Birthday Stats

In the half hour before I have to set off on my arduous journey to the railway station I'm glued to my TV watching live broadcasts of the final preparations for the China's 60th birthday celebration. Some interesting statistics I've just heard:

1.7 million -- people participating in the parade
2 -- AM since performers started standing in position at Tiananmen Square
169 -- steps flag bearers will walk on Chang'an Avenue
1'6" -- minutes and seconds it takes for a certain portion of the parade to pass
8 -- the number of teeth each singer in the children's choir is to show in a smile
80,000 -- children bearing colored banners forming patterns you can see from aerial view
1 -- second each banner change is supposed to be done in

I'm sure there'll be more astounding numbers rattled off on TV today. I'll be watching from my train car!

Signing off for a week...tales from the desert to come after!

Daily Anecdote: Ringing In the 60th

China’s 60th birthday is just two days away. Here in Beijing it feels like the entire city is on spring-cleaning duty. Potted plants in bright greens, reds, and yellows are everywhere – lining sidewalks, stacked onto metal stands to form the shape of pagodas, and arranged according to color to spell out “National Celebration.” Banners bearing upbeat slogans (“Continue striving for ‘xiaokang’ society!“) have been strung over bridges and tunnels. Large structures, be they residential complexes or commercial space, proudly bear China’s “five star red flag.” Everything has to be spic and span when the largest parade in China’s history (1.7 million people are reported to be taking part) rolls onto Chang’an Avenue.

The works don’t end at making the city look its best. Beijing is also making sure everyone is behaving their best. For weeks I puzzled over the groups of middle-aged people sitting on folding stools at street corners. Are they exercise groups? Conversation clubs? Who are these early birds plunking themselves down at busy intersections before the clock even strikes 8 AM?

The mystery was solved on Monday when these rag tag groups showed up uniformly decked out in bright yellow t-shirts painted with the “60” logo. Their red armbands now say “Capital Security Volunteer.” These citizens are “voluntarily” (in truth this is a paid temp job) patrolling street corners to spot suspicious activity that could get in the way of the celebrations. All security personnel in the city – private guards employed by banks, offices, and homes – have also been given this volunteer uniform and instructed to look out for party poopers. In the extensive subway system there’s yet another group of temporary recruits wearing bright blue hats and shirts (emblazoned with “Beijing Volunteer”) and sporting matching fanny packs. Their job is to watch every metro car. With this many people out on surveillance there’s little chance that a group of disgruntled Uighurs or Tibetans or anyone harboring the host of contemporary Chinese discontents can disrupt the festivities.

It wouldn’t be a party if everyone were just being watched. There are fun parts too for the everyman. The government has promoted a whopping sixty patriotic films for release around the October 1 holiday. I’m not talking about black and white propaganda films here. It’s stuff that people actually want to watch! The biggest movie release of the bunch is “The Founding of a Republic”, directed by a group of big ticket filmmakers, including Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. This two-hour movie is a starfest – I counted over forty famous faces making appearances, most of them in cameo roles. The Brad Pitts and Angelina Jolies of Chinese cinema (including HK) are all involved. It’s like “Ocean’s 11” times twenty. You won’t find artistic collaboration to this extent under any other circumstance.

“Founding” tells the epic story of the Chinese civil war and how Mao Zedong and the Communist Party eventually won. Other patriotic movies promoted for the 60th anniversary are themed around espionage and WWII. These also bear long lists of A-list actors and the trailers have the seductive appeal of last year’s “Lust Caution.”

I watched “Founding,” out of a sense of duty to accompany my mother and also because the trailer was poignantly appealing. I have to say I quite enjoyed it – the cinematography was phenomenal (I doubt any other Chinese film has had so generous a budget), the costumes exquisite, and the representation of modern Chinese history was not as biased as I expected. Even the English subtitles were all written correctly, making the film, in theory, internationally distributable. The only gaffe in the movie was the miscasting of two foreign characters – an African American soldier was played by what I can guess to be a Kenyan and John Stuart Leighton (the famous American ambassador) was played by an Australian. (With so many foreigners living in China I would’ve expected more appropriate foreign casting). Small faux pas aside, if this were a purely commercial film it would rank among the “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” types and garner international awards for its arresting visuals.

The biggest downer to the big ole party is the mobility restrictions it has placed on Beijing residents. On the big day, I’m scheduled to set off for a week-long tour of Inner Mongolia and nearby areas, including a few days of camping in the desert. But, like most other travelers, I’m still confused as to whether I can actually get myself to the train station. The government has severely limited private traffic for security concerns and to ensure the logistics of transporting almost two million people to their performing post goes smoothly.

Beijing’s main subway line, the East-West Line 1, will be suspended from midnight on September 30 to midnight the next day. Chang’an Avenue is closed to traffic for the 24-hour period, as are the 2nd and 3rd Ring roads. There are rumors – but no reliable official word – that parts of the 4th Ring road will also be closed. This essentially means citizens can’t get from point to point within the city starting on the eve of the birthday.

Already my commute tonight became onerous. On the way home from work I saw more police cars and starchy navy uniforms than taxis. Forced to take a bus, I found myself squished against other human sardines in a bus spilling over with riders eager to get home before the virtual lock down begins. Gridlock traffic was worse than usual.

I'm nervously awaiting an official announcement on road conditions, but even if this comes out tomorrow there’s always the possibility of the government making last minute changes to make sure its agenda gets carried out first and foremost. Here’s hoping that I won’t celebrate the 60th anniversary of my country’s founding with a backpack strapped to me, trekking 30km across Beijing to get to the train station on time!

Daily Anecdote: Mom and Pop Recycling

I’m on a budding green streak so I did a little poking and digging into recycling in China. I was always under the impression that Chinese people don’t care about recycling; we’re too busy making our newfound wealth to bother with separating the trash or participating in green fundraisers. Apparently I’m wrong. Recycling in China is a big deal, it just happens in a different way than I’m used to.

My perception that Chinese “don’t care” comes from the fact that I’m accustomed to seeing recycling born out of a moral decision. People living in developed countries choose to rinse out their milk bottles and sort their garbage because they are environmentally conscious. Although this level of green morality is not yet be widespread in China, recycling happens here -- and extensively so -- as a result of a million small economic decisions. People recycle in developing countries because they can make a living doing it.

The truth is in the numbers. China is one of the world leaders in recycling waste paper, which makes up some 60% of the fiber used to manufacture paper products here. I suspect there are similarly surprising statistics in plastics and glass.

Indeed, everywhere I look I see mom and pop recyclers busily going about their work. On most street corners there are old ladies fishing treasures out of the city garbage cans with tongs. The more vigilant ones follow me around if they see me carrying a half empty bottle of beverage, waiting to snatch it up the minute I dispose of it. I’ve even had people come up to me to ask, “Are you going to finish that?” (This usually leads to my gulping the drink down to save them the trouble of sifting through the bin). Tricycles regularly go through residential neighborhoods, their riders beating drums, singing in loud voices for people to sell their household waste.

Once the reusables are gathered, they are collected via an extensive network of centers. Tricycles zip by every road with their “trunks” piled high with aluminum cans, plastic bottles, or corrugated board. They’re en route to the recycling centers, which seem to have multiplied over the years when I wasn’t watching. If you go by a nondescript warehouse at the right hour you’ll see tricycles lining up to deposit their finds in exchange for cash. The dinky rooms hold monstrously large mountains of recyclable goods.

Whether economic or moral, environmentally-friendly decisions are made on a daily basis here. The government is doing its part to bridge the gap between moral and cash-incentivized green behavior. I’ve already mentioned the “no free plastic bags” policy now in place in China. Public awareness campaigns are also on the rise. On subway cars, an animated frog named Leon lights up the screens and to entertain commuters with cartoon clips about the merits of recycling. On buses, valuable advertising space is taken up with little diagrams about how many trees or barrels of oil can be saved from recycling. I hope that as China makes the transition from developing to developed country our green behavior will evolve seamlessly from cash-based decisions to morality-driven ones.

Being Green: Paper Napkins and Plastic Sporks

I’m not much of an environmentalist. I don’t hug trees, I rarely think about energy efficient light bulbs, and I’ve never used the words “carbon footprint” in a conversation. Yet, in my travels this year, the issue of paper and plastic usage keeps coming to my attention. As my friends and family know well, much of what I do when I travel is eat. Naturally, it is at dining tables that I felt most keenly the big differences in how people around the world consume paper and plastic.

When I left New York for Singapore two years ago, I had grown used to the luxurious (some would say wasteful) usage of disposables in America. Arriving in Singapore, I was at first dismayed to find that most casual eateries (of which there are plenty) in this foodie nation do not provide napkins to diners. This “napkin stinginess” bugged me initially but after living there a while I got used to toting around my own tissue packets. If I happen to forget my pocket tissues, too bad for me, I would have to forego the luxury of wiping my hands clean and would have to wash instead.

Other aspects of Singapore’s paper and plastic conscientiousness grew on me. I started to like seeing foods packaged in strange vessels – drinks poured into small plastic sacs tied at the end; chicken rice and char kway teo wrapped in waxed paper; soup is about the only thing that entitles you to the extravagance of a plastic take-out bowl. The inconveniences of dining without free-flowing napkins and disposable containers melted away into a kind of rustic Asian charm.

Going from Singapore to my “summer home” (more like budget rental) in Paris was an easy switch. Although American tourists complained about the lack of proper take-out equipment, I was happy to carry my baguette out of the bakery with only a small square of pastry paper covering its middle. At the markets, free plastic bags are so small and flimsy that I preferred bringing my own foldable shopping bag. If I had stayed longer I probably would’ve splurged on a panier on wheels, like the ones old ladies use to haul their groceries home. At restaurants, I felt more civilized dabbing my lips with cloth serviettes instead of paper napkins. And I came to appreciate why many restaurants don’t do take-out – why bother stocking up on expensive plastic wares? And what insane diners would prefer eating in the solitude of their cramped apartment instead of in an ambient café? The French paper and plastic stinginess struck me as an accidentally green kind of sophistication.

When I left Europe for a visit back to the US I felt a real culture shock. After learning to live with fewer paper napkins and plastic sporks (and liking it), the sight of a delivery boy on my doorstep holding four lunch tacos in TWO separate paper bags, each double wrapped in a heavy duty plastic bag, weirded me out. What’s with the reinforcement? Do the restaurants think a paper bag by itself would’ve torn under the weight of two tacos carried over five blocks?

Open a take-out bag and you’ll find more confounding excess – three full sets of plastic cutlery (fork, spoon, and knife) for a two-person order, a hefty serving of folded tree (in case the food is delivered to a household devoid of its own towels and tissues).

Elsewhere, juice joints stuff stacks of plush napkins into your hand when you buy a single cup of OJ, perhaps expecting a spill every time. Ziploc bags are bought and discarded without a thought. Durable take-out food containers rarely get a rinse and a reuse. God bless America, a land of abundance, especially when it comes to napkins and sporks.

It was another big switch, the biggest one in fact, to land in Beijing after being in the US. I didn’t read the January 2008 memo that banned shops from handing out free plastic bags to customers. So I was the only sucker paying up big bucks for plastic receptacles for my groceries when everyone else whipped out their reusable cloth shopping bags. When it comes to paper, China is and has always been stingy. If restaurants provide paper napkins they’re usually modest, flimsy squares dispensed one piece (and one ply) at a time. Take-out boxes here aren’t so much boxes as paper envelopes fortified with a little plastic.

The dining and shopping experience in China has quickly evolved into a system of BYOPB (plastic bag), BYOC (container – I’ve seen people bring their kitchen pots to the neighborhood restaurant for take-out), and BYOTP (toilet paper). These inconveniences bother me a little, especially when I’ve forgotten to BMO (bring my own). Yet, on a bigger scale, paper and plastic stinginess actually makes me feel better about the shopping and eating that I do everyday. My purchases may make a hole in my wallet but at least they’re not doing the same to the ozone layer, adding to a landfill, or felling a forest.

Daily Anecdote: Bargaining 101

Inflation and currency appreciation have killed my game. I used to come to China for annual wardrobe updates on the cheap. Now China is so expensive that I’m resorting to the markets for a good deal. (The department stores long ago exceeded my willingness to pay for domestic brands and Shenzhen factory quality). Although I didn’t find what I needed (a fake North Face bag to replace my broken real one) at the right price at Silk Street market, the trip did refresh my memory of just how varied bargaining styles are. Here’s a modest catalogue of bargaining strategies for novices…

The Aggro
Shopkeepers like to wear you down with loud and persistent haggling. After a while I usually figure that my eardrums are worth more than the measly dollars I’m trying to bargain down, so I pay up. But the Aggro bargainer never caves in. He counters the seller’s strategy by being even more unbearable himself. My cousin Evan is an expert Aggro. He’ll plants himself firmly in a stall and shout ludicrous things until the vendor gives him the discount, just to get him out of there. A typical Evan line, “What? 30RMB? For 30 RMB I’ll make one and sell it back to you! 5RMB, that’s all I’m going to pay!”

The Poor Card
The polar opposite to the Aggro, the Poor Card approach is an exercise in solemnity and silence. The buyer remains uncomfortably stoic while the vendor chatters away. He doesn’t engage in the two-way negotiation, he just reiterates a desired price when the seller takes a breather from talking. A classic line is, “But this is all the money I have,” said over and over again. There’s also a Poor Card expert in my family -- my mom. Her skillful silence got me a fancy set of bedding (pillow cases, cushions, sheets, the whole shebang) for 300 when the seller asked for 900.

“This Sucks”
This strategy works for people who can bring themselves to shamelessly nitpick. The buyers see something they like, try it on, decide it is a good thing, and then proceeds to disparage it. Disdainful body language is a helpful complement -- holding up the item with two fingers, shaking it, screwing up your face to say, “Look at this shoddy stitching” all work. Disdain quickly turns to glee when the seller gives up and hands you that piece of clothing you really didn’t want just half a minute ago.

The Cutesies
This occasionally works for pretty, young girls. You’d have to try the clothes on, look dazzlingly good, prance about the stall attracting other shoppers’ attention, and sweetly ask “Ayi” (auntie) or “Jie” (older sister) to please give you a discount. Shopkeepers are pretty immune to buyers’ tricks, but once in a while they soften to a pleading girl.

The Non-bargaining Bargain
This works surprisingly well for foreigners. Often you see big white men shrugging their shoulders with an “I don’t know what I’m doing” expression, smiling guiltily, tentatively saying “No, no, I can’t pay that much.” These buyers don’t know the rules, don’t know how much things should be, don’t know how to set their price…and it works! They’re blissfully and ignorantly playing the “how low will you go” patience game.

For every buyer bargaining style in the book there’s probably a dozen matching sells. Let’s take a look at how the merchants hold up their end of the bargain.

The Linguists
Walk down any crowded alley way at Silk Street and you’ll see foreign buyers delighted with the shopkeepers’ linguistic dexterity. These guys work hard for their money, learning how to say, “Your wife is beautiful!” and “You’re killing me with your prices” in English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, just to name a few. The sight of so many vendors speaking so many languages to lure buyers may be the number one draw at the markets.

The Soft Sell
I learned about this first hand when Geoff and I were separated for a few brief minutes at Silk Street. When I found him again he had three salesgirls on his arms, tugging at his shirt, rubbing his biceps, pulling him into their stall. They don’t do this to couples but any time an unsupervised male shows up the shopkeepers pounce and show them what it means to “sa jiao.” (If you don’t know what this is, ask a friend who has dated a Chinese girl, or wait for a future posting!)

The Flatterers
White lies, even blatant lies, are rampant as sellers stroke buyers’ egos. “This dress could only work on a figure like yours! Bigger girls come by and I don’t even let them try it, I know it won’t fit.” If a piece is too big on you the vendors says, “It’s perfectly breezy for the summer.” If it’s too tight, “You don’t want to wear things loose and dowdy!” If you’re wondering about how a linen skirt will fare when the weather cools, vendors reply, “This is heavy linen, it’ll work well into the fall.” If it’s wool you’re fingering in the summer, they say, “This is good material, it’s seasonless.”

The Poor Card
Just as buyers cry poor, so do sellers. Shopkeepers love to mutter, “I tell you, I’m not making any money on this, I’m giving it to you at cost (or at a loss)!” as they start to wrap up your purchase. Right after a smile appears as he bids you adieu, and you know you might’ve asked for an even lower price.

“This Quality!”
Even though 99.9% of the goods in the big markets are made in shady factories somewhere down south (Dongguan?), that doesn’t stop the sellers from asking a high price for superior quality. Over the years I’ve heard, “This is imported.” “This is export quality.” “This is a famous Italian brand, Goocci.” “That’s a Nordic model, that’s why the sizes run big.” “This (fake) is better than the real thing.”

This last pitch threw me into some trouble at Silk Street this time. I found some North Face copies but balked when the sellers demanded RMB380 (~$55). I blurted, not as a bargaining tactic but out of pure surprise, “But a real North Face costs only $30 on sale at a US outlet.” This really didn’t sit well with the shopkeeper who insisted that his bags were made at the same factory as the real ones, with better materials.

After huffing and puffing at me for a while, the vendor resorted to the last bargaining ploy, The Dismissal. He waved me away with one hand, saying, “If you don’t have money to buy good quality why don’t you just go buy the real one.” This must be one for the ages, a fake goods peddler telling me that the real goods are cheaper!

Daily Anecdote: The Gays, the Comrades

I got to know a little about the gay community in China during my second year at university. One of my best friends from school was an openly gay Chinese man. When I came to Beijing for a summer internship I spent much of my free time hanging out with his large group of successful, confident, irreverent, and gay friends.

Prior to that summer, I hadn’t given serious thought to homosexuality in China. I was raised like most Chinese, happily oblivious to issues surrounding cultural stigmas. Gayness, like incest or serial murder, were things that we assumed only afflicted post-industrial societies, where people developed strange conditions from having too much free time on their hands.

During that summer, almost ten years ago, my first lesson on the gay scene was gay vernacular. Just as homosexuals in the west re-appropriated derogatory terms like “queer” as their own, Chinese gays also developed a tongue-in-cheek lingo. They took to calling themselves “tong zhi” (literally “comrade”). You could be a “nan tong zhi” (gay man) or “nu tong zhi” (lesbian woman), or alternatively, a “lala” (lesbian). You could also label yourself “zhi de” (straight) or “wan de” (“crooked”). I laughed at the secretive glee the gay pioneers must’ve felt when they addressed each other by the very terms of endearment used by a regime that, until 1997, deemed sodomy illegal, and until 2001, registered homosexuality as a mental illness. I, too, felt an illicit joy at being included in this largely underground community of rebels.

Nearly a decade later I’m finding a much more “out” scene in China. In the time I spent away, busily toiling as a corporate slave, China’s 30 million homosexuals have made quiet progress. I was surprised to find that I can pick up a copy of TimeOut and read about gay nightlife in Beijing. I can also now Google search China’s first ever Gay Pride Parade (in Shanghai this June) without running into a firewall. Gay activists and organizers can speak about their ambitions to set up Beijing’s first Pride Parade next year in interviews. I can even watch subtly “gay” programming on cable TV.

It is this last point that shocks me the most. Ten years ago I wouldn’t have imagined China’s tightly controlled broadcast media being remotely gay-friendly. But here I was on a Sunday afternoon watching a TV show with strong homosexual undertones.

I was attempting to bond with my broody teenage cousin who has just moved to Beijing for university, so I subjected myself to the torture of watching a celebrity variety show. Hunan Satellite, one of the more popular entertainment channels, was doing a show featuring Coco Lee, an over-the-hill Chinese American R&B singer. There were the usual vapid segments -- Coco’s life secrets, her beauty tricks and favorite foods. Then came the fan segment of the show. The producers had combed the country to find the most fanatical devotees who could sing like Coco, dress like Coco, do Coco’s signature “motor butt” hip-gyrating dance.

It was mind numbing…until the featured fans came on stage. I sat up in alert fascination – they were all men! There was a make-up artist who demonstrated how he transforms his masculine face into an uncanny resemblance to Coco (supposedly even her mom couldn’t tell the difference when shown a photo of the fake Coco). There was a young man who proudly performed the “motor butt” dance. There was even a boy who sang with Coco’s signature voice (think Mariah Carey, but in Chinese). Every minute I was expecting the central censors to cut off the programming. But it didn’t happen. The studio audience kept watching and laughing. I kept wondering how the conservative viewers at home were reacting to this overt display of male femininity.

An hour of TV convinced me that China’s mainstream view towards “comraderie” has indeed changed. We’re not quite at the point of aspirational equality yet, but people have changed enough to tolerate public representations of alternative lifestyles. Later, I learned that the unspoken official stance on homosexuality is the “Triple No” policy – no approval, no disapproval, no promotion. This leaves enough grey area for gay activists to set up support networks, but also murkiness for the government to crack down any time it feels uneasy about gay activities. It seems that with all citizen groups in China the government is happy to keep one eye shut as long as the organizations don’t get too political.

It’s still a long way to social acceptance of homosexuality from here, but at least for now China’s “comrades” and “lala’s” can party it up like never before.

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Daily Anecdote: The Elusive Fold

Anyone who is Asian, whether here in China, or in Korea and Japan, or an Asian American or Eurasian living overseas, knows the difference between a monolid and a double lid. If you didn’t grow up in a culture that prizes the elusive eye folds, here is the 101: a double eyelid is a fold of skin that creases over your eye, giving it some depth (and a natural place to put eye shadow). Many Asians aren’t blessed with this piece of non-functional anatomy and have developed “lid obsessed” cultures (and industries) to compensate.

When I was just five years old, aunties and female neighbors were already discussing the condition of my eyelids and what implications they had on my marital prospects. I had monolids when I was little, but they grew into an imbalanced pair in grade school (one mono- and one double lid). In my teenage years my eyelids morphed into a steady state, which my husband now calls the “thousand folds.” Instead of mono- or double lids, I have countless tiny creases on my eyes. It’s a bit of an anomaly, but not too displeasing to the male sex as to cause my female relations further concern.

In earlier days, the only thing people could do about their eyelids was talk. Catchy phrases and rhymes sprang forth from women’s laments and self consolations on the subject of monolids, also connoted with small eyes (another biological “flaw” common to Asians). A popular one is, “Small eyes focus light better. Big eyes disperse light.” As if optics were the primary concern here! Another one that caught on with urbanization and increasing household wealth is, “Small eyes are city chic. Big eyes are for the farms.” Depending on the eyelids of the person you ask, everyone in China seems to have their favorite lid motto.

Over time there came to be things that people could do to change the look of their lids. Cosmetics came into the picture first. I cringe now as I tell the story about my battle with lid-enhancing makeup. Years ago I walked into my senior yearbook photo session with light makeup on my face that I had applied myself. The photographer took one unimpressed look, uttered a “tsk tsk”, and ordered his makeup artist to do some “work” on my eyelids. After an uncomfortable twenty minutes in the chair I turned to see a raccoon staring back at me from the mirror. The “work” done on me was precisely the kind I always avoided – heavy-handed application of brown eye shadow to create depth where little existed and fool viewers into thinking a bigger crease has miraculously grown. I protested but the photo session was already behind schedule and I was forced to smile with raccoon eyes. That year I didn’t ask anyone to sign my yearbook page.

Makeup was but the first step towards eyelid modification. Soon, plastic surgeons had developed techniques for sewing two parts of an eyelid together into an artificial fold. This quickly became the most popular knife procedure for Chinese women. In the beginning, the handiwork wasn’t so great, leaving millions of women marching around town with protruding eyelids. To this day I see women looking unnaturally awake and alert. Knife styles have since improved, but there’s no cure for the perma-puff-lid the surgery pioneers are still sporting.

Nowadays women are more selective about jumping on the next irreversible surgery bandwagon. More sophisticated cosmetic products – not the raccoon brown eye shadow -- are a common alternative. As I flipped through a glossy magazine recently, I noted with fascination all the lid enhancing options. There is lid tape, a double-sided adhesive wearers can cut into slim strips and stick onto the eye where a crease should be. This keeps the top part of the lid stuck to the bottom part, creating a double lid…in theory. Often I see oblivious girls, after a night of partying or a particularly sweaty afternoon, with a piece of dangling tape hanging off their fake creases.

There is also lid glue. It’s probably the same stuff as you use to glue on false eyelashes, except it comes with a nifty little spatula. This tool is curved and fits the shape of a convex eye. You push it against your monolid, making a dent where a crease would be had you been so endowed, and insert a trail of glue. This seems to work better than tape and keeps the lids stuck for longer.

Who knows what the beauticians of our lid-obsessed culture will come up with next! I’m happy to report that I’ve never used a cosmetic eyelid enhancer (except under coercion a la the yearbook incident) and have managed to marry myself off. Maybe it’s because I found a foreigner who doesn’t know just what he’s missing with the double lids!

Life In the Bike Lane

Two weeks ago I accepted a part time teaching job at an international school near home. If my old life at an investment bank was life in the fast lane and my four-month honeymoon was life on the beach, this gig is most certainly life in the bike lane, literally and metaphorically.

With this job my days are becoming more structured (seven hours at school, three of which I can spend writing or reading Dr. Seuss as class prep). At the end of a week I get paid some pocket money. Not enough to add much to the bank account but just enough to put a grin on my face and prompt me into buying posh cocktails at “Xiu” on the weekend. This life in the bike lane is, so far, a happy balance.

Becoming a teacher has also put me quite literally ON the bike lane. Before going to the school to meet the principal for the first time (also the first time being in the principal’s office has meant a good thing) I Google mapped the location. The school was only three kilometers northeast of my apartment and, according to Google, a six-minute car ride away.

Not so. It seems our friends at Google haven’t figured out how to factor Beijing’s gridlock traffic into its driving time estimates. I spent twenty-five minutes each way in a taxi and paid enough in fares to set me back one Mojito. There had to be a better way to commute.

The next day I strapped a pack onto my back, thanked mom for the lunch box she prepared, and stepped onto my blue bicycle. It’s a trusty vehicle with a “girl” frame (low crossbar to accommodate dresses and skirts) and a shiny aluminum basket (already misshapen into a trapezoid when the bike fell against a wall). At $30, it’s also a cheap enough vehicle for to ride and park carelessly around Beijing, where bike theft is rampant. I silently thanked the government for paving bike lanes as wide as car lanes all around the city and was ready to go.

Out on the road I quickly discovered that I was, by far, the slowest biker. Senior citizens with gaunt frames and silver hair were whizzing by on their way to taichi practice (or to the “granny meat market perhaps).

I was also the only one who seemed to bother with traffic rules. As soon as my front wheel rolled out of the gates of the peaceful apartment complex, vehicles came at me from six directions. Bikes rolled directly towards me, making me do a double take, wondering if I’m in Singapore and should be on the left side of the road. Cars crossed intersections straight into me while I was on the pedestrian crosswalk on a green light. Motorcycles swerved at diagonal angles into me, without any regard for what color the turning light was.

I soon learned that if I was to survive and reach school I would have to work my way into the middle of a pack of bikers, huddle close, and go where everyone else steers their bikes. Forget about the lights!

Like me, my brand new vehicle was also out of place among the other contraptions on the bike lane. There’s the unremarkable two-wheelers: bikes, mopeds, and those annoying electro-bikes with pedals that whirl uselessly when the motor is on and the rider’s feet are comfortably resting on the floorboard. But even among the bike-like vehicles, a large number are in seriously patchy condition. I saw a man happily pedaling in front of me on a bike that had the main frame of an ancient Flying Pigeon, incongruously shiny aluminum mudguards over the wheels (looking rather home-made), a very sporty blue plastic backseat (ripped off a fancier mountain bike), and a handy basket on the front that looked like it would be happier in the crook of an Italian girl’s arm.

There’s also plenty of mini three-wheelers, basically “pick up trucks” in bike form, on the road. The backs of these three-wheel bikes are usually piled high with recycled bottles, metal scraps, but I also frequently see children sitting in place of goods or a curled up adult having a nap in the back.

I made it to school that day in twenty minutes. Over the last two weeks I’ve been able to do the trip in as little as fifteen minutes when the traffic is good.

The more I use the bike lane the more I realize that it’s just the place for me. I love the freedom of coming and going when I please, without having to hail a taxi or haggle with the “black cab” drivers who hover outside nice apartment buildings waiting to con newly arrived expat. As the weather cools into autumn (Beijing’s most glorious season) I sometimes get to throw a scarf around my neck and feel it trailing in the wind behind me. I don’t even mind jostling for a place in the bike hoard at intersections (making sure to always place myself in the middle among layers of “protection” should a car accidentally plow through) or shouting “Kan che!” (“Watch out, oncoming vehicle”) to anyone veering into my lane.

Some days, when the air is crisp and the sky is blue (Beijing’s smog does clear up occasionally), pedaling on my bike reminds me of school, those happy days at Stanford when my biggest worry was finishing a policy paper on time. But most days, even if it’s muggy and crowded, I feel an exhilarating happiness from being able to conduct myself from place to place independently. Knowing that my journeys to and fro have hardly cost a thing or brought more waste into the world only makes me pedal faster. And so, I’ll keep on biking and see where this latest adventure takes me.

Daily Anecdote: Big Ole Party

On October 1, China will celebrate its 60th birthday. That’s counting from 1949 when Mao Zedong announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China atop Tiananmen to an audience of 500,000 in the Square down below. Unless you’re deaf, mute, and blind, there’s no way you can be in Beijing and not have an idea of just how big this birthday bash is going to be.

Starting from September 12, stretches of Chang’an Street – the widest, longest, and most important of Beijing’s grand avenues that runs from East to West (through Tiananmen in the middle) – will be closed so the party organizers will have a chance to run rehearsals and set up for the big show. This also means that the Palace Museum, Tiananmen’s viewing levels, and a host of other central attractions in Beijing will stop receiving visitors. In terms of impact to tourism, this is equivalent to Paris shutting down the Louvre for more than two weeks or New York halting ferry service to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

Hey, if the government is taking such great pains to prepare for the big event it should be one hell of a spectacle, right? Yes, you can bet your Mao suit that it will be and you can see all of it…on your TV. Unlike Fourth of July parades and other national day festivities, Beijing’s bash is closed to the public. There’ll be a lot of people there (I would guess at least a thousand invitees), but all of them will be Very Very Very Important Persons (VVVIP) and people with to-die-for “guanxi” (connections). The average citizen won’t be able to get within miles of Tiananmen Square leading up to and on the big day itself. The Grand Hyatt and other hotels in the epicenter of action have been wholly booked out by the government. Hotels within viewing periphery are also out of the question – when a journalist called up to ask about the possibility of a room with a view he was met with an embarrassed laugh.

It’s not just the touristy areas that will be affected. Everyday life is also ramping up and changing shape as we head into national day. The judicial centers that receive millions of petitioners – most of them desperately poor and having travelled great distances across the country to bring their grievances to the capital – have closed. Without a place to go and having some idea of how to get their sad stories heard, the petitioners have taken to milling about in front of the China Central Television (CCTV) headquarters. The evening news and important daytime radio programs are already starting to recite the litany of key messages that will be harped on during the national day address. Last night I heard an unequivocal radio report on an exhibit of the recent ethnic violence in Xinjiang. On smaller issues, even before rehearsals start, congestion is increasingly common as roads are cleared for scores of official vehicles to pass through. Last week, I sat at an intersection 500 meters away from my apartment for twenty minutes watching with dull boredom as fifty or so squeaky new (and empty) buses whizzed by with uniform speed and flashing lights. I can only guess that these are the cars that will transport performers or VIPs (for the VVVIPs will surely have classier rides). Word on the street is that President Hu Jintao will arrive at the jubilee in a 17-foot stretch limo. Bling bling, that’s how the socialists roll these days.

No question about it, it’s going to be one fantastic shindig, communist style. Tens of thousands of performers will showcase their skills for precisely choreographed dance and musical praise of our great nation. An equally impressive number of army, air force, and navy men will also undoubtedly be strutting their stuff in awesome military parades. And if I remember correctly from my days as a Young Pioneer (I still have my red neckerchief) and as class monitor at Shuangyushu Elementary, there’ll be a bigger array of brightly colored flora arranged in appropriate motifs or spelling out sprightly messages (“Ecstatically Celebrate the Motherland!” perhaps) than any world class botanical garden has ever seen. Elsewhere, in Shanghai and Guangzhou I presume, there will be public celebrating, parties and events at entertainment establishments. But here in Beijing, the partying is for the Party members, everyone else is encouraged to be home. And that’s where I’ll be, at home, on my couch, tuning into a historical show.

Daily Anecdotes: "Oh, Robert!"

I started the Daily Anecdote series to give everyone a glimpse of the joys, hilarities, and mysteries of everyday life in China. I also want to share a bit about what Chinese people think life outside of China is like.

I was reminded of our popular misconceptions of foreigners last week while stuck in traffic and boredom. A furniture delivery truck happened to roll by my window then. Plastered along the length of the truck body was a giant ad depicting three Caucasians lounging about a living room. These characters sat on an excessively flowery sofa, dressed in fine evening attire (slinky gowns and monkey suits) and holding champagne flutes. Hovering around them were two other Caucasian figures, also dressed to the nines, playing the saxophone and oboe.

I laughed out loud. Is this what Chinese people think foreigners do all day? Sit around in cocktail dresses listening to jazz? And does an ad like this really help the furniture company sell tacky couches?

The answer to question one is, yes, this scene IS what Chinese people think foreigners do all day…sort of. At least, it WAS at some point in our recent history what we believed westerners were up to. (As for number two, I have no idea if more or less couches were sold as a result of this dubious ad strategy).

ALL DRESSED UP AND NOWHERE TO GO

On the question of attire, when China first opened up to the West most of us were “informed” of how foreigners dress through TV images of parties and revelry, things we had not experienced first-hand under previously austere regimes. Thus, we believed this is how people ALWAYS dressed. So we channeled our newfound fashion freedom and modest prosperity into dressing UP. I had a happy childhood staring with jaw agape at Chinese women aerating park lawns in their stiletto heels or elbowing onto public buses in sequined gowns.

As more and more westerners came to China to study or work, and as more Chinese were able to travel overseas, this misconception gradually dissipated. We now accept that casual wear is appropriate for the weekends, sportswear for doing sports, and so on so forth. Yet, there is still the chance these days that when an adventurous backpacker makes his way to a remote inland province, he is disappointing hundreds of Chinese with his preference for cargo shorts and Tevas. What a letdown for a farmer’s first encounter with a foreigner not to be with one dressed in coat and tails!

SO JAZZY

The choice of sax and oboe on the furniture truck ad is also an apt, albeit a bit outdated, cultural generalization. For us, jazz is western and Kenny G is jazz. In 1996, my family took a cruise down the Yangtze River to have our first and last look at the sights along the Three Gorges before they would be flooded by our nation’s magnificent hydropower plans. On this relatively luxurious yacht we awoke daily to the sound of Kenny G’s “Going Home” piping through the centralized speaker system. At the time, we thought it was pleasant and terribly sophisticated. It wasn’t until I went to college in the US that I learned that jazz doesn’t start and stop at the sax. Nor has Kenny G ever come up in any discussion I’ve had with serious jazz aficionados!

“OH, ROBERT!”

I like to save the best for last, and nothing is better than how Chinese people think foreigners talk. Every country has its own sounds for imitating, or mocking, foreign languages (“ching ching chong chong” comes to mind). In China, the equivalent is “ji li gu lu,” a sound halfway between what a happy pig frolicking in mud may make and the rumble of a rolling wheel. This is not deprecatory, it’s just exceedingly happy.

There is the even more amusing issue of voice dubbing in imported movies and TV shows. I can almost attest with certainty that five voice actors do all of the dubbing for western characters in the media. Whether it’s Carrie Bradshaw from “Sex and the City” or the Virgin Queen on the screen, the same nasal female voice does the speaking.

The signature dubbed voice is higher pitched than usual, deliberately “airy”, and persistently sing-songy. The dubbers insist on saying English names in translation a rolly-polly half Chinese, half English mix…like, “Oh, Luo-buh-ta” for “Oh, Robert!” It’s uncanny, really, and you have to hear it to believe it.

Chinese misconceptions of foreigners have evolved over the years, for the better. We no longer think westerners do their household chores in gowns and tuxes, we don’t always associate their musical tastes with Kenny G, but we haven’t gotten around to hiring some new voice actors yet. So, for the time being, we still have to put up with “Oh, Robert!”

Daily Anecdote: Meal Time at the Construction Site

When I started working in Manhattan in 2004, swanky restaurants and elaborate dinners became part of the weekly “team-building” or “client meeting” routine. After I moved over to finance, the meals got better and more frequent. My taste buds developed into these thousand little discerning and fickle things. The “Dining Out” portion of the household expense report that my then-boyfriend diligently drew up every month grew and grew. At the peak of the Asian equity bubble two years ago, I didn’t blink twice when I charged a few hundred euros on brunch for one at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris.

I’ve wined and I’ve dined, but none of these gourmet meals ever made me salivate like I did two weeks ago. I was walking in the “expatty” Sanlitun area with some friends when we passed by a construction site. It was seven PM sharp and a battalion of dusty-haired, brown-skinned construction workers had emerged from the walled-in compound and was lining up on the street to get their dinner rations. The men were dirty and dressed in rags, a decrepit-looking crowd. Most of them wore shoes with holes in the sides, pieces of string around the waist to hold up ill-fitting pants, and raggedy shirts that were fraying everywhere. Not your typical unionized construction worker with a uniform of flannel shirt, Caterpillar boots, and regulation hardhat.

Normally I would’ve crossed the street to avoid being stared at by such a crowd. Next to them, my clean and simple clothing looked like extravagant finery. But something in the faces of these construction workers captivated me. They all showed expressions of…sheer excitement!

I slowed down to look and saw that each man held in his hands two large tin bowls. The ones at the back of the line jostled with each other in a friendly manner to get closer to the food. At the head of the line, dinner was being ladled out of two giant oil-barrel-like things. One barrel was heaped high with gleaming white rice. The other contained an ambiguous-looking yellowish soup, maybe boiled cabbage. When a man reached the head of the line, the “cafeteria lady” would serve him an enormous pile of rice (about the quantity that a personal-sized rice cooker yields) and a generous spoonful of slop.

The food itself was not appetizing. No enticing colors or visual presentation, likely day-old vegetables, and way too much carb for an evening meal. But the men were buzzing around the barrels happily, like bees around a succulent flower, ripe with pollen. Their eyes gleamed with anticipation of the filling meal ahead, they elbowed each other with laughter, and some even rubbed their bellies with impatience.

Right then I realized that their meal was probably better than any caviar, frois gras, or Dom Perignon that ever passed through my lips. They had worked hard, expended all their energy, and were now looking forward to replenishing nourishment. This meal would taste heavenly because their bodies deserved every bite of what the “cafeteria lady” would ladle into their tins, and most likely more.

I remembered with guilt and shame on the times I ordered an unnecessary dessert just to end my dinner on a sweet note, commanded an extra dish “just to taste,” and had threw out an expensive doggy bag because I left it in the fridge for too long. With material abundance and the alleviation of my personal hunger, I no longer remembered what it was like to enjoy food because you NEEDED it, worked hard for it, and savored it.

Night began to fall and I walked away from the scene. With every step I resolved to work more, eat less, and minimize waste because somewhere, someone really deserves the simple meals that I’ve come to take for granted.

Daily Anecdote: Those Chinese Quads

If it could be said that every people, every culture, has its own distinctive physical posture then the squat would be the Chinese stance. Over my summer travels I observed three cultures closely – French, American, and Chinese – and came to generalize that that the Chinese squat, the French lie, and the Americans walk, or, rather, the Americans run.

In the early summer, all around France I saw the “national posture” – the lounge, or the laying about. Wherever I looked there were insouciant French people lying on their many grassy lawns partaking in their endless picnics. Or they were prostrate on any permitting architecture – under an impressive arch, beside a refreshing fountain, atop an ancient slab of stone, reading, smoking, or, quite often, making out. Even the legions of white-collar office workers seemed to find time to lounge around during their lunch hour when they would grab a gourmet sandwich at Paul, walk to the Tuileries or Luxembourg gardens, and pull up a green lounge chair provided for by their magnificent Socialist state.

By late summer I was in the US and was constantly reminded of the favored American stance – the brisk walk or the full on run. New Yorkers bumped me left and right as I tried to cross intersections at the leisurely gait I had acquired in France. Busy people pounding the pavement with their purposeful steps bustled everywhere. Even in their free time the Americans like to step it up – the preferred leisure activity seems to be a jog through the neighborhood. Outside of New York, in retirement towns on the Northeast, I saw much of the same, albeit at a more moderate pace. It may be true that in the sedentary South or in the Midwest people are more likely to be driving than to be running anywhere, but even so I think a generally upright posture is the norm.

Fall rolled around and I was back in China, peering out of taxi windows at groups of men squatting on the sidewalks, stepping around hoards of squatters at the train stations, and navigating the occasional squat-style toilet. None of this would’ve raised my eyebrows before, but this time I had my husband with me and he was continuously remarking on what strong quadriceps the Chinese must have to be able to squat all day long.

I thought about it and realized that there was some truth to what he said. Whether we Chinese are born with stronger, more squat-friendly quads or if we simply build them up from squatting at an early age (the more likely explanation) it did seem that foreigners don’t manage this posture as well as the locals. Many times my husband has tried my national posture in his joking effort to become a “good Chinese man,” but he either tips over from not balancing his weight evenly or his squat just looks somehow WRONG.

I also remember an instance ten years ago when a friend brought his study abroad host mother from San Diego to Beijing on holiday and we had to drive home every time the old lady needed to use the toilet. She couldn’t squat for peanuts. One time, we were out at lunch far from home and the only way she could use the restaurant toilet was if my friend and I each held one of her hands and lowered her into a tentative squat, pulling all the while so she wouldn’t tip over into a pile of unpleasantness behind her. That was quite an experience and I’m glad to report that in the intervening decade most public establishments in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai have converted their toilets to the Western commode.

Just how did the squat become the favorable idle stance for Chinese then? A social anthropologist might have a good answer, but I’ll add my two cents here. It may have something to do with our more recent agrarian past and the generally confined spaces we face. Take an example here, an American farmer is out on his field and wants to spend some time surveying his kingdom and see that nothing is amiss. He can stand around and when he gets tired he’s going to sit down on the wide variety of sitting implements available to him -- his tractor, his chairs, or even the tops of nicely packaged sacks of industrial farming supplies. Now, if a Chinese farmer wants to do the same thing he’s strapped for options out on the field. Is he going to sit on his manual hoe and plow? On the dirt? Or maybe on some fresh fertilizer? Note quite. He’s probably going to squat as a way of resting his feet (once you get used to squatting it actually IS less tiring than standing) and keeping most of his clothing.

While a large proportion of Chinese still farm, not ALL of us do it. So how do we explain the popularity of the squat elsewhere? Well, a lack of clean sitting spaces seems to be a pervasive problem in a generally poor country. An average American kitchen has a relative abundance of counter space, professional stoves, and various sitting devices. But a regular Chinese mom cooks in a cramped space tucked into the corner of her abode. Never have I seen a chair in a Chinese kitchen and not infrequently do people cook off makeshift gas or coal burners set on the floor. Here, the squat is actually a comfortable position of a suitable height as you stir your fry.

I have creative license here on my blog and it’s possible that I just dreamed up a far-fetched socioeconomic explanation for a “national posture.” It would be interesting to see in another fifty years when China’s GDP is hopefully much higher than it is today whether people will have forgotten how to use their quads.

Daily Anecdote: If It’s White, It Must Be Good

For nearly twenty of my twenty-eight years I lived in English-speaking countries. In all this time I was known as “Zhai Qi”, or “Qi Zhai”, if you’d like. Occasionally I thought about giving myself an English name and saving a poor substitute teacher from struggling with the gaggle of weird letters at the bottom of her role call sheet, or to give myself an easier time when meeting clients in Toledo, Ohio.

Yet, “Mary” or “Samantha” never felt right. So, for better or worse, I stuck with my Chinese name, the only name I know. Now I’m getting to the punch line. Here I am returning to China and every week that I’ve been here someone has asked me to kindly consider giving myself an English name. Really? Here where people actually know how to verbally handle the “Q” and “Zh” sounds?

This seeming perplexity boils down to a Chinese attitude that all things foreign (especially associated with white-skinned and blond-haired people) must be better. In recent years, the new Chinese nationalism has been much remarked on in the international press. Yet, alongside this fierce sense of Chinese pride coexists an equally persistent admiration of all things Western. We even have a word for it, “chong yang.”

There are plenty of examples of the reverse discrimination that my people impose on themselves. Last week, after seeing copies of my two degrees from a top American university, hearing my Californian English, and seeing that I was competent enough to have worked at a global bank, a staffer at an English tutoring agency suggested that I give myself an English name to increase my chances of getting students. She was embarrassed, to be sure, but felt professionally compelled to warn me that with a name like “Qi”, no parent would ever believe I could speak English better than a lighter-skinned backpacker who may have made his way to Beijing and needed some spare cash.

This attitude, acknowledged by some, but for the most part taken for granted, is deeply ingrained in our culture through our vocabulary. The word “yang”, meaning “ocean” or “Pacific”, refers to things that came to us from abroad, specifically from the West. “Yang ren” means “ocean person”, that is, “foreigner” or “Westerner.” Walk into any clothing stall at a market and you’ll hear salesgirls chirping accolades, “Oh this dress makes you so ‘yang qi’,” meaning, literally, “an air of Westerness.” Years ago when clothing pirates down in Shenzhen started to get wind of the GAP brand, I was being sold on “G-A-P” pajamas at the silk market. Affordable T-shirts favored by the lower income earners are nine times out of ten emblazoned with nonsensical English lettering. Restauranteurs who can’t even come up with “Chinglish” names or slogans frequently choose based on what SOUNDS Western in Chinese. Hence, the proliferation of the words “luo,” “man,” and “si” in eateries (that’s “ro-man-ce” for the non-Chinese speaking reader).

Even among the elderly dinosaurs this vocabulary of Western idolization is prevalent. This morning I played ping pong in my neighborhood park with a bunch of retirees (my mom included). Every time an expert player lobbed a skillful shot at his opponent, the defeated player exclaimed, “Wow, you’re playing ‘yang de,’” as in, “You’re bringing out some Western skills!”

This is my generalized observation, of course, and there ARE instances where “yang” doesn’t denote something good. Most notably, the phrase “chu yang xiang,” which literally means “exhibit a Western countenance,” but really means to do something ridiculous. But these, for the time being, seem to be the exception. For now, if I want to start making some pocket change, I’ve got to brainstorm a Western-sounding name for myself. How about “Ro-Man-Ce”?