Cloned Crow

BEIJING – An overflowing pint of Tiger Beer in each hand, Crow stopped
for just over five seconds on his way to the patio.

"I'm sorry the service is bad today," he said. "I just had to fire all
my staff."

The perils of opening a business in China are many: the national
government will modify its arcane legal code and make it illegal,
local government or a corrupt official will demand bribes, or people
just won't get what's on offer. Then there's the reason why Crow
didn't have a kitchen staff to manage his popular pizzeria.

Crow gave our table five more seconds on his way back to the kitchen.
"A cook stole all my reicipes," he said, still sounded pissed even
though he must have offered the story several dozen times. "He's
planning to open up his own restaurant near Tsinghua."

Damn. Crow might become a victim of his own sucess. More than a year
ago, Crow opened his little neighborhood pizza joint on a road near
where Beijing and Tsinghua Universities meet. It operates out of a
small hutong, a covered patio and one medium-sized dining hall. Inside
the walls are bright red, with wraught-iron lamps and large screen on
the back wall. Tables have been placed randomly so that the room seats
one-third more than it can comfortably handle. This means walking
strange paths to get from a seat in the back corner to the back room
or the bar, but only enforces the vibe of a neighborhood dive in
Any-College-Town, U.S.A.

The pizza is pretty great, with authentic ingredients that are hard to
find in Beijing, such as pepperoni and black olives. They're also a
fantastic bargain, with a medium pizza that comfortably serves three
costing 50 RMB. Beer starts at a little over a $1 a pint, and there's
also cheap breakfast specials.

Crow's still in his mid-20s, but he's scored a home run on the Beijing
restaurant scene. His restaurant recently was named Best Foreign
Student Hangout by the editors at That's Beijing. The restaurant is
packed nearly every time I go there. That included today's visit, and
the four remaining staff members were running every where to try and
ensure at least a minimum standard of service.

Crow looked frazzled when he came to take our order, and I'm sure
there's a tough couple weeks ahead of him. But I don't think he should
worry about the restaurant's survival. His good food is sure to
outlast any copy.

The Buildings Loom Tall

TIANJIN, China – How important is a city's architecture?

Based on an afternoon wandering around China's fourth largest, buildings have the ability to transform the way people live.

Tianjin is a city of over 10 million on the Sea River – a delta that leads into the Pacific Ocean. It serves as Beijing's port, its strategic location playing a role in decisive moments in Chinese history. Here a six-nation force began its march toward Beijing in 1901, shooting and killing their way to rescue a few dozen foreigners surrounded by thousands of angry Boxers, eager to drive foreigners
from the Middle Kingdom.

The Boxer Rebellion failed, and western influence continued in Tianjin. The city had a large foreign concession, an area of the town that served as a giant embassy, a place where the laws of China didn't apply. The Japanese, Germans, French and British all lived here.

There were other concessions, in Beijing, Xiamen, and Shanghai, but many of these buildings were destroyed by development in the People's Republic of China. In Tianjin they remain largely intact, thanks to local preservation movements and a city with few other tourist drawcards.

Today the foreign concession is governed by the Chinese, but they here they must bow to West. The streets are still narrow two-lanes with tall trees shading the sidewalks. There are no huge avenues or ring roads that cut through the center of most Chinese cities, a massive concrete strip that can take more than a minute to cross. On a 95-degree day, I prefer the shade.

I visited on a weekend, and the streets were nearly deserted. The types of tenants in these buildings – a mix of banks and foreign-Chinese joint ventures – were so different than the places that occupied them a century ago. Each building had a preservation placard on the outside, which listed the business, former occupation and preservation status. Several times they aligned. An old Japanese bank is now the Bank of China, the British bank the Construction Bank. And people in the concession still keep business hours, not showing up on evenings or the weekend.

The old foreign concession is a just part of Tianjin. Elsewhere, the city sprawls as the rest of China does. On one side of the concession is the Sea River, elsewhere it is bordered by huge roads. But here among the old marble and brick buildings, stately architecture and shady trees have created a quieter, more peaceful alternative.

He Was There

BEIJING – In a sweltering room on the second floor of Tsinghua's
recently refurbished Communications and Media Studies Department,
nearly 50 future journalists, public relations flacks and censors
watched an hour-and-a-half presentation by one of television's most
recognizable reporters, Peter Arnett.

Arnett is spending the semester teaching at Shantou University, a few
hundred miles southeast of here in Guangdong Province. He never said
why he accepted the position, but the tone of the presentation made it
sound as if he wanted a different, low-key experience after four years
covering the second Gulf War.

His lecture went roughly chronology, taking ground-breaking work
during the early days of the Vietnam War, then onto his experiences in
diplomatic circles in the 1970s, his widely influential coverage of
the Persian Gulf War as a CNN correspondent, and then his role as
mentor and hero of the anti-war movement during the age of Global
Terrorism.

Arnett gave the lecture in English, and seemed only occasionally to
remember that his audience spoke it as a second language (a friend and
I were the only non-Chinese students in the room), delivering
sentences like this one, "I challenged Castro to a boxing match,
because he liked Ali at the time. Thankfully he didn't put up his
dukes. America didn't like Cuba at the time."

He also seemed incredibly hot, dabbing his mostly bald head with a
dripping wet sweat rag every two minutes. But despite looking
uncomfortable, he didn't give these students a cop-out presentation,
lingering over certain stories, pointing out other Pultizer-Prize
winners in old photos from Siagon, laughing while talking about his
firing from NBC in 2003 for giving an interview to the Iraqi press
agency and his subsequent hiring by the Daily Mirror.

The most interesting part of the lecture came when Arnett briefly
discussed China, which he first visited in 1972 right after Nixon's
visit. "Beijing was not a busy city then," he said, but he couldn't
illustrate that point because cameras were not allowed on this trip. A
trip seven years later, soon after the rise of Deng Xiaoping, was much
more relaxed: eight nights of dining in the Great Hall of the People,
a trip to the Great Wall and many, many pictures of a fascinatingly
deserted Beijing.

What does he think of China today? He didn't give much away in the
lecture, perhaps constrained by time or not wanting to wade into
sensitive political waters at China's best university. He did discuss
the issue with the French news agency AFP in a recent interview,
implying that he's been given more freedom than he expected:

"I thought there would be real limitations in what we would be able to
talk about but that is not the case," he said. "In other places I have
been I have encountered a sense of pessimism but I don't get that
sense here. I'm privileged to be giving young people some of my
insights."

This Entry Costs One Dollar

BEIJING – My first meal at Tsinghua came from the Foreign Students
Eatery, where the dozen or so cafeteria workers are familiar enough
with Chinese nubs and their frantic pointing. I wordlessly selected a
chicken and cucumber dish, a side of rice and a plate of dumplings.
With a soda, the total came to 9.5 RMB, or a little over a dollar. I
took out my one-time 10 RMB dining card and swiped in a counter top
machine. It didn't like the card. Rather than deducting the amount it
started beeping. I tried it three more times to the same effect. The
fuyuan at the cashier knew the meaning of the beep. "Your card doesn't
have enough money," she said, and told me to take another renminbi out
of my wallet.

Weeks later I knew enough Chinese to decipher a sign posted on the
counter near the card reader. "Here we sell 10 RMB dining cards. Each
one is 10 RMB (there is a one renminbi service fee on each card,
making the balance 9 RMB) and can they can be bought here." What I
didn't know when I arrived was that at Tsinghua, everything comes with
a fee.

When I wanted to leave on my Worker's Holiday trip a day early, the
Foreign Students Office said it would be happy to reschedule my
listening midterm – for a 50 RMB fee. The library charges 10 RMB for a
card, then 100 RMB to take out books. The worst offender is Dining
Services, who charge a 20 RMB fee on a reusable dining card, a 10 RMB
fee to recharge it, a 30 RMB deposit and take 10 percent of anything
on the card as a general "service fee."

There are fees to make a photocopy, fees to wash clothes, fees to
organize an activity and fees to register your living location. An
unlucky person – or one disposed to doing things that incur a fee –
might spend more than a month's tuition just on fees while studying
here.

As much as I hate having to dig into my wallet every 10 minutes, these
fees do have a point. High education is China offered à la carte,
which means that every time a student uses a service at the
university, he pays for it. Want to play tennis or use the
university's dilapidated exercise bikes? Fine, but it'll be 3 RMB for
each visit.

American universities, especially private ones, add services as a way
to compensate for ballooning tuition, room and board fees. Parents
send $40,000 to $50,000 to an academic institution each year with the
idea that this is all-inclusive, that this small fortune will cover
their son or daughter's eating, drinking, academic, physical and
mental needs for the next 10 months. Send them the money for four
years, and then show up on a sunny May afternoon to watch your new
graduate march across the stage.

Many students wind up getting a raw deal. Someone who works off-campus
full time, doesn't join university activities and peruses a course of
study with few tangible equipment costs (such as English) winds up
with a poor return on the original investment. Perhaps American
universities should look East for inspiration, and allow students to
choose what they want.

Celvin

BEIJING — Celvin is 20-year-old college sophomore, an English major with a penchant for cooking. He's just fallen deeply in love, and I can't imagine his desire will ever be requited.

Celvin's been mentioned on this blog, he was Three Thumbs' unnamed apprecentice at last Saturday's barbecue, the one responsible for carrying the huge cartload of supplies around the Tsinghua campus. Now let me mimic Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and tell the events of that evening from another angle.

Three Thumbs kept Celvin busy for most of the night, having him prepare wings and pre-spice each roll. Later in the evening, Three Thumbs started chatting with party guests, and left the Celvin in charge of the embers. By 10:00 the party had put away the last of the wings and Celvin was free to join the festivities. Soon he'd found Jessie, a junior from San Diego.

Celvin's English is not good, and Jessie's Chinese is basic, so they had trouble communicating. Some of my more fluent friends served as a meditator and they exchange a few pleasantries about school, their families and the weather.

At this point everyone at the party was full of alcohol and roast chicken, and their conversation was interrupted by requests for pictures. I took a picture with Three Thumbs. Three Thumbs was in a picture with Jessie. I'm in one with Celvin and a tree, and then at some point Jessie and Celvin were in a shot together. After pictures the party guests broke up, the party guests to a bar, Three Thumbs and Celvin to work their grill in front of it.

The next morning Jessie woke up to a text message.

"hello. how you doing?" It was Celvin.

Ten minutes later:

"last night very fun. i really enjoy meeting you."

Celvin sent more messages throughout the day, most referencing when he could get a copy of a picture someone took at the party of Jessie and him. Unfortunately the camera went missing after the party, taking the
picture with it. Celvin didn't take the news well:

"I can pay money," he said in one message. He doubted the camera was really missing. "But I think is this the real reason? I not think so," another message said.

Jessie dropped her phone in toilet Wednesday night, rendering it useless for two days. When it started working again, there were messages waiting.

"i very very very very very very very very very very want to see you."

Celvin had fallen for Jessie, and he wanted a meeting. He suggested dinner, as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, Jessie didn't reciprocate his feelings. She's seeing someone, and isn't about to dump him for a mediocre English student from a small town in Hebei Province. Therein lies her dilemma: She wants to tell Celvin the truth, but in a way that won't drive him to jump from a tall building.

Three Thumbs weighed in one night when Jessie stopped by his grill for a couple late wings and some advice.

"Celvin won't give up," he said to Jessie. "He is in love."

This week Jessie and I are planning to dine with Celvin. I will be there as translator, friend and protector in case Celvin decides he can't contain his love for the duration of the dinner.

I'm not sure if this is the best solution. Celvin wants to go on a date, not dine with a couple foreign acquaintances. Perhaps it would be better to avoid all contact, and figure that Celvin would move onto a new crush in a couple weeks. But this way at least he gets to see Jessie, and there's a chance that their relationship will develop into a healthy, long-lasting friendship, and Jessie's Text Message Box will never be empty again.

My Favorite Animal

BEIJING – A strange question deserves a strange response.

"What is your favorite kind of animal?" I said to a Beijing taxi driver late one recent evening.

"What?" he said, and shot me a confused look. I repeated myself, stressing the tones to ensure comprehension.

"Well, uh, Chinese people. Chinese people are my favorite animal."

Chinese people? Really? The best animal? I laughed and told him that white people would take offense at being called an animal, no matter the circumstances.

"But we aren't white people," he said. "We have yellow skin."

Point taken.

Juche

BEIJING – After a scrumptious dinner of dog hot pot Friday afternoon,
I stopped into the campus bowling alley to watch part of the annual
International Students Bowling Competition.

Normally I avoid these Foreign Students Office organized activities,
as they usually consist of awkward conversations, extremely obvious
cultural events (tea ceremonies, Beijing opera videos, trips to the
tourist trap section of the Great Wall, Badaling) and people asking me
questions about the National Basketball League.

None of that happened today. Instead I found out who would be on the
Security Council if hard power was measured by bowling skills.
Indonesia would be a superpower, along with Kazakhstan and South
Korea. The flaky North Koreans would be a significant threat – but
their inconsistency would make unreliable. Americans talk a good game,
and look pretty good while playing, but the result is pretty terrible:
sixth place, behind Vietnam.

The organizers went for maximum comic effect when choosing teams to
share lanes: United States vs. Vietnam, Japan vs. China, Malaysia vs.
Singapore and Kazakhstan vs. North Korea. The last one isn't that
funny, but I choose to watch the match from that side of the room. One
surprise of this semester is the discover that Kazazhstan produces
such beautiful women. If the Tsinghua contingent is an accurate
indicator Astana is crawling with six-foot, fit women with tan faces
and long, dark hair.

I also wanted to get a closer look at the North Koreans. China
sponsors hundreds of students from the Hermit Kingdom to study here,
enabling communication between the two countries who have a
relationship they used to describe as "teeth and mouth." They live in
the foreign student dorms, but no one hears much about them. There are
rumors they are ordered not to speak with white students, and anyone
caught breaking the rule faces immediate deportation and punishment
back home.

The country's contingent was four players, all short men in their late
20s or early 30s. The dullness of their clothes stood out. Each player
wore solid shirt, one a white button-shirt, another a teal T-shirt
tucked into a pair of blue trousers. The clothes didn't look old, just
unfashionable. There were no concession to the maximalist designs in
fashion across East Asia: bright colors, extra buttons, zippers and
clips, shirts with random chunks of English text and fractured
collages. These clothes were utilitarian, a physical manifestation of
the country's Juche philosophy – plain, unadorned outfits that reflect
the conditions of the masses.

There were traces of juche in the way they bowled. A man in a short
sleeve shirt the color of sunflower petals always approached the lane
with the same three steps, releasing the ball at the precisely the
right time, finishing with his right hand pointing toward 10 o'clock,
a pose straight out of a bowling magazine. His technique was
incredibly mechanical, as if he'd learned to bowl by studying a book
and emulated the positions shown in instructional pictures. Perhaps he
had.

The bowlers had no problem getting down eight or nine pins. Their
balls went straight, usually hitting the center pin. But they couldn't
modify their carefully practice strokes enough to get a spare, and
they lacked the experience to consistently get strikes. They lost to a
Kazakh team which the players threw the ball down the lane any way
they thought of: one player consistently used bounces to get the pins
down. Juche wasn't enough.

I didn't get a chance to talk with the North Koreans. As one player
walked to the bathroom, I muttered a "ni hao" and a smile. In response
he nodded his head, not breaking the rules and talking to an American,
but just possibly making a friendly gesture.