More firsts

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What a weekend! Work kept us busy with all these fun activities. Thursday night was our karaoke/office “Idol” competition (First #1) — which I am proud to say, my roommate has made it to the final round based on his performance of Stray Cats’ “Stray Cat Strut.”

Then Friday afternoon, we boarded a bus to Hongluo Mountain for a work retreat (First #2). We were also given 170 kuai to spend at the hotel, which bought me two games of bowling, a round (?) of archery (First #3) and a 30 minute back massage (First #4), with almost 40 kuai leftover. That doesn’t include the joy of having my coworkers’ company nor the joy of making new friends with the folks at the railway bureau in the Song and Dance Room. Now they knew how to do karaoke.

The next morning, we began ascending the mountain bright and early. There is also a Buddhist temple near the foot of the mountain and a Tian Men (Heaven’s Gate) at the very top. Rather stupidly, I was ill-prepared. I should have known Chinese mountains (First #5) are not like American mountains. There are no cutbacks and footpaths; rather, there are stairs more or less straight to the top. St. Peter wasn’t there to greet me when I made it, either.

But the real adventure was coming down the mountain. There was an “Alpine Coaster” about half-way up the mountain, and the name pretty much says it all. They strap people into these individual cars and then link the cars together to form a train. A guy in the first car works the breaks, and luckily for us, our driver’s breaks were broken. It was like a real roller coaster!

Today, Chris and I checked out the Silk Market and South Chaoyang District. We got badminton gear and played some pick-up badminton (First #6) at The Place, which was actually a really cool place to be. The Place is a shopping mall, I think, with mostly Western clothing stores; I saw a Zara, Guess, Jack n Jones, Mango and French Connection. But there are these three or four giant LCD screens covering a huge open plaza where kids and their parents were throwing these big disks. Essentially, each of these discs is made of plastic balloon stuff wrapped around a hoola hoop with a little bit of air inside. A grand staircase overlooking the plaza provided a great place for couples and friends to sit and people-watch. Also, a Juice Avenue stand had really kick-ass Hong Kong-style boba. It was a great night at The Place.

That’s another thing about China that I love: People go outside and hang out at night. Not at a bar or a friend’s house, but just outside — on the sidewalks, in the hutongs, on the outdoor plaza of some shopping mall. They’ll throw around some cheap toy, play pickup badminton or a game a chess, or just talk — in Chinese, they call it liao tian (??), or chatting the day away. It’s a sense of camaraderie and of simple pleasures that completely erases all notion of an earlier time when business and brusqueness ruled the day. It’s where you discover the heart of the Chinese.

Pure awesomeness

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I have persevered and conquered! My photo gallery* now comes with links. How convenient for you guys. Now, do you prefer the links to open in the same window or new ones?

Next up: figuring out how to change the type to Century Gothic. In case you haven’t noticed, I already learned how to do this on my blog. Sometimes (like right now), I feel like the title of my post.

*Also with new and updated albums.

An introduction to the dark side

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On the surface, China doesn’t feel all that different from the States. Except for the occasional culture shock, I barely notice I’m in a different country. For one thing, my routine is pretty much the same: I wake up, go to work, come home and eventually find dinner somewhere. I ate out all the time back home, and I eat out all the time here. I’m so used to hearing Chinese back home that it goes in one ear here and out the other.

But every once in a while, something comes up to remind me that I am living in a tightly controlled country: The guards standing at every entrance to every parking lot and building. A popular Web site that I can’t access. The six security cameras that watch and record my every move at work.

Then there was an assignment I got for work today. I was asked to look over it and see if I wanted to polish it — if I did, I would receive monetary compensation. A little strange, I thought, considering my manager had been handing me stories all last week to polish without giving me a choice or any money. Then again, she gave my roommate yesterday some cash after he finished a story involving government workers’ kids. The UNC alum who now works for the company told us that this kind of compensation is nothing unusual.

She also once advised that the answer is always yes here. We will be asked if we wanted to do something — go on a trip, participate in a KTV party, polish a story — and the correct answer is yes. After skimming the story in question, though, I wanted to say no. There was something fishy about it. In fact, it wasn’t even a story; it was a fabricated transcript of a discussion on the Falun Gong that allegedly included scholars from all over the world. Continue reading →

Quick Takes: Observations on the Chinese Way

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  • In China, it is possible to lock someone in the house. This happened to me the other morning, as in, my roommate locked me inside our apartment. I thought I was going crazy, forgetting how to open the door. Fortunately, I was not losing my mind. The door doesn’t unlock from the inside if it is locked from the outside.
  • The scariest few moments of my life occur when I am opening the door to a bathroom stall. I am afraid it will reveal a really filthy squat toilet. Or just a squat toilet in general.
  • The crosswalk between the Gongzhufenbei bus stop and the Gongzhufen subway station entrance is the funnest crosswalk to cross ever. It’s a melee of taxis, buses, cars and cyclists traveling on the side road of Sanhuan Dajie (the third ring) spilling out onto a traffic circle with exits on the left and right. Pedestrians who are thrown into this mess trying to get to the subway station simply take steps wherever there is not a vehicle. It’s a lot like playing Frogger.
  • I feel like God is making up for all those unfulfilled Chinese food cravings I had back in Chapel Hill. But now I just really want a Krispy Kreme original glazed donut, and the nearest Krispy Kreme is in Korea. Other things I miss: Ben and Jerry’s. Good Internet. My pillow.
  • My roommate recently informed me that I’ve been sleeping with a towel. I thought it was a blanket, but now that I know it’s a towel, it definitely feels like a towel. And it’s towel-sized. I’m still using it as a blanket, though.
  • Back home, people treated me like an American: always speaking to me in English, not recognizing that I’m Asian. Here, except for the people at work, everyone speaks to me in Chinese like I’m one of them. It’s a great feeling, and I love talking to people in Chinese with the little Chinese I know. I’m getting the Beijing accent down. “Wei? Ni hao. Zherrrr shirrr shei-ah?” “Qing dai women daor Huar-yuan Qiaor, xibei bian…dui, zai Xisanhuanr.” And I’ll be walking down the streets, seeing all this great food. “Oh, this guy’s selling jiaozi! Oh, he says that’s some yang rou on a stick! Dofu! Ooh, a huoguo dian! That restaurant has Beijing kao ya!” I love being part of the club.
  • Of course, I’m not part of the club. When I came here with my family, I got a few inquiries about where I was from. This time around, I think it’s pretty obvious. Being with Chris gives it away. I’m not quite sure what Beijingers think when they see us together, though. Guys gawk at me a lot and glare at Chris, but every once in a while, people will glare at me, too. I heard they are more cliquish here than in other cities, so I wonder if they think I shouldn’t be hanging out with the whities.

June 4 at Tian’anmen

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I never cared much for the 1989 Tian’anmen Square Incident (or any of the other ones either). Not knowing what China was like 20 years ago, I can’t speak on how the incident has affected China or how much China has changed. What I can say is, I’m adding my more-or-less ambivalence on the incident to my list of Ways in Which I’m Asian.

The other interns from work and I took a trek to the square after our shift ended. They were hoping to catch something cool, a newsworthy event that would somehow mark the anniversary of a historic day. But of course there wasn’t anything to see. Besides the heightened security (there were guards stationed every 5 meters or so with plain-clothes officers standing near them), the average Chinese person—so far as I can tell—just doesn’t care. It’s in the past, and it doesn’t matter if people know the truth about what happened. What little they know has been passed down through hearsay or is from official government propaganda, and there is an awareness that there is more they don’t know.

I wanted to ask the security guard who stopped us from entering the square, Why all the security? We had visited a week ago with no problem; why did we need our passports this time? He asked to see my passport, and I told him I only had my driver’s license. He admired it and then said it wouldn’t work. He asked me who I was with, and I pointed to my friends. He asked me why we came, and I told him we just wanted to take a look and walk around. He asked me why we wanted to look around, and I said, No reason.

He actually let us through, which I like to attribute to my American-Chinese charm. I didn’t ask my questions because my dad had advised me to stay on the government’s side, which I took to mean as “don’t cause any trouble.” The square had much fewer people than last week when we went: in fact, there were probably more security guards than visitors.

It’s the irony that gets me: Tian’anmen, the Heaven-Peace Door, and its square, with the Long-Peace Avenue running through it bore witness to this bloody incident. In effect, it’s the Massacre at Heaven-Peace Door. There are two sides to this story, and as usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Just because people are protesting for democracy and economic freedoms doesn’t mean the government should bend over and say, Here you go! Then again, just because people pose a threat to stability and the government itself doesn’t mean the government should open fire on them.

China doesn’t have the clear-cut ethics of the West; justice and individual rights are not external entities that need to be maintained. Chinese ethics is much murkier, much more instinctive and subjective. For that reason, the Tian’anmen Square Incident that occurred 20 years ago has simply been suppressed, unaddressed and unanswered.

Vacation’s almost over

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Today, being God’s day, I decided to make it a lazy Sunday. Roommate and I were feeling a little beat from all the excitement of the past week, I think. Yesterday we took another walk, this time around our neighborhood, and I discovered a nice strip of shops the next (very large) block over with a bakery and cafe that sells boba. And then there was also last night, which lasted into early this morning. It was a real shame because I finally had conquered my jet lag the day before.

The night started at about 10 p.m. when on our way out, one of the students from Penn State called to confirm our meeting time and place. They had suggested earlier the Sanlitun area, which is directly on the other side of town from where Chris and I live, also on the third ring. Neither of us had ventured out that far yet, so Matt from Penn State told us to meet them at the subway stop. He informed me that he was a tall-ish white guy, which in my mind, seemed enough for identification. Alas, when Chris and I finally got to the other side of town nearly 45 minutes after the appointed time, the subway stop was deserted and there was no tall-ish white guy named Matt from Penn State. Taking a gamble, we grabbed a taxi to the Adidas building Matt had mentioned. Sure enough, there was a street lit up by bars. After wandering up and down yelling “Matt” at every possible foreigner we passed with no luck, we plopped down at an outdoor table and ordered a couple of Tsingtaos. Chris continued to mention Matt in some nonchalant way every time a tall-ish white guy walked by. No one even paused. And then—success! Continue reading →

A retraction

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I spoke too soon.

A blue sky over Beijing today! I noticed it when I looked out my balcony this afternoon. It was bright and sunny — beautiful! I immediately asked my roommate to go out with me. We thought we’d go fly kites over Tian’anmen Square, but apparently no one flies kites there. Still, we wandered the place amongst the thousands who were also milling around the world’s largest urban open square, all surrounded by even larger structures: Tian’anmen to the north with the palace behind it; Chang’an Jie separating them; the Great Hall of the People on the west; and the National Museum on the east.

As we continued further up Chang’an Jie, the grandeur of all the hotels and government buildings along it, designer shops and Wangfujing Dajie revealed an exciting city that no longer seemed so foreign. The buildings were modern, the sidewalks were cleaner and the landscaping was full of color — and all against a sunny blue sky. This was a Beijing I could fall in love with.

The sun eventually set, and we headed back toward the square. Everything was lit up, throwing the square into a warm glow. It was beautiful: serene and esoteric even as people continued to swarm the place and cars rushed down the street. To top it off, the National Centre for the Performing Arts added a soft colorful radiance into the scene. The rush of people and cars around me; the moon shining brightly high in the sky; and the grandeur of all that is China past and present captured in just a few blocks — I am in love.

The JFK story

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So airports actually don’t have all the stores you could ever possibly want or need. I learned this the hard way. There I was, in Terminal 1 at JFK (after landing at Terminal 2), settling down at my gate during a layover. Where’s a post office? Shouldn’t there be a gajillion of them scattered between the Puma and Clinique and Salvatore Ferragamo shops? In my rush to leave the country, I had forgotten to turn in my apartment keys. Naturally, I wanted to mail them back ASAP. But there is no post office. At least, not one that anyone was aware of. Finally, a food lady tells me there is one in Terminal 4. Terminal 4! I had to catch the Air Train over there, which means I would have to go through security again. Continue reading →