Visiting the Doctor

Having experienced the filth and publicity of the Tianjin medical clinic during the mandatory health evaluation for my visa, you may wonder why I would voluntarily seek medical care at a Chinese hospital when I have access to the Embassy clinic, the SOS International Medical Clinic, and when neither of those can help, to Beijing United Family Hospital, a fully-equipped international hospital.

Those of you that know me may recall that for more than 20 years I have had difficulties with chronic joint pain. After many years cycling through standard Western doctors, I finally turned to what we in the West consider alternative medicine. After struggling with recurring pain for 15 years, I finally found that acupuncture and other forms of holistic medicine were far more successful at managing the pain is anything standard Western medicine had offered me. Consequently, when the pain flared in my shoulder this fall to the point where it was interfering with my regular routines, I opted for medical care in the Chinese system, rather than at one of the Western facilities to which I have access.

I asked around and everyone familiar with Beijing recommended the same hospital, Dongzhimen Yiyuan (East Gate Hospital). After making some phone calls, we discovered that an appointment was unnecessary so Ben and I headed down there one afternoon to see for ourselves. We arrived at a dilapidated, malodorous building. With some difficult we explained to the receptionist what the problem was. She wanted to know what kind of treatment I wanted. With some difficulty, Ben managed to explain that we weren't sure and would like a doctor to advise us as to a recommended course of treatment. We were sent to the massage department on the third floor.

We made our way to the third floor and followed signs to the massage department, a dim, dirty, grey corridor. After asking advice from several people evidently waiting in the hallway cum waiting room, we finally identified the right room. Inside was a row of massage tables covered with filthy, unwashed rags. The only reasonably clean thing in the room was the doctor's white lab coat. Although he seemed to be in the middle of working on a patient, he sat me down on a chair, made a few inquiries about my shoulder and asked me to demonstrate what hurt. He announced that massage was the appropriate treatment, wrote out some forms and sent us back down the hall to pay. Each treatment cost RMB45 or about $6.50. After paying for that day's treatment we returned to massage department. Again, we had to inquire of the other patients sitting around as to what was the appropriate next step. Were we to wait until called or simply go back in?

The verdict, just go back in. Privacy is non-existent here. Fortunately, treatment was all conducted without any adjustment to clothing so it didn't really matter. The doctor set his apprentice to work on my shoulder. I received nearly 30 minutes of massage, first from the apprentice and then from the master. It was the least relaxing, most painful massage I have ever experienced! Although the joint pain did seem to diminish some over the next few days, the pain in my bruised muscles (and bruises certainly appeared - if I'd then been seen at an American hospital in the next several days I doubtless would have undergone a grilling designed to determine whether I had been the victim of domestic violence) more than made up for it. I wasn't certain I could face another treatment and so skipped the follow-up the doctor had recommended.

When the pain returned, though, I gritted my teeth and decided to give it another go. The second treatment was mercifully shorter than the first, although it resulted in nearly as much bruising. Having failed to return on the recommended day for my follow-up, the doctor decided I would need four treatments, rather than the two he initially recommended. I think he just got a kick out of chatting with Ben (and it's not clear whether the hospital actually got its cut of the last few treatments since we just gave the money directly to the doctor and didn't get the forms stamped by the cashier).

That being said, though, I do have to say that however painful the treatment may have been, it does seem to have been reasonably effective. The pain in my shoulder is greatly diminished. I also must say that I am relieved the doctor advised massage and not acupuncture. Even if the needles were sterile, as I imagine they probably are, the environment was so dirty I am not sure I'd have been comfortable allowing anything to break the skin.

Better in Beijing...bye for now.

Xi'an

If you haven't been to Xi'an what are you waiting for?! The Terracotta Warriors must truly be one of the great wonders of the world. I admit to being a bit of an archaeology fiend (Archaeology Magazine is the only magazine I have ever reliably read cover-to-cover within days of receiving each issue), but I have been to a lot of places and few were quite so entrancing.

True, there is less of a tendency in the West to restore archaeological finds and it is only with restoration that the Warriors have real impact (the unrestored pits were interesting, but not breathtaking in the way the restored pits were) so maybe there are other sites which would, in their original glory, have been equally impressive, but it is hard to imagine. Even in their partially-restored state, the Terracotta Warriors are extraordinary. Endless ranks of bigger-than life warrior statues, each unique. Originally they were painted in brilliant, primary colors. Today the colors have vanished, but in the restored areas each painstakingly reconstructed statue stands proudly in its place silently guarding its lord's tomb through the endless still of death.


Moving back through the site, we eventually come to the open, but not yet restored excavations. Here the warriors lie decimated, their shells shattered and jumbled by ancient marauders. In just a few decades since their discovery, thousands of warriors have already been remade. There are untold thousands more waiting patiently for their turn to rejoin their comrades in silent vigil. The magnitude of this army, wrought by ancient hands, is awe-inspring. Equally remarkable is the effort which has gone into assembling the massive jigsaw puzzle one shard at a time.

From where the warriors watch, it is more than a kilometer to the mounded tomb where the king is actually buried. The tomb stands impenetrable, sealed against time and those who would desecrate it by chambers filled with mercury, a fortress which even modern technology cannot force to reveal its secrets.

In awe in Beijing...

For more pictures see: my Xi'an Album.

Off to the Ball

While we're all accustomed to the endless festivities of the holiday season, the diplomatic community takes the party atmosphere to new heights. To the best of my knowledge the black-tie-ball season started off with the British Ball (which we skipped) at the end of October. The following weekend we helped celebrate the founding of the US Marine's at the full-dress Marine Ball.

The evening started, in typical fashion, with cocktails and hors d'ouvres outside the ballroom followed by a mad scramble to locate our seats when the doors opened. It was another hour or more before dinner was served. First we had to observe the formalities: speeches by the US Ambassador to China and the ranking Marine officer in the Pacific region, the raising of the flag, and the cutting of the birthday cake by the eldest Marine present (a woman, much to my surprise!). All carried out, of course, with proper military pomp. Only after the speeches, toasts, marching, etc. were complete was dinner served. Fare was that of any unmemorable, large, Western hotel banquet. Dancing, naturally, followed, with some guests staying as late as 2 or 3 AM. We left at a relatively early 11 when my cold medicine started to wear off.

We skipped several other balls but landed in late-November at the St. Andrew's Ball, the Beijing Caledonian Society's black-tie affair celebrating the saint's day of the patron saint of Scotland. Although both are large, black-tie events, the St. Andrew's Ball is considerably different in character from the Marine Ball, and, dare I say it, rather more fun. The typical cocktails and hors d'ouvres were followed not by a general rush for tables, but by the Grand March. Guests lined up couple-by-couple at the door to the ballroom behind the chieftan of the Caledonian Society and his wife. At the appointed hour the doors opened and the piper (flown in from Scotland for the occasion) began to play. In time to the music (more-or-less) we marched across the dance floor to the base of the stage. From there couples turned alternately left and right, to circle around the outside of the dance floor and return to center. Once all the guests were in the room, the line continued moving back up the floor. As pairs of couples met in the middle, they linked arms. Foursomes again circled the floor in alternating directions, linking arms into groups of eight and then sixteen as they met again in the center. The broad lines dissolved into the first dance, the Gay Gordons, an easy progressive dance. We proceeded to toasts (can't forget to toast the Queen!) and on to a many-course dinner (complete with haggis) punctuated wtih music by Katie Targett Adams. Dancing continued into the wee hours with a midnight break for soup & stovies and a hearty breakfast before heading home around 3.

After a lull in January, the ball season gives a final huzzah in February with the Australia Ball on Valentine's Day (which we do not plan to attend) and the Caledonian Society's Burns' Supper (happy birthday Robert Burns!) on February 21 (which we wouldn't miss).

Off to the dance...

PS For more pics see: my Marine Ball Album.

At Work

Many of you have been asking about my job, so here goes. I joined Ethos Technologies in June as the head of the .NET Web Solutions group. Ethos is a small software outsourcing firm of slightly under 200 employees. We serve primarily European clients. I manage a group of about 40 people. My teams use .NET technology (don't ask me too much about that because I don't know!) to provide a variety of web solutions for clients. Our solutions range from social networking sites to hospital data management systems.

In addition to the day-to-day work of managing my staff and overseeing their projects, the other department heads and I spend a significant amount of our time working on corporate strategy and internal process improvement initiatives. Since we are a small firm, the breadth of our work is quite broad - we work on everything from IT and HR policies to sales strategies to training.

On a typical day I arrive at the office between 8:30 and 9. After catching up on overnight email, I might spend some time preparing a performance review for one of my employees, go on to a meeting with my colleagues about HR policies, then have a routine one-on-one meeting with one of my project managers. Returning to my desk I might then spend some time reviewing quality or financial reports or drafting a new standard for some aspect of HR. Except on Mondays & Wednesdays when I have a Chinese lesson at lunch time, I typically head out for lunch with some of my colleagues around 12:30. Lunch usually consists of greasy, stir-fried green beans and rice, although we occasionally vary the diet with a sandwich from Subway or spaghetti (when they aren't out) from the coffee place. Afternoon looks very much like morning, meetings on a variety of topics interspersed with brief periods at my desk to work on resource assignments, performance evaluations or formulating standards, strategy or training materials. Time at my desk is, of course, always punctuated by IM discussions and email exchanges. I typically wind down and head home between 5:30 and 6:00.

Yunnan with Habitat for Humanity

Halloween weekend Ben and I went to a small village, Ganhaizi, in Yunnan Province to work on a Habitat for Humanity project. The trip was interesting, although of perhaps somewhat questionable value (more on that later).

Day 1 started with a mid-day flight to Kunming, capital of Yunnan, China's southwestern-most province.

About 15 of us (mostly US Embassy personnel and/or spouses) gathered at the Kunming airport for the 4+ hour drive north to Shilata, the tiny town where we stayed in a primitive, concrete guest house with a single "squatty-potty" for the lot of us and no showers. Here is our room:

From Shilata, it was about a 45 minute hike to Ganhaizi. We were warmly welcomed on the first morning by a group of villagers who sang us into the village.

Our welcome was the only thing warm about the morning. It was chilly, damp and muddy. Nevertheless, we were eager to get to work. Ganhaizi is a village of Miao people. It was visited at some indeterminate time in the past by Korean missionaries and since then the people of the village have been practicing Christians. The church is the most substantial building in the village and it was there we deposited our things to keep them dry while we set off to work.

Our assignment for the day was to finish digging out and leveling the ground for the foundation of the house. Despite the weather we went to work with a will and made quite good progress over the course of the morning.

Our tools were primitive. We had hoes, hand woven baskets for carting dirt, one shovel and a pick-axe to help with the hardest patches. Although the weather grew progressively worse over the course of the morning, we managed to nearly double the cleared area before the rain drove us to take shelter in the neighboring house. After just a few minutes in the building, it was clear why new homes were so critical. The house we sheltered in was of rammed earth construction - basically a dirt floor, packed dirt walls and a few wooden beams supporting a very leaky tile roof. The house was heated by an open fire in the middle of the floor of the main room. With no chimney or smoke hole, the only outlets for the smoke were the poorly covered doorway and the gaps between the roof and the walls. It was almost unbearably smoky inside. We were grateful when we were summoned to lunch which the villagers had prepared for us. Lunch consisted of rice, french fries, a tomato and tofu dish, cabbage and a bit of chicken (unfortunately not the rooster that crowed all night every night!).

By the time lunch was over it was raining too hard for it to be feasible to continue work on the house. After some discussion, our Habitat host finally arranged with the villagers for us to help them with an important autumn task, the preparation of the feed that would keep their pigs alive through the winter. Pigs in Yunnan eat corn during the winter. The villagers grow the corn, harvest it, allow it to partially dry by hanging it in bundles from every conceivably place, then remove the kernels from the ears and finish drying them. All of the work must be done by hand and we all developed blisters from the remarkably difficult task of removing the stubborn kernels from the ears.

I have a sneaking suspicion that one villager could have cleaned as many ears of corn that afternoon as all 15 of us together managed. Even so, we felt as if we'd put in a good day's work and were pretty exhausted by the end of the cold, damp hike back to Shilata. Some people even managed to sleep through the rooster's crowing that night.

Unfortunately, the next morning the weather had deteriorated further and we faced a serious decision. Return to the village and go back to work despite the weather (even the villagers thought we were pretty crazy for having worked the preceding day), or declare the weather to be untenable and return early to Kunming. Several people had urgent work to return to in Beijing and were eager to get home a day earlier than anticipated, but we all felt an obligation to try to do the work we'd come to do. After much debate we finally decided that we would work in Ganhaizi in the morning, but return to Shilata in the early afternoon and take the bus back to Kunming that evening. Those who were eager to get home could fly out on the late flight to Beijing and the rest of us would stay over in Kunming. A few people decided for various reasons not to make the trek to the village and were appointed to arrange the flight changes, hotels, etc.

The rest of us bundled up and set off. We arrived in Ganhaizi to find that our new assignment was to move a heap of bricks. We organized an assembly line to hand the bricks from the top of the hill down, to a pile at the bottom and got to work. I would estimate that we moved about a thousand bricks over the course of about 2 1/2 hours. That may not sound like so much, but those bricks are heavy! I was certainly feeling it by the end. Although we didn't manage to move all the bricks, we did make quite a dent.

We joined the villagers for an early lunch, then were treated to a brief performance by the church choir before heading back to Shilata and on towards home.



Although we worked hard and the work was clearly appreciated. We left with somewhat mixed feelings about its true value. While I think Habitat is, in general, a fantastic organization, I am not sure that whoever plans international resource usage fully understands how things work here in China. We began to doubt what we were doing on the afternoon of the first day when we stopped in to see the house that last year's trip had worked on. A year after they were there, it remained an unoccupied brick shell with no doors or windows. Another house from earlier years had one of six rooms occupied with the remaining also unfinished, vacant spaces. Of the 200 or so people counted in the population of the village, I don't think more than 40 were actually present when we were there. Most of the working-age adults had likely moved to a major city where they can earn far more than what they would earn from subsistence farming in their home village. Due to Chinese system of residence records, all of those people are recorded as residents of the village even if they spend only a few weeks a year there, or less. While the solid Habitat houses are clearly a vast improvement over the rammed-earth huts typical of that part of China, it is not so clear that they will ever really be lived in. Although it was satisfying to see our accomplishments, and the villagers clearly appreciated that we were there, I am left to wonder whether the Habitat for Humanity might find a higher-impact way to put its resources to use in China.

Worn out in Beijing...off for a shower (now that hot water is finally back!).

No Hot Water?!

Last week at about 10 PM on Wednesday (October 28) we got a note under our door from the building's management: effective immediately there would be no hot water. Hot water service would resume on Saturday, November 1. Thanks for the advance warning!

After suffering cold showers for a couple of days, we left for a long weekend working in the mud in the middle of nowhere with no showers at all (post coming soon). By the time we got home on Monday night we were exhausted, dirty (ok - we did get showers of sorts on Sunday night, but not exactly optimal), and sore. I was dying for a hot bath.

Surprise! There was still no hot water. Ben called the office. Sorry - no hot water until November 5. He called back to ask if the gym had hot water. Nope. He called back again to ask what alternative arrangements had been made for showers. Huh? We don't know.

I had a tantrum and enough points for a free night at the Grand Hyatt. I checked online and there seemed to be plenty of rooms available. Around 10:15 PM we headed out. I didn't want to wait in the cold for a cab so we went to the office to get them to call us one. Ben explained that we were so upset at not having hot water that we were going to spend the night in a hotel. The office staff (explain to me why there need to be three people in the office in the middle of the night!) dutifully noted in their log book that we were unhappy at not having hot water and we headed out. Much to our dismay, the Hyatt, despite showing rooms available on the website had no rooms available. Back we went to our cold, hot-waterless apartment.

By the time we headed back I was so exhausted I just wanted to get to bed. Ben stopped in the office to demand that they make arrangements for us to have hot showers by the time we got up in the morning. After much dithering they finally had to get the manager out of bed. It turns out arrangements had long since been made. We could shower at a spa down the street (open 24 hours) and the building would reimburse the charges. Why didn't anyone say so in the first place?!

Shower facilities aren't exactly optimal at the spa down the street but between the two of us we have managed to get 3 warm showers and 1 cold one there in the last few days. Why did we pay for the privilege of taking a cold shower? Well...it turns out that unlike in most places I am familiar with, hot water is provided from centralized hot water plants scattered around the city, not by hot water heaters in the individual buildings, let alone apartments. The spa heats some of its own water in addition to the hot water it gets from the city which is why it is able to provide at least some warm showers. So why has there been no hot water for over a week (no...the hot water did not come back on Nov. 5 as promised...it is still off)? Apparently we are served by the hot water plant that was constructed to service the Olympic zone. Now that the Olympics are over the city has taken that hot water plant offline. I would guess that close to 10,000 apartments (granted many not occupied) and businesses lost their hot water. The city is now working "around the clock" (although most of the workers must be invisible because I have only once seen any sign of them) to reconnect all of us whose water they turned off to other hot water supplies. Why did they not simply leave the hot water plant running or, at least, tie us into the other systems before shutting down the hot water plant? Beats me! TIC (This Is China).

Signing off cold in Beijing...

Busy in Beijing

I know it's been a while since I've posted. It's been a busy month here. The city is slowly going back to normal after the Olympics, although my street remains closed to traffic most of the time (frustrating and inconvenient!).

Aside from that, our life has been a whirlwind of activities. There seems to be a party almost every weekend as well as dinners, lunches, badminton with colleagues, dance classes to get ready for the upcoming St. Andrew's Ball (a black-tie Scottish dinner/dance hosted by the Beijing Caledonian Society). Also coming up is the Marine Ball, another black-tie (or, in my husband's case dress uniform) event celebrating the birthday of the Marines.

Preparation for such affairs is a little more elaborate (although considerably cheaper) here than at home. Instead of heading to Macy's or your department store of choice, evening gowns are made to order by your favorite tailor. To the Marine Ball in a couple of weeks I will wear a long-sleeved top of sheer black silk layered over red silk with a floor-length, tailored, black silk skirt. The St. Andrew's Ball will require a little more inventiveness and definitely an expedition to the gigantic fabric market where $20-$30 will buy yards and yards of beautiful fabrics. Another $30-$50 will get them made into your dream dress.

Also on the drawing board is some upcoming travel. The weekend after next Ben and I head to a tiny village in rural Yunan province to work on a Habitat for Humanity project. Then, after the Marine Ball, Ben heads out for a trip along the Silk Road. I will join him in Xi'an to see the stone soldiers if at all possible.

That's about it for now. Hopefully next time I'll have pictures from the Habitat trip. Bye from Beijing...

Holiday Madness

This week is National Day, the annual holiday celebrating the PRC's (People's Republic of China) nationhood. I don't know exactly how people celebrate the holiday other than the week they get off work. As far as I can tell there isn't much national or patriotic feeling - mostly people are just glad to have an all-too-rare break from work. As far as I can tell, most Chinese businesses give their employees a one week holiday at National Day, a one week holiday at Chinese New Year (late January or early February) and one day off for mid-Autumn festival. Chinese employees may get some discretionary time off but usually it is quite limited. Time off here makes the 2-3 weeks of paid vacation plus 10-12 company holidays I'm used to in the US seem quite generous (not to mention the 5+ weeks of vacatioon and many holidays most Europeans get!). Not only is the time off so limited (and inflexible), the week-long break for National Day isn't really a week-long break. In order to have 7 consecutive days off (five business days plus a weekend), Chinese employees are required to work the preceding weekend so the advertised 5-day holiday really only amounts to three days off. Thank goodness I'm not Chinese! Lucky for me, my employer grants expats flexible leave time so we can work through Chinese holidays (and not on weekends!) and take time off to celebrate our own holidays (or at other times as we choose).

The Visa Nightmare

I reported in my first post on the hassle of dealing with the Chinese bureaucracy especially with regard to obtaining a visa. The result of the first round was that I arrived in China carrying an 'F' visa, the type normally issued to visitors coming to do temporary business (e.g. attend a meeting) here. It allowed me to start work but had the significant defect that it allowed me to stay in the country for no more than thirty days at a time. Obviously leaving the country once a month was pretty inconvenient. The visa administrator at work figured the thing to do was wait until after the Olympics when, presumably, the restrictions that made it so difficult to get visas would be lifted.

In the meantime, my company opened a "representative office" in Tianjin. Visas are controlled at a local or regional level, not at the national level here. Consequently a restriction on visas in Beijing does not mean that its neighbor, Tianjin, is not issuing visas. Since Beijing has not lifted its restrictions (it currently allocates five work permits to my employer, although we have around a dozen expat employees) I (along with two other foreigners hired this summer) had to apply for my permanent work permit in Tianjin. The process went like this...

First my company had to do a bunch of paperwork which resulted in an official letter of invitation. I had to take that invitation letter (within three days of the date of issuance) to a Chinese embassy. Yes, that's right...an embassy. That means I had to leave the country to apply for the new visa. Seoul is the nearest option so that's where I went.

We flew in Sunday evening. First thing Monday morning we headed for the embassy. Thirty minutes later the taxi dropped us outside a drab doorway in the pouring rain. A guard blocked our way as moved to enter and pointed at a tiny sign posted high on the wall. Although we were at the address given on the website for the visa section of the Embassy, the sign informed us that visa applications were to be done at the consular section located elsewhere. We carefully copied the address and hailed another cab. We headed back the way we had come and were deposited no more than five minutes from our hotel. At the top of the steep driveway down to the building we were accosted by a lady offering visa agent services. We declined and proceeded to the gate. The guard pointed us to another tiny sign "All visa applications must be handled by an agent." Now soaked to the skin we returned to the agent at the top of the driveway. As she led us down the street to her office she informed us that the application would take three to four months. Obviously not acceptable! My office told me I should be able to get it processed in 24 hours or, at worst, 48. The agent left us sitting on a tiny couch in her office while her colleague made some phone calls. A quarter of an hour later she informed us that the embassy was only processing applications from Korean citizens. There was nothing she could do. Cold, wet and thoroughly frustrated we decided to have one more go at handling the application ourselves. We returned to the gate and vigorously waved our US passports in the guard's face. When he couldn't dissuade us, he reluctantly let us pass. Once we actually made it into the visa office things couldn't have been easier. The requirement that visas applications be handled by agents meant there were very few people in the office (although those that were there all had huge stacks of passports). We located a form (which by now I am expert in filling out in just the right way), and deposited it and my passport at the drop-off window. Sure enough, within two days my new visa was ready to go.

Application for a "Z" visa, the type needed for long-term work in China, results in a single-entry, 30-day visa. Once back in China you must apply for a work permit and residence permit. Since my visa was issued by Tianjin I had to go through the process there. If all had gone according to plan this could have been accomplished with three trips to Tianjin over the course of about a week and a half. Of course, all did not go according to plan.

The Sunday evening after I returned from Korea I left, accompanied by an administrator from my office, for Tianjin. Until recently Tianjin was a two-hour train ride from Beijing. Thanks to the bullet train which began operation at the beginning of August, it is now about 30 minutes (excluding, of course, the 45+ minutes it takes to get from my apartment to the train station or the 30+ minutes of driving time at the other end to get to wherever we are going). The plan was to make a series of stops Monday morning culminating with a visit to the International Medical Clinic for the required health check. One must arrive at the clinic before 10:30 AM to go through the health check procedure so we started out very early on Monday. We arrived at a small office in an undistinguished building at 8 AM where we collected some papers which remain a mystery to me. Our next stop was my "local" police station - aka the police station local to a colleague who lives in Tianjin and who has kindly allowed all of us to register as living in his apartment. In order to be eligible for the health check one must be registered with the police. My colleague met us there to show the police his registration papers. Unfortunately for us, the one officer capable of registering a foreigner had opted not to come to work that day, although my office had called Friday afternoon to be certain he would be there. That effectively ended our progress for the day. Since it was not yet 9 AM and we clearly had no hope of making more progress (steps must be done strictly in order) we returned to Beijing.

Tuesday my office called to confirm that the officer we needed to see would be present. We were assured he would be available in the afternoon so we returned to Tianjin for the second time. We did, eventually manage to complete the police registration and arrived at the Inbound Bureau just in the nick of time for me to have the "interview" required to obtain the paper authorizing the health check. The "interview" was a two minute affair during which I said not a word. The administrator my office sent to help me through the process appears to have done nothing more than tell the officer the address and phone number of our Tianjin office. He wrote something on a form (in triplicate), which we carried to a counter where we paid a fee. We then took the form and the receipt to another counter where the lady wrote something on another form. Since it was, by then, late afternoon (far past the 10:30 AM deadline for the health check) we returned once more to Beijing. Wednesday we caught a very early train to Tianjin to ensure we would arrive in plenty of time for the health check. As I recall we made one more stop at yet another office for yet another form before proceeding to the clinic. We arrived at a madhouse. It turned out to be just a few days before the local university started its fall session and they had bussed in all their foreign students to get their health checks. There must have been at least 100 people crammed into a room no more than 30 feet by 18. The first stop was a table at one end of the room to collect a form. I filled out the form and we handed it back to the lady at the table (one lady at one table serving all those people) who pasted on one of the requisite passport photos and returned the form to be taken to the registration window. Although I had already asked whether the health check paperwork that I had submitted for the visa application in Korea would be sufficient I decided to ask once more. My companion took the papers and disappeared to ask. At this point the story departs the realm of the merely aggravating and enters the land of the truly absurd. She came back and reported that the papers would, indeed, have been sufficient except that the clinic where the check had been performed had neglected to stamp the photo. Mind you, every page of the packet must have had at least a dozen stamps. The Chinese are inordinately fond of stamps and nothing is considered official unless it is stamped with the legal and official stamp of the authenticating authority. Knowing the fondness for stamps, I had asked the clinic (operated by the American embassy and therefore not precisely familiar with the vagaries of the Chinese requirements) to stamp every single location where they had entered any information. They were quite obliging and my paperwork had as many stamps as we could conceive of needing. Not, apparently, enough. I asked the obvious next question...instead of fighting the crowd (there is no such thing as an orderly line in China), couldn't I just take the forms back to the clinic and get the photo stamped. The answer..."no!" It was too late, I had filled out the form requesting the health check and now would be required to complete the health check at the Tianjin clinic (I wasn't even registered in the computer yet, but that didn't seem to matter). So it was that an hour and a half later I finally managed to battle my way to the front of the crowd, shove my form into the hands of the single registrar and get the swipe card that would carry me through the steps of the health check. Before proceeding, though, I had, of course, to pay the fee. The cashier's counter was to the right of the raging hoard, the relative calm of the clinic itself to the left. A massively dumb arrangement. I had first to fight my way out of the crowd to pay, then fight back through the crowd to go actually get checked out.

Visiting a Chinese clinic is not at all like visiting a US clinic. Health authorities in the US would have shut this clinic down in a heartbeat. The floors were filthy and gritty underfoot. Table coverings, etc. were unwashed and used repeatedly - no disposable paper here. Each station (blood draw, x-ray, height and weight, etc.) had its own room. There were no private exam rooms, the line of people waiting their turn at each station was right there with you in the room. Although the needle and test tubes used for the blood draw were sanitary, the holder used to hold the test tubes was reused from patient to patient and the little cups for urine samples were not hermetically sealed to avoid contamination (and, like most public bathrooms in China, no toilet paper was provided). Although I have, by choice, sought treatment in another Chinese clinic (more on that another time), I would not care to repeat this experience! Having finished the ordeal it was time to return to Beijing. Nothing further could be done until the results of the exam were complete.

We returned to Tianjin early the following week to collect the results of my health check. These we brought to another office where we applied for my work permit. We arrived at the application counter only to be informed that we needed two photocopies of some document, not one. My companion headed back downstairs to the copy center to have a second photocopy made while I waited at the counter. The lady piled my papers neatly together and left them sitting on the counter. When my companion returned with the photocopy the lady at the counter resumed processing the documents. She then spent nearly 30 minutes typing data into the computer. Don't ask me why she couldn't have gotten started while Judy ran down to make the other photocopy! Eventually, though, the data was duly entered, various forms were printed, photos affixed (I think I probably used about 15 passport photos in this process), and everything was thoroughly covered with the omnipotent red stamps.

Time to head back the Inbound Bureau. There I had more photos taken, some printed and a copy even provided on floppy disc (yes, really, floppy disk!). I completed the application for a residence permit, waited in a long line and, eventually, deposited the paperwork, my passport, photographs (less the apparently irrelevant although mandatory floppy disc copy), work permit, health documents and all with a visa officer. So much for trip four.

I had another week to wait before making my final trip to Tianjin to collect my completed residence permit. After more than two hours of travel, it took all of about five minutes to collect my documents. I was thrilled to have them back and know the endless back-and-forth was over. The thrill lasted just until I opened my passport to confirm the visa was in order. To my horror I discovered that although the work permit office had given me a one-year work permit, the Inbound Bureau only saw fit to issue my a six-month residence permit. My stomach dropped as I realized I would have to face the process again in March.

Frustrated in Beijing...bye for now.

Learning Chinese

So, whoever told you that learning Chinese is hard lied. It isn't hard...it's HARD!!!!!

After 'studying' (okay...okay...taking a lessons for a few months, listening to some tapes for a few more) for almost a year, I came to China sort of able to introduce myself, count and tell time and that's about it. After living here for four months I can more-or-less give instructions to taxi drivers and find at how much stuff costs. Not a lot of progress.

Forget about learning to read and write (how on earth is anyone here even remotely literate?!)...just learning vocabulary and grammar is hard enough. Start with the fact that even taking the 5 different tone variants (4 + the neutral tone) Chinese still has a very limited range of syllable sounds. Words generally consist of two syllables, although each syllable also has its own meaning (or usually several, one for each character you can use to spell the syllable) and can sometimes be used alone; words occasionally also have more than two syllables. Although each character generally has one pronunciation (including tone), the tone of the succeeding syllable can alter the tone used (so, for example, if a third-tone syllable is followed by another third-tone syllable, the first syllable is pronounced in second tone). The consequence of both the limited range of sound options and the tonal variation produced by sequencing means that there are an inordinately large number of homophones (different words that sound alike) - even assuming you can distinguish between the tones which is no easy feat for those of us who speak basically atonal languages (English isn't strictly atonal - for example, a rising tone at the end of a sentence indicates a question - but is minimally tonal in relation to Chinese). I consider myself pretty good at making educated guesses as to meaning from context and the words I can pick up, but the degree of homophony in Chinese makes it quite a challenge. First you have to be able to figure out where one word stops and another ends and then figure out enough words to make educated guesses as to the rest. Not so easy with the extensive homophony.

Then there's the grammar. Trying to make sense of the grammar is rather like trying to cross the Pacific Ocean in a leaky inflatable raft with no means of propulsion. Even determining whether a word is an adjective or a verb is a meaningless endeavor - words can be both. For example, if I want to say "I am tired," I don't construct the sentence using the pronoun the indicates me, the verb that indicates to be and the adjective that indicates tired (in any order), instead I use the pronoun that indicates me, the adverb "very" and the adjective "tired." This results in a sentence that translates directly to "I very tired," thus the origin of the all-too-common verb-less sentences we hear from Chinese speakers learning English and a major source of confusion for English speakers trying to learn Chinese. Sometimes you need a verb and sometimes you don't - not only don't need one but can't use one, adverbs and adjectives often serve instead.

Now suppose you've got more than one of something. You can't just say "two things" or "seven things" - every noun has an associated "measure word." The measure words acts sort of like an article ('the' or 'a') and goes between the number and the noun. The measure word for any given noun depends on what category it belongs to and the categories are anything but intuitive. The one thing you can always be sure of is that if you guess at a measure word by using the word you know goes with something that seems similar you're likely to be wrong. It seems obvious to me that there might be a measure word for people, another for animals, one for foods, etc. Not so...the measure word for 'river' is the same as the measure word for 'snake.' That makes perfect sense if you think of snakes and rivers as examples of long, skinny things, but not much sense at all if you think of a river as a type of place or terrain feature and of a snake as an animal. So, guessing measure words is pretty hopeless. Omitting them is no good, people really can't figure out what you're trying to say. I'm not sure why this should be since I can generally figure out what someone means even when the forget to preceded the noun with "the," but so it goes. Your next best option is to use the measure word "ge" which is the generic measure word that applies to anything that doesn't have some other measure word. About 75% of the time if you use "ge" in place of the proper measure word the person you are speaking to will figure out what you mean. So that leaves just two more problems with amounts of things. First, you have to remember that for mysterious reasons if you have two of something you don't use the counting word for "two" (as in the word you use when you say "one, two, three, four..."), you have to replace it with a special word for saying "two things." This change is unique to the word for "two" and quite unusual in the language in general where substitute words or word alterations are quite rare. The second is expressing indefinite quantities (some, a few, a lot, a little, etc.). Some of these expressions take measure words and others don't. Some take measure words for some nouns and not others. Some use different expressions for different kinds of nouns. Some vary depending on whether you have an indefinite quantity that is smaller than 10 or larger than 10. Ugh!

Then there are dates and times. Unlike most Western languages, there is no such thing as verb conjugation in Chinese. Verbs (when you use them at all) don't change based on time, subject, object, etc. like they do in most Western languages. At first blush this seems like a great relief...no verb conjugations (and exceptions!) to memorize! As any English speaker who has struggled through the sometimes confusing process of learning to conjugate verbs in Romance languages (when do you use the past perfect vs. imperfect and what is a subjunctive, anyway?!) can attest, verb conjugations often seem the hardest aspect of learning a language. Ha! Wait until you try learning a language without them. Now you need to specify precisely when every action occurred. The verb form doesn't indicate whether it happened in the past, present or future. It turns out that's a lot more confusing. If time has any relevance you must include a time clause. That's ok if you want to be specific about the time (yesterday evening at 7:30 PM or tomorrow in the middle of the day at 1:15 PM). It gets really hard if the time is indefinite...sometime before now, sometime after something else, earlier than, later then, late, after, etc. I wanted to find out how to tell the taxi driver to turn right after a particular building - my teacher had no idea how to say such a thing. My husband told me what to say but 95% of the time the taxi driver tries to make the turn before the building not after, so apparently the phrase doesn't hold much meaning for them. Forget telling ayi "I'll be home later than usual tonight" or asking if she can serve dinner a little earlier than usual. Again, ugh!

And then there are all the mysterious sentence structures that must be used when they must be used (or you are either extraordinarily rude or completely unintelligible) but there is no definable rule for when to use them. There is, for example, the "ba" structure. I won't go into details of how the sentence is put together. Suffice it to say it includes the meaningless word "ba." I was instructed to use that structure when giving ayi instructions for what to buy at the store. It then materialized, however, that I am only to use it if I want her to buy an indefinite quantity of something (some mushrooms) and I tell her as she's leaving for the store (or call her after she's left to ask her to pick up the stuff while she's out). If I give her instructions about what to buy at the store later (tomorrow, next week, etc.) or to buy a specific quantity (e.g. 1/2 kilo) then I don't use that sentence structure. When I tried to generalize to other situations I failed spectacularly. It seems the only way to learn when to use it and when not to use it is by trial and error. Thrice, ugh!

No doubt it gets worse before it gets better. Yippee!

Zai jian (see you later or something along those lines) from Beijing...

Welcome to Take Beijing Taxi

"Welcome to take Beijing taxi" is the friendly recorded greeting I hear each time a taxi driver starts his (or, unexpectedly often, her) meter. Too bad the ride isn't always as pleasant as the greeting.

That's not to say all Beijing taxi drivers are bad - they're not. Taxi drivers here come in three categories: the good, the incompetent and the cheats. Taxi drivers here, like those everywhere, drive like madmen. That goes without saying (see my last post for a link to disturbingly accurate description of a typical traffic encounter). So, how do the good, the incompetent and the cheats differ?

The Good Driver Good drivers here cover a range from the merely "Wow! I actually got where I wanted to go in less than an hour!" to the "I got where I wanted to go in record time and I almost forgot I was in a taxi!" There are two minimum criteria for a driver to qualify as "good." First, he must actually sort of know his way around more-or-less and second, he must speak Mandarin well enough to understand where I'm asking to go even if my pronunciation isn't 100% perfect.

As to the first criterion, there was a time in the not-so-distant past (i.e. until shortly after I arrived in Beijing) when I would have told you that a good taxi driver knows his city backwards and forwards - that, given any address in the city, he knows exactly where it is and how to get there from his present location. I've lowered my standards. In Beijing a good taxi driver can, given an address, at least get you in the vicinity then follow directions received by phone from someone at your destination. Why the change? Beijing is an immense city covering an area roughly equivalent to the surface area of Mercury (ok...maybe a teeny-tiny exaggeration, but it really is huge). Aside from the 6 ring roads which, as the name suggests, form a series of concentric circles around the city center streets in Beijing follow no discernible organizational pattern. There are major thoroughfares spaced anywhere from a few hundred meters to a mile or more apart. Scattered in between these large streets (and occasionally freeways or toll roads) are a veritable rabbit warren of small streets and alleys some of which may only be long enough to serve one or two buildings while others go on for miles. Streets may or may not be straight, may or may not run in any distinct directions, and can be counted on to change names at frequent but irregular intervals. Just to make matters interesting, streets are frequently designated with a directional notation (e.g. East XYZ St.). In most cities of my acquaintance these directional markers are a good clue about where to look for the street on the map. East ... St. can generally be located on the east side of the city, usually east of some well-defined dividing line (e.g. 5th Ave. in Manhattan). Not so in Beijing. In Beijing the directional designation only tells you that the section of road it designates lies in the indicated direction with respect to some other thing that shares a name with the street. East XYZ St. may be the eastern portion of a street whose other portion is called West XYZ St. even if the entire street lies in the far western part of the city. It could also be the street that forms the eastern border of XYZ neighborhood or runs along the eastern side of XYZ park (again, regardless of where in the city the area it borders happens to lie). Furthermore, Beijing is divided into several districts and street names are not unique across districts. I.e. there may be an XYZ St. in Chaoyang District and another, totally distinct one in Haidian District. The two may never connect, not interesect, be of different shapes, sizes and directions and otherwise have nothing whatsoever to do with one another. Vastly complicating matters is the fact that Chinese possesses far more characters than syllable sounds (basically each character represents a syllable but there are many, many homophones) even considering each tone/syllable combination as separate (Mandarin uses five different tones or pitch inflections - any given combination of consonants and vowels will take on entirely distinct and unrelated meanings depending on the tone applied). The consequence to Beijing geography of the massive number of homophones is that there can be many streets whose names have identical pronunciations. There are three possibilities for distinguishing among streets with identically pronounced names (not to mention those those that are not identical to Chinese speakers, but are indistinguishable to tone-deaf foreigners!): describe the precise location of the street, write down the name of the street or use the common 'spelling' technique of identifying characters by word association (as in "mama de ma" meaning "the character ma that is used in the well-known word mama"). None of these comes easily to foreigners.

So, given that Beijing has about a million streets (no, that's not an actual fact - just hyperbole) which go every which way, change names constantly, and frequently share names (at least in spoken language), not to mention that many small streets do not appear on maps and have no signs, I figure I've got to cut the taxi drivers a break. Thus the criterion "get you in the vicinity and be able to follow directions from there."

Which brings me to my second criterion "be able to figure out what I'm trying to say." Even here I'll cut the taxi drivers a bit of a break. If I get the tones wrong on street names I really can't complain too much if I end up in the wrong place, after all, I could get the tones perfectly and still end up in the wrong place due to the homophony trick. To qualify as "good" a taxi driver needs to at least be able to interpret innocent mispronounciations of well known destinations (e.g. the airport, train station, Tiananmen Square, etc.).

If "get you in the neighborhood" and "figure out what I'm trying to say if it's a well-known destination" are the minimum to be good, what makes a truly superlative taxi driver? The answer is easy: improvements on both criteria. An outstanding taxi driver can not only get me more-or-less where I'm going, but can get me precisely where I'm going if my destination is a well-known location or on a big street. He can also do so by an efficient route which takes typical traffic patterns (and better actual current traffic activity) into account along with road closures due to construction (frequent), the Olympics (massively annoying just at the moment) or other more mysterious reasons. A top-notch taxi driver is also friendly and communicative. He likes to chat but also understands the challenges of communicating with a foreigner whose Mandarin is as stellar as mine (i.e. barely extends beyond "hello" and "turn left/right here"). He knows how to speak slowly, use simple words, find synonyms when I don't know a word he's used, and elaborate with gestures (but not to the point of making his driving any more dangerous). These rare but fabulous drivers are my very best opportunity to practice and improve my Chinese. They're delighted to have a foreigner in the car, ask me lots of easy questions (where am I from? do I have kids? do I like Beijing? etc.), tell me easy-to-understand stories about themselves and their families, point out landmarks, give me new words ("Hey...do you have those in America? What are they called? Oh...here we call them...or you can also call them..."). I think I actually understood almost 75% of what the guy who drove me home from the train station last night said to me! That's definitely a personal best. The final characteristic that separates the great out from the good is humility. Given the bewildering complexity of navigation in Beijing, even the best sometimes make mistakes. If they are really exceptional they apologize promptly as soon as they realize their error, ask how much the ride ought to cost and stop the meter when it hits the number I give them.

The Incompetent Driver The bulk of Beijing taxi drivers are what I would consider incompetent. If they have any idea at all where I want to go they have no clue how to get there and will often take a route twice as long as the obvious route. For example, suppose I am at a shopping complex on East 3rd Ring Rd. (the ring roads are roughly square, E. X Ring Rd. is the portion of X Ring Rd. that runs north-south along the east edge of the square) and want to go to a location at the NE corner of 3rd Ring Rd. A good taxi driver will go north on E. 3rd Ring Rd. and we'll be there in a quarter of an hour (give or take depending on how far south the start point is and how much traffic there happens to be). An incompetent driver might meander aimlessly around a lot of unidentifiable surface streets before finally arriving or, worse, might head the wrong way on 3rd Ring Rd. If he goes south instead of north on 3rd Ring Rd. he will have to traverse 3+ sides of the square (south to the SE corner, then west to the SW corner, then north the NW corner, then east to the NE corner instead of just north straight to the NE corner). Incompetent taxi drivers also often fail to understand simple directions that even their slightly more adequate cousins can manage (e.g. "take 5th Ring Road to the Badaling Expressway" which is about the easiest thing in the world to do from my apartment). They also have spent the summer driving around a city altered by its new Olympic landscape without having absorbed that all streets that cross through the Olympic zone are closed (and have been for two months or more).

The Cheats Then there are the cheats. There aren't many but they exist. These are the unscrupulous drivers who figure they can take advantage of helpless foreigners. Unlike the incompetent drivers who simply don't know their way around the city well enough to select sensible routes, the cheats will assume that a foreigner a) doesn't know how to get to the destination and/or b) can't communicate well enough to insist on a route and will take the opportunity to select a long, slow route guaranteed to rack up a hefty fare. I figure another week and I will no longer fall victim to the cheats on the routes I travel frequently (e.g. to/from work) and a few more weeks after that and I should escape their clutches entirely. I know the route to/from work well now, but am still not quite confident enough in my Mandarin to question why a driver isn't following the route I know. I'm close though. A little bit longer to feel confident challenging a driver who seems to be taking a questionable route when I can't give precise directions for a better one.

And there you have it...taxi drivers in a nutshell (okay...a very big nut!). The vehicles themselves are a story for another day.

Welcome to read Beijing blog...that's all for now.

An Intro to Traffic in Beijing

A friend of mine passed on this wonderful introduction to the intricacies of Beijing traffic. Enjoy!

Olympics...Wow!

Ok...ok...I know Olympic fever is over, but I had a hectic week so I'm just now getting around to posting about my Olympic experience.

Those of you that know me know that I am not a sports person. I don't like watching sports, I don't particularly like doing sports with a few limited exceptions. Sports are just not my thing.

Sitting in the second row on the ground-level of the Bird's Next was amazing! I had a perfect view of the javelin, a distant, but clear view of the women's high jump and a perfect view of the track (or at least my side of it). Unfortunately I didn't think to bring a camera so I can't show you exactly what it looked like from my point of view.



Javlin was especially exciting. The Norwegian gold-medalist defended his Olympic title. His family was sitting just behind me. He came over to greet them and pick up the flag he carried on his victory lap just feet from where I was sitting. How often do we get to be that close to a world class athlete?!

I really thought I'd just stay for an hour or so, because, after all, how often do you live in the Olympic city? You ought go to something just for the experience. It was so riveting I couldn't tear myself away until the last event was over. What an experience!

In fact, I had passingly more contact with Olympians and their families than most people. We live in easy walking distance from the Olympic Village (just down the street) and our complex was full of people here for the Olympics, most related in some way - a member of the US wrestling team, the wife of a US track coach and her friends, a member of the US State Department here in an official capacity. For a few weeks it was pretty lively around here. The apartments are all empty once again and it's back to life as usual.

Signing off from Beijing...

What's Up With the Olympic Coverage???

So, you'd think the city hosting the Olympics would manage to provide decent TV coverage. If that city is Beijing, you'd think wrong! The first week there were five channels that reliably had prime-time coverage. This week it's down to three. The basic rule seems to be: if China is in the event and likely to do well, it has a chance of being covered. I get rooting for the home team, but they take it to a remarkable extreme! I mean really, who wants to watch four evenings of weightlifting??? Weightlifting is NOT exciting. If the home team takes a medal, show the winning lifts on your hourly highlights, but full coverage evening after evening after evening? Especially if you've only got five channels with coverage. Surely there must be something more interesting!

Last night a Brazilian friend came over. The plan: dinner and the game. Which game? Brazil vs. US for the gold in women's football (that's soccer to the rest of you Americans ;) ). Football doesn't exactly dominate the US sports scene but I bet even if the home team weren't playing the game would have been televised (maybe not live, but definitely televised). In the rest of the world where football borders on mania (ok...basketball supersedes here but it is definitely hugely popular) it's prety hard to imagine that an Olympic gold medal football match wouldn't get TV coverage. We channel surfed all evening. We even checked all the channels that hadn't been carrying Olympic coverage. Nada. We got athletics (well, people on the track...I didn't actually see much activity), ping pong, and women's volleyball. The other two channels are no longer running Olympics coverage. What's up with that?! People here are actually quite friendly towards the US and Brazil definitely fields popular football teams. We couldn't believe they didn't air the game!

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Today it poured. No...deluge is more accurate. I stepped out of my building with an umbrella and within seconds I was drenched. Seven hours later my jeans and shoes are still uncomfortably wet. Ugh! Apparently my discomfort is all thanks to the Beijing Weather Bureau. My colleague found this article about the Beijing Rainmakers.

Soggy in Beijing...

Finally! A Seat at the Olympics!

I guess I have to give at least a little nod to CoSport. It is almost the end of the Olympics, but they did finally manage to get their website working properly (as in you can actually get on it and some of those empty stadium seats are actually available for sale). I was actually able to get a ticket to an Olympic event, so I won't have to spend the entire 2 1/2 weeks in an Olympic city without ever entering a stadium. Off to see athletics Saturday night. Still crossing my fingers for a gymnastic event of some sort (looks like rhythmic's all that's left), but something's better than nothing. I'll let you all know what it's like to actually be in the Bird's Nest (I got what I suppose is a great seat in the second row). I know exactly zero about what I'll be watching, but hey, it's the Olympics, right? Should be fun.

More from Beijing post-Olympic-experience...

Beijing During the Olympics

I know, I know...I promised a post last weekend. Better late than never, right?

Beijing during the Olympics is...not as different as I'd expected from Beijing any other time except they've halted all construction and the air almost resembles breathable. Summers here seem to be hot, humid and hazy. After rainstorms, though, it sometimes "clears" up for a day or two. Normally a "clear" day means amber colored skies (don't you love pollution!) discernable from cloudy days only because of the intensity of shadows. It poured on Thursday, though, and the sky was actually blue the last couple of days. What a nice change!

Otherwise, there are a lot more foreigners than usual and they've cleaned up taxis (although drivers still speak no English). Taxi drivers now sport "uniforms" consisting of yellow button-down shirts and navy pants (those who comply, anyway). Some are excepting IC cards (subway & bus cards) for payment and some claim to offer free translation services, although, interestingly, the decal indicating that such service is available neglects to mention how to obtain it.

Our compound - apartment complexes often seem to be referred to as compounds and, indeed, that seems an appropriate appellation for ours given that it's walled, guarded and even sports metal detectors at the gates - is just down the street (maybe a mile, but by Beijing standards that's practically next door) from the Olympic Village. Overflow from the Village is being housed here. When we left for our last trip several of the buildings (there are 6 25-ish story towers) seemed essentially empty. In fact, they were scrambling to finish construction on our building and maybe some of the others. At most two of the three elevators worked at any one time and one was still walled with plywood. One day when the elevator claimed to be going down it actually took me to floor 26 (4 is considered bad luck, so we have no floor numbers with 4's in them and, to accommodate Western superstition as well, we also have no floor 13, thus 24 or 25 floors, but floor numbers up to 27). I discovered that floor 26 was an unfinished shell - even the sheetrock wasn't up yet. Not only that, but shortly after we moved in we were given a schedule for the gym in our building (there is a gorgeous gym for the whole compound across the garden but we also have our own small one in the basement); the schedule showed pretty normal hours, except during the Olympics when it was scheduled to be open noon - 2 PM only. We went down to check it out and found...nothing...just piles of construction materials. Somehow in the three weeks we were gone, the upper floors got finished, the gym is finished, all the elevators are running. They must have had an army of workers in here!

Before we left I never saw another Westerner in the compound and there was only one member of the staff (and there are a LOT of staff) that seemed to have even remotely competent English. Now the place is crawling with foreigners and I seem to be able to communicate with the office staff with no problem. I am sure the foreigners will all vanish again after the Olympics, but I hope that some of the English speaking staff will stick around. I've started Mandarin lessons and am working hard. I can now take taxis to and from work without resorting to address cards and can even give directions to other places provided I know how to get there (which is rare). I managed to tell ayi I wouldn't be home for dinner on Thursday and with a combination of speaking and demonstration she managed to tell me how to cook the dumplings she left for me to eat this weekend. Beyond that, though, communication is tough. I can't even order food to be delivered from the restaurant in our basement.

But...back to the Olympics. Aside from slightly cleaner air, a temporary increase in the number of foreigners around, and increased police patrols there really doesn't seem to be much change. Reports all suggest hotels are way underbooked. All those people you see in the stands in yellow shirts are volunteers assigned to fill empty seats and cheer. Although many events have lots of empty seats it's impossible to get tickets (well, everyone else seems to be managing, but most of the time I can't get on the ticket sales site and when I can it always claims everything is sold out, so, so far, no in-person viewing for me).

In general, the current state of the city is rather anti-climactic after the frenzy of preparation over the last couple of months. It will be interesting to see what happens after the Games are over and everyone goes home.

That's all for now. Hopefully the rest of the travelogue soon. Signing off from Beijing...

Sorry for the Silence

Hi all...sorry I've been silent for...wow...a whole month! I got sick while traveling and am just now starting to feel human again. Look for posting to resume this weekend.

Interruptions Continued: Adventures with Ayi

Ok, ok...so I still haven't caught up with my trip report. Honestly, it's because I HATE organizing pictures (and I'm kind of hoping to get Luke's so I have some better pics to choose from). I promise I'll keep working on it. We take off on our next trip in less than a week and if I'm not caught up on the last one (and the intervening weekend in Seoul) I may have to give this up as a lost cause.

In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy our latest adventures with ayi. Zhang Ayi is a marvel and I can't imagine what we'd do without her!

Every evening when we get home we have a delicious (well, with a few exceptions...more to come), nutritious dinner on the table. A typical meal consists of a sauteed vegetable (eggplant, squash, or something), a braised green vegetable (usually of Chinese varieties totally unfamiliar to us, but sort of spinach-like), soup (usually a light chicken broth with some kind of vegetable and either a little egg or a little tofu), a meat dish (she makes particularly yummy ribs!) and, of course, a bowl of rice. By the time we've left the dining room, ayi has a giant plate of watermelon cut into bite-sized pieces waiting for us (with toothpicks for eating...well...actually, those pre-strung disposable dental floss things...don't ask me...).

In addition to the ribs, some of my favorite dishes are the cold cucmber salad with garlic and a bit of vinegar, sliced tomatoes which ayi peels (and let me tell you, peeling tomatoes is a real pain!) sprinkled lightly with sugar (yes, it sounds a little odd, but it turns out to be delicious), sauteed eggplant, and, of course, jiaozi (Beijing's native style of boiled dumplings) which ayi makes entirely from scratch (she rolls the skins at home, then brings them over and fills, seals and cooks the dumplings here).

Ayi makes everything from scratch and she shops each day for fresh foods. She informs us that food must be made and eaten fresh. Store-bought dumplings (or even the skins) are no good (in fact, are unhealthy). We aren't even allowed to save leftovers (which we always have) for lunch the next day (not healthy ayi insists). Last time I went to the store with her (before I started work, obviously) happened to be a fish night. I KNOW that fish was fresh because I watched the lady in the fish section scoop it alive an flopping out of tank, whack it dead, clean it and hand it over. An hour later that fish was on our table (and it was definitely good...although I don't want to think too hard about what might have been in the water it lived its life in...).

Jiaozi are usually a Friday night treat. This past Friday dinner looked like this:


I believe jiaozi are usually a meal by themselves, but ayi didn't want us to feel that the meal was insufficient, so she gave us plenty of other dishes as well. Yes, the pale things are just what you think they are...chicken feet (aka phoenix claws)...here's a close up so you can tell for sure:


We dutifully tried them but told ayi that in the future chicken feet could, perhaps, be left out of our diet.

Ayi believes it is her job to keep us healthy. In fact, shortly after she started working for us, she told us that if we got sick she would feel she failed at her job (boy I hope my immune system is up to whatever germs hang around in Beijing that I haven't been exposed to at home or I'll feel awfully guilty!). To keep us healthy, ayi has started us on a new regime: mung bean soup at bedtime. Mung bean soup is a mildly sweet dish of mushy mong beans in the liquid they were cooked in. It is eaten cold. Ayi makes it fresh each day and we're under strict orders not to heat it, eat any day other than the day it was made or to eat it in any season other than summer. The texture of the mung beans is not horrible, but neither is it particularly nice. Other than being slightly sweet, the soup doesn't actually taste like much. It is even mildly refreshing, so we've been dutifully eating a bowl at bedtime as ordered.

Ayi has a remarkable work ethic. Although we told her when we hired her that she needn't come in for a full day when we're out of town, just stop by to feed the cats. She insists on working her whole schedule anyway (plus coming in to feed the cats on the weekends). I don't know if she actually does, or what she does when she's here, but I suspect she really does come full time and really finds work to do. This week three things happened that demonstrated the difference between her idea of what her work required of her and our idea.

First, we will be traveling for three weeks starting on Saturday. We can arrange for pet-sitting services through our building. Ayi's daughter (who lives in ayi's hometown in Anhui province which isn't exactly just around the corner) has a birthday this month. We thought, since ayi has been doing such good work for us, that we'd use the building's pet-sitting service for a week and, as a bonus, buy ayi a train ticket home so she could visit her daughter (and, of course, the week at home would be paid time as usual). We thought we were offering her a very nice bonus. She thought we wanted to fire her. Oops! After much reassurance that we are very happy with her work and don't know what we'd do without her, ayi is not going home. She's working as usual.

Second, on Wednesday or Thursday I had a meeting scheduled to last until six. I like to leave the office by 5:30 at the latest so I have time to get home and eat in time for ayi to clean up and leave pretty close to when she's supposed to get off at 7. When it became apparent that the meeting was not going to end at 6 (it ended sometime slightly after 7:30), I texted Ben to let him know I would be a while. He tried to send ayi home, but she refused. It's her job to serve us dinner, even if dinner is very late. It was close to 8:30 by the time I finally made it home. I was pretty surprised to see ayi still there. She finally agreed to go home as soon as dinner was on the table and leave the dishes until the next day (but under no circumstances were we to touch them, not even clear the table, let alone wash up!). I felt terrible keeping her two hours after she was supposed to get off, but she refused any overtime pay or offer of equivalent time off the next day.

Third, as she was leaving Friday night, she suddenly became very concerned about what we would eat over the weekend. She tried to insist that she would come in on Saturday and Sunday to at least cook our dinner. That we managed to head off. We managed to reassure her that we could fend for ourselves over the weekend - we had plans to go out on Saturday anyway. The Chinese kitchen may exactly be familiar to me, but I actually love to cook and can probably manage eggs and toast if nothing else (or there's always the restaurant in the basement or several restaurants at the club in our complex). If she insists on staying late when I get stuck at work and working her full schedule even if we're out of town, the least we can do is make sure she doesn't work weekends when we're here!

It's a bit of an adjustment having more-or-less full-time help, but I confess it's kind of nice. I think I'll be pretty spoiled returning to the US where someone who shops, cooks, cleans, does laundry and pretty much anything else we can think up for her is definitely unaffordable!

Another Interruption: An Update on Life as Usual

So, what with going to work and all, we're actually starting to settle into a routine (at least I am...Ben's out of class at the moment so he's taking it easy).

I stumble groggily out of bed WAY too early (6:15-ish if I can manage it). Ben usually stays in bed until I get out of the shower (although that may change when his classes start again). Then he gets up to make sure I've grabbed a banana or something for breakfast (which I sometimes even eat :P ). I stagger out of the house around 7:15 and make my way to the subway.

It's about a 4-5 minute walk to the subway if I remember to take the shortcut through the apartment complex behind us, or a little longer if I forget and go around. Either way, I consistently dodge just barely in time to avoid losing an eye to the weird bit of rusty metal sticking out of the gate to the construction site by the subway. I go north on the number 5 subway line for 3 stops. It's generally not crowded. I often even get a seat. The trick I've noticed (shhh...I don't want everyone to find out!) is to head for the entry lanes furthest from where the steps to the platform come out. Most stations have entries/exits at either end of the platform and naturally people tend to bunch close to where they arrive on the platform. If you get on the subway elsewhere on the platform you've got a better chance at reduced crowding. This isn't so important early in the morning on the 5 going north, but when I change to the westbound 13 it becomes critical. West on 13 is rush hour in the morning and it's crowded...no, it's CROWDED. I still have a bruise on my ankle where from when it got caught between the platform and the train as I was shoved forward by the mob of people trying to pack into the car. Moving to the middle of the platform is ESSENTIAL for health and well being when getting on that train in that direction at that station in rush hour! So, no more getting trampled, but the train's still crowded. I've yet to get a seat on the 13. Standing isn't so bad, though, at least not for the first stop or two. I go 4 stops total on the 13. Starting at about the 2nd stop things get crazy. Looking out the window, you can see the line which runs off the platform, down the stairs, through the station, down to the street and through a series of switchbacks on the street. I don't even want to think about how long it would take to get on the subway at that stop or the next. Crowding becomes uncomfortable at the second stop and almost unbearable at the third. Thank goodness I get off after that. It's really pretty manageable so long as the air conditioning works. The day the air conditioning was off was...well...let's just say we all might as well have swum to work. A quick walk through a parking lot (look out for cars!), up a little flagstone path, a game of Frogger crossing the street and I come to my building where I settle in for the day (see my last post for more about work).

Most days I get to work around 8 and pull myself away between 5 and 5:30 (generally closer to 5:30). I repeat the train operation in reverse (although it's not usually quite as crowded on the 13...I think I leave just a bit early for the worst of the traffic) and come through the door around 6:15. As I walk in the door I hear the sizzle as ayi heats the wok up in the kitchen to prepare whichever dish has to be seared at the last minute. A few minutes later we sit down to dinner.

We try to finish up by 6:45 since ayi always stays until we're done so she can wash up before she goes home. She's supposed to get off at 7, although I fear I've tended to keep her a bit late since I've started work.

Relax for a bit (or call up to read to Zoe), to the gym for a long swim and a cleansing sit in the steam room, sauna or hot tub (unless I'm too tired to drag myself over there or the weather outside is too miserable), a little reading or part of a movie, a little Chinese TV just for the extra exposure to the language and I'm usually asleep by 10.

Thus pass the days...

Interruption: Off and Running at Work

I know you're all waiting to hear about the rest of the trip and see more pictures. I hope I'll get there soon (maybe even at least part way there today!). In the meantime, though, I thought I'd give you an update on my new job.

I started work a week and a half ago at Ethos Technologies. The people I work with are awesome! In eight days at work, I have yet to be left on my own for lunch or even to be allowed to pay for my own lunch (until I finally insisted on picking up the tab late in the week). Lunch is usually ordered in from one of the many nearby Chinese take-out places (which certainly beat American Chinese take-out!). Although I haven't really done it myself yet, as far as I can tell, those of us that can't read Chinese menus or place food orders in Chinese have only to go to one of our friendly Chinese colleagues who will obligingly order for us (and even select for us if we're flexible about what we eat). We eat together in a cozy lunch room - generally family style.

Team lunches, dinners and other social activities seem to be frequent and there are weekend basketball, football (that's soccer to you Americans ;)) and badminton clubs. Ben and I joined a number of my colleagues for badminton yesterday. I hadn't played since high school, but it came back to me pretty quickly and my colleagues were patient and friendly about my gaffes. In addition to sports, there are English clubs for the Chinese students to practice their English (I think we need a Chinese club for us non-Chinese to practice our Chinese, too - maybe I'll get that started). I also think I'll look into founding some other non-sports options. I've got lots of people in my group who are looking for ways to practice their English, so I think maybe an English-language book club would be fun. The trick will be to find books that are fun and accessible for everyone. I also really enjoyed Toastmasters when I belonged at Seagate. It would be a great forum to help people with their spoken English. When I get back from my next trip I'll see if there's sufficient interest and do some research on how to found a new chapter. Another great thing about the people at work is their diversity. The non-Chinese come from all over, but truly, so do the Chinese. Nearly every province in China is represented. Since food is one of my personal passions (I know you haven't seen a lot about food yet, but count on it...so long as I can manage to keep up you'll probably be treated to more than you ever wanted to know!) I'd love to see if I can drum up interest in a food club...the idea, I think, would be that for each meeting we'd select a different cuisine (ideally led each time by a member for whom that cuisine is native) and eat together at a restaurant specializing in that cuisine. I think it would be a great way to get to know each other and to get a taste of different parts of China and the world all without leaving Beijing. Contrary to everything I'd heard, Beijing does not seem to lack for restaurants serving food from around the world.

So...that's for the social fabric of work. It's not all fun and games though (well...actually, so far it is all fun, but definitely not all games). I have 35 people reporting to me at the moment (with 6 new people joining my group tomorrow, more at the end of July and still more at the end of August). The group structure is brand new to Ethos so everyone is still learning/figuring out how the new organization will work. I am not only struggling to get to know everyone in my group (it's hard to get to know 35 people practically overnight...especially, I confess, when they have names that are totally unfamiliar, which I can't even pronounce, and sometimes can't distinguish given name from surname), but trying to grasp the projects we are responsible for, pick up enough about the technology (which is brand new to me) to make sense of them, and find out what's in the pipeline so I have work for all those new people to do, not to mention learning a whole set of new IT systems, corporate policies, etc. At any rate, it's hard work, but fun. I love a new challenge and this is certainly that. The names, systems, policies, etc. will sort themselves out over time (hopefully less time rather than more!)...most important, I like the people I work with and know that every day will bring new friends, new learning and fun. After two years back in school, it's an adjustment getting up every morning to get to the office, but for the first time in a long time, I'm enjoying myself enough that it's also hard to tear myself away at the end of the day to go home. That's the way work should be.