12/16/2004: "Hockey in Beijing"

There is roller hockey in Beijing! I recently read an article on that's beijing which told me where to go to find some Roller hockey. The last time I returned from the US I brought some of my equipment because I wanted to start playing some hockey again.

(that's me on the left)

The rink was next to a larger sports center which apparently also has an ice rink in it. Although I haven't had a chance to check out if anyone is playing Ice hockey (I hear there is, but I don't know when they play), I was excited to find a group playing roller hockey.

There was a mix of ages there and most of the people were chinese. Just like many activities in China, safety-equipement was pretty much optional so, "play at your own risk" - this is a country without a serious liability system remember...

The rink was started by a guy from Harbin which is a north-eastern city in China - extremely frigging cold! Harbin is famous for these ice festivals they have every year where there are beautiful and amazing sculptures of ice. (If global warming is coming, maybe we should all check it out before we loose the chance!).

So the rink was not a full-size rink, but the people there were friendly and I did bump into two westerners. The man who runs the rink used to play for the Chinese Olympic team, so of course he was pretty awesome. You could rent all the gear for about 50yuan, or if you brought your skates, it was 30 yuan. Everynight they start with some drills, and then scrimmage. It's pretty fun!

My problems are that I don't know enough of the hockey terms in Chinese yet. Quite funny! Also, some of these guys I have a particulary hard time understanding, so it hasn't been that smooth in the language department. However, it keeps me from criticizing much which is probably good haha!

12/12/2004: "Special Skills"

Every since I've arrived in China, I've been amazed by a nifty little skill that all the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese students seem to have. While studying, I am often distracted by the skill with which these students to spin their pens or pencils around in their hands. Often defying gravity, these amazing tricks will mesmerize me for much longer time than they should (I'm embarrassed to say!).

I once had a classmate in college from Korea. He could do an equally amazing trick with his pen and my classmates and I asked him how long it took him to learn it and he told us - years of practice! He was embarrassed at how much studying he lost practicing that trick!

Well, I recently recorded one of my Korean classmates doing a similar trick. I will try to video the other style when I have an opportunity. Enjoy the video!

12/11/2004: "He Ping Foot Massage"

My brother was visiting last month to practice eating sunflower seeds with me (joke) - and we were walking around the WangFuJing area of downtown Beijing when we came across the He Ping Foot Massage place. My brother is a doctor and gave a nice

big warm smile when he saw this sign. I am sure that he doesn't really believe that massaging the center of your foot will improve the function of your bronchial tubes. However, everyone usually enjoys a good foot massage, and I'm sure I'm a lot more relaxed after getting one!

The differences between western and eastern medicine are many. Personally, I feel more comfortable with the western method because I am from the US. I prefer the scientific method, but although that usually works great, Chinese medicine has some good value too, and unlike Western medicine, they have had 5000 years to practice, so i'm sure a lot of it is going to work.

But when emergencies come, we usually prefer to stick with what we are familiar with -it is human nature. So, if I break something serious - please send me to a western doctor.

Fortunately, there are many of those in Beijing!

12/1/2004: "The Internet was broken"

For the last 4 days I was unable to access any internet sites outside of China. I am not sure why this would happen, but it started me thinking that maybe the people in charge around here didn't want the little people finding something out. So, if any of my buddies back home stumble across some compelling information, drop me a comment on this blog and I'll follow up with you, ok?

In other news I have a theory that many westerner (more specifically, my family and friends), have a fear of coming to China. The language is one type of barrier or dis-incentive, but their feeling about the food is another. The reality is that there is a huge variety of great tasting chinese food that is easy for a westerner to like.

So, for the next few weeks I'll be toting my digital camera around to make an Introductory-guide to Chinese food for Picky Westerners. :) Stay tuned! There's a lot of tasty yummies!

11/20/2004: "TOP 10 QUESTIONS THE CHINESE ASK ME"

The Chinese are a very wonderful people. Usually, when I meet chinese on the street, or the subway, or in some informal setting, they are very friendly and open. This also means they are very unafraid to ask certain questions. Over the time that I have been in China, I have answered the following questions probably hundreds of times. I don't mind answering them, and it always puts a smile on my face, but some Westerners will undoubtedly be a little surprised:

1. "Oh, you speak Chinese well, how long have you been in China?"
2. "What did you come to China for?"
3. "Are you {French/German/Swiss/Russian - those are the guesses I get}?"
4. "how old are you?" (at this point, I make them guess. The lowest guess has been 19years old, the highest was 29. For those of you who know me, I'm at least one university degree older than that - haha. I'm starting to think that the Chinese are not good at judging western faces. When I tell them my actual age, on one occasion the person actually dropped what they were holding - haha).
5. "Are you married?" (At this point I usually tell them that often Americans spend time working a while before they get married - it's just a cultural difference). If I'm not married, they ask me: "Do you have a Chinese girlfriend?"
6. "Do you have children?"
7. "Do you like China?" (a totally loaded question)
8. "Do you like Chinese people"
9. "What do you think of Chinese food?"
10. "Do you like George Bush?"

So my friends, when you come to China, don't be surprised if these questions are asked of you. In the west, questions numbered 4,5,6 and probably 10 wouldn't be appropriate to ask.

10/10c/2004: "Culture of Teeth"

Americans generally have excellent teeth. When I was growing up, my father continually reminded me that his teeth were awful because he didn't take care of them. Several times while growing up, my father had to stop eating dinner because of a tooth problem, and he had many trips to the tooth doctor to fix the problems he had.

Growing up in the US you quickly learn that it is important to have nice, white, straight teeth. As I've gotten older, I'm not totally convinced that they have to be straight, or even totally white, but it's important that they are healthy and not too gross - of that I am sure.

That being said, besides for a few months of neglect, my teeth are fine. We are not here to discuss my teeth. :)

In China, the situation is different. It is a developing country, so there is a wide variety of...shall we say... mouth healthiness. There are some extremely bad teeth floating around in the population, and they generally suffer from a little bit more neglect than in the US. Advertisements and movie stars don't all have perfect teeth, but surely as time goes on, the teeth are looking better and better in these mediums.

The most interesting thing that I have discovered recently is an answer to a question I first had when I met many Chinese in the US: "why are chinese teeth sometimes jagged or notched on the bottom of their front teeth?" (see the picture, notice the tooth on the left has a notch at the bottom?) I never knew why that was until I came to china. The answer? SUNFLOWER SEEDS.

Yes, the Chinese love to eat roasted salted sun flower seeds. It is truly a national past-time second only to Pingpong and Badminton. While visiting a friend in Guizhou province I once saw a woman eating sunflower seeds and spitting out the shells at such a rapid pace, it made my jaw drop faster than the shells she was spitting out. She was literally like a two-stroke motor - in one bite she would shell the seed, the next step spit out the shell and eat the seed in one motion. The speed of this repeating pattern was amazing - easily every two seconds a new one would be put into her mouth! That's 30 seeds a minute! One of my friends claims she can eat faster than that, but I have yet to get it on video - she was already a bit too shy about me snapping this picture of her tooth - that's why it lookeds so bad, she called me every name in the chinese swear book when I tried to get this picture!

Yes, the tooth is worn down by years of chomping sunflower seeds. I confirmed my theory at lunch one day while my Chinese friends were eating them - YES! The seed edge fits perfectly into that notch in the tooth - very convenient! A quick "CRACK" and some skillful mouthwork and everything is finished! Some of them even have multiple notches as they like to switch sides after a while. Fascinating!

Now my friends, you now know a key insight into Chinese culture - that many of them didn't even realize. If you want to entertain Chinese guests and really make some friends - put some roasted sunflower seeds on the table!

10/10b/2004: "Class again"

So to continue my wrap up of what I've been doing....

After Adrian left, I had to immediately take an entrance exam at my school - for which I was unprepared after not studying any characters for 2 months. I did excellent on the speaking part, but totally bombed on character recognition, so I got put into "B-ban", where "A" is for beginners, B is for people who can speak a little bit and get around without hurting themselves too bad, B+ if for people who are marginally better, C is people maybe who can talk about something a tiny bit off the beaten track, and so on... Some of my classmates were put into B+ Ban which is just B a little farther along.

I ended up petitioning the school with several other classmates to create a new class because if I went with the one they put me in, I would be reviewing 15 of the same chapters that I already studied all over again! So now I am in a new class that is great and fits me very well. Ironically though, I will be leaving the school in November because I just accepted a pretty good job in Beijing at a computer company. This job was a very good fit for me and since I was floating along for such a long time without steady work, it will make me feel more normal to take it. :) I am planning on studying at night during the week to continue my chinese learning.

10/10/2004: "What have I been up to recently"

So to continue my wrap up of what I've been doing....

My friend Adrian visited in early September. It was great to see him and we travelled down to Shanghai and Nanjing ( you can look below for some key photos - I will try to put up some more later). We rode bikes around Beijing, had a good time, and I even thing Adrian may have been getting a little dreamy-eyed for a nice young woman with pretty eyes around here - haha!

One of the more interesting parts of the trip to Shanghai was that we met with a friend of Adrians that he basically only met once and then chatted over email for a few months. Just like many Chinese, this lady could write and read English without too many problems, but when it came to speaking - big problem. Suddenly, i was put into the situation of being a translator! How funny that was! I say it is funny because I don't believe that I am AT ALL qualified to be a translator - haha! How can you translate when 50-80% of what the other person says you don't understand!? Very hard! However, after a few minutes, the woman "dumbed-down" her speech for me and things started to click - what fun that was! haha!

You can see above I was waving my arms around a lot, and I even had to put a finger in my ear to emphasize what I was trying to say - haha! I guess waving the arms helps a lot when you don't know enough words. We were at a Starbucks in Shanghai, and I think the cafienne was getting to me because my arms were waving a lot. Maybe I wasn't really speaking well and it was just the coffee? Hmm... Regardless of all that, we had fun there. Adrian's friends were nice and took us for some great food and drink. I had the first acceptable perl milk tea yet in China - yumm! I may have to go back to Shanghai just for that! To the left is a little picture of Adrian - but it's been blurred to protect his identity from the numerous women worldwide who want to get a piece of him. ;-) Clearly this woman was frustrated with his lack of studying Chinese (he actually studied a bit) - and she wanted to hit him!

10/9/2004: "The culture of paperwork"

Hello everyone! Some of you are getting a little frustrated with the lack of regular postings here. I guess some explanation is in order! In August, I was working teaching a lot of English and basically tromping around Beijing getting my bike fixed and doing all sorts of things having to do with Visas and some of the Beurocracies of living here as a foriegner. When I think of what I did in August, I can't come up with much, but I know I was sure busy. This seguay's nicely into a culture point I'll mention: sometimes it takes longer to get stuff done in Beijing (btw: I've started to say Beijing a lot more than China now because I don't want to generalize too much. It could be better / different in other cities, so "your mileage may vary").

Beijing is truly an interesting place. The Chinese has grasped and taken advantage of some stunning usages of technology. For example, almost everywhere smart cards are used - which is great and convenient. They also have a convenient Pay-as-you-go model for cellphones which keeps you from being tied to a terrible phone company for long or committing to a rate plan that is too expensive. Every once in a while I'm pleasantly surprised at the cleverness of the culture. However, in some ways, things are lagging behind the times a bit.

Generally speaking, there is a lot more useless paperwork going on here than in other countries. Take your worst nightmare from the Department of Motor Vehicles in the US regarding paperwork or forms and double it and that is what you have in many beurocratic systems here in Beijing. For example, I know that in the US, if you buy something or schedule something to be repaired, you don't really need your receipt usually if you want to return it (provided you have packaging or something). You can just give them your name or phone number and that's it.. However here, you absolutely must hang onto every darned little piece of paper you are given or you are going to be out of luck. Add to this the fact that I can't read quite enough chinese yet to completely understand some of these receipts and it becomes very easy to start loosing / accidentally throwing out stuff.

I've been reading that the Gov't here is going to try to make some changes to improve the credit system and change some laws to reduce paperwork, so that is a small light on the horizon. It takes more time for people's habits to change though, so for now, I just bought a little file folder to help me keep all the reciepts!

9/25/2004: "Mooncake & fruitcake"

The Moon festival is coming soon. I'm not completely familiar with this festival, but apparently it's very common for people to give "Moon cakes" as gifts. One of my friends said they are gross to eat, so tonight I asked one of my Chinese friends David if he likes to eat them. "No, they don't taste good". It seems that it's quite common for people to NOT like Moon Cakes. One of my friends just spent 300Yuan on a Moon cake (which is quite a bit). I thought this was strange and I asked him why. He said it's common for people to give them as gifts to people in "power" positions - bosses, managers, and the like. He was giving one to his manager.

So it seems that in China all these people are giving Moon cakes, and nobody really likes them. Apparently there are so many extra, unwanted moon cakes around; they are using them to restore portions of the Great Wall! (joke). But seriously, I thought it was quite interesting - the moon-cake makers are making a lot of money, and it doesn't really matter if it tastes good because nobody is really eating them!

It seems to be a lot like the Fruitcake thing in the west. I've never eaten a fruitcake that I liked, but everyone gives them as gifts around the holidays, so the situation seems much the same.

When I get a chance, I'll put up a picture of a Moon-cake. :)

9/11/2004: "Been Travelling: Come to China"

Sorry I haven't written in a while. I've been a bit busy. I just finished moving and my friend Adrian also came to visit. He gets the prize for being the first friend of mine to come to China to see me (and some of China of course!). Where is everyone else? Hahaha!

I think that a lot of my western friends view a trip to china as too inconvenient. Perhaps they think the plane ride is too far, or they don't like the stories they hear about the squat toilets, or maybe they just fear not being able to communicate. I can understand these fears since I had them myself when I first arrived.

However, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages when considering a trip to this country.

For starters, the plane ride is not bad. You can get a direct flight from any US west-coast city and be here in 12 hours. You can fly into Beijing or Shanghai and I believe even Hong Kong direct - and there are enough Starbucks here to help you get over your jet lag when you arrive. Just try to get some sleep on the plane and you'll be in good shape.

Regarding the toilets, well yes if you compare them to ones in western countries, it can be a problem sometimes. I believe that the public toilets are the worst, but some private toilets in business buildings can also be a problem. However, many other ones are quite tolerable. The only problem being they are a little smelly and often don't have soap. I carry around some waterless alcohol-based soap just for this purpose. Generally, if you can just try not to pay attention too much to them, you'll be able to enjoy the rest of your trip without too much trouble.

Now I have a story about the language. When I first arrived, I basically couldn't speak much Chinese. I knew a handful of words, and often wouldn't put them in the right order. One day I had to meet someone at a place I didn't know to have them help me buy a cellphone. I got off at the wrong subway stop and walked around looking for the place. I finally realized I wasn't going to make it and was lost.

I finally saw a sign for a language school, and figured someone there would know English, so I walked in. The people behind the counter were thrilled to see me, but couldn't understand what I needed. They ushered out a cute little 12 year old girl to translate. Before I knew it, they had borrowed a car for me and were driving me to the place, no strings attached! Wow! That probably wouldn't happen in the US I think!

I recently traveled with my friend Adrian to Shanghai and around Beijing. It's clear that the benefits of coming to china are huge. You get to see a country with over 5,000 years of history! You can gape at a civilization that has had essentially the same written language for the same amount of time, and marvel at the fact that they accomplish so much with a pictographic language!

A view of Shanghai from Renmin Park. Shanghai is filled with new buildings juxtaposed amonst the old. A very rich city.	Nanjing means 'South Capital'. It is a city with many canals, trees and greenery.
Beijing's Lama Temple. Picture compliments of my friend Adrian.	Sugar-coated fruits - yum! The street food in china is plentiful, tasty and unique!

8/17/2004: "Beijing at night"

Summer nights in Beijing can be surprisingly pleasant. If the weather isn't too hot in the evening, many people walk around or "hang out" outside. Riding a bicycle around can be a pleasant experience. Many small restaurants put out tables and chairs outside to allow people to enjoy the night. Groups of people will have long extended dinners, laughing and generally having a good time.

Many times riding home at night, there will be young couples sitting on fences arm in arm, or walking around holding hands. Because there are so many people in Beijing, it is hard for young couples to find privacy of their own. Sometimes the cover of darkness is the only privacy they get - even though there may be another couple nearby, if they can't see them, they pretend they are not there. Many times riding my bike home at night I will see several couples sitting together being romantic.

One characteristic of Beijing in the summer is that the men very much like to walk around in the heat showing their bellies. They will roll up their shirts to their chest and allow the world to see their naturally fit (and sometimes beer-fit) bellies. Very interesting!

Recently I discovered that Beijing does have a small number of popular western sports. The Expatriate community has started a hockey league. Although I haven't attended a game yet, they apparently have regular tournaments throughout Asia. Sounds like fun!

There is also a group that plays the distinctly California sport: Ultimate Frisbee. I recently attended an event by a group playing Ultimate in Beijing. It seemed they were almost completely from North America, with a few local Chinese mixed in. We played indoors at a place in Beijing that was really sweet. For a small fee we got to play on an indoor court and have complete access to their health club which was one of the nicest I've ever been in. It had beautiful weight/exercise room, hot tub, sauna, personal showers, carpets everywhere - very clean and new. It was such a pleasure! However, my Ultimate Frisbee experience was dampened somewhat by the fact that I am out of shape for ultimate frisbee, I have an ankle problem and an often-sore back, and that I was probably the oldest one there - haha. However, I didn't humiliate myself, so maybe I'll do better next time.

To summarize the experience, while showering after that difficult workout, I was so happy with the shower and the facility (and the price) I was thinking, "yeah, I could get used to this!" A message to my friends: when you come out, we are going to that club!

Chinese Culture point:

Recently I decided to move again since my roommate Erin is moving to Shanghai, I've decided to rent a place for myself. I also decided to pay a little more figuring if I can teach a few more English classes every week, I should be able to cover the extra rent cost. The place I've rented is pretty nice, but it desperately needs paint and the bathroom looks like a cave. I negotiated with the landlady to give me a discount on the rent and in exchange I'll pay for some upgrades. To make a long story short, she agreed, but wanted to be involved in that process.

She wanted to see a lot of details in each quote we got - which turned out to be a really good idea. It seems that workmanship in China is solely driven by money. Often if you are re-tiling a bathroom, the worker may quote you a good quality tile price, and then do things like buy cheaper tiles. He will say he will put waterproofing material in, but then won't. Although this happens in the western world as well, I was surprised that all the people I spoke with were so adamant about this as a fact of life. They all suggested I do a large amount of micromanaging of the process to make sure it goes right.

I think I've been sufficiently educated about this now, so we are going forward with one set of workers. I've made sure to buy them food and snacks occasionally to encourage them to do a good job, and I've even helped them bring in about 700lbs of floor and wall tile, so I hope I've earned their good workmanship. However, from what people keep telling me, I must be ever vigilant!

8/7/2004: "Americans behaving badly part 2"

I was recently sitting in the school coffee shop studying one night when a nice young woman came up to me. She asked me if I could help them make some recordings of English dialogs for their education company. All I had to do was show up and recite what they had written. She said that they could only pay 100RMB/hr right now, but maybe later pay more if I spoke with the boss. Since I didn't have anything to do the next morning I decided I could try it and they agreed to meet me at 9am at the south gate of the university.

The next morning I met them and we went to their company. She showed me the script and it was really not bad compared to some of the other stuff I've seen, but I told them that if they were expecting people to learn English from listening to this script, they would learn quite a few bad habits and just generally incorrect information, so I started to do some editing. (One humorous error was their description of Christmas in America: a time when all Americans ring bells and dance around in the streets - there is also a fat man in a red suit who delivers cookies!).

I had also met the boss of the company. He seemed like a nice guy and I agreed to do the first set of recordings for 100/hr an hour and if he liked my work, we could negotiate for a situation we were both happy with. He seemed to like that.

At about 1pm they had apparently found an american woman to show up as well. They wanted us to alternate with the man and the woman's voice so that the students who were listening wouldn't have any problems comprehending English spoken by either sex. No problem I thought, but when I met her, I realized there was going to likely be a problem. I don't remember her name, but let's call her Ann. The first thing I noticed about Ann was that she has a Tattoo on her breast. I know this because she was wearing a low cut shirt. She was 24 or so and was also dressed in kind of an urban street-style outfit that fits in with the tatoo - lots of things dangling off of her, rings, etc. I don't remember exactly. She was also not openly friendly - definitely was aloof when I first met her.

Ann immediately started talking about price with them. She was testy and basically looking for problems. She had insisted they pay her 150/hr the night before and was also told she could negotiate with the boss for more, which she expected to get. Any uncertainty on their part she interpreted as them trying to take advangate of her. Several times she turned to me and said "You have to be careful with these people, they always try to do this...", or "Dealing the the Chinese in business is like this, they are always trying to take advantage of you...", "These people...", "You people..." She was starting to sound like Ross Perot - categorizing all chinese together in one big ugly lump.

The worst part was that I was trying to keep everything civil, and she kept escalating the situation. I finally got everyone to agree we should just start recording and see what happens later.

The recording took some time since the equipment was new and they were having some problems. Any suggestions they gave her, she took with an attitude of "they don't know what they are doing, those idiots" and kept saying things like "I'm a professional, I've done this before, I know what I'm doing, etc". I tried to keep my mouth shut.

We finally got into the recordings and had several good laughs over edits I didn't have time to get to, but then the fun came to an end. The price negotiations for today and the future work began again. She tried to bring me in as being "on her side" several times saying "we". I finally spoke up and said "wait, your negotiations are not the same as mine - I have already made an agreement with them". She turned to me and looked at me like I had betrayed her. I felt bad because I didn't want her to think that, but I just wasn't going to be a jerk and treat these people like they were stupid like she was.

Those of you who understand a little of chinese culture (really it applies in many cultures) understand 关系(pinyin: "guan-xi" or phonetic "gwan-shi"), which means 'caring'. In business dealings it means you care about the relationship between the business parties first - develop some sort of relationship or connection. The assumption is that afterwards you can always find a solution or a happy compromise. For someone who lived in china for 2.5 years, I was surprised to see she didn't understand it. Or perhaps she knew about it, but was tired of it, I don't know. Regardless, she was insolent and demanding - her voice getting higher and higher the more upset she got. I tried more and more to sink into the couch to escape, but I have not mastered the super-power of scattering my molecules and re-assembling them in another place...yet.

Finally the boss got fed up with her attitude. He paid her 200RMB for her 4 hours of work and told her he wouldn't need her services again. She left in a huff. Afterwards I negotiated with him and he was much happier. We settled on a price of 150 including editing time. It would be a little painful for him, but he would get a much higher quality script (with my edits) and his customers would be happier. Except now I have to find another north american speaker.

8/2/2004: "A picture for my brother"

My brother bailed out on the "bachelor hike" before his wedding, so i thought I'd put up a picture I got from it. This was taken right before the bear came charging out of the woods at us. We all went running screaming down the mountain. Actually, that's not true, but we did see a bear that day, and Alan practically stepped on his foot while walking back to the car - that part is true!
This picture is in Jackson Hole Wyoming. It is very majestic and beautiful there.

7/28/2004: "The real reason the US invaded Iraq"

Not exactly China related, but when you consider the big picture it is a little. Anyway, I thought this was quite funny, so I will take a chance that the US will block my site and put it up - haha... It is entitled "the real reason the US invaded Iraq"

7/22/2004: "Guiyang 贵阳"

Last week I went to GuiYang in southern China to visit my classmate who then attempted to strangle me in a cave (see the first movie below)．It is very pretty there. There are these interesting narrow but tall mountains. The sky was clear and it wasn't too hot either. Of course I was the only white guy around so I illicited a few stares from the local people and especially their children who would walk up and say "hello"and when I said hello back, they sometimes would run away laughing. Quite an interesting experience! The trip was good and I had many reasons to be happy with it.

Here's a picture of a very common occurrance in southern china - street food vendors cooking up stuff everywhere on a small bowl of charcoal and a screen. Several times I ate BBQ tofu (i know the chinese name, but I don't know the characters yet).

7/17/2004: "Thailand Motorcycle Taxi"

Last week I went to Thailand to visit my friend Ladda. It was fun to see the differences in lifestyle in another major Asian metropolis. There are several forms of transportation in Bankok. You have your regular taxi, you have a Tuk-Tuk and you have a Motorcycle Taxi. The most dangerous and alarming is the Motorcycle Taxi where young women will often sit side-saddle on them while they zip precariously fast through traffic. No helmets either.

				Tuk Tuk Video!

For the rest of the pictures, click on the picture of the Thai Fruit below! This fruit is tasty, but watch out for the pits!

7/17/2004: "Plane Flight problems"

Last week I went to Thailand to visit my friend Ladda. I started my trip on a thursday in Beijing. When I arrived at the Beijing airport, I was a little late, but still had 30 minutes until departure. However, in China it seems they don't like that and won't let you on the plane, so I had to miss it and get the next flight the following day. Sadly, the weather was bad, so that flight was delayed 5 hrs, which meant I arrived in Bankok at 5:30am on very little sleep. What a mess.

Foolishly thinking that this was the end of my airline troubles, I misread the return ticket time and arrived 12hrs late for my departure (it was in 24hr format!) - argh! So, I had to pay a penalty to get ANOTHER ticket back to Beijing 12hrs later. That night I arrived early for the 1:30am flight why do they have a 4hr flight start at 1:30am??). At 2pm we boarded (they were late), and then we proceeded to leave the gate and return to the gate about 56 times because of some problem with the plane.

I was so tired since I had taken a night train to Bankok the day before and hadn't slept much (some 16 year old pervert kept peeking in my sleeper compartment waking me up), so I was drifting in and out and all I remember is some guy (from Isreal?) singing and keeping people awake. Eventually at 5am, the flight was cancelled and they moved us to an 11am flight on Thai airlines. I slept on the floor of the business class lounge with a bunch of other pissed off people. Eventually I made it back to Beijing!

7/17/2004: "Revisit of Xi'an pictures"

Many people haven't seen the pictures I took of the Xi'an (西安)trip I had in early May. I think this is because I put up just too many pictures. So, I have condensed this presentation and I am experimenting with using a .pdf slideshow to show the pictures to you. You can download the .pdf file and see the slideshow by clicking on this link. Again, please remember all pictures on this site are copyrighted. Thanks and enjoy the pictures! Be careful, it's 10 megs.

7/10/2004: "Shamus Navarro"

While in Mountain View California, I met a fellow who was a travelling poet. He gave us a little recital and I caught it on video for you all. He travels doing his poetry and accepts donations. This is not Robert Frost type of stuff though, but it's a good piece of American culture and he even through in a slightly incorrect pronounciation of Beijing. If you want to send him an email, send it here: seamusrecites@comcast.com:

"Beauty"

(the file is about 8 megs, so be patient)

7/9/2004: "Went to QingDao"

I went to Qingdao for a few days and just got back last night. It's nice and a "small" city, but still huge by western standards. Here's a picture:

I also took a day trip to Laoshan mountain which is a very cool and picturesque place. While going there, we spent a long time behind a 3 wheeled motorcycle taxi which was giving a very uncomfortable bumpy ride to this well dressed woman. Every time it hit a bump (there were a lot), her head would hit the roof and she'd nearly fall out. Poor girl:

Finally ,there was this very informative and entertaining sign on the climb up the mountain:

I'm going to thailand tonight to meet up with Ladda. I didn't have time to book ahead at a place to stay, and my plane arrives after midnight- so I may be in for a bit of an adventure! Stay tuned!

6/29/2004: "Bicycle thieves are the scum of the earth"

Today I had my second bicycle stolen. The first was stolen three days ago. I guess I was asking for it because I had so many people telling me that bikes get stolen, but I had gone for 5 months without a problem. ha! What sort of a theif would steal a bike when it is pouring rain out, I don't know.

Awful human. Did I say human? I meant to say DOG. Oh, wait, that would be too nice, because although they eat dogs in china, calling a bicycle theif a dog would BE DISRESPECTFUL TO A DEAD DOG ON A STICK, so I can't call them that. How about calling bicycle thieves, ROTTING SOULLESS CARCASSES THAT ARE A BLACK CANCEROUS WOUND ON THE FACE OF SOCIETY. There, that's better.

Why are they so bad? Well because people who ride bicycles in Beijing often DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY, and although I am not starving, other people who DON'T HAVE money routinely get their bicycles stolen. Those bicycles are absolutely necessary for them to get to work to feed their families. This is serious crap, I'm not understating this. A bicycle thief really does suck.

Plus, it would be nice to ride a decent bike everyday in Beijing (since pretty much everyone has to ride one to get around), so it would be nice to be able to have a decent one, but NOOOOOOOO, Mr. I'm-going-to-steal-your-bike-because-i'm-a-walking-soulless-carcass won't let anyone enjoy that possibility.

Secondly, because bicyle thievery is so common, people don't even bother to keep their bikes in good running order for fear they will get stolen if they do. I've seen bikes that can't stop collide into cars/people and many others use the Flint-Stones foot-brake method because the people fear that having a bike with working brakes may make it an attractive theft target. Well maybe not everyone, but some.

Yes, i'm pissed off.

6/24/2004: "Craving Enchiladas"

While back in the US, I visited my good friend L. who loves to eat spicy food. After begging, we went to my favorite Mexican-american restaurant called Andale in Palo Alto, California. It was as wonderfully cheesy and luscious as I remember!

We ordered enchilada's and tamales as a dinner plate complete with savory pinto beans and spanish rice. She ordered the Tamale which is a corn husk cake-like thing with meat inside. Somewhat like a 包子，but with mostly meat and seasonings inside. I ordered the enchilada which is cheese and chicken with some quacamole (avacado) sauce and sour cream on top. Oh my god, i'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

6/22/2004: "Whoops, been busy..."

I was back in the US last week for my brothers wedding. I have a lot of interesting things to talk about, but no time. I have the first of three final exams tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll leave you with a picture of two of my siblings.

5/22/2004: "Stealing the weekend"

During the first week of May there is a holiday in China. It is called the 5/1 holiday. During this time schools let out for the week and in fact, many businesses shut down as well.

My classmates and I were shocked to discover that the holiday only includes the first weekend and the following weekdays - NOT THE NEXT WEEKEND. This means you are expected to come into work/school for the weekend and the following week. 7 days straight of school! OH THE HORROR! ;-)

There was almost an outright rebellion in my class when people heard this. In the west, people NEVER have to come to school on the weekends unless you go to a weekend school. The weekends are sacred! Additionally many of my european and american classmates had already booked vacations during that final weekend, so they just told the teacher "sorry, but we won't be here".

Technically what the govornment is doing is sliding the two working days of thursday and friday into the weekend - basically "stealing the weekend" and moving it back into the week. I was told this was popular because many people return home for the holidays and it takes them a full day to travel by train going to and from (in china, travelling by train is the most common form of longer distance transportation), so by making a long contiguous length of time with no work allows people the necessary time to visit home.

Regardless, when I returned, 7 days straight of school was a bit rough - mostly just the waking up at 7am part for 7 days!

Again, this would NEVER happen in the US - the weekends are sacred ground - holy ground! haha.

When we returned, we all shared our vacation stories. One of my French classmates rode his bicycle 3 days with some friends to a famous mountain south of Beijing. Quite an adventure! he rode a bicycle that didn't fit him, so he put his bag on top of the seat and sat on top of that! Of course it was very uncomfortable. He also said that they stayed in some extremely cheap places for the night - 5 yuen each - and he actually tried to bargain the price down (just for fun - crazy guy he loves to bargain). 5 Yuen is .60cents in the US. You can't share a room for a night in the US for under $19, so this was extremely cheap!

5/20/2004: "Buying Bannanas"

There are many small little produce markets around Beijing - some of them are located on the back of 3 wheeled bicycles on side streets and some of them are in big markets similar to what you would find in Europe or the US.

A while back, I noticed a strange problem when I would try to buy bannanas. I would approach the vendor and point at the bannanas and say "please, I want to buy one" "wo xiang mai yi ge". Then they would give me three small bannanas. The first two times this happened, I figured that it was me saying something wrong. Why would they give me 3 when I asked for 1?

Later, I discovered that produce is measured in "jin" as a measurement in Beijing. 1 "jin" is about 500 grams. So, when I said "give me one" they interpreted it as my saying "give me one jin worth of that". When I discovered this, I laughed. In America we say a "bunch" of bannanas, but if we say "one" we just mean one bannana!

5/18/2004: "Don't get the wrong idea"

Actually I have had an amazing amount of excellent chinese food in Beijing. Beijing has a plethora of good restaurants - both small and large to feed almost any palette. Of course the chinese ones are the better ones.

Another funny thing happened recently. I've been trying to get some western sheet music of some Broadway show tunes I used to sing in college, but they are very hard to find here in Beijing. I enlisted the help of Wood, - a friend who is currently frantically studying for a big English exam this June - to help me out.

We were trying to find a place that had a music school and a related music store. We had both split up and were asking directions. Accidentally, I ended up asking the same guy that he had asked earlier for directions. Later, Wood told me that the man was not very helpful (quite short, actually with his answers), but for me, he was extremely helpful, explaining everything in detail, pointing and gesturing and such. Wood found the whole situation funny, which is good because one of my classmates who married a chinese woman told me that his wife gets annoyed when this happens: "why should they treat you any differently than me?" I've been thinking that if enough foriegners start coming to China, things will maybe swing the other way...

In the meantime, I'm hitting the books again. I taught 7.5 hrs of English classes this weekend and my voice was a little tired. Lots of great kids. I do my best to be goofy while somewhat staying on topic and teaching them some good pronounciation. A MESSAGE TO JENNY CHEN IF YOU ARE READING THIS: Jenny, where are those orderly, organized, quiet schoolkids you were telling me you taught when you lived in China? I can't find them. These kids are pretty boisterous and noisy just like I was when I was younger. Ha!

5/15/2004: "Hey Mom, I ate Mud-Snake for dinner"

Tonight I went out to dinner with a friend from southern China. We went out for "huo guo" which I'm sure I haven't spelled right, but it basically is called "hot pot". You get a big bowl of spiced liquid with veggies and stuff - split down the middle: spicy on one side, and mild on the other - and you order various things to put in it.

My friend being from southern china was digging right into the hot stuff. When I asked if they had eaten "Gou Rou" there before, they replied 当然！"Dang Ran!" (of course). Wow. Fido beware. However, I've changed a lot about my culinary habits since coming to China. I've eaten a few stranger things than I may have normally but I haven't quite gone out on the edge yet. Tonight I definitely pushed myself, and although I didn't jump off, I came pretty close for a guy who's grew up thinking that "Honeycombs" brand sugar-cereal was exotic spicy food.

We ordered something that came to our table still wiggling. They looked like eels to me with their heads cut off, but my friend translated loosely as something about a snake (but it wasn't) and it likes to hang out in the mud. It also was still wiggling a bit when they put it on the table. Startled I pointed and said "uhh... it's alive" and my friend replied "Yes, it's fresh!" with a happy grin and plunked it into the boiling stew.

It was actually pretty good! The only problem was that there were bones everywhere and it kept slipping out of my chopsticks.

I've come to realize that my American diet has made me somewhat squeemish to eating foods that are out of my normal culinary range. This isn't a problem in the US, but now that I'm out of the US, I'm realizing I really am missing out on a variety of things! For one, the spicy food - I've got to get better at eating it because a lot of folks eat spicy here.

While I'm at it, I think i've discovered why America has a weight problem and why China doesn't: Chopsticks. Basically, you burn more calories eating with chopsticks because you can't put much in your mouth each time you take a bite. You move your arms back and forth to the bowls/dishes much more than with a fork, thus burning more calories and loosing weight. I've actually gotten HUNGRIER (occasionally) when I started to eat chinese food rather than less hungry as you would expect. In America, you can put large chunks of food on your fork and stuff it all in your mouth in one happy bite. You can do this so quickly that you put more food inside of you before your stomach realizes it is full. Also the portions tend to be quite large in the US - and of course there is all this cheese everywhere. This is the problem! Now that I've solved that, onto the next problem... Oh I forgot to mention that in Beijing people walk a heck of a lot more and ride bikes all the time too.

5/10/2004: "The bank took my money"

I've been trying to get my plane flight back to China for a week or so now. Buying online from america is going to be too expensive because I waited too long to get the ticket. I finally found a place with a decent price and faxed them a copy of my passport. They were going to charge me about 4500RMB. But, when I went to the bank, the machine didn't give me my money for some reason.

The next day I discovered that the machine had debited the money from my account anyway! Ugh! So, I had to skip part of my class to make copies of the reciepts and have my friends help me argue with the bank. The verdict? Maybe I'll get my money in a month! ugh! I couldn't help but think that a very basic function of an ATM machine is to not take your money if it doesn't give you money, and (vice-versa), not give money when it can't take it from your bank. This hasn't happened in the US to me before, but I've already bumped into 2 other people who've had this problem here. Ugh.

So, I search frantically for a ticket.

5/6/2004: "Xi'An Trip"

If you are the impatient type and don't want to read, click here for photos. The descriptions below should be read to get the whole story though...

I just got back this morning from a trip to Xi'An. Last week was a bit crazy because I had exams for 3 days and I had to move at the same time. Unfortunately because of some miscommunications, my roomates and I had to move out of our place by 5/2 and I only found out on 4/28, so I had very little time. Many thanks to my friends Carol, Wood, and Ellen (Yin Ping) who helped me a lot in finding a new place. I really appreciate the help!

I am now living only 7 minutes by bicycle from my school, which is much more convenient. It is farther from downtown, but that's ok since I seem to spend most of my time at school studying.

After finding my new place and literally dumping all my things in the corner of the room, I packed for my trip and left. I had selected a trip that the school was offering the students in my class. It was a whirlwind tour of central China: first to Zhengzhou city, then to Kaifeng, then to Xi'An with a few other places thrown in.

On the trip were many Indonesian students. Before the trip I had no idea that there were so many in our school, but that could be because there are very few in my building where I study. The trip also had some Japanese, Korean and a few others. I was the only American there. There were sixty people and the trip was quite well organized by a place called "China M&R Special Tours" (shanshuitour@sohu.com). The main tour guide was Wang Nan (Mr. Wang) who was quite funny and could speak enough english to get us by. I think I was the worst chinese student there - many of the other students were far better than I in chinese, so he was speaking a lot in chinese and I wasn't always sure what was going to happen next...

We took a train from Beijing on Saturday night (hours after I finished moving) to Zhengzhou city. It was a deluxe sleeper train and was quite nice. You do have to be ready to bump and squash against people - so if you are from the US and haven't traveled by train, it could be a bit different. The ride took 10hours and arrived in the morning in Zhengzhou. We were warned that there were pickpockets in the train station, but nobody had any problems. I think that because we were in a big group we may have been ok.

Anyway, here's the quite list of things before I get to the pictures:

• Lord Bao's Temple
• Ancient Capital at Kaifeng (used to be a capital of the Henan province, but it moved because it kept getting flooded)
• Yellow River
• Iron Pagoda
• Shaolin Temple
• Pagoda Forest
• Longman Caves / Luoyang (pretty city)
• Guanlin (nice place)
• Xi'An Dumpling Festival / City Wall
• Dayan Pagoda
• Terra Cotta Warriors
• Stone Tablet forest

But one of the biggest highlights was meeting a whole bunch of new people and making some new friends. We all had a great time and took many pictures.

Some things I found out that I thought were interesting. Lord Bao used to be the Mayor of Kaifeng and was famous because he was very just and fair. He didn't like corruption at all. Apparently if you wanted to see the mayor, you had to come to the gate of the city and put your name down on the list. If you didn't pay a lot of money to the guards they wouldn't put your name down. Lord Bao didn't like this, but he knew it was a cultural thing that couldn't be changed overnight, so instead he instituted a "back door" policy for all the poor people in the town. At night, a back gate to the compound would be opened so that the poor people could come in and ask questions and see him.

In Henan province, it a common greeting for people to say "Zhong bu zhong" which literally means "Is it, or is it not in the middle". This is used as a greeting occasionally in this province and is similar to how people in the north say ask you if you have eaten as a form of greeting (instead of saying "hello, how are you", they say "hello, have you eaten?" as a greeting - I'm still not used to that yet haha).

I also learned a lot about the Yellow River. It is considered be the people in the Henan province to be the cradle of Chinese civilization. Our guide told us that if you took a bottle of water from the yellow river, after the water settled, it would be 1/2 sand. Much of the river is shallow and is filled with sand and silt, so it is very difficult to traverse by boat. Our other guide told us the reason why chinese are considered to be "yellow" is because they all have drank water from the yellow river.

After staying in the zhengzhou region for two days, we took a daytime train to Xi'an. This was an unexpected pain in the butt because 1) the trip was 7hrs, when most of us expected it to be 3 or 4, and 2) the seats were very hard. Many of us were quite annoyed at that, but we got over it. When we arrived in Xi'an we were able to see the longest and best preserved city wall in the world. It's quite impressive. The dumplings we ate that night were the best I've ever had, and the dinner was thoroughly enjoyed by all. I still drool if I think about it too much!

Afterwards many of us decided to walk back to the hotel, which was fun. We walked by the old Bell Tower in the center of town which was light up and was very pretty. I noticed about 15 bats flying around high above the tower, going after all the bugs that were being attracted by the lights. I thought it was cool, but I wasn't able to get a good bat-picture.

The train ride back the next day was not on a deluxe train, but it was still servicable. I was able to talk to one of the teachers at the school and he consoled me that although I couldn't pick out enough words in my comprehension, that I was on the right track and was getting a lot closer to being able understand many many things. He was a very nice gentleman and I can tell that he has teaching in his blood. He's patient and was willing to help us all at 11pm at night, on a cramped and crowded train - he must like to teach!

5/6/2004: "Great Wall Trip"

Almost a month ago now, I went to see one of the great wonders of the world. Known to many westerners as "The Great Wall of China", inside of China it is called "Chang Cheng"¡°³¤³Ç¡± (I think that's right), which literally means "long city". My school organized a trip for all the A-level chinese students. We all piled into a bus and were driven to the Mutianyu location. There are several locations where you can see the great wall throughout china, but Mutianyu is one of the newest sections (it's still over 600 years old however). It was restored sometime recently so that more tourists can see it, and it is only about an hour bus ride from Beijing.

After you park, in order to get to the wall, you walk by a go-cart track, and a whole row of vendors trying to sell you everything from a silk american flag scarf to a chairman Mao-era hat. You can buy ice cream and coke and other tasty yummies too - so in that sense it is not too different from some tourist spots in the US. Many of the vendors have even mastered a few english words: "Hello" and "only a few dollars", etc. Once you pass them, you walk up to the entry way and start climing the mountain. I split off from the group halfway up when we reached a fork in the road - preferring to go solo in typical Callahan fashion. I bumped into some chinese on the way up who were quite friendly and spoke a little english with me. I chatted back to them in a combination of English and Chinese and they were very happy to hear I was studying Hanyu (chinese) in Beijing. It was a beautiful day - there were many reasons to be happy.

When I reached the top, it was early in the day and there weren't many people up there yet, so I was able to snap a few pictures without having too many people in the way. I discovered later that there is actually a chair lift or cable-car ride you can take that brings you to the top, so on peak days (it was a monday, so it wasn't crowded there), the wall can often be flooded with people because anyone who can't walk up the 20 flights of stairs can take the chairlift instead.

I hiked around the wall a bit and asked some chinese to take my picture. They immediately asked me to be in a picture with them. If you have been reading this website for long enough, you know that this is common in touristy areas for someone like me. Chinese from other areas of the country - people who have never seen a westerner in real life - will often come to these places to travel. When they see someone like me they ask for a picture - it always puts a smile on my face and I'm happy to oblige.

Later, I bumped into my classmates and we all had lunch together at one of the empty guard stations. Some of us climbed around on the unrestored section of the wall. I made a video of that too. I also have a link for pictures.

Afterwards, we were all tired, and so many of us rode the "speed chute" down to the parking area. It was faster and more fun than walking down from the great wall. Although I felt that I shouldn't be supporting the twisting of a national monument into a tacky tourist attraction, I was tired and late too, so I took the ride. I had some guilty pleasure because it was quite fun (and I didn't crash horribly like I did many years ago on Gunstock mountain in New Hampshire one summer, where my cart flipped over and I scraped all the skin off of both shoulders!).

I snapped a few pictures of my classmates going down, and apparently Max took a video the whole way - brave man. Maybe if he sends it to me I'll put that up too. haha!

SEE THE PICTURES | SEE THE VIDEO

5/1/2004: "Lots of updates coming"

Folks, I've averaged 12hrs of studying almost every day for the last 2-3 weeks. I've made a trip to the great wall, I've inhaled some special Beijing Tree-fluff, I've moved again, I've taken 3 major exams in 3 days, and tonight I embark on a journey to Xi'an for 4 days. I have a lot of updates to do, but I haven't a chance yet. Please be patient.

Best wishes to my friend Adrian G, who is soon to become a Triathlete. Go kick some butt, dude! :)

4/10/2004: "Commute pictures"

It is hard to describe what commuting and traffic is like in Beijing. So, I decided to take my camera along with me and take some pictures and video. Some of the video is bouncing around a bit because i'm pedaling and holding only one hand on the handlebars at the same time, so please try not to get sick watching it. haha.

Videos: I accidently recorded these on the highest quality level, so they are large. I'll just put up one for now because it's going to take me forever to upload it. I'm getting lazy, so I'm just going to put in links:

Video 1

4/9/2004: "Brent! Have you ever seen music like this?"

I recently attended a rehearsal for the chorus at my school. I thought it would be fun to sit in and see if they were singing any songs in English, or at least see if I felt like joining up. I had thought that it would be a good opportunity for me to practice listening and speaking mandarin, as well as meet some of my fellow students.

Well, it turns out that I was the only westerner there for a while, but fortunately another guy showed up a few minutes later. The first big shock for me was that the music notation they use is like nothing I've ever seen before! It's based on the "fixed Do" system, and they use numbers 1-8 to denote what note you are singing. I'm not sure at all how they deal with the notes once you go out of an octave, but apparently they think it is easier. I was totally lost. Additionally, since I can't read many characters yet, I was really in bad shape.

Here's a picture of the notation - click on it for a larger view.

It really is interesting, but I finally communicated to them that if they had standard notation, it would be better for me. It didn't help me much because my sight-reading skills are 12 years out of date, so I was pretty miserable!

I am a little mystified why they would teach everyone a system which is not common (maybe they use it somewhere else, but I have never heard of it). When I was in Music School there was a big talk once with all these composers and famous people about how they could write music differently to make it easier to read - naturally all of us music students were interested in finding an easier way to learn to read music, but after much discussion, it became clear that the existing notation system was, in fact, quite good and appropriate. Well, I'm sure the Chinese system has it's benifits, I'm just irritated and crabby that if I want to read the music, I may have to learn this system.

4/7/2004: "China's Economic Growth"

Due to an administrative error, some pictures on my computer were deleted, so I don't have any exciting new pictures right now. So, I'll take this time to briefly -very briefly because I have to continue to study the new words from chapter 18 tonight- discuss a few things I've noticed that are possibly playing a role in limiting China's economic growth.

The first one I noticed when I went to pay my tuition. I went to the bank to change over my travelers checks for cash to pay tuition and they gave me something like 117 one hundred Yuan bank notes. I asked the bank teller if I could exchange them for some 1000 Yuan notes and she said "Mei you" which means "we don't have". At the time I thought that they had just run out, but so far the information I have indicates that there ARE NONE.

To put this in perspective, 100RMB (Yuan) is equivalent to about $12 US dollars. Now things are a lot less expensive in China, so that goes a long way (you can eat frugally for 10 days on 100 Yuan), which is great, but if you want to buy anything that is over $50 US dollars, you are starting to have to carry around a lot of these notes - which just isn't practical.

I am definitely no economist, but I am sure this is affecting the economy in strange ways - it is probably keeping inflation down for one!

The second is that there is very little usage of credit cards here. Everything everywhere is all about cash, cash, cash! You won't be accumulating any airline mileage by using your credit card in China because 90% of all the vendors don't accept Visa/MC or anything at all from what I can see. They refuse to share the burden of the fees that western vendors will, and additionally since there is no credit system in China, it's very risky for them as well. Overall, I understand it now, and I accept this reality.

Because of this cash-only system and the rampant prevalence of what I call "micro vendors" (man with a suitcase selling DVD's at the bus stop, 3 wheeled bicycle on top of which said vendor makes Potato Pancakes, etc), the ability for the govornment to track and collect taxes from these people seems to be impossible.

There are obvious positive effects to this for the consumer and tourist of course - bargaining, good prices, flexibility in businesses, etc - so personally I don't mind, but I'm sure it's bothering the gov't like an itch that they just can't reach in order to scratch.

(As a side note - taxis are VERY CHEAP in Beijing! It's so nice, and they are everywhere too - if you walk too close to the curb, one will pull up beside you and honk his horn to give you a ride!)

Until next time... zai jian!

-pat

4/3/2004: "Dust Storm"

I was knocked out for three days with what I call the "dust flu" last week. I was riding my bike to an internet cafe to post updates to this very website you are reading now, when an enormous wind gust blew a whole pile of dust onto me - yuck! When I got off my bike, I was able to witness the same wind blowing all of the dust off the top 10 floors of a new building they were building nearby - it was quite a sight - almost like an explosion was going off on the building up there!

I my fleece jacket smelled like I had rolled in the dirt afterwards - blech! Anyway, thinking I was living through a dust storm, I quickly text messaged my friends who said "probably not", and then later I confirmed it with two of my english students who said indeed, a real dust storm is far worse - they mentioned something about the sky going dark and when you look the lights that are on,they appear green instead of their natural color because of all the dust in the air. Yikes. I hope I'm not on my bike when that hits!

of school because of it. I'm now pretty far behind and am taking a few minutes to update my webpage amongst a weekend of pure studying. I have to learn about 100 words in addition to writing an essay in chinese.

Here are a few extra pictures I had lying around. This one is of what they call a "bangbangche". These three wheeled vehicles are nowhere to be seen during the day, but they prowl around Beijing at night. So far that I can tell, they serve two purposes: 1) to make as much noise as possible to wake everyone up (it seems the have huge 1 cylinder engines that never go above 100rpm - no mufflers either), and 2) Pollute as much as possible (one of these went by me while I was riding my bicycle home late at night and I was so engulfed in black smoke, that I couldn't see the road for a few seconds). Beijing is starting to improve it's international image for the 2008 olympic games, so I'm sure they have a plan to get rid of these things and buy some 4 stroke pickup trucks.

On the more positive side, America played china in a big match of Pingpong.

It was an overcast, but warm day in the park near our home where the game took place. Many neighbors came out to watch the big nose American push up his sleeves and boast in a typical American fashion that he was going to win (but I didn't really boast - i'm not that dumb!). China, represented here by XiaoNie, had a swift hand - deft of skill!

Yes, they have outdoor public pingpong tables in Beijing - very cool, except we had to stop regularly when the wind started blowing. Those extremely lightweight balls don't respond very predictably when it is windy out.

So anyway, America, represented by none other than me, was not quite as skilled...

(note that the all the neighborhood kids all came out to watch. One of them was happily running around yelling "WaiguoRen! WaiguoRen!" - which means "Foreigner", the whole time. See, this was a very big event in China that day!

Sadly, I didn't come through for the US - my technique was not all there.

In this picture, you can see I'm running away from the competition - actually I'm chasing the ball, which I failed to hit

back across the table. I have many other embarrassing shots like this, but I won't humiliate myself anymore.

I'm sorry to report that America was crushed! However, I will give credit where it is due - to the victor: China!

3/29/2004: "Korean Dancers"

I had my first skate class on Saturday. It went pretty well with 7 students. All where very into it and seemed like they will come back. My roomates helped me out quite a bit - thanks if you read this!

Afterward, we were walking out of the campus and discovered a large group of Korean women dancing - or practicing some routing. It seemed to be quite complex - they had an instructor and everything. I immediately thought of my website and the fun people would have seeing this, so I pulled out my camera and started making this little film. It's only 2 megs, but I have a 12 meg version with more slinky footage, so if you like what you see, leave me a note and I'll put up the bigger one.

It is interesting to note that there are so many Koreans in Beijing that they can form their own dance troupe. I can't see the Americans doing that - even if there were enough of them.

I recently realized that my geography is quite bad for this region. I didn't realize that I was living at the same longitude as north korea - quite far north!

3/28/2004: "Cute as a button"

I have many opportunities to take interesting pictures, but somehow often forget my camera. I think this is why camera phones are so popular. However, the quality of a camera phone's camera just can't match that of a real camera.

Anyway, I happened to have my camera on me and snapped this shot of an adorable kid and her mother.

3/27/2004: "taking my job seriously"

I wanted to let you know I'm taking my job of teaching English and American culture to my roomates very seriously. Witness this very serious lesson in American Culture I recently gave to my roomates (.wav audio file - 2 megs).

(note to my chinese English Language students - this is an example of "sarcasm").

3/26/2004: "My Food Is Problematic" said River (from the cancelled TV show "Firefly")

Well, my food is a little problematic too. It seems there is not much cheese in Beijing. My french friends who love cheese would not be pleased! I do love cheese, but not as much as chocolate - and there is a little problem with chocolate in Beijing too, but that is for another discussion. First the cheese...

In the cafeteria, there are no dishes with cheese in them. You can order an omelette made from eggs with beef, pork and vegetables, but not any cheese. All the other restaurants I have been with have a very limited cheese selection.

In America, you cannot visit a restaurant, snack stand, or vending machine without some products having cheese or cheese flavoring in them! In America (perhaps -only- in america), you can actually have "cheese food" which is not actually cheese, but some sort of manufactured product that is like cheese, but not really. I guess it's designed to be cheaper and more easy to manufacture, and since they put the words "cheese food" in small letters, many Americans are fooled into thinking it's actually cheese. So strange!

People love cheese in the US - perhaps that is also contributing to America's obesity problem. Yes, the Chinese people I've met have mentioned America's now world-famous problem with being Fat - and usually with a smile on their faces. Who can blame them for feeling a little self-rightous learning that the most powerful nation in the world, with the most aggressive president in the world (flexing his muscles with high-school football player enthusiasm, I may add), with the most advanced technologies in medicine and science, can't seem to keep itself from fattening up like pigs on a farm?

Well anyway, I find it all quite interesting! I've not eaten much cheese recently - although a friend of mine Katherine (the best English speaker who is native Chinese I've thus-far met in China, btw) invited me to her birthday party at a Pizza Hut. My American friends will be shocked to discover that this pizza hut was like a palace! More elegant and nice than most 4 star restaurants in San Francisco! Glass lined stair cases, marble everywhere, custom interior design with special lights - fancy fancy! It was expensive by Chinese standards, but we did feed 6 people for $30, so quite cheap actually. (Alas, there was no tomato sauce on the pizza though.) My chinese friends there were surprised to discover that the Pizza Hut's in the US are relatively cheap and unelegant places (thus the word "hut").

So anyway, i'm not eating much cheese recently, and I do believe... I'm getting thinner! :)

3/25/2004: "Americans in Beijing"

I've managed to catch back up in my studies here, although that is really silly to say because because I just got a pile of homework for today and yet another opportunity to fall far behind!

Here is an excerpt of a letter I wrote to some friends who are considering coming to Beijing to study. Both of them are working professionals in the US who are interested in a lifestyle change - similar to how I was when I decided to leave.

"When you come here to study, you need to decide how serious you want to be. Many foriegners (westerners) who come to study are pretty divided in this sense. Some of them aren't always taking it very seriously and occasionally start feeling pretty stupid because they are falling far behind in their classes here. The homework is definitely piled high, but you start to understand that it is necessary only after you start to get an idea of how much there is to learn. The language taught in the book is only 1/2 of the language, the other parts are colloquial expressions and cultural information you need to learn outside or (sometimes if you are lucky) in classes.

Learning an entire language is a complex and difficult task. There is no easy way to do it. Consistent dedication combined with many hours of studying, constant review, and persistence are the only viable ways to learn. Sadly, there is no pill we can take to make it easier or happen faster. However, it is important to note that you can 'shoot yourself in the foot' with a bad study method. My newer attempts at studying encorporate a sort of 'cross-training' approach where I learn the characters, do dictation, write little stories, and then meet with a study partner to review and practice conversations which are designed to help me digest and incorporate the new words into my speaking habits.

However, the reward is great. There are moments when I can actually communicate with people and it's quite refreshing and pleasing. I've been studying for just over a month now, and I see and feel a difference in my ability already.

I must warn you though - it is easy to start feeling down and stupid - if you slack off, 'fall off the wagon' and stop pushing yourself to do it, it's easy to fall behind.

I keep telling myself that I gave up a lot to be here: jobs, friends, financial stuff, family, etc - so that motivates me pretty well. When my classmates sometimes ask my why I spend so much time studying, I tell them that I gave up a lot - I miss my friends, family, and the beautiful state of California - and giving up all that is not worth it if I don't get real value out of my experience here.

I probably study more than most of my classmates, but I am not the best in my little class. Many people have strengths that far exceed mine in class - some people can comprehend quicker, learn characters quicker, read better, etc, but it doesn't matter when you consider that there is far, far to go to learn a language.

You CAN function in Beijing only knowing a handful of words and a piece of the culture, but you will probably not be happy for long. There are many Americans here who feel that they are constantly being cheated, taken advantage of, and laughed at because they don't understand enough of both of these things (culture and language). Sadly, when these things happen to these people, you start to see the dark side of American culture - the selfishness, intolerance and impatience. I don't want to be one of those people, and so I study and try to learn as much as possible. The people here can be quite pleasant if you open your eyes and your mind enough - very very sweet, generous and warm hearted - easily making the journey (thus far, for me) worth it!

Hope you can come!
-pat"

3/22/2004: "Falling behind"

I'm struggling to stay in step with the class recently. We are learning about 20-30 characters a day now, and it is a struggle to find a study method that works well. Last week I experimented with flash cards and some other methods and it was a disaster - making me fall behind. I am now trying to play catchup.

I've enlisted my roomates to help me with starting a skate class in Beijing for fun, take a look at www.youskate.com to see the details. It's a great opportunity for my roomates to see how a small business can be started and run. I've been delegating tasks too with regularity. My last challenge is to find some inline hockey skates that fit me here in china. That's pretty hard to do.

Enjoy the recent pictures, Last weekend I took a trip to JingShan park near the Forbidden city. This is as close to the Forbidden City I've gotten - and I was hoping for a better view inside, but the smog of Beijing really ruined some of the possibilities. I explained to two of my language students why it's a bad sign that you can look directly at the sun on most days in Beijing and not hurt your eyes. It had never occurred to them why that was bad until I explained it (there's a picture of that on the right). As most of my western friends know, you can hardly ever look directly at the sun in the US until it is very close to the horizon - and even then it can be dangerous for your eyes.

I'll try to put up more interesting observations later.

3/17/2004: "Power of Coffee"

It seems that the Chinese have not completely understood the financial and physiological impacts of Coffee. There are a few starbucks coffee shops around, and they are doing very well, but many chinese have not really developed a taste for coffee (at least where I'm at). Starbucks is definitely priced well above the disposable income level of many chinese I know here, so that should discourage things, but apparently not. I'm also surprised to say that I must admit even more fondness for starbucks now that there is hardly anything like it around.

In the US, where I was living, and also in pretty much every major city, there are many more coffee shops. Some are Starbucks, but there is also a healthy amount of competition. Here in Beijing, the only think that is competing like that seem to be restaurants. Good coffee is hard to find.

Not that I drink much coffee.

I actually drink Mocha, which is basically chocolately & powerful coffee concentrate. OK, so it's pretty much the same, but that extra kick of sweetness and chocolate is quite tasty.

Why am I writing about this? Well, every morning it is a struggle to get up and into school in time for my 4 hours of sitting in place in class trying to absorb as much chinese as possible (see below article). It is often a challenge to stay completely awake during these classes.

The school has a little concession that sells (ahem) "coffee" and tea in these mono-molecular-thin plastic cups that immediately eject all fluid in them onto your hand when you pick them up (you must pick them up by the reinforced edge). This substance, which they call "coffee" is actually some weak powdered instant coffee, with powdered milk and sugar, to which they add hot water and stir frantically for about 3/4ths of a second before handing it to you -in a hurry because there are 30 other people trying to order around you - and this is at the point where you grab it in the wrong spot and it spills all over you (burning hot).

This is not coffee.

So, finally this week, when I nearly fell asleep in the front row of class, I decided that "desperate times call for desperate measures", and at the next break, I sprinted with my fellow American Classmate John and one of my French classmates, Patrick, to "brownstones coffee" - which is also TRULY AWFUL coffee. HOWEVER, it is actually coffee, and for (no kidding) 10 times the price of that other thing, I was able to get a LARGE mocha, which -like some magic western elixer- powered my body back up. Boy, I was really doing great after that. It was quite amazing. I really felt that my chinese comprehension was a lot better - I was totally cranked up! That is the power of coffee.

OK, well I've got to ride my bike home and get some sleep so that I hopefully won't need the coffee tomorrow.

3/15/2004: "Quick teacher info"

I accidentally deleted my changes for this week, so i've got to whip them together while I have 15 minutes before my tutoring session - on a borrowed internet connection. Yikes!

Anyway, here's a video of our great teacher - very talented woman. I am so very happy to have a teacher who's really into it with a sense of humor and all. We've cranked through almost 6 chapters in 3-4 weeks!

Suddenly I have my arms full of Language Exchange partners - many people here want to learn chinese. I also have my hands full of tutoring jobs. The pay to teach english is a lot better than most jobs here, and there is lots of demand. You can live comfortably on 10-12 hrs of teaching a week. I have to get better at managing my time though - studying is paramount. Teaching is fun, but it isn't a major priority for me right now.

In the US, Chinese teachers do not get much pay - which is sad, since now I keenly understand how difficult it is to learn the language!

3/6/2004: "more pictures" Yay, i finally organized some pictures.

Loads of building going on in Beijing. There are cranes everywere. There are buildings being built even at night and every weekend. This picture shows several cranes in one location showing all the building going on in this area. I live and go to school in the northern west area of Beijing where lots of tech and schooling is happening - these buildings are going up in that area.

3/6/2004: "About the language & studying"

I've put in many hours studying this week and haven't had much time to write much here - you can probably tell because my last post was such awful writing (sorry). Twice this week I was at the library studying until 11pm. I feel like I've been cramming chinese characters into every orifice of my body to get myself to remember them. I've even considered playing endless loops of recordings of my chinese classes over and over while I slept, but I think that would be too much.

I've been experimenting with different kinds of studying. It is very easy to forget the next day what characters you learned the previous day, so I try to spend 1/2 of my time reviewing what I was already supposed to know. It is difficult because there are three aspects of learning that I need to focus on:

1. Character memory and recognition. The ability to know what character (hanzi ºº×Ö)and then be able to pull it from my memory to write it. That is harder than the other part of it which is just recognizing it when you see it on a page.
2. Listening comprehension and speaking. This usually requires you to have some familiarity with the characters you are hearing, so you do this after you do the first step. For myself, I usually write little sentances or ask my language partners to create simple sentances for me and I record them as tracks on my mp3 player and then play them back randomly. I will often repeat the words I hear back to my language partner, or when I'm listining back to the recordings, I will use it as dictation and write it all down.
3. Pinyin. You also need to know the Pinyin. Pinyin is the romanization of the chinese characters. For example the pinyin for "me" is "wo", but there would be a tiny v-shaped characxter over the "o" to indicate the tone you use when you say it. In this case the tone would be a falling and rising tone (there are 4 other tones used in Chinese). When you learn chinese, the very first step is to become adept at learning Pinyin pronounciation (which btw, is distinctly different than English pronounciation - the "wo" above is not pronounced like you would say it in English). Pinyin is a key tool in helping to learn the language because it indicates the tone and pronounciation of it's associated character.

So, each night I have to learn somewhere between 15 and 30 new characters and I try to run through all of the scenarios listed above - but it's kind of impossible to do all that, so I just try to touch on each of them a little bit and spend more time on the important words like "this, that, there, bank, dictionary", etc.

The grammer is somewhat different than English as well. For example, if you wanted to say "I'm studying english at the university", it would actually be "I'm (at the university), studying english. This becomes more tricky when you start saying more complicated versions of the above: "six o'clock, let's meet for dinner at the cafeteria" becomes "we meet, six o'clock, at the cafeteria to eat dinner". Or something like that - hey, i'm just a beginner after all. I hope several months from now I'll be much better... Wish me luck!

3/4/2004: "Manners"

I have mentioned before that there are often many people working in banks, restaurants, etc in Beijing. This is different than the US, where you will often have only a few waitresses at a restaurant, all of whom are running around like crazy to make it all work.

I've noticed that in China, the waitor / waitress will stand by your table after giving you the menu and wait patiently for you to select something. At first I felt pressure to choose quickly because I knew they were waiting -and in the US it would be considered impolite to keep them waiting since they have so much work to do, but later I realized it was OK because there are many waitresses and there is really not much else for them to do.

So, a warning to my chinese friends if you go to the US: if the waitress is waiting for you to choose and you know you need more time, please ask them to "please give (you) a few minutes" to decide - otherwise they may not be very happy with you.

Another thing that is nice about China is that tipping is uncommon. This really simplifies things! In the US, you must constantly calculate tips and factor that into the cost of everything you eat. Much simpler here!

3/4/2004: "ͼÊé¹Ý"

I've been spending a lot of time studying in the library recently. When I was in the University of Massachusetts, I would occasionally study in the library, but many students often studied in their rooms. If you went to the library, you could easily find a place to study. For every 10 large desks, you would find only two had people studying at them, so there was plenty of room. I never thought about it much, but I think that the library could have had fewer desks and saved some money!

In China, (at least at my school) libraries are full of people. I will post some pictures soon to show this, but it really is different. Every seat is full, and often finding a spot in the library is difficult from about 10am-10pm. Students are always there, studying like crazy, and often taking short naps right on their books. They will bring in containers of tea with them and sip them while they work. I have a feeling there is a way to refill these tea containers - I've seen some industrial sized thermos' around, but I don't know if they are for just anyone wanting hot water or not. If you happen to know, please tell me, because sometimes I run out of water and need some too.

People are very quiet in the library. I remember in the US getting annoyed at people who were talking, laughing or joking in the library, but that hasn't happened here yet. I'm sometimes worried that I"m making too much noise when I move my chair and it makes a big scraping sound 'cause I'm a bit heavier and not used to the chairs. Once I woke up the guy next to me - oops.

3/1/2004: "Matrix Retionsvolu"

So I bought a DVD last week - "Matrix Revolutions" - I was curious to see it since it was relatively new and I hadn't seen it in the states. I didn't realize it had come out on DVD yet - and I was happy to spend the $1 for it since it was such a great price for a completely legitimate DVD movie - one where all the profits of the sale go straight to the people who made the movie. I'm sure it was a real copy - definitely not a pirated copy. Really, it wasn't. I'm quite sure. Really. The guy on the floor of the subway hallway with all those new movies spread out on blankets looked like a respectable fellow who wouldn't engage in piracy at all. Really. I'm sure it was quite legal.

Anyway, as soon as I popped in the DVD, I realized it was from a guy with a digital camera sitting in the movie theater in china watching the movie. It was quite good considering, but the audio was a little wacky, and every once in a while the camera would shake, or you'd hear people coughing.

The kicker was that the movie seemed really disjointed - which I expected from a matrix movie where they are always saying "Everything that has a beginning has an end", or "every end is sometimes a beginning" or something like that - until at the end I realized THAT THE MOVIE HAD STARTED HALFWAY THROUGH, AND PLAYED THE FIRST HALF AT THE END! It was so ironic! "everything that has a beginning has an end" - for real! The DVD was defective and the beginning and end were right next to each other mid-way through the DVD! Haha! So, that's why I wrote the title the way I did.

So anyway... That one went right into the trash.

3/1/2004: "Everyday something new"

Last week, I was eating dinner in the cafeteria when a tall atheletic looking chinese man sits down next to me. He seems nice and friendly and we start to talk. The only problem is that my ability to speak chinese is pitifully poor right now, and his English was even worse. However, he did explain to me that he is majoring in Spanish at the school (i'm at a language school). I mention that I studied a little spanish once, and suddenly he's trying to speak to me in half spanish, half chinese, and I can't understand any of it and it's becoming a real mess because I'm starting to use more gestures and i'm starting to wave my arms around and jump about - knocking food around and creating quite a scene.

A few minutes later woman sits down next to us, and is quietly eating. I later attempt to ask her if her food is hot in chinese (successfully!), and she replies in perfect English "Actually yes, it's quite hot" - wow! So, now the guy wants her to interpret between me and her and he's asking her to tell me all this stuff - and I start feeling bad for her now having a new job to do besides eating her dinner. Eventually it all worked out OK and I even got their phone numbers to talk with them. Suprisingly, the guy immediately gave my number to his friend who wanted to speak English, and that guy called me before I had even finished eating! It was a humorous situation!

Early this week, I was sitting in the cafeteria again, when 4 chinese people come up to me and one woman wants to know if I can speak chinese. "little" I say- quite honestly, and then she tells me they are looking for models to do some advertising and take my picture and get my height and weight (in metric of course), and move off. How funny!

Today, I hadn't even made it to the cafeteria, when two men came up to me to ask me if I was interested in being on Television - and also got my information. It's quite funny! I'm going to have to go to the cafeteria more often! Haha!

2/29/2004: "咖啡馆"

Last night, I hung out with my friend Robert. Robert is a computer science student who will graduate soon from Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications. He's a bright guy who is now actively looking for a tech job. His English skills are pretty good, so it was fun to hang out with him. I hope he gets a job he is happy with, so I was trying to give him some ideas about interviewing since I used to be a hiring manager in a tech company. He explained to me that many chinese are interested in working for a big / large company first, then later maybe working for a smaller company. In my experience, this is backwards because it seems that in america, you get more opportunity to learn more things more quickly at a smaller company, and it is those skills that you learned, you can then later use to "ace" the interview at the larger company. Often the larger company has more benifits as well - so if you later have a family and want to have more time for yourself, the larger company is the place to work later on, after you want to settle down and have a family.

Anyway, we went to a nice cafe called "sculpting time" in beijing and had some Hawaiian pizza. The pizza was good, but they seemed to forget that even in hawaiian pizza you need tomato sauce! Oh well, it was still good for pizza in china! I also had Orange Tea and other things. After we went to try and find a Bar that was in my Lonely Planet guidebook called "Solutions". Now, this book is the LATEST EDITION for 2003, so I expected it to be up to date, HOWEVER, after a long taxi ride and walking around for 30 minutes, we found out that it was closed TWO YEARS AGO!!! SO A BIG THANK-YOU TO LONELY PLANET!! Argh!

We later just drove around and found three little bars in a row and walked up to one of them. Outside of one of them, there were these two guys who were calling out to us in Mandarin. Robert told me they were calling for us to try out the bar "come on in, try it out", etc, but for me, this also worked backwards. I was LESS interested in going into a bar with two strange men yelling at me outside of it. Why on earth would I be more interested in going in there? So, we went to the other place. I think that if the manager of that place wants to appeal to more westerners, he should not have people yelling on the outside - just make sure there are a lot of happy people inside and his business will be fine.

I was hoping to find a cool place to go to, but I was unable to do so that night. It was OK where we went, but it wasn't the hopping university hot-spot I was hoping for. I'm on the looking for this type of place because eventually some of my friends from the US will come and visit me (hint-hint!!!), and I want to be able to show them the cool places and things to do.

Today I went to the Yabao lu market. I wanted to bargain for a few T-shirts and look around for some gifts for friends back home. I did successfully get two shirts for almost the same price he originally gave me for just one shirt, so that was a good victory. It worked out to be about $4/each - which is not bad because they were pretty good quality. I also found a nice chinese silk shop which had some pretty nice silk night-gowns, etc. I also saw some rollerblades for sale there - the lowest price was about $15 us, but I couldn't bring myself to buy them because 1) I'd have to carry them back and 2) they were a lot different design than my usual skates, so I decided I would hold off for now.

Now I am eating and using the internet in a nice cafe which serves food (mostly), and I'm the only one who is using a computer here. I hope to do some chinese studying tonight, and then go home. It's very important that I learn to read the characters because right now I can't each much food unless I'm with friends who can translate - or unless they have an English menu, or pictures I can point to. Definitely limits me! Feeling illiterate is not fun.

2/28/2004: "American Culture"

There are many people here who want to learn English. If you are a person who can be open minded about Chinese culture and feel like a change of pace in your life, then you should consider teaching chinese in China. Although I am not doing it right now, I have a feeling it would be very rewarding. However I know that my school only pays about 2600RMB a month, which is just about $300 US/month. Since you can get shared housing for about $130us a month, that's still doing OK, but I think my school may pay a little low - although some pretty good housing is included.

I've discovered that - although simple for me - understanding American culture is not that easy. Many of my chinese friends here who are learning English are still derailed by American humor or expressions (like the one I just used for example!). They ask me "where can I learn Chinese Culture?". Hmm... I tell them that probably a combination of music, reading of newspapers, and watching movies (but sometimes I'm afraid they will take the wrong messages from the movies). Any ideas?

My chinese friends have some unrealistic ideas of what american culture is like. Someone told me once they thought americans can fall in and out of love easily. Another told me that Americans like to have many boyfriends / girlfriends before marriage. It is at these times that I realize how different the cultures really can be - there are many opportunities for misunderstandings!

Actually, my friend (who is convinced that I will never get married if I have not gotten married already) just told me (while i'm at the computer in the internet cafe) "I think you can have no wife, but you can't survive without the internet!" haha.

2/28/2004: "ÎÒϲ»¶½È×Ó"

"Wo3 xi4huan2 jiao3zi4" Means "I like dumplings!" I'm learning lots of words now! I'm going to have to keep studying 2-4 hours a day on top of classes just to keep up. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know...

Today while riding the bus to the cafe to post this note, I realized I had not seen a single personal pickup truck. I'm sure there are some pickup trucks that are used for construction and large projects, but I have not seen a single pickup truck like many many people own in the US. There are many cars here, but I haven't seen any pickup trucks. I'm sure there are some, but I guess not many.

2/26/2004 (2): "School"

I've started school! Yay, i'm finally really starting to learn more chinese. So far it has been easy, but it's going to get hard fast, I can tell. The chinese language school has several hundred students, most of whom are Korean and Japanese, however the school also teaches many other languages, so there are plenty of people around. The libraries are absolutely crammed on the weekday afternoons, and interestingly enough, the Chinese seem to be OK leaving their stuff on the library tables to "save their spot" while going off and having dinner, etc. That's kind of refreshing to me, but I'm not ready to do it yet. I'm just worried that someone would snag my books or something.

It's going to be harder for me to update my webpage as frequently moving forward, but I will try. There are so many things to mention and talk about - and many pictures to take to help show some of the differences (and similarities) between the American culture that I grew up with and the Chinese culture that I'm happily learning about at light-speed. Keep checking back and I'll try to keep putting in new stuff.

2/26/2004: "Internet problems"

So my email account isn't working right now because my domain name for ilstudios expired and I was never notified by the company that manages the domain. Now, I am currently unable to get it going again because I can't find the page to go to to pay for it! I've set up another email account: patrick at youskate.com that should work, so please use that.

2/23/2004: "Chinese Ice cream"

I'm eating chinese ice cream right now. I was surprised to discover that the chinese like ice cream as much (or more) than Americans! The best part is that they spend less money on it! hahaha! I have not seen any gourmet ice cream like Hagen Daz or Ben and Jerry's just yet though - but the regular stuff is pretty good.

Most interesting is that they have different flavors. For example, my roomate at some ice cream today that was in the shape of a husk of corn. It was vanilla ice cream with an outer shell that was like Mochi, but it was flavored and shaped like corn on the cob! Interesting! I'm sure there are other interesting flavors to explore, so I will keep riding my bicycle so that I don't get fat!

2/23/2004: "New bike"

I bought a new bike with the help of Jie's friend Cai Yong! Thanks Cai! I'm a lot happier with this bike. It is much faster than my old bike because it has gears and narrower, high pressure road bike tires. While riding home, I noticed one small problem. I was riding very quickly towards a large intersection, when I realized the lights were changing. I applied the brakes, but they were not very responsive and I couldn't slow down in time, so I decided to hop on the pedals and try to out-run the oncoming traffic! It was a little close - there was a huge bus bearing down on me as I squeaked by, but I was OK. I think I need to do something about those brakes. They are old fashioned side-pull brakes. I want to get some dual-pivot shimano's on there and then I can stop!

This bike cost twice as much as my old one, but it does fit me a little better - it is still too small though. I will need to get a longer seatpost.

2/23/2004: "Food in Beijing"

I've been in China for 23 days now, and I have had tasty food the entire time. It has all been very good food - even the street food is tasty. When I was thinking about coming to Beijing, I was a little worried I would be forced to eat chicken feet and brined duck heads when I was here, but I've not had any problems at all with the food. It has all been very tasty and yummy.

Of course if you WANT to eat chicken feet and duck heads, be my guest - you certainly have those choices available to you, but there is enough variety to appeal to any pallete! If you want good food, come to china! :)

The good food does come with a small risk however. In the US, there are rules and regulations about restaurants. For example, every restaurant of a certain size that serves food must have a restroom available for the customers to use. Additionally, all employees must wash there hands after each visit to the restroom, and there must be soap available, etc. In China, often restaurants have no restroom available, just a sink for washing hands. Sometimes the sink is just put in the corner of the diningroom - quite different! One place I was in recently had a sink, but no soap and no method of washing hands, which concerned me a bit when I started thinking about the sanitation issues with that.

Yesterday my friend Amanda and I went to a "Western food" restaurant. It was my first time being to one since I left the US. This restaurant had several amusing typo's in the menu (I took a picture of one, but I haven't downloaded it from my camera yet). The food was not bad - we had Fish and Chips - but they were not the same as in London or the US - kind of mushy. The best dish was a Beef with mushroom and cream dressing and some seasoned fried potato slivers - quite tasty! The dessert looked like a chocolate sundae, but was mostly whipped cream. Hmmm.... Prices were a bit higher than you may expect in the US, but not too bad.

McDonalds:
McDonalds has a large presence in Beijing. I read that there are 70 of them here. At first I was sort of horrified by this, but now it doesn't bother me. The food establish which is looked down upon and scorned in many ways in the US (and even sued for making people fat), has some appeal here. One thing is that that it is consistent. The food is good and it always tastes the same. Prices are a little bit higher than most regular restaurants here, but the facilities always include a restroom and are well maintained. I've eaten two apple pies and two chocolate sundae's there. I couldn't help myself. The funny thing is they tast EXACTLY the same as they do in the US.

There is also KFC here although not much business there since people are worried about Bird Flu. I think because of SARS last year people are way sensitive to things like this now.

School:
I was supposed to start school today, but it turns out that I was just supposed to get my class assignment. Originally I though class was starting on the 16th, but that was just when registration started, then I though it was going to be on the 19th, but that was just when the placement exam was, then I thought it was today, but that was just when our scores and class placement would be ready. So, finally I start class tomorrow! I'm looking forward to jumping in with both feet and learning as much as I can.

Ignorance:
My roomate is a little frustrated with my lack of Chinese culuture experience. She just showed me a picture of some famous chinese woman from 1949, but I had no idea who she was. Mayling Soo? I have no idea and my roomate is (right now) laughing at me. Darn. There is much I don't know about china still!

A Special Note to Friends in the US:
Ladda: Keep kicking-butt at work, it will pay off for you. Thank you very much for all the help with the administrative stuff for me as well. My trip to China would not be a reality without great and wonderful people like you. See you in July! ;-)
Adrian: I know you are freezing your butt off doing the outdoor swimming and biking through TNT - but as Ladda will also tell you, TNT is very rewarding and confidence building. Wildflower is not an easy triathlon and with TNT you will succeed in doing it. You're going to be one of the few people in the world who can do 3 evens competitively in one day! Enjoy the journey and I'll be with you in spirit. Heck, I may even try to do another Triathlon out here sometime.
Jennifer, Anatole, Mia: Thank you for your support as well. Please have as much fun as you can in the house and let me know what you are up to. Jennifer, kick butt at school, Anatole, thanks for helping me with the Car, etc, and Mia, please try not to spend too much time at your job! ;-)
Josh M, Sandra & NIkki:Please keep safe all of you. Josh, have fun on Vipers and tell the guys I haven't yet started coaching the Chinese Womens Olympic Hockey team, but I may yet get lucky - haha. BTW: I got some good luck socks for you to play hockey in. I was going to get you some Hello Kitty ones, but I thought maybe the guys would make too much fun of you in the locker room. Sandra, you have my best wishes and support in kicking Josh's butt to get up at night and take care of the little one - hahaha! :)
Naveen! : Dude, how's school? How is Texas? I hope things are going well. Please let me know what you are up to. There are TONS of Korean folks at my school, let me know if you want me to ask them anything,ok ? Just thinking of the good times we had at SL2002 makes me laugh.
Brent & Melanie: You guys have to come and visit - you'd like it here I think! Brent, thanks for all your help! I'm still going to that internet cafe you helped me find! haha! Start thinking about coming out within the year if you can - it'll be great! We can ride bicycles around Beijing hahaha!
Will & Denise & Co: Thanks for being great neighbors and watching over things! Feel free to remind Manuel that he has a website now: http://www.perezlandscaping.com he probably forgot about it.
To everyone else: It is impossible for me to list and thank all the folks in the US who've helped me get things going here, but thanks and you have my warm wishes and encouragement for all the things you are doing. Keep in touch and have as much fun as you can without sacrificing a good future. :)

2/17/2004: "Shang Dao Kafei Guan"

I am at the Shang Dao Kafei right now. "Shang Dao Wang (several chinese friends contacted me to correct me on this - doh!) " means Internet in Chinese. I can even recognize the character for this now. Each day I chip away at the wall seperating my ability to read and function in china a little more. However, the wall is large and intimidating right now. For example, my first visit to this cafe was a disaster because the waitress was trying to tell me something about the menu and I don't have any idea what she was saying. I finally ordered some other food and she seemed to be happier and went away, but I have no real idea of what happened.

Sometimes it is tempting to call my roomate and hand the cellphone to the waitress (or other person) in these situations, but that is a cop-out and won't help me through these things. I need to suffer a bit I figure to learn. This I know well. Regardless, I got a coffee when I wanted a mocha, and when I tried to work it out, they took it away and brought me back the coffee with whipped cream on the top. Whoops!

One thing I have noticed here. The women don't seem to wear as much make up as many women in public in the US. I think this is a good thing. My roomate said to me at one point that too much makeup was "not natural" - and I was glad to hear it.

Another thing I've noticed recently - many shops, banks, cafe's (including the one I'm in now) have about 2-3 times the number of employees in them than comparable ones in the US. A cafe in the US that served food and cofee in this sort of environment would have 4 people maximum. So far, this seems to have about 8 people working in it. It is even more with a bank - the bank of china I was in recently (a small branch no less), had about 25 employees running around. You often have to take a number at these banks too - like the way you would at a Deli back in the US. Interesting!

2/16/2004: "Hero"

Today at school, they showed us a movie called "hero". I have no real idea what happened in this movie because it was all in chinese. They showed the characters at the bottom, but because it was also in Chinese, I was still lost. However the Canadian born chinese guy next to me was also lost, so I don't feel bad.

Here's how it went:
The wife killed her husband and his lover (cheater!), then they came back to life, and she killed them again. This happened 3 times, after each time she was sad about it and cried a lot. I think I was missing a lot of the plot. The music and the scenery were very pretty though - makes me want to see more of China. It also makes me want to learn the language because I'm missing out on all this fun! Hollywood movies aren't like this!

Most Hollywood movies (especially action ones) have a happy ending where the maincharacter lives, etc. It seems that this is not the case for many chinese movies. That is refreshingly different, although the amount of melodrama can be a bit much at times, it's a good change for me.

2/16/2004: "tao-jia huan-jia"

Today I witnessed the interesting art of bargaining. I've listed the chinese name for this in the title. It seems that in the bigger stores which have labels all over their stuff and more employees and are more western-style, there is no bargaining. However, there are many marketplace type stores that do. Yesterday my roomates Xiao Rui (pronounced "Shao Ree") and HanJing went to Xidan (pronounced Shee-dan) to buy some stuff.

On the first floor was a large supermarket style place, the second floor was clothing, the third was this enormous maze-like market - a lot like a western flea market. There was a lot of duplication in the products being sold, so you could often see the same Hello Kitty bag for sale 4 stalls down from the first one. However, there was still a huge selection. It is in these places that you can bargain.

Since I don't speak chinese, I am not very good at this. I can only say a few things and I know all the numbers for money. Often when they reply, I don't always understand what they are saying, so I will put it into a question like "did you just say 50, yes or no?", and then I can figure out what they are saying.

One stall had a shirt I was interested in. They wanted 160Y when I asked them. That is about $19US - which is not bad because it was a nice shirt. Many of you would think it was a bargain back in the states. I walked away and told my roomate HanJing the price. She went back and started bargaining for me. I couldn't often tell what they were saying, but it went back and forth for a while, with the sales woman talking about how nice the fabric was and how you can't get this shirt anywhere else, and Hanjing pointing to another stall down the way and saying how she could get it down there for less. She also probably mentioned that they were just trying to take advantage of me because I am an "WaiGuoRen" (why-goah-ren, foreigner), and I was actually a broke student who needs a shirt, etc, etc. We even started to walk away at one point, and the woman was shouting at us as we were walking - loudly! Finally she turns to me and says (in english): "We can get this for $25, do you want it?", I tell her yes and she goes back and bargains some more. Things seem to get a little heated in the conversation, but finally she asks me for the money and I give it to the woman. The woman seemed irritated and wouldn't look at me when she took my money.

While walking away, Hanjing said "I think 25Y was a little much, I think if I tried again, I could have gotten it for 20Y. I was just blown away at the math in this situation. I just paid $3 for a shirt I almost bought for $19! Haha. Several times that day, she demonstrated her dangerous bargaining skills. One time, she even asked if the woman would like a picture with me - (because foreigners are such a rare sight, sometimes people will ask me to take a picture with them). This was fun, but she was doing it to assist in her ability to bargain for a good price on a bag for Xiao Rui! It worked and she got the price she wanted! A dangerously good bargaininer! Haha!

Later, I tried my own hand at bargaining. I managed to get a shirt down from 180 to 45 - a victory for a novice American. Hanjing said that it could have been another 25Y shirt, but still told me that I did better than her first time, so I don't feel too bad! She promised me an ice cream! Haha! I think we are sometimes missing out on this fun in the States.

2/15/2004: "VIDEO Fun"

OK, I've found some time to upload some videos. I am taking more pictures than I have time to put up! sheesh! I hope you enjoy these moving images of chinese life. Sometimes a video can capture a moment more than a picture can....

I also put up some more pictures though....

You can hear the whistling here - it is quite amazing. (2megs)	Traditional Beijing Opera dancing. (2megs)
A chinese man getting a little exercise. There are many of these facilities sprinkled around the city - sort of a public gym. (900k)	A video I made by spinning around in place near the center of Tianamen square. This place is _BIG_, REALLY BIG.(6 megs)
Street performer - listen to his percussion. This man is playing the "erhu" (pinyin) or "Are-who" in english. (800k)	My roomate is quite a character. Here she is trying to explain to me the equivalent of "in-laws" in chinese. Quite funny. She will kill me if she sees this up on the 'net, so look at it quickly! Haha! (6 megs)
	(ok, my roomate found out and she's mad at me - hahaha - I should try to keep them happy!)

2/15/2004: "Infrastructure"

When I went to Taiwan two years ago to meet my friend Jessie (hi Jessie if you are reading this!), I was amazed at the number of scooters that were there. In Beijing, if you replaced the scooters with people on bicycles, and probably doubled the number, you'd start to get an idea of what it is like. Because of this, I would bet that the people in Beijing as a whole are probably in better physical shape - haha...

Intersections in Beijing would shock any american (who hasn't travelled to asia before) into making their eyes fall out in about 3 seconds. They are huge for one thing, and the attention given to the red-light/green-light thing is quite vague ("Oh, was it red? Well, I really wanted to go, so I did").

Many people in Beijing are pissed off about the increasing number of cars in recent years. The new economic growth has resulted in a huge up-swing in the number of cars. Since I am now a bicycle owner, I can understand the problem. Before, the roads were wide enough for bicycles to zip around everywhere and generally get where you want to go fast - but now there are all these cars in the way, often stopped bumper-to-bumper at traffic lights. Bicycles can no longer sneak through as easily and that really slows them down. The cars just take up too much space. This really is a problem when you need to cross to the other side of a street and you are not at an intersection. Traffic congestion is definitely a problem in america too, but it is generally more orderly - here it is totally chaotic because much of the infrastructure operates by bicycle.

Speaking of infrastructure, the gov't has done another good thing with the roads. In one direction, you have two major lanes (picture coming here too). The left lane is divided from the right by a row of trees or a median of some sort. The left lane is largest, has 3 sub lanes and is only for cars and larger vehicles. The right lane is for bicycles. Taxis and buses can also pull into this lane to make stops or pick people up, but generally it is for bicycles - which is pretty good, except that sometimes the taxis and busses seem to be often in these lanes - along with the cars. So, sometimes it doesn't always feel like just a bike lane.

When I came to the internet cafe today, I decided to ride my bike. It was 6 kilometers only, but it took me almost 45 minutes because of the traffic and the intersections - both of which take a long time. Darn!

In Beijing you will see several types of vehicles:

1. Cars
2. Small taxi-cars
3. traditional bicycles
4. traditional bicycles with a girl balanced precariously on her butt on the rear-rack (picture coming). Myself, I drove my roomate around for several days like this while she helped me buy basic necessities - TOTALLY DANGEROUS!!! But, it is very common here.
5. 3 wheeled handicapped motorcycles. There are these little put-put 3 wheel motorcycles zipping around. Technically they are only supposed to be driven by handicapped people (which is a great idea for the city to do because there is NO WAY this huge city could suddenly start putting in something as alien as handicapped parking spaces like they have in the US).
6. 3 wheeled "pickup truck" bicycles. Imagine a three wheeled bicycle, but the rear wheels are about 3-4 feet apart and have a flat-bed on top which you can carry things. THere is this huge chain connected to the cranks up front that drives the rear wheels. I have seen these bicycles carry AMAZING amounts of stuff. I have seen them piled 10 feet high and 10 feet square or more with boxes, trash, other bicycles, people - you name it. This type of bicycle picks up the garbage, moves the food around, carries supplies, and more. Without these vehicles, the city could only get goods so far - these bicycles are the "capilaries" (sp?) of the city. Without them, Beijing would cease to function. I have NEVER SEEN an 18wheeled tractor trailer like you see in the US. Simin says they have them sometimes on the large roads between the cities, but here in the last few miles, it's all those beaten up 3 wheeled bikes.
7. Pedestrians. Of course they are everywhere too, and also are crossing the intersections. The intersections can be chaotic - just grab a handful of the vehicles above and drop too many of them into an intersection and that's pretty much what it's like. I once was crossing an intersection when I got stuck with another chinese guy INBETWEEN two lanes of oncoming traffic. A bus passed me about 6 inches from my face, while a bunch of taxis whipped by me on the other side. It was a close call - but the chinese guy was not nearly as freaked as I was - he thought it was funny.
   

2/16/2004: "videos"

The chinese name for this instrument is "Er-Hu", or for those of us who don't know PINYIN, it is "AR-Who". There are a few street musicians in Beijing who play this inexpensive instrument for money. However, many of them are on the edge of poverty. This one was rather creative and has added some purcussion to his instrument. Click on the video to see and hear.

2/14/2004: "Happy Valentines Day."

Several friends and I went out for Valentines day. First we went to the "purple vine tea house" we had very tasty chinese food and got to listen to a variety of theatrical acts from traditional chinese music, to acrobatics and this amazing Shanghai-style face-changing art form.

I have a few mini-video's of these I will put up later, but frankly, I was so enthralled, that I didn't want to miss anything by taking pictures - it was really quite a treat - and very economical. Tickets and dinner were about 200RMB total which is $25 FOR TWO PEOPLE. The best part was that the couple next to us at the table ordered a bunch of food, then didn't eat it and left early, so I got another free and yummy helping of Roast Duck!

Some of the acts were very interesting. Of note was this one gentleman who would play a solo over some traditional chinese music. He used a very small and cute horn-like instrument and was very animated while playing it. Occasionally, he would take the instrument away from his lips and do the most amazing and melodic whistling (loud too!) I have ever heard. He would then switch back to the horn without missing a beat. Quite fascinating!

Another interesting act was a gentleman who managed to do amazing things with what was probably an 80 pound pot. He tossed it into the air and caught it on his head - then proceeded to flip it around, spin it, keep it in place while he moved, and then flip it up so it was balanced amazingly on the very thin edge of the pot. Quite a sight!

One of the final showpieces was this woman who came out to do a dance wearing a very amazing mask. She danced around a little bit, but then suddenly was wearing a different mask entirely - different color and shape. The crowd gasped in surprise! She continued to dance, and suddenly in the blink of an eye, swiped her hand across her face and she was wearing another mask! She continued to do this - sometimes with just a quick nod of her head she would be wearing another mask. The curiosity in me was so great that I was watching very carefully to try and theorize on how she could be doing this, but to this day I have no answer! Electronics? Roll-up film? I have no answer! But, she kept doing it - even walking around the audience, inciting gasps and thunderous applause until the very end when she did it again, but had no mask at all- just a big smile - that drew the biggest applause of all.

Afterwards, we met up with another friend and went to this very cool area of Beijing. It's quite the hopping night-spot! It was in a Hutong -which is an old traditional chinese- style neighborhood in beijing. This Hutong was similar to those comfy, narrow alleyways you may see in Paris or some of the other European cities. It was populated with many bars and was near a pretty lake. There were many couples strolling about arm in arm, and some even had set up a few little tea-lights arranged in a heart shape next to the water where they could stand with thier girlfriend and be romanic. Definitely, the chinese can be very romantic!

****

Each day in China, I find several things that are interesting to me as a westerner - it's sometimes a challenge to remember them all, but for all of my friends out there in California and around the world who may be reading this, I promise to try my best. I start school next week and that is going to be filling up much of my time, so I may be a little less frequent updating this site -but please be patient! :)

2/12/2004: "California"

So last night I was showing my roomates pictures of Santa Cruz, San Francisco, redwood trees, Tahoe, etc, and this morning I was listening to "California" by Phantom Planet - which is a great happy and fun song that basically reminds me of why california is so great. I definitely love California - it is huge, diverse, majestic and wonderful.

Then I got to thinking, why was it I appreciate California more now that I am here in Beijing? I guess I didn't have enough perspective on things while I was there - at least recently. I got too interested in staring at my feet (job, etc) and didn't look up at the beautiful things around me. This is probably just another case of "Absence makes the heart grow fonder", but we put so much energy and emotion into our lives, it is a dissapointing thing to discover that we aren't appreciating enough of what we have - people (like friends), places (like California), and things (like having napkins anytime you want them!).

My chinese friends have been telling me that many of the beautiful pictures i have shown them remind them of the many beautiful places within china. I am happy to hear that, and I hope that I can appreciate it as much as I appreciate california right now. So far, china has been OK to me, but I sure would like to be able to read stuff. Right now I can only order food I can see or point at. In some cases I can order food that I can say, but not much. I am also quite handcuffed when it comes to listening. Yesterday I ordered sunglasses and the people behind the counter were chuckling and giggling and saying all this stuff I couldn't pick up.

An administrative note: I've now put the comments for the pictures inside the new page you get when you click on the picture - it just works out easier for me that way.

2/12/2004: "new photos!"

I just put up some new photos... stay tuned for the video....

2/11/2004: "bicycle"

I will reiterate that I am a bicycle snob.
"I am a bicycle snob"
"I am a bicycle snob"
"I am a bicycle snob"
My new chinese friends Robert and Han Jing brought me around to several bicycle shops today. We walked and walked. These were "shops" in only the loosest sense of the word - totally different than your traditional US shop. Two of them were operating out of a location the size of a walk-in closet in a std modern US house.

When I left for China, I joked with my roomates and friends that I would probably be riding a 3 speed bicycle when I got here. Now, I would be happy to ride the bicycle I was thinking of because many bikes here are 1 speed! There are a few mountainbikes, but most of them are strangely configured: many gears, but archaic side-pull brakes. Hardly any have Shimano components, etc. One speeds are actually sufficient though - because there are very few hills - Beijing is Flat!

Anyway, walking around sampling these bicycles surprised me. When I used to work in a bicycle shop 1986-1990, I learned that sometimes even the worst parts can be adjusted to work well with a little bit of effort. Side pull brakes can sometimes work well, etc. However, many of the bikes I saw on display had poorly adjusted brakes, poorly adjusted headsets, and tires without enough air in them, etc. I was surprised that a shop owner wouldn't take more care to make his bicycles more appealing. However, with the volume and low margin that these small shops operate on could probably explain this. They put them together as fast as they can and sell them as quickly as possible.

Robert explained to me that bicycles in china are merely a tool, and since there are many stoplights, people aren't concerned as much with speed, etc. After attempting to cross some of these intersections though, I wonder why they don't put more emphasis on functional brakes!

Considering all of this, I may have found a bicycle I like. We found a shop that sells Giant Bicycles. I found a 1 speed Giant bicycle with good functioning brakes and 3 piece cranks (the modern design), that also has a rack on the back (for carrying people more than groceries!), and it has decent tires too.

UPDATE ON BIRD FLU: my brother mentions to me (he's involved with this stuff), that currently I shouldn't stress about Bird Flu, but they are "on watch" because it *could* become something bad.
Until next time... ZAIJIAN!

WAIT: I'm not done. Someone also forwarded around a resume for me. I didn't quite realize this was happening, but it seems that somoene here wants me to come in for an interview. Cool. :)

2/10/2004: "turbo chinese"

Now that I have moved into my room in the apartment I will be staying at, I am now forced to speak more chinese than ever before. It is kind of like grabbing onto a car as it passes you on the highway - suddenly i'm ripped out of my comfortable little world and put into quite a bit of pain. Fortunately, I have a very patient and understanding roomate who is willing to spend hours with me working through the language barrier. I have learned the name ofmy currenct favorite chinese food: "jiaozi" (i'm currently too lazy to translate that into good PINYIN or recognizable English -just take your best guess) - it means "dumplings" (sort of). Just imagine potstickers that are not fried and are filled with a huge variety of things.

Tthe value of classroom instruction is becoming clearer each interaction because the time I spend studying the new words to commit them to memory means that I'll be able to increase my vocabulary more quickly - and I'll be able to do that much better once I start at the University. (As a side note, it only took me about 6 days to pronounce the chinese name for the school I'm going to: "beay-jing, ewwwyueaah, when-hwa! dahshuueeaahh")

Today I went to the SPR coffee shop. At the shop they have an advertising flyer:
"Like most people to and from work everyday, I want neither to stay in the office nor go home at times. Then I always walk over to a coffee house names SPR, pretending I'm a drifting cloud. After a coffee snack, it is quiet again and I always come at this time. Then, the barista, perhaps a young couple, would readjust the jazz music to much lower volume. I would order a cup and start writing a short essay. I'm about to pick up my pen when my attention is distracted by the talk of the two girls. Fashionable, modern and young, they look like college students. They talk in a low voice but I can still hear them and I can sense the anxiety, loneliness and expections behind their laughter and talk the sweet melancholy of the young. In a winder afternoon, a man snatchine a little leisure is sipping the cup of sweet melancholy and expectations.... mocha....mocha...mocha...." (Ladda may want to give this to Dana Street Coffee...)

2/09/2004: "A little sadness"

Today I am leaving the youth hostel to move into my new place. So far I've met some wonderful people from England, Australia, Korea, Norway, Hong Kong and Isreal while staying in the 9 bedroom dorm at the Feiying International Youth Hostel near ChangChungJie Ditie subway in Beijing. The hostel, with it's constantly leaking wet bathroom (my first experience there was to step onto the wet bathroom floor in socks in the dark!), held some of the nicest and most interesting people I have met in a long time. "Ingrid" is relatively young and this is her first big journey away from home in Norway, told me that she is a bit sad that all these people are leaving now. It is definitely a little hard because I think that although everyone knows that although we exchange email addresses, we will probably have trouble keeping in touch. I remember hearing somewhere that the single most important factor in building friendships is convenient geography (closeness)...

For me it is of course mixed because I'm moving into one bedroom of a two bedroom apartment with some excellent roomates who spent many hours yesterday helping me to learn chinese while bargaining hard for a rechargable electric razor (high quality $5/us), sunglasses ($1US), and some other odds and ends. I will also be closer to school, have a room where I can actually spread out some stuff, and work on the next task which is probably either buying a bicycle or visiting more of the tourist sites before school starts. Oh, I also have to figure out how I blew through all my credit on my cellphone with only about 3 phone calls?? I don't understand the chinese phone system completely yet. :(

After I get settled, I will upload some more pictures. I have some cute videos of some stuff including: -beijingers excercising in the park on these funky machines, -Heaven's Gate, Tianamen Square, and a picture of me and my friend Simin (pronounced "SIMEEAN"- sort of...)

2/09/2004: "Napkin Envy"

In the US, when you go to a restaurant - especially a fast food restaurant - they give you napkins. If you get "to go" at macdonalds, they give you a wad of napkins several inches thick. With very little effort, you can get many many napkins. Sometimes I've been afraid to ask for an extra napkin (or ketchup) because I know they will give me 10 instead of the 1 that I need. In most entry level to mid-level restaurants, they have napkin dispensers at every table filled with napkins. Napkins are everywhere..

In china, this is not the case. There is a dearth of napkins. It seems that most people eat food without many napkins. I never noticed how messy I was until now (probably the chopsticks don't help). Even at Macdonalds they don't have the napkin dispensers. My friend tells me that at some restaurants they charge money for extra napkins (my korean roomate just confirmed this that in Xi'an he got charged for a napkin). I'm not sure why this is - I'm sure china certainly has enough trees.

I have also noticed there aren't many tissues. I don't think I would have noticed this as quickly had I not had a cold...

2/08/2004: "Bird Flu, Mad Cow, etc"

A lot of chinese seem to be avoiding eating chicken. I did some reading up on Bird Flu and found out that this is probably a little premature.
According to Yahoo News, Bird Flu seems to have only killed children under 10. Also, it is only transmitted directly from birds to humans. Finally, it seems to be a problem only in situations where there is poor hygene or lax Vet. stds were the birds are sold or slaughtered. The article specifically said "Humans have to live in close proxmity to live poultry". Currently -that is the deal. So, for most of us, probably not a problem.

Right now, the big worry is "what if". What if it mutates into something that can jump human-human, or can be transmitted airborne. Well, then we'd be in trouble. So, keep checking the news, but I guess I'll be OK eating chicken.

The funny thing is that when I left the states, I was also steering away from Beef because of Mad Cow. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I figured I probably shouldn't eat much beef anyway. So, I was starting get frustrated because my main alternative was also just removed, but again, it sounds like a little premature.

2/08/2004: "The Student problem"

Today, I decided to check out Tianamen Square and the Forbidden city. Both are very famous and historic sites in Beijing. The weather was miraculously warm too! I was actually able to go the whole time without using my hat or gloves. I planned for people trying to sell me stuff though, so I put on my MP3 player and was rocking out listening to tunes as I entered Tianamen square.

It didn't last long though. Pretty soon, a persistent Chinese girl was waving her arms in front of me, and something told me that maybe she wasn't trying to sell something (or maybe I was just lucky), so I stopped and she basically wanted to just practice her English. I guess I felt bad about abusing so many chinese people with my awful Mandarin in the last few days, so to make a long story short, I didn't make it to the Forbidden City, but I ended up talking with her for a few hours. Her name was "Eva".

After speaking with her, I can understand her persistence.

One of the ways to get a good job & career is to have English fluency - no matter where in the world you are. Who doesn't want a good job or career? So, how are you - as a student sharing a dorm room at a university with 8 other students (not kidding - and we thought it was bad at UMass with 3)- going to practice? You can learn to read and write a bit at school, but as one of my chinese friends will attest - learning to speak English from another Chinese, usually doesn't work out well.

American's don't typically go to China to study. English speaking people in general do not go to China in sufficent numbers to resolve this. A student in china just cannot afford to go overseas to study in America to learn to speak English. Just for comparison, the breakfast I had today would have cost me $1 in the US, but it cost 12CENTS here in China. So, the economy of scale just doesn't work in reverse for these bright young students.

I was discussing with my new friend Simin (thanks for introducing me Steve!), how there were travelers from many different countries at the youth hostel and how I thought it was a great experience for them as college aged kids to get out and see the world. Simin said: "I wish there was a way for chinese youth to do that - but many many just can't afford it" - again the economies of scale just don't work.

So, in many ways, i didn't mind spending a few hours helping a young student improve her English and learn about American culture. I now think I understand her situation.

2/07.5/2004: "Simple Things & I have a place to live"

Some things I've noticed:

• Chinese women will often hold hands, or walk arm in arm. There is nothing wrong with this. In the US this may be considered strange. I think that's a shame. It is very nice that often young chinese women do this and I think it is something that should be encouraged in the US as well
• There apparently aren't very many building inspectors. I looked at some places to live today, and it's really forcing me to adjust what I consider to be "liveable" down several notches. Did I say several? A LOT. One building had an entryway of beaten-looking chipped concrete, dirt rutted driveway, no lights in the entry way, just a big dark holewith no door - where you kind of have to feel your way around in the dark to find the stairs, missing firehoses on each floor, not really any light "fixtures", just bulbs hanging off of wires, insufficient lighting everywhere, and what would be a 30 page list of building code violations in the states. No doubt, it's a lot different here. Regardless, I did select a place to stay. It's amazingly bad by western standards, but it was middle of the pack for what I say - the nice thing is that it's close to school and the roomates will definitely help me learn Mandarin. Very nice!

There was one place for me to stay - right across the street from the school. It was a beautiful new high-rise building. A nice young couple where the woman actually worked in the same field as me at the SUN reseach group! They had an extra room and they were just interested in having an american speaking guest - it was going to be a FREE place to stay! It was looking good, EXCEPT for the 5 CATS I was very allergic too! Gah! Nothing is ever perfect!

2/07/2004: "Getting off a train"

I think I was in Europe - Switzerland I believe - where they have these special marks on the ground where the subway trains stop. It is shaped like the letter "V" within a smaller letter "V". People waiting to get on the train have to line up between the inside and the outside of the V's so that the people on the inside getting out have a clear path. It works great.

In the US, it is accepted that people should be allowed to get off of the train / bus / trolley before new people get onto it. Occasionally someone will hop on without realizing there was still someone waiting to get off, but generally that is how it works.

In china, there seem to be no rules about this. When the doors open, it is a free-for-all of squeezing through to get on and off. It works, and it especially works for me because I have the advantage of height and size, and I have been wearing my bright blue ski jacket recently whereas many of the chinese favor dark colors - people clear out of my way pretty easily.

2/06/2004: "Look at that guy"

Someone recently explained to me that the chinese don't usually say "excuse me" when they bump into you. She explained that it was because there are so many of us in the city constantly bumping into each other, that it was just accepted that it was going to happen, so you don't have to bother saying anything. I found this interesting. What I found more interesting was my inability to STOP saying "excuse me" or "sorry" when I bump into someone. On the bus the other day, I had been squashed up behind some woman, and my backpack accidentally crashed into her, silly me, I said "sorry" in English, which I'm sure she clearly didn't understand, and she ignored me anyway. No harm done I guess.

I met an american guy Jeff, who had taught in Japan for two years and was considering teaching in china. He was traveling around china trying to find a place he got a good "feel" from. He said he noticed that the chinese were staring at him a lot. I knew that this was likely to happen in the smaller cities and countryside where there are less foreigners, but I didn't think it would happen much here. However, he seemed a bit annoyed and explained that the Japanese will be curious, but won't stare - and maybe they see more foriegners there. I hadn't had any experiences other than the occasional long-look until yesterday.

I was eating at a restaurant and I noticed that the entire kitchen staff was lined up one after another, staring into the dining room at me. At first I thought that maybe they were looking at their boss or something to see if he liked the food, but after a while I realized it was me - and I didn't have food on my shirt either! This went on for about 10 minutes, then finally stopped. It bothered me a bit, but I got over it.

Later that night while waiting for the train, I was just standing on the platform, listening to my mp3 player. I wasn't feeling well because I just got over a cold. There were two chinese guys in their 20's in front of me. One of the turned around and looked at me for a bit, then tapped his friend on the shoulder, whispered in his ear, and started laughing, as his friend turned around to stare right at me. I wasn't in the mood to walk away or anything, so I just stood there and did nothing. Jeff had said something earlier about it being disrespectful and I remembered it at that moment. Well, once I get better at chinese, I can talk to them when they do that.

2/05/2004: "Learning the city, getting things done"

Yesterday I discovered that my Blackberry doesn't want to work in China. Even though it is advertized as a "world compatible phone" that will work in China. I've sent them email, but they have not responded yet. If anyone knows why I get "invalid SIM card" when I put in a Chinese SIM card, please let me know! If you have any ideas at all, let me know.

I'm frustrated by this because it means I will have to spend a relatively large amount of money and buy a cellphone here, which I don't really want to do. Jie's friend and Steve's friend Simin are trying to get in touch with me to help me find a place to live (and some other wonderful people are volunteering to help me out too!), that it is worth it to just buy one. Maybe I can sell it later if I get my blackberry working. It is more important for me to find a good place to stay quickly than it is to worry too much about getting my cellphone working.

Yesterday I also went to the BLCU, which getting there was an adventure. I went by train to Xizhimen, got lost leaving the station and walked about 3 miles back and forth to try and find the bus stop for bus 722 ("chi-ar-ar"). Finally I found it and rode it to the campus, which was set up differently than I expected. I wandered around, but was very cold and my ankle was getting a little sore from all the walking. I had a funny chinese conversation with the staff in the main building (it took 3 of them to understand my limited chinese), but I learned that the building i was in was NOT the one I was looking for - haha.

The campus seems nice, but it was pretty abandoned because it is between semesters there. I can see it being a nice place when everything is going on though. However, it was so cold and I was tired that it was hard to be very uppity about it (especially when my ankle was hurting). I will go back tomorrow, earlier and look around again.

When I got back to the dorm, Jeff - an English Language teacher was telling me about seeing a group of nice older women doing aerobics in Tianamen Square. He said the funny part was the music they were listenting too was raunchy american dance music from the 80's featuring lyrics like "Yeah, I want some P***Y! P***Y, Yeah, and some D**K for you!", etc. He said he couldn't stop laughing. These cultural hiccups can be funny.

2/03/2004: "exploring..."

Last night I went out with my dorm mates. There is this guy from Australia who's excellent at bargaining. These two girls came into the room talking about the great deal they got on these shoes and he goes "how much did you pay?", "100Y" she says. <pause> "oh... you paid too much. You could have probably gotten it for 20Y" he tells her. This happened several times. However, he explained that he really enjoys the bargaining and likes to try and get a good deal. Today I spent 3Y for 4 bannanas which, after they all started laughing at me when i walked away, I realized that was really only the bargaining starting price and I was spending too much. oh well!

Now thanks to my friend Brent, he directed me to these websites:

http://www.wlan.com.cn/eng/ewireless.htm
AND
http://www.chinapulse.com/wifi/
Which both have directories of wireless internet cafes -cool. Thanks Brent. I'm sitting at the "Be there or Be square" cafe / restaurant right now, but their network connection keeps going down. It took me 3 attempts and lots of arm waving to explain to them that the computer their DSL router probably needed to be restarted. I couldn't understand much of what they said - I have so much to learn.

2/02/2004: "A whole new world"

My plane flight went well, but it was a bit long. When I stopped in Tokyo to change planes, I got stopped because it turned out I left my leatherman (knife!) in my carry on bags! Doh! This happened because I was originally planning on putting that bag in my checked luggage, but changed my mind at the last minute. It just goes to show that the US still has a long way to go with security, but the Japanese don't - they are very thorough - and were polite at the same time.

I spent a few hours speaking with this nice Japanese woman Kaora who worked as an engineer for the US military. She was travelling with her daughter who was sitting behind her. They were having fun handing notes in Japanese back and forth between them. She was telling me how she raised her daughter in the US for many years, then moved back to Japan - so her daughter (now in high school) is almost completely bi-lingual. Good for her!

When I arrived in Beijing at the airport I knew my first challenge was going to be finding a taxi to get me to the youth hostel. My friend Steve had helped me out by going over the pronounciation for the youth hostel name in chinese for at least an hour the night before - and I recorded it on my mp3 player and listened to it when I was on the plane so i could practice - and he also gave me a .gif file of the chinese characters for the address that I printed out.

When I got to the outer part of the terminal - the waiting area, there were all these plainclothes taxi guys running up to me and the other foriegners trying to get us to take their taxis. We hadn't even gotten out of the terminal yet, so this was really annoying. However, a few seconds later a shout went up and all those chinese taxi guys start running for the exits! I guess there was a security detail coming and they weren't supposed to canvass buisiness inside the terminal. So one taxi guy and his girlfriend were hassling me for a while while I was trying to buy a beverage at the vending machine - they just wouldn't leave me alone, so I started talking to them. I started to say the chinese name of the place, as I had rehearsed, but there were probably 4 or 5 people standing their staring at me and listening and it was probably more stressful than all those years I was up on stage singing in front of people when I performed in musicals! So strange! However, I got it out, but it wasn't perfect and they kept interrupting me, so they didn't figure it out. I gave them the sheet that I had printed the address on, and they said "yea - 180Y", which i knew was too much, so I asked for 120, and they countered with 150. I started to say "no", but they ran off because another shout went up for the security guards. The problem was that he ran off with my directions!

good thing I had another printed copy! (thanks anatole!!)

So, I sat down with my drink to enjoy a few moments of peace and quiet and not 10 seconds later I had a new "friend". Another taxi driver who was simultaneously trying to become my friend while looking around frantically for the police who could bust him. After bargaining with him a bit, I got lazy and settled on 150Y (including tolls) even though I knew I shouldn't pay more than 120. Well, I figured if it wasn't double, than I was doing OK for an american. haha...err...

We got into an early 90's VW, which i quickly realized was NOT an official taxi. This was just some guy who was trying to make money taxiing around foreigners at the airport. It had rally wheels and tinted windows, but was a little beat up. I briefly thought that maybe he was taking me to his friends so they can beat me up and take my stuff, but I figured this probably wouldn't happen, so I just tried to talk to him as much as possible so maybe he would think I was a cool guy and hopefully would decide that I was too nice to take to his friends to get beaten up and robbed. It's funny what you think of when you are tired, in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, and don't have any idea where you are going...at night...in the dark...sitting next to some guy you don't know.

I struggled through much of my chinese vocabulary talking with him. He said he through I was 25 years old, but I said "wo bu gangdan" which means "I'm not worthy of that praise"- or something like that. I talked with him about America and he said that he thought too many chinese are going there. hehe...

I got worried again when we stopped in some alleyway at a tea shop, but realized it was so he could ask directions. It worked, and we got to the hostel without any problems.

When I checked in and got to my dorm room, it was filled with a combination of British and Austrailian travelers. That really confused me because I was so tired I couldn't get the accent straight. They were cool and impressed with my ice climbing bag (thanks mike!), but I quickly discovered that I COULDN'T GET IT OPEN because while at the airport, I somehow reset the combination to something I didn't know. I gave up and went to sleep...

The next morning I learned the chinese name for "locksmith" which is "suo3 jiang4" (for those of you who don't know, the numbers indicate tones in chinese - there are 4 of them - flat-1, up-2, down/up-3, and down-4) and asked the receptionist in my broken chinese to help. They showed me where I could find one. It turned out the guy operated out of a "shop" which was a cargo-bicycle that he'd stop and open up at a certain spot every day. After learning how to say "break open", I he broke the lock for me for free!

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in beijing right now. There are about 80 computers here. I've paid 3 quai (yuen) for 1 hour, which works out to 34cents! I met up with a group of Aussies and a group of English folk who I'm sharing a dorm room with, and one of them loves to bargain. He got his friend a North Face jacket (replica, made in the same factory probably) for $18us - probably a $150 jacket in Palo Alto! Ha - I need those skills! Problem is that I don't have room to carry much, so I'm not really buying anything. It was a 1-speed bike with very questionable brakes and loose cranks that got progressively worse during the day. The front wheel also wobbled a lot, but I pedaled probably about 8 miles on it. I used to be such a bicycle snob. What I would give for a current model of the shittiest huffy sold in the US - that would be top of the line here... I am also amazed at the ease with which I've adopted the beijing style of bicycle riding. It didn't even occur to me that I didn't have helmet as I pedaled in front of oncoming traffic, or played "chicken" with a car as I tried to cross a street - just like all the chinese people here. I do wish I had gears though, some peppier acceleration would probably have made me feel better. It was fun, but my butt hurt because the seat was so bad, and the bicycle proceeded to break during the day (the cranks got more and more loose!).  

For lunch, I got 12 tasty dumplings and a cup of tea for $1.35 - now that I can
handle! haha!

I don't have any pictures right now - I didn't download them to my laptop yet. More later...

1/30/2004: "About to leave the US"

Last week I had my final skate class. Many great friends and students there. Thank you all for making the last year wonderful and fun. We all went out to Dana Street Coffee afterwards and had something to eat and drink.

Later that afternoon, I still hadn't left the coffee shop because a very talented guitarist named Dorian Michael came in and played. He was exceptionally good. I stayed for his full show and then bought his CD. Live music rocks.

1/20/2004: "Updating my world"

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone who is Chinese or celebrates that Holiday! I also would like to extend a warm "Happy New Year" to the people in Beijing who are helping me! People like Dr. He, LiZhi, Mei and a bunch of others have been extremely helpful in getting me the information I need to make this whole thing work! Thank you and I look forward to meeting you in person!

While I am on the topic, I need to thank a certain Dr. Callahan for giving me the list of immunizations and critical travel medicine information that i need to adjust and adapt to the different environment. I hope that my preparations will be sufficient to enable me to really enjoy this experience.

For my preparations this week, I've spent a lot of time this week trying to sell stuff so I have money for the trip. I realize that my negotiating skills need some improvement. From what I read about chinese commerce, I'm going to get really killed on prices if I don't develop some better negotiating skills!

I'm definitely "Updating my world" right now. I've made changes in my living situation, my financial situation, my transportation situation, and even my eating situation - everything in my life is changing for this trip! It is pretty exciting, I just hope I don't forget anything important!

Next Sunday is going to be the last class for the Youskate.com skate school. I've had hundreds of students over the last year of all ages and they have all been wonderful and great. I feel priviledged to know these people and to have helped them learn to skate.

To the right is alink to a video of one of the drills I did in the last class. As you can see, it didn't go too well for all the students, but it was a race, and sometimes the competitive juices make people go faster than they should! :)

Who knows, maybe I will open a skating school in Beijing.... Do you think anyone would be interested?

12/28/2003: "Let the Adventure Begin!"

Since 1994 I was thinking about telecommuting. Since 1996 I wanted to get out of the country and travel. First it was Spain, then it was somewhere in Asia. When my friend Brent finally got a full-time gig telecommuting, I started thinking about it more. When my company canned much of it's staff last year, I started putting things in motion.

At the end of January I fly out to Beijing to start studying Mandarin 20hrs a week (and I hear about another 20hrs of studying!). I've studied two semesters at Foothill College, so I hope that will help.

The picture to the right is of me purchasing my plane ticket to Beijing. Rarely do we have such definitive moments in our life! How often can we say (beforehand) that this exact moment will change your life? Well, there it is for me folks - and I took a picture of it (thanks Alan).

Now, I have to rent my room, sell stuff, study more, and generally work my tail off until I hop on the plane.

1/10/2004: "For Sale"

Happy new year everyone. I've been super busy since I got back from boston. I worked out a deal with my roomates, I found someone to rent my room, and I'm in the middle of selling a bunch of stuff! Here is a link to some of it if you know anyone who is interested:
house stuff | electronics stuff | music stuff
I am also considering selling my car and my motorcycle. The car because it's a depreciating investment, and the motorcycle since, well.. I need the money. However, the motorcycle takes less garage space and I really do enjoy riding it. Hmm...

I'm going to sell my laptop and digi cam and get smaller lighter alternates that I can bring. My friend Ladda has also taken a bunch of my furniture which helps.

Moving can be an emotional experience. For example, there's just no way i can keep all this stuff. I'll be getting rid of clothes and even pictures that I've had for a while - and it's kind of hard. However, I just have to keep reminding myself that it's all going to be good.

I logged onto www.hostelz.com and found a few potential Hostels to stay in when I first arrive in Beijing. I booked a week at one near Tianamen square which is a Hostelling International Hostel. I recommend the HI hostels 'cause they seem to have consistently good quality and cleanliness - at least the ones I've been at here in the States.

People are also giving me contacts in Beijing -which is great since I will have some people to contact when I am there.. I'm mostly focused on learning Mandarin, chinese culture and also people. It would be awful if I didn't make significant progress on speaking after 6 months though, so I hope to not get too distracted.

I do have one big worry though - I haven't recieved my JW202 form which I need to get my visa. I'm going to have to send an email to the school again.