Costner: Winter is coming

Coming back from my post this evening I was struck by how much more crisply sound seems to travel in cold evening air. Perhaps because the other townspeople have been chased inside, you can now hear everything: rustling of single leaves, three twigs breaking in rapid succession as a passerby steps through the gutter by the roadside. Or maybe, as mentioned before, it's because senses are heightened in cold air, and thinking becomes easier--or, rather, you cannot help but feel sharper, more alert. Certainly one is more tense, less languid, as your body twitches to keep itself warm against a penetrating wind. In the summer I could remember thinking how strange it will be to see this place cold once again. Seeing it now, I cannot believe it ever was warm in the first place.

指鹿为马

zhi lu wei ma: Zhao Gao, the most powerful eunuch in the Qin dynasty court, was contemplating treason but needed to see whether the most important officials would side with him in the uprising. As a test, he brought a deer to present to the Second Emperor. Upon introducing the animal, Zhao Gao asked for comment on his lovely horse. "My dear Zhao Gao," the emperor laughed, "I believe you are mistaken, this animal is surely a deer, not a horse!" The emperor asked the attending officials their thoughts, and one by one, each sought to either curry favor with Zhao Gao--"What a lovely horse!"--or else remained defiant, echoing the emperor's observation. In the coming days, each defiant offical was summoned to Zhao Gao and executed on the spot.

天要下雨，娘要嫁人

tian yao xia yu, niang yao jia ren: A girl was speaking with her mother, trying to decide on a suitable day to be married. They consulted the almanac, considering her year of birth and zodiac sign, the groom's sign, and most importantly, the history of weather on different days of the year. "No one wants a rainy day for their wedding," said the girl. "You have just as much chance of controlling the weather as controlling a herd of charging yaks. When a lady wants to marry, she'll marry, and when the sky wants to rain, it'll rain."

Angry Birds soda

If you would have told me 10 years ago that I'd be drinking a soda in Beijing that's part of a branding campaign for a Scandinavia-based company that makes video games played by people from Tikrit to Thailand on their pocket-sized computers--a company whose flagship product features sling-shotted birds and radioactive pigs, and which is currently contemplating an IPO with a $9 billion valuation--I would have said you were a total nutbag. And here we find ourselves...

山高水远

shan di huang yuan: In the dragon-toothed mountains of Guizhou, a poor boy stole a sweet melon from a elderly melon seller. The boy made no attempt to hide his actions, nonchalantly grabbing a melon as he walked by. "What are you doing!?" the seller shouted. "Taking a melon." The boy mentioned. "You have to pay for that!" was yelled after him as he walked away.

"If you need money for the melon, chase after me and take it--I have nothing," the boy said. "But... but it's the emperor's edict! You can't steal!" complained the melon dealer, looking around hopelessly for a constable. "Oh... it's an edict, then? Old man, don't you see? The mountains are tall, and the emperor is far away."

蜻蜓点水

qing ting dian shui: "The dragonfly darts about, rippling the water gently as it moves quickly from place to place."

Most Chinese-y thing I did this week

I took the plunge two years ago and bought a motorbike. Taking cabs back and forth from work was really taking a toll, so despite the clear safety concerns, I reasoned with myself I'd save a lot of money, life and limb be damned.

And save money I have. It was super-easy getting a bike. Cost is about 3,000 RMB for a new 150 cc moped, more then enough pep to get around anywhere (even out to the suburbs, as we experimented with a month or so ago). Gas costs about 35 rmb for fill-up, getting me about 150 km per tank--dooope! License and registration? Although I finagled mine through a shady dude I met through the bike dealer, you can now get your "blue book" (registration) and even plates through Taobao.

What I was not expecting was the way Beijing manages to control and discourage gas-powered bike riders--at the pump. I quickly discovered which gas stations around my home are a bit lax on the government's requirement to show registration and driver's license every time you gas up your motorbike (a regulation that, amazingly, isn't something required for car drivers). From time to time--at rush hour, lunchtime, and during important political conferences in Beijing--gas is especially hard to come by.

We are now in the midst of the aftermath of the Third Plenum, one of Xi Jinping's first shots at displaying the extent of his consolidation of power by outlining the extent of the reforms he and the Politburo are cooking up. It's what they call in China a "sensitive" time, which to your guy on the street basically amounts to some laws that are usually not enforced being enforced for a limited period of time, as a public security measure supposed to clamp down on any possible unrest or chicanery.

At my first stop for gas, a younger employee (first bad sign: more inclined to be performing his job correctly, to "play it by the book") who I had never seen before  (second bad sign: not inclined to give me a break as he's probably never seen me get gas from a more relaxed colleague) asked for my driver's license. Typical response: "I left it at home" (whereas "I don't have one" will definitely get you denied, some guys will let you by with even a horrible excuse for not producing the right documents). I get blown off: "You have to have your driver's license--look at the rules board over there!" I looked over at the rules board I've driven by 76 times as I gassed up at this same station in previous weeks, months, years. "Sure you can't help me out, buddy?" "Nope."

Off I went up to my mainstay: a place in central Wangjing that even during the 18th Party Congress (another particularly annoying "sensitive" time, as it lasted for weeks, throwing travel plans totally out of whack) let me have a tank. An older guy (first good sign) who I had seen before (second good sign) told me to pull up to the pump ahead. Looking at my bike and the plates stored in my glovebox, he quietly noted "Display them." Hmm? "Display them. They have to be on the outside." I kneeled down to attach the plates onto the rear fender of the bike at the pump and got yelled at: "Not here!" "Then where?" I asked. "Over there!" he said, pointing to a parking space right next to the gas station entrance.

I pushed Ysobelle (what I've taken to calling my moped) over to the parking spot and realized I had nothing with which to attach the plates. Nothing in the glove box except a ragged sandwich bag I use to hold my plates and registration. Carefully ripping the bag into a long plastic strip, I placed the license plate on the rear fender right above the reflector, and tied it on using the plastic bag-turned-rubber band. Pushing the bike back up to the pump, I turned to see a security guard from the hotel next to the station and jumped a bit, until I saw the smile beaming across his face. A smile that said.. I don't know what it said, but he approved of the jerry-rigging.

守株待兔

shou zhu dai tu: In the middle of a long day in the fields, a farmer rested for a few minutes under a tree. While he was resting, a rabbit skittered across the grass in front of him and crashed into a rock. The farmer walked over and checked the rabbit: dead. 'How incredible," said the farmer. "I have to sit under this tree more often!" And he did, day after day, quitting work and waiting for another rabbit to take home for dinner. Day after day, he became more and more hungry, waiting for the serendipity of that first resting time under the tree to repeat itself.

井底之蛙

jing di zhi wa: A frog lived his whole life at the bottom of a damp well, enjoying the puddles and flies and occasionally looking up to the small circle of sky above. One day, a crow landed on the rim of the well high above the frog. Startled, the frog asked, "How is it that you can fly around up there? There's not enough sky for a bird half your size!" The bird shouted back down, "There is more than enough sky for me. There world up here is much different and much bigger than you think. You should check it out sometime."

惊弓之鸟

jing gong zhi niao: The king loved to hunt, and one day took several of his bodyguards out into the forest to shoot down some birds with their bows and arrows. One bodyguard, a particularly ambitious man looking for a promotion, admonished the others: "What are you doing with those arrows?! There's no need for me to even shoot to bring down a bird. The mere sight of me behind a bow will scare the animal to death." A bird flapped out of a nearby tree, and as the man cocked back his bow to aim his imaginary arrow, the flying bird dropped out of the sky as if it was shot. "There! You see! Scared to death of me!" The bodyguard led the group away as his friend scampered out from behind a bush, blood on his hands from where he had broken the bird's wing a moment before.

滥竽充数

lan yu chong shu: The king of the land adored fine music, and called for an orchestra of hundreds of musicians to play at the palace. Seeing the hordes of musicians getting ready to play, a passerby asked what's going on. "They're all going to play for the king!" The passerby joined the throng, grabbing a bamboo shoot as he walked and fashioning it into a flute on his way to the palace. In the orchestral pit he sat down alongside 100 other flutists, and as they began to play, did his best to mime the flute players beside him. After the performance, he was paid for his fine renditions of the king's favorite songs, having never blown one note.

China fear-mongering

In exchanging a couple of emails with alumni friends getting prepared to visit China this spring, I am reminded of some of the conversations I have with people new to China, or who ask me about my impression of the country. "What's it like?" many folks will ask hesitantly. "It must be a crazy place..." It is a "crazy" place: in urban Beijing, I tend to think of the striking mixture of the great trappings of mega-rich cosmopolitan Chinese alongside the rural traditions of recent arrivals and the migrant masses. But I get the sense that the "crazy" meant by friends and relatives who have not spent time on the mainland circles around other factors: the police state, politics, "big brother" looking over your shoulder.

I am not an apologist for this place. The China experience particularly of an American passport holder is very very different than the China experience of some other expat communities. The biggest "experience gap" is between expatriates and Chinese citizens. Human rights violations and legal abuses here are very real. China's "have it both ways" approach of asking for recognition as a "developed" country at global political summits, but a "developing" country with an evolving rule of law doesn't do anything to help get its domestic agenda accelerating to a more equitable legal and economic situation for the majority of Chinese people.

As a foreigner, unless you really screw up, the elements of the police state that you experience amount to a dismal amount of bureaucracy surrounding visa applications and housing registration and not much else. For the relatively few who venture into Chinese-language social media, there is a more day-to-day aspect of censorship that feels more immediate. VPNs are getting better and better and allow access to international websites and other opinions. I do think, however, that you can see an irrational "Great Red Terror" in many people outside of China when they remark on their imagining of what life must be like for an expatriate living in Beijing, a fear that is not backed up as you move through everyday life in this country, interacting with people and families on a 1-on-1, face-to-face basis.

画蛇添足

hua she tian zu: A poor man was putting a new roof on his home and enlisted the help of some other villagers. After a long day of work, the man offered up a jug of wine, not enough for all of the workers. He said: "I'll give the jug to the man who can draw a snake the fastest." One of the workers quickly drew a squiggly line in the dirt and believed, for a moment, he was done. He looked at some other workers around him, working hard and perfecting their drawings. Accordingly, the fast one began to add more detail to his snake--a few extra lines, giving the snake feet like a salamander. Before he could finish, the poor man approved the drawing of another worker: a simple drawing of a squiggly line. "But that's exactly what I drew!" the fast worker said. "That's not what I see here," said the poor man. "We all know snakes don't have feet."