new country for old ben

home again!

2009-07-05T16:24:00.000-07:00

Just a note to anyone who has followed my blog--Erin and I are back in the U.S. We are in Seattle visiting my parents and will be heading back to Kansas soon. This thing has been woefully without updates, but only because the Chinese government started blocking all blogger access in April. I'll try to make some kind of final post and put up some pictures here before I start updating my other, non-travel blog.

Factory 798

2009-04-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to visit the Factory 798 district of Beijing since we first arrived in China, but we didn't really have a good time to explore the place until last week. The galleries were on par with the Great Wall for me. That's not my characteristic hyperbole, either.

Liking 798 shouldn't be too much of a surprise for me, since I'm a sucker for a good gallery, and a giant sucker for an entire conflagration of good galleries. One of my favorite things was this gigantic installation we saw. I don't even know if installation is an appropriate word--it filled a room the size of a small auditorium. All of the parts of the room tied into the piece. The artist used the existing girders and beams in the room, all of the floor, and every part of the wall space. There was also a sculptor Erin and I were into named Li Chen. It's hard to get across the scale of his sculptures. They're gigantic. They make you feel dwarfed by them in the best possible way.

The good thing is that the gallery district exceeded all of my expectations about what we'd actually find. The bad thing is, I now want to go back there about 8 more times before we leave in the first week of July. Wait, do I even have eight weeks left? That's a strange realization. I can't believe we've already lived in China for almost 8 months. It doesn't seem possible. In any case, here are some pictures from our trip. Erin and I are both excited to go back to Beijing this weekend and get a chance to hang out with a friend of hers from Lawrence.

picture day

2009-04-15T16:28:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Chinese High Schools have something that's sort of like a Yearbook. The book is only for the graduating seniors, though. The teachers asked me if I would get my picture taken so that I could be in the yearbook. The flurry of activity surrounding picture day has been very interesting. The teachers fixing their hair, the students being fascinated by the teachers fixing their hair, etc. One of these pictures is of some students who were, ostensibly, visiting the restroom, peeking into the room where the pictures were being taken.

Mysterious Chinese Fruit, Part 1

2009-04-12T04:25:00.000-07:00

One of the most amazing things about living in China is the low cost of fruits and vegetables here. We buy them all the time from the open market area in our neighborhood. Chinese pomellos are the most amazing fruit I've discovered so far. They're different than the pomellos you can buy back in the states--I think they're a little sweeter, and taste a little more like your average grapefruit. Also, they're juicier and not quite so mealy. I love them. You can buy whole pineapples on the street here too, and the people selling them will peel them and core them for you, while you stand there. Sadly, it's no longer pomello season, so I figured I should try all of the fruits I can't eat, or have never eaten, back in the states. I pantomimed to the woman selling this first one, asking her if I eat it like an apple, or if I should cut into it. She conveyed that I should cut into it. I don't know what the names of these are, but they're starting to come into season here. They're little melons. They taste like a cantelope to me. It's kind of cool that they're small enough for one person to have their own little melon. Using the asian Pomello as a perfect 10, on a 1 to 10 scale, I give these little yellow melons about an 8.

This is what happens when all of the heat, in all of the apartment buildings in an entire country is turned off on March 15th...

2009-03-30T04:15:00.000-07:00

Ninjas!

"lost" bikes never gonna break in my stride...ain't never gonna hold me down, oh no, I got to keep on mooooooooovin'

2009-03-28T17:45:00.000-07:00

I can't remember the last time I posted something about our bicycles. I remember for awhile we were posting a lot of things. It really bugged us when Erin "lost" her first bicycle. (Cultural note: if your bicycle gets stolen in China, when you tell people about it in Chinese, the phrase you use translates roughly to "I lost my bike" and not "someone stole my bike.") I've since mellowed out. Bikes get stolen over here. It still saves a lot of money to ride them places, and riding bikes in a pack of Chinese bicyclists is one of the most exhilarating things I've ever experienced.

As a recap to our current bicycle situation, Erin's new bike got stolen last semester, so then she used my bicycle to go to school, which was actually a bicycle we inherited from an American guy named Chase who went back to the states. Eventually, we saw some guys on a street by Nankai selling super, super cheap bikes. We went and bought one for Erin, so that we could both have bikes, only to discover about a week later that the reason these bicycles were so cheap was because the gear and the pedals were actually slightly BEHIND where your body is positioned on the seat. I want you to stop for a moment and imagine pedaling a bicycle with the pedals very slightly behind your center of gravity. It was horrible. You get a good crosswind hitting you and it felt like you were moving backwards. Not having functional bikes for both of us was no huge loss, at the time, since it was the middle of winter and my school is a ways away, and Nankai is really close. I just took taxis to school and Erin rode our one good bike. The taxis sound like a ridiculous thing to do, I know, but you must keep in mind that the cost of a 20 minutes taxi ride translates to a little over two U.S. dollars here. The real loss was that I just missed riding my bike, particularly riding around to places with Erin on the weekends.

So, now that it's thawing out in Tianjin (I type, as I'm wearing my red long underwear), I decided that I wanted to get a working bike and start riding it to school. Last week I asked Sam, Erin's brother, to show me the place where he got Chase's bike, and also his own bicycle. Actually, it's the same bike Erin is using. Also, the week before last, Sam got a bicycle from the same place for a Canadian guy named Scott. Scott's wife Olga already has one of these bikes. While Sam was helping me he joked around about all of us having the same bicycles. There was one moment when Sam and I were riding together past a group of people, and he looked down at our matching bicycles and said "Riders of ROHAN!" Before Erin and I leave China I want to take a picture of everyone who owns this same bicycle riding them together at the same time. I think this can be done. Also, the guy who owns this little bicycle shop loves Sam. I think Sam should be getting some kind of kickback, or percentage from this guy. Sam Billing is the Tianjin bicycle connection.

Yesterday Erin and I rode to my school together, so that I could time the ride and not arrive late once I start bicycling there next week. It's about an eight mile ride. I'm looking forward to it. I'll try to remember to take my camera with me and get some shots of things I pass on the way. The picture I'm posting with this is from our friend Miguel's birthday party last week. Miguel is from Columbia and is one of our good friends here in Tianjin. He had his party in one of the local little park areas by some apartment buildings. I think what you see in the background of this picture looks very Tianjin to me. Miguel cooked Columbian BBQ for a bunch of international students on these little charcoal grills and we had a really nice time.

P.S.: I almost forgot! The cheap bike that was so horrible to ride was parked in the big pile of bicycles in front of our apartment all winter, with a little lock on it. I took off this lock so that I could use it, along with a massive, heavy-duty chain lock I bought, on my new bike. Estimated time before the crappy bike with the horrible center-of-gravity was stolen? 12 hours.

haha. Take that, thieves! I hope you hit a crosswind.

Day 219 in China: The photo shoot

2009-03-23T01:57:00.001-07:00

Today is my two hundred and nineteenth day in China. In honor of this momentous occasion, I accosted Erin where she was sitting and studying on the couch and forced her into an impromptu photo shoot. Some of the phrases I blurted out as emotional instructions for the shoot included "look confused!" "Okay, now look angry!" "Okay, now you just finished a marathon!"

I will sneak in under the wire and post before a month has gone by.

2009-03-18T04:48:00.001-07:00

Many of my friends are currently enjoying spring break. I hope everyone is having a fabulous time. Without further adieu, here are five things about China:

1. The Chinese word for road is "Lu." One of my earliest cabbie-jokes involves the word "lu." "Cabbie-jokes" are my largest category of social interaction in China. Functioning as a mute, I've developed an entire series of discreet, non-verbal, or barely verbal, interactions with people. These interactions tend to involve several hand gestures and sounds that I've perfected. For example, there is a displeased sort of smacking noise Chinese people make when something is happening that shouldn't be happening. When I catch a cab to go to my school in the morning, traffic is usually unholy in a special kind of unholy way that does not exist in cities in the United States. It amazes me that people in the U.S., a country that prides itself on automotive aptitude, know so little about what is possible when driving. For example, on an average-sized, busy street, it is in fact possible for five, sometimes even six cars to travel side by side around a corner after a light changes. It is also possible for a fleet of bicyclists to weave in and out between these cars during the same light change. While this is all going on, it is also supremely possible for an octagenarian man carrying a tin cup full of dry rice home from the local market in his pajamas to make his way across the afformentioned intersection. On rare occasions, it is also possible for a city bus to T a bicyclist at this intersection and for there to be blood on the street for several days before someone washes it off. But I digress. All these things are possible.

One "cabbie-joke" that is a favorite of mine involves a very busy street in Tianjin called "Fukang Lu." Taxi-drivers hate this street. I noticed after a month or so of being here that Fukang Lu gets really busy at about the same time each morning. My cab-drivers all start to make the smacking sound about a half a block before we arrive at Fukang Lu. So, I've started making the smacking sound along with them. Happily, the actual name "Fukang Lu" sound awfully close to an English explitive of displeasure. One of the moments in my daily life when I feel the closest connection to a Chinese person is when my taxi approaches Fukang Lu and the driver makes the smacking noise and mutters "Fukang Lu!" This muttering is my cue. I nod my head vigorously, make the smacking noise myself and then mutter "Fu**ing Lu!" along with him. He laughs, and then pats me on the back. We are together in our mutual shared experience at this moment. Last week, after this exchange with a taxi driver, the driver reached with one hand (he was driving with the other) behind his seat and pulled out a loaf of bread. As every Chinese citizen knows, Westerners eat bread constantly all day and night. It is one of our oddities, like having blue eyes and trying to force capitalism on the unwilling. The cabbie was so pleased with our feeling of togetherness that he offered me some of his bread. We ate the bread and he drove me to school. I then made exact change for him, an action that is sometimes met with an extreme degree of surprise by some taxi drivers. It is common knowledge that a bread-eating Westerner, much like a horse that has been trained to count by stomping its hoof, has only a rudimentary grasp of numbers; he may be able to give you money, but not the correct amount of money. When one of these bread-eaters does so, it is a wonder.

2. Last week I, an American, taught my Korean World History students at a public, Communist Chinese High School the five pillars of Islam while we studied the history of Islamic civilizations.

Anything is possible.

3. There are at least six or seven distinct kinds of Kim Chi. I have eaten them all.

4. If my students think the clothes I'm wearing are good, they flash me a thumbs up when I arrive to class and yell "Ben-teacher! Fashion very good today!!" This perplexes me, as I only have about five outfits I cycle through, since I could only bring two suitcases with me, and one was full of books. I will, however, miss this when I'm back teaching at KU next year. I can't imagine a jaded, Johnson County freshman who is being forced to take composition flashing me anything as positive as a thumbs up.

5. The lyrics "whisper words of wisdom" from the Beatles song "Let It Be" are difficult for Korean students to say, which is unfortunate, since this is one of their favorite songs to sing in the singing rooms at KTV karaoke centers. Even their English teachers have difficulty helping them learn how to pronounce it.

feeling better and some pictures

2009-02-23T17:49:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling a lot better after taking the medicine Erin and I got from the pharmacy in our neighborhood. It doesn't really matter to me whether it was the Eastern medicine or the Western medicine that fixed me up. I think it was both, working in conjunction. The best part was that there was this ancient, ancient looking Chinese woman who was in the pharmacy at the same time we were. She kept coming over and watching what the pharmacists were going to give me, and asking them questions. On the way out of the pharmacy she explained to Erin and I that she's a doctor, and she wanted to make sure they were giving me the right medicine. Then she got on her bicycle and went on her merry way. Sometimes I love China. She was really nice. But on to more interesting business than me being sick.

I've been wanting to post some of these pictures for a long time now on ye olde blogge. During all of our travels I felt compelled to take pictures of door-knockers, rain-gutters, paving stones and other smaller details. I think this stemmed from a frustration with the grandiose, tourist-shots I was taking at the beginning of our travels. It's essentially impossible to convey the scope, or beauty of most of the places we've traveled in any kind of landscape shot. Or rather, grandiose beauty is far less interesting to me than idiosyncratic details. I think it's a little bit pointless to take shot after shot of places like, say, Tienanmen Square, or even the Forbidden City. I still took plenty of these pictures, but the photos I like most are the ones that focus on minutia, or on the people in my neighborhood. This is all, of course, my completely subjective, personal opinion. Without further adieu, I present to you some of the pictures I took on our trip that I think are in t erest ing:

I think I might actually just be allergic to China.

2009-02-19T23:42:00.000-08:00

So, we've been back home for about three days from our travels, and I'm still sick. This is a little distressing to me. I was sick for about the last week and a half of our trip. I'm starting to forget what it was actually like to be able to breath out of my nose, or to not wake up each morning hacking up...well, we won't go into that. When I was pondering this, I realized that I was actually quite ill at the beginning of our trip, when we met up with our friend Jen in Beijing. Then I remembered that I was sick when I was grading all of my students final examinations, before that trip. Thinking about grading those finals caused me to remember the different colds I had last semester (about 4 or 5). My new, tentative hypothesis is that I am, in fact, completely allergic to China. This is not an impossible theory, given that Tianjin has some of the highest air pollution levels of any city in the world. My new plan is to never leave my apartment. Does this seem like a plausible idea? I mean, teaching might be a little difficult, and buying food, but I figure I can use Skype to teach my students and then rig up some kind of magic tube to have food "beamed" into our kitchen. Until I get better, this is the imaginary world I will be living in. When we return to the states, I will breath in the sweet, sweet, Barak-odored air of freedom.

photo-editing and bronchial spasms

2009-02-16T20:54:00.000-08:00

We've finally made our way back to Tianjin. I'm in the process of a giant photo-editing extravaganza, punctuated by what I assume is bronchitis. My goal is to make coherent, organized posts about each of the places we've traveled with a few specific photos. I do want to post one picture I tried to take, though. When we were in Xi'an, at the Terra Cotta warriors dig site/museum, I tried to take a panoramic picture using three shots, one after another. Then I used a photo-editing program to kind of cobble them together. I didn't have a tripod, but I think my dad would be proud. The actual size of the dig was the most impressive thing to me. I think if you click on the photo you can view the larger version.

curious celebrations in People's park

2009-02-09T20:34:00.000-08:00

Erin, Nathan and I wandered around Chengdu a few days ago and went to the People's Park near our hotel. It was a little unclear what exactly was going on (which is the norm), but it seemed like there was a celebration underway specifically for older people in Tianjin. There were a number of different bands performing, and older Chinese citizens dancing and doing their exercises (those two things sometimes go hand in hand). I took a few videos, but these don't do the situation justice. I've decided I like the Sichuan people. I've been trying to learn more about the history of this province, and what I've learned so far only increases my affection for this part of China.

pandas like to eat

2009-02-09T19:58:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures/film-clips of pandas doing what they do best. Erin and I kept speculating just what our cat, JBJ, would do if he were to encounter a panda. Perhaps they could have an eating contest. Ah, JBJ. There is nothing quite as fluffy as you in this part of the world, but pandas are a close second.

Chengdu is great

2009-02-07T18:59:00.000-08:00

I like this city. Everything is going well, even though we've had to revise some of our travel plans. Apparently everyone and their grandmother wants to go to Lanzho right now. As a result, we're heading to Xi'an after Chengdu, in a few days. That's just fine, though. Our hostel is run by a group of artists. They bought this old factory building and converted it. They have a studio in the building, and there's a restaurant and a cafe, and even a pool table. The TexMex restaurant was amazing and surreal. Today we're going to Du Fu's cottage and the historical park related to Tang Dynasty poets.

Guilin, Chongqing and Dazu County

2009-02-03T22:24:00.000-08:00

I'm fairly miserable at posting regularly on my blog, but I'll try to write for a bit here. Today we're in Chongqing (Chung King, pre-Pinyin). Tomorrow we'll be catching another train for Chungdu. Chungdu is a city where the poet Tu Fu lived and wrote a large number of his poems. He is one of my favorite two poets from the Tang Dynasty. I'm looking forward to seeing the cottage he lived in when he was in Chengdu. Also, there's a TexMex restaurant in Chengdu. One thing my experiences here in China have impressed upon me is that what seems incongruous is 100% a product of one's culture. Who says that TexMex doesn't belong in Chungdu? I've made my peace with the fact that expecting things to belong anywhere is a farcical prospect at best, and is incredibly silly the further you move away from your home country. For example, Erin and I just finished walking through the tight, windy streets of Chongqing's market area and I bought some socks. The sock store was in between a food vendor and a guy who sold giant koosh balls. I had no idea that I would find socks where I did, but it was magical when it happened and it seemed right.

One of my fears is that I'll move back to the states and forget this realization that expectations about where things should be and what people should be doing in certain places are socially constructed. I fear that it will be all too easy to slip back into the comfort of "knowing" what's going on. I like my intense, edgy sense of displacement over here. I think it's keeping my wits sharp and my instincts intact. I'll post some more photos of Guilin, Chongqing and Dazu Country. We took a bus trip to Dazu Country yesterday. The sculptures there are ancient. I wished that my friends Josh and Jeff could have been there, since they're sculptors themselves. Actually, it occurs to me that Kari, who I used to work with at the Red Door, and Alicia, who also worked at the Red Door, would have loved this place too. Sculptors of the world need to check this place out.

weaving

2009-02-03T07:28:00.000-08:00

still traveling

2009-02-03T06:57:00.000-08:00

Tonight we're in Chongqing. Our next stop is Chengdu, and then Xiahe. So far we've been on the road for about two weeks, and we'll be gone for two weeks more before we're back in Tianjin. Here are a few recent pictures.

a pagoda and an escalator

2009-01-25T06:44:00.000-08:00

Shanghai and Hangzhou

2009-01-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

I need to pass out into a blissful sleep in our hostel here in Hangzhou, after a long day of going to train stations (two, since I led us to the wrong one first, accidentally) and hiking around. Our trip has been good, though frigidly cold so far. Here are a few photos and some movie clips. I'll write more here further down the road.

a very small tour of the Forbidden City

2009-01-09T23:55:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, when Erin and I started planning what to do over the New Year holiday, we decided to go to the Forbidden City in Beijing. I've always wanted to go, and even though Erin has visited it before, there is still a lot that she hasn't seen. I think this is a place most people feel they should see if they are close to Beijing. The scale reminds me of the Louvre; it's huge and impossible to see adequately in one trip. So, for this, my first trip to the Forbidden City, I decided I would only take pictures of small details. I actually think this more effectively conveys the intense amount of effort that went into constructing the place, and the surreal sense of an entire city within a city, where secret things happened for a very long time.

I don't know if this necessitates its own lonely spot on a sidebar

2009-01-02T21:44:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that I filmed everyone but myself making New Year's resolutions. One of my resolutions is to make time to submit poems to places this year. I have been absolutely miserable at sending things out during the past twelve months. I sent something to this website after one of my KU professor's linked it on his blog, and my pastiche/cut-up/flarf is on the site. I'm going to continue to submit things as much as I can while I'm in China. If more than just this one thing gets put somewhere on the web, then I'll make a sidebar. I think if anyone who reads this blog is interested in submitting things to 3by3by3, they should.

the surreal soundtrack of China (for Shannon)

2009-01-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

Shannon asked me what I've been listening to, in the new year, here in China. So, in the spirit of authenticity, here are the first 25 songs that are playing randomly from my Itunes library this morning as I choke down Chinese cold medicine. My favorite random ordering from this list? Moonlight Sonata followed by Sly & The Family Stone. Enjoy.

Honey Child What Can I Do? Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
La Strada del Bosco Luciano Virgili
You Know I’m No Good Amy Winehouse
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before The Smiths
Rick Kick Shaw Cecil Taylor
Tell Me in the Morning Cold War Kids
Ran Kan Kan Buena Vista Social Club
I Wish I Was the Moon Neko Case
Mo ve’la bella mia de la muntagna Matteo Salvatore
Black Satin The Raveonettes
Tell It To Me Old Crow Medicine Show
Gigantic The Pixies
Modern Romance Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Cheap and Cheerful The Kills
Uncle John’s Band Indigo Girls
Rebel, Rebel David Bowie
I Guess That’s Why They Call it The Blues Elton John
Textbook Love Fleet Foxes
Hospital Beds Cold War Kids
Moonlight Sonata Beethoven
If You Want Me to Stay Sly and The Family Stone
Serenade for Piano & Violin Schubert
Dusty Wreath Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Stay Cool The Roots
Pretty (Ugly Before) Elliott Smith

further resolutions

2009-01-02T03:09:00.001-08:00

Today was my last day of teaching for this term. Aside from the three hours of mind-numbingly boring number-crunching figuring out grades required, I had a lot of fun filming my students and hanging out with them when they finished their exams. Here are some pictures of my students and a few of their resolutions. My favorite response might be "Abraham's", where he says that his resolution is for me, if I want, to invite him to come to America. I'm going to make an entirely new set of resolutions for myself that involve telling people that my resolution is for them to, if they want, do something that I would like. In fact, my first new year's resolution is that you, if you want, could actually leave a comment on this blog post, thereby reducing my nihilism and intermittent ennui. Yup. That's my first resolution of the new year.

"I am a star!" or "You are a star!"

2009-01-01T04:29:00.000-08:00

Here are some things that happened on the first day of the first month of the two-thousand-and-ninth year:

1) I walked by the frozen canal with Erin and remarked on two men ice-fishing. I thought that the darker part below the bridge didn't look as frozen as the rest of the canal, most likely because the water is deeper there.

2) I ate lunch with Zhou You's parents, Sam, Zhou You's grandmother, and Erin. The chicken dish with cilantro was my favorite.

3) Erin and I went to the book building here in Tianjin to buy prizes for my students. In my World History class and American History class I've been passing out these little pieces of paper to my students all semester long, each time we have an open-ended conversation and they participate. The pieces of paper each say "You are a star" and have a red star on them. I think it's funny that they have red stars on them. The stars have almost mythical status in Meijiang School now. There was a lot of discussion about the stars each week this semester. Who has their stars? Where do people keep their stars? What if their stars get stolen? How often should they count their stars? Why did I switch from writing "I am a star" to "You are a star" at one point in the semester? I have no answer for this last question, at least, not an answer that doesn't make me seem a little crazy, or that made sense to my students.

At the beginning of the semester, I imagined the students looking down at the stars, and then reading "I am a star" and the phrase acting as a sort of positive reinforcement, as if the pieces of paper might convince them that they were stars. Then I realized that this could also be interpreted as me giving them a red star that says "I am a star", as some kind of bizarre, occidental coupe to garner their esteem, or convince people of my innate star-quality. There is a lot of hilarious cultural miscommunication in my daily life. The idea of a western teacher passing out pieces of paper that say "I am a star!" on them to a group of Eastern students is not that far off from some other bizarre ideas of westerners I've encountered from my students and in my daily life. For example, in E-Mart today, a girl yelled "Hello!" and then "McDonalds!" from the make-up counter when Erin and I walked by. Try to figure that one out. I'm not sure if were were supposed to rub our tummies and give her a thumbs up, or do some kind of dance. What would the McDonald's dance look like?

In the end, I'm not sure which phrase would code most appropriately, but I opted for the "You are a star!" instead of the "I am a star!" I could so strongly picture my students, in my mind, looking down and then seeing "I am a star!" written on the little pieces of paper, but I decided that the act of giving them the star would make "you are" and not "I am" more appropriate.

Enough of that, though!

4) When we were all eating lunch together I thought it would be fun to ask people what their resolutions were for the new year. So, here are Sam's, Erin's and Zhou You's resolutions. I might try to get some of my students to tell me their resolutions tomorrow, on my last day of teaching this semester. I'm going to miss my students over the long break. My students are the people I communicate with the most here in Tianjin, except for Erin. I think that we're "tight." They are my friends.

It was a funeral.

2008-12-21T15:11:00.000-08:00

While it was still dark this morning I heard voices down in the street and saw this strange procession of what I assume were relatives and friends carrying belongings from the apartment across from us and putting them into cars and vans. The flowers were all gone too. Just a moment ago, at 7:13 am, fireworks erupted and chased away evil spirits.

addendum

2008-12-20T16:28:00.001-08:00

When we were coming home from a friend's place last night, it started to snow. I took a picture of the flowers with a little snow on them, and then this morning everything was covered with it.

window things

2008-12-20T00:35:00.000-08:00

I was in my kitchen this morning making pancakes for Erin. Our kitchen is my favorite spot in our apartment, because you can see all of the other people in all of their kitchens in all of the surrounding apartments. I like the feeling of everyone cooking at the same time. Now that it's winter, I especially like to look out the window and see all of the windows steaming up at once. When the sun is setting, this look the best, but I can never get it to come out in a picture very well. One of the reasons the buildings are all constructed the same way is because the gas for the stoves is piped to the same place in each of the units. I think the uniform construction of Chinese apartment buildings is beautiful and pragmatic. At least, it seems that way to me. I'm sure that I'm missing a good deal of what is happening around me on a daily basis. My interpretation of events is wonderfully askew. For example, this morning when I was making pancakes, I looked out the window and there were these flower arrangements in front of the door to the opposite apartment building. I looked at these for a long time trying to figure out whether they were for a wedding, or for a funeral. I'm still not sure. "I'm Waiting For My Man" by the Velvet Underground was playing on my Ipod in the kitchen while I was cooking, which would be appropriate for either occasion.

"Pizza for Women"

2008-12-13T17:36:00.001-08:00

Apparently, my idea to post something every day didn't work, owing to my truant disposition. I digress, though. I'll move on.

I was teaching some of my younger students different food and restaurant vocabulary and they asked me, with genuine seriousness, whether I had ever eaten pizza. Once I told them I had, they asked me what my favorite kind of pizza was. I, in turn, asked them what their favorite kind of pizza was and they informed me that, OF COURSE, it was Potato Pizza. There was much horrified sighing and rending of garments when I informed them that I had never eaten potato pizza, and they were positive that I was lying to them. According to my students, every American MUST have eaten potato pizza, since pizza is American food, and everyone loves potato pizza. (Sorry Italian peoples of the world. Apparently my country has appropriated your food. We have a tendency to appropriate things. Mea culpa.)

My very serious student Carol repeated, half to herself, under her breath, "But Mr. Cartwright, potato pizza is so delicious. Is is SO delicious."

What could I do? I asked my students where the best place was in Tianjin to eat Potato Pizza and I promised them that I would try it. Carol also said "You should try corn. Corn is good, but Potato is the best pizza." My students told me to go to Mr. Pizza for Potato Pizza. Luckily, Erin and I knew where this place was, since it is close to where we buy groceries. Mr. Pizza is memorable, to me, because their slogan in English, under the name, is "Mr. Pizza--Pizza for Women." Erin and I have tried to figure out why Mr. Pizza has pizza for women, but it is a mystery.

Here are some highlights of potato pizza:

1. Potatoes (naturally)
2. Corn flakes (?)
3. Mayonnaise (??!)
4. A stuffed crust filled with warm, pureed pumpkin. (??!($#*(##(@*@!)

"distressed" bicycles

2008-12-01T03:48:00.000-08:00

Erin and I just got home after having dinner with her friends Miguel, Juana, Lihuijin in this tiny restaurant inside of an apartment building. I liked it. It felt like a secret restaurant. Most of my favorite restaurants and bars feel like secret restaurants and bars. For example, in Seattle, I love the Alibi Room. It's in an alley off of Pike Street. There used to be this coffee shop, or maybe a bar, (I can't remember which and I think that means I'm getting old) in Port Townsend, Washington, and you had to enter the place through this little half-door. Maybe if one of my cohorts from those days reads this they can comment and tell me the name. I can't remember the name of it.

After dinner Juana and Miguel told us about this guy who sells cheap bikes down the street from the restaurant. The cheap bikes are actually new cheap bikes, not stolen cheap bikes. Erin and I jumped at the chance to somehow circumvent her earlier moral dilemma about buying a stolen bike. Juana and Miguel kindly offered to show us the place. The bikes cost what amounts to about $25 after conversion, so we jumped at buying one for Erin. Bicycling is the most practical way to get around here, and getting one's bike stolen is nothing to write home about. The timing was perfect, too, since I had previously taken a taxi from my school to meet up with everyone. Erin had our one remaining bike with her, and I wasn't looking forward to hoofing it home in the progressively bitter cold of a Tianjin winter. After we bought the new bike we both got to ride home.

On the ride home I kept thinking about the word "distressed" because Erin and I had already discussed wanting to rough up a new bike, if we bought one, so that it would look less appealing to steal. In the states, at a Pier One, or some other store, "distressed" tables are being sold for exhorbatent fees. At clothing stores "distressed" jeans are also being sold for exhorbatant fees. Distressed leather jackets, distressed baseball caps, the list goes on. I've been thinking lately that America may be unique in its need for "distressed" goods. From what I can glean, Tianjiners distress things on their own, and don't need manufacturers to do the distressing for them. In fact, things here maybe be a little too distressed at times. The air is distressed, the water in the canal is distressed, the frozen globs of spit on the sidewalk are distressed. But I digress.

Advertising language keeps coming up in my thoughts and my writing, lately, because I'm coming to terms with the fact that many sounds and sights that make me feel nostalgic, or safe, are really just Pavlovian responses to advertising. For example, after about a month in, here in China, I walked into a Fomax store and was in the drink aisle when I suddenly felt an emotional tug towards a plastic bottle with a familiar color scheme. It was a Minute Maid bottle of "orange drink". Here was the distressing part, before I move on to discuss "distressing" a bike; I don't read characters. I have merely been trained, through all of the years of my childhood, to know that the colors orange and black mean "Minute Maid". At first I thought it was a fluke, but a week later I was in Carrefour, in the toothpaste aisle and felt a similar, nostalgic tug. After I felt the tug I pointed to a display and said "That's Crest." Then I pointed to another one and said "that's Colgate," and then I felt a little like a trained monkey. And also, shamefully, a little bit at peace.

But back to the bike.

Once we got the new cheap non-stolen bike home I ran up to our apartment and got some supplies: 1) the steel wool from the kitchen, 2) a roll of strapping tape, and 3) a plastic bag. Then I proceeded to scratch the new cheap non-stolen bike as much as I could. I wrapped a piece of strapping tape around it. I used the steel wool on the "leather" of the seat. Erin grabbed some dirt and we rubbed it on the bike for good measure, before locking it up. Voila. We successfully "distressed" a bicycle.

I'll take a picture of the distressed bicycle tomorrow and post it.

If it hasn't been stolen.

here's something

2008-11-27T23:19:00.001-08:00

I'm not very good at blogging consistently. I'm going to try and post at least one thing each day, even if it's short. Here's my first try:

Today I had one of my classes listen to music as part of their grammar lessons. I played songs that have the phrase "I feel" used in different ways, because I've been teaching them different ways this phrase is used, and different sentence patterns it is used with. My students huddled around my miniature Ipod speakers and fought over who got to sit directly in front of the speaker. They asked me if I could play Sara Vaughn's cover of "I feel pretty" three times in a row. Some days I feel like teaching in a Confucian culture, though absolutely maddening at times, has spoiled me and that I will find it difficult to go back to teaching brooding, trustafarian JoCo college Freshmen. That is my moment of the day. Also, I learned that in Korea crows are bad luck. The word for the number four is also bad luck, because it rhymes with the word for death.

School Festival

2008-11-21T18:31:00.001-08:00

Last week, on Friday, my school had their yearly festival. I’ve never been to something like this in the United States. I’m curious if some U.S. schools, maybe private schools, have festivals like this. Unfortunately, Erin and I both forgot to take our cameras. It was a real spectacle. My students told me this week that they posted a video from the festival of them singing and dancing to a K-pop song on some Korean version of YouTube. If I can find it, I’ll link it here. My student “Alex” said to me: “Mr. Cartwright, I am sure that we are going to be famous now. Our video had maybe twenty hits on Friday, and then I looked today, and we have 300 hits!” I’m kind of at a loss to explain exactly what happened at this festival in some way that makes sense. There was food. It was in a giant, fancy auditorium. Parents were there. Teachers were there. Students danced, and one student sang opera in Italian. There was a movie about two students who love the same girl that was shown. Students dressed up like waiters would run up and down the aisles and deliver things to people. There was some strange raffle where everyone had to stand up and look for a number on the bottom of their seats. A lot of my fellow teachers got on stage and danced with giant lollipops to a K-pop song called “I am kissing you.” There was a dance contest. Some of my twelve year old students dressed up in drag and sang a song called “Hey Mister!” from a Korean movie. They looked a little like the supremes. They were wearing a lot of blue, silver and gold lamay. A lot of things are more intense and confusing because of my lack of language over here. I felt a little like Hunter Thompson while watching all of it.

It was interesting to introduce Erin to my students, who are really fascinated by her. They’ve slowly gotten comfortable with talking to me, and seeing me every day, but I think Erin threw them for a loop. Some of my students would run up to us in their bowties and waiter uniforms in the auditorium and would start chattering away to me because they were excited to see me, and then you could visibly see them notice Erin out of the corner of their eye, who was sitting beside me, and they’d freeze up and get tongue-tied and the exchange would go something like this:
“Mr. Cartwright…is this…your wife?” I would say yes and introduce them and my students would sort of wave and say “hello!!!” really loudly, clearly very excited, and then they would look nervous, as if Erin’s presence threw a wrench in the script they were planning out in their head for what they would say when they saw me. I remember making scripts in my head like this in all of my French and German conversation courses. I think they’re curious about what exactly Americans do. They’re always watching me very closely, which was a little anxiety-inducing at first, but it’s just normal curiosity, and there is no cultural taboo against staring here, I think. It’s certainly not meant to make me feel uncomfortable. I always feel like I’m kind of a letdown, though. I don’t have a colt 45 to take out of my pocket and twirl around. Sometimes I think they’re waiting for me to order pizza. I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do at those moments. Sing the national anthem? Start a business? Call a limousine? I like my students.

burning spirit money in my neighborhood

2008-10-29T05:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I saw something strange when I was walking down our street, on my way to go teach at my school. There were these charcoal circles on the octagon sidewalk tiles, and little piles of burnt paper. I sort of pushed the image to the back of my mind, and then forgot about it until this afternoon.

In my World History class that I'm teaching to the Korean students we had a discussion last week about whether or not we should study the ancient China section in our book. Our textbook has a chapter on ancient China, but I skipped over the chapter earlier in the semester, figuring that my students must have learned about ancient China in their other literature and history courses, taught by their actual Chinese teachers. I found out from my students, however, that this was not the case. They really wanted to study more about Ancient China, so that's what we're doing. I actually took several courses in my honors program at Washington State University on ancient China. Still, it's bizarre to be an American teaching Korean students in a Chinese public High School about ancient China. "Unqualified" is the adjective that keeps running through my mind while I teach this unit. In any case, today my student "Abraham" asked me if I had seen the burnt circles on the sidewalks. I said that I had, and he explained to me that people are burning paper money for their ancestors to spend in the afterlife. We also talked about the practice in China of setting off fireworks to keep evil spirits and ghosts away. Abraham and my other Korean students explained to me that in China there are many traditions to scare away the ghosts, while in Korea, there are traditions to encourage the ghosts to visit. Abraham and my other students told me that in Korea the Korean people want the spirits and ghosts from the afterlife to visit them, because the spirits can teach them important things, or help them make decisions. About a half hour ago Erin and I were walking down our street after dinner and there was this amazing line of our neighbors burning little fires of paper money. We stopped and Erin asked a nice man from our neighborhood, in Chinese, about the practice, and he explained it to her. Once we were in our apartment I decided I really wanted to try and take a picture, but then when I got back out in the neighborhood I was nervous and didn't want to do anything inappropriate, or disrespectful. Some of our neighbors saw me and smiled and motioned that it was okay, but I still only took one picture. What an amazing evening.

Chang Cheng

2008-10-25T16:39:00.001-07:00

more photos

2008-10-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

photos

2008-10-16T19:23:00.001-07:00

Ancient Culture Street

2008-10-16T18:39:00.000-07:00

In Kansas, if you go to Dodge City, people put on cowboy shows, and tourists are able to see a "real" Western town. I imagine that "Ancient Culture Street" is a little like this in Tianjin. That sounds horribly cynical, and I don't mean it to. I think it's interesting how different cultures all over the world create little areas to reproduce some time period, or place in their history, which they consider to have been a high point. What exactly, or really, "when" exactly a culture chooses to reproduce might be very telling about that particular culture. I'm not going to think about what recreating a gun fight and the graveyard of Boot Hill in Dodge City might mean for my own country. Wait, it's too late. I did think about it. Here are three videos I made in ancient culture street. One is just to show what it looks like, the other is to show this really cool stand where an artist would make little characters out of clay very quickly, and the last one is of a food vendor. I thought the noise coming from his steamer was some kind of musical instrument at first, which was what made me walk over to the area where I made the movies.

Hm. Two of my videos had some trouble uploading. Hopefully I can add them to this post.

I think I fixed it.

pictures of people

2008-10-02T18:44:00.000-07:00

I have this pet theory that people should take fewer photographs of "scenery" when they're traveling, and more photographs of people. I think that when I return to the states, the pictures I'm going to want to look at are of the people I got to know in my daily life here. So, with that in mind, I took my camera with me yesterday. The other impetus for this was that Erin chatted with our friend Elliott online and he mentioned that I should post more. This made me miss Elliott like the Dickens, so here you go Elliott. Erin just got off the phone with her sister Megan, as well, and Megan mentioned being curious about what other foods we've been discovering here, after she read the post about the breakfast thing I ate. I'll try to take more pictures of food. If anyone else has suggestions of things they'd like me to post about on this blog, just leave me a comment. Like Mark Twain, I have a "truant disposition", so I need people to help me keep on the blogging straight and narrow.

Picture descriptions: 1) This is a picture of all the flags in front of apartment buildings in our neighborhood, in honor of the holiday for the founding of the PRC. Many women also wear a red berette in their hair for the holiday. I'm going to try and find information about what that's all about. 2) This is a picture of a waitress and one of the owners of the little restaurant that's around the corner from where we live. This place is very close to our apartment. People eat out a lot more frequently here, it seems, than in the U.S. Restaurants are loud, and lively, and social. We frequently see a large number of people from our neighborhood also eating out at this same place. You can see on the wall this gigantic block of pictures of food from their menu. The menu is written entirely in characters, without images, so I think Erin has set a challenge for herself to try and order just from reading the characters in the menu, but we sometimes break down and walk over to the wall to point at things like ignorant Laowai. I really wanted to take a picture of the waitresses, because they're very funny and we've gotten to know them more, but when they saw I had a camera, three of them scurried off. The remaining waitress in this shot is pretending to organize the chopstick and cup sets, but really, she's avoiding having her picture taken. After I took this shot, the guy I assume is one of the owners ushered me over so that I could take a picture of the woman behind the counter. We'll get to her eventually. 3) This is a picture of the lady running the cigarette and booze shop next to the restaurant. These shops are everywhere. All they sell are cigarettes and booze. We've never actually bought anything from this particular lady, but she seemed nice. You can't see him, but there's this guy sitting on the floor behind the counter to this woman's left, dead asleep and snoring loudly. He's the man we wave to who usually runs the shop. Also, I wanted to take this picture so that you could see the insane cigarette lighter they have for sale. Click on the picture to make it bigger. The cigarette lighter is the gold-looking...uh...elephant? I think it resembles those things the Riders of Rohan fought in The Lord of the Rings movies in front of the white city. Anybody want it? I could probably ship it, or fit it into my suitcase on the return trip. 4) I love these guys. These two men run the bicycle repair stand on our corner. There are bicycle repair carts all over the city run by men like this, but these two particular guys run the one in our neighborhood I walk by on my way to get a cab to work each day. I think they might actually be upstart bicycle repairmen, because there's another little shop deeper into the neighborhood that looks more elaborate. One of our friends here said that you should be careful of some of the stands in the city, because some of the ones close to the university sell bicycle locks for a very specific reason. They sell locks that they have the master key to, and then they go bicycle "shopping" after you have one of their locks. These guys don't strike me as running that kind of operation, though. They don't sell locks. And seriously, how could you not trust them? Look at how amused they are. I envy these guys. They get to sit on this corner all day. 5) This is the aforementioned "lady behind the counter" at our local restaurant. I would like to draw your attention to three things. First, there is a nice bust of Mao on the counter. Second, you can sort of see my head in the mirror. Third, this lady's ensemble is not exceptional; in China, feather boas, sequins and see-through, knee-high socks are adequate business attire. Also, pajamas are acceptable if you're just walking along the side of the street for a few miles.

books

2008-09-20T01:34:00.000-07:00

Books written in English that I've found for sale in Tianjin:

The Castle, Franz Kafka
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
Emma, Jane Austen
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Red and the Black, Stendhal
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
Sons and Lovers, Ivan Turgnev
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Right now I'm reading Winesburg, Ohio for my non-comprehensive lists book. I'm trying to find a copy of Moby Dick that isn't abridged, because I've seen shortened ones floating around. I don't know why I find this so interesting, but I'll keep posting the titles of books that I see for sale in case others are curious as well. One of my students is reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin for fun. I saw some other student had my student's copy in a different class, later in the day on Friday. They're passing it around. It's sort of a hot commodity. I never imagined this happening with that book.

more pictures of the neighborhood

2008-09-09T04:32:00.000-07:00

Here are a few more pictures of our neighborhood. I particularly wanted to take a picture of the sidewalk with the leaning trees along it. One of my favorite moments of the day is the moment when I am walking past the entrance to the magic alley, on my way home, along this sidewalk with the leaning trees. There are also some pictures of the entrance to our building, our stairwell, and our front door.

the story of an American Ben in a Korean High School in China

2008-09-09T04:13:00.000-07:00

These are some pictures of my daily life teaching at a Korean High School. Blogger is doing some strange things of late, when I try to post pictures and move them around or add captions, so I'll just try and summarize up front. The first pictures are of the entrance to the school where I work, along with some of its signs. There's a bust of someone to the right as you walk in. I'm not sure who this is. Does anyone know? Basically, the bust of this bearded guy is the only other Western-looking face I see in Tianjin during most of my days. I've become affectionate towards him. It think it might be Plato or Socrates. Later in the group of photos are a couple of pictures of my co-teachers. I would consider these people to be my friends. Casey, the woman wearing yellow, is another English teacher. She moved to China a couple of weeks ago, just like me, from Korea. The rest of the teachers don't speak English or Chinese, and I don't speak Chinese or Korean, but we all eat lunch together, and make jokes, look exhausted, or roll our eyes at similar things. We take turns buying juice boxes for each other. We let people jump in line at the copy machine. We share the instant coffee and take turns buying it when it runs out. These past few weeks have taught me that actually being able to speak to someone is highly overrated, in terms of forming a friendship.

One note: click on the photos to see larger versions of the images

the symbol using/symbol creating/symbol misusing animal

2008-09-07T00:10:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Burke is one of my favorite rhetoricians and he once said that man is the symbol using, symbol creating, symbol misusing animal. One set of symbols I find curious in China are cartoon characters. The associations are different for cartoon character images here than they are in the west. Maybe this is partially the west's fault, or the new vortex of meanings are tied up with the west in some way. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's even possible for me to figure out entirely what they mean here. Western cartoon characters carry some connotation of wealth and "western-ness" in China. It might not be wealth exactly, but some feeling of "modernity" that isn't easy for me to grasp. Here's what I can figure out:

These images aren't as heavily associated with children, but with something new, or the new way of life. Just to clarify, I'm not talking about manga, or images from graphic novels. Manga and graphic novels here would be a whole other conversation. A long one. What I'm referring to are images we might code specifically as children's images. Loony Toons characters. Disney characters.

I don't know how to convey the prevalence of these characters in a variety of strange places here. They are everywhere. I will often pick up an object in the store and groan when I find that Mickey Mouse is on it. It's hard to find things without cartoon characters on them. There are a variety of different cartoon characters on objects in our apartment, in order to make the apartment seem more upscale, or attractive. For instance, there is a curtain that we draw in the bedroom of our place to shut out the light from the glass-paned door. Mickey and Minnie are on that. There's a light fixture in our bathroom. Pluto is chasing Tweety Bird on that. There's a Hello Kitty light switch cover in our bedroom. The strangest one in our apartment, by far, is the cartoon image of two little boys in briefs eating ice cream next to each other. This is actually the brand label that is on our fridge. It's the company's symbol.

batteries schmatteries

2008-09-06T17:21:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted anything here in about a week. I remember vaguely, last weekend, taking my camera with me out of the house to get some more shots of Tianjin with actual people in them, only to discover that my camera batteries were dead. I still don't have any batteries, but why would that prevent me from writing? When I think about posting something to my blog, do I imagine that this must necessarily include posting pictures? Why do I feel compelled to put pictures up here all the time? Is it because of our visual culture? The commodification of culture? (i.e., I'm in a "foreign" place, therefore I must "get" something from this place to show people, and images somehow seem more tangible) I don't want to become reliant on a camera. Also, it bothers me when people are constantly photographing things. It always has. You can ask my family, or Erin--if I'm in someplace that I think is really fascinating, I get very annoyed at having to stop experiencing to take pictures of it.

When I was teaching composition at Washburn a few years ago many of my students did not respond well at all when we discussed writing in terms of "voice", or the "sound" of a certain writer. This made me curious, so I asked them if, when they read books by different writers, they hear a voice in their heads reading the text, or if they imagine the writing of different people "sounding" different, because of style, word-choice, etc. I think this sound model of discussing writing has been around for a long time, but maybe it's lost some of its usefulness. Out of three or four classes, in successive semesters, none of my younger students said they thought of writing in terms of voice, or sound. I frequently taught evening classes and my students ranged in age from 17 to 55. The older students in my class did tend to discuss writing using words associate with sound, like "tone", "voice", etc. Did the older students feel more familiar with this because writing has been taught to them for so long using this sound vocabulary, or is the difference a result of an actual shift in culture to something more visual? Do people experience writing more visually than they used to? I know I'm kind of going on and on about this, but it's been in my thoughts a lot this week. Some of the reading I've been doing for my PhD comprehensives, and other things I've stumbled across, has mentioned how different groups of poets and writers, at different times, have taken issue with the privileging of the "sound" of poetry, prose, words, etc., over their visual characteristics.

I've read about this tension between the visual and aural qualities of poetry, specifically, a lot, and I thought that I was relatively comfortable in a neutral position, or rather, wanting both qualities to function harmoniously without championing one over the other. My former position of neutrality has been complicated by my daily life here, though, in a place where I have absolutely no written language. I have been experiencing, simultaneously, a renewed sense of respect for the sound of language, just as sound, and a renewed sense of respect for the visual that is not associated with written language. I can try to read the pinyin for a word in Chinese--for example, the name of my neighborhood--but without listening to native speakers say the name over and over again, I can't repeat it in a way that a taxi driver will understand. Also, something strange is happening to the way I encounter the world around me visually. In the states, I have a relatively bad sense of direction. This hasn't really changed in China. What has changed, though, is that my visual memory seems to be kicking into high gear. I will remember a certain bench, or a specific type of lamp post, or what kind of brick the streets in one area have, and as a result, I find that I know what part of town I am in most of the time here, whereas, if I were in a large city I'm relatively unfamiliar with in the states, like New York, maybe, I think it would take me a lot longer to recognize places, because my brain would be somehow lazy, relying on all of the English words everywhere to help me orient myself. Here, I have no understanding of written language, and this is causing me to remember how everything looks. The way things look is vitally important to me in my daily life, because if I don't know what things look like specifically, I won't be able to navigate my way around even my own neighborhood, much less find my way to the school I teach at, which is about twenty minutes by car from where I live. Enter conundrum. Finish very long blog post.

You know that scene in the first Harry Potter book...

2008-08-28T18:30:00.000-07:00

...where Harry goes to the train station, and he's all "It's just a normal train station. I don't see what the big deal is," but actually, it's a magic train station? (I'm paraphrasing here. I hope that Phil Nel isn't reading this.) That scene from Harry Potter is sort of what the alley branching off the left of our little street is like. Yesterday morning I had to get up before Erin and catch a taxi down to my doctor's appointment, and when I left our apartment I smelled this amazing food, peered down the alley and saw several street vendor carts had magically appeared there. I've been bugging Erin all of yesterday and today about getting up and going out there in search of breakfast. Today she relented, and we ate the most amazing food. We also explored more of the magic alley. Forget Carre Foure. I'm never going there again. Our magic alley has everything in it--a traditional open-air market, a building with a bunch of different food shops, produce salesmen, a meat vendor, and a place to get ice cream. The magical alley has old men on stools playing Chinese chess, little twisting branching streets full of people with blankets selling things from Converse knock-offs to Pokemon toys, tea shops, you name it. It was such an unassuming alley. It might be my favorite magic alley that I have ever encountered, including the strange one in Port Townsend, WA that leads to the hidden bar with the half-door, hobbit-sized entrance, and the alley in Seattle that leads to the youth hostel and the Alibi Lounge. This alley blows those magical alleys out of the water. I feel like I'm a character in Pan's Labyrinth, only less terrified of everything. At the top of this post is a picture of the most amazing 0.439149 USD breakfast (that's right...43 cents) that I have ever had the pleasure of eating. I bought this at the mouth of the magical alley. Erin is trying to find out what the name of this thing is. Basically, the little cart has a flat griddle surface on it. The first part of the process is kind of like the process my French friends use for making crepes. You start with some batter, and smooth it into a circle with a tool just like the one used with crepes. Next, you crack two eggs onto the batter before it solidifies, and mix them in. Then, some sort of salty plumb sauce is applied. While this is cooking, fresh green onion and cilantro gets chopped up and tossed onto it. Next, this fried, dough thing is put on top and crumbled. Red pepper sauce is added, and then the whole thing is folded twice onto itself and placed into a little bag. I'm going to try and make a movie of the very nice lady who runs the cart making one some time soon. It was fascinating to watch.

American History will never be the same...

2008-08-28T04:40:00.000-07:00

I did two interesting things today. First, I had to go to a Chinese hospital and have a full physical examination, even though I paid to have one completed in the states before I left. My physical examination forms from the states didn't have a giant, red stamp overlapping a photograph of me. Seriously. That was the reason the exam report wouldn't work. So, today I had to go to another physical examination, and have the following performed:

--blood drawn
--a chest x-ray
--an ekg
--a urine sample taken (after being told to drink anything or eat anything
--blood pressure checked

etc., etc., etc.

The whole experience made me a little uncomfortable. I would have been uncomfortable, even if I spoke any Mandarin. Not speaking Mandarin made me extra uncomfortable. If you ever happen to come over here and need to go through a government physical examination, I'll let you in on what to expect:

Basically, you go in, go to a desk, give them about four passport photos which you MUST have purchased ahead of time, then you get a form. Then you fill out the form, wait in a line, and have them take a digital picture of you that they check against your passport. This is so each of the different doctors in the building, at the six different stations, will be able to pull up your picture on their computer in the six different rooms and verify that it's you, as you continue on your merry way. After your digital picture, you go to the window and pay, and then you go around to each of the different doctors' rooms as fast as you can. All of the rooms branch off of the same hall, and there are a ton of people scurrying in an out of all of the rooms.

The hall reminded me of the Franz Kafka novel The Trial. It also reminded me of the Orson Welles movie-version of that novel ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXA7RtM_GFY ).

Each time you go into a room, to...let's say, take off your shirt, lay down on a table and get slathered up with that weird ultrasound lubricant they use for EKG tests,--wait, I'm getting confused--I had BOTH an ultrasound and an EKG test performed. Both of them had lubricant. Anyways, there will be several people continuously appearing in the room, waiting in a huddled line for you to finish and hop off the table so that they can have their turn. Everyone will be speaking Mandarin. Constantly.

So, here was the most hilarious part of the experience--I was a little bit stressed out, what with the scurrying and the lubricant, and when they took my blood pressure in the blood pressure room (I think it was room 3) it was a little bit high. I told my Laowai-wrangler Sylvia, who told the doctor, that I check my blood pressure regularly, and that it's normally very good; it was probably just a little high because I was nervous from running around for the examinations. SO, the doctor talks to my Laowai-wrangler saying something I'm not sure about and we continue on to the blood-letting room. While we're waiting on the bench in that room for the spot where the needle pricked me to clot, Sylvia keeps saying to me "Don't be nervous. It's okay. You should not be nervous with the exam," and making sort of soothing hand-motions to me. I thought at the time that this was really nice of Sylvia. She works for my employer and has been helping me out for the past week, so we're sort of getting to be friends. I thought the concern was sweet on her part. THEN she asked me "Well, are you ready?" I sort of blinked at her. Basically, the blood-pressure people told her that they were going to let me try the test again. That's why she was telling me not to be nervous. SO, we go back into the blood pressure room and I stick my arm back into the machine. Sylvia stands directly in front of me the entire time, this second go-round, and says "don't be nervous, don't be nervous, don't be nervous" over and over again. This makes me nervous. But, I eventually got out of there and I think everything went alright. After we left, I scurried over to the building that my employer's office is in and went up to the 11th floor to meet with the woman in charge of the contracts/teaching-jobs, etc.

This leads me to interesting thing-of-the-day #2:

I found out from her that I am going to be teaching American History to groups of Chinese students instead of English grammar, as I previously thought. I am intrigued by the idea of this, even though I am probably not qualified to do such a thing. I will research. I will "bone up" on teaching American History, even though I am full of questions, so that I will do a passable job. How does one teach American History in English to students whom are all under the age of 12? Will we sing "Yankie Doodle Dandy?" Is it appropriate for me to teach them to sing "The Battle of New Orleans?" I mean, I am living in a city that factored significantly in The Boxer Rebellion. Suggestions are welcome. It will all be fodder for poems, or critical essays, I say. This second interesting situation of the day is the reason for the picture of William Cutting. Also, here are the lyrics to The Battle of New Orleans:

Well, in eighteen and fourteen we took a little trip
along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans,
And we caught the bloody British near the town of New Orleans.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, I see'd Mars Jackson walkin down the street
talkin' to a pirate by the name of Jean Lafayette [pronounced La-feet]
He gave Jean a drink that he brung from Tennessee
and the pirate said he'd help us drive the British in the sea.

The French said Andrew, you'd better run,
for Packingham's a comin' with a bullet in his gun.
Old Hickory said he didn't give a dang,
he's gonna whip the britches off of Colonel Packingham.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, we looked down the river and we see'd the British come,
and there must have been a hundred of 'em beatin' on the drum.
They stepped so high and they made their bugles ring
while we stood by our cotton bales and didn't say a thing.

Old Hickory said we could take 'em by surprise
if we didn't fire a musket til we looked 'em in the eyes.
We held our fire til we see'd their faces well,
then we opened up with squirrel guns and really gave a yell.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, we fired our cannon til the barrel melted down,
so we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round.
We filled his head with cannon balls and powdered his behind,
and when they tetched the powder off, the gator lost his mind.

We'll march back home but we'll never be content
till we make Old Hickory the people's President.
And every time we think about the bacon and the beans,
we'll think about the fun we had way down in New Orleans.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin,
But there wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go.
They ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch 'em
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
But there wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

our neighborhood

2008-08-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

Sally (my sister) gave me some good prodding about posting more here. I think I've been in a state of constant grok over the past few days. In my defense, our internet just got hooked up about fifteen minutes ago in our apartment, so prior to today posting wasn't very easy.

Also, I had this theory that I think my friend Jason would approve of, that I tested with our internet service guy this morning. I packed our modem, our router, and all of our connection cables in my luggage. I knew that the DSL would be "turned on" today, so this morning I woke up and gathered together every appliance adapter we own and proceeded to hook up everything. I figured that a tech-guy working for an internet company, regardless of country, would be able to visually recognize that everything was connected and we wouldn't even need to talk about it (which would be impossible, me not speaking Mandarin). The guy walked in, I pointed to a few things, showed him where the phone jack was connected, and he sat down, typed a few things, set a password, and was out of the apartment in about 10 minutes. Every interaction I have where I can actually communicate something to someone is becoming a sort of victory for me. In any case, on to the fun stuff!

I took a few photos and movies of our apartment and neighborhood:

This last movie I made after it rained pretty heavily. In it are two guys across the alley/courtyard area from us who are sweeping the standing water left after the storm into the gutter. Close to the spot where these guys are sweeping, there are a couple of older Chinese men who have adopted several stray cats in the neighborhood. I like to watch these guys feed their cats and (I assume) debate their relative merits from our kitchen window while I'm cooking dinner. My next blogging goal is to get some decent pictures of these guys with the cats.

Erin's new blog

2008-08-25T00:27:00.000-07:00

My wife Erin's old blog can't be accessed over here, so she just (as of 10 minutes ago, from what I've been observing from my table here at the internet cafe) started a new one. Here is the link to her new blog:
http://anotheruncarvedblog.blogspot.com/

home sweet China

2008-08-22T01:41:00.000-07:00

This will just be a short post. Erin and I are in China, but our internet won't be connected for a few more days. Here is a list of things I've done so far:

1) Been in a police station five times. This was for residency permits. I am going back again on Monday.

2) Taught thirty five-year-olds about the four seasons. I did this today for my job. I drew a really bad picture of stick-figures being carried into the air by their kites for my "Spring" visual aids. The kids loved them. They also like icecream.

3) Learned to live as a mute. I have a small notebook that I ask people from my job, and Erin's brother Sam to write things in for me, like, directions to specific places so that I can show them to taxi drivers. This is working well so far. It is my only means of communication.

4) Eaten the best xioxia (sp?) in the world. These are dumplings. I had "mutton and cillantro" duplings. If I had my way I would eat these for every meal, for the rest of my life.

5) Saw a three or four year old little boy peeing in a field next to a bunch of well-dressed people walking around. I was in a taxi. He waved at me.

6) Looked at three apartments. This was a long process. We rented one and I love our neighborhood. I will take pictures.

There are a million other things I should write. I'll have to write them here later. I miss everyone in the states, but this place is very, very good for me I think. I've written two prose poems already. I've been sticking to my PhD reading-list schedule and I'll post it here soon. Elliott asked me about this before we left. Also, if Joe happens to be reading this, I haven't been able to access the internet since we arrived (we're in an internet cafe right now), but I'll soon be e-mailing you my introduction and lists that Mike looked over. That's a really strange thing to be communicating in a blog. I think I've forgotten how to internet in the last few weeks. We'll see.

Also!!

I registered for the 3-Day novel writing contest again. Anybody else feel like taking part? If so, e-mail me, and we can be "friends" on their message board.

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop

2008-08-12T16:16:00.000-07:00

Today my dad flew in from Spokane. We walked down on the pier and stopped by Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. I'm assuming that most kids who grew up in the northwest have been to this place at one time or another. I like the old machines the shop is filled with. Some of these might have even sparked my personal interest in slide projectors, old typewriters and other contraptions of antiquity. This occurred to me today. It also occurred to me that one of the reasons I enjoy reading Arman's blog, aside from learning about what he's doing with his new album and laughing at the movie of our friend Dave dressed up like a clown, is because Arman seems like a person who is also fascinated by interesting machines. I wonder if we have this in common because we were born on the same day? There's no telling. Come to think of it, my cousin Daniel, who is a DJ, also seems like someone who is fascinated by interesting machines. I bet that Arman and Daniel would get along well with one another. Daniel lives in Hong Kong with his wife and owns/runs a club named yumla . I hope that Erin and I can visit Yumla and Dan while we're in China. My best friend Zach was a little disturbed when he met Daniel, years ago when Zach and I were both eighteen, because Zach thought Daniel and I looked very similar back then. It genuinely freaked Zach out. He told me after our trip that Daniel and I even stood in similar postures and that the whole experience was like watching the Patty Duke Show. This has been a really long tangent. Back to what I was saying about Ye Olde Curiosity Shop:

My sister and I used to ask our parents for change so that we could see what all of the different machines did. I remember one machine absolutely terrifying me. Part of the terror, I think, was that I didn't expect the machine to be sinister, and it turned out to be very sinister. I think that Jolly Jack's laugh is maybe the most disturbing thing I've ever heard. To commemorate this childhood terror, I made a movie of what happens when you put a coin into Jolly Jack. Make sure you turn the volume up so that you can hear his creepy laugh:

I also found all of the antique "film" machines I remember from when I was a kid. I was maybe five or six the first time I put some change in the machine with the Charlie Chaplin images. Using this thing today made me think of my good friend Elliott Stevens and our mutual love of Charlie Chaplin. Elliott even dressed up like Charlie Chaplin one Halloween. Here's a picture of Elliott and Erin at a Halloween party that year:

Anyways, I made I made a movie of the Chaplin machine specifically for Elliott, who, along with Rob Baumann and both of their roommates, is taking care of our cats while we're in China. So, Elliott, this one's for you:

I also remember being maybe nine or ten and finding the following machine at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. I think I had to distract my parents and my sister so that I could use it without them knowing:

Finally, right before we left the shop today, I used the fortune telling machine I've used every time that I've ever been there. I received a rather disturbing fortune. Actually, the first half of the fortune is spot-on for me, but the last part about traveling is troublesome. I tried to take a picture of the fortune, but it didn't turn out very well. I may post it here. This is what the fortune from the machine said:

Estrella's Prophecies:

A wise old owl sat on an oak
The more he sat the less he spoke
The less he spoke, the more he heard
Why can't you be like that wise old bird?

Yes my friend your greatest fault is that you talk too much. Learn to keep a secret. However, your other golden qualities make up for your talkativeness. Your anxiety to help others, and your consideration of other people's wishes has earned you many friends.

A friend will urge you to take a trip. Don't do it. Your best interest lies in remaining at home. I'm depending on your good sense to lead you on the right path.

Drop another Coin in the slot and I will tell more

Your Luck Numbers--286--87, 88, 89, 90.

Here is a movie of the machine giving me my fortune. Also, you can see Erin and me waving in the reflection of the glass:

this limbo isn't half bad

2008-08-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

We're in limbo in Seattle for about ten days. Washington still feels like "home" to me, which I think is very strange. I have spent at least a third of my life (off and on) in the midwest; I counted the years and figured this out today. I am suspicious that I have not been "allowing" the midwest to feel like home as much as it should. Maybe I don't have control over allowing a place to feel like home or not, but I think that I might have some say in it. I am sorry midwest. I should be better to you. I promise to do better.

A week from now we'll be in the air, heading to Beijing. Today, my mom took us down to the market to walk around. We walked from the market to the Olympic Sculpture Park that SAM opened up since I was last here. I like it. I tried to take some pictures of things that looked interesting to me on our walk.

We walked by one of the buildings I did demolition work on when I was 22 or 23. It is across the street from the Seattle Art Institute. I mention this because I workshopped a poem that had a scene in it that described the exact intersection we walked across. I had a lot of strange feelings walking around Seattle. I haven't been back here for about three years. I have some strong memories of walking through the market when I was a little kid. I also have some strong memories of wandering around Seattle in my early twenties trying to figure out what the hell was going on in my life. Same market. Same smells. Same feelings.

I also made a movie of a violinist at the market. I like the look on Erin's face at the end of the movie. She tolerates me. I am lucky that she tolerates me. I do a lot of silly things. I also made a movie of this floating thing. I'm not sure what it is. It might be a net. Erin says it is a bumper that goes between ships, or maybe between a ship and the dock. I'm wondering how she knows this. Maybe she had a secret life as a sailor that I know nothing about.

Sam is kind of a big deal in the PRC

2008-08-02T21:13:00.001-07:00

This is sort of a re-posting of something hilarious my wife put on her blog, but here is a recent clip of my brother-in-Law Sam singing a song in Chinese on a Chinese television show. It was a contest for Western Chinese language speakers. Sam recently completed a Masters in Linguistics at a Chinese University. He also sings Journey songs really well at Karaoke.

a brief update about a very bad uhaul

2008-07-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

Currently, all of our stuff (excepting luggage) is in storage by the barn on Erin's parents' land. We've completely checked out of our old apartment. Through a complex series of events, we ended up moving our belongings THREE times on Sunday. It's still a little hazy, but here is what I remember about what happened:

1. We go to pick up our Uhaul. Since it was an "in-town" move from Lawrence to Topeka, they would only rent it to us for three and a half hours. We reserved a specific time to pick it up, but then we waited in line for twenty minutes when we actually tried to pick it up, before we got to the counter. They wouldn't add twenty minutes on to our three and a half hours. In fact, when we suggested that they let us have some more time because we'd been waiting in line, they threatened not to rent us the Uhaul we had reserved and told us: "You need to understand that it's a very busy time. I have someone picking up this Uhual at 4:30. I'm not renting it to you if you aren't going to have it back by 4:30."

2. We rent the Uhaul. Erin, Megan, Elliott and I frantically load up the Uhaul--frantically, but very carefully. Erin jumps in the Uhaul and I jump in my car to follow her to Topeka.

3. It should be noted that at this point in the causal chain of events, the temperature outside was around 100 degrees--probably the hottest part of the day.

4. At the intersection of sixth and Rockledge, right down from our house, the Uhaul died, blocking traffic that was trying to get to I-70.

5. Panic ensues.

6. We call Uhaul. They send someone out in another truck. Strangely, without inspecting our truck, the Uhaul employee backs a second truck up illegally so that it's behind ours (see illustration).

7. Many cars honk. Many cars pass by.

8. The Uhaul employee tells us a) they were never supposed to rent that truck because it doesn't have air-conditioning and it has a broken fuel-pump.

9. The Uhaul employee tells us b) "Don't worry--we won't charge you for turning in the truck late. Now we need to put all of your stuff from the first truck into the second truck."

10. Erin and I move our things--all of them--frantically, for the second time in about an hour. The Uhaul employee "helps" us.

11. It looks like everything won't fit, since we're having to rearrange the order of objects in the truck.

12. The Uhaul employee says "Hey, I can probably get you guys a 'deal' on a smaller trailer, if you want one to put the extra stuff in."

13. With effort, I prevent Erin from punching the Uhaul employee in the face.

14. We leave some unimportant things on our curb.

15. We drive to Topeka. We unload everything we own, moving it for the third time in one day.

16. We return the truck, after-hours, to the Uhaul place.

17. We vacuum our old apartment.

18. We drive back to Topeka.

19. I think about Samuel Beckett.

20. I think this was all a philosophical test to prepare me for traveling in China.

21. I think that I passed the test.

22. I think about Samuel Beckett again.

23. I fall asleep murmuring combinations of the phrases "What are we doing?", "Waiting for Godot..." and "Ah, yes..."

It's a good thing they don't weigh carry-on luggage

2008-07-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

I never anticipated how difficult trying to decide what books to pack for an entire year would be. I even planned this out several months ago, but it's still hard. The books that I specifically need to take in order to study my comprehensive lists, or for my online Science Fiction as Literature course are simple. It's the "extra" books that are ripping my heart out. Here is a list of painful questions I had to ask myself this morning:

1. How necessary is the red book of John Cheever stories?
2. Can I somehow wedge the complete short stories of Flannery O'Conner in there?
3. What if I get halfway through the year and I'm really depressed and don't have any Richard Hugo poetry?
4. Is it better to take the complete works of H.D. (which weighs a lot) or only to take Trilogy? What if I start reading Trilogy and then NEED the rest of the poems?
5. Should I take the books of poetry I love the most, that I reread constantly, or should I focus on taking books of poetry that are new to me?
6. What's better; books that you can learn things from (in terms of craft) or books that will comfort you?
7. Anthologies, or a select group of complete books? If I take anthologies, I might have a greater variety of things to read, but since I'm planning a book-length project of my own, learning how other writers have arranged items in a book--specifically the order they chose for their works--might teach me more.

Any advice from people who read this post would be greatly appreciated.

you say "luddite," I say "maybe"

2008-07-16T06:52:00.000-07:00

Deciding what to take with me for a year has been difficult. I'll have two 50 lb. bags which I'll check, and two carry-ons. I need at least one of those bags to be entirely full of books. Luckily, I found a good bookstore/lending library in Beijing. That should help.

I'm also packing my laptop and something called a PC6. I have a problem becoming fascinated with outdated technology. Our apartment is filled with old slide projectors and typewriters. Recently, I've also started acquiring a few older computers/word-processors. This addiction to older typing machines might relate to my writing process. I think that the internet destroys productivity, or at least, it has the potential to do so. One thing I like about laptops is that they allow me to get away from my house. I do a lot of my best writing away from home, I think. However, I get easily distracted by checking my e-mail, etc,. when what I really need to do is focus for a prolonged period of time on things that I'm writing. After a lot of research, I bought a PC6 for several reasons. This is a word-processor usually marketed to primary schools. I read someone's blog that mentioned one of these machines before getting one. I wish I could find the blog and link it here. Here are the reasons I bought it:

1) It has a 36-hour battery life. Mine has a rechargeable battery pack, but it can also run on 4aa batteries. I hate how I have to keep plugging in my laptop. I could take this thing on a trip to Beijing and not have to plug it in all weekend.
2) It was designed to be used (primarily) by children. You can drop this thing on the ground and it won't break. I could probably submerge it in water and it wouldn't break.
3) It weighs less than 3 lbs. and I'll be bicycling everywhere.
4) It comes with a receiver that connects to any USB port. You can "beam" any text file you create on it into ANY text program on your computer--word, e-mail, etc., etc. I could connect the receiver to a Mac and send my text file to a mac.

Alright, this is sounding like a commercial, so I'm going to stop. The only sad part about the PC6 is that I'll likely retire my IBM Thinkpad. I won't actually get rid of it, but I can't take the 30 lb. thing to China. My wife will be happy about this. She hates the loud beeping noise the Thinkpad makes when you turn it on. Here are some pictures of my poor Thinkpad:

Here are some pictures of the PC6 and a short film of me "beaming" something. Erin and I keep laughing and saying the word "beam" each time we look at the PC6. Erin commented that "beaming" technology sounds like something a computer company would have talked about in the 80's, when they thought about the future. I'm still waiting for my hover-skateboard that Michael J. Fox had in Back to the Future. I wish someone would get on that.

the countdown begins

2008-07-14T22:41:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of the city I am moving to in China:

I'm trying to think of something auspicious to write for the first post of this new blog. I frequently have pretty poor blog discipline, but am going to stay focused with this one. I want to document what my expectations are for living in China prior to actually being there, and then record what happens to me as honestly as I can, as I experience it. I'll be flying from Seattle to Beijing on August 16th, so I have a little time to exorcise some of my preconceived notions. I already have my job for the year and my visa taken care of. That process alone taught me some things. I think I'll start with a top-10 list of things I've already experienced or learned about during the getting-ready stages, some of which surprised me:

1. I have health insurance. It's free. My teaching job in China is giving this to me. My country won't give me health insurance for free.
2. I had to get a chest x-ray and an EKG for my documentation. Going to China is serious business.
3. I used my economic stimulus package from George to pay for my tests that I need in order to travel to China. I will stimulate the U.S. economy by going to China. I'm not sure how that is going to happen.
4. I compared Chinese Amazon.com (try typing "English novel" into the search field) to United States Amazon.com when trying to decide which books I need to buy and take with me. This process caused a wave of patriotism to wash over me.
5. I've wanted to learn how to play Mahjong for a very long time, so that when I get to China, I'll be able to make friends with the really old men who play Mahjong in a lot of the parks. I bought a book on Mahjong. Mahjong is incredibly complicated. You have to know what direction the sun is in compared to the table where you are playing in order to decide who sits where. I am not making this up. The quest to learn how to play Mahjong is going to take a very long time.
6. Sometimes I think capitalism is going to ruin part of this experience, even though I know there will be moments when I'll be homesick for "western" things. Here is a list of western businesses I know are in Tianjin: Burger King, McDonalds, T.G.I. Friday's, Wal-Mart, KFC, Starbucks, Subway, Papa John's, Pizza Hut. I have already set a resolution for myself; I am going to try and avoid eating any Western food for as long as I possibly can.
7. China does not have very good toilets. I am not talking about the squatting toilets which terrify many westerners. I mean the western-style toilets. The pipes are small and inadequate for the disposal systems connected to many Western style toilets in China, because there are no large sewers. This fact makes me think about what a luxury it is for many of us Americans that our cities were constructed later than many European cities, at a time when innovations in plumbing were being discovered. As a result, most of our cities have some kind of sewer-systems that were build prior to expansion and urban sprawl. However, if you lived in a place that had been inhabited for hundreds and hundreds of years prior to innovations in plumbing, you might not have a shiny, gigantic sewer-system, would you? I think too many Westerners are quick to criticize plumbing in other countries without thinking, whether they are traveling in Europe or in Asia. Seriously--what are you supposed to do? Tear up all of the skyscrapers in Beijing so that you can build a sewer? It's not very realistic. If we had to do something like that in New York, nobody would go for it and the sewer would never get built, and yet, we're very quick to criticize other countries for something which is essentially an accident of history; we lucked out and plumbing was improved before our cities became too inhabited. What do we want? A medal?

Digression: I learned recently that Chinese people are frequently confused when they see chase-scenes in western movies that take place in large, open sewers you can run around in. The pipes are only about six inches in diameter for a lot of the "sewer" systems in China. A couple of things: 1) Victor Hugo is very popular in China. I'm not sure why. I wonder what they make of the chapter in Les Miserables where Jean Valjean is chased through the sewer? 2) My wife Erin told me that in a lot of businesses with Western-style toilets in China, you can see the scuff marks on the toilet seat from where people have climbed up onto them and squatted while standing on the edge of the bowl. This makes perfect sense to me. How would you know how to use some strange-looking Western toilet if you had only seen the squatting kind? This is yet another situation where I feel like people who come from rural environments are made to feel embarrassed when they encounter urban social practices. It doesn't matter whether you're from Iowa and you don't know what fork to use at the Waldorf, or if you're from a rural province in China and are confused by the western toilet; the social web of ritual behavior necessary to move through an urban setting can be daunting. Of course, the reverse is also 100% true. Just wait until I get to my own personal "squatting toilet" post--the one I know is in my future. I will feel like a Western fool.
8. I can't think of any more right now; I'll need to finish this list tomorrow.