Overachieving Beinu Geniuses

It has been a pleasantly busy November for me. I took a one-week trip mid-month to California, visiting Kristin, and got to see Yamei, Koren and Grace Wang – my greatest reward. Everyone seemed to be doing well, which is something to be thankful for.

It was interesting to come back to New York and talked with Agnes about the fate of the many overachievers from Beinu in America. (Her sister was one of them, and we had a couple, sort of, from the Shu class too.) The culture in Beinu was such that all we had to do was to work super hard to stay on top of the class, and we would be recognized for our “talents”. Unfortunately, once out of school, there is more to life than getting good grade. All the Beinu advantages could not guarantee success in America. In America, some Beinu achievers may succeed where others fail, and some Beinu geniuses may just get a little luckier than other Beinu geniuses.

Overachievers are by nature hypercompetitive, no matter how old they become. Life is unfair. There is surely a lot of later-day disappointments for the Beinu genius type in the Chinese quarters of American cities. This phenomenon is nothing unique about Chinese, however, we Chinese have perfected the art of jealousy and envy.

Is it necessary to be disappointed? I don’t think so. We may have spent too much time naval gazing - Time to rise above the narrow circle of Chinese and look around at this beautiful adoptive homeland, with all its intelligence, creativity, energy, interesting experiences to offer, and fascinating people to meet. I was fortunate to be exposed to the culture early on, through my American husband and his friends. I lived away from my Chinese friends back then. I had to struggle to learn new things by myself; I felt inadequate for not knowing the different forms of Western music, English literature, arts and sciences, and history in this country that made life worth living for; at the same time I was excited like a child about learning all these new experiences. Suffice to say that I have turned my competitiveness into competing with myself; I have worked hard trying to be a more cultured, broadly intelligent and happier person. Considering how far I have become, I feel personally fulfilled: This is not a wasted trip; it is certainly good enough for me; and I quite enjoy myself.

The conventional wisdom says, "If you aim higher, so will you fall harder." Ted Turner turned it around and observed, "If you aim higher than you are capable of, then you will always have something interesting to work on all through your life (so that you don't die off 24 months after you retire...)" The key is to satisfy yourself, not others.

Attached are a few Christmas gift jewelry I've recently made.



Happy Holidays.

Susie Li
11/30/2008

Around New York

I heard this story over the radio: Two friends from Philadelphia, in their 80s, after one's wife passed away, made a pact to go to a museum every two weeks within 200 miles of radius. They have visited well over 50 museums so far, some spectacular, some mundane (like traveling all the way to see a horse...granted it was some special horse of historical value.) My Beinu friends and I are doing similar things right now.


New York Botanical Garden

(Special Exhibit: The Flower Art of Kiku)

The New York botanical garden is having a flower show "The Art of the Japanese Chrysanthemum (Kiku in japanese)", which covers a wide range of exquisite Oriental landscape objects: flowers such as chrysanthemum, camellia, lotus; trees such as red maple, pine, bamboo (Take), bonsai; settings such as lotus ponds, rock gardens, and a monumental bamboo sculpture.



The bamboo sculpture was huge bamboos being twisted and turned into a canopy. A lot of work, but not exactly beautiful.

As far as the centerpiece chrysanthemum goes, they come in all sizes and colors. I personally prefers the small, delicate kinds, which work equally well as ground covering as show pieces (or simply as the main ingredient in the Chinese chrysanthemum tea), so vibrant and effortlessly beautiful. The large breeds were too much for my taste, like peonies. It’s freakish to see how these huge flowers were “bent” (or “woven”) out of shape in the Japanese hands, like being made into a bouquet of 230-bulbs from one spindly flower stem all precariously propped up by massive amount of wires and contraption.

After the flamboyant outdoor flower shows, the indoor bonsai displays seemed a little pale, and, a little diminutive in comparison.


Very nice overall. I had all the pictures to prove it.

Admission: $20
Friends: Agnes Young, Hsiao-Hwa Hsu, Echo, Susie

Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), NY

(“Meeting with Bodhisattva” – the drum dance show by the U Theater, a Buddhist inspired dance group based in Taiwan, ROC)

In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is an enlightened being who postpones the attainment of nirvana in order to alleviate the suffering of others.

I guessed the show told how a person attained enlightenment through facing life’s many unknowns. I got only one act right: when the center character wielded his stick as an oar (Buddha’s path to enlightenment included the stint of being a ferryman.)

Ode to Buddha, my spiritual leader – I got that.

However, it would be quite difficult for the lay audience to understand the point of the dance without some preparation. There was plenty of acrobatic drumming and physical aerobics, but the movements were stealthily quiet, and there was no music.

Objectively, the dance was a bit too mystical and obtuse for popularity. Fortunately, it was not too long, lasting only 1 hour 20 minutes, and no intermission. On my way home, inside the Union Street subway station, a man and a woman were drumming vigorously on an array of improvised tin/plastic cans. They sounded almost familiar, and quite good.

Friends: Agnes Young, Hsiao-Hwa Hsu



More garden pictures are available at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/li.chungying/20082009Activities#

Susie Li (11/4/2008)

Six-Day (10/4-10/9/2008) Fall Foliage Drive to Maine

(It has been a while since I wrote. Life had been all work until this fall. Now that kids are gone - Jake went away to college at Buffalo, and Kristin works in San Francisco - the adults get to play...)

Sunshine everyday (high in the 60s, nighttime in the 30s), State of Maine (mind) goes like this: Shorelines (beautiful coasts, cold waters); meticulously preserved lighthouses; abundant seafood (lobsters, haddocks and shrimps); Arcadia state park has everything recreational one could ask for: ocean + Cadillac mountains + lakes + fjords + sea birds (Elder ducks, loons, puffins, American bald eagles, sea gulls) + plants (blueberries, cranberries, rosebuds, maple syrup) and fall foliage + hiking trails + rocks + boating or sports fishing, moose and miniature squirrels.

10/4/2008 Saturday (Day 1) Sunny and crisp day

- Drove 400 miles from Mount Kisco in the morning
- Arrived early afternoon in Maine: the “pine tree” state, the beautiful state, sunny
- Visited LL Bean at Freeport, ME. Not in a buying mood. Same stuff as in the catalogue. Too crowded.
- Stayed in Trade Winds Motel in Rockland dock side. Ate lobsters at the Big Fish Restaurant, my first. Morning breakfast at the motel was quite sumptuous.

10/5/2008 Sunday (Day 2) Sunny and crisp day

- Arrived in Arcadia State Park; stayed at the Seawall Motel on the Quiet Side (met Dave Loyd); met “speed bump” the cat and Dave’s daughter and guests at breakfast. It was a surprisingly warm and intimate breakfast. Lots of great conversations.
- Took a 3 mile beach loop hike around Wonderland. Ate at the “Dry Dock Café” (which was not much). Bought a cane-sugar green apple soda from Canada at a corner market, quite tasty.

10/6/2008 Monday (Day 3) Sunny and crisp day

- Visited Bar Harbor, the Sausalito of Arcadia; bought a beautiful red “father” vase at the tiny Asian/American “Eclipse” Gallery run by a lady from Beijing named Hongrun Lee (part-time resident from May-October)
- Drove to Cutler point, looked around, almost ran into a big moose on the way to the border town Lubec (the northern tip of Maine bordering the great state of Canada). Ate dinner at this cute but quite good restaurant, “Murphy’s Village Restaurant” (no more than 2 restaurants in town). Steve liked their Southern Burrito.
- The dockside motel in town is booked full. So we drove back to the next big town Machias. Retired to a roadside motel (not much of place to mention).

10/7/2008 Tuesday (Day 4) Sunny and crisp day

- Quoddy Head State Park and its Lighthouse (the Eastern most point of the US). Took a short 2.5 mile hike along the coast. Turned around at the Green Point.
- Stopped over at the Cutler Trailhead Public Conservation Land, and took a very strenuous 5.9 mile hike (1/4 along the coast, the rest was rugged, hunter trails with rocks and more rocks, not many switchbacks.)
- Had a slow leak in one tire. Went down to Machias, and stayed in an AAA-rated motel, quite nice.

10/8/2008 Wednesday (Day 5) Sunny and crisp day

- Had the tire repaired at a gas station, a very friendly neighborhood business.
- Stopped by the Jasper Beach at Machias. Jasper is a type of dark-greenish jade-like rock that forms the mountain whose erosion turned into beach pebbles. Collected Jasper stone pebbles and drift wood to complete my miniature beach garden at home.
- Back to Arcadia State Park, the Quiet side, stayed at the Seawall Motel again.
- Ate a pretty good lobster dinner at the “Gilley’s Head of the Harbor” restaurant.

10/9/2008 Thursday (Day 6) Cloudy in the morning and a little rain overnight, sunny afternoon

- Seawall breakfast with Dave: learned so much about his life story, and how he made a go of the motel business (was a Hartford Insurance executive to start out; laid off in 1999; remembered a business traveler that he met on the plane talking about Maine and Arcadia a year and half before his layoff; decided that no need for the insurance job stress, took a trip to Maine, and bought up the rundown Seawall motel on the spot and the land it sat on in 2000, renovated the place since and offered artist workshops (his wife Vicky is a painter); motel marketing through internet booking and the local chamber of commerce and word of mouth; offered breakfast as a way to communicate with guests; the reward of living in a beautiful park land with the peace of mind (in the deep winter, there is no guests, you could cuddle in an armchair, covering yourself with an afghan, with speed bump by your feet, and a good book in hand, classical music in the background, and just look out the window for the gorgeous winter coast – life cannot get any better than that.); found stage-3 testicular cancer and cured in 2006 (everyday now is a blessing, this place gives him strength to recover and fight on); final advice: follow your passion.
- Checked out of Seawall. Took a short hike of the Beech Mountain trail to the fire tower, 1.1 miles, easygoing and fantastic view of 2 autumn lakes of fall leaves (can’t be beat, like Norwegian fjord in my imagination).
- Sun came out in the afternoon. Heading home at 2pm along the same coastline.
- Arrived in Mount Kisco around 11pm.

Fearless Seagulls ..............

..... Mussel Tidal Pool

Cadillac Mountain .................

Wish all of you well !!

Susie Li (10/31/2008)