My Walk Home Today

My Walk Home Today

I told myself when I started these blogs that I wouldn’t ever sit there and tell a day by day account of my life because that would be boring to me and anyone that is reading about my life in China. But today’s walk home was pure China at least how I see it. Basically a lot of things that make you shake your head and say what is going on here?
The area around campus is not the most wealthy (but also not the poorest of the poor) this makes for interesting sights on a daily basis but today was special. I leave out of the east gate on campus and turn south to head to the train station. About 200 yards south of the gate I see a man in his early 30’s standing on the sidewalk staring at a patch of dirt between the sidewalk and a fence. As I walk closer I could tell he was staring intently at something but for the life of me I couldn’t tell what in the world it could be. As I came closer nothing was apparent until I came up upon the man and I saw the treasure that had captivated his imagination it was a pile of dog poop.

I crossed the street shortly after passing poop man to experience the 2nd great smell of China. Having previously worked in the underground utilities business I have been exposed to sewage on a regular basis I thought I had left those days behind me until I came to China. Depending on the neighborhood you are in the smell is present. You never know when it’s going to hit you but it’s always around especially in the area around our school (not as bad where we live). As soon as I hit the sidewalk I hit the smell and it stays with me for a block. I turn the corner where I see an elderly woman sitting by a biuck (a bike with a truck bed). I can tell she has something that she’s trying to sell in the back of the biuck but I can’t tell what it is as I get closer I see lot of small bowls surrounding a large glass bowl. In the glass bowl I see a blob of bright orange and black in the smaller bowls I see specs of orange and black this is when it hits me that she is selling goldfish on the street corner.

Not long after the goldfish lady I came up to another biuck this one had a couch on the back of it as I came around to the back of the couch I see two men standing over a washing machine talking, it soon became apparent that that the man with the biuck was trying to sell his washing machine on the side of the road.
I’ve mentioned before about cars parked on the sidewalk this is nothing new. I’ve also had to move on the sidewalk to let a car drive past me on the sidewalk. Today I had a first, I crossed the road not far from my apartment and there was a car driving down the sidewalk I didn’t think much of it until I started to see him back up and pull forward, then back up and pull forward again, then back up and pull forward again, if he had been taking his driver’s test he would have failed because it took him more than 3 points to do a 3 point turn but he did successfully turn his car around on the sidewalk.

There’s an alley that is a short cut to get to our apartment that we take every day. In this alley is a random guard shack with a gate that extends maybe 1/4 of the way across the alley and isn’t big enough to block anything that wants to get by it. We often joke about the man in the guard shack and how easy of a job it is to protect a dead end alley (there is a footpath that we take). The best I can figure is that the guard shack is the “home base” for the men that run up and down the street by our apartment blocking off parking spots and making people pay to park (not a very efficient operation but it seems to make them some money). Usually the man in the guard shack is reading, or taking a nap I walk by smile at him and keep walking. Today was different and by far the low point of my time so far in China. I’ve read and been told about the police in China and the corruption within the neighborhoods but today I saw two police officers who appeared to be beating man in the both. It’s common in China for illegitimate businesses to be set up and the police allow them to operate as long as they pay kickbacks to the police. My assumption is there was some disagreement or issue with paying and the police were teaching him a lesson. It’s a hard situation to be put in but I turned my head and walked home. Today was an interesting day.

Getting Settled

Getting Settled

When we first to China we were housed for the first two weeks in on campus housing in a traditional dormitory style setting. We had no intention of staying in this arrangement however it worked until we could find somewhere to live. Thus we began our process of walking around the city of Beijing trying to find somewhere to live. There aren’t traditional apartment complexes here like you would find in the states. So you end up working with a real estate agent that helps you find a place for rent. We worked with three different agents over the course of about a week and must have seen 10 different apartments over the week. In order to look at these apartments we logged miles and miles of walking in the coldest winter Beijing has seen in decades. We worked with one agent in particular that stands out in my mind his name is “Pat.”

Pat asks us to meet him at 5 o’clock one evening about a block from a subway stop and he’ll show us a few apartments in the area. We tried to meet Pat where he had asked but couldn’t find it so out of frustration and frozen hands, feet, and faces we jumped inside of a mall called him up and said come find us. About 15 minutes later Pat shows up on his moped wearing an army green winter coat that comes down to about his knees, ear muffs, and over his pants are leather knee length “chaps” to keep his legs from freezing off while riding his moped around in the -12 degree (Fahrenheit) weather, Pat is fairly tall by Chinese standards probably around 5’10” wears glasses and is probably in his early 40’s with a full head of hair (that’s one thing I’ve notice not many bald guys here). We walk out of the mall to meet him at his moped when a gust of wind blows his moped over and into the street. Pat takes off after his moped into the street and is now standing in the road trying to stand his ride up on a patch of ice (it had snowed a few days prior and there is snow and ice everywhere) slipping and sliding back and forth with no regard for his own life after what seems like 5 minutes of the struggle Pat’s moped is vertical and ready to ride. Pat stumbles back over to us, points east and mumbles among other things “even erliven,” I look at Ted and Dirk (my roommates) and say “WHAT?” Dirk has the same look of confusion on his face as that I have and Ted seems to know exactly what Pat’s talking about.

Next thing I know we are walking for about 15 minutes through the -12 degree gusting wind streets of Beijing until we see Pat standing in front of the 7-11. We get within about 5 feet of him and he jumps back on his moped and shoots down a side street where he parks outside of a classic Chinese apartment building. There is an narrow iron gate with two Chinese Flags waving from the top of the gate we have to step up and through the gate where we are met by one of Pat’s friends or coworkers be honest we never figured out who he was or why he was with us. We walk into a dimly lit building with narrow halls and Pat’s little friend in tow (he is about 5 feet tall weighs maybe 140 pounds and a good bit younger than Pat probably late 20’s or early 30’s), all of a sudden little Pat starts throwing what appears to be at first a temper tantrum jumping up and down arms clapping against his body and suddenly he STOPS and we continue walking. Dirk and I are looking at each other wondering what in the world we’ve gotten ourselves into until Ted tells us that the lights were activated by the Chinese Clapper and so little Pat was making noise to get the lights to turn on.

We walk into the first apartment that Pat show’s us (he showed us three but this one pretty much sums up our experiences with Pat) where Pat knocks on the door of the apartment and waits for someone to answer the door. I look at Ted and say “Is someone living here? He knows we need a place ASAP right?” Ted says something to Pat in Chinese and tells me, “its ok.” A couple of seconds later a middle aged Chinese woman opens the door to her house and we are handed bags to put over our shoes so we don’t make the floors dirty. We walk into the apartment which opens up into the living room/kitchen area to find our hosts husband sitting on the couch watching a Chinese sitcom on T.V. he stands up and greets us with a Ni Hao and we proceed to move off to the room to the right of the living room/kitchen which is the downstairs bathroom connected to the downstairs bedroom where we find the happy couples teenaged son looking at all of his board games still in their original packaging neatly placed on the enclosed bookshelf next to his bed (for those of you who have seen the movie “The 40 Year Old Virgin” it was like looking at the Asian version). I walk into the room to check it out and he gets up and walks into his closet I don’t know but he walked into the closet and closed the closet door I decided it was time to go upstairs.

There is a narrow spiral staircase in the living room/kitchen that leads upstairs to a loft area and the rest of the apartment. The loft area is small but nice and overlooks the living room. Off the loft is the other bedroom which doubles as the master and is setup almost identical to the downstairs bedroom. Ted is downstairs making small talk with the couple’s house that we are in and I yell down to him that I think I’ve seen the entire house and there is only two bedrooms. He says something to them in Chinese and yells back to me that they would put a bed in the loft if we decided to rent the house. This apartment definitely had the feel of a one-child policy apartment.

We left the apartment and made our way to the next two apartments where we were able to meet a lot of nice Chinese couples and their children. While walking around the city on this cold and snowy night it was great to see the determination of the Chinese people on their mopeds. Picture a snow covered street that has been driving on by cars and truck and now the snow while packed down its not level or even close to level this creates an interesting situation for a two wheel moped where we got to see more than one moped driver going no more than 5 MPH fall over while driving down the street and get back up just to do it all over again.

We finally decided on the first apartment that we saw with an agent named Daphene , the apartment is in the Sanlitun area of Beijing which is the area that is most famous for the Bars, Restaurants, Shopping and Embassies. It’s a great location for us except how far it is from school. We have a 20 minute walk to the subway then a 10 minute ride on the subway followed by a 15 minute walk to school. Unfortunately close to school there isn’t much as far as a life goes so living where we live is great. We are about 8 KM to the east of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and the best thing about our place is we have a western grocery store downstairs. If you look at the pictures I posted the other day April Gourmet is the grocery store where you can buy a half gallon of Florida’s Natural OJ for the equivalent of $13. I’ve been drinking an OJ “Drink” that I can get for about $3.

Just some pictures

Outside of our APT.
This is how people park on the sidewalk
A common way to move two people one rides the bike one sits on the fender.
Just one of many smog masks
Bikes lined up at the train station.

Hey Girl You Look Good in that Smog Mask!

The Streets of Beijing

(So I took some pictures that I wanted to post with this blog but my camera is broken so until I get a new camera or get mine fixed no more pictures)

Getting around Beijing can be a lot of fun, I’ve already talked about the subway and mentioned the taxi’s these are my most common means of going more than a few of blocks. Yes I did say a few of blocks, and no I’m not being lazy. A few of blocks in most places isn’t that bad, in Beijing and from what I understand most of China is a LONG way. It’s not a stretch to say that a three block walk could take 20+ minutes and be over a mile (in the 15 degree weather that’s a long walk). The sights on that walk can make your jaw hit the ground.

It’s taken me about two weeks to understand the basics of drivers ed. In China. From what I gather here are the 5 rules of the road:
1) Use your horn at least once every block
2) If you get near another car use your horn
3) If you think a car might not know what your horn sounds like use it
4) Worry about only the car in front of you anyone behind you should know to use their horn
5) If your natural reaction is to hit the brakes don’t hit the gas and hope to avoid danger

In essence what these roads have done is created a noisy cluster of cars going in every direction imaginable but surprisingly few accidents. In the two weeks I’ve been here I’ve seen only two accidents one was between a car and a bike where the car was turning right and the man on the bike was hit from behind and got to feel the windshield with his head. The other accident happened right outside of my new apartment. We live on a side street and there was a car turning right into an alley and was hit by the police who were leaving the alley. I showed up to the scene minutes after the accident had occurred, about three hours later the police car was gone the other car hadn’t moved I guess he decided that was as good of a park spot as any.

Parking in Beijing is very interesting. The idea is park wherever you damn well please. Can’t find anywhere to park? Why don’t you drive up onto the sidewalk and park on the sidewalk. I was on the sidewalk this past weekend (1/9/10) walking from the subway back to my apartment while walking down Dongzhimenwai Way which is a major road (this is the road that most of the Embassies are on) a Toyota Camry comes barreling down the side walk honking its horn at people that wouldn’t get out of his way fast enough. He passes and I turn onto Chunxiu Lu a half a block into my walk I’m jumping out of the way of another car driving down the side walk across the street from a police station. It’s interesting to see but they have a bumper system in some places on the sidewalk that can be raised and lowered in order to decide if you are allowed to park on the sidewalk, clearly this is acceptable.

I haven’t noticed much smog yet, I think part of this is a result of the weather we’ve had in Beijing (windy and cold). Despite the lack of smog within the city people (mainly woman) wear smog masks on a daily basis. The variety of smog masks is mildly entertaining (I’m working on a picture collection of people and their smog masks) you’ll see everything from the basic surgical style mask to the designer smog masks with designs and logos covering people’s faces. This past weekend I notice a couple in their early twenties on the subway wearing MATCHING smog masks, a moment later I see him lean over and kiss her smog mask on smog mask, I didn’t know what to think about it then and I still don’t.

I’ll take the Beijing Duck and a Side of Lung Cancer:

The Food!

I feel like I need to explain my take on Chinese food in the states before I explain my take on the food. I like Chinese food but I’d generally only eat it once a month, my favorite is Kung Po Chicken a little spicy, a tasty sauce, chicken, peanuts and rice what more could you ask for (other than bacon). Generally I avoid the strip mall Chinese food preferring to eat at places like P.F. Chang’s where I know chicken is actually chicken (meow). I hope you can now imagine the nightmarish eating situation I have found myself in where I can’t speak the language, read the characters, and everything they serve is part of an animal that we wouldn’t consider eating in the states.
Also I think it’s important to note that if I don’t succeed in learning this crazy language I will get my PHD in chop sticks by the end of all of my time in China. At our second meal in China I was struggling with my chop stinks after dropping half my meal on my shirt and the other half on the table the Fu Yen (waiters) brought over a fork for me so I’d be able to eat some of my food. I’m actually not that bad with the chop sticks I was just having an off day. Speaking of the Fu Yen it amazes me but in China in order to get the attention of anyone on the wait staff you simply yell Fu Yen and they come running there’s very few manners when it comes to working with a person in a restaurant. We actually have had the waiter or waitress leave a table that was ordering to tend to us and have had a waiter/waitress leave us while ordering to tend to another table.
Our first dinner was great we were escorted by ambassadors of University to a local restaurant where they ordered for us an assortment of local favorites and traditional Chinese cuisine. When we walked into the restaurant I was greeted with what I will call my first smell of China (you know how the beach has a smell, the mountains have a smell that’s what I mean so fair I’ve found two China smells I’ll tell you about the other later on). It’s a difficult smell to describe but I am going to do my best so work with me and use your imagination and I’d say close your eyes but then you’d stop reading. Picture yourself opening the door to your grandmother’s house (for the sake of this description your grandmother is 75 years old and smokes two packs a day and so do all of her friends that hang out at her house with her all day). Grandma’s house is very comfortable, her friends all welcome you by yelling what appear to be nice things at you but they all appear to be drunk (or at least it sounds that way cause you have NO idea what they are saying) and the furniture is great it’s about 25 years old and has been soaking in smoke since the day it arrived at grandma’s house. After sitting down and taking your coat off you have time to realize there’s another faint smell in the distance is it ginger? Or chili? The smell is alluring with a sweet yet spicy flair that you can’t quite put your finger on it because of the damn smoke! In a nut shell that is what I will from here on refer to as the first smell of China, you smell it in restaurants, bars, houses, apartments, and pretty much any building there are no rules or laws regarding where you can and can’t smoke.
So now back to the food. Most restaurants serve the food family style (so if you are planning to visit be ready to share) large platters that are easily enough to feed one person and often times can be shared. Our first dinner a couple of dishes stand out in my mind the first being the “mashed potatoes” which our hosts agreed is one of their favorite Chinese foods. I used the quotation marks because I have never had a potato that tasted like that before and hope not to ever again. Deliriously tired (been awake at that point for 25 hours) I bit the potato off my chop sticks hoping for a warm salty reminder of home and I get a stone cold sugar crystal mush, having taken about three spoon fulls of “the mush” I had no choice but to eat every sweet cold bite.
Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved peanuts, from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to peanut butter cups to salted in the shell I’m a peanut guy luckily for me the loose translation for Beijing is land of the peanut. In about 25% of the dishes here you will find peanuts or use peanut sauce. So if you are allergic to peanuts I wouldn’t book a trip to China anytime soon.
Peking Duck or Beijing Duck is one of the most famous Chinese dishes and one that needs to be tried. I can’t tell you how they prepare it all I know is that every 5 or so minutes throughout our meal another dish would magically arrive on our table until a chef comes out to our table rolling a cart with a golden brown duck (the entire bird minus the feathers) getting his final ride to our stomachs. Our chef begins to slice the bird into thin slices of meat which are served to us on a try that features a ceramic duck head at the end of it. Individually we took what look like tortilla wraps and places the duck in the wrap along with carrots and other vegetables wrapped it up like a burrito and ate it. Once our chef had taken all of the meat he was kind enough to chop the ducks head off the remainder of the body and then cut the head in half for anyone that wanted to eat duck brain (I think our duck brain went to waste).
Overall the food has been great a lot of rice, noodles, vegetables, and meat (breakfast meat is big hard to find a donut). I am developing my favorites Kung Po Chicken I love; unlike in the states where you get a ton of random vegetables mixed in with the chicken and peanuts it’s mainly the key ingredients rather than a lot of fillers. I’ve found a restaurant that I can get my Kung Po Chicken for around 20 RMB (about $3) and can usually have let over’s (there’s no tipping or taxes in China on most goods and services). There is also a shrimp dish that I’ve had once and need to figure out what it is because it was AWESOME we got a huge pile of shrimp (probably 50 shrimp) that were in a sweet sauce for about $3.
The restaurants I’ve been eating at so far are what I would call the middle of the road Chinese restaurants not by any means the nicest but by no means the cheap stuff. I need to get a little bit braver and start trying some of cheap local restaurants where you can get noodles and meat for around 6 or 7 RMB (about $1), the other guys have been eating dumplings at one of these places in the mornings and I’m not quite there yet (I’ll post a picture of what these places look like soon). I have tried cow tongue (served cold) and it was actually really good I guess you put enough seasoning on something you can make almost anything taste good.
I think I’m rambling so the last thing about the food here is paying. This goes for most of China not just restaurants all transactions are paid in cash as hardly anywhere accepts credit card (might be part of the reason why China is able to buy all of the U.S. debt…) and a lot of places require that you pre-pay for food. It’s fun at bill time because the restaurants won’t split a bill and if you dare try to pay a 20 RMB check with a 100 RMB bill they won’t take it unless you show them you don’t have anything smaller.

Alright I need to go study some so I can throw some knowledge into my next blog. Hope everyone back home is doing well please let me know if you have any questions or anything anyone of you want to know.

First Impressions

First Impressions:

I am working hard not to make a judgment on a culture and people based on the limited experiences I’ve had so far. That being said there are some traits that the Chinese have that I can say without much questions I am not judging prematurely.

The Chinese people don’t know how to wait their turn. From the minute we landed in Beijing I was getting pushed. I think it is safe to say that most people have flown before at some point in time and know that when the plane lands you wait until it has stopped to begin to gather your bags and deplane. In doing so you wait until it’s your rows turn to begin to exit. This was not the case when we landed in Beijing.

In my section of the plane there were 99 seats (yes I counted) and out of the 99 people in my section 7 were western (this was the last time I’d see 7 Americans all in the same place for the next few days). As soon as our plane touched down in Beijing 4 Chinese men on the plane started to stand up much to the dismay of the flight attendants that started to scream at them in my cabin to sit down. Once the plane finally did stop the stampede started toward the door. I stood up from my aisle seat and was pushed and shoved sideways so that the people behind me could get closer to the front door before I could even open the overhead compartment (welcome to China). This lasted just long enough for me to realize that unless I stopped someone I was going to end up face down, I lowered my shoulder as a Chinese man tried to pass me and he stopped dead in his tracks, I was free to get my bags.

The subway system is the cheapest and fastest way to maneuver around Beijing. There are a number of interweaving lines like any big city in the states and doesn’t feel or seem much different than any system stateside other than the method of loading and unloading. You would think that people would realize that the fastest and safest thing to do would be to allow people to get off the train before attempting to board the train, this doesn’t happen at a busy subway station (the less crowded stations are fine). Instead it is mass chaos, people pushing and shoving (once again) in an attempt to get on or off the train. Yesterday we were going to Tienanmen Square and while boarding the train I watched a woman (who was trying to get off the train) literally carried onto the train as the crowd moved her like a pebble in the ocean. Thankfully being six foot one in China gives me some advantages when it comes to crowd control. Don’t worry mom if you come visit we’ll take taxis so I don’t lose you.

For the first time in my life I’m learning what it is like to be a minority and to a certain degree racially profiled. By no means is it all negative or positive more of a mix bag of results and in some places I’ve been surprised by peoples reaction to us. We have met some people here that love us for the novelty of being American, having facial hair, blue eyes, our height, etc. Yesterday outside the Forbidden City we had girls coming up to ask to have their picture taken with us like we were some kind of celebrities from speaking with other American’s in China this is very common and something we’ll have to get used to. When we were entering Tienanmen square the Army is searching people and their belongs before they are allowed to enter the square we were standing in line when one of the officers pulled us out of line and allowed us to pass without patting any of us down. These are some of the times when being a foreigner has been positive. There have been the negative.

We’ve seen people tell us at restaurants there isn’t room when there clearly is and walk up Chinese people have been seated before and after us without hesitation. Thankfully Ted can speak the language and has called out the hostesses and managers for this practice and we’ve been able to get seated after some brief arguments. We’ve also seen this with cab drivers where they will drive past us and pick up a group of Chinese people 20 yards farther down or where a cab driver will repeatedly say he doesn’t know where we are going until he realizes that we aren’t going to get out of the cab and drives us to our desired location with ease. Then there are the looks, stares, and the comments people make (I don’t know what they mean so some may be positive and some negative) at times you can tell it’s because people here don’t see westerners frequently and at times you can tell they are not happy we are here and there is some hostility towards us. Overall I think the Chinese people are excited that we are here and enjoy seeing outsiders especially after decades of isolation.

Random Observation:

It's okay to do a snot rocket in public. We've seen countless people do this but none better than a 4 foot tall grandmother while walking down the street only a few blocks from the Olympic stadium. Apparently tissues aren't a common item in China.

The pictures I posted are from just outside the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square.

The tall guy in the picture with me is Ted.

The picture in front of the Monument to the Peoples Hero from left to right is Ted, Cooper and Dirk.

The Picture in the snow has Jon and Jen as well as the other guys. It's been snowing for two days now have about a foot on the ground and its probably the only time I'll ever see Beijing quiet. Very peaceful actually.

You will probably notice that we will all be wearing pretty much the exact same thing but trust me we are changing its just so cold all you're going to see is jackets hats and gloves.