Tag: Fulbright

Into the Unknown

As a new year unfolds, I’ve been thinking about what the future has to bring.

While these thoughts have been intermittent throughout the past few months, I’ve finally decided to take the time to process them rather than just have them pass through.

One year ago, I was in Portland, unsure of where I would be in the coming year. I had just applied to Fulbright, as well as to three programs in Japan. While coming to Fuzhou was a possibility, it was not one I thought was likely—especially considering the stringently selective evaluation process. Besides, given my obvious bias towards applying to programs in Japan, it was more likely that one of my Japanese routes would come through and I would end up in Tokyo, Yokohama, or elsewhere on the archipelago for my first year after graduation.

I still remember the day I emailed my advisor in a panic when I received that fateful email from Fulbright telling me not that I was accepted, but that I would have to wait for further decisions.

“I think you’re just going to have to wait at this point,” he relayed to me via email.

And so I waited.

It wasn’t long before I received an official Fulbright offer, which came with a request for a prompt acceptance. I didn’t have time to consider my other options—which at that point had yet to arrive—and perhaps that’s for the best. It was quick, easy, and simple.

After my accepting my Fulbright, my future seemed relatively assured for the next year. I would be in Fuzhou, China doing tea research. While the details were murky, the overall sense of time and location was set. But it was not until late-summer—weeks before my arrival in China—that I finally got my last few documents ensuring that I would actually be able to execute this project.

This reflection has made me realize how uncertain this world is.

Our vision of the future, no matter how we might envision it, is merely that: a vision conjured by our skewed perceptions of reality and our limited projections of what might happen.

If you were to ask 12-year-old Andrew what he thought he would be doing in the year 2020, he probably would have said something along the lines of being in pharmacy school or starting his first year at Google as a software engineer.

Twelve-year-old Andrew had never heard of the word “Fulbright,” nor did he know that people actually made careers out of researching Asian history and culture. How could he have possibly predicted he would eventually seek this path?

Thus, I have no strict predictions of where I will be in 2030.

I tell myself now that I will (hopefully) be done with school, perhaps with a doctoral degree in hand, and that I will be gainfully employed by some liberal arts college where I can teach a small seminar on tea to a group of engaged and curious students, and then spend entire afternoons in my office chatting with undergraduates over cups of steaming tea, an iron kettle eternally bubbling next to my desk.

But just as 12-year-old me was woefully inaccurate about where I would be as a 22-year-old, I know I will be equally wrong about my current predictions. However, this doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

While I recognize the need to have a goal and a sense of direction, I also have no qualms about shifts in direction. Paraphrasing one of my past teachers, the circumstances we are currently in are the best circumstances for us. Our circumstances constantly change, but as we adapt and respond to the changes around us, we are able to make the best of our circumstances.

Objectively, who is to say that one circumstance is ultimately better for us than another circumstance? While I might wonder what my life would be like had I gone to Japan rather than China, or if I had stuck with Computer Science rather than study the evolution of loose-leaf tea culture, these thoughts quickly fade as I come to the conclusion that I do not know—and will never know. These paths might exist in alternate universes, but in this present universe, I will only know the effects of my past choices and influences.

Surely, I would not be where I am today if I had stuck with the Computer Science or even the Psychology route. But would I still be here if my senior thesis was on calligraphy rather than tea? Who knows.

Looking back at these past choices, from the most impactful decisions to the minutest of thoughts and actions, each one has molded and shaped my path—even if I did not have the foresight to know what I was creating. Taking the Daoist example of the uncarved block, what starts as a canvas of infinite possibilities is gradually whittled down with each scrape, cut, and sanding, losing its realm of possibilities until its final shape is complete.

Does the carver know what the finished product will be? Can he see it within the uncarved block, using each of his precise movements to manifest it?

Perhaps a skilled carver is able to, but I am not a skilled carver.

My vision of the future is hazy—and not just because of the increasing wildfires ravaging our planet. I do not know what my finished product will look like. Besides, how do I know that my initial vision of the final product is the best that can be produced?

As I go through life one phase at a time, I try to make the choices that align with what I hope the future will be. Will my choices hurt others? Are they generally beneficial? Will they come back to haunt me later? Should the answers be sound, I proceed, venturing another step forward into the unknown and committing another slice to the uncarved block.

Granted, while my vision is hazy, having a general vision ensures that I don’t step too far away from where I want to be heading. I won’t lop off half the block with a sudden, impulsive addiction, nor will I suddenly decide that on second thought, I want to be an accountant and veer my life in a completely different direction.

While I am barely at the quarter-point of my life, I feel like there has been so much shaved off of the block that I am left with the task of fine-tuning the details. How much of these were decided when I was born in Portland, OR, where I was offered 13 years of public education, a cocktail of immunization shots in infancy to minimize my chance of dying young, and brought home by two loving parents who were committed to my well-being?

By these statistics alone, much of my life was decided in the instant the hospital’s florescent lights bathed my fresh skin. I was differentiated from billions of others in the world simply through the conditions at my birth, and these distinguishing traits compounded as the years went by. My upbringing, my education, my interests and pursuits—each of them influencing each other—created (and still continuously creates) the personality that I am able to call “me” today.

The web of factors that lead us to where we are now is too complex for me to begin to comprehend. Despite not knowing the full outcomes of our decisions—and the decisions made by those around us—these actions and thoughts made every single day reverberate through time, rippling into the depths of the unknown, affecting future decisions, future habits, and future outcomes.

Now, as I near the midpoint of my time in China, I have been pondering my next steps. Where will I live upon my return to the US? What will I do? How will these choices close or open doors in the future?

Recently, a few routes have presented themselves—often as half-jokes—but I am left pondering about their potential. I purposely avoided graduate school applications this round to leave time for another gap year (or two), but which projects will I pursue in the interim?

When it is time for me to make the decision, I will decide it based on my limited understanding, and it will irreversibly influence my future in ways I can and cannot see or even begin to comprehend.

But at the same time, I don’t feel like it will be a very difficult decision to make. Given that all of my choices lead to paths I am passionate about and eager to explore, I think I will be happy with any of them. My present choices are already limited by my past choices, and what I choose now will further my journey while defining my path just that much more. And with that, I know that whichever decision I make, the circumstances they lead me to will be the best circumstances for me. That is all I can ever know, after all.

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Tea Shopping and Indian Food

Last week, I met up with a fellow Fulbrighter in Fuzhou to buy some tea. And so, we went to my usual tea mall and explored a few shops, looking specifically for qingxiang tie guanyin 清香鐵觀音, a lightly-oxidized oolong, and zhengshan xiaozhong 正山小種, which is what we’d consider in the US “black tea” (although in China it’s considered “red tea” hongcha 紅茶).

Upon arriving at the tea mall, we walked into a place staffed by an older couple with TIE GUANYIN in bold letters on the shop sign.

“Do you have any tie guanyin?” I asked innocently.

“No,” the shopkeeper replied. “We don’t sell tie guanyin.”

What a lie. But oh well, I’ve been hit with the “you look too young to actually spend money on tea, so I’m just gonna wave you away” treatment enough times now, so we went next door to another place that had a bold TIE GUANYIN sign on the door.

One middle-aged lady sat at the table and invited us to sit.

“What are you looking for?” she prompted.

“Qingxiang tie guanyin, and our budget is about 200 rmb per jin (500 grams),” I replied.

She brought out two varieties for us to sample.

Upon trying it, my heart sank. I had gotten ripped off on my previous trip. Last time I came here to purchase tie guanyin, I had sampled three varieties and ended up spending almost double the price for something that was comparable to what this shop was selling for merely 230 rmb.

While the flavor was mediocre, it was a very smooth tea. Rather than leaving my throat dry and course, it was very refreshing, although I would have preferred it a little bit heavier. It was something I felt like I could just gulp down rather than something I would sip and savor.

As she talked on and on about her tea-selling experience, I turned to my Fulbright friend and asked in English, “Thoughts?”

We had a brief exchange. Neither of us were particularly impressed, and so we decided we’d go elsewhere.

“Wow,” the shopkeeper said. “You’re foreigners!”

We nodded sheepishly.

I wasn’t sure what to think. I guess we both look Asian enough to pass the initial appearance test, and we were fluent enough to get by without raising any alarms. It wasn’t until we spoke in English that our friend the shopkeeper realized we weren’t from the local area.

In any case, we bid her farewell and walked in search of another tie guanyin shop. Being in Fujian, there are plenty of places that sell them.

My Fulbright friend was not particularly impressed, so we went to a second shop.

As soon as we walked in, our host remarked, “You’re not from around these parts, are you?”

We were taken aback. Our previous host didn’t realize we weren’t locals, but this shopkeeper was astute enough to catch that point before we even sat down.

“No, we’re from the US,” I replied.

“Ah, that explains it,” she continued. “I used to live in Spain. You Americans carry yourselves differently from those of us who grew up in China.”

While I can typically notice the subtle traits that distinguish an Asian American from someone who grew up in Asia, I hadn’t thought that it would be visible to the older generation. But I suppose her exposure to a variety of cultures helped her identify that we were not locals, despite our phenotypic expression.

After explaining what we wanted and what our budget would be, she brewed two types. Although I specifically requested qingxiang, she decided to give us a sample of nongxiang as well. Just in case.

While it was more fragrant than the other shop, the tea left a sense of dryness in my throat.

After drinking a few rounds and using the restroom two or three times, we decided this would be a good purchase (it was a bit cheaper than the other place), and that going to another shop might not be worth it.

To seal the deal, the kind shopkeeper gifted us a few samples of their Wuyi Rock Tea. She made it clear that these were very cheap, but that they weren’t too terrible nonetheless.

After making a small purchase of 250 grams, we ventured to Sanfang qixiang, Fuzhou’s most touristy place, looked around at some bookstores, and then met up with another classmate for Indian food.

It wasn’t bad, but I was really disappointed in the fact that the food here isn’t spicy.

We also ordered way too much. After three curries, two types of naan, rice, shawarmas, and a rice pudding dessert, my stomach felt like it was about to explode. But wow, that naan was really, really good.

While I haven’t been able to find a Mexican restaurant in Fuzhou yet, I’m glad to know that there are options for non-Chinese food here. While I don’t mind Chinese food, eating at the same dining hall every single day gets a bit tough.

A bunch of other things have happened over the past few weeks, but I won’t be sharing every detail about my adventures here.

I think my next post will be a reflection on the decade ahead.

Posted on by Andrew Nguy 1

The Incognito American

Reflecting on my previous post, I can almost always count on people telling me I don’t seem American.

I don’t look American, I don’t sound American, I don’t act American.

Sometimes, this is very helpful in getting to bond with local students and not having them tense up around me. Other times, it leads to extended interrogations on my origins, why I speak Mandarin, and general disbelief in what I’m telling them.

Recently, in another irritating episode, my guqin teacher asked me to be an interpreter for a guqin workshop with foreign dignitaries. This wasn’t an issue for me at all. Having done all sorts of interpretation and translation before, this would be a wonderful chance for me to help with some cross-cultural exchange (one of the aspects of the Fulbright Program) while also giving myself an opportunity to practice interpretation again.

One of the other guqin classmates interrupted us before I could respond.

“Hah!” she cackled. “What makes you think a kid like him can do English interpretation?”

Ever stoic, my guqin teacher ignored her.

“Sure, I’ll do it,” I told him.

“Good,” he replied. “I’ll send you the powerpoint later this week.”

“I don’t know what you see in him,” she shook her head at our instructor. “When’s this event happening? Monday was it? I’ll be there. Let’s see how good this kid’s English turns out to be.”

I don’t recall her being invited.

Our instructor turned over to me, “It’ll be good exposure for guqin. If we want the art to survive, it has to be able to make an impact outside of China. Who knows—maybe one of the dignitaries there will be inspired to support guqin education in the US.”

I nodded and continued practicing.

In this rather aggravating incident, I realized that my latent Americanness led quite a few people to underestimate me, which… is not necessarily a bad thing. I actually enjoy being inconspicuous. What annoyed me was how she immediately dismissed me on basis of age. Even if I had grown up entirely in China (which she assumed), I know plenty of twenty-some-year-olds who are stellar interpreters and translators despite having grown up in a non-English-speaking country.

While my Americanness is constantly questioned (or dismissed) here, I’ve started wondering what it means to be American. While most people here associate a blond-hair, blue-eyed appearance Americanness, an encounter I had in the elevator illustrated that this is a terrible heuristic.

I walked into the elevator. There was a blond woman and a Chinese man present. As we descend, the Chinese man said—in English—to the blond woman, “Happy Thanksgiving!”

“I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving,” she replied.

“Oh,” he looked confused. “Aren’t you American?”

“I’m British.”

I stifled my laughter. Oh, if only it were Independence Day. Wishing a Brit “Happy Independence Day” would truly be too perfect.

Then I realized. He didn’t wish me a Happy Thanksgiving, probably because he assumed I was—like him—a Chinese person who doesn’t celebrate the holiday.

Culturally, a lot of what I do isn’t “American.” I play guqin, not guitar. I write calligraphy with a brush, not a pen. I drink tea, not beer. I admire poems by Li Bai and Wang Wei, not Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.

But at the same time, that doesn’t necessarily make me Chinese. In fact, when I go out with Chinese classmates, they’re taken aback when I order tea despite everybody else ordering a Budweiser. They find it strange that I’m not acclimated to a Chinese classroom environment, and they find it even stranger when I tell them we had things called seminars which were discussion-based classes.

Having grown up in the US, many of my experiences differ from my Chinese counterparts precisely because of my environment. While I also celebrate the Lunar New Year, Qingming, and Mid-Autumn Festival, these weren’t necessarily identical to how my Chinese classmates celebrate them.

Thinking back to my JET interview, it seems like a lot of cultural exchange tends to focus on how different cultures are so that they seem exotic, fresh, and new to the other. But I disagree entirely with that perspective. Instead, I view cultural exchange as something that can be accomplished through sharing similarities. Rather than talking about football and mass shootings (seriously, these are the two main things people bring up when I mention I’m from the US), I find it much more productive to talk about how Chinese culture has adapted and changed in the US.

I remember vividly my JET interviewer looking wholly unimpressed when I said that I’d bring a calligraphy brush to Japan to show people American culture, but I still stand by that statement. If the US is indeed a melting pot of cultures, I think it’s helpful to show East Asia that their culture is represented in the pot as well. The flavors might have changed (brush lettering is one way of using the brush that Japanese shodo doesn’t have), but it starts at one shared point of culture before branching off into the differences.

Thinking about it some more, I’d bring Cup Noodles as well. There isn’t a better symbol of starving American college student than 10 cent ramen.

While these objects themselves don’t seem American by appearance, they’ve been immersed in American culture and have grown in their own way.

I suppose, in way, I like this approach because I’m like the objects—outwardly Asian, yet with a latent American twist.

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Matcha in Fuzhou

After a long day of tea drinking with the aunties, I opted to practice at home instead of showing up to guqin class Saturday morning. It was shaping up to be a busy day already, and I was anticipating both a calligraphy competition and—surprisingly—sado demonstration at the Fuzhou City Library in the afternoon.

Let’s start with the calligraphy competition.

Aside from the entire thing being rather poorly run (we were given paper but not mats or ink, the tables were way too small, and the paper was way too big), my fatal mistake was that I submitted a piece of semi-cursive calligraphy.

As I walked out of the room, I noticed that everybody else had submitted regular script.

I froze. Did I misread the requirements? No—the brochure stated clearly that we were free to submit any script we’d like. So did everybody submit standard script because of personal preference?

As I walked to the lobby, a classmate came up to me and said, “Hey—what script was that? The one you just submitted. I can’t really read what it says.”

I laughed, “It’s semi-cursive.”

“Oh,” she replied. “Perhaps the judges will like that your piece is unique?”

I shrugged. We both knew my submission would be cast off to the side because there wasn’t anything to compare it to. It’d be extremely difficult to rank it against under pieces if the script is totally different.

It was 3:30. The sado demonstration had just begun. I hadn’t had matcha in months, and the thought of potentially tasting some again compelled me to leave.

The awards ceremony for the competition was at 4:30, but I wasn’t planning on sticking around. I dashed out of the building and hopped onto the subway train, ultimately making it to the library by 4:15.

It was a demonstration on bonryaku, the first temae I had learned when I was living in Kyoto. It was interesting as I had never heard sado being explained in Chinese before. The audience—mostly local tea connoisseurs and people affiliated with Fujian’s tea industry—were curious about how to grade and price matcha, whereas in my past experiences with American classmates, people typically ask about the wagashi.

In the end, I got to whisk and drink a nice hot bowl of matcha, and the instructor mentioned that while small, there is an Urasenke community in Fuzhou (or at least there was five years ago). She offered to contact them for me and see if they’re still active. If so, I’d finally be able to practice tea again! Fingers crossed~

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Textiles and Tea

I woke up early Friday morning to visit my friend the tea arts professor. She had some other instructors she wanted to introduce me to. But, with everybody being busy, our meeting would be limited to 30 minutes.

While this wouldn’t be enough to talk about much, it would at least be a good introduction, and I might get to meet up with them again later. When Fulbright told us that research in China requires a lot of connections and playing guanxi cards, I didn’t realize the extent to which this is necessary. I’m very fortunate to have made so many friends through traditional arts.

We arrived at the offices at 9:20, and water was already boiling. Two other middle-aged ladies were chatting. One was an office assistant, the other was a tea merchant. After introductions, I found out that the tea merchant primarily sold white tea, which I had been curious about anyways.

Upon deeper inquiry, I decided that this would be one main focus during my stay in Fuzhou. White tea seems to be a primary example of shifting tea cultures in the region. To be clear, this is all from hearsay—I’ll need to do more research before being sure. Despite having gone unnoticed for most of Chinese history, there were a few policies enacted in 2013 that aimed to boost white tea production while also regulating the use of pesticides in growing white tea. This has led to a boom in white tea production and sales, with people collecting white tea cakes in a fashion similar to puer cake collection (although it’s nowhere near that expensive… yet).

And now, white tea is being touted as this healthy, anti-inflammatory, all-natural tea, with some recent data showing that white tea production and consumption in China has steadily grown over the past five years, likely as a result of the new policies.

But while these agricultural policies create more supply, they don’t create demand. The demand is being generated through marketing white tea as healthier, and now through tying it to the greater realm of Chinese tea culture. As one of the professors mentioned, this is difficult to do because although “white tea” as a term is in pre-modern texts, it doesn’t actually refer to the white tea we consume today.

But nonetheless, the industry seems to be fairing rather well from the health-oriented marketing alone. Fuding, where a lot of white tea is produced, is near Mt. Taimu, a major tourist attraction and scenic park—which is nice because the foot-traffic alone is enough to sell tea. I wonder if the pairing of tourist destinations and tea production is a conscious decision on part of local (or perhaps national) policy-makers. It certainly helped sell tea and promote an aesthetic of literati-in-nature-drinking-tea in the Ming, and it’s fun to see how this is being reimagined in the present day.

Okay. Enough about white tea, for now at least.

The meeting ended up lasting eight hours rather than 30 minutes. We drank a few rounds of tea, had lunch, and then went to a textiles workshop to drink more tea. Over the course of eight hours, I was treated to a wonderful assortment of rougui, shuixian, and white peony—all Fujian specialties. I also got to meet artisans working to create tea-based dyes for textiles (this is another side of tea as a commodity that I haven’t begun to dig into).

After a long day and plenty of new friends, I went back to campus…

Only to meet another new friend.

Huang Yu is a doctoral candidate writing his dissertation on ink stones. Could this get any nerdier? Perhaps not. He’s also a wonderful calligrapher. And he speaks Cantonese. We connected really well, and after gifting me a box of chrysanthemum tea, he invited me to come join him in calligraphy lessons some time.

At this rate, I’ve met so many people (both young and old) in traditional arts that I don’t know if I’ll have enough time in my life to learn from them. But at the very least, I’m glad I know them and can pay them visits in the future—they’re all doing some very cool things.

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Packing, Part 1

I woke up today—three days before I fly across the world and live in China for the next ten months of my life—and thought to myself: what am I going to bring with me?

Limited to two suitcases, one carry-on, and one personal item, my first decision was an easy one: I would leave one suitcase empty. After all, I already plan on accumulating trinkets, souvenirs, fine teapots, calligraphy brushes, kilograms of delicious oolong tea, and a guqin.

Then came my mother, her voice slicing through my bedroom and her hands proudly brandishing a pair of vomit-green pants. “Look!” she exclaimed. “I got these on sale! You can wear them in China.”

I flopped over onto the other side of my bed and said, “I don’t want to bring too much.”

“Nonsense,” she replied. “One pair of pants is definitely not too much.”

A painful flashback brought me back to the weeks leading up to the fateful day I moved into Pomona College. That same line repeated itself until I ended up lugging an excess of clothing—three quarters of which I have yet to wear, even after four years.

“It’s alright,” I insisted, turning towards the warmer side of my bed. “If I need pants, I’ll just buy them there.”

She tossed the pair of pants at me; it landed somewhere near my head.

“Do you think I work day and night so you can waste money on pants that are not on sale?” she was understandably frustrated. “Try them on at least.”

I reached for them, opened half an eye, and rolled back over to the other side of my bed (the cooler side was a bit more pleasant in the summer heat).

“I think you got this from the women’s section.”

She walked over to me, her slippers shuffling on the linoleum floor. “Are you sure?”

I sat up and pointed at the label: Size 0. “Yup, see for yourself.”

She picked it up and laughed, “You’re so skinny you’d fit in it anyways.”

That’s true. I would. She left me to my own devices as she got ready for work. I breathed a sigh of relief—perhaps this time, I would finally be able to leave the house with an empty suitcase.

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