Wo Han Shuai

At long last, a return to normality.

I arrived at Southwest University on Sunday, beaten and downtrodden, after getting only 90 minutes of sleep the previous night.  "C'est la vie" we all thought; it's our last night in Beijing, it would be a shame to waste it.  I seem to always forget that I'm an old man in a young man's body.  

My 4 a.m. wakeup call reminded me that I was not quite the savvy, indestructible world traveler I thought I was.  What proceeded was the most unpleasant 12 hours possibly ever lived.  And not even a Starbucks to ease the pain; nor, to my dismay, a coffee vendor of any kind.  Anywhere.  Oh the humanity.

Despite my grumbling, we made it to the University sans problems, and I have gotten settled on my posh 5th floor dorm room fairly quickly.  Brice and I found ourselves in a "deluxe" suite, which is usually reserved for triples, but through some enlightened happenstance we get it to ourselves.  What makes a dorm room "deluxe", you may wonder.  For one, leather couches.  Also, a separate bedroom.  We are quite pleased.   

Our classes at the University are laughably short, but I am learning a decent amount through the thickly-accented English of our Professors.  While I have little hope of learning anything but the most rudimentary Chinese, I am at least able to practice it whenever we go out to markets or shops.  

The typical conversation proceeds thusly:

Shopkeeper: [Fast Chinese telling me the price]

Me: Uhh...I don't speak Chinese.

Shopkeeper: [Makes hand gesture referring to the Chinese character for the price]

Me: [I shrug, because I don't understand the hand gestures, nor the character it refers to]

Shopkeeper: [Looks confused, because nobody shrugs in China]

Me: [In broken Chinese] I America country...I no understand....Sorry

Shopkeeper: [Finds a calculator and types in the price]

Chinese, I'm finding, is a mystery.  Our language teacher writes characters on the board expecting us to recite them...but she often forgets that, for us, Chinese is not phonetic.  At all.  The only way we can pronounce these symbols is though route memorization.  I am planning on just learning pinyin, which is the phonetic spelling of Chinese (which, of course, nobody here can actually read).  

Spanish is suddenly looking much more appealing.

Chongqing is turning out to be a nice city to spend two months in; the area is fairly forgiving to foreigners (probably because they don't get many here), and I have not been hassled to buy a Rolex once.  The vegetation is lush and green, which is a byproduct of the scorching 100+ degree weather with humidity in the 90s.  I've been told on numerous occasions the weather will cool down soon, but I've seen little evidence of it.  

Some local students helped me get set up with a cell phone and some local slang, so I am now prepared to play the part of a hip college student studying abroad.  China, by the way, has the cell phone industry down to a science.  50RMB for a SIM card, 130RMB for a second-hand (or third-hand, or fourth-hand) phone, and you are set.  If you can navigate the somewhat shady network of underground cell phone and SIM card dealers (many students deal them for extra money), you can have a phone with no contracts, no salesmen, nothing.  All for less than $20USD.  The United States should take note.

This weekend we travel to Hainan for the National Holiday.  Hainan, I'm told, is the Chinese eqivilent of Hawaii.  

Fantastic.  

If there is anything that a pale, skinny Irishman traveling abroad dosen't need, it is more hot weather and sandy beaches.

Oh well, maybe they will have a Starbucks.  One can only dream.

Zai Jain (Goodbye),

--McG

Note: The title of this blog is "I'm handsome" in semi-pinyin.  My new Chinese friend Jason taught me it tonight.  I'm planning on saying it as much as I can tomorrow.  What fun.

I'm a Tourist and I Don't Care

Can circumstances turn 90 degrees, instead of the normal 180?  If they can, then the change from Shanghai to Beijing would be one of them.  Different?  Yes.  Altogether different?  Not quite.

The work of the Olympic-minded Chinese Government can be seen across the city, from giant banners with "Beijing 08" splashed across them, to expertly manicured flower-beds adorning the sides of freeways and main streets.  But try as they might to put a band-aid on ailing parts of the city, Beijing still has the hallmarks of a metropolitan Chinese city: a poorly constructed sewer system prone to smelling up entire blocks of city, tap water that will make you physically ill, and bootleg sales of everything from Olympic jerseys to, yes, more Rolexes.  

While on a bus ride to the Great Wall, I was struck with the idea that maintaining these sections of city is much like maintaining a Geo Metro: try as you might to fix it up and make it look nice, it is still a cheap car and will always remain so until you upgrade the entire thing.

Despite these drawbacks, Beijing really is a great city.  Taxi rides cost around $2-3 USD for a 20-minute trip, which has been the main way I have gotten around town, and there is an amazing lake district that reminds me of what Bridgeport Village could be if it decided it wanted to be cool.  (Sorry for the 90% of people who won't understand that reference).

As for touristy exploits, I got to climb on a "technically-illegal-but-poorly-marked-so-it's-ok" section of the Great Wall, which was actually quite moving.  We had it all to ourselves, and after a short climb up the wall of a lookout tower, I was gazing on an enormous valley with miles of crumbling wall descending on either side of me; it was an incredible experience.

We also got to watch the Track and Field finals of the Paralympics in the Bird's Nest, with the Water Cube shining beside us.  It was weird to think that thousands of people had been watching Hussein Bolt dance around in victory in my very seat only one month ago.  Our evening was made even more exciting by one of the largest thunderstorms I've ever experienced.  Epic.

We're off to the U.S. Consulate in a few minutes, and then we leave for Chongqing on Sunday at 4 a.m.  I'll say it again:  4 a.m.  I hope you are as appalled at that as I am.  Oh well.  When in China.

Until next time,

-McG

Baghdad, China

Don't ever go to Shanghai.  

If you can help it, avoid Shanghai at all costs.  It's dirty, smelly, and full of fake Rolex salesmen.  

...

Perhaps I'm over-generalizing.  It's true, Shanghai does have its enjoyable sections of town, which I will describe later.  For the most part, however, Shanghai consists of smelly blocks of run down buildings, inhabited by questionable retailers and "massage" parlors; I will let you drawn your own conclusions about the latter.

We stayed in the Astor House Hotel, a historic building that has been privy to some of the most monumental events in Chinese history; the first stock exchange, filament-based lightbulb, and visits by President Grant and Albert Einstein.  Unfortunately, while the hotel itself was preserved as the luxary resort it always was, the area around the Astor House slowly degenerated into a slummish hellhole akin to the worst of war-torn Iraq.  In fact, the area around our hotel was dubbed "Little Baghdad" by several in our group, and rightfully so; two blocks south was an area of rubble that looked like it was just thrashed by a few of Tony Stark's Jericho missiles (props to those who understood that film reference).

But I digress, my hated of Shanghai was diluted somewhat by our venture to the French Concession, a section of town that looked strangely like Portland, especially given the light rain that coated the road in that sheen that I'm so familiar with.  We ventured to the Chinese Communist Propaganda Museum, which was essentially a collection of illegal works of art produced by Chainman Mao's propaganda campaigns all housed in the basement of an apartment building; sketchy and illegal, yes, but oh so worth it.

Shanghai, I also found out, is home to an absolutely homicidal scooter population.  As well a buses, and taxis, and even bicycles.  They all pay completely no heed to red lights, yields, or lanes in general.  It is chaos.  Madness.  A undulating mass of zig-zagging mahem.  Anarchy in practice.  Crossing the street requires a conscience dismissal of any and all road-crossing-etiquette that one learned in elementary school.  Puerto Rico looks like a drivers education class after this experience.  

My final night in Shanghai was an enjoyable one.  I ate at a fantastic restaurant (Ajisen), explored the taxi system (which will require a blog entry all its own), and discovered the municipal sytem of Shanghai is in desperate need of renovation: apparently it is common practice to leave wet cement on high-traffic sidewalks with no notification or warnings; there is one streetcorner of Shanghai that has my (accidental) footprint and (intentional) initials engraved into it.  

All in all, I am happy to be out of Shanghai.  Although we were in a poor area of town, I was not impressed with the city in general, and am excited to experience Beijing.  I still have a lot of talk about in regards to Shanghai, so I may write another entry tomorrow morning (free internet at this hotel....finally!).  

Peace out homies, I miss you all,

-- McG 

p.s. --- Apparently China missed the memo that pull tabs on soda cans are SO ten years ago.  Literally every Coke or Pepsi has pull tabs that require me to throw away two separate pieces of trash instead of one.  This is truly a mystery to me.  

  

Out of Service

Time has a funny way of passing.  It has been only five days since I arrived in China, but it feels like more has happened in these five days than the past three months combined.  (I suppose waking up at 6am and going to bed at 1am for the majority of the week has helped).  

We left Hong Kong this morning at 6:45am and traveled to Shanghai, where we will spend the next four days doing...well, largely the same things we did in Hong Kong: visiting businesses, trying new foods/restaurants, and generally trying to avoid the copious amounts of fake Rolex salesmen that inhabit every street corner of every street ever paved.  

Shanghai, and Hong Kong to a lesser degree, are cities of 

extreme contrasts.  Government-run slum highrises that house thousands of impoverished families sit directly next to Armani tailors; an armless beggar sings in an underground subway that sits directly below a Masarati dealership, which is filled with rich twenty-something investment bankers looking for ways to spend their money.  

I am aware that these contrasts exist in the United States, but I think the extreme proximity in which the Chinese have to live -- usually out of necessity from lack of land -- highlights these normal occurrences into something unique.  It is not uncommon to see below poverty families living literally next door to an all-marble office building streaming with smartly dressed business people.  Apparently zoning laws aren't high on the "to do" list of the Chinese Government.  

It seems that no trip goes completely according to plan, and this week we had our first major hiccup.  In Chinese elevators, we have been told many times, there is always

room for one more.  We quickly found out, however, that the elevators at Hong Kong Baptist University don't appriciate this lovely adage.

As the doors closed on our lift packed full of business students, it let out a heart-stopping screech and haltingly dropped about a foot.  As if to further torture us, the elevator bravely tried to haul us up, only to drop another foot to a violent halt.  The screen blinked "Out of Service" at us innocently.    

After a sadly misguided attempt to pry the doors open a la "Panic Room", we simply waited until the bewildered security staff managed to extract us twenty minutes later.  

How convenient, then, that this experience provides a perfect metaphor for a summation of Hong Kong: a wonderful and industrious city that is sadly being overworked by an ever-growing population.  Unfortunately, the city cannot conveniently flash "Out of Service" until it is reset by an aging security officer -- it must endure its trials and either prevail through savvy governing, or fall ill to the pains of growth.  

Only time (and the Chinese government) will tell.

-McG

p.s. - please comment on my posts.  It makes me feel loved.  Emails are nice too.  

Humb-Awesome in Hong Kompton

I am in a state of utter exhaustion.  Extreme, mind-numbing, muscle-twitching, heart-wrenching exhaustion.  Let me elaborate.

I arrived in Hong Kong disoriented and sleep deprived, being awake for nearly 22 hours of constant travel.  I managed to watch an entirely ridiculo

us amount of movies, although I can now say I've seen Iron Man (awesome) and Indiana Jones (not so awesome).

After a wonderful nights sleep, we were off to tour Hong Kong with our super cool tour guide Sailor Moon.  (Ok, her name was Moon....what do you expect us to call her?)  During lunch at the Jumbo Floating Restaurant I discovered a steamed bun filled with barbecue pork which was incredibly delicious.  I later found out this dish is called "humbao"; we proceeded to refer to it as "humb-awesome".  

Hong Kong, I'm finding out, is a massively overpopulated oasis of free market persuasion.  Apartment housing can cost upwards of $200,000 a year, with demand far surpassing supply.  The majority of the workforce lives in government subsidized high rises that are in desperate need of renovating.  This inspired us to nickname it Hong Kompton -- we can be very politically correct.

On our day off we hiked the highest peak on Lantau Island, which happens to be the second highest peak in all of Hong Kong.  This turned out to be far more of a challenge than I was prepared for.  My fair Irish disposition is more suitable for the type of hiking that includes frequent stops and a visit to Stabucks afterwards.  

This was not that type of hike.

This hike was 7 kilometers of steep incline and stairsteps, zigzagging through the foothills of Hong Kong.  The weather was blisteringly hot, and I was quite sure I was dying at least 4 times during the three hours it took us to reach the world's largest Buddha statue at the end.  At the end of the hike I was many things (sore, tired, dehydated), but I am not so sure about enlightened.  I guess we'll see.

I will try to write a more intelligent and illuminating blog entry tomorrow, but I'm running on very little sleep and lots of coffee....not a great combo.

P.S. - I'm sure the Korean people have mastered many things in life, but unfortunately, latte-making is not one of them.  Thankfully Hong Kong has embraced the Starbucks lifestyle, which is where I'm enjoying a latte on par with home.  A bit of Seattle across the world.  

-McG