m/f

One of the things I think is so interesting here is the male/female dynamic and how those relationships operate. Many of my students, upon finding out my age, ask if I am not worried about getting married. A typical Chinese woman wants to be married by the age of 30, and probably working on having a child by then as well. When I explain that I do not want to have children and am not particularly worried about getting married, if it happens it happens, they are just confused. Granted, a lot of Westerners feel the same way, so that part is not so different.

I have a Chinese friend that has been with her boyfriend for almost three years; they have been dating long distance for two. She loves him. My friend comes from a fairly well to do family, her parents worked in the government. I have to imagine her boyfriend does as well since he goes to university in Moscow, which sounds expensive. Her mother does not think he is a suitable match for her though, because he does not come from enough money and will not make enough money, so she will not marry him, even though she wants to. She will marry whomever her mother tells her to, because she thinks her mother is always right. So she is fine with the idea of an arranged marriage for money, not love. I think it is especially interesting in her case, because her mother did not marry the man her parents told her to, she finished university instead and chose her own match.

Chinese men pay for everything here for their women, and the women's friends. Women want to have a boyfriend in university because it will save them a lot of money. It's strategy!

 

I have a prepaid phone here and when I receive texts telling me I am running low on funds, they come through in Chinese so I never know I will run out until it happens. I ran out the other day and a male Chinese friend of mine tried to call. Upon receiving the message back that my phone was off, he put enough money on it to last me probably at least six months (apparently all you need to do this is someone's phone number). I had no idea how my phone was working again, but my TA knew right away that a boy had paid for it. Never in my entire life have I had a many try to pay my phone bill, I felt like the beginnings of a kept woman!

high rises vs basements

China is crowded. Ridiculously crowded. Everywhere you look there are huge high rise buildings. In America these types of buildings are typically businesses, here 90% of the time they are apartments, and that percentage goes up the further out of a big city you get. Taking the train through the countryside you will randomly see clusters of identical high rises that are all apartments. Naturally most of the Chinese live in buildings such as these, due to the land to people ratio. Also, if they want to live near civilization, they must live in an apartment. They will often buy them though, and sometimes the buildings even have something similar to an HOA.

It's interesting how they build these immense complexes; if the plan is to have ten of the same building within the complex, they will not start and finish one and move on to the next, they will start all ten and take forever to finish them all.

Whether or not you can see them, there are ten cranes pictured here.

Apparently when many of these high rises were built, investors bought a large number of the apartments (a building is not built until all the money to do so is accounted for). Now they want to charge a very high rent for the Chinese to live in them, which the Chinese cannot afford. The investors will not sell because the market is down, so they hold these apartments and keep them vacant, instead of just lowering the asking rent to generate some income even if it is not the desired amount. Because of this, MANY of these high rises are completely empty.

This forces a lot of the Chinese to live in tiny, shared basements under the complexes. They sleep in large dormitory style rooms where they share bunk beds with people they do not know and share bathrooms with large numbers of strangers as well. They have virtually no personal space. If they are lucky enough to be able to afford a single room in a basement, it will not be nice.

The whole setup seems crazy and so unfortunate.

skinny Chinese

The other day, my replacement in TEDA and I were musing over how the Chinese could stay so thin, given the way they eat. As I have mentioned before, the Chinese over order to an extreme. For any given meal, I just expect to see about twice as much food as the table needs to eat. But the younger generations really don't work out much, certainly not as fanatically as many Westerners. And much of what the older generations do is more light exercise, like ballroom dancing, ping pong and badminton than more intense activities like basketball, lifting weights and running.

When we asked my former TA about this, she said that Chinese women are very concerned with staying thin. They want to look very bony and angular, what we would call sickly skinny. Apparently after a big meal or before bed, many of her friends will throw up what they have eaten. Or maybe they will just chew the food and not swallow when they eat. I don't know why I was so shocked to hear that many of them have eating disorders, but I was. I guess I thought it was genetics!

Beijing driving days

One thing I kind of love about Beijing (outside of 798) is the limited driving days. Since there are so many people, so many cars and so much traffic, everyone has one day a week (Monday through Friday) where they are cannot drive. This is dependent upon the last number of the license plates and rotates quarterly. So if your license plate number ends in 8, maybe January through March you will not be able to drive on Mondays, April through June you will not be able to drive Tuesdays, etc.

It seems like a good system to me, it encourages carpooling and is fair with the quarterly rotation, so everyone experiences the inconvenience on different days. No one is exempt, even if they must drive as part of their job (i.e. taxi driver, private driver, delivery driver).

This is actually the one traffic law that I have seen enforced here.

798 & the art hotel

Beijing I am not sold on; I would never want to live here or even stay for an extended period of time. But I am so completely sold on 798, I think could live in this little area (which is actually much larger than I initially thought). I'd have to become an eccentric writer or something, but I could probably manage that.

I'm sitting in a little second story cafe writing this morning and the ambiance is phenomenal. There's beautiful and random art all over, there was Spanish lounge music playing earlier but it has switched to the Beatles and there are two really sweet dogs and a kitten wandering around. They had the animals locked up and they were whining and sounded so sad I convinced the staff to let them out and now they're hanging out with me. I dig it.

Last night, I stayed at an "art hotel" that is a 20 minute walk down the street from 798. I checked a couple different places for a reasonable hotel to stay in that was in the city but in the same general direction as the airport, and this fit the bill and sounded interesting. I found it on Priceline, it didn't even show up on any of the Chinese websites I was looking at.

 

The hotel has three classes of rooms. They have the tiny cubbyhole looking rooms you think of when you think of China, which I almost stayed in for the experience, but you do not get your own bathroom and seeing as how I am about to head stay with a friend and her boyfriend for a week I figured I should enjoy a private bathroom while I had the chance. The next class of room is what I chose, an art room. They all have some kind of art taking up a whole wall and are small interior rooms. I wasn't planning to be in my room much, so it worked out quite nicely for me. The next class of room is really heavily themed art rooms that looked very cool. The design of the whole space of these is beautiful and they are all different. All of the rooms are pretty reasonable; I was definitely happy with the place! Maybe not the closest to any crazy clubbing nightlife, but that wasn't part of my plan for this trip anyway. I would stay here again.

Duh?

another adventure in Beijing: pt 3

After the game last night I stayed at my friend's sister's awesome apartment in Beijing.

In the interest of only being a small creep (as opposed to a major creep posting pictures of the inside of the apartment of people I just met), I'll just post this picture of their view of the center courtyard of their complex.

Today his brother in law left on a trip to Hong Kong and his sister had class, so we were left to our own devices. We headed over to 798 to explore. Even though I'd been before, 798 is definitely a place I could spend weeks in and not get bored, or see everything.

 

This was awesome; it's a hologram maze of a city!!!

Wall from the left...

...same wall from the right!

end of the maze

Racist much?

Tonight my friend had family time with his sister, so I did dinner solo in 798 and then a Chinese friend that I met in Tanggu who lives in Beijing met me out. We grabbed a few drinks in 798, but everything shuts down pretty early, so in the interest of doing something interesting but not staying out all night at a club we went to play pool. We played in the second basement level of a mall at a super crazy place you would never find not living in Beijing, and they randomly brought us watermelon.

Tomorrow I'm headed back to 798 solo again for more art before my flight to Korea tomorrow evening!

another adventure in Beijing: pt 2

Yesterday after I took my replacement around Tanggu a bit, I taught one final class, packed up my stuff and hopped a train to Beijing to meet my friend from Phoenix and his sister again. We were going to see the Beijing Guoan play the Brisbane Roar that evening at Workers Stadium, so it was very important for me to catch the right train. By the time I got through traffic and waited in line at the train station, there were only standing tickets left (same price though), but luckily my luggage made the perfect seat for me!

When I got off the train, I took a cab to the stadium to meet my friend, dropped my luggage in his sisters car and then we were in to see the game. We had amazing seats, third row, center field, due to some nifty connections my friend's sister has. The Guoan were supposed to get killed, but it was actually a really good game. Guoan scored first and the game ended 1-1. The fans get super into it; they dress up, chant, sing and have props, just like we do. They just seem to all be sober. The stadium is not set up like Western stadiums with vendors and such. There were just seats, bathrooms, a few odd people selling sodas and riot police. Everywhere.

The crowd over there was singing a song to the tune of "The Entertainer," ha.

They totally had the best seats in the house (they turned around and sat down during the game).

TEDA legacy

My replacement arrived in TEDA late Sunday evening. Monday I gave her the rundown on all the teaching she was taking over from me and at night we were able to get my TA to join us for a drink for my last night out.

My replacement is British. She is in her early twenties and has been traveling and doing odd jobs for the past year and a half, mostly around Australia. Australia has always been my dream place to go, but I want to go for an extended period of time not just a few week's holiday, so she was perfect to grill about that.

She had a lot of questions for me about life in Tanggu and general cultural differences in China as well, having never been here before. I feel like I scared her a bit, but hopefully I brought it back to a positive place! As far as life goes, I just stressed that she cannot rely on the TA and must get out on her own. I have been much happier the past few weeks getting out and about by myself, but it took me a while to figure that out. On Tuesday morning before I left, I took her around to all the malls and places she would want to visit regularly and gave her the expat magazines and such that would help her acclimate, so I think (cross my fingers for her) she's set up for success.

St. Patrick's Day

I had to teach all day yesterday, boo. And, turns out the Chinese don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day, which is not a shocker, since they don't really drink. Lucky for me (since it is my favorite holiday, tied with Halloween) the foreigners still do. The Irish bar down the street was still a good time last night. There was a Guinness promo girl there which made me laugh (because I do liquor promotions in the States, including Guinness) and provided me with a lovely hat!

The bad part is that I had to teach this morning too. At 9am. And unfortunately, while delicious, my spicy garlic noodles with mushrooms was not the best hangover food ever. I'd kill for some Spinato's right now...

more fun with food

Picking out fruit you don't know at the grocery store is always a good time; I have absolutely no idea how to judge the ripeness of these kinds of things. Not too firm but not too squishy?

 This fruit actually turned out to be something I'd had before. I had no clue until I cut it open. It is sweet but very light, almost refreshing. The black seeds are a little crunchy, but very small, like in a kiwi; they make the texture interesting. I like it!

 

I've started cooking in TEDA, and I use these and absolutely obscene amounts of garlic in everything I make.

fog makes me happy

We had actual fog the other day, not just smog. Crazy, awesome, Wisconsin style fog. It was beautiful; love it :)

View from my building on a clear day.

View from my building on a foggy day. Uh...