Jetsam

It occurred to me that I have of late been remiss in my duties as a bloggist, and in penance to my readers, all 7 of you, I thought I'd write this post. Sorry, it's tough finding the time to live through things exciting enough to write about AND actually writing about them. So Beijing not much has changed in Beijing, it is still the city, moving unceasingly in a million different directions, but as an outsider it is pretty easy to float on top of the flow to wherever I want to go. I will be back in Houston before I really sink into the current. However, watching as an outsider has it's perks, like not getting detained in Lhasa.

Over fall break I was in Tibet for three days, and each day I had a run-in with the Chinese police. I didn't know this, but Tibet is now a police state. Lhasa is 70% Han Chinese thanks to Chinese migration, and and Chinese soldiers, in groups of 5 and dressed in riot gear, stand in stations at every corner, or patrol with shotguns and machine guns through the alleys. A sniper's nest sits above Jokang temple (the most famous). I accidentally kicked a rock into the feet of one soldier on the second day. While I would hate to generalize, this one didn't have much of a sense of humour. Our train got into town late at night on Tuesday, and after dad and I got dinner, we left the restaurant just in time to see a riot start. Two snobbish kids on bikes were pretending to ride into people in the square, and pulling away at the last second, but they actually hit a Tibetan man on his motorbike. When he yelled at them they kicked his bike, knocking his food onto the floor. Then the motorcyclist punched one of the boys. At this point it was time to leave, so we started walking down the alley. About a step into this plan one of the cinderblocks they were throwing shattered at my feet, and a dozen soldiers with guns up came running down the alley, at me. Thinking quickly, not wanting to get shot, I put my hands at head height, and made a face that said "I don't know officer". They changed direction two steps from me and went for the fight that was getting bigger behind me. Time to go. Other days we got pulled over in taxis, or spent three hours in a police station because my passport went missing and I needed to get back to Beijing. As far as the sights, a picture is worth a thousand words. You should see Potala Palace, and Jokang temple, and Sera Monastery, and mountains covered in colorful prayer flags. But I will say, in each of those places, there was a palpable, heavy, holy feeling. Also a brief bout with dysentery, and a renewed comfort with squat toilets. Not a bad three days.

Other things worth knowing about Tibet: Yak meat is delicious, Monks slap their hands to emphasize a point when they debate, and so in heated discussion it looks like martial arts. Buddhas exist for everything, and the higher up the mountain and the bigger the better. The Tibetans all speak Mandarin and Tibetan, and have excellent taste in headwear.

Realized three years after enrolling in college that I could have learned everything I needed to know about life from Johnny Cash, Warren Zevon, and Bob Schneider, for about 100 dollars in CD's. Finally have coffee here, shocked at how much I can get done in a day.

Can't Get Enough

Hard to believe it's been over two weeks since I was last on here. Alot has happened since I last wrote, so I'll try and catch you up in a few sentences. We took the trip to Shanxi, had a humbling dinner in a dying village, saw some of the scars a planned economy left on the countryside, and watched how people far tougher than me make a satisfying living in rough conditions. Think Steinbeck. A couple of death-defying experiences, inlcuding an all-male sauna, and a drunk driver on the sidewalk with a sense of humour. I sprained my ankle a little bit on the mountain, so after getting down and then climbing to a Buddhist monastary the next day- like I would miss that- I have been trying to take it a little slower. This has not gone as planned. Since returning I have gone to a Chinese rock/rap concert, which is surprisingly similar to one in the U.S. until they throw food on you, 798 Art District, the "Paris of the East", where artists from all over the world now congregate and shock viewers, and the Laoshe Teahouse, made famous by the playwright Lao She, who drowned himself during the Cultural Revolution. His memory is honored by kung fu demonstrations and bottomless green tea.



Also, I will be teaching English for a few hours each week for the rest of the semester, so I visited the Party Development and Education Center, newly refurbished with Communist Party funds, it looks really nice. There is a giant hammer and sickle in every room. We met the group we will be working for, and after they offered us liquor in the teacher's lounge (it's gonna be a good volunteer experience) they showed us around and told us about volunteering in the Olympics. Excited about learning how to teach English, and I would be in their CCTV commercial fliming this Friday, but the academic program I am with is leaving town Thursday to Sunday, to Henan province. I have no idea what for yet. Followed a week of hard Chinese study with a trip to one of Beijing's top 10 nightclubs. It was alright. Am now in the phase of travel where my curiosity about the new city is deepening while I'm starting to miss a couple things about Houston. Food and people mostly, though a bed that doesn't have mold growing in it would also be a welcome relief. Still alot to see here, many palaces, gates, museums, terra-cotta soldiers, oppressed territories, all of which should be seen in a lifetime, if only in silent tribute to what people can do.


Finally, I am now writing a travel column for the Rice Standard, so check that out from time to time if you enjoy bad writing. Word of the day: Jiáxiaozi - fake boy / lesbian

I'm Good Now

Bob Schnieder you really cut to the core of me. I'm up late preparing a powerpoint for the class discussion I volunteered to lead in one of my english-speaking classes tomorrow. It's amazing how a room anywhere in the world feels like Rice when you're up past midnight studying. Culture shock indeed. Upon noticing that it had been a whole week since my last post, and seeing as I leave for the mountains on Thursday and will be gone all weekend, I wanted to write something before I get too busy. Mainly I enjoy bragging, and I feel good right now.

I have one day with nine hours of classes left, and then we leave for the mountains of northern Shanxi province, which involves starting at 7:45 a.m. for a day of riding a bus, a train, and then another less comofortable bus. Lunch will not be served. We visit an unpaved section of the Great Wall, and arrive in a small village and spend the night. Friday we take a short 6 mile hike south to the other side of the mountain chain, into Hebei province, to reach a small guesthouse for cold showers. Possible visit to a hot spring with a brothel built on the second floor. Don't worry, I'll wear a shower cap. Saturday we have classes and sucker an unsuspecting driver into taking us to an almost undiscovered Buddhist temple, on a road which has snared every other vehicle which used it, requiring the passengers to get out and push. Also, Happy Yom Kippur. Sunday we spend all day getting back to school. So really too many experiences to make sense of them all at once, but the main thing is people are pretty much the same everywhere: crazy. Still wrapping my head around what it means to be one of 1.4 Billion, in a nation where the government is seen as the natural solver of problems ( as opposed to individual or community action). Also a HUGE generation gap, as those over 50 here lived through the Mao era, but those my age were born after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.

Had my first Beijing nightclub experience, and it was everything I thought it could be. Sweet dance moves are clearly an international language. We got a spot on stage, and proceeded to tear the club up.  Home before dawn. Before theis club visit of course, we spent the day climbing the Great Wall, absolutely beautiful, absolutely impressive, mountains behind mountains behind mountains, with this thin ribbon of stone that took hundreds of years and thousands of lives, thrusting from the top Also filled with bodies of those who died building it. It was less crowded than it might have been. Only takes a half hour walking uphill to reach it. The best view was just past the Off-Limits signs. So overall my life is entirely too good right now.

Excitable Boy

There's a body of research on what happens to travelers as they experience culture shock, and like mourning, it's divided into several clear phases. The first is euphoria, followed by frustration or depression, then gradual adjustment, then bi-culturalism, feeling at home in this place. I am still pretty solidly in the first phase, and if you read on, I think it will be pretty  clear I ought to be.

My flight was late, and spent a little extra time hanging out on the tarmac after we landed, so I missed the group transport to campus, and instead finangled a bus ticket, in Chinese, to take me within half a mile, then took a brisk evening walk with one hundred pounds of baggage. Awesome. I missed the group meal, but fortunately a couple guys drinking 20 cent beer in their room were kind enough to invite me in for a liquid dinner. They had just completed one month of teaching english in Yunan, and are in the same program I am. The night passed easily. In fact, just about everyone in this program is good company of various types.

Classes start in two days, we got our first homework tonight. That should give you some idea of the rigor of the program. Tough, but at least my Chinese should improve meteorically. The professors seem, without exception, phenomenal - calmly and unquestionably experts in their fields. Am also planning to do extracurricular classes in martial arts and chinese cooking, plus weekend trips to include the Great Wall and three days in the backcountry, sleeping with local families and hiking the mountains. Pretty optimistic about maintaining this euphoria for a little while. We visited a rebuilt Hutong this afternoon, and although the main road was converted into a tourist shopping strip, there were some pretty impressive old homes down the side streets, including that of the wife of the last Qing emperor. Kind of cool for an afternoon walk.

Before I start classes though, I have this weekend to get through. In what is quickly becoming my favorite tradition, I was dragged from bed on my birthday by pounding on my door, and after swapping my favorite silk pajamas for basketball shorts and a shirt, a dozen of us went out to the best little bar in Beijing. 3 RMB (40 cents) for a glass of beer on tap. Street food for pennies on the way back. Good preperation for tonight.

I realize I'm gushing, but I'm still pretty enamored with this behemoth of a city. And if anyone wants to follow my account, I'll try and update about once every other week, but probably more often at first while I'm in awe of Beijing, and convinced anyone's dying to hear about it.

Peace,
Tom

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Bob Schneider strumming from my computer, uploading pictures of my friends, a stomach stretched with pizza and pie a la mode, and someone besides Rick Sanchez talking on CNN; I can't help feeling surrounded by the things I'm going to miss about this country. In eleven hours my plane leaves for Canada, and Wednesday evening I land in Beijing, beginning my four months in China. This means, apart from moving into a room that hasn't just been stained by my dog, that I have 26 hours of airline liquor and Shrek Forever After to ease my cultural transition. One of those things will make the other one better.

With this post I officially become a blogger, mainly because I don't want to answer the same questions twenty times when I return. Hopefully being surrounded by a nation whose language I can't yet speak grants me a few insights into Chinese culture and the nature of the individual that I can articulate understandably. Possibly not. Regardless of how it turns out, I am ready to go. So, to conclude my first blog post, I present the things I'm expecting when I arrive in Beijing:

• A feeling of being tremendously lost, because I haven't seriously practiced Chinese in a couple months, but mainly because I'll actually get lost.
• Permissiveness of tremendous alcohol consumption.
• Being viewed as a curiosity, cultural ambassador, and an easy mark. 
• Introduction to Chinese history as viewed in China.
• Determining how easily a willing westerner can assimilate into local culture.

Game on China.