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."