6/15/2005: Fun with your feet

There are some serious discomforts, inconveniences, and annoyances for a westernized person to come to Beijing to live. Short trips are no problems, but over time, things do start to bug you a bit. Now, there's no shortage of other blogs by westerners that list these things out - and I've also hinted at a few of them here on this site. However, there are an awful lot of good things going on here too...

Recently I discovered yet another thing that will make it hard for me to leave China when the time comes... Foot Massages. Yes, it sounds simple, and there are actually a few people who don't like them too much, but I find them quite relaxing. For 40RMB you can get a 75 minute foot massage, in a comfortable reclining chair, a warm cup of tea, and unlike most of the hair salons (which to this point have been a hit or miss situation), the massages have been worth it every time.

So, add it to the growing list of things that make you smile when you come to China. :)

6/12/2005: Training the humans

Recently I went to the Beijing Zoo. I'm not quite sure what was more interesting: the animals or the people. The zoo was actually better than I expected. After I had read the guidebook, I expected it to be quite bad, but actually it was pretty good.

I did have an Ostrich try to eat my shoe though - but I'll go back to that later.

So, the big thing at the Zoo was the Panda Bears - or at least that's what all

"Let me out!" he said, as he grabs onto the bar of the cage and shakes.

the advertising material wanted you to believe. In fact, with some kinds of tickets, you had to pay an extra fee to go in to see the panda bears. However, when we went in, there was only one Panda, and he didn't look happy.

I think he knew that on the other side of the one way glass there were all these Popsicle-sucking, cigarette-smoking, bumping, pushing, shoving, sweating, I-dont-understand-a-thing- about-photography-so-I'll-use-my-flash- here-in-front-of-the-glass- window - kind of people.

How did I know he knew this?

Because all he did was show his dirty-butt to us the whole time.

Yep, Mr. "cute" panda, with his white-haired butt-hair all stained brown just managed to find the best spot where 1) it was impossible to take a picture (but everyone tried anyway, and just succeeded in shooting the flash into each others' faces) 2) you could only see his dirty hairy butt.

What a great Panda bear experience. For me, the crowd was more interesting than the Bear. Especially the ones who were actually trying to take a picture of the guy with the little cameras in their cellphones!. After much work, I did manage to get one picture that wasn't totally horrible, but you can probably download better off the 'net (but then you wouldn't have this neat and personal story to go along with it, would you?).

Next came the regular bears - and they were darned interesting. Actually, the human bear interaction was interesting. First off, these bears had clearly trained the humans. All they had to do was to learn the traditional two handed bow in order to get food and drink. People would see the bear go onto his hind legs and then bow, and people would toss him food and drink. Things were so good for these guys, they even had preferences - for example they preferred Coke over water. The first video (8megs) here shows the bear bowing and then drinking "Bing Hong Cha" which is a sweet red tea drink. A moment earlier someone tried to give him water and once he tasted it, he turned away for the sweeter drink..

The second video (1.5megs), was just kind of... well it was BEAR SHAGGING! Notice I don't use the other S word because I don't want to get blocked out. :) I just thought it would be particularly funny to put up on my website - maybe I'll get more visitors because my content is now in the gutter?

The next video (1.2megs) was of a very well adapted polar bear with excellent eyesight. Excellent because someone was tossing him small pieces of carrots and he was catching all of them right out of the air without any mistakes at all. It was quite a site!

Our last bear (2.4megs) is the entertainment king. The Elvis of bears. He was cool, sexy and shook his legs in that special Elvis-way. He literally danced for his food. People would ask him to turn to the left, and he would dance around to the left, etc, etc. Quite a site!

6/01/2005: Children's day

Today was Children's day in China. In a country where you can have only one child, the topic of children is amazingly popular. For a culture that has a history of families continuing to have babies until there is finally a boy baby, the one-child policy has been very tough.

People around here have an obsession with children since the one-child policy took affect. Now children have 3 sets of parents: the parents, then two sets of grandparents each. You can't imagine the amount of attention these little tyke's get. I'm amazed that more of these children aren't horribly spoiled. I have seen some very awful behavior by Chinese children, but I think that the school system and the culture kind of helps deter the children from being any more spoiled than they really are. They can be a little spoiled, but there are too many people in China for the society to allow these kids too many freedoms - chaos would ensue. Just thinking for a minute what it would be like if the US had a one-child policy - wow, it could be really bad.

So today is Children's day. In our little "xiao qu" or small community, there was an organized performance by all the children in the area. People are a bit more social around this apartment development than you may see in the west, so there's more people willing to do things like organize a childrens show. It was very cute in it's own way, although the music was blasting everywhere, so everyone in all 5 buildings was certainly made aware of what was going on.

5/31/2005: Lunchtime Entertainment

Today as I finished up my morning work, I heard what first sounded like someone's cellphone ringing. "hmm... they must not be at their desk" I thought, because the music kept going on and on. A few minutes later I opened the door to my office to realize that it was actually Musak . I had worked at my company for over 6 months to only today discover that every several meters, in the ceiling was a strategically placed a 5 inch speaker.

It turns out that these speakers were located throughout the whole building. The music was really getting irritating at this point, so i stormed around to discover most people had already gone out to lunch - or they were driven outside by the music, I thought. However, realistically, it seems that Chinese people actually like this kind of stuff because it's played everywhere.

I couldn't help thinking that maybe I was being brainwashed, but it would probably be in Chinese, and my Chinese is so bad, it wouldn't have worked. Haha. Of course I'm joking.

In the west, while working at IT companies, it was often policy to not allow people to play music at their desk. People were strongly encouraged to get head-phones to keep from disturbing others. So, here I was annoyed that someone else had decided what music I would like and decided to play it over the building loudspeakers for everyone to listen to. Definite culture clash.

In a useless attempt to retaliate, I sent an email to the facilities person saying "Hey, this music isn't as cool as the music I like. Can you please change it to Dream Theater? I really think everyone will like this song! Thanks! " Then I left and ate my lunch outside to escape. Fortunately after lunch it had stopped.

5/18/2005: Kung Fu & IP

Over the vacation week, I went on a bicycle tour with cyclechina. The tour went through some hutongs in south-central beijing, just south of the old 2nd ring road-city wall. It's one of the only parts of the city I have seen with an intact city wall - before that ride, I didn't even realize there was still one.

What was notable about the hutong tour was that hutongs are really quiet places. Everywhere else in Beijing, you get used to the constant noise from the roads, rampant horn-honking and people shouting/talking, selling things, or playing pre-recorded messages on speakerphones to get your attention - but in the hutongs, things are really quiet. The pathways within the hutongs are just that - very narrow, maybe 2-3 people wide and that's it, so there is not much vehicle traffic other than bicycles, and they are pretty quiet. The myriad of twisty-turny ways breaks up the sound and the wind from outside, and you can see it really can be peaceful in there.

I was just starting to entertain thoughts of trying to rent a hutong house, when I rememebered that they usually don't have toilets - those are outside in the alley and are public. Oh, and they are pretty awful too.

After the bicycle ride through the hutongs, we had dinner and then went to this very cool looking building for a Kung-Fu show. It was a great show, with heavily influenced elements from Cirque du Soliel. If they had any intellectual copyrights or anything like that, I'm sure the Cirque people would be a little annoyyed, but nevertheless it was a good show.

Speaking of copyrights, I saw a commecial yesterday which was about 30 seconds of the movie Garfield the Cat. The scenes where Garfield is dancing around with Odie, someone edited it and put a bottle of soda in his hand so it looked like he was drinking it. They also changed the words and the music to be Chinese of course - just like the bottle of soda he was drinking. If anyone from Hollywood ever came out here on a regular basis, they would just die. I think one of the best careers to have in the next 10 years may be an IP lawyer - of course you'd loose 90% of the cases in the courts, but you'd still make a lot of money trying!

5/1/2005: Vacation at "shi du" (translation)

Right now, we're in the middle of the May first holiday week in China. Recently, me and my friend took a day and rode my scooter to a place called "shi du", which means "ten degrees". It actually means 10 crossings of a river (the road crosses it 10 times). It's pretty far from Beijing - about 2+ hours drive - we took the highway and some country roads to get there. We went through very many small cities too, each one prettier than the last. When we got to "wu du" 5th crossing- we ran into a huge traffic jam. It seems everyone in China had decided to go there. The traffic was so bad, people were just getting out of their cars and walking. Fortunately, I had my super-duper-turbo-jet-powered-scooter (OK that wasn't in the Chinese part! ;-) ), and I was able to avoid most of the traffic jam and finally get to shi du.

You can see some of the pictures on the right side bar - take a look.

Returning home was a pain in the ass. There was dust and sand flying everywhere and by the time we got home, we were deathly-dirty. (that's one of the bad parts about Beijing - very dusty!).

5/1/2005: Vacation at 十渡

现在,我们在过五一长假. 我和我的好朋友在一起骑摩托车去十渡.十渡离北京很远. 在路上花了两个多小时.我们走高速公路和乡村小路.我们越过很多小城市.风景越来越漂亮.

到五渡的时候似乎所有的中国人都到这儿来了.堵车很厉害,许多人都下车走路!幸亏我们骑摩托车能避开堵车!

右边是十渡的风景照片,你们可以看一看.

回家的时候,不太好-路上太脏了!到处都有沙和灰尘, 回家的时候我们都脏死了!

4/13/2005: "We'd better get them bodyguards"

"We'd better get them bodyguards" is what he said.

There we were all sitting in the meeting, discussing what had happened in Beijing recently. An unchecked upsurge in nationalistic ferver towards one of China's neighboring countries. Angry crowds of youth chanting, shouting and demanding that said countries products not be sold in China, that their govornment atone for it's 60+ year old sins which they never experienced but are sure they were really bad because the govorntment told them they were. Cheering and throwing rocks for their people go home, etc, etc. Two employees from that country who work for my company were fearing for their lives due to these events. Another recent hire was having trouble getting housing because of racist landlords.

No matter that many of them took pictures of the event with cameras manufactured by companies based in that country, or that millions of Chinese businesses prosper because of those products, or that all the rocks that were being thrown into those restaurants and stores were hitting the Chinese people working there. There were even some innocent kids beatup because they were mistaken for said country's citizens (the foam-mouthed youth didn't quite catch the accent before they started punching I guess).

60+ years is a long time I say. Sure, it's awful what they did, but the people involved in those events have long since gone away. It doesn't help China much to harbor a grudge. It's probably better to just let it go and get on with making money and building up China. But what's really going on? I'll leave that to more insightful people (strongly recommended reading).

For anyone coming to China, there are two topics you should avoid at all costs discussing, for if you do you will see an average person turn into an angry, frothing-at-the-mouth pre-recorded message. These topics are: the country in question above, and the little "other" country that everyone else thinks is pretty much it's own country, but nobody here thinks that at all. In fact, they will grown horns and get downright upset if you even mention the thought.

For me, it's a choice between this situation, and living in the US with Him. Hmm...<Pat shakes his head quickly> Well! That was easy. For now, it's not so bad here so I stay and keep studying & working. It's very unlikely there will be a terrorist attack here, the people are really nice, I get to make movies and do interesting stuff. The most dangerous thing is a toss up between the airquality and the traffic. No Yellow Alert, Orange Alert, etc...

加油 中国！！"Go China!" ;-)

4/8/2005: "A story from the recent past"

There I was, sitting in a small apartment in a nameless southern Chinese city. Gray sky, 6 story box-like soviet style apartment homes and other similar surroundings with many chinese cities. This development was the living quarters for the employees of an aluminum factory/refinery - one of the largest in the world I've been told. However, the Chinese are often comparing things to one another ("this is the #1 X and that is the #2 X, This is #1 Y and that is #3", etc).

It was a small apartment and the owner was a manager at the factory. His wife was quite charming and they had a lovely daughter. When I arrived with the family I was with, they ushered me into a seat and immediately offered me cigarettes, beer, and asked if I could play Majong. When I said I couldn't, but maybe I could learn, they said it's probably better if I didn't, because it is sort of a bad habit (this coming from a place where over 70% of the men smoke?).

So I sat and watched the people, and answered many of the standard questions. I breathed in the smoke, sat at their table and ate with them. They offerred me "bai jiu" which is a 50-70% alcohol drink they have here, sweet red wine, beer, and more cigarrettes (I managed to turn down the cigarrettes, but had to try the others). They also put many unidentifyable foods in my bowl and as I tried my best to eat them, I couldn't help think of all my friends back home who would never ever be even remotely willing to try anything that looked anything like this. However, I also would never have eaten it, but yet there I was giving it a shot, so maybe they would to.

At a later point after dinner, I was back on the couch and after a few minutes I realized what I was watching. The show had two Chinese midgets on it, giving a performance on what was clearly low-budget video taped television. One of them was eating glass while the other one was signing. The glass eater had a very worried expression on his face. Later the other one was swallowing fire - he looked to be in great pain. Neither of them looked very happy about it. Real life is definitely better than fiction - or television.

4/2/2005: "Making Movies"

I was recently invited to participate in the making of a movie. It's about Matteo Ricci - and guess who will be playing him! Haha! Well, in the US, I would definitely have zero opportunity to perform in a Role like this, but it's nice to know my background in performance is finally being put to use again!

As part of this role, I must appear as Matteo Ricci at various points in his life in China - including the first 10 years or so he was there - when he decided to shave his head bald. Of course, the director wanted me to shave my head, but after a discussion with my girlfriend, we decided that it wasn't worth it, so the film company had to make me a fake bald head.

It has turned out to be quite the expience. The bald head - in real life- looks quite convincing, but the director is tearing his hair out because it looks so bad on the camera. It also doesn't feel too good. They glue it down to your hairline using some quite toxic stuff (i have a feeling they may be more high-tech in Hollywood), and it basically feels like a swim cap - kinda tight. Now the problem was that the first two days I wore it for a total of 26hrs, so when it came off, my head was totally wet with hours of accumulated sweat, that and the toxic sticky stuff made me start to respect all those hollywood actors much more.

There were some other setups I was able to also try to reflect his look at other points in his life.

Also, I show up for the first 12 hr day (the second was 14), and it turns out that except for the director and a camera guy, I'm the only westerner there. Across the course of the next two days, I probably answered hundreds of questions about how long i've been in china, whether I liked chinese food, etc, etc. It was indeed a little tiring.

The filming took place on a historic looking street on a film studio lot in Beijing. The location isn't super great because there are a few towering apartment buildings hovering in the background, so more than once the camera man was screwed by accidentally catching a hi-rise in the background.

The second day there were about 100 extras. Some were dressed with hair like below, some were dressed in old-fashioned farmer costumes, and they were all very interesting people. One of them was a chinese man with natural green eyes! He was a farmer during the week, and on the weekends he occasionally was an extra in movies - very interesting!

Stay tuned for more pictures!

4/2/2005: "The Red Stamp"

In China, the red stamp is very important. Everyone who's anyone has a red stamp. It makes things official. You can't have a business without a red stamp. Lots of stamping of things, and lots of red stamps - it's very important here! There's even a black market for red stamps! How interesting!

In other news I recently visited my brother and took a picture of his dog:

I also recently caught this picture of a hot water heater - used to heat large amounts of water for people buying tea:

4/2/2005: "Group Activities"

In China, there are a lot of group activities taking place. I have often seen groups gathering to do excercise or to shout out slogans of some type. You will sometimes see 20 or 30 uniformed employees marching quickly around the block before their store opens in the morning - all shouting out a song or slogan of some sort - or just exercising. Click the link to see an example.

Recently I was working late and I kept hearing some shouting noises outside my office. When I finally left, there were a bunch of guys in uniform practicing martial art excercises. I'm not sure what they were doing there, but it's another example of public group activities. This video is a little more fun. Oh, you'll need to down load realplayer to play these videos -they were taking with my cellphone.

3/29/2005: "香山公园"

I took a small trip to a park near Beijing recently. It's quite nice, but as with most parks in China on the weekend, it's filled with people. You have to hike up pretty far into the hills to get away from the crowds. It's still nice though. The day I went it was pretty smoggy, so I was unable to get very many really nice scenic pictures. Unfortunately that happens a lot in Beijing. Ironically, this is probably one of the tourist spots where the pictures you see in the advertisements have pretty blue skies (gotta be photo-shopped into place) - and those Ads are better than the pictures you get by really going there. I'm not saying anything to take away from these places - they are all great and worth seeing, but it's a little sad that the pollution and smog in and around BJ is detracting from these places. I remember I was more than a little pissed off that I couldn't get a good picture of the forbidden city from the great spot I had up on the top of a park-hill behind the forbidden city.

Yet, everyone I speak with tells me how much better it is compared to just 5 years ago - "a world of difference" they say. Wow, I just can't help but wonder what it was like before. The local gov't is trying to do a lot to improve things by moving factories out of the city, but yet there is still a long way to go. There are still a lot of smokestacks in city and still some problems with polluting vehicles. The olympics are coming in 2008 and I don't see how the athletes are going to break many records if the air isn't any cleaner. They have their work cut out for them, but if any Gov't can do it, the Chinese one can. It wouldn't be the first time they made some huge change in a short amount of time - after all, they don't really have to make everyone happy. The gov't is pushing for better International recognition, and they are pulling out most all the stops to get what they want.

Now, to put it all in perspective though - I'm clearly a spoiled person when it comes to air quality. San Francisco is one of the cleaner cities in the world for air quality. I recently came back from a trip from that area, and you can just compare the sky in this picture with the ones above from Beijing. Yes, I'm spoiled - that picture is NOT touched up by photoshop btw.

3/17/2005: "Big Buildings, small hutongs"

Here is a picture from my office looking down. You can see the parking area for the bicycles, the entryway into the underground parking area, and to the left, you can see the remaining older buildings. The building I am in is quite modern, with large sections of glass, marble everywhere, etc, but yet just outside you will see an old section of the city. Many times you will see things like this, it seems so out of place, but it is a reflection of the super-fast development and almost reckless modernization that China is going through.

In this other picture, you can see the mixture of older soviet-style 6 story buildings and the more modern high rises that pepper modern Beijing. The old ones are slowly going away and being replaced by modern apartment complexes and business centers.

Beijing is a city full of contrast, no doubt about it. Yesterday I saw a Porsche SUV trying to pass a guy on a 3 wheeled bicycle with bent wheels carrying a refridgerator! Very interesting!

2/17/2005: "Turbo Street Machine! 我的跑车"

Watch out Beijingers! HatrickPatrick has a new street machine! No, it's not the $12 bicycle with the oval wheels, nor is it the moped with parts that fall off every time you ride it! It's a state-of-the-art screaming road killing, speed-demon, flames-painted-on-the-sides street machine! Woohoo! Look out China, Pat's got a Scooter! Yiiiihaaa!

What's that thundering noise you hear? A truck? Well, yes, but tucked in behind it, humming along happily on his powerful kick-ass, tear-up-the-road 125cc air-cooled imported-from-japan-but-assembled-in-China scooter is Patrick! And, unlike many of his fellow road-hogging bicycles, he's actually wearing a helmet! Bright red (there wasn't any other color that fit). As if having a 大鼻子外国人 (big nose foreigner) riding the streets of beijing on an awe-inspiring street-machine wasn't enough, now you can see him coming with his big red brightly colored helmet - complete with speckles!! Protect your children! Hide them away! 美国巨大来了! (the American Monster is coming!).

2/5/2005: "BOOM!"

You know the part in the US anthem about the "rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air"? Well, even on the 4th of july in the US, there aren't as many booming/bursting sounds as I can hear right now in Beijing from my desk as I type this. I guess that's what you get for being in the country that invented gunpowder! And the most interesting thing is that new years is two days away still! Zowie!

PS: The car alarms are not happy, and wouldn't you know it, I just bought a little alarm for my scooter. Bad timing. I'll get a picture of my cute little scooter on the website soon.

1/30/2005: "Ice skating"

I recently went out to Houhai - which is a big man-made lake in central Beijing, to go ice skating. It was a bit cold, but that didn't discourage several Chinese men from donning bathing suits, cracking a hole in the ice and swimming around.

It's apparently a bit of a tradition here to sing a bit before jumping in - I know that I'd surely be singing a bit after I got in! Something like: "AAHHHH! GET ME OUT!! HEEEELP!"

It was interesting to see that the chinese like to use these little sit-down chairs on skate blades and use essentially ski poles to push themselves around the ice. It was quite a trip for them to see me skating around backwards and forwards and stuff - i got more than a few people staring at me.

Being a westerner in a land of black haired people is one thing, but skating around like the second rate hockey player that I am is quite another! Yes, I provided much entertainment and I'm sure they will be telling their friends about it.

It was a nice afternoon though and I was able to get a few good pictures of the sun setting and a few of the traditional chinese buildings near by.

I even rented a little sit-down chair for my friend and we pushed each other around a bit.

There was even one section which had been smoothed out for hockey, but I didn't have my stick, and besides there were no edges to the section which meant if you missed a pass, you'd be skating across the lake to catc your puck again.

No friends, I really only want to play hockey on a hockey rink. Haha.

Lots of cute kids floating around too - well not floating around (haha), they were snacking on some barbeque'd chicken a skewers, etc.

Speaking of Chicken skewers, I have not forgotten my promise to you all to discuss what kinds of Chinese foods are here that are easy for westerners to like!

So, here I have a picture of, what is essentially "muslim nan" bread. The dough is shaped onto a specially design rock which is then slammed onto the inside of a brick oven's wall to cook.

The result is what you see below - wonderfully soft and tasty warm bread. This kind of bread and the associated food comes from north-western part of china near Turkey - a region called "xin jiang". The food is very good, and they often eat a lot of lamb with these wonderful spices - ooh.... I'm getting hungry!
The last food item for today is a personal favorite of mine called "Ah-ha coffee" It's a mocha-coffee kind of product - not really like Starbucks

mocha, but it's not bad. It costs 4 yuan (about 50 cents) and it will help you wake up and study a little longer or keep you going when you are on your second 2 hr business meeting of the day.

1/2005: "TSUNAMI"

As we all know, the death toll from the Tsunami is staggering. Such a tragedy makes all others pale in comparison. I have recently donated all the money I have ever recieved to this website - and more - to the Red Cross and I hope that you will also donate.

Don't forget that a tragedy like this can strike anywhere, at any time - be a good neighbor and chip in whatever you can.

1/7/2005: "New Year Acrobatic show!"

The Govornment of Beijing invited many of the expatriots to see an acrobatics show at Beijing DaXue recently. I got there late, but it was quite good! I snapped a few pictures and video so you can get an idea.

This first fellow was doing amazing things balancing a big ceramic pot on his head. He would toss it 10-15 feet in the air and then impossibly catch it on his head/neck. Quite a show!

This next group was a chorus of pretty girls who were spinning, tossing and jumping in sync with music and these colorful and interesting...uhm... "yoyos". I'm not sure what to call them, but they were spinning them up and doing all sorts of tricks with them. Very cool! I really liked this performance, especially becaue their hats were these long and interesting feathers that bounced around while they were dancing.

This last picture is a link to a movie. There were these women who had little kids perched upon their feet (as you can see in the picture), and were throwing them in the air, just like my sister used to do with me as a kid - only MUCH more so! Quite a sight! At one point, they even traded by throwing the kids through the air to one another - wow!

1/5/2005: "DVD Pirates!"

DVD piracy is quite rampant in China. However, many people are employed in this booming industry, so maybe it's ok that some of the money go to them instead of the rich people who already have all that money. I don't know, but nevertheless, it is rampant.

I was walking around looking for an ATM today when I decided to make a video. Lucky for you, a guy ran up to me to try and sell me some DVD's - so I got it all on film! He later tried to sell to another westerner walking around. Quite entertaining!

Enjoy the "movie"! :)

(copyright hatrickpatrick.com, all rights reserved - no copying, duplication, or piracy of my movie allowed!) ;-)

1/2/2005: "新年快乐！Happy new year!"

Now, the fun begins! With the new year, I've decided to start convincing more westerners to come and visit China. I think it's a great and interesting place, and if there is anything that will get people to come, it's the food.

So, I've been preparing for this a long time - over the next few months I'll be introducing pictures of various types of food I think westerners will like. Slowly it is my hope that more westerners will come and try it out for real!

I have specifically selected food that is not spicy, but is tasty and fun to eat. I am specifically aiming for people that are Americans and other westerners who are a little afraid of trying something new.

So, to start things off, I appeal to the sweet tooth in all of us. This picture shows this nifty apple-like thing that is skewered and then sugar coated on a stick. It's called "bing tang hu lu" 冰糖葫芦-Pretty tasty and extremeley inexpensive.

Come back next week and we'll cover some more staple foods! :) Eat well!

12/25/2004: "圣诞节 = Christmas Day!"

Happy "sheng dan jie! (that's "christmas in chinese"). Merry Christmas to all of my family and friends in the US, China and werever you are in the world!

It recently snowed in Beijing, so I will be lucky to have the first white christmas I've had in a very long time! Tonight I am going to meet with some of my old classmates to have some dinner together and exchange a few gifts.

I've put a picture of the snow-scene outside my apartment window here. It's very very cold though -7 degrees celcius! BRRRR! Click on it to see a big version.

My computer is in an alcove next to some very leaky windows, so I am sitting here typing this with very cold and slow-moving fingers (the things I do for you guys! - and nobody has donated to my site no less!). I just finished eating some leftovers from a restaurant. It was "tuna spaghetti", but the chinese have their own version which has hot peppers in it, so although my hands are freezing, my mouth is burning.

Have a merry Christmas!

PS: The chinese call Santa Claus "sheng dan lao ren" which means "christmas old person" - haha.

12/24/2004: "平安夜 = Christmas Eve"

Last night was Christmas Eve. This is the first Christmas ever where I will not be with my Family. Christmas Eve in Chinese is called 平安夜 which is pronounced "ping1 an1 ye4" which literally means Safe Night.

When I walked out of my chinese class at 7pm, the area outside my school which is already usually crowded was unbelievabily crowded. I had my camera with me, so I took this picture.

I cannot with words describe the traffic situation that night. Two intersections were in complete gridlock, with cars, trucks, busses, three wheeled bicycles all jammed together in the middle of this intersection - and stuck. Yes, even many bicycles were stuck between the bumpers of cars which were pinned close together at odd angles.

Every night in Beijing some intersections get like this - and I hope someday to be able to climb up on a pole and take a good picture of it because it is unlike anything I've ever seen in the west. With this picture, you can click and look at the large version and see all the busses and traffic on the left.

12/20/2004: "Traditional Chinese Massage"

My classmate last year told me about a chinese massage guy in the local hospital who will give you a massage for a good price. However, it's not much of a massage, it's actually a chiropractic adjustment! The price? 35RMB! (You guys can do the math - you are all smart people out there.)

This guy will do almost all the same adjustments that many expensive Chriropractors back in the West will do, and while the "science" behind it is a little more sketchy, heck, it works.

I try to go to him every few weeks, but now that I'm working it's a little hard. I did learn a new word through this process: "fan song" which means "relax because I'm about to quickly twist your body and crack your back." haha - not really. It's just "relax".

Make sure you click on the picture to see the sign outside his office. It's in 4 different languages: English, Japanese, Korean, and of course Chinese.

12/19/2004: "Get your Strange-Taste Horsebeans right here!"

There really are some interesting snacks in China. Unlike in the US, where all the snacks seem to be made of artificial cheese, chocolate or just plain sugar, the snacks in China are all over the map in taste.

Make sure you click on this!

I recently bought what I thought were Mango strips, but turned out to be heavily salted and (frankly) awful tasting pieces of mango that didn't taste at all like Mango.

Other snacks I've tasted have been great though. They have all different types of seeds and nuts you can eat, with a variety of tastes and flavors - sometimes you are eating meat or tofu and you just don't know it. Sometimes spicy, sometimes salty, sometimes something else - Very interesting!

I recently got a laugh out of something a friend of mine bought - the english translation was "Strange Taste Horsebeans" - haha very funny! They taste pretty good though - some kind of mix between a nut and some other flavor I can't describe.

12/18/2004: "Top Three Questions for Girls"

My friend Ana recently told me that on her trip to China, her and her other asian friends were often asked these questions.

The conversation goes like this:

1. "How old are you?"
2. "Are you married?"
3. "Why not? You're not so ugly."

And this coming from wrinkled old men with no teeth!

I guess I had it easy with my questions!my questions!

12/18/2004: "I'm a writer and director!"

For the company Xmas party, the employees are encouraged to participate in doing some kind of performance. I volunteered to do a small play. I ended up deciding not to participate in it myself, but instead directed some of my coworkers in the performance. We just did it two days ago and it went over great.

The skit was about a crazy person who copied a resume off of the internet and is trying to get a job at a startup company in silicon valley during the dot com boom of 2000. It was inspired by a real-life experience where the person actually answered the phone and proceeded to talk about their dinner plans during an interview I was giving them.

It was a good opportunity for everyone who participated to practice their english speaking skills. Most of the party was in Chinese, and since my chinese isn't good enough, I didn't understand a lot of it.

During rehearsal, I took to video taping segments to show them what to improve or change. I happened to have a little video on my camera, so i'll put it up here on site! Click here to see the video (it's 4 megs).