South

Way past due for another post, isn't it? If everything works out, I'll be posting a few in the next couple weeks. I've been writing occasionally on the subway two and from wherever, basically any time I don't have my laptop readily available.

In the meantime, I'm in the midst of packing my way out of my room here in preparation for two weeks in Southern China. From my vantage point across the room, I can't see anything but grey skies, so I'm glad to be getting on the road just now. I suspect I'll have more to write about there as well. 

That'll be it for now. Just letting you know I haven't yet dropped off the face of the Earth.

Chinese Lesson

Chinese lesson:
我要雪碧
wǒ yào xuěbì
我要学屄
wǒ yào xuébī


The first of these means, "I want Sprite." The latter means "I want to study vagina" (a pretty vulgar way to say it, at that). I don't recommend mixing these up, especially not around gutter-minded shopkeeps.

Mutton

So after a few days of my roommate Jared talking up a place he mysteriously only referred to as "the yangrou place" (羊肉, or yángròu, literally means sheep meat, or mutton), I finally consented last night to indulge his borderline obsession. We had attempted to find the place earlier in the day, but while walking along a side road of restaurants, Jared (again mysteriously*) declared that they "didn't seem to be here". How can a place not be at the place it is supposed to be?


*I'm afraid I'm mis-characterizing Jared here as a man of mystery and bizarre culinary obsessions (he also took exception to my earlier suggestion that he is kind of sleepy, but has done little to dispel this notion). Despite his erstwhile Ahab-like fixation on finding Chinese KFC (analysis: disappointing) early in September, I admit that neither of these adjectives really fit. I would probably use other, less sinister and more positive modifiers, but this is neither the time nor place to sing praises to either of my roommates Jared and Mark learnèd as they may be.


When our band of four arrived at the place, I understood fairly quickly. The 'yangrou place' consists of a husband and wife with a grill, loads of coals, food, and a bicycle. It is entirely outside, on what is ambiguously either a sidewalk or a parking lot. When we arrived, the wife took out four small stools, arranged them in a circle, and placed a small coal grill in the middle of our circle. We ordered several dozen skewers of mutton (by American kebab standards, these were fairly small, so we are talking about a smallish meal for four) and several slices of what would only be described as Chinese garlic bread.


At Jared's urging, I took an opportunity between waves of skewers to ask the man manning the grill about himself. I've found that in Beijing, the order in which you ask personal questions is fairly important. The primary rule that the first question should never be "Where are you from?". I previously mentioned the hukou (户口, or residence cards) system, in which you are assigned social services according to your residence (or in practice, your place of birth). Between the CCP's goal for China to provide for 90-95% of its own agricultural needs and previous Mao-era agricultural disasters, the CCP is fairly paranoid about mass migration from the agricultural sector (it also prevents the urban social security system from becoming over-burdened). By making it particularly difficult to receive an urban hukou, theoretically there should be more farmers and more agricultural production, although enforcement of the system has dropped over time (which isn't to say that it goes entirely unenforced, hence the skittishness about the question "Where are you from?").


In fact, I had heard that these particular mutton-grillers had, on one occasion, heard a police car was coming and simply picked up their grill - coals and all - and ran out of sight (returning as soon as the police left). I've heard other stories about entire streets with vendors scrambling to clear out with all of their wares, so a couple running around carrying a still-burning grill off into the dark doesn't seem so far-fetched. So instead I started with my favorite, "Do you have a kid?" Skipping the embarrassing "How many kids do you have?" question (remember: One Child Policy), I found out that they had a daughter who was married and eighteen years old (I think they tried to tell us what she or her husband did for work, but I didn't understand). She and the rest of their family lived in Anhui province (mid-east China, just one province away from the coast). Finally, I figured out that they had been in Beijing for just two years. After this we blathered a bit about Huang Shan (黄山/ Mount Huang/ Yellow Mountain), which is to say they spoke fondly of it and I rambled incoherently about my desire to see it. Getting this far without horrible communication missteps, I returned satisfied to my meal. When we finished, they thanked us and we promised we would return.

Mike gambles for electronic goods

Bought a camera last week. If you know anything about China's consumer electronics market, you'll know this was a potentially disastrous move. Beijing's electronics markets cover every shade of gray, from the perfectly legitimate to the absolutely illegal. I can tell you now that I am 99% sure my mission was a success, I am now the proud owner of what is almost certainly a Sony CyberShot DSC-T99C.

Some context: in my preparations to go to China, my camera was something of an afterthought (as were most things, I guess). When I was packing, I discovered that my old camera was entirely uncooperative (it seemed to want to do nothing but reminisce on old photographs, entirely unwilling to change settings and make new ones). I was also about to go to the Great Wall, so it seemed like a reasonable to to get one.

I bought my camera in Zhongguancun, the nearby electronics district (I originally planned to go out to Wukesong Camera City, but one of the program professors advised against it due to the bait-and-switch tactics employed there). So I walked into the Dinghao electronics building (pictured below) expecting a fairly similar experience to the other shopping malls I've seen in China - smaller, more vertical, more specialized versions of American malls. This was not Dinghao. In Dinghao, people rent out a single stall that is maybe 15-20 square feet and specialize in one good (often in one brand). This makes finding what you want extremely difficult, as various stores seem to aim to be as far from their competition as possible, with the exception of computer part vendors in the basement who all seemed rather tech-savvy and probably got along quite well (I may be reading too much into this organization scheme, but the camera shops seemed few and far between).

Eventually, I made my way to a larger camera store (about the size of my down room) on an upper level which carried one of the models I was looking for. I suspect I paid a slight premium for buying from an actual, enclosed (if informal by American standards) store, but I wanted to be able to concentrate while I carried out this operation. I ask one of the half-dozen people mulling to set a price to my desired camera, and after conferring with a compatriot, he tells me it is 2050元 ($306). I reply that I saw the same camera on the internet for 1780元 ($266) (a classic bartering technique (though in this case, I wasn't lying, I just my research)). He makes a quick phone call, turns to me smiling, and we have this disastrous conversation (translated from Chinese):

Him: Black or green? (cleverly implying that he has accepted my price without explicitly admitting my victory)
Me: Black or green?
Him: Right, black or green.
Me: Black or green... Black or green means what?
He becomes flustered, thinks for a second, and - in English - yells: BLACK!

I understand, and ask for the black one. I revert to mostly pantomiming for the rest of out conversation, until another of the mulling-abouters start asking me question about my Chinese studies, which I mostly failed to answer in my flustered state. She also (I think) joked with the other people sitting about about foreigners and their fondness for the verb一verb construction (ex. 看一看 or kan yi kan, meaning 'to have a quick look' as opposed to 'to look'). She conspicuously did not compliment me on my Chinese, which was refreshingly honest of her (the other day a man complimented me on my Chinese after I merely asked him how much the popsicle I was holding cost - the Chinese are usually eager to compliment you on learning their language). All the meanwhile, the man handling my camera was showing me how it worked, applying a protective film to the screen, showing me the original battery and charger were still in the box, etc. When the time came to pay, the man wrote on something check-shaped and handed it to me. I proceeded to spend several minutes asking (in Chinese), "Do I have to write anything on this?". He attempted and explanation a couple times until we became mutually frustrated and I decided to ignore the mystery paper. I handed him 1800元 in cash and he handed me my 20元 change, wrote something on the paper, put it in my bag with the camera (so apparently I was dealing with a receipt here). At this point I went on my merry way.

So all in all -  a while lot of confusion, embarrassment, and a 270元 ($40) discount on a almost certainly real camera. Not bad.

Exposition

Two weeks and no more posts? To be honest, the problem has been both an unwillingness to sit down and write, coupled with an unwillingness to stop writing once I start (consider this your warning: this one is going to be a little lengthy). So let's get this show on the road.

Starting things off, a list of places I've been:

Incheon, Korea - Rainy (due to incoming typhoon). Folks were very nice, and English was everywhere (which was kind of disappointing, I was looking forward to being hopelessly lost). I watched a Korean TV program teaching English, and walked away no better at Korean, but confident in my ability to order "the chicken, to go" at an Anglophone restaurant.

Peking University - If in the future I say "Beida", this is what I mean (Beida = Beijing Daxue = Peking University). The campus is quite a bit larger than my native AU and is impressively green, considering the rest of Beijing. I have already befriended a woman who minds an outside convenience store here. My dorm room (which is more of a lived-in hotel room analogue) has become something of a common area for other people in my program, due to our frequently-open door, two wireless routers*, and natural charm. I suspect my roommate Jared's naps are partly designed to signal others to stay away (or he is just a sleepy guy). *One said router is a picture frame-router combo, so naturally I installed a postcard of the good Chairman Mao (I have since learned that Chinese opinion toward Mao is around 50-50 right now, whereas Zhou Enlai is nearly unanimously loved, but where the hell am I going to get a postcard of Uncle Zhou?).

Tiananmen Square (part 1) - I went there the same day I made it to Beijing. Me and the people I was with got surrounded by about 30 students from Harbin who were fascinated by our ability to speak rudimentary Chinese (or our blonde hair).

Wudaokou - This is a big area for foreigners, especially nightlife. We got sent off to eat pizza with our orientation groups, and the Americanness of the whole experience was disorienting. I prefer the night-market outside here, because haggling is sort of fun. I haven't had many opportunities, but I did manage to get 33% off something (or about $2 off). Inevitably the fact that I'm a foreigner gets mentioned, either to let me know I'm getting the same price as a Chinese person, or in flustered (non-offensive) non-sequitur.

Ikea - Chinese Ikea is exactly like in America except cheaper and the restaurant has live music covering American songs.

A Hutong - I'm not entirely sure what constitutes a hutong at this point, but in effect it's a series of small, densely packed homes with narrow alleys (preliminary research indicates they're more like large, re-purposed homes?). I'll give a better explanation at a later point, I'm sure. I followed one of my professors (a British expat) on a tour group through one of these to get some food. The food ranged from good to deliberately strange (gelatinized chicken blood, intestines, etc.). Naturally I was obliged to make a spectacle of myself by eating as much of the latter category as possible.

The Forbidden City/Tiananmen Square (part 2) - The Forbidden City is huge. The Forbidden City is a wonderful place to take pictures. The Forbidden City is the perfect place for a kung fu showdown. It's also fairly touristy, but that is a-okay.

Some other observations/ fun facts:
-It's kind of absurd how inexpensive everything is here. I'm afraid I'm adopting a thoroughly American sense of consumerism here (although I'm sure when I get back, paying even $5 for a meal is going to be a little painful).
-It's amazing how much English the Chinese know. I have often found myself asking for directions in Chinese and getting a response in English. It's a little disorienting, but somewhat wonderful.
-I've already developed a cautious appreciation for Chinese traffic custom. Bikes, cars, and pedestrians all go whenever they think it's safe, which leads to dicey situations, but bikes and cars are also sensible enough to move around pedestrians. I wouldn't call the system better than American traffic laws, but I would call it  "better-suited for people who are really impatient" and "more exciting".
-I've been told most of the 'police' in Beijing are really just private security. The only people I've managed to positively identify as police are the folks in uniform around Tiananmen (as well as a few very conspicuous plain-clothes cops, probably there as a reminder that there may be other, less conspicuous plain-clothes cops).
-I've also been told that because of the hukou (residence card) system, the population of Beijing may secretly be around 40 million (if that's true, then there are more Beijingers than Canadians). The main point of the residence card (as far as I've been able to tell) is determining what sort of social services you're entitled to, so it's possible to live in a city with a rural residence card (it's extremely difficult to get an urban hukou if you weren't born in a city). Plenty of so-called migrant workers are really just country-folk who set up in Beijing and other cities full-time, but don't manage to get residence cards.

Alright, that's all for now. In the future there may be photos, depending on how soon I can acquire a working camera/co-opt the photographs of others.

Greetings.

My name is Mike. I'm studying abroad in China. This is my blog.

If you're reading this, you already know me, and so I can probably skip the exposition. I'll also save you the meta-commentary on blogging so that we can get to the important stuff (me).

I'm writing this in Dulles International (though we'll see if I manage to connect to the internet here), and I'm surrounded by Koreans. Ahead of me is a sixteen(ish?) hour flight and a twenty-hour layover in Seoul before I finally make it to Beijing because SOMEONE (me) decided that twenty hours in Seoul would be fun and not a horrible nuisance.

I'm cutting this one off here for three reasons: 1. Boarding is in fifteen minutes, which is about how long it takes to enjoy a sandwich, and I have a wonderful sandwich my mom packed for me. 2. I want to get this post out before arriving in Beijing so I can post this out on Facebook (which I am told is one of the internet Mongols kept out by the Great Firewall). 3. I haven't even made it to China and I'm supposed to say something interesting? No sir.

In the meantime, you should read friends of mine who have way better study abroad blogs than me:
http://vamosaitam.blogspot.com/ (Carlo Burriesci, in the land of Montezuma)
http://atathakr.blogspot.com/ (Andrew Daly, in the land of the pharoahs)
http://thoughtsandstoriesfromkenya.blogspot.com/ (Peter Glover, in the land of recent constitutional referenda (Kenya))