Rereading The Glass Palace

As National Novel Writing Month began and I finally started writing a novel, I picked up The Glass Palace to reread. I first read the book when I started working with an organization advocating for human rights and democracy in Burma in 2007. Because the book was set in Burma, it was immediately one of my favourites.

In the last year and a half, as I began thinking about my own book, I have for the first time reread some of my favourite novels. Rereading is not at all as uninteresting as I thought it would be.

My familiarity with the plot of The Glass Palace afforded me the opportunity to pay attention to how Amitav Ghosh skilfully built a fictional story in the midst of historical upheavals, how he illustrated the characters and brought it all to life. Rereading this book was just the inspiration I needed, so much so that I kept wanting to read rather than write. It was the historical period and political developments that intellectually drew me into the story, but the characters that pulled at my emotions and kept me submersed in the story even when I put the book down. There were several points in the novel where I was elated by a marriage or moved to tears by the sad outcome for one of the characters.

The point that affected me the most was the second last scene in which Aung San Suu Kyi addresses a large crowd that has gathered around her house in Rangoon to hear her speak through the gate, from the confines of her house arrest. Ghosh successfully illustrated the hope that had been placed on her, the leader who could save the people of Burma from the tyranny of the military regime. In the last couple of years, this hope has sadly been eroded. Aung San Suu Kyi has become the kind of politician that Ghosh so elegantly held her above; she has gone beyond what would have once been her limits in order to gain more power for herself and her party, and allowed politics to take over everything. The final phrase of the chapter, “that it is just a matter of time before [the generals] are made to answer for all that they have done,” could not have been further from the truth of the last years. The generals have orchestrated the widely praised ‘miraculous transition to democracy’ precisely so that they could avoid being held responsible for their crimes. And yet crimes against ethnic minorities, farmers, labourers and human rights activists continue and it will take many more years for genuine democracy to take root.

Burma has taken a different path than the hope portrayed in this scene, but it does not detract from the beauty and vividness of the book. I hope to reread it again, perhaps several years down the road as Burma’s transition continues to unfold. Until then, The Glass Palace will remain an inspiration for my own writing.

Turtle Feet

“In order to understand something clearly, one must first give it up.”

I said something similar to one of my best friends in Dharamsala the week before I left. While I knew I would miss India like crazy – and I was right – I experienced so much that I knew I needed to leave to let it all soak in.

I picked up Turtle Feet at a small bookstore in Majnu ka Tilla, the Tibetan colony in Delhi. It jumped out at me because I had been thinking a lot about my monk friend, his life, and the community’s expectations of monks. The front flap of Turtle Feet included a line about demystifying monks’ lives. Perfect food for thought.

Back in Montreal, when I finally sat down to read it, my first impression was that the author, Nikolai Grozni, was a stupid injie (Westerner) who took his vows to become a monk without fully understanding what it meant. His friends were the epitome of the Western tourists I hated in Dharamsala, oblivious to the culture and community around them and disrespectful without even being aware of it.

But as I read, I discovered that the author was slowly learning lessons that gave him a deeper understanding of the community – many lessons I myself had to learn. In one chapter, Grozni writes about meeting Tsar, a Western monk who smoked and was always hanging out with girls. At first he seemed interested in Tsar because he was a fellow Western monk who wasn’t afraid to still act however he wanted. But by the end of the chapter, Grozni realized that he was being judged by the community for hanging out with someone who had such a bad reputation.

Reading about the difficulties Grozni encountered on his spiritual quest for the truth made me think more about my own struggle to understand the Buddhist ideas of emptiness and impermanence. The more I have read about Buddhism, the more I have felt like a stupid Westerner who has been taught to hang on to people and experiences, be miserable missing them when they were gone, and to deeply fear death. In comparison, my Tibetan friends seem to be able to cope much better with life’s changes. I keep trying to override the worldview that is deeply engrained in me, but the process is making me realize how difficult it is to change my fundamental beliefs when they are the basis of my actions and reactions on a daily basis. I have also realized that until now, I have not chosen those fundamental beliefs, I have merely soaked them in from my surroundings. I took some comfort in knowing that I am not alone in my struggle; even as a monk who was studying Buddhist texts with learned teachers, Grozni also seemed to be grappling to understand Buddhism through the worldview from his childhood.

Grozni’s descriptions of Dharamsala are so vivid. He describes the bustle of the town, the packs of dogs and beggars, and being surrounded by the Himalayas so precisely that I felt again what it was like to be there. It made me miss the fresh air and the night sky and the million sounds I could hear from my bed in the morning, and even the damn monkeys.

At a time when I was painfully missing India, Turtle Feet helped me realize that Dharamsala will never be the same as it was during the year I was there. Many of my friends have left, our lives have changed, and our experiences have changed us. At the same time, I know that Dharamsala will always be there and will probably always evoke a sense of awe in those who visit it.

Beijing Coma by Ma Jian

Before the Olympics, a friend posted a video of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on his Facebook page. I knew the story of the Chinese Army’s ruthless crackdown, but had never seen such brutal footage of it before. I cried as I watched tanks rolling over students in the street and police indiscriminately firing on crowds. I thought to myself, if the Chinese government, military and police treated their own people like this, imagine how bad things must have been in Tibet in 1987-89 and since March of this year. The same thought echoed through by mind as I read Bejing Coma.

When I heard about Beijing Coma, I was immediately intrigued. All of the author’s books have been banned in China. After he wrote Stick Out Your Tongue, a book about Tibet, Ma Jian was forced to leave his country, exiled for writing truths that the Chinese Communist Party didn’t want others to hear. A friend of mine who protested in Beijing during the Olympics this summer was told many times by Chinese police that she had a “criminal mouth” – I consider her to be in good company.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the interplay between fact and fiction, especially in terms of ethnography and novels. Most of my favorite books are historically or culturally based, and involve a lot of background research. I have been thinking of this interplay as an interesting means of presenting information about a culture or moment in history. But reading Beijing Coma raised some doubts. Having never read a detailed history of the Chinese democracy movement, I was somewhat obliged to give this book the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was accurate in its insight into the movement. But I didn’t feel comfortable with that assumption. Throughout the book, I found myself trying to determine what was historically factual and what was fictional. I was left supposing that, with such books, there is no way of discerning fact from fiction, unless one has done one’s own research or is already intimately familiar with the topic. For those not versed in a given subject then, do such books offer only a dubious source of knowledge?

If I were to take this book as factually accurate, it was striking how disorganized the protests were leading up to the Massacre. The students were driven to protest because of their disgust for their government’s corruption, but they had no real strategy or vision of where the movement was headed. It seemed like they were just making things up as they went along. This gave me a bit of confidence in the Tibet movement as we are definitely more strategic and have a more nuanced understanding of the struggle than the Chinese students did. But nonetheless, I was inspired by their drive to stand up for what they believed in, especially in the face of such a callous government and military machine. Their bravery – even if it was only the “stars in their eyes” idealism of 20-somethings – was enough that the Chinese people came the Square to support them, donating money, food, and supplies.

If you don’t want to delve into the entire 586-page book, you should at least read the last 40 pages. Knowing how the students’ occupation of Tiananmen Square ends, these pages were riveting. I could feel the students’ fear and their sense of outrage at their government. When the Army first starts firing into the crowds, the students cried out:

“The People’s Army loves the people! The Chinese people don’t shoot their fellow countrymen!”

This passage epitomized my disgust that the CCP could order such violence against peaceful democracy protesters. I may be biased, but the students’ demands were neither irrational nor dangerous for Chinese citizens – only the CCP.

As an optimist, I appreciate that Ma Jian tries to end Beijing Coma with a sense of hope for democracy in China, but I find reality much more dismal. Most of the movement leaders now live in exile, there is no “movement” anymore, and those individuals who do dare to speak out are silenced, jailed, or forced into exile. This lack of rights is exaggerated among the so-called “ethnic minorities” – such as Tibetans – whose struggle for basic rights and freedom is so intimately intertwined with the struggle for rights and democracy of all Chinese citizens.

How is it that the largest country in the world is still able to control the thoughts and actions of over a billion citizens and colonized peoples? Ma Jian offered an explanation:

“The Chinese are very adept at ‘reducing big problems to small problems, then reducing small problems to nothing at all,’ as the saying goes. It’s a survival skill they’ve developed over millennia.”

This is definitely something we saw with the Chinese government’s handling of the Olympic Torch Relay and the Games themselves. But it leaves me wondering: how do we force the government of one of the largest, most powerful countries in the world, to address the issues of human rights and democracy instead of brushing them under the table?

I am all of these: Consumer. Invader. Crusader. Seducer. Self-hating Westerner. Buffoon.

A Traveller’s Response to “There’s No Such Thing As Eco-Tourism” by Anneli Rufus.

I agree: colonialism isn’t dead. The dreaded word has crossed my mind on numerous trips in the past, but never more powerfully than in the last 5 months that I have been living in Asia. My relations to those around me have undeniably been affected by the notions of the consumer, invader, crusader, seducer, self-hating Westerner, and buffoon, all of which play into today’s form of colonialism.

I am a consumer of culture. I pay to see traditional dances and puppet shows, and to enter temples. I search out and relish new places, new experiences, and new foods. I may not buy typical souvenirs, but I avidly consume these new experiences. Similar to the way a fire consumes things, I have also destroyed the cultural essence of interactions by taking photos. As an anthropology student, I became really interested in the duality of photography as an art form and also as an ethnographic technique. While I can’t deny that a picture may be able to capture a ceremony or emotion, I have found that it often removes the human interaction that might have taken place in that moment. When I started being approached by tourists from Java asking to have their pictures taken with me, I understood just how alienating it can be to have a camera pointed in your face. All of a sudden, I was the odd one, the “other,” deemed to be so different and interesting that the mere act of me being there at the same time as them needed to be caught on film. I was really uncomfortable with the cameras pointed my way, openly or covertly. How then, can I turn around and expect people to let me take pictures of them? I can learn so much more about them (and they can learn more about me) by watching and asking the right questions.

I am an invader. This is not my place, and it never will be. Westerners in Bali may be able to speak Bahasa Indonesia, many become Hindu and eat local food, they may even marry a Balinese. But their skin will always be a different colour, and they will always be seen as a tourist once they step outside of their group of friends or the banjar (community) in which they live. I even found myself and my friends making that erroneous judgment. When I saw other white people, I instinctively thought that they were just tourists. It’s as if, because I lived there and hung out with mostly Balinese friends, I didn’t consider myself a tourist anymore. I have found that expats here in Thailand do the same thing. Loud, obnoxious and inconsiderate tourists make the farangs (foreigners) living here sink down in their chairs, and exchange embarrassed glances with one another, as if they are different than the tourists. You can feel this sense of superiority at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Bangkok every night, where expats mingle amongst themselves. They seem to think that they have adapted to and joined the local culture, and that this distinguishes them from the tourists, making them less of an invader. A wolf who sincerely considers himself a sheep is indeed an interesting phenomenon.

I am a crusader and a seducer, even if indirectly. My way of life and fundamental beliefs about society and relationships come through very differently in another country. In Bali, I got the distinct impression that people my age are extremely envious of what they see as the Western lifestyle and the values that entails. They want it for themselves at the expense of their traditional way of life. They want to be free and independent and travel the world, rather than having the responsibility of taking care of their families and contributing to the banjar. So while I haven’t directly and vehemently promoted my beliefs, they are being adopted by the younger generations. I haven’t tried to seduce locals to my way of life, but I can see it happening.

I am a self-hating Westerner. In the face of my Balinese friends’ deeply rooted religious beliefs, I felt spiritually confused and almost envious that their spirituality was intertwined with their daily lives. An argument with a guy named Wayan at the local drinking hole makes an excellent case in point for my own spiritual uncertainty. One night, Wayan said that Rastafari was a fashion style and not a religion. Amongst a bunch of self-proclaimed Rastas who weren’t rising to the defense of their beliefs, I felt compelled to argue the opposite: Rastafari has a strong biblical and historical basis like any other religion, with deep beliefs that influence how people live their lives. Some Rasta beliefs, such as dreadlocks, have been adopted by some people who may not know the deeper meaning of the symbols that they wear. My main argument was that religion cannot be reduced to what a person looks like on the outside, but is more fundamentally about what is in his or her heart. I told Wayan that to me, he didn’t especially look like a Hindu, sitting there in jeans and a t-shirt. At this point, he got really mad and started accusing me of being a stupid white person who knew nothing about religion, and especially nothing about Hinduism. He said that I didn’t believe in any god and the more I learned about other religions, the more confused I got. I was taken aback by the anger in his voice when he said this, but I totally agreed with Wayan. Despite that, there was no way for me to convince him that trying to understand and learn from different religions was acceptable position for me to be in. I may have finally won over Wayan and everyone listening when I said that I believed god was in everything, but his point had been made: a lot of Westerners are spiritually confused and I don’t think that any of us really like to admit it.

I am a also a buffoon. From the moment I stepped into Thailand, I have felt like a stupid white person – and nowhere nearly as much as in taxis. Most taxi drivers here do not speak English, so when I go out on my own, I carry along a little map my coworkers had made with my address and all the street names written in Thai. Since I cannot speak Thai, I thought this would solve the problem of communicating with taxi drivers. On my first time going home alone from a market which I had already been to several times with coworkers, I got into a taxi and showed the driver my map. He nodded and smiled so I thought he understood and knew where he was going. After our first wrong turn, I told him he should have gone the other way. He said something that seemed like “this is a better way,” so I gave him the benefit of my doubt. After 10 minutes and passing several large overpasses, I knew that this was not a better way and after a similar experience in Kuala Lumpur, I assumed that he was taking me the wrong way to make me pay more money. I held my cool as long as I could because I had been warned that Thais think it’s funny when Westerners get upset. But eventually I told him that I knew this way was more expensive and that this was a bad thing to do to farangs. He said something in Thai and kept driving. After an hour on what should have been a 5-minute trip, I realized that he wasn’t trying to scam me and that we were lost because neither of us could understand one another. I must have mispronounced my street name – there are 5 different tones on vowels in Thai! – and on top of that he couldn’t even read the Thai on the map I showed him. This has taught me that it is totally unrealistic to think I could live here for the next 9 months without having to learn such a hard language. However, people here who are learning Thai have pointed out the catch-22: while I want to learn so that I’m not such a stupid buffoon, my undoubtedly horrible pronunciation will only make me more of a buffoon as I learn!

All of this begs the question: why do we have this quest to travel and to go on so-called “adventure” trips? I think that we, as a society, have become bored. And I don’t just mean Westerners. In my experience teaching English online, I met hundreds of Asians who loved traveling just as much as Westerners. I think that we are not happy with our lives at home so we feel that we need to leave in order to get our heart beating again. In a world that so highly values commodities and personal accomplishments, traveling also gives us more bragging rights.

The more I’ve traveled, the more I’ve realized how lucky I am and how great I have it back home. I am privileged to have grown up in a society that allows me to study as much and whatever I want at school and that doesn’t limit the importance of my life as a woman to the house I keep, how happy my husband is and how many healthy children I have.

Does that mean that I will never travel again? Probably not. But these ideas definitely change how I travel. Being in another country, I am aware every day that I am a part of a new form of colonialism that makes me a consumer, invader, crusader, seducer, self-hating Westerner, and buffoon, all in one. It’s all part of the humbling experience of trying to understand another culture, whether you are passing through as a traveler or are trying to settle in.