Supermarket

The Clash song, " Lost in the Supermarket" comes to mind. As does Don DeLillo's White Noise, his description of the overwhelming

• Stuff is huge. I was looking for a pint of milk for cooking. The only thing available were 1/2-gallon containers. Not one quart or pint container in the whole aisle.
• Incredible variety. You can see how delicately brands are delineated from one another. In the dairy aisle: whole, 1%, 2%, fat-free, fat-free organic milk.. that's not to mention almond, soy...
• Plastic. On everything. Packaged to the max, vacuum-wrapped and tightly bound. A FrontLine I saw years ago had a French advertising consultant talking about how, in France, plastic packaging leads to associations with "the morgue, body bags, death, decay." (Maybe more appropriate for bleu cheese than others.) I laughed at that until the vibe I got today.

At the margins

Too many people, when the exercise, stop way before they should 'cause they got something inside their mind that says, "aw, thats too much pain."

Flopping through a modified P90X routine (P80X?) this morning I was struck by this little pearl. Pushing out pushups on the floor of my living room, I neared the end of each set with my arms wobbling like spaghetti on the last couple of reps. On the last couple pushes, form goes out the window and it's just about getting it done. Whether I get it done on that last rep or two, in the moment, feels like it has very little to do with physical strength. At that point, it is all about mental resolve and a battle of you versus yourself. I find that when I am feeling confident about other things in my life, when I am in a positive mindset, that's when those last few reps can happen--when the pain is manageable and when you can get some real work done. After all, workouts are like life in that the real progress gets made on the margins. At meetings, sticking around with folks after things break up to ask and answer questions often reveals new ideas, problems, and perspectives. At networking events, bouncing off someone that has also stayed an extra 15 minutes proves the connection of a lifetime. At parties, mini-parties on the fringes are often the most fun part of the night. Entrepreneurs operating at the fringe of a company or an industry, situating themselves in the vanguard, are situating themselves for success. In a workout, also, it's all about work put in at the margins. Everything else is going through the motions. Margins vs. Motions.

CONTRADICTION: Gaining face by losing it

You'll often hear, on getting to China on business, that drinking culture here is a bit different. As it's put by some: "it's good to puke." Overindulging at a client dinner shows new friends that you are willing to hold nothing back in dealing with them, that you're "letting it all hang out" and are able to let them "have something on you." In other words, by losing face, you gain friendship and can form guanxi.

I have been getting back into basketball these days. The realtor who is trying to sell the apartment I'm living in (for my landlord, not for me) was adamant that I come to the 6:30am game in Taiyanggoing park, down the street, to hang out and 锻炼身体, "work out, exercise your body"--and to help them practice their English, which I'm happy to do. When I first got to China, I played basketball on the college campus where I worked. I certainly got worked out. Inspired by the moves of Russell Westbrook and Kobe Bryant, and generally with no previous formal coaching, recreational Chinese ballplayers have an out-of-control style that led to my having no less than 3 bloody noses and a handful of bruises my first month on the court. This danger was exacerbated by the fact that I myself am totally out of control and am still trying as hard as I was in 7th grade to move gracefully walking down a sidewalk much less driving down the lane. In an effort to reinvigorate my spoken Chinese, get a workout, and have some fun, I decided to give basketball in China another shot and join the daily game down at the park. I've gone twice now, and while I've not shared some baijiu with the fellas (yet), I've built up a respectful, friendly relationship with some of them.

Today, setting up shop down in the post, I was being d'ed up by one of the bigger guys--one with a Fresh Prince-style flattop hairdo that generally is associated with military types, according to the dictionary of Chinese hairdos. The dude is actually way nicer than his hair would let on, and we were playing each other with the right kind of competitiveness, contesting shots cleanly and playing pretty closely. At this particular moment, gassed after about 20 minutes running around a half-court, I pushed off with my back to gain some separation for a turnaround, and nothing was there. I stumbled into the air and did a backwards somersault on the concrete, as I went down hearing the rising "oooooOOHH" of the guys on the court and the dudes playing pingpong next door. Just total amateur hour. After popping up with a smile--unhurt, but with my 面子 mianzi, or "face," flung out the window and screaming as it fell to the ground--I was helped up and high-fived as I jumped back on the court. After the game, chatting amiably, it felt genuinely friendly, like a gap had been bridged. I had "gracefully" embarrassed myself, let it all hang out, but shown myself capable of having a good time. In the West or in China, that's what life is all about, isn't it?

What motivates China in the "Age of Ambition"

I haven't read Evan Osnos' new book yet. In the meantime, I'll take a stab at predicting what he'll call up as some of the motivating forces behind Chinese folks who you don't hear much about in the nightly American news hour. I just had his book zapped to my Kindle today and look forward to seeing how my predictions match up with his observations. After 6 years living in Beijing, my take on what animates the ambitions of Chinese today:

1) One billion customers to serve: I could not initially get my head around the number of different sportswear companies with the exact same logo as Nike operating in Beijing. I then considered the sheer number of people these days looking to buy sportswear, like Mr. Clean and the college kids playing pickup basketball on campuses all around the city. There can exist 4 different stores sitting on the street right next to one another, occupying the same market niche, because if just a fraction of a percent of the hundreds of thousands of passerbys decide to pick up a tanktop or runners at that store, they're set. As James McGregor describes in his book, while the story of the past several decades has been China as a producer, the story of future decades will be that of selling into and inside China--a reality to which the rest of the world is slowly waking up, but of which Chinese are acutely aware and positioned to seize advantage.

2) Adaptability as a way of life: Connected to the phenomenon of having so many potential customers at your doorstep, that businesses seem to pop up (and out) so quickly in Beijing is not surprising. Peter Hessler remarks in one of his books how being handed a business card in China listing 15 different proficiencies is not uncommon. Off the top of my head I can count 3 plumber/electrician/locksmiths within a 10-minute walk of my apartment. On most skybridges arching over the ring roads surrounding Beijing, you can find vendors selling everything from mobile phone stickers to socks. Particularly for the emergent middle class, things change so quickly, one cannot afford to approach making a living by siloing yourself and only doing one thing to get by. Businesses and families in the developed world are concerned that things are changing too quickly to keep up--commercially, psychologically. The level of adaptability displayed particularly by young people in China, is particularly extraordinary.

3) Searching for "something else": Walking to the subway through an affluent Beijing neighborhood a year ago, I heard an electric bike behind me accelerate rapidly and then swung in front of me. The driver was a kind-looking lady with glasses who asked if I would like a teaching job; they needed teachers immediately. I declined, but took her card, which read: "Holy Education." I asked if there was a lot of demand for ESL that mixed in Bible stories with learning about nouns and verbs. She said they couldn't find teachers fast enough. "It must be difficult teaching religious education in China, no?" She said that Bible stories are used as reading material without getting into the intensely religious parts--surprising, given the name of the company. In the past year or two, in conversations with parents and students, I have never heard more mention of Jesus than in any time past. Even those whoa are not expressly Christian had some very pointed questions during this past Easter, which is translated in Mandarin as "resurrection holiday." As affluent Chinese come to see how purely material metrics for success can often prove unfulfilling, and how particularly Christian spirituality can offer some kind of higher purpose, it will be interesting to see if Chinese families continue the search for new ways of living "the good life."

4) Used to the competition: In 2011, Amy Chua's book caused a stir with the suggestion that "Chinese parents" are superior in creating "stereotypically successful kids." I have met enough people here in Beijing to understand that China, like anywhere, seems to have just as many successful or failing people as anywhere else. An interesting learning experience was when I worked at Tsinghua University--one of China's two or three premier universities--and in my spare time helped students prepare applications for graduate schools in the US and UK. These were China's high flyers--students who competed against millions of other applicants to win admission to Tsinghua. When I mentioned the idea of a "safety school" to add to their list of MIT, Cambridge, Berkeley, and Yale, they simply shrugged it off. "I need to get into one of these places," they said. "Otherwise, I'll just stay in China, work and live at home." Why the obsession with only the top tier? "My parents would be disappointed with anything else." Many students had inculcated the desires of their parents and now could not differentiate between those and desires of their own. Regardless, they were--they are--extraordinarily driven and utterly unwilling to settle for anything less than their absolute best--which they are convinced is as good as anyone else's best, not just in China, but in the world.

Mr. Clean

I can't speak for other gyms, but at mine there's a Mr. Clean. And by a Mr. Clean, I mean a few different guys who very closely resemble a Chinese version of Mr. Clean. I know for a fact that there are multiple Mr. Clean's as sometimes they come to the gym at the same time. He's characterized by a couple different features:

• 50-60 years old, from my guess (maybe older)
• high-end gear, usually including knee braces and lifting gloves
• day-time, non-lunchtime lifting, perhaps a retiree
• FUBU- or Sean John-style street jersey
• frequent phone calls while on treadmill or stationary bike
• spends a lot of time working out, but also a lot of time chatting
• very loud conversational tone of voice
• putting up some impressive weight and not afraid to exert himself despite age
• smiling and willing to throw you a spot, especially when you're lifting less than him
• always, always the shaved head

Here's to you, Mr. Clean. It's been tough keeping up with you around the bench press. God knows I will not be attacking the weight room like that when I'm your age!

The Congo and China

Just watched an episode of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown which touched on a connection that is shared, in my mind, between China and the Congo in the way both places are perceived by the world outside.

An eastern Congo city on the shore of Lake Kivu is the launch point for Bourdain's run to the Congo River, a part of the world brought into memory for many westerners through Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness. The city of Goma, it is described by Bourdain's fixers, could be seen as a stand-in representative of the Congo's larger situation; surrounded by at least 8 different tribal militias battling for influence, everything from levels of danger to the availability of food and water fluctuate wildly from day to day, hour to hour. The culture is amazing, to Bourdain's main interest the food and people are amazing, but the Congo as it exists now can simply not sustain any type of sustained media attention--it's too crazy, it's by turns stable and unstable, the situation is too complicated. As a documentary filmmaker on the show describes, "you can't fit the Congo into 3 sentences on a nightly newscast."

I'm not the first person to note that China is best conceived--can only be conceived--by casual observers, journalists, policymakers, or anyone else by allowing for a tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance, for the existence simultaneously of contradictory information leading to contradictory conclusions. The "contradictions" thread on this blog is dedicated to fleshing out some examples. China is organized and built up in a way that, from the images I saw just now, is lightyears ahead of the Congo. It's problems, however, are well-documented, and its situation--political, economic, social--is just so incredibly complex. It is a place that cannot fit into 3 sentences on a nightly newscast, yet because of its rising importance this is what we try to do many evenings on CNN, NBC, ABC, and FOX News. It is a place that is convenient for western news outlets as it accommodates so many different 3 sentence wrap-ups, each of which can be substantiated in some way--made to mean something by different people, for different watchers, to different ends.

So what to do? Give up on understanding these places? Unlike the Congo, China at least has the benefit of rising clout as a growing global power. There are lots of economic and other incentives for everything from people-to-people exchanges to foreign investments that will continue to build greater understanding over the near term. Congo, to this point, has had no such luck. An interesting comparison: urban Chinese routinely lament the horrors of traveling home by train each Chinese New Year. The trains are packed, there's barely space to move, and tickets are difficult to get. One of the most heartbreaking parts of the Bourdain's program is when they visit an old Congolese railway station that used to be the hub of a route that went all around the country and then all the way down to South Africa. Now, there's no more locomotives, and no train transportation across the city, much less the country. At least in China, there are trains that exist that can be crowded in the first place. Appropriately, Bourdain ends the show describing the hope of the Congolese people in the face of a very uncertain future.

1 big reason Americans can't afford to ignore China

The Rhodium Group just published a report showing that the US-China relationship is at a crossroads: for the first time in modern history, more money from Chinese companies is coming into the US than the other way around. These trends are only accelerating:

It is important to observe that US investment in China isn't stopping; although the rate of foreign direct investment (FDI) growth seems to be stagnating, US investment in China will continue to be an important feature that should be of significant interest to Chinese officials. Of greater importance to this relationship, as the Rhodium report points out, is American policymakers' increased consideration of this sea change--most importantly, I would argue, as it relates to employment of Americans in America by Chinese-owned firms:

Although the number of jobs currently produced by Chinese employers in America is relatively small, the number is increasing exponentially. Major takeaway: going forward, the career paths for hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of Americans based in the US will be defined by their ability to understand and navigate Chinese culture, language, and corporate behavior.

老北京人：weather forecasts

New Beijingers: 天气预报 is Chinese for "weather forecast," when the guy on the news tries to guess whether it will rain or shine the next day.

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老北京人：天气预报 is Chinese for "weather pronouncement," when the guy on the news calls over to the military dudes shooting photodecomposing silver iodide missiles into the atmosphere to hear when and how much rain will happen.

老北京人："Old Beijing Folks"

Driving home tonight in pelting rain on top of a motorbike that seemed to be disintegrating underneath me, I had an idea for another thread. 老北京人 lao beijing ren is Chinese for "old Beijing folks," folks who know how it really is in the North Capital of China. Hopefully, LBJR posts can shed some light on how your perceptions about things in China change as you spend more and more time here.

6 Chinese 8-year olds may now believe this is the legend of Easter

Class: "It's about Jesus, we already know that!"

Mr. Kevin: "Nooo, Easter is not about Jesus. Do you guys know what the world really looked like 5,000 years ago?"

Class: "......uh..."

Mr. Kevin: "Five thousand years ago, things were a bit different than they are today. Things were bigger. Plants, garbage cans, houses. Rabbits. They were the size of people" <cynical expression of disbelief washes over class> "and they ruled the world."

"The rabbits, for as long as they could remember, had their run of things, lazing away the days, eating grass peacefully. One day, arriving on their shores were these birds--they couldn't fly, they had these weird feet--"

Class: "Chickens!"

Mr. Kevin: "--and they were interested in more space to grow their chicken kingdom bigger and bigger. The rabbits didn't like this, they wanted their homes to themselves, to live in peace. But the chickens were having none of it. A war began that lasted for many years" not
be real>
"After many years of fighting, the rabbits had had enough and they decided to do something drastic. They--"

Nancy: "What's 'drastic'?"

Mr, Kevin: "Something really really BIG. They figured that, what's the best way to get rid of the chickens? We could kill them, but that's way too crazy. Hey, how about we took at the chicken babies?! Then there won't be any more chickens to fight.

"So late one night, the rabbits crept into the chicken's camp, and stole all of these huge eggs. At that time, chickens were pretty big, right? So that was no small thing stealing thousands of eggs bigger than basketballs!

"The rabbits felt bad about stealing all their eggs. They were peaceful animals and they felt like they had no choice. 'Hey, this isn't us,' said the rabbit leader. 'We can't do this.'

"Instead of rolling the eggs into the sea as they had planned, the rabbits ran around the glen and gather flowers and petals of every kind--red ones, blue ones, yellow and green. They threw them into big, boiling pots of water, and soon their were these big pots of color into which they dipped all the eggs.

"Back at the chicken camp, they went to bed heartbroken. But the next morning, in the middle of camp, there was a pile of colored eggs 5 stories high. 'Our babies!' they shouted.

"The rabbit commander shook hands with Captain Chicken, and the war was over. We commemorate that day, every year, by coloring Easter eggs, celebrating the peace between rabbits and chickens."

Bob: "But what happened to rabbits and chickens? Why are they so small today?"

Mr. Kevin: "Good question. People came along. We had big sticks, then we had axes and tools for fighting with the animals that the rabbits and chickens didn't have. So what's the only thing they could of have done? Only thing to do was hide--under the ground, under the house, wherever. Slowly, evolution selected for the smallest chickens and rabbits."

Americans Promoting Study Abroad

While the number of Chinese students studying in America each year gets a lot of play (it's now around 200,000, recently passing India as the most from any country), an even more incredible number is how many American students study in China each year: about 17,000 in 2013. This "education gap" is appalling and potentially very dangerous, as America and China's future together is interwoven and will be based on the quality and depth of understanding that each side has for the other. Right now, on a person-to-person basis, China is doing a good job building up a critical mass of worldly young people. America, for various reasons, needs to keep up. That is why it's so exciting to be involved with APSA, an organization promoting study abroad opportunities for at-risk American students who otherwise couldn't dream about an experience living and studying in China. In association with President Obama's 100,000 Strong Initiative to increase the number and diversity of Americans studying in China to 100,000 total during his time in office, APSA is doing incredible work identifying and providing exciting study and professional experiences for talented young people who will go on to become the next generation of ambassadors promoting partnership and understanding between our two countries.

Just last week, Jeffrey Wood, an APSA Scholar who participated in APSA's flagship Summer Scholars 10-week immersion program (we have 90 kids this summer, up from 50 last summer), had the chance to interview First Lady Michelle Obama, who was passing through Beijing with her mother and daughters. Jeffrey, who is now enrolled at George Mason University, is currently studying abroad here. Not a bad way to spend your time away from studying Mandarin, eh?!?

lumps of meat

In the last 2 weeks I've taken 2 separate spills on my skateboard. Each time, my whole body weight landed square on my left elbow and knee, which are both still swollen up like a grapefruit. It's been a bit less than a week since the most recent spill, and the arm is starting to feel a bit better.

The pain in my upper arm isn't a throbbing bruise pain. It's a deep, dull bone pain. Most of the time, just walking around and at work, it's easy to forget about. At the gym and playing hockey, making certain torquing motions with my fingers or wrists sets flashbulbs firing behind my eyes. I try to duplicate these special movement to make sure I avoid it next time, but something about the way I'm doing it doesn't register the same pain response.

It's strange the way the pieces of our bodies are connected together, and when the system gets disturbed how it responds to a trauma. The tendons and fibers that make us up, and how they play with one another. You forget how much has to be going right for all of these things to work in concert. The only time you remember how delicate you are is when you lose abilities you take for granted.

As a coda, I was just at the supermarket (where I couldn't believe I heard Wilco being played over the loudspeaker, how this place has changed in 6 years). At the meat counter a lady in a pink velour tracksuit was buying what had to be half of an adult cow's ribcage. Still all attached together like something you would see in the meat locker of a Rocky movie, she hoists up the ribs to the meat chopper across the counter. "Throw it to me," the chopper says. With a second of hesitation, the lady launches the ribs across the counter for a direct hit onto the cutting board. She had a smile on her face from ear to ear.

CONTRADICTION: Urban and rural

In a courtyard garden hidden between new-built art deco skyscrapers, a group of 3 old women sit on a concrete abutment screaming at each other. If you were standing on the other side of the 10-foot wall forming the other side of the yard, you wouldn't be able to see the ladies, but you could certainly hear them, and might wonder when the cops would be called to break up a fight. But there are smiles all around. One lady with short, permy gray hair makes an amazingly quick move that seems decades younger than her years, shoving her conversation partner forcefully. Nearly tumbling off her seat, her buddy regains herself and takes a swing back at the perpetrator.

There is a timelessness about the exchange: people enjoying each others' company, gossiping, soaking in sunlight which does get through the clouds sometimes here in Beijing. This is a scene that has happened every day in China all over the place, for thousands of years. Surrounded by supermarkets, malls, movie theaters, and Starbucks, it seems that most people--especially older folks and families--keep some kind of routine that feels like it has been ingrained here since antiquity. Sitting under a tree together, chatting in the park. Taking a stroll around the block after dinner. Practicing taiqi in the courtyard, late at night once the city is calm. As many Ferraris, Bugattis, and Rolls Royces as you see stteaming down the avenues, it cannot take away from the undercurrent you get than this place is so, so old, with ways of doing things as ancient as the Wall.

A friend visited here some time ago, it was his first trip ever to mainland China. I asked him what was his strongest impression, just several hours after getting off the plane. Despite all the KFCs, McDonalds, luxury brands, and news reports about China's economic explosion, the proximity people maintained to a rural way of living is immediately palpable. "Not just the way people dress, but the way people walk, the way the look at one another.." Like you're in the middle of a village in the midst of a city. There are downsides, but in Beijing there's a village's warmth and a rawness, a realness to the lifestyle here that you simply don't get in the developing world.

CONTRADICTION: Weather

This is what Beijing looks like today--65F, sunny, pm2.5 of 76... first official t-shirt day of 2014. You can visibly see the spring in people's step walking down the street. I've read about the phenomenon, in Russia, when the winter breaks and "white nights" set in, how folks get almost hysterically happy that the cold and wind has kicked out for at least a little while. This is the best time of year in Beijing, aside from the couple weeks in September/October when the summer breaks and its cool with a bit less wind. The restaurants are breaking out the tables to let diners sit outside on the sidewalk, the 串儿 vendors are moving their grills outside too. Nothing better than Chinese dining al fresco.

"armpit"

In an attempt to replace Chinglish with more native English, we go over American slang in class. Today's slang was "armpit"--as in "this place is a real armpit," "wow, what an armpit!"

After everyone got a laugh at me showing of my amazing, well-formed pits, I explained the figurative meaning of the term using a story of a town I drove through this one time where, in the town diner, the chef had nosehair down to his knees, and how the town dump was right next to the public pool. Needless to say, they got the point.

I ask for original sentences using the term, "armpit," from each of the students, most of them choosing to describe their parents' hometowns--as they described, rural places where animals and people lived together, where animal feces was everywhere, and where everything is dirty. Ivan went so far as to say, "Beijing is an armpit."

Chinese dream

Each generation of Chinese leadership adopts a mantra that is designed to represent the spirit of that administration. It becomes a refrain during speeches and public statements. Hu Jintao extolled the dual virtues of "scientific development" and a "harmonious society," highlighting the need in the last decade for expansion in Chinese science and technology, and use of that R&D in managing an increasingly connected and demanding citizenship.

In that last decade, China has risen to become the world's 2nd biggest economy, with the world's greatest number of internet users, and largest number of mobiles phones in use: 1.22 billion. Against the backdrop of China's well-publicized problems with pollution, human rights, and other issues, there is much for the leadership to be excited about as the "Chinese miracle" pushes ahead. In this spirit, it would seem, Xi Jinping has begin to use the phrase, "the Chinese dream," as his administration's calling card earlier in 2013.

"The Chinese dream" is a cryptic message with different resonances. Riffing on the dreams of other countries, such as America, how might the Chinese dream compare? One thing is clear: whereas previous leaders have emphasized more practical, pragmatic language and present change, Xi's dream is about a better future.

Construction sites are ubiquitous all over China, and Beijing is no exception. The markings on protective walls surrounding these sites are managed by local propaganda departments for display of advertisements suggesting slogans and other messages: right now, it's "the Chinese dream." When I first saw these go up earlier in the autumn of 2013, I was impressed how minimally clean and tasteful the design was, as opposed to the Hu administration's busy and less thoughtful aesthetic.

The above writing in large characters could be translated as "wish luck to the motherland," with an image filial piety accompanying to the right. Ian Johnson's analysis of the Chinese dream propaganda in the New York Review of Books points out how propaganda these days is moving from an emphasis on Communist to more traditional, Confucian values that were vilified just years before:

The difference is that while the old posters touted Communist values, the new ones largely replace them with pre-Communist Chinese traditions—drawing on traditional folk art like paper cutouts, woodblock prints, and clay figurines to illustrate their message. This is a redefinition of the state’s vision from a Marxist utopia to a Confucian, family-centric nation, defined by a quiet life of respecting the elderly and saving for the future.

Why move from espousing political values and instead emphasize traditional culture in Party imagery and language? Johnson explains the value in having the two blend together:

Almost all the art used in the posters, with its depictions of traditional dress and poses, used to be derided by the Party as belonging to China’s backward, pre-Communist past; now, these aesthetic traditions are a bulwark used to legitimize the Party as a guardian and creator of the country’s hopes and aspirations. 

One of the most interesting posters is the above, zhong guo hao qi! literally, "nice move, China!" The image is of two children playing chess. As Johnson observes, the major question here is: what is the nature of the game that China is winning? Who is the opponent?

It is easy to read especially the above as thought engineering, but to be honest it seems like most locals at least in Beijing pay very little regard. Whereas folks outside China might envision millions of Beijingers wandering city streets, eyes agog as the brainwash takes them over, Johnson's blog shows many of these posters are viewed cynically, some even defaced and ripped--a high crime that, if the vandal was caught, would certainly lead to detention or worse. Especially as a foreigner, it's easy to read the "good move, China" poster as an statement of China's aggressive intentions to "win the game," be it international diplomacy or a more domestic concern. I would instead look at it as a representation of Party neurosis that the government feels the need to manufacture a reality they are not certain is actually happening. As Jonathan Spence writes, "modern China" has not yet arrived, but the search is underway, with many trying to shape what that place may be, in word and action.

绕口令

raokouling is how you say "tongue twister" in Chinese, which I learned after wee how easy it was for my 8 year olds to say "toy boat" 10 times fast. I usually can't get past 3-4 times speaking as fast as possible. "Sally sells sea shells by the seashore" was very tricky. The sh- blend and s- sound are both used in Mandarin, however many dialects switch sh- for s- or don't pronounce sh- altogether--making Sally's story a multilingual mouth masher.

马上

Horse year is here, and we're so excited that the 17-foot long poster on our wall proclaiming 马到成功--"when the horses are here, success comes with them"--is now more relevant than ever. A lot of advertisements are using the word 马上, which means something like "immediately" but, if you literally translate the two characters, is read as "on a horse"... like when someone in sports or at work tells you to "get on your horse" and hurry up.

CONTRADICTION: iPhone dominoes

China is a developing country. Hundreds of millions of people here live in rural poverty with limited access to basic necessities.

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http://bit.ly/1j88jmi

What is as crazy as spending all that money on all those phones is then posting it online with a "Happy Holidays" greeting expecting... what response? Why the choice of English? Easier to domino than Chinese characters?

CONTRADICTION: Foreigner feelings

Dudes in Chinese gyms go pretty hard, but none go harder than the oldest guys. It's literally the 60-70 year old bracket that I see constantly pushing sets to failure, sweating their brains out, and really letting out some noise when pushing out their reps. Oddly, when lifting weights, there is little or no spotting (I've often considered why: face? concerns about manliness? just unaware of the practice? there are coaches walking around the gym but don't seem to help out unless they are getting paid for 1-on-1 training). I needed a spot and called her over to help me in case I was going to drop the bar on my head. As I was doing the set and giving some instruction, a couple of guys who were there working out together were looking on, seeing what this spotting thing was all about. It seemed like having a girl being the one giving the spot was of special interest. Although they had been working out for a half-hour on the bench press and other exercises, neither one of them had been watching out for the other; right after we were done, they waited for us to walk away to change weights and gave spotting a try. Within a half-hour, I saw 3 other sets of people helping themselves with spots on other benches.

It's cool and fun to see this kind of knowledge dispersed in real time. I don't know if "knowledge dispersal" is even the right term. Maybe these dudes already knew about spotting, and seeing two foreign people do it gave it the imprimateur of, "OK, I guess this spotting idea is legit" or "oh, that's how you spot someone." You take for granted the Phys Ed classes in middle school where most American kids learn about this stuff, about how to lead not only a healthy lifestyle but also how to exercise properly and effectively. China is developing so fast, and the involvement of foreigners isn't important just for building English skills, taking international technology, or the other stuff you see in the news. There are just so many "best practices" in so many areas of life in China where there is room for sharing--for education and exchange. And there is a genuine respect, appreciation, excitement among folks here to learn more about other cultures.

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It is often observed that there is not a lot of love lost between China and Japan. Politically, right now the two countries are at odds over a number of issues: Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, Japan's prime minister visiting WWII shrines commemorating war criminals. On an individual basis, people are people, and many locals I know have great friendships with Japanese expats here in Beijing. I think there is a difference between urban China and rural China, where less exposure to foreigners as real people means that people are more susceptible to influence from movies and TV. And Chinese CCTV certainly does not help to quell any negative feelings. From Murong Xuecun in NYT yesterday:

The state prohibits content that “incites ethnic hatred,” yet according to Southern Weekly more than 70 anti-Japanese TV series were screened in China in 2012. And in March 2013 the newspaper reported that 48 anti-Japanese-themed TV series were being shot simultaneously in Hengdian World Studios, a film studio in Zhejiang Province, in eastern China.

There is no doubt that anti-foreign nationalism is a key component of how the CCP has chosen to define Chineseness--which is weird, given the myriad ways Chinese people I see in Beijing both respect and seek out foreigners as friends, sometimes primarily for practical purposes like English learning, but many times simply because they're curious. That the government has chosen to define a group of people not for what they are, but for what they are not--"we are not Japan, we are not the West"--leads to the confusion behind what Jonathan Spence calls "the search for modern China." Negative definitions of things don't really lend any clarity to a thing's true nature. It's kind of like Boston Red Sox culture--there is none. The Yankees all shave? We'll have handlebar mustaches. They're elitist snobs? Red Sox are dudes of the people. It's not "Red Sox culture," it's "not-Yankees culture." As China culturally and politically regains some confidence lost during the "100 years of humiliation," it will be interesting to see if so much anti-foreign nationalism remains in politics.

不亦乐乎

bu yi le hu: Short for, "you pengzi yuan fang lai, bu yi le hu," the first sentence of Confucius' Analects, perhaps the most famous of all classical Chinese books. Translation would read something like, "Isn't it a pleasure when friends visit from afar"--prompting the values of hospitality to outsiders that you'll see in common folks whenever you visit China. Thinking these days of my incredible experience on the BYLH crew back in 2010... www.booeylehoo.org

孀

shuang: Another gorgeous histogram: the main portion, to the right, can mean either a winter's frost, or a coating or covering of whiteness, as in either cosmetics or, say, cake frosting. The smaller piece on the left, the "woman radical," indicates that this character should have something to do with ladies. Used together, these two pieces are pronounced shuang, first tone, the Mandarin word for "widow."