Life without music...

Justin and I were reflecting today on how drastically things have changed in the past three years in Beijing.  These changes have impacted nearly every aspect of daily life including things like ease of payment (you can now use a domestic debit card in at least 60% of restaurants/stores), variety and quality of restaurants, variety and quality of imported food and rising costs for nearly everything, just to name a few.  Another major change to add to the list is the number of international artists that have begun to include Beijing as a necessary stopping point on their world tours.  

Currently, Beijing is scheduled to host such internationally well-known recording artists as Kylie Minogue, Avril Lavigne, Linkin Park, Coldplay, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kanye West.  The city also has scheduled a number of large music festivals including many locally/nationally popular artists.

Here's the problem: there's no guarantee they will happen.  The dates for the Kanye West concert, to which I am very excited to now have tickets, have been changed at least three times.  Last year Celine Dion, a local goddess due to the success of Titanic in China, was scheduled to perform and "cancelled" at the last minute.  Most people here knew it was the government trying to avoid a foreigner with a microphone and a large crowd gathered together in a venue. This is partly thanks to Bjork publicly expressing her widely shared (and largely justified) political views at a concert last year in Shanghai.  Odds are she won't be invited back to China anytime soon.

The good sign is that these big artists are even on the schedule to perform here.  Venues have been set aside and tickets have been sold.  Not that this means anything in China, but at least it gives us hope that international variety in music might one day be at the caliber of the international food that we have so come to enjoy.  

"Without music life would be a mistake."  ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Kanye, welcome to China!

Toilet Trauma

Some of my most awkward moments in China have been spent in the bathroom.  I wish I could say that these moments had been spent solitarily, but alas, they have not.  They have been spent with maintenance men.

The reality of human waste carries much less social stigmatism in a country where, until recently, entire neighborhoods shared a common toilet facility.  That's not to say that the situation no longer exists, it absolutely does in many neighborhoods including the one below my apartment, but the majority of people in cities and even smaller towns live in high-rise apartments.  I have used these communal bathrooms many times, and they are anything but discreet.  They are most easily found by following one's sense of smell.  Upon entering, you normally find four or five holes in the floor.  That's all.  No walls, rarely plumbing.  So, needless to say, people are less squirmy about bathroom privacy or the thought/sight of human waste.

I could share a myriad of stories about embarrassing bathroom situations involving Chinese maintenance men including (but not limited to): falling through the plastic toilet seat cover and into the toilet and then being caught by a maintenance hero before tumbling to the floor all while trying to point out the desired height of a new shower head, having a maintenance man take apart my plumbing lines and a radiator in an effort to find the ring I later found in the powdered laundry detergent bag (while he was still there), and many involving galoshes, toilet snakes, plungers, and lakes of poo - one of the most scarring included the entire hotel staff crammed inside my hotel room watching the whole affair.

Today I had a less embarrassing experience, but very typical one, in which I spent an hour sitting on the floor of the bathroom drinking my coffee while a maintenance man took apart my entire toilet at least twice.  Each time he emptied the entire toilet tank's contents of water all over the floor.  Wonderful.

The problem: recently my toilet has been taking a really long time to recover after being flushed and it doesn't have very good water pressure to start with.  So, it takes multiple flushes to take care of business (often with a smelly waiting period in between). This gets embarrassing when a guest has to use the toilet and ends up panicking in the bathroom for ten minutes. 

Any experience with a maintenance man first starts with a phone call to the operator either of the apartment office or hotel front desk.  This can be the most trying part of the whole saga.  Explaining plumbing problems over the phone is no easy task for someone who doesn't understand plumbing in any language, but trying to explain them in Chinese brings an awkward conversation to a whole new level.  Luckily today's problem wasn't an emergency, because that is even less fun.  

Today's conversation (translated from the original Chinese):

April: Hello?

Operator: Hello?

April: Hi, I have a problem with my toilet.  (I would like to note here that I am 100% confident that I know the Chinese word for "toilet" and used it properly throughout this conversation.)

Operator: With what part of your bathroom?

April: The toilet.

Operator: Where in the bathroom?

April: Where?  In my toilet!

Operator: What's the problem?  

April: There's a problem with the water, when you use it there's not enough and it is really slow.

Operator: Is the faucet broken?

April: No, it's a toilet.

Operator: Is there a problem with the hot water or the cold water?

April: There is no hot or cold water, it's a toilet, it's just regular water but it's really slow.

Operator: Well, what's the problem?

April: I don't know, I just told you the problem, I'm not exactly sure what's wrong or how to say it.

-----long pause-----

Operator: Are you home now?

April: Yes.  Can you send someone to look at it?

Operator: Okay, I'll send someone now.

April: Thank you.

The final verdict in today's chapter was that I need a new part.  One thing's for sure, dealing with operators and maintenance men is trying, but tracking down plumbing parts on your bicycle in a city void of The Real Yellow Pages and then trying to bargain for the real price when you don't even know the name of the thing in English, much less Chinese, is enough to make anyone crazy. Happy hunting to me! 

Fragrant Hills Park

My students, mostly college aged, asked me last week if I would like to meet them at 8am on Saturday morning to go to Fragrant Hills Park and see the fall foliage.  Having never experienced autumn anywhere outside of Beijing, this is the only tradition I have ever participated in: the yearly pilgrimage to see fall leaves.  In previous years we have heard stories of how packed the most famous park, Fragrant Hills park, is and have avoided it at all costs, settling for lesser known outlets.  However, this year, I decided to take them up on it and experience this epic tourist journey in full Chinese style.  Justin, in an effort to support me and my career, came along.

I am chronically late, but Justin and I were on time, which I cannot say for my students.  Having lived in Beijing for 2 1/2 years, we are seasoned veterans compared to many of them.  They have come to the "big city" to study English and are constantly getting lost on buses.  At about 9am we were all together and boarded a public bus (after having waited in a longer line to have the priviledge of seats, of course).  An hour later we arrived and plunged into the current of humanity streaming up the stairs to the top of the mountain.  Conversation was interesting as my students tried their best to make small talk with Justin and I.  At one point, one of them asked me if there were this many people in America.  I, of course, told her "no", trying to imagine a Disney World line - including vendors, pushing, and litter - along the Appalachian Trail.  She told me that Chinese people have had to learn to see the beauty in other people's faces, as well as in nature, which I thought was a pretty good technique.

Some of my students (and me)

This sign says "Hard Work Room", one of my students suggested Justin have his picture taken here after she saw him sending work emails on a Saturday

After an hour or two we got to the top, spread out some paper on the ground and ate lunch.  The students asked Justin and I to teach them an American card game so we taught them "Spoons".  The consequence for losing was a dare, and they had a blast coming up with embarrasing things to make each other do.  Actually, they had a blast waiting for Justin and I to think of things. 

A few hours later, when it became clear they wanted to stay until nightfall, we excused ourselves and took the cable car back down.

View of Beijing

We're always on the outside in our Chinese tourism experiences, so for once, it was nice to be treated as one of the bunch.  I only had two random people ask to take their picture with me all day.  ;-)

National Day - Chengdu and Leshan

After Songpan we headed back to Chengdu, the capitol of Sichuan, and from there went to LeShan to see "Dafo" an unbelievable 71-meter high representation of Buddha carved into the side of a mountain in 713 AD.  Here we did run into some tourists, but I can't imagine how bad it would normally be.  Dafo looks over a large body of water, so first we took a boat to get a glimpse from beneath him, then we hiked up next to his head.  

All Aboard!  During peak season you can see the boat tipping as tourists rush to the side closest to Dafo to take pictures.  Yikes!

The next day we left bright and early to get a chance to see China's most lovable creature, the panda, which Sichuan is most famous for.  We got there while they were still eating and they were beautiful.  The best part was the baby nursery, where the cutest little guys were being loved on by the staff.  Unfortunately, photos were not permitted in that area. 

Mom and baby 

A very friendly panda

The highlight of a trip to Sichuan is the spicy food and we enjoyed quite a bit of it.  Sichuan food is described as "ma la" which means "numb and spicy", and that's an excellent description.  Sichuan people believe that in the summer it's best to eat spicy food because it makes you sweat which cools you down.  The weather was cold while we were there, so I'm not sure what the theory is then, but we were definitely sweating.

Overall it was a great trip.  Wonderful food, beautiful scenery, unique experiences.

National Day - Songpan

Next we headed off to Songpan, a small town in northern Sichuan. (Tourism was so bad that the driver that had brought us from the airport to Jiuzhaigou hung around the hotel for two days to take us.)  We had a great time checking out the local architecture, drinking tea, talking to friendly people (in addition to Han and Tibetan, there is also a large Muslim community here) and exploring a local slaughterhouse. 

Muslim men relaxing by the city wall

Some little friends

I wish I could say no animals were harmed in the making of this blog... 

A very old Tibetan man took 30 minutes to show Justin this incredible horn, and the whole town got to hear Justin try it out.  He and his wife then invited us to share their dinner.

Making wool quilts

After a day exploring the town, we set off into the mountains on a three day horse trek with two local guides.  This was the ultimate camping experience: the horses carried everything and the guides set up camp, got firewood, cooked food, etc. so we basically relaxed the whole time.  People say Songpan is the true beginning of the Tibetan culture, and they are right.  We travelled through many small Tibetan villages where the traditional dress is worn and monks roam around town.

Yakity - Yak don't talk back!

Setting up camp

I'm not the only one who needed a change of shoes after a long day

A very little cowboy

Wild strawberries, yum!

Tibetan prayer wheels

Our guides: Li Yuan Bo and Yei Feng Hao

National Day - Jiuzhaigou

National Day holiday is October 1st in China and it's one of two week long holidays where the entire country is free from school/work at the same time.  Usually we try to get OUT of the country in order to avoid the nightmare which is inevitable when 1.3 billion tourists are on the move.  This year we had hoped to go to Laos or Cambodia with Stacey and Derek again, but due to the guys last minute notice on work schedules it didn't work out.   SO, we ended up going to Sichuan province which unfortunately had a devastating earthquake hit earlier this year, but because of that disaster the tourists were few and far between, which was (selfishly) fortunate for us.

We flew into Chengdu, the capitol of Sichuan and then headed to Jiuzhaigou the next morning.  Due to a total freak incident, perhaps because we were the only foreigners at the entire airport, we ended up in first class - both of us for the first time ever.  This enjoyable experience was shortlived however, due to the fact that the flight was only 45 minutes long.  Oh well, it was great to be jet-setters for a brief stint.  

Flyin' in style

Jiuzhaigou has a famous National Park which is absolutely breathtaking.  In a country where environmental concerns have not been at the top of the priority list, it was amazing to see a place so well preserved and protected.  We spent the day hiking various trails and being overwhelmed by the range of colors present in nature.  Northern Sichuan's elevation is between 3000 - 4000 meters, so we were feeling some of the effects with shortness of breath and headaches.