Citius, Altius, Fortius

The Olympics have come and gone, and I had the incredible good fortune of seeing some of them. I have quite a few things to say about the Beijing Games and about our experiences with the "festive" Chinese atmosphere surrounding them. But I will save all that for another time. First I would like to publish a series of posts about each day of events. Our friend from home named Josh came to visit right after the opening ceremonies and we went to a few things with him. He is a former competitive distance runner, so a lot of his friends and former teammates were competing here.

The Conspiracy Unfolds -Dimmu Borgir

If it's not one goddamn thing, it's another.

This little gem of advice was passed down to me by my father many years ago. It is one of the only pieces of touching fatherly advice he gave me, other than a birds-and-bees talk that consisted of him tossing me a box of Trojans and saying "Know what these are for? Good. Use them." (The box of Trojans was already half empty.)

At the time I thought "If it's not one goddamn thing, it's another" was just my father being grumpy and paranoid. Little did I know, that to this day I have never found a more true and concise phrase. It's become a mantra really. A spirit guide to show me the path in all life's situations, big or small.

And this very day I discovered that even in China my father was right; everyone is out to get me.

The powers that be set this insidious plan in motion over a year ago. So subtle were the movements of the cogs in their secret machine I had no idea until today I was being played with. I received a new bank card in the mail even though mine had not yet expired. My bank had decided to switch their partnership with Visa to MasterCard for what seemed no reason at all.

Oh, but it's all so clear now in retrospect.

All my life I've wanted to go to the Olympics. Granted; when I was a lad I thought I would be competing in lacrosse. (Never mind that it's not an Olympic sport. I figured the rest of the world would figure out what they were missing out on and the IOC would sanction Olympics lacrosse by the time I was old enough. It made sense at the time.) But as I got older and realized that unless I had some undiscovered talent lying latent within me, I was going to have to go to the Olympics as a spectator.

Then in 1996 the Games finally came to the U.S. Atlanta was not exactly next door to San Francisco, but it was closer than Barcelona. I figured this would be the closest I would ever get but at that time I was in college and tickets were just not fiscally possible. I could barely afford my twice-daily Top Ramen.

Then in 2002 about one month before the games began, NBC decided to sell their local affiliation to a station in San Jose. Another seemingly innocent enough move. But then I realized what They were doing. Once NBC moved their transmitters to San Jose, I could no longer get their signal. NBC owns the "exclusive broadcasting rights" for the Olympic Games. Again, with my paltry earnings, I could not afford the cable hookup that would enable me to watch.

So when I heard that I would be in Beijing during the summer Olympics, I this would be it. "I'm going to be in China about one mile from the stadium," I thought. "Tickets are hard to get, but my wife works at the all powerful Google. Surely they will have a hook up," I said. My first shock came when we arrived and I find out that Google doesn't quite swing the same clout they do in the States. In fact practically no one has even heard of them.

But wait... What's this? There is an Olympic Ticket office that still has some tickets to scattered events, AND these tickets are reserved for foreigners! I can Buy them online? My ship has finally come in! Not only am I in the right place at the right time, but I now actually have the funds available to me to buy tickets...

But today They unveiled their endgame: The website only accepts Visa cards.

"No problem." I thought. I'll just go down to the ticket office and buy them with cash. I headed down there with a wallet full of this Monopoly money they call cash here. Oh, but there is no joy in Mudville today... Visa is the "Official Sponsor" of the Beijing games. You could show up at the ticketing office with a backpack full of gold bullion, they ONLY take Visa cards.

So I schlepped my mopey, sweaty ass back home and watched some more Olympic coverage. "At least it's not NBC," I thought to myself. Then I remembered they don't have any coverage in English here.

I would be angrier if not for my father's prophetic words ringing in my ears.

We Are Ready -Beijing's Official Olympic Theme

Well, the opening ceremony is over. I was very impressed right up until the end. I might even say it was the best opening ceremony I've seen yet. Right up until the end. There was much speculation here about who would light the cauldron at the end. At first it was thought it would be Yao Ming, but he carried the torch a couple days ago and you can't have a person carry it twice. Yao Ming being the biggest star they have here, everyone thought they would have to pull out somebody huge to top him. If not someone really famous then maybe someone with a touching or inspirational story. Instead the organizers went with a relative nobody. Some dude who won a gold medal for China decades ago in gymnastics. I thought maybe he was a local hero, but no one in the stadium seemed all that impressed with who he was either.

But like I said the begining was fantastic. Really amazing special effects and cool choreography.

Hot Town, Summer In The City -The Lovin' Spoonful

A little before and after for you. These photos were taken at the same time of day from the same spot with the same camera set at the same settings.
The hazy picture is an example of an average day here. The clear one is an example of the clearest day we've had yet.

The Final Countdown -Europe

Well... I haven't written in quite some time. I've been busy as hell and loving it.

But I figured since the Olympics start tomorrow, now is as good a time as any to write an entry. The city has been changing in leaps and bounds over the past couple of months. With the exception of the pollution. It still sucks.
About 3 weeks ago the government reduced about 50% of the private traffic from the roads in the city. You would think that would have some impact. But it didn't. The air was just as horrible as ever, and the roads were just as congested. There are over 10,000 active construction sites and they closed over half of them. But - surprise, surprise - 5,000 construction sites is still a SHITLOAD. Then they closed all the factories in and around Beijing. I actually thought that one would make a difference, but it was just too little too late. The weather hasn't helped. There has been no rain for weeks and the air has been still and stale.

While the government has been taking drastic measures to reduce the pollution, their official stance seems to be that there is no pollution in Beijing to begin with. They have maintained that the reason you can't see the sky (or even 20 feet in front of you) is because of dust from the Gobi Desert and because of "fog." Even as outsiders stand next to the National Stadium and take damning smog readings, the government responds the way it does in all situations it doesn't care for: they just stick their fingers in their ears and say "la la la I can't hear you."

A while back they had a very simple solution to deal with the smog. They simply changed some words around in the system they use to report smog levels. So while the World Health Organization charts say that 50 parts per million of particulate pollution is "dangerous," the Chinese Government's charts say that the exact same reading is "not dangerous." Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective ones.

The scary thing is that most people here seem to believe whatever the government tells them. At first it was confusing to me how easily the masses seem pacified, but the longer I'm here, the more it makes sense. These are not stupid people. They do have limited access to outside news reports so the truth is out there for them to find. But why would you bother informing yourself with another viewpoint, if you could be punished for discussing it. The Chinese live in a system that is not only deceptive, but a system that also leaves no room whatsoever for dissent and so doesn't need to hide it's deception. Add to that the fact that most folks here speak little or no English and 99% of the news that is reported in Chinese comes from the state run papers, the state run radio, and the 10 state run TV channels, they never really hear any other opinion the the one they are supposed to.

But let's dish this hatred around evenly, shall we?

Before you think I am extolling the virtues of democracy on the locals here, I should make clear that my disappointment in my own country doesn't run any less deep. At least the Chinese people are trying. While the Chinese deny the problem and simultaneously try desperately to fix the problem, most people in the U.S. simply deny the existence of problems like global warming so they don't have to stop driving big trucks or reducing waste. Or worse yet are the pseudo-hippies I'm surrounded by in San Francisco who complain of global warming and at the same time drive alone in huge trucks and tell themselves things like "I need 4 wheel drive for when I go skiing in Tahoe." Or "I need a roomy vehicle because I have kids." Unless you are actually driving yourself up the side of the mountain ski slopes, your 4 wheel drive is overkill (or you could have bought yourself a fuel efficient and quite sporty Subaru.) And how many kids do you have and just what size are they? Unless you are schlepping around 6 mutant-giants with feet like couches and heads like beach balls a station wagon is by far the biggest car you need.

But let's move on. It's too early in the day for me to get my dander raised, and Heather hates having to calm me down when I get in one of my righteously indignant moods.

So later today (tomorrow for those of you back in the States) the opening ceremonies of the Olympics begin. Those of you who know me know that I think the Summer Olympics are the pinnacle of sport, so actually being in the same city with the games is more exciting than I can possibly explain. I have that tingly feeling in my fingers and toes just thinking about it. Like when you were a kid and you knew it was just a few hours until Santa brought you that new GI Joe figure with the realistic swivel-arm elbow articulation.

We have been lucky enough to find a guy here who has been trying to track down some tickets for us. Most events are sold out, but there is a pretty brisk underground ticket trade going on. The track and field tickets are pretty pricey so it looks as though we will only be going to one day if we can, but that's more than I ever dreamed I would be able to see, so I'm OK with it. Also, boxing and weightlifting are two of my favorite Olympic sports, and it has always been hard to get coverage of them from NBC. Neither of those sports are too terribly popular here so we might be able to afford to go to a couple of those nights. Here in China all the favorites to win medals in boxing or weightlifting are in the lightest weight classes, and the guys I want to go see are in the heavier weight classes.

Tickets for the opening ceremony were selling in the range of several thousands of dollars, so we will be going to a friend's house tonight to watch on TV with a few other expats. Our home is located only a few miles from the Bird's Nest so we may be able to see some of the fireworks from our window.

Well my excitement over the Olympics has soothed me after my earlier ideological rant so I should go before I find something else to get indignant about.

I'll blog more about the games as soon as I get the chance, but considering the content and given the fact I had to skirt a few of their security protocols to post this let's just hope I'm not arrested or deported by the Central Government before that. Also my friend Muxen is coming to visit next week and the two of us tend to get incredibly drunk and irresponsible together, so we may cause an international incident. (Muxen is his last name, but I already have a friend named Josh so I call him by his surname to avoid confusion.)

So barring an arrest I'll blog again within a week.

Dinner with friends at a Japanese restaurant called "Kiss Kiss".

Syllables Syllables everywhere and not a word to speak.

One of the guys from the office was nice enough to spend his lunch break one day helping us get cell phones. He took a cab with us to a crazy part of town (not far from our hotel) where they sell all high tech appliances. He was saying that this four block area of Beijing sells more than 1/4 of all the I.T. products sold in all of China. It was madness. Big IT malls as well as little shops everywhere, all packed with laptops, cameras, computer accessories, and cell phones. If it takes batteries, they sell it there.
We went into a little cell phone shop to get me a phone (Heather's office supplied hers.) Buying a phone is very different here than in the states. It's much like it is in India or Thailand. Rather than go to a Cingular store to buy a phone and get roped into a ridiculously expensive 2 year contract, here you go and buy your phone for a pittance from any number of retailers. Then you go to the service provider's store and buy your SIM card to activate the phone.

There was a Samsung phone I wanted back home that would cost me $80 if I signed up for 2 more years on my Cingular contract. It was a very basic phone without any bells or whistles. Should I have the gall to buy this phone without signing up for the contract the very same phone would cost $300. In Asia only the most outlandishly expensive and fancy phones cost $300. And there are no contracts. (come to think of it, when we were in South Africa we had a really tough time explaining the idea of a cell phone contract to someone) Almost everyone just buys pay-as-you-go SIM cards. Anyway I got an LG phone for $50.


So far, the single most fascinating thing I've encountered here are the Taxis. I have yet to get into a cab and have the driver have ANY idea where I want to go. At first I thought it was just the language barrier. But we get the front desk people to write down the addresses of wherever we are going in Chinese and the drivers still just stare at the address and then tell us they don't know where it is. We've tried using maps, but that just seems to make the situation worse. They scowl and squint as they pore over the map and then just toss the map aside in frustration. It is as though each and every taxi driver is not only driving a cab for the first time, but they are driving in a city they've never seen before.

What makes the situation tolerable is the same thing that makes it so frustrating: The hotel is located in the middle of a huge shopping district and we are at most 2 miles from Heather's office which is in a huge business park. So while the fact that these drivers can't find these two destinations that you can practically shout between is baffling, the distance is short enough that we can usually coax them into just driving as we tell them where to take the lefts and rights. (I shit you not 3 rights and 2 lefts door to door)

I can say a few words in Mandarin, ("left" and "right" among them) but I am not anywhere close to being able to understand the rapid fire, multi-tonal, barrage of sounds that the locals use to communicate.

I read that Mandarin has 405 basic syllables which are pronounced in different tones to produce about 1,300 building blocks for the language. By comparison English only has 44 basic sounds, but they combine in so many ways they make up over 3,000 syllables. This was encouraging to me at first. It gave me hope that learning Chinese wouldn't be too hard. But then I got to the chapter on "measure words". Any sort of arguments you may hear about the difficulty of the English language can easily be countered by the absurdity of Chinese measure words.
In Chinese one cannot simply say "That is one bottle." or "There are 2 cigarettes." There are dozens of quantifying words that you must use, but the rub is that these quantifiers seem to follow absolutely no logical patterns whatsoever. For example: "One book." is said "Yi ben shu." "Yi" meaning "one", "shu" meaning book, and "ben" is used to quantify things that are bound such as books or magazines. Seems straight forward enough until you read on and find out that "bu" is used to quantify novels or films (but I thought a novel was a book) and "ce" is for volumes of books (and sometimes just for books) and "qi" is for periodicals (yes this includes magazines which I was under the impression were bound and so fell under "ben".)

??????

"Chuang" is for quilts blankets or sheets. "Gen" is for long thin objects, but you might run into some gray area here because "zhi" is for stick like objects.
There are 3 different ways to say "fu" and depending on which you use you will be quantifying 1: paintings, works of calligraphy, or maps. 2. doses of Chinese medicine. or 3. things that come in pairs or sets.
(Unless you're talking about pairs of people; that's "dui"; or if these pairs or sets of things are set in rows, that's "pai".)
And the list goes on, and on, and on...

I know that the locals will probably forgive me if I screw up trying to use the quantifiers, but I think this bizarre syntax points to a method of logic that helps explain why it is so difficult for someone to figure out how to get from point A to point B when driving a cab.

Shopping

Needless to say I get a lot of stares here but strangely, when I am in a supermarket, people stare at the things in my basket way more than they stare at me.

Falling On My Head Like a Memory -Eurythmics

The rains have come again tonight. They started this weekend with a spectacular thunderstorm on Friday night.

It rains very hard, but not for very long. But since the city is so flat you can see the lightning and hear the thunder from miles away. On Friday we sat by the window with it open and took in the show. Sometimes the lightning looked like it was going to come right in the widow. The thunder was so loud we could hear every last crackle. It was like an explosion preceded by a crisp, series of crescendoing pops and cracks. It was as if the sky were made of thick ice and someone was trying to smash their way through it from the other side, driving huge fissures down through the clouds.

We are on the 18^th floor giving us a good vantage point being able to look out across a big section of the city skyline.

We live in a “serviced residence hotel” meaning we are in a hotel, but we have a kitchenette and living room. The people here are incredibly nice and the facilities are much more than I expected. There’s a pool and a gym and a restaurant (which is only open for breakfast.) Whenever I’m working out, any of the staff who walks by the glass gym doors stops to smile and wave to me, even though I’ve never even seen most of them.

Just as I was misled to believe that some people here would speak some English, I was also mistaken in thinking that I would be a giant in a land of short people. I am only a little taller than the average person in the street here. Saturday night one of the guys in the party we went to dinner with was at least two inches taller than me.

The way I understand it, people from the North tend to be historically taller, and people in the south shorter. Like most countries where populations stayed in the same place geographically, the different environments made certain physical traits dominant. The south tends to be more mountainous and forested, and the north is more open with deserts and plains.

I start Mandarin classes on Wednesday, and I am REALLY looking forward to it. I am getting tired of Heather and I being the only people who don’t speak the language.

I'm Back, Bitches!

I have finally found a way onto blogger here. More accurately someone at Heather's office showed me how.

So... China...

We left S.F. on a Monday afternoon and arrived in China on a Wednesday morning, so Tuesday disappeared somewhere over the Pacific. That particular Tuesday happened to be my birthday, so I guess I'm not really 34.



The people at the front desk speak passable English, but so far, they are the only people I've run into who speak any English at all. I haven't started Mandarin classes yet, but I found a school I'm interested in and it looks like there is a class starting the week after next.

There is a shopping mall nearby and across the street from that, there's a grocery store. The malls and grocery are pretty much just like the ones at home, except for some of the horrific smells in the supermarket.
I'm not sure if any of you have ever had a jackfruit. I'm not sure what it's called here, but in Singapore and in India it was called jackfruit. It's a huge fruit that grows on trees. It's about the size of a watermelon. The rind is covered in small dull spikes and the flesh inside is somewhere between a pineapple and an orange only sweeter than both. But the most pronounced feature of the jackfruit is that is smells like absolute and utter shit when it is in season. And it happens to be in season right now. As soon as you walk into the store you can smell what I can only describe as rotting flesh boiled in sugar. It is a rancid smell, but at the same time a very, very sweet smell. You don't have to be anywhere near the produce section to smell it though. It's everywhere. And the locals here seem to go apeshit for it. Scads of people are packed around the jackfruit display, some getting it cut up into sections (which just releases more of the smell) and some taking the whole thing.


As I said before the supermarket is very similar to a Safeway or something back home. It's huge with fluorescent lighting, and dirty tile floors. They have everything from cosmetics to booze. At the ends of some aisles there are girls with little megaphones hawking the latest yogurts or fruit juices. I think the main difference between this market and one in the U.S. would be the butcher. Walking into an area of the store filled with raw meat here is not for the faint of heart. Much like back home the butchers stand behind counters of pre-cut meat. Unlike back home, most of the meat is uncovered, so it is pretty pungent. Behind each counter there are entire animals hung on racks.

Nobody buys the pre-cut stuff. They just ask the butcher for whatever cut they want and he cuts it off one of the carcasses.