I realize that’s easy to say from here in the safety of my home, but hear me out. If the protesters continue their peaceful protests and the junta fucks continue to respond with violence and repression – there’s an excellent opportunity for Burma to finally shed its illegitimate leadership and get the they’ve been long promised.

“Remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS.” – Mahatma Gandhi

China’s response has been just as expected for a nation with its own sketchy past when it comes to protesters and bullets. They clearly see the PR nightmare of Olympic proportions this could lead to if they’re not perceived to be doing their best to cool the generals’ jets.

That said, they’re not exactly leaning hard on the country, more just giving them the ole “nudge, nudge, psst” routine. But one sort of expects that from a country like China. I mean, we are talking the country that is the Axis of Evil’s golf buddy.

What irritates this blogger is the fact that India is pulling the same routine. As the world’s largest , following China’s lead is lame. But then, China comes into the equation there as well.

China, through its Three Monkey foreign policy, has developed tight ties with Burma’s military-led government and as such is reaping major rewards. Of course this creates an impossible situation with countries that want to hold themselves to an ethical standard of some sort.

Now India is playing the razor’s edge of wanting what China has in Burma, but not sure how to do it without compromising its integrity. Similar to Google in China in some ways, India is desperate to push into Burma as much as it can to gain some of the Buddhist nation’s natural wealth. Until now they’ve been somewhat silently doing so, but now the spotlight has flipped on them and public outcry has come from its citizens.

India’s largest English newspaper, The Times of India, has called for the government to “quietly urge [Burma] towards []. We are not like China. We champion democratic values. Do something.” (from The Guardian)

Granted, some of India’s desire to get in bed with Burma is in effect to limit China’s control in the region, but it does create a troubling question – who’s at fault when a free nation begins to buddy with a not free nation to stop another (bigger) not free nation from expanding.

Anyway, neither here nor there… well actually, it’s precisely “here” and “there”, but… back to the issue at hand: be sure to check out the “Support the monk’s protest in Burma” Facebook group for a number of ways you can get involved and show your support for those in the front lines of putting an end to oppressive regimes.

A great thing that’s being displayed with the situation in Burma is that it’s showing that it is getting more and more difficult for tyrants to repress their people, and keep it quiet. Even with the government creating an Internet blackout, people are still getting photos, videos and messages to the outside world.

Take note oppressive regimes – the time of blanket cover-ups and mass disappearances is coming to an end.

Lets all keep our fingers crossed Aung San Suu Kyi figures out how to unlock her front door and lead the revolution.

Last night I had a dream
That the world had turned around
And all our hopes had come to be
And the people gathered ‘round
They all brought what they could bring
And nobody went without
And I learned a song to sing
The revolution starts now. – Steve Earle, “The Revolution Starts Now“

H/T to Jay Gatsby for the photos, found via the Facebook group – many more here.

I think back to what I knew, and it’s admittedly quite embarrassing. China, being as far away from my small-town Canada as you could possibly get, always seemed just about the most foreign place in the world.

I have absolutely no memory of meeting anyone Chinese before I hit college. Yep, I think I lasted 21 years of my life not meeting a single member of the most populated country on earth. I am not sure if that speaks towards China’s previous emigration polices, or the cultural ineptness of my hometown.

Despite my limited exposure to other cultures, in college I developed a real desire to expand my world-view. It was in this vein that I signed up for a buddy program with the International Department. They take one Canadian college kid and pair them up with a student in the ESL/International Program. I was paired with Teng Da (whose name I thankfully had written as a caption of the attached photo, lest it have been lost for all time).

We were paired because of our equal interest in photography. So, we spent a couple awkward hours over several weeks walking about the college campus and snapping shots. Teng didn’t leave much of an impression on me, but I was in college, so really, not much did. The only conversation I remember having with him about China went something like this:

Me: So, you’re from China?
Teng: Yes.
Me (not wanting to sound like an idiot that didn’t know China’s cities): So, what city?
Teng: Beijing.
Me: Yeah? Beijing. Is it very large?
Teng (thinking:加拿大人都是傻瓜): Yes.

China completely faded from my world-view after that until I was in Thailand in 2004. I had just finished backpacking around Europe for three months, and was eager to soak up some Asian culture for another two.

While in Northern Thailand I was lent a copy of The Rape of Nanking. It’s hard to remember my initial impressions of the book, for I had a complete lack of context at the time. I had heard of Nanking, but didn’t know why it was sometimes called Nanjing (the same confusion had confronted me with ‘Beijing’ and ‘Peking’ when talking to my buddy Da). The book spoke of ‘the fall of Shanghai’ and the Japanese marching to Nanjing. My geography of China was non-existent at that point, and never did I imagine that I’d be living directly between the two cities the novel was talking about.

A couple weeks later I moved further south in Thailand and ended up meeting a quite cool German guy who had stopped in Thailand to revisit Koh Phangnan (explaining how different it had been when he first visited a decade previous). Jurgen was heading to Shanghai, as he had heard it was the “new Tokyo” for hipness and he was keen to see what all the fuss was about.

We kept in touch, and I heard from him after he returned home. He had never found the ‘fuss’.

China again faded into the background noise of life until I began searching for ways to combine a desire to travel some more as well as save money for getting my ass to Australia (which, some of you will remember, was the original plan). ESL seemed like the most viable way, and though I had fallen in love with Thailand, China offered 15-20 hour work weeks for nearly twice the pay that those sweaty Thai schools gave you for shirt-and-tie 40-hour weeks.

(incidentally, had I had a degree and not a college diploma, I would most likely be telling you all about how little I knew about Korea or Japan.)

So, as you can see, when I arrived in China I had all the foreknowledge of an infant. I had done my homework by this point, but was still relatively clueless. Sure I had seen the movies (The Last Emperor, Seven Years of Brad Pitt, Kundun, Empire of the Sun, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, etc…), and you bet your ass I was on my China LP guide like a fat kid on a Smartie; but upon arrival, like most I assume, I was an empty vessel.

It’s filled a little in my time here, and I would love to sit down with Teng Da now and chat more about him and how he ended up in my small-town college with a crapload of camera equipment. The thing is, I don’t think not knowing about a country or a culture beforehand is a detriment. Perhaps it’s a bit indicative of North Americans being culturally isolated, but for those of us with a desire to go places and see them first hand, it tends to make it a more interesting journey.

One of the reasons I really love living in China (despite whinging about it so much), is that there’s so much more to learn. Every time I think I’ve got something figured out, someone does something and turns my understanding of it completely upside down.

You gotta respect that about a place.