River Town

I just did the 12 hour flight to the US and finished Peter Hessler's River Town. The author was a Peace Corp Volunteer in Sichaun Province in the late 1990s, and it talks about his two years there.

I loved the book  - to put it another way, it's the book I would love to have written. Certainly Beijing is not Fuling, the small (200,000 person) town that Hessler found himself in, but the experience is similar.  It's about the experience of living in a foreign country. When I first arrived, my first memory is the taxi driving into Beijing too quickly, driving in the breakdown lane, swerving into the left lane and then the right. The next day I had to cross six lanes of this traffic to get to the office and I wasn't sure I would make it. I followed a Chinese person, and made it.

After days and weeks, the noise and chaos fades, and that becomes background, and you see depth of life. You see the complexity of how China's social network is interconnected, in some ways very caring, in some ways following fixed patterns. Hessler experiences the duality of being a foreigner: on one hand, I will always be waiguoren (literally translated, outsider, but the common way to translate foreigner), but on the other hand people trust you and are friendly because you're not Chinese.  How do you talk authentically about Chinese or American politics while respecting others' views? Hessler beautifully captures all the surprises of life, in a new country, in a new place.

I'd recommend it to my American expat friends in China, people who just want a good read, and even my Chinese colleagues who are curious about how a foreigner's life can be in China.

Foreigners

Last week I was in the US on a business trip, in Colorado more precisely. I had to go to Denver to run an errand, and passed a Chinese restaurant, in a blue collar neighborhood.  I was missing Chinese food, and I thought I might even practice some Chinese. So, I went in, talked to the owner, who seemed a little disoriented, perhaps hearing a white person speaking Chinese.

 But, the interesting thing was the customers.  A group of Hispanics sat in one corner.  An African American man, who I guess was from the Caribbean was ordering. And a couple of average looking white men sat in the booth beside me.

And it struck me, how this is one thing that's very different from my experience in China. In China, I am the foreigner, and it's obvious, because I look really different from 99.9% of the population. But in America, the concept of foreigner is very different - nearly all of us, or our ancestors were once foreigners. 

Art at the Office

Last week, I started seeing lots of sculptures put up in the small park outside Sun's offices. I took a look tonight, and was quite impressed, as were others I talked to. It's an exhibit by Chinese university students, from all over China.   I saw art I simply enjoyed, and touched me (and admittedly, some left me confused). And, I was surprised at the wide range of themes: some traditional Chinese cultural themes, but also many reflecting the huge changes that are happening in China now.

Eating at Ikea

I just got back from a trip from Ikea.  Ikea is popular, lots of my colleagues shop there (in fact, I kept on recognizing furniture from my last apartment - I guess my landlord was a big fan).

One pleasant surprise is that it's also a good source for foreign (at least Swedish) food, and what they have is good quality and at reasonable prices. So, for good coffee, Swedish vodka, salmon, blueberry soup, cheese, crackerbread, or little Swdish cookies, it's the place to go.

Material, Social and Spiritual Capital

The dean of my MBA school wrote an interesting article about Material, Social and Spiritual Capital.  I need to sit with it before commenting, but it touched me, and maybe there will be another blog about it in a couple days...

Pictures from Peking University

I attend an MBA program at Peking University.  I got to campus early on Sunday morning, and snapped some pictures.

Fireworks

Ten years ago, I used to take a lot of pictures, with a big 35mm SLR camera.  Had a darkroom.  It took a lot of time, and I put it aside eventually.

Yesterday, I took some pictures at Chinese New Year I really enjoyed, the felt similar satisfaction I used to get with the SLR. But, this is with a simple Canon Digital point and shoot and picasa.

Chinese New Year's Party

A couple weeks ago, Sun ERI had its New Year's party. For weeks before the office was buzzing with people practicing.  Sin Yaw's blog has a cool video.  There were some amazing performances, singing, performing plays, playing instruments. I was even in a show with other laowai (foreigners).  If you look closely, I'm the forth foreigner, in red, joining the other three.

Several of  the foreigners in my office commented that this would never happen in America. I think it's true.

Money

In Beijing, I usually pay with cash. Credit cards aren't widely used, although a lot of nicer restaurants, department stores and grocery stores accept them.  I recently got a local Chinese debit card that can be used in places that a Mastercard or Visa can not.

When you pay with cash, in particular the larger bills like 50 or 100 RMB (=6/12 USD), people either look closely at the bill, or run it through a machine to check that it is authentic. I never really thought much about it, but then last week, I went to a restaurant with my colleagues and paid the bill with a 50 RMB note. The waitress returned a bit later, and said sorry, this isn't real. Then we all sat around and tried to figure out why it wasn't real (it was difficult).

For this bill, there were two problems. The first was that the silver strip woven vertically into the note was actually printed on. This goes through the 0 of the large 50. The second was that if you crinkled the note, it made more noise than a real note. 

Biking in Beijing

One of my New Year's resolution was to get in better shape this year (the other is to really work on my Chinese). Not being one to go to the gym, I decided to ride my bike to work regularly. It's 7km, more or less, from my apartment, at north third ring road to my office near Tsinghua University.

I have a bike (it's actually my third bike in Beijing, the other two were "lost" as they say here).  It's a one speed, perfect for Beijing's flat terrain, utilitarian with a basket on the front, a rack on the back.  It cost 350 RMB (about 45 USD); a little high but the bike salesman said something about it being specially built for foreigners, and it was indeed a little bigger than others.

So, I ride. At first, when I started riding to work, I was annoyed at all the traffic.  Taxis don't respect bikes, unless they're going to hit you (someone told me if a taxi driver hits you, he will be fined an incredible amount of money).  There is always traffic, and cars drive in the bike lane. Pedestrians often walk in the bike lane because the sidewalk is non existant.

Eventually though, it became more of a game. See how fast I can go, and not use the brakes. Pass the electric bike. Go around the buses that stop in front of you to pick up passengers.

And so it's become fun.  Beijing is actually a pretty good place to ride. It's the only place I know where the big ring roads circling the city have bike lanes. Although there are a lot of cars that don't seem to pay attention to bikes, I don't think I've ever seen an accident.  And, generally it's the fastest way for me to get from home to my office (faster than waiting in a taxi in a traffic jam).