Yes, China let me out

I’m back in the land of shorts and sandals, which no adult Chinese male, at least in Yangzhou, would be caught dead wearing. I’m groggy, but none the worse for wear, though it’s definitely the traveling part of traveling I hate most. Sadly, grace under pressure doesn’t belong on my modest list of strong suits.

Jianghai College arranged to have a driver pick me up at 9 a.m. Friday for the three- to four-hour drive to Shanghai Pudong airport, where I was to catch a 4:10 p.m. flight to Chicago. We were graciously accompanied by a teaching colleague, Fan Chun Xia. Xue Cai Ming, Lu Wen Juan and several other students with whom I’d grown close showed up at my dormitory to see me off.

The last few days had brought a whirlwind of late shopping and final farewells, which grew increasingly emotional until the thought of leaving had become difficult. I kept telling myself this was a good thing — better to have mixed feelings, to have met so many good people, to miss them, than to have been desperate to get out, thinking I had wasted a year.

I can’t see not going back at some point.

Anyway, a late start didn’t worry me. We had plenty of time. But I hadn’t built in the stop for a meal. I don’t care what you’re doing or where you’re going or why. In China, people stop at noon and 6, just about to the minute, for lunch and dinner. If you get injured seriously enough to require an ambulance there, I would suggest not doing so around noon or 6.

My mind started racing with worries about the early arrival time advised for international travelers, then worst-case scenarios. My old friend Panic stopped by. Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, contemplation, meditation, I needed them all.

After some rushing required to solve a problem paying for extra bags, I cut it a little close but made it. The rest was just waiting and losing sleep.

There’s so much I haven’t written about my experiences but still would like to write, so for the time being, the Rog-ect isn’t going anywhere.

Let me start this new chapter by recommending a couple of resources that have done a far better job than I of explaining and describing China. One is Middle Kingdom Life, a great guide to teaching in China and related topics, specifically geared toward expats. The other is “Serve The People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China,” by Jen Lin-Liu, which I just started reading. In the first several pages, I found more accurate insights about Chinese cuisine and classrooms than I had expressed in a year of blogging, i.e., students taking cell-phone calls during class, Chinese chefs not measuring any incredients. Plus, it’s got recipes, including Yangzhou fried rice.

I’m diving into the recipes as soon as I do some grocery shopping. And get a wok and a new knife. And a stove, preferably gas. And a new home for the stove. And … well, all in good time.

Odds and ends (零碎东西)?

The Chinese characters mean either “odds and ends” or “remnant fragment East West,” not sure which.

“Mental mistakes” in Chinese: Watching Game 6 of the NBA Finals on CCTV, as usual, I couldn’t decipher much of the Chinese commentators’ rapid-fire analysis. But at one point, I could have sworn I heard the words “mental mistake” after a Miami turnover. Nah, couldn’t be. A few minutes later, there, I heard it again.

“Mental mistake” is evidently Chinese for “mental mistake.”

It was great seeing Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd and the Dallas Mavericks win their first title, but enough with the Nowitzki-Bird comparisons, please. As the Mavs were clinching the title, they juxtaposed Dirk shots with footage of Larry Bird in Game 6 of the Celtics’ victory over Houston in the 1986 Finals, when Bird put up 29 points, 11 rebounds, 12 assists and three steals. Dirk finished with 12 assists for the entire series. He couldn’t touch Bird’s passing genius.

For that matter, let’s call a moratorium on Kobe-Jordan comparisons, Lebron-MJ, Lebron-anyone at this point. Stop it. Just stop it.

Upstaged on the bus, for once: One sweltering afternoon, I’m sitting in the bus, waiting for it to leave the Jianghai College lot, when on steps a man with a basket of large, gray, squawking birds. They looked sort of like a cross between gray geese and pelicans, or gray geese and egrets, or … I don’t know, they were gray.*

From that point on, no one noticed the Westerner aboard. Which was fine. Did I mention it was hot? About halfway along the 20-minute trip, it was impossible not to notice that the odor was getting stronger. (Having given up my seat, I was standing nearer the birds by that time.)

Then, I looked down and noticed a puddle of yellow fluid, like a thin, watery yolk, slowly emanating from the basket. I mean, like, what? Do these things lay fried eggs? Do birds take a piss? I’m sorry, I’m not exactly an ornithologist here.

I began to feel weak-kneed and got off at the next stop, where I immediately became the subject of stares again. Almost wish the birds had gotten off with me. Almost.

Trouble redefining a label, let alone a life: Heard from an long-lost friend awhile back. After a warm exchange of niceties, as proof you can pick up a conversation wherever you left off 30 or so years ago, he acidly noted in one missive: “Hey, brainiac, you are not an ‘out-of-work’ journalist, as your blog subhead reads. If you get paid at the university, which I assume you do, then you’re working.”

Good point. I changed it to “laid-off” journalist. Thanks, Mark. (I had already changed “sportswriter” to “journalist” because I didn’t want to be defined only by sports. As long as I’m consumed by what to call myself, I may never actually have to decide what to do next.)

The origin of The Rog-ect: Meant to explain this eons ago. It goes way back to an inside joke among sportswriters at The News & Observer that I liked to assign impossible projects, i.e., “Hey, can you give me something on the history of sports by 5? And I really think you can keep it under 20 inches.”

I’m not sure I was ever that bad. OK, maybe.

*Upon further reflection, I’m guessing those birds were cormorants, which have been used to fish in Chinese rivers for hundreds of years. Trained and tethered by the throat, which prevents them  from swallowing larger fish, the birds are capable of diving deep for their catches. When I saw this done on CCTV, a light went on. It’s being done now more for tourists.

A few snaps from Shanghai

Rapid-fire impressions from two-day trip: dark, rainy, cold, extremely crowded in old shopping district, spotless and efficient subway system, long lines on a Monday for China Pavilion at World Expo despite weather, lost amid skyscrapers in financial district (took an hour walking a big circle when crossing the street would have worked), lost on subway back to hotel (went too far, got back on and went too far going back, got different directions from four different people, got off at right stop and didn’t trust it, got back on and went to wrong stop, got back on and finally got off at right place just short of jamming a long, pointy object in right ear), high-speed train out of Shanghai hit close to 200 mph.

These shots were taken inside the China Pavilion. If you want to know what everything is, pretend I’m still lost, and look it up. As usual, drag your cursor over the photos for my snarky remarks, and click on a picture to make it bigger.

One last blowout in Beijing

Left, happy; center, indifferent; right, sad. And dead.

I’m writing this from the only Starbucks in Yangzhou, in lieu of my smelly (something is, uh, wrong with the pipes), currently Internet-less apartment, a sure sign that I have turned back into a pumpkin.

Charlie and I had one last big dinner in Beijing at Da Dong, which is renowned for its roast duck. After ordering, I was asked to pick one. My brother caught the moment on his cell phone. (From a China Today article, I found out later that I really did not have much choice, fatness-wise: A standard duck should weigh 1.35 kg, with a margin of error of only 0.05 kg. … The standard way is to cut [the duck] into 108 slices, every one of which should include some of the crispy skin.)

By 6:30 a.m. the next morning, he was on a flight back to the United States, and four hours later, I boarded a plane for Nanjing, about one hour from Yangzhou. This close to the Lunar New Year and Spring Festival, it was impossible to buy a train ticket. From Nanjing, I took a bus back.

For some reason, it was delayed an hour, then the driver couldn’t get it started. Suddenly, passengers started filing off the bus, and I’m thinking, “Oh, no, we have to board another one.”

Nope. This is China. About a dozen men started pushing; the driver popped the clutch; and we were off.

So long, Grand Hyatt. Hello, my life.

The Great Staircase

"It doesn't seem that great to us," the brothers said, turning their backs.

For 420 RMB each, we hopped a small tour bus bound for the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall — less tourist-y than the Badaling section, probably more crowded than harder-to-reach places like Huanghuacheng, Simatai and Jinshanling. We opted for convenience, which got us the bus trip with six others and a guide, a stop on the way at a small cloisonné maker (copper vases with elaborate enamel designs) and a stop on the way back for a tea tasting, plus the entrance fee and the cable-car tickets.

On this winter’s day, Mutianyu was relatively quiet. We took a gondola to the top and spent about an uncrowded hour and a half wandering along the top of the wall — and up one brutal set of stairs. I’ve never seen so many steps. The biggest hassle, aside from the obvious exertions, was the gauntlet of souvenir vendors we had to run upon arriving and leaving.

Take a look. At the bottom, I added a shot of a worker at the vase place. As usual, drag the cursor over a picture for more unwanted witticisms. Click on a photograph to enlarge it.

Looking up from the base.

No, you can’t make me climb those.

Heart rate holding steady at 379 beats per minute.

“That little hill? A trifle.”

Worker applies copper-wire design to piece.

“It doesn’t seem that great to us,” the brothers said, turning their backs.

Great line from the guide, who deftly defined a Chinese reality when asked about the availability of marijuana: “Nothing is allowed in China. Everything is possible.”

Give Beijing time

My reporting skills will fail to adequately express all of the visual and culinary delights that assault one’s senses here, so take my word for it: You need at least a week, unless you’re content to see the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and leave the rest. We won’t finish in 10 days.

Three days ago, after my brother got up early to run again with an expat living in Beijing, this time in a bitterly cold wind through the Olympic Park (his water bottles froze), we eventually made our way on foot down Wangfujing Dajie,

Nice hang time.

a hot shopping street that is closed to traffic, and a couple of more blocks to the National Art Museum of China. Bad day to go: Only one exhibit hall was open for the 20 yuan admission price.

Large work at National Art Museum.

From there, we strolled a little farther and stopped at the Poetry Cafe & Bar, a funky little place on a side street near the Forbidden City, sort of Lower West Side meets Beijing. In the back of a menu, the Poet Charlieate composed a modest work:

The brothers van der Horst numbered two;
They loved Beijing, although the cold they did rue;
Ethnic dances, long runs in Olympic Park and a Forbidden City 5-star loo;
Roger, the writer, teaching English in Yangzhou;
Charlie, the doctor, working to make HIV go low;
Having fun together, always on the go.

I wept.

We continued, encountering a Beijinger who suggested, for an interesting old-China view, turning down a narrow alley, called a hútòng, on which happened to be located his art studio. He’s a faculty member at a local arts school. He said.

Couldn’t hurt to look, right? Eight-thousand yuan later, we walked out with three prints each, including two gorgeous winter scenes that we’re hoping we don’t see someday at a P.F. Chang’s. My brother concluded that it was either our greatest deal ever or our dumbest.

As a bonus, our artist put his brush to paper to create a little calligraphy, using bamboo imagery and the Chinese characters for our first names — 罗杰 for Luójié, or Roger, which he said was a noble name (reminded me of the time a guy in Jamaica tried to sell me some dope, telling me he had a sister named Roger) and 查尔斯 for Chá’ĕrsī, or Charles. Anyway, I know he did those pieces. I saw him.

Our artist at work.

For dinner, we were pointed to the Dali Courtyard, a small place down another dark alley, or hútòng, identifiable only by the red lantern with “Dali” scrawled on it, just past the vomiting guy. This hidden gem, on Xiaojingchang off Gulou Dong Dajie, serves a fixed menu at a reasonable price.

The next afternoon, because of this and that (my sloth?), an insane, nausea-inducing cab ride got us to Yong He Gong, or Lama Temple, a Buddhist site, with less than an hour to spare before closing time. Aside from the usual swerving in and out of traffic at high speed, cabbies here love to yank on the emergency brake, which produces a jerking sensation with every start and stop. Maybe the guy near the Dali had just taken a taxi.

Anyhoo, the temple complex was built in 1694, according to Frommer’s, and belonged to the future emperor Yong Zheng. Admission is 25 RMB, plus another 40 for audio tour gear. (Charlie says it didn’t add much.) The site includes several old, beautiful incense burners and, in the last of the five central halls,

Buddha's proudest legacy? Perhaps not.

a statue of Maitreya, the future Buddha, carved from a single piece of white sandlewood and measuring 26 meters tall. It’s in the “Guinness Book of Records.” You’re not supposed to take pictures inside, though.

The complex appears to draw a mix of devout followers of Tibetan Buddhism, gawking tourists and gawking devout followers. And the occasional visitor like me, always ready with a quick quip or request for others, such as, “Hey, could you repeat that praying thing for me so I can get a few more shots? Yeah, yeah, that’s it.”

Yong He Gong is an active temple.

Afterward, we didn’t repeat the cab mistake, instead trying Beijing’s spotless new subway system, with a stop just outside the temple entrance. A plastic card system is used. We got back to the hotel for two yuan each.

That night, we discovered another great restaurant, Hua’s, thanks to Charlie’s new running companion. It’s near the temple on Dongzhimen Nei, better known as “Ghost Street,” or Gui Jie, where the restaurants, many in old residences, stay open 24 hours. With all the red lanterns, it’s hard to miss.

Ghost Street.

The spicy crayfish, served with plastic gloves, were delicious, as were the impossibly fresh green beans and a sweet corn casserole. It’s easier on Westerners because the huge menu includes a photo of every dish.

We were treated to an Ed Sullivan-like show of performers shredding dough on a tall unicycle, juggling butcher’s knives, spinning plates, pouring tea with kung fu moves and “changing faces” in brightly colored costume and masks, the latter an ancient Sichuan Opera dramatic art form.

Beijing

If there are two Chinas, one has checked into the Grand Hyatt Beijing, or is conducting business here. More Americans than I’ve seen in four-and-a-half months are milling around. This is the China they want a piece of, the newer, wealthier version, fashionably dressed, spending gobs of cash at Gucci and Cartier. Yangzhou seems shabby by comparison, as do I.

The hotel room isn’t all that different from my campus dormitory apartment, except for the flat-screen TV, stylish photographic prints on the wall, enormous shower stall that isn’t combined with the toilet, shower head I don’t have to hold, stocked mini-bar, $10 cans of mixed nuts, absence of smells, central heating, laundry service, concierge, ninth-story view overlooking the lighted fountain. The TV gets HBO and ESPN, albeit the international version of the sports channel with the cricket and the ironman competitions.

So, how did I get in?

My brother flew here from North Carolina to spend a few days with me — how many brothers would do that? China got a second van der Horst; America got Chinese President Hu Jintao for a few days. Another unfair trade advantage for China? You decide.

Charlie is associate chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and director of the AIDS Clinical Trials Unit at UNC’s School of Medicine. He has had some face time with the guy who heads AIDS treatment … for all of China … as well as time to hook up with other English-speaking runners and hit the early morning streets of Beijing. (The best time to run, one says, is 4:30 a.m.: no traffic, no pollution.) At age 59, Charlie is ripped, in better shape than he was at 29, and one of the top triathletes in his age group in the Tar Heel state.

As the photo slide show indicates, we saw the Forbidden City the first full day in Beijing. Today, while he was working out, I walked the two or three blocks to Tian’anmen Square and paid my respects to the late Chairman Mao. Security is tight: soldiers everywhere. I had to check my camera bag for 5 RMB at a small place with lockers, and to go through a couple of airport-like checkpoints, where I got the wand treatment, though I was waved on a lot more quickly than the Chinese visitors around me. Admission remains free.

For someone dead 35 years, and who wished to be cremated, Mao looked pretty good. A little waxy. I can’t say whether it’s age or an understandably wan appearance in reaction to all those Western stores along streets crowded with black Mercedes and Audis.

*Having been in China a matter of hours, Charlie easily skirted the private cabbies overcharging lăowài (老外), or foreigners. Having been in China for more than four months, I fell for the pitch at the train station and wound up paying 80 RMB for a five-minute trip I found later costs about 12 yuan in a registered taxi, and that was after I bargained the guy down from 150 yuan. Be careful, lăowài!

**The overnight train from Yangzhou to Beijing, with a sleeper berth for 430 yuan, ran on time, arriving about 6:30 a.m. at the end of a 10-hour journey. The problem is getting back. Reservations can be made no sooner than 10 days in advance, and ticket buyers were sleeping on line at the station to get where they want to go for the upcoming Chinese New Year and Spring Festival holiday. I gave up, booked a flight to Nanjing, about an hour from Yangzhou, and hope to catch a bus or train from there. Be careful, lăowài, about making travel arrangements around Spring Festival. This year, an estimated 230 million passengers are expected to travel by the start of the Lunar New Year on Feb. 3 in the world’s largest annual mass migration.

***My brother and I paid 400 RMB for a guide’s services for four hours at the Forbidden City. He had enough time to take us to a good local jade shop away from the higher-priced Malls at Oriental Plaza, which is attached to the Grand Hyatt Beijing. On a scale of 1-5, we gave him a 3.

****The Beijing duck at Made in China, a restaurant in the hotel, was to die for. My taste buds are weakening my would-be socialist tendencies.

van der Horsts allowed in Forbidden City

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Frequently asked question: How could a eunuch in the emperor’s court ensure a trip to heaven?

Answer: By buying his genitalia back before he died so he could be buried “whole”. That’s what our guide said. My brother, Charlie, asked me to put that in. So to speak.

I still can’t get used to …

… the way many Chinese order at a restaurant, a process that can seem more like a debate. The customer looks over the menu, often a booklet of five or six plastic-encased pages, pausing to ask questions, discussing items with the server, working from front to back, then from back to front, staring, staring, perhaps hoping that if he looks long enough, the menu items will improve or come down in price or something. It’s worth noting: He’s not just ordering a dish for himself but four or five dishes for the entire table, so he wants to get it right.

… the way people walk into the street seemingly oblivious to traffic, confident that if they get to a spot ahead of a car, the spot belongs to them and the car will either stop or, more likely, swerve into another lane, confident that if it gets to a spot in the other lane first, the approaching bus will stop or, more likely, swerve into another lane. Seasoned pedestrians blithely make their way without incident, and the only one who comes close to being killed is me. It’s all timing, I guess.

… buses being driven like bumper cars, as if the idea is to cause elderly people with many bags to go flying.

… the idea that I’m old enough now for elderly people with many bags to decline my seat when it is offered.

That’s it for this edition of “I still can’t get used to …”

Still kicking, screaming, beating head against The Great Firewall

Observations from far side of said wall:

• The bad news: I have lost access to The China Rog-ect for reasons unknown.

• The good news: I’ll keep plugging and see what happens.

• The bad news: I’m known for having a “hot temper.”

• The good news: In China, a hot temper means one is “able,” a fellow teacher says, so I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

• Many things relearned may be “just like riding a bike again,” except, it seems, riding a bike again, especially when trying to give someone a lift. That’s common here. It’s nothing to see a student, even with luggage, hop on the back rack of a friend’s moving bike. Mine tips over.

• It was definitely strange to hear “Jingle Bells” at a Chinese supermarket.

• Thirty minutes later, having heard every version of the song ever recorded, being played on some kind of tape loop from hell, I was already sick of the holiday season. In China.

• Actually, Christmas is a big shopping day here for the New Year’s holiday, like the day after Thanksgiving in the States.

• It’s nice to be the one giving quizzes now.

• One of my best English speakers is one of my worst students. He got a 64 on a midterm quiz. I wrote on it: “Pay more attention in class.” Ten minutes after it was handed back to him, he was face down on his front-row desk, asleep. “You’re outta here,” I told him, teaching the class another American expression. It’s nice to be the one kicking kids out of class now.

• Yangzhou, as previously mentioned, is considered a small, almost backwater city by Chinese standards, despite of a population of 4.6 million. Westerners are few; I’m the only one at Jianghai College. English expressions on students’ clothing typically make no sense, things like “only you hear the put” and “he WS freeze real.” Naturally, returning to my apartment one day, I encountered a student in a North Carolina hoodie.

• I can hear N.C. State fans gagging. Hey, the whole country’s red, so chill.

• Once a week, I teach a writing class for the other English teachers at Jianghai. Unable to make it, one sent me a text message today: “Sorry, Roger. I’m still in the communist meeting.” Not an explanation I’m used to seeing.

• My late mother might have loved shopping in China, where just about everything is negotiable. I like the game — you always walk away thinking you got a deal — but it’s tiresome, too. You have to be patient and willing to walk away. It takes time. As one colleague put it, “Just once I would like to know their lowest price at the beginning.”

Happy holidays, all.