[stylist] The Monkey in the Zoo: creative writing prompt

Mon Feb 4 14:46:29 UTC 2013

I would like to thank everyone who looked at this piece.  Your critique is valuable.

There are three reasons that this is not more from my daughter's point of view.
First, I tend to be self-absorbed and hence, I tend to write from my viewpoint even if it would be better written from someone else's.  OK, we all have our faults and this is mine.
Second, I was writing this for The Braille Spectator (which is an NFB newsletter) and hence the emphasis is on blindness and travel.  In this case NFB's self-absorption jibed with mine.  (OK, I will say things about NFB among friends that I wouldn't say to the general public).
Third, Zebe (being fifteen years old) had the typical teenager outlook when looking at a bunch of old stuff; I think her attitude was dutiful appreciation.  She definitely enjoyed the shopping in Shanghai (in the small stalls over there I felt like a bull in a china closet, smile).  She also enjoyed the chance she had to dress up in ancient Chinese dresses and pose for the camera.  I think she liked the slide down from the great wall, but I wasn't with her for that so I had to get a retrospective.  Also, when we were not touring, Zebe and her friends played a sort of speed competitive solitaire which I was not eyesight equipped for.  I retired with my science fiction magazine (after dealing with the legendary crowds of China I needed space (smile).
Also, living in the Washington, DC area, we tend to be jaded when it comes to the cyclopean architecture of world capitals.  So we are walking by Mao's tomb going OK, another big building, OK got that.
We loved the Forbidden City even though we got soaked by pouring rain as we walked through it.  Much of touring this attraction is walking through the ancient architecture and peering into rooms (I got a limited amount out of that.
Of any blind person traveling to China, I would say that a white cane is a must; you'll need it to find the thresholds (ubiquitous over there) and you'll need it for the great wall.  Also, much of touring China is looking at intricate scrollwork and other intricate art, so you will want someone there to explain it to you.

Anyway, once again thanks for looking this over.

Shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jacqueline Williams
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2013 8:20 PM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] The Monkey in the Zoo: creative writing prompt

Shawn,
I want to apologize for not giving feedback yet on your Rondeau, and your trip to the IRS for the 1099s. I have read them both twice, but it will take time for me to isolate my remarks and tie them to the correct line. You are being very prolific and there are interesting thoughts in all of your work.
I will go ahead and comment on this particular piece about China.
First, I agree with Lynda's critique in all aspects. Adding your daughter's reactions would make it  perhaps more like a creative non-fiction assignment.
However, as it stands right now, I believe it has merit if submitted to a travel magazine. I say this because, on my bucket list, I had an item, "Walking the Great Wall of China." Then, when I could no longer consider, I wished someone would make a movie of it to be shown in the big wrap-around theatres. (IMAC)? only that last time, I could get the gist, and certainly hear the commentary.
You told details of your experience on it to the degree, that I feel that item from my bucket list was partially fulfilled. Since, I am not of "adoptive" quality, I find that I am totally interested without reference to your daughter. Why not submit it to two different audiences. The blind or otherwise impaired  wanting to adopt, and also, the traveler. There are so many magazines in each category, and I think many writers reformat the same article for many submissions.
I am going to forward your article to a friend who has been in China once, and wants very much to make another trip. She is a youngster, being only 70, and you mention many of the things she has not seen yet.
Keep on writing in the many genres you use.
My computers sometimes starts doing the "bump and grind", so loud I cannot understand JAWS and then I turn it off.  However, in time, I will make comments on your other writings.
Jackie

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jacobson, Shawn D
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 12:19 PM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] The Monkey in the Zoo: creative writing prompt

I wrote a short piece, about 2,000 words for our state affiliate newsletter about our recent trip to China.  We had adopted Zebe in 1995 (she was one-year-old at the time and we had her first birthday in China).  We recently returned for a homeland tour so that she could see the country that she is from.  The highlights of the trip are discussed in the article.

Shawn

A Tale of the Freeze Dried Duck, an American family's adventures in China By Shawn Jacobson

Even since we adopted Zebe fourteen years ago, we had planned to return to China.  We wanted to show Zebe the country that she was from.  Also, we wanted to see more of it ourselves.  We had seen some of Hong Kong and Guangzhou, but we had not had time or energy to see the rest of the country.
And besides, getting a child for the first time and learning on the fly how to be parents does not go well with intensive tourism.

So after more than a year of planning, we were finally ready.  We had our passports, visas, tickets and itinerary and were ready to go.  We would travel for two weeks and visit seven cities in China starting with Shanghai.
Here we met one of the families that adopted with us and now lived in an ex-patriot community northwest of the city.

Our time in Shanghai was primarily a chance to shop and rest up from the plane trip.  We shopped at the Pearl Market and the Fabric Market both large buildings full of small shops and stalls.  We bought clothing and some people in the group bought pearls.  When it was time to try on our new clothes, the shopkeeper would make an impromptu dressing room by draping cloth across a corner of the stall.

The next stop was Beijing.  Here we were constantly busy touring since there was a lot to see and experience.  The schedule was also compressed because we were three hours late getting there from Shanghai.  The highlight was The Great Wall, which sits to the North of Beijing.  The section that we toured runs along the top of a mountain ridge and is reached by a cable car.  As we ascended, I could see on my right the wall climbing next to us; I was looking foreword to walking down the wall and taking a sled back down to the starting point.  However, when we reached the top, we found that the section of wall we were at was closed and to get to an open section of wall required walking a dangerous path along the edge of a cliff.  Our guide talked to the guards, and they did let some of us go up and walk on a small part of the wall while the more adventuresome members of the party took the path.

So at least we got up on the wall.  From the top you could see the wall snaking off into the mountains beyond us and you could see down into valleys on both sides.  This is facilitated by the arrow slits carved into both sides of the wall.  We also got to see one of the old watch towers used by soldiers stationed on the wall.  I remember ducking under archways in this building and looking out the other side to see the wall descend down a steep flight of stairs.  On the mountain, an exhortation to revere the thoughts of Mao was carved into the rock.  But the fierce t-shirt peddlers we went by on the way down revered only the art of selling.  After running a two block gauntlet of merchants, we reached the bus and headed back into town.

Another interesting activity was the Hu Tong tour.  We rode rickshaws through an ancient village within Beijing itself.  All around us we could smell food being cooked and could hear people working on the street and repairing buildings (China is always under construction).  A highlight of the tour came when we had tea with a lady who lived in the village.  She described her life and explained why she loved living in the village.  Since her house shared a common courtyard with several other houses, there was always someone around to be with.

I was surprised to truly enjoy the acrobat show we saw in Beijing.  I felt that the performance would be so visual that I wouldn't get anything out of it; but I was able to use binoculars to focus in on those performances that were on one part of the stage.  I particularly enjoyed a performance where a lady did various handstands while on a crane that carried her around the stage thirty feet in the air.  There were many other impressive performances in the show.

We next traveled to Xian, to see the Terra Cotta soldiers, a collection of statues made two thousand years ago and found in a filed just outside of town.  In order to preserve the original colors of the statues, most have not been removed from the pits where they were found.  Before seeing the actual soldiers, we toured a factory where replicas are made and had a chance to do some shopping.  Then it was off to the excavation to see the real thing.  The most impressive soldier site had ranks of infantry soldiers interspersed with terra cotta horses.  This area was about the size of a football field and had about 7,000 figures.  Two smaller sites had archers and statues of officers.  Each figure has unique facial features, but the statues come in a few basic types, infantrymen, officers, archers, and horses.  A stature of each type was found in a museum at the third site.

Xian is also known for its city wall.  This wall is forty feet high and almost 50 feet across.  It stretches for about 8 miles around the old city.
We were able to go up on the wall and ride in rickshaws (the younger people in the group road bicycles) on top of the wall.  On the inside of the wall was the old city which has its old architecture preserved.  On the other side is the modern city of Xian with its skyscraper towers and modern building design.  The wall itself is used by the residents of the city for exercise and as a place to enjoy nice days.

Xian was the original capital of China long before Beijing became an important city.  It also is the start point for the silk-road.  While there, was saw the Great Mosque of Xian, a mosque built about 1,200 years ago by Moslems who came to Xian over the silk-road.  This mosque is unique in that it is built in the form of a Buddhist temple.

Buddhism is big in China, so we were able to see some truly big Buddhas.  In Beijing, at the Lama temple, we saw a Buddha that was 90 feet tall and was carved out of a single tree.  The biggest Buddha we saw was the Leshan Giant Buddha.  This Buddha is carved out of the side of a cliff over confluence of two rivers.  I was concerned that I would not be able to see the Buddha from the boat, but I need not have worried.  We came around a bend in the river and there it was; the whole side of the cliff was carved into a seated Buddha that was 240 feet high.  On either side of the statue were sets of steps, I could see people (who looked ant sized by comparison) climbing up and down; when passing in front of the statue, they were about the height of the Buddha's toes.

We saw this mountain of a Buddha on the way from Chengdu, the next city on our itinerary, to the Bifengxia panda base.  This panda base is in the mountains near Ya An where we stayed the night before going to the preserve.
We saw about 20 pandas in several different enclosures.  The pandas were playing in the mud, so they weren't black and white, as you would expect, but were dark tan and black instead.  We even got to see a baby panda that was small enough to fit on your hand.  My son Stephen got a good picture of
the little panda.    While there, we ran into a group of school children and
they used us to practice their English skills.

Chengdu was where we stayed at the most unique hotel on our trip,  the Ginli Hotel.  This was a traditional Chinese courtyard hotel, each room opened directly onto a courtyard or the street.  One noteworthy aspect was the breakfast we received there.  This traditional Chinese snack breakfast was brought to our rooms every morning in a wicker basket.  The breakfast consisted of an egg and a carton of milk in the top basket and a sweet potato and an ear of corn in the bottom basket.  Once we ate what we wanted (the milk tasted strange) we got coffee and finished our breakfast at the Starbuck's near the hotel.

Both the hotel and the Starbuck's were on a pedestrian mall that stretched for several blocks through downtown Chengdu.  The mall featured small shops and other merchants (including a man who made candy in the shapes of
animals) and restaurants.  One evening, we ate dinner in an open-air restaurant just down the street from the hotel.

Our last day in Chengdu, we went to Luodai, a preserved village from very early China.  Here, the women could try on traditional Chinese dresses and have their picture taken.  While they were doing that, Stephen and I stood on the side of the street and watched people parade by in their costumes.
Luodai means "lost belt" in Chinese; the village got its name because one of the early residents lost his belt down the village well.  We were able to see where the old well had been.

That afternoon, we flew from Chengdu to Xiamen, the city where we adopted Zebe.  We were curious about how the city had changed since we were there 14 years ago.  When we arrived, we saw that the city had changed quite a bit.
The tall buildings that had been under construction when we adopted Zebe had been completed along with many other skyscrapers.  We visited a hot springs resort that had been built after we were last in Xiamen.  One neat thing to do was to sit in the fish pool while little fish ate the dead skin off of your body.  It took a while for me to get used to the tickling sensation, but eventually, I relaxed and enjoyed it.  We also had a Chinese head massage and a "hot rocks" message where you lay down in a pit and have people shovel sand on pot of you (don't read any horror stories before doing this).  The sand helps keeps you warm so that you sweat.

On our last day in Xiamen, we went to the orphanage where we first met Zebe.
Like the rest of the city, the place had changed a lot.  The original building where we had received Zebe had been torn down and a twenty-story building to house children and seniors was being built in its place.  We saw the lady who was the orphanage administrator.  We exchanged gifts and we give them some money to help with the building.  Everyone cried.  While there we saw two children who were going to be adopted very soon.

That afternoon, we flew back to Shanghai and Zebe and Chris (a friend who went with us) had a combined birthday party.  The party was at the Monk, a pub near where our friends lived.  Scott, who had been with us on our first trip, played the sax in a band that played at the club and his band played happy birthday for us.  We were reminded of Zebe's first birthday which we had in Xiamen.

While in China, we had many adventures and unique experiences to numerous to mention here.  One of the most memorable experiences we had come after Zebe found a wallet in the tour bus in Xiamen.  When the driver saw the wallet, he knew who it belonged to.  It belonged to his friend who worked on the buses.  When his friend got his wallet back, he was ecstatic (you don't want to lose your ID card in China) and he gave Zebe several gifts.  One of these was a freeze dried duck (that's right, the whole duck bill, feet, and all).
We weren't sure what we would do with it, but that decision was taken out of our hands by the customs agents in Newark when we arrived.  You can't take a freeze dried duck into the country.

So the duck didn't make it back with us, but our memories can't be taken away.  Adopting Zebe was a wonderful, scary, challenging experience and this vacation was also a wonderful experience with its own adventures.  Though we will probably never get back to China, we will remember these trips forever.

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda Lambert
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 12:16 PM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] The Monkey in the Zoo: creative writing prompt

I enjoyed reading this, too, Barbara. My husband and I had three little girls and then decided we could make room for another couple of children in our hears and home.  We adoped a little boy from Vietnam who is Vietnamese and Black; and we adopted a little girl from Korea in the 70s.

One day some people from out of town were trying to find our house. They stopped in the town to ask a policeman for directions. He said, "OH, that is the international family. Follow me, I will take you there."  Our friends had a police escort out of town and directly to our front door that day.

Our son is now 42 years old, married to a physician and has a delightful daughter who is in her first year of college at Mt. Holyoke College in MA.
He is a highschool counselor in Maryland.

Our daughter was 9 years old when she came to America. She is a mom of two children and lives in Wisconsin.

Holidays at our home are a celebration of cultures and we have a full house as they all come "home" every Christmas.

In addition to those two children, we had several foster children over the years as well. These days, it is cats and dogs that fill our days and keep us busy.

Lynda
Lynda Lambert
104 River Road
Ellwood City, PA 16117

724 758 4979

My Blog:  http://www.walkingbyinnervision.blogspot.com
My Website:  http://lyndalambert.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jacobson, Shawn D" <Shawn.D.Jacobson at hud.gov>
To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 10:54 AM
Subject: Re: [stylist] The Monkey in the Zoo: creative writing prompt

> Barbara
>
> My experience adopting a daughter in China was very similar.  There
> were three of us western couples with Chinese babies.  We were always
> the center of attention.
>
> Shawn
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Barbara
> Hammel
> Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 11:00 PM
> To: stylist at nfbnet.org
> Subject: [stylist] The Monkey in the Zoo: creative writing prompt
>
> Okay, I know this is short, but is this sort of what this is supposed
> to look like?
>
>  THE MONKEY IN THE ZOO
>
>  by Barbara Hammel
>
>
>
> I knew that visiting another country would be interesting, but I never
> imagined the people would find me so fascinating. Or was it the twin boys?
> Or the sighted man with a blind woman and a sighted woman and the
> blind twin boys?
>
>
>
> By this time we'd acquired one stroller and my husband was pushing
> that but I wanted a break from carrying the other in a backpack.
>
>
>
> We got into the cage--I mean stopped at a bench--to take a rest.
> Before we knew it, we were surrounded by silent onlookers who, along
> with everyone else we met on that trip, kept giving my husband the
> thumbs-up.  (Was it the two blind boys are the two women or all of us
> and our purpose that made them do this.)
>
>
>
> It took me back to my days at the Braille School when schoolchildren
> would take tours. (It is the school Mary Ingalls attended, after all.)
> We would always have to demonstrate how to write their names in
> Braille so a hundred--or maybe just seven or eight--would gather
> around the desk and not just stand there, but lean over me and the desk and the Braillewriter.
>
>
>
> Now this happened to us everywhere we went in China. (I often wonder
> if that article the journalist was doing ever got published?)
>
> I guess we were a human interest story since we were adopting boys, a
> rarity in that country, and I'm blind. I just wonder what they thought
> about us, and I wonder how they thought each of us fit in the picture.
>
>
>
> Never mind, after all. We were just monkeys in the zoo, odd sorts of
> beings because our eyes don't see and those two sighted people were
> just our
>
> handlers.
>
>
>
> Barbara
>
>
>
> Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. -- Carl Sandburg
> _______________________________________________
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