[Click here for English]

Si paseas por el monte Emei, en China,
nunca le robes el alimento a un mico glotón

En 1997 yo tenía veinte años y jamás había viajado a algún lugar donde el español no fuese la lengua oficial. Por razones que no me vienen a la mente, decidí visitar China el verano de aquel año. Ahora me es difícil recordar la mayor parte del viaje, dos meses plagados de extrañas interacciones sin el beneficio de un idioma común: yo intentaba interpretar signos inescrutables y fallaba consistentemente. Estos episodios se han fundido y, en muchos casos, han tomado el color y la forma de una extensa alucinación. Recuerdo haber aprendido cómo solicitar bocadillos al vapor, cómo decir hola y gracias y cómo ordenar una marca de agua embotellada llamada Wahaha, cuyo nombre yo disfrutaba pronunciando casi tanto como mis anfitriones chinos disfrutaban oyéndome decirlo. Pasé bellos momentos con amables extraños, usualmente con una cámara o una docena de cervezas de por medio, y estos encuentros terminaban a menudo con abrazos. Era, pude entenderlo así, una época de optimismo para China: a fines de julio de ese año, Hong Kong se reintegraría a la Madre Patria y la economía estaba atravesando un boom. Donde quiera que yo fuera había turistas locales, miembros de la nueva clase media urbana, todos en grupos organizados por colores: rojo, anaranjado brillante, verde. Había manadas de ellos en cada templo, parque o atracción arqueológica, y por lo general estaban guiados por una jovencita que usaba un megáfono y una bandera de colores encendidos. Vestían camisetas y gorras que combinaban entre sí, hablaban ruidosamente en sus celulares, fumaban sin cesar y tomaban fotografías de todo. No sé lo que esperaba ver en China, pero estoy seguro de que aquello no lo era. Yo era lo suficientemente consciente para estar fastidiado por los turistas y a la vez un tanto avergonzado de ese resentimiento. Después de todo, su presencia representaba una especie de progreso, y ¿qué derecho tenía yo de juzgar a los chinos por tener por fin la oportunidad de ver su propio país? Read More

 [Click here to read the article in Spanish.]

In 1997 I was twenty years old and had never traveled anywhere where Spanish was not the official language. For reasons that are opaque to me now, I decided to visit China that summer. Most of the trip is unrecoverable at this point, two months full of strange interactions without the benefit of a common language, wherein I tried to interpret inscrutable gestures and failed consistently. These episodes have melted together and, in many cases, taken on the color and shape of an extended hallucination. I recall learning how to ask for steamed dumplings, how to say hello and thank you and how to order a brand of bottled water called WAHAHA, which I enjoyed saying almost as much as my Chinese hosts enjoyed hearing me say it. I had moments of small beauty with kind strangers, usually involving a camera or a dozen bottles of beer, and ending with an embrace. It was an optimistic time for China: Hong Kong was to rejoin the Motherland at the end of July, and the economy was booming. Everywhere I went there were internal tourists, the new urban middle-class, in tour groups organized by color: red, bright orange, green. There were packs of them at every temple, park, or archeological attraction, usually led by a young woman with a megaphone and a brightly-colored flag. They wore matching t-shirts and hats, spoke loudly into their cell phones, smoked incessantly, and took photographs of everything. I don't know exactly what I expected to see in China, but this was not it. I was aware enough to be simultaneously annoyed by the tourists and a little ashamed of my resentment. Their presence did, after all, represent a step forward of sorts, and what right did I have to judge the Chinese finally having the opportunity to see their own country? Read More

Among children born in America in the late 1980s, my classmates at the San Francisco Day School must have been the happiest, healthiest, most unthinkingest cluster of them all. Our parents raised us to give thoughtful Bar Mitzvah gifts, walk or jog daily, recognize Kwanzaa. If the community was not quite anti-intellectual, it was certainly not a culture of quiet indoor pursuits. The weather was too nice, for one thing. And our parents, who hadn't attended Ivy League schools and didn't read literature, had yet done well enough to afford beach houses up the coast and a rainbow flock of Polar Fleeces. Among us, their offspring, there was no such thing as academic rivalry. We worked together if we worked at all.

[excerpted from Issue 6]

The first school shooter of the 1990s was an Asian boy who played the violin. I laughed when I heard an account of the rampage from my friend Ethan Gooding, who had survived it. Ethan forgave me my reaction. I think he knew by then that most people, facing up to a real atrocity, as opposed to the hundreds they'd seen on TV, didn't know how to act.

Reading Michael Cunningham's The Hours, I longed desperately for its better, earlier version, Mrs. Dalloway. In much the same way, I wished I were watching D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Don't Look Back (1967) while sitting through Todd Haynes's riff on the life and music of Bob Dylan, I'm Not There. Haynes's movie opens with a clear homage to the cinema verité style of Don't Look Back: the camera, standing in for the singer, hustles through some doors and up some stairs onto a stage, to be greeted by cheering fans. Read More

Just before New Year's, I attended a garden wedding in the Nairobi suburbs, where the maid of honor, who flew in from California for the event, greeted the guests in Kamba, Luo, and English. By the following Tuesday, I was glued to CNN International back home in New York City, watching with horror news footage which showed the smouldering ruins of a church in Eldoret, a sanctuary to which members of one ethnic group had fled, in vain, to escape retaliation from another tribe.

Which is the real Kenya? The cosmopolitan, multicultural society in which marriages between people from different backgrounds and regions are wholly unremarkable? Or the nation rent by "tribal clashes," whose ethnic violence has been broadcast around the world since last Sunday's rigged election? Read More

Pt. 1: Currency Crosses

n+1: Would you like something?

HFM: Just a water.

n+1: Bottled water? It's on me.

HFM: Just tap water, thank you.

n+1: No, really, it's on me.

HFM: Thanks, I'm OK.

n+1: All right, let's get to it. Is America now a Third World country?

HFM: No, we're a First World country with a weak currency. From time to time, the dollar's been very weak; from time to time, it's very strong; and unfortunately what tends to happen is people tend to just extrapolate. But in reality, over the very very long term, currency processes tend to be fairly stable and mean-reverting. So the dollar's very weak today, but that's no reason to believe the dollar's going to be weak forever or that, because it's weak today, it's going to get dramatically weaker tomorrow.