I have ridden my bike for 500 miles in this country

I like to think of that as a positive, instead of what it has done to my lungs. Please don’t think about my [blackening] lungs too much, Lauren Friedman once fainted at the sight of a fake blackening lung. [Hi Laurie!] No really, I’m enjoying my method of transportations… its all about understanding the flow of traffic in this city. It really is the quickest way to get anywhere. I biked for 20 miles on Saturday, around the southern portion of the second ring road, along the old city moat, when I got back home my legs could feel the work out- so could my lungs! Unfortunately the supposed Mountain Biker’s Club of Beijing is currently in Triathlon season, and I just don’t run [or swim for that matter]. So I’ll continue enjoying my commute. Really to work out in this town you need to get way out of town to the mountains or join a gym [which I can’t afford].

Work, work, work. I think I might be getting paid tomorrow in a large stack of cold hard cash, what more is exciting than that? I think I might purchase a house plant. Current projects I have going are: my newsletter, so fun to write, Chris and I are organizing a Chinese NGO and international volunteers networking mixer. Our courtyard would be perfect for such an event, and there is no such event yet, so we think this could generate good contacts and getting Hui Ling into the NGO community. I’ll keep you posted!

Shout out to Ms Lindsay Shaw and Leah D, right now I’m using my roommate’s awesome computer sound system and am blasting “Sweet Child of Mine” – I’m sure my neighbors love it! They can get up and over it because right now it’s 6.30 pm and I’ve been enduring drilling and hammering starting at 8 am 7 days a week for a while now. Isn’t remodeling done yet?

I was reading an article in a ‘what’s going on in Beijing’ foreigner type magazine called “City Weekend” and they were talking about how Beijing was the cultural capital, of old and particularly recently, and now maybe it is the source of modern artsy stuff because it was the old cultural capital. I also went to a lecture on The Forbidden City [don’t know what that is? Check this site out: http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/beijing/forbidden.htm]


Where the professor giving the lecture was saying that prior to the 14th century [ok I’m guessing which century it was] said that prior to the building of the Forbidden City, Beijing was mostly army garrisons and farmland. Along came some emperor who decided that power needed to be moved to the north, and Beijing would be it. He started to construct the Forbidden City, pretty much to secure the monarchy and his power, and to make it extravagant [read: ridiculous]. It was built on a grand scale, and therefore artisans and craftsman had to be brought in from the south for periods at a time. Moving people and their families means there needs to be service people to provide for them, thus thee city was built upon their important Yangtze river craftspeople and the service people that came with. So I think it’s funny that Beijing is regarded as the ‘cultural center’, when really the culture was just imported from the middle of China.

Want to watch a great movie about China? Check these out- All are directed by the most famous director Zhang Yimo and staring the beautiful and now living in my Beijing villa Gong Li:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110081/
To Live or Huozhe

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105197/
The Story of Qiu Ju or Qiu Ju da guan si
That’s about all I have for now. I will leave you with a few funny “you know you lived in China [or Asia] when…” I’ll even give you a little insight as to why they are funny! [I’m chuckling as I read them]
When your co-workers return to the office you ask them, "have you returned to the office?" --One of the co-workers that I teach English to asked me how to translate “work’s over” I told him it was that, but that in English we don’t state the obvious like they do in Chinese. My basic conversation with my neighbors everyday is: [them] “you’re going to work!” [me] “ay!”. [I come home] [them] “you’re home from work!” [me] “ay!”.

You have no distinction between in-door voice and out-door voice. – This can make restaurants Very loud, especially when they all start drinking.

You wear your pajamas to go to the supermarket. – Matching tops and bottoms, probably with some dog print. I have a photo of this. I don’t know if they actually wear these pj’s to bed but they wear them outside with their leather shoes.

Your belt wraps around your waist twice. – This seems to be an epidemic in China, they are either making belts to big or the men buying them are too hopefully of their ability to get fat. Still an enigma to me.

You no longer wait in line, but immediately go to the head of the queue. – Lines are meaningless in China. You should see me at McDonalds. This is something I have to be culturally sensitive to when I return to the US, because although that type of proactive behavior is commended in this country, gun-toting Americans may think otherwise…

It is no longer surprising that the only decision made at a meeting is the time and venue for the next meeting. – Welcome to my world of Chinese non-profits! Hopefully we will make some forward progress soon… I have high hopes [but not too high, this Is China…]

You no longer wonder how someone making US$200 per month can drive a Mercedes.

You find it saves time to stand and retrieve your cabin baggage while the plane is still on final approach. – The Chinese in travel mode is hysterical, whether its by bus, train, or plane.

You are quite content to repeat your order six times in a restaurant that only has four items on the menu. – This is not an exaggeration. Here’s the basic ordering dialogue:
[me, pointing to item on the menu] “I want one plate of this”
[waitress] “that one?”
[me, still pointing] “yes that one.”
[waitress] “one plate of chicken with peanuts, is that right?”
[me] “yes one plate that is right”
[waitress] “ok we will bring one plate”
Then add things like- don’t add hot peppers, don’t add meat, don’t add MSG and the conversation lengthens… After you have all the dishes ordered, they repeat them back to you! So fun!

You're not surprised when three men with a ladder show up to change a light bulb. – Employment in the Great Country!

As Homer Simpson says, "its funny because its true..."

Would you rather have a Beemer, a Lexus, or freedom?

That’s from some hip hop song, I would say most Chinese would choose the first two, or a Mercedes. They may settle for an Audi. Freedom? I was chatting with the office kids that I teach English to [really its more chatting than teaching because their English is already pretty good] and we were talking about the cultural revolution and I was saying that I heard that more people died in china from the start of the “great leap forward” [ironically a giant leap back] to the end of the cultural revolution [like 1950s to 1976] than in WW1, WW2, and the Vietnam war combined… my students said, no that wasn’t possible. I asked how do you know? They said, my parents lived through it! I said, but they wouldn’t know how many people died altogether? They said no but I’ve read it when I studied history. I said the government wrote your history books, right? Right. And that same government lied about how many died as a result of SARS, right? OK, you’re right, we don’t really know how many people died. Anyway, thought it was interesting. I’m trying to teach them about the exciting world of healthcare research, we just read an article from the Economist which was challenging to me and them [ha!] and they really just want to know if what they watch on American movies is really how American life is. They specifically mentioned “American Pie” I had to shamelessly agree that that movie can be a realistic portrait of American life…
I would like to write more about my Gansu trip but I think I summed it up well in my last email… photos are coming, I promise. I’ve been slacking on my blogging, photo uploading, emailing in general due to the fact that I seem to be actually working now, which is a happy change. It’s nice to have two part time jobs. The healthcare teaching is going pretty well, I like teaching to an extent. It turns out the book I got for the beginning class is way above their level and I’m going to have to go get a little kiddie book and start with the basic basics, like talking about the weather, before we can start introducing each other and talking about what department we work in. But its going well.
Hui Ling is an interesting experience… working in a Chinese NGO, well I would say our motto is to reinvent the wheel, each time a little different, sometimes the wheel goes around, sometimes we just pretend it goes around and still ask for money. Currently we are discussing a commission based pay schedule, which me and Chris [the Belgium guy I work with] are strongly opposed to, and my father calls “but unethical and strongly discouraged.” Our new executive director seems to think that the only way to evaluate our progress as the development office is by the money we bring in, so we should get paid accordingly, not as a team, but as individuals. I am sure you are thinking, how would that work? Why would it be effective to have us be working against each other to bring in the most amount of money? This pay schedule might be effective if we were in telemarketing, but not development. Chris and I decided to change the name of our office to ‘Show me the money department’. In the end, it doesn’t matter too much to me, because James is still paying me enough, but it does dishearten me that I am on such a different page than my boss. My current project is to write a newsletter to keep not only the local community informed [and reminded that we need money!] about Hui Ling but also to gather the email addresses of the honky’s that come to visit us and then ask them for donations like at Christmas. So although this won’t turn into immediate money, it seems like something we need… anyway, working in China can be frustrating. Sometimes I feel like everything I do here is so new and it’s the first time and therefore such a challenge, such an uphill battle, I miss the sophistication of the US. Of course if I were in the US at an NGO I might be totally entrenched in the over sophistication of the organization, stuck somewhere counting staples… who knows. In any case it’s a good experience and McDonald’s coffee is keeping me going.
Ok, I feel carpel tunnel coming on, I got to get out on this beautiful Saturday and go for a bike ride.
Hope everyone is well. Apologies again for not blogging more often. It’s a busy life I lead!

I so happy

I have a new job. I am so excited to have a new job. Something I care about. Something I still think about when I leave. Today was my first day… I spent the morning revising a brochure they had put together… I felt so useful and just delicious knowing that I was doing something that I was actually good at! It was fab. But then, after it was almost perfect, the power went out and the damn thing didn’t save. By the end of the day I realized that it might be a metaphor for me working there… I will feel helpful and useful and I could recreate most of the brochure from memory, but its going to be challenging, frustrating, because its China.
China has been frustrating me recently… just a lack of standards. I really needed coffee this Saturday, went to McDonald’s, the coffee machine was broken. Went to Scholtzkey’s deli for a sandwich… they ran out of sandwiches. I call this LACK OF STANDARDS and sometimes it gets to me. But its about time that something about this country got to me cuz I was previously living in some kind of la la land… so its cool, I’m still having a great time… but its good to realize that everything will not always be easy and happy and consistent.
So my new job is at Hui Ling Community Service for the Mentally Disabled we decided would be the proper English translation. This afternoon I met with the British Ambassador’s wife and her friend, who at some point mentioned that she lived at Legend Gardens, I said, well I lived there a while back.. what district were you in? one. One! Me too! What house? Ten. Ten? I lived in nine! How crazy is that? She says, do you know who owns your house now? Gong li. [very famous Chinese actress: http://www.askmen.com/women/actress_100/105_gong_li.html] So anyway, my job is to work in the development office.. I think I told y’all a bit about this before… anyway, I’m excited.
So I have completed my first role on stage… ok I was a minor stage hand, but still… It was really fun. In the beginning I was really nervous. I mean my only job was to move this table on and off stage, but I helped the costume designer prepare the clothes and other props… so it was such a new experience for me. So fun to hang out back stage while the orchestra warms up, hang out with the Soldier [the show was ‘A Soldier’s Tale’ by Stravinsky] before he went on… he told me his heart was pumping out of his chest… I was like, so is mine and I’m not even dancing! It was fun to hang out with the dancers… be part of Alison’s directorial debut It was amazing to watch her do everything all in Chinese… tell the dancers how to dance, tell the set guys how to do the set… her Chinese is real good.
It’s raining in Beijing. Traffic is murder when it rains. I still ride my bike, today I got very wet. I immediately showered to get the hepatitis off of me.

Claire is a lazy blogger.

Sorry for not getting on this sooner, but the blog about my travels is no minor deal, so its taken me a while to really get a ‘round tuit’. So here goes…

Finally back to the Northern Capital

I had a minute so I thought I would begin to relay my last week's
travels to yall. And when I say travels I mean it, as I was physically
in transit for most of the week. First, an introduction to the
teamsters: the travel buds, Anna, Italian who I know from Beijing, is
an archeologist, studying ancient city layout. Her boyfriend, Noel, an
American who lives in a bumble town called Jing dezhen, where by day
he is a teacher to 551 kids, and by any spare time he is a sculptor
setting up his own factory to produce… sculpture of porcelain.
Most porcelain things made in this country are made there. His best
friend is Austin, who is also American but currently hails from
Bangkok, his home over the past 7 years. He speaks fluent Thai
[naturally]. And Swedish [why not]. And a bit of Burmease [like Burma, the country.] They were ausome travel buds, the guys were really sweet, very brotherly to me, and overly sarcastic, so we had a great time making fun of all the crazy characters we ran into along the road.
Now, a brief intro to my return trip which will hopefully explain my
lack of coherence in this blog. [I guess I wrote this part last week] My day started yesterday, I think it was Friday yesterday, we woke up at 6.30am and took an hour and a half car ride to the nearest train station, where we boarded a train,
called the bumpkin of all bumpkin trains, from Dunhuang to Jia Yu Guan. Let me first try to explain how in the middle of nowhere I was. Dunhuang is 2000 km from Beijing, or for us Americans that's 1243 miles, which is like San Francisco to Denver, or NYC to Lincoln Nebraska. [FYI Denver to NYC is 1780 miles]. Except that there is nothing but wasteland in this friendly province called Gansu. Map of
Gansu province:
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/gansu/gansu.gif
http://www.landingchina.com/city_guide/Gansu_Province.htm

Ok so now that we have some vague idea of where I was, let me tell you
about the bumpkin train. Its called the bumpkin train for two
reasons: 1. it stops at every shack, farm house, and outhouse between
Urumqi and Xi'an. 2. you can travel on a very uncomfortable hard seat
from Urumqi to Xi'an, which probably takes about 80 hours because of
all the stops, for only $12. I was only on the train for 5 hours fortunately. Some of the faces on this train… Han Chinese, farmers whose skin and hands were so worn… muslims. Krygikastany people that don't even look Chinese. When we got on the train I had more eyeballs on me than ever before. A policeman came by and told people not to stare because it wasn’t polite. I mostly wrote in my journal, and the farmer lady across from me watched me write every word with fascination. The only way we got seats at all was because these seats
were below the loudest train speaker on the bumpkin train. You see in
China when you purchase your train ticket you not only get the train
ride, you also get to experience train music, in this case at
deafening volumes. So I had my loudest music I could find on [Bergler
thanks for that mix! Brittany's my prerogative rocks] and therefore
couldn't concentrate on reading. At one point I engaged in the
classic Chinese hobby of being a gape-er. There was a serious yelling
match going on between the train authority people, who seem to mainly
seek to abuse their power and ma fan [bother] people, and why not
bother the bumpkins. The train folks were going around with their
"scale" a well used people- weighing scale, and making the bumpkins
weigh their giant bumpkin bags. The bumpkins yell back, but
unfortunately they are barely intelligible because they don't speak
clear or standard 'putong hua' or Mandarin Chinese, they speak
bumpkin dialect. So I stand and watch with everyone else until the
train lady tells me to go back to my car. Even then we continue to
watch. I enjoy Chinese hobbies.
We arrive in JiaYuGuan, and see the sights there: the end of the
great wall, and the fort the everything that went through the silk
road must pass through this fort. Finally located some decent Chinese food there, so we ate lunch and dinner at the same place. at 8 pm we boarded another
train, this one a fast train that made no stops in between and was
therefore not filled with bumpkins but with tourists, but we still
had the horrible hard seats which are REALLY HORRIBLE AT 3AM WHEN YOU
ARE SO EXHAUSTED AND THERE IS NO WHERE TO SLEEP. sorry for yelling. I guess I should be glad I am not the guy who is sleeping on the sink.
Really. Arrived in Lanzhou at 6.30 am, had some coffee, drove another
hour to the airport, fly two hours home on the most turbulent ride
that I can remember in a long time, landed and realized that every
10th passengers had vom-med, gross, the Chinese cant really hold
their stuff. Got to Beijing, walked out of the airport for about 45
min, to the old town of Tian Zhu, paid 18 cents to take the
bus home. I am so thrifty.

So that was just the trip home. Let’s see what I wrote about my travels… try to decipher my chicken scratch. Every inch of this country is used for something. Even the mountain tops are terraced and cultivated. The sleeper cars on the train, called ‘hard sleepers’, don’t have cabin doors, so you are just out in the open with everyone. Very communal. Of course it wouldn’t matter anyway cuz I got stuck with the snoring man right next to me anyway. Music is being played on the train pretty much the whole time, except from 10pm to the joyous early hour of 7am. It’s times like these that I swear by earplugs. The only moment of color in the villages that I pass on the train are the doors- colored tiles, red doors, red characters that say ‘prosperity’ ‘longevity’ ‘good fortune’ etc. There are many many satellite dishes in villagers’ courtyards.. for what I don’t know. Every bit of trash is collected, pieced through, and piled up. Recycling is king in this country. The reduced concept hasn’t exactly hit this country yet.
The cell phone necktie. For super convenient access to your lifeblood, the cell phone, can be dangled from your neck, like jewelry. It may also come with an earpiece that connects to the phone so that you can chat it up without the ma fan of actually holding the phone to your ear.
The first thing I notice about not being in Beijing is the ‘you’re the only foreigner this town has ever seen’ syndrome.. which involves shouting at me, ‘foreigner!’ in chinese, pointing, laughing, staring, and a million “HALLO”s. tao yan- hate it. Makes me miss Beijing. Beijing is worlds away from the capital of Gansu province, a horrid little city called Lanzhou. But fortunately I didn’t come to Gansu to hang out in lanzhou, this is just a stopover. I finally meet up with my friends, I take them back to my hotel, where the are five clocks above the front desk with times from around the world. According to the Peace hotel, when it is 4.30 in Beijing its 9:50 in New York, 2:05 in London, and 7:40 in Tokyo. Hmm. The lady at the front desk is possible the meanest Chineser I have ever run into. She claims there are no more rooms, saying, ‘I said it clearly, we have no rooms’ [which sounds really rude in chinese]. Of course when I go ask the lady that opens my room for me about free rooms, she says oh yes there are many, until the meany at the front desk calls her to tell us no. Don’t know why, but we were glad to get the hell out of Lanzhou.
A quote from Red Dust, by Ma Jian: “China is a black hole, I want to dive into it. I don’t know where I am going, I just know I had to leave. Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead.”
An overview of the week: Friday, 20 hour overnight train from Beijing to Lanzhou. Saturday 6 hour bus ride to Xiahe. Monday in Xiahe. Tuesday 6 hour bus back to Lanzhou, PM 10 hour overnight train to Jiayuguan. Wednesday, 10 hour bumpy bus ride to Dunhuang. Thursday in Dunhuang. Friday brings us back to the start of the blog with the 5 hour bumpkin train, then overnight in hardseats back to Lanzhou then plane to Beijing. Whew. So you can see we didn’t spend a whole lot of time not moving. More of the travels later!

I slow to get to this

Just wanted to let y'all know that I have arrived safely back in the Jing, as in the Capital, and due to lack of sleep/ coherence my blog about the trip is slow to materialize, so your patience is appreciated while I get it together. Photos to be sent out soon too on snapfish.
Overall, had a great trip, despite the many [Many] hours of schelpping on buses, trains, planes, automobiles, bikes, tuk-tuks, rickshaws, little motorcycles with boxes on the back of them, it was a great trip, great adventure. You really have to schlep to see anything cool in this country. The company was awesome, traveled with some great guys and an Italian bella, the bathrooms were fragrant, and I don't mean springtime fresh, the food was some of the most horrible food this country has ever produced, and the sites awe-inspiring. Details to follow, promise.
Happy momma mom mom mom, mom mom-a-ram, rom a ram day to all the motha's out there, in particular shout out to Dr. P-Trompoulous, MSW, LCSW, love you momma.

My folks rock

When I meet new people, and we’re sitting on buses for days on end, we usually get to the ‘gay history’ questions. I get the typical, ‘when did you know you were gay’ and things like that, and I also always get, ‘how do your parents handle it?’ which I think is an interesting way to phrase it, using the word ‘handle,’ as if to ask, ‘how do your parents handle your heroin addiction/ propensity to alcoholism and violence / extreme bad smells…’ or things like that. As if its something they have to handle or deal with it. Below is an email from my motha… word.

>>This morning ten of us from Love Makes a Family met with Nickerson [Senator in CT] who has voted for gay rights in the past but most recently voted against giving the equal rights which civil marriage (as opposed to civil unions) guarantees. He was a good listener and I had the feeling that perhaps he was hearing us. Certainly hearing the personal stories of human beings is more powerful than just debating and demonstrating. Dad was particularly eloquent asking, in essence, what would you do to make the world a fairer place if your child was gay? (Implication was of course that he wouldn't have voted for DOMA and against civil marriage.) So, one step at a time.............<<

I don’t think you can ask for a better way of ‘handling’ my queer nature.

On the road again

Hello from Gansu province- quite the venture, I'll give yall the real blog later right now the screen at the net cafe I'm at is rather fuzzy and is making my eyes hurt. Just went to Xiahe- town South of Lanzhou, 6 hour bus ride from here, some important Buddhist temple there, geting on a train soon to sleep, arrive in Jiayuguan, where the great wall ends, then a short 6 hour bus ride to dunhuang, the final destinataion, anyway, wanted to give yall a shout out to let you know im still kicking it.
my travel companions are fun, two american dudes who have been living in thailand and china for the last many years, and anna from italy who i know from beijing. those of you on friendster that care they are: anna, austin, and noel. that's the crew. we travel well together, so its a good time.
anywho.
good photos [hopefully, then again i dont doubt the J.DavidNelson camera]to come when i return to the Jing [next Sat]. couldn't be more excited to travel via the highly modern 'aeroplane'