So, I've been experimenting with various ways of reducing my meat intake in the past weeks. What seems to work best for me is asking a simple question before I sit down to cook/order: "will the presence of meat substantially increase my enjoyment of this meal?".
I've been doing this for over a week now, and I can't really say that I'm "suffering" or feeling "deprived" at all. I had some bacon in my potato-leek soup earlier this week, and there was a great pulled pork sandwich with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) albertprime last week. On the other hand, I had some lovely eggplant (baigan bharta) yesterday, was reminded at lunch that artichokes are in season (yes!!!), and overate at thai (again).
I'm uncomfortable with attaching a label to my diet because it's so driven by my mood and whims (and has only been tested for a week). But if I had to choose a label, I suspect I'm going to start resembling a lacto-ovo-bacon-prosciutto pescetarian .. assuming I can stick to this, of course.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
This New York Times article pretty much captures exactly how I feel about having meat in my diet. I don't feel a need to "quit" eating it, but I don't enjoy having it front-and-center in my diet. All I want is meat reduction.
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
So, the husband and I just moved into a new apartment. Since we've only ever lived with roommates (or in furnished corporate apartments :P), we never realized how much stuff we didn't have. Media shelves, for one thing: it turns out that we have an entire wall in our apartment hidden by stacks and stacks and stacks of DVDs and CDs and video games. A large quantity of stuff we've been hauling around will be downsized and donated, of course, but there's also a lot of furniture shopping that needs to happen in the upcoming weeks.
When I was younger (ie, single), I'd always assumed that I'd have a tasteful, tranquil, bright-and-open, faux-Asian inspired theme if I had a free hand at decorating my place. You know: open bamboo floors, spare and delicate brush paintings, that whole thing.
Now that I have that opportunity -- and a husband -- I'm discovering that our collective decorating tastes tend towards ... children's furniture. By now, I've spent over a dozen hours wandering Crate and Barrel, skimming the Ikea catalogue, and peering through the windows at Dania. But what actually gets The Collective excited and cooing are stores like The Land of Nod and Pottery Barn Kids. There's still differences of opinion, to be sure (I like pastels and cartoony animals; he loves bright vivid colors), but overall it seems like we've found our common ground in children's furniture. We just bought a jungle-themed shower curtain from Target's kid's section last night (we almost bought the matching bathmat and hand towels too). And we've been tape-measuring the entire apartment in an attempt to fit this adorable play tent somewhere.
Part of me still wants to do a nook or a hallway or sompelace in a more grown-up style, but I'm really not sure how it'll fit into the overall kids theme we have going. I imagine it'd be pretty disorienting for guests to enter a bamboo-and-espresso hallway, only to transition to a living room decorated like a nursery.
3 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
The manufacturing center of most of our western products, China has always been an easy and inexpensive place to pick up counterfeits, “failed QA” products, and even “fallen off the truck” bargains (my personal euphemism for products stolen by factory workers). Given that most of our goods — electronic, textile, food, whatever — are transformed from raw materials into shelf-ready products in China, it’s not surprising that cheap knockoffs abound.
Some of them are counterfeits: for example, why not churn out a few fake LV purses if your factory is already configured to make purses for K-mart?
Some of them are the genuine thing, but failed the factory’s QA process; in fact, it’s a very common suspicion among Chinese consumers that most locally-targeted products sold in China (eg, batteries, sporting equipment) are the products which didn’t meet western QA standards. I had a co-worker who (before the melamine scandal broke) only fed his baby formula from powder which he had friends and family purchase from the US or Canada. Nowadays, of course, the importing of baby food is even more popular.
A third category are genuine products which are stolen from the factory floor. This is extremely common; so common, in fact, that it’s built into a factory’s operating budget! I once met the owner of an umbrella factory who, when I asked why he didn’t institute tighter security controls, said that he preferred to have his product stolen by workers (at a rate which he could measure and plan for) than to deal with the unpredictable behaviour of angry workers in a labour market where “a little workplace theft” was considered part of their compensation package! “What if I tightened security and they retaliate by sabotaging the equipment?” he asked.
A common variant on the stolen-products theme is the theft of raw materials. Instead of stealing the finished product, a canny worker can steal the raw materials (or walk away with post-manufacturing scraps) and use their “inside information” to produce a few lookalikes in their off-hours.
I was reminded of my shopping experiences in Beijing by this article in the New York Times. “Silk Street” is a huge indoor bazaar: a building covering almost an entire city block, packed to the gills with teeny stalls staffed with independent vendors all selling the same crappy-quality shirts/pants/purses/knockoffs. After living in China for 7 months and repeatedly hearing that the Silk Market was on every tourists’ “must see” tour of Beijing, Albert and I decided to take a peek.
In retrospect, I should have stuck with my gut feeling: Albert and I don’t really enjoy shopping that much (and we HATE haggling), it was a 45-minute ride away from our apartment (one way!), and the products on sale focused more on looks than on quality. On the other hand, it left us with the following entertaining story:
After spending a few minutes listlessly wandering the market, I decided that to complete the experience, I needed to “bid on” — and perhaps even purchase — something at the market. There were a pair of cute-looking Clark’s sandals that caught my eye (actually, it’s this pair, but in sage green). I asked the vendor, in English, how much the sandals cost. She explained that, being made of genuine leather and constructed in the high-quality manner that Clark’s is famous for and blah-blah-sales-pitch-blah-blah, she couldn’t sell it to me for less than 500 RMB ($65-70 USD). I counteroffered and we haggled for a bit, finally ending up with me trying on the sandals.
They were too loose. I have a really low instep, and while I probably could have survived, I didn’t feel like buying yet another pair of uncomfortable sandals. So I handed the sandals back and I explained that not only were the sandals too loose, they were made out of leather and certain to stretch even more.
She reared back in surprise. “What kind of product do you think I sell here?”, she demanded. “This is Silk Street! Everything here is counterfeit! Even the leather is fake!! There’s no way these would stretch!!!”
I think it’s a perfect story to describe Silk Street.
I have two other counterfeit stories, none as good as my Silk Street experience.
In the first, my mom asked me to buy a DVD of the Olympics Opening Ceremony. I decided that it would be a fun challenge to buy a legit DVD produced by CCTV. It turns out that this is very hard to do. I canvassed several stores, ranging from the small-and-dingy (almost certainly knockoffs) to expensive places that cater to foreigners (considerably more upscale packaging, but still knockoffs). In some places, the knockoffs were of such good quality that I wasn’t certain whether I was buying the real thing. In the end, unable to determine whether I was buying legit DVDs, I ended up buying the disks at the official Olympics store in the airport, for 190 RMB (which is equivalent to buying a DVD in the US for $190 USD). Lesson learned? Counterfeits are deeply woven into the Chinese economy; it’s almost impossible to buy the real thing, and it makes no financial sense to do so.
In the second story, I was actively looking for knockoffs. After getting completely and somewhat-dangerously soaked in these two hikes, I was determined to buy a rainproof jacket at a pricepoint where I’d be comfortable trashing it. My prayers were answered when I discovered an “outlet store” down the street specializing in western high-end brands (eg, Archteryx, Spyder). For less than $20 USD, which is a somewhat-expensive-for-locals 160 RMB, I could buy rain jackets in any size, colour, or style I wanted: they had a mysterious supplier who could deliver a practically-custom-ordered jacket within days of my order.
I sent a lot of business their way: relatives, tourists, expat co-workers, etc. I knew we were all getting over-charged (probably could have bargained down to 120 RMB, given their costs and the volume we were sending them), but I was just happy to have a rainproof jacket. It got to the point where they gave me a farewell present (a bracelet) when we told them we were leaving Beijing.
To this day, I’m not sure if it’s a failed-QA jacket or a fallen-off-the-truck bargain. The materials are clearly legitimate, but there is some egregiously bad workmanship on them. My lovely blue Archteryx jacket has a blob of zipper sealant conspicuously dripped on the front of the jacket, and my mother-in-law’s jacket has some really terrible stitching on the sleeve. Another friend of mine put her jacket in the washer (after several months of loyal service, I might add), only to discover that the jacket’s taped seams had melted (yes, melted!) when she pulled it out of the machine.
But, in the end — and in a very mainland-Chinese attitude — I’m satisfied with my purchase. I paid for — and received! — exactly the amount of money I expected to for the quality that I received.
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
It's not readily apparent by reading my public "China blog", but I'm back in the US now. Actually, I've been back for a little over a week, but been cooped up indoors with a very very ill husband (they tested him for tuberculosis, it was that bad!) and jetlag (with my current reflexes, I've been too scared to operate a car to get out of here).
I am very very stir-crazy now, so expect to see more of me as my fear of motor vehicles is dominated by my need to see faces. Yesterday was only my second day of work since getting back, and it was startling how hungry I was to see non-family faces.
There's still several weeks of backlogged China posts to work through, so expect to see me chug my way through them on the China blog ... slowly, of course.
Since I'm working through the past's backlog on the other blog, it seemed appropriate that I use this blog to look towards the future. I haven't made any progress towards my new year resolutions, but they were written with the expectation that I wouldn't get started until I returned from China anyway. Additionally, after a year of stressful living abroad with only the stress relief being the ability to pick fights with the other spouse, the husband and I have made some additional resolutions towards lowering the stress levels in our relationship. These are relatively simple resolutions (such as: "no talking about work after 8 PM", "the first 30 mins after work is quiet time, eg, reading a book or listening to music"), but I'm hoping they'll help us turn around some of the nastier stress-relief habits we've built up in the friendless-vacuum that was China.
Right now, my biggest frustration is this feeling that I'm in a holding pattern. Professionally, I'm between projects: mostly wrapped up with China work, but still without a team in the US. I'm in talks with a few local teams and hope to have a new project/team selected by the end of the week, but in the interim it's hard to be motivated to wake up at a reasonable hour (or even to go to work) when there are no teammates to disappoint, or deliverables, or deadlines.
Personally, we're temporarily staying in the husband's parents' basement. It's quite cramped and it doesn't feel like our space at all: there's almost 30 years of family memories and artifacts and history floating around in my living space, and I feel crowded out. Add to the situation my lesser fluency with the language they speak at home -- they speak Cantonese, which I can understand but which requires half a second of thought before I can compose a sentence -- and the net result is that I feel like I'm always on my toes in a space that isn't mine. The husband and I have a goal of finding an apartment of our own by the end of next weekend, and despite my strong dislike of the physical labour involved with moving, I'm looking forward to being able to stretch out and relax in my own space again.
I'm also looking forward to having my own kitchen: it's been almost 1.5 years since I've had my own cooking space, stocked with the equipment that I need and use (I missed having mixing bowls!). While it was a fun challenge to cook in my kitchen in China, at times it felt like a contest in equipment- and ingredient-minimalism. And the husband's parents' kitchen is "someone else's kitchen" (a vegetarian/Buddhist/low-sodium kitchen, no less!), so it's also hard to get comfortable there.
If I were to summarize it all, what I really yearn for is a regular life with a regular schedule. This past 3 months have been extremely challenging ones (for example: due to my stress eating, I've gained almost 2 pounds/month); some normalcy -- and some cardiovascular "me time" -- would be really welcome right about now.
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
The run-up to the Olympics included a lot of construction, to be sure … but not all of the Olympics special-treatment was limited to muscularly brobdingnagian construction projects.
The average Beijing citizen got a lot of perks. I’m not sure if these were intended for Olympics tourists but happened to provide benefit for locals, or whether they were intended purely for locals.
- For example, several bicycle parking lots waived their fees (yes, parking lots for bicycles!):
 </p>
- And of course, a clear blue sky and lush topiaries scattered all around the city (undoubtedly giving visitors the false impression that Beijing is a beautiful green city):
 
(of course, the flowers and topiaries died 2 weeks into the events — as you can see from this photo — but since most of the Olympics tourists had left by then, it was a simple matter of sweeping the streets of dead leaves and throwing away the pots of dirt and dead plants)</p>
- As cheesy as it sounded, the decorative bunting and banners strewn over just about every vertical surface really did work. Combined with air clear enough for you to actually SEE the banners, the bright banners gave the city a festive air that couldn’t help but pick up your mood:
 </p>
- New buslines were introduced which ran directly between Beijing’s most famous historical tourist sites (Temple of Heaven, Forbidden City, etc) and — of course — its newest Olympic sites. These affordable routes were an extremely popular way for Beijing locals to get a sneak peek at their newest landmarks before they were unveiled to the rest of the world. The tourist bus as it drove by the Bird’s Nest was packed! I was surprised the double-decker didn’t tip over from number of people gawking out the windows.
 </p>
- Monitors installed throughout the city displayed the games in realtime. Here, several commuters take a break from their Sunday evening errands to watch the last few seconds of the men’s basketball final match.
Of course, not all Olympics-related measures were so egalitarian. Many measures were adopted to “ease the way” for official Olympics-related business.
- In addition to the license-plate traffic restrictions (”if your license plate ends on an even number, you can only drive your car on even-numbered days; same for odd-numbered plates”), many highway and lanes were restricted to official Olympics cars. For example, on the 4-lane street in front of my office (which happened to be the main thoroughfare between two venues), 2 lanes were reserved for the sole use of Olympics vehicles: no busses, no government vehicles, nuthin’. In some sections of street, the hoped-for traffic jam alleviation due to reduced overall traffic was completely overshadowed by the loss in traffic capacity.
 </p>
- Airport checkin lines: economy, first/business class, and Olympics officials:
(I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of the special “Olympics officials” immigration and security checkpoint lines)</p>
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
2 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Don’t get me wrong: I’m as big of a fan of Engrish and Chinglish as anyone else. But I generally try not to post too much about it, because I’m sure my Chinese is equally bad (or worse!).
These two, however, were so good that I had to break my don’t-post-Chinglish rule. Enjoy!
Kiss my … ess?!
An ingeniously labelled Chinese sign: “A step up helps keep it cleaner”
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
As you can see, I’m making slow progress against a huge backlog of posts I’ve been meaning to write. This current post covers the last year’s Olympic games.
As mentioned in my earlier post, Albert and I initially came to Beijing for a 6-month assignment that was supposed to end immediately prior to the August 8 (the day of the opening ceremonies). We had no plans of staying in hot-and-muggy-and-expensive Beijing on our own money, just to watch a few athletic competitions. (People who know us well know that we’re not exactly what you’d call “fitness enthusiasts”). So when we renewed our assignments in late June, we had no plans or tickets to attend the events. In fact, if it weren’t for the expense of travelling during that time period and the hand-wringing over the never-did-materialize transportation nightmare, we might have left the city altogether.
The biggest impact on our lives was the steady disappearance of expat friends (whom the Chinese government were evicting for just about any visa irregularity it could think of) and the complaints of our remaining expats about the temporary closing of most bars and many foreigner-friendly restaurants. Not that Albert and I had an opportunity to see these closings first-hand; we live rather far from the city center and very far from the foreigner-friendly embassy district, the two areas most affected by the closings.
Our opportunity to see an Olympic event — in real life! — came when our friend Matt revealed that he had a few extra tickets that he’d purchased for friends who’d bailed. He’d bought the cheapie tickets, “nosebleed seats” for semi-finals or quarter-finals, but would we be interested in coming along? You bet!
I accompanied Matt to the finals for judo, in the lightest-weight division they had. Walking into the stadium, I had no idea what judo was … and the event didn’t do much to educate. As far as I can tell, judo utilizes a lot of subtle footwork to throw one’s opponent, which doesn’t lend itself well to viewing from extremely high-up seats; I got more out of watching the televised broadcast than by watching the people below me. On the other hand, our seats were smack in the middle of a huge Japanese crowd who was cheering one of their own, and it was exciting to see middle-aged men and women leap out of their seats screaming at the top of their lungs in Japanese. This was also my first introduction to what would become a regular event at future Olympic competitions: organized cheering. The Japanese contingent wore matching hats and noisemakers, and their cheers or claps were selected and coordinated by a flag-waving elderly man sitting at the front of their section. He and the rest of the Japanese went completely nuts during the flag raising ceremony, when the Japanese woman won the gold medal.
Afterwards, Albert had an opportunity to go with Matt to the Water Cube; Albert, Matt, our friend Adam, and I got to see the qualifying matches for several track and field events in the Bird’s Nest; and Albert and I saw team sabre fencing.
I don’t have any photos from the judo event (I didn’t find out about the tickets until about an hour beforehand, so I didn’t have my camera) or from the Water Cube (because I didn’t go), but here’s some photos from the Bird’s Nest and the rest of the Olympic Green.
    
 
A fountain outside the watercube. There were tons of kids playing in it, on the hot sunny day I was there.
Typical China-quality construction: the “Beijing 2008″ decals on the back of the seats in the stadium were badly-applied stickers.
 
That might be Usain Bolt in the front. We had great seats, but the 100m dash heats were held on the other side of the stadium.
A road in the Olympics Green. It wasn’t used, but it’s clearly intended for post-Olympics usage (whatever that may be). Take particular note of the silvered/reflective sun parasol in the foreground; they’re extremely popular with Asian women, since Asian society prizes a porcelain-white complexion. For those women who accidentally get tanned anyway, skin-bleaching creams are exceptionally popular. Your average beauty-supply shop will usually have an entire aisle dedicated to them!
Some building on the green called the “Bob”; I never found out why. Notice how brilliantly blue the sky is; a Beijing rarity, but a welcomed one.
Even the lighting ornaments are themed!
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Wow, does anyone still read this thing anymore? It feels as if all my blogging mojo migrated to facebook or my public China blog.
2008 was quite the year for me. A lot of stuff happened to make me rethink relationships with friends and family and the world.
How did I do on last year's resolutions? Pretty good, I think. Unsurprisingly, I'm much happier with how I punctuate. I made decent progress at sharing praise and acknowledgment (I get kudos on this at work, but need to do better in my personal life). Surprisingly, I made quite a bit of progress on the "work angst" goals: living in China and a recent experience with death has helped me gain a lot more perspective on the (lack of) importance that work should have in my life.
With that in mind, here's my 2009 resolutions:
- Strengthen relationships with friends and family. More frank talk, more hanging out.
- Dance. I got into lindy hopping while I was in Beijing. I don't want that to stop when I go home (even though the community there is more diffuse and scary).
- Exercise. Living abroad was really challenging for my exercise schedule. I'd like to reincorporate exercise into my daily life, and get my body fat percentage back to its pre-China level.
- Volunteer at a hospital. In 2008, I spent more time in hospitals than I'd ever expected to. Those places do great work, and they don't get the help they deserve.
- Start my journaling project. I have a private journal-writing project that I'd like to get started before my memories fade. Some of the entries may make their way into a public forum, but I expect most of them will not.
This year's resolutions are quite ambitious, so I'm a bit nervous about next year's progress report. Wish me luck!
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Google just signed a deal with LIFE magazine which makes their photo archive (~250 yrs!) available for searching.
The Beijinger magazine has a good selection of historical Tiananmen Square photos, and you can search the entire archive for more Beijing photos. Two other fun queries are Hong Kong and Shanghai.
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
I know this is almost 4 months too late, but in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics I was fascinated by how many countdown clocks blossomed around the country. They varied from hand-lettered paper signs to huge Omega-sponsored computerized monoliths dominating the city skyline, from grand Tiananmen Square to information displays on public buses.
I half-heartedly started collecting photos of the countdown clocks, which I’m presenting here, but for every photo you see here there are probably 5-10 other clocks that I didn’t have my camera for. So, enjoy the photos, and try to imagine the excitement of living in the host city for this year’s biggest party!
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Early on, in our assignments, my wallet was stolen. This wasn’t an irrecoverable error, however, since I’d kept a spare ATM and spare credit card in the hotel safe. Well, during our early-June Japan trip, I discovered that the wallet’s loss was, in fact, irrecoverable: it turned out that the cards which I’d kept in the safe expired in June!
To make matters worse: several weeks earlier, in our post-Great-Wall dance exhaustion, Albert’s wallet had disappeared, and the remaining cards didn’t work in Japan. Fortunately, Albert’s childhood friend (whom we were visiting) was exceptionally kind and loaned us several hundred dollar’s worth of money, with which we finished our trip.
Our ridiculously bad luck got worse when we returned to Beijing, however: none of our banks or credit cards were willing to mail new credit cards or ATM cards to a previously-unknown address in Beijing; they were only willing to mail it back to our registered/known addresses in the US.
We were cashless in Beijing.
Our friend Matt kindly repaid us the money we’d loaned him for our trip to Chengdu, and we used those funds to purchase plane tickets home. To be honest, we probably could have lasted a few more weeks in Beijing** by bumming money off people and taking cash advances on Albert’s single remaining credit card … but it wasn’t a safe long-term solution, and to be honest, we were so very very homesick by that point. China is not a first-world country, and we didn’t speak the language. Seattle — with its natural beauty, friends and family, and fluency-in-English — had beckoned for months as a paradise. So we bought our tickets and came home.
Coming home after 4 months away was an interesting experience. Given how desperately we’d wanted to come home, I’d expected a bit of a reverse culture shock. Certainly, we were terrifyingly giddy at being able to see lush greenery, have >1 mile visibility, speak to bus drivers, and drink water from the tap. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the expected I-miss-Beijing reaction never arrived. Instead, we went on a Seattle rampage: eating our favourite foods, seeing good friends (too briefly), and taking in the natural scenery as much as possible.
To give you a taste of how frantic and giddy we were at being home: within 12 hours of getting off the plane, we’d gone hiking on Tiger Mountain (5 AM), stopped by our favourite root beer joint (10 AM), had dim sum (11 AM), hung out with friends and played board games (1 PM), came home for a delicious home-cooked meal (5 PM), watched the sunset (9 PM), then collapsed into bed. All this, with only 4 hours of sleep and jetlag.
 
A few days into the trip, however, we’d settled back into a normal pace. And, although we never felt nostalgia for Beijing, we started remembering the things we didn’t like about Seattle: the constant need to drive (instead of taking public transportation), the lack of 24-hour food and entertainment (especially difficult for folks with jetlag!), the uncomfortably large and fatty meals (and lack of decent fruit). For me, the most important result from this trip wasn’t the experiences and meals that I could check off of my “Seattle To-Do” list, but the realization that — as great as home is — Beijing could be a decent place too.
And so we decided to renew our assignments in Beijing, during our much-yearned-for trip home.
–
** Remember, at the time we headed home, we still hadn’t decided to renew our assignments. We thought we’d only need to survive in this untenable cashless situation for only 6 more weeks.
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
It’s Friday afternoon and I’m trying to convince Albert to go out to see Quantum of Solace with me tonight. Which means it’s time to talk about how going to see a movie differs in China!
First and foremost, movie pricing is tiered here. The cost of seeing a locally-produced movie might cost you the the equivalent of 20-30 local dollars here**; the cost of seeing an imported Hollywood blockbuster is considerably higher: 60 local dollars for the subtitled version or 70 local dollars for the dubbed version (presumably because it’s more expensive to dub than to sub). When you think about it, tiered pricing makes a whole lot of sense: theaters can recuperate their expenditures on expensive movies faster, and studios have a very easy way to persuade audiences to come to their experimental or arthouse movie: drop the ticket price.
Secondly, theaters have assigned seating. No more begging people to shift over “just 1 seat” so you can sit with your husband; how enlightened is that? I love knowing whether I’ll get a decent view of the screen (or whether I’ll be able to sit with my friends) before I purchase my ticket.
** remember that going to see the movies is a middle- or upper-class activity. There’s no such thing as the “$5 matinee”; the cheapest movie will still cost you an expensive dinner, or 4-5 cheap lunches.
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
In early June (yes, I’m very backlogged on blogging!) Albert learned that his cousin and childhood friend were both in Tokyo. Since he and I tend to go crazy if we spend too much time in Beijing, it seemed like a perfect excuse to spend a long weekend in Tokyo. We’d been to Tokyo before, so the plan was to eat, people-watch, eat, hang out with friends, eat, and breathe in some fresh non-Beijing air.
( A little dubious about our ability to find fresh air in Tokyo, one of the most dense cities in the world? Let’s not forget that in pre-Olympics Beijing, the tops of nearby skyscrapers isn’t always visible.
As you can see, our threshold for “fresh air” was quite low! )
We pretty much succeeded on all counts, except for one meal, where the salad was inexplicably coated with mayonnaise and meat. In addition, we had a chance to visit Tokyo’s legendary fish market, though seeing the transition from fish carcass to abstract block of delicious sashimi did put quite the damper on my appetite.
      
( yes, that’s a 7-Eleven branded ATM; 7-Eleven in asia is ubiquitous, awesome, and nothing like the scuzzy 7-Eleven you see in America. also, have i mentioned how much i love Japan vending machines?! this baby dispenses hot meals! )
Most typically — Albert and I are terrible planners — we took an exceptionally badly-planned half-day jaunt to Okutama National Park to get some of that fresh air. After a 2-hour train ride and another 30 minutes arguing with a recalcitrant bus driver, we finally figured out that we’d arrived just in time to catch the last bus ride up the mountain. The bus driver was kind enough to take a leisurely cigarette break when he reached the parking lot at the top, giving us a chance to dance giddily in the rain-drenched parking lot for 3 minutes before we had to get back on the bus. All told, it was over 6 hours of transit just for an opportunity to breathe 3 minutes of fresh air. And, as desperate as we were, it was almost worth it.
I left Tokyo a day before Albert, and he took the opportunity to have some “me time” at a famous Tokyo spa! Please peer-pressure him into posting a brief description of his encounter with the famous Doctor Fish.
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma recently (fascinating book, highly highly recommended), and one of the many interesting ideas I carried away from it was the idea of an “industrial food chain”: that food is can be mass-manufactured from a few basic ingredients. There are two interesting corollaries:
- mediocre-quality food can be available year-round, independent of seasonality
- these base ingredients can be grown in high-density, high-volume mega-farms
Industrial food is very much not the case in China. Most food originates from small plots: it’s not unusual, though no longer common, to see a farmer squatting alongside with a few dozen vegetables on a dirty blanket, selling his wares on the sidewalk of a busy Beijing street. This is, of course, a nightmare for food-safety inspectors, who (if lucky) must trace a single shipment of meat to several dozen small farms or (if unlucky) have no idea where/who that shipment came from. The ongoing melamine-in-milk scare is a perfect illustration of how difficult it is to track down a source in the pre-industrial food chain (there are other factors, of course, such as corruption).
There is a plus side to pre-industrial food, however, and that’s that fresh food here is very very good: the result of seasonality/locality and a discerning public who’s never eaten the mediocre industrial apple. I had always been ho-hum about fruit in the US; in China, I’ve come to appreciate why fruit is a traditional gift amongst friends: it’s damn tasty. For the first time in my life, I’ve actually dreamed — yes, fantasized in my unconscious mind! — about eating Chinese oranges. If I have to give up year-round availability of oranges, just to be able to eat divine oranges 3 months out of the year, I’d do it. Happily.
Shortly after I posted about those amazing yams back in April, the store stopped selling them (they converted to powdered bubble tea during the summer?!?!). However, now that autumn is back upon us, it’s yam time once more. Albert and I had our first yam of the season yesterday, and memory didn’t disappoint; I look forward to many more yams in the upcoming months.
–
One last administrative note, and that’s to mention that a very loyal reader of this blog recently passed away. J, I wish I’d blogged more regularly in the past months instead of publishing this backlog after you’d passed. You are, and will be, missed.
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Reposting a link from the Seattle Times, wherein Microsoft enables an anti-piracy feature in Windows and the Chinese users who have are using stolen copies of Windows get huffy about being caught!
Piracy — not just of software — is rampant in China. I conducted an experiment a few months back, where I tried to buy a legitimate DVD of the Beijing Olympics ceremony. I ran into lots of bad knockoffs (some of them selling in legitimate, middle-class stores) and several very very good knockoffs (I wasn’t entirely certain whether they were legit). Because the illegit ones were so prevalent and realistic-looking, I finally ended up buying the hopefully-legit copy directly from the hopefully-official Olympics souvenir store. I think it was an official store because it was at the airport, but whatever it was, I certainly paid through the nose! I saw hopefully-illegit copies for 30 RMB (when converted to local cost-of-living and buying power, it’s approx $30 USD), but ended up paying 120 RMB for my hopefully-legit copy!
Let’s also remember that, in some cases, the legit stuff is prohibitively expensive. For example, Microsoft doesn’t “localize” software prices, putting prices through the roof. You think MS Office 2007 is pricey at $400 USD? Try paying the equivalent of $3000 for it!
Given the expense and difficulty of buying legitimate software, music, and video, it’s unsurprising that most Chinese users view pirated copies as being “just as valid”. As foreigners, we may chuckle at the indignation of those who are “in the wrong” (ie, buying pirated software), but let’s not forget the cultural context
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
I keep meaning to post my experiences regarding the Beijing Olympics, but it’s been a frantic week. Instead, I will scribble down a few tangentially-related thoughts:
Unsurprisingly, many young expats go drinking and clubbing. I don’t know how to say “swing dance” in Chinese, nor “jazz music”, so all my co-workers are very surprised/confused when I tell them I go dancing on a weekly basis: I’m not exactly the clubbing type. I’ve tried for several months to remember, but these two terms keep slipping from my head. So, here it is in writing: 摇摆舞 (yao2 bai3 wu3 - swing dance) and 爵士 (jue2 shi4 - jazz); maybe now I’ll remember it better.
In our 6 months here in Beijing, swing has been our most reliable way of meeting non-work expats. There are many locals who come, but the ones I know best — mostly because of my limited language skills — are the expats.
A long time ago (well, only a few months ago, but it feels like ages), I’d heard that expat life was one filled with goodbyes; an expat is always saying goodbye to friends. Whether it’s newly-met short-term travelers going to the next city or long-acquaintance expats whose assignment has ended, it’s supposed to feel like an endless parade of farewell parties.
I’ve only been here for 6 months so I haven’t met and lost many friends yet. Certainly, I’ve seen faces come and go from the rather small expat swing community, but they haven’t been really really close. This weekend one of my closer Beijing friends left (Matt, featured in the Chengdu sidetrip blog entry), which has been my hardest goodbye yet.
One of the expats in the Beijing swing community has been in Beijing for ~7 years, which I suppose makes him an expert in farewells. I wonder what it’s like to meet and make friends-with-expiration-dates for such an extended period of time. After a long enough time, does one learn to think: “well, it’s not worth becoming good friends with X because they’ll be gone in only 2 months”? One of these days I’ll have to ask.
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
3 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
It’s hard to say whether Beijing’s air hates my hair more than my hair hates Beijing, but the end result is the same: my long hair — the only part of my personal appearance I am actually proud of — is really suffering during my extended stay here. If you’ve only ever lived in a coastal city — like me — then you don’t really understand how dry Beijing’s air can get.
My hair is so dry and brittle that strands snap or fall out in the course of the day; I leave hairballs wherever I go (how much more hair can I shed before a bald spot appears?, I’ve wondered). The texture of my hair has completely changed, and I’m seriously contemplating a drastic haircut after my 1-year assignment is over (would a bob work for my face shape?).
As a sign of how frustrated I am with its condition: I just grabbed a pair of scissors from my desk and lopped off 3 inches. No mirror, no friends, no rubber bands: just grab-fistful-and-cut. I’d rather deal with hacked-up hair than with the final 3 inches of … dead cells … that’s been hanging off my head. I hate it. I simply hate my hair.
Please, if you consider visiting us in Beijing, bring me hair care products and junk food!
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
8 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Apparently, the Fuwa (the Olympics mascot) have been disowned by their creator. I’ve often thought that the amount of symbolism which has been packed into those cartoons was excessive, and now we know why: they were created by committee. Incidentally, I just discovered that the each cartoon character’s traditional pose looks like their respective textual character (see this image). Here’s an incomplete list of the Fuwa’s symbolism, which should help you understand why the creator had to create oversized hats for the Fuwa, just to capture all that symbolism.
Unrelatedly, I have to say that Beijing looks pretty good right now. There’s flowers blooming in beds all over the city, fresh bunting festowned from every corner and construction site, repaved sidewalks and repainted streets, and all those ugly prescriptivist “10 dos, 10 don’ts” signs have now been removed in favour of colourful “Beijing 2008″ signs (more info on the “10 dos, 10 don’ts” campaign here). But it’s worth mentioning that most of those flower beds will be dead in a month. In the 6 months we’ve lived here, it’s become clear that flower beds here are regarded as a short-term seasonal decorative element. Usually, several thousand colourful and flowering plants will be planted by an army of gardeners — sometimes not even bothering to remove the plants from their plastic pots — only to removed after a month of valiant struggle in Beijing’s claylike soil and immense heat (or cold) has caused them to wilt or die. The bed outside the nearest shopping mall has seen marigolds (summer), vincas (late spring), pansies (mid-spring), and several other annuals whose names I don’t know. I’m pretty sure that none of those flowers’ natural growing environment resemble Beijing in the slightest.
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
I’d like to exhort my readers one more time to check out Blogging Beijing. As the Olympics countdown reaches into the single digits, Daniel is really cranking up the quality and the quantity of his posts. If you’re curious about Beijing, check out his excellent blog when you’re done with my modest musings here.
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
|
|
|
