A Letter Home

Hello Friends and Hello Seattle,

I hope you are all doing well amidst the harsh weather, and I hope you all had wonderful Christmases. I’ve been meaning to write you all for a while, but this letter kept on being delayed by distractions and the lethargy of being on Winter Break. Ajla visited for the last two weeks and it was great to have her. It was so nice to see a face from Seattle again. We spent the weeks snacking through Beijing and seeing places like the Lama Temple, Great Wall, and the Forbidden City. Our Christmas was fun—a small party with a white elephant gift exchange, and far too much food. It definitely wasn’t as spirited as the US, then again, as with most western holidays, China semi-celebrates them. This is to say, because many people find things from the US to be really “cool,” they celebrate them or at least create the illusion of celebrating them. Such Christmas festivities include the purchasing of your own “Pre-arranged and authentic Christmas Tree” and decorating your house with pictures of the “Christmas Old Man.” Such were the signs I read posted in stores about Christmas. I even remember walking into a couple of stores and having the salespeople try to persuade me to buy things by saying that it was all the rage in America. I don’t think I give off the American vibe right away. People usually think I’m Korean, Uygur (an ethnic group from the Northwest region of Xinjiang), Malaysian, and on a good day, native Chinese. Usually I just politely reveal that I’m an American after they’ve played twenty-questions with my nationality and continue on my way. Either way, I did my best to get in the Christmas spirit, and did my best to recreate an American Christmas family meal for a bunch of my Chinese friends ( and teachers). This was the first time they had mashed potatoes, gravy, candied yams, and as Ajla said ealier “Ants on a Log.” Though, I must be honest. When one of my friends suggested that I make “Ants on a Log,” I had no idea what he was talking about. I was introduced to the exotic American custom of celery and peanut butter at the same time of our Chinese guests.

So yes, the Christmas season so far has been fun. Aside from some small inconveniences like my water heater pipes bursting and the flash flood of my kitchen, the high of 0 degrees Celsius on the weather report, the last couple weeks have been a relaxing week of recovery. I’ve conquered my seasonal chronic-hack (with the help of lots of Chinese medicine), and now I have a month of winter break to earn a little English teaching money and time to study.

Since Ajla came to visit, I’ve been thinking of all of you. Things change so quickly in Beijing. Buildings are being constructed left and right. Businesses come and go. It made me think of what SU might be like when I return. It’s strange (and a little sad) to receive all the emails of campus events and see all the exciting things you are all planning and not be able to see them in action. Nonetheless, I’m sure they are all fantastic! I have grown accustomed to reading SU emails as a part of my routine of seeing “good things happening in the US/Outside of China.” I contrast this news with steady stream of horrifying/depressing stories I read on Google News. News in China always seems to always report that the country is doing fine. Of course, I don’t always have alternative publications to compare news reports. What I find most interesting about all of this, is that I am reading the news much more often now that I am outside the US, than when I was in the US. I suppose I am not assigned much reading, so I have time to read what I like, but I have this strange feeling that I am reading more news about the US because the New York Times and Reuters has become my gossip column about life back home. I’ve actually gotten into a habit of loudly exchanging headlines with my housemate as we lazily pass our days. When it is cold outside and I don’t want to go anywhere, I find it nice shout out to my roommate that the CIA is now using Viagra as a negotiation device in Afghani politics (BBC), or that people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for photos of Sarah Palin’s newly born grandson. I have to keep myself entertained somehow. It’s just not very motivating to go out when I need to dress up like a ninja in order to avoid freezing in the street. Hanging around in my heated apartment is much nicer.

I would be inclined to go back out and go find the gay nights in the city again, but I think I should wait for my respiratory system to be at full strength before plunging back into the clouds of cigarette smoke that occupy every social lounge in the city. In the meantime, outside of studying and reading the news, I’ve also starting practicing with a Jianzi (the Chinese shuttlecock/hackie-sack thing). One of my housemates gave it to me for Christmas and I have been challenged and addicted to it since receiving it. It’s so funny to think how humans can be so easily amused and occupied by such inane activities like kicking a colorful weight with feathers attached on top into the air over and over. At any rate, it’s keeping me fit during this time of not wanting to leave the apartment.

Anyway, I’m going to go to sleep now, but I hope you all have a fun time welcoming the New Year!

George

On the Way Home

I boarded an overnight train from Hangzhou to Beijing at 11:00pm yesterday. I was luckily enough to get a spacious lower bunk, and promptly fell asleep within the first 15 minutes of the train departing. It’s now 9:48am, and I’m still on the train, watching the Chinese countryside run pass me. Our train is supposed to arrive in Beijing sometime around 2:00pm. It’s still very quiet on the train. Aside from the occasional attendant advertising “peanuts, beer, milk, tea, and local favorites” most of the car is still sleeping. I think I was one of the few to fall asleep early last night. Many of the people in my program are going back to the US in the next couple days, and this is one of the last nights they will spend with the people on this program and in China. The country does have this way to pull you into it’s rhythm. I can’t really say I feel the same way because I will be here for many months more, but it was strange seeing a preview of what I might have to go through myself months down the line. I am going to miss everybody who was on the BIAS (Beijing Institute of Asian Studies) this semester, and while the study trip (and well, tourism in general) makes me very tired it made me happy to spend some time with my classmates. I find it very appropriate that our last event as a class was a tour of the South. It was a beautiful contrast to the awkward bunk of college students we were the first time we were thrown into tour buses and told to enjoy western China at the beginning of the semester. Cheers to you, class, I am very glad to have studied with you. 很高兴认识你。

The trip to Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou was quite nice. Aside from something triggering my lungs to act up again, I was happy, especially with the food. I took a bunch of pictures of the dishes we had, and of some that I had never had before. Such new and untasted dishes included: deep fried bacon, West Lake Eel, and a Chinese hotdog.

I believe the deep fried bacon was my favorite. Mostly, because I didn’t realize it was bacon upon first bite. Then again, I suppose, when one eats a slice of fried fat, it could be hard to tell if it is an animal or vegetable. It wasn’t that greasy, and I think it was made with a very thin sweet potato batter, which is why I was confused about what it was at the beginning, because it tasted like sweet potato. It was accentuated with sliced (canned) peaches, and despite the simplicity of the dish, I was quite satisfied. I am very excited to make the dish when I get back to the US. Very very excited.

Other highlights of the trip were seeing the “Garden of the Humble Administrator” in Suzhou and the “Yellow Dragon Mountain” in Hangzhou.

I really enjoyed the Suzhou Garden. It was originally constructed by a Chinese general and then renovated and expanded after many wars. Compared to the Summer Palace, which was a zoo, the Garden was a heavenly experience. There wasn’t any jostling, pushing, shoving, or awkward people trying to take pictures with us foreigners. There was a quiet garden that people could quietly appreciate. I now understand why the aristocracy of China created escapes like the Summer Palace and the Administrator’s Garden in the middle of their cities. It’s because they wanted a peaceful place amidst the loud and crowded Chinese city. These were places for the rulers to regain their sanity.

The Yellow Dragon Mountain was fun not necessarily because it was a peaceful serene place (though it was), rather, it was a blast because I got to meet a troupe of Chinese rock climbers who were practicing on an old stone building at the top of the mountain. My friends and I were playing with a 毽子 [Jian4zi – a like a Chinese hacky (I realize how that I don’t actually know how to spell this word) sack except it has a little round piece of metal with feathers sticking out at the end] when these guys came up to the building we were next to and started running up the walls. At first I thought these were just some crazy guys who just liked to run up walls. Then my friends and I noticed that the had chalked their hands and were carefully placing their hands in cracks along the stone. Soon they turned to us and asked if us foreigners did such things as climb building and run up walls. My friends and I said yes and gave it a go. It wasn’t too bad. We were only humiliated when some guy started climbing with weights attached to his ankles, at which point, we decided that yes, they were indeed hardcore, and we indeed were not.

We also met up with a fellow from Hangzhou who spoke pretty good English and had some very strong opinions about a certain island in Southeast Asia which was once a territory of Japan and home to my family. He asked where my family was from, I politely answered a region in mainland China. Apparently, according to this fellow, China would not have problems with said island if America was not involved with the politics of this island. I declined to put forward an opinion. The limits of Chinese nationalist fervor was not something that I wanted to test at the time. Anyway, my battery is running low now, but I’ll find you all again soon.

See you all later.

george

The End of the Semester and Winter Break

李白

夜思

床前明月光
疑是地上霜
挙頭望明月
低頭思故郷

Li Bai

Quiet Night Thoughts

Before my bed
there is bright moonlight
So that it seems
Like frost on the ground:

Lifting my head
I watch the bright moon,
Lowering my head
I dream that I'm home.

I am sitting in my hotel room here in Shanghai, and this poem came to my head. I learned it in high school when my Chinese teacher told me that Chinese middle schoolers were made to memorize poetry as part of their literature classes. It's written by Li Bai, a famous Tang poet, who can be thought of as one of the Shakespeare's of Chinese (or rather, Shakespeare, can be thought of the Li Bai of English, since Shakespeare came much later).

People generally remember this poem when they think of home, and yes, I am thinking of home right now. I have officially finished my first semester in China. At first, I felt very accomplished. I can read much better now. I can make out what newspaper articles are saying, and my spoken vocabulary has expanded at least 3 fold. However, there is still a long way to go. While I can recognize 80% of the characters I see now, the next challenge I have is understanding what words each combination of characters make. Such understanding will come, but for now- I am going to relax a bit. I'm going spend my time reading, drinking coffee, and thinking about the festive things happening in the US. I can't deny it, I do miss them. Though, I am not going to let that stop me from enjoying my traveling time.

I must say though, that the overnight train from Beijing to Shanghai was not the most pleasant trip. Unlike the overnight train from Beijing to Xian that I took at the beginning of the semester, I was not given the best night's sleep. At 6:30 this morning, the train lights came on and an attendant started walking up and down the halls, in a loud monotonous voice, announcing that she was selling warm milk. I nearly stuck my head out of the bunk and said, NO. It's 6:30 in the MORNING. I DONT WANT YOUR MILK. But, I soon remembered that indeed, I was in a public place, and pulled the covers over my head in an attempt to fall back asleep. The attempts were unsuccessful.

Soon we arrived in Shanghai, and upon first impression, the city dazzled me. It is the largest city in China, and not only that, it is a city of skyscrapers. The architecture is amazing! While it is definitely not Classical Chinese, and while it is mostly western, it is a stark contrast to the high-modernist, geometrically shaped,, linear, buildings of Beijing. Shanghai has this feeling of it being a completely different type of organism. It's wealthy, but at the same time, it has a disorganization that reminds me of how Manhattan is arranged. It's hard for me to describe. On the one hand, there is Beijing with its buildings almost set up as if they were on a Monopoly board, and on the other hand, there is Shanghai that seems to have just sprung out of the ground.

Our professors then took us to the top of the Shanghai Financial Building, the tallest building by roof height (that is to say, building without an antenna to add to its measurement) in the world. Afterwards, we went to the Shanghai Museum, and saw their collections of ancient chinese bronze, jade, furniture, and calligraphy. Following these trips, we were givien an hour of leave before dinner. I took a nap, and then got up to have a fabulous meal. Shanghai is known for its love of the "not very salty/heavy." Shanghainese cuisine loves to bring forth the gentle flavors of its dishes without overpowering any of the subtler flavors present. I would have taken pictures of the meal, but unfortunately, I forgot my camera.




(A view from the Financial Building. That is the Oriental Peal Tower.)

Tomorrow we will head to the Bund (an older part of the city by the water) and see old Shanghai. I'm really excited for more meals. Northern Chinese food gets a little old after a while. It's nice to escape their heavy flavors and taste how southerners prepare their food.

It is also...much much warmer down here. May I say how pleasant it is to not have to apply chapstick 10 times a day and wear 6 layers? It is pleasant, very pleasant indeed. Though, I must say that I kind of miss Beijing already. The air here is cleaner. The sky is blue, and I feel like without unpleasantries and annoyances, Chinese urban life just isn't the same. It's hard to get used to living, when one of the things that I did regularly was complain about the weather. I've gotten used to complaining, and now, I have to find something else to do.

I think I've already decided what I'm going to do while traveling in the South to replace complaining about the weather. I think I will toss around the idea about how "Christmas is celebrated in China." It's fascinating really. Christmas here, apart from it being celebrated by the very small Christian population of china, is one of the largest reflections of western social mimicry I have seen in China. Then again, with the Commercial Christmas at the center of the US holiday stage, it's not really all that farfetched to see many wealthy Chinese celebrating Christmas to reflect affluent America. Even the at the top of the Financial Building, there was a space for people to take their pictures, in red Santa outfits, in a sleigh that was flying over a panoramic background of the Shanghai skyline. It's just strange to me. While it would make me feel more at home to see China get all "festive for the holidays (that it doesn't actually celebrate)," a Chinese Christmas just isn't...the same. There are not cheesy sweaters, yule log television shows, or music specials being played. There is just this outer layer of Christmas that interestingly enough, also started the day after Thanksgiving.

(I should have included this picture in the last entry, but I didnt. This is Thanksgiving dinner. The duck is in the lower left.)

At any rate, while I am excited to be traveling right now, I am also excited to go back to my Beijing apartment and take part in my tradition of sitting cozily around a Christmas tree of sorts, and not doing really...anything. After all, thats what I did at home. 

Happy Holidays,

George

(The sun setting outside the Shanghai Museum)

Moving Along

Hello world.

I hope you are all doing well. I have received some lovely little notes from you all, and am glad to hear of all the fun things you are doing. It's good to hear that people are still smiling during a week in which the the whole world seemed to be having terrible problems.

Luckily, I have not run into problems as serious as Somali pirates or quasi-civil war. I have only entered that period of the year in which I develop a chronic (but harmless) asthmatic hack. I'll be taking wagers to see who can guess the month I'll stop coughing. Who ever wins will receive a high quality Chinese product. 

Other than this annoyance, the effect of me having this cough is that I cannot go to bars for a while, and have to watch my smoke intake, which is quite hard to do in China. Especially because all the places for fun are usually hidden in the plumes. 

This last week really wasn't anything exciting, other than having the experience of making Thanksgiving dinner in China.  First of all, this country doesn't have ovens. So it was fun faking oven baked food with the stove top. It was a pseudo pot-luck thanksgiving with 11 or so different dishes prepared by groups of people. I was working on the stuffing, baked potatoes, and purchasing the Peking Duck (which I will take as a replacement for Turkey anyday. Turkey is far too lean.) All of the dishes were quite successful, including my stuffing (made from scratch of course) made with a combination of mushrooms, white onion, leek, garlic, thyme, oregano, parsley, black pepper, salt, some seasoned  baguette  from the French supermarket, a can of Tsingtao beer, and some thick cut pieces of pork fat. It was an adventure trying to make  the soggy stove stop stir fried bread not taste like soggy bread and taste like stuffing. Not having a sense of smell was also a bit of a challenge. But after contemplating whether or not I wanted to milk the excess liquid out of the bread, I settled with the long process of constantly stirring the concoction in a dry wok until it regained bread like consistency. 

The potatoes were also a bit of a challenge. I ended up putting them in a pot suspended above the bottom of the pot with a little bit of foil. Then after covering the potatoes again I consistently added water to the bottom of the pot to try and mimic the dry heat of baking, and avoid the best I could, the wet heat of steaming. Though, in the end, I failed and ended up steaming the batch of potatoes because I didnt wrap them well enough. But a steamed potato isn't that far from a baked one.

The other dishes were: a type of eggplant with a flavor somewhere  in between sour and spicy eggplant, chicken wings in a coke sauce, a homestyle fried tofu, Japanese curry, rice, candied sweet potato mash, steamed broccoli and steamed carrots,  and an assortment of fruits and nuts. 

Everything was delicious, despite the fact that cooking it was almost like cooking while camping--trying to improvise and repair when some disaster struck. It was good to cook like that again thought. It had been a long time since I took on a cooking challenge, and I feel quite reenergized now.

 

And! after this upcoming week, I can relax for a little. The semester will officially end for me next friday, and then I will be off on another excursion through China. This time, I will be headed toward Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou. I'm excited to see the South of China again, and especially to have my accent blend in with the locals. I am really excited to taste food from the south again. While I appreciate all this salty, oily, stir fried northern food, I am ready to taste all the sweet dishes of China. 

Once I get back, Ajla will be visiting!! I'm really excited. She'll be a good motivator, and it will be fun to go exploring China with her. Then, I will start the long march of prepping for the HSK and interning. 

I've set a new goal for myself in this whole Chinese proficiency test business. Instead of aiming to take the intermediate level test, I think I'm going to take the advanced level test. I figure, if shoot high enough, maybe the arch that I get from shooting high well give me a decent score. That being being said, the month of January is going to be a fun filled month of cramming chinese while it snows. 

Which brings me to something I've been thinking a lot about in my attempts to understand Chinese culture. It's been remarkable how many words I've found to describe intense struggle or burden. Moreover, these words are regularly used in regular conversation. The more I live here, the more I realize how stoic this society is. One bears his or her burden and lives on. To fail would be to considered weak, and I don't think I've really had a chance to many of "society's losers" but the work ethic in this country far outpaces the US. I hear of students who go to school 7 days a week, combining their regular lessons with outside English classes and other academic activities. The well rounded education isn't really focused on here, because one's admission into college is completely dependent upon one's test scores. Hell, students here have to have at least reading proficiency in English to get into college. 

While this system may not be the best for students lives, it has created a generation of students with incredible stamina. On the flipside, it also creates a really tricky social environment for students.

One thing that unifies so many students now is this unified experience of struggling through Chinese education in order to succeed. However, social interaction tends to be a little different that how Americans or Europeans would interact with each other. Not only do these students have to deal with the social effects of the one child policy (that is to say, being an only child and being the focus of their parent's attention), but such a rigid education system heavily impacts what Americans would usually consider to be organic social development. And on top of that, there is no...celebration for graduating high school. After all, its just part of the burden that Chinese people are supposed to bear. Our teacher even told us that some parents, when writing their children birthday cards, write "Have a lot of fun on your birthday AND study hard." I put the and in caps because that and is a very special form of Chinese "and" used to express a conjunction between two things that the speaker believes has a very close relationship. 

Chinese students make me feel like I am wasting my life away. Of course, I don't really believe that. But interesting to see this new "work ethic" that doesn't relate with "The American Dream" or protestant influences in the spirit of capitalism.

okay

I love you all.

it's time for me to get back to work now.

george

thisentryisdis jointed

It's a grey Sunday. The air is cold, and I've started wearing gloves outside. The sun makes occasional appearances, peaking its head around the smog banks and sky scrapers to beam a smile or so at the people below. I wave to hello, and smile back. In some ways, my life in Beijing isn't that much different than my life in Seattle. While I may write here about my adventures, 85% of the time, I'm sitting in a warm cozy room, with some soft music playing in the background, studying.

Thats essentially the scene right now. I'm Listening to Jay Brannan (who, I discovered recently, and subsequently fell in love with. He's 26, gay, and beautiful, which makes feel like I have a chance. Oh, one can dream.) I'm cuddled in my blankets because I don't want to start the day.

and in proper fashion, the warm cozy reality I was just experiencing was just shattered by the lady who comes sporadically to check the water meter. Sometimes I wonder if I attract irony.

Well, I suppose I have to reset the scene now. I'm sitting grumpily on my couch, and I'm a little chilly, but thats my own fault, because it's not cold enough to motivate me to move and grab a blanket or turn on the heater. I am longer motivated to write. I will finish this later.

* * *

So it's later now. Specifically, Monday evening. And I'm relatively comfortable again--propped up on my couch with my feet on the coffee table. I ate a sandwich for dinner, and I am now procrastinating on words I should be learning how to write. But it's toasty in my apartment, and I have a stick of Toblerone. I laugh, because this is the same way I would procrastinate in Seattle. Except in Seattle I would usually be propped up on JoEllen Koester's bed satirizing Emily Holt on the other side of the room.

I've actually started thinking about home and my friends more so recently. Not in any nearing-depression sort of way, but in the, itwouldbereallynicetohavelunchwithsoaendsorightnow kind of way. Skype has given me my friend fixes and things are going well. I suppose it's finally hit me that my life in china doesn't involve me working with every social network within a 5 mile radius to institute some sort of project amidst my other responsibilities (as my life in Seattle did). I'm here, learning Chinese, and learning it well. It's just strange now realize...that I am not doing any extracurricular activity other than tutoring English on the side. 

(which might I say, was rediculous today. My student, this really wealthy business woman, wants to be fluent in English in two months. Apparently, Zhang Zi Yi became fluent in two months, and she wants to do the same. I think I responded with something like. "Only if you study really really hard." )

I spend my weekends relaxing, and/or casually working on homework, and I am sane. Chinese has gotten much easier after I've built my foundation of characters, so that pressure is gone. Now, I have constant manageable amounts of stress, and I feel like something is wrong. I probably shouldn't jinx this. It's actually quite nice. Having free time just made me think of home. But not in the way that I'm direly missing home, but because I was just revealed another aspect of how my life in China is different that my life in Seattle. 

This is this most obvious, unexciting an obvious revelation I've had just yet. Walking around the Summer Palace didn't give it to me. Wandering through the mountains of Yunnan didn't give it to me. No, the full realization that coming to China has the opportunity cost of not being in Seattle, gave it to me. Maybe I'm seeing this as more powerful than it actually is. I just can't seem to place my finger on that feeling of truly knowing that I'm doing something different. Maybe its because studying in Seattle is pretty much like studying in China. It's cold outside and I curl up with my notebooks . But its this complete understanding that the rhythm of my daily life is actually different that so gently and bluntly hit me over the head. 

and well, after this revelation-I feel no different. That's a sort of anticlimactic ending to a period of self reflection. 

anyway, in other news:

exciting things in my life happen on the weekends. Yesterday night, when I should have been doing homework, I decided that I would go out to “The Boat.” The Boat has queer Sundays, and every so often, has a screening of a local documentary film project currently being funded by a Forbes Foundation Grant. It’s name is something along the lines of “Queer as Folk: Beijing.” It explores the different facets of gay culture in China and somewhat resembles the “Sex and Seattle Series” that is held at the Hugo House, with the exception that its is more journalism than fictional relationships acted out on stage.

The episode I saw last night focused on the state of HIV in China. At the center of the film was a series of interviews with Edwin Cameron, HIV positive Supreme Court Justice of South Africa. He visited China recently to speak to students and the Health Minster of china. As of now, China’s cultural attitude toward those who are HIV positive is not the least bit accepting. People have been fired from their jobs, and there is still an irrational fear of the disease present in much of the population. However, it is reassuring to know that after Edwin Cameron’s discussion with the Chinese government, the Government is cognizant of the problems that arise from HIV stigma, and how HIV stigma only perpetuates the spread of HIV.

I hope to go back in the future.

I guess I should stop procrastinating now.

It Started with Avenue Q

So my weekend began with me listening to a lot of Avenue Q. I think I looped "What do you do with a B.A. in English?" a few too many times for my health. I think I listen songs like that when I'm either melodramatically tired or feel like I'm caught in some state of apathetic torpor. The question of what my genuine state of being is when I'm listening to Avenue Q on repeat is not a question I can answer. But whatever state of mind you think such an action would require was probably present in me last friday as I nibbled on cheesecake and debated what I was going to do during the weekend. 

It's so hard to be motivated to do anything when lacking sleep. So hard. I am one sleepy sleepy boy. It takes a lot of energy to be a twittery young sprite, and the week sure takes it out of me. I'm sure many of my friends already realize this about me. I miss my first grade afternoon naps and am often in a dizzy haze trying to stay awake in Chinese class. If I had a "fundamental mood" that would rule over my perspective of the world, then sleepiness would definitely be it. That being said, I was reluctant to do anything on Friday night. 

But- I decided that I it would be healthy of me to stop eating cheesecake and listening to Avenue Q so I grabbed high school classmate, Andrew, and went to the Armin Van Buuren Concert at the GT Banana. 

First, there are far to many clubs in the Beijing that involve the word, "Banana." Second, Chinese clubs have the worst dance floors ever. It's almost like the designers of these clubs purposely make the dance floors so small because they know that this society is so socially awkward and compartmentalized that it takes an enclosed space with a strobe light and a smoke machine to loosen people up. 

Other than these two idiosyncrasies, I had an okay time. Though, I have to be honest, trance gets a little repetitive for me, and well, dancing by myself in a crowd of chinese people next to Andrew only really amuses me for so long. Andrew and I talked about this afterwards. He misses his girlfriend, and dancing alone in China for half a year doesn't exactly make the distance between him and his partner any closer. His girlfriend called while we were talking once, and that boy turned into a puddle. I have a soft spot in my heart for people like that. Maybe its because I secretly am a mushy, sappy, pathetic little puppy trying to play the part of toughened grungy mutt to mask color of my soul. Or maybe I'm just a fountain of melodrama whose experience with Romantic comedies is interfering with his personal psychoanalysis. Either way, Friday was not the most motivating day for me. The combination of malaise, a mediocre club, and seeing andrew turn into a puddle (though, andrew, know that you can turn into a puddle anytime you want), did not bode well for 小明.

Saturday though, was much better. After a semi-productive day of memorizing characters, my roommate Cat, and I went to a drinks party in Chaoyang. It was hosted by a genial expat from San Francisco named Ming. I ran into Ming one night at this loungebarthing that I now frequent on thursdays. The man is wonderful host. My heart nearly stopped when I saw a western hors d'oeuvres so beautifully set upon the table. It reminded me so much of home. After tarrying there for a while, some new friends, Cat, and myself moseyed over to Destination.

Now, the Gay sweatbox that is Destination had slowly lost much of its appeal to me since Halloween.  But, it was much nicer this time. Having fun friends with you makes such a big difference especially when one is part of an enclave of foreigners in a Chinese sea. I've discovered that I can officially handle about half of a Long Island ice tea before entering into a delightfully trashy state, and that I sleep so wonderfully afterwards.

Sunday began fantastically. I woke up to the warm sun tickling my face, listened to music that wasn't Avenue Q, and started writing this. Unfortunately, this fantasticism only lasted until my computer decided to die. At about 1:00pm this afternoon, my computer decided that it wasn't going to start, and I had to make another pilgrimage the apple store and hung out there for about 5 hours until my computer was fixed. Sometimes, I wish I lived in ChaoYang district. It would make trips like this so much more convenient. Maybe its a copout that I want to live in the more western district, but thats where many of the things that I require to live reside: gays, the mac store, and good restaurants. 

Oh, maybe I'll move there this summer. Meanwhile, I dont mind living in the district of cheap food and college students.

Goodnight, world.

George

Holidays in the Pre-Holiday Season

I've had an exciting last couple of weeks here in the Beijing. Despite the fact that the days are getting shorter, people are still out celebrating various occasions into the night. It began with Halloween. I'm fairly certain that most Chinese people had no idea why all the Westerners were dressed in funky costumes and wandering around in groups. I overheard many a confused conversation and had many a local confused as to why someone, who looked like one of their own, was in costume. I'm also fairly certain that my neighbors were a little confused about this holiday in which one was supposed to wear a costume and beg for candy. Nonetheless, it was great. I think my favorite costume of the evening was my old high school friend, Andrew, who slapped on articles of clothing from various decades, donned some goggles, those running shoes (that aren't really shoes, but are those toe-sock things with hard rubber soles that you run in), and attached a fanny pack to himself, and called himself a time-traveler.

What was even more exciting than my time traveler friend, was that before going out we ate at this Brazilian BBQ place in the neighboring district. For 16 Dollars I had an unlimited supply of delicious appetizers, steak, pork chops, sausage, lamb, and chicken. I must admit, I felt a little bit gluttonous, but I forgave myself quickly because it was a holiday. The rest of the night involved me dancing with zombies, animals, and locals who felt a little awkward dancing near zombies and animals.

The following night I got to see Kanye West at the Worker's Gymnasium in Beijing. That was really exciting. It was weird to think that only a month or so ago, Kanye's performance space was filled with Olympians. The only downside was that the sound quality wasn't all that good. Though, it was worth it to watch him perform "Stronger," as I have had that song on my "practicing Chinese characters" playlist for a while. Kanye has been part of the reason why I am now slowly becoming literate in Chinese. Thank you, Kanye. Thank You.

A few days after Kanye was the election. 99.8% of China supports Obama, and nearly every US expat I have met is also an Obama supporter. I don't think China was nearly as excited as Seattle was (people flowing into the streets and all), but many cafes and restaurants had parties and were giving out free drinks. Other than that, China was relatively quiet.

A couple days after the concert, I also got the chance to go to a simmered lamb restaurant over by the Forbidden City. Dare I say, while Kanye was exciting, this was more amazing. I’ve had hot pot before, but this was just a little bit different. Hot pot generally involves a large pot of broth set at the center of the table in which people toss in pre-chopped pieces of food. It’s like French fondue or Japanese shabu shabu. But simmered lamb, unlike other forms of hot pot, is a Beijing specialty. The lamb has no aftertaste and it’s all so tender. And occasionally, one is also served roasted lamb skewers dusted with Xinjiang (a western region of China influenced heavily by Islam) spices. One is also given the option to have fresh green vegetables, Chinese radishes, seafood, or sesame sauce (which is almost like peanut sauce) to accentuate one’s meal. I left the restaurant quite satisfied.



Most recently, I went to go see what I've been told was the 2nd drag-show in Beijing. I was really excited to go especially after working so hard to organize the second ever drag-show to happen at SU last year. It was really fun. The LGBTQA community in Beijing has really formed an interesting foundation. First of all, there are two communities: the Chinese speaking community and the English speaking community. It's interesting because I've been weaving in between both when I go out. There's usually a "Chinese side" and then the "not so Chinese side." It seems like it’s mostly a language barrier that keeps the two sides from coming together, but there are also really big cultural divides in terms how people interact. When Chinese people go out, they tend to sit down in closed groups while the expatriates tend to walk around making small talk. Nonetheless, the drag-show was a success.



The drag-show was primarily attended by the expat community, but it was fantastic. It wasn't like Julia's, but it was one of the most spirited events I've been to in Beijing. It gave many of the expats a little taste of home that they had been missing for a long time. I even met some new friends. It's hard finding LGBTQA people in everyday life in China unless you actively seek them out. This is nothing like living on Capitol Hill. But, I'm glad I've found them. Beijing just became that much less foreign to me.



Until next time,

George

Midterm in the Middle Kingdom

Hello friends-

Having made it half way through the semester, I think China has finally started being nice to me. Maybe that isn't the right way of saying it. I think I've finally figured out China enough to avoid most of the annoying bureaucratic situations, and I have decided that I am going to politely resist the urge to kick the cars and cabs that try and run me over despite the fact that I have the green light. I am motivated to learn again rather than dragging myself through the sea of Chinese characters that seems to taunt me as the April Chinese Proficiency Exam draws nearer.

Somewhere around midterms, I was inspired. I was inspired by a pedestrian.

As I was crossing the street one evening, the light turned green for my side of the street to cross. There was an old man crossing on the other side, and while he was crossing these cars clearly running red lights started honking their horns and attempting to plow through the people walking. Despite the motorized pieces of metal driving approaching the old man, he kept walking at his normal pace. The driver who was waiting behind the old man became more impatient by the second and started holding the horn down on his car. Angered, the old man turned to the driver in the car and blurted some Chinese obscenity. The man in the car jumped out in the middle of the intersection and started berating the old man with more Chinese obscenities and then hopped back into his car. Infuriated after finally passing the car with the irate driver, the old man turn around and kicked the car with all his little old man strength. The car drove away. The driver turned looked back and spat.

I guess on the surface this just seems like a road rage conflict, but there's so much more intra-Chinese cultural conflict going on. The first was the conflict between the old man walking and the young man that was driving the car. Not only did the young man violate the driving laws (which everyone does), but also he violated it against a person who he should have been respecting. The old man was following all the rules and this uppity young fellow decided that he was going to break the rules. Somewhere in that conflict, the traditional way of viewing life wrestled with the new generation that tries to separate itself from the slow moving ancien regime.

The second conflict was a class conflict. Here's how I think the technological/class hierarchy operates in china. If you're on the road, the more advanced your driving machine is, the more "rights" you have to demand that other people move out of your way. So here's equation.

Weakest ---- Pedestrian < Bicycle < Electric Bicycle < Vespa < Motorcycle < Car ----Strongest

*For those of you who have not seen an electric bicycle, it is a bike with an electric motor attached that allows you use the motor or pedal if your out of power.

In the US, we might comment on how "that person in the Mustang/Jaguar/ BMW thinks they own the road”, but at least in the US, 90% of the time you encounter an extreme aggressive driver, you are in a car. In China, the divide isn't between people who mutually own cars, but people who own cars and people who do not. Underneath it all, your car signifies your social/economic status and thus gives you more "right" to mow down a pedestrian. It's been a long time since the Great Leap Forward, and with China's rapid development such class conflicts are inevitable.

Anyway, this old man inspired me to study. I can't say whether or not he meant to challenge the Chinese social system, but if that old man can take on China, a Chinese Proficiency Exam should be nothing. So here I am, hunkered down and reenergized to take on the world. I guess it helped that I got to relax a little bit in this midterm period. I suppose it was also comforting to know that the native Chinese don't just accept the crazy streets as "culture." That old man reminded me that no, not all chinese people think alike, are the same, and are out to run me over with a bus. It's a comforting thought, really.

In other news, I've been having fun meeting all the other people studying Chinese in Beijing. My roommate and I were talking the other day, and we decided that study abroad in China could not be an escape; it could not be a vacation. China might be inexpensive compared to Europe, but you need to work. When you want to interact with the local population, you need to speak Chinese to them, because 90% of the people in China do not speak English, and if they do, they are often reluctant to. So, it's been fun talking to the other students here and hearing their stories of how they got to China.

So far, I've met a couple Canadians, two Norwegians, three Italians, a Singaporean, four Koreans, and numerous Americans. It's also been a bit frightening seeing how many people I've met in China that have connections to people I know back in the US. I even stumbled on a few high school classmates while wandering around the city. The world really is small.

At any rate, in order to get to know these people better, I decided that I would shamelessly throw myself a housewarming party, invite several people, and ask them to bring food. The idea was quite popular. People showed up, brought food, and my house was quite warm despite the fact that the winter is rapidly approaching.

And it is cold. It’s going to be very, very cold. Beijing gets a taste of the Russian winter as it blows down from the North. I don’t really want to think about it yet.

Regarding another bit of completely unrelated news, this 40 year old Chinese business woman systematically analyzed my sexiness the other day. Apparently, I have a very nice knows, seductive eyes, and because the tops of my ears exceeds the height of my eyebrows, I am brilliant and destined to do great things.

I'm slowly getting lessons on how to be auspicious. I'll let you know what other body parts you need to rearrange to keep your Feng Shui in order.

Have a nice Fall season, friends.

The Coco Banana

So I've made friends with this one female worker at the Bridge Cafe.  Her name is Xiao jing (little Mirror). She's so cute. Every time I come in and she gets all giddy and comes over to talk to me. She's always interested in what I'm studying and frequently asks me if I need help and always smiles and says "study hard. study hard." Yesterday, after my exams I went into Bridge to get myself something sweet, and she was there, giddy as can be. But this time, she came up to me and asked me if I could read Chinese on my computer. I told her yes, and she directed me to a website that was her blog, filled with more than a 1000 poems, short stories, and notes written since her high school years. I also couldn't help but notice that she directed me to a collection of love poetry that she had written.

I started to fear that she was getting the wrong idea of me saying hi to her everyday, and the Chinese aren't the most expressive with their feelings, so when people do show warmth and interest in them, its often interpreted romantically (especially if you're close in age). After spending sometime reading her poetry, and her blushing every time I looked at her, I casually slipped that her work reminded me of a boy I knew back home. She was a little taken aback. She said, "but you could go look for a girl." I then had the fun time translating that my sexuality was not of my own choice. She innocently replied with a, "but you can still change!" I replied with broken chinese while pointing to various words that I would quickly look-up online like "depression," "suicide," and "repression." 

That being said. Gay culture here is still underground. You can find it. There are gay clubs and gay bars, and gay organizations, but they have yet to make a break into mainstream chinese media.

I told Xiao Jing that I was one of the 断袖之癖 (duan4 xiu4 zhi1 pi3). I told her that I was of the "love of the cut sleeve." She didn't understand. I told her that in in Western Han in Ancient China there was an Emperor named Ai-Di. One night, Ai-Di and his lover were fast asleep in bed. His lover had fallen asleep on the emperor's royal robes. Suddenly, the emperor's advisor rushed into the room begging Ai-Di's attention. Called to duty, Ai-Di had to leave his lover, but did not want to wake him from his sleep. So- in order to let him rest, Ai-Di cut his sleeve,giving birth to the phrase "the love of the cut sleeve."

Xiao Jing smiled. She said it was a very romantic story, but despite such history in China, she has only seen two openly gay couples in China. One, she said, was in a train station. The other was at a bus stop. Beyond that, she knew no one. China has a long way to go. On the bright said, the People's Congress has been having discussion about the legalization of same sex marriage and homosexuality has been unbanned for a while now. Though, after talking to a few other people, it's interesting to see that the Chinese stereotype of homosexuality is relatively the same as the US stereotype. Maybe it's US influenced, but homosexuals (men at least) are still considered weak, effeminate, afraid of anything dirty, and limp-wristed. 

We'll see how the rest of the year turns out for me.

Anyway,

After having a bonding moment with Xiao Jing, a couple A couple friends and I decided to go on an adventure and follow an ad in The Beijinger advertising this Aussie Mash-Up Duo weaving hiphop, funk, and techno at this place called the "White Rabbit Club." The place was small and and empty at 10:30pm on a Friday night. The Aussie Duo wasn't showing up until 1:00am at the earliest, and to be frank, it was kind of lame. Though, the owners were nice enough to refund our cover charge, and we went elsewhere.

Luckily, some of my old Chinese roommates were with us, and one of them suggested that we go to this club on the "club street" Gongtixilu (workers street west). So we hopped in a cab and made our way to the Coco Banana. If there is anyway to describe a club in China it would be with the word "gaudy" and variations of the word gaudy. The outside of the club seemed like it was caged in golden neon lights and unlike the other places what I've been to, this place was filled with locals. We each paid our 50 RMB cover charge ( 7 dollars), and after being patted down at the security check, we crept inside. The music was surprisingly simple, but satisfying. They took a lot of p popular pop/hip hop songs and spun them with some simple techno dance beats. This was far more exciting than the Rabbit. It was also far more crowded. If there was a fire code, I'm sure this places was violating it. People were pressed up against each other, and to make it even more intimate, people were also casually blowing smoke into each other's faces. I swear everyone inside the club was chain smoking: one the dance floor, between drinks, between words, while walking, while sitting, while doing absolutely anything. It was pretty rough for me and my weak lungs, and for some reason. In addition to all this smoke, the place thought they needed a smoke machine. 

However, I can say I had a great time. Despite my clothes smelling like tobacco. I danced. I danced around the awkward Chinese boys, and I attempted to dance on this platform, BUT apparently, you can only dance on the platform if you're a girl. That was sort of disappointing, but the music was good and I let all my stresses out on the dance floor.

Now, I'm working again. I bought myself a fancy electronic dictionary. I can write characters into it. It's pretty sweet. I'll show you all when I get home.

Love,

me

Friday is wonderful

Because I can find a nice warm cafe, sip tea, read xkcd.

* * *

There are two weeks until the halfway point of the semester. I have gone into a very machine like mode of studying again. Reading, writing, and reading some more in an attempt to make everything stick. I occasionally get bouts of annoying discouragement (like today, when I pronounced like 10 things incorrectly in my speaking exam), but I will endure (忍住 ). It just feels so different than the latter part of the summer in which i felt so, for the lack of my ability to pump out better words, free and happy. I had time to think, I had time to run, I was at my peak physical condition, and had all the comforts of Seattle. Now, I'm afraid to exercise too much for fear of inhaling too much pollution, I don't have time to think, and I'm starting to fear the idea that I like sitting and studying characters. Economists weren't lying about opportunity cost. I hate having to believe them though, but the results are showing. I've lost all the muscle that I gained this summer, and now my clothes are slightly baggy. I actually feel like I'm in high school again--doing repetitive assignments late into the night and waking up early. 

I'm sure if I watch some cheesy disney film I'll be inspired again. Thats why I keep Mulan on my computer. It's not so I can have 1 gig of my hard drive taken up, but it's supposed to remind me of my need to uphold my family honor despite whatever odds may face me. Okay, so maybe I'm dramatizing this situation a little too much, but Mulan is a good movie, and if I can trick myself into believing that my working hard will somehow bring such honor to my family in the most Confucian of ways, then I will live in this fictional reality until I learn Chinese, and then watch some other cheesy movie to remind me of what the real world is like. 

This will be a very restful weekend.

I'm excited. I'm going to buy a fancy electronic dictionary that allows me to write characters into it and maybe save me a few hours of sleep every night. I've never been so thrilled to get a dictionary before.

thrilled.

Coming Along

Hello friends, I apologize for minimal posting lately, Beijing got colder and my teachers decided that they wanted to "Jia you" or "add fuel" to our lessons, so I've been spending many a night sitting in warm places staring at flashcards and memorizing characters, and trying to piece together sentences of this blog every now and then. I did get a chance to see the Summer Palace recently. It was named one of the UN World Heritage sites and was definitely a spectacular sight. It was by far the biggest "garden" I have ever seen. Not only was it a garden, but it included a lake and several temples. The only thing that kept me from appreciating it all was the 100,000 other tourists in the Palace. Every time i go out so some cultural site, I feel like I'm descending into the belly of an animal. Each attraction is always heavily attended by thousands of people. China just has too many people.

Tour groups with matching hats are fun.

my roommate was coerced into taking a picture with the chinese man. after this, the man took a picture of his son with her.

So many everyday situations are complicated by the fact that there are so many people, and that there really isn't a culture of standing in lines. I don't know why people from the cold war generation talk about communist countries and how all they do is stand in lines, because I have yet to see a group of people in this country willingly stand in a line on their own. It's gets annoying after a while. After a long day of working, everybody has to fight with everybody else because no one trusts anyone else. To clarify that confusing sentence, take this example. If a group of people are standing in a line, there will be another group of people that come and cut into the line because they don't actually believe that the people standing in line are willingly submitting to a form of order that forces them to submit to being behind somebody else. That being said, I have been trampled by many a old woman moving her way up in line. I don't exactly know what to do when something like that comes up! I mean, I'm supposed to treat older people with respect, at least when I speak to them, but does that mean I let them trample me as they check out at the store? Apparently, yes. Because if I stand stiffly, I will get some crack about me being a young whipper snapper in chinese.

But thats the least of my worries right now, and the least of the Chinese's worries. The Chinese have to worry about the job market right now. My last homework assignment was to talk to a couple of college students about finding a job after graduating. I figured that if I was studying at the harvard of china, even students with degrees in Medieval Chinese Chopstick Carving could find jobs. Apparently, this is not so. It's gotten to the point where if a percentage graduates from a school in a particular major consistently do not find jobs within 3 days, the government will shut down the major completely. Moreover, many a job still have "male applicant only" signs. I thought the job market was rough in the United States, but with such a large population and people willing to move across to country to do jobs even in the service industry, competition in china is beyond rigorous. That feeling of being not so special comes really easily when one lives in a country of 1.3+ billion. I now understand why the Chinese use the word “努力” nu3 li4 to describe a persons ideal work ethic. Nuli means hardworking and there is no easy job that comes in China. One does not have the comfort of being able to fall back on a "fast food" job, there just aren't that many around.

Though, speaking of fast food.

KFC and McDonalds are totally upper class bourgeois places to eat here. Only the rich can afford to eat there, and apparently, its where you go to flaunt your status. Rich families will often get dressed up to go to KFC, McDonalds, or even Pizza hut to enjoy a "Sunday Brunch" or whatever the chinese equivalent is.

Other than having the time to make these observations, I am busily working away. I feel like I'm in high school again. I dont like this idea of having morning and afternoon classes everyday with lots of homework. My brain gets tired, but I guess thats expected because Chinese forces you to use both sides of your brain. I think thats why Chinese people live so long and have such a lower rate of Alzheimer's. Their brains get constant workouts from just speaking. (As i read on the BBC website a while ago), it's because people who speak chinese need to coordinate their left and right sides of the brain in order to match the tones of the words with the ideas of the words. In this way, speaking chinese is like singing a song. Reading characters out loud adds even more activity to the brain. So yes, my brain is tired, but I must 努力学习, or study hard, as the chinese say. There is no shortcut learning here. There is only force of will.

nerding out

Hello world.

As of today I have yet to obtain a massage. Unlike the other cities in China I travelled to in which massage parlors seemed to be on every corner, I only know of one in my area. Either way, the massages here are wonderful. Most of them are acupressure massages that churn you into a whole new person. I had an acupressure foot massage in Kunming and swore i started feeling my stomach and arms twitch when they pushed on parts of my feet. It's also interesting, because many of the massage parlors in China are places for blind employment. It's nice to know that China has some niche in society for the blind, but at the same time to know that because one is blind and might be confined to a life of foot massaging is also dismaying. Nonetheless, those who give massages do a wonderful job of realigning my Qi.

Other than reliving memories of past massages, nothing really exciting has been happening. Oh- well. I am getting kind of excited for my slowly being able to read. That's sort of nice. What's fun about learning the characters is that the visual etymology that one must practice in order to write the characters. When describe a character, they don't say its definition. They give a series of examples that use the word or explain the words "radicals" or root words. I have spent much time laughing and the history of the words coming to life as i learn them. For example. The characters for direct (the adjective) are 直接。The first character's root word is an eye. But the second character's root words are a hand with a man standing on top of a woman.

So apparently when one makes eye contact with a woman and stands on her with his hand raised, this IS direct.

That being said, it's also been really interesting to see how allegorical language is, especially chinese. Even abstract ideas like "directness" are rooted in historical examples of what one would be considered direct.

Fun huh?

In preparation for a night of homework

I am eating a piece of Black Forest Chocolate Cake

and

blogging.

I suppose this is one of my new forms of procrastination when I really don't feel like facing the chinese language. After a week of being sick, it was an un-fun road back into chinese. I'm still on it. After only a week, I was having trouble writing the the basic of characters. This just shows I'm still in a very fragile stage of language acquisition and another week long illness could very well mean the end of my grades. I hadn't seen as many red marks on a paper I've gotten back in a long time- except for the one that I got back today. So-I didn't do horribly, but it's time for me to get back on track. On that note- i decided to drop my Classical Chinese class. While I really did enjoy it, I have too much I need to make up/remember, and I want to retain as much as this chinese as possible. i believe if i continued to take that class I just wouldn't have enough time for the language to soak in.

Other than that rude awakening, today was nice. I went on a little campus exploration trip today and tried this Bun/Porridge restaurant on campus. It's a really nice cheap lunch when one doesn't want to deal with hassle of the food court or the noodle house. I feel healthy again, and I can ride my bike again without worry.

Though, I noticed that there was actually very little traffic on the streets today. I guess its because its a national holiday. This week is China's birthday, and it looks like everyone went back to their home province. I'm used to swerving for my life at least 4 times a day, but I only had to once today.

I could really use a massage right now. I should have gotten one this weekend.

The Chinese Bauhaus

So I've found myself a new coffee shop to haunt: The Bridge Cafe here in Wudaokou. In some ways, it's like an upgrade. Not only do I get an extensive (though expensive) coffee menu, but I also get a wine list, CNN playing on an LCD projector on the third level, and a menu that includes european style pastry, panini, soup, salad, and pasta. By Chinese standards, this place is a rip off. By American standards, this place is like that whole in the wall place that you go to the weekends after having some sunny jaunt through some happy place.

And it's filled with so many interesting people. I think I have met more Europeans and Latin Americans studying Chinese in Beijing than Americans. Chinese is the new French, and now that the French are studying chinese, China needs to open up cute places like the Bridge Cafe to give us Westerners a quiet haven from the 热闹-ness that is the crazy loud city around us.

For the most part, I just sit here with one ear phone in, writing characters over and over until they stick. It's not too loud, and they have fantastic wireless. This beats the French Pastry Shop for sure.

In other news, I'm mostly better. My stomach still tells me the contrary every once and a while, but I'm done being dizzy, fevered, heachached, and all that un-fun business. Now I just need to catch up.

Adventures in the Chinese Healthcare system

Dear World,

I am sick.

Two days ago i started getting a headache/stomach ache that gradually increased in intensity as time passed. When tried to sleep, I found myself having fever chills and waking often to use the bathroom. Deciding that my health was most likely screwed up, I showed up at school early to go to the University clinic. I remember the resident director of our program saying that students were afraid of going to the university clinic despite it being quite good and quite cheap. I decided that I would risk it. My headache was killing me and it felt as if someone was punching me in the stomach every once and a while.

I show up at the clinic at 7:00am only to find a flock of old people attempting to stand in line. Nothing seemed open yet, so I went back to my program's office to sleep on a couch until one of the staff showed up. At 8:00am, someone finally showed up and I dizzily walked over and pleaded in chinese that she take me to see the doctor. My chinese has gotten better, but effectively conveying medical history is not yet a forte of mine. Plus, that hospital looked like a jungle at 7:00am and I was not going to go into the jungle without a native.

The staff member told me that the hospital didn't open until 9:00 and that she had never been there. Apparently, Chinese people avoid seeing the doctor like the plague. They're big fans of self medication. It didn't take me long to figure out why.

When I arrived, I stood for 15 minutes in a registration line at the entrance of the clinic. It was here that i drew a conclusion of how diseases spread so fast in China. There are just so many people. But it isn't just that, the swarm of geriatric germ incubators stood so close to each other and myself that I could feel their breath on my neck. There also isn't a "cover your mouth" etiquette when when you cough or sneeze, so I often found myself being pelted by hacks, sneezes, and the ever popular audible open-mouthed throat clearing.

Once I registered, I ventured into a waiting room in which I told one doctor my symptoms and she blurted some orders at me to go see some other doctors for further instructors. I figured, she just wasn't a morning person. I arrived at the other doctors, and told her I had some stomach problems and a headache/dizziness, they then handed me a little thimble like thing with a lid and told me that they wanted a stool sample. I quickly responded, i'll try, but I really doing think you're going to get any.

They then snappily replied, "YOU MUST provide one if you have stomach problems." They directed me to the squatty potty and commanded me that i give them a sample. After a few minutes of trying, i told them I couldnt. And they said, "well, then you'll wait until you give us one." They then directed me to stand in line for a blood test.

As I spelunked deeper into this hive, i felt the air change. You know that sterile smell of American hospitals that some people get freaked out about? Well, that smell would have been a comfort compared to this smell of squatty potty, nursing home, and stale unmoving air. Soon I arrived at the line for the blood test. This grumpy looking man in line began to speak to me. So whats wrong with you? It would have been fine to converse with this man, except he like all the other people in this hospital stood alarmingly close to me, and like every person in the hospital patient or doctor, spoke 100 decibels above what is normally acceptable for human hearing. I felt as if my head was going to explode. It didn't help that he, like many other chinese people, had this "know it all- I told you so" attitude. At that point, i just wanted to punch him. though, that would have been bad diplomacy and decided that it was the sickness making me do things.

After dizzily standing in like for another 15 minutes, I then discover that the blood test machine is actually broken and that they can't actually test blood. It had been broken for the last 15 minutes. They didn't exactly tell those of us standing in line. By then, i told the staff member that I was with that i just wanted to go home and sleep. She said, we're here, we might as well try to get them to give you something. We went back to the first doctor that commanded something at me and that doctor handed me a thermometer and told me to put it under my arm for 7 minutes. The staff member with me said she would time me with her phone. when the time was up, she brought the thermometer back and said it registered at 39 Degrees C or 102 F. The doctor was scolded "7 minutes hasn't passed yet!" By this time, I think that doctor just really enjoyed yelling at patients. the staff member responded, "I TIMED IT." The doctor replied, he still needs to give a stool sample.

We left.

We then returned to my program's office and the director advised that I go to an English speaking international hospital. It unfortunately was one district away and usually would take about an hour to get there. I hopped in a cab an then made my way to the hospital. Lucky me, there was a traffic jam and my head got to be split by the chorus of a hundred chinese car horns. Another thing about China is that they really like to use their car horns, sickeningly so.

When i arrived at the hospital, they nearly turned me down, saying they had no appointments open. I pleaded with them that I came from an hour away and was running a high fever. They found an opening and let me in. While sitting in the waiting room, the nurses at the station were yammering away "fever? he's come here for a fever? you dont need to come here for a fever." I decided to ignore them and wait for the doctor. Because China has so many people its understandable that those in charge would do anything to make the lines shorter. At least this hospital was more cordial.

I finally saw the doctor and he told me that I was either struck with a stomach virus or bacteria. He prescribed some rehydration salts, ibprofen, and zythromax, and i was on my way home.

Since then, I have been sleeping.

and sleeping.

And trying to to move because the world spins.

kind of like now.

goodnight, world.

bureaucratic healthcare sucks.

school

Hello Friends,

Sorry for being out of the loop for a while, my program has kept me busy by taking me on an adventure through China, and then class began. So—here’s me catching up.

We left Beijing on August 31st 5:00pm on an overnight train to Xi’an, the ancient capital of China and the current capital of Shaanxi province. That was my first time riding in a sleeper on a train. I remember when I was really little, I had this infatuation with trains. I wanted to be an engineer and I played with my toy trains all the time. While the opportunity to sleep in a (hard) sleeper for a short while did fulfill some of my childhood dreams, and while the scenery we passed was beautiful, I was distracted by cigarette smoke always wafting my way. One isn’t allowed to smoke in any of the cars, but one can stand in between the cars and billow away. Lucky me, my bed at the end of the car, and smoke casually floated pass me as the car door opened and closed. Things were fine once I feel asleep. I got some of the best sleep that I have ever gotten on that train.



The next morning at 7:00am we arrived at Xi’an.

The city was wide awake at 7:00am, and the train station was a madhouse. We were caught in the middle of tour groups, locals, and merchants trying to sell things to tourists. We hopped into a tour bus and proceeded to our hotel. Once we dropped off out bags, we jumped back into the busses to visit the Terra Cotta Soldiers and the Ancient Walls of Xi’an.




The museum at the soldiers was very cool. What amused the most was a little display of a chrome infused sword invented more than 1000 years before the west even began using chromium.



(I dont have anything cool to say about the city walls other than it's more than 2000 years old and i got to ride my by around it)

: )

Despite the coolness of the exhibits, I was still constantly reminded of my status as a tourist. Everywhere we went there was at least 10 different gift stands, shops, and/or three streets of merchants trying to sell their wares. People shout out their prices, trying to convince people to buy. They use their one English word, “hello!” followed by the only other English words they know, numbers. I remember once I was scared by this little lady who snuck up being me and screeched “HELLO!” and waved a necklace at me. While I understand that these people are working hard to earn money, that freaked me out. I don’t think I’ve been that scared in a long time. The harder thing is that I see all these, mostly older women, trying to sell these products, and I can’t help be feel sad. So many of these merchants get shot down constantly, hoping to make some big break off of a tourist who will pay 10 times more than something is actually worth.

I see the cities where they live, I see their homes as I walk through these tourist traps, and feel sad. These feeling subsided when we went to Chengdu to see the pandas



(one of the most adorable sights on the planet), but quickly came back as we arrived in LiJiang. Known for its “ancient city” and “ancient architecture” LiJiang is famous for its tourists. The only thing really ancient about LiJiang is the fact that the ancient city was built on the site of the ancient city. Most of the other buildings were built within the last 50 years. Though, some parts of the city were very saddening. Despite the modern status of the city, many citizens still did not have running water and had to use the canal system that ran through the city to obtain water.

LiJiang was also the first city that we traveled to in which we were exposed to a very strong Chinese ethnic minority population, the Naxi. Historians are actually debating now if the Nazi population history outdates that of the Xia civilization in the east of China.



Despite having this exposure, I feel like my conception of the Naxi was skewed. China apparently has a system of official tourist sites that people can visit and LiJiang is one of them. At the same time, it seems like the ethnic minorities are tokenized as part of these tourist attractions, very similar to the first nations peoples in the US. Though, I am in no place to judge. Tourist commerce seemed to really help the local people.

Dali was similar to LiJiang –except the beer was cheaper and apparently its one of the drug capitals of China. There were also a lot of foreigners in Dali. There are so many of them that they made them a “foreigner’s street.” It was strange for me to see “western food” advertised as exotic. Hamburgers were exotic. Cheese was exotic. Pizza was exotic. I guess it made me feel that much more special to know that my home was in America.

A couple days later, we drove into Kunming and flew back to Beijing. Class started and my brain has started to get tired from the daily work again. Because I haven’t studied Chinese in so long, I’ve been struggling to relearn the characters that I should have known in high school. But its doable. Yet by the end of the week, I am trashed. With 8-9 hours of Chinese in school, followed by 3-4 hours of homework, I’m totally destroyed.


Back to work.

Miss you all

-George


p.s.



theres a lake on my campus. The reflecting pool on the SU campus is cool. but a LAKE? man. a lake.

There is one apple store in all of China

So after a brief hiatus of getting settled in, I'm back. I had some computer problems earlier so I had a hard time connecting with the rest of the world. Essentially, my Mac power cord made this wonderful popping sound and stopped working. At first we went to this electronics super mall in the "downtown" area of my district. Though, to use to term downtown is deceiving. Beijing is so big that many locals have yet to see districts (boroughs) other than their own and those adjacent to their own. My current district, haidian district, is one of the largest districts with a population that is about the size of San Francisco and Seattle combined. Anyway, the shocking thing about this electronics super mall really wasn't a mall. It was more like a permanent flea market of bargaining, pushing, shoving, and fighting for a price that you want. There were more than 5 buildings, each at least 8 floors high of various "authorized resellers" (or so they say) of mac, pc, camera, and other electronic products. I went to 5 different "mac" sellers each giving me a different price for a mac charger with a base price of 120 dollars and a max price of 150 dollars.

Some buildings were so filled with people and products that I couldn't see the windows, and even my local friend who was taking me got lost in the building sometimes. Counters and booths arise in this flea market mall without any system of organization. There was no thematic division of products, and even the painted arrows on the ground that was supposed to lead me to exits faded into piles of boxes. This is the part of chinese culture that totally defies my vision of the Chinese etched in my mind from 6th grade history classes.

Before, when I thought chinese, I either thought of Tang Dynasty confucian order or of a photo of the transcontinental railroad workers with their tents all neatly lined up along the edge of the tracks. Beijing has been quite the opposite. Despite the rigidly organized political system, Beijing Culture is still very much like a jungle. One example of this is that Beijing does not really use street addresses. Everyone orients themselves according to major landmarks, labeled communities, or public transportation routes. If i asked a taxi driver to take me to a particular street intersection, I really only have a 20% chance of him actually knowing where to take me. For example, when I was trying to find my bank- i was told to go to the about 50 meters north of the east gate of Tsinghua University. If one does not have local knowledge of the area, then one is pretty much left on the outer fabric of society. It's even harder not knowing chinese. Now, my chinese isn't anywhere near native speaking, but at least I could make it out of that electronics super mall alive. I can only imagine how much harder it would have been for someone who has no chinese experience to try and navigate that bustling modern flea market.

Eventually, i gave up on this mall and tried to find a real mac owned mac store instead of tying to deal with people trying to gouge me on what they just called the "inherent expense" associated with using apple products.


there is one apple store in china. one. and it opened last July.


ONE apple store, in ALL of china.

Luckily, it was in Beijing. But it was also located an hour away in the Sanlitun Area of Beijing in Chaoyang district, the largest district in Beijing adjacent to Haidian. Seeing Sanlitun was like walking into a different China. It was a China filled with expensive Gucci bags, europeans, Americans,  and western architecture.



At any rate. I went to the apple store. They gave me a new charger, and my computer is all better.

The day after was the last day of the Olympics and my roommates told me that they were all going to go to the closing ceremony for the olympics.

So we ate dinner



(Shrimp ball soup, scrambled eggs and tomato, sauteed chinese broccoli, chinese radish salad, corn, and rice.)

and hopped on the train to head to the closing ceremony.



Now. I thought this train was crowded, but this was only the tip of the iceberg. My body was politely pressed against the people next to me as I tried to take a picture. Yet, when this picture was taken, it was a few minutes before rush hour. come rush hour, the train becomes packed solid. There is also no particular etiquette when it comes to sitting on mass public transportation other than push or be pushed. I went to pick up my friend from the airport during rush hour a couple days ago and I ended up using her luggage as a battering ram to push through a mass of people blocking the door as i tried to get off at my stop. XIA CHE (I'm GETTING OFF) - yelled and the people didnt move! They clung to their spaces because they knew if they moved, there was a chance that they wouldn't get back on the train. The subway has by far been the most harrowing part of china so far. People waiting to cross the street in the middle of the street is harrowing as well- but I'll describe that later.

Eventually, we made it to the Tiananmen square stop and left the subway. At first, i was little confused. i thought we were going to the Birds Nest. No no- my roommates told me. "We're going to Tiananmen Square, Birds nest tickets cost 1200 USD. The ceremony at Tiananmen is free."

Tiananmen was astounding. It was a testament to a city that has for the last 1000 years had a population of at least 10 million people. The buildings surrounding the Forbidden City (gu gong) and Tiananmen were monolithic. It was almost as if buildings had to be constructed that big in order to convey a sense of authority over such a large population. Red lanterns lit our pathway to the square and despite the splendor of my surroundings I could only focus on how many people were around me. The streets were full. The busses were full. With the exception of a few pockets of space people were densely piled into this antihill of a city. I can now understand why nationalism and group mentality/ethics is so important to the Chinese people. There are just so many of them that having an individualistic mentality, one that focuses on how special one person is, just doesn't work out. There is ALWAYS somebody out there that could rival you--so everyone might as well identify as part of a strong group. At the same time, wandering in this mob of people also presented the impression that these people didn't really identify as part of a cohesive group. I realize that this was just because I was evaluting China and chinese people based upon general manners, courtesies, and customs that we have in the West. In China- it's okay to push around your fellow chinese to get where you need to go, because they will do the same to you.

After a about 20 minutes of pushing, we made it to the front of the square and - here is what we saw.




With that- I leave you folks. I need to go find a futon.