The Balance of Yin & Yang.

My flatmates Moe and Clara took Stan and I on a hiking trip to Xiangshan Park. Instead of writing a long entry about this journey, I've opted to show them to you in pictures instead. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this entry would be like a Tolstoy epic. Please enjoy.

Also included in this series of photographs are pictures of Sinoland Language and Culture school. On several floors of this 23 floor building, there are zen-gardens where people could go to take a coffee-break or simply take your mind off work for a bit. As you could see in the photos, I found this place to be very meditative.

My school is on the 20th floor of this sleek building and only recently had I noticed the absence of floors 4, 13, and 14. Instead, it is replaced with 3A, 12A, and 12B respectively. The number 4 is pronounced as "shu" which sounds a lot like the Chinese word for death, so 4 is a very undesirable number to have. People go to great lengths to make sure that the number 4 doesn't appear in phone numbers, addresses, licence plates, suite numbers, and the likes. As for the number 13, that's just triskaidekaphobia of western influence. I found this elevator keypad comical so I had to take a photo for your viewing pleasures.

Off to the Orient.

To the Oriental Plaza, that is. :)

I went on an adventure today and challenged myself to take the subway system to the Oriental Plaza shopping centre. My student, earlier today, had recommended going there when I asked her if there were any good shopping malls and districts in this area.


I needed to get new shoes as I've been wearing these New Balance running shoes for everything, regardless of whether it matched with my attire or not. I should have brought my entire collection of shoes to Beijing.





Navigating the subway system was easier than I had imagined. There are three lines currently in operation: the Yellow (Line 13), the Blue (Line 2), and the Red (Line 1). I had to ride all of them to get to my destination. There are about ten more lines scheduled to open before the 2008 Olympics. The great thing about taking the subway is that it's fast and cheap (only 5 RMB each way), but the subway is often crowded and reeks of human waste and body odour.

The mall itself was nothing spectacular as it looked just like any of the malls in Vancouver, but then again, I've never seen anything like it here in Beijing. What was nice about the Oriental Plaza was the array of stores of which I've never seen or heard of before, which offered something different from the usual GAP's, Banana Republic's, and Old Navy's. In fact, I have yet to see these American retail stores here in Beijing.

While strolling throughout the mall, I came across the Beijing Volkswagen Olympic Forum and the Beijing Audi Forum across from it, which were both adjacent to the BMW Lifestyle Store. With an exception to the BMW Lifestyle Store, they sold automobiles inside a mall! Now this was definitely unique, so I took a quick tour inside. Mmm... Polo... Sagitar... Touareg... Phaeton... Yes, I will keep dreaming. :D

Now to recap other notable events this past week, I will clump them all together here:








My new flatmates, Moe and Clara, cooked dinner for Stan and I last Sunday.








Although the main beef dish which simmered in the pan a little too long was rendered inedible (which was unfortunate as Clara had gone to a speciality store far away to get), they managed to serve up a spicy dish of string beans and peanuts substitute with salad, eggs, and tomatoes.



And the soup! Mustn't forget about the delicious soup of whatever it was!








After a few weeks of trying to get high speed internet in my apartment, I finally got it installed, so no more lugging my heavy PowerBook around to internet cafe's and spending hours upon hours there. Now I could spend hours upon hours inside without ever leaving my flat! ;) I'm just joshing around of course.


With great excitement, I went out to the electronics district to buy another AirPort Express the very next day so that I wouldn't be tethered to my desk by an ethernet cable. The beauty of watching DVD's from the comfort of my own bed and chatting to friends online while sitting on the can! Got the AirPort Express at a great price too. After haggling the merchant, I got the price reduced from 1,200 RMB to only 900 RMB. That's $130 CAD! The MSRP for the AirPort Express is priced at $159 CAD on Apple's own website.

I also caught a bad cold during the week and the worst of it was when I was conducting a class. I was blowing my nose off, coughing my lungs out, and sneezing my head off. I wanted to croak over on the floor in a fetus position and scream "I'm dying! I'm dying!", but with my voice almost lost, screaming was impossible. I apologised profusely for not taking the day off and exposing her to the potential of spreading my cold. I bet this cold had everything to do with my body trying to adjust to the disgustingly despicable air quality here. (Message to friends back home: please send bottled Vancouver air, post haste!) I'm doing much better now with the aid of Chinese medicine, HALLS, and lots of oolong tea, but the cough still remains. sadly, my flatmate, Clara, has begun to cough...

In addition to the pollution, the humidity is very low, so my throat dries up very quickly, making it a little painful to breathe. I went out and bought an air humidifier to help me sleep at night.

In closing, I'll leave you with a few new Chinese phrases I've learned from my brother and flatmates. My apologies if I have erred in my phonetics, or "pinyin" as it is called here.

- Ni dan bi ne ("nee dan bee na"): Don't fuck with me.
- Er bai wu ("are buy wuoo"): Idiot. Literally: "two-hundred-and-fifty" or 250.
- Huang shu ("huang shoe"): Pornography. Literally: "yellow book".

These words will come in very handy, especially when a driver cuts me off on my bike path. Hey, it adds character! :D

Being Beijingese.

If there's one thing you could count on in China, it'll have to be the lack of quality in Chinese craftsmanship. Things fall apart, break, or not work at all right out of the box! To add to this list, I'll have to throw in the bad quality of packaged foods like instant noodles and moon cakes. For heaven's sake, many don't even meet its own quality control measures (a standard that's placed lower than the more discriminating ISO standards) for food quality and safety, so you put your health in jeopardy when you realise later that there was something else in what you had just consumed, in addition to the foul taste of it, making your stomach churn like never before. Unfortunately, your selection is limited when you start boycotting everything that's Made in China™.



Case in point: the new door lock to my flat jammed up after only a few weeks of use, preventing Stan and I from leaving the apartment. Yes, we were locked inside of our flat because of the faulty locking mechanism. Stan pondered about what would happen if there was a case of fire in our building. I rather not think about that scenario, but jumping out our third floor window isn't an option I will want to take. If I remember correctly, one could jump out of the second floor window and still have a good chance of survival, but jumping out of the third and surviving the fall is much less likely. As a result, I used all my might and pulled the whole lock mechanism right off the door. This rendered the main door unsecured, but fortunately, there's a gated door in front of it which added a second security barrier, which still functioned well. Knock on wood.

A pipe in the kitchen also sprung a leak, leaving a puddle of water on the tiled floor. After contacting the landlady about the two immediate problems at hand, a plumber and a lock repair man was scheduled to come the day after. Of course, they came at the time when I was the only one home, and wouldn't you believe it, they didn't speak a lick of English. Oh Mon Dieu! To make this situation even worse, THEY BOTH CAME KNOCKING AT MY DOOR AT THE SAME TIME. In light of this hilarious situation I found myself in, I took it in stride and called one of my students and asked her to be my translator, passing my mobile to the plumber and lock repair man back and forth. "Sign here, pay amount, get receipt, off you go!" I did it with military style.



I've signed on several more students since my last post, both privately and at Sinoland Language & Culture Co., pushing my work schedule up to 25 hours a week. I don't know how I managed to do this, but I'm now working 7 days a week! As an award of excellence and to reap the benefits of my hard work, I walked over to the electronics district about an hour and a half away and bought myself an iDog. Yep, I've wanted one since Christmas but they were all sold out everywhere then. Now I finally own one and he sits happily on my desk just wanting to be played with and eager to dance along when I attach my iPod to him. Must love dogs... ;)

I have a new mode of transportation now. I used to take the taxi frequently (it's only 10 RMB, or $1.40 CAD for the short trips I make) and use my own two feet, but Stan took me to a place right at the gates of the Beijing Language & Culture University (BLCU) and found me a second-hand bike which I scored for only 60 RMB, or about $9 CAD. Of course, with the money I'm making by teaching, I could afford a new bike, but bikes are stolen so frequently here that I really didn't care to get a shiny new bike with all the bells and whistles which would stand out from a sea of rusty grey bikes, so I settled for something that would blend right in, complete with bicycle grease, worn out brake pads, and a fender rubbing against the front tyre.



There is one particular thing that impressed me about China however, contrarily to the rant I opened this blog with, and that is the dominance of Volkswagens on the road. Being a huge fan of VW, this was something I noticed immediately. In addition to the fleet of Jetta CiF's being used as taxis, private owners seem to prefer VW's over any other automobile manufacturer, including the cheap and ugly Chinese engineered Geely. There are VW models here like Gol, Polo, Santana, Bora, and Sagitar which aren't available in the North American market. Just from my own estimates, I think VW's market share in China (or at least in Beijing) is somewhere around the 40% mark. That's impressive! There are other foreign makes here including Citroën, Peugeot, Renalt, Fiat, Hyundai, and Buick, but none of them are as dominating as Volkswagen. It's hard to say how and why VW's dominate the automobile market here though. Could it be that VW has a strong marketing department? Maybe VW has a special joint-venture agreement with the Chinese government with the opening of the manufacturing plant in Shanghai. Do the Chinese actually have great taste in automobiles?



For whatever the reason, the Chinese certainly make up for their shoddy craftsmanship with their excellent choice in German engineering. Now, if only they could start driving like Germans too...

The White Rabbit.

It's almost been a few weeks now since I arrived in Beijing and I'm slowly adjusting to the way of life here, learning as I go along. It's been a real struggle just doing my shopping and banking without knowing any Mandarin. It's sometimes frusterating when my English and sign language isn't enough to get what I want. I got really annoyed at the supermarket the other day because I had to leave behind my eggs, pears, and apples at the cash register. I understood later that I had to weigh them myself, print off a barcode and stick them on the bag beforehand. I wanted to go back into the supermarket to get my eggs and fruits and do it right the second time around, but I was denied entry for some reason (they have security guards standing at entrance ways everywhere here) so I shot him a dirty look and huffed and puffed my way back to my apartment... ^&!%@*&!^%*&^@%*&@^% GRRRR!!!!

I picked up an elementary book on learning basic conversational Chinese with audio cassettes to listen to the phonetics and pronunciations of this tone-based language. Life will be much easier once I start speaking and understanding Mandarin.



My first impressions of Beijing was that it was very polluted, dirty, and primitive. The smog here is so bad that it's equivalent to smoking 10 packs of cigarettes a day. The air smell like the freeons and ions you would smell in an air-conditioned room. It's hard to describe, of course, but it's potent, and it's everywhere. Traffic is a mess too. A clash of pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists cross each other's path and NO ONE follows the lights in intersections. When it's "safe to go" they go, or budge their way in. Drivers seem to have the right of way here, not pedestrians. It's always a game of chicken when crossing the roads, and I had to get used to this quickly.



I don't have net access in my apartment just yet, so I've been frequenting cafes leeching off it's WiFi and sitting here for hours on end.

I went out with a group of around ten foreigners, most of whom were Germans, for a night of karaoke last night. It was a blast! Though the menus on the computer for selecting songs were difficult to understand because they were all in Chinese, we managed to search songs by song titles (just not by artists) and combed through it, covering everything from Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean" to the Carpenter's "Goodbye to Love". Many of the videos, especially the generic ones of couples in love frolicking through the fields of green, were ridiculously hilarious. Even more hilarious were the numerous spelling errors in the lyrics as the song played on. Could you say "Engrish"?



In addition to tutoring two Korean girls privately, I got a job at the Sinoland Language and Culture Co. today as an English teacher! I went in for my orientation today and was introduced to my new co-workers in the teachers lounge. They were very cordial, friendly, and seemed very interested in my background. I think they were just happy to have a Canadian working amongst them. =) The language school is on the 20th floor of a sparkling new glass building, with classrooms overlooking the busy streets of Beijing.

It's been quite an adventure here so far, chasing after the white rabbit down the rabbit hole. More updates and pictures to come!