Colorful Instructors

BEIJING - The Chinese don't have very many last names, which means in the short time I've been here I've already met three Lins, two Wangs and a fair number of Lis. And since everyone in the university insists on being called "laoshi" whether they're an instructor or merely an officer worker, confusion has erupted.

 

Is the short older man who works in the Foreign Students Office during afternoon Lin or Liu Laoshi? What was the name of the crazy van driver who couldn't get to Tian'anmen Square last week? I can't remember names in English, so Chinese requires some extra assistance. I've turned to nicknames.

 

My listening teacher -- Zhang Laoshi -- frequently wears a pink sweater. Her nickname is now Pink. When the class discovered that our speaking teacher -- Huang Laoshi -- uses the Huang character that means "Yellow," we had our theme. The third teacher, our reading instructor, had no particularly obvious color traits, so we christened her "Brown," after her most popular outfit.

 

Giving my teachers nicknames allowed me to easily remember their Chinese names. Pink? That's Zhang Laoshi. And if the first class is taught by Pink, Lin Laoshi -- Brown -- must be teaching next.

 

Friday afternoon the bell rang with no sign of our speaking teacher.

 

"Where's Yellow?" I said to a couple classmates.

 

Suddenly he appeared at the back of the class.

 

"不是'Yellow' ，我姓黄," he said. Which means something like, I'm not "Yellow," I'm Yellow.

 

Time for a new nickname.

This is a Library. You Can't Borrow Our Books.

BEIJING - Wasting time in China can be hard, for every annoying experience in Serviceland is a chance to practice Chinese.

 

Take Tsinghua's woefully ineffective library. One of the best in China with over four million volumes, the library's English collection would be laughed out of a tiny town in the middle of South Dakota. Tsinghua offers an English major, although I hope that students are not encouraged to practice based on what's on offer.

 

Despite the collection's small size, I wanted access to some of the only available English books. It took four seperate trips to the library -- one each to acquire a student card, library permission slip, borrowing form and a passport photograph, but I finally got the library card. The library charges a 300 RMB deposit on language students taking out books, presumably so I'm not tempted to swipe the 50-year-old copy of "Crime & Punishment" after I've finished it.

 

It took me around half an hour to choose two books from the five shelves of English literature. I decided on V.S. Naipual's "In a Free State" and a book by a Nigerian author whose name I did not recognize but had an interesting sleeve. Books in hand, I went to the checkout counter.

 

"You can't take these out," the woman behind the counter said. "Not with this library card."

 

She said it matter-of-factly, but this was the first I'd heard of a two-tiered library system.

 

"What do you mean?" I said.

 

"English books are very expensive. You can't take them out."

 

At this, I became quite angry. I'd been waiting to take out books for two weeks. Using new vocbulary from class, I unleashed a torrent of insults on the woman, including "This isn't fair," "This policy is stupid," "I'm very annoyed, not satisifed and still want to take these books out." The woman responded by getting her manager.

 

Mrs. Lin handled my complaint. She probably held a senior librarian post, and she looked the part, with long black hair with pieces of gray and a conservative, pilly blue sweater.

 

"Do you understand Chinese?" she said, "Because I don't speak English."

 

"A little," I said, and then we launched into a discussion of the differences between Chinese and English books. In the past Tsinghua has had problems with students taking foreign books and not returning them. To compensate, they don't allow certain types of cards to take out books. To take out an English book, I'd need to pay a deposit of 1,000 RMB, and an additional 10 RMB a month to use the library.

 

But the English books I wanted to take out weren't expensive, I said. They had their prices listed on them -- $1.50, $2 -- and hardly required such a large deposit. Besides, with Tsinghua in control of my student record, why would I want to cross the library?

 

Mrs. Lin nodded her head in agreement, but policy is policy. I couldn't justify keeping that much money at the library, and told her that I wouldn't be needing my library card. She arranged for my money to be returned.

"You can understand Chinese quite well," she said, as a salutation. I looked at my cell phone. My various library arguments took over an hour to resolve, during which I spoke only Chinese. I didn't realize the time passing, Chinese seemed less a skill to practice than a necessary tool in my battle to access literature. I lost that battle, but I didn't walk away empty-handed.

Losing to Hu

BEIJING - When it came time to choose bikes, I knew The Catac had to go. Its rusty, fake German frame couldn't compare to the Eisenhower-era flourishes of The Gazelle.

 

The Catac wasn't returned in perfect shape. Its new owner treated it poorly. The chain was loose, the tires deflated and the handlebars even more bent than when I lost it. With so many problems, I decided to take it back to the place where I bought it: Bike Doctor Hu's tiny repair shack on the west side of campus.

 

The loose chain meant I had to walk the Catac over to Dr. Hu's, turning a five minute bike ride into a 20 minute walk. I arrived to find Dr. Hu busy as ever. After four meetings, I've decided that Hu must be in his early 40s. His face has deep creases of a man much older, but he remains quite spry, getting on the ground to examine a bike with ease.

 

I went up to Hu with the bike. He got the idea, Hu's a smart man. "You want to sell the bike?" he said.

 

I nodded. "How much?"

 

Hu listed all the problems with the bike, mentioning the handlebars, tires, chain and even catching a couple others that I hadn't noticed, like bent wires and a new problem with my basket.

 

"But you just sold me this bike last week," I protested.

 

Hu offered me 50 for the bike. I bought it for 75, giving Hu an instant profit of 25. I countered with 60.

 

Hu didn't seem interested. "At 60 I don't want it," he said, and pushed 50 RMB into my hand.

 

Once again I was outsmarted by Hu. He sold me both bikes at slightly inflated rates, despite my frantic bargaining. Now he was making a profit off someone stealing from me. But I was unlikely to get any price at another place, where they wouldn't want my defective Catac.

 

I took Hu's offer, but left him with him with final joke. I took out the orange polyster seat cover the thief put on The Catac.

 

"I don't want that," Hu said.

 

But Hu would take it. "No, no. Take it. It's a gift for you."

 

And I left before he could give back.

The Gazelle

BEIJING - Meet The Gazelle.

 

She's faster, sleeker and more art-deco than her predecessor.

 

She comes with a new seat, basket and lock for 110 RMB. Her brakes are underneath the handlebars, which don't have any practical purpose but ensure she stands out in a crowd.

 

You can see The Gazelle around Northwestern Beijing all this spring, or until she swiped by a sneaky Chinese thief.

O.K. so there's supposed to be a picture here, but the Great Firewall of China isn't letting me upload one today. I'll try at a later date.

The Keystone Cops and the Return of the Catac

BEIJING - When my bike disappeared last week, I didn't report it to the police. My friends said it would be a waste of time. The police can't be bothered looking for stolen bike in a sea of them.

 

I took a couple days to mourn the loss and then bought the Gazelle. I did everything exactly the same as last time, except this time I bought a better lock, which I make sure to attach to an immobile object every evening.

 

This afternoon I chained The Gazelle to a staircase leading up to the lobby of my building, opposite a "Please Do Not Place Your Bike Here Sign." Underneath the sign was a bike. The bike's most obvious feature was a neon orange velour seat cover, but looking past that I saw the faded letters "Catac" scrawled across the frame. I went closer and gave it a thorough inspection. The same dented basket with a hole in one side, the same twisted right brake bar, the same broken stop. There was no question: This was the Catac.

 

I ran inside the building to the front counter.

 

"Fuyuan! Fuyuan!" I said, addressing the building staff. "Last week my bike was stolen but now it's outside! My bike is back!"

 

"Really?"

 

There were three fuyuans behind the lobby counter. The first fuyuan wanted to call the police, the second fuyuan said that wasn't a good idea because buying a used bike is illegal in China, and the third fuyuan said that he knew another type of police who could take care of the problem.

 

Five minutes later, a dark green van pulled up to the door. Four men came out, all dressed in cheap polyster jackets that I imagine they believe gives them an air of authority and came inside. They introduced themselves as supervisors of the dining hall and after hearing the story of the Catac, asked to see my student card.

 

In China, a student card is actually a small book that resembles a half-size passport. I took mine out of my pocket and the head suit man gave it a looking over. Satisfied, he handed it back.

 

"Do you need your bike back right now?" he asked me.

 

"No, why?"

 

The suit men had a plan. They wanted to put the bike back as bait, and perform a stakeout to catch the bike thief. That sounded fine with me, so I left the men to their own devices.

 

Fifteen minutes later, I left the building on an errand and found the four suit men standing on the lawn in front of the building. Beside them was the bike, lying 20 meters from where the thief left it. Some detective work.

 

An hour later, I returned to the building to see The Catac on the ground, knocked over by a strong wind. The fake police were gone, and the fuyuan said they caught no one.

 

I peeled the ugly orange seat cover off the old Catac. It was mine once again.

The Genuine Articles

BEIJING - When will China get real?

 

On the streets of Beijing, many middle-class accoutrement are on display: phones, movies, music, name brand pants and jackets. The problem is that many of these are knock-offs, expertly made and virtually identical to the real McCoy.

 

This isn't news; Chinese fakes stock black markets around the world. But will it ever change? If the country's economy continues to develop, it won't be long before large numbers of people make Western level incomes. One hundred million people making $10,000 a year in ten years doesn't seem far-fetched. The Chinese could replace fakes with the genuine article.

 

A shocking discovery I made last night causes me to think otherwise. A small newsstand on campus had several magazine racks on display just outside the store, one with comics, another with news articles and a third with English titles. They were mostly old issues of Time and the Economist, resealed in plastic and being sold for $1.75.

 

With the paucity of English language reading material in China, it looked like a good deal. I thumbed through the titles, but one stood out. It was an Economist, maize in color with a nine-photo montage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "Meet Germany's New Leader," the main headline screamed, but something didn't seem quite right. Instead of the traditional Economist font, the text on the cover was written in Times New Roman. And the promised articles weren't from the issue with Merkel on the cover, they belonged to the week before. This was a fake Economist.

 

Why someone would go through the trouble of making knock-off copies of a two year old economic magazine I'm not sure. But someone did and presumably there is a market for this kind of thing.

 

Fakes are widely available on the Tsinghua campus, China's best science and technology research college. This is the place where China's future inventors are studying, people who should care about intellectual property law. Instead, here they sell knock off iPod headphones for $3 and fake Sony ones for $2. The bikes aren't real, and neither are the basketballs.

 

Rather than going away, I see the Chinese fake economy branching off into smaller and smaller niches: Economists and Salinger books for the intellectual, North Face jackets and Columbia packs for the backpacker, Hello Kitty dolls and Korean soaps for the teenager.

 

Sounds like a phenomenon that might interest The Economist.

Language Accessories

BEIJING - Under my right arm during each Chinese adventure is a Little Yellow Book.

 

This is the "Langenscheidt Pocket Dictionary: Chinese," a six by three inch guide to the country. The Langenscheidt gets me out of traffic jams, helps repair broken appliances, and led to my recent acquistion of Aghan currency. I consider it invaluable, which is why I found it particularly strange when a middle-aged Chinese man got off his bicycle in the middle of Tsinghua's busy pathways and asked me how much it cost.

 

"Eighty kuai," I said, which is about $10.

 

"Can I see it?" he said. The man wore an old windbreaker and khakis. He looked too old to be a student, but lacked the air of sophisticated and academic wisdom that inhabits most professors. Perhaps he worked at the library, or was a doctoral student. He spoke English quite well.

 

"Pock-et Dictionary," he said, reading the teal blue text on the cover.

 

He stared down at the book for a while more. "So this is about 14 American dollars?"

 

I let him know that his estimate was a little high. He handed me back the book, gave me a farewell wave and kept on biking.

 

Why he stopped me I'm not sure. Maybe he had a copy that he wanted to sell, or is in the market for an English-Chinese dictionary. Maybe he just thought it looked cool.

Beijing's Fancy Nordic Cafe

BEIJING - As a university student, I shouldn't feel out of place at Ikea. The Swedish furniture store carved out a small empire on reasonably priced, cosmopolitian but hard to assemble homeware. But wandering around the company's four story Beijing outlet, I felt like I should have worn better shoes.

 

At 8 p.m. on Friday night the store was packed with young families, many with a small child riding in the cart. Grandma and Grandpa also were along, offering advice as these middle-class professionals bought new furniture to go with their new downtown digs. Most shoppers looked thrilled to be there.

 

Ikea may be the furniture new graduates with loan payments can afford, but here in China it's a mark of luxury. The curved Swedish designs are a huge improvement from the drab Communist styles that decorate most Chinese flats.

 

I came for a pillow, since the dorms only provide one that usually falls on the floor in the middle of the night. I found that Ikea caters to a number of Chinese budgets: high and higher. Cheap pillows started at RMB 49, but these were useless. The first acceptable pillow cost RMB 99, and the store also sold RMB 199, 299 and 450 models. It's too rich for my taste, but the pillow racks were half-empty, meaning that someone is snatching up these pricy bed items.

 

Like so many other things in China, the center of the store was the food counter. At most Ikeas, the restaurant is hidden toward the end of the store, providing people with a rest after a relaxing afternoon of shopping. In Beijing it's accessible right from the entrance, and clearly is the only destination for some shoppers. The dining hall sat several hundred, and each table was full.

 

The wealth of the Ikea clientele was even more clear here. Most people used forks and spoons with ease, and came to dinner with fancy coats, suits and dresses. I even heard a smattering of English around the dinning hall -- even though very few ex-pats seemed to be in residence.

 

"Excuse me," a person said after bumping into me in English. Another young Chinese woman told me to get the Ikea Family card - this way on my next visit, I could get free coffee.

 

The line for food spilled out of the cafeteria area. Other diners stocked up on food as if they hadn't eaten in weeks: each one taking two or more heaping dishes plus salads, muffins and wine. It took more than 15 minutes for me to get my plate of Swedish meatballs and gravy, fries and a Coke for Y15.

 

The meal was delicious, and I'm glad to have had so much company. It appears I'll have a place to get Swedish meatballs in Beijing for some time to come.

Blondes Have It Better

BEIJING - For my first haircut as a Beijing resident, I walked over to a narrow alley near Tsinghua's West Gate. Vendors lined the street, selling cold noodles, grilled tofu and cheap phone cards so migrant workers can talk to family in Shangdong, Shanxi or Hubei.

 

My salon appeared to have no name. Instead two barber poles, each with a strip of neon pink in the middle, marked the entrance. Inside two red barber chairs were near center on the red wall. Both chairs were occupied by young Chinese women, hair half in curls, half flowing two feet towards the floor. Cutting their hair were two fashionably dressed men who looked related. One had his hair dyed platinum blonde, the other wore his in a mullet.

 

"I'd like a haircut," I said.

 

The blonde-haired man pointed me to a folding chair in the salon's back right corner. This was the salon's waiting room. I took out Chekov's "Uncle Vanya," and started to read about life on a nineteenth-century Russian estate. A portable boom-box blasted out Hong Kong techno; one of the customers sang along to most of the lyrics in impressive Cantonese.

 

I read halfway through Act Three before the blonde barber called me over to the table. "How do you want your hair?" he said.

 

My hair vocabulary hasn't improved in the last month. "Not too short," is still all I have.

 

The barber took off, trimming, cutting, snipping and clipping my hair for the next 45 minutes. After the second blow-dry, he allowed me to put my glasses back on. My hair had been thrown in two different directions - something I think maybe called a "weave" in salon terms. There just wasn't very much of it - perhaps a quarter of an inch on top. I thanked the barber and got out of the salon before he decided to take any more of my hair.

 

The next day I came to class with my newly scalped top to find that the only two other white men in the class with the same 'do. All three of us sought out small salons around the West Gate, and all were left with little hair to show for it.

 

"Haircuts" is an infrequent series about haircuts, the people who give them and the styles they dish out.

Character Swap

BEIJING - It appears that Blogger has been inserting random errors into some of my recent entries. Chinese characters in e-mail entries (and this being China, many entries have at least a couple) have been scrambled.

I thought e-mail would be a panacea to the problem of posting from remote places. But over the past two months entries have been sent and not posted, posted on the wrong day, and now have completely different meanings.

I'm going to try to post directly to Blogger whenever possible, but with the Chinese government blocking and unblocking the site at random, it won't be all the time.

Meeting Friends Can Pay

Beijing - My speaking teacher dismissed class last Friday with an unusual assignment. He wanted each student to meet two new Chinese friends and one foreign friend. His gave us a short list of questions to ask, including name, age, hometown and profession and said the data would be collected on Monday.

Groans echoed through the classroom. Students don't like additional work five minutes before the week's final bell.

"When you come to China, of course you want to meet Chinese people," our teacher said, and dismissed the class.

My first friend I met at a bar. Wang Winxin is 27, a computer programmer in central Beijing who lives out here in the city's northwest. He hates Zhang Yimou movies and most recent Chinese historical dramas, preferring to watch Tony Jaa action movies from Thailand. I saved his phone number in my address book and wrote down the rest of the information the next morning.

Saturday and Sunday passed, but I made no new friends. I passed thousands of possibilities on the streets of Beijing, but not once asked the necessary questions. "How much is this," slips easily out of my mouth; "What's your profession," less so.

After dinner on Sunday I became desperate. I remembered a couple additional instructions issued by my teacher two days earlier. "Don't meet taxi drivers. Don't meet fuyuans." He meant that the class should try to meet other students, not service workers. But I was low on options; I went downstairs to see the fuyuans.

A fuyuan (服员) is a general category of customer service worker. In my life here, they're the two dozen or so people who clean my room every day, guard the building against theft (not very well - where's my bike??), and constantly converse with the building's 100 or so residents.

Working downstairs on Sunday I found two ladies and a man, each dressed in crisp uniforms, a tan and red pant suit for the women, a dark navy jacket and slacks for the man. The man appeared to be in charge, as he sat confidently behind the desk while the women played cards in front. I approached the desk and soon found myself in conversation with Li Ke (李刻), 23, a native of Beijing. He is an only child, currently single and residing in on-campus service housing.

I asked Li Ke if he had any hobbies. He responded in unfamiliar Chinese words. We fumbled around a little, trying to establish meaning until Li Ke switched to English. "Collect money," he said. His coin collection included American, British, Italian, Australian pieces, and others from more exotic places including the Faroe Islands, Denmark and Iraq. This collection came from friends, Li Ke said.

Then I had an idea. "Wait a second," I said, and hopped on the elevator up to my room. I grabbed a few roubles from my desk. I have dozens of these rouble coins, they continue to fall out of strange corners of my luggage. I went downstairs and gave Li Ke one, two and five rouble coins. He looked thrilled.

The next day Li Ke called me over coming back from a class. "I have a little gift for you," he said, and pulled a small envelope with two bills inside. They were two multicolored bills from Afghanistan. One was 5,000 Afghanis, the other 10,000 Afghanis.

Back in my room, I looked up the current value of 15,000 Afghanis out of curosity. According to XE.com, the current mid-market trading rate is $306.21.

But before I booked a vacation to Afghanistan, I went to eBay where I discovered these multicolored notes were issued by the Taliban and are no longer legal currency and fairly common. Current asking price: $1.50.

Oh well. I finished my homework on time and made a new friend in the process, and my life's a little richer thanks to that.

The Georgian Order

BEIJING - "Here's the one thing you need to know," Shannon said, and then paused for dramatic effect. "Chinese is PTPA: Person, Time, Place and Action."

It's the best instructional advice anyone's ever give me in Chinese. Better than when I found out the second and third tones are not, in fact, the same, better than when I found out I'd been writing the character for I - 我 - incorrectly. No, this constitutes nothing less than a Chinese miracle.

Everyday at Tsinghua I learn new words. Inside the classroom there are endless vocabulary lists, pop quizzes and impromptu 生词 (shengci, new words) thrown up on the board. After class is over I find myself learning more practical words, such as shower, earphones and stolen, for more practical reasons. Many of these encounters have been detailed on this blog, and I am sure more will in the future.

I find myself increasingly reaching for and finding new words, helping me to describe my problem to teachers, salespeople and random onlookers. But pressed to create dialogues on the spot, I find it coming out in an ungrammatical puddle, verbs, nouns and adjectives tripping over each other in unacceptable ways. I'm glad to at least be understood, but also realize that I must make the transition to more proper speech. That's where this little acronym comes in.

At first I thought PTPA was some kind of Golden Rule of Chinese, something most people learn on their first day of instruction. But I looked on Google and the phrase came up with no hits, and a couple classmates from different parts of the world had never heard of it. It might be a creation of Shannon's former university, a small language institute in California where he holed up 12 hours a day for 18 months, practicing his tones.

Like all rules, Shannon's has plenty of exceptions. But as a quick way to construct sentences on the fly, it'll do quite nicely.

When You Gotta Go

BEIJING - I hate Communist showers.

To save energy, all dormitories here provide hot water eight hours a day. From 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. to midnight, the water flows. At other times, the taps provide only water straight from Beijing's underground reserves, which are hundreds of meters below the surface and glacial in temperature.

Once I tried to take a cold water shower, but uncontrollable shivering and heart palpitations convinced me this wasn't a good idea.

So I have to wait before cleaning myself, even if at times like now it can be torturous. It's around noon Beijing time, and I've just woken up from a night out. Here in Beijing, smoking's still legal, so my clothes and hair smell like the Marbolo Man. There's still three hours to wait before I can get rid of last night's gunk.

With some time to kill, I've been pondering the possible benefits of hot water 8 hours a day. Water conservation seems the obvious answer, but I don't think I'm using less water because of the time limit. Now that I know it's limited, I use plenty of water when it's available. Five minute showers sometimes continue for 15.

Previously satisfied with one shower a day, I sometimes sneak back to the shower room for a second round near midnight. I worry that the next day conflicts will arise during shower periods, leaving me rather smelly on day three.

Maybe it's just considered excessive to have hot water available all the time. Eight hours is better than the military, where it can be just 15 minutes. Recently in Lithuania, I went to an ex-KGB prison where inmates were allowed 10 minutes to shower every week. Guards turned the hot and cold water taps on at random, a sadistic game they used to pass long shifts. By comparison, my arrangement seems rather plush.

I've come down with a bit of Princess and the Pea syndrome. Living at Tsinghua is quite cheap and comfortable. There's daily maid service, weekly sheet changing, 24 hour electricity and a sparkling Western toilet. My roommate's friendly and so are the security guards. A bank, supermarket, restaurant, and hair salon all within a five-minute walk. Yes, I pretty much have everything I need here.

But that still doesn't change the fact that the next two hours and 30 minutes are going to suck.

Mourning the Catac

BEIJING - Thursday night, I stopped by the Foreign Language Center's supermarket shortly before closing. I bought jasmine tea, a bowl of spicy pork ramen noodles and an orange Fanta. I threw the purchase into my bike basket and pedalled the three minutes home.

I didn't know at the time it would be last time I would ride my precious bike. This morning, I went down to the lobby of my dormitory, Building 23, and ducked into the bike storage catacombs on the left side of the building. I soon reached the place where I keep my bike, the third storage area on the right-side.

I looked for the familiar piece of brown and black checkered velor that covered the cracked leather seat. For the bright red lock, a giant piece of metal licorice with see-through crimson plastic on top. I went to the adjacent bike area, and then to the ones on the other side of the hallway. It was nowhere to be found.

The receptionists didn't even know I owned a bike. Describe it to us, they asked. Struggling for words, I managed a few appropriate adjectives. It was old, with a red lock and a seat that wasn't all black. The head receptionist took notes as I was talking, and they promised a search.

Twelve hours later, I hold out little hope of ever seeing the bike again. As I've mentioned before, bikes get stolen all the time in China, and what are the odds of locating one stray set of wheels in a sea of them?

With the loss of my bike and the lock, I lose Y100, about $12.50. This presumes that I can find a new one at the same cost, not a guarantee considering the amount of time it took to get the first one. I'm also out my main mode of transport, a rusty set of wheels that quickly became my favorite possession.

The bike had no name. I wanted to give it one, assigning something to claim it as my own. "Suzi" was the closest I came, but somehow it seemed slightly vulgar to christen a bike with a human name. I thought what I  might call another vehicle, but failed to get past the "Red Rocket," a Toyota Tercel I once drove around Albany. Then there were Chinese names, which might have been appropriate considering the surroundings. Considering how long it took me to decide on my own Chinese name, I couldn't see going down that path again, only to end up with something silly like 小车 (xiaoche, little car) or vulgar 拉肚子 (laduzi, diaherra).

The only thing I knew about the bike's origins was a faded decal under the seat that said "Catac." The man who sold it to me claimed it was German, although he later modified that and said it was German and Chinese. Perhaps that meant a Chinese bike with a borrowed German name. Or maybe long ago it arrived by ship from China; I'm not sure, and it never really mattered.

Most afternoons I'd take the bike somewhere, going an adventure masked as an errand. Every trip to the Internet Café I'd take a different route. Sometimes I would ride on the side of the main highway, blasting French techno on iPod, cars honking their horns as they passed. Other times I'd wind through campus, watching in awe as Chinese students rode two or three to a bike,

One time I crossed the railroad tracks -- the Trans-Siberian runs not 100 meters behind my dorm -- and went to the Korean part of Wudaokou. Here dishes are garnished with kimchi, not soy sauce, and some people speak worse Putonghua than I do. I wandered into a back alley, passed a club named R&B and waved to a couple old men on the street. It all seemed natural when pedalling by.

The Tsinghua campus makes sense on a bike. The large red slogan banners, announcing events and major government initiatives, are draped across the roads at a bike rider's eye level. Major campus services - the library, canteens, and administrative offices - are scattered over a couple of kilometers. By foot, it can take 20 or 30 minutes to walk between parts. Only by taking a bike are things located within reasonable distances.

This is why my period of mourning will be brief. Soon enough I will again have wheels, will again be pedalling around the flat, wide streets of Wudaokou, dodging traffic and running errands long after the Catac is melted for scrap metal.

We'll Always Have Facebook

BEIJING - Wednesday night at Propaganda, a student bar in Wudaokou, the basement dance floor is packed full of Chinese and foreign students, making and losing friends every song. They're here for open bar night, where $6 buys all the Manhattans, Mai Tais, Tsingdaos and Whiskey Sours one can drink before four in the morning.

 

Stopping by the bar in the middle of this week's event, I started chatting with a woman standing next to me, waiting for a Blue Hawaii. She studied Chinese at Capital Normal University, she explained in Chinese. Switching to English, she explained that she was on exchange for one semester from Wesleyan, in Boston. I mentioned that I went to Tufts, not five miles away.

 

"I went to Tufts once," she said, reaching over to get her cocktail. "It was a lecture about adoptees."

 

I paused, thinking back about a year ago, when a friend took me to a lecture about a Korean women adopted by an American family. "Wait," I said, "Was it about Korean adoptees?"

 

"Yes," she said, getting excited now. We doubled checked the size of the room (large), wall decorations (periodic tables, it was held in the chemistry building) and after lecture refreshments (cupcakes). They were the same. We had met before, in a manner of speaking.

 

She grabbed my arm -- thankfully not the one with the whiskey sour in it -- and walked toward the staircase.

 

"You must meet my roommate," she said.

 

We went into the middle of the dance floor, elbowing our way past its mostly drunk occupants. There we found the roommate, a Korean-American who also went to Wesleyan.

 

"I'm from here," she said, pointing near the elbow of her left hand, which was bent in a 90-degree angle. This was the location of her town on Cape Cod. We exchanged memories from that one shared lecture, chatted briefly about Beijing, and then danced to "Buttons" by Pussycat Dolls and Snoop Dogg, "The Next Episode," also from Snoop Dogg, this time with Dr. Dre, and Chingy's "Holiday Inn."

 

After the third song, the roommate disappeared out onto the dance floor.

 

"I have to go," she said.

 

But as she was leaving, she shouted out a final good bye.

 

"Facebook me!"

 

And I did. If our first encounter went unnoticed, and our second was by chance, why not have the third be on the Internet?

The Worst Thing You Can Say To a Kazakh

BEIJING - One joy of studying in a Communist country is meeting students from different countries. In my travels, I've met plenty of Brits, Australians and Germans. Now I take classes alongside Georgians, Mongolians, Lebanese and even Kazakhs.

I'm not sure how big the Kazakh contingent is at Tsinghua. I've became chummy with Madi, a short man with frosted blond tips in his black hair and a vague hip-hop sense of style.

I met Madi on the first day of class, wandering in our dorm lobby. He didn't know his class name, Chinese name or a word of the language.

"I just got here from Kazakhstan," he said, explaining missing nearly a week of orientation events.

Madi works for computer company, specializing in Information Control and Management. He's been dispatched to China by his company, which is paying for 18 months of language training, because he's been told that he won't rise out of middle-management without Chinese. Unmarried, Madi was chosen to learn the language of most of the company's suppliers.

That's right. The first person I ever meet from Kazakhstan works in information control, has just been sent to a strange country to learn the culture and the language for a vaguely absurd reason. You might be wondering why I haven't made a joke about the world's most-famous non-Kazakh Kazakh, Borat. Let me tell you about the other Kazakh I know.

Nadam is 18 years old, and studying here for a year before heading back to Kazakhstan for university. He wouldn't be out of place on the streets of Moscow, with a modern, if Russian-influenced dressing style. He's nice but quiet, rarely saying anything unless called on by our Chinese teachers.

Borat is the elephant that is always in the Kazakh's room. I want to ask, or make a joke or at least say "Very Nice!" in their presence, but I'm afraid of the consequences.

One American classmate had less concern. She asked Nadam if he'd heard of Borat.

Nadam was indignant. "Everybody in Kazakhstan hates this man! Why did he make this movie? He has never even been to Kazakhstan."

Embarrassed, the American pretended to look over new vocabulary words before our next class began.

The next day the American changed class. Her nominal reason was that she couldn't understand our level, and wanted to change to an elementary class. While true enough, I wonder if she feared any further Kazakh wrath.

The moral here is even though it may be incredibly tempting, don't ask a Kazakh about Borat. Ever.

Written in 30 Minutes or Less

BEIJING - I fear I've been a bit too negative here the past few days. Internet access, development, and rip-offs are serious problems here in China, but not so much that they exclude the simple surprises of living here.

 

One surprise is that I'm sitting here at the computer right now. It's 8 p.m. China time, and I missed the (excellent) dining hall's 5 to 7 p.m. dinner hour. That means I'm on my own for dinner. Rather than having to get on my bike and pedal to the nearest hole-in-the-wall eatery, in 15 minutes or so I'll be eating a steaming plate of oyako donburi. This Japanese egg and rice dish is one of my favorites, and it's coming to my door for under a $1.50. That includes a drink, and since this is China, I won't be expected to tip.

 

Enthralled with the choices on campus, I didn't even know there were on-campus delivery options until Friday night. It was around this time, and my roommate posed a question. He asked if I wanted to order some dinner. I said sure, but where to order from? He then went to the top shelf of his desk and pulled out from between two thick GRE study books, a pile of menus.

 

Written in Korean, Japanese, Chinglish and only occasionally Chinese, these lengthy menus mean infinite choice for the lazy Tsinghua student. They're open late, and the line's rarely busy. Wudaokou is a primarily Korean area, and there are plenty of Korean places, along with several Japanese and a pizza joint. There's also a place that specializes in chicken wings and kabobs and stays open until 3 a.m. I'm not sure if it has a name. If not, I suggest "Food that Will Make Drunks Very, Very Happy."

Deep Deep Deep in the Capital

BEIJING - Here's a character all visitors to China's capital should know: 拆. Pronouced "chai," it means destroy, and it's used to mark buildings that won't be around in a month or two.

As the country's preparations for the Olympic Games climax this spring and summer, more and more older buildings are being knocked down to make way for badminton arenas, five-star hotels and fancy Peking Duck restaurants. A BBC Radio documentary I listened to on the Trans-Siberian said that last year there was more construction in Beijing than in the last three combined for all of Western Europe.

Saturday I discovered that not all of Beijing's past is being demolished to make way for the Olympics. As with most things I find, I figured this out by getting lost.

I left comfortable Wudaokou for downtown Beijing to pick up a shoe. That's no typo - I meant shoe singular. Unpacking this week, I discovered not one of the five missing items described in a recent post, and only one Garmont hiking shoe. I also found a key without a key chain. Using Sherlock Holmes levels of reasoning, I realized I'd forgotten the shoe in my hostel locker. So it was back to Qianmen for the shoe and my Y100 locker deposit.

After picking them up unharmed, I decided to head to the Beijing Books Store, a block-long Mao-ist era relic. The crowds can be crazy, the staff surly, but the selection of reasonably priced English books can't be matched this side of Delhi. From a previous visit, a knew the store was not too far west of Tian'anmen Square and set off in that direction.

I walked three blocks, three monolithic blocks of Socialist deisgn, before realizing that I was on Qianmen Lu, and the bookstore was north on Chang'an Lu. I took the first right, and within 100 meters was plunged deep into the hutong world. Here the streets aren't paved, the only bathrooms are public, and spitting apparently is still legal. Old women sold dirt cheap apples, pears and the fruit best translated in English as "apple with a banana taste."

At the tiny Zhongmu Canteen, I ordered by pointing to the handwritten characters on the wall-mounted menu. Five minutes later, a huge bowl of heeping noodles arrived from a old woman with few teeth and nearly incomprehensible Beijing dialect. The food and a large Tsingdao predictably cost less than a dollar.

Across the street from the Canteen was a large fence. Behind it the Great Hall of the People, China's main legislative building, loomed not 200 meters in the distance. Tian'anmen Square was behind that. This neighborhood borders the center of the Chinese empire, and yet life continues as if one of the largest economic booms didn't exist.

Is China's economic boom a chimera? I'm sure the only reason this hutong district hasn't been raised is some historical significance, and that soon even if the buildings remain, they'll be renovated into luxury condos. Right now, though, there's still room in the heart of Beijing to step back in time, and get lost.

Life in the New Socialist Countryside

BEIJING - Beijingers enjoyed two days of clean air this week, a welcome break from the smog that suspiciously aligned with the opening of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference, the country's show legislature.

 

The government makes sure people know that the Committee is in session, interrupting programming on over three dozen channels to broadcast speeches from Premier Wen Jiabao -- who resembles an aging frog in appearance -- and some of the country's rare press conferences.

 

At one point this week, rather than turning off the television, I went over to CCTV-9, our cable system's lone English channel, for a comprehensive summary. The state news service breathlessly recapped the government's ambitious agenda for the upcoming year -- more housing market controls! better bank financing! more Chinese tour groups abroad! as if these items hadn't been planned months in advance.

 

The self-congratulation continues online, where Xinhua -- the only English language news-media accessible on the cheapie Internet service -- ran item after item from the Congress. The online item that stuck out the most was, "China aims to rid dire poverty by 2010." (Here's a direct link: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-03/07/content_5811266.htm.) Ignoring the verb problem in the headline, this appears to be a real policy change.

 

Here's the lead: "No one in China should live in dire poverty by 2010, members to the National Committee of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference said yesterday."

 

Number-crazy Chinese bureaucracts are promising to counteract the Three Nos -- No Job, No Land, No Social Security -- with four new programs. Four is bigger than three, so the chances of success seem quite high.

 

The article quotes Chen Yaobang, "a former official in the agriculture and forestry ministries," who is currently doing God knows what.  "By a simple calculation, we can see that if each person gets 300 yuan from the government, then we only need 6 billion yuan to solve the problem of people in dire poverty."

 

This all sounds pretty commendable. Problems begin appearing in paragraph four, where the reader learns that dire poverty is defined as annual income below 638 yuan. That's an infintesinal sum -- around $82, or 25 cents a day.

 

Wait a second. There are people in China make less than 25 cents a day? China may be cheap, but 25 cents won't buy much more than a bowl of noodles -- not enough to live on. And this isn't in a dirt poor sub-Saharan African nation, but a place that recently annouced that one city - Guangzhou - now has an average per capita income of over $10,000. (A number discredited when it came out because it excluded the city's legions of poor migrant workers.) Giving people 300 yuan, or about $38 a year, is a good start, but the government should be doing lots more.

 

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this article is that I need to stop relying on Xinhua as my only news source. The flesh filled photo galleries might be great, but when the day's main headline is, "Tibetan official: slim hope for Dalai to return," it's time for the Times.

Wait, this is Chinese class?

BEIJING - Maybe I don't have the worst Chinese in China after all.

 

Yesterday I walked into my listening class to find a Korean student sitting in my usual seat. I knew he was Korean by his bowl haircut and big, square glasses, and also because Koreans make up more than 60% of students at my level. I took the seat next to him -- it's still the first week of classes and seats are still quite flexible.

 

At exactly 1:00 p.m., the teacher strolled through the door and started the lesson. She played an incomprehensible tape a couple times, asked questions about the short sentences played, as if it was possible to understand between the tape fuzz and strange southern accents on the cassette tape. We students looked on puzzled for the next hour and a half, randomly shouting words that seemed related to the dialogue. Sometimes these were correct, and our teacher seemed satisfied.

 

The next class was reading. Here at Tsinghua, the teachers change between subjects, but the student's don't. This is the same setup we had in the sixth grade, complete with an electric bell that marks the exact end of class. Our reading teacher arrived right on time and dived into a lesson on banking. We talked about depositing money, withdrawal forms and remittances, about which I know rather little. Then our teacher announced it was time for a "对话" or dialogue. She told us to make a few phrases on the topic we our neighbor.

 

I turned to my Korean desk mate, who had said very little the past three hours.

 

"Do you want to be the teller or the person withdrawing the money," I said, in Chinese.

 

No response.

 

"So we have to make a dialogue. You can be person A or B. What do you like better?"

 

Again, no response.

 

"Right now we are at a bank. You have some money. You want to give it to me. What do you say?"

 

The student continued to just stare at me. Finally, he said, in English, "Chinese, no. Use English."

 

I was dumbfounded. This student didn't know any Chinese. Why wasn't he in this level, and how was I supposed to write a dialogue? I waved my hand and got the attention of our teacher.

 

"Laoshi," I said in Chinese, "I don't think this person knows how to speak Chinese."

 

The teacher looked surprised. "Who?" she said.

 

"This guy right here," I said, referring to the Korean, who seemed oblivious to us talking about him.

 

"Oh," she said, and then used English to encourage our new friend to switch to the introductory class.

You Can't Afford to Surf

BEIJING - How can the Chinese government control the Internet? How can one government, no matter how authoritative, contain information coming from hundreds of millions of sources, on thousands and thousands corners of the Web, throughout the world, in real time?

 

The idea of watching what people do online seems so enormous, that most governments barely even try,. They focus resources on sex offenders, counterfeiters and the occasional bootlegger. Everywhere else is free to blog, chat and Facebook away in peace.

 

Not China. It's no secret that the country employs massive amounts of resources on information control in the web. Reading an article in a western newspaper gives the impression of a vast number of bureaucrats, sitting in cubicles somewhere in the outskirts of Beijing, each monitoring a different corner of the Internet. Offending comments are deleted upon posting, and extreme cases the person responsible gets in legal trouble.

 

Now that I'm actually in China, and behind this firewall, I can see that these active measures are only a small part of the control mechanisms. Far more important are the more passive controls in place.

 

The Chinese government couples access to the Chinese market with assurances from businesses that they will incorporate censorship software when designing products. The most famous case of this is Google.cn, whose headquarters are less than a mile from where a type this, where search results are filtered not by the government, but by controls voluntarily built into the engine by the company involved. Yahoo, Baidu, and other large Internet companies have similar measures, taking the pressure off the government to find each and every reference to what happened in that large square around 1990.

 

The rabbit hole goes even further. Chinese Internet providers and public institutions frequently offer two levels of Internet access. One option will be access to Chinese sites, or sites that are hosted in the People's Republic of China. The cost for this service can be quite low - here at Tsinghua, the charge is just 3Y a month. The other option is what most Western people consider second nature: the ability to access all sites from around the world. Getting that at Tsinghua costs a minimum of 30Y, with unlimited access costing 90Y.

 

While this might not sound like much - 90Y is only $11 - it's a fair sum for a Chinese student living on tiny government stipends. Ninety yuan is nearly a week's lodging, or 12 meals at the dining hall. It's a fair bet that most students pinch pennies and stick to the local-only Internet plan.

 

This is economic apartheid disguised as multi-tiered access. By pricing China's best and brightest students out of the entire World Wide Web, the government ensures they will only be exposed to domestic sites, where sensitive topics are filtered or blocked. Students don't know what other sites are producing, and therefore remain ignorant of other, contrary opinions. Worst of all, they may not even know that even exist.

 

Chinese control of the Internet is firmer and more subtle than I could have imagined. Six months ago, I would have been worried posting a message like this would get me in trouble with a shadowy Internet police force. Now I realize that the fate of this entry is even worse: No one in China is even going to read it all.

The Doctor is in

BEIJING - Growing up in Albany, China  was a place of Great Walls, tea and bicycles.

 

I've conquered the wall, and I have a 12-pack of Guanxi Shiru Green Tea on my desk. To complete my Chinese fantasy, I needed only a bike.

 

One of my strongest memories from my first, quick trip to Wudaokou this summer were the foreigners mixed in the Chinese crowds on bicycles. When I moved here, I wanted to be one of those people.

 

Every new exchange student I meet, I ask about bicycles. Do you have one? How much did it cost? Where did you buy it?

 

I received the best advice from Andres, a Colombian in the fourth year of a masters in architecture here at Tsinghua. He's been through seven bikes in his time in Beijing.

 

"Don't buy a new bike," he said. "Don't be a nice looking bike. Just buy one that looks crappy, and make sure you don't pay too much for it."

 

I started my search with Youming, a Malay who lives on my floor. We went to the University's West Gate, where there are a strip of bicycle shops opposite the gate. At each one, we asked the same simple question: "Do you have used bikes?" (I got to try out a new word, ershouche, or second-hand bike.)

 

No, each shopkeeper said, and sent us down the street. At the last station, the shop owner also said no, but then pointed to an upside bike frame near the door of his shop. The rusted frame had no wheels, and looked ready to for the scrapyard.

 

"Come back tomorrow, and you can have that one for Y80," he said.

 

The next day I walked back to West Gate, back to the same shop to find the same man standing in the exact position on the sidewalk. Even his shirt was the same.

 

"We don't have used bikes," he said. "I can sell you that new one for Y250."

 

"What about yesterday? You had new bikes," I said.

 

"No. No have," he said, and then insisted a try out his new bike.

 

I wish I had the language skills to communicate the problem with the new bike. Cost wasn't the issue. Thirty dollars in America doesn't buy a plastic tricycle, let alone something with a fresh coat of paint and a basket. No, the problem was that while $30 isn't too much money, $30 times seven stolen bikes begins to add up.

 

I thanked the shopkeeper and began the long stroll back to my dorm. Just as I was about to make the final turn into the dormitory part of campus, a sign caught my eye: Bicycle Doctor Feng, it said in English. I went over and saw an old man, presumably Dr. Feng, sitting on a stool.

 

"Hello," I said. "Do you have any second-hand bikes?"

 

"Second hand bikes? No," the doctor said. "I do have a new one for Y170."

 

"But I want a used one," I said.

 

"Sorry."

 

"Do you know where I can find a used bike?"

 

Dr. Feng paused for a long time. He appeared to be thinking deep thoughts.

 

"Well, I do have that used bicycle," he said, and pointed to a sturdy-looking used model, just behind the new one he wanted to sell me.

 

From here there was only bargaining. I went low, he struck back with a couple comments about quality, I countered with jokes about the bike's sloppy paint job. Eventually we settled on Y100, including a lock. That's around $12. For fulfilling a life-long fantasy, not bad at all.

Spokes

BEIJING - Three times a week, I pretend I live in the real world. I get up at 7:30 a.m., get dressed and head out the door.

 

The difference between me and some of my other fellow college graduates is that I walk only a couple hundred meters, from my dorm to the class building. The other difference is that on the way I cross the River of Bicycles.

 

Chinese students at Tsinghua live in a dozen or so dorms at the extreme north end of campus. Their classes are scattered around the massive site, but since they live at the north part of campus, all must first go south. Most of them head down the school's main North-South artery, the Nanbei Lu. And since this is China, most of them do it on bicycle. This creates a constant stream of two-wheeled traffic, one that peaks about 10 minutes before classes begin. Right when I want to cross it.

 

My dorm is at the Dongbeimen, or Northeast gate. Our classroom -- a brand new, U-shaped building with a supermarket, post office, and hair salon -- is due west of the dorm. It's a quick walk, much shorter than at other colleges I attend. The only problem is the river.

 

Unlike cars, bicycles don't have to yield to pedestrians. There's no red light to allow periodic safe crossing. Just wave after wave of young Chinese adults, all trying to make it to class on time.

 

Cross the River the wrong way, and you could wind up on the River Sphinx.

 

In developing countries with poor traffic infrastructure the general rule is to cross at an even pace, giving drivers time to react to your movement. I wouldn't suggest that when dealing with bicycles. They're so lightweight and movable that drivers believe they can always avoid a collision, and don't turn away until the last possible second. It's damn scary, and I don't like it.

 

I've also tried crossing the river using the "Frogger" method, heading forward, backwards and sideways in gaps in the traffic. I get across, but not before I've wasted five minutes and embarassed myself in front of a good chunk of the Tsinghua campus.

 

This obstacle is forcing me to take action. Tomorrow, I'm buying a bike.

Please Observe All Signs and Regulations While in the China

BEIJING - A university orientation says quite a bit about the country's culture.

 

In America, orientations tend to be free-flowing affairs, where students kayak, scavenge, and sing their way through a week of different activities, each designed to help them find their niche and group of friends in a large school.

 

I've been lucky enough to see orientations in a couple other countries, and things are quite a bit different. Two years ago I was at McGill University in Montreal for orientation. There the student introduction to college is a series of drinking activities, introducing students to the permissive culture that pervades the French-speaking city. In Hong Kong, I observed, but did not participate in the endurance tests and feats of strength the constitute a new student's first week on campus. Students must walk open a mountain in the middle of the night, march around chanting militaryesque slogans and the stand for a marathon public speech session to ensure they are properly assimilated into the school's hard work all day, all night culture.

 

Tsinghua is quite different. Here, new students receive a lecture on China's laws.

 

Giving the address was Xiaoyue, from the Beijing chapter of the People's Republic of China Public Safety Bureau. In cheery but rather heavily accented English, she ran through a Powerpoint presentation on how not to windup in a cold, dark Chinese prison cell.

 

Tip No. 1: Don't do drugs.

 

"Some foreigners think, 'I only take drugs. I no sell.' But here in China, the penalties for drugs are very serious."

 

Next slide. There's a large picture of two old, foreign men with a black bar across their eyes. In the foreground, a young Chinese woman wearing not much is bending over. The picture resembles soft-core erotica, as depitced by a photography graduate student.

 

"In China there are some street women," Xiaoyue said, "But prostitution and hookers are not allowed."

 

The Americans, British and Germans in the audience laughed at the use of the word "hookers." The Eastern Europeans seemed baffled.

 

Xiaoyue encouraged audience participation at points, to mixed success.

 

"Who knows the Chinese word for tourism?" she said during the presentation's long section about visa regulations. The correct answer, luxing, could be heard from different points around the room.

 

She gave advice on drinking alcohol. "Who hear has been to Houhai? This is an area of Beijing with many, many bars around a lake. I think there are over 100 bars there. Some are very loud, for dancing. Some are not so loud. I think you should all go there some time."

 

The presentation went on for well over an hour. I learned about deportation rules, extending visas, applying for re-entry permits, why it's illegal to organize student marches, and even China's curious definition of religious freedom.

 

"It is illegal to try to convert a resident of a China to another religion. Here in China we have the religious freedom. You are free to go to the designated church. But many residents of China do not believe in religion. So we must respect their freedom, too."

 

Xiaoyue gave such a spirited and lively presentation, that some students seemed to forget she represented China's vast police network. At the end of her presentation, one student asked about something he'd heard about China back in the States.

 

"Is it true that sometimes people go to a bar, pass out, and wake up with stitches and without a kidney?"

 

The entire hall erupted in laughter. Xiaoyue, with perfect comedic timing, waited until the roar died down and replied, "No, I don't think so. Not here."

An Unlucky Line

BEIJING - The city's subway system has just been named the ninth best in the world by some random survey. I'd post the link, but I'm typing this at a dodgy Korean Internet cafe, where opening more than two windows at a time leads to total system failure.

 

Take my word on this one. Some company has declared Beijing's subway system better than Hong Kong or New York's.

 

In theory, the system is great. Eight lines connecting many points of the city, criss-crossing between neighborhoods just like in Moscow and New York. But that subway system won't exist in 2009. People of the present are stuck with three lines: one that travels in a circle around the city center, a long east-west side, and a third line, Line 13. Line 13 runs in a crooked upside-down U-shape, hitting many of the city's northern areas. My school and several other universities are served by the Wudaokou stop, about halfway up one side of the line.

 

When I first arrived in Beijing I took residence at a hostel in Qianmen, just south of Tian'anmen. With school about to start, I was needed more and more in Wudaokou. Eventually I moved in the residence halls and brought my stuff up to Wudaokou. This required trip after trip from Qianmen to Wudaokou, a journey that takes about an hour and a half and means switching from Line 2 to Line 1.

 

On the world's ninth best subway system, the lines don't do something as obvious as connect. No, the interchange between Line 2 and Line 13 are about half a kilometer from each other. To get between the two, passengers exit the underground Line 2 station and then walk through a series of above ground passageways to the elevated Line 13 station. It takes about 10 minutes depending on whether the throngs of Beijing commuters are running at rampage or just torrent speed.

 

Since this is China, there are also hawkers between the lines. Some sell magazines, others sell stretchy polyester clothes. A couple have music and English tapes, although fakes don't seem to available on this route. But my favorite item is the one I saw late one afternoon, heading back to Qianmen for one last round of drinks with the hostel crew. An old man, dressed in a cheap black suit, held out a small cage. Inside when a striped grey and white cat, not more than six weeks old.

 

"Cat?" he said, and pushed the cage toward me. I passed.

 

I wonder if these hawkers factored into the creation of the world's best subway list. After all, where else can you acquire a household pet during your commute?

Pax Mongolia

BEIJING - I have now met, and gotten smash with, a good chunk of the Mongolian Peace Corps.

 

After braving clubs with names like Ikh Mongol with the married and similarly named Eric and Erica, wandering the streets of Ulaanbaatar late at night with banned-from-his-college-for-life Maryland native Jeremy, I spent last night swapping Mongolia stories with straight out of Queens Craig.

 

Last night Craig wore a faded jacket, a plain shirt, and flip-flops. He has a messy beard that in Queens might be dismissed as hipster posturing, but here, given his time in the Mongolian hinterlands, seems authentic.

 

He's in Beijing for the week, taking his first trip out of Mongolia in over 18 months. The trip is an opportunity to experience the Great Wall, Tian'anmen Square, and dinners without mutton. Highlights so far include a trip to McDonald's, where he ordered two hamburgers and a large french fry, and the joys of Tsingdao Beer, only 60 cents a liter at our hostel.

 

Craig has a Mongolian girlfriend, a sign designer who lives in the same eastern provincial capital.

 

"But there aren't many signs in Mongolia," I said.

 

"Chances are, if there is a sign, she designed it," Craig said.

 

Demand or no demand, sign maker struck me as an unusual profession in rural Mongolia. I asked Craig what the rest of the town's residents did for work.

 

"Teacher. Government worker. The Chinese zinc mine outside of town." After each profession he paused. "A lot of them are unemployed. There's a lot of unemployment."

 

None of the jobs Craig listed require any local ingenuity or entrepreneurship, just money from Ulaanbaatar or foreign governments.

 

I steered the conversation toward a favorite topic, politics. Are Mongolians political people?

 

The answer came easily: no. Craig's attempts to talk politics are usually met with dismissive generalizations or nervous laughs. There's one person in town who works fervently for the Democrat Party. The others don't seem too bothered.

 

Last year the Mongolian government fell after the Communists pulled a series of manuevers in Parliament. The Communists were able to break out of a coalition with the Democrats (the result of a tight election the previous year) and form a new government. What exactly happened isn't clear; some people in Ulaanbaatar have called it a coup. Craig found out when one of his co-workers came up to him after class.

 

"The government collapsed," he said, and then dropped the topic. Concerned, Craig tried to continue the conversation, to little success.

 

"They'll make a new one," the Mongolian said, "Don't worry."

 

But I could tell beneath the beard and easy exterior, Craig is worried. Worried that country he's spent nearly two years in is sliding toward chaos, or somehow unable to start improving the impoverished lives of its people. That 15 years of democracy haven't brought real reform to the rural areas that need it most.

 

Soon Craig must decide whether he will stay in Mongolia after his Peace Corps term ends. He's considering it, moving in his girlfriend and maybe even settling down. There's something in voice that leads to me believe that won't actually happen, that somehow he'll take a different path, out of Mongolia.

Rechristened

BEIJING - Today I am reborn. I'm changing my name, Prince-style.

 

For someone whose Chinese is still at an elementary level, I've burned through a good number of Chinese names.

 

Several weeks after starting Mandarian lessons, I took some random characters from the first few lessons of the textbook and created my first name, 书八书. That name, although symterical, makes absolutely no sense ("Shoe Eight Shoe"), so I turned to my friends for help.

 

First up was Cho, born in Hong Kong and now in advanced Mandarian classes. He came up with "shu qing ping" - perhaps 书请平 - but I'll never be sure. Before he got around to writing the characters for me, I was told my new was "too femine," and I needed a new one.

 

I turned to another college friend, Tiffany, during our Spring Break. Suitably loaded up on rum cocktails, I asked to devise the perfect Chinese name. She came up with 书真大, which sounded fine with me, but this summer in China people kept laughing when I repeated it.

 

So today, when a nice woman in the Office of Foreign Students at Tsinghua University asked if I had a Chinese name, I replied with hesitation.

 

"Yes," I said, "But I'm not sure if it's any good." I repeated my last name, and she shook her head.

 

"Perhaps we can come up with a new one," she said. Then she started talking among her two collagues in furiously fast Mandarian. Five minutes later, the committee had an answer: 苏彬. Pronouced "SUE-BIN," it seems perfect.

 

I'm going to stick with this name, at least until someone else has a problem with it.