Gulags!? in China!?

Post by New-Clark (refer to Durrell's post about brewing and hooking)

 

Guide to Avoiding the Chinese Gulags

 

For those of you who have gotten a visa for China, perhaps you've pondered at times what would happen if you inadvertently overstayed your welcome. If you haven't yet, you're probably doing it right now. I myself wondered this while I was overstaying my welcome, and realized that I wouldn't really enjoy being incarcerated in a Chinese Gulag (if such things exist outside of Russia).

 

I woke up groggily on a Wednesday morning around 11 am or so Beijing time. First thing I did was check my phone text messages. I had unknowingly made the correct decision to silence my phone while I was sleeping, and so I didn't accidentally answer the phone during this morning. The first message was from Joy and read:

 

"The police are looking for you, are you ok?"

 

I immediately got worried and tried to determine what I could have possibly done to draw attention to myself. I quickly find out that I had misread the departure date on my temporary residence registration form. Instead of mmddyyyy it is yyyymmdd, crazy non-uniformity of date designations (that's my explanation and I'm sticking to it).

 

I follow advice to not answer the phone, not answer the door, and get the hell out of China. I schedule a flight for that evening to Seoul, Korea, and have the tickets scheduled to be delivered to my apartment around 4:30 pm.

 

Around 4, there is a knock on the door. I have my roommate Will answer the door since it could be my tickets, but it turns out to be the police...looking for me. Thankfully they forgo the search of the apartment, Will plays off like he's his brother (since he was unregistered at the time), and I get my tickets literally 5 minutes after the police depart.

 

Upon leaving China through Beijing International, no mention of my longer than allotted stay is made, and I safely board the plane and leave for Korea. My return flight is about 17 hours after I arrive, just long enough to catch some Z's in the airport, and determine that the Korean language sounds way more foreign than Chinese does.

 

When I get back to China, I go to the police department to reregister. This is about how the conversation went:

 

Police Officer: "Oh, I've been looking for you"

Ignorantly: "Oh? You have? I didn't know"

Inquisitively: "Yes, I stopped by your apartment and your roommate said that you left"

Innocently: "Ah, well yeah I left for Korea"

Trap #1: "I called your phone several times, why didn't you pick up?"

Honestly: "I left for Korea…Why would I bring my Chinese phone to Korea?"

Failed: "Oh, you're right. What were you doing in Korea?"

Convincingly: "Sightseeing"

Trap #2: "Do you speak Korean?"

In the Clear: "No, but I don't speak Chinese either"

 

And that is how I avoided being stuck in a Chinese Gulag. So, moral of the story: don't answer your phone if you don't know the number, it could be the cops. Or just someone you forgot to put into your phonebook.

philippines spring break 2010! wooooo!

some will remember spring break 2009, when durrell and i zipped all over japan by high-speed rail. that was great fun, but it was also pretty cold, so this year i decided to head somewhere warmer. thus: spring break philippines 2010! (click through any of the pictures for the full album)

wooo! spring break! wooo!

in fact, i was looking at a globe earlier today in a property management office in an office building in dalian and i figured out that on boracay i was actually the furthest south i've ever been. but i'm getting ahead of myself. after a polite invitation, persistent nagging and then pretending like i couldn't care less whether she joined or not (my less-than-successful approach to women in general), i convinced (my new roommate) joy to join as well. most people just go to the beach at boracay when they go to the philippines on chinese spring break, but i decided to buck that trend because i'm a rebel and i can only spend so long getting sunburned after 15 minutes in the sun. so instead i did some aggressive googling and, inspired by spring break 2005 (wooo!), eventually settled on a place called batad.

sunrise over batad

so the trip is divided into two parts: batad and boracay, with a short bop around manila at the beginning. i won't say much about manila because it is remarkable only because of its sheer geographic enormity and the fact that it is so unremarkable. killing time before our overnight bus to banaue, joy and i found a pleasantly quiet world war ii memorial and a museum with a series of dioramas depicting philippine history the only nice parts of our day. so after dinner in one of the affluent suburbs, we caught a taxi back into the city for our 10:30 pm bus departure. the bus ride was quite nice compared to those in china except for one thing: it was air conditioned to arctic temperatures. it was like the polar express on there. the temp in manila was a nice 80 degrees even that late at night, but you had people in jackets, woolen hats and wrapped in blankets getting on the bus. but we made it, and daresay even got some sleep.

banaue

after an early morning arrival in banaue, a busy mountain town that is actually the seat of the unesco world heritage rice terraces, we set off by foot for the village of batad, guided only by vague directions i had read on the internet and an explanation from the tourist information booth. you can only get to batad by walking, though you can hire a jeep or motor-trike to take you most of the way there. unfortunately i misunderstood the directions, and what we expected to take a little over an hour took a little over three. but the scenery was beautiful, the sun was hot and we got some serious street cred from the locals that i guess were not used to seeing foreigners hump it all the way out to the village. but one thing we ended up having in batad was lots of time, so it turned out not to matter. we got there by lunch and were blown away by some seriously impressive scenery. after getting settled in a guest house we strolled across the rice terraces and out to a nearby waterfall where we swam in the cold water. we repeated the same the next day, spiced up by the arrival at our guesthouse of four wildly entertaining israelis, two of whom actually had the same itinerary as us for the rest of the trip. the next two days we did two more hikes, both somewhat unexpectedly at 10+ miles, which made us eager to get some serious r&r down on boracay. (for anybody that comes here googling "batad hiking" here is a pretty reliable rundown of a hike we did: http://www.waypoints.ph/detail_gen.html?wpt=banawe).

the view from our guesthouse

having a good time in the philippines!

mugging in front of the local swimming hole

hiking scenery

after an much more unpleasant overnight bus down to manila (this time the a/c was joined by the bus driver blasting lady gaga on his cell phone), we caught an early flight down to caticlan, a short boat ride over to boracay island and a motor-trike ride to our guesthouse. we were impressively on the beach by 9:30 am, where essentially we stayed put for the rest of our time in the philippines. the beach at boracay is quite nice, hopefully as you can see in my lovely pictures, though some say it doesn't compare to thailand. i've never been to a thai beach but i would say it's about the same as the one i hung out at in taiwan and not as good as the beaches in hawaii. but on boracay they serve you 1 dollar mai tais to your beach chair and happy hour starts at 2 pm. they also have all you can eat buffets on the beach at night with fresh clams and oysters. (by the way, israelis talk a big game when it comes to eating but i think any american jew could easily eat one under the table.) and everybody speaks excellent english. it's a vacation spot that's hard to beat, for sure.

beach on boracay

boracay sunset

as a final note a lot of people asked me about filipino food, since you never see any filipino restaurants around. well there's a reason: filipino food is totally unremarkable. it's kind of like an asian version of spanish food, with some american influence (fried chicken). so lots of garlic rice with fried eggs, chicken/pork and vegetables. good, but nothing that would bring out the suburbanites or yuppies back in the states. the mark of any successful ethnic food, i think.

filipino food

How to Survive a Trip to Erlian

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My first suggestion is make sure not to go to Erlian in the winter and if you can't make sure of that make for damn sure that you don't go when it is snowing. My trip to Erlian took about 72 hours when it should have taken 36. Just a quick note, this blog post is for those trying to cross the border to quickly get out of the country to re-up those annoying 60 or 90 day tourist visas. In theory, this can be an effective and cheap way to go, unless mother nature drops a mild snow storm in your way that Chinese drivers don't know how to negate, although they make the drive frequently. So here is the 25 hour way the trip is supposed to go, by the way this is coming from Beijing.

1. Go to the South Bum Frakk Beijing (I think the area is called Mu Xu Yuan, but have no idea. You know it when you see the blocks of abandoned department stores) and purchase a bus to ticket to Erlian for about 180 yuan. I left around 5pm on Sunday. (I bought my ticket from the Mongolian Embassy and they gave me a ride to the station that is part of the reason why I don't know where I was. From the Mongolian Embassy the ticket cost 230)

2. The bus ride should take about 12 hours and you should get in around 5am. However, if you are an idiot like me. You chose to go to Erlian on the day that it is going to snow mildly, albeit stick to the rode and have to literally wait in track for 10 hours without moving an inch. Until the next morning, when for some reason the trucks that were backing everyone up, decide to pull over to the side of the rode and let everyone pass. Spending an extra 10 hours on the bus not moving doesn't sound bad but it was awful because you are stuck in this tiny bed that is barely wider than my body and definitely not as long as my body. I am 5'9" so if you are taller than me, good luck, you are in for a rough ride. The bed can't be adjusted so you are forced to pretty much lay down the whole time or slouched bent over in your bed because the bus roof is not far away. Also, what made the car ride uncomfortable was you had to fit your feet in these little tiny cubby wholes that squish your feet. The bus was definitely not designed for the American beef cake. A tip of advice, I would take the top bunk, because you don't Chinese people spitting down on you, or dropping food or cigarette buts on you or if you are really unlucky having some kid wet the bed above you. I was on the top by the way. While on the bus I got to observe some interesting interactions with Chinese parents and their kids. I don't know why this happened but for some reason on my way to see a man about a horse, I saw a Chinese mom give a couple of good backhands to her kid, she looked like she was pretty good at ping pong. And at another time, I heard a Chinese mom calling her Child stupid. Both incidents reminded me of the good old days.

3. Once you get in at 5am, you can go to the bus station and wait or you can go to a hotel and stay in a common 3 bed room for 10 to 20 yuan. However, for me I got in at 5pm the next. Meaning I spent a full 24 hours on the bus, double the time. So my schedule was all frakked up, goodbye 25 hour trip hello eternity. Lucky for me, when I got a ride from the Mongolian Embassy to the bus station there were some Mongolians students riding with me. I did not really talk to them in the car ride to the car ride to the bus station or on the bus ride, and by really I mean not at all. But after I got of the bus to Erlian, I must have looked like I was dazed and confused, probably because I was and they jumped to my rescue. Because as you know when, when you get off the bus in any Chinese city, the first thing that happens is you get accosted by Chinese people to try to take you to a hotel or give you a ride or scam you or steal your organs or sell you for sex. As I am somewhat pretty, I was very worried about the latter and was happy to be rescued. The students asked me where I was going in broken English. And I was like Mongolia. (I know what you are asking yourself right now. How did you know they were students if you didn't speak with them. Well, it just so happens that I knew about how to get to Erlian by bus from my Mongolian CIA friend. And he was the one who arranged my trip from the Mongolian Embassy. And as I was riding in the car to the bus station, he texts me and says they look like good Mongolian students, you should hang out with them. Turns out he was right). So once, I tell them I want to go to Mongolia they jam me in this truck car thing. The truck car thing is the size of a smart car and some how we jam, seven people into it, needless to say there was a lot of doubling up and getting to know one another. Another note, since this is close to the border of Mongolia, they are speaking Mongolian the whole time, so I have no clue what is going on and when I jump in the car with them, I have no idea where I am going either. It never occurred for me to ask, when it occurred but I thought it might seem rude, so I just went a long for the ride. After a brief stop at a bank and a really shady place where it looked like for sure I was going to be sold into sexual slavery (thankfully, for what I can only assume was said because it was said in Mongolian, the Mongolians were like "hell nah, we ain't stayin here, you best to take us to another place), finally we ended up at a nice little hotel where it only looked like I might lose a kidney. The Mongolian students ended up being really cool. I went out to dinner with them and they ended up treating me to Mongolian food. At dinner we ended up drinking Mongolian milk tea which was salty, pale, and warm. They told me it was good to warm you up, because it was freezing cold outside. And I ate this fried rice dish with lamb, carrots and cummerbunds that was amazing and we all shared what can be best described as 肉饼. I found out four of the Mongolians were English students and one other was a computer science major and another was just a girlfriend. They had been traveling across China from New Delhi to go home to UB (UB because I don't know how to spell it and I don't want to google it, UB is the capitol). Of the four English students one was female and she dominated the conversation telling me about themselves, her boyfriend is the one whole rescued me and threw me in the car with them. They ended up treating me to dinner. So I decided to return their kindness with a few bottles of 啤酒. We went back to the English students room and watched a couple of performances from the Grammy Awards (Jayz and Black Eyed Peas) and I guess I looked bored or something because they decided to show me Mongolian hip hop music which is a lot like gangsta rap but in Mongolian. I thought I was watching the Mongolian version of N.W.A. and Usher. After while, I went back to my room with the computer science major and the girlfriend and watched How I Met Your Mother with them until I feel a sleep. I didn't bring my computer by the way. I ended up waking up in the middle of the night listening to my ipod until 8am when it was time for me to figure out how to cross the border to Mongolia. Side note, the Stuff You Should Know podcast entertaining and informative, it got me throw my 24 hour bus ride and waking up in the middle of the night.

4. After checking out of the hotel, I rushed over to the bus station to catch a bus to across the border. Cabs to travel short distances around the city are about 5 yuan and they don't turn on the meter, also from the one cabbie I talked to I gathered that all Erlian cabbie's think Obama is bad because he talks to the Dali Lama (that word guaranteed censorship) and sold guns to Taiwan, and that America should have only one party and not two. I could not get him to tell me which party the one should be. Anyway, I rushed to bus station to discover there is only one bus leaving for Zamyn Uud and it is at 1:30pm and the last bus for Beijing is at 4:30pm. So I am beginning to flip my Santa Claus at this moment and freak out. There is no way I am staying another night in Erlian and I really don't want to get stuck in Zamyn Uud. But I buy a ticket anyway for 40 yuan and text my MCIA friend for a solution and he suggest going to the central market to hop a ride with jeeps the cross the border for what he says 150 yuan max. So I hope in the a text and he tells me he has a friend that can take me across for 100 yuan. So I am uber excited at this point because I just might not get stuck in Erlian another night.

5. The what I am going to call the Jeep Marauder tells me that he can take me across for 150 yuan and I am like nah 120 and he was like okay fine and he tells me that he has another American that he is taking too. I am like whatever, but we have to leave now. And he is like okay we will leave now. So I am getting in the car and say hello to the American and the first thing the American tells is that this guy is a trickster and he has been waiting for like an hour to cross. So after 30 minutes of me and the American telling him to lets go already. He finally has gathered enough people to make the trip worthwhile for him and has jammed us tight like sardines in the back seat and the trunk.

6. The border crossing is pretty uneventful, people are jumping out the car left and right some keeping going on to Zamyn Uud with US so don't, new people come in the jeep and each border check point, the driver is jumping out and giving gifts and bribes left and right. All I know is that process of going from the Chinese to the Mongolian check points goes off well with out me being sold in to sexual slavery, as you can tell is something I was really worried about the whole trip.

7. Once across to the Mongolian side, the American and I have to wait in the car for two hours while the driver handles his shady business and gathers more people for the ride back. Luckily, the American was their with me or I probably would have been very annoyed. But having someone to talk about the ridiculousness with makes the time go by a lot faster and makes for pretty interesting observations. I have only been to the US Mexican border once and that was Tijuana, but I never really thought about it until the American pointed it out (he is from Houston, a very large border city. Well, at least I think it is with all that urban sprawl it is just a matter of time if it isn't) to but Erlian and Zamyn Uud look like the US Mexican border and even the US Canadian border to some extent. The US being Erlian in both cases.

8. After gathering enough people, we cross the border again, more bribes and gifts are driver. The driver has to collect half our fare to help pay it. And I notice for half he only collects 50 yuan from me, things are coming up Milhouse.  

9. The driver drops us off at the bus station in Erlian. And I pay him 50 yuan and he doesn't say a word, Ka-Ching!

10. By this time it is 12pm and I hopeful that I can catch the 2pm bus back to Beijing, so I turned in the ticket I previously bought and try to get a ticket back for the 2pm bus, unfortunately it is sold out. But luckily they still have tickets for 4:30 which ends up being sold out by the time I get on. The ticket cost 200 yuan.

11. I ended spending the rest of the time walking around city and eating lunch with the American. At lunch we have this style of egg plant I have never tried. I don't know if I had said this in the blog before, but the egg plant cooked style in China is the best egg plant cooked style in the world, its fact I read in the CIA world fact book. Anyway the style is called 啤酒茄子, it is the best egg plant cooked style I have ever had. The food in Erlian is kind of expensive a dish of 锅爆肉 cost 35 yuan and wasn't nearly as good as my favorite Chinese restaurant's 锅爆肉 (more on that in a future blog), even the Qingdao's (beer) were a whopping 4yuan. The place was breaking the bank on my food budget.

12. The bus back to Beijing was much better. The cubby wholes for the feet where larger, actually built for real size people and beds were longer. If you are really fat and really tall you still would not have enjoyed this bus ride. But as I am just fat and average, it was fine. The only set back on the journey was when the bus driver got lost, but luckily the American was up front with him and had google maps on his phone. I got back to Beijing around 4:30am Wednesday. I felts so happy to see the three big humps of Xizhimen, I almost cried. But I was super sad when I realized the bus driver was driving us back to South Bum Frakk Beijing. I finally made it home around 5am for a nice shower, which I probably shouldn't say but it was my first shower since Sunday morning and the first time I brushed my teeth since then too. It was probably the least hygienic 72 hours of my whole life. If you saw the communal hotel bathroom I was staying in you would not have taken a shower either and probably would have peed outside. The bus station bathroom was much cleaner than the hotels.

Tips: If you try to get on a modern bus and get a top bunk in the back, because they are the best, and if you can't do that get just get a top bunk. Don't get a top bunk in the back on an older bus because then you are basically sharing one bed with everyone in the back. If you are tall you might want to get a top bunk in the very front.

Another tip if you can, travel with someone, preferably Mongolian, it will help a lot. And if you can't do that find some Mongolian students to hang out with. I think navigating the city might be hard if you don't speak Chinese or Mongolian. Very hard.

Another tip, eat the 啤酒茄子and the Mongolian food. But don't get diarrhea, if you do, you are not going to have a good time.

Another tip, know a MCIA agent that you can text for advice or at least someone who has been there.

Last tip, try to get a Jeep Marauder that already has people lined up to go that way you can leave quicker and you don't get scammed. Before I met up with the American he tried to go with these Mongolians guys that just took him to a gas station told him to pay for gas, drove him back to his original destination and then siphoned off the gas.

Shout outs: Thank you MCIA agent for helping me to navigate through this situation, I probably would have been sold in to sexual slavery without your help. And this post is for New Clark, hopefully I can save you a little money when you have to hide from the police again. 

Oh and this is not Golze posting, its me. 

plant update, and more

i just got back from a week in the philippines. it was a great trip, excellent weather, blah blah i'll put up a post on it soon with lots of pictures. in the meantime here is a picture of my plant, which has hit upon some hard times after moving to the new apartment. those that follow the blog, however, will remember about how my plant almost died before bouncing back with a vengeance. therefore, i remain optimistic, as long as turner didn't kill the thing while i was away on vacation.

besides the philippine post i am pleased to announce that durrell and i are working on a couple of ambitious initiatives for the blog. and by a couple, i mean one. but it should bring our blog up to 2008 standards, so i do hope you all stick around for the unveiling in a couple weeks.

and finally, i just want to say that the posting reach-around method that durrell is using seems to label every post as by me. though i imagine it's clear who's who at this point, i just want to throw that out there.

Ramblings and an Invention

First the ramblings. Feb. 14 marked the start of not only Valentine's Day, but also the start of Chinese New Year. And for Chinese New Year, it seems that everyone single inhabitant of Beijing goes out and purchases fireworks and firecrackers. At the end of the day it looks like Seattle on the 4th of July times a factor of 20 (which is roughly the population difference or just a made up number). Anyway, as you can imagine after everyone is finished setting off there fireworks and firecrackers there is mounds and mounds of garage in the street. I never really thought about how they clean up the mess, but they employ the same technique that is used during a snow storm, i.e. bulldozers, garbage trucks and thousand of people with brooms. It looked a lot like Golze's post on the snow.

Another rambling is the other day I made pizza with friends and it turned out great. As you can see from the picture. I recently finished the book Outliers and it says that it takes about 10,000 hours before you can become an expert at something. I don't really know about that because I haven't spent 10,000 hours making pizza and I already got a black belt in pizza.

Now the invention. Sir Isaac Newton created calculus in an effort to discover gravities effect on the earths orbit. I created my invention in order to discovers alcohols effect on the brain. My new invention is a drinking game. I have no name for it and am open to suggestions, bur right now it is tentatively called The Long March. Like all good drinking games, the rules are simple, however, the involves cards. The game is played much like war.

Rules:

1. Highest card wins, and if you win you take a sip of your drink.

2. War trumps anything, meaning if you throw out an ace but two others throw out two fives, the winner of the war drinks. If playing with four people and there are two wars then the highest cards war competes.

3. The first person to get rid of all their cards has to drink half their drink and are out of the game.

4. The game is over when only one person is left with all the cards or when one person still left in the game finishes all of their drink.

5. If playing with jokers, everyone drinks when the card is played and the person who throws the joker drinks twice.

Since the game is still in the beta stage, I am looking for better rules and a good name for the game, so please leave suggestions.

2 pimps and a Dealer

After walking home after an intense Brewing and tv watching secession with Golze and New Clark (aka Turner), I decided to cut throw SLT for a more interesting walking home and to see if I could find something to satisfy my sweet tooth. As it was midnight as I was walking, most businesses were closed. However, not all of them. In a one block radius from the Jinkelong to Ya Show, I encountered a dealer and 2 pimps. Apparently, the pimps in China adopt the same strategy as coffee shops in Seattle or for those of you in China as Uighur granola sellers.  The two pimps came at me with the same usual line, "you want sex? Sex! Sex!" Well, I think they were pimps, but I might look like the Becue Biglow type, so it could have been an offer. Normally, in these situations, I try to come up with something witty to see what they will say, e.g. I have AIDS, how much? or Do you have any no armed midgets?, but because I was tired I could not think of anything. I have not shaved in a long while so I look like a complete bum, especially with what I was wearing tonight. So that leads me to assume that the people who buy drugs and get prostitutes look like complete bums too. I think maybe it might be time for me to shave. Because I can't even grow a full beard anyway, I have something of a new style that I am calling the archipelago.

who says there's no innovation in china

from my work's holiday party, which took place last week. it was actually a cream of lobster soup, not very good, but i can't figure out how they got to cappuccino.

my team and i performed a dance to a korean pop song at the party, what my chinese colleagues keep translating as a "hot dance." i'll upload the video once we get it at work.

Because Golze Called Me Out...

Since Golze called me out, I have decided to create a new post. As there is not much going on in my life right now other than trying to get some trabajo. I have not had much to write about, so I decided to create a movie with pictures from my new apartment. An apartment that has been a constant pain in the tuckus.

I am trying out some new system to try to email blog post to the blog because the Chinese government is blocking almost everything google right now. I can't even get to my google photos, stupid hackers. Anyway, enjoy the movie if you can see it. I am skeptical of this emailing method.

slow times

actually it's anything but, but i've just moved and have no internet set up in my new place, so sorry posting has been a bit scarce. also apologies to several people who have sent some e-mails recently that i have yet to respond to. hopefully this weekend i'll get things up and running and back up to speed.

 

durrell, however, has no such excuses. i suggest everybody e-mail him demanding more posts.

Nothing Feels More Satisfying Than A Good Caulk

(post from durrell)

Warning! The content of this blog post is only suitable for immature high schoolers.

Recently, I have moved into a new apartment (pictures to come) and I have discovered that the base of my toilet was leaking. There seemed to be small holes at the base, where the original caulk was not filling them. Having no personal experience with caulk, I had my MCIA friend help me with the caulk job. Apparently, in the past he liked to put caulk in the mouth of mice (I guess in Mongolia that is how you create bouncy balls). After going to our local market to buy a caulk shaft and a gun, we did some prep work before caulking up the holes. Before inserting our caulk in to the holes, I had to give the tip of the caulk shaft a quick bris, once that was done we were ready. As you can see from the picture, it gotta little messy, caulk got every. It seems putting caulk on a toilet is not the same as putting caulk in a mouse's mouth. All in all, I think for my first caulk experience, I did a good job. Also in the bonus picture, I put caulk on a pipe for my washing machine.

On a slightly less immature note, I noticed two things while shopping for stuff recently. The amount of Chinese words I know for stuff has diminished by a good 20%, for example, I had no idea how to say caulk or use words to describe it. I am really going to have start improving my Chinese again just to do ordinary task. The second thing I noticed is that Chinese people when shopping for groceries at the local supermarket tend to not load up huge shopping carts like in the states. If they were shopping in the states everyone of them could hit the express line. I don't know if this is an example of the United States over consumption mentality or Chinese frugality or both.

And another thing I have noticed since being here is that I do not know how to cross the street anymore. I swear that I have been almost hit by a car at least 7 times sense the two weeks I have been back. I keep forgetting just because cars have a red light and I have a green walking mean, that doesn't mean they are going to stop to let you cross. There is a population problem here and pedestrians will be the first to go.

clearing snow, beijing style

shovels into front loader into garbage truck. this is a fairly advanced operation for beijing. elsewhere snow is shoveled into flatbed trucks and then dumped into open manhole covers. sometimes it is just swept with brooms into large piles.

Happy Anniversary and Welcome back Me

(the following is posted on behalf of durrell, through my proxy at work. all spelling mistakes have been left intact. -b)

After about five months away from China, I have decide to come back. Mainly because there was no trabajo for me in the US (I didn't actually look for work but fthe US media assured me there were no more jobs and I trust whatever they have to say), thus, I decided I would go to the place where people are stealing all the American jobs and contribute to the economic shift of China and supposed decline of the United States. So far I still have no trabajo, so if someone who reads this blog wants to give me a trabajo just leave a comment (will work for dumplings). The other reason I decided to return is because I wanted to celebrate five years of being in China....on the internet. It has been five years to the day that HSCCWRT has been on the information gatherer. So for this honorary blog post, I have decided to tell you in exciting bullet point form the top ten things that I have noticed have changed since we first got here (and yes it is in order, and by order, I mean the order I thought them up just now):

- We are no longer students living in China, now we are beer brewing experts.

- Clark is no longer with us (He has been dead to this blog for a while now) and has been replaced by his brother.

- Beijing doesn't look like a giant Chinatown anymore, it looks like any other city in the world with more people.

- There probably are twice as many skyscrapers than when we first arrived.

- Golze hates any New York Times fluff piece about working and/or living in China (Maybe that hasn't changed).

- My Chinese is worse than when I first arrived. Golze's is somehow better.

- According to Golze there are more cars and its cleaner, the latter of which is debatable as I am fairly certain I have the black lung from being here.

- The price of Chinese food is crazy high, it cost like 10kuai for a meal when it used to cost about 8kuai. Inflation sucks.

- The amount of places where you can get 盖饭 seems to be diminishing, but that could be because we live in the eastern part of the city.

- And finally the last thing I can think up for ten is....there are a lot more foreigners or what Golze calls white people taking potential job opportunities away from me.

Hopefully, in another five years we will be making this list for you all again, but probably from America and getting all our information from the US media. I hope this has been a enjoyable five years for you loyal readers. Happy New Year to you all.

more snow in beijing

it dumped on beijing all this weekend, especially hard today, adding about another foot of snow to some 6-8 inches from saturday. in the afternoon turner and i headed out and trekked over to jingshan park, behind the forbidden city. there were lots of people there as you could see the forbidden city covered in snow, but the streets were nice and quiet. here is a picture across the moat to the northeast corner of the forbidden city.

interestingly, i was going to post about how, starting on 1 january, everybody's favourite free proxy software stopped working, which would have meant it would once again be quite difficult to post to the blog. but all of a sudden tonight i can access the blog without any sort of reach-around software. even youtube is accessible. no idea how long it will last, but hopefully for a while. fingers crossed.

when dreams come true

i took this friday off to use up the last of my use-it-or-lose-it vacation days before the end of the year, and so charley, who has every day off, and i went out to happy valley, an actually pretty legit if small amusement park in beijing. the idea was that there would be no lines on a weekday in december, and we turned out to be right, especially since on friday the high was something like -3 degrees celsius. unfortunately, unlike many places in china the park is not run by idiots, so about half the rides were closed for the seemingly quite slow winter season. fortunately, however, the best ride in the park, and actually one of the best rides i've ever been on anywhere, was open.

because the english in the above link is less than clear, let me break the ride down for you. basically you sit on the outside of this big wheel, which starts to swing like a pendulum, eventually at the peak of the ride breaking the 180 degree plane with the fulcrum and swinging back and forth pretty damn fast. but the best part is that at the same time the wheel itself spins around in a circle. the whole thing lasts for about a minute i think. it's hard to focus while on the ride.

however, after taking this ride several times in a row, we made an important discovery: waiting in line might actually be a good thing. i'm not normally one to be bothered by roller coasters and the like but going on something like this over and over without stopping makes you sick pretty fast. after only three hours we basically stumbled out of the park and collapsed back at home. still, i'd say we definitely got our money's worth.

second hand love

getting my own car here in china has long been something i've kinda wanted to do. there are lots of places in the mountains around the city that are nearly impossible to get to by public transit that are nice to visit, have good hiking, etc. also taking a road trip across China is something that every expat toys with but none actually do. however, one of the reasons that i have not bought a car despite having my license is that a second hand market for cars is nearly non-existent. there are apparently two large second hand markets in the city, but there are no guarantees against getting a lemon, and prices are still quite expensive. along those same lines, i can't be sure that i'll be able to sell the car for a reasonable price once i decide to move on.

i present the below as evidence on the lack of a real second hand market for cars in beijing. it's actually been parking outside my office for a while but i haven't taken a picture of it to avoid making it look like i in any way endorse this sort of ridiculousness. i can just see them trying to trade this thing in in five years' time. "what do you mean nobody wants to buy a two-door honda with garfield professionally airbrushed all over four sides?"

at least it beats a hand painted tribute to the tv show "prison break" that takes up the entire side of the car. and yes, that is something that i have actually seen.

91.9% of the population can't be wrong

tonight in the little corner store one of the ladies from the neighborhood said that i look like marx and engles, due to the winter beard that i've kept since my trip to taiwan. the beard initially brought on a fair amount of ribbing from people at work (i like to believe because they're all jealous that they can't grow one), but they've since gotten used to it. though at least i was never called a terrorist at work, which is what one cabbie alluded to when asked to guess where i was from (definitely not the states, cause people from there don't have beards, according to him).

along the same lines, we got the e-mail invitation to our annual chinese new year party this week, which continues to tread on the border of stuff that could get you sued in the states. one would think that a year in which race riots killed hundreds in xinjiang would not be a good time to have the theme of the party be "china's minorities," but then again our hr department is not exactly known for it's cultural sensitivity. (this is the same group that, at our annual retreat, organised the self-appointed "hot girls" in the office to do a "fashion show," which basically consisted of them walking a cat-walk in incredibly scanty outfits. i remember turning to my filipino friend and saying "i'm never going to see anything like this again in my life." she agreed.) the costume theme at the party this year is "international style" or something, which basically means dress up like the stereotype of some ethnic group. the invitation literally has these two pictures as part of the design.

i'm not really sure how to feel about this kind of stuff. i mean, i'm not personally offended by any of these choices or images, nor am i particularly a fan of obsessive political correctness. but i think it just makes me mad that there is clearly no effort to even consider how these things might be disrespectful. i'm not sure if diversity is a prerequisite to change these kinds of attitudes, but if it is i'm not really hopeful for any sort of progression on this front in china.

in other news, i'm just about finished with an excellent book on china, "400 million customers" by carl crow. written by an american in the late 1930s, probably the only book about business in china worth reading, though i recommend you pick up the 2008 version published by the china economic review. not unlike durrell's blog posts, the 2003 version is riddled with typos.

the "s" is silent

just got back from a great 10-day trip to laos with the 'rents. beautiful, warm, relaxing. no turkey for thanksgiving, even though we saw a bunch running around (introduced by USAID, now mostly feral). don't really have time to write it up now, but might do so in the future. no promises though, seeing as how spotty i've been at posting lately. in the meantime, here's a taste:

full album can be found here.

asian baseball tour 2009: taiwan!

so back to my promised posts about taiwan. one of my main goals for my trip was to see a baseball game, something which i did on my third night but had almost forgotten about when i left. by the end of the trip, when people asked what i did on the west coast, i had to think pretty hard for something besides walk around night markets and drink milk tea.

but yes! i saw the uni-president 7-11 lions (hereafter 7-11) take on the sinon bulls of the chinese professional baseball league in taichung. like in korea, major corporations own the baseball teams, but unlike in korea, they have no home stadiums. instead the four teams travel all over the island playing games. the taichung stadium was pretty decent, much smaller than the one in korea but substantially larger and well-kept than the tianjin stadium. it probably compares to an older AAA stadium in the states.

the crowd was fairly small, probably because it was a tuesday night and there was a light drizzle for the first part of the game. nevertheless they seemed really into it, pumped up by what appeared to be professional cheering teams (you can see the 7-11 side below). it's unclear actually how much of the crowd was actual crowd, and how much was the cheer squad. nevertheless, things felt fairly professional. they even played a series of american classic rock covers throughout the game, with words changed (in chinese) to relate to baseball. for example, the eponymous chorus of highway to hell was replaced with "aishang bangqiu," which basically means "to fall in love with baseball" or kinda "to be crazy about baseball (in a loving way)." the first translation is easier.

anyway, i actually left the game at the top of the 9th because i was getting really hungry (no concessions in the cheap seats), but by that point sinon was crushing 7-11 12-1, so i don't think i missed much in the last inning.

snow in beijing!

tis quite beautiful outside. only problem is now it's ball-freezing cold and they don't turn the heat on for another two weeks.

another life-changing post about my plant

excuse my brief diversion from taiwan pictures, but i know how popular posts about my plant are. i just wanted everyone to know that the thing is blooming like crazy, not only is it only the second time it's bloomed in nine months, but there are more flowers than i've ever seen on it. there are so many flowers they're falling to the floor! it's like springtime for hitler in here!

but seriously, despite being very small these guys are super fragrant. it's actually a little suffocating close to the plant. but nice to know i can actually nurture life out of something.

how to succeed in free, democratic, progressive china

the typhoon ended up being quite disappointing, though to be fair, i guess when it finally "hit" taiwan, it was only a tropical storm. what we got out of it was two days of solid rain, which in itself is impressive. i've never seen it rain so hard for so long. nevertheless, for something that royally screwed up many of my plans for the trip, i was a little let down. i didn't even get to say "batten down the hatches!"

though i guess it did have its upside. by the time it was clear when the storm was going to hit the island, i was already ensconced in an excellent hostel in hualien, a city on the scenic east coast of taiwan. because pretty much everybody had been canceling trips due to the storm, i was one of three people in the place, and during the day the owner would just lock up, put up the equivalent of a "gone fishin'" sign, and drive us around, showing us the sights. we went to a swimming hole in a river, saw a beautiful restored japanese military building, slept in book stores and had an amazing sashimi lunch at the local fish market.

one of the most striking differences between taiwan and china is how good the food is, no matter where you get it. the sashimi we had was, while not quite as good as the sushi at tsukiji, definitely the second best i've had in my life. (and at three dollars for the whole meal, easily tops on a value basis.) while taiwanese cuisine itself isn't too interesting, the food everywhere was fresh, lite and delicious. i pretty much drowned myself in fruit juice and milk tea, my favorite of the latter being the lately discovered (by me) roast japanese tea flavor.

as for a quick rundown of my itinerary, i basically did a counter-clockwise circle, starting and ending in taipei. major stops were taichung (where i saw baseball and met up with andy), kenting (where i learned to surf), and hualien (where i was basically a bum for 6 days and went on several scooter rides). i had originally planned to hike one of the 3,000+ meter peaks in the center of the island, but the storm put the ol' kibosh on that idea. i did get to do a bit of hiking on my last full day there, climbing a 1,000 meter peak in a small national park north of taipei, but the weather was horrible, redeemed only by a soak in a free public hot spring i shared with 15 old naked taiwanese men.

by the end i found it very hard to leave taiwan. the place is beautiful (and we're talking haiwaii beautiful, combined with lots of really tall mountains, it's like sticking the sierra on kauai), the people are polite and friendly, and there are absolutely no hassles when traveling around. you aren't constantly worried about people trying to rip you off, like here in china, and even the subway bathrooms are nice and clean. with no language barrier either, it was honestly one of the most relaxing vacations i've ever had.

a detailed account of the trip will probably take too long, but i'll try over the next couple days to put up some pictures in individual posts, explaining parts of the trip.

taiwan post forthcoming

so i'm back from a great trip to taiwan. apologies but i won't get around to posting on the trip for a little bit as i'm somewhat occupied working through some issues locally, among them studying for the GRE. but never fear, posts are bubbling around in the back of my mind.

in the meantime, you can check out pictures here. explanations will be forthcoming.

weeeee!

i leave tomorrow to go to taiwan, the other china, for two weeks, so expect e-mail, etc to be spotty. and don't worry; posts on the trip will be forthcoming.

also good news: i got off my ass and downloaded hot spot shield, so i can post from home again. sorry for the dead time this summer. things will pick up again going forward.

tanks in beijing

1 october is national day in china, which celebrates the founding of the people's republic. this year is the 60th anniversary, and every ten years the communist party literally rolls out the big guns and parades them down the street in beijing. so we've been treated to another round of traffic restrictions and heavy police presence. on the actual day of the parade, most people seem to believe it's unlikely that any joe shmoe (or laobaixing as they're called here) will be allowed down to chang'an avenue, and i'll be in taiwan anyway (sticking it to the man), so i've had to get what little exposure i could to the military madness in the meantime.

the first real glimpse of the preparations was three weeks ago, when one night stumbling out of a bar i came across an endless line of enormous trucks covered in tarps driving at about 5 mph one of the main drags. these i assume were the structures of some of the floats in the parade, which are being stored in worker's stadium, near where i used to live.

the second, and more exciting, exposure to the preparations came this past friday night/saturday morning. pretty much everybody in the central part of the city was forced to go home early, as they were closing chang'an avenue and one of the subway lines in preparation for a full rehearsal, which took place at 3 am on saturday morning. so after an afternoon of lazing around and making t-shirts, emmy and i headed out to meet up with jeff at a notorious russian club called chocolate for his birthday. (yes, russian clubs. i am that much of a baller.) as soon as we got in a cab (this is around midnight), however, the driver told us he couldn't take us where we needed to go, because the entire second ring road and several other streets were shut to traffic. so after bailing from the cab and walking over to the second ring, we were treated to the tail end of a line of tanks, armored personnel carriers and missile batteries driving to the starting point for the parade.

i imagine on the actual day of the parade, the whole city will be a mess. they are shutting down all flights into and out of beijing (just announced) for the whole morning, which should also be fun (i'll be long gone at this point).

in other news, i have had many encounters recently with the huang shu lang, an odd ferret-type thing that lives in the hutong areas in beijing. i've seen them twice before, but just this weekend one appeared in our apartment complex (confirmed by emmy and clark). they are supposed to be good luck, unless they steal your chicken or soul, so i'm feeling as lucky as can be.

seoul baseball game videos

a title where "seoul" is cleverly substituted for "soul"

UPDATE: thanks to tip from conor, images should now link through to the full gallery.

leading the baller lifestyle that we do, a couple of weeks ago clark and i decided on a whim to jet over to seoul for the weekend to catch a baseball game. plus neither of us had ever been to korea, tickets were pretty cheap and the flight is short (2 hours).

we went straight to the airport friday night after work, and arrived in korea just after midnight. no matter what anybody tells you, getting to seoul (over an hour away from the incheon airport) after midnight is not easy. also anyone that says the subway runs late into the night is a liar. there were only a couple of buses, leaving about every 40 minutes or so, and so finally after wandering around and consulting a map and the flight attendants from our flight, we decided to just get on the next bus and take a cab from wherever it ended up. the next bus happened to be going to a terminal in the southern seoul, while our hostel was up in the north. at one point a trying-to-be-helpful airport staff told us that we shouldn't take that bus, because the next one was going a lot closer to where we were staying. yes but the next one wasn't leaving for another 1.5 hours! we stayed on the bus we were on.

after about an hour our bus arrived and we hopped off and flagged down the next taxi. i tried to say where we were going in some mangled korean that i had studied for maybe 20 minutes. of course the driver didn't understand me so i handed him a map i had printed out. he kept squinting at it and pointing at things, and i kept shrugging, thinking he didn't understand the map. next thing we know he gets out of the car and goes and holds it to the headlight while he reads out. turns out he couldn't see it in the poorly lit car! not the best sign for a driver but we decided to roll with it. eventually he called up the hostel and they told him where to go and we made it safely.

so the next morning we were up and out, with plans to go to the baseball game that evening but nothing much in between. first stop was one of the large imperial palaces in the city, and on the recommendation of a guy on the bus we went to the one that wasn't like the forbidden city. it was actually quite nice, with architecture that was much more simple than china and also conformed more to the landscape. there was also a secret garden in the back with a secret snack bar that sold secret pocari sweat.

after that we wandered around the city for a while, through a small residential neighborhood then downtown, where we finally found an ATM that would take our chinese ATM cards. eventually we found a touristy market and a revitalised canal area that i had heard about previously. clark and i had a romantic walk down the canal and stopped to rest with all the old koreans with their feet in the water. the water was crystal clear, quite a difference from the chunky, frothy sludge that flows through beijing in places.

next up was the baseball game, which turned out to be an absolute blast. we hopped on the subway out there and popped up right beneath the main seoul stadium, which is on the olympic grounds. playing that night were the doosan bears (one of two seoul teams) and the hated samsung lions (source unknown). in korea, all the teams are owned by chaebols, massive korean corporations. so there is a kia team, a hyundai team, an LG team, among others. all have a home field but are named for the company. so of course after buying our tickets we picked up doosan rather than samsung thundersticks (necessary equipment) some snacks and giant korean beers and headed into the stadium. there is no bag check or anything, and the stadium is lined with convenience stores and fast food joints. both KFC and burger king had scantily clad women outside trying to attract customers. we opted for some korean sushi and dried squid.

the bears ended up crushing the hated lions 12-5, with one of many kims having a standout night. because seating in the upper of the two decks is general admission, the crowd separates itself behind the two teams, and we were right in the middle directly behind home plate. pretty much everybody has a pair of thundersticks and bangs them together in surprising unison (i'll try to remember to upload a video of this later). so far, except for the olympics, i have a good record of getting fairly toasted by the end of asian baseball games so we were getting pretty into things at the end of the game, even though our squid ran out.

after we picked up some doosan gear on the way out, we headed to a commercial area nearby to get some korean bbq (in korea, they just call it bbq), which was pretty delicious. afterwords we went to another nightlife area and had a drink on the roof of a pretty lame bar, then just went back and hit the sack. this time, i brought the card from the hostel and the driver punched it into his gps and took us right there. all i had to do was shout "ok!" when we arrived and all went fine.

the next morning we checked out of the hostel and headed downtown to check out a market and climb a scenic mountain that is right in the middle of town. (as an aside, before i left i was asking about stamps for some postcards, and a japanese guy who spoke little english and seemed to be a semi-permanent nocturnal fixture of the hostel offered to send them for me on monday. did anybody get one? i sent out a bunch.) the market was a little ho-hum, mostly everyday stuff and small by chinese standards. after a leisurely ascent of the mountain, which had some great views, we got some grub at a local place and caught our bus back to the airport.

all in all a very pleasant weekend. seoul is a nice city, very large and very clean, and quite pedestrian and public transportation friendly, but when it comes down to it there is not all that much to do. to a certain extent it reminded me of tokyo, but tokyo seems to be constantly teeming with life and activity while seoul (on the weekend granted) seemed quiet and dead at times. it strikes me as a pleasant place to live, but i think i'll stick with the dirty excitement of beijing for the time being.

quick pics

clark and i went to seoul this weekend, so expect a post on that soon. in the meantime, here are a couple snapshots i took with my phone recently that i found amusing:

vestiges of communist motivational techniques inside the friendship store

a climbing area that also proved a popular photo spot with soon-to-be-married couples, south of beijing

"if i don't see you in the future, i'll see you in the pasture"

i am sad to say that good friend and general upstart durrell cashed his checks in and headed home to seattle today. most do not realize that durrell was not actually a founding author of this blog, but joined after we arrived in china more four and a half years ago. while his posts were typo-ridden at best and unintelligible at worst, they definitely made the blog more interesting and i believe pretty accurately reflect the always upbeat attitude that make durrell such a good guy to have around here. durrell, i think in terms of both life in beijing and the blog, i can safely say that it definitely won’t be the same without you, but it will be a lot quieter.

durrell celebrates 4th of july

beautiful beijing

i've been a bit slow in getting these pictures up, but unlike the good ol' blogger block back in 2005 i can't write to the blog except through the proxy at work, which needless to say has slowed our blogging progress considerably. even clark recently expressed an intention to blog that had been stymied by the internet censorship.

anyway, two or three weeks ago was a day with probably the worst air quality since i've been here. so i figured i'd take some pictures to show people how bad the air can get. the first picture is from that day, while the second picture is at the same spot on a remarkably clear day a couple weeks later, for contrast.

while that first picture does look bad, i do want to caveat it by saying that i think a lot of the poor visibility was fog, which may get me a lot of flack from the cynical expat crowd. the air was definitely bad (the u.s. embassy's air quality monitoring station gave it a 500, which is pretty off the charts), but there was the close-in damp feel that you get with fog, not pollution. though i'm no meterologist, i'm willing to bet that there's some sort of correlation between fog and super bad air days, either the fog holds the pollution in or the still air that leads to fog also allows the pollution to just sit there. or something. anyway, the air was bad and now you can see it.

my brother and sister come to china and create mass havoc

as durrell mentioned in the previous post, my brother and sister did in fact come to visit me last week(end). but rather than write about it here i'm going to take the lazy route and just point you in the direction of my sister's blog. she has done an excellent job of writing up the trip, complete with many pictures in which i of course look pretty damn good, but michael as always looks better. i'll just add one more picture not on julina's blog, courtesy of marjorie:

for future internet continuity, julina's posts are here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5

Chinese Wedding and Chinese Baseball

(this post was actually written by durrell, but since blogger is blocked in china he asked me to post this through my proxy at work - BEN)

After taking a hiatus, I am back. A lot has happened since I last wrote anything, so I will not try to catch you up on everything, because I mostly don’t remember. I do remember that a lot of Middlebury people and Golzes have come through the Jing and it was great to see them all. Calvin, remember you said that I could be in your cabinet once you are president.

Our beers that we started brewing a few blog posts ago have matured well and are pretty good, some better than others. I have had a hard time picking a favorite, but my current favorite is our ginger beer (my favorite tends to be whatever I am drinking at the time), which has had mixed reviews by people. One person said it tastes like soap and others said they want to buy it.

Not last weekend but the weekend before that, I went to a Chinese wedding. It was the only Chinese wedding I have ever been to and not like anything I have ever seen before. As I have not been to a lot of Chinese weddings, I did not know what to expect and I do not know if the one I went to is how things are normally performed (I tried to think of a better word than performed, but I can’t because it was definitely a performance). The wedding started with the groom popping out from build a television screen like a host would on a game show, the announcer announced his entrance and I am pretty sure that announcer said Leeeeet’s get ready toooo rummmmmbleeeee in Chinese. As he comes out clouds smoke shoot out from the sides and the lights start flickering and the music changes from slow to something more uptempo, it felt like watching Shaq come out during an all star game. When I get married I definitely want to have an announcer and when once I kiss the bride I am going to spike the bouquet and do an end zone/wedding dance. After the announcer announced the groom it was the brides turn. The way the music changed and from the excitement in the announcer’s voice, I was almost positive that she was going to fly from the ceiling. However, she came down holding her dads arm to some slow Chinese pop music. It was very sweet. Then, they played the tradition wedding music and the father gives the bride to the groom, all the while the announcer is announcing everything. Once they are on stage, the announcer administers the vows; the announcer is a cross between a minister and a hype man and Michael Buffer. After the vows are exchanged more smoke, cake cutting ensues, pictures with everyone at the party, more smoke, pouring out the champagne, more smoke and then the bridge and groom comes around to toast everyone individual. A lot of alcohol was consumed by them, it was quite impressive. I may not have done a good job describing it, but it was a very beautiful event. Once China stops blocking my access to blogspot I will add pictures.

After the wedding ended, Señor Bacardi and I met up with Golze and went to a baseball game to see the Beijing Tigers vs. the Tianjin Lions. It was a great game. The Beijing Tigers had a substantial fan section complete with Chinese drums, baseball chants and raucousness. We were basically the raucousness, Señor Bacardi is a bad influence on us, the Chinese fans were relatively tame except for the drummers. At one point during the match, I saw this girl with a baseball glove and turn to Golze and say do you think she can use that? And she turns around and glares at me and says yes (I often forget that Chinese people can speak English). If Señor Bacardi wasn’t there I might have felt more embarrassed. Anyway, with some stellar defense and good at bats, the Tigers rallied to come back and defeat the Tianjin Lions in the bottom of the 9th. I forget to mention that the Tigers uniforms are pretty sweet, if anyone knows how to get a jersey let me know, I tried to buy one from the players and go shot down. They kept saying something like we need them, we are still playing in the game or some other nonsense. After the game was over Golze and I were not sure how we were going to get back to Beijing (the game was not played in Beijing, it was in some small city just outside) or at least back to the train station (the train station was pretty far from the field). So as we are talking to a guard at the guard station at the entrance to the ballpark a car pulls up. And ask if we want a ride. We are like hellz yeah (we are in China no one is going to kidnap us and take us to candy mountain). Once we get in we realize, on snap, the driver is the girl with the glove. Awkward! After some chat chit, we discover that the driver and the other passenger are reporters and that the girl with the baseball glove works for Time and that their English is much better than mine. I think it is pretty safe to say we will never make it on the Time blog roll now.

the dentist in china

my mother will be happy to know that i made a trip to the dentist this past week. i get　(i think) one free cleaning and checkup a year through my health insurance at select dental clinics in beijing. so of course i just picked the one that was closest to my office, called "Care Plus". i didn't really know what to expect, but several friends, i believe clark included, had been to the dentist, and said it was just the same as in the states. really at this point i'm way past being surprised when anything in beijing meets western standards, and the dentist wasn't an exception. everything was clean and all the equipment was modern. but what really struck me was how much nicer of an experience it was than in the states.

first of all i scheduled the appointment only two days in advance, whereas for the dentist i went to growing up it's so crazy you almost need to schedule your next appointment in six months time before even your current appointment. they even called me up to change the time to make sure there was an english speaking staff member to do my cleaning, which i graciously accepted because i don't know any dentist vocabulary but turned out i didn't need. and everybody was extraordinarily friendly, especially after i awed them with my ability to speak and write chinese. (the best way to really impress a chinese person is to write something in chinese, as most people in beijing now are pretty jaded by foreigners who can speak. luckily i only had to write my address, which besides my name is about the only thing i can write from memory in chinese anymore).

but the kicker was at the end of the cleaning, where the girl who cleaned my teeth (they called her a "doctor" in chinese but i'm not actually sure if she was a doctor in the english sense) told me "your teeth are really great!" a far cry from in the states, where the end of a cleaning usually results in some heavy admonishment, about how you should floss, and then once you start flossing about how you are doing it wrong, and then about how you're brushing too hard or too straight or not for long enough. i mean i take ok care of my teeth (i actually floss everyday), but i suspect most of her praise was due to some pretty weak competition from the locals on the dental hygiene front. still, i walked out of there feeling pretty good, which is more than i can say for any trip to the dentist back home.

a goldilocks moment

considering that i don't have any mexican friends, it was only today that i finally felt some effects of the A/H1N1 flu pandemic. mainland china has its first suspected case of the flu now, and so they're pulling out all the stops to keep us safe at my fancy ass gym (corporate membership). they take the temperature of everybody that comes in the door and if you're above 37 degrees they don't let you in.

however, i have my doubts about the efficacy of the procedure. when i arrived today, there was a lady with what must have been some kind of infrared thermometer, about the size of a small flashlight, a bit of technology i had never seen before. it apparently works by taking a reading off your skin. the first reading she took was off the top of my wrist, which returned a 33 (too cold, she said). the next was off my forehead, which returned a 37 (she told me to a wait a second to cool down). finally i rolled up my sleeve, and the reading off my forearm was an even 35 (perfect, according to her). later i overheard a guy in a locker room saying the same thing had happened to him. let's just say that if the pandemic arrives, the gym won't be the first place i will be taking refuge.

tianjin and china's stephen colbert

two weekends ago i took an afternoon trip to tianjin with a friend to visit a former teacher of ours from summer school. we took the new bullet train, which costs less than 10 dollars and covers the 70 miles between beijing and tianjin in only 25 minutes. apparently the CRH trains, which are clearly ripped off from the japanese bullet trains, are the fastest conventional trains in the world. ours didn't go the full 350 km/h, but the 332 km/h speed we did reach was fast enough as far as i'm concerned.

tianjin is a decent city, but the i share the major complaint with most other people in that there's not much going on there. we went to lunch and wandered around the part of town with a lot of old architecture from when there was a large european presence in the city in the early 20th century. it was a cool mix of quite large single family homes and small apartment buildings. it looked like a neighborhood you might find in an old inner suburb of boston or new york.

but the highlight of the trip was lunch, when i ticked another animal off my list of things to eat: ants. i wasn't too keen on it but gave into peer pressure and tried. as you can see from the picture, it came in a small martini glass with a maraschino cherry. they had much more texture than flavor, crunchy but also light and airy. it was like eating hundreds of teeny tiny pieces of popcorn. apparently they are good for virility, but i can't vouch for any immediate effects.

fun story: durrell and i, on our way to my place to watch lost, stop in to the corner store right outside my building so i can get a drink, and the guy working there, who sees me all the time, looks at durrell and asks me "is he your little brother?" i look at him for a second, then ask "does he look like me?" and the guy says "yeah, you look a lot alike." honestly it was refreshing, after meeting so many obliviously racist people in china, to meet a guy that is clearly blind to race.