Beijing Traffic Signs

I have been meaning to take pictures of and make a post about these traffic signs for a while, but since I don't own a camera, it was hard for me to take them. Also life just always gets in the way of everything, and by life, I mean my laziness.

In theory I know what this traffic sign means. I think it means don't drive down this street or don't park on this street, but since I saw cars parked on the street with this sign, I don't really know. Maybe it just means don't park under this sign, because there were no cars directly underneath the sign, just around it.

I know what this sign means. No left turn. However, knowing how people drive in this capitol, I am pretty sure it is never obeyed, and I don’t just say that because I was recently hit by a car.

Now, this sign, I have no idea what this sign means. This sign could mean anything. I should ask Golze because he has his Chinese driver’s license. I think it means no car bombs or it means no shooting flames out of the back of your car. I think the former because I mostly see it around embassies and office buildings.

This is just a view from my apartment window of Chaoyang Park and Solana. Unfortunately, Beijing doesn’t have enough of those clear blue sky days, and also unfortunately, summer has ended and autumn has arrived, so no more green park to look at, just the barren wasteland of East Beijing. And by barren wasteland, I mean all the high rise buildings off in the distance.

Laying low in Chengdu

I know I told you last time that I was going to write a post after getting to Kangding, but energized by how nice Ganzi was, I decided to take a detour to Danba. The road from Ganzi to Danba was the worst of the whole trip, with a ride that took about 14 hours, including one hour caused by a breakdown on the suspension system. I'll put a more detailed post on the road later when I can put up pictures, In any case, by the time I got to Danba I needed a break from buses, so stayed there two nights, then on to Kangding, which was a pretty ok place after I took a soak in the local hot springs. Otherwise it is a quickly modernizing small Chinese city, and cold. There I did get to meet more friendly Israelis who taught me another great card game to add to my repertoire.

So now I'm in Chengdu, and I've decided to pack it in for the October holiday, which starts on Friday. Essentially I have two choices: go back and hide out in Beijing or find some small place far away from any population center to lay low for a week (Sershu would fit the bill, but that's not somewhere I exactly want to spend a lot of time). I chose to go back to Beijing, especially considering I was going to head back after the holiday anyway to get a jump on grad school apps. Also, multiple plans to meet up with people fell through.

But what really pushed me was that upon arriving in Chengdu I found that every single hostel is fully booked for the whole holiday.  This is actually part of a big change I've noticed travelling this time around compared to our previous adventures across the country: many hostels now have majority locals for guests. Before, these types of backpacker places were entirely foreigners. That being said, few locals do the kind of hardcore travelling that I come across many foreigners, particularly Israelis, doing. Thy seem to be mostly students looking for cheap accommodation before they start tours or young yuppie couples doing a week-long trip. In any case, it's a big change.

So I have a couple days to hang out in and around Chengdu before hopping a train back to Beijing before the holiday starts. The city honestly hasn't changed all that much since I was last here (tonight I'm staying in the same hostel as five years ago; it's getting a bit long in the tooth). Of course there are new buildings and cleaner, wider streets, but otherwise it still has the same super-relaxed feel that I enjoyed so much last time. Oh, and the food is still awesome.

Unless special circumstances require, I probably won't post again until I get back to Beijing and throw up some pictures from this first stretch. Until then...

A short missive from the end of the world

That certainly is where it feels like I am now, stuck in Serxu, a Tibetan town and what appears to be the mangy dog capital of the world, right over the border from Qinghai in Sichuan province. I rolled into town this morning hoping to catch onward transportation to a town further down my route, but turns out they all leave early in the morning, so since I'm not willing to fork over 600 kuai to hire a car down myself, I'm stuck in this place tonight. As I mentioned to my sister in an e-mail, the scenary is great but the accomodation is horrid. Dorm-style situations that take foreigners are actually quite rare in this part of the world (though I managed to find one tonight), meaning that I often have to pay for double rooms, which really sucks. I've found that I don't really have the stomach anymore for (as the ineffable Lonely Planet loves to say) dingy dorm rooms, odd smells and lack of running water. The monks that run the guesthouse where I'm staying, however, let me hang out in their office, drinking yak butter tea and watching stupid Chinese television. Their Chinese is way, way worse then mine, so the conversation runs out pretty quickly. I plan to stay up as late as possible until I'm nearly passing out and then crawl into my bed. Luckily cars leaving for my next stop, Ganzi, leave really early in the morning, so I can be up and out of here quick.

 

I do like being on the road though; if I could just keep moving without having to stop I would. The ride from Yushu this morning was beautiful, up and over a 4,700 meter pass and then bumping into a huge fesitival at a monastery about an hour from here. Tibetans from all over were coming through, many on horseback and as many in Hyundai SUVs. It was raining a bit and now is cold, and I think I can see a dusting of snow on the higher peaks around. The scenary is basically high, windswept plains that gently climb to massive peaks, rather than the jagged mountains that long-time readers will remember from when I went up the Kharakhorum Highway with Clark and Tyler. Once I got to Serxu, though, my momentum was lost as all attempts to hitch a ride out of town failed. I think from here I'm going to high-tail it down to Kangding, stopping in Ganzi overnight. Kangding is about a day's ride from Chengdu, which means comfortable foreigner-oriented hostels and hopefully some fellow travellers, where I can relax for a while and reasses plans. Though it seems a bit of a cop-out, and I'll be passing some cool sights on the way down, I still have plenty of time to hop to some other nearby places, especially if I can find some people to tag along with.

 

So, I'll try to post again when I reach Kangding two days from now. In the meantime, glad to know people are enjoying the tweets. I'll keep it up.

 

Also loved ones can rest assured that there've been no problems with altitude.

The Life and Death of a Little Birdie

I must start with this is not really my story; this is the story of my roommate. And the first part of the story I only know second hand. The second part I did witness. The timeline above pretty much tells the story, but I will recap it here.

My roommate was on her way to work, and when she opened the door she noticed a bird flying around, and for some reason that I don’t quite understand she is intensely afraid of birds (which might help to explain her lack of knowledge of what types of birds can fly, for example, ducks and geese). Instead of running for the elevator, which in hindsight would have been much more effective in terms of what happened later, she ran back in to the apartment, attempting to hide from the theoretical violent attacks of the winged creature outside the door (maybe my roommate has watched too many Hitchcock movies).

Hoping that the bird would eventually fly away, and forget all about her, she waited for a little while in the apartment, periodically checking the peep hole for the vulture that was outside her door. After looking through the peep hole and not seeing any sight of the pterodactyl, she opened the door, to find to her horror that the bird was sitting on the floor looking at her, which is why she didn’t see it in the peep hole. Then her rational mind kicked in, and she realized that this winged menace was not the threat she thought, she looked down to see a 6 inch green little birdie. Then the cuteness of this little bird clouded her mind as she let it hop toward her and eventually let it hop its way into our apartment, and once it was in the apartment it took flight and started flying all over the place. Because of the fact that she went and hid in the apartment for several minutes, instead of heading straight for the elevator, she was late for work and didn’t have time to catch the bird. So for several hours, there was an unattended bird in our apartment we are still finding the places where it cacaed everywhere, and I am sure it will be a while before we find all of them). Please refer to the timeline for the things that happened prior to this next sentence. When I got home the bird was in a cage and not looking great. After trying to soothe it and give it food, the bird only lasted about another five hours from the time I got home. In total, the bird was in our lives and our apartment for about a sixteen hour period. The lesson from this is that birds that I encounter in China have very short life spans and I don’t think that I should be getting any pets anytime soon; I am having enough trouble trying to take care of little Ben and Hey Zeus, an orange tree, I inherited.

Catching Up on the Blogging

Currently, I am reading The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. I am 1/3 of the way through the book and I don’t think I really like, it is a little too pornographic for me and maybe too intelligent for my liking. I have realized that any book that is highly touted by the New York Times Book Review will probably not be in my fav 5. Nevertheless, in honor of this book that I am currently reading, I have decided to write a blog post in its style. This style works for me because I have been neglecting writing blog post, mainly because I have been very busy at work and nothing interesting has happened, and also because this style will make writing one long blog post about multiple events more effective. And when I say in its style, I just mean like diary entries.

Saturday, August 28th

Today, I was ignominiously inaugurated into the confederacy of dunces. Regrettably, it was not a choice. The inauguration was painful and should have probably ended with a trip to the ER. All and all, the experience could have been much worse.

The day started with me waking up with a fever and deciding whether or not I should cancel giving my English class. I thought, no, I won’t cancel, it is only an hour and I earn more in this hour than an hour at my real job. Take the money, leave the cannoli, as the expression goes. Since, I wanted to sleep in because I was feeling terrible, I decided to ride my bike to the class, otherwise, I would have had to leave earlier on the subway. I arrived to the class feeling not extremely terrible, but immediately regretting my decision to bike. Ironically, when the class began, the first thing that we discussed was how dangerous it is to ride your bicycle in Beijing, and how you need to be careful if you do ride (the irony will be apparent soon). When the class finally ended, the only thing I was thinking about was how nice it would be to be in bed right now. And once I got on my bike, I was calculating the time it would take me until I was back in bed; I estimated about twenty minutes.

First, before I explain what happened next, let me tell you. It is pretty routine in China to cross the street even when the little man is not green, especially when the turn signal is green and the rest of the lights are red. Well, while I was in the haze of my fever and day dreaming about my bed, I decided to do one of these routine green turn signal traffic crossing. I should have known this was a bad idea, when I noticed that I was the only one doing this, and normally every Chinese person trying to cross the street is way out in front of me doing this illegal crossing; however, they were all patiently waiting for the light to change. Anyway, I slowly edged my bicycle out in to traffic looking to make sure no cars were coming from my left (cars coming from my left would be making a right hand turn, and they normally don’t stop and/or yield for red lights, as you will read in a minute). No cars from the left, good, I keep going. Now, it’s important that I get the timing right here, because the light is green for the cars making a left turn and red for cars going straight. I have to make my move to cross when a car is to slow to react to the car in front and leaves a ten foot space (cars are normally too slow to react because most drivers here have cell phones attached to their ears or hands making phone calls and text messaging). So, I get the time right and can get a cross the lane where the cars are turning, and I am looking up to my left to make sure the light is still red for cars going straight, and it is. So, I don’t have to rush and I can keep going without any problems and I am that much closer to my bed. However, I made a miscalculation and didn’t take into consideration cars don’t stop at red lights when they make right hand turns. And WHAM! At about 3 mph, I slam my bike into a car that is going about what seems to me 50 mph. As I said in my last post, I have a gym membership now, and luckily I have been using it, and I also think the fact that I played foot ball helped in the fact that I didn’t die. Because, as I slammed in to the side of the car, I instinctively used a technique in football called getting skinning, which means making yourself small at the point of impact, and I bounce off the side of the car and land on my feet, only to have my foot ran over by the tire of the car (I really don’t know if any of this happened as I said, but this is how it played out in my mind, I think the car ran over my foot because it was in pain afterward). So, I am hoping on my left foot, trying to gage whether or not my right foot is broken. It seems okay but has a little pain.

The car stops and the passenger gets out asking if I am okay, and I am thinking oh shit, there is a big scratch in that guys door, he is going to try to make me pay for it. But, as the guy is making sure I am okay, there is fear in his eyes, and I realize that he is probably not going to make me pay for the scratch. So, I am trying to think how can I get out of here quickly, before he changes his mind and tries to make me pay for something (because in my experience and from stories from other people, Chinese people will try to get as much money out of a foreigner when ever an accident occurs, even if they hit them with a car). I tell him, I am fine. And he says something about the light was red, didn’t you see it. I don’t say anything. And he seemed to get belligerent. And I think oh no, I didn’t make my escape in time. Then I remember someone telling me that if a car hits a pedestrian, it is always the cars fault in China. And since, he seems to be getting angry, I ask him if he wants me to call the cops. And he immediately shuts up. I think tides have turned buddy. Then he asked me if I am okay again. And I am like I am fine. And try to ride off, but my bike is FUBAR. The wheel is out of alignment. The driver finally comes around, and inspects my bike, trying to help me fix it so I can leave. After about 10 minutes of him trying to fix my bike, and me getting on trying to ride a way, he offers me money for a cab and asks me if I need to go to the hospital. I say no I don’t want your money. Just give me a ride home, and he is like no way. Finally, after realizing I can’t fix my bike, and at this point I realize I am not that injured because I can walk okay, I tell him that my bike is broken and cannot be ridden, and he offers me 100 kuai to get it fixed. I take it and walk away trying to find the nearest bike stand. And he speeds off not looking back.

I end up walking from Chaoyangmenwai to Sanlitun, which is about 2km. So my foot seems fine, I drop my bike off at a repair stand there, and the guy tells me, I need to replace my whole front end. I am like whatever (I just want to go home and sleep at this point because I feel sicker and now my body aches from being hit by a car), how much does it cost? He says 45kuai, I think it’s less than 100kuai, so it’s okay, and I have money for a cab home. Things are coming up Milhouse. I leave my lock on the ground with him and the bike and hop in the first cab home.
Once I get home, the only thing I am worried about is my fever and only feel a slight pain in foot and leg, and a little pain in my wrist. I guess I hit my wrist on the side of the car. The pain is not intense, and I feel terrible from the flu, so I don’t think I need to go to the hospital. Anyway, I take some flu medicine and the lights go out.

Sunday, August 29th

I wake up with a throbbing pain in my leg and wrist. Hospital time. I go to the ER of Beijing United (I love having insurance) and end up getting checked out by this friendly American doctor. He checks my leg and wrist and says nothing seems broken. He gives me an x-ray on my wrist, just in case, and finds no cracks or breaks. I leave the hospital relieved and go back to bed and overdose myself with flu medication.

Monday, August 30th

Take a flight to Dalian for a business trip. My flu has been downgraded to just a cold and the flu medication is doing a great job at suppressing my symptoms. But, I am popping pills like Skittles every four hours.

Recently, I have heard a great analogy or metaphor or onomatopoeia, whatever the literary device is for what I am about to say. Going to second tier cities in China, is like standing with your mouth open behind the exhaust of a car and throwing a handful of sand and dirt in your face. As for Dalian, it is not as bad as most second tier cities in China, so the air is a little fresher than most cities and there is a little less dirt in the air. The city is on the coast, so that helps maintain the air quality. The city recently had an oil spill off its coast, so it is the Louisiana of China.

Tuesday, August 31st

I had 烤鱼for the first time, which is grilled seafood. Since Dalian is a coastal city, it is famous for its seafood, even if it is enriched with crude oil. I really enjoyed it, except for when the live scallops came, and I watched them being grilled alive in their shells. Watching their shells open and close over the fire was a little disturbing. I think I heard one scream, but that was probably only in my mind. However, its meat was delicious. Later, I poured a little beer out for my dead friend.

Wednesday, September 1st

Ate at the Brooklyn pizza restaurant in Dalian, it was absolutely delicious and I highly recommend you go there, if you ever find yourself in Dalian. For more info, revisit Golze’s blog post on the subject.

Thursday, September 2nd

I am so sick of walking around office buildings and especially shopping malls for work. I am glad I am flying out of Dalian for Beijing.

Friday, September 3rd

After work, I went and watched kendo with my friends. It is one of the most interesting sports that I completely don’t understand. Like, I have no idea what is going on or how points are scored (I found this video of one of the final matches we watched).What attracts me most to the sport, besides watching people be bludgeoned with bamboo sticks is the random yelling. Sometimes, I like to just randomly yell things too, so this sport really interests me (in the opening seconds of the match in the video you can hear what I mean). Also watching the ceremony when they put on their gear is pretty fascinating, it is probably how traditional samurais got dressed.

The most interesting match we watched was with the women. We watched this Japanese lady destroy this Italian lady in like 30 seconds. I guess the equivalent would be watching Mikey T knock someone out in 15 seconds.

Saturday, September 4th

I went to pick up my bike, and it works much better than before I got in the accident. Because the whole front end was replaced it sits much higher and makes it much easier for me to ride. So I guess getting in the accident has an upside. Unfortunately, I have to replace my bike lock because I carelessly threw it on the ground when I left, and according to the repair stand guy, it was stolen.

Epilogue

My leg still hurts, but my wrist is much better.

Hitting the road

I've been hanging out in Xining for about five days now, and in an hour and a half I am about to board an overnight sleeper bus to Yushu, in far western Qinghai where the province meets Tibet and Sichuan. Long-time readers of the blog may remember a disastrous sleeper bus trip from Lijiang to Kunming back in 2005, after which I swore off sleepers forever. But this is the only way out there short of flying and or breaking the trip into two days staying at a boring nothing town in between (where I don't even know if there's anywhere to stay). Anyway, I got my ticket two days in advance which means I have a solid berth near the front. Hopefully it won't be too bad, and when it comes down to it, I will have survived.

It's taken a bit of effort to get out of Xining. I stayed at a hostel and met a number of really nice people hanging out waiting to go to Tibet and/or Nepal. Hanging out with other travellers is much nicer than travelling alone. I took a one-night trip out to a nearby town called Tongren, and found myself incredibly bored/lonely at times. There's always the potential to meet other people on the road, but the way I'm travelling is pretty barren of tourists so I imagine I'll probably be alone most of the time. By and large it's fine; I can do a lot of reading and maybe a bit of self-discovery (this is Tibet, after all), but I think by the time I make it to Chengdu I'll be worn out of being alone. But we'll see how things go.

Anyway, to quickly recap the planned trip, I'll be heading from Yushu over in Sichuan to a town called Serxu, then hop through a couple of places whose exact names escape me, but include Maningango, Garzi, Kangding and others. All Tibet and all at very high altitudes (3000-4000 meters). It'll probably be a week before I make it back to civilization in Chengdu. Hopefully there'll be internet along the way and I'll put up another post before then.

hey!

yesterday i went with my friend jeff to attend heyrobics in chaoyang park. heyrobics is apparently a very popular swedish aerobics-style group exercise routine (in sweden it's called something else, while heyrobics is the international name). basically, it's a series of medium tempo aerobics moves and strength exercises interspersed with light running set to swedish house music and led by a very swedish guy about my age named linus (pronounced lee-nus). it's totally ridiculous but also an effective workout. i'm sore all over today.

linus says that in sweden you sometimes will get thousands of people attending free sessions in city parks during the summer, which must be quite a sight. there were probably about 50 people yesterday, though jeff says that's about twice as many as normal (a swedish young professionals event swelled the ranks a bit). most everybody was a foreigner or a significant other of a foreigner. of course this attracted a lot of attention from the families enjoying a late summer sunday evening in the park, but funnily enough a number of them joined in. i guess with a strong tradition of group exercises in public places, many people in beijing don't find it that odd to dance around in a big group in the park for exercise. jeff and i we speculating about where you could pull this off in the states, and decided probably only san francisco and portland, maybe new york.

so i'm back and relaxing for a week before taking off to xining in qinghai province next sunday. the flight was uneventful but the movies sucked. we left in august but arrived in september, so i think they just showed a random assortment of whatever they had on hand (goddam iron man 2 again). i went to the summer palace finally with a former coworker visiting from out of town. it's as nice as everybody says. otherwise, i've just been biking around, cooking, watching dvds and thinking about getting ready for traveling.

it's surprising how quickly i've adapted back to life here, considering that i got very used to living back in the states this summer and it was a bit hard to leave. but when i went to register with the psb, the ladies working (or sitting and chatting) behind the counter began interrogating me on the difference between butter and cream, down to how they were made. i said i didn't really know because i'm not a peasant, but i was still admonished because americans are supposed to know stuff like this. it reminded me that it's these kind of bizarre interactions that make daily life here fun, and make me glad to be back.

http://heyrobics.com/

if not triumphant, at least a return

tomorrow i'll be heading back to dirty old beijing after a summer at home, which, apart from the departure of new clark and the laziness of durrell, is the main reason posting has been so slow over the past three months. this time back i won't be working, instead living a more bohemian existence of travel, deep self reflection and drinking all the beer that we brewed this winter.
i hope to post somewhat often, but i until mid-november i hope to be on the road, so access to blog posting i imagine will be limited. instead, i have jerry-rigged a relay of rss feeds that should allow me to post text messages from my mobile phone in china. with fingers crossed, the message will flip through five different web sites before ending up on my brand-spanking-new twitter account. from there, it will be launched to facebook, google buzz and a new widget on the top right corner of the blog. so basically, if you pay attention to me at all through the wonders of cyberspace (and in the case of facebook, even if you don't), you hopefully won't have to do anything. if, however, you'd like to take our relationship a step further, you can find a link to my twitter feed below:

https://twitter.com/bengeewhiz

it should be noted, however, that in all likelihood i won't have access to any of these services in china, so i won't be able to see your questions, likes and tweet-smacks at least until i get back to beijing. but i'll enjoy reading once i do finally get access, so by all means please comment like you mean it. you can also always just send me an e-mail too!

so it's so long to the land of the free. until my return, remember: if i don't see you in the future, i'll see you in the pasture.

The Sinofied Crêpe

I miss jianbing, and all those other Chinese favorites: 干煸豆角, 四川烤鱼, 水煮鱼, 新疆大盘鸡. I could go on. I made this video a while ago but never posted it while in China (obvi). But it's no less appetizing after the fact:

Biking in Beijing: A Professional Risk Analysis

Recently, I started a new job in the research department of a real estate firm (basically taking over Golze's job, but way lower on the totem pole). Since, I am doing a lot of research, I am creating lots of bar graphs and pie charts; I have decide to use my research skills to estimate the increase danger I have put myself in since New Clark gave me his old bike, which he inherited from Clark Classic. New Clark gave me his bike without any seat on it, just a pole with springs. I guess he was just sitting on the pole and using the springs for shock absorption.  I have since bought a seat for the bike (so the bike only cost me RMB 18 so far). Anyway, attached are two bar graphs that illustrate some back of the envelope calculations I have made that convey the risks associated with biking.

The first chart shows the number of times my friends or I have been in accidents while biking and walking and whether or not we were injured (whether or not they injured someone, which was the case in some incidents, is not considered). I must confess, I am the only one of my friends that I know who has been hit by a car while walking. Unfortunately, I have been hit twice, but luckily I have never been injured. I have only been hit once on a bike, and I was not injured then also. In my one bike accident and in one walking accident, I got hit by the driver because he was backing up without looking behind him, one was looking in the side mirror to back up and one was not looking at all, just using the force; I guess it was not strong with in him, he was a taxi driver by the way. So just by biking, I am three times more likely to get in an accident with a car, another bicycle, or a pedestrian. And in a bike accident, there is a 33% chance I am going to get injured. While I know this is not statistically accurate in anyway, I am convinced it reflects the reality here. And by biking, I am much more likely to die sooner rather than later. But what would life be without a little adventure. And one of the good things with my new job is that I have health insurance now and a gym membership, so now I can afford to get hit and I can build up the muscles to sustain the blows.

These numbers just come out of my imagination, but they are mostly accurate. Don't worry I don't bike every day, and I only bike sometimes with my Ipod on. So you can probably lower that number by at least 2%. 

On a completely different note, I have decided to expand my door to door lawnmower sales business in to other ventures. Recently, CNN did some groundbreaking news coverage on companies who rent white foreigners. Thus, I have decided to start a company that brings other foreigners in to ask the other companies' white foreigners questions to see if they are on the up and up. I think I can go public by next march. Who wants to invest now, and get in early? I will even bring some Chinese people to my investor meeting so you know I am legit.

Highlight of the Week: This is an email message I received this week – "This is a gentle reminder that you were 3 mins late this morning. You monthly allowance for July has been used."

2 Old Visa Trips Before Leaving China

Post by New Clark

Forewarning: this is a long one. You might wanna get some popcorn.

Well, true to my intentions, New Clark has successfully replaced the absence of Clark by creating an absence of New Clark. Is there really a difference? Probably not. Regardless, I feel like sharing a bit about the last few visa runs and getting in as much blogging as possible since I'll soon be leaving China, and in the by-laws of the blog, it says only one Clark can blog per continent, so when I return to America, I'll have to relegate my blogging abilities to, "Classic Clark".

After my nearly disastrous encounter with the Visa police on that trip to Korea, I decided to play it safe for the next one, read my departure date correctly, and leave China on the my visa expired at the latest. After those uncharacteristically intelligent decisions on my part, I decided to try to go to Mongolia and see if it was all that Durrell had built it up to be, i.e. being sold into sexual slavery. I briefed myself with Durrell's blog, asked his advice, and then consulted our common MCIA friend for the real, accurately spelled, intel.

Just for clarification from Durrell's post, if you're going to purchase the tickets for the bus to Mongolia, not at the station but at a governmental building associated with Mongolia, it's the Consulate that you want to go to and not the Embassy. The military guard outside the embassy would not talk to me or answer any of my question (as if I could actually speak Chinese to him). Regardless of this initial mishap, I was able to find the consulate, purchase a bus ticket, and travel in the taxi to the bus station in southern Beijing. I don't have anything much to add to Durrell's description of the taxi ride, the location of the bus stop, and the bus ride up to Mongolia. I will say that while I was blessed with good weather, my luck did not hold out for traveling with either another foreigner or a group of Mongolian students.

As someone who has never officially studied Chinese, but now knows enough to get around and make it seem like I can actually speak it, I often get told by people who did study that, "this person can speak good English," or, "yeah, it should be no problem with the Chinese you can speak". It's probably better if those statements are taken with a very large grain of salt. I don't recommend trying to do this trip to Mongolia unless you speak Chinese fluently, or know Mongolian fluently. It just doesn't work quite as well. Sure you can get across, but you'll probably be paying extra, and people will pretend that they can't speak Chinese if you are trying to and not succeeding. Also, try to get a Chinese driver to drive you in his jeep across the border. The Mongolian ones, who are friends of the people who try to load you in a taxi right out of the bus, dawdle around all day will try to take more money than initially bargained on to cross the border. Needless to say, I left feeling like I had been fleeced, but I still got across the border safely for another two month stint in Mainland China.

However, I do feel like I've had unnecessarily bad luck when it comes to border crossings/renewal of my visa. On this particular trip to Mongolia, I was pulled aside when I was trying to leave China, owing only to the fact that I carried a passport from the U.S.. After being interrogated by the officials as to my reasons for wanting to cross (sightseeing....for an hour), and what I was doing in china (...freeloading, since I'm not supposed to be working?) I was reluctantly allowed to leave Mainland China and enter Mongolia. There were no questions upon trying to enter Mongolia, or to leave Mongolia and re-enter China. I figured that the reason they wanted to stop me from leaving was purely in the interests the man wanting to practice his English, not because I was looking shifty and could be carrying illicit contraband out of China. I came to this conclusion because even though they asked to look in my backpack, they didn't even shift stuff around and I've gotten frisked more times on my way to the bathroom than I did in that customs office.

I managed to cross safely, and then return earlier than expected into Beijing, which was due to a crazy driver who pulled us into the station around 1:30 am, which was about 5 hours ahead of schedule. But, as I have not posted in a while, this post is backdated and can now be followed up by my second visa trip to Korea. Initially, it was not supposed to be a trip to Korea, but a trip to Hong Kong, this however had to get scrapped as everything planned about the trip to Hong Kong went wrong.

I had found these really cheap tickets to Shenzhen, which is the city located right outside HK. You can fly there much cheaper than directly to HK, and take a bus from the Airport to the border for about 40 yuan and 30 minutes of travel. My flight was to leave Beijing at 8:20pm, stopover at Wuhan for the night, then continue to Shenzhen the next morning. I had also booked a similar stopover at Wuhan flight from Shenzhen back to Beijing without the overnight part. Unfortunately for me, I managed to miss my flight out of Beijing by about 5 - 10 minutes since they stop checking people in 30 minutes before takeoff. Entirely my fault. I book a second flight, this time direct, to Shenzhen from Beijing, but it leaves the next morning. I head home to crash and wake up early for it. While I make it on time for my flight's scheduled departure, it gets delayed due to heavy air traffic at Beijing International. When I arrive in Shenzhen, I have just enough time to take the bus across the border and get back to the airport to catch my original flight back to Beijing as long as nothing goes wrong.

This time I was pulled aside at the customs station due to the fact that I was one day over my allowed period of stay in China, which was on the intentional side. Poor choice when trying to cross customs at the border, as I've now learned. They didn't let me leave China, and instead made me wait for an official to talk to me. It took enough time getting someone who could explain that if I still wanted to cross I would have to sign some document, creating a permanent record on my passport that I had overstayed my welcome, or that I would have to go back to Beijing and sign some document at the immigration public security bureau. Even with the official saying that going back to Beijing would result in no penalty, it certainly still sounded like exactly the same thing. By now, I had wasted so much time in trying to cross that if I did not leave the immigration border immediately, I would miss my flight back to Beijing. Having already missed one flight, and being tired and frustrated with an official who spoke great English but seemed like a real duffer, I chose to get back onto the bus and catch my flight back to Beijing. Luckily, I was able to check in just before the check-in gates closed for my flight.

The flight from Shenzhen back to Wuhan went as scheduled. However, my flight leaving Wuhan was delayed by 4 hours, again due to congested air traffic around Beijing. The airline drove a bunch of us to a hotel, then expected us to pay for it. I decided instead to chill around the hotel and get some local food, and talk to some local Wuhanites. Whatever portion of the city we were in, it was pretty grubby and full of female pimps trying to get coin out of the foreigners. In Beijing, the people selling don't follow you around for several minutes trying to haggle prices, and so I was a little shocked and amused when this happened no less than 4 times to me. Actually leaving on my flight around 1:30 in the morning, I didn't get into Beijing until around 2:30 am, at which point none of the trains were running. Since I didn't want to shell out for a taxi, I chose instead to sleep at the airport.

My next plan of action was to sleep on my options, and see if I could get a black market visa to replace the one I was currently carrying. This didn't really pan out in the manner I wanted, and so I purchased another ticket to Korea (being my standard fallback position after my last serious mishap). Here again, at the airport, they didn't question my 3 day overstayed welcome, and I was allowed to pass through customs unhindered. Finally, with things going my way, I depart and arrive on time to Korea, sleep in the airport, and return to Beijing in the morning.

Lesson learned. If you need to cross the border and you're over by a day or two, don't be an American, and don't try it anywhere except at the airport.

Plant Update and Name Changes

Post by New Clark.

As of today onwards, Ben's plant is now going to be called, "Little Ben". It takes after its namesake well in that it is taller than Durrell's plant, Jesus (pronounced with Spanish phonetics).

Little Ben has been left in my care for the time subsequent Ben's departure from China and until I also return to the States. In the aftermath of the dropping of leaves event which will be blamed on the mild locational change from Ben's old apartment to his new apartment, Little Ben has made surprising and substantial growth. The most astonishing thing is that it seems that it is growing even better having left the 朝内北小街 area just inside the second ring, and moved out to just outside the third ring in the 朝阳公园西门 area that Durrell lives.

After many discussions of why this dramatic change has occurred, I've come this one conclusion. Solidarity.

I wanted include some pictures of the tenacious trees, but I'm not going to that. Ben will just have to use his imagination till he's surprised when he actually sees his plant again, and I'll leave the photo posting to the professional.

stuffing ourselves with donkey meat

last weekend we took a trip out to distant chegongzhuangwai to sample some highly recommended donkey meat. the meat was cold and came on these big plates mixed with slightly hot green peppers. you then poured a mixture of vinegar and garlic over the meat, and put them in these flaky pastry things. it was good, and we ate a lot.

shanji and durrell enjoying the donkey meat

a chart explaining why donkey meat is better than beef, lamb and pork in terms of water, protein, fat and ash (?) content

brewing beer: my career advantage

as some of you may or may not know, i've returned stateside, replaced by new clark. you may also know that i'm a significantly better blogger from outside china.

this move means trying to kick-start a job search in the worst economy we'll see for generations. nice work, old clark. but i'm doing my darnedest to put my best foot forward, which includes tinkering with the old resume.

i've always struggled with the "additional" line at the bottom of the resume (reading, jogging, harry potter, etc.) what is its real purpose? what should you include? what shouldn't you include? what does the decision to include this line, at all, say about you, the job seeker? does your career ever reach a point where you outgrow the "additional" line? does your career ever reach a point where you outgrow the resume? (sec. treas. here i come!)

once in a previous job, a resume came across my desk that listed the job-seeker as a "van morrison enthusiast." this caught my eye, no doubt, and i thankfully had the chance to interview the candidate. the guy got the job and turned out to be really cool -- deserving of his self-ascribed epithet -- but i think it could have gone either way, honestly. i was simply intrigued. i also interpreted this to be a potentially cautionary tale: if you claim to be a "van morrison enthusiast," you better be a van morrison enthusiast. i would not, for example, want to sit across the table from an interviewer who thinks they are, in fact, more van morrison enthusiast than i. so how far can you actually push the "additional" line?

another problem i constantly fear is that i'm hobby-less. i'm a very interesting guy, don't get me wrong -- i just don't lend well to established "hobbies" (e.g. blogging or rooting for professional sports teams.) there's nothing wrong with this, i swear!

so after much deliberation (clearly) i left several of the painfully generic elements in my additional line untouched ("traveling, snowboarding"), but decided to spice it up some with... beer brewing.

it has been an enormous hit. after months of wondering if people actually even made it that far on my resume, i've received comment after comment about my experiences in brewing. and the fact that i did this in china makes it even that much more noteworthy -- which is standard for pretty much any ex-pat activity and/or activities performed by ex-pats.

why is this?

are there more closet brewers out there than i originally assumed? is beer brewing still a form of connoisseurship that you can discuss in broad daylight without pretension? (...tentative use of connoisseur there... which is a pretentious word in itself.)

do i care? not really -- just so long as the positive comments about my resume's "additional" line keep coming. so for all the unemployed out there, i highly recommend making a mash this weekend. you'll thank me.

The Worstest Word You Can Say in a Movie in China

Recently, New Clark, Golze, my roommate, and I went to see Iron Man 2, taking advantage of half price Tuesdays. And for some reason, they kept censoring a word. At first I could not tell what the word was, I just assumed it might be a certain word. But I was like, why the hell would they censor that word, the Cold War ended at least 10 years ago, who is going to care about that word. But it kept happening, they kept censoring the word. I mean why would Russia care that they are the bad guys in the movie and is it really that hard to tell that Mickey Rourke is using a bad Russian accent. Do you need to keep censoring the word Russia/Russian. There are enough Russians in Beijing to know that Russians are super villains. I mean Chocolate is infamous in Beijing. I could understand censoring Swaziland or even Nauru, but why Russia. Come on! China and Russia broke up like 20 years ago, it's okay to say her name again. Get over it.

asian baseball tour 2009/2010: japan!

last weekend i took a quick trip back to japan to see my friends steve and caitlyn before they move back to states and also complete a quad-fecta of baseball in asia. as fans of the blog know, i've seen professional games in china, korea and taiwan, and so i wanted to tick off japan while i still had a free place to stay there. durrell was originally going to join but visa issues grounded him in beijing.

fukuoka's yahoo! japan dome

the game was great, and felt the most like a professional, big league game of the four countries. the soft bank hawks (fukuoka, the home team, yay!) beat the chiba marines (hiss!) in a very exciting game that included a number of home runs and one spectacular collision about five meters in front of home plate. the hawks' runner clobbered the catcher, who had only just caught the ball, sending the ball flying. the runner lay on the ground for a second, climbed up and stumbled a few steps to home before collapsing on the plate. the catcher stayed down for a while.

one interesting tradition took place in lieu of the seventh inning stretch. in the middle of the seventh inning (or after the seventh inning, i don't remember) everybody in the crowd blew up these rather phallic-shaped balloons, sang a song together, then released them into the air. a little plastic whistle was attached to the end of each balloon so that they all buzzed terrifically when let go. they also all fell on everybody's heads after. this was repeated after the end of the game as well, but with white balloons instead of yellow. i guess white stands for victory.

getting ready to blow!

weeeeee!

all in all a good time. i think of all the games i saw, the korean game was the most fun, because it had the best balance between major league professionalism and local quirkiness in the form of gimbop, giant beers and dried squid. japan felt a bit too clean and professional (the stadium was called the Yahoo! Japan Dome, for instance). the two chinese games were a blast but the enjoyment was mostly fuelled by friends and alcohol, as opposed to the quality of the game itself. taiwan was quiet and peaceful but not very exciting. now that i think about it, each of these games are pretty representative of my experiences in their host countries. maybe i should write a story about it. i'm sure i could get the nytimes to publish that crap.

A Sighting, a Polling, and Disbelief

Post by New Clark

A while back, I happened to witness the amazing event of a Chinese fire-drill in China. I was shocked, and since I was riding my bicycle and lacked a camera, I missed out on obtaining factual support to my claim of this sighting. However, seeing this event was not what surprised me the most.

I later notified my ex-pat compatriots about my fantastic find. I found it unfortunate that I got three different reactions to this information.

"You saw a Chinese fire-drill? That's awesome! We used to do those all the time when I was a kid and we probably made all the other cars wonder what the hell we were doing." – Response by a Coloradoan

"You saw a Chinese fire-drill? What is that? I've never heard of such a thing. Is that like a regular fire-drill but in China?" – Response by a Seattleite

"Cool, I haven't seen one of those yet. Where did you see it?" – Response by a Californian

Since, of the accurate polling of the three people I told, one actively practiced Chinese fire-drills, one knew what they were, and one had no idea what it was, I thought it might be prudent to inform people what a Chinese fire-drill is.

It's where you get out of your car at a red light, run around it and then get back in your car. Why do the Chinese do this? I'm not entirely sure; I'm still working on why their popcorn is sugary and not salty. It sure tastes good though.

yes, but will my hands be so fter?

note to self: when advertising hand cream called "la mer" in a massive mall display, make sure you put a big enough space between the two words.

quick plug for wang wen

i went to see a great dalian band called wang wen (惘闻) play last night. i saw them play when i first got here in 2008, in fact i think the first live concert i saw in china. this time they were promoting their new album L&R and put on a great show again. hopefully someday they'll get a chance to do a US tour like local beijing bands carsick cars and hedgehog did a couple months ago. if so, i highly recommend you check them out. in the meantime, you can check out their myspace page here. just watch out for the sexual predators.

qingming in shanghai

this weekend was qingming jie, or tomb sweeping festival, in china. even though it's apparently only a han chinese traditional holiday the whole country gets a three day weekend. i took the chance to make what has become a once a year trek to shanghai to visit friends. based on how many people were out and about at the newly restored bund on monday, there didn't seem to be a lot of tomb sweeping going on.

i won't bore you with a detailed play by play because nothing much happened. but while throwing an elbow at some chick that was in my way on the escalator when i got back to beijing, i realised it was sort of a bizarre experience, even though i had a great time. the entire thing (brunches, easter party, picnic in a park, beirut games) could have taken place in the US. for example, on monday evening before flying back to beijing i had a giant (delicious) burrito at this restaurant packed with laowai getting drunk on margaritas. i'm having a hard time believing that anywhere you can get decent mexican food counts as china. in beijing all we have is saddle cantina, where the tortillas taste like the pancakes they use with peking duck.

anyway, too much has been written about the differences between beijing and shanghai so i won't rehash that here. i will write about the bund, which just reopened to great fanfare after two years of construction. i hadn't been there for five years, and it pretty much looks the same to me, though shanghaiiers insist otherwise. i will say there are a lot more buildings over in pudong, including the glorious giant bottle opener, an apt dedication to laowai living.

on another note, the shanghai metro is expanding at a ridiculously rapid rate as they get ready for the 2010 expo to open next month. the trains and stations, especially on the new lines, are all really nice, with fancy flat screen displays and google maps-type consoles you can use to look at the area around the station. once after brunch at a popular art gallery slash cafe area, we walked out to the street right in front of a brand new metro station that my friend didn't even know existed. meanwhile, the beijing subway is burning to the ground.