The Ambassador, the Whiffenpoofs, Dionysus, and other fortuitous events

[Don't be confused - this post is belated!]

     After a short lull following the push to produce the Nightline segment on Ai Weiwei, the drama of the Olympics has once again filled the news void. Maybe this year I've followed the Games more closely than I have in the past, but it really seems that there is an incredible amount of drama in London. On even just the Chinese team, a women's badminton duo was disqualified for trying to lose, hurdling champion Liu Xiang fell on the first jump and now has fallen from grace, 16-year-old female swimmer Ye Shiwen is apparently faster than Ryan Lochte and maintains she's not doping, diver Qin Kai was weepy because he failed the secure the final gold medal needed for a clean sweep...but drama aside, I am wowed every day by the athletic performances of the Olympic athletes. It's fascinating and compelling to watch them compete given the pressure they are under, and also to see how they deal with it once the results are out. 

     Speaking of Olympics and China, the article I wrote about the Chinese badminton team that purposely tried to lose was published on the main ABC site! This is a big deal because the articles I have written thus far have been for the ABC News blogs, and Gloria says I am the first intern (at ABC Beijing? that she knows of? in history?) to publish an article on the main site. (The context was a little vague, but I felt proud nonetheless.) 

     I went with my ABC colleague, Kaijing, to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China mixer event on Thursday, where I met a host of characters, including the team at “the other ABC” (Australian Broadcasting Company), a man who introduced himself as “the only Belgian correspondent in China”, a former “Reuterd” who now works at Bloomberg, who declared that Romney would without a doubt win the upcoming presidential election, and a journalist-turned-independent-filmmaker who asserted that diplomats are mindless government puppets, and that any allegiance to a news network, station, or paper is the sacrifices pure journalism to the confines of a bureaucracy. It was fascinating to meet this wide range of people each reporting from Beijing through the lens of their company (or independently funded-documentary). At the mixer, I learned about the jiantao, an idiosyncrasy of reporting from Beijing. In short, if a journalist gets in trouble with Chinese police while reporting (whether it be for doing an “illegal” interview or going he or she shouldn’t), the police will take the reporter and team to the station and require that they write jiantao, or self-criticisms. One of the mixer attendees recalled his peeved cameraman writing a defensive jiantao, and then at the reporter’s urging inserting honorifics with arrows (“I can’t believe they would respectfully defer to the decision to take our cameras…”) The Belgian correspondent told a much more sobering story about being severely beaten by police while trying to report on the AIDS villages in China, where entire populations are dying after dirty needles in hospitals and infected blood transfusions caused the massive spread of the illness. The police confiscated all but one of his teams tapes, and beat them to the point that the reporter thought he was going to die. While the police eventually returned the tapes (blank) and sent them money, so shaken was he after the experience that he has vowed not to return to the villages and avoided reporting more controversial stories. (This is the sort of tale I’m relieved my mom didn’t hear before I went to Beijing.)

With members of the Foreign Correspondents'
Club of China

With Kaijing

     The Saturday that followed can only be described as incredible, bizarre, and perhaps some of the most fun I have had this trip. I received an email from Gloria the previous day asking, “Would you like to join me and Jim [her husband, chief of staff to the US ambassador] to hear the Whiffenpoofs perform at the ambassador’s home on Saturday?”, clarifying that the Whiffenpoofs are a Yale a capella group and that Ambassador Gary Locke is a Yale alum. Even with that explanation, I was essentially clueless about what to expect, but frankly would have said yes to any chance to meet the ambassador. 

With Ambassador Gary Locke
(and his priceless artwork)

   Still, I would never have imagined that as I entered the ambassador’s Beijing mansion I would come face to face with a host of priceless works of art, including Lichtenstein and Warhol original works. As it were, the US embassies have access to an enormous art collection, and so when they moved in, Gary Locke’s wife decorated the mansion with their favorite pieces. (My jaw dropped later that night when Ambassador Locke joked that they needed to move a certain sculpture to make way for some Chihuly pieces—except he wasn’t joking.) Before the performance started, Gloria introduced me to Ambassador Locke, and we talked briefly about the need for American students to study in China (there are 170,000 students from China studying in the US, yet only 14,000 American students studying in China.) In talking with him one-on-one and hearing him speak about the importance of cross-cultural communication, it was instantly clear why he had been appointed to his position—he was both engaging and engaged, very genuine and overwhelmingly gracious.

The Chihuly is going here...

The Lichtenstein is above a photo of Gary Locke and his wife
chilling and thrilling with the Clintons on the campaign trail

Yes, that's the real deal!

     And then came the Whiffenpoofs—fourteen Yale men in tails and white gloves singing show tunes and spirituals. The oldest all-male a capella group at Yale, the Whiffenpoofs take a year off from school to travel the world giving performances. And they really were jet-setting—they went everywhere, from Bali to Madagascar (when we saw them, they had arrived from Japan and were leaving the next day for Cambodia.) They are phenomenal singers and showmen, and talking to them afterward dispelled any notion that their talent and smarts had gone to their heads. 

     After the concert, I grabbed dinner with Gloria, Jim, their nephew Austin, a junior at Columbia doing summer-study in Beijing, and his friends. After talking some politics and current affairs, Gloria and Jim took off, and Austin and his friends deliberated over how to spend the rest of their evening, inviting me to tag along. Apparently the Whiffenpoofs had made off with their women, and so they had to weigh the options: meet up with their female friends and have to compete with singing Yale men, or abandon ship and hit the club? We eventually came to the conclusion that "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and somewhat apprehensively ventured over to the Whiffenpoof after-party.

A drunken Whiffenpoof serenade at Chez Dionysus

     I got my first sense that this gathering was unconventional as we walked up to the apartment and spotted a Whiffenpoof coat of arms mural in the stairwell. Little did I know that we were about to enter the lavish four-story apartment of a Whiffenpoof alum and come face to face with the Yale Club of Beijing, the Whiffenpoofs, a wall covered with Russian Orthodox iconography, and the hosts themselves, a charming, neon orange oxford-clad middle-aged man named Dionysus and his partner. An international businessman and amazing host, Dionysus' work apparently takes him around the world, and so he had arrived from New York the previous day, was hosting the party that night, and planned to return to NYC the following day. The apartment was crowded with guests, and so I got to talk to a whole host of interesting people, from the Whiffenpoofs to Dionysus himself. The group did a second, somewhat tipsier performance for the new crowd, and I daresay a good time was had by all, including us gatecrashers. 

     The following day, Wurihan and I did something extremely typical of us and went out for delicious food. The theme of the day was "Food from the Lands of China's Ethnic Minorities", so we went out for lunch at a Yunnan restaurant and dinner at a Xinjiang restaurant. Food from Yunnan Province (south China) is characterized by herb usage, and food from Xinjiang Province (northwest China) is halal and uses a lot of mutton. Rest assured it was delicious and we ate everything.

     Monday last week was my last night swing dancing in Beijing, and it was kind of a bust because there were four guys who showed up, and at least three times as many girls. That kind of ratio doesn't really work for swing dancing unless the women know how to be leads. Still, I had a lovely time hanging out with Clare and my friend Yen, a Malaysian-Australian designer I've been friends with since entering the Beijing swing scene. I told them about my noise complaint story, which is rather embarrassing:

With Yen

With Clare

     Clare invited me to a solo swing dance class, where we learned the shim sham (swing dance's most famous line dance) and some fancy new Charleston moves. So inspired was I by these new moves that upon returning home I decided to practice...in heels. Big mistake. Around 12:30 am I got a knock on the door, and immediately knew I was in done for. Opening the door, I was met by a girl in her twenties or so who requested that I be a bit quieter, as there were elderly people living below me. "Do you understand what I'm saying?" she continued to ask. I assured her that I did, and was extremely sorry for causing so much trouble. She assured me it was no problem—still, the next day I received a call informing me that the family had reported me to apartment employees. Given how many times I have called the apartment workers with apartment issues, from repeated electricity outages to the three times I accidentally pushed the emergency alarm button, I'm sure the complaint just solidified my reputation as a total nut. (So thus ends the tale of my hard-soled in-home dance career.)

Fever and Flood

     I wish I could claim that my three week absence from blogging was entirely due to being caught up in an amazing adventure, too immersed in the real world to stop for the virtual one. As it were, though, of the last twenty-one days, ten of them I spent being horrendously, dreadfully ill, in pajamas for days on end trying to remember what health felt like. After developing enormous lymph nodes, a very high fever and body aches, I went to an international clinic, where the doctor diagnosed me with a cold. After a week of bedrest and constant hydration, I wasn't anywhere close to being better, and so went back to the clinic, only to discover that I actually had strep throat. While I enjoyed a movie and TV marathon, being sick away from home, especially in a foreign country, was a really long, miserable, and lonely experience which I do not recommend and do not want to repeat. It was also especially disappointing to spend days on end feeling that the world was going by without me--I missed out on going to work and gallivanting in Beijing with my roommates Sha, Ricky, and Calvin (who have all since left).

With Sha, his dad, and Ricky

Walking around the Olympic facilities at night

Water Cube

With members of the Wellesley Club of Beijing

     I'm back on my feet now, though, and have been doing a host of fun things like touring the US Embassy with the Wellesley Club of Beijing, going to see Brave, eating out-of-this-world ramen, attending a solo swing dance class with Clare, gorging myself on Russian food with Wurihan, and of course staying busy keeping up with the news.

  This last weekend's news was fairly monumental, though as everything unfolded I had no idea of the scale. I had planned to spend last Saturday finally having a "treat yourself" day, complete with souvenir-shopping, delicious food, a much-needed massage and pedicure. Thus, that morning I was very disheartened to look out the window and see--nothing. A thick haze had engulfed the city, making it impossible to see past one block. I checked the air quality index--in the 370's ("Hazardous", according to the monitor)."Not in my lungs," I thought, and with that my self-indulgent day out on the town turned into a much less thrilling day cooped up in the apartment. I was glad to when rain started falling that afternoon, hopeful that it would clear up the air.

Remember this photo from last post?

Same view, this time with heavy pollution

      Little did I know that as I sulked at home, Beijing was facing its heaviest rains since 1951. While my neighborhood was relatively fine, some areas of the city were desecrated by the flooding. There have been a stream of pictures and videos of collapsed roads, cars barely visible above the waters, houses turned to rubble. The aftermath of the rains has caused an uproar online; microbloggers are bemoaning the antiquated city sewer systems, which are to blame for much of the flooding, and also expressing doubts that the government is being honest about the death toll (officially reported to be 37 people dead). Many are angry that a government which has spent billions on glamorous projects like the Olympic facilities would neglect something so fundamental as infrastructure. 

     ABC visited one of the villages that was hit the hardest, and I wrote an article about the scene: In Beijing, Doubt Grows as Thousands Struggle to Rebuild After Floods. Wading through piles of muck, we spoke with locals who saw their homes and livelihoods swept away before their eyes. Looking at the destruction, I had no idea how one could even imagine the rebuilding process--there seemed to be neither beginning nor end to the mess. When asked if the government was doing enough to help them, all of the residents we spoke with immediately said no. They'll be sleeping on cots in tents in a schoolyard until they have a place to call home again, and it's really impossible to know when that will be.

In The News:

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The In-Between, and Foreign Snake-Heads

     The changes that have come in just one week have been incremental, yet life-changing. For one, I now have most of the essentials I still needed: comfy shoes for schlepping, a camera for photo-documentation, a visa and Pepto-Bismol (for obvious reasons...) The most important and least tangible, though, is a place to stay! For July and August, my family friends are so generously hosting me in their spare apartment. Having a room for those two months, though, meant that I needed to find somewhere to live in June. I have spent the last month contacting homestay agencies, responding to online ads, researching hostels and apartments, all in the pursuit of housing that was convenient, affordable, safe. The most important criterion in my mind, though, was food. Primal, I know, but when considering that I've never lived on my own and have predominantly relied on others to feed me, figuring out how I'm going to eat for two and a half months has been constantly on my mind. What's more, while I know I can rise to the challenge, the prospect of going to a Chinese market, finding ingredients I recognize and can use, potentially bartering for products in Chinese, finding utensils to cook with, etc. on my own sounds overwhelming. That said, Chinese restaurants are extremely affordable and abundant by Western standards, so many of my Chinese friends have advised against even attempting to cook for myself. 

     In short, the horror of starving alone drove my search to find a host family who will feed me, love me, correct my Chinese, let me play violin, and be close to my internship site. Call it fear of commitment, but the idea of signing up to live in someone's home based on such superficial knowledge of him or her (location, occupation, number of rooms in the home, the assurance that "you will be safe anytime in his house") is a huge leap of faith. So over the course of a month, I emailed back and forth with agencies and my own contacts, trying to find a situation that didn't require me to a) work as a maid, b) spend a certain number of hours per week volunteering, c) commute for over an hour. 

     After changing my mind at least four times, I rejected all of my options and wrote to a woman whose homestay offer I originally decided against because it was outside my budget. She wrote back that she had already agreed to host another student, but could contact her friend. Seeing as at that moment I had no leads and ten days to figure out where I would be moving to, there seemed to be no downside to asking. As it were, her friend's home is quite close to where I'll be working, she is happy for me to practice violin, her rate is much lower--and it includes meals. Here's what sealed the deal for me, though: the friend is a nutritionist and reportedly makes "very authentic" and "delicious" Beijing cuisine. To quote Elsa Schiaparelli, "Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale." I would argue that having authentic and delicious Chinese food is imperative if I am to succeed this summer. 

     It's no guarantee that this homestay is going to be completely smooth sailing, and I'm optimistic I'll learn a lot from my host family members as well as my own mistakes. From their messages, they seem very kind, and even if the homestay goes terribly, I have a back-up couch to crash (and as always I'm sure it will make for some interesting stories). Nevertheless, I can't fully explain what what an incredible relief it is to know that I at least have a place to go when I arrive in Beijing.

    On a slightly different note, recent incidents involving foreigners in China (a British tourist's sexual harassment of a Chinese woman, and Russian cellist's mockery of a Chinese woman on a train, both captured on video) has sparked Chinese national outcry, and perhaps xenophobia. After the former incident, many Chinese micro-bloggers voiced angry opposition to foreigners in their country, most notably CCTV host Yang Rui, who wrote that those who can't find work in the US or EU come to China to "grab our money, engage in human trafficking" and called for his country-fellows to "cut off the foreign snake heads." Now, the Chinese government has launched a 100 day campaign to drive out foreigners who have entered and work in the country illegally. 

     Disturbing as all of this is, from what I have heard, the anti-foreigner sentiment hasn't manifested itself in the form of violence; if anything, the police are just profiling passerby (what else is new?) and randomly demanding to see passports. It's unfortunate that the stories about conflict between Chinese and foreigners are the ones that are being highlighted in China (for there are many positive stories that are under the radar) but it makes sense that the Chinese government encourages it as a way to set the country apart (and over) the West. Personally, I'm just hoping that xenophobia doesn't further escalate in the pursuit of a unified China. My new goal is to show at least one person in China that foreigners aren't all that bad.

     (Six days until departure!)

Audrey

In the News:

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