Greetings to the Good People of Weesp

Recently, it has come to the Golzer's attention that we have a large readership from the previously uninhabited peat bog of Weesp. As everyone knows, Weesp is famous for: Weesper Mop cookies, Weesper porcelain, Defense Line, Nieuwstraat 41, a circular fort, three windmills, a goldfish named Mr. Tafelzuur, Roozenboom and Draaierschans, being 3k from the end of the Amsterdam metro, coining the term Weesper Wobber (a person that enjoys cookies. A wobber is a cookie in the land of Weesp. e.g. Cookie monster is a weesper wobber), and NOW for being our number one viewers from Europe. I would like to thank Bart Horseling and the good people of the best previously uninhabited peat bog for tuning in, we are able to do this because we are supported by viewers like you. And as they say in the land of Weesp, "Vechtstreek Uitermeer Advocaat Muiden Naarden" (May your dike be filled with cheese and tulips).

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.