The River is Brown, The Drinks Yellow

LANZHOU, China - The shouts came from the banks of the Yellow River.

 

"Hello! Hello!"

 

This didn't faze me. Outside of the Beijing bubble, Chinese people are constantly hooting that English greeting at foreigners. Pity the French, who have to go through China with people under the impression that they are American.

 

I kept walking straight, planning to walk right by the half-dozen hooters. But then a thin man with rosy cheeks and a Bruce Lee haircut got up and took me by the arm.

 

"Hello!"

 

From up close, I could see that his rosy cheeks were caused by the same thing as his distinctive breath: beer. "Come! Sit!"

 

And since I had four hours to spare before I had to meet an American friend at the train station, I did. The man introduced himself as Xiao Nan (xiao, or little, is a common nickname for a younger person. An older person can be called lao something, with just means old) and said the five people gathered around the plastic table were his friends from middle school.

 

The crew had stacked out an area on a long promenade that runs next to the Yellow River, China's second-longest river and Lanzhou's reason for existence. In Lanzhou the river still has over a thousand miles before emptying in the Pacific, and its brown, silty waters flow very quickly here. It's not beautiful or majestic in a traditional sense, but framed from that table with steep mountains and pointed Taoist temples on the opposite bank, it formed a nice place to have a cold brew.

 

Xiao Nan poured a small glassful of beer into his cup and mine. We toasted and then pounded the glass. Then he repoured, and we went again. I did many shots with the group, sometimes with Xiao Nan, sometimes with another male friend. The two women in the group didn't say anything or drink, only smiling when I looked in their direction.

 

"How can I move to America?" Xiao Nan's friend asked me.

 

He knew no one in the country and had no relatives there. He works as a taxi driver and did not get admitted to college. His chances of legally getting a job in the States weren't good, but I tried to deflect the question with a procedural answer.

 

"First, you need a visa," I said, and then we did another round of drinks.

 

As the collective total of a dozen or so glasses went to my head, I felt glad that I had arrived with a day to spend myself. Wandering around as one foreigner makes it so much easier to be invited in and converse with the local population. I can't imagine Xiao Nan grabbing me and a friend hand. But as one, I wasn't threatening, and therefore was welcome onto their small turf overlooking the Yellow River.

 

I asked Xiao Nan about his plans for the May Holiday.

 

"No plan," he said. "We'll just be sitting here, drinking beer. You can come back anytime."

The Refugees

LONGXI, China - The 16-hour journey wore on the faces of the 150 or so passengers left in Car 16 of the T75 express to Lanzhou.

When the train left Beijing West Station two-thirds of a day earlier, the bright blue car was full of activity, groups furiously peeling and eating sunflower seeds, exchange stories about relatives back home, and generally revelling in the upcoming nine-day vacation. Most of the people in the car are headed home to visit relatives, temporarily leaving their 12 hour a day, marginally paying positions for a little relaxation.

Sitting to my right, occupying seat number 51 was one of those people. Xian Yuan is 26 years-old with a live in girlfriend he met at Xi'an Jiaotong University. He works for an American cell phone company, writing code for the software inside the phone. The work's not bad, but his Chinese bosses constantly set projects that keep him there late in the night.

Xian Yuan likes to move around. He's worked for a year in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu and now Beijing for the same company. "When you're young, it's the time to visit different places," he told me. He wants eventually to head to India or especially Japan next. He asked me several detailed questions about the process -- whether Americans need visas, and how much a beer cost on the streets of Tokyo. I answered the best I could, mostly through second hand information I have gleamed from friends there now. We talked for several hours, probably the longest single conversation I've ever had in Mandarin, and it became clear that we were kindred spirits, bouncing around from place to place in the years just after college.

Meeting people like Xian Yuan is why I love to travel by rail. As I've documented on this blog, I've already spent over a week on the rails so far this year, and it's perfectly possible that I'll double that time before the year is over. I just don't know if I'll be doing any more travel in particular class.

Most Chinese trains have three classes -- soft sleeper, hard sleeper and hard seat. Sleeper cars have beds -- six per cabin in hard, four per cabin in soft. All of my previous overnight trips in Chinese trains have been in hard sleeper. It's a busy place, with people chatting from early in the morning to late at night, bouncing from cabin to cabin to visit friends. Nothing in hard sleeper, though, prepared me for a night in a hard seat. A hard seat cabin in arranged in alternating rows of five seats that face each other -- two on one side of the aisle, three on the other. There are more dividers between the seats, it's more like a slightly padded bench.

All of this might be O.K., but there is actually a fourth class on these trains: standing tickets. These dirt cheap seats get a person into a hard sleeper car, and that's it. If there's open seats, they can take them, but otherwise they are stuffed in between aisles, next to the bathroom, even under the seats, literally anywhere a human might fit. With the holidays approaching, more than a 100 extra people crowded Car 15, meaning about 200 people were crammed in a space the size of four or five minivans.

It was incredibly crowded. I shared my three person bench with Xian Yuan and two other people. Getting to the bathroom at the end of the car took 10 minutes. Reaching the restaurant car -- only possible by crossing four soft sleeper cars -- was next to impossible. I managed to reach it, only to find the kitchen closed and masses of people passed out in and around each table.

The train resembled a moving refugee camp, a horde of humanity crammed into an impossibly small space. As the night turned into early morning, the glazed over eyes and sagging faces of my fellow passengers made it appear that the final destination of this train was the gulag, not a vacation.

At 7 a.m., I bid goodbye to Xian Yuan. We exchanged contact information and made a promise to hit up a bar sometime when his boss let him out before midnight. Stops at Zhengzhou, Xi'an, and Tianshui slowly cleared out the packed cars. By Longxi, I had the entire bench to myself. Getting a few minutes of sleep is now a distinct possibility. And sometime in the not too distant future, I too will be able to get off this train.

Going Downmarket

LANZHOU, China - Exiting the Lanzhou Express after spending 20 hours
in a seat with a good chunk of Beijing's migrant workers, I wanted my
first night of vacation to spent in an actual bed, with two pillows
and a turn down service if possible.

I hadn't walked into the pouring rain and cold north winds of the city
before I felt a spasm of cheapness. I ducked into a small subterranean
market, haggled an umbrella from 35 RMB down to 10, and headed toward
a line of cheap guesthouses opposite the station.

In America, there's motels and hotels. In China it's a little more
complicated, as binguans, luguans and fandians compete to put up the
tourist. I've stayed in many hotels around China, and generally leave
disappointed. With the exception of a couple five-star hotels in
Yunnan Province (thanks Tufts), my nights at Chinese hotels usually
mean smoke-filled rooms, grotty showers and endless night time calls
from prostitutes.

Armed with some Chinese, I'd decided to try and get into a zhoudaisuo,
a cheap guesthouse that are generally off limits to foreigners.

The first place I tried kept its receptionists behind thick glass,
just like at foreign remittance booths. The workers frantically waved
their hands before I could even get in the building. I guess that
place didn't take foreigners.

Just down the street a man stood in front of a street-side guesthouse
sign. He offered to show me a room. We disappeared into a dark and
quite low staircase. The man kept climbing and climbing, eventually
reaching the building's seventh and top floor. My sleepless and hungry
body couldn't consider staying at this place, no matter what the
price.

Then I found the place. The lobby was on the third floor, a small but
cheery place with a card table, a bouquet of fake flowers and a map of
Gansu province on the wall. The rack rates said a special room cost 78
RMB, but they offered it to me for 55. I asked for 50, and they
accepted.

"Thanks for staying here," the receptionist said as opened my room,
and I think he meant it.

I crashed on my full size bed, woke up two hours later and took a hot
shower, and wondered if I'd ever bother with a Chinese hotel again.

False Beginnings

BEIJING - The last few days I've rushing between preparing for
midterms, last minute gatherings and other things that always seem to
pop up just before a vacation. One of them is a looming writing
project, which I've been putting off for some time. The assignment is
to talk about my study plan in China. I wound up going with a
straight-forward approach, but not before going through several drafts
where I found myself writing in the language of this blog. Here's one
opening paragraph that I decided not to use:

"As I prepared to sit down, the old woman smiled at me. I showed her
my train ticket, just to make sure I was in the correct row. She
nodded, and I took my place in the carriage bound for Guangzhou. I had
many questions for my cabin mate: Did she have any children? Where did
she buy her crisp blue shirt? Who was her best friend? On this, my
first trip to China, I wanted to know everything about the country I
had studied for so long back home. But I had no Chinese to ask this
woman my questions, no way to know the thoughts, feelings and hopes of
the people around me. I felt as if I was exploring the country with
only one eye, half-blind to my surroundings. When I returned to
America, I decided to enroll in a Putonghua course."

Line 'em Up

BEIJING - Every once and a while I'll pass by a random line. It's a clearly a line, a bunch of people standing roughly parallel to one another, each one either checking his or her watch, staring at the sky or loudly conversing with the person in front of them. What it is will be apparent, but why they are standing in line is a mystery.

 

Some how it seems rude to ask people why they are waiting in line. People waiting are usually grumpy, and I think asking someone why they are standing in the middle of sidewalk when they could be actually doing something is a bit dangerous. Once I waited eight hours to get the autograph Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan. I imagine if someone came up to me around the sixth hour and asked, "Hello. Why are you waiting here?" I would be seriously tempt to punch them in the face.

 

So the only way that I actually familiarize myself with these random lines is by the standing in them. A couple days ago I had the perfect introduction to a new kind of queue in China: the railway ticket booth. Most train tickets in China can only be reserved four days in advance, leading to huge queues several days before a vacation period. Because by the time train tickets are available plans to visit such and such a place have inevitably already been established. The train ticket isn't just something you'd like to get, it's now very necessary.

 

I stood in the line at the Wudaokou ticket booth for 30 minutes on Tuesday afternoon, only to be told that tickets didn't go on sale until 7 p.m. That meant coming back for an hour long waiting encore in the evening. Both times I stood on the sidewalk, in between a hospital gate and a condom vending machine, staring at my watch and looking down at the sky. Once I tried saying hello to the person in front of me. The woman just smiled and turned around; I guess she's not one for line conversation.

 

I did manage to get a train ticket in the end, and I'm now very familiar with the railway ticket booth queue. The next time I see a bunch of people standing on the sidewalk a few days before a vacation period, I'm going to feel rather sorry for them.

 

(This post is really just a roundabout way of saying that tomorrow I head out west for a week-and-a-half long vacation. I'm taking the train to sunny Lanzhou, the place where Han, Muslim and Tibetan China collide. Hopefully I'll be able to update from the road, but who knows.)

Twenty/Twenty

BEIJING - At 4:20 a.m. this morning, hundreds, if not thousands of college students across America woke up in the middle of the night, went out to a nearby quad, grassy field or wooded area and smoked some marijuana. At the exact same time of Beijing, I was sweating over a puzzle map of China, desperate trying to figure out where to place Jiangsu Province.

 

It wasn't until two hours later, over a perfect munchies snack of french fries, a milkshake and onion rings that I realized I'd missed the magic moment.

 

You might think no one in China would really care about 4/20, and I suppose for the vast majority of the 1.4 billion people here that's true. Easter came and went without anyone noticing. But with oodles of American students around, people have at least been talking about the holiday for quite some time.

 

First we had to explain the holiday. Apparently people from England, Korea, and Kazakhstan don't celebrate 4/20. It's easy to describe what you do on 4/20 -- smoke -- but why it's done is more illusive. Is it because 420 is the police code for marijuana use? Celebrating Hitler's birthday? Because some people in California in the 1970s got out of class at 4:20 in the afternoon? No one here seems to sure, and since Wikipedia is blocked in China the argument can't be settled. Needless to say, the Americans were able to get the basic idea of the holiday across.

 

Then there's the problem of actually celebrating. Drug use in China isn't encouraged. Being found with a relatively small amount can lead to a bullet in the back of the head, although a more realistic outcome would be instant deportation. Nevertheless, it seemed every expat I ran into had heard about a way to score some.

 

The least connected were headed to Sanlitun, the main embassy and expat region, where they could purchase a little from Africans on the street who crawl from bar to bar asking tourists if they want "something special." Other people had moved up to the level "of knowing someone." One friend said he knew a guy who grew plants in his apartment. Apparently he was a novice though, because the plants were all male and contained very little usable product. Other people had even more advanced contacts, connections with the Hong Kong drug trade or some other dangerous acquaintances.

 

I might have been in class for 4:20 on 4/20, but I made it downtown later in the day. The sweet smoke was definitely in the air at Sanlitun, in bars and on the street. An American holiday was making inroads in the land of the dragon, one puff at a time.

Have it Your Way

BEIJING - I have passed another language milestone: today I ordered an entire meal at McDonald's in Chinese.

 

They don't teach too much of the necessary vocabulary for ordering in an American chain restaurant in the Tsinghua classrooms, so I've largely had to figure out how to say the necessary things on my own.

 

Sprite I learned a couple days after arriving, when my Malaysian roommate woke me up at 3 a.m. to announce it was snowing. "Snow! Snow!" he said, incredibly excited. Having just come from Siberia, I was less than impressed, but used it as an opportunity to learn that snow is 雪，also the first character in Sprite.

 

Hamburger probably came first, I think I might have even learned this on one of my trips to China three years ago. The Chinese way to say it is "HAN-BAO-BAO," an adaptation of the English word that's distinct enough that a person behind the counter in Chengdu or Guilin might know that you're talking about the round bun with the piece of meat in the middle.

 

Then there were the French Fries, which I just put together today. In class I recently learned that "条" is a word to count long, skinny things. Roads, rivers and dragons all qualify. It makes sense that a french fry would also be in the word, so when I saw it as the second character on the McDonald's menu, I wasn't suprised. But I was a little taken aback at the character before it: 薯. We'd just learned that in class too.

 

So there it is: 一个中雪碧， 两个汉堡包， 一个种薯条.

 

That may be some pretty busted Chinese, but at 3:00 p.m. on April 22, 2007, it got me a pretty tasty lunch at the Wudaokou McDonald's.

The Fish Fiends

TIANXIANYU, China - The old widower warned me about the fish. If only I had listened.

 

I fell in conversation with this woman, whose name I never caught, because she had the smart idea to create makeshift seats in the middle of a near-vertical pitch of trail. The path leads from a parking lot up to the Jiankou section of the Great Wall, a tortorus mile and a half that ends with a scramble up a handmade ladder.

 

The view from the top is fantastic, and the Great Wall here is crumbling and largely unrestored. Coming to section like this (there are many) is much preferable tramping around Badaling, the completely rebuilt and hawker-filled section close to Beijing.

 

After the steep hike up and the equally steep journey back down, I happily took the old woman up on her offer of a seat in a make-shift mountain shop.The woman had carefully placed newsprint over a few flat stones, put up a thin canvas tarp, and sold drinks to passing hikers. She charges 6 RMB for a bottle of water, and 8 RMB for tea or coke -- about a 400% markup from the bottom of the mountain.

 

While I didn't get her name, I did find out the woman had two children, one studying to be a lawyer, the other in school, is widowed, and moved to the village just a few years ago. She spent a great deal of time explaining to me which characters were in the village's name, first by saying what words they were in "tian as in field," then drawing them in the dirt with a stick. By the time my first friend showed up at the drink station, it was very clear that we were near the village of 田仙鱼, and not say, in 天线与 (these would have the same romanizations).

 

Then the woman decided ask a couple questions. Naturally, the first our nationality, and after that what we were doing after the hiking. Eating, I replied. The woman then gave me some advice. The people at the bottom of the mountain were cheaters, she said. You would order an eight pound fish, and then they'd swipe for it for a two pound one but charge you for the larger amount. Be careful, she said.

 

I thanked for her advice, bought a bottle of her overpriced water and headed down the mountain. Thirty minutes later we arrived, dirty, sore, and quite hungry. Rather than charge admission to their section of the wall, the residents of Tianxianyu have placed a large resident specializing in fish at the wall's access point. The fish are kept in several large outdoor concrete tanks, and visitors are encouraged to catch their dinner, which is then fried and served at a nearby table.

 

The loads of Chinese tourists (strangely not climbing the wall, just here for the food) should have been a clue that something was up. The ridiculous idea of casting a hook into a concrete bowl in order to catch dinner should have been another clue. And the fact that a woman who makes her living by over-charging tourists told me that they over-charged at this restaurant. Then there was our driver, egging us on by constantly saying, "The big here are really big! So big!"

 

Yes, the fish restaurant was a tourist trap.

 

They tried to charge us 15 RMB for soy sauce, 10 RMB for a bottle of water, and when asked recommendations only pointed to the most expensive things on the menu.

 

But the worst thing of all was the fish. We ordered a plate of smoked fish. Ten minutes later, two small fillets arrived, each well seasoned and quite tasty. I quite liked it, until I saw the bill. The tiny pieces of fish amounted to 2.5 斤, or nearly three pounds of fish. I'm quite convinced the staff actually did switch out the fish, giving us a smaller fish but charging for a big one.

 

So please, come out here, expierence the Great Wall in a pretty natural setting, but for God's sake, listen to the old widower when she warns you about the fish.

With A Poster, It's Paris

BEIJING -- I asked the tiny noodle stall's lone occupant, a middle-aged woman wearing a blue apron, if I could see a menu.

"It's right there," she replied, and pointed to a series of hand-painted signs hanging on one wall. I squinted, trying to read the slightly messy handwriting before decided on an order of 肉丝炒饭, or sliced-pork fried rice.

I asked the woman if they had any cold drinks, and when she replied that no, they didn't, I went door and bought a cold ice red tea.

"Cold drinks are much better than warm drinks," I said as an explanation, and the woman smiled.

The restaurant wasn't the smallest I've seen in China. There were six tables, each with three or four stools, a small container of crushed red pepper and a napkin basket. On the walls of the restaurant were three massive posters, each one several feet wide and in a plastic frame. The one under my table showed the Eiffel Tower with few Parisian fountains in the foreground. I asked the woman why she'd put up the picture.

"Because it's a nice picture, very lively," she said.

My food arrived -- a huge mound of rice covered in soy sauce, with a fair amount of sweet pork mixed inside. As I chomped away, a man with brown pants and a funny mustache entered the restaurant. He carried a plate, which he stuck in a microwave sitting the table closest to the restaurant's rear, and then came over to talk with me.

"Why aren't you drinking beer?" he said.

"Because it's too early for beer. Tonight I'll have some beer."

He picked up my book that I'd placed on the table.

"What's this?" he said.

I'm reading Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize winning tale of love and tragedy during the years leading up to and during the Russian Revolution. I tried to explain the plot of the book in my limited Chinese.

"The story takes place 100 years ago. There's a Russian doctor. He falls in love with a very beautiful young woman. Then there's a--"

I had to pause here and go for my yellow dictionary and look up the word for war. When I read the dictionary's first entry zhanzheng, the man didn't understand. I tried again, but with no luck. It's probably best that I didn't have to continue my book summary, as I would have to look "revolution," "exile," "Communism" and "Siberia," before long.

The man then took my dictionary and started flipping through the pages. He giggled at a few entries, but I when I asked to see what he was laughing at, he showed me the word "swat." I don't think that's terribly funny.

The microwave timer went off and the man fetched his plate and walked out the door, leaving me to finish my rice.

This is nothing special -- a cheap meal, a couple of new conversation companions, and a pretty good time. It seems I can't duck into a back alley with meeting someone interesting; a person who throws up a picture of the Eiffel Tower to make sure quiet cafe seem busier, a man who thinks I should drink in the middle of the afternoon.

"Your food is very good," I told the restaurant owner before leaving. "I'll be back to look at your wall again soon."

Beibei

BEIJING -- I met Beibei on the side of a small stream flanked by blossoming willow trees, cherry blossoms, and a warm spring wind. It was the perfect setting for a Chinese romance, one of classical novels that starts with a clandestine relationship that turns into a torrid love affair and then ends tragically. But it wasn't meant to be. Beibei, you see, is a baby.

Beibei's not talking yet, but she displayed her disinterest in other ways. Her caretaker, a young woman with a broad smile, tried to make her wave at me, propping up her tiny let arm. She refused to go along.

 

"Say hello, Beibei! Say hello!" the woman said. But Beibei looked tried. At three months old, she's not quite ready for idle conversation. Thankfully her roommates were more than willing to talk as I waited for a friend at the stream's edge. I was only about 400 meters from the Tsinghua gates -- from the stream's edge I could see my dorm -- but this isn't part of the campus world. This place, which the woman told me was Tsinghua No. 8 Hutong, stands apart.

 

Three hundred people live in this 胡同 (hutong), a traditional Beijing courtyard dwelling, that have been mostly demolished in the center of Beijing. There's no indoor plumbing, just makeshift electric wires thrown up haphazardly in different places. I think most people here are migrant workers: a sign in front advertising rooms for $120 a month said men and women were welcome, and no  "户口" was necessary. The 户口 (hukou) is a home registration permit, which states whether someone is allowed to live in the city or the countryside. Without a city hukou, housing options are limited to gray-market dwellings on the city's fringes, like Tsinghua Hutong No. 8.

 

Beibei bore marks of this world. She wore a faded pair of heavily-pilled purple pants, and a shirt that looked quite used. They looked pretty poor, but they didn't wallow into despair to their guest. A few minutes into our conversation, Beibei's mother showed up, along with her big brother and girl of around the same age. They had just returned from elementary school, where the 9-year-old brother attends.

 

"Speak some English to this man," her mother said.

 

The brother, a tiny guy with glasses, turned red and refused to talk in any language. A bit of stage frightm I suppose. He wore smarter clothing, a crisp shirt that had obviously been neatly pressed before the school day. In 15 years, he might leave Tsinghua No. 8 Hutong behind for the nearby university.

 

"He's very smart," his mother said, as her son tried to hide behind her back rather than talk to the foriegner.

 

I could have gone on talking all day, but Beibei looked tired. She needed a nap, and I could just make out the distant figure of my friend on the side of the stream. I waved Beibei goodbye, and this time she waved back, as her mother said we could come back anytime.

His Wings Still Flap

BEIJING - Breaking news from the corner of Chengfu Lu and Subway Line 13: 王弟弟/Wang Didi/ Three Thumbs is not in jail. Speaking last night to a crew of Wednesday night drunks, he said his two week absence was spent visiting his mother in Chongqing, not in a cold, hard Chinese jail cell. He didn't comment on why his absence lined up with the police raid on the wing joints, but perhaps he used it as an excuse for an overdue vacation.

 

Next time I'll be more careful in reporting the idle chatter of the Wudaokou community, or the claims of a chicken wing salesman. In reporting on Wang Didi's jail term, he had an ulterior motive. People have to buy their chicken wings from somewhere, and perhaps he thought by telling a white lie, we'd shift over to his grill.

 

The comments I made on China's legal system still stand. I've heard enough examples from class speakers, books, and professors to be convinced that the application of law here is inconsistent and sometimes corrupt. Thankfully, it appears that at least for now, the consequences of bad laws have not affected my circle of friends.

Who Says College Graduates Aren't Employable?

BEIJING - Having hauled myself all the way over here to Beijing, this weekend I belatedly started to investiage whether or not I am actually employable in this part of the world.

 

I'm insulated from the job search for the next few months thanks to language classes, but when a friend rang and floated the idea of attending a job fair downtown, I rather quickly decided to take him up on the offer. I wanted to know what kinds jobs might await after the language class holiday ends.

 

If the Chaoyong Job Fair is a guide, there's a growing demand for English teachers, English instructors, English tutors, English coaches and English mentors. All our professions need not apply.

 

The job fair was held in a fancy hotel in central Beijing, a place where a night in a standard room would cost more than three months rent. The people in attendance certainly didn't appear to be type of crowd that might fancy a night here, although I did overhear one participant telling a rather raunchy story about the surroundings. "Last summer, on our last night in Beijing, my friend hired a prostitute and brought her here. He said the tub in the room was like a swimming pool."

 

That might sound a bit distasteful for a job fair, but I am not sure it would have been a fatal blow at this event. Companies were looking for English teachers, and everyone lucky enough to have been born in an English-speaking country qualified. Most of these people came from private schools and companies in major Chinese cities. These cities, places like Chongqing and Harbin, had millions of people and thriving companies, but precious few foreigners to teach the world's lingua franca. So they came to Beijing to try and woo some of the city's 50,000 foreigners away from the cosmopolitan comforts of the capital city.

 

The farther away the position, the more desperate the recruiter. "Welcome to teach in Foshan City," a private-school teacher from Guangdong said as he thrust a blue flyer in my face. People from Harbin screamed across the aisle for me to sit down.

 

I don't want to teach English. Or more precisely I don't mind teaching English, but it's not exactly the career I had in mind when I came over here.

 

There were thankfully a couple media organizations in attendance. Communist Party mouthpiece the China Daily brought a few free copies of that day's paper -- a sign to check out their Web site. I briefly chatted with a woman from the Beijing Review, although things wrapped up pretty quickly when it became apparent she didn't work for the magazine and didn't really know anything about it. She referred me to the group's Web site.

 

On the way to the exit, I stopped on one final booth, for a Beijing Meteorological association. They wanted English people to read the weather for CCTV-9, the government English language station. A woman at the booth was more than happy to answer my many questions on the job.

 

"So wait, I can be on TV?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Do you need any training?"

 

"No. Maybe we just show you how to point on the map."

 

"And this is on CCTV?"

 

"Yes."

 

So there you have it. Although the print media market is hopeless, in a couple weeks I could beamed to televisions around the world thanks to China Central Television. Being a bit camer shy, I decided not to leave my name. But a couple of my friends did, and pretty soon a star might just be born.

Straight Outta Ulaanbaatar

DARKHAN, Mongolia – After the old Russian woman in the top bunk went to sleep, Sumar brought out his laptop videos.

As our train slowly passed through the pitch-black Mongolian grasslands, Sumar eagerly showed me what he'd downloaded at university in the Siberian city of Irkutsk. First he went through his collection of basketball clips, where members of various NBA teams made incredible shots during the last seconds of important games. Then came a video shot at art exhibition of a Scandinavian man creating shadow puppets using sand in time to a pre-recorded soundtrack. After that, Sumar clicked on the folder called "Music."

He opened the first file. The name was Cyrillic but I recognized the video from the first few frames. It was Nelly's "Hot in Herre," the most popular rap song of 2002.

"I love Nelly," Sumar said. "He's my favorite." We then watched most of the Nelly catalogue, including "My Place," "Country Grammar," "Flap Your Wings," and that song about chilling with my boo. Sumar then asked if I wanted to hear some Mongolian music, to which I quickly replied, "Yes!"

He queued the video on the computer, waiting for Windows Media Player to load. At this point I had only been in Mongolia a few hours, and had just heard the language for the first time as I snuck across the Russian border in a van full of traders, with hidden human cargo in the back seat. The beat started rumbling, a mix of deep bass rumbles and quick drum hits. A Mongolian flashed across the screen, dressed in urban clothing on top of a building at night. He started to rap in a guttural burst, delievering his lines in a way that seemed half rap-half chant. Accompanying the music were gritty shots of Mongolian urban life: monks fighting, police brutality, strippers, poverty and crumbling Soviet buildings. This was the music of Zaya, a song called "Tears of Ulaanbaatar," his first solo recording away from Mongolia's biggest rap group Tatar.

The beats, the songs, the setting: I loved it all. Perhaps this is the way people felt when they heard Led Zeppelin or the Beatles for the first time, falling completely in love with something so unexpected. I knew that I needed to get this record, immediately. Sumar only had the video, but suggested that I try to buy the record in the capital. He wrote down the name of a couple record stores in Ulaanbaatar and included a couple of Mongolian swear words to boot: Alna shuu! Muu nohoin gölög min! If I remember correctly, this translates to something along the lines of "Fuck you! I fucked your mother last night!"

The next morning I set out to find the Zaya album. At the State Department Store they didn't know anything about it. Hi-Fi Records said it wouldn't be out for another two months. The Hip-Hop Clothing Store no longer sold music. This being Mongolia, the options pretty much ended here.

With no music, I collected stories about the rapper. People in Ulaanbaatar told me about concerts they attended for Zaya's old group Tatar. They talked about the group incited a riot and the police started beating the crowd. A Peace Corps worker in Beijing told me that he'd seen the video six months earlier, but hadn't heard anything about a release. A Mongolian on my floor here in Tsinghua – who, the first time he met me, said, "What up Motherfucker!" – definitely wanted to buy the album, but definitely didn't have it yet. Another student offered to mail me a copy when she went home on spring break.

Then last night I was bumming around on Youtube, when I put in the name "Zaya" and "Ulaanbaatar." One result appeared, and it was the correct one. So now, thanks to the magic of the Internet and a poster named Munko, I can share the video with you. Enjoy:

Running "A-fowl" of the Law

BEIJING - I'm outside, running past the Zijing Dormitories. I'm hurrying to reach No. 23, my own building, before the clock hits midnight and the shower turns off for another eight hours. It's been 48 hours since my last shower, and I'm desperate to make it to this one. Fortunately, I reach the entrance in time and am now clean.

Not everyone here in Wudaokou makes it home on time. Last Thursday, Wang Didi never made it home at all.

Wang Didi sells chicken wings in front of a couple Western-leaning bars close to campus. Every time I visited his makeshift grill, wings flew off as soon as they cooked. At 3 RMB a pair, I'm sure Wang Didi cleared 300 RMB a night in merchandise. Even after subtracting for the raw chicken and charcoal, that leaves a substantial sum for a migrant working in Beijing.

Wang's outfit technically lay outside the law. He has no permit to sell the wings, and therefore he operates in China's large black market economy.  In the eyes of the law, his operation was no different than the people peddling fake North Face jackets and "300" DVDs outside of shopping bags.

Last week the police decided to have a random sweep, the kind they sometimes conduct on illegal activities. They picked up the chicken wing sellers, seized their merchandise and took them away.

Two days later, the wings people were back, but Wang Didi wasn't with them. For some reason, he wound up in jail. The wings salesmen didn't seem to know why, but they did say he would be released this upcoming Wednesday, nearly two weeks after he disappeared.

In a very small way, I now have felt the uneven touch of the law in China. Why did Wang Didi go to prison, and not the salesman on his left or right? It all seems so arbitrary.

Tonight I went back to Wudaokou to buy a snack around one in the morning. The main square was lively, nearly at its Saturday night peak. Old women sold Chinese books out of dusty wheelbarrows. Other people hawked pineapples, there were even a few puppies for sale in cardboard boxes. A couple police officers walked around the area, looking disinterested.

Hopefully in a few days Wang Didi will return here. And if he does, I will be appreciative of just how ephemeral his presence here really is.

Market Conditions

BEIJING -- The city's aflame with peach, cherry, plum and several other types of electric-pink blossoms. With the weather so good, I figured it was a good time to duck into the city's indoor markets and walk away with a good deal or two.

 

Unfortunately most of the customers at the five-story complex near Sanlitun Bar Street weren't affected by the weather. They were middle-aged package tourists and businessmen, here because their timetables said it was time to visit. They came armed with fistfuls of cash, strong currencies and no Chinese.

 

All these rich westerners were a major hurdle in my attempts to get the local price. To them, a knock-off Polo shirt is a steal at 80 RMB. Who cares if the real price is 25? The vendors have even less incentive than usual to go down to their true lowest price. With pre-Olympics tourism increasing by month, there's always another German pensioner to buy the North Face jacket I won't buy.

 

I didn't wind up buying anything at the market, but the two hours I spent there with an American and British friend were worthwhile. I got to see the different approaches the vendors took to Chinese and foreign customers, ruthlessly overcharging the latter while trying to fend off extreme low-ball offers from the locals. The vendors usually got the upper hand either way, but even the inflated prices are pretty good.

 

We spent of plenty of time talking with vendors, always a talkative sort. One had me guess her age, and pretended to get offended when I said 24. Her real age was 18. Her fellow Polo seller used us a couple English grammar questions, and I was happy to let her know how she could inform customers that Visa purchases would incur a 10 percent surcharge. Another asked me to write my Chinese name, and then gave me a first-ever compliment on my stroke order.

 

Then we over to watch section, where the Europeans seem more to than happy to pay $30 for Rolex knock-offs than go for $10 on the streets of Manhattan. I guess it's harder to get these things in Vienna than American cities. Then there was the American couple that confusingly paid for their purchase with dollars. The merchants were happy to accept them, but only at the exchange rate of 7.4 RMB to 1 dollar. That put an extra five percent on the all ready over priced item.I was torn whether to interfere with the scene. Should I step in and offer a hand to my fellow foreigners, and save them a few dollars? Or is that money better left in the hands of the Chinese, who I'm sure have less? I decided to stay put.

 

Besides, Chinese isn't a prerequisite to getting a good deal. In the market's basement, I passed a couple Germans with the right philosophy. They wanted a couple hats, and they only wanted to pay 30 RMB for each one. When the merchants refused to go below 100 RMB, they sat down, smiled and proceeded to wait. They had some banter with the sellers, refused to get angry, and put on a look of having all the time in the world. It took the better part of an hour, but with no Chinese or yelling, they got the correct price.

What a Lush

BEIJING - What can you get with the legal names of all five Spice Girls, the country with the lowest population density, and the location of the annual Old Ivy tournament?

 

If you can recall all three quickly, the answer might be a free bottle of Jack Daniels. That's the prize for winning the weekly Quiz Night at Lush, a popular bar crammed in the second floor of a Wudaokou bookshop.

 

The place is famous. It's mentioned in Wudaokou's Wikipedia article: "Wudaokou's popularity as an international student area is reflected in its large number of bars and nightclubs (including Bar Loco, Lush and Propaganda), which generally offer cheaper prices than many similar clubs in more central areas, such as SanLiTun." I knew about Lush before I ever went to China, as people returning from summer language programs would discuss legendary nights out that began or ended at Lush.

 

I even popped in for a drink during my quick visit here last summer, chancing on the bar by accident, but stopping because I'd heard so much about it. I thought once I moved to Wudaokou I'd be here quite a bit.

 

I wouldn't be the only American to do so. Lush is so American that during the middle of last week's round two people stood up for no apparent reason and yelled, "Pitchfork sucks!" This is probably the only place in China where the majority of people would even know what was being referenced, let alone have an opinion on the matter. (It doesn't.)

 

But all is not well in Lush-land. First off, the quiz night is in transition, with this week seeing a new host replacing the other guy who's name I never learned. The new hosts were a chubby American and quite-fit Australian girl, who managed to piss off most of the crowd by insisting that the Black Eyed Peas single "Don't Phunk With My Heart" be spelled with a "ph" to receive points.

 

People are also complaining on the Lush Facebook group, which has nearly 1,000 members. One person wrote,"i go every wednesday but us new yorkers hate the questions...first off the music selections are all punk rock/indie rock etc etc...there were like 6 teams with zero points and all the punk/indie fans were taking over...the same with the movie quotes it seems like the questions are fit for only one type of person haha a punk rocker or an AE/Abercrombie wearing midwestern kid..."

 

Even more troublesome is the appearance of an "Lush is Not Cool" Facebook group, and another person posting, "Lush is a place for people who hate China," on the normal Lush Facebook wall.

 

That's a little harsh. Even though Lush makes few efforts to acknowledge that it's in China, especially during its extremely American Quiz Night, it's only following a very successful business plan. After all, outside the bar is all of China. It's not exactly like Lush is depriving people of China, only giving a change of pace for slightly homesick expats. I don't live at the place, but I certainly don't mind regular visits.

 

So far our team has managed a pair of third place finishes and one second place. But this week I'm studying my geography and girl group trivia, and perhaps next Wednesday, the Jack Daniels will be ours.

Listen More, Speak More, Next Test is 不错

BEIJING - Lately I've been thinking quite a bit about high school. Was it really that bad? At the time, I hated being cooped up in the same building for four years, not being able to use the toilet without a pass, easily detained at the whim of a hall monitor. I took my diploma and headed to Boston, returning only to Albany sporadically, and hardly ever to Colonie High School.

 

But now at Tsinghua I spend my days in one building, where every 50 minutes a bell rings to mark the beginning, end and periods of the school day. In between classes, students gather in the halls to talk about how that test was, what happened last night at the bar, and "can you spot me four kuai so i can buy a drink at the supermarket downstairs?" All of which happened pretty frequently in high school. There are even cliques here, although instead of goths, jocks and preps, here there are Americans, Koreans and Old Men Who Wear Beanies.

 

Today my life took another step back to high school land, as Lin Laoshi (aka Brown) handed back her most recent test with a sour look and a lecture. Apparently the test didn't go so well. To illustrate her point, Brown drew a diagram on the blackboard comparing our class' results to the one across the hall, which she also teaches. That class had a bunch of 80s and 90s on the test, while our class had an average right around a 72.

 

"I don't understand why the classes are different," Brown said, with that nagging tone that must come with a teaching certificate. "The lessons are the same, the teachers are the same, the methods are the same. I can only think of two reasons why it could be different. That class sits in a 'U' shape. (She actually didn't say "U," but rather drew the shape with her finger. Our class sits in rows.) I don't think that's it. Perhaps the people in that class are better students than this class."

 

Ouch. Brown offered at least the hope of redemption though. The class still has two weeks until the midterm, and promised results if we followed her advice. In true Chinese fashion, she presented it as a slogan:

 

下课　力学习

上课好好听

考试不错！

 

Which basically means if you study a lot outside of class, and pay attention in class, the test will go pretty well. Nothing revolutionary, but good advice.

 

I don't have much to worry about -- I actually did pretty well on the test, but I appreciate Brown's attempts to get the class in shape. Especially if it means bringing out some intriguing Chinese slogans to prove her point. That's something we never had at Colonie High School.

Kitsch Kills

BEIJING -- One thing industrialization has brought to China is a standardization of tourist crap.The same assemblage of fat Buddha statues, cheap metal coins and chops are for sale at attractions from the Mongolian border to Vietnam.

That predictability meant I wasn't surprised that the tiny alley market off Wangfujing Street hadn't changed in the three years since my last visit. The only noticeable new product was a pair of shiny stones, which somehow boomeranged and whistled when thrown in the air.

I came with a couple friends, capping off a rare day of sightseeing in Central Beijing. I have a certain affinity for Chinese kitsch, but having already purchased a good chunk of this stuff in 2004 I only observed this time. It was the first time for everyone else, and they slowly examined the items on display.

"Are you going to buy a Little Red Book?" I asked one of them, idly making conversation.

"No, I don't think so," he said, with just a hint of disgust.

The conversation quickly moved from there, but I became concerned at my own suggestion. Was it appropriate to encourage people to buy copies of something associated with the Cultural Revolution?

My own copy of the Little Red Book is sitting in my closet in Albany, next to a plastic drum and a crumbled entrance ticket to the Xi'an terracotta warriors. It came from Hong Kong's Temple Street Night Market, a series of clothing stalls, porn booths, fortune tellers and tiny seafood shops that comes together after sunset in the middle of Kowloon. I found my copy at a small antique place, underneath a pile of new English, German and Cantonese translations.

The newer copies use cheap plastic, but the older ones use a higher-quality leather. The book was worn, with many passages inside underlined and Chinese notes in the margin. I talked down the price, pointing out these deficiencies to the shop owner. The book cost about $5.

The big draw is a supposed collection of quotes from Mao Zedong. In reality many of these quotes were heavily edited before appearing in the text, but these edited entries were used as a gospel in a religion that condemned hundreds of thousands of people to death. The words themselves are certainly not responsible -- just as in the Bible, many of the quotes are vague enough to be bent in any particular direction -- but the Book represents an awful era. (What exactly does "every Communist working in the mass movements should be a friend of the masses and not a boss over them, an indefatigable teacher and not a bureaucratic politician," from Chapter 28 mean?)

And I think the book is less a Pop Artifact than some of the other artifacts from this era sold in the country. The propaganda posters represent a separate and important style, and I have fewer problems with their presence in American college dorm rooms than with that book in my closet.

I know enough Chinese history that the words "Cultural Revolution" bring to mind images of suffering, torture and death, but it can be hard to rectify this with the excitement of a Beijing market, where vendors encourage you to take a piece of this era home. I can only hope next time I have the smarts to say, "no thanks."

Ding-Ding-Ding Goes My Femmy Bell

BEIJING -- My bike The Gazelle is quite similar to its animal namesake. Both can go quite fast, but have severe problems coming to a quick stop.

 

I thought my Gazelle's problems could be fixed, so I once again returned to Bike Doctor Hu's repair shop for a tune-up. With a few twists of the wrench, Dr. Hu brought the brakes back to somewhat working condition, and moved on to more pressing topics.

 

"I lost your bike," he said, speaking in a slow cadence as if embarrassed at what he was admitting.

 

According to Dr. Hu, after I sold him the Catac last week, he left it outside his shop. The next day he returned to the shop to find the bike missing.

 

"So did someone steal it?" I asked.

 

"Maybe," Hu said, which I took to mean the Catac was stolen for a second time in less than two weeks. All this for a bike that's worth less than $10 and surrounded by thousands of other bikes that are more expensive, many without locks. How strange the world is.

 

I had another item of business with my favorite repairman. The Gazelle needed a bell, so that whenever someone cuts me off, I can take out my anger by making an inoffensive ringing, rather than screaming whatever Chinese profanity I learned that particular week. Dr. Hu chuckled at my request, said he could provide me with one for 4 RMB.

 

"I've got one for you," he said.

 

He made a sale.

 

So now, if you're ever on the Tsinghua campus and want to see my bike it's pretty easy. Just look for the one with an "I Love My Baby" bell on it.

The Day the Music Died

BEIJING - At the back of the Dongyue Temple in Beijing's Chaoyong District, there is a lovely courtyard. I wish I could give period dates or accurate descriptions of its features, but alas I never got around to studying imperial architecture in college.

Nevertheless I can say this is the Chinese courtyard as imagined by young Sinologists all over the world, with shiny blue curved roof tiles and large red lanterns hung every meter on the outside of the crimson-colored hallways.

The Dongyue Temple admission ticket includes entry to this courtyard, which is located behind the main Daoist statues and relics of the temple. My ticket - normally 30 RMB, but just 5 RMB with a student card - says this is the "Beijing Folk Museum," and is the only place in Beijing where large folk performances can be held.

Behind the final statue hall, roughly in the middle of the courtyard, is a large, tacky stage that is used for performances. It's brand-new, and designed in the Chinese "shiny red thing" category. All over China these tacky balloons and pixelated background montages are ruining historical sites and downtown shopping malls alike. The Dongyue Temple was no exception.

But despite the intrusion of the tacky, I still had a wonderful experience in the courtyard during my visit last summer. I visited the temple on a hot, sunny afternoon by myself, wanting to kill a couple hours before meeting an American friend in a language program. As I entered the courtyard, I heard music coming from a back corner. Three young musicians were playing Chinese instruments. One was the erhu, the other two I didn't recognize.

I went upstairs and stood next to where they were playing. The music was lovely, the perfect antidote to the broiling hot weather. I sat down and listened for over half an hour, nearly falling asleep to the sounds.

Yesterday I returned to the temple with a couple friends, and went back to that courtyard. There were no sounds, and no musicians in sight. A few workers played cards, uninterested in the few people at the temple. I again climbed the stairs to the second floor, and walked in the room where I heard people playing. There I saw a couple instruments, and three young Chinese, dressed in traditional but ill-fitting costumes.

I asked one with long curly black hair (recent perm?) when the music was going to start.

"Today's there's no music," she said.

I asked her if there was ever music. She said on Chinese New Year sometimes there were performers, other times no. I protested that I had heard music there nine months ago. She seemed confused, and called over a colleague. Yes, he said, there used to be musical performances, but now no longer. The music had died.

Cold Feet

BEIJING -- My reading teacher entered the classroom this afternoon and shot me an astonished look.

 

"Su Bin, aren't you cold?" she said.

 

"No, why?"

 

"Your feet. You're wearing 踢鞋."

 

"What?"

 

I didn't understand the last word, but I'm trying to communicate with my teachers only in Chinese. Instead of asking her the English word, I went for my bright yellow Chinese-English dictionary. After a minute, I found the right entry: sandals.

 

Even though Beijing's in the middle of a cold snap, I wore sandals with my jeans and light grey sweater today. I did it because I have no clean socks, and didn't expect anyone to notice. But nothing escapes the watchful eyes of Brown.

 

"You're going to get sick," she said.

 

"Why?"

 

"Chinese people say, 'If your feet are cold, then you will get a cold.'"

 

Strange. In America, we associate a cold head with sickness. I guess in China it's the other way around. I'm glad I wore sandals, even only to find out a Chinese taboo.

Birds of a Feather, Grill Together

BEIJING -- If Beijing needs information about traffic patterns, the government should first ask food vendors. After all, it's their job to know where the crowds are.

 

In Wudaokou, pineapple salesmen camp out at most major intersections, selling sticks of the tasty fruit for a yuan a pop. Outside Wudaokou's narrow strip of Western bars vendors sell meat on a stick. They line up soon after sundown, and stay there until the very end of the evening, reaping hundreds of dollars a night from the drunk munchies.

 

My Beijing crew's favorite wing place belongs to Wang Didi -- Younger Brother Wang -- a friendly man with a Chicago Cubs hat and three thumbs. Wang cooks his wings on a portable grill, a three-foot long trough fueled by small pieces of wood. He takes the uncooked wings from his basket, each one already balanced between two wooden sticks. Wang grills each one for about three minutes, then adds a few spices. After that they're ready to eat: 3 RMB for one, 5 RMB for two and 10 RMB for four.

 

They taste delicious: crispy, juicy with just a hint of spice. I could eat 20, and sometimes my friends do. There's even an idea floating around of hiring Wang Didi for a party: promise him a minimum of a few hundred yuan and transport him to the middle of the Tsinghua campus.

 

With some Chinese skills and a bit of friendly banter, it's possible to lower the price. Shannon -- when not popularizing "PTPA" -- gets his wings at 4.5 RMB a pair. Wang Didi cries "Pengyou!" when he recognizes a frequent customer, and takes a couple new wings out to grill.

 

Tonight I found out Wang's originally from Chongqing, and that his trademark Chicago Cubs hat was a gift from an American friend. It was enough to solicit a laugh or two, but not lower the price. Perhaps next time, I'll ask about his girlfriend.

Tree in a Box

BEIJING - This campus operates on a peculiar rhythm. Things happen in ways that seem illogical, but somehow they always seem to get done. At times my life is a constant kabuki performance, with no one around to explain the meaning behind the elaborate rituals.

Take the mystery of the scaffold tree. Three weeks ago, a dozen or so laborers appeared in the courtyard between my dormitory and its immediate neighbor. They wore matching yellow hats and dirty jeans. Probably migrants, these men spent two long days erecting a structure around a tree in the middle of the courtyard. A frame of thick metal poles boxed in the tree, whose thin upper branches looked pithy in comparsion.

After finishing, the workers wrapped large pieces of translucent plastic around the outside of the lattice work and headed home. Whatever they had come to do was now finished.

In my bike rides and walks around campus, I came across a few other trees covered in the same manner. The dressed trees were all middle-aged, neither new saplings planted to stave off erosion nor the thick trunks that date from the Qing Dyansty. They all appeared healthy, although it's hard to tell the health of a plant in winter on the other side of a plastic sheet.

I can't figure out why the university spent money on constructing these tree fences. At first I thought they were created as a precursor to removal, but no trees have fallen. It occured to me that these might be some type of protection against Beijing's spring sand storms. But today the city had its fiercest winds yet, and I saw the group of workers reappear. They weren't at my tree, but one a couple dorms to the north. They wore the same yellow hats and old clothes. This time they came not to build, but dismantle. So far my tree is untouched, but I'm sure they will come for it soon.

When they do, I hope they'll be in a mood to answer a couple questions. Neither the building staff nor my classmates seem to have any idea about these plastic towers. Hopefully with a little conversation I can tap into this campus' strange rhythm.

A Pleasant State of Affairs

BEIJING - I don't actually live in China.

I live in Wudaokou, a small area on the northwest side of Beijing. Although there are no embassies here, I'm pretty sure that crimes committed here aren't prosecuted in a normal Chinese court. If Wudaokou declared independence and became a Monaco-esque city-state, I wouldn't be surprised. Life here, at least in and around the Tsinghua campus, is different.

As I chugged closer to the Chinese border on the Trans-Siberian Express, I remembered the things that annoyed me during previous visits: the spitting, the crowds, car exhaust, yelling and eating of strange body organs. Near the frontier these concerns reached a fever pitch, and I wondered why I'd decided to trek halfway across the world to come here. Then I entered China, and immediately fell through a manhole cover, verifying my suspicions.

Turns out I was wrong. None of my Chinese "pet peeves" are noticeable here in the university district. In a month, I haven't seen anyone spit, there are few cars on campus, and the caps to on-campus manholes seem to be thoroughly in place.

While life here can hardly be considered calm, there's not the awe-inspiring hordes that can be found at many Chinese institutions such as a railway station, open-air market or McDonald's. People frequently queue, and in most of the campus loudspeakers don't blast continuous streams of pop music on nature-lovers.

In gaining phlegm-free streets, I've lost little. There are still the things I love about China, many of which I've already detailed on this blog: the people, the bikes, the food and the service.

Now if I wanted to seek out these Chinese characteristics (In Chinese: 特点. I can now count this blog entry as studying for tomorrow's listening exam.) I dislike, I merely need to bike ride 15 minutes south, west or east of the campus (it's hard to go north), to return to the China I once knew. But in my day-to-day life I see surprisingly little of it.

Perhaps life here at Tsinghua is a preview of what things will be like in 25, 30 years. If that's the case, I suspect I'll be very comfortable in the China of 2037.