Home Is Where the Boot Is

I had an adventure this weekend. I gathered my trusty map, my less-trustworthy Chinese reading skills, and my extremely trustworthy sense of direction and set out to find a little piece of home in this massive and foreign place. All I can say is this: I flew 6,000 miles away from Maine and found Maine 6 miles away. LL Bean, home sweet home.

LL Bean, Beijing, is located in a swanky "lifestyle mall" in the nicer end of town. This open-concept mall, with a lovely fountain timed to classical music in the central courtyard, is full of high-end Western brands, ranging from Espirit to dear Beans. There is a Starbucks and a Coldstone Creamery, where you can pay in excess of 50 kuai for an ice cream (comparison: I can buy a Drumstick-like ice cream on the street for 2 kuai). The atmosphere was pleasant, but I felt more out of place here than I did on the bus (where I noted, absently, that I was the only non-Chinese out of 50 or so. This is not unusual.). I felt like I'd wandered into 5th Avenue, or at the very least, the designer shops in the Old Port. So I beelined for Beans.

What to say, what to say. It is an LL Bean, in all its glory. It has canoe-paddle door handles. It has little decorative shelves of fake evergreen and snowshoes. It sells the ice-cream making kick ball. The only un-Bean-ish thing about it is that it's tiny. It's very much like the average-sized store in the Maine Mall. But, I imagine I'm spoiled by frequenting the flagship store.

What's that? What did things cost? Well, if you think things would be slightly cheaper, considering the lack of international shipping expenses and the location, think again. Perhaps you'd like their sunwashed cotton messenger bags? That's 420 kuai. Some women's rain pants? 750 kuai. Now that's just ridiculous. To answer my sister's question, no, the sizes don't appear to be smaller, but there is a predominance of smaller sizes -- my casual perusal only found one size large.

So I didn't buy anything. That wasn't the point of going, however. Just being there, surrounded by familiar decor, made me feel a little less out of place. It really is a little piece of home away from home.

One last note: there didn't seem to be any taxidermed animals about. It makes me wonder what a Beijing Cabella's would look like. Naked, I daresay.

PS. I saw the following billboard on my way to Beans. It's oddly comforting to know that China's "join up now" ads looks just like ours.

On Illiteracy and Being Mostly Successful

There are a few things to which you become accustomed during your first few weeks in China (please excuse my broad generalizations based on my extremely objective personal experiences). Number one: if the buildings two blocks away do not look fuzzy, then it is a relatively good day. If the building across the street is hazy, that's a bad day. Secondly: walking down the street is like playing chicken. Not just with traffic, mind you, but others pedestrians. No one sticks any particular side, people dart about, and sidewalks are de facto parking lots. Third: you will not see the stars again until you leave (I'll admit I'm not used to that yet -- I may never be). But on to today's first topic: if you aren't fluent in Chinese, you must get used to being basically illiterate. There is a little thrill at finding a sign you can mostly or completely read. Most signs, advertisements, and bus route signs might as well be in Korean, for all I can decipher them. This bugged me at first -- we come from a very literate society. I'm not sure I could get around home without reading signs. I never realized how helpful the pictures on food packaging are. After all, how would I have any idea what 'Welsh Pepper Taste' crackers were without little pictures of red hot chili peppers? (Actually, I don't know what they taste like... but with that graphic, I'm not going to try.) Now, I blithely travel about my neighborhood, unable to read anything, but mostly getting done what I need to do.

Speaking of routine errands, it's amazing what you can get done with limited language skills. On the other hand, getting things done and getting things done the way you expected are totally different things. Today, for example, I went to the bank to exchange some more money, and bought some dumplings for dinner.

I had changed money on my second day in China, when I had no functional language skills for that action. It took several hours (two of the people I went with had traveler's checks of a type the bank had never seen). None of the bank employees spoke English, and the same form would be passed back and forth repeatedly as more blanks would have to be filled it -- which is what they probably told us, but none of us understood the first time. Today, I actually managed to get my proper bank ticket (it's a little kiosk -- you have to punch in what you want to do, and it gives you a number like at the supermarket deli) and could say my intention (wo yao duihuan waibi). In a fun twist, the bank teller I got today could speak a little English (passport, hundred) even though I could have (probably) managed English-free. Ah, well. It went quickly and trouble-tree today, and I count that as a total success.

Then I bought some dumplings. There is a little vendor after the check-out at the supermarket, and they sell several varieties. I could read that they were pork dumplings, all with different secondary ingredients, but I couldn't read most of those. So, I asked, as I know the sound of more foodstuffs than the characters. Still not much help, but I eliminated several varieties based on their names containing the words "sour" "tofu" or "spicy." I chose at random from the rest, and got a "large" plate (apparently the default, and she'd already starting filling the tray before I could formulate a response, so I ended up with 27 dumplings). Then, and here's where my success becomes a qualified success, apparently you can have them cooked or buy them raw. I apparently missed being asked if I wanted them cooked, so I got them raw. Ah, well, no harm no foul; there's a hot plate and a pot in the dorm kitchen, I can do the boiling myself. All together, my 27 dumplings cost 11 kuai, and shall feed me tonight, tomorrow night, and possibly for breakfast, too. Oh, and in case you're curious, they are pork-and-onion flavor, which is delicious. (And now, to outrage my favorite almost-veterinarian: yeah, I'm pretty sure this pork hadn't seen refrigerator in six hours, if ever. But I was impressed with the food-prep safety -- the lady used tongs to handle the grubby money and never her hands, and the whole stall was very clean-looking. Then I boiled the life out of the dumplings (literally: I misread the hotplate at first and cranked it up to 270*C. I have never seen water boil so fast.) So if I get food poisoning or whatnot, it is purely chance and not because I'm a crazy risk-taker.)

On that note, I am going to go look at the stars on Google Earth. How I miss them.

Hello Warm Lemonade and Foreigners

There is a down side to all this lovely warm weather, you know. I'm sitting here without a sweater with all my windows open. The sun is streaming in cheerfully, a gentle breeze occasionally caressed my cheek, and if I don't try to look too far into the distance, I hardly notice the pollution. But alas, the loss of cool weather means I can no longer use my porch as a refrigerator. Now if I want cold juice, I'll have to store in the in the first floor kitchen -- and is cold juice really worth the trip up and down six flights of stairs? Probably not.

Speaking of juice, let me tell you about the kind I'm trying today. It's by a company I recognized, having found them online last year. They have a most memorable name -- Wa ha ha. It's just as funny in Chinese as in English. Anyway, I felt like some lemon, and saw this "lemon juice drink." Now, I have to admit, I can't read most of the ingredients. Actually, I was proud that I could find the list of ingredients. I see that it contains 12% juice, which I felt was pretty standard for lemonade, but lacking nutritional information, I had no idea whether this "lemon juice drink" contained sugar. While I think you'd be hard pressed to find lemon water that lemony without sugar in the US, this is China. I ate a green pea popsicle two days ago -- I can't take anything for granted. But considering my personal life philosophy is "if life gives you lemons, eat them or get scurvy" I felt I could deal with whatever flavor my new juice threw at me (side note: its name is Hello-C, in English writing. It comes in lemon and grapefruit flavors. Apparently, it's healthy. So there was a point against containing sugar). Besides, it was 3 kuai, so if I couldn't drink it, I'd only wasted fifty cents.

So, you ask. What does Hello-C lemon taste like? Well, if my taste buds aren't lying to me, it tastes exactly like Countrytime lemonade. You know, like we have at events in the summer -- warm, sickly sweet, totally-fake-tasting lemonade. It would probably be much better cold. Alas, warm weather.

Speaking again of the RIDICULOUSLY nice weather (really, I can't get over it), it has a wonderful effect on my mood. As you may know, I have an awful tendency toward melancholy, home-sickness, and general non-enthusiasm. This was much the case at the end of classes today, as I left the school building, but one blast of the outside air and there was a spring in my step and a smile on my face. Then I rounded the corner and squeezed past the gatehouse just as a little girl, maybe 4 years old, and her mother turned in from the street. The little girl was eating a rapidly melting creamsicle-like thing in that adorable way of little kids -- which is to say it was dripping all over her hand and she didn't care. I was slightly in front of them (one of the upcoming posts shall be on the subject of the relative walking speeds of Chinese, Mainers, and the rest of the world) and the little girl quite clearly and loudly says to her mother, "Look! A foreigner." Hmmm. I'm the only foreigner on the street right now. . . I barely made it inside the dormitory before I cracked up. Oh, little kids, I love them so. Tact is just not saying true stuff, after all.

On that note, I am in much too good a mood to finish my homework right now. Today's topic is terminal liver cancer and human euthanasia -- how can I possibly read about that when the birds are chirping cheerfully outside my window (OK, fine. It's an electric screwdriver. Close enough)? I shall post new photos to facebook instead.

Five Senses

I think, in writing about my experiences, I have an unfortunate tendency to focus on sights and events. I would be remiss, however, if I did not extrapolate a little more. After all, we have five senses with which to experience the world, and you can hardly recreate my wild tales without proper descriptions. So today, I shall further introduce you to my home away from home. Close your eyes (unless you're using them to read, in which case perhaps you'd better leave them a little open) and follow me.

If you were standing outside my front door today, you would be shivering a bit from the cold. Google tells me it is a balmy 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and there is a great cold wind blowing in from the west (which is to say, from the dry, dry Gobi desert). The wind whistles around the edges of the building and thunders down the cavernous channels made by streets running between sky scrapers. I can see more tall buildings from my window than exist in my dear state of Maine, I'm sure. The wind gusts rather constantly, and it makes the doors and windows rattle like discontented ghosts are trying the latches. Sometimes, the wind twists into some strange nook, and makes surprising sounds. Just yesterday, I was sure I heard the horns played by the Abydonians in Stargate when Ra's ship is descending. This afternoon, on the way to lunch, I looked up to see if the Nasgul were attacking.

When the wind isn't blowing quite so hard, my corner of the city is amazingly quite. Or, well, much quieter than I expected so large a city would be. Yes, the constant chorus of car horns is a little jarring (I believe all Chinese drivers follow the Massachusetts Driver model), but little other traffic noise finds its way down my little street. I often hear Chinese conversations shouted cheerfully, but more often than not, I haven't the foggiest what is said.

Every morning, Monday through Friday, I am treated to the Chinese National Anthem at 8am sharp. Across the street from me is an elementary school -- as I wash my face and brush my teeth in the morning, I watch hordes of little kids arrive at school, and a select few solemnly raise the flag in the courtyard. Now that is is warming up, and the kids aren't so bundled against the cold, I can see that their uniforms are bright blue track suit-like affairs. They have bright yellow knit caps with brims. All in all, very adorable. It's also very comforting, although it is disconcerting to realize how much of my education has been in close proximity to elementary schoolers -- first high school in the same building, then my college dorm across the street from one, and now, on the other side of the world, the same situation. Anyway, it's fun to see parents arriving with their children in the morning; at once reminding me of my childhood and at the same time so different. The Chinese school is a building, surrounded by ball courts and courtyard, and surrounded on all sides by two story, narrow buildings that form a wall. They enter through the front gate, which is where they are dropped off. There's nothing like a school bus here -- the kids arrive on foot, perched on the baggage racks or back seats of their parent's bicycles, or in a startling variety of cars (My favorite of these looks like the offspring of a Dodge Caravan and a VW Beetle, which got its looks from the van and its size from the bug -- I shall have to take a picture). Many of the children arrive alone or with peers, no adults. I distinctly remember not being allowed, by the school, to walk to or from primary school for fear of traffic and strangers with nondescript vans and candy. Apparently that is not a fear here, which just goes to show that six year olds are better at navigating Beijing traffic than I am -- but more on that later.

Back to the street, there is a long white metal fence, taller than me, in front of our buildings. It can be gated off at night, although the gate man is always on duty, so I think it does not close. Whatever it may say about my social life, I haven't been out past curfew to see. The walkway is paved with square grey concrete stones, perhaps 6 inches a side. They aren't very even, and it's a blessing my ankles are so willing to bend, otherwise I'd surely have broken them twice over by now. I have an alarming tendency not to look where I'm stepping. In the afternoon, around the time school lets out, the street occasionally gains a street vendor selling roasted sweet potatoes or pineapples artfully carved into a spiral pattern which takes off all the rough outer skin. You can get a hot, sweet, tender potato bigger than your fist for about 3 kuai, a medium sized pineapple is about 5 kuai -- so less than a US dollar each.

Let's step into the dorm, now. The front door is dark green, if you care to know. Inside, you weave through the collection of bicycles that people park inside, glance at the announcement board to your left, and sigh at the six storeys you have to climb to get to my room. Alas. Then you try not to breathe through your nose, because for some reason, the hallway smells like a poorly-tended outhouse today.

There's no way to put it gently, I don't think. Sometimes, my home away from home smells like shit. It's not a reflection on actually cleanliness, though. The dear ayis (ayi is Chinese for aunt; it's a respectful term of address for the two housekeeping ladies) climb up and down every day, cleaning the hall, cleaning our bathrooms, and washing our sheets. I'm sure it has something to do with the plumbing, or something. It's not too bad, really. Sometimes you just need to shut up and breathe through your mouth. Oh, and a pineapple in your room can soak up chemical smells -- but don't eat it afterwards.

I've taken you through sight, sound, taste, and smell now, the only sense left is touch. Much here is the same -- desks still feel like desks, concrete pavement still feels like concrete pavement. Perhaps the biggest difference is the bed. I've complained about this before, and I'll complain again, because my poor back just won't acclimate. Chinese beds are stiff as board. They take "firm" to a whole new level. It's like in the memory foam ad, where a scantily clad woman jumps up and down on one side of the bed while a glass of wine fails to spill on the other. Except in this case, the glass doesn't spill because solid rock doesn't transfer motion well. Aw, well, perhaps I'm exaggerating, but compared to the inner springs and three inches of memory foam I was luxuriating in for the two months before my arrival here, it's like sleeping on the floor. Thank goodness I'm young and can take it.

Although the bed aside, I think my desk chair was designed by the Spanish Inquisition. I can't feel my gluteus maximus at the moment, which makes me think this post is a wee bit long. I shall stop here and search out dinner. Tomorrow we go to the Summer Palace, and I'll lots to tell you then.

Little Dogs and Alley Cats

As of today, I have been in Beijing for one month. I have finally found a new way to blog, as my much-loved livejournal is inaccessible from behind the Great Firewall of China. Thus, I have put a lot of time and thought into deciding about what my first blog post should be. Traffic? Pollution? International relations? Food? Amusing stories about the daily trials of living in a country where you barely speak the language? Ah, but no. Today's post is about cats and dogs.
First, dogs. I will admit that the past few weeks were particularly cold, but it still seems that the number of dogs in sweaters was disproportionately high. I even saw one dog wearing what appeared to be a shirt and overalls. I'm sure it was in fact a cleverly designed onesie, along the lines of the one piece shirt-under-sweater concept, but the question remains: was such cleverness really warranted on doggie clothes? Is there canine haute couture? Furthermore, every dog I've seen is tiny. Not even just small, but true little run-while-you-walk, ankle height dogs. Perhaps it is because this is a city, and people do not have the space for larger dogs, but I rather miss seeing big dogs. And this from a girl who was terrified of big dogs for the first decade or so of her life.
Cats, on the other hand, are much safer. Their biggest threat is cat scratch fever, which never seemed particularly intimidating. Oh, I'm sure my sister the vet could give us a litany of terrible diseases one can get from a cat, but most cats seem benign. I've never wished a cat ill, until the past week here.
I live on the sixth floor of a dormitory on a quiet side street in the Xicheng district of Beijing. In front of the dorm is an elementary school; behind the dorm is a college. Between the college and the back of my building is a little alley, and this is where the Alley Cat lives.
The Alley Cat seems to be alone for the most part, and I don't think I've ever heard a more miserable-sounding creature. S/he's mostly quiet during the day, but come evening and the pitiful cries begin. For the first few nights, I wasn't sure if it was a cat or an unhappy baby. On the way back from dinner last week, I caught a glimpse of the Alley Cat climbing across the low roof of the next-door building. Judging from the ragged appearance, I'd guess Alley Cat was a stray, but I suppose s/he could be someone's pet. Alley Cat is a yellow tiger in coloring and rather reminds me of our cat Tiger from way back when. I thought the Alley Cat was undisputed Master of All, until the wee hours of Monday morning. At about 3 am, I was awoken by a sound I know all too well from the confrontations between my cats at home -- Cat War. Hissing, yowling, growling, and generally the sense that a fight is about to go down that makes the Spartans in 300 look like sissies. I put my earplugs in and went back to sleep, only a little worried for Alley Cat. As it turns out, I didn't even need to worry at all -- Alley Cat was slinking about the scraggly bushes the next morning as I walked to class.