The Garden of the Cang Lang Ting (Blue Waves Pavilion) in Suzhou, China

Walkway along the canal outside of the Garden, as seen from The Fish
Watching Spot

For a long time I have been meaning to share pictures from my visit to this classical Chinese garden in Suzhou. I hesitated because I felt I did not know enough about Chinese gardens to write about them. Now, as the landscape turns grey here in Chicago, I find myself thinking again about these gardens I visited back in late March, when the landscape there was similarly muted, and nature had not yet awoken to full bloom. So I've decided it is time to share, even though I still don't know enough. Nevertheless I hope this photo essay will give you a glimpse, and ideally transport you, just a little bit, to this rather serene world amidst the bustling city of Suzhou. About a two hour drive west of Shanghai, Suzhou is a "smaller" city by Chinese standards, which means it has a metropolitan area of about 10 million inhabitants that makes it larger than Chicago.

The Cang Lang Ting Garden was originally built in the 11th century by the poet Su Shunqin, who took its name from a line in the "Fishermen" poems by Chu Ci (340 - 278 BCE): "If the water of the Cang Lang river is clean, I wash the ribbons of my official hat in it; if it is dirty, I wash my feet."

How appropriate then, that a visitor today will still find a boat moored by the outer wall of the garden. The old and formerly walled city of Suzhou, a giant square framed by a canal, today lies in the center of a vast carpet of industrial parks and mid-rise apartment developments. It's a city of canals (see my Tiger Hill photo essay). While most classical Chinese gardens will feature a body of water in their middle, the Cang Lang Ting is known for "borrowing" this canal that runs along its southern side.

The perimeter wall features not only an outside walkway, but latticed windows that let the visitor look in and out, thus blurring the border of the garden and making it feel much larger than it is.

A classical Chinese garden is divided into different sections, often including outdoor rooms or pavilions, none of which are arranged symmetrically. You never get a grand vista. Rather, you are led around corners, along hallways, ending in windows that frame a carefully arranged planting beyond their intricate lattice work.

While classical Chinese gardens were built rather than planted, their space arrangements do not follow the symmetry we generally expect from buildings. Notice that none of the windows in this hallway feature the same pattern. You will look in vain for any kind of symmetry in the West European sense. Rather, symmetry is to be found in balancing the four seasons, or making sure the elements (water, flora and fauna) are represented. While Chinese buildings generally favor symmetry in the sense of one side balancing the other, using a rather simple pattern, a garden was seen more like a painting; its beauty does not come from a carefully designed symmetry, but rather a "perfect" depiction of nature.

Coming around a bend, you might happen upon a little wonder, such as this window in the shape of gourd. It is one of four windows representing the seasons. Looking through, your gaze rests upon a grove of bamboo.

Then you turn another corner and you find yourself on this walkway (notice the elaborate stone pattern of the pavement) that seems to spring forward like a brook, jumping through the moon gate and on to another part of the garden, the surprise of which we cannot see yet from this vantage point.

All these walls partition the grounds in such a way that a grand illusion of space is created, while the actual garden encompasses roughly four acres in a rather rectangular parcel. Indeed, after touring this garden and another one (which I hope to share soon), I felt like I had walked a lot, which I had, and seen a lot, which I had, since every corner offers a unique design. I was genuinely tired, and my head was full of all that beauty.

Looking up from all that walking, a vista of gables and magnolia blossoms.
 

 

 

 

Garden rooms, such as this Smelling Prunus Mume Pavilion (named after the Chinese plum tree), offer a spot to rest, receive visitors, be outside and enjoy nature while being sheltered from the summer heat and somewhat, perhaps, from the winter cold.

Wall tablets recount the visit of a long ago VIP, offer a poem, or a careful drawing of the flora found outside. Suzhou was always a city of the arts and culture, and, dreamed up by a poet, one can see how this particular garden's elegance and carefully designed, yet somehow simple rooms might be a retreat for a creative soul retiring from public life.

Looking out from the pavilion's other side, a window imitating shattered glass again provides a frame for nature.

The idea of the Chinese garden is to bring nature to the city by, for instance, constructing a mountain out of rockery, such as this mountain in the middle of the Cang Lang Ting garden that leads up, via many "climbing paths," to a look-out pavilion.

Back on the outside of the garden is another display of rockery, here aptly framing the canal water.

Guest Blog by Julia San Fratello: Accepting Myself at Ragdale

I am beyond pleased to host one of my memoir students, Julia San Fratello, as a guest blogger today. Julia just enjoyed her very first writer's residency at Ragdale this past September, and so I asked her whether she'd write about her experience. Thank you, Julia, for sharing! Here is Julia:

I lay in my bathtub at home with the door locked as I took in the news that I had been accepted to an artists’ residency at the idyllic haven of Ragdale. Getting the letter had made me feel so supported. That I would actually get to go was something that needed to soak in quite literally with the bathroom door holding back the tide of duties, real and imagined, which my big trip would allow me to sidestep.

Several months later, I drove an hour north of Chicago for two weeks of nurturing bliss and powerful prose. That first night at Ragdale, I sat in a circle of introduction with the other residents. As my moment approached, I held the worn needlepoint cushion underneath me and rocked in my chair, wondering if anyone had ever asked to skip their turn.

With many warm eyes upon me, I found the courage to declare: “I’m a writer.”

Back in my room, called The Yellow Room, I went nowhere. Plowing forward through a sentence or two, I was soon interrupted by a funky patter, "Who are you kidding? You stink! How can you be so selfish?

I fled my sunny writing perch to climb onto a loaner bike, sip endless cups of tea, and perform a thorough inspection of all and any empty beehives on the property.

For three days I wandered the fields and forests of Ragdale, staring at branches and clouds. I called my husband and daughter from a path in the middle of the prairie. I watched small yellow finches with black striping flicker along plants that shot up into the air and ended in large fuzzy yellow sprouts.

Those birds could sing. Why couldn’t I?

Back in The Yellow Room, I began wondering if my cozy hideaway under the eaves was mocking me. Did the lemon yellow paint imply I was nothing but a yellow-bellied sap sucker? I scratched pen to paper as more dreaded thoughts came into my head.

A friend at home, who knew my insecurity, suggested I write any negative thoughts onto slips of paper, "Put those thoughts in a box and get rid of them. Tell yourself you’ll look at them when you get home."

I resisted her advice, and I certainly hadn't brought a box.

The Voice, however, continued to erode my progress. But, as Ragdale is magical, a little tin box soon called to me from the bottom of the bookshelf near the door. Finally, I could purge these villains and go about my business. Soon I ran out of slips and turned to filling long sheets of legal paper, restricting each negative thought to one line at a time. By evening, I could hardly close the box.

 

 

At dinner on Day Four I blithely admitted to my little trove of insults. "I spend more time writing crap for the box than writing what I came here to work on!"

"That is so great,” said a biographer from New York. I was making light of my predicament and I thought maybe he was, too.

"Why?" I asked.

"Now you have two pieces. You have the one you are working on. and the one you’ll make later out of the slips in the box. It’ll be great!"

We lifted sliced tomatoes to our lips and laughed. At Ragdale, New Yorkers are not only edgy. They are kind.

Soon a playwright from Chicago sat down. She had been to Ragdale seven times which made me feel…outranked!

"It is so great to come to dinner and be here with you guys," she said. "It was one of those days when I felt like I was rewriting the same sentence all day long. Just knowing you guys are in your rooms trying to make art helps me so much." Everyone nodded, and we each took a tiny dessert square nestled in paper from a tray.

On Day Five I hit the ground running. My borrowed tin with the slips went into an empty drawer in the yellow desk. I continued slaving away after dinner. Yellow is such a happy color!

A week later I gave my first public reading of an essay that I had revised in my room for cowards.

"That was so great," said the resident who had organized the evening. "You really allowed yourself to be vulnerable."

I spent the next few days revising a ridiculous novella…for fun!

When I kissed my new friends good-bye, I actually felt that warm and fuzzy way you’re supposed to feel at the end of summer camp. And, as I turned onto the highway heading back towards Chicago, a little yellow finch flew across the concrete entrance ramp.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ceramic turkey made by my daughter

I was going to make a list of all the things I am thankful for, but there are simply too many, and I am, in a superstitious sort of way, worried I might forget something. So I will just say that I am thankful for my life, with all its components, and I will share this week's poem from American Life in Poetry, since it captures so nicely what today is all about for most Americans.

 

Thanksgiving

by Tim Nolan

 

Thanks for the Italian chestnuts—with their

tough shells—the smooth chocolaty

skin of them—thanks for the boiling water—

 

itself a miracle and a mystery—

thanks for the seasoned sauce pan

and the old wooden spoon—and all

 

the neglected instruments in the drawer—

the garlic crusher—the bent paring knife—

the apple slicer that creates six

 

perfect wedges out of the crisp Haralson—

thanks for the humming radio—thanks

for the program on the radio

 

about the guy who was a cross-dresser—

but his wife forgave him—and he

ended up almost dying from leukemia—

 

(and you could tell his wife loved him

entirely—it was in her deliberate voice)—

thanks for the brined turkey—

 

the size of a big baby—thanks—

for the departed head of the turkey—

the present neck—the giblets

 

(whatever they are)—wrapped up as

small gifts inside the cavern of the ribs—

thanks—thanks—thanks—for the candles

 

lit on the table—the dried twigs—

the autumn leaves in the blue Chinese vase—

thanks—for the faces—our faces—in this low light.

This is Bliss...

...hot chocolate in the grass in November.

 

 

 

...kicking off the hiking boots.

 

 

 

...lying on the autumn ground.

 

 

 

...studying the leaves.

 

 

 

...having the time to notice the wound in a tree.

 

 

 

...walking by the pond and realizing the reflection of the trees is so perfect...

 

 

 

...that it exudes a Sleepy Hollow vibe when seen from the pond's other side.

 

Hot Chocolate Party in the Cold

It's that time of year again when I like to have a hot chocolate party outside in the cold. The beginning of this week afforded us the perfect juxtaposition in weather for this kind of undertaking: Sunday was unusually warm with temperatures in the 60s, and we finally got around to hollowing out and carving some of the pumpkins we had schlepped home from our visit to the pumpkin farm back in October. While you don't need a pumpkin to have a hot chocolate party in the cold and dark, they do make fun lanterns. And they smell good, freshly carved.

Towards evening, temperatures started plummeting until they reached the 30s by Monday morning. Sunday evening, when it was dark and getting cold, was the perfect time to have a little hot chocolate party outside on our porch, even though it started to rain. (Check my blog post from last November for a how to).

 

As you can see, I'm still celebrating fall, even when it's wet and cold outside.

Open House at the Museum of Science and Industry

Under the South Portico of the Musem of Science and Industry
where one usually doesn't get to hang out.

A reader's comment on my post about Chicago Art Deco at the Powhatan on how fun it is to peek behind the scenes reminded me that I still have pictures to share from Member Open House at the Museum of Science and Industry in July. We live a few blocks from the museum, in fact our kids consider it part of their back yard, meaning they'd know their way around it blindfolded, so getting to see otherwise unseen parts of the museum is especially enticing to us.

Standing under the normally locked entrance at the South Portico, we had this view looking over the back steps, the terrace, the lagoon and museum members enjoying the ice cream social that's part of Member Open House.

The MSI holds this event every summer. This was the second time we could attend. The evening is short, and so we focused on exploring only one of the many parts of the museum that are usually not open. This year we decided to go see the corporate offices, and find out where they do all the work of planning exhibits, raising funds, marketing their efforts, and just generally keeping that venerable institution running. Where, we wondered, were those offices hidden? There is no obvious office annex or wing. Turns out the offices are aligned along this infinite hallway that winds itself along the outline of the museum, one story up from the official second floor. It was fun to discover the "secret" elevator and stairway that provide access.

I, of course, fell in love with these art deco lamps in the hallway. What an elegant place to work!

In some instances it is also a rather cramped place to work. After all, the building dates back to 1893 and offices were not exactly planned for. And I wonder whether the stone grilles in front of the windows are endearing when you look at them every day, or if they make you feel as if you were in a prison.

View from the Museum's President's desk out over the Smart Home exhibit outdoors. If you look closely, you can see the blue of Lake Michigan beyond the trees in the background. Not a bad view even if it's through lattice work.
 

 

 

 

View from the hallway outside of the president's office down into the museum.
 

 

 

 

At the opposite end of the museum from the president's office (a walk that seemed to go on for ever!), the same giant arched window with the generous lattice work can be found in the marketing offices.
 

 

 

 

Traces of the recent Dr. Suess exhibit in the marketing office.
 

 

 

 

In the hallway, posters from the 1930s. (The museum opened in 1933.)
 

 

 

 

The exhibit planning office - getting a glimpse at how an exhibit starts to take shape was my favorite part of Open House. Plus I love bikes and nudged one of the planners who was present to have at least one of those oldies in their collection available for a tryout in the exhibit. Wouldn't that be cool to ride around the museum on one of those giant wheels? Not happening, I know, but still.

Guest Blog by Shirley Hershey Showalter: Writing About Faith

As announced last Monday, I am happy to welcome Shirley Hershey Showalter as a guest blogger today. We met in the online world last year; I was initially intrigued by her 100 Memoirs blog in which she set out to read as many memoirs as possible to learn how to write her own. I left comments, and we connected. I have followed Shirley's quest to write her memoir about growing up Mennonite, and I was particularly curious how she tackled the dicey topic of writing about faith, mainly because I have been struggling with how to do that myself. So I am thrilled that Shirley was willing to share her insights (Thank you, Shirley!):

Writing About Faith - Imagine a Plane Ride

by Shirley Hershey Showalter

We all know that politics and religion are like the third rail of conversation. But do they have to be?

If you and I meet on a plane or train and fall into conversation, it’s only a matter of time before something one of us says leads me to tell you I’m Mennonite. Here’s how you might find out:

"Where did you go to college?" Eastern Mennonite University

"You were a college president? Where?" Goshen College, a liberal arts and Mennonite college in Indiana

From there, you either drop your questions and turn to your Coke and peanuts, or you push on:

"Did you drive a horse and buggy instead of a car?"

"No. You are thinking of the Amish, who are 'cousins' to the Mennonites but practice a stricter separation from the world."

"Is it true Mennonites are pacifists? Why?"

"The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) is the centerpiece of the Bible from a Mennonite perspective. Many generations of Mennonite teaching and community life go back to the belief that Jesus meant what he said there, including 'Love your enemies.' "

"You don’t look like a Mennonite."

"I was a 'plain' Mennonite in the 1960s until my branch of the Mennonite Church no longer required prayer coverings and plain dress. I hope I’ve moved from being 'plain' externally to being 'simple' internally. I still feel respect and kinship for the best of the more conservative Anabaptist (both Mennonite and Amish) traditions."

My 21-year-old mother holds me on the right.
My aunt holds my cousin on the left.
Date: early fall, 1948

I’ve enjoyed many conversations with strangers over the years. The best ones of these turned into mutual exchanges. I might ask, for example, the question Krista Tippett often uses at the beginning of her radio show OnBeing: "What was your religious or moral environment as you were growing up?"

This way, I’ve heard quite a few faith stories from other people of many religions and no religion. In general, when people share their experiences of faith descriptively, others find them interesting. Being different from the mainstream actually makes your story more interesting. It took me a while to figure that out.

For a long time, I was embarrassed about wearing a prayer covering in public school and sitting on the bleachers as the other kids learned to dance in gym class. Now those stories are at the very heart of the memoir I’m writing called Blush: A Mennonite Girl in a Glittering World. I’m currently revising the manuscript and expecting publication in the fall with Herald Press.

So if we can have heart-felt and mutual conversations about religion with strangers in person, how do we translate that experience into writing memoir?

Here’s my thesis: Writing about religion is a lot like talking to a stranger on a plane. If the subject comes up there naturally, it might be one to consider for your writing. If it doesn’t, perhaps your story should focus on other aspects of your life. My advice:

Be transparent. Tell the truth about your religion, both the good and the bad. No religion is perfect. All religions have made a contribution to individual lives and cultures.

Write from your heart. Focus on experience rather than doctrine, unless and until the doctrine impacts your own story. Then feel free to share how you were moved, drawn in, transformed, defeated, terrified, shamed, or otherwise impacted by your faith.

Invite rather than exclude the reader. If you have followed the first two pieces of advice, you will have created a space wide enough for both you, the protagonist of your story, and the reader. The reader is on your side, wondering what will happen to you as you navigate the differences between your internal desires and the external realities of your life.

Readers may even start pondering their own values, beliefs, and commitments. This would be wonderful! But they will close the book if they sense you have the hidden motive to convert them. On the other hand, if you do this well, you could be the member of any religion and a sympathetic reader could be someone of a religion in conflict with yours. Does this happen often? No. Would it help us to live more peacefully if it did? Yes.

Do you talk about your faith or your religious background to strangers? Does this analogy make sense to you, or do you think it better not to get into this subject?

In Memory of Kristallnacht

The "Temple of the Israelite Cultural
Community" in Reichenberg, burned
down during Kristallnacht

November 9-10 marks the anniversary of Kristallnacht, when in 1938 in all the territories controlled by the German Reich synagogues were burned down, Jewish shop windows smashed (hence the name "Night of Crystal") and stores ransacked, Jewish property destroyed, and Jews themselves harassed, beaten, killed or sent off to concentration camps. It marked the beginning of the end for European Jewry under the Nazis.

I used to attend events at our synagogue here in Chicago, organized by old German Jews who had experienced that day, and whose families had subsequently fled. Sadly, they are not around anymore. But readings in memory of Kristallnacht are still held, and when I received another such invitation earlier this week, I thought it was time to create my own little commemoration with a tidbit from my family history.

Old postcard showing the Café Post on the left, where my grandfather
and great-uncle used to hang out, with the synagogue in the
background that my great-uncle's father helped build.

My father's family is from the town of Liberec in what is now the Czech Republic. During their time in the 1930s and 40s it was called Reichenberg, was part of Czechoslovakia and predominantly German-speaking. The father of my great-uncle Guido had been on the building committee that planned, financed and built the synagogue in Reichenberg, which opened on Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) in September 1889.

In October 1938, after the infamous Munich Agreement, Nazi Germany took over the so called Sudetenland, i.e. the mainly German-speaking border areas of Czechoslovakia, and made Reichenberg the capital of this new province of the German Reich. My family, all of them Social Democrats (both my grandfather and his brother-in-law Guido had served on the city council), found themselves on the wrong side of the fence in more than one way.

Guido was already ill with diabetes and in a sanatorium during Kristallnacht, and in a way this is a blessing as he did not witness the burning down of the synagogue his family had invested so much in.

In 2009 I traveled to Liberec and spent some time in the city library digging through the archives of newspapers from 1938, mainly in order to be able to recreate in my memoir what it must have been like for my grandparents, great-aunt and great-uncle to live through those times. It was chilling to read those articles from 1938 as they provide the uninterpreted version of a point in time; they are a lot more illuminating than a history book written with the benefit of hindsight.

I found this article from November 11, 1938 in the Reichenberger Stadtzeitung, the city newspaper which was then already a Nazi Party organ as the free press had been done away with. The article describes, quite unashamedly, the burning down of the synagogue, without mentioning, of course, that this was a deliberate act of arson and vandalism. Following is my unofficial translation of the article, if you're interested. Immersing myself in this short text while translating had me wondering, yet again, how my family managed to survive in the inferno their city had become.

While it is easy to condemn what happened in 1938, and to see Kristallnacht as an unique historical event, I think we should remember that we ourselves still live in a time when, in some parts of the world, synagogues and churches are set ablaze.

Article from the Reichenberger Stadtzeitung (Nazi party paper), November 11, 1938:

Reichenberg's Synagogue in Flames

Only the walls are still standing - the population protests against the murderous Jewish attack [This refers to the murder in France of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, who was shot by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish 17-year-old whose family had been expelled from Germany earlier that year.]

Reichenberg. As we already reported in the political part of the paper, fires broke out yesterday in the temples in Reichenberg and Gablonz [neighboring city].

An eyewitness of the fire in the synagogue in Reichenberg tells us that the fire developed around 1 p.m. and spread rather quickly. Flames were bursting out of the windows of the altar room. The fire brigade of Reichenberg arrived quickly and fought against the fire with several hoses. A few minutes after people heard about the fire, a crowd of spectators gathered and besieged the entrances, which were barred by police. Soon smoke came from the dome, and flames from the window above the entry. The crowd awaited the moment when the dome of the tower with the star of David would collapse. At 2:43 p.m. the iron arches of the dome were bending, and it come roaring down. A gigantic cloud of smoke and dust arose from the round tower towards the sky. Later, parts of the roof collapsed as well. At 5 p.m. the synagogue resembled a ruin with flames still licking its sides.
In the evening hours, spontaneous protest demonstrations happened all over Reichenberg to protest the cowardly, murderous attack by the Jew Grynszpan, whose victim was, as is well known, the Legion Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Vom Rath. The people marched through the streets, demonstrating their indignation at this vicious murder.

The Privilege of Teaching Memoir

Photo by Patty Michels, taken during my Advanced Memoir Workshop.

Seems I am out and about this week, because I am thrilled to announce that my essay "The Privilege of Teaching Memoir" has just been published by the Washington Independent Review of Books.

I've been teaching memoir for six years now at StoryStudio Chicago, and it is my dream job. When my editor at the WIRoB asked me to write about what it's like to teach memoir, I was first excited (it's nice to have work solicited), but then I started worrying: I am used to talking about the craft of writing memoir with writers, but how would I write about teaching memoir for the general reading public? I have to confess I dragged my feet, and my editor had to be extra patient until I thankfully had a great discussion with a beginning memoir class during which I figured out what I thought was the right angle on the topic.

So, if you have a few minutes, could you head on over, and then come back and let me know here what you think? There's no spot to leave comments at WIRoB, but thankfully, there is here. Which is one reason I love blogging - it allows for a dialogue with readers.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Writing About Family

My grandmother and me at my wedding

I'm thrilled to be guest blogging on Shirley Showalter's blog today. Topic: Writing About Family. It's the hairiest issue in writing memoir, at least based on my experience teaching memoir writing at StoryStudio Chicago. So please head on over!

Next Monday I'll be hosting Shirley on the topic of writing about faith. Stay tuned!

Photo Essay: Point Reyes - Into the Fog

Cypress trees dripping with moisture on the way to the lighthouse at
Point Reyes.

Since today is November 1, and I have so far been celebrating fall with roaring colors, I'm thinking this is right time to share my photos of fog along the California coast. For me, fog goes with November, even though this is more of a cliché than based on personal experience. Fog is rare in Chicago where I live, and wasn't that common in Upper Bavaria in Germany where I grew up. Maybe, for that very reason, I have a certain benign fascination with the mystery fog brings with it.

Point Reyes National Seashore from Highway 1 north of Marshall

On our trip to California this summer, we experienced the most amazing fog banks in Marin County, along the Pacific Coast just north of San Francisco. Driving out on the Point Reyes Peninsula was an especially surreal experience. Along the inlet and Highway 1, the day was sunny and warm, but we could see the clouds hovering over the hills.

The fog thickened the closer we got to the ocean. The landscape reminded me of the West coast of Ireland, except that there the grass would have been green, while here it was dried out.

The grasslands and hills of the Point Reyes Peninsula are active farmland. Here an empty trough.

Hiking in the fog.

Once we got to the tip of the peninsula, the fog was so thick that we could see about 30 feet. Here my daughter heads into the fog on our way to hopefully spot the lighthouse. It was also barely 50F and we all zipped our hoods tightly against the wind.

Alas, once we reached the top of the cliff, we found ourselves in the middle of the clouds with no view of the lighthouse. At least I got this shot of white zero visibility. This serene white did not come with quiet, however. Rather, the howling wind and the crashing waves down below were almost deafening.

 

Eventually, thanks to the force of the wind, the fog thinned out and we got a glimpse of the lighthouse. Sadly, it was closed the day we were there.

On the way back, the shoreline was visible beyond the cypress trees.

 

Driving back north on Highway 1, the sun was now over the peninsula, filtering through the fog that was still hovering over the hills.