365 Days of Chinese

Taiwan: Almost Paradise

When I moved to Beijing last summer, I lived with a Taiwanese girl for a month, and we often discussed the differences between Taiwan and Beijing and what she liked and disliked about both. She had a very objective perspective that I found insightful. 

One thing that stood out to me was that she felt Beijing is far more international and open to the world than Taipei. I would have assumed the opposite. She felt most of her friends would never leave Taiwan, had no desire to leave, and never even watched international news.

On the other hand, she complained constantly about what she viewed as a fundamental lack of manners and sanitation in Beijing.

She had a long list of the advantages and disadvantages of both places, but suffice it to say that there are good points and bad points about both areas in her "expert" view.

I have a couple friends in Taiwan at the moment and they've both described it as "China without any of the stuff you hate." One friend recently sent me the above photos of the world's most glorious bowl of noodles to prove to me that Taiwan is indeed Almost Paradise. She has also sent me a couple photos of the ducks and turtles living peacefully in a lake she passes on her way to class every day.

I've heard so much about Taiwan over the last several months that I've decided to go investigate for myself during the upcoming Spring Festival with my old friend Phil from the IUP summer session.

Taiwan, prepare yourself. 

Christmas in China

2014 was the first time I missed Christmas in the States. I lived in China for almost three years from 2010 to 2012, but I flew back for Christmas every year.

Fortunately, a fine young gentleman I grew up with in Barre, Vermont has been living in Beijing for several years and manages one of the best bars in town: The Brick. They had a private potluck Christmas party complete with a full menu of hot cocktails. I drank Hot Toddys (Toddies?) until my face was flushed and my eyelids drooped in blissful Christmas satisfaction.

At the end of every term at IUP, every student needs to give a formal presentation (演讲) in Chinese, with or without PowerPoint, on a topic of their choice. This term, I chose to do my presentation on America's role in the Dioayu/Senkaku Island issue in the East China Sea. I've copied it below for your viewing pleasure. I'm sure it still has many errors despite a couple edits, but hey it's in Chinese, cut me some slack.

酒入舍出

A friend shared with me a funny story she read in 古文 (classical Chinese) class. I've never studied classical Chinese, but the gist of the story according to her is that a high-brow gentleman invites another high-brow gentleman into his home, but gentleman #2 is late. This offends gentleman #1, but he remains polite and pours his guest a glass of wine -- which gentleman #2 proceeds to spill all over the floor...

So gentleman #1, unsurprisingly, becomes quite upset and expresses his outrage with something to the effect of: "First you come late, then you spill my wine?" To which gentleman #2 responds that he has spilled the wine on purpose because he has heard that 酒入舍出 -- "When the wine goes in, the tongue comes out."

Catholicism Meets Patriarchy

Here's something interesting from my trip to Yunnan in October that I never posted. We spent a couple nights in a small village in Yunnan called Cizhong. Apparently, French missionaries spent decades trying to Christianize the rural populations in this region, and Catholic churches are now scattered around the area, some remarkably old.

A few murdered priests and burned churches later, the Christianizing efforts seemed to have paid off, with many locals now attending church regularly.

I shed all notions of religion long ago, but I did attend Catholic school for a number of years when I was a young lad, so I know a thing or two about how Catholics worship their god. This is why my eyebrows scrunched my forehead all the way up to the very high ceiling when we entered one of the local churches.

One of the first things that caught my eye was a very typical statue of the Virgin Mary in a very typical pose, with a very typical depiction of her holding baby Jesus in her arms just underneath.

Except... something wasn't right. As I approached, I realized the Vrigin Mary had a beard. Because she wasn't the Virgin Mary at all. She was Joseph, the "adopted" father of Jesus. There, in front of me, after nine years in Catholic school, was the first and only time I've ever seen Mary swapped for Joseph in this way.

Yummy Yummy in my Tummy: China's Gutter Oil

The above photos were taken in Beijing's 五道口 Wudaokou neighborhood by a friend as she was walking back to her apartment just last night.

This is a woman collecting together what is commonly called "gutter oil" in English, or digouyou 地沟油 in Chinese, which is illegally "recycled" oil collected from... well, just about anywhere collectors think they might be able to scrape some up, including street gutters and sewage deposits (yes, seriously).

They then boil up the slop, extract the oily goodness hidden inside, and finally sell the "finished product" to restaurants and street cart food vendors at super low prices. The abomination ultimately ends up in your tummy when you eat at sketchy hole-in-the-wall places or buy some gloopy mystery meat from a shady chuan'er guy on the street.

The Chinese government estimates that about 10% of oil sold in the food industry in China is gutter oil (see below video). Obviously they're making efforts to shut down this trade, but as you can see in the photos above, it persists.

No need to cancel your flight to China, however. You can generally assume franchise restaurants and visibly "nice" places won't be stooping so low to save money. They're smart enough to not risk their reputation -- and their business license -- for relatively marginal profit gains. But since most street vendors are unlicensed across the board and are selling their "food" at rock-bottom prices to stay in business, they're a bit less apt to care.

For those with a strong stomach:

They all look the same to me...

Lovers of Corporate America will know that when Starbucks gets busy, employees ask each patron their name and write it on the respective cup in order to avoid drink mix-ups amidst the chaos of capitalist consumption.

My friend went to a Starbucks in Hainan in southern China and, instead of writing her name on the cup, an employee decided "外国" -- which in this case I would translate as "foreigner" -- was enough of an identifier. 

I don't think I need to elaborate on this... A picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

The Infamous Chengguan

I think it's safe to say that most Chinese people consider the Chengguan 城管 ("City Management" officials) to be the scum of the earth. Countless stories have been published about their reported brutality, violence, corruption, and general shittyness at even remotely resembling decent human beings.

The Chengguan are basically quasi-cops tasked by local governments with enforcing petty laws. In the pictures I've posted above (which I took at the Wudaokou 五道口 subway station in Beijing), you can see a large group of Chengguan presumably asking some street vendors whether they have the proper licenses to sell things.

In the vast majority of these cases, street vendors are unlicensed, so they tend to quickly pack up their wares and run like the devil when they see the Chengguan approaching.

In this case, a poor soul was caught. I use this word because you can clearly see two Chengguan officials holding the woman's bike handles, and another official speaking to her with what I would describe as defensive body language.

You can also see a group of Chengguan in the back inspecting the contents of a vendor's table.

Yunnan had a 5.8 magnitude earthquake about a month before I arrived during my fall break. I considered canceling my trip, but I was told the hotels I booked were OK, and by the time I was traveling, most of the roads had been cleared.

But the damage was obvious throughout my stay. I'm not much of a picture-taker, so I don't have any evidence of the buried bridges, collapsed houses, and cars and trucks crushed by falling stones, but I remember them all clearly. I actually stayed in Benzilan, just at the epicenter of the quake. Most of the residents were staying in blue government-provided relief tents, and I was told they were awaiting relief compensation from the government in order to repair their damaged homes and business. According to the link above, over 55,000 structures were damaged.

In the below photos I took at a local monastery, you can see one of these tents in the courtyard, with the words "民政救灾" which I guess translates to something like "government disaster relief". You can also see some young monks (one of them was only 8 or 9 years old) playing in the  in the second photo.

For my week-long fall break at IUP, I decided to make a trip to one of my very favorite regions in all of China: northern Yunnan. I visited this area in 2011, and I promised myself I would eventually go back and see more of it.

Northern Yunnan is quite high up on the Tibetan plateau: I stayed at a variety of places between 2,000 and 4000+ meters above sea level. And it actually borders Tibet. In fact, most of the counties along the border are almost exclusively Tibetan, both ethnically and culturally, and have the same "autonomous" rights at the province of Tibet, despite the fact that they're physically in Yunnan.

One of my favorite aspects of Tibetan culture is the elements of Buddhism that run through so much of... everything. And the weather is gorgeous. And the landscape makes me understand the word "awe". And the architecture is beautiful and peaceful and I just love every second of my time there.

My first night was in legendary Shangrila, where I stayed at the Songtsam hotel there -- hands-down one of the best hotels in all of China (and for the record I worked in the hotel industry in mainland China for almost three years).

The hotel is located right near Songzanlin Monastery, a famous (and huge) monastery community, where I spent several hours wandering around and breathing in peace and love and beauty and fresh air:

I know I harp about pollution all the time, but it's an in-your-face thing in Beijing (literally), and I just can't get myself to ignore a perfectly good opportunity to complain about something.

Pollution, pollution, pollution. It's in the news, and it's in my formerly perfectly pink lungs. When there's a clear day in Beijing with breathable air, it's like a holiday. Everyone is in a good mood, the birds are chirping, and all the colors seem brighter. The latter is probably a result of the fact that we no longer have to view the world through a veil of coal dust.

I would (with absolutely no evidence) estimate that there are maybe two pollution-free days per week. That's a pretty shitty track record, but it makes those clear days all the more special ♥

For your viewing pleasure, I've taken a photo of a largely pollution free day (AQI in the 40s) to compare to a high pollution day. The AQI was around 250 in the second photo. This is actually not that high by Beijing standards (my personal "wear a mask or you're going to die of black lung" threshold is 300), but it's technically considered "Very Unhealthy", which is what happens to the air just before it turns "Hazardous" at 300.

(Sidenote: these photos were taken from a window at the IUP building. See how beautiful the Tsinghua campus is!?... when you can see it...)

If you can spot the difference between these two photos, you get a cookie and a pat on the head...

Yes, that's right! The sky in the second photo has been scorched, Matrix-style, and you can no longer see the mountains! In fact, I didn't even know there were mountains surrounding Beijing until several weeks after I arrived (true story).

We got lost hiking in a prohibited area of the Great Wall.

Word to the wise: Don't go hiking near the Great Wall in places where you aren't supposed to go hiking. Unless you have a guide. And avoid doing it at night. In the dark. Without a flashlight.

I'm not going to go into the details of this story, because it would take thousands of words, but the short version is that we went on a Great Wall hike, and it turned out the leader of our group wasn't quite sure how to get to the wall. He obviously didn't realize he wouldn't be able to find his way, but as the light faded we began to realize he was lost.

We had hiked for hours, so we knew it would be completely dark long before we got back to the village if we decided to turn around. So we decided to push onward, hoping we'd find the wall.

We didn't.

We ended up reaching an impassable cliff-side in the dark, using our mobile phones to paw our way around. At that point we had no choice but to turn around.

We did eventually find our way back to the village by walking slowly and rationing our water and mobile phone lights. We had one functioning mobile phone by the time we got there, and, completely exhausted, we slept outside in the village square.

An adventure, to say the least, but not one that I would repeat.

I took a trip to Guilin during IUP's summer break. I worked in Guilin for a few years some time ago, and I wanted to introduce the area to some friends.

Fortunately, we were able to save some money by staying at CLI -- the Chinese Language Institute in Guilin where I used to take classes long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. This gave us easy access to downtown Guilin, where we spent most mornings and afternoons idly drinking coffee by the famous Li River.

The Chinese have a saying: 桂林山水甲天下, which translates to something like "The landscape of Guilin is the most beautiful under heaven." We spent quite a bit of time drifting down different parts of the Li River on bamboo rafts, losing ourselves in the peace and tranquility of the place. A friend and I even fell asleep on one of the boats for a short time.

One of our boat rides led us to an ancient village called Xingping, where we wandered around the old streets. I asked a few locals how old the village is, but I got vague answers of "several hundred years". I found one ancient building (which I believe is an old ancestral temple) particularly striking:

CAOCHANGDI ART DISTRICT

I visited Caochangdi 草场地 with some friends recently. This is the "other" art district in Beijing (in addition to the better-known 798 district). It was completely empty when we went. And when I say "completely empty" I mean there wasn't a single soul walking the streets anywhere in the entire district -- which is quite big. There were a couple people working in back rooms in the few open galleries we could find, but they didn't seem to notice we had walked in.

The picture of the cube above was probably the coolest thing I saw. It's a piece that uses projectors on all sides of a white cube to create the illusion of images moving inside of it. I'm embarrassed to report that I don't remember the artist's name.

As we were walking around the eerily quite streets, we came across a wall on which had been written "THE BLIND LEADS THE BLIND" (image above). For those not familiar with the Caochangdi district, this is where artist-activist Ai Weiwei lives. There are imposing cameras everywhere, and you can feel the weight of Big Brother's eyes all over you.

http://chinarides.tumblr.com/

My little brother works for RIDES magazine in NYC, so I've had cars on the mind for the last couple of years, especially since "sick rides" are the subject-matter of half of his postings on social media.

With this mindset, the car scene in China has stood out to me far more than in previous years. And in addition to my own heightened interest, Beijing and Shanghai seem to be putting more and more resources into developing their nebulous car scenes. This has included major car shows in both cities. I haven't attended, so I can't attest to the level of success of any of these, but I did see one covered on CCTV, and the fact that they're being held and covered at all is evidence of strong investment and at least moderate public interest.

To explore this car theme a bit more personally, I've decided to snap a shot whenever I see a luxury car or a Gaizhuangche 改装车 -- what the Chinese are calling their custom, or "suped up", cars.

I've put all of these photos into a new blog linked above.

798 ART DISTRICT

I'm generally a cynic -- or a "realist", as I prefer to call myself. My posts tend to view the world through a less than rosy lens. But yesterday was hands-down the best day I've spent in Beijing -- a city, as you can gather from the links in the previous sentence, that I'm not hugely fond of.

Where was I? What happened? Was I drunk? Has the city been redeemed!?

A dear IUP friend invited me to Beijing's 798 Art District, which I had vaguely heard about but never visited. The weather was gorgeous -- not too hot, not too cold. The air was clean. The sky was blue. We gathered together a group of four amazing human beings and set off for 798 艺术区.

The area is quite big -- several blocks. It's an old Mao-era factory zone that was turned into an art district about a decade ago. But the kicker is that they've kept much of the original factory infrastructure, so it has an extremely unique feel -- kind of steam-punkish in some ways.

It features shops selling loads of unique artsy stuff, galleries as far as the eye can see, lots of excellent little cafes strewn throughout. It felt like I was transported outside of China through a wormhole, and dropped in the middle of... I don't even know where...

Words honestly cannot do this place justice. Neither can pictures, for that matter. But I've posted some here anyway.