Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Another temple
Last Saturday Jamie and I went outside the city to visit a temple that's quite different from the ones we saw in Beijing. It is only now being slowly restored; the pictures show something of the state of the project. We saw a few other visitors when we arrived, but they were leaving and we mostly had the place to ourselves. We talked briefly to one of the monks, who was very welcoming. Then we climbed down a slope outside the temple itself and looked into some abandoned cave homes.
I'm in the middle of packing (leaving Yulin tomorrow, unbelievably enough), so I won't elaborate right now. But here are some pictures.
I'm in the middle of packing (leaving Yulin tomorrow, unbelievably enough), so I won't elaborate right now. But here are some pictures.
Monday, 8 March 2010
A quick one
Once the semester started, the whirlwind began. I have been teaching with Jamie each day -- having fun meeting students, practicing English with them, getting a feel for how thing work here. Tonight I gave a talk to about 200 students using a quickly assembled Powerpoint slide show on "Maine Culture and Daily Life." Given how little time there was to prepare, I think it went okay. There were lots of good questions afterwards.
There's a lot I'd like to write about, including part II of "being a foreigner," but it will have to wait, perhaps for my night at a hotel in Beijing (Thursday), or the hours I'll be spending at the airport Friday.
Meanwhile, there are some pictures here.
There's a lot I'd like to write about, including part II of "being a foreigner," but it will have to wait, perhaps for my night at a hotel in Beijing (Thursday), or the hours I'll be spending at the airport Friday.
Meanwhile, there are some pictures here.
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Foreigner I: Europe
The first time I went to Ireland, in 1979, I said to someone in a pub that I was “Italian.” That person laughed and said, “You’re not Italian, you’re American, anyone can see that a mile away.” (After a couple of weeks in the country, I too could tell an American a mile away.)
That casual comment changed my understanding of a lot of things as time passed. When I was growing up, in the context of Dad’s family, not to mention church and school, we had always called ourselves “Italian.” As far as I can remember there were no hyphenated Americans in those days. In America there were Italians, Irish, Finns, and Swedes, not Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, etc., never mind African Americans or Native Americans. No one ever gave much thought to how to distinguish Finn(ish-Americans) from the Finns in Finland; most of us had never been to Europe and never saw any Europeans, so it didn’t matter.
My first reaction to the guy in the pub in 1979 was that of course the perspective was different if you were in Europe; in Ireland, you were only a stone’s throw from the real Italy, which was full of real Italians, and in fact real Italians showed up in Ireland on vacation on a regular basis. It took me longer to realize how big a difference there must have between the lifestyles of Italian-Americans and those of Italians in Italy. Grandma Mat and her generation kept up the food traditions, they could still speak and understand Italian, and they associated mostly with each other and not with other kinds of Americans. Nevertheless, they weren’t really Italian any more; they were Italian-American.
Another thing that first trip to Ireland got me thinking about was foreignness -- in both directions. Ireland (and later England) felt both familiar and foreign to me. The architecture was different from home -- but not too different. (Never mind the question of what “home” means if you’re talking about the U.S. as a whole, from the desert southwest to northern Maine, from Florida to Seattle.) There was a lot of different vocabulary (“car park” for parking lot, “ring” for call on the phone, “call” for come by the house, etc.), but not too much different vocabulary. The lifestyle was different but not too different (no central heating in Ireland; rather, a turf fire, but in a recognizable fireplace). So while it was very clear that I wasn’t in America any more, there was enough that was familiar -- especially and above all the language -- to keep traveling from being very daunting.
From the other direction, I felt foreign. Going across the ocean to foreign countries made me think about the fact that not everyone shares my assumptions, my memories, or my history in a way that people from one country share those things even in a diverse country like the U.S. In another country, talking to people who see the U.S. from the outside, things just look different. The Dublin paper was always full of news about the United States in a way that American papers were never full of news about Ireland, and people actually had strong opinions about the U.S. in Ireland, because the U.S. affected them in a way that Ireland did not affect the U.S.
Those trips made me treasure the chance to go away and feel like a foreigner for a while. I would get some of my fixed ideas shaken up, see the world out of other people’s eyes for a while, see new places out of my own eyes, and come home not quite the same person I was before.
Brussels put a few cracks in that picture. Unlike in Amsterdam, where everyone on the street seems to speak beautiful English, in Brussels, outside my office, most people didn’t speak much if any English at all. It turned out that when I couldn’t have conversations with people, being a foreigner wasn’t quite so much fun. I had a great trip to Brussels (with my side visit to Amsterdam), but it taught me that being a foreigner is a little more complicated than I had thought.
China is another story altogether -- which I’ll try to tell next time.
That casual comment changed my understanding of a lot of things as time passed. When I was growing up, in the context of Dad’s family, not to mention church and school, we had always called ourselves “Italian.” As far as I can remember there were no hyphenated Americans in those days. In America there were Italians, Irish, Finns, and Swedes, not Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, etc., never mind African Americans or Native Americans. No one ever gave much thought to how to distinguish Finn(ish-Americans) from the Finns in Finland; most of us had never been to Europe and never saw any Europeans, so it didn’t matter.
My first reaction to the guy in the pub in 1979 was that of course the perspective was different if you were in Europe; in Ireland, you were only a stone’s throw from the real Italy, which was full of real Italians, and in fact real Italians showed up in Ireland on vacation on a regular basis. It took me longer to realize how big a difference there must have between the lifestyles of Italian-Americans and those of Italians in Italy. Grandma Mat and her generation kept up the food traditions, they could still speak and understand Italian, and they associated mostly with each other and not with other kinds of Americans. Nevertheless, they weren’t really Italian any more; they were Italian-American.
Another thing that first trip to Ireland got me thinking about was foreignness -- in both directions. Ireland (and later England) felt both familiar and foreign to me. The architecture was different from home -- but not too different. (Never mind the question of what “home” means if you’re talking about the U.S. as a whole, from the desert southwest to northern Maine, from Florida to Seattle.) There was a lot of different vocabulary (“car park” for parking lot, “ring” for call on the phone, “call” for come by the house, etc.), but not too much different vocabulary. The lifestyle was different but not too different (no central heating in Ireland; rather, a turf fire, but in a recognizable fireplace). So while it was very clear that I wasn’t in America any more, there was enough that was familiar -- especially and above all the language -- to keep traveling from being very daunting.
From the other direction, I felt foreign. Going across the ocean to foreign countries made me think about the fact that not everyone shares my assumptions, my memories, or my history in a way that people from one country share those things even in a diverse country like the U.S. In another country, talking to people who see the U.S. from the outside, things just look different. The Dublin paper was always full of news about the United States in a way that American papers were never full of news about Ireland, and people actually had strong opinions about the U.S. in Ireland, because the U.S. affected them in a way that Ireland did not affect the U.S.
Those trips made me treasure the chance to go away and feel like a foreigner for a while. I would get some of my fixed ideas shaken up, see the world out of other people’s eyes for a while, see new places out of my own eyes, and come home not quite the same person I was before.
Brussels put a few cracks in that picture. Unlike in Amsterdam, where everyone on the street seems to speak beautiful English, in Brussels, outside my office, most people didn’t speak much if any English at all. It turned out that when I couldn’t have conversations with people, being a foreigner wasn’t quite so much fun. I had a great trip to Brussels (with my side visit to Amsterdam), but it taught me that being a foreigner is a little more complicated than I had thought.
China is another story altogether -- which I’ll try to tell next time.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Travel plans
My visa extension finally came through. I will be flying home on March 12 rather than March 6. In the extra time I will teach with Jamie for the first week of classes, give a talk to English majors on daily life and culture in Maine (!!!), and be available to the English faculty to consult on usage and grammar.
I'll be leaving Yulin on the 11th.
I'll be leaving Yulin on the 11th.
Language
Unbelievable as it seems, I have been gone from home for almost four weeks. The past week or so has felt like a transition from being a tourist overwhelmed by unfamiliar impressions to being a temporary inhabitant of a place that feels ever more familiar, if no less mysterious and foreign.
Language has been a big part of my impressions from the start. Jamie is teaching English and learning Chinese, and we have talked about those endeavors quite a bit. Many people speak to us in English -- everything from “Hello” on the street to discussions with Jamie’s colleagues. A couple of them (especially Marien from Holland) speak such fluent English that those conversations go without a hitch.
On the other hand, I speak no Chinese at all apart from “ni hao” (hello) and “xie xie” (thank you), and very few people here can say more in English than I can say in Chinese. We hear “Hello - nice to meet you” on the streets a lot, but with most people it tends to end there. I can pick up a few words and phrases -- mostly stuff I listened to on CD’s before I came here -- but none of the meaning of what people are saying in Chinese.
As in Brussels, I wish I could have direct, in-depth conversations with local people. Jamie speaks what sounds to me like fluent Chinese (though he continues to deny that he’s very good!), and he does a lot of translating for me. Without him I would have lost my mind or fled home a long time ago. But it would take years of effort to be able to function here in terms of language, and both Jamie and his colleagues are evidence of that. All of them have been studying Chinese or English (respectively) for a long time, and I haven’t run into anyone who appears to have native fluency in English, nor does Jamie have native fluency in Chinese. Except for a very few language geniuses, only babies find this sort of thing easy!
Aside from the personal side of language issues, there’s also the politics. In China, every school child starts learning English in third grade and goes on with it through high school. The government not only supports English learning, it mandates it. (There is a national educational policy here; I don’t know what role the provincial and local governments play.) English majors at Yulin University must also learn Japanese, and I have met a number of people who also studied Russian or German.
Without going into a long rant, I will say that I wish the U.S. would place more emphasis on language learning. In that respect, coming here has only intensified a feeling I’ve had for a long time. The fact that many Chinese people know English, while very few Americans know Chinese (or any other foreign language) seems likely to play a subtle but important role -- not to our advantage -- in the coming years of economic competition between the two countries. This is not to mention the millions of bi- and multi-lingual Europeans and Africans who speak English with native or nearly native fluency, besides any number of other languages. My colleagues in Brussels switched back and forth among English, Dutch, and French without blinking, and I remember Edgard from the Ivory Coast, who taught French at Maranacook years ago, spoke beautiful English, and knew four other languages besides French and English.
Yes, English is a world language at this point, that’s why everyone else is learning it. But soon we’re going to be like kids who don’t know pig latin; a lot of the rest of the world is going to be able to talk behind our backs while we can’t talk behind theirs. ;)
Not only that, being a nation of immigrants means that we have an immense opportunity within our own borders to encourage multi-lingual citizens. Why should my Italian ancestors have had to abandon Italian when they learned English? Why don’t we encourage immigrants to maintain their native languages across the generations when they come here, so that we would have a nation in which not only English, but Spanish, Portuguese, Somali, Arabic, and any number of other languages are also spoken?
For those of you who are tempted to say that immigrants aren't learning English these days, I read about a study that said that in Southern California, later generations of immigrant families are learning English at about the same pace and rate as my Italian ancestors. It just seems different now because there is a long-term constant supply of new immigrants who don't know the language. But their' children and grandchildren are learning English just like Grandma, Grandpa, and Dad and his siblings did.
Well, that was something of a rant after all. 'Nuf said.
Language has been a big part of my impressions from the start. Jamie is teaching English and learning Chinese, and we have talked about those endeavors quite a bit. Many people speak to us in English -- everything from “Hello” on the street to discussions with Jamie’s colleagues. A couple of them (especially Marien from Holland) speak such fluent English that those conversations go without a hitch.
On the other hand, I speak no Chinese at all apart from “ni hao” (hello) and “xie xie” (thank you), and very few people here can say more in English than I can say in Chinese. We hear “Hello - nice to meet you” on the streets a lot, but with most people it tends to end there. I can pick up a few words and phrases -- mostly stuff I listened to on CD’s before I came here -- but none of the meaning of what people are saying in Chinese.
As in Brussels, I wish I could have direct, in-depth conversations with local people. Jamie speaks what sounds to me like fluent Chinese (though he continues to deny that he’s very good!), and he does a lot of translating for me. Without him I would have lost my mind or fled home a long time ago. But it would take years of effort to be able to function here in terms of language, and both Jamie and his colleagues are evidence of that. All of them have been studying Chinese or English (respectively) for a long time, and I haven’t run into anyone who appears to have native fluency in English, nor does Jamie have native fluency in Chinese. Except for a very few language geniuses, only babies find this sort of thing easy!
Aside from the personal side of language issues, there’s also the politics. In China, every school child starts learning English in third grade and goes on with it through high school. The government not only supports English learning, it mandates it. (There is a national educational policy here; I don’t know what role the provincial and local governments play.) English majors at Yulin University must also learn Japanese, and I have met a number of people who also studied Russian or German.
Without going into a long rant, I will say that I wish the U.S. would place more emphasis on language learning. In that respect, coming here has only intensified a feeling I’ve had for a long time. The fact that many Chinese people know English, while very few Americans know Chinese (or any other foreign language) seems likely to play a subtle but important role -- not to our advantage -- in the coming years of economic competition between the two countries. This is not to mention the millions of bi- and multi-lingual Europeans and Africans who speak English with native or nearly native fluency, besides any number of other languages. My colleagues in Brussels switched back and forth among English, Dutch, and French without blinking, and I remember Edgard from the Ivory Coast, who taught French at Maranacook years ago, spoke beautiful English, and knew four other languages besides French and English.
Yes, English is a world language at this point, that’s why everyone else is learning it. But soon we’re going to be like kids who don’t know pig latin; a lot of the rest of the world is going to be able to talk behind our backs while we can’t talk behind theirs. ;)
Not only that, being a nation of immigrants means that we have an immense opportunity within our own borders to encourage multi-lingual citizens. Why should my Italian ancestors have had to abandon Italian when they learned English? Why don’t we encourage immigrants to maintain their native languages across the generations when they come here, so that we would have a nation in which not only English, but Spanish, Portuguese, Somali, Arabic, and any number of other languages are also spoken?
For those of you who are tempted to say that immigrants aren't learning English these days, I read about a study that said that in Southern California, later generations of immigrant families are learning English at about the same pace and rate as my Italian ancestors. It just seems different now because there is a long-term constant supply of new immigrants who don't know the language. But their' children and grandchildren are learning English just like Grandma, Grandpa, and Dad and his siblings did.
Well, that was something of a rant after all. 'Nuf said.
Time passing
Here are a few recent pictures. I haven't taken many lately and the days have been passing fast and kind of randomly. I'll add another post soon, but meanwhile the pictures have some captions.
Saturday, 27 February 2010
Spring Festival II
This is out of order, but I’ve long since given up trying to stay organized. ;)
Spring Festival isn’t confined to New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The sixth day of the new year is the last day of one phase of the celebrating; almost everyone is off work for those six days but most people go back after that. There’s also the Lantern Festival, which happens on the fifteenth. Not the fifteenth of February, but the fifteenth of the new year, which is the time of the full moon.
There have been fireworks going off here since I came. For the first few days there were many street vendors selling holiday souvenirs and decorations and a dazzling variety of fireworks. We bought some and took them to Yanfeng’s family’s celebration, where they became part of a much larger supply.
On that first weekend, there was noise from firecrackers around the clock. It intensified on the Saturday (New Year’s Eve) and became constant and ubiquitous by Saturday evening. All over the city, boys and men (yes, I saw lots of girls and women spectating but I never saw one light a fuse) were out in the streets lighting stuff that would be illegal at home. From where we stood outside the alley to Yanfeng’s parents’ house, we could see fireworks all over the city that were at least as elaborate as the ones in Winthrop, Maine, on the Fourth of July. All these were being set off by private citizens.
This Sunday, for the Lantern Festival, the city government puts on its own (reportedly amazing) fireworks display at Century Park downtown. Amongst us foreigners (Jamie, Marien, me) there isn’t a lot of enthusiasm for going into the crowd that will be there, with -- still and again -- lots of boys setting off firecrackers all over the place. We haven’t decided what to do yet, if anything. It seems like a shame to miss the occasion, but besides the issue of crowds+fireworks, we would probably have to walk there and back and I don’t think my knees are up to it. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, as in so many other areas, there is a much more laissez faire attitude toward activities that would give a lot of Americans heart palptations from the safety point of view. When Jamie and I were walking to the pagoda the other day we passed a group of little boys, maybe 5-7 years old. Most of the boys were covering their ears with their hands while another little boy stuck a firecracker into a crack in a brick wall, lit it with a cigarette lighter, moved all of a foot or so away himself, covered his ears, and waited for the bang.
Nobody got hurt. (This time, anyhow.)
Meanwhile, at the end of the same street, I saw a woman riding a motorbike with a little kid on the back. The little kid was holding onto an even smaller kid. No one had a helmet, to say the least.
Spring Festival isn’t confined to New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The sixth day of the new year is the last day of one phase of the celebrating; almost everyone is off work for those six days but most people go back after that. There’s also the Lantern Festival, which happens on the fifteenth. Not the fifteenth of February, but the fifteenth of the new year, which is the time of the full moon.
There have been fireworks going off here since I came. For the first few days there were many street vendors selling holiday souvenirs and decorations and a dazzling variety of fireworks. We bought some and took them to Yanfeng’s family’s celebration, where they became part of a much larger supply.
On that first weekend, there was noise from firecrackers around the clock. It intensified on the Saturday (New Year’s Eve) and became constant and ubiquitous by Saturday evening. All over the city, boys and men (yes, I saw lots of girls and women spectating but I never saw one light a fuse) were out in the streets lighting stuff that would be illegal at home. From where we stood outside the alley to Yanfeng’s parents’ house, we could see fireworks all over the city that were at least as elaborate as the ones in Winthrop, Maine, on the Fourth of July. All these were being set off by private citizens.
This Sunday, for the Lantern Festival, the city government puts on its own (reportedly amazing) fireworks display at Century Park downtown. Amongst us foreigners (Jamie, Marien, me) there isn’t a lot of enthusiasm for going into the crowd that will be there, with -- still and again -- lots of boys setting off firecrackers all over the place. We haven’t decided what to do yet, if anything. It seems like a shame to miss the occasion, but besides the issue of crowds+fireworks, we would probably have to walk there and back and I don’t think my knees are up to it. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, as in so many other areas, there is a much more laissez faire attitude toward activities that would give a lot of Americans heart palptations from the safety point of view. When Jamie and I were walking to the pagoda the other day we passed a group of little boys, maybe 5-7 years old. Most of the boys were covering their ears with their hands while another little boy stuck a firecracker into a crack in a brick wall, lit it with a cigarette lighter, moved all of a foot or so away himself, covered his ears, and waited for the bang.
Nobody got hurt. (This time, anyhow.)
Meanwhile, at the end of the same street, I saw a woman riding a motorbike with a little kid on the back. The little kid was holding onto an even smaller kid. No one had a helmet, to say the least.
Friday, 26 February 2010
Eating out
There’s a wide range of eating options. At the “low” end there are street vendors selling cooked food. Lots of them sell meat on skewers, some (surprisingly to me, especially in February) sell corn on the cob, some sell roasted whole sweet potatoes. And that’s a very partial list. We haven’t bought anything on the street, but as I wrote in one of the Beijing entries, we have eaten food from places that were no more than a hole in the wall.
A step up from street vendors is a style of restaurant that has a few tables and sells steamed buns, soups, maybe dumplings, and I don’t know what all else because I can’t read the menus and Jamie and I like steamed buns, egg drop soup, and dumplings so much that we never order anything else. Or check that, we haven’t ordered dumplings yet because the place we’ve been going to hasn’t returned to full swing after the holiday period, and even now his favorite place hasn’t reopened; it’s doing the spring cleaning that traditionally accompanies the holiday.
Steamed buns are little balls of a flour dough with a meat filling (pork, usually). Eight or ten at a time are steamed in bamboo containers. The egg drop soup also contains herbs, including cilantro, and “fungus,” which doesn’t correspond to anything very familiar, but you can think of mushrooms to get in the ballpark.
About the “sanitary” customs, the less said the better. In small restaurants in Yulin, there’s a little roll on the table off which you tear a piece to use as a napkin (the paper is stretchy and a couple of inches wide). When you’re done with it, you throw it on the floor. Whether it would be impolite to leave used napkins on the table, I don’t know. There is typically also a bin of chopsticks -- we always take the disposable ones. There’s a bottle of vinegar and a bowl of chopped hot peppers in oil (they remind me of dad). You get a tiny bowl into which to pour your condiments, then dip the steamed buns into the bowl.
There are also bigger, nicer places, which have not only an open dining area but a lot of private rooms, which people here prefer. Food is served “family style.” All the serving dishes are in the center of the table (maybe on a lazy susan), and everyone takes what they want with their own chopsticks. There are no serving utensils except the ladle for soup. Each person has chopsticks, a little plate, a teacup, a small drinking glass, and a soup bowl and spoon. The soup bowl can be used for soup (which is the last course here, not the first), or rice. No napkin is provided. We keep packets of tissues in our jacket pockets for this and other reasons.
Jamie, Marien, and I were at dinner a few nights ago. We ordered three or four dishes to share, but we were still hungry when we had finished them. We tried to order another dish that we thought we’d all like, but the waitress said it was a cold vegetable, and all our vegetable dishes had been cold, and we should order a hot vegetable now. Jamie says this is one of many food customs (and perhaps superstitions) -- but he doesn’t (and I don’t) know much more about them.
With the odd (and I mean odd) exception here and there, I like everything I’ve eaten, and some of it I could eat every day. I decided ahead of time that there was no way I was going to be able to indulge all my food sensitivities here, so I would just try to eat anything that was served. So far so good, knock on wood.
A step up from street vendors is a style of restaurant that has a few tables and sells steamed buns, soups, maybe dumplings, and I don’t know what all else because I can’t read the menus and Jamie and I like steamed buns, egg drop soup, and dumplings so much that we never order anything else. Or check that, we haven’t ordered dumplings yet because the place we’ve been going to hasn’t returned to full swing after the holiday period, and even now his favorite place hasn’t reopened; it’s doing the spring cleaning that traditionally accompanies the holiday.
Steamed buns are little balls of a flour dough with a meat filling (pork, usually). Eight or ten at a time are steamed in bamboo containers. The egg drop soup also contains herbs, including cilantro, and “fungus,” which doesn’t correspond to anything very familiar, but you can think of mushrooms to get in the ballpark.
About the “sanitary” customs, the less said the better. In small restaurants in Yulin, there’s a little roll on the table off which you tear a piece to use as a napkin (the paper is stretchy and a couple of inches wide). When you’re done with it, you throw it on the floor. Whether it would be impolite to leave used napkins on the table, I don’t know. There is typically also a bin of chopsticks -- we always take the disposable ones. There’s a bottle of vinegar and a bowl of chopped hot peppers in oil (they remind me of dad). You get a tiny bowl into which to pour your condiments, then dip the steamed buns into the bowl.
There are also bigger, nicer places, which have not only an open dining area but a lot of private rooms, which people here prefer. Food is served “family style.” All the serving dishes are in the center of the table (maybe on a lazy susan), and everyone takes what they want with their own chopsticks. There are no serving utensils except the ladle for soup. Each person has chopsticks, a little plate, a teacup, a small drinking glass, and a soup bowl and spoon. The soup bowl can be used for soup (which is the last course here, not the first), or rice. No napkin is provided. We keep packets of tissues in our jacket pockets for this and other reasons.
Jamie, Marien, and I were at dinner a few nights ago. We ordered three or four dishes to share, but we were still hungry when we had finished them. We tried to order another dish that we thought we’d all like, but the waitress said it was a cold vegetable, and all our vegetable dishes had been cold, and we should order a hot vegetable now. Jamie says this is one of many food customs (and perhaps superstitions) -- but he doesn’t (and I don’t) know much more about them.
With the odd (and I mean odd) exception here and there, I like everything I’ve eaten, and some of it I could eat every day. I decided ahead of time that there was no way I was going to be able to indulge all my food sensitivities here, so I would just try to eat anything that was served. So far so good, knock on wood.
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Sightseeing
On Monday the same foursome that shared the birthday dinner went on a sightseeing excursion just outside Yulin. We took a cab to a place called Zhen Bei Tai, a fort located a few miles outside Yulin on the section of the Great Wall that runs just north of the town. In this stretch, as for a lot of its length, the Wall has crumbled almost into invisibility (see pictures here), but the fort still stands tall and it’s possible to climb to the very top of it, which we did. Slowly, in phases.
It was fun to get outside the city and to get a sense of where it sits geographically. To the north and northwest there is nothing but dry, reddish, desert-like empty land -- all the way to Inner Mongolia. To the southeast is Yulin, sitting in a bright haze of dusty air in the springlike weather. To the east there is construction -- Jingjing said some of it was housing and some might have been factory buildings. There are still people living in cave houses not that far from Yulin, but the government is building housing and trying to get the people to move out of the caves. Jamie saw some of the cave houses on his hiking trips last spring.
From Zhen Bei Tai it was maybe a fifteen minute walk back down the hill to the main road, then down another side road to a place called Red Stone Gorge. This is a spot where a river has carved a gorge, into the sides of which caves have been cut, and onto the sides of which inscriptions have been carved. Inside some of the caves are Buddhist statues, and the ceilings are painted with symbols, some of which seem to be from the Chinese “Book of Changes” (an ancient book), and many others of which I didn’t recognize (not surprising). In one of the caves, all the statues were female, and Jingjing said this was a place where women would come to pray for a healthy child. Each statue was holding some kind of tool or scroll.
These “caves” are cut into the rock and range in side from small to very spacious. They are dry squared off, and not anything like what I pictured last year when Jamie said he had seen places where people lived in cave houses. They could be made quite comfortable (no indoor plumbing, I dare say), especially since they would be cool in the summer and relatively warm in the winter.
My camera ran out of memory halfway up Zhen Bei Tai, so I don’t have pictures of Red Stone Gorge. My traveling companies took some pictures, so I’ll post some as soon as we trade our pics around.
After all this walking we were dusty and hungry, so we caught a bus (my first bus ride) and went downtown for dinner. The streets were jam packed with people, unlike on the day when Jamie and I walked there last week. This was apparently a more typical day, even though it was also a work day for most people. There were people in the park, some of whom were flying kites. There were street vendors selling kites right outside the park. I bought a couple of small ones that with any luck will fit in my suitcase.
It was fun to get outside the city and to get a sense of where it sits geographically. To the north and northwest there is nothing but dry, reddish, desert-like empty land -- all the way to Inner Mongolia. To the southeast is Yulin, sitting in a bright haze of dusty air in the springlike weather. To the east there is construction -- Jingjing said some of it was housing and some might have been factory buildings. There are still people living in cave houses not that far from Yulin, but the government is building housing and trying to get the people to move out of the caves. Jamie saw some of the cave houses on his hiking trips last spring.
From Zhen Bei Tai it was maybe a fifteen minute walk back down the hill to the main road, then down another side road to a place called Red Stone Gorge. This is a spot where a river has carved a gorge, into the sides of which caves have been cut, and onto the sides of which inscriptions have been carved. Inside some of the caves are Buddhist statues, and the ceilings are painted with symbols, some of which seem to be from the Chinese “Book of Changes” (an ancient book), and many others of which I didn’t recognize (not surprising). In one of the caves, all the statues were female, and Jingjing said this was a place where women would come to pray for a healthy child. Each statue was holding some kind of tool or scroll.
These “caves” are cut into the rock and range in side from small to very spacious. They are dry squared off, and not anything like what I pictured last year when Jamie said he had seen places where people lived in cave houses. They could be made quite comfortable (no indoor plumbing, I dare say), especially since they would be cool in the summer and relatively warm in the winter.
My camera ran out of memory halfway up Zhen Bei Tai, so I don’t have pictures of Red Stone Gorge. My traveling companies took some pictures, so I’ll post some as soon as we trade our pics around.
After all this walking we were dusty and hungry, so we caught a bus (my first bus ride) and went downtown for dinner. The streets were jam packed with people, unlike on the day when Jamie and I walked there last week. This was apparently a more typical day, even though it was also a work day for most people. There were people in the park, some of whom were flying kites. There were street vendors selling kites right outside the park. I bought a couple of small ones that with any luck will fit in my suitcase.
Monday, 22 February 2010
Bargaining
Lots of things in China are not sold at a set price; there’s an expectation that buyer and seller will dicker. Sometimes it’s clear which system is in use -- in the grocery store, for example, prices are fixed. In fact, in the grocery store, prices are in the computer. If, at checkout, the computer doesn’t recognize a bar code, the checkout person can’t sell the product. You can see a little pile of items accumulating on a nearby counter, where the clerks throw what they can’t get a price on. It’s not clear to me why, in that situation, the checkout person doesn’t just call for a price like they do at home -- it’s not like there aren’t lots of store employees standing around with time on their hands to make use of by staring at foreigners. ;) I’m sure there’s a reason, I just don’t know what it is.
When the price isn’t fixed, a further complication for the inexperienced visitor is that different markets, and even different vendors, seem to enter the bargaining process/game with different unwritten rules in mind. I have rarely been in situations in life where I’ve had to bargain, but my impression of a “classic” bargaining situation is that the buyer and seller both start the game by suggesting prices that are either lower (the buyer) or higher (the seller) than they’re willing to settle for in the end. Then there’s a back and forth that involves some lowering on one side and some raising on the other, until some number is agreed upon, which (in my fantasy) is probably a lot of the time about halfway between the original offers.
Well, it may not work that way at home a lot of the time either -- I don’t know, maybe I’m too naïve. But it definitely doesn’t work that way here. Or rather, it works that way now and then, but it works every other imaginable way too. Depending.
It’s “depending on what” that isn’t clear, except that the first rule, everywhere there’s bargaining, seems to be “soak the tourists.” Or maybe it’s “soak the ignorant,” that is, anyone, tourist or not, who’s ignorant of the process and/or ignorant of what things should really cost.
A typical example is a blue hanging (very cheaply made, but gorgeous colors, and I wanted it, okay?) that I bought when we came down from the Great Wall. Jamie asked the woman at the stand how much she wanted for it, and she said 150 (150 yuan). He said that was too much and we started to walk away. She then said 100 and Jamie again said it was too much and we started to walk away. He asked me in English what I was willing to pay, and having been through this a bunch of times already I said 20. (He thought it should have been about 3, but we didn’t try that number.) When the seller asked what we were willing to pay, Jamie said 20. The seller said no and started to go on about how that wasn’t enough, she couldn’t make any money that way, etc. (Some of them actually get tears in their eyes when the sob story starts.) She may have then offered 30 (I don’t remember for sure). Jamie said no again and we started walking. Then she called after us, “Okay, 20.” Just like that.
I’ll say more about bargaining when I write about the “antiques” market in Beijing, but meanwhile, the souvenir sellers at the Great Wall are class by themselves. I wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sad that the place was so uncrowded the day we went. If it had been more crowded, there would have been a lot more souvenir sellers; as it was, a lot of the booths were shuttered. But if it had been more crowded, there would have been more tourists to serve as targets of the sellers, and we might have been able to get by them with less hassle.
They are very aggressive. They stand in your way to prevent you from walking past, and if you start to walk past they put their hands on you and physically try to keep you there. They say a couple of words of English, including “dollar” -- they kept saying they were selling t-shirts for a “dollar.” We weren’t sure whether this meant they actually wanted a dollar bill -- technically, that’s illegal -- or what. I was glad Jamie was there to warn me ahead of time about the onslaught, and to steer me past the booths. It feels weird to me to be getting into the habit of constantly ignoring people -- both vendors and the people who stare at us all the time. But the vendors are in a sense just playing a game that I don’t know how to play, and the people who stare at us -- well who knows, I suppose there are a lot of different motivations for that.
When the price isn’t fixed, a further complication for the inexperienced visitor is that different markets, and even different vendors, seem to enter the bargaining process/game with different unwritten rules in mind. I have rarely been in situations in life where I’ve had to bargain, but my impression of a “classic” bargaining situation is that the buyer and seller both start the game by suggesting prices that are either lower (the buyer) or higher (the seller) than they’re willing to settle for in the end. Then there’s a back and forth that involves some lowering on one side and some raising on the other, until some number is agreed upon, which (in my fantasy) is probably a lot of the time about halfway between the original offers.
Well, it may not work that way at home a lot of the time either -- I don’t know, maybe I’m too naïve. But it definitely doesn’t work that way here. Or rather, it works that way now and then, but it works every other imaginable way too. Depending.
It’s “depending on what” that isn’t clear, except that the first rule, everywhere there’s bargaining, seems to be “soak the tourists.” Or maybe it’s “soak the ignorant,” that is, anyone, tourist or not, who’s ignorant of the process and/or ignorant of what things should really cost.
A typical example is a blue hanging (very cheaply made, but gorgeous colors, and I wanted it, okay?) that I bought when we came down from the Great Wall. Jamie asked the woman at the stand how much she wanted for it, and she said 150 (150 yuan). He said that was too much and we started to walk away. She then said 100 and Jamie again said it was too much and we started to walk away. He asked me in English what I was willing to pay, and having been through this a bunch of times already I said 20. (He thought it should have been about 3, but we didn’t try that number.) When the seller asked what we were willing to pay, Jamie said 20. The seller said no and started to go on about how that wasn’t enough, she couldn’t make any money that way, etc. (Some of them actually get tears in their eyes when the sob story starts.) She may have then offered 30 (I don’t remember for sure). Jamie said no again and we started walking. Then she called after us, “Okay, 20.” Just like that.
I’ll say more about bargaining when I write about the “antiques” market in Beijing, but meanwhile, the souvenir sellers at the Great Wall are class by themselves. I wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sad that the place was so uncrowded the day we went. If it had been more crowded, there would have been a lot more souvenir sellers; as it was, a lot of the booths were shuttered. But if it had been more crowded, there would have been more tourists to serve as targets of the sellers, and we might have been able to get by them with less hassle.
They are very aggressive. They stand in your way to prevent you from walking past, and if you start to walk past they put their hands on you and physically try to keep you there. They say a couple of words of English, including “dollar” -- they kept saying they were selling t-shirts for a “dollar.” We weren’t sure whether this meant they actually wanted a dollar bill -- technically, that’s illegal -- or what. I was glad Jamie was there to warn me ahead of time about the onslaught, and to steer me past the booths. It feels weird to me to be getting into the habit of constantly ignoring people -- both vendors and the people who stare at us all the time. But the vendors are in a sense just playing a game that I don’t know how to play, and the people who stare at us -- well who knows, I suppose there are a lot of different motivations for that.
Money
For those of you who don’t work in international compensation and/or don’t travel out of the country, a note about money and prices as a preliminary to the next post, which will be about bargaining:
The unit of currency in China is called, in daily life, the “yuan.” (More formally, it’s called “renminbi.”) China keeps the relationship between its currency and the dollar more or less fixed; the exchange value doesn’t “float” completely freely like that of most other currencies. The exchange rate is around 6.8 yuan per dollar, i.e. when you exchange money, you can “buy” about 6.8 yuan for a dollar, or a dollar for 6.8 yuan.
Most things cost a lot less here than at home as measured by how many dollars I need to get enough yuan to buy them. By contrast, when I went to London and Brussels in 2008, a lot of things cost more than at home. The exchange rate is only a part of the reason for the differences; the cost of living in general is another part. It’s very complicated -- otherwise I would have to find a different line of work. But as far as traveling goes, at the moment it’s expensive for Americans to travel in Europe and cheap for us to travel in China. (Getting here is another story.)
The cost of food here is shockingly low if you measure it in terms of the dollars I need to spend to get enough yuan to buy the meals. Jamie and I can go out to one of the little restaurants near the campus and get enough steamed buns and egg drop soup to keep us going for a lot of the day -- for 8 yuan, or a little over a dollar, apiece. On the other hand, wages in China are proportionally lower, so the meals don’t seem as cheap to local people. Vice versa (at least as to the meals) in Europe. Eating out in London was very expensive, and not just because the dollar was weak versus the pound at the time. (Take-out (or take-away, as they call it) was cheaper than eating in a sit-down restaurant, so that’s mostly what Maddy and I did on that trip.)
Sunday, 21 February 2010
The Year of the Tiger
Tonight four of us went out to a nice restaurant for hot pot, Yulin style. This time the pot in the center of the table was heated by a gas burner underneath, unlike the one in Beijing. It was divided in two, and both sides contained water flavored by a mix of spices, some recognizable (slices of ginger) and some not. One side was mild-flavored, the other spicy hot, with lots of little red peppers floating around in it.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned that in nicer restaurants, the wait staff (whether one person or several, like tonight) stands by the table while you peruse the menu and decide what to order. Tonight we had three foreigners (besides Jamie and me there was Marien, who is from the Netherlands and teaches English here) and Jingjing, who is from Yulin and is a senior English major at the university.
The head waiter gave us a sheet of paper with dozens of things to choose from that we would eventually cook in the hot pot, and with Jingjing facilitating we chose:
mushrooms
beef (very thin slices)
mutton (ditto)
tofu
lettuce
potato slices
sweet potato slices (but pale, not like ours)
2 kinds of noodles (lucky, for birthday celebrations)
fish balls
quail eggs
chicken eggs
We were each given a small bowl with a peanuty sauce in it, plus there were little plates of condiments to add to the sauce: chopped cilantro, chopped scallions (or something similar), a red sauce, and a green sauce. We also added some broth from both sides of the hot pot to our dipping bowls and stirred everything together.
Tea was brought (which is only automatic in nicer restaurants, oddly enough given the custom in Chinese restaurants at home), and we also had Sprite and beer.
The items we had ordered came several at a time, and we put two or three kinds of things in the hot pot at once. One kind of noodle looked like spaghetti (but didn't taste like it), and one was a translucent, wide, flat, chewy potato-based noodle that I’ve been fed a bunch of times here and like a lot. Noodles were saved for next to last, just before the chicken eggs.
As you can imagine, this meal went on for a long time, until we were all too full for another bite.
Back outside, for the first time since I’ve been here we didn’t get a cab right away. Every cab that went by already had someone in it, and although there’s a shortage of cabs here, so they often pick up a second fare when they’ve already got a first one, with four of us only an empty cab would have stopped. We finally gave up, and Marien and Jamie started to walk back to campus on the assumption that Jingjing and I would get a cab more easily by ourselves. And then, of course, one came along immediately, and we had the driver pick up Jamie and Marien as well.
Back at Jamie’s apartment -- cake and ice cream. :) The bakery had provided a gizmo that opened up into a Chinese lotus flower with a little candle on each petal, and played a tinny “Happy Birthday.” Jingjing added a Chinese verse to the singing, and a good time was had by all.
There are pictures, but they’re not on my camera, so I’ll have to wait to post them.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned that in nicer restaurants, the wait staff (whether one person or several, like tonight) stands by the table while you peruse the menu and decide what to order. Tonight we had three foreigners (besides Jamie and me there was Marien, who is from the Netherlands and teaches English here) and Jingjing, who is from Yulin and is a senior English major at the university.
The head waiter gave us a sheet of paper with dozens of things to choose from that we would eventually cook in the hot pot, and with Jingjing facilitating we chose:
mushrooms
beef (very thin slices)
mutton (ditto)
tofu
lettuce
potato slices
sweet potato slices (but pale, not like ours)
2 kinds of noodles (lucky, for birthday celebrations)
fish balls
quail eggs
chicken eggs
We were each given a small bowl with a peanuty sauce in it, plus there were little plates of condiments to add to the sauce: chopped cilantro, chopped scallions (or something similar), a red sauce, and a green sauce. We also added some broth from both sides of the hot pot to our dipping bowls and stirred everything together.
Tea was brought (which is only automatic in nicer restaurants, oddly enough given the custom in Chinese restaurants at home), and we also had Sprite and beer.
The items we had ordered came several at a time, and we put two or three kinds of things in the hot pot at once. One kind of noodle looked like spaghetti (but didn't taste like it), and one was a translucent, wide, flat, chewy potato-based noodle that I’ve been fed a bunch of times here and like a lot. Noodles were saved for next to last, just before the chicken eggs.
As you can imagine, this meal went on for a long time, until we were all too full for another bite.
Back outside, for the first time since I’ve been here we didn’t get a cab right away. Every cab that went by already had someone in it, and although there’s a shortage of cabs here, so they often pick up a second fare when they’ve already got a first one, with four of us only an empty cab would have stopped. We finally gave up, and Marien and Jamie started to walk back to campus on the assumption that Jingjing and I would get a cab more easily by ourselves. And then, of course, one came along immediately, and we had the driver pick up Jamie and Marien as well.
Back at Jamie’s apartment -- cake and ice cream. :) The bakery had provided a gizmo that opened up into a Chinese lotus flower with a little candle on each petal, and played a tinny “Happy Birthday.” Jingjing added a Chinese verse to the singing, and a good time was had by all.
There are pictures, but they’re not on my camera, so I’ll have to wait to post them.
Friday, 19 February 2010
Yulin: The Organ Grinder's Monkey
Jamie said that Yulin would be different from Beijing, and guess what, it is. It is a different landscape, for one thing, but right now I want to talk about how people react to us.
Early on in his stay in Yulin, Jamie wrote that on the street he sometimes feels like he’s a on display rather than being seen as a real human being -- I called it being the organ grinder’s monkey. Now I’m seeing it first-hand every time we go out in public.
In Beijing, even in the neighborhood of our hotel where there were hardly any other foreigners around, people didn’t pay much attention to us. Beijing is a city of 15 million people, so I suppose they’re urban/urbane and absorbed in their own bustle. Sometimes people gazed, but they really didn’t seem all that interested in us. Sometimes they were a little surprised that Jamie spoke Chinese, but even that didn’t cause much of a stir. Once, in the place where we ate most of our breakfasts, I attempted to say “thank you” in Chinese, and even though it’s a hard word because it has a sound that we don’t have at all in English, the young man behind the counter laughed and said (in Chinese) that my Chinese was very good. (That is not the consensus opinion.)
Here in Yulin we get stared at constantly. We went into a little fast food joint one day (imitation Western food; I’d much rather eat local food but we couldn’t find anything open because of the holiday), and the young folks in the booth behind us laughed out loud. Later I nodded and said hi to them and they were perfectly friendly; the staring doesn’t seemed to be hostile, because every time I’ve smiled at or spoken to someone I get a friendly response. In the grocery store one day, I had a few moments of rare separation from Jamie when I waited in the produce section with our vegies (you have to have them wrapped and weighed before you leave the section), and he went off to grab something else that also needed to be weighed. Three women who worked in the store were just standing around staring at me, so I said “ni hao” (“hi” in Chinese), and that set them all smiling and talking to me a mile a minute, and of course I couldn’t understand any of it, except that I caught the word “mama,” which, amazingly enough, means “mother.” I tried to say (in Chinese) that I don’t speak Mandarin, but either they didn’t understand my pronunciation, or they didn’t really take it in, because they kept right on talking. When Jamie came back we were able to have a little conversation that mostly consisted of saying hello and Happy New Year. Elsewhere in the store a man with a little boy in tow said “Happy New Year” (in English) and we returned the greeting and everyone smiled and that was nice.
One day on a walk we ran into an elderly man Jamie knows, a retired farmer who lives around here and walks very slowly with a cane, and with him I had a nice little chat with Jamie’s help as interpreter. He asked me what I think of China so far and I said that it’s amazing and interesting and that I have so many impressions I can’t even sort them out. He was very sweet, as are all the older folks we’ve talked with, mostly meaning the men at the guard house near Jamie’s building, who are just tickled that his mother is here.
On the day of Spring Festival we walked to the nearby shopping district. We were about to cross a street when a guy stopped his van, rolled down his window, said “Hello” in English, then asked Jamie in Chinese why he hadn’t gone home for the holidays. Jamie shrugged and said his mother had come here. That seemed to satisfy the man, who then said “Happy New Year” in English and drove off. He was a complete stranger.
Sometimes people say “hello” and just laugh. I have to battle a tendency to be offended or alarmed by this, but Jamie told me a story about being in the park one day and having a young couple who were walking near him look at him and talk and laugh. Since Jamie, unlike me, can understand Chinese, he was able to pick up that they were laughing because neither one wanted to be the brave one and try to speak to him in English. So their laughter was at themselves, not at him.
I am working on my own reaction to the staring. If I’m tired and crabby, I tend to keep my eyes down so I don’t see it and therefore have nothing to react to. If I have more mental energy, I tend to greet some people and not others. Sometimes they look away, sometimes they just keep staring, but far more often they get a big smile and say hi back. Not infrequently, someone will walk by us, staring, and then when we’re out of eyeshot and walking in opposite directions, say “Hello” -- usually with a laugh. I’m not sure what this is about, and I keep fighting the tendency to do a little mind-reading. The smiles and greetings that usually come when I say hi help with that.
Thinking of home - without a doubt, people who look “different” (by any number of measures) can get treated oddly or offensively in the U.S., and probably everywhere else on earth. On the other hand, in a lot of the U.S. these days the population is so diverse that though there is always the potential for a reaction to someone “different from me,” there’s no way to define “different from ‘all the rest of us’” because “all the rest of us” are a crazy quilt from everywhere. In China, it’s still overwhelmingly Chinese people, and it seems like it will be a very long time before that changes, if it ever does. Especially in a frontier outpost like Yulin.
Early on in his stay in Yulin, Jamie wrote that on the street he sometimes feels like he’s a on display rather than being seen as a real human being -- I called it being the organ grinder’s monkey. Now I’m seeing it first-hand every time we go out in public.
In Beijing, even in the neighborhood of our hotel where there were hardly any other foreigners around, people didn’t pay much attention to us. Beijing is a city of 15 million people, so I suppose they’re urban/urbane and absorbed in their own bustle. Sometimes people gazed, but they really didn’t seem all that interested in us. Sometimes they were a little surprised that Jamie spoke Chinese, but even that didn’t cause much of a stir. Once, in the place where we ate most of our breakfasts, I attempted to say “thank you” in Chinese, and even though it’s a hard word because it has a sound that we don’t have at all in English, the young man behind the counter laughed and said (in Chinese) that my Chinese was very good. (That is not the consensus opinion.)
Here in Yulin we get stared at constantly. We went into a little fast food joint one day (imitation Western food; I’d much rather eat local food but we couldn’t find anything open because of the holiday), and the young folks in the booth behind us laughed out loud. Later I nodded and said hi to them and they were perfectly friendly; the staring doesn’t seemed to be hostile, because every time I’ve smiled at or spoken to someone I get a friendly response. In the grocery store one day, I had a few moments of rare separation from Jamie when I waited in the produce section with our vegies (you have to have them wrapped and weighed before you leave the section), and he went off to grab something else that also needed to be weighed. Three women who worked in the store were just standing around staring at me, so I said “ni hao” (“hi” in Chinese), and that set them all smiling and talking to me a mile a minute, and of course I couldn’t understand any of it, except that I caught the word “mama,” which, amazingly enough, means “mother.” I tried to say (in Chinese) that I don’t speak Mandarin, but either they didn’t understand my pronunciation, or they didn’t really take it in, because they kept right on talking. When Jamie came back we were able to have a little conversation that mostly consisted of saying hello and Happy New Year. Elsewhere in the store a man with a little boy in tow said “Happy New Year” (in English) and we returned the greeting and everyone smiled and that was nice.
One day on a walk we ran into an elderly man Jamie knows, a retired farmer who lives around here and walks very slowly with a cane, and with him I had a nice little chat with Jamie’s help as interpreter. He asked me what I think of China so far and I said that it’s amazing and interesting and that I have so many impressions I can’t even sort them out. He was very sweet, as are all the older folks we’ve talked with, mostly meaning the men at the guard house near Jamie’s building, who are just tickled that his mother is here.
On the day of Spring Festival we walked to the nearby shopping district. We were about to cross a street when a guy stopped his van, rolled down his window, said “Hello” in English, then asked Jamie in Chinese why he hadn’t gone home for the holidays. Jamie shrugged and said his mother had come here. That seemed to satisfy the man, who then said “Happy New Year” in English and drove off. He was a complete stranger.
Sometimes people say “hello” and just laugh. I have to battle a tendency to be offended or alarmed by this, but Jamie told me a story about being in the park one day and having a young couple who were walking near him look at him and talk and laugh. Since Jamie, unlike me, can understand Chinese, he was able to pick up that they were laughing because neither one wanted to be the brave one and try to speak to him in English. So their laughter was at themselves, not at him.
I am working on my own reaction to the staring. If I’m tired and crabby, I tend to keep my eyes down so I don’t see it and therefore have nothing to react to. If I have more mental energy, I tend to greet some people and not others. Sometimes they look away, sometimes they just keep staring, but far more often they get a big smile and say hi back. Not infrequently, someone will walk by us, staring, and then when we’re out of eyeshot and walking in opposite directions, say “Hello” -- usually with a laugh. I’m not sure what this is about, and I keep fighting the tendency to do a little mind-reading. The smiles and greetings that usually come when I say hi help with that.
Thinking of home - without a doubt, people who look “different” (by any number of measures) can get treated oddly or offensively in the U.S., and probably everywhere else on earth. On the other hand, in a lot of the U.S. these days the population is so diverse that though there is always the potential for a reaction to someone “different from me,” there’s no way to define “different from ‘all the rest of us’” because “all the rest of us” are a crazy quilt from everywhere. In China, it’s still overwhelmingly Chinese people, and it seems like it will be a very long time before that changes, if it ever does. Especially in a frontier outpost like Yulin.
Yulin: Downtown
Thursday, 2/18/10 -- my first trek to downtown Yulin. We walked the usual ten minutes to get off the campus, missed the bus, and luckily caught a cab right away. Yulin is laid out longways roughly northwest to southeast along a river. The campus is toward the northwest edge, and quite detached from the downtown area and, for that matter, the rest of the city. East of the river there are three streets that roughly parallel the river and that constitute “downtown” -- Third Street, nearest the river; then Second Street; then First Street, which is a restored old market area.
On the ride downtown the cab crossed the river, drove under a gate in the old city wall, and dropped us off, as Jamie had requested, at Century Park. We strolled through the park, which Jamie says is crowded in warmer weather but which was almost empty that day. After the park we crossed second street and then walked along an uphill alley to First Street and the old market. A lot of stores were still closed for the holiday season, but some were open, and the street was bustling with walkers. We got a lot of stares, as usual.
Away from the wind it was a pleasant, mild day. The flip side of being in a place that gets almost no rain or snow is that it’s almost always sunny, and that’s nice.
Pictures here.
On the ride downtown the cab crossed the river, drove under a gate in the old city wall, and dropped us off, as Jamie had requested, at Century Park. We strolled through the park, which Jamie says is crowded in warmer weather but which was almost empty that day. After the park we crossed second street and then walked along an uphill alley to First Street and the old market. A lot of stores were still closed for the holiday season, but some were open, and the street was bustling with walkers. We got a lot of stares, as usual.
Away from the wind it was a pleasant, mild day. The flip side of being in a place that gets almost no rain or snow is that it’s almost always sunny, and that’s nice.
Pictures here.
Traffic
The U.S. State Department website’s section on China says that travelers should understand that drivers here consider traffic lights and rules of the road to be “advisory” rather than “mandatory.” The U.S. State Department isn’t kidding. The number and mix of vehicles on the streets of Beijing is mind-boggling, and naturally there are mobs of pedestrians too, and everyone is playing chicken with everyone else at all times.
A street with 3 or 4 or 5 or 7 lanes in each direction has a bunch of lights, and there’s a lane on each side for smaller/slower vehicles (bicycles, bicycle-driven carts, motorbikes, motorbikes with enclosures on the back, etc. etc. etc.). The latter don’t obey any traffic signals. Drivers turning left often have a left arrow at the same time that walkers have a green walk sign, and the left-turning drivers habitually beep their horns all the way through crowds of walkers and bikers in intersections. In Beijing we always made sure to stay with the crowd, because in the end the drivers don’t actually plow people down (at least we didn’t see anyone do that), though they look like they would if they thought they could get away with it.
We did see the immediate aftermath of an accident on the way to Mutianyu (the section of the Great Wall we went to). There was a car pulled off to the side of the road with a guy talking frantically on a cell phone. There was a trail of small bits of debris leading to the center left of the road, where a woman was cradling a man who had obviously been hit. There were no officials on the scene yet. Traffic was going carefully around the whole sad mess.
For the first few days in Yulin there was the additional thrill of having to walk on slippery snow-covered pavement. Jamie usually just grabs my jacket sleeve and guides me through. In Cambridge I am perfectly capable of knowing when to walk through traffic, and at what pace, and when not to, even now that I have creaky old knees. Here, no way. The mutual understandings about who gives way in what situation are all different.
In some places there are walkways built over the streets, so that people can choose to go a slightly longer way around (with stairs), but more safely. We walked over one of these in Yulin that Jamie said had just been installed -- he had seen it brought to the site. A couple of the pictures in the Yulin/Downtown album (coming up in the next post) were taken from it.
Some pictures of Beijing traffic (and commerce) here.
A street with 3 or 4 or 5 or 7 lanes in each direction has a bunch of lights, and there’s a lane on each side for smaller/slower vehicles (bicycles, bicycle-driven carts, motorbikes, motorbikes with enclosures on the back, etc. etc. etc.). The latter don’t obey any traffic signals. Drivers turning left often have a left arrow at the same time that walkers have a green walk sign, and the left-turning drivers habitually beep their horns all the way through crowds of walkers and bikers in intersections. In Beijing we always made sure to stay with the crowd, because in the end the drivers don’t actually plow people down (at least we didn’t see anyone do that), though they look like they would if they thought they could get away with it.
We did see the immediate aftermath of an accident on the way to Mutianyu (the section of the Great Wall we went to). There was a car pulled off to the side of the road with a guy talking frantically on a cell phone. There was a trail of small bits of debris leading to the center left of the road, where a woman was cradling a man who had obviously been hit. There were no officials on the scene yet. Traffic was going carefully around the whole sad mess.
For the first few days in Yulin there was the additional thrill of having to walk on slippery snow-covered pavement. Jamie usually just grabs my jacket sleeve and guides me through. In Cambridge I am perfectly capable of knowing when to walk through traffic, and at what pace, and when not to, even now that I have creaky old knees. Here, no way. The mutual understandings about who gives way in what situation are all different.
In some places there are walkways built over the streets, so that people can choose to go a slightly longer way around (with stairs), but more safely. We walked over one of these in Yulin that Jamie said had just been installed -- he had seen it brought to the site. A couple of the pictures in the Yulin/Downtown album (coming up in the next post) were taken from it.
Some pictures of Beijing traffic (and commerce) here.
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Chicken feet and pig's ear
Guess which one of those items I tried today,and which I was very glad not to be pressured to eat?
The pig's ear was too chewy for me to be able to say I actually liked it, but the spicy flavoring made it okay. The texture is reminiscent of squid, which I've had in sushi and, if I remember correctly, in some kind of Italian salad. But squid is better than pig's ear -- just my opinion.
As to chicken feet -- well, like I said, I dodged that bullet.
We socialized with two separate families today -- lots of good food and pleasant company. We took a walk this evening and saw some stars for the first time since I've been here, and the 3-day-old moon sinking in the west. It was about 1 degree F. outside, and windy.
More stories soon.
The pig's ear was too chewy for me to be able to say I actually liked it, but the spicy flavoring made it okay. The texture is reminiscent of squid, which I've had in sushi and, if I remember correctly, in some kind of Italian salad. But squid is better than pig's ear -- just my opinion.
As to chicken feet -- well, like I said, I dodged that bullet.
We socialized with two separate families today -- lots of good food and pleasant company. We took a walk this evening and saw some stars for the first time since I've been here, and the 3-day-old moon sinking in the west. It was about 1 degree F. outside, and windy.
More stories soon.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Beijing buildings
The neighborhood where we stayed in Beijing was on a relatively human scale, but you could look in any direction and see tall buildings, lots and lots of tall buildings. When we took cab rides, and for miles on the way out of the city to the Great Wall, there were tall buildings, old ones, new ones, isolated ones, clustered ones. No doubt I'm just a country girl from rural Maine, and most of the world takes this kind of thing for granted, but I had fun taking pictures, some of which are here.
Spring Festival I
I had heard about the existence of “Chinese New Year” over the years, but only recently did I learn that it’s also called Spring Festival, and only last weekend did I learn how big a deal it is in China.
As with Easter and Passover, the date varies from year to year. Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that all three holidays are related to both the moon and the timing of either the equinox or the solstice.
For the nerds among us:
Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
From Wikipedia: “Passover begins on the 15th day of the month of Nisan, which corresponds to the full moon of Nisan, the first month of the Hebrew calendar, in accordance with the Hebrew Bible. Passover is a spring festival, so the 14th of Nisan begins on the night of a full moon after the vernal equinox.”
From Wikipedia again: “In the Gregorian calendar, Chinese New Year falls on different dates each year, a date between January 21 and February 20. In the Chinese calendar, winter solstice must occur in the 11th month, which means that Chinese New Year usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice (rarely the third if an intercalary month intervenes).”
This year, the Chinese New Year began on Sunday, February 14. Saturday was therefore New Year’s eve. Being lucky enough to be here for this holiday season, I have had long delicious feasts with two sets of extended families, where Jamie and I were welcomed to join festivities with grandparents, in-laws, and kids of various ages. It’s fun to see different customs and to eat Chinese food that is almost nothing like what we call “Chinese food” in the US. Around here mutton is a staple, though I don’t think that would be true in other parts of China. In the meal we just had at Miss Ji’s place, downstairs from Jamie, I was told that mutton was something they had all the time, whereas the “Beijing Duck” was special for the holiday feast.
Lots of people are taken aback by the fact that Jamie didn’t go to his family for the holidays. Spring Festival is in that respect like Christmas for us, but more so. It seems like every last Chinese person on earth tries to go/come home for the holiday. The kids get 40 days off from school, there seemed to be enough fireworks just in Yulin to supply the entire US on the Fourth of July, and the celebrating lasts for six days, during which time everyone is on vacation.
On Saturday, New Year’s Eve, Jamie and I were invited to the home of his colleague Liu Yanfeng, who spent some months in Readfield as an AFS teacher 5 or 6 years ago, and who was the connection through whom Jamie found his job. Yanfeng is married and has a daughter, JiaoJiao, who is eight years old by our measure. By Chinese measure, she’s nine. Here, you are “1” on the day you are born. Then, everyone gets a year older on New Year’s day. So a baby born the day before the New Year would be “2” after being alive for a day or two.
It makes perfect sense to them. ;)
We went to Yanfeng’s house in the late morning and had a lovely lunch. There was a soup packed with several kinds of meat, some noodles and vegies, and other things that as usual I couldn’t identify. Very tasty. There were also steamed dumplings (pork filling, something like you can get in Chinese restaurants at home), plus some doughnut-shaped things that were made with millet meal. I ate several of these and loved them.
After lunch we talked. I had brought some books for JiaoJiao, and she looked at them for a long time. One of the them was about Helen Keller, and I learned that Chinese children learn all about Helen Keller and that she is very well-known in China. Later, JiaoJiao read to me from her English textbook. Her English pronunciation is really good and she is quick to pick up new things. She also danced for us, and that was fun too.
Eventually Yanfeng’s brother picked us up to go to their parents’ house for the rest of the day’s celebrations. There we met Yanfeng’s parents, the brother’s wife and child (16 months old, named TongTong), and also Yanfeng’s sister and her husband and son. Several of these people spoke at least a little English, so I was able to talk to them a bit without Jamie having to translate every exchange.
TongTong cried when we walked into the house. She was shy, we were strangers. The houses aren’t kept all that warm, so she was wearing warm clothes that made her look as round as she was tall. Eventually she got less shy, until she was willing to stand between where Jamie and I were sitting on the couch and to play with us a bit. At one point she dropped something on the floor and I said, “uh-oh,” and she immediately imitated it and then kept saying “uh-oh” for the rest of the day. She also referred to me by the word for “grandma” or “old lady.” Perceptive kid. ;)
Dinner was served on a little table in the front room of the apartment. There were couches and chairs pulled up around the table, and Jamie and I were repeatedly urged to sit down and start eating. When we first came in there were snacks, then Yanfeng’s mother and the other cooks (it seemed to be a joint enterprise) brought in one dish at a time until there were at least a dozen different things to choose from. Yanfeng said that we should eat, because it’s not the custom in China for everyone to wait til everyone else has food, or til all the food is served. Once again I have no idea what some of the dishes were, but there was a huge beautiful bowl with a whole fish in it (steamed, I think), there were a couple of dishes that were mostly meat (including lamb), and there were several kinds of vegies and mixed dishes. I tried everything and loved several of the dishes to the point of asking for the recipe for one of them (bits of pork, cilantro, something like scallions, other green vegies, garlic, I don’t know what else). My least favorite was lamb, but that’s nothing new.
The custom is for everyone to pick food out of the common bowls with chopsticks. You put your food into your own little bowl, on top of rice if you’ve taken some rice. People pick around in the dishes to find the nicest bits, and people do keep eating a little at a time for a long, long time. Yanfeng’s father, who didn’t say two words the whole day, several times offered food to Jamie and me, making sure we tried the specialties. He would pick something up with his chopsticks and hold it out to us, and I think it would have been rude to refuse. I did end up leaving some of my lamb in my bowl, but no one commented on that.
We were offered wine, beer, tea, soda, and water. I had tea and water. After the meal was over and the table was cleared, at a time when Jamie was outside doing fireworks (I truly will get to the fireworks eventually), I was asked if I wanted some “millet wine.” They said it wasn’t really wine and wasn’t alcoholic, so I said I’d try a bit. It was yellow, sort of creamy, served in a bowl, a bit sweet, a bit tangy, and fermented in some way. I didn’t mind it but didn’t like it enough to finish my bowl (which was quite a bit more than a tiny bit).
Later in the evening there was Mah-Jong, and eventually we went outside to set off fire crackers of various kinds. But that’s another installment.
As with Easter and Passover, the date varies from year to year. Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that all three holidays are related to both the moon and the timing of either the equinox or the solstice.
For the nerds among us:
Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
From Wikipedia: “Passover begins on the 15th day of the month of Nisan, which corresponds to the full moon of Nisan, the first month of the Hebrew calendar, in accordance with the Hebrew Bible. Passover is a spring festival, so the 14th of Nisan begins on the night of a full moon after the vernal equinox.”
From Wikipedia again: “In the Gregorian calendar, Chinese New Year falls on different dates each year, a date between January 21 and February 20. In the Chinese calendar, winter solstice must occur in the 11th month, which means that Chinese New Year usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice (rarely the third if an intercalary month intervenes).”
This year, the Chinese New Year began on Sunday, February 14. Saturday was therefore New Year’s eve. Being lucky enough to be here for this holiday season, I have had long delicious feasts with two sets of extended families, where Jamie and I were welcomed to join festivities with grandparents, in-laws, and kids of various ages. It’s fun to see different customs and to eat Chinese food that is almost nothing like what we call “Chinese food” in the US. Around here mutton is a staple, though I don’t think that would be true in other parts of China. In the meal we just had at Miss Ji’s place, downstairs from Jamie, I was told that mutton was something they had all the time, whereas the “Beijing Duck” was special for the holiday feast.
Lots of people are taken aback by the fact that Jamie didn’t go to his family for the holidays. Spring Festival is in that respect like Christmas for us, but more so. It seems like every last Chinese person on earth tries to go/come home for the holiday. The kids get 40 days off from school, there seemed to be enough fireworks just in Yulin to supply the entire US on the Fourth of July, and the celebrating lasts for six days, during which time everyone is on vacation.
On Saturday, New Year’s Eve, Jamie and I were invited to the home of his colleague Liu Yanfeng, who spent some months in Readfield as an AFS teacher 5 or 6 years ago, and who was the connection through whom Jamie found his job. Yanfeng is married and has a daughter, JiaoJiao, who is eight years old by our measure. By Chinese measure, she’s nine. Here, you are “1” on the day you are born. Then, everyone gets a year older on New Year’s day. So a baby born the day before the New Year would be “2” after being alive for a day or two.
It makes perfect sense to them. ;)
We went to Yanfeng’s house in the late morning and had a lovely lunch. There was a soup packed with several kinds of meat, some noodles and vegies, and other things that as usual I couldn’t identify. Very tasty. There were also steamed dumplings (pork filling, something like you can get in Chinese restaurants at home), plus some doughnut-shaped things that were made with millet meal. I ate several of these and loved them.
After lunch we talked. I had brought some books for JiaoJiao, and she looked at them for a long time. One of the them was about Helen Keller, and I learned that Chinese children learn all about Helen Keller and that she is very well-known in China. Later, JiaoJiao read to me from her English textbook. Her English pronunciation is really good and she is quick to pick up new things. She also danced for us, and that was fun too.
Eventually Yanfeng’s brother picked us up to go to their parents’ house for the rest of the day’s celebrations. There we met Yanfeng’s parents, the brother’s wife and child (16 months old, named TongTong), and also Yanfeng’s sister and her husband and son. Several of these people spoke at least a little English, so I was able to talk to them a bit without Jamie having to translate every exchange.
TongTong cried when we walked into the house. She was shy, we were strangers. The houses aren’t kept all that warm, so she was wearing warm clothes that made her look as round as she was tall. Eventually she got less shy, until she was willing to stand between where Jamie and I were sitting on the couch and to play with us a bit. At one point she dropped something on the floor and I said, “uh-oh,” and she immediately imitated it and then kept saying “uh-oh” for the rest of the day. She also referred to me by the word for “grandma” or “old lady.” Perceptive kid. ;)
Dinner was served on a little table in the front room of the apartment. There were couches and chairs pulled up around the table, and Jamie and I were repeatedly urged to sit down and start eating. When we first came in there were snacks, then Yanfeng’s mother and the other cooks (it seemed to be a joint enterprise) brought in one dish at a time until there were at least a dozen different things to choose from. Yanfeng said that we should eat, because it’s not the custom in China for everyone to wait til everyone else has food, or til all the food is served. Once again I have no idea what some of the dishes were, but there was a huge beautiful bowl with a whole fish in it (steamed, I think), there were a couple of dishes that were mostly meat (including lamb), and there were several kinds of vegies and mixed dishes. I tried everything and loved several of the dishes to the point of asking for the recipe for one of them (bits of pork, cilantro, something like scallions, other green vegies, garlic, I don’t know what else). My least favorite was lamb, but that’s nothing new.
The custom is for everyone to pick food out of the common bowls with chopsticks. You put your food into your own little bowl, on top of rice if you’ve taken some rice. People pick around in the dishes to find the nicest bits, and people do keep eating a little at a time for a long, long time. Yanfeng’s father, who didn’t say two words the whole day, several times offered food to Jamie and me, making sure we tried the specialties. He would pick something up with his chopsticks and hold it out to us, and I think it would have been rude to refuse. I did end up leaving some of my lamb in my bowl, but no one commented on that.
We were offered wine, beer, tea, soda, and water. I had tea and water. After the meal was over and the table was cleared, at a time when Jamie was outside doing fireworks (I truly will get to the fireworks eventually), I was asked if I wanted some “millet wine.” They said it wasn’t really wine and wasn’t alcoholic, so I said I’d try a bit. It was yellow, sort of creamy, served in a bowl, a bit sweet, a bit tangy, and fermented in some way. I didn’t mind it but didn’t like it enough to finish my bowl (which was quite a bit more than a tiny bit).
Later in the evening there was Mah-Jong, and eventually we went outside to set off fire crackers of various kinds. But that’s another installment.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Seeing the sights in Beijing: Sunday and Monday
Sunday:
Tiananmen Square is massive. We saw it on the day after a night of snow, and the air was even more opaque than usual, so even the weather added to the feeling of grimness. There is nothing “pretty” or human-scale anywhere in sight. The only thing I can think the place is useful for is to have space for massed armies, or maybe massed populace listening to speeches, or ... what happened in 1989. There are no trees, no benches. Maybe there is some greenery when it’s not winter, but there was none the day we visited. A lot of my impressions of China are going to be colored (no pun intended) by the fact that I’m here at a time when everything is brown. The mountainous country on the Great Wall trek was brown, and Jamie says that in the summer it is overwhelmingly green. So maybe there is a softening touch around Tiananmen Square in the summer time too.
Jamie and I were surprised, when we talked about it later, at how differently we think about Tiananmen Square. I don’t remember ever having heard much about it before the events of 1989, and they are still what I most associate it with. From that point of view, I’m glad I went there in some vague way of honoring what people did there, but it’s not a place that would draw me back the way places I visited in the UK would. Jamie doesn’t have the same strong association with the events of 1989, but we did agree that the major message of the whole complex -- the Square and the Forbidden City -- is of overwhelming “state” power.
In the Forbidden City, we didn’t have time to explore every little side branch. But the spaces in the central sequences are massive: again, armies? Until the garden at the very back, there is no greenery, nothing soft, nothing of human scale. There’s a beauty in the ornate roofs and ceilings -- all that intricate woodwork and color. And I do wonder if, as in a medieval fort/castle let’s say, there was actually a lot of everyday bustle in those huge spaces when the place was actually in use: market stalls, blacksmith shops, stuff like that.
The place was crowded, but not as much as it would have been in different weather or in a different season. The vast majority of the visitors were Chinese -- it’s vacation season here, 40 days around Spring Festival.
Monday:
We went to two temples and a shopping center.
The Temple of the Lamas, or Yonghegong, is, depending on which source you believe, the largest Buddhist temple in Beijing, or in all of China. After a long gap, it has been functioning as a monastery again since 1980. It felt more crowded than the Forbidden City, again with mostly Chinese people. There are monks tending the various indoor spaces, and most of the visitors were buying incense sticks, lighting them, and doing a series of bows to the temples and Buddha statues in all the buildings (there were many). We came into one of the courtyards between buildings and found a bunch of couples with baby buggies. They were all non-Chinese, maybe a group that had come here to adopt.
This place was beautiful -- my favorite “sight” after the Great wall. Sad to say, it was forbidden to take pictures inside the buildings. There were huge statues of various Buddhas and boddhisattvas, there were ancient boxes of manuscripts, places to bow and offer incense, and many other interesting things.
About half a mile away from Yonghegong is Kongmaio, the Confucius Temple. It’s similar in being a large complex of buildings (some connected, some not) and courtyards, but it’s smaller than Yonghegong. There is a small museum devoted to the life and thought of Confucius, and there’s a section where there are tall standing stones inscribed with the names of scholars (Jin Shi) who passed certain important exams in long-ago empires.
We had taken the subway to Tiananmen Square on Sunday, but on Monday I proposed that given the low cost of everything here, we should start taking cabs to save my achy knees. After leaving the Confucius Temple we caught a cab to the Workers Stadium (one of the venues of the 2008 Olympics), then walked to a knock-off mall called Ya Show. This was the first (and it turned out to be the only) place where I saw any number of non-Chinese people. In the food court I heard a number of languages -- none of them English. In the food court was also where I decided to start taking pictures of “Chinglish.”
Pictures here, here, and here.
Tiananmen Square is massive. We saw it on the day after a night of snow, and the air was even more opaque than usual, so even the weather added to the feeling of grimness. There is nothing “pretty” or human-scale anywhere in sight. The only thing I can think the place is useful for is to have space for massed armies, or maybe massed populace listening to speeches, or ... what happened in 1989. There are no trees, no benches. Maybe there is some greenery when it’s not winter, but there was none the day we visited. A lot of my impressions of China are going to be colored (no pun intended) by the fact that I’m here at a time when everything is brown. The mountainous country on the Great Wall trek was brown, and Jamie says that in the summer it is overwhelmingly green. So maybe there is a softening touch around Tiananmen Square in the summer time too.
Jamie and I were surprised, when we talked about it later, at how differently we think about Tiananmen Square. I don’t remember ever having heard much about it before the events of 1989, and they are still what I most associate it with. From that point of view, I’m glad I went there in some vague way of honoring what people did there, but it’s not a place that would draw me back the way places I visited in the UK would. Jamie doesn’t have the same strong association with the events of 1989, but we did agree that the major message of the whole complex -- the Square and the Forbidden City -- is of overwhelming “state” power.
In the Forbidden City, we didn’t have time to explore every little side branch. But the spaces in the central sequences are massive: again, armies? Until the garden at the very back, there is no greenery, nothing soft, nothing of human scale. There’s a beauty in the ornate roofs and ceilings -- all that intricate woodwork and color. And I do wonder if, as in a medieval fort/castle let’s say, there was actually a lot of everyday bustle in those huge spaces when the place was actually in use: market stalls, blacksmith shops, stuff like that.
The place was crowded, but not as much as it would have been in different weather or in a different season. The vast majority of the visitors were Chinese -- it’s vacation season here, 40 days around Spring Festival.
Monday:
We went to two temples and a shopping center.
The Temple of the Lamas, or Yonghegong, is, depending on which source you believe, the largest Buddhist temple in Beijing, or in all of China. After a long gap, it has been functioning as a monastery again since 1980. It felt more crowded than the Forbidden City, again with mostly Chinese people. There are monks tending the various indoor spaces, and most of the visitors were buying incense sticks, lighting them, and doing a series of bows to the temples and Buddha statues in all the buildings (there were many). We came into one of the courtyards between buildings and found a bunch of couples with baby buggies. They were all non-Chinese, maybe a group that had come here to adopt.
This place was beautiful -- my favorite “sight” after the Great wall. Sad to say, it was forbidden to take pictures inside the buildings. There were huge statues of various Buddhas and boddhisattvas, there were ancient boxes of manuscripts, places to bow and offer incense, and many other interesting things.
About half a mile away from Yonghegong is Kongmaio, the Confucius Temple. It’s similar in being a large complex of buildings (some connected, some not) and courtyards, but it’s smaller than Yonghegong. There is a small museum devoted to the life and thought of Confucius, and there’s a section where there are tall standing stones inscribed with the names of scholars (Jin Shi) who passed certain important exams in long-ago empires.
We had taken the subway to Tiananmen Square on Sunday, but on Monday I proposed that given the low cost of everything here, we should start taking cabs to save my achy knees. After leaving the Confucius Temple we caught a cab to the Workers Stadium (one of the venues of the 2008 Olympics), then walked to a knock-off mall called Ya Show. This was the first (and it turned out to be the only) place where I saw any number of non-Chinese people. In the food court I heard a number of languages -- none of them English. In the food court was also where I decided to start taking pictures of “Chinglish.”
Pictures here, here, and here.
Saturday, 13 February 2010
The Great Wall
Uploading photos into blog posts is slow and tedious, so
here's a link to some pictures of our trip to the Great Wall.
here's a link to some pictures of our trip to the Great Wall.
Friday, 12 February 2010
First Impressions
At least right around here, if you removed all the Chinese characters from sight it could be a city in any number of places; there is nothing particularly Chinese about it until you look more closely and see some of the decorative motifs in restaurants or businesses. There are many many little shops, all crowded to the last inch with stuff. Funny how recognizable a box that holds a tube of toothpaste is, even if it’s covered with Chinese characters instead of the word “toothpaste.” On the other hand, lots of goods have labels in both Chinese and English -- some of the toothpaste says, among other inscrutable (to me) things, “Colgate.”
There are lots of little hole-in-the-wall places that sell fresh-cooked food, either as the entire enterprise or as one corner of a more varied enterprise. We bought some bottled water in a tiny shop -- not much bigger than a big closet for a lot of Americans -- that sold a mix of grocery items, and in one little corner of it there was a round griddle, and the woman made me a wrap on the griddle, broke an egg on it, got it all cooked, then filled it with ... I don’t know what, but it was very tasty to eat while walking along the street in the gathering dusk, my first meal in China. Jamie got something similar from another hole in the wall which was literally a guy crouched behind a glass-fronted opening between two stores, cooking and selling a variety of stuffed wraps. There are places that sell what passes for sweets -- pastries, cakes, stuffed things -- stuffed with what, I have no idea. But they’re tasty too.
We spent a couple of hours walking around, eating, and window shopping last night, then, having had all of maybe eleven hours of sleep in the previous 2½ days, I collapsed into bed at about 7:30 last night and slept, with almost no breaks, til 8:30 this morning.
We got up, went out again, and ate in a place that I can only compare with let’s say Panera -- cheap decent food ordered at a counter. Very tasty again. I had wonton soup (of a sort) and pot stickers.
We walked and talked and walked and talked -- and I was back in bed by 12:30 and slept the afternoon away. In other words, 18 of my first 26 hours in China were spent sleeping. I am babying myself about it because I have a sore throat, and I want to try to keep from getting sicker. So whether I’m still tired because of a virus, jet lag, or just travel exhaustion, suffice to say I don’t have any energy.
Though -- after a really nice dinner in a sit-down restaurant, I am feeling a little better at last.
We had Peking Duck for dinner, and dumplings, and a dish that was a pile of spinach with peanuts in a sweetish sauce. The menu had stuff like tripe and many other body parts of ducks and cows and pigs that have never been seen on any American menu I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Also, the names of things are not always revealing: what does “Three Fresh Wontons” mean? It doesn’t mean 3 wontons, it means 3 ingredients inside them, but which 3 ... I don’t know.
It was snowing when we got out of the restaurant.
*****
This is pretty random, but it’s a day’s worth of first impressions. It’s too early to make this judgment, except that based on what I’ve read about Beijing it will probably hold true: there’s no sky. One of the reasons I haven’t just picked up and moved to Cambridge in the years since Maddy went off to college is that there’s no night sky to speak of. In Cambridge there’s a dark gray bowl overhead with about 6 faint stars in it, at best, and occasionally you get a glimpse of the moon. But the sky can be gorgeously blue in the daytime. Here, there seems to be no blue sky at all, at least by my standards, just a gray-brown haze. And of course, no night sky either. As with Cambridge and the night, I doubt many people who live here notice much, or care. There are other things to pay attention to.
[Update a few days later: we have had some “sunny” days, when the sky was sort of blue, at least you could tell that behind the mix of thin clouds and air pollution there was some blue. Nothing like home. I said something like this to Jamie and he said that he reckoned he would have to rethink his ideas of blue sky when he went back home again.]
Sunday 2/7/10, almost 9 p.m.
I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and haven’t been back to bed. We had breakfast at the same place as yesterday, called in English “Fastest Tastiest.” (Yes, there is a big sign outside with that name on it. I’ll try to post a picture.) We went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. (Whew. More on that later.) We walked and took the subway. The air was thick and hazy, it was a white world all around after last night’s snowfall. Later we had hot pot for dinner and did a little shopping, by which time I was ready for more sleep.
The nearest thing I can compare hot pot to is fondue. There is a big vessel/bowl of water in the center of the table, and in this case there was a metal “tower” in the center of that, kept warm by some method (charcoal?) that we couldn’t figure out. Jamie says this is not the modern method of doing hot pot that he has seen elsewhere, which makes sense since the restaurant was called “Old Beijing” and all the staff were dressed in Manchu (?) style. I’m just guessing, but the place was obviously trying to recreate someone's idea of the old days.
When we came in, the greeter shouted something toward the upstairs level, and Jamie suggested that he was saying, “Hey, some foreigners are here.” But he did that whenever anyone came in, so it wasn’t just for us.
Jamie ordered 5 or 6 things off a menu that I couldn’t read -- fish balls, thin slices of mutton, sliced potatoes, big leaves of some kind of cabbage, another vegetable that I couldn’t identify. We dropped bits of everything into the boiling water, waited for stuff to cook, ate all of it with a very spicy sauce that had a mix of flavors: peanuts, something fishy, some scallions maybe, other things I couldn’t identify. (P.S. I even liked the mutton. That was a big surprise.)
After that -- long overdue bedtime.
There are lots of little hole-in-the-wall places that sell fresh-cooked food, either as the entire enterprise or as one corner of a more varied enterprise. We bought some bottled water in a tiny shop -- not much bigger than a big closet for a lot of Americans -- that sold a mix of grocery items, and in one little corner of it there was a round griddle, and the woman made me a wrap on the griddle, broke an egg on it, got it all cooked, then filled it with ... I don’t know what, but it was very tasty to eat while walking along the street in the gathering dusk, my first meal in China. Jamie got something similar from another hole in the wall which was literally a guy crouched behind a glass-fronted opening between two stores, cooking and selling a variety of stuffed wraps. There are places that sell what passes for sweets -- pastries, cakes, stuffed things -- stuffed with what, I have no idea. But they’re tasty too.
We spent a couple of hours walking around, eating, and window shopping last night, then, having had all of maybe eleven hours of sleep in the previous 2½ days, I collapsed into bed at about 7:30 last night and slept, with almost no breaks, til 8:30 this morning.
We got up, went out again, and ate in a place that I can only compare with let’s say Panera -- cheap decent food ordered at a counter. Very tasty again. I had wonton soup (of a sort) and pot stickers.
We walked and talked and walked and talked -- and I was back in bed by 12:30 and slept the afternoon away. In other words, 18 of my first 26 hours in China were spent sleeping. I am babying myself about it because I have a sore throat, and I want to try to keep from getting sicker. So whether I’m still tired because of a virus, jet lag, or just travel exhaustion, suffice to say I don’t have any energy.
Though -- after a really nice dinner in a sit-down restaurant, I am feeling a little better at last.
We had Peking Duck for dinner, and dumplings, and a dish that was a pile of spinach with peanuts in a sweetish sauce. The menu had stuff like tripe and many other body parts of ducks and cows and pigs that have never been seen on any American menu I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Also, the names of things are not always revealing: what does “Three Fresh Wontons” mean? It doesn’t mean 3 wontons, it means 3 ingredients inside them, but which 3 ... I don’t know.
It was snowing when we got out of the restaurant.
*****
This is pretty random, but it’s a day’s worth of first impressions. It’s too early to make this judgment, except that based on what I’ve read about Beijing it will probably hold true: there’s no sky. One of the reasons I haven’t just picked up and moved to Cambridge in the years since Maddy went off to college is that there’s no night sky to speak of. In Cambridge there’s a dark gray bowl overhead with about 6 faint stars in it, at best, and occasionally you get a glimpse of the moon. But the sky can be gorgeously blue in the daytime. Here, there seems to be no blue sky at all, at least by my standards, just a gray-brown haze. And of course, no night sky either. As with Cambridge and the night, I doubt many people who live here notice much, or care. There are other things to pay attention to.
[Update a few days later: we have had some “sunny” days, when the sky was sort of blue, at least you could tell that behind the mix of thin clouds and air pollution there was some blue. Nothing like home. I said something like this to Jamie and he said that he reckoned he would have to rethink his ideas of blue sky when he went back home again.]
Sunday 2/7/10, almost 9 p.m.
I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and haven’t been back to bed. We had breakfast at the same place as yesterday, called in English “Fastest Tastiest.” (Yes, there is a big sign outside with that name on it. I’ll try to post a picture.) We went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. (Whew. More on that later.) We walked and took the subway. The air was thick and hazy, it was a white world all around after last night’s snowfall. Later we had hot pot for dinner and did a little shopping, by which time I was ready for more sleep.
The nearest thing I can compare hot pot to is fondue. There is a big vessel/bowl of water in the center of the table, and in this case there was a metal “tower” in the center of that, kept warm by some method (charcoal?) that we couldn’t figure out. Jamie says this is not the modern method of doing hot pot that he has seen elsewhere, which makes sense since the restaurant was called “Old Beijing” and all the staff were dressed in Manchu (?) style. I’m just guessing, but the place was obviously trying to recreate someone's idea of the old days.
When we came in, the greeter shouted something toward the upstairs level, and Jamie suggested that he was saying, “Hey, some foreigners are here.” But he did that whenever anyone came in, so it wasn’t just for us.
Jamie ordered 5 or 6 things off a menu that I couldn’t read -- fish balls, thin slices of mutton, sliced potatoes, big leaves of some kind of cabbage, another vegetable that I couldn’t identify. We dropped bits of everything into the boiling water, waited for stuff to cook, ate all of it with a very spicy sauce that had a mix of flavors: peanuts, something fishy, some scallions maybe, other things I couldn’t identify. (P.S. I even liked the mutton. That was a big surprise.)
After that -- long overdue bedtime.
Travel and Arrival
Notes from February 6, 2010, 9:31 p.m. Beijing
The traveling was smooth and uneventful. All the planes were on time, even early. The thirteen-hour flight between Newark and Beijing was about as expected: hard to get through. After we were fed the first and most substantial of three in-flight meals, I slept for about an hour and a half. I finished my book five hours before the flight was over, then alternated between trying to sleep, eating again (and again), watching the flight map and statistics, and looking at the beginnings of movies or snippets from old TV shows (The King and I, LOTR III, The Philadelphia Story, Hill Street Blues), and playing freecell -- all of the latter on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of me. There were 338 movies to choose from, though that tally is a little deceptive because it includes, in many cases, several versions of the same movie but with different subtitles (Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese). When you choose a movie to watch, in many cases you also get the choice of a bunch of different dubbings (many more languages than just Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese). Contrary to what the clerk told me when I called Continental last week, I could find no evidence of an outlet into which to plug my computer, but that was okay because my computer was out of reach in the overhead bin anyhow.
We flew north out of Newark, over Albany and Montreal and eventually over far northern Canada. Eventually we headed southward across Siberia and Mongolia. The result was that out of the only window I could see that had an open shutter, what was visible for most of the flight was a pre-dawn or post-sunset sky -- for hours and hours and hours.
The flight map makes it easier to visualize why the sunrise/sunset thing is happening. The global view shows the areas of daylight and night moving across the surface of the earth, and we were flying not that far from the demarcation line for most of the trip.
*****
Finally -- Beijing. It was exciting to get sight of it, and a little depressing as well. The air looked a lot like brown pea soup, and given that it’s winter but there’s no snow-cover, the ground looked all brown and dusty as well.
We landed at 2:40 p.m. The process from there included a gate where we had to hand in a form (filled in while still in flight) about whether we might have H1N1 flu, with the threat of quarantine if “they” thought we might. Then a big hall with maybe 15 lines for immigration: 2/3 of the lines for “Chinese Nationals,” 1/3 for “Foreigners.” This took a very long time; several of the people ahead of me did not get waved through quickly. I saw one young man led away by a customs officer -- maybe to more questioning? I don’t know. I got through with no trouble, then waited for my baggage. When I finally came out and saw Jamie in the crowd, I was happy and relieved beyond words. When they had given us the flu/quarantine form on the plane, all I could think of was what a fiasco it would be to be quarantined for swine flu instead of finally, after all that travel, meeting up with Jamie. Luckily it didn’t happen that way.
We took a long cab ride with a driver who wasn’t sure where the hotel was, even though Jamie had printed out some Google Maps pictures. But she got us here with no trouble. We’re in a neighborhood that is local instead of touristy (I’ve seen only a handful of Caucasian faces right around here in almost a week), urban but not skyscraper urban. The room is tiny but clean and pleasant, just about big enough for us and all the luggage. We got here at about 5:00 o’clock, took a breath, and went out to see the neighborhood and get some dinner. As we started walking down a big street Jamie said, “Any impressions so far?” Exhausted and overwhelmed and hardly able to believe I was actually here, all I could say was, “Lotta Chinese people.”
:)
The traveling was smooth and uneventful. All the planes were on time, even early. The thirteen-hour flight between Newark and Beijing was about as expected: hard to get through. After we were fed the first and most substantial of three in-flight meals, I slept for about an hour and a half. I finished my book five hours before the flight was over, then alternated between trying to sleep, eating again (and again), watching the flight map and statistics, and looking at the beginnings of movies or snippets from old TV shows (The King and I, LOTR III, The Philadelphia Story, Hill Street Blues), and playing freecell -- all of the latter on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of me. There were 338 movies to choose from, though that tally is a little deceptive because it includes, in many cases, several versions of the same movie but with different subtitles (Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese). When you choose a movie to watch, in many cases you also get the choice of a bunch of different dubbings (many more languages than just Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese). Contrary to what the clerk told me when I called Continental last week, I could find no evidence of an outlet into which to plug my computer, but that was okay because my computer was out of reach in the overhead bin anyhow.
We flew north out of Newark, over Albany and Montreal and eventually over far northern Canada. Eventually we headed southward across Siberia and Mongolia. The result was that out of the only window I could see that had an open shutter, what was visible for most of the flight was a pre-dawn or post-sunset sky -- for hours and hours and hours.
The flight map makes it easier to visualize why the sunrise/sunset thing is happening. The global view shows the areas of daylight and night moving across the surface of the earth, and we were flying not that far from the demarcation line for most of the trip.
*****
Finally -- Beijing. It was exciting to get sight of it, and a little depressing as well. The air looked a lot like brown pea soup, and given that it’s winter but there’s no snow-cover, the ground looked all brown and dusty as well.
We landed at 2:40 p.m. The process from there included a gate where we had to hand in a form (filled in while still in flight) about whether we might have H1N1 flu, with the threat of quarantine if “they” thought we might. Then a big hall with maybe 15 lines for immigration: 2/3 of the lines for “Chinese Nationals,” 1/3 for “Foreigners.” This took a very long time; several of the people ahead of me did not get waved through quickly. I saw one young man led away by a customs officer -- maybe to more questioning? I don’t know. I got through with no trouble, then waited for my baggage. When I finally came out and saw Jamie in the crowd, I was happy and relieved beyond words. When they had given us the flu/quarantine form on the plane, all I could think of was what a fiasco it would be to be quarantined for swine flu instead of finally, after all that travel, meeting up with Jamie. Luckily it didn’t happen that way.
We took a long cab ride with a driver who wasn’t sure where the hotel was, even though Jamie had printed out some Google Maps pictures. But she got us here with no trouble. We’re in a neighborhood that is local instead of touristy (I’ve seen only a handful of Caucasian faces right around here in almost a week), urban but not skyscraper urban. The room is tiny but clean and pleasant, just about big enough for us and all the luggage. We got here at about 5:00 o’clock, took a breath, and went out to see the neighborhood and get some dinner. As we started walking down a big street Jamie said, “Any impressions so far?” Exhausted and overwhelmed and hardly able to believe I was actually here, all I could say was, “Lotta Chinese people.”
:)
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Packed and ready
My bags are packed, I'm (almost) ready to go....
It's hard to believe that if all goes well I'll be seeing Jamie -- in China -- in about 50 hours.
After more than a year of dithering about making a trip, and months of procrastination in deciding when to go, and endless to-do lists, shopping trips, and packing dilemmas: everything is done. Or if it's not done, it's not going to get done.
Maddy has set me up for the trip by taking me shopping to get me an early birthday present: my first iPod. She is helping me select, download, upload, and generally gather music, and she supplied three movies on DVD that I might want to watch on the long flights between Newark and Beijing. I also have a couple of books in my bag, just in case I get jaded with using electronic gadgetry.
The biggest challenge will probably be the luggage. I have the biggest hard-sided suitcase LL Bean sells, plus a large knapsack of books that Jamie chose for his department (as well as some gift books), plus my carry-on backpack. The first two will be checked, and Maddy will help me manage them in Portland. The hard part will be getting them through Customs in Beijing. But then Jamie will be there to add muscle to the enterprise.
For now -- bedtime.
It's hard to believe that if all goes well I'll be seeing Jamie -- in China -- in about 50 hours.
After more than a year of dithering about making a trip, and months of procrastination in deciding when to go, and endless to-do lists, shopping trips, and packing dilemmas: everything is done. Or if it's not done, it's not going to get done.
Maddy has set me up for the trip by taking me shopping to get me an early birthday present: my first iPod. She is helping me select, download, upload, and generally gather music, and she supplied three movies on DVD that I might want to watch on the long flights between Newark and Beijing. I also have a couple of books in my bag, just in case I get jaded with using electronic gadgetry.
The biggest challenge will probably be the luggage. I have the biggest hard-sided suitcase LL Bean sells, plus a large knapsack of books that Jamie chose for his department (as well as some gift books), plus my carry-on backpack. The first two will be checked, and Maddy will help me manage them in Portland. The hard part will be getting them through Customs in Beijing. But then Jamie will be there to add muscle to the enterprise.
For now -- bedtime.
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Almost ready for China
In a week, if all goes well, I should be more than halfway through the long flight between Newark and Beijing. Whether I'll be able to get at this blog when I'm over there is an open question; Jamie is skeptical about it. But I'm going to try. Right now I'm just making sure it still works.
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