Books, Couchsurfing dinners, and hotsprings

I am officially off of work for Spring Festival. Also called 春节 (chūn ​jié​), or Chinese new year, it involves lots of people traveling. I want to save money for debt payment and for future travels (especially Spain this summer!), and it is still a bit chilly outside for my preferences, so I am gonna be staying at home for most of this vacation. Fortunately, I have some things I want to take care of at home. Primarily, I am zooming through China Shakes the World as fast as I can because I am very eager to start Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism. I also have a book on Latin America that I am very excited to read. Unless something unexpected comes up, China Shakes the World should be the last China book I read for a while. I am still interested in plenty of China-issues, and there are still loads of books in the China section of my "books to read" list, but I am trying to focus on Latin America. I have ordered Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America's Soul and Open Veins of Latin America off of Taobao, so those are my planned readings after Spring Festival.


Reading isn't the only thing that I will be doing though! In addition to the 40 Gigs of movies that I have gathered over the past year that could use watching, I plan on practicing some juggling everyday, and hopefully some P90-X driven exercise. I also am going to make regular use of some instructional breakdancing videos I got from a Russian guy at the juggling club. Hopefully I can get some basic toprock down by the time my vacation is over.


Much like many Americans spend Christmas at home with extended family, most Chinese people go back to their hometowns for Spring Festival. This means that the majority of my Chinese friends are out of town for the week (some for the month!), and Beijing suddenly becomes a much quieter and calmer city (except for the fireworks). Most of us foreigners don't have an ancestral hometown in China, though, and some Chinese people don't go home, so I will be going to a big couchsurfer gathering on Wednesday night to celebrate the new year with our international community here in Beijing. Comprising, dinner, watching the fireworks, and dancing, I think an event like this will be good for me. Regardless as to how much I normally yearn for more downtime to read and watch movies, I know that having nothing at all on my schedule is the opposite end of the spectrum, and is no better for my mental health than being overly busy is. Having some social things like this planned will keep me from going crazy and getting bored with my schedule of reading and other self-focused activities.

I am also going to to and check out some nearby hot springs with a Chinese friend whose hometown actually around Beijing, in a nearby area called Yanjiao (燕郊), so that will be another fun time out being social. Not to mention the idea of relaxing at a hot springs for a whole day is very appealing in itself.

To Be or Not To Be a Professional Juggler

Maybe I will stay in Beijing for another year. That means that maybe I will stay in Beijing until 2012, and maybe I won’t go to Spain until the 2012-2013 school year.

This is the option I am considering: after finishing my year of work at American House in June, I could get an apartment in the inner east side of Beijing, closer to the Cervantes Institute, close to the GuLou area, and close to Natooke. As my primary occupation, I could help Fede teach juggling and acrobatics to children in international schools, as well as performing juggling and acrobatics around town with Fede and his Beijing Performers group. It would be fairly easy to extend my visa. I could also still go to Spain, just a year later than I had originally planned on. It has been there for several hundred years already, I imagine that it will still be there for the next decade.

Living on the east side would put me closer to the Cervantes Institute. Currently it takes me about 90 minutes to get to the Cervantes Institute by public transit or by biking. Taking a taxi is certainly much quicker, but the price of it causes me to avoid it in most situations. This potential life of next year would allow me to have less than a 40 hour work week, thereby allowing me to spend more time doing Spanish language activities, whether that is studying, conversing, or watching movies. Both a professional focus on juggling and a less than 40 hour work week would allow and encourage me to improve my juggling skill. The same goes for the other skills that I could perform, such as fire staff and partner acrobatics. Although a less than 40 hour work week is a big desire of mine, even if I spent 45 hours a week doing it, I think I would enjoy 45 hours of teaching and performing juggling and acrobatics more than most jobs.

I think that one of the biggest benefits would be that when someone asks me what I do, I could honestly respond “I am a juggler.” Call it a dream, but I would love to be ably to honestly consider myself a professional performer and a teacher of circus skills. Fede says that there would be enough work to make a living from. I tend to not frivolously spent too much money, and although my standard of what counts as enough money might be a bit higher than Fede’s (due to monthly payments of college debt), I can always do other freelance jobs to supplement my juggling income. If I felt that I needed extra money to supplement that income I could always do a few hours of English teaching here or there.

Fede has also said that he would welcome my help to teach and spread his Body Foundation method (a health and fitness centered curriculum), which is another thing that I would love to be a part of. He has already said that, if the budget he receives allows it, he would welcome me to go with him to Tibet next summer to train the local teachers in his method. That would also serve as my training in how to teach the method, after which I would be able to do the training without Fede’s supervision. Fede has already taught some preliminary form of his program in Sudan and around Beijing. I have no doubt that he may try to teach it when he is visiting his girlfriend in the Central African Republic in January and February. If I were to help him with this project it could potentially give me a lot of opportunities to travel to various African countries to train local staff at schools and NGOs. I would love it if it involved some Latin American countries as well, and there is no reason why the curriculum could only be applied in China and Africa.

Even if I end up pursuing this future, I would still fly back to the United States during the summer of 2011; I want to take care of my oral assessment with the State Department and I want to go to Jocco and Allie’s wedding. There is also an important person or two that, although I did not make explicit promises to, I said that I would see very much like to see during the summer.

A Regular Sunday

On some Sundays I help Federico manage a group of performers in The Village in Sanlitun on the east side of Beijing. On these Sundays I will usually meet at the local juggling/fixed gear bike shop Natooke around 1, and be at The Village between 2 and 3, after which we have our performances. As an example, here is my day on Sunday October 17^th.

I woke up naturally at around seven thirty, and I promptly spent about an hour and a half putting various songs into a playlist to use for the performance in the afternoon. After finishing the playlist, I took a shower, did email and facebook things. A big thing was that I was able to linking up my blog to my facebook and I was also able to link up my twitter to my facebook. Facebook is the main way I communicate with friends from college, and although the twitter may be less important I am going to start writing blog posts more often. This is going to be one of those “keep family and friends updated as to my life” kind of blogs, much like many students write when they are on study abroad. Now every time I update my Twitter or write a new blog post, it will automatically be posted to my facebook. After selecting my outfit for the show in the afternoon, I left home at around 11am. I wanted to wait longer to wait for my couchsurfer, Ana, to wake up, but I was afraid that I was going to be late. It turns out that this was far earlier than I needed to leave home, but it turned out fine. When I got to Natooke Ines (one of the owners), Julien (her boyfriend) and friends were having lunch, so I joined them. In exchange for cleaning up the containers and the table afterward I was able to have their leftovers, which were both numerous and delicious. I had plenty of time, so I did some computer stuff and then started preparing the sanlunche (三轮车, literally three wheeled cart) for our show. Gus soon arrived and helped me get things ready, and soon the sanlunche’s sound system was all set up and we were ready to go. Federico hooked up a speaker, some lights, and put a really cool paint job on the sanlunche. Fede also has a big battery that we place in the sanlunche that powers a motor as well as the sound system, so I don’t even have to power it via my own legs with the pedals; I can just rotate the handle on the right side and the motor kicks in to send me zooming along the streets of Beijing. Arriving at The Village, Gus and I headed into the Orange and starting getting ready. Soon Jiuji arrived and after some playful banter and thumb-twiddling we headed out for the parade. We normally have a parade as the first part of our show. During the parade I will ride the Sanlunche around The Village with the music on, and I will shout out “There will be a big performance in the central square of The Village at 3:30! Big show at 3:30! All are welcome to come and enjoy this free performance!”, or something similar. Gus has really good Chinese (I think Gus’s Chinese is even better than mine, and I don’t meet many people under 30 with better Chinese than me) so he was the translator for today. We stopped every now and then for small preview performances from Gus or Jiuji, and a few times I even grabbed three balls and joined in. After thirty minutes of parade we had our big show.  I first introduced Jiu Ji, and he did a contact juggling routine. Jiu Ji’s performance was excellent (as always) and received lots of dropped jaws and wows (as always). Next up was Gus with a sharp juggling routine. I think he claims that it is nothing special, but in my opinion it is a pretty solid routine. As long as he is not being compared to any of the greats (up against which almost all jugglers would look horrible) I think he has some good tricks and he does them well. Next Jiu Ji went up again with a little light trick that he has been working on recently. This act is essentially passing a little ball of light between his hands, eating it, spitting it out, and so on and so forth. The audience loves it, and Jiu Ji’s motions are quick enough and smooth enough that most people cannot see how he does it. Just as Jiu Ji was finishing his light show, Ines rolled in (she came late due to an audition for a TV show that ran late) on her trick bike. I stalled for a bit of time by drawing out her introduction to give her time to strip out of her biking-across-town clothes and into her give-an-awesome-performance clothes, after which she hopped on and started doing her thing. All in all I think it was a good show. I prefer to have one additional performer, or some good audience interaction, but for having three performers I think that it was pretty good. After a few minutes of young Chinese girls telling Gus how cool he was (not only is he white, he also can speak Chinese and juggle!), we packed everything up on the sanlunche and headed back to Natooke. Gus came back to the shop with me to help me unload, after which we rode our bikes partway home together. By  the time I get home on Sunday evenings after managing Fede’s shows I am always exhausted, but it also one of the best times I have available to me to Skype chat with friends outside of China. No one was on/around at that time though, so I studied some language, read some news articles, and got some rest.

Back to Beijing, and then Back to my Future

I have been back in China for a full three months now (tourist visa has expired), and I have fully settled into my new home and gotten into the swing of life here. I juggle, I dance, I teach, I live and I learn. What more is there to say about my life than that? Recently I have been sleeping less and going out less frequently too. I have been waking up quite early (around 6:30) naturally, and I have normally been staying up until around midnight. I can tell I am tired because every now and then I stumble over my own shoes while walking, which is something I tend to do when I haven't gotten enough sleep. If my body doesn't even have enough energy to lift its feet, then there is something amiss. Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up though, and I have three days off. The National Day holiday is coming up too, which will give me a week of travel with my sister. It will be nice to have a vacation.

The biggest thing here recently has been my managing of some Sunday performances in The Village. Normally, Federico would manage these performances, but Fede is in Tibet for two weeks, so he has me running the shows. It is fun and exciting, it gives me good experience, and the money is good for the amount of stress and pain that I go through (moderate stress, no pain). In fact, I have kind of become Fede's sidekick. Somewhere between and intern, an apprentice, and a part-time employee who is not paid in regular amounts or with consistency. Regardless as to how one chooses to describe it, I am loving it so far.

I have fairly solidly decided that I will only stay in Beijing for one year. Summer 2011 is gonna be pretty busy for me, as there is Jocco's and Allie's wedding in the U.S., another friend's wedding in Spain, and I really want to go to both of them! I will also have my oral assessment with the U.S. State Department, so I can do that next summer. I am planning on applying for the ‘teaching English in Spain' program again, and doing that for the next year of my life. I still really want to improve my Spanish, and Europe is a place that I want to experience too. I am also looking forward to that program in Spain requiring me to work less that 40 hours/week, which will give me more time to read, practice things (juggling, dancing, martial arts, languages, or whatever else catches my fancy), and do freelance or other work on the side.

Speaking of Spain and Spanish, on Tuesday my Noché de Conversación will start, and I am very excited to have a group which will allow me to practice my Spanish. I have posted to CouchSurfing and on DouBan about the event.