Relocation!

I've got a new blog.  It's just my name.

joannaeswan dot blogspot dot com

see you there!  I'm headed to CalArts in a month and will be updating as regularly as possible all my excellent adventures in aesthetic wonderland.

Pastorals

Not sure if I've posted this already, but I was really interested in the way Chinese construction was set up to mask any unappetizing area of the city (demolitions, new subway lines, et c).  I worked up a series of photos examining this phenomenon, called "Pastorals."  Here are a few images:

More photos? Click below.

Goings-on

"To Do Mon 10/24," the note reads, "finish photo editing; elucidate paintings series; draft Davis Life entry; brainstorm a new post; yoga."  Interspersed with pencil doodles and attempts to record my thoughts in a dark car on southbound Highway 101, these myriad engagements appear and reappear throughout what is currently my working journal.  Rebuffed for being too bulky, its predecessor sits always in my bag, adding weight and not much else.  I'm very busy currently, though it's hard to see why as I'm--for all intents and purposes--unemployed, homeless save for my childhood bedroom, and--it seems--perennially in transit.  Nonetheless, I find myself on the Net once more, seeking more busyness.

Here's what I've crossed of my lists so far:


-find an apartment in the East Bay for under $900/month (!)


-finish an article on Kenny G's popularity in China


 -devise a recipe for cardamom-walnut lassis (a traditional Indian drink)

-turn my mom's garage into a semi-working studio space


-explore the aesthetic oddities of my aged vetements and also of Dia de los Muertos


make some normal hummus and some BERRY hummus (still savory, just purple)


wine taste with my sweetie at Napa wineries with neoclassical pretensions and excellent limestone-y caves!

An Arcadian Adventure

Any image search of northern California landscapes, earth, nature, or outdoors-y scenes will yield a myriad of colors and locales but an overarching palette of warm, earthy, sun-weathered expansiveness--a welcome change from Beijing's astronomical assemblages or the monotonal sheen of airports galore.

Now it's October, and the light has changed from sizzling to sun-crisped, the leaves submitting to autumnal breezes and the colors of aging: crimson, mustard-yellow, ochre.


Whenever the clime takes its seasonal turn, I start feeling convivial.  Consequently, a few weekends ago I found myself at the Silveyville Pumpkin and Tree Farm, located in Dixon, California--on a quest for pumpkins and Halloween cheer.


While 4 acres of almonds and walnut trees were unfortunately removed to accomodate said pumpkin patch, groups of nut-bearing trees remain, providing shade, dramatic disruption to an otherwise unimpeded horizon, and delicious food, too!

Bridges Over Untroubled Water

Chinese Banquets: fun, filling, completely exhausting.

I've been marinating some photos on my computer for a while now, and thought I'd share.  After two weeks in Hangzhou this July (replete with Chinese banquet after banquet, interspersed with bike trips around Hangzhou, Galen and I decided it was time for a change.

We took that Wenzhou train, then hopped on a bus to Taishun, and proceeded to backpack our way around Chinese villages.  Galen had done some digging and pulled up fascinating information about old bridges, some of which date back to the late Ming dynasty (17th century).  Armed with arduously-copied characters, scribbled maps, and a borrowed tent, we ventured into uncharted territory.

Known as langqiao (廊桥, "corridor bridges") and also fengyuqiao (风雨桥 "wind and rain bridges"), these amazing structures are cared for by locals and remain relatively well-preserved.

We seemed to be the only foreigners in the area, and felt this otherness acutely when village kids followed us and gossipy neighbors gaped at us as we passed--to be fair, though, they may have been gaping at our improvised-trashbag-rain-ponchos, my unorthodox wet-weather shoes (clear plastic jellies) or Galen's mountain-man beard.

 It rained a lot at first. 

Instead of finding hotels (because there weren't really any), we simply found discreet places and set up camp. One time it was a hill overlooking the road and a bevy of stunning graves embedded in verdant hills; another night we tucked into a small farm's nook.

Galen woke up at 4 am to take this amazing photograph. What a trooper.

In the morning, we began our search for food. The villages had little need for hospitality services, so restaurants were scant. Some grannies were cooking up breakfast for their friends in a makeshift outdoor eating area though, and offered us a hearty serving of rice-y breakfast...blocks...

   I don't know how else to describe them, but they were yummy. Hot and spicy sauces were added. Toothless grannies admired our chopstick skills as we scarfed down their culinary creations.

camp set-up

a shrine in Sankui--for some reason I'm reminded of Ingmar Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander"--Uncle Isak's House of Creepy Treasures and all...

We hiked in our own sweat to Santiao Bridge (built in 1843, so a bit younger) and then rewarded ourselves with a swim, where I promptly lost my jelly sandals in the water. Oops.



These two dudes saw us waiting for the unpredictable bus and offered a ride. When we reached "civilization" they absolutely refused compensation for their troubles--then they invited us to come party in the "big city" of Taishun that evening! We respectfully declined, as we had yet to find a camp spot.

This bridge was in Sankui.

If you weren't interested in crossing covered-style, you could traverse these stones instead. 

I'm guessing, due to the paucity of fellow travelers, that this region is still rather unknown, but as with many sites in China, it may soon become overrun with tourist busses and bored Beijingers. A lounge on the langqiaos was quite the picturesque way to finish up our voyage in China.

 More info on the bridges here.

Memory Reel in Reverse

I've been back in les Etats now for 35 days--I think I still have some acclimating to do.  Perhaps it's because I've traversed my Golden home state more extensively than I have in quite some time.  Perhaps it's because one year feels all sorts of fluid when thinking about the passage of time--suddenly marijuana is virtually legal in California, there are compostable spork sightings outside of the Davis Food Co-Op, Denny's Offers a dubious healthful breakfast alternative dubbed the "Fit Slam"...

Hanger 1, NASA Ames Campus 

Perhaps it's because I'm suddenly able to speak my native tongue with strangers on the street and business proprietors alike.  I can order a hamburger wrapped in lettuce or non-clandestine-secret-menu "Animal Fries."



I can access Facebook, Youtube, This Blog, and more--without so much as a glance as to whether my VPN was directing my IP address to a locale outside the Great Firewall.  I can even get a ticket for not wearing my seatbelt, or driving drunk! (I didn't)


Three cheers for Neoclassical columns!  

Mexican food in the Mission

I can also meet awesome people doing awesome things like building websites to combat corruption.
Check it out.

I've never been happier to be back in California, and as I scoot from Mountain View to Napa and Oakland and Davis and then back to SF, I'm reminded of how lucky we are in this here country; shure it's got problems that we should probably be critiquing more thoroughly, and yeah, there are more obese people here still, but--in lieu of trite ending, here's a quote from David Foster Wallace that perhaps transcends my binary banter on arbitrary national boundaries:


"[true freedom] means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.  Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."

Wenzhou

This is the Wenzhou Train Station. There's been a lot of buzz around this little city in Zhejiang province recently because of the tragic train accident that happened there last month. 40 died and 192 were injured in China's first high-speed rail crash ever.

It's basically been hushed up by the government, but many netizens insist on continuing a discourse about how the rescue efforts were carried out (not to mention how poorly tested and ill-prepared the bullet train system was).



We zipped past the bridge where the two trains had collided a week before, breaking apart and plunging to the ground below. There was still a lot of wreckage. The bullet trains go about 120 mph, or at least ours did the day we took it--a week after the accident (safest time to travel!). It wasn't full by any account, and ticket sales have definitely declined post-tragedy.

Al Jazeera has a fabulous and comprehensive piece revealing how much the government controlled media coverage of the accident. I remember watching the news as the accident leaked to television; notwithstanding the complete terror and total panic obviously rippling through the scene, I was so impressed by the organized and compassionate local villagers who rushed to the scene and did whatever they could.