Amiram Hayardeny's My China Experience

Two Years in Beijing

On April 20, 2006, yours truly had arrived in Beijing, on his own, with a job to start and a bridgehead to establish for the family who followed a couple of months later.  Two years isn't an extremely long period of time, but it is long enough to consider when reviewing periods of time that changed my life.  My China Experience changed my life and my family's life on so many levels, I can't begin to tell you.  Let me try nonetheless. taxi drivers 

• People in the street
• Never try to generalize an entire people.  I met nice people here, and people who were not so nice.  Polite and impolite.  English speakers, non English speakers, and people who think they speak English, but they really don't.  I met kind people, warm hearted people, child loving people, curious people, helpful people.  I also met rude people, impolite people and smokers.  I met highly educated, sophisticated, well traveled people.  I also met simple, poor, and very provincial people.  When you come here you must realize that you are a stranger, a foreigner.  You must accept people looking at you, staring at you, giggling at you.  If you come here with kids, particularly ones that are blond, cute and smiling, prepare yourself, many would love to take their pictures.  Don't get offended.  People are curious, and many of them saw very few foreigners in the lifetimes.
• If you're exceptional - very fair complexioned, tall, large, you may be asked for your picture to be taken with some curious Chinese people.  They are mostly harmless.  My kids are sometimes reluctant when asked for their photo to be taken.  I usually leave it to them, but I never object.
  
• Shopping and bargaining
• Everything is bargainable.  If you know how to bargain, you can get everything at a very low price.  Sometimes at a fraction of what you're used to.  But the prices are going higher, the bargaining less effective, most likely due to the Olympics.  I love the Silk Market, and the Pearl Market.  But most of all, I like the Sunny Gold market, a walking distance from home...
• A couple of tips for bargaining:
• Never indicate that you want the product soooo much.  Vendors are very sensitive to body language.  If they realize that you made up your mind to get it, no matter what, you lose.
• It's a good practice to decide how much is the product worth for you, before you start asking for the price.  The reason is that unconsciously, you might bargain in accordance with the original price presented to you.  You lose again.  Just recently I saw a beautiful old (looking) vase in the Dirt Market (Panjia Yuan).  I offered RMB 300.00.  The vendor asked for RMB 4,800.00.  I ended up buying it for 300.00.
  
• Appliances
• You can buy everything in Beijing.  All brands, Chinese, Korean, German, American.  If all goes well and the appliance works well, you'll be fine.  If you need service, you'll need someone who speaks Chinese to activate the warranty.  Without it, you'd be left with a broken appliance.
• You might think (based on recent China bashing on the news media) that Chinese brands are of low quality.  That's not necessarily the case.  Some are good.  Some are very good in fact.  And the ones you buy of "foreign" make, may very well be made in China after all...
• Before you purchase anything, do a little research, with today's consumer reports on the Web, you should have no problem understanding what you're buying.
  
• Entertainment
• DVDs - you can get originals (don't laugh, some studios understood: little money or no money - little is better) for very low prices if you go to the right places.  Buying on the streets may be cheaper, but chances are you'll get this frozen DVD frame at the most nerve wrecking point of the film.
• I've seen Harry Potter at an actual theater here.  But that was indeed the only movie I've seen here, simply because most of the imported films are dubbed to Chinese, and have no subtitles in English.  I miss the big screen and the pop corn, but learned to live without it.
• And Celine Dion canceled her concert in Beijing.
  
• Away from Family and Friends
  
• New friends, visiting family, and DVDs.  Restaurants, sightseeing, flying kites.  Walk in the park, bicycle rides and shopping.  Being away is not as bad as one might think.
  
• Children
• A variety of international schools are available for western kids.  Tuition is a small fortune.  But the education is excellent.  We send to Beanstalk International Bilingual School.  The kids are happy, challenged, and they learn a lot.  Shiri is fluent in English, and she can chat freely in Mandarin.  Guy understands English well, speaks it a little, and can chat in Chinese as well.  I find it particularly amazing, when the both of them sing nursery rhymes in the back of the car, in Chinese...
• There are parks, swimming pools, amusement parks, playgrounds, zoos, aquariums, museums, and more parks, all around town.  There's a lot of stuff to do.
  
• Transportation
• I haven't taken the subway yet.  But they're building a station near where I live (near Yan-Sha bridge, or Lufthansa Center).  For the incredible price of RMB 2.00, you can get pretty much everywhere.  Quickly, unlike above ground transportation.  Buses are crowded and slow.  Taxi cabs are convenient and readily available.  The drivers will not speak English.  And the inside of the car may have odors completely opposite the lemon-pine-forest you'd expect.
• The airport is a masterpiece, and my experience of arrivals and departures was in fact, excellent.
  
• Food
• Chinese food is great. But having spent most of my life in western countries, I still like cheese, chopped liver, fresh bread, butter, smoked turkey breast, mustard, mayo, and Diet Coke.  Beijing is a real cosmopolitan city.  You can find everything here.  Jenny Lou's is a chain of stores catering to the western population of the city.  But Carrefour, a French supermarket chain is not far behind.
• If you're ready for the run-around, you can get French baguette at the Paris Baguette, Hamburgers at Schindler's Meats, Bagels at Mrs. Shanen's Bagels, smoked turkey at the Lido Hotel Deli...
  
• There are thousands of restaurants, representing an amazingly large variety of cuisines, all kinds of Chinese, but also Pacific Rim, Korean, Japanese, Indian, French, even Middle Eastern.  Bite-A-Pita is our favorite.  The food, the owners, the environment, feels like home.
• The American fast food chains are well represented here.  McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC are on many corners of the city.  Most common is the (bad) coffee proudly brewed by Starbuck's.
  
• News
• When I first came here, I was getting the news from CCTV9.  The world was rosy.  Then I started watching CNN and things got significantly worse.  I learned to avoid both.
• For a while I subscribed to International Herald Tribune.  It comes from Hong Kong, and the delivery time is late afternoon.  I realized two things: 1. I was reading a 24 hour old newspaper.  And 2. I was always behind in the news.  I canceled the subscription.
• I signed up for Business Week.  I love it.  I now get bad economy news from various sources.
  
• The Internet is the best source of news for me though.  Yet, you have to be really on the alert.  When we heard that Celine Dion is coming to Beijing, we rushed to get tickets.  But when the concert was canceled, we didn't find out until the night of the show.  We're simply not tuned to the local news.  A serial killer could be working in the neighborhood, and we wouldn't know about it.  Shame on us.  But it has some good sides as well.  Not a lot of local bad news.  I can live with that.
• The Internet is almost unlimited.  Wikipedia was out of reach until a few months ago.  It's accessible now.  Same with a few other sites.  There's nothing that can't be worked around with a proxy server.
• Ayi
• In Israel where we came from, we could only afford a "cleaning lady".  The kind that "doesn't".  Doesn't do windows, laundry, dishes, ironing, diapers, floors and ceilings...  In Beijing we were able to afford a full time maid, "Ayi" that does.  Everything.  Cooking and cleaning, washing and ironing, windows and floors.  But most importantly, she plays with Guy, our five year old.  He adores her, and she loves him, and they speak Chinese to each other.  It's really sweet.  We became much more than her employer, and what she receives from the agency is only part of her package.
• But it didn't start with the honeymoon it is today.  When she started with us, she used to fold and place damp laundry in the closet, when the drying cycle finished.  She used to cook with a liter of oil every day, which she diligently saved and used the next day, until we found out.  She put wet dishes in the cabinets, and misplaced pretty much every item in the house.  She never mastered eating with utensils, but she developed a craving to cake.  Watching her enjoying cake, with chopsticks...  We love Suza, she's a part of our family now.

Posted at 09:34PM May 26, 2008 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]

Global Warming - a DIfferent View

It all started with some strange guy who started warning about "global warning" a few years ago.  Many heard the news item and thought - there's another lunatic with a warning.  They all remembered Nostradamus, and his friends in every century, who diligently predicted the end of the world.  Prophecies which were updated as soon as they didn't come true.  Turn of centuries, midnights, full moons, sun storms, comets, all came and went, and the earth people (that's us) remained.  They didn't repent, they didn't pray, they continued to invent new stuff which created more warnings, which never came true, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Then came the warning about the melting of the icebergs.  Some concerns were registered, particularly in the far northern hemisphere, where most residents are Eskimos and seals.  Most of the population just turned to one another and said "oh well", and went on to the local pub for a drink.  Next came a really scary news piece about the rising temperatures, and that apparently the last decade was the hottest on record or something.  Some eyebrows were raised, but most people went on to the beach, were the warm breeze took off the edge of the outstanding heat.  Life went on.

Then WNN aired some really really disturbing footage about the cities along the shores of the oceans, and that in a few years, they will all be covered in seawater.  People in those cities went outside and checked whether their windows and doors will be above the new sea level, and same for their favorite stores, pubs, parks and so on.  They also went ahead and checked that aunt Petunia's home would definitely be covered with water, and so would be the police station.  Once that was out of the way, they went on with their business.  The ones who discovered that their homes will most likely be underwater, took a few sessions with the local psychotherapist, to refresh their denial techniques.  They too went back to the annual barbecue which was producing smoke as much as the local utility's chimney.

Then the media claimed with absolute certainty that the "permafrost in Russia" is melting, and that will let out millions of metric tons of some unknown Methane gas into the atmosphere, doubling the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in a very short time.  There was some anxiety, but it turned out to be unrelated.  It was about the local football team losing miserably this season.  The people remembered from their biology classes that methane is also produced when sheep in New Zealand fart.  So, they said, what's another real big sheep flatulence?  They went on to walk the dog, who happened to have had chilly for dinner...

Then came the food shortages, which was the result of the droughts, which was a direct result to the warming of the earth, and the lack of rain.  Desertification became a word known by every single third grader.  But that was more because of that show "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?" than because of the actual drought.  Some nervous breakdowns were recorded around the world, but WNN aired a piece about desert resorts, and everyone calmed down and booked their vacations early.  Prices skyrocketed.

Nobody got too excited over the "dying of the rain forests".  Many people just said they can do without them, and the rain is really needed elsewhere...

Then the earth was on fire.  Literally.  Wildfires were spotted everywhere, burning everything in their way.  But it was too late already.  The earth burned, then the ice melted, the cities were covered with water, there was no food, water was contaminated, livestock around the world died of plagues, the earth died.  So did we.

I don't know if global warming is real, and if it is how real and how quick it is.  But just in case it is, don't you want to do something about it?

Posted at 09:33PM May 26, 2008 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[2]

Tattoos, Babies, and the Israeli Flag

The picture below broke a personal record for me. The elapsed time between seeing this picture and the first tear could be measured in nanoseconds. But that was one record broken, there were a few more. The parade of feelings and memories. Personal, familial, tribal and global all came streaming. Faces of the living and the dead. Faces of old an young, of happy and sad. Of friends and foes.

As I'm writing these words, it occurs to me that explanation is necessary. The blue and white Israeli flag, the tattooed hand of an old lady, and the chubby little hand of a baby. Many are familiar with chubby little hands. Less may be familiar with the Israeli flag. Few are familiar with old ladies with tattooed numbers on their hands.

When I was young, Israel was full of those. They weren't so old back then, they had tattooed numbers on their hands, and it was said: those with the numbers on their hands. Having this number on the hand was the clearest, gruesome, chilling evidence that these people had something in common. They belonged to a certain club. Not the kind of club you might be thinking about. Not an upper class Golf club, not a Yacht club. Not even an exceptional fraternity or sorority, although one might claim that it was precisely that. These people spent time in the darkest places ever to have existed on this planet. And they lived to tell. They were the survivors of Hitler's death camps.

The German, in their incredible effectiveness and order, kept records of every single person they ever de-humanized, and ultimately killed. Every person who entered the gates of the death camps was branded. Like cattle. They were branded with a serial number. When their turn came to be eliminated, the records could have been set straight, that this once human, professional, family person, Jew - is no longer. Mission accomplished.

But some, against all odds, survived. They rose from the ashes, they picked whatever was left of their humanity, dignity, of their families, of their former lives and former identities, and went to Israel. There, slowly, carefully, with a lot of help, patience and love, some of them were able to rebuild. To put together families, businesses, and a country. Imagine that.

I don't have a clue who the people in the picture are.  But the old hand, with the tattoo is my grandmother's, and the chubby little hand is mine. The flag is my country's. It's irrelevant that my grandmother is no longer with us, and that I no longer am a baby. Both my grandmother and I have a strong connection to the land of Israel. The three elements in the picture are combined into one big evidence - we're here to stay.

* The picture was taken by Karen Gillerman-Harel.  The picture won the contest "Israel Sixtieth Birthday Flag".  All rights reserved to Karen Gillerman-Harel.

Posted at 09:28PM May 26, 2008 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[8]