field notes from exile

我今晚终于回到了深圳湾公园，抓到了蛇年最后的一缕夕阳。南方的海是我的母海，我的毛茸茸的mothersea。可以这样叫她吗？母海听起来有点怪。我还不太敢乱搞中文，乱编自己的词/字。希望明年可以更勇敢（流利）一点！

I. all out of order

All doctrine—philosophical, religious, political—tries to prescribe the correct order of things. Where must things be placed? How must they interact with the things around them? I’ve spent a long time cultivating my own doctrine of place, and I think I’ve arrived at a satisfactory thesis. I ask, am I in the right place? And my body, for the first time, answers me with its comfort.

As the zodiac shifts (back) into my benmingnian, I’ve been trying to think on the last twelve years. It’s a tall order to draw through-lines from 2014 to 2026, but I’ve found a few. So much of the last twelve years was defined by a fierce and desperate yearning, a screaming ache to be loved. I might call this last lunar cycle a period of misplaced love: I spent so long hurling my heart at anyone who might hold it, and I was hurt badly for it. This year, I’ve finally begun to place my love—myself—in the right hands.

Discernment is a fitting agenda for the yin wood snake, the zodiac that ruled this last lunar year. I’ve exercised restraint in every aspect of my life. I’ve been careful with my heart. I’ve kept my sentences short. I’ve been focused in my politics: better to maintain small and consistent efforts, instead of running from fire to fire, while I lack the support system I would have at home. I’ve come to think of my time as a surface, as the palm of a third hand: for what I love, I will open that palm, reach out to hold as much as I can. Otherwise, I close my fist. (And/or swing at a bitch.)

My refusal also manifests in what Mumbi Macharia calls epistemic disobedience: the refusal to learn about and understand myself through colonial/violent systems of knowledge. At last, I’ve stopped seeing myself with any gaze that demands my punishment, any gaze that calls for my shame. It is a refusal that comes hand-in-hand with another: my refusal of a conventional career, with all its prestige and predictability. Despite my lack of a singular focus, despite (or because of?) all my wandering, I’ve become a sharper writer. I answer to nothing except my own rigor, the demands I make of myself and my craft. It’s the kind of freedom I’ve always wanted, the freedom to write transgressively. (However, I’m under no illusion that this is the life I want forever; having finished my book, I’m ready to leave Beijing and the absurdly lucrative part-time jobs that let me write so much.)

II. the fool and the divine

Everyone tells you to be careful during your benmingnian. But that’s a bit difficult, as my relationship to the divine has shifted away from fear over the last few years. I’ve realized that the universe has a sense of humor. I’ve also realized that spirituality and sensuality are deeply intertwined for me, that I approach my own body at the same time that I approach the world. This is why I love the Longmen Grottoes, the grace and suppleness of its figures, more than any other grotto in China. This is also why, despite all my refusal, I can’t bring myself to be austere. I’ve already spent much of the last twelve years in various states of denial—denial of food, rest, joy—as I pursued excellence. In the next twelve years, I will no longer live to punish myself. There are few altars I’m keen to kneel at.

What we see in ourselves, we see in the gods. I took everything too seriously when I was 21, the year I first moved to Beijing. Whenever I visited a temple, I prayed dutifully. I offered fruits and snacks to the gods, afraid of incurring their wrath. Baba does not act like me. At every temple we visit, he nods to the first deity he sees and asks it to deliver the appropriate prayers to all the other deities. Then, he wanders off to admire the architecture. But Baba is not heretical, nor is he scornful of divine order or worship. No—he believes very deeply in order. The divine is also a part of this order, as everyday as his own body. This summer, when we drove through the Gobi Desert, I pointed out a patch of shimmering clouds. What’s that? I asked. The spirits, he said simply, before droning on about Maoist philosophy.

I learned to be a fool from Baba. As in, Baba taught me to turn my belly up to the world and laugh at myself, to jingle around for the sole purpose of making my loved ones laugh. The conditions for being a fool: a mutual understanding of deception and debasement. An unshakeable conviction of the self, on the part of the fool, and a loving esteem for the fool, on the part of the audience. In the last twelve years, Baba has become kind, patient, wise. Still, I sense that there is little he loves more than playing the fool for his family. If I were a better Buddhist, I might offer you a few parables about clowning-around-as-worship. I guess the alternative—learning not to take myself or the divine too seriously—will have to do. Last week, I spent hours sitting in the courtyard of the White Clouds Temple, watching magnolia flowers shiver their way into the cold, wondering which of the fruit-offerings were most popular among the gods. Daoist temples remind me of my Popo’s home in Dongguan: her figurine of Guanyin, which finds an echo in my own. My own—I like the sound of that. The divine has become my own, as capable of playfulness and rigor as I am.

III. field notes from exile

The last twelve years were also defined by my rootlessness. I bounced between a number of countries as I grew up, and whenever I returned to China, my cities were never as I left them. Beijing is not where my family comes from (Guangdong forever <3 <3), but it has somehow become the latest of my many second homes. I have yet to figure out where my first home is supposed to be. I think the next twelve years might be defined by that search.

The fruit of a rootless plant is bitter. I was not in the U.S. for many political crises, and I struggled to make sense of everything from afar. My escape has always been a privilege, even if I’d never intended for it to coincide with crisis. But it is painful to be so far away. I cried when I first saw Uzo Eguno’s paintings at the Tate Modern in London. He, an Igbo artist-in-exile, had witnessed the Biafra Succession and the genocide of his people from afar. His paintings are muted, his figures limp and featureless. I recognized their grief as my own.

There are not many spaces that invite grief, especially when you are far from its source. Before I left for China, I worked in San Francisco Chinatown, which I loved for its diversity of grief-spaces. I helped out with three projects in my brief time there, each to uplift and honor the forgotten. During my first year in Beijing, I was determined to find similar spaces in China. This impulse manifested as a thesis where I interviewed all the artists and curators I could find about their experiences with post-COVID censorship policies. Always, my unasked question: was it possible to be watched by something over than the state? To enter a space where I may be seen, known, and reminded of who I am by those like me? The answer: yes, of course, always. If we do not find these spaces, we build them ourselves.

I suspect that I will continue to live in my self-imposed exile for a while, so I’ve developed a working theory of living, fighting, and making art from afar. I ask myself, what do people on the ground need from me? and then try my best to deliver. I focus on their joy, for there is always joy in resistance. (I believe that cynics are cowards who aren’t involved in any resistance efforts. It takes bravery to resist and participate, to be hopeful. Cynicism is selfish.) I treat all my art—my writing, in particular—as an act of excavation, or as a curatorial exercise. While you read my writing, you are a guest in some chamber of my heart. I take a lot of pride in shaping that space. Sometimes, I loose an essay like an arrow, a hallway clean and straight from front to end. This piece feels homier, a three-room apartment with many doors and windows. No overhead lighting, much wall art.

（我目前还看不出来我的中文作品/空间的样子。还没到那个水平吧。。。房子还缺几个窗户，地板，门。）

I also refuse (so much refusal) to be ragebaited, to let my guilt or despair distract from what needs to be done. We are responsible for carving out the rivers of our love and anger, channeling the force of so much water toward what is lifegiving. That focus was the most precious lesson of the last twelve years. I hope I will see its harvest in the next!

春节快乐！