Notes to self by Emilie Pine

Emilie Pine by Westcorkmusic.ie
 

Milk and honey by rupi kaur

This is the journey of
surviving through poetry
this is the blood sweat tears
of twenty-one years
this is my heart
in your hands
this is
the hurting
the loving
the breaking
the healing

- rupi kaur

Many small windows together give the best view

As it goes, I started off writing posts about my colleagues, as they have been the most intimate relations I have with anyone in Shanghai and my best windows to China. First there was Demi, and then Sophie and Peipei and more recently I wrote about my experiences with  Leona on our Philippines trip and a paragraph on Future. I always intended to write about each and everyone at the office, but then the team expanded so fast, and relations deepened and widened so quickly that I got lost and paused.

Little windows onto people's lives
Having read a lot on Chinese culture, I 'know' many things that are happening here. But as we worked, had lunch, traveled and drank together, sharing the little things of life that you never tell anyone but your colleagues, I continued to be surprised, and shocked as these stories got a face, and societal problems turned out to be my friends' personal problems.

A few of the sentences that rang in my ears long after they were spoken:

• The incredible influence that parents have on their (one) child's choices in life: "My mother won't let me have a baby this year, because it is the year of the wooden sheep, and the baby will feel cold and hungry all its life." 
• The long distance relations that many people have "I only see my husband once every two months / once every two weeks etc he is very busy and I live with his mum, who is old and sick"
• The complex relationship between women and their in laws who usually come to live with them after childbirth "My husband and I want to let our baby cry until she falls asleep, but my in laws come into our bedroom and take her away from me when she cries" 
• The enormous pressure from society on girls to marry early "After coming home for Chinese New Year, I had to explain 1000 times why I am not married" "After 30 they say my life will be over if I am not married" 
• Wondering what my assistant was chatting about with her boyfriend from morning til night:  hundreds of Hello Kitty emoticons back and forth, shaping a story in a language that I am too old to understand. 
• Materialism is everywhere, and in short the 'new religion' "My husband and I are always talking throughout the day (on wechat) usually about what we will buy, or what we have bought." 

It's not all clichés

But at the same time, just working for an NGO means going against mainstream thought about what is deemed important in life: money, a stable job, buying a house, buying an expensive handbag, an expensive car, an expensive holiday, etc. So where in general many people have a hard time trusting each other, because that other person might have bad intentions with our money, or break a deal that we are about to sign, we as a team were pretty harmonious and open, maybe because we had nothing to loose, and had already stepped off the societal ladder to fame and wealth. This openness has been one of the biggest sources for gratitude for me. 

The biggest window of all

That being said, my next post will be about my now former director, Alan, who was much more than a window to China because he was among the few who actually provided subtitles to my experiences. A bit of an intelligentsia, he told me the things (sometimes in a whisper) that are beneath the surface, culture, history, religion, rebellion, and that put together gave me many new perspectives while looking at Shanghai and I got to see old things with new eyes. 

One street, two women

It's past sunset, on the ground floor of Rainbow City Mall.

Through the glass wall of the beauty parlour, I spot a young woman, relaxing on the seat. The otherwise quiet rows of nail polish now host a busy scene. Two girls squat at the young woman's feet, brushing up her toes. One girl sits by her hand, doing a manicure. One girl stands at her head, applying fake eyelashes. The centre of the picture is her little dog, not bigger than a kitten. It sits at her lap, it's curls and bows all neat and tidy.


6 hours earlier, two minutes away.

It's lunch time, and the construction site has opened its gates for the workers to get some noodles or dumplings outside in the street. Men covered in dust and cement flood the area. Their blue and yellow helmets creating a uniform impression. Sounds of their work have reached us since 6am. Until deep in the night will we see the light flashes of them welding. But I look again, one of them is a woman. The sheer strength she must have!

Little stitches, big lessons

...*(K1, p1) 2 times, k3, p1, k1, p1, k2, repeat from * to end of round.

On a free evening like tonight I usually pick up a knitting project. I like knitting for many reasons, for one it's nice to create something tangible, sometimes even useful. It is also nice to do something with your hands, and to think about the person you are making it for. It is relaxing to the brain and makes me sleepy after a long day behind my computer. But it's not these things that inspired today's blogpost.

Knitting is also incredibly difficult. It is applied mathematics, reads like a weird type of HTML and if you make a mistake... it just shows.

Life lessons I learned from knitting

Admit your mistakes

illustration from econesting.com

If you make a mistake, surely you can continue as if nothing happened. Most likely the mistake will show itself even worse a while later, or create more mistakes. You will start feeling guilty, didn't you mean to make this one perfect when you started it? Isn't it for your special friend after all? Many rows later I always end up taking it out to start afresh.

Finish what you start

Knitting is fun when you start... Looking at the nice picture on the pattern, thinking of how perfect you will make this one. And then it wears off. You take the piece apart 2, 3, 4 times. Finish one side of the sweater but the idea of doing the other is boring. In the end you have 4 pieces laying around that need stitching together. And pressing. But it seems as much work to do that as it was to do all the knitting so far. It's not! A few minutes of love unto that old project can make it into the perfect piece you had in mind all the time.

Remain in control

Take breaks. Stop when you are tired. Actually this is my grandmothers life lesson that I'm still learning. There's always tomorrow. You knit because it's fun! Don't let yourself be carried away by curiosity how this will look, and what if you just only that colour etc. You end up making mistakes. And taking it apart again.

Listen to your teacher

If you don't understand what you're doing, just do what your pattern says. Don't be smart about it. This is very counterintuitive, I know. But every time I try a new technique I have no clue what I'm doing until when it's finished. And the only way to make it work is to really count the stitches and follow instructions. Count! 1, 2, 3, purl!

Simple is beautiful

Not everything needs a funny texture ánd a funny color pattern ánd a funny shape at the same time. Keep it simple. Show off your nice even knitting technique. The beautiful wool that you use. Which brings me to the last point.

Invest in quality

Use beautiful wool. Use nice needles. Why spend 50 hours knitting something that could have looked and felt 10 times better if you spend a few euros extra? Seeing and using the end result of your work can be so rewarding, but it's you who has to make it worthwhile. 

Not quite fat

There's much talk about the issue of obesity, but all I see are the young & pretty girls that Shanghai is so famous for. So I decided to keep my eyes open and count. Back and forth to my lunch date yesterday I saw 3 overweight girls. Quite excited with my new interest I walked back home, determined to share the first data of this little research. Until I saw this girl doing her balancing act and totally forgot about it all.

NB, now that the hot season has started, there's much complain of girls on public transport about guys who ejaculate on their bare legs during rush hour (yuk)

NNB, somehow somewhere these girls transform into women. I see them everyday in the showers at the gym. The shape gone, the frock gone, the long hair cut short, the high heels swapped for Crocs.

A little naughtiness

Just recently I figured out that there is another website called thereadheadrevealed. It explains the many American visitors to my blog I guess... For all those that I disappointed by not quite revealing so much, I saw two gripping paintings at the Shanghai Art Museum today that may make up for it. Needless to say there was quite a cue of male photographers in front of it. I love the snake curling near their ankles...

Image of the conspiracy (part 1)

Image of the conspiracy (part 2)

I'm looking still for better pictures, apparently google & Chinese art don't go very well together.

of women and chicken

So we went into the last phase with our women group. Windows had asked us to make a manual that could guide them in any project that they want to undertake. Our idea was to make worksheets that help think of preparation, network and money.

After introducing the first sheet we soon found out that the women wanted to work on individual projects. A little anxious as to how that would contribute to 'community building' we introduced more personal sheets and worked on them in small groups. One for chicken, one for a greenhouse and one for goats.

The last session we looked back at the whole month and did a tip top on our way of working from which we got only compliments. Nobody here would ever be critical in your face.

On the side we have been developing a recipe book for Palestinian food. Many women have written their recipes down for us and we were invited for lunch so that we could take pictures of lovely grape leave wraps with chicken.

We will be back in June for a follow up. For now am half satisfied with our work. Still a long way to go to be an effective 'community builder'.