AmandaMa's Blog

What is the next cool product?

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 01:09:13 GMT

I attended an interesting summit held by Modernmedia last Friday. The key topic was creativity in products.

The first speaker was the CEO from Tim Thom, a French designing company. He emphasized the importance of telling a love story about your product, and turn it into a best seller: unique, exellent and innovative. The design should be more than the technology but the usage, the simpler, the better.

Then came the second speaker, Pete Heskett from BBH Consulting, also brought up the topic on how to innovate. Comparing to Tim Thom, Pete is a brave and structured thinker, who believed that innovation came from the attitude and approach rather than a flash of genius. He also encouraged borderless thinking.

Later moguls from well-known IT giants from Lenovo to Sony Ericsson gathered at a panel discussion. When the host asked what would be the most desirable item on the screen where it showed: A) a Sony Ericsson cell phone B) a Samsang MP3 C) an intellegent computer D) a yoga computer E)Ming (Motorola cell phone). CEO from Tim Thom wrote a question mark on his paper board, indicating it would always be the next product he desired as a cool product.

The speech given by the CEO of Google China was brilliant, and allow me to say that Li Kai fu was a seasoned and charming speaker. He was more than a manager, instead, he became the image of Google China, the voice of Google China. It was even funny when Kaifu mentioned that he dare not be creative since if he told his staff his opnions his employees would start following him but not coming up with their own creative ideas. So all he did was to create a creative environment and shut up.

Boyfriend

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:19:36 GMT

"I love this, my favorite." He would say with the momentary passion, sincerely.
"Really?" She questioned as she always did, not believing and not making the conversation float, lazily.

She was lazy, always tired, charmingly effortless in anything she did, like a furry cat. Carelessly she watched him, the cranky, emotional kid inside his body, the need to be spoiled and put up with, she snorted in denial.

In the darkness of the bedroom, where they had sweated and hugged like two lovers before death, he was content in his frustration, drown in the easiness of zero, no hill to climb for our lion, down as the hellish summer silence, his soaked pores sour. She heard it hollowing in front of the air she breathed in, a world of frown and neck aches. He remembered to dump the rubbish can; she nodded to thank him, struggling to focus on the rightness as a girlfriend whose life was to ice the bad habbits of a man. She wanted to spit, with all the distain as the normality.

Weak as a person who only traveled on foot, she rested her head on her curved knees, winking at the weight of her thoughts, the drunkness coming to catch up, lightening a night and inviting the fire.

She busied herself in the livingroom, giving up with the thought of comforting her turbulent mind. She felt tasteless, all alone, like food forgotten the salt, flat and cheap.

But for that moment she was fed with the extreme niddles of fear, when he spun her upside-down, grabbing her feet as if she's not an existing creature, as light as a feather. She resisted with little shrieks from her mouth, then screamed in red, realistic fears, her heart squeezed into a messy gesture of a writer's paper, wrong and full with wronged pollywogs. Stolen a way of behaving like a human, you were quivering in shock, on the red red couch, a favorite color to die for. She did not move until the fear mortified in otherwise giddiness. She moved up, feeling like using a bathroom, in an imagination of flushing a toilet with her waxed private area, the fluid tripping like a mastered plan. Shaking shaking shaking.

Another blog

Mon, 29 May 2006 17:28:08 GMT

Started to like MSN as one can upload as many pics as they like. Here is the new address for the new blog:

http://spaces.msn.com/mamengyao/

Postmodern Sleaze

Sat, 27 May 2006 03:49:13 GMT

My new job requires me to attend as many hell-bent events as possible as all insiders know it is the doohickey of how business rolls ahead in Beijing--the quality of guanxi and the quantity of acquaintances. Despite the intricacy in the variety of events, I became more of a bitter feminist after years spent studying the social species in the international circle.

Last week I was all dressed up at a weekend cocktail of some sort of a Chamber thing. The dim light tapered my wee eagerness to brush elbows, and the grey and black suited and skirted throng made me suffer with the urge to cry. For a silent minute I keened for some bright color among my peers, so that I didn't look like a peacock bimbo. Damn!

Until finally I was introduced to some mid-age lawyer, an overseas born Chinese woman. Since there was not much business talk to invent in my head as: 1) I was an idiot on the attorneyhood and the only thing I did to gen up some knowledge was to watch Ally Mckbeal; 2) I wasn't planning to ruin my intriguing saucy style by sounding like an idiot in front of a serious-faced ABC.

So I started this way, "So how do you like your life in Beijing?"
"It's okay." She answered briefly and calmly.
"How long have you been living here?"
"Two years." Brief answer without a dip for a further expression.
"So do you like to go out?" I heard myself having short breathes.
"When I have time." She rolled her eyes, but not blinking.
"So you like to cook?" My head somehow stopped working and I started stupid questions, trapped.
"Well when I have time." She kept the eye rolling.
"Travel a lot?" Heart attack heart attack!!!
"When I have-- oh I do travel on business sometimes." She rubbed her upper lip with a napkin, as if to scrub off the first part of her sentence.

Then later this week, I was summoned by a friend who had an event emergency for the shortage of attendees. Dropping the dishes I was about to enjoy on a private evening I jumped in my dress and thundered to the venue, only to find the speaker was a familiar (yes, once again to highlight the fact that we were living in a small world), who had a bad reputation of his manhood in the dating climate of Beijing. I wondered suddenly why the hell the fast-changing city had to always recycle the stinky trash instead of saving some room for the newcomers.

What an eyesore to tolerate! When the speaker was whooshing his arms up and down like a police stopping the traffic, playing his game with phoney smile and pracitsed humor, my peer and I were staring at each other blankly, unsure to swallow or just puke the yck out on his face.

Twenty minutes of schmoozing was right after the speech, a Chinese version of the "Postmodern Sleaze" replaying. My girl friend secured me from some possible bad behaviors of showing my disdain on "Oh you look so familiar! Have we met?" and frenzy of name cards exchanging.

We finally perched on a night club couch, laughing away the dreaded evening. The band was great and we stimulated the dancing muscles of the shy teens by jumping on the empty stage first . And yes we were a group of nuts playing teenage fun on adult checks.

Wish my Beijing had more to offer.

Raining in the Fire

Fri, 26 May 2006 12:18:11 GMT

Raining in the Fire

We cosmo creatures don't know how to deal with the rain. We only get out to feel the liveness of wet grass. My black sneakers were jazzed on the top of green, fresh by the tearing summer sky. Steeled souls, are very much chained in this vanity city, where nature and beauty is rarely apprecited, where fate is roomed on face value.

I am not talking; I have lost my mouth. My tongue is cut into pieces, and my giddy nerves, giving away to the energy waiting for a good burn. A cage, a concrete bubble, a humiliated console, a wide, suffocating web, a bruised faithless can. Here you are so unreal, so high with your own sacred thoughts, so holly with your loneliness, so light being someone that is none.

Cease fighting against yourself, no matter how hard it gets to the real. The result must be shocking, in the end you are your runninng figures on a computer keyboard. Flow me, float my thoughts, turn me into Muriel Spark, yet not quite. Women, the magical word, your language kills.

The day you lose yourself entirely, you scoop up the world. Afraid the moment would come; afraid it never comes. Right and wrong, good lesbian lovers, till death do they apart. We are so trapped, in a game we mean and a way we rain. Life is big, wild with the infinite and yet tiny with human sins.

Looking and keep searching, how would your life just immerce in rain? Sentences already broken into sparks of your fire, hotty warm, like the modena depth of a womb. You do not give a shit of how they civilize you, how they reason the demons in you; you are only a floating river, your salt melting into the big sea, where you ever belonged.

Yellowed memories, still haunting, became certain color you avoid. You are fear yourself, trying to tame the uneasy wolf. At night, they haunt, and you are not an ordinary creature.

After"Vagina Monologues"

Mon, 22 May 2006 02:40:57 GMT

A friend and I travelled long way to HartSalon 798 for the longing play of Vagina Monologue, which was played by two Britishes and one American gal and an African-American. The place was cool although it's a bit hard to see what's going on as seats were on the same level except those in the back, and the actors were using the stage floor a lot to convey hot love making. I enjoyed it at the beginning, then got a bit uneasy as my friend found it too much fight and too much bloody kissing and cuddling, and fibbling on bed, and she left early, and the American guy beside me was approaching closer to me to get a clearer view, which, annoyed me to certain extent. I spilt my beer on his seat pretending it was a "opps" accident and thank god he moved his bulk.

I loved the script, the dialogues, the confusion of being a woman in a relationship, and the womanhood itself. The complex of the love scene has always interested me and it churned the waves of my river when they showed that love died in a relationship, in being too close, in the loss of the lost. Hardly using any word, the sorrow was there communicating a whole. I felt like crying, felt like letting out the sorrow, felt like jumping on the stage and screaming.

But the play was a bit dry without a depth it should have had. Didn't mean it was no good. In fact I think they did it quite well and they put tons of energy in making it perfect. But there was too much acting in it, in the way they screamed, laughed and fighted. And honestly I would have enjoyed it better when the actors' appearance and outfits could match better with the story. Guess they showed us their version of the monologue as they were only in their early twenties.

Well I didn't manage to stick to the end either as my feelings got thicker and the play gradually weaned me out of my emotions by its lack of tensity. So I walked out during the break. Strolling along 798 in the early evening, feeling a bit wan with emotions squeezing my chest, I suddenly wanted to write my own play or play it even by myself. I felt I could do it, and I felt I had it in me already--I had felt it or experienced it in the past.

I perhaps would call it "Fish with wings" or "Hairy".

Lonely night, crowed with too many thoughts of love.

Dead Ghosty

Sun, 14 May 2006 12:18:28 GMT

She didn't quite remember how it happened. She remembered she was walking home in her summer saddles, a new pair in brown, and SOHO in the night was beautiful, upheaving itself towards the soft wind. It smelt summer already; she saw gals giggling with their young love outside on the bench and, chairs, tables and people were laid outdoor to welcome the romantic summer. All seemed perfect among the concrete CBD except that she needed to get laid.

Her neck was hurt, that kind of hurtness that blew her a dreaded feel as if she had got numberless little tumors in the veins planted inside her long-suffering neck, annoyingly angering her. I want to be healthy---there are so many things to do, she yelled with a coldly disdainful front. She yelled again.

Then suddenly, she was in a movie, in a life project, in a dead code. She saw herself walking fancy walk on the street, people around numb-faced, the entire world mercied into black and white. She was floating, given a power to see the truth, that moment short but immortal, that she sensed her death and undying soul.

How silly people were dining in the restaurant, transparent confusion through the huge openly desired windows, and single pretty women were alone somehow, so hollow and proud, all the truth missing. She's deadly dead, you see. She's not a spolied writer any more.

Loss, and limited space, and the heavy air, all had taken her over. She's yelling somehow. She's dead. And she's a ghost in June.

You can take them out of China, but you cannot take "China" out of them!

Sun, 14 May 2006 05:30:36 GMT

Single gals night at a friend's place, a vegetarian feast for four. Considering that my girl friend had never yet cooked for any of her peers in Beijing and her ability to make dishes as her flair of steering a tank, the food was surprisingly original and tasty. The other two gals, at their early twenties, however did a lot of non-vegetarian chats about the sleazy rich Chinese men and their contrived wives. Here is a story to share:

The American gal had a Chinese student who was rich and married to a pretty woman, but the wife was from some place in Hehan and unfortunately her educational portfolio was not as lucky as her look, built up by piles of mingpai. This American gal even saw this woman teaching her daughter how to squat on the toilet!

Another gal commented: "You can take those people out of China, but you cannot take China out of them!" Which is very true. As we are around by more and more rich people we hear more and more funny stories about how they show off their filthy richness by making themselves a big fool in public.

Then the topic inevitably was switched to the dirty Chinese men, those ones who had got money to burn. They have lovers, and they buy women. Bizarrely they are not afraid to blurb it as a trophy. And their wives are left home frustrated with financial security.

Speaking of why Chinese men suck ten reasons were listed last night at the table:

They are sexually frustrated but educated, and very bad in bed;
They have more sick porns than sexual partners;
They snore and spit;
They smell;
They have bad manners with women;
They think they are superior to women;
They are so spoiled and show no respect to their parents;
They don't know how to talk and be interesting;
They are very bad in bed;
Did I mention that they were very bad in bed?

Well here you go!

Have A Bit More Fun

Sat, 13 May 2006 00:22:33 GMT

Thursady afternoon, the third TBJ Restaurant Award kicked off at the Champagne Bar, which as rumor runs is an okay copy of the urbanly hot Centro. So out went this charmed free bird, to find herself embroiled in a flurry of catchups among TBJ teams and old clients.

I was offered ASC wine, tasting good although I secretly wished for Champagne. The first lady waved me over was an old colleague, who quit right after a couple of months of slavery at TBJ and likes to introduce herself as the girlfriend of certain name. With a "hello" missing in her prelude immediately she launched her missile: "So where are you working now?" I grabbed my glass of wine, saying in a jokish way to her: "Hey, relax, don't be so aggressive." She felt a bit embrassed by showing her curiosity in such an egar, restless way, and changed her way of asking: "So are you happy now?" "Very," I said shortly, and helloed the woman standing next to her. As this "girlfriend" lady had curled her hair, glassed her face, and donned a beige suit, she looked a lot feminine, in an uptight professional way, still. I praised her change and she did her bits to me. Out of too many strains and too few topic, she somehow blurted: "Why don't you go mingle? There are a lot hot single guys in the crowd!" I gave her a look, and she made up her mess like this: "I mean, a lot business potentials." Funny little uptight business woman, what is your problem? I winked at her, and it suddenly occured to me that some people they don't change, even the environments around them have changed, but they don't change for happiness and fun. They are so tied up in their own meanness to compare to make others feel bitter, and their belief in the meaning of life is so limited and small. Perhaps it's just a picture for their unhappiness. Well, if I used my girlfriend W's famous phrase, it'd be: "Hey what the fuck? Have more sex man and stop finding fault with me!"

Our Ayis

Mon, 08 May 2006 10:23:56 GMT

Jon and Gabbie have got a house that make you ache with desire. And they throw fabulous BBQ parties as long as Beijing begins its spring thaw. Fredrik has been calling them my "BBQ friends" as to emphasize how yummy their food was, especially Jon's BBQ sauce, exoticly stimulating to the tongues.

Their assistant and Ayi, a twenty-five year old from a small town, but already mothering her child. She's a tad cute when she scrutinized with two big, winking eyes, a pair of beautiful eyes that give both wonders and shyness. Jonathon refuses to call her Ayi, as the original purpose to hire xiao luo (her name) was to help him with the screen talks. And she also helps clean the house when there's not much talks to do. She grew fast, and kept changing her hair style as a proof of being among movie-stars and hip fashionists. Did she just dye it into a flaming color last time I saw her? Did Jon just tell us that she's divorcing her hubby? Well good girl.

Now that I have had an Ayi of my own, an Ayi who speaks rather loud in her southern accent. She's even louder when I shook my head not able to understand her accent, and she urged me to water the plants no more with funny seriousness on her face. On the first day she came to clean the apartment, I was cooking chicken soup and she immediately furrowed at my masterpiece: "Is this the way you cook chicken? The color shouldn't have been so dark and oily!" But I love her. And she's honest and bizarre, and quite smart in reading my mind.

I also have a Taiwanese girl friend, who put one hundred kuai in the drawer to test her Ayi. Of course the Ayi didn't foolishly mistook the money as some toilet paper which she could randomly wrap in her pocket, so for sure the next day the Ayi was awarded with my girl friend's apartment key.

Cheers for a Civilized Life

Sun, 07 May 2006 05:04:36 GMT

Little bear, my girlfriend, seduced me with the thought of getting out dancing last night, as if engineering an evocation of liveness which I lost in the hometown wedding. She suggested Cheers. She said it's a Spanish night.

This little place was crammed with grungy youths jumping like overdosed kangarooes the minute I stepped in! The music was flowing with a Xinjiang flavor, exotic, lively and freshly brushing the ears. Those four Xinjiang performers were all good looking in an artistic way, and very talented and manly romantic. I wondered if they had involved some irish elements in their music or it was just Xinjiang, and I just loved it when they played it slow and pure, as if playing the untainted nature, with waters and green big trees. They gave me chills of sensations. And I just danced and danced, like a flying bird in enormous freedom.

Bear danced with a smile on her face and how lovely and crazy she was when she was washed over by music. I hadn't seen a person that could love music so much, that she's actually eating and living in it.

Then again, I met a lonely man, sitting behind me, loading himself with alcohol. He was wearing a black t-shirt and blue jeans, grey-haired, and not bad looking. But he seemed to be lost, shy and uncomfortable, like a skater so unsure of the ice on a strange river. Steams from his body sneaked into the air around me, I felt his nervousness.

Occasionally I took one or two glances in his direction, wondering what kind of life he was living and what made him the way he was, alone, ackward and freaked out by being so. And it was kind of funny that you met the most cheering crowd at the Cheers and there was always one or two that were leftovers, that were like the black tshirted guy behind my back. They didn't talk much and their mouthes were functioning only for the sake of drinking. Silently they were bored, wishing to be young and cheery, eyes wondering for a place to rest their stares.

Then I saw him troop up to the stage, standing beside the dancing group, experimentally attempted a move or two with little twist of his hip, flat ass almost dropping. Poor creature on earth. I meant to dig more but reckoned I'd remain a girlfriend's decency so I just dropped it.

Back home, still thinking about it. Rememebered one time out with Mr.Boyfriend at a bar with a great band, and I mistook a guy as him since they almost looked the same, glassed and thinly tall. So at our table we started a guessing lark for this guy's identity. This guy was seated with a guy and two women at a long table upstairs. The woman opposite him was blond and stunning, the other one was senior, elegant and stylish. Fredrik's guess was that he was an architect or a designer. Mine was an artist or at least a painter. And we both agreed he's from France. Boyfriend urged me to go over and ask, which I denied. Then good Fredrik, suddenly stood up and run over to the guy, all smiley nice, did his good deed of asking along. Having deluged the flirt and eyeing this guy in great curiosity, I was actually smirking this time, when Fredrik came back to me with an evil grin.

Well he's from America and certainly not the least artist type judged by the way he coldly and arrogantly kept his profession zipped to our curiosity. We were well disappointed that we didn't guess right, or mostly because the reality was never the same comparing to your imaginations, and it's bloody plain and boring. Wished that he at least had a bit of sense of humor though.

Well that's Beijing, you meet stange people, and you play it all. How does it feel to get back to such a civilized life? Cheers indeed!

Blitz of a Teenager Dream

Sat, 06 May 2006 01:39:01 GMT

Dad picked me up at the trasition station with overwhelming happiness. He got my big bag and talked a bit nervously: "Say something to my wife." I narrowed my eyes in the same fashion that Beijingners do before a major sandstorm, and in the dimness of night I waved my right hand to the figure standing by the car, grunted: "aunty Xiao, hello."

The trip to my mom's apartment was faster than I thought, which I was not sure if it's because I was absent-minded in their hardly conducted conversations or it's only because Xiao, who's driving with a tilting neck, was nervous to speak to me again after my five years of indignant silence to her. But those things weighed little to me as I had learned to switch off the sentimental button and be able to ice up my feelings in the lick of time. What mattered was that I did miss the bus heading home and mom was pissed off by my stupid "I cannot wait at the station among peasants for another bloody 3 hours without knowing when the fuck the bus would wheel back" excuse. Then I had to rent a car back at night. And when Dad offered his help and warned me how blank the driver could be in finding the right outlet to my hometown I accepted his geneosity in picking me up half-way, which meant that I had to meet his wife as well.

But it did matter to me, the entire story of going back to a place where I grew up, seeing on two sides of the street all the renovated buildings with a few memorable dirts in them, which numbed me in the strong pouring of the new woven in the old, the kind of oldness rotted in your heart but would never die away. Shiver I certainly did, in the howling car heading home.

At mom's apartment building, I copped a word or two with dad, said a brief thank you to his wife, and climbed upstairs already hearing mom's cooing "MiaoMiao?" I flowered a big smile, answering: "Mommy I am home."

The next day’s wedding was a hectic disaster of the worst chaos on earth. Despite millions of weddings that were happening on the same day (a day aka luck and happiness in Chinese lunar calendar standards), Mom and I arrived at my aunt’s apartment building in the early morning, my eyes instantly sore with the sight of huge strings of balloons and two dancing gals who were apparently not into the hip-pop scene in their cheap mini-skirts. People clattered downstairs of the building, watching the two robot rabbits jumping like aliens, seemingly stunned by the ostentation my aunt detailed. Mom waved hard in my aunt’s direction, meanwhile asking me: “How does mom look?” I tightened my grip on her, saying: “Can’t be better!”

Between hives of Chinese pop and a major show of her authority as the gloom’s mom and a wedding dictator, my aunt finally spotted mom and me. For a second she furrowed, which made me aware of the colorful summer dress I donned and subconsciously I did a mental stumble, and then she squeezed a smile and stepped forward with two open arms like an ostrich trying a fly. I hugged her affectionately, saying “Congrats, aunt!”

I was welcomed inside the apartment, where people started to trickle in, where the smoke and the loudness of everything started to grow hums in my head. Mom was set to accompany the relatives from the bride’s side, busy filling the teacups and smiling. I wondered if she’d be devoid of words when all the cups were done full. So I stood behind her, massaging her neck, smiling and supporting her.

Then I heard someone screamed something and everybody stormed downstairs. I followed the crowd down, only to find the bride and gloom, my cousin, who’d grown into a man with a mid-thirty look and a hidden belly, glowing with all his hair combed backwards. Beside him the ivory-skinned and wide-eyed bride was elegant and shiny, only the wedding dress a bit sloppy and second-hand like. Her plummy lips were frozen into a stiff smile unveiling her tender fear and tiredness for the big day of her life. I nodded with a hi, before I even realized, I was folded into my uncle’s arms who gave me a heavy peck on the cheek. “Huh…” I was helpless, “Uncle, I am a grown-up and you cannot do it as if I am ten!” He just gave me another heavier one on the other cheek, saying: "Why the heck you never come back, my little bird?"

All the buzz of playing with the bride as a tradition was sealed in the apartment and the wedding organizer snarled at us: “Okay, now everyone gets into the car to the restaurant and no cleaning of the floor, no turning off the lights! You hear me good!” I relieved a sigh, wondering if he’d worked a tourism guide job as a profession before.

In the dim light of the restaurant they had demostrated us how a wedding should be like: grand speeches on stage, Chinese pop dance show, kissing in public and the most tedious music a man of a visual example for the hardness of life played with an electronic organ. A lady next to me was busy picking up dishes for the gloom and bride, and stopped me right away when I tried to help: "No, not more! Only one piece for each dish at a time. This is the tradition and they will eat at night in their wedding room." Well that'd be cold I suppose, but they could use a microwave, or even that was forbidden according to the tradition?

After the wedding lunch there was more mess to eyeball. In spite of the dirtiness of spilling dishes and drinks all over the tables and floor, some people were actually filling plastic bags with leftovers, meanwhile some were still eating at their tables, drinking baijiu and smoking numberless cigarettes. I started to sneeze, hard. My aunt was smiling in her oversized winter suits with a pinky shirt to match, saying with fraud generosity: "Let them pack ba! We don't need the food. Just make sure to collect and put into the car all the baijiu left from the wedding!"

Unfortunately the first piece of every dish for the couple was packed away too.

Back to aunt's apartment, I drunk two cans of beers to cool down. Mom was upset that the wedding organizer asked her when would be her wedding in the most jokish way and she didn't know how to answer. I was allergic from the smokes, bored in general over everything, and too tired to pursue my carping any more. But I did feel glad that I was not the criminal to be shot down for the day as the cousin took most of the attention and absorbed the pressure as the center of the universe. My close relatives asked me what I did, and my hype aunt offered an answer that was correct but still needed update: "She's a writer!" Coyly I joked: "I sit at home--that's what it means."

I was back to Beijing the next day after a long hug given by mom. She watched me in the bus with all the love and understanding a mom could ever give, letting me free of the formalities and traditions my relatives believed, urging me to chase a dream of my own and fly high, and protecting me in a special way that not many people could apprehend. I turned back, seated still in the bus, the warmness of her eyes showering over me in a chilly rainy morning.

It is not true that I had nothing but bitterness to bite in my hometown; it is true that I don't belong there. Suddenly all the dreams I tried hard to build as a teenager, was real and innocently sweet in the blitz of my return to hometown. The streets, familiar or foreign, narrow or wide, dirty or spotless, were stories and memories I could no longer deny, which held too much into my face. I greeted them finally on the day I was leaving hometown in the faith to find a place called home again.

The Right in the Wrong

Thu, 04 May 2006 13:45:30 GMT

I followed him back to the restaurant, watching him vanish in the back of the area where the kitchen was, as if in a Wangjiawei's movie, eying his neat tight ass in those decent pants rolling away, temptingly intriguing.

On my way home

Mon, 01 May 2006 22:46:50 GMT

Suddenly miss those old days when I lived in my countryside apartment freelancing for that's Beijing two and a half years ago. Back then writing was all I had, and it was all I cared. Not an easy life as the loneliness was unbearable in the darkness of nights and the passion and joy for writing was surpringly hotter than sex. Up and down, I was emotionally nuts those days.

Each time I think about the past years I get a bit older in my mind.

I got up at six this morning, relaxed and recovered from the fear for going back home, feeling strong and calm. My half-packed bags are lying on the red counch, smiling. My notes for HardCandy June issue are half-finished too. It is such a quiet morning that you cannot help but sit and think.

On my desktop there is me and Fredrik holding tightly together and I actually smiled in that picture, a charming happy smile without worry and anger. I would put the smile in my pockets on my way home, purring a song or something merry. It's the cousin's wedding and everybody should sing.

Bye for now, my Beijing!

Scary Hometown

Mon, 01 May 2006 12:48:43 GMT

I am from Tangshan, a medium city in HeBei province. Nothing spectacular about my hometown except the lurid earthquake that buried hundreds of thousands of lives including my own grandmother and uncle in 1976. I was born later, luckily not inheriting all the bitterness that had left to my parents' generation.

Foreigners with more than average knowledge about China offered their sympathy:"Oh I am so sorry to hear that they were gone at the earthquake." But it's a boring start judged by my years of experiences upon studying the species of men. In fact at those events I am secretly longing for somebody who actually talks without the cliche of trying so hard on a "conversation".

My family's portfolio is such a messy long story, surely as long and messy as any of yours. And I never knew how to begin to paint it. Either my mom's first death of love or my dad's evil trick in getting her in bed? Or just my grandmother's (dad's mother) tragedy in marrying a man she despised and died old and mean without decency? It pains me to think all of that, those things that my hometown represents otherwise, so cruelly true and present. How can one escape from the jutting net of the previous life? The history of your root, and your destiny, in which you step by step became the way you are. Hell the hometown. This is how my heart breaks.

But I am leaving tomorrow to my mom's apartment in the centre of Tangshan, and my entire body hurts whenever I give it a thought. It is a wedding ceremony--my cousin, the son of my aunt, half a year my junior, is getting married on May 3rd. And for the record, this wild impious Amanda will be back in front of her old-fashioned but judgemental relatives, being queried and poked, only because she's not a good student in school and a crazy writer who only dates foreigners, who's got a life that has nothing to do with going back to Tangshan but running away from it. They hate it that I am international, that I am a creature they cannot comprehend, that they are not able to put into their preachings on a better life of marrying well and being an obedient daughter. Well I am not. And mom doesn't want me to be one.

Mom called me asking me to buy sour plums and snacks for dad. Apparently that's what he has asked for. Dad became a kid with gustations only. I got a feeling that the older I grow the stronger fear my dad feels to talk to me. He's planning to meet me though, according to mom whom he could talk a bit openly to, and he included the meeting with his ten-year-old son whom I have absolutely no interest in meeting with.

I talk to dad, and I surely do. He asked me to take care of his son, for his education. I guess it's all that this meeting takes and I swallow my hardness and anger. Not me, to suffer, not just me, okay? The day I go crazy you will know your pushing limit. Why not set me free dad? I dream of you all night long. You are in the middle of my relationship with the new guy, there forever asking for the key of my apartment. I cannot give away my happiness. Under all the nasty thoughts of a twisted life, I saw you fuck me in my dreams. And such a scary family story to tell, but I will begin with brutal honesty. I am, after all, a broken bottle with leaking fluid inside, nothing to lose anyhow.

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 02:04:56 GMT

Out of the Vase, Into the Fields

For quite some time I had been queried by different persons how I bagged the HardCandy gig. It seemed odd to my acquaintances that a Beijing version of “Sex and the City” would be penned by a Chinese woman with little literary education and buckets of cynicism.

Well, that’s just how it went. Somehow when you think luck will be the last thing to drop out of the sky, it drops on top of you, changing your center of gravity.

Two years ago I bye-byed a white-collar CBD babe career. I was a “pretty vase” – something akin to a nice piece of furniture to have around the office – and I spent my days abusing multiple-choice coffees on a daily basis. Shortly after qutting, I was bored silly talking to a group of suits at a chamber event and reckoned that I should interject a remark now and then so people knew I was still breathing. Suddenly a man, wrapped in a daffy sweater that didn’t do him any favors, leaned forward asking me what I did for a living. I thought I’d spice up the conversation so I blurted in jest: “I write.”

Relishing the word “write”, this man tucked his name card into my hand and asked me to send him something that demonstrated some writing flair and then walked out in an ape-like fashion. I looked at the card. It said that’s Beijing.

The next day I contorted in front of my computer for hours, my confidence waning as I stewed and re-stewed over an article that had all the vim of a microwaved beefsteak. My false bravado had put me in a spot. What if they thought I was just a chichi dolt with a quaint vocabulary? I was about to choke, despite reminding myself mechanically that life was a matter of trying new things and not letting go of opportunities. Perhaps a writing career was more rewarding than being simply a walking ashtray, and more exciting than surviving yawny conferences and droopy faces as a pretty vase. So I spilled my guts about my hellish state of mind, and punched “send” with the flourish of a conductor closing a symphony.

They liked it. They LIKED it!!! So said an email several days later, days that went by like I was waiting for the results of a cancer screening. Upon receiving the email, I sat there smiling like a goof, clicking the refresh button again and again.

The following month, a friend carried a copy of that’s Beijing to a pub where I was seated with a few others. My hands and legs and every other part of my body started shaking the minute she deposited the magazine on my table. Thumbing through the thick pages, I inhaled the blooming perfumes of ink and flipped to my column. To see my name in a magazine – an English one at that – was overwhelming. All the words, words that I’d gathered together in one column, printed on a page toward the back, convulsed me with pride and wonder. Together with the article there was a picture of a booted modern lady walking on the street at night, a sexed-up image, a fussier, feistier and taller version of me. My entire world twirled on its axis at that very moment…

Now two years have passed, I wonder what my life would be like if my diffidence had deterred me from sending in that first article. Where would I be and what other life would have pinned me down beneath its headlights? I’m so glad to have stepped out from life as a pretty vase, into a field of untamed wildflowers, a world brimming with drama and dreams.

Living in a Jetlag

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 13:48:27 GMT

Life murmurred in its morning jog when I drank in last night´s fancy dreams as if experiencing a mental coma. Everything seemed flippingly solemn like a fast-forward movie, so flashy that it reminded me of the sudden click from a camera man. It offered you chills of excitement that was only reflected on the glossy cover of a fashion mag. But you desired to disappear, into the shiny whiteness of the pricey paper covers, out of people´s inspirations. Specially this time, you were you, unnecessarily understood.

So you need a moment, a moment with hell, with all the imaginative, surreal, yellowed fear and wonder from the thickness of your rotted fingers, and those fingers rocked in pale wrinkled mind, you from the ash of the flamed automn, a piece flying towards the sun. So much to tell, humbly you believed in a return of the love. Your love, easily vanished through the path of your reality. The protection was in your hearty air.

Perhaps you could belong, or it´s just simply wrong. All the songs you wrote, they said it was beautiful. You never knew and you never would. All the magic of a blackened deep water, the depth of your wording mouth, here it was, and you drowned your soul. This was how it began.

We were born sexy, in such a tasty way.

Such way to die

Sat, 08 Apr 2006 13:06:50 GMT

I wish everything could be simple
So I could give up easily
Upside down the world for me ample
Angel Black Angel
Too hard to say
So closed my apple
Other side of world help me
Go further stumble

Well you are iceberg humble
Wanting to be multilplied your mumble
Lemon tree in my face
Bury a soul what a breath gamble
So cold worth the other side of the world for me
All the time it takes faded into a Tango
Too hard to say
Just feel it easily
That's how it shines
Most every day

And I wish it simple
So I give up easily
And I die subtly

Half-faced Woman

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 14:35:21 GMT

Half-faced Woman

Tell me its only my delusion
Its only the sound of the rain
Not coming down this hard again
Not going to last long my evil woman
Coming and going so much to lose in vain

But baby I am no ones fool
Baby you are just full
And your heart soaks in wine
Dont give me too much to gain
Just tell me that something there is true
Its not just the sound of your rain

I feel my body moving
I feel my world itching
Only you only you play me again

Baby I am a man of good
And I wouldnt hurt you loon
Just tell me that is something new
Your pictures with a future
Not just a want plain

But why cannot you come down again
In the sound of the rain

The Color of Salmon

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 14:27:08 GMT

It hadn’t warned in last January’s horoscope that I’d simultaneously lapse into a double interview totally by accident. In the coldest mouth of a Tuesday evening, I gunned to a pub in the fashion of a CIA breaking into an enemy house, only to find my promising employer seated with his new friend Mr.G, a tall academic type planted behind the table. With pupils darting about in his green eyes like lemons in a fruit machine, Mr.G curiously fessed that he recalled having received my CV some time ago, but had in fact not seen fit to reply.

All the blood that had been milling around in my face beginning a sudden and speedy exodus, I tripped down my memory lane but still couldn’t position him properly, so I simply grinned and swilled my Hoegaarden, though not at the same time. But why the hell G didn’t summon me for an interview?

To my horror Mr.G deposited me an email the next day justifying why he previously decided not to interview me. It read like this: “From you application photo I got a feeling of just a ‘party girl’.” Mortified, I continued to sit there as if I’d been hit by a truck. The next minute I was already scanning my resume photo: I wasn’t wearing any dramatic peacock-feathered hair, no cleavage pouring over the top, but merely in the middle of my twenties slink by in an evening dress so tight a six-year-old would’ve struggled to breathe in it. But why shouldn’t a marketing lady look this way? How could he take me at face value and deny me an interview so carelessly? If there’s fairness on this earth, I thought, I had just failed to see it!
Then again, after being transparent about judging me curtly he had asked for a second meeting. Despite the tedious predictability of the scene, I batted an email back: “Well I have always liked the bit of drama in life. And thanks for your sage advice on what would be appropriate pictures for a resume. I'd like to meet again to have a chance to defend myself and prove that I am not just a master of parties.”
With my girl-next-door wardrobe and a pair of nerdy glasses marking me out as a neat lady, I legged out on my super high heels (for the fear that if I stepped out of them, the tall Mr.G would wonder where I’d gone, and I had to reply: “I am down here.”) to seek retribution the following Saturday evening. I was biding my time in the hopes of serving him his dish cold Metaphorically chewing gum and blowing bubbles of defiance in the face of Mr.G, I looked him up and down trying to find a suitable insult, before gurgling “Hi How are ya.” He beamed his toothy smile and nodded, naturally engineering a conversation without revealing his judgmental claws.
When the tension was ozzing away in fun (I had to admit) conversation, the night shaped itself into a quaint European country with music 20 years behind. It was the best I could do to remind myself that I had come here seeking justice, and perhaps even retribution from this judgmental man. I ordered Guinness for Mr.G, who immediately grimaced at the sight of it. “Do you like it?” I asked, wondering how anyone couldn’t. “Huh, I have been drinking Heinekens. ” he signed helplessly, “But it’s good to change sometimes.” I began to feel a trickle of conciliation tickle at my stern intentions, when I saw him sip at the Guinness like taking his medicine.

Starting to feel sorry for him in his brave efforts to swallow the thick black beer, which he did with the grace of a man eating ground mouse, I asked: “So what is your favorite color, G?”
“Orange.” He smiled, trying to force the fumes of Guinness from his mouth.
“That’s the color of salmon.” I commented.
“No, the color of salmon is pink. I will let the bartender settle the bet.”

Five hours flickered by, and my retribution turned out instead to be the reward of getting to know a fun person. In swallowing the Guinness I’d bought him, he had swallowed the haughtiness that had turned me against him. I realized that I was judging because I had been judged by him. He needed to look beyond the photograph of a party girl, and I needed to look beyond his initial rejection of my application. Perhaps the color of salmon is orange, or perhaps it’s pink, and perhaps that’s just the way we see things, and we judge differently. I love Guinness: that’s just me. And that shouldn’t stop us from giving a second try to people, because we might be fooled by our own eyes for the first impression.

Give Me Life

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:44:02 GMT

Give Me Life

Last December my life had inevitably ebbed into a status of no surprise, no mystery and no sense of danger, instead, I had literarily morphed into a walking corpse, straight out of Michael Jackson’s Video, but the added twist of a Stepford Wife attitude. Having to continue a life that I felt no link with made my veins hurt. Voices, small and insistent, whispered to me from the far corners of my mind, reminding me of how much I pined to unwrap my days in a new fashion.

When winter was locked into the very breath of my office life I, at last balled my petite body on the company couch into my fatal decision. The resignation was smooth, but somehow twirled my entire world on its axis: life was, this time, smiling at me through a mouthful of limes with a sour expression of freedom and a blank future to eye. Since I had never been able to master the merits of “Positive Thinking”, I needed some help to drill it into my brain, and so I let my girl friends in on the shocking news of my early retirement.

However, bailing out of my position not into the crash pad of something lined up, but instead into the wild blue, sounded funnier than Hitler’s hemorrhoids to my well-hired peers. Women with more serious problems immediately engineered a brood of therapeutic phone talks with me—a typical case of the blind leading the blind. Between pros and cons (mostly cons in their sage analysis), I followed the traditional idea that good gal should always listen, until I was finally made to feel as helpless as a turtle flipping on its back. Terrified by a solitary picture of myself trashing in the sea of desperate job-hunters, I hung up the phone, itching for a backpacker’s booze fest to obliterate my wariness.

That night a list of questions as long as my arm shot arrows up and down my cringing spine: was I always to be the queen of bad decisions? Was my move to whitewash over my dissatisfaction nothing more than that, or did I deserve some applause for my brave resolution to start new? From inanity to inarticulacy I sank into my couch, channel hopping in front of my giant TV for what felt like a decade. Noting that luck would not drop from the ceiling into my lap, and that instead I would probably put on five more pounds around my belly thanks to my sarky lifestyle, I pulled myself to my feet, my brain suddenly having bright waves.

Instead of moping around in my apartment, I thought, I really should get myself “a life”. For the first time in ages, I reveled in my opportunity to relax and think for myself without worrying about being late, or feeling a creeping panicking in the face of deadlines. I had seen so many of my pals enduring jobs they hated for the sake of stable incomes; I had heard ceaseless complaints from those whom I saw as prisoners of their need for security stay in shaky relationships. I used to be one of them, seduced by the fear of loss for a better future.

The icy sunlight was licking dry the soggy negativity of the room, and my will for a new life was an overripe fruit about to drop. Life was not supposed to be suffering the security of a job, a relationship, or a social life; rather, it should be learning what you want, and finding ways to get this. Life takes guts, it takes guts to step free of the fear that is bred of security, to waltz merrily away from the strangling insurances and open up to new adventures.

In the map of my reality, there should be colors as loud and fabulous as Spanish women, sceneries as green as the summers of Beijing, and life as lush as a tropical plant. Out of the mud of my self-remorse, I recognized and in my heart celebrated that possibility is the charm of life, stepping alone out into the wild blue, beyond the boxes and rails of a calm and sedentary life, is what it’s all about, for me anyway.

You are invisible

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 15:13:18 GMT

I cannot see you for an earthy touch, thus you are in my imaginary tale, dense and a bit naive in your own way. You know me, but not quite, we both into the game of intrigue, such alike souls.

I tainted you by accident, and accidents are my forte. You cannot read me--you only sensed my certain insanity. Purple party, I was a millionaire, poor with words, lost in the right direction, only that you were true in my hazed eyes. They sang twice to gain again my flare.

Embrace life I am so me, licking through the dryness of night, surreal in the glow of burning candles. When loneliness is merely a hobby, it's time to exercise. Brilliant misery of life brings me wonders of heaven, yet so locked in a confused mind.

Words words, please help me sing. Sweet moment not easy for me. A lady, fully dressed mysterious queen. Shrug off my shell, and catch me hence I fall. I am made for no one like you, nearly I am no one but yours. Decorate my life, I need your bitterness and charm, dumping the past as trash, loving new as dirty. Contrived contradiction, you beloved woman, your vain wants go ahead trying to decide a horse's journey wild.

The Valentine's Day Panic

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 09:45:29 GMT

I broke up with Bob the boyfriend right before last year’s Valentine’s—more evidence of the evil tenor of God’s sense of humor. But dash it all aren’t we living in a great society where lovers are instantly replaceable and in infinite supply? After the mental suicide of the most traumatic kind, however, I found that happiness was no longer my default position; instead, I was being swallowed by my own dread of an impending Valentine’s Day humiliation.

Clair, who had been sweetly supportive during the Bob crisis, suggested a single’s party on the big night as a shame-free alternative. I soon figured it impossible to sell my ex on ebay, so I’d better sell myself well as a fabulous singleton wheeling my spikes around at the prancy party. It was, after all, my will to kick a guy out of my head after kicking him out of my bed.

To my surprise at the club there were actually so many beautiful singletons, who all possessed the pluck to go out without a Valentine in arm. Suddenly, like a school chemistry lab miracle, a dude emerging with dark bristled hair, shot a flirtatious look at me with one eyebrow raised. Upon meeting my super-thorny look of an accountant during a bad tax year, he lisped a concerned hi. I propelled my chest out more and sucked my tummy in until it hit my spine: “Hi, you.” When he was hovering at the bar ordering me a drink, I secretly wished an ounce of smiling muscles was ordered as well.

A tad tipsy, I secured myself to the stage while the punk made efforts to reduce my misery to a mere peanut-sized nodule. Among exuberant hugs and cheering faces, a short-skirted blonde, 10 times as attractive as the guys around her, transfixed me when she asked us to indulge a post-party at her apartment nearby.

“You should come with me. She’s a friend.” His breath was warm, and he smelt like Dove Bar soap.
“I shouldn’t.” Emotionally dyslexic, I was having trouble thinking straight; I was thinking curved. Thus my shouldn’t came out with a hint of should.

In half an hour, I skittered along with an army of people to the blonde’s apartment, and proceeded directly to the lav to cool my head, all the while fiercely wondering how my fate would be sealed that night. When I got out, I was hit by a roomful of partying people, among whom the dude poured me a giant glass of water and grabbed my hand, saying: “Let me play you a song.”

Ironically enough, listening to the song the punk spontaneously made for me, with other people rollicking in their whiskey moods, I felt a somewhat morose pang tightening my chest, and songs of good, happiness, pain and loss were germinating in my head; all this emotion was clearly mirrored in the reflection of my glass: after months of wrestling with my own relationship with Bob, I suddenly realized such romance couldn’t buy me any happiness at all. After all there’s no such thing that a new guy in need could erase an old guy indeed.

Certainly I could sit joyfully like a bottle of uncorked champagne, grinning tough contrived, but I made a drastic action otherwise. In no time I bolted off to the door, grabbed all my stuff and run to the outside, with an intention of never looking back.

That night, with the perfect moonlight and thousands and thousands of broken hearts, I found my way home to my lone bed, sagging, weeping; but in my heart I knew eventually my pain would be washed over by the dazzling morning sunshine and I’d wake up in my fabulous self, unsagging, not weeping.

Like Daughter, Like Mother

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 08:35:53 GMT

For six years, my mom has been trying to nudge me into a stable relationship that would end in wedding bells. She encouraged my move to Beijing, as she reckoned Beijing has almost as many eligible bachelors as it does cars. No such luck for me: I have yet to run into a guy who can cure me of my marriage phobia in a dangerously cute way.

Mama Lady Dong, divorced and retired in my hometown in the north, had overcome our geographical distance by keeping me in 24-hour cellular contact to propagate her “get my daughter married” agenda. I long ago learned it wasn't worth the eye wrinkles to argue with her, so I always listened with a nod.

Two weeks ago, however, things changed. Out of blue one morning she announced: “Miaomiao, mom is dating!”

“You're what?” I blurted out.

“I'm dating. DATING. Is there something wrong with my little Miaomiao’s ears?” She giggled, girlishly, sending my head spinning. “I'm dating Uncle Sheng. I think you met him once or twice before.” Her voice was honeyed with delicious happiness. She sounded so young, and I felt so outraged ... and so old.

“Mom, you can't just call and drop a bomb like that on me! How much do you know about this guy? Is he sincere? Does he treat you right? How old is he? Most importantly, do you love him? Uncle Sheng!?” I wanted to have Uncle Sheng (whoever the hell he was) as a stepfather about as much as I wanted a case of food poisoning.

“Tell you everything later,” mom breezed like an American teenager. “Just tell me, do you think I should dye my hair cranberry red?"

My stomach dropped when I heard behind her the unmistakable droning of a hair dryer. “Are you at a hair salon? This early?” I added, as calmly as I could under the circumstances, “Cranberry red is an okay color for a coffee mug, but not for a person’s head.”

“Ok, brown then. Maybe blonde? I gotta go!” She hung up without allowing me to object, in the way that I usually do during our ‘getting married’ conversations.

Suddenly my mom was too preoccupied with dating to talk to her own daughter! How so? Just because of a man, a man who apparently had the balls to frog-march my poor old mom into a beauty salon? With zillions of ugly images churning though my mind like an R-rated horror movie, I concluded: I’ve got to offer my sage advice to mom, who’s sailing in the sea of love ... so innocent, so incapable of dealing with icebergs.

Speech prepared and edited, with possible objections exhaustively considered, I called her that evening. “Men are dangerous, and men of 50 are especially – no, obscenely – dangerous. Mom, you have to listen to your daughter, who has more dating experience than you do.”

However, my planned speech was derailed by a male voice on the other end of the phone. “Hi, Miaomiao, this is uncle Sheng. Your mom has told me so much about you and WE are both very proud of you, lady!”

What? The enemy was in the house? And they were already “WE”? My eyes almost bugged out of my head, and I blinked quickly to secure them in place. For the first time I heard a man’s voice from the same number I had been dialing for years. Feigning a cucumber’s cool, I batted back my questions: “Hello! Nice to hear that! By the way, how long have you been going out? What do you like to do for fun? Do you like to go to the theater, and yet are you still flexible enough to do housework? Are you a good cook? Oh, and my mom has diabetes, so please don’t put sugar in the dishes.”

“Hao la, Miaomiao,” Mom grabbed the phone, “Mama knows you care about me and Mama loves you more than anything. Don’t worry too much, Uncle Sheng is a good man and Mama’s happy.”

One of the perks of being in a happy relationship is the right to speak wisely, and mom capitalized upon this. “Ok,” I caved, but immediately warned, “I'm going to keep a close eye on him until he has passed my three month test. Mom, I am so happy that you are dating again! Mom, I love you!”

“I love you too, Miaomiao,” mom said, “Don’t work too hard, as workaholic girls like you are wont to do, and remember to drink your milk.”

“Ha ha, I know.” I put down the phone, and then I felt neglected, because for the first time in six years, she did not end our conversation with her urging me to find a nice boy to marry.

Say it

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 08:22:12 GMT

Give wants or lose ounce
in the last chance
Say it
When everybody else cold in minds

My head explodes
Say it
See how contradicted
Simple words shine

Live in a world
Golden framed and yellow flared
Weave a dream to only feel
For what things I have done

Last day I was numb
Today just fine
Come on and see me in my place