西门在中国

Hot Water Machine. (Caution: Hot Water)

2011-03-24T13:08:00.003+08:00

Inexcusably found at Ikea. (Thankfully the Chinese sounds much better. Literally "Boiling water machine. High temperature, please use caution drinking.")

Listen. Hammock - The Backward Step

2011-03-23T19:43:00.001+08:00

Don't Know What to Do with Buckets and Buckets Full of Little Boys' Pee? Make Eggs!

2011-03-17T11:16:00.001+08:00


Image Ministry of Tofu

Have you ever eaten a hard-boiled egg and wondered, "Gee, this egg sure is delicious, but I bet it would taste a lot better if it was boiled in little boys' urine"? Yep. We've all been there. Thankfully, we now finally have our wish. Actually, as an important traditional Spring food of Dongyang in Zhejiang Province, it's been around long enough that it's been made into a cultural heritage in 2008!

Image Ministry of Tofu

The eggs are called tong zi dan (童子蛋), and are made by first collecting urine in buckets from prepubescent boys set out in the local elementary school. The eggs are then boiled in the urine and sold for 1.5 yuan (about a $0.25 USD). The scent emanating from the vats of steaming urine has been referred to as "the smell of spring" by some locals. Others have remarked that it "stinks to death" (臭死了).

When I first entered this country six years ago, I was well aware of the culinary eccentricities that are present in this nation. I viewed it as a challenge to be conquered, and swore there would be nothing too strange, pungent, or revolting for me to try. A few duck tongues, sea urchins, lamb testicles, and grasshoppers later, I decided I would not eat blood. Another few scorpions, lizards, and beetles later, I added goat placenta to my "will not eat" list, doubling it in size. Now, faced with a food that includes human waste and borders mild cannibalism, I'm worried at the rate of growth of this list. You can't win them all, I guess.

Story via Ministry of Tofu: Boy’s-urine-soaked eggs listed as local specialty, intangible cultural heritage

BUBIES

2011-03-15T12:39:00.001+08:00

Aptly named bra store in Hong Kong

Listen. Washed Out - Feel it All Around

2011-03-15T12:17:00.003+08:00

Earth Heart Suck Power

2011-03-14T13:00:00.004+08:00

Ever since I started studying Chinese, I've been amused by how words are constructed by individual characters. Each character is monosyllabic, and not quite a word, (although some characters can stand on their own individually), but could be thought of as parts of words such as prefixes, suffixes, or root words, each part not an independent word itself, but adding a syllable and a change to the overall meaning of the word.

When the literal meaning is taken from each individual character in a word, you're often left with a mildly entertaining mnemonic device for remembering the word. Common examples often include: 电话 - electric talk (telephone), 电脑 - electric brain (computer), and 手机 - hand machine (mobile phone).

Some of these constructions, however, are downright hilarious. I imagine it may be quite difficult to take someone who has diabetes seriously if they came to me crying saying that they just found out they had sweet pee disease (糖尿病).

I get such a kick out of words like 濑尿虾 - rapid flowing stream of urine shrimp (mantis shrimp), 橄榄求 - olive ball (American football), and 拍胸脯 - pat the chest meat (vouch for someone) that I once had thought to collect them as I go and share them on this blog, but in the end it never amounted anything more than a passing thought.

A couple years later, I cursed the sky with fists raised into the air when I found out a fellow language learner had taken the same idea and took a bit more initiative than I to actually get it off the ground. ThoseCrazyChinese.com took gems such as 子宫 - baby palace (uterus), 跳蛋 - jumping eggs (vibrator), and 耳屎 - ear shit (earwax), and brought them out on display for the general public to enjoy. Tragically, after only about 20 posts or so the site fell into disrepair, was abandoned, and has now been turned into a parked domain.

While reading 1984 in Chinese this morning, I came across a word I hadn't seen before, but was such a strange construction I had to look it up immediately. The results reminded me of the sad fate of ThoseCrazyChinese.com, and has inspired me to take it upon myself to collect such treasures as 毛毛球 hairy, hairy balls (earmuffs) and post them here from time to time.

The word I came across this morning was earth heart suck power (地心吸力), or as we say in English, gravitational force. The logic of this language reminds me why I love studying it so much. Stay tuned for more entries like 心肠 - heart intestines (intentions / state of mind), 唱片 - singing slice (record), and one of my personal favorite idioms, 癞蛤蟆想吃天鹅肉 - a toad wanting to eat swan meat (aspiring after something one is not worthy of).

It should also be pointed out that the same word, (灌肠), can mean either enema or sausage. Be careful what you order, friends.

Macanese Pancakes

2011-03-13T10:42:00.001+08:00

Listen. All Night, All Right - Clive Tanaka y su Orquesta

2011-03-12T13:14:00.001+08:00

The World Beneath Our Feet

2011-03-12T13:13:00.001+08:00

Macau Peninsula

2011-03-12T13:12:00.003+08:00

Dried Fish

2011-03-12T13:11:00.001+08:00

Dancing in the Park

2011-03-08T16:28:00.001+08:00

Streetside Dentist

2011-03-08T16:26:00.001+08:00

(Taken from the sidewalk)

Listen. Radiohead - Codex

2011-03-06T22:33:00.003+08:00

Choppin' Fish Heads

2011-03-06T22:32:00.001+08:00

The Bridge

2011-03-06T22:31:00.007+08:00

Phone Booth

2011-03-06T22:31:00.006+08:00

On the Way Home from Peng Chau Island

2011-03-06T22:31:00.005+08:00

Women Hold Up Half of the Hanzi?

2010-10-14T13:10:00.001+08:00

Studying something as brutal as the Chinese language is, every day there seems to be a new reason to give up. However, every once in a while you'll uncover a hidden gem about the language that is so interesting, it gives you just enough reason to keep going. The other day I came across my new all-time favorite Chinese character.

But before I explain what it is or why it tickled me so, let's take a quick second to go over again some basics of Chinese characters. Each character is made up of a several smaller parts, each which have their own pronunciation and a meaning. Characters' meaning and/or pronunciation is based on one, both, or a combination of these components.

The classic example is the character for good (好), which is comprised of the character for woman (女) and child (子). Here, the two components come together to form a new meaning, since a woman and a child together are generally considered 'good'.

Not every character works this way, however. Sometimes the meaning is based on only one of the parts, and one of the other parts supply clues to the pronunciation. Or sometimes, it seems completely random. There's much more to this, but this explanation will do for our purposes here.

Okay, back to the action. A few weeks ago, I was browsing through my Chinese dictionary, searching by "radical" (the name given to the most significant of these smaller components of a character). In this view, I was able to see all characters containing a given radical. After poking around for some time at various random radicals, I began browsing the radical 女, which means woman.

It was then when I came across my favorite new Chinese character. It's the character 嬲. What's so great about this character is how descriptive and direct it's composition is. What we have here in this character is the component for man (男) on the left, with the component for woman (女) in the middle, then surrounded again with another man (男) on the right. The meaning to this character? "to flirt / to tease / to play with / to disturb". This was just too good.

This got me thinking back to my studies over the past few years. There's always some interesting or ironic about the radicals that are used in some particular Chinese characters. For example, is it a coincidence or antisemitism that has placed the dog component into the word for Jew (犹)?

But by far, the one that I noticed most being used in interesting ways is certainly the woman character. It seemed to be used very stereotypically, chauvinistically, or just simply applied to words that have very negative connotation. At the time, while slightly taken aback and mildly offended, I just kind of laughed to myself and used it as a mnemonic device for remembering the character.

Soon soon after that, however, I ran across an article on the wonderful ChinaSMACK! about Chinese women being upset about the perceived sexism implicit in the written Chinese language. I realized perhaps I wasn't the only one who noticed this.

Here are some examples of characters with very negative connotation that include the woman radical:

奴 - slave
妖 - wicked, evil
嫉 - envy
妒 - envy
婪 - greedy
佞 - flatter
嫌 - dislike
妄 - presumptuous
奸 - rape
妨 - hinder, impede, obstruct

This is of course leaving out the dubious connection my Chinese friend pointed out about the character for marriage (婚), which contains the component for woman on the left, and the component meaning "confused / muddled" on the right, implying that when a woman gets confused or muddled, she then gets married. (Anyone familiar with the language, however, would understand that the confused / muddled component gives the character it's sound, not the meaning.)

Most words involving the woman radical are simply words that are directly and objectively related to women, such as mother, sister, etc... Then there are some that are just funny and bizarre, such as 姗姗, meaning "to walk slowly like a woman". (Why don't we have a word for this in English? At least you'd think we'd have a word meaning "to throw like a girl".)

But what about all the Chinese characters with positive connotation that contain the woman radical? The character, 安, means "peace", which is the roof component over the woman component. (Could this mean "one woman under a roof will bring peace to a household"?) Or how about the character 妙, meaning "wonderful / excellent / fine". There are so many more, and I'm not even going to bother listing any of the literally countless words meaning beautiful containing the woman radical.

Are people just seeing what they want to see? Are these characters merely a coincidence and there is another explanation? Or is it sexism as a result of a male-dominated society?

One Man's Trash

2010-10-04T12:06:00.001+08:00

Today, I recalled a humorous annectdote I had heard from a friend when I first arrived in China that I almost forgot about. Because it's third-hand information, I can't vouch for the truthiness of the story, but it sounds quite plausible to me. This story takes place approximately 15 years ago.

Some American friends living in rural Southern China, and wanting to continue the American lifestyle, were dissatisfied with hanging out laundry to dry. As clothing dryers were completely unheard of, and absolutely unavailable in mainland China, they decided to make the trek down to Hong Kong to pick one up.

When crossing the border back into the mainland, they were prepared to pay a duty on this large-ticket item when passing through customs. Although I wasn't present for the event I'll attempt to recreate the scene that transpired with the customs officials.

Customs Official: "What the hell is this thing?"

Americans: "It's a clothing dryer."

"A what?"

"A clothing dryer."

"Well, what does it do?"

"You put your wet clothes in it, press the button, and then they come out dry."

(Laughing hysterically in utter disbelief) "You know if you just hang clothes up, they'll dry by themselves, right?"

"Yeah, but this does it faster."

(Still laughing in disbelief) "How much did you pay for this hunk of junk?"

"About $500*."

"$500 for this worthless thing? Buddy, you got seriously taken. Go on and pass on through. No need to pay a duty on this piece of garbage. You've already been ripped off enough."

*I have no idea what the actual price was.

I love this story. Just goes to show that some luxuries that we believe to be so indispensable in the developed world are viewed as worthless in the majority of the rest of the world.

I can completely resonate with the story as well. When I first arrived in Hong Kong, part of the developed world, and realized no one used dryers here, I thought they were nuts. I was completely inconvenienced having to hang up every piece of clothing and wait a full 24 hours for my clothes to dry. Now, after three years of being dryerless, I'm wondering why we ever used them in the first place.

However, with the amount of development in the past 15 years, it's hard to imagine this story taking place today. Or at least in the big cities in China. Now, sadly, it seems as if the new middle class in China is copying all of the worst ideas of America and the rest of the developed world. The idea among the middle and upper class has now become, "If America has it, we want it." As I look around at packed KFC's on every street corner, pizza delivery, and drive-through fast food joints, 2-car garages, SUV's and urban sprawl, I'm beginning to hang my head in shame, wondering if America has now created a monster.

More on this idea to come in the future.

Listen. Chromeo - I Could Be Wrong

2010-09-27T11:43:00.002+08:00

Sunset Over Gulou

2010-09-27T11:20:00.001+08:00

This is why I love Beijing.

Sheep Skeleton Hot Pot? I Want Seconds and I Haven't Even Had Firsts.

2010-09-21T23:01:00.001+08:00

(Actually, this is a very traditional Beijing specialty. It's supposed to be quite good, and I'm surprised I still haven't tried it yet. It just sounds so gross when translated literally.)

Rides Look at the Ship to Delimit to the Sea Sand Beach Amusement Park

2010-09-20T11:10:00.001+08:00

Perhaps not even as much fun as they let on. Note the difference between the stock photo and the real photo in the bottom left.

Don't You Hate Pants?

2010-09-16T21:35:00.002+08:00

Found at a gas station in rural Indiana.

I Fought The Law (and I Won!)

2010-09-14T11:29:00.001+08:00

(Suggested listening: "I Fought the Law" by The Clash)

Living in China can be dangerous - and I'm not talking about the countless hazards we face on a daily basis (insane drivers, the lack of "hard hat areas" in construction sites, etc). It can be dangerous because so much of the time as a foreigner here, you feel above the law. Or above the rules at least. Every rule can be bent or broken here, given the right circumstances. As a foreigner, simply pretending you don't understand for long enough will frustrate authority figures to the point where they simply give up. If this doesn't work, you can always then can the act, and argue/joke with them until they relent.

Therefore, the danger comes in when you're actually in a situation when it might not be the best thing to mess with somebody. When you're used to no consequences, your behavior starts to get riskier.

A group of friends and I were enjoying a lovely meal of Korean barbeque in the neighborhood. The meal was just about finished, but we were in good spirits and lingering for a spell. I excused myself to the restroom, and upon finishing washing my hands in the unisex shared sink area, watched an obviously drunk, middle-aged woman stumble in to common area. She looked at the omnipresent long line to the woman's restroom and sighed and cursed in frustration. Jokingly, I pointed at the door that said "Men" on it, and said "No line in there...".

With that, she barged in through the door, where she was greeted with a few urinating Koreans. She immediately charged back out to see me drowning with laughter and disbelief. "坏蛋！坏蛋!" ("Bad egg!"), she yelled. (Common name called of a bad person). The woman was livid. I was in tears laughing. Even being as drunk as she was, I never imagined she would actually listen to me.

She didn't stop there, though. "Bad egg! You're a bad egg!", she yelled, continuing with an endless stream of ranting. I laughed it off and walked back to my table. A few minutes later, when the drunk woman finally found our table in the small restaurant, she came back to give it to me in front of my friends, who had no clue what was going on but were wondering why I was laughing so hard.

"What's your name? Where are you from?", she demanded.

"I'm from Xinjiang province."

She was unconvinced. "No honestly, I'm from Xinjiang! Look at my beard! Listen to how bad my Chinese is!"

(This might have only been slightly plausible. People from Xinjiang are Uigher, of Turkish decent. When I wore a beard, my Chinese friends told me I could pass for someone from Xinjiang, but really, there is no way this was possible. Even less possible was the fact that this Xinjiang person was sitting with a table of 6 other foreigners speaking fluent English.)

"Don't lie to me!"

"I told you, I'm not lying!"

"Don't lie to me, I'm a police officer!"

At this point, I was having a blast. It was as if things couldn't have gotten any better. Even if she were telling the truth, the fact that she was having difficulty standing up assured me that I had nothing to be afraid of.

"That's great! So am I!"

She stormed off. A minute later, she came stumbling back, this time flashing her badge in my face. She demanded again to know where I was from.

I pulled out my Indiana driver's license. "See! Xin. Jiang.", I said as I pointed to the word, "Indiana". I turned to a friend to laugh, while still holding up my license. She then reached in without me even realizing it and snatched it from my hand. The woman then drunk-ran around the corner, where she huddled over the card, simultaneously trying to get her eyes to focus on anything, and trying to find a single word her extremely limited English could recognize. I knew the only English word that she might be able to understand would be "America", but thankfully, due to the States' fiercely anti-national ID beliefs, this word was nowhere on the card. Even still, I had to get my ID back.

I snuck up behind her ever so quietly and slowly. I reached around the huddling woman and lifted the card right from out of her grasp, then made a mad dash back to my seat.

This was met with another barrage of "Bad egg! Bad egg!" and a few more minutes of shouting. By this time, I was done. I'd had my fun and just wanted the lady to go away, which she eventually did after a few more empty threats.

I only wish she would have brought me down to the station to hear what charges she wanted to file against me. "Informing a drunk off-duty female police officer of vacancy in the male restroom"? I'm sure they would have thrown the book at me.

Goodbye, Kermit. Thank you for being delicious.

2010-09-14T11:15:00.001+08:00

Photo credit: Eva Chan

We've Heard You Loud and Clear: Now with More Privelege and More Happy

2010-09-14T11:10:00.003+08:00

Don't Put Bathroom

2010-09-14T11:00:00.001+08:00

Sometimes life just isn't fair. You want to put bathroom, but the man won't let you.

Choices

2010-09-14T09:27:00.001+08:00

Found on bathroom stall doors in a Wangjing mall. Self-explanatory, but are people really shaped like this?

Be Loyal to Chairman Mao

2009-09-14T11:58:00.007+08:00

Learning Chinese is a ridiculous endeavor to say the least. I though I knew what I was getting into, but at each step, I'm still realizing how challenging of a task this language is.

That's not to say that it's not without its rewards. Every now and then you'll overhear something hilarious, read something amazing, or have an incredible conversation that reminds you why you're doing this, and makes it all worthwhile.

I had another experience like that a few weeks ago when I visited the Great Wall for the 6th time this summer. We were at a part of the wall that I had never been to, and I saw in the distance 30 ft. letters, Hollywood-style on the side of the mountain. It took a few seconds to sink in, but I realized that I recognized every one of the characters. As I started to put it all together I was overcome with joy upon my discovery. The sign read: "Be Loyal to Chairman Mao". After talking with some folks on the wall, it turns out that this was a remnant from the Cultural Revolution, and has been up since.

As I passed the hundreds of other foreigners on the wall who had no idea what the sign said, it made me think about how they didn't know what they were missing and how happy I was to be able to read such an amazing piece of history.

Propaganda knows no bounds.

Tiananmen in Preparation for 60th Anniversary of the PRC

2009-09-13T18:36:00.005+08:00

For those living here in China, it's no secret that the country is preparing for its 60th birthday early next month. To celebrate the event, in addition to denying thousands of foreigner's visas and other incredibly paranoid behavior, the government is throwing a military parade that is supposed to be greater than a million Super Bowls. ChinaSMACK has some amazing, must-see photos of the preparations.

While this would be an amazing time to be in Beijing, as it turns out, practically no one will be allowed to watch the parade in person. To be more specific, subway lines will be closed around Tiananmen Square during national day. Roads will be closed. All businesses within almost 1/2 mile away from the square will be closed the week of the event. They are not taking any chances with anything. Me and my fellow Beijingers will have to watch the event on television along with the rest of the world.

Some friends and I were on the way to a lounge last week, and happened past Tiananmen Square at 11 o'clock at night. To our surprise, in a month in advance, the whole area was lit up like a stadium with enormous spotlights and several 3-story tall LED screens. Seems quite impressive to say the least.

(Forgive the shoddy camera work.)

Tiananmen at Night from Simon Lesser on Vimeo.

Worst. Band. Ever.

2009-09-11T12:57:00.002+08:00

Of the multitude of pleasant surprises of living in Beijing, nothing was quite more unexpected than the existence of a fairly rocking music scene. Living in the South for a year, I had completely dismissed Chinese music as being utter crap. It seems that close to 100% of the population here listens exclusively to Mandopop (the cheesiest, most syrupy-sweet, gagging pop music you can imagine).

What blew my mind is that even the most bad-ass thugs you would see on the streets, would come blasting the most bubblegum Celine Dion-esque pop music. Rock music seemed to have missed the entire country.

Coming to Beijing, I found out that not only was rock music beginning to take hold in big cities here, but that Beijing was actually the heart of it. I would have assumed Shanghai to be the center for new rock music, but alas, this is not the case.

In the past 6 months, we have been host to Battles, Jose Gonzales, Ratatat, Yann Tiersen, Dragonforce, The Handsome Furs, an international electronic music festival featuring DJ's from all over the world, and many, many more. (Even washed up pop-punk bands such as MxPx and No Use for a Name stopped by in the past 6 months!)

As it turns out, the heart of the local home-brewed Beijing bands happens to be located just a few blocks away from my apartment, at a club called D-22. Dubbed by some as the CBGB's of China, D-22 features local rock bands 6 nights a week.

I try to make it a habit to stop by once every couple of weeks or so, checking out everything from jazz to deathmetal, punk and alternative to screamo. The quality runs the gamut, per usual the local scene. Sometimes you'll find absolutely fantastic bands, and sometimes you'll get typical, garageband crap.

However, nothing compared in outright crapulatude as the concert I witnessed last week. It was 'experimental' night at the club, which evidently meant 'noise...with trippy delay and phaser effects!'

The first band stepped up to the plate, and for 30 minutes did nothing but make horrid, horrid noise. A melody (or heck, even a rhythm) was nowhere to be found. During the final song, the guitarist put his guitar down and picked up the mic, and proceeded to scream - but not in a hardcore/metal controlled way, more in a 'I'm really mad at my little sister for taking one of my toys' way.

Screaming from Simon Lesser on Vimeo.

Once they finished, the next band hopped on stage. In a similar fashion, they went on to torture our ears - nay, souls - for another 40 minutes. The band consisted of a keyboardist and guitarist, and I must applaud them for at least playing 'notes', if not playing a melody. However, these notes were completely hit at random, with no regard to whether or not it could be construed as pleasant by anyone's standards.

The experience was not unlike a tribute to their 2-year old brother who at times would pick up the guitar and smack it with his hands, entertained to no end at the noises that emanated from the device.

Rockin' Like Dokken (part 1) from Simon Lesser on Vimeo.

...and yet, it continued.

Rockin' Like Dokken (part 2) from Simon Lesser on Vimeo.

...and yet I still feel I should not be one to judge. I used to be in a ska band.

Contradictions

2009-09-11T10:45:00.003+08:00

Props to Steve for the pic.

More Photos From The Creepy Mannequin Store

2009-09-11T10:35:00.002+08:00

Props to Steve for the pics.

"Lazy Fail" Fail

2009-09-08T20:49:00.006+08:00

This photo was posted on our much-beloved FAIL blog with the caption of "Lazy Fail". I'm not positive, but I'm quite sure this photo was taken on line 10 in Beijing. (At least it was in China or possibly Hong Kong, given away by the Chinese characters on the sign.) While I admit it's a pretty humorous scene, I take issue with this accusation.

see more Fail Blog

The point of contention is that this comes from a very American viewpoint. More specifically, referring to this behavior as lazy assumes that these people do the same amount of exercise as people do in America.

This idea neglects the fact that most of these people have walked at least 15 minutes to get to the subway. Once in the subway, there might be anywhere from 2-4 flights of stairs that must be ascended without the aid of an escalator. Add another 2-4 flights for each transfer you need to make, and then another 15 minutes to their final destination from the subway exit. So when there is an escalator present, most people feel perfectly satisfied to wait in line guilt-free. (See any fat people in the picture?)

All that to say I'm not intentionally trying to be smarmy. I did have quite a chuckle on seeing this photo. Perhaps it's my own jealously that in the wealthiest country on earth, our public transportation is such a travesty compared to a still-developing country such as China.

There's really no excuse for this. So perhaps this is my way of venting my dissatisfaction with that fact that we have no way of commuting publicly that will simultaneously help us work off our fat asses.

Until then, I feel quite justified in waiting in line for the escalator.

Anything With Four Legs Except a Table

2009-08-31T20:40:00.017+08:00

There's a saying here that says the Chinese eat anything with four legs except a table, and anything that flies that isn't an airplane, but I'm sure that still leaves a lot of things out. Eating people is generally agreed as a bad idea, but just about any other carbon-based matter is quite literally still on the table.

Thousands of years of never having an adequate food supply for the entire country has led to this "Waste not, want not" approach to their diet over the years, and in recent times when food production has finally reached a surplus, the Chinese have developed such a taste for goat penis, duck tongue, and silk worms, that there is no good reason to halt the consumption of such delicacies.

No better place is this illustrated better than in my old hometown in the Southern countryside. It took me a good couple months to realize it, but although we were surrounded by vast sprawls of beautiful nature, accompanying wildlife was nowhere to be found. Whatever the Asian equivalent would be to squirrels and deer running wild in people's back yards was nonexistent there.

When I asked a friend who had lived there for almost ten years why this was, I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry by the response: "They ate it all." During the Great Leap Forward in the 1960s when more than 30 million people died due to starvation, anything that moved was a source of sustenance, and who could blame them? But the fact that an event more than 40 years ago has still had such a dramatic effect on the fauna of an ecosystem today is just mind-blowing.

All that to say that from my first trip to Hong Kong I've been an adventurous eater, never turning a single dish down that I had not tried before (with the sole exception of blood). The environmentalist in me certainly applauds the Chinese style to eat all parts of animals, and I think Westerners could learn a bit from their example.

So when I heard of a magical street in Beijing that where you could try every insane food known to mankind, I was ecstatic. I rounded up two brave souls to join me, Darren and Henry, and the three of us embarked on our gastronomic journey.

Me in front of the market

We figured we would go tackle the street from the grossest to most delicious. This way we would have our hunger helping us out on the really hard-to-swallow morsels. The only thing worse than eating something extremely foul is eating something extremely foul on a full stomach. So in this way, insects were elected to be the first on the list.

We had heard that the crowning jewel of the food street was scorpions. I knew, like every other insect that they were eaten somewhere in this country, but I had never actually seen them on a menu. To my surprise and delight, not only were they abundant, but they were still alive and skewered on sticks when we arrived!

Live Scorpions from Simon Lesser on Vimeo.

We even got a glimpse of a man skewering fresh ones onto a stick!

Skewering Live Scorpions from Simon Lesser on Vimeo.

Before we tried anything, we continued walking down the rest of the street to get a good look at everything on offer.

Live, impaled scorpions waiting to take the hot oil dive

Silkworms and centipedes

Locusts perhaps? Or maybe grasshoppers

I have no idea what this poor sucker was. Lizard perhaps?

I will be honest. On our walk towards the street, knowing full-well what to expect, I was filled with inalienable confidence. But something about seeing the scorpions wrangle around on the skewers, actually freaked me out a bit. It had been a couple years since I'd eaten anything truly this wild, and I was feeling a little rusty.

Once the first batch of scorpions came out of the oil though, my confidence returned. It was much easier to look that stinger right in the eye now that it had stopped moving.

**Bonus: Be sure to check out the lady's reaction to us eating the scorpions at 1:01 in the video.

Eating Scorpions from Simon Lesser on Vimeo.

Next up were the seahorses. It certainly helped that everything on the street made its way into the deep fryer, but no amount of oil could save these guys from tasting like eating a crispy, fishy, seashell.

Hello, my pretty.

...and goodbye

Seahorses from Simon Lesser on Vimeo.

Then came what would go down as the 2nd most disgusting item of the night: Starfish. A video says a thousand words...

Starfish from Simon Lesser on Vimeo.

From insects and bone-flavored seafood, we made our way to some good old-fashioned Halal food. At the next stand we were greeted by some extremely friendly Uighurs barbequing every part of the lamb (sans wool). One man in particular caught our interest by yelling in the same style as a popcorn and peanut vendor at a baseball game might, "Laaaaamb baaaalllllls! Laaaaaaaamb Peeeeeeniiiiis!" How could we refuse? While it's still not the exclusive Beijing penis restaurant, it's a start. So we ordered up a set. (Yes, that kind of set.)

Lamb parts. Can you guess which one is the penis?

In case you're wondering what sheep testicles looked like

A set

So juvenile, but I couldn't help myself

Lamb Business from Simon Lesser on Vimeo.

In Hong Kong, I had once eaten something that my local friends refused to tell me what it was until the next day. Turns out that it was sea urchin, but it was cooked, well-seasoned, and in a shape that you could not tell what animal the meat came from. But at the night market, we happened up upon a plate of raw, whole sea urchins. This way felt much more authentic.

Raw sea urchins

As it turns out, the best way to eat sea urchin is raw, not unlike sushi. So our "chef" picked up one of the lucky little guys and cut him perfectly in half. He shook it up a little before the cut, so all of the stuff in the inside settled to one half, and he threw the other out. The remaining half looked like it was filled with a big ball of mud. He scooped out all of the dirt and god-only-knows what else into the garbage. When he was satisfied with how much gunk he removed, he sprayed in some soy sauce and added a drop of wasabi.

First, he cut them in half

Then he scooped out most of the dirt

What he handed me looked absolutely foul. There seemed no good reason to put what was in my hands into my mouth. So we scraped out what we could best tell was meat and ate it good and raw.

Looks divine, no?

Trembling with fear

The meat turned out to be actually quite delicious. The best thing I can compare it to is very choice sashimi, mixed with copious amounts of sea mud. I figured that if it was somehow possible to rinse off the meat, or prepare it slightly more refined, it would actually be quite nice. As it was, it was still pretty good. We were just glad it was nowhere near as scary-tasting as it was scary-looking.

Before ordering up some of the most foul items of the night, we picked up a baby shark to cleanse our palette's. While still exotic, I knew from experience that shark meat tasted pretty good, so I figured it would be a nice break from creepy-crawlies that were next.

Baby sharks

Baby shark head

The last event of the night was a triple-header of beetles, a centipede, and silkworms. This proved to be our most fierce battle with our gag reflexes of the night.

First up was the centipede. Apart from being long, there was really very little meat on the guy, so I figured it couldn't be that bad. I dove in straight for the head. A bitter, foul, insecty flavor immediately filled my mouth. The sensation was not unlike chewing through a bitter pill, or at least a bitter pill made from centipedes. In any way, the signal sent from my tongue to my brain was the same: "This is not food. This is vile. This should not enter the body."

Thankfully, due to the small size of the bite, swallowing the morsel was also not unlike swallowing a pill, and went down without too much of a fight. When my fellow companions tried their turn at the centipede, however, I felt as if I may have gotten the wrong end of the deal. They didn't mind it at all. Either I was overreacting, or the head was the most miserable part. I still guess it's the latter.

Rocking the centipede

No me gusta

The beetles were a slightly uneventful intermission before the silkworms. They fared crunchy, with the now-familiar insect flavor, but not too strong, and not too meaty for that matter. While no one requested seconds, swallowing was not too difficult of a challenge.

Our white whale was now upon us, and we were staring the silkworms right in the eyes. (Do silkworms have eyes?)

Henry was the first victim to bite the bullet and go for it. He'd held his own all night and took everything down like a champ, but the sheer wretchedness of the silkworms proved too much for him to keep his composure.

Henry gagging after a bite of the silkworms

Darren stepped up to the plate next, and suffered the same fate.

Darren trying to keep the silkworms down

By this point, I had become more than a little nervous. I had just watched two fellow soldiers wretching and dry-heaving after one mere bite. But I knew there was only one way out of this, so I popped it in.

I don't want to do it

Immediately after taking a bite, I felt my compadres' pain. It was truly awful. It took all of the worst parts of the centipede flavor, amplified it, and added a texture that was just...wrong.

Swallowing was not an option it seemed, but it had to be done. Before I even attempted to squeeze it down my throat, however, the dry-heaving began. I almost spit it up. After a while I was able to claim victory, but it was a battle well-fought.

Without a doubt, the chewiness of the critters certainly made for the worst part. Becuase the other objects we had been eating had been relatively thin, the deep-frying process had rendered most of them nicely oily and crispy. However, while the deep-fryer had tanned the outer shell of the silkworms a nice golden-brown, the insides were left still-goey and mushy.

This made for a long, grudging chewing cycle. The starfish was bad, make no mistake, but it was crushed into a swallowable powder after a few bouts of mastication. The silkworm on the other hand was not going away any time soon, and I could feel him laughing at me for it.

Oh yeah, it's that bad

...and here it comes back up

Once we had our lasts of the silkworms, we went running towards some fried noodles to liberate our mouths of the still-lingering, offending flavor. We returned home triumphant and full, but not without battle wounds.

The epilogue to this whole tale is that this event actually took place all the way back in April. I've just now gotten around to posting about it. Since then, I've returned twice to the scene of the crime with visiting friends from the States, who naturally, must try these items. So once again, I put on my game face, and went at them full-force.

Adding to the menu in subsequent trips include: Stinky tofu (so much worse than it sounds), snake, snake skin, crickets, some sort of bird that neither Steve or I were able to identify, sheep kidneys, and a few other choice selections not coming to mind at the moment.

In full disclosure, I will add that the same excitement apparent in this first trek was not as abundant in subsequent treks. When I stuck my toothpick into the stinky tofu again last week with Steve, nothing about it felt adventurous or exciting. I only felt dread and disgust.

My apologies, Steve, for my lack of passion in our last journey together. My stomach finally said, "No more." And while my mouth still agreed to open, my heart just wasn't in it.

Is the adventure gone for good, or are my gag reflexes just begging for a short break? Let's hope the latter. Heck, I'll even put money on it.

Shake Hands with Beef (or a Mannequin)

2009-08-30T21:49:00.004+08:00

On a long bike ride through Beijing last week, Steve and I stumbled across one of my new favorite stores in the city. The storefront is filled from head to toe with every kind of mannequin you could possibly imagine. As we went blazing by, we both simultaneously did a double take, looking at each other both realizing we had to turn around and go inside. It's the kind of store that dreams are made of. You know that a place like this has to exist somewhere, but who of us have had the the luxury of finding it?

Most likely used to juvenile trouble-makers stopping by the store with no intention of buying, the owner of the store was quick to give us the "Shoo, shoo, no photos" routine. While Steve went off taking as many shots as he could, I did my best to stall the lady.

I used to think that being a foreigner was great because I could just play dumb to everything that people said and get away with just about anything. But now that my Chinese skills are to a level that is a bit startling to the locals (still not great, just surprising), I can use their shock and my language skills to try to win them over if playing dumb doesn't work. It's the best of both worlds!

So once I realized that her pointing at the camera and saying "No!", and pointing to the door was pretty universal, I tried to smooth things over with language. She made the mistake of asking the obvious question, "Are you going to buy something or not?", which I responded with, "Why else would I come here, lady? Tell me about this one over here. How much is this one? Hmm...that's a bit much. I'm looking for one a bit shorter and younger. Do you have any like that?" I was at least halfway convincing because she led me around the store half-heartedly selling me on a few of the models (which are surprisingly expensive!)

As my confidence in my acting abilities began to wane, I told her I would just have a look around by myself and talk it over with my business partner. She then told me she wanted to close and we would have to come back tomorrow. Not wanting to push my luck, we stepped out of the wonderland.

The video's not great, but it's the best I was able to take in our limited time. I didn't want to upset the owner too much, just in case she recognized me for next time I come back...

Mannequin City from Simon Lesser on Vimeo.

Please No Large Conveniencing

2009-08-30T20:48:00.002+08:00

Found in the bathroom at a cafe near the Forbidden City.

If You Want To Do Business, You Must Study the Jews

2009-08-30T20:29:00.002+08:00

While waiting for my friend, Steve's delayed flight from America at the airport, I decided to pass the time by browsing the airport bookstore. While parsing through the books in the business section, a certain title struck my eye. It read "做生意要学犹太人", or roughly translated into English as "If You Want To Do Business, You Must Study the Jews".

After regaining composure, I opened the book to the first page. Above a hilariously cliche cartoon drawing of gold, jewels, and pearls that the Jew has accumulated through his conniving, is the headline: "The ethic group best at making money in the entire world: The Jews". You can imagine what the book continues to elaborate on.

As if it couldn't get any better, as Steve and I were waiting in another airport for yet another delayed flight, we checked out the bookstore in another city's airport. To my somewhat disbelief, we found yet another book on the same exact subject, titled "The Way of Making Money From the Jewish". Fool me once...well...you're not going to fool me again, so for the best $3 I've spent in a while, I picked it up and began to read as fast as my still-awful Chinese would allow.

While hilarious, I can't say the book was entirely shocking. Chinese people are crazy about Jews. They love 'em. Mention you're an American, and you get smiles and looks of approval or respect. Mention you're an American Jew, and they are no longer worthy of standing in your presence. "The Jews are very good people. Very clever. Very good at making money!", they say.

It makes enough sense why the Chinese have such a high regard for Jews. They're similar in many ways. Both ethnic groups have a very long history deeply steeped in tradition, both have been through some pretty rough times throughout history - particularly in the 20th century, both are rather clever, and above all - highly concerned with and quite adept at making money.

The funny thing is that no Chinese that I've met have heard of any of the negative stereotypes about Jews - or any other stereotypes about Jews besides that they're adept at making money for that matter. When I tell them that they're sometimes accused of being regarded as greedy, or that they own a disproportionate amount of the world's wealth, that they dominate Hollywood, or even that they're supposed to be stereotypically funny, witty, or have awful rhythm, I'm met with empty faces. How did this happen? Where do the Chinese get their ideas about Jewish people? Is there a single source for these opinions? How is it that China seems to be the one country in the world where anti-semitism completely failed to take hold?

Anyone who has insight or thoughts on this, please drop a line in the comments. I'm quite curious.

Which Way to the Animal Killing Pavilion?

2009-08-30T19:59:00.003+08:00

No I Didn't Say, "Yahoo"

2009-08-30T19:17:00.001+08:00

Spicy Mother-in-Law

2009-08-30T18:54:00.001+08:00

A bit of a creepy company name for a company if you ask me.

Chicken + Poisonous Snake = Mildly Toxic Deliciousness

2009-06-04T20:15:00.003+08:00

As the never-ending list of incredibly imaginative, exotic, and perhaps cruel dishes continues, I've found a new one that takes the cake: "Snake-bite Chicken". The worst part (or best part) about this dish is that the only way I've found out about it is from an article on the BBC telling of its recent prohibition.

The outrage is due to the irregular slaughter of the chicken in preparation for the dish. As one may guess by the name, the chicken is killed by allowing a poisonous snake to bite it until it ascends to the great chicken coop in the sky. Evidently this makes the chicken taste more delicious. (And here we are in the States still using clumsy methods such as knives...)

Excerpt from the BBC article:

Restaurants in China have long specialized in exotic dishes which have provoked condemnation from animal rights activists and health watchdogs - such as monkey brains scooped from a live animal, civet cat and deer foetus soup.

Question: When the article says the "monkey brains are scooped from a live animal", do they mean they're scooped from a live monkey, or do they scoop the monkey brains out of some other live animal?

The deer foetus soup is a new one for me by the way.

All this to say that eating dog in China is technically illegal as well, but is readily-available in many restaurants and at almost any wet market it the South. It seems as if these laws are put in place more for the pacification of the international community rather than intending to ever be an actual binding law. Whenever the world becomes up in arms about a dish deemed cruel or a violation animal rights, China wholeheartedly agrees with its accusers, bans the dish, and looks the other way in its practice. Who says you can't have your snake-bite chicken and eat it too?

People who don't enjoy watching chickens bit by snakes should avoid watching this video.

Inner Mongolia

2009-06-01T00:09:00.016+08:00

Spring semester is a wonderful time to study at a Chinese university. There are no less than 3 holidays we're treated to throughout the semester, not to mention the weeklong break before finals. (I'm guessing we're supposed to study?) During a glorious Labor Day, 14 friends and I embarked on a journey to Inner Mongolia for 3 days.

The tour left at a ghastly 6:00 in the morning, and was approximately a 6 hour drive to Hohhot, the biggest city in Inner Mongolia. We piled in a "15 passenger bus", which I can only assume means, if you take 15 human bodies and boil them down into some sort of liquid form, you might be able fit the remaining goo into the bus without overflowing. (Also, there were actually 17 of us including our driver and tour guides.) Needless to say, it was quite a cramped ride.

We swung through Hohhot for a quick hotpot meal, then headed into the mountains towards the grasslands. Snaking through the mountains on a very narrow road proved to be quite rough for our unfortunate carsick friends in the back of the bus. When we arrived at the top, after passing through a few small villages we reached the grasslands.

Seriously creepy taxidermy sheep at the entrance to the restaurant

Delicious hotpot

I was disappointed to find out this was just a clump of a strong-tasting seasoning, not something bloody and gross

The grasslands reminded me much of the plains in the Western United States. Long stretches of flat land, with no agriculture, and nary a tree to be found.

After about 40 minutes driving through dirt roads, we came upon our camp, dubbed "New Yurt City" by fellow traveling companions. The locals dressed in traditional clothing met us as soon as we exited the bus, singing a welcoming song, and offering liquor. The correct way to accept the alcohol was to dip a finger in it, sprinkle one drop to the heavens, one drop to the earth, one drop to your friends, and then drink with both hands (or something like that). Felt bad for germ freaks who didn't appreciate all the dirty fingers in their beverage. Turns out the fingers must have added the secret ingredient because the normally foul rice alcohol tasted delicious.

The welcoming ceremony

Me in front of New Yurt City

After settling into our yurts, more Mongolians came galloping forth from the distance.

We were told to form a semi-circle. The Mongolian warriors dismounted from their horses and entered the semi-circle. The ringleader announced to us that they would give us a Mongolian wrestling demonstration. He explained the rules, and we watched a few of them go at it.

After a few minutes, he began pulling volunteers out of the audience to go against the trained Mongolian wrestlers. A few white guys suited up, and gave it their best effort, but were no match for the quick leg work of the Mongolians. (Turns out, you're not allowed to attack the lower body with your arms - it's all throws or trips.)

I hadn't wrestled in 10 years and wasn't really interested in showing off or making a spectacle, so I gladly refrained from volunteering. However, a friend of mine (due to the Full Nelson experience - read her account here) knew that I used to wrestle. When she recalled this fact, she announced it to the whole group. While I didn't really want to go, I knew that it might be a long time before I had the opportunity to wrestle a Mongolian again, so I suited up and jumped into the ring.

Getting suited up

But by now, the Mongolians claimed they were tired, so they were now matching tourist against tourist. I first went against a rather tall Canadian gentlemen. He had long arms and a tall frame, which made it extremely difficult to get close. After a long stalemate, I stepped in front and hip tossed him.

The ringleader insisted we continue for the best two out of three, so we went at it again, and again I was able to bring him to the ground.

By this time, there was a Chinese guy in the crowd seeming to be getting quite excited, and looked like he wanted a piece of whitey. I was ready to be done, but he wanted a go, so I stuck around. After we shook hands, he came at me ferociously, I was able to keep him at bay, and sneak a leg in for a trip. After I helped him up, he looked as sore as ever. He let loose now, using any methods he knew how, flagrantly breaking a number of Mongolian wrestling rules. The ref stepped in and broke us apart. He then picked up a dried piece of horse poo and rubbed it into the man's face, as a penalty for breaking the rules.

As expected, now he was really pissed off. But once again, I scored one for the big U.S.A..

By this time, I was absolutely exhausted, but felt a bit gypped (pardon the ethnic slur) that I had not gotten the opportunity to wrestle a real Mongolian. My friends felt the same way, who pleaded to the lazy Mongolian wrestlers to go a round with me. One of them agreed, and after a quick pep talk by my peeps, I was back in the ring again.

As expected, the Mongolian was certainly my fiercest opponent yet. I couldn't get anything in on him. In addition, he was grabbing onto my shirt (completely legal) and slowly bringing it over my head hockey-style. I'm not sure how, but I was able to bring him a bit close and stuck a leg behind his, hooking him, bringing him into the ground.

Another score for whitey. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

If only babes swooned for me like this outside of an obviously posed photograph

Next up was a horse ride through the grasslands. It was getting a bit cold, so the locals rented frigid individuals green, thick, down-to-your-ankles, revolution-style coats. Every female on the trip took them up on it. We mounted our steeds and were off into the glorious sunset.

Once we got to the grasslands, as it was still quite early in the season, it seemed a bit anti-climactic. All of the tall grass was dead, and this year's grass had not begun to grow yet. This didn't stop me from frolicking about in the vast open fields.

That evening we had our local hosts kill the fatted lamb and barbecue it for us. Of course, they could not simply bring it to the table sliced and prepared - a ceremony was in order. And oh, what a ceremony it was! A gentleman and a lady were brought out of the crowd, and were adorned with ceremonial dress. They were placed at the center table, and the glorious animal was brought forth. Much unintelligible speech was made about the bountiful harvest, the wondrous occasion, and the provisions before us. Songs were sung, candles were lit, and rejoicing was made. The couple walked several times around the table, each time heroically downing another large glass of the fierce rice alcohol. I'm sure there was meaning to all of these procedures, but most of us were quite distracted - the ceremony seemed to take ages, and we were busy devouring the rest of our meal.

Finally the last chorus was sung, and immediately an apron-clad gentelady wielding an enormous knife came bursting into the room, going straight for the head of crispy Lamb Chop. It's carcass was disassembled with unprecedented speed and presented at our table. However, it seemed as if our butcher had done a rather inadequate job, merely handing us massive clumps of unseparated flesh and bones. The staff brought a few sword-like implements to our table to aid in the deconstruction. What followed was a greasy, bone-hacking and flesh-severing mess. Cartilage was flying everywhere. The impossibly chewy lamb gum we were left with seemed hardly worth ending up elbow-deep in ewe gristle, but the experience was worth it.

The remnants of our finished lamb carcass

While we dined, the Mongolians working at the camp gave us a variety show of epic proportions. They busted out the Casio keyboard, while ripping some pretty amazing folk songs and dances. Then, inexplicably once everyone was finished eating, they turned off the lights, disco balls lit up, and they declared it was a Mongolian disco dance party. We had seen some amazing things today, but the unexpectedness of the hilarious change in setting had everyone in tears. We pushed our tables and chairs out of the way, and got down Mongolian-style right there in the tiny dining yurt. I'll tell you, this Mongolian gent can seriously rock the Casio keyboard.

After s'more making over a charcoal fire and laying in the grass to see the stars long concealed by the Beijing smog, we retired to our yurts. Some mentally-troubled individuals woke up at 4:00 in the morning to catch the sun rise. Upon waking at a time where one would not question my sanity, I was able to see the results of the rising of the sun, which fully satisfied me. We then hopped into the bus again, Gobi-bound.

Another three cramped hours later, we had reached the desert. It turned out to be more beautiful than I even imagined - huge, rolling sand dunes stretching out as far as the eye could see. On the outskirts of the desert, it seemed slightly disappointing, as it had seemed our Chinese hosts had set up what looked like a carnival, trying to suck as much money as they could from visiting tourists. While one could argue activities such as sky-car rides, sand tobogganing, ATV and camel riding, human hamster balling, and countless other activities added to the fun, it also seemed a bit cheapening of the vast, natural environment.

While the majority went off to ride camels along a fixed route, a couple friends and I went on a hike through the sand dunes. A fantasy of mine had been to walk far enough into the desert, that when you turn around you are able to see nothing but sand dunes - no people, no civilization, just sand.

We had quite an amazing, picturesque hike, however, I can't say we accomplished this goal fully. Far in the distance on the horizon, was an enormous power plant puffing away. Oops.

We spent the remainder of our time jumping off of the peaks of the sand dunes - definitely the highlight of the trip. It seemed no matter how high the peak, how steep the slope, or how far the drop, it was nearly impossible to get hurt. We would run from the top and jump, seeming as if it were minutes before we hit the ground. Exhausted, we would lay in the sand for a few moments before mustering the energy to climb back to the top and do it all again.

The remainder of the trip passed more or less uneventful, if not still quite fun. We spent the next few days marveling at how every last nook and cranny of our clothes, bags, and bodies were able to retain such copious amounts of sand.

Oh sweet Gobi, you will not soon be forgotten.

(Props to Ade and Eva for the fantastic photography. Thanks, friends.)

More Adventures in Chinese Slang

2009-05-31T22:45:00.003+08:00

For the first year I lived in China, I intentionally avoided learning bad words in Chinese. I had heard that people on the streets have been known to curse like sailors, and quite frankly, I just didn't want to hear it. I figured this was a rare occasion in which I'd rather be ignorant of something rather than be bothered by it. If someone on the streets told me where I could put something, I was able to just stare back at them blankly.

However, two years later in my studies, I figured it's now perhaps a part of my comprehensive learning to pick up these colorful words and phrases. A well-trusted language blog online recommended a book of Chinese street language, so I curiously made the purchase. My theory was indeed correct. My first day back in China after reading the book, I heard all sorts of fun words sitting in the internet cafe.

Nevertheless, this book has gotten a lot of attention among local friends here when they find out I posses such a book. It's quite juvenile, but they get such a kick out of reading it, perhaps never seeing all of these phrases compiled in one all-encompassing list.

That's not to say it's all trashy language, sexual innuendo's, and different words to say "poop". The vast majority of the book is actually dedicated to everyday slang, how not to accidentally make mistakes in your tones which could lead to very unfortunate misspeaking, exotic food, words about crimes and drugs, mild insults, euphemisms, etc..

While I will spare you the most giggle-inducing words and phrases in light of keeping this blog somewhat family-friendly, I'd like to share just a few of my favorite slang words, phrases, and expressions.

A common way to call a westerner is a "big-nosed person"
A euphemism for having your menstrual period is to say you're "having bad luck"
If someone is talking nonsense or trying to cheat you, you can say he "let's out dog farts"
For some reason, saying that someone is "Two-hundred and fifty" is saying that they're stupid
Here's one I can see leading to a lot of confusion: If you're at a hotel and someone asks if you "need an extra quilt tonight", they're really asking if you'd like a prostitute sent up to your room later. What if you're really just cold?
The same character for "relieving yourself" also means "convenient". So if you're going #2, you're literally say you're going for a "large convenience". In this way you can also go for a "small convenience".
One of my favorite idioms so far: "he's dumb as a wooden chicken"
Chinese pride themselves on being extremely humble and are never allowed to accept a compliment. When complimented, they will often respond by saying "Where? Where?" as to say "You can't possibly be talking about me!" A popular story Chinese people like to tell goes like this: A foreigner is talking to a pretty girl. He tells her that she's beautiful. She tries to deflect the compliment by saying "Where? Where?" Confused and slightly embarrassed, he replies "Um...your face, your hair, your legs..."

Okay, so this next one is not family friendly, but it's just so hilarious and ridiculous I just have to share it.

Evidently, if you want to insult someone by saying they're poor, you can say that he is:

"...so poor that he cannot afford a drumstick, but instead must use his penis to beat his drum."

(The Chinese is much less clumsy than the English translation.)

Get a Real Name, Hippie

2009-05-31T21:39:00.002+08:00

I ran across a story in the New York Times a while back that's just too good not to share:

A mind-blowing and intimidating fact about the Chinese language is that it contains over 55,000 characters. Mercifully, the vast majority of these characters have more or less gone into extinction, with many only appearing in books or ancient literature. A paltry 3,500 characters are all that is required to read a newspaper.

Added to this is an interesting fact about Chinese names. Despite this multitude of characters, 80% of all Chinese people share one of the 100 most common Chinese family names. (Which is why it might seem like there are millions of Mr. Chen's in the world - there are millions of them.)

However, given names are quite the opposite and can be chosen from any combination of the 55,000 characters in the library. Similar to the recent creative explosion in hilariously imaginative names in America, parents in China love combing through these rarely-used characters in search of a name that is truly unique or possesses a special meaning for their children.

Here's where the problem comes in. The Chinese government's Public Security Bureau just got a new computer system. However, it only recognizes approximately 32,000 characters. If the characters in your name are one of these left-out 20,000, there is no way to enter you into the system.

What to do? Change your name. That is the solution put forth by the Chinese government. If your name doesn't fit our system, it's time for a new one. You shouldn't have had such a ridiculous name in the first place.

I'm curious to see how people would react to a similar law in the States.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Babysheep

2009-05-31T21:08:00.002+08:00

I don't know why this is so funny, but naming a restaurant "BABYSHEEP" is just fantastic.

KFC Delivery

2009-05-31T18:10:00.004+08:00

Walking down the streets of Hohhot, Inner Mongolia quite late at night, I noticed that supplies are delivered to KFC stores via China Post. Picturing a Big Mac filled US Postal Service truck outside of a McDonald's would be a strange sight. Is this not analogous?

This is not a 7-11

2009-05-30T20:35:00.001+08:00

However, this is:

The Times...

2009-05-30T19:05:00.007+08:00

While studying in Hong Kong in the Spring of '05, some friends and I visited Beijing. It was an incredibly exciting experience as it was our first time in the mainland, and the city amazed us at every turn. However, as much fun as we had, we weren't left with a great overall impression of the city. Although we were living in what's considered one of the most crowded cities in the world at the time, coming to Beijing felt three times as crowded. In addition to the feeling of claustrophobia in the city, the public spitting (even indoors), rampant littering, omnipresent grifting, and an overall general feeling of rude and uncivilized behavior completely rubbed us the wrong way.

For this reason, when I decided to return to Beijing to study, I did so reluctantly. Although I knew the city was definitely the best city in the world to learn Mandarin, I was not looking forward to repeating our experiences from before. I understood that the city had gone through quite a bit of transformation in preparation for the Olympics, so I was optimistically hopeful, yet understood that four years is still a very small period of time.

However, shortly after my arrival to the city, I was absolutely stunned with unbelief and confusion. Quite simply, the city I live in today seems to bear no resemblance to the city I visited four years ago. The city is covered with new skyscrapers, beautiful and modern western clubs, bars, and coffee shops, luxurious upscale shopping centers, all complemented with green landscaping lining the city. The crowded, ancient, dirty subway has now been transformed into a crowded, ultra-modern, clean subway, and the busses are nearly all brand-new.

I was prepared for these aesthetic, tangible changes in the city, but it appeared that China had done a complete surgery on the behavior of Beijing's residents. Public spitting has dramatically been reduced, while littering is now on par with most large cities in the world. While I had heard about the enormous public effort at 'civilizing' Beijing residents in preparation for the Olympics by such focused days as "National Queuing Day" and "Give Up Your Seat Day", I never expected a society could be transformed so quickly. In my amazement, I paid the same price as locals almost everywhere I went. When I got on the bus, it was the same price every time. When I bought something from a street vendor, it was not 10x the price as the guy next to me. People do not stare, point, or request to have their picture taken with you. People queue (at least, more so than any other part in the country). I have not once been "petted" by someone curious about my body hair.

Being an ex-pizza deliverer, I have an uncanny sense of direction, and have been able to retrace the exact paths we followed on our journey four years ago. Perplexingly, each street seems like a dream-like representation of where I was before. As with a dream, everything seems similar, but in an inexplicably dissimilar way. The sleepy streets I remember passing are now full of chic coffee shops and bars. The dirty alleyways are now beautifully paved and immaculate. I knew the hutongs were being demolished in droves, but it seemed as if every single street in the city recieved a complete make-over.

What was going on here? I was honestly baffled. Had the city indeed changed this much? Did my visit only take me to the worst parts of the city and I somehow missed the good parts? Did my memory not serve me well, remembering things incorrectly? Or was I simply biased, seeing only the negative, and ignoring the greatness of the city?

While the answer is undoubtedly a combination of these things, I've spent the past few months trying to find which explanation is the most accurate description of reality. Lately, I've come to the feeling that my memory is not betraying me, but the city is really just this different. I had been looking for evidence to support this theory, but was unable to come up with something concrete.

That is, until yesterday. On my five-hour bike ride to the city center, I decided to visit the hostel we stayed at during our previous visit. It was an amazing hostel - not in the fact that it was an amazing hostel (read: not smell like piss and be filthy as hell), but more so in the fact that we were staying a 10-minute walk away from the Tiananmen Square for less than USD $5 a night. But when I arrived at the street the hostel was located on, I stopped in shock: The entire street, along with every building on it had been bulldozed. In fact, it had been turned into a pedestrian-only street. Every building was brand new - so new, that almost 9 out of 10 storefronts were still vacant!

As I walked down the way in amazement, I finally saw the first hard piece of evidence I had been looking for. Our old hostel had been turned into an H&M store. I am certain of it, not only because it seems to be exactly about the same place where our hostel was, but because in the alley behind it, the old building still stands, where it is awaiting its imminent demolition.

While I admit, yes, perhaps we were slightly bias and more affected by the appalling negative aspects of the city during our first visit, it is clear - this is a very different place than it was just a very short time ago.

Photo taken in 2005

Photo taken in the near exact spot in 2009

The H&M store in front of our old hostel

Remnants of the soon-to-be demolished hotel next to our hostel

View of the entire street, May 2009

More on Product Positioning

2009-05-30T17:31:00.000+08:00

A friend and fellow observant Beijing blogger came across another quite interesting positioning of products in Chinese pharmacies. Evidently Watsons places condoms directly next to baby supplies.

Makes sense, right? If you need to buy a pacifier, you'll need to pick up some of the product right next to it, so as to prevent purchasing a second at a later time. Perhaps we have a new runner-up to the old "Wal-Mart Beer and Diapers Correlation".

Fermented Horse Milk

2009-05-04T16:26:00.006+08:00

Contrary to what Sasha Baron Cohen claims, the national beverage of Kazakhstan is not fermented horse urine, but fermented horse milk. Since hearing of this ambrosia of sorts, I've been quite curious as to what it could possibly taste like. First of all, who knew milk could ferment? Secondly, it's not often you hear of people drinking liquid from horses' boobs. These reasons combined to make it a must-try beverage, so imagine my surprise when I came across it on my recent trek to Inner Mongolia.

It was only $3 USD for a bottle, so a few of us decided to go in on it. In retrospect, it may have been a good idea to splurge for bottle of a higher-grade in order to try the tipple at its finest, but this one certainly did the trick. Upon checking the label, the drink clocked in at 16% alcohol, and was produced locally.

At lunch that afternoon, we christened the bottle and poured everyone a glass. It was a clear and slightly cloudy, but not quite milky in appearance. After cries of "ganbei!", we all sipped our respective glasses. The taste was certainly a bit milky in flavor, a bit sour - but not in a sour milk way, more similar to the sourness tasted with traditional Chinese rice wine. Thankfully, it was nowhere near as reprehensible or fierce as the 150 proof baijiu.

In summation: Not bad, but it might be a while before I start ordering fermented horse milk on-the-rocks, or a fermented horse milk and coke at the local pub.

BT辣

2009-04-20T19:41:00.010+08:00

I had heard a legend of the so-called "hottest chicken wings in Beijing" from a friend yesterday. Upon hearing such tales, I wasted no time in getting directions to this magical destination. So today, I gathered two other brave souls, and we embarked in devouring chicken appendages forged by lucifer himself in the fieriest depths of hell.

The wings in Chinese are called 变态辣翅 (pronounced bian tai la chi), meaning "Abnormally Spicy Chicken Wings", and for some reason they are referred to as BT辣 everywhere they are known.

To help explain how hot these wings were, on the wall of the restaurant is a message board, where people how have attempted the wings can write stories / warnings to other patrons.

The headline is translated as "Abnormally Spicy Wings 'Heroes' Message Board"

Roughly translated as "So hot it makes me want to die"

"So (Chinese expletive) hot!"

We took a look at the menu and ordered 2 of the BT wings for each of us, as well as 2 more of another kind of wings the waiter said was even hotter. To complement our wings, we also took on some less insane bbq squid, eggplant, mantou (Chinese bread), and green peppers.

We squirmed for a little while waiting for our destiny to come upon us. When it finally appeared in all its firetruck-red soaked glory, I went for the hottest ones, while the others made the much more sane move of working their way up to it.

It was certainly a delayed effect. The spice took a good 10-20 seconds before it really showed its true colors. I won't lie, it was extremely spicy - so hot even after I finished all four wings, even the bread tasted spicy for about 5 minutes, it might have been the hottest thing I've ever tried...but for some reason I expected more.

I lived through it, so for that reason I think I feel a bit disappointed. On the upside, I was told that they were too spicy to have any flavor, but I found the opposite to be true. They had a fantastic flavor. I would certainly come back here again, and not just for the fun of trying something ridiculous.

Henry preparing for his spicy journey

I'm so ready.

Bite #2

Hard at work

We struggle to smile as our lips are aflame

3 down, 1 to go

As with any spicy meal, the degree of hotness is measured by how sweaty my bald spot is. Although it's quite cool out, my hair is soaked.

The remnants (we joined the clean plate club it)

Buckets of Goo

2009-04-20T16:58:00.009+08:00

The other night I was enjoying some lovely 羊肉串 (bbq lamb meat on a stick) in a dark alley some may refer to as 'shady'. (It's a place quite at home to me, but the vast majority of foreigners here avoid eating food on this street.)

As I sat savoring the delicious lamb flesh, in the distance I saw a gentleman stroll up the alley carrying a large white bucket. When he approached the entrance of the restaurant, he set his bucket down, and proceeded to lift up the large rock used as a stepping stone to the doorway. He set it to the side, and reached deep into the hole that this large rock covered. He then lifted up a trap door, hiding some sort of goodness below.

By this point, I was on the edge of my seat. What in the world is he hiding under here? It can't be a safe. That wouldn't make sense. But what would you store under a rock in the street?

The man reached into his bucket and pulled out a metal bowl, then reached deep into the hole and started scooping out some sort of goop and dumped it into the bucket. I tried my hardest, but without causing a scene could not figure out what substance it was. It was dark, grey or perhaps brown, and very thick. Whatever it was looked absolutely filthy.

When the bucket was full, he closed the trap door, covered the hole with the rock, and walked back down the alley with his full bucket of filth.

Filling the bucket with filth

Covering the hole

I'm kicking myself for not being more assertive and asking him what he was doing or at least taking a full video of it. Perhaps next time I walk down the alley, if no one is looking I'll pull up the rock and take a look for myself. The curiosity is driving me mad.

One haircut, please. Hold the insults.

2009-04-20T00:26:00.005+08:00

Getting a haircut on campus is an amazingly convenient experience. The shop is located only about a 5-minute walk from my dorm, is open every night until 10:30 P.M., and costs about $1.25 for a shampoo and haircut. While only 2 people are responsible for cutting your hair at this location (instead of the 5 people required in other experiences), they do a decent job at managing my simple haircut. However, from tonight's experience, evidently you can't demand excellent customer service for this price.

As I sat down at the sink to have my hair washed, a girl wets my hair and begins:

"Wow, you have so much grey hair!"

"Yeah...I know."

(pause)

"You know, your hair really is bad."

"What do you mean, 'bad'? How is it bad?"

"It's bad because...it's just bad...look at it."

(pause)

"You've really lost a lot of hair on top, too. It's so thin!"

(laughing) "Yeah..."

"You should really take better care of your hair. It's terrible. Okay, we're done."

I move to the guy who will cut my hair. He dries off my hair a bit more, takes one look at it, and began:

"You know, you're really starting to get thin on top!"

"Yeah...she told me."

This continued for a while...

Fragrant Spring Onion Sauce Explodes Cow Son

2009-04-20T00:25:00.000+08:00

It's no secret that I absolutely love collecting photos of amazingly mistranslated English signs and menus I've ran across here. It's a bit like a scavenger hunt across the whole country.

I've recently come across a site online that has posted the end-all be-all of Chinglish menus. It's over. There's almost no point in continuing...this one is just too perfect. It really has it all.

The best part is that after looking at the Chinese, I really have no clue how most of these translations happened - I can't imagine a computer program or human being ever translating certain characters in this way.

Some favorites:

Good to Eat Mountain

The Farmer is Small to Fry King

Slippery Meat in King's Vegetables in Pillar

A West Bean Pays the Fish a Soup

Add a Peaceful

Cowboy Leg Beautiful Pole

Double-boiled Forest Frog Plaster w/Coconut Juice

Every Form Rape

and last, but definitely not least:

Fuck the Salt (Beautiful Pole) Duck Chin

Link: May I Take Your Order?

Blood, the Breakfast of Champions

2009-03-31T20:11:00.003+08:00

Of all the wonderful items that Chinese people have creatively categorized as "food", there's only one thing here I won't eat - blood. I know what you're thinking, but it's not even the Jewish thing either. I'm not afraid of new things, I'll eat duck tongue or chicken brain without skipping a beat. But blood is a no go. To tell the truth, I'm not exactly sure why. (Perhaps it's the bodily fluids thing. To my knowledge I've never seen steamed mucus on a menu, but I probably wouldn't be too inclined to try that either.)

Last week a friend and I were walking into a Chinese restaurant as she complained that she was feeling quite tired. "I feel like I need some blood in me" is the interesting choice of words she chose to describe her fatigue. I said in jest that we could order some steamed pigs blood to satisfy that craving, but it was met with little support.

We then sat down with the rest of the group and proceeded to order food. As dishes are served family style, usually one or two people take charge in ordering for the rest of the table. I was only mildly involved, merely overhearing some of the dishes being ordered. I did happen to notice that we ordered a dish called something like "Red and White Tofu". I'd never heard of the dish, but didn't think much of it since the word "red" in a dish name usually refers a spicy braised dish.

However, my eyes lit up a bit when a dish fitting exactly the colors of its name appeared on our table.

I pulled a waitress over to our table:

(Pointing at a piece of blood) "Excuse me, what is this stuff here?"

"That's tofu."

"Really? Because it looks like blood."

"No, it's tofu."

(Pointing at a different piece of blood) "What about this?"

"Oh, that's blood."

She got her wish.

When Life Gives You a Sandwich Full of Dirt and Pebbles, Make Sandwichade.

2009-03-26T10:06:00.010+08:00

It may not come as a huge surprise to those close to me that the past year of my life has been a rough one. While blame could be cast on a number of reasons or circumstances, the simplest explanation is that I just let life get to me. I simply wasn't able to brush off the daily awfulness of life that is required in order to keep moving.

A few months ago, I vowed to come out of this slump. Slowly, I have been able to pull myself out of this hole and reclaim my life. But it wasn't until this morning until I had proof that I could finally claim victory over this slump.

Running late to baseball practice, I only had time to pick up a quick sandwich from the on-campus store. I knew I wouldn't have time for lunch, so I could not skip breakfast too. Unwrapping the sandwich, I hopped on my bike. Tragically, the first bump sent my irreplaceable meal plummeting to the ground. It landed open, face down on the concrete.

Those of you familiar with the fine print of the "Three Second Rule" know that there is a clause near the bottom that makes this law of nature null and void in China. Nowhere are you allowed to eat anything that has even thought about going near the ground here. However, I was faced with a dilemma. I didn't have time to buy another one. It was either forfeit my only meal in 12 hours, or go for it.

This is the kind of thing that starts a very bad day. But I was determined. I refused to life get one over on me again. Not this time. I looked up and noticed that 3 or 4 people were watching the situation. They could tell I had a slight glimmer in my eye, and were watching in suspense whether I'd really do it.

I stood straight up, stared life in the face, and pieced my sandwich back together - pebbles and all. Hopped back on my bike, and took a huge, delicious bite as I met my onlookers gaze square in the eyes. You couldn't even taste the dirt. Simon: 1 Life: 0

I'm finally back.

Glass Official Business Cup of Double Deck

2009-03-23T02:14:00.002+08:00

Finally recharged my camera's battery today, so I was able to capture the goodness at the local supermarket. These never get old, do they?

Chicken + Tiger = Delicious

2009-03-17T22:54:00.002+08:00

Some friends of mine when to Harbin for the weekend (city in the far Northeast of China). They went to a tiger park where you can feed the tigers chickens - either on a stick, or just throwing them out the window. I so wish I would have gone with them.

Enjoy the carnage.

Why Wal-Mart Understands China

2009-03-17T21:33:00.008+08:00

One of the blessings / curses of living in such a massive city is the availability of goods. Living in a small town in a much less wealthy part of the country, I was used to living without most amenities I enjoy back home. Everything I needed that I knew I wouldn't find here (french press coffee maker, floss, deodorant, etc.) I had to bring from home. Somehow I didn't realize that this would not be the case this time in a city of 17 million people. Nearly any product you could possibly want or imagine can be found relative ease in this city.

Nowhere is this point better illustrated than the fact that a Wal-Mart is located one subway stop from my dorm. It's actually connected to the station, and I can be at the front door in under 25 minutes from leaving my room.

From my time working at the Wal-Mart Home Office in Bentonville Arkansas, I've been slightly infatuated with the concept of Wal-Mart in China. We opened a store here during the time I worked there, and pictures of the grand openeing were sent out to all employees. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, and I've been fascinated ever since.

Believe it or not, Wal-Mart actually has a pretty substantial presence in China. A lot of multinational companies are scrambling to make a splash in the China market, but not all succeed. Wal-Mart, however, understands China.

Here's why: The building is spread over several floors, so it isn't as initially as impressive as the 'I can't see past the end of the horizon to the other side of the store' effect you get in America. So in order to support the weight of the extra floors, there are massive columns spread throughout. Near the far corner of the personal hygiene department is one such column. It's actually only about 5 feet from the shelves on all sides, so it's really a tight squeeze to get back to the items placed in this area. Seems like a terrible design flaw in an otherwise well-architected building. Whose idea was this? What products could you ever place in such an inconvenient area?

Condoms.

That's right, condoms - and it's pure genius on Wal-Mart's part. Condoms are the life-blood of the one-child policy here, and yet sex is still quite taboo in Chinese culture. Being caught purchasing condoms could be a mortifyingly embarrassing situation. But no one can see anyone in this corner of the store. Unless someone deliberately walks back into this small area, you remain neigh invisible.

While I have no statistics to back it up, I am reasonably confident in believing that Wal-Mart sells more condoms than any other retailer in China.

It takes so much more than simply setting up shop as in your home country to do business internationally. You must understand your customers. And that is why Wal-Mart has succeeded in China.

Full Nelson

2009-03-17T20:04:00.006+08:00

Although, I would much rather leave this story untold, the purpose of this blog is to document interesting phenomena I encounter here in China. And this event was certainly interesting.

(This is in no way is an attempt to brag about a heroic event, because I assure you it was anything but.)

A couple of nights ago I was walking a friend home. As we approached the alley where we would part for the evening, we passed a young couple. The girl was holding onto a rather large handbag, and the guy was behind her, wrapping his arms around her and grabbing the handbag. She was squirming and trying to get away, but he had a pretty firm grip on her and the bag. As we walked by, they appeared to be joking around with half-smiles on their faces, so we thought nothing of it.

We said a short farewell, and were ready to part our separate ways, until we looked up and noticed that they were still going at it. Joking or not, the girl was shrieking a bit, and this had been going on for over a few minutes. Reluctantly, I walked my bike past them again pretending to mind my own business, going in for a closer look to make sure everything was in good fun. I made eye contact with the girl for a good second. She still appeared to be smiling, and maybe even laughing a bit. I was only a couple feet away, so if she needed help, she definitely would have signaled as such.

So I returned to my friend and ensured her that although we both felt quite uncomfortable leaving with this scene still going on, I was reasonably confident that the girl was not in danger and we should go in peace. We said another uneasy goodbye and walked away.

As I hopped on my bike, I still couldn't let it go. It had been more than 5 minutes now, and they were still struggling. If this was a cute little flirting game, it was getting pretty weird. People were passing left and right, but no one paid attention or stopped. I knew if I didn't at least ask if she needed help, I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it.

I can't recall clearly the exact words that were exchanged, but I asked the girl several times if she needed help. Each time, I got a different response from the girl. They ranged from, "No, I don't need help", "Yes, please help", "We're just joking", and "He's trying to steal this from me". From the guy, the responses I got were "She's my girlfriend", "We're just joking around", "You're just a foreigner, you don't understand what she is saying".

Confused and frustrated, I looked her in the eyes and said, "Seriously. Tell me the truth. Do you want me to help you? Are you just joking around?" I finally got a straight answer when she said, "Yes, please help. I'm not joking."

At this point, I honestly can't remember the last time I had to assert myself in any kind of physical confrontation. Without any knowledge of self-defense or what to do in this kind of situation, my mind went blank. I always knew what I would do in a fight if confronted - stand there, and kindly ask the gentlemen to bash my face in, but I never thought about what if I would have to do on another person's behalf. Besides telling the guy, "Hey...yeah...come on...don't do that..." I really had no idea what to do. The only thing left in my head was wrestling moves I learned back in high school.

The guy was possibly very slightly above average in size for a Chinese guy who has been drinking his milk, but still pretty much just a kid. On top of this, he didn't do much to try to resist me, as he would have had to let go of the girl in order to do so. As I proceeded to put my arms through his and onto his head, his only resistance was to say, "Buddy...friend...brother...we're cool...she's my girfriend...you're just a foreigner, you don't understand what she was saying..."

I now had him in a full nelson (considered an illegal and unsportsmanlike move in wrestling, since there is no real way to break the hold.) As soon as he lost his grip on the girl, she started sprinting away as fast as she could. I felt relieved that based on her pace, she definitely wanted to be free of this guy.

A small crowd of about 6-7 people had now formed around us. Now that the girl was gone, latecomers were wondering why this white guy was holding this Chinese guy in a full nelson hold in the middle of the street. I wanted to wait until she was completely out of sight before I let him go so he couldn't follow her, so I just held him for a minute looking at the bystanders, awkwardly nodding the kind of nod that says, "Hey, how's it going? Take a picture!"

As he called me 'brother' one last time, I let him go and hopped on my bike.

Tiananmen Literally Means "Gate of Heavenly Peace". (Square Just Means "Square").

2009-03-10T22:51:00.003+08:00

Parting Words

2009-03-10T22:46:00.002+08:00

I've been meaning to sort out the past year and a half I spent in America in a splendidly articulated retro/introspective post here. While I search for deep themes to highlight, I'm left with the very last conversation I had with a stranger in America.

My flight left the next morning from Chicago at 8:00 AM, so I spent the evening with Joe, as he bartended at a cozy little Irish joint. Towards the end of the evening, one of the fine gentlemen at the bar struck up conversation with me. Eventually it came out that I was leaving in a few hours for China.

"What the fuck is in China?" He pondered out loud in a non-rhetoric, boisterous voice.

"What, indeed." I replied.

And so, has begun my quest to find out what is in China. Perhaps next time I'll have a better answer.

Chicken Head

2009-03-02T09:46:00.004+08:00

So a friend just told me of an outdoor street market where you can eat scorpions, larvae, and other delectable treats. Stay tuned, I'm thinking this weekend will be an insect-fest. Until then, here's a chicken head. Don't knock it 'till you've tried it...tasted just like fried chicken. Only more "heady".

Before:
After:Next up: The delicious brain...

If Even Number Entrance

2009-03-02T09:00:00.000+08:00

Found at church today.

Meat

2009-02-28T18:00:00.003+08:00

I think I will be starting a new section to this blog:

Things found in the bathroom sink

Happy Christian Pizza

2009-02-28T01:25:00.004+08:00

Found on the bathroom sink of my dorm.

My favorite kind of pizza.

The Peacock

2009-02-26T21:12:00.004+08:00

I finished the third day of classes today, and so far has been quite good. In one of my courses, we're read through a story for comprehension. The vocabulary was pretty difficult for me, so it took 2 days to make it through it. But once I finally understood everything, I realized it's really quite a great story.

I've translated it here for you to read. (I have taken a fair amount of liberty with the translation and paraphrasing.)

One day, my friend and I were talking about nothing in particular, when all of a sudden, a mysterious grin came onto on his face. "Do you want to hear a riddle?" Curious, I said "Sure".

He began: "You're an explorer traveling through a strange forest with five animals: a tiger, a monkey, a peacock, an elephant, and a dog. In this journey you will encounter many dangers and hardships. You cannot bring all of the animals with you through to the end. You have to get rid of them one by one throughout your journey. In which order will you get rid of them?"

After thinking for a while, I replied, "First the peacock, then the tiger, the dog, the monkey, and lastly, the elephant." My friend started laughing. "I knew it! You got rid of the peacock first too!"

"What's so funny about that? What does this even mean?"

He explained, "The peacock represents your lover (or spouse), the tiger represents your desires for money and power, the dog represents your friends, the elephant represents your parents, and the monkey represents your children. How you answer this riddle reveals a lot about what kind of person you are. Whoever your get rid of first in the story represents who you will betray first when you encounter a hardship or crisis."

"The peacock represents my lover? So you're saying that I would first betray my lover in a hardship?" I was so surprised to hear this. The truth is, the only reason I decided to get rid of the peacock first is that in a dangerous situation, the peacock is the least helpful animal to me.

This outcome really upset me, so I began to pose the same riddle to everyone. It seemed that no matter who I told the riddle to, they all had the same answer as I had. Everyone chose to get rid of the peacock first. I began to think, "What kind of person would come up with a riddle like this?"

Then one day, I called an old friend from my hometown and remembered this riddle. I decided to pose it to him. After thinking for a while, he responded, "Monkey, tiger, dog, elephant, peacock." I couldn't believe it! He was the first person I had met that got rid of the peacock last!

"Why did you get rid of the peacock last?" I asked him eagerly. He calmly replied, "Think about this group of animals: The peacock is the least able to protect itself, so how could I feel right about leaving it alone in such a dangerous place?"

I finally understood. Most of the time, we only think about how other people can benefit us, instead of thinking about how others might benefit from our help.

Instead of looking only out for our own interests, we should be pay attention to when others are in need of help.

Fried Wikipedia

2009-02-21T23:21:00.003+08:00

I ran across a link today to a photo of a Chinese menu I wish I would have found. At a local restaurant in Beijing, the character for 'chicken' was inexplicably mistranslated as 'Wikipedia'. This leads to such delicious treats such as:

Stir-fried Wikipedia
Stir-fried Wikipedia with pimentos
Steamed eggs with Wikipedia
Wikipedia with peppers

Check out the link for photos. Fried Wikipedia

Some changes 'round these parts

2009-02-21T22:26:00.002+08:00

It's been a year-a-half since I since my leave of absence of blogging. The general idea was that I would blog if I had something interesting to talk about. Unfortunately, living in Midwestern America did not provide such opportunities. However, now that I have returned to China once again, I hope to resume blogging activities.

While I certainly appreciate (and did not expect) the warm response this blog has received in the past, I am wary that this blog may be a bit different than before. While I'm still hoping to share crazy stories, cultural experiences, and bizarre culinary adventures, I'm anticipating less of these experiences this time around.

This primarily has to do with the environment in which I'm living. There are several obvious, striking differences in my environment here in Beijing than in the South where I lived before.

First off, I am living in a city of approximately 17 million instead of a rural town of 300,000 (incredibly small for China). While in the South, I couldn't walk down the street without every head turning towards me, with people laughing, pointing, or staring, people here are very used to foreigners here, especially since the Olympics this past summer. I should be carefully sensitive in my description here, but people in the city behave much more... (and I hate to use this word...) 'civilized'. Due to significantly higher income levels, and the fact that they're not farmers, people in Beijing engage much less in activity that a foreigner may find mildly amusing / offensive. (i.e. holding your baby over the street to poop)

Also, while I am determined to eat at the 'penis restaurant' here in Beijing (a restaurant that specializes in cooking dishes with penis as the main ingredient), food from the Northern part of China tends to be far less exotic than food in the South. So it might be slightly more difficult to find dog meat noodles or duck tongue soup here.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of all though, is that because the omnipresence of hilariously mistranslated signs was viewed as an area of national embarrassment, Beijing had hired a task force of competent English speakers to eradicate all instances of such malsignage.

Lastly, I am living in a college dormitory in an upscale part of town. The campus is gated, and I will more than likely be spending the majority of my time within these gates. This does seem a bit tragic, but I need to remember that my primary reason for being here is to study, and study I shall do.

You may also notice a few additions to the site by the way of the sidebar. These are just a few other widgets added to broaden the spectrum of updates. Now, if you're interested, you can receive more Simon than you ever wanted or can handle.

Twitter feed - You can follow me on the microblogging site Twitter under the username simonlesser.
What I am listening to - Music that is currently rocking my guts.
What I am reading - Interesting news stories or links that I have shared through Google Reader. (If you use Google Reader too, you should start sharing too and let me know about it!) I scour a number of blogs about China, so this may be a great place to keep up with news that flies under the radar. (Be aware, geek stuff may be intermingled in here as well.)
Subscribe to this blog via RSS - Allows you to read this blog in the RSS reader of your choice so you don't have to keep checking the site for updates.

Bicycle Adventures

2009-02-21T21:28:00.002+08:00

As a foreigner in China, just about anything you do is considered crazy. This can often be played to your advantage if you choose. You can go around doing whatever you like, claiming ignorance to just about everything, saying "我就是个笨蛋的老外。我不知道了！” ("I'm just a stupid foreigner, I didn't know!") But today, I began to think I was a bit nuts as well.

Being a student staying in China for longer than 6 months, I'm required to obtain a residence permit. In order to do so, you have to jump through a series of bureaucratic hoops, including getting a health checkup to prove you're not bringing AIDS or other goodies into the country. You get the checkup in your home country, but need to immediately get it verified by the health officials here.

So during registration, the university gave me instructions on how to take care of this, and handed me a crude map of how to get to the clinic. It looked quite far from the university, but I figured Beijing is a city of bikes - therefore, all places in this city are bikeable. So the next morning at 9:00, I set off for the clinic.

Already, the elements were against me. It was as cold as it had been all week (mid-20's), but Beijing was covered with the first (and more than likely only) snow of the year, amidst the biggest drought Northern China has experienced in 38 years. (The Chinese government actually is taking credit for the snow, saying that they had launched chemicals into the clouds causing the snowfall). It was quite obvious to see that the city is not well-equiped in dealing with snow, as the maintenance ladies on campus removed snow from streets and sidewalks with brooms instead of shovels.

But weather aside, I was off, riding through the 1-inch of snow in the bike lane. It didn't take me long to realize that I wasn't making much progress on my map, and that it could take me quite a while to reach the clinic. 'No matter' I thought, as my American gut could use the exercise, and I continued.

Conditions soon worsened. The speed of the cars on the streets kept increasing, as the size of the bike decreased. Then I happened to notice the sign that said no bikes were allowed on this street from 7:00-21:00. It occurred to me that if bikes weren't allowed on a street in Beijing, it must be pretty serious. While the bike lane still had a good coating of snow and ice, the snow in the car lanes had melted into brown slush and water, which made perfect conditions for spraying water on the bike lane every time a car passed. 'No matter', I thought once again to myself.

An hour had now passed, and there was a considerable more distance to go on the map. I was now at a point of no return though. I had to keep going. The campus is located in the far Northwest of the city, and I was headed farther Northwest. Slowly I saw the city spread further and further out, and it became apparent that I would soon be in the outskirts of the city. A few minutes later, I was in the absolute middle of nowhere. It was bizarre. The buildings disappeared, and were replaced with fields. I then came upon an absolutely enormous lot of the biggest satellite dishes I've ever seen. (Think "Cable Guy" big). There must have been over 100 satellite dishes in the lot.

I stopped seeing other bikers a while ago. But now, I had stopped seeing cars for a bit too. As I got close to the clinic people started appearing again. As I passed on my bike, they looked at me as if I were a madman. There I was - a white foreigner bundled up from head to toe, completely covered in snow and slush, riding in the middle of nowhere, on a street that bicycles were prohibited to ride on. It was fantastic. I so dearly wish I had a photo of these looks.

In total, it took just slightly under 1 hour and 45 minutes to get there. I filled out a short form, and handed it to the clerk at the desk. She then informed me that I should come back in 3 hours to pick the results. I did not know this was part of the deal.

After a short, pointless debate on whether to start riding home and turning around half-way, I hopped back on my bike to find a place to kill some time. The only problem being that I was in the middle of nowhere, it took me 45 minutes to find signs of civilization. After a bowl of fiercely hot noodles, and a couple of hours in a fiercely cold internet bar (how is it colder inside than outside?), I picked up my documents and headed home again.

I think next time, I will check the map a bit closer.

(Also, I hope to promise that this is the last voyage I take without brining my camera.)

Arrival

2009-02-13T12:35:00.002+08:00

Friends, I have arrived safely in Beijing. Posts to follow shortly. Also, be sure to check out my Twitter feed.

Coming Soon: Life

2009-01-12T03:45:00.003+08:00

Greetings to the masses of the void who have checked this blog for updates over the past year and a half. Next month, I will be moving back to the Middle Kingdom and resume blogging activities.

Stay tuned, but until then, please enjoy wonderful nothingness.

Chinglish Revisited, Once Again

2008-07-09T10:18:00.004+08:00

We should take a minute to lament these last few weeks before the Olympics of the eradication of Chinglish that has taken place in Beijing over the past year in preparation for the games. They claim that signs on stores that read 'Face a Guest Soil Special Product Supermarket' are a national embarrassment, and are being removed and retranslated at an alarming rate.

While this brings up a number of issues that I won't go into here, such as the question of whether Beijing is whitewashing the city and giving a false impression of what life in China is really like, it robs the foreigner living in China of one of our most treasured games - 'Find the most ridiculously translated English sign in the city'.

In the midst of this lamentation, there's a fantastic article in Wired Magazine about the influence that Chinglish is having on the English language. It's an intimidating figure to think about - that there are actually more English speakers living in China than in America. As language is a constantly evolving organism, it seems a bit un-American to think that another country may have more control over the direction of our language than we do. Don't say you weren't warned.

Check out the link.

Hanoi Intersection at Night

2008-06-12T09:41:00.002+08:00

I've been riding my bike to work and around town a lot lately. I ride my bike with somewhat of the same philosophy as when I drive my car. Allow me elaborate.

When I have a problem with my car, I intentionally ignore it for weeks or months on end, subconsciously hoping that my car completely dies and I'll be forced to walk and ride my bike everywhere. I know how irrational this is, but I still don't care. When my car does die, in reality, I'm completely screwed, but part of me will be very happy.

Somewhat similarly, when I ride my bike, I intentionally play near chicken with oncoming vehicles. I obey no traffic lights, I pull out in front of cars unexpectedly, and take up way too much of a lane. People get legitimately upset with me, and I just can't understand why. My thoughts are, 'Serves them right for driving a car! I will make it as difficult as possible for motorists so that no one will ever drive a car again.' Once again, a completely rational idea.

Part of my bicyclical recklessness comes from riding my bike in China. There, there were no rules. As I've said before, the only rule was you couldn't occupy the same exact place as another vehicle at the same exact time. It worked perfectly. There were no traffic signals, no crosswalks, nothing. People just drove somewhat slowly, and expected people to pull out in front of them.

I found a video online of a Hanoi intersection at night that reminded me of everything I love about riding my bike in China.

Hanoi crazy night traffic from v!Nc3sl4s on Vimeo.

Hong Kong's MTR System Runs on Windows

2007-06-11T01:00:00.000+08:00

The Bungee Jump

2007-06-10T22:29:00.000+08:00

Last week I embarked on what was by no small margin the most terrifying experience of my life. We had gone with the advanced class students to a small Chinese amusement park that offered bungee jumping. Most of the day I had no hard feelings about the fact that I was going to skip out on this particular adventure. But as I looked up at that platform in the heavens, I felt the same kind of semi-reluctant feeling we felt that time in Thailand when my friend Euan and I saw a lady pushing a cart full of grasshoppers she was selling to eat. He just looked at me and said, "Looks like we don't have a choice here." It's just the kind of thing that you have to do if it comes along.

I know what you're thinking. Under usual circumstances, I probably would never go bungee jumping in America. And when you take into consideration that everything in this country tends to be thrice as shady as back home, it kind of seals the deal. But I did my homework. I asked around, and it turns out that this place had been around for a few years, and no one has heard of anyone dying. So I figured it was safe enough for me. Besides, it was only US $10, and I'll never have that opportunity again.

So I paid my money, got my blood pressure checked, pretended I could read the Chinese waiver they gave me, and did my best to explain to the lady that we use a different system of measuring our eyeglass prescriptions in America so I can't tell you what number my eyes are rated. (The fact that the US government allows me to drive without glasses wasn't cutting it for her. She needed a number.) Next, I got weighed to make sure my big American ass wouldn't snap the bungee cord. Then it was up into the elevator with the three of us: Jamie, (by far the coolest and craziest girl at the school), myself, and another Chinese guy.

By the time we got to the top, I realized for the first time that this might actually be scary. We were hundreds of feet up, the floor was mesh, and the railing was Chinese-height. I finally understood why this was much more scary than a roller coaster. In a roller coaster, you're strapped in and you don't have to move. A machine moves for you, so when you get to the top of that first hill, you don't have to think about whether you want to go down or not. The decision is made for you - there's no backing out. With bungee jumping, you have to stand there on the edge with nothing to hang onto, and just jump.

Jamie, being absolutely fearless, volunteered. "I'll go first! I'll go first!" "Who was I to argue?" I thought. The workers at the top then gave us a few minutes of instructions while Jamie translated for me. As soon as they finished, they pointed at me, pulled me close to them, and started to attach various hooks and carabiners to me. Jamie yelled good luck to me, and I was escorted to the edge.

And oh, what an edge it was. There it was. The whole world in front of me. I could see for miles. It was at that point that they started blasting "The Final Countdown" on the loudspeakers. I was too frightened to laugh hysterically at how funny this was. As I looked down, I knew that there was absolutely no way to convince my body to jump over the edge. My instincts were too finely trained to know that jumping from hundreds of feet in the air when you can't feel anything protecting you will kill you. My legs were shaking to the point that I was worried I'd lose my balance. At that time, I had already calculated the degree of embarrassment, self-dissatisfaction, and loss of money I would face when I backed out. "Sure, some people will make fun of me, and I'll have wasted $10. But that's not really that bad..." But by then, the worker had already said, "Okay, let's go." At least three times, and was already on number two of his countdown that started at five. Perhaps it was a wild streak in me, or perhaps it was the lifelong conditioning of my brain to know that when a countdown is over something is supposed to happen, but the next thing I knew, I had blinked and jumped simultaneously.

I'll be honest. The first two bounces were too terrifying to enjoy. It took until the third bounce or so to realize how awesome it had been. As enjoyed my remaining bounces and destroyed what was left of my vocal cords, they began to lower the hook. I attached it to my belt and they raised me up. When I got on the solid platform I almost kneeled down and kissed the mesh, but I was able to restrain myself. I watched Jamie jump fearlessly and without a care in the world into the abyss. Even once on sea level, it took me about thirty minutes for my hands to stop shaking.

Props to Eric for the camera work.

Me Fail English? That's Unpossible!

2007-06-09T16:41:00.003+08:00

Disclaimer: This collection of amazing pictures were not taken by me. Special thanks to the team of college students who lent me these pictures.

Face a guest soil special product supermarket

No lingering (or jump roping for that matter).

This sign marks the area where you can play around nuclear material, or kneel down to smell your friend's armpit.

Inhale tube. Please don't hot drinks. (You may need to enlarge this one to see it).

Remember: Civilization is from every thing.

Sorry, kids. Keep your tops on.

Language Observations

2007-06-09T16:38:00.000+08:00

Although I hate to admit it because it makes me feel like I should know more than I do, I've been studying Mandarin for slightly more than a year and a half now. I've absolutely loved every second of it, and really hope I can continue my studies for a long time. One thing I've learned after living abroad in two different contexts is how it really is impossible to understand a culture without understanding the language of the people, and impossible to understand a language without understanding the culture of the people. I've really been able to see how interrelated these two are. Living here in China, with at least some understanding of the language, I feel so much more a part of the culture and people than I did in Hong Kong, where I embarrassingly learned less than 30 words in Cantonese.

In addition to all of the other rewards of learning a new language and using it on a daily basis, part of the the fun of learning a new language is all the colorful and cultural items you come across.

For example, food is a huge part of Chinese culture. Everything about society revolves around food. As such, it even leaks into slang vocabulary for insults. It seems that every insult in Chinese involves food in some way*. To call someone stupid, you don't just call them stupid, you call them a 'stupid egg'. (笨蛋）. Someone who eats a lot, or is just not very smart is called a rice bucket (饭桶）. Another one meaning 'newbie' or just 'stupid' is a 'vegetable bird' (菜鸟）. To get fired is to 'have your squid fried' (炒鱿鱼）. To tell someone that they're your good friend, you can tell them 'You're my dog meat' (你是我的狗肉）.

Personally, my favorite idiom I've learned is used to describe when someone stands you up on a date. You can tell them they 'released your pigeons'. Not only does this bring up the most absurd mental picture, it also sounds really funny to say. (Nǐ fāng wǒde gēzǐ! / 你放我的鸽子!) A close second place however is an idiom for sexual harrassment. If you feel a guy has stepped over the line, you can yell 'You ate my tofu!' (你吃我的豆腐!)

Every Chinese character is made up of one or more parts, called radicals. Some of the radicals help give clues about how to pronounce the word, while others may give clues about the meaning. For example, the character meaning good (好） contains two parts. The part on the left means woman (女）, and the part on the right means child （子）. A woman and a child together is considered good, so you can see how the radicals can sometimes give the meaning to a character. This is all background to say that I can't remember which character it is right now, but my Chinese teacher showed me how the character for marriage consists of two parts. One of the radicals is the one meaning woman, which I mentioned above. The other radical means to become dizzy. So... Woman + Dizzy = Marriage.

On another note, A woman who is too vain is called a 'stinking beauty' (臭美）. If two people are on a date and someone tags along and becomes a third wheel, he's considered a 'light bulb' （灯泡）. To have 'Hong Kong feet' (香港腳 ) is to have smelly feet. (Unless you actually live in Hong Kong, then you say someone has 'Singapore feet'). Of course, everyone's favorite is when someone asks you how you're doing and you want to say you're just doing okay or so-so, you can say 'Horse, horse, tiger, tiger' （马马虎虎）.

It's also considered cute to call your girlfriend a pig in a loving tone of voice. I can't imagine the culture shock a Chinese man would be in for if he didn't learn not to do this with his first girlfriend upon coming to America.

While we're on the subject, as a person possessing a fair amount of Jewish blood running through his veins, I would be remiss if I failed to point out a certain 'coincidence' of the Chinese language. The word in Mandarin for pig is spelled in Pinyin (the system for writing Chinese words with roman letters) as zhu, and is pronounced phonetically as jü, which sounds exactly the same as the word Jew. Coincidence? I think not.

*This idea was originally noted by ChinesePod.com.

I am a Racist

2007-06-01T17:28:00.000+08:00

I have recently run across an extremely interesting project being done over the internet by Harvard called "Project Implicit". The project consists of a variety of tests designed to discover implicit or subconscious biases, attitudes, or preferences you may have about a certain people group.

The test I took examined your implicit preference of European Americans or African Americans. The test consisted of a two groups of words: Negative words such as failure, terrible, nasty, awful, etc., and positive words such as wonderful, happy, love, etc.. For the first section of the test, you must categorize each word as either good or bad by pressing the button corresponding to each word. (Good is on the left, bad is on the right). You must do the test as absolutely fast as you can, so it measures your automatic or implicit ideas. If you think about it too long, your data will not be accurate.

Next, the categories change. There are no longer words that you must categorize, but pictures of faces. The categories are not good/bad, but African American or European American. So you are shown a picture of an African American, and you are expected to press the button corresponding to African American. Simple enough, right?

The final section of the test is really where things get interesting. Both of the previous two tests are combined into one. The button on the left now stands for either good or African American, while the button on the right now stands for bad or European American. You're then shown either a word or a face and you must classify it accordingly. Later, they are switched so good is joined with European American and vice-versa. The idea is that (as a white person), it may subconsciously harder to associate positive words with African-Americans than European Americans.

When I finished I must admit, to my shock, I failed miserably. The pronouncement was "Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for European American compared to African American". I figured, "This can't be right." I took it again, but ended up with the same results.

I didn't want to believe it at first, but the more I thought about the study and methods used, the more I had to accept that it really did reveal some subconsciously buried things about how I view people.

I began to look around the site for more information. I was able to find a little consolation in the FAQ section of the study:

If my Black-White attitude IAT shows automatic White preference, does that mean that I'm prejudiced?

Answer: This is a very important question. Social psychologists use the word 'prejudiced' to describe people who endorse or approve of negative attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward various out-groups. Many people who show automatic White preference on the Black-White attitude IAT are not prejudiced by this definition. It is possible to show biases on the IAT that are not consciously endorsed, or are even contradictory to intentional attitudes and beliefs. People who hold egalitarian conscious attitudes in the face of automatic White preferences may able to function in non-prejudiced fashion partly by making active efforts to prevent their automatic White preference from producing discriminatory behavior. However, when they relax these active efforts, these non-prejudiced people may be likely to show discrimination in thought or behavior. The question of relation between implicit and explicit attitudes is of great interest to social psychologists, several of whom are doing research on that question for race-related attitudes.

This test has forced me to be completely honest with myself to discover that this description probably fits me very well. Most likely, I do have an "automatic White preference", but my "egalitarian conscious attitude" prevents me from "producing discriminating behavior".

The next question is, how do I change this automatic preference? Is it even possible?

I highly recommend taking the test. (Once you accept the disclaimer, choose the Race IAS near the middle of the page). It may very well tell you something you didn't know about yourself. Even if not, it will be interesting at the least.

五月五号 (Wu Yue, Wu Hao)

2007-05-18T17:40:00.000+08:00

The blog has been a little quiet lately. In contrast to last semester, things have been extremely busy lately. "With what?" you may ask.

Last week I put together a Cinco de Mayo Fiesta for the students. While yes, this doesn't have anything to do with English, it is a big part of American culture. (In addition, it gives me an excuse to eat Mexican food.) So last time I was passing through Hong Kong, I was able to pick up some supplies. I slaved over a hot stove to create a quasi-Mexican meal of burritos and tacos with fresh homemade salsa, taco meat, refried beans, lettuce, chili peppers, etc. We even had tortilla chips to dip in the salsa.

Because if you don't go all out on something, it's not worth doing, I made a paper mache pinata for the evening. In honor of the year of the golden pig, I shaped it in the image of a cute little piggy. Because it was my first time with paper mache, and I wanted to make sure it wouldn't break after the first hit, I didn't know exactly how thick to make it. So I really coated that sucka' with quite a few layers. So much so, that when it was time to break it open, I had to cut slits in it with a knife in order for it to break open and release it's bounty inside.

All in all, I think everyone had a pretty good time. Originally, due to its unavailability, I assumed that Chinese people don't or wouldn't like Mexican food. (Most likely due to the cheese and fresh vegetables. Both of which do not appear anywhere in Chinese cuisine). But I was pleasantly surprised as everyone certainly seemed to enjoy the food. So now I've sold the idea of Mexican food to 16 people in China. Perhaps if I'm able to convince a few hundred million more, we could get a Mexican restaurant here...

The buffet

Jason rockin' some burrito action

Me and Ms. Piggy ( I made the paper mache part of the pig, but one of the other teachers made it pretty.)

Lenny smackin' the pig as the children are on the edges of their seats for the candy.

Poor, Beautiful Moths (Pt. 2)

2007-05-17T22:44:00.000+08:00

Have you ever had to kill something beautiful? Or maybe you've hit a raccoon with your car, but only got it's leg and had to back over it again to put it out of it's misery.

Perhaps I'm being over dramatic, but it keeps happening. Every night, hundreds of bugs somehow weasel their way into my apartment. Included in this swarm of bugs are enormous moths. They're so big, I really have no idea how they sneak in with my windows closed. Because of their size, their wings constantly flap loudly against the ceilings, walls, or my face while I'm trying to sleep. I've tried, but I just cant fall asleep with these four-inch monsters swarming around my room.

The problem is, some of these moths are really quite a creation. It's just so hard to splatter something so beautiful all over the ceiling. Nevertheless, it's one of those unpleasantnesses that must be done. Check out this poor sucker:

Rest in peace, my love.

Chinglish on NPR

2007-04-22T22:04:00.000+08:00

NPR did a great story last week about the crackdown on Chinglish Beijing is trying to do for the Olympics next year. It's a great story, and is right on with the situation all over China. You can listen to the story here.

They point out some really great common mistakes made here such as menu's misspelling 'carp' as 'crap', and 'Mouth Watering Chicken' as 'Saliva Chicken'. My favorite one that I hadn't heard of was the naming of a museum about China's national minorities as "Racist Park".

This is necessary for the development of the country, and is certainly a pride issue since so many foreigners have laughed to tears upon seeing some of these translations. However, I must admit that in a way I'm very sad to see them go. First of all, (quite selfishly) because I enjoy them so much. But second of all, it seems to me that so much is being done in Beijing to sweep things under the rug or whitewash problems, I feel that people coming to the Olympics will certainly not see this country the way it really is. I'm certainly all for the development of China (in a responsible manner) and a better life for its residents, but sometimes I wonder how much can fit under the bed when mom comes in to see if we've cleaned our room.

I Want My Coke, and I Want It Now.

2007-04-22T21:30:00.000+08:00

I have made a startling, yet indisputable observation recently: Chinese people are clearly not as evolved as Americans. While some of you may be appalled that a seemingly innocuous blog has just made the leap into controversial subjects such as racial supremacy and the origins of the universe, I promise you I have proof. Chinese people's mouths have not evolved to the size of that of a (fully evolved) American's. In comparison, their mouths are considerably smaller.

The most obvious downside to this is the speed at which one can consume chemical-flavored sugar water from an aluminum can. While the American, with his highly evolved mouth, can drink at speeds reaching nearly 3oz/sec, the Chinese are still drinking at a paltry 1oz/sec. (Fig. A). That means they have to wait an average of three times as long to consume their favorite beverage!

(Fig. A)

They have no idea what they're missing.

Drinks Aftertaste

2007-04-22T00:46:00.000+08:00

Nothing too special here. Just wanted to share some new signs and T-shirt with you.

The Pregnant Woman Button

2007-04-17T23:59:00.000+08:00

I took an overnight bus ride to Hong Kong last week. The bus is always a bit of an adventure since it's pretty crowded and you never know exactly what you're in for. You get a bed that's just wide enough for someone with a body size like mine to fit snugly between the metal bars of your bed on either side. There's three rows of beds in the bus, and they're stacked two beds high. It's a bit of hassle because everyone must take off their shoes and socks before getting on the bus. Fortunately, I've caught a bit of athletes foot and so I was able to stink up the entire bus with the lovely smell of my feet.

When you lie down in the bed, which is tilted at about a 25 degree angle, you have a good foot or two above your head before the bunk or ceiling above you starts. On this ceiling above you is a vent with broken controls that spews freezing cold air at you, two different light buttons which do not work, and a new, amazing 'mystery' button that I've never seen before. It was amazing. It was a picture, drawn in the man/woman toilet picture fashion of having a human silhouette created out of geometric shapes. But this one was different. It looked like either a very fat, or pregnant woman. Her torso was completely round, so it looked to me more like a pregnant woman than a fat one. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me so I couldn't take a picture. Thinking quickly, I grabbed one of my journals and did a quick sketch of what the button looked like so I wouldn't forget. Now that I'm back at my computer, I've tried using my extremely limited artistic abilities to recreate this button for you. I know it looks funny and distorted, but I assure you the real button on the bus looked extremely similar to this.

After sketching the picture and having a good chuckle to myself, my mind was flooded with curiosity. "What in the world could this button be?" Could it be a button for the bus attendant, like in a plane? If so, why was the woman in the picture fat? To be honest she wouldn't be able to fit down the claustrophobic aisles of the bus. The only thing I could come to the conclusion was that it was for if you were pregnant, and currently needed to give birth. You could press the button, and the bus driver would stop the bus, deliver your baby, and then continue. At this point, I couldn't resist the temptation to press the button to see what happened. I began to press it repeatedly. But alas, like every other button above me, it was to no avail. I was neither greeted with a perfectly round woman with a beverage nor someone to aid me birthing a child. I laid back down, disappointed, and tried to sleep.

Accompany the Kidney

2007-04-17T14:52:00.000+08:00

I've been traveling the last week or so, and of course traveling means new places. New places means new signs, and new signs mean new hilarious Chinglish. A couple of these are from last semester, so they might be repeats if you happened to see the DVD when I was in the states. Nevertheless, here they are in all their glory:

Where exactly would you like me to accompany the kidney to?

I can actually read the Chinese on the one on the left. I think the translation should say 'Vegetarian food', but even still, it's not very descriptive. As for the 'Sea Kelp in Belting', I have no idea.

I believe to cook this dish, they first made vegetarian pasta (out of soy of course), and then extracted the intestines. Once again the Chinese isn't really helpful here either. The literal translation would be 'Noodle intestines'.

These two were found on the urinals of two different restrooms:

It's pretty amazing that the Chinese actually should say 'Please rinse out the sink after you throw up'. I should remind you that this was not at a bar, but a seafood restaurant. Perhaps they count on many people drinking the 130-proof 'baijiu' (rice alcohol) that's so popular in this country.

Mmm...I can always go for a nice heaping bowl of 'Giv-ling-goo'.

I have no idea why the English does not read 'Passion Fruit Coffee' and 'Ice Cream Coffee' as it should.

Don't eat here. Leermei's food is a sham.

This one's a bit hard to make out, but it says 'JAPAN honored guest bathefinland'

If you find as much strange pleasure in these signs as I do, I've recently discovered www.engrish.com. It's a collection of poor English signs from Japan, and contains hundreds more than I could ever hope to collect on my blog. (I have found that when these signs come from Japan they're called 'Engrish'.)

Fast Food

2007-03-28T09:34:00.000+08:00

With spring coming, and mosquito season around the corner, I thought you might enjoy this little tidbit:

Someone just told me the other day that the reason Genghis Kahn and his men were able to move so quickly was that they never stopped to eat. They would ride on their horses for five days straight at a time. In order to have enough energy to keep going, they would take a straw and stick it into the back of the horses' neck. So any time they got hungry, they just slurped up the horses blood to keep going.

Mmm...

Thoughts From a Travel-Weary Brain at 30,000 Feet

2007-03-28T00:42:00.000+08:00

My trip back home in January took from start to finish over 40 hours, and only included 2-3 hours of sleep. On the way back I was in a writing frenzy, but my brain was so spaced out that I didn't even remember I had written pages and pages on this journey until I found it in my notebook today. So here's a post from back in January:

I'm on my way to Chicago right now. I was somehow able to finagle a window seat on all four flights back home, so I am able to satisfy my child-like fascination with watching the entire world from thousands of feet in the air. (I just can't understand why someone would want an isle seat). You can probably tell that I'm still relatively new to flying, so I haven't gotten over the initial thrill of it. Something tells me it might not ever get old for me though.

One thing I absolutely love about flying is going through the clouds. This morning, the weather looks like hell below the clouds. It's rainy, foggy, and gray. But no matter how depressing the weather looks standing on the earth's surface, after you pass through the clouds it all disappears. Every day is sunny above the clouds. The sky is blue and it never rains. It's kind of hopeful in a way. The next time you look outside and feel depressed, you can remember that on the other side of those depressing clouds is a beautiful world.

The sun is just beginning to rise, but it's still very dark. Out in the darkness, I can see a few purple patches in the clouds where light is being absorbed from the city lights below. I remember back in the days in Fort Wayne before I went to college I would work late nights delivering pizzas. I worked in the suburbs, so some of the deliveries were pretty far out into the country. On cloudy nights, driving back to the city I would see the clouds in the distance glowing purple around where the city was. I'm not sure why, but I've always thought that this was beautiful. But now this is the first time I'm seeing it from above.

In a way, it kind of reminds me of my life. Six years ago, when I was delivering pizzas, I never dreamed that there was something on the other side of that purple glow. I had no idea of the potential my life had, or the places I would go. I was stuck in a very static world that consisted of little more than punk rock, trying to impress females, and The Thirty Minute Star Trek Hour. It was a very selfish and myopic world to say the least. Some of you might be able to recall a famous quote by me during this time:

"As far as I'm concerned, people who I've never met don't exist. There very well might be people living on the other side of the world, but as far as I'm concerned, if I haven't met them they're not real yet."

I'd like to think I've progressed a little bit in my world view.

I've been criticized, and rightly so, by some of my friends that say I'm too hard on people or expect to much from people. Many times, if I am not careful, I will act rude to them if they don't pass my standard of 'enlightenment'. I've recognized that this is definitely a problem I have, but I've never really understood why I act this way. I think perhaps I've finally realized that this angst and frustration I feel towards people like this is really my hatred and embarrassment of the person I used to be. I hate to see anyone as ignorant as I was.

But as I'm looking down at the clouds, I can almost see myself six years ago sitting in my car on the other side. I had no idea about life on the other side because I was blinded by ignorance and fear. But now I feel free of these things, and it's as if the floodgates are open. There is such a feeling of freedom, hope, and potential for the future that I never thought was possible. The only limit is your fears.

The Walls are Sweating

2007-03-15T15:08:00.001+08:00

People have always been puzzled by my love of winter. But really, I absolutely adore the cold and can hardly stand the heat. This is most likely because I start sweating like Roger Ebert as soon as the temperature gets over 70 degrees. But besides the beautiful snow and not being covered in sweat, I realized when I was back in America last month another reason why I love winter so much: It's not cold indoors.

This might not be quite a shock to you, but it's in sharp contrast of winter here. It doesn't get nearly as cold here as it does in Indiana. December through February is winter here and temperatures are from 40-60 degrees. The difference is that the temperature is the same both indoors and outdoors.

Luckily my 'permanent sweater' (as Cat used to refer to it) or my 'massive amounts of gorilla-like body hair' (as some of my friends in Fort Wayne would refer to it) keeps me about five to ten degrees warmer than most, but the vast majority of people here resort to wearing winter coats, hats, and gloves indoors during the winter.

That being said, most of the teachers' apartments have small heaters in them, but this is very unusual. In order to not isolate myself too far from the normal living conditions of most people here, I refrained from using my heater for the majority of the winter. However, a couple weeks before I left last semester I was sick of being constantly cold. My hands hadn't felt warm in months. So I decided to turn on the heater. As it turns out, it was broken and only blew cold air.

Now that I've been back, the weather here has been moderately warm and the air is extremely humid. The school building that I live in tends to keep its temperature for a long time, so indoors it's still very cool. So the cool building mixed with the warm, humid air creates condensation on everything. Right now, everything is wet. The walls are sweating are the floors are soaked. This table I'm sitting at is damp, and when I climb into bed this evening, the covers will be cold and wet. I've been told the dampness will continue for about two months, but will be joined in a couple days by perpetual rain.

I certainly hope this talk about the weather here doesn't sound like complaining. To be honest, it doesn't bother me that much, and I'm just taking it for what it is. In a couple months when I can't lift the pen off my desk without sweating a gallon, then you'll hear me complaining.

Approximately Four Ounces Lighter on Top

2007-03-06T21:09:00.000+08:00

What's the longest consecutive time someone has washed your hair for? I just broke the 10 minute mark yesterday, and my scalp is still a little sore.

Just after a few days here, I have come to a sad realization that the humid air here has left my dreams of long, luxurious, rock star hair looking curly, unmanageable, and Nathan Lesser-esque. So I hung my head, faced reality, and headed to the barber shop.

I let my hair grow last semester partly because I didn't know when I'd have a job that I could look however I liked at, but partly because of anxiety of trying to explain to the barber in another language what I wanted my hair to look like. I brought a friend to help translate, but when he explained to the barber what I wanted, it turned out I knew how to say everything he interpreted for me.

When we walked in, there were about six workers sitting around the shop, waiting. When I told them I wanted a haircut, they said the person who cuts the hair isn't here right now, but they could start washing my hair. So one of the guys wets my hair down, and then goes to work with the shampoo. He starts raking my hair back into foamy rows with his fingers. He keeps raking and scrubbing my hair back until all the suds are at the back of my head. He would then grab a handful of the suds, slam it on the top of my head, then start raking it back again.

This continued for a while. So much longer than I could have dreamed was necessary. So long it was comical. It felt good at first, but about half-way through, my scalp began to hurt a little. As a man who will most certainly be bald or at least quite thin in just a few years, his scrubbing began to worry me a bit. I started to wonder if this length of time was normal. I thought about telling him we can be done, but I started laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing, and wanted to see how long he would keep going.

He finally did stop, and asked me to go to the sink to rinse off. This is when he sat down, and another one of the girls got up to rinse my hair off. It turns out, his job was only the beginning scrub, and the girl's job was the rinse. The man who would cut my hair arrived and cut my hair about an inch shorter than I expected. When he finished, yet another man stood up to do the post-cut wash. Lastly, a different woman rinsed my hair off. While she rinsed my hair, I was laughing out loud at the fact that it took five people to cut my hair!

This kind of thing in this country isn't really all that new to be honest. They didn't have five people cutting my hair because of the super efficiency of an assembly line style barber shop. It's really that there's just so many people here in this country. For example, the first time I went to Beijing, it made me very uncomfortable that when you go to a restaurant, you have your own personal waiter. They seat you, hand you the menu, and then just stand there. They watch you look over the menu. I was with Cat at the time, who I've always impatiently thought had always had a chronic difficulty in making decisions on menu items, so I was squirming in my seat as the woman just stood there patiently as Cat poured over the menu. When we asked her to come back in a few minutes, she just smiled and stayed. After you order, they don't stand at your table anymore. They stand a few feet back, maybe between two or three tables. It's less common in our city here, but it still makes me very uncomfortable.

The concept of overpopulation really reaches into more aspects of life than you would initially guess. The concept about employment is simple. Hire them all but pay them little, thereby eliminating unemployment. But the longer I stay here, you see how it affects attitudes and world views. At this point, I still don't feel like I have enough understanding in the matter to fully describe these attitudes and world views without making blanket statements or being unintentionally offensive, so I won't go into detail about them now. But it does remind me how difficult it is to see things in the same way as someone who has lived here their entire life and knows nothing outside of this place. It's so easy to unfairly judge based on my own culture and circumstances without ever putting myself in their shoes.

Quick News Item

2007-03-06T20:09:00.001+08:00

Just a couple things about this blog:

1. I've arrived here safely, so all you mom-like people out there can stop worrying.

2. I've opened the comments section up on this blog. Please feel free to respond, comment, or write anything you'd like here. I'd love to hear from you!

3. After spending a little time in America on computers that were not my own, I noticed that when I view my blog on most people's computers, the Chinese characters come up as ????? or fun little empty boxes. This is because you do not have Asian fonts installed on your computer. If the aesthetics of this is really bothering you, you can change it in 'Control Panel', but you'll need to insert the Windows disc, so it may not be worth it. You'll just have to deal with the ugliness. (I know the world's a pretty ugly place, so I hate to add to it.)

4. My apologies for not posting more often. As this place has become less 'new' and 'exciting', the observations and stories flow more slowly. But really it's probably just laziness. I'll try to pick up the pace.

later

Follow-Up

2007-02-24T00:51:00.000+08:00

I was listening to the Ricky Gervais podcast the other day, when I realized that Mr. Karl Pilkington had asked the same question as our friend at my brothers' place. About people in Africa living in the village, he asked if they wanted to live like that. In response, Ricky Gervais exploded at him (as usual) saying that "They're not the Amish!"

There's two things I want to point out here. First of all, that I have to come clean of the fact that I subconsciously ripped off Ricky Gervais, so I need to cite my source as to not plagiarize.

The second point, which is far more amusing and important, is that a real human being said the exact phrase that Karl Pilkington said. If you're familiar with who Karl Pilkington is, I think we can agree that nothing more needs to be said.

Poor people? Throw 'em to the lions, I say.

2007-02-12T04:32:00.000+08:00

Please allow me to go on a brief tirade. Don’t get me wrong, as much crap as give America, I recognize that every place has its faults, and I try not to romanticize that other countries are necessarily the pinnacle of enlightenment. But since I got back from Hong Kong a couple years ago, I begun to realize how incredibly insular, myopic, and sheltered so many Americans are.

Two examples of this in the past week come to mind. Last night, I was at IHOP with my friend Chad at about 3 in the morning. Chad, an avid tattoo enthusiast, was asking a little about tattoos in China. After talking for a bit about it, I mentioned that I really would never recommend getting a tattoo in China. Something about the horribly unsanitary conditions of a developing country and a huge AIDS epidemic there.

At that sentence, the girl in the booth behind me swiveled around and jumped into the conversation. She was in her late 20s and had a tattoo on her neck that looked like a smudge of green ink wiped onto her skin by the tattoo artist’s butt cheek. “Really?” She said. “Getting tattooed in China is a hell of a lot better than here.” She went on to tell me about how they in fact did not have a problem with sanitation or AIDS in the country. It’s actually a lot more sanitary there.

She then continued to tell me a story about Eastern Asia with severely skewed geographic information. Her stories were peppered with all kinds of hilariously inaccurate facts about China, but they included something to the effect of Vietnam being far west of Laos, and that her boyfriend was going to start building roads there because all their roads are made of dirt.

I was taken back a bit by her comments, but I didn’t feel like getting much into it. I asked if she’d ever been to China. “No…but I had a Chinese boyfriend once.” I was probably more rude than I should have been as I just laughed a little as I turned around and said, “This world you speak of sounds interesting. I’d love to visit it someday.”

While that conversation was merely annoying, this next one is simply unbelievable. I was visiting my brothers’ place last week, when they had another visitor stop by. Evidently neither of my brothers knew him very well, but he had done some pretty hard drugs and needed a place to come down for a little while. So he ended up as an incredibly awkward third wheel in the conversation the whole night.

His comments throughout the night were annoying, but the night reached it’s climax when we were talking about the issue of income inequality in China. In the middle of a serious conversation on the vast majority of the country who live in poverty, he jumps in with an amazing question. “Yeah…but…aren’t these people just poor because they want to be. I mean, like they don’t want to be a part of society with technology and that stuff.” Jaws dropped all around the room. As much as I wondered if answering the question would even do any good for this guy, I decided to do it anyway. I tried to explain, “These people are not the Amish. They’re not rebelling against things like food, warm shelter, medicine, and clean water because they have some ideological differences with society. Really, they’d just like to stay alive.”

I hoped this conversation was over, but he countered with perhaps the most shamefully ignorant statement I’ve ever heard. “Yeah, but I mean, these people really brought it on themselves. It’s their fault they’re so poor, you know?” We were stunned. None of us knew how to reply. After grasping for every ounce of patience within me, I politely said to him, “You know, you’re really going to have a lot more understanding before you make comments like that.” I went on to try to explain to him the reality of the situation, but more than likely, the effort was futile.

This whole situation just made me think about perspectives. How could someone be so confused to believe that the reason why 2/3 of the world lives in poverty is because either they want to live that way, or because it’s their own fault? Sometimes when I come down hard on the people in this country I wonder if there’s any other country in the world that is so comfortable, powerful, and isolated from the idea of poverty that someone could honestly believe this.

I just imagined what their reaction would be if one of my students, who was born in the village to farmer parents and had to work so hard for the little that they have, were sitting in that room when the comments were made. How would that make them feel? I can’t even imagine it.

Now, I say all this not to show how I 'set these people straight' or to display a 'better than thou' mentality, so I hope that isn't what is coming across here. What I am saying is that the second greatest commandment we were given is to love our neighbor. But to really love your neighbor, you must understand them. To do this, you must educate yourself and experience the world through someone else's eyes. At this point, I don't feel like we can simply preach about love, unless this love includes understanding.

Camping

2007-02-07T23:36:00.000+08:00

(This is a a belated post, dating from about mid-November.)

The textbooks we use in our classes are generally pretty good. However, on occasion, they'll cover subjects that are completely foreign to most people living outside of North America. Worse than that is that sometimes the book tends to rub the students' noses in the huge income gap between Americans and the rest of the world. Given that 2/3 of the world do not enjoy a living standard anywhere close to the developed world, and that this 2/3 is most likely to want to learn English, it seems like a real slap in the face to the target audience of the book. Chapters that talk about how most Americans own at least two cars per family, or when the Americans in the video are complaining about their 'small, dirty apartment' and the students are living in a much, much smaller and not as nice apartment, I kind of squirm in my seat a little bit.

Luckily, this cultural difference I'm speaking of didn't directly have to do with income inequality. The chapter we were talking about was "Camping". So I began class by asking, "How many of you have been camping before?" They understood the question, but puzzled faces were aimed at me, and all hands were left on desks. I moved on. "Okay...how many of you would like to go camping." Not a hand moved. My students looked at me like they thought I was crazy. When I asked, they couldn't think of a single reason why someone would go camping. It seemed like the most pointless thing they could imagine.

We joked around about this in class, and laughed our way through the rest of the lesson, begging them to pretend that camping would be fun. It was only a couple months later when we tried to speculate why our students had no interest in camping. It finally dawned on us why. Many of our students' parents are farmers. As such, they live on a farm in the middle of the countryside. They live in a very small, almost tent-like building in the middle of the beautiful nature. The food they eat is fresh food cooked over a campfire. So why in the world would they want to buy a tent, walk into their front yard, cook their food as normal, and sleep in their tent? It all suddenly made sense.

Nevertheless, it came to the ears of my fun-loving Mandarin teacher, Geoff, that I enjoyed camping and usually went at least once a year. Unlike my students, he was intrigued at the idea and wanted to go camping with me sometime.

So the great thing about living in Southern China in the winter is that around mid-November, Geoff, myself, and Andy (who had been a teacher at the school a few years ago, but had come back to visit) picked up a couple tents and went camping after class one day.

We got on our bikes and started riding. The beautiful thing about the town we live in, is that after only about five minutes on a bike, you can be in the middle of the countryside without ever knowing there is a city nearby. It was about a 45 minute ride through the countryside, by the side of the mountains, through the rice fields. Geoff took me a way he had taken me one way before on the bike ride I wrote about a few months ago, but I could never find it again on my own. It was a small trail that left the main road, and went through a small village to end up by the river.

(I've described this scene in a blog entry the last time Geoff and I went on a bike ride here, but I'm going to do it again for those who haven't heard the story. If you'd like, feel free to skip down a few paragraphs.) The river was beautiful. To cross it, we had to go on this bridge that was maybe a little larger than a meter wide. We started to cross, but then stopped in the middle of the bridge. It's still my favorite view in all of China that I've seen so far. The bridge is so narrow, it feels like you're almost floating on top of the water. As you bring your eyes up, you see the beautiful river snake through the scenery, above that is flat rice fields in all directions for about a half mile, above that is the mountains in every direction with the sun slowly setting above them.

To our left, on the riverbank was a farmer's restaurant. A farmer's restaurant is much what it sounds like. It's usually just in the middle of a village or the side of the river, very small, and very simple. This one consisted of a small tent, and three rafts that were floating on the banks of the river. The tent was the kitchen, which was really just a stove or a fire with a wok on it, and a big cutting board. Each of the rafts were covered, and had a small table in the middle of them for people to sit at. As we looked at the restaurant from the bridge, we saw some people who had finished their meal and decided to jump into the river from their rafts for a swim.

The three of us went down to the restaurant to eat dinner. There's no menu at these restaurants, and just one person who works there. He's just a local farmer, and we're assuming he probably can't speak Mandarin very well, only the local dialect, so we're lucky to have Geoff along with us. Geoff walks into the tent and asks him what he has today as Andy and I sit down on one of the rafts. We end up eating a whole chicken and some green vegetables which I was told are the above-ground part of a sweet potato. Like last time, the meal was incredible, and so cheap it was almost criminal.

We then decided we should probably set up our campsite before it gets too much darker. I had been wondering for some time where Geoff was going to take us to set up camp. I knew there weren't campsites (obviously), and no real woods or wilderness in the area. So when I asked, he said, "We'll just set up in the middle of this rice field here." "Isn't that someone's property? Won't they care that we're setting up on it, and building a fire in the middle of their land?" He replied, "No, of course not! Why would they?"

I think that's when I realized another big cultural difference on how people view personal property. I envisioned camping in the middle of some farmer's field in America, and the farmer coming out with a shotgun yelling, "Git off mah properta, boy!" That simply wasn't the case here. (Actually, later in the year, Geoff and I went camping again in a different farmer's field, and they actually invited us into their home! We went inside to say hello, and they gave us a few pounds of tangerines to take home.)

So we set up our tents in the middle of the harvested rice fields. We hunted for wood for a while and started a fire. At around midnight we decided to walk back to the river and go for a swim. So the three of us got completely naked and jumped into the river at midnight in the middle of November. When I thought about what the weather must have been like in Indiana at the time, I just laughed as I jumped in.

After we had dried off, we went back to the campsite. We talked for a while, and Andy and Geoff taught me a couple Chinese songs. Here's when the night got a little creepy. As we were sitting around the fire, we noticed something reflecting light about thirty feet away. We couldn't tell what it was, but it wasn't moving as we got closer to it. When we got about ten feet away, we could finally tell that it was a small, frightened Chinese man. He was shaking a little bit, held an empty jar in one hand, and wore a bowl on his head. He looked a bit like a beggar. He wasn't moving or saying anything, just staring at us. Geoff started to ask him questions in the local dialect, but he wouldn't respond.

After a little while of this, Geoff said he thinks the man is mentally handicapped. "Can we give him some money and some food?" I asked. Geoff told me to go ahead and try. When I handed him the money and food, he slowly accepted them into his hands, but had a confused look on his face as if he didn't understand what either of them were. Geoff explained to me that they have no way of dealing with mentally handicapped people here. There's no institution to take care of them, and many times, families don't know what to do with them. So if the family doesn't take care of them, they just let them loose to wander. He said a lot of them don't understand the concept of money, so you can't even give them money either. This made sense with me as I had noticed that many of the homeless people in our town look so confused, they don't ask for money.

After a while more of Geoff asking him questions, the man responded very timidly. He lived in the nearby town. He had a family there, but they didn't take care of him. That was about we got out of him. We kept asking what he wanted, but he just didn't reply. We invited him to sit around the fire with us, but he wouldn't move. We went back to the fire eventually, but the man just watched us. When it came time to go to sleep, I asked Geoff what we should do. Geoff, more rudely than I would have liked, told the man to go home. But he didn't even blink.

When we went into our tents, he moved to the remaining embers of the fire and warmed himself. It made me sad that he didn't join us when we there. If I would have known he was cold, I would have wanted to do something about it. Likewise, it also made me sad that it seemed like he didn't know what to do with the food or money we gave him. When we asked him how we could help him, he just stared confused and scared at us. I wanted to help him so much, but there was just nothing I could do.

I woke up a couple times in the middle of the night, but the man was still awake, warming himself at the embers. Finally, a couple hours before we had woken up, he had fallen asleep next to the fire. When we woke up, he remained asleep while we packed up. I knew he had to have been hungry, but the food we had given him was still sitting next to him.

After we had packed up, we went on a bike ride in the opposite direction for a couple hours. On the way home, we had to come back again past our campsite. When we passed, we saw the man now sitting up, at the same place we left him. The food still sat next to him. I felt so helpless to help him.

Back in the U.S.S.A. (You don't know how lucky you are, boy.)

2007-01-24T05:50:00.000+08:00

Hey friends. I apologize yet again for the lack of updates to the blog. From about mid-December until now, things have been pretty wild.

I returned to America on Monday. After an over 40 hour journey including a cancelled plane ticket and lost luggage, I feel a bit like Oddysseus to be overdramatic. As much as I miss China already, I'm so excited to see every one of you again.

So because there was no time to write in the past two months, I have a collection of belated stories I hope to add here in the next couple weeks.

In case I do not return to China next semester, I will probably continue using this site as a person blog, but may be updated less frequently (depending on the level of interest). I'll also be opening comments up (for security reasons, I could not allow this before.)

I'm looking forward to seeing you all soon.

Roofing

2007-01-05T23:37:00.000+08:00

As long as we’re on the subject of outrages, I saw another violation of human decency today. I was walking behind the park today, when I passed a beautiful pond. The pond was large, and had beautiful lilies growing on it. In the distance above the pond was an amazing view of the mountains.

I then heard a splash right next to me. As I looked up, I saw a group of workers redoing the roof of a building that sat right next to the pond. They were ripping the old shingles off of the roof, but instead of throwing them into a dumpster, or even the ground to be picked up later, they were launching them into the pond! I had to do a double take. Surely, this was just one of them trying to be funny and just threw one shingle into the pond. But then there was another splash, and then another. Every last shingle of this roof, (and it was a big roof), was being thrown into the beautiful pond.

This outright disrespect for the environment, or even beauty in general nonetheless, made me furious. I wanted to run over there and yell at them to stop. However, when I pictured in my mind what it would look like for a crazy 老外 (foreigner) to yell at them in horribly broken Chinese to stop, I decided that it wouldn’t do any good. Even if a local person yelled at them, they wouldn’t stop, so I would just be making a fool out of myself.

I talked to Geoff later, and he agreed. “Can’t somebody do something?” I said. Geoff replied that first of all, no one cares, so nobody wants to do anything. He said even if they mayor were walking by, he’d probably say “It’s not my problem.” Even if the mayor did care, there’s are no laws against it.

“Can’t they fine them?”

“They’re poor farmers, they don’t have any money!”

“Can’t they make them clean it up?”

“They can…but no one cares. Listen: I care, you care. But we don’t matter here. The only thing the government cares about is money. If this isn’t hurting their wallet, they don’t care.”

“But if this place is dirty enough, no one will want to come! Then they’ll have no money!”

Geoff then turned and looked at me with a look that kind of summarized what we’ve been talking about for the past four months. If I could put this look into words it might say:

“Listen brother, I know just as well as you do what has been happening to my beautiful hometown these past ten years. They’re polluting the air, the streets, and the water. They’re building hotels in the middle of the rice fields and mountains. They’re digging into the mountains to steal rocks to build these hotels. They've brought in sleazy brothels to suit the rich, touring businessmen and foreigners that come through here. They’re taking the farmers’ land and paying them next to nothing so they can develop on it. I know and I care, but you just have to realize that we’re helpless here. This isn't America. You can't change it.”

I understood.

Return

2007-01-05T23:24:00.000+08:00

For those of you who may not know, I will be returning to America in about two weeks. I'll fly into Detroit on the 22nd.

See you then.