Took this the other night at the seaside park in Kai Fa Qu. Had to wait to get home to publish it, Youtube is banned on the far side and trying to do it via DSL and my VPN was too slow. So here it is, The Dailan Fan Dance.
Enjoy!
Friday, June 05, 2009
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
It's the destination, not the journey
So I find myself on the road once again, heading home to wrap up some work before heading back here for the meat of my assignment. This year has been very different than last, I'm not living in airports like I was and trips have gone back to being special instead of my regular fare.
In the spirit of the mercurial nature of Dalian traffic, I allowed 2+ hours for the trip to the gate and check in. You never know here, the last time I went out I barely made it through the luggage check, the crowds were that deep. I figured I had nothing better to do and so planned to sit at the airport if necessary.
This morning was crystal clear as it is on some days before the automobile traffic picks up. Perhaps the power plants have been off line for a couple of days, because we've had a short string of mornings and evenings that have a clear view of the ocean, and in today's case, Dalian city proper.
I had dinner with friends last night and on my walk down my newly found special street I once again stopped to watch the purple pajama grandma doing her nightly Tai Chi, this time joined by eight other women. Again it was a mystical moment, watching the women slowly doing the moves in unison, illuminated by a single street light.
When he dropped me off yesterday, Mr Jiang had given me a box of cherries and pears, freshly picked as it's now the season here in Liaoning, as a gift for my journey and I had left it with my dinner partners. When he picked me up I told him how wonderful they were. He was in a good mood this morning, collecting my bags and putting them in the trunk.
Per our regular routine, our conversation turned to weighty topics. I saw a hawk land on a power line and told him about it, adding that I like to look at birds. He replied that birds were very good to eat, especially the bird dishes prepared in Luxun, the next big city down the peninsula. He added that there were not many birds in China, and I wonder if he made the connection between those two points.
We talked about population and compared that of the US to China. The Chinese have different terms for numbers than we do and it can make translation difficult. They speak in terms of "wan" which is 10,000. For example, they would say "30 wan" when we would say 300,000 and "300 wan" when we would say 3,000,000. "2000 wan" would be 20 million but then it changes and the term "yi" is introduced for 100 million. It took me a moment to calculate his statement that China had "Shi si yi ren" or 14 - 100,000,000 people or in our speak, 1.4 billion souls. I took it to the next step, bringing the population of India into the calculation and he said, "yes, China #1, Hindu #2" he went on to compare American family sizes to the 1 child policy, adding that too many people and too many children are very expensive when you consider food, clothing, shelter, school and everything else it takes to provide a life. The more I talk with him, the more I realize that he is a very informed fellow.
We arrived in about 30 minutes, the benefit of driving to town this time of day. The airport was just as it ever is, I had to switch lines three times due to people arguing across the gaps, trading luggage and cutting in front of me. I finally picked a line that seemed to be moving and it was sped up further by the two guys in front of me, one who just left as he had no intention of checking in, he just thought the line was a good place to stand. The second guy had stood in line merely to ask a question by way of yelling at the agent for 30 seconds before walking away. It took me 90 seconds to complete my transaction, even receiving a priority sticker on my bag, a first for this place.
We left Dalian a bit late but arrived in Beijing close to the scheduled time. The connection here is a bit tight - about 2 hours - which can be problematic if security or immigration are bogged down and it was making me a bit tense waiting for my bag which didn't seem to me coming. When it did show up, it came in one of those hard plastic bins that the normally reserve for oddly shaped things (mine being a standard big suitcase). The bin with my bag crested the chute, shot down on the moving surface, hit the rail and popped straight out onto the floor. Another passenger made a point of walking around it, as though it was some sort of invisible yet detectable obstacle.
What I had forgotten from previous transfers here was that it's just a short hop from domestic baggage claim to international check-in and so now I had plenty of time. I lined up in the special status line but one of the attendants (in China they often have young women waiting by the international check-in lines to facilitate things) offered me an open counter down where the proletariat usually checks their bags. So I accepted and actually managed to clear the area before the remainder of the fancy passengers.
The train car I picked for the ride out to the plane was loaded with young security agents heading out to their shift. A gaggle of 20-something Chinese is a sight to behold - you'd swear you were in the cafeteria at an American middle school. A couple of the girls were eating cherries and spitting the pits on the marble floor. They found it hysterical when one of their co-workers almost slipped and ended up on her backside.
There really isn't much to say about the long flight aside from the fact that of course the one doofus that refused to close his window shades happened to be at the end of my row. I had just fallen asleep when he pulled his shade up and hit me with the concentrated solar laser beam which put an end to my dozing plans. There's always one, on every flight and this guy felt that he needed the light to pick at the skin on his hands, which for some reason he was eating. Scratch, pick, munch - that said just about everything. Well, that and the weird two-toned sort of boat shoes, sort of loafers he was wearing. A bit later when he fell asleep a kindly flight attendant went over and pulled it down, giving the rest of us a break.
About now it's 1 AM as far as my body is concerned but I am feeling pretty chipper. Probably the huge pastry carb load I have going, or maybe it's just over-tiredness. One thing thing that does feelo really good is the fact that I'm back in a place where I can write my story without having to sneak onto the internet via my corporate virtual private network. It's been a real pain these last few weeks, being unable to write or even review my blog from my apartment, without the added subterfuge of using my work computer. I think it's a pretty strange thing to be in a place where the powers that be are so worried, that they block something as insipid as Blogger. I mean honestly, most people are just complaining about not being able to get a good parking spot in front of their building, right?
In the spirit of the mercurial nature of Dalian traffic, I allowed 2+ hours for the trip to the gate and check in. You never know here, the last time I went out I barely made it through the luggage check, the crowds were that deep. I figured I had nothing better to do and so planned to sit at the airport if necessary.
This morning was crystal clear as it is on some days before the automobile traffic picks up. Perhaps the power plants have been off line for a couple of days, because we've had a short string of mornings and evenings that have a clear view of the ocean, and in today's case, Dalian city proper.
I had dinner with friends last night and on my walk down my newly found special street I once again stopped to watch the purple pajama grandma doing her nightly Tai Chi, this time joined by eight other women. Again it was a mystical moment, watching the women slowly doing the moves in unison, illuminated by a single street light.
When he dropped me off yesterday, Mr Jiang had given me a box of cherries and pears, freshly picked as it's now the season here in Liaoning, as a gift for my journey and I had left it with my dinner partners. When he picked me up I told him how wonderful they were. He was in a good mood this morning, collecting my bags and putting them in the trunk.
Per our regular routine, our conversation turned to weighty topics. I saw a hawk land on a power line and told him about it, adding that I like to look at birds. He replied that birds were very good to eat, especially the bird dishes prepared in Luxun, the next big city down the peninsula. He added that there were not many birds in China, and I wonder if he made the connection between those two points.
We talked about population and compared that of the US to China. The Chinese have different terms for numbers than we do and it can make translation difficult. They speak in terms of "wan" which is 10,000. For example, they would say "30 wan" when we would say 300,000 and "300 wan" when we would say 3,000,000. "2000 wan" would be 20 million but then it changes and the term "yi" is introduced for 100 million. It took me a moment to calculate his statement that China had "Shi si yi ren" or 14 - 100,000,000 people or in our speak, 1.4 billion souls. I took it to the next step, bringing the population of India into the calculation and he said, "yes, China #1, Hindu #2" he went on to compare American family sizes to the 1 child policy, adding that too many people and too many children are very expensive when you consider food, clothing, shelter, school and everything else it takes to provide a life. The more I talk with him, the more I realize that he is a very informed fellow.
We arrived in about 30 minutes, the benefit of driving to town this time of day. The airport was just as it ever is, I had to switch lines three times due to people arguing across the gaps, trading luggage and cutting in front of me. I finally picked a line that seemed to be moving and it was sped up further by the two guys in front of me, one who just left as he had no intention of checking in, he just thought the line was a good place to stand. The second guy had stood in line merely to ask a question by way of yelling at the agent for 30 seconds before walking away. It took me 90 seconds to complete my transaction, even receiving a priority sticker on my bag, a first for this place.
We left Dalian a bit late but arrived in Beijing close to the scheduled time. The connection here is a bit tight - about 2 hours - which can be problematic if security or immigration are bogged down and it was making me a bit tense waiting for my bag which didn't seem to me coming. When it did show up, it came in one of those hard plastic bins that the normally reserve for oddly shaped things (mine being a standard big suitcase). The bin with my bag crested the chute, shot down on the moving surface, hit the rail and popped straight out onto the floor. Another passenger made a point of walking around it, as though it was some sort of invisible yet detectable obstacle.
What I had forgotten from previous transfers here was that it's just a short hop from domestic baggage claim to international check-in and so now I had plenty of time. I lined up in the special status line but one of the attendants (in China they often have young women waiting by the international check-in lines to facilitate things) offered me an open counter down where the proletariat usually checks their bags. So I accepted and actually managed to clear the area before the remainder of the fancy passengers.
The train car I picked for the ride out to the plane was loaded with young security agents heading out to their shift. A gaggle of 20-something Chinese is a sight to behold - you'd swear you were in the cafeteria at an American middle school. A couple of the girls were eating cherries and spitting the pits on the marble floor. They found it hysterical when one of their co-workers almost slipped and ended up on her backside.
There really isn't much to say about the long flight aside from the fact that of course the one doofus that refused to close his window shades happened to be at the end of my row. I had just fallen asleep when he pulled his shade up and hit me with the concentrated solar laser beam which put an end to my dozing plans. There's always one, on every flight and this guy felt that he needed the light to pick at the skin on his hands, which for some reason he was eating. Scratch, pick, munch - that said just about everything. Well, that and the weird two-toned sort of boat shoes, sort of loafers he was wearing. A bit later when he fell asleep a kindly flight attendant went over and pulled it down, giving the rest of us a break.
About now it's 1 AM as far as my body is concerned but I am feeling pretty chipper. Probably the huge pastry carb load I have going, or maybe it's just over-tiredness. One thing thing that does feelo really good is the fact that I'm back in a place where I can write my story without having to sneak onto the internet via my corporate virtual private network. It's been a real pain these last few weeks, being unable to write or even review my blog from my apartment, without the added subterfuge of using my work computer. I think it's a pretty strange thing to be in a place where the powers that be are so worried, that they block something as insipid as Blogger. I mean honestly, most people are just complaining about not being able to get a good parking spot in front of their building, right?
Heading home tomorrow, last chance for some real adventures
Most of my compatriots have opted to undergo the rabies vaccination that is suggested by our health organization. I’ve chosen not to, mostly because the vaccine almost killed one of our dogs once and also because I think it’s a waste of time and money. As a preventative, you get three shots; if an animal draws blood, you get five. And the rush to the hospital to get them only has to happen within seven days. I decided sometime back that Hepatitis, Japanese Encephalitis and Typhus vaccinations were plenty. This means though that you have to be on your guard around dogs and that in turn often means we make a lot of jokes about being attacked, an attack that would take the form of having your ankle bitten by the standard Chinese dog that’s 6 inches high at the withers.
Last Sunday I had that run-in with the rat dog in the park. Not much of a run-in and not much of a dog. But for a moment when he pulled himself up to his full size I was slightly concerned. I got over it. This morning when I boarded the elevator, there was a loose Pomeranian running around and around between the other rider’s legs, clearly excited about his impending walk around the block. No leash, when I say loose I mean loose. This situation deserved my undivided attention.
I boarded and took a place in the corner at the front. The dog came over and stood under me, looking up with a grin which suggested, “This person is the wrong color and the wrong height and doesn’t smell right either.” I smiled and he went off, staying at the back for about 10 seconds before returning and staring at me some more, this time with more of a dog smile on his face now as if to say, “Well, you don’t look or smell right, but you’re smiling so you must be okay.” I’m sure if he’d had a tail he would have wagged it. We stopped at a couple of floors on the way down and darned if the little orange fellow knew enough not to get off. His master said something to him and the dog looked up at him and back at the door, waiting for it to open. When we got to the first, the master gently kicked him out the door into the lobby and he went tearing out the door to see what was going on out in the real world. From then on I was nothing more than a mere afterthought in his little doggie brain.
Some days you just wonder if it’s ever going to let up. No day here is like a day at home, days at home are rarely punctuated by weirdness. But a day here without something strange happening is simply not conceivable. To me anyway. It makes me wonder how the Chinese live their lives because if I had to put up with the things they must have to put up with, I think I’d lose my mind.
I got in the car this morning and there was a plastic grocery bag with a fast food container in it and I knew right away that there was a story about to happen. Mr. Jiang told me that he had brought me lunch, leftovers from a party he had last night with his friend. I can only imagine what he has to say about me, it’s either “he’s very smart” or “you have to hear the latest on this guy.” He told me that he and his friend had a great time drinking some beers and eating some dinner and that he brought this for me to try out. Well, I’m flying tomorrow and so I was immediately on the defensive but I thanked him profusely and accepted his kind gift. We spent the drive to work making plans for me to visit the bank this afternoon where I hoped to accomplish two things. First, I wanted to request a replacement debit card for the one I’d received back in September. There was a bit of a problem with that batch, the magnetic strip and the labeling were peeling off all the cards in the batch that was handed out that week. I know this because one of my staff received his card on the same day as I did and he’d ended up replacing his in January. I just put a bit of scotch tape on mine, figuring it would get me through until I had a chance to get a new one. Nothing here is as easy as it could be; in this case a new card takes 7 business days and requires a return trip to the bank. It would be unthinkable that you might be able to get one faster than that. Second, I wanted to pay my corporate credit card bill before I left the country for a month. I showed a business card from the bank to Mr. Jiang and asked him if he had an idea where it was, he didn’t which didn’t surprise me, but I did and he told me he’d call to find out later. We made a plan for him to pick me up at 2 PM.
When I arrived at my desk, I decided that I would check out the lunch. The inside of the bag was smelling kind of fishy and when I opened up the container, it became apparent why – inside was a whole crab and an abalone. Kind of room temperature. I was very flattered but decided to offer this up to the common fund.
The better part of the morning was spent trying to see if I could link my debit card to my corporate credit card via China Merchant Bank’s online system. They have a really nice, all-English web page with happy, smiling people wearing telephone headsets beckoning you to ring them up. They have a nice list of log-in opportunities on the right hand side and I chose “Login to General Edition.” The fun stopped right there, along with the English. Behind the Potemkin village of happy, bilingual operators, everything was written in Chinese. I asked my colleague to come over and help me with the translation and we made some progress, actually getting a look at the balance of my savings account which amazingly had grown by 3.20 RMB in the last 9 months. The miracle of compound interest, 50 cent is 50 more cents in my pocket any day of the week. Imagine if I had had more than $200 in there!
Things began to unravel when we tried to link my corporate card to my debit card. In the infinite wisdom of our corporation, we are asked to apply for and use a Chinese credit card for all the business travel we do while we are on assignment here. It’s a nice idea, but I can imagine the howls of laughter from the desk jockeys at the Chandler Marriott when I try to use it there. Anyway, last January I did the application with the help of a department secretary and unlike most of my co-workers who had done the same, I actually received mine. I didn’t have any intention of actually using it, but I figured it would be worthwhile because very often, Chinese businesses don’t take the standard issue American Express card that normal employees have.
One of the cool things about our travel expense system is that if you use the corporate card, all the charges are automatically linked to your expense report. Often no receipts are necessary, all you do is apply the charges and the company pays the bill. It’s very clean and simple and so when I received my last vaccinations I used my AMEX card to pay for them. Well, surprise, the process only works when you’re living in the US. Over here, no such luck so I had to pay the bill when it came to my house and then wait for the reimbursement to come to my Chinese bank account, in RMB, of course. Never mind that it took me two expense reports before I realized that the base currency was Yuan and not US Dollars. When I checked out of the Inn Fine the other day, I used the Chinese card figuring I would be treated to the same behind the scenes process. Well, surprise again – there is no link between the corporate card and the expense reporting system. Paying the bill is up to you. And remember, we live in a country where it’s impossible to receive a bill in the mail, write a check and mail it in. One of my pals told me that he just takes his credit card to an ATM, tells it he wants to pay the balance and then shoves 20,000 Yuan into the machine, 100 at a time. But another co-worker told me he had managed to link his two accounts and in doing so, enabled direct bill pay. Of course some of this could be done on-line, but to do that you have to go to the bank and acquire a USB security thumb drive to plug into your computer every time you want to do a transfer. Yes, well, I thought I’d go for the former.
Mr. Jiang promptly picked me up at 2 and asked for the business card. He called the bank to get directions and had a long conversation with the person over there, in which I heard “Intel” and my name mentioned a bunch of times. As we pulled out of the lot I asked him if he knew where we were going and his answer was, “cha bu duo”, more or less.
Now I’ve been to the bank once and I’ve been by it a couple of times. I roughly know where it is, it fronts a district called “Green Town” which means nothing to the Chinese who have their own name for it. Never mind the giant sign that says it out front, no, the Chinese name is something phonetically like “guh leen shitian”, probably half Chinglish and half Chinese. As we drove through Kai Fa Qu, past the streets where I knew we were supposed to turn, I gathered that we were going to take the long way around, sort of drive past the bank some distance to the west while heading south, then loop back north on the east side along the beach. And that is exactly what we did; it couldn’t have been further if we tried, unless it involved taking a ferry to Korea and sailing back. But after a couple of pauses at intersections, we did find it, even managing to find the car entrance that was cleverly hidden between two bushes in the next door neighbor’s front yard.
I was looking for Mr. Yang and guessed immediately that he was the young man bounding across the lobby towards me. It is seemingly his job to sit there and wait for westerners to appear at the door, because he does have a modicum of English. When I spoke to him in Chinese, he responded with a very emphatic “Whoa”, obviously picked up in some movie featuring California surfer types. Just about everything I said about anything after that received the same response.
We solved the challenge of linking the cards quite quickly – Mr. Yang called up the credit card people and handed the phone to me. The young woman on the other end called me “Mr. Terry” and went through all my security questions, one by one in order to verify my identity. That done, she made the link and I was in business – my never to be used again credit card was now linked to my savings account.
The second challenge proved far more problematic. We filled out the “Lost/Replacement Card” request card and took it to a teller. Mr. Yang asked me if I wanted to “Frozen my money” and once I figured out what he was asking, I said “no”, I can’t because they are going to pay my credit card bill. This caused all sorts of confusion and consternation and the need for a second manager, behind the teller screen to get involved too. The situation eventually degraded to Mr. Yang and me staring at the back of the teller’s monitor while she and her manager stared at the front. I asked Mr. Yang what the problem was and he said the standard for the system is to “frozen the money.” I guess that’s to take care of the first part of the request, the “lost card” part but it’s not really necessary to deal with the “I just want one that isn’t peeling apart”, part. A couple of times I suggested that we just cancel this request and that I deal with it when I come back in a month. Mr. Yang nodded and agreed and went back to staring at the computer. The more Mr. Yang and the teller and the teller manager talked, the more I began to wonder if they even worked at the same bank. The teller’s manager went off and got on the phone for a long time while Mr. Yang and I discussed bicycles (my description of a custom bike received a huge “Whoa”) and horses (everyone is always amazed that we have four and are yet not tempted to eat them.) Suddenly, without warning, the teller asked me to enter my PIN and the problem was solved – my money was “not too frozen.” Mr. Yang gave me two pieces of paper; one which he said was very important and must not be lost. He folded it in large sections and jammed it in my passport cover. The second piece he informed me was, “Of no use to me whatsoever.” All the while this was going on; he was treating me to cups of hot water from the water cooler and asking me how I felt about their customer service. My response to the positive was met with great enthusiasm. He followed me out to the car and told me that he would keep an eye out to see if he would find me bicycling.
Last Sunday I had that run-in with the rat dog in the park. Not much of a run-in and not much of a dog. But for a moment when he pulled himself up to his full size I was slightly concerned. I got over it. This morning when I boarded the elevator, there was a loose Pomeranian running around and around between the other rider’s legs, clearly excited about his impending walk around the block. No leash, when I say loose I mean loose. This situation deserved my undivided attention.
I boarded and took a place in the corner at the front. The dog came over and stood under me, looking up with a grin which suggested, “This person is the wrong color and the wrong height and doesn’t smell right either.” I smiled and he went off, staying at the back for about 10 seconds before returning and staring at me some more, this time with more of a dog smile on his face now as if to say, “Well, you don’t look or smell right, but you’re smiling so you must be okay.” I’m sure if he’d had a tail he would have wagged it. We stopped at a couple of floors on the way down and darned if the little orange fellow knew enough not to get off. His master said something to him and the dog looked up at him and back at the door, waiting for it to open. When we got to the first, the master gently kicked him out the door into the lobby and he went tearing out the door to see what was going on out in the real world. From then on I was nothing more than a mere afterthought in his little doggie brain.
Some days you just wonder if it’s ever going to let up. No day here is like a day at home, days at home are rarely punctuated by weirdness. But a day here without something strange happening is simply not conceivable. To me anyway. It makes me wonder how the Chinese live their lives because if I had to put up with the things they must have to put up with, I think I’d lose my mind.
I got in the car this morning and there was a plastic grocery bag with a fast food container in it and I knew right away that there was a story about to happen. Mr. Jiang told me that he had brought me lunch, leftovers from a party he had last night with his friend. I can only imagine what he has to say about me, it’s either “he’s very smart” or “you have to hear the latest on this guy.” He told me that he and his friend had a great time drinking some beers and eating some dinner and that he brought this for me to try out. Well, I’m flying tomorrow and so I was immediately on the defensive but I thanked him profusely and accepted his kind gift. We spent the drive to work making plans for me to visit the bank this afternoon where I hoped to accomplish two things. First, I wanted to request a replacement debit card for the one I’d received back in September. There was a bit of a problem with that batch, the magnetic strip and the labeling were peeling off all the cards in the batch that was handed out that week. I know this because one of my staff received his card on the same day as I did and he’d ended up replacing his in January. I just put a bit of scotch tape on mine, figuring it would get me through until I had a chance to get a new one. Nothing here is as easy as it could be; in this case a new card takes 7 business days and requires a return trip to the bank. It would be unthinkable that you might be able to get one faster than that. Second, I wanted to pay my corporate credit card bill before I left the country for a month. I showed a business card from the bank to Mr. Jiang and asked him if he had an idea where it was, he didn’t which didn’t surprise me, but I did and he told me he’d call to find out later. We made a plan for him to pick me up at 2 PM.
When I arrived at my desk, I decided that I would check out the lunch. The inside of the bag was smelling kind of fishy and when I opened up the container, it became apparent why – inside was a whole crab and an abalone. Kind of room temperature. I was very flattered but decided to offer this up to the common fund.
The better part of the morning was spent trying to see if I could link my debit card to my corporate credit card via China Merchant Bank’s online system. They have a really nice, all-English web page with happy, smiling people wearing telephone headsets beckoning you to ring them up. They have a nice list of log-in opportunities on the right hand side and I chose “Login to General Edition.” The fun stopped right there, along with the English. Behind the Potemkin village of happy, bilingual operators, everything was written in Chinese. I asked my colleague to come over and help me with the translation and we made some progress, actually getting a look at the balance of my savings account which amazingly had grown by 3.20 RMB in the last 9 months. The miracle of compound interest, 50 cent is 50 more cents in my pocket any day of the week. Imagine if I had had more than $200 in there!
Things began to unravel when we tried to link my corporate card to my debit card. In the infinite wisdom of our corporation, we are asked to apply for and use a Chinese credit card for all the business travel we do while we are on assignment here. It’s a nice idea, but I can imagine the howls of laughter from the desk jockeys at the Chandler Marriott when I try to use it there. Anyway, last January I did the application with the help of a department secretary and unlike most of my co-workers who had done the same, I actually received mine. I didn’t have any intention of actually using it, but I figured it would be worthwhile because very often, Chinese businesses don’t take the standard issue American Express card that normal employees have.
One of the cool things about our travel expense system is that if you use the corporate card, all the charges are automatically linked to your expense report. Often no receipts are necessary, all you do is apply the charges and the company pays the bill. It’s very clean and simple and so when I received my last vaccinations I used my AMEX card to pay for them. Well, surprise, the process only works when you’re living in the US. Over here, no such luck so I had to pay the bill when it came to my house and then wait for the reimbursement to come to my Chinese bank account, in RMB, of course. Never mind that it took me two expense reports before I realized that the base currency was Yuan and not US Dollars. When I checked out of the Inn Fine the other day, I used the Chinese card figuring I would be treated to the same behind the scenes process. Well, surprise again – there is no link between the corporate card and the expense reporting system. Paying the bill is up to you. And remember, we live in a country where it’s impossible to receive a bill in the mail, write a check and mail it in. One of my pals told me that he just takes his credit card to an ATM, tells it he wants to pay the balance and then shoves 20,000 Yuan into the machine, 100 at a time. But another co-worker told me he had managed to link his two accounts and in doing so, enabled direct bill pay. Of course some of this could be done on-line, but to do that you have to go to the bank and acquire a USB security thumb drive to plug into your computer every time you want to do a transfer. Yes, well, I thought I’d go for the former.
Mr. Jiang promptly picked me up at 2 and asked for the business card. He called the bank to get directions and had a long conversation with the person over there, in which I heard “Intel” and my name mentioned a bunch of times. As we pulled out of the lot I asked him if he knew where we were going and his answer was, “cha bu duo”, more or less.
Now I’ve been to the bank once and I’ve been by it a couple of times. I roughly know where it is, it fronts a district called “Green Town” which means nothing to the Chinese who have their own name for it. Never mind the giant sign that says it out front, no, the Chinese name is something phonetically like “guh leen shitian”, probably half Chinglish and half Chinese. As we drove through Kai Fa Qu, past the streets where I knew we were supposed to turn, I gathered that we were going to take the long way around, sort of drive past the bank some distance to the west while heading south, then loop back north on the east side along the beach. And that is exactly what we did; it couldn’t have been further if we tried, unless it involved taking a ferry to Korea and sailing back. But after a couple of pauses at intersections, we did find it, even managing to find the car entrance that was cleverly hidden between two bushes in the next door neighbor’s front yard.
I was looking for Mr. Yang and guessed immediately that he was the young man bounding across the lobby towards me. It is seemingly his job to sit there and wait for westerners to appear at the door, because he does have a modicum of English. When I spoke to him in Chinese, he responded with a very emphatic “Whoa”, obviously picked up in some movie featuring California surfer types. Just about everything I said about anything after that received the same response.
We solved the challenge of linking the cards quite quickly – Mr. Yang called up the credit card people and handed the phone to me. The young woman on the other end called me “Mr. Terry” and went through all my security questions, one by one in order to verify my identity. That done, she made the link and I was in business – my never to be used again credit card was now linked to my savings account.
The second challenge proved far more problematic. We filled out the “Lost/Replacement Card” request card and took it to a teller. Mr. Yang asked me if I wanted to “Frozen my money” and once I figured out what he was asking, I said “no”, I can’t because they are going to pay my credit card bill. This caused all sorts of confusion and consternation and the need for a second manager, behind the teller screen to get involved too. The situation eventually degraded to Mr. Yang and me staring at the back of the teller’s monitor while she and her manager stared at the front. I asked Mr. Yang what the problem was and he said the standard for the system is to “frozen the money.” I guess that’s to take care of the first part of the request, the “lost card” part but it’s not really necessary to deal with the “I just want one that isn’t peeling apart”, part. A couple of times I suggested that we just cancel this request and that I deal with it when I come back in a month. Mr. Yang nodded and agreed and went back to staring at the computer. The more Mr. Yang and the teller and the teller manager talked, the more I began to wonder if they even worked at the same bank. The teller’s manager went off and got on the phone for a long time while Mr. Yang and I discussed bicycles (my description of a custom bike received a huge “Whoa”) and horses (everyone is always amazed that we have four and are yet not tempted to eat them.) Suddenly, without warning, the teller asked me to enter my PIN and the problem was solved – my money was “not too frozen.” Mr. Yang gave me two pieces of paper; one which he said was very important and must not be lost. He folded it in large sections and jammed it in my passport cover. The second piece he informed me was, “Of no use to me whatsoever.” All the while this was going on; he was treating me to cups of hot water from the water cooler and asking me how I felt about their customer service. My response to the positive was met with great enthusiasm. He followed me out to the car and told me that he would keep an eye out to see if he would find me bicycling.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Would it annoy you if your electronic safe played half the McDonald's tune every time you opened it?
Well it annoys me.
I spent the better part of the day sitting in my office eating cookies. The first were some chocolate sandwich cookies that looked interesting but ended up being some sort of salt free Ritz Cracker with a relatively flavorless fudge filling. Having been let down by those I went back down to the convenience store and went for the hard stuff – Chinese chocolate-filled Oreos. No fooling around anymore.
I didn’t think there was much potential for a story today but as always, things come along to make the day more interesting than it initially promised. Aside from the cookies, work was work. I made a little more headway buying down my meal card with four bottles of water and six more Dove bars (plus the aforementioned pastries) but I’m still looking at a solid $20 left to go. More water and more chocolate tomorrow, my last day in the office before I head back to the US.
The trips to and from work today were brightened by my conversations with Mr. Jiang. On the morning route I was able to fashion the tale of how I first came to Dalian in 2006 and when I did, all the land around the factory was still farms and villages. I told him about our walk down the dirt road that would eventually become this broad boulevard and how the farmers came out of their houses to stare at the Americans who suddenly appeared in their neighborhood. I related how they waved and yelled, “Mei guo ren” and how they thought that we must be slow-witted for being out there in the middle of nowhere wandering around. I think though that the joke was on them though, because the farms are long gone and they’re now living in high rises in town watching television and taking showers in hot water. Mr. Jiang thought about this for a few seconds and then burst out laughing; apparently my attempt at getting the humorous tale across was a success.
On the way home tonight we passed a cart being pulled by one donkey and ponying a second. They looked pretty old and tired, being in the middle of an early summer shedding, but in general they looked well fed. I asked Mr. Jiang for the correct name, “Lu” and just for grins I asked him if he liked donkey meat. He lit up and said “Oh yes, it’s my favorite.” Pressing the topic I tried out the word for deer, which is also “Lu” but in the 4th tone instead of the 2nd tone with an umlaut as it is for donkey. I’ve heard more than once how westerners have gone to a restaurant and ordered venison and received the equine version instead.
Mr. Jiang informed me that deer was his second favorite and then went down the list – donkey, then deer, then beef, and then chicken. Pork he said, well actually he said “Pigguh” was very bad. He doesn’t like it at all. A bit of a surprise to me given how common it is here, but I guess it’s no different than people everywhere – some things they like and some things they don’t.
Having said goodbye to him, I went in my building and caught the elevator. There was a couple already on-board having come up from the garage that I think is under the building. Just as the door was closing, two more women jumped on. One Chinese and the other a short, 20-something blond westerner.
Encountering people over here from my side of the globe is always an open-ended situation. On the one hand, some will make a small gesture simply because it’s nice to see a fellow traveler. On the other, some will ignore you simply because they’re too cool to give into the former. This one unplugged her iPod and stared straight ahead. The tension was a bit thick as we ascended.
The couple got off somewhere around 8 and the Chinese woman got off at 22 leaving us alone. I figured I’d have some fun so I took off my sunglasses, slowly folded them and tucked them in my collar and said, “All this time I thought I was the only one.” She laughed nervously and replied that often it feels just that way. We exchanged home ports – she was from Canada – and told me that she was from western Canada when I replied that Ontario was my family home. We arrived at my floor and much to my surprise she got off in front of me. I told her that this was even odder, living on the same floor and she laughed and said no, she’s a tutor; this is not where she lives. It got a bit stranger yet when she turned towards my door and I suddenly figured out that she was the tutor to the children that live right next door to me. I gave her my name and she told me that hers was “Abigail” and we said goodbye. Funny, the only real conversation I’ve had with a westerner outside of my fellow workers and it happens in my elevator.
For dinner I went over to Matt and Kris’ and we sat out back on their patio while they watered the newly planted grass in their backyard, all under the amused watchfulness of the neighborhood Chinese walking down the back street. They stop, press their faces against the wrought iron fence and observe the foreigners doing foreign things in the Westerner Living History Museum. I wave and say “Ni hao” and they smile and reply in kind. I guess I now know how the residents of Williamsburg feel.
As it was getting dark some drumming started up at the park down the block. We decided to walk down and watch the Fan Dance that is held every evening. Strolling is a pretty common thing here in the evenings, especially before it gets stinking hot. You pass young women walking hand in hand, couples chatting about the day and grandmas out in their purple, red or green silk pajamas. Tonight the street and park were loaded with them as it was a wonderfully clear and balmy night without a hint of smog for a change.
The music level at the park was quite loud, the drums being supplemented by a pair of high pitched squeaky horns. On a broad plaza, a hundred or more women were lined up in long columns, each holding a brightly colored feather fan. As the music blared, the women moved forward, doing a sort of two-step line dance. Some added more flourish than others, many kept their motions simple. I took some photos and a couple of videos and just watch, mesmerized. They went from one end of the plaza to the other where the leads of the columns split to the left or the right, half reversing up the outside of the pack and half doing the same up the middle. This continued on and on until I’d finally just had enough of watching it. As we left the park the music continued, once again reduced to the rhythmic beating of the drums.
I bid adieu to my party outside the gates to their complex and started my walk home. I’ve found as new route that goes straight through a gated community from their place to the back of my building running up the slight hill through rows of apartment blocks on one side of the street and a couple of schools on the other. Tonight it was almost silent, for once you could not hear the traffic from my normally busy route home. The street was barely lit by a few lamps which cast big yellow circles on the street between the trees. At one small intersection I could hear Chinese music playing up above me from one of the apartments. A tiny bat flitted through the trees, picking off insects attracted to the light.
Approaching the end of the gated portion of the street I walked slowly to watch three women doing Tai Chi under a streetlamp. One stopped and watched while the other two, tiny and elderly and dressed in white and purple silk pajamas, slowly and precisely went through the motions. The moment was dreamlike.
stick this little bit of filler in here.
(Sorry for the so-so nature of the photos, I had to go to the maximum ISO to avoid using the flash. The blurriness might actually convey the moment fairly well)
I spent the better part of the day sitting in my office eating cookies. The first were some chocolate sandwich cookies that looked interesting but ended up being some sort of salt free Ritz Cracker with a relatively flavorless fudge filling. Having been let down by those I went back down to the convenience store and went for the hard stuff – Chinese chocolate-filled Oreos. No fooling around anymore.
I didn’t think there was much potential for a story today but as always, things come along to make the day more interesting than it initially promised. Aside from the cookies, work was work. I made a little more headway buying down my meal card with four bottles of water and six more Dove bars (plus the aforementioned pastries) but I’m still looking at a solid $20 left to go. More water and more chocolate tomorrow, my last day in the office before I head back to the US.
The trips to and from work today were brightened by my conversations with Mr. Jiang. On the morning route I was able to fashion the tale of how I first came to Dalian in 2006 and when I did, all the land around the factory was still farms and villages. I told him about our walk down the dirt road that would eventually become this broad boulevard and how the farmers came out of their houses to stare at the Americans who suddenly appeared in their neighborhood. I related how they waved and yelled, “Mei guo ren” and how they thought that we must be slow-witted for being out there in the middle of nowhere wandering around. I think though that the joke was on them though, because the farms are long gone and they’re now living in high rises in town watching television and taking showers in hot water. Mr. Jiang thought about this for a few seconds and then burst out laughing; apparently my attempt at getting the humorous tale across was a success.
On the way home tonight we passed a cart being pulled by one donkey and ponying a second. They looked pretty old and tired, being in the middle of an early summer shedding, but in general they looked well fed. I asked Mr. Jiang for the correct name, “Lu” and just for grins I asked him if he liked donkey meat. He lit up and said “Oh yes, it’s my favorite.” Pressing the topic I tried out the word for deer, which is also “Lu” but in the 4th tone instead of the 2nd tone with an umlaut as it is for donkey. I’ve heard more than once how westerners have gone to a restaurant and ordered venison and received the equine version instead.
Mr. Jiang informed me that deer was his second favorite and then went down the list – donkey, then deer, then beef, and then chicken. Pork he said, well actually he said “Pigguh” was very bad. He doesn’t like it at all. A bit of a surprise to me given how common it is here, but I guess it’s no different than people everywhere – some things they like and some things they don’t.
Having said goodbye to him, I went in my building and caught the elevator. There was a couple already on-board having come up from the garage that I think is under the building. Just as the door was closing, two more women jumped on. One Chinese and the other a short, 20-something blond westerner.
Encountering people over here from my side of the globe is always an open-ended situation. On the one hand, some will make a small gesture simply because it’s nice to see a fellow traveler. On the other, some will ignore you simply because they’re too cool to give into the former. This one unplugged her iPod and stared straight ahead. The tension was a bit thick as we ascended.
The couple got off somewhere around 8 and the Chinese woman got off at 22 leaving us alone. I figured I’d have some fun so I took off my sunglasses, slowly folded them and tucked them in my collar and said, “All this time I thought I was the only one.” She laughed nervously and replied that often it feels just that way. We exchanged home ports – she was from Canada – and told me that she was from western Canada when I replied that Ontario was my family home. We arrived at my floor and much to my surprise she got off in front of me. I told her that this was even odder, living on the same floor and she laughed and said no, she’s a tutor; this is not where she lives. It got a bit stranger yet when she turned towards my door and I suddenly figured out that she was the tutor to the children that live right next door to me. I gave her my name and she told me that hers was “Abigail” and we said goodbye. Funny, the only real conversation I’ve had with a westerner outside of my fellow workers and it happens in my elevator.
For dinner I went over to Matt and Kris’ and we sat out back on their patio while they watered the newly planted grass in their backyard, all under the amused watchfulness of the neighborhood Chinese walking down the back street. They stop, press their faces against the wrought iron fence and observe the foreigners doing foreign things in the Westerner Living History Museum. I wave and say “Ni hao” and they smile and reply in kind. I guess I now know how the residents of Williamsburg feel.
As it was getting dark some drumming started up at the park down the block. We decided to walk down and watch the Fan Dance that is held every evening. Strolling is a pretty common thing here in the evenings, especially before it gets stinking hot. You pass young women walking hand in hand, couples chatting about the day and grandmas out in their purple, red or green silk pajamas. Tonight the street and park were loaded with them as it was a wonderfully clear and balmy night without a hint of smog for a change.
The music level at the park was quite loud, the drums being supplemented by a pair of high pitched squeaky horns. On a broad plaza, a hundred or more women were lined up in long columns, each holding a brightly colored feather fan. As the music blared, the women moved forward, doing a sort of two-step line dance. Some added more flourish than others, many kept their motions simple. I took some photos and a couple of videos and just watch, mesmerized. They went from one end of the plaza to the other where the leads of the columns split to the left or the right, half reversing up the outside of the pack and half doing the same up the middle. This continued on and on until I’d finally just had enough of watching it. As we left the park the music continued, once again reduced to the rhythmic beating of the drums.
I bid adieu to my party outside the gates to their complex and started my walk home. I’ve found as new route that goes straight through a gated community from their place to the back of my building running up the slight hill through rows of apartment blocks on one side of the street and a couple of schools on the other. Tonight it was almost silent, for once you could not hear the traffic from my normally busy route home. The street was barely lit by a few lamps which cast big yellow circles on the street between the trees. At one small intersection I could hear Chinese music playing up above me from one of the apartments. A tiny bat flitted through the trees, picking off insects attracted to the light.
Approaching the end of the gated portion of the street I walked slowly to watch three women doing Tai Chi under a streetlamp. One stopped and watched while the other two, tiny and elderly and dressed in white and purple silk pajamas, slowly and precisely went through the motions. The moment was dreamlike.
stick this little bit of filler in here.
(Sorry for the so-so nature of the photos, I had to go to the maximum ISO to avoid using the flash. The blurriness might actually convey the moment fairly well)
Monday, June 01, 2009
Dinner achieved!
When I returned from my bike outing and recovered from my strenuous ride up the elevator I decided to call My Lovely Wife. We were having a nice catch-up conversation when all hell broke loose – a wedding across the street at the Inn Fine. The event brought to mind a story that a friend told me about being on the phone with a help desk person when some Chinese New Year's fireworks kicked off – the help desk person was so shocked by the explosions that they asked if my friend was in a war zone. That anecdote pretty much sums it up – fireworks in China are the bane of a sane existence.
Wondering about the racket I got up and looked out the window - the bride and groom were in a white stretch Lincoln limousine, the videographer was leading in a red convertible and blocking the rest of Jin Ma Lu were the 10 or 15 black sedans forming the wedding party. Traffic was backed up for blocks while the procession sat and waited for the fireworks to scare off the evil spirits. My Lovely Wife told me to go and lock myself in the bathroom to lessen the din, but it's not an option - my building is 100% poured concrete and my Wi-Fi signal is only strong enough to maintain a Skype connection within 6 feet of my router. Since I couldn't hear I decided to take some pictures.
The fireworks ended after 30 seconds or so and the limo pulled in to allow the happy couple to get out of the car. They walked 25 feet as the cannons went off showering them with little bits of colored confetti and streamers. Cannons discharged, they walked another 10 feet where the bride was handed a cluster of balloons, probably 6 feet in diameter. Surprisingly she was able to release them before the combined lift carried her away. As they walked to the hotel entrance the balloons floated off against the background of Big Black Mountain on their way to choke a dolphin or to find their place in the North Pacific Trash Gyre. Or maybe both. The moment they were inside the red inflatable arch was a blob on the ground and workers were busy sweeping up the fireworks residue. In no time it was as though none of it had ever happened.
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Having successfully hunted and gathered my set of All the Basic Ingredients for Chinese Cooking, I decided that Sunday night was going to be my inaugural cooking evening. I had some pork, I had the goods, I had some leftover green beans courtesy of my gracious hostess and I was ready to whip up a masterpiece. I went off to the web and found a recipe for Sichuan stir-fried pork and figured it was a good place to start. I didn't have any chicken broth or peanuts, or a means to accurately measure the ingredients that I did have, but I figured I'd let the chiles and the peppercorns in the green beans carry the day. All I really needed to do was whip up a brown sauce with a little soy, cook the meat, add some vinegar, rice wine and cornstarch and re-heat the vegetables. How could that not turn out fit for a king? Worst case it was crunchy peanut butter and sour cherry jam on my last two pieces of bread.
My kitchen is a little on the small side and the counters are really low for a strapping brute such as me. In order to do the dishes I have to sort of stoop over and put my head under the cabinets to be looking down on the work. It's that or rest my forehead on a cabinet door. The sink levels off at about 5 inches below my belt buckle so I'm in a serious crunch when it comes time to do the dishes. Surprisingly, the upper cabinets are mounted high, so much so that I can barely reach the top shelf. Your average Chinese would need a fireman's ladder to use the upper two shelves. The décor is very modern, and the cabinets are opened and closed not with handles but with a metal channel that forms a sharp edge at just about top of the forehead level. I've told myself about sixteen times to not leave those doors open when I'm flitting around the kitchen putting things away.
There is a general dearth of cabinet space, certainly not enough for food, supplies and dishware. I got busy doing the prep work – laying out the ingredients, chopping the meat and lining up the bottles of vinegar, wine and soy. I realized about this time that my current storage spot for bottles and utensils, just off the right of the cooktop, was going to be a poor choice because everything was going to get oil splattered whenever I fried. So I set about opening and closing doors and moving things around. I found a home for the utensils that was convenient – upper cabinet just to the right of the burners. About this time the meat was finishing up and it was time to add the chicken broth substitute – water - and so I turned and went to the water dispenser inconveniently located in the dining room next to the refrigerator (a big improvement over having it in the living room where it was originally however.) I dumped the water in the wok and did a couple of spins to get it mixed, reducing the flame to get a roiling simmer going. That taken care of I turned to go back to stuffing things in the upper cabinet when I felt this sort of sickening thud – I'd walked straight into the edge of a cabinet door with the top of my head.
At first I wasn't sure how to react – it hurt so much that I was at a loss for words. My reaction was to grab a piece of paper towel and in applying it I realized I was bleeding like a stuck pig. It's never a good feeling to put a piece of paper on your head and have it come away blood-soaked. I decided to go and have a look in the mirror, already dreading my return visit to the First Affiliate Hospital of the Dalian Medical University for stitches. Heading off to the nearest bathroom I suddenly came to the realization that this bathroom doesn't have a light over the mirror, only the light in the center of the room ceiling which is useless for finding a bleeding wound in the center of a head with hair. Down the hall to the master bathroom and the same slap in the face – no wonder my makeup has been so poorly applied lately – the mirrors in this joint are dark. I stood there and thought about it for a minute or so, filling up my towel with more of the red stuff before it dawned on me to grab my flashlight and illuminate the stricken region while looking in one of the abysmal mirrors. Of course I really could have used three hands to do this – one to hold the light and two to move my hair around but I managed with two and found a pair of nice little gouges torn in my scalp. Bloody but not stitch worthy. I grabbed a blob of Neosporin and gave myself a stylishly nice moussey antibacterial hairdo.
The dinner turned out to be sublime and I enjoyed it sitting in my red Poang chair overlooking the buildings below illuminated by the golden light of the setting sun.
Wondering about the racket I got up and looked out the window - the bride and groom were in a white stretch Lincoln limousine, the videographer was leading in a red convertible and blocking the rest of Jin Ma Lu were the 10 or 15 black sedans forming the wedding party. Traffic was backed up for blocks while the procession sat and waited for the fireworks to scare off the evil spirits. My Lovely Wife told me to go and lock myself in the bathroom to lessen the din, but it's not an option - my building is 100% poured concrete and my Wi-Fi signal is only strong enough to maintain a Skype connection within 6 feet of my router. Since I couldn't hear I decided to take some pictures.
The fireworks ended after 30 seconds or so and the limo pulled in to allow the happy couple to get out of the car. They walked 25 feet as the cannons went off showering them with little bits of colored confetti and streamers. Cannons discharged, they walked another 10 feet where the bride was handed a cluster of balloons, probably 6 feet in diameter. Surprisingly she was able to release them before the combined lift carried her away. As they walked to the hotel entrance the balloons floated off against the background of Big Black Mountain on their way to choke a dolphin or to find their place in the North Pacific Trash Gyre. Or maybe both. The moment they were inside the red inflatable arch was a blob on the ground and workers were busy sweeping up the fireworks residue. In no time it was as though none of it had ever happened.
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Having successfully hunted and gathered my set of All the Basic Ingredients for Chinese Cooking, I decided that Sunday night was going to be my inaugural cooking evening. I had some pork, I had the goods, I had some leftover green beans courtesy of my gracious hostess and I was ready to whip up a masterpiece. I went off to the web and found a recipe for Sichuan stir-fried pork and figured it was a good place to start. I didn't have any chicken broth or peanuts, or a means to accurately measure the ingredients that I did have, but I figured I'd let the chiles and the peppercorns in the green beans carry the day. All I really needed to do was whip up a brown sauce with a little soy, cook the meat, add some vinegar, rice wine and cornstarch and re-heat the vegetables. How could that not turn out fit for a king? Worst case it was crunchy peanut butter and sour cherry jam on my last two pieces of bread.
My kitchen is a little on the small side and the counters are really low for a strapping brute such as me. In order to do the dishes I have to sort of stoop over and put my head under the cabinets to be looking down on the work. It's that or rest my forehead on a cabinet door. The sink levels off at about 5 inches below my belt buckle so I'm in a serious crunch when it comes time to do the dishes. Surprisingly, the upper cabinets are mounted high, so much so that I can barely reach the top shelf. Your average Chinese would need a fireman's ladder to use the upper two shelves. The décor is very modern, and the cabinets are opened and closed not with handles but with a metal channel that forms a sharp edge at just about top of the forehead level. I've told myself about sixteen times to not leave those doors open when I'm flitting around the kitchen putting things away.
There is a general dearth of cabinet space, certainly not enough for food, supplies and dishware. I got busy doing the prep work – laying out the ingredients, chopping the meat and lining up the bottles of vinegar, wine and soy. I realized about this time that my current storage spot for bottles and utensils, just off the right of the cooktop, was going to be a poor choice because everything was going to get oil splattered whenever I fried. So I set about opening and closing doors and moving things around. I found a home for the utensils that was convenient – upper cabinet just to the right of the burners. About this time the meat was finishing up and it was time to add the chicken broth substitute – water - and so I turned and went to the water dispenser inconveniently located in the dining room next to the refrigerator (a big improvement over having it in the living room where it was originally however.) I dumped the water in the wok and did a couple of spins to get it mixed, reducing the flame to get a roiling simmer going. That taken care of I turned to go back to stuffing things in the upper cabinet when I felt this sort of sickening thud – I'd walked straight into the edge of a cabinet door with the top of my head.
At first I wasn't sure how to react – it hurt so much that I was at a loss for words. My reaction was to grab a piece of paper towel and in applying it I realized I was bleeding like a stuck pig. It's never a good feeling to put a piece of paper on your head and have it come away blood-soaked. I decided to go and have a look in the mirror, already dreading my return visit to the First Affiliate Hospital of the Dalian Medical University for stitches. Heading off to the nearest bathroom I suddenly came to the realization that this bathroom doesn't have a light over the mirror, only the light in the center of the room ceiling which is useless for finding a bleeding wound in the center of a head with hair. Down the hall to the master bathroom and the same slap in the face – no wonder my makeup has been so poorly applied lately – the mirrors in this joint are dark. I stood there and thought about it for a minute or so, filling up my towel with more of the red stuff before it dawned on me to grab my flashlight and illuminate the stricken region while looking in one of the abysmal mirrors. Of course I really could have used three hands to do this – one to hold the light and two to move my hair around but I managed with two and found a pair of nice little gouges torn in my scalp. Bloody but not stitch worthy. I grabbed a blob of Neosporin and gave myself a stylishly nice moussey antibacterial hairdo.
The dinner turned out to be sublime and I enjoyed it sitting in my red Poang chair overlooking the buildings below illuminated by the golden light of the setting sun.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Throwing caution to the wind, I ride my bike.
I guess I'm a regular at Starbucks now, the night guy just told me my order before I even opened my mouth. I threw him a curve ball though and ordered a Vente instead of a Grande. It might be time to change the music though because "Autumn in New York" now seems to always be playing when I walk in the door. The tape has moved on to a classic rendition of "Black Coffee", an appropriate tune considering the locale.
My weekend was pretty full, to say the least. I spent the early part of yesterday out on foot scoping out the big park on the far side of the light rail tracks as a potential spot for bike riding. From my place it's hard to see what's in there, although there seemed to be sort of a dirt boundary road that might bear some use given that one of the bikes I brought was rigged for off road riding. I met a friend for coffee and then headed off in the direction of the park entrance. I cut across 5 Colour City and spent some time marveling at how boring and drab it looks in the daytime without the noisy bars, the drunks, the massage girls beckoning me inside and all the neon. I guess red-light districts everywhere take on a different hue in the light of day. I crossed the main road and walked up one of the scooter/bike lanes that run parallel to some of the busier streets. These are common in the bigger cities – Shanghai has an extensive network – and they provide a generally safer means for bike travel. Cars more or less stay out of them because they are slow. Unfortunately, Dalian does not have many, and this one didn't travel very far.
The park entrance looked very shabby and not at all bike worthy since it consisted of a bunch of tall stone stairs leading up into the woods. Three workers carrying rakes dissuaded me from heading up into the forest ahead of them, I could catch a little of what they were saying and I knew it was about me. So rather than continue with that little game I continued on down the road looking for a more official entrance.
Taking a left I found myself at the First Affiliated Hospital of the Dalian Medical University one of the places I visited back in February. It looked about the same today as it did back then, cars all over the sidewalk, people heading in and out. The only difference now was the occasional patient out for a stroll in their blue and white hospital pajamas. One guy, his hand and arm completely bandaged was walking along visiting with his wife.
The park remained off to my left with no clear entrance. At the next intersection I took a left and continued to search. Some large Japanese automotive parts manufacturer of a name new to me was housed in big white and blue buildings on both sides of the street. Mixed in were shabby apartment blocks, apparently housing the workers and their families. The company buildings were finally replaced with more apartment blocks most of which had beauty salons in the ground floor shops. I'd apparently stumbled into the self-improvement district
A half mile or so down the road I finally found a way in – a grand entrance lined with big privet bushes and a couple of giant stone blocks with the name of the place carved on them. There didn't appear to be an entrance fee so I headed in and climbed up the first broad paved road into the trees.
This side was pretty nice, broad lawns and big trees, a little red pagoda up amid the pines. Strollers were taking in the late morning, women walking as always with an umbrella in a quest to remain as pale as possible. Young couples sat among the trees planning the fireworks and giant red arches for their weddings. Old folks looked at me as though I was from Mars. I did a lot of mental note taking as I walked along finally deciding that despite its small size, it had some good, short but steep climbs and a general lack of cars and people. While I doubted I could spend two hours in there, I could certainly do a handful of loops and get a good workout.
Rather than go back the way I came, I headed in the direction of the entrance closest to my apartment and the vibe was just about as bad as it was with the workers I'd left behind earlier. There is something about young men sitting on benches in the woods with that "I'm not doing anything wrong" look on their face that plainly conveys the opposite. I don't know what it is about urban parks, but for some reason they have a way of making people look guilty. Maybe they are, I don't know; I just hurried along the path and took the stairs down to the street level, passing another loud young couple and a lot of trash.
My afternoon was dedicated to unpacking and re-assembling my two bicycles in preparation for the off chance that I would develop the nerve to actually ride one out on the street today. Consistent with my base level of luck, upon pumping up the tires I discovered that I had two flat tires – one per bicycle. Murphy is out to get me it seems between flat tires and lost grocery lists.
Last night I went to dinner at a colleague's house, sort of a get together for the few of us that had remained in town on this long weekend. I'm still glad I made the choice I did about sticking around as I managed to get just about everything squared away, at least those things that make my life easier to live.
My dinner date was at my colleague's apartment, in downtown Dalian by Xinhai Square, the chief tourist spot in Dalian. He and his wife who is from Sichuan Province had taken me out for some authentic food one time back in Shanghai, and I was looking forward to a full meal prepared in her style. Mr. Jiang picked me up for the drive in and we had a nice chat in Chinese about how fat Americans like big cars.
After a misstep at his complex entrance, I found my way in and up to his place. It was very nice; about the size of mine and done in Japanese style furnishings, sort of simple, Asian, modern. Being only on the 4th floor his sea view was sadly restricted and it appeared it was about to be even more doomed judging from the crane that was smack dab in the middle of it. The guests started to arrive and I realized I had not brought a gift which made me feel like a complete clod given that I was raised better than that. The fact that most of them had brought expensive liquors and wines didn't make me feel any better. Point taken, a mistake not to make a second time.
This was the first such gathering where I was in the distinct minority and I have to say it was an interesting feeling being completely unable to follow any of the conversations. We did go back and forth between Chinese and English though and I even managed to educate the crowd on the origin of the name "Sichuan". It translates as "four rivers" and was given because of the four rivers that drain the region, also forming the northern basin of the Yangtze. Everyone got a good laugh at the American giving them a lesson in Chinese geography place names.
I asked the guys who were raised here about the legend behind the boy on the bull statue out in Kai Fa Qu and no one had an idea. The hill is named after it - "Tong Niu" - and I assume it has some legendary explanation. But no one had any idea and I was a bit surprised that no one had ever had the interest to find out
Dinner was served and I was seated at the place of honor in front of a big bowl of Sichuan Chicken, my favorite dish. The chicken is fried and braised to about the consistency of jerky and then served in a big pile of those nasty little red cellophane peppers. To say that it's hot is to diminish it – blistering would be a better description. We had quite a banquet set before us and I made my way through just about every dish. Sichuan green beans served cold, shrimp in some kind of tomato puree, dried cold beef slices, beef in a hot broth steaming with mouth numbing peppercorns, a bowl of goose parts, a Hunan-style duck with its sad little head staring out of the bowl, a big pot of American potato salad which served to return your palate to normalcy between the spicy dishes, saucy Ribbon Fish, some steamed greens, beef boiled in hot pepper oil, Thai glass noodles and the most interesting dish of all, a plate of duck tongues. My friend had been warned by his wife not to seat me by the tongues, but I dug right in and they were quite interesting. About 2 inches long including the muscles that formerly allowed the duck to move it, each tongue held a tiny bone. They looked just like a pale tan version of the Catclaw seed you sometimes find in the desert in Arizona. They were quite tasty in the same way that beef tongue is.
I was sent home with the remnants of my favorite dishes and the promise of a return invitation. I told my hostess that her dishes were my "zui ai", my very favorite, and went on my way. Mr. Jiang picked me up and we had a nice chat on the way home in Chinese about our wives and how they are the bosses and how we earn our money and hand it all over to them.
This morning I dilly-dallied before finally getting up the nerve to take my bike downstairs and ride it. Fitting it in the elevator was the first challenge and avoiding getting hit by a bright red Camaro in my parking lot didn't bode well. But I got across the street and headed down the sidewalk to where I supposed the entrance to the park would be.
The sidewalks here are very broad and are used by cars, scooters, cyclists, trucks and pedestrians interchangeably. No matter how long I stay here, I don't think I will ever get used to cars inching down the walk blowing their horns for the walkers to get out of their way. This morning though I pretty much had the place all to myself. Rounding the corner on Haerbin Road I saw a little street that seemed to run parallel to the way I had just traveled and sure enough, I found a quiet empty path from my building that would allow me to skip the sidewalk ride altogether. At the far end of it, a woman sat on a crate tending to bee hives. It took a moment to settle in, but the whole block was lined with brown bee boxes and two little tents that seemed to be the living quarters for the beekeepers. Very interesting, right here one block off the main drag, behind hotel row. I stopped to take a couple of pictures and watched as sparrows darted in and out of the trees, stealing a bee or two for a morning meal.
Continuing on I found that the park entrance was a bit further down the road than I had anticipated. I had to go out in the street a couple of times to avoid workers who were replacing the bricks that make up the walk. I finally reached the entrance and turned right, heading in. A man in a police uniform sitting at a small wooden desk under an umbrella through me for a moment and I had to make a split second decision about whether to stop or not. In doing so I stopped paying attention to where I was heading and almost skewered myself on one of four yellow pipes sticking out of the road, forming a car barrier. I barely dodged one with my rear wheel but managed to stay upright. The official stared at me like I was nuts but didn't say a word.
The decision to ride in here turned out to be a good one. I looped around and around, taking the little climbs hard and getting my heart rate up there. My pulse was further quickened when I was chased by a scruffy little rat dog that belonged to one of the gardeners. It got me thinking about my stand on not having a rabies vaccination, but only for a moment. I kept the bike between me and it and I had to respect it for its tenacity – it wouldn't shut up until I was a long way down the path.
On one of my loops I made it a point to say "hello" to the official and he returned my greeting in kind.
I managed to kill a solid forty minutes in there before heading out. I retraced my path from yesterday, riding by the hospital where ironically I didn't feel terribly safe in the traffic. Too many visitors looking for parking spots and too many taxis picking people up. After exploring the parallel bike lane to its end I headed back to my building, an hour under my belt. Which didn't seem like long enough so I headed off in the other direction towards the sea. I rode by the neighborhood where quite a few of my work pals live and made a couple of loops around a new park that is down by their place. Two groups of elementary school students were being shuffled around by their minders. The boys were dressed in blue polo shirts and white shorts, the girls in pink shifts with matching hats. Circling the park I found my way out to a big pond that held a couple of sea gulls. I wondered if there would be ducks in the winter, but the water was so brown and smelled so bad that I doubt it. A Peregrine Falcon though was lazily turning circles in front of a high rise suggesting that it might be nesting up on top. I left the park and followed the road past the Karaoke restaurant with the giant goddess and cherubs on the front, stopping to take a couple of pictures.
I followed the same road for a while passing a school yard filled with middle school kids dressed in red and white uniforms. They were so noisy that they reminded me of the sound of the flocks of geese at Bosque del Apache in the winter. Some were running on the track and dozens were jumping rope
I was closing in on two hours and felt I had had a darn enjoyable outing. I took a quiet side street back and arrived unscathed. The chief learning here is that you simply have to pay attention all the time. The cars are not terribly respectful of you and you have to watch out not only for what they are about to do but also how they are going to react to what other cars are doing. Chinese drivers are always looking for an advantage, so you have to be on guard that their attempt to advance their position in not at your expense.
My weekend was pretty full, to say the least. I spent the early part of yesterday out on foot scoping out the big park on the far side of the light rail tracks as a potential spot for bike riding. From my place it's hard to see what's in there, although there seemed to be sort of a dirt boundary road that might bear some use given that one of the bikes I brought was rigged for off road riding. I met a friend for coffee and then headed off in the direction of the park entrance. I cut across 5 Colour City and spent some time marveling at how boring and drab it looks in the daytime without the noisy bars, the drunks, the massage girls beckoning me inside and all the neon. I guess red-light districts everywhere take on a different hue in the light of day. I crossed the main road and walked up one of the scooter/bike lanes that run parallel to some of the busier streets. These are common in the bigger cities – Shanghai has an extensive network – and they provide a generally safer means for bike travel. Cars more or less stay out of them because they are slow. Unfortunately, Dalian does not have many, and this one didn't travel very far.
The park entrance looked very shabby and not at all bike worthy since it consisted of a bunch of tall stone stairs leading up into the woods. Three workers carrying rakes dissuaded me from heading up into the forest ahead of them, I could catch a little of what they were saying and I knew it was about me. So rather than continue with that little game I continued on down the road looking for a more official entrance.
Taking a left I found myself at the First Affiliated Hospital of the Dalian Medical University one of the places I visited back in February. It looked about the same today as it did back then, cars all over the sidewalk, people heading in and out. The only difference now was the occasional patient out for a stroll in their blue and white hospital pajamas. One guy, his hand and arm completely bandaged was walking along visiting with his wife.
The park remained off to my left with no clear entrance. At the next intersection I took a left and continued to search. Some large Japanese automotive parts manufacturer of a name new to me was housed in big white and blue buildings on both sides of the street. Mixed in were shabby apartment blocks, apparently housing the workers and their families. The company buildings were finally replaced with more apartment blocks most of which had beauty salons in the ground floor shops. I'd apparently stumbled into the self-improvement district
A half mile or so down the road I finally found a way in – a grand entrance lined with big privet bushes and a couple of giant stone blocks with the name of the place carved on them. There didn't appear to be an entrance fee so I headed in and climbed up the first broad paved road into the trees.
This side was pretty nice, broad lawns and big trees, a little red pagoda up amid the pines. Strollers were taking in the late morning, women walking as always with an umbrella in a quest to remain as pale as possible. Young couples sat among the trees planning the fireworks and giant red arches for their weddings. Old folks looked at me as though I was from Mars. I did a lot of mental note taking as I walked along finally deciding that despite its small size, it had some good, short but steep climbs and a general lack of cars and people. While I doubted I could spend two hours in there, I could certainly do a handful of loops and get a good workout.
Rather than go back the way I came, I headed in the direction of the entrance closest to my apartment and the vibe was just about as bad as it was with the workers I'd left behind earlier. There is something about young men sitting on benches in the woods with that "I'm not doing anything wrong" look on their face that plainly conveys the opposite. I don't know what it is about urban parks, but for some reason they have a way of making people look guilty. Maybe they are, I don't know; I just hurried along the path and took the stairs down to the street level, passing another loud young couple and a lot of trash.
My afternoon was dedicated to unpacking and re-assembling my two bicycles in preparation for the off chance that I would develop the nerve to actually ride one out on the street today. Consistent with my base level of luck, upon pumping up the tires I discovered that I had two flat tires – one per bicycle. Murphy is out to get me it seems between flat tires and lost grocery lists.
Last night I went to dinner at a colleague's house, sort of a get together for the few of us that had remained in town on this long weekend. I'm still glad I made the choice I did about sticking around as I managed to get just about everything squared away, at least those things that make my life easier to live.
My dinner date was at my colleague's apartment, in downtown Dalian by Xinhai Square, the chief tourist spot in Dalian. He and his wife who is from Sichuan Province had taken me out for some authentic food one time back in Shanghai, and I was looking forward to a full meal prepared in her style. Mr. Jiang picked me up for the drive in and we had a nice chat in Chinese about how fat Americans like big cars.
After a misstep at his complex entrance, I found my way in and up to his place. It was very nice; about the size of mine and done in Japanese style furnishings, sort of simple, Asian, modern. Being only on the 4th floor his sea view was sadly restricted and it appeared it was about to be even more doomed judging from the crane that was smack dab in the middle of it. The guests started to arrive and I realized I had not brought a gift which made me feel like a complete clod given that I was raised better than that. The fact that most of them had brought expensive liquors and wines didn't make me feel any better. Point taken, a mistake not to make a second time.
This was the first such gathering where I was in the distinct minority and I have to say it was an interesting feeling being completely unable to follow any of the conversations. We did go back and forth between Chinese and English though and I even managed to educate the crowd on the origin of the name "Sichuan". It translates as "four rivers" and was given because of the four rivers that drain the region, also forming the northern basin of the Yangtze. Everyone got a good laugh at the American giving them a lesson in Chinese geography place names.
I asked the guys who were raised here about the legend behind the boy on the bull statue out in Kai Fa Qu and no one had an idea. The hill is named after it - "Tong Niu" - and I assume it has some legendary explanation. But no one had any idea and I was a bit surprised that no one had ever had the interest to find out
Dinner was served and I was seated at the place of honor in front of a big bowl of Sichuan Chicken, my favorite dish. The chicken is fried and braised to about the consistency of jerky and then served in a big pile of those nasty little red cellophane peppers. To say that it's hot is to diminish it – blistering would be a better description. We had quite a banquet set before us and I made my way through just about every dish. Sichuan green beans served cold, shrimp in some kind of tomato puree, dried cold beef slices, beef in a hot broth steaming with mouth numbing peppercorns, a bowl of goose parts, a Hunan-style duck with its sad little head staring out of the bowl, a big pot of American potato salad which served to return your palate to normalcy between the spicy dishes, saucy Ribbon Fish, some steamed greens, beef boiled in hot pepper oil, Thai glass noodles and the most interesting dish of all, a plate of duck tongues. My friend had been warned by his wife not to seat me by the tongues, but I dug right in and they were quite interesting. About 2 inches long including the muscles that formerly allowed the duck to move it, each tongue held a tiny bone. They looked just like a pale tan version of the Catclaw seed you sometimes find in the desert in Arizona. They were quite tasty in the same way that beef tongue is.
I was sent home with the remnants of my favorite dishes and the promise of a return invitation. I told my hostess that her dishes were my "zui ai", my very favorite, and went on my way. Mr. Jiang picked me up and we had a nice chat on the way home in Chinese about our wives and how they are the bosses and how we earn our money and hand it all over to them.
This morning I dilly-dallied before finally getting up the nerve to take my bike downstairs and ride it. Fitting it in the elevator was the first challenge and avoiding getting hit by a bright red Camaro in my parking lot didn't bode well. But I got across the street and headed down the sidewalk to where I supposed the entrance to the park would be.
The sidewalks here are very broad and are used by cars, scooters, cyclists, trucks and pedestrians interchangeably. No matter how long I stay here, I don't think I will ever get used to cars inching down the walk blowing their horns for the walkers to get out of their way. This morning though I pretty much had the place all to myself. Rounding the corner on Haerbin Road I saw a little street that seemed to run parallel to the way I had just traveled and sure enough, I found a quiet empty path from my building that would allow me to skip the sidewalk ride altogether. At the far end of it, a woman sat on a crate tending to bee hives. It took a moment to settle in, but the whole block was lined with brown bee boxes and two little tents that seemed to be the living quarters for the beekeepers. Very interesting, right here one block off the main drag, behind hotel row. I stopped to take a couple of pictures and watched as sparrows darted in and out of the trees, stealing a bee or two for a morning meal.
Continuing on I found that the park entrance was a bit further down the road than I had anticipated. I had to go out in the street a couple of times to avoid workers who were replacing the bricks that make up the walk. I finally reached the entrance and turned right, heading in. A man in a police uniform sitting at a small wooden desk under an umbrella through me for a moment and I had to make a split second decision about whether to stop or not. In doing so I stopped paying attention to where I was heading and almost skewered myself on one of four yellow pipes sticking out of the road, forming a car barrier. I barely dodged one with my rear wheel but managed to stay upright. The official stared at me like I was nuts but didn't say a word.
The decision to ride in here turned out to be a good one. I looped around and around, taking the little climbs hard and getting my heart rate up there. My pulse was further quickened when I was chased by a scruffy little rat dog that belonged to one of the gardeners. It got me thinking about my stand on not having a rabies vaccination, but only for a moment. I kept the bike between me and it and I had to respect it for its tenacity – it wouldn't shut up until I was a long way down the path.
On one of my loops I made it a point to say "hello" to the official and he returned my greeting in kind.
I managed to kill a solid forty minutes in there before heading out. I retraced my path from yesterday, riding by the hospital where ironically I didn't feel terribly safe in the traffic. Too many visitors looking for parking spots and too many taxis picking people up. After exploring the parallel bike lane to its end I headed back to my building, an hour under my belt. Which didn't seem like long enough so I headed off in the other direction towards the sea. I rode by the neighborhood where quite a few of my work pals live and made a couple of loops around a new park that is down by their place. Two groups of elementary school students were being shuffled around by their minders. The boys were dressed in blue polo shirts and white shorts, the girls in pink shifts with matching hats. Circling the park I found my way out to a big pond that held a couple of sea gulls. I wondered if there would be ducks in the winter, but the water was so brown and smelled so bad that I doubt it. A Peregrine Falcon though was lazily turning circles in front of a high rise suggesting that it might be nesting up on top. I left the park and followed the road past the Karaoke restaurant with the giant goddess and cherubs on the front, stopping to take a couple of pictures.
I followed the same road for a while passing a school yard filled with middle school kids dressed in red and white uniforms. They were so noisy that they reminded me of the sound of the flocks of geese at Bosque del Apache in the winter. Some were running on the track and dozens were jumping rope
I was closing in on two hours and felt I had had a darn enjoyable outing. I took a quiet side street back and arrived unscathed. The chief learning here is that you simply have to pay attention all the time. The cars are not terribly respectful of you and you have to watch out not only for what they are about to do but also how they are going to react to what other cars are doing. Chinese drivers are always looking for an advantage, so you have to be on guard that their attempt to advance their position in not at your expense.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
My domicile
The name of the building I live in is Jun Yue Hao Ting - something, something, imperial mansion. It's neither of those last two things. As buildings go in Kai Fa Qu, it's pretty nice but "mansion" is not a word I would use to describe it.
Apartment living here is a bit different than it is over there. First of all, they're all owned by individuals, more of a co-op than a true apartment. Secondly, the builders tend to move a bunch of people in long before the building is complete in order to generate some cash flow to pay for the finishing touches. So while we're living here, the management office consists of two card tables, a phone and three folding chairs in a roughed in room the size of a dirigible hanger. I suppose someday it will be quite impressive, today it's quite unfinished.
We do have a doorman, some of the time and when he's on duty he often has the security door propped open with a chair so that he can go outside and supervise the guys finishing the rest of the building. At night though the door is generally locked and he is nowhere to be seen. There are two elevators on my side of the place, really really slow and generally kind of dirty. The other day the walls were covered with the handprints of someone who had been doing drywall work. This morning the floor was wet from who knows what. And then there's the magic formula of pushing button number 24 to go to the 24th floor but watching the numbers go by until it says "27" when you arrive.
My floor has 4 doors and I assume there are 4 families living up here. I've never seen them and it's not uncommon for out of state people to who units that they never live in. I have heard people rustling around on occasion.
Trash is an interesting challenge as there doesn't seem to be an organized way of collecting it. Maria my consultant told me to leave it in the stairwell and I tested that theory 8 days ago. It's still there. One of the ghost families put some cardboard boxes outside their door and they remained there for 2 days until finally disappearing. So right now I am testing that theory with some cardboard of my own. It's been 3 days. Wet garbage is easy - everyone just dumps it on a pile outside the front door and it disappears the same day
This is my building as seen from the park across the street. My unit is smack in the middle column, four floors from the top.
Apartment living here is a bit different than it is over there. First of all, they're all owned by individuals, more of a co-op than a true apartment. Secondly, the builders tend to move a bunch of people in long before the building is complete in order to generate some cash flow to pay for the finishing touches. So while we're living here, the management office consists of two card tables, a phone and three folding chairs in a roughed in room the size of a dirigible hanger. I suppose someday it will be quite impressive, today it's quite unfinished.
We do have a doorman, some of the time and when he's on duty he often has the security door propped open with a chair so that he can go outside and supervise the guys finishing the rest of the building. At night though the door is generally locked and he is nowhere to be seen. There are two elevators on my side of the place, really really slow and generally kind of dirty. The other day the walls were covered with the handprints of someone who had been doing drywall work. This morning the floor was wet from who knows what. And then there's the magic formula of pushing button number 24 to go to the 24th floor but watching the numbers go by until it says "27" when you arrive.
My floor has 4 doors and I assume there are 4 families living up here. I've never seen them and it's not uncommon for out of state people to who units that they never live in. I have heard people rustling around on occasion.
Trash is an interesting challenge as there doesn't seem to be an organized way of collecting it. Maria my consultant told me to leave it in the stairwell and I tested that theory 8 days ago. It's still there. One of the ghost families put some cardboard boxes outside their door and they remained there for 2 days until finally disappearing. So right now I am testing that theory with some cardboard of my own. It's been 3 days. Wet garbage is easy - everyone just dumps it on a pile outside the front door and it disappears the same day
This is my building as seen from the park across the street. My unit is smack in the middle column, four floors from the top.
If you look up the center line until you see the one and only box hanging on the wall, that's my place and that's one of my air conditioners.
This is my Poang chair from IKEA. Sitting here in the bay window I can enjoy the view of the city and the ocean.
Living room seen from the Poang chair. Dining room beyond with Guanyin meditating on the table.
The other side of the living room with my giant television. It's tuned to BBC News just about all the time.
Shot across the dining room table to the kitchen. Beyond is the glassed in room that overlooks Jin Ma Lu, the street out front.
Didn't want you to miss an opportunity to see the giant air conditioner that provides a nice Feng Shui balance for the tiny refrigerator.
Detail of the scroll painting. Two Magpie Jays with Full Moon and Springtime Blossoms.
Guest bedroom, sign up for your stay now, the list is filling fast. Yes, the duvet is a bit small. The landlord did not understand the concept of buying up a size and chose the appropriate cover for the precise matress size. And yes, the mattress is as thin as it looks, but oddly comfortable.
Other side of the guest bedroom. Although this is a moderately large apartment, the furniture is even larger. There are no closets so you need an armoire. And they're not small.
Master bedroom from the doorway. That quilt is tough on the brain, with diagonally arrayed pockets it's hard to tell if it's straight when you make the bed.
Other direction showing giant armoire and techno desk lamp.
My attempt at peace and harmony. Vase alone with simple table in small white space.
Another shot of the kitchen. That toaster oven on the left is something, it uses lamps instead of coils and you have to use special sunglasses when using it.
Glassed in porch/laundry room annex. No room for a dryer anywhere else, so here it is. About the size of a large microwave, it works surprisingly well. The hangers you see are hanging from the clothesline system that is raised and lowered via a crank behind the dryer.
Second bathroom. Note the shower that has no enclosure whatsoever. Very common here, sometimes the shower heads are in the middle of the room.
The big brother of my Kerren Hotel washer. This one's a beast and it does a good job. Here's the door closed shot.
And here's the door open shot. I used it today for the first time and honestly I figured it out despite the labels being solely in Chinese.
View from the living room window. That temple appears to no longer be in use.
Living room window view Part 2, looking towards Dalian city which is obscured by "marine fog."
Another living room view. Those towers on the right side are beachfront.
View to the northeast towards Korea, I expect this is where the missiles will come from.
Closeup of the bridge they are building between Kai Fa Qu and Dalian city, supposed to take some of the traffic load off of the current connection and I'm sure it will until they add a million or so new cars.
View of the flying saucer from my bedroom window. They are preparing it for a mission to Mars.
Big beachfront restaurant, straight out my back window.
View of the Inn Fine Hotel, my former residence of last week from the guest bedroom. Those mountains in the background are the ones we climbed on Dragon Boat Festival Thursday.
Also from the guest bedroom towards Five Colour City which is tucked down between the tall buildings.
The Victoria Hotel at night, never ending neon lightshow, the tubes run until quite late, red - green - blue - white.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Once in a while, things actually work out
It only takes one little thing to dissolve you into a puddle of despair in this place. Every day seems to be made up of a series of sharp highs and blunt lows and not much regular life stability in between which makes it hard to manage your time and plan your activities when you never know what’s just around the corner. Of course this is true of life no matter where you live, but here because it’s so alien, the little things just seem to be more crisply in focus and capable of knocking you down right quick.
I was thinking about my eating habits at work today and recalled a time when I was not a bad practitioner of Chinese cuisine. I had this big thick cookbook, the right tools and a full set of ingredients on hand, procured on weekends at the local Asian market. Cooking Chinese is really not that tough and it doesn’t have to come out perfect to be good enough. I’d created many a meal in the past that was at least minimally worthy of the worst Chinese restaurant I’d been to. And some were even worthy of the better ones. But it’s been a while and the skill has certainly atrophied to the point where I’ve lost the understanding of the most basics. Every cuisine has them, French has cream, Italian has tomatoes and New Mexican has chiles. Mongolian I suppose has fermented mare’s milk, but that’s a story for another time. Working with those you can generally whip up something you would not be ashamed to feed a visiting Fireman. So I went off to the web to conjure up a few recipes to see just how hard it would be to get rolling again, after all I am in China and the fixings don’t require anything but a stroll to the market down the block. Frankly, there is no reason for me to be eating peanut and jelly sandwiches 5 nights a week (aside from the fact that they taste really good.)
A little bit of research and the understanding slowly crept back into my head – sugar, cornstarch, vinegar and rice wine – the cornerstones of just about every dish from this side of the International Dateline. All fine and good, but these items were not going to jump off the shelves into my basket - finding them in a store full of Chinese labels was going to take a bit of work and so I put myself to the task of making a shopping list, written in Chinese characters. What could go wrong, head to the store and wander around with a piece of paper in front of my face until you see bottles and bags with the same characters. A foolproof plan if there ever was one.
Sugar and vinegar were easy, single words and common at that. Rice wine was a bit tougher, but two co-workers helped me with that one. Cornstarch was another story and the discussion of its proper name provoked an argument between my helpers. Seems they might not call it the same thing here that they call it in Shanghai. Or Sichuan or Hunan for that matter. So I took both suggestions and wrote them down.
I had a plan, I had the means and most importantly, I had the motivation.
Mr. Jiang collected me at four and I spent the time on the ride home making plans for him to pick me up on Saturday for a dinner date in Dalian with some co-workers. I’m really getting into the swing of communicating with him and I’ll admit that it feels darn good when I formulate a complex sentence in Chinese and he tells me it’s correct. Today he also told me that he likes to work on Saturdays because he enjoys the overtime, dropping the hint that Sunday was not bad either.
After dropping off my stuff I shoved a couple of empty shopping bags in my messenger bag, grabbed my shopping list and headed down the street to the new Tesco market. I have to say, this newly opened store has really cheered me up on my shopping trips, it being clean and bright. Far better than the other two I’ve been using.
Now that the weather is nice, the sidewalks are jammed with street vendors selling fruit, ceramic Santa Claus butter dishes, ocean going container ship models built from plastic pop beads, women’s knee high stockings, Hawaiian print short shorts and today’s special, travel sized packs of Kleenex. The one food item that caught my eye was some sort of dough based treat that looked a lot like the cinnamon crispers you find at fairs in the Southwest. Kind of a pale brown ribbon. Well here the ribbon was being dispensed from a dough press and the operator was taking up the output and folding it into small piles. The interesting part though was the means by which the thing was running – a small diesel engine belching oily gray smoke through an exhaust pipe over the dough ribbon output. These kinds of distractions make navigation kind of tough, but the booming disco beat coming from the stores helps to keep you focused and moving forward.
I crossed the street and stopped to tie my shoe at the store entrance. Once done I reached in my back pocket to get my shopping list and discovered that it was gone. I mean really, how does a piece of standard sized letter paper folded in fourths fall out of your pocket on a 2 block walk? It was just another one of those little coral reefs thrown in front of my ship of progress and I was instantly depressed and angry at the same time. I had no means to go home and print a new one, I had no chance of finding the stuff without it and so my only option was to turn around and head back home, my spirit dashed once again. As I crossed the street I decided at least to watch the ground on the off chance I might stumble upon it, but I didn’t have much hope.
I paid particular attention at a couple of spots where I’d done some gymnastics to avoid an obstruction or where I had accidentally ended up on the seller side of the carpet which required a leap, but nothing was there. I kept on going with each white scrap of similar size giving me a moment’s hope.
Halfway back to my apartment, I saw a piece of paper up ahead that had some writing on it and nearing it I also saw that it had a size six hiking boot tread on it as well, but wonder of wonders it was my list. I turned around and headed back – I was in business once again.
Grocery stores in China are generally in the basements of buildings, don’t ask me why. The new Tesco though seems to occupy an interstitial space and it’s hard to find your way in without simultaneously going up and down escalators to get there. I made it a point of going in the way I’d last gone out on my last visit but somehow I ended up at a dead end requiring a ride up to another floor. It’s worth noting right now that when I subsequently left I walked right out where I came in, on the same level. I’ll figure out how they’ve managed to bend time and space some other time.
I made my way into the main entrance, grabbing a hand basket and willfully ignoring the young women who are supposed to seize my messenger bag in order to dissuade me from shoplifting. They take away your handbag, man-purse or backpack and seal it in a big blue canvas affair with one of those non-goes we use in the states to protect Banana Republic underwear. I walk past them all the time and they watch my progress hoping I’ll comply but way to daunted to yell at me.
In addition to shopping for my target items, I decided to take my time and really peruse the offerings, something I never do because shopping here puts me in a frenzy and my survival mechanism is to get in and get out as quickly as possible. But today, why not, it’s not like I have anywhere to go. An aisle dedicated to myriad Oreo based products brought to mind a show we’d watched some time back on MSNBC about the profusion of Oreo items over here, each designed to capture the interest of the Chinese consumer and to keep them buying. Here, you don’t find regular old round Oreos, you find Oreo bars, wafer cookies, sticks tubes and cudgels. I tossed a box of chocolate covered Oreo wafers into my basket. I found Chinese Ritz Crackers and the Lay’s version of Pringles, selecting Traditional and Lime flavored.
Eventually I found my way to the Aisle of All Things Bottled and using my little character list I immediately found two types of vinegar. Hot on the heels of that success I added a bottle of Sesame Oil. Rice Wine though was eluding me and I’d not yet attempted cornstarch so I wandered around until I found a couple of young women in need of an assignment and I showed them my list. Cornstarch – forget it – this store doesn’t have it. Expressing skepticism in my best Chinese, they took me over to another girl, the expert in grains and nuts. She looked at the characters and said “No.” I pointed to the second set of characters, the other name suggested by my No. 2 Work Helper, which was printed right by the first one and she said “Yes”, shuffling me off to a pile of zip lock bags full of the stuff. Sugar was easy and all that remained was Rice Wine which a fourth young woman obligingly led me to. My plan had worked, the goods were mine, and I checked out and was on my way.
Completely unrelated to this story, I wanted to add a couple of photos I took the other day following our hike up Da Hei Shan. The cab dropped us off by our favorite western restaurant – The Real Eddie’s – and we hoofed it down the alley to his place, a Philly Cheesesteak in mind. Walking along the backs of other restaurants we passed these two young women, waitresses about to go on shift, out back washing their feet and giving themselves pedicures in tubs of dishwater. I tried real hard to think about how the local restaurant reviewer in Albuquerque would handle such a thing and couldn’t come up with anything. Offended or amused, I’m not sure. Here though it was just another one of those funny little things you come across when you least expect it which is honestly, all the time.
I was thinking about my eating habits at work today and recalled a time when I was not a bad practitioner of Chinese cuisine. I had this big thick cookbook, the right tools and a full set of ingredients on hand, procured on weekends at the local Asian market. Cooking Chinese is really not that tough and it doesn’t have to come out perfect to be good enough. I’d created many a meal in the past that was at least minimally worthy of the worst Chinese restaurant I’d been to. And some were even worthy of the better ones. But it’s been a while and the skill has certainly atrophied to the point where I’ve lost the understanding of the most basics. Every cuisine has them, French has cream, Italian has tomatoes and New Mexican has chiles. Mongolian I suppose has fermented mare’s milk, but that’s a story for another time. Working with those you can generally whip up something you would not be ashamed to feed a visiting Fireman. So I went off to the web to conjure up a few recipes to see just how hard it would be to get rolling again, after all I am in China and the fixings don’t require anything but a stroll to the market down the block. Frankly, there is no reason for me to be eating peanut and jelly sandwiches 5 nights a week (aside from the fact that they taste really good.)
A little bit of research and the understanding slowly crept back into my head – sugar, cornstarch, vinegar and rice wine – the cornerstones of just about every dish from this side of the International Dateline. All fine and good, but these items were not going to jump off the shelves into my basket - finding them in a store full of Chinese labels was going to take a bit of work and so I put myself to the task of making a shopping list, written in Chinese characters. What could go wrong, head to the store and wander around with a piece of paper in front of my face until you see bottles and bags with the same characters. A foolproof plan if there ever was one.
Sugar and vinegar were easy, single words and common at that. Rice wine was a bit tougher, but two co-workers helped me with that one. Cornstarch was another story and the discussion of its proper name provoked an argument between my helpers. Seems they might not call it the same thing here that they call it in Shanghai. Or Sichuan or Hunan for that matter. So I took both suggestions and wrote them down.
I had a plan, I had the means and most importantly, I had the motivation.
Mr. Jiang collected me at four and I spent the time on the ride home making plans for him to pick me up on Saturday for a dinner date in Dalian with some co-workers. I’m really getting into the swing of communicating with him and I’ll admit that it feels darn good when I formulate a complex sentence in Chinese and he tells me it’s correct. Today he also told me that he likes to work on Saturdays because he enjoys the overtime, dropping the hint that Sunday was not bad either.
After dropping off my stuff I shoved a couple of empty shopping bags in my messenger bag, grabbed my shopping list and headed down the street to the new Tesco market. I have to say, this newly opened store has really cheered me up on my shopping trips, it being clean and bright. Far better than the other two I’ve been using.
Now that the weather is nice, the sidewalks are jammed with street vendors selling fruit, ceramic Santa Claus butter dishes, ocean going container ship models built from plastic pop beads, women’s knee high stockings, Hawaiian print short shorts and today’s special, travel sized packs of Kleenex. The one food item that caught my eye was some sort of dough based treat that looked a lot like the cinnamon crispers you find at fairs in the Southwest. Kind of a pale brown ribbon. Well here the ribbon was being dispensed from a dough press and the operator was taking up the output and folding it into small piles. The interesting part though was the means by which the thing was running – a small diesel engine belching oily gray smoke through an exhaust pipe over the dough ribbon output. These kinds of distractions make navigation kind of tough, but the booming disco beat coming from the stores helps to keep you focused and moving forward.
I crossed the street and stopped to tie my shoe at the store entrance. Once done I reached in my back pocket to get my shopping list and discovered that it was gone. I mean really, how does a piece of standard sized letter paper folded in fourths fall out of your pocket on a 2 block walk? It was just another one of those little coral reefs thrown in front of my ship of progress and I was instantly depressed and angry at the same time. I had no means to go home and print a new one, I had no chance of finding the stuff without it and so my only option was to turn around and head back home, my spirit dashed once again. As I crossed the street I decided at least to watch the ground on the off chance I might stumble upon it, but I didn’t have much hope.
I paid particular attention at a couple of spots where I’d done some gymnastics to avoid an obstruction or where I had accidentally ended up on the seller side of the carpet which required a leap, but nothing was there. I kept on going with each white scrap of similar size giving me a moment’s hope.
Halfway back to my apartment, I saw a piece of paper up ahead that had some writing on it and nearing it I also saw that it had a size six hiking boot tread on it as well, but wonder of wonders it was my list. I turned around and headed back – I was in business once again.
Grocery stores in China are generally in the basements of buildings, don’t ask me why. The new Tesco though seems to occupy an interstitial space and it’s hard to find your way in without simultaneously going up and down escalators to get there. I made it a point of going in the way I’d last gone out on my last visit but somehow I ended up at a dead end requiring a ride up to another floor. It’s worth noting right now that when I subsequently left I walked right out where I came in, on the same level. I’ll figure out how they’ve managed to bend time and space some other time.
I made my way into the main entrance, grabbing a hand basket and willfully ignoring the young women who are supposed to seize my messenger bag in order to dissuade me from shoplifting. They take away your handbag, man-purse or backpack and seal it in a big blue canvas affair with one of those non-goes we use in the states to protect Banana Republic underwear. I walk past them all the time and they watch my progress hoping I’ll comply but way to daunted to yell at me.
In addition to shopping for my target items, I decided to take my time and really peruse the offerings, something I never do because shopping here puts me in a frenzy and my survival mechanism is to get in and get out as quickly as possible. But today, why not, it’s not like I have anywhere to go. An aisle dedicated to myriad Oreo based products brought to mind a show we’d watched some time back on MSNBC about the profusion of Oreo items over here, each designed to capture the interest of the Chinese consumer and to keep them buying. Here, you don’t find regular old round Oreos, you find Oreo bars, wafer cookies, sticks tubes and cudgels. I tossed a box of chocolate covered Oreo wafers into my basket. I found Chinese Ritz Crackers and the Lay’s version of Pringles, selecting Traditional and Lime flavored.
Eventually I found my way to the Aisle of All Things Bottled and using my little character list I immediately found two types of vinegar. Hot on the heels of that success I added a bottle of Sesame Oil. Rice Wine though was eluding me and I’d not yet attempted cornstarch so I wandered around until I found a couple of young women in need of an assignment and I showed them my list. Cornstarch – forget it – this store doesn’t have it. Expressing skepticism in my best Chinese, they took me over to another girl, the expert in grains and nuts. She looked at the characters and said “No.” I pointed to the second set of characters, the other name suggested by my No. 2 Work Helper, which was printed right by the first one and she said “Yes”, shuffling me off to a pile of zip lock bags full of the stuff. Sugar was easy and all that remained was Rice Wine which a fourth young woman obligingly led me to. My plan had worked, the goods were mine, and I checked out and was on my way.
Completely unrelated to this story, I wanted to add a couple of photos I took the other day following our hike up Da Hei Shan. The cab dropped us off by our favorite western restaurant – The Real Eddie’s – and we hoofed it down the alley to his place, a Philly Cheesesteak in mind. Walking along the backs of other restaurants we passed these two young women, waitresses about to go on shift, out back washing their feet and giving themselves pedicures in tubs of dishwater. I tried real hard to think about how the local restaurant reviewer in Albuquerque would handle such a thing and couldn’t come up with anything. Offended or amused, I’m not sure. Here though it was just another one of those funny little things you come across when you least expect it which is honestly, all the time.
Cong di dao shan tou - from the bottom to the top of the mountain
We had a work holiday today and it being a Thursday many people turned it into a 4 day outing. I went back and forth a couple of times about going “somewhere” before deciding that I had so much house stuff to do that it might be better to just find a way to enjoy the day without getting on a plane to an exotic locale. After all, I still had a pile of IKEA stuff to assemble, new kitchen ware to clean and put away as well as a load of laundry. The latter meant it was time to understand the washer and dryer. So staying in town was the decision.
But that didn’t mean that I had to turn myself into a domestic worker for a day, there were still places to be explored and what better day to do them. I settled on another trip to Da Hei Shan (Big Black Mountain) and enlisted a friend in the excursion.
Recall from one of my February blogs, I’d been there before in late afternoon when climbing the mountain was pretty much out of the question due to the waning light. On the way down I’d had that depressing experience of seeing those boys with the puppy, so I thought I’d try today to put a better spin on the place.
The day began with a thick chemical fog obscuring the sun and making it a bit on the cooler side. These morning hazes leave the sky a rather unappealing pale saffron color, but they do buy you a couple of hours of respite from the tropical heat. Although it’s just the end of May, it’s already turning into the seaside bamboo steamer that we know and love from the summer months.
Today’s holiday is The Dragon Boat Festival - 端午节 字面意思是龙舟节 - also called Double Fifth Festival, is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth moon of the lunar calendar. It is one of the most important Chinese festivals, following only the Autumn Moon Festival and Chinese New Year.
The origin of this summer festival centers around a scholarly government official named Chu Yuan. He was a good and respected man, but because of the misdeeds of jealous rivals he eventually fell into disfavor in the emperor's court.
Unable to regain the respect of the emperor, Chuan threw himself into the Mi Low River. Because of their admiration for Chu Yuan, the local people living adjacent to the river rushed into their boats to search for him while throwing rice into the waters to appease the river dragons. Although they were unable to find Chu Yuan, their efforts are still commemorated today during the Dragon Boat Festival.
At the center of the modern festival are the dragon boat races. Competing teams drive their colorful craft forward to the rhythm of beating drums. These exciting races were inspired by the villager's valiant attempts to rescue Chu Yuan from the Mi Lo. This tradition has remained unbroken for centuries although up here in the north, the holiday is little more than a day off of work for most of us and triple time for my pals at the coffee shop.
A very popular dish during the Dragon Boat festival is zong zi. This tasty dish consists of rice dumplings with meat, peanut, egg yolk, or other fillings wrapped in bamboo leaves. The tradition of zong zi is meant to remind us of the village fishermen scattering rice across the water of the Mi Lo in order to appease the river dragons so that they would not devour Chu Yuan.
The fifth lunar moon has more significance than just the story of Chu Yuan, many Chinese consider this time of year especially dangerous when extra efforts must be made to protect their family from illness. Families will hang various herbs, called Ay Tsao on their door for protection. The drinking of Realgar Wine is thought to remove poisons from the body. (Realgar by the way is a Chinese herbal mixture and it is added to flavor rice wine to create the festival concoction.) Hsiang Bao are also worn; these sachets contain various fragrant medicinal herbs thought to protect the wearer from illness.
I made a plan to meet my companion at Starbucks – where else – and to be on the road by about 9 or 9:30. It’s a walk of about 3 miles to the base of the mountain, mostly uphill and through the industrial districts that form the border zone between here and the next city over, Jinzhou. It’s not particularly appealing and it can take the legs out of you which is something to avoid considering that you’re about to climb a mountain. So rather than waste a bunch of energy, we decided to catch a cab to the lot at the base and to walk up from there. Faced with the prospect of trying to tell a cabbie where to go, I began the mental practice of giving him the name I knew, and that failing, telling him how to get there turn by turn. As it ended up, “Da Hei Shan” worked perfectly well and we were there in 15 minutes, only 14 kuai lighter for the ride. Arriving at the parking lot it was clear immediately why the driver knew what I was talking about – the place was mobbed with people planning to do the same festival day hike.
I paid the 20 kuai admission fee, collected our tickets and we were on our way. The stares began almost immediately, this being another one of those places that westerners simply don’t frequent. There is a new temple under construction just above the parking lot so we wandered in. The statues here were different than those I’ve seen in the past and I am wondering if this is one of those synthesized religious sites that counter the pure Buddhist presence in China. The most popular religion here in the north is an amalgam of Buddhism, Confucianism and the country-based Animist traditions. The few monks wandering around in the temple halls wore white pants and short black jackets with those traditional Asian button and loop fasteners. They also wore caps that brought to mind those worn by the holy men at the Shinto temples in Japan which got me to thinking that they might be throwing in that here as well. There is still quite a strong Japanese influence here in the north, and I suspect we were seeing some of that here.
You ascend the mountain via a narrow and deep valley in the rock. Between the vegetation and the landforms, you could easily be dropped here and think that you were in either Sabino or Nacapule Canyons back home. Short Live Oaks, or the Chinese equivalent, dominated the flora. Birds sang in the trees but there was no watching them from here. You see, Da Hei Shan has a dark secret – you climb it via hundreds of narrow stone stairs built for size 6 shoes, not big boys with size 10+ sporting lugged soles. No, you didn’t look around, you watched your feet or you end up on your face.
We passed a lot of Chinese tucked into little shady glens having a picnic or simply resting from the climb. While it was arduous, it was tempered by a nice breeze and a lot of shade. We climbed for 20 minutes or so, passing little faux pagodas by the side of the path and answering a constant barrage of “hello”, “how are you” and “nice to meet you” offered by the people we were passing. To listen to the English greetings, you might get the impression that these are the only things they pick up in English class. I always respond in English and follow up with Chinese that invariably gets them laughing.
We stopped for a family taking pictures of their little daughter and were invited to get in it. I swear my visage appears in more Chinese scrap books than I care to mention. The parents are always so grateful though and I always oblige.
Along the path some enterprising people had set up stands offering sausages, candy, ice cream and drinks – comfort food to take the sting out of the death climb ahead. It amazed me that people would lug this stuff up here merely to sell it to hikers, but such is their enterprising nature.
We hit tree line after a half hour of walking and the path changed along with the vegetation – it now went more or less straight up adding a second level of treachery. Now people started to fall behind as the going was very tough. A girl plopped down in the middle of a stair and began to exclaim, “Oh my God, Oh my God” over and over. This might not have seemed extraordinary aside from the fact that she appeared to be about 4. I had sincere doubts that she had any idea what she was saying, and our presence probably brought out the English that she must have picked up watching a western movie. Perhaps the heroine in some film, under some kind of duress had used the phrase and this munchkin had internalized it, finally finding what seemed to be an appropriate moment to give it a try. The climb was bad, but hardly “God” worthy. We got a good laugh out of it.
Midway up we came to another temple, this one quite fancy and a little more Buddhist in its representation. A guard was checking tickets at the entrance which set me to scrambling to find mine, and making me wonder how anyone could have gotten here without one. Some backcountry trail perhaps. There were four buildings around a center square and the incense smoke was thick and sweet. I went to each temple and visited with each Buddha. Off the side of the main plaza was a large Buddha done in white marble with a giant yellow cape draped around his shoulders. Surrounding him back the trees were smaller stone carvings of various monks, each sporting his own bright yellow cape. Very similar to the Hill of 100 Monks I visited back in November, only the clothing on these statues was fresh and the colors were vibrant, not sun-bleached and tattered like those at the other site.
Behind this statue was a large cubic building topped with a large golden Guanyin, looking out over the valley. We wandered off into the woods and found yet another small shrine containing three of the less strictly Buddhist statues. Two small plates had been left as offerings, one with leeks and the other with two eggs.
Finding the path out of the temple compound, we had our tickets checked again and then up and up we went, eventually reaching a switchback that housed a tiny shrine. A man stood in the shade selling red ribbons to tie to the tree – another prayer offered to a local deity. A cute little girl in a miniature prom dress climbed up on the shrine and stood there hamming it up for her adoring family.
At a small platform at the next switchback a young man tried to compel his Chow to keep walking. The poor thing’s breathing sounded like a death rattle and it was clear that it didn’t want to go on. With each pull on the leash, the dog settled further down into the sand colored dirt.
Some person with a sense of humor had at some infrequent interval scratched the number of stairs onto a rock by the side of the path – we stood at 600 and we had plenty to go.
After one last vertical set, we reached an opening and wandered along a road through the trees which led to a parking lot – looks like one can drive up here from the other side. There were quite a few more vendors up here; one even had pints of Vodka if you needed a hot afternoon buzz. And it was now hot, the shade having been left below. Off to one side was the road down, to the other a broad paved boulevard to a monument – the Reviewing of the Army Platform. I’d read about it - sometime in the deep recesses of time some local warlord had stood here to watch his army march through the narrow defile below. They met the enemy and were hacked to pieces. This big temple-like structure commemorated that event.
It was a nice change to walk along the flat saddle here at the top. Up a few stairs we found some marble statues of soldiers and horses and following the lead of the locals, we climbed up and had our pictures taken.
The view was incredible – the ocean in both directions, Kai Fa Qu, Dalian and Jinzhou spread out below. It would have been really nice had the smog not almost completely obscured the detail. Off in the distance was a steady barrage of fireworks, this being a big wedding day smack at the beginning of the big wedding season. In fact I had passed the fixings for one on my walk to Starbucks that put last Saturday’s event to shame. Twenty or more fireworks cannons, three giant red arches, more than 30 flower displays and uniformed guards shuffling the pedestrians on their way. The sounds of fireworks that would normally send an American running for a better view are completely ignored here – they are just so common.
The temple at the top of the stone platform was clearly Japanese – the decorations, carvings and paint choices were virtually identical to a couple I had seen last year in Kyoto. This place served to remind me of the history of the region and the parallel development paths between the two cultures, a shared experience that ended most violently in the 1930’s.
Heading down from the platform, we had to make a decision from a couple of choices – back down the way we came, up the next set of stairs to the summit or down the back side of the mountain on a nice, paved road. We chose number two, having not yet had our fill of climbing.
At the highest point, there are some cell phone or communications towers, listening posts I’ve been told. From our vantage point we could see another set of stairs heading up and they didn’t appear to be nearly as steep as the last set so off we went in search of the base. The initial climb on the road was tough – it was steep and getting hot. We stopped for a break at an overlook that had a nice breeze and enjoyed the view. A steady stream of Chinese offered more “hellos” as they passed, heading in both directions. Aaron stretched out and I sat watching the people. I glanced off to my right and caught a young woman who had been sitting next to me on the low wall now standing across the road taking our picture with her cell phone. She saw me seeing her and turned face and scurried off laughing. I asked her if she was taking my picture and her friend began to giggle uncontrollably, confirming my suspicion.
Having recovered 20% of our strength we started off again up the road to the stairs and reaching the base we realized a miscalculation – we’d made a bad turn somewhere and these were not the gentle stairs hugging the hillside. These were stairs that came out of a ladder factory but not daunted, we forged ahead, leaving poorly prepared Chinese in our wake. I will mention here that the Chinese do not prepare well for these kinds of outings. Most are carrying some sort of big snack like a loaf of bread along with a couple of Cokes in a plastic shopping bag. The women wear high heels and the men wear bedroom slippers with the heels tucked under their feet. None of them are wearing clothes for the effort; the women use umbrellas to keep cool and the men roll their shirts up to their arm pits.
This part of the climb was so bad that I simply concentrated on my breathing and on not falling backwards. The falling part was not made any easier by the fact that people in various states of cardiac arrest were stopping in the small pools of shade offered by the few trees that were near the stairs. This further restricted an already narrow path and caused a conflict between those of us heading up and the smart people heading down.
After a couple of short stops to gasp some air, we made it to the top. What greeted us there was more people wanting to take our picture, a couple of aborted conversations in Chinese and an interesting lesson in caste. An old man was wandering about collecting plastic water bottles – there were droves – and the guy next to me had an empty. Rather than hand it to the collector, he threw it on the ground at his feet forcing the old guy to bend over to pick it up which he did, but not without giving the guy a knowing look.
A group of four twenty something’s took turns taking pictures of themselves standing on a rock behind us and we finally snapped to what they were doing and invited them to sit between us and have another round taken.
It was time to head down and the stairs were far more enjoyable with the advantage of gravity as our friend. You couldn’t go fast, but at least you weren’t pulling yourself up with the non-existent handrail.
At the crossroads we made a decision – instead of going back down the way we came, we’d head down the nice road and come out at the other entrance to the park. From there it was a short hike on another nice flat road to the place where the taxi had dropped us off 3 hours earlier. This turned out to be a good plan marred by another miscalculation – the road was really, really steep and to get down we had to get in this shin-burning lope. I admired the switchbacks which had to be a 20% grade and thought about what an interesting challenge it would be to ride a bike up those corners. Taxis from the top and the bottom raced by blowing their horns constantly in hopes of clearing the pesky pedestrians off the road; for being a park, it was pretty chaotic. A family drove by in an SUV and a young woman in the front seat snapped pictures of us as they passed. Just a couple of Americans in their natural environment here in Safari Land Park.
Eventually we hit the bottom and wandered back towards our beginning spot through a tiny village. It looked as though most of the houses along the road were also converted into temporary restaurants, serving the visitors to the area. The women doing the cooking and cleaning were dumping the dirty water out of the windows into a gray water stream that ran along the edge of the road. The weeds seemed to appreciate the irrigation effort. Cordwood stood stacked at road in front of each tiny house, and dog was engrossed with something down a lane between two rows of homes. We passed an attractive temple but decided to save it for another time – we were done at this point.
It turned out to be a mile or so walk back to the start and we lucked out immediately – a taxi came up and I hailed it. Telling him where to take us was a bit more challenging but I got through and we were on our way. Halfway down he told me the meter would not be observed, rather we were going home for a fixed rate of twice what we’d paid on the way up. Well, it was probably a situation of him not wanting to go into town, as the money to be made was with the short trips up and down the hill. And it was almost certainly a case of him knowing he had us but for the price of an extra $2, it wasn’t worth the argument. As he dropped us off back in town I pointed to the meter and observed that it said 14 kuai. He looked at me with a stone cold stare and said “30.” I handed him a 20 and a 10 and got out, saying “goodbye” as I left.
But that didn’t mean that I had to turn myself into a domestic worker for a day, there were still places to be explored and what better day to do them. I settled on another trip to Da Hei Shan (Big Black Mountain) and enlisted a friend in the excursion.
Recall from one of my February blogs, I’d been there before in late afternoon when climbing the mountain was pretty much out of the question due to the waning light. On the way down I’d had that depressing experience of seeing those boys with the puppy, so I thought I’d try today to put a better spin on the place.
The day began with a thick chemical fog obscuring the sun and making it a bit on the cooler side. These morning hazes leave the sky a rather unappealing pale saffron color, but they do buy you a couple of hours of respite from the tropical heat. Although it’s just the end of May, it’s already turning into the seaside bamboo steamer that we know and love from the summer months.
Today’s holiday is The Dragon Boat Festival - 端午节 字面意思是龙舟节 - also called Double Fifth Festival, is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth moon of the lunar calendar. It is one of the most important Chinese festivals, following only the Autumn Moon Festival and Chinese New Year.
The origin of this summer festival centers around a scholarly government official named Chu Yuan. He was a good and respected man, but because of the misdeeds of jealous rivals he eventually fell into disfavor in the emperor's court.
Unable to regain the respect of the emperor, Chuan threw himself into the Mi Low River. Because of their admiration for Chu Yuan, the local people living adjacent to the river rushed into their boats to search for him while throwing rice into the waters to appease the river dragons. Although they were unable to find Chu Yuan, their efforts are still commemorated today during the Dragon Boat Festival.
At the center of the modern festival are the dragon boat races. Competing teams drive their colorful craft forward to the rhythm of beating drums. These exciting races were inspired by the villager's valiant attempts to rescue Chu Yuan from the Mi Lo. This tradition has remained unbroken for centuries although up here in the north, the holiday is little more than a day off of work for most of us and triple time for my pals at the coffee shop.
A very popular dish during the Dragon Boat festival is zong zi. This tasty dish consists of rice dumplings with meat, peanut, egg yolk, or other fillings wrapped in bamboo leaves. The tradition of zong zi is meant to remind us of the village fishermen scattering rice across the water of the Mi Lo in order to appease the river dragons so that they would not devour Chu Yuan.
The fifth lunar moon has more significance than just the story of Chu Yuan, many Chinese consider this time of year especially dangerous when extra efforts must be made to protect their family from illness. Families will hang various herbs, called Ay Tsao on their door for protection. The drinking of Realgar Wine is thought to remove poisons from the body. (Realgar by the way is a Chinese herbal mixture and it is added to flavor rice wine to create the festival concoction.) Hsiang Bao are also worn; these sachets contain various fragrant medicinal herbs thought to protect the wearer from illness.
I made a plan to meet my companion at Starbucks – where else – and to be on the road by about 9 or 9:30. It’s a walk of about 3 miles to the base of the mountain, mostly uphill and through the industrial districts that form the border zone between here and the next city over, Jinzhou. It’s not particularly appealing and it can take the legs out of you which is something to avoid considering that you’re about to climb a mountain. So rather than waste a bunch of energy, we decided to catch a cab to the lot at the base and to walk up from there. Faced with the prospect of trying to tell a cabbie where to go, I began the mental practice of giving him the name I knew, and that failing, telling him how to get there turn by turn. As it ended up, “Da Hei Shan” worked perfectly well and we were there in 15 minutes, only 14 kuai lighter for the ride. Arriving at the parking lot it was clear immediately why the driver knew what I was talking about – the place was mobbed with people planning to do the same festival day hike.
I paid the 20 kuai admission fee, collected our tickets and we were on our way. The stares began almost immediately, this being another one of those places that westerners simply don’t frequent. There is a new temple under construction just above the parking lot so we wandered in. The statues here were different than those I’ve seen in the past and I am wondering if this is one of those synthesized religious sites that counter the pure Buddhist presence in China. The most popular religion here in the north is an amalgam of Buddhism, Confucianism and the country-based Animist traditions. The few monks wandering around in the temple halls wore white pants and short black jackets with those traditional Asian button and loop fasteners. They also wore caps that brought to mind those worn by the holy men at the Shinto temples in Japan which got me to thinking that they might be throwing in that here as well. There is still quite a strong Japanese influence here in the north, and I suspect we were seeing some of that here.
You ascend the mountain via a narrow and deep valley in the rock. Between the vegetation and the landforms, you could easily be dropped here and think that you were in either Sabino or Nacapule Canyons back home. Short Live Oaks, or the Chinese equivalent, dominated the flora. Birds sang in the trees but there was no watching them from here. You see, Da Hei Shan has a dark secret – you climb it via hundreds of narrow stone stairs built for size 6 shoes, not big boys with size 10+ sporting lugged soles. No, you didn’t look around, you watched your feet or you end up on your face.
We passed a lot of Chinese tucked into little shady glens having a picnic or simply resting from the climb. While it was arduous, it was tempered by a nice breeze and a lot of shade. We climbed for 20 minutes or so, passing little faux pagodas by the side of the path and answering a constant barrage of “hello”, “how are you” and “nice to meet you” offered by the people we were passing. To listen to the English greetings, you might get the impression that these are the only things they pick up in English class. I always respond in English and follow up with Chinese that invariably gets them laughing.
We stopped for a family taking pictures of their little daughter and were invited to get in it. I swear my visage appears in more Chinese scrap books than I care to mention. The parents are always so grateful though and I always oblige.
Along the path some enterprising people had set up stands offering sausages, candy, ice cream and drinks – comfort food to take the sting out of the death climb ahead. It amazed me that people would lug this stuff up here merely to sell it to hikers, but such is their enterprising nature.
We hit tree line after a half hour of walking and the path changed along with the vegetation – it now went more or less straight up adding a second level of treachery. Now people started to fall behind as the going was very tough. A girl plopped down in the middle of a stair and began to exclaim, “Oh my God, Oh my God” over and over. This might not have seemed extraordinary aside from the fact that she appeared to be about 4. I had sincere doubts that she had any idea what she was saying, and our presence probably brought out the English that she must have picked up watching a western movie. Perhaps the heroine in some film, under some kind of duress had used the phrase and this munchkin had internalized it, finally finding what seemed to be an appropriate moment to give it a try. The climb was bad, but hardly “God” worthy. We got a good laugh out of it.
Midway up we came to another temple, this one quite fancy and a little more Buddhist in its representation. A guard was checking tickets at the entrance which set me to scrambling to find mine, and making me wonder how anyone could have gotten here without one. Some backcountry trail perhaps. There were four buildings around a center square and the incense smoke was thick and sweet. I went to each temple and visited with each Buddha. Off the side of the main plaza was a large Buddha done in white marble with a giant yellow cape draped around his shoulders. Surrounding him back the trees were smaller stone carvings of various monks, each sporting his own bright yellow cape. Very similar to the Hill of 100 Monks I visited back in November, only the clothing on these statues was fresh and the colors were vibrant, not sun-bleached and tattered like those at the other site.
Behind this statue was a large cubic building topped with a large golden Guanyin, looking out over the valley. We wandered off into the woods and found yet another small shrine containing three of the less strictly Buddhist statues. Two small plates had been left as offerings, one with leeks and the other with two eggs.
Finding the path out of the temple compound, we had our tickets checked again and then up and up we went, eventually reaching a switchback that housed a tiny shrine. A man stood in the shade selling red ribbons to tie to the tree – another prayer offered to a local deity. A cute little girl in a miniature prom dress climbed up on the shrine and stood there hamming it up for her adoring family.
At a small platform at the next switchback a young man tried to compel his Chow to keep walking. The poor thing’s breathing sounded like a death rattle and it was clear that it didn’t want to go on. With each pull on the leash, the dog settled further down into the sand colored dirt.
Some person with a sense of humor had at some infrequent interval scratched the number of stairs onto a rock by the side of the path – we stood at 600 and we had plenty to go.
After one last vertical set, we reached an opening and wandered along a road through the trees which led to a parking lot – looks like one can drive up here from the other side. There were quite a few more vendors up here; one even had pints of Vodka if you needed a hot afternoon buzz. And it was now hot, the shade having been left below. Off to one side was the road down, to the other a broad paved boulevard to a monument – the Reviewing of the Army Platform. I’d read about it - sometime in the deep recesses of time some local warlord had stood here to watch his army march through the narrow defile below. They met the enemy and were hacked to pieces. This big temple-like structure commemorated that event.
It was a nice change to walk along the flat saddle here at the top. Up a few stairs we found some marble statues of soldiers and horses and following the lead of the locals, we climbed up and had our pictures taken.
The view was incredible – the ocean in both directions, Kai Fa Qu, Dalian and Jinzhou spread out below. It would have been really nice had the smog not almost completely obscured the detail. Off in the distance was a steady barrage of fireworks, this being a big wedding day smack at the beginning of the big wedding season. In fact I had passed the fixings for one on my walk to Starbucks that put last Saturday’s event to shame. Twenty or more fireworks cannons, three giant red arches, more than 30 flower displays and uniformed guards shuffling the pedestrians on their way. The sounds of fireworks that would normally send an American running for a better view are completely ignored here – they are just so common.
The temple at the top of the stone platform was clearly Japanese – the decorations, carvings and paint choices were virtually identical to a couple I had seen last year in Kyoto. This place served to remind me of the history of the region and the parallel development paths between the two cultures, a shared experience that ended most violently in the 1930’s.
Heading down from the platform, we had to make a decision from a couple of choices – back down the way we came, up the next set of stairs to the summit or down the back side of the mountain on a nice, paved road. We chose number two, having not yet had our fill of climbing.
At the highest point, there are some cell phone or communications towers, listening posts I’ve been told. From our vantage point we could see another set of stairs heading up and they didn’t appear to be nearly as steep as the last set so off we went in search of the base. The initial climb on the road was tough – it was steep and getting hot. We stopped for a break at an overlook that had a nice breeze and enjoyed the view. A steady stream of Chinese offered more “hellos” as they passed, heading in both directions. Aaron stretched out and I sat watching the people. I glanced off to my right and caught a young woman who had been sitting next to me on the low wall now standing across the road taking our picture with her cell phone. She saw me seeing her and turned face and scurried off laughing. I asked her if she was taking my picture and her friend began to giggle uncontrollably, confirming my suspicion.
Having recovered 20% of our strength we started off again up the road to the stairs and reaching the base we realized a miscalculation – we’d made a bad turn somewhere and these were not the gentle stairs hugging the hillside. These were stairs that came out of a ladder factory but not daunted, we forged ahead, leaving poorly prepared Chinese in our wake. I will mention here that the Chinese do not prepare well for these kinds of outings. Most are carrying some sort of big snack like a loaf of bread along with a couple of Cokes in a plastic shopping bag. The women wear high heels and the men wear bedroom slippers with the heels tucked under their feet. None of them are wearing clothes for the effort; the women use umbrellas to keep cool and the men roll their shirts up to their arm pits.
This part of the climb was so bad that I simply concentrated on my breathing and on not falling backwards. The falling part was not made any easier by the fact that people in various states of cardiac arrest were stopping in the small pools of shade offered by the few trees that were near the stairs. This further restricted an already narrow path and caused a conflict between those of us heading up and the smart people heading down.
After a couple of short stops to gasp some air, we made it to the top. What greeted us there was more people wanting to take our picture, a couple of aborted conversations in Chinese and an interesting lesson in caste. An old man was wandering about collecting plastic water bottles – there were droves – and the guy next to me had an empty. Rather than hand it to the collector, he threw it on the ground at his feet forcing the old guy to bend over to pick it up which he did, but not without giving the guy a knowing look.
A group of four twenty something’s took turns taking pictures of themselves standing on a rock behind us and we finally snapped to what they were doing and invited them to sit between us and have another round taken.
It was time to head down and the stairs were far more enjoyable with the advantage of gravity as our friend. You couldn’t go fast, but at least you weren’t pulling yourself up with the non-existent handrail.
At the crossroads we made a decision – instead of going back down the way we came, we’d head down the nice road and come out at the other entrance to the park. From there it was a short hike on another nice flat road to the place where the taxi had dropped us off 3 hours earlier. This turned out to be a good plan marred by another miscalculation – the road was really, really steep and to get down we had to get in this shin-burning lope. I admired the switchbacks which had to be a 20% grade and thought about what an interesting challenge it would be to ride a bike up those corners. Taxis from the top and the bottom raced by blowing their horns constantly in hopes of clearing the pesky pedestrians off the road; for being a park, it was pretty chaotic. A family drove by in an SUV and a young woman in the front seat snapped pictures of us as they passed. Just a couple of Americans in their natural environment here in Safari Land Park.
Eventually we hit the bottom and wandered back towards our beginning spot through a tiny village. It looked as though most of the houses along the road were also converted into temporary restaurants, serving the visitors to the area. The women doing the cooking and cleaning were dumping the dirty water out of the windows into a gray water stream that ran along the edge of the road. The weeds seemed to appreciate the irrigation effort. Cordwood stood stacked at road in front of each tiny house, and dog was engrossed with something down a lane between two rows of homes. We passed an attractive temple but decided to save it for another time – we were done at this point.
It turned out to be a mile or so walk back to the start and we lucked out immediately – a taxi came up and I hailed it. Telling him where to take us was a bit more challenging but I got through and we were on our way. Halfway down he told me the meter would not be observed, rather we were going home for a fixed rate of twice what we’d paid on the way up. Well, it was probably a situation of him not wanting to go into town, as the money to be made was with the short trips up and down the hill. And it was almost certainly a case of him knowing he had us but for the price of an extra $2, it wasn’t worth the argument. As he dropped us off back in town I pointed to the meter and observed that it said 14 kuai. He looked at me with a stone cold stare and said “30.” I handed him a 20 and a 10 and got out, saying “goodbye” as I left.
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