Hoi An to Hue

Before leaving Hoi An I met a girl from Boston. We hung out in bars, the cheap ones with the $0.25 draft beers, and chatted a lot. It was nice talking to someone from Boston, but she was very career focused. It got annoying talking about jobs and school and real world things like taxes and insurance. Sheesh. I also find I'm getting really sick of running the 'just met while traveling in SE Asia' script. How long have you been traveling? Where are you from? Where have you been? How much longer do you have? Where's next? What do you do back home? I've met some great people and had interesting conversations, but the introductions wear me down, and I'm sick of talking about why I dislike China and why I'm no longer working at the UN. Actually, I don't like bringing up the UN at all. It always gets a "Really? Wow!" response, and it always feels like I'm bragging. The only time I don't mind is when someone asks me whether I'm teaching English in China. It's the same thing with school. If someone asks me where I went to school I always answer Boston, and only MIT if they follow up. But saying I work in China always leads to the next question.

I collected all of my clothing before leaving Hoi An. Of the 10 shirts, jacket, and pair of shoes I bought, the only thing I was really unhappy with was the tux shirt. I may do another one in China. I had a hard time explaining stud eyelets to them, the collar isn't as stiff as I'd like, and the fabric I picked sort of makes it look like a curtain. Since that last part was my fault, I paid for the thing, but I'll probably never wear it. I don't know whether I mentioned before, but for one of the more casual button-up shirts I ordered I picked a blue and orange striped fabric, and for some bizarre reason they made the stripes horizontal instead of vertical. I tried it on, and it looked ok. I had half a mind to make them re-do it, but I thought that maybe it'd grow on me, and all of my shirts are vertically striped, so I kept it.

I took a bus to Hue. I paid $4 for the 3 hour trip, which turned out to be almost twice as much as I could have paid.

I could talk a lot about Hue, but I'll keep it short. My hotel on the first night was a too-expensive $9. Its redeeming feature was the fact that it was on the 5th floor, a one floor walkup from the elevator to the 4th. Next to my room, one of 2 on the floor, was a ladder bolted to the wall, leading up to a skylight that opened up. At night I took a little bottle of Vodka Hanoi up and sat perched on the edge of the window, looking down on the city.

Hue was the site of some of the fiercest fighting in the war, which I didn't know until I left the city and started reading a book called Dispatches. It's the old imperial capital, and the ancient part of the city is surrounded by a citadel with towering, meters-thick walls that go on for 10km. During the Tet Offensive, NVA regulars took the city and flew their flag over the citadel for weeks before the US could retake it. It was street to street combat with incredible losses, said to be one marine for every meter captured.

In the battle, and in a previous Viet Minh-French battle a decade or more earlier, the city took heavy damage from air strikes and shelling. The Thai Hoa Palace, Vietnam's equivalent of the Forbidden City, is mostly leveled to a foundation covered in grass, despite the hesitance of the US military to target it. What's left has been restored and reworked, and out front flies a huge Vietnamese flag. It's interesting for me to compare Vietnam's palace with the Forbidden City. The two-story gate here looks tiny in comparison to Tiananmen. The courtyards in China in which the emperor could review his mandarins and troops would hold armies, while the courtyard here would fit into a soccer stadium. Instead of 27 steps, split by a huge tablet carved with dragons, leading up to the Chinese throne, there are 3 unornamented steps here. It's fairly obvious where the power in the region was during the imperial days.

Pandas and jackhammers

I don't have much to say about this, but I thought it was interesting.

The city of Beijing just opened an elevated tunnel. The goal is to ease traffic that snarls up as cars try to move between the West second and third ring road. This sounds perfectly normal, and much like the bypass any other city might build.

The difference is that this tunnel passes over the Beijing City Zoo, and it's supposedly soundproofed to protect the animals. I haven't been to the zoo. Scot hasn't been to this one, either, but he says that zoos in China are the most appalling he's seen. This particular zoo is home to China's premier panda exhibit, however, so I hope that the high profile keeps them honest. I'm curious whether the efforts to soundproof the tunnel will pay off, but I wonder more about what the animals went through while they were building the damn thing.

"The" way vs. "A" way

From James Fallows's (Atlantic Monthly writer) blog:

This is not a scientific comparison, but when i saw one scene I remembered another.

This is the recent scene: yesterday afternoon, Naha airport, Okinawa, Japan. Line crew gassing up a Cirrus SR22:



Details to notice below: crew identically dressed in company uniform; complete safety gear -- hardhats, reflective chest straps with procedural checklist clipped on, puffy protective cuff to shield the plane's wing from damage. It's hard to see in the picture, but even the boots are part of the uniform: black, with red laces, and company logos on the back. Impossible to see in the picture: the coordinated shout and semi-bow toward the plane when the fueling was done.




Now, the scene I remembered and mentioned last year: Refueling the same kind of plane in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, China.



With usual caveats against sweeping generalization, what this made me think was: Japan is all about the way of doing things. Practice, ritual, perfectionism, as much fanatical attention to the process as to the result. China is all about finding a way to do things. Improvisation, little interest in rules, putting up with whatever is necessary to attain the result.

(Yeah yeah yeah, there are exceptions: perfectionist operations in China, loosey-goosey ones in Japan. Still.)

At the moment, I am feeling positive toward both approaches. The emphasis on the right way of doing things is re-surprising on each encounter with Japan. And the determination to do things in China, no matter what, commands respect, despite the obvious complications and problems it creates.

But when it comes to refueling the plane....

My coworker James lives in one of the fancy expat apartments near my place. He pays about 10x as much for his rent, and the apartment IS much nicer than mine. He says he likes renting there, but he'd hate to own it. The power outlet covers are on at slight angles, the hardwood floor isn't sealed, the faucets wobble, etc. Whoever actually bought the apartment (presumably prepaid for it) got a seriously sub-standard construction job, in what's one of the nicer places in the city. I don't know how much of it's a lack of pride in one's work and how much of it's the fact that it was built by untrained migrant laborers.

Living the dream

It's taken me a while, but I've increasingly come to a simple conclusion- I hate China. I'm willing to accept that I may just hate Beijing, since in reality I haven't spent much time in other parts of the country, but I definitely hate something.

Let me start with the Beijing-specific.

Who builds a megacity, a seat of power over an exploding (I'll not say booming) economy, here? It's perched on the edge of the world's biggest desert. It's not at the mouth of a navigable river, or on a strategic port. It's far enough North that the winters are brutal, made worse by the complete lack of moisture to retain heat at night. It's in a valley that traps pollution, so when the sky isn't sleet-grey it's tinged with the browns and yellows of poisons.

The accent in Beijing is jarring. Spoken Chinese can hardly be described as a beautiful language, at least to our Western sensibilities, but even in China the Beijing accent is considered the worst. Imagine, if you will, taxi drivers who are incapable of understanding "Park the car in Harvard Yard", and need the proper accent applied to the sentence for a glimmer of recognition to flutter in their alcohol-shot eyes. Beijing-hua is best spoken with a nasal whine, with a liberal application of Rs to the ends of words.

There is disturbing poverty within a literal stone's-throw of the Great Hall of the People. I'll post pictures of the slums South of Tiananmen soon, but they're truly decrepit. This a block from the black-tinted windows of the black Audis with black government plates.

I live in a rich neighborhood, surrounded by expats and the wealthiest Chinese. Not 30 minutes ago I was in Jenny Lou's, a grocery store that caters to foreigners with its imported goods. The faceless and absent Mrs. Lou is a despicable bitch, however, and would gladly gut your children for an extra dollar's profit. Nevertheless, the place has a monopoly on Triscuits and Macaroni, so we foreign devils pay our king's ransom and smile as she twists the knife. I did not, you'll note, restrictively refer to myself and my foreign colleagues as 'capitalist running dogs' or 'capitalist roaders'. I think it should be clear why. I can understand why foreigners, far from home, would fork over wads of cash for longed-for luxuries. I cannot, however, understand why Chinese locals will pay the same obscene markups for vegetables, fruit, and meats that are no different from those at the Chinese grocer down the street. Watching the Chinese couple in front of me pay $150 for a grocery bill (an astronomic sum nearly equal to a month's salary for your average white-collar Beijing worker), I saw no other option but to dump my loose change into the cups of the beggars outside the store.

The spitting. I have no way of describing it for those of you who haven't visited. There are 3 sounds I'm unable to escape: construction, horns, and HAAAGHH. It's not polite spitting, it's lung-clearing, projectile expulsions. Sometimes a gentleman in a suit will stop on the sidewalk, plug one nostril with a finger, close his mouth, and exhale sharply.

If you're not dodging phlegm, you're dodging cigarette butts (still lit), taxi bumpers, and bicyclists on cell phones.

Beer is expensive and disgusting. Daria and I had drinks at my coworker James's place last weekend, and I felt great the next morning. I'd gotten used to Chinese hangovers, caused by impure alcohol with all its formaldehyde and God knows what. Drinking imported Western liquor, even in quantities, is healthy by comparison. Tsingtao has almost no flavor, no bubbles, no color, and no alcohol. Besides a mild, soapy aftertaste, what's the point? I'm simply unable to drink Chinese liquor. Some pansy-ass Chinese gentleman informed me it was because Western men weren't 'used to' such strong alcohol (the Chinese is more like 'capable of being used to'). I responded by pulling out a hip flask of scotch and inviting him to try what Western men drank. That's another thing- the cultural elitism. China is great, grand, and flawless. I understand that they're restricted in their exposure to media, but the logical disconnect between wanting to be like us and thinking that they're already far superior to us is sort of mind-boggling.

Environmental bombardment. The air hurts, the people make me sick, the noise is penetrating. When I went to Thailand, what amazed me the most was the skies. I'd honestly forgotten that sky was so blue and that clouds were so fluffy. Isn't that depressing?

I go on about the little things that I hate about living here, and it really is little things that build up to make it intolerable, but the worst is that I don't know what's good about this place- I just can't find it. The food can be good. There are occasionally things that are cool, like the red stars on granite, but then I realize that they're cool because they're symbols for things that are blessedly-absent at home.

I've had fun on some of the days when I've been a tourist. There are breathtakingly beautiful buildings and parks here, you just have to seek them out. The problem is that they're not integrated into the city. It's not like Central Park, or the Common, where you just walk through as you get out of the subway on your way to work. To get into the Summer Palace, or even pedestrian Chaoyang Park, you have to pay an entry fee and fight through the throngs of tourists. There is great beauty here, but it's all labeled as such and priced accordingly.

All of this, plus a lack of job satisfaction, an absence of good friends, and steadily declining weight (and health?) combine to make me strongly consider moving back home in the spring. I'm still weighing options, and I think I've found a good English teaching gig here, but I don't know whether the investment of time and mental health will pay off in terms of Chinese learned and resulting career benefits. As much as I was eager to get out of Boston, I think about it rather fondly from here. So besides looking at teaching jobs here I'm looking at lab positions in NYC, Boston, and San Francisco. I don't know how I'll make the eventual decision.

Rules of the Road, Beijing Style

Unfortunately, none of the material in this post is mine. I found and edited the Rules of the Road, and I received the diagrams and descriptions in an email from a friend. No one seems to know where they originated from.

Rules of the Road, Beijing

1. Me First

2. Impeding the progress of others is equivalent to making progress yourself

5. (for taxis): Road rules can be violated at will, except when (a) there is a police vehicle in the vicinity; or (b) the passenger suggests violating a rule, at which point rules must be followed

6. The vehicle traveling straight on an unimpeded roadway never has the right-of-way

7. If ever in doubt about what to do in a driving situation, refer to rule #1

To introduce you to the intricacies of Beijing driving, I will start with a relatively simple concept: the left turn.

STEP 1:



We see here a typical intersection. The light has just turned green for the east-west streets, and car [A], an enormous black Lexus with pitch black windows, wants to make a left turn into the southbound lanes. Pedestrians wait on each corner. (For purposes of this demonstration, we'll assume no one is running the north-south red light, and no one is jaywalking - a rather large assumption.)

STEP 2:



To make a left turn, it is VITAL that [A] cut off all eastbound traffic as soon as possible. The first few brave or foolish legitimate pedestrians step off the curb; this is of no concern. [A] makes his move.

STEP 3:



NO! Too slow! [A] has managed to partially block [B], a brand new purple and yellow Hyundai taxi, but [A] has only achieved what Beijing drivers would consider a 'weak' blocking position.

STEP 4:



In this detail, we can see why: [A] has only inserted his left bumper and cannot move forward without contact. [B], on the other hand, is in the dominant position - by putting his wheel hard to the right and flooring it, he can fully block [A].

STEP 5:



[B] proceeds to swerve right, cutting off [C], a tiny red Peugeot with a gold plastic dragon hood ornament, spoiler and assorted knobs glued on. Since [B] is just accelerating, and [C] is now decelerating, this has created a low-density 'dead space' in the intersection. [D], a strange blue tricycle dumptruck carrying what appear to be 40 of the world's oldest propane tanks, sees this and makes a move.

STEP 6:



DENIED! [E], an old red taxi with its name sloppily stenciled in white on its doors, has boldly cut across two lanes of traffic, behind [D], and then swerved right, driving [D] into an extremely weak position behind [A]. Meanwhile, [B] and [C] are still fighting for position, with [C] muscling his way into the crosswalk. The only thing between [E] and a successful left turn is a few lawful pedestrians. [E] steps on the gas...

STEP 7:



...and is cut off by [F], an elderly man pedaling his tricycle verrrryyy slooooowwwly with a 15-foot-diameter sphere of empty plastic cooking oil bottles bungee-corded haphazardly to the cargo area. He was part of the lawful pedestrians, but seeing the stalled traffic, decided to cut diagonally across the intersection. Not only has [F] blocked [E], he is headed straight at [B], giving [C] the edge he needs.

STEP 8:




[B] concedes to [C], who drives in the crosswalk behind [F] and blocks [E]. Meanwhile, [G], a herd of about 20 bicycles, mopeds, pedestrians and wheelbarrows, sensing weakness in the eastbound lane and seeing that much of the westbound traffic is blocked behind [D], breaks north against the light. [F] pedals doggedly onward at about 2 miles per hour, his face like chiseled marble.

STEP 9:



Now things get interesting. [C] has broken free and, as the first vehicle to get where he was going, wins. [E] makes a move to block [B] but, like [A] at the start of the left turn, only gains a 'weak' block. [A] has cleverly let [F] pass and guns into a crowd of [G], which both moves [A] forward and drives some [G] stragglers into the path of [D], clearing [A]'s flanks. Little now stands between [A] and a strong second-place finish.

STEP 10:



Except for public bus [H], one of those double buses with the accordion-thing connector. [H] has been screaming unnoticed along the eastbound sidewalk and now careens dangerously into a U-turn. This doesn't appear to concern the 112 people packed inside and pressed against the windows (although that could be due to a lack of oxygen.) [H] completely blocks both [A] and [D]. On the other side of the intersection, [B] has swerved into the lawful pedestrians (who aren't important enough to warrant a letter) and has gained position on [E].

[E] has forgotten the face of his father: He was so focused on his battle with [B] that he lost sight of the ultimate goal and is now hopelessly out of position.

This clears the path for dark horse [I], a blue Buick Lacrosse, to cut all the way across behind [H] and become the second vehicle to get where he was going (and the first to complete a left turn), since [F] has changed his mind again and is now gradually drifting north into the southbound lanes. But everyone better hurry, because the light is about to change...

STEP 11:



STEP 12:



And we're ready to start over.

Below, some real pictures of Chinese traffic:





edit: It's the small things in the story that make it art, in my mind- The old man on the bike with a face like chiseled marble, the Audi gunning it into pedestrians, the tiny tiny red Peugeot with a gold plastic dragon hood ornament, spoiler and assorted knobs. The author zeroed in on some great stereotypes.

Who IS that masked laowai?

Mask Week is a not-a-protest being organized by some guys on the That's Beijing forums.

The idea is simple.
1. Buy a mask. (The best one possible to protect you from air pollutants) Still, simple cloth masks, although not very effective can still raise awareness. You can buy them cheaply in local pharmacies, supermarkets and so on.
2. From the time you wake up on the 17th to the time you go to bed on the 24th wear a mask whenever you go outside. Just live your daily life but when you step out the door, wear a mask. (Yes we realize that indoor air pollution is more dangerous because it is concentrated but this is aiming at outdoor air pollution.)

...

Mask Week's goal is to promote dialogue about air pollution's dangers and its consequences. For many people who have grown up with air pollution, having gray skies and smog is "just the way it is." Many say they are used to it and others simply say there is nothing that can be done. Meanwhile, babies are being born defective, cancer is rising, and people are dying prematurely because of at least in part from air pollution. Mask Week is to get people moving. To stop people from accepting air pollution as the way things have to be. Talking to others is an important first step to change. And this is what Mask Week seeks to do. Get people talking about solutions so that more and more people can live happy and healthy lives.

I, for one, will be wearing a cheap, ineffective paper mask, starting on 11/17 ('yao yao yao qi', which also means 'want want want air').

Buy Prada, support the Motherland!

The whole video is an interesting look at Xinjiang, China's western-most, largest, and maybe most resource-rich province. I knew that China had been sending ethnic Han workers out to the province's cities to 'dilute' the Muslim influence and try to bring the population more into line with the rest of the country, and this documentary touches on the issue.

My favorite part, though, is the swearing-in ceremony of new Communist Party members in the last minute or so. They swear to fight for communism with all their might, at the same time wearing imported clothing in Western styles.

Also, while looking for work today, I found a middle school searching for a business teacher. "Remember, kids. China's a communist country. Buy Prada, support the motherland!"

I wonder whether I can hold my breath for 2 more months.

According to SEPA, the Chinese government environmental agency, today's Air Pollution Index is 253, a 4B rating.

Let's see what the good folk at SEPA have to say about such a rating:

4B, 251-300, Moderate-heavy polluted. The symptoms of the cardiac and lung disease patients aggravate remarkably, and the exercise endurance drop lower. The healthy crowds popularly appear some symptoms. The aged, cardiac and lung disease patients should stay indoors and reduce physical activities.

Let's look over at our friends at the US EPA. They calculate API on the same 0-500 scale as SEPA. What do they have to say about a 253 score?

Now, while the scale used is the same, it's normalized differently. 100 is set as the baseline, acceptable level of a pollutant. It took some digging to try to match these scales, since standards are recorded in different units and different time scales in different places. I settled on the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for EPA data, and Environmental Air Quality Standard (GB3095-1996) (word document, in Chinese) for SEPA. Here's my comparison:

Ozone:
EPA used to use a 1-hour averaging measurement, with the normal level set at 0.235mg/m3. In 2005 the EPA revoked the 1-hour measurement in favor of a more meaningful 8-hour average, and lowered the acceptable level to 0.176mg/m3 averaged over the 8 hours.

SEPA uses a 1-hour averaging measurement, with the normal level set at .2mg/m3. So while their standard is lower then the EPA's old 1-hour standard, it's generally considered an inadequate measure.

Particulate Matter (PM):

The EPA measures two kinds of particulates, PM10 and PM2.5. PM10 is 10 microns across or less, and PM2.5 is 2.5 microns across or less. Allowable levels are .15mg/m3 and .035mg/m3 respectively.

SEPA also measures PM10, and has an identical allowable level, but does not measure PM2.5.

PM10 is about 1/4 the diameter of a grain of salt. It's small dust, basically. It gets into your lungs and inflames them, clogging things up. You cough and hack, but my impression is that your body flushes it out. PM2.5 is considered more dangerous- it goes into your blood stream, relatively unfiltered by your respiratory tract. So while the PM10 standards are the same here, PM2.5 is ignored in China.

Carbon monoxide (CO):

Carbon monoxide affects the respiratory, cardiovascular, and central nervous systems. The EPA allows 40mg/m3 an hour, and SEPA only allows 10mg/m3 an hour. This seems like a much more stringent standard, but more on that later.

NO2 and SO2-

This is harder to compare. EPA uses an annual average of .1mg/m3 for NOx, all nitrous oxides, and SEPA uses a .12mg/m3 limit of NO2 per day. So the timeframe is different, as are the exact pollutants allowed. It's normal for the hour number to be higher than the day which is higher than the year, the idea being that your body can take a quick shock more than prolonged exposure.

Similarly, SEPA uses .15mg/m3 a day for SO2, where the EPA uses .364mg/m3 a day for SOx. This to me seems to be the one category where SEPA's standards are stricter.

Conclusions-

The allowable levels seem to be slightly lower for pollutants in China. Here's the kicker, though: While SEPA has these standards, their monitoring center only measures SO2, NO2, and PM. So their stricter CO standards don't seem to factor in, and apparently neither does their O3 limit. This seems significant to me. Only as I was walking into my apartment today did I identify the smell- ozone. So after a bunch more reading, including the formulas for pollution index calculation, I still don't know how comparable the numbers are. Let's stretch and say they correlate perfectly, and read what the EPA has to say about a pollution index of 253:

Very Unhealthy 201-300 Health alert: everyone may experience more serious health effects.

Particulate Matter: People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should avoid all physical activity outdoors. Everyone else should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion.

Ozone: Active children and adults, and people with respiratory disease, such as asthma, should avoid all outdoor exertion; everyone else, especially children, should limit outdoor exertion.

In other words, hold your breaths. I'm looking forward to moving somewhere the sun isn't a red disk in a sleet-grey sky.

I can't see the ground 14 floors down.

This is from one of my favorite China bloggers, Imagethief:

Proving that there is no idea so unoriginal that it can't be rejuvenated by making it bigger, Beijing has announced plans for a colossal Ferris wheel. This, it is claimed, will be larger than both the famous London Eye (destroyed by the Fantastic Four in a recent movie, I recall) and the Singapore Flyer, which Imagethief has often fantasized seeing break free from its moorings and roll across the straits to Batam.

From 208 meters above Chaoyang Park you are guaranteed a spectacular view of, well, Chaoyang Park. But to tantalize you, the China Daily has included this 3D rendering of the proposed wheel of joy pictured before a suspiciously clear sky:



In fact, it's so suspiciously clear that I did a little digging, and sure enough, have found this other, well hidden rendering that depicts the wheel in actual Beijing conditions:



Fun!

From my own perspective (literally, as I can see that spot from my window) I imagine this will be quite an eyesore. Chaoyang Park, and the neighboring embassy district, are the one wooded, green part of town for a fair distance. I've joked about this before, but I'll do it again. Chaoyang Park is the largest park in Asia (I mistakenly told my dad the world.) I live on Chaoyang Park West Road. Central Park West in NYC is abbreviated CPW. I live on Beijing's CPW. This is relevant now as a comparison. Can you imagine the uproar if all of the New Yorkers who paid top dollar for a park view apartment were going to get to look at a huge, garishly-lit, carnival ride instead of their sanity-preserving trees? And believe me, it will be garishly lit.

In fact, the road to hell.

There are jackhammers going outside my apartment.

It's midnight.

Seriously, people, this is not the road to the future.

edit: I had originally written, "road to civilization", but I think that's inaccurate.

Extinguishing the light at the end of the tunnel, 2

From an email from my father:

I had actually just read your post about the subway fare reduction and crowding. Sounds frustrating. Of course, if they want to get people out of the cars, they should leave subway fares alone, and charge a fee for cars to enter the city. This city-wide congestion pricing was successfully pioneered in London, which currently has a 8-pound/day fee.

Vehicles license plates are monitored by camera- there are no tollbooths, tickets or tokens. Payment made at various stores throughout the city is "self-enforced," but non-payment within 48 hours leads to a 150-pound charge.

You probably heard of this, but the details and success measures are interesting.

Alternatively, they could follow your suggestion but have "First Class" subway cars rather than a universal far increase (this is akin to a high-speed toll lane on the highway, now being implemented in some US cities).

Counterfeit $2.64 bills

When I tried to pay for my lunch on Saturday, the restaurant I frequent wouldn't take the 20RMB ($2.64) note I handed them. Actually, I didn't even finish handing the bill over before they rejected it; it was a pretty obvious counterfeit. I had gotten the bill the night before while out at a fancy lounge. The lounge has two girls sitting at a desk with a UV lamp and a bright visible spectrum lamp checking incoming bills, so it's not really possible that the money I was given in change came from the till by accident. Somewhere between the till and my hands the fake 20 had to have been switched in and the real one pocketed, so that means it was probably the waitress. It was dark and I was drinking, and I don't usually check bills under 50RMB anyway, even though they apparently even make fake 5RMB notes. Fortunately I had enough coins and small bills at the restaurant to pay for lunch, otherwise I would have had to go to a bank and come back. They know me there, so it probably would have been fine, but it was irritating.

I've decided to keep the counterfeit note rather than to try to just spend it. The typical attitude towards a fake bill here is one of annoyance. It's not usually a real loss, you just have to keep trying to pass it until someone takes it, then it's their problem.

I had hoped to write something here about statistics on counterfeiting in China versus the rest of the world, but no one seems to have the numbers. There are reports in newspapers of huge sting operations seizing millions of dollars worth of fake Chinese currency, but that's all released by the Chinese government in official Chinese government-owned newspapers, and there doesn't seem to be anything recently. The general consensus on the street is that with the rise of cheap printing technology, counterfeiting is worse here than ever.

Extinguishing the light at the end of the tunnel

Last week, after returning to Beijing from my vacation (chronicled here in pictures, but perhaps never to be typed up in the blog), I was ecstatic to discover that in addition to opening a new subway line, the price of tickets had actually been lowered, from 3RMB to 2. I was gleeful, to say the least.

My glee was poorly thought out, as such emotions tend to be. In addition to the new line servicing its own area, it brought a huge increase to the number of people transferring to and riding the 2 existing lines. A China Daily article quotes city officials who say that the passenger volume has increased by 46% since the opening of the new line, "an immediate positive impact." Of course this increase in passenger load has made morning commutes almost unbearable, and even Sunday afternoon rides unpalatable.

The city announced earlier in the year that it will bring 264 new subway cars into service and cut waiting times for every line in order to make public transit more comfortable and appealing. They also seem to recognize that more lines are needed to make the subway a good choice for most commuters. They plan 4 more lines by 2010, bringing the total to 7, and a total of 19 lines covering 560 km by 2020, making the network the largest in the world. Of course, reducing the fare by 33% means reducing their revenues by nearly the same amount, costing the government an estimated $130 million a year on top of existing subsidies.

Meanwhile, as long as the experience underground is miserable and crowded, more people will be driven towards the great Chinese dream of the decade- car ownership. People who can afford a car are not going to be won over by a 1RMB price decrease. Cars are partly status symbols, but they're also (delusionally) perceived as convenient and comfortable compared to other forms of transportation in the city. To paraphrase a poster in a Beijing expat message board commenting on the price drop, the city won't persuade a single driver to switch over, they lost a third of their revenue, and they made the subway a living hell. Brilliant.

I'm also going to steal a potential solution from that same forum thread and expand on it a little. Don't decrease the fare, increase it. Make it 10RMB a ride, a 400% increase from the new price, and a luxury experience. Provide a hot cup of soy milk and a fried dough stick in the morning, an evening paper on the way home, and make the ride comfortable. If they want to reduce pollution and improve traffic they need to bring rich people down out of their cars, not take poor people off of their bikes and out of the buses. It shouldn't be too hard a sell. Drivers sit in traffic that's getting worse by the day. Surely reading a newspaper in an air conditioned, well-appointed subway carriage as they're whisked to work is a better solution. The poor people were doing fine with their buses and their bikes until the cars arrived and tangled up traffic. A huge price increase doesn't seem to be helping the poor people, but I think in the grand scheme it is.

River crabs

I'm blatantly stealing this post from imagethief, a highly regarded China blogger I read. He links to Rebecca MacKinnon's blog and quotes this:

In China these days, if your website gets blocked, your blog-hosting service takes down a politically edgy post you wrote, or your ISP deletes your site completely, you say: "I've been harmonized." The word for harmony, harmonized, or harmonious (all the same word in Chinese) is pronounced "he xie" in Chinese and is written like this: 和谐. For those without Chinese fonts on their browser.

However, there's a slight problem, which is that since this phrase is so often used sarcastically on Chinese blogs and forums, it has been flagged as a sensitive keyword by many of the blog and forum hosting platforms, increasing the chances that a post using this phrase could itself get "harmonized." So bloggers and chatroom denizens have switched the characters to another phrase, 河蟹, also pronounced "he xie" (with slightly different tonation) which means "river crab".

Thus, when bloggers seem to be writing nonsensically about "river crab," they're actually talking about censorship.

Imagethief also notes that Chinese is an excellent language for puns.

Convictions for Sale

An article in the NYT and the IHT today discusses American investment in Chinese companies developing sophisticated surveillance equipment. Because the companies do their technology development in China they're exempt from US export controls, but they're still welcome to take funding from US investors and hedge funds. So, with a $110 million loan from the Citadel group, a Chinese company called China Security and Surveillance Technology is buying up all of its competitors, celebrating each acquisition with a banquet for potential acquisitions and public officials. From the article.

“When they come, they hear central government officials endorsing us, they hear bankers endorsing us or supporting us, it gives us credibility,” Mr. Yap said. “It’s a lot of drinking, it’s like a wedding banquet.”

While that's a very Chinese way of doing business, the idea of one company buying out all of its competition with money it receives from the US, all the while cozying up to the Chinese government and in effect bribing its remaining competitors, is sickening and scary. In fact the Minister of Public Security is now director of the company, meaning the number of degrees of separation between the US investors and the Chinese government is frighteningly small. China just passed a law restricting monopolies, and The China Daily recently condemned monopolies as bad for the nation, calling them the major obstacle in the promotion of social interests. I don't know the full story behind this company, but a government minister is in control, the company is consolidating the industry, the competition's bosses are being wined and dined, and unrestricted money is flowing in from Wall Street.


The equipment China Security and Surveillance Technology develops is ostensibly for public safety and crime reduction. Surveillance companies in China point out that the UK has a more sophisticated and extensive camera network already in place, and Manhattan is setting up a similar system, so they argue that we're in no location to criticize. Representative Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argues that surveillance in China is not the same as surveillance in the West, as China is a one-party state with little to check its actions. Mr. Lantos also plans to investigate “the cooperation of American companies in the Chinese police state.”

I don't like China's government, and I don't like its restrictions on its people, but I'm simply appalled by the idea of Americans directly supporting its worst characteristics. Institutions like the NYT are good at getting attention, though, for example when the UAE wanted to buy a controlling interest in our ports. Hopefully I'm not the only member of the American public who feels this way, and the attention will lead to support for Mr. Lantos and his investigation.

Lost In Translation - A movie about a boy and his dog.

I was going through some of my flatmate's pirated DVDs and found some gems.



On the back of Munich they've included DVD extras for Skeleton Key, which I'd never heard of.



The Chinese synopsis of Cinderella Man is accurate, but the English is taken off of a review by some random movie goer

I've never wanted a briefcase before.

I just had my second meeting in as many days. I spent 2 unproductive weeks trying to to line up meetings and make things happen. Now things have finally started falling into place, but maybe a bit faster than I'd like.

09/06

I had a meeting at the Beijing Pharma and Biotech Center, a biotech promotion group funded by Beijing. The meeting was at 2PM, and their office is about 25km from work, so I knew I had to leave at 1 at the latest. I had some preparation work to do, but I also had a morning meeting with a UN coworker to deal with.

The coworker was trying to get me to help rewrite our Country Service Framework, the description of our activities in China. I had helped on an earlier draft, and it turns out I inadvertently changed UN policy by combining our listed 'priority' and 'goal' in our development and aid framework language. It turns out that the priority was China's and the goal was our own, so for about a week our goals matched China's phrasing. They're similar; it's not like I was devoting the UN to a new socialist countryside or anything. Anyway, besides finding out I accidentally set policy, this conversation took forever. We realized after an hour of discussion that the only tasks I'd actually been given so far were 2 copy/paste operations. I wanted to leave, to get ready for my afternoon meeting, but our talk dragged on and on. She realized it, too, but we've got scheduling problems coming up and had to finish outlining the work. She left for a quick talk with our boss, I scrambled to organize my notes for my meeting, then we got back together to talk some more. I ended up with a real assignment, one involving a working brain and plenty of writing, but I spent my whole morning getting it.

I raced downstairs to a cab and across town, writing notes on the ride. I got out somewhere near the address I'd been given and walked across a medical school campus, complete with beautiful bridges and Chinese eaves, stopping to ask a security guard directions. I was a bit confused about where to turn, but I stumbled on the place, a much bigger office than I'd imagined. That part of town is much less vertical than others, and the office had a big parking lot of its own and an open field on the other side. It wasn't what I'd imagined.

So I sat down with 'Alice' from public affairs, who was translating, and Hong from research, and ended up talking to them for 3 hours. I knew the meeting was running long, but I didn't realize to what degree until I'd left. They gave me some decent information, but since it was mostly translated I didn't get much in the way of quotes. The most exciting part for me was 2 books they had, both reports in Chinese on the local industry and full of statistics. I photocopied the cover and title pages of the books so that I could find them later; they may be the only way to get some damn numbers around here. Hong was very interested in biotech elsewhere in the world, a topic on which I'm now fairly knowledgeable, so I gave them some stats I'd gathered and promised to email them a few reports, in addition to my own when it was done, then we took a picture and I left.

I took a bus to meet Scot nearby at Zhongguancun, the computer and electronics district, where he'd been shopping. I wandered around a bit to check out the huge cell phone and MP3 player selection, but only ended up buying some blank DVDs and an iPod wall charger ($3!). At this point I'm seriously considering these external hard drives with card readers that they have around here. I'd just buy the case and put my own laptop drive in it, I think, rather than trust whatever discount drive they're pushing. The kind of cases I like are light, have batteries built in so you can use them on the road without a wall plug, and have a slot to load a CF card. A setup like this, maybe $100 for a hard drive and $25 for the enclosure, would give me almost unrestricted space for digital pictures while I'm traveling. I just ordered a second 2GB compact flash card for Thailand, so the drive isn't urgent, but I'm seriously thinking about it for the future.

Afterward our getting our geek fix we met Matt and Ben, 2 MIT grads from my year who just moved to Beijing to start work. We had a hot pot dinner in Wudaokou, yet another Beijing district I hadn't seen before. Haidian and Wudaokou are where most of the universities are, so they have a young feeling. Microsoft, Google, and a lot of other tech companies are there, too. After dinner we had some beer on the street and chatted for a bit, then I said goodbye to Scot before his visa run back to the States and rushed off to catch the train home. I only made it part way before the system shut down for the night (I couldn't make a connecting train), so I had to take a cab part of the way.

I got home right before midnight, thankfully, or the elevator would have been off and I would have had to climb up to my apartment. I'm getting sick of the damn Cinderella routine.


09/07

I met Alessandro at the office at 8, and his driver took us to our meeting at the National Center for Biotech Development. Alessandro normally pays this Chinese guy to drive his wife around during the day and leave the car back at the office afterwards. It's cheaper than buying another car, a local guy gets a pretty sweet job, and his wife doesn't have to learn to drive, so I guess it's good all around.

\We had about 5 minutes with the center's director, then he left us with a staffer to answer the rest of our questions. The staffer was polite and nice, he just didn't really know what I want to find out or he doesn't want to tell me. Honestly, I think they don't know. One thing I want is a list of biotech companies in China. He thought they had such a thing in each individual department of their center, and it could maybe be compiled. These guys work in a building together, have a focus on biotech, and rely on their contacts to get anything done, but they don't have a master address book. It's not incompetence, I don't think, just this Chinese attitude wherein you don't coordinate between departments.

Then, as I'm writing this, I get an email from the staffer thanking us for the meeting and 'reminding' me that I have to submit my report to him for approval of any reference to their center before publication. I haven't responded yet, but if a guy in the US asked me for editorial approval after the fact I'd probably laugh at him. I doubt it'll be an issue; I don't think I got anything interesting enough to make it into the report.

A rooster this is not.

It's interesting to me which sounds wake me up in the morning. At No. 6 it could be a passing truck on Memorial Dr., or the football coach yelling into his megaphone, or the grounds staff mowing a lawn. Maybe it was someone upstairs playing music too loudly, or a snowplow beeping in reverse as its blade scraped pavement. Sometimes it was my neighbor's alarm clock, screeching ceaselessly and incessantly for the past 23 minutes. Sometimes it was my own alarm clock, reminding me that if I hit snooze again I'd never make it to class. There was a panoply of sounds, each unpleasant in its own way.

Not so, China. There is but one morning reveille- the joyous sound of Progress. Construction wakes me every morning at ungodly hours, and on the bad days it doesn't stop until well after dark. There is no break for holidays, no rest on the sabbath, only endless building. It's not just up and out and bigger, in my building it involves gutting the place and redoing every wall, window, door, and floor.

I think the Chinese have admitted defeat. The truly rich have moved away from the construction, the poor are the ones who run it, and the middle classes have surrendered to and been subjugated by the dust and the jackhammers and the drills.

---

It's been pointed out that my practice article's paragraphs are too long (true); that there aren't enough quotes (that's because I didn't interview anyone); that I use acres, square miles, and kilometers at different points; and that the 30 year estimate is awfully precise to be used without an approximation word. I only went to MIT, and you want consistency of units and error bars? Picky.

I LIKE saying, "Mr. Xiaoyuan". I think the Economist gets the title thing right, and saying, "Mr. Bush" gives it that pleasant invective feel without being too obvious.

I also noticed that I assumed that Yu Xiaoyuan's surname was Xiaoyuan because that's how it was written on an English language site, but upon further thought I'm almost certain it's Yu. We have an interesting way of addressing that problem at the UN, or maybe it's in all business in China. We write the last name in all caps, so you sign your email LEI Nuo, or John SMITH. It's like that on my business card, too.

My defensiveness aside, thanks for comments from those who gave them, and feel free to make your own if you haven't.

Dr. Lei Nuo, I presume.

I was thinking about something my father said to me while we were jogging in Maine. He was exhorting me to get a PhD, and said that he was tired of correcting people who called him 'doctor', either covering their bases or simply assuming as much. Well, I'd been called doctor before on various research trips and at different meetings, but it's extremely widespread here. I've gotten two emails today alone with the Dr. title, and Alessandro's gotten one as well. I don't think that's a good enough reason to spend five years working on a PhD, but I can certainly imagine it becoming embarrassing or tiring after a while.

If my posts had fewer subjects it'd be easier to come up with clever titles.

8/24

Night out at 5:19

I decided that I should go out to a bar. I was sick of sitting around watching TV and eager to try to meet people, and I'd seen on the thatsbeijing forum that a member was performing at a place nearby called 5:19, so I decided to check it out.

5:19 was quiet. There was the forum member playing guitar and singing rather competently, plus maybe 10 other people on the first floor. There were others upstairs on the roof, but I didn't know that yet. So I ordered a drink, much to my regret turning down the Bombay Sapphire in favor of the dramatically cheaper Gordon's Dry in my gin and tonic. I chatted with a few of the guys sitting around on some couches. They turned out to be Americans working in construction on the new US embassy, and were all pretty drunk. The conversation was much as you'd expect a chat with drunk construction workers to be, revolving around booze, women, and sports. I politely declined their invitation to go next door to dance with the Filipina girls, explaining with a straight face that I was waiting for a friend.

I chatted with the bartender and owner, Dave from Canada, who was running the business in his retirement. I asked him why he'd stayed in China after his decade-long contract with the mining company was up and after his wife divorced him, and he answered that he couldn't imagine readjusting to civilization.

I met the musician, who I'd previously chatted with in the online forum, and we went upstairs to the roof to hang out with some others. There he introduced me to an older guy from Montana working on the communications infrastructure for the Olympics.

I took the opportunity to ask how he felt about potential protests, which was apparently a red-button issue. It ended up a 3-hour, heated debate about freedoms, respect, and the 'greatest stage ever set on earth'. I thought for a while he was drunk, but it later turned out he was a recovering alcoholic and he'd been drinking tonic water. Anyway, we had radically different points of view. In the young and naive corner, I supported protest and free speech and the ability and obligation of individuals to change the world. He had a much more jaded attitude about the potential for change, and he also believed that the Olympics shouldn't be interrupted by dissent. His arguments weren't very good, but one that held up for me was that public protest would inevitably disrupt some poor athlete's proudest moment. He also had this weird belief that Olympics were about hope for the Chinese people, and that protesting would somehow betray that hope. I personally think that most Chinese see the Olympics more as an opportunity to make a quick buck by whatever means they can than they do a source of hope or pride. Anyway, he argued on the grounds that protesting against injustices in China during thr Olympics was somehow taking away hope from the Chinese people, which was just weird. By this point the bar had closed, which I didn't think they did in Beijing, and we were standing outside the front door debating. He finally misquoted Ben Franklin at me, saying, "He who sacrifices hope for security gets neither." (What?) When of course it's, "He who sacrifices LIBERTY for security deserves neither." So when I pointed his error out to him, trying hard not to jump up and down in glee that he made my point for me, we agreed to disagree and I went home for the night. I didn't meet anyone my age and I didn't meet any girls, but at least I got out of the house.

8/25

On Saturday I met my language exchange partner for the second time, this time at a Starbucks in Guomao halfway between our places. We haven't been very diligent about studying, to say the least. As much as I loathe Starbucks, it was nice to overpay for a giant coffee; I had no idea how much I'd miss the drink. So we chatted for a few hours, asking questions and taking notes. I managed to drop my pocket PC with my electronic dictionary off of the table and down 2 flights of stairs, but it survived intact, probably thanks to the heavy metal case that I've hated lugging around.

Bike repairs (Or, "No, no. Night time is when I fill the hole with water")

It was getting dark when I got back to the subway station where I'd left my bike. I had already put on my helmet and flashing lights and started riding down the street when I realized that my rear tire was flat. Fortunately, China has bicycle repair 'shops' on just about every corner They're really just 3-wheeled carts with supplies and a grease-covered older guy sitting on a stool, but they work. I remembered that only a moment ago I'd seen one across the street from where my bike was parked. Then, as I got off my bike and turned around, something clicked- those bastards flattened my tire. Furious, but trying to act cool, I walked my bike over to the cart and asked to use his pump, hoping they'd just let the air out. So I pumped up my tube and stood around for a minute poking at the tire. It was leaking, so I asked the guy how much it'd be to change the tube. He wanted 40RMB, but I talked him down to 25RMB ($3.50 for parts and labor), plus I get to keep the dead tube, which I'll throw away to prevent him from pawning it off on someone who doesn't know a new one from a patch job. When he took the tire off I checked it for anything along the inside which could re-puncture the tube. Assuming he's competent, he should have done that himself if he didn't know how the tube was damaged. He had a water bowl, so I pumped the tube up and slowly ran the length of it through the water until I found the leak, an invisible line of holes along the seam. It could have been a slightly split seam or it could have been someone with a needle poking my tire a few times. Who knows, but after he put my wheel back on I waited for a few minutes to make sure all was kosher before I paid him and left. I don't know if he actually did kill my tube, but everyone here I've mentioned the incident to thinks he did.

8/27-28

On Monday and Tuesday I got little done at work, or so it always seems to feel. I'm calling and emailing a bunch of people in the government and research institutions, trying to get information and set up meetings. I finally managed to schedule one with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science on Wednesday, but other than that I mostly got passed around from person to person and played phone and email tag.

Alessandro, one of UNIDO's permanent staff, has been really helpful about suggesting names and sending emails out through his account with his name on them, so that's been encouraging. We also have fun chats during the day on everything from his part-time job at the opera during college, where he chatted with Pavarotti and had to carry around large, 'dead' sopranos on stage; to articles in the Economist; to hiking and climbing. He's much older than I am, has a wife and a kid, but it's cool to have someone at work to interact with on a social level.

This week I was also tasked with writing the copy for the new UNIDO China brochure. I don't mind doing some of this kind of work for the people here; it makes me feel like I'm pulling my weight and it keeps them happy.

Exercise, plus what do do with my time

The evenings have been slow and long since my 1 month membership for yoga expired. I would have re-upped it, but I'll leave for Thailand before the full month and it seemed expensive to waste that time. As a result I'm going home earlier and still not doing much when I get there. I've been thinking about getting back into martial arts, so I've been shopping around. I found a well-regarded jiu jitsu school down in SOHO, about 15 minutes from work by bike, which I'll probably check out, but I realized that since I'm in China I should probably take advantage of it by learning something local. I've been asking around about taiji and kung fu teachers, but they're elusive. Most of the best teachers seem to be old guys who teach in parks, just not in the parks near me. They also charge lesson by lesson, payable in cash, and aren't cheap. So I'm looking, but I don't know if it's a practical idea.

The other fitness thing I've recently stumbled on is this yoga retreat outside of the city. It's not cheap, but neither is it too expensive- on the order of $100 for a weekend with food, transportation, accommodation, and classes included. It sounds fun, but the most amazing part is the setting; one location is an old Buddhist temple, another has property around a crumbling stretch of the Great Wall. It seems great, assuming I can handle that big a dose of hippie-ness in a weekend.

8/29

My first work meeting with a 'local expert'

After much debate I ended up wearing my suit to my meeting at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science. I seriously wonder what people think when they see me walking around wearing a jacket, tie, and eyebrow piercing. I sort of like the contradiction, and I guess I'll settle for it if I can't dye my hair fun colors. No one in China dresses up; it's like casual Friday meets the Caribbean, with short-sleeve button up shirts all around for the elite businessmen and officials and track pants and polo shirts for the rest. It's sort of a shame that a country with such a cool sartorial tradition has settled on the lowest common denominator of Western dress. Even during the Cultural Revolution, although the clothing was uniform, it was unique and interesting.

I got up at 6:30 to make it to my meeting by 9, biking to work to collect my notes and drop off my computer, then catching a cab to Haidian, some 15km away, during rush hour. I got to read papers and jot notes during the ride through the morning traffic, so I understand the appeal of chauffeurs for people with money and stressful jobs. The taxi driver didn't know exactly where to go, but we managed to navigate there successfully, marking the occasion as the first time the Chinese GPS software on my pocket PC has been useful, and even then it wasn't while hooked up to the GPS. The campus of the institute, along with the rest of China, was gutted by construction, so I hiked in dress shoes over piles of dirt and under tin roofs until I found the right building.

The man I was meeting with, a Prof. Huang, had come downstairs to meet me when I called him to tell him I was nearby. We shook hands and headed up to his office. After the business card swap ritual we got down to business, but as an aside, how are you supposed to take the card you're accepting with 2 hands while simultaneously offer your own the same way? I assume you take turns, but who offers first? The actual trade ended up a weird tangle, but I don't think he cared. He spent a couple of years at Cornell, studying abroad as everyone here seems to do, so was probably lower key about some things than he could have been.

Prof. Huang is the head of biotech research at the institute, a scientist, not a suit. He was wearing a tie, however, so I just took my jacket off and the clothing thing worked out after all. I started by telling him about my research and my goals, and then we dove right into my list of questions. Unfortunately this whole exchange was in English. His wasn't great, but he knew the relevant vocabulary, so it went better than it would have if I'd tried to come up with Chinese for 'cultivars' or 'herbicide'. I ended up with some good notes, a powerpoint presentation with stats, and an introduction to a guy at the Chinese Center for Agricultural Policy whose papers I've read, so all in all it was productive.

When I got back to work I took my taxi receipts to the administrative assistant to figure out how to get reimbursed. She asked me to write my name and the purpose of the taxi trip on the receipt. "Just write, 'meeting'," she said. So I did, she added up the total for the 2 receipts on her calculator, asked if I could break a hundred, and handed me cash on the spot. How cool is that? In a country filled with red tape, in an organization known for bureaucracy, I got my taxi receipts refunded from petty cash out of a drawer in the assistant's desk.