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.