A Riddle

A few days ago, Tram took me to a grocery store other than Wu Mei for the first time. It was a small place,with a hole-in-the-wall Jin Bing stand and a Coca-Cola sign sticking out the front, but it had a great number of things that I had resigned myself to never finding in China.

First, I found a Gillette combination razor/shaving cream pack. You'd think this would be easier to find, and it probably is- it just wasn't in Wu Mei and I still haven't bothered to go to any other shopping center (we have a Wal-Mart AND a Carrefour). Something would seem terribly wrong if I went to Wal-Mart in China (maybe they have "made here!" and "crafted locally" stickers on everything) and so I choose not to go. Anyway, having bought the razor/shaving cream, I can now place it in a prominent spot and look at it from time to time, occasionally chuckling and shaking my head as if to say "not today, friend."

Next, I found instant milk-tea. I don't know if I've mentioned milk-tea before, but it is a hot drink that manages to combine the smooth creaminess of milk with the slightly metallic herbiness of tea. Maybe that's not a great description. It tastes good. You have to stir it, though, or it just tastes like hot water and then there's a big clump of really strong tea/sugar stuff at the bottom.

Perhaps the most important purchase I made came as a pair- sliced bread and a jar of peanut butter. These are two items I had pretty much given up on, and I have been taking full advantage of having them. I don't have a knife, so I just dig the bread into the jar and go for it. This is not a "sharing" food. I was very, very happy about the peanut butter and bread.

Moving on from the grocery store, I've been meaning to share the following story for about a month now. To preface- in order to appreciate the story, you just have to believe that Peng is not a sketchy person and that everything he said was delivered simply because he thought it was the most logical reaction...

So there are a group of us at the English Bar, and this girl named Jordan is explaining to us, and to Peng (the owner of the bar) how the students in her class really like to hear riddles and jokes and things like that. Peng asked her to give him one of the riddles. It was, as follows:

"What is greater than God
More evil than the devil
Rich people want it
Poor people have it
and if you eat it, you will die."

She then explained that the answer would be obvious once you figured it out, and that there was only one correct answer. We (the Americans) threw around a few ideas for a minute while Peng sat there quietly. After all of our answers were rejected, Peng confidently (though whisperingly) said "It is cocaine."

Jordan said "well that's a good answer but it's not right..." And Peng responded "are you sure? It makes perfect sense with all the clues! It MUST be cocaine." And Jordan said "Actually, the answer is 'nothing.'" We all said "ahhh" and realized how dumb we had been. As we were leaving, Peng said "Nothing works, but I still think it's cocaine. It is a better answer."

Not Quite Dead Yet

Unshaven, but Outside at Last!

Well I've certainly been lazy, but the cause of my lack of updates is not so much sickness as a general lack of stories to tell... which I suppose is directly related to sickness, but I've come to accept that I'm never going to feel like a million bucks in a place where a nice day is indicated by the phrase "I can see some blue today." I've been a bad traveler, though- staying in, talking only to Americans... I did put pants on at about 5PM today, and I considered that a great success.

There was an old man that I met on the plane to Harbin. His name was William, and he described himself as "German, with Russian parents, but I lived in Malaysia for fifteen years and am an Australian citizen." His observation on language learning is another reason I have not been posting- it's not like a straight slope, it's more like a series of plateaus. I'm on the plateau where I can now tell people what I want in very simple terms, but I still can't really understand anything that they say to me. I am not discouraged by this, but it does cut down on my "I can finally do this!" stories.

On Friday we had a mixer with all of the other programs in Beijing that we could find. John "The Duke" Wayne has a way with going up to any random person and instantly becoming best friends with them, and so he found tons of other groups and pledged a good portion of our 70-person contingent to the party. I met some cool people, but the true highlight of the night was an amazing DJ who actually had enough skill to convince me to come out and dance for an hour and a half straight. Anyone who has ever been with me in a dancing situation knows that this was quite a feat, but he kept mixing good songs one into the other, so I kept dancing. I mean... flailing my arms and jumping up and down.

Saturday we went to the Llama Temple, which is a very very old Buddhist temple complex. It is exactly like every other temple that we have been to... around every corner is what looks like a barbecue pit, and inside every pit is enough incense to choke the gods and cause them to pass out and fall out of the clouds. I imagine that's the point. The only object of real note in the temple is a giant, four-story (ish) Buddha carved out of a single, enormous tree a couple hundred years ago. Of course, there was no picture taking allowed, so you have to come to Beijing to see it.

I did walk around campus a little and was able to take pictures here. It's getting very close to being warm!

It's almost sort of Spring! The ice is kind of in a way melting a little bit!

And I DID discover a new favorite food. I'm not sure exactly what they're called, but as far as I can tell it's "Jin Bing." Imagine a crepe that's rolled up in a tiny omelet that has spices and sauce and a crunchy rice-y center. It's the perfect snack to carry around, and it only costs 30 cents! That's not a huge surprise around here anymore, but it is really really good and we need a few Jin Bing stands in America.

The preparation of the delicious crepe/omelet/crunch thingy...

That's all the general news I have. In non-China news, I haven't started working on an eight minute piece of music that I need for Italy (maybe I'll make an Italy blog!) this summer and it's due in two months. If anyone has any one-word ideas for what the piece should be about, please send them to me. I'm looking for some inspiration here.

As a final thought, my roommate Junta came in the other night with this card that a random guy on the street handed him. The more Chinese I learn, the more I see why it's so hard for them to translate anything into English, but I still get a kick out of these. Here's exactly what the card has on it:

"Comfort helath casino bar It's Chinese style bar We have beautiful young girls, sexy dancing, no ticket. Welcome show girl bar, looking forward. Welcome show girl bar, looking forward. Welcome you!!! Based on this card, you may get one glass/bottle of juice, or Tsing Tao beer/coca cola for free!"


Quote of the Day-
"Well, at least in China you can always be sure of someone lurking in a dark corner." -I forget where I heard this, but I'm pretty sure in context it was very true.

Things I've Learned About Being Sick in China

1. Don't get sick in China.

2. See 1.

That about covers it. All I have left is a slightly annoying pressure on my left temple that I think is a remnant of sinus pressure, as well as a more reasonably runny nose. I've been very lucky to made so many friends here who seem to have come equipped with their own pharmacies.

Hillary gave me some sinus stuff, which was awesome, except for the first night when I took two right before getting into bed and then saw that it was "daytime!" Which led to a very fun night which mostly consisted of my brain saying "I want to sleep, but I can't stop thinking about it and I'll never get to sleep if I'm thinking about sleep. I should stop thinking. Like now. Now would be good. It would be a good time to go to sleep. An excellent time not to be awake, but I should really stop thinking about it...." etc...

Today Maria (who is Guatemalan) offered me "good Guatemalan drugs" if I relapse, which would certainly raise my medical multiculturalism. I think I should be OK though.

I forgot to mention this, but in class on Friday we were talking about getting extra credit from playing a game, except everyone tied, so all of the students quickly had their hands up in the air saying "we should all get extra credit" at which point the teacher said "no" and I said, "This isn't a democracy!" And then everyone stared at me and I remembered where I was. Context is important.

Traditional Chinese Medicine

Not much new to write, as I have essentially locked myself in my room for the past three days in attempts to get over this bug that everyone seems to have. Danni, from the English Bar, sent over some traditional Chinese pills, which I have gladly taken, considering that none of my good old-fashioned American pills were doing anything. It remains to be seen what effect they will have.

The good news is that internet is back on in our building, so I can post without leaving my room.

I'm posting today to reflect on what's happening on the other side of the world at the College of William and Mary. President Nichol resigned after being informed by the Board of Visitors that his contract would not be renewed in July. I spent a good part of the day (what else was I going to do?) reading stories and interpretations and opinions on this matter. The following are my thoughts (with thanks to David Husband for pointing out some BOV practices):

You may believe either that President Nichol got up every morning at 4AM to spoon-feed hungry orphaned kittens and, in addition, was a fantastic leader (and if you disagree I can call you ignorant/closed-minded/evil/neo-con) or that he was sent by Satan himself to increase divisiveness, lose the college money, and bring the reputation of our beloved school down (and if you disagree then I shall call you a liberal, spoiled-brat, ignorant (this word plays both sides), and hypocrite). From what I can tell, there is no other option or "middle ground," or if there is it seems to be shouted out of existence by the two diametrically opposed camps (who sometimes are miraculously able to take the exact same action and make it mean two completely different things).

If there is any doubt in the minds of supporters of either side, they refuse to show it. The truth may lie somewhere in between, but it would be argumentative suicide to admit any wrongdoing on the side that you espouse. The BOV (evil or awesome, depending) has a chance here to open up the records of what went on in their closed-door sessions and be fully open about the reasons that President Nichol's renewal was left to lapse. These records, giving insight into the rubric of grading a college president, would serve to make it very clear why the BOV did what they did. This will never happen, though. Someone might come across looking poorly, someone might open him or herself up for a personal attack, etc.... and so empty lines of rhetoric from both sides will continue to clash unyieldingly.

At Woodberry, when someone was kicked out, whether we agreed with it or not, we were all sat down and given the relevant facts of the case, regardless of what those facts might be. We were told very clearly what Woodberry stood for and how this person failed to rise to those standards. We were also told that the vote to remove the person was unanimous (because once you see who's going to win, you go back and MAKE it unanimous. Which sort of defeat the idea of "unanimous" but I understand why it's done.) The point is that, as high schoolers, we were at the very least given enough respect by our superiors that they believed we could handle an honest explanation of the facts at hand. We might have disagreed with the rules used, or the methods that found out the culprit, or any number of other things... but we understood, certainly, exactly what the rules were. This is not so in the case of the loss of a William and Mary President. And, considering recent controversies about the Wren Cross and the Sex Worker's Art Show, the door is wide open for anyone to interpret Nichol's ousting in whatever way is wished. It's like everyone gets a brightly colored invitation to the "let's see who can yell the loudest" party.

I appreciate that the firing of a college president is a very sensitive issue (and very different from the dismissal of a high school student), but to make a decision such as this, behind closed doors, and then to offer only cursory allusions to reasons of dismissal, however well intentioned or justified, is only setting up the college for more extreme polarity down the road. When every student knows "without a doubt" that he or she is right, then the point of college may have been lost.

I want to make it clear that I am neither supporting nor condemning the BOV- except in their voting practices- because I have no way of knowing what their criteria were. I do not believe that anyone should be happy about this, because I can't imagine what trouble Nichol has caused that would be worse than the national attention that this story is getting now.

In the end, though, as has been stated from every front, "the college is greater than any one man." And things will continue much as they always have...

Tai Chi and Running into Glass Doors

Yesterday was our first Tai Chi lesson, and it was an experience straight out of a movie. Our instructor was waiting for us outside the International Studies building (a straight shot from our dorm) and seemed, in his blue sweatshirt and pants, to be the Chinese version of the trainer from Rocky. In personality, he was exactly like you’d imagine an old Chinese master (the kind without the beard) if you were imagining the nice kind. Really, just think one up, as clichéd as you like… that’s our teacher. As Hillary later put it, “it’s like he was doing Taijie with his voice.”

First, he would say everything in fiercely pronounced mandarin, which I have no way of explaining other than saying accented staccato with about four different pitches. Then he would say “eeenglish,” and he would draw out the “e” like that and scoop the pitch while saying it. You know, like you would imagine someone to do in a movie. Then he would explain that the move he just named was something like “whiiiiite, greeeeen, oopen wiiings.” And then we followed his movements as closely as possible, which he would reward with a “veeeeeery guuud. Hen (pronounced “hun”) hao (“how”).

To demonstrate further, he would turn to us and, for example, place his right hand above his left, as in a position, and say “riiiiiiight? Riiiiight? Riiiight.” And then move the left above the right very quickly and say “wrong!” and then go back to right over left and say “riiiiight. Riiighht.” And then switch again, “wrong!”

In summary, best Tai Chi teacher ever. By the end of the semester, we should know all the steps in the 24-action version of Tai Chi.

Today I woke up and I was sick. Apparently I came down with the same thing that has plagued everyone else since Pingyao. Oh well, I got to watch Zoolander and some Scrubs this afternoon to make it all better. I thought I was feeling better tonight, but then, on my way to the International Studies building to get internet, I tried to walk through a glass door. It was just as funny as the people watching me had always thought something like that would be.

The reason that I have to walk to the SIS building to get internet is because ours isn't working. We chalked this up to Chinese New Year festivities/lack of work, but today I heard that the REAL reason we don't have internet is because the IT people are pissed at our whole building for buying one internet account and sharing it with three people in the room (which is what our program told us to do, so I'm confused on that point.) And so they shut it off as a sort of punitive measure. As Ben put it, "now they have a bunch of angry meiguo-rens in the building we have the American ability to form unions/mobs" I can't remember whether he said unions or mobs. Same difference.

Chinese class is getting harder, and so I'm using lots of mnemonic devices to try to remember different characters. My favorite devices, that I'd like to post here completely out of context, are "Man-Sideways Jesus-Carrot," "Questionmark people-questionmark Apollo Landing" and "Lion King." If you think the way that I do, then those things spell out the Chinese equivalent of "What," "To know someone," and "How is it?" I'm pretty sure if I keep doing this I'm going to become very confused and crash and burn sometime in the near future.

Chinese New Year!

Feb. 6-9- Taiyuan and Pingyao

Yesterday we returned from our trip to the north. Everyone complained about how cold it was. Everyone, that is, except for those of us who had braved the wild winter weather of Harbin.

Our first stop was the city of Taiyuan, about eight hours north of Beijing and two hours away from Pingyao, which was our true destination. We stopped in the city because Dr. Li wanted us to be in a big city for Chinese New Year. Most of us didn't understand, at first...

But then we heard the fireworks. It was the middle of the day, and they were already going full force. In fact, they went on through the night and sporadically for the next three days. It's best to watch the video, because it defies description, other than saying that a Chinese New Year celebration makes the Fourth of July look like a three year old holding a sparkler. If you hear anything that seems like rain in the audio- it's just millions of firecrackers that act as a sort of garnish to the explosive feast.

The next day we went on to Pingyao. The town of Pingyao is an ancient walled-in city, much like most European ancient walled-in cities. They had the requisite big-spikey-thing that they could drop on invaders...

It's in shadow, but there are lots of spikes...

And, like most ancient walled-in cities, even the hotels are part of the ancient gloriousness...

Amanda in the hotel courtyard

And we spent a good deal of time in the marketplace, looking at old things to buy. It was a curious thing that most of the ancient artifacts in any given antique store looked exactly like the ancient artifacts in any adjacent antique store.

The program bought us all tickets to go into any museum in Pingyao, and so we tried to visit as many of them as possible. They were all what used to be large homes with courtyards turned into exhibits about the growth of Pingyao's martial arts or the first banks in China. The more I see of Chinese museums, the more I think of the wonderful museums that we enjoy in the United States, which avoid making every display look like a scene out of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. We had fun seeing what we could of the actual historical objects, though.

There was a room full of these little statues in a Daoist Temple,
and this one was apparently mine.

John Wayne (we call him "The Duke") and I manage to look
dumb in front of lots of Chinese people. No one told us that
they were behind us until it was too late. I don't really know
what that pose is all about...

This is just a great picture of John and Amanda

As always, all of the photos I took on our trips (not too many, don't get excited) are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/23482798@N04/

Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of doing a post every other day now that our Spring Break is over. Tomorrow is our first day of Tai Chi, and I'm pretty excited about that (even though it is at 7AM).

02/01/08-02/04/08- HARBIN (I feel like poem)

02/01/08

“The especially charming and beautiful scenery, fresh air and novel elegant pavilions reflecting in green jungles are very strongly impressed on your memory, but also forget to return home. …. If we roam here listening birds and insects’ singings, we will feel like poem.” –Jin Wei Hotel Guest Services Directory

We arrived in Harbin at 1:00AM local time, and were instantly greeted by a brigade of black-market taxi drivers who make the Beijing drivers look like patrons of virtue. As Will later put it, “I don’t think I’ve ever actually been shoved towards a taxi.” We settled on two of the least sketchy taxis that we could find and headed for downtown Harbin. Once we checked in at our hotel (all in Chinese- I wasn’t involved) Steve, Will and I pushed together our two beds (cheaper than three) and tried to find things to do other than sleep. First we tried to turn on the TV, but all that we could turn on was a small red light. We decided that this must be high entertainment in near-Siberia, and went to sleep.

02/02/08

The next day we went out on the town. No matter how many layers of clothes we had on, it was still freezing. I’m writing this now from Beijing, and we went out to get dinner and it felt downright balmy. Harbin is really a difficult place to describe. There’s the Russian architecture, but also Chinese and Modern and Turkish, etc… and it seems vaguely reminiscent of New York City. Below you will find a picture of me at a Russian supply store.

I made a hao pengyou (good friend).

We wandered for a bit, and then found the river of ice.

The sun setting on the river. I'm standing in the middle of it while taking the picture.

I’ve never seen a frozen river before, and it was amazing. It must be about a kilometer across to the island, and all that you can see is ice and horses with carriages and, on the banks, ice luges and inner-tubes and skating rinks divided by mounds of snow. We all decided to go down a hill with inner-tubes, which I thought was going to be the scariest thing I did that day. I was sure that at some point, halfway down the 45 degree hill, I would spin around and hit a small bump and go THWAP with a very graceful Olympic-style back-flip onto my head.

After our death-defying, we decided to find the ice festival. So we walked across a frozen river of ice, you know, like any intelligent person might do. I watch a lot of Man vs. Wild, so if anyone HAD fallen in, I would have known what to do. I'm sure that Mom is laughing right now, and by laughing I mean writing me an e-mail about personal safety (there were cars on the ice, so we figured it was safe).

After a good fifteen minute walk, we hit dry land again in the form of Sun Island, which was apparently a barren ghost town. We walked around for about thirty minutes without seeing anyone, which was very strange considering this was supposed to be the general location of the ice festival. We expected a crowd to jump out at any moment and yell "surprise!" After all, this is China, and the one time we can't find anyone is the time when we were most trying to find a large gathering of people. Oh irony. We did find a strange patch of red liquid on the road, though, and imagined a scene in this deserted place where a car could just wheel around a corner and take one of us out.

We think it would look sort of like that. We may have been delusionally cold, so please forgive the utter inappropriateness of taking such a picture.

In time, we found the festival. The snow festival. Which was closing (because it was almost dark), which explained why we couldn't find anyone. We were told (in Chinese, no one speaks English in Harbin) that the ice festival was down the road, but very, very far. It would help if we took a taxi.

Unfortunately, there were no taxis in sight, so we recommenced our journey on foot. Across the island we marched in the bitter, 0 degree Fahrenheit cold. Across the inverted bridge of Kazahck-Dun...

I made up the name.

And again further down the road. Dissension in the ranks was rampant. Mutiny was a distinct possibility, as was hypothermia. Steve, after all, had left his heavy jacket in our room back in Beijing. Just as we thought we could go no further, a line of taxis appeared miraculously, as though out of a dream, and we negotiated a good price for our whisking away to Ice-World.

When we finally arrived, it was as though all of the trials and tribulations of the past five hours were no more than five minutes, for the Ice Festival loomed larger than most amusement parks, and glowed brighter than the Vegas Strip (another definition of strip that I forgot to teach my students. Darn). The festival really was amazing, and from here I think I'll let my pictures and videos tell what they can about our experience there. I also now have all of my photos from China posted at http://www.flickr.com/photos/23482798@N04/. I'll be on a school trip to Inner Mongolia from now until Sunday. Otherwise, I would have written a longer post about our trip to Harbin. I decided that getting the pictures and videos up was more important than writing a novel about three days. The bottom line is that I highly recommend Harbin as a travel destination- I like everyone would love the Ice Festival. Best weekend trip ever.

Acropolis, acropolis. I feel like such a stupid American.

Me, Hillary, and Will in front of a super-gigantic ice tower covered in ice.

The whole group in front of one of the many large Olympic-themed ice sculptures.

This links to a video of the greatest song about the Beijing Olympics ever written and performed by a majority of China's pop stars, a-la "We Are the World." The moment at about 3'07" cracks me up every time. If you listen, maybe you can guess why.

Someone double-dog-dared me.