It has been a while, so I'll give a little update. I'm approximately 6287 miles East of my last post. It is sad, clear, hot, stressful, and nerve wracking to be in Los Angeles after such a fulfilling adventure in the ancient world of China. Now that I have returned triumphantly to my school with stories of delicious scorpions, taxi battles, man-made rain, and a society of rebirth, the culture shock of returning to my homeland is palpable. We just take up so much SPACE here. But I will say that being able to drink the water and see the sun is making my life a lot more pleasant. Other than that, however, I return to the US and A undeniably changed. I think the most important such alteration to my perspecitve is one caused by lowered expectations of comfort and convenience. The Chinese seem to be just fine in their, from Western eyes, unbearably cramped and haphazard living quarters. In fact, Gallup recently went around the globe to countries of higher world economic standing and polled the inhabitants to gauge their level of happiness. Obviously, they don't simply come out and ask, "How happy are you?" Using a series of roundabout queries the poll showed that Chinese people have one of the highest rates of satisfaction with their current and perceived future existence. The economy there is exploding. The number of people living in abject poverty has dropped to rock bottom levels. Their average per capita income is still at high third world levels, but compared to the mass extinction level it was at not three decades ago, people are pretty ok with the trends. And that contentment is reflected in the way the majority of the people I met in China responded to my interest in their lives.
--But this positive change has come at quite a price. Chinese culture does not dote upon physical manifestations of the past the way our Western one does, so there is less of a sense of monumental loss when they bulldoze a thousand year old Hutong to create a single luxury apartment block (where people can play tennis upon the exact location that a single family held residence for generations). But all this promise of progress and betterment will fade eventually, and some will begin (and already have begun) lamenting what can never be recovered. China will be left with few copies of what life used to be like, and in the process of building toward a certain Western ideal will find that they have erased their very identity.
--I come back here and understand the Chinese drive to assimilate Western culture. It's clean, well-made, spacious, private, and individualized. All things that China has only recently become aware of, and then obsessed with. But these traits are surface treatments on top of a land lacking identity and culture. We grow up in our technological cities surrounded by advancement and diversity, completely disconnected from any sense of purpose or generational continuity. Each person is his or her own being, capable of creating or destroying themselves independent of anyone else, but unable and, eventually, desperately looking to find their grand place. The Chinese have culture in spades, it effuses from their very speech, and yet they covet (and I'm making an argument here) our independence and heritage-crushing individuality. It may seem to simply stem from the Western World's firm foundation atop Mazlow's Heirarchy, where we have little to fear in the way of starvation and basic physical comforts, and thus may now turn our attention to more esoteric ideals relating to comfort of mind. But I believe the conflicted intentions of our two hemispheres stem instead from a fundamental we-come-from-half-a-world-away difference of opinion, very simply. The Chinese economy is unstoppable in a way that ours has not been for almost a decade, the Chinese people are overwhelmingly happy with the direction of their lives and promises of the future, so it does not stand to reason that they are looking UP to us, striving to attain what we have and they 'do not'. We are just on different paths looking for different things dealing with the tremendous consequences of our relentless pursuits. That we may have what they want, and they may have what we want, is only reflected in our two cultures' inextricably intertwined fates. Wherever we two end up, we will probably end up there together.
--Goodbye China. I hope I may return someday.
-c
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Saturday, July 5, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 62
I have to invent a new word for last night. Awesorrible. It is something so wonderful and so awful that it ends up feeling just average. Similar to Dragonball Z, if you've ever watched it. No? Well, anyway, last night my old choir, the Los Angeles Children's Chorus (LACC) participated in a performance of Carmina Burana at the brand new Beijing National Performing Arts Center near Tienanmen Square in the center of the city. And I wanted to attend. No big deal, right? Take a shower, catch a cab, buy a ticket, come home. Like riding a bike.
--On an interesting side note, Beijing has recorded more rain this summer than in the past 20. Most of it has been man-made, and begins at precisely 7pm every Friday night. Man-made, you ask? Of course. The Chinese government, in readying for the Olympics, has been directly seeding the clouds with silver iodide delivered via rusty old Communist-era jalopy rockets. You can hear them flying overhead shortly before a downpour shouting "Thars gold in them thar hills!" or whatever jalopys say. Anyway it's a good way to get rid of some old ordinance and help green-up Beijing's 1.3 million new Olympic trees at the same time. My only problem is with the timing. Why Friday night??
--The performance started at 7:30 on the button. The flier said it was a two-part affair, with Carmina Burana joining an interpretive performance by one of China's premier transsexual ballet dancers. And by transsexual I mean man becoming woman, not man wearing tutu. She's quite famous here.
--In order to make the 7:30 show with enough time to purchase tickets beforehand, I planned to arrive at 7, and thus leave my apartment/catch a cab at 6. My driver was a young, personable guy, and he took great pains to show me all the most well-blocked and agonizingly slow shortcuts he knew through the city. By 7 we had barely made it out of my neighborhood. At 7:30 we were stuck on the expressway inching along carlength by carlength. I hoped beyond hope that the flier said 7:30 because the performance actually started at 8. By this time I was rather frantic and ready to scream at my young, personable cab driver, who at that moment was having a young, personable chat on his cell phone with some other young, personable Chinese person. I can still see the imprints of my nails on my palm. At 7:55 we finally turned onto the street that the Performing Arts Center is on, and zoomed up to a staggeringly halted mass of tiny vehicles six lanes across. No one was moving. Even worse, people were getting out of their cars to see what was the matter. Even worse than that, the old rusty rockets had successfully delivered their payloads, and it was beginning to bucket down in golf-ball sized drops. Pretty soon we could barely see the front of the car, let alone what the holdup was, because there was more water in the air than air. The streets began to flood. The clock ticked over to 8. I threw up in my mouth. And finally, FINALLY the cars hinted toward evaporating from in front of us.
--The cab driver dropped me off with a young, personable wave amidst the densest torrent I'd seen that night. My umbrella creaked and buckled under the weight of water not simply falling, but being shot out of the sky at a 45 degree angle. I set my tiny, cheap little shelter against the worst of it and sloshed 50 or so yards to a set of large glass doors. The building is the shape of a single droplet of water sitting on a flat surface. A big round blob. Locals call it 'the butt' because it has a crack of windows going up the front side. But that's beside the point. By the time I made it to the bank of doors I might as well have been walking through a swimming pool from the knees down. My waterproof shoes were doing an admirable job of containing all the liquid pouring into them from around my ankles.
--A series of guards stood resolutely between me and the safety of 'butt's' warm interior. "NO" they said to me with their hands and faces and uniforms as I huddled toward the opening. "WHY NOT?" I said with my sopping hand gestures. "GO AROUND TO THE FRONT" their official miming told me. "FINE. JUST SEE IF I WILL THEN!" I gestured through the torrent. The walk around crackside took its toll. By the time I made it down to the identical bank of glass doors outfitted with identical guards, my umbrella was beginning to come apart at the seams, several of its ribs were bent and rusting, and my pants had slid to my knees under the weight of excess water. Despite my appearance I approached the new set of guards with aplomb. It was approximately 8:30. My watch wasn't working anymore, so I had to use the sun and stars to suss that bit out. A big sign behind the glass said BOX OFFICE enticingly. With my gaze affixed 20 yards past the doors, I ran smack into the be-medaled hat of a very perplexed uniformed teenager. I had forgotten about, and probably dismissed as irrelevant, the uniforms on this side of the building, because I knew it was the correct side, and assumed that I had full permission to enter. Not so. They roundly refused my entry. "TOO LATE!" they forcefully gestured. "GO AWAY!" Unfortunately for them, they did not know how arduous had been my journey from Wang Jing. I picked up a nearby feral ferret (of which there are many in the city) and threw it at them. In the screaming confusion I slipped past unnoticed, and sprinted toward the safety of BOX OFFICE.
--Behind the counter I witnessed a heart-wrenching scene. Three women were putting jackets on over their uniforms while hastily gathering Things into purses. Oh no. They're closed. I reached out a sopping hand and tapped the most English-speakingy one on her shoulderpad. "PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE?" Long pauses, whispered discussions, angry reprovals, encouraging glances, and, finally, "OK. One last ticket. Ok. That will be 380 Yuan. Cash." I jumped my fist into the air. It was sort of like how 80's tv shows always end, but without the freeze frame. I hastily plunged my hand into the pool of water in my pocket around my knees and salvaged my wallet. Pulling it open, I found to my indescribable horror exactly (and not a Jiao more) 340 Yuan. Oh. Crap. I couldn't believe it. At all. What. Do. I. Do. Now.
--There are some abilities that you have to be born with. If you aren't, you can practice, take lessons, read about it, and generally become somewhat decent. But you can never be truly great without the natural gift. The ability to draw is one example. Perhaps cooking is another. My gift is looking staggeringly pathetic. Heart-stoppingly, bone-chillingly, gasp-inducingly downtrodden. Standing there dripping like an icicle in the desert, clutching my crumpled and useless umbrella, shoes flooded with water, pants around my ankles, I have to say I might have been in the greatest form of my life. Like the saddest sap in Miserableville I slowly slopped my Yuan onto the counter and began to cry. The woman was helpless in my grasp. She gave me the most pitying look anyone can give, reached into her purse, and pulled out her own 40 Yuan to add to mine. Then she slid a ticket over to me like Mother Theresa kissing a leper, and I silently shuffled my way into the performance hall just in time for the end of intermission.
--I still didn't quite know which part of the program I had missed, but to my utter delight when the curtain rose for the second half there stood the 200 requisite men women and children ready to belt out one of the most powerful classical pieces ever created. Seeing the singers on stage, full orchestra and 20 or so spectacularly-costumed dancers before them was such an overwhelming relief after hours and hours of worry and misery and anguish and uncertainty and patheticness that I began to weep. I made it. The orchestra punched their first notes, the choir 'O FORTUNA'ed loudly, and I sank into my chair, bathing in contentment for the first time in a long, horrible evening.
--It was a grand performance. The confusing woman dancer choreographed acrobatic, truly breathtaking movements to fit perfectly the mood of each piece. LACC rocked, as usual, and the choir and orchestra, from Stanford University, did an adequate job as well. It was certainly the most interesting performance of Carmina Burana that I have or probably ever will see.
--At 9:30 the curtain finally descended in front of the performers after three bowing sessions for a standing ovation that seemed to go on forever. I knew I was broke, and I also knew I needed to grab a cab home, so my first order of business was a trip to some unspecified ATM hopefully somewhat near the performance hall. A quick scan of the street told me that I was in the dreaded business/government district. The blocks here are horrific, mostly completely devoid of storefronts for miles on end. It's a little like being at the airport with a craving for Chicken Tikki Masala. You might be able to find it, but it'll take a lot of walking and no one will be able to direct you. Eventually, however, I found a welcoming white and red '24' lit up over the typical glass cube that signals an all night ATM. With great enthusiasm I wrenched open the door to find a single old Chinese man with a trowel kneeling on the floor and staring at me like I just walked in on him grooming his dog. 'What's this guy doing here?' we both said with our faces. There was no ATM, not even a bank here, just the prospect of such an establishment sometime in the near future. Crap. Another 20 minutes and three blocks later I finally found a real one and withdrew my moneys.
--At this point I was pretty confident. Dangerously confident, in fact, that I would be home in time to catch an episode of my favorite show on TV and be in bed at a reasonable time. After all, it was only 10:00. All I had left to do was catch a cab. No sweat. I ran straight out into the river and threw my arm from under my sad umbrella at the curb. Count to ten...aaaand...cab! CAB! Hey. What's this here. Um, guys, I'm ready now. Cab please. Choo Zoo Chuh! That's how you pronounce 'taxi' in Mandarin. I yelled it. Cab after cab after cab zoomed by. Almost all were full of passengers. Occasionally, an empty one would pass at breakneck speed. Most splashed tsunamis onto my pants, which were back down around my knees. I couldn't figure out what the problem was. Why weren't they stopping for me? I finally determined that I was standing downstream from some unspecified and momentarily invisible taxi pickup point. I walked up the street, but couldn't see the place. Taxis continued their speedy processional mocking. Occasional couples huddled under umbrellas with halfhearted attempts at snagging a passing coach, grateful for the excuse to spend more time in the same physical space. I reached a busy intersection and stood on the corner, catching two simultaneous directions of traffic with my outstretched hand. Nothing. I moved on. By the time 11:00 rolled around I could feel the rainwater sloshing around in my eyeballs. And I was hopelessly lost. I couldn't have returned to the performance hall if I'd wanted to, and I was smack in the middle of the endless, lifeless forbidden forest of after-hours office towers. A new tack was in order.
--Hotels will sometimes help non-customers, especially if the place is big and fancy and you are extremely nice and can do a decent 'I'm so pathetic and helpless' routine. Heh. They don't know who they're dealing with. I searched several blocks and finally found the brightly lit revolving door I was looking for. Doorman, plush carpets, fancy marble, perfect. I gave the uniform a confident smile and pushed into the lobby, where another uniform begged my pardon. 'Choo Zoo Chuh,' I answered. He squished his face up in confusion. I mimed talking on a telephone, and repeated 'Choo Zoo Chuh.'
'Sir, is there anything I can help you with?' !!! English! What luck!
I asked him if it would be possible to have the hotel call me a cab. He called over the prettiest woman on staff, their head of customer relations, and she told me that they would be overwhelmed with happiness to accommodate me. She led me to an arrangement of plush, opulent, air conditioned furniture (though it was raining, it was still 90 degrees outside), and told me to wait while they hailed a cab. No one takes tips in China, but this kind of service is actually quite common. It's just the Chinese way, I guess. I sat, relieved, and for the first time in an hour and a half, forgot about cabs entirely. I checked my email on my phone, read the program I still clutched, and chatted a bit with a Japanese businessman next to me. 20 mintues rolled by without my noticing. The lady returned. 'Sir, I am very sorry to say that we are unable to get a taxi to come to the hotel. We are open only one week, sir, and I am very sorry to say that they do not know our hotel yet, and I am very sorry to say that we cannot get one to stop at our door at this time. Please accept my sincere apologies.' what? Are you KIDDING me!? That's...well, that's just astounding! I can't believe it!
'No, no, of course, that's no problem. Thank you so much for trying to help me. I'll just go try my luck outside. Some more. Maybe I can find my way home on the subway or something. Thank you. Bye.'
'Sorry, sir, but the subway is closed one hour ago. Sorry.' Sigh.
As I approached the curb outside I found the first doorman drenched and defeated looking, still out in the night downpour attempting to hail me a cab. I thanked him profusely and watched as he ambled dejectedly to his post. If a freaking hotel doorman can't hail a cab out here, what hope have I??
--The next forty five minutes were a series of drenching splashes and cunning entrapments. I decided that there were a high enough volume of empty cabs that if I hid behind a light pole at a busy intersection, I could run out into traffic during the red lights and find one to just jump into right there in the middle of the street. After three such encounters, I came to the disheartening conclusion that this was not a good idea. I'm glad I don't speak Chinese, because the stuff those cab drivers screamed at me when I splatted onto their pristine interiors was probably the most hideous stuff one person can say to another. I hoped that they would take pity on my MeyGoaRen-ness (Americanicity) and just take me where I wanted to go. No such luck. One guy actually got out of the car and yanked my door open, and I jumped out before he could throw me onto the street.
--By midnight my umbrella was in tatters and I slopped along the gutter, lost and sobbing. The nice thing about such a rain, no one can see you cry. I kicked at floating trash and halfheartedly held my hand out while I looked for a hole to crawl into for the night. I wondered if they had homeless shelters in China. For the 105628500 time, a car drove by and dumped a man-sized wave upon my head. I felt myself begin to melt a little. I focused all my frustrations and anger on that car. I stared at it with enough force to light it on fire, even in this weather. And it stopped. It stopped? What's this? Would I actually get to yell at someone for this small injustice? No one exited the vehicle. I approached the passenger side with fervor and wrenched open the door. There was a taxi driver behind the wheel. He looked at me expectantly. His nonchalance was confusing. I backed away. This man was playing a game I didn't understand. What did he want with me?
--With a horrifyingly gentle smile he beckoned me inside. 'Where to?' he intoned in Chinese. No. Way. After more than two hours, three fights, the heights of riches and the depths of depravity, a cab just pulled up and stopped. For me.
--The relief of seeing my apartment building cannot be overstated. It was there. Shining, wet, and comforting. When the taxi driver pulled to a stop at the curb, I wept in his arms and promised to send him some gifts from Los Angeles when I returned home. He was a saint, a miracle-worker, an humanitarian of Nobel proportions. I stood in the street and watched his saintly taillights disappear into the mist, never to return again. Then I reached into my pocket to call my roommate to let me in from the continuing downpour, and discovered that I had left my cell phone in the cab. DAMN THAT $%*&@^!!
-c
--On an interesting side note, Beijing has recorded more rain this summer than in the past 20. Most of it has been man-made, and begins at precisely 7pm every Friday night. Man-made, you ask? Of course. The Chinese government, in readying for the Olympics, has been directly seeding the clouds with silver iodide delivered via rusty old Communist-era jalopy rockets. You can hear them flying overhead shortly before a downpour shouting "Thars gold in them thar hills!" or whatever jalopys say. Anyway it's a good way to get rid of some old ordinance and help green-up Beijing's 1.3 million new Olympic trees at the same time. My only problem is with the timing. Why Friday night??
--The performance started at 7:30 on the button. The flier said it was a two-part affair, with Carmina Burana joining an interpretive performance by one of China's premier transsexual ballet dancers. And by transsexual I mean man becoming woman, not man wearing tutu. She's quite famous here.
--In order to make the 7:30 show with enough time to purchase tickets beforehand, I planned to arrive at 7, and thus leave my apartment/catch a cab at 6. My driver was a young, personable guy, and he took great pains to show me all the most well-blocked and agonizingly slow shortcuts he knew through the city. By 7 we had barely made it out of my neighborhood. At 7:30 we were stuck on the expressway inching along carlength by carlength. I hoped beyond hope that the flier said 7:30 because the performance actually started at 8. By this time I was rather frantic and ready to scream at my young, personable cab driver, who at that moment was having a young, personable chat on his cell phone with some other young, personable Chinese person. I can still see the imprints of my nails on my palm. At 7:55 we finally turned onto the street that the Performing Arts Center is on, and zoomed up to a staggeringly halted mass of tiny vehicles six lanes across. No one was moving. Even worse, people were getting out of their cars to see what was the matter. Even worse than that, the old rusty rockets had successfully delivered their payloads, and it was beginning to bucket down in golf-ball sized drops. Pretty soon we could barely see the front of the car, let alone what the holdup was, because there was more water in the air than air. The streets began to flood. The clock ticked over to 8. I threw up in my mouth. And finally, FINALLY the cars hinted toward evaporating from in front of us.
--The cab driver dropped me off with a young, personable wave amidst the densest torrent I'd seen that night. My umbrella creaked and buckled under the weight of water not simply falling, but being shot out of the sky at a 45 degree angle. I set my tiny, cheap little shelter against the worst of it and sloshed 50 or so yards to a set of large glass doors. The building is the shape of a single droplet of water sitting on a flat surface. A big round blob. Locals call it 'the butt' because it has a crack of windows going up the front side. But that's beside the point. By the time I made it to the bank of doors I might as well have been walking through a swimming pool from the knees down. My waterproof shoes were doing an admirable job of containing all the liquid pouring into them from around my ankles.
--A series of guards stood resolutely between me and the safety of 'butt's' warm interior. "NO" they said to me with their hands and faces and uniforms as I huddled toward the opening. "WHY NOT?" I said with my sopping hand gestures. "GO AROUND TO THE FRONT" their official miming told me. "FINE. JUST SEE IF I WILL THEN!" I gestured through the torrent. The walk around crackside took its toll. By the time I made it down to the identical bank of glass doors outfitted with identical guards, my umbrella was beginning to come apart at the seams, several of its ribs were bent and rusting, and my pants had slid to my knees under the weight of excess water. Despite my appearance I approached the new set of guards with aplomb. It was approximately 8:30. My watch wasn't working anymore, so I had to use the sun and stars to suss that bit out. A big sign behind the glass said BOX OFFICE enticingly. With my gaze affixed 20 yards past the doors, I ran smack into the be-medaled hat of a very perplexed uniformed teenager. I had forgotten about, and probably dismissed as irrelevant, the uniforms on this side of the building, because I knew it was the correct side, and assumed that I had full permission to enter. Not so. They roundly refused my entry. "TOO LATE!" they forcefully gestured. "GO AWAY!" Unfortunately for them, they did not know how arduous had been my journey from Wang Jing. I picked up a nearby feral ferret (of which there are many in the city) and threw it at them. In the screaming confusion I slipped past unnoticed, and sprinted toward the safety of BOX OFFICE.
--Behind the counter I witnessed a heart-wrenching scene. Three women were putting jackets on over their uniforms while hastily gathering Things into purses. Oh no. They're closed. I reached out a sopping hand and tapped the most English-speakingy one on her shoulderpad. "PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE?" Long pauses, whispered discussions, angry reprovals, encouraging glances, and, finally, "OK. One last ticket. Ok. That will be 380 Yuan. Cash." I jumped my fist into the air. It was sort of like how 80's tv shows always end, but without the freeze frame. I hastily plunged my hand into the pool of water in my pocket around my knees and salvaged my wallet. Pulling it open, I found to my indescribable horror exactly (and not a Jiao more) 340 Yuan. Oh. Crap. I couldn't believe it. At all. What. Do. I. Do. Now.
--There are some abilities that you have to be born with. If you aren't, you can practice, take lessons, read about it, and generally become somewhat decent. But you can never be truly great without the natural gift. The ability to draw is one example. Perhaps cooking is another. My gift is looking staggeringly pathetic. Heart-stoppingly, bone-chillingly, gasp-inducingly downtrodden. Standing there dripping like an icicle in the desert, clutching my crumpled and useless umbrella, shoes flooded with water, pants around my ankles, I have to say I might have been in the greatest form of my life. Like the saddest sap in Miserableville I slowly slopped my Yuan onto the counter and began to cry. The woman was helpless in my grasp. She gave me the most pitying look anyone can give, reached into her purse, and pulled out her own 40 Yuan to add to mine. Then she slid a ticket over to me like Mother Theresa kissing a leper, and I silently shuffled my way into the performance hall just in time for the end of intermission.
--I still didn't quite know which part of the program I had missed, but to my utter delight when the curtain rose for the second half there stood the 200 requisite men women and children ready to belt out one of the most powerful classical pieces ever created. Seeing the singers on stage, full orchestra and 20 or so spectacularly-costumed dancers before them was such an overwhelming relief after hours and hours of worry and misery and anguish and uncertainty and patheticness that I began to weep. I made it. The orchestra punched their first notes, the choir 'O FORTUNA'ed loudly, and I sank into my chair, bathing in contentment for the first time in a long, horrible evening.
--It was a grand performance. The confusing woman dancer choreographed acrobatic, truly breathtaking movements to fit perfectly the mood of each piece. LACC rocked, as usual, and the choir and orchestra, from Stanford University, did an adequate job as well. It was certainly the most interesting performance of Carmina Burana that I have or probably ever will see.
--At 9:30 the curtain finally descended in front of the performers after three bowing sessions for a standing ovation that seemed to go on forever. I knew I was broke, and I also knew I needed to grab a cab home, so my first order of business was a trip to some unspecified ATM hopefully somewhat near the performance hall. A quick scan of the street told me that I was in the dreaded business/government district. The blocks here are horrific, mostly completely devoid of storefronts for miles on end. It's a little like being at the airport with a craving for Chicken Tikki Masala. You might be able to find it, but it'll take a lot of walking and no one will be able to direct you. Eventually, however, I found a welcoming white and red '24' lit up over the typical glass cube that signals an all night ATM. With great enthusiasm I wrenched open the door to find a single old Chinese man with a trowel kneeling on the floor and staring at me like I just walked in on him grooming his dog. 'What's this guy doing here?' we both said with our faces. There was no ATM, not even a bank here, just the prospect of such an establishment sometime in the near future. Crap. Another 20 minutes and three blocks later I finally found a real one and withdrew my moneys.
--At this point I was pretty confident. Dangerously confident, in fact, that I would be home in time to catch an episode of my favorite show on TV and be in bed at a reasonable time. After all, it was only 10:00. All I had left to do was catch a cab. No sweat. I ran straight out into the river and threw my arm from under my sad umbrella at the curb. Count to ten...aaaand...cab! CAB! Hey. What's this here. Um, guys, I'm ready now. Cab please. Choo Zoo Chuh! That's how you pronounce 'taxi' in Mandarin. I yelled it. Cab after cab after cab zoomed by. Almost all were full of passengers. Occasionally, an empty one would pass at breakneck speed. Most splashed tsunamis onto my pants, which were back down around my knees. I couldn't figure out what the problem was. Why weren't they stopping for me? I finally determined that I was standing downstream from some unspecified and momentarily invisible taxi pickup point. I walked up the street, but couldn't see the place. Taxis continued their speedy processional mocking. Occasional couples huddled under umbrellas with halfhearted attempts at snagging a passing coach, grateful for the excuse to spend more time in the same physical space. I reached a busy intersection and stood on the corner, catching two simultaneous directions of traffic with my outstretched hand. Nothing. I moved on. By the time 11:00 rolled around I could feel the rainwater sloshing around in my eyeballs. And I was hopelessly lost. I couldn't have returned to the performance hall if I'd wanted to, and I was smack in the middle of the endless, lifeless forbidden forest of after-hours office towers. A new tack was in order.
--Hotels will sometimes help non-customers, especially if the place is big and fancy and you are extremely nice and can do a decent 'I'm so pathetic and helpless' routine. Heh. They don't know who they're dealing with. I searched several blocks and finally found the brightly lit revolving door I was looking for. Doorman, plush carpets, fancy marble, perfect. I gave the uniform a confident smile and pushed into the lobby, where another uniform begged my pardon. 'Choo Zoo Chuh,' I answered. He squished his face up in confusion. I mimed talking on a telephone, and repeated 'Choo Zoo Chuh.'
'Sir, is there anything I can help you with?' !!! English! What luck!
I asked him if it would be possible to have the hotel call me a cab. He called over the prettiest woman on staff, their head of customer relations, and she told me that they would be overwhelmed with happiness to accommodate me. She led me to an arrangement of plush, opulent, air conditioned furniture (though it was raining, it was still 90 degrees outside), and told me to wait while they hailed a cab. No one takes tips in China, but this kind of service is actually quite common. It's just the Chinese way, I guess. I sat, relieved, and for the first time in an hour and a half, forgot about cabs entirely. I checked my email on my phone, read the program I still clutched, and chatted a bit with a Japanese businessman next to me. 20 mintues rolled by without my noticing. The lady returned. 'Sir, I am very sorry to say that we are unable to get a taxi to come to the hotel. We are open only one week, sir, and I am very sorry to say that they do not know our hotel yet, and I am very sorry to say that we cannot get one to stop at our door at this time. Please accept my sincere apologies.' what? Are you KIDDING me!? That's...well, that's just astounding! I can't believe it!
'No, no, of course, that's no problem. Thank you so much for trying to help me. I'll just go try my luck outside. Some more. Maybe I can find my way home on the subway or something. Thank you. Bye.'
'Sorry, sir, but the subway is closed one hour ago. Sorry.' Sigh.
As I approached the curb outside I found the first doorman drenched and defeated looking, still out in the night downpour attempting to hail me a cab. I thanked him profusely and watched as he ambled dejectedly to his post. If a freaking hotel doorman can't hail a cab out here, what hope have I??
--The next forty five minutes were a series of drenching splashes and cunning entrapments. I decided that there were a high enough volume of empty cabs that if I hid behind a light pole at a busy intersection, I could run out into traffic during the red lights and find one to just jump into right there in the middle of the street. After three such encounters, I came to the disheartening conclusion that this was not a good idea. I'm glad I don't speak Chinese, because the stuff those cab drivers screamed at me when I splatted onto their pristine interiors was probably the most hideous stuff one person can say to another. I hoped that they would take pity on my MeyGoaRen-ness (Americanicity) and just take me where I wanted to go. No such luck. One guy actually got out of the car and yanked my door open, and I jumped out before he could throw me onto the street.
--By midnight my umbrella was in tatters and I slopped along the gutter, lost and sobbing. The nice thing about such a rain, no one can see you cry. I kicked at floating trash and halfheartedly held my hand out while I looked for a hole to crawl into for the night. I wondered if they had homeless shelters in China. For the 105628500 time, a car drove by and dumped a man-sized wave upon my head. I felt myself begin to melt a little. I focused all my frustrations and anger on that car. I stared at it with enough force to light it on fire, even in this weather. And it stopped. It stopped? What's this? Would I actually get to yell at someone for this small injustice? No one exited the vehicle. I approached the passenger side with fervor and wrenched open the door. There was a taxi driver behind the wheel. He looked at me expectantly. His nonchalance was confusing. I backed away. This man was playing a game I didn't understand. What did he want with me?
--With a horrifyingly gentle smile he beckoned me inside. 'Where to?' he intoned in Chinese. No. Way. After more than two hours, three fights, the heights of riches and the depths of depravity, a cab just pulled up and stopped. For me.
--The relief of seeing my apartment building cannot be overstated. It was there. Shining, wet, and comforting. When the taxi driver pulled to a stop at the curb, I wept in his arms and promised to send him some gifts from Los Angeles when I returned home. He was a saint, a miracle-worker, an humanitarian of Nobel proportions. I stood in the street and watched his saintly taillights disappear into the mist, never to return again. Then I reached into my pocket to call my roommate to let me in from the continuing downpour, and discovered that I had left my cell phone in the cab. DAMN THAT $%*&@^!!
-c
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 60
I've never considered myself much of a fashion hound. More like a fashion muskrat, or maybe even just a fashion cricket. So when I walk into the Silk Street Pearl Market near Americatown here in Beijing, world headquarters for fake (jiade) Chinese knockoffs and their be-kiosked professional quarterbacks, I get understandably sweaty. The place is so intimidating that they have their own psychiactric ward for maladies ranging from breakdowns due to fear, breakdowns due to regret, and breakdowns due to extreme shopoholistic euphoria. At some point(s), every customer in the five story market must make the spectacularly rediculous choice between pride and an object that, 20 minutes earlier, they never knew existed. That's mostly because the goods in this place are a tantalizing mix of 'ooh!' and 'wow!' The ooh is for the thing you didn't know you wanted, and the wow is for the price you might be able to get it for.
--If you aren't getting the picture (I know, you probably are), here's a typical purchasing scenario: It begins with your eyes glued resolutely to the tips of your swinging shoes as you attempt to shove your way down the kiosk-lined corridor. If you do not raise your head one inch, you will only have small Chinese women grabbing at your arm or screaming in your face, which, they have all noticed with a sense of irony, is pointed right at them because of your (meaning my) enormous height. This forces you to lift your eyes from their faces as you attempt to circumvent their hysterics. At that moment, you will inevitably lock eyes, even for just a split second, with some sort of garment, 'antique' trinket, accessory, or electronic device. This causes a frenzy of activity, as three different women dive into their junk-laden caves to grab a handful of the exact same object you momentarily gazed upon and immediately disregarded. Now they come at you armed with things. All this can be forcibly ignored with a resolute enough will. However, eventually you will lock eyes with something ever-so-mildly interesting. In your mind, for the briefest instant, you think, "Gee, it'd be nice to have that. Too bad I'm poor. Oh well...Actually, maybe it's really cheap here. I wonder if I can get them to settle on a price I find reasonable." In that briefest instant, you may as well have taken off your pants and run screaming through the hallway, that's how conspicuous you are. Pounce. Out of nowhere, ten tiny hands grip your person and yank you into the kiosk. This is in no uncertain terms the unexaggerated truth. They actually grab you and pull you bodily into the shop, like a puppy at the vet. The bodyguard stands back warily, ready for any indication you are about to drown. Before you realize what has happened, you are face-to-face with 10 variations of whatever item initially caught your eye and a Chinese woman so fierce and animated that you instinctively cover your eyes. With one hand pulling down on your wrist and one hand holding ten shirts/shoes/watches/bags/trinkets/games/jackets and one hand furiously gesturing at this or that feature, the 'conversation' about price begins. The first step, over which you have entirely no control, is to say two of the most frightening words in the Chinese language: "how much?"
--She smiles like a frog in a fly factory. "Oh, well, this not cheap knockoff like other there. This real leather, not so cheap. Normal pwice..." (steel yourself) "...is..." (typing on calculator) "...105628500.00 Yuan. No no no! Come back here! We friends, I not make you pay this! This normal pwice! Not friend pwice! For you, friend, I give big discount! Look here! Ok, for you, I give..." (typing) "...105628000.00 Yuan! Is good pwice! Come back! We friends now!"
--You are inevitably pulling your way to the threshold of her kiosk, and she's throwing a tantrum. The initial price is so outrageous that you require no acting skills to let her know that this is way more than you wanted to spend. What it does is make you think twice about your own initial offer. If you're tough, you stick with your gut. And then take another 90% off that. If you're not tough, you end up changing your initial asking price based on her first offer. By the way, the accent I've written into this exchange is only there to show you how good their English is. It is not to make fun of the way they talk. For one thing, they speak English 105628500 times better than I will ever speak Chinese. I just thought I should clear that up. So, then it's your turn to reply.
"That's WAY too much. I don't even want it. Bye."
"Wait! You not happy?! We friends, you tell me, what you want to pay?" She hands over the calculator. This is the moment of truth. Where will this all begin?
You type in "10 Yuan."
She looks up like you just punched her daughter in the face. And she's frighteningly quiet now. "Listen. We friends. I thought you like me. Why you give me pwice for sock? How much you pay for sock? This jacket (let's just say for the sake of the exercise). No sock. Seriously. How much you pay for sock?" She reaches down with a fourth hand and grabs at your sock. At this point you are utterly confused. Why is she suddenly talking about socks? You have to move on.
"No, we're too far apart. I have to go now." Pull unconvincingly.
"Wait wait. Ok. Fine, I give you good pwice for jacket. Not sock. Ok, here: 105624000 Yuan. This best pwice. Ok?"
"What? That's barely different!"
"Ok, what you pay for nice jacket? Give me you best pwice!" She shoves the calc over to you.
"Well, I guess I could go to...25 Yuan."
"Whatwhatwhat?" I'll simplify the exchange from here on out. There are some subtleties, like when she tells you that if she takes your price she'll actually be getting less than she paid for it, and you tell her that you might be able to squeeze out an extra 10 Yuan if you borrow cab fare from your friends, but it basically goes something like this (with several pretend walkings-away resulting in large-scale multi-person riots):
"105620000"
"50"
"105600000"
"60"
"105000000"
"65"
"5000000" BIG protestations.
"75"
"100000" Tantrum.
"100"
"5000" Wow. What just happened?
"150" She's peeing with glee.
"1000"
"175" Got you right where she wants you.
"500"
"200" You can't stop. You just can't.
"400"
"250"
"350"
"280"
"Ok, you want 280, I want 350, let's split. 310! Best pwice! You happy, me happy."
"300"
"You make me poor! Come on, 310, best pwice!"
Go ahead and try to walk away at this moment. I have friends who attempted it. The woman will scream out in Chinese and all the other women from nearby kiosks will come running over to form a barricade. It's impossible to break away once you've gotten to the end of the negotiation, even with your bodyguard pushing and shoving his way through the reef of little women. He's really only there to get you out after the first back and forth. Beyond that you're on your own.
--That's when you realize that you've just promised this woman 300 Yuan for a jacket you didn't even want, which is precisely 5 times what she bought it for, and 3 times more than you initially wanted to pay. It's an utterly humiliating moment. But no matter how much you thrash and scream, eventually you will get out of there with a new jacket, 300 fewer Quai (she budges at the last second, to make you feel better about your purchase), and a feeling of having been part of something ancient and mystical. You are but one in a long line of foreign suckers.
--Congratulations. Now go take your jacket home and watch as its seams split upon first wearing.
-c
--This, of course, depends on two things. First, one's skill with the art of negotiation, which in turn requires an almost inexhaustable knowledge of 'things' and their seasonal alterations and accordant prices, as well as a deft mind that can convert last year's model prices into fake knockoff dollars, and then into Renminbi. The second, and perhaps more important, is a qualified bodyguard (some enterprising individual now rents them out at the front door, much to the chagrin of the marketsellers). The bodyguard is necessary not to watch your purse or purchased items, but to wade unhindered into the kiosk and extract you bodily should you ever make the reckless decision not to buy the thing you just asked the price of.
--Thinking of the Pearl Market as a discreet collection of Polo shirt/Coach bag-selling kiosks is a monumental misunderstanding. It is much more akin to an army base in which the soldiers get paid by the kill. Customers walk in there wearing the enemy's uniform: naievete and an idiotic surprised grin. There are no Chinese customers at the Pearl. (Ok, not to peel away the fourth wall, but that statement was made for dramatic effect, and is entirely untrue. I just wanted to point out that it's mostly foreign people who are the whales to the slaughter, that's all.) If you make it out of the place without something you don't need, then you haven't purchased anything, and you should treat yourself to a steak dinner. If you make it out of there feeling like you've gotten away with theft, I have a bridge to sell you.--If you aren't getting the picture (I know, you probably are), here's a typical purchasing scenario: It begins with your eyes glued resolutely to the tips of your swinging shoes as you attempt to shove your way down the kiosk-lined corridor. If you do not raise your head one inch, you will only have small Chinese women grabbing at your arm or screaming in your face, which, they have all noticed with a sense of irony, is pointed right at them because of your (meaning my) enormous height. This forces you to lift your eyes from their faces as you attempt to circumvent their hysterics. At that moment, you will inevitably lock eyes, even for just a split second, with some sort of garment, 'antique' trinket, accessory, or electronic device. This causes a frenzy of activity, as three different women dive into their junk-laden caves to grab a handful of the exact same object you momentarily gazed upon and immediately disregarded. Now they come at you armed with things. All this can be forcibly ignored with a resolute enough will. However, eventually you will lock eyes with something ever-so-mildly interesting. In your mind, for the briefest instant, you think, "Gee, it'd be nice to have that. Too bad I'm poor. Oh well...Actually, maybe it's really cheap here. I wonder if I can get them to settle on a price I find reasonable." In that briefest instant, you may as well have taken off your pants and run screaming through the hallway, that's how conspicuous you are. Pounce. Out of nowhere, ten tiny hands grip your person and yank you into the kiosk. This is in no uncertain terms the unexaggerated truth. They actually grab you and pull you bodily into the shop, like a puppy at the vet. The bodyguard stands back warily, ready for any indication you are about to drown. Before you realize what has happened, you are face-to-face with 10 variations of whatever item initially caught your eye and a Chinese woman so fierce and animated that you instinctively cover your eyes. With one hand pulling down on your wrist and one hand holding ten shirts/shoes/watches/bags
--She smiles like a frog in a fly factory. "Oh, well, this not cheap knockoff like other there. This real leather, not so cheap. Normal pwice..." (steel yourself) "...is..." (typing on calculator) "...105628500.00 Yuan. No no no! Come back here! We friends, I not make you pay this! This normal pwice! Not friend pwice! For you, friend, I give big discount! Look here! Ok, for you, I give..." (typing) "...105628000.00 Yuan! Is good pwice! Come back! We friends now!"
--You are inevitably pulling your way to the threshold of her kiosk, and she's throwing a tantrum. The initial price is so outrageous that you require no acting skills to let her know that this is way more than you wanted to spend. What it does is make you think twice about your own initial offer. If you're tough, you stick with your gut. And then take another 90% off that. If you're not tough, you end up changing your initial asking price based on her first offer. By the way, the accent I've written into this exchange is only there to show you how good their English is. It is not to make fun of the way they talk. For one thing, they speak English 105628500 times better than I will ever speak Chinese. I just thought I should clear that up. So, then it's your turn to reply.
"That's WAY too much. I don't even want it. Bye."
"Wait! You not happy?! We friends, you tell me, what you want to pay?" She hands over the calculator. This is the moment of truth. Where will this all begin?
You type in "10 Yuan."
She looks up like you just punched her daughter in the face. And she's frighteningly quiet now. "Listen. We friends. I thought you like me. Why you give me pwice for sock? How much you pay for sock? This jacket (let's just say for the sake of the exercise). No sock. Seriously. How much you pay for sock?" She reaches down with a fourth hand and grabs at your sock. At this point you are utterly confused. Why is she suddenly talking about socks? You have to move on.
"No, we're too far apart. I have to go now." Pull unconvincingly.
"Wait wait. Ok. Fine, I give you good pwice for jacket. Not sock. Ok, here: 105624000 Yuan. This best pwice. Ok?"
"What? That's barely different!"
"Ok, what you pay for nice jacket? Give me you best pwice!" She shoves the calc over to you.
"Well, I guess I could go to...25 Yuan."
"Whatwhatwhat?" I'll simplify the exchange from here on out. There are some subtleties, like when she tells you that if she takes your price she'll actually be getting less than she paid for it, and you tell her that you might be able to squeeze out an extra 10 Yuan if you borrow cab fare from your friends, but it basically goes something like this (with several pretend walkings-away resulting in large-scale multi-person riots):
"105620000"
"50"
"105600000"
"60"
"105000000"
"65"
"5000000" BIG protestations.
"75"
"100000" Tantrum.
"100"
"5000" Wow. What just happened?
"150" She's peeing with glee.
"1000"
"175" Got you right where she wants you.
"500"
"200" You can't stop. You just can't.
"400"
"250"
"350"
"280"
"Ok, you want 280, I want 350, let's split. 310! Best pwice! You happy, me happy."
"300"
"You make me poor! Come on, 310, best pwice!"
Go ahead and try to walk away at this moment. I have friends who attempted it. The woman will scream out in Chinese and all the other women from nearby kiosks will come running over to form a barricade. It's impossible to break away once you've gotten to the end of the negotiation, even with your bodyguard pushing and shoving his way through the reef of little women. He's really only there to get you out after the first back and forth. Beyond that you're on your own.
--That's when you realize that you've just promised this woman 300 Yuan for a jacket you didn't even want, which is precisely 5 times what she bought it for, and 3 times more than you initially wanted to pay. It's an utterly humiliating moment. But no matter how much you thrash and scream, eventually you will get out of there with a new jacket, 300 fewer Quai (she budges at the last second, to make you feel better about your purchase), and a feeling of having been part of something ancient and mystical. You are but one in a long line of foreign suckers.
--Congratulations. Now go take your jacket home and watch as its seams split upon first wearing.
-c
Thursday, June 19, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 48
--I’m in Los Angeles right now. I may not have mentioned that I was returning home so soon, but that’s only because I’m just here for a thesis review and in a few days I’ll be back in Beijing. My last day in China is July 7. But it’s really nice to be home for a bit, see everyone, marvel at the strangeness of my home life. After living amongst families who all rotate their sleep schedule to share one bed, it’s pretty strange to show up here where everyone lives in their own house and has their own yard and takes up so much space that it makes me wonder how we can possibly sustain it all. I guess that’s the question of the century. I feel more culture shock coming home than I ever did upon my arrival in China. And the air in LA is so clear. Jeez.
--There’s an interesting thing happening at BASE right now. About three weeks ago, a large group of us, mostly the guys, all ate the same thing at the same place and ended up with some sort of exotic sickness. It’s not the end of the world, and shut your ears if you are easily embarrassed. A lot of us are mysteriously not ‘regular’. In fact, we are more like ‘disturbingly often’ and ‘freakishly sudden’. It is not uncommon for the tranquil atmosphere of studio to be rent by the sound of a wooden chair being flung backward as some poor soul bursts from his desk to sprint at full speed on careful tiptoes to the bathroom, where all manner of pungent sounds emanate for just a couple of minutes. Then the door will push open, and out will come said person, haggard and relieved, to return to his desk for another couple of hours of peaceful work until the process is repeated again. What is this madness? It makes you start to worry about all sorts of things that are not perfectly right. For instance, I sneeze a lot in the morning. I thought it was my down bedding, but maybe it’s another symptom of the ravaging effects of this strange Eastern parasite. And my knee has been bothering me a lot, which I originally chalked up to a grueling all-day hike across the Great Wall, but perhaps it’s the bug eating away at cartilage between my bones. Also, one of my taste buds is falling out. No kidding. It’s about 3 millimeters longer than the rest of them, and it’s right in the center of my tongue, swishing about in my mouth like a sea anemone tentacle whenever I drink something. I think I’d better see a doctor. Maybe the taste bud is the key to everything that’s wrong with me. What if that’s the Chinese Parasite Headquarters for Section Chris. Is it possible to have one taste bud surgically removed? I can almost pull it out myself, but I think that would be quite messy. Best to leave the skilled work to the professionals. Bu I can feew ip fwopping awoun im my mouf aw va ime an ip’s fweaping ammoying. Aaa. Unh. Bammip! Sigh. Can’t get it. Anyway, my thesis review is tomorrow at 2. If any of you want to come see it, it’s at Sciarc, so stop by if you’ve got a minute. I’ll let you know how it went in the next post.
-c
--There’s an interesting thing happening at BASE right now. About three weeks ago, a large group of us, mostly the guys, all ate the same thing at the same place and ended up with some sort of exotic sickness. It’s not the end of the world, and shut your ears if you are easily embarrassed. A lot of us are mysteriously not ‘regular’. In fact, we are more like ‘disturbingly often’ and ‘freakishly sudden’. It is not uncommon for the tranquil atmosphere of studio to be rent by the sound of a wooden chair being flung backward as some poor soul bursts from his desk to sprint at full speed on careful tiptoes to the bathroom, where all manner of pungent sounds emanate for just a couple of minutes. Then the door will push open, and out will come said person, haggard and relieved, to return to his desk for another couple of hours of peaceful work until the process is repeated again. What is this madness? It makes you start to worry about all sorts of things that are not perfectly right. For instance, I sneeze a lot in the morning. I thought it was my down bedding, but maybe it’s another symptom of the ravaging effects of this strange Eastern parasite. And my knee has been bothering me a lot, which I originally chalked up to a grueling all-day hike across the Great Wall, but perhaps it’s the bug eating away at cartilage between my bones. Also, one of my taste buds is falling out. No kidding. It’s about 3 millimeters longer than the rest of them, and it’s right in the center of my tongue, swishing about in my mouth like a sea anemone tentacle whenever I drink something. I think I’d better see a doctor. Maybe the taste bud is the key to everything that’s wrong with me. What if that’s the Chinese Parasite Headquarters for Section Chris. Is it possible to have one taste bud surgically removed? I can almost pull it out myself, but I think that would be quite messy. Best to leave the skilled work to the professionals. Bu I can feew ip fwopping awoun im my mouf aw va ime an ip’s fweaping ammoying. Aaa. Unh. Bammip! Sigh. Can’t get it. Anyway, my thesis review is tomorrow at 2. If any of you want to come see it, it’s at Sciarc, so stop by if you’ve got a minute. I’ll let you know how it went in the next post.
-c
Sunday, June 15, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 43
I have been to The Great Wall and must now submit to the most ancient of Chinese rituals. There is an old saying here: One who rides back of stone snake must return home to blog. It is so long-standing and pervasive that there is even evidence of it influencing the Japanese in this recently-uncovered primitive haiku:
Foreign monsters throng
The green mountains divided
Now go home and blog
I find myself part of a tradition few get to experience. And yet it's immediate familiarity makes me question the very nature of this post. Am I going to just write another blog about how amazing the Great Wall of China is? Really?
--Yes. Yes I am very much. Why? Because it's amazing. Really REALLY amazing. So amazing, in fact, that it has its own cell phone towers just so visitors can call home and say, "Hey, whatcha doin? Oh, laundry? That's nice, but I'M ON THE FREAKING GREAT WALL OF CHINA RIGHT NOW. Seeya." *click* I didn't do that, however I did call my dad and wish him a happy Father's Day. It was Father's Day for me, but it isn't Father's Day for him until right now. Confused? Well, just to be safe, I'll say 'Happy Father's Day dad'! There. That should cover all my bases. So, back to the wall.
--Since this post will be entirely about the Great Wall of China from here on out, and it takes me about three minutes to write 'the Great Wall of China', I'm going to hereby shorten it to UJDWC, which stems from a nickname I gave it at the time (Utterly Jaw-Dropping Wall of China). The UJDWC is so impressive that there were at least three times when I literally gasped audibly. The first was when a swarm of bees flew into our cable car enclosure. The second was when I saw the wall for the first time. And the third was when I realized that there were four near-vertical wall sections between me and the car. It turned out that the bees were more like hornets, and a good frantic screaming scramble to wedge ourselves underneath the benches seemed to ward them off. This slow, creaky, slow cable car system is designed to circumvent the 40 minute road hike up to the entrance. UJDWC is built along mountain ridges, for obvious defensive reasons, so just arriving at the gate doesn't get you even within sighting distance of the one man-made thing that can be seen from space in daylight. We opted for the slow, creaky, slow, dizzyingly high and vulnerable-to-aerial-attack contraption that is half ski-lift and half death-trap to quicken our pace to UJDWC. I think it still took 40 minutes. What's nice is it lets you off at one of the towers, so you go through a 500 year old castle-like structure before the UJDWC is revealed to you in it's treacherous splendor all at once as you emerge from the darkened stone cavern.
--What a day to do this hike. It's 4 miles long, and takes 4 hours. It's a set route along the wall that enables you to hit every major ticket stop before getting to the end. Our driver dropped us off, wrote a note in Chinese, waved, and left. There was some feeling that he would probably be there at the other end when we arrived, but it wasn't completely obvious at that point. We figured that our rockin cell signal would eventually save us.
--UJDWC is in various states of disrepair and newness, and was obviously built by whomever happened upon the site over its lengthy period of construction. Its width, height, slope, lean, stairs, ramps, cobblestones, and towers vary so violently from one patch to another that just keeping yourself from toppling over is a heavy task. And several places are so steep that you crawl up the steps. Also, there are essentially two general types of stairs; ferret-sized and rhino-sized. Why they couldn't just assume that it would be mostly people who used the wall, I don't know. I guess they were just covering all their bases. But it means that any human visitor must use the full capacities of their frontal cortex to correctly place bottom-of-foot onto tread-of-stair, as it is either 3 or 16 inches above or below its previous resting place. We (Matt, Jessica, Mark, and I) must be brilliant, because we managed to get through the four hour hike without more than a single ruptured knee and a slightly broken nose.
--The views of UJDWC from UJDWC are astonishing. I took a million pictures of essentially the same thing in different configurations during the hike, and they can now be seen on flickr in case you're a glutton for punishment. No, seriously, they're awesome.
--What was not awesome was the agonizing brutality of the hike. We were constantly drenched in sweat and locals trying to sell us Cokawaterpostcardtshirt like it was gold nuggets at a clearance sale. One woman actually stood in front of us and watched us eat our packed lunch ready to pounce when it appeared any of us was getting to the bottom of our water. 'Cold Cokawater! Cold Cokawater! Postcardshirt!' 'NO. I have NO MONEY. The UJDWC ticket kiosks TOOK IT ALL. YOU'RE WASTING YOUR TIME.' Etc. to no avail. I ended up giving her my bag of curry-flavored candied peanuts (these, as you might imagine, were not exactly what I thought I was buying when I got them at the store) which she promptly transferred into a ziplock and tried to sell to Mark. We eventually figured out that when we had gathered a sufficient following of Cokawaters we could just stop and wait for an inevitable 20 person German tour group to flow by, and they would fall into the bigger mass like moons to a gas giant so that we could be left relatively at peace for a half hour or so. In all it was a quiet, pleasant, utterly draining day.
--So now I'm home after climbing the Great Wall of China, blogging about the Great Wall of China, and I feel at peace with the experience. All is one, the cycle has been completed. I highly recommend you take a trip out this way to see this place. It's one of those few landmarks that's actually better than you expect it to be in person. Like Yosemite, Paris, and In-N-Out.
--My time in China is beginning to come to a close. There's so much left to see and do, so I might just return in the not-too-distant future. We'll see.
-c
Foreign monsters throng
The green mountains divided
Now go home and blog
I find myself part of a tradition few get to experience. And yet it's immediate familiarity makes me question the very nature of this post. Am I going to just write another blog about how amazing the Great Wall of China is? Really?
--Yes. Yes I am very much. Why? Because it's amazing. Really REALLY amazing. So amazing, in fact, that it has its own cell phone towers just so visitors can call home and say, "Hey, whatcha doin? Oh, laundry? That's nice, but I'M ON THE FREAKING GREAT WALL OF CHINA RIGHT NOW. Seeya." *click* I didn't do that, however I did call my dad and wish him a happy Father's Day. It was Father's Day for me, but it isn't Father's Day for him until right now. Confused? Well, just to be safe, I'll say 'Happy Father's Day dad'! There. That should cover all my bases. So, back to the wall.
--Since this post will be entirely about the Great Wall of China from here on out, and it takes me about three minutes to write 'the Great Wall of China', I'm going to hereby shorten it to UJDWC, which stems from a nickname I gave it at the time (Utterly Jaw-Dropping Wall of China). The UJDWC is so impressive that there were at least three times when I literally gasped audibly. The first was when a swarm of bees flew into our cable car enclosure. The second was when I saw the wall for the first time. And the third was when I realized that there were four near-vertical wall sections between me and the car. It turned out that the bees were more like hornets, and a good frantic screaming scramble to wedge ourselves underneath the benches seemed to ward them off. This slow, creaky, slow cable car system is designed to circumvent the 40 minute road hike up to the entrance. UJDWC is built along mountain ridges, for obvious defensive reasons, so just arriving at the gate doesn't get you even within sighting distance of the one man-made thing that can be seen from space in daylight. We opted for the slow, creaky, slow, dizzyingly high and vulnerable-to-aerial-attack contraption that is half ski-lift and half death-trap to quicken our pace to UJDWC. I think it still took 40 minutes. What's nice is it lets you off at one of the towers, so you go through a 500 year old castle-like structure before the UJDWC is revealed to you in it's treacherous splendor all at once as you emerge from the darkened stone cavern.
--What a day to do this hike. It's 4 miles long, and takes 4 hours. It's a set route along the wall that enables you to hit every major ticket stop before getting to the end. Our driver dropped us off, wrote a note in Chinese, waved, and left. There was some feeling that he would probably be there at the other end when we arrived, but it wasn't completely obvious at that point. We figured that our rockin cell signal would eventually save us.
--UJDWC is in various states of disrepair and newness, and was obviously built by whomever happened upon the site over its lengthy period of construction. Its width, height, slope, lean, stairs, ramps, cobblestones, and towers vary so violently from one patch to another that just keeping yourself from toppling over is a heavy task. And several places are so steep that you crawl up the steps. Also, there are essentially two general types of stairs; ferret-sized and rhino-sized. Why they couldn't just assume that it would be mostly people who used the wall, I don't know. I guess they were just covering all their bases. But it means that any human visitor must use the full capacities of their frontal cortex to correctly place bottom-of-foot onto tread-of-stair, as it is either 3 or 16 inches above or below its previous resting place. We (Matt, Jessica, Mark, and I) must be brilliant, because we managed to get through the four hour hike without more than a single ruptured knee and a slightly broken nose.
--The views of UJDWC from UJDWC are astonishing. I took a million pictures of essentially the same thing in different configurations during the hike, and they can now be seen on flickr in case you're a glutton for punishment. No, seriously, they're awesome.
--What was not awesome was the agonizing brutality of the hike. We were constantly drenched in sweat and locals trying to sell us Cokawaterpostcardtshirt like it was gold nuggets at a clearance sale. One woman actually stood in front of us and watched us eat our packed lunch ready to pounce when it appeared any of us was getting to the bottom of our water. 'Cold Cokawater! Cold Cokawater! Postcardshirt!' 'NO. I have NO MONEY. The UJDWC ticket kiosks TOOK IT ALL. YOU'RE WASTING YOUR TIME.' Etc. to no avail. I ended up giving her my bag of curry-flavored candied peanuts (these, as you might imagine, were not exactly what I thought I was buying when I got them at the store) which she promptly transferred into a ziplock and tried to sell to Mark. We eventually figured out that when we had gathered a sufficient following of Cokawaters we could just stop and wait for an inevitable 20 person German tour group to flow by, and they would fall into the bigger mass like moons to a gas giant so that we could be left relatively at peace for a half hour or so. In all it was a quiet, pleasant, utterly draining day.
--So now I'm home after climbing the Great Wall of China, blogging about the Great Wall of China, and I feel at peace with the experience. All is one, the cycle has been completed. I highly recommend you take a trip out this way to see this place. It's one of those few landmarks that's actually better than you expect it to be in person. Like Yosemite, Paris, and In-N-Out.
--My time in China is beginning to come to a close. There's so much left to see and do, so I might just return in the not-too-distant future. We'll see.
-c
Monday, June 9, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 36
If you will forgive me for a moment, I need to jot something down so I don't ever forget it. (You don't have to read these next couple sentences if you don't want to, but it might serve you well one day. I'm just saying...) Ok, here goes. Note to self: Landlords are nowhere near as frightening as Landlord's wives. End of note.
--There. That will do. I need to remember that for all time. My schedule for Sunday was thus:
8am: Wake up.
9am: Arrive at school (hereafter known by its proper name, B.A.S.E., or BASE for short.)
9am-5pm: Futz around making the BASE website/kill time.
5pm-7pm: Fret nervously about my upcoming meeting/film showing/film approval with Landlord.
7pm-8pm: Wait outside corner market for store owner to finish dinner so he can take me to see Landlord.
8pm: Find that Landlord's wife is home instead of Landlord.
8:00:01pm: Crap pants.
8:00:01-8:07pm: Listen to Store Owner, Guy Who Works at School (via phone), and Landlord's Wife have violent three-directional argument.
8:07pm-8:08pm: Catch phone hurled at head by Landlord's Wife. Hear GWWaS tell me that she does not approve. Does not approve at all. Wonder where my life went so wrong. Beg. Plead. Clutch at skirt hem of Landlord's Wife.
8:08pm-8:10pm: Jump out of way of Landlord returning home. Listen to another angry argument between Landlord, Landlord's Wife, and Store Owner.
8:10pm-8:20pm: Show film to the three from laptop. Try to figure out whether their utter confusion is good or bad. Suddenly get thrown out of house by Landlord and Landlord's Wife.
8:25pm: Have Store Owner point expectedly at the balcony.
8:25pm-10pm: Have GWWaS translate Store Owner's gestures. Project approved by Landlord and Landlord's Wife. Run back to BASE. Gather truckload of equipment and carry it back to balcony on bicycle. Set up rig with help from Store Owner. Frantically press play (on computer), then record (on camera). Watch as people marvel over the spectacle. Wonder where it all went right. Don't ask questions.
--Yep. Hectic day. The townspeople loved the project because it was weird and funny-looking and they recognized people in the film, and recognized where the film was made, and enjoyed looking down on everyone's morning rituals in the square. The Landlords loved it because they could stand down on the ground telling everyone who would listen that it was their building, and thus their project, and thus their idea, and be the centers of attention for a full hour (Parades were thrown in their honor. We'll get to that later). My professors loved it because the event makes all kinds of statements about the nature of time and space, and can cure cancer and make whales more plentiful. And I loved it because it's finished.
--So that's one completely interesting facet of Chinese culture I ran into this week, the other took place just this night. I wasn't kidding about the parade. Today was a Chinese holiday. It's the first time this holiday has ever been celebrated. If you're wondering how they can just invent holidays, I would like to tell you a secret. I personally saw the head of Hallmark leaving out the back door of the Forbidden City just a week ago. Coincidence? Anyway, I was leaving BASE to find a cab, and happened upon a large throng of people cramming their way down the tiny alley that leads to Place to Pick Up Cab. I followed slowly, listening to the amazing horns and watching everyone talk and laugh and follow what I thought was a paper dragon, but turned out to be a life-sized paper horse-drawn carriage. We all stopped at the intersection and I began filming the spectacle: horns, dancing, laughing, horse. When suddenly, to my astonishment, horse burst into flames, and in seconds horse and carriage were engulfed, collapsed, and turned to large burning embers in the sky. Right there on the street. And I got it all on tape! Cool. I'll upload the file to flickr soon. That's all for now. I'm exhausted. Also, go Lakers. Sigh.
-c
--There. That will do. I need to remember that for all time. My schedule for Sunday was thus:
8am: Wake up.
9am: Arrive at school (hereafter known by its proper name, B.A.S.E., or BASE for short.)
9am-5pm: Futz around making the BASE website/kill time.
5pm-7pm: Fret nervously about my upcoming meeting/film showing/film approval with Landlord.
7pm-8pm: Wait outside corner market for store owner to finish dinner so he can take me to see Landlord.
8pm: Find that Landlord's wife is home instead of Landlord.
8:00:01pm: Crap pants.
8:00:01-8:07pm: Listen to Store Owner, Guy Who Works at School (via phone), and Landlord's Wife have violent three-directional argument.
8:07pm-8:08pm: Catch phone hurled at head by Landlord's Wife. Hear GWWaS tell me that she does not approve. Does not approve at all. Wonder where my life went so wrong. Beg. Plead. Clutch at skirt hem of Landlord's Wife.
8:08pm-8:10pm: Jump out of way of Landlord returning home. Listen to another angry argument between Landlord, Landlord's Wife, and Store Owner.
8:10pm-8:20pm: Show film to the three from laptop. Try to figure out whether their utter confusion is good or bad. Suddenly get thrown out of house by Landlord and Landlord's Wife.
8:25pm: Have Store Owner point expectedly at the balcony.
8:25pm-10pm: Have GWWaS translate Store Owner's gestures. Project approved by Landlord and Landlord's Wife. Run back to BASE. Gather truckload of equipment and carry it back to balcony on bicycle. Set up rig with help from Store Owner. Frantically press play (on computer), then record (on camera). Watch as people marvel over the spectacle. Wonder where it all went right. Don't ask questions.
--Yep. Hectic day. The townspeople loved the project because it was weird and funny-looking and they recognized people in the film, and recognized where the film was made, and enjoyed looking down on everyone's morning rituals in the square. The Landlords loved it because they could stand down on the ground telling everyone who would listen that it was their building, and thus their project, and thus their idea, and be the centers of attention for a full hour (Parades were thrown in their honor. We'll get to that later). My professors loved it because the event makes all kinds of statements about the nature of time and space, and can cure cancer and make whales more plentiful. And I loved it because it's finished.
--So that's one completely interesting facet of Chinese culture I ran into this week, the other took place just this night. I wasn't kidding about the parade. Today was a Chinese holiday. It's the first time this holiday has ever been celebrated. If you're wondering how they can just invent holidays, I would like to tell you a secret. I personally saw the head of Hallmark leaving out the back door of the Forbidden City just a week ago. Coincidence? Anyway, I was leaving BASE to find a cab, and happened upon a large throng of people cramming their way down the tiny alley that leads to Place to Pick Up Cab. I followed slowly, listening to the amazing horns and watching everyone talk and laugh and follow what I thought was a paper dragon, but turned out to be a life-sized paper horse-drawn carriage. We all stopped at the intersection and I began filming the spectacle: horns, dancing, laughing, horse. When suddenly, to my astonishment, horse burst into flames, and in seconds horse and carriage were engulfed, collapsed, and turned to large burning embers in the sky. Right there on the street. And I got it all on tape! Cool. I'll upload the file to flickr soon. That's all for now. I'm exhausted. Also, go Lakers. Sigh.
-c
Saturday, June 7, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 34
I've spent the last few days mired in a series of inexplicable and frustrating legal technicalities. I'm quite enthusiastic about my project, I think it will lead to a good line of inquiry, and I am very close to finishing the data-gathering segment of the show. One last step remains, to go up onto the balcony from whence I previously shot my footage and project that same footage onto the ground that I filmed at the beginning of the week. The idea is to re-introduce a previous space and time into this village square, and see what effect the new ground plane/time period/point of view will have on the people passing through it. Ideally, they would return from whence they came, encountering their morning selves from above in the evening. Ok, that may have been a little confusing, I'll admit. But it makes sense once you see it.
--The biggest problem, which also is not a problem at all, is that I have no idea what the result will be, and thus have trouble explaining exactly why I am doing all this. I just know in my gut that it'll be worthwhile. The second and most disruptive problem is that the landlord of the building where rests my balcony has significant issues with my existence on this planet, and would like very much for me to shove off and not be heard from again. Perhaps with fanfare and a bottle of Chablis. This, of course, runs antithetical to my end goals, which, as stated above, are nebulous at best. In a world forgotten by time In any case, One Man stood between me and world domination completing my project.
--Step one: Go to the bank. Withdraw 500 Yuan. Cry. Return to school.
--Step two: Find an envelope. Stuff money in. Cry.
--Step three: Convince Guy Who Works at School to translate for me.
--Step four: Go to landlord. Tap on shoulder. Ahem.
--Step five: Stand back while GWWaS explains the nebulous premise of my nebulous project to landlord.
--Step six: Bite fingernails.
--Step seven: Recognize that landlord is beginning to look less obstinate.
--Step eight: Realize that they are finished talking and looking at you with your bloody fingernails.
--Step nine: Listen to GWWaS tell you that you have permission to do your project.
--Step ten: Wonder when you need to give money to landlord. Wink. Nudge.
--Step eleven: Listen to GWWaS yell at you for bringing envelope full of cash along. Return to school.
--Step twelve: Yay.
--In case that wasn't absolutely clear, I got my permission, did not have to fork over a bribe (the landlord was actually quite reasonable in the end), and will complete my project tomorrow night (Sunday, June 8th, 2008, in case any of you want to come see). Phew. That was tough. I may still have to buy him a carton of cigarettes or a nice bottle of Chinese wine after I'm done. Actually, if I had given him money during the initial talk, it would have seemed to him that I am trying to do something illegal. Instead, I will give him a 'gift' after everything is over. So, a well spent day. I'll let you know how it goes after tomorrow's festivities. I think the townies will get a kick out of it. We'll see. Also, there's a small chance I may end up in prison. But probably not. I'll carry my passport with me just in case.
-c
--The biggest problem, which also is not a problem at all, is that I have no idea what the result will be, and thus have trouble explaining exactly why I am doing all this. I just know in my gut that it'll be worthwhile. The second and most disruptive problem is that the landlord of the building where rests my balcony has significant issues with my existence on this planet, and would like very much for me to shove off and not be heard from again. Perhaps with fanfare and a bottle of Chablis. This, of course, runs antithetical to my end goals, which, as stated above, are nebulous at best. In a world forgotten by time In any case, One Man stood between me and world domination completing my project.
--Step one: Go to the bank. Withdraw 500 Yuan. Cry. Return to school.
--Step two: Find an envelope. Stuff money in. Cry.
--Step three: Convince Guy Who Works at School to translate for me.
--Step four: Go to landlord. Tap on shoulder. Ahem.
--Step five: Stand back while GWWaS explains the nebulous premise of my nebulous project to landlord.
--Step six: Bite fingernails.
--Step seven: Recognize that landlord is beginning to look less obstinate.
--Step eight: Realize that they are finished talking and looking at you with your bloody fingernails.
--Step nine: Listen to GWWaS tell you that you have permission to do your project.
--Step ten: Wonder when you need to give money to landlord. Wink. Nudge.
--Step eleven: Listen to GWWaS yell at you for bringing envelope full of cash along. Return to school.
--Step twelve: Yay.
--In case that wasn't absolutely clear, I got my permission, did not have to fork over a bribe (the landlord was actually quite reasonable in the end), and will complete my project tomorrow night (Sunday, June 8th, 2008, in case any of you want to come see). Phew. That was tough. I may still have to buy him a carton of cigarettes or a nice bottle of Chinese wine after I'm done. Actually, if I had given him money during the initial talk, it would have seemed to him that I am trying to do something illegal. Instead, I will give him a 'gift' after everything is over. So, a well spent day. I'll let you know how it goes after tomorrow's festivities. I think the townies will get a kick out of it. We'll see. Also, there's a small chance I may end up in prison. But probably not. I'll carry my passport with me just in case.
-c
Monday, June 2, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 30
I'm amazed at the sequence of events that led me to this place. It is 7:30 in the morning, and I'm huddled on a stranger's balcony overlooking the main square of Caochangdi village outside of Beijing. Freezing to death. Between me and the torrential, icy stare of mother nature is a cotton shirt one size too small and the acceptance that I may have overlooked a few items during my morning gatherings. In my defense, it is the third day of June and this is the first of this weather I have encountered in Beijing. At the overcast crack of dawn it looked like I'd be good to videotape the village's morning routines, but my camera has long ago scampered into the driest corner it could find, useless. I arrived at my elevated perch one hour before, having cleared the permissions with owners of the nearby apartment. I set up my very much not waterproof (nor even mistproof) camera pointing down at the square, anxiously awaiting the explosion of activity that signals each workday's hello. Rocking back on my heels with a whistle, I waved confidently at some passers-by who had noticed the camera and sat down on a little plastic stool next to the tripod. Just as I began to hate myself for not bringing a book a frigid, sloppy splash shook me from my silent contemplation of a strange black bug on the railing. You would think that would be the point at which I realized I was in trouble. Instead, I did the next obvious thing, which was to hold my backpack over the camera in the accumulating rain with the vain hope of it letting up before my arms fell off. It was only after I had sapped every ounce of strength keeping the ever-weightier sack over this tiny piece of electronics that was now recording absolutely no one down below that I began to question my decisions on this matter. With a tremendously heavy heart, I shut down the feed and waltzed my backpack-over-tripod into the only spot completely sheltered by the small eve above. I slid my sopping stool as far clear of the stinging torrent as was possible, and sank onto it with a splash.
--Now I'm just waiting. Waiting for Mother to drain her fury. Waiting for people to return to their outdoor lives. Waiting for any bit of clear so I can try to salvage this utterly bizarre morning. A few minutes ago an elderly lady who lives in the apartment behind me came out to gave my soggy bones a sympathetic smile. A pity poncho would be more useful. I tried to explain that to her, but my limited vocabulary of 'hello', 'goodbye', 'right turn', 'left turn', 'straight ahead', and 'I am an American' only caused her to frown ruefully while slowly clicking the door shut in my face. The few people braving the slop below haven't taken notice of my plight, but that's kind of the point. I'm on my own, and it's just a matter of principle whether or not I pack up and leave this ice cave. So, to kill time before my inevitable defeat, I imagine the incredible sequence of events that led me to this moment.
--Sure, I woke up this morning with my camera charged and nothing but filming on the agenda. But if I'd checked the weather, I would have avoided much of this problem by bringing an umbrella. That would have been sure to guarantee not a single drop of rain. But before even that, I chose to come to Beijing for my thesis instead of staying home to work on it. And before that I made the decision to do a project concerning the movement of people. Before that I was led down the path towards a thesis by attending SCI-Arc, and I chose to go there because of my interest in architecture and my love of Los Angeles. But I could not have begun my studies in this field without an undergraduate degree from UCLA, the opportunity for which was provided me because of the emphasis on higher learning of my high school. But I would not have attended such a place had my parents not known early on how incredibly important a strong education can be. So, in other words, I am shivering in the corner of this drenched metal balcony jotting sloppy wet smudges into my sketchbook, watching the increasingly angry rain inch ever closer to my hiding place, all because of the diligent upbringing of my wonderful parents. Thanks guys, I wouldn't be here without you. :)
-c
--Now I'm just waiting. Waiting for Mother to drain her fury. Waiting for people to return to their outdoor lives. Waiting for any bit of clear so I can try to salvage this utterly bizarre morning. A few minutes ago an elderly lady who lives in the apartment behind me came out to gave my soggy bones a sympathetic smile. A pity poncho would be more useful. I tried to explain that to her, but my limited vocabulary of 'hello', 'goodbye', 'right turn', 'left turn', 'straight ahead', and 'I am an American' only caused her to frown ruefully while slowly clicking the door shut in my face. The few people braving the slop below haven't taken notice of my plight, but that's kind of the point. I'm on my own, and it's just a matter of principle whether or not I pack up and leave this ice cave. So, to kill time before my inevitable defeat, I imagine the incredible sequence of events that led me to this moment.
--Sure, I woke up this morning with my camera charged and nothing but filming on the agenda. But if I'd checked the weather, I would have avoided much of this problem by bringing an umbrella. That would have been sure to guarantee not a single drop of rain. But before even that, I chose to come to Beijing for my thesis instead of staying home to work on it. And before that I made the decision to do a project concerning the movement of people. Before that I was led down the path towards a thesis by attending SCI-Arc, and I chose to go there because of my interest in architecture and my love of Los Angeles. But I could not have begun my studies in this field without an undergraduate degree from UCLA, the opportunity for which was provided me because of the emphasis on higher learning of my high school. But I would not have attended such a place had my parents not known early on how incredibly important a strong education can be. So, in other words, I am shivering in the corner of this drenched metal balcony jotting sloppy wet smudges into my sketchbook, watching the increasingly angry rain inch ever closer to my hiding place, all because of the diligent upbringing of my wonderful parents. Thanks guys, I wouldn't be here without you. :)
-c
Saturday, May 31, 2008
ChinaBlog MiniTrip End
The sun has just set over the Olympic Torch Building out my twelfth-story window. I've been gathering and organizing all the footage from this incredible 5 day trip to the southern part of China. It feels incredibly home-like here in my Beijing apartment, much more so than I ever would have thought, and not a little relieving that I am no longer living out of a suitcase. For the first time in a few days, sweat is not pouring down my face Airplane-style, and there are no mosquitoes to be heard, but I am also sad to face the work ahead for my thesis. I want to keep exploring this place. I've clearly just scratched the surface, and a trip from one city to two others is not even close to allowing for a full understanding of this country. Although I will say that after three days in Shanghai I have a pretty good feel for how it differs from my home port of Beijing. For one thing, it is a lot more vibrant. Beijing is a city of nonstop movement, but that movement seems always related to work and completing the never-ending set of tasks that develop when erecting a city of 20 million in half a decade. On the other hand, twenty years ago Shanghai was a bunch of rice paddies, and since then has become the second largest urban center in China. But it feels as though its growth and development have long ago slowed to normal heightened Chinese levels. The city's vibrancy comes from a strong night life, and a younger-skewed populace that thrives on modern convenience. If you want to make some comparisons, Beijing's endless urban sprawl is similar to Los Angeles', and Shanghai's density and youth is similar to New York's. These are obviously gross generalizations, but they can work on the surface.
--Our nonstop shot from Hangzhou to Shanghai came after an amazing tour through a Hangzhou bamboo plantation and factory. I'm still scratching at the volcanic bumps left behind by some of the biggest and, according to the plant manager, fiercest mosquitoes in the world. You could feel them landing on you, not by stinger or wing flaps, but by weight. 'Oh, haha! A puppy just jumped on my shoulder! Now where did you come from little fella-OHMYGODWHATTHEHELLISTHAT-GETITOFFGETITOFF!' And then the weakness sets in, your knees buckle, and you're scratching in another spot for the rest of the month. But aside from that, they might easily have filmed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in this plantation, because it is nauseatingly beautiful. The factory ran like a swiss watch, with a surprising number of women 'throwing the slats'. That's what they call working in a bamboo factory. Actually, I just made that up. But that's what it should be called. And now it is. By the time we were out of the 156 degree factory heat we were almost unable to muster the strength to get to the train station. I was worried that our 'hard seat' tickets would give us 10" of butt space upon which to hang on for two and a half hours of dear life, bone-rattling 20mph rail travel. Imagine my surprise, for the second and last time on this trip, when the sleekest, modernest, shiniest bullet train pulled up to the platform and silently halted before us. The wide, comfortable seats were anything but 'hard', and could be labeled more accurately as 'ohlordthat'snice' or maybe 'doweeverhavetogetoffthisheavenlything'. The hour flitted past quick as a trackside bamboo shoot, while the sky got darker and more menacing as we approached Shanghai. By the time we arrived lightning was constant through the ebony clouds, illuminating tiny parts of the massive skyline one fragile blink at a time. Our mad, haphazard scramble through the muddy streets of Shanghai left us and our belongings all manner of soaked, and I considered myself a genius for having stuffed an umbrella in the outside pocket of my bag, despite the 75 degree weather of Beijing when I left. Always be prepared, and such. After several wrong turns, a similar number of frantic phone calls to the hostel, and even a couple of verbal directions from passing Europeans, we found our glass hole in the wall and slipped inside...into the greatest hostel my meager travels have ever brought me to. It's difficult to describe how nice this place is, but I would liken it to a W hotel. If you've ever seen one of those, you'll get the idea. If you haven't, check one out. It may be cheesy as a hotel chain, but as a hostel it's heaven on earth, especially for $18 a night. And the fleet of young ladies who staffed the place all spoke excellent english, and were invaluable in navigating the city over the coming days.
--Our (meaning me, Jamie, Mark, and Sean) first dinner was inside a place recommended to us by my Beijing roommates, who had been in Shanghai for one day before we arrived. I got a hamburger, fries, and a coke, which was the first such dish I've had here, and it only cost $25. Not 25 Yuan, as you would expect in Beijing. My can of Coke, no refills, was $5. Five. Dollars. It almost made the burger and fries a good deal. Needless to say, we all returned to the hostel fuming. If you're wondering why we even ate dinner there, it was because the district we were in, on that particular day of the week (Tuesday), shuts down at 10. We arrived starving at 9:55. It was either eat expensively or not at all. We ate. And fumed.
--The next morning, however, we awoke with an air of optimism. Shanghai was before us, waiting. This time it was me, Jamie, Mark, and Matt. You might be able to tell who all these people are if you look at my flickr page (www.flickr.com/photos/chrisward23). We set out to find the French district, which we'd been told was very quaint and interesting, along with a good place to eat breakfast called the Mansion Hotel. We left at nine, arrived bedraggled and hungry at 10:05, and were told that the place closed at 10, and opened again for lunch at 1. What IS it with this place? So we went to McDonald's, where I had a coconut pie and a shot of oj to tide me over. We found ourselves on the main shopping street, and strolled along until Jamie was inexplicably sucked into the black hole that is H&M. There's a spot of oil on the street below my window that looks exactly like a bunny. Hi Sonia! Where was I? Oh, right, H&M. After some cajoling, canoodeling, and conversing, we convinced H&M to let our little comrade slip through its mighty capitalist digits intact. Phew, that was too close. Our next stop was the People's Square, where we met a die-hard Wisconsin fan who ran up to us screaming about some Rose Bowl or other, not knowing that Matt's MICHIGAN ARCHITECTURE shirt pretty much eliminated him from any knowledge of such events. I chuckled and remained silent.
--Our goal was a new-ish building called the Chinese Urban Planning Museum, which has the largest scale model of a city in the world. How big could a scale model of a city be? It's half scale. Ok, not that big. But one of my feet would only crush one of its buildings. And every structure in the city over 3 stories is represented in one gigantic room. Pictures are on Flickr. It's an amazing exhibit, one that must continually be updated as new iconic buildings are erected every 6 months or so.
--The next stop was the Oriental Pearl tower, a Space-Needle-esque thing standing on the other side of the Yangtze from the Urban Planning Museum. A couple subway stops later we emerged underneath it, gawking at the ridiculousness of the thing. It's a gigantic cement tower covered in big metal balls. Pictures are on Flickr. A young Chinese man came up to us and began rattling away in insistent Mandarin, and we stood for a few moments with our heads cocked listening for any uttered word we might latch onto to gather his intentions. We finally were able to communicate that we were architecture students from the US, at which point he switched to his native English and told us that he was from Georgia Tech. It was all a little practical joke to make us look stupid. Ha. Ha. All his asian-american friends laughed heartily at our expense, and we sort of looked at each other with an air of 'um...ok'. Jamie felt especially offended, and invited the lot of them to join us that evening for dinner (with the intention of making them eat something horrible). Admiring the tower for a few minutes, our stomachs tapped us on the shoulder and reminded us that it was 2 in the afternoon, then pointed to a nearby Subway. Mmm...shrimp sandwiches. They don't make them like that back home. Sated, we could have gone back into the subway tunnels for a complicated, crowded ride back across the river, but something about the words 'Tourist Tunnel' in rainbow text on our map managed to snag our attention. What in the world was a 'Tourist Tunnel'? It must be amazing, seeing that it has the adjective 'Tourist'. 'Tourist Anything' is always better than just 'Anything'. It went under the river, and nearby posters had pictures of fish. Maybe it was a 'Tourist Glass Tunnel Across the River'. Or a 'Tourist Aquarium for Easy River Egress'. Or maybe it was just a 'Tourist Tram with Terrible Lights and Cheesy Music Behind Announcements of CONSTANT MAGMA or SPATIAL VACUUM'. It was the lattest. I was excited enough to pay half of Mark's entrance fee, he being the only sane one of our group in his refusal to pay 40 Quai for a stupid tram surrounded in Christmas lights. It actually looks pretty neat in the pictures, but that's only because my camera is so bad at snapping low light. We immediately recommended the 'Tourist Tunnel' to everyone in Shanghai. The other side of the tunnel was a grand riverwalk City Improvement Project designed to concentrate the most amount of tourists into a skinny, unexitable walkway with at least half of the city's beggars, sellers, and pickpockets. I left with a fake Rolex watch and an utter sense of shame. Since it was getting toward the end of the day, and we were in danger of losing what money/dignity we had left, we ducked into a nearby lighthouse and ordered some drinks. The place was empty, so we convinced the owner to allow access to the top of the spire, and we stood up there talking and laughing and looking out over the city for an hour before everyone but Matt and I returned to the hostel. We ate dinner at a nearby cheap, tasty Chinese restaurant, took a bunch of nighttime photos along the riverwalk (the most famous and scenic part of the city), and then crashed into the hostel.
--Our final day of the trip was a frantic dash to cover whatever ground we didn't tread the day before. Matt and I had only one thing on our minds: the top of the Oriental Pearl. After an hour and a half subway ride, we bought the most expensive tickets to the topmost observation deck, stepped into the elevator, and ascended into dense, visibility-slaughtering clouds. They started at about 50 feet off the ground, and were still very door-not-window-like at the tippy top. We stared out at the white nothingness, looked at each other with 'well, this is what we asked for' faces, got back in the elevator, and began the return journey home. There was just enough time to pack all our belongings and cab it to the train station, where we all instantly fell asleep, and woke up 12 hours later in Beijing. It's good to be home.
--It's time now to really hunker down and get some solid work done on thesis. I have three more weeks until I return home to LA, and I still have so much I want/need to do. On monday morning, I'm going to stand up on a guy's balcony in our little village and film everyone's morning routine in the square below me. Then, that night, I'm going to project the morning's film onto the square to create a new ground plane. The place is small enough that people might begin to recognize themselves, and if I do it for several days in a row people in the morning might catch on and alter the way they move through the space, knowing that that night everyone will be able to see it. If you're wondering what this has to do with Architecture, I can only tell you that it does not. And yet it does. Touristly.
-c
--Our nonstop shot from Hangzhou to Shanghai came after an amazing tour through a Hangzhou bamboo plantation and factory. I'm still scratching at the volcanic bumps left behind by some of the biggest and, according to the plant manager, fiercest mosquitoes in the world. You could feel them landing on you, not by stinger or wing flaps, but by weight. 'Oh, haha! A puppy just jumped on my shoulder! Now where did you come from little fella-OHMYGODWHATTHEHELLISTHAT-GETITOFFGETITOFF!' And then the weakness sets in, your knees buckle, and you're scratching in another spot for the rest of the month. But aside from that, they might easily have filmed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in this plantation, because it is nauseatingly beautiful. The factory ran like a swiss watch, with a surprising number of women 'throwing the slats'. That's what they call working in a bamboo factory. Actually, I just made that up. But that's what it should be called. And now it is. By the time we were out of the 156 degree factory heat we were almost unable to muster the strength to get to the train station. I was worried that our 'hard seat' tickets would give us 10" of butt space upon which to hang on for two and a half hours of dear life, bone-rattling 20mph rail travel. Imagine my surprise, for the second and last time on this trip, when the sleekest, modernest, shiniest bullet train pulled up to the platform and silently halted before us. The wide, comfortable seats were anything but 'hard', and could be labeled more accurately as 'ohlordthat'snice' or maybe 'doweeverhavetogetoffthisheavenlything'. The hour flitted past quick as a trackside bamboo shoot, while the sky got darker and more menacing as we approached Shanghai. By the time we arrived lightning was constant through the ebony clouds, illuminating tiny parts of the massive skyline one fragile blink at a time. Our mad, haphazard scramble through the muddy streets of Shanghai left us and our belongings all manner of soaked, and I considered myself a genius for having stuffed an umbrella in the outside pocket of my bag, despite the 75 degree weather of Beijing when I left. Always be prepared, and such. After several wrong turns, a similar number of frantic phone calls to the hostel, and even a couple of verbal directions from passing Europeans, we found our glass hole in the wall and slipped inside...into the greatest hostel my meager travels have ever brought me to. It's difficult to describe how nice this place is, but I would liken it to a W hotel. If you've ever seen one of those, you'll get the idea. If you haven't, check one out. It may be cheesy as a hotel chain, but as a hostel it's heaven on earth, especially for $18 a night. And the fleet of young ladies who staffed the place all spoke excellent english, and were invaluable in navigating the city over the coming days.
--Our (meaning me, Jamie, Mark, and Sean) first dinner was inside a place recommended to us by my Beijing roommates, who had been in Shanghai for one day before we arrived. I got a hamburger, fries, and a coke, which was the first such dish I've had here, and it only cost $25. Not 25 Yuan, as you would expect in Beijing. My can of Coke, no refills, was $5. Five. Dollars. It almost made the burger and fries a good deal. Needless to say, we all returned to the hostel fuming. If you're wondering why we even ate dinner there, it was because the district we were in, on that particular day of the week (Tuesday), shuts down at 10. We arrived starving at 9:55. It was either eat expensively or not at all. We ate. And fumed.
--The next morning, however, we awoke with an air of optimism. Shanghai was before us, waiting. This time it was me, Jamie, Mark, and Matt. You might be able to tell who all these people are if you look at my flickr page (www.flickr.com/photos/chrisward23). We set out to find the French district, which we'd been told was very quaint and interesting, along with a good place to eat breakfast called the Mansion Hotel. We left at nine, arrived bedraggled and hungry at 10:05, and were told that the place closed at 10, and opened again for lunch at 1. What IS it with this place? So we went to McDonald's, where I had a coconut pie and a shot of oj to tide me over. We found ourselves on the main shopping street, and strolled along until Jamie was inexplicably sucked into the black hole that is H&M. There's a spot of oil on the street below my window that looks exactly like a bunny. Hi Sonia! Where was I? Oh, right, H&M. After some cajoling, canoodeling, and conversing, we convinced H&M to let our little comrade slip through its mighty capitalist digits intact. Phew, that was too close. Our next stop was the People's Square, where we met a die-hard Wisconsin fan who ran up to us screaming about some Rose Bowl or other, not knowing that Matt's MICHIGAN ARCHITECTURE shirt pretty much eliminated him from any knowledge of such events. I chuckled and remained silent.
--Our goal was a new-ish building called the Chinese Urban Planning Museum, which has the largest scale model of a city in the world. How big could a scale model of a city be? It's half scale. Ok, not that big. But one of my feet would only crush one of its buildings. And every structure in the city over 3 stories is represented in one gigantic room. Pictures are on Flickr. It's an amazing exhibit, one that must continually be updated as new iconic buildings are erected every 6 months or so.
--The next stop was the Oriental Pearl tower, a Space-Needle-esque thing standing on the other side of the Yangtze from the Urban Planning Museum. A couple subway stops later we emerged underneath it, gawking at the ridiculousness of the thing. It's a gigantic cement tower covered in big metal balls. Pictures are on Flickr. A young Chinese man came up to us and began rattling away in insistent Mandarin, and we stood for a few moments with our heads cocked listening for any uttered word we might latch onto to gather his intentions. We finally were able to communicate that we were architecture students from the US, at which point he switched to his native English and told us that he was from Georgia Tech. It was all a little practical joke to make us look stupid. Ha. Ha. All his asian-american friends laughed heartily at our expense, and we sort of looked at each other with an air of 'um...ok'. Jamie felt especially offended, and invited the lot of them to join us that evening for dinner (with the intention of making them eat something horrible). Admiring the tower for a few minutes, our stomachs tapped us on the shoulder and reminded us that it was 2 in the afternoon, then pointed to a nearby Subway. Mmm...shrimp sandwiches. They don't make them like that back home. Sated, we could have gone back into the subway tunnels for a complicated, crowded ride back across the river, but something about the words 'Tourist Tunnel' in rainbow text on our map managed to snag our attention. What in the world was a 'Tourist Tunnel'? It must be amazing, seeing that it has the adjective 'Tourist'. 'Tourist Anything' is always better than just 'Anything'. It went under the river, and nearby posters had pictures of fish. Maybe it was a 'Tourist Glass Tunnel Across the River'. Or a 'Tourist Aquarium for Easy River Egress'. Or maybe it was just a 'Tourist Tram with Terrible Lights and Cheesy Music Behind Announcements of CONSTANT MAGMA or SPATIAL VACUUM'. It was the lattest. I was excited enough to pay half of Mark's entrance fee, he being the only sane one of our group in his refusal to pay 40 Quai for a stupid tram surrounded in Christmas lights. It actually looks pretty neat in the pictures, but that's only because my camera is so bad at snapping low light. We immediately recommended the 'Tourist Tunnel' to everyone in Shanghai. The other side of the tunnel was a grand riverwalk City Improvement Project designed to concentrate the most amount of tourists into a skinny, unexitable walkway with at least half of the city's beggars, sellers, and pickpockets. I left with a fake Rolex watch and an utter sense of shame. Since it was getting toward the end of the day, and we were in danger of losing what money/dignity we had left, we ducked into a nearby lighthouse and ordered some drinks. The place was empty, so we convinced the owner to allow access to the top of the spire, and we stood up there talking and laughing and looking out over the city for an hour before everyone but Matt and I returned to the hostel. We ate dinner at a nearby cheap, tasty Chinese restaurant, took a bunch of nighttime photos along the riverwalk (the most famous and scenic part of the city), and then crashed into the hostel.
--Our final day of the trip was a frantic dash to cover whatever ground we didn't tread the day before. Matt and I had only one thing on our minds: the top of the Oriental Pearl. After an hour and a half subway ride, we bought the most expensive tickets to the topmost observation deck, stepped into the elevator, and ascended into dense, visibility-slaughtering clouds. They started at about 50 feet off the ground, and were still very door-not-window-like at the tippy top. We stared out at the white nothingness, looked at each other with 'well, this is what we asked for' faces, got back in the elevator, and began the return journey home. There was just enough time to pack all our belongings and cab it to the train station, where we all instantly fell asleep, and woke up 12 hours later in Beijing. It's good to be home.
--It's time now to really hunker down and get some solid work done on thesis. I have three more weeks until I return home to LA, and I still have so much I want/need to do. On monday morning, I'm going to stand up on a guy's balcony in our little village and film everyone's morning routine in the square below me. Then, that night, I'm going to project the morning's film onto the square to create a new ground plane. The place is small enough that people might begin to recognize themselves, and if I do it for several days in a row people in the morning might catch on and alter the way they move through the space, knowing that that night everyone will be able to see it. If you're wondering what this has to do with Architecture, I can only tell you that it does not. And yet it does. Touristly.
-c
Friday, May 30, 2008
ChinaBlog MiniTrip photos
It's been a hectic bunch of days in Shanghai, so while I write about it I uploaded some new flickr photos for your distraction. Enjoy.
-c
-c
Sunday, May 25, 2008
ChinaBlog MiniTrip Day 2
Hangzhou. The most beautiful city in China is right now the most humid city in China. Actually, I can't confirm that, but it's in the top ten, or maybe the top ten of beautiful cities in China. It's 75 degrees with 430% water in the air. It's so humid you have to wear a face mask to keep from swallowing passing fish. After disembarking our train we herded 18 people through the complex and crowded station to a well-marked line of taxis. There was one set of directions between the throng of us, so we each took the phone number of the hostel, intending to contact the front desk and have them tell the cab driver where to go. Well, imagine the poor guy behind the counter who gets 6 simultaneous phone calls asking for directions. Only one cab made it unscathed, and it happened to be the one I was in. We began as an intimidating line of aggressive (more so than Beijing, it seems) blue and silver Hundais, and then one after another dropped away, taking wrong turns, stopping in wrong places, and getting forced onto conveniently placed dirt flipping ramps designed to throw wayward speeding Hundais onto large parked panel trucks. With explosions. Without a single incident, the Hundai we were in arrived at the hostel with us alone and confused, because none of the people in our cab had the check-in information. Ten minutes later, the next cab arrived, it's contents shaken, singed, and bleary-eyed. A third cab approached with its roof caved in, missing five hubcaps, but still operational. The last cab was being pushed by some nearby old Chinese men. We never saw the rest.
--Our hostel is situated right across the street from West Lake, a grand central lake in the middle of Hangzhou. It is famous across China for it's 'eight scenes', fixed picturesque spots with names like "Autumn Breeze over Moonlit Water" and "Melting Snow with Flakes of Sea Cucumber". They are designed to be seen on specific days throughout the year, based on their titles. They were made hmbafld years ago, and are the reason Hangzhou is pushed heavily by the Chinese government as a tourist spot. There is no construction in this city.
-- We took some time to eat breakfast, shower, walk around the lake a bit, and shower. On our itinerary was a visit to the Chinese Academy of Art, which has its impressive campus just down the road from our hostel. We put our stuff in the rooms, showered, gathered our cameras and cell phones and maps, showered, and left. Getting 18 people into cabs on the street is hilarious and exhausting, but we somehow managed. They had some showers in the dorms at the Academy, so we went there first to clean up, and then perused the interesting architecture, art, and gardens of the scenic place. We spent a good 2 hours there, including visits to nearby Porsche, Aston Martin, Maserati, and Ferrari dealerships. The Michigan people were completely astounded at these vehicles, and I began to realize just how skewed my perspective on cars really is.
--After piling everyone into the backs of five frantic people-movers, we returned to the hostel to shower and get ready for dinner. We're going out to a specific restaurant to meet up with someone who is going to give us a personal tour of the famous Hangzhou bamboo factory on Tuesday morning, and it's a really fancy place. I've been told that it might be expensive, which means dinner might be 10 bucks instead of 5. And we have to dress up, which means I'm going to be wearing a polo shirt with jeans. I know, you're having trouble picturing it. Anyway, maybe I'll be able to give an update when I get back. Hope all is well back home.
**UPDATE**
--The aforementioned West Lake in the center of Hangzhou has several small islands, the largest of which is connected to the shore by a short bridge, and is covered in restaurants. At the point furthest into the lake, there is a very famous old eatery, and that's where we ate dinner, split up in two private rooms. The food was good, we sampled a lot of different dishes (and drinks) similar to the ones we've been having all throughout the trip, and the menu wasn't as strange as I've been told it might be in this part of the country. Our dinner was huge, magnificent, and 600 Yuan for 9 people. That's 67 Yuan per person, divide by 7, carry the one, jump around in a circle, and it comes out to about $9.50 a meal. I'm not usually one to say 'I told you so', so I'll just say 'look how amazing I am', and assume you're capable of reading between the lines.
--One of my roommates was anticipating his birthday last night. It came at about midnight. Maybe exactly at midnight. But we haven't gotten to that part of the story yet. In any case, when we emerged from the restaurant several days after arriving, we were confronted by the quaintest wooden Chinese gondolas in all the land, brought there by blind monks plank by plank, and operated by University PHD students. 10 of us couldn't resist celebrating early out on the water. It was still very hot, but on the lake there was a bit of a breeze, so we were immediately rewarded for our impulsiveness. We split into two boats, and the two Physics majors deftly sped us out to one of the islands in the middle of the lake with just one fixed oar each (it actually looked impossible to keep these things from simply drifting in large circles, what with the Physics problems of always paddling on one side of the boat, but these guys' advanced degrees had given them tremendous control over our world's natural forces). When we got there, it was clear that this was the Hangzhou equivalent of "Makeout Point". The couples among us melted quietly into the foliage, and the rest of us spent 20 minutes exploring this little place Tom-Sawyer-Island-style. There were all kinds of ancient structures covering the island, so it was a stretch to see everything before we had to leave again. The student drivers had to get back to their labs. It was a beautiful, relaxing, utterly pleasant hour spent out on the water, and would be the last moment of peace for the rest of the night.
--Still hours away from midnight, the next stop, after a hostel shower, was an en masse stampede to a local deserted jazz club. We heard everything from old standards to Dean Martin to Eric Clapton, all crooned out by a 70 year old woman and her two sons on piano and upright bass. There was also sax player and a drummer, but they were small and plastic and covered in multi-colered lights. The saxaphonist was especially accurate and on beat. One of our bunch, during a band break, was coaxed onstage to play piano for us, and we got the whole bar (just the group of us, really. I said it was deserted.) to sing Hey Jude while he accompanied. He'd never been to a bar before, is the youngest of us （at 19）, and after being the center of attention sat down at the table and confidently ordered a Long Island Iced Tea. He took one sip and crumpled to the floor. We had to carry him home. Those who didn't head back went with the rest of us out to the most Dance-iest Asian-ist Asian Dance Club you've ever seen. I felt like Sydney Bristow, or maybe Marshall, as the Michael-Jackson-green laser light show pounded us into the floor one heart-stopping beat at a time. There were no inked-up, besuited mobsters in this club for me to remotely access hard drives from using stylish infrared glasses. Instead there was just the bunch of us jumping and dancing and having a grand old time until midnight rolled around, at which point I had a beer with everyone, said happy birthday to my roommate, showered, danced some more, and finally came home to shower. My clothes still haven't forgiven me. So that was my night. If they're all like that on this trip I'll smell like smoke until my birthday. We'll see.
-c
--Our hostel is situated right across the street from West Lake, a grand central lake in the middle of Hangzhou. It is famous across China for it's 'eight scenes', fixed picturesque spots with names like "Autumn Breeze over Moonlit Water" and "Melting Snow with Flakes of Sea Cucumber". They are designed to be seen on specific days throughout the year, based on their titles. They were made hmbafld years ago, and are the reason Hangzhou is pushed heavily by the Chinese government as a tourist spot. There is no construction in this city.
-- We took some time to eat breakfast, shower, walk around the lake a bit, and shower. On our itinerary was a visit to the Chinese Academy of Art, which has its impressive campus just down the road from our hostel. We put our stuff in the rooms, showered, gathered our cameras and cell phones and maps, showered, and left. Getting 18 people into cabs on the street is hilarious and exhausting, but we somehow managed. They had some showers in the dorms at the Academy, so we went there first to clean up, and then perused the interesting architecture, art, and gardens of the scenic place. We spent a good 2 hours there, including visits to nearby Porsche, Aston Martin, Maserati, and Ferrari dealerships. The Michigan people were completely astounded at these vehicles, and I began to realize just how skewed my perspective on cars really is.
--After piling everyone into the backs of five frantic people-movers, we returned to the hostel to shower and get ready for dinner. We're going out to a specific restaurant to meet up with someone who is going to give us a personal tour of the famous Hangzhou bamboo factory on Tuesday morning, and it's a really fancy place. I've been told that it might be expensive, which means dinner might be 10 bucks instead of 5. And we have to dress up, which means I'm going to be wearing a polo shirt with jeans. I know, you're having trouble picturing it. Anyway, maybe I'll be able to give an update when I get back. Hope all is well back home.
**UPDATE**
--The aforementioned West Lake in the center of Hangzhou has several small islands, the largest of which is connected to the shore by a short bridge, and is covered in restaurants. At the point furthest into the lake, there is a very famous old eatery, and that's where we ate dinner, split up in two private rooms. The food was good, we sampled a lot of different dishes (and drinks) similar to the ones we've been having all throughout the trip, and the menu wasn't as strange as I've been told it might be in this part of the country. Our dinner was huge, magnificent, and 600 Yuan for 9 people. That's 67 Yuan per person, divide by 7, carry the one, jump around in a circle, and it comes out to about $9.50 a meal. I'm not usually one to say 'I told you so', so I'll just say 'look how amazing I am', and assume you're capable of reading between the lines.
--One of my roommates was anticipating his birthday last night. It came at about midnight. Maybe exactly at midnight. But we haven't gotten to that part of the story yet. In any case, when we emerged from the restaurant several days after arriving, we were confronted by the quaintest wooden Chinese gondolas in all the land, brought there by blind monks plank by plank, and operated by University PHD students. 10 of us couldn't resist celebrating early out on the water. It was still very hot, but on the lake there was a bit of a breeze, so we were immediately rewarded for our impulsiveness. We split into two boats, and the two Physics majors deftly sped us out to one of the islands in the middle of the lake with just one fixed oar each (it actually looked impossible to keep these things from simply drifting in large circles, what with the Physics problems of always paddling on one side of the boat, but these guys' advanced degrees had given them tremendous control over our world's natural forces). When we got there, it was clear that this was the Hangzhou equivalent of "Makeout Point". The couples among us melted quietly into the foliage, and the rest of us spent 20 minutes exploring this little place Tom-Sawyer-Island-style. There were all kinds of ancient structures covering the island, so it was a stretch to see everything before we had to leave again. The student drivers had to get back to their labs. It was a beautiful, relaxing, utterly pleasant hour spent out on the water, and would be the last moment of peace for the rest of the night.
--Still hours away from midnight, the next stop, after a hostel shower, was an en masse stampede to a local deserted jazz club. We heard everything from old standards to Dean Martin to Eric Clapton, all crooned out by a 70 year old woman and her two sons on piano and upright bass. There was also sax player and a drummer, but they were small and plastic and covered in multi-colered lights. The saxaphonist was especially accurate and on beat. One of our bunch, during a band break, was coaxed onstage to play piano for us, and we got the whole bar (just the group of us, really. I said it was deserted.) to sing Hey Jude while he accompanied. He'd never been to a bar before, is the youngest of us （at 19）, and after being the center of attention sat down at the table and confidently ordered a Long Island Iced Tea. He took one sip and crumpled to the floor. We had to carry him home. Those who didn't head back went with the rest of us out to the most Dance-iest Asian-ist Asian Dance Club you've ever seen. I felt like Sydney Bristow, or maybe Marshall, as the Michael-Jackson-green laser light show pounded us into the floor one heart-stopping beat at a time. There were no inked-up, besuited mobsters in this club for me to remotely access hard drives from using stylish infrared glasses. Instead there was just the bunch of us jumping and dancing and having a grand old time until midnight rolled around, at which point I had a beer with everyone, said happy birthday to my roommate, showered, danced some more, and finally came home to shower. My clothes still haven't forgiven me. So that was my night. If they're all like that on this trip I'll smell like smoke until my birthday. We'll see.
-c
Saturday, May 24, 2008
ChinaBlog MiniTrip Day 1
What image forms in your brain when you think of Chinese trains? Nope. Wrong. Well, I'm sure some of them are like that, but not this one. This particular train would make Germans sit down in their liederhosen and wonder where it all went so verdammt back home. "Ach, Kleissl, es tut mir lied! Diese bahn ist so gross und schnell und modern. Wir sind dumbkopferin!" Yes, they are female Germans. Now you're guilty of two stereotypes...what's he talking about? Nevermind. The train is very big, fast, and modern. It has all the expected conveniences, like air conditioning, ladders that fold into the wall, a little table with a rose on it, and a dining car that serves fired wife buffer. In fact, there were several dishes with fired wife on the menu. This train must have a high employee turnover rate. In all seriousness, we never figured out what they exactly meant to write instead, and none of us were brave enough to order a fired wife, because we DID figure out that every time they wrote 'fired', they meant 'fried', and, well, to be honest I'm still not sure which is worse. Instead I got the shrivled pork peppers, which was some kind of delicious beef dish with yams. The woman behind the counter spent a good five minutes digging through what can only be described as a trash can to find the hand-written English menu, so I guess we were lucky to have any idea whatsoever what we were asking for. We've all found that simply pointing at random to an all-Chinese menu will invariably get you a dish of steamed sea cucumber entrails. While that may be fun and adventurous once, its not very filling, nor exciting, the tenth or eleventh time. I've heard that Shanghai has the strangest food in China, so I'm looking forward to a change.
I think this is all I can write with my thumbs at this time. I need to go to bed so I can be up in time for our arrival in Hangzhou at 7am. We'll spend two nights there before we move on to Shanghai. More later!
-c
I think this is all I can write with my thumbs at this time. I need to go to bed so I can be up in time for our arrival in Hangzhou at 7am. We'll spend two nights there before we move on to Shanghai. More later!
-c
MiniTrip to Hangzhou & Shanghai
I'm going on a little trip for the next five days. We're taking a sleeper train from Beijing to, supposedly, the most beautiful city in China. It's called Hangzhou, and it's one point of a triangle of cities that includes Shanghai. The third city is called Suzhou, and I know literally nothing about it. They're all an hour away from each other. By train, and we'll be romping around the three of them for the next few days.im not taking my laptop, but if I have Internet access, as I do now, I can write on my phone and still be able to post. So, off we go! More later.
-c
-c
Sunday, May 18, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 17
"This reminds me of President Bush's memorial address after Hurricane Katrina." My professor, Robert, was being facetious. We stood in a small group on the sidewalk when he said it, winding down from an experience so overwhelming that, for once, all of us were rather at a loss for words. His comment was the first to put the sounds into some semblance of perspective for this Westerner. I wanted my head to keep ringing with the power of the noise. I wanted the silent aftermath to stretch on for weeks. But eventually, as it always does, the quietness dissipated, and the everyday sounds of city life wound up once again. But for 15 minutes this afternoon, every single person in China, native and foreign, was united.
--I was thirsty. I wonder if I'd have even noticed all the commotion had a combination of dust in the air and boredom with purified water not sent me out to the courtyard from our sheltered little studio. A man in a parked truck just inside the gate was leaning on his horn. He seemed to be having an argument with another car driving past our complex outside. A small group of local artists huddled in their doorway looking out upon the din. With (really for the first time here) a note of trepidation, I poked my head out the gate. The driver continued on slowly, still blowing his horn. BEE-BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. BEE-BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. BEE-BEEEEEEEEEEEE. One short, one long. One short, one long. The truck driver responded in kind. And then I began to hear it.
--The car horn is an integral tool to navigating this city. Unlike back home, it is rarely used in anger, but more commonly to warn of coming danger. The beeps of taxis can often be translated into English as "excuse me, coming through, right behind you." Or, perhaps, "you need to stop or we will crash." They are frequent and pervasive.
--So I at first ignored the noisy background to this strange automotive dialogue. But after a moment I began to realize that not only the courtyard truck driver and street-cruising car, but a taxi down the street, some other unseen vehicles in the nearby village, and cars and trucks speeding by on the airport expressway had voices in this extensive nonverbal exchange.
--I felt a wave of pressure on my face as I realized exactly what was going on. Within the full breadth of my hearing, people driving in cars honked their horns, and people on the street stood mourning, sobbing, silent. One hour ago, the entire city; no, it was clear, the entire country of China stood still, listening to the loud, mournful wail of every car, truck, rickshaw, and bicycle in the most populous country on Earth. Waves of compassion and unity were palpable, within the crowded urban streets of Beijing, within the small villages of rural China, and within every person crying quietly on the streetcorner. This was a moment of silence. This was a roar of solidarity. For a full 15 minutes, 1.2 billion people said goodbye together.
-c
--I was thirsty. I wonder if I'd have even noticed all the commotion had a combination of dust in the air and boredom with purified water not sent me out to the courtyard from our sheltered little studio. A man in a parked truck just inside the gate was leaning on his horn. He seemed to be having an argument with another car driving past our complex outside. A small group of local artists huddled in their doorway looking out upon the din. With (really for the first time here) a note of trepidation, I poked my head out the gate. The driver continued on slowly, still blowing his horn. BEE-BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. BEE-BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. BEE-BEEEEEEEEEEEE. One short, one long. One short, one long. The truck driver responded in kind. And then I began to hear it.
--The car horn is an integral tool to navigating this city. Unlike back home, it is rarely used in anger, but more commonly to warn of coming danger. The beeps of taxis can often be translated into English as "excuse me, coming through, right behind you." Or, perhaps, "you need to stop or we will crash." They are frequent and pervasive.
--So I at first ignored the noisy background to this strange automotive dialogue. But after a moment I began to realize that not only the courtyard truck driver and street-cruising car, but a taxi down the street, some other unseen vehicles in the nearby village, and cars and trucks speeding by on the airport expressway had voices in this extensive nonverbal exchange.
--I felt a wave of pressure on my face as I realized exactly what was going on. Within the full breadth of my hearing, people driving in cars honked their horns, and people on the street stood mourning, sobbing, silent. One hour ago, the entire city; no, it was clear, the entire country of China stood still, listening to the loud, mournful wail of every car, truck, rickshaw, and bicycle in the most populous country on Earth. Waves of compassion and unity were palpable, within the crowded urban streets of Beijing, within the small villages of rural China, and within every person crying quietly on the streetcorner. This was a moment of silence. This was a roar of solidarity. For a full 15 minutes, 1.2 billion people said goodbye together.
-c
ChinaBlog Day 16
Ugh. Sick. That’s what I’ve been doing since Friday. I’m allergic to my down bedding, so I wake up every morning with about an hour of sneezing. I’ve gotten used to that. This is different. On Friday I arose with the kind of sore throat that portends an uncomfortable immediate future. Sure enough, by Friday afternoon I was surrounded by a snowy-white meadow of used Kleenex. In two days I went through three boxes of tissue. And that’s not including the half roll of toilet paper I resorted to, MacGyver-style, when the first box ran out. I have sneezed and wiped my nose so many times that you can see the cartilage. When I get back home, everyone is going to call me Michael. Jackson. Sorry, I’m really out of it.
--Because of this issue, I’ve been holed up in my room for almost three days now. It’s been ok, what with the internets and the Googles and the Skypes. I’ve felt very in touch with the world I’m unable to visit. I just longingly stare at it out my 12th floor window from bed. Then I sneeze, cough, have a seizure, and blow my nose. One more to the pile. It was really the smell that made me open the window, and imagine my surprise when a big clod of dirt flew into the room and landed on my computer. Did I mention I’m on the 12th floor? Wait, let me check. Hmm…sick, tissue, internets, longing stare, oh yes. There it is. 12th floor. 12TH FLOOR. The wind is so strong that it picked up a clod of dirt from the tree farm next door, lifted it 120 feet into the air, through my open window, and deposited it square on the keyboard of my laptop. I think the odds of that happening are, like, 100:1. Maybe even 200:1. I don’t think it’s done anything bad to anything sensitive. Time will tell.
--Now I’m going to go to sleep again. I’m almost the last person in our group, and certainly in this apartment, to get sick like this, so not only was it bound to happen, but I kind of know what's in store. Everyone keeps telling me to just sleep it off. 24 solid hours of rest has been the cure for many people so far. If you insist.
-c
--Because of this issue, I’ve been holed up in my room for almost three days now. It’s been ok, what with the internets and the Googles and the Skypes. I’ve felt very in touch with the world I’m unable to visit. I just longingly stare at it out my 12th floor window from bed. Then I sneeze, cough, have a seizure, and blow my nose. One more to the pile. It was really the smell that made me open the window, and imagine my surprise when a big clod of dirt flew into the room and landed on my computer. Did I mention I’m on the 12th floor? Wait, let me check. Hmm…sick, tissue, internets, longing stare, oh yes. There it is. 12th floor. 12TH FLOOR. The wind is so strong that it picked up a clod of dirt from the tree farm next door, lifted it 120 feet into the air, through my open window, and deposited it square on the keyboard of my laptop. I think the odds of that happening are, like, 100:1. Maybe even 200:1. I don’t think it’s done anything bad to anything sensitive. Time will tell.
--Now I’m going to go to sleep again. I’m almost the last person in our group, and certainly in this apartment, to get sick like this, so not only was it bound to happen, but I kind of know what's in store. Everyone keeps telling me to just sleep it off. 24 solid hours of rest has been the cure for many people so far. If you insist.
-c
Thursday, May 15, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 13
I can’t shake the feeling that I’m walking around in the birthplace of modern China. Or maybe the birthday of modern China. In about a year and a half, modern China will be wrapped up in a blue or pink blanket, snuggled in a diminutive rolling crib, it’s exhausted mother reaching out in vain for one tiny hug as this critical newborn is wheeled out of the delivery room to the intensive care unit. Modern China is a preemie. And right now it is in hour 40 of a very long and tumultuous delivery process. It began with the 1979 water breaking, followed by an early 1980s 80 mph rush to the hospital in a middle-of-the-night taxi. After a 1990s Emergency Room arrival and check-in process, the year 2000 brought modern China into the delivery room, and it is still on its way out. If you’re wondering, modern China’s mother is Communist China, who was left with this child after a recent on-again, off-again, love/hate relationship with the United States. The father’s not around much, but he sends money every month in the form of business and trade. It’s still unclear how much he’s going to be involved in raising the newborn. I think mom is going to have quite a bit of say in that.
--What brings this up is looking at my Beijing apartment complex on Google Earth. It’s the only finished project in a sea of muddy construction sites. As you walk the streets in my neighborhood you feel as if you’ve stepped into Chicago circa 1895, just as the greatest and most influential high-rises in the world were taking shape. They’re still around today, defining the Windy City’s culture and presence. Beijing will be similarly affected by the development we’re watching right now. As more and more rural families, or, more often, family members immigrate to the cities (I use this word carefully, because it is just as difficult culturally, economically, and especially legally, to move from the countryside to the city in China as it is to move from one country to another), the hope is that this explosion in building will match the explosion in urban population. But adolescence is a universal concept, and most likely young modern China will follow the well-beaten path made by every other volatile urban environment as it goes through development and understanding of its place in the world. If it doesn’t end up squatting in an abandoned warehouse with a $20-a-day drug habit it will be better off than most. After years of Failed Urban Nations doing stint after stint in rehab, promising they want to get better, giving hope for a new future only to relapse and end up back on the street, expectations for newborn modern China are preemptively low.
--But here’s the punchline: preemie newborn modern China is not a child, but a baby Elephant in a person-sized world. It is going through all of these developments on a scale unheard of in history. Modern China is bigger than any civilization ever to walk the earth. When modern China wants it’s bottle, where will we get enough milk to feed it? It’s not its fault that it will be hungry after such an ordeal. How will we find a bed for it? What room will it sleep in? It’s a staggering problem for one set of staying-together-for-the-kid parents to deal with. They’re just not that into each other, and having a baby the size of a small car in the house with them isn’t going to settle things down. The one hurt most by this situation is the calf, destined to live in a household where neither parent truly accepts it. Somehow, it will have to find a way to fend for itself, and maybe grow up to be a contributing member of society. The odds are not in its favor.
-c
--What brings this up is looking at my Beijing apartment complex on Google Earth. It’s the only finished project in a sea of muddy construction sites. As you walk the streets in my neighborhood you feel as if you’ve stepped into Chicago circa 1895, just as the greatest and most influential high-rises in the world were taking shape. They’re still around today, defining the Windy City’s culture and presence. Beijing will be similarly affected by the development we’re watching right now. As more and more rural families, or, more often, family members immigrate to the cities (I use this word carefully, because it is just as difficult culturally, economically, and especially legally, to move from the countryside to the city in China as it is to move from one country to another), the hope is that this explosion in building will match the explosion in urban population. But adolescence is a universal concept, and most likely young modern China will follow the well-beaten path made by every other volatile urban environment as it goes through development and understanding of its place in the world. If it doesn’t end up squatting in an abandoned warehouse with a $20-a-day drug habit it will be better off than most. After years of Failed Urban Nations doing stint after stint in rehab, promising they want to get better, giving hope for a new future only to relapse and end up back on the street, expectations for newborn modern China are preemptively low.
--But here’s the punchline: preemie newborn modern China is not a child, but a baby Elephant in a person-sized world. It is going through all of these developments on a scale unheard of in history. Modern China is bigger than any civilization ever to walk the earth. When modern China wants it’s bottle, where will we get enough milk to feed it? It’s not its fault that it will be hungry after such an ordeal. How will we find a bed for it? What room will it sleep in? It’s a staggering problem for one set of staying-together-for-the-kid parents to deal with. They’re just not that into each other, and having a baby the size of a small car in the house with them isn’t going to settle things down. The one hurt most by this situation is the calf, destined to live in a household where neither parent truly accepts it. Somehow, it will have to find a way to fend for itself, and maybe grow up to be a contributing member of society. The odds are not in its favor.
-c
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 11
Sorry if the previous post seemed crass and insensitive. I am only just now learning the extent of the damage. At the time I was just writing what I experienced. Now I read it knowing the magnitude of devastation and feel guilty. But this is the story of what happened to me, and all I can write is what I felt at the time given the information I had available, which was pretty much none. I certainly don't want to be making jokes about this disaster. I hope you all understand my intention with yesterday's post. Thanks.
-c
ChinaBlog Day 10
*POST FROM YESTERDAY. EVERYTHING IS OK HERE*
I’ve lived in LA my whole life, and have experienced all kinds of earthquakes, rumbly to destructive. The worst I’ve ever seen hit our city at a teeth-jarring 6.5, and it tore the place apart. Today, however, I sat through 2 and a half minutes of a 7.5 Richter Scale tremor with an epicenter more than 700 miles away. I can’t believe after living for 28 years within throwing distance of the San Andreas Fault the 7.0 found me in China. It was a surreal experience. I was helping one of the other BASE students connect her computer to the servers at studio (That’s my job here. We all have a job, and I got ‘Computer Nerd’. Sorry Sylvie.). Suddenly, I began to feel completely overwhelmed. It was as if there was someone behind me with their hand on my shoulder, gently rocking me back and forth ever so slightly. I thought I was about to pass out right in my seat. I just couldn’t make the feeling that I was sitting on a boat on a breezy day subside. I closed my eyes, crossed them, uncrossed them, tried to focus on the computer screen, but the swaying just wouldn’t stop. Finally I put my hands on my head and my head on the table and moaned, and the girl I was talking to immediately pushed her chair back under the not-so-erroneous assumption that I was about to spew all over the floor. She couldn’t tell what was wrong with me, but her perplexion turned to surprise when, just as suddenly as I had, she gasped. She felt it too. Then we were both moaning and holding our heads like we knew we had cutoff jeans in our future (that was an Incredible Hulk reference. Probably too subtle). I looked up from between my fingers and saw a room full of students moaning and grasping their heads. A group of people standing up nearby took no notice of these events. I immediately arose from my chair, and the feeling of queasiness passed, but the floor still moved underfoot. I walked to my professors to ask them what this was, but since they hadn’t felt the queasiness they couldn’t really understand what I was talking about, and blamed it on a nearby train. I told them that a train goes by every half hour, and I’ve never felt this. I stumbled over to my fellow students, who were madly clawing at their faces in desperate attempts to reach into their eye sockets and steady their sloshing brains with their hands. I got them up and helped them outside. I said ‘this is an-n earthq-quake, Michig-gan people, and this is a-a HUGE one. I’d bet it’s an 8.0.’
‘What?’ they exclaimed. ‘8.0 e-earthquakes lev-vel everything-g under-rfoot. There’s no way it’s that-t massive.’
‘Ah-ha,’ I retorted. ‘The Rich-cht-ter Scale is based p-partly on the amoun-nt of time an earthquake las-sts. O-one of the lar-rgest earthquak-kes ever re-ecorded was in Alas-ska and it w-went on for more th-than five min-nutes. This has been s-shaking now for at least-t half that-t. It’ll be a h-huge o-one. 8.0 a-at least. You’ll see-ee. Does anyon-ne have a sto-opwatch-ch? Let’s get-t it out and time the l-last of the earthq-quake. It might b-be interes-sting to see j-just how long it will-l keep going, and then w-we can-n extrapolat-te to figure o-out approx-ximately the duration of the sh-shaking.’ You get the idea. It was a long time.
We went outside and talked about the rumbling for a while before the earth finally stopped hammocking lazily. When we returned to our computers, CNN put up a headline about the 7.5ness of the shaking. I still have no idea about the aftermath of the quake, because where I live has no internet (due to logistical ineptitude, not natural disaster). I hope I don’t find out tomorrow that a lot of people were hurt.
--Speaking of earthquakily-dangerous living spaces, we finally moved into our new place today. It’s on the twelfth floor of a building in a medium-sized (and by medium-sized, I mean like a medium-sized blue whale) apartment complex in the Beijing equivalent of Beverly Hills. There are sixteen 25-story towers situated around a large green space with tennis courts, a park, a gym, convenience stores, gardens, play areas, and an underground parking garage. It takes approximately 5 minutes to walk from one end of the central park to the other, which we have to do whenever we exit the complex. And this is only one of endless coordinated mass living spaces in just this district alone. They stretch as far as the eye can see, which can be either a long way or a few feet, depending on how high up your apartment is, and are of varying quality, depending on what part of the city you can afford to live in. The further out from the center you go, the fancier and more ridiculous the living situations. All of the buildings I can see out my window (let’s count, one, two, three, forty billion, a trillion bajillion, etc) were built no more than 7 years ago. Many are still under construction. The city is blanketed by an unfinished sea of crane-topped monuments to the unwavering power of the global capitalist economy. It’s quite beautiful.
--Tonight, to celebrate our newfound digs, we decided to go out to dinner in our new neighborhood. The first place we stumbled upon was a Starbucks. Since none of us had been in one yet on this trip, we stopped for some $5 Frappuccinos. We won’t be returning for a while. When we continued down the street we also found a KFC, a Pizza Hut, a McDonald’s, a Papa John’s, and a KFC. If you are thinking I accidentally typed that twice, let me assure you, there is, in fact, a KFC, and then half a block down and across the street, a KFC. Again. If you stand in the right place, you can see both of them simultaneously. Just like that girl’s feet and head. It’s as if America tripped on a Chinese curb and faceplanted violently into our neighborhood. We had dinner at HoSun’s Honey BBQ, which was really just a Korean BBQ place similar to the one we visited two nights ago. Low budget, but good pork.
--Speaking of capitalist pigs, we found Americatown yesterday. It’s exactly like Chinatown or Little Tokyo in LA, but with strange foreigners all over the place. We had real live authentic American breakfasts of pancakes, waffles, omelets, sausage, bacon, hashed browns, oj, and sea cucumber. The place where we ate was called ‘American Steak and Eggs’, and next door was a small cottage-house-turned-restaurant called ‘Grandma’s Pantry’, and next door to that was a small hole-in-the-wall called ‘McDonald’s’. When we walked in the front door of AS&E we were greeted with a round of ‘Hellosirandyouarewelcomeinthisrestaurant’ by a nice Chinese lady standing behind the typical diner podium with a sign on it saying ‘please to be seated wait sir’. We walked past a few dozen or so nonchalant glances from the largest collection of white people this side of the Forbidden City, and were treated to a wonderfully wholehearted attempt at breakfast diner food. I ordered a pecan waffle, which was the same as the regular waffle, which was the same as the pancakes, but with a grid pattern and some nut shavings on the top. My roommate was so excited about ‘real food’ that he powered through a large shrimp and cheese omelet (with extra cheese) and a stack of strawberry pancakes sprinkled with granulated sugar. I ordered oj with my meal, and they went in back, mixed up some Tang, threw some pulp in, and contentedly charged me 20 Yuan for their effort. The oj was almost as much as my waffle. I guess that’s appropriate, given that the ‘juice’ was the best thing on the table. Actually, my breakfast included scrambled eggs, and they only put a tiny bit of garlic and soy sauce in them, so they were pretty good. I just kept thinking about how Chinese people must feel going into a ‘Chinese Food’ place in the States, looking at the crap we proudly serve them, eating it with a fake smile and a sigh. I now know precisely what they are thinking. It’s a little bit disappointment, but it’s also a little bit happiness that at least someone’s trying. It’s the thought that counts.
-c
I’ve lived in LA my whole life, and have experienced all kinds of earthquakes, rumbly to destructive. The worst I’ve ever seen hit our city at a teeth-jarring 6.5, and it tore the place apart. Today, however, I sat through 2 and a half minutes of a 7.5 Richter Scale tremor with an epicenter more than 700 miles away. I can’t believe after living for 28 years within throwing distance of the San Andreas Fault the 7.0 found me in China. It was a surreal experience. I was helping one of the other BASE students connect her computer to the servers at studio (That’s my job here. We all have a job, and I got ‘Computer Nerd’. Sorry Sylvie.). Suddenly, I began to feel completely overwhelmed. It was as if there was someone behind me with their hand on my shoulder, gently rocking me back and forth ever so slightly. I thought I was about to pass out right in my seat. I just couldn’t make the feeling that I was sitting on a boat on a breezy day subside. I closed my eyes, crossed them, uncrossed them, tried to focus on the computer screen, but the swaying just wouldn’t stop. Finally I put my hands on my head and my head on the table and moaned, and the girl I was talking to immediately pushed her chair back under the not-so-erroneous assumption that I was about to spew all over the floor. She couldn’t tell what was wrong with me, but her perplexion turned to surprise when, just as suddenly as I had, she gasped. She felt it too. Then we were both moaning and holding our heads like we knew we had cutoff jeans in our future (that was an Incredible Hulk reference. Probably too subtle). I looked up from between my fingers and saw a room full of students moaning and grasping their heads. A group of people standing up nearby took no notice of these events. I immediately arose from my chair, and the feeling of queasiness passed, but the floor still moved underfoot. I walked to my professors to ask them what this was, but since they hadn’t felt the queasiness they couldn’t really understand what I was talking about, and blamed it on a nearby train. I told them that a train goes by every half hour, and I’ve never felt this. I stumbled over to my fellow students, who were madly clawing at their faces in desperate attempts to reach into their eye sockets and steady their sloshing brains with their hands. I got them up and helped them outside. I said ‘this is an-n earthq-quake, Michig-gan people, and this is a-a HUGE one. I’d bet it’s an 8.0.’
‘What?’ they exclaimed. ‘8.0 e-earthquakes lev-vel everything-g under-rfoot. There’s no way it’s that-t massive.’
‘Ah-ha,’ I retorted. ‘The Rich-cht-ter Scale is based p-partly on the amoun-nt of time an earthquake las-sts. O-one of the lar-rgest earthquak-kes ever re-ecorded was in Alas-ska and it w-went on for more th-than five min-nutes. This has been s-shaking now for at least-t half that-t. It’ll be a h-huge o-one. 8.0 a-at least. You’ll see-ee. Does anyon-ne have a sto-opwatch-ch? Let’s get-t it out and time the l-last of the earthq-quake. It might b-be interes-sting to see j-just how long it will-l keep going, and then w-we can-n extrapolat-te to figure o-out approx-ximately the duration of the sh-shaking.’ You get the idea. It was a long time.
We went outside and talked about the rumbling for a while before the earth finally stopped hammocking lazily. When we returned to our computers, CNN put up a headline about the 7.5ness of the shaking. I still have no idea about the aftermath of the quake, because where I live has no internet (due to logistical ineptitude, not natural disaster). I hope I don’t find out tomorrow that a lot of people were hurt.
--Speaking of earthquakily-dangerous living spaces, we finally moved into our new place today. It’s on the twelfth floor of a building in a medium-sized (and by medium-sized, I mean like a medium-sized blue whale) apartment complex in the Beijing equivalent of Beverly Hills. There are sixteen 25-story towers situated around a large green space with tennis courts, a park, a gym, convenience stores, gardens, play areas, and an underground parking garage. It takes approximately 5 minutes to walk from one end of the central park to the other, which we have to do whenever we exit the complex. And this is only one of endless coordinated mass living spaces in just this district alone. They stretch as far as the eye can see, which can be either a long way or a few feet, depending on how high up your apartment is, and are of varying quality, depending on what part of the city you can afford to live in. The further out from the center you go, the fancier and more ridiculous the living situations. All of the buildings I can see out my window (let’s count, one, two, three, forty billion, a trillion bajillion, etc) were built no more than 7 years ago. Many are still under construction. The city is blanketed by an unfinished sea of crane-topped monuments to the unwavering power of the global capitalist economy. It’s quite beautiful.
--Tonight, to celebrate our newfound digs, we decided to go out to dinner in our new neighborhood. The first place we stumbled upon was a Starbucks. Since none of us had been in one yet on this trip, we stopped for some $5 Frappuccinos. We won’t be returning for a while. When we continued down the street we also found a KFC, a Pizza Hut, a McDonald’s, a Papa John’s, and a KFC. If you are thinking I accidentally typed that twice, let me assure you, there is, in fact, a KFC, and then half a block down and across the street, a KFC. Again. If you stand in the right place, you can see both of them simultaneously. Just like that girl’s feet and head. It’s as if America tripped on a Chinese curb and faceplanted violently into our neighborhood. We had dinner at HoSun’s Honey BBQ, which was really just a Korean BBQ place similar to the one we visited two nights ago. Low budget, but good pork.
--Speaking of capitalist pigs, we found Americatown yesterday. It’s exactly like Chinatown or Little Tokyo in LA, but with strange foreigners all over the place. We had real live authentic American breakfasts of pancakes, waffles, omelets, sausage, bacon, hashed browns, oj, and sea cucumber. The place where we ate was called ‘American Steak and Eggs’, and next door was a small cottage-house-turned-restaurant called ‘Grandma’s Pantry’, and next door to that was a small hole-in-the-wall called ‘McDonald’s’. When we walked in the front door of AS&E we were greeted with a round of ‘Hellosirandyouarewelcomeinthisrestaurant’ by a nice Chinese lady standing behind the typical diner podium with a sign on it saying ‘please to be seated wait sir’. We walked past a few dozen or so nonchalant glances from the largest collection of white people this side of the Forbidden City, and were treated to a wonderfully wholehearted attempt at breakfast diner food. I ordered a pecan waffle, which was the same as the regular waffle, which was the same as the pancakes, but with a grid pattern and some nut shavings on the top. My roommate was so excited about ‘real food’ that he powered through a large shrimp and cheese omelet (with extra cheese) and a stack of strawberry pancakes sprinkled with granulated sugar. I ordered oj with my meal, and they went in back, mixed up some Tang, threw some pulp in, and contentedly charged me 20 Yuan for their effort. The oj was almost as much as my waffle. I guess that’s appropriate, given that the ‘juice’ was the best thing on the table. Actually, my breakfast included scrambled eggs, and they only put a tiny bit of garlic and soy sauce in them, so they were pretty good. I just kept thinking about how Chinese people must feel going into a ‘Chinese Food’ place in the States, looking at the crap we proudly serve them, eating it with a fake smile and a sigh. I now know precisely what they are thinking. It’s a little bit disappointment, but it’s also a little bit happiness that at least someone’s trying. It’s the thought that counts.
-c
Sunday, May 11, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 09
I think I just broke someone. I’ve gotten used to the double takes when people see me on the street, but, obviously, they haven’t gotten used to me. What I still can’t believe is that the sight of a white person is so rare here that it warrants extra attention, and even wonder. ‘What is that thing?’ they seem to be astonishing aloud in Chinese to my face. ‘Look at the way it moves! It’s like a circus animal! Sung, come here and see this! Maybe if we poke it we can make it do tricks.’ And so they do. Usually, the scenario goes like this: I’m walking with my groceries or laptop or whatever. I happen to look up from my feet at the same moment someone coming the other direction does too, and we make eye contact. Out of politeness, we both then look away, as if it had never happened. I continue to look away, and out of the periphery of my vision, I see their head snap back toward mine like I was covered in bees. There is usually a mixture of shock, amusement, and horror etched on their mug. If you can’t picture their face, just imagine that you have walked out your front door and found, instead of me, 10 clowns stuffed into a tiny car, having just run head-on into another small car filled with another 10 clowns, and they are all strewn across the street in various states of carnage, with googly eyeglasses springing around on dazed faces, size 56 shoes run through windshields, and red squeaky noses bleeping timidly under scurrying paramedics’ footfalls. Shock, horror, amusement.
--So, back to the lecture at hand, I think I just broke someone. I was returning from, where else, the grocery store, and was near my building. I had already encountered immeasurable disbelief by this point, having lumbered my way to the store, and, more implausibly, through the tiny aisles of tiny overly-packaged tiny foodstuffs (almost like a normal person, but much much bigger and freakishly pale), and I was pretty much over the double-takes. So, once again, I happened to look up (to see how close I was to the entrance of my place) and caught eyes with a girl of perhaps 14 arriving home from school. We both promptly looked away, as you do, and I was expecting the requisite ‘HOLYCRAPAMONSTERRUN!’ head snap. Sure enough, it came right on cue, but exactly at that moment there just happened to be, and I couldn’t make this up, a transparent-green plastic disposable correction-tape (white out) dispenser laying on the ground just under her foot. Out of the corner of my ear I heard a loud cracking crunch, and out of the corner of my eye I saw this tiny little being hit the pavement eyebrow first like a 50 lb. slab of meat. Her bags went everywhere. Her glasses skittered across the damp asphalt. I briefly saw the soles of her shoes and the top of her head simultaneously. It was one of the most hysterically horrendous faceplants I’ve ever seen. Even worse than the time Alex Ou made one turn on his first ever black diamond run and fell 150 feet down the slope, losing every article of clothing on his person not considered to be some type of underwear. It was that bad. I instantly flew to the rescue, helped her up, gathered her things, asked her if she was ok, all that. If I had disappeared at that moment, she would have burst into tears. Instead, she just turned the most impossible shade of red and stared resolutely at her feet as she took her things from me, and then ran off without a word. Imagine the mortification of a monster seeing you fall down in public. And then to have the horrible thing help you with your stuff, it’s almost too much to bear. She’s probably never going to leave her room again. I felt so tremendously awful for her that I had to come straight home and post the entire story on the internet for everyone to read about. Poor thing.
-c
--So, back to the lecture at hand, I think I just broke someone. I was returning from, where else, the grocery store, and was near my building. I had already encountered immeasurable disbelief by this point, having lumbered my way to the store, and, more implausibly, through the tiny aisles of tiny overly-packaged tiny foodstuffs (almost like a normal person, but much much bigger and freakishly pale), and I was pretty much over the double-takes. So, once again, I happened to look up (to see how close I was to the entrance of my place) and caught eyes with a girl of perhaps 14 arriving home from school. We both promptly looked away, as you do, and I was expecting the requisite ‘HOLYCRAPAMONSTERRUN!’ head snap. Sure enough, it came right on cue, but exactly at that moment there just happened to be, and I couldn’t make this up, a transparent-green plastic disposable correction-tape (white out) dispenser laying on the ground just under her foot. Out of the corner of my ear I heard a loud cracking crunch, and out of the corner of my eye I saw this tiny little being hit the pavement eyebrow first like a 50 lb. slab of meat. Her bags went everywhere. Her glasses skittered across the damp asphalt. I briefly saw the soles of her shoes and the top of her head simultaneously. It was one of the most hysterically horrendous faceplants I’ve ever seen. Even worse than the time Alex Ou made one turn on his first ever black diamond run and fell 150 feet down the slope, losing every article of clothing on his person not considered to be some type of underwear. It was that bad. I instantly flew to the rescue, helped her up, gathered her things, asked her if she was ok, all that. If I had disappeared at that moment, she would have burst into tears. Instead, she just turned the most impossible shade of red and stared resolutely at her feet as she took her things from me, and then ran off without a word. Imagine the mortification of a monster seeing you fall down in public. And then to have the horrible thing help you with your stuff, it’s almost too much to bear. She’s probably never going to leave her room again. I felt so tremendously awful for her that I had to come straight home and post the entire story on the internet for everyone to read about. Poor thing.
-c
Thursday, May 8, 2008
ChinaBlog Day 06
I’ve been in China for 6 days now, and I haven’t really hit that point where I’m struck by just how different this place is, or been enamored specifically by the idea of being on another side of the world. It’s so comfortable here, so giving and safe, inexpensive, frenetic, and alive, that no matter how many people pull me aside on the street to take a picture with me I just can’t feel like a fish out of water. That happens, by the way. Sometimes they giggle over and ask politely for a picture with the giant albino monster from the West, or sometimes I turn around and find a foot long lens in my face. I just continue what I’m doing and let them get their candid shots. Let’s be honest, I do the same thing to them a dozen times a day, when I pass an old woman cooking dumplings on her front doorstep, or find a man sitting in an alley sharpening an ancient butcher knife on a 200 year old whetstone. We’re all learning from each other here. I get to see the way we’re really supposed to interact with this planet, making your own things, never throwing anything away (they don’t sell disposable cups here. You just can’t find them), and tremendous respect for craft and efficiency, not salary and accumulation of useless things. And they get to see what it looks like when the gene pool ambles drunkenly through the forest for a few hundred generations. There’s a reason people from the west keep coming back from here changed. It’s a totally refreshing and natural way of thinking about the purpose of life. Families live in the same house for centuries, and children playing in a narrow, lively alley can know that not just their grandparents, but their ancestors played the same games as children in the same streets. There is such a connection with the past that they literally worship it. Back in the somethingorothers, Jesuit priests came over here to China and were accepted with open arms. The Chinese knew there was a lot to learn from each other. But eventually, the priests were here to convert the Chinese, and insisted that their spiritual focus on ancestors should be pushed aside in favor of the one god system, and the Chinese kept asking if they could just keep the one god to the side as a sort of lightning-throwing, bearded, toga-wearing Fonzie, cool and well respected, but always secondary to family and history. This sticking point got worse, and eventually the Jesuits left disappointed. But imagine if you took the notion that everyone from your family kept on watching and guiding you as you lived your life. These are real, tangible people who you may have known for a time. It just feels so much more powerful than some impossibly large figure twisted and manipulated by millennia of Western men and their selfish power struggles. It’s easy to see why I can leave my computer unattended in an unlocked studio space here and feel completely comfortable going away for hours.
I feel like the main Chinese version of petty theft is trying to get ignorant foreigners to buy cheap knock-offs thinking they’re the real deal. “Zhen de jia de?” is a phrase we were taught on the first day. It means “Real, or fake?” You ask it to the market seller. If they answer, “zhen de,” real, then you know it’s fake. If they answer with a string of swear words, then you know it’s real, and you’ve just insulted them, but you can’t afford it anyway, so just say “dui bu qi,” sorry, and walk away sheepishly. The black market for ‘fakes’ is so pervasive here that the bed sheets in my apartment are covered in the Louis Vuitton logo. And they were probably bought at the corner supermarket. Whatever the back alley copy machines do to leather-stamped wallets of major fashion houses, it doesn’t rip your credit cards from your pocket at gunpoint, and it doesn’t lend itself to a society of fear.
Unless you count the cabbies. The traffic here is completely different from home, no matter what city you live in. There is a strict set of rules on the road, but they have not a lot to do with the laws set forth by the government. Instead, the system is based on efficiency and getting where you need to go as quickly as possible. And it works surprisingly well. There is often not more than three inches between the cars/bikes/people/buses/ovens, but if you really pay attention to what’s not there, you’ll see a city free of dents, accidents, and abnormal levels of turmoil.
Lastly, speaking of abdominal turmoil, we ate from a Pizza Hut last night. It is a little kiosk-sized opening in the surrounding din that, were it not for a gaudy red Formica countertop, might be mistaken for any combination of Kinko’s, Boxes and More, and The UPS Store. We ordered a ‘large’ pizza, which clearly stated on the menu that it was 12’ across. I was impressed. At that size, it would not only break the door frame even if it were removed from the place vertically, it would require a remodel of the entire shop and the ones to either side, which, oddly enough, are a Boxes and More and a UPS Store. We were a little worried that we would not be able to finish the thing off in one night, even with our insistence to the confused man behind the copy machines that we were desperately uninterested in having sea cucumber slivered liberally across our massive pie. But for 72 Yuan, or just over $10, it seemed like the leftovers might be necessary to make this meal worthwhile. Ten minutes later the man emerged triumphantly from the back oven/plotter room and handed us a bag with a tiny, flat box in it. We checked to see that we were still not next door (this looking like the ‘Boxes’ offering, naturally). 72 Yuan later, we had our ‘large’ 12” pizza, which actually measured 12” only if you include the box it came in and the surrounding air rights acquired by the pizza in a string of shady 1980s land deals. We turned the tiny thing on edge and the three of us carefully passed it through the door, more out of a confused sense of dashed expectation than true necessity, and each took a side as we crab-walked our little sauced-up coaster back to the apartment and the sad eyes of all five who live here. We each tweezed ourselves a slice and sucked on it until the nutrients were gone, then stood in the living room staring at each other in silence. Did we just eat something? And so, with an inexplicable craving for sea cucumber, I went to bed.
-c
I feel like the main Chinese version of petty theft is trying to get ignorant foreigners to buy cheap knock-offs thinking they’re the real deal. “Zhen de jia de?” is a phrase we were taught on the first day. It means “Real, or fake?” You ask it to the market seller. If they answer, “zhen de,” real, then you know it’s fake. If they answer with a string of swear words, then you know it’s real, and you’ve just insulted them, but you can’t afford it anyway, so just say “dui bu qi,” sorry, and walk away sheepishly. The black market for ‘fakes’ is so pervasive here that the bed sheets in my apartment are covered in the Louis Vuitton logo. And they were probably bought at the corner supermarket. Whatever the back alley copy machines do to leather-stamped wallets of major fashion houses, it doesn’t rip your credit cards from your pocket at gunpoint, and it doesn’t lend itself to a society of fear.
Unless you count the cabbies. The traffic here is completely different from home, no matter what city you live in. There is a strict set of rules on the road, but they have not a lot to do with the laws set forth by the government. Instead, the system is based on efficiency and getting where you need to go as quickly as possible. And it works surprisingly well. There is often not more than three inches between the cars/bikes/people/buses/ovens, but if you really pay attention to what’s not there, you’ll see a city free of dents, accidents, and abnormal levels of turmoil.
Lastly, speaking of abdominal turmoil, we ate from a Pizza Hut last night. It is a little kiosk-sized opening in the surrounding din that, were it not for a gaudy red Formica countertop, might be mistaken for any combination of Kinko’s, Boxes and More, and The UPS Store. We ordered a ‘large’ pizza, which clearly stated on the menu that it was 12’ across. I was impressed. At that size, it would not only break the door frame even if it were removed from the place vertically, it would require a remodel of the entire shop and the ones to either side, which, oddly enough, are a Boxes and More and a UPS Store. We were a little worried that we would not be able to finish the thing off in one night, even with our insistence to the confused man behind the copy machines that we were desperately uninterested in having sea cucumber slivered liberally across our massive pie. But for 72 Yuan, or just over $10, it seemed like the leftovers might be necessary to make this meal worthwhile. Ten minutes later the man emerged triumphantly from the back oven/plotter room and handed us a bag with a tiny, flat box in it. We checked to see that we were still not next door (this looking like the ‘Boxes’ offering, naturally). 72 Yuan later, we had our ‘large’ 12” pizza, which actually measured 12” only if you include the box it came in and the surrounding air rights acquired by the pizza in a string of shady 1980s land deals. We turned the tiny thing on edge and the three of us carefully passed it through the door, more out of a confused sense of dashed expectation than true necessity, and each took a side as we crab-walked our little sauced-up coaster back to the apartment and the sad eyes of all five who live here. We each tweezed ourselves a slice and sucked on it until the nutrients were gone, then stood in the living room staring at each other in silence. Did we just eat something? And so, with an inexplicable craving for sea cucumber, I went to bed.
-c
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