Out of the Well: A Frogs-Eye-View of China and the World

The Martyr With a Broom; or why you have to be brave to be a street sweeper in China

2006-05-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

So I worry about this country sometimes.

I have a text book right now that depresses the hell out of me. Theclass is radio listening, and towards that goal it is effective. The
subjects, taken from real radio shows, however are awful. teachers
making whole classes of children slap a child's face, teenage Internet
criminals, fake diploma mills, and the like.

The last few day have been too much. The lesson is entitled "why do we make public sanitation workers shed blood and tears?" according to the radio report (circa '98). For some reason there is a prevalent phenomena of people "humiliating and beating up" sanitation workers. It seems that at the slightest provocation people are willing to go up to guys n gals (often from the countryside or elderly) driving garbage trucks and picking the trash off the street and beat to the point of unconsciousness, disability and death.

When i first read this i thought. Well its just to weird to be true. Then i thought, well at the end of the nineteens maybe it was a problem, but surely not now. I just googled the Chinese phrase
"Sanitation workers humiliated" as it appeared in my lesson. 17,300 hits came up, one from earlier this month. I was proud of myself that, armed with my new beating up sanitation worker vocabulary, i could make my way through a few articles calling for greater public respect for these people, as well as publicly provided medical insurance. So it is still a problem.

Sorry to tell you all this. It is just driving me crazy how absurd this is. I really like this country but this makes no sense. Why sanitation workers? What makes them such a target? Why not taxi drivers, construction workers, or the lady who sells me egg pancakes in the morning? (Not that I wish it on anyone, especially not the egg pancake lady.)

My mornings are filled with both garbage truck men and street cleaners, I am going to spend the next couple of weeks worrying about them.

On the upside, less than 6 days until Sarah comes to China and helps me think about less crazy things.

The Trip Begins; or Shanhai and Boat

2006-05-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

IMG_2569
Originally uploaded by ebenlindsey.

Last friday morning, in honor of international Labor Day (the following monday), five of my friends and I skipped school to get an early start on our five day break. At five thirty in the morning roomate-Nick, roomate-Rhonda, fellow-ex-reedie-Jen, fellow-ex-reedie-Miri, and isreali-classmate-Yoel piled into to cabs to catch an early flight to Shanghai.

Upon arriving in shanghai, anyone who has been trapped in the sandy, dusty, blandness of Beijing will immediately be struck by two advantages of the southern city. Moisture and the color green. Not only were we hit with a welcome wall of humidity as we stepped out of the Pudong International airport, but our eyes were subjected to a whole range of green foliage the likes of which we could not even imagine in the capital.

We spent a lovely day meandering through the french quarter and staring in rapt amazement at the bustling crazyness that is the Nanjing lu shopping district. We ate a fantastic meal, and gernerally agreed that the Shanghaiese had it made.

As great as shanghai is, it was not our goal. That evening, after a harrowing taxi drive (by the way, it is impossible to get a cab in Shanghai) we borded a boat heading out for a 14hour trip to putuo shan.

tommorrow... arrival.

Home Again; or why you have to wait another day or so to hear about my vacation

2006-05-07T02:01:00.000-07:00

IMG_2595
Originally uploaded by ebenlindsey.

Hey all, well, I am back in the Big BJ, which seems rather dusty in comparison to the beautiful south. My internet connection is cut off due to lack of payment (not my fault), so as soon as it back I will recount my adventures.

In the meantime, check out my flicker page for the photos.

The Shower; or How a Daily Ritual Became a Daily Horror

2006-04-27T08:21:00.000-07:00

My apartment is fantastic. It is modern, spacious and populated with extremely pleasant people. My rent is more affordable than that of my fellow Laowai, and I get a huge bedroom with a sunroom all to myself.

There is of course a catch. Our shower seems to be possessed by a daemon. For weeks it will work much like any shower. Nothing amiss, hot water, cold water, a full range of warms, cools, and in between. Then, one day, for no reason what so ever, it turns on you. The hot water will come out as a tiny trickle if at all, or worse, the water pressure will be fine, but there will be no heat.

There are two ways of dealing with this problem. 1)Work for ten minutes before the shower to perfect the perfect amount hot water running in the sink. It must be on enough that it will keep the water heater running, but not so much that it will use up all of the pressure. 2) Shower less. I have been working on both of these fronts, but the basic result is that I have gone crazy.

Today, after weeks of a trickle, the pressure came back and for seven delicious minutes I had a perfect shower. When it went cold after that I did not care a bit. The only reason I can think for this blessing is that I am leaving in the morning for a week in the south. I am sure the moment I return it will be back to the good old shower purgatory.

See you in a week.

The Sportsman; or the secret history of a Beijing bicycle

2006-04-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

The Sportsman, in happier days.
Originally uploaded by ebenlindsey.

Its origins were obscure. The Sportsman came into my life when american-roommate-Jed went looking for a theftproof bike. Two very expensive bikes had come into and out of his possession in the previous two weeks and he had decided that he needed a bike no one wanted. The bike dealer had offered him a variety of very nice used bikes but Jed was adamant. He only wanted the absolute worst bike in stock. The man thought for a moment and went around back. After a few moments he returned with a medium sized "woman's style" bike. Black with touches of read that looked like they were hastily added with spraypaint.

The shopkeeper pointed at the downtube sticker which read Sportsman USA, "its made in America", he promised. "10dollars*." In the end Jed got it for seven on the condition that the man remove the broken basket on the front.

The sportsman passed into my possession when Jed left Beijing to return to the sunny beaches of Florida. I put some money into it, replacing the pedals and the seat. For about one dollar I had the breaks repaired the day I slid into traffic on my way to school. In the end it still looked like a piece of crap, but it rode pretty well and I have taken it many places the last few months, exploring little corners of Haidian District.

I last saw it last night when I came home from dinner with some friends. I locked it up just like any night, but this morning it was gone. No one in this city really "owns" a bike. Bikes get stolen everyday and as a result they are cheap. I don't know anyone who has ever sold a bike, but the shops are full of second hand models.

The Sportsman had a secret history. I am sure it had many owners before me, and I bet it will have many after whoever gets in next. I hope they enjoy it.

*all monetary units converted for the readers convenience.

Big Test, Big Plans, Big Pain-in-the-Butt

2006-04-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

I woke up at seven this morning to the sound of my alarm clock buzzing inches from my head. Strange, this seemed strange as I thought it was still the weekend. As it turns out I was right, but I had signed away my Sunday morning to the HSK. The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi is a Chinese proficiency test comparable to the TOEFL tests in the states. I have no real reason to take it, and no hope of testing as proficient, but as my program was paying for it, it would seem rude to turn it down.

The test was held next door at Beijing Yuyan Wenhua Daxue, the Beijing Language and Culture University. BLCU is notable for being a majority frowner school. And even more notable for being mostly Korean. On the way to the test I swung by a campus shop to pick up a juice box and I saw for the first time in months boxes of Coco Crispies and Frosted flakes, if this was not surprising enough the boxes were in Korean!

The test was two and a half hours of educated guessing, and was comparable to the practice test that put me squarely in the intermediate category. If I did really well I might have gotten a 5(of 9), which is one less than necessary to attend a Chinese University in Chinese (unless you major in science, in which case you need a 3).

After the test I had an enjoyable meal, and a walk through a clothing market that seems to have sprung up from nowhere in a parking lot in Wudaokou. (fellow-ex-reedie-friend-Jen claims it has been there all along, but I have my doubts.)

The rest of my day was spent planning trips, first the one I will take with my family in June, and second the one I will be departing for this Thursday. Hmm... in retrospect this seems backwards.

originally I was going to spend the International Labor Day holiday in the ex-people republic of Mongolia, but time, logistics, and lethargy made that plan seem a little two much. Instead I will be heading to one of my favorite places in the world. Putuo Shan, and island off the coast of Shanghai. Hours were spent today with my travel companions trying purchase tickets online (ultimately successful), figuring out boat tickets on Chinese web pages (still having trouble), and worrying about money (ongoing). All and all though it should be a good trip. I promise to take many pictures.

I go walking, after midnight; or a new look at an old place

2006-04-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

2006-4 night pictures 032
Originally uploaded by ebenlindsey.

Last night, while wondering the Tsinghua campus playing with my camera, I had the opportunity to see a different side of a neighborhood I consider myself quite familiar with. That is, the neighborhood between my apartment building and the Erxiao Men (pictured in the previous post, this is the old school gate and still lies on the equator of the campus, separating the "residential" southern half from the academic and dormitory buildings of the northern half. I guess it should be explained that students live near the class rooms, while the southern half of the campus is inhabited by professors, workers, shop owners, retirees and the like. But I digress.) While my neighborhood is made up of cookie cutter five and six story apartment blocks laid out in regular rows, this neighborhood is dominated by one story brown brick courtyard houses separated by narrow alleyways and small streets. The inhabitants of these residences have set up a variety of businesses, from dry-cleaners, and seamstresses, to print shops that advertise good rates for photocopies and digital photo printing. In general any service neglected by nearby supermarket and post office provides a cottage industry for the neighborhood.

While my elderly neighbors have all turned in by eight at night, these was a surprising variety of activity going on in this area after midnight. I noted, as I passed the windows on a small street, seamstresses finishing up dresses at their sowing machines, I saw a man in his mid thirties smoking and working on a computer in the print shop, and I even saw a woman asleep, sitting up in a small lit booth from which she sold egg pancakes during the day.

At the end of the street I found a Kodak shop (pictured) that I wanted to photograph. As I was struggling to level my tripod I noted that this part of the street was particularly active with people walking by every few minutes. It was not until I saw a gentleman a little older than myself tromp by in polka-dot pajamas that I realized the building next to the shop was the neighborhood bathroom.

After standing there for about twenty minutes a young lady who had been watching me from the bathroom entrance (I must have looked odd) came over and after greeting me in English, proceeded to question me in Chinese. I am quite proud of myself that we were able to carry on pretty well. When she used an unfamiliar word, she was able to supply the English equivalent, "hobby", which to my mind recommends a pretty high level of education, although perhaps informal.

It seems that she lived in the neighbor, which she exclaimed dated back to before the schools founding, and were some of the original building used as residents for teachers and administrators. It was not until after she left that it occurred to me how remarkable she was, or at least that she represented a somewhat remarkable phenomena. By American standards, or even Beijing standards, living in a coal heated brick house without a private bathroom would suggest poverty. But here was a neighborhood, that although outwardly shoddy, was positioned in the middle of one of the greatest institutions of learning in the country, and populated by hardworking and reasonably educated people.

I walk through this neighborhood several times a week. I have never given it much of a thought, except maybe once or twice when I was buying an egg pancake. It's nice to live in a place that confounds and confuses you.

A Change in Plan

2006-04-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

2006-4 night pictures 011
Originally uploaded by ebenlindsey.

Once upon a time I was a karaoke (here we say Ka La OK) King. I was averaging three weekends a month spent in the enjoyment of, and recovery from singing my heart out until four in the morning. In these more sedate times, I must admit that I have not stepped foot in a Karaoke bar since early February. So the plan tonight was to rekindle our love of packing into a tiny room with two mikes, a TV, and a loud PA system.

After a tasty dinner at the Yunan Restaurant on Chengfu Road, another neglected former love, we took a stroll down qinghua nan road to the fantastically named "Rambling through Time". We arrived to find that not only had it changed its name, but it was booked up by a private party for the evening.

So instead I took a stroll around the campus and gave my new MINI-tripod, recently purchased at the photography market, a test run. The results tend to lean a bit to the left, but I like them. Check them out on my flickr page.

Sandstorms, Brainstorms, and Months of Silence; or Drinking from the firehose of Knowledge

2006-04-20T02:04:00.000-07:00

Well it has been a looooong time since I have written in this blog. For that I am truly sorry. I worry that perhaps there is no one left to read it. Oh well, better not to dwell on the subject.

So what have I been up to all this time? A reasonable question, and I am glad you asked. I have been drinking from the fire hose of knowledge. My classes here at the IUP Center for Chinese language studies at Tsing-hua U. have been keeping me quite busy. While I still sound like a six year old who has been spending to much time with an Econ text book, I have found that, little by little, I am becoming marginally literate in this ridiculous language. Now what does that mean, really? It means that If I was given a bit of academic text on a subject that I was not completely ignorant in, as well as the use of a good dictionary, I can figure out the point at the rate of about 2-3 pages an hour. This may not sound like much to you slackers who have studied French or Spanish, but to me this is like walking the Appalachian trail.

The weather these intervening months have been uniformly awful. Cold, polluted, dry and windy. The last two months things have gotten really nice, with interrupting weeks of cold or sand. "Sand?" you ask. It seems that, due to deforestation in north china, anyone downwind from inner Mongolia is periodically blasted with the all of the loose soil that used to be held down by trees. The good news is that these sandstorms are far less frequent then they were ten years ago, as the government has been planting trees as fast as possible.

Today however is fantastic, sunny, not a cloud in the sky, 70 degrees, ahh. The trees all have leaves again, meaning that my world of yellow and gray has been infused with green. Now that I have been re-invigorated by the weather, I will endeavor to write in this blog more.

If you want to see pictures of what I have been up to the last few months check them out at my flickr page.

Folks I think are cool

2005-11-29T05:22:00.000-08:00

I wanted to take a few minutes (stolen from homework I should be doing) to recognize some people and things I think are rather cool.

First off, Abigail Washburn, Bela Fleck, Ben Solee, and a fantastic fiddler whose name escapes me, for the fantastic show on Saturday night at BeiDa (Beijing University).
Abigail Washburn is a banjo player / song writer from Chicago who plays “neo-traditional folk” arrangements of her own as well as traditional bluegrass and folk songs. What really makes her interesting is that she speaks Chinese, has written a couple of songs in Chinese, and was about a week from attending Beijing University as a Law Student up until a week before she signed her record contract. I would imagine that she is often compared to Alison Krauss, and while I think this is a valid comparison, I would argue that Washburn’s music is a little more interesting. While Krauss sings lovely renditions of traditional American songs, Washburn blends bluegrass, African-American spirituals, blues, and Chinese folk music to make something that feels more alive, more current.
The audience at BeiDa on Saturday was more than half Lao Wai (read: gringos, like myself), but that did not stop Ms. Washburn from speaking only in Chinese for the first half hour. This instantly won the hearts of the Chinese in the audience. I found it pleasing as well for two reasons. First I like to watch people who have not made any effort at learning Chinese squirm, secondly, her vocabulary and mine seem to be similar, so I could understand her pretty well. When she finally started speaking English there was scattered applause in the audience.
It was nice to have a cultural exchange that focused on traditional American culture. It seems too often that in the China-U.S. cultural exchange we take the role of the “modern,” with economic, technological, and organizational skills to offer, while China takes the “traditional” role offering us their rich cultural history in exchange. It was nice that the students at BeiDa had a chance to see that we have a traditional culture. It was nice to be reminded of this myself. Thanks folks!

The next cool person on the list: Norwegian-Roommate-Chris for his good showing on the GMAT yesterday. This man found time during the last three weeks to study for the GMAT, despite his incredible workload and lovely young girlfriend. He didn’t do that bad either. Drink a toast to him!

While I am in the neighborhood I would like to recognize American-Roommate-Jed for the following joke. “What is the Chinese Pirate’s favorite number? Errrrr!” (er [pronounced like the letter ‘R’] = 2)

Next up is the WuDaoKou coffee shop “Space for Imagination” for offering me the opportunity to drink a Belgian beer without going downtown. While in the states Duvel is not my favorite Belgian, it sure does in a pinch. They also serve Woodpecker Hard Apple Cider, which feels appropriate for the season. Thanks!

Finally special thanks go out to the president of a prestigious American university who recently visited China. He was presented with four tickets to the Chinese National Circus acrobatics show, and when he was to busy to go, his daughter gave them to a friend of mine who took me to see this ridiculous show. If you come to china you must go see some acrobats. Thank you, sir!

That’s it for now. I have some posts fermenting in my mind right now. Perhaps a Beijing Beer guide (for those of us who don’t like to go to the San Li Tung Bar Street), a Cheng Fu Road Restaurant Guide, and some pictures of the acrobats.

Take it easy!

The Faires and the Developer

2005-11-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

Some times the world is just too fantastic for words.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16397688

&method=full&siteid=66633&headline=my--pound-15k

-is-away-with-the-fairies--name_page.htm

Take that modern world.

Follow up

2005-11-21T19:11:00.000-08:00

I am unsatisfied with the end of the last post. Perhaps there is no way to understand exactly what happened in history. Let me suggest that more important than achieving the Truth, is caring about the Truth. Someone who cares will be excited when they come across a piece of evidence that challenges their assumptions and beliefs about the past. We must strive toward a complex view of the past.

Chinese Soap Operas, Japanese Comic Books, History, the Truth, and the Bastards who will Always Try to Hide it from You.

2005-11-21T02:55:00.000-08:00

If you have been watching the last few episodes of the hit Soap Opera on CCTV-1, (the name escapes me, I will add it in later), you will have no trouble understanding why the Chinese still hate the Japanese. The soap opera, which had its 44th and final episode tonight, is ending with the occupation of Beijing (actually they called it Beiping in the republican period) by the Japanese army. At nine o’clock on Saturday night millions of Chinese families gathered around the TV to watch a pretty young Chinese woman slit her own throat with a hatchet to avoid being rapped by Japanese soldiers. If this was your night time programming you might want to take the streets in protest, as the Chinese did this summer, when you learn that Japan no longer needs to tell there kids about these horrible things in school.

I usually look at these sort of portrayals of the Japanese with mixed feelings. On onee hand they are unproductive, even hatemongering images that do not need to be broadcast on primetime. At the same time these things did actually happen. In fact many, many Chinese women met much worse fates than the pretty actress on the show, when they were forced into sexual slavery as comfort women for the Japanese. Does historical accuracy mean that it not intentionally provocative to show this sort of thing on state run TV?

I had thought that Japan, due to its open society, was immune from this sort of xenophobia. Well it would seem that, at least according to a recent New York Times article, I was wrong. Beyond mentions of Japanese atrocities being eliminated from text books (more on this in a second), Japanese comic books have now become a site of anti-Chinese and even anti-Korean sentiment.

It seems that there are currently two very popular comics in Japan one each dedicated to portraying the faults of the Koreans and Chinese respectively. To quote the article by Norimitsu Onishi, “… ‘Introduction to China,’ which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: ‘Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive.’ ” These comic books, and their soon to be released follow-ups, make the claims that South Korean prosperity is due to Japanese colonialism, 10 percent of the Chinese GDP was based on prostitution, and that the “Rape of Nanjing [Nan-King to the Wade-Giles inclined] was fabricated by the Chinese government. Considering the popularity of Comics in Japan (the anti-Korean and Chinese books sold 360,000 and 180,000 respectively) this would be tantamount to a television program in Germany that denied the holocaust. (I don’t make the comparison lightly, the holocaust was indeed on a much greater scale, but 100,000-300,000 Chinese died in Nanjing, and horrible medical experiments were preformed on Chinese prisoners in Manchuria.)

This is why I am a historian, or historian in training if you will. The bastards, even in a free state, will always lie about history if it is their own interest. These books, in contrast to the Chinese soap opera, are not produced by the state, but they are in line with the policies of the government in regards to the teaching of history. To one again quote the NYT article, “As nationalists and revisionists have come to dominate the public debate in Japan, figures advocating an honest view of history are being silenced, said Yutaka Yoshida, a historian at Hitotsubashi University here. Mr. Yoshida said the growing movement to deny history, like the Rape of Nanjing, was a sort of "religion" for an increasingly insecure nation.”

I am not saying the Chinese are above selective teaching in their schools, they most certainly are not, but at least they teach that Mao was thirty percent wrong. Nor do the bastards only reside in Asia. In every country in the world people push their own versions of history to promote their own version of what is right in the present. In the States (the united ones that is) I have heard Thomas Jefferson invoked by liberals as a “non-orthodox” Christian who denied the divinity of Christ and advocated a strict separation of Church and state. I have also heard him described as a “devout” Christian who mandated the teaching of the bible when he was in charge of D.C. schools. The likelyhood is that both sides are lying, or more specifically untruthfully simplifying history to their own ends. To hell with truth in the name of what they think is right.

This is why we have to teach our children history. I have never subscribed to the “those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it” branch of thinking. It seems to me we are probably doomed to repeat it anyway. They need to know how to approach the past so as to know how to deal with the present. When we teach our children history it needs go beyond names and dates [although as a history dork I find names and dates sort of sexy]. We need to teach them how to spot a story that is just to good, or too simple to be true. So that when they are fully fledged citizens, and the bastards try to tell them why they should be angry, or self-righteous, or swallow some particular party line, they know when to cry bullshit.

The Truth is the only thing that matters when talking about history, even when it does not fit a noble policy of the present. If history does not fit their argument, our leaders should find better reasons for us to agree with them.

KFC Commercial

2005-11-19T05:48:00.000-08:00

I am not a fantastic monitor of the Chinese media, so I don't really know how much they think about the Avian flu. It does seem to be a big enough deal that Kentucky Fried Chicken has released new commercials to deal with any anti-poultry backlash.

The commercial starts with the generic close ups of delicious glistening chicken pieces and wings which in America would no doubt be accompanied by an incredibly annoying voice describing of the foods many delicious qualities. The new Chinese commercial features a soft calming voice and the slogan "anquan... weisheng... meiwei" (safe... sanitary... delicious...)

This lovely reassurance is followed by footage of a factory with dozens of people in bright white clothes, face masks and gloves performing some sort clean butchering process via a conveyor belt. Now I am psyched that their factories are clean, but I am struck by the fact that this image might not play so well in the states. I mean we all know that fast food, and most other food is factory processed, but I can't imagine a US ad company wanting to remind us of it.

A post I wrote instead of studying for tomorrows test

2005-11-17T21:58:00.000-08:00

I still have not died of Avian Flu or a terrorist attack (see last post), so I guess I should make an effort to write in this thing more often. Mostly I have a test tomorrow, so I wrote this to avoid studying.

So the deal is that I really like the Chinese language. I like studying it, I like speaking it (although I often feel like an idiot when I do) and I like its history and idiosyncrasies. There are however a few things that just drive me nuts. Here are a couple of them.

In English if we don’t greet each other with “Hello” or “Hi” we might ask the somewhat rhetorical question “How are you doing?” or “How have you been?” It is understood that this very general question could or could not be answered. In Chinese there is no word for hello (due to English influence the word Nihao, literally “you good,” has been added), so native English speakers of Chinese often greet each other with “Ni zenmeyang?” which basically means “How are you doing?” This drives our teachers crazy. Apparently no Chinese person would ever say this as a greeting, it is much to general. The Chinese are a specific people, so they do not have one set question they ask each other in greeting but instead a infinite number of questions that are not expected to be answered.

Here are a few, imagine these questions being used by a relative stranger instead of Hello.

Have you eaten? (Chibao le ma?) – This is confusing as you often wonder if they are asking you to dinner or lunch. They are most certainly not.

How are your parents? (Ni de fumu zenmeyang?) – This person has never met my parents. For all they know I might be an orphan.

Where are you going? (Qu nar?) – Often said in passing without stopping.

How’s business? (Shengyi zenmeyang?) – this one makes sense. I have no real argument with it.

The second thing that bugs me is that sometimes two similar things will be described with the same word and the same character. As far as I can tell, and I have tried to find and answer to this, there is no way to differentiate in spoken or written Chinese between a goat and a sheep (both Yang). I think I eat sheep just about three times a week, but who knows? Maybe I eat goat. There seems to be a similar problem with the word for both elevator and escalator (dianti). I will admit I am less researched on this example. As far as I know, to be specific you have to say something like “The Yang with the white fluffy wool.” or “The dianti you get inside to ride.”

Fear and Fun: Two sides of the Beijing Coin

2005-11-12T23:06:00.000-08:00

This week provided two big things to worry about. Number one was a posting on the US Embassy's web page that warned that there was evidence that terrorists may try to bomb five star hotels in Beijing this week trying to target Americans. While I am not myself a frequent patron of five star hotels I have just recently discovered "Grandma's Kitchen" a lovely restaurant which serves not only the best damn Hamburger I have had this side of the pacific, but also delicious, mouthwatering apple pie. You can even get Dr. Pepper or A&W root beer. To quote an Irish girl at the table next to us "I thought I was doing well with the Chinese food, you know? That I didn't miss any of this stuff. Now I know I am an Irish girl through an through." This discovery was an emotional experience for everyone involved. The only problem, Grandma's Kitchen is located downtown near all of the Five Star Hotels. To complicate maters further a day later the Chinese Police said that there was no such threat, that it was a hoax. I am left with the choice of believing my government (which has a track record of lying to me) or the Chinese government (ditto). I think either way I am going to Grandma's for Thanksgiving, at least by then President Bush will be back in the states and we will be less of a target.

While I was lackadaisically rolling the possibility of horrible fiery death around in my cranium I received news of a even more horrible possibility for my imminent death Qin Liugan (the dreaded Avian Flu). It is not to say that there is anything new about the avian flu. In fact for some weeks the only thing separating me from the hordes of recently culled birds was about as much land as separates Boston and northern Maine. What really gave me the creeping horrors was an email I got from our program director encouraging us to stock up on water and non perishables in case we get quarantined in our apartments. Try that one on for size, quarantined. We were also instructed to keep our belonging organized such that we could pack anything we wanted to keep into suitcases in case we had to be evacuated. Evacuated. Quarantined. These words connote relative seriousness in my mind.

So that is what we have done. Yesterday American-Roommate-Jed and I went to the grocery store for Water, Oatmeal, Raman, and canned fruit. I also got myself a nifty diaper-like face masks (see picture below) to ward off both the smog and the possibility that the air itself could be poisoned with birdborn illness.

So how does one deal with this sort of horror in their daily lives? I did what any red-blooded American would do. I ate a fantastic meat based meal and then got drunk. I accomplished this last night with the help of American-Former-Reedie-Friend-Jenn, and one of my Chinese teachers, Li Laoshi (laoshi is her title, it means teacher). Li Laoshi first took us to a fantastic restaurant where I was presented with a bare Sheep femur with delicious meet at either end. From my limited experiences with animal anatomy I believe I was eating sheep ankle and knee, and do you know what, I loved it. As we were avoiding eating things with wings we also ordered a whole rabbit, which was placed so that I got to look into his cute little face. (Pictures forthcoming).

With our bellies full of animal protein and greenbeans, Increasingly-Fantastic-Teacher-Li Laoshi took us to a little bar that was astonishingly close to my house. For 35 kuai for me, and 25 kuai for them (their double X chromosomes entitling them to a discount) we were allowed to drink as much as we wanted from a list of about 14 choices. For twenty kuai an hour we were also given a little room in which we could sing Karaoke. This may in fact be my new favorite place. At around two thirty in the AM I returned with my fears forgotten, at least for the moment.

I will try to write this blog more frequently, that is unless I am done in by a bomb, the flu, or massive liver failure.

Shanxi

2005-10-17T02:26:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I have posted. Things have been going pretty swimingly. I am now an official resident of the city of Beijing. I am about four days away from my first major exam. Things are going pretty well. In this sort of situation I find it hard to post. It is something I have to work on. Life here at Qinghua is quite nice. The fall weather has been cold, but it also tends to be clear, I can even see the mountains from my class room on most days.

I got back last night from this semesters "free" Field trip to Shanxi province. (If you want to find Shanxi on a map it is south of Inner Mongolia, west of Hebei province and Beijing.) It was a blitz two day trip to see the provinces chief historical and cultural sites. I have included some pictures for all of you.

Nowadays Shanxi is known for coal and carbohydrates. The city of Datong in Shanxi, where we spent the first night, is the site of the country's largest coal mine. The local food of Shanxi is mostly wheat and rice noodles. I have to say, it was really pleasant to get away from my spicy Beijing food for a couple of days of hearty peasant food. I think a highlight was the millet porridge on our last morning. As all of our travel was by bus we got a chance to see a lot of the countryside. It reminded me quite a bit at different times of Idaho, Montana and Nebraska. At times stark terraced mountains would give way to high dessert, while at others rolling hills would be dotted with cows and sheep. Beef it seems is also very common in Shanxi. In beijing, while you can easily eat beef, pork and Yang(sheep or goat, they use the same character) are much more common.

The night life in Datong is somewhat lacking. However on our fist night I went to a Karaoke bar with my norwegen roomate Christian, fellow Reed Alum Jenn Smith, and my isreali classmate Yoel. Karaoke is the tool of the devil. It encourages public humiliation and drunkeness. It was fun.

In the morning we (the fifty or so of us on the fieldtrip) made our way to the Yungang grotto. The Yungang grotto is a cliff face with fifty carvings, most of them quite large, of the three aspects of the the Buddha, usually accompanied by a host of minor deities, attendants, etc. Some of the grottos are cavernous rooms with hundreds of carvings around a central buddha several stories tall, while others are small rooms with a single statue. The carvings all date back to the fifth century AD. It was cold an windy, but rather beautiful.

After the grotto we drove to the Xuankongsi hanging temple. The hanging temple is precariously perched on the side of a cliff. The rooms inside it are generally less than four feet deep. It is hard to tell from this picture but the cliff is flat behind the temple. They did not carve out the cliff to accommodate it. Basically climbing up into the temple is not for the faint of heart, but it was well worth it. Also interesting, this temple contains Buddhist, daoist, and Confucian alters. It is a good reminder of how these three very different traditions coexisted for so long. (Hmm... pictures do not seem to want to load, oh well.)

The last stop of the day was the Yingxian Muta. What really makes this pagoda remarkable is its age. The pagoda has been standing for 900 years, and is made completely of wood. There is not a single nail. It seems the cold dry climate of Shanxi is good for wood.

The last place we stopped was the ancient city of Ping Yao. The city would be Disneyland if people did not actually live there. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries this city was the financial center of the empire, with several different large banks making commercial loans. By some fluke of history no one bothered to tear down the old city to make way for the future. Perhaps it seemed out of the way compared to Datong in the coal rich north. In any event the whole city is still cobblestones and Ming style courtyard houses. The city even has a (slightly reconstructed) city wall, something that did not survive growth and development in other cities. Our hotel here was fantastic, we slept on traditional Kangs (flat sleeping surfaces heated from below) and our rooms opened out into a large common courtyard.

(I will try to add the rest of the pictures later.)

Damn

2005-09-25T23:51:00.000-07:00

Well I just spent an hour on a beautiful, hillarious, and witty post about how last friday I lost my bank card, had the lock to my appartment break preventing us from getting in, and mistakenly thought I had lost my phone. It was great. And now it is gone. You will never read it.

Frustrating eh?

Plus I seem to have lost my watch.

Eben

Things you must do if you come to Beijing: #1 English Corner

2005-09-20T23:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I began this blog to search out what I wanted to do with my life. It turns out that while I think about that a lot I don't have much to say about it at the present time. At IUP there are lots of different people with different ideas about what they want to do. I have met a couple of pleasant Qing history students (we may even start a Manchu study group) and a lot of future business men. I still don't know. Damn.

So today I will start a series of things that you must do if you are a foreigner in this city.

Today I will tell you about English corner. Every Friday at Renmin Daxue (people's university) on Zhongguancun Road in Haidian Beijing (about a 30-40 minute walk from Qinghua University) people gather to practice their English.

If you are a foreigner you can show up anytime from 7-12 and find out what it feels like to be a movie star, or as my roommate puts it, a god. The ratio of Chinese to foreigners at English corner is about 20 to one. That means within ten minutes of arriving you will have at least fifteen people trying to speak with you. As the foreigner you basically talk consistently for as long as you like, you control the conversation by what questions you choose to answer. In a minute you may be asked everything from "What country are you from." to "What do you think about the system of Chinese land ownership, versus the American." to "What do you think of Chinese Girls."

This last question was the one my roommate came to answer. His mission for the evening was to scout out possible Chinese girlfriends. Many Chinese women there seemed to have the same idea. When I mentioned my girlfriend back home, the females in the group around me immediately walked over to him. After about twenty minutes the groups settled into topic based discussion groups. Around my roommate stood about twenty girls all flirting with him, while my group consisted of extremely intelligent men, and some women discussion history, politics, economics, etc.

While my opinion was always wanted it was not always respected. I was twice quizzed on the order of the Chinese dynasties (I messed up and forgot the Sui) and the order of the Qing emperors (I have to bone up on these before next Friday). When I said I was a student of history and I thought history was import, a software engineer explained to me that going to school for history was like learning to kill a dragon. The man who learns to kill dragons is verry wise, but as there are no dragons to kill all he can do is teach other people how to kill dragons.

The most incredible thing is the level of open discussion permitted at this forum. People could say anything they want, without fear of reprisals from the same government who does not let me read my own blog on the internet. In my group I had an ardent communist who wanted me to write letters to President Bush, and various newspapers to explain how early Qing history give leverage to Chinese claims over Taiwan. I explained to him that I would love to explain Chinese history to everyone in America, but that not that many people were interested. In my group there was also an ardent democrat who argued passionately against the communist that until they had the right to own land they would have no other real rights. Personally, when asked what I thought the Chinese government should do, I answered truthfully. It is really not my place to say. I am a 22 year old American, and I have no right to say how China should be run. Many of them seemed to think this was a reasonable point of view, but one of them kept interrupting me with non-sequitors about the Anglo-Saxons and whether or not they came from Germany. It was quite strange.

So that is thing number one that you must do if you come to Beijing.

English Corner
7pm-when everyone has gone home
Renmin Daxue
Zhongguancun Lu
Haidian, Beijing

Take it easy everyone

Beginning in earnist

2005-09-14T21:44:00.000-07:00

Well things have actually begun to look like they will loog for the next year.

My father left on monday, which meant, apart from missing him terribly, I was no longer welcome at our hotel, The Qinghua Yuan Bingguan. Now I live on the fifth floor of an old chinese appartment building on campus. It is a quiet neighborhood that in america would probobly be called a housing project. Rows of identical five story appartment buildings each with their own little number to identify themself. I live in the Nan(south) 12-1 building.

The appartment itself is rather nice, but I think I already described it in a previous post.

Yesterday I took my entrance exams. They did not go particularly well, but if they did I would not need to be here studying this infuriatingly strange language. Ah well. I am trying to keep a positive attitude about everything.

After my test there was the opening ceremony, during which we were told that we were the best of the best, and as such should not skip classes or drink on the bar street. Both good pieces of advice I must admit.

Today's business includes both a campus tour and possibly the purchase of a bicycle.

When my internet access is stabilized at the appartment I will try to send pictues.

Chapter two: we are tourists

2005-09-10T02:28:00.000-07:00

(Note: I do not know if these are being posted, for some reason I can't visit any site with a blogspot.com address. Perhaps I am being blocked by the Great firewall, email me if you can read this.)

On friday we began to do the tourist thing in earnest. After a leisurely morning in Wu Dao Kou, which involved purchasing a nifty little cell phone, we took a taxi down to the Forbidden City. If you have never been to the Forbidden City, it is quite a daunting experience. The massive palace complex consists of five or six main courtyards, off of which flow innumerable courtyards, show rooms and gardens. As my father said, it should only be done in two hours or several days. As he is only here until Monday we went for the two hour run through.

Behind the Forbidden City is a park called Jingshan Gongyuan, literally scenic mountain public park. From the mountain we were able to see into the Forbidden City, as well as much of Beijing. That is we would have, were it not for the omnipresent haze. Nonetheless the view was impressive, and after the crowds at the Forbidden City, it was pleasantly sparse.

We then engaged in one of the most frustrating, and potentially rewarding, tourist traditions in Beijing, the bicycle rickshaw ride through the old Hutongs of Beijing. The Hutongs are the low courtyard houses that make up the inner city of Beijing. The idea of the rickshaw ride is that you pay in the beginning, you pay in the middle, and then you pay at the end. At the beginning you negotiate a price with the English-speaking boss. In the middle the non-English speaking driver takes you to various destinations where you are expected to pay an entrance fee, buy something to eat, etc. It can be assumed that your driver gets a cut. I had been on this before so we were not too badly fleeced. We saw two nice courtyard houses for reasonable entrance fees, one of which included free tea. At one point he brought us to the drum tower and tried to convince us to pay 65RMB each for a guide and a ticket to enter. We declined and walked to the real ticket booth where we each paid 15RMB. In the end he dropped us off at the least convenient end of the Houhai bar district and explained that he worked hard and that his boss would not give him much money. We gave him a little out of pity and walked away reasonably pleased with our afternoon.

After a couple of hours of wandering we discovered a nice Peiking Duck restaurant (complete with waiters in Qing Dynasty costume!) where we ate a good meal before turning in early.

Today (Saturday) we ventured outside of Beijing to the Great Wall at Badaling and the Ming Tombs at Shi San Ling. We had arranged to go by car with Mr. Song, our taxi driver who had taken us to our hotel the first day. I had wanted to find a taxi driver who would be willing to take us (and thus avoid the tour busses), and Mr. Song had two good things going for him. His taxi had plenty of legroom, and I was able to understand his Chinese reasonably well. It turns out that he is also just a really nice guy. The only bump in the road was when he took us to Badaling (a popular tourist spot on the wall) because I had failed to properly communicate to him which section of the wall I wanted to go to. This was not much of a problem because we beat the tourists by about an hour, and had a great time anyway.

After the great wall Mr. Song took us to a restaurant in Shi San Ling (literally 13 tombs) the town where 13 of the 16 Ming emperors are buried. We treated him to a fantastic lunch, which included Hot and Sour Soup, Ma Po Tofu, an extravagantly large local fish of some sort (their expensive specialty) and some tasty dry cooked chicken. Best meal in China thus far. We got to talking, as best as we could with my poor Chinese, and he told us about himself. His wife works in a hotel, and he has a 5 year old son. When I asked him if he always lived in Beijing he replied that he had, and proceeded to invite me and my whole family to come for a meal when they all come to visit in June. I am looking forward to this, hopefully by then I will be a more effective translator.

After dinner we visited the tomb of Ming emperor Shenzong, which was completed in 1590. This tomb was excavated in the 1950s, and today you can desend about 7 stories by foot into the old kings underground burial chamber where he and his two wives rested for about 350 years. Educational and entertaining!

On the way back Mr. Song stopped at one of the many orchard side fruit stands and hopped out of the car. He returned with a present: A bag of tiny zang fruits and four enormous peaches. The zang fruits are small and oval, with a small seed in the center. They taste like a really sweet apple. Mr. Song explained that if we had purchased them they would have been much more expensive. Because he was Chinese the zang fruit was only 5RMB(60US Cents) for about a pound of them. This was how much we had just paid for a bottle of water.

All and all not a bad couple of days. Tomorrow I get the key to my apartment, and then I get to go the police station to attempt the acquisition of a temporary visitors permit. Yipee!

First dispatch

2005-09-08T19:12:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday I arrived safely in Beijing, along with my father who will be traveling with me for the week before classes begin. It has been a year since I was in China and I was met with a series of surprises both pleasant and unpleasant. The pleasant surprise was that Tsing-Hua University is very close to Wu Dao Kou, a neighborhood I frequented quite often last summer. That is to say the part of Tsing-hua I will be living in is close to Wu Dao Kou, the campus is incredibly large. They say that it is the MIT of the east, but two or three MIT’s could fit inside it comfortably without feeling cramped.

The second surprise was how much things had changed in a year. Whole streets of shops had turned over. Sadly my favorite little Muslim restaurant, whose LaMien I had been craving since I left china, is now a gaudy western style coffee shop. Secondly, some of the nicer western coffee shops offer wireless Internet for free! No more Smokey porno infested Internet Cafes for this old foreigner.

Yesterday morning my father and I went to see my new apartment which exceeds all expectations. Three large bedrooms, two small sunrooms for drying clothing, a livingroom, kitchen, and a bathroom. The best part is that it is on the fifth floor of an all Chinese apartment building. The apartments are owned by tsing-hua, but students, families, and other people from the neighborhood live there. It is really quite nice that I will be living among Chinese people, and not in the foreign student dorms. I move in on the 11th, after which my bureaucratic hell will begin. More on that when it happens.

Pipe Story: Why I would rather be a fireman than a landlord

2005-08-02T14:16:00.000-07:00

This entry was going to be about my lovely weekend on Cape Cod. It was truly gorgeous down there, and I had a lovely evening with some good friends, but alas, I have other news to bring you. Sarah and I came home from the cape and decided to head over to her apartment in the great city of Somerville. She has had the apartment for about a month, but we have been moving her in slowly. To tell you the truth, I have not been eager to see her go. Well, this Sunday night was going to be the last day of moving in. We were going to set up the TV, computer, and hand a couple of pictures, and then congratulate ourselves on a job well done.

The TV and computer went up without a hitch, as did a couple of small things she wanted to hang on the wall. The big project was going to be hanging a large framed Jackson Pollock reproduction, measuring about one foot high by three and a half feet long. The wall I wanted to hang it on seemed to be made of concrete, so we decided it would look lovely over the newly set up TV.

This is where the disaster began…

Maybe disaster is the wrong word, perhaps fiasco is better.

How were we to know that the mark we made on the wall for the nail was dead center on a one inch copper pipe that carried to forced hot water for the apartments heating system? It only took three good hits on the hammer for a stream of water to appear down the wall, like a strange undulating crack. Like an idiot I pulled the nail out and a spout of water immediately erupted at a forty-five degree angle spraying the room with water.

After frantic calls to the landlord (who didn’t answer is phone), and several plumbers (who didn’t seem interested in helping us out), Sarah called 911. In the meantime I was holding my hands against the hole in the wall like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. Running the water down my arms and into a series of buckets, with the hope of keeping some of the water out of the wall and off of the floor.

The firemen finally saved me, although one just watched me struggle with my hole in the wall while his brethren worked to find the valve that would stem the flow. Eventually they had to turn the water off in the whole building, which roused whatever neighbors in the building had not come down to see what the fire trucks were up to.

Well… a couple of days have gone by. The landlord has come and mumbled his piece, the plumber has left a lovely hole in the wall with a beautiful new patch. Today Sarah is meeting with some rug cleaners who will save us from the specter of mildew. The lovely living room we set up is now in piles in the bedroom.

Ah well my friends… it could all be worse I guess. Hope you are all happy, healthy and dry.

Sympathy for the RMV photographer

2005-07-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

The organization I work for decided last spring that all of it's doctors should wear the same lab coats, and that these lab coats should be equipped with a loop from which to hang their snazzy ID Badges. The only problem was, they had no snazzy ID badges. That's where I come in. I just spent the last month searching a fairly disorganized collection of professional photographs our doctors and nurses, and turning them into fancy ID Badges. So far, this was a great job. I got to manage a database, do new and interesting work every day, and generally have had a good time doing it.

This week I began phase two of my job. The rest of my summer will be spent traveling taking not-so-professional pictures of the rest of the staff. It seems that if you don't have a degree affixed to the end of your name, it doesn't matter if you look like hell on your ID. That is not to say I am a bad photographer, it's just that I am in a less than ideal situation.

I spent the day photographing a series of very nice people, most of whom wanted nothing to do with me. No one likes the guy taking their picture if it wasn't their idea to have it taken. A large number of people also believe that they look better if they do not smile. This is a fantasy. You always look better smiling. You always look better smiling.

I have gained sympathy for the photographers at the Registry of Motor Vehicles (as we call it here in the great state of Massachusetts). It is not their fault if the picture on your drivers license sucks, it is yours.

Ah well, things are looking up anyway. Sarah seems to have gotten herself a job. In fact she will be in the same organization as I am. Perhaps she will smile when I take her picture.

Happy weekend all...

Peter Weiss

2005-07-26T19:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the world lost a truly unique man, Peter Weiss. I did not know him as well as some, but I was proud to think of him as a friend. He was the father of a dear dear friend, and he left us to soon. While I met peter on several occasions, I really got to know him when he and his family adopted me for a week when we were both in Beijing last summer. Peter put me up in a hotel, fed me every meal, and took me to climb the great wall of china. My week with the Weiss's let me get to know several sides of Peter. I met the Peter Weiss who was a respected lawyer. I saw this Peter grin proudly when he was publicly singled out by the Chinese Minister of Technology and information at a banquet following a conference he was attending. I got to know Peter Weiss the devout Buddhist, when we visited many of Beijing's famous temples. Mostly I will remember the Peter Weiss who gleefully jumped out of a van to talk to some bee farmers on the side of the road.

We were coming back from climbing the great wall when Peter saw some bee keepers living in a tent on the side of the road. After getting me to stop the driver we got out, and peter began pantomiming to them that he too had once been a Bee Keeper. I do not know if they understood him, in fact I am pretty sure they were nothing but confused by him, but they could tell he was trying to tell them something nice, and that he was a good person. He climbed back in the van with a water bottle full of unrefined honey, which they had decided to give him. I can still see him smiling ear to ear.

Goodbye Peter. I wish I had gotten to know you better. I hope everything is better wherever you are now.

That summer Feeling

2005-07-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

The summer feeling has led to a lot of laziness on my part, and thus I have neglected this blog. My apologies. As always thanks to Dan for busting my chops to keep writing.

Speaking of Dan, he is not a bad example of one way to live a life. He just graduated with a degree in computer science, something which landed him a decent paying job in a major accounting firm for the fall, with a signing bonus hefty enough to let him spend his whole summer traveling. The man just took my backpack and hoofed it off to Europe. When I discussed his future career with him, he told me that it was not that he loved accounting, but that he wanted a job he could leave at the office. My girlfriend Sarah has expressed similar thoughts. My history major background does not exactly make me a hot ticket for an accounting firm, but I could work my way into happy career in business.

The other big development in my process is that I have found a cool grad school that would help me keep my options open. The Fletcher school Tufts University offers a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy. This degree would allow me to pursue business, international policy studies, or academics. Another big advantage is that my girlfriend lives about a mile from there.

Hope your summers are all going well. Mine is actually pretty good, excepting some unfortunate news that I will include in a separate post momentarily.

Also, a program called PlecoDict, a Chinese dictionary program for the Palm Handheld OS, has changed my life. It basically turns a palm pilot into a Chinese dictionary, and allows you to look up characters by writing them on the screen.

2005-07-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

So, I just graduated with a degree in history. I spent the last few months of my life convinced that I wanted to go on to a degree in Chinese history and devote my life to the study of early seventeenth century East Asia. I was all set for the life of the mind. Now I am out in the wider world and my options seem a little more open. I am not saying that I don't want to study history, but perhaps I want to do something more practical. Perhaps I want to use my interest in China for business purposes, or maybe I do want to continue in academia, but study something more recent. Either way, I have until sometime before next spring to make up my mind if I want to go to some sort of grad school.

So what is the plan for now until then? This summer I am working for a successful business in suburban Boston. Surprisingly, life in the office, though tedious at times, is not so bad. Starting in September, I will be in an intensive language program in Beijing. This Blog will serve as a chronicle of these two different experiences and how they affect the decisions I will make for next year.