Illustrious Musings

Clerk in Ningxia, anyone?

2009-05-13T22:01:00.008+08:00

The High People's Court in the Ningxia Autonomous Region (kind of like a province, but with some marginally additional powers because of its sizable Hui population) has produced a stunning video to show off its thorough study and implementation of the Supreme People's Court (SPC)'s "Five Prohibitions" campaign. Stunning not the least for the ease with which those judges can bellow "it is strictly prohibited to have inappropriate contact with lawyers in violation of regulations" in one lyrical arc.

If I were going to write something political about the video, I would highlight its populist discourse, which is probably significant in light of SPC President Wang Shengjun's focus on popularization, rather than professionalization, of the judiciary. Really, I'm just fascinated with the images that some video editor threw together. At some level, it reminds me of how my brother and I used to act out the ten plagues at seder every passover, although I'd like to think that our visual sequences were more immediately related to the text at hand.

The video starts out with some fairly run of the mill proclamations, accompanied by innocuous photos of court staff looking all official:

People's courts are for the people

The Five Prohibitions are inscribed in our hearts

People's judges are for the people

Justice connects the hearts of the masses.

Then we get to the pedagogical content (0:32):

"It is strictly prohibited [for court staff] to receive gifts from parties involved in cases, and related persons."

But wait, there's a cut to a man attending to an apparently sick, elderly gentleman. Is this really what the SPC means by "receiving gifts?" In a January 8, 2009 document titled "Measures for Handling Violations of the 'Five Prohibitions,'" the SPC explains that this prohibition "refers to receiving money, invitations to eat, entertainment, travel, and other matters of interest from case parties, defense counsel, legal representatives, and other entrusted auditors, assessors, auctioneers, selling agents, appraisers, or other persons overseeing a bankruptcy, or persons affiliated with such entities." Visting the sick, definitely prohibited.

We are next informed (0:40) that "it is strictly prohibited to have inappropriate contact with lawyers in violation of regulations," against the backdrop of two very suspicious individuals shaking hands. This clearly rises to the level of "inappropriate contact with lawyers in violation of the Supreme People's Court and Ministry of Justice's 'Several Regulations on Standardizing the Relationship between Judges and Lawyers in order to Protect the Impartiality of Justice' and other related SPC regulations." Check the high-collared blouse for a money-filled envelope.

The camera lingers (0:44) with distrust on a dude in a forest green vest, aggressively encouraging his new friend to pose for a group photograph. We now know that this is no good, under the principle that "it is strictly prohibited to meddle in or make inquiries in cases handled by others," which "refers to violating regulations by meddling in, interfering in, making inquiries about, or asking about other [judges'] cases, or using one's influence or interceding or other such behavior directed at the leaders, collegiate tribunal members, or single judge appointed to try a case, or other auxiliary personnel of the units or departments handling cases."

Watch out, because, the next image (0:50) stands in for two prohibitions, so whatever is going on must be really seriously and no-kiddingly strictly prohibited. A Ningxia High People's Court truck hauling cargo through the snow is not only violating "the strict prohibition on practicing favoritism when entrusted to carry out appraisals and auctions" (practicing favoritism or looking out for one's own interests when entrusted as an auditor, assessor, auctioneer, selling agent, appraiser, or other person overseeing a bankruptcy, by carrying out malicious collusion, fraud, or other illegal manipulation with relevant organs and personnel), but also for that matter violating "the strict prohibition on divulging secrets about cases being tried" (divulging the specific situations and other secrets about the trial or enforcement of cases, obtained from case discussions of the collegiate tribunal or the case trial committee). You've got to credit the composer (徐安) for how nicely that last prohibition flies off the tongue.

At this point, there's a bit more self-congratulation, although I'm starting to suspect that the truck is actually delivering some sort of relief supplies, which in any event must be punishable by various forms of administrative discipline, some of them extra-legal, even, but for various reasons, that's probably not written down.

The second time through the enumeration of the prohibitions (at 1:50), we accompany some court staff down a dirt path. This is unauthorized travel at the least, not to mention that we are witnessing some seriously improper inquiries into case status. By the time we're in the bearded dude's house (there is an ongoing foreclosure auction), we know from the nods and smiles all around that case secrets are being divulged faster than a Ningxia sandstorm will deposit sediment in your morning tea.

The third time through, the self-congratulatory paean is full-blown narcissism, with the judges stoically in place. By this point, I'm a bit more doubtful than ever that justice ties their hearts to mine.

Thanks to Josephine Lau for a translation suggestion, and to Otto Malmgren for circulating the video link (originally at http://www.nxfy.gov.cn/99/2009-4-15/2920302@1078.htm but fails to load in many browsers).

Regulatory reform anyone?

2009-02-18T22:12:00.004+08:00

围观 is a handy phrase meaning "to surround and watch."

Some kind of construction continues.

Legal reform

2009-01-25T20:49:00.002+08:00

National destiny

2009-01-25T19:56:00.008+08:00

It's taken me five months to get over my fear of how trite it is to blog from Beijing about the Olympics. If the passage of time hasn't made the notion of the Olympic blog post any less hackneyed, perhaps it's created room for some nostalgia to creep in. My nostalgia is unforgiving, though.

The smog grew worse each day in late July. I wonder how many officials were fired.

Opening ceremony broadcast at Ditan Park.

Cuba vs. North Korea, lightweight women's judo. This is what the Olympics now means to me.

Portuguese judo competitor's head wound bandaged.

Pure irony.

Danish handball fans went wild after a last minute upset over Russia. This gentleman felt obliged to point out his shirt to me, as if it were not obvious why I had just asked permission to photograph him.

North Korean fans (or at least fans of North Korea).

Speedwalking.

Wading in the steeplechase trap.

McDonald's crowd control

Small "installation" adjacent to handball and water polo venues.

Handwritten directions at the interchange station between the Olympic subway line and the rest of the subway system.

Iceland's #1 fan, this woman (married to Icelandic man at left) insisted that everyone cheer for her team during the handball match. Some of her lobbying included such educational facts as "Iceland is an island nation of 300,000 people."

New York

2009-01-25T19:36:00.002+08:00

The new New Museum. Brilliant.

Loitering in Chelsea.

Installation or found object? (Battery Park)

Gansu, Hangzhou, walls 等等

2008-08-23T16:21:00.017+08:00

Each box contains a cricket. The vendor told me I could expect a life expectancy of six months.
Pajamas are the summer vêtement of choice in Shanghai.

Incense at the Lama temple. The post-troubles security staff in June must have been all undercover, as I saw nary a soldier in uniform.
Construction chaos in late July, getting dangerously close to the Olympics, at my light-rail station. Ask not why a bicycle is hoisted up.

Rice wine jugs, Wuzhen

David at Great Wall, Simatai. Our driver and the Chinese hikers I met all insisted that the haze is "clouds."

In the days before the national college entrance exam, students leave good-luck plaques at the former imperial college, near Ming and Qing steles inscribed with the names of scholars who passed the examinations become advisors to the emperors.

My father uses community exercise equipment at the Longjing green tea fields.

The only Buddhist temple basketball court I've encountered so far--at the 4th century Lingyin Si in Hangzhou.

I trust that by now, NBC has taught you all how to say 中国加油! (translated perhaps most awkwardly as "Refueling China"). My father was way ahead of the curve in June when he bought this shirt on the street.

Tremendous styroam pile in the provincial capital of Gansu. Here, my brother David and I met my former roommates Jacob and Jessica, who are perhaps the first American travelers to transit directly from San Francisco to Lanzhou. The city is a few dozen kilometers narrow, squeezed between mountains and the Yellow River.

My #1 China rule is not to touch still water sources. We sipped yogurt by the Yellow River and watched more public exercise.

The Tibetan town of Xiahe closed, and the next flight to Dunhuang not leaving for another day, we made the most of our Lanzhou base by hopping a bus to Linxia, a predominately Muslim town. En route, most of the passengers did not speak Mandarin. One spoke enough to ask our nationality, and he was so delighted with the answer that he pulled out several thousand US dollars. The jury is out on the funds' provenance.

Linxia markets

David was frequently asked his height.

After hailing a cab at random, and testing the driver's temperament by having him wander through crowded streets to re-visit our favorite bakery, we asked him to recommend and take us to a rural, scenic site that would still leave us time to catch our evening flight. We were not disappointed by the Tibetan-style temple.

Gansu families on summer vacation made us stop for so many photos that we barely left in time to take three cabs and a bus to the the Lanzhou airport, changing vehicles each time we entered a zone where a new municipality regulated what kinds of license plates could enter.

The road back to Linxia took us through a dusty town of single story buildings, mostly marked for demolition ("拆"). (Beijing's buildings used to be covered with this character, but so many have been bulldozed already that it's now a rarity there.) Nearby were new, pink high-rises.

Dunhuang is in in the middle of nowhere, which means that it has an airport served by 737s, and a brand new train station. Nearby are the Mogao caves, with several hundred rooms filled with Buddhist art dating as far back as the fourth century. So many have been plundered that visitors are allowed to see only ten caves. I couldn't keep track of which was the third-largest statue in the China, vs. the third-largest statue made of a single piece of wood, but despite the conservation concerns, I was floored by the good condition and intricate detail of the work.

Mogao complex (no photography inside).
Mingsha sand dune park, sign noting its status as a "harmonious scenic point," invoking the current party slogan about building a "harmonious society." I certainly didn't observe any conflict, and it was scandalously fun:

Four hours east of Dunhuang lies another pseudo-oasis, Jiayuguan. The fort marks a former boundary between China-proper and the hinterlands of the empire, a point from which misbehavers would be exiled. While in town, we experienced several water outages, as roads were being paved frantically for the Olympic torch's imminent arrival.
Scientific development, harmonious development, reform and opening, name your euphemism for industry in Jiayuguan.
Reconstructed Great Wall near Jiayuguan
Invaders would have to traverse this before even reaching the wall.

Unreconstructed Great Wall fragments east of Jiayuguan

In the desert, sand sweepers' work never ends.

Jacob and David warn fleeing exiled poets.
5,500 meter snow-capped mountains lie to the south, in Sichuan.

Kansai, Naoshima

2008-05-08T18:43:00.007+08:00

May 1 holiday was shortened this year, but my language program was stuck giving us the whole week they had promised us months in advance. Japan!

Naoshima is a sparsely populated island in the Inland Sea that is facing a mini boom of tourists gawking at its contemporary art collection. The highlight is the architecture of the Chichu Art Museum, designed by Tadao Ando. Photography is strictly prohibited anywhere near the museum (I had to check my bag in lockers across the street), but I found the following seven photos on Flickr (sneaky photographer? granted special permission?) Credit goes here; I have posted these under the terms of the following Creative Commons license.

A corner of the walkway that connects the several small buildings of the museum. The gravel is glued to the ground, creating a bizarre underfoot sensation.

Changing light throughout the day creates shadows in perfect proportion to the shapes of the corners between beams.

"Banzai Corner," Yukinori Yanagi (at the Benesse Art Site)

Chichu
Chichu
"Time/Timeless/No Time," Walter De Maria, at Chichu

[All below photos are mine.]

A ferry in the Inland Sea.

My boat arrived in Naoshima shortly after sunset. I was pleasantly surprised to find assembled at the small hostel (curiously named "Kowloon") the most fantastic assortment of architects, video game designers, students, and more, who all treated their visit to Naoshima as a pilgrimage, and with whom I explored the island.
直島やばい!

Hiroshi gave me an extensive explanation on the relation between his towel and Edo period style.
Waiting to disembark the ferry. Note the distinct personal space between each body.

Several small homes (and in this case, a shrine) near Honmura Port have been transformed into site-specific installations ("Art House Project"). Glass staircase at "Go'o Shrine," Hiroshi Sugimoto.

not officially an installation.

ubiquitous roof style in rural Japan

communing with the iconic "Pumpkin" by Yayoi Kusama

No one was willing to entertain that this haze might be a Chinese export, but I still have my suspicions.

Façade of "Haisha," Shinro Ohtake (Art House Project).

Before roaming the hills of Naoshima, I swept through the gardens, temples, castles, alleys, and eateries (as a rule of thumb, not if there were more than 8 seats) of Kyoto, Nara, Himeji, and Osaka. In Kyoto, I tasted red rice sakes at a tiny bar, and in Osaka, I ate a several course all-tofu meal.

Cast for chocolate- or sweet-vegetable-filled dough snacks. These pastries also popular in China, especially in former Manchuria.

I had a 28 course vegan lunch at あじろ in northwest Kyoto, next to Myoshinji temple. I sat in a private room and nibbled tiny dishes while listening to an English conversation in the neighboring room between an Israeli woman and Japanese man about competing ideals of art patronage. The food highlight was a block of creamy tofu, infused with sesame and a bitter spicy herb (think seder horseradish, not sushi wasabi, although its appearance resembled the latter). It was a gorgeous balance in textures between the soft tofu and the meatiness of the sesame. As I review my notes about what I ate, I see the comment: "approached point where seems they're trying to feed me to death." Seven courses remained.

The final course: matcha.

Kyoto
Kyoto
Kyoto
Nanzen-Ji, Kyoto
Chayama train station, on the way to Naoshima
I knew that Nara had a park with deer and that one could buy wafers to feed said deer. I did not know that "park" meant an area contiguous with the entire city. Human children on par seemed skittish about the whole premise. The deer need a dermatologist.

Himeji Castle. I had the pleasure of visiting, and climbing the six stories inside on small wooden ladders, with the entire Japanese populace on a national holiday.

Kyoto
Kyoto
Kyoto
Garden at the Okochi Sanso villa, founded by the samurai film actor Okochi Denjiro.

Kofuku-ji, Nara
Kofuku-ji, Nara
Kiyomizu-Dera, Kyoto
Aqueduct, Nanzen-Ji, Kyoto
Tenryu-Ji, Kyoto. Or am I blindly matching names of temples and photos?
Tenryu-Ji, Kyoto
Okochi Sanso, Kyoto
Global BNE!
Kyoto graphic design
Naoshima
Vending machine culture, Osaka
Anomie in Nara. Nary a deer in sight.

Grave sweeping

2008-05-08T18:18:00.000+08:00

To cut down the crowds traveling during the May golden week this year, China shortened the formerly weeklong May Day holiday, and in a controversial move, designated several traditional festivals as public holidays. One new official holiday is 清明节, Qingmingjie, observed by visiting and cleaning ancestors' graves.

My recent ancestors aren't buried in China, and the ancestors of my grave-sweeping partner-in-crime Jerry are "dead so long no one sweeps their graves," so we instead visited the Longhua Martyrs Cemetery in Shanghai, a site that commemorates the lives of murdered Chinese Communists. The sculptures are remarkably Soviet.

Nearby Longhua Temple:
Gratuitous Ferragamo exhibit:

Southern pastiche

2008-03-30T09:43:00.000+08:00

Distributing incense at Taipei temple

As I rode the airport bus into Taipei, I sent a text message, almost as an afterthought, to the friend of the friend of the friend in Beijing from whom I had borrowed a Taiwan SIM card, asking if he wanted to meet up after New Years festivities wound down. How naive of me to think that I would not immediately be invited to his extended family's New Years Eve dinner, and several hours of praying ("拜拜") at Buddhist temples, well into dawn.

I was quickly welcomed into Mark's family, especially after it turned out we have the same surname (葛), and after eating gargantuan amounts of food, and then waiting for midnight to arrive, we drove in circles around Taipei, visiting as many temples as we could. At each, we offered incense to a number of likenesses of the Buddha, carrying fruit and snacks along with us. I thought we might leave the food as offerings at the temples, but instead, we snacked in the car between pilgrimages, the point being that the fruit had been blessed by the smoke in the temples. At about 4am, gorged beyond holiness, I was finally dropped off at my hostel, but not after Mark's grandmother gave me a hongbao (红包), a red envelope with money, traditionally given by elders to younger members of their family (or, in other contexts, as bribes to politicians). The pattern of extreme kindness by strangers in Taiwan was repeated ad infinitum, as I was given candy, boxed lunches, tea, and portions of others' mahjong winnings.

Papers thrown into a furnace at a temple in Taipei on New Years Eve.

Altar on Taipei street

Macao just before New Years

Taipei temple

"Business temporarily closed for New Years inventory." Massive swaths of Taipei were closed for days on end after New Years. Other areas, in particular those that looked like Shibuya in Tokyo, were packed with shoppers, and the most absurd English:

CATTLE OFFAL!

Shockingly refreshing hybrid caffeinated beverage, resting on the laurels of that mainstay of East Asian vending machines, Pocari Sweat.

New Years also meant 20 some days of uninterrupted fireworks. Most of these sounded like small car bombs. Peter (my Beijing roommate) and I abruptly woke up one morning in our Taipei hostel convinced that the mainland's campaign to reclaim the renegade province was in full swing.

Big Buddha on Lantau Island in Hong Kong

foils of Big Buddha

distant Big Buddha

enormous Zhong Tai monastery in central Taiwan, where on the last day of a bonsai and bronze exhibit, vegetarian vendors set up stalls in a field nearby. A guy selling peas told me that he had traveled frequently to Johnstown, PA in the 1980s, before he retired from the steel business. Peter and I approached a woman who incessantly sang an inane jingle that she clearly had just invented: "Hamburger, hamburger, tastyburger, luckyburger, makes you lucky all day long," and grabbed the microphone to sing the verse (in Chinese) ourselves. She looked impressed before continuing on her zombie-like determination to promote the mysterious soy protein. No one bought any.

Peter and I tried to get information on the return schedule of the bus from the highway (15 minute walk from the monastery) back to the major town nearby. The monks at the information desk insisted that no such bus existed. It was irrelevant that that very bus was precisely how we arrived that morning. They took pity on our resorting to supposedly fantastic lies and gave us a ride to town in a large van, not before making it clear, in a kind of guarded generosity, that we were receiving special treatment that we might not expect in the future.

Taipei temple roof

CEMETERIES

envious graveside views at Lamma Island, Hong KongMuslim cemetery, partitioned from Catholic cemetery and overlooking the latter, in Hong Kong

SNOWSTORM

During the snow disaster that devastated much of China in late January, train service was paralyzed. I almost went to visit Ivy in Guangzhou but ultimately decided that even though I could easily take the express train there from Shenzhen, it was not worth facing the estimated 600,000 unhappy migrant workers I would meet upon disembarking at the Guangzhou train station, waiting for their only chance each year (New Years/Spring Festival) to visit home. Shortly after I decided against the jaunt, news came out that someone at Guangzhou station had been trampled to death in a stampede of passengers running for a train that finally began to operate. Below are comparatively modest scenes of passengers waiting in the Shenzhen station.

These people had been camped out for days. 随地吐痰 was in full swing.

Passengers watch news of the storm on flat screen televisions apparently especially set up in light of the disaster. In the Shenzhen subway, I watched videos of soldiers heroically shoveling snow off of highways in central China. Without the material infrastructure (snow plows) to deal with snow storms (in part because these areas rarely experience such heavy snows), the story of the storm became one of human heroism.

Mini-fight breaks out over relief supplies being handed out.

Chiang Kai-Shek's cadillac ostentatiously displayed at his Memorial Hall in Taipei.

Pro-independence photo at the Chang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall.

National Palace Musem in Taipei, arguably the best collection of Chinese art in the world. Most of the pieces were smuggled from the mainland after 1949. An exhibit painstakingly detailed from which rooms in the Forbidden City (Beijing) the objects on display originated. Several Taiwanese told me that if Taiwan becomes independent, the new nation would be morally obligated to return the art to China.

I am in theory not against amplified karaoke being broadcast through seaside parks (Taidong), but there should be some stricter guidelines.

On the walk from what we later learned was an imaginary bus stop, to Zhong Tai Monastery. Oolong tea fields in Ruili, mountainous central Taiwan

Ruili

Ruili (Fog! not pollution! Finally!)

Notice at Taroko Gorge, Taiwan

Hong Kong-Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, Hong Kong side, at a colonial era prison, later an immigrant detention facility largely for Vietnamese immigrants. Now a museum space. . .

Obsolete warnings posted for prisoners, with announcement of Wi-Fi service now available at the museum. Model for prison abolition?

Lots of barbed wire still hanging around.
Former cattle depot in Hong Kong, now arts space; spectre of Hou-Yin

apartment complex near Shenzhen side of Bienniale

Massive modernist housing complex, Lantau Island, Hong Kong

BNE! In Taiwan!

Objects waiting to be found, Taipei

Macau

English lesson, men's bathroom, municipal building, Taidong, Taiwan

first ever Beijing Tu B'Shvat party, my house, Beijing

Tiger obsession

2008-03-29T17:33:00.000+08:00

The counter that Erika suggested I place on my blog reveals the most profound of data: more visitors come to my site looking for information on tigers than any other source.

Search terms used to access my site (from google) include:

"sleeping siberian tiger"
"baby lions how they eat"
"baby tigers for sale with large pics"
"photos of baby lions and tigers"

and many, many people just searching "baby lions"

Other search terms deserving honors include:

"everything in transit"
"importing dried seafood shenzhen"
"bursts of color around crosses"
"harbin has the most standard mandarin"

I'll take this moment to preempt complaints of a dearth of photos of me:

with boundless energy before bootcamp started, accompanied by Liang
Reading a historical narrative at the Jewish museum in Harbin

Blowing sand

2008-03-18T19:14:00.000+08:00

Something about this morning's sky didn't look right, but since that's fairly normal, I donned my face mask (with active charcoal cloth filter and HEPA filtration) and biked to class. At 8:01am, my teacher interrupted herself, declared that the smell of earth in the air was distracting her, and closed the curtains on the mini-apocalypse unfolding outside of the window.

Such was my induction to Beijing's first largescale sand/dust storm of the season, a scene that is likely to repeat several times this spring. "Terrifying" was the most common word I heard used to describe the dark sky. I asked what happens when the storms are worse than I experienced today and was told that: 1) more sand particles could swirl around; 2) the air could be yellow instead of grey; 3) yellow sky could be combined with rain, meaning that it would literally be raining yellow mud.

The air cleared somewhat by evening, and as I watched the sun set, its rays reflecting off the haze on the horizon were nearly blinding.

Markets!

2008-03-08T14:25:00.001+08:00

For some reason, Hong Kong markets are grouped together by theme, as if to force intense competition, and providing great convenience for consumers. Want tropical pet fish? There's an entire street for it. Birds? An entire network of alleys. Shoes? A veritable small neighborhood of shops. Indoor food markets (nearly empty by afternoon, as freshness-obsessed shoppers scorn anything that hasn't just been set out for sale); outdoor night markets; herbal medicine streets; dried seafood (shark fins! flattened ducks!), wet seafood, and live animal markets abound.

Smashed ducks

Pancakes (饼, the most versatile Chinese food word, extending to cookies, crackers, tortillas, many kinds of sandwiches, basically anything largely composed of flattened starch) being rolled out at Shilin Night Market in Taipei

Nuts roasting in Macau, much more high-tech machine than the large roasting pans that cover the streets of Beijing in the winter

center of Macau

New Years candies in Taipei

Chickens killed only seconds ago, Hong Kong food market

See above

See above

Hong Kong indoor food market

Hong Kong dried seafood market

Shark fins being sorted, Hong Kong

Herbs

I finally found Schizandra berries here (五味子）

WOW

2008-02-23T11:23:00.000+08:00

Windows of the World theme park in Shenzhen is filled with sites. Beyond the replicas of over sixty wonders of the world, hourly performances in the Africa, Polynesia, South Asia, Native America, and other Villages give visitors an introduction to world cultures. For instance, in the Africa Village, park workers in wigs teach the audience how to drum and walk on stilts. Maori impersonators teach the world "Aloha" and dance while grunting and sticking out their tongues frequently. There is also a neighboring park that contains all of the wonders of China, and with performances of ethnic minority groups. This is all so ripe for someone's anthropology dissertation that I could barely contain myself.

This guy in the middle was so over the top that he completely undermined the suspension of disbelief that the park tried to instill. He acted so cynically that I convinced myself that he was American and made up all kinds of stories about how he came to work as a dancer in SZ.

The arc only appears to be larger than the average Shenzhen highrise. Really, basically anything in SZ is taller.

Photos of park performers superimposed on Pyramid images??? Display outside of the African village

The Golden Gate Bridge. This is really impressive because it's outside of the park.
Shenzhen, New York skylines. Notice towers.

For a fee, world travelers can dress up in local garb.

Niagra Falls. Do any falls experts know what makes this distinguishable from any other falls?
A lot of America all in one place

While I'm on WOW, the casinos in Macau are massive. This is the Venetian, where I won about $2, which makes it not as cool as the Grand Lisboa, where I won $15.

This building is really real: the oldest lighthouse in China (Macau).

Borders, ports

2008-02-23T00:25:00.000+08:00

Shenzhen subway station, at border crossing

I spent the bulk of my month-long New Year's ("Spring Festival") break in what I am calling liminal China. I accumulated 35 passport stamps (largely as a result of sleeping in Shenzhen and daytripping to Hong Kong), cycled through four series of currencies, manipulated my accent, and somewhat grew accustomed to reading characters abolished in the PRC 40-odd years ago, all ostensibly without leaving the "country":

Shenzhen, a stone's throw from Hong Kong, only 20 years ago a village but since being designated one of the first Special Economic Zones in the 1980s, by some measurements now China's wealthiest city.

Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region (SAR), where out of deference to local habit, I had to abandon all pedestrian strategies (pushing and squeezing my body through crowds) that I studied so hard in Beijing

Macau, a former Portuguese colony and now SAR, part of the same landmass as mainland China, with the world's largest casinos, and perhaps the largest number of signs in the world in a language (Portuguese) that almost no residents speak.

Taiwan, a place (how is that for my being noncommittal on weighty political questions) whose use of a calendar based on the founding of the Republic of China (we are now in Year 97) could not possibly bear any relationship to its anxieties about sovereignty.

Even in Beijing, I have never seen such large scale dioramas as this in Hong Kong. Shooting, of course, is an Olympic event, although not one that will be held in HK.

Fuwa (Olympic mascots) race up the stairs of what remains of the 17th century St. Paul Cathedral in Macau. It is probably not coincidental that Olympics paraphernalia are more prevalent in these two cities that most places in China I have visited--the decorations serve to reinforce the former colonies' status as part of the PRC, by heralding their participation in the grand performance of national power.

Beachgoers in Taidong, Taiwan gaze east at the Pacific. No Olympics banners within hundreds of kilometers.

Landfill in Hong Kong harbor

Landfill
Bay at Cheung Chau island, Hong Kong. Cars are prohibited on the island.

Cheung ChauLandfill

Hong Kong, dramatic storage containers

Power plant, Lamma Island, Hong Kong

Maids' Day Off

Crowds, mostly Filipina domestic workers, sit in the sidewalks and streets of Hong Kong on Sundays.

more Yangtze delta

2008-02-20T18:51:00.000+08:00

Unusually large construction cavern in Hongkou neighborhood of Shanghai, once part of the International Concession

As most of you probably know, a sizable Jewish community lived in Shanghai during the first half of last century; in addition to a first wave of Sephardic businessspeople, many fled Russian pogroms, and more fled the Nazis.

In the same neighborhood as the above construction pit, a small former Ashkenazi synagogue now functions as a museum. At the moment, the main point of interest is the architecture and furniture; the small exhibit included such items as a Singer sewing machine owned by a Jewish family. There was, however, uncharacteristically unfurious construction on a future exhibit hall behind the main building. I was given a lovely tour by an undergraduate student majoring in Middle Eastern studies, who explained that during the early 1940s, when the Japanese army occupied Shanghai, thousands of Ashkenazi Jews were crammed into a ghetto in the neighborhood surrounding the synagogue. The wealthier Sephardim faced no special restrictions. The below photo is of an apartment building in the former ghetto.

Ohel Moshe Synagogue

Nearby townhouses

I.M. Pei designed Suzhou Museum garden

Hexagonal museum windows contrast with round windows in Ming dynasty Suzhou gardens

Suzhou, an ancient silk producing center, has textiles for sale near every classical garden. As I browsed scarves, I came across one that said "I love Jesus" in English; the merchant was tickled silly when I told her what it meant.

At the largely outdoor kunqu (opera) museum, tucked next to a canal, I came across a private rehearsal, the performers' falsetto echoing off of the stone walls.

Shanghai miscellanea

2008-02-19T19:04:00.000+08:00

A form of late Qing dynasty currency on display at the jaw-dropping (millennia old bronzes) Shanghai museum

Public exercise on plastic equipment abounds in Chinese cities.

An arts district near every former factory or railway, and "SoHo lofts" always nearby

Japanese exhibit in Shanghai promoting alternatives to plastic bags, which, incidentally, are largely to be banned in China beginning in June. Only thicker plastic bags will be permitted, and stores may not give them away for free. It's somewhat unclear how permitting thicker plastics will reduce plastic consumption, as well as how this law is to be enforced (given, say, how rampantly industrial emissions standards are violated at the provincial level). I first found out about this new law by reading (and comprehending) the newspaper headline over someone's shoulder on the Shanghai subway!

"Expert drilling?"

Street side blood pressure examination

Socialist-cum-Busby Berkeley posters herald harmonious Shanghai subway construction

Mysterious (un)found object drive by in the French concession

Japanese bartenders were so excessively polite at the Transit Lounge on a quiet Wednesday night that they washed the same dishes for hours so as not to lose face by not working. Staring at this wallpaper for too long is not a good idea.

Matchmakers

2008-01-19T09:54:00.000+08:00

In Shanghai's People's Square, I unwittingly wandered into Matchmakers' Corner. I surreptitiously read classifieds for a bit, before being dragged into a fairly trite line of questioning: "How many years have you lived in China?" "How old are you?" My suitability as a groom began to more closely scrutinized: "If you're American, why don't you have blue eyes?" "Why aren't you taller?" A woman who insisted on speaking bad loud English finally asked: "You come here to look for a daughter, yes? I mean boyfriend?" I failed to get her card.

In Search of a Few Lumps of Coal

2007-12-29T18:14:00.000+08:00

Typical gradient of Beijing sky on a sunny day. Blue above, turbid at the horizon.

Morning of the day when the pollution index literally went off the charts (above 500 is unmeasured).

In search of the pollution source-- carting coal at JiuChang art district.

I live in a high technology apartment. My roommate and I are not only able to control when the heat turns on, we are also able to control the degree of heat. In Beijing, this lifestyle is a luxury.

With luxuries come responsibilities, namely having to pay for the heat we use (many, but not all residential customers' landlords pay for their uninterrupted blasts of heat). When I first noticed that our coal gas meter was running low, I went to a neighborhood bank, on the advice of a classmate, who had been able to charge her gas card there. The tellers helpfully and eagerly informed me that I needed to go a different nearby bank.

The security guard (from all appearances working his after-middle-school job) at Bank B squashed all hopes of any easy resolution. Not only was I not in the right place, but he had no idea what I needed to do. When I pressed him for advice, he gave me detailed directions to Bank C. I didn't need to make the trek there to know that he was just trying to appease me and save face.

I went instead to Bank D, next door to the ATM that has never failed me, hoping the good luck would rub off. The teller sent me to Bank E, and I knew from her poise that she probably knew what she was talking about.

I learned that Bank E was indeed the proper coal recharging station, but after much fudging around with the machine, I was told that my card was broken.

Satisfied that I had at least come this far, I called it a day, and later went to the real estate office of my apartment complex, where after my landlord gave her blessing by phone, I was written a permission slip to be issued a new card.

Obtaining the card involved a 5 minute train and 30 minute bus ride to the outskirts of the city, and about an hour of walking in circles, to find the small office that mysteriously controlled the microchip in my kitchen. The moment of truth came when I discovered that the address I was given did not specify that the building was "east" or "west" of a given street. As I asked an old cabbage seller for directions, she threw her head back in hysterical laughter, as if she had never before heard a foreigner speak Chinese, before explaining that she never crosses onto the west side of the street so had no idea where the place was. When I finally arrived at the office to find a door ajar, the electronic coal keepers in vain searched for my landlord's name in the computer system, causing them quickly to conclude that she was a fraud and tax evader, and ours an illegal rental unit. I asked them to explain as much to her on the phone, and somehow the misunderstanding was resolved.

Harbin

2007-11-12T14:42:00.000+08:00

Traveling by hard sleeper train is a guaranteed way to make five new friends. The compartments have two sets of facing lower, middle, and upper bunks. What hard sleepers lack is not so much the softness of soft sleepers (both are comfortable enough) but doors. The compartments face into a hallway through which beverage, noodle, and flashlight vendors pass. Besides those who stand between the train cars and chain smoke, most passengers sit together on the lowest bunks, chat, and share food (and so I always reserve the top bunk, not to avoid the social rituals, but to make sure no one spills noodles or alcohol on my bed). On my way to Harbin, as I sat on someone else's bed and ate peanuts, organic apples, lamb dumplings, cucumbers, spiced chicken, and anything I was offered without visible claws, I met, among others:

1) a 42 year old male civil engineer from northeastern China, specializing in project management, wearing a "孝" pin to symbolize that he is in mourning for his recently deceased father. He was excited to learn that Jews also have mourning rituals.

2) a woman in her 40s originally from Ningbo, on her way to visit a 44 year old friend who just had her first (and only...) child. She is in the process of emigrating to Canada, somehow made easier by her husband's naval career, and she was excited to share that her daughter was applying to study abroad programs in Germany and Australia. She immediately promised me (in no less certain terms) four different legal assistant positions with her lawyer friends in Beijing.

3) a 24 year old female recent college graduate, fluent in English, currently not working, while studying for graduate school entrance exams. Her preparation on the train consisted of reading an English language magazine about China's lunar aspirations. The rest of the train car offered her endless advice on how she could find a job in today's ruthless economic conditions (about 30% of recent college graduates are unemployed).

4) an ~18 year old boy wearing tight white jeans and an earring in the shape of a necktie, who did not say anything and listened to us for hours. This is not rude.

My ADHD cab driver from the train station to Angela's dorm explained what year nearly every one of Harbin's several dozen universities was founded, apologized for the trash falling from the truck in front of us (and was relieved that I answered yes, in the US this is theoretically punishable by fine), and informed me that real estate in China is much more expensive than in the US, according to his sister in Atlanta.

Much of Harbin's architecture shows the influence of the Russians who largely built the city at the turn of the 20th century. One Harbin museum referred to this in English as "western influence," but in Chinese as something that roughly translates to "western cultural contamination" or "pollution." Still, I spoke at length with three Chinese men who had lived in Harbin since at least the 1940s, all of whom praised the Russians' contribution to the city's layout and lamented that when Mao expelled the Russians in 1956 or so, something of the city's livelihood was lost. Between the bustle of the commercial streets and the copious underground drag bars, the town seems back on track.

Angela participating in the illicit Russian chocolate trade.

I have a bad habit of engaging shopkeepers in lengthy discussions about the provenance of their clearly counterfeit goods. As soon as I saw the bottle of "JoensDanhse" (ostensibly Jack Daniels) in a "Russian Commodities Store," I couldn't resist. The attendant diligently explained that the liquor was imported, although she wasn't sure from where. I suggested that the whiskey may have been distilled in China, as per the English label ("Shandong of China," also "Made in Tenderness.") She would have none of it, although she declined to produce an import certificate akin to those affixed to the plentiful bottles of Russian vodka.

Overemployment.

One of Harbin's two historical museums is housed in a gorgeous former synagogue from the turn of the last century and holds mostly photographs of Jewish life from that era. One of the frustrating qualities of the museum was that there was little explanation of the larger events surrounding the photos. Hundreds of photos were labeled something like "Rosenthal's bakery in 1924," but I struggled to connect the dots into a story about why Jews came to Harbin in droves, how they lived while there (other than by posing for portraits and opening shops), and why they left. A brief history in the shape of a torah scroll listed census figures without any context, and so, from the dates, I was able to infer that the migration seemed to begin in the late 19th century as a result of pogroms in the Pale and to increase after the Bolshevik Revolution, and that after Japanese annexation of the region (Manchuria) in 1931, the Jews left in droves.

The layout of the museum at the former headquarters of Japanese Unit 731, aka "Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory," also left something to be desired, but the horror of the site was still evident. Unit 731 organized germ warfare throughout China during World War II, and carried out vivisection and other experiments (studies on frostbite, the effects of vacuums, the courses of bacterial infections, etc.) on captured human subjects. Because the retreating Japanese army destroyed most of the evidence (and handed the US army the rest), the museum is hard pressed to mount a comprehensive exhibit and often errs on the side of defensive pleas to the visitor to believe that the documentary evidence is really really true.

Still, there are at least two features that effectively gesture toward the terror of the place. The first is a video exhibit of testimony by former Japanese army officials involved in the biological warfare and human experiments. Most spoke in matter of fact terms, as if the only way to distance themselves from their actions was to renounce any emotion. A caption explained that one had also refused his army pension in an attempt to repent. The second is the barrenness of the land surrounding the former military compound, left that way as if in recognition of the inability to account for the past with text or monuments or by any other means than letting the ruins of the old buildings continue to collapse.

In defense of the thoughtfulness of at least some of Harbin's curators, I offer the following poorly photographed musing on the arrangement of the photographs in another museum:

Elsewhere in Harbin, these rusting walls were a burst of color in a sea of flashy glass and steel construction.

This old advertisement(?) (nearly illegible) was reused as a piece of a wall at the ferocious animal park mentioned below.

As pervasive as overemployment, these handwritten phone numbers can be found on the walls in any neighborhood of any Chinese city. At least in Beijing, they are usually the numbers of agents who will arrange for migrant workers to obtain forged work permits, to subvert the requirement that only legal residents of a city can receive certain social services, such as public education and health care. Paint is always layered, with the city or building owner wiping out the numbers, before someone else comes along to paint in another color. This is a dormitory at a HeiLongJiang University in Harbin.

Cabbage drying and for sale on the street.

It does not take long for someone from Harbin to point out how "standard" their Mandarin is, i.e. accent-less (if this is a coherent concept). The street calligraphers on the bank of the Songhua river were distraught to hear that I was studying in Beijing, where the accent of some locals could taint my tongue, and they implored me to join Angela and Leslie and study in Harbin. I tried to explain that my teachers speak the most standard of Mandarin in class, that some are even from Harbin, that unlike Harbiners, native Beijingers generally don't speak other dialects, and that besides, it's useful to become accustomed to hearing different accents.

There must have been some gap between my meaning and how it was understood, because they began to chide me for what they understood to be my project to master every single one of China's dozens of dialects, something that only linguists could do. I was about to whip out the complex compound sentence that I had memorized from my textbook that states that a linguist only need study language's form and does not actually need to be able to speak multiple languages (and the corollary sentence, using some fancy grammar patterns, that even someone who knows 10 languages is not a linguist unless she studies the form of language), but somehow the conversation had quickly turned to China's four ancient inventions, and which one of the four some government bureau recently removed from the official list. The calligraphers began to fight about which was cut from the list, and I deftly stepped away before the argument grew so loud that a policeman jumped in.

Those of you who have read this far are probably waiting for me to talk about the world famous Harbin Siberian Tiger Reserve, where for $270, one can purchase a large cattle to be fed to a tiger. A chicken only costs about $8. I did not read much about the reserve before eagerly handing my admission ticket to the bus driver, and I was a bit surprised when I found myself riding a vehicle in loops through several Siberian tiger, jaguar, and lion habitats. Right next to the animals. Our driver more than once made a sharp turn and explained that sometimes, the tigers like to attack the doors. None of my fellow tourists (15 Chinese, 2 Korean, and my friend Angela) opted for the chickens or cattle. After about an hour of (successfully) practicing every anti-anxiety technique I have ever learned, we were released to a stunning pedestrian walkway through the reserve.

Baby lions playing with baby Siberian tigers' tails is just really cute.

There is no zoom lens in use here.

Sparkle

2007-11-04T00:27:00.000+08:00

With only 11 days left until the central government flips on the central heat in Beijing's buildings (think lots more coal dust in the air), I went out in search of what may soon be a rare commodity: the clean, bright, and shiny.

Laura and Peter bask in translucent paneling.

New subway faregates wrapped in pink plastic. The stations on the new Line 5 have Mozart piped in! (Everything that transit the obsessed will want to read about the new line.)

The Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall's model of the city.

Peter and I stand over our language center. (I have spent several minutes trying to decide how best to describe just which building it is before finally deciding that the truth here, much like when my teachers ask about the topography of my hometown, is irrelevant.)

The Hall also has an exhibit on the future of the standard of living in China. Apparently, all children will have floral lights projected above their beds. I tried to strike up a conversation with the guard about the unlikelihood of everyone in Beijing living in such large courtyard homes (before quickly adding that it is of course my dream that everyone does so). She was remarkably polite and said something about how the exhibit does in fact represent the future.

There was a gentleman playing a grand piano in the foyer of the hall, as well as gallery attendants in place to activate the energy-conserving motion-activated escalators.

Ramadan

2007-10-26T17:48:00.000+08:00

On a walk through Xi'an's Hui quarter two weeks ago, on the last night of Ramadan, I came across an impromptu parade of sorts. Religious leaders and followers circled the streets of the commercial district, where each restaurant and shop had placed a table of offerings on the sidewalk in front of their business. The crowd stopped at each site to say a prayer and take the food and flowers, before moving onto the next table. After circling through the streets for an hour or so, the group dispersed in front of the mosque, where a few entered. They exited shortly afterward carrying bottles of Pepsi.

English translations of Chinese phrases I have learned recently:

-relations of production [Marx]
-site-specific installation [art]
-forced to sign an unfair and exploitative treaty

Infinitely more useful words I do not how to say in Chinese or have looked up ad infinitum but still do not remember because my brain is busy trying to keep track of seven different ways each to say "become" or "protect" under minutely different circumstances include virtually ever fruit and vegetable; it is more more efficient at markets or dining halls to follow others' lead and point - "one of those!" I am on track to, next summer, being able to read legal cases, but not a restaurant menu.

Beijing radio is mostly talk, not music. (One notable exception is the karaoke radio program where listeners call in to sing their favorite songs on air.) I was surprised then to hear the theme music from Schindler's List broadcast recently, as an interlude between traffic and news reports. When I mentioned this to Aki, he wrily wondered if the station had paid the appropriate royalties.

Each of the classrooms at my language center has, among other common features, an enormous box of tissues on the center of the table. It is the only item in immediate reach from all three students' chairs. I asked one teacher if perhaps the administration was preparing for us to burst into tears of frustration. She was not amused, and the box was still there the following day.

Southwest Jaunt

2007-10-08T15:59:00.000+08:00

Although I personally thought that I did not deserve a week of vacation after only three weeks of class (this of course following a two month break from any gainful employment), who am I not to join in the celebration of the 58th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic?

Two Fridays ago, I hopped on a plane to the hardly provincial city of Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, in China's southwest. There, Wei, Tash, and I unsurprisingly found old city buildings being torn down, yet covered with official propaganda posters proclaiming "Protect the Old Town through Economic Development." A Givenchy showroom was being built next to housing that was marked for destruction (拆).

The next morning, we made a quick decision--jump the border for Burma, or follow the backpacker route northwest? We ultimately decided that even our collective charm didn't stand a chance of getting us out of military detention south of the border, and so we hopped on the eight hour Lijiang Express, a luxurious coach that featured a dubbed screening of "White Chicks," among other local cultural production.

Lijiang is an extremelycharmingcutetown populated in large part by the Naxi, a group who have largely been marginalized from the town's reconstruction following an earthquake about ten years ago. I do not count as an expert on either Lijiang or the Naxi, mostly because I spent my whole stay in the extremelycutelovely hotel courtyard, pictured below, eating furu (creamy and fermented spiced tofu).

That is of course hyperbole, because I also found time to pose in front of doorways and pursue other readily charming visuals.

Craving a second eight-hour bus ride through mountainous roads... ...we hopped on one headed for Luguhu, a lake area populated in large part, by the Mosuo, famous among anthropologists for their matrilineal culture and "walking marriage" practices. I spent the first few hours of the ride translating text messages for the gentleman next to me, who was feverishly corresponding with a Dutch woman he had met some months before in his home province of Shaanxi. He explained that although his four siblings all worked and had families, he preferred not to work, instead relying on his parents' nominal income to support his travel hobby, an interest I found surprising given his simple luggage, and the fact that he wore the same clothes each of the three days I saw him at the Lake. The text messaging was interrupted, as was our bus, by a landslide that had occurred a few hours earlier. A few dozen cars and buses had stopped on either side of the debris, which was resolved within an hour by a small dynamite explosion and a bulldozer that pushed the rocks into the river below. In Luguhu, our bus driver and hotel proprietor assured us that we would have no trouble finding a guide and itinerary for a 2-3 day hike, yet they had no suggestions as to how to organize such a trip. The café frequented by backpackers proved no more fruitful; fully 6 guides sipped tea while offering hikes lasting half a day, 5 days (back to Lijiang), or 10 days (on to Shangri-La) and chiding the notion of a trek of any other length.

Undeterred, we sat down at a simple lakeside restaurant and asked our waiter for advice. He promptly announced that for a nominal fee, he and his cousin would meet us the next morning to accompany us on a 2 day mountain trek, with a chicken in hand. We declined the chicken but made the deal. By the next evening, we had climbed to about 3600 meters, allowing our guides to take many smoke breaks on the way,

and not having encountered even a single goatherd on the often pathless ascent. As they grilled potatoes and corn on an open flame among the dense brush, I was pleased to find that my language lessons on marriage, divorce, aging, and the One Child Policy (often a two child policy in the countryside, depending on the circumstances, the family's ethnicity, and the sex of the first child) allowed me to ask many impertinent questions about rural life.

After a long descent that afforded us panoramic views of bordering Sichuan Province,

we were led to our guides' home, where we were given a tour of their biogas toilet (allowing them to generate energy from compost instead of burning wood) and watched soap operas while we waited for the family matriarch to prepare lunch. Her husband crouched in the corner carefully brewing small glasses of tea. Towering over the room was a giant portrait of Mao, adorned with flowers and incense (our guides explained that they did not "believe," but their father did).
After a stop at the local hot springs, we spent the rest of our time in Luguhu riding bikes around the lake (about an 80km loop, except that loops traditionally are uninterrupted, rather than terminating in swamps and requiring riders to ride boats for one hour back to the start of said loop), Wei commented on the cuteness of every single local resident (particularly if under the age of 35 or over the age of 45) and the abominably boring habits of every single Chinese tourist we passed (ostensibly a general lack of adventure), and I remained agnostic as to the value of these judgments but decidedly interested in returning to eat more creamy fermented spicy courtyard tofu, and so we returned to Lijiang without so much as an earthquake or landslide, but not before meeting another indubitably adventuresome woman from Chongqing who, like my bus buddy, belonged to the leisure class and was traveling for several weeks, in her case, taking several months off from her silver jewelry retail business, adorned in the meantime with colorful shawls, and outraged that the waiter did not invite her on our mountain climb.

Lijiang's music festival attendees were decidedly more eclectic than Beijing's, affording encounters with a sort of Yunnan Von Trapp family (accompanied by a drum and bass beat), a downright frightening Tibetan-like Björk who demanded that an army of volunteers remove every speck of dirt from the stage before she performed barefoot, and a delightful group from China's northeast that performed in drag and falsetto, invoking features of that region's opera style. My dear readers will see that Lijiang police are as adept at group formation as those in Beijing.

Although the situation is surely not unique to China, many dissertations remain to be written on the ideal of whiteness here, particularly constructed and reflected through marketing. I scour the labels of any moisturizer or sunscreen before purchase, in order to avoid the whitening creams present in most.

Back in Beijing (but not before a short airplane delay, during which all passengers were promptly served hot meals while we waited at the gate), I sought out a haircut at the edge of my apartment compound, at Hair Rodeo. The expedition was successful, even though I do not speak Korean. Fortunately, a Mandarin speaking employee translated throughout the entire event for my apparently monolingual Korean stylist. As far as I could tell, the rest of the customers freely spoke Mandarin with their stylists, and I can only speculate why I had two Hairdesigners for the price of one, but such is the luck of the draw in my neighborhood, where the menu of my favorite basement café is all in Korean, with about 65% translated into Chinese, and only some of that same portion in English. And so my roommate's dinner last night came with a side dish of green tea and chocolate ice cream on a Belgian waffle, instead of a vegetable pancake. Such are the felicitous hazards of our enterprise abroad.

May or May Not Be Related To The Olympics File

2007-09-19T15:03:00.000+08:00

Boxing children in donkey and bear(?) outfits on national television. Some of my dear readers may recall my run-in with less lavishly costumed boxing children on a Sunday in the park in Tijuana. A new global trend?

Although I have not yet joined the marching band, I do dine daily in the student cafeterias, where I follow native Chinese speakers' practice of pointing at what they'd like and saying "one of those, half a plate of that, and some of that." I swipe a punch card ($6 has lasted me about 12 lunches), find a seat, and begin to inspect my catch (success means finding no chicken claws).

Yesterday, my classmates and I went to check out a Muslim-style canteen and were pleased with the selections (hand-pulled wide noodles, spicy broths, plenty of well-spiced green vegetables), only to find that our punch cards hadn't been activated [literally translated as "opened"] to allow us to eat at that particular facility. No drama; we were invited to return the following day to pay.

When I went to activate my card, I was of course directed to a second office. There, I tried in vain to "open," "open," "turn on," "open," [big hand gestures] my card to eat at the "Qingzhen," "special," "additional," restaurant but was met with blank stares. Finally an attendant asked whether I was Muslim. Yes, I guessed, correctly. Five seconds later, my card was blessed. Perhaps this is what the Tsinghua foreign student guide means by "Please observe religious activities in designated areas only."

Far and away

2007-09-11T19:36:00.000+08:00

the most popular t-shirt in Beijing at the moment.

Humbled

2007-09-10T22:07:00.000+08:00

Olympic non sequitur and undeniable falsehood of the week: "Because of the Olympics, there aren't really any parties in Beijing for awhile." (A clueless art student's response to Angela's inquiry upon leaving the Public Enemy performance at the Beijing Pop Festival as to whether there were an after party.)

On this the first day of class, my teachers sent me home to learn 78 new words in one evening, apparently a relatively light load, compared to what's to come. Considering that some "words" are actually four word phrases, I am slated either to be absolutely numb to the world, or else a veritable dictionary, come next June. In (separate) class (es) tomorrow, we are discussing both roast duck and the gradual evolution of social institutions.

Recent observations:

-Cardamom in my beef noodle soup at a campus dining hall. Exquisite!

-A car making a left turn from the right-most of five lanes of traffic at a four way intersection, on a red light.

While watching last year's Chinese blockbuster "The Postmodern Life of My Aunt" at my apartment last Tuesday night, I had an unexpected visitor. No sooner did I answer the door to notice a short woman with a red "Beijing Municipality" armband than she swiftly kicked off her shoes, slipped her feet into a pair of booties, and disappeared under the kitchen sink. After some confusion, I realized that she was not about to reveal a passageway to the missing 14th floor, and she eventually made it known that I owed her for 2 months of water usage. When I protested that I had just moved in, she offered herself a seat at the dining room table and helpfully suggested that I ask the landlord to pay the bill. After several inquiries as to whether the Beijing Water Bureau would so be so kind as to give me a receipt to facilitate such reimbursement (answer: no), she finally clued me in that she would return with an invoice in a few days time. Problem solved, surreal encounter concluded.

Eclectic pop fans:

Private security guards (barely out of junior high school) nearly outnumbered spectators at the Festival. Marky Ramone's wry comment: "This here is just like Woodstock." It's relatively unclear just what the guards would do in the event of an actual security event, since even when crowdsurfers succeeded in stealing the guards' hats during Cui Jian's performance (a rare event, as his music became the anthem for some of the Tiananmen protesters in 1989), the lads solemnly stood by. At the conclusion of the performance, they dispersed into their respective work units and lined up in formation for some sort of debriefing. (Note: this is also standard practice for restaurant wait staff at the beginning and end of each shift.)

Bustle

2007-09-03T23:55:00.001+08:00

Evidence that socialism is over? A communist-themed restaurant in a poor, migrant worker suburb (Daxing). It took Angela and I an extraordinarily long time to decipher the menu to ensure that we did not order intestines or other food apparently consumed during the People's Liberation Army's jaunts in the mountains. (We succeeded.)

Chiles drying in Daxing.

Newspaper reading in Ritan Park.

Flurry of activity, nearly all Chinese tourists, in Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen is truly thrilling.

The Permissive Republic of China

Kids playing in the canals at Tsinghua. The water is frightening.
Carefully rearranged ruins from the British and French invasion at the Old Summer Palace (圆明园)

I have been unable to grasp the metaphor of the broken rainbow.

Special English

2007-09-03T23:32:00.000+08:00

Delightful uses of the Roman script:

A loose view of copyright laws leads to some felicitous results. This is a water bottle I purchased near my apartment.

Murakami inspired, apparently. Across from the first "Sculpting in Time" Café location in Xiangshan.

Character writing in Behai park; note the t-shirt at background.

The You-Know-What-in-You-Know-When

2007-09-03T22:03:00.000+08:00

"I wait in line..."

I was amazed by how many people asked me when I first visited Beijing in August 2004, "Did you know that Beijing will host the Olympics in 2008?" Perhaps the best I can say for the city's collective modesty is that no one I have met so far has dared to presume that I don't know what's coming in 2008.

I hesitate to make sweeping generalizations based on a few weeks of observations, but I think it's safe to say that the Olympics are a reference point--if an incoherent one--for nearly anything in Beijing. Electronic billboards throughout the city proclaim: "There are 339 days, 21 hours, 44 minutes, and 32 seconds until [...]" I walk past a McDonald's, and the only Mandarin I can make out of the loudspeaker announcement is "...Olympics..." The key to my apartment is stamped "2008."

I've especially been struck by the paternalism of the government campaigns to prepare Beijing residents for the onslaught of foreign visitors next summer. The city has been blanketed with red banners advocating the virtues of lining up in an orderly fashion (for buses and subway cars, mostly). One learns at Beihai park the importance of yielding to others, at the International Beer Garden in Wudaokou of the cultural sophistication of waiting in lines, and on the subway itself of the happiness that this all yields.

(Sidebar: Banners aside, boarding the subway is usually akin to rushing into Wal-Mart at 6am the day after Thanksgiving to purchase a Tickle Me Elmo, with the notable exception that there are also people exiting the car, too. Even if a line has formed, it tends to disintegrate by the time the train arrives. At busy bus stops during rush hour, though, there are several flag waving guards that establish order. I recently saw one of these guards--a woman in her 60s--force a young guy crouched on the sidewalk near the bus stop to get up and move to the back of the line.)

My personal comfort aside, I'm more interested in what these campaigns indicate about the relation between the state/Party and the people, or the state's claims on the latter. Most of the signs are written in the first person: "I wait in line, I yield to others, I am happy," or "The Olympics are coming, civilized culture too, new winds are blowing; I participate, I contribute; I am happy." The voice of the state attempts to subsume the voice of the people, as if to guilt Beijing residents into acknowledging that they aren't yet civilized enough, by the government's standards, for foreign visitors. "Participation" is one of the more ambiguous words; in addition to obliging the flag waving guards, I suspect that it means at least endorsing the ideology that "Olympics=good." Ensuring the stability of this equation bolsters the legitimacy of the state's destruction and displacement of entire neighborhoods, as well as the establishment of any kind of capitalist enterprise, because this development is somehow for the common good.

Olympic mascots below a banner at Behai park.

Child interpellated as subject.

Views

2007-09-03T19:39:00.000+08:00

Panoramic view of Beijing from the Fragrant Hills (香山) west of the city.

I gained tremendous clarity.

Behai Park at dusk.

Marching is an integral part of freshman orientation at Tsinghua. During my brief stay in the dorms, the chanting woke me at 7:00 each morning. Apparently foreigners are exempt from the requirement, or at least no one has invited me yet.

The view from my 16th floor living room (actually 14th, as there is no 13 or 14--the latter is a homonym for something that can be roughly translated as "You must die," or just "Die!") is certainly not as glorious as it was in San Francisco, but the courtyard...

...and light rail station provide much distraction. The pink building in the foreground is a clone of the one in which I live (there are 20 or so in this sprawling complex). The train geek in me notes that not only can I watch the comings and goings of a light rail from my bedroom, but I can also see several long-distance passenger and freight lines as well. The neighborhood is called 五道口, or the "intersection of five routes," for the rail crossing just beneath the elevated station.

By popular demand

2007-09-03T18:16:00.000+08:00

Labor

Worker cameraderie, near the "World Trade Center"

As I walk about Beijing, its sidewalks usually crowded with food vendors, delivery bicycles, and even cars, it is difficult to forget that China's economy is supposedly growing at a phenomenal rate of roughly 10% per year. Buildings are being demolished and rebuilt seemingly everywhere, and I am as likely to come upon a construction crew at dawn on a Sunday morning as any other time. Although this recent opinion piece suggested that China's official growth figures are inflated in comparison to its energy use, it is remarkable to this lay observer how towering skyscrapers are built in large part with simple hand tools.

As soon as I've gotten used to walking down a particular street, chasms such as this suddenly open.

Preparing for a new exhibit at the distillery-cum-art gallery district Jiuchang

Outside of artist districts, I have seen few socialist symbols such as this (at Jiuchang)

Even Mao's tomb (in Tiananmen Square) is being refurbished in advance of the I-forget-what-is-taking-place-in-2008.

Most manual labor (visible from the street) performed by women seems to be landscaping work.

At the East Gate of Tsinghua University, with Beijing's "Silicon Valley" (Zhongguancun) in the background.