Apartment in winter

After a night out, I get back to an apartment that has an unusual feature in China: wintertime heating that you can control yourself. Typically, apartments are heated as a public good, with radiators flipping on in November and turning off in March. We have a hot water heater in our apartment that we need to charge up to have heat, and right now it's out. It's about 15 degrees outside, and the wind is blowing through our sunporch in such a way that the sliding door separating it from the bedroom is clanking back and forth--cold and loud. Definitely makes one appreciate the smaller luxuries in life, and how a place like China has a knack for bringing you around to refocusing on them.

Post-Christmas

Our place is decked out in lights and stockings, the tree is now stocked with post-Christmas wrapper paper shrapnel, and the rabbit seems about to explode with a combination of fruit snacks and grassy treats he was given for the holidays. After last night's meal at Capital M, including suckling pork belly with that amazing crispy skin and a half inch-thick layer of pork fat, I'm about ready to be rolled out in a wheelbarrow myself. Diet starts Monday...

Grasslands communication

Because Twitter is blocked in mainland China, a number of competing services have jumped in to capture the huge demand for microblogging services here. The two biggest players are Sina's Weibo ("microwave") and Tencent's Weixin ("micromessage"). I've never really done Twitter before, but have been using Weixin to stay in touch with both foreign and local friends. You can walkie-talkie, text, send photos, arrange chat groups... it's like AIM all over again!

Everyone in China has mobile phones, from the cities to deeper parts of the countryside. The cool thing about Weixin is that it alerts you whenever someone in your phone contacts has also joined the service. I was recently surprised to see an account pop up for a farmer who owns a small Hebei motel at which we've spent the last couple National Day holidays, riding horses, drinking baijiu, and eating freshly-slaughtered lamb kebabs. For me, there's no better tourist experience in China than road-tripping 500 kms out past the Great Wall into ethnic Mongolia, totally different feel from the China on the other side of the wall--and man, do they love horses!  I immediately walkie-talkied the motel owner to ask how he was doing and if he could send some pictures to show friends. Still no photos to share, but it's pretty cool to think how this guy's small business could potentially be transformed by new technology--and I might have an easier way to convince people to drive 6 hours with me out to this amazing place!

Special delivery

This place can be tough on couples, especially an international relationship where both folks are foreigners trying to figure things out in China. Stresses normally associated with living together are exacerbating by things you could only encounter in a developing country. Only the strong can last here for any decent period of time, and you have to be adaptable.

And then there are situations that go from pains in the neck to incredibly convenient if you know what you're doing here. I got a call about needing toilet paper in our bathroom on my walk out to a local restaurant. Chinese communities have little shops that sell household goods, and they'll typically deliver anything from instant noodles to roach spray right to your door for free, if you can communicate "Raid" in Chinese to the shopkeeper. I called in and pieced together what I thought was the translation for "toilet paper" in Chinese, and the guy understood. I didn't even need to say my building and apartment number because he knew from experience that that particular kind of broken Chinese could only be me. I touched base a few minutes later and the apartment magically had toilet paper, delivered about 10 minutes later. Gotta love this place!

Food odor

Getting into cabs in Beijing you're sometimes overwhelmed by what Meagan calls "the odor of hot wet foot cheese." To me, one is reminded more of dried sausages and cigarettes, but to each their own. The food here is so pungent and flavorful that it's typical you're carrying it around with you for a while afterward. In particular, the smell of Sichuan peppercorns, 花椒 huajiao, mixed with garlic is one that you're constantly smelling. It was surprising to see a cabdriver wince as I got into the cab and told him where to go, as he asked me rhetorically, "So you've just eaten, no? Man, you got a food smell to you!" I had just had soba noodles soaked in huajiao and garlic for lunch. Apparently growing more and more like a Chinese cab driver every day here, eating habits and otherwise...

Tough start to the week

There's two things that set the tone for a good week over here more than anything else:
1) Playing well and locking in a W in our ice hockey games each Sunday evening
2) Waking up on Monday morning to read about the Giants rolling to another victory

No hockey this week, so I guess that's a wash leaning toward a slight negative, as a week without hockey is never a good thing. (Beijing isn't cold enough yet that Houhai and the other lakes have frozen for skating, so for now the only option is the rink.) I checked online this morning to see that the Giants had been smoked at the Falcons to the tune of 34-0. I haven't checked the stat line yet but this has to be one of the most embarrassing losses in recent memory for Big Blue. I was relying on young David Wilson to rush and return me to the win column in my fantasy competition this weekend, to no avail. Once again, the playoff door for the Redskins and Cowboys is left ajar--should have shut that thing firmly this week. Missed opportunities...

Movie stars, Massive attacks

Outside the mall where I get my groceries there were several vans pulled up in front of a Christmas display put there to attract shoppers with it's international style. Out of the vans came about a half-dozen gaffers and grips who were filming what looked like a Chinese soap opera. Two young, attractive actors strolled hand in hand through scene that must have something to do with them passing the time shopping either directly proceeding or immediately after a heated lover's quarrel. A crowd of regular folks, including young professionals, migrant workers and families, all looked on in respectful amazement,  cordoned into nice order by some attending interns. To think about what this scene would be like, whether it would even be possible, less than 15 years ago... this in a place where you still get pounced on by plainclothes police officers for snapping photos in Tiananmen Square.

Before heading off to crash here I've been listening to Massive Attack's Blue Lines, which initially came out in 1991 and has just been reissued this autumn. It's incredible how fresh the album still sounds, and how much the electronica and hip-hop instrumental stuff from today still riffs on stuff MA was doing over 20 years ago.

Orange-gray snow

It's amazing how much it takes out of you waking up each morning in Beijing and seeing a gray sky. There is clear blue greeting you every once in a while, usually after some precipitation the night before. Getting up before the sun rises is pretty great as you're left hopeful that the upcoming day could be a clear one.

This morning I woke up to blackness. Around sunrise, the atmosphere was lit up a bizarre shade of orange, like some massive Dickensian oil lamp illuminating the entire cityscape. It was at once kinda scary and awesome, seeing Beijing like that enveloped and orange and also a thick layer of snow from the night before. Snow is awesome. The sounds of the crowing rooster that live behind our building (in urban downtown Beijing) were soft, and you could hear adult guys laughing with one another on the sidewalk in ways that wouldn't be possible on "regular" days as gray-orange as this if there was no snow on the ground.

BoBo Dumplings, XiBaHe, Taiyanggong

There really is nothing better than a few "silver ingot" filled 饺子 on a cold winter's night. The place right behind my apartment serves 15 for about $2. Stateside is great, but it has nothing on cheap eats like that--except maybe off Lafayette St in Chinatown. Since last posting, have been through a job change, 2 weddings, a minor motorcycle accident and the birth of several new nieces and nephews... life rolls merrily along. Going to try to keep the posts brief so I can keep finding time to do this.