A mosaic outdoor table draws my eye. I love the idea of outdoor space—the extension of your interior home. In college, outdoor space was communal. It is similar in my apartment complex. The first floor apartments have some claim to the grassy area out their back door, but that space quickly dissolves into walking paths and exercise equipment—
an adult playground of sorts.
Instead, my outdoor space is literally an extension of my house—a 5th floor enclosed balcony. A narrow hallway of space with floor to ceiling windows, it is neither spacious nor private. (It faces my head principal’s current apartment.) Its primary function is to be my laundry room, containing a washing machine, drying racks for clothes, and cleaning products. But my desire is to have a pseudo-outdoor space, so I purchased similar outdoor furniture. My table is a black plastic wicker with a glass surface. Smaller than the mosaic table, it can only accommodate two chairs of matching black plastic wicker. Sometimes I go out to do work. Occasionally I go out to relax over a cup of tea or meal. Even less frequently, I ask a friend to dodge the laundry and join me around this table.
A few years ago, my grandparents commissioned a custom-built rectangular dining table, complete with ample leaves. The goal was one table that could fit all the aunt, uncles, and cousins—more than 20 people. But I find these seating arrangements awkward. Even a rectangle table of 12 is too many for me. A circle table is far superior to encourage community. In China, restaurants have circle tables for upwards of 15 people in their private rooms. With a large lazy susan in the middle, they are quite adequate for serving and more than adequate for socialization.
There is a power play inherent in every table.
Who is the head of the table? More than just a seat at the table, it is a position of authority. Then
to whom do they extend an invitation to join them at the table? We ask what makes one worthy to join—
what does one bring to the table? Once at the table,
what does their seat communicate? One of the first changes I made to my classroom was to cut 10 cm off the legs of all the tables; they were too tall for elementary students. My tables are to be a safe place, a welcoming place that encourages self-expression. Places at a table, both in an ergonomic sense and in relative position, dictate how one is to behave in this social construct.
In Western thought, a circle removes the authority of the head of the table. Maya Lin designed Peace Chapel at Juniata College in the form of a circle so that all participants come to the (spiritual) table as equals.
But power and authority are too central to culture for this idea to prevail in a country that uses circle tables for every affair.
The Chinese, in fact, have preferred seats around the circle; the host and most important guest sit facing the door. I was at a dinner last year with other expatriates and foreign visitors. We sat around the circle table as we saw fit. After the seats were chosen, we realized that we had sat a 2 year old boy in the seat of honor as the host. Incidentally, he would also be required to pay for the meal. We had a chuckle about this, and what the restaurant staff must think of our choice of seats.
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I take pride in returning things to their home country. A quick look through my wardrobe will show that I continually bring my articles of clothing back to their roots. Yes, the tags read “Made in China,” but I had to fly halfway around the world to buy that dress (at Target) and return to China with it in my suitcase. I laugh as a coping mechanism. It is absolutely ridiculous, but political and economic guidelines necessitate such waste of carbon emissions.
We were a nerdy sort of recycling family. Not the hippie-type, but the geeky dad who sorts all plastics, composts non-meat organic material, and disassembles electronics into their recycling components. I grew up with a great respect of the earth and our great duty as stewards. In college, being green became trendy. I might have considered some lifestyle changes during my senior year except that I was pursuing a job in China. Where the labels are not in English. And “organic” means the company paid off the inspectors.
Moisturizer was one of the items I imported for my personal use. When I moved here in 2008, I brought the day-to-day variety and the heavy-sunscreen variety. That year, I started purchasing some local options, looking to find a suitable replacement. Clean & Clear was available at Carrefour so I purchased a bottle of the day-to-day variety. Since that seemed to work just fine, I decided to look for moisturizer with SPF. In a country obsessed with light skin, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
Sure enough, Clean & Clear had another variety that might meet my need. I could identify “SPF” on the bottle, along with “Clean & Clear: Clear Fairness.” Nothing else was in English, but that was fine. Using SPF would keep my skin fair. Great!
I slathered the moisturizer on the next morning while the mirror was still fogged. About 20 minutes later, I came back into the bathroom and was shocked at what I saw. I was a ghost! I had blotchy, uneven patches of whiteness across my face. No self-tanner in this moisturizer. No hint of color. No glow. This moisturizer contained white pigment. I tried to correct with some serious foundation, but I never used the moisturizer again. (Friends later informed me that it could have bleaching chemicals, to literally change your skin color, not just protect it from getting darker and whiten it on the surface.)
These days, I stick to imported sunscreen. Which for years I’ve been taught is the secret to health. Wear sunscreen. Put it on 30 minutes before sun exposure. Wear it daily. Even in winter. Protect, protect, protect.
Did you know the chemicals in sunscreen are bad for you? My Neutrogena Healthy Defense Daily Moisturizer scored a 7 out of 10 on
Skin Deep (not recommended) and a 5.2 on
Good Guide (positive for environmental and social responsibility but poor for health). Who knew the chemicals could cause neurotoxicity, endocrine disruptions, and cellular level changes. But at least we won’t have skin cancer.
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Some people move frequently. My family did not. We made one major move, from California to Pennsylvania, in the summer before I started Kindergarten. From that year until now, my family continues to live in the same house.
But college started me down a different path. Every year, I lived in a different house, be it a dorm room, on-campus apartment, off-campus apartment, or townhouse 10 minutes away by car. At the end of each year, I could have made an effort to stay, but instead choose to pursue a different house. It wasn’t for discontentment; each place offered many great things, and had some downsides, of course. But I never stayed. And then I moved to China. In college, I had a choice about housing, as the consumer who paid. Now I am given housing as part of my contract. The housing is more than sufficient, but it is given, without much choice. I was grateful to move apartments after 6 months, to an apartment whose aesthetics and location are much preferred. But while I love my current house, I have no power over how long I stay. The school is looking to relocate staff over the next few years to a cheaper area of town, closer to the school. When my time comes, I will be required to move, and until then, I will wait, never quite sure when my time will be up. In addition, at any time, the landlord could break contract and claim the apartment back. A good friend lived in her place for the first 7 years of her time in China. Randomly, less than a week before she was to fly to the states for a summer visit, her landlord broke contract and asked for the place back.
The safety and security of a house, of a home, just torn out from under her. It sent a chill down my spine, wondering how I would react in the same situation.
The work of Do-Ho Suh speaks to the transient nature of expatriate life. I knew his work would be especially meaningful to my students when I watched the Art 21 segment during my first year. After watching the first few minutes, we discussed his life in relation to ours. How many places had we lived? What did we want in a house? At the young age of 8, they could understand Suh when he said “I want to carry my house, my home, with me all the time, like a snail.” Similar to bell hooks’s art class assignment, I asked the students to draw a blueprint of their ideal house. They could take with them anywhere, regardless of how many times their parents forced them to move and where they went. Open-ended questions guided their planning, but the house was only limited by their imagination. If there was to be a space for a sibling, parents, or friends, that was up to them. How many rooms, what type, and the layout, all for them to determine.
Looking at Suh's work now, time has deepened my understanding of him and his art; it has brought me to a similar place. Last summer was my first trip back to the states in two years. While one would think I would be overflowing with excitement, I was nervous.
Did I still have a place there?
My house was in Qingdao, China. It was my parents who had a house in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.
But despite its location, my apartment in Qingdao is quite Western. Is it my personal style, or a desire for the familiar, that keeps me in this Pottery Barn oasis, overlooking the Yellow Sea?
I have a blueprint of my ideal house. After sketching some plans on a long car ride back from a vacation in North Carolina, I was pleased to find a house in my grandparents’ blueprint book that matched the exterior of a house I’d sketched. I would make some changes to the blueprint, of course, but I keep the photocopy in a file at my parents’ house of “Important Papers.” I found the blueprint, more than 6 years old, when I was back this past summer. I was still drawn to the structure of the house, and jumped back into daydreaming as I envisioned the space.
I don’t know if I left this dream behind, along with the blueprint, when I hopped on a plane in July 2008. Even if I didn’t,
do I still want to be bound by a house, with property deeds and mortgage payments and insurance? And this house, it’s a farm house. It would never work in a city.
Do I want to live in the country? Maybe it would work on a street on the outskirts of a small town, walking distance to some shops and the school, but surrounded by farms. There’d be a tire swing on the tree to the left of the driveway and a finished basement where the kids could do crafts and play games. Maybe that could work for me. But then I start dreaming of the architecture in Morocco and the landscape of Greece and the home I would make in a temporary house and think maybe,
just maybe, I can let go of this house.
Maybe.
Assignment: Explore your own and others' stories and metaphors of table prior to encountering an artwork in which table is important. The Dinner Party Curriculum Encounter--Table Talk provides a way for you all to get to know each other around the metaphor of "table," an obvious metaphor of The Dinner Party. Use Good Guide & Skin Deep to learn about the social, environmental, and health performance of household objects in your home. Share one discovery. Look at artworks to discover House Metaphors in Contemporary Art and play with the idea of a metaphor of house that helps you to see something about yourself that you had not previously perceived in this way.
References:
Malone, Mary (1995). Maya Lin: Architect and Artist. Berkley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Seligman, Scott D. (1999). Chinese Business Etiquette. New York: Warner Business Books.
New York: The New Press.
Table Image: source unknown, from Table Talk encounter on DabbleBoard
Seoul Home/L.A. Home/New York Home/Baltimore Home/London Home/Seattle Home:
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magazines. We began by looking at these two interiors, first separately, then comparing and contrasting. The students were quick to point out the child-friendly items in the room on the right. While students were consistently able to determine child and adult spaces, and often teenage places, gender associations were not as clear. “Appropriate” colors are not culturally universal, so many of my male first graders freely expressed interest in rooms of pinks and purples. While most chose children’s bedrooms as their favorite place, either with toys, princess dresses, or flowers, one child preferred the photo of coat hooks, a bench, and shoes (from an entryway); he loved the feeling of family.
space (demonstrating depth in the collage) and in switching out similar items (a lamp for another lamp). These two differences could result from the different students in the class along with better instruction from me the second time around. Additionally, it became clear in the interviews that the first class was very confused about who lived in each interior. They merged their identity with the paper person who originally liked the room. One boy was upset when I said he had to draw a new room for his person; in his world, they were married and living together in the altered space.
