beijing blues

Day Off ...

2010-05-07T23:55:00.001+08:00

Boring and pedantic thoughts. What's that mean? I think about things that seem at the same time deep and commonplace. Like time. Teenagers in a cafe taking pictures of themselves and enjoying the first real summer day, waiting for school to end while I enjoy my first real day off in weeks. Their experience of time is different from mine. I remember being a teenager and thinking about time being compartmentalized and compressed. Of course I had all the usual angst and anxiety about the expansiveness of time and infinities, but real life time seemed so regular: school, no school, summers, weekends, classes, assignments, semesters, TV shows. When I became an adult, time seemed to unroll in front of me like a giant carpet. Winters and summers, days and nights, weekdays and weekends, nothing was preset. All my unusual jobs, partying, traveling, friends and girlfriends, there were no rules about time and, as much as I've always tried to control it by imposing routines - exercising, writing, eating, sleeping – taming it and understanding it has always been out of reach.

My first real day off in three weeks. I've no idea why I'm working so much. More thoughts. How about opening a cafe called Easy Coffee? Here's the concept: no tax and a simply priced menu, but a nice, friendly, comfy place with a good personality. Does a cafe have a personality? Of course it does. Easy Coffee will have a $1 to go menu: small coffee, your coffee (your cup), small juice, simple snacks such as bagels and peanut butter sandwiches and cookies and mini-brownies. Easy Coffee will also have a $2 menu (coffees, some foods), a $3 menu (fancy coffees) and a $5 menu (protein shakes and maybe sandwiches). And that's it! Easy Coffee. I'd go there. Easy Coffee! It's easy! Or .. Easy Coffee! No Change! No Tax! Good Stuff!

How about a movie? A green card marriage: a guy receives money to marry a girl so she can get citizenship. They go through the interviews and red tape. But they fall in love. Why not? It's an intense experience that they go through together. The immigration interviewer doesn't believe them. The more the marriage is questioned, and the more the couple defends it, the more it seems real. But now they have a problem: they're already married, but they want to do it for real. But they can't divorce for three years. So they wait. They get divorced. And then they really tie the knot.

Toilet Paper

2009-08-15T23:02:00.001+08:00

What did I learn from living in China? I’ve been asked this question a few times recently, having recently returned from the place. I was there for four years, long enough (most people suppose) to learn something. Every once in a while, someone in China assumed that I learned how to eat with chopsticks or use a squat toilet, easy to master situations that present problems for some foreigners. But I grew up in New York – I’ve been eating with chopsticks and relieving myself in strange and uncomfortable locations for years.

So what did I learn? I learned how to speak Chinese, but that seems too obvious. I recently got a new apartment, my first real, legal, New York apartment that I’m in all alone without roommates or relatives. The place is totally empty. And, out of habit, I’ve put rolls of toilet paper everywhere: on my nightstand, the table I eat breakfast on, on the kitchen counter, and of course in the bathroom. One type of paper instead of four: paper towels, napkins, tissues, and of course, toilet paper.

With the exception of industrial accidents, such as large dogs or heroin addicts having bodily accidents, I think I’ll be OK with toilet paper for all of my household paper needs. It actually works best for most situations – I think many Americans just think it’s weird or gross to use toilet paper outside of the bathroom, but I’ve been liberated. Thanks, China.

Xmas in Beijing

2008-12-26T04:03:00.001+08:00

Xmas in Beijing this year was great. I went to a rave. I danced with glowsticks. I drank Chinese scotch mixed with iced tea. What more can I say?

???

2008-12-08T01:16:00.000+08:00

I haven't written anything here for a while. Ah, China. A few weeks ago, Lisa and I had a crazy Chinese day. We saw monkeys and bears riding BMX bikes, lepers begging outside a temple, and a woman with BOUND FEET begging for money. What centure is this?

But today was just as good. My cousin Jason is here. We got a little tipsy off of 6.5% Laos black beer. We met two girls in the bar, one who insisted on coming over tomorrow to teach us how to cook authentic Gansu food, and another who asked me to help her send an English text message to her Korean-Canadian boyfriend or ex-boyfriend in Canada. I can't stop coughing from this awful cold and in the taxi home from the bar, Jason mentioned that the worst thing about death is no more dreaming. What a concept. I decided we had to check with the taxi driver so I asked him, in Chinese, if he thought we could continue to dream and sleep after death. He didn't think we were nuts. He told us a lot of interesting stuff about death. Then we got home and came upstairs, where I am now. Jason is asleep on the couch and I'm in bed writing. Time for sleep!

Luddites?

2008-11-15T18:45:00.000+08:00

Is there an anti-technology trend I wasn't informed of sweeping the world? Lately I've met a few people who don't have cell phones or email accounts. What's going on? Does anyone out there know?

Asian Speed Dating

2008-11-15T07:55:00.000+08:00

I've been getting emails from Click2Asia, some weird website that organizes Asian themed events. Every few months for the past few years, they send me an invite to an Asian Speed Dating event in New York. I don't know who they are or how they figured out that I live in New York or, most importantly, why they think I would be interested or eligible to attend.

After receiving my umpteenth invite yesterday I decided I had to find out, so I sent them an email. Here's what I wrote:

I have been receiving email notices about your speed dating events for a long time. I've never replied or registered, because I don't live near New York (or in the US, for that matter). However, I will be returning to New York (my hometown) in a few months.

I have a question: can I register for Asian Speed Dating if I'm not Asian? And, how do you define Asian? I've lived in Asia for many years, but I doubt many people would consider me "Asian".

I'm still waiting for the response, and I'll keep you all posted.

Obama

2008-11-06T07:14:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was a great day for America and I hope it goes a long way to showing the rest of the world what kind of country we really are. A few hours after watching the election results live on CNN (online, of course) I was on the phone with someone from a local kindergarten about a part-time job. I'm American and well spoken with many years of teaching experience under my belt. Like usual in China, they were very excited about meeting me and giving me a teaching job. Then the woman on the phone asked her final question: "are you white or black?" I've dealt with this a lot in Asia and she was quick to explain herself. She told me that a lot of the American teachers that show up are black and the kids (and parents, she added - I tend to think it's mostly the parents) are scared of them.

Racism is alive and well all over the world, but the next time someone in China accuses me of coming from a racist country, I'm going to laugh in their face.

Na Bang

2008-10-25T15:24:00.000+08:00

Writing. I’m sitting at a desk in a hotel. Listening to a BBC podcast about the golden ratio. The host of the show is interviewing a composer whose religious music utilizes golden section divisions. Inspiring stuff. Should be, at least. The hotel is in Na Bang, a border town on the Chinese/Myanmar frontier. We’re on the Chinese side, and this town seems to exist solely for the bigger Myanmar town across the little river. The local people, both Chinese and Burmese, can cross the river and the border relatively at will, but I’m stuck on the Chinese side – this is not an official border crossing point, and foreigners can’t exit or enter China from here. No big deal. I’d rather be stuck on the China side than on the Myanmar side.

Writing, writing. I’m on my third packet of Nescafe black. Soulful, religious music is still podcasting in my headphones. Writing well is so goddamned difficult. I feel as if I have nothing to say, but how can that be possible from where I am? Last night the three of us wandered the six streets of Na Bang – this town is tiny. It’s impossible to tell who’s from China and who’s from Myanmar, since many ethnic Burmese live in this part of Yunnan. The three of us (American, Chinese, and Mongolian) wandered into a brothel looking for a foot massage for our aching hiking feet. My Chinese friend freaked out and went into instant panic mode, repeating “go, go, go” and “out, out, out”. He didn’t want to speak in Chinese because he didn’t want the girls to undersand him, but his English is lacking. He then repeated “bitches, bitches, bitches”. None of the girls looked 18. We were in the brothl for less than a minute, and I knew we shouldn’t linger. Underaged Burmese hookers, border town, heroin trafficking area. But something made us linger for that near minute. For me, it was the one with the typical Burmese off-white face paint covering still pudgy cheeks. She looked up at me and smiled, nothing sexy or whory, just a cute smile. How should I feel? The PC list would’ve covered a range of emotions starting somewhere around pity and ending somewhere around rage. But I felt something more natural, male, primal, just attraction and urges. Young, my Chinese friend, is perpetually scared of things, and he lives here. I knew there was no immediate danger, but we left just the same.

Writing, writing, writing. Outside I told him that I of course knew that they were hookers – I’m not that dumb or naive. I simply hadn’t understood her Chinese, which was mostly local dialect with a little Mandarin mixed in. I asked her if we could get a foot massage and when she said “no” I asked her what the place was. She said something simple, something like “take me”, but it was all dialect. I asked Young to translate and the situation became kind of absurd. But he’s so scared all the time. Once we went to a nightclub in Yingjiang and he warned me over and over about the bad women and all the drugs inside. It sounded adventurous, but it turned out to be a typical Chinese disco with college and high school kids and nothing stronger than beer. Afterwards he admitted he’d never even been there (or any other club).

Back to writing. Damnit again, this hotel feels like the place to do it. Foreign country. Border town. My iPod is playing a new BBC podcast now, something about science. Two days ago we started our hike from the midpoint of the Yingjiang to Na Bang road. The first day we passed a town that had been hit by the recent earthquakes. The local school was damaged and the kids had class in tents. We wandered into a classroom (something I’ve done a few times in Yunnan and I’m always greeted warmly – in America I’d probably be arrested before turning the doorknob) and chatted and taught English for 10 or 15 minutes. That first day we hiked 22 or 23 kilometers, too much for an inexperienced hiker like me. One of our bags, the heaviest one, was a crappy Chinese backpack and hurt like hell after an hour. We took shifts, of course, but on the second day we konked out after 12 kilometers and wimped out by taking a minivan with a carsick Burmese girl who kept vomiting out the window.

Young has guanxi with the Chinese border patrol forces at Na Bang. He works for the local Yingjiang TV station, and they did a story in the area. So when we arrived yesterday we headed straight for the border crossing, a short bridge with two Chinese cops on our side and two Myanmar cops on the other. But it’s relatively friendly and people cross easily. The tricycle taxis on the Chinese side are all from Myanmar – I think they come over to work during the day and return to Myanmar at night. The head cop told me that lots of Chinese men have wives from the other side, but he also added that the Burmese girls aren’t good – their skin is too dark. People in China are obsessed with white skin. The Burmese girls look good to me.

Writing, goddamnit again. Now I’m back in Yingjiang. Yesterday at the Na Bang border crossing I taught an impromptu English class to all the cops in their barracks. We roleplayed the situation of foreigners trying to cross the border, which is not allowed. We practiced saying “it’s impossible!”, “you can’t cross here!”, “show me your passport”, and “it’s the law!” In each roleplay with each cop I took out a wad of money from my pocket at some point and offered it as a bribe to let me across the river and into Myanmar. I taught them to say “no! no bribes!”. Even though it was all acting, offering bribes to the entire border patrol force, one by one, felt dangerous and thrilling.

Writing. Not much more to say. The hiking trip is over and it’s almost time to go home to Kunming.

Croque-monsieur

2008-10-15T18:47:00.000+08:00

Every two or three years I find myself in France or in a French type restaurant or cafe and see croque-monsieur on the menu. I never remember if I really like it or not, or exactly what it is, so I order it. And then I wish I had ordered something else. Oh, well.

2008-10-15T10:02:00.000+08:00

I’ve been doing a bit of soul-searching for the past 37 years – I’d be lying if I said it was a new thing. But I recently thought about something new and in the process, possibly figured myself out a little bit more. Maybe I’m an adventurist. The word came to me recently out of nowhere and I thought about it in an F. Scott Fitzgerald type of way. I think it’s in A Diamond as Big as the Ritz that Fitzgerald mentions adventurists. To me an adventurist isn’t a conqueror or a tyrant or a crusader (necessarily), and he also isn’t a Casanova. An adventurist is someone who gets off on the romance of life. Traveling to different places, working different jobs, meeting different people：this is the romance of life, the slightly good and benevolent flipside of the playboy, vagabond, tramp, and pirate.

I’ve been going out on dates lately. I love the first date. I love the anticipation, the corniness of just going to the movies or walking in a park or by a lake with a girl you don’t know and maybe holding her hand and hopefully having a first kiss. And doing it in a foreign language, in my case Chinese, is great (because what the hell would be the point of going on a date in English? That's no fun). Then what happens? Do you get bored with her (or she with you), or is it simply more adventurous to move on?

Getting a new job or living in a new place can be scary, but the feeling of being trapped somewhere can be much worse. I recently spent three years living in the same house in Beijing (a record for me) and when I finally decided to move, I was full of ambivalence. But now, in my new apartment and new life in Kunming, I know it was the right decision. There was a girl and a job back there, but those things are all here, too, and the newness of my life is great.

Some people who read this (especially my mom) will be distressed. But I think they may be missing the point. I’m relatively sure that I will settle down eventually. In fact, I’m positive that I’ll at least become more settled than I am now. Theodore Zeldin talks about modern man’s concept of life being very different from how people in the past viewed life. A lot of us, he says (and I agree), look at life as a series of adventures. Work is outdated, therefore, and the days of over-specialization are over. We all need more general knowledge in order to create better work environments and more effective companies. Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing these last seven years since I left America. My store of general knowledge probably far outweighs my store of any specialized knowledge.

When I started thinking about adventure I plotted a purposeful essay that would make great logical points, but I think I'll just leave it close and personal for now. I am planning on taking a new type of adventure soon. It's an adventure in the very obvious sense: a one week hiking trip in rural Yunnan, from YingJiang to the Myanmar border. I'm probably going with a friend, but I might go alone. We will bring a tent and basic supplies, and ask people if we can pitch our tent in their yards. I hope to cover 20 kilometers a day. Whatever happens, I'm sure it will be a great adventure.

My Visa Ad

2008-10-15T08:51:00.002+08:00

Chinese Class Tuition in Kunming: $1000
Ticket Price at the Local Theater: $1.40
Understanding a Really Bad but Obscure Pun in a Chinese movie: Priceless

Ghetto Movie Theater

2008-10-13T23:35:00.000+08:00

My new thing is going to the movies as much as possible in China. I like to choose movies without English subtitles, if possible. Tonight I saw a very silly Chinese crime/comedy film in the local neighborhood ghetto theater. The theater reminds me of the old, dilapidated neighborhood theaters I remember as a kid - the one on St. Marks, the old Murray Hill Theater, the really weird one on Grand Street that's some kind of NYU medical clinic now. The place is musty, the seats and doors don't all work properly, and the movies are cheap (about $1.50). Our movie tonight was 20 minutes late getting started and then, when we were all sitting in the dark theater ten minutes into the film, the ticket guy came in with a flashlight to check our tickets. He had to walk down each row and examine everyone's ticket and even my Chinese friend said she hadn't seen a movie theater that ghetto in China in 20 years. Yay China.

Foreigners

2008-10-13T08:18:00.000+08:00

Last night I was in a restaurant with a Chinese friend enjoying a late-night snack after seeing the new Angelina Jolie movie (dubbed with no subtitles, of course). We got into a discussion about something or other and I found myself referring to 外国人 (foreigners) a few times. Referring to people as either 'Chinese' or 'foreign' is common in China, but it struck me as bizarre last night. Especially for an outsider like me, using those terms so naturally is kind of weird.

Of course, China isn't like America. This is a much more insulated and isolated place without any significant history of immigration. In America, it would be insulting to refer to someone as a 'foreigner' simply because they looked different or spoke a different language (such as most of the people hanging out in Chinatown), but here it's totally logical and makes a lot of sense in conversation. So last night, as I swilled beer and chomped chicken kabobs, I told my Chinese friend that she should drink some 白酒 (Chinese vodka) before bedtime to cure her sore throat. When she told me that that was a crazy idea, I replied that it was just a habit that we Chinese had, and a 外国人 like her probably wouldn't understand.

Beijing Blues

2008-10-11T17:39:00.001+08:00

We went to a bar to watch a sporting event on TV, but the owner switched off the TV fifteen minutes after we got there so a live band could perform. We had brought our own wine and paid a corking fee; I felt cheated. Let’s just leave, she said, so we got up and walked out.

Outside there weren’t any other bars or cafes with TVs, so we gave up and walked behind the monument on the East side of the square. There was an old neighborhood with narrow streets, brightly colored communist style exercise equipment in a little park, and men playing cards in front of shops. Even though it was night, the moon completely illuminated the small square. We sat down on a bench near the exercise equipment: a wheel that you spun with your hand, something that was supposed to imitate running but looked more like cross country skiing, hard sit-up benches with painful metal rollers that crunched your back. I was the only foreigner there, but people didn’t pay much attention to us.

We sat face to face, straddling the concrete bench. I drank the wine greedily; I’ve never been able to sip anything from a bottle. She didn’t really drink – just a half glass at the bar, and none out in the street. I’d once seen her down a 65ml shot of local vodka and practically had to carry her to a taxi. I took a few swigs and held her. The bottle was on the ground, but a group of local girls sitting on the bench next to us noticed and giggled. I didn’t care. I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her very close. We kissed and she complained about my mustache.

We waited and eventually the girls left. The men were still playing cards, but we were shielded by the exercise equipment and a small tree and I didn’t think they had a clear view of our bench. The wine was almost completely gone and I felt good. Looking at her in the middle of everything, the park, the ancient winding streets snaking out in every direction, the men laughing, cards being slammed onto the tables, so far away from where I was from, everything felt strangely romantic. She put her hand on the inside of my leg and kissed me. Do you think anyone can see us, she asked. No, I don’t think so, I don’t think so.

I reached down to finish the last bit of wine. I put the bottle to my mouth and began tilting it up; she was underneath the bottle playing with my belt. Suddenly she jerked up and hit the bottle with her head. I dropped the bottle and dropped to the ground. I wasn’t in pain, but my mouth watered and I spit on the ground several times. I rubbed my tongue on my upper teeth and the left front one felt different; it was chipped.

三P? 没有...

2008-09-28T13:40:00.001+08:00

On the sleeper bus to YingJiang there are a few absolutely horrible beds where you are literally squished between two people. Of course, i had one of these beds. It was totally impossible to sleep without touching the other people and i commented to my bed-partner about how this kind of situation could NEVER exist in America. The bed to my left was seperated from mine by a small arm-rest divider doohickey, but the bed to my right was flush up against my tiny one. I was one of the first people to arrive and the bus was not filling up quickly, so I thought I might luck out and get two beds. But this is China, and more so Yunnan, and they would never let that bus out of the city without filling up the beds, so we eventually wound up going to another bus depot to pick up passengers.

My main worry was who I would be sleeping with. A fat person? A smoker? (yes - people still smoke on the buses in China and no, I'm not going to write something negative about China here, I'm just making an observation) Incredibly, a beautiful, young, Chinese girl got on the bus and headed straight for the bed. We started talking and she even recognized me from YingJiang TV! (I made a travelogue show that was broadcast on the local TV network last time I was here) And then another cute, young girl got into the bed on my left. And no, I'm not going to write anything about sleeping with two young, cute, Chinese girls, but I was thrilled not to be trapped between any of the other bus riders.

We chatted, studied Chinese and English together, listened to my IPOD together, and eventually I fell asleep in a semi-cuddle position with her (there was no other way. Her head and my head were inches apart and our arms kept touching. My bed was literally as wide as my butt!) I can never sleep on those buses, anyway. Every few hours they stop for a pee-stop, once for a police checkpoint, and once for dinner. Oy vey.

Anyway, now I'm here in YingJiang. More later. Thanks for reading my blog and making it the most viewed blog about YingJiang overnight bus trips in the history of the internet.

YingJiang

2008-09-27T08:55:00.000+08:00

Today I am going to take a 12 or 14 hour long trip on a cockroach infested sleeper bus with grungy pillows and blankets. It's the only way to get to YingJiang, and it's worth it. Hopefully, I'll have lots of groovy recordings and pictures to post soon.

Blogging in Chinese

2008-09-21T10:34:00.000+08:00

For those of you that don't know, I've recently started a Chinese blog (http://zhongguo-china.blogspot.com). I'm mostly doing it to work on my Chinese, but I think it might be an interesting thing for Chinese people to read.

More Recordings

2008-09-19T20:09:00.001+08:00

The other day I went to a big temple in Kunming and got some nice chanting recordings. Listen to them here and here.

Papillon

2008-09-16T15:16:00.004+08:00

Guiyang - showed up here to meet a friend whose phone has been off since I arrived. I can't get in touch with her and I might give up and go back to Kunming tonight. How annoying. I came to Guizhou Province to teach English in Liupanshui over the weekend, and then I came here to Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou, to see this friend. She's a foot massage girl I used to know in Beijing and she told me yesterday to come down and call her and we'd hang out today. Well, I came and I called, but no one answered. Maybe she's married now or something and she didn't want to tell me, but now something happened and she's avoiding me. Chinese girls like her (uneducated and from the sticks) that I've met tend to get married young. So, I'm alone in Guiyang. All I've done since I arrived is read in my hotel room and wander around the city. I'm staying at the Xin Miao Sen Apartments, a kind of transient hotel with 60 RMB double rooms (no bathroom). The window looks out onto the street and my room is just above the red neon sign advertising the hotel - it's like being in a bad movie. And I just read Papillon for the first time and it really affected me - but more on that later.

So now I'm in Guiyang. Maybe my friend lost her phone or is lying unconscious in a hospital somewhere, but I'm still mad.

When I got to Guiyang I jumped in a taxi and the driver helped me find the Xin Miao Sen Apartments (I highly recommend this place if you ever find yourself in Guiyang). Today it took two taxis to find a place to get a foot massage, and I wound up in this beauty parlor in the big hotel near the train station. Taxi drivers in China are great. The girl kept apologizing to me (before and during) that she couldn't wash my feet (not sure why - she did soak and dry them) and that she wasn't a professional at foot massage.

Back in Liupanshui, where I went to teach English for two days (remember that part of the story?) something very weird happened. When I got there I was picked up at the train station and taken to dinner by some people from the school. Then we went to the hotel. Two Chinese guys and I, one was a government worker and the other was the husband of someone who worked at the school (neither of these people were directly associated with the place where I was working, but connections and relationships are very important in China - maybe I just didn't really understand who they were) checked me in and we all went upstairs to my room. I assumed they were just helping me find my room, saying goodnight, and making sure everything was OK. It was Friday night and I had class early the next morning. The government guy turned to leave and before I realized what was going on the other guy sat down on one of the beds and took his shoes and shirt off.

The next morning the two of us woke up and went to work together. After work everyone went out to dinner. Breakfast and lunch was also provided at the school for the whole staff; we all ate together and of course it was all free. After dinner we went to a fancy place with private suites to play mahjong and it was here that I realized that I hadn't been allowed to order anything for myself, use any of my own money or be unescorted (except for using the toilet) in over 24 hours. Keep in mind that I was in the middle of reading Papillon.

They knew I wasn't a mahjong player (I like Chinese card games, not mahjong) so the government guy took me in his van for a ride. We went to the main park in Guiyang, watched people dancing in the square, drank tea, and chatted. He told me that Guiyang is also called "liang du" or "cool capital" because the weather is never hot, and it did feel very nice and very cool as we sipped tea from little plastic cups. We talked about America and how he's dying to visit, but can't speak English and doesn't have enough money to make the trip yet. Halfway through our chat I brought up the subject of my confinement. I tried to tell him, as politely as possible, that I wanted to sleep in my own private room and that I didn't need a bodyguard or an escort, especially when I was sleeping. He told me that since there weren't many foreigners in Liupanshui it was a little sketchy and they just wanted me to be OK. I reminded him that I was OK, that I was able to speak Chinese (I had been speaking Chinese with him for a whole day and two evenings already) and had been living and traveling in China for years. And, in my experience, Chinese cities are relatively safe for foreigners (just avoid the crazy drivers). Besides, I reminded him, I'm much bigger than the guy who was protecting me; maybe I should be his bodyguard. The government guy said he'd see what he could do and we got back in the van to pick up the mahjong crew.

At this point I started getting a little panicky. I do that sometimes: panic. I wanted to get a foot massage. I wanted to walk outside and grab a snack. It was 9:30 and I wanted to be alone and sleep alone. I've never had to have a handler before, and I realized that was what was going on, although in a very informal way. Maybe Guizhou, being more remote, is a bit more communist than most other places in China. In any event, I'd been un-alone for over 24 hours and I was looking at at least 18 more. I had just finished reading Papillon's description of the two years he spent in solitary confinement in the "man-eater" on one of the islands off the coast of French Guyana and, although making any sort of comparison is ludicrous, reading about Papillon's trials made my situation seem more acute: I must escape!

We got back to the hotel and it was clear that the guy who slept in my room the night before was determined to stay with me again. At this point I got annoyed. I had tried to be polite, but that hadn't worked. It all seemed so ridiculous. The school was down the block and this guy had a wife and kid at home. The next day I was going to go deeper into Guizhou; what was he going to do - follow me and keep protecting me? And, I was working off the books for these people, without a work permit, which is of course illegal, although very common. But maybe that was the point. In their minds, that made them more responsible for me. Mostly I was annoyed because I had been promised round trip train tickets, 770 RMB, plus a hotel room for my weekend's worth of work. It's not a lot of money (about $110) and I mostly took the job to get a free trip to Guizhou. But in my mind, my hotel room should not have come equipped with a skinny middle aged Chinese dude smoking cigarettes in the morning.

So I sort of played the "culture difference" card, something I hated to do, since it always irks me when people chalk up any minor difference to culture: "oh, of course he's left handed - he's a foreigner!" Without directly mentioning culture, I explained that I hadn't slept well the night before and I needed my own room because I'm just not used to sleeping in a room with another person. Amazingly, they agreed and booked another room for my handler across the hall from me.

Now for the crazy part. There is a point to this story; I hope you're still reading. I started reading Papillon again in my room and feeling trapped. I really needed a foot massage. I'm a foot massage junkie and I hadn't had one in over a month. Foot massages are one of the best things about China. Soaking your feet, having a cute Chinese girl scrub and clean them, and then massage them for an hour is heavenly.

Every Chinese hotel I've ever been in has massage services, either directly or indirectly connected. What would be the harm? My handler would never know, and I probably wouldn't be leaving the hotel anyway. I went down to the front desk and asked the girl if I could get a foot massage. She said the hotel didn't have any massage services. I was so shocked I questioned her: "really?" This was a big hotel in a relatively decent sized Chinese city. Inconceivable. Oh, well. No worries. I'll just go out and find one. So I asked the girl where a close one was and she said there weren't any places close by and didn't I want to take my friend? I answered no, he's not my friend, and I'd rather go by myself. I told her I just wanted to take a walk by myself. She said "wait" and picked up the phone.

In an instant, everything became clear. She had been given instructions to call up if I attempted to leave the hotel. She had already dialed the room. I remembered Papillon's speech to all the inmates about the purest thing, the break, and how it ought to be respected. I walked quickly towards the door and she yelled "wait" one more time. I opened the door and jogged down the block to freedom. Five minutes later the school called me.

Of course I was never really really confined. It was more like being under observation, ostensibly for my own good, but I'm sure they were covering themselves, too. But combined with the emotions Papillon was stirring up, it made me realize how terrifying imprisonment probably is. No secret there. I hope I never experience a real prison, especially if it's a French penal colony off the coast of South America in the 1930's. That would really suck.

Security

2008-09-16T14:51:00.000+08:00

On my recent trip to Guizhou province I took a few trains. Chinese train stations have a lot of security nowadays - metal detectors and X-ray machines at the entrances. Unfortunately, trains are the transportation of choice for all Chinese peasants, who frequently travel with all of their worldly possessions on their backs or in two enormous sacks balanced on a beam of wood and painfully held on a shoulder.

On one of my recent train trips there was a slight hold up at the entrance to the station. A group of peasants was waiting on the side while their bags were X-rayed and searched. The cops had pulled out a hoe and an ax and were trying to decide if the ax was kosher to take on the train. I didn't wait for them to come to a decision. But I recently accidentally tried to bring a Swiss Army knife and a bottle of Burmese whiskey in Kunming and two or three screwdrivers at the airport in Beijing. Both times they were picked up. So the Chinese security machine is working well.

Passport Stamps

2008-09-16T14:50:00.000+08:00

Just for the hell of it, I decided to check how many stamps and visas were in my passport. It's the passport I've had since 2002. I'll post the answer here soon - for now I want everyone to guess. :)

Chinese class continued ...

2008-09-10T20:13:00.000+08:00

In my listening class we just had a lesson about giving directions. We listened to a tape of a woman asking a cop for directions to her son's apartment. In the end she thanks him and calls him "comrade". How goddamned old is our material? I'm not Chinese and even I know that the word for comrade means faggot nowadays.

Audio Recordings!

2008-09-08T12:44:00.000+08:00

I've been wandering around Kunming with my field recorder lately. Last night I wandered into Green Lake just before it closed for the night, and recorded a few groups of people making music. People in Kunming like to dance, sing, and play instruments in the park (no busking, just musical merriment. One group had a guy playing a leaf (click here.) I also recorded another group of banjo players and a woman singing opera (click here). And, finally, I conducted a hard-hitting interview with one of my students about the dangers of teen coffee drinking (click here.)

Kunming Chinese Class 2

2008-09-05T16:41:00.004+08:00

I love my Chinese class in Kunming. I'm studying at the KM College of Eastern Languages, which is in an office building and is a bit like Apex Tech or Devry. It's a collge, sort of, and I think they'll give me a set of tools when I graduate. And, of course, I had to take the first step and call them.

My class is full of old people (40's and 50's type of old people - not geriatrics). My favorite guy is this weird fifty something Japanese guy in desperate need of a haircut. He wears skate shoes, baggy jeans, and a black long sleeved t-shirt most days, and is always nervous. Today he had to make a presentation in front of the class (we all do once every week or so) and I had almost no idea what he was talking about (I don't think our teacher did either. He was nervous and rambling, starting off with a discussion of ancient Japanese gods and moving on to mountains, sunrises, different places to watch sunrises, and then he drew a map on the blackboard and started talking about Cambodia, and then all of a sudden his presentation was over).

I just did my presentation two days ago. I told one of my killer Chinese jokes (I know a few, but only one clean one. I'm going to record it later and post a link for the recording on this blog.)

Keep in touch, everyone! By the way - today I found a great new blind massage shop and had a great massage. Afterwards, while playing cards with the massage guys (I guess most of them are just legally blind) one of the really blind guys started playing guitar. Here's a recording of him playing: click here

Kunming Chinese Class

2008-09-05T16:38:00.000+08:00

I've recently realized that there's nothing as funny as two middle aged Japanese men with horrible accents reading dialogue in Chinese class.

Top Eleven Signs You've Been Living in China Too Long

2008-08-09T10:53:00.000+08:00

Alcoholic beverages below 50% aren't strong enough
You spit on the floor (six months in China)
You spit on the floor in a restaurant (one year in China)
You spit on the floor in your own home (two years in China)
Putting hot shish kebobs directly into a plastic bag seems normal
Squat toilets feel more comfortable than the sit down ones
You forgot what 'Kung Pao' chicken tastes like
You rush to the hospital in a panic because you DON'T have diarhhea
You catch yourself saying Taiwan Sheng (台湾省)
"The sun? What sun?"
You can't access your own blog

2008 Olympics: Opening Ceremony

2008-08-09T10:38:00.000+08:00

Last night was the opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I'm sure a lot of people are blogging about it, so I won't waste too much space here, but I'd like to tell my "opening ceremony story". I went to the Heineken House, Holland's hospitality party center which was set up at the Agriculture Exhibition Center. Thousands of orange shirted and mostly tall Dutch people swilled Heineken, at fries with mayo, and watched the ceremony on many huge flat screen TVs. It was too festive for me; I wasn't in the mood. So just after the ceremony started, I headed back to my neighborhood, had a quick snack at a local restaurant staffed only with guys from Gansu, and then watched the remainder of the ceremony at my local foot massage place with the boss and foot massage girls, all provincial chicks from out in the sticks.

The contrast between rich partying Dutch people and most likely undocumented working Chinese people actually wasn't that great. Everyone just wanted to chill out and enjoy the show last night. No one wanted to work (despite being on duty, even the boss didn't force anyone to deal with customers and the TV was on in all the massage rooms).

A morbid curiosity on my part made me wonder what would happen if it rained. It's been a rainy Summer, and everyone says the Chinese government has been carrying out a massive weather manipulation program aimed at keeping the skies rain-free during the ceremony. Did it work? Well, all I can report (the program has been secretive) is that within 10 minutes of the close of the ceremony, the skies in my neighborhood opened up and the rain started falling.

So the Chinese government appears to be able to control everything, including the weather. If one of the goals of this Olympics is to re-enforce the legitimacy of the government then the rain thing was pretty convincing. But if all anyone ever cared about was having a dry ceremony, I guess it was worth it. I still have my doubts about weather manipulation, though, and I'm half inclined to believe it was all just dumb luck.

That's my report from Beijing the morning after the opening ceremony. I just woke up at a nice late mid-morning time and I'm ready to head off to the gym for some serious Olympic style training.

GERD, Anyone?

2008-07-20T12:01:00.002+08:00

GERD is just indigestion, isn't it? Or maybe GERD is the same as agita. When I was a kid in the seventies and eighties, my grandfather would get indigestion from eating too many hotdogs, and my grandmother would get agita from my grandfather's indigestion. There was always plenty of Tums and Gas-X on hand. And Rolaids, which has such a cooler name than Tums. But then again, I thought Ford was a much cooler name than Carter, so what did I know? Maybe that's why five year olds aren't allowed to vote.

So what exactly is GERD? I'm closer to 40 than 30 now, old enough to experience these problems for myself, but I'm not sure how to kvetch correctly. Problems! Oy, my problems! I won't go into them now because I'm sure you've got enough problems of your own. Well, OK, maybe I will, but only a little. Should I just make a list? How about just this week? OK. If you insist. Altitude sickness, how's that? Or maybe it was just dehydration, but probably a combination of the two. Maybe food poisoning and lactose intolerance, too. Maybe all of the above! The symptoms? No, I don't think you want to hear them. There might be children listening.

I should get on the phone with my grandparents and interrogate them about their symptoms. The conversation will probably go something like this:

Me: Grandma, I want to talk about human digestion.

Grandma: Wait...let me put grandpa on the other line. Morty! Pick up the phone! It's Tony!

Grandpa: Tonymaboy! Where are you? Mongolia?

Me: Yes! I'm on a farm in the middle of Mongolia. It's very dirty here and full of flies. All I've eaten for days is dairy and mutton and goat. I have a headache and, I think, GERD.

Grandma: Oh, GERD! Mine has been acting up too lately, but I take those generic Pepcid you brought from China last time you were here. I still have at least 200 pills left.

Me: Oh, good. And I had altitude sickness. It was awful! I won't even tell you the details. But I want to ask you about heartburn and...

Grandpa: Mongolia! Do they have bagels and cream cheese there? Let's open up an Ess-A-Bagel in Mongolia - I bet we'll make a killing!

Me: Wait...I mean, what's the difference between GERD and indigestion? How about heartburn? What about agita?

Grandma: Oh, agita. Morty's mother used to get agita all the time. Remember, Morty?

Me: So only Jewish people can get agita??

Grandpa: How about knishes? I bet those Mongolians never had a decent knish in their life! A hotdog cart with knishes, that’s all we need to get started...

Grandma: Morty, what are you talking about with the restaurants again? We're not opening up any restaurants here or Mongolia or China or anywhere else!

My grandparents are very old now, but they've still got enough energy to get the gastric juices churning. Grandpa's skinnier, and dreams of hotdog emporiums in Beijing and knish shops in Ulaan Baator have replaced his late night binges. Only his physical appetite has diminished. And the endless discussions about food are still there, only altered slightly: Morty, just drink half a can of Ensure, what can it hurt?

At some point in the conversation, my phone would die or the signal would cut out and I'd be none the wiser. The acids from my stomach are still creeping up to the back of my throat where something, thank god, blocks them. It burns, and the red wine doesn't help, but a few more sips probably won't hurt. After all, I need something to complain about. Rolaids, anyone?

Stunned Fish

2008-07-09T02:39:00.000+08:00

Today I witnessed one of the most Chinese things I've ever seen.

The owner at my local restaurant came outside to weigh a live fish on a scale. The customer followed to make sure he didn't cheat. The fish was still alive and wiggling a lot in the net, but he reached in to pull it out. I thought "there's no way that fish will stay still on the scale .. what's he doing?" He then held the fish in his hand, held it up above his head, and threw the fish full force into THE SIDEWALK. Keep in mind that the customer was watching the whole time. The fish now stopped moving and he put it on the scale, the customer checked the weight, and they both went inside to cook and eat.

The best part? The owner was smoking a cigarette the entire time.

Yay China.

Today was a funny Beijing day.

2007-10-16T12:43:00.000+08:00

Today was a funny Beijing day.

I went to the bus stop and the guard was making everyone wait on line. She told me to get on line and I said I didn't want to. She asked me where I was going and when I told her, she reiterated her request for me to get on line. I told her I didn't want to again. I could see she was getting a little annoeyed, so I told her I would get on last. Then, since it was morning and i was a little phlegmatic (and not thinking), I spat into the street. She told me not to do that. She told me I couldn't stand where I was standing. I left and waited till the bus came and got on last.

Basically, all the Chinese people were waiting in a very orderly fashion and being good citizens. Then the lone foreigner comes along, refuses to wait in line and spits into the street.

Price Fixing

2007-05-29T12:05:00.000+08:00

Yesterday I wandered into my friendly neighborhood foot massage place, where I tend to spend a lot of time chatting with the staff and occasionally teaching them a little English. I noticed that their shiny new English menu (which I helped them translate) had inflated prices. I asked them why foreigners have to pay more (in all fairness, it's nothing personal against Americans or Europeans - the menu alsohad Chinese on it so they can cheat people from Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia) and they said it's no big deal and that people traveling in a foreign country should expect it. In America, they think, the same thing happens to foreigners who wander into small shops. I told them that a taxi driver or street vendor might cheat a foreigner in any country, but the idea of having two menus with two different price structures is absurd and mildly offensive.

But then I started thinking. Is it really so bad? Is it a way of ripping off foreigners, or is it similar to the discounts locals in Hawaii get when they go into a small shop and tell the owner that they're local?

Anyone have any opinions? Please post a response if you do ...

Donkey

2007-05-13T08:25:00.000+08:00

It's not often that an experienced exotic-meats eater like myself gets to try something new, but last night I had my first tase of donkey meat. As you'd expect, it didn't taste too good, but it was edible. Like most second-class meats, it was served in a pot in a spicy stew with a flame under it to keep it hot at the table (since it will be eaten so slowly, due to it's mediocre flavor). It was spicy and tasted like a gamey meat - that's about all I have to say on the donkey front.

Hye-Jin

2007-05-11T15:44:00.000+08:00

A young girl wakes up in the morning and looks around the room. Is she expecting something or someone to be there? Does she think the room will be different than when she went to sleep the night before? She falls back asleep for a few minutes, but her alarm goes off and she wakes up again. She turns on the light and we see her face clearly for the first time – she appears to be about 15 years old, with long black hair and bangs which go just below her eyebrows. She’s wearing an oversized red t-shirt with a big yellow star on the front. She looks over at the clock, even though she knows what time it is: 7:30AM.

Her name is Hye-Jin. It’s Saturday, and there was no need to wake up so early, but she thought it would be a good idea to get an early start. Now she’s not so sure, but what’s done is done. She gets up and walks out of the bedroom, through the kitchen, and into the bathroom. She’s unconcerned about noise, scraping her flip-flops across the floor as she walks. She lives alone, so who cares? If she wakes up her stupid neighbors, big deal? They were jerks. In the bathroom, she brushes her teeth, splashes water on her face, and washes her hands thoroughly. Despite the fact that she washed and sanitized her hands frequently and with all types of products, she never let anything except water and lotion touch her face. She had a big problem with acne a year ago and tried all kinds of products, but none of them worked. Finally, she just gave up and it got better. After that, she decided that simple was best –and it was much cheaper, anyway.

After her morning toilet (she loved that expression) she went back into the kitchen for a little snack (toast, iced tea, and an Oreo cookie) and then went back to her bedroom to get dressed. She tried to meditate and sit on the edge of her bed for a few minutes, but she got bored. Oh, well. Skirt, Converse sneakers, some kind of shirt. That didn’t look right, so she put on jeans and a sweater. The sweater was just tight enough to imply that she had something to show, but loose enough to not really show it. Not that she was worried about having small breasts for a 15 year old – she was just worried about people realizing she was 15. She shouldn’t be living here alone in an apartment in New York and working at Starbucks if she was a 15 year old girl from Korea, but she was. Anyway, what was she going to do today? It was her first Saturday off in months and she had no idea how to spend it. Her friends would be asleep for hours, and her coworkers were stuck behind the bar making cappuccinos and lattes for the early morning laptop crowd. At 8:05AM, she walks out the door and takes the elevator downstairs, unlocks her bike, jumps on and rides away.

She rides down First Avenue from 21^st Street all the way to Houston against the traffic. At Houston Street, she turns left and heads east, but then changes her mind and makes a U-turn. She bikes up Houston all the way to Sixth Avenue, and then heads uptown, eventually making her way to Jane Street. She bikes to the river and checks out some piers, slowly riding up and down streets she’s never been to. She buys a coffee in a deli and drinks it on a stoop and thinks about her life.

One year ago, just before her 15^th birthday, she went to America on a school trip. She visited Hawaii, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York. The night before she was supposed to come home, she slipped out of the hotel and went to a bar with one of her friends. They didn’t have any idea about where to go, so they walked downtown and tried to act like they had a destination. Along the way they stopped in a store for cigarettes and met a guy who took them to a bar on Avenue B. When the bar closed, Hye-Jin’s friend went back to the hotel and Hye-Jin didn’t. At the time, it felt like a perfectly natural thing to do (although her friend freaked out about it). Tell everyone I ran away, she told her friend.

She went home with the guy and spent the next few weeks hanging out in his apartment. She emailed her parents every day (from a proxy server, even though she was pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to trace it) and told them she was perfectly OK. Of course, they were frantic and insisted that she come home, but she held her ground. She knew her parents and the police and Interpol and who knew who else was looking for her, but how hard is it for a Korean girl to slip under the radar in New York City? Pretty easy, that’s how hard it is. For the first month she stayed home most of the time, anyway.

The guy went to college out of state and was going to sublet his apartment, but he let Hye-Jin stay there and pay half the rent. She got a fake ID in Chinatown and got a job at Starbucks, and told her parents she was in California. She had no idea whether they believed her or not, but after about six months she stopped being paranoid around cops and slipped into life in the city. She told her neighbors she was 18 years old and a foreign student studying at SVA, and they seemed to believe her. Her English was better than it would have been had she stayed in Korea studying all day and all night, and her parents always pushed her to study English anyway. In a weird way, she thought her parents might be happy knowing her English was so good. As long as she was safe (she kept emailing them almost every other day) they were probably happy.

The coffee finished, she walks her bike back to the deli, buys a newspaper and sees the headline, something about a shooting at a college in Virginia. Then she notices the picture on the cover of every paper on the rack and a chill comes over her. The guy on the cover is him. Before she has time to react, a man grabs her from behind and slaps a pair of handcuffs on her, as the bike and the newspaper fall to the sidewalk. The man throws her into the back of an unmarked car and sits next to her as they speed off. We finally got you, Hye-Jin, the driver tells her – it’s time to go back to Korea.

Bored in Beijing

2007-04-05T10:33:00.000+08:00

I recently decided to write a book called '101 Self-Help Books I Don't Have The Time (Nor Inclination) To Write'. The book will consist of 101 synopses of silly self-help books. Here are a few I've completed (with a lot of help from friends!) At the end of this blog entry, there are some titles that I haven't even had time to write synopses for - oy vey.

The Loser's Guide to Success

In this book, I explore the secrets to success of losers in various fields. Through extensive interviews with petty criminals, drug addicts, alcoholics, divorcees, and Brittney Spears, the true path to loserhood is illuminated. Did you think it was easy being a loser? Waking up each morning and failing miserably at everything you planned? Of course not! To lose well, and truly, requires determination few can muster. This book gives you the guidance and the motivation to truly succeed at something (probably for the first time in your life) – failure.

Stop Looking for Gurus: Find Someone Who's Always Wrong, and Do the Opposite

This book has been a long time coming. After years of never living up to the examples they set, I decided to look for guidance from someone ‘less than perfect’. In this wonderful book, he begins by telling us about his failed attempts at enlightenment –mass marriages with the reverend Sun Yun Moon, failed pilgrimages to Bangalore to meet Sai Baba, Montanan compounds and standoffs with the FBI, and Jews for Jesus. Oy vey!

One day, after years of emulating success and perfection, I awoke and had what can only be described as a moment of clarity – he was doing everything ass backwards. Instead of trying to copy what others did right, he would just do the opposite of what others did wrong. His first step was to find a restaurant that was failing miserably and study everything about it. Within one month, he opened his own restaurant and did everything completely opposite of what he had observed. Guess what – SUCCESS! Since then, he has applied his patent pending technique to marriage, carreer, investment, and not being a heroin addict.

Top 10 Secrets of the Steadily Employed

Ever had a job for more than three and a half months? I have! Believe it or not, simply by reading this book you can learn the tricks of the trade. Avoid getting fired over and over again from job after job. Such common sense as ‘don’t hit your boss’, ‘no peyote on the job, kemosabe!’ and ‘use the toilet’ will ring true to anyone that’s ever had, or wanted, a job.

Jarring Realities - Worry your way to a thinner, happier you!

Recent studies have shown that fidgeting, worrying, biting nails, anxiety attacks, restless energy, bouncing your legs, twiddling your thumbs, and OCD are more effective at burning calories than going to the gym. Get off the meds and start shaking your body to lose weight!

How to Bullshit People

Bullshitting 101 is presented in this easy to read, easy to understand, and impossible to trust new book by me. Over 200 pages of tips and tricks you, the reader, never know if the author is being upfront with you. Where does the bullshit end (indeed, begin) in this informative text? No spoilers here, you’ve got to buy the book!

Break the Cycle of Eating and Sleeping Now!

Wake up and have some eggs. Keep eating all day. Go to sleep. Repeat. Does this sound like your life? Day in, day out, the same thing over and over. What drudgery! How boring and, of course, totally lame! With this new book, even a complete moron can master the techniques that will take you out of the endless ‘sleep/eat’ cycle, or SEC. Did we say ‘techniques’? We meant to say ‘technique’. That’s right, there’s only one little thing you need to do to break the cycle and become a truly free individual. Of course, we won’t reveal the secrets entombed in this lofty treatise, because then you wouldn’t buy the book! But, just to give you a little hint, think of two words that rhyme with brystol leth. Ooops, did we just reveal too much?

Big Fish Little Pond: Make It In Podunk and Spin It Up to Gotham
Turn your job into cash
The new Computer Revolution - Get started with the trend that's changing American business
Gangsta Yoga
Erotic Massage for Pets
The Benefits of Short Term Planning: The Secret to Success "They" Don't Want You To Know
202 Self-Help and Philosophy Books I Don't Have Time to Write
Tantric Techniques for Pets

Chinese Hospitals

2007-03-29T17:27:00.000+08:00

I've recently had some interesting medical experiences in Beijing. A few weeks ago, I discovered a small lump in my chest and, being the hypochondriac that I am, I decided to go to the hospital. I was pretty sure it was a cyst, but I wanted to get it checked out.

The first place I went to was recommended by my co-worker. My GF told me to call to make sure the hospital would be open when we went, but I didn't and, of course, the hospital is closed on weekends. It is a giant hospital.

The second place I went to was the China-Japan Hatred Hospital (or maybe it was the China-Japan Mutual Feelings of Distrust Hospital ... OK, it's the China-Japan Friendship Hospital.) This place is open on weekends, but they don't really have English speaking doctors, despite claims to the contrary. I went on a Sunday, walked out of the doc's office when it became obvious to me he didn't understand me or the word 'cyst', and made an appointment to come the next morning when the head internist was there.

So, next morning I went back, saw the English speaking head internist (she also didn't know what 'cyst' meant and had to look it up in her electronic dictionary) and she referred me to surgery. The surgery doc was about 900 years old and he called in another doc to translate (even though they both couldn't speak English.) My strategy was to pretend I didn't understand Chinese - I do many things here in Chinese, but I want to take care of my health in English. The 900 year old doctor began feeling my chest and talking about fatty deposits by my armpit. He asked the other doctor to feel. The other doctor felt. The first doctor said 'you see, you see'. The second doctor replied 'but ... I think it's muscle ... it's muscle, isn't it?' Then I walked out and told them that I was going to another hospital.

Hospital three was the Beijing Family Hospital, a haven of western medicine floating in a sea of chaotic Chinese yukkiness. My doctor there has a bedside manner (I forgot to mention that the internist, before referring me to the surgeon, told me I had a tumor in my breast), speaks English perfectly (he's Canadian), is spritual (which I think is important for a doctor) and, I think, actually studied medicine. Anyway, the upshot of this whole ordeal is I probably have an infection, and the antibiotics I'm taking now should make the nodule (much nicer sounding word) dissappear. Oh, the docs at Beijing Family also have a sense of humor. As part of my exam, I had a sonogram and the doc told me afterwards 'one thing I'm sure of ... you're not pregnant.'

Top Eleven Signs You've Been Living In China Too Long

2007-03-23T16:33:00.000+08:00

How Do I Know ...

2007-03-15T12:39:00.000+08:00

I have an Indian friend in Beijing who's married to a Chinese girl. Before they got married, they had to jump through some hoops dealing with Chinese red tape. The Chinese government required him to provide documentation proving that he wasn't already married. In other words, he needed the opposite of a marriage certificate: a not married certificate. So, he went back to India and went to a notary and had an official letter notarized. The first thing the notary asked my friend (insert heavy Indian accent here) was 'how do I know you're not married?' My friend responded by asking 'how do you not know I'm not married?' My friend's logic won, or perhaps the notary, being a Hindu, realized how many lifetimes the argument could last and relented. In the end, the Chinese government was convinced that he was not married. On the other hand, convincing his wife ...

Oy vey!

2007-03-15T00:10:00.000+08:00

China continues to be crazy. I've just accepted a job to record an 80000 word dictionary. The guy I'm working for has calculated that it can be done in 45 hours. We've got two Brits and two Americans (one male and one female of each) and we all have to record 80000 words. Oy vey. I'll make enough to pay for my plane ticket back home in May, tho.

可怜

2007-02-28T11:03:00.000+08:00

Faithful readers of my blogs know that I fired my housekeeper last month. I like her a lot, but she was a little incompetent (being a woman was her main qualification) and always late. This morning I was taking a shower while my new housekeeper was upstairs straightening up. When I stepped out of the shower I saw my old housekeeper in the living room, which was very weird and Twilight Zonish. She had come by totally unannounced to return my key, and I suspect to spy on me and see if I had a new housekeeper. Luckily, the new housekeeper was quiet and I was able to run upstairs and whisper to her to stay put. The old housekeeper asked me if I wanted her back, and I said no, and she was sad. It was an awful experience.

狗肉

2007-02-24T13:12:00.000+08:00

A funny thing happened to me in China the other day that will help reverse stereotypes around the world. In America, I’ve often heard talk of Chinese restaurants passing off dog meat as beef. I’ve always maintained this was silly because a)the taste is different and b)cheap beef is pretty cheap and c)dog meat is hard to get and not so cheap (aside from being illegal, there’s not too much meat on one dog).

So anyway, a few days ago I had dog stew at my local greasy spoon Chinese joint (I anticipate some comments or emails now) and it was pretty good, but not too dog-ish. I’ve had good dog meat in Korea a bunch of times (I anticipate still more protest emails) and I know what it should taste like. I asked the waiter if it was really dogmeat, and not just plain old beef. She insisted that it was 100% pure dogmeat.

Then, a few days after that, I stopped by for another dinner and ordered a similar stewed dish, but with beef. Lo and behold: same taste. I was convinced. I called the waitress over and complained that my beef tasted suspiciously similar to … my supposed dogmeat of a few days before. She insisted that her restaurant would never put any beef in dog stew.

So there you have it. No self-respecting Chinese restaurant would ever try to trick you into eating dog - only the other way around.

ATTHERATE!

2007-02-24T13:09:00.000+08:00

What’s the deal with attherate? I thought everyone said ‘at’ when expressing the ‘@’ symbol - apparently not. My Indian coworker, when telling me his email address, said ‘blahblahblah-attherate-gmaildotcom’. I had no idea what he meant and thought he was pulling some kind of Borat move on me, which he frequently does. He insisted attherate is the correct way to say ‘@’ in India and one quick Google check verified it. This led me to thinking about the ‘@’ symbol. I always assumed it was made by writing the word ‘at’ in cursive very quickly. Also, since it is clearly a symbol meant to save time and space, it seems nuts to spell it out, or say it, with so many words and syllables.

As it turns out, the earliest known ‘@’ is from the 14th century, in Venice, representing a jar ("anfora") and signifying a weight quantity. From there it went into dictionaries, was included in the first Underwood typewriter (1885), and made its way to the keyboards we use today. Ray Tomlinson, the man who sent the world’s first email (to himself, of course) wanted a symbol that was so weird it couldn’t possibly appear in anyone’s name; he chose the @ symbol.

Why do we say at? Some think the symbol is related to the Latin ‘ad’, meaning ‘at’. This is probably untrue (see evidence above), but the name stuck, at least in English. The symbol is a sort of Rorschach test, with different cultures seeing different things (usually animals) in it. The Koreans and French see a snail (snails are popular delicacies in both countries), and other countries see different animals and name the symbol accordingly. Where the Indians got ‘attherate’ is beyond me.

Spitting in Beijing

2007-02-24T13:00:00.001+08:00

Before I start, I’d like to make a disclaimer: I’m a spitter - always have been, always will be. I’m a bit phlegmatic, I’ve always had allergies and a post nasal drip. In the mornings, I get a little stuffy, and the alternative to spitting (swallowing) isn’t too pleasant and, I think, a bit unhealthy – so I spit. If I’m at home or work, I go to the bathroom and take care of things privately. If I’m in public, I try to find a gutter, garbage can, or some earth (sorry, plants and trees) and relieve myself somewhere people won’t see/touch/step on. However, if there’s no secret spot for me to spit, I have been known to let loose on the sidewalk or street. I’ll admit it – I’ve hocked up many a loogie in many a public place in many countries.

Disclaimer out of the way, I’ve noticed three things that Beijingers tend to do that I don’t, when it comes to spitting culture. First: the noise. Loud, hocking, hacking noises that seem to approach the noises I would make when vomiting don’t offend me, but I don’t see the point. I can almost always bring up my catarrh quietly. Second: the public ness of it. I usually try to do it when no one is looking, or at least do it away from the people I’m with. Third: doing it when you don’t really need to. If it takes you a long time and a lot of effort to work up just a dab of lungbutter, you probably didn’t need to spit in the first place.

I’m writing this because last night, at my usual 串(chuanr) spot I started to really notice and observe all of the spitting that was going on. A group of guys had just finished eating dinner and were standing around in a circle with nothing to do, acting tough and planning their next move, as guys from any country are wont to do. The stood there, talked, and spat. Holy crap! There was a lot of spitting. Then someone else far away coughed up a lung, I let one loose, and then the waitress from the restaurant came outside and spat on the ground. It was actually quite funny.

I’ve read a lot of foreigners stuff about Beijing and China (including the Lonely Planet book on Beijing) and I’ve seen a few tirades about all of the spitting. I say (and I guess only a few other Jewish readers will understand this, but it seems so punny) ‘Stop Hoking a Chainik!’ Spitting is no big deal. My only advice to Beijingers is to turn down the volume a teeny bit. Other than that, keep on keeping on.

Chinatown School Dayze

2007-02-22T13:22:00.001+08:00

I’ve been teaching little Korean kids (7,8,9 and 10) for the past few weeks and I’ve been, in a way, reliving my elementary school days….There’s one kid who cries when I give him homework and can’t deal with the pressures of school. He recovers quickly, but him and another boy have had a few meltdowns in class. A few of the kids have a hard time concentrating on what’s going on, while others just breeze through it and ask for extra homework, from time to time.

I remember all of the weird little personalities from PS124 and think about where we are now. Photographers, DJs, musicians, English teachers living in China, college professors, belly dancers … my elementary school class was full of quirky kids who became quirky adults. I wonder about these kids, too. The skinny boy who can stand on one leg, chant, do all kinds of weird yoga looking things, loves saying weird words over and over, cries when he gets homework, but is always one of the first to yell out my name and smile and give me a big hug when the kids first get here in the morning. The chubby kid who smiles from ear to ear every time he wins a game or doesn’t make any mistakes on a quiz; also one of the first to give me a hug; he’s a sucker for praise and affection. The youngest kid (a seven year old girl) who speaks English the best in the class, better than the older kids. The oldest kid (ten), chubby and completely disinterested, terrified of reading out loud, constantly getting all of the questions wrong on the quizzes. What will these kids grow up into? Probably office workers and stuff like that. I think my elementary school class was a fluke.

Mini Con Artists

2007-02-22T13:20:00.001+08:00

I just spent a few hours hanging out at the Great Wall chatting with a family of souvenir sellers. The kids were pianzi and wanted me to teach them how to say ‘I worked all day making that’ when trying to sell mass produced Chinese souvenirs to foreign tourists. I taught them how to say ‘my grandmother worked all day making that’ and we all had a good laugh.

Funny Beijing Day

2007-02-22T13:17:00.002+08:00

Something funny just happened at the office here in Beijing. At lunchtime, our boss encourages us to play video games and other weird creative stuff. So, today the one black guy was playing basketball on the PS2 with one of the Chinese employees, and I watched and noticed that Yao Ming never got the ball. I asked them, ‘why doesn’t Yao Ming ever get the ball’ and the black guy said, ‘ask him, it’s his team’. So the Chinese guy was not letting any of the black guys on the team pass to Yao Ming while playing PS2 basketball against a black guy. I was the Jewish guy in the stands commenting.

My Letter to The New York Times

2007-02-22T13:17:00.001+08:00

I’m a New Yorker working in Beijing at a medical research company; I edit reports researched and prepared by Chinese scientists. The other day I read an article in the Science Times about calorie reduced diets, and how, simply by eating 30% fewer calories, lab animals live longer healthier lives, and are more active and resistant to disease. Fascinated, I turned to the two researchers nearest me and showed them what I’d found. "Look at this", I told them in my poor Chinese, "check out the research these American scientists are doing". After reading the article, they told me, nonplussed, "that’s not research". I thought my Chinese was off (it frequently is) and repeated everything in English. They shrugged it off and told me, quite simply, that there’s an old saying in China: eat ’til you’re 70% full and dress ’til you’re 70% warm. In China, they assured me, people had known about this for thousands of years. I would’ve chalked it up to just another bit of folksy wisdom, except for the fact that the figures (30% fewer calories and 70% full) are exactly the same.

茶和知识

2007-02-22T13:12:00.001+08:00

Drinking tea must be a big thing in China. German researchers recently figured out that adding milk possibly eliminates some of the healthy effects of black tea. Was this big news overseas (overseas refers, by the way, to places outside China)? Lately, every time I try to put a little milk in my tea someone chastises me and goes into a lengthy explanation of how I’m nullifying all of the beneficial qualities of the tea. Then said person proceeds to eat a sausage, smoke a cigarette, cook food without washing their hands, talk into a cell phone, or engage in some other unhealthy activity.

I often wonder why some things get big press over here and some do not - why some historical events are well known and some are not. I suppose I learned random shit in school, and Chinese students do, too. I remember junior high school history (or was it called social studies) being mostly about Otto Von Bismarck and the Prussia (Euro history), Eli Whitney and the cotton gin (the industrial revolution), Harriet Tubbman and the underground railroad (American history, when Columbus came, then white people came, then slaves came, and then the Civil War happened, but mostly it was all about Eli Whitney), and, of course, World War II. These things, although important, aren’t the only important things. I’m sure we learned about the Vietnam War (although I think I learned about that mostly from my grandpa Morty and my own reading), The Cultural Revolution, Africa and stuff like that. Did we just gloss over the recent stuff? The touchy subjects? I’m probably not being completely objective. I’m sure we did learn a lot more, but the focus always felt a little off.

Chinese people seem to always know about Martin Luther King, slavery, the civil rights struggle. Was it taught in school because it reflects something bad about America? Not sure. It always seems strange that people here are so knowledgeable about some stuff, and ignorant about others, although I’m sure Americans are more familiar with the works of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan than they are with the works of Mao Ze Dong and Deng Xiao Ping - so maybe it should come as no surprise. Chinese people all know who the president of America is, and I’m sure most Americans don’t know who the president of China is. Spotty knowledge is an interesting thing.

Long Live Communism!

2007-02-22T13:11:00.001+08:00

Communism is great. Here in Beijing, there’s too much traffic and the subways are too crowded. So, in an effort to encourage bus-riding, the government just reduced the bus fare by 50%. The bus now costs five cents if you have a bus card (which I do) - the subway costs almost eight times as much. I can’t imagine this ever happening in America. Go communism!

Mobile TV

2007-02-22T13:09:00.000+08:00

I was just reading about mobile mobile TV, which will be the new broadband ‘TV on your cellphone’ thing … at first I thought, ‘oh, that’s kind of cool’, but then I remembered that TV has always been mobile. Technology gone backwards - TV went from being mobile to being cable, and now we need wireless broadband to broadcast it to a cellphone.

RIP James Brown

2007-01-03T13:13:00.000+08:00

I’m sure everyone is blogging about James Brown but, well, he’s dead. Luckily, I did get to see him in concert before he died. A few years ago, I saw him in Battery Park in downtown Manhattan and someone in his entourage wheeled out a giant birthday cake and told the crowd it was James Brown’s birthday. We all felt really cool and special, sang happy birthday and it seemed historic. A month or so later, I was in Tennessee and I saw James Brown perform at Bonaroo and they did the same birthday shpiel. The guy next to me had a huge grin on his face and I knew what he was thinking, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he wasn’t part of a historical something or other, but was just witnessing cheap theatrics.

I tell this story to prove a point. James Brown is probably the only person (except for, perhaps, Chuck Berry and Willie Nelson) who could (and should) get away with this kind of thing. He invented funk, for god’s sake. At least as far as I’m concerned, faked birthdays, PCP rampages, and police chase outs are totally excusable. RIP James Brown.

Crying in Beijing

2006-12-22T13:15:00.000+08:00

Beijing is the New York of the east - forget Tokyo and Seoul. New buildings are going up everywhere here, and the old ones are being knocked down one day, forgotten the next. Neighborhoods are gentrified; squatters hang on ’til the last minute in houses surrounded by abandoned buildings and rubble. The old and the new are clashing every day, all over the city. Ancient hutongs where no one has plumbing next to giant luxury apartment buildings. Rich and poor, old and new, Han Chinese and the minority groups and peasants, the native Beijingers and the people from outside - all of the clashes New York has.

December is here and it’s getting cold, even for a New Yorker like me. Tensions mount when it gets cold - frustrations come to the surface. People stay home more at night and have to deal with their families, and during the day, the subway can be almost impossible to deal with, and, to combat the cold, there’s more drinking. I’m happy in the cold, but I don’t have a family to go home to. Yesterday I saw two women who couldn’t take the pressure anymore and lost control.

The first was in the subway, and the second was out on the street when I was eating shish kebobs and drinking baijiu with the local restaurant owner and shish kebob stand owner (they are insane, by the way - the owner of the restaurant drinks a bottle of 46% alcohol every night, and usually one bottle isn’t enough. He eats peanuts with it, telling me that Chinese people are poor, and peanuts and a 50 cent bottle of 46% alcohol are nice and cheap. I suspect he eats the peanuts to avoid eating any substantial food and ruining his drunk, but I can’t understand how he functions and runs a restaurant while drinking so much. Actually, he just sits at a table and watches TV most of the night.)

In the subway I saw a woman freak out and grab a man by the arm and refuse to let go. She was crying, screaming, and panicking. The man was totally innocent, but she accused him of pushing her, stealing something, I’m not sure what. Cops came and told everyone not to look, nothing going on here, go about your business (just like in New York.) The woman wouldn’t let go; she was holding on to his arm so tightly her hands were white, and she was a tough, strong woman. The man promised her he wouldn’t run away, but she wouldn’t let go. The cops begged her to let go and apologized to the man and thanked him for not getting angry … he said, don’t worry, it’s OK. The woman, still clutching his arm, got down on her knees and cried; her tears were falling on the subway platform floor. The cops led the two (still attached) up the stairs to somewhere private, I assume, to deal with things. The woman was obviously disturbed, or crazy, or who knows what. But the whole thing was handled very compassionately. I wondered how it would’ve gone down in America. At some point, I think the cops would’ve gotten violent and forcibly removed the woman from the man, the man would’ve gotten really pissed - it would’ve been a different scene.

Story two took place outside at the shish kebob stand. Next door is a mahjong parlor and the waitress was playing, and maybe someone cheated (although probably not.) The waitress was outside screaming and crying, her face red and covered with tears. The owner of the restaurant and the shish kebob guy told her not to cry, don’t worry, relax, stop crying, go back inside and play. It was like they were talking to a child, and people couldn’t help smile and laugh a little, because it was weird. This waitress is a little strange, maybe a little dim (I don’t know how else to describe her), but they were treating her very compassionately, as if she was a small kid.

I live in one of the old houses in an ancient hutong. My street has so far been spared, although some hutongs close by haven’t been so lucky. I’ve even seen a few standoffs between residents, cops, and demolition crews, but those things are usually handled swiftly in China. My house is in an important courtyard which has been landmarked, so I think we’re safe from the wrecking ball (although I’ve heard rumors that they might turn it into a museum for the Olympic crowd). I grew up on Avenue C and 10th Street, an area that’s been gentrified and renovated to the point where French restaurants occupy the former shooting galleries and bodegas that sold dubious products. Will the same thing happen in my cute neighborhood here in Beijing? If so, what’s going to replace the shish kebob stand, mahjongg parlor, and all of the hair salons that sell dubious services here? A French restaurant? I don’t think so – I’ll be out on the front lines protesting when the wrecking crew comes.

Beijing in October

2006-10-22T12:18:00.000+08:00

Beijing in October is surprisingly nice. The weather hasn’t really turned cold yet (I turn the heater on in the morning, but leave it off when I sleep) and the sky is actually blue every once in a while (as opposed to almost never). There’s a little wind, which perhaps blows away the pollution, resulting in visible clouds and breathable air; although, yesterday I saw a man jogging down the middle of the bike lane, risking life, limb, and lung in a way that I’m sure outweighed whatever benefit he got from aerobic exercise.

But today the sky really is blue, the pollution seems to be at low ebb, the wind is what I’d describe as a nice breeze, and Beijing in the autumn is in full swing. I woke up this morning to the smell of yummy wonton soup, my insane dog barking and skitching all over the floor, and had a feeling that all was right with the world. Even though I was still sick (sore throat), still uncomfortable (super dry air makes my nose all icky), still in slight pain (sore throat again and a cut on my finger that got a little infected), and still exhausted (jet lag combined with my new and longer hours at my new and better job) – well, you get the point. Life isn’t perfect, even when all of the environmental things add up to niceness. Anyway, out of bed and into the world I emerged, no shower and ready for my Chinese day. Here’s how it began:

Walking to the subway, I pass through a few nice and old hutongs. Some of the houses are old and rickety; some have recently been redone (well – the facades, at least) to present a more presentable Beijing to the world just in time for the 2008 Olympics; some aren’t houses at all, but typical not too tall Chinese apartment buildings. The public bathrooms in my neighborhood have also recently been redone (outsides and insides … a breath of fresh air – at least for a little while), and there are a lot of them. Many of the houses in the hutong are bathroomless. The abundance of public bathrooms is one of the things that make Beijing such a liveable city. The other is the six cent mutton shish kebobs available almost all night and all over the place. The big bottles of beer that cost less than a quarter are another, but I’ll get into that in a future article. Anyway, where was I? Ah – the walk to the subway, past the morning bun sellers, fruit sellers, everything sellers. Through the little park behind Jianguomen station, where rollerbladers go round and round, and skaters practice skating near old ladies who aren’t frightened of self propelled, wheeled things (that’s China for you). Into the subway I descend for the three stop trip to Dawanglu, where I work. And that’s where I am now – sitting at my desk, staring into this computer, taking a break from editing reports, and getting ready for some greasy Chinese lunch – delivered, of course. Just like being back home in New York – Chinese delivery. Some things in life never change.

Random Conversations

2006-02-22T13:23:00.000+08:00

I just had an extremely odd conversation that tested my Chinese ability to the max. It actually took a long time before I fully grasped what was being said to me.

As you know, I have a dog and have become, for the first time in my life, a dog person. At night I take little Max for walks, clean up her poop, and hang out on the street with the other dog lovers. Tonight I sat down at a local 羊肉串place and ate shish kebobs, drank baijiu and had a nice long chat with the local dog fancier.

My dog doesn’t have an ID card (it’s expensive! about $125 for the first year. The local dog fancier told me that about 80% of the dogs in the hutong are illegal and unliscenced. Then he told me what he (from personal experience) knows about the consequences of cheaping out on the doggie ID. If I’m caught (and I have a friend who’s a cop here … it isn’t so much about getting caught as it is getting messed with) I will be stuck with a big fine ($600) ehich can be reduced to $25 if I beat my dog to death in front of the coppers. Crazy, huh?