何でも良い

Here’s a small and insignificant proof that the world is getting smaller, and civilization gaps narrower. In the past, it could have taken some surprising minutes, sometimes even a pen and paper, in order for the non-Israeli in front of me to understand my middle-eastern funny sounding name. I was Zoha, Zala, Zara, Jua (India…), Zaha, Zora and even Zoe. These days, most people – well, especially non-Chinese – seem to get my name immediately. Some even go as far as asking me if I like cutting hair, and what do I think of Adam Sandler. Till now I have been captiously correcting them, but I guess there would come a time when I would just let it go. You don’t mess with a Zohan.

Medium rare

“No sports, no rock, no information, for mindless chatter – we’re your station!”
(the Simpsons' KBBL radio jingle)

Sometimes being a workless traveler slash ”freelance” student can be really tough. You don’t have any structure to work in. It’s almost 11 am, and I am still in my pajamas, struggling to find something else to read, some additional piece of data. When all is done, I resort, again and again, to the Israeli news, to acquire some new peace of data. Maybe a kindergarten using new techniques was opened in Tiberius, maybe there is another reportage about the building extension in the settlements, or (as I just saw today) a list of Israel’s “10 best falafels!”.

I first experienced it when I was living in Berlin – this adherence to the Israeli papers, first and foremost “Haaretz”. I am not alone. I have an Israeli friend who has been living for more than five years now in Berlin, and still, every time I saw him open the computer, he checks Haaretz. I guess we do it out of a mixture of boredom, genuine interest and routine – your fingers just slip over automatically, after you read your last e-mail.

On top of that is the society we come from and (on and off) live in. According to a research I have heard of during my studies, the Israeli society is unique in the huge disparity between the high amount of time citizens spend in acquiring news and discussing politics (and Israel is indeed a pretty interesting country to live in), and their negligible belief in their own ability to change the situation they so habitually consume. This sure explains a lot, and I won’t be surprised to find out the Palestinians take second place.

In a way, a similar disparity is reflected in almost all Israelis I know, especially in my circle of friends, who can be clearly distinguished between the ones who plunder these pages daily (usually people working with a computer. They check NRG and Ynet too), and the ones completely out of the loop.

Sure, it’s important for me as an Israeli and an activist to stay updated. Yet how can reading Haaretz daily help me? I usually recommend it to foreigners, it might really help them understand the situation. But for us natives, it’s simply the same stuff every day. It’s not that by reading it I get any smarter, get to know my country better. Most of it is simply politicians’ blabber, discouraging reports and maybe an occasionally enlightening yet worn-out commentary in between. The attention to what’s going on in the world which actually surrounds our small dark bubble might be increasing, now with the crisis and all, yet is still minor, some kind of back-cover amusement.

Well, now it’s over, I tell you! I am going to be an updated yet newsfeed-free Israeli. As long as nothing extreme happens (oh, it will) and as long as I am out of the country, I will just let the Zipis, the Bibis and the Libis do their thing. I hereby promise to open Haaretz only once a week (Friday, usually the time homesickness kicks in). The rest of the time, I will settle for Asahi shinbun, New-York times, China Times and Süddeutsche Zeitung. Who knows, maybe they got some middle-east section…

******************

this post was written about three weeks ago, yet I decided to wait with it, and see whether i can keep my promise. well, so far so good, and with nice results too. the scattered news i do get from Israel, especially from Netanyahu's never-ending and depressing coalition negotiations, make me even more determined.

the specials

It was definitely one of the most exciting moments in my travels, and my Jewish life. In a small, humble room, thousand of Miles away from the home, or from the Beijing and Shanghai synagogues, six Chinese and one Israeli were receiving the Shabat together. There was something both extremely encouraging and dispiriting in watching these few lonely Jews, that with one stroke of a Kipah seemed suddenly less like their fellow citizens, and much more like their “brothers”, the ones I met in Caracas, Indiana, Berlin, Jerusalem or Dharamsala. I thought of my mother, who would have doubtless burst in tears of excitement being there. Even I, while reading the blessing in Hebrew (the honor of the extinguished guest), got something caught in the eye. Heck, what are forty years in the desert in comparison with the wonder of a thousand in nowhere China?

But as far as I gathered (not much), the Jewish community of Kaifeng is today far from being a thriving community. Internal fighting about prestige, authentication and – of course – money, tore this rare flock apart. To that you can add the long years of being treated like some marvelous zoo animal, and the cold shoulder they have presumably been given from China, and from Israel’s governmental and Jewish authorities.

“I wanted to study in Israel”, told me a 20-something youth, the only one who could read and understand the words Sh’ma Israel on my Kipah. “The China government has no problem with people leaving the country. My petition for a visa was rejected on the part of Israel. At first there was no institution to accept us, then when that was found the government itself didn’t want us. Maybe now that the government is changing again.”

"I will be their savior!", I was flushed with inspiration during the service, "I will contact the Israeli Embassy, I will make Kaifeng my home, live amongst them, grow to speak their local dialect (which makes Mandarin feel as familiar and explicit as English), and will teach them Hebrew. Together, we will create a real, world-wide known community! One that people, especially Israelis and Jews, would love to come and be a part of. We will build a hostel for these travelers, maybe even a synagogue. If we built it, they will come!"

Quickly enough crept the anti-thoughts in: screw this. Finding out that you are different in China’s giant masses must be every young Han’s dream, on a par of winning the lottery. Yet instead of bringing them together, their uniqueness brought them more apart. Instead of acting together to sustain some kind of identity, some right of existence, they have succumbed to the old way of doing things – grudge, social accounting, connections, competitions, feuds. Guess being both Chinese and Jewish is simply too much tension and guilt-trips to withhold. Kaifeng has great potential, but they are grown-up people, and if they do not feel like pulling themselves together, I should not get myself all mixed-up. And anyhow, let them do their own thing. They have lasted for a thousand years, and can last another without a conceited well-wisher coming to tell them how to do things.

*********************

The final result is somewhere in between. But for now, this dilemma was spared. I just arrived to the big Xi'an, and may have left Kaifeng totally, in search of a place where I can get a Visa.

开封ing

Back in the days, I hated hearing foreigners speaking about their experiences in China. First, it was mostly about food, and then it was meat meat meat meat (“Oh, you’re vegetarian? So why do you want to go to China?!”). Second, as almost the only one who still wasn’t there, I was envious. On top of it, I also had some auto-semi-racist fears about coming to China after it would all be tarnished by the west, exploding with foreigners running around the streets, polluting our beautiful environment with their terrible toneless Chinese (still better than mine, but does that stand for something?). While Beijing and Qingdao might have somehow confirm my fears to some small extent, then came Kaifeng and pacified me completely. We Kaifeng foreigners are few and proud, but especially few. The last couple of days were the first in China during which I saw no foreigner whatsoever. Not that I don’t want to see them, they are great, but it is still nice to know I have the possibility to detach myself completely.

Weather is great, it’s smells like spring and the city is nice. These were “twin-days” – wake up early in the morning (here in the country, it’s so lovely. Bed at 23, wake at 7); stay in bed in front of the computer and TV; eat lunch; go to my friends’ house to work on translating stuff; go out – one time dancing with her parents (her dad took my hands and tried to teach me), and yesterday to the Kaifeng night market, located in a cool bustling downtown, just several minutes walk away.

星吧 (Pub Star)

When speaking of China’s economic boom (and ignoring its vague future), everything is only still at an early stage in Kaifeng. These lines are being written in the freshly opened “Pub star”. As far as I (and the locals I talked with) know, it’s Kaifeng’s first bar, if you go by the good definition of a bar, as a place cool people can hang around and nice music is played, and not as a place where a hundred male Chinese huddle together to play cards, smoke, and occasionally begin a generation-long vendetta.

Kaifeng is not nearly as big and modern as its neighbor city Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, but it does have a lot of potential, and is house to the most prestigious university in the most-populated province of China – Henan University. The campus is nice and well taken-care of, filled and surrounded by a genuine university atmosphere – young and cute students walking around, many in groups, laughing a lot. Yet the study A LOT, and most of what they do in their free time is eat (that's simply the good-old Chinese way. No, it’s not culture, it’s the economy, stupid – food here is considerably cheaper than drinks), linger on the computer in internet spots and run back to the university before curfew. The idea of having an alternative (or shall I say western?) good time is still foreign to most of them. Yet sometimes one bar\cafe is capable of changing everything. Yes, it’s Saturday evening, and I am sitting here alone right now, but 5 bucks says it is a whole party complex in a few years.

Here Comes Another One

I am sitting in my bed right now, trying to reflect as quickly as I can the day that just passed, before the enthusiasm fades away, as it always does.

Oh, man, how I love traveling sometimes. I’ll just give you the highlights – I arrived to the city of Kaifeng at 6:30 in the morning, tired and cold after a long train from Qingdao. It used to be the capital of the Northern Song dynasty, and if I know my Chinese history – and I don’t, but you’d have to take my word, or go to wikipedia – the first city in the world to cross the one million inhabitants. It was at that time and to that bustling metropolis that a group of Jewish Indian immigrants allegedly made their way, and got the emperor's permission to settle. Today it is a run-down (literally, as floods from the Yellow River covered the city a few times), gray city in the middle of China, maybe a tourist spot to some extent, but not much more. It’s nothing like the two cities I have been so far, and anything like the ones in the movies – no skyscrapers (the buried cities don’t allow that); no English; no foreigners (50, estimated one that I met, which in a way makes my humble arrival an event not only in the Jewish community scale); walkable distances; a million bikes and autorickshaws; and a chicken here and there. Judging by the clean alleys and clothes, it is no poor city, just humble and simple. An American I met told me he pays 500 Yuan (75 US) monthly for a two bed-room apartment in a great spot, and still hears being told that it is too much. I know people who pay four times that amount for a room in Beijing. The language is weird, not so much the dialect as the intonations – the locals replace the first and third tones. For one who has been studying the tones so tenaciously (I gave them the greatest attention from starters, as I gathered them to be my weakest point, due to my utterly unmusical ears) this amounts to sacrilegious.

Speaking of faith, guess who I found here. You might say I have couchsurfed the good-old way – walking from alley to Hutong loaded with my cargo, telling people “take me to your Jews”. And they did. I suddenly found myself in a Chinese house, which was everything Chinese other than the pictures in Hebrew on the walls, and a few menorahs. 200 Jews still live in Kaifeng, told me the nice young host, Guo Yan, who as opposed to her husband could speak Mandarin. Her cousin is in Jerusalem, studies Hebrew. She herself is there to receive the coming visitors and Jews (me being the first one to come to study Chinese), and hopes to establish some small museum for Kaifeng Jews. Interesting stuff.

The day continued with a short visit to the musk (I had to pee. “we never had any problems with the Muslims”, refuted my host my wikipedia-based question, adding something like “they don’t care”); finding my "guest house" (it stands up to this definition only to the extent of it being a house, me being a guest, and some small amount of money changing hands. It does have my first electric mattress though); going with Guo to check about studies in Henan University (doesn’t look to good, too expensive for a probably low lever. finding a job as a teacher might be better); visiting Library Shalom, the university’s Jewish history room (“Our department is in the top 3 Jewish departments in China”, laughed the guy sitting there alone reading, “all in all it’s us, Shanghai and Beijing. Top 3!”); meeting a couple of other foreigners, and going all together eating. Walking through the dark streets back home, munching on some local cookie, I couldn't help but feeling grateful.

青岛

Do you know that thing sometimes in movies? Out of some kind of weird turn of events, the protagonist arrives at some peaceful place, a haven of some sort. The lighting is bright, the view a bit blurry, people are tender and calm, the kids are all wearing white, singing. Yet there always some catch. Maybe our hero is dead, maybe dreaming, maybe the place conceals a dreadful secret, and maybe the cruel world around is just about to cave in.

In a way, this is the feeling for me these days in Qingdao ("green Island"). Ever heard of this place? I am not even sure anymore if I knew of it till more than a month ago. Well, I heard German colonialism, of good beer. People told me it is an awesome city. I thought about a big city, very touristic. Nothing prepared for this city, which seems to have everything good to offer – clean beaches and alleys； shiny huge skyscrapers and broad, spacious streets in the new part of town； a nicely kept old barrio, with a great hostel to stay at； lively and not too posh nightlife; a proud yet not hedonistic foreign community; good food; a big park in the middle of the city; great air; San-Fransisco (or Haifa) style inhabited hills with a great view; a small city feeling (This city is supposed to be housing a population larger than Israel's. From the looks of it, I wouldn't give it more than a million). Mostly responsible for all that is of course the population itself, both local and foreign. All radiate satisfaction, mildness... health.

I know what you are thinking – "the guy has fallen prey to the oldest traveler mistake, spending his time in the nice side of town, rubbing shoulders with the plump elites, and disregarding the misery of the rest". Well, a bit. But I have also walked through the poor market, witnessing nothing but calm faces and nicely undertaken dense living. I have been to the police bureau; all clean, few people, and no cutting in line. Heck, I have been to the hospital, and all I have seen were smiling aunties and a laid-back doctor, sitting alone in his room, reading a newspaper at midday.

I am not fooling myself. The experience is subjective, and the catch is there to be found, some kind of dreadful truth. Or maybe I am just dreaming. But for now - does that make it less authentic?

****

I am here for the coming days, and afterward it’s probably on to Kaifeng and Xi’an. After I see these two cities, I will decide where do I wish to stay and study.

new blog, global language

“Writing”, wrote a professor of mine, in a spread sheet dedicated to writing essays, “entails a submission, an exposure”. This goes also for this first post in my brand new blog. For years I have submitted myself away from my best foreign language, English. I have been studying everything language possible, and writing a blog in Hebrew, which I intend to keep alive. Now I am submitting myself back. I have lost this imagined mutiny against our master language. Those of you who know my passion for languages would easily understand how hard a step it is for me to admit that.

It’s not that I hate English, not at all. However, I do hate to think of the unilingual world that English represents. But having recently written a paper glorifying the language reforms made in Japan in the last 150 years, which compromised an entrenched culture for better communication and practically for democracy, my thoughts changed a bit. And after seeing tiny Chinese kids being encouraged to sing for me “good morning to you” from their non-English speaking parents, something inside me broke. If the Chinese are willing to let it go, who am I to be the last man rushing from tower to tower along the Great Wall.

I still intend to use a few other languages in this blog. But that would mean consciously disregarding languages’ most important feature – communication. When I toilingly write something, I want to reach as many people and friends as I can. I guess 90% of the people I know can read English, which gives it about a 40% lead over Hebrew, and 60% over German, not to speak of Chinese and Japanese. These are huge differences, in front of which even a tenacious polyglot like me can’t remain silent. I am simply missing a whole bunch of beloved readership with every passing non-English word.

Just to be sure: I am not compromising for quality in exchange for quantity. English is actually my best foreign language, and there probably won’t be any foreign language in which I am better than in English, no matter how much Thomas Mann or Haruki Murakami I read.

One might see it as a sign for the end of my language rage, and maybe even as the end of my travels. I would rather see it as the beginning of a more mature attitude towards languages, and towards the world I am living in.