Hi there. Long post alert. I’m writing this at the Shanghai Library which for some reason has a Starbucks inside it. Been in the city for a full week as of today. Some initial notes: big big big shock to go from village life in Malawi to a city of 24 million in China. Things I miss in Malawi: the lake, the sun, the friendly chance encounters with folks, the lack of spending, the people I worked with. Things I’m glad to find plenty of here: boba, noodles, dumplings, really easy-to-use public transport, well-dressed babies, fish kept both as pets and as pre-meals. My day-to-day has less structure in Shanghai than in Kande, which maybe makes it more true-to-form to the Watson mission of independent exploration, but also forces me to be more proactive about my plans and my writing process.

I’ve done a couple cool things since I got here. I spent a night out at a rooftop club in the Bund called Bar Rouge, where I got a wonderful view of the city (and drank two really overpriced drinks, one of which was on fire for aesthetic reasons??). I visited the Shanghai Museum which is home to some really cool artifacts from China’s long history including this wild Mongol Chess Set (Brass and Jade, Qing Dynasty 1644-1911) I’m trying to write a poem about and this Ming decorative plate with designs of plums and little red bats flying around on it. I’ve never seen a bat on ceramics or like anything before? I guess bats in general aren’t as pretty for ornate decorations as birds and flowers. But for some reason, that plate stuck with me.

The Bund was beautiful until I had to pay a ludicrous cover charge that night :/// )

Yesterday, I spent my day at the Wenshang Flower, Bird, Insect, and Fish market, which is this old market tucked behind a couple of buildings on South Xizang Road. There are maybe fifty to sixty stalls that all sell live animals. The first thing you notice upon entering is the noise—a persistent high-pitched drone, constantly rising and falling, like a tiny traffic jam. One of the big draws of the market is its crickets—they sell both singing varieties and fighting varieties and all of them are loud as hell. Like so loud. I got to spectate a cricket fight with these old Chinese dudes (who I think were gambling on the winners) and it was wild. Other creatures sold here: maybe a hundred different freshwater tropical fish species, salamanders, snails, Caribbean hermit crabs, Pomeranians, siamese cats, hedgehogs, bearded dragons, ball pythons, cockatiels, Chinese songbirds, and so many damn turtles. I saw snappers and red-eared sliders and soft shells and just like every possible turtle. Baby turtles the size of a 50-cent piece and big-ass ones the size of a small dog. It was a strange and interesting and colorful place, and I’m going to try and visit a few more times. I spoke a little with the woman in charge of the store’s only fancy goldfish stall, which had some really beautiful breeds. I’ll attach some pics.

You can see Orandas, Ranchus, Lionheads, Samsaras. Pond varieties in the plastic boxes.

Anyway, I should clarify: the central fish associated with China in my project is the goldfish. As the world’s most popular pet fish, and the ones least well-suited to their most commonly chosen homes (bowls), they fit neatly into my project’s theme of containment, but what’s even more intriguing to me is the history of their breeding. Hundreds of years of selective breeding of the Prussian carp (probably) have produced hundreds of goldfish varieties, many of them so far removed from their original form that they look almost alien. Like little flesh balloons with bulging eyes and humpbacks. No joke, just look up “Prussian Carp” and then look up “celestial eye goldfish” and “lionhead goldfish” and “ranchu goldfish.” The differences in these fish are like the difference between wolves and yorkies. The container for these fish is the pond, the tank, the bowl, but also the body. Their bodies have been stretched so much in so many directions, and so, I think goldfish are a good place from which to write about the body in flux. Anyway, I’ll end on this lil excerpt from a fiction project I’m working on. It concerns goldfish, and hopefully frames the kind of stuff I’m trying to explore. Some background: the speaker is an artist who lives in Ho Chi Minh City. That’s it lol.

Excerpt:

The thing with goldfish is they do not really exist, at least not in their natural state. I have tried to explain this to my mother many times. Any specimen you will find in a shop today is at least a hundred deviations from the original, the history of this deviance beginning in Ancient China with a series of artistic experiments in which the great sculptors of the day attempted to carve dragons out of carp.

The emperors of the Song Dynasty began with a handful of wild-caught Prussian carp, which they selected for especially bright scales and colorful streaks. Red and orange were shades of good fortune, and in those days of intermittent war and famine, good fortune was hard to come by. Next came massive heads and protruding eyes. Markers of wisdom and foresight, both kingly qualities. The fish were becoming something else, something more than themselves. Finally, the long fins and flowing tails and distended bellies. To be veiled was to be shielded by heaven. To be fat was to be swollen with luck. Each ridge and whisker, each little gesture of dragonhood, had its grand purpose. These were designs passed from heaven to human to animal. Centuries before oil and canvas, these emperors painted dragons with scale and bone.

As a former poet, I will tell you this: in every line of work there is something called metaphor. Metaphor is a type of torture in which you take a body and make it say what you want it to. This is what the emperors did. When they said goldfish, what they meant was mythic. Celestial. Full of heaven. What they meant was, your body is my body because it is mine to shape. Gnarled backs and long whiskers. Fins billowing like war banners. Scales brighter than pearl. In my hands, you are more precious than gold. The first artists to sculpt these fish knew that names were powerful. They knew that naming itself was a kind of alchemy, a way to turn words into flesh into history.

I know many artists today who still work in this medium. There is Ji, the Taiwanese monk at the temple on Pasteur Street who breeds Ranchus and Orandas in plastic tubs. There is Geoffrey, the German expat who lives down by the beach and sells hybrid fantails to important men living in glass towers. I visit them on occasion, to workshop their pieces and to show them my own. Their art is oftentimes an imprecise one, but I cannot deny the results are impressive when executed properly.