Below Heaven There Is Hangzhou

There is only God

2010-03-02T03:43:00.000-08:00

I have left the ashram and am on my way back to Hangzhou. How grateful I feel at this moment! My energy, concentration, patience, and overall sense of well being has increased dramatically! Never before had I consistently eaten so healthy, woke up early, practiced yoga and meditation, limited my sexual thoughts, and sang devotional songs. I am truly inspired and am looking forward to integrating these practices into my daily life.

I expected this. I knew I would return with a better understanding of how to live a healthy life.

What I didn't expect is that, for the first time in my life, I am interested in God. I discovered all the wonderful feelings I am having are merely side effects and that the main point of yogic living, and the Vedanta philosophy on which it is based, is God realization.

One thing above all that I will take from this experience is the slight twist in wording that I have so long rejected. Instead of saying "There is only one God," Vedanta states, "There is only God." When I first heard the swami say this about a week into the course I was rattled.

The concept is totally inconceivable. I came to learn this is exactly the point. Vedanta asserts that the rational mind cannot possibly understand God. Therefore, in order to understand God one must transcend the rational mind. Instead of being irrational, which means to draw false conclusions, one must be non-rational, which which means to stop thinking.

The concept of the non-rational approach merely shows the way. To slow down the mind and eventually transcend it, you have to do the practice. "An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory," said Swami Sivananda (1887-1963), the founder of the particular lineage of yoga I was learning. Nonetheless, I am glad to know the theory behind the practice. It helps to explain the feeling of other-worldliness I often have at the end of a really good yoga class and, ironically, the non-rational approach seems to be the most rational approach to religion. May not be what everyone needs, but it works for me!

Oh, and how about that cow with the painted horns!!!

Chanting in Sanskrit

2010-02-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

I've been at the ashram in India two weeks now. Week two flew by, but it was also a lot harder. I've felt more tired and I'm having a harder time focusing during meditation. They say week two is the hardest, that after a bit of healthy living your body starts to release toxins and tucked away emotions start to come up. I think it's also because we have started talking a lot more about Indian philosophy and all the interesting ideas have got my head spinning.

One of the weirder things we do is chant in Sanskrit (a romanized version of course, the language itself looks like this: संस्कृता वाक्). The sounds are fairly simple, and we have a chant book to follow, so now I can sing along most of the time. What's interesting is that this ancient language is thought to vibrate and influence various energy centers in your body! Apparently there is a bunch of interesting research going on right now in India regarding Sanskrit and energy vibrations. One story our Swami told piqued my interest. He said a bunch of people gathered together to chant the sacred word "Om" while circled around a pool of water filled with floating objects. Gradually the objects formed the shape ॐ , which is exactly how "Om" is symbolized!

At this point, all I can say is that chanting Sanskrit is relaxing and it doesn't feel weird anymore. If it's doing something more that is beneficial, great.

Gentle Discipline at the Ashram

2010-01-28T23:38:00.000-08:00

I've come to India to study yoga at an ashram for one month. Click here for more photos. One week has passed and I already feel transformed. Everyday is calm, but busy. Here is my daily schedule:

Wake up at 5:30 AM. Chant in Sanskrit and meditate 6:00-7:30, tea break, learn to teach yoga 8:00-10:00, brunch, clean ashram 10:45-11:45, chanting class 12:00-1:00, nap, yoga philosophy class 2:00-3:30, tea break, do yoga 4:00-6:00, dinner, do homework, chant and meditate again 7:30-9:00 PM. It's a long day! All the classes are done in the room in the picture and when were not doing yoga we are sitting upright on the floor. Needless to say, my back is killing me.

The point of all this is to purify the body and mind; the body through yoga and healthy vegetarian food (which is incredible!); and the mind through yoga, cleaning, chanting, and meditation. The purification process is supposed to help us calm down and concentrate the mind, which in turn enables us to build energy, compassion, clarity, and discipline.

I wake up early with ease, take a cold shower without too much complaining, and then proceed to do a whole day of "boring" stuff in good spirits. You'd think I'd be going insane. What keeps me going is this growing feeling of calm, which at certain times during the day escalates into intense relaxation and joy; usually that moment is at the end of afternoon yoga class, or during evening meditation when the ache in my back suddenly disappears, my body doesn't want to move an inch, time passes quickly, and my only thought is the sensation of my breath moving in and out. I'm so curious to know how I'll feel in the weeks to come.

It also helps that the people here are really nice and interesting. They include an Indian singer, an American college student that was a drug addict, a friendly German guy that stutters constantly but still has the courage to become a yoga teacher, a Japanese girl that speaks Chinese, and other Indian guy that's been telling me all about Ayurvedic medicine. Our yoga teacher is a soft spoken man from Uruguay and the lead monk, the Swami, is a very articulate Indian man who deeply passionate about yoga philosophy and has a beautiful singing voice for chanting.

I'll end with an image that has stuck in my mind. A few days ago, at dusk, I wandered down to a quiet spot where two hammocks have been hung. The temperature was perfect, cool air with a slight breeze. To my right were the sounds of bugs and frogs, and to my left the Indian singer chatting in Hindi on his cell phone. In the distance I could barely hear monks chanting in the temple. I lay there and felt so calm.

Back at Home

2010-01-06T11:56:00.001-08:00

I’m in Vail Colorado at the moment, sitting by a fake fireplace that turns on with a flip of a switch, drinking hot tea. It’s snowing outside. The rest of the family is off skiing and I’m taking the day off to relax. Life is good.

I’ve been getting in a ton of good quality family time. Last night my sister Louise and I cooked noodles with peanut sauce and diced grill chicken as well as my grandma’s awesome steamed broccoli with melted butter. Roger cooked up a tasty potato cream soup. After dinner we played a really interesting board game called Settlers of Catan. I love playing family board games, especially with my dad involved. He is usually caught up with work, so it’s a rare opportunity to see him relax and laugh.

This time back at home in the US has been more mellow than usual. I have been spending a lot more time with family which I find really rewarding. Partly it’s because less of my friends are around; most of them aren’t students anymore so they have less vacation time. But also I’ve just made the point of hanging with the family more. It’s been great. I feel so much love from all of them.

88

2009-11-05T01:08:00.000-08:00

One of my American friends has starting working at 88 club, one of the most popular clubs in Hangzhou. Eight or so foreigners work there. They all get free alcohol and are paid to dance and mingle. The patrons are generally young Chinese people, many of which are in Hangzhou on vacation and heard about the club because it’s a big chain (over 30 in China.)

The inside of 88 looks like a fancy saloon, and has tons of gaudy looking chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Like most clubs in China, entrance is free but people are “strongly encouraged” to buy a table, the cost of which includes a certain amount of alcohol. Some of the high roller tables cost a minimum of 10,000 RMB (US$ 1500).

It’s a cool place to party because the atmosphere builds as the night progresses. Everyone drinks hard until about midnight and then the place goes nuts. Some people pile on to the stage in the middle to dance, while others latch on to each other to form long trains that weave through the crowd. The club flips on a bunch of flashing lights, light sticks get passed out, and in between songs they put on live ramp performances.

The 88 club in Hangzhou has a particularly infamous reputation. A few months ago some local university students were killed there during a brawl with security guards. Apparently the students made some lewd comments and for whatever crazy reason the guards stomped a few of them to death. Violent crime is very uncommon in China, so the news shocked the community when it first came out. The club reopened recently, however, and the violent event certainly hasn’t hurt business. Even on a Monday or Tues night the place is packed.

I’m amazed my friend found this kind of job in the first place. When she first showed up at my house with 4 suitcases packed with party clothes I laughed, but now she’s actually using all that stuff.

Mongolia Trip

2009-10-12T20:04:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a 6 day trek through central Mongolia. What a different place than China! Click here to see pics. Mongolia’s population density is only 3 people per square mile! It’s practically all country and no people. Asphalt roads are almost non existent, so getting around was awfully bumpy, but the upshot of course is that bad roads disincentivize economic development and all the junk that comes with it. I saw tons of wild animals including horses, a fox, and even eagles! China ate all their wild animals long ago.

I went on the trip with an high school buddy, Brockett, and two other friends from Hangzhou. We stayed in yurts, which are kind of like tepees but they are bigger and round, with a metal stove in the middle for cooking and heating. Every day we’d drive a few hundred kilometers, and then settle at a new site. We saw some historic sites and did a bunch of hiking, horseback riding, and even camel riding.

One night we played a popular Mongolian game that is kind of like jacks. The pieces are made out of the ankle bones of sheep. Each bone has four sides that look sort of like a goat, a lamb, a horse, or a camel. You roll the bones and then try to flick the ones that match at each other. If you flick successfully, then you get to pick up those bones and keep going until you miss or there are no more matches. The rest gets picked up by the next player, who rolls the bones again. There are a bunch of other rules I don’t know.

The highlight of the trip was our last night on the trek. We’d been driving all day and pulled into our camp as the sun was setting. We soon discovered that the nomads we were planning to stay with had already left. Previously nights we’d had our own yurt to ourselves, provided by friends of our tour guide, but this time we were going to have to crash at a stranger’s yurt; it was too cold to simply sleep outside.

A woman and her 1 year old baby popped out of the nearest yurt and our guide quickly convinced her to let us stay. The four of us, along with another Argentinean guy that joined our tour, lined up like sausages on her floor to sleep, but not before being “forced” to drink copious amounts of vodka. 10 shots in, as we were dozing off, I decided to turn my body 180 degrees so I wouldn’t feel so cramped, but all the Mongolians immediately berated me for pointing my feet at the sacred back side of the yurt, smiled real big, and then proceeded to give me 3 penalty vodka shots. I slept like a log that night.

As we headed back to the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, we saw a big asphalt road being built. We were told the Chinese are “helping” the Mongolians to build a central, north-south road all the way through Mongolia from China to Russia. Our tour guide, at least, wasn’t too happy about it. He’s worried about China’s tightening economic control over Mongolia and thinks that continued economic development will destroy Mongolia’s rural communities. Half the population already lives in Ulaanbaatar, and the city has doubled in size in the last ten years. Urbanization is in full swing.

Fun in the sun

2009-05-26T02:48:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back I heard a knock on the door of my little home office, which is on the second floor. I opened the door and two little kids burst in wanting to play. This is one of them slung over my shoulder last Sunday. Now that the sun is out we have been hosting BBQs and inviting the loads of college kids that my brother and other roommate Jason teach. The highlight, for sure, has been the water balloons. I've also been working on my badminton game.

China's "Human Flesh" Search Engine

2009-05-24T22:57:00.001-07:00

Wouldn't think the kid in green had just accidentally killed someone racing his car, eh? He seems way too relaxed. Then again, he's from a rich Hangzhou family, so he probably expects to get off easy. That's how the Chinese internet community interpreted this photo. Within hours, all of the kid's personal information was put online. His name, ID card #, address, school, cell phone #, etc., all probably pulled from social networking sites. It's an interesting shaming tactic that's becoming very popular in China. Check out this article for more info.

Running like a chicken with its head cut off

2009-04-28T21:34:00.001-07:00

Life has stayed busy lately. Days after I got back from Taiwan, my dad visited for a week. Since then I've been working late nearly every night on two different consulting projects. Also, unexpectedly, I managed to get outrageously drunk two weekends in a row. Got a bit more to go with work, and another rock concert this weekend, so the adventure continues...

I'm in a remarkably good mood despite all this. I guess i just needed to go a bit nuts, and I'm actually really excited about my latest project, which involves a newly invented electric motor that may very well revolutionize the industry.

Definitely plan to calm down in May though, and get myself back in order.

Taiwan beach party

2009-04-12T23:50:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I tore it up at Taiwan's version of spring break and thoroughly fell in love with the island. The incentives were in place to party all night: I was staying in a tiny room with 6 guys, and out on the street and down on the beaches was the rowdiest party I'd ever attended, with by far the highest concentration of beautiful women I'd ever seen.

I'm left with a delightful montage of memories: only three mattresses for 6 people! beers. building a fire on the beach. trip to 7-11. bikini truck! going into the middle of nowhere in a cab. punk rocker screaming. whoa, the beach party is where it's at. crazy blond girl introduces me to everyone. laying out on the beach the next day. got so burned. hot sisters. gangsters eating beetle nut. even bigger fire, so everyone we met found us. said i was a yoga teacher, very good idea. so many people arriving now. crazy all night. sun comes up, thought the night was over, it wasn't. find my friends drinking whiskey at 10Am. A round of espresso, whiskey, tequila, and a long island ice tea. ha. party is dieing down. suddenly at a dance party, then in the ocean. fuck my phone is broken. back in Taipei. somehow going out again. almost beat up by gangsters. just barely woke up on time. at the airport eating some good bread and sipping brown rice milk.

Whoa...Taiwan!

2009-04-01T22:16:00.001-07:00

I am in Taipei right now for business and pleasure. For business I'm trying to promote American dehydrated potatoes (boring, but at least I'm hitting the street and stretching my Chinese). For pleasure I'm headed down to Spring Scream, a huge 200 band, 4 day raucous beach party in the south of Taiwan. A bunch of friends from Shanghai are coming over. We leave tomorrow morning and I could not be more psyched.

The other good thing is that Taiwan itself is awesome. I'm definitely going to move here at some point. Every person I've met has been very friendly. Beautiful women are everywhere. The food, especially the street food, is incredible fresh, tasty and diverse. I could go on and on. Basically it's China in a developed country form. One thing that's really interesting for me is that I can communicate with old people and working people here much more naturally. They are not awed by me. They don't go on about my Chinese or America. We just talk.

Sludge

2009-03-10T19:00:00.001-07:00

Every now and then something interesting goes on outside my window. Today the sludge cleaners have arrived. Not sewage, just collected runoff water and mud, but still fairly stinky. The cleaners work in a 5 man team. One guy uses a pick axe to lift out the lid. Another brings over a sludge bucket. A third uses a long bamboo pole with with a sack on the end to scoop out the sludge. The sack has a ring on the bottom, and one guy uses a metal rod to lift the sack up and dump out the contents. Once a bucket is filled, two other guys mount it onto a truck. A fairly clean operation, unless the truck tipped over.

Hot springs

2009-03-08T20:28:00.000-07:00

The best place to hangout outside when it's rainy and cold is a hot spring; that or a heated rock slab. A bunch of us did both this weekend in a little city called Wuyi, about 3 hrs drive south of Hangzhou. Like so many places in China, we worked our way through worn out looking streets and found a little oasis amongst all the mess. The hot spring resort had 20+ piping hot pools, each infused with different substances including chinese medicine, coffee, and wine. Afterwards we got massages, wrapped in towels laying on rock slabs that must have been heated with water pipes below. After a month of rain, today the warm sun finally returned. Our timing was perfect.

Room full of Chinese environmentalists

2009-02-17T19:04:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday, after a pleasant walk in the mountains with my dog, I passed by the organic food place in my neighborhood and went to buy some buckwheat noodles. The usually sleepy venue was packed with people, most of them, it turned out, avid environmentalists. In the picture is Mrs. Hu, the store owner (and quickly becoming my personal hero), showing off her trash cans made from trash. She plans to sell them and donate the proceeds to environmental cleanup efforts.

I got into a conversation about trash cleanup. Lots of Chinese throw trash on the ground without a thought. One lady was talking up organizing a group to pick up trash somewhere in Hangzhou. She also runs a big brother big sister like program, and suggested she could bring some of the kids along. Another lady said she had some media contacts and perhaps could make a story out of it.

Mrs. Hu was telling me a story the other day about a foreigner in Western China that started picking up trash himself on the weekends and ended up inspiring more than a thousand people to join him in the process every weekend. Very inspiring to be amidst all the passion.

What!?

2009-02-13T01:45:00.000-08:00

Here is a ridiculous video I came across. A toddler in Western China smokes an entire cigarette. No good, no good at all.

Puppy pics

2009-02-08T23:08:00.000-08:00

Ain't our puppy 锤锤（hammer hammer) a cutie? For more photos check out my friend Iverson's blog.

Hiking the north peak

2009-02-06T23:40:00.000-08:00

Yup, the girl in the photo is wearing heels. On my hike up the mountain next to my house this afternoon i saw a handful of ladies doing the same. Style comes first for some I guess. hehe, from their expressions it looked liked they were paying the price. I also saw a few monks walking really slow; very relaxing to watch. As it's Saturday, the path was fairly packed with people.
Orange peels and chewed up sugar cane lined the way, along with a bunch of trash unfortunately. Nearly everyone commented on my dog, who also came along. She's turning into a great friend maker and quite the hiker. The mountain next to my house is called the north peak, but two mountains right next to it are taller so I'm not really sure why it has the name. hehe.

Chinese New Year

2009-01-25T18:58:00.000-08:00

I spent a lot of time looking up last night. I loved watching these ladies set off this lantern. For a while we thought it would veer into a tree and start a fire. At midnight, when the year of the cow officially began, we saw some massive explosions, in the sky and on the ground. You would not believe how long the black cat strands are here. Loads of folks came to our usually sleepy neighborhood to burn incense at the Buddhist temples in the area. The whole event kinda felt like Christmas and New Year's eve wrapped up in one. Roger commented the procession of people reminded him of Christmas mass. Early in the evening I heard little kids in our neighborhood crying because of all the noise, but our little puppy was unphased. I was so proud.

Dumplings and Crab Sperm

2009-01-18T21:35:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we made dumplings from scratch. We also boiled live crabs in the wok. The low point for Roger was when he found out he had been eating crab sperm. The high point for me was learning how to make this awesome vermicelli noodle dish with stir fried pork and shredded cucumbers.

In the picture, that's our Chinese neighbor and good friend on the far left. We call her "Iverson" because she's infatuated with the basketball player. In the middle is Iverson's home town friend, who's nickname is "Camel" in Chinese. The two are both about to go home together for Chinese New Year. Right of my brother is Rachel, the lead chef in the dumpling venture. She's super chill.

上有天堂下有苏杭 Above there is heaven, below there is Hangzhou

2009-01-14T02:23:00.000-08:00

The view from my bedroom window

I now live in Hangzhou, China. Life is good. I live in a big house with my brother. We are surrounded by mountains and tea fields. We have a puppy. Down the street is an "organic living center" where I eat most of my lunches. The air is clean. The people are friendly. I speak Chinese all the time now. Every few months we throw big parties. There is a bus nearby that goes directly to my yoga center. Even though we live in the boonies, we can easily find cabs because there is a giant Buddhist temple that everyone visits. I work from home in a cozy office, still for the same management consulting company.

Hangzhou is famous in China for its beauty. It was also the capital of China a thousand years ago, and at the time, was the most populated and developed city in the world. Someone told me two story buildings were invented here. The Chinese have a saying: Above there is heaven, below there is Suzhou and Hangzhou. I’ve visited Suzhou once, it pales in comparison. What makes Hangzhou special are its gardens, which is something Chinese have always done very, very well. Basically I live in the middle of a giant garden. When my girlfriend dumped me 6 months ago I was pretty shocked and upset, but Hangzhou saved me. There is nowhere else in the world I would rather be. I have found my little slice of heaven.