Defrosting

The heat is on! The heat is on! I don't know why it's on so early, but it's not for me to question. What a glorious day.

China Fun Fact: The second round of Olympic ticket sales, releasing 1.8 million tickets, was suspended earlier this week when high demand crashed the booking system. The ticket Web site reportedly received more than 200,000 requests per second in the first hour. Sales resume Monday.

Eight Big Temples

Weekend wrap-up: On Friday I went to see Alvin Ailey, the modern dance company from New York. The ticket cost more than I usually spend in a week, but it was so worth it. I first saw AAADT with Maura and Laura last year in D.C., and wasn't about to pass up another opportunity to see them perform.

Saturday was mostly for sleeping, but in the evening Brian and I went to a nearby Pizza Hut for dinner. Now, Pizza Hut in China is not like Pizza Hut in the U.S. It's upscale dining, like the scene in Demolition Man where city officials invite Sylvester Stallone to a fancy dinner at Taco Bell. Picture this: You're sitting at your table, waiting for your 93-yuan Meat Supreme pizza, surrounded by middle-class diners seated below vegetable murals and next to ceramic Italian chefs slightly altered to look more Chinese. This is also the only place in town with Halloween decorations, including anime-style witches and pumpkin costumes for the staff. The theme from Ghost and this song drift in the air on a repeating (and very short) playlist in order to set the mood. It's surreal.

What had been a damp and foggy weekend abruptly changed course on Sunday, producing an amazingly bright and clear day (for Beijing), so Niall and I went to Badachu to visit temples and see the autumn leaves (photos
here). It's a steep hike up the Western Hills, where eight temples ascend the mountain, but the views are rewarding.

China Fun Fact: A Chinese couple is awaiting approval to name their child @, arguing that the English pronunciation "at" sounds like the Mandarin "ai ta," which means "love him." Also, there are now almost 3,500 people in China named Ao Yun ("Olympics").

I'm sorry, can you say that again?

Almost everyone I've spoken to in the past two weeks has heard me complain about having no heat. Bad news on that front. I had assumed that, like many schools/apartment buildings do, the school was waiting to turn on the heat in order to save money. When I asked my students about this, they said the heat usually comes on in early November. No problem, I thought. I can wait another week or so. But that's not the whole story.

Today we had a visit from Cliff, who works in the head office. A new teacher is arriving soon to replace our temporary teacher, and Cliff came to discuss the transition with the academic dean. Before the meeting, we sat down with him in the kitchen to discuss how classes are going and someone (probably me) mentioned being cold. Then Cliff dropped this little bomb on us: No one in Beijing has central heating until the relevant government office says so. This year he thinks the designated day is November 23. It's like this in every city in northern China, while cities below the Yellow River just don't get heat at all because it's (usually) warmer there.

Cliff actually had to explain it twice because I wasn't sure I heard him right the first time. "Wait," I said. "Am I understanding this correctly? There is no heat for anyone in Beijing until someone in some central office flips a switch?" I've lived here for two months, and I think this is the first time I've come across a concept so foreign to my experience and worldview that it actually blew me away. I still can't wrap my head around it.

So where does this leave me when I'm getting up for class at 6:30 in the morning? Well, I'll check to see if my electric air conditioner has a heating function. Some rooms around campus have space heaters, and I can see why.

China Fun Fact: China has more than 300 million smokers.

Birthday

On Saturday the school celebrated its 140th anniversary, and we were invited to attend. Preparations had been underway for quite some time -- when we came back from break there were new bilingual signs posted around campus identifying the buildings and their histories, and potted flowers started appearing on campus a week ago.

It had been a long week, and while I wanted to see what this celebration was all about, I wasn't looking forward to getting up early on Saturday. Nonetheless, I set my alarm for 7:15 so I could take my time and have a leisurely breakfast before meeting the academic dean outside our building at 8:30 or so. Instead, I woke up to find that I had turned off my alarm, rolled on top of it and continued sleeping until 8:05. I jumped out of bed, got dressed and went upstairs to wake Brian, who had also slept through his alarm. We met our dean outside on time, rushed and bleary-eyed. Like, I still had sleep lines on my face. But it was a nice day and I began to wake up soon.

The dean paired us with two Chinese English teachers, Allison and Melody, who translated so we would know what was going on. The two-and-a-half-hour ceremony took place in the gym, where it began with students reading congratulatory letters from the Beijing Ministry of Education and other schools. After the principal spoke, distinguished alumni crossed the stage -- including the school's oldest alum, at 102 years old. They also presented the school's first Chinese principal (the school was founded in 1867 by American missionaries, and its first four principals were American), and we watched a video about the school's history.

Then came the performances, which ranged from teacher and student choirs to an accordion quartet playing "Jingle Bells." My favorite, however, was dancing by students from Xinjiang, a northwestern autonomous region that borders Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan. Xinjiang, which has significant natural gas resources, is home to the ethnic Uygur people as well as a separatist movement. The movement has met with repressive tactics by the Chinese government, which has used the war on terror to aggressively pursue Uygur separatists as "Islamic terrorists." 150 Xinjiang students come to the school each year, and they tend to stick together. Theirs was the last performance, and it felt more Middle Eastern or Russian than Chinese. The teacher next to me said the people in Xinjiang are born singers and dancers.

The ceremony wrapped up with speeches by Beijing's vice-mayor and officials from the Beijing Ministry of Education, followed by lunch. In the afternoon the school was supposed to take us to see the Grand Canal, but when I called the coordinator she said the canal had no water so we couldn't go.

In the evening Niall, Brian and I went to Grandma's Kitchen, an American restaurant downtown that's about as authentic as it gets. The menu features meatloaf, country-fried chicken, apple pie, onion rings and all-day Western breakfasts. It felt a little ridiculous being there, but we had probably the best burgers we'll find in town, except maybe at upscale hotels.

Going back to Tongzhou, there were so many people in line at the transfer station that Brian and I didn't get on the first train, but we were first in line for the next one. Passenger volume has jumped by up to 46 percent since Line 5 opened and the city lowered the fare to 2 kuai, and it was bad enough before. Boarding a subway train in Beijing is like playing musical chairs, but with more pushing, shoving and scheming -- seniors and pregant women be damned. Every seat is filled in two seconds flat. Then everyone crowds in until absolutely no one else can fit, leaving the rest on the platform -- and that isn't even necessarily during rush hour.

So we were standing at the edge of the platform with a fairly solid line forming behind us, but as soon as the train pulled in, the line dissolved and everyone started pushing forward. The doors didn't open right away but the pressure from the crowd behind us kept increasing, literally crushing us against the car doors. Once the doors opened, we practically fell in as everyone rushed in behind us. Despite being first in line, Brian and I barely got seats. One guy ended up sitting in my lap, and tried to squeeze between us before giving up. In short, getting a seat was not worth fighting the crowd.

On Sunday Niall and I went to see a photography exhibit at Dashanzi, an art district housed in a former factory. The place is a maze of alleys lined with tiny galleries, and it's teeming with foreigners who sit outside the cafes sipping expensive coffee and discussing representations of trauma in abstract art or how to use new media to romanticize the mundane. It was nice for an afternoon, but it's not really my scene. We wandered through a few Chinese and Japanese contemporary art exhibits, then headed somewhere cheaper for dinner.

China Fun Fact: As of April 2007, China had 58 Subway restaurants. Canada has more than 2,000, the U.S. has almost 21,000 and the U.K. has 870.

The Great Firewall of China

So... Blogspot is working again, but now it's YouTube (nooooo!!!) that's been blocked. What is that, like a trade? I'm willing to put up with blocks on blogging sites (so long as I can post), but taking away my YouTube is going too far. Are you listening, Chinese censors?

I've seen two common theories for why this is happening. One is the ongoing 17th Communist Party Congress, which began on Monday in Beijing. YouTube stopped working Wednesday night. But it's more likely that it has to do with YouTube recently launching Chinese-language versions for Hong Kong and Taiwan. If no one can access regular YouTube, they'll have to use the new version -- thus driving up advertising revenue. The congress ends on Sunday, so hopefully the site will be back online by then. Otherwise, where am I going to watch clips of cats playing the piano and totally unhinged fans in hysterics over Britney Spears?

As far as I can tell (and please correct me if you have updated information), there are now official YouTube bans in the UAE and Iran, with previous short-lived bans in Morocco, Thailand, Turkey and Brazil. The Defense Department has banned YouTube at its military facilities in Iraq (you know, claiming to fight for those unalienable rights while selectively denying them to U.S. citizens), although it's still available on public computers there. When will governments realize that technology has made it impossible to control the information people access? They're fighting a losing battle.

China Fun Fact: Three million people rode Line 5 during its first week of operation.

Le weekend

More sightseeing this weekend -- this time it was the Temple of Heaven, now conveniently located along the new Line 5 subway (photos here). Saturday evening Niall, Brian and I went to the street food market at Wangfujing, where about 100 vendors have set up shop. There were more foreigners here, including an American couple pushing a stroller through the crowd with their three blond kids. They weren't moving very fast, however, because everyone wanted to stop and touch the white children.

The market had everything from meat sticks to fruit to dumplings, plus one or two stands with crickets, scorpions, centipedes, etc. For all we hear about Chinese people eating freaky things, however, the only people ordering these items were Westerners.

The Singapore Film Festival arrived in Beijing this weekend, so on Sunday we saw I Not Stupid Too (2006), Singapore's second highest-grossing film ever and the follow-up to 2002's I Not Stupid. It's about the communication gap between children and parents/teachers. The director (who also appeared in the film) spoke before and after, but the only thing I understood was that the movie would be shown at a different theater later in the week.

I saw this in China Daily last week and thought it was interesting.

China Fun Fact: Beijing is the 20th most expensive city in the world.

Extra credit

Today I observed an English class taught by a Chinese teacher. Cindy, the teacher, used PowerPoint to introduce a unit on poems -- the first example was "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." She discussed rhyme, rhythm and different types of poetry, including sonnets and limericks. One limerick was about a woman from Corfu who wanted to visit Peru, but was too large to get on any train or airplane. Cindy went on to explain (it sounds mean, but she's actually such a nice person) that in America all the bathrooms have special stalls with railings for all the overweight Westerners. Then the class, which had about 50 students, listened to a dialogue twice before the 40-minute period ended.

After class Cindy asked me if I had any suggestions for her, as if I'd been teaching for five years rather than five weeks. I should have been asking her for advice. She showed me the textbook and explained that she's required to teach grammatical terms like noun clause and appositive, even though she doesn't think the students benefit much from it. I told her I had no idea what appositive meant. (I've since looked it up; for anyone who's curious, an appositive is a noun or pronoun that further explains or identifies another noun. For example, in the sentence "My dog Tiki has had a tick problem recently," "Tiki" is an appositive that further identifies "dog." Another example: "The sixth largest state in the nation, Arizona joined the union in 1912" -- "the sixth largest state in the nation" is an appositive. Isn't learning fun? Maybe I should replace China Fun Facts with English Grammar Fun Facts.)

China Fun Fact: If you think the four tones make Mandarin hard to learn, Cantonese has nine.

Changcheng

When we last left off, I was about to leave for Shanhaiguan with vague plans and little preparation. It had the potential to be a huge disaster. Well, it was fantastic.

Things didn’t look good when we woke up on Friday to pouring rain. Brian and I met Niall and his friend Kristi, who teaches English in Korea, at the train station and eventually found our gate. We found ourselves sitting next to probably the only other foreigners on the train, two guys who were also headed to Shanhaiguan with plans to camp on the Great Wall. There wasn’t much to see on the way there since it was so rainy and gray. The train moved slowly and stopped frequently, and it was a long six hours. (By the way, try using a squat toilet on a moving train.)

Shanhaiguan is about 200 miles/315 km from Beijing and, like everything else in China, has a long history. The area has had a human presence since the Neolithic Age, and Shanhaiguan itself (the name means “between the mountains and the sea”) was built in 1381. Throughout history the town has been a strategic military pass. Most recently, it experienced Japanese occupation from 1933 to 1945. In October 1945, weeks after the Japanese surrender, Shanhaiguan witnessed a clash between Nationalist and Communist forces.

Once we arrived in Shanhaiguan the first thing we did was buy return tickets, because in China you can only buy tickets one way. We had planned to stay one night and take the train back the next day, but there were no seats available until Sunday. If we had known this would happen, I think we all would have packed differently and perhaps thought to bring some key items (socks, underwear, hairbrush, toothbrush, etc.). Combined with the fact that our hostel had no shower, this would later make for a smelly trip back.

From the train station we went into town by taxi, whose driver insisted on taking us to a particular hotel outside our price range. When we explained that we wanted to look around and find another hotel, he first told us it was too dark and then, when we politely declined again and walked away, proceeded to follow us down the street in his car before finally giving up. After eating, walking around for awhile and having halting conversations with a few other drivers, we found a great place – four beds in a room for 35 RMB (less than US$5) per person per night.

Shanhaiguan is more popular with Chinese tourists than foreigners, and we were quite a spectacle. At lunch on Saturday a little girl came up with a notebook and asked me to write out my name (my autograph?). In the afternoon we visited the Great Wall Museum, then took a taxi to Jiumenkou, where a 100-m section of the Great Wall crosses a river. Fortunately the rain stopped not long after we got there. The place was practically deserted. We wandered through an impressive aviary and down a Great Wall tunnel before getting on the Wall itself.

Mao Zedong reportedly had a saying: “Bú dào Chángchéng fēi hǎo hàn” (“A man who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a real man”). In our case it was more like, “A man who has not taken 100 photos on the Great Wall is not a real tourist.” The clouds and mist gave the experience a reverent, eerie feel. (Photos here.)

The weather cleared up on Sunday, perfect timing for our visit to Laolongtou (Old Dragon’s Head). This is where the Great Wall meets the Bohai Sea, stretching more than 22 meters into the water. There were more people here, and we were disappointed to spot other foreigners for the first time all weekend. But I can hardly blame them. Built in 1579, Laolongtou rises over a flawless beach with minimal disruptions, save for enterprising businessmen taking tourists (including us) out for a spin on their motorboats. (Photos here.)

After lunch we returned to the train station, where we didn’t have to wait long before our train arrived. Actually getting on the train was a different story. When it pulled into the station we all lined up at our respective cars, but no one could get on because so many people were squeezing their way through the standing-room-only crowd – luggage in hand and on head – to disembark. The train was already late, and it was taking so long to board everyone that staff started waving us down to other cars where the lines were shorter. The door we passed through was several feet off the ground with no steps, so train attendants pulled us up from above and hoisted us up from below, then shoved us in. We had seats in the next car, but there was no going anywhere. We were standing next to a man with a snack cart, and the idea of him pushing it anywhere was laughable.

Crowds never stop Chinese people, however. Soon someone came pushing through in our direction, so we decided to let him clear a path for us. Picture a pile of writhing earthworms – it was like moving through that. Finally we arrived at our seats and apologetically dislodged the people sitting there. This time the trip was shorter, only about four and a half hours, and we were able to see more of the countryside. We arrived in Beijing around 7:30 p.m., parted ways with Niall and Kristi and got on the subway to Tongzhou, ready to start another week.

China Fun Fact: All the Great Wall sections built over 2,000 years add up to more than 50,000 kilometers in length.

Still on break

This has been a lazy week, aside from a two-hour trip to Haidian to see where Niall lives and find the nearest Carrefour. Yesterday Niall, Brian and I spent the day at the Marco Polo Bridge and Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall (photos here). The Marco Polo Bridge, built in 1189, is the oldest stone bridge in Beijing and earned its name because Marco Polo had such high praise for it. The Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall covers the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). It's all in Chinese but very well done, plus I rented an audio guide. The Chinese resistance to the Japanese invasion actually began with a clash near the Marco Polo Bridge in July 1937.

Since we didn't travel the way we planned to this week we've treated ourselves to some fine meals, including Korean barbecue and tasty but overpriced Indian food (I'm never paying more than $4 for a meal ever again). I've now used the bus several times, and it isn't so bad. I also bought a swipe card for use on public transit, so I don't have to worry about carrying small bills anymore.

Today I went to the train station to buy tickets to Shanhaiguan -- success! Shanhaiguan is where the Great Wall meets the sea; it's about 315 km away. We leave tomorrow, and hopefully we'll find a train or bus back before classes resume on Monday.

China Fun Fact: Up to 150 million people are traveling this week, with more than 100,000 gathering in Tiananmen Square on Monday. 1.7 million people left Beijing but the same number came in, while Shanghai expected up to 4.2 million tourists. (Source: Sydney Morning Herald)