A Paragraph (for a trashy novel)

The persistent pulse of heavy house techno courses through a club, pounding on the insides of every partier, begging to be released. The DJ can't free the pent up pulse on his own: he knows that his job is not to provide the beat, but to read the pulse of the club--the dancers, the drinkers, the couples making out in the crowd, and the singles looking through the crowd to make anything out--and to amplify and intensify that pulse until it permeates the very people who produced it in the first place. The beat circulates. It flows and grows with an energy that drives everything harder and faster. This is the pulse of a city that never sleeps. It is the vibrant pulse of rebellion. The pulse of joy. Nevertheless, it is a pulse that cannot be broken or slowed without toxic effects. The pulse becomes an infinite loop that flows through every body until somebody can't take it anymore. Then, the pulse proves to be the purposeful tock of a time-bomb about to explode.

*** *** ***

Okay, you can make up the rest on your own. I was about to write about someone I met in a nightclub, but I felt like soing something creative instead. This exercise was a little different from writing a restaurant review, and hopefully more fun for those of you who aren't going too be eating in Beijing any time soon. It's also fun to write as if I'm having a conversation with an audience that I'm pretty sure doesn't exist. Anyway, as usual, I always would appreciate feedback on any of the writing I post here. Feel free to get in touch by any means (if you're real to begin with...).

Korean

I need to stop eating with the Dutch. The whole saying about "going Dutch" must come from the fact that Dutch people don't seem too concerned with paying for food. I was planning a nice 3-10 RMB dinner of some kind of take-out or street food that I could eat on the couch. Instead I found myself with Tommy in a "That's Beijing" nominated Korean restaurant eating bibimbap and chatting with the owner.

Fortunately, the Dutch I eat with have good taste. 韩香馆 "Korean Bistro" is a great little restaurant. The setting is pleasantly modern. Dark wooden tabletops and straight lines keep the place looking clean and neat. A small Koi pond runs throug the center of the restaurant under the stairs that lead to a rooftop dinning area. We didn't eat on the roof, but I will have to go back on a warmer evening because the roof overlooks a neighborhood of Hutongs and courtyard houses that are still in good condition.

The food is strictly Korean, which is a relief from American restaurants where you can never tell if you're better off ordering from the Japanese or Korean side of the menu, but you can be sure that neither is going to be rewarding. I am no expert on Korean food, but the flavors were distinct and delicious--I even enjoyed the compulsory cold pickled vegetables served at the beginning of the meal.

Overall, though, the best part of the restaurant was the Owner. Chow King-Tai is originally from Hong Kong. He studied at Leeds and speaks fluent English and French in addition to Cantonese and Mandarin (and the menu is printed in three languages). The restaurant was not too crowded, so we talked with him several times during the meal. Tommy had eaten there before, and was greeted warmly when we walked in. Mr. Chow offered useful advice on travel in China, and also good advice on what to order.

The cost was considerably more than that of a basket of dumplings, but after last night's disaster at Kokomo it was a relief to get some good food. Korean food is a far stretch from comfort food, but 韩香馆 will be a good restaurant to remember when I need a break from Chinese food.

韩香馆:
Atmosphere: 4.5
Service: 5
Food: 5
Price: 4
Total: 4.625

Kokomo

Yesterday Marguerite, Virginie and I attempted to go out to dinner to celebrate Marguerite's birthday. Unfortunately, by ten o'clock, the belly dancer restaurant had closed, and we were compelled to devise a backup plan on the spot. Although Beijing is a city that rarely sleeps, it seems that the French restaurant owners all turn in early, and we were unable to find a restaurant that would remind les filles of Paris.

We found Kokomo instead.

All I have to say is that the Xinjiang kebabs that can be found on every corner in Beijing at any hour are 1/10 the price and have 10 times the flavor of anything we ordered. I would even go as far as to say that those kebabs (lamb, spicy and pepper on a stick) are closer to being Caribbean than anything in Kokomo.

Fortunately we were able to walk down the street and find our friends from Hutong School. It was a disappointing birthday dinner, but a good party.

Kokomo:
Atmosphere: 3
Service: 3
Food: 2
Price: 2
Total: 2.5

New Pictures!

Unfortunately, with the whole moving to a new site deal, the last few posts are out of order. Unless you're really curious about food, read the Xiaoxue post first.


Also, to make things easier, here are links to the good stuff:

Pictures of my neighborhood
Pictures of Elementary school

The internet isn't working well, so the new pics feature will have to wait. For now, enjoy the photos I posted from the last week!

Going Dutch: Cafe Sambal

Last Wednesday I discovered that a few of my Dutch compatriots were scanning the pages of "That's Beijing" for a good restaurant. Never one to skip out on a good meal, I decided to tag along.

Walking up Guloudajie (鼓楼大街) from Hutong school, you can find Cafe Sambal by turning down a small hutong and entering the first door on your left. From the outside, the restaurant is as unassuming as any of the other small houses and public bathrooms in the neighborhood. You have to climb a couple of antique stone steps to get in the door, but once inside, you realize that this restaurant is not your typical hole-in-the-wall Chinese cookery.

Sambal is owned by the same group as Paper and Bed. It is located right around the corner from Bed, and the decor is similar: Basic wall decorations and low tables. Although we weren't sitting on an actual bed, our private room featured a raised seating platform with cushions for seats and low tables. There was ample room to spread out, and the music that drifted in from the main hall was pleasant and understated. The private room definitely proved to be a more comfortable option with better light and more atmosphere than the main area.

The fare is high quality Southeast Asian, and the menu provides ample selection. There are plenty of seafood options that go far above and beyond Beijing's typical fish offerings. Prawns seem to be a specialty, and could be ordered in a number of different dishes. For those of us who prefer to eat the fruits of the earth, there is no lack of meat and vegetable dishes. Dishes averaged around 30-45 RMB. However, the portions were pretty small: four of us ordered 3 appetizers and 3 main dishes altogether. Although we were not left hungry, we did end up eating all of our rice and considered ordering more.

Our waiters were attentive and helpful. They didn't speak very much English, but they knew enough that the Dutch could get by without using Chinese. The head waiter even made good suggestions based on what we said we wanted to eat. My only complaint with the staff is that they brought us expensive mineral water that we didn't ask for, and that choice inflated our bill beyond our expectations.

The food was delicious. Everything was cooked expertly. The vegetables were crisp and flavorful, and the meat was tender. All of the sauces were good enough to eat on their own (or with rice). Unfortunately, with the small portions, such good cooking left us wanting more than we had ordered. We made quick work of the curry, and ended up using the sauce to enhance our rice.

To our surprise, the bill came out to be much higher than expected. It was around 500 RMB, which is about 2.5 times what we expected to pay. For the quality of the food, we expected to pay more than normal, but for the amount of food we ate it was disappointing to spend 125 each. My caveat is to specifically request cheap water.

Overall, The restaurant was quite nice. On the scoring system that I have just invented, I give it a 4 for atmosphere, a 5 for quality, a 4.5 for service and a 3 for price: overall, 4.125 out of 5. I would go there again, but I think that it is more suitable for two or three people than for a larger group.

Xiaoxue 小学

I thought that teaching some classes in Anhui was hard. There was no lesson plan and every day I would stand in front of a new class of kids who were less interested in learning English than they were in seeing a foreigner for the first time. Even so, those classes in Anhui were fun because the kids were only a few years younger than me, and they weren't afraid to talk to me and ask questions.

Saturday I went with one of the teachers from Hutong school, Zhangqian; an Italian, Gabriele; and three Chinese college students to a suburb of Beijing to teach English in an elementary school. I was the only native English speaker. As Gabriele put it, "Those poor kids: they're going to end up with an Italian-Chinese accent!"

I had a great time. I taught the alphabet and numbers to about 12 six-year-olds for a few hours, and I entertained them with my fantastic Chinese. Unfortunately, after we got to "12," I ran out of material (I probably could have kept going up to 100, but the kids were having a hard enough time remembering "five").

Teaching elementary school kids who have almost no experience with English is completely different than teaching middle school kids who have studied English since elementary school. These students knew the English alphabet, but I don't think they knew what it meant. Instead of teaching them to read English, their teachers teach them pronunciations by using Chinese characters--This is similar to the Chinese technique for transliterating Western names, and has the curious effect of making Chinese English unrecognizable. The teachers also don't bother to teach the meanings of English phrases: One girl caught me off guard by asking what "thank you" means: I had a hard time answering at first because I couldn't tell if she was saying an English word or a Chinese word. But when I figured out her question, I couldn't help wondering why someone would have taught her that phrase without telling her how to use it.

I think that at the end of the day I may have learned more than the kids I was trying to teach than they learned from me. I learned a lot about the condition of Chinese schools in small towns. I learned that even suburbs of huge cities can still be small towns that benefit very little from their proximity to an urban center. I learned that the Chinese version of the ABC song is different than the American version (they don't get the lmnop part). Meanwhile, the students only learned the hokey-pokey and an ad-hoc version of duck, duck, goose AKA ya, ya, e.

The best part of the day was that I met three Chinese college students. These are pretty much the first Chinese friends I have made here who are my age. They are really great because they are not Beijingers--two of them come from Hunan, and the other was from somewhere else in the south. The Hunanren were great: they taught me some dialect and were generally fun to talk to. The other student was really interesting because she has travelled over more of the world than me. We all made fun of her because she has been to so many foreign countries, but not to many places in China--She has been to Germany, Italy, America, Denmark and Spain, but never to Hunan.

After we returned to the city, we all went out to eat together, and then to a bar at Houhai where I was really excited to be able to order chocolate milk. Dinner was a rooftop joint where we ordered something on the order of 100 chicken wings for 6 people. I tried to impress the southerners with my ability to eat spicy food, but in retrospect I don't recommend trying to eat 4 super-spicy wings at once without any rice to absorb the hotness... today I lost my voice completely! At any rate, I think my daring paid off and everyone was suitably impressed. I'm planning on going out with them for Hunan food and maybe Karaoke.

The whole day was great, but exhausting. Switching between three different languages (English for the sake of Gabriele, Chinese when we didn't need to include him, and French when Gabriele and I needed to leave out the Chinese (although neither of us speak French very well)) is draining and the sheer amount of talking may have had an influence on my current inability to speak. Also, playing with the kids took a lot of energy! After chocolate milk, I came home and fell asleep.

As my Hunanese sister-in-arms against our friends who wanted to go dancing put it: "They are the royalty of dance, We are the royalty of sitting and sleeping."

I can't wait to do it again!

New Blog

You may or may not have noticed that the blog has moved to a new address. This move occurred not as a result of some brilliant insight, but rather because my good friends at Google decided to loose my account information for the other page.

So, I took the opportunity to change a few things:

1. New Template. It's slightly edgier (as far as prescription templates go), and a little easier on the eyes.

2. New Feature! I added a list on the right where I will be keeping track of the good restaurants I eat in. I'm not going to list little street food places--only the classier joints that are worth remembering. I will also try to post reviews.

3. New Feature! Pic of the irregular time period: I will post a picture here whenever I add pictures to the picture page. That way, you will know when there are new pictures up, and you will have a convenient way to reach them. Cool?

So those are the new features of the blog. I think it will actually be a bit better now. It was a little inconvenient having to reset everything, and I think that this URL is deficient, but there's not much I can do except provide you all with more interesting procrastination material and a snazzier layout!

Friday, April 20, 2007

Ich bin ein Beijinger

Sitting in the stark black and white office of the German operated internet company Jabgo, it is hard not to notice the reality behind the stereotypes that we often use. The office bleeds efficiency. Within the single room, computers block sight lines so that the employees can see nothing but their own work; at the same time, the boss has a large desk from which he can attend to everyone no matter where they are sitting. The only sound is the persistent tapping of keys and the occasional phone ring. It's not an unhappy office, but it serves only one purpose: work.

Compare this German workspace with the chinese setting of Hutong school. There, five of us work in one office. We each have our own desk with plenty of space, and interdesk communication is often enjoyable and encouraged. When I suggested removing a wall to allow the back room (barely more than a closet) to be more included, Jan started trying to arrange it immediately. People at Hutong school frequently leave the office to sit in the sun in the courtyard, walk down the street for a bottle of water, or just to chat. Lunch breaks last from 12:30 to 2, or whenever you feel like returning to work. It is not an inefficient workplace, but it is certainly more relaxed, and definitely more in synch with Beijing life.

I have learned more about cultural stereotypes in Beijing in the last two weeks than I ever knew before. The dutch always seem a bit embarrassed by their nationality; the Germans have no sense of humor; the French are inefficient; and surprisingly, Americans are romantic. Jews are a novelty in China, and in the last 3 days I have explained my religion several times to curious Chinese who were shocked to discover that I was a walking talking Jew.

In Beijing, we are all expats. We all speak English to each other, and we are all united as outsiders in the Chinese world. Perhaps this is the reason that we harp on cultural stereotypes and even embrace them as symbols of who we are. Most of the time, I just think of myself as a foreigner in China, but sometimes its good to be the one who calls fooball "soccer" and impatiently waits for my Big Mac and fries. It's also fun to crush people's stereotypes by having less of an appetite for my Big Mac than my French friends.

The stereotypes are reassuring, and an endless source of amusement--especially when someone discovers that they have always held a false belief about someone else. We will never be chinese here, but we can at least live like the stereotype of Hutong life: relaxing and enjoying life as it comes.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Lingualisme

The best characteristic of the Beijing is that it is not America. Not only do the locals speak Chinese, but the expats come from all over the world. Hutong school is a particularly good example of the reality of the internationality of this city. Last night I went out with two Poles, an Italian, an Australian, two French, a Slovakian and a Filipino. We also met up with a few Chinese friends.

The inevitable result of the convergence of nationalities is a language juggling act. Desert last night included a rousing discussion of the Chinese phrase 马马虎虎 mamahuhu:

French Girl1: "mamahuhu...it's horse horse monkey monkey?"
Me: "Horse Horse Tiger Tiger."
French Girl2: "and it means?"
Me: "Comme ci comme ca."
French Girl1: "Oui, Comme ci Comme ca"
Italian: "In French it's Comme ci comme ca? In Italian it's Cosi Cosi [sic]."
Pole: "In Polish it's [something I can't remember]"
German Girl: "In German it's So la la."
Me: "In English it's 'it's okay.'"

There may have been some other options discussed, but we decided that the Chinese is definitely the most astute. Somehow "horse horse tiger tiger" says it all.

I spent a good part of the weekend hanging out with the French. On Friday I went with the French guys to see NOFX. Great punk rock concert--I hope that it was Beijing's first exposure to a live American punk band because the crowd was about as rowdy as they possibly could have been. There was enough energy in the room that I somehow ended up on stage. Fortunately, there was enough energy in the room that people were there to catch me when I got off the stage.

Anyway, I started off the evening eating pizza with the French and feeling like a sore thumb for making everyone else speak English. Eventually, I had to admit that I had studied french for quite a long time, and then I got in trouble because I had to use it. At that point I could barely put a full sentence together in French before reverting back to English, or Chinese. The guys gave up and spoke to me on my own level. I did manage to overhear parts of the side conversation in French, and I think my comprehension is much better than my ability to speak.

I spent the next two days sightseeing with the French girls, Virginie et Marguerite. By the end of today, I had become thoroughly confused. I was speaking English with the girls, reading their French guide book and directing the driver in Chinese. When I tried to bargain with the driver in French, I knew I was in trouble.

The balance of my non-native languages is at stake! I'm not worried though: If I lose my Chinese, then I'll at least improve my French. Marguerite assures me that if I hang out with them, then in three months I will be watching French movies without subtitles.

***NEW FEATURE: Click on the images for links to more photos!***

Saturday, April 14, 2007

New Pictures!

Here Is a Picture of the old man from yesterday.


More of my pictures from the last few days are HERE.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Taking Candy

Remember when you were young and your parents, teachers and generally wiser elders told you not to talk to strangers? That rule doesn't apply when you're a foreigner in Beijing--at least not when you're trying to improve your Chinese.

Today I took to the roads on a photography and workout extravaganza. I've learned in the last couple days that biking around Beijing is not the best way to get in shape because weaving between pedestrians, other cyclists and buses does not provide much opportunity for speed.

Nevertheless, I started heading south on Dongsidajie with no aim in mind. Soon, I unexpectedly found myself at Wangfujing, where I discovered that the police don't like it when you ride your bike on pedestrian streets. A short time later I learned that the police don't like it when you try to take pictures of them...

Forced to circumvent Wangfujing, I headed towards the Forbidden city to take pictures of the tourists/locals/anything interesting. By the time I left, the light was getting to be pretty decent and the vendors were starting to realize that I had no intention to buy anything.

I pedaled up the street, and was in the process of taking the long way home when and old man in fatigues waved me over with one hand while he spilled beer from the bottle in his other hand.

Having a shiny new bike is a good way to make new friends.

The old man couldn't speak. He could only give me a thumbs-up to let me know how impressive the amount of hair was that I have on my arms. His thumbs-up quickly became a "clink" as he and his fellow sidewalk squatters invited me to enjoy an afternoon beer with them.

We chatted for about an hour, and one by one the gang dispersed until I was left with the original old man (who kept clinking and trying to get me to drink more) and one pedicab driver named Wang Sheng, who told me that he is twenty-three years old even though he looked like he could be forty. Eventually, he reminded me that Beijing has two thousand years of history, and that he could guide me through the hutongs to see historic courtyard houses. I appreciated the distraction, so I took him up on his offer, and followed him on my bike.

We basically just followed a few alleyways back to the houhai area. Every so often, we stopped and my new friend told me to read a sign that explained the historical significance of a particular hutong or house. He also pointed out places where old houses were being knocked down to be replaced by modern facilities.

Meanwhile, we chatted about various things--the differences between Beijing and America, whether I had a girlfriend, what I was going to do after studying Chinese--the usual. I can't say that anything he told me was particularly enlightening (although it was interesting to learn that spirits can't jump over high thresholds), but I did make a new friend.

We eventually worked our way north through a maze of alleyways and moving obstacles, and finally found ourselves at the Hutong School.

One of the teachers was standing outside, and after Wang Sheng left he told me: "You have to be careful when you spend time with strangers."*

Maybe you don't have to remember--teachers everywhere give the same advice!

*rough translation

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Beijing Bicycle

Here's a picture of my new bike. According to Laoguo it's very beautiful, so it might get stolen. I have to make sure to lock it to things other than itself. It's a little bit too small, but it was the biggest frame size they had in the store, so maybe Chinese people don't buy very many big bikes. At any rate, it's pretty decent, and you can't beat the blue and pink color scheme!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Meeting Hutong School and Tibet

Yesterday I finally got to go to the Hutong School itself and start to figure out what's what. Jan is still not there, so I'm not really starting the internship, but I got to meet a lot of the other students/interns and some of the teachers. I still have to arrange my Classes because they will be private lessons, and I'm still not sure what time they will be held or how often.

More interestingly, I went out to dinner with some of the other students and one of the English teachers. The teacher was really interesting because she is originally from Tibet. I am not positive, but I think that she must be Tibetan and not Han Chinese.

Anyway, this teacher has a lot to say because she comes from an autonomous region and she studied politics in University. At first, she insisted that she liked teaching as opposed to doing something related to her major because it is more fun, but eventually she admitted that the real reason she is teaching is because taking a teaching job was the only way that she would be allowed to stay in Beijing. The Chinese have what she described as a "stupid" system in which everyone has an ID that says where they are from and where they are allowed to go; unless they have a job that validates their living away from home, they are not allowed to leave their original province.

Naturally, once we all discovered that she was from Tibet, we began asking questions about China's treatment of Tibet and what she thought of Tibetan independence. As someone whose family lived through the Communists rough handling of Tibet, she had strong feelings about the questions. Nevertheless, she is not so unhappy with the Chinese that she supports independence. In her opinion, if Tibet became free from China, then it would just become dominated by another nearby country like India. The way things are now, the Tibetan government is technically autonomous. The Party only gets involved through capital investments and maybe back room type dealings--perhaps these types of involvement show a greater control than direct rule, but for the time being things are working out reasonably well.

Admittedly, the past was much more of a problem. We talked mainly about the Great Leap Forward. The teacher told us that a huge percentage of people in Tibet starved at that time, and that some even resorted to cannibalism. She started to talk about how family members tried to save their children, but we didn't get very far into that conversation.

The most telling part of our discussion was when she told us that during the Great Leap the government collected crops from the peasants--allegedly to repay their debt to Russia. However, the government really was not paying any debt (I may be wrong about the date, but it was around that time that Stalin died and China stopped its involvement with Russia). Meanwhile, the crops that were collected just rotted while the people starved! The governor(?) of Tibet feared for his life at that time. It seems that people threatened to eat him.

What strikes me most is that none of the people in Beijing even knew about these problems in the provinces. Beijingren only get their news through government sources, so the censorship is severe and people are kept ignorant of the governments dirty dealings in its own country. Today the censorship reaches the internet, and it's hard to say what people know, and more importantly what they believe. It seems that the only reliable source of information about Chinese history are the people who experienced it first hand.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Apartment Pictures

This is a shot of the kitchen. You can see the washing machine through the door. The bathroom is behind it. If the internet connection wasn't so slow I would upload a pic of the bathroom, which impressively incorporates a toilet and a shower in the same closet.

This is the living room. Nice mod-ish couch, TV with DVD player and refrigerator/freezer.
My room. A bed that might as well be a granite slab with a beanbag pillow. There is also a wardrobe that is not wide enough to hang things in.

Overall it's a pretty nice place! There's an elementary school next door and a bunch of little shops around the corner.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

到了

I arrived in Beijing last night. The drive from the airport to the apartment was fun because I got to remember a bit of Beijing Geography. It looks like the city has grown since the last time I was here, but once we got inside the second ring road I started to recognize where I was.

The apartment building is in a block of similar buildings. It has six floors and I'm lucky enough to be all the way on top--Six flights of stairs was a lot of fun with my suitcases. The building is right near 雍和宫 the Lama Temple. Apparently we are a subway stop away from the Hutong School.

Today the school is closed because of Easter, so I get a day to settle in. I'll post some pictures this afternoon.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Saturday, March 17 2007

Here's a photo of sunrise at Deer Valley. We're skiing in 60+ degree weather--the benefits of a beach vacation with the fun of a ski trip. Good times.