a spectre is haunting asia

2007-05-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

The 798 Art District is the nucleus of Beijing’s hyper-hyped art scene. In the 50’s, a number of factories were constructed in order to produce necessary electronics, but became obsolete after China opened up. In the late 90’s, artists started moving to this area for inexpensive studio space and currently the entire area abounds with galleries and hip coffee shops. As far as I can tell, no art is currently being made in Soho, as the rent has gotten too high for anything but a successful gallery or hip coffee shop. 798’s gentrification parallels New York’s Soho. The art was alright, but not excellent. The best part was the buildings that housed the art.

2007-05-03T00:54:00.000-07:00

A weekend of studying before the last week yielded some free time to attend China’s largest music festival, Midi. Midi is China’s first modern music school, which years ago began hosting a festival showcasing the music of its students. What began as a one-day concert has evolved into a corporate-sponsored 4-day long extravaganza featuring five stages which each showcase a certain genre. After wandering around for two hours trying to find the park where this was taking place, we finally arrived to witness a very un-Chinese sight – there was a huge line of people who were all very well dressed. This was strange for two reasons. Firstly, the Chinese don’t line up and instead prefer to shove and push their way to their destination. The phenomenon of standing in a line, though rarely seen, is the result of the Beijing government preparing for the Olympics. On the 11th of every month, volunteers force masses of people into neat queue in order to board subways and busses. Though I imagine that this was originally difficult to manage, people are now doing it on their own, submitting to the government’s call to do their part to help out with the Olympics. The second strange incident was that everyone was very well dressed. However, they weren’t dressed in drab darks and gray dress shirts as if they were going to visit their in-laws, the uniform of most Chinese men I see on the street. They also weren’t they donning the gaudy jewelry and high-heels of Beijing sophisticates. Nor was anyone was trying to pull off something that doesn’t suit them, a common sight in Beijing’s bars. Rather, they were wearing very much the same thing I saw most people wearing at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago - hip, relaxed and well-put-together outfits that looked good on a scrawny person, such as an American hipster or an average Chinese guy.

As we drew closer, we quickly realized that a large number of the attendees were not Chinese, but rather were assorted foreigners. Perhaps a full eighth of the attendees were 老外. However, that did not make the mesmerizing effect of the crowd any less strange. Often when looking at the stage, you only see the back of people’s head – their hair. But, this crowd was different because everyone’s hair was black, which sort of hypnotized me. I felt empathy for the hypnotized lion who has cannot decipher one zebra from another when staring at a herd. This effect was magnified at the rock stage, as everyone was also wearing black t-shirts. Still, I wasn’t in enough of a trance to enjoy, Honey Gun, the nü-metal band (pictured left) that came out. They began their show by broadcasting, over the jumbo-tron, their music video, which depicted them racing cars through the streets of Shanghai and rocking out in both an abandoned apartment building and a cube floating over the city. When they finally came out, they were wearing the same clothes as in the music video. If that wasn’t disastrous enough, they began playing their instruments, which my companions and I took as a sign to see what else was going on at the festival.

There was a hip-hop stage where some American schmuck copped DJ Shadow and small rave tent, but the best part was the experimental music stage, in front of which about 200 gorgeous and incredibly dressed Chinese sat in the shade and listened to the ambient noise flowing from the speakers. As I had said earlier, the Chinese have a thing for photography and these people were no exception, as they continuously were snapping shots. However, these were the kind of people who preferred film over digital and would rather take a picture of their feet than a flower. Everyone was sitting with their self-designed clothes and a husband-wife group came out who played traditional Chinese instruments while doing noise. The wife must had been traditionally trained, as she clearly had control over her instrument. After we saw that, we decided to leave to go studying, as this last week is finals. In fact, I ought to get to studying right now.

2007-04-20T03:09:00.000-07:00

I’ll add a picture of the Crocs ad when I get one.

In the last entry, I explained my voyage into the world of getting paid for letting people take my picture. This odyssey continued last Friday and Saturday, and became more and more strange, as everyone decided that I knew how to speak perfect Chinese. While this was a great opportunity to practice, at most times it resembled the photography scene from Lost in Translation, an inevitable comparison that was playing through my head all the while. I was photographed with a hip-hop dancer from Shanghai, a 19-year-old Crocs salesman, the beautiful trophy wife of an English businessman, and a Canadian dude-bro who couldn’t stop hitting on the hip-hop dancer.

The Canadian was interesting. He had spent four summers in China interning at various offices and is now studying Mandarin and looking for work, trying to break into the circle of foreigners that work in the Beijing offices of various foreign companies. His Chinese was alright, but not good enough to get anywhere with the hip-hop dancer. When he wasn’t ogling her, he was either nonchalantly telling me about his hilariously dull experiences in the Beijing club circuit or doing a strange dance that I have come to recognize as the foreigner networking jig. The jig has a few basic steps, which include ostentatious displays of ritzy cell phones, loud discussions of future job prospects, and taking down numbers. Beyond the basic steps, there are more advanced ones, such as taking pictures of your contacts in order to remember them or explaining how you first got a job in Beijing (perhaps the best story I have heard was, “I called them and told them I spoke some Chinese and had buying. . . I mean purchasing experience,” Which I think means that this person took some Chinese in college and had seen their future employer’s product on the shelf.) I had thought that this sort of social networking was a real-life version of the friend-collection that is currently taking place on myspace.com and facebook.com, but then I asked my boss to explain. Apparently, the foreigner labor market in China, though much more stable than ten years ago, is still very unpredictable, and a stray contact on your cell phone could land a job, as Western-trained minds are still a hot commodity despite the growing savvy of less expensive Chinese labor.

I'm done with school here in two weeks. My plans after that are still to be determined, but now it looks like I'm going to go to India for three weeks and then Malaysia for two weeks after that. I'll then return to China and tour around until the 1st of July. I want to be in the Twin Cities on the 4th.

2007-04-07T22:50:00.001-07:00

I recently was afforded another break, which I had to spend in Beijing in order to arrange my visa to India. The first two days of break were spent waiting in front of the Indian Embassy, watching professional tour guides skip the long line in order to process the visas of twenty Chinese citizens who plan to run amuck in New Delhi while toting $4000 SLR cameras and wearing identical fluorescent hats. A strange thing about the Chinese tourism business is that there is still the image of the “bushwhacker” anthropologist wearing all khaki and documenting his findings for the world. In most ads concerning tourism in China or abroad, this image persists, contrasting sharply with the reality I see at every mildly-touristy spot- 30 Chinese people all wearing the same thing, following around a flag-bearing tour guide while snapping close-up pictures of fake flowers.

However, my break was not without its benefits. Because I was here, I was available to model for Crocs, an American shoe company specializing in ugly foam shoes. One of my classmates works for this company and needed to find an Asian-looking boy to model these shoes. So, I was invited to go out to eat at a ritzy Chinese restaurant. (I think the greatest part of my study abroad has been mingling with all classes of people, a freedom I don’t exercise in the US.) They decided I “looked healthy enough” and told me to go to their office the next day so we could go to the Great Wall to take pictures.

The next day, my classmate and I went to their office, and we took an extremely expensive cab ride to “The Commune”, a hotel complex overlooking the Badalang portion of the Great Wall. When the hotel was first constructed, it won international praise for its modernist architecture. While I was there, it was clear that this praise was well-deserved, as each of the two-dozen structures on the compound were unique and complex. However, the buildings, made of bamboo, rusting metal, and huge panes of glass, weren’t suited for housing the event that was taking place that day – an Easter celebration catering to rich Chinese families. Children played among priceless works of art crafted by masters of the contemporary Beijing scene, finding painted eggs among the meticulously planted shrubbery. Among all of this commotion, the fathers of the children were recording their child’s every move with the aforementioned $4000 cameras. Most of the servants, who greatly outnumbered the patrons, wore the same thing – black pants and a matching black shirt with a single red star on the chest. Some servants, however, were forced to wear different clothes, forced to dress as clowns and enormous bunny rabbits in order to entertain the children. Perhaps the least strange sight was me - amidst all of this, I was wearing horrendously ugly shoes while getting photographed atop and inside the award-winning modernist architecture.

2007-04-01T00:36:00.000-07:00

Poorly written, but I have homework:

In China, there are two kinds of tourist spots – those that westerners visit and those that westerners do not visit. Tai Shan is one that westerners do not visit. Because it is relatively remote and not especially Chinese, most Western tour companies rarely bother with it. As a result, ticket prices are cheaper and accommodations are a little bit shabbier. Also, Chinese from the neighboring small cities are more likely to take short train rides there for a jaunt rather than going all the way to Beijing. These middle-class workers and college students rarely have the opportunity to see westerners. While Beijingers see white faces every day, the average Chinese person perhaps sees one a year. And when they are sightseeing, a white face is just another part of the spectacle. While I can occasionally blend in, and often do when walking in Beijing with my Asian-descendent classmates, it’s impossible with my friend Anna, who was gawked at by most of our fellow hikers. Often people would awkwardly utter a “Hello” and occasionally people would ask for pictures. Inevitably, our Chinese was better than their English.

2007-03-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

At the Great Wall, I could only think of how tedious it must have been for the soldiers who spent their entire lives sitting up there, endlessly watching the brown hills. Some of the soldiers, those recruited from the nearby areas, likely worked on the wall their entire lives and didn't know which side they were defending and which side they were defending from. I could elaborate, but suffice to say the Great Wall isn't very spectacular.

I've been relatively active, but haven't been good about documenting my movement. This weekend, I plan to go climb a mountain. I'm doing better at school, the sun is coming out, I've finally made some Chinese friends, and the paradoxes of the modern Chinese concepts of freedom and individuality are gradually becoming less muddled, yet more complex. I'm surprising myself with my initial conclusions, but have to hash out my true opinion before putting it into words. It's difficult to revise your entire conception of freedom. Sorry for being so cryptic - though this blog has recently recieved critical praise, I shouldn't rest on my laurels.

2007-03-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

My host university's long break, which is essentially the same America's summer break, has finally ended, which has made our campus a lot less desolate. The students' return has revealed a number of specifities of Chinese universities, most notably the daily blaring of music. Each day, after classes end, speakers placed all around campus loudly play Chinese pop music. When I asked one of my teachers to explain this custom, she told me that administration requests that music play all over campus and in the students' dorms (just the domestic students, thank God) in order to make everyone feel relaxed after class. However, she said, this is an ostensible explanation, as the administration true motive is to keep students from falling asleep after class. Indeed the synthesized wailings of a Chinese pop star makes it difficult to doze off.

My bike was stolen despite tremendous effort spent locking it properly using only a puny Chinese lock. The realization that it was stolen was not accompanied with the usual feelings of violation and anger, as I would feel in the US. I assumed that was a sign that I was still not entirely accustomed to China - to me, my environment is strange and dangerous, so I half-expected it to get stolen. However, when I told my teachers, they also were not at all surprised, as it is a common occurance in Beijing.

2007-03-10T17:54:00.000-08:00

After six weeks of near non-stop study, I finished midterms and boarded a train to Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province located in China’s mid-West. Before I left, I was in the midst of an existential crisis – likely the result of High Fidelity, academically-induced stress, and a certain self-awareness that comes from meeting new people. The trip provided me an opportunity to write letters to friends and ponder my place in the world, leaving me rejuvenated and (somewhat) prepared to face the tedium of endlessly studying Chinese characters.

Sichuan was gorgeous. I spent little of my seven days in Chengdu, instead spending three days traveling to and climbing the sacred Buddhist Mt. Emei and another day at the equally sacred, yet Taoist Mt. Qingcheng. Fortunately, I took a lot of pictures, so reading this post can be more of an act of perception than imagination.

The twenty-six hour train ride was gorgeous, as we traversed most of middle China. On trains in China (or at least our hard sleepers), everyone goes to sleep and wakes up at the same time, which is enforced through an abrupt lights-off policy. The next day, my cabin's television started squaking - advertisements for Yahoo! and Chinese propaganda videos loudly indicated that it was time to wake up. My anger and confusion immediately gave way to awe when I looked outside to realize that we were traveling through a beautiful mountain pass.

A few hours later, we descended and the snowy mining (?) towns became farms dotted with yellow flowers, a cash crop used for the production of canola oil. The riverside houses managed stepped farms that have likely not changed for the past millenia. Occasionally, the skeleton of an abandoned factory stood atop a hill in the middle of a field of yellow flowers, a monument to the decline of rural industry since Mao's successors focused on more lucrative and practical urban-coastal development.

The pastoral settings contrasted sharply to Chengdu, the buzzing capital of Sichuan which is almost indiscernable from Beijing. Granted, Chengdu is not yet as developed as Beijing - the pollution isn't as awful and there are few foreigners. However, Chengdu is on the rise and is looking to the West for its inspiration - economic (Chengdu is aiming to become the center of China's biotech development) and aesthetic. Close to our hotel was an outdoor mall with stores ranging from American "lifestyle" brand Polo Ralph Lauren to high-end European designers such as Dior. If the mere existence of these shops is not enough of a testament of the influence and admiration of the West, the statues of white American shoppers surely is. At the mouth of the kilometer-long outdoor mall are about eight statues of fashionably-dressed, good-looking, tall, white people all posing as if they, too, are crusing the same shops that the Chinese are frequenting. The people of Chengdu believed that these statues were previously a good photo opportunity - at least two people were always for pictures with the statues (read: idols). However, when actual white people, too, were posing with the statues, it was such a sight as to attract the attention of well over fifty gawkers, all curiously comparing the statues to the real thing.

Perhaps the reason why most foreigners travel to the somewhat remote Chengdu is the Panda, China's docile, amicable national animal and "ambassador to the world." The various signposts and videos indicated why the Panda, despite a lack of natural predators, is still facing extinction - they are terribly evolved animals. They are only capable of processing 20% of what they consume and their layers of fat prevent them from realizing that they are pregnant, so when they finally give birth, they are confused at the sudden appearance of a squaking, hairless infant and swat at it with their enormous paws (which sport an underutilized thumb). Regardless of these sad realities concerning the Panda's ability to survive as a species, Lizzie has convinced me through impassioned arguments that enormous rescources should be spent in order to maintain this important part of China's ecosystem, as they are incredibly cute.

This is part of the head of the Leshan Grand Buddha, which was built in 734(!) and has been the world's largest Buddha since the destruction of the Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban. While the pure scale of a project of this size is staggering, it perhaps more interesting to note that Buddhism was not yet a deeply entrenched institution, as it had migrated into China less than one hundred years earlier. However, its egalitarianism greatly conflicted with imperial power, so the construction of the Leshan Grand Buddha could be considered an act of protest from an upstart religious perspective. However, I'm very shaky on my facts here, so I wouldn't quote me on this one.

This is a picture taken from one of the gorgeous buildings constructed on Mt. Leshan, which are numerous as the many pilgrims to the Buddha throughout the ages helped to develop the mountain.

The climb up Mt. Emei, another sacred Buddhist mountain, was easily the highlight of my trip to Sichuan. The mountain is 3099 meters tall and the hike featured stream-side hikes through lush valleys, monkey-infested bridge-cities that looked like the Ewok villiage, no-visibility trudges through clouds, and finally ice-glazed trees. However, one thing was constant throughout the entire hike - stairs. Unlike America, trails are not composed of switchbacks, but rather seemingly endless stone staircases. The amount of labor required to construct these stairs is unthinkable, as hiking up the stairs was both discouraging and terrible on my knees - doing it with a slab of stone strapped to my back seems impossible. However, the stairs had the benefit of allowing me to focus on the scenery and the age-indicating plates tied to some of the older trees, one of which was over 1000 years old.

I like this picture.

I spent the night at a monastary, which marks perhaps the coldest night of my life to date. However, the warm vegetarian food the monks provided was excellent and the mountain-side building was quiet, peaceful and meditative. I'm sorry to be so obtuse, but it was strange how closely this building matched my image of a Chinese mountain-side monastary. When I woke up, all of the clouds that I had been hiking through during the afternoon had frozen and latched on to the trees and ground, providing everything with an icy glaze. The clouds in the lower altitudes did not freeze, which resulted in the cloud-sea phenomenon from the first picture in this post.

I also like this picture.

At the peak of the mountain is a very dramatic reward for the hike, a 70 meter tall brass Buddha riding three three-tusked elephants. The Golden Summit was traditionally an important part of a pilgrimage. Also pictured are the classmates that hiked with me and more stairs.

The next day, I went to the sacred Taoist Qingcheng mountain, which was also beautiful, but was not as great a story. So, I will save time in order to begin studying and just post the pictures.

When I returned to Beijing, I went to a Chinese roller disco.

2007-02-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

Friday night marked the beginning of Spring Festival, the most important holiday of the year. Everyone in China celebrated (and continues to celebrate) as the lunar calendar turned over to the year of the Golden Pig. Spring Festival, which is referred to as Chinese New Year in the states, is a combination of Thanksgiving and New Years and is simply epic. It commences the world’s largest annual human migration, as over one billion people return home, stressing China’s infrastructure for over two weeks. On the night of Spring Festival, people eat only steamed dumplings in order to bring themselves wealth, as dumplings are shaped like the currency used before paper money. People also light fireworks, which is perhaps the most sensational part of Spring Festival. In the past decade in Beijing, fireworks have been outlawed because of a (reasonable) fear of widespread fires. However, last year signaled a change in the policy and rules have been even more relaxed this year. As a result, the days leading up to Spring Festival were loud, as fireworks were exploded throughout the city from when sun went down until about three in the morning.

On the Friday of Spring Festival, I woke up early and decided to find a park well south of Beijing’s subway system. During my wanderings, I encountered some guys setting off fireworks on the side of the road. These fireworks were dangerous – definitely not the kind you could buy in the US. They looked like a fuse attached to the tube of a toilet paper roll. When they lit the fuse, the bottom of the toilet paper roll exploded, sending the other half about thirty feet skyward, where it would explode. I asked them if I could watch, and they insisted that I light one, so I did. They lit me a cigarette, which they were using to set the fireworks off, and gave me one of the perilous toilet paper rolls. I set it down and used the cigarette to light the fuse, which burned extremely fast. I ran away and my firework exploded sideways, sending the other half into the street to explode near the undercarriage of a moving car. They thought this was hilarious and we began the "usual conversation" - I’m American. I’m in China studying Chinese at Jingjimaoyidaxue. Thank you, but I don’t think my Chinese is very good. Yes I’m not entirely white – my mother is Korean (this last part, which is a staple of any conversation I have with Chinese, isn’t true. I’m actually half-Japanese, but I don’t want to deal with Chinese prejudice against Japanese. Though it is relatively minor, I don’t want to encounter any potential problems. I also realized that I can’t say I’m half-Chinese, as it opens the door to a number of other questions that I can’t answer.)

This time, the conversation had a twist – one of the guys asked me if I had eaten. I said I had, but I was still hungry. He thought this was great and told me to follow him. I followed him into one of the foreboding and dirty alleys that open into the minor pedestrian streets. I then followed him into a smaller alley, and then an even smaller one, which turned out to be the courtyard of his family’s home. Everyone was sitting together in one room, surrounding a table filled with food. I sat across from the grisly, unshaven father, who was seated on a bed with his wife, who had curly hair that was dyed red. The family consisted of two sons and two daughters. I had already met the first son and the other son was at the computer, video-chatting on QQ, the most popular messaging service in China. The daughters, who looked like they were about my age, were ordered to bring me a clean bowl and rice. At first, they were confused by my presence, but as I explained they started shoveling food onto my plate. They were all very excited to have a guest, especially since I was American who could understand Chinese. At one point during my meal, they all insisted that I go to the computer, whereupon I provided the family video-evidence of my existence. On the screen were the astonished faces of the friends of the family, all of whom were video chatting. I greeted their gawking friends and then crafted an excuse for leaving, as I didn’t want to overstay my welcome.

I don’t want to further burden this post with the intricacies of the interaction, but it is important to note that this family was anything but rich. I think the son that I had met on the street was a Fuwuyuan, a service person whose job description (and relative pay) is not unlike a movie theatre cleaner in America. This family was definitely on the losing end of China’s growth – the lower end of the economic stratification that is developing. However, it is important to note that, despite their relative poverty, they had a computer with internet service.

After I left the family, I visited a park and then returned to my dorm. That night, at around midnight, some students and I went to the roof of the library to see the fireworks go off around the city. It was amazing – the countdown to midnight was accompanied with a crescendo of sound and light. By the time the clock struck, every apartment building was hosting its own fireworks show. The fireworks themselves were remarkable, as they were much larger than what can be bought in the US. However, what was most amazing was the effect of the ritual - rather than everyone going to one place for public fireworks, each family bought their own to set off at midnight. From our perspective - about 10 stories up and eye level with the explosions - the effect was incredible. Each dark alley and street was erupting, spewing sparks, bangs and flashes into the sky. We eventually gave up futile attempts to take pictures of the transient flashes of light and just appreciated the collective chaos, stopping occasionally to smile and wish each other 春节快了 - Happy New Year.

We stood awestruck for about an hour before the cachophany subsided. At that point, I took out my own personal stash and we went to the street to set them off.

The next day, I went to a few 庙会, or temple festivals. These week-long New Years festivals take place all throughout Beijing. So far, I've only attended two of them, but they're better explained with pictures than with words (especially my words, as evidenced by the previous paragraphs). So, here are some pictures of the festivals. Also included are pictures of my visit to the Yonghe Gong Tibetan Buddhist Lamasary, an analysis of Beijing's walls, and a sad clown:

The Tibetan Lamasary, which was constructed in the 18th century, is one of the few temples that survived the Cultural Revolution. The architecture and decorations are all very Chinese, but they still speak to the influence of Indian art and architecture. Also, all of the dieties, which I was not permitted to photograph, were strange - most were traditional Chinese symbols of power imposed on Indian figures. The result was a dragon with one thousand hands or a many-armed figure copulating with an eight-headed lion. The picture that began this post is of the gateway and this is the main prayer hall.

In Beijing, mostly south of the Forbidden City, are a number of walls that boast of Beijing's preemincence. Few ads decorate these walls, and they seem to be mostly government-sponsered propaganda.

However, behind all of these walls are dilapidated ruins, buildings destroyed by wrecking cranes and underuse. All of these areas will be developed into Western-style apartments and shopping malls, and one hopes that they are only destroying the Soviet-style block buildings rather than the few remaining traditional alleys (胡同) and homes that the Beijing government begrudgingly preserved.

This is the first festival I visited, Longtan Park. It is the largest festival and was extremely crowded. With the exception of the staged "cultural shows," there wasn't much to do except walk through the crowds and buy things.

This is the stage that hosted the cultural show. Not very exciting, but every minority got to show off its funny songs and dance. China has a particular way of dealing with its minorities, which will be addressed later.

Sad clown.

This is the second festival I went to. It was at the oldest Taoist temple in Beijing - the White Cloud temple. People would wait for 40-50 minutes in order to touch the archway to the temple, which was supposed to bring good luck.

People also waited long in line to touch the symbols of the Chinese Zodiac, which was also supposed to bring luck.

The amount of incense burned was incredible. There were appointed incence handlers and the devoted would light their incense, say prayers, and hand their incense to a monk, who would throw them on a huge pyre. (I didn't feel right taking pictures of this ritual, so all that I photographed is the massive amounts of extinguished incense.) As a result of the incredible amount of incense expended, the temple had a very pleasant fragrance, and I enjoyed it much more than the usual scent of pollution.

2007-02-14T19:33:00.000-08:00

Those are people swimming in February. They would flounder out to the ice, touch it, and swim back to pour warm water all over their bodies.

I haven’t written in a while because I haven’t been seeing much of Beijing. Most of my time has been spent studying in my room or fighting off various illnesses. However, last weekend, I decided I had to get out of my funk, so I got on the subway with somewhat vague intentions.

I found my way to the Dongyue Temple, a Taoist temple that managed to survive the Cultural Revolution. The architecture of the temple is traditionally Chinese, so it is very simple - essentially a series of courtyards. Surrounding each of the courtyards are small rooms that, at first glance, look like exhibits at the national history museum. Each of these rooms contain a number of statues of demons, Taoist deities, and people undergoing various tortures. Each room symbolizes a fate that could possibly befall you and the few Chinese present prayed at each of these rooms by lighting incense and bowing. It is not unlike devotionalism to saints prevalent in popular Catholicism.

When I visited, the temple was preparing for Spring Festival, the annual festival that marks the beginning of the new year in the Chinese lunar calendar. Spring Festival’s five days of family fun begins tomorrow, providing me both a break from school and a reason to go out. Beijing’s temples throw fairs that are very highly attended, so my next entry might be more exciting.

After seeing the temple, I again boarded the subway and, after some split decisions and aimless wandering through the streets, found myself at Hou Hai, which is the name for a lake surrounded by touristy sights, enormous bars, and parks. As I walked around the lake, I was provided with numerous opportunities to practice my Chinese as I was nearly continuously approached by bicycle-riding entrepreneurs who wanted me to ride in their bicycle’s carriage to one of Hou Hai’s tourist spots. After about two hours, I completed my lap around the lake and returned to my dorm.

That night and tonight, the first nights I haven't either been sick or busy, were spent going out and meeting people. Like most major cities, Beijing's options for nocturnal debauchery are numerous and varied. As per usual, I've been frequenting small and inexpensive music venues and hipster bars, however the club scene is incredible and somewhat surprising, as it entirely contradicts the stereotype of the hard-working Chinese with an 11o'clock curfew. Last night, I learned to play the Chinese dice drinking game, which earned me both some comfort (albeit chemically induced) with my Chinese as well as a Chinese "girlfriend", which means that some girl has my phone number and is bragging to her friends about how she's going to move to America.

2007-02-03T20:19:00.000-08:00

“SARS” masks – Asians wear surgical masks in everyday life, a tendency that has become known in the states as wearing “SARS Masks.” The association between wearing surgical masks and SARS is entirely constructed by the media. When the SARS pandemic began, major television media outlets needed a depiction of the situation in Asia, so they dug into their archives to get videos of people wearing surgical masks while walking through the street. However, this is common practice in Asia for a few reasons:

1. The Dust Cloud – Every Spring in Beijing, there are terrible dust storms so people wear surgical masks to keep themselves from choking on the dust.
2. Pollution – Asia has terrible pollution and people don’t want to always be breathing it in.
3. Cosmetic – Asian women wear surgical masks more often than men. This is because the wind and weather is bad for their skin. In China, there is still an aesthetic of “the more milky white the better”, which is reflected by their commercials and print advertisements. This cosmetic aesthetic is complicated, as they want milky white, but not pale. This explains the popularity of red clothes, another stereotype of the Chinese. Indeed, Chinese people don’t like wearing red because they are communists. They like it because it brings out the color in their cheeks and lips.

I’m sick and I have been in bed all weekend, which is not much fun. I haven’t been talking much to people but instead have been watching bootlegged movies that I bought and trying to lie down.

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This just in – In a somewhat miraculous turn of events, my health has improved. I was extremely ill, and as I was writing this post even thought that I ought to have taken more precautions against the bird flu.

2007-01-31T08:48:00.000-08:00

Postmodernism (后现代化主义): “The Chinese did it first” is a relatively safe statement to make about any aspect of society – as if having a spherical conception of the world in the 2nd century BC wasn’t enough, the Chinese also managed to beat Foucault to the punch: The Chinese word for history is 历史. The first character has two parts: a factory (厂) and power (力). The power is in the factory, which would indicate that the factory is constructing, or manufacturing power. The second character, 史, depicts a hand with a pen writing at a desk. These two characters are combined in order to create the word “history”. Therefore, history - 历史 - is the manufacturing of power by the hand of someone at a desk. What’s really crazy is that this is the simplified version of the character. Chinese characters, though currently dauntingly complicated, were even more difficult before the Mao era. Mao simplified many of the characters in order to make them easier to remember, which would increase literacy – a good goal for a communist. This change, which happened in the fifties, did not affect the Chinese language outside of the mainland, so Taiwan and the various Chinatowns throughout the US and Canada use the traditional character sets. They do not have such a blatant representation of Mao’s understanding of power/knowledge.

A few days ago, I had considered leaving this program and doing something else with my time here in China. After talking with friends here, calling home, and exploring options with my study abroad advisor, I finally talked with the head of the program. As a result, I am getting an extra hour of tutoring each day as well as ridiculous amounts of moral support. Every time I turn a corner, a 老师 is there to tell me how much I'm improving. So, I feel better now and I'm finally in the mindset that I've made a choice to be here, as I didn't feel that way before. I'd like to thank everyone that helped me through the last week, as I was really not doing well. I'd also like to apologize for this post. I feel as if the academic part of my brain is falling apart, so I was extremely excited to do some mickey mouse scholarship using my Chinese dictionary.

2007-01-28T23:54:00.000-08:00

The weekend finally came and my Saturday night was spent searching for a Chinese rock concert. With vague directions provided by That’s Beijing, the expat magazine, myself and a buddy went looking for Star Time, which is part of a four story entertainment megaplex. The top floor is a concert hall, the third floor is a huge, extremely ritzy lounge bar, the second and first floors are a disco called Tango, and the basement is all KTV, which is what the Chinese call Karaoke. Next to this huge and bustling building is an equally huge and bustling 24-hour, four-story dim sum restaurant. It was a strange mix of people, as the attendants of the rock show were entirely different than the well-dressed lounge patrons or the very drunk KTVers. Surprisingly, there were few other westerners at the show, so we got stared at. However, after only two weeks, I’ve grown used to getting gawked at. The first band finished tuning up and they started playing hard rock that sounded too much like Korn. The next band came out and each of the band members wore the same thing – brown collared button-up shirts with matching pants and a red arm band. The arm band read AK-47, the band’s name. However, their uniform was a clear message – they were dressed like the Red Guard, Mao’s youth corps during the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guard terrorized the Chinese people by accusing people of capitalist sentiments. Regardless of how unsubstantiated these claims were, they justified taunts, property seizure, and occasionally beatings. The politics of the band's lyrics were lost on me, but I liked their music. It borrowed elements from New Wave and Hardcore, but mostly sounded like Rage Against the Machine in Chinese.

That was probably the most notable event. I have some more things to talk about, including making jiaozi at my host family, why Chinese people wear “SARS” masks, why Chinese people like wearing red, and the underclass of servants known as “FuWuYuan”, but I’ll talk about them later, as I have 70 characters to memorize for tomorrow.

I somehow managed to survive the arduous and frustrating first week of classes. I’ve apparently lost my once uncanny memory – short-term, working, and long. I spend hours trying to store a few characters to no avail, a brain gimmick that would have been no problem for my high-school self. I suppose it reflects a real education rather than the collection of memory tests that was my high school education. While the weekend was fun, the next week has already begun and it is already shaping up to be both painful and psychologically damaging.

2007-01-23T20:10:00.000-08:00

This is a Chinese Language program for computers. It's essentially all I have seen of China since the last post.

This was written before my first class:

台球 - Billiards

Tonight I went to a Chinese pool hall. . .

Me talk pretty one day – I think I’m going to have to curtail my listening to music because it is stimulating parts of my brain that ought to be dying. (I had the thought of translating The GZA’s “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth” into Chinese. I likely still will because it’ll be interesting.) I feel like I’m going to lose my ability to speak English. It’ll all be put into memorizing important Chinese words – like 紧张 (nervous). The entire purpose of the language pledge, I think, is two-fold. While we are surely devoting more parts of the brain to Chinese, we are doing so by destroying the English-speaking parts in order to make room.

The most frustrating part of all of this is that I know that in about twenty years science will have developed a pill that allows you to remember everything you read and hear. Or at least something that will dramatically increase our ability to memorize information. However, that sort of invention will be obsolete by the time it is created. Indeed, by the time the memory pill is manufactured, we will have such a seamless interaction with sources of information that memorization will be a useless skill.

---

Since then, I have done nothing but eat, sleep, and study Chinese. I, for some reason, cannot remember the words. It is very difficult and I'm not keeping up with the class. Hopefully, I'll get better at this, because right now I'm just desperately hanging on. However, I am improving and can have survival-level conversations with other English-speaking students in Chinglish. Since we can only speak Chinese, it is useful to be able to ask people if they want to "Leave Buy Food Want?"

2007-01-20T01:41:00.000-08:00

污染 - Pollution
蟑螂 – Cockroach
不三不四 – Sketchy (not three not four)

The pollution in Beijing is unbearable. Objects as near as just fifty feet away are obscured by clouds of toxins and smog. Just normal breathing has been giving me a headache and everyone’s smoking only adds to the toxins. As soon as I get off of the smoggy street, I go into a smoky room. I’ll try to find some pictures to corroborate this.

Yesterday was the last day that we could speak English, so all of the students hit the bars. Near to our school is a strip called San Li Tou (pronounced San Li Touar in a Beijing Accent), which was a trip. There were beggars everywhere and I followed some of the returning students back to a back-alley bar that was supposed to have cheap drinks. On the way there, we passed a number of bars that we packed with Chinese. Each had a small band playing for them and were filled with smoke. The bands ranged from rock acts complete with grungy, long-haired rockers in tight pants to two –piece mom-and-pop acts which only had an old woman singing and a guy with a keyboard. In each of these bars, a bunch of older-looking Chinese men were sitting at tables that were placed all over the dance floor. It was strange because it wasn’t a rock show, nor could people really talk to each other because of the music. I was trying to look into these bars in order to figure out the social dynamics, but my efforts were hindered by the small children grabbing at my arms and putting their hands in my pockets.

We arrived at the bar, which was essentially a basement with a counter. I was amazed that such a place could exist in China, but I’m learning that any expectation of China is totally unfounded. Many of the expectations are the result of orientalized bullshit that doesn’t account for the vast economic changes that have happened within the last twenty years. Speaking of orientalism, it really affects everyone’s conceptions of Chinese women. It’s very difficult for a Chinese woman to be sexy in American eyes because we’ve been so conditioned to think that they are cute, which is manifest from our conception of them as children. At best, they are beautiful, but it is an untouchable beauty, like a child. However, the instances in American culture when they are sexy is a fetishism of the exotic.

Alright I’ll stop waxing philosophical using ideas from books I haven’t read (I’ve read Said’s intro. Do I get credit for that?). After having drinks, we went to a disco called Club Blu, which was on the third level of the building across the street. On the way up the stairs, I saw fancy satin curtains through the door in the second floor. I went through the door and found a beautiful café that was full of books. I looked around this huge café/bookstore for a while and realized that is a French-oriented restaurant that serves relatively inexpensive wine and French food. The prevalence of this sort of western restaurant is not unlike the lunch I had eaten just that day, which was at the “cozy café”, a small restaurant on the second level of a Soho building structure. They served hamburgers and other western food inside of a tiny restaurant which had about four workers serving the twelve seats. These western restaurants are all over Beijing, but they are not nearly as prevalent as the Mcdonald’s and KFC, which is usually what Chinese people associate with American culture.

The world of the private college student is small. At this program, everyone is related by just a few degrees of separation. I could go into it, but it was expected before I came here. What was a surprise was the lack of acknowledgement of Macalester, but I think that is just to be expected of small schools in general. Today, we started the language pledge and I am now trapped in a cage of incoherent speech. However, everyone seems to be struggling together and we are well aware that the only way to get out of it is to speak more.

That entry was written a while ago. It takes me a while to finish these long posts, so the few days that followed that post will be completed by using a much simpler medium: pictures and captions. The post will end with an e-mail from Anthony Carr, who will be henceforth known as Ground Control.

This is one of my roommates. We live in a very nice dorm, so I wonder how many of these guys live in some of the slums that we've seen. Many of the slums are right next to huge shiny buildings, which is characteristicically Chinese.

This woman was swinging her flag around for a few hours while listening to sparse techno. Many older people gather in the parks to pursue their hobbies and it all takes on an aspect of spectacle. Often, the spectator can become part of the show, which is what happened with the huge harmonica band in the next picture. Everyone then gathered around the band and started singing along.

Many people use the parks as a place to exercise. As you walk through a park, many older people are walking around, sometimes vigorously. Perhaps the most entertaining, outside of the flag-waving and prevalent ballroom dancing, is the incredible athleticism exhibited by the hacky-sackers. It isn't the same as American hacky sack - they play with what is best described as a huge badmitton shuttlecock. However, the accuracy and distance they can get from it is incredible. I should take a video.

There were a number of attempts to christianize China, which resulted in the construction, destruction, and reconstruction, of a number of churches. This is one of the churches that surround the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City has a church at its North, East, South, and West - this is the East Church. It isn't large or particularly beautiful, but I liked the picture becasue people are getting their wedding pictures in front of it.

Shopping is everything in China and every need is filled - except deodorant. Clothing stores are everywhere, but don't expect to ever be able to find a Ming vase, a silk padded jacket, or fancy shoes. Everyone wears western clothes. Strangely, the one place where you can find a padded silk jacket is Wal Mart.

I just thought that this was funny. Perhaps it is a reward for getting so far through this imposing entry. An even better reward is Tony's eloquent e-mail that he sent to me in response to my request for information:

yo.
heres some info that really interested me.
you certainly sparked my curiosity.
attached are the following dangerous documents:
1) wikipedia article "Media of the People's Republic of China" (english)
2) book in pdf - "Media Control in China" written by He Qinglian and published by HRIC. (chinese)
i read an excerpt in english. heres a review:
Media Control in China describes how China's much-lauded economic modernization has allowed the government to camouflage its pervasive control under the glossy façade of consumerism, with a shift from ham-fisted censorship to an elaborate architecture of Party supervision, amorphous legislation, stringent licensing mechanisms, handpicked personnel and concentrated media ownership.
*) in the future, request any info on any topic you want. i will send you whatever i find, including a wikipedia summary, within the next 24 hours.
call me ground control.
i got your back.
tony

2007-01-17T21:00:00.000-08:00

This is what wikipedia looks like in China. Please send me information, as I will no longer have access to a vast and constantly changing cache of facts about the world. You'll probably have to send things in a word document, as links will not work.

If you want to send physical objects, they might get here if you use the English address:

Jared Rudolph
Associated Colleges in China
Foreign Students Dormitory
Capital University of Economics and Business
Hongmio, Chaoyang District
Beijing, P.R. China 100026

However, the Chinese address would likely work better:

中国，北京
红庙，朝阳门外大街
首都经济贸易大学
外国留学生宿舍
何杰明（Jared Rudolph)

You’ll probably want to use both.

At five in the morning, a program is on TV that is a montage of videos of Vancouver along with sappy piano music. Lots of shots of maple leaves changing colors. According to my father, 30 percent of households in Vancouver are Chinese speaking.

2007-01-17T01:36:00.000-08:00

It's ridiculously easy to add photos onto this website.

Today I went to the ancient Summer Palace, which is now a gorgeous park with traditional-style buildings. It is adjacent to Peking University’s imposing library that both functions as a research library and contains original texts dating back to the 5th century BC. I was traveling with a white American and everywhere we went people were looking at us.

Traveling around Beijing has been interesting. I had thought that my half-Asian features would allow me to somewhat blend into the crowd, but I am instantly recognized as a foreigner. People usually avoid eye contact, but sometimes they stare. All of my interactions have been in Chinese, and everyone encourages my use of Chinese, even if they understand English. Their patience seems infinite.

If you haven't noticed, I'm somewhat antsy to see the city of Beijing. This wanderlust is motivated largely by the incredible fear that I'll be trapped in my room studying for the next four months. Tomorrow, I take my placement exam and classes will begin on Monday. Class will be intense.

2007-01-16T16:25:00.000-08:00

Macalester is wonderful. Two days ago, I woke up and was prepared to go through another day of wandering the streets. Just as I was leaving, my Chinese tutor, who is a 北京人，knocked on my door. I was so excited to see him after the previous day’s mishap. Tida, the Thai Macalester student in my program, had him pick her up from the airport and he took it upon himself to help us get oriented in the city. We went and got groceries and then took the subway throughout the city. He was extremely helpful and explained a number of things that I wouldn’t usually understand.

We went to a number of stores which were directed at foreign people. The particular place we went was seven floors of knock-off clothing, jewelry and DVD’s. The girls we were with, Tida, a Macalester grad named Jennifer, and a girl from my program, enjoyed the shopping while Yan and I walked through the tourist trap quickly and tried to avoid all of the pestering salespeople. After we were done, we still had to kill some time before the scheduled rendezvous with the girls. I was going to sit down on a step outside, but Yan scoffed and said that it was dirty. His disgust at the proposition of sitting on the dirty street was somewhat prudish, however this prudishness is not unfounded. Everything in Beijing is dirty. If a bike is left out for more than a day it is covered in dust. Sadly, this leaves the city with a drab feel. This is supposed to improve after a rain, and I have heard some students say that city stimulates clouds to rain before major holidays. Supposedly there is a way to do this.

Cell phones here are very cheap. One of the students bought one for forty dollars. Minutes are extremely cheap. The variety and low price of the phones lead me to believe that the American market for phones and services is unduly expensive. However, this could also be the result of the Chinese development of cell phone infrastructure.

We walked with Yan through his old neighborhood, which he said has changed markedly since the last time he had visited. On one corner, there was a string of three barbershops. Yan told me that these shops were likely a prostitution front. Through the glass windows of each shop, I could see three or four pretty girls sitting on a bench supposedly waiting for a haircut.

When we returned from our visit, a number of students had arrived. We went out to eat in a big group. There are many types of students at my program and they are all academically intense, as you would have to be in order to involve yourself in something this ridiculous. However, everyone's motivations for learning Chinese seem varied, as some are well aware of the history and politics of China and are able to reference all of the articles they’ve read about contemporary culture. Some seem to lack that knowledge, but are well aware of the economic future of China and have internships lined up for the summer.

Yesterday, I went with another student to the military history museum, which was really interesting. After seeing the exhibit at Macalester concerning the massive doctoring of photos by the Chinese government, I could recognize which picture had been altered. Naturally, many of the photos had been altered and the touchy historical events had a twist to them.

After that, we went north to a beautiful park where people were ice fishing and old couples were going for walks. There are a number of urban parks in Beijing, all of which are used by tons of people. Mostly, it is old people just hanging out and doing things. We walked some people doing water calligraphy, which is writing Chinese characters on the stone terraces using huge brush-sponges soaked in water. We were at first just watching one of the old guys doing it, but westerners rarely go unnoticed and one of the water calligraphers eventually talked to us and asked us to write our names. Naturally, a crowd of about 20 developed in order to see the 老外 (foreigners) butcher their language. However, everyone applauded our childish efforts. After we had written our names, the old man did the same thing except much prettier. He then called on his friend, who wrote our names in two beautiful cursive scripts. Everyone asked us what we studied at school. When I couldn’t properly pronounce 哲学 (philosophy), a man asked me in perfect English what my major was and then informed everyone, which led to a debate that seemed like it is not unlike the usual debate resultant from mentioning philosophy in public discourse. However, I could pick out parts of their discussion, which was centered around one man’s belief that Chinese philosophy was boring.

In China, they have to read Marxist-Leninist philosophy as well as the thought of Mao and Deng Xiaoping. This is taught in schools and it must be impossible to teach it to high-school students who don’t care about it.

2007-01-16T06:26:00.000-08:00

It wasn't a long walk to Tianamen square, but there were a tons of things to see. On the way, I ran into Oriental Plaza, which is a street that has a lot of stores. On a Sunday afternoon, it was so crowded that it was difficult to navigate the crowd and all of the stores were packed with shoppers. It was worse than most American malls during Christmas shopping season. I marveled at the consumerism for a while before going back to the road that would eventually lead me to Tianamen square and things to touch.

On the way to Tianamen square, two girls stopped me and started talking with me. They said they wanted to practice their American slang and kept saying "sick" and "sweet" with Chinese accents. We talked in English because it was clear that my Chinese was not up to par and they really wanted to try out their slang. American Slang is very popular in China and one of my escorts, "Lilly" has bought eight books on it and a few DVD's.

As we went through Tianamen square, we talked about American Pie, which is HUGE in China. Usually, when young Chinese meet Americans, American Pie is discussed. I suspect that the Chinese government allowed for that movie to pass through because it was such an awful depiction of American students. At the end of high school, every Chinese student is studying for a do-or-die exam that will determine the course of the rest of their life. In contrast, the Chinese think that American students are ending their education with whatever is depicted in American Pie, Chinese interpretations of the movie vary, but they all reflect poorly on the work ethic of real American students. Lilly asked me if there really was a party after graduation where everyone lost their virginity. If you were to briefly reflect on the movie, it is not difficult to determine how she drew these conclusions. From there, it really isn't a far jump to think that this party was not only condoned, but also sponsored by the school, as the kids all targeted Prom. Whatever be the collective Chinese interpretation of American Pie, it surely doesn't lead them to believe that America is earning its future. People here work all the time (Cab drivers work all but two days a month) and likely have no idea that their economy is being artificially depressed by the government.

Information is communicated in one way that I had not anticipated. Newspapers are posted around the city. Papers are affixed on little kiosks which are located at what seems like every other street corner, sort of like a college campus. People gather around these kiosks and read the news, which I assume all comes from the government. This is not different than the traditional way of conveying information, which was to put huge posters up around the city. New techniques are also used and the Chinese government officially owns ten CCTV (China Central TV) stations and heavily censors the rest. CCTV broadcasts a ton of propaganda and there's a lot of flag waving, as expected. Also on TV are a number of dramas that take place in Manchu china. Everyone wears the traditional (at least Manchu traditional, so 1644-1912) hairstyles and clothing. These seem to be very popular - at any time there are at least three of them on the ten channels. There are also the Kung Fu epics, which are feature outlandish costumes and fighting pig-man chimeras. They're strange and difficult to understand.

2007-01-14T19:12:00.000-08:00

The crowding and the pollution of Beijing are noticeable before your plane lands. As the plane starts to descend, the horizon never turns into a distinct line. Rather the blue-white haze that is seen at high elevation takes on a yellow-brown hue. The horizon never appears and the yellow-brown seems closer and closer as the smog gets thicker and thicker. Buildings, enormous boxes with windows, can be seen through the smog. Each of these look like they hold about 100 efficiency apartments and they are all ugly. In the states, they'd be unacceptable for low-income housing. Identical buildings are organized in blocks of eight or ten. For every block of these buildings there is an adjacent construction project dominated by a towering crane.

My cab ride to my host university brought me closer to the city center, where buildings looked less like boxes. However, this only meant that the cranes towered more and were as much of the skyline as the buildings. The ride was disastrous. I was dropped off at the wrong school and then had to hail another cab to get to the right place. When I was trying to get to the school and when I was checking in, many of my fears were realized. I really can't communicate at all in this language. I'm scared because this is going to be hard and there is no way out.

2007-01-14T19:10:00.000-08:00

This was written a few days before I went to China while I was in Vancouver:

When I write, I often tend to be pretentious, which is likely the result of a heavy-handed approach to communication manifest from doing philosophy for the last two years. In this blog, I'm going to try to avoid this penchant. However, I'd like my words to carry some weight, as I don't want to mitigate the importance of the endeavor I am about to pursue - In a few days, i will be leaving for Asia for months in order to learn Chinese.

The collegiate jaunt into Asia is fast becoming cliched. The interest in China, which is reflected and perpetuated by the New York Times, has caused a huge number of students to learn the language of "the dynamic Middle Kingdom". At Macalester, the enrollment in Introductory Chinese has increased almost five-fold since its inception two years ago. My journey to China is one instance of a more global phenomenon, as American students inticed by job opportunities are taking an interest in China. I like to believe that my own journey to Asia is fueled by curiosity about Asia rather than a striving to profit from its exploitation. Still, I recognize that my decision to study China is not as idealistic and academic as I would lead myself to believe. Veering my academic interests towards Asia was a rare and paternally celebrated move towards the pragmatic. This pragmatism has also allowed me to entertain plans ranging from learning Indonesian to enrolling in law school to participating in the business free-for-all currently beginning in China. I am one of many college-aged Americans who fear becoming a twenty-something without health care, so plans about my distant and ever-changing future will be agonized over. I hope that my scheming and get-rich-quick schemes do not overburden this journal.

I'll be there for a while, but I'm not really sure how long. There are some certainties. I will arrive on January 13th to participate in a language immersion program in Beijing. At this program, I will be forced to speak only Chinese. If I am caught speaking English, I will first be given a warning. Next, I will have my grade reduced from one of my classes. The third time, I will be expelled from the school. The program ends in early May. My visa is good until the 13th of June and my flight will return to Milwaukee on the 15th of August, but that is subject to change.

I hope that this blog is entertaining and that my friends and family will enjoy reading it. I also hope that it provides a lens to view the widespread trend of Americans studying in Asia. I will likely keep my own journal and this blog will feature only things from it that I think have widespread relevance. I would like to thank my parents for supporting this venture both financially and emotionally.