happy holidays!

I hope that wherever you may be, you feel safe, warm, and loved.  Best wishes for a great new year, and thanks for helping make mine so particularly meaningful.

oil country

i spent today wandering around doha, mainly in the "city center" mall (yeah, that's what it's called, and it has at least 3 adidas stores and 3 burger kings), and corniche, the pedestrian park area near the water. it was largely uneventful, except for the shock of seeing everybody in headscarves. i kept a vote in the mall for all of 5 minutes, and about 75% of the women had them, though people dressed in totally western, revealing clothing were present as well. what surprised me is that the headscarves that covered only the hair i barely noticed, but i was instinctively (and not rationally) a little frightened by the complete burkas, that leave just a slit for the eyes. i'm not sure why that is: 1) has the image propaganda gone to my head? emily moxley, a george w. bush success story... 2) am i more disturbed by the more that's covered, because for me it's symbolic of greater oppression?, or 3) does it just remind me of every hollywood mugger/murderer/thief that pulls on a ski mask to commit the crime? i tried to figure this one out, and i'm really just not sure... but after only a few hours in qatar, it's no longer strange to me to see women in burkas sipping out of a christmas-themed starbucks cup. tomorrow i go on a 4x4 trip in the desert dunes, and then continue on to england to be with the family for C*.

qatar!

I made it out of China alive!  The last few days were spent in Shanghai (I have never seen so many bulk candy stores) and an afternoon in Suzhou (famous for their gardens).  I really liked Shanghai for a somewhat inexplicable reason.  I felt less "on-edge" there, probably partially a result of the fact that it's a much more western city than anywhere else I've been in China.

I'm now in Qatar for 36 hours or so.  I was kindly warmed up to the "over-friendliness" of the men by my seat-mate on the plane.  He was from Jordan, probably 45, in China on vacation.  About a third of the way through the trip he started putting his hand on my back when I put my head on the seat tray to fall asleep.  That was weird.  He also suggested that we "see each other gain, which is easier, in Jordan or in the United States?"  I completely ignored that ridiculous question.

At customs in Doha I was grilled about CDs/DVDs, which I initially denied but then admitted having a few that I'd gotten from friends.  But then they just let me go through without asking to see them.  It was intimidating, and strange, at the same time.  I got in a taxi.  And the taxi driver asked me if I was married.  To which I answered, "Yes!  Yes I am married!  I will see my husband tomorrow."  Married for the next 36 hours...

hangzhou

I've spent the past day and a half in Hangzhou, a town about 2 to 3 hours from Shanghai, famous for it's West Lake, green tea, and silk.  I've had pretty bad weather, just drizzly, cold, and generally "winter" weather which isn't ideal for a town that's known for it's cruise around the lake and through the tea plantations.  Don't worry, I did those things anyway, and the (still) fall colors on the trees were beautiful.  Probably not as beautiful though as they would have been if the sun had been out.  In general, the town was nice, but nothing to write home about.  The only notable thing really was that they seem to have more (secular) Christmas cheer than even the U.S.  Every blasted restaurant seems to require that it's employees wear santa hats.  Which is hilarious.  Traditional Chinese costume below, santa hat up top.  It's like the full-body mullet.

yangshuo

I spent the last two days in Yangshuo.  Amazing place.  And just what I needed.  I loved biking through the rice fields amidst beautiful scenery, and staying in a family-run hostel that treated me like a family member as well.  I will put up my pictures eventually, but they really don't do the town justice, because 1) I lack a pollution filter (yes, even the outdoor cities of "only" 400,000 in China have pollution.  trivia: China has 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities.  and they're mostly places you haven't heard of; if i recall correctly, beijing, shanghai, etc don't even make the list.), but really they don't do it justice because 2) to appreciate a place like yangshuo, you really have to be there and feel the atmosphere, hear the silence except for the occasional hum of a passing motorbiker, and soak in the quiet.  i felt the same way about the great wall and the swiss alps, for what it's worth.  it's a rare place in china, indeed, where you can get away from the noise pollution.

 

the typical thing to do in the area is to take an 8 hour boat ride down the li river from guilin (closest airport) to yangshuo.  however, the river's too low right now for the trip, which was actually not a disappointment to me at all.  i don't think you have to take the boat ride to appreciate the scenery, and that's been ratified by a few I've spoken with who've done it.  but i wanted to do something on the river, so i took a short local trip on a bamboo raft.  i shared it with a chinese man "david" in town for business from shanghai.  david was neatly, nicely dressed like any of our fathers would be, and he loved practicing his english with me.  i actually didn't mind his fatherly treatment of me or acting interested in the camera pics he had of his three year old son.

 

when we got on the boat, "david" asked me what the name of such a vessel was in english.  i shrugged and said "bamboo raft?  is there a special name in chinese?" to which he responded, "$%^&*.  in english, it means 'bamboo ferry.'" ... chinese, very literal language...  you'd know that of course by looking at any restaurant menu or the translation of any monument or building (one of my personal favorites is the "wall of accumulated elegance," a fantastically eroded sedimentary rock wall in the forbidden city).

"david" was able to do a decent job of translating what they have named some of the rock structures ("looks like a camel" - true, it did, "looks like a man" - umm, ok...).  At the beginning of the ride I paid for it with two 20-yuan bills, and the woman turned it over and showed me that the picture on the bill was exactly what i was looking at.  when i returned, she showed me the bill again, telling me what i had given her was counterfeit.  there must be a lot of counterfeit money in china.  everywhere i went in beijing, no matter what i was buying, they checked the bills for authenticity.  i managed to get through nearly three months in beijing without accidentally using anything fake.  a guy i met in yangshuo had been swindled out of 500 yuan by a taxi driver when he first landed in the country.  he had gone to an ATM, pulled out some money, and when he tried to pay the taxi driver, the driver just kept taking a bill, looking at it (evidently switching it with a fake 100 he had), and handing it back saying it was fake.  andy was amazed at the time he had received fake money from an ATM, until our hostel owner put it together for us that the taxi driver was switching the money with his quick hands for counterfeit bills.  later in the day when i bought some awesome handwoven shoes, i was chatting with the woman and asked her about the prevalence of fake money.  i guess all the shopkeepers down there can tell instantly by touching it.  i can tell the difference when i compare my fake 20 with a real one, but would never be able to tell the difference if i didn't have a benchmark bill.

 

anyway, "david" and i had no way of knowing that the 20 the woman claimed i gave her was actually the one i gave her, or if she had switched it with another one.  but i happily gave her another 20, and commented to "david" on our walk back that i didn't mind so much even if she was "not being a friend" ("friend" or "not friend" was the way david phrased "honest worker" or "criminal") because i recognized i was lucky and came from a rich country.  this led to a conversation about how in china the cities are so different from the rural areas.  for perspective, stuart tells me the average rural chinese person makes about 200 yuan per month ($27).  david began speaking about his extremely poor hometown in rural anhui province.  i asked him more about his hometown and his family, and it came out that his older brother worked for a building company.  i was fearful he meant one of the miserably cold, poor construction workers that live on-site in pseudo-tent structures that i saw every step of every day in beijing, but identifying with david and the way i pictured his life based on his appearance and the way he described his job, i was hopeful that he meant he was a manager or office worker of some sort.  but then i asked about his sister, and he said she was 25 (despite all appearances, my age ;)) and worked in a clothes factory.  he said she "sews clothes."  at that point i thought he could only mean she worked in a sweatshop, and so i fearfully asked, "oh.  it is a very very hard job then?" "yes"  "many long hours?" "yes, many long hours."  it was heartwrenching to realize the background david must have come from, and that he was perhaps the chosen child that was sent to college to go earn money for the family.  now granted, i'm making that last part up about being the chosen child, but it was hard for me to hear how someone i identified so much with was actually so totally different and had a family that lived in miserable conditions.  the night before at dinner i had talked with some people about how anything that necessitates labor in china is dirt cheap, because labor is practically free.  they had said that westerners don't care about the sweatshops and they only care about getting goods for the lowest price possible.  i told them i wasn't sure i agreed.  while that may in the end be true, to begin with in our heads the low price isn't linked with the exploitation of the chinese workforce.  when i see a shirt that's cheap, i don't think about it being cheap because the people that made it are getting paid less than a dollar a day.  it may be that we'd still decide to buy the shirt even if we were thinking about what made it so cheap, but at least at present the only thing that can be corroborated is that the image/reality has not been branded into our minds.  i'm not sure how that exploitation can be fixed (wait, didn't marx have some ideas about that? ;)), but obviously first the two have to actually be linked in our heads.

 

that night i asked the hostel owner if i could cook with the family.  we had a great time cooking the 10 or so dishes together, and i got to see how to make some of the delicious chinese food they'd served us the night before.  a highlight was the sweet and sour chicken (housemates, you can look forward to the fire alarm going off when i attempt to fry the chicken for it upon return, as i've never successfully fried anything i don't think...).  while i was helping them i walked out the kitchen door to the back where a few family members were, and saw a fully membered but defeathered bloody chicken lying on the ground.  they looked at me, and must've assumed that i was horrified, because they said, "not for you, for us to eat!"  (little did they know i have the food standards of a cockroach and would've sat right down and eaten it with them.)  after returning to cooking, i saw them chop up the chicken, bone, beak, and all, and put it into a pot for some homemade hot pot (they had cabbage, radish, and bone with skimpy chicken for their hot pot).  the grandfather came in later and took out the beak to eat.  i was shocked not by the chicken, but that the quality of the food that i was served as a guest was so far superior to what they ate themselves.  especially because the night before we hadn't even finished half of what they served us, and then the mother just lopped all the leftovers into one soupy mess, rather than clearing the serving plates to the other room so that they could finish it off.

i popped for the taxi ride back to the airport with my 3 suitcases for my flight to hangzhou, and as the plane crested the smog layer i was greeted with a beautiful blue sky.  i had an amazing time in yangshuo, but it definitely confronted me with the two major things that concern me about china: it's total disregard for the environment and the rural poor.

yin and yang

Chinese culture emphasizes balancing forces, yin and yang if you will.
The hot pot restaurant that was near me gives you ice cream at the
end to balance the hot of the food you prepare at the table in the
boiling water. Yangshuo must be the yin to Beijing's yang for me. It
is the ice cream dessert after a long meal you cooked yourself.

Beijing inside all day; Yangshuo outside all day
Beijing horrified by how many hours the MSRA interns work; Yangshuo
horrified by the accident aftermath I saw, with fatalities.
Seriously, horrifying. I couldn't figure out why no one was hovering
over the man lying on the street and trying to help him when there had
clearly been an accident. Then, I knew. It was chilling.
In Beijing it takes me as long to get to the area of the city where we
played trivia as it takes to get from central Beijing to the next town
of 10 million plus. Yangshuo, biking city.
Beijing, mountains of recycling in carts pulled by bikers, written
about by American bloggers. Yangshuo, mounds of rock structures,
written about by Chinese poets. (can only be described in
pictures...check out google images of Guilin.)
Beijing, car taxis. Yangshuo, motorcycle taxis. And evidently the
horrifying incident wasn't horrible enough because I like the wind in
my ears :(.
Beijing, corporate ladder climbing. Yangshuo, rock climbing.
Beijing, hotel that makes me change rooms in the middle of the night.
Yangshuo, hostel that picks me up from the bus station and feeds me
delicious food.
Beijing river of people, Yangshuo Li River.
Beijing signature dish: Peking duck. Yangshuo: beer fish.
Beijing, carcasses carried on the road. Yangshuo, live squawking
ducks and roosters carried upside down by their legs.
Beijing, I could not speak the Chinese. Yangshuo, I still cannot
speak the Chinese.

last day

Well today was my last day at MSRA.  I spent most of it trying to sort through a bureaucratic nightmare complicated with a language barrier.  But then Lu Min and I celebrated the end of the nightmare with some KFC, which there are a lot of here.  It actually seems almost more Chinese than American to me at this point; they certainly have about 5x the density here.  But the KFC here doesn't have biscuits, which is, to quote Lu Min "a pity."

I'm off to travel for the week.  My itinerary takes me roughly to Guilin/Yangshuo (beautiful/majestic rock structures http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=guilin&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi), then up to Hangzhou (West Lake), then Suzhou (nice gardens) and finally Shanghai (heard of it?) before I exit the country.  I am overly excited about what will actually turn out to be my last Chinese experience: the magnetic, elevated train (Maglev) from downtown Shanghai to the airport, reaching speeds of something like 450 km/hr.  I am least excited about carrying a life's worth of stuff and the trip of a tourist's worth of junk around the world.

Things I will not miss about Beijing include the inefficiency, blood tofu, and trying to do anything at rush hour, on a holiday or weekend, or something that involves walking on to property owned by the Bank of China.  I will definitely miss my $1 noodle place next to work, the kindness of the Chinese, and the research support and advice I received at Microsoft.

Brooks article

Very interesting article about the China's work-hard mentality and growing role in the international scene: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04brooks.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

 

I have lots of thoughts about this that I started to put into a blog entry, but feel I can't post at the present time.  I will share in due time.

internet blocking

Why the BBC site is blocked in China: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1285915.stm

(Also, anybody that recognizes Taiwan as an independent nation doesn't have an embassy in China.)

Why Wikipedia is blocked in China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong

I'm probably being tracked for having searched that term. There was an American women's group in Shanghai, that mainly has coffee hours, etc, but there must've been a questionable email on the group list somewhere that got picked up because people showed up at the last meeting and disbanded the coffee hour.

Why Blogspot is blocked in China: I'm sure there are many. Pick your poison.

I'm interested to see how dissidence is handled at the Olympics.

yeah, ummm

Winslow and Brent point out that I made an error in believing that the gender gap was due to the families continuing to have children until they have a son. That still results in equal gender populations.... So yeah, Iltis would not be very proud, but since then I've actually bothered to work out the probabilistic likelihood of each in an exhaustive and theoretic way. I can send you the proof if you want ;). Funny thing is, I remember having the same reaction that that didn't explain it, but enough people reiterated it when I asked I stopped thinking and just started restating. But anyway, there's something much more sinister about the gender divide. Also a lesson that you can't believe everything that a Chinese citizen says about China, as I've noted on occasions when : people convinced me to go to Tiananmen Square on National Day (extreme crowds/could not move/etc), people told me I'd be able to upgrade to a bed on my train from Xi'an (yeah, no...), people told me the inhabitants of Xinjiang province (self-governing) could and have killed people in China and cannot be punished...

China and the gender divide

I found out a little while ago that the ratio of men to women in China as 120:100. Ouch. This happens because if a family has a son first, they stop having children, but if they have a daughter, they will keep having children (and pay for them, or sometimes there are legal exceptions where you can have more than one child if the first is a girl) until they have a son. The guy that sits next to me laughs and tells me how he has two older sisters, but, note, "no younger siblings..." I mentioned that I thought this would change soon, but the other interns disagreed with me, citing the infinite population of rural Chinese.

So anyway, in many ways this makes girls more precious. Or, at least, finding a girlfriend, downright impossible. This leads to situations like the following:
1. A LOT of prostitution. At least one prostitute, and I think several, work my hotel. She left cards under my door when I was in a single room. Now, she calls up, and usually hangs up the phone when a female voice answers. The other night though, she asked me if I wanted a "mah-sahhh-gee" - a meaningful and intentional mispronounciation of massage. Also, she will come knock lightly on the doors one by one late at night. Don't answer that late-night knock. Anyway, I've heard the theory that one of the reasons it is so big in an unexpected place like China is because it's in high demand for a society with so few women. Men just can't go around unsatisfied all the time. I'm not sure that can be totally accurate, but interesting nonetheless...
2. I heard last night about a woman who had planned her wedding and honeymoon, in their entirety, for next year. Doesn't have a boyfriend. She'll go find him now. I guess that she has some time since all of the wedding plans are straight. Compare this to the U.S., where a girl won't buy a dress for the prom before she has a date. Wow.

I think the women in China have a lot of implicit power in their relationships because of this. Much more needy, demanding, and princess-like. But that's only based on some anecdotal evidence...

Chinese Transportation Etiquette: 10 Commandments

1. Don't leave more than two inches of space between you and those immediately in front of you and behind you. Failure to obey this commandment results in immediate forfeiture of spot in line. (and if you're in a line at a grocery store, rather than getting train/etc tickets, you can slowly and passive aggressively push the cart of person in front you with your own cart as they take money out of their wallet and receive change to finish the transaction. if you time this right, your cart will be perfectly positioned and theirs totally out of the way just as they slip their change back into their wallet and the cashier turns back to ring up your own groceries, saving you 5 seconds.)
2. Don't allow people to exit a subway car or elevator before you attempt to board. Two streams of traffic going in opposite directions at a door is desirable, and slows everyone down.
3. Don't get off of a train or elevator, no matter how crowded, to create space for someone else attempting to de-board. Doing this gives the person getting off the liberty to shove and push everyone in their way as they see if they can get out before the doors close. Sometimes they don't get out in time, which is perfectly amusing, unless it's you.
4. Don't wait until your light turns green before crossing the street. This allows you to progressively cross the street in stages. First, you cross the right hand turn lane. You can stand in the middle of this lane. Then you cross the traffic going in one direction, getting to the median. Finally, you can cross the traffic going the other direction. Piecewise-street-crossing is the best way to get where you're going.
5. Do not give up an open seat. In fact, you should move as quickly as possible, as an open seat shouldn't be open for more than 0.5 seconds. Also, if the seat opens up, say, on the right of you, and your friend is standing to your left, you should move over to the right seat, blocking others from getting the seat you're vacating, and leaving it open to your friend on your left. If there are old people on the train, it doesn't matter. Tough cookies.
6. You can always find more room for more people on the train.
7. If the transit workers in the subway station make you line up to wait for the train, this line means absolutely zero when the train pulls in. Push. Shove. GET ON THAT TRAIN.
8. If a train is pulling into the station as you walk up or down the steps to the platform, don't run for the train. Continue at the same pace, blocking everyone behind you.
9. Your subway "transfer" may or may not involve walking out of one station, outside, around the block, through cattle grates, inside, down to one platform, through that platform, and finally to your destination platform.
10. You can always get out of the bus/subway/rat race and take a taxi for $1.25.

The virtues of chinese line and transportation etiquette: violence in entering and exiting, selfishness in taking seats, shameless, stupid bravery in crossing streets, stoicism in tolerating the conditions.

Chinese birthdays

Today is Lu Min's birthday. Or so I thought. He then explained to me, that he was born on November 26 of the solar calendar in 1985. But in the lunar calendar it was October 15, 1985. So actually his birthday was October 15, but that this year October 15 of the lunar calendar is November 24 of the solar calendar. Or something like that. Jim and I tried to explain to him that the concept of a "year" was intrinsically solar, so lunar birthdays didn't make sense. I don't think he got it. But anyway, leave it to the Chinese to complicate yearly birthdays. They probably pick one of the like 5 different days it could be, based on different sequences of applying solar/lunar calendars, on which date has "lucky numbers," the way they pick their phone numbers based on lucky numbers (which results in numbers with 8's being expensive and ones with 4's being cheap). This lucky number crap also probably explains the quick-moving line at the Chinese embassy in LA, which I wrote about in August. I think people just took every 10th number or so, so that they got one with an "8" in it. Jen also experienced this same thing when she went to get her VISA in DC; she accidently took two numbers (a 49 and a 50) and a guy mentioned to her that it was good she took two to get the luckier number. Ridiculous.

An American in Beijing

Today's first guest blog, brought to you by Jen Albinson:

 

"You know you're in Beijing when you're on your fourth computer (the first three being nonfunctional), the gamer in the corner is hawking huge loogies on the floor, and you can't see across the street because of pollution."  -Emily Kay.

 

So, as Emily and I awoke this morning, well-rested (despite the hotel prostitute's two attempts to rouse us for some "mah-saw-gee" - one on phone, one at door), we decided that today was the day to blog.  We have had an epic week and have many things to share. 

 

It being the American week to celebrate families and friends over beheaded fowl carcasses, we brought Thanksgiving to Beijing.  While in DC, I loaded up on non-perishables.  Courtney sent two cans of pumpkin, and Safeway provided a pie crust, cranberry sauce, yams, dried cranberries, stuffing mix, and marshmallows.  Our friend Nandi, who lives in Beijing, offered his kitchen, and we invited our friends Hardy, Stuart, and Jim to join us.  Traditional Thanksgiving, right? 

 

We decided to complete the American Thanksgiving experience by buying our final groceries at Wal-Mart: Zhichun Lu.  They had the traditional greeters at the door, however they said more "ni hao" than "how'r ya doin'?"  Our quest for baking soda proved somewhat elusive.  We called on all the Chinese speakers we knew for help translating, and ended up purchasing yeast and two mysterious white powder substances shelved close to the yeast.  Our fingers were crossed that one of these powders would cause the pumpkin bread to rise.  We passed on the dragon fruit, but did nod to the local cuisine by purchasing some extremely long string beans.  

 

Our efforts at procuring baking soda, flour, and sugar, alas, went to waste.  When we arrived at Nandi's, we quickly learned that he does not have an oven (Nandi: "Yeah, I guess when I think about Thanksgiving, I DO imagine stuff coming out of the oven.")  He also lacked a can opener.  Let's now walk you through our planned menu:

 

Stuffing (350 [177 in Celsius, Emily would add] degree oven)

Sweet potato marshmallow casserole (400 degree oven, 2 cans)

Pumpkin pie (425 degree oven, 3 cans)

Pumpkin bread (350 degree oven, 2 cans)

Cranberry sauce (2 cans)

Green beans

Persimmons picked up at the Great Wall (very autumnal)

 

We had 4 guests arriving in 2 hours, and we were looking at a meal of green beans and persimmons.  We therefore opened a bottle of wine.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! 

 

Just kidding.  Through the magic of the internet, we determined how to cook almost the entire meal stovetop, in woks.  Yes, we made a no-bake pumpkin pie in a wok with a soup spoon.  We chopped the vegetables on an extra kitchen floor tile.  Nandi generously went to the grocery store in search of a can opener and some new ingredients necessary for a stovetop Thanksgiving.  It all ended up delicious, save the sweet potato marshmallow casserole -- which can't be eaten with chopsticks anyway.  Despite Emily's attempts to inspire the building of a mud oven, we had to let go of the pumpkin bread dream. 

 

Things we are thankful for:

 

1.  Fish.  Namely: the massive one in the transparent shopping bag on the subway, and the one that jumped out of its tank and flopped onto the floor under my chair while I was eating an otherwise delicious lunch.

 

2.  Masseuses that don't understand no, shaking heads, gesticulations of "no/stop."  While Emily and I enjoyed a luxurious couples massage, the masseuse conveyed that he was willing to refill our tea and plate of raisins.  Despite our best gestures, shaking of heads, and limited Chinglish, we were somehow unable to convey "no" to the man.  More tea and raisins arrived immediately.  Being unable to communicate "no": an all new low.

 

3.  Crowded subway trains.  I was waiting for Emily when I received the following text.  "10 minutes late, couldn't get off train."  Apparently the car was so crowded that she physically could not get off at her stop.  She claims she pushed and shoved with the best of them.   

 

4.  Chinglish.  Doesn't someone know someone who speaks a little English?  Apparently not.  A highlight includes: "Lama beat it," referring to the acts of the Holy Ones at the Buddhist temple.

 

5.  Cheap DVDs.  84 of them.

 

6.  Construction.  You know how occasionally there's road work going on outside of your apartment and you want to scream?  That's the constant state of affairs here.  Apparently Olympics + Communist Party = nonstop construction.  Emily's hotel is literally under construction while simultaneously hosting guests.  The Lonely Planet sent us on a hutong tour -- and instead of wandering through quaint Beijing neighborhoods, we encountered a construction sandstorm.  We also picked out a vegetarian restaurant in Beijing, known for it's incredible fake meats.  We arrived to find a pile of rubble.  Meiyo.

 

7.  Saving face.  In a shame culture, when Emily brings her friend to Microsoft after hours to check email, rather than being individually scolded, an email gets sent out to the entire firm the next day reminding employees that interns are not allowed to have guests and to "be professional."  Oops!

 

I'm going to sign off, since the man hawking loogies is really taking it to a new level.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  I'm thankful for my friends.

 

Love, Jen

fashion

i forgot to post this earlier, and was reminded of it when i stopped to get some froyo yesterday.  that is, the mcdonald's workers in beijing wear the coolest jeans ever, with the golden arches boldly emblazoned on each back pocket.  if a rap artist doesn't pick this up for a music video within the next year, i will be sorely disappointed.  i mentioned these to ben last weekend (by the way, mongolia doesn't have mcdonald's, or any other american chain...amazing...mongolia...the final frontier), and he told me that i should get myself a pair.  we discussed logistics, and while at first i thought it would be way too embarrassing to go in there with somebody and ask for a pair of jeans, we soon realized that me walking in there, pantomiming taking off my pants, and then pulling a 100-yuan bill out of my wallet was a horrible idea.  no, ben thinks i should go in there with one of my mandarin speakers and offer to trade pants (and a cash bonus) for one of the employee's jeans.  we'll see if that happens.

 

by the way the mcdonald's in beijing sells corn, and green bean pie.

mongolia

In China there seems to be very little violent crime. A fair amount of pickpocketing, etc, but not so much of the other stuff. So I headed to Mongolia this past weekend for some raping and pillaging as I didn't want my carnal instincts to go totally dull. I took Air Pillage from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar where Ben picked me up from the airport, and upon seeing him I instantly became jealous of his $15 super warm coat. But actually the weekend was much less cold and drafty than I expected. The people in Mongolia are still people and still require respite from the cold, so it was really ok. As long as I had long underwear on...

The first day we checked out some stuff in UB, and it immediately became apparent to me how much more Soviet than Chinese the city is. The language, the traditional dress, the big square in the middle of the city...all very Soviet...I guess it's just that the people appear more Chinese than Russian that made me expect more of a Chinese city. Anyway, we checked out the statue of the (evidently enormously obese) Chinggis Khaan. I recited the 26-page Wikipedia article I'd read on the man, nay legend, on the plane to Ben and informed him that 0.5% of men worldwide are related to Genghis the gang banger, and about 8% of Asian males. We went to a Buddhist temple, which was cool because I'd actually never been to a Buddhist temple before. Ben bought a trance khoomi CD (khoomi is throat singing, and doesn't sound a bit like it's coming out of a human), and it was awesome to hear Happy Birthday with a khoomi singer set to a trance beat. I love old meets new. At the last minute we heard about a traditional Mongolian instruments orchestra concert from one of Ben's friends. The concert was 100% Mongolian instruments, so mainly the horse-head fiddle and then other instruments I can't name. There was a khoomi singer and other soloists as well. They were all dressed in traditional clothing, which I would call "costumes" but Ben says they wear it on a regular basis. Check out the picture.

The next day we headed out to the country, driving through the ger districts of UB. 60% of the city population lives in gers, and kindly their coal heating produces a nice layer of smog over the city, which, let's be honest, doesn't compare to Beijing's (at least Beijing on a bad day). We kept going out to Terelj National Park, and were picked up by a herder driving an ox cart. We forded the river (never caulk the wagon), Ben got cholera, and now when you pass the spot in future games there's an RIP Ben headstone. We reached the herder's ger, and went in for tea. The Mongolians are huge fans of milk tea, just a combination of regular tea with some milk and (usually) salt. It was great the first time I had it. But after my 20th bowl (every family we went to see insisted on us having some...they're big on hospitality, by which I mean, force-feeding), I was really sick of it. I also think that the milk tea may have given me food poisoning that appeared at 10 PM the night I was leaving. That country milk was definitely not pasteurized (also unhomogenized, raw, in a recylable container)... ;)

The travel between ger/herder families was again via ox cart, which was great because travelling so slowly (~3 mi/hr) you can really absorb the silence and the beauty around you. Also, it was important to notice that the gers were, practically speaking, extremely far apart, which you wouldn't have noticed had you zipped in a car between them. We arrived at the next ger family, who had a very good looking son, what can I say, I have it for men in deels. The father, appropriately known as Bold (who knows how you spell that in Mongolian), was famous in the area for how much he could eat. The first family told me "He can eat 40 buuz! (dumplings)." Actually, it was communicated as flashing 10 fingers four times, pointing to a buuz, and telling Ben in Mongolian, "the next herder." We had some tea, then some more tea, then we helped milk the cow, blah blah, had dinner, and then played ankle bones, which is a game using pig ankle bones as dice, which made me feel like a fortune teller as we played it around a candle in a hut sitting on the floor.

The next day we woke up to the cow I had dubbed "Maggie" the night before as an ex-cow. I guess there was a reason she was being kept in the fenced area around the ger. Watching her being taken apart was somewhat horrifying. Also horrifying was watching them dismember her not only without gloves (and the son cut his hands on a rib at one point, giving him all the diseases Maggie had), but just wearing the same old deel they wear for everything else. Awesome.

We did some archery, went to another ger (oh, did I mention they insulate their barns and gers with cow poop?), ate some horse meat (didn't know it was horse meat at the time, thought it was beef) and then headed to a nice lodge where we lived in luxury for an evening and the next morning. We also rode horses the next morning, which was frustrating because the horses wouldn't listen to us. Headed back to UB, got dinner with Kyle Jaros, was sick all night from food poisoning, flew back to Beijing. Ben said being sick was retribution for my trip to Mongolia being too "easy." Evidently the cold was not as bad as it normally is. But don't worry, it was enough for a temperature-sensitive poser Californian like me.

So Mongolia was definitely one of the most different places I've been. It really was like being in a different era. One without electricity (though sometimes with cell phones that can be charged via a battery pack), where three generations live in a single room, and where traditional dress is not synonymous with out-of-the-ordinary.

Halloween

Today being Halloween, a few co-workers have been asking a little about the American holiday. I try to explain to them that it's not really a holiday, we still have work, and it's really just an excuse for little kids to get candy (after all, every little kid's motto/driving principle is: getcandygetcandygetcandygetcandy) and young adults to party. Jim kindly showed them a few pictures of Halloween from Isla Vista yesterday at work, while I desperately tried to tell them, "America isn't all like that!" In the spirit of IV, I was thinking I could best explain the spirit for young adults by showing up today in costume, by which of course as a girl I could only mean my underwear. And then I would just explain to Microsoft that I was celebrating my American heritage, and that this was important to me. Actually, I wouldn't have to explain anything, because they would just think to themselves, "Oh, it must be an American thing." In the end, I decided to reverse trick or treat them after lunch instead.

However, some things the Chinese have decided it is easier to just let me get away with:

1) I think I went to the gym at 7 AM for a few days when the opening time had been switched to 10 AM. By the way, what business changes it's opening time by three hours? I mean, what's going on here? It's not a new business, and even if it was, isn't initially being off by three hours a lot? You gotta have a little more accuracy than that...

2) Getting in cabs when I'm within a few blocks of where I'm going. But actually I guess they don't always let me get away with this. In fact, I'm keeping a running tally of the number of times they somewhat yell at me when I get in the cab and point in the direction of what I'm looking for. I'm up to 2. For the record, I always know that I'm extremely close. I like to walk places and get lost, because it's a great way to see the city and explore. I don't feel like I see it the same way from a cab. But eventually I decide I actually want to get where I'm going, and to me it's worth the $1.25 for them to just drop me off at the front door, so that I don't have to re-orient myself and find the place, and most importantly, bother a Chinese person and force them to try to speak English and point me in the right direction. Evidently to those two cabbies it was not worth the $1.25. Which, by the way, doesn't make sense. Shouldn't you want to get paid for doing practically nothing?

3) Putting MSG on my oatmeal.

4) Going to the bulk bins at the grocery store, and buying 12.5 cents worth of something. One time, I didn't even have enough in the bag. It was too light for the scale, and the person couldn't figure out what was going wrong and why the scale was beeping at her when she tried to print the price label. In China I have never seen people get so much bulk at one time. We're talking 10 gallon-sized bags worth of snacks and candy. At first I'm not sure where it all goes...but then I remember my "hike" up Xiang Shan, that they've had to institute a one-child policy, and the fact that they are able to manually tag their web. Anyway, they must think I'm strange to get so little, but they never say anything.

massages, preparations, etc

My bed in the hotel is giving me premature, makes-you-feel-like-a-decrepit-old-woman, backpain.  So yesterday Jim and I went to get a massage, you know, the 2-hour, $9 kind.  And yes, that's even with the exchange rate sinking faster than an elephant in quicksand, but not as funny.  My masseuse could not have been more than 14 years old, and weighed maybe 0.85 nelson reveley's.  A shining moment was when Jim's masseuse leaned over and hacked a big one into a trashcan.  I wonder if China is the only place where hacking phlegm out of your throat is acceptable no matter what the circumstance.  Meals, formal occasions, massages...

 

Also, I've been making plans to go to see Ben Shell in Mongolia.  And I can't even tell you how worried I am about freezing to death.  I went and bought long underwear yesterday, even though we all know, long underwear is just plain ridiculous.  I'm going to land in Mongolia in full Arctic trekwear.  And then Ben can roll me back to his apartment/Mongolian ger where I will sit next to a heat source, not move, and not see any of Mongolia.

good news!

That "salt" that I bought to put on my oatmeal the first week...not actually salt.  I mean, what else would you expect that's a clear, grainy compound under the sign in the grocery store that says "#$%^&* / Salt & Sugar"?  Evidently...MSG.  I thought it tasted funny the first time I had it, and haven't put it on since, thinking it was some weird kind of Chinese salt that didn't go with oatmeal.  My friend "Chris" saw it today at my desk, and asked why I had it, and then looked at me all yao-ming-big-eyed when I said I liked it on my oatmeal.  So I started thinking about it and laughing hysterically to myself that it must not be what I thought it was, and asked my neighbor if it was salt.  When he laughed and said no, I made him look it up...  Anybody want some:

 

Headaches/migraines

Lethargy

Sleepiness

Anxiety

Panic attacks

Mental confusion/disorientation

Insomnia

Nausea/vomiting

Diarrhea

Stomach cramps

Irritable bowel syndrome

Bloating

Asthma attacks

Shortness of breath

Chest pain or tightness

Runny nose/sneezing

Extreme dryness of the mouth

Hives or rash

Palpitations

Flushing

Mouth lesions

with their oatmeal?

Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Maxim

"No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --

approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less."

 

But if you send me your phone number, I'll call you and you can tell me about it.  (I just bought a U.S. phone card.)  You can also post your number here and another one of my friends can meet you in a reststop on I-95.  It's a great opportunity.  Don't squander it.

The Great Wall

the peace sign...still cool in china....

And meet Lu Min, one of my favorite Chinese, and unfortunately not one of the ones that speaks the most English. Good thing I am fluent in Mandarin. (Also the guy you probably speak with if you call my office phone and I'm not there, and now you can picture the guy that tells you "Emily is not kere, she travel to Kong Kong.")

So yeah, I went to the Great Wall...it was awesome...and I'm copping out on writing about it. But it all reminded me of a great poem, which I shall oh-so-conveniently post for you here to take you back to fall schooldays and autumn leaves. If I were in high school I would most certainly explicate this poem with my Great Wall experience as a backdrop, but alas, I grew up, and I have to work. Maybe one of these days while something processes I will research, write, and post here my 5-paragraph thesis with funneling introduction that does just that. For now, Robert Frost (a slightly better writer anyway):

"Mending Wall"
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

this must be some kind of joke

(make sure to check out the slideshow...that fake fire extinguisher really had me fooled there)

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/world/asia/20japan.html?hp

 

but to relate this to china, the chinese friends i have spoken to will say without any reservation or qualification they don't like the japanese.  "no, i do not like the japanese.  they attack our country, and your america too!"  "japan is small, so they come to attack our china when they run out of resources."  they asked me how the u.s. gets along so well with england, and while i felt totally unqualified to speak for the nation, i told them that i thought it was just because we were such similar countries with similar values.  this didn't seem to ring true to them or explain it.  they couldn't understand how we had such good relations with a country that we "just" fought 200 years ago....  it was an odd question for me, but not so odd when i think about china's relationship with taiwan and japan.

Military Museum

This past Saturday I went to the Military Museum, a hilarious recommendation from Bob Williams.  I was in the mood for doing something that wasn't a "must-see" and I'd be doing later with friends but still something uniquely Chinese.  Military Museum it was.

 

Usually when I walk out of the subway station in a new place, there's a good 90 seconds of turning in circles and repeated re-orienting of my rape me rob me kill me map, before I give up and walk up to someone and point to a place on the map and give them a puzzled look as I shrug my shoulders.  This time, it was easy.  It was that ridiculously huge nice mansion building looming over everything within 15 miles.  I got my ticket (I'm a little surprised it's not free...I would expect them to want anybody and everybody to come.  This idea is supported by the fact that it is the only subway stop that also has it's English name on the map.  Yes, "Military Museum" is the subway stop...wouldn't want anyone to miss it.), and went inside.  Inside was a three-story tall statue of Mao.  In talking to my co-workers since, these statues are in a lot of places; every University, etc.  I said to Manni, "Yup, you guys really love Mao."  She responded, "We respect Mao."  Jim tells me he was reading an interesting book in Germany before he came here about the true autobiography of Mao that I'm going to have to check out when I get back.  Jim decided it wasn't a good book to bring to China.

 

The museum was five stories of propaganda, but it was exactly because of that that it was interesting.  (For what it's worth, this is the one place I've been in China that wasn't packed full of people.)  It had all sorts of artwork, sculptures (you have never seen such happy soldiers), and paraphenalia from different military campaigns, mainly the revolution obviously.  I was so glad I got to see the belts, buttons, and binoculars they used during March 9-12 of 1943.  Right.  Anyway, interesting notes: World War II = anti-Japanese War, also, China has never been the aggressor but always been attacked (I need to study the history of this), there were no atrocities committed by the communists during the revolution, also, they put interesting Asian sauce on hot sandwiches in the gift shop on the 3rd floor that is delicious.  Suffice it to say that when I walked out of the building into the large square surrounded by inspiring music that made me feel like I was walking in a movie, I was thoroughly convinced of the sanctity of the Communist Party and about registered for it on the way out the gate.  No but really, speaking of registering for party, evidently most people are still registered for it (one English teacher I talked to said his class was 70% registered, and while I was surprised others in the group were surprised that number wasn't higher), but it really doesn't mean much to be registered.  Talking to my colleague Lei Wu yesterday, it's really a necessary social/status step for obtaining jobs, etc.  Also, students in China have to take a test before they go to grad school in China, with three choice sections and three required sections: Chinese, Math, and poliltics.  They want to make sure that their most educated and elite agree with their policies.  Honestly, that's what my colleagues told me about why the politics section was required.

"hiking" in China

So I think I have a new thread for that New York Times series "China: Choking on Growth."

The "hike" that a group of us went on today was more like being shuttled through a sidewalk/stair chute at the going rate with a few trees on either side. Seriously, there was NO room. Your pace was pretty much dictated by the rest of the people walking. It was actually a really steep hike, so that rate was pretty slow. It was therefore also very loud. Lots of chattering. But the crowning moment came on the way down, when the shuttling stopped, and everybody was looking and pointing at a tree. I looked, hoping to see something interesting. But no. It was a SQUIRREL. The traffic was stopped FOR A SQUIRREL. Incredible! I wouldn't have even noticed that I hadn't seen a non-human creature that day (though I saw enough humans to fill my yearly creature quota), but this certainly brought that point to light. No animals. Anywhere.

I was laughing hysterically and making comments to Jim. Then I started to tell them that "Squirrels are very common in the United States. Actually, we consider them pests. When I was younger, we had so many squirrels in our backyard, that my dad used to catch them in a trap." Then they looked at me big-eyed and, I am not making this up, said, "and then you ate them!!!!" to which I responded, "No, no, in fact in the U.S. we only really eat pigs, cows, chickens, and fish. No, we didn't eat the squirrels. My dad would drive it far away out into the country and let it go." "Ohhhh." We then returned to things we could symmetrically relate to, like why the hell do so many Chinese wear suits on overnight trains, on hikes, other entirely inappropriate places, etc. (The answer, evidently, is that these crackpots think they look good in suits, and don't care about getting them dirty. Baffling to the group, although more familiar to the Chinese.)

Another random note: I was discussing Baidu, the Chinese Google/extensively used search engine, with my friend Manni. It works much better for Chinese characters, so they use it to search the Chinese web. She told me that it involves a lot of manually-created tags for the different pages, and that's why it works so well. As someone that works in computer vision, and right now specifically automatic tagging, I was telling her how insustainable that is. I was also expressing surprise that the manual tags could be that extensive, to which she replied, "Yes, but this is China. There are so many people, so manual tagging is easy." I looked around at the river-of-people hiking trail, and understood.

By the way the picture of me and Manni Duan doing the peace sign at the pagoda on top of the "mountain," absolutely surrounded by people, would make a great photo for the NYTimes piece.

beautiful, handsome people

Jim (my co-worker from UCSB who is now here) and I were invited to go on a hike with another Chinese intern. We thought we were just going on a walk. But she sent us an email describing how beautiful and handsome and smart and SINGLE the other boy and girl are that we are going hiking with.

We didn't realize we were actually getting set up. We're very excited for our outing with the "beautiful, handsome people."

who is this dude?

...i don't know, but he's awesome.

other awesome morning sightings in beijing:
1.  man doing tai chi every morning when i walk to work.  i really want to take a picture, but fear the awkwardness as i walk by him for the next 2.5 months if he catches me.
2.  the BIGGEST cucumber i have EVER seen.  seriously, this thing was like 10th birthday party watermelon size.  the seeds were the size of regular cucumbers.  ok that last part was an exaggeration.  i also thought i saw yao ming-size green onions , but jen informs me these are indeed just referred to as "leeks."
3.  a person on a bike pulling a cart the other day.  the cart was only partially covered.  and inside were a bunch of red, bleeding carcasses.  probably headed to my cafeteria for lunch.  i avoided the meat that day, opting for the stuffed veggie roll, egg drop soup, and corn.

is there anything better...

than getting gingersnaps in the mail?

Raft of the Medusa

As last week was technically a holiday in China (you wouldn't necessarily know it if you saw a snapshot of the intern lab at MSRA), I thought it would be foolish not to take the opportunity to visit something that would be a little harder to get to on a normal weekend.  I'd heard mixed reviews about Xi'an, a town in the interior of China with a really rich history, and most famous for the Terracotta Warriors ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_warriors ...if you're not accessing the web in China), but I was really excited about what I heard about it so I decided to go despite the mixed reviews.  My colleagues were a little worried about me going by myself (but that's because it seems like they NEVER do anything by themselves...it's interesting to see a country full of only-children...) but I like doing things by myself much of the time and figured I could handle it.  I took the overnight train Thursday night, arriving on Friday morning.  After getting to Xi'an, I went to buy my train ticket back to Beijing (in China you can't generally buy your ticket back at the same time as you buy your ticket...you usually have to wait to get to the place you're going, which is fine if you know people in the place you're going, as everybody else on this train inevitably did, as they can go to the destination train station and buy the ticket for you...).  At the ticket window I was met with disaster.  If I wanted even a seat, not even a bed, but a seat, I was going to have to wait until Tuesday night, arriving back in Beijing Wednesday morning, making me miss two days of work.  I grumbled, called up some people that knew the system, they spoke some Mandarin to the ticket agent and confirmed, and bought a standing room ticket.  Awesome.

 

I headed to find a room with some people from New Zealand.  We knew that we were getting screwed on the room, but didn't think the $4 we were getting screwed was worth the hassle, and put our stuff down.  We headed to see the Terracotta Warriors, which were an hour out of town, and were AWESOME.  It was pretty cool to see something that old and hear about the history of it all.  It started off with this 360-degree video which embarrassingly reminded me of 300, that helped you picture the time period and the emperor that created them all.  (This emperor unified China for the first time.)  Afterwards I headed out of the site amidst people trying to sell me mini-terracotta warriors, smashing them against each other "see?  will not break!" to show me how high quality they were.  I was SO hoping to see an Aladdin reenactment, "will not break...will not break....it broke."  Instead, when I laughed at them and walked away, they said, "I love you!" which was just as hysterical.  Some woman tried to sell me a pomegranate for 5 yuan, and I asked her if she realized that literally every 10 feet for the next 10 miles (not exaggerating) other people were selling the exact same thing for much less, but they use the metric system in China so she didn't understand.

 

After I got back I went to the Bell Tower (picture above, but the pic doesn't do anything but the traffic and the green taxis justice...it's quite beautiful), the symbol of the city, where I saw this really cool musical performance.  The musicians were all dressed in traditional clothes from the Ming dynasty era, and there was also this dancer that did some pretty cool stuff with two ornate fans.  I think they should get her some ribbons or balls or whatever and she'd do great in rhythmic gymnastics or one of those other Olympic pseudo-sports.

 

We went and got some dinner, which was soup with soggy bread but delicious, especially with the spices that graced my streetmeat and street eggs and Bob had informed me came from the area.  The New Zealanders were hot to go out, but I was seriously ill from the pollution in the city (WAY worse than Beijing) and lack of sleep from the night train.  It about killed me not to go out (I was really kicking myself after they came in at 4:30 AM, showed me pictures and told me stories from the night), but I knew that if I was *sick* and standing on a train for 12 hours the next day, well, that might prove to be less than pleasant.

 

The next day my routine involved a lot of prepping for the overnight ride.  I went and did homage to two religions in hopes that their leader would take me to a train seat, at the Big Goose Pagoda ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_goose_pagoda), which was awesome and makes me want to learn about Chinese architecture, and also the Great Mosque in the Muslim quarter of Xi'an.  I ate some delicious food from the Muslim quarter, got discriminated against at a random booth (when I countered her price she stared me down, pointed towards the door, and said "GO"...she really should just put up a sign that says "NO AMERICANS ALLOWED" and save us all some time), went to the Drum Tower and saw an awesome concert (similar to the one at the Bell Tower), and prepped some more for my train ride by buying dry socks (it was raining all day) and the smallest box of tissues I could find for my runny nose, which still had 16 different mini pouches of tissues.  Throughout the day I got asked for many pictures and was told over and over again "You are very beautiful," but what they really mean is "You have blonde hair," it's just that they don't know the words "have," "blonde," or "hair."

 

I got on the train and started trying to upgrade to a seat.  No dice.  The aisles were packed.  People piled on top of each other.  Body limbs everywhere.  It was seriously a scene out of Gericault's Raft of the Medusa .  I'm pretty sure there was some cannibalism going on.  I started playing snake on my phone, actually, I was playing rapid roll, but a girl I met in line came and found me 7 cars away, spoke some Mandarin magic to another passenger, and found someone I bought a scalped seat ticket off of.  It would have been worth pretty much any price, but it was a nice $12.50.  The guy also spoke some English, and we chatted a lot.  He was encouraging me to take pictures of all of the craziness because he knew this must be so foreign to me, but my camera was in my backpack that was above the seats, and I wouldn't have stood up for anything short of a live birth.

 

While all this was going on, I asked anyone that spoke a word of English how they got their ticket, because I figured there had to be a way to avoid this sort of situation despite what the MSRA engineers had told me.  It really seems like there isn't; actually, there is, but that solution is that you buy a plane ticket.  I suppose back in Beijing I could have bought a scalped ticket for the way back, but there's little guarantee that your ticket is real when you do that.  My friends say though that it was only because I travelled during the holiday that I had a problem.  Any other time....that ship would've never left the horizon....

 

Xi'an...liked it...Chinese trains during holidays...could be better.

i stand corrected

i took a jab at Paint in an earlier post (http://moxtrot.blogspot.com/2007/09/i-made-it.html)

that was before i'd seen this, a recreation of the mona lisa using paint (edition 3rd grade):

http://tv.mofile.com/cn/videoplay/fullscreennew.htm?QKGBST2I&undefined

"Superduper! Superduper! That's nice. Way to go! Neato..."

Paint, actually an amazing program.

random other note: I went to an indie music fest in Beijing yesterday, mainly to people watch and check out how an event like that would compare to that in the U.S. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs actually headline the event, but pretty much all of the other bands were Chinese, and I'll be gone when the yeah yeah yeahs play anyway. The big Chinese act at the festival is an anti-establishment band called Re-TROS, and I read this interesting article about how they have to get their lyrics approved ( http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12847366). Their solution is foolproof: just lie when translating the English lyrics for the government (..."hang the police" becomes "the police are laughing"...). Chinese indie rockers look a lot like American ones, just with spikier hair, if that mean's anything. Seriously, the same clothes, same attitude... I got to check out this one piano rock band with a female lead which was pretty good. Probably would have been better had I understood more words than the Mandarin "THANK YOU! thank you!" she offered at the end of each song, like any other music act you've ever seen. The music was good though. We left when an American hip hop act took over, as I've seen that before...

phone

i bought a phone -one of the nokia ones straight from 1999, but you know what that means, that means it has Snake...

international code (011 from the u.s.) + 86 + 1 + 371-763-1438

i think it's really cheap with skype (maybe 2.4 cents per minute, or something). if you're calling with skype, you can leave out the international code and the 86, just pick call china.

national day

Monday was National Day in China, and as a result this week is a holiday for the country. And it needs one after working all weekend! National Day means a big influx of visitors to Beijing, so everything's been really crowded. Two friends from the tea house/internet cafe took me to Tiananmen Square on Sunday night to see it covered in flowers and lights. It was absolutely beautiful. They had several large-scale displays of Christmas lights, decorating things such as a mini-Buddhist temple, etc. It really all did have a Christmas feel for me because there was a spirit of camaraderie and general happiness that went with the lights. Kids and adults alike were running around with kites and flags. When we went to take a picture with Chairman Mao, I asked Yao Qiang (from the tea house) if I could take a picture of the stern-looking soldier that was standing nearby. She started shouting something to him, and then got really upset and seemed really embarrassed and scared, and Zaqew (from the internet cafe) started sternly lecturing her a little bit. The soldier came up and starting yelling at her and then walked away. We then shrinked away from the area (but not before I could be asked for a picture with several groups of people)... I repeatedly asked Zaqew and Yao Qiang what she had said to set off the soldier, but they couldn't translate it and all she could explain was that she called him the wrong thing. I'm going to make them translate it though the next chance I get with a dictionary nearby....

Monday morning I went back to Tiananmen to see the flag raising (which happens every day, but is particularly special/big on National Day). There were evidently over 100,000 people. I had seen people camped out the night before at 8 PM. We showed up at 5:15 AM or so for the 6 AM flag raising. I didn't get to see much, my friend Chris just lifted me up towards the end, but it wasn't because we were late. It had been raining off and on and the square kept clearing out, so we actually had decent spots. I think all in all, maybe 50 out of 100,000 saw the entire thing and were able to hear the anthem. The place was so crowded that I literally could not lift up my arms. I felt like I could've fallen asleep standing up because I literally could not move. At one point, I lifted my chin up to look upwards at something; it ended up above somebody's shoulder, and I had to push them to get my head back in a normal place. Also, the Chinese apparently do not use fences. Instead they line up police/soldiers triple thick to guide you where you need to go. It was all quite crazy....

In other news via Anand, they're instituting a ban on sexually provocative noises in China, in preparation for a Communist meeting in a month or so (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20983975/). I don't really get why it has to be timed with the meeting, but hey, I won't ask questions, or make sexually provocative noises.

Update: Apparently Yao Qiang called the "soldier" a security guard, when he is actually from the Chinese Flag Guard, which is "very sacred." Acutally, Zaqew said that she called him "ensure public security," but that doesn't make any sense, so I think he means security guard (of some sort).

Friendship

The other day at the train station, having just arrived in Beijing, I thought I was seeing one of what must only be a very few displays of gay pride in the country when I saw two girls (probably 25 years old) holding hands. Since then, I have seen literally countless girls paired off, holding hands, for absolutely no reason. I guess holding hands is in fact a statement of True Friendship, you know, the kind that only middle school girls could truly understand. I just can't wait to see too wrinkled old ladies walking around giggling and holding hands, preferably carrying Lisa Frank Justin Timberlake folders.

Q94.5 FM

Every time an intern's phone rings and they don't have it on them, I am treated to a Chinese pop music lesson, as they all have a pop song that plays in its entirety for ringtones. It sounds like our pop music, except in Chinese. I think I just heard the Chinese Usher.

(In China, that's pronounced "Chuh" 94.5 FM)

work

Now that I'm finishing my first week at work, I feel a little bit like sharing what it's like here at MSRA (Microsoft Research Asia...don't think I ever explicitly mentioned that).  It's been really easy to get work done, because all of you are asleep while I'm at work, except for a few hours in the morning, when you're not asleep but you're not chained to your desk and checking email every 5 minutes either.  There's about 300 other interns here (my mom would want a count of the women; my best guess is that it's 20% female) and we're all in one of a few areas scattered about the office.  Intern factory.  Pretty much all Chinese, except for a guy I met from Luxembourg and then two Koreans.  It's always really quiet in here, testament to the fact that they don't really chat with each other.  They use MSN for online chatting, but I don't think they do too much of that either.  Maybe a little, but not that much.  Everybody stays really late (like, 10 PM...); I definitely don't think anyone has any other activities besides work and things you can do in the break room (ping pong....unfortunately I've yet to see someone hold the paddle Chinese style..., pool, foosball, massage chairs...).  So anyway, yeah, you're gonna get a lot more done if you never have any reason to leave.  Ever.  So yes, they work pretty hard here....the stereotype is true....

 

I did hear that people sometimes plug in an Xbox to the conference room plasmas.  I think I remember some people doing that at UCSB or Princeton....engineers, some things never change.  Such as the nerd factor.

 

On another random note: I considered pulling my "I don't understand" card again last night (a la Apple Store in Tianjin) when the hotel told me they were changing my room and I was going to have to move and get a roommate.  I was just going to ignore the phone call and act like I didn't know what they were talking about.  I thought that would only work for a day though, so I ended up going down, putting on a sad face, and they let me keep my room.  Score.

Mid-Autumn Festival

Yesterday was the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, which by design roughly coincides with the Autumn Equinox and a full moon.  There's a mythological story that goes along with it, too, of course, that goes something like this: one day there are 12 suns in the sky, and they're burning everything on earth.  This guy has to shoot them down with his bow and arrow (I guess nunchucks hadn't been invented), and in return he is given some special pill, put he's not supposed to take it for a year.  His wife finds it and takes it (hmm? Eve? Pandora?), and it makes her float to the moon where she has to stay for all eternity (hence they have a woman on the moon, not a man in the moon).  There's something about a rabbit on the moon, too.  Anyway, on the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the man can go visit his wife on the moon.  Hooray!  Naturally, this exciting fact is celebrated every year with food that is bad for you, namely, moon cakes.  Moon cakes are round, individual-size, dense, rich treats.  On the top there's a Chinese design that indicates what's inside of them, as there are a few different kinds.  The basic kind has a whole egg yolk in the middle of the dense cake, which is supposed to symbolize the moon.  They're good, except for the egg yolk, which is bad, and which also smells funny.

 

We had moon cakes at work, and the pseudo-English-speaker at the tea house gave me a moon cake, with a note that let's just say indicated he took his English lessons at the Hallmark store.

do they even know what that is?

Moments I have thought that they just don't quite get it:

 

1) In the train station, saw a mother holding her 4ish-year-old son's hand wearing a tight black t-shirt with "TOO DRUNK" emblazoned across the chest in 5-inch bold gold-colored glitter letters.  Do you think she has any idea what that means?  Or are they just characters to her that look cool, the way any Chinese character a t-shirt looks to us even if we don't know what it means?  I wonder if there's an American mom out there somewhere wearing a shirt that says "TOO DRUNK" in Chinese.

 

2) In the grocery store to top all grocery stores (complete with inclined moving sidewalks to take you and your shopping cart through the multiple levels and enough samples for Richard not only to live off of but have a well-balanced diet to boot), Christmas music was blaring through the speakers.  And to think, everywhere else in the world the baby appeared in the manger in December.

 

3) Hangin in there with the chopsticks...  You know they've heard of the fork.  You're not moving a bunch of hay with two pool cues.  --Jerry Seinfeld

 

4) This Sat/Sun are work days because the National holiday is next week?  Is it actually a holiday if you make the time up?

 

5) No drinks at meals?  How about water?  Nothing?  Ok.  Can you at least give me a spoon to eat my noodle soup?  No? Chopsticks again?  Ok.

 

6) My bathroom floor doesn't even slope towards the drain.  So I shower, the entire floor under the sink, toilet, everything, floods.  Sanitary.  Good thing I don't find anything gross.  This pushes my limits though.

 

7) A language where the pronunciation of every word has to be memorized.  Does make it look much cooler though.  Which leaves me wondering if the visual aesthetics of Chinese poetry are a big part of the beauty of the poem.  Seriously, anyone know?

 

Things they do, however, "get":

 

1) The electricity in my hotel room shuts off if my key isn't in the holder by the door.  Why waste electricity if no one's in the room?  Good thinking.

 

2) Fruit at the 3 o'clock afternoon break (by the way, the shortest corporate break you've ever seen:  show up, eat/pick up something, leave.  you're done in 45 seconds.  astounding.)

 

3) The spices they've used on my street eggs and street meat are stupendous.  Definitely going to have to figure that one out.

 

4) That my blog is subverting their people and should be blocked.

 

5) The beauty of neon lights and karaoke.

Women's World Cup

So Ian's girlfriend Nicole, who's involved in sports event planning, pointed out to me that the Women's World Cup was going to be in China while I was here (it was originally going to be here in 2003, but had to be moved to the US due to the SARS epidemic). I was almost embarrassed that I hadn't thought about that already when she told me in August, because I used to follow soccer pretty avidly, knew all of the players, profiles, number of dependents, etc. I went to the WWC back in 1999 I guess it was, and also saw men's and women's soccer at the Olympics in 1996 and in the men's World Cup in 1994. (Am I getting these years right?) Anyway, I went and looked up the schedule and as luck would have it the day after I arrived there was a game in the neighborhood of Beijing that the U.S. would likely be playing in, if they won their bracket. So I noted that and followed through on it yesterday; I saw it as a sort of reasonable challenge to get me a little more acclimated to China, public transportation, etc.

There were definitely a few problems. The hotel sent me on the non-express bus to the wrong train station (I'll exhaustively bitch about the staff another time), and the train stations (both of them) were pretty miserable. The woman at the first train station sold me a ticket for a train I couldn't make, as the bus ride to the other station took longer than she gave me. I got another lesson in Chinese line etiquette when trying to get switched to a later train (the first was at LAX, the second at the Beijing airport taxi queue where I a man from Malaysia pointed out that I was giving too much space and was being cut, and asked "May I help you in any way?"....). At the train station this grandmother that should have been behind me, kept pulling up even with me, and then when the line moved, she would move in front of me. Then a few seconds later she would put her hand on my back and forcefully push me forward until I was again even with her. It was as if she really wanted to cut me, would do it, and then feel guilty and give me my spot back, but not so guilty that she wouldn't leave the opportunity for herself to do it again.

Once I finally had the ticket, I had a lot of trouble finding the platform, because there were no signs for the platform. Actually, I'm sure there were, they were just in Chinese characters. I just kept seeing the number 2 next to my train on the board, and assumed that meant go to the first place marked "2" I saw, which was acutally just a waiting area. I figured that out, then went and had somebody point me to the tracks by handing them my ticket and shrugging, and then pointing in random locations until they got excited, but naturally my train ended up not being on the 2 track. I still don't know what the 2 was on the 40' by 15' display board, nor what was supposed to point me to the 5 track, but I found my train by following somebody that I saw in the "Tianjin" line that I aggressively compared tickets with and found was on the same train. (By the way, I now know three chinese characters. The ones for "Tianjin," "internet cafe," and "women.") There were seat predicaments as well, but I digress.

Eventually I made it to Tianjin, which while only an hour away on the train is really far away when you consider the trains/buses on either end that take forever. I grabbed the 8 bus because a website had said to take that to the end of the line to get to the stadium. I hope the Internet never lies to me about something of this sort, because while I try to verify the information once on board by asking or looking at a map, it's generally pretty difficult. I ended up getting off halfway there because I saw a dumpling restaurant I'd heard about and wanted to check it out. I went in and asked for what I had been told was their specialty, a sort of stuffed steamed roll. They laughed and then got their token English speaker to explain that they had "many kinds of baozi" or whatever the word was. I think I asked for a pizza at pizza hut, or comparable. Anyway, it was pretty tasty. I looked up the words for "very good!" and said that as I was leaving, but evidently I'm not pronouncing it right because I've used it several times since and just get blank stares and awkward laughs.

Later I went over to the stadium after checking out what must be the mecca of all grocery stores (Chinese grocery stores are amazing...) that happened to be in a shopping mall. I got my ticket for the U.S.-England match and was going to go check out the stadium even though it was relatively early, but the security guard gave me what I can only describe as a hang loose hand gesture. I figured he was telling me it was too early, and since I didn't really care I went off exploring. I found an apple store, as well as a "Trader Zhou's" which, disappointingly, only sells wine. I abused the apple store for their internet but prominently placed down my ipod next to me on the counter so they knew I liked their products (one of the only advantages of not speaking the language is being able to be rude like I was in this circumstance and getting away with it because they have a hard time telling me to stop since I don't speak their language).

I went over to this little park area where they were selling street meat (delicious, and it all worked out fine, Brent!) and watching the other quarterfinal game (Germany v. South Korea) on a big screen. I made an American Friend At First Sight, a middle-aged guy that has been on a lot of business trips to China and right now is halfway through a 1-year assignment in Shanghai (by the way, in Beijing not counting the train station, I have seen one other Caucasian...I'm definitely not in the tourist district...and I'm told soon I will be getting asked for pictures). He gave me lots of tips on bargaining and shopping with the Chinese shopkeepers that Jen and I will be taking full advantage of in November. He also told me that the "hang loose" gesture meant 6, as in, 6 PM. He taught me the one-hand Chinese gesture for 7-10 as well.

Eventually went to the game, which was pretty awesome to see. I don't know all the players anymore, but I know a fair number that have held over from the days I followed it. There were more English fans it seemed, or probably just louder and better organized. U.S. won 3-0, and I made another AFAFS in the stadium, sitting next to a guy that had been there for decades with his wife after they had decided to adopt 5 kids from the orphanage in Tianjin. I think this American Chinese enjoyed the distraction I provided him during the game; his current company was only asking questions like where is the goodyear blimp, where do they get the balls, why is only one ball allowed on the field, where did people get the horns, why does the sun shine, etc.

Trip back took forever (trains and buses don't run late here, even on major routes like Beijing-Tianjin, so I had to take 3 taxis), but it was all totally worth it. Took me back to some of my earlier days. :)

quintessentially chinese

So right now I am sitting in a Chinese tea house, where I ordered from a picture menu and with the help of the only person within a square mile that speaks a lick of English.  He works at the internet cafe down the hall, but I prefer the tea house because of the wireless.  The "tea," mind you, is some sort of red bean paste frozen thing.  I like red bean paste :).  The whole staff is staring at me.  And the guy that helped me comes and reads my email over my shoulder every 10 minutes or so.  Evidently that's acceptable around here.  Oh, and I'm posting this via e-mail rather than the site because the CCP (the Chinese Communist party) has blocked my site.  I thought that was really interesting.  My 10 yuan also got me (unlimited?) Chinese salty snacks like dry-roasted edamame and 2 other kinds of dried seeds I haven't identified yet.  Internet is dangerously hard to find around here.  The CCP used a fire in an Internet cafe a few years ago as an excuse to shut down most of the internet cafes.  It's amazing to me to ask people "Internet?" and not have them immediately know what I'm talking about, much less a place nearby where I can use my computer.  This place is a 20-minute walk from my hotel (!!).  I'm headed to Microsoft to check in and do some paperwork in a bit, and I'm hoping they can help me with this Internet situation.

Things have definitely been much harder than I expected so far.  There's really no pinyin anywhere, just Chinese characters, which makes things downright impossible.  Additionally, Chinese characters of course can be printed in different "fonts" just the way our characters are, so even if I sit and compare at a particular character sometimes I can't tell if the differences are significant or not.  Is that trapezoid with the imperfect corner and and overextended side the same as the box at the bottom of this character I'm looking at on the map?  I don't know.  Additionally, my map from MSR was made using Paint edition 3rd grade, is not to scale, and landmarks only the hardest things to find.  I think things will be much better come Monday though when I have a building full on engineers to help out.

I'm eating all of these dried snacks whole, but I'm pretty sure there's at least a part of it that I'm supposed to be removing...

i made it

Flight was uneventful and gradually introduced me to the culture I was entering, starting as early as check-in at LAX; nobody speaks English here; I have a tiny room to myself that does not distinguish shower area of the bathroom from the toilet area in any fashion; internet is horrendous. The last of these clearly needs to be rectified.

By the way, get skype. I'm moxley777. It's free, ya fools!

travel reading

As I leave in a mere hour for my flight to Beijing, which takes 26 hours in total including the bus down to LAX and a stop in Tokyo, I want to share some of the books that are going to be keeping me company. By the way, while in Guatemala, I got an AMAZING amount of reading done...I can read in cars, boats, "touristic" minibuses, you name it, so there's never a dull moment. While there I read:

1. This Side of Paradise (3 out of 5 - I was a little disappointed because I had heard it was so many people's favorite book. I think I read it a little too late or something; it just didn't seem that amazing to me. I also couldn't figure out how somebody could like it with all of its Princeton references if they didn't go there. However, Nada pointed out that that may have been a distraction for me, and been why I didn't like it as much as most to begin with...)

2. Fahrenheit 451 (4 out of 5 - I somehow escaped reading this one in high school, and found it in a used book shop for $1.875. Pretty good!)

3. River Town (4 out of 5 - This book I found in my amazing hotel in Atitlan. It was absolutely perfect for me now...It's about a person in the Peace Corps that goes to rural China to teach for 2 years. It's a loosely strung together collection of anecdotes, commentary and analysis of China and the Chinese. It got me really excited for my internship and was easy to pick up and put down while travelling on the trip. I even made Nada pick up the Mandarin Lesson CDs I had abandoned at school after the first 2 minutes as it made me want to pick up a little Chinese, but the book inspired me to think I might want to try, at least a little bit. It also made me very, very afraid of pollution there.)

4. The Rule of Four (3 out of 5 - Entertaining, quick read, but the message/theme was a little blatant and unoriginal. Made me miss campus and a lot of you terribly though...)

and I'm taking the following with me to Beijing:

1. Mating (one of Anand's favorites)
2. White Swans (one of Laura's favorites. read this one before and loved it; it's about the Cultural Revolution and I want to remind myself of a lot of that history.)
3. Lord of the Flies (escaped High School without reading this one, too...guess I was too busy SOHCAHTOAing)
4. Crying of Lot 49 (I keep hearing it's good, and it's short....)
5. Chinese Phrases for Dummies. Though I'm already regretting not getting a phrasebook....not that at this point I could read them even if they were in the Romanized pinyin...

Alright, time to go shower and head towards the bus for my flight out of LA.

thoughts on Belize

So Brent and I had a whirlwind tour of Belize.  Yesterday involved four buses that landed us at Placencia, per Jen's recommendation.

 

The night before we went to Belize, we made the following list of things we collectively knew about Belize:

1) Guatemala thinks it owns Belize

2) I used to think Belize was in Africa

3) It's tiny, so tiny Emily and Laura ran into each other while their families vacationed there last Christmas break.  Evidently there are only 2 major roads (E/W and N/S) so it was pretty certain even before they left that they'd run into each other.

 

We really enjoyed our brief time there.  Some surprises/things I learned:

1) They all speak English there.

2) It's a very Caribbean culture there.  I guess that makes sense, but I was expecting something more similar to what I had seen in other parts of Central America

3) I gather it's becoming a very trendy place.  Tommy Lee Jones, Leonardo DiCaprio, Francis Ford Coppola, and the restaurant owner that chatted with me own islands/keys there.  Also, classy families like the Browers and the Chiswick-Pattersons are vacationing there.  It's on the up.

 

We're back in Guatemala now, and head back to California tomorrow.  We decided to spend the night in the "dirty port city" of Puerto Barrios tonight rather than hide in a hostel in Guatemala City where we'd have to run by the window for fear of being shot every time we wanted to cross the room.  I'd get grouchy being crouched next to the ground for the next 24 hours.