hog maw

i’ve been thinking, lately, that being in your mid-twenties is kind of like going through puberty all over again. less in that hormonal, physical way, but also in an overwhelming, too-big-for-my-psychic-kid-clothes kind of way. but instead of that girl in your class suddenly having boobs, it’s that girl in your class suddenly having kids. instead of feeling a mix of resent and shame about my ignorance of pop culture references, it’s about my inability to figure out taxes. instead of stumbling on my words because i haven’t evolved from saying “freakin” to f*ckin”, i stumble because i don’t know whether to say “i’m going home” or “i’m going to my parents house.”

meanwhile i imagine this blog will have to go through puberty too, if i am to keep writing in it. after all, i spend more time with dead people than alive ones these days. there are very few fun sensory details to report, unless you count the fun sensation of balancing a pile of books between my hands and my chin. instead of impressions that gain shape and form through the process of translating them into english and putting them on the page, all i have clanking around in my head now are half-baked arguments that involve bland profundities like people just want to be good and esoteric facts like chiang kai-shek was a scorpio. so…bear with me. things might get weird.

a few weeks ago (this climate seems unthinkable now)

i enter the library on a cool autumn day and upon exiting find myself buffeted in all directions by warm winds, like someone breathing with their mouth open

and as i walk home under a purple sky, between rustling rows of shedding trees

the wind sharpens and slows, and a far-off pattering begins to crescendo until i feel drops on my skin.

i think of california

the cloudless blue skies staring back patiently, indifferently, indulgently

kind enough,

and cruel enough

to let you forget about

topography,

temperature,

time

uchicago is a curious place

where people show up to optional section

and undergrads take notes on their computers during class without going on facebook.

in the basement of cobb

a white ivy-covered building that would not look out of place in minas tirith

there is a cash-only cafe that serves pre-packaged thai food at lunch time

everyone working behind the counter is a baby hipster

and they play loud angsty music

or happy music, very ironically.

throughout the cafe black gloves hang from the ceiling tied up with string.

before 12, the lights are mostly off

but then a guy walks in and flips on the lights and the lunch crowd rushes in

a few girls nod and laugh at each other, curls bobbing about like clouds, frizzy from being under beanies and hoods

a bearded man picks up the fallen pieces of his burger with his hands, silver band glinting as he licks his fingers

and a group of boys with fishing rods stuffed in their backpacks leave, brushing past my table smelling of oranges.

a feeling sets in, one familiar to me from beijing

the sweet sad thrill

of being an secret stranger

a foreigner in disguise.

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*edit: ok now it’s week 7 and the undergrads are definitely occasionally scrolling thru their newsfeeds in class. but the general impression of kids working themselves into the ground still stands.

cab drivers in beijing are pretty hit or miss.

you never know when they’ll hock a loogie out the window

that threatens to spray back through your open window in the backseat.

some are friendly,

and help me with my pronunciation

and ask a lot of questions about the states

but still, you never know when they’ll casually say something about Black people plaguing america

or drive like a goddamn fanatic while lecturing you on how to drive, speeding seatbelt-less down the fourth ring at night with the windows rolled all the way down

after one of these, i’ll order kuaiches for awhile.

but i always go back. because my favorite type of ride is the quiet kind, where the cab driver starts listening to their voice messages on wechat

a colleague complaining about the last customer,

a woman asking when they’ll be home

a friend asking his wechat friend group:

good morning brothers, how did you sleep last night?

since coming back to california i have been utterly unable to write anything. i think it’s because upon returning i am suddenly seized with a strange uncertainty about how to position myself in relation to my surroundings. feelings of deep familiarity are inextricable with those of foreignness.

at the dentist, today: i’ve been going to her since i was a child, but i still don’t know the names of her children, and i still need to use google maps to get to her office. but when i walk in her secretary looks at me with a familiar and kindly smile, greeting me by name. i can only smile back. while my dentist cleans my teeth, she asks me about china, about inequality, vents about trump. and all this i talk about easily, feeling suddenly and disproportionately literate.

when i leave, i decide to get my car washed. i use the search function on maps to find one on my way home. when i get there, i pull into the wrong line a few times–the one for waxing, the one for interior washes–but i still i insist on sitting in the car myself instead of giving them the keys and waiting in the shade with everyone else, because the car wash itself was one of my favorite things as a kid.

first, the foam spray. the spinning, heavy strips of fabric hitting the windows with a thundering sound. making their way around the sides and closing in around the back. the water falling in sheets, the daylight filtering dimly in. i always liked the feeling of sudden secrecy in public places–like when i would hide in the clothing racks at talbots while my mother shopped, sweaters brushing against my face as she flipped through them.

the spinning strips of fabric pull away from the car, and the flow of water slows. the sudden boom of the dryer turning on. water drops race across the windshield and down the sides, and a hole of vision appears in the midst of the rippling water.

i see a man standing by the exit, but he makes no move towards me. i get out of the car and unfold my side-view mirrors. am i supposed to tip? i think of all the times i didn’t because i didn’t have small bills and walk up to him and give him the dollar i had pulled out of my wallet earlier. after which i’m prepared to drive away, but he walks over and begins haphazardly wiping down my car with a rag.

after he finishes, i thank him and restart the navigation to the address i’ve called home my entire life. maps tells me i have about a mile to go.

so i was going to wait until i heard back, but seeing as it’s been more than a month and i think it’s reasonable to assume my application won’t be selected out of 20,000 applications to represent all millennials ever, i might as well post the thing i wrote here so the sweat and tears i poured into writing an EXACTLY 500 word long capsule of myself don’t go completely wasted. if you’re curious, this was a response to this job posting, and i wrote it the week before i moved back to the bay.

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My name is Niuniu Teo. I grew up in the Bay Area and graduated from Stanford in 2016. I’m currently earning a Master’s in China Studies from Peking University. In a week, I’ll board a plane to San Francisco, marking the end of an 18-month stay in Beijing. In the spirit of leaving pieces of oneself in other places, I thought it was a good time to read Joan Didion.

What is the best thing you’ve read this week?

“The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past,” Joan Didion writes in the opening pages of Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Her words seem to channel something essential, sub-surface and glimmering about the place. Helpless under her spell, I can only nod along. No one remembers, I repeat.

Joan remembers, though. She remembers swimming in the Sacramento and the American, “the same rivers we had swum for a century.” She remembers running her brother’s boxer dog over the fields her great-great grandfather had planted. My great-great grandfather made tofu somewhere in southern China during the Qing Dynasty and spoke a dialect my mother understood as a child, but can’t speak anymore.

“Many people,” Joan continues, “have been to Los Angeles or to San Francisco…and they naturally tend to believe that they have in fact been to California. They have not been, and they probably never will be, for it is a longer and in many ways a more difficult trip than they might want to undertake, one of those trips on which the destination flickers chimerically on the horizon, ever receding, ever diminishing.” She pauses, for dramatic effect. “I happen to know about that trip because I come from California.”

I also come from California. But my parents came from Singapore and Beijing by plane, not canvas-covered wagon. And it did take me awhile to drive to Coachella in my dusty red Prius, and the road was flat and vanishing under the fading sun, but that doesn’t count, Joan in my head tells me. We have swum these rivers for a century.

If that is the case, I am part of the silent they, who did not swim those rivers, and may never know the real California. To her, the Bay Area probably lost all its California-ness sometime between the closing of the apple orchards and the opening of the restaurant that wraps sushi in tortillas. But to me, claiming the “real” California sounds a bit like mythologizing a piece of land so it appears to belong more to one group of people than another.

But then again, maybe all she was trying to say was how much she loved California, how much harder and better and deeper she loved it compared with her friends who flew in from New York and took pictures of Big Sur, and how she is now mourning the places and people and pieces of herself as they become part of the discarded past. I wonder if there will come a day when I, too, insist on my version of California so others know there was once a place they no longer remember, full of people who are no longer around. No one remembers the one-story Craftsman house, I’ll say. Desert plants in the rock garden, covered cars in the cul-de-sac. My mother in the yard shifting the gardenias to shield them from the blinding sun that bounces off the stucco walls and makes your skin itch under your jeans.

before leaving, i wanted to write goodbye notes to my friends in beijing, but couldn’t find the words. i partly blame the limited ways we know to say goodbye.

how to say goodbye? to a place, to people, to a version of yourself?

we don’t have the right words.

even cab drivers will say upon dropping me off at the airport, “慢走。再见。“ — go slow, see you again.

in english, we have “goodbye.” now that it’s been divorced, somewhat, from its original “god be with you,” it feels more final—less of a “see ya in heaven” type of deal. and, more and more often, people in chinese say 拜拜 (bai-bai) at the ends of phone calls or lunches or visits—perhaps importing a rootless word of farewell also seems more appropriate.

But still, at those big, final goodbyes, the urge to reassure ourselves resurfaces in full force. “until next time,” we say. “see you again.”

i wish we had better words, more honest words. words that would capture things like: it will never be the same, and now that it is ending i know what it was. things like: thank you for all you have given me.

my toiletries are all still almost full.

some people’s minds move before they do. i guess i’m not like that.

and what will happen to these memories in the over bright, over clean California sun?

—

now that i’m back in the bay, the sun is so bright and the days so warm and the language so english that the past year and a half already feels like someone else’s life. maybe after some more time (and some more sleep), i will find the words to talk about it all. and maybe not. either way, in the meantime, here are some pictures i took on my last day there.

—

the view from my room

the lake frozen over

the fish still there

the lamps newly lit

my roommate napping on my bed as i packed into the night

we’ve been on this train for 7 hours, with at least two more to go.

we were supposed to have arrived hours ago, but snowstorms began sweeping through in the morning, and our train slowed to a crawl.

during the day, time passed easily as the snowy landscape rolled by—fields cut neatly into white squares with black dirt borders, large red banners with stern white block characters like “put your whole self into improving quality” or “walk forward with the party towards a harmonious society” looking almost festive strung in rows across the streets. occasionally, we would slow to a halt a few hundred yards from an empty station, with snow falling heavily, silently, coating wire fences and matte billboards in a layer of white.

but now it is dark outside, and only the telephone poles are dark enough to stand out against the dark background, the black sky, the purplish black of the snow. brighter than the landscape is the layered reflection of the train compartment on the glossy window panes. the compartment feels smaller now, and too brightly lit, like a stage. the man in front of me keeps leaning forward to hack phlegm into the pink paper bag in the seat pocket in front of him. my ears feel plugged and oversensitive, the way they sometimes do when i’ve been sitting in the same position for a long time with headphones on. far away sounds are muffled, but close sounds are sharper and louder than before.

the woman across the aisle from me picks up the phone. the connection must be bad.

hello? she says
hey.
hello?
hey.
hello?

like a pingpong match with herself.

we haven’t reached nanjing yet, she says. i’ll call you when i’m there.

today i attended my grandma’s choir’s end of year performance. picture in your mind’s eye: somewhere down a beijing hutong on a cold winter’s day, a room full of singing chinese grannies. there is not a man in the room, and i am the youngest person there by a few decades.

my grandma leans over between performances: “i’m going to go to the bathroom,” she says.

i nod. “i come?”

she shakes her head. “no, no, you stay here.”

as she leaves, an elderly lady behind her looks over at me and says “you should go with her!”

i obediently get up and follow my grandmother out the door. as i follow her out the door, another lady smiles a crinkly smile at us both. “how nice,” she says. referring to me escorting my grandma to the bathroom.

“what are you doing?” my grandma asks, upon realizing i have followed her out the door.

“uh, going to the bathroom.”

“you’re not going just to accompany me, are you?

“no, i have to go.”

“did you bring paper?”

“no.”

“oh…you’re going to need to go back and get some then, i only have enough for me.”

“oh. i mean. i brought some.”

“ok.”

she walks into a stall. i walk into a stall. i take my pants off and squat, but don’t pee. i get up, zip up, and wait for her to finish. i walk her back. more grannies smile and nod in approval.

it’s been quite some time since my last post, and even longer since i was posting regularly. something i struggle with is how to decide what belongs here and what doesn’t. and that got harder as i began switching between going full-tilt on my thesis and submitting my phd applications, with a week-long hiatus to show one magpie around the city. aside from that, though, i basically didn’t leave the building or talk to other humans for a month.

i still feel like i’m in a transitory state. but i have two months left here, with one overarching goal of bidding this place a proper farewell. so i am posting this as a way to get myself back in the groove.