Waters of Beijing, Friendship, Death, and Potatoes

     This weekend was my first real weekend in Beijing, and I was dreading it. I knew I shouldn't curl up in my room hiding from the world all weekend, but it was so tempting, given this city's overwhelming size and population. There are so many places to explore here--Beijing seems to never end--but the planning and energy required to go anywhere new, especially as a solo traveler, almost made kicking back in my "studio" with good music and Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air the obvious choice. Ultimately, though, my boss' suggestion to explore Beijing's hutong, as well as my room's lack of air conditioning, provided the necessary impetus to get out of my bubble and face the crowds.

Beijing's drum tower

      Hutong are the narrow alleyways formed by the walls of traditional courtyard homes, and are especially associated with Beijing. As hutong are regularly demolished to make way for new construction projects,  historical movements have made a push to preserve areas of Beijing that still have these courtyard homes. Karson, the ABC producer, recommended that I check out the hutong around the Beijing Drum and Bell Towers, and so come Saturday that is what I did--or tried to do, at least. I invited Kazumi to join me, and knowing only the subway station of where we were heading, we set off in search of a delicious lunch place and the towers. After spotting the towers from afar, we decided to take a pit stop in a Vietnamese-French fusion restaurant before wandering around the area. It's good we did--as soon as we ordered it started pouring rain, complete with thunder and lightening. After a few hours, the rain had diminished to a slow trickle, and so we ventured out to the towers through the alleyways. By the time the rain had stopped the towers were closed, but not being able to enter didn't diminish the overall effect--especially since lightening was still streaking across the sky in the distance. (Unfortunately, I don't have a tower-with-lightening picture--you'll just have to take my word for it).

The first sky I was able to see since arriving in Beijing

     To interject: this weekend brought two seemingly small developments that that were major game-changers for my quality of life, and one was the rain. I had woken up a few days earlier barely unable to speak because of the poor air quality. My nose was clogged, my throat was clogged, my brain was clogged...later in the day I regained my voice, but my hacking cough (and the symptoms that go with it) don't seem to be going anywhere. In That week, the air quality index (AQI) in Beijing was in the upper 200's, according to US Embassy measurements, which are posted hourly via Twitter. To put this in perspective, the US Environmental Protection Agency considers an AQI over 100 unhealthy. Most cities in the US don't exceed double digits on this scale, which takes into account the number of pollutant particulates in the air. Scarily, the upper 200's is nothing unusual for Beijing--apparently a few weeks ago the AQI was over 500 (exceeding the limit of the US scale!) Right now in China's Hubei province, citizens of seven cities have been instructed to stay inside because a thick yellowish haze of pollution has engulfed the area--the AQI there was a whopping 589 yesterday. But back to the rain--it cleared everything up, and the AQI here was in the single and double digits for a few days! In other words, I have been able to see the sky, buildings in the distance, the sun, etc. for the first time since being here, and the weather has been glorious. In Beijing, one cannot take these things for granted.

Holding on for dear life in the motorized rickshaw

     Kazumi and I started back after taking requisite pictures of the area, but soon found that we had no idea how to get back to the station, and that the people we asked weren't so sure, either. After several attempts to get directions, a rickshaw driver assured us that the station was a far walk and offered his services. We were wary at first--after all, we had walked from the station earlier that day--but seeing as we had no idea where to go (and frankly, I was intrigued by the idea of riding in a rickshaw) we accepted his offer. This turned out to be a fantastic choice, not only because we had been walking in the wrong direction, but also because the experience of being ferried by a driver on a motorized bike weaving through (and often narrowly missing) traffic was exhilarating. Motorized rickshaw is my definitely new favorite mode of transportation.

     After hutong-ing, I rushed off to Beijing Concert Hall to meet my dear friend Grant. Grant and I go back to the days of high school All-State Orchestra, and coincidence of coincidences, his college orchestra toured China this summer. I showed up an hour in advance of the performance, and had the following exchange with the venue's [Chinese] employee:

Me: "Hi, I'm with the orchestra! Where should I go?"

*pause*

Employee: "What is an orchestra?"

I was amused that Grant seemed to know I was taking his picture from afar.

Once we got that subtlety cleared up, I had no issue finding Grant and picking up my ticket. The performance was overwhelmingly fantastic--I had no idea his orchestra was so talented!--and equally enjoyed the Chinese speeches Grant and his conductor gave introducing the group and the pieces they played. At the first Chinese greeting, the audience burst into a huge cheer, and enthusiastically applauded each piece on the program, which included a range of works, from Shostakovich Symphony 5 to a work by a Chinese composer. The orchestra finished off the night (after two calls for an encore!) with the audience-interactive Mambo from Bernstein's West Side Story. It was a magnificent concert, and so lovely to see Grant.

At the lake at Beijing University.
Not pictured: the stone boat we're standing on.

     That was only the beginning of seeing dear friends from the past! I found out that weekend that my friend John was passing through Beijing on his way to a language program in Harbin, China, and so we met up for lunch. He only realized a few days ago that I was in China, and so our meeting was quite auspicious. John and I have some uncanny overlaps--we both have intense interests in Japanese and Chinese, and play violin. In fact, we met in Tokyo in 2008 because we both were studying abroad there. So on Sunday, we got noodles, walked around the lake at Houhai, then went to Beijing University and walked around the lake there, caught up on each other's life, lamented the difficulties of learning and functioning in Chinese with a Japanese-language background, and so on. Talking about the rain, the lakes we were circumambulating, and expense of supporting one's "bottled water habit" in Beijing (where tap water is potentially toxic) we joked that the theme of our visit was "Waters of Beijing."

I met John at Yaoji Chaogan, which is an
extremely authentic Chinese restaurant
that rose to fame after US vice-president
 Joe Biden ate there. The meal he ordered
is apparently now known as the bai-deng.

John and I saw a line of fishermen with these
exceedingly long poles around the lake at Houhai.
Given the relatively small size of the lake,
we had no idea what creature they were
hoping to catch that would require such big poles.

    














     While I'm living with a host family right now, two other Beijing families have quickly become my support network. The families have sons Travis and Sha who are and were students at my old high school (Sha just graduated!) Even before I arrived, these families have been taking care of me--Sha's family is hosting me in their apartment later this summer, and Travis' dad picked me up from the airport when I first arrived and got me a working phone. If that wasn't enough, Travis' family took me out for Peking Duck, a local delicacy that roughly equates to a Chinese taco, and Sha's family treated me to Shanghainese food. They've been incredibly kind and helpful, and having friends in Beijing makes the entire experience so much less daunting. Even if I were their indentured servant, I don't think I could properly repay them--all I can hope is that I'll be in a position in the future to help them out!

With Travis and the Peking Duck chef, who is obviously thrilled to be in this picture

     I know you've been on the edge of your seat wondering what the other recent development that has turned the tides in my favor could be, and so I'll mollify the curiosity that has been plaguing you this entire post: the road by my host family's apartment is now paved! Never have I been more happy to see asphalt. Before being paved, the path was abominable--the best way I can describe it is to say that it seemed to actually be made of pollution. The path was not quite dirt, not quite gravel, uneven and strewn with garbage. Basically, it was a nightmare for walking, especially if you liked the shoes you were wearing...Although the new street already looks like it will soon be worse for the wear, not having to dodge potholes in addition to the constant flow of rogue motorists is a welcome treat.

     Last night was a night of bonding with my host Xu Yuan and Matt and Taylor, the two American guys living with me. I was reading in my room when I heard traditional Chinese music from the street. Xu Yuan then knocked on my door, asking if I wanted to go see something fun. Assuming it was a street festival, I jumped to my feet and searched for my camera as Xu Yuan told me to hurry up. When I told him what I was looking for, he said, "No! Don't bring it--this is a funeral!" I was a little bewildered--I tend to think of "something fun" and funerals as mutually exclusive--but followed him and the guys out the door, sans camera. We chased down the music (which featured cymbals and an instrument that I can only describe as Chinese bagpipes), only to see a crowd surrounding a man lighting a fire in the middle of the street. After parading down the street with hired musicians, the relatives burn paper representing anything the deceased may need--from paper houses to "hell money". The music ended abruptly, and the crowd soon dispersed as the fire died downed and backed-up drivers honked angrily. Xu Yuan told us that what we had witnessed was a traditional-style funeral rite that was now rare and in fact illegal.

     Later in the evening, the four of us were sitting around a table when somehow our discussion subject turned to ancestry. Xu Yuan asked us about our ethnicities, and apparently unsatisfied with the answer "American", was mystified that our ancestors would have moved from foreign countries to the US. Matt and Taylor have predominantly Irish heritage, and so we explained the history of the Irish potato famine to the intrigued Xu Yuan. One of the two guys made the comparison that potatoes were to Ireland what rice is to China--namely, a food staple. "So Irish people left to eat America's potatoes?" Xu Yuan asked us. "Kind of," we answered, "What would you do if there was sickness in Chinese rice?" Xu Yuan thought about it for a moment. "I'd probably go eat the American potato, too."

In The News:

US Embassy warns of "particularly poor" air quality in Wuhan
Nepal 'Himalayan Viagra' harvest droops to record low
China changes patent law in fight for cheaper drugs

The jazz club from last post--
Kazumi and I ended up going!

Houhai, where the jazz club was, is
known for its nightlife

The Blur of the Beginning

     I could write about what I packed for this two and a half month experience, or what it feels like to travel for 24 hours straight, but the long and the short of it is that I am in Beijing, settling into my host family's home and about to finish up my first week of interning. Already it feels like I've been here for ages--the daily oppressiveness of jetlag, pollution, heat, and sheer deluge of people sharing the same space as me leave me exhausted and, possibly excepting the jetlag, show no signs of ever letting up. That said, I'm loving my work and the people I've met.

My room at my host family's house

     After nearly an entire day of traveling that took me through Los Angeles and South Korea, I got to my host family's home late Saturday night (or early Saturday morning, according to my internal clock). My ride from the airport, a friend's father, and I were initially skeptical of my living arrangements: my host family lives in an older apartment complex, run-down by most Western standards (peeling paint, dirty cement floors, flickering lights) but their apartment itself is neat and clean. My room is very small (approximately 7 by 8.5 feet) with very thin walls, has a desk and bed, and leads to a contained patio of sorts (though calling it a patio would be generous). The bed is basically a glorified cot with a sleeping pad, spring-less and with a piece of fabric that serves as the sheet. Also, the internet is spotty and intermittent...have I sold you on the place yet? In spite of obvious deterring factors, I have my own room, access to hot water, a space to practice violin, food, a short commute to work, and a very helpful host family. In other words, by no means am I wasting away in a crumbling shanty.

View from my room

The market by my host family's apartment complex

"Honey, I brought home a nice turtle and frog for dinner!"

With Kazumi

     Also, I have housemates! Before I came I had no idea that my host family has two apartments and regularly hosts foreigners, and so for the first few days of being here I kept running into new people. I first met Kazumi, a Japanese woman who is staying here for a week while taking Chinese classes. That we both speak Japanese and our mutual feeling of cluelessness quickly bonded us, and so the day after I arrived she invited me to go with her to the 798 district, which is an art district area in Beijing crammed with galleries and cafes. We must have visited tens of contemporary art galleries by the time we made it out of the area--the most memorable were an exhibit of pictures of icons (not, the description insisted, iconic pictures) and a highly disturbing series of works with motifs of jellyfish and bondage. Kazumi's side passion is singing jazz, so tonight we're going to go to a jazz club. As we only speak in Japanese, so far my time in Beijing has been an unlikely double-immersion experience, which has made for some entertaining language mix-ups. There are also two American guys, a Mexican man and an Israeli woman living in the apartment who I met over a series of days, each time surprised to discover a new housemate. 

     I'm not yet over jetlag, which has meant that everyday I have been waking up somewhere between 4 and 5 am. I then engage in battle with the internet connection as I try to Skype my family and friends, get dressed, do the exercise dance with the schoolchildren across from my balcony, practice violin, eat breakfast, and head out the door to fight my way onto the subway system. I'll clarify a few of these points:

     1) The exercise dance: every morning at the same time, the students of a school across from my apartment complex process outside in lines, forming a huge formation. As school officials supervise, a symphonic band soundtrack comes on over the loudspeakers, accompanying a narrator who keeps the beat ("One two three four, two two three four..."). [Here's someone's YouTube video of one such dance.] It's so cheesy and yet so regimented that I can't help but join in from afar. Also, this has been my only exercise since coming--with the air quality being so abominable, working out outside is out of the question.

     2) Breakfast: room temperature milk in a packet (see photo), an egg or rice, and a mini-Luna bar from my rations if I'm peckish.

Breakfast

     3) The subway: There is a word in Japanese for a full train during rush hour, man-in densha. What I didn't realize was that man-in densha is the lower end of the bell curve for train passenger density in China. Especially during rush hour, the lines extend up the stairs to the entryway, and there is a violent  rush of squeezing and pushing to get on the train--to the point that a fight briefly broke out in my subway car this morning (that was quickly resolved, don't worry!). 

     Anyway, I'm getting accustomed to the routine and as I said, really enjoying the people here. It's not quite the coffee-run internship--I've already written two stories so far on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests and on China's closing of Tibet to foreign tourists. Also, today I accompanied Gloria, the bureau's reporter, to a speech she gave to the faculty of a local women's university. After her forty-five minute presentation on empowering and heightening global awareness in women, the first question of three questions she was asked was, "What does creative writing mean?" It was fascinating to hear her explain the concepts of fiction-writing, developing the narrative voice, and self-expression to these teachers, who struggled to grasp what she was talking about. I imagine they were shocked that students could spend their college careers majoring in such a thing.

After explaining the concept of a creative writing major

     Other things I'm trying to adjust to:

• The constant and blatant stares I get everywhere I go--having hundreds of eyes on you anytime you're in public takes some getting used to.
• The directness of the Chinese language and people--in huge contrast to the honorifics and "I humbly beseech you" speech patterns of Japanese, people here have no qualms telling you "don't want!", "get out", "not right!" 
• That the TV screens go black when foreign news reports on topics that are controversial to the Chinese government. This has happened at least three times this week, once when the BBC reporter was in the middle of the word Tiananmen.

     Anyway, I'm going to cut this off before it gets any longer than it already is. It's long overdue and still doesn't properly express how overwhelming and stimulating this experience is. 

In The News (I wrote these!):

Tiananmen Square Quietly Remembered 23 Years Later

China Forbids International Tourism to Tibet Indefinitely

It's Time-Warp Time

     Today's the day--I go to the airport in a few short hours, and after many long hours will be arriving in Beijing! I'm going by way of LA and South Korea, so layovers coupled with flight time means that I'll be traveling for an entire day...as in 24 hours. It's definitely a commute that's hard to get excited about. I am mystified, though, that I leave early morning and arrive the next day in the late evening (I'm flying back in time, yet still end up a day ahead of when I left). I even made a spreadsheet to try to figure out how the timezones lined up during my flights, but still couldn't pinpoint where all the time went...foiled by the International Date Line, I guess.


     Anyways, with any luck the Beijing Blog will finally have posts from Beijing--so stay posted!


Audrey

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:

Before China's Transition, A Wave of Nationalism

Because every blog needs a first post.

I should have realized it was only a matter of time before I created another blog.

     My consciousness of a world greater than Austin, Texas, came with my ten-month immersion in an all-girl's high school in Japan. Selected by my high school faculty to represent the school abroad at our Japanese sister school, I learned enough Japanese to ask the time and took off for Japan in September 2007 with newly-purchased knee socks, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and little idea of what to expect. From the moment I arrived, I was plunged into Japan, living with two host families over the course of the exchange and taking all of my classes in Japanese. Through battling rogue robotic toilets and learning the hard way the custom of eating everything on my plate, I became fluent in Japanese, discovered the differences (and samenesses) of Japanese and American culture, and began to realize the magnitude of opportunities awaiting those willing to take a chance. 

     I recorded my time in Japan through The Tokyo Blog. The Tokyo Blog was originally intended to inform my family and friends; as my posts and pictures became more extensive, though, my readership expanded to friends of friends, peers, my school, my community, and beyond. At the time, I thought I was simply chronicling the experience to entertain and update my readers. Now, I realize that writing about my successes and mishaps was just as much for my own benefit--to process, debrief, and remember. Rather than dreading my next language- or custom-related shortcoming, I began to eagerly try new things, knowing that the worst mistakes make for the best stories.

     After I returned to the States for my junior year of high school, I abandoned my years of studying Spanish for Chinese. Japanese characters come from the Chinese writing system, and after learning about 400 or 500 characters in Japan (and recalling the labors of conjugating the subjunctive tense in Spanish) it seemed like an obvious choice. Whether it was it was the recent experience of picking up language quickly, the writing system overlap with Japanese, or the lack of verb conjugation in Chinese, I found Chinese coming naturally to me. 

     I got a taste of China in the summer of 2009 when I spent a month going from city to city taking language classes and seeing the sights. While I remember vividly sweating buckets on Great Wall, bartering furiously at the Silk Market, and dressing up in Beijing opera costume and makeup, just as striking was the pollution that reduced the line of vision to about half a mile and my host sister's complaints about the cruelty of her peers in their pursuit to attend a good university. That summer, ethnic riots in Xinjiang (a northeastern region of China) incited the Chinese government's nation-wide shutdown of Facebook. That smog, cut-throat competition, and censorship are realities for millions is distressing; however, understanding the historical, political, social, and cultural elements that have made China what it is today is also incredibly fascinating to me. 

     Now, I am a rising junior at Wellesley College double-majoring in East Asian Linguistics and Music. (East Asian Linguistics is an individual major, i.e. one I am creating myself that combines Japanese and Chinese languages and cultures with pure linguistics, as well as classes that address the two.) This summer I will be spending 10 weeks as an intern at the Beijing Bureau of ABC News and living with a host family. My hope is that this blog will be informative, meaningful, and entertaining for the reader--and at the very least, that it will document what is certain to be a unique experience for me.

     (13 days until departure!)


Audrey


In the News:
Beijing Pledges to Clean Out Illegal Foreigners