I'm headed back Stateside very soon, and unfortunately, my residence permit expires while I'm gone. In order to get it extended, I needed to have my Foreign Expert's Certificate extended.

The extension of the foreign expert's certificate requires a week, the extension of the residence permit also requires a week. Each requires multiple trips to multiple offices, lots of paperwork, and a smattering of red rubber stampings.

I leave in a week.

I've managed, somehow, in the last few days, to meet the two friendliest, most helpful Chinese government workers ever. The first in the Office of Importing Foreign Intellectuals (see included photo) the second at the big Public Security Bureau building near the Lama Temple.

The first told me that, if I faxed him a letter explaining my situation and included my flight itinerary, he'd see what he could do. What he did was get my certificate back to me in less than twenty-four hours. He even called me this morning (!!!) to tell me that my certificate would be ready by 3pm. Holy crap.

Oh, and big ups to Melissa and her intern for helping me write the letter.

Today, I tried to get my visa extended. I was told that it would take a week, and a bunch of paperwork (which I didn't have) to get it done.

I explained my situation. She told me that, if I could get the paperwork and red rubber stamps back to her by tomorrow, she'd make sure I had my passport back before I leave. She told me to come straight to her and avoid the other workers.

I'm crossing my fingers... as I need to visit a police station tomorrow for some other paperwork. I hope it goes as smoothly. I also hope I find the incredibly nice lady at the PSB.

I know my friends who helped me get the Foreign Expert's certificate won't ever read this (as it's written poorly in a foreign language... but thanks to them endlessly anyhow.

** Update **
This morning I went to the police station to get my temporary residence whatever thingy we laowai all need but frequently are late in getting...

I ran into someone I casually know, he lived in the same complex and was in need of the same card. He was first in line, and for some reason, they gave him a lot of shit... "You've lived here for this long and still haven't had this done... that's illegal, you know. You should be fined."

For some reason, the same police woman gave me absolutely no trouble and just signed the papers and printed my form.

I headed straight to the PSB, and filled out some forms, talked to the right people, and I'll have my passport back on the morning that I leave. Eek.

Labels: Beijing Adventures, Bullshit, Bureaucracy, Good Luck

I frequently feel in Beijing that I’m living in two very disparate places. Admittedly, I foster that feeling, but the city itself is mostly responsible for this. Interspersed within the high-rises and multi-million dollar office towers are pockets of old Beijing. Decaying, single-floored brick buildings that may be twenty, fifty, or a hundred years old huddle in the shadows of these young giants. Age and continued use frequently give them more character than the buildings that surround and dwarf them.

Somewhat out of necessity, but also out of curiosity, I find myself drawn to both the old and the new Beijing, the daily life in the hutongs and the swank events around the city. Most often, it’s obvious I don’t fit in. In the back alleys, not only am I a foreigner, but relatively filthy rich. At high-class events around the city, my middle-class background shows through. I don’t like champagne. I hold my wine glass incorrectly. I’m oblivious to the fact that I just casually chatted with some celebrity. I don’t truly fit in anywhere because I’m a middle-class outsider, and there’s no true middle class here.

Old Beijing

Yesterday, I took my scooter for repairs at a garage sandwiched between a widening street and train tracks in the fast-growing Bai zi wan area. Its continued existence in that neighborhood is probably a side-effect of the fact that the narrow strip of land it’s on isn’t developable.

As I entered, hesitantly, I saw a taxi cab having its tires replaced, or maybe rotated, on the left. On the right, motorcycles, scooters, and motorized bicycles haphazardly queued up for repairs. People meandered about or welded something to something else, or looked on as someone else made repairs. Many of them wore grease-stained clothes and had fresh grease on their hands. I had no idea who to talk to. Everyone I saw was potentially a customer or a mechanic.

The ground was uneven, sloping at strange angles to itself, and covered in a few layers of grime. The rear wall of the garage was a squat, brick building that housed a tiny convenience store and what appeared to be the storehouse for the repair shop; shelves full of spare parts, possibly second hand, mostly covered in dust. The garage itself was an awning held aloft by a line of trees and steel tubes welded together in a skeleton. The steel tube is in the very center was too short, and so was propped up by two bricks. A scooter, much smaller than mine, sat in a corner and appeared to have been sitting there for an eternity. The front half of it was held to the back half with a misshapen board with a nut/bolt set through each corner.

The boss stepped out of the store room and greeted me. He was not at all grease-covered, and looked incredibly like an aged Zhou Enlai (on the left in the photo). He had his posture, his eyebrows, and smile. He had his hat, and a matching coat. His mannerisms were as I’ve always imagined Zhou’s mannerisms to have been. I don't think that the original Zhou Enlai had gold teeth, but this one did. As far as I can tell, besides the grill, he had no other bling.

Zhou Enlai asked me to show him what was wrong with my bike. I did. He got a fifteen year old boy to start working on it.

A drunken man pulled up on his motor-trike. He had a big furry hat that stereotypes of Russians wear in Siberia. A cloud of alcohol scent surrounded him. He asked where I was from, then insisted on speaking Russian to me. I, and the others, repeatedly told him that I couldn’t understand Russian, let alone his drunken Mandarin. He wanted his biked fixed before they fixed mine. I don’t know if it was out of politeness to me, or in the interested of keeping this wildly drunk guy off of the road for a while, but they refused and continued working on mine.

The drunk starting making me uncomfortable when he mimed rubbing his oily hands on my coat. Fortunately, a young Deng Xiaoping came to my rescue. He was, I figured out after a while, a customer, and didn’t work with Zhou Enlai at all. Deng talked to me at great length, and made me feel as though my Mandarin ability was novice at best. I’m not even clear exactly what the subject was. He enjoyed the conversation, though.

After two hours of watching the15-year-old try to repair my bike, it was clear that the repairs would be done any time soon. I asked if I could come back tomorrow. The boy said “Sure,” with what was obviously a sigh of relief. I think I was getting special treatment as the foreign guest, and the boy thought he had to rush to get the work done.

“We’ll be open at 8am tomorrow,” he said.

“I have something to do in the morning,” I lied, “I’ll be by in the afternoon. Maybe about this time.”

New Beijing


An hour later, I was on my way to the Chocojing party. I didn't know what they were, but the invite intrigued me, so I went. The event was held at a place called Luna, or Luce. It's hard to tell. I found the address in That's Beijing under the name Luna, but the sign on the door said "Luce." I have my suspicions that Luce is the restaurant part, and Luna is the lounge part.

Anyhow, it was everything that these swank, in-a-traditional-house-in-a-hutong- but-redecorated-with-a-lot-of-funiture-that-might-be-european places are supposed to be. Subdued lighting, mostly white patrons, and music that is supposed to be cool partially because no one can name the artists. Having said, that, it was quite enjoyable and some of the chocolate fabulous. The entrance fee was a fair 50 kuai, which included the chocolate and chocolate martinis. Well worth the cost.

There was an AmCham dinner going on at the same time, and many of the AmCham people overflowed into the Chocojing thing. Some of the AmCham people were wearing shoes that cost much much more than my scooter, and I can't help but wonder if they'd ever set foot in a place like the repair shop I was in just hours ago.

I mingled, met some interesting people, had a great time. I met people, both foreign and Chinese, who have spent more money on airfare than some of the people I met at the repair shop will make in their entire lifetime. I made the mistake of notice only the chocolate part of the chocolate martinis, and missed the martini part until it was too late.

The host of Chocojing, a few of the guests, and I continued on to two other parties. We left the first rather quickly. It was held at Bed, and the atmosphere was, well... incongruous with our mood. One of our friends remarked that it 'felt like we're supposed to sprawl out on the couch and smoke weed.' The party immediately after that was a beach party held in someone's apartment. There were quite a few guests, including a smidgen of guys in shorts and Hawaiian shirts and a girl in a bikini. Most of the guests seemed unwilling to wear less than their Beijing winter attire. I'm still not certain who the host of that party was, but thank you for (and sorry about) the half-bottle of gin.

We moved on to a bar or two after the parties. Eventually, I ended up at The Saddle, where I ran into someone from the Chocojing party. Though the details never entered my long term memory, thank you for the conversation.

Real Beijing

This afternoon, hangover in retreat, I returned to the repair shop. It was as if the whole place was on pause while I was gone. The 15-year-old still had my bike in various pieces scattered about. He was frantically unscrewing bolts and stripping wires, and insisting that the turn signals never worked in the first place. It was another hour and a half before my bike was ready to go.

After all that work, the repairs we 5 kuai less than the small burrito I ate at The Saddle. 30 kuai for both the parts and labor. I cannot imagine how they can run that shop when that much work amounts to 30 kuai.

They wished me a happy Spring Festival, and I drove away. I got as far as the street when the engine died. After another half hour of repairs, they'd asked if I had anything important to do and whether I was in a hurry. I told them I'd leave the bike with them another night, and come back tomorrow afternoon.

A lot of foreigners in Beijing can be overheard expressing their anger over how quickly the 'old' Beijing is being destroyed. Of course, most of these people live in the high-rises that they hate so much. Some of them live in modernized, converted siheyuan, but none of them live in the 'old' Beijing that is being unceremoniously replaced.

Don't get me wrong, I miss it, too. I remember when Beijing was a few skyscrapers surrounded by millions of small apartment complexes and traditional buildings. Now it's hundreds of skyscrapers, thousands of apartment complexes and pockets of traditional housing.

What I mean to question is this: has this ever happened in Beijing's past? Has the general feeling ever been "these newcomers are ruining our city with all this newfangled crap?" It's not as if Beijing has never seen upheaval and change before.

Labels: Beijing Adventures, Drinks

Today is the first day of spring, according to the traditional Chinese calendar. Lichun (立春) is the first of the 24 solar periods that the year is split into. What's a solar period? Shrug. Like most holidays, few know the significance yet most follow the traditions.

For Chinese holidays, 'tradition' most often refers to (possibly making and) eating some particular food with one's family. In the case of Lichun, the traditional food is the spring roll. My friend Karen hastily invited me to join her and her mother for the Lichun experience. Unsure of what her family's interpretation of spring rolls would look like, but harboring a general love of food, I jumped at the chance and we headed out to Changping, the Northern suburb of Beijing where her mother lives.


Hesitation

On the hour and a half subway-to-light rail journey I thought a lot about the correct way to act while at her mother's home and trying, to preemptively reconcile the vast differences between Chinese and American attitudes towards politeness. Is it better to eat too much, or should I not to eat too much because I'm an unexpected guest? Should I keep my elbows off the table? I've heard that I'm supposed to make slurping noises while eating soup in Asia. Is that true? How terrible is it that I've been in China for most of my adult life and still haven't learned proper table manners?

Outside of my internal misgivings, the light rail ride was uneventful. I watched as the scenery passed, the dense residential neighborhoods gave way to large swaths of unused land, dry and brown. The squat, dark gray brick buildings here and there are a sparse version of what Beijing looked like to me when I first got here. It's comforting, that is until I imagine Changping as Beijing's forehead and the sparse buildings a receding hairline.

Gossip

Beijing's above-ground light rail system looks nearly finished. It's clean, many of the stations have bathrooms, and the air conditioning is actually comfortable. This completeness makes the exit of the Lishuiqiao station even more jarring. As we exit the predominantly white, open-air station, we are greeted by a bustling corridor of passengers, motorcycle taxis, and snack food stands. Nothing here is permanent. Blue corrugated steel serves as the corridor walls, most of the snack food stands are on the backs of three-wheeled bicycles. The ground is dust, waiting for the sidewalk and landscaping in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. The pleasant smell of roasted chestnuts and the voices of the hawkers fills the air.

We walk until we come to an even longer corridor of quasi-legal cabs packed in impossible numbers below a bridge. The drivers stand outside their cars casually chatting with one another until they see us, then start competing for our business. Without hesitation, Karen chooses one she knows.

His car is a tiny, red four-door that the three of us could probably lift over our heads if the gas tank was empty. To my surprise, he is entirely non-plussed about having a foreign passenger.

I ask a little about him. He says he doesn't actually need to take passengers, he owns a business that sells and delivers the giant watter bottles for water coolers ubiquitous not only in offices but also in homes in China. He drives mostly out of habit, he's been doing it for so long and so many people know him. I imagine he does it because he enjoys socializing and his minor fame within the local underground taxi world.

He tells us a little about local news. A woman was pushed from a 6th floor window in late January. I expected it would make people in the neighborhood uneasy, but it apparently hadn't. It seemed more of a sensationalized piece of gossip in this otherwise life-as-usual suburb, and I am drawn in. Do they know who pushed her? Did she live? Was it a domestic thing, or a burglary gone wrong? Was it-gasp-murder?

His answers are disappointing. The perpetrator turned himself in, he wasn't a family member or friend, but no motive was given. The woman lived, for a short while, then died. We each mused that it was a horrible way to die, but were unashamed of our morbid interest.

He drops us off at a housing development named Tian Tong Yuan (天通园). Outside the massive complex, the world is made of dust, wind, and fast moving trucks delivering goods to and from Beijing. Inside, it's new apartment buildings and green foliage. The complex is by far the largest I've ever seen.

Mom


As we walk towards Karen's mother's home, I ask what all of the phone numbers hastily spray-painted on the walls were for. She doesn't tell me, but instead says that her mother cannot understand why the police do not catch the vandals and cut off their fingers. I recall spray-painting the wall of a bridge as a teenager, and imagine her mother as a strict high school teacher who I'll have to be on my best behavior for.

Mom is tiny, elderly, and extremely kind in a very genuine way. She's busy cooking, and the house is filled with the aromas of the spring roll fillings. She's from the Northeast, which means that two of the fillings and the accompanying soup are made from pickled vegetables vaguely like sauerkraut and generous amounts of pork. These are not spring rolls in the sense of the deep-fried kind served at Chinese restaurants in the west. These are Chun Bing (春饼), which the diner wraps him or herself in a shell that is like a thick flour tortilla.

Karen pushes me to compliment her mother. Tell her you really like her kitchen. It will really make her happy. I find it ridiculously difficult to say. Most of my hesitation stems from nervousness. Part of it stems from the fact that her kitchen, while nice, doesn't look spectacular. I don't want to seem fake with my compliments. My nervousness building, I say what I think I'm supposed to. You've been so busy all day. You must be tired. Can I help? You should take a rest.

I wander around the house in order to calm my nerves. The modest house has an inordinate amount of paintings, most of which are not mounted, their frames propped up on the wall behind them. I think I've found my in here.

Wow, mom, you're quite a good painter. I say it and I mean it. Her face lights up, she stops cooking, and takes a break to show me her paintings. Mostly landscapes. Some of them are originals, a few of them are copies of Monet. Karen eggs me on, but my limited vocabulary begins to show the fifth time I say, "that one is extremely pretty."

I try to say something new, so I tell her that all of them are quite nice, but I really like the earth-toned paintings the best. I'm not certain if I said it clearly, but it seemed to satisfy her somehow, and she chose a painting to give me. I refuse it at first, but Karen assures me that it would make Mom very happy if I accept, so I do. Mom starts putting the painting in a frame. I instinctively say, "I can't accept that frame, I'm sure it's very expensive."

What? I was just showing you that it looks better in a frame. You'll need to buy your own.

As she finishes cooking dinner and talks with her daughter, I sit on the couch (which I feel oversized for) and wait. The Japanese Ultraman plays on the television, dubbed in Chinese. I'm nearly surrounded by Karen's stuffed animal toys from her childhood. The effect is surreal.

Genuine China Experience


Dinner is served. I watch attentively as they place some of each of the four fillings in the center of the flour shell, wrap them masterfully with chopsticks and bite into them. I choose what I imagine is a similar amount of fillings, then clumsily wrap them with chopsticks and my free hand. I begin to feel like the cliche foreigner on CCTV9 having a 'genuine' scripted China experience.

The food is really good. Am I eating too much? Mom goes to the kitchen and returns with more of the chun bing shells. Should I be eating more?

Mom starts some small talk. Your Chinese is really good. How long have you been here? Do you think that China is 'good?'

I answer what I think I'm suppose to answer. Karen chimes in, "You look like one of those cliche foreigners on CCTV9 having a 'genuine' China experience." Oh? "No no," she assures me, "It's good, it's exactly what she expects."

Generosity vs. Pride

After dinner, Karen and I talk for a while while Mom takes a nap. I start to fall asleep on the couch while Howl's Floating Castle plays on TV in a long string of 5 minute clips, also dubbed in Chinese. We say our goodbyes, and Karen helps me to find another underground cab to take me back to the light rail station.

This driver turns out to be rather glad to be driving around with a foreign guest. Again, I feel like the cliche foreigner, but, to a degree it's fun. Do you think America is good? Is it better than China? In America, is everything expensive? What about food? I heard that poor people in America can eat and go to school. Is that true? Does the government pay for everything? How about medical care? Do poor people get adequate health care?

I ashamedly admit that the USA lacks universal health coverage. Just to get my dig in, I start to mention that Canada does. I don't get to finish. He interrupts me with a comment I wasn't expecting at all.

Really? But, but... what about things like blood cancer? My son has blood cancer, and that's why I drive passengers around out here. I have another job, but I need to do this because so much of my money goes to his hospital bills. I was thinking Americans don't have to worry about things like blood cancer because the government paid for treatment.

I'm jaded enough at this point in my life to know that I cannot trust the sad stories of strangers who aren't ashamed to say that they need money. Still, I consider paying more than the requisite 10 kuai for the ride.

You know what I pay the hospital each year? 20,000 RMB.

For me, that's a lot of money. Money that I used to buy a fancy notebook. Money he used to keep his son alive. When we get to the light rail station, I reconsider giving him more money, especially because he only asks for 10 kuai. My generosity fails me, I hand him the cash and alight, then make my way towards another uneventful light rail ride.

Somehow, though I've set out to have a totally new experience, I end up at my favorite cocktail bar by 10pm, ignoring the friendly distractions as I type out this post. I glance over at my friends, who have been patiently allow me to work.

"We're waiting for you. Come have a drink."

I think I shall.

Labels: Beijing Adventures

It occurred to me, too late, that logistically, I'll need to run the random place generator a week early, to give myself time to prepare. In the spirit of truly keeping it random, I want to actually go to the place that the KML generator chooses, even if it looks unpromising.

What this means is that sometimes, it may choose something so out of the way (and so out of my knowledge of Beijing) that I'll need plenty of time to figure out how to get there, and when I'll need to set out. This week, it chose a place about 20km (as the crow flies) from my apartment. I had every intention of winging it and going, but another opportunity presented itself, and I took it.

The reason I'm doing this is partially to learn more about the "real" Beijing. The opportunity I was handed today gave me a chance to do so. I hope you enjoy my first attempt... the experiences I have here are frequently interesting. I hope that my writing can capture that.

Labels: Beijing Adventures

I've been living in this town for seven years, and I don't know nearly enough about it.

Yeah, I know my way around (particularly in the North and East, like every foreigner worth his/her salt does). Sure, I know the bar scene (like every foreigner who has lost the ability to stay away from alcohol more than 4 days a week does). I know a bit about the Universities (like every foreigner that got their start here as some combination of language student/teacher does).

But, what about normal, daily life? I learned a little bit about it, on a tiny scale, back when I was studying at the former Beijing Polytechnic University. Back then, I didn't have enough cash to go out much, so I mostly entertained myself nearby the dorm. I got to meet local Beijingers, eat wonderful (and cheap!) food, and managed to get a few good photos here and there.

So, I want to know more about this city that I love so much. More than office buildings and my friend's apartments. More than the-admittedly wonderful-bars and restaurants I frequent.

My solution: Once a week, I use Google Earth and a script I wrote to choose a random spot in Beijing. I then find my way there, find something interesting about the place, take pictures, talk to someone I meet there, and eat at a nearby restaurant.

I'll be going on my first adventure this Sunday, presumably. I can't wait to see what kind of trouble I get myself into with this....

Labels: Beijing Adventures