Dear Sister (China February 2011)

I am newly returned from China, which is a country that both attacks and seduces you in successive waves. I felt a bit like a member of a government in exile after the 16 hours on the plane followed by a 4 hour car ride to Da Qing. We had tickets to Da Qing, but lost our places on the flight due to a delay in Newark, snow of course. We instead got the last two tickets to Harbin and were driven from there, past the ice palaces famous of the city. It was a nice redemption for the hours spent waiting at the Beijing airport, myself a bit worse for wear at not having been able to sleep on the plane. My red eyes looked begrudgingly at the comfort of the luxurious fur-laden men and women that would be my flight neighbors. Once arriving, my final arduous task was that of carrying three 50 lb. bags up five flights of stairs, but at having accomplished that I was completely full of life and enjoyed some of baba's beer and mama's cooking before going to sleep.

The reference photograph that I have provided you with shows what I hope to be my new vehicle for writing. I hope that some of the better phrases can make it you here as well, but, I must say that the slope of the letters on a typing machine are such that they take the fingers along in such a momentum that one cannot help but continue writing. Which is why it is necessary to change paper from time to time, so as not to have such a fit as to digress...

As you know I was in the orient for Chinese New Year, which, in any other country is the aural equivalent of a coup. The fireworks are of such a design as to be loud, more so than to be bright, though there are some that light up the sky from time to time. Paired with our location in Anda--a city under development, paused I presume until the ground thaws--it felt very much like a functional apocalypse. There is rubble everywhere, as though old buildings have been leveled, as they have, but by grading equipment rather than bombs. Maybe this is somehow influenced by my having watched 'Gone With the Wind' en route. Such a tragic film. At a certain point it is a cruel ping-pong of tragedy, and all after having survived the Yankees! It all started out so care-free with the Negress yelling out of the window, and the cripple finding his freedom in the equestrian jump, large windows with great tumult beyond, and then they burn Atlanta only to blame her for being backwards, not remembering that it was they who retarded her. Unlike the south, It is so cold that two layers of long underwear be worn, one of a normal quality, and one quite thick, feeling a bit like a ski-bib. The face is the hardest to keep from freezing, and most of the locals have a permanent rouge to their chicks from the blow of freezing wind. I attempted to cover my face with my scarf, but as soon as my breath came out, it froze, and then I no longer had cashmere against my skin, but a wet layer of ice. The moral is that there is no real solution other than to wearing a mask tight on your face or gaining a rosy complexion. I suppose staying inside is also a viable alternative, which as a necessity must happen anyway to some degree.

More later. I must collect laundry and be off to work soon, but as I have been awake since four A.M., I can't imagine doing much effective work today.

Love,

Bradlee