你好朋友!

Interactive Expat

2011-07-02T02:21:00.001+08:00

Thinking of moving to Beijing?
Check out Interactive Expat!

New Adventure, New Blog!

2010-10-26T08:57:00.001+08:00

Check out the continuation of the Elliot Adventure at Binkies & Burp Cloths!

再见朋友, 你好宝宝! Goodbye Friend, Hello Baby!

2010-06-22T21:23:00.002+08:00

This is it.
I've put on my reflective writing mood inducing music and am beginning what I've been putting off for awhile now, writing the last post of the China blog.
Yep, the last.
Settle in, its a long one.
As I was on the subway the other day, I suddenly thought to myself, “Wow! I can count on my hands just how many subway rides I have left to go until we leave.” Then, “Dang, I'm going to have to add money to my subway card one more time.” I was hoping to just make it to 0 RMB on our last ride Sunday, as if the last swipe as I exited the subway station was symbolic of leaving China... It was at that time it really hit me that Beijing, the place we were planning on making our home for the long-term, was in fact going to be just two years that went by way too fast.
Many people have asked us to describe what its like to live in China. To be honest, if we gave you a list it would be made up of mostly the unattractive aspects of living here. Its just about impossible not to compare one's home country and China when asked that question. To live in Beijing is to live in a huge, sprawling city with dirty areas (where we live) and clean areas (westernized/tourist parts), where the contrast between rich and poor is shocking, where western logic is rare, the weather extreme, and the people, cars and basically everything else is loud. Despite all that Beijing is one cool place to live. Its the people that make the place. And if we had to choose what we'll miss most, its the people.
We've had the privilege of meeting some incredible people here- other foreigners and Chinese alike. We hope that we can always be friends with them.
With the knowledge that we are leaving, everyone has asked us when we'll be back. And while I have learned never to say “never”, I think I can say that for now we will will be closing the China chapter of our lives. It pains me to say that and pains Jeff even more. Jeff was the one who said he never wanted to go home after being here just 3 weeks. Jeff was the one who made living in China look easy, even though he no longer eats three Zhenbings a day. While I took a bit longer to adjust, I never stopped finding things that made living here better and easier. When that happened, a voice would tell me, “See? You can do it!” And thats part of the reason I loved living here- I learned what I really need (coffee), what I can do without (expensive junk), what really matters (people) and how to put things in perspective. For example, yesterday we went to lunch at a friend's house. Ok, well, not a house. She lives in a small room in the basement of a modern apartment complex. I didn't even know that could be done before. The room has no A/C, no heat, no kitchen, no bathroom. She shares the room with one of her friends. She cooks on a hot-plate in the hallway outside her room door and uses the bathroom down a dark and dripping hallway. I don't know where she takes a shower...We ate a delicious lunch, enjoyed eachother's company and had a few laughs. Many people may feel bad for her- I did- until I realized half-way through lunch that she's happy. She has what she needs- somewhere to live, a job and good friends...She may use ear muffs when she goes to bed in the winter and live far from her family but she knows whats important and she's focused. She's happy with what she has, not with what she doesn't. Thats what China has taught me.
So, to those of you who have toyed with the idea of coming to China but are still unsure, Jeff and I have one thing to say, “make like Nike and Just Do It.”
Yes, it will be the hardest thing you've ever done. Yes, you may hate it sometimes. Yes, its guaranteed that you'll miss everything about home. And yes, its rough at times.
But its all so worth it and you'll never regret it. The best stuff here is even better than what you can imagine.
And now I leave you with some important stuff to know/consider/remember:
1)The Subway Line 13 trains have the best A/C. Line 10 has the best A/C inside the stations itself.
2)Avoid Line 1 if at all possible at all times. Its the most popular line and is crowded all the time.
3)Live where the “real people” live. Its more fun that way and cheaper too.
4)To live in China means to give up a lot of control. Go with the flow.
5)That being said, when lost- follow the huge mass of people. They're probably going where you need to.
6)When confronted with a new/challenging situation or food to try, just tell yourself “no regrets” and open up.
Thats all I can think of for now...
As the China chapter closes, another even scarier (in a good way) yet greater adventure awaits us. Elliot is coming in September. Its hard to describe exactly how it feels to have such a huge change take you by surprise but we're both glad it happened now and not when we're 40... We have no regrets that two years ago we sold our house in California, that we quit our jobs, got rid of all that we owned and now have nothing to go home to except people who love us (I'm pretty sure they still do). When friends tell us having Elliot will be the best thing thats happened to us, I believe them and now that we've had time to adjust we're both excited about having a new person in our lives. One thing we always want Elliot to know is that he did not ruin our lives or our China plans. We will tell him he was the biggest, coolest surprise we ever had and when he asks where he came from we'll say, “Africa- where only the best babies come from.”
So here we come. Back to California with the 2 bags we left with and a little person on the way.

2 pictures for you

2010-06-20T07:31:00.002+08:00

A friend of ours made us a caligraphy thing (thats pregnancy brain
talking, I forgot what to call it) for Elliot whose Chinese name is 白子文 (Bai ZiWen). Its easy to write and say, yay to Jeff for choosing an easy Chinese name. Although calling Elliot "WenWen" makes him sound like a girl so say our Chinese friends...

Last night we went to real traditional Japanese sushi with real
Japanese people. No California rolls here... I stuck with the eel that
was cooked through and edamame. Did you know edamame is high in iron?
I was thinking that maybe I've been so tired lately because I'm not
getting enough iron, so I loaded up. Jeff and our friends enjoyed an
assortment of sea urchin, scallops, salmon, tuna and other sushi
stuff.

Dinners With Friends

2010-06-15T21:50:00.004+08:00

Since we're leaving soon our nights have been packed and we're booked solid until we return to the US. We want to be able to spend as much time as possible with all our friends to say goodbye.

This 4 year old little boy is a Jeff worshipper of the highest order. He loves to rough-house and play with Jeff whenever they see eachother. It doesn't hurt either that Jeff gives him a toy or candy every time he sees him too...He also drew us a great picture of snowmen that we'll put on our fridge, as soon as we have one.

A couple days later, we went to a friend's house and had dinner with her family. She's the one from Hunan that I have a hard time understanding. Alas, just as I'm starting to be be able to decipher her accent, we'll be leaving... Her family is awesome! She has 3 kids- 2 daughters and one son. The Grandma lives with them, she's is 96 years old and has 13 children! When I asked how many grandchildren she has, she said she doesn't remember because there are too may. We sat together on the couch after dinner and she held my hand. One of the daughters had fun giving chopstick weilding lessons to our visitors that came along with us. And all night long the husband wanted Jeff to drink BaiJiu (literally: White Alcohol. Its Chinese vodka) and he did for awhile. It came in handy when Jeff needed to wash down the hot mustard oil they gave him for his greens during dinner.

Little Mandarin Maoists In California

2010-06-15T10:29:00.001+08:00

It seems as if some parents in SoCal are very upset by the idea that Mandarin may be taught in their schools. According to them, learning about China and Chinese culture will brainwash them and the "Enemy" will turn their kids into little Maoists. Check out this funny clip from the Daily Show:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Socialism Studies

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Jeff and I on the other hand are excited by the idea that Mandarin immersion classes are popping up in schools all over California. The City of Davis also offers a Mandarin playgroup that we definitely want Elliot to be a part of when he is old enough.

Update Shot

2010-06-12T08:48:00.003+08:00

Here I am after 3 days of running around Beijing with my
visitors...went to Great Wall, helped get them 2 new suits, got
crushed in the subway last night during rush hour after the acrobat
show...Speaking of rush hour- when we were squeezed onto the subway, a
lady needed to get past me to exit for the next stop; she noticed I
was preganant and was profusely apologizing for getting by me. I said
it was no problem as I tried to suck in my stomach as if that would
help...
I think some of the uncomfortable phase of pregnancy has begun: when
I lay on my left side, my stomach won't stop growling. When I lay on
my right side, I get bad heartburn. Lying on my back gives me leg
cramps....Sitting up to sleep seems like the most comfy option most of
the time....oh, so tired...

Musings From a Sufferer of Pregnancy Related Diminished Mental Capacity

2010-06-09T09:00:00.001+08:00

Our time in China is winding down, just under three weeks and we'll be back...with that comes the same nostalgia I felt when we were leaving California almost two years ago. The need to feel like it was important to take mental snapshots of the everyday mundane things- the sunset over the Coastal Range, the Cabin road, downtown Davis, and the smell of pine trees (yes, mental snapshots can also include odors for better or worse. I think of these snapshots as emanation images). Now I am feeling nostalgic about walking to the bus stop amidst the trash and stray dogs of the neighborhood, fighting my way through the vendors at the subway, getting yelled at by taxi men, going to our favorite Xingjiang restaurant in the Hutongs, and yes, even the smell of the stairway in our building- it smells like cool, dusty concrete...
There are plenty of things I won't miss, of course. Most of which has to do with transportation and the bad smells. Bad customer service won't be missed either. But now even those things will be forever memorialized as part of our China Experience.
All this makes me reflect too about what we have accomplished while we've been here... ok well, if we speak in those terms, its more like what Jeff has accomplished and what I've actually managed to do to some extent. Since we have been in China, Jeff has become pretty much fluent in Chinese and while I have made great strides speaking The Hua, I still teeter between flashes of unparalleled linguistic brilliance and episodes of grammatical affliction. The casualties have been great. Chinese kicks my butt on a regular basis. Lately, I have been able to blame pregnancy, so when I have to ask how to say something very simple because I have forgotten, I no longer get the look of disappointment from the person I ask, I just get a pat on the head and am told its ok to forget sometimes.
Bless the dear souls of our patient Chinese friends. Jeff and I bring humor to their lives. Example: We have a friend from Hunan that I have a really hard time understanding because she not only has a Southern accent, but she also has a lisp. One day we were having a conversation that included others, but at the time they were just listening to us. As the conversation progressed and I got more and more lost, she stopped and asked me something in Chinese. Blank look from me for what seemed like eternity, and mind racing I said, "What?", in Chinese. Everyone started to laugh, and she just continued speaking. While I felt good that I was able to make all my friends laugh, I had no idea what she had said until later. Jeff told me she was asking me, "Do you understand what I'm saying?". To this day, I still don't know how I could have misunderstood that... If I had to tell you my greatest accomplishments with Chinese so far, it would have to be that I can now have a detailed conversation about most things ( or I can figure it out and if you're patient, I can respond given time) and can also get a text message in Chinese and respond in an intelligent manner. I tend to take things literally though, so sometimes thats a problem.
I'm off to the airport now to get our last visitors. So begins a week of "Lasts". Last visit to the Wall, last visit to the acrobat show, and last visit to the Silk Market. I won't miss the Silk Market.

China Pictures

2010-06-08T08:47:00.001+08:00

1. When you live on a farm and need a haircut go to the Farmer Barber

2. Its common for the doors to get blocked on the trains, so windows become doors

3. Nike and Addidas Kung fu shoes- Yesss!

4 and 5. Get to work anyway you can...

Off I go to Changping Again and Other Random Things

2010-06-06T07:39:00.002+08:00

After a year of not going to Changping (because I didn't need to and its hecka far away in the opposite direction I usually go), I'm off to the Great North again. I'll bring my camera and take pics of anything interesting we may see.
The other night Elliot put on his best acrobatic show yet and Jeff was able to feel it all. I think now that he really does believe somethings in there, it was hard to get him to move his hand once Elliot stopped...
Speaking of acrobatics, we have our LAST visitors arriving on Wednesday. They are in Mongolia right now visiting some other friends. They're Americans we met in South Africa last December. I'm trying to think of stuff to do and will probably take them to an afternoon acrobat show so we can get out of the heat for awhile...

What Elliot Likes (Or seems to because I say so)

2010-06-03T10:02:00.001+08:00

Basically, I don't know what Elliot really likes, he'll have to tell me later, but I have been noticing reactions to what I eat and listen to. While his barometer goes from a lot of movement to none at all, I just take the opinion that if he's moving a lot he must like whatever it is I'm subjecting him to.
What gets a reaction:
(Food)
Asparagus with ranch dressing
Cucumbers
Yogurt
Zucchini
Cereal
Smoothies
Grilled cheese sandwiches
(Music)
The West Wing theme song
Guns N Roses- November Rain
U2
The Lemonheads
Creedance Clearwater Revival
Daft Punk

Maybe all this means Elliot will be a veggie loving, discerning TV viewer who enjoys a bit of classic rock and dance music . Who Knows?

ThunderStorms!

2010-06-01T19:00:00.007+08:00

Here's outside our window...The past two evenings we have had fantastic thunderstorms! Its hard to explain how spectacular they are, but imagine they are whipped up out of nowhere and are so close the thunder and lightning happen at the same time. The thunder is so loud it sets off car alarms and can wake the dead. I love it! I will definitely miss this about living in Beijing, we just don't get weather like this in California.
AND, today June 1st was a momentous day in history: Jeff FINALLY felt Elliot move.

5 pictures for you

2010-05-30T16:54:00.003+08:00

Our friends came and spent the weekend with us...they really like to
take pictures.
1. Jeff is showing off a baby gift one of our Chinese friends gave us.
2. Me in my Made In China Shirt
3. Jeff excited about his burger
4. Us
5. To Elliot: Yes, this is your Father.

2010-05-27T09:47:00.002+08:00

From the Beijinger:

We all have stories of nearly being run down while crossing a Beijing street, or cut off by a truck while on our bicycle, or almost pushed under a subway carriage by overly eager fellow passengers. But how many of us can maintain the spectacularly blase attitude of the tricycle rider captured in this video, blithely sailing over a Beijing intersection as a two-car one-bus pile-up plays out around him?

The news report also features footage of a pedestrian neatly avoiding being rundown by a car and a bus, and a man dodging two oncoming trains, though ChinaHush questions the authenticity of the last clip. Click the link to see for yourself: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTc0OTE4Mzg0.html

Hamburger Babies and The Growing Belly

2010-05-26T10:37:00.013+08:00

I have no clue as to why this baby is stuck inside this hamburger bun pillow, but it can't be too comfortable for him...
Here I am, belly getting bigger...every time we see our Chinese friends one of them is bound to say,"越来越多!" (Bigger and bigger!)

This comes with the Chinese assumption that since my belly is bigger it means I can fit more food in there. Not entirely true. Last night we were to dinner with friends and the well meaning, motherly type kept refilling my bowl with pork and mushroom soup until I thought I would explode. I did try something I've never had before: NanGuaBing 南瓜饼or pumpkin bread/cake.

Its pretty good. Imagine a corn muffin thats been deep fried and theres pumpkin filling inside. They're small but rich, so I had one and with assurances from the well meaning motherly type that they are in fact healthy and all pregnant women should eat them, so I took two home for later.

First Purchase

2010-05-24T08:30:00.003+08:00

Since we found out we're having a boy, we're both getting more excited...not because its a boy, a girl would have been great too, but because knowing who Elliot is makes it all the more real. Elliot has been quite an acrobat since I first felt him kick last month. He now wakes me up in the mornings and has an exercise session between 7:30 and 9:30 every evening that has me at a loss to where all this energy comes from. Was it the 2 steamed zucchinis I just ate? Does Elliot like zucchini or is he protesting? Its the strangest thing to feel movement inside of you and to have no control over it.

Since I'm seeing Jeff alot more in the evenings now (only 1 night class this semster), I have been "forcing" him to sit with me on the couch so he can keep his hand on my stomach to feel Elliot move. Have you ever made Jeff try to sit still without him feeling like he's not doing anything productive? I consider it practice for when I'll have to make Elliot sit still at important occasions. Jeff doesn't seem frustrated by the fact that he hasn't been able to feel Elliot's big kicks, but now I think Elliot's just messing with him. As soon as Jeff moves his hand away, Elliot gives me some of his biggest which leads me to yell, "Ahhh! You missed it!!" to Jeff. Jeff in turn begins to iron... I think by now Elliot will have The West Wing theme music hardwired into his little brain. I bought Jeff the complete series and we have been watching it most nights before bed.

So in preperation for the little man that is to come, I bought Elliot his first book, "The Complete Adventures of Curious George".

As a kid I remember my favorite books were: the Richard Scarry books, anything from Dr. Suess- especially The Lorax, the Encyclopedia Brown series, all the books by Bill Peet and of course, Curious George. Its going to be alot of fun putting together a little library for Elliot. I also want to get one of those little person size reading chairs...

Confessions of a Chinese Language Student

2010-05-23T14:22:00.002+08:00

The following is from the HaoHao Report... Alas, I have done most of these things too...

"Chinese is a really difficult and frustrating language to learn, but it always helps to laugh at yourself to get you through the process.
My confessions 我的自白:

Injuries
I have, in frustration, banged my head against my Chinese textbooks.
I’m pretty sure I’ve ruined my eyesight by staring at Chinese characters for too long.
I once got frost nip on my toes from studying for too long in my unheated Chinese apartment.
Tones
If you ask me for a “beizi” and there is a cup 杯子 bēizi and a blanket 被子 bèizi on the table, I won’t know which one to give you.
When I’m sick, I ask my friends to bring me soup 汤 tāng, but they always bring me candy 糖 táng instead and then tell me I should eat something healthier.
One time I told a friend we would have camels feet at my wedding but when I said 骆蹄脚 luòtí jiǎo, he heard nude photos 裸体照 luǒtǐzhào. I think he was disappointed when I clarified.
Spoonerisms
About 80% of the time I tell people I like to eat bees 蜜蜂 mìfēng on my mántou 馒头, but what I really mean is honey 蜂蜜 fēngmì.
Sometimes when I say I want to eat pineapple 菠萝bōluó, I really mean carrots (radish) 萝卜 luóbo. My husband always buys both for me just in case.
I once ordered a butt 屁股pìgu in a restaurant but I really wanted a pineapple beer 果啤guǒpí. The waiter got angry.
Characters
I’m proud to write my characters like an elementary school student. I think my writing is neat and clear. I can’t read what Chinese people write.
I feel both relieved and frustrated when Chinese people forget how to write a character. Relieved because even Chinese people think their language is hard too, but frustrated because if Chinese people can’t remember how to write the characters what hope do I have?
When people draw a character on my hand, I really have no idea what character they are writing but I usually pretend that I do.
I learned how to read Chinese characters by text messaging on my cell phone. Same with Pinying.
Measure words
I once had a test on measure words and filled in half the blanks with 个gè.
For example: 一____公园
My Chinese boyfriend said I was right “一个公园,” my Chinese teacher said I was wrong “一座公园.” I told my Chinese teacher people didn’t really talk like that but he didn’t change my grade.
Random
I sometimes let people assume that I don’t speak Chinese just so I can listen to what they have to say about me.
I can understand it when other foreigners speak Chinese even if Chinese people can’t.
Chinese has ruined my English. I now say weird things in English like “uncomfortable” 不太舒服 bùtài shūfu when I’m sick and “eating” medicine 吃药chīyào.
I want to crawl under a rock/cry/punch someone when I speak Chinese to Chinese person and he/she replies back “I’m sorry I don’t speak English.”
I reply in Chinese when people speak English to me and I don’t even realize it.
If I don’t understand something, I will ask for clarification, but if I still don’t understand the second time, I’ll pretend that I do just to save face.
Through the process of learning Chinese in China, I’ve become a master of charades."

Love Letters To Jeff

2010-05-21T09:06:00.001+08:00

Jeff has a writing class this semester and to help the students with their creative writing and use of English similes and metaphors, he had them write love letters. He told them to write the letters to an anonymous person, state how they feel about the person and how they would feel if their love letter was positively received. That being said, two girl students chose to write their letters to Jeff. Here are some excerpts:
" Your nose is upright as a spine."
" Your fingers are slender like scallions."
" You are as slender as bamboo."
" Your body is as strong as a mountain and active like a monkey."
After having a good laugh we're looking forward to next week's assignment: Dear John letters. Jeff is going to have the girls that wrote him the love letters, write break-up letters to him. Will keep you posted...

Chinese Culture, Pregnancy and Childbirth

2010-05-20T08:28:00.001+08:00

In many ways being pregnant was what I imagined it to be. Morning sickness wasn't fun, feeling the baby's first kick felt like I had thought it would (it was still awesome and took me by surprise) and getting bigger, while not the most comfortable thing in the world, still is pretty cool. Its been an adventure to experience things which I have no control over, except when I have to go to the bathroom and am afraid I won't make it in time...
There have been many things I haven't expected though, many of which I doubt I would have encountered were we not in China. Below you'll see just a few of the things people in China still believe and practice even though its the 21st century. Some things seem far fetched, while others seem logical...

"PRENATAL CARE:
ACTIVITIES
Do not use sharp objects on the bed because it can result in the infant being born with a cleft palate or lip. (i.e. scissors and knives.)
Do not go near open fire i.e. barbecue, or any open cooking fire. It is not clear why this is important except that this belief continues to be passed down by the elders. The instructions are to don't question just do this.
Pregnancy is considered a "hot" condition, so to balance the scale between "hot and cold" or "ying and yang" cold foods must be consumed throughout pregnancy.
Do not touch anything adhesive or anything with glue; for this causes the baby to have birth marks.
Do not criticize others; otherwise the baby will act and look like the person you criticize.
Husbands want boy babies to carry on the family name.
Acupuncture and massage are limited because of pregnancy."

I have been told many of these things but am still hounded by older women to drink hot water. Its getting so hot now, that drinking hot water is the last thing I want to do.

"FOOD RECOMMENDATIONS AND RESTRICTIONS
Avoid eating shellfish because it can cause a rash on baby.
Crab and squid cause the womb to be "sticky".
If you eat too much the baby will be too large and the labor will be harder.
Drink coconut milk so that baby will have good quality skin."

Many of our Chinese friends counsel me regulary to eat fruit, which I do, but they want me to eat an innordinate amount of fruit. In recent weeks I have had lychees held in front of my protesting face, apples offered to me, plates of pineapple set in front of me as if on a dare to see how much of it I'll consume in one sitting. Of course I know its all well meaning and doesn't bother me in the slightest- except the lychees. I don't like them, they remind me of eye-balls...

"OTHER
To determining sex while pregnant: if the belly is "pointed" it will be a boy if the belly is "rounded" it will be a girl."

In my case, this is true.

"LABOR AND DELIVERY:
ROLES
The spouse is not present during delivery because it is not part of the male role to participate.
For the first delivery, the mother of the expectant woman is present, however it is up to the expectant woman to deliver subsequent births by herself at home."

Wow! If I were to have Elliot in a Chinese hospital, Jeff would not be allowed in the room. I can't even imagine having to have babies by myself...I think thats more in the countryside though...

"SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS
During labor crying out will attract evil spirits to the new child, so silence is recommended to protect baby.
Must eat well for energy.
Squatting is ideal position for birth, if you lie down on your back the baby will have no energy to come out.
A necklace must be placed around the baby's neck before the umbilical cord is cut, this will "tie" the baby's life to the necklace and not the cord.
To protect baby's soft spot and belly, rub ginger paste or tiger balm on them.
Acupressure is helpful for relaxation for easier delivery.
PLACENTA
The placenta must be kept and buried near the birth place so that in death it may be worn into heaven as a symbol of atonement and humility of earth life. It is required to be reborn.
Throughout life, parts of the dried placenta may be used to make medicines for various ailments."

Bleh to most of that but the squatting during labor, eating well and accupressure seem sound...

POST PARTUM CARE:
"FOOD RECOMMENDATIONS AND RESTRICTIONS
Post partum is considered a "cold" condition due to blood loss during labor. Hot foods are required to rebuild lost blood supply. If cold foods are eaten at this time it can result in headache or arthritis in old age.
Hot foods would include, hot water, hot tea, ginger, vinegar, pigs feet and high protein meats, although beef should be avoided because it slows healing."

No pig knuckles for me please...

"SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS
Stay in doors for at least thirty days, this is called the "sitting month". This period can be as long as three months.
To prevent complications and avoid upsetting the balance of "hot and cold", avoid showering, washing hair, or exposing yourself to any cold conditions such as air conditioning, open windows, drafts or doorways during the "sitting" month.
Use water with ginger to purify hands before handling baby."

I've had quite a few conversations with Chinese women about this. Many women would prefer to have showers and hate the idea of staying inside for one month, but it seems that the more the mom or mother-in-law is involved, the chance of being forced to follow this tradition is greater. I think one of the first things I'd want to do after childbirth is have a shower.
So there you have it, some of the things that make China the interesting place that it is.

The African Souvenir Revealed!

2010-05-16T10:14:00.001+08:00

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Men At Work

2010-05-14T09:09:00.002+08:00

Well, one man at work. This a typical scene when something is being
done- one man working away while a bunch of other men stand around,
smoke and throw in their two cents whenever they see fit. Efficiency
at its best!

Crowd Collection

2010-05-11T17:51:00.002+08:00

Yep, China's crowded. Granted this is at its worst- either during holidays or rush hour...

Glasses City!

2010-05-11T10:21:00.008+08:00

Yesterday, I went with Jaime to the Beijing Ming Jing Yuan Glasses
Market against my better judgement... not because I was uncertain I
wouldn't be able to control my self in the optical palace, but because
I have the 4th cold so far in my pregnancy experience. So much for the
prenatal vitamins with 200% C, my religious hand-washing and avoidance
of sick people for fear they may give me German Measles (Rubella
virus); yes, I found out from my Dr. that I have no immunity, and
since I live in a developing country where people are not vaccinated,
her advice? Avoid crowds. Hmmmm.... not that I'm truly worried about
measles, but really?
Anyway, feeling like the walking dead and on 2 days of no sleep, I
headed south with Jaime. The market is a five minute walk from the
subway and the weather was great. When I walked into the market I got
the same feeling I used to get when I would walk into Costco without a
list: sensory overload accompanied by memory loss as to why I was
there in the first place. I also had that commercial from UHF, "Spatula City" by Weird
Al Yankovic stuck in my head too. Yes, and I did stay up late and listen
to Dr. Demento on Sunday nights as a kid...
Glasses for every occasion!

A plethora of glasses awaited us in the Market's 3 floors of stores.
Considering what we wanted it didn't take Jaime and I more than an
hour to find what we liked. We both picked 2 pairs, one sunglasses and
one regular pair. Jaime's proved not to be a problem. Mine did. To
make this a little less long, it seems as if I'm a "special case" in
China. Sunglasses could be made for me, but they would have to be
"special", contacts are impossible- they don't make my kind in China,
and the glasses I did end up with make me feel like I'm in a fish
bowl. It occurred to me this morning as to why: lenses made in China
are all glass. I have never had anything but thin as possible plastic
lenses. My current lenses are pretty thin...so, basically in the end I
got a cool pair of frames well worth the 80RMB they cost me. I can
always change them out when I get back home.
Here's a picture of what my belly looks like now.

Good thing you can't see how raw my nose is from incessent nose blowing. And according to some website I read about pregnancy, the baby is now about 10 inches or the size of a large banana...

20 Weeks, 7 weeks

2010-05-08T17:13:00.001+08:00

I'm officially halfway through pregnancy! Next week we find out who this is:

.
Its only 7 weeks until we go home and the new adventure begins...

Shanghai Is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish

2010-05-07T07:57:00.004+08:00

Jackson Lowen for The New York Times

Shanghai has been trying to harness English translations that sometimes wander, like "cash recyling machine." More Photos »

By ANDREW JACOBS

SHANGHAI — For English speakers with subpar Chinese skills, daily life in China offers a confounding array of choices. At banks, there are machines for "cash withdrawing" and "cash recycling." The menus of local restaurants might present such delectables as "fried enema," "monolithic tree mushroom stem squid" and a mysterious thirst-quencher known as "The Jew's Ear Juice."

Multimedia

Slide Show

A Sampling of Chinglish

Share Your Photos: Strange Signs From Abroad

Those who have had a bit too much monolithic tree mushroom stem squid could find themselves requiring roomier attire: extra-large sizes sometimes come in "fatso" or "lard bucket" categories. These and other fashions can be had at the clothing chain known as Scat.
Go ahead and snicker, although by last Saturday's opening of the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, drawing more than 70 million visitors over its six-month run, these and other uniquely Chinese maladaptations of the English language were supposed to have been largely excised.
Well, that at least is what the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language Use has been trying to accomplish during the past two years.
Fortified by an army of 600 volunteers and a politburo of adroit English speakers, the commission has fixed more than 10,000 public signs (farewell "Teliot" and "urine district"), rewritten English-language historical placards and helped hundreds of restaurants recast offerings.
The campaign is partly modeled on Beijing's herculean effort to clean up English signage for the 2008 Summer Olympics, which led to the replacement of 400,000 street signs, 1,300 restaurant menus and such exemplars of impropriety as the Dongda Anus Hospital — now known as the Dongda Proctology Hospital. Gone, too, is Racist Park, a cultural attraction that has since been rechristened Minorities Park.
"The purpose of signage is to be useful, not to be amusing," said Zhao Huimin, the former Chinese ambassador to the United States who, as director general of the capital's Foreign Affairs Office, has been leading the fight for linguistic standardization and sobriety.
But while the war on mangled English may be considered a signature achievement of government officials, aficionados of what is known as Chinglish are wringing their hands in despair.
Oliver Lutz Radtke, a former German radio reporter who may well be the world's foremost authority on Chinglish, said he believed that China should embrace the fanciful melding of English and Chinese as the hallmark of a dynamic, living language. As he sees it, Chinglish is an endangered species that deserves preservation.
"If you standardize all these signs, you not only take away the little giggle you get while strolling in the park but you lose a window into the Chinese mind," said Mr. Radtke, who is the author of a pair of picture books that feature giggle-worthy Chinglish signs in their natural habitat.
Lest anyone think it is all about laughs, Mr. Radtke is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Chinglish at the University of Heidelberg.
Still, the enemies of Chinglish say the laughter it elicits is humiliating. Wang Xiaoming, an English scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, painfully recalls the guffaws that erupted among her foreign-born colleagues as they flipped through a photographic collection of poorly written signs. "They didn't mean to insult me but I couldn't help but feel uncomfortable," said Ms. Wang, who has since become one of Beijing's leading Chinglish slayers.
Those who study the roots of Chinglish say many examples can be traced to laziness and a flawed but wildly popular translation software. Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania, said the computerized dictionary, Jingshan Ciba, had led to sexually oriented vulgarities identifying dried produce in Chinese supermarkets and the regrettable "fried enema" menu selection that should have been rendered as "fried sausage."
Although improved translation software and a growing zeal for grammatically unassailable English has slowed the output of new Chinglishisms, Mr. Mair said he still received about five new examples a day from people who knew he was good at deciphering what went wrong. "If someone would pay me to do it, I'd spend my life studying these things," he said.
Among those getting paid to wrestle with Chinglish is Jeffrey Yao, an English translator and teacher at the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation at Shanghai International Studies University who is leading the sign exorcism. But even as he eradicates the most egregious examples by government fiat — businesses dare not ignore the commission's suggested fixes — he has mixed feelings, noting that although some Chinglish phrases sound awkward to Western ears, they can be refreshingly lyrical. "Some of it tends to be expressive, even elegant," he said, shuffling through an online catalog of signs that were submitted by the volunteers who prowled Shanghai with digital cameras. "They provide a window into how we Chinese think about language."
He offered the following example: While park signs in the West exhort people to "Keep Off the Grass," Chinese versions tend to anthropomorphize nature as a way to gently engage the stomping masses. Hence, such admonishments as "The Little Grass Is Sleeping. Please Don't Disturb It" or "Don't Hurt Me. I Am Afraid of Pain."
Mr. Yao read off the Chinese equivalents as if savoring a Shakespearean sonnet. "How lovely," he said with a sigh.
He pointed out that this linguistic mentality helped create such expressions as "long time no see," a word-for-word translation of a Chinese expression that became a mainstay of spoken English. But Mr. Yao, who spent nearly two decades working as a translator in Canada, has his limits. He showed a sign from a park designed to provide visitors with the rules for entry, which include prohibitions on washing, "scavenging," clothes drying and public defecation, all of it rendered in unintelligible — and in the case of the last item — rather salty English. The sign ended with this humdinger: "Because if the tourist does not obey the staff to manage or contrary holds, Does, all consequences are proud."
Even though he had had the sign corrected recently, Mr. Yao could not help but shake his head in disgust at the memory. And he was irritated to find that a raft of troublesome sign verbiage had slipped past the commission as the expo approached, including a cafeteria sign that read, "The tableware reclaims a place." (Translation: drop off dirty dishes here.)
"Some Chinglish expressions are nice, but we are not translating literature here," he said. "I want to see people nodding that they understand the message on these signs. I don't want to see them laughing."

Myth-making in China

2010-05-05T08:26:00.000+08:00

About The Author: Matt M
A med school dropout turned migrant worker and master of allusions, this foreign monkey journeyed so far west he found himself in the Far East where he seeks his fortune, the great American novel, and other expat writers. He currently suffers from dromomania for which the elusive remedy lies somewhere west of his current location. Scribbling provides temporary relief for his condition.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I first came to China. I knew that I wouldn’t be picking up the language or some Kung Fu or finding enlightenment in a Buddhist temple or becoming the first man to discover a shopper’s paradise. I knew I could expect Blade Runner cities and Dickensian conditions. But nothing could prepare me for my own ignorance, especially my inability to find its remedy.
Concrete answers to simple questions were seemingly nonexistent. Direct questions elicited maybes. Ask and you shall receive a tea-stained smile and don’t-ask-why-just-be-shy attitude. Getting a straight answer was like practicing frontier dentistry in the Wild West. Then I realized the most expedient way to fill in the cavities was to use my own imagination and make myths.
Maybe years from now after I scale the Great Wall of the Mandarin I will be able to shed more light on some of the strangeness in China. But for now laowai mythology will have to suffice. What follows is a stranger’s attempt to make sense of strange land.

The Village of Maybei

Once upon a time somewhere in China there was a village where somebody once told somebody else to do something. Maybe somebody said something about tile production. Unfortunately, the teller and the told were from two different villages. Thus, they spoke two different dialects.
Miscommunication ensued and it wasn’t clear if tile production should be increased or decreased. The one being told thought he would lose face if he asked for clarification, and took it upon himself to err on the side of boosting the economy. Thus, tile production increased. Unfortunately, orders had actually come from higher up to decrease tile production. Justice was swiftly executed: The receiver had accumulated more guangxi, therefore the sender ended up spending retirement in a rice paddy.
Ever since that fateful day, anything and everything has been prefaced with the word “maybe.” That way, both communicators are protected from liability. And this is why everything in China is vague and possible. Nobody wants to be held accountable should their answer come back to haunt them. In effect, all communication should be as slippery as rain-slicked tile.

The Evil Demon

How many evil demons can fit on the tip of a chopstick? What passes for a jury here is still out, but it may be surmised that for every laowai in China there is an evil demon who monitors his or her internet usage. The evil demon, not to be confused with its omnipotent western cousin, Descartes’ Evil Daemon, is a creature that doesn’t seem to take its job very seriously. This is why you can google or wiki certain topics one moment, and then for some inexplicable reason your connection with cyberspace is severed.
The best way to get around this is to confuse or placate the demon. One strategy is to shake it off your tail by searching for things like “Mid Level Luxury in Modern China” or “Modest Economic Development Preserves Environment and Increases Harmony Overall.” Once the demon is lulled into complacency, you have a chance to search the web with impunity for such things as a good florist to supply your dinner party with a hundred flowers. The best time to conduct a web quest is during lunchtime as this is when a majority of evil demons are drunk on baijiu.

Tale of the Tile Factory

Once upon another time there was a tile factory. After Reform and Opening, the race to modernize the country’s bathroom décor began. This is how the nation solved its tile surplus and why many sidewalks and even some streets are paved in tiles. There were even enough tiles left over to overlay all the new buildings with a glaze of modernism.
(And Myra would like to add: "Tile sidewalks are extremely slippery when wet." See The Village of Maybei )

The National Sound

Amongst many other adverse health effects, the poisonous atmosphere butchers the respiratory tree in a manner similar to chronic tobacco smoking. When this happens, your airway thickens, and the mucociliary elevator becomes as reliable as a 3rd tier city’s hotel elevator. Thus, most inhabitants have to resort to manually hawking up lugies lest they drown in their own phlegm.
During the winter time, well-preserved specimens litter the bathroom tile walkways. Analysis reveals the contents to be composed of phlegm, soot, microbes, carbon monoxide, and a cocktail of some 4,000 toxins, mutagens, and carcinogens. Some say that in years to come a fellowship of immigrants, natives, and sentient machines will one day band together to terraform the Eastern hemisphere and create a Green City on a Hill. And the National Sound will become of the stuff of nostalgia.

The Orwellian Watchtowers

Towers are interspersed throughout the cities and some of the highways of Hunan province. They look like retrofuturistic flying saucers on a stick. Maybe they are relics of a bygone era; now even the bathroom tiled buildings of New China rise above them.
I have never visited one, but there is probably a hatch at its base, and you can climb up the ladder through a hollow tube where you will find yourself in a round room – kind of like Seattle’s Space Needle – where Red Guards with jet packs and Hello Kitty™ plastic arm sleeves constantly sip tea, aim telescopes at the streets, and compile a list of traffic violations for review by a bureau located somewhere in the provincial capital. Maybe this is where the evil demon lairs.

What would Confucius do if he had a car?

In America many illustrious leaders are guided by the motto, “What would Jesus do?” Amongst other factors, this question has helped to craft wise decisions regarding policies both foreign and domestic — including the one leading to a war on an abstract noun.
Perhaps the Chinese can adapt a similar version of enlightened Western thinking to benefit their society as well. Imagine how harmonious your city’s neighborhood would be if every citizen was issued a “What Would Confucius Do?” bracelet after they earned their driver’s license?
Then the primordial chaos of man-eat-man traffic would coalesce into an orderly hierarchy ranging from lowly and humble pedestrian to the high-ranking coal truck. And the Middle Kingdom would no longer be barbarized by such barbarian inventions as the automobile.

Bucklers of Goober Resistance

The latest in the armamentarium of Neo Traditional Chinese medicine, plastic arm sleeves act as a combo arm warmer and spit deflector shield. The Hello Kitty™ patterned bucklers actually boost charisma, immunity to H1N1, and wards against evil húli jīng fox spirits. Please check out my website, where you can peruse an online catalog, and order a pair in your favorite color, pattern, or cartoon character. Friendly operators in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A. are standing by to stand by to take your order.

2 pictures for you

2010-05-03T15:57:00.002+08:00

The giant Lilacs are blooming across the way from us. They grow pretty
much untamed and have grown into quite a little forest that smells
really good. Its been nice to walk by something in the neighborhood
and encounter a pleasant smell.... I partook of the bounty and put
some in the apartment.

Straight from Winter To Summer

2010-05-03T10:30:00.004+08:00

The past couple days have been blazing hot! Today its cloudy and muggy...looking forward to the first thunderstorm of the season which is forecast for later today. There are cottonwood trees all around our campus and this week it looks like its snowing even though its 85 degrees. All the fluff from the trees is blowing everywhere, creating a nightmare for allergy sufferers. We seem to be unaffected by it though.

Yesterday, I went with Eric and Jaime to massage and I discussed with my girl the one week of Spring we had. She's from Henan and said the heat we have now is nothing compared to her hometown.
My pregnancy vocabulary is also improving everyday...I can now have a conversation with someone about C-sections, whether or not to use pain meds during delivery and so on. My massage girl is a firm believer in natural delivery and since she comes from the country, she has all sorts of advice a lot of which seems to makes sense. One thing she's said is that the more you walk everyday, the faster your labor will be (it was in her case). As to how accurate that is, I don't know. But I do know I am walking A LOT!

"You Know You've Been In China Too Long When..."

2010-04-27T20:38:00.004+08:00

The Lost Loawai blog recently had an amusing post entitled “You know you’ve been in China too long when…” At least it's amusing until you notice how many points you can tick off.
Anyway, here’s a couple of the choice indicators:
-You start shaving your eyebrows and stop shaving everywhere else.
-You can speak at least one other dialect aside from Mandarin.
-You drink powder coffee.
-You like ankle hose with sandals and a skirt.
-Your favorite beer is named after a place in China.
-You add 7-up 七喜 to your wine.
-You married a Chinese person.
-You consider not buying diapers for your children.
-You play ping pong and badminton on a regular basis.
-You talk to strangers while you are using the bathroom.
You can see the complete list at www.lostlaowai.com
A quick google search reveals many of these lists – here a few extra items from Beijing Made Easy:
-You start picking at other people’s dinner plates before they even offer you a taste.
-You no longer need tissues to blow your nose.
-You consider McDonalds a treat.
-You are the last of your first group of friends still in China.
-You start cutting off large vehicles on your bicycle.

Breaking News From the Beijing Bathroom Scene

2010-04-26T20:11:00.001+08:00

Well, at least its noteworthy to me... Today,in Wudaokou, I found the first bathroom I have used (besides my own at home) that smelled like bleach,and it was at the subway station. I was on my way to meet up with Eric and Jaime when I came to the proper conclusion that I would rather use a subway station bathroom than risk having wet pants in public. Even though it was forecast to rain, I couldn't have gotten away with wet pants... I could smell the reassuring scent of bleach before I reached the bathroom entrance and everything looked brighter from there. So while it was still a subway bathroom, the whole experience was a thousand times better than normal because my senses weren't assaulted by the usual smells. But then again, no bathroom in China is perfect right? As I went to the stall and shut the door, I had a lovely view to the busy street outside. This also meant that passersby also had quite a view of me if they chose. But what can one do? When you gotta go, you gotta go. Bleach trumps public viewing.

Just about Half-Way

2010-04-24T12:50:00.008+08:00

Just about half-way through pregnancy now. Its gone by fast! Here's what the baby looks like by now... Jeff and I are on countdown mode until the next appointment when we can know if its a boy or girl...its moving quite a bit now, so the weird feeling I had last week was officially the first time I felt the baby move.

I sure am getting a kick out of all the changes my body is going through. Like, for instance, seeing the surprise on people's faces after they see how big I have gotten these past 2 weeks. "What's happened?!", they say, " all of a sudden you're huge!" I couldn't hide the fact I'm pregnant now even if I tried. Fortunately, no stretch marks though (yay!).
That and I'm eating alot of cheese, a good size block each week- I have help though don't worry... You know how I was never much of a cheese person, like Jeff says he's not a tomatoe person? Basically it means that I don't like to eat any stinky cheese, including feta, but cheese on pizza and grilled cheese is delicious; its the same with Jeff- he wont eat raw tomatoes but loves salsa...So now we're eating alot of quesadillas, tacos, lasagna and such... even the smell of cheese like chedder, really melts my butter now. Thanks to Eric and Jaime too for bringing me 2 more giant bottles of ranch dressing. Did you know cooked but cold asparagus is delicious with Ranch?

4 pictures for you

2010-04-21T07:57:00.006+08:00

We've just sent Britt and Jehan to the airport. We had a great time
with them and its too bad they couldn't stay longer! And what troopers
they are! Besides biking through what seemed like half of southern
China up and down mountains, they also toughed it out when we lost
water here Friday night. Both apartments were dry. Now we have water in
our apartment, but Eric and Jaime are enduring and taking showers at
our place until the men come to fix whatever is wrong in the apartment
they're staying at....the surprises never stop.
Yesterday we went to the Wall. I stayed at the bottom and guarded bags
since I thought it unwise at this time to try to climb up that rickety
ladder. As we were leaving, the village people wouldn't stop hassling
us to buy postcards, but Jeff fended off this man by offering him
strawberries. He liked them alot and we learned that the area we went through to get to that part of the Wall is famous for all its strawberry fields.

Was It or Wasn't It?

2010-04-16T18:18:00.000+08:00

Today I was sitting on the couch watching TV after I got home, when Jeff came in from one of his classes. When he came in and we said hi to each other from different rooms, I felt a small something in my stomach jump like how I would imagine it would feel if you knew what a bubble felt like when it burst, if that makes any sense. I have come to the conclusion that if in fact it was the first time I have felt the baby move, I must have startled it. But then again, I have doubts because I only felt it once. If the same feeling happens again I guess I'll know for sure...

Food For Thought

2010-04-16T10:11:00.003+08:00

When Yuebin restaurant in Cuihua Hutong opened in 1980, it was Beijing's only private restaurant. Yuebin is still serving three decades later, but Beijing's restaurant scene offers a few more choices these days.

Among the expats of Beijing are some old-timers who' ll wax with baffling fondness about food back in the day, 20 or even 30 years ago. They are of course mostly full of shi – the capital today offers an embarrassment of gastronomic riches, while back in the earlies it was, well, just an embarrassment. But lest we take for granted the city's astonishing Chinese culinary offerings – rivaled nowhere in the world for regional diversity, and only perhaps by Taipei for sheer quality – it's instructive to remember just how far things have come in such a short span of time.

It wasn't all awful, of course. Home-cooked meals were great, owing perhaps to produce which, even if more constrained by the season, was usually fresh and flavorful. You could eat well in the fancy hotel restaurants, but only if you could afford it and had some FEC – the Foreign Exchange Certificates needed to purchase certain goods. Alternatively, if you had privileged connections, strong liver function and an inordinate fondness for sea cucumber, there was always a banquet to be had. I had none of those – not the FEC, the guanxi, the liver nor sea cucumber love. So for me, the quintessential dining experience of my early days here was the good old state-run restaurant.

Old-school state-run joints aren't all that easy to find nowadays, though their dispirited descendents live on in the employee shitang of office buildings, and in the neighborhood dives in Beijing's less fashionable quarters. You know the places: cheap and less than cheerful, with their drab exteriors, harsh fluorescent lighting, pungent baijiu stench, and outsize glass Lazy Susans, milky from occasional, half-hearted wipes with greasy rags. Even these, thou gh , are a huge improvement on what used to be.

In the late 1980s, when I first lived in Beijing, there were already good privately run restaurants, but still I mostly ate at a large, nondescript state run place just down the hutong from my family's home in Xisi. I learned to get there on time if I expected to eat. After 1.30pm, the staff in their blue vests would already be down for their siesta, and after 7.30pm they'd be gathered around some costume drama on the tiny television on the cashier's counter and couldn't be bothered to take your order.

The thick, vinyl-bound menu promised a variety the kitchen could never make good on. A surly waitress would saunter over, impatiently wait for me to order, and reflexively snarl "Meiyou!" to just about everything I asked for. Half the time I'd grudgingly settle on garlic shoots (suanmiao) with pork and gulao rou, a sweet-and-sour pork whose batter-fried exterior and sugary sauce spared me from really having to taste the odd bits of meat within. Decent beef was out of the question. If I was lucky, they'd have a leafy g reen l ike rape or bok choy, but usually it was kongxincai(water spinach), youmaicai (Chinese lettuce), and haoziganr (crown daisy chrysanthemum), none of which really did it for me then and still don't today. The veggies weren't bad, though, once you drained off the preposterous amounts of oil in which they were stir-fried. Spinach was available in season, but broccoli, snow peas and asparagus didn't start appearing with much frequency until the early '90s.

It was the rare restaurant that offered cold beverages; after a while, I just came to accept that, except in the winter months, my beer or Coke would be served warm. Happily, those weren't the only choices in drink. There was coconut milk – still available in most Chinese eateries – and an odd sort of orange beverage called either "Snappy C" or "Pulpy C," for which I still get nostalgic longings. Tea, if you were lucky, was your basic Beijing jasmine brew; usually, though, it was a kind of rusty, slightly earthy decoction of brick-tea scraps.

Then there was the rice. I really can't fathom why the rice was so uniformly awful back then. Somehow, no matter what time of day I ordered, my rice would arrive cold, stale and hard. But it was the sand, and occasionally the BB-sized pieces of gravel, that really ruined the rice for me. After that first jarringly audible crunch, no pleasure was possible for the rest of the meal, which I spent chewing timidly and with intense concentration out of fear that a visit to the dentist – truly a frightening prospect back then – would be necessary. But woe be tide the customer who'd think to complain about rocks in the rice to the waitress.

Today the tables have completely been turned, and the customers, once cowed by ill-tempered wait staff, now bark at them and bitch if their orders aren't on the table within five minutes. Superabundance, hypercompetition, and unconscionable waste: Is there a better symbol of the changes China's undergone than Beijing's restaurants? -- The Beijinger

Questions Asked...and Answered

2010-04-14T09:36:00.003+08:00

Spring is at war with Winter and there's no clear winner as of yet. The weather is cold and cloudy, but the trees are blossoming and leaves are starting to come out. Its set to rain again this weekend too. Bring back the sun! Last year at this time, it was 75 degrees with sunshine...right now is almost 40 degrees. I think its colder in our apartment than outside...

The following are some questions I have been asked since I have been pregnant. Some were asked because the asker has never been pregnant while others are a bit strange:

What does morning sickness feel like?

It feels like being carsick all the time. It feels like you're on the verge of hurling all the time. Food helped me for a little while, but then it was back to being carsick.

How tired were you, really?

Hmmm....imagine sleeping a full night like a rock, waking up for an hour or two and then feeling like you haven't slept in days. For a couple weeks my routine was to wake up at 7am and go back to bed for a couple hours at 9am. Sometimes I needed an afternoon nap too and would go to bed at 9pm.

Is it weird to know that you have something growing inside of you?

Yes, but its cool at the same time. Its more real to me when I see the ultrasound pictures.

Can you feel the baby?

Not yet. My stomach is getting bigger though.

Do you have any weird cravings?

No...But I really like mangos and ranch dressing right now. Not together.

What do you want your baby to look like?

A human, preferably a cute one. I guess I don't really have a say though, the genes had the plans.

Do you think its a boy or a girl?

I have no idea. I haven't had any premonitions. But people here in China are split 50/50.

What are you eating?

Food. Salads, veggies, fruits, sandwiches, smoothies, a good burger once in awhile, tacos, Indian food and Xingjiang food and Chinese food- of course.

How are you feeling now?

Not sick. Pretty good, except I have to climb stairs slowly. I get really out of breath. When we go the the Great Wall next week, I think I'll stay at the bottom and read a book...

everyone else can climb up that rickety ladder and gallivant on the Wall.

Can you suck in your stomach?

Not really.

Can you see your feet?

As of now, yes.

So there you have it. I have come to the conclusion that since my body is no longer my own, I should get used to answering all kinds of questions as well as having my stomach patted and talked to...

Two Milestones in One Day or I Got a Seat and a Haircut

2010-04-12T14:03:00.001+08:00

While probably not really exciting or interesting for you, I did mark two milestones today.
First, after an early start today it was finally time to head home. On my way to the subway and the Subway sandwich I passed by a haircut place that looked pretty decent. Decent as in, it was shiny inside, full of customers, I liked the haircuts of the staff and it didn't smell bad or chemically in there. So I think to myself, whats to lose except some hair? They probably don't speak English and I won't be able to tell them anything specific about my haircut needs, but they should be able to figure it out. And if I don't like it, it'll grow back...So I marched myself inside and asked how much haircuts cost. The girl told me it would be 38RMB for a regular haircut and 68RMB for a professional one. Hmmmm... "Arn't they all supposed to be professional? If I choose the 38RMB cut, does that mean my hair will be cut by monkeys?", I wanted to ask but instead asked her what the difference was. None, really. Just that the more expensive haircut is done by a real stylist. So I did some more quick thinking and hedged my bets. I chose the more expensive cut with a real stylist based on the fact that I really wanted to be sure to the best of my limited ability that I got a good haircut.
After my hair was washed, I was put in a chair and waited for awhile until a guy came out and threw a cover over me and asked me how much to cut. He had a cool professionalism that makes these situations alot less stressful. Sometimes I prefer a slight brusqueness in situations such as these because I feel the person knows what they're doing and is in control. He was in no way rude, he just knew what to do and did it in 10 minutes. What a relief! Back home I would always stress about what to talk about with the haircut person and how to tell them what I wanted. Here, I just said cut of this much and that was that. Got a blow dry and everything. Now I can say I got a haircut in China all by myself. Just so you know, 68RMB is considered alot for a haircut, especially in our neighborhood. On campus, haircuts are 8RMB. But I think the adage, "you get what you pay for" is especially true when it comes to haircuts...
Second milestone: I got a seat on the subway for the first time without having to ask for it. A man offered me his seat like a gentleman should. I must really look pregnant now! Most people so far have looked at me and continued to do whatever they were doing. Now I'm pretty straightforward and just pick a person, usually a man, and say, "Pardon me can I sit?" Their eyes go to my belly and then they get up for me. It was just nice not to have to say that today.

KFC Customers Get Fried

2010-04-11T11:06:00.003+08:00

Ever wondered what takes to get a crowd of Beijingers really fired up? Seems KFC have found the right formula.
When we read initial reports about “incidents” in certain Chinese KFC branches after the chain refused to honor a promotion deal, it appeared to be a Shanghai-based story. It seems the deal was in fact national, however, and the disturbances took place in several cities, including Beijing.
The Global Times reported this morning: “Customers stormed the Kentucky Fried Chicken at the China World Tower in Beijing on Tuesday evening, flipping chairs and tables and refusing to leave after their coupons were denied, the branch's manager said Wednesday.”
China Daily reported, “Some customers in Nanjing, Beijing and Shanghai had bitter quarrels with KFC staff, resulting in police rushing to the scene to maintain order.”
For those interested in the nuances of the incident, ChinaSMACK has the best account of what triggered the dispute. Basically is boils down to this: “A coupon that was available online offered KFC’s normal RMB 64 Family Bucket meal for half price (RMB 32). The coupon was valid throughout the country and on Tuesday. Many Shanghai residents printed this coupon and brought it to their local KFC where they were eventually rejected. KFC staff in different stores offered different excuses and handled upset customers differently.”
This same sequence of events played out in several other cities around China.
KFC later stated they halted the promotion due to the appearance of fake coupons on various websites (who could have seen that coming?), but as the ChinaSMACK post points out, “For most people, the important point was not the savings but the principle of KFC not honoring their own promotion and handling customers in a dishonest and inconsistent way.”
The whole thing seems to be a classic example of China's tradition of chronically bad customer relations. Rather than attempting to resolve problems or disputes to customers’ satisfaction, all too often the standard response here is evasion, outright lies or simply pretending the problem doesn’t exist. The Chinese language blog Sinoglot has a post on this issue, following on from the KFC incident.
The heated reaction of consumers is also an indication that locals are increasingly angry about the way they are treated in these kinds of situations – and the fact that they are not longer willing to take things lying down.
It reminds me of an incident I witnessed last year during a "one-hour" stopover in Shanghai during an international flight. My fellow passengers and I were simply abandoned by Air China at a deserted Pudong Airport in the middle of the night, after the onward flight to Beijing was suddenly canceled. Not that we were told it was canceled. The aircrew simply locked up the plane and walked off as we watched from the boarding area. It was only after irate passengers started getting physical with the terminal fixtures that Air China finally bothered to take us to a hotel - three hours later. -- The Beijinger

Spring Bellies

2010-04-09T12:49:00.003+08:00

Spring has finally come to Beijing! No jacket required.

When we went with Britt and Jehan to the Summer Palace on Sunday, we saw this man. It gave me a clear indication that it will be getting warmer and warmer in Beijing. Who needs a groundhog? When Spring has sprung the men of Beijing bare their bellies with gusto and drink beer on the street. And speaking of bellies, here's mine at 16 weeks. I think its grown a little more...I have yet to beat this Beijing man though, but it'll happen soon!

黑车(Black Cab) Men

2010-04-07T14:20:00.001+08:00

If I walk out of our apartment any time of day, I'm sure to see at least ten cars and vans loitering outside while their owners congregate in huddles playing cards. If I choose to, I can walk up to any one of them and bargain for a ride to anywhere. I may have to wait for them to finish their game though, money is involved; card games are serious business.
Fortunately, we're saved from actually bargaining for rides on the street. We have our own connection. When we arrived in China that hot and humid day way back when, Jeff's new boss picked us up with a guy who the new boss said was his "friend". Sounded good to me. I was happy just to have an air-conditioned ride. Since then, that driver has also become our "friend". If you've come to visit us in China, you've met him. He's been with us to pick you up at the airport and has taken you back there when it was time to return home. He speaks no English, smokes like a chimney and likes to drink 7-Up. Over the last year and a half we have not only given him a lot of business, but also a lot of 7-Up; so much so that now we get the 朋友折扣, or Friend Discount. Being a HeiChe man is his job and how he supports his whole family- wife, child and parents.
Everyday, as I walk by the card playing men I wonder who they are and what they're like. Do they really make money? What do their wives think they do all day? Do they have other jobs? Then I think it must be a great life, playing cards and smoking all day while waiting for a carless customer who may or may not ask for a ride. I've never seen our friend out there.
Sometimes I know these men have their wives hustling business for them. Some subway stations have more Black Cabs than others. One in particular has all the women outside waiting to pounce as soon as you exit the station. "Where do you want to go?", "10 kuai, 10 kuai!", You need to go home? Come with me". If you agree to go with them, they'll lead you down the street to a waiting car. It kind of goes against everything we're taught from childhood; don't talk to strangers, let alone get in a car with them. But its China- meaning so much happens here that goes against ones better instincts that if we were to apply home rules in China, we may never leave our apartments, and even our apartments can (probably are) be hazardous.
So how do you tell when someone can be trusted and others can't be? Good question. The answer is you really can't and shouldn't. But live here long enough and you know what to look for. For example, when we went to Sanya last year with our friends we had to make a 3 hour drive from the Hainan airport to our hotel. Jeff and I put on our bargaining faces and stepped into the swarm of hustlers. Our bargaining faces, being white, only got us so far, but we did get a good deal. After agreeing to a price we knew to be fair, we were led off on a 10 minute walk to a deserted parking lot where a different guy was waiting to drive us. The only reason we did this was because we were a group of four- four against one very small Chinese man seemed like good odds and we told him we wouldn't pay until we got to our hotel. The only time I take a black cab by myself is if I'm close to home, otherwise I stick with the bus or real taxis. The price is comparable in most cases and the only reason to take a black cab is that the price remains the same even if theres traffic, theres no meter to run up.
So, if you come to China get used to random cars honking and slowing down as they pass by you. They are asking if you want a ride. This even happens on the freeways, where we've seen groups of people waiting for someone to pull over so the bargaining can begin. And if you need a ride, feel free to walk up to the men playing cards on the side of the road, they want your business. I must admit, this is one of the things I find great about China besides being able to buy anything from fruit to electronics to books on the street, and that is knowing if I wanted to, I could walk outside my door and bargain for a ride to anywhere.

Its should be 99 REAL Chinese Foods!

2010-04-03T16:55:00.003+08:00

Inaccuracy! Inaccuracy! I just looked more closely at this list. Fortune cookies ARE NOT REAL! They come from California. Now those of you who were wondering can sleep tonight.
P.S.- Our visitors have arrived safely.
P.P.S- Here's a picture of an old Chinese man.

100 Real Chinese Foods

2010-04-02T17:46:00.001+08:00

Chinese food isn't just fried rice and kung-pow chicken...
Almond milk
Ants Climbing a Tree (poetic, not literal, name)
Asian pear
Baby bok choy
Baijiu
Beef brisket
Beggar's Chicken
Bingtang hulu
Bitter melon
Bubble tea
Buddha's Delight
Cantonese roast duck
Century egg, or thousand-year egg
Cha siu (Cantonese roast pork)
Char kway teow
Chicken feet
Chinese sausage
Chow mein
Chrysanthemum tea
Claypot rice
Congee
Conpoy (dried scallops)
Crab rangoon
Dan Dan noodles
Dragonfruit
Dragon's Beard candy
Dried cuttlefish
Drunken chicken
Dry-fried green beans
Egg drop soup
Egg rolls
Egg tart, Cantonese or Macanese
Fresh bamboo shoots
Fortune cookies
Fried milk
Fried rice
Gai lan (Chinese broccoli)
General Tso's Chicken
Gobi Manchurian
Goji berries (Chinese wolfberries)
Grass jelly
Hainan chicken rice
Hand-pulled noodles
Har gau (steamed shrimp dumplings in translucent wrappers)
Haw flakes
Hibiscus tea
Hong Kong-style Milk Tea
Hot and sour soup
Hot Coca-Cola with Ginger
Hot Pot
Iron Goddess tea (Tieguanyin)
Jellyfish
Kosher Chinese food
Kung Pao Chicken
Lamb skewers (yangrou chua'r)
Lion's Head meatballs
Lomo Saltado
Longan fruit
Lychee
Macaroni in soup with Spam
Malatang
Mantou, especially if fried and dipped in sweetened condensed milk
Mapo Tofu
Mock meat
Mooncake (bonus points for the snow-skin variety)
Nor mai gai (chicken and sticky rice in lotus leaf)
Pan-fried jiaozi
Peking duck
Pineapple bun
Prawn crackers
Pu'er tea
Rambutan
Red bean in dessert form
Red bayberry
Red cooked pork
Roast pigeon
Rose tea
Roujiamo
Scallion pancake
Shaved ice dessert
Sesame chicken
Sichuan pepper in any dish
Sichuan preserved vegetable (zhacai)
Silken tofu
Soy milk, freshly made
Steamed egg custard
Stinky tofu
Sugar cane juice
Sweet and sour pork, chicken, or shrimp
Taro
Tea eggs
Tea-smoked duck
Turnip cake (law bok gau)
Twice-cooked pork
Water chestnut cake (mati gau)
Wonton noodle soup
Wood ear
Xiaolongbao (soup dumplings)
Yuanyang (half coffee, half tea, Hong Kong style)
Yunnan goat cheese

Sweet Potato Lounge Chair

2010-03-30T10:04:00.002+08:00

The man who sells sweet potatoes by our bus stop has aquired a chair from who knows where- last week it had wheels, but now its supported by milk crates. He didn't want to be in the picture...

What is Cleanliness?

2010-03-28T13:43:00.001+08:00

Like my opinion on safety, I have come to the conclusion that cleanliness is also a relative term. For those of you who may not remember the bit on Safety, here's the China definition: If you're not hurt, you're safe.
As for cleanliness, here's what I have come up with to soothe my screaming brain when confronted with putridness: If you can't see the filth, its probably not too bad, but use your nose. Just leave the blacklight at home, do what you need to do and get out. If you can see the filth, its probably best to not touch anything or taste anything within the immediate vicinity. And wash your hands as soon as possible.
China has too many people, so jobs must be created for them. In a lot of cases, there are about three people doing a job that could be done by one. However, when it comes to bathrooms and the large population of China, there will never be enough workers to keep the bathrooms decently clean. And not enough bleach for that matter. I think there must be a bleach famine in China... Thus for every worker that has the dreaded job of unclogging toilets and keeping toilet paper stocked, unless they're tired of the paper clogging old Beijing pipes and don't stock it anymore, you have two people standing around watching as the working person dunks an old mop in one of the toilets and swishes it around the bathroom to "clean" it.
It looks clean, but what about the smell? Bathrooms in this category are not considered all that bad. But the sink probably doesn't have soap, even if there is a sink. Bring your hand sanatizer and own toilet paper just in case. For the bathrooms that are not like this, use your imagination and don't touch anything. It can be done, I have done this a few times though it is difficult to accomplish while holding my breath and balancing in uncomfortable positions. This has ended with pregnancy, center of gravity changing and all that...
I don't think one can't but help too feel bad for the poor workers in Beijing who have the toughest jobs; trash collectors, bathroom cleaners and the like. I commend them for their cast iron stomachs. Maybe all Chinese people have stomachs of iron and the fortitude of brick walls because when it comes to stuff we would heave at, they seem unpreturbed.
Case and point: Lately subways have been making me queasy. The last time this happened, I had to exit one stop earlier than planned to hurl. I made it to the top of the stairs, ready to descend with the masses towards the exit when I threw up. I had warning though, so I had covered my mouth. I kept going so as not to be trampled but the stairs didn't end. They kept going and going. Finally, once at the end of the stairs I discover I have chosen the only subway station in Beijing with no bathroom. Then I see two workers, tap one on the shoulder and mime to her my predictament. “You need to throw up?”, she says. I nod. “Ok, just go over there”, she says as she points to the floor. Past the point of caring, I follow her directions and wait for the other worker to return. She ran off to find some paper towels for me. “You're pregnant arn't you?”, the first nice worker says, “ I was sick too when I was pregnant with my first baby. I have two now. Don't worry, it gets better.” Then she threw an old newspaper over the mess I made and then wiped it up with out a bat of an eye. The floor looked shiny after that and by China standards was clean.
Thankyou Subway Ladies at Liufang Subway Station.

Bleh!

2010-03-28T12:32:00.004+08:00

One of the most disturbing aspects of living in contemporary China is the seemingly endless stream of food safety bad news stories. The past week has seen some real doozies even by China standards, with a CCTV investigative report claiming many disposable chopsticks are highly toxic, and allegations that the use of oil dredged from drains is rampant in Chinese restaurants.The CCTV report on the manufacturing of disposable chopsticks went to air last Monday (March 15), featuring images of workers happily walking over piles of the utensils tossed on factory floors and dogs sniffing around work areas.

More disturbing were the allegations summarized in a Global Times report last Friday(March 19): "Toxic chemicals including sulfur, hydrogen peroxide and paraffin are believed to be used to keep disposable chopsticks white and smooth, and also as an insect repellent, according to a CCTV program on March 15. Hydrogen peroxide is a powerful oxidizer used as a rocket propellant, among its many other industrial applications."

The Global Times report also quotes Dong Jinshi of the Kaifa Environment Technology Consultation Center talking about disposable chopsticks: "Eighty percent of these things are not safe… and when you consider the packaging, it is only worse. Some plastic sleeves are made of garbage plastic."

Then there were the reports that waste oil sourced from drains commonly finds its way back into restaurant kitchens. The Global Times reported this morning: "Huang Fenghong, deputy director of the Oil Crops Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told the Global Times that, after seven years of field research, his research team has concluded that the use of recycled oil is rampant in some areas, especially where cash-strapped migrant workers and students are major diners. Recycled cooking oil, dubbed 'drainage oil,' is refined from discarded kitchen waste and reused in the preparation of meals at restaurants and canteens. 'The use of drainage oil will put the public's health in peril because it may contain heavy metal, waste antibiotics or aflatoxins, a highly toxic substance that could cause cancer,' he said."

The report continues: "He Dongping, a nutrition professor at central China's Wuhan Polytechnic University and a member of Huang's team, told the China Youth Daily on Thursday that people in China consume about 2 to 3 million tons of drainage oil a year. 'China consumes about 22.5 million tons of cooking oil annually, which means that one in 10 meals in the country may be cooked with illegal cooking oil,' the newspaper quoted him as saying."

China Daily was more blunt: "Read this before you eat at Chinese restaurants next time. Every year, two to three million tons of swill-cooked dirty oil, soaked with poisonous carcinogens have sneaked back to our dining tables through an underground muck-money network so rampant that it's an open secret in the industry, the China Youth Dailyreported Wednesday…. According to an undercover investigation in Wuhan by nine senior students of professor He, the conspiracy starts at night when swill-fishers hollow out the stinking hogwash from urban sewages, followed by filtrating, heating, subsiding, dividing, and then in the morning comes out the clear-looking 'edible' oil for unwitting customers."

China Hush has translated a post that appeared on SINA in the wake of these allegations, supposedly written by an anonymous chef. The poster claims that "cases of fishing sewer waste oil are fewer now," but sourcing oil from drains is still common practice.

The anonymous poster writes: "Where does it flow to after the drainage oil is collected? Of course the dinner table!... Drainage oil processing is simple: put it in a huge pot and heat it up, then add some chemicals, the residues and impurities in the waste oil are separated and sink to the bottom of the pot. The upper layer clear oil looks no different than the normal oil if just looking at it. The price for this oil is only 3 yuan per kg, and the normal edible oil costs 9 yuan per kg. The drainage oil is usually used by fast food restaurants, food stalls, street food stands and including some companies' in-house cafeterias."

So, to summarize: it appears the food supply and our milk are contaminated, the oil our food is cooked is often sourced from drains or sewers, and most of the chopsticks we eat with are highly toxic.

Bon appetite!

-The Beijinger

And now for my bit: Good thing when we do eat out its usually foreign food with the exception of our favorite Xingjiang food. After reading this article I feel the need for a fresh,large salad....

Bump

2010-03-25T17:06:00.002+08:00

Saturday is 14 weeks. First trimester done! At this point though I think I look more like I have a beer belly than anything...

Mangos Takeover

2010-03-23T14:20:00.003+08:00

Morning sickness may be a thing of the past. I've been feeling good the past 3 days, still really exhausted, but not sick. Yay! With that, I saw some mangos yesterday and had to have them, which I did. I think this is my first craving...Today i was out and bought some more. They're so good to me right now and fortunately they're in plentiful supply. For about 5rmb per Jin (Chinese measurement of weight) I got 5 mangos for 13rmb. A good and delicious deal.

CNN Vid of Sand Storm in Beijing

2010-03-21T06:21:00.000+08:00

...if its not snowing and freezing cold, its gale force sand storm winds and freezing cold...

Dust Amongst Us

2010-03-20T07:44:00.006+08:00

Woke up to apocalyptic orange air today, Jeff says its like we're on Mars. Heres some pictures of what it looks like, my camera wouldn't pick up the orange tint the air has too well, but this one photo shows just what its like right now at 7:30am. I borrowed some photos because I'm not bringing my camera out today...I'm going to be doing my best not to choke and keep the dust out of my eyes. The wind gusts are up to 60 mph right now in spots.

On Ginger

2010-03-18T08:29:00.002+08:00

I've had writer's block brought on by a severe lack of clear thinking ability. My brain cell loss from being with child has begun, and in full force.

When one takes in to account all the symptoms that come with pregnancy, some of which are (and that I have) nausea, back ache, snoring, bloody nose, having to pee all the time, motion sickness, mental fog, fatigue and food aversions. It makes me wonder, "who in their right mind would want to even HAVE a baby and voluntarily subject themselves to this misery?!" And then I remember, not only do these things go away (atleast the nausea, its the worst) but for every woman its different. I am suspicious of women who say they felt great in their first trimester- I narrow my eyes at you! So I have resigned myself to the fact that I'm not that special, I'm of the majority of women who feel yucky the first 3 months. There has been reprieves though, the Disneyland day being the best. Its good to know that a $70 ticket wasn't wasted on me...

Call me a slow learner, but I have also conceded to use ginger religiously to control morning sickness. I'm not a fan of ginger, I don't care for the taste or the smell... But, I became desperate the other night when we were out and asked the waitress who was waiting on us at the Xingjiang restaurant to bring me some hot water with ginger slices in it. I had just gotten of the subway and bus and my stomach was reeling. After the first few sips I began to feel a bit better and by the time I finished it I felt like a new person, albeit an exhausted one.

The next day I went to the store and got me a hunk of fresh ginger and Hansen's ginger ale. Hansen's ginger ale is in my opinion not recreational drink. It tastes like carbonated ginger medicine, but it worked. The Chinese saying goes, "the worst it tastes, the better it is for you."

Last night, I drank up my ginger and hot water concoction before getting on the bus and felt great until a couple stops from our destination, so on the way home I asked Jeff to get us a cab. Atleast in a cab I can have easy access to the door in case of barf emergency and can also lie down in the backseat if needed.

So if my calculations are correct and I will be like most women, morning sickness should go away by next week. Here's to hoping!

No Spring in Beijing

2010-03-14T12:44:00.002+08:00

Looks like Winter is hanging on for awhile longer. Forecast says it
will be almost 70 degrees by Friday. I have a hard time believing
that!

Interview With Peter Hessler: Behind the Wheel in China

2010-03-13T13:32:00.001+08:00

TRAVEL INTERVIEWS: Frank Bures asks the New Yorker writer about his new book, "Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory"

Back in 2001, Peter Hessler looked at his hands. He’d been living in China since 1996, when he began teaching English in a school in Fuling, an experience he recounted in his book, River Town. But now he wanted to go farther into the country. Since he had at least three good fingers on each hand (as well as both thumbs), he was eligible for his Chinese driver’s license, and he went in to take his test.
The test featured questions such as, “If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you should: a) not tell him; b) reply patiently and accurately; c) tell him the wrong way,” and, “If you give somebody a ride and realize that he left something in your car, you should: a) keep it for yourself; b) return it to the person or his place of work as quickly as possible; c) call him and offer to return it for a ransom.” Of course, Hessler passed, and his license was, in some ways, a passport into a China he’d never seen—a China that is changing so fast it may never be seen again. The trips he took resulted in his new book, Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory, a triptych of pieces about his travels. (Read a World Hum excerpt here.) I emailed Hessler and spoke with him by phone at his home in Ridgway, Colorado.
World Hum: You lived in China for five years without a car. Do you feel like you missed things during that period?

Peter Hessler: Not really. The Peace Corps actually had a rule that you got thrown out automatically if you were caught driving. The officials at the college [where I was stationed] were impressed that Adam Meier and I knew how to drive, and sometimes they’d ask us to drive back to campus after these drunken banquets, after endless shots of baijiu. We always played by the rules and declined. So I suppose I missed out on that particular driving experience.
I think the timing for the license was good. When I first started freelancing full time, in 1999, I did a lot of travel by train. And I had traveled by train and boat during my Peace Corps years. So I spent some time seeing the country from that perspective, but by 2001 I was ready for a new mode of transportation. I appreciated some of the things that a car allowed me to do—report more freely, for example, going wherever I pleased. It gave me more flexibility in terms of being able to camp. And it allowed me to avoid hiring a local driver who might tip off the authorities. By that point I had been reporting long enough to know some of these pitfalls. Also, like a lot of people from the Midwest, I’ve always enjoyed driving. I just like being on an empty road, and there are a lot of them in western China.
It seems that being able to drive opened up new parts of China to you, which you hadn’t known before. How did it change the way you saw the country?
The main thing was that it took me off the beaten path. If you’re going by train or boat, you will generally be following routes that are commonly used, and you’ll go through bigger settlements. Any time you’re fully independent you have more flexibility. The same is true if you’re on foot or bike, of course. I’ve done long walking trips in the past—I did the coast to coast walk across northern England many years ago, and I also spent two months entirely on foot in Switzerland, crossing the country by old pathways. Those were wonderful experiences but in some ways they might be harder to write about. For one thing, you are so tired—at night I’d just crash in my tent.    With the car, the main thing was that I could pick people up. I stopped for hitchhikers all across China, mostly young people who were leaving the villages for city jobs. It gave me a new perspective on that process—I’d talk to these folks, and then I’d stop in the villages, where I could see how few young people had stayed. Of course, I was aware of how important these changes were before I made the trip, but I hadn’t experienced it in such a direct way. Also, driving reminded me of how beautiful northern and western China are. Living in a big city like Beijing, and traveling to other big cities to report, it can be easy to forget how beautiful China is. So many of these mountain and desert landscapes are just magnificent.
Do you think that driving changed your relationship to the country, or to people you met?
In order to get a license, I had to be fully registered, with a resident journalist visa, an official address, paying taxes, etc. It required a lot of paperwork and over the course of that process I realized that I was going to be in China for a number of years. When I first moved to Beijing in 1999 that wasn’t at all clear. I was freelancing unofficially and I always knew there was a chance I wouldn’t stay (or would get kicked out). So the license was part of this decision to make China a legal, longer-term home. It reminded me that I was committing to writing about the place in a serious way.   I felt more comfortable approaching people in the car when I was driving. In the past I had made some reporting trips where I hired a driver, and I was never crazy about that dynamic. Often the drivers are great, and they can teach you about the area, but it can also turn into an annoyance—in China the drivers have a tendency to re-negotiate fees halfway through the trip. Sometimes it turns into an endless bargaining session; it’s a distraction.    And there’s a certain dynamic you have when you’re the white guy getting driven around by a local. It’s the same if you have a translator. I always felt much more comfortable alone, and in the car it made it easier to approach people. They found it interesting that I was alone, so they were curious. And since I didn’t have a retinue there wasn’t this sense of the “official foreigner” arriving in town. Finally, it established a level of competence, or at least familiarity. People seemed to sense that even if I stood out, I must have some connection to the place because I was driving my own vehicle. I felt like I belonged.
You met a lot of suspicion when you got far up-country. That seemed to contrast with the more open atmosphere in the urban areas. Is that still the case these days?

Photo by Darryl Kennedy
There wasn’t too much suspicion among average people. Villagers were generally very open and trusting. Of course, the official authorities were different. My first driving trip ended when the foreign affairs office kicked me out of Yulin, in northern Shaanxi. But that place has always been notorious for police problems—I know other foreign journalists who have gotten kicked out of there. And my friend Ian Johnson had done some sensitive reporting on a major protest in that region, a couple of years before I was there. When the cops kicked me out, they alluded to Ian’s stories. You don’t want to go someplace where another journalist has fouled the waters.
On my second journey I had various minor problems, but I was always able to talk my way out. People seemed more alert as I went west, but they didn’t seem to know exactly what to do with me. And generally they were good-natured. I got stopped at a roadblock near Qinghai, on the Tibetan plateau, and the cop, who looked about 12 years old, took a look at my license. “It looks just like a Chinese license!” he said. “It is a Chinese license,” I said. He seemed to think that this document issued entirely in Chinese characters had come from the U.S., like me. People often were simply clueless.
You write that in China your learning curve never flattened out, because “China is the kind of country where you constantly discover something new, and revelations occur on a daily basis. One of the most important discoveries is the fact that the Chinese share this sensation. The place changes too fast ... We were all out of place; nobody has today’s China figured out.” I found that interesting. As a writer, I imagine there’s some advantage in that.
I suppose that’s why I stayed for more than a decade and wrote a set of three books. I felt like I could undertake these big projects without repeating myself. Some of it was simply the size and range of the country, but it was also the issue of change that you mentioned.
I loved how the man you rented the car from asked you if you’d eaten the dog you hit. You didn’t then, but have you thought about it since?
I have no problems with eating a dog; I’ve done it before. I just wouldn’t want to deal with skinning the damn thing. To be honest, I’m terrified of dogs. I had a paper route as a kid, and I was a distance runner, so I had a lot of bad experiences with dogs in my formative years. And then I lived abroad for 15 years, in places where people don’t have so many pets. It’s actually a hard thing about coming back to the States. I’m not very comfortable around dogs and Americans find that really strange.
Since returning I’ve been attacked by dogs probably 10 times while I’m running. Usually I’m able to fend them off, but I got bit once not long after I moved back to the States. I had to go to a doctor and get it cleaned up. And the owner went completely hysterical. When I went to check to make sure the dog had his shots, she was crying uncontrollably. Absolutely sobbing. “This is the worst thing that could ever happen!” she said. I was thinking, well, the Cultural Revolution might have been worse. And then she wrote me letters of apology in the dog’s voice. They were handwritten and signed with the dog’s name. It’s moments like that when the United States seems as foreign to me as anything I saw in China.

4 pictures for you

2010-03-12T07:10:00.003+08:00

Went to Disneyland and a fantastic wedding and
reception in Laguna Beach.
We made it back from California...Jeff in one piece, me not so much. I left bits of me and my meals on the plane and at various points on the ride home. I felt so bad. I think Jet lag and general fatigue increases morning sickness symptoms because when we got back I went straight to bed even though it was 630 pm. Now its 1am and I'm still tired but the wind is HOWLING- i think we have a dust storm outside, I can smell it when we get a big gust. Even though all our windows are shut, the floor feels gritty. I'm checking email, eating a snack and then going back to bed...Good thing we're staying home today!
Flight was good, got business class (just barely). When we got to SFO and were going to check in, the agent told us that we had no reservation. It seemed that they were having problems with their system, since they were able to look us up but Jeff's grandpa had to make a completely new reservation. So after charging multiple calls on the payphone with Amex- who knows how much that will be- we finally got it straight with United. We were not happy with them, but were happy to make it on the plane.
The flight was full and we were in each in middle seats, so I was really hoping that I wouldn't throw up, but I did as we landed. The people on either side of me were nice of enough to ignore me. Its not like I'm a loud thrower-upper, but its kind of hard to hide whats going on. The flight itself was fine though.

Lack of Motivation or Jet Lag?

2010-03-06T01:11:00.002+08:00

Sorry, haven't posted in awhile...Its been busy and we were really, really tired up until a couple days ago.
Have spent time running around visiting friends and family.
Yesterday, we went to Disneyland. It was cool, haven't been there is about 12 years and alot has changed! Including ticket prices which made me want to have a heart attack. I guess it costs alot to make it the Happiest Place on Earth...And, by some miracle, I wasn't sick! I lasted the whole day! I went on Pirates of the Carribean twice.
This morning I woke up and wasn't sick either, so I'm hoping that I'm done with morning sickness or atleast everything is ok.

Avacados and Berry Pie

2010-02-24T07:59:00.003+08:00

In two days we leave for California and all I can think about is food. Yes, seeing friends and family will be great, but bring on the avacados, salsa, Taco Bell, Pluto's salads and Berry Pie. And hurry.
I have felt so weird lately and my relationship with food has been so rocky the past month, that I consider it a good thing I look forward to eating now. Well, not look forward to, but it would be more accurate to say its more like, "Give me food now or I'm going to rip someone's head off before I faint!" So, it is true thats all I do now- think of food, eat the food and go to the bathroom every 30 minutes. Back to the weird part though: Before I was not a snacker. I would eat mid-morning, lunch and dinner. Rarely, would I eat in between meals. But now that I have this voracious bean within me, I have to eat all the time. It can't be anything though and it can't be alot. If I don't eat enough, I get sick and if I eat too much, I get sick.
My to do list for preparing to leave includes notifying the flight attendants that I may or may not throw up upon landing in San Francisco, as well as informing them that even if I am asleep when a meal will be served, for the sake of their safety, they have to wake me up so I can eat.

Speaking of food, you may find this video interesting. It will give you an idea of how Beijingers eat as well as hearing that Beijing accent Jeff and I have come to know and love. I don't agree with the guy on one point though: many of the foods he said are "museum foods" or not really eaten anymore, is how most Chinese people we know eat everyday...

Long March To Glucose Test and a Bit on Public Barfing

2010-02-21T12:15:00.003+08:00

(If you think throwing up is gross, you may not want to read this, now that I know how some of you feel after my story from last winter. But this isn't near as bad...)

Made it to my glucose test this morning after a perilous hour and 15 minutes on the subway.
I woke up this morning at 7:00am, felt pretty good until 20 minutes later when my stomach was screaming for food, so I decided to lollygag no more and make the trek to the CBD where my doctor's office is.
All along the way I kept telling myself, "You're a tough one!" "You can do it!" , until I came to the last stop. As I exited the train with other masses I could tell my stomach had had enough. It was time to rebel.
My mind said to my stomach, "we're almost there! Wheres your self-control?"
To which my stomach said, "Bleh".
The subway stations in the CBD (Central Business District) are very nice and clean places; shiny interiors and clean floors that make you feel as if you're not in China. The thought of throwing up in a clean place like that, with about a thousand other people around wasn't my idea of starting off the day on a good note (for me or innocent bystanders), but the stomach does what it wants to and so I threw up. Thanks to my cat-like reflexes, I caught it by clapping my hand over my mouth and exited the subway station that way. As soon as I was outside I found a semi-private location, which means about 100 people around instead of a thousand, and did some quick manuvering. With one fast swoop of the hand, while spitting at the same time, I managed not to get any throwup on my clothes, then with one hand I took off my coat and sweatshirt, used my sweatshirt as a napkin, put my coat on, stuffed my sweatshirt in my bag and was off.
Yes, I am a Public Barfer. In my defense though, I've seen people in China do far worse things in public.
When I arrived to the doctor five minutes later, I went straight to the bathroom to wash my hands and face. I felt pretty much ok after that.
The blood test was fast and easy, much less trouble than I thought it would be... all seems well so far on the baby front. Jeff and I heard the heart beat yesterday and even got to see it beating on the ultrasound...

The Earthquake We Didn't Feel

2010-02-18T14:22:00.000+08:00

Quake rocks China-Russia-North Korea border region
(AP) – 3 hours ago
BEIJING — A magnitude 6.7 earthquake rocked the region where China, Russia and North Korea meet Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
Though area residents said they did not feel the quake, office towers in Beijing — about 770 miles (1,240 kilometers) away from the epicenter — swayed slightly for about a minute.
The quake occurred 335 miles (540 kilometers) below the earth's surface.
With earthquakes centered deep underground, sometimes those close to the epicenter don't feel it while people further away notice some shaking, said the duty officer at the Seismological Bureau of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in northeast China's Jilin province. He refused to give his name as is common among Chinese officials.
The Korea Earthquake Research Center said there was no damage in North or South Korea and that quakes occur in that region about once a year.
The USGS said the epicenter was on the Russian coast along the Sea of Japan, 61 miles (98 kilometers) west-southwest of Vladivostok, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) east of China's Yanji city in Jilin province.

(So, in other words, it was too far away for us to feel it...but its interesting skyscrapers in Beijing were swaying!)

Chinese Menu

2010-02-17T08:20:00.003+08:00

This is part of an email I received from our friend G-Man:

...Also, I went to xinjiang food a while back and wrote down some hilarious english translations from the menu, the best i've yet seen. Here are some of them (exactly as they were on the menu):

Unwearied effort however mutton

Friedox-tenclon wity chili

The garlic burns the stomach strip

Fries the barbecue

Burns the vegetable heart in vain

Mutton coverlet

Sweet and sour at heart beautiful

Western region mutton leg

The onion explodes the mutton

Braised chicken piece goober

Taste amorphophallus riveri silk

Does the pot to rip the chicken

Pot young sheep's internal organ

Does the pot chicken to be mixed

Pot young sheep scorpion

The hand picks food by hand

Pulls the strip

Qinghai three fever

Oh those make me laugh every time I read them. I thought you might get a good laugh too. It makes me want to say things like, "The western region is the best part of a mutton leg", "I'll take anything with 'wity chili'", or "Does the post chicken to be mixed?". Oh I'm laughing.

2010-02-13T16:05:00.001+08:00

This weekend is the official start of the Chinese New Year celebrations. That means, for Jeff and I, limited sleep for the next couple days. Fireworks have been going off at all times for the past few days, but it has been a random explosion here and there. Tonight, we know its going to be different. Once again, we live in a war-zone where one person has called Beijing at this time "the best DIY fireworks show on earth." As you can see from this video, it really is something to behold.
The other night we had firecrackers thrown at our bus (not the brightest idea by the guys who did it, but they were drunk). And I was amused to see people launching fireworks in a busy intersection with passersby and cars carrying on as if there was no threat to their safety as they navigated through all the smoke and explosions...

Playing the Pregnancy Card

2010-02-13T08:46:00.002+08:00

For being a people notorious for not following the rules, when it comes to those in a position of "power" some Chinese people can sure be sticklers for the rules, that is until you catch them off guard...
Last weekend we were at a very nice western restaurant where I enjoyed a delicious mango smoothie while Jeff and some other friends enjoyed adult beverages. It was good, but what could make it super-good? Answer: Whip cream.
So I flagged down a waiter and asked. "Oh, I'm sorry, I can put whip cream on it, but I'll have to charge you extra", was his reply.
"But I just found out I'm pregnant, and I really want it..." I said.
"Ok, I'll do it for free."
Yay!
And yesterday I started a new job where they want to pay me once a month, but I want to be paid after each class. The head teacher refused to budge until I said, "But I'm pregnant." To which he replied, "Well, since you have special circumstances, I'll see what I can do for you..."
Yay!
I'm curious to see how far I can really take this...

P.S.- I guess the picture of the soup I like grossed some of you out...The black stringy stuff is a kind of mushroom. And I usually just get the veggie kind (carrots, corn, cabbage) with no meat, but that pic was the only one I had. It really is yummy!

Aijisen Ramen Noodle Soup...

2010-02-11T13:27:00.006+08:00

Is the most delish thing to me right now.
Morning Sickness be gone!

Aijisen Ramen is a chain from Japan, but Beijing has a profusion of
them, mostly in malls. Chinese people really seem to like it- its
packed all the time. They also have some amazing fried rice.
When I happen to find myself in a mall (which is atleast twice a week),
I get a hankering. It doesn't help that I'm hungry all the time too.
This isn't packaged ramen for a dollar like you can get at
Safeway, this is a thousand times better. So, for 19 kuai I get my
fix. Its alot cheaper than coffee and healthier... Its easier to eat ramen with chopsticks than you may think. I also like that you get a personal size ladle to use too, that helps alot.
You can try it too! I saw that there is an Aijisen Ramen in Fremont.

On Being Pregnant in Beijing

2010-02-09T09:25:00.004+08:00

I have only known I am pregnant for about a week, but I can already see that being pregnant in Beijing will have its advantages and disadvantages.

First, the advantages:

I'll now get a seat on the bus and subway. I can't wait until I start showing, then I can really tell people to move so the pregnant lady can sit.

Ok, maybe thats the only advantage I can think of right now...

Disadvantages:

The air. So its not until I had to worry about someone smaller and more helpless than me, that I see just how many people smoke here. And the coal stacks seem to be spewing more than usual. Jeff and I were walking across the street the other day and as we were cutting around some giant buses, he told me not to inhale until we passed them.

My doctor is far away. Well, everything in Beijing is far away from where we live, but atleast theres a Subway sandwhich next door to my doctor's office. The day I have to go to the doctor for that blood glucose test, where you can't eat anything before is going to be one tough day. I am starving when I wake up in the morning.

Smells. Not too many smells have truly bothered me (yet), however the street vendors at my subway stop cooking their eggs and mystery meats reminds me of cat food now. Bleh.

On another note, besides the question, "Was this all planned?", the question I have gotten the most is, "How do you feel?" (Mostly scared out of my mind)...the following is the answers to all the questions that have been emailed to me.

1. Was this all planned?

Heck no. Jeff and I were the last people who ever thought we would have kids, let alone a SURPRISE.

2. How is Jeff taking all this? What does he think?

Well, if you know Jeff, you know he doesn't like surprises. He's a planner. I think its accurate to say he's pretty shaken up. As am I.

3. Do you have any weird food cravings?

No. I mostly want to avoid foods, I'm not craving them. Pretty much my diet right now consists of fresh fruit that Jeff cuts up for me each morning, fresh veggies, milk, chicken, yogurt and whatever else won't make me barf. Bread and waffles make me gag. I alternate between being ravenous and wanting to hurl most of the time.

4. Are you coming back to the US?

Yes. We'll be back in July when Jeff's contract is up at his university.

5. Are you guys happy?

Sure, why not? Our life is just changing in ways we never imagined, it will take a bit of getting used to.

Our African Souvenir

2010-02-07T09:44:00.003+08:00

I found out I was pregnant for reals on Friday.
I had taken a pregnancy test last Tuesday (after feeling sick for a
week) and ignored the positive result mostly because it was a cheap
Chinese brand test that I thought was probably innaccurate anyway. I
also ignored the result, in part, because I thought at the time, "If I
don't acknowledge it, it isn't true."
Thursday, I was still feeling awful and after spending almost another
week on the couch contemplating whether that was my life now... laying
on the couch and watching TV, something had to be done.
After discussions with Jeff, it was determined that I should go to the
store and get more cheap Chinese pregnancy tests.
Jeff and I stood together over the tests, he wishing the lines away
and me getting a weird feeling I had never experienced before: 60%
scared out of my mind and the rest was a mixture of excitement,
sheepishness and a settled feeling, like "atleast I know for sure whats
happened to me and why I feel so sick."
"How did this Happen?" was our next question, then "What are we going to do?"
The next day I went to the doctor at a western style clinic. I really
like my new doctor, even though she is Chinese, she speaks English and
was trained in the US. She answered Jeff's questions which were:
Who's the father? (you, Jeff)
Are you sure? (yes)
What are the chances of miscarriage? (20%) But I have morning sickness
which the doctor said is a good sign.
Is it twins? (most likely no. Twins don't run in our families)

So now we are getting over our shock and are contemplating our future.
We have no jobs, no health insurance, no house, no cars, nothing, when
we go back to the US in July. Something will work out somehow though,
we certain of that and we're getting excited...the adventure never ends!

2010-02-03T14:09:00.000+08:00

here is a version of the cartoon we saw on the plane going to Chengdu...Yay for Social Morality!

Hair

2010-02-02T14:58:00.004+08:00

You know how I've mentioned before that it feels like Beijing is about 20 years behind?

Hair. It's more than a controversial musical. It's a way of life. How
else do you explain the plethora of hairdressers in Beijing? If they
aren't cutting hair, then what could they possibly be doing? No
matter. What's clear is that a bit of mousse and expert tousling can
swing you over the fine line between fool and cool.

When you and your pal dress pretty similarly (and that's before the
glasses), you'll need something to set you apart. Why not try a much
softer, more natural haircut? Then why not ram it home by flashing a
bit of leg?

Le mullet, as it's known in French, is best sported with a Lacoste
polo shirt. Nothing says that you're le cool dude like rocking a
modern twist on a haircut that has been dropped by backwoodsmen for
seeming a little dated. Shoegazing pose optional.

Volume is important but should it come at the expense of your hair's
health? Full marks for effort but two treatments ago was as good as it
was going to get. Hold back, kids. Less is more. More ends up like the
extra in a John Hughes film who ends up on the cutting room floor
because the coiffure's gone too far.

(from The Beijinger)

So Long Chengdu, the city we never saw...

2010-01-31T08:42:00.000+08:00

This morning we leave Chengdu for our return to Beijing...its a shame we didn't get to do anything really- except cough in bed, cough at our hosts and cough on the street when we did happen to make it outside.
What we did get to see of the city is actually how I imagined Beijing would be before we came to China. There's western stuff here, but its hasn't overtaken the city (yet) and there are tons of bicycles and mo-peds.
The cab drivers were also exceptionally friendly but not chatty like they are in Beijing... When we were returning to the apartment last night the driver pulled over at a gas station and told us to get out. In Beijing this doesn't happen, so we asked the driver why, what's happening? He said he needed to get gas, so we waited on the corner while he filled up and then we continued on our way.

South By SouthWest

2010-01-28T11:03:00.004+08:00

Jeff and I have never really travelled while being ill. I have decided that I prefer not to travel that way. We had been scheduled to fly to Chengdu, Sichuan for a long time however and even though we contemplated canceling our trip, the loss of $500 spoke louder than our hacking coughs and fevered bodies.
We were all set to save some money and take the airport express train to the Beijing aiport, but the morning of our scheduled departure we called our driver man to take us- no strength. On the plane, as we hacked and coughed all the way to Sichuan, got concerned looks from other passengers, and tried our best to sniffle quietly, there was a public service announcment about the dangers of H1N1. Cartoon arrows from the USA pointed towards China while piglets said in Chinese, "Its so tragic!" Then the announcement encouraged people to call a special number if they were ill or knew someone who was. Thank goodness no one reported us....we don't have it by the way, so no need to worry...The cab driver was very friendly and we were relieved to know that he knew the place we needed to get to. The weather was about 50 degrees F and felt positively balmy compared to Beijing, so I had the window rolled down all the way. Through my coughing it was even a pleasant surprise to see the trees in Chengdu still have their leaves! The driver said they stay year round.
So it looks like our trip to Chengdu is an expensive recovery trip in our room. We'll get done what we needed to get done here and head home on Sunday. The pandas will have to wait until another time, we're feeling too yucky to even care that we won't get to see them this time. The picture below is what our friends tell us is a normal Chengdu day. We took from the window of where we're staying. Its foggy here all the time and the sun rarely ever breaks through...

Radiators A'bursting

2010-01-26T08:31:00.005+08:00

When I went to the office the other day to pick up Jeff's salary (he wasn't able to and office was closing for holiday), I saw one of the new teachers that I hadn't seen in a long time. He's a nice guy who went through Neighborhood Shock big time when he came to our Uni. Despite living in China for a number of years, his only experience with Beijing had been the more westernized and cosmopolitan parts, so when he found out he was living out in the boonies he, quite understandably, hated it. Now its all good, but he did tell me a story about what happened to him and the other new teacher a couple weeks ago...
Just to give you a run-down so you know who's who in the building:
First floor: older Korean couple. They're nice and the wife's Chinese is really good so when we do speak to them its in Chinese.
Second floor: Us. We're nice too.
Third floor: A mystery. We know someone is above us because we can hear them, but we're unsure if its the Canadian teacher directly above us or across the hall on the other side. He's nice and its his first year in China. We do know for sure though that someone is directly above us now, since The Incident.
Fourth floor: The Brit teacher and his girlfriend. They keep to themselves...
Fifth floor: The other new teacher from Colorado. He likes Stargate-Atlantis and uses a Mac.

Ok, so here's the story:
The guy on the 5th floor said he was doing laundry one weekend evening and watching Stargate- Atlantis when he looked out of his kitchen window and saw steam pouring out the side of the building. He thought it was strange, but many strange things happen in China, so he continued doing laundry and watching his shows.
Awhile later, he got a frantic call from the Canadian on the 3rd floor. "Is your water leaking?! My whole apartment is flooded with water and I can stop it!"
5th Floor Guy ran down the stairs to see that if what the Canadian said was indeed true and it was; water was everywhere and the source seemed to be the walls, it was pouring through electrical sockets and cracks and baseboards. There was about 2 inches of water on the floor at this point... They frantically tried to call Brian, who didn't answer his phone, it being a weekend and all...so I assume that Candian Guy spent the night at 5th Floor Guy's apartment.
Finally, Brian, who gets the message in the dead of night, shows up at 5am the next morning with a man to fix everything.
So, thats why Jeff and I heard drills and men tromping up and down the stairs so early that morning! It all comes together eventually... After investigation, it was determined that the other unoccupied apartment on the 4th floor had a burst radiator and it was flooded too; there was so much water that it poured into Canadian Guy's apartment.
Its a bit like James Palmer said in his latest column from Time Out: Beijing,
" I can count up to a dozen ways in which various Beijing apartments have tried to kill me. The light in the bathroom exploding (spraying shattered glass at eye-level height), was a particularly good one, as was the bubbling sewage that once poured out of the kitchen sink.
Electrical plugs hanging half out of the wall, burning hot pipe-lines in the bathroom, flaring gas stoves, light coverings made of panes of glass that slip and break unexpectedly, permanently dark and steep staircases- its a wonder I'm still alive..."
I'm beginning to feel as if our days are numbered, our apartment has most of those things...but we have survived so far, ceiling tiles falling and all...

2010-01-24T07:28:00.002+08:00

Oh, the irony...

Intoxication Place...

2010-01-23T20:50:00.002+08:00

...happens to be this wall in between two bars.

The Cold, Peepholes and X-Rays in Snow

2010-01-21T11:20:00.005+08:00

16 degree sunrise outside our window yesterday.

Sam and I found an X-ray in the snow. Looks like someone lost their knee.

Our peephole: After continually looking out because people were
tromping up and down the stairs all morning, I thought I'd take a
photo. The door accross the hall is our other apartment, where guests
stay.

P.S.- Did you see Ginger and Wenchao's blog?!? I have total location envy!! While I am freezing in sub-artic temps, they're wearing T-shirts! Serenity now!!

5 Random Pictures For You

2010-01-21T07:43:00.006+08:00

Beijing at night is really cool (yes, its cold- but also neat),
especially at this time of year. Its almost Chinese New Year, it
begins February 14th, so there are lots of lanterns everywhere. I took
this on my back and forth to Sanlitun from Dongzhimen at about
7:00pm. I shared the sidewalk with small dogs in sweaters and flashy
light up colllars and their owners doing their daily stroll, Beijinger
style... The older Beijingers, especially men walk with their hands
folded behind their back, hips out- its quite a distinctive saunter,
I'll get a pic of that for you later...

And, here's a pic you can add to the Jeff Hall of Unflattering
Photos. As I've mentioned, its become his purpose in life to look as
unattractive as possible when I take his picture.

The boy in the PJs is my little scientist, Bill. In the few months I
have been tutoring Bill (Chinese name pronounced: DohDoh) I have never
seen him wear anything else except these fuzzy PJs. And in a move which I
took to be flattering because he's now very comfortble with me and its
such a Chinese thing to do, he uses the bathroom with the door
open when he needs a break from his lesson and I see more than I ever cared to.

The next pic is of a boy I saw on the bus awhile ago. I liked his
jacket, his hood has ears.

Last but not least: this photo is a little old. I took it just as we
got our first snow, but I forgot to post it. This is what our subway
stop looks like at rush-hour every morning. Sometimes I imagine I'm at
Disneyland waiting for a ride and that helps a bit...

Grandmas on the Bus

2010-01-19T09:15:00.003+08:00

I wish I was older. Then I would always get a free ride with a
guaranteed seat on the bus, could reprimand rude punk kids if needed,
and after that I could take a nap on the way.

From Wikitravel...

2010-01-17T12:39:00.002+08:00

Had a good chuckle when I read this article about the driving in Beijing...

"Driving is crazy in Beijing, and reckless driving is the norm. Be prepared for drivers to violate traffic laws even to the extent of going in reverse on highways to back up to a missed exit. Also expect occasional road debris (a piece of wood or torn out tire) to be laying in the roadway...
Crossing the road in China is an art and may be difficult for pedestrians unused to Beijing's particular driving styles. Before crossing, assume that none of the road users will give way to you, even if a policeman is present. Zebra crossings are redundant. Chinese drivers lean on the horn heavily and frequently play games of chicken with pedestrians and other vehicles. Should you hear a loud horn when crossing the road, always look around as there is probably a car right behind you or heading straight for you. Should you find several cars and bicycles veering towards you from different directions, do not try to run to safety; instead, stand still. For drivers and cyclists a stationary obstacle is easier to avoid. Also note that traffic light crossings have zebra stripes painted on the road, but you should only cross when the walk light is green. As with pedestrian crossings in many countries, there is strength in numbers. When a mass of people crosses together cars are more likely to stop or slow down."

I have to admit, Chinese drivers do have the fastest reflexes I've ever seen...

(If you click on the Title it will take you to the Wikitravel page for Beijing)

How I HuiJia (return home)

2010-01-16T11:47:00.001+08:00

Every mile is two in winter.- George Herbert (1593 - 1633), Jacula Prudentum

This past week I've found my self returning home every evening between 7:00 or 8:00pm after leaving at about 9:00am in the mornings. By 5:00pm the sun has gone down, the hordes are going home from work and the buses and subways need an after-school special about what it means to have personal space.
And so, here is the following timeline of one of my fated trips home replete with descriptions of the cold and the run in with a jerk cabby. If all this sounds bad to you, just remember that its China and one can get used to many things...its all in a days work.
5:30pm
I'm ready to leave where I was. Its just gotten dark and I have a huge bag of groceries with me, so I debate whether or not its worth it to taxi it to the subway instead of taking the bus. I decide to wait for the bus, even though it means changing once. Oh, good! The first bus is here. While not looking for omens, maybe its a good sign and I'll make it painlessly to the subway. (Hah.)
5:40pm
Get to the bus stop where I wait for the bus that goes to the subway. Its cold, about 15ºF degrees, so I'm thankful for the gloves I've reappropriated from Jeff. He appropriated them last year because he liked them. The wind has started to blow and people are jumping up and down to keep warm.
6:00pm
No bus. Its getting really cold now. The bag of groceries may as well be filled with cement. I give the bus a 5 minute deadline. If it doesn't come, I'm taking a taxi to the subway.
6:15pm
I get a taxi. It was a bit hard, seeing as everyone wants one when its cold. My driver looks like he's from the sticks and smells strongly of garlic and B.O. A lot of people, especially the country people chew raw garlic in the winter to keep bugs away. It works for foreigners (as in keeping them away) too, except its kind of hard to avoid when you're a captive audience stuck in their taxi or next to them on the bus. The worst is when you're standing butt to butt, crammed in a bus and the person closest to you answers their phone; not only do Chinese people yell into their phones, but the garlic and old food odors spewing sometimes make me feel as if I'm about to faint...but I digess...so I'm in the taxi and I tell the driver where to go. He impatiently tells me he knows where to go, but then he wants to get on the packed bumper to bumper 4th Ring Road because he thinks it will be faster than using the side road. Its the same idea as taking Chiles Road to bypass the traffic on I-80, instead of getting on the freeway at Mace. So, I tell him to just take the side road. In return I get an angry, profanity ridden scolding that smells like garlic. I'm called an assortmant of things, but just as I'm about ready to tell him to let me out and refuse to pay, he gets a break in the traffic and hits the gas peddle hard, horn blaring all the way. Atleast he's going fast. I give him the cold shoulder when I get out, but remember who I am so I hand him the fare with both hands.
6:40pm
Arrive to subway. I feel like a trout going upstream a I fight the current of people coming off the subway. No seats available, but atleast I can put my giant bag down and give my back a rest. My glasses begin to fog up because its so warm. On the subway I don't get stared at as much, unless I start speaking English or Chinese...Speaking of speaking, a woman starts asking me questions in English.
She wants me to teach her daughter so we exchange phone numbers. During our conversation, she can't remember a particular word and a another man tells her. We had an audience and didn't know it.
7:05pm
Get to my stop and say goodbye to the nice mom. Make my way out into the now 10ºF weather and get an artic blast as I walk out the doors and descend into a mass of HeiChe (black car) drivers all screaming and yelling to people. “Where do you want to go?” ,“Return Home!” . The air is thick with coal smoke. The key is to not make eye contact with anyone if you don't want to encourage a bargaining war for a ride home. For especially persistant ones, I keep my head down and shake my head. Only the brave will actually try to grab my arm, and for that they get a look of death, but it doesn't happen today. I make it across the street to my bus stop and see about 100 people waiting.
7:20pm
The bus arrives. I stick my elbows out, put my bags in front of me and prepare to be crushed. I also make sure to keep my ground so that any shoving I receive is countered. Fortunately two buses come at the same time, so part of the mass breaks off to shove onto the other bus. I get a seat. Small victory!
7:30pm
The wind is stronger now as I get off the bus for the final 5 minute walk home. My nose feels like its about to break off. I walk as quickley as possible and practically run up our stairs. Its good to be home from a cold day and enjoy the sauna that is our apartment!

Avatar Described in Chinglish

2010-01-12T20:11:00.001+08:00

So, we hear the Avatar movie is all the craze is the US... The description we have about it here in China is more than a little confusing.
I have not made up or embellished the following. Its word for painful word from the back of the ad we saw:

" Stories from the earth began, Jack Sally is a veteran paralyzed legs, he felt nothing worthy of him to fight, so he was sent ot the planet Pandora Mining company gladly accepted. There is a planet somewhere else do not have the mineral elements "unobtanium", able to attract human beings htousands of miles to be here pioneering reason for this is that it "unobtanium" will completely change the human beings energy sector. But the problem is, resource-rich planet, Pandora, is not suitable for human life, where the air for human lethal, native plants and animals ferocious predators, extremely dangerous. The environment here has created a different human races: 10 foot tall blue humanid creature "Na" vi tribe". "Na" vi ethnic discontent of human pioneers of the arrival of the machines do not like human beings on this planet's land just because of the stains left by mining around scars..."

Sounds like a winner!

The Lighted Armpit & Weird Mannequin Mall

2010-01-11T08:02:00.003+08:00

Tianjin, when seen from a distance and at night, actually looks like a beautiful city...

The preceding was seen at a big mall yesterday. Its at times when I see things like this, that I have the following brief conversation with myself:
"Hmmmm....Whats that about?
Turtles don't have hair! Preposterous! Bears? Bears as models?
Whats with the starved red people?
Atleast an octopus playing drums isn't so crazy...
Well, there's no signs. Not that I could really read them anyway to find out whats happening.
Some things in China- its just better not to try to understand, but I can take pictures!
Where's my camera?"

Interview with Sam and Ashley

2010-01-08T07:57:00.000+08:00

I'm stealing an idea from Ginger and Wenchao's blog and interviewed our visitors Sam and Ashley about their opinions of Beijing...They are visiting for 6 weeks and are already fitting in like old pros here!
And just so you know, this is all what they said verbatim with no coaching at all.

Q: So, how are you guys liking Beijing?
Ashley: We love it, but thats because we have amazing hosts who know how to show us a good time.
Sam: I like everything so far. I like my new boots, the cold, the transportation...

Q: What has surprised you most about Beijing?
Ashley: I don't know. I guess how urban it is, it feels very western- like we're in any other big city but with Chinese characters everywhere.
Sam: I feel like I'm in communist Russia except there's Chinese characters everywhere...
Myra: That doesn't answer the question...
Sam: Oh, yeah. I didn't expect everyone to be so starey-starey at me, the white boy. But you get used to it...
Ashley: Whats up with that?! I haven't been stared at!
Sam: You are stared at all the time, you just haven't noticed.
Ashley: Thats not good that I haven't noticed. Someone could being spying on me and I'd never know...

Q: Before you leave Beijing, what do you want to do for sure?
Ashley: Buy Vanesa her shoes.
Sam: I want to go down the slide at the Great wall. Thats pretty much the only thing I looked forward to about coming to China.

And so ends the interview.
Later today we're heading to Tianjin, the armpit city, on the fast train!

MYTH: Chinese People don't like sweets

2010-01-07T14:04:00.004+08:00

FACT: These are Chinese cream puffs.
They are extremely delicious an definitely addictive. And, bad for me to know this- because they are sold by the bag; meaning that they are super cheap. A friend came over for dinner last night with a plastic shopping bag full of these puffy delectibles that she bought at her neighborhood cream puff stand. After expressing awe and delight that there are stands that make cream puffs throughout Beijing, I'll be on the hunt to find them in my neighborhood.

5 pictures for you

2010-01-05T10:38:00.002+08:00

I hope the CNN video of the snow is working...seems like some can view
it and others can't.
Heres a picture of our road as we waited for the bus yesterday as
well as a snowman that looks like Buddah.
Sam got Jeff a monster size apple yesterday! Its bigger than a softball!

Record Snow

2010-01-04T17:16:00.000+08:00

Yep, its cold here.

2010-01-03T10:31:00.000+08:00

My body is becoming whole again, its been a painful process so i still consider myself a work in progress...at least my lethargy is back to normal and socially acceptable levels- even watching Frasier from dawn to dusk was a bit much for me.
We woke up to tons of snow this morning! Our visitors asked when it would snow yesterday and their question was answered last night as we waited for a very slow in coming bus to take us home. I love having visitors- it keeps everything new and I have fun seeing things through their eyes. Its good to have others to laugh with when the inevitable snot rocket is blown right next to you, when we hear the symphony of hocking all around with the intermittent explosion to round things out.
Speaking of explosions, the fireworks have been very quiet this year. Has the economic downturn finaly started to have an affect on the Chinese everyman's fireworks budjets? I wonder...this time last year explosions were on and off all day with two hours solid of fireworks every night in all different directions of the neighborhood.

Cat Scratch Fever

2010-01-02T07:26:00.001+08:00

I have a Ted Nugent song for a disease! It was my present from South Africa, bless the lion cub who licked my arm then gave me a love bite...for the past week, well, even before that, I felt super rotten. Armed with cold packs, Advil and antibiotics I spent the week on the couch fighting the Fever inbetween changes of clothes and Frasier episodes. So now I'm a bit Frasier'd out.
All thats left is to get rid of the strange cysts that have cropped up so I'm using a goldenseal/salt tea thats not for drinking...
More later when health competely returns!

Brain Freeze Beijing Style

2009-12-28T07:34:00.003+08:00

Time for the weather report. It's cold out folks. Bonecrushing cold. The kind of cold which will wrench the spirit out of a young man, or forge it into steel.
-Northern Exposure, Lost and Found, 1992

Yesterday, I was getting ready to rush out the door for work and even though it's not part of my morning routine, had to take a shower because I had neglected to the night before. Jeff is the morning shower taker, I'm more of a mid-day or evening showerer myself. It takes awhile for the water heater to get hot, so it works out better that way... Nevermind too that I'm dragging a bit from feeling dead tired this week. I really have sunk low, too tired for a shower...wow.
So after my rushed shower that became cold midway through, my Chinese brand hairdryer, that really is like a weedeater because it would rather eat my hair than dry it, started to smoke, then died and I was left looking like a frizzy rat. After a smart remark which was more like a tired cursing of my Chinese hairdryer, I told Jeff my prediction of how I thought the day would turn out: “I'm going to regret this and get sick.” Duh.
As a preemptive strike I took a load a Vitamin C and Echinachea with an Advil for good measure.
In my rush I forgot to even put a hat on as I left...not that I think it really would have been a huge protetction- it was 12ºF yesterday, with a breeze, that under warmer conditions would have been pleasant, but on this day it might as well been a gale.
Bitter, bitter, bitter.
Have you ever had brain freeze from eating ice cream too fast? It was benumbed medulla oblongata the moment I stepped outside and as I felt my hair I was not entirely surprised that it was frozen solid. Whole new meaning for Helmet Hair.
Later, when work was done and I was sitting in a warm room, my right thumb went numb. My thawing brain immediately made the connection between numb thumb and knot neck; a nerve was protesting the abuse of the day . Over the course of the day the muscles in my back, shoulders and neck had tightened to such a point that it was hard to turn my head to look at something, instead I had to shift my whole body.
I still felt pretty chipper though and was more than happy and hungry to go to our favorite Xingjiang restaurant for dinner. After dinner, we had the fantastic idea to do massage! Now that was what I REALLY needed!
The folowing 2 hours were self percribed torture.
My massage girl, Number 16, berated me for going outside with a wet head. I know, I know! I am the world's biggest idiot! I literally am a numbskull!
By this time every muscle in my body ached and I was running a fever, but I couldn't have been in a better place.
Number 16 had me drinking hot water like no tomorrow as she kneaded the knots out of my wretched body . We enjoyed delightful converasation between my shrieks and wails. No pain, no gain and in the end I felt quite a bit better! But, now I can say from experience a frozen brain is an unhappy brain, and happily takes revenge on the innocent body.

2009-12-25T07:35:00.001+08:00

Static Carrots or Organic vs. Non and Whether to Get More Bang for Your Renmingbi

2009-12-23T15:48:00.003+08:00

Coming back from vacation means traveling to the store to stock up on essentials that have languished in the fridge while I was gone or replacing items I hadn't the forethought to chuck before leaving. We came home to a fridge full of old yogurt, which I didn't try- that kind of lesson doesn't need repeating, and a package of decaying mushrooms. Can mushrooms grow from mushrooms? That question will have be answered at a later time...
I was mainly on the hunt for a new dish-rack, since our old one was destroyed when the 2 ton ceiling tiles fell on it. Why China put floor tiles on the ceiling we'll never know, but we certainly know what happens as a result. I wish I could have heard the sound that was made when it all came crashing down. Oh, China...
So, while I was at the store I thought I may as well get some veggies too. The issue about whether to buy organic versus “regular” should be no problem right? Of course we don't want pesticide saturated veggies! In China, its not so much pesticides I worry about as much as whether or not something is organic or really organic- meaning it was fertilized with what I saw men taking out of the sewer today when they were repairing a burst pipe...
For Westerners in China, when it comes to price, there really is no difference unless you're buying a lot. Its like deciding whether to spend 30 cents or a dollar. Every bit counts though when saving fen for Starbuck's on a Chinese income... but all fruits and veggies are relatively cheap, even imported ones. Except avocados, those should have their own price index like gold, they cost just as much. But getting back on track, its not a price issue, I go on more unsophisticated notions.
First, it depends on how I feel that day. Do I have time to stand in the produce line to get everything weighed and priced? Or should I just go to the organic section where its already packaged and ready to go but where I don't get as much bang for my renmingbi? Do I really want to stick my hands in the bin full of mostly dirt to dig for the veggies myself after I've already had to dig the tongs out of the raw chicken bin in the meat section of the store?
Then, I think about how the veggies feel. Yes they have feelings! Tell me how you'd feel if you were pawed at and squeezed all day. At the end of the day, you'd look pretty bruised and bedraggled too. So, if I'm at the store near the end of the day when only the used veggies are left, I go for the organics still perched perkily in their saran and styro containers (packaging issues aside for now). I have learned that buying sad fruit and veggies out of pity only makes the buyer a loser in the end. It seems that sad fruits and veggies who are on their last breath when purchased whither and decay rapidly once the money is in the cashiers hand, so that once you return home your bananas that were mostly yellow just an hour ago are now a completely blackened dead.
Lastly, I think about what seems more natural. In China you can never be sure. For instance, yesterday after I found the dish-rack I went to the veggie section of the supermarket and began to pick out yams, potatoes and carrots. These are among the cheapest veggies one can buy and I had time, so I was not in the organic section. The yams were big, but they're supposed to be big and fat right? The potatoes were a healthy size too. The carrots, however, looked like they were on steroids. They were the biggest carrots I'd ever seen- logs of carrots, one bigger than around my wrist and as long as my forearm... First my brain said, “Whoa! Thats awesome!”, Then it said, “Thats just not right”. My hand, being slower than my brain, was still going through the carrot bin as I was saying this to myself when I got a massive static shock. They were angry steroidal carrots! Carrots shouldn't be that big and angry unless China has a monopoly on a giant carrot variety that conducts electricity...Needless to say, I jumped what seemed sky high, looked around to see if anyone noticed, which no one seemed to, and then I rebuked the giant carrots before marching over to the organic section to buy carrots of a better attitude.
So there's my highly scientific system for buying fruits and veggies. Nine times out of ten I buy organic if I buy them at a supermarket. The fruit and veggie market near our house is Organic organic, so they get an extra long special soak in the sink when I clean them...

Building Cat

2009-12-22T09:50:00.002+08:00

Building Cat has been adopted by our 4th floor neighbor who has also
made a box for him/her/who knows? to sleep in at night. Every so often
we hear ferocious battles going on between Building Cat and other Cat
Interlopers who want a piece of the box on cold nights. My question
though: Who is giving Building Cat cake and buffalo wings? He/She eats
better than I do!

Rainbow Nation to the Middle Kingdom

2009-12-20T12:59:00.002+08:00

We're back! We got home last night at 1:00am and went to bed at 2:00am. This morning we woke up at 11:30am, just in time for me to drink some coffee and go to my afternoon job; after that I'll go to the store and get food!
Our Welcome Home:
When we came home last night we saw that part of the ceiling caved in in our kitchen...So, we know what we're doing on Monday. making calls to Brian so he can send someone over to "fix" it. I'll also take photos when its done. I doubt that it will be an improvement...

I've found that when one has no expectations in China, things tend to work out much better!

Safari!

2009-12-19T04:12:00.008+08:00

I just left sitting on our porch just now... it was impossible to stay there undisturbed after I made the mistake of giving the monkeys pistachios. As I attempted to write, I felt that I was under ambush surveillance while the monkeys inched closer and closer, the most brazen one jumping up next to me on the other seat. The closer they got, the louder I heard the Jaws theme song even though I knew deep down they wouldn't hurt me... But those beady eyes! Perturbed that I had indeed gotten myself into a pickle (or gherkin as its said in South Africa) I yelled to Jeff that I was surrounded, got no response- I think he was fake sleeping- so I moved inside. It didn't help though, the monkeys still sat outside the door waiting for me, even coming up to the sliding door making like they were going to get in...finally after I was sure they would open the door and come in given the chance, I put my shoes back on, left jeff to fend forhimself in the event of a monkey attack and headed to the pool; safety in numbers...
Before I tell you more about our incredible safari experience, I'll tell you about where we're at. Its an awesome place! The staff knew all our names...our glasses are never empty and we're offered tempting treats all hours of the day. One drink thats especially delicious is Amarula, its a liqueur made from the fruit of the Marula tree and it tastes like Bailey's but smoother. So Good! We found some at the airport and got a bottle to take home.
The meals were amazing and the chef stood up in a tree when he would announce to us the menu and tell a story.
You can see more in my photos, but sorry I have not included captions with this set yet- theres just too many. If you have a question though, just email...
Phinda Game Reserve is on 60,000 acres and has 7 distict habitats with about a 1000 miles of track. I can't remember them all, but I think Bush, Forest, Marsh, Grassland and some others are included in the habitats. The lodge we're staying at is called the Forest Lodge. Five percent of the entire reserve is sand forest, which I had never heard of or seen before... The lodge was built by hand with materials carried in on wheelbarrow so as not to disturb the eco-system. The entire place was built around trees and only 12 were removed during construction. All the little huts are situated so you don't see anyone else and they don't see you. Good, considering that the huts are mostly glass.
(for more click here: http://www.andbeyondafrica.com/luxury_safari/south_africa/phinda_private_game_reserve/and_beyond_phinda_private_game_reserve/accommodation/and_beyond_phinda_forest_lodge)
When we arrived the first day, we were given the rundown of do's and don'ts, one of which is that under no circumstances are we allowed to walk about the camp unattended after dark. Lions, cheetah and other animals wonder freely all over, so with that in our minds, we were sent off to meet our game ranger and his tracker so we could do our first drive. But an elephant fence does go around the lodge though to keep them out- we were told they have destroyed the camp a couple times...
Game Ranger Devin and Zulu Tracker Dan solidified themselves as the best after we saw a herd of buffalo, a crash of 16 rhino, a rare black rhino, wildebeest and zebra eating together, impala and nyala; we also got to see lions napping in a tree- all on the first drive. But we were futher blown away at dark, when Zulu Tracker Dan was shining his spotlight as we drove down the track looking for a leopard, he yelled for Devin to stop.
“What? What? Do you see a leopard?!”, we echoed looking around expectantly.
Then Zulu Tracker Dan said something to Devin in Zulu and while he jumped out of the vehicle he said to us, “Theres no way you guys are going to believe this, but Dan just found a green chameleon on a green bush at night while we were driving at 20mph!” Zulu Tracker Dan is the best! So we admired the chameleon and headed back to camp for dinner, marveling at Dan's skills.
The next morning we woke up at 4:30am for another game drive where we saw everything we didn't get to see the day before. On this drive, we saw elephants, a journey of giraffes, another dazzle of zebra, families of warthogs, a raft of hippos, a baby wilderbeest that was just born and unsteady on his feet with his family surrounding him and two crocodiles. We also saw some cool birds, like an African Eagle... On the way back to camp we saw a warthog enjoying a mud bath in a tire track, so we waited for him to finish before we continued. By 9:00am when our morning game drive was over, we felt like the day was already over, and if it was, we were more than satisfied with how it had turned out. But no, instead of eating lunch, we went to a delicious brekkie (South African for breakfast) and watched the monkeys steal food from people's unattended plates. One monkey swooped down and scared a poor person to death when it swiped her muffin. The monkeys proved to be so entertaining that one of the staff brought out the monkey stick so as to scare away anymore theives.
Since we had drives that went into the evenings, we spent most of that time trying to find leopard and lions. Both paid off! The vehicles only go into the bush for lion, leopard and cheetah- so we got to do alot of off-roading! It was so much fun! I'll make my video later of us chasing lions... We learned that Zulu Tracker Dan can tell most things about an animal, just from their paw prints! he knows, sex, age, weight, and how old the tracks are... While Dan did his thing and we waited for it to get a bit darker for leopard hunting, we had a snack by a waterhole and got a lesson from devin about frogs.
This was the best trip ever and certainly was a once in a lifetime experience! Especially because we have no money left anymore! But it was so worth it. We were so happy that we got to see everything and it was better than we could have ever imagined- everything from the food to the lodge to the animals- all were above and beyond anything we could have ever wished for. I never want to go to a zoo again and I wish we could have stayed even just one day longer.
Hope you enjoy the pictures! The first few are of what we saw on the way.
Biggest surprise about South Africa: Its so green!

Xhosa or "the clicking language"

2009-12-15T22:41:00.005+08:00

Xhosa is pronounced like "Khosa" with a clicking sound...
Click (no pun intended) on the pic and it will take you to the video...the girls are sayingthey're names and that they are so happy to meet all us and love that we all came to Africa.

From International

More Lions!

2009-12-15T17:46:00.002+08:00

Here's a couple vids from the Lion Preserve...

Lions! from Myra on Vimeo.

Don't watch the following if you don't like guts...

Lion Eating Cow from Myra on Vimeo.

Durban Highlights

2009-12-14T23:29:00.002+08:00

Slideshow

2009-12-10T15:02:00.009+08:00

When we arrived at the The Royal Hotel in Durban yesterday, we knew within 5 minutes this was a nickel and diming operation... we have to pay an arm and a leg for internet, pay for dry cleaning and laundry through the nose...The first thing Jeff did within 5 minutes of arriving, was to call for an iron and ioning board- then he abruptly slammed the phone down. "This Hotel does not have irons!", he said in an disturbed angry voice, "This place has already gone down a few notches in my book!" Fortunately, before a meltdown, Jessica and Adan called at that exact moment to see if we had arrived and told Jeff they had a travel iron. We spent the evening after dinner ironing at their room and having a great time catching up. All the foreigners (us) have been told that under no circumstances are we allowed to leave the hotel after dark. Its too unsafe. I believe it- Durban is like south central LA but scarier. It doesn't help that we stick out like sore thumbs...but it hasn't detracted from our enjoyment, all the friends staying here are having a great time. We're happy this trip isn't has hectic as Poland was: we're 10 minutes from the stadium, we don't have to get up at 5am and we will get back to our rooms at a reasonable hour.
The Convention starts today...We've met so many friends we know or that know others incommon- its such a small world! It seems so cliche to say that now...
Jessica and Adan did their Safari already at the Same place we'll go to next week. They said it will blow us away and is by far the coolest experience they've ever had. Then they refused to tell us anymore! I'm so excited!
Here's all the photos I've taken so far. There's no wi-fi available for free here at the hotel, so I've just forked over 20 US Dollars for 4 hours of internet access. I hope they will upload quickley! I'll include a vid or two for you as well, if all my minutes arn't used up. Make sure to read the captions on my Photos. Click on the slideshow frame bottom to see the captions.

First Photos of Africa...

2009-12-09T17:43:00.008+08:00

There are a few, (185), so here's some to start you off. Internet has been interesting so far and I have only been able to get access in the airports, which is where I am now...we're waiting for our flight to Durban. The trip has been FANTASTIC so far, better than we could have ever imagined.
I'll tell you a bit first about the Jo'berg branch: It has alot of acerage where wild roebuck roam free. Because alot of printing is done there, the branch has a special ventilation system that filters the Printery air before it goes outside. A non-polluting environment!
The first few photos are of the grounds at the branch. Then you'll see photos of us at the lion park. The one lion is eating the cow, so skip that one if you don't want to see!

Africa! Africa!

2009-12-06T12:30:00.003+08:00

Well hello there! We got to South Africa safely after an hour delay in Dubai. There was a luggage problem, all the luggage got loaded on the wrong plane so we had to wait for them to reload to our plane. It was an interesting flight. Most of the passengers on our flight from Dubai to Johannesburg were Haj pilgrims, returning from Jeddah. During their prayer times, the rows were blocked with men and women bowing towards Mecca and singing their prayers. Some women were fully covered- wearing a burka- the only part of them we could see was their eyes, others still wore the veil but we could see their faces.
After 8 hours, these two exhausted travellers went through South African customs, and went to pick up our checked bags. Mine came out completely soaked! It shall forever remain a mystery as to why, Jeff's was dry, but in the end it turned out to be water, so no problem...
We were met at the airport by an older fellow, Sorrel, who put us in the car and we headed off to the South African Branch to spend our first night.
The next morning, we were amazingly up and ready in time to do MW with the family and we enjoyed a good breakfast before we went on a walk around the grounds. Its gorgeous! Wild roebuck wander the grounds and the brothers take such good care of everything. They do everything organically and make sure to leave the wildlife as undisturbed as possible.
After that, our friend Paul picked us up as were going to spend the weekend with his family. But before he took us to his house, we went to the LIONS!
I will be posting my pics ASAP... wireless internet is a bit different here it seems...
The lions were amazing! In addition to housing 70 lions at this preserve, a few of which are rescued, there was a tiger and four cheetahs who had also been rescued from zoos and game farms that didn't treat the animals nicely.
Our guide took us inside the Cheetah enclosure where we stood 5 feet from wild cheetahs! Vince, our guide, said cheetahs don't attack anything tall, so adults can go inside theie enclosure with no fear of harm. Children on the other hand are prime cheetah targets, so they arn't even allowed to go up to the fence...later we got to pet a cheetah that had been rescued. Even though she was wild, she tolerated us and even seemed to enjoy ear rubs.
We got to see 5 male adult lions eat a cow. It was gross and so cool at the same time. I have photos and video, but will be sure to warn you before so that if the site of filleted cow is disturbing, you can skip it. Now I can say what cow guts look like though!
After we saw the adult lions, we went to the babies and played with them! One little guy got tired of Jeff petting him and snapped at him- so Jeff came closest to be eaten, not me! I was given a love bite though and it wasn't pleasant...imagine getting a love bite from a house cat, but multiply the pain and teeth factor by 20. I have brusies, but he didn't break the skin.
The family that we're spending the weekend with is awesome! Pauls mom, Ingrid, is amazing and I knew she was cool when we went into their living room and saw that she had painted her ceiling hot pink. Shes my kind of woman!
So, gotta go now... today we are heading to the Rosebank Market and then will be back in time for dinner. The family has invited some friends we ended up seeing yesterday who we know from Oakland Cantonese! We saw them yesterday and said to eachother, "What are YOU doing here?!"
Tomorrow we go back to the Branch to stay until Wednesday morning when we fly to Durban. I'll post all my pics tomorrow!

Hello From Dubai!

2009-12-03T16:58:00.003+08:00

Hello! We're on a layover right now in Dubai, UAE. We made it with only a minor bump in the Beijing airport- they wouldn't take our e-tix at first...more on that later...
Its about 80 degrees here and very sandy.
We found a Starbucks and a Burger King, I am partaking of Starbucks (of Course)...

Roaming Blog

2009-12-01T08:31:00.008+08:00

Hard to believe that we get to leave for South Africa in 2 days! This trip has been 2 years in the making!

"Myra will hold them, and probably get bitten...."- Jeff
Theres my ever loving man! He said I can go first to hold the lions, then if I do get bitten, they won't be hungry anymore when its his turn... my philosophy on this is, whatever happens to me- even if I'm missing limbs at the end of the day on Friday- it'll make a good story for the blog!

Fresh Eggs

2009-11-30T09:36:00.005+08:00

We saw this on the steps leading to the subway the other night... Beijing certainly doesn't feel like a big metropolitan city when we see this! The lady was grilling kabobs and selling them...

And I guess I can say I have an Egg Lady now. When I was at the big supermarket yesterday I forgot to get eggs, so I went to the big market thats outside our South Gate. There were rows and rows of egg sellers, so I just went to the first person that smiled at me.

She had all kinds- duck eggs, quail eggs, Blue eggs, purple ones, and of course, chicken eggs.

I hadn't bought eggs at the outdoor market before, so I was a little curious to see how much I would be charged. Good thing for me- I was able to watch what one guy did...the egg lady gave him a small plastic bag and he filled it up with eggs, then she weighed them. It was kind of like picking out fruit at the store. I paid 6rmb for 15 eggs.

I still have an ethical dilemma about bargaining for food... when I go to the outdoor market, I know the sellers with scales all have the same prices but I frequently see people bargaining over corn that is 1rmb ( less than 30 cents). However, being a farmer is tough- I wouldn't want to do it. So today I decided I don't bargain for eggs and produce...

Baboon Gangs and Thieves

2009-11-25T17:54:00.008+08:00

Jessica just emailed me an article...It seems Baboon gangs are on the rampage in South Africa.You may remember Jessica and I were the victims of seperate monkey incidents last year in Sanya (see posts from January/February '09)...

This monkey jumped at her face. I wish we had it on video...

It will remain to be seen if baboons react the same way.

Here's the article:

S. Africa's baboon gangs get more aggressive
Protected species gets away with thefts; tourists are easy targets
The Associated Press
updated 11:54 a.m. ET Nov. 24, 2009
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Visitors to South Africa's premier holiday destination who are worried about becoming victims of the country's high crime rate could find themselves instead robbed by a more furry kind of felon: baboons.

The cheeky primates have learned how to open car doors and jump through windows in pursuit of tasty sandwiches and snacks.

City officials are battling to control the increasingly aggressive troupes and there are fears the problem will only worsen with the influx of visitors to Cape Town during the World Cup next year.

On Tuesday, a troupe of 29 baboons raided four cars outside Simon's Town, a small coastal neighborhood. A baboon dubbed "Fred," the leader of the group, opened unlocked doors and jumped through windows to search for food.

He ransacked a bag in the back seat of a red car as a couple panicked about their passports. A girl screamed nearby as a baboon hopped into her car through a back window. Others climbed on car roofs and hoods, looking for ways inside.

Many of those who stopped to watch the raid had their own cars broken into by other baboons.

"We spend the whole day basically rescuing tourists," said Mark Duffels, a volunteer who monitors the baboons in an effort to keep them at bay.

There are about 420 baboons in 17 troupes that roam the city's outskirts, especially the popular scenic sites along the coast. Baboons are a protected species under South African legislation but their persistent pursuit of food has led to conflict with residents.

The baboons associate humans and cars with food although people are strongly discouraged from feeding the animals.

But Justin O' Riain, head of the baboon research unit at the University of Cape Town, fears that the influx of visitors next year will only feed the primates' taste for human foods even more.

"Tourism is going to go through the roof, and this equals exposure to naive people and rich pickings," he said. "People who stop the car, they're going to get raided."

Concerned Simon's Town residents asked Monday for a crossing gate to be put up on the road that leads to the nearby Cape of Good Hope nature reserve.

Cars would be stopped before they enter baboon territory and given a brochure in their native language explaining why they should stay in their cars, lock their doors and close their windows if they see baboons.

"We're so anxious about tourists who can't read or understand English. It puts them at risk," said Liz Hardman, who is leading the campaign. "The perception is that the baboons are harmless and they're not. They're wild animals."

Post 201

2009-11-25T07:52:00.004+08:00

I can't believe I forgot to celebrate after my 200th post yesterday! What was I thinking?
WhooHoo! Yay 201!
When I get to South Africa next week, I'm going to do a bit of tweaking to the blog...make an article section and sort things by topic. That is, if I have time...I just got an email from our friends there. I get to play with THE LIONS the day after we arrive! I hope they know that I may need to spend all day there... So, while I had two glorious days of unhindered blog access a couple weeks ago, its now sporadic at best and I"ve gone back to using a proxy. Jeff was right, he said, " You flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami". I can imagine that the Monitors noticed a huge surge of activity on my blog the moment I figured out it was unblocked and said in Chinese loosely translated, "Whoa, that IP is way outta line!"
We spent a great week with Ginger and Wenchao when they came to visit...I got to know them better than I did before and found that Ginger loves crisps, which is British for chips. Fortunately for her, Lay's makes every kind of chip flavor imaginable. Everything from Kiwi Lay's to Italian Red Meat Lay's. The other night we got back after going to the store, I pointed out that Their chip purchases could represent the Four Food Groups; they bought Blueberry, Italian Red Meat, Mexican Tomato Flavor ("Flavor" is in the name)...all they needed was a Veg. I suggest next time they buy Greek Salad flavor or Cucumber to complete their meal.
This also leads me to wonder about food in the future. What if, instead of us eating meal pills or gum, like in Willy Wonka- no, the original one, where Gene Wilder gave me bad dreams from the tunnel scene, we eat chips. Lay's must have it all figured out...My cheap, yet delicious, Chilean Cabernet does go well with the Mexican Tomato Flavor.
Here's a pic of the gifts we are taking with us to South Africa:

I got a bunch of magnets and then I'll print a little note with them... Jeff got smiley erasers for the kids. I told him they're going to think they're candy and then they'll be disappointed, I know I'd be... He's such a teacher. "The parents and their teeth will thank me", was his reply.

Weekend in Pictures

2009-11-24T08:50:00.007+08:00

First, I saw this as I was going to work the other day...if you need some, let me know.

We went to the Summer Palace again; I took this photo as we were leaving. It was getting really cold. For being the "slack season" where tourists can get in for a big discount (20rmb), The Summer Palace was very crowded!

As we were elaving we saw this tourist trap complete with a sad easy chair.

And not too far from that sad hovels with fish drying outside.

I seriously doubt Audrey Hepburn knew she would be photoshopped into a Chinese drink ad...

"Yay for American conglomerates taking over the world!" I said as I ate my Hypocrisy Sandwich and enjoyed one of the Wonders of the World. There's now a Subway Sandwich at the Mutianyu Great Wall, and while I don't think its as bad as putting a Starbucks inside the Forbidden City ( it was later closed due to protest that it desecrated a landmark), it is pretty tacky, but delicious. Please don't close.

Here I am in my new puffy coat at the Wall. It really is like wearing a big sleeping bag.

And last, but not least: The WTO conference was held in Beijing! Nope, not the World Trade Organization, but The World Toilet Organization!
Here's a blip from their site: "WTO is the organizer of the very successful series of World Toilet Summits and World Toilet Expo and Forum. To-date, 8 World Toilet Summits and 2 World Toilet Expo & Forum have been hosted in 10 different cities around the world. Each summit addresses the critical issues of toilet and sanitation from technologies, development, funding, to design, maintenance, social entrepreneurship, capacity building, research and various other related topics, creating massive media coverage and momentum.
WTO also declared its founding day of November 19 as "World Toilet Day" and this is now being celebrated by members all over the world. Thus increasing awareness and generating local action for better sanitation."
For a company that was handing out swag shaped like poo, they sure have an understated sense of humor. I regret to say, there aren't many Toilet Angels in Beijing...the things that go on in bathrooms, especially Chinese ones are not angelic, but are in fact, unholy. Thats probably why the conference was in Beijing... Mark your calendars for next November.