Chai le means demolish.

I came home one day and the guard stand at the gate and the hair cutting place attached to it was chai le-ed. Chai means demolished but its really like razed. As in, the neighborhoods has been razed. Just a pile of concrete blocks. Apparently the developer [company that is funding the buildings] from next door [formally the Home of Tycoons now the Cosmopolite] came over with the police and the government and said that this area was their property now. The saddest part is that they are going to turn it into a through road, and take away the walking neighborhood feel from our cute little apartment group, apparently just 10 years old. My apartment buildings look like they were built in the late 60s, but really just built in 1995. Will the buildings going up now be chai-ed in 10 years?

The saddest thing about this razing incident was the bed that was out on the street; a little boy in his school uniform- yellow baseball hat and red bandana sitting on the bed, an older woman comes up to him and says: “Bao Beir [precious], now you have no where to live, so sad.” The hairdresser is my cleaning woman’s husband. Did he get compensated for the destruction of his place of business? Fortunately they don’t live in there. I guess it’s all part of raising the standard of living.

My snack for the day is really spicy lotus root. I got it at the stand where they sell spicy duck necks and heads. One of my Angels had that for breakfast one day [this does not appear strange to them at all] and I sampled the lotus root for lunch, and I’m a big fan, so I thought I’d buy a whole bag. A little too spicy for eating it just with Doritos though [which I buy for a whopping $3!]. Yum.

I’ve been very MIA recently, having now received not one but two emails from my father with the subject “Alive?” so don’t feel bad if you haven’t received anything from me recently. I want to tell everyone about the ridiculousness of my job but I’m going to write some folks back first, starting with my mother, so don’t hold your breath but I’ll be giving observations of the China new –money sector of life soon.

No I can’t come see your golf course tonight

My job currently leaves me plenty of time to think about what I want to blog about. You see I have one of those idle jobs in China, with nothing really to do, just sit around, walk around, chat, hang out, attempt to manage my Angels who all want to quit anyway so they’re not necessarily being good Angels.

The sales team has now decided that I should come talk to customers about the fabulous ‘English style butler service” that we provide- I am written into the brochures as the “English style butler with many years of overseas hotel experience and four Angels as assistants” so you see these places just wouldn’t be the same without us. I am constantly reminding the sales team that I am NOT English, I’m American, as they introduce me. So far I haven’t had many of the conversations in Chinese with them, I don’t think the sales manager is really communicating with them that I can interact with the customers a little more than them just saying: “this is our English style butler”. I am talking to the overseas Chinese, those who have been living in Los Angeles for 20 years and have come back here to invest their money in China, and they ask me questions that I should know, but my training was designed so that ‘oh foreigners won’t come’ so my materials were all in Chinese, thus leaving me in the dark.

It’s only minorly frustrating, mostly I’m just really bored and want to gorge my eyeballs out, but then I remind myself of the money I’m making and the box lunches are good [pumpkin and jelly fish? That was last Friday’s] and the commute isn’t bad so I am going to try to figure out how to make my Chinese better, and see if I can last until January or February. I spend my days sitting at the reception desk, talking to the sales staff, only one speaks pretty bad English, but they all have English names like Jon, Justin, Lucky, Lydia, Jade, Sunny, Angel, some normal names, some Chinese-only English names, except one unfortunate man whose name is Semen. Really. I told him the other night, just before I left work, that he should go look his name up in the dictionary and see what it meant. He said his Chinese English teacher gave it to him, and he didn’t go look it up, and the next day there was a Chinese- American with a very thick New York accent, and told him to check out his name card, well he broke the news to him that maybe it wasn’t the best choice in names. So my job has its moments.

There was one local Chinese woman who spoke a little English and was telling me about the golf course that she manages and how her son is going to be the next Tiger Woods and was like, you should come see the golf course, when do you get off work? Does she really think I have time tonight to go further north to see her golf course in the dark?

One thing I have learned that is essential in maintaining sanity in this country is to have someone who comes from where you come from share it with you. I have been having dinner with the Wu’s, as normal, but now I have someone to share it with: Caroline Kilmer, from Kilmer fame, as in the family after the Nelsons that Wu drove for. With both agree that its nice to have someone else to distract attention for a minute that we might not be stuffing our mouths, and for me, she does a fab job as the straight girl, wearing girlie things and possibly [*gasp*] acquiring a boyfriend. Last night we took them out for dinner, it was Wu mama’s 52nd birthday, and spent a whopping $29 on the whole meal. She writes:
“I think dinner went swimmingly, don't you? Although I find it hilarious that I managed to fulfill certain boyfriend requirements only to have them negated by nationality. I'm starting to get the impression that the only way we can win with the Wus here is if we simultaneously date the Hardy Boys.”

She’s dating a Serb. We were having trouble describing just where that was, cuz we are not all too clear.

Besides that, the pollution the past couple days [before the wind starting blowing, thankfully] was so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. My lungs hurt, and was inside all day. You could actually eat the air with a spoon. Yummy. From a Guardian article that two people sent to me:

>>Beijing and its neighbouring north-east Chinese provinces have the planet's worst levels of nitrogen dioxide, which can cause fatal damage to the lungs. A recently published study, conducted by the Chinese Academy on Environmental Planning, blamed air pollution for 411,000 premature deaths - mostly from lung and heart-related diseases - in 2003. It said that a third of China's urban residents were exposed to harmful levels of pollution.<<

So I am enjoying my Monday off [I work weekends, this doesn’t seem to stop me from going out] by holing up in my office [ha! I have an office] with my donated space heater [thanks Johanna] wearing two sweat shirts and two hats because ol’ Uncle Hu hasn’t turned on the heat yet. November 15th it’ll come on. I’ll try to keep up with emails, but if I haven’t, yours is coming soon.