Thoughts on China

I’m sure I’ll use this for a few other things, but I have never been much of a diary writer. I am so psyched about going to China this October, though, that I think I’ll overcome my writer’s inertia. I probably should have started this a year ago, when I first thought of taking a trip to China. I’ve been to a lot of helpful web sites and read a lot of helpful books. As I go along here, I’ll try to link to those helpful sites and review the helpful books.

I am also attempting to learn ?? (Chinese). I’m lucky to have a great tutor, whose English name is Sophie.� She majored in teaching Chinese as a foreign language in China and I couldn’t ask for a better teacher!� I am tutoring her to prepare for the essay part of the GRE, so our relationship is mutually beneficial.

Sophie’s name is ?? (Xu? F?i) in Chinese, which means “flying snow”. If you look at the Chinese characters (??, or H�nz�) for her name, you can see that the right one is a flying crane and the left one (you may have to enlarge the fonts to see it more clearly) has two parts. The top part is rain and the bottom part is a broom, so the meaning is “rain that can be swept with a broom”, or…..snow! This is one reason why I’m interested in the Chinese language. There are thousands of years of built up meanings in the characters, so each one has a story to tell. In any case, I think her name is poetic, not unlike the names given to native Americans (aka Indians).

Besides Sophie, I have a few Chinese friends/coworkers who I annoy with my bad pronunciations, as well as the new characters I have learned. They are pretty good sports about it, so again, I’m lucky!

Well, that’s enough for an inaugural post. I’ll try again tomorrow.

I’m looking forward to spending some time in the bamboo forest around Anji.

I’ve been busy getting the blog looking good, before I started writing anything serious.

If you haven’t noticed the three little colored buttons above the calendar on the right, give them a try. They change the color of this page, including a different banner up top. I think you may like the blue one, which shows part of the nine dragon screen in Beihai Park, Beijing. I can’t wait to see it!

I had some bamboo for the green, but put the Great Wall in at the last minute. I don’t think it looks right in green, but the ??? (b?ngm�y?ng in pinyin, or what we Westerners call the terracotta warriors) look so cool with the orange filter, that something had to give.

The picture in the left column is a random one from an album I have at Google’s Picasa. Each time you visit or reload the page, you’ll see another picture there. Once I go to China, I’ll switch it to another album of pictures that I’ll take and upload from there.

Let me know what you think of the themes. I’m definitely open for suggestions.

So much has been written about Beijing, especially about the tourist spots, that this should be a fairly short post. I’ll try to concentrate on the things I’ve run across that have not been beaten to death…

Shopping

I got this picture of Wangfujing from Ian and Wendy’s travelogue site .

tour-beijing.com has a good section about 2/3 of the way down the page about Shopping Streets in Beijing. Wangfujing is probably the most famous shopping street in Beijing. Here are a couple of pages from BeijingTravelTips.com that give a good idea of what it’s like on the tourist trail and as a shopping street. Maps of China, a great site for, well, maps of China….has a map of Wangfujing Street.

While Wangfujing may be the most famous shopping district in Beijing, I think the coolest will be Qianmen shopping street. Here is what tour-beijing.com says about it:

Qianmen Shopping Street:
This is an ancient shopping street outside Qianmen Gate.It is the market with the most history. Merchants have been hawking their wares in these alleys for hundreds of years, and some hoary relics still stand � like the Ruifuxiang Silk and Cotton Fabric Store (on Dazhalan Jie), and the Tongrentang Traditional Medicine Shop (just west of Ruifuxiang). It is sided by shops and restaurants. It has many other old shops such as Neiliansheng Shoe Shop, Cotton Fabrics Shop, Quanyechang, Zhang Yiyuan Tea Store and Majuyuan Hat Store.

I saw a documentary that had the Neiliansheng Shoe Shop in it. The shoes you get there are handmade and are very comfortable. Most of the famous Chinese leaders, as well as a President or two of the US has gotten a pair of their shoes. The best part is, they are only about $10-$20. I understand the Tongrentang Medicine Shop there is one of the biggest and oldest Chinese medicine shops around (it was established in 1669). For me, there’s nothing better than hand crafted merchandise made by artisans for generations.

Maps of China also has a map of the Qianmen Shopping street.

So, after the tourist attractions and shopping, what to do? Of course, the evenings will be filled with going to kung fu and acrobat shows, etc. Again, these are all over the web and I can’t add anything (at least until I’ve been there!). Have you noticed the big omission yet??? Food….

Where to eat?

Despite all the recent brouhaha over food in China, I’m excited about trying all I can. Dumplings for breakfast, noodles for lunch and at least one dinner of Peking Duck (why do we still call it that, by the way, instead of “Beijing Duck”? The official romanization of the Mandarin Chinese (official language of the PR of China) has been Pinyin for decades (before 1960), but we insist on calling the most famous dish of their capital city “Peking Duck”, which is following the long discarded Wade-Giles system. This isn’t the only instance where we hold on way too long, of course, as the province we still call “Canton” has been Guangdong just as long. We never changed over with “Peking Man”, either….

OK, so where should I go for “Beijing Duck”? (I know, don’t tell me…Beijing, of course!) I understand the most famous restaurant for this is a chain called Quanjude that has been around since 1864. I hear that it’s so good, I may have to have it twice!

I have to confess, the food I’m really waiting to try in China is south and west of Beijing, in Sichuan! They say “some like it hot”, and I’m “some”…

OK, well, that about wraps up Beijing, without ever once mentioning the Great Wall (??, or Ch�ngch�ng), Tianamen Square (?????, or Ti?n’?nm�n Gu?ngch?ng), the Forbidden City (??, or G�g?ng), the Temple of Heaven (??, or Ti?nt�n), the Summer Palace (???, or Y�h� Yu�n) or even the Bell and Drum towers (?? ? ?? or zh?ngl�u h� g?l�u), Beihai Park (???? or B?ih?i G?ngyu�n) or (being a former navigator, I’ll have to go here) the Beijing Ancient Observatory (??????, B?ij?ng g? gu?n xi�ng t�i), or…….OK, you get the point, there’s so much to see in Beijing that I’m tired just from thinking about it!

Next time, I’ll discuss the Great Wall (I still haven’t figured out what section I want to visit)…

塞翁失马, 焉知祸福   (sàiwēngshīmǎ, yānzhīhuòfú)

I find myself thinking about this idiom a lot. As with all Chinese proverbs, there’s a story behind these few words that is then condensed down:

Once upon a time, an old man’s horse ran away. His friends and neighbors lamented his misfortune, but the man said, “Who knows if this is bad luck, or good luck?”

A few days later, his horse returned with another beautiful horse. The town’s people, as you would expect, excitedly proclaimed the old man’s great luck! The old man merely replied, “Who knows if this is bad luck, or good luck?”

His son set about breaking in the new, wild horse, but was thrown and broke his leg, which didn’t get set right. You guessed it, the people murmured to each other what a terrible tragedy had befallen the old man’s family. Of course, the old man stoically repeated: “Who knows if this is bad luck, or good luck?”

The very next year, the emperor’s men came to town to conscript all the able-bodied men of the town into the army, for a war was brewing. The old man’s son, because of his gimpy leg, was the only one left behind. Sometime later, terrible news came from the battlefront that most of the town’s soldiers were killed in a terrible battle.

So, no matter what happens, it is not always immediately knowable if it is good or bad. I know my first job after college, I was working as a retail assistant manager, working 60-80 hours a week for $14,000 a year (this was in 1984, so the wage was not that great for so many hours). In addition, my manager wouldn’t give me time to do the manager’s training program on the job. When they had to lay off 150 assistant managers, they did it by how much of the training programs we had completed, so I got laid off. I thought it was terrible, since it was my first experience of failure. Two weeks later, though, I went and took a test to get into Air Force Officer Training School and did well, getting a slot which eventually led to 6 years as a navigator on a C-130. I initially thought being laid off was the worst thing that could happen, but I found out it was maybe the best thing, since I didn’t have the opportunity in a small town working that many hours to find another job.

So, when something that seems really terrible or really great happens, the first thing I think to myself, is 塞翁失马, 焉知祸福

Well, many things are going according to schedule. I got my Chinese visa through BCV Visa and Passport Expeditors. They handled that process flawlessly.

I also got my airplane tickets. Originally, I had planned to leave Tallahassee on October 6 or 7 to arrive in Beijing on October 8, then return from Shanghai on November 10. I changed that to get back on November 15, so that I could go to Huangshan (a very cool mountain), as well. Well, I couldn’t find tickets much under $1200 on these dates. In fact, the prices seemed to go up over the last couple of weeks. Then, one of the travel agents told me that if I left on Wednesday, October 3, I could get the tickets for $980 including all taxes, etc. So this is how my 4 week trip became a 6 week trip!

Now I have to completely review my itinerary to see what I’ll add, change, etc. I already have 4 mountains on my schedule (Tai Shan (泰山), Song Shan (嵩山), Emei Shan (峨眉山) and Huang Shan (黄山). If you haven’t guessed by now, 山 (shan) means mountain, and the character looks like one, too. Well, I might add one more mountain, Hua Shan (华山), near Xi’an. Each of these mountains offers something unique, but I have to look at China again to see if having a full six weeks doesn’t change my mind about where all to go.

Just when I thought everything was firming up, my plans became completely loose again! At least I’m doing this with 6 weeks left and not 6 days!

Well, I can’t go into it, but something happened yesterday that puts my whole trip up in the air. How it comes down, only time will tell. It’s not a bad thing, but what would ordinarily be a great opportunity, seems so unwelcome now. The trip I was looking more forward to than anything I’ve ever done is, at the very least, going to be cut short. I can’t believe that anything has stopped me from just going and sorting everything out when I get back, but it has.

I’m going to try to see if I can go for three weeks. After all, I bought $980 nonrefundable tickets, a Chinese visa cost about $162, including FedEx each way, a $29 sim chip for cell phone service in China, etc. That’s just the things that will surely be no good if I don’t go. It doesn’t include the numerous guidebooks, etc., that I bought this spring and that go out of date quickly with the continual construction that is going on in the cities.

OK, enough lamenting. All I have to do is look a couple posts down…that is:

塞翁失马, 焉知祸福

(sàiwēngshīmǎ, yānzhīhuòfú)

Well, it appears that I will be going for six weeks, after all!

我很高兴 (Wǒ hěn gāoxìng, or, I’m very happy!)

But now I’m leaving in only 36 days…so much to do, but not really. All I really have to do has been done. I’m not going to put myself on any kind of rigorous schedule when I get there. If I like a place, I may stay there a couple of extra days. I have a schedule, but I’m not on a tour bus, so I’m sure there will be plenty of unexpected detours, just not to a “xxx” factory and associated store (as tours in China tend to do, from what I’ve read).

One thing I’ll be sad about is that I’ll be saying goodbye to my English student (and Chinese tutor), 雪飞 (Xuě Fēi, or Sophie), when I leave. Her husband got a job at Yale University, so they’ll be gone before I get back. We have learned a lot about each others’ cultures and have become best friends over the past few months. I’ll miss her.

I had been planning to do a few posts about different aspects of what I’ve done to prepare for this trip, but I’ve been too busy preparing for this trip! So, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing on this blog before I leave….

再见

With all the headlines in the US newspapers over the last year about all the horrible transgressions of the Chinese, I immediately thought of America over a century ago.Sweatshops in China?

Where do you think child labor laws in the United States came from?

Pollution? That pea soup London Fog was caused by coal burning smog…

In other words, I felt like we are blaming the Chinese for going through a phase of capitalism that we went through ourselves.

While I was too lazy to write an article summarizing all of my thoughts, I am glad to see that a very good article on this subject has already been written.

So, while China definitely has to clean up its act, we would do much better to have the attitude of “how can we help you avoid the mistakes that we made in the same circumstances” than a holier-than-thou attitude that acts as if the US has always been “green”. Remember the Cuyahoga River burning at Cleveland? That wasn’t 100 years ago, it wasn’t even 50 years ago, it was 38 years ago in 1969.

It always helps communication if we start any chastising by looking in the mirror and recognizing that we aren’t exactly a pillar of perfection, either. Then, work together to solve the problem, rather than pointing the finger.

Well, the tension is building. I just got over a couple of days in bed being sick. That’s going to put more stress on my job, since I have a few things I really have to get done before I leave. Now, it’s 3:00 in the morning and I’m wide awake. So, I guess because of how I came out of this cold, I’m on Beijing time a week and a half early…Hopefully, this will be good practice for the jet lag I’ll soon have…

I just saw another site that’s only half finished, but if you are planning to go to China, I would really recommend you checking it out: http://www.yilongwei.com

He really adds details that many others gloss over when it comes to dealing with things. For instance, he spends a lot of words describing exactly how riding the trains in China works. He discusses many of the pitfalls that can happen when you make assumptions (like you’ll be able to get a ticket for the next day’s train when you get off at a tourist destination for one day…not necessarily, and you better make sure your schedule is loose enough to handle this type of delay).

Well, mine is, but I have planned where I’d like to spend the extra time. Now I know I better have a few days of slack built in to the schedule to accommodate these types of unplanned delays.

Of course, I already have this figured out for the flights to and from China. With a total of four stops each way (including the destination), there are plenty of opportunities to miss connecting flights (or have my checked bag miss them).

My plan is to be unflappable and to take everything in stride. I figure there will be times that I won’t be a happy camper. Maybe I get a flat tire on the bike I just rented and have to wait a half hour while it gets repaired. But, this will just give me an opportunity to meet a Chinese bicycle repairman I wouldn’t have met otherwise. Perhaps he’ll get a chuckle out of my mispronunciation of some Chinese words, but I hope he’ll appreciate that I’m trying (in fact, my wife says I’m VERY trying, but that’s a different story…).

I have been planning this trip for so long, I don’t think it’s going to hit me that I’m going until I’ve left Detroit and am drifting off to sleep somewhere over the Arctic Circle…we’ll see…