english class

I had a dream last night. It was rather depressing. I dreamt that I woke up and checked the weather. That’s was it. It had warmed up, above freezing for the next two weeks at least. Warm front. I should be celebrating right? Wrong. Warm temperatures mean no ice snow or ice snow festival. Possibly one of the few redeeming aspects of Ha’erbin (I say possibly because I haven’t seen it yet). In the dream, I was devastated. I had bore over half a year of Ha’erbin life just waiting for this ice snow festival. How could the weather gods do this to me. I needed to get cold fast and stay that way. Turns out it was a dream. We have nice cold temperatures in the forecast. Today there are even 40mph wind gusts and snow! Might even call it a blizzard. It is pretty. I’m dreaming of a white china-mas.

I sat in on a two hour graduate level English class this week. Graduate level doesn’t mean the students are really good at English. In fact most cant speak a sentence. Graduate means they are graduate students. The way the class was taught made Chinese English abilities much easier to understand. This obviously doesn’t go for everyone, but at least for some of the younger generations in higher education. Many of these students can read and write English fairly well. Some well enough to get higher scores than me on some standardized test, like the GRE. Unfortunately few can speak fluid sentences or hold a conversation. Its not their fault. They just haven’t really practiced oral English, or had an opportunity to practice. This graduate English class made that clear. The class consisted of the teacher reading the text in English out loud. Then translating it into Chinese sentence by sentence, or calling on a student to translate it. So the students contact with English was simply reading by themselves and hearing their teacher read it. They didn’t actually say the English words or even have to try and understand them because the teacher or one of the students from the front of the class gave them the translation immediately after the English. Out of the 50 or so in the class, about 5 had to translate sentences and they were all in the first 2 of 10 rows. Pretty low chance of being called on, especially in the back. The story of the day was about a male ballot (pronounced like voting ballot) dancer and his cocaine overdose. A rather inappropriate and out of place story, I thought. Drugs are nowhere near a national topic here. There seldom spoken about and no one has done them or knows what they are. The translation for cocaine was simply ‘drug’ and snorting cocaine was simply ‘do drugs’.

Yummy things consumed this week.

煎饼果子,jian bing guozi, pretty common and eaten quite often by me. Consists of a very thin pancake made from only flour and water on a 2ft diameter iron griddle. Filled with fried egg, hot chili, cilantro, onions, hotdogs bits, hashbrowns and some fried bread chips. Delicious.

烤地瓜 roast whole sweet potato. Need not mention more. Served out of oil drum roaster.

包子 steamed buns filled with sauerkraut.

春饼 spring rolls, although not the deep fried things. These are Chinese burritos. Plate size thin pancakes again made from watery flour mixture. Then filled with an assortment of stirfry dishes like carrots and beef, sweet hot pork, tree ear fungus and egg.

I sent off a whole bundle of holiday cards last week. They should be arriving at various locations within three weeks time! If you have reason to believe you will not receive a card (ie I don’t have your address) send it to me and I will mail you a postcard during our little epic adventure coming up in Jan, feb, and march.

Attention Zhuhai!

珠海珠海！你是一个经常读者。我不想让你害怕了，但是如果您想，请给我发送一个电子邮件，让我知道你是谁。

Housing

Interesting contrast or inconsistency. When you think of china what do you think? Over 4000 years of civilized history?

Independent inventor of rice cultivation, black powder, printing blocks, paper, the compass, or shark fin soup? How about traditional buildings like the forbidden palace or Buddhist monasteries and Taoist or Confucius temples? Those things are all here. There are also scores of new buildings, temporary buildings, modern short lived buildings. The modern buildings outnumber the old by far. This last week I was talking about houses with some people and the issue of age came up. I hadn’t really paid much attention to the age of buildings or the role age played in the quality of buildings.
When a building was built plays a big role in the quality of the building and quality of the apartments within. Not only because building materials are better or more modern in newer buildings, but mostly because the wiring, plumbing, walls, doors, windows, and floors get old and degrade. When talking about the apartment you live in you definitely know in what year it was built and most people seems to have a pretty good idea what your apartment is like just from that. This is all pretty standard stuff. In the US it is about the same. You know a house built in the 70’s or 90’s is a bit different and when remodeling might be needed. The thing that is different here ~ the time scales… An apartment from ’98 is old. Not only is it old, it probably needs renovation and remodeling. The plumbing has probably rusted, the floors are not flat, and the walls might be cracking, molding, or slowly (quickly?) crumbling, and the windows definitely leak. This isn’t to mention that painting isn’t common here. Instead whitewashing is, and in high traffic areas like the university classrooms, it is a yearly process. I am not saying that everything 10 years old is falling down, but the perspective I got last week, was places 10 years old are not good, and you should probably find someplace newer.
Most of the buildings here have been built in the last 20 years, if not the last 15 or 10. China is reportedly to add millions of square meters of residential space every year. Every this relatively new, even though it may not appear that way. Buildings really do age quickly here. Probably do to a different maintenance paradigm, no maintenance in some cases.
On campus there were some one-story brick row houses on campus. That was at least until last week. Now there is one little row house. The rest were destroyed by a large front-end loader and carried off in a dump truck. The remaining house bears the scar of its neighbors on its east wall. The fate of the row houses has been long foreseen. They used to stand amongst a towering forest of 6-7 story apartments buildings providing housing to the university staff and faculty. The row houses were out of place and taking up valuable apartment building space. The last row house still stands because the inhabitant doesn’t want to move out and the university can’t force them out. So there is currently a standoff. Who knows how long it will last.
A similar process is also going on behind the university campus. What was farmland last week, is now being turned, compacted and prepared for construction of an expansion for the university. The fields were surrounded on all sides of apartment complexes and 6 lane roads; definitely out of place and again the eventual destruction/construction a long foreseen result. Development is a big force and consumes…

Big picture update:
Tiger Park (story)
Scenes
Nature
Strange

Generally any album with a recent date has new pictures.

Snippets from the last week or so…

Walking on campus the other day I noticed an elderly man sauntering towards me on the icy road. He had a big grin on his face visible even from far away. As he approached I noticed he was wearing a very stylish black leather ball cap (very popular among the elder males). Not only was the hat stylish it bore the brand “Homy” in big silver metal letters.

There are a few things are a bit hard to understand here. I will pick one for now. Polished marble floors. Many of the buildings on campus and in the city have shiny polished marble floors. They are even washed every night so they are bright and shiny for the next day. I think it is fine that companies want to up their image with fancy rocks. Unfortunately if you add a little water, snow, ice, or slush to a polished marble floor they become slick as ice, which is the exact state of the floors here for the duration of winter. It is quite amusing, although not terribly convenient. Indoor ice rinks are fun, but I suppose they are dangerous for the feeble and the hordes of high heel leather boot clad females. The situation might be improved with something of a welcome mat or runner separating the snow of the outside and the polished marble of the inside. But alas no such thing is common here and instead the inadvertent ice rinks prosper.

So there are no snow plows here…largely because it doesn’t snow that much. But there are also no sand trucks, and they have stopped using salt on the roads. So that means what falls generally stays. Also on the shady sides of buildings and mysteriously covering certain roads and intersections are inches of jumbled ice. Not smooth, rather hilly and rutted, but super slick. On campus the first year students are tasked with chipping away the foot packed snow from sidewalks and roads with flat shovels. It’s a big job…but there are at least several thousand freshmen to do it.

Went to the police/visa office yesterday to arrange a new visa. It was quite the place. Nothing like the Polson town hall where I originally got my passport. This place was bustling. Long snaking lines without much sense to them, people sitting and standing all over the place, several clerks working, several work stations empty, and the same thing repeated on all five floors. Keep in mind this is just Ha'erbin. I can't imagine what things in a Big city would be like. Surprisingly enough most people where there to get visa's to Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. There were very few foreigners, and very few Chinese applicants for new passports. Two hours later I walked out down a hundred dollars and on my way to a new visa. Aside from the long lines I remember the foot tall letters on the wall behind the clerks "Rigorously Enforce the Law Warmly Serve the People"
"严格执法 热情服务“

Dinner Extravaganza

Not going to lie, it has been cold. Frozen nose hairs and breath condensing and freezing into intricate ice crystals on the edges of my scarf.

There have been a few interesting developments in the last week, mostly centered around meeting the mayor of Ha’erbin for dinner last Sunday and again Wednesday.

A friend of a friend was visiting from the US last weekend. It just so happened that his father is music composer and happened to have some sort of business relations with a music publisher/ distributor here in Ha’erbin. It also turns out that the composer’s brother is a major in a large city in southern China, and the publisher/ distributor is possibly the mayor of Ha’erbin. I say possibly for three reasons. One, I only know her surname, two I cant seem to find her listed online, and there, of the locals I have asked, none have known the name of the mayor. She has held the position for 20 years, she said. I would assume someone would know. But, whatever, she says she is the mayor and has taken us out to dinner twice.

The first dinner was just my brother, our American friend and her visiting American friend (fluent in Cantonese and English), his cousin the interpreter (from Mandarin to Cantonese), the mayor and the mayor’s friend and college age daughter. It was quite the affair, semi awkward. Way too much food. There is a Chinese custom, unclear weather it is modern or traditional so it might not be fair to describe it as a custom, maybe better to say a practice; a practice to treating people to dinner, ordering extravagant amounts of food and not eating most of it. Apparently you must order outrageous amounts of food to demonstrate your commitment to doing business with your dinner guests (ie impress them by wasting food and money). If you don’t shovel food onto the table, your potential business partners will think you are not genuinely interested in making a deal with them. The monumental dinners are also used to sustain business relations, as in the case of this particular Sunday. The mayor apparently wanted one, to show respect for the visiting American’s father and politically powerful uncle, and two to smooth the road for distributing a new CD in southern china.

Dinner was good and we gorged. There were 20+ dishes of very well done Chinese food. Smoked eel, pig slaughter stew (sauerkraut with pig organs), sushi, various vegetable and meat stir fry dishes, crabs, cold Chinese style cold salads, bite size fish, boiled dumplings and on and on. Conversations varied, but were stunted by significant language barriers. The cousin, a native of Guangzhou, and fluent in Cantonese and partially fluent in Mandarin, gave translation to his visiting American cousin while I gave translation to my brother and our local American friend and vise versa to the mayor. I also tried to make small talk with the mayor’s friend and her daughter, while trying to tune out the English conversations my brother was having with the other two Americans. It was a bit hectic.

Wednesday the whole deal happened again. The mayor picked us up and drove us to another fancy restaurant, a seafood restaurant. I had not seen a restaurant like this before, it was very upscale. Our table wasn’t just a table, it was a room. The building had been designed very similar to a hotel. Our room had a closet for coats, its own bathroom, a couch and a big round table for 12. The table could have easily been replaced with a bed if the restaurant went under, or needed to host a conference. In attendance were my brother, our local American friend, the mayor, 4 dudes (“the man” sort of dudes, older, super fat, politically powerful, wealthy, and self acknowledging), a music composer, and two college music professors. One of the dudes was possibly the provincial minister of education, one was a director for CCTV (Central China TV, the main 10+ channels nationally), and the other two held high level university administration jobs. This meal was much less awkward. My brother and our American friend mostly talked to each other, while I listened and joined in where I could with the larger Chinese conversation. As it turns out, everyone but the music student were old friends, often go out to dinner with each other, and frequently play mahjong. Dinner was equally extravagant, but less was ordered, so we actually managed to finish about 50% of it. Since it was a seafood restaurant, fishy things were on center stage. Nothing too fishy though, fish, shrimp (both fried and raw), sushi, squid, abalone, scallops, and other strange sea creatures unidentifiable and with confusing Chinese names. It was all really good, although raw shrimp are just too slimy and cold to be really desirable.

I was a bit hesitant about going to the second dinner. I can’t help but thinking the mayor had some underlying motive, which she still might have. Her stated purpose was to introduce us to more people in Ha’erbin, which she accomplished. She also said that our American friend should tutor the two music teachers in conversation English, which they probably could use. One of the music said one sentence in English, “my English poor.” The other one sang a sentence or two “I want to study oral English,” although it was unclear whether the singing was intentional or just an unfortunately funny accent.

On the ride home, after talking to the major’s driver for some time as he ‘accidentally’ took two wrong turns and doubled our driving time by driving 30km/h for most of the way, he asked for my phone number and invited my brother and I go drinking and eat lamb kabobs over the next weekend.

Last night my brother, another American, and a Chinese guy, his girlfriend and I went to Pizza hut. It was pretty much Pizza hut in the states, with some major differences. In China, pizza hut is a nice restaurant. Very clean and expensive (relatively, it’s about the same as the US price). The pizza’s are cooked in the same style as in the US, but the toppings are different. Very different. We had a curry chicken pizza with chicken some vegetables and curry saucy instead of tomato sauce and a salmon seafood pizza, with raw salmon, squid shrimp, wasabi, and a white cream sauce instead of tomato sauce. Both were pretty good. There was also Chinese style potato salad which was not good.

Ice, Carrot, and Ultrasound.

The ice field is done! Or maybe as done as it is going to get. There are still some big holes, ridges and ditches here and there. But it is mostly smooth and getting a thorough work over by masses of Chinese students. Some gliding smoothly carelessly weaving in and amongst their classmates and others awkwardly stumbling and painfully failing. We have one pair of ice skates…still need one more. There is a slight problem finding skates for larger feet.

The other night we went out with street shoes from some carrot ice soccer and freeze tag. It was a great 2 hours of fun. There were five of us, and aside from my brother the rest shall remain unidentified for their sake. One of the unknowns was ridiculous. Granted running on ice and making quick turns to avoid pursuers or score carrot goals is not easy business. However this one person evoked jolly laughter in casey and I frequently. It was mostly due to their manner of running, but sometimes also due to various noise emitted whilst being pursued. Their body above the knees was kept perfectly still and erect. Only the knees ankles and feet moved. Their heels never touched the ice. So it looked like a warner bros style cartoon character, speedily tiptoeing hither and thither. On top of that their arms were kept tight at their sides, with their hands pointing at 90 degree angles straight out to the sides. I thought they looked like a penguin.

Yesterday I went for a physical for my new visa. $60 later I guess I had been checked, but in a way very different from anything I had had before. Everything that I thought should go into a physical was included in this one..but not actually checked, just stamped and signed off. Each portion of the physical was performed by a different doctor in a different room. For example the for the external check, I was asked to stand hold my hands out in front of me and turn them over. Check, stamp, sign. The internal check involved a stethoscope on my nipples. The eye, mouth, ear check was just a check, stamp, sign. I did get some blood taken, as well as an ultrasound, ekg, and a chest xray. So I guess they will know if I am pregnant, have a heart condition or TB. I get to go back tomorrow to pick up the results.

More cold

It actually warmed up the past few days. Things even got close to melting. The weather report still forecasts "bitter cold" "frigid" and "extremely cold."

The ice skating rink is getting closer to resembling something useful rather than the sad mixture of frozen mud and ice it started out as. It is enormous. Not just a single rink, but more like 8 put together with some trees added for challenges and visual appeal. Currently the ice field is mostly ice covered, but with numerous imperfections. Ridges, lumps, cracks, holes and the such. They have about ten sleds mounted with 200gal water barrels and a nifty water spraying deal on the back. I think they will start physically pulling them around in the next few days to smooth out the ice.

In anticipation of its completion we are going to buy ice skates today. We are anticipating on spending a very small amount of money on a couple of used pairs. Any guesses on how much new or use skates go for?

new address

Jason Clark #601
PO Box 228
Northeast Forestry University
Ha'erbin, Heilongjiang Province 150040
People's Republic of China

Cell
086 13796 033047

Winter

Last Friday night outside a Russian bar full of Russians two Russians refused to believe that I wasn’t Russian and insisted on talking Russian to me interspersed with bits of English and very bad Chinese and trying to convince me that I was indeed Russian. This went on for several minutes, no exaggeration. I tried to talk to them and get a Russian insight into life in Haerbin, but failed to get any response other than “Rusky!” I think they were genuinely dumb or drunk and dumb.

This last week it got cold. Not as cold as it will get but cold enough for now. We are seeing highs of -13C and lows of -20C. Or in more familiar terms 7F to -4F. It’s still November. January and February are supposed to be the cold ones. I wonder how much more the temperature can drop. We are still losing 3minutes of daylight each day. Right now the sun makes a very fast long low arc across the southern sky. The solstice is only 4 weeks off from now and then each day will be longer…but not quite warmer.

I know it’s cold now by the instantaneous freezing of nose hairs I experience immediately upon exiting any building. It’s not that cold, it can get colder. Casey and I have a bet going about at what temperature water will freeze when poured out our 6^th story window but before hitting the ground. -20C is not cold enough.

leaves
some snow
boiler

In other news I haven't really started my research or at least not like I had in mind. I am currently reading Chinese articles about China's forest management policy, which is good. I have hopes to get started on some other thing this week, but we will wait and see if they play out.

week one and counting

First week at the forestry university.

I started off the week with lots of introductions to people in the engineering college. I got to see the human factor lab, which i am still not sure what is used for. The lab is full of machines to test reflexes, muscle memory, reaction times, multi-tasking abilities, estimation abilities and so on. Apparently the machines are useful to determine human abilities as they might relate to future machines and our abilities to operate them.

I also got to see the the provincial forest model. It is a comprehensive model of all of the provinces forests combined into one model and by combined i mean the model is divided into 4 parts with red lines and there is a fifth part on separate table. the thing is huge, probably 20ftX30ft. This last year several foreign forest experts came to admire the model, even western countries dont have a model as good as this one. dont get me wrong, other countries have forest models, but none are complete animated.... the whole thing is filled with little electric motors and wired up to a computer. every single tree can be 'cut down(fall over)' through the click of a mouse. even the little trucks and tree cranes move it really exciting. although this week it wasnt fully operational. i need to go back next week and see it in full action.

I started taking classes here as well. Right now I have two. One called environmental science, which is very uninteresting, and one called forest ecology which is actually pretty good. Environmental science consists of powerpoint slides copied directly from a poor quality american environmental science book from the 1980's. The professor has calls on students from the roster to read the english slides and then translate them into chinese. This might be a good idea if the students could read english or even if after stumbling through the slide they had any idea what they just read. That would make translating a bit easier. My motive for being in the class is not to learn anything new, but rather to help improve my chinese. This class does not help. The forest ecology class is good because the professor knows what he is doing and gives good lectures.

Forestry Uni here we come

It’s been something of a big week. Last weekend I packed up my stuff and moved out of the international student dorm. I wasn’t too sad to be leaving the dorm, but leaving my roommate, Song Lailong, was tough. I really liked living with him, and will definitely miss talking to him everyday. We will have to make a point to meet up for dinner weekly to catch up.

I put my bags in a cab and took the 15min drive to my new university. The Northeast Forestry University. 东北林业大学. My new apartment is part of the graduate student housing and on the 6^th floor. I arrived and placed my bags in the middle of a large stark room wrapped in bright white walls. The bright white walls have just been re-plastered/white washed and were a stark contrast to the visible deposit of dust on all horizontal surfaces. After some sweeping and mopping, the place was a bit nicer. Although the supplied mop consisting only of a stick with a shredded tee shirt attached really only got the floor wet.

There wasn’t much in the apartment even though it is furnished. There are two single beds, two chairs, three desks, two wardrobes, a tv, washer, fridge, and a single burner gas stove. After cleaning, I went to get some dishes, pots, and food. I got an amazing amount of veggies for $3 and spices for another $3.

On Monday I presented myself at the engineering college to arrange classes, register and meet the relevant officials. It was really interesting and everyone was very nice. I start class this next Monday. Casey arrived Tuesday morning.

We spent most of the week touring around Ha’erbin. We also made the decision to buy a second single burner stove and splice the gas line to hook it up. Now we are cooking in style with two burners. We also outfitted ourselves with an iron wok for all our stir frying needs and a cast iron griddle for griddle cakes and omelets.

After a rather awkward introduction in which building manager tried out his English, I was handed to phone to talk to one of the American English teachers on campus. Thursday night, Casey and I went out to dinner with 3 of the 4 other Americans on campus. We talked for about 3 hours about Ha’erbin.

Friday was Halloween and not much of a big deal in china. Casey, I and two other guys went wearing blue and yellow factory worker uniforms. After dinner at a traditional Chinese dinner and some homemade mead, we went to the one western bar in town to meet a bunch of foreigners ‘celebrating’ Halloween at the bar. Celebrating didn’t consist of anything more than a bit of drink and chat wrapped in costumes.

On Sunday I met the three Sudanese guys living in our building. They are all here studying civil engineering. Two speak some English and the third speaks some Chinese. Their first language is Arabic, but that doesn’t help them very much in China or at the university. They take one semester of Chinese and then 4 years of civil engineering. The only catch is the civil engineering courses are all in Chinese and one semester of Chinese doesn’t get them anywhere near able to understand. So instead they learn mostly in English from the internet. I have not found out yet why they are here or how their Ph.D. here is a good idea, but I will keep it in mind to ask.

Today there were snow flurries, but everything just melted on the ground. The forecast has a week more of mild weather and then a dive into 6 months of sub-zero temps.

Tomorrow on the menu: griddle cakes and hawthorn berry compote.

Snow

It snowed today. Lots of flurries, not quite cold enough for it to stick though. I also saw my breath. Winter is coming. Snow is in the forecast for 3 of the next 6 days.

Air pollution

The air has actually been pretty good here in Ha'erbin. Until last week. Last Thursday was a bit cloudy/foggy, but both me and my roommate woke up a bit weird. I went running that afternoon and felt a uncomfortable burning sensation in my chest. That night a i had the symptoms of a mild sinus infection and began self medicating.

Friday was worse, in regard to the sinuses. I was mostly cured by Monday. I didnt know that the air was bad Thursday-Saturday until Monday when I had a look at the Chinese EPA Air quality website. I found this little graph.

The first value(81) is Sunday(10/19) Friday is the 273. The values correspond to the Chinese air quality index, which is similar to the US EPA's AQI. The Chinese index as the same scale and same categories. I was a bit suspicious of this, so I investigate how both were calculated. Turns out they are not so similar. The indexes are based on 5 pollutants (SO2 , NO2 , Particles, CO, and O3). Only Particles and O3 are the same for both indexes. SO2 and CO both have much higher thresholds in the Chinese index. NO2 for 100+ and above all surpass US standards.
Sorry the table is ugly, blogspot is messing with the row height.

Chinese API	SO2		CO
	US AQI		US AQI
50	28		46
100	60		86
200	198		500+
300	299		500+
400	500+		500+
500	500+		500+

Interesting enough since Sunday, the Chinese EPA air quality website has been "down".

From the EPA website:

Air Quality Index	Numerical		Meaning
Levels of Health Concern	Value	Colors
Good	0-50	Green	Air quality is considered satisfactory, and air pollution poses little or no risk.
Moderate	51-100	Yellow	Air quality is acceptable; however, for some pollutants there may be a moderate health concern for a very small number of people who are unusually sensitive to air pollution.
Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups	101-150	Orange	Members of sensitive groups may experience health effects. The general public is not likely to be affected.
Unhealthy	151-200	Red	Everyone may begin to experience health effects; members of sensitive groups may experience more serious health effects.
Very Unhealthy	201-300	Purple	Health alert: everyone may experience more serious health effects.
Hazardous	> 300	Maroon	Health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected.

Voltage

I went to buy a voltage adapter today. Something I should have done 4 months ago. I sauntered over to the massive 'electric things' mall and descended into the basement. The floors above ground are fairly orderly, filled with litte stalls selling every sort of flash drive, mp3 player, dvd player and mouse you could ever imagine. Some name brands, some chinese brands, and lots of fakes. The basement is another world. Packed with the same little stalls, but each full of computer related hardware and pirated dvds. Stacks of scraped towers and printers fill the corners and aisles are packed with people searching for their favorite movie or lugging in some beast of 90's 'electric thing' needing repair.

I found my voltage converter without much fuss. Got home plugged it in, heard a strange buzzing noise immediately followed by a pop and no more buzzing noise. I quickly unplugged the very hot slightly smoking converter only to discover I had bought a 110-220 converter...not the required 220-110. Consequently china's 220 fried it. About that time my roommate came in and i told him the story. He recommended I immediately return to the store and explain that they have given me the 110-220 by mistake, and I had wanted the 220-110. The idea of trading in a fried adapter doesnt settle well with me, but hey, do as the locals do. I asked another guy on my way out and he said exactly the same thing.

At the store I repeated the magic little phrase..you gave me the wrong one, can you switch it? They took it to the back and then opened the little box it came in and began to smell it and pass it around to the other 4 superfluous employees for them to smell. This went on for a bit too long and I thought I was going to be caught in my life. Honestly the little thing smelled strongly of burnt electronics. While one guy was still smelling the thing, one employ came out and handed me the correct 220-110 and I was off.

One week and counting

I am almost done. Oct 24 marks the end of my 4 month language program and the true beginning of a year of Chinese forestry management research.

The language program has been great for my Chinese, but I am ready for it to end and jump into forestry management. The past 4 months I have been studying a bit of the background stuff about Chinese forestry. It pretty different than the US.

Expect a summary of the Chinese Grain to Green program next week. Maybe even discussion of the most recent land reform discussion.

Veggies

First of all lamb feast pictures.

So there is a practice here of buying up loads of cabbage and leeks in the fall, air drying them for a week, and then storing them inside for the remainder of the winter. That way come winter you dont have to buy veggies. Or back in the day, you could eat veggies because there werent any to buy in the winter. Things are bit different today. There are plenty of veggies available in the winter either grown in hothouses or shipped up from the south. Nevertheless the older generation still goes out and buys massive quantities of cabbage and leeks. This last week all the sidewalks and smaller streets were covered with their bounty laid out to dry before being squirreled away in corners of their houses.

PS there are lots of new photos scattered through out different albums. Just check the album date to see the most recent ones.

Tigers and Lamb(s)

Some guy was eaten by a tiger. A zoo tiger. Right here in Ha'erbin at the tiger park. I havent been yet, but I will go. It sounds like a bunch of starved tigers in pens. You can buy things and to feed to them ranging from a live chicken to a live cow. Apparently, China's record for members of the public being mauled or eaten by zoo animals isnt so good.

Speaking of eating animals. I ate a lamb. We went to a restaurant called "one lamb" and ordered one lamb. After selected the cutest little cuddly wuddly white as snow one eye green one eye brown lamb, we sat and enjoyed some warm beer as it roasted in an electric rotisserie in the back. Some time later the little guy arrived on a platter. The presentation was somewhat lacking and the waiter immediately commenced tearing the flesh into chopstick size pieces with his hands. It was tasty. Have to go back for another. Pictures.

In other news, a student was bea1en by the po1ice this last weekend. Details are still unclear as to what exactly went down. But it seems there was an argument over one of the parties speeding in the parking lot, an ensuing argument, and then its not clear whether the student or the popo started it. Several other students were injured by the popo. Some of the popo may have been drinking, and the students were probably as well, as it occurred in a bar parking lot. There are pretty mixed opinions of the event. Some think the student deserved it, others think the cops were abusing power/ negligent. Every news source is a bit different. There are pictures and a video of only the argument if you search. I dont think Ha'erbin is dangerous, not any more than LA. This is only one incident and things like this are rare here. I am probably more likely to be eaten by a tiger.

You probably have heard something about this thing called the chinese zodiac. I happen to be a rat. Forthright, disciplined, systematic, meticulous, charismatic, hardworking, industrious, charming, eloquent, sociable, shrewd, and scheming. That about sums me up. 2008 is the year of the rat. I am supposed to have extra good luck. I am also supposed to wear red socks, underwear, belt, and as much red clothing as possible all year long for extra good luck. If only i had known. If you happen to be a cow/ox next year is yours, so ask santa for some extra lucky red clothes to welcome in the new year.

Gender equality hasnt quite spread here. There are many examples of inequality, but today I go for just one. What do you say when someone gives birth to a baby girl what do you say? so so. or at least you have less pressure now (referring to societal pressure to raise a stellar boy). Back in the days before government enforced single child rearing, if you had two or three girls and no boys, it was down right embarrassing to your family name. now(back then (before 1950's) girls didnt go to school, or at least not that often or for very long), girls are not held to the same standards. if your baby girl doesnt study well, so be it, but if your boy doesnt study well you better start worrying and get to doing something about it. when someone has a boy you say congratulations. When I explained the custom of pink and baby blue for babies, the first question was "americans think baby blue is better than pink, right?"

Slow like a mushroom

Slowpoke just doesnt cut it. If you are slow, slow eating, slow thinking, slow moving, or slow writing you are slow like mushroom. Mushrooms are slow if you didnt notice. They dont really go anyway. But the do grow fast, or at least the characteristic mushroom shaped fruit grows fast. Some seem to appear in a day and wither the next.

There is a pretty significant hothouse mushroom and wild mushroom industry here. I look forward to the chance to do some hunting or gathering. If only there are monsters like ZA.

Terms or endearment. I plan to investigate this one further, but right now I might have a winner.
Four-Eyed Penguin. Given by one my teachers to her hubby to reflect his strong prescription glasses and waddling walk.

Two weeks of classes left. Then a move to an apartment, Casey's arrival, the beginning of regular cooking, thorough exploration of chinese cuisine, and the beginning of forest management research/study. Right now my supervisor has me lined to up to sit in on a full load of chinese forestry management classes. We will see how that goes. I am for trying for a week or so, or maybe even the semester if they are good, but I have other plans for the rest of the year...

Tonight various boiled vegetables and meats are on the menu. Hotpot it is. Literally a large hot pot placed on a burner in the center of the table in which i will place the most delicious greens, and most mysterious "meat balls" that bounce like super balls.

Fire! Detector

I have a fire detector. Several weeks after the foretold plastic fire, they have deemed fire detectors as necessary in every room. Mine even beeps when i press the little red button. I should give it a real test with some paper scraps and a lighter just to see if there really is americium in there making things work.

If you want to describe someone as picky, dont just say picky, instead say the could find bones even in eggs! I have to say i have found bones in eggs, along with the rest of the chick fetus.

Also asians evolved from monkeys and westerners(white people, including europeans and cowboys) evolved from chimpanzees. Not sure about the rest of the races. But the separate ancestries sure does help to explain all kinds of differences. Body hair, facial features, physical strength, corruption...and the list goes on. Strangely enough the two species can still interbreed.

New weight loss plan, or at least ass shrinking plan. Just sit. Thats right, eat then sit. Apparently sitting actually works your butt, or at least "strokes" it and that just burns away the ass calories.

More various bits of conversations and opinions to come.

Chinese Wedding

I just got back from a chinese wedding. I got up at 6am this morning to get breakfast and get ready. One of my teachers invited me and a classmate to attend. At 7am we went to do the couples new apt to watch the bride get ready and meet the maternal half of the family. Their new apartment is localed in a newly developed complex. There might be 20+ new apt buildings, still not fully leased/sold. It is all located on the outskirts of town making commuting a must. It was a very pretty place, much nicer than the periodic 'future apartment' pics i post.

At 9 we caravaned to a big military hotel to watch the ceremony and have lunch. It was a big hotel, with decorations to give a US wedding planner several heart attacks. Interesting enough I dont think the word tacky has entered into the chinese vocabulary. The ceremony began at 10, lasted maybe 5minutes, and was uneventful and uninteresting. There werent actually that many people paying attention. It was held in the lobby of the hotel. Lots of people talking and smoking as the MC conducted the ceremony. There was a brief intervention by some governmental official to make the whole thing official, then it was over.

We proceeded to lunch, where i was coerced by a gentleman at our table to drink bai jiu. Bai jiu is a clear 40-60% liquor commonly consumed in china by men. This particular brand was 50% or 100 proof and tasted like wretched fire water. I had three glasses with him, each larger than two shots. Then we moved on beer. There was lots of toasting for no reason and many toasts to the bride and groom. Being white in china, my classmate and I were invited to take pictures with the bride and groom.

The whole thing was over before 11am.

A sky filled with paper scraps and plastic bags

I have yet to see it, but it is common enough that there is a phrase to describe it. 纸屑塑料袋满天飞。 It is supposedly a frequent site in the country side whenever there is a slight wind. Disposal of modern garbage/manmade garbage is mostly in piles where it will set for who knows how long. Along comes the wind and puff its gone. Into the trees, rivers, fields, and sky. Blown away to become someone else's problem. The results are easy to see. Trees are decorated with american pride, full of red, white, and blue plastic bags. Fields are littered with wrappers, bags, newspapers, and bottles. In the rivers plastic bags and bottles swim by.

These little insights into chinese life keep coming up in conversations.

Another dichotomy, this one about interpersonal relations

USA
Blunt, frank, put everything on the table (ie no secrets,hidden motives or opinions)
Dont like someone, think someone screwed up, just say it.

China
Read people, then base actions on your perception of their demeanor and disposition.
Speak in circles, around a topic
Use tact
Implied meanings, indirect approaches
Say one thing, and mean another (Good job, you worked really hard =*this is terrible, maybe you'll do better next time)

I asked where these ideas come from and apparently there are chinese books on Chinese vs. American psychology and interpersonal relations differences.

坐月子
A month of sitting.
A traditional custom/practice for new mothers in China. After the birth, the new mother is confined to the house and her bed for one month. During this month she is to lay in bed and breastfeed. She will be attended to by her mother or her mother-in-law and fed a diet of boiled eggs and millet porridge to replenish her nutrients.

Sparrow Eradication
Back in the days of the big MZD. Someone got the idea that sparrows were pests and eating all the grain. Grain production was very big in the planned economy. A sparrow eradication campaign was begun. Sparrows were netted, stoned, and killed in mass numbers country-wide until there were very few left. Lo and behold, an ecosystem imbalance ensued. While sparrows are seed eaters they also happen to eat insects. With the sparrows gone, a plague of locust was unleashed causing far more damage than the sparrows ever did. It is unclear whether the locust plague and the sparrow eradication were related or just coincidence, but the sparrow eradication campaign was dropped.

Thank you, Driver for considering our safety

We returned this morning from a short jaunt to Dandong. From the train station we got on a bus and headed for campus. The streets were surprisingly lively for 4am on a sunday morning. Lots of people shuffling about and cars coming and going. Not even 5minutes from the station we were stopped at a red light when a taxi flew by from behind and blew through the red light. No hesitation, just plain bravado. I took the moment to thank the driver "Thank you, Driver for considering our safety."

It was overall a good trip. We went to a relaxing little island on the yellow sea. Ate some seafood, had a bonfire/disco party on the beach, rode tandem bikes, and I went for a swim. The disco beach bonfire party was unexpected and ridiculous. Three unenthusiastic dudes played crazy russian disco music accompanied by absurd music videos that had nothing to do with the music. The music videos were of the same genre offered at the karaoke bars. Most of them consist of a guy and a girl in some sort of romantic situation. Walking down a beach, riding a motorcycle, in a hotel... There is no plot, just lots of shots of them from various angles for the duration of the song. They shot with handheld cameras, and the "actors" probably got paid less than $10.

I ate some interesting food. Had some crabs, what i think were clams, and some snails. I also ate a whole rotisserie rabbit for lunch one day. There was plenty of free/dead time on the trip which gave us time to practice our jianzi (a feathered hackysack) game.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/DanDong
http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/Food

Fire response

Back from a short vacation to Dandong, a city right across from n. korea on the Yalu river. Returning at 4am this morning I was greeted by two bright little signs. Both advising us to avoid fires by reducing our use the electric fan.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/Ads

Air Raid Siren

It turns out the Air Raid Siren test was not really a test. It actually served as a reminder to northeast china residents that in 1931 on Sept. 18th. Japanese soldiers, in response to a railroad bombing, invaded and occupied northeast china until the end of WWII. The sirens served to remind people what the Japanese did to them.

Snippets from the last week

Apparently one of my teachers has a history of making her students cry. Male students. She said "they looked big and tall, but then they just cried." I asked what she did to make them cry and she said it was just the normal stuff..."say it again, say it again, dont you remember?, didnt you prepare for you class?" In the midst of crying the students told our teacher that it wasnt her fault, it was their's, they were upset with their own failure.

While running in the rain to the badminton courts last night, wearing only a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "go china/中国加油" and athletic shorts, I overheard two ladies talking. I only picked up a sentence as i passed. "one pair of pants just isnt enough, you have to wear two." Fall has arrived here. Day time temps are in the 50-60's and jackets, long pants, and longunderwear have come out. I am still sporting shorts, t-shirt, and sandals...

Our dorm caught on fire yesterday. Just a small fire, but enough to melt some serious amounts of plastic bathroom decor and fill the place with putrid burnt plastic smoke, and black ash. We are being told it was the fault of the the occupants of the room for leaving the bathroom exhaust fan on too long, causing it to catch on fire. That might be true..but exhaust fans are there to exhaust the perpetual sewer smell and thick moistness of the poorly plumbed plastic lined bathrooms. I am prone to think the fan had a little quality control problem. Either way, all is well and supposedly some fire investigators are coming to check all the bathrooms soon. By the way there are no smoke detectors or fire sprinklers, but there is a big fire hose on everyfloor. I think it was the burnt plastic smell that tipped someone off. Although I did here someone say they just someone was cooking in the kitchen. Plastique ala char.

There was an air raid siren test this morning. Either that or japan came back to reclaim a part of the continent.

Motivation

little bits of chinese wisdom are everywhere. some sound like wise sayings, others like rubbish. i am sure most have some basis in confucius, taoist, or buddhist teachings, and others are cultural beliefs or practices.

here are three, more to come later.

peaches care for people, apricots harm people, plums kill people. The meaning is eat more peaches.

Big round eyes are pretty eyes, for girls at least. This is a basic belief here and I have run up against it many times. However the other day in class while my teacher was talking about self encouragement, while saying people tell themselves they are pretty, she simultaneously used her fingers to spread her eyelids, thus creating the illusion of a big round eyes. now if you didnt know about the big eye thing, you might have though pretty meant something resembling a little kid making googely eyes.

Out of the same conversation i learned that many chinese, especially older chinese, have self encouragement sayings that they will write and hang of the walls of their house and say to themselves everyday. I immediately thought of those motivation posters, that I think are particular to business minded people. the posters with a photograph of a mountain or a forest. on the bottom is printed a word like "Determination" "It is the size of one's will which determines success." I think most of these posters are a joke, and some of them are.

But my teacher was very serious about this self encouragement phrase. Apparently there are lots of popular ones passed on by important people. I dont have a complete list of these phrases, but things like "hard work can overcome all problems" or "From where there is no hope, find hope" are common. She was also very surprised that I did not have a phrase of my own. 'if i dont have a phrase, what motivates me?' I replied, 'I just am motivated, i didnt know people needed phrases to be motivated. ' Who knows I could just wake up one day with no motivation and need a phrase.

Whats your phrase?

Return from the south

I am back. If you didnt know I was gone, i was for about 10 days. Which did follow about two weeks of a ferocious chinese cold. So am I am back in more than one way.

I spend the last 10 days in Changsha, Hunan and Chengdu, Sichuan. Both are possible cities for my next semester here in china. I went to scope them out, as well as get a taste of southern/central china. Both cites were great, especially compared to Ha'erbin. I also got a good taste of strange mandarin accents. I met several people who spoke utterly impossible for me to understand chinese dialects. Luckily everyone understood whatever I said using my 'standard' chinese. Luckily most of the people spoke some standard chinese, or something close to it.

Changsha was a nice enough city, although fairly characterless, unless you call shopping a character trait. It is a provincial capital which makes it big, similar to harbin with an ambiguous population estimate of 4 million. I rode a bus for an hour and didnt get but halfway across the city. That being said, it was far more enjoyable than Ha'erbin, more of a relaxed feeling, less traffic, smaller roads, and fewer soulless concrete massifs. There were tree lined streets, cozy little restaurants and friendly people abound. There were also several rather large and very nice public parks. Most importantly there was a 2000+year old mummy chinese lady preserved in vinegar. Preserved with her, although not in vinegar, were lots of neat artifacts, including some of the most intricate silk clothing i have seen.

From Changsha, I took an overday-overnight train to chengdu. 11am-8am. Got to see lots and lots of farmland. The only things that interrupted the farmland in the over 600 miles between the two cities were tunnels and other cities. Arriving in chengdu I was met by a representative of the hostel that resembled a member of the gorillaz, the small one with the shifty eyes. Got settled in the hostel then walked down the street to find a small place cranking out the breakfast fair, enormous steamed dumplings dripping with sweet msg laden oil and tasty goodness.

The highlights of Chengdu were the tea gardens, especially at the Taoist temple. I think I spent about 3 hours either at the temple or chatting up 80+ year old retired professors and various other retirees all the whilst sipping delicious jasmine tea. I also managed to venture out of the city to see the world's largest/tallest buddha. I didnt even know the thing existed until the day before I got on the bus to go see it. It was enormous, but even more impressive was its location on a cliff overlooking the convergence of three rivers. There were plenty of other smaller buddhas in the vicinity and swarms of chinese tourists. I had lunch at fishing village nearby. Just after starting to eat I was approached by smiling chinese guy. He asked if I wanted to joing him and his wife and told me he want to treat me to lunch with him and the three large fish he had ordered. I gladly accepted. I ordered some pretty good food, especially this dish of stir-fried green onions and bacon. The fish was really good too. Although only a short while before I had witnessed the fish removed from its bucket and then swung by a rope against the stone floor a few times to kill it. I talked about chinese life, improving quality of life, travel, chinese liquor, and toasted warm beer to warm welcomes to china. By the end of the meal the couple invited me to go with them to a near by scenic buddhist mountain (12000ft) for the weekend and to come visit them in their town. I had a catch a plane back to ha'erbin the next day, regretfully, I had to refuse both generous offers. Although we did exchange contact info for when I do return to sichuan.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/chengdu

Eastern Russia

so i was just playing translator for the dorm staff and some newly arrived russians. the russians didnt speak chinese and the dorm staff sure doesnt speak russian. they speak a little english, but mostly just a few nouns scattered amidst some chinese. turns out the russians dont really speak much english either. even basic slow english was not working too well. either way, after the exchange, i was talking to the dorm staff about all the new students arriving and i mentioned that the russians didnt really understand what i told them in english. she was astounded and said something along the lines of I thought english was the international language that everyone understood. I need to practice my english. I guess russia gets excluded from the international sphere, or at least eastern russia.

there are some pretty interesting stereotypes/prejudices against eastern russians here. Most of them stem from a belief that they are too dumb and lazy to help themselves. Apparently, the situation is quite bad right across the border. I can vouch for the validity of the story, but i talked to a local who had been to visit some cities in eastern russia. they said tomatoes were $5US and potatoes were $1US each. They also said all the russians wanted to buy his 20cent lighter because they couldnt buy lighters in russia.

from another perspective, one of my teachers believes the russians that come study chinese are rather smart, but dont apply themselves.

olympic regulations

this is a bit outdated now, but still interesting. I was reading about the olympics and came upon a list of regulations for behavior while attending events. Most of it was pretty straight forward like no bombs, knives, other weapons, poisonous gases, etc. Some was a little more amusing. Drunken belligerence is banned. as is streaking, disturbing events and breaking laws.

I was also reading and talking to people about behavior suggestions/ codes beijing residents may have or may not have received or been able to watch on tv/ listen to on the radio. Included in this list were going shirtless for men (pretty common especially in the summer, although not as common as the roll-the-shirt-up-over-belly move), spitting, and wearing your pajamas outside.

Olympics!

I return from the capital and hustle and bustle. I had forgotten just how big Beijing is. It is big. Comparable to LA in terms of population, but size, I dont know. Using public transport it is enormous. Consider riding public transport for multiple hours every day and always ending up somewhere different. You could ride to subway for a hour in any direction and not reach the end. One day I started from the center of the city, rode the subway for a hour, then transfered to a bus for half hour before finally reaching my destination on the third ring road. There are six ring roads. The diameter of the 4,5,6 and ring roads must be immense.

Beijing was much the same, except there was noticeable crowding. It was hard to differentiate the normal summer tourism crowding and Olympic crowding. There were people everywhere. Since I was there last three new subway lines have opened, and they are all packed. It didnt help that half of the private cars were prevented from driving to reduce beijing's air pollution. Beijing Air,
Harmful Air

It was pretty and relaxing to take a break from Ha'erbin and chinese class. Attending track and field was exciting. The crowd was mostly chinese and there were a surprising number of Empty Seats. In the stands I was asked to pose with some little chinese boy for a picture. The same little boy a little latter was instructed by his mother to retrieve a coke bottle from under my seat and then urinate in it. I guess she wasnt willing to take him to the restroom.

The olympic park is enormous. It took a good half hour to walk from the front gate to the rear gate and the beginning of the forest park. When I go back to beijing in a week I will explore the forest park. I cant help but wonder, what will become of the olympic park when the olympics are done. Right now it is just very wide two mile paved swath of land with a few buildings here and there. I assume there is a massive underground complex of offices and facilities, as I saw many barricaded staircases. We will see later this year on another trip. By the way have Beijing and the Friendlies welcomed you yet? Beijing Welcomes You

So I am not alone in being disappointed with CCTV's coverage of the olympics. Here is a piece that explains some of vexations in prettier language. NBC vs CCTV

In other news, I have a week of classes left. Just enough time for midterms, and then a 10day vacation to the south. On the 29th I leave for Changsha via beijing and eventual end up in Chengdu. Back in harbin on the 8th. Going to explore and check out possible locations for next semester.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/olympic

Olympics TV

I want to know what the Olympic coverage is like in the states, or other countries. Are most of the events broadcast, are the highlights and stats? Do the broadcasts focus on the US teams? What is the commentary like?

Olympic coverage here is interesting. All coverage is provided by the state run CCTV (Chinese Central TV station). There are about 4 separate CCTV channels broadcasting Olympic coverage of some sort and several others not. One channel was even renamed from CCTV 5 to CCTV Olympics.

Chinese events, especially potential Chinese gold medal events are the main focus. What else would you expect. Gold medal replays are frequent, repetitive, and glorious. I bet you havent seen the three women's weightlifting gold medalists lifting their final weight over 30 times. I have. I have seen more slow motion jumping and running replays of the young Chinese gymnastic team than I want. I keep going down the list of the 17+ gold medals china has already won. There is great pride in the athletes, and there should be. The Chinese athletes have done
very well thus far.

The sporting commentary is not what I remember from watching in the states. The Chinese commentators are very critical of the foreign athletes. They might me critical of the Chinese athletes as well, but the only events I have seen broadcast have all resulted Chinese gold
medals and nothing but praise for the outstanding performance of the Chinese athletes. Is it like this in the US as well? I dont remember as much critical commentary. There lots of comments on form, style, execution, balance, strength, coordination....and on and on. The commentary for last night's China vs. Austria pingpong was particularly critical of the Austrian's form and style. The Austrian lost.

I am off in a few hours for the heart of china. I expect to find it beautiful, clean, full of foreigners, and helpful Chinese youth dressed in blue.

olympics

I am going. This friday night we board the train for beijing. Got three big days in the city and one precious ticket to see the 110m hurdles first round including the chinese Liu Xiang and American Terrence Trammell. An extremely kind former coworker gifted me the tickets he was unable to use.

Its pretty excited, not only to escape the drear of chinese class and harbin, but also to go back to beijing. i want to see first hand what has changed over the past two years and what all this talk about beijing putting on a false face is all about. There have been several reports in the western news about beijing walling off areas of the city, erecting fences, tearing down neighborhoods, building false tourist attractions, etc. Now we get to see what is true.

When I was last in beijing in 2006, they had begun work on the olympic facilities but there weren't many noticeable changes. Full report to come next week.

Things Ｉ dont yet understand

Plastic bottle collecting.

There are numerous people scouring the campus daily in search of plastic bottles. They collect them and sell them. Reports of how much they are worth vary between $0.01 and $0.07 per bottle. I have no idea how many bottles one might collect in a day, but it is apparently worth it and the competition with other collectors is fierce. It is not uncommon if you are carrying a half full bottle to be approached or chased by a bottle collector requesting you finish it and give them the empty bottle.

High heels everywhere.

I know most of the chinese women are short, and apparently taller is better. I still dont understand walking around this campus in high heels daily. I have heard it is hard to walk in high heels. The natural difficulty combined with the array of uneven awkward surfaces around campus seems to make the daily life for the high heeled precarious if not dangerous. I have yet to see anyone fall, but have seen some impressive blisters.

Clarification

I dont actually eat bugs all the time.
Only sometimes and entirely by choice. Uncooked insects are rather abundant. Culinary cooked bugs are actually rare in harbin, although, I have heard they are more popular in the south. That will have to wait.

Food is not that interesting, as most of my meals on the the cafeteria. I eat out at local restaurants for most dinners. Restaurants are very prevalent, as regular chinese people eat out frequently.

Breakfast can be anything from steamed dumplings with fennel stalk or pork filling, plain steamed buns, fried buns with pork cabbage filling, corn pancakes fried in oil, donut like things dripping with oil (you tiao，油条), milk, soy milk, rice porridge, hard boiled eggs, fried eggs, and pickled vegetables.

Lunch and dinner blend together. Mostly assortments of stir fried vegetables and meats. Standard vegies plus lots of chinese cabbage and eggplant. Meats are either stir fried with some veggies or fried with their own sauce and maybe a light breading. There are also boiled dumplings, fried rice, noodle soups and fried noodles. And Rice, lots of white fluffy rice.

There is alot of oil involved with most food.

Currently it is watermelon season, so most dinners are followed with a trip to the watermelon pile to buy a half watermelon. About 5lbs for $0.75. Did i mention food is cheap? If I eat 3 meals at the cafeteria, probably spend $2 a day. If i go for the plain stuff and gorge on rice, $1.50.

What is china? What is america?

Rather relative and not any one thing. Today's topic for class was what best represented China and the US. We came up with a quite an impressive list.

China:

• Panda
• Jackie Chan
• Kung Fu
• Manufacturing ('Factory of the World')
• China Shipping containers
• Tea
• Calligraphy
• Great Wall
• Silk
• Chinese Opera

US

• Efficient
• Democratic
• Equality
• Self Importance
• Arrogance
• Freedom
• Money
• Modernity
• Hollywood
• McDonalds, KFC, Nike, Coke

I cant say I agree with either list. Actually the whole activity of making lists to represent countries is rather disagreeable. I just want to argue with each item, argue that a list couldnt ever hope to even come close to accurately representing a country, let alone a city. But I have to play along in class.

Friday I get to give an oral report on what represents chinese culture. I give oral reports daily, and dislike them. I dislike them because I feel limited by the rather simple and often binary prompts. Like "is a large national population a good thing or a bad thing?" I begin most of my reports with, its not a question of good or bad. There are advantages and disadvantages to both sizes and there are sizes in the middle. Then go on to give some examples. In the population report, I talked about per capita natural resources, carrying capacity, and agricultural output's dependency on oil(or rather, how oil has allowed us to exceed the natural carrying capacity). I think pomona might have influenced my responses.


I went for a walk the other day and here are the results.
http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/archy

I have been adding photos to existing albums rather than creating new albums. So expect the archy, strange things, chongzi, and soon to be 'sheng huo' albums to get new photos regularly.

Olympics in the news

The olympics is in the news here everyday. On TV and in the papers its all 'ow un whey'

Most of the stuff on tv and in the news is pretty rosy.

Finally some real american investigative reporting.

http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=aqNaAU2vXlI#

Dinner and another day exploring

I went out exploring again yesterday. This time to one of the shopping districts for a more thorough investigation. What I had before thought was a mediocre pedestrian underpass lined with clothing vendors/stores turns out to be a vast underground city jammed packed with women's clothing, women, and the occasional mens clothing or leather jacket stall. I spent about an hour wandering around in search of a t-shirt vendor in hopes of purchasing some chinglish keepers to no avail. When I emerged it was still daylight and I was very far from where I started. After finding my bearings, I reentered the labyrinth the the intent of underpassing a large intersection. I emerged a few minutes later further away from the intersection, but on a different wrong side. I normally dont have trouble with directions or navigating, but the womens clothing underground city is packed and very confusing, as every hallway looks the same, and there are many turns, twists and strange stairs. After a second attempt I made my way under the intersection.

On my way home I found a "tasty dog" restaurant and a dumpling restaurant which will be explored in the coming week.

Last night was the final dinner for the students on the summer program. They one week of exams left, then they return to the states leaving tony and I here until the new crop arrives in September. Dinner was an all you can eat hotel buffet, not that interesting, nor that tasty. I did get to eat something labeled as 'quail' and some silk worms. The 'quail' was a small bird no bigger than a baseball cooked whole. After the dinner we(3 americans and 3 chinese) went exploring harbin we found some super fun exercise machines and some more insects to eat. Conversations were varied, but topics included remote sensing, public displays of affection, long distance relationships, the 2005 benzine spill (nytimes,iht, bbc, wikipedia) racial discrimination in the US, obama, and homosexuality in the US. Overall it was really interesting talking the the chinese students and getting insights into chinese perceptions.

For example, one student mentioned that in the interview process to be a roommate with one of the american students he was asked whether he minded living with a a gay american. He didnt mention his response, but he did say, before that interview he had never thought about the possibility of sharing a room with a gay man. Homosexuality isnt visible in china. This student said he had never met a gay man and asked if we americans had. Thats sort of a strange question. My college had a queer resource center, complete with a director, student staff, and numorous 'mentors' to assist incoming students integrate with the queer community and explore their queer identity. Of course I had met some gay guys, they are a large contingent of metropolitan american cities. There are even tv shows based on not much more than being gay and living in a city.

I should probably mention that the program here has a language pledge. It wasnt a big deal, i just scratched my name at the bottom of a page with some rules one it. Either way, all of my interactions are in chinese, whether they be with the other american students or the chinese students. The chinese students signed a similar pledge promising not to speak english with us. My chinese is improving. Remote sensing is a pretty advanced topic to be talking about in chinese, at least i think so.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/Food

Bank Confusions

I have been trying to get a wire transfer setup from the US to my chinese bank account for the last two weeks. I started by strolling into the bank of china and setting up a bank account. It was an easy painless process, although strange. I had to create a 6 digit pin and enter it about 40 times throughout the account opening process. After the account was open I asked for the wire transfer numbers. I was supplied with one number, an address, and my acc number.
Before I left the states, I had called the US bank and asked what I needed to do to wire money. I needed my acc number, a routing number, and the wire transfer code. I was a bit suspicious when I got an address instead of a routing number. Bear in mind all conversations concerning my account are in chinese. So when I got the transfer info with an address instead of a routing number, I questioned the teller and was assured that the address was sufficient. I thanked the teller and left.

The next morning at 6am I called up the US bank to catch them before closing and setup the wire transfer. I was politely informed that the wire transfer desk closed at 130pm and it was now 3pm. That night at midnight I called up the US bank and attempted to setup the wire transfer. I provided the bank with the information from the bank of china, acc number, wire code, and address. I was told I needed a routing number. I said they dont have a routing number, they use their address instead. No good. I called up bank of china customer service and asked to speak with an english speaking rep. The english rep didnt really 'speak' english. She said some things in english and then waited for a select list of memorized responses or questions. My query was not on her list and she was utterly confused. The conversation resembled one you might have had with a computer.

Please say your name
me
I am sorry I couldnt understand you. did you say justin?
no
please say your name
me
I am sorry I couldnt hear you.
me
did you say johnson?
no
Please speak your selection 1 for acc summary, 2 for ....
customer service
Transferring you to loans and credit
no!
If you would like a car loan say car loan, if you would like a rate quote...
No, Customer service....

After about 10 minutes of trying to explain what a routing number was, I hung up and called again, this time speaking to a chinese rep. Still failing to both explain what a routing number or obtain one. The chinese rep, just as the teller had done, assured me that only the address was needed and that she had no idea what a routing number was.

The next day I returned to the bank of china branch and again failed at obtaining a routing number. At midnight I called the US bank and again tried to explain that routing numbers were unavailable and wire transfers in china only use addresses. Still unable to wire money, the rep said they would have a manager call me back with info on how to transfer money without a routing number. Progress! I got a message two days later telling me to provide the bank with my account number, wire code, and routing number. Failure!

That night I called the bank of china, ny branch office and talked to someone who not only spoke and understood english, but also knew what a routing number was and gave me one. Finally real progress. I called the US bank and gave them all the info. Wire transfer on the way.

A couple days later the bank of china calls my cell phone and tells me (in chinese) they have received a wire transfer with my account number, but the name on the wire transfer does not match the name on my account. The wire transfer is for a me cxxxx. not a me axxxx cxxxx like my account. I explain that in the us, middle names are not important, and that my us bank doesnt even know my middle name. She doesnt buy it, and says the bank of china cannot accept the transfer. I guess this is some sort of international anti-money laundering/illegal transfer protection.

That night I call up the US bank and relay my conversation with the bank of china. The rep says they used whatever name was on my account and that i would need to come in to add my middle name, or fill out some paper work and mail it back to them. I elect for the paperwork option, and resign myself to not getting a wire transfer anytime in the next month. After I hang up, out of curiosity i check my account online. Magically it has my middle name listed. I immediately call back and get the same rep. I tell her my middle name is on the account and ask why it wasnt included on the wire transfer. She says middle names are not used, unless the customer specifically requests it. How was I to know? After speaking with a manager, the bank agrees to send out a new wire transfer with my full name at no additional charge as soon as the old one comes back. So now I wait for the new transfer to come through. Maybe next week, the bank of china said it might take 2 weeks to clear once they receive it. Banks are fun.

Other options for setting up a chinese bank account include things like going to the atm every day drawing the max, then carrying the wad across the street to the bank office and depositing it. I could also use travelers checks or western union and go downtown to the main office, trade the paper for US dollars, then goto another bank and convert the money to RMB, then go and wait in an enormous line to deposit it, or come back across town with the wad and deposit it my local bank after waiting in a much smaller line.