Chinablogs

Highlights

2009-02-20T15:35:00.002-05:00

Now that I have moved on to bigger and better blogs, I am going to leave my Chinablogs with a short list of my favorite posts:

http://chinablogsmaokelan.blogspot.com/2005/11/chai-le-means-demolish.html

http://chinablogsmaokelan.blogspot.com/2005/06/trip-to-country-side.html

http://chinablogsmaokelan.blogspot.com/2006/01/girl-named-mark_29.html

Please check my new blog (less journal, more links) at http://maokelan18.tumblr.com/

And for those of us with especially short attention spans, follow me on http://twitter.com/maokelan18

再见！

yes, they do eat cat

2008-05-10T06:09:00.003-04:00

I saw one, roasted, hanging with the usual legs of pork, ready to be purchased for a cool 400 RMB [like more than $50]. apparently kitty cat is delicious, according to the woman who tried to sell it to me.

My journey started in Chengdu, capital of sichuan (http://youtube.com/watch?v=FzRH3iTQPrk&feature=related), saw the giantess buddha in leshan among the masses of tourists, slept with a mouse in my room who had a thing for the hotel soap. tried to buy tickets to western sichuan but apparently not only journalists are blocked, but everyone with the white white face. http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080406/NEWS07/804060661/1009/NEWS07

"It's for your safety". So I stayed around Chengdu, traveling with a college roomate, Margo. We traveled up a Daoist mountain to a village with no roads who grilled me why my president likes war and likes to kill people. I tried to explain the whole oil theory, but they weren't buying. A fellow tourist on the mountain had a t shirt (in English) that read: TIBExT ALWAYS IS, WAS, AND WILL BE PART OF CHINA. they wanted me to translate this for them. i did, and agreed wtih them, because I'm a Commy at heart, but historically, was anything really part of anything?
So, with my plan of ventures to western/ tibetaxn china now nixed "for my safety" i decided to hop a train to kunming, capital of yunnan, and head down to xi shuang ban na, where the happy minorities live (laos/ vietnam border area).

I should be returning to beijing in a few weeks, then home to CT beginning of june. hope everyone is well.

March 2008 (now that’s a creative title)

2008-03-05T03:46:00.000-05:00

Cambodia- February 2008. My friend Caroline and I decided to go to Cambodia after really searching, reading, studying, and deciding that yes, Cambodia was the cheapest place to fly to when buying tickets 8 days before you want to depart.

First, let me give all photo credits to Caroline the photographer, and she posted the best of her photos on her photo blog at:

http://www.photoblog.com/carolinece/2008/02/07/

Photos of actual people [such as me and Caroline] will sent separately via kodakgallery, please let me know if you didn’t receive an email to view those and I’ll send it to you.

I want to be upfront and admit that I went to the pool at the Hotel Intercontinental and drank Bloody Mary’s while Caroline went to the Killing Fields. Is that terrible that I was drinking Bloody Mary’s? Probably. But we needed rest and Cambodia was a great mix of tourist sites, out of the way sites, relaxing, and visiting the local genocide sites. I’m not going to recount the entire vacation, but I will relate this one story:

The journey began, funnily enough, at Beijing Capital “we’re ready for the Olympics we promise” Airport, I was trying to sneak through a 120 ml sunscreen, when we all know the requirements are 100 ml, even if the stupid bottle is almost empty. Right when I was about to agree to throw the bottle out, the airport security guard ushers me behind a wall to wear he was disposing of other liquid items and tells me to put the bottle in my pocket where I am out of site of the cameras. You can feel safe about flying into China, I promise.

So you’ll learn more about the trip by checking out the photos.

For me, my update consists of this:

Its getting warm in Beijing, but Uncle Hu turns the heat off on March 15.
I actually got into business school, so far I’m planning on attending Babson (in Boston) but I also got waitlisted at Boston College, so we will see.
Summer plans are up in the air currently… I’m planning on quitting my job end of April, my former college roommate Margo is coming from New Zealand to visit and do some traveling in China. After that, I will eventually leave China (see below for thoughts on that) and probably spend most of my summer at 25 Ford Lane (Connecticut), in addition to visiting my older brother and Carmen in SF and driving my car home from Denver.

So, I’m leaving China. Ever since I returned from Cambodia I’ve had this realization that its time to leave. In short, I’m feeling sad about it. It’s been three years, and at this moment I’m very much liking Beijing. But, there are a few key things that Beijing does not have, namely: The Nelson Clan, clean air, and my sail boat. I’m sure I’ll be back.

Huang Shan bike photos

2007-04-10T23:02:00.000-04:00

Photos are up on the bike race- to browse the many many of them here are the websites that have some:

http://lemonhead.yculblog.com/post.1788736.html
http://www.citycamels.net/bbs/index.php?s=213c8bf7935648517ddd8031b91ef89e&showtopic=2314
http://www.52bike.com/bbs/dispbbs.asp?boardID=32&ID=16559&page=1

http://community.webshots.com/album/558578312axNEwI

This one is me on the downhill section.

I will be posting a smaller collection of photos and send them out via kodakgallery shortly...

It’s 55 degrees in my apartment

2007-04-09T04:21:00.000-04:00

Spring is here, spring is here, it is light out when I come home from work, and colder in my apartment than it is outside [Uncle Hu turned off the heat first week in March].

I am glad to see March over, to be honest. Two of my good friends here left this month, and another good friend came to visit, but it really emphasized that this is a transient place. People don’t stay long here, and with good reason. I have recently made a pact with my sister to come pull me outta here at some point, should I get stuck and incapable of moving “home”.

Work is also going relatively well, although sometimes I wonder how mega large companies like Nokia can continue to produce decent phones. I had a conversation with a man the other day that went something like this: “we are all engineers and we don’t think about what will happen in the future. I realized that we are moving to this new building and maybe we should tell someone of our special requirements.” You think? The building is currently on level 3 [out of 6] and now people come to me to say they need their own special room built. So it keeps me on my toes.

It was my birthday on the 8^th and I did successfully turn 27 despite various and sundry lovely women returning to North America during that time period. I received lovely gifts including a flask, a stuffed schnauzer [a toy, not a dead animal], and my favorite gift, my carbon bike pedals.

Speaking of bikes, my race was Saturday, and I did not win, but I was the first loser. I don’t feel all that terrible about it because for 75% of the race I thought I was in first place. We’re still not clear where this so-called first place finisher came from, but it doesn’t really matter, as Floyd “I didn’t take performance enhancing drugs” Landis says:

"Everybody wants to say, 'I couldn't win because of this or that.' To my way of thinking, it doesn't matter if your *&*%$ head fell off or your legs exploded. If you didn't make it, you didn't make it. One excuse is as good as another."

In any case, I did win some $$ [with income tax taken out] and more bike parts. I have mostly my bike to thank, it really did make a difference. I look forward to beating the pants of the winner of this race this summer in Beijing. Unfortunately she was a very nice girl. I was the only honky on the podium for the women, so I guess it is good to see the Chinese women getting into the sport. More photos coming soon- this one is me on the 2 block, who knows what I am doing, but yes we did get big ridiculous checks that I later used to package my bicycle. If you are wondering where this mysterious 1st place winner is, she was off showering.

I know text messages are slowly catching on in the US, here in China we live through them. We even get spam text messages: usually in Chinese, and usually for airplane tickets or massage. I recently received one in “English” from my gym declaring:

"honorific member's friends, in chance encounter the store celeb rates one anniversary moment, the club of TheSpa will organize the member to leave for the Yesanpo of laishui he bei provi"

Ah yes. I’ve always wanted to go there.

Happy Year of the Pig

2007-02-12T04:03:00.000-05:00

From the NYTimes: "So the nation has been saddled with tax cuts that have turned a budget surplus into a big deficit, education reform that has been badly managed and underfinanced, far-right judges with scant qualifications, the dismantling of regulations in order to benefit corporations at the expense of workers, and a triumph of ideology over science in policy making on the environment and medical research. All along, Americans' civil liberties and the constitutional balance have been trampled by a president determined to assert ever more power."

And to make matters worse, Anna Nicole Smith is died. She will be mourned. [side note: she's the biggest (tallest, heaviest, biggest measurements) Playmate of the Year (1993)].

The good side is, thanks for global warming, mountain bike season has been jump started, which is especially good since I finally decided I deserved to purchase my dream bike- that's the stock photo, actual photos to come. She's a real beauty.

In other more personal news, I was selected to win a highly selective and coveted prize at my company's New Year party on Friday: "Going above and beyond for MB Project Management." Contrary to traditional ceremony practice in this country, where there are neighborhoods solely dedicated to the displaying and manufacturing of awards, and awards ceremonies all involve elaborate trophy’s and padded red certificates laced in gold, my award was an orange post-it note with the words ‘above and beyond’ scribbled on it. I think this means I am no longer a slacker. This is quite an accomplishment.

The Chinese New Year has begun, which mostly fireworks going off at all times and with no regard to pedestrians on the sidewalk. The ‘floating population’ have returned home, which means construction projects have come to halt, and the group of people who do the jobs that no one else wants are gone as well. Sooner or later the government is going to have a reorganize their holiday schedule as it is soon becoming impossible for a nation of 9 trillion people to all travel back to bumpkin land on the same day. I’ll be here, enjoying the Colorado- like weather [sans snow] and eating and riding my bike and sleeping…

Apologies for the lack of blogging. I’ve been workin’.

Be a Foreigner's Landlord!

2006-11-10T05:31:00.000-05:00

That is the current ad running on 97 lighted signs placed 6 feet apart on my road advertising for the now giant apartment buildings going up next to my house, the Cosmopolite. [I've decided its pronounced cos- MOP-o-lite] [koz-mop-uh-lahyt]
1. a person who is cosmopolitan in his or her ideas, life, etc.; citizen of the world.

One of the last vestiges of Communism: heat control. 5 days left until Uncle Hu turns on the heat. November 15 will be a celebratory day, because currently, my apartment is freezing. Like I sleep with a hat on. I may have said this all last year.

The Chinese seem to not yet be adjusted to escalators. Seems they've had them for a while, but still they are very attentive to getting on and off the escalator. This can slow things up. In the subways, there are signs that say "civilized passengers: please stand to the right, walk on the left."

But let’s talk about the Democrats. Congratulations, America, for pulling your h*** out of you’re a**. [my dad is going to yell at me for that one but I'll say it anyway] Except for you folks in Colorado, who,thank the Lord, have defined marriage as between one man and one woman. Great job, guys. I didn’t want to get married anyway. I also really enjoyed this photo of the Santorum family, above. I think I speak for everyone when I say, Rick, we’re really going to miss you. Thankfully priests who have sex with male prostitutes while stopping by to purchase their monthly methamphetamine dose will not be allowed to marry goats thanks to people like ol’ Rick. http://www.aboms.com/

In more personal news, China is good, my job is actually very good and getting interesting. I am trying to move Nokia to a new building, and trying to figure out what they want/ how they want it, etc and communicate that to the people who are building the building [who according to my boss are totally incompetent which is a tiny bit worrisome]. Also worrisome is that currently the building is a hole in the ground and Nokia is set to move in December 2007. Hooray for speedy construction in China.

Aside from that, I have been enjoying the fall weather biking, watching the leaves change, getting all my last minute biking in before I try to do it and loose toes to frostbite.

Do people in America sign emails abbreviating ‘Best regards’? How could they be your best regards if you can’t even take the time to write them out?

brs,
Claire

A woman pulling a bathtub

2006-09-25T08:27:00.000-04:00

I was biking to work one day and stopped at a busy intersection to watch a woman cross the street. She was clearly in some state of homelessness, and had a firm grip on some sort of leash that was attached to a bathtub, which waited at her feet to cross the street. The bathtub had a random smattering of recyclables in it, but still, one would think a bathtub not the best way to transport… anything. Maybe we need to introduce more shopping carts here. [They have them but as the Chinese don’t buy in bulk they are not that popular]. When will I get a digital camera? Honestly.

I started my new job, now I’ve been at it for a 6 weeks, and it’s great. I don’t know how I went so long without having to use my brain at work [actually I’ll tell you how: $$$]. I work about a 25 min bike ride from my house, which takes me to the south eastern part of the city, near where $600 million project scheduled for completion in time for the 2008 Olympics, the new CCTV [China Central TV] tower is being built.

My job is, essentially, helping companies figure out what they want to move or expand into a new office. Right now I am working with Nokia as they embark on a major move to a giant R&D center, which will potentially become Nokia’s largest R&D center in the world, in the south of the city. We help them figure out how many people they have, how many they will have, what they want to change about their office in terms of manager rooms, storage, etc, and as the time gets closer we will help them select furniture, security, IT, etc, it sounds easy but its actually pretty major.

I’m enjoying it, my boss is very interested in making sure I learn everything that is going on, so I can feel those bullet points on my resume actually being something that I learned while doing.

I work with five Chinese project managers, young bright guys who all speak English, and three foreign guys. [We could say I was hired because of my gender but I’m ok with that]. In conclusion, job=good, that’s about all I can say about it. Keeping me busy and mind occupied!

When I’m not working, and I don’t have family or friends in town [Poppa Nelson came into town and bought me a new washing machine, it’s my prized possession!], I’m still riding my bike, last weekend was another major race, major meaning they bring the pro’s in, such as the woman who won the gold in the Athens’ Olympics. She’s serious. But I still managed fifth place [not counting her and another pro!] so I was happy with that, and third in the club races, which was decent. Hopefully I’ll have more photos of me contemplating how much I really want to be heffing up this hill soon. Finally the season of decent temperatures is here, which makes for good biking, but the days when I can just wear t shirts out at night are numbered, soon I’ll be in my full suit of long underwear and be frozen. I don’t look forward to it!

But I do have some trips planned to get out of the cold long winter… I’ll be home for about two weeks over Christmas, and the Nelson’s are planning a family trip to Morocco over Chinese New Year [February].

This year a bunch of my good friends have left but I have managed to find new ones for my essential six days a week eating out schedule. Yum. I’m also playing Gaelic football [I know you haven’t heard of it, it’s a combo of volleyball /basketball /soccer played on a soccer field] and we have a tournament in Shanghai in October. I play with a bunch of Irish with names likes “Aoife” that I rarely understand but seem to be nice people.

Observations:
A young girl sits straddling her boyfriend on a very main street at 6 pm. And they say China isn’t big on affection?

My friend Caroline, possibly one of the most hysterical people I know, lives in the ‘new’ type of neighborhood- not quite the luxurious villa, but the just-out-of-town affordable group of 17 apartment buildings in some complex called “Heaven’s Boat” which apparently is filled to the brim with babies. She texts me: “sitting on a bench surrounded by cigarette butts, babies in split pants and got gently reprimanded by guard for slipping feet out of sandals. Spit ok. Bare feet? Not ok.” [She contends that they were clean feet too. Perhaps the guard didn’t want her clean feet to touch the general area that 1.2 billion toddlers regard as their giant toilet? Possible.]

So as you can see common sense hasn’t quite hit the nation. In fact, foreigners are hired these days solely because we grow up with that ability to have common sense, to “think outside the box” and not how our education system told us how to do it. We learned how to think, they learned how to regurgitate and now they are having trouble finding people that can help companies like IBM fill their human resource voids as they grow and grow…

"If someone from Chicago's involved, do it. Do it, do it, do it" - my father

2006-07-20T04:41:00.000-04:00

I’m taking a new job. Project management. www.mb-associates.com.cn British boss, small company, wants to train me up. Basically, we represent a client as they move their business to a new office, from dealing with the designers, architects, renovation contractors, furniture people, etc. Sounds a lot better than what I’m doing now [which is still not much]. I start in a little over two weeks. I’m VERY excited to get outta here and do something I actually want to get up in the morning to do. [The Chicago person is my boss’s wife, who has her own company but works out of the same office].

Besides that, its hot here but not as hot as it was last summer. I have a couple bike races coming up so I’m trying to train for those. I bought new plants for my apt as well as a second hand couch that is much comfier… I’ll try to take photos soon.

Random Observations of life here: [feel free to scan these]

An actual conversation I just had with the secretary at work:
"Fiona, I ran out of tissues. How do I get another box?"
"Did you apply last month for tissues?"
"No."
And that's how it goes in the world of anyone-takes-anything-that-isn't accounted for. SOMEHOW they had an extra box lying around and I was allowed to use that one. But this
month I will be applying for the maximum of two boxes, in an effort not to run out [other people use my tissues so it's hard to gauge].

Most executives that I speak to seem to intersperse their Chinese with English words. Most do not shake hands. Not even the men. We can have entire conversations without knowing each other's name.

"VIP" is a commonly used term in Chinese, they all know it and use it frequently, however, the letter 'v' is not an easy one for the Chinese pronounce [think the Japanese and the letter 'r'] so "VIP" becomes "wei IP".

Receptionists, in general, are meant to be friendly people. After visiting every company in my building to do a survey, I see this is Not true. Out of 35 companies, only two had friendly receptionists. And the others were not only not friendly, they were downright mean.

I used to think the ability to sit and do nothing was something
limited to the mentally challenged young adults I worked with at Hui
Ling, I now see that anyone whose job is content-free has that
ability, and they sit there perfectly content. Not filling their time
busying themselves with other things, like I do, but just sitting,
occasionally chatting [no doubt about important issues] because by
sitting and doing nothing at least they are not doing the Wrong thing
[like I am, reading the NYtimes and such]. How do they have this
ability? Were they not stimulated as kids? Does ADHD not exist here?

I'm served Nestle instant coffee by the office maid-lady. This is an
interesting form of coffee, I've had coffee flavored candies that
resemble coffee more than this does. Its amazingly sweet, which is odd
considering most Chinese don't eat oreos remarking that it "too
sweet". My boss drinks this regularly, I think more as a sign of status than actual enjoyment. He also has tobacco stained hands that shake. He works all the time, a workaholic for sure, yet seems to be trying to kill himself as fast as possible with his cigarette intake. I don't get it. And he burps.

China needs basic health classes. In addition to many misconceptions of ways to lose weight that I’ve heard Chinese women make, I particularly enjoyed this one:
"the best way to lose weight is to not work out. because when you work
out, you need to eat more. so if you just rest and sleep then you can
eat less and lose weight"

You mean your work doesn't supply you with pantyhose?
Mine does. And demands that I wear them to, along with the rest of the uniform. The Communist idea of the 'dan wei' is still alive and well, even in the multinational corporate world. I also get $1.25 for lunch every day, a shuttle bus to and from work, and a locker room where at 6.10pm all my female co-workers are sprinting towards the free hot water showers.

Summer is here, which means my neighbors have commenced sitting guard at our doorway at most hours of the day, making it easier for them to monitor my every move and ask me questions like "is your toilet still blocked up" [it isn't] and 'do you think its hot? [turns to another neighbor] she runs her air conditioning 24 hours a day [not true, only at night]. I guess they don't know the energy hogs that americans are usually known to be.

On the airplane: we've discussed the squat toilets before, all public toilets are squats, but most modern facilities and homes have toilets as we know them. The Chinese seem to insist that they squat, even on a sitting toilet, even on the airplane. It's true. On my Air China flight, I found footprints on the seat. That's quite a physical feat!

Biking statistics (from the Economist)
Between 1978 and 2004 the number of vehicles [cars] on China's roads increased 20-fold to 27m. As recently as 1998, 60% of Beijing commuters used bicycles, according to the Cycling Association of China. By 2002 that figure had already dropped to 20%. Some 1,000 cars are added to the city's roads each day.

Combover [the operations manager here] is gone, he was only here briefly and left for unknown reasons. So far I don't miss his odd English or listening to him spit into tissues. Some other things he did to pass the time:
Rubbing his eyes
Looking like he's thinking
Playing with his cell phone
Folding tissues
Quietly spitting into tissues
Looking at what he spit into the tissue
Rubbing his hands
Crossing his hands in front of his computer
Rubbing his head
Inspecting zippers on his briefcase
repositioning his laptop and mouse
getting and drinking horrible instant Nescafe
putting the long strands of hair barely covering his bald spot back on top of his head [only when it falls forward]
sneezing
scratching the back of his head
closing his laptop and opening it again
arranging documents on his desk
staring blankly
blinking repeatedly
rearranging pre-folded tissues
digging into pockets for tissues
staring at his turquoise cell phone [not the manliest of colors even in china]
yelling at his assistant to fetch documents from the printer
hiring more educated young women to do nothing

Replacing Combover is a man who has worked mostly in the government/ bureaucracy and goes by the English name "Jahops" which he took from his Chinese name "Jian Guo". [I don’t see the connection in the two names, nor where he gets the idea that he can invent his own name].

One sentence says it all.

2006-05-11T04:31:00.000-04:00

This is from Rolling Stone's article "The Worst President in History", but this sentenced came up on google 530 times.

"According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined."

You can find the rest of the article at:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/profile/story/9961300/the_worst_president_in_history

[thanks brother]

Spring is here

2006-05-11T03:35:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, my spring in Beijing is quickly ending. By the time I get back to Beijing, on June 8th, it will be that weather where it is even too hot to consider wearing pants at night. Beijing summer gives new meaning to putting all your winter clothes away. Which is sad as I have been enjoying a lovely spring so far, birds are on the trees, flowers are in bloom, and it’s lasting many days longer than our 48 hour-spring last year. But I am excited to spend some of that spring in the clean air of Connecticut.

Before my Tuesday departure, I have been wrapping up lose ends, which has involved purchasing about 20 pounds of DVDs for my siblings, removing everything that is out in my apartment and whisking it off to the closet so as to prevent dust build-up, and once again attempting to change my hard- earned RMB into a currency that is usable outside the United States.

Basically, the Chinese don’t want you to covert your RMB to USD. They want you to spend it locally. And whether it is the individual’s subconscious or the bank policies, or a combination of both, here is the short list of what it took to get my money changed:
Five trips to the bank
Valid work license [which involved 8 photos, copies of all my paperwork and $80]
3 forms all officially stamped by my company [2 of which the bank kept]
A bank form in quadruplicate
All forms copied and stamped
$20 in fees
An hour at the bank
3 different tellers [on this last trip]
Signing my name five times on five documents
Entering my password twice
An intermittent muttering of ‘give me my money’
Finally, they forked it over. So, I’m ready to go, take a break from the polluted land of capitalism and expensive housing developments called “Chateau Academia”.

My race is Saturday. I fly down there tomorrow. My racing partner, Tyson is already there and describes the surroundings as this:
“Today is beautiful. Not too hot with a cool breeze. The views here are great. So much green.. Butterflies all over... Flowers blooming... The smell of honey suckle flowers blowing across the road...”
This boy is currently enrolled at the Naval Academy. [Need I say more?] He also says that it is very wet, slick, and full of vegetation, which could make for a messy race, but at least we will soak up the nature [literally as well as figuratively]. So I’m looking forward to it. I’m a little nervous about the potential starving/ freezing/ darkness aspect to it, but I’m sure it’ll be a good time. I haven’t been working out this week so I have all kinds of energy to burn… [I say that now! Ha!]

See some of you in the US soon. I’ll be at my folks’ house starting Tuesday night.

Skirt Season

2006-04-29T03:50:00.000-04:00

Apparently the dust storm [see last blog title, "It Snowed Dust"] made
the NYTimes! I hope this isn't the first time they thought that
Beijing's climate might adversely affect the Olympics. And although it
won't come at the time of the Dust Storm filled Spring, it will be in
the dead heat of the summer stagnant air time.

NYT, April 23, 2006
Also Made in China: The Big Dust Storm
As President Hu Jintao left China for the United States last week,
something was sweeping into Beijing behind him. A large dust storm hit
the capital, turning skies a murky yellow and coating buildings and
streets in fine powder.
While dust storms are not unusual in China, particularly in the
spring, "this one was quite a bit more extreme than they've had in
recent years," said Thomas E. Gill, an associate professor of geology
and environmental science at the University of Texas at El Paso who
studies dust storms. The storm's intensity may have been due to
drought in China's extensive deserts, or to land clearing and other
agricultural practices that leave soil exposed.
The Olympics will be in Beijing in August 2008, and a major dust storm
could wreak havoc. Most storms occur in the spring, Professor Gill
said, "but if conditions are right, dust storms can happen any time of
year."
The government is spending a lot to replant eroded areas, create wind
breaks and use other soil conservation techniques to cut down on the
intensity of storms, Professor Gill said. "The Chinese are very
concerned about this," he said. "But it's too early to tell whether
those efforts have worked."

May 8th marks the official beginning of the skirt season- that means
our female dominated office will be retiring our pleated front pants
for the much summer preferable skirts. My skirt is in the process of
being made, and I am wondering if my company will be passing out pantie
hose or do we just get to wear the short pantyhose material ankle
socks [that they have already given me]??

The May Holiday has officially begun- I am, of course, at work, as
this weekend is still an official work weekend, as the Chinese holiday
scheduling goes. I don't really mind considering my vacation to the
US of A begins soon, and I'll get some time off this weekend as well.

My major adventure race is May 13th, so I am almost done training for
that... I think it will be fun, actually, despite fears of exhaustion
and blisters. I'm looking forward to it. And for those who missed it, I will be in the CT/ NYC area starting May
16th until June 6th. I look forward to seeing anyone who is in the
area...

It snowed Dirt

2006-04-18T23:22:00.000-04:00

I woke up Monday morning, after returning from Huang Shan late in the night to a layer of orange dust covering everything, like a blanket of snow. It’s the dust season, so that means in addition to the pollution we have this ‘dust’ [it could be from the Gobi desert] blowing in the wind, sometimes strong enough to stop the construction next to my house.

Two weeks ago I ran in part of a marathon, there are five team members that run a leg of the marathon, so I ran the last 7.2 km bit. I started on the western second ring road, which had been cut off of all vehicle traffic, so it was just little me listening to Michael Jackson’s hits from the 80s slowly jogging along this totally empty road. Imagine the BQE totally empty, reserved just for you. By the time my teammate got to me most runners had already gone so that's why I was the only one on the road. Fortunately for my lungs, this day was heavily polluted [yes we have days that are worse than others] and the blocking off of this road caused serious traffic buildup, so as I ran, next to me where virtual parking lots of cars just sitting, exhaust fuming out. I decided to up the challenge I would smoke four packs of cigarettes while running. Boy did my lungs feel great when I finished! The lesson here is: don’t run in this city. Duh.

This weekend I managed to escape to a lush green paradise, filled with unpolluted clean crisp air, just near the famed Chinese mountain Huang Shan [literally yellow mountain]. On Friday we [the MOB- Mountain Bikers of Beijing, a mostly foreign crowd of biking nuts] rode from our hotel to the old village of Xi Di to arrive only to be accosted by hired photographers and other young tourists wanting their photos with us. We actually took away from the limelight of the mayor who was giving a speech about how excited they all were to have us there for the bike race. We walked through the town posing for photos, knowing that one day someone would come up to us and say, hey I saw your photo in a toothpaste ad or hanging in a random restaurant…

Saturday morning was the race. It was a fun course, two 22 km loops up and down the mountain, beautiful views, through villages, pretty difficult but still fun. I only managed to come in fourth [argh], 8 minutes behind 1st place, and it was a bit annoying because I lined up for the race in the very back because the information we had said that the women would get a separate start from the men, but we didn’t, and most of the women were lined up at the start of the line! So most of my race involved trying to pass [useless] men. One passing incident ended up with me falling into a paddy field [literally getting knocked over into a giant pile of sludge] which made the race a bit muddier but still fun.

On Sunday the rest of the MOB went to the actually Yellow Mountain, to be met with 10,000 Chinese tourists ‘climbing’ [walking up the cement staircase] the mountain, I [having been to the mountain before] knew it would be like that and opted to find somewhere else to bike. I ended up biking up a tractor trail to some very small mountain villages where life hasn't changed, outside of electricity and TVs [which they all had, despite the fact that only motorbikes could actually make it up to them]. I biked through everyone working in the farms, picking tea leaves, babies hanging out, really really old people still working, young people who somehow haven't figured out that moving to the city might provide a better life.

Back in Beijing now, I have three weeks left to train for the major adventure race, where I think it will be about 6 hours of mountain biking and 2 hours of running, plus all the other activities [see last blog for the list]. That’s about it for now…

JOb Duties

2006-03-26T01:44:00.000-05:00

I forgot to say more about this part:
What am I doing there? Good question. I am the ‘customer service manager’ [that’s better than ‘butler’]

This week I was in charge of putting together a customer service power presentation to give to the office staff and the engineers- I did my google research and found some helpful tips, had about four people help me translate them, then tried to conveyed these very foreign ideas to a room of wide- eyed Chinese. That language is not the most effective or efficient- it would have been a challenge to convey the ideas in English, let alone a language that I barely speak. The man who was doing the other half of the presentation, Mr. Combover [his long hairs fall forward when he leans down to advance to the next slide, its really gross] tried to help me elaborate on my concepts but I still think the ideas were lost. Oh well I tried. And giving presentations in other languages are always interesting.

I also put together a survey that we will be giving to the businesses in our building- Xerox, Sony, among other major businesses. Besides that I am not really sure what else I am supposed to be doing. I think butting in on what people do on a daily basis and force them to explain to me what they are doing and see if I can make sense of it or think about how they could be doing it better. I’m hoping for the best. I’ll keep you posted on my ever evolving job duties…

Hello, Manager

2006-03-26T00:44:00.000-05:00

My new place of work is a giant office building- two actually, connected by a three story glass atrium- called Gateway Plaza. [To clarify, my last place of work was called the Olive Garden]. It’s in the city, only a fifteen minute bike ride from my house. I bought a new town bike [for $25 called ‘Wonder’] to get to and from and I love biking through town, especially as the weather is getting nice. And I get to go out for lunch, there are so many nearby restaurants. And places to buy things- grocery stores, bike stores, post offices- it makes my lunch hour an actual useful time to me as opposed to eating bad Chinese take-out and sitting in the freezing machine room turned cafeteria at the Olive Garden. The Olive Garden was in the middle of nowhere, so I couldn’t go anywhere for lunch. So those are the things I really like.

My boss’s phone jingle is a loud cock-a-doodle-doo followed by Elmer Fudd saying “Hey! It’s me! You’re buddy.” [was he famous for saying that?] He’s a short pudgy Hong Kong man that says he’s from Canada despite the fact that when he speaks English it sounds like he has marbles in his mouth. I only understand 50% of what he says, but I get the general idea. He’s a serious worker, a workaholic, but sometimes laughs like Santa Claus. He smokes constantly, in his office and during meetings, which is just delicious. He oversees 20-30 other Jones Lang LaSalle projects [no one is really sure how many] so he’s a pretty big guy [despite his smaller frame]. He has high expectations and hopefully will have plenty for me to do, despite that fact that in our ‘what is my job’ conversation he said that my job is mostly out of the office “patrolling”. Am I the police? Patrolling for what? So I fear that he does just want me to be the white person on campus again, but this time it is not the developer who is paying me to do nothing, and he reminded me that I need to prove to the developer that I am worth the money.

My office is very busy, filled with very busy people, and almost all positions are occupied by young Chinese women. When I took the building tour with Amy, the duty manager, who speaks no English but goes by Amy anyway, when we walk into a room the workers all stand up and say, ‘hello manager’, she replies with the Chinese equivalent of ‘at ease’. The head of security [60+ boys] is a women. The head of cleaning, HR, and almost all other positions except for head of engineers, renovations manager, and the operations manager [still not sure just what that covers] is a female. Did my boss, Kelvin, employ all these women because he’s a creepy old man? Or because they are smart, trainable, obedient, and hard working? In typical Chinese style, although there is a lot to do and everyone seems very busy, there seems to be a severe overlap in job duties. And many people still do not have computers, yet sit at a desk all day. What do they do? I am not quite clear.
What am I doing there? Good question. I am the ‘customer service manager’ [that’s better than ‘butler’]
So that’s the job update. More to come but I am finding I have little time to write anyone because not only am I actually working at work, but I am working out a lot to prepare for a bunch of races that I am participating in.

On April 15th I will be going to the middle south of china to Yellow Mountain to participate in a 50 km mountain biking race. I’m flying down there with the mountain biking of Beijing club so it should be a fun weekend. http://www.nordicways.com/view/en/view.asp?indexId=20051215195325

On June 13th I am going to a mountain south of Shanghai called Mo Gan Shan to do a 24 hour Adventure Race sponsored by North Face. This is a new kind of race, I think originally started by MTV [ha!] but its caught on in Asia and it should be pretty crazy. Here is what I will be doing:
http://www.seyonasia.com/

Summary of disciplines and activities over the 24 hours:
Trail running – 17.5 km
Mountain biking – 82 km (approx. 30% of time on sealed roads, the rest on rough surface)
Bike Carry – 2 km
Canoeing – 6 km
Swimming – 50 meters
Orienteering
Map navigation skills
Regular abseiling – 50 meters
Diagonal abseil – 80 meters
Zip line – 120 meters
Rope ladder – 15 meters
Mystery team-work tests
Mental/logical puzzles

The race starts at 9 am and the first team is expected to finish by 8 pm. I will be competing in the male/ female division [there is less competition and therefore it is easier to win] with a boy named Tyson Meadors who actually seeked me out to do this race. It involves a lot of mountain biking so he found me through the mountain biking club. Tyson is taking a break from going to school at Annapolis, yes the Naval Academy, where he plays football and is participated in the Ethics Bowl [why not?].

All that is keeping me pretty busy… hope everyone is good. Sorry for slow emailing. More soon.

Birthday Time

2006-03-13T05:57:00.000-05:00

And a fabulous birthday it was. On my birthday, I went for a bike ride on the loop that will be the Olympics mountain biking loop- where I had some races in the past- and rode around for a couple hours, then sat in only minimal traffic and came back to the east side of town to eat dinner with a bunch of folks. Dinner was great [should have photos soon], and I got some quality gifts, including:
Toblerone chocolate
Butterfinger flavored hot coco mix [brought from Hong Kong!]
A body loofa glove
A bunch of sponges that say: “SWEEP THE CLOTH Healthy Life.. begin from the clean garbo” [right]
Books from mom
Tupperware and a hand-made Tupperware carrier [for lunch]
And a three foot orange tree, delivered via moped. All great gifts.

I also bought myself some trail running sneakers and a $100 cell phone [cheap!]. I can listen to the radio on it. So it was a good birthday.

There is a photo of me and my sis on my computer desktop right now, and as many of you know, my sister has brown hair. When my coworkers are looking at this photo, and I tell them that this person is my sister, they first ask me if it is my real sister and not my cousin. When I reply that it is in fact my real sister, and that we don’t call our cousins ‘sister’, they ask why she has different color hair than me. Apparently they skipped that part of genetics in school.

If fancy cell phones are symbols of affluence and culture than you can count me out. Most of the Angels and other folks here have cell phones that cost as much as their monthly salary. They are buying $250 phones [and up]. That’s like if you make $2500 dollars per month spending it all on a stupid phone. Their phones can take photos, movies, play music, heck, it could be the English Butler and I could go home. My favorite is that their screen always has a photo of themselves looking particularly pretty. Why would you want to look at yourself EVERY time you look at your phone? I will never understand the vanity. And what happens when they drop it in the toilet?

A common conversation as I approach a group of saleswomen: “what’s wrong with your face?” someone else: “all those spots” someone else: “it must be an allergy, huh” me: “yeah.” Or- “did you get fatter?” someone else: “Look! You can see your stomach!” someone else: “Are you pregnant?” someone else [after I ask if they have eaten] “I’m not eating lunch, I’m losing weight.”

I find that I also begin to make Chinese- like comments, such as, I see someone eating, I say “you’re eating.” I hear a phone ring, I say “the phone is ringing.” I see someone leaving work, I say “you’re leaving work.”

The Chinese not only love to state the obvious, they also love to explain it.
I read in a magazine that five superstars were advertising for a bottle of alcohol [not unusual]. The article states that the government recently passed a law that you must be 18 to buy alcohol, however one of the superstars had just turned 17. When I pointed this out to a nearby Angel, she explained to me that she was just advertising for the alcohol, she wasn’t going to buy it or drink it herself. Really. I had no idea. Maybe that’s just the lack of sarcasm in the country.

I’m doing some editing on a document that was translated from Chinese, it is a manual to a rented office. The following words have come up:
Noodles
Beard
Rice
Dragon
Hurl
Flurried
Anne [?]

I’m not sure what dictionary they are using. This is the beginning of [hopefully] real and actual work to be done by yours truly at my new place of business, Gateway Plaza. I start on Thursday!! I can’t wait to get out of here!

Management Chinese- style: tell the employees that you are going to fire that they will be fired two weeks in advance. Then, have them work with the new employees, even though you are paying the new employees half as much. Then, have the old employees train the new ones. Then, question, what is wrong with the old employees’ attitudes? I’m hoping its just like this at the Olive Garden.

THE FOLLOWING PART IS ONLY FOR SUPER BLOG/ CHINA READERS, IT’S PRETTY BORING
I’m reading this book called A Billion Customers by this guy whose been doing business in China since 1990 [James McGregor] and I find that some of his observations resonate with my experience…
Companies seem to be organized as dictatorships. My Angels have been told that they don’t need to stand at the door before 9am, but if a manager is there walking around, they will stand regardless, even after I tell them countless times that they don’t need to stand just because a manager is there. It’s like an instilled fear of the boss.

The Chinese don’t treat others as equals: everyone is treated according to their status. The cleaning ladies are so deferential it’s a bit nauseating. The salespeople jump at the first words uttered by their managers’ mouth [who is a 28 year old woman].

They don’t separate personal and professional. This leads to vacations taken only with work colleagues; significant others are left at home. It also seems that people don’t have many friends outside of work. A few days after the head security guards were let go, and were waiting for their next work to begin, I found them coming back here to go out to lunch with my manager and the office assistant. Days in a row. And then hanging out in the club after lunch. Just chatting. And it’s not like this place is near anyone’s house. After I leave this Olive Garden I plan on not coming back. Ever. [and couldn’t they have googled ‘olive garden’ to find out that it’s a chain Italian restaurant in the US? Do a little market research?]

No one wants to accept responsibility for any mistakes. If a mistake is made someone else is always found to blame, but people rarely acknowledge their mistake. Yesterday a package was delivered to our reception desk, a salesman named Justin signed for it because the receipt of the package, Jane, wasn’t there that day. Today, Jane discovered that her package was no longer at the reception desk, and called in the delivery man to ask him who signed for it, and after talking to Justin [who said he did in fact sign for it, but didn’t allow that to make him accept responsibility for its current whereabouts] Jane yelled at the delivery man for about half an hour, asking about his company policy and refusing to just say, well our sales person signed for it, thus agreeing that he would be responsible for it getting to me, and it got lost in between, its our fault.

When the developers finally decided to kick our company out of this ‘Olive Garden’ that I work, I didn’t find out in some email [I don’t have a company email address] there wasn’t anything posted, no memo, nothing. I only found out after asking my manager point blank what was going on. Information is not shared with others and I can’t figure out why they don’t share it. Possibly they know that everyone talks to each other so much that news will get around that way. In continuation of my fake ‘manager’ duties, I didn’t find out that my Angels had been giving 6 extra days off because they worked too much during Chinese New year until I saw the schedule and asked one of them [one would think that I would do the schedule but the office assistant never had the patience to explain it to me, and besides, that would take away power from her]. Another thing I love about this work place is the communication between the developer and our company. Our Angels and bartender and waitress work until 8.30 pm every night, despite the fact that the entire sales staff goes home at 7 pm. So for an hour and a half every night we sit here and do nothing, and if a customer did come, there would be no sales person here to receive them.

Cooperation. Because of the ridiculous glass box structure of the reception area, on days that it is cloudy it is freezing in here, on days that it is sunny it is insufferably hot. One cloudy day they took out the free standing heaters [that you might find at an outdoor bar], but they continued to light them on sunny days. I inquired with the head security guard as to who we could find to turn them off because there is absolutely no need for them on such a hot day, but he said he would not find who it was because it didn’t concern him. I tried to stress that we all work in the same place, we should work together. I wasn’t successful.

Also interesting was McGregor’s short commentary/ summary of the Cultural Revolution:
“In preserving his own political position, Mao destroyed the country’s economy and tore apart the fabric of Chinese society… China hit rock bottom during the Cultural Revolution. A society that treasured education closed its schools. A society in which students were taught to revere teachers suddenly had student Red Guards beating and sometimes killing their teachers. A society based on filial piety had children denouncing their parents at mass rallies.”

Sometimes I just can’t believe that China was like that a mere 30 years ago. That one man could transform an entire giant nation of people to go against the cultural values they have had for thousands of years. It’s a little frightening.

The Big News

2006-02-28T18:16:00.000-05:00

We got a new music system installed- apparently the ceiling speakers were just too poor quality to actually play music- so now we have these giant hulking black speakers placed around the club house piping in what sounds like should be coming out of a 14 year old girls’ bedroom, not a place where people are buying $18,000 parking spaces.

Today the heat is broken and the roof of the greenhouse ceiling is leaking because the glass is broken and for whatever reason they haven’t fixed it. It snowed last night and it is Grey and Cold today.

The Big News is… I’m getting out of here! Yes, it’s true. The developer has decided that our staff and club management is sub-par, and they want us out. I don’t totally understand all this, and no one tells me much, but this is what I have heard. When I asked what specifically is so terrible about us, and my manager specified that one Angel is ugly and the outdoor security men are not big and handsome enough, and that our staff changes too frequently. Perhaps they haven’t figured out that anyone with half a brain and decent looks can find a better way to make a living than opening doors or standing outside? Only the two office workers [my manager and the useless bitchy girl who frequently yells at me] the engineer and the four head security guards are actually directly employed by my company, so we will be moved to other projects. Everyone else [who is hired through an employment agency] will be let go.

I am being moved to the place that I did the hostess-ing event in September… remember those creepy photos of me in the blue suit with creepy make up on? I’m going back there. To do what I am not too sure but I know that it is a 14 min bike ride from my house, it is in the city and therefore surrounded by many good places to eat, there are businesses already in the building, and I will be office based, not some white statue at the reception desk. So I am thrilled. We all leave March 14th… that makes 11 days of work left. In the meantime I will be reading books copied from the internet, I’m starting with Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin. Why not.

My Weekend Adventure
I took a weekend trip with Alison, her friend Caitrin and her boyfriend Ted, to the ‘ancient city’ of Ping Yao, located roughly 7 to 10 hours south west of Beijing. We bought train tickets and left Friday night, arriving at 5 am in Ping Yao, into a town SO DARK with no lights, no nothing open, it was… dark. And cold. We woke up the people in one hotel and sat and drank tea while we waited out for a lower price on the rooms [they started at 1,200 for one room, we got them down to 800 for two]. We stayed in a beautiful hotel [rare outside major cities] that was a renovated old courtyard, with rooms in the traditional ‘kang’ beds- that is, the heater underneath the bed, and the place where the whole family sleeps, reads, watches TV, hang out, etc, because it’s the only warm place. We saw the kang in action at a store where we bought some tradition shoes- they invited us into their back room to sit on their kang. Be grateful that we have giant living rooms!

It was lovely town, similar to Lijiang [where I went with the folks and sis in October], but less Epcot Center like, much more dirty, less touristy, and an actual functioning town. Old city walls, small alley ways not big enough for cars, it was very cool.

We spent half the day on Saturday trying to get train tickets back. Part of the fun of traveling in China not by plane is that you can’t buy round trip tickets. No, that would make way too much sense for this country. So we went to four places before we decided that there really were no train tickets back on Sunday night. We were told to go to the nearby city, Tai Yuan [the capital of Shan Xi province] and get a bus or a train from there.

On Sunday, we saw the house that “Raise the Red Lantern” film was made in, and then drove to this major city, and decided to take a bus back to Beijing because it takes half the time, we could arrive by 1 am. We got on our luxury liner bus at 7pm, and headed onto the major highway. It had been snowing, and we were traveling into the mountains, and at some point we came to a stop and learned that they had closed the highway because it was frozen and it would not open until ten the next morning. It was already midnight. All the truckers and most people on the bus immediately gave up and went to sleep right there on the highway. Keep in mind we are in the middle of nowhere, except for a small gas station that we went to, got them to call their friend with a car to pick us up and take us to the nearest train station [for an exorbitant amount]. We arrived at the train station and bought ‘no seat’ tickets for the 1.30am train. This means that there are no empty seats or beds, and we are getting onto an already crammed bumpkin train. These ‘hard seat’ cars get packed with people, people everywhere, curled up on the sinks, in the aisles, in the place between cars, standing for hours at a time, mostly migrants moving to the big city. We stood for two hours until some beds became available and we were able to charm the train lady [actually Caitrin was the charmer here, she was great] to sell us the upgrade. At four we finally got to lie down and sleep until we got to Beijing the next morning.

I may fly home next time [if I am smart enough to remember my passport!]

Vietnam

2006-02-19T01:37:00.000-05:00

Vietnam is a beautiful country and the people are really nice. Alison and I had a great trip without traveling very far: We went from Hanoi to Cat Ba island, which is set in a bay of a thousand other tiny islands jutting up like giant rocks. From there we went to a po-dunk town south of Hanoi to see some natural sites including a beautiful and untouched rainforest. From there we went back to Hanoi. All together 8 days.

Observations:
There are no chain stores in Hanoi. No McDonald’s, Starbucks, KFC, nothing. Not a whole lot of foreign businesses by the looks of things. There is however a ton of foreign/ European/ French influence, seen in the churches that dot the city and countryside, as well as the graveyards with elaborate headstones that take up a significant amount of the farmland. The French brought to the Vietnamese the toilet hose [kind of a bidet], yummy strong coffee, beautiful architecture, bread, and random tour guides that speak French.

I was constantly comparing Vietnam to China, the people, the food, the geography, and trying to figure out just what was different. I first noticed that the Vietnamese are nicer to each other. They are nicer to their service people, not shouting commands loudly at them, they are nicer to foreigners, and in general just seem to have a more pleasant demeanor.

The most major contrast was between Hanoi and Beijing- the countryside seems pretty much the same. Beijing has a more developed economy, people have more money and there are more things to buy. The infrastructure is greater and it is evident that the government has more money [and owns most of the United States as well]. Hanoi has a more ‘third world’ feel: narrow streets with no garbage cans and trash floating through the exposed gutters. Mopeds are everywhere, except for the occasional car and cab. Dogs everywhere, guarding each house, building, and houseboat, at least one dog. Very few people with dogs as pets, very few purebreds, like they are crazy about in Beijing. Kumquat trees in everyone’s living room [for the New Year]. The houses are odd as well: four or five story townhouses, both in the city and country, where the first floor opens entirely up to the street, where the family hangs out, drinks tea, enjoys there kumquat tree, and watches the world go by. Similar to China there are always people sitting around.

The countryside seems about the same amount of development as China: dirty agricultural towns. However, these bumpkin towns in Vietnam have a booming funeral business: headstones, coffins, flowers both fake and real, which all seems so anti Asian to me.

My cousin Dave’s vision of Vietnam life:
When you receive this, if you receive this, if you are lucky enough to receive this, you are probably in Vietnam, where things are probably quieter than in China at the present time; I like to think you are in the country, near some rice paddies without mosquitoes, eating something delicate and light, and there is some folk music coming from the village, and it is late afternoon, and....

That exact scene happened. Things were quiet. I was in the country, surrounded by rice paddies, the mosquitoes were slim, and instead of folk music it was karaoke Vietnamese disco music, but pretty similar. Vietnam was what I pictured it to be, and I imagine what most people picture it to be.

The food was delicious, although I don’t think we gave it a fair chance as we didn’t really know what to order and ate many days on the street eating noodle soup, pho, which is good but after many bowls of it for many meals it gets a little old. They have this great culture of street consumption, on very tiny plastic stools, either drinking coffee, eating pho, or sitting at the Bia Hoi shop, where you can get a frosty glass of delicious draft beer for thirty cents.

Moped riding
In order to get around, the mode of transportation is a moped, and for those of us who don’t own our own, a friendly man to drive the moped for you. Our first ride was the three of us on one bike, [they frequently ride with four on one moped], and me grasping the shoulder of our driver, til he let me know that it wasn’t necessary to hang on. Will zipping around the countryside we found a handle on the bike of the bike to help resist the temptaion to wrap arms around the drivers. After I got over constant thoughts of “I’m going to die, I’m going to die” it was a good way to see the countryside. In the city we mostly took cabs.

We got up early the first day we were in Hanoi to go see Uncle Ho, or what we all pretend is Uncle Ho, because I just don’t believe that the Vietnamese knew how to preserve dead bodies in 1969 if the Chinese didn’t know seven years later. He looked pretty waxy to me. But still, we were solemn and slowly moved around his creepy sarcophagus, they have a nifty rubber track to remind you where to go, and a raised walkway for those youngsters [so cute]. I almost made it out without being chastised by the guards, but I spoke too loudly too soon and was shhhsed by a guard. What excitement. This reminded me of my parent’s trip to Hanoi in October of 1998 and the funny email my mom wrote to me about it [yes I still had the email]:

While in Hanoi we visited the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh or Uncle Ho as he is
lovingly called. I'm afraid that I must relate to you that your father, that
wild and crazy guy, had to be spoken to by the guard three times. Three
times! First he whispered too loud, then he had a suspect bulge in his pocket
(actually his glasses case) and, most egregious of all, he stepped out of our
single file line and off the rubber carpet to try to talk to me. You could
say that the procedures surrounding the viewing of old Uncle Ho are a bit on
the strict side. We then went to the museum which we had to rush through as it
was closing (at 11:15) for lunch. We asked when it would be reopening and
found that the lunch hour would be over at 2:00 pm. I'd say that while the
communists may be a bit up tight about their body viewing procedures, they've
got the right idea about giving themselves plenty of time for a little r and r
during their working day.

I will send the link to my photos soon, let me know if you didn’t get them.

This is English to the Chinese:
“Good good study, day day up!” Almost everyone knows this phrase, both in Chinese and its exact English translation. Kinda funny considering if they did study well they would know that that’s ‘not good hear’ as the Chinese would translate.

On studying English, looking at my Angels book, who cant speak anything near basic English, is studying things like:

1. On our way to new York, we visted the Browns, _______ used to be our neighbor.
a) whom b) which c) who d) that

And highly useful catch phrases, such as:
2. Look! These are ____________.
a) mouse’s tails b) mices’ tails c)mice’s tails d) mice’s tail

3. Don’t let them lead _________.
a) your nose b) you by the nose c)you by your nose d) by your nose

And then there’s the ones that even after we have been speaking and studying English we still got wrong on the SAT:
4. ________ are good friends.
a) He, you and I b) You, I are he c) I, you and he d) You, he and I

And conversations commonly head in the office:
“Don’t touch the papers.
Certainly. I’ll not let the papers be touched.”

Hope that gave you all a laugh.

Answer key: 1. c, 2. c [I thought it would be mouse tails] 3. b 4. d

If anyone has Skype, let me know, we can be Skype buddies [Skype is a program where you can chat online or call computer to computer for free]. My ID is maokelan

The Chinese reaction to my trip to Vietnam:
“Was Vietnam chaotic?” “I hear they are very poor.” “Is Vietnam better or is china better?” “Definitely china is better.” [me] how do you know? Have you been? “No, I just think so.” There are a few that think traveling to Vietnam would be cool though. But most think its poor and chaotic. And most refuse the fact that China invaded Vietnam [actually multiple times over hundreds of years]. They say China was ‘protecting their land.’ Oh China the victim, those terrible Japanese… Aren’t they the true enemy!

Work is still wild and exciting. I am currently trying to combat my horrible habit of whistling. Apparently whistling is very unbecoming for woman, and its against company policy to whistle while you work. Well there goes one American ideal [“whistle while you work…”

A girl named Mark

2006-01-29T01:47:00.001-05:00

Looking out of my giant glass box where I spend my days, watching the sun move from the left side to the right [sometimes I can stare directly at the orange ball due to the thick pollution/fog], I look at our neighboring corners- to the left are three giant electric towers that are probably giving us cancer faster than the air pollution is coating my lungs in tar. Directly across the street is a mini bus station that appears to have a constantly burning fire [of leaves, plastic, rubber] and a mangy dog [we call him Big Yellow]. Neither corner meshes with our theme of ridiculous ostentatious ness.

Mercedes and Buicks filled with recently rich Chinese driving around the suburbs of Beijing trying to decide with $350,00 apartment to buy zoom past caravans of bumpkins on their horse-pulled carts. That’s my daily view. At least my office has great windows.

One thing I still don’t understand about is country is breakfast. There seems to be no differentiation of what is breakfast food and what is not. For instance, you don’t walk into a restaurant and ask, ‘are you still serving breakfast?’ because breakfast is mostly fried dough or bao zi [like dumplings, jiao zi, but bready-er]. One expired Angel [they all seem to quit so quickly, including the waitress named Mark], told me that she ate one of two things for breakfast:
1. cookies;
2. really spicy duck parts- head, neck, wings, and cold spicy lotus root;
3. a combination of the two.

In a real estate magazine, an ad for an Insinkerator [as in the garbage disposal brand] shows a white family and the drawing of what’s inside the garbage disposal shows bones. Can you put bones in an Insinkerator? I think not.

A word on names. Even the workers that are good friends with our manager, Shang Li, still call her ‘Manager Shang’. I find this too strange and only call her by her Chinese name. [Her English name is Sylvia but I’m not a fan of that name and she doesn’t respond to it anyway]. Other times, people are called solely by their title because Chinese names are too much of a pain to remember. For example, if one needs the Angels’ assistance, they just call out ‘Angel.’ I’ve watched my new Angels, two of whom are best friends [I call them the “Duo”], from ten feet away call each other and they don’t respond. Do they not have the innate reaction to turn your head to anything resembling their name? [like Blair, Air, chocolate Éclair for me]. No. Another example, before they learned to say my name in their two or three syllable pronunciation [Ke Lair] they just called me ‘Butler’ [in Chinese]. For example [this actually happened] if someone opens the bathroom stall door and I’m in there [cuz the lock was broken] they would exclaim, ‘oh! The butler!’

I got my business cards:
Claire Nelson
Butler
Shi Mao Olive Garden

They don’t get that the image this conjures up in 99% of American minds is Anthony Hopkins in a tux and tails eating breadsticks at the Italian chain restaurant the Olive Garden. Still, I’m happy I got the cards. Market research? Ha!

Sarcasm is not the Chinese sense of humor. I said with a smile on my face to the waitresses, ‘its really busy today’ and they said, ‘no, not one person has come in.’ And I said, that’s true, I was actually joking.

One woman just waked in with a Burberry scarf, a violently violet fur [possibly real] coat, riding pants and Molly Ringwald 1986 style brown boots that she wears with her pants tucked in and at least a three inch heal. I was talking with my friends last night that the word ‘cheesy’ doesn’t really translate.

My new Angel, Duoduo [not pronounced like the English word duo meaning two], who recently decided that her English name would be Ani [like Difranco] told me her favorite song is a remix of the theme song of Beverly Hills Cop the movie from the 80s. I told her this and she had heard of Eddie Murphy.

Duoduo and her best friend Kang Ying [whose English name is Cathy but you would think she’s saying Cassie] tell me of their evening ventures to play their favorite game called Killer. They go to a club that is specifically for Killer, and is only open 6 pm to the wee small hours, and they pay $1.25 an hour [they make $3.25 an hour] to play this game. They sit in a room with 15 other people and try to guess who are the killers, who are the police, and who are the common people. Everyone lies and tells stories and whoever wins gets promoted to the next level. It’s a mind/ logic game, like something we would play in middle school. No one drinks, as that would ‘affect your thinking’ Duoduo tells me. Sometimes they play multiple nights of the week until 1 am. When I ask her why masses of 20 somethings are flocking to play this wholesome game and Americans would never consider such a thing [outside of the religious freaks] she has a few answers:
1. The Chinese think ‘language is an art’ and therefore like speaking it;
2. When young kids are growing up, they think policemen are heroes, and want to be one. My limited interaction with policemen is that they are corrupt, surly, and power hungry fat men. But I could be wrong. Maybe they are heroes.
We grow up with movies like Crash, which I saw recently, where cops are mostly sexist racist pigs. Outside of Beverly Hills Cop, are there movies that make police look like heroes?

New Year is almost upon us, which means that it sounds like I am living in a war zone. This is the first year in a long time that people are allowed to set off fireworks in some parts of the city, and they have set up firework selling shacks and light them off late into the night for multiple nights in a row. New Year is like if you didn’t let a country of 5 billion people not work and have a holiday and not party for an entire year, and then suddenly BAM it explodes into this drunken loud craziness. Taking the subway means battling the brigade of people wheeling suitcases. Going out to eat means battling the lacking wait staff cuz most have gone home for to celebrate. All transportation is overly crowded. It’s really a fun time. I’m leaving for Vietnam January 29th.
Happy Year of the Dog!

A new year in the cold northern capital

2006-01-23T00:44:00.000-05:00

Tricks to a freezing winter from my Minnesotan roommate Alison Olson:

1. Dress like an onion
2. Your head is a chimney
3. Cotton is rotton

I got back a few days ago, I think, but jet lag has me in a pretty thick fog so I am barely aware when morning comes that it is morning and not still the middle of the night. It doesn’t help that its dark out until 8 am. Today I woke up and it was light when I stepped out of my house and I thought my clock was slow. Turns out on sunny days it gets light earlier.

While I was home many people seemed confused about what it is that I do in my employed world, I think I tried to explain my actual position but didn't explain the phenomenon behind it. There are something like 5 billion people in this country, which is a lot of people to employ. Our [silly] American idea of employment is that, there is something to do, you hire someone to do it, they have certain responsibilities and duties and they do them. Not so in China. Here the idea is to Employ the Masses. There are many many people in this country that unfortunately were not taugh to be inventive and entrepreneurial as we are, and therefore graduate and need to be given a job to do. A place to be. From the Chinese ideal of the work unit [dan wei] that employs you and makes sure you receive a paycheck, food, probably a work uniform, transportation to and from your job, and something to do with your time for five or six days a week. They give you off on the public holidays so you can go to your hometown and make dumplings with your family. The government’s jobs still provide you with necessities like long underwear, coke, shampoo. You have no life outside of your work. You might take vacations with your work unit, because why wouldn’t you want to spend an additional five days with your co workers? So everyone where I work is part of that mentality. Now of course the mentality is changing, and girls [like my ever growing population of Angels] can quit and find other jobs at the drop of a hat. And they do. Now there are a total of 10 Angels- 6 have quit and four new ones have been hired. My dad made the astute comment that maybe I should say something of the high turnover rate of the position [for I am their manger] but really, I don't think they would grasp the concept. I would look at it as, they don't do anything, so they get bored and quit, why not just eliminate the position?

Since I have been back, the visitors to our sales center have dropped dramatically. Where we once had 40 in one day now we are lucky to have 10. But, we still have three Angels to open the door, plus the doorman, three waitresses, plus the bartender, 20 some odd sales people on a given day, and one cleaning lady per every 10 square meters. "Overstaffed" is not a word that translates here.

Some insightful bits of Chinese thinking I have heard since I got back:
-drinking water while eating will mess up my digestion
-drinking room temperature water will make my face fat
-and my favorite, you celebrating Christmas is like us celebrating new year. Not really, we don’t make dumplings and we don’t find lighting fire crackers every night for 9 days fun. But close.

So that is what I am a part of. Returning to work wasn't as bad as a dreaded it to be; the questions I got were: was Christmas fun, did it snow/ is it cold there. One security man tried to tell the Angels that its summer in New York, I politely reminded him that it’s the southern half of the world that is currently in the season of summer, not the US. As critical as I am of the Chinese for being ignorant of other countries, I guess I should try to see from their perspective of never having been out of the country, parents have never been out of the country, and most friends have not been anywhere either, except maybe Hong Kong. Traveling is only slowly being encouraged but when a ticket to Vietnam is 5000 RMB and their monthly salary is 3000 RMB it makes it a little difficult. That and the old mentality that everywhere else is dirty and uncultured and uninteresting, why would you want to leave China?

They let me start using my computer at work which is currently feeding my soul- that and we all seem to run around totally unchecked and therefore I can do pretty much whatever I want and no one cares. But I am still starting my job search for something else. Well, full force starting it as soon as I upload my music collection to my new ipod. [thanks HOB]

In other exciting news, I have purchased tickets to Vietnam. I have wanted to go since I became obsessed with ‘Good Morning Vietnam’ the movie when I was 12. [“Time to rock it from the delta to the DMZ.”] I am also exhilarated to be leaving Beijing in the height of the very coldness, and to be leaving during the much anticipated Chinese New Year. The biggest most celebrated holiday in a country of this size can be a little frightening. What is most frightening is trying to appease all my Chinese co-workers by eating their dumplings that they will bring en masse to the workplace soon. The Chinese love their holidays but none more than the New Year. They light firecrackers in a way that gives meaning to the reason why we associate Chinese with firecrackers. To be honest I’ve never been here during New Year and don’t plan to be anytime soon. Although I think we are leaving the day after the actual day so we’ll get a taste of it. Alison will be my chief travel partner and we will be starting our travels in Hanoi. We might visit the Hilton there. Any advice from past Vietnam travelers would be great.

Being back in China is nice, I do like it here, last night I had duck and foot massages which are luxuries I Can Afford, and my Chinese skills was not all forgotten. I did however deeply enjoy the United States- driving, the friendliness, the open space, the cleanliness, although I was a little shocked at the amount of dog diarrhea [sorry to be graphic] on the streets on NYC- when will people learn not to feed their dogs people food? It was nice to be home, of course, see people, stock up on American things, enjoy the food although it doesn’t make me feel all that good, soak in the sun in Mexico. I'll be keeping up more on my blogs now that I have my computer here. So be prepared for more reading. Hopefully it'll be interesting. So far this country does not cease to amaze me.

Chai le means demolish.

2005-11-23T08:34:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-07T00:54:00.000-05:00

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.

Where have I been?

2005-10-23T10:05:00.000-04:00

I know, I know. You’re feeling out of the loop. You’re feeling that I up and went to China, sure, you heard from me for a while, but then, you assume, I was either speaking too much Chinese that I forgot how to communicate in English, or I went on one of these crazy cross country by broken down bus trips and never returned. Fear not. The real answer was really just lack of computer.

So, I’d like my first shout out to be to Mister Capital “J” David “Poppa” Nelson, for bringing me my own machine. Pop, I promise you’ll hear from me more often! Yes, I own my very own computer, a nice little laptop, for the first time since my lovely ‘machine that never actually worked’ that I schlepped around in college. It took five days and six people to get the machine to connect to the internet, but finally, I can sit in my pajamas, listen to my own music, and write to my people, no more smelly smoky internet cafes for me. I really couldn’t be happier about it.

My life has had some changes, as life so commonly goes, in the last month. I think I left off when I was going on my ‘business trip’ to Shanghai and Nanjing with my health care consulting company. My duties on this trip varied from standing around looking white to attract the attention of other heath care people to entertaining our conference speaker, and English man by the name of Nicholas Hall. We ate well, when my boss James was taking us out, and Nicholas’s lectures on health care advertising, marketing, branding, etc, were interesting, but a 10 day trip with my co workers was a little long! I got to see Nanjing, which is a quickly developing city, like so many in China, but is so untouched by the government. For example, Beijing used to have all these great outdoor markets, that since have been turned into giant ugly modern malls. Nanjing still has these markets. Good air, good parks, good food. Wu Xia [Xiao Wu’s daughter] is moving to Nanjing for her job in November so I am looking forward to visiting her there.

On the weekend during the conferences, I took a side trip to a small town called Shaoxing. Shaoxing is a smaller version of two larger more touristy towns called Hangzhou and Suzhou. The Chinese have a saying that ‘above there is heaven, below there is Hangzhou and Suzhou’. These are towns with canals, beautiful white stone bridges, and gardens that people from all over the country flock to see. Shaoxing is more of a regular less tourist infested version of these towns, and the original home of Lu Xun, a famous writer in China. [He wrote from 1918-1936]. Shaoxing is also the original home of stinky tofu, which I failed to try, because I spent the whole weekend breathing in its horrible stench.

Prior to this trip, I received a text message from a friend that said: “work for an American company, make USD $3000 per month”. Not enjoying my current state of poverty, I replied to this text, sent my resume, and next thing I knew I was being offered a job at a company called Jones Lang LaSalle. It is a real estate company, originally a joint venture between a Chicago company and a London company that specializes in market research and property management. Mostly what they do in Beijing is manage the high end residential and office buildings. How it works is a resident pays 4.5 RMB per square meter to JLL, and we clean the lobby everyday, maintain the outside landscape, and provide services similar to a concierge at a hotel. This concierge like service has been expanded to be called ‘personal butler service’, and my job is to explain to potential buyers just what this service consists of. In addition, JLL maintains the clubhouse, which is, at the location I am working at, kind of a smaller version of a country club. We have a green house [complete with palm trees], bar, swimming pool, sauna, Jacuzzi, spa, gym, even simulation golf.

I am the manager of 4 assistants, who JLL refers to as ‘angels’, based on the fact that they were hired because of their beauty, and they are the ones who will greet you when you come to my clubhouse to look at the sample room and consider purchasing an apartment there. I was hired also based on my looks, my lovely white skin and Roman nose landed me yet another job. As much as I enjoyed working at Hui Ling, it was fairly obvious that getting anything done there was close to impossible, not only because of the language barrier but also because the administration was not moving at any kind of pace. Really I hated teaching English with a passion, it just lost its fun when on the 7th week my students needed to be reminded what ‘weekend’ meant. And the idea of working for a well known major stable company making A LOT more money than I ever have before was appealing. So I started here mid-September, so far I have been in training, which has fizzled out, and now we are just waiting for the clubhouse construction to be finished so we can go stand around and look pretty and white. It should be finished early next week.

One downfall of the job is that it is on the north fifth ring road, a good distance from my home, and I need to take the shuttle bus up there, so my nice bike commute is over, but its probably for the best for my lungs. Another downfall is that I think the job might be the classic Chinese job of standing around an overstaffed building waiting for business. One friend told me to look at it as getting paid to work on my Chinese. And my Chinese has been rapidly improving, as the angels do not speak English, thus I must ‘manage’ in Chinese, which pretty much means lots of patience and dictionaries.

The dictator behind this mission is a money bags Napoleon syndrome of a 5 foot Hong Kong man, the developer, his company is called Shi Mao. He is the one who thinks beauty and white skin sells, and he’s probably right. A couple weeks ago we all assembled in a room for his review, me and the angels, the waitresses, bartenders, and security men. He walked in, we were all prepared for some propaganda sounding speech of how well we were all going to do, instead he started whispering to the club manager, Felix, grimaced at us, and left in a huff. I was told that he thought the waitresses were ugly and the security guards too frail. Our photos were taken for his review, so the ‘difficult looking’ [as ugly in Chinese is directly translated] folks could get the boot and be replaced by better looking youngsters.

So, I’m hoping for the best. The angels are pretty cool girls, and so are the waitresses, and as my sister says, you can do anything for a year, especially when this job affords a life I couldn’t leave before [ie my new laptop!] and the idea of paying my debts back should get me through the boringest of days. It will be an adventure regardless.

On my living side of life, I briefly had a new roommate, Lila Buckley [her new job screwed up her business card to read “Lila Buckleg”] hailing from Ukiah, California. A graduate of Middlebury, she studied Chinese and lived here before, and had set up a job with a Chinese environment related NGO. When she got here they told her that they had free housing provided for her, which came as a surprise to both of us, and so after a month of living with me she moved to her more free-er location. I can’t blame her, I remember what it was like to make the NGO salary. She’s a cool girl though, so we still hang out.

So I have my little apartment to myself, I have turned the smaller bedroom into an office. For the last week my father has been living with me, starting off with a bang up trip to Ikea for further house necessities, and the old man has since helped me really clean the floor [apparently soap is required??] clean out my nasty kitchen [although Lila did give it a good start] buy a second set of sheets, wash everything in my house, set up my internet, even put down contact paper on my shelves. He does the dishes and laundry when I leave, and is waiting with a big hug when I get home from work. Pretty much I’m thinking of hiring him to be my full time live in ‘ayi’ [Chinese for house cleaning person].

Mom and Hayley left last Saturday [I will get to our trip in a moment] and my dad stayed an extra week to see former colleagues and customers. In China, when you leave with the reputation that my dad left with, when you tell them that you are coming back to see everyone, they do it up. My dad is always surprised at how well they treat him, I have to remind him that if he did a shit job at IBM they might not be treating him like an emperor, but it is because he left as a virtual IBM God, and that is why he gets the royal treatment.

In the last week we have gone to banquet dinners every night. For those of you not familiar with banquets, you go to a very nice restaurant, and get your own proviate room, and sit at a giant table with 4-12 people and eat everything. In this past week I have tried many a strange item. Here’s the short list:

At the duck banquet: duck feet, duck entrails, I skipped the duck tongues this time, although they did look appetizing and the other Chinese at the table were wolfing them down [I ate one once when I was 17 and almost ralphed]. The duck feet were pretty good, but they were pretty disguised in mustard and cabbage. The entrails were chewy.
At the Sichuan hot pot: pig esophagus, pig stomach, goose entrails, chicken feet, cow stomach. The chicken feet were actually OK, but they were the rare de-boned kind. The pig esophagus was also OK. Nothing too terrible, but not all that good either. I don’t think I’ll be ordering these delicacies again.
My favorite banquet was with those crazy IBMers, we went to a Taiwan restaurant and had delicious scallops, pigeons, beef, many yummy more regular foods, and as in traditional IBM style, lots of cheers-ing, lots of beer.
Banquet #4 was with my dad’s organizations partner, the foundation that is doing NFTE training in China [teaching kids and adults entrepreneurship]. The head of the organization here, called Bright China, is a very kid man named Mr Shao who has more money then most, owns many buildings, and gives 100 million RMB to his programs [which extend well beyond the entrepreneurship training]. On this night we ate Shanghai style and enjoyed duck egg wrapped in pig ear. Why not? Those two items seem to go hand in hand to me.

The weekend before my family came I had registered to participate in a set of bike races: on Saturday was the team road race and Sunday was the individual and team mountain races. On Friday for lunch, I enjoyed a traditional Chinese dish called a ‘meat pie’ and didn’t finish it so thought I would take it back to the office and enjoy it later in the day. Yum yum. Ate the rest of it at about five o’clock, did some errands after work, and got home and started feeling ill… very ill. Had the famed ‘la du zi’ [which I learned does not translate as spicy tummy but still sounds like spicy tummy to me]… anyway, was very ill, somehow I managed to get up and go to the race on Saturday, I was motivated by the fact that I was the one who had asked my teammate to set this up, the team race required a steep entry fee and he had connected with the Norwegian Salmon Promotion Board to sponsor us. [When I think biking I think salmon, don’t you?] So I managed to take the subway to the race and complete my one lap, it was only 9 minutes long, and we still won the road race. I went home and slept for 17 hours, was still sick Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday morning I finally got it together because my sister was coming that afternoon!

Wednesday morning we flew to Yunnan province, the southern most province in China that bordered Burma, Laos and Vietnam. We went to the north western corner to a town called Lijiang to start our two day hike of Tiger Leaping Gorge. This is a beautiful gorge, and a beautiful hike, you’ll see photos soon. Along the hike are guesthouses to eat and stay in, each with a great view of the adjacent mountains and the clouds that drift through them.

Everything grows in Yunnan, so we ate 9 kinds of mushrooms, tons of fresh vegetables, ginger tea, so yummy. The hike was necessarily strenuous but we managed to have a good time. On Saturday we met up with Pat and Dave, who flew from Beijing, and spent a few days touring Lijiang. Lijiang is a cute old town with little cobbled streets and no bikes or cars that was destroyed in a earthquake in the early 90s and rebuilt in the same style, but seems a but like Epcot center. Packed with Chinese tourists, most on tours, and filled with a billion stores, we shopped, ate, walked, and drank yummy coffee until our next destination- 3 hours south to Dali, another beautiful mountain side town with a lake. This town was a little more authentic.

In the end this blog is getting very long and listy and boring and maybe its just cuz I’m trying to write the last two months of my life in as concise form as possible I seem to leave out the things that are interesting and just tell the who what when where. Well maybe I’ll go back and elaborate.

But that’s it for now. I’m proud that I’ve gotten this far in organizing my life. This weekend I managed to get a maid, someone to keep the dust bunnies from attacking and the dry cleaning woman from not selling my clothes I’ve left them there for that long. She comes for only $1.25 an hour. Can’t beat that. I haven’t gotten to the masses of emails, so if you haven’t received a personal one from me [mom] either CALL ME or just rest assured that you are not the only one. Hope everyone is good. Photos up when my website and computer decide to become friends again.

Back to blogging

2005-08-09T00:07:00.000-04:00

How's that for a creative title? As much as I dislike internet cafes,
they do have cold coke in glass bottles, and really, only a few things
make more happy than that does. One thing that I forgot how happy it
makes me is cooking. I have been fairly content with eating out, I
definitely can't make Chinese food,. And they do it so well, might as
well eat out, well I recently have been preparing my own "western"
meals and it is so fun to cook and make yummy non Chinese
–when-you-are-done –a-giant –pile-of – oil- is – left meals. I recently made German potato pancakes from what I could best recollect the last time my father made them [1987] and they were so yummy. Go me. Maybe I’ll open a breakfast café here [ok no].

The famed Hilary R. O'Brien and trusty traveler Madam LA Brown have
just visited, it was a whirlwind two weeks, and we all had a great
time. After a few days [this is going to get graphic] they noticed
that their throats hurt, they had a little of the ol' la du zi [spicy
tummy], and generally were feeling wiped. Aside from their added jet
lag and touring around Beijing is 95 degree heat, that is the general
body state that one deals with while in Beijing. You just… get used to
it. Other things they noticed that I have gotten used to: the thinness
of the Chinese plastic bag. At Alison's house I was bagging some
unused food in plastic bags that were American brand and was surprised
at how thick they were! And for what? The Chinese bags work 85% of the
time. Also: there are people everywhere. Everything is always crowded.
But, as we also discussed, Americans live well beyond their means,
enjoying most of the world's resources, and if the Chinese lived like
we did [or anywhere near it really] they would consume every inch of
the entire world's resources. So, by having thin plastic bags and
filling every bus every time, they are managing to live below their
means.

I have yet to develop my photos but Hil has got her’s on her mac website, check them out at:
http://homepage.mac.com/h.obrien/PhotoAlbum3.html
The last bunch of photos are from Hil’s and my trip to the province just south of Beijing, called Henan, to a town called Luoyang, we had a blast.

In other news, Summer is about to disappear to the land of the Swiss, off ot get married… I can’t wait til she leaves I can clean the house, no more cigarette ash, throw out her nasty garbage cans… I found a new roommate. she’s still in the US but we’ve been corresponding and she seems pretty cool. She writes:

>>I went to Middlebury College, in Middlebury. (About
one hour south of UVM/Burlington). I majored in
cultural anthropology/sociology and Chinese (joint
major). I graduated in 2004, worked at the Earth
Policy Institute in DC for half a year after
graduation, then traveled and WWOOFed (volunteered on
organic farms, www.wwoof.org) with my boyfriend in
France for the spring. Now I'm back in CA, staying
with my parents in Ukiah (about two hours north of
San Francisco). I grew up in a recycled wood cabin in
the woods near here, solar powered, composting toilet,
hand crank washing machine, etc... we moved into town
when I was 13 and I still miss the land.<<

So I said, why not? She gets here September 2nd. Between now and tehn I will be going on a mega business trip, there are a couple OTC medical conferences in Shanghai and Nanjing so I am going to represent the company that I teach English for, mostly to get them to pay attention to us and come to our conference. Use that big nose.

I think that’s it for now. Sorry I haven’t been a better blogger… now it seems that China is just… life.

I know, I know

2005-07-30T04:55:00.000-04:00

Hello faithful readers, I know I haven't blogged in a while and I AM SORRY. The heat has slowed me down. That and Ms. LA Brown and Hilary R. O'Brien were just here. But I will write soon. Promise.

Photos from bike racing

2005-07-04T12:49:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday's:

http://www.dongfanghong.com.cn/bbs/dispbbs.asp?BoardID=1&id=4181&replyID=57671&star=2&skin=

The second photo, I'm on the far right in the white helmet/ blue shirt, heifing up the hill!

Third photo, that's me unable to stand bike shorts the ride that high so I must fold them down, thus the ensuing China beer gut... Then you'll see photos of some of the other roadsters.

Next, the horrible hill where my chain fell off. These photos are of the relay/ team race. The second mountain bike photo, guy in the orange helmet is my teammate Stuart. Then, photos of me at the beginning of appropriatly kicking some butt. This is at the beginning of the loop, on the next hill section I left her far behind...

The very crouched over white man in Postal Service jersey is my other teamate Seigfried.

In case you missed or I didn't post photos of the last road race...
http://www.windspeedcycling.com/Article_Show.asp?ArticleID=86
Look for the little man in the one piece PLA outfit..

It’s nice to be out of the know.

2005-07-03T09:26:00.000-04:00

Just looking at Google’s news headlines:

US endures deadliest year in Afghanistan
Missing girl found with registered sex-offender
US government secrecy reaches historic high
Luther Vandross’ legacy will live forever

and if that’s not horrible enough…

Bush gets to pick TWO supreme justices!

Happy Fourth.

Heat and racing.

2005-07-02T22:06:00.000-04:00

My racing day started at 6 am, trying to fool the subway woman that my bike was not a bike, but simply parts. I did this by taking the wheels off. I so smart. Off to the park where the Shimano Bikers Festival was held, next to the fifth ring road [like a highway], still in the city.
OK I’ll get to the main events quickly here, photos to come soon where you can view the other bikers which were hysterical, mostly the older women in their pink sweatpants and bicycles with baskets and rat traps on them… too funny. The idea with schlepping up very steep hills is that if you have a light bike, its easier. Pretty easy concept. My bike, purchase at about $176, is NOT light. In fact, my teammates were amazed I could get up the hills at all on my bike.

The first event was the road race, and as we know I don’t have a road bike, but thought I might give it a whirl, only to find out that I don’t like road racing. As far as I can tell, its just sprinting up hills, me beating the other girls, then on the downhills them catching up simply because they have road bikes and road bikes are faster than mine. It was alright, three laps, I came in fifth and won 300 kuai [$40].

The second event was the ever anticipated women’s individual mountain bike race. Alison and I had walked the course during the lunch break, and it looked pretty tough. 3 laps for a total of 7.5 miles. Well that’s the last time I’ll walk the course and not ride it: we started out on the pavement for about 100 feet, then a major off road hill which quickly bottlenecks so the idea is to immediately get in front. Well my janky $176 bike did not like me changing gears on the hill, my chain fell off, and all of sudden I was stuck behind grandma with her basket walking up the hill. the men were also racing with us so that added to the people. After the first lap I wanted to quit to save my energy for the team race, but my teammate Stuart convinced me that I could place if I caught up, so I kept going. It was a really fun course, and I went from 8th place at the end of the first lap to finishing 3rd. I was impressed with my catch up, but I could have made so much more money to buy better bike parts so my bike wouldn’t fall apart like it did if I had had the insight not to change gears right then… Ok, I’m over it.

The team event: I raced with three exceptional men, in the men’s mountain individual they finishing in first, third, and fourth place so I knew I was teamed up with the best! Their strategery was that the best guys would go first, so we could get a lead, then with me and the fourth place guy at the end our position could only get worse. I was third [this is a relay race by the way, we all do one lap] and when Stuart finished his lap the competitor was right behind him, which meant that the girl that beat me both on the mountain and road was right on my tail. I lost her after the second uphill and didn’t hear from her again, giving my team about a 90 second lead. When Siegfried, the last member in our team finished I was awarded a sweaty scruffy kiss [which was somewhat painful to be honest]. So we won that event, and I won some more money.

Grand total of new bike parts [meaning a new derailleur so my gears can change when I want them to, and not fall off at the most important moment in the race]: 1850 RMB or $225.

The day ended with some unfortunate heat stroke that I believe started after the road race: general dizziness and feeling like death, about to vomit, etc, and continued throughout the day [except when I was on my mountain bike, then I felt fine of course] until the evening when I really thought death was upon me, but fortunately Alison took excellent care of me and I made a [somewhat] speedy recovery.

A trip to the country side

2005-06-27T23:48:00.001-04:00

On Saturday afternoon we all packed into the family roadster and headed to the mountains. Me, Alison, the Wu family, and the boyfriend, LBX, brought our ‘hiking shoes’ [or cheap Chinese sneakers, or white slip ons as for the Wu mama]. We drive three hours to a small village near Badaling [a tourist site of the Great Wall]. The village has maybe five families in it, like 30 people max. We stayed with a family who Wu has known since the days of Nancy Burgoyne [legendary Texan that Wu drove for before the Nelson clan], and has since gone back to this family to stay. The countryside has an exception to the one child policy: if your first child is a girl, you are permitted another chance to have a boy. This family had an older girl, 15 years old, and a younger boy, 9. We brought them our used clothing- from the Wu’s that might mean t-shirts with holes in it, from me that means clothes from my overly fashionable roommate and my Italian friend Anna. So this little cutest farmer family now are some of the best dressed bumpkins out there.

Everything we ate, they grew on their farm. I’ve never had better [or obviously fresher cucumbers]. The food was very yum. And the father was very excited that I was drinking with him [he was drinking rice wine, I was drinking beer]. We went to bed to awake to both families using their quietest ‘inside voices’ [“WU XIA!!!! COME HERE!!!!”] Lovely. And this was at 5 am. We finally got up at 6 to hear, why did you get up so late! You’re lazy! You already missed the fog! It was so beautiful! We’ve been up since 4! Love it. We got on the trail and hiked up to the Great Wall, just a short two hour hike from the village. We went to a part of the Wall that was not restored, no tourists, just us and some photographers. It was BEAUTIFUL and so awesome to be somewhere where most people don’t get the opportunity to go.

In other Really exciting news, I finally have coffee in my home. No more McDonalds! I got the coffee that I won on my mountain bike race ground, bought a little drip plastic cup thing [the one you put over your coffee cup and pour hot water through it] and filters, and now I am so so happy. Cereal and coffee, what little joys in life.

Summer is really marrying the Swiss. She knows Very Little about the country of Switzerland. She knows the population of Switzerland is the same as her hometown in Shandong province. She knows that the size of Switzerland is the size of Shandong province. She knows there are lots of mountains. That’s all she knows. I wish her the best of luck acculturating herself to her new life. She leaves in September [yes that means I need a new roommate, but not sure who].

I have a big bike race this weekend- Shimano is sponsoring a mountain bike race that might somehow be in the city. Not sure how that is going to work. Looking at photos of the female contenders from past years, I will be overjoyed to have some actual competition. That is this Saturday.

I just sent out two invites to view two albums on snapfish. If you didn’t receive an invite, email me at maokelan18 at gmail dot com and I will send you the link.

You too can speak Chinese. A friend of mine just enlightened me to her latest Chinese/ English realization: you all know the word “gigolo” as in the 1980 movie, “American Gigolo” with Richard Gere. In Chinese, if you say the word ‘gigolo’ it means ‘this building’. In pinyin [the way we Romanicize the way characters sound] it is zhe ge lou. Ha!

The doves are released

2005-06-14T00:30:00.000-04:00

So Michael joins the rest of the celebrities, where the majority of sane people know he's molesting young boys, but somehow he doesn't go to jail. Stab in the heart to Martha. Anyone have thoughts on this? How about thoughts that the only US news that I write about in my blog is about Michael Jackson? I can be reached at maokelan18@gmail.com
Would love to know what you news readers out there think.

In other news, I'm ALMOST done getting all my photos online. It's been weeks of procrastinating and computers crashing.

Locking my bike up outside McDonald's this am, to get my coffee, and there's a large bus in the right hand turn lane, honking at the many cars ahead of it for not running over the bicyclists and not turning. Not only was the bus honking, but the bus ticket taker [who stands in the middle of the bus and has to be one of the worst jobs this country has thought up] is on the bullhorn yelling at the cars to go! So funny.

Other horrible jobs this country has thought up to employ people: the crossing guard. They stand at each corner [four to an intersection] and hold a flag and blow a whistle, stopping bikers from crossing against the light. They are oh so helpful poeple, yelling at you when you defy the traffic lights and cross anyway [some are posted at intersections where there aren't that many cars, so I go when the intersection is clear, I don't have time to wait for lights], and they tell you to go even though there are still cars bikes buses and motorcycles in the intersection.

A really pointless job is the bus lander. They stand at the bus stops, wear a very official sash, and have a little hand held sign that has their bus number on it. They direct the buses where to stop. As if the bus driver hasn't been stopping at a designated place for 7 years, probably driving the same line the whole time as well. As you can see all these jobs have to do with people management. The bus ticket taker [the person on the bus] not only sells you the ticket, but also helps pack people into the bus, telling them where extra room is, telling them to shift forward, waking up the 30 year old man from his supposed slumber to let an old lady sit down [sometimes they are polite and get up themselves I will add].

Another job, mostly for old people, is the neighborhood monitor. This involves sitting in the neighborhood with up to 7 others and gossiping about whats going on. So, if someone breaks into my apartment and steals my watercooler, the old people will see it and will know that something is not right because every person that enters my building they will talk about. Neighborhood watch. They also wear official looking armbands. Too cute.

China has many people. Somehow most of them have jobs. That's about all I have to report for now... I have to write a quiz [me! a teacher! HA!]

If you’re racing, you might as well win.

2005-06-06T05:53:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I participated in a race called the “king and queen of the mountain”. The race consisted of the men’s division, 20+ men, mostly honky’s but some Chinesers, and four women. It was entirely uphill. 10 miles, 3200 feet elevation gain. It took me an hour and a half and I passed my only real challenger at about mile 8, some Russian woman who just didn’t deserve to win. So I had to pass her. You know how it is. Ok enough gloating in my win. But it was nice ride, beautiful mountains, listening to my Genesis [“Turn it on!” thanks bro] and nice to be working out outside of the city. The white men were shown up, depsite their multi thousand dollar bikes, by some young chinese guy who must have weighed in at about 90 pounds [with his bike]. Ha!

I apologize for not blogging more, I have been very very busy and now that I am actually working at my jobs, it takes a lot more time away from writing! How are my jobs?

Hui Ling tugs at the heart strings. I sat down to interview a young man, turning 25 this month, a fellow monkey, who said that after completing middle school he sat at home, doing nothing it seems, until he found Hui Ling and has been coming here for almost two years. As critical as i am of their service and lack of properly trained staff, in the end, these folks have a place to go where people like them, accept them, appreciate them, teach them, give them some kind of work that makes them feel worthy. So that was nice.

I like the family style community that they have here. Last Friday after our staff meeting we had a party to celebrate all the staff who had birthdays between January and June. We ate stacks, drank soda, and the birthday folks [me and six others] dressed up in ridiculous costumes and put on our own version of a Chinese New Year’s Day parade. The Chinese celebrate by being loud. They call it ‘re nao’ which literally means hot [like the word you would use to describe the temp outside] and nao which literally means ‘wrangling at the market’, or noisy, clamorous. It was all great fun. Then we went to a restaurant, ate it up, and then we were all forced to sing songs from where we came from. The Frenchman bravely stood up and crooned out something horrible, Chris sang something Flemish, and it got to my turn and I was like, do you get that I may be outgoing and all, but I just don’t sing in front of large crowds? No. not acceptable. So I sang ‘happy birthday’ and everyone joined in! Such a cheater. So it’s going well. I’m almost done with our newsletter, I’ll send it around when it’s really done.

My other job: I never wanted to be an English teacher

And here I am, teaching it up. Somehow I'm teaching Really basic English, I think that is why it is not my favorite. I get tired of correcting the use of 'the,' the lack of pronunciation of the letter 'v', feeling that my teaching is useless because they have already studied the basics of English during grade school and they think just cuz I’m white I will apply my whitey magic and presto they will speak English. Especially when one of them is always translating what I’m asking [tough questions like ‘how many people are in your family?’] and feeling irritated that the students don't have the patience to listen to me and Think about what I’m saying. But it’s paying for my life as I get screwed over by some janky new salary scheme here at Hui Ling [I’m trying not to be bitter about it]. Commission –based salary for the development office? Sounds unethical to me. But this is China.

The Bergler put forth this question, after reading my travel blog: “what did you all do in these outer provinces?? mostly I learned that the trains suck and Chinese people cant hold in their vomit (which is enlightening nonetheless).
Good question, apparently I didn’t get to that. In the first place we visited, Xiahe, there is a famous Tibetan Monastery, one of the largest, or one of the six most important or something, and Tibetans make pilgrimages from Tibet with babies strapped to their backs and grandma with the cane and their only sweatshirt which says “World Football Club” and somehow get to this high mountain village. What do they do when they get there? They walk around the monastery turning the pray wheels. The next town that we visited was Dunhuang, where we saw these amazing caves that folks have been drawing their art in for centuries.
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/gansu/dunhuang/mogao_grottoes/
http://www.chinapage.com/dunhua54.gif
http://www.chinapage.com/dunhua56.gif

We had some interesting discussions about the finding of these caves, because there was tons of art and manuscripts that were taken by white folks from the caves, so I was initially irritated by the whites for doing that, but then the literature in the museum there goes on to say that if they didn’t take the stuff the Chinese would have stolen it, burned it, or it would end up in the hands of officials instead of in the museum. So a good point was made. At least the whites are preserving their history/culture for them.

In other news, I purchased some moisturizer based on this English on the front of the bottle: “Sheep placenta Essence”. Now that’s an attention- getting. My skin has never been softer!

I have ridden my bike for 500 miles in this country

2005-05-30T06:24:00.000-04:00

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?

2005-05-28T01:51:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-16T10:04:00.000-04:00

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.

2005-05-15T05:33:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-08T23:40:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-08T08:43:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-03T08:14:00.000-04:00

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'

It's about time I wrote something here

2005-04-30T08:30:00.000-04:00

Hallo from Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province, pretty much the middle of China. When I say "hallo" i mean it, I've been walking around town for a while, and it's one of those towns that when they see foreigners they either: 1. scream "HALLO" 2. shout and point "lao wai!" [foreigner] 3. just talk about me and giggle that I am there. This gets old fast. Makes me miss the not caring who you are in Beijing. But, this town is the jumping off point for seeing many cultural relics, and as it is the May 1 holiday, its time to get out of the city [which is infested with tourists anyway] and travel. I am meeting my friends tonight in this town, we will first venture south of here, then north to Dunhuang, [a short overnight train and then 5 hour busride from here], then back to Lanzhou to fly back to Beijing in one week. Took the train here, still feel like I am moving. It wasn't too bad, for a 20 hour ride, lots of sleeping, reading, listening to the man [of course] right next to me snore. The train is clean and passengers get to listen to train radio, which is blaring until 10 pm and then starts up again at 7 am! It's times like these that I swear by earplugs.
Looking out the window on the way here, noticed [once again] that every inch of this country is used, even the tops of mountains are terraced and cultivated. A number of countryside towns have satelite dishes in their courtyards, propped up by bricks. The only moment of color in these towns is the doors- colorful tiles, bright red sings with fortune-brining characters surround the door frame. Beijing is worlds away from here.
The cell phone necktie. For super convenient access, why not have your fancy schmancy cell phone dangling from your neck? The necktie comes complete with an ear piece, for hands free talking, and you can match it to all your outfits.
Right now I am in a swealtering internet cafe, I would guess it is about 85 degrees in here, but somehow they have mini glass bottle cokes, you know I love me some cokes, so I'm getting to my emails while waiting for my friends to arrive.
Ok, that's about the extent of creativity that I can mustur. I have a new email address, hotmail really does suck, should you want to write me please address it to:
maokelan18@gmail.com
peace

I am venturing away from Beijing soon

2005-04-25T04:32:00.000-04:00

What holiday is that? May 1st. I don’t think we really celebrate that one in the US…
The Chinese system of vacation does not revolve around vacation days given to workers, here we have the highly effective system of public holidays, which means that the whole country takes vacation at the same time. A genius system, I give the country two years to get rid of it altogether because the infrastructure is already overburdened with this mega population, forget when they all want to travel together! So I am about to throw convenience to the wind and do some traveling myself. This Friday I will board a train from Beijing’s West station headed to Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province, a short 24 hour train ride.
http://www.chinaetravel.com/province/pr06.html
Gansu is that odd shape because its horrible mountainous, and through the middle runs the Silk Road. So, I’m doing the train part by myself, that will probably be lots of random chatting with other train passengers, sleeping, and a lot of beer. Meeting my friends in Lanzhou on the 1st. Who? My friend Anna, Italian, and her American boyfriend who lives elsewhere in China, and his American male friend who lives in Thailand. Should be a fun group. Haven’t made a whole lot of plans from there, but you get the general idea. Hope I can blog from nowhere’sville, or where ever it is I end up, keep y’all posted on china travels. I am really looking forward to going somewhere, I feel like I travel all the time in the US [well I do] and this is probably the first time in a very very long time that I’ve stayed put for almost three months!

Apparently my boss is in the Wall Street Journal

2005-04-22T09:43:00.000-04:00

China's Growth Strains Family Ties

Â --- As Children Prosper, Leave Home, Parents' Role Dims; A Tight-Knit Clan Frays

By Kathy Chen
2,405 words
13 April 2005
The Asian Wall Street Journal/ A1/ English
(c) 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

To see the edition in which this article appeared,

click here http://awsj.com.hk/factiva-ns

NANCHANG, China -- This country's success is tearing the Fan family apart.

Fan Qun, a successful 39-year-old entrepreneur in Beijing, bought his parents a new apartment and takes them sightseeing in other Chinese cities. But he feels he has little in common with them anymore and less to say to them. His younger brother Fan Jun, 37, is reeling over a divorce, after his wife left him to pursue opportunities in southern
China. He is unemployed after a failed business venture and has been living with his parents for more than a year.

At a loss over how to deal with his family's situation, patriarch Fan Hanlin often retreats to his bedroom, usurped in his role of respected elder. His older son's social standing outstrips his, and his younger son ignores his advice. Mr. Fan's wife escapes by playing mahjong each afternoon with friends.

"Everyone is unhappy," says the elder Mr. Fan, 70.

For thousands of years, Chinese have made the family paramount, with generations often living together, and younger members deferring to their elders. Fathers were the head of the household. But opportunities born of China's move to a market-based economy over the past two dozen years are creating new wealth, new hierarchies and new strains. The scramble to keep up with neighbors, or one's own relatives, is testing
family ties, contributing to a rise in social problems.

Some 1.6 million couples divorced in China last year, a 21% jump from the year before, according to China's Ministry of Civil Affairs. In Beijing, there were 800 reported cases of domestic violence in 2004, double the number the previous year, according to the city's Bureau of Justice.

Younger Chinese are opting for privacy over extended-family living, and buying parents their own apartments. Others are putting their aging parents in nursing homes, as convenience trumps filial piety, an unheard-of violation of Confucian ethics. Over the past decade, the number of nursing-home residents has increased 40% to more
than one million.

Parents of young children are leaving their offspring in the care of relatives for years, as they seek better jobs far from home. Millions of peasants have left their rural homes for work in cities, while some professionals are going abroad. The trend is spawning China's own generation of latchkey children, numbering in the tens of millions.

In the Fan household, life followed traditional guidelines when the children were growing up. Mr. Fan, head of the household, taught physics at a high school and his wife, Luo Shuzheng, was an engineer in a state-run factory. They had three children -- two boys and a girl -- who excelled at school, and tested into prestigious universities.

Like other Chinese children, the Fans were expected to obey their father without question. "We required [the children] to sit still and didn't let them fool around," Mr. Fan says.

Usually, just raising his voice was enough, but Mr. Fan says he sometimes hit the boys. He still recollects with pride how, after he hit his younger son in an effort to improve his study habits, the boy scored so well on college-entrance exams that he ranked among the top students in Nanchang County.

The Fans were a tight-knit clan. Qun, the oldest, looked after his two younger siblings while their parents were at work. Many nights, their mother stayed up mending clothes and making cloth shoes for the children. Sundays were a rush of shopping, cooking and housework. Neither Mr. Fan's nor his wife's parents lived with them, but the couple
set aside part of their small income each month to give to their parents.

Like generations of Chinese, Mr. Fan and his wife, Ms. Luo, envisioned a life driven by filial duties for their own children: study hard, find a stable job, get married, produce offspring (preferably male) and support your parents in old age. But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Fan children were graduating from college, China's economic overhaul was opening up all sorts of new opportunities, in job
choices, lifestyles and ways to get rich.

Qun jumped at the chance to do something different. Bucking the trend among college graduates at the time to take a state-sector job, he opted for a marketing position in a joint-venture company of SmithKline Beecham, now GlaxoSmithKline PLC. He learned about the pharmaceutical business and Western marketing techniques, befriended American colleagues and helped the company successfully launch its Contac brand of cold medicine in China.

In 1996, he started his own consulting company, advising drug companies on doing business in China. Today, he says his company employs a dozen people, including his wife, Li Chunhui, and generates annual revenue exceeding 10 million yuan ($1.2 million). He says the company's after-tax profit is 15% to 20% of revenue.

As Qun prospered, the distance widened between him and his family in Nanchang, a city of 4.5 million about 1,250 kilometers from his new home in Beijing. He shares few details of his life in the city with his parents. They don't understand his business, he says, and wouldn't necessarily approve of his lifestyle. He and his wife each drive their own car, dine out frequently and retain two housekeepers, including one just to look after Wrong Wrong, their pet Pekinese dog. This year, they moved to a two-story house in a wealthy suburb.

His parents don't have a car or a housekeeper, rarely eat out and take pride in saving. "If my parents saw me spending this kind of money, I'd be embarrassed," Qun says, as he and his wife grab a coffee at a Starbucks shop on the way home from the office. He notes the few hundred dollars they spend each month on such luxuries as fresh beef, imported cookies, dog sweaters and a sitter for their dog is more than the his parents' monthly income.

In the past, Chinese families revolved around fathers and sons. But like other younger-generation Chinese, Qun views his first allegiance as with his xiao jiating, or small family unit centered around his marriage.

The couple have resisted suggestions by Qun's parents for them to have a baby. Instead, Qun's wife insists their Pekinese should be recognized as a "grandson," proclaiming the dog's surname to be "Fan." Qun says this offended his mother, and she once complained that he should find a wife "who listens more." In traditional China, a son would have quietly accepted such criticism. But Qun says he told his mother that if she had a problem with his wife, she should tell her directly.

"My main family is with Linda," he says, using his wife's English name. Like many of today's middle-class Chinese, the couple also have adopted Western names, a practice that is viewed in some circles as a sign of being modern and sophisticated.

His mother says she doesn't care how they raise their dog, but "you still need to have a child. How will you get by when you are old? Dogs can't take care of you."

These days, Qun sees his parents only a few times a year. Conversations tend to be about Nanchang friends or family, since his parents have different views on other subjects. "They always complain about how the government is unfair and society is unjust," says Qun. "I try to influence them . . . but I think they'll never catch up to my way of thinking."

Min, the youngest Fan sibling, also resisted her parents' traditional expectations. Ms. Luo says she hoped her daughter, after graduation from college, would return to Nanchang. Instead, Min settled in the southern city of Guangzhou, where she is married, has a child and works at a major Chinese insurance company.

Jun, the middle sibling, is still figuring out his place in the new China. Growing up, he says the constant message from his parents and school was: "If you just listen, you'll be successful, and society will take care of you." After college, he accepted a job at the Nanchang subsidiary of the state-run China Machinery & Equipment Import & Export Corp.

Working as a trader, he exported engines to other Asian countries and the U.S. and earned more than $10,000 in bonuses, he says. But after more than a decade on the job, his salary changed little, totaling about $200 a month.

In 1993, Jun married a fellow office worker, Zhu Yifang. Their employer provided them with a small apartment and they had a son in 1995.

After the baby was born, Jun's mother spent long stretches of time living with the couple, a traditional Chinese practice. But Ms. Zhu says she resented her mother-in-law's presence, which she regarded as interference. "It would have been better if the older generation didn't live with us," Ms. Zhu says. "But I couldn't refuse," she says.

Unlike wives in pre-reform China, Ms. Zhu could walk away, with more freedom and job opportunities. In 1999, she went to southern China to work as the sales agent for a construction-material company, leaving her husband to care for their son, then 4 years old. In 2000, the couple divorced. Today, Ms. Zhu lives in Nanchang with a boyfriend and earns more than $500 a month, she says, teaching English at a university and running her own English-language class.

After the divorce, in 2001, Qun offered his younger brother a job at his company in Beijing to market a vitamin supplement and oversee a handful of employees. Jun quit his state-sector job and accepted.

But he felt uncomfortable leaving his son in his parents' care, he says. He couldn't get used to Beijing or his new job. He had a hard time persuading retailers to buy the vitamin supplement, and after a year, the venture had incurred more than $60,000 in losses. He says the company didn't spend enough to promote the product.

Qun says his younger brother "approached the job like he was still at a state-run company . . . He got up in the morning, drank a cup of tea, and then did only what I told him to." He says Jun "often complains and finds excuses. . . . We live in different worlds."

Jun says that by his older brother's standards, "I haven't succeeded . . . but the goals he chooses are different from mine." He thinks Qun "doesn't necessarily like what he does, but he wants to earn money." His own goal in life, Jun says, is to first be a good father.

Jun returned home and last year moved in with his parents. That is a reversal of Chinese tradition, in which grown offspring typically provide for their parents.

Sitting on the apartment patio on a recent day, Jun sipped tea from a beer mug and pondered his future.

"I haven't thought through a lot of things, like how to raise my kid, how to be a model parent and how to live with my parents," Jun says. "I'm just considering the question, `How successful should I be?' People drive a [Mercedes] Benz; I don't have a car."

Mr. Fan and Jun often squabble over how to raise Jun's son, now 9 years old. "I tell [Jun] his son should go to sleep at 9 p.m. or he'll be tired at school. But I talk and no one listens," says Mr. Fan.

Jun says his father "has lived this long, but doesn't know what family is. You need to show love to your kid, but [the elder Mr. Fan] doesn't express his emotions."

After initially rejecting his brother's suggestion that he look for a job outside of Nanchang, Jun recently had a change of heart. He says he plans to visit Shanghai to explore an opportunity to work for a trading company there.

Economic changes have given people in China more money, but are also causing "more pressure" Jun says. "Some contradictions always existed in our family," he says, "but when life was simple, we just lived with them."

A flood of memories

2005-04-22T09:27:00.000-04:00

I’m going to some law conference that for some reason my boss wants me to attend. Some hotel right off Wang Fu Jing- the 5th ave of Beijing- called the Peninsula hotel. Had to ask a friend just where it was. Running late as usual but have noticed that in this country that doesn’t matter much. I’m having a somewhat hazy morning after partying kinda late with hayley’s ex, Mr. Todd Arthur [are you picking up what I’m putting down?” hee hee]. Find the hotel, find a woman to direct me to the conference I’m attending. “Up the stairs”. The stairs. Huge white marble stairs. Flash back to my senior year, the first time I set my eyes on these stairs. I’m in a similar state of mind- except instead of being exhausted and hungover I’m quite inebriated for my 18 year old self. Senior prom. I’m uncomfortable in my silk alley purchased prom dress, girlie shoes, I think someone put make up on me and forced me to wear pantyhose, g-d help me. I stumble up these grand stairs laughing with my slew of dates [prom was a much more chill experience then] only to look up and see the principal of the school and [his wife] the guidance counselor waiting to greet us. Hope this isn’t a sobriety check. Back to this morning- I carefully reach the top of the stairs to see another familiar ISB [Int’l School of Beijing, common on now…] shining face- a guy I wasn’t particularly friends with, but he recognizes me, we chat, I get the phone number of an old class mate of mine whose also in BJ. Love those random connections. I rush to coffee in an attempt to keep me awake during the lectures, peer into the grand ballroom and see the kids form my geography class, English class, not in their traditional high school garb but all dressed up- glittering gowns. Tuxes. There Tim, looking as cute as ever, too bad I just don’t like the boys in that way. Mom always liked him, but word has it she’s gotta man. I size up the crowd and realize that most of the squares in my class did not follow the age old American tradition of [as we say in non- parents world] getting shitfaced prior to arrival at the famed prom; well that’s what I get for hanging with the bad kids. Back at the law conference. Coffee break. I look out on the day light and see my 18 year old self leaving the hotel, its 7 am and I’ve spent just a few short hours trying to sleep on the floor of my friends rented hotel room. I get in a cab on this beautiful blue sky summer Sunday morning, schlep home, which is 45 min even without traffic. On my ride home I recall some of the events from the early morning- recalling the feeling of knowing that this time in my life is coming to an end soon. Not only high school, not only china, those were major enough in themselves, but that this group of people will never be together again. Out school will be destroyed. Folk’s parents will move away, classmates will go to uni and get jobs in far away countries. We will all lose touch. I enjoy these random places in BJ like the Peninsula hotel and the slippery giant white staircase where I can take a trip down memory lane and jump into my 18 year old head. My next move was to gradumatate. Then take a solo trip home, stopping in Singapore to visit my sis. Spend 8 hours in the Tokyo airport, learn to shower in a sink. Arrive in Chicago. Stare at all the white folk, think I know them all, my first bite of reverse culture shock. Mom tells me Mema is dieing. We are sad, but as she says, shes lived a long life and is ready to go. But she always wanted to know what young Claire would get up to. As my mom and I joked, ‘good thing she missed the lesbian venture.’ You thought she had trouble adjusting to Mark’s nose ring… eating outside on the patio at Mema’s country club. Uncle Tom at the head of the table makes a toast, to Mema, although she is not with us, she would love to see us all eating together, all here together. I hope she would also love to see that young Claire off doing whateva it is that I’m doing…
Thanks for reading folks.

Variations on a Rococo theme, Opus 33

2005-04-18T02:47:00.000-04:00

Summer’s current man, think I told you about him before, ‘The Swiss’, plays the trumpet for the Beijing Symphony Orchestra. He got us tickets to see them perform Tchaikovsky Saturday night at the concert hall within the Forbidden City. The park and hall itself were really beautiful. Before the concert started, a long list was read both in English and Chinese to everyone in the hall, about what NOT to do in the auditorium. To retain an elegant atmosphere he tells me. No gum. No plastic bags. Cell phone have to be in the ‘noiseless position’, asking us to turn them off would go too far. Don’t walk about the theater. No children under 1.2 meters are allowed [unless they are white, I saw some very small white kids]. The list goes on and on. Don’t clap between movements [this happened anyway, the Chinese really have no idea]. There are about five orchestra members who are white, and only twice as many whiteys in the audience. The theater is 75% full. We listened to a bunch of Peter Ilyich’s opus’s, including Opus 33, which was Variations on a Rococo theme, which apparently was some period in European history, which the Swiss described as ‘opulent’. I enjoyed the music, it was great. Summer’s first classical music concert. I think she thinks its pretty boring, but she does listen to quite a variety of music, so I assume she got a bit of kick out of it. Would ask her but she hasn’t been home in… a while. Must be at the Swiss’s. His apt is no doubt nicer than ours, especially since a drunk friend of mine ripped off the bathroom light switch [which is just a cord hanging down] and now its rather dark in there. Well the late night construction lights from next door keep me from falling in.

E-Z Money. I got a call from my friend Lee, an American who works at That’s Beijing, the foreign ‘what’s happening’ magazine, who said she has Chinese friend that needs to borrow one of her foreign friends. My job? Pretend I work with this guy in his architecture firm, go with him to a meeting with some potential clients to show the clients that his company employees foreigners. He says its too expensive to actually employ foreigners, so he paid me $60 for four hours of sitting in the meeting looking Caucasian. Not a bad morning. Might even ‘work’ with him again. You know my extensive background in architecture!

Shout out to Kat-o, who is going to Australia at the end of the summer. Way to leave the country girl. I’m trying to figure out just who my audience is, so far I have: my fam, H.O’B, Berg, K&B, Lovely Linds, various 856 18th street-ers, who else?

A country of gape-ers. This morning I stopped my ride to wrok to watch a fight occurring across the street. I just stopped, right there in the bike lane, as did everyone else I was biking with. A crowd had gathered. Traffic was stopped. The fight was not even that good. The Chinese love to stop and watch.

Went back to my high school, or what is left. The main building, the original school building, has been turned into a health club. The gym in that building is the only real remnants of anything physical from my high school. The remainder of the grounds have been torn down, nothing remains. A little sad.

Dinner with the Wu’s, or old couples that don’t like each other. I asked Wu when he was going to retire. One year or more. I asked what he would do, I said, will you stay at home and argue with your wife? He said, “I will kill her and find a better wife”. I shamelessly and without thought retorted, “you should”. Watching what Yangling has done to prohibit her daughter’s independence and turn her into a critical nagging old woman sometimes makes me want to vom. I asked Wu Xia to come out with my friends to go dancing this Wed night because it’s ladies night and the disco is free. When she found out that we would get to the club at 10.30, that would be too late. Her mother grimaced. She would not go because that would make her mother mad. I asked, you are 25 years old, why are you still letting your mother tell you what to do? No response. I guess I just have such an innate reaction to rebel, to be independent, but I guess if I raised by her mother those feelings would quickly be squashed. Or never generate to begin with. It’s too bad that Wu got stuck with such a… person [resisting name-calling temptations]. The horrible family that Wu is currently driving for makes him drive them to Sunday night dinner, so he is not at home when I come over for dinner, which leaves me with Wu Xia’s premature nagging and Yangling’s constant criticism.

The Japan protests were not reported in Chinese newspapers. I didn’t get off my butt to attend neither. The story is, Japan is not admitting its WW2 atrocities, so the Chinese are pissed. Most countries tend to ‘forget’ the atrocities in their history, the US has not yet admitted its atrocities toward the Native people of our country, and China is very close to erasing their past about how much damage Mao caused, the extent of the Cultural Revolution, and there is no one to remind them. More on that later.

Should have more photos up tomorrow. Decided its time to get the ol hunking camera out, show y’all some of China.

Fact: China spends $45 per person per year on healthcare. For the US that number is $4700.

Accidents, death, and confrontation

2005-04-13T00:57:00.000-04:00

No mom, not me, I am OK. Breathe a sigh of relief. But I thought it was a pertinent time to discuss the above topics, as China is a constant reminder that accidents happen, death happens, and of course not every purchasing event ends in ‘thank you’.

First, the grim topic: accidents and death. Riding my bike home yesterday I road by the saddest scene of a dog that was just hit by a car. Not a stray dog, someone asked me, there are no stray dogs in China, each and every dog here is someone’s pride and joy. He had no leash, but the woman standing over him, yelling something at him, was holding the leash of another cute little white dog. When will they learn to keep all their dogs on a leash? The dog was not dead, but still moving, which made me wish I was a Charlton Heston gun-touting American, no not to shoot the driver, but to shoot the dog, get him out of his misery. And the driver? Where was he? Nowhere to be found. A grim scene, but a good reminder that accidents happen, death happens, dogs die. Please keep your dog on a leash.

Pat’s words of wisdom on the subject: “dying not dieing. Who should know better than I? I'm in the business..”

Confrontation. Summer and I were walking to dinner last night, to meet her current man, “the swiss” [because we both cannot pronounce his real name, which sounds something like “Autie”] we walked by two well dressed men attempting to converse with a newsstand man. He asked, do you speak Chinese? And said, yes, meaning Summer speaks Chinese. He explained that he bought three cell phone cards [these cards are bane of my existence, the card that puts credit on your phone so you can use it] and one was bunk, like there was no pin number, he was ripped off. So Summer politely asked the already rage-filled newsstand man just what was going on, his response was rather unintelligible, because he was some country bumpkin and spoke the Chinese equivalent of banjo-speak [term courtesy of H. O’Brien, describing the dialect of some deep-kentuckiens, more on country bumpkins in a minute], in essence said something like it wasn’t his card. Don’t know how that works considering he sold the man the card. The German man talks back to the bumpkin, poking his finger into the bumpkins chest, which is not too smart, the Chinese are small people but they come with an army when the going gets tough, so I tried my diplomatic skills, telling the man, “mister, us foreigners all love china. We are in china to spend money. To give you money. Why are you causing us mafan [difficulty]? We don’t want to have to call the police or the embassy. If you sold him the card and the card doesn’t work, then it is your problem. Why not give the man back his money?” The German continues to yell at the bumpkin in English, then steals other phone cards that were on display, and leaves. So much for helping the situation, seems he used me as a distraction. Summer said the display cards are just for show anyway!

People regularly ask me what country I come from. I in turn ask them where they are from, because 9 times out of 10 the people I am buying my beer from are clearly not from Beijing. If you are from Beijing you can hear it immediately in the way they speak. They speak standard Chinese, the Chinese that I learned, and if you are from another place, they are sometimes unintelligible and speak banjo-talk. The city is slowly filling with ‘wai-di ren’, outside place people. I wonder how they are living legally.

To close, something I enjoyed hearing from one of my roommates from CU:　 “I’m happy that you finally made it back!!”　－Meredith. Thanks, Mers.

A day with Pat Wynne, finally, cuz I know y’all still have no idea who she is!

2005-04-12T02:09:00.000-04:00

Pat Wynne went to high school with my mommy. Back in the day when ol’ Patty Newman was young on the scene. Pat didn’t give me anything too joocy about Patty way back when, except to say that they did party some, there was some craziness going on… which is good to hear. Said she was an alright girl, that momma of mine, sounds a bit like me in high school, ran with a chill crowd, knew the ‘cool’ kids but didn’t really want to be friends with them [because they mostly suck, and at least those kids from GHS now are recovering drug addicts, have babies, etc, whereas my friends are creating, doing, living in China, etc].

It was fun to take Pat Wynne around, show her my town. She was so appreciative of my touring with her, thinking it is mafan [difficulty or something] in my life, when really, any excuse to tell someone All Day about my favorite city, my life, etc, is a good time to me. Turns out I love to talk about China. And Pat was very interested. ‘

We started the day with a loop around Tiananmen Square, not much going there, walked straight through the Forbidden City, again not much going on there, so I took her to a place I once knew… we wandered down a windy hutong [alley] and I swear this woman had no confidence that I knew anywhere where I was [at this point she was asking me if I traveled with a map, I goffed at that one!] and we peaked in the first courtyard entrance door that was open, to speak to a young woman who had a badge with a familiar logo on it: ah, well if it isn’t the school I used to volunteer for when I was here in 2001.

Back at Hui Ling. It is not really a school so much as an organization for young adults with developmental disabilities, teaching them basic life necessities, giving them the confidence to ride the bus, go to the library, etc, it is more of a community. We sat down and had tea with Ms Meng, the Guangzhou woman who founded this school, who told me that since I left, the school had expanded greatly. In 2001, there was one school in Beijing and one in Guangzhou, now there are 7 more branches of the school in Beijing as well as in many cities around China. The English co-founder had since squeezed out some puppies and brought them back to England to raise them. So, they have little contact with the foreign community. Enter my white shining big nose face, and Ms Meng is trying to convince me to come back and work with them, not so much with the kids because we all know that was not my strong suit, but with connecting them with the foreign community, help raise some funds. Sounds like a good project to me, and it is true the my large nose and round eyes do now have quite a few contacts that could bring the big bucks in.

Pat and I continued our walking, got her on a barely crowded by Beijing standards bus, ate some typical Chinese food, wound through some alleys, rode the subway, rested briefly at my home where we met up with Won Park, my favorite Korean-American, who persuaded us to eat swanky Chinese food at a fabulous restaurant called South Beauty. The wine and Evian alone was $50! Ah, the food is good in this country.

Overall had a great day with Pat. If she comes to your town I highly recommend chillin with her. She is now off to live in Sydney, Australia, for a couple months, such an adventure. Pat, let me know how Sydney life is treating you!

I just got ripped off by the rombutan man

2005-04-12T02:06:00.000-04:00

And just what is a rombutan? Here is a photo of a bunch of them.
http://www.anthropology.pdx.edu/ISLE/ISLEimages/classes/rombutan%20thumbnail.jpg
You rip off that rough exterior and reveal and white fleshy juicy almost lychee like fruit. I see similarities with this fruit to myself…
Even with my so-called Chinese speaking ability I am still getting ripped off! I have reached a level of frustration with my inability to recall words in Chinese that I once knew, to the point where I actually picked up a borrowed textbook and STARTED STUDYING AGAIN. Crazy I know. I do have to admit, the last time I was in China I had been studying Chinese for four and a half years straight, now I am back in this country after not speaking it for four years, so no wonder it sucks. It’s coming back to me rather quickly. I just find it ridiculous that I was at one point writing research papers in the language and now I can barely communicate with the waitress. I do still refuse to pay for classes, my goal is NOT to be fluent in any way, I love speaking my own language with my own peeps way too much, it keeps me sane, but I would like to get back to at least where I was when I last left.

Apparently the actual blog about my day with pat wynne never came through. That will be the third time that that blog did not come through, so sorry pat and pat, but now you get the super condensed version. I am sure you can understand my frustration with the machines that disappear by beautiful prose.

Had dinner at the latest new restaurant near my home last night, a Dongbei food place, when I asked my new friend Hannah just where that was, she snidely responded, ‘the north east?’ [For those non Chinese speakers dongbei is literally east north]. Hannah is a rad girl, an ideal friend, from Decatur, yes the ATL baby, and she also enjoys teaching her Chinese friends slang that not even other young Americans can understand. Example: instead of saying ‘bye –bye’ [the Chinese love that one] she taught them ‘holla at a player when you see me on the skreeeeeeeeet’. Word. We had a good amount of laughs. She’s my gateway to a million and one lesbians, can’t wait to chill with them all.

The current job story: [since my father continues to ask] had a brief meeting with James [my boss] yesterday. This morning he left for Warsaw to go to Nicholas Hall’s OTC conference, wish I was going with him, but I guess I can get over it. He is definitely a man of a grand vision, details are just that, details. He has this whole plan for me, which works in a way that I help him start his China- specific OTC newsletter/journal, and he helps me become this… OTC expert/saleswoman extraordinaire. Still he does not focus on the actual goings-on of this massive project I am entrenched in, such as, how will I magically transform these hundred articles into a coherent journal that is not totally plagiarized? Haven’t got that far in discussions with him. Nor have we focused on the 1129 pages of uselessness that my Chinese coworker came up with. For some reason I have doubts about his researching abilities. But I am staying with the job, because to be honest I am about to be flat broke, I am down to my last… oh, about 80 bucks, which is pretty funny. I love a life with no credit cards and 80 bucks is actually a livable amount until I get paid in two weeks. Ha!

I just sent an invite to view my latest photo album, so if you didn’t get it, email me. There are a bunch of other albums in there, including some from friends that might not be all that parent- appropriate, so older peeps you are welcome to view them, but you know… all that jazz.

I have a phone number! Yes, a real phone that rings in my house and if you call me I don’t have to pay for it. My cell phone is… I would say four times as expensive to use regularly here than in the US. It is probably the only thing that is more expensive here that I purchase, but still it is sucking me dry. OK, the phone number is, with calling codes to call from the US to China, 011-86-10-6417-6714. So call me sometime, should you feel the need, but don’t surprised if I’m not there, I am rarely home when I’m not sleeping. But, good times to call are: Monday-Thursday 6pm to 11 pm. To figure out when that is where you are, check out http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html

My friend Alison had a funny convo with Summer’s boss at my party, which she related some of which to me:　“he was hilarious. I was criticizing him for wanting to bring that Italian Barbie magazine [somehow this magazine ended up at my party] to china, saying it's the last thing china needs now that all these young girls are already having surgery and stuff to look more western, they didn't need Barbie too. and he turns it around and starts complimenting me. I guess that's Chinese, kiss up so someone stops criticizing you. maybe you should try that with the Wu's -- when they start nagging, start complimenting their drapes or something.”

At the end there she is relating to my constant bitching about how the Wu’s are such nice people, take such good care of me, but are Very judgmental [note the capital “V”!] of how I live my life, and also very questioning if I know what is best for me, which gets old REALLY fast. Turns out I’ve been living on my own and taking care of myself for… 8 years now, I think I know when I am cold and when I am full. Do we really need to have another discussion over the fact that I don’t want rice? That I have already eaten enough? Do I know that I am capable of biking across the city at 9 o’clock at night? And it would be one thing if it was just Yangling [mom] nagging me, but it’s WuXia too, which makes me want to chew off my arms and throw them at her sometimes. Really I’m over it, but maybe Alison is right, when they are judging/criticizing me, I will compliment their drapes? We will see how that goes over.

Adventures in Mushrooms

2005-04-09T05:46:00.000-04:00

My new favorite restaurant is at the bottom of a major building/mall 7 min from my house. It is hot pot, and you sit at a counter, kind of dinner style, and you have your own hotpot. It’s just spicy seasoned boiling water, you cook everything in there [I’ll give the full description for those of you that don’t know]. Then I order tofu slices, lotus root, spinach, and lettuce which I eat raw, and dip everything in a sauce called ‘ma jiang’ which is like sesame/ peanut butter-y. So yummy. I would have a ma jiang IV if I could. For some reason the meat isn’t doing it for me. So then I try to sample different kinds of mushrooms, because they have so many that we don’t have in the country of Dubya. Last time I ate with Raleigh we tried “old person head” mushroom and this time Alison and I ate ‘monkey head’. I don’t recommend the monkey bit, can’t do the consistency. Ha! Nutritious and delicious. I’m losing the craving for Westerns food [I didn’t know I was going to be able to do this!] and it is SO nice to feel SO good after I eat, everything I eat here makes my body feel GREAT. As some of you may know [Linds, Son, thanks for your patience with my issues] I have some trouble with the typical American fare… anyway, I’m loving it. If I never use my kitchen once I’ll be ok with it. It’s VERY tiny, only two burners, that’s the only thing to cook on.

THE PARTY WAS FABULOUS-O. highlights include: despite bucketing rain, and like any other city there are no cabs, even at 10 pm, when it is raining, still many many people showed up. Probably 30 altogether. Some attendees: Wu Xia, after saying that she definitely could not come, nor could her man who has an English test on Sunday, stayed for a while, being cute and chatting in the corner, LBX downing whatever alcohol was around, and Wu Xia, well I tried to get her drink, at one point I had her double fisting Bailey’s in one hand and red wine in the other! Ha! They were very cute. Glad she got to meet some of my friends. My new Euro friends- Anna from Italy, Bea from Switzerland, who only speaks 5 languages. Old roommates April, boyfriend “Da” [meaning big], Bri, Alison, Jeremy. A handful of Chinese friends of both Summer and me. Then there was the lesbian constituency. Hysterical! Hannah, new friend from Decatur [ATL BABY! WHAT UP!] brought her ever growing collection of young cute Chinese lez with fabulous English and an penchant for Bailey’s. Love ‘em. Then there are the Euro lez, most seem to be Italian and let me tell you they are LOUD and HYSTERICAL. So need to hang out with them more. I like that my party ends up being 50% straight and 50% downright queer. Wu Xia of course had No idea. So it was a bomb party, the apt was just big enough, lots of beer and wine was gifted so no one went home parched, and the neighbors were actually pretty chill. One neighbor came upstairs to ask us to turn down the music, I was in my room chatting with some folks at the time, so Summer talked to her, and kindly gave me the finger as I looked on while the neighbor was bitching and moaning. Love the American-isms Summer has picked up! She’s great. It’s nice to chill with a non-traditional Chinese girl, I think she is the first Chinese I actually feel a close connection to. So, we kicked everyone out at about 1 [maybe?] and went to a club to ‘get down’ as they call it… A good time was had by all. This morning my apt smelled like a frat house, delicious. Tried to get folks not to smoke in my house but that was Far from actually being a reality. Ah, this is Not the US!

Just ran into my neighbor while on my way to the internet café, we chatted for a bit. She lives right below me and was telling me that her husband has a heart illness, but didn’t seem particularly sad about it [not surprisingly the Chinese def do Not where their heart on their sleeve!]. She has a 26 year old daughter who still lives with them [of course] and who supposedly ‘speaks’ English [speak and study are very different, but her mother thinks she can speak it] and I am dieing to hang out with. Love having neighbors, my own little neighborhood. Everyone loved my house last night, it is very homey. I’ll take pictures, possibly even today, since I cleaned, and post them soon.

Question: are y’all that I haven’t heard from enjoying my blog? Are you even reading it? I know there are the addicts- folks, Linds, Hil, The Berg, anyone else read it religiously? Or do you check it occasionally and see I have written way too much for you to be bothered to read so you scan it? Is anyone getting offended or annoyed? Crying? Laughing? Overwhelmed with joy at my magical way with words? Give me your thoughts/ comments, would love to hear. Apologies for being so out of touch email-wise, its been a crazy week but I should be answering all emails next week as the ol’ boss is going to Warsaw for a week on Monday.

Some Ani brilliance for y’all:

so we're led by denial like lambs to the slaughter

serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water

and the old farm road's a four-lane that leads to the mall

and our dreams are all guillotines waiting to fall

i'm wondering what it will take for my country to rise, first we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes or nature succumbs to one last dumb decision and america the beautiful is just one big subdivision

A day with Pat Wynne

2005-04-08T04:48:00.000-04:00

Just wrote a ton, lost a bunch of it in an internet SNAFU. I'll re-write maybe tommorow but the gist of it is:
had a blast showing Pat Wynne my fav city.
party is tonight, hope we all can cram into my tiny apt.
yeah, that's pretty much it. The time now is... beer:thirty. Time to leave work.

Rainbow Country

I am currently eating Paella.

2005-04-05T04:38:00.000-04:00

Yes, as in the Spanish dish. Went out to the bars last night and one of the girls I met up with did not want her leftovers [I did not eat at the expensive tapas restaurant but met them after] so I took them. It’s not very good. When my standard for European fare is The Med in Boulder, most Chinese chefs pale in comparison… and really Chinese food does my body so much better. No dairy, no wheat, no whatever else it is that I don’t do well with in Western food… but I could not pass it up if it’s free. The shrimp are unpeeled and the rice is dry.

Sat next to the cutest baby on the bus, his mother identified that we were both the year of the monkey. As older women get on the bus they wave and smile at the baby and the mother says grandma is looking at you! Say hi to grandma! It is very cute that the Chinese call total strangers grandma or auntie just based on their age. Too cute.

My job is… coming along. The news journal that I am compiling is kind of taking shape, now I am wondering how we will use all these other company’s articles without plagiarizing and being illegal, and illegal according to whom? Discussions with my boss about this are slow but it is coming together so I am sticking with it. And he is sooo nice to me- I asked him if I could take Thursday off to go sightseeing with an old friend of my mom’s, Pat Wynne, who is in town on business, and he said, sure, do you want to take the company driver? Such a nice guy. Last night I went with the driver to a department store to buy house stuff, when a house comes furnished yes it comes with a bed but no you cannot sleep directly on the mattress. You must first purchase a mattress pad, so I threw down $50 [a lot in this country!] for my Japanese super comf mattress pad. So far the only things I have bought in this country are for my bed! Seems that is the only thing I really need, house-wise.

Life is good here, I like the pace. I like the city- ness about it. In the US I seem to spend so much time by myself in my car. Here I pack my bag with my discman, journal, book, and head out, walking, bus, subway, out with the people. Taking the time to write Lindsay a letter while enjoying coffee at McDonald’s. Walking 20 minutes to the bar street, drink a beer along the way. Chatting with folks on the subway; while waiting for the light to change on my bike. It is working well with me. I also enjoy the people [meaning foreigners] I am meeting here, everyone who lives here are China fanatics like me, speak the language, they dig the scene. Smart folks. So we get along.

Ok I need to tear into this shrimp.

A note on the sms.com thing

2005-04-04T02:32:00.000-04:00

For those of you that received an email ["Guess what? You now have 1 friend that have invited you to their mobile network!"] from some sms company wanting you to sign up, I apoligize. Someone invited me and when I signed up they somehow got hold of my whole address book and spammed all of y'all.
SMS is text messaging, like writing short messages using cell phones, and the service does not even work in China. Wish it did.
Please delete any incoming requests to sign up!
Sorry!

I ate pig's kidney last night.

2005-04-04T01:45:00.000-04:00

Turns out it was gross, but at least I tried it. LBX [Wu Xia boyfriend] likes delicacies, I call them strange meat but Wu says that its just more expensive, not weird. They were essential for my move yesterday. I have since acquired four chairs that are hands, you sit in the palm and rest on the fingers, in a rainbow [Queer power!] of colors, they spice up the apartment. Will take photos soon so I can post them on snapfish. The Wu Coalition helped me move, he has the minivan you know, and clean the new place, and were not too overbearing fortunately. My new place is awesome, although it has been a long time since I spent the first time in a new place by myself [Summer did not get her moving together until today]. My bed was excessively hard, and I left the windows open, so it was a cold hard night for me, and I found myself wide awake between the hours of 3 am and 7 am! Well at least I got a lot thinking done. About what I am not sure. Things I am working on in China. I am very busy here. I have decided [among other things] that I need to refocus all my energy into working, working hard at the job I currently have, and at furthering my job search. Git -r- done. If anyone sees any roundtuits they can send my way, I'd sure 'preciate it. My sickness seems to have finally left, it was never a full blown anything, but everyday I had a new symptom. Like my body was immunizing itself to all China sickness in one bout.

During this move I have noticed a problem that plagues china throughout: lack of standards. My bed sheet fit on my last bed, but now my new bed is just a bit too long. The landlords leaves all kind of crazy stuff in our apartment, from old soap and combs to a sewing machine table [the one where the machine hides in the table] that they refuse to take out. Very different from the US where you move in and you don’t get anything. Summer was complaining that the landlord is making us put the phone in our name, saying she did not trust us and she was worried we might be calling the US or Shandong province and not pay the bill. In the US you obviously put the phone in your name and pay whatever the hook up few is without hesitation. So it is interesting to see that all these points need to be renegotiated, there is not a standard practice for anything it seems. Having a Chinese roommate it ESSENTIAL, I don’t know how I would do all this without Summer! This Friday we are having a housewarming party, hopefully it won't get too out of hand…

I read this in the news today: “400 American civilians who call themselves "Minutemen" will guard the border between the US and Mexico. The group is composed of mostly retired men who have formed an all-volunteer civilian border patrol. For the next 30 days, they will rotate shifts around the clock to keep an eye on the Arizona-Mexico border. They're looking for illegal immigrants and smugglers who cross through a porous stretch of sun-baked desert in southeast Arizona. "I think it's a very high priority after 9/11," Inbody said. "There are hundreds of 'illegals' over that border just waiting to cross," he added.” From ABC news. Does this bother anyone else? Weren’t the 9/11 terrorists Saudis? Are Mexicans really a potential terrorist threat? Is it their ability to pick strawberries 12 hours a day for below minimum wage really threatening national security?

I went out with some friends Saturday night to a bar selected because it serves the cheapest beer in SanLiTun [$1.25 for a bottle of TsingDao] and ran into someone I briefly went to high school with here. He was a freshmen when I was a junior and we briefly hung out and played roller hockey in the parking garage of his diplomatic compound [Tai Yuan]. It was funny to see him, we briefly reminisced about high school life, and he recounted why he moved back to Beijing: he studied Chinese in college and didn’t feel too useful in the US. He feels he doesn’t know anything but Beijing. Also his family still lives here, turns out his father is a diplomat in the department of giving government grants, Fulbright’s to be exact, which my friend Alison here helped coordinate. Such a small world here in Beijing.

To close, another quote from The Dork of Cork:
"It is that greatest of mysteries: falling in love. Falling. An accurate word, suggesting as it does something that occurs independently of the will. The irresistible pull of gravity. A man falls from the roof of a building; he cannot by willing it impede his progress toward the ground. A man falls in love; he cannot check his descent.”

Job interview. "Tell me about your work experience...

2005-04-01T04:37:00.000-05:00

IN CHINESE!!!" Are you ca-ca-ca-ca-crazy? Huh-what? Ok, so I had an interview with the level company, met with the woman who just moments before the interview started informed me that I should try to speak in Chinese for the company CEO that would be down shortly to interview me. It really brings a whole new meaning to an interview, when it is suddenly in another languageâ€¦ I mean, I can chat with the best of the Beijing cab drivers, but I have never really thought of how to describe how the operations part of my job at the remanufactured inkjet marketing online company specifically was established and how policies were set... Love that preparation. The job seemed ok, sales mostly, getting people to be the company's clients by showing off my big big nose and white skin and poor poor Chinese. [the Chinese like to repeat words to add emphasis] Would consider taking the job despite by deep hatred for sales were it not for the fact that this job is not even in Scarsdale, it's in Schenectady, just with lots more traffic in between. I just cannot justify moving to the east side of town, in the actual city, to live on the far far far west side of town. I mean I am talking like my neighbor is the Summer Palace. So it is not a good enough job [no matter what they pay, not like I am having trouble affording my cheapest moment in life ever] to spend most of my day schlepping out there. But I am glad went, but will stay at my cush researching for no real use job until something better [or at least more geographically desirable] comes along.

To end, some lyrics from the Police that I have been pondering:
Do I have to tell the story
Of a thousand rainy days since we first met
It's a big enough umbrella
But it's always me that ends up getting wet

Changing homes, possibly jobs

2005-03-31T06:44:00.000-05:00

This weekend is the big move: out of the palatial Hakim residence to my smaller but more desirably located apartment. That happens Sunday. Through very half-assed job searching I came across a company called “level” [http://www.leveldisplay.com/ from their website: Level is a Chinese owned and operated company specializing in design, fabrication and coordination of exhibition & marketing events in China since 1995]
that wants to interview me, so I thought, why not. Hakim says it is worth a trip out there, and out there it is, in Haidian, the northwest corner of the city [and I’m in the northeast]. Like if I lived in Manhattan this job would be in Scarsdale. [or something]. So I’ll go check it out and see if it’s worth the schlep out there, at least for a bit, anything different from what I’m doing now would be great.
Been a bit sick the past couple days, a strange sickness that only really manifested itself yesterday as ‘la duzi’ literally spicy tummy, the same spicy as the restaurant [spicy mother in law]. Only one day, it wasn’t too bad, but it did drive me back to Carrefour to search for simple American fare such as eggs [not kept in the refrigerator section but next to the crackers and candy] and bread [white is the only choice] and peanut butter and Campbell’s imported from Australia soup, which cost half as much as my new pillow [the pillow was $5, so the soup was pretty much ridiculously priced comparatively]. Nothing like some hydrogenated oils and MSG to get that tum back on track! I am actually feeling better tonight, headed to a networking event this evening.
I joined the local LGBTQA [A is for alliance] group, mostly because the only lesbians I know started the group, and one Chinese boy wrote to a member of the group:
> There is just one thing that I wanna say: I am not gay. I am quite straight. Just 2 co- founders are my best friends. I wanna support those 2 lesbians. They are cute.
> By the way, are you homosexual or straight?
> Chen

So cute! I love how genuine those Chinese are about those questions. Ha! Ok, gotta go finish my soup and get out of this house, the only contact I’ve had in a couple days is the woman standing SO CLOSE behind me at Carrefour. Why does she need to stand so close? Does she notice how generously I give the man in front of me his personal space? Is there a reason you need to be constantly touching my backpack and my elbow? Would you like it in your face? OK, put your aggression away. It’s just shopping in China.

Q. Do the six mid- construction buildings immediately surrounding your fancy apt disrupt your sleep?

2005-03-29T05:04:00.000-05:00

A. Yes. The construction workers are building at all hours of the day, so if it's a Sunday afternoon nap, there is the noise of construction. If I get home at 2 am, there is the dull hum of construction. Late night it looks like fire works, no, it's construction. Fun for me.

FORTUNATLY, I HAVE FOUND A DOMICLE IN WHICH TO LIVE. Yes, an apartment just for me. And Summer. We move in this weekend. I will be paying about $146 per month, which is pretty on par for my salary. The place comes furnished, complete with a TV and a stereo, and also a giant [think covering the entire wall, five feet by 4 feet] painting of a fake waterfall. My bedroom is covered in furniture you might see at an old folks' home; light fake wood fills the whole room. I have an enclosed balcony, a perfect little place for my bike. The bathroom and kitchen are fairly new and all rooms have a lot of light. The apartment is east- west facing and a third floor walk up. It is in the Dong Zhi Men neighborhood, five minute walk to the subway, 15 minute walk to the San Li Tun bar street, and for those of you that really know the city, directly across from the foreigner compound "East Lake Villa". It is enclosed by buildings, and the gate entrance has a sign that reads: "Home of Tycoons." My apartment buildings is not where the tycoons live, but I think there is some fancy schmancy place being built next door. It is a cute neighborhood complete with plenty of old folks walking their many dogs. The woman who showed us the place came with her mini poodle, who recently had his toes painted pink. So, I really am excited to have my own place, Summer and I are very excited to decorate and make it our own.

I tried to wash my clothes a few days ago at the Hakim residence. I put the clothes and soap in, turned on the machine and the water, and no water came. The clothes went round and round, but still no water. I asked Hakim and he said that neither he nor his Chinese wife knew how the machine worked, so I would have to wait for the maid to return on Tuesday to get them cleaned. On top of that, the washing machine door locked so hand washing my clothes was not an option. Ha!

Waiting for the subway. A loud cell phone ring goes off and fills the whole station, it is the familiar "Jingle Bells." He lets it ring for a while before answering it. Cell phone courtesy is not a theory that has hit the mainland yet. I step onto the subway car, not so crowded for 11 pm on a Sunday night, but still every seat is taken apart from the ones surrounding a fresh pile of vomit. Everyone stares at it and then looks at each other as if to agree how disgusting it is. This country is full of pukers, you see them leaning into trash cans, over the railing onto grass, out the bus window into shoddy plastic bags, often. Hope y'all aren't eating while reading this. You know China is not always a delicious place.

On another note, last night I ate about five pounds or kilos or whatever of delicious crab, a giant bowl of crab parts arrived at our table sitting in oil and plastic gloves were passed around for easy access. Soon everything was covered in crab parts, oil, and the smell has yet to leave my hands. At one point in the chaos of eating I bit down on something that caused my tongue and mouth to go numb, literally like a trip to the dentist. I was a little worried I would start chewing on myself instead of the crab but a couple mouthfuls of beer, tea, and green beans brought feeling back. We ate at a restaurant called La Popo, literally Spicy Mother-in-law [husband's mother, no doubt not a popular person for who calls her mother-in-law!]

Side note, sorry about the double publishing of some blogs. Sometimes I worry it did not go through, but I'll stop. Can't delete 'em from China neither.

I am enjoying a book that I eyed on my mother's shelf for many years, called The Dork of Cork, dork meaning dwarf, Cork being the town in Ireland. A thick and detailed book, which I am learning is my style. I'll leave you with a quote from it, about the storage of memory:
"The image has been carefully processed, folded, and stored away, laid up like a special garment, a baptismal gown or a wedding dress, in tissue paper, dusted with moth flakes, tucked far back in the darkest closets of the brain. I unfold the memory. It is as fresh and bright as yesterday."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LINDSAY!!!

2005-03-26T12:59:00.000-05:00

It took me seven times to figure out how to use the phone card I just purchased to call my girlfriend on her birthday. I could not understand the recorded voice's English, I finally called back and heard the woman in Chinese and I could get through! No, my Chinese isn't that good... I've decided my Chinese is fairly bad, I can understand the conversation if I am in control, but not if they take over...

Happy Birthday Woman, I love you!

I wore a seatbelt today

2005-03-26T12:49:00.000-05:00

First time since I been here. Now before you go getting all bent out of shape, the only opportunity to wear a seat belt is in cabs, and then only when you are banished to the front seat, forced to talk to the cab driver about the traffic of Beijing and how the US is a “good country”, despite the fact that the only real contact he may have had with the US is his son’s infatuation with the NBA. It was nice to have a glimpse of the life of safety in the US- we are safe, over safe, yet accidents still happen there and year. When I bike to work I am the ONLY person wearing a helmet. Yet everyone bikes. 85, sure, with ol’ granny nugget in tow. 11, she can ride a bike too. My favorite is the under 4 years that are on the back of their mom’s bike on the ‘rat trap’ just holding on. Sometimes they have special little people handles; sometimes he’s just free riding it. Crazy little guys.

I also made breakfast, twice now, with bacon, so-called “American Style” but really just ham with fat attached. Made a sandwich out of it today, bread was bad so I may stick with the Chineeeesse food, it is always yum.

Missing y’all, ‘preciate those of you that send me emails with notes like “P.S. I'm still a religious reader of your hilarious blog. Keep it up…” –Hillie O’B, she’s a TOTAL lamb.

Just got back from a house party where I actually knew a fair amount of people, my scene I guess. Mostly americanos, honky’s, been here for a bit [not Lao Beijing like me though] [Lao means old, as in lao shi teacher or Lao Wu as Wu Xia calls Xiao Wu, indicating he is no longer Xiao – meaning small- cuz he’s old, even though he doesn’t show it- he passes on his surname, Wu to his daughter] [sorry for that total tangent but I want to make sure this is crystal to those of y’all who hadn’t had the Chyna experience yet] so they are a cool crowd. Not as worldly as I may like, turns out I can hang out with the honky Dubya haters in Denver, but a cool group of kids. Even though 80% of the party was Lao wai [literally old outside, meaning foreigners], the toilet seat remained up for the entire party, so funny, but no one was wearing their cell phone around their neck [many Chinese find this is a convenient and fashionable way to be a slave to your cellie]. My favorite is when people get all snooty about having lived in Beijing for so long, over a year, oh my gosh, the city this… and I’m like really… ha funny funny, Lao Beijing.

Tomorrow apt hunting with Summer, hope for the best.

Happy Birthday Lindsay. Love from Beijing to Boulder Woman!

I just made $75 in 3 and a half hours!

2005-03-25T04:14:00.000-05:00

And it was only slightly illegal. A Chinese music teacher wanted me to help him transcribe parts of the Broadway show Chicago, one that he video taped while watching the performance in Beijing. His students are doing a rendition of the show and he wanted to know what the dialogue was between the songs. So I listened, typed, and a short time later I had made a LOT more than I do at my job now! So I have to look for more of those. Ah, the gift of being a native English speaker!

Life has slowed down I think. I am comfortably living at Hakim’s palatial residence while my new roommate Summer looks for apartments for us to check out. I have decided that I do in fact need to leave my job, but think it is best to ask to work part time so I still have something going on and I am not totally in the doldrums of unemployment. The job search starts tomorrow [yes Saturday].

What do you do for a living Mr. Fletch?
I’m a Shepard.
I would like to give a shot out to my favorite movie line quoter, yes Mr. Edward Thomas, isn’t he a cutie. For those of you on friendster I highly recommend checking out his photo, it is one of his best. Edward writes: >I just "posted" a "comment" on your "blog" which may get "censored" by the Chinese "authorities" and cause you to go to "prison" for the majority of your "child- bearing years".< And: >Actually I check it like 4 times a day, and curse you audibly when nothing new has been added.”

Two comments on this, you don’t need to worry about the “authoritie”seeing your “comments” because they cannot see them, I cannot see them, no one in China can see my blog, so to repeat again IF YOU LEAVE COMMENTS ONLY Y’ALL IN THE US CAN READ THEM. Comprende? You will have to email me [or through friendster] if you want me to hear your thoughts.

Additionally, please feel free to curse me when I don’t add something, but sometimes there is not a lot of action going on in this city. Sometimes it is just life. Ok, ok I do have a few stories that may spark your interest.
In the underpass from the Dongzhimen subway to get across the street- there are many people selling puppies in little duffel bags, only $4 per pup. Yes I almost bought one before I realized I would have to open quite a large dog park to rescue all this these doggies. What a life they must have three months old and getting treated the same way as the woman who sells combs treats her products, I try not think to about it.

The Chinese government has officially turned the heat off. This means heat is off in all government buildings, crappy old housing, and new fancy housing where tenants like Hakim are paying upwards of $1200 for his apartment [that is a lot of money here, you New Yorkers!] So, Hakim, like many other Chinese, still wears his long underwear [I refuse to put mine back on]. The weather is nice, earlier this week it was gua feng which means REALLY windy, like so windy you can not walk into the wind, and walking away from the wind really means running because it pushes you. So fun. Well at least I saw that I apparently have a mountain view [on some days].
Last night I arranged to have dinner with two girls that I met online through the Beijing honky classifieds, I invited my friend, Raleigh, and they invited some of their friends and the next thing we knew there were 10 of us all at dinner. All of them except Raleigh and me were from Europe, so there was a lot of Italian being spoken, lots of accents, but fortunately most of the convo was in English. Mostly grad students, all of them, so no real great job connections, but I always enjoy an international type friend to break through my Americano club. So hopefully we will get together again, in a smaller number, those giant tables make it hard to really talk to someone [especially with really loud Italian girls right next to you].

The folks have returned from their mega- venture to India, country of contrasts and ‘Dehli Belly. I will not relay the entire story but take Montezum’s revenge + my mother + long airplane flights, you know the outcome [bad]. Aside from that they said the trip was “good” [feel free to ask Patty for further comment]. In any case it is nice to have them home so I can take to them on the phone occasionally.

For those of you that know my girlfriend, Ms. Lindsay E. Shaw, she is turning 27 this Saturday, should you want to send her a birthday greeting. Happy birthday Linds! Miss you.

I sleep diagonal in my bed

2005-03-20T05:33:00.000-05:00

Why? Because I can. Because I'm sleeping in giant bed in my own room with a door that closes and NO CATS. It's been amazing, so far, the new digs. I go around showing off my very own key to anyone who will listen. Yesterday I purchased some essentials: speakers for my discman ($4), a hair dryer ($3), and tape to hang photos of my loved ones [Lindsay, sib's, my precious VW and Mitchell, among others]. Waking up and seeing everyone up there makes my day. The apartment is called 'Phoenix City' and is located on the NW corner of where the NE 3rd ring road meets the airport expressway- directly across from Carrefour, their version of Walmart.

Introduce "The Girls from Shandong," the coastal province where Qingdao is located, and where Hakim's wife, Rose, is from. Remember the woman who is the general manager of the excutive fitness club? Rose's best friend. Last night I met Summer, who Hakim introduced me to, saying she was looking for a roomate. Turns out she is my age, very 'ku' [cool] modern, speaks fabulous English and just may be batting for my team. We talked, we're having dinner tommorow night to start our cheap but conveniently located apartment search! I am very excited to have found a cool Chinese roomate. Prrrfect.

I finally had dinner with Xue Ji Xiu, or "Joocy Jew" as my father so correctly pronounces it. [I'll call her XJX to make everyone's life easier]. She's the executive major marketing head honcho for IBM China, and she just got through being auditing by the government, which sounded about as much fun as doing a triathalon with no legs, but for three months instead of a few hours. She said she hasn't had a weekend in months and was working 16 hour days. Due to her hard work IBM passed the audit! Way to go, XJX. She's quite a talker, which left me time to enjoy some high class healthy Sichuan food ["you're eating with a middle age woman" she said]. She's smarter than most, that XJX. Her conversation is filled with "cheng yu's" which are traditional sayings typically used by the especially scholarly. One was describing her being low maintenance, "su mian chao tian," literally translated as 'pure face facing the sky'.

We decided due to our busy schedules we would do a monthly checkup. It was nice to hear someone speak of my Ol' Man with such incredible respect. Like he's some IBM G-d, which of course he is. A legend, that J. David. He's got morals higher than the Petronas Towers. Hopefully he passed some on to me!

The Great Hakim has a Phatty* Apartment, turns out

2005-03-17T22:33:00.000-05:00

Went to dinner with boss James and Hakim the other night, he was back in town from Qingdao [yes where the beer Tsing Tao or however they spell it comes from] and I was notified moments after procuring other dinner plans that I Should with a capital S come to dinner with Hakim. C’est la vie here. We went to a delicious Yunnan restaurant [southern province that borders Vietnam/ Burma/ Laos] the food was very different- I had something very close to a Latke and dare I say a non- mayonnaise salad. At the dinner were a number of Hakim’s friends, including some healthcare industry guys, one of which was clearly from China but had spent considerable time in the US and had a US passport [he informed us] and therefore said he was from “The US”. Hmm. I guess that’s kind of the same way I say I am a Beijing ren [person].
I sat next to a young man named Ben who went to Qing Hua [their version of a tougher Harvard] and during a business planning workshop [while still in school] he created a software company and got people to invest in him and now at the age of 29 he is the CEO of 100 employees and is the #1 company or something like that in whatever software specialty he does. Bright guy. В
Additionally, Hakim decided I should move into his Beijing apartment, as he has the lease until April 15th and will be in Qingdao with his fiancee. I went to see the place, turns out it is a lap of luxury, and I am guaranteed to be able to sleep in to my required 9 am rising hour. This morning my roommate was up before the cats at 6.15. Shoot me in the eye. So I may move in this weekend.
Boss ain’t here today, he’s at a conference in Kunming [capital of Yunnan, but this is not a geography lesson] which gives my fellow co-workers a chance to slack off. One girl is out cold napping on her desk. I think the rest of them are packed into the lunchroom watching TV. Working in a Chinese company does give me some insight into how China works and keeps from working. My coworker Wang Wei, from Inner-Mongolia, youngest of 10 brothers and sisters [he’s over 30 so he was born before the one child policy was put into effect], occasionally uses our nice work bathroom for a quick shower [in the sink] and frequently wipes his hands on the curtains to dry them off. Yum-my.
For those of you interested on reading funny China stories, my friend Alison [who is here still] wrote this a while back about her experience in Harbin [northern most city in China] and it’s hysterical. At least I was laughing out loud at the office [drawing the attention of Wang Wei, and when I tried to explain why it was so funny he didn’t really get it.] The article is here:
http://www.theglimpse.com/newsite/viewarticle2.asp?articleid=1
It is kind of long, but if you skip to part II, about fatness in China, you will get into and read the whole thing. Part III is about food poisoning, and part IV about conversation in the public toilets. A good read.

*Vocab for those not in my generation: Phatty, as in phat, as in cool, ausome, rad.

Burger Madness

2005-03-15T05:09:00.000-05:00

Last night I was treated to my first Western meal, at the good olвЂ™ Outback Steakhouse, which I have never been to anywhere. We arrived, the waiter promptly took our beer and burger order, and about 15 minutes later our beer had still not arrived, and we had to chase down our waiter. He was no where to be found, the burgers arrived, the order was almost correct except the bacon missing from my burger, and then our friendly waiter finally appeared with our beers. The cost of this meal? My 32 ounce draft Budweiser was US$4.65 and the burger was US$7. Amazing that they can charge US prices and still have not even Chinese service, just bad service.
I went out with a man named Winter Wright, an American living in China since when I first got here [1996] who I met also through Jon Hakim. He has his own copywriting business, www.winterwright.com, which seems like something I would really like to do, but he was not about to hire me. He works for himself by himself in his house so maybe it would not be perfect. He thought my 2004 healthcare year in review project was a good one, and would definitely look good on my resume, so I appreciated that support.
On another note, I stopped by the nearby to my work breakfast cart, aptly named Beijing Breakfast, and purchased a beverage [I was looking for my hot soy milk but this place was not a traditional breakfast place] so I purchased a orange and pineapple drink called Have Fun, and I am actually having fun drinking it, it is pretty yum. Also available for consumption was some type of meat sandwich with the English words on it Wart Coil. I almost bought it just to save the wrapper, but I knew I would try to eat what was inside, and yesterday I had a scary experience when I bought something that they called an egg, but upon further investigation there was no yolk and the consistency was scary. That set back my snack eating adventurous spirit!

Eating Cake with Chopsticks

2005-03-14T05:44:00.000-05:00

The birthday celebrations continued this weekend with a dinner last night with the Wu Family, we all put on our sweatpants [Wu wears sweatpants cuz his belly won’t fit in a whole lot else] and headed out to the local restaurant to have dinner. When someone has a “special” dinner in China, you get a separate room to eat in, which is rather creepy because there is no music, nothing to look at, just you and your friends in the small room. The food was good and I got to take some chicken home which I just enjoyed as a late afternoon snack at work. Once we got back to the Wu house, Wu and Yang Ling arrived with a cake! Yeah for my birthday cake! There are photos of the event on snapfish.com, I will email all of you [hopefully everyone] so you can check them out. If you don’t get the email, let me know so I can send the link to you. There are also photos of folks in boulder, Mexico vacation, for your browsing pleasure, on snapfish. I also got a pink bracelet from Wu Xia so I am looking quite stylish.

On Saturday I got off my lazy and increasingly large butt and joined the MOBsters [mountain bikers of Beijing] for their second ride of the season. I met them at 8 am the Agricultural Hall’s parking lot and we put all of our bikes into our bus and headed up to the Ming Tombs, only about an hour from Beijing. There were 9 of us, one woman who was Chinese, the rest were non-American whitey men. The riding was great, but a bit of an ass-kicker for those of us not in shape! [AKA me]. The guys were great, helping me carrying my [very heavy] bike through the boulder fields. We rode up a mountain, down the mountain [very cold]. Up the next mountain, down the mountain [again hands were frozen]. It was a great way to see the countryside, to see the faces of the people up there. As I approached someone on the road their faces had a look of: disgust, fear, scowl, a grimace, but then after I say a friendly “ni hao” their faces light up and they have the biggest smile, their sun wrinkled country faces beamed at me. We stopped and had a snack with two women who were fire wardens in the mountains, which means they basically sit on the side of the road and do really nothing all day, I guess until someone starts smoking in the mountains and they attack! They were super nice, and took our photo. The scene of watching the country bumpkin try to work a digital camera was priceless. My new bike performed well, aside from its heavy-ness, but we all decided it was a good deal for the money. In the end I rode 25 miles!!! And I felt it the next day. And today too. A jump start to my spring work out.

My job has made progress, we had a meeting today and decided that I would research and compile a healthcare review for the year 2004 for China’s OTC market, and then do the same for the beginning of this year, and then send out monthly newsflash emails. Quite a major task, but I think it could be both interesting and feasible. And I am MORE THAN happy to have a goal, something to work towards, here at my little office. Aside from that, the weather is warm, the kitties are cuddly, and the friends plentiful!

Visas and Bikes

2005-03-11T06:49:00.000-05:00

I finally got my new bike! It’s ausome. An American brand, GT, Avalanche 2.0. According to anything I can find online, this bike does not exist or is not made in the USA. Its red all over, very good looking, matches with its rider. I want you all to know that I am riding it very carefully around this town- it’s a crazy town to ride in. But, if 11 year old kids and 85 year old grannies with grandpop in tow can do it, so can I. Today was the first day I rode it to work- only took me 25 minutes. As I cruised pass the bus station I was so happy to know that I would not have to feel the millions of Chinese bodies pressed against mine as we all packed onto the bus. Sometimes on the bus every part of my body is touching someone else’s. My elbow is in someone’s face as I hold onto the handrail, sorry dear, she gracefully moves it from her face.

Unfortunately today was a day the Chinese call ‘gua da feng’ - really big wind. There were times I was riding and not making any forward progress. By the time I got to work much of the cities dirt and dust was stuck to my face. Delicious. Still beats the bus. Tomorrow I will join the MOB [mountain bikers of Beijing] and go to the Ming Tombs [about 1 hour north of Beijing] and ride the mountains there, I can’t wait. Hope my bike holds up.

Today I also dealt with my visa situation. I went this morning and spoke to one woman behind the counter at the Public Security Bureau, I said, I want to extend my visa. What do I need? She directed me to go stand in a long line. I went to the line and spoke with another foreigner who was waiting in line who had a piece of paper called ‘application for visa form’. I went back to the woman, we’ll call her Dumbass for short, and asked, can I have an application form? She gave it to me. I went back to the long line, and noticed that my photo must be affixed to the form. I went back to Dumbass, and asked, can I have some glue to attach my photo? Oh yes, here. Gee thanks. So I say to her, ok, to clarify, I only need my passport, photo, visa form, that is ALL I need to get my visa extension? Yes, just go get in that long line.

Back to the long line, after waiting a long time, I talk to someone who says I must go with my roommate to the police station and get a temporary residence permit first. I wanted to go back to Dumbass and say, do you have any idea what you are doing here? What exactly is your job? Do you think you are helping China? She was text messaging the whole time, which must be a chronic problem with the Chinese and their jobs, the man I bought my bicycle from was telling me to ‘hold one moment’ [in English] while he read and responded to his text message. [For those of you out of the technology loop, you can write your friends messages on your cell phone, the Chinese love it].

This experience is what we refer to as ‘ma fan’. Ma, the character, is a pictograph of hemp fibers drying under a shed. They use this character to mean a variety of other words, including ‘numb’, the ‘ma’ of ‘mah jong’, and my dad’s favorite tofu dish, ‘ma po dofu’ [spicy tofu]. When put together with the character ‘fan’, which is a pictograph of fire in the head, together they mean ‘bother, trouble, inconvenience, pain, &*%$, a feeling experienced by foreigners when trying to get their visa renewed and talking to people who work at the visa place but have no idea what they are talking about… “Suan le!” [‘suan’ is a pictograph of bamboo and an abacus for counting shell money plus ‘le’ indicating past tense, put together to mean ‘forget it’ - or wasn’t the meaning obvious to you…]

Notes from a restaurant

2005-03-11T06:45:00.000-05:00

[I’m at a restaurant, waiting to get my ‘to go’ food, I wrote this in my journal there.]
21 men and one woman at a large table. Only one more table remains in the room, although there is additional seating upstairs. None of them stare at me as I quietly sit and wait for my food. The waitresses’ outfits are long sleeve red shirts with denim overalls. Unusual. “Hey Jude”, the muzak version [no lyrics] is playing. I have come back to this neighborhood restaurant for “nan gua bing” south gourd cake- in essence, pumpkin pie filling type stuff deep fried with purple bean paste in the middle, a little larger than a double stuff oreo. A fritter I guess. The more I use Chinese, the done worser my English gets. 10 little hot cakes for $1.25, a perfect desert.

Occasionally one man will leave his seat and walk down the table and get other men to drink with them; the custom of “gan bei” or finishing the glass is gone, now they sensibly “he yi kou” or ‘drink one mouth’- just a mouthful. Probably best considering it is not yet 6 pm. They all eat a bit, then smoke a lot. I swear Chinese cigarettes smoke faster than ours, maybe that’s why they smoke so many. The woman at the table is asked to ‘gan bei’ but she is drinking water, and doesn’t drink any anyway, she just raises her glass. They are all wearing dark drab clothes and most keep their jackets on even though it is warm in here. They take no notice of me frantically recording their dinner in my journal.

As they all stand up for a toast, their voices get louder and louder. One man’s cell phone rings louder than all the voices- he answers it mid- toast. Cell phone etiquette has not yet hit China. Last week when I was at the ballet, I was seated on the balcony section of the theater, and in between acts I would look down and see half the audience’s cell phones light up, no doubt checking text messages and see whose called. My pumpkin cakes have arrived. Time to leave the 21 men to their dinner/celebration.

Birthday in China

2005-03-10T01:46:00.000-05:00

Birthday in china. My new friends have been exceptional at making my birthday special, I woke up at 12.30 am last night to my friend alison’s birthday text message. Then at 1.30 am my dearest girlfriend called our house- she is still not too clear on the time change! [neither am i]. this am I woke up to the kitty’s playing in my suitcase at 7.30am, as soon as I yelled at them to get out, I heard from downstairs, happy birthday! From roommate bri. I’ve gotten 6 more text messages with happy birthday in various languages, all from my new friends! And no birthday in china isn’t complete without having a nice Chinese man take you out to eat- I went with my boss and four coworkers to a nearby Sichuan restaurant for lunch, he ordered some crazy food that was actually REALLY GOOD and I don’t think I will ever need to eat again. The way these men handle the ordering process is amazing, you must have at least one food from every category: cold dishes, meat, fish, soup, desert, rice, noodles, something weird, juice, beer, tea, it was so yummy. And not cheap, about $50 for six people [that translates as pricey in this country!] it was great, and I had some time to talk to my coworkers [who since my arrival have been reticent] and I think they are warming up to me. And Wang Wei promises not to smoke, or at least to smoke less, in the office. Yeah for me. Yeah for my lungs, really. So 25 has been good so far. My bosses wife, Linda, gave me a birthday present [my only one besides my bike, which was a gift from myself anyway]- a pink wallet, wrapped up in nice paper, in a little red bag, too cute. When Jon Hakim initially introduced me to James, he said that he and his wife were really some of the nicest people. He is really turning out to be right!
Later that night I had dinner with my roommates and their men, then we went to a Women’s Day event at a bar, which was good, my friend Alison did some crazy modern dance, then there was a strange lull of entertainment, then two grrl bands got on stage and did their screaming music type event. It was not the best entertainment-wise, but a good time. A good bday altogether.
Last night I went to the thatsbj.com [English newspaper here] website launching party, it was fun to mingle with my new friends and meet other cool people… Today I am going to get my new bike [yesterday I ran out of time!] so I am super excited about that.
That’s the extent of the bday madness, thanks to everyone for sendig bday wishes, those of you who haven’t, its not too late!

From the Statistics Department

2005-03-10T01:07:00.000-05:00

For all of you amazed by numbers:

Beijing, China's second most populous city, [first is Shanghai] has a population twice that of Los Angeles (7.74 million compared with 3.87 million).
A mere 1.4% of all Chinese live in either Shanghai or Beijing., and just 3.8% of the country's population resides in any of China's 10 most populous cities.
So where do nearly 90% of urban China's residents actually live? In the "Third China" -- a rapidly expanding set of second-tier cities beyond the country's 10 largest, which most non-Chinese, and even some Chinese themselves, have never heard of. Even though it is still predominantly rural, China has 45 cities with populations of 1 million or more within the city proper, each with a population greater than that of the City of Detroit. The United States has only nine such cities.

Wedding bells and the Great Wu, Even Greater

2005-03-07T06:20:00.000-05:00

At Sunday night family dinner at the Wu’s, I had a conversation with Wu Xia about dating and what the word ‘commitment ‘means. Her boyfriend, LBX [Li Bo Xing, but I call him LBX] recently purchased an apartment, which is in the process of being built, and will be done in one year. So I asked Wu Xia, will you move in with him when the apt is finished? She said maybe, if they are still dating. I said, you might as well, you have been dating him for two years. She said two years was not a long time, she knew of people who have dated for eight years and still do not live together or are married. I said those people have a fear of commitment, and we discussed what that means. I said, if LBX leaves right now, you could never see him again, you have no commitment with him. She said, right.
Later that night, Xiao Wu and I were sitting at the dinner table while Wu Xia and LBX were watching TV, and Wu and I were discussing debts to parents, and he said he had loaned Wu Xia 100,000 RMB [about 12 grand US] to help LBX buy this apt. I yelled into the other room, ‘Wu Xia! Guo lai! [come here!] I asked her, you don ‘t call 100,000 RMB a commitment?! She turned rather red and started explaining all these bank loan situations, and how its better to pay more money up front, blah blah blah, I told her, I don’t care about why it makes sense to loan him the money, I am wondering why you didn’t tell me that you have in fact made a commitment to this man! She said she didn’t want me to think badly of her and LBX. I told her that I thought it was great that they were buying a house together, and she should be proud of the commitment she has made, because it means she believes in her relationship, and told Wu that it was great that he supported his daughter that way too. Wu Xia said that it wasn’t a true commitment, like a contract or marriage, because Wu told her that if she wants to break up with LBX she should not worry about the money. I said that I agreed, but still 100,000 RMB is a lot of money! Anyway, this is turning out to be a really long story, but in the end I learned that: 1. Wu is a great guy, even greater, and I think it’s so ausome that he believes in and support his daughter like that. And 2. Wu Xia is probably going to marry this guy!!!! He’d a cool guy, so I am excited for her. Whoa, major.
Author’s note: do not fear that folks in China will be accessing my blog and reading all my insights into their lives, you cannot view my blog page in this country!
Sorry to be overblogging, I know it's alot to read but as my work is still rather 'mellow' I don't have a whole more to do than blog!

Mao Zedong, a forever warm memory

2005-03-07T06:10:00.000-05:00

The following are comments on the Xinhua news site [same one the racism article came from]. The full comments can be viewed at:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2003-12/18/content_1072232.htm

Iamcrazy: Whoever enables the Chinese people to have enough to eat, people will remember him.
reincarnate: Why do I have deep feelings for Mao Zedong? First, he was a Chinese; Second, he was a patriotic; Third, he worked in the interests of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people; and Fourth, he did not seek gains for himself or for his family. That is why Mao always lives in my heart.
Fuyu: Why do we commemorate Mao Zedong? Because he was the backbone of the Chinese people
I submitted these comments/questions to Xinhua News:
I am an American living in Beijing and was just reading some comments on Mao in the Voice of Netizens. If a reader wished to comment on the tragedies that occurred in this country under Mao's rule, would you publish it? Do Chinese people know about the extent of the tragedies that Mao incited? Such as the amount of people who died as a result of lack of food during the 1950s, or the amount of people that were persecuted and murdered during the Cultural Revolution. There are still so many people who remember the Cultural Revolution as they lived through it, and they do not remember it as a happy time. How then are readers still regarding Mao as a warm memory? When will you as a country own up to your real history? When will Mao become a criminal instead of national hero?

China on our human rights abuses

2005-03-05T22:52:00.000-05:00

You know how we say the Chinese are filled with human rights abuses? Well they think the same of us, aparently as I found in this Xinhua news article [Xinhua is the equivalent of the AP in China]. I can't even give highlights of the article, you'll really have to read it yourself. They really did a great job piecing bits together to create a rather dismal picture. Below is the article, enjoy. [and don't hate the Chinese for it!]

Racial discrimination deeply rooted in US: China's report
www.chinaview.cn 2005-03-03 13:28:40
BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhuanet) -- Racial discrimination has been deeply rooted in the United States, permeating into every aspects of society, said the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2004 released by the Information Office of the State Council of China Thursday.
According to the record, the colored people are generally poor,with living condition much worse than the white. According to a report of The Guardian of Britain on Oct. 9, 2004, the average netassets of a white family is 88,000 US dollars in 2002, 11 times of a family of Latin American ancestry, or nearly 15 times of a family of African ancestry.
Statistics show that the number of black people living in poverty is three times that of the white. The average life expectancy of the black is six years shorter than the white.
People of minority ethnic groups are biased against in employment and occupation, the record said. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of the United States received 29,000 complaints in 2003 of racial bias in the workplace. Statistics provided by the United States Department of Labor also suggest that by November 2004, the unemployment rate for black and white people is 10.8 percent and 4.7 percent respectively.
Teenagers from at least 38 countries work like slaves (EFE San Francisco, Sept. 26, 2004). Out of 45 million people who are unable to afford Medicare in the United States, 7 million are African-Americans, accounting for about one fifth of the total African-Americans in the States. The proportion is 77 percent higher than that for the white people. The Declaration of Independence said all men are created equal, so the gap between black and white people is simply an insult to the founding essenceof the United States, according to the US News and World Report onMarch 29, 2004.
The record said that apartheid runs rampant at schools of the United States. One in eight southern black students attends a school that is 99 percent black. About a third attend schools thatare at least 90 percent minority. In the Northeast, by contrast, more than half of blacks attend such schools, the Washington Post reported on May 17, 2004.
According to the record, racism recurs on campus of American universities. Fascist slogans and posters promoting superiority ofwhite people, along with threats by weapon or words were found on college campuses including University of California at Berkeley. Protests were sparked off when Santa Rosa Junior College in California published anti-Semitism opinions in a column article inits campus newspaper and the chat room of its website were dominated by white-superior surfers. At Dartmouth College, white girl students auctioned off black slaves in fund-raising activities. At the University of Southern Mississippi, hordes of white students assaulted four black students, chanting racist slogans after a football match was over. At Olivet College of Michigan State, where there are only 55 black students, 51 of the black students quitted school after racial cases of violence or harassment (see The China Press, a Chinese language newspaper published in New York, on April 17, 2004).
The record showed that racial prejudice has made social conflicts to become acute, causing a rise in hate crimes. Racial prejudice, most often directed at black people, was behind more than half of the nation's 7,489 reported hate crime incidents in 2003, the FBI said on Nov. 22 2004. Race bias was behind 3,844 of the total cases in 2003, FBI claimed after having made statistics of hate crimes handled by 16 percent of the law-enforcement organizations in the States. Reports of hate crimes motivated by anti-black bias totaled 2,548 in 2003, accounting for 51.4 percentof the total, more than double the total hate crimes against all other racial groups. There were 3,150 black victims in these reports, according to the annual FBI figures. And with regard to the attribute of race, among the 6,934 reported offenders, 62.3 percent were white.
In a related development, because of the "lingering atmosphere of fear" stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks and fallout from the Iraq War, there were 1,019 anti-Muslim incidents in the United States in 2003, representing a 69 percent increase. There were 221incidents in 2003 of anti-muslim bias in California, tripled a year ago, Los Angeles Times reported on May 3.
Racial prejudice is ubiquitous in judicial fields, the record said. The proportion for persons of colored races being sentenced or being imprisoned is notably higher than whites. In accordance with a report published in Nov. 2004 by the US Department of Justice, colored races accounted for over 70 percent of inmates inthe United States.
By the end of 2003, out of 1.4 million prisoners who are serving jail terms above one year at the federal or state prisons,44 percent were blacks. Blacks who are arrested are 3 times more likely to be imprisoned than whites who are arrested. White felonsare more likely to get probation than blacks. (see the State BlackAmerica 2004, issued by National Urban League on March 24, 2004).
The record said after the Sept. 11 incident, the United States openly restricts the rights of citizens under the cloak of homeland security, and uses diverse means including wire tapping of phone conversations and secret investigations, checks on all secret files, and monitoring transfers of fund and cash flows to supervise activities of its citizens, in which, people of ethnic minority groups, foreigners and immigrants become main victims.
Statistics show that after the Sept. 11 attacks, 32 million were investigated out of racial prejudice concern throughout the United States. Among the people being investigated out of racial prejudice concern, African-Americans made up 47 percent, followed by people of Latino and Asian origins. White Americans only account for 3 percent.
The US Department of Homeland Security announced in Nov. 2004 that 157,281 immigrants were repatriated in one year, up 8 percentfrom a year ago, a record high. The number of foreigners arrested without any documents also went up by 112 percent according to a report by Argentina La Nacion, Nov. 21, 2004.
Another report said starting from last year, many American cities such as San Francisco, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami, Saint Paul, Denver Kansas and Portland, dozens of immigrants from Mexico or other countries are arrested each day and are forced to wear fetters like suspects. The practice of treating illegal immigrants like criminals has become a national trend. The limit in the definition of terrorists and illegal immigrants has become very blurry, the record said.

On an end note, my brief thoughts on the Chinese being racist, they are outright racist toward black folks, they will blatenly speak badly about them, but still the kids are wild about the NBA. Go figure. Additionally, my friends who are Asian-American and speak English just like I do cannot get a job tutoring Chinese. To apply for these jobs they must see your photo to prove your whitey white honky ness. Love it. I just applied for one! I could make $15 to $20 an hour, so hope for the best.

Almost my birthday

2005-03-04T22:55:00.000-05:00

And an exciting one it will be!

Currently I am toying with the idea of moving home, yes all my three bags and pillow, to more of a permanent location, my own room! Haven’t had once since before Christmas, it’s time. Mostly my motivation is to have a place where I can hang up all my photos of Lindsay, Mitchell, K&B and the rest of the gang. I found a cheap room [like $125/month, right in my price range] in a good location [its actually down the street from a disco I used to go to when I was in high school, Nightman] with a Chinese girl named Gilda [as in Radner]. She seems pretty cool, speaks English well and actually won’t speak to me in Chinese. Which is Ok, I guess. The apartment is in true Chinese style, it was probably built in the 80s but looks older than the Communist party itself, but the interior is pretty nice, and the room comes furnished with a horribly uncomfortable double bed, among other high quality furniture. Gilda says I can buy good cheap bed mats at Ikea. I may do it, I think it might be time to have my own place. Could happen this weekend, I will keep you all posted. Of course my fear is that as soon as I commit to Gilda I will find an ad for a similar apartment, but with fun international roommates that love to go out and eat, party, and have dozens of fun friends. I don’t know how many more night I would have to endure sleeping with the kitties to achieve that.

I am learning to live on my meager Chinese salary, only eating Chinese food, and I have finally discovered decent breakfast options: the Chinese Egg McMuffin. For only 12 cents I purchase a just-baked bread type thing, they cut it open and put a fried egg inside. Then I buy a warm soy bean milk drink to wash it down, its all pretty tasty and for about a quarter. For lunch, work serves us food, your basic low quality Chinese, it comes in a crappy little box with four sections, all with different food. Usually two or three are edible, and I have learned that anything tastes OK when you wash it down with lots of rice. Now is not a time to be picky.

How is work? Boring, because my boss is waiting to hear from Nicholas Hall, the man in England with whom we are setting up this healthcare conference. In the meantime I have been self educating myself on pretty much anything I can find out about China, healthcare, China’s economy and foreign investment, which is pretty interesting. James [boss] says we will start our preparations on Monday.

The Chinese have traded in their kids for dogs

His wife, Linda, who works in the adjoining office, brought their dog in today to visit the office staff, he’s a Pekingese dog [surprisingly the most popular dog I have seen here, http://www.akc.org/breeds/pekingese/index.cfm]. She refers to him as her son and his name is Wrong. “Wrong wrong!” He came to the office and his favorite activity was standing in front of me and barking. “Gua! Gua! Gua!” That’s the translation of ‘bark’. Linda says he likes to frighten people with is bark, but as we noted from his wagging tail, he clearly wants to be my new best friend. She placed him on a table and we all stood around and looked at him while she feed him candy [like people’s candy, which she bite off and then fed to him] and dried crab apples [also people food]. [I know K&B are gasping] After he snarfed all his food down, did some more barking, Linda put his coat on, of which she says he has many. During the day the maid takes him to doggie day care for half the day. There are many dogs in my neighborhood, MANY DOGS, and surprisingly very few kids. I think the Chinese have turned their kids into dogs. They are easier to treat like princes; they just lavish the attention, food, all the care given to them. Kids grow up into to teenagers and reject all that. I don’t know how the dogs are helping population control though.

My parents are on their way to India in a few short hours. They will leave on Friday and get there on Sunday. Now that’s really the other side of the world. They are on some three week tour, hopefully they will come back sans giardia.В My mom will happy to note that the public toilets in all of Beijing have been redone, and there is no longer a charge to use them. There used to be a charge of 2 cents, paid to the most horrible job in China, the toilet fee taking person, and you would get back the most disgusting money you have ever seen. It was after these experiences that my mom swore off drinking any liquid ever again in China. Well, Pat, drink up because they don’t smell near as bad. The Olympics are doing some good things.

A fun fact to leave you with for the weekend: in China there are 166 cities with one million people, while the US has nine.

I am really enjoying the second hand smoke at my new job.

2005-03-01T05:23:00.000-05:00

I sit in the main room with two younger Chinese guys who smoke a cigarette about every 5 minutes. The smoke is giving me a headache; I think I will have to ask James [my boss] to move [although he smokes too, not sure how he'll react!] Besides that, day one at my new job was good. I just sat at my new computer and continued to read through info on my new highly exciting industry of healthcare marketing. First interesting fact: the healthcare market is highly regulated by the Chinese government [not surprisingly]. This includes a ban on feminine hygiene product ads and hemorrhoid ads during mealtime on TV. Ha! No one wants to watch that while eating dinner. [Why they are watching TV at all during dinner is beyond me, that was the original sin at the Nelson home].

So, work was pretty good. After I read through about 12 more pounds of information tomorrow, I may start actually doing something. And today the bus only took me 35 minutes. I think I may purchase a bike, I could probably cut my commute time in half.

Another story of note, I met another woman [Hakim’s wife’s best friend] who gave me her card and said I should call her as she is the General Manager of an executive health club [read: very expensive and luxurious]. So, I called her and went over there to work out. The club was very nice, the same machines as in the US, and we ‘worked out’, although despite her supposed Monday, Wednesday, Friday strict ‘work out’ regime, she was exhausted after using one machine and seemed to have zero strength. I guess I shouldn’t be too critical, but if I were the GM of a health club I would at least know how the machines work? We chatted after the work out, and had some coffee, as she told me about her pretty much miserable life, as her daughter and husband [who she has no interest in] are in Qingdao and she does nothing here but work. So, maybe not my best friend but a good contact.

If I hadn’t already mentioned, it’s my birthday next Tuesday, which is Women’s Day in this country, and saying the date “san ba” [literally “three eight” as they call months by their number] is a euphemism for “bitch”. Love it.

Another thing to note, I am officially an accomplished Beijing bus-rider, and for those of you that have been to China, you know what that means. For those of you that don’t, well I guess it like 9 times more difficult than riding a bus in NYC, except that everything is in Chinese!

Job jobby jobula jobiska jobby job McJobberson

2005-02-28T03:51:00.000-05:00

Could it be? Employment? Me? Ca-ca-ca-crazy. I know, I know, you want to know all the details. Well I’ll tell you what I know. Friday night I met Hayley’s friend Jon Hakim, AKA ‘The Great Hakim’ because the man knows just about everyone in this small town. He introduced me to James Fan, who is the General Manager/ founder of a company called Jowin Communications, they deal in healthcare marketing. I am going to work with them for a couple months, as an intern, so my hours will be flexible, my pay small [5,000 RMB, or about $625 a month, which is pretty livable in this country and already 2,000 RMB more than Wu Xia makes!] and the dress casual. There are only about five people in the office, and we can all smoke as many cigarettes as we want [thank god, second hand smoking was one of my job requirements].

They work with local brands in a bunch of areas [advertising, product development, etc], but I will be working with a company that they do business with in England called Nicholas Hall- http://www.nicholashall.com/ who deals with complete consumer healthcare marketing support service [yes I just took that from their website]. I will help coordinate a training session where Nicholas will come to China in May or June. James just gave me about 12 issues of “Insight,” Nicholas Hall’s industry magazine, to read through on this lovely grey afternoon. Fun fun fun. James is very excited to be hiring his first foreigner! I will no doubt rapidly improve my Chinese as James is the only staff who speaks English. He is from Jinan something Province, his wife [who works next door in another company that James owns, dealing with representing a French brand of eye lens/surgery/product something] is from Beijing.

So I’m excited that I have a job, a salary, somewhere to go everyday [it took me a quick 45 minutes to get there by bus, I think I may purchase a bicycle!] and the job actually sounds pretty interesting. I think the healthcare marketing field could be a good field to get into, OTC [my first vocab, over the counter] drugs certainly aren’t going anywhere.

What else? I may consider moving from April’s sofa, getting my own place, hopefully with roommates similar to Jack, Janet and Chrissy. I can rent a room for about $150.

I just bought some snacks, or little food as it translates in Chinese. Some sesame bread and caramelized crab apples on a stick, the man first said this costs 1.6, then his boss shouted, 2.6! Inflation right before my eyes. As if 12 cents really makes that much of a difference to me. I guess on my $625/month salary I should start thinking like a Chinese.

Well I am off to read about drugs, drugs, and more drugs. Could be a fun evening!

PS My birthday is next Tuesday, March 8th, and I expect e-cards from everyone. www.bluemountain.com

White and furry

2005-02-24T23:06:00.000-05:00

Meet my new friends: blue eyed Yoyo, brown eyed Mojo, or perhaps it is the other way around. They are uber furry white cats and they like me very much. I like them too, except when the scratch at the couch I am sleeping on at 4 am.

April has a Chinese boyfriend, his name is Da You, or Yong, or Yao, or something thereabout. Anyway, last night he came home before April because April had a meeting and we chatted about the US, he has many questions. Here in China he is a personal trainer at a gym so we discussed gyms in the US and my ACL/ knee and my subsequent workout. We discussed Arnold, steroids, the cost of living in NYC versus Beijing. I introduced him to the Rolling Stones, and he wanted to know about American weddings. I introduced him to Bachelor parties, what the bride’s parents pay for, what people do at weddings. I was impressed I could have such a lengthy discussion in Chinese [with the aid of my dictionary for words like ‘tendon’].

The courtyard the this apt looks onto fills with old people and little dogs around mid day. They bark a lot. Well anything to shoo away the Chinaman walking around in his long underwear. It’s warming up here, maybe. My birthday is coming up, maybe I’ll get a job as my present.

mom's words of wisdom

2005-02-23T00:24:00.000-05:00

For those of you unfamiliar with Pat Nelson's ability with words, welcome. She wrote this to me on Feb 17th:

C'bert: So now you are in Beijing.......and you accomplished the Herculean task of figuring out how one moves away for an unspecified, but probably lengthy, period of time. You successfully moved stuff and stored stuff and got rid of stuff, sorted out insurance and car and telephone and who knows what else and said one million goodbyes and now you're there. If I remember the beginning of most adventures I have known, you may be thinking "Eeegads. I'm here. What now?" First you congratulate yourself on what you have already (rather gracefully) managed to accomplish. Then.........well, then you just keep going. Just like you have done. So, with these incredible words of wisdom I shall leave you to go off to my daily adventure --not to deal with death and disease, but with healing and with coping. (I'm trying to be a more positive person). You know we're thinking of you---trying to imagine what you're doing, who you're with, what your reaction to China is...................and, of course waiting with baited breath to hear from you. So, enjoy (the air?, the peaceful streets??) No, the adventure.
I love you! Mom
Thanks momma, you keep me going.
write to Patty Nelson, MSW at patnelsonxx@hotmail.com
ha!

I heart April

2005-02-22T05:19:00.000-05:00

First step: buy a cell phone. Second step: move out the hostel. Check and check! Yes folks I am leaving my backpacking friends behind and will be moving into my new home this evening. my friend April, who I met when I was studying here in 2001, has offered her lovely apt to me, which is really nicer than nice. She lives still near Xiao Wu, in a Chinese apt building, and has a two floor flat. She lives with another girl from the US, and I will be residing on the second floor room couch. I will be sharing my living situation with two furry white cats, I am sure we will soon all be friends.

A note on my Chinese friends: well really it is only the Wu family. Xiao Wu [man] was our driver when I lived here with the folks back in 96 to 98. We were not allowed to drive [according to IBM] so he drove us around. He speaks English, and his daughter, Wu Xia [same last name as her father] is my age and her English is fabulous. Wife is YangLing, no English speak for her, but she takes good care of me and makes some mean grub.

Xiao is pronounced "sh-yao" kindof. Xia is pronouced "sh-ya"

Today I asked Yangling to help me buy a comforter for my new sofa bed, and we went to the much loved Carrefour [think Target] and bought a $10 comforter, pjs, Baobao cha [yummy tea that my father would kill a man for] and a nice thermos [the same one costs $25 at the tea spot, $3 here]. I love the cheapness of China. Yangling was a great shopping buddy, I have to say I couldn't have figured it out myself. Her funniest moment was me saying the tea smelled like soap.

What else? Well I guess that's it. Tonight I will eat at the Wu's, Yangling has made Ou Her, which is lotus root sliced, then the slices put to sandwich 'xiar' which is a pork/seasoning filling that goes in dumplings, then deep fried. It's amazing. [my mouth is watering].
Love you all. Thanks for reading.

blogger in china is not work so well

2005-02-20T23:09:00.000-05:00

i find that the more chinese i speak the worser my english gets. i should work on that, trying to get a job and all. also my blog is not working so well, at least i cannot view it, but yall still can so thats what matters.

hello everyone from the heart of the middle kingdom! i am glad everyone is enjoying my blogging and most are writing me real emails too. really appreciate that. that means that when i come to the internet cafe i can email yall back instead of job searching.

life knocked me off my platform so i pulled out my first pair of boots bought on the street at astor place before new york was run by suits. and i suited up for the long walk back to myself closer to the ground now with sorrow and stealth
thats ms ani difranco for ya, seems pertinent to me now.

my neighbor here at the lovely internet bar is showing me a photo from her american teacher... she is from henan province and has the face tan to show it. in china if your skin isnt bright neon white then you are a country bumpkin and your skin has been roasting in the sun... she asks, is this your country? and its a photo of a bunch of horses in a park... yes that looks like my country [it could be anywhere]. we are now exchaning email addresses, maybe she will want to read my blog. she shows me her chinese passport, she has applied many times for a visa to go to sweden to visit her friends but hasnt gotten one yet. now we are exchanging cell phone numbers. i wonder what we will say on the phone... probably something like: she: shen me shen me china speak, me: sorry i dont understand. she seems like a shady character to me, i probably should not give her my cell #. a henan person in beijing is not right, you know they are not allowed to move around like that. now she wants to get me some job. strange encounters in the smoke urine internet bar.

the internet bar is lovely, 25 cents per hour, and in the bathroom i discovered my first non squating toilet, if you can call it that, it was really more of a dirrhea filled vomit hole whose smells frequently waff through the computer room, disrupting the thick smoke caused by the 17 year old computer game players that fill this place. i will cease drinking any fluids, at least until my next trip to mcdonalds where i feed my coffee addiction. i wear a giant down coat so only my fingers freeze [yes i am indoors]. at some point i will have to step out for a breathe of fresh air, maybe even a bite to eat.

I spoke to my folks and sister this am, I have purchased a cell phone [want to call me? 011 86 10 137 1823 9041] and we discussed what had changed since I was last here. the city itself is the same, some new buildings, subways, but mostly that part is the same. the pollution is not as bad! the factories have been moved away, the coal burning lessens due to the rise of apt buildings. chinese have little toy dogs now, they wear little sweaters and go to dog parks. they go skiing, they wear cool 80s leather boots, like molly ringwald in the breakfeast club. they dont stare at me on the bus, they are over the foreign face. mcdonalds continues to fascinate me- the sign above the straw dispenser warns you not to put your straw in a hot drink. i order an orange juice and they ask if it is ok that it is cold. i buy roasted chestnuts at an outdoor market, the man microwaves them up for me. two stalls down a man is selling a device that cuts carrots and potatoes, announcing as he demonstrates it with his microphone.

jobs, jobs, jobby jobola... i am applying for some jobs via a beijing classified ad websites. i think i would do well as a editing/polishing/writing position at an advertising/PR company. hope for the best. hope my next blog my job paragraph is longer!

i am making friends- last night i hung out with my friend hilary's friend caitlin's friend alison, who was very cool, shes a dj for an e-z commy listening station, she lives in some phatty new hutong housing, modern china style two story house. tonight i will see another friend who was here when i was in uni here. i love my cell phone.

well, time to move on from my rambling blog. to clarify, if you would like to post a comment to my blog, the comments are for everyone to see, it makes the blog more of an interactive discussion. i cant see them because as we reviewed i cant see my own blog, it dont work in china. email me if you want me to read it.

love to you all.

welcome to your new life

2005-02-16T10:57:00.000-05:00

I have arrived in China! Holy Crap! I am currently enjoying a lovely YanJing brewsky in my lovely internet cafe in an International Youth Hostel that Xiao Wu found for me. [For those not that are not in the know, Xiao Wu was our driver when I lived here in high school. IBMers were not allowed to drive. We have since become good friends and his daughter is my age].

The Wu family picked me up at the airport and so far it is looking similar. We passed the Nelson residence 1996-1998, Legend Gardens Villas, where the closets were not wide enough for my father suits...

It smells the same here. They still havent got a good handle on that crazy English language. In the airport bathroom the sign above the automatic faucets read "automatic water. unnecessary touching." Maybe the unnecesary touching was in reference to a banned activity in the bathroom. Who knows.

Wu has a new car, an American mini van. Ha! On the way home we passed an accident that looked like it had happened a while ago but they still had not retrieved a dead comrade from the road side. We drove by his dead body, covered by a makeshift tarp, as if it were just broken glass. The Wu family commented on it briefly.

I am staying very near the Wu's house, so they can take good care of me, and under the lights of Big Blue, yes I can see the IBM on the building next to me from the hostel. Right near the bar street too, where I had a few Corona's during my later high school years. 7-11 has moved to China, thank God I wont be without that convenience. Wu Xia [daughter of Wu] says she eats lunch there almost daily.

Well that's it for now. Sorry if its somewhat disjunctive, who knows what time zone I am on. Please email me. Now is the time. It's not difficult, just a press of a button and you can tell me your own personal thoughts....

Maybe I'll get a job tommorow. Well I'll definitly get a cell phone and some yummy Chinese food- Wu's wife Yangling is cooking!

Preparing to leave Colorado

2005-02-09T03:28:00.000-05:00

Thanks for checking back on the ol' blogsite, I had an overwhelming response of gratitude for an introduction to this new-fangled "blog", from all ends of the age spectrum. You're welcome. It's really my first time blogging as well.

We had our going away/ housewarming party Monday. You dont get too many of those kind of parties anymore. we prepared for the fiesta by getting the new boulder house together- new coffee table, photos on the walls, and had a great party. our first potluck, and it worked so well! sorry friends that comeover often, any dinner party from now on is potluck. on that note, lindsay and i have a TON of beer and potato salad if yall want to come over and help clear out the fridge.

with most goodbyes said, i spent the day actually putting my stuff into suitcases and sending off pieces of the things i will miss most- my bike, disassembled, and my car will be residing in the mtn location of cousin karen and jon's, and my skis in aunt jody and uncle phil's basement. i hope to duplicate my bike in some way once i get a job and for sure try out china's idea of a ski resort.

I cant wait for san francisco, the city alone is an ausome place to visit, but the people i know there are really why i am going. it will be a good send off from my roomate from senior year, lilli milton, two friends from china when i was there in 2001, lydia and alissa, and caitlin finnel, rugby allstar.

I also spent a portion of the day with Kat-o, newest employee at Dog City Doggy Day Care[ DCDDC], on our Flatiron view porch enjoying a beer and Colorado sunshine. i will miss the mtns a ton, but fortunatly beijing does have some crazy mtns nearby, you just dont know they are there until you walk into them due to thick pollution. itll be like biking uphill with four cheap chinese cigerrettes in your mouth. well i always enjoyed a challenge.

Happy new year of the rooster. To send a new year card, or print out a rooster to color-in, check out http://www.underfives.co.uk/chnsenyr.html

well thats it from the square state of colorado, at 5,324 feet in boulder, more from me when im wearing flowers in my hair.

Welcome to My Chinablogs!

2005-02-03T12:46:00.000-05:00

Welcome everyone to my first Chinablogs, well really its a Boulderblog as I am still in sunny snowy Boulder. I depart Feb 11 for San Fran and the 15th for the motherland, so stay tuned for highly exciting events along the way.