Dead Laptop

Thursday, July 24
5:00 PM

Sorry about the lack of updates recently but my laptop died and it's been way less convenient to blog. Anyhow, I'll post an update tomorrow, but rest assured that we returned from the Inner Mongolia trip safely and had an extremely interesting time. In the meantime, here are some pictures which I'll explain later.

Sunday, July 13
11:05 PM

OK, I want to put in a word here about the availability of cheap labor in this country. It is unbelievable how many people are employed here. I mentioned in a previous post about the pharmacy we went to with an employee in every aisle. It's like that in every store you go. I've now been to two different malls and while they were both very modern and had a western feel to them, the big thing you notice is the number of employees per square foot. And it's not just malls. People are employed doing anything and everything. In my apartment building, there's a woman who sits downstairs and pushes the elevator button for people coming in. Granted, it can be a bit tricky because there are 3 elevators that have completely separate buttons, and each has a display showing what floor the elevator's on. So you basically have to play a little game every time to guess which button is the right one to push.

Coming through the tollbooth on the way back from the Great Wall I noticed that there were no less than 3 employees per tollbooth lane, all taking tickets, just to speed things up a bit. And there was a woman with a broom who swept off the curb after every single car went by. Also, there are all these people wearing red armbands with some sort of chinese lettering on them (I can't read them). I've been told they're paid to be security people to just sort of hang around outside various locations or at street corners just to make sure nothing nefarious is going on.

The staff in every restaurant I've been in has been insanely polite and helpful. And you can't tip here -- it's just not part of the culture. Not even taxi drivers. They give you the fare and they mean it, and that's it, bye.

Today I hung out with my host family in the morning and did my laundry. Well, I put it in the machine but Yi Pei took it out and hang-dried it, and left it folded neatly on my bed this evening. She even hung up all my shirts. They fed me breakfast and lunch. Then around 1:30 I headed over to the school on my bike. Ji Young was there with her newly-assigned language exchange partner; a chinese girl named Smile. Obviously not her real name, but it's the one she picked to be her English name. It'll probably work OK for her while she's in China, but if she ever goes abroad she might want to think about switching it out for something else. But in the meantime, it's funny.

After they finished up, Ji Young introduced me to another Korean girl who she just met there. Apparently this girl's father was friends with Ji Young's father so they told them they should call each other. This girl is in graduate school and had a full scholarship to major in Chinese Studies at Beijing University. She's only been studying Chinese for 6 years, but is so good at it that she's one of only 2 real-time interpreters being used to go between Chinese and Korean in the olympics. She'll be interpreting for coaches and players and TV people. She's going to be on TV a lot during the olympics. Anyway, they invited me to go to the mall with them. They were going to get their nails done (which costs $5 here, by the way -- see note about cheap labor above) and were probably going to go out afterwards. So I said sure, and we all got in a taxi over to Wang Jing mall.

We got a drink first and then they went off to get their nails done and I walked around the mall. After I got back, Ji Young suggested we go get foot massages and I didn't have a problem with that, so her friend walked us over to some place that only a local would know (in some random building and up some stairs) that was really nice. These 3 girls came in to be our masseuses and I remarked to Ji Young that this would be a really weird job and that I wouldn't be able to do it. She just laughed and said, 'Well, they didn't study. So now they get to do this.' So we all sat there together in these amazing chairs and they brought us drinks, and worked on us for over an hour. It was amazing. Afterwards they charged us 58 yuan each. For those of you who aren't up on the exchange rates, that works out to about $8. I mean, really, see note about cheap labor above.

Anyway, after that we were all starving so we got in another taxi and her friend took us out to this amazing Korean restaurant where we each had 900 different plates of things in front of us and were mixing stuff up and cooking stuff, and it was just incredible food. Her friend paid -- but I saw the bill. It was 135 yuan. That's less than $20. And remember, no tipping!!

I'm going to sleep now.... more tomorrow.

Photos, finally (see related blog post below)

Check it out... it's a cannon. It's pointed at Mongolia.

For some reason, asians don't sweat. It's really not fair.

Chinese hot-pot dinner in Xidan. Ji Young is on the left. Her tutor Sylvia is on the right.

Sunday, July 13
7:20 AM

I'm legal! I finally got my Temporary Resident Registration and so now if I get stopped by the street police I'll have something to show them. So, I'm a little excited about that.

Thursday evening I saw Emily and she said she normally walks to school, but that she did have a car and could bring it up Friday afternoon when we met, if I or 'my friend' wanted to go somewhere. So I said I'd give her a call around lunchtime the next day and let her know.

Friday morning while I was biking to class my phone rang. I had it in the side pocket of my backpack so it was a bit tricky reaching back to answer it while I was pedaling, but I managed. But if you think driving and talking on a cell phone is dangerous, you should try bicycling through morning rush-hour Beijing traffic and doing the same thing. Let's just say next time I'll pull over. Anyhow, it was Ji Young asking me if I was on my way to class and saying that her stomach hurt, and that she was going to be late to class, and could I tell the teacher, etc. So when I got to class I remembered our assignment from the other day about writing an 'I can't come to class tomorrow' note in chinese. I walked in and said, 'Lv Laoshi, jintian zaoshang Ji Young gei wo da dian hua. Ta gaosu le wo ta de duzi teng, he wan lai le.' (Teacher Lv, this morning Ji Young called me. She told me her stomach hurt, and she would come later.) Apparently that worked because she smiled and said 'feichang hao!' (Very good!), I assume in reference to my speaking and not that fact that Ji Young was sick.

At lunchtime I called Ji Young to check on her and ask if she wanted to go somewhere with Emily this afternoon. She said she was supposed to meet her language tutor Sylvia from Chicago (actually from Beijing) later on but maybe it'd be fun if we all met up and did something. I called Emily back and she was OK with that. Around 3:15 Emily showed up and took us down to some large shopping area called Xidan. On the way we passed the Forbidden City and Tian'anmen Square. At some point I'll go back and visit them properly before I leave.

We met Sylvia and her husband, and one other guy. We went shopping for awhile and I actually bought a much smaller backpack to carry back and forth to class everyday. The big one I brought was great to hold all the stuff I didn't want to check on the plane, but it's cumbersome to carry around all day so I found a small black one on sale for about $30. Incidentally, they do sales here differently. A typical sale might have a big sign that says '8 zhe'. 'Zhe' means '10 percent'. And '8 Zhe' means '80% ON', which is the same as 20% off, see. Backwards from the way the U.S. does it. Glad we learned that before we went shopping. The whole procedure for buying things, even in department stores, is different, too. You find what you want and the clerk writes you up a ticket. You then take that ticket to a central cashier, pay, and then go back to where your item was to pick it up. They do that for everything. I don't think they want the clerks to handle the money.

We also stopped at a pharmacy, which was an interesting experience. There must have been 30 aisles in there, and each aisle had at least one employee assigned to it. So there was no shortage of help. You also have a choice between 'xi yao' (western medicine) or 'zhong yao' (chinese medicine). Most people seem to choose chinese medicine here. It's all very different. Usually involves buying vials of several things that you have to drink several times a day. But they all swear by it. In fact Ji Young has a preference for that and that's what she ended up buying. They also let you take the medicine right there in the store and they tell you what to do. It's almost like going to the doctor. Very comforting.

Afterwards all 6 of us ate at a chinese 'hot pot' restaurant where they boil oil at your table and you order a bunch of stuff to drop in it and then fish out later to eat. They divided our rectangular 'pot' into 2 sections. One for spicy, one not. It was great. It's a bit of a challenge because you forget what you've put in there and it's hard to see where the stuff is through the oil and spices and all. But it's definitely a social experience.

I've been told by a number of chinese people that my pronunciation is very clear. And when I complain that they're speaking too fast they apologize and say that I was speaking chinese fast, too, and my pronunciation was good enough that they assumed I was more fluent. Which is a huge compliment. And also a bad assumption. But Chinese people don't give fake compliments.... if they think you're bad at something they just won't say anything.

Emily dropped us off about 10 that night, and I rode back home on the bike.

Saturday morning a bunch of us met at the school for a trip to the Great Wall at about 8:30. The section we went to was about an hour-and-a-half drive out of the city. It's the first 'touristy' place I've been to since arriving, so it's the first time I've had to deal with souvenir street vendors. We found it was easy to just wave them off and say 'bu yao' (don't need), and they get the message. Although we did buy some ice cream. Anyhow, about 25 of us took cable cars up to the top of the mountain to one of the towers. The towers are numbered, and we started at tower 10. Well, I should say they're numbered on the Great Map (my term) at the bottom, but not on the towers themselves, which is hopelessly confusing. Even the guides have no idea what tower they're at at any given time.

Our guide was 'Angry Calligraphy Guy', as the guys from the UK have started to call him. Although he wasn't angry yesterday -- I guess he was more in his element. He took a number of group pictures at the top and then turned us loose. We had two choices. Hike along the wall up (and I mean UP) to tower 20, then back down to tower 6 where there was apparently a way back down. The guide said we had to be back down at the bus a 2 PM, which gave us 3 hours. Well, we walked as far as tower 11, and Ji Young and I decided there was no way we were going to make it up to 20. So we turned around and walked back towards tower 6.

Which was an arduous-enough hike as it was -- there were lots of stairs and narrow doorways. And it was very hot. My host mom had given me some 'sour plum juice' which is very popular here, and apparently good for the heat. So I had that and plenty of water. We took lots of great pictures. The Wall really is an amazing thing. And the scenery was incredible. You could see the Wall snake off into the distance for miles and you could just imagine the 200 years of slave labor it took to build it. It took us probably an hour and a half to get to tower 6. There, we had two options to get down. Another cable car-type ride (this one was open, kind of like a ski-lift), OR, a toboggan run to the bottom. Not kidding. And Ji Young wasn't about to let us avoid that, so we each paid 40 yuan plus 1 yuan for insurance (yes, insurance). And we lined up to get in these single-person toboggan-things. And of couse she says, 'you go first.' Right. You had a hand brake thing, but that was it, and they told you to lean in to the turns so you didn't crash. Anyway, it was loooong way to the bottom, but it was a blast.

When we got to the bottom we were starving so we found some place that sold noodles and we hung out there. A little later we met up with everybody else, who in fact made it to tower 20, but only had enough time left to go back to tower 10 (where we started) and take the original cable car back down. So they never made it to the toboggan run, and so in MY opinion they missed out.

The bus dropped us back at the school around 3:30, and I went in to get on the net and relax. While I was there, this chinese guy Tom who's been talking to me every day (an english student) offered to take me to dinner at 5:30. So we went to this very local chinese place and he ordered a bunch of stuff for me to try. It was a place that specialized in mutton, apparently, and the cuisine was from some other province in China, although I don't remember the name. There was spicy mutton on a stick, ribs, some spicy cabbage dish, and of course, leg of mutton. Yes, eating a chicken leg is one thing, but you haven't lived until you've been given plastic gloves and a sheep leg to eat. I tried everything and it was very good, but I couldn't eat much because the heat during the day had kind of made me lose my appetite.

I'm going to head up to the school around 1:30 and try to post this along with some pictures.

Thursday, July 10
6:02 PM

I missed an update yesterday so I'll see if I can remember everything.

Within 24 hours of coming to China, as a 'temporary resident', foreigners are supposed to register with the local police. The system they've been using for the students with host families is that the families would take the students down to the station and register. Well, I haven't been with the host family that much, so as of yesterday I still hadn't registered, which technically makes me illegal. From what I understand, occasionally the police will stop foreigners in the street and ask to see their passport and this registration card you're supposed to get. Anyhow, I had planned on being back 'home' at 3:30 PM yesterday to go do that but my host family was worried that it would take awhile, so they suggested I leave my passport with them this morning and they'd take care of it. When I got back here about 30 minutes ago my passport was laying on my bed here, so I think I'm good, but I'll check.

I can hear Yi Pei in the next room making dinner. This will be my first evening meal with them.

Ah, she's so nice, she just brought me a bowl full of cut-up watermelon.

By the way, because of the language barrier, I've been having one of the receptionists at Worldlink call my host family and explain to them what time I'm coming home, etc. They're nice about that. Everybody there is really helpful and understands that most of us are on the other side of the planet from where we live, so they try to accommodate us as much as possible.

In the mornings Yi Pei's been making me breakfast and usually has it on the table by 7:20 or so. But yesteday she was late and I was basically walking out the door when she came running in at 7:45 with all this stuff she'd made -- eggs, chicken, cut up vegetables, yogurt, etc. So I had to eat that, and so I was late to school.

I rented a cellphone yesterday, and so I now have a local Beijing number. The other people had rented them and I felt out of the loop since they're always planning stuff to do they had no way of calling me. Plus I had no way for my language exchange partner Emily to get in touch with me. We met again yesterday and I gave her the number. My exchange contribution was helping her polish up her resume (which was in English) online. Towards the end of that, my Korean classmate Ji Young called me and said she was in a taxi and wanted to know if I wanted to go shopping or something so I said sure, and headed outside. We went over to a Starbucks and hung out, and then checked out a really cool international grocery market called 'Jenny Lou's'. It had stuff from all over the world, including expired 'Florida's Best' orange juice from the U.S. Neat.

This morning I was a *little* late to school but it didn't matter because I was the only one in class for the first 3 hours. And one-on-one chinese lessons for 3 hours is pretty intense. I really like my morning teacher, Lv (pronounced kind of like 'leugh'), though. She's probably 28 or so and seems to genuinely enjoy her job. And she's very patient, which is a huge plus. Ji Young had been at the police station with the registration stuff, and she walked in just as the 3rd hour was ending. For lunch we walked over to a Korean restaurant I found, which was really good.

The afternoon class today was good, too. We did more dictation, which is brutal for me. Afterwards I saw Emily wandering around and we set up a time to meet again tomorrow.

At 3 I went to my elective Chinese Calligraphy class. And let's just say I have a new appreciation for people who can write chinese characters with brushes. It's crazy. And the guy who was teaching it was a little scary. Felt a little like chinese chinese writing bootcamp. 'You people. You have too many rounded edges. You MUST push the brush. Push it!' Anyway. That went on for 2 hours. I have a photo of that that I'll post.

More later....

Wednesday, July 9, 2008
4:36 AM

OK, so I was too tired to do an entry last night. But I'm up so I'll do it now.

The sun comes up here at 4:30 in the morning. Who's idea was that? One of the guys at the school says his host family wakes up when the sun comes up every day, and then goes to bed at 8:30 or 9. I don't really understand why, considering that they're not farmers or anything.

Yesterday was the first real day of class. Those of us in the 'intensive' program have 2 class sessions. The morning session goes from 8 to 12. We have 2 10-minute breaks and a 20-minute break. Then lunch is until 1. Then there's another session from 1-3. Each session has a different teacher, so I have 2 teachers. Our morning session at the level I'm in has 3 students, and the afternoon session has 2. Both of my teachers are Chinese, and quite fluent in English. But they do try to spend most of the class talking in Chinese. They also emphasize writing in Chinese, which I'm not good at at ALL. We had homework to review characters for a dictation test today (that's not going to go well), and we're also supposed to write an 'excuse note' in Chinese. Oh, and to help memorize names of body parts we sang 'head shoulders knees and toes' in Chinese.

For lunch, there are a number of restaurants around. Or, as I did yesterday, during the last break before lunch you can go in the 'cafeteria' area at the school and they have a bunch of menus from different places, and you can tell them what you want. They'll call in your order for you and deliver it to you at lunchtime. So the Korean girl and I did that yesterday... we actually ordered from a Korean place and she helped me through the menu.

Each session has its own textbook. The one for the morning session actually includes a DVD, which is handy -- it basically acts out all the dialogs in the book.

I was supposed to go over to the police station with a group of the students at 3 yesterday to register (I haven't done that yet) but it turns out that I have to go to a different station so I believe I'm going to come back to the apartment at 3:30 today and go with my host family.

At 6 PM they brought a bunch of prospective language exchange partners in to pair up with us. We were supposed to just start talking to them and then pick one to keep meeting up with. I was talking to 2 of them. One was a guy named Chris who kept trying to talk to me about the NBA. Apparently as a world culture, that's what America brings to the table. He kept asking me about various off-season player trades. I explained I was really more of an NFL fan and he knew what that was. He also thought everybody in America played sports in high school and college. He said he played basketball in high school, but the guy was 5'11 so I imagine that made sense. The other person I was talking to was a 33-year-old girl named Emily, who's married, and a college teacher in business. Her English is really good. She's also been to America, so between that and her not being particularly interested in the NBA, we had more to talk about. We hung out for about 90 minutes and exchanged numbers and agreed to meet up again today around 6 PM.

I rode back to the apartment, and the host family's son was there. He had apparently been working in Sichuan. He's in his early 20's, I'd guess, and speaks some English, so that was a relief. He goes by the English name 'Leo'.

OK -- have to study... more later.

Monday, July 7, 2008
10:24 PM

As a correction to my post from yesterday, the apartment I'm staying in actually has 3 bedrooms. So I'm not sure why grandma is sleeping on the couch. In any case, one bedroom has a computer in it, which my host mom (whom I now know as Yi Pei) just informed me has internet and she said 'ni ke yi you' (You can use/have). So that may come in handy.

OK, so this morning I woke up at 2:00 AM and had serious trouble getting back to sleep, so I went through the lessons I've saved from my online classes to prepare for what I figured was going to be the placement test. At 7:00 AM or so I came out to a nice breakfast of more of that cream stuff I like (it's actually some sort of yogurt, I think... but it's thinner than normal yogurt), some cold meat, and some slightly vinegared vegetables. Oh, and some sweet bread that was really, really good. Actually the whole thing was really, really good.

Also as a correction there's only 1 cat. Not sure why I thought there were 2. Anyhow, I told Yi Pei 'wo men mei you mao... wo de tai tai bu xihuan' (We don't have a cat... my wife doesn't like them). Kind of inane, but I'm trying.

At about quarter to 8, we both got on bikes and I followed her to the campus. It was a harrowing 15 minute ride through crazy traffic. I think the last time I actually used a bike for transportation was in college. I only almost died (at least in my head) 3 times or so. At one point she took off and squeezed between two buses which were coming in opposite directions towards each other. I had about half a second to make a decision as to whether to zip after her or not, but I ended up closing my eyes and going for it, and well, I'm still here.

I was very impressed with the 'campus'. WorldLink has 3 in Beijing. This one is on the 4th floor of a massive building called 'Lead International'. It's a large, very modern space with 20 classrooms, a cafeteria, student exchange area (with computers, wi-fi, and even a pool table), restrooms, vending machines, etc. And a nice outdoor patio. The classrooms are very white, with etched glass windows. The staff was ridiculously attentive and professional. There were 8 of us starting class today. Some of us for 4 weeks, some for as many as 16 weeks. Our orientation was given by one of the WorldLink founders, an asian woman from Australia who's been living in Beijing for 11 years. She gave us a welcome pack with notebooks, maps, a WorldLink shirt, medical insurance card, prepaid phone card, etc.

The people I started with today are of various ages and nationalities. There's a girl from Ireland, guys from Zurich, Germany, England, and North Carolina, and a girl from Korea. Of the 8 of us starting, only 3 of us had prior experience with chinese. After the orientation the other 5 were given a break and we moved classrooms to take the placement test.

The test consisted of 300 characters, above which you were to write the Pin Yin pronunciation. Underneath that were a hundred or so 'expressions' (combinations of characters) that you were to circle if you understood what they meant. Of the 300 random characters they picked, I guess I knew about 200 of them, and I knew a bunch of the expressions. Afterwards, the test administrator (a Chinese guy named Trillion... seriously) came in and individually asked each of us a few questions in chinese that we had to answer.

As a result of the placement test, the Zurich guy got bumped up a level from beginner, and the Korean girl and myself got bumped up another level from that. So I'm pretty happy with that. It'll make the rest of this class a whole lot more meaningful. It also means I've been doing pretty well with my somewhat haphazard study over the past year.

After the placement tests, two girls from the staff (one from Australia, the other Chinese) took us all out to eat at a Sichuan-style chinese restaurant across the street. We sat around a lazy-susan topped table and they ordered a bunch of stuff for us. It was AMAZING food.

After that, they took us on a walking tour of the area around the Lead International building, showing us various stores and restaurants. Then, they took us by bus to the SOS Emergency International Care facility that we belong to for the time that we're here. I have a 24-hour emergency number (999) I can call for any medical reason, and I have insurance which pays for a part of it should I need their services. It was a nice facility, complete with ER beds, an optometrist, and a pharmacy. They even have their own jet parked at Beijing International and say they can arrange an emergency medical evacuation from China within 3 hours.

On the way back we drove through part of Beijing and saw some interesting sights, like the new CCTV tower headquarters (look it up on the web; it's pretty cool). They're going crazy for the Olympics here. They're doing crazy construction and planting things all over the place. They're reducing pollution and traffic by saying only people with odd or even numbers on their license plates can drive on alternate days. And our orientation person today was saying that the 'Weather Control Bureau' (It's AWESOME that they even have one of those) is routinely shooting chemicals into the air to make it rain on some days and not others. She said the weather has been really weird this year.... humid one day, dry the next, crazy rain, then no clouds at all. She swears they're doing it all on purpose.

Our 'language exchange partners' have been chosen for us, and I'll get to meet mine at 6 PM tomorrow night. I have class starting at 8 AM. I rode home tonight in the dark and managed to find my way back. Hopefully I'll sleep better tonight than last night.

Beijing is strangely not unlike a lot of other big cities I've been in. On the surface, at least, things seem very sensible. There's plenty of shopping and available transportation, and restaurants -- they said today that 200 new restaurants open in Beijing every WEEK. There are a lot of people on bicycles, but there are also a lot of cars. And I would say the majority of the cars are foreign; as in not Chinese... but very few American cars (although I did see a couple of Buick mini-vans today.... go figure).

More tomorrow.