Quarantine

In the States, the day after Thanksgiving marks the commencement of holiday shopping and its attendant rampant advertising and discount campaigns. And, as much as we may not like to admit it, the month-long Christmas/Hanukkah fever is shared by many an American, unless you are Muslim or a Jehovah’s Witness.

Perhaps because the majority of Americans celebrate either Christmas or Hanukkah, the proliferation of Santa Clauses, christmas trees, elves, menorahs, and the ever-present Christmas song doesn’t stand out as strange,  purely commercial, or misplaced.

In Beijing, however, everyone – Chinese or expat – can easily view the holiday season in the same way that singles perceive Valentine’s Day: as a commercialized, commodity-driven month.

Cashier wearing a Santa hat

Except this one is full of discounts and sad, sad employees who grudgingly wear floppy Santa hats.

In The Village, one of Beijing’s most popular (and posh) shopping centers, a Smart Car and a Christmas tree are enclosed in a glass bubble. On the rim of the bubble, the message, “You could be the lucky winner of a brand new Smart Car!” is written in a happy, Christmas-y font. Ten meters away, at the entrance of UniQlo, a Japanese-owned clothing store, cutouts of Christmas hats and Santa Clauses block one’s view of the store’s interior. Inside the store, Christmas discounts abound (yay!) and foreigners are lined up, 10 or 20 at any given time, at the changing rooms or registers. Of course, there are Chinese people shopping too, but they are, I must say, the minority here.

And so, at first glance, there is a holiday fervor in the shopping area. But once one steps away from The Village, all of that dissipates, and one remembers that China is not a country in which holidays are celebrated in December. Chun Jie, the Spring Festival, isn’t until the end of January. On a second take of The Village’s Christmas trees and decorations, I couldn’t help but notice that while foreigners were walking past the decorations with smiles on their faces, the Chinese patrons walked by slowly, staring at the decorations,

Christmas decorations in The Village

as if they were looking at something that wasn’t their own, in a place that didn’t belong to them, in the midst of a celebration of which they were not a part.

On seeing this disconnect, I realized that I really don’t like the holiday season in China. I like China’s holiday seasons. I really loved it when every single store and home put out a Chinese flag during National Day. And I loved it when all of the small stores sold moon cakes during the Moon Festival. But Christmas? (Hanukkah is way beyond the capacity of these international corporate designs.) I don’t like it. Not one bit! And I especially don’t like it when Chinese employees are made to wear Santa hats!!!! Do they have a choice? In the States, do all employees have to abide by their companies’ costume policies?

I’d rather not have a commercial holiday season at all. Just knowing that Hanukkah

Cooking latkes at Maria's

 is going on right now is good enough for me. I don’t have a menorah, but I did make latkes!!! Tonight, at Maria’s, most of my friends got together for a holiday party, at which I made latkes from SCRATCH. We also ate salad, Swedish pancakes (American crepes), fruit with melted chocolate, and Danish sweets. The meal was 1/4 dinner fare and 3/4 dessert. It was amazing.

OK – so that’s the one thing – LATKES. I can’t do without them during the holiday season.

My very own latkes!

Before going to China, I had to get an HIV test. If the results had been positive, I wouldn’t be in China right now. Terrible, right? Funny thing is, before October 30th, 2009, if a Chinese person tried to get into the States with positive test results, s/he wouldn’t be able to get in, either.

China is one of the remaining six countries that bans foreigners with HIV/AIDS from entering the country. The ban may be lifted for the Shanghai expo which will take place next year, the China Daily reported today.

HIV/AIDS is a global issue, but it seems as though China and Africa have received the most attention from the global media outlets in the past few years.

For World AIDS Day, the Global Times published a feature on the current status of HIV/AIDS in China, which includes an update on issues relating to stigma and homosexuality in China. Also, the Xinhua News Agency, the Party’s central media mouthpiece, published a timeline of China’s improvement on these issues (you can find it in the Times feature).

Here are some of the important dates:

June 1985: China’s first AIDS case is reported when an Argentine-American traveler dies at Peking Union Medical College Hospital.

1990: China HIV/AIDS Prevention Committe established.

1998: HIV infections are reported in all 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, with drug users accounting for 60-70 percent of reported infections.

1999:  The Ministry of Health unveils a new regulation concerning rights of HIV/AIDS citizens: their privacy should not be infringed and medical organizations should not refuse to treat them.

2003: On World AIDS Day, Premier Wen Jiabao becomes the first Chinese premeir to shake hands with an HIV-positive person.

2004: President Hu Jintao talks with AIDS patients in Beijing and shakes hands with them on November 30.

2006: The first HIV/AIDS Prevention Rule is put into practice on March 1.

When reading this, two things stood out for me: one, it is really shocking how quickly the disease spread in China (the mainland currently has an estimated 740,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, though only 319,877 cases have been recorded, according to the Ministry of Health), and two, I was dismayed at the fact that  “shaking hands” (really, the act of touching) was still newsbreaking in 2004 – even though formal acts such as the handshake hold more weight in China than they do in the States.

And, even with all of the reform, the stigma present in Chinese culture and experienced by HIV/AIDS victims is still overwhelming and debilitating. Actually, the UNAIDS in Beijing keeps a statistical record of this. If you want to check it out, read the The China Stigma Index Report, which was released in 2009. Out of a survey of 2000 people, 48.2 percent of those interviewed feared that if their statuses were exposed, other people would not engage in physical contact with them. Perhaps more upsetting is that 49.4 percent feared that they would not be allowed to be near other people’s children.

As noted in Xinhua’s release, breaches of privacy are against China’s policy. However, the Index reported that ”One third of all respondents said that their status had been revealed to others without their permission.”

So, China still has a lot to deal with when it comes to HIV/AIDS. I don’t know how it can effectively deal with this crisis without also dealing with the stigma of homosexuality. My good friend here has a new boyfriend who is a student at the renowned Beijing Film Academy. Before meeting him, he had told me that he was “shy.” But, what I saw in this third-year amateur auteur was a frightened individual. And though my friend is more open about his sexual preferences than his partner, he, too, has to keep things under wraps in the dorm, lest some of the vocally homophobic male students on the floor discover his sexual identity.

So, as open as China wants to be to the “world,” that is, the international HIV/AIDS community, it still has internal issues of great magnitude. 

But, before anyone begins to look to China for HIV/AIDS problems, make sure you look at your own country first. It wasn’t until this year that the United States ended its two-decade long discrimination against the world’s HIV/AIDS victims. Is “HIV/AIDS victim” synonymous with “irresponsible individual”? Anyway, on October 30th of this year, Obama signed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Extension Act, lifting a 22-year ban on international HIV/AIDS victims, the Washington Post reported. So, rah-rah. Honestly, I’m not clapping any hands until I see some serious immigration reform and some federal- no, Obama - support of gay marriage.

Sometimes I get the feeling like I’m writing into a void on this thing. Knock, knock, knock. Is anybody there? Is anyone even reading this anymore?

Originally, I wasn’t sure if this blog was going to be for me or for you, the audience. What I’ve found is that in the end, it’s more for you, isn’t it? Yes, I’m recording my time here, and, of course, examining it through these entries, but the fun of it all, the amusement – that’s all for you.

The question of audience, reader-response, fun, these are all issues that I think about when I reflect on my experience here. Sometimes it feels like a burden; I know I’ve done something great or gone somewhere interesting, but sometimes I just want feelings to linger and remain in my memory. The process of describing my experiences and giving them to an audience can be a challenge at times; sometimes I worry that putting something on “paper” takes away from the sanctity of my personal memory and also makes me self-conscious of the event that I am – strangely, I suppose, in light of my previous statement – so eager to share.

What I suppose I’m trying to say is this: the process of blogging – writing down my thoughts and memories for an audience – is a difficult one, as at some point I have to become detached from my experience to write about it and make it interesting. The challenge of writing descriptive language to thoroughly convey emotion or conjure an image requires more than the act of experiencing something; it requires me to create a narrative of a trajectory of sorts.

The fact that I no longer receive comments on this blog isn’t the only thing that has brought my attention to story-telling and narrative creation lately. I’m currently applying to graduate school in order to further my literary studes (in this case, I want to pursue contemporary Chinese literature), and while composing my statement of purpose have become unusually focused on literature’s role in society, the process of creating literature, and what literature means to me.

In an effort to stop speaking to myself for hours on end, I’ve channeled a lot of my thoughts into conversations with friends. Recently, I decided to start up a blog with Sarah, Madeline, and Michelle, among others, in order to begin some sort of dialogue on our post-undergraduate thoughts regarding culture, literature, art, etc., In Beijing, I’ve gone on many an outing with friends such as Isabel, Maria, and Dario, to places such as the Literature Museum (an absolute bore!), 798, and myriad events, such as the ones I’ve previously mentioned.

Moreover, I’ve been trying to meet Chinese friends with whom I can discuss issues of Chinese literature and the future of the art form here. On Cultural Day, I met a student at Jiaoda who is studying English and loves literature. Though he is a wee freshman, his genuine interest in American culture and his ability to converse almost fluently in English made me think that we could potentially be friends and discuss culture and literature from time to time. This idea came to fruition on Saturday, when I took the student, Barry, to Wangfujing’s bookstore, the largest in Beijing. It was kind of cute, because Barry doesn’t really leave the Jiaoda area, and he became this wide-eyed kid when I told him we were going to go to a bookstore for the afternoon. We spent over two hours in the store. Besides showing him all the good classics to read and checking out China’s top ten list – Twilight is number one – we also went to the Chinese literature area, and Barry explained the difference between contemporary literature (dang dai), which is Chinese literature written between 1949 to the present, and modern literature (xian dai), which is categorized as literature written between 1919 and 1949. I ended up buying him Great Expectations, even though he already knew what to expect (I asked him if he wanted to read about England during the Industrial Revolution to see what London was like then. He said, “smelly? dirty?”). I bought five books, two written only in Chinese.

On Monday, I continued Barry’s literary education by explaining some key phrases in one of Donald Trump’s brilliant works, which Barry decided to read after making it through Kite Runner, a task which required an arduous three-day reading spree (not bad, right?). I spent some time explaining terms such as “keeping it in perspective” and “living on the edge.” Barry also came with Twilight, which he plans to read this upcoming weekend. I am not at the level to read high falutin’ Chinese literature yet, so I brought a textbook from the States that I think has much more interesting topics than the ten-year-old books we’ve been given here. Because Barry has five brothers and sisters (talk about the fees!!) I thought it’d be interesting to talk using vocabulary from the chapter, “Birth Control and Human Rights.” Our conversation ended up being quite interesting. Barry pretty much made the point that the book made, which is: with all the kids that China would have without birth control, human rights organizations would be worrying about why the children were so poor and families couldn’t support them. With birth control, people worry that China is violating people’s human rights. There are two sides to the issue; long story short, you won’t lose your job (anymore) if you have more than one child. You just have to pay the fee.

At the end of our converation, Barry told me that he really liked talking about the one child policy, and was eager to talk with me about other policies that China has taken and ideas that are specific to China, especially those which sprout from Confucian thought (he showed me a Confucian saying that says that a man should be independent at thirty, and explained that there’s one for forty, too). In the States, we hear a lot about complacency of the people. We read about convictions of corrupt financiers and of horror stories about corrupt officials. It’s also important that we keep in mind that news is carefully chosen; how often do you read about students’ healthy inquiry into Chinese policy without condemning it? (Also, how often do you read about manufactured snow, which is what we had on Halloween!) In the two times that I have seen Barry, he’s both quoted Obama (”Obama says that the government can’t do everything. You have to leave it in the hands of the people.”) and Confucius. He’s praised policies made by the Chinese government – especially regarding the reform and open up (gai ge kai fang) movement - and talked about the fact that the government has smart people running it, but people have to contribute ideas for things to change.

I look forward to more talks with Barry, though he is a young’n. Speaking with him about literature, about the influence that the works that he’s reading has had on him, makes me think more about the role that literature plays in social environments. It also reminds me of why I enjoy the practice of examining the creation of narratives. What sort of narratives inspire Barry? If he knows about the world mainly through books, which ones are they, and what do they do for him?

One of Barry’s favorite authors is Ernest Hemingway. He recently read his novella The Old Man and the Sea. I had never read it before, so I picked it up in Wangfujing and read it last night. In the story, an old fisherman tells himself, “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” This is Barry’s favorite line in the book, perhaps because his mother always told him never to give up, even if he meets challenges. While Barry took the advice of Hemingway, which happened to also be that of his mother, and perhaps Confucian thought (?), I read the novella as a Daoist allegory. In Daoist theory, life is generational, there is no linear history, and man and animal are one. In the one hundred-and-ten page work, the passage that resonated for me was: “The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.”

To me, my existence here cannot be a linear one. Perhaps I will leave as a person who is better at Chinese. But each time I learn something new or meet someone new, I feel like I can know everything, that I am getting closer to understanding the status of contemporary Chinese culture. Yet, my perpetual distancing of myself from this fact, my knowledge that everything I learn can be isolated, shows that I don’t truly condone the act of possessing full knowledge of anything. I hope that when I return from Beijing, I’m still thirsty – no, parched - for experience and for reception of others’ experiences, without feeling like I’ve missed out – only that I know that I want more.

Life was pretty miserable between Wednesday afternoon and Friday morning, as I had the Jiayuan Czuo  ganmao, better known as my dormitory’s common cold. Coughing and sweating  (and the composition of an occasional blog post) comprised most of my daily activity; a friend or two stopped by in the interim.

On Friday morning, I woke up in a pool of my own sweat and decided that I really didn’t want to be sick anymore. Moreover, when I took my temperature and realized that it was 37.9 for the billionth time, I decided to throw it away, as only a broken thermometer would show the same exact temperature that many times. Without knowing whether or not I had a fever (or whether I ever had a fever, or whether the fever I had was higher or lower than 37.9), I gave Isabel a call and asked if we could do something. Luckily, she had read about an ongoing series at 798 (Beijing’s trendy art district located in renovated warehouses on the east side of of the city) entitled “China Stories,” which features weekly interviews with successful foreigners living in Beijing. Friday’s interview gave the spotlight to Johannes Neubacher, the editor-in-chief of the Chinese edition of Madame Figaro, a French fashion magazine.

What we expected to gain from going to this interview we couldn’t quite decipher, but we nevertheless headed to the art district to see Mr. Neubacher and two art exhibits by Ai Wei Wei and Zhang Xiaogang, two of China’s most prominent contemporary artists. Between bouts of sporadic coughs and nose-blows, I managed to tip-toe appropriately through the exhibits, but didn’t hold back from gingerly touching Ai Wei Wei’s three-dimensional world – made out of hundreds of layers of thin cotton strips, which are meant to represent how China is inextricably linked to the rest of the world (and vice versa) through the cotton trade, among other things – and Zhang Xiaogang’s cement figures of the relics of his youth.

In an unfortunate turn of events, the interview with Heubacher ended up being weak in comparison to the exhibits. Though we arrived on time, Isabel and I were dismayed to find only a handful of attendees at the free event; the translator arrived late – hence, the interview started late – and she only translated questions she deemed “important”; and Heubacher only skimmed the surface of the cultural issues inherent in such a transitory and generally  insidious atmosphere as the fashion magazine industry. (My nose blowing and general coughing didn’t exactly make the event more enjoyable.)

On leaving the event, our information regarding fashion magazine culture in Beijing had increased to the extent that we knew that the three tenets of personal fashion are: 1. people want to show off wealth by wearing name brands 2. people want to distinguish themselves from other people, and 3. people want to make sure that the way in which people distinguish themselves corresponds with their personalities. We also found out that magazines in Beijing make much more money on advertising than on distribution, so that’s why all of the fashion magazines look like magazine-length Jimmy Choo ads.

What we felt like we were missing was a discussion that pursued larger questions such as why foreigners become editor-in-chiefs of magazines that serve to represent Beijing fashion, or how this EIC perceives his role as a contributor to the rampant consumerism taking place in Beijing’s 26-35 year old women – the age group that Madame Figaro represents. Interestingly, we ended up using these lingering questions as prompts for what became a two-hour discussion at a nearby Japanese restaurant on topics ranging from the possiblity of fluency in Chinese to examinations of our own reactions to our Chinese friends’ perspectives on government structures and current policies.

For me, the conversation was long overdue, as I have been trying to grapple with many feelings of alienation and frustration in a culture that can sometimes seem inaccessible. Moreover, our talk set the stage for my outing today with a Chinese student I met during Cultural Day, whose outlook on China and its future was a stark comparison to what I have previously observed and/or assumed. I’ll get into this more in my next entry, which will also feature pictures of the top sellers in the foreign book market at Beijing’s largest book store.

Look forward to details of Obama-praising, Twilight hype, and the wide-eyed hopes of a young college student in Beijing.

A short note: From now on,  I plan on responding to comments in the comments section of each entry. So, if you leave a comment, you can now expect a response.

1. The NYT reported today that in Chongqing six people were sentenced to death and one to 18 years in prison, after being convicted of corruption. (And some extra: during my first week in Beijing, Scott told me, “They’re all corrupt.” By this he meant that everyone is involved in financial corruption of some sort, but the ones who get convicted have gotten on somebody’s bad side. In this case, it seems as if Bo Xilai needed a popularity boost.)

2. Yesterday, China Daily reported that a 32-year old Russian student at Beijing Hang University died yesterday of H1N1. He is the first foreigner to die of the disease and the eighth overall in China. (My news: our teacher told us about this yesterday and another one told us today. We’ve been warned not to go out of our rooms if we feel sick. Unfortunately, this week everyone in our dormitory is sick, including Bolette, Dario, Renata, Mei Mei, and - worst of all – me. Though I don’t have a fever or any of the main symptoms of the flu, I do have a phlegmy chest cough and an achy body. I went to class today, but I may not go tomorrow, even though I have a small test. In related news, in order to protect themselves from the virus, Chinese students have been wearing masks everywhere over the past few days. The masks are so popular that they’ve become a fashion statement. Vendors are selling masks with different patterns and cartoons on them, so people can get creative if they want to. A few lucky souls will get a mask when I return home…) 

3. The temperature has risen a bit from its frigid below-freezing temperatures on Saturday thru Tuesday to stable, dreary, and cold ones. A lot of people think they got sick from the abrupt change of temperature. I’m sick because Mei Mei was hacking a lung for a week.

With Yang

Jin Wu Xing, the large warehouse market, provided the kitschy French masquerade masks, while the bar and art districts provided the parties. But no one in Beijing supplied the essential components of America’s favorite pagan holiday: children and candy.

Halloween in Beijing is an opportunity for bars to make a buck and for foreign students to try to capture the feel of a longstanding tradition in the States and elsewhere. For me, however, I was generally unenthused and uninspired by the events of the night, which included a Tim Burton pre-game playlist, a decision to not spend 200 kuai for an overcrowded dance party (that we previously attended for free), and a few hours at Nan Jie, a foreigners’ bar in Sanlitun.

Maybe I’m just not a partier. Or maybe I’m starting to realize that Halloween parties in Beijing are simulacra; just because bars are decorated with pumpkins doesn’t mean that the tradition exists here. Without the sheer enjoyment and genuine fear expressed by the real revelers of the holiday – children - Halloween is dead. But then again, this point of view is clearly an American’s. Moments of disappointment such as these always harken back to the real point of the matter: I can’t step out of the American perspective. I continually try to enter these blank spaces, ironically embodied in a decorated and loud bar, and find myself wishing that I felt something. But what exactly am I looking to feel? And if I felt the feeling of home or of a connection to something familiar, would I be satisfied? Should I be looking for America here?

I remember when I first read James Joyce’s short story, “Clay,” in his work Dubliners, I felt a connection to Halloween even though the author depicted an All Hallow’s Eve celebration from early 20th-century Dublin. Though I hadn’t intentionally been looking for connections between the celebration of the pagan holiday at home and abroad, I was strangely excited by Joyce’s depiction of a rainy night, a woman clad in brown who accidentally chooses death in a game of chance, who also has a pointed nose and a small little body – a husbandless, lonely, and isolated woman who has become the quintessential figure of an American (and Irish?) Halloween. Looking back on my first reading of the story, I can say why I felt connected to Joyce’s depiction of the holiday. Now, having just read it again, I realize that I like the story because it’s layered; Joyce intertwines the rich Celtic history of All Hallow’s Eve with the state of Ireland’s then contemporary social ailments. Though I can’t necessarily relate, I can tap into a rich space - the piece begs its readers to come along and play in a kind of Sartrean fantasy land – where both reader and author put in half of the effort.

In Beijing, I sometimes have a hard time tapping in. I sensed that the Halloween scene was vapid, while the days leading up to the National Day was laden with a heavy and rich history. Yet, I couldn’t enter into either of those spaces, as the former didn’t offer anything and the latter was so layered and complex that all that I wanted to do was watch (and that was all that I was allowed). Critical inquiry in China requires so much of me. Culturally, there aren’t many crossovers. And when there are, I feel as though they’re empty – I don’t want to dig deeply into consumerism in China and its adaptation of American cultural practices.

So for now, I am on the outside just taking it all in. Critical inquiry will come later, but this first trip is purely experiential.

Now can someone please sum all of this up in a concise and well written statement of purpose?

I wrote my last entry just as I was heading out the door to go to Xi’an, a very old and famous city twelve hours southwest of Beijing – by train, that is. The trip was short and sweet; I, along with four others, left Beijing at 9:24 PM on Saturday the third and returned at 7 AM on Tuesday the sixth. I have a lot of fun stories and beautiful pictures. I’ll write about it all shortly. But first I’d like to talk about something else: the Beijing nightlife scene.

Last night I went to three different party spots in the city, all located in the middle and east sections of the city, but all vastly different and inordinately fun. If you want to see Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese bands – male bands, that is – playing original work, you must go to Mao’s Livehouse (www.maolive.com). The venue is similar to one you may find in Williamsburg or Alphabet City. The outside facade is designed to look like a warehouse and the interior is similar. The walls are adorned with graffiti and record label banners; the hall itself is a big room with a fairly large floor space with a raised stage. Though the venue can accomodate rocked-out scene, the fun level varies immensely depending on the nights you go, so it’s important to choose your date of attendance wisely. (A group of us hit up this spot a few weeks ago and found the lights on and some fans sitting on the ground watching a mellow band – suffice it to say we left immediately.) Last night was a brilliant night to go, as bands were lined up to play all night and all of the Chinese students were still on vacation. Maria, Isabel, and I got there at around 9:30 and caught a Taiwanese band, Burn, finishing up a set. Their music is pretty catchy if you like alternative rock from the late 80s and early 90s. We heard a song that I’m pretty sure was a rip off of R.E.M’s “Losing My Religion.” The lead singer was an adorable, skinny, suspender-wearing Taiwanese guy with bleached hair (well, partially bleached) and a not-so-great voice. His energy was there, but his sound just didn’t deliver. Nevertheless, we all found ourselves nodding to the beat and enjoying the scene, which, I must say, did not resemble that of a Williamsburg one at all.

Chinese college students don’t go out as much as American students (really, students anywhere else in the world) do. That’s number one. Secondly, if students or young people go out, they won’t drink nearly as much as one would expect at a club scene or concert. Women, especially, drink less than men. While we were in Xi’an, Isabel told me that her language partner never goes out, because, to her, going out is considered dirty, gross, obscene. Of course I can go into an analysis of this attitude towards drinking – but I think I should keep it simple. I actually think that the situation is fairly simple.  Either you go out and you’re not studious or dedicated enough, or you stay in and you are a good girl or boy. On this particular night at Livehouse, the venue was filled to half of the hall’s capacity – there were only around six foreigners in the spot. It was nice to see so many people out, but it was clear that people were going out to hear music; no one was holding a drink, and no one stopped off at the bar after the show was over. The lack of drinkers did make me feel a bit more conscious of the beer (or two, or three?) that I inevitably hold in my hand on a night out, but I’m alright with it.

I haven’t even made it to the second set, have I? I must talk briefly about it, because it was much better than Burn. The band had six or so musicians, all men, all young, all about rock and hip-hop and beards and generally being more beautiful than any of the other Chinese men any of us had seen in Bejing up until that point.

Lucky Monkey playing at Mao Livehouse

Anyway, I have their album, and I will make everyone that I know in the States listen to Lucky Monkey (www.luckymonkey.org), not because their music is especially amazing, but because they do a hip-hop rendition of a popular nationalist song we heard for 24 hours straight on October 1st. Aren’t rock and hip-hop about counter-cultural sentiments at their foundations? The utter irony is enough to warrant constant listening.

The concert ended after Lucky Monkey’s set. While the Beijing crowd piled out as if the building was about to burn down, the foreigners (waiguoren) lingered to chat with the boys of Burn and LM. I ended striking up a conversation with one of the guitarists from Burn, who spoke a bit of English and wanted to practice on me, but let me speak Chinese for the majority of the conversation. “Oec”  – as he’s called by his friends –  explained that while playing in a band is fun, his real dream is to graduate with a PhD from Princeton (okay, yes, I got excited and did talk a little bit about you, Joe) in Physics. First though, he has to complete a mandatory year in Taiwan’s military. Because I’ll be in Taiwan next spring, I thought it’d be good to exchange number and emails, so we’ll be hanging out next spring! I told him I’d help him prepare for the TOEFL, an English proficiency examination for foreigners, and he said he’d help me prepare for the HSK, a Mandarin proficiency test.

When the conversations all but died out, we decided to go to an opium den-themed bar, Bed, which is located in a small hutong that even taxi drivers don’t recognize (or is it our Chinese?? No, this time the driver really didn’t know the hutong. But I’ve actually been kicked out of a cab before because the driver didn’t understand what I was  saying – okay, that’s not true. He understood what I was saying, he just didn’t want to go to the destination….another cab driver understood it perfectly!!) Remember when I said that young people don’t really go out in Beijing?

Isabel on a bed in Bed

Well, that’s true of the savvier scene too during the weekdays. Bed, which is considered one of trendier bars in the city, was empty when we arrived at 11:30. It didn’t matter though, because the owner of the place let us sit anywhere we wanted. Usually you’d have to pay 400 rmb to sit in the nicer sections of the bar, which feature nineteenth-century style beds that patrons actually have to take their shoes off for before climbing in. The bar is dimly lit and must be really nice on a Saturday, when the owner brings in a DJ to play house and techno beats. The three of us got to scramble into the nicest bed and tried to imagine what being an opium addict at a opium den in a narrow hutong in Beijing must have been like 150 years ago. It was hard to imagine, since we were drinking whiskey and cokes and smoking cigarettes with Jack Daniels ashtrays (I’ve only been bumming, if anyone cares - just trying to be honest).

The bar was nice, but too silent for our last night out before resuming our daily classes (Saturday-Friday this upcoming week – weekend classes to make up for our extravagant holiday). Dario and Mechal kept calling us, anyway, to remind us that it was imperative that we celebrate Mechal and Vincente’s birthdays at Mix, a gigantic meatmarket of a club, in front of which everyone had collected themselves. After gingerly exiting our bed, we headed out of the hutong (not before I mistakenly told the owner of the bar that I’d be back with all of friends. This Saturday? she asked. I had to tell her that we all had class and assured her that Yexu xia ge xing qi de zhou mo wo men yao hui lai!  (Maybe next weekend we’ll come back!)). When we got to Mix, we found around fifteen of our people there, who informed us that girls were free, the club was crowded as all hell, and it was time to go in, NOW.

The club is housed in a mammoth building. Security guards greet you at the door and shove flashlights in your bags, then they make your check your coats and bags (I held on to mine) before corralling you onto the dance floor. Before you can enter the gyrating mass of bodies,

The only image my camera would pick up of the scene at Mix

a free drink is handed to you by the bartender (no explanation as to the contents), and then, finally, you make your way to the fun. The three hours that I was there was a bit of a whirlwind. The club is a really great place for dancing, as the DJ spins really current hip-hop beats and mixes in some pop songs in between. No Chinese songs, though, just American and British. Somepeople acquired a corner table in the back of the bar, so I hopped from table to floor over the course of the nether hours.

We ended up leaving at 3:30-ish. Before going to my dorm, though, I picked up some circular dumplings (baozi) at our favorite spot right outside of the south gate. It was great to be there so late, because we got to see a young guy and his mom (?) preparing the baozi for the morning’s breakfast crowd. I asked him how many they make every day, and he said around 2000 pieces, which is quite a lot, don’t you think?

Tonight marks the last night of our vacation. We’re celebrating by going to a sushi restaurant on the other side of town. It’s a little pricey (we have to make reservations), but it’s a necessary ending to a peaceful yet productive and active break. Thank you, Chairman Mao, for kicking out the Nationalists sixty years ago. But, also, thanks to those involved in Cross-Strait relations for allowing Taiwanese people (young musicians, especially) to come back to China and show us a good time.

Today I decided to take a trip to Wal-Mart, where I thought I might find a very cheap printer/scanner, which I am beginning to think is a necessary item for an American student trying to apply to graduate school from Beijing.

Before leaving, I google-mapped the public transportation directions, and was happy to find that the commute only required one bus and was just a few stops away.  The quick journey started out alright – I got on the bus, saw a guy with a Chinese-flag sticker on his face (bandaid or symbol of national pride?), and was not thrown to the ground when the bus unexpectedly made a very short stop. Unfortunately, my headphones were in when the stop was announced, and I had to get off a bit farther than I had previously intended. A nice lady was available to assist me in getting back on track, so up until that point, everything was really fine.

The trouble started when I walked for close to a mile without seeing a Wal-Mart sign. I knew that I was on the right street and that I should see a Wal-Mart by the train station. A bit down the road from the train station,  I still hadn’t found the store. As usual, I had to solicit the help of a random pedestrian, who put me back on track. So I backtracked and eventually found the store, annoyingly placed a few stairs below the official entrance of the station, but not directly on the road. In the future, I’ll tell my friends to begin walking up the stairs towards the train station, and right before you’ve hit the station, look right – and there’s the Wal-Mart!

In a city where everything is so big and cheap, one may also expect a Wal-Mart to be even bigger (and maybe cheaper) than Wal-Marts in the States. What I discovered, however, is that Beijing’s vastness and the state of its retail data systems actually makes Wal-Marts look puny, disorganized, and a general pain to go to and shop at.

The “supercenter” had only two printer/scanners on display, one priced at 1780 rmb and the other at 688 rmb. I bought the cheaper one, of course, but was annoyed at the fact that there weren’t many other choices. I also needed to buy toiletries, but had a very difficult time strolling my cart through the plentiful displays placed around the health products area.

Crowded placement of beauty products

 I generally felt like I was in a Wal-Mart that Wal-Mart had forgotten about 15 years ago. The prices still had the flip-down number system, so that customers can see when prices are lowered and the amount of products available were just smaller in scale. Why executives haven’t chosen to update and modernize this store is up to anyone’s guess. It seems as though the store is very popular, despite the uncomfortable placement of products. I’m not so sure, however, that the store is so popular that it needs hundreds of employees working in it, milling around, working at the register, or literally telling you what products you should buy in a given aisle.

Despite the experience, I did buy a printer/scanner; I also bought many toiletries and a ream of printer paper. I also got to peruse the Chinese products that have been made by international companies. While there were many Chinese brands that offered face washes with whitening-agents,  I also saw an Olay product with a whitening agent.

Olay facial cream with whitening agent

As with all international companies, Olay adapted to the needs and wants of Chinese beauty-supply consumers. It’s a little unnerving, though, to see Olay giving in to this racial desire. On the other hand, no one overtly criticizes products that make our skin more tan for the summer…maybe products that change the colors of our skin should be banned? Seeing it in China, I think tacky. Perhaps I should start taking a closer look at the ways we influence our skin colors, body types, etc. in the States. I mean, it’s pretty obvious, but I’m usually not disgusted by the products. Reality check!

Superman (the most recent film) is on CCTV 6 tonight – in English, with Chinese subtitles (so happy they don’t dub over anymore). I feel as though some readers will enjoy this information. I was just at my computer, reading away, when I heard, “from father to son…” Of course, I had to turn around, and was glad to find the big block letters passing through the screen in English and Chinese characters.

I may spend a bit of time watching the film tonight as well as the commercials that highlight skin lotions that whiten skin, the joy of hand-washing, and the delicious attributes of Minute Maid orange “juice” (it’s orange drink, let’s be serious), among others.

On October 24th, Jiaoda is presenting a cultural fair/performance for its students and the Beijing community. Last week, the international office asked us to attend a meeting about the fair, at which we were told that we could do an exhibition or a performance. The American and Canadian students – we had to link up since there are only two Canadians, but I’m not sure that doing this will be that successful in adequately highlighting Canadian culture and history — should we just post pictures of Mike Myers and Alanis Morissette? –  will be doing an exhibition. What we weren’t told, though, is that the office would be requiring the Chinese language students to participate in the performance section as Chinese song performers.

Today, our class was asked to attend an extra session of “class” after our 4-hour stint in the morning in order to practice Beijing’s most overplayed welcome song in the history of the world, “Beijing Huan Ying Ni (Beijing Welcomes You).”

Check out the video here.

Can you find this shot in the video?

 I mean, I love the song. I’m excited about singing it. I’m not excited about memorizing the entire song or having a solo line. I’ve heard that colleges in China like to show off their international students, but I didn’t think it would happen at Jiaoda, a school with such a high academic profile. In short, I was wrong.

It’s funny that we’re rehearsing this song now, right before the National Day. All of the teachers are  just in happier, sing-ier moods. Our speaking teacher made us all sing our national anthems in class today. Yang (Chinese-American from Long Island) and I had a pretty hard time getting past the first few lines of our national anthem – nothing is sacred in America. Then again, Dario, my BFF from Spain, couldn’t sing his anthem and chose to sing a French hit from the ’80s.

I must say, the Saudi Arabian (Sale), Swedish (Maria), Peruvian (Nataly), and Thai (Ban) students knew their anthems best.