This is why I always take my camera

This afternoon, I hopped on my bike and went out to find a spare battery for my camera. I was successful in that quest, but aside from that, I saw three things interesting enough to take pictures of.

After leaving the electronics mall, a stopped by KFC for a quick late lunch, and was glad I went in.

1. See? I wasn’t making it up!

I wrote a while ago about an amusing T-shirt I saw at a subway station. I now have photographic proof that it exists:
This is not the same woman whom I saw wearing it before.

2. Drama and thrills are everywhere

When I came out of the restaurant, there was a large crowd of people gathered on the sidewalk. They were watching a small movie crew shoot a brief scene at a public phone.
I’ve marked the two actors with arrows. I don’t know if they’re famous or unknowns. Here are some closer pictures of them.
Eventually they finished what they were doing. It was a short little scene where the man goes up to the phone, slips in his card, punches some numbers, has a brief conversation, checks his watch, hangs up, and walks away. A few seconds later, the woman comes up to the phone, but apparently doesn’t do anything.

I had to wait until they were done because they were set up blocking the spot where I had parked my bike.

3. China adds another ring

On the way home, I passed by Workers Indoor Arena, where Olympic boxing will take place, and saw a new sculpture being set up outside the south gate.
It looks like it will have some kind of electronic component, as there were a bunch of cables dangling off of it, not hooked to anything. Astute readers will notice that there are six rings here instead of the Olympic five. Don’t know what’s up with that.

No cheap yaks

It was a little like walking into a Monty Python sketch. I entered April Gourmet, one of the Western-style groceries I visit when I need something the Chinese stores don’t carry. In front of the deli case was a young woman wearing some sort of traditional garb I didn’t recognize holding a little plate of samples with toothpicks. As I walked past, she said in heavily accented English, “Tibet yak cheese.” Of course I tried some. I think maybe the samples had been sitting around too long, since mine was kind of dried out, but it was a fairly good cheese, with a little bite to it but not too strong. It’s kind of expensive, being an organic specialty item aimed squarely at the affluent market, but I will probably buy it someday. But I have to admit that the phrase “Tibetan yak cheese” just makes me want to giggle.
I picked up a brochure, which helpfully informed me of the following facts:

No addiction of fluid coagulate chemicals.

Yak cheese has an unique modest, clean and smoothy milky taste, and is highly nutrient. Cheese, in itself, has an much more splendid flavour than external mold, and without the flavour of animals. In the beginning, it may taste modest, clean and smoothy. And after around 30s, the mixed flower-flavour begins to spread, and lasts about 120s, at the peak, with a fresh, pleasant, milky sweet and flower’s fragranct taste in your mouth.

Mr. White, the American cheese authority, has praised of this precious cheese that “The cheese has a fresh, pleasure fragrance like flower.”

Its quantity of iron is 9 times of other cheeses, Zinc is 3 times, calcium is 1.5 times.

In addition, it is helpful for loosing weight, adjusting metabolism, improving your immune system, “resisting cancer and oxidation,” adjusting blood pressure and sugar, improving bone density, and preventing and curing diabetes. Dang, maybe I should have bought some. I’m too young to oxidize.

You can visit their website here.

Chop suey

As it happens, chop suey doesn’t seem to exist in China. I’ve read something about the name translating as “mixed bits” or something like that – it’s not Mandarin, probably Cantonese. Anyway, the title is chosen in the hopes that it really does mean “mixed bits” since it’s one of those miscellaneous scattered posts without a single theme.

Come 1 May I discovered that my internet connection didn’t like my password anymore. It hasn’t happened in a while, but my landlord forgot to pay the ISP again. It’s not like I needed any excuses to stay at the office long hours. And the internet at the office is slower for many things than my connection here.

Today’s topics include work, food, Chinese (the language) and Chingrish. Oh, yes, and harmonicas.

Phase 1: Work

The reason it’s been busy at work lately is this. Things went much better than last time, and we managed to sell more than a half million tickets in the first day, which may very well be a feat no ticketing company has ever accomplished. Around 5pm the day before, we started hearing stories about people queued up at Bank of China branches for the 9am opening. Those of you who have purchased tickets in the US and Europe will no doubt know that buying online is a far better option, but the system was set up to give a fair chance to people without computers or access to the internet.
Our Help Desk was up to full strength all day, answering questions coming in from bank branches. This was a very noisy room.
We got two big boxes of food from McDonald’s and KFC to feed the crew.

Within the first two days, essentially all the tickets to events in Beijing had been snapped up, and only the events in other cities are still available.

OK, enough of that. On to...

Phase 2: Food

I’ve mentioned a dish called jinjiang rousi, and my description brought on a request to see what the it looks like. Well, here it is, TC. It’s the one on the right.
It’s pork cut in thin strips (rou means meat, and si refers to this style of cutting). Jinjiang is the sauce, apparently. I don’t know what the word means. I’m told it’s a Beijing specialty, possibly of recent invention rather than a traditional dish like roast duck. The sauce is not spicy, but savory, and quite similar to Peking Duck sauce. Soy sauce is likely a main ingredient. Under the meat you find some thread-cut onion, just as with duck. The wrappers are made of bean curd, essentially thin dry tofu. You roll up the meat and onion in the wrapper and eat it, which can be a challenge with chopsticks even for an experienced user.

The dish on the left was some kind of lettuce in a nice sesame flavored sauce. In the middle is chicken with cucumber and a tiny amount of red pepper.

That was one day’s lunch. On another day, a coworker told me she really wanted to have kaoyu, roast fish, from a restaurant on Gui Jie. I think I’ve mentioned Ghost Street before – it’s the nickname for one of the major streets that lies between the office and my apartment. It’s a little further than we usually go for lunch, but for kaoyu you make the effort.

We got to the restaurant before noon and were the first ones in there. This might normally be a warning sign that the food isn’t very good, but my companion had eaten there before and assured me it would be worth it. There were four or five different kinds of fish on the menu, sold by the kilo. We picked one that cost ¥38. Then you select what kind of sauce you want from four-pepper spicy down to mild. We picked the spiciest one. Then you pick what will be roasted with the fish, and we got some greens and mushrooms. A couple of bowls of steamed rice, and there’s your meal. The waiter brought the wiggling fish out for our approval in a net. It was about 3kg.
And here’s what it looked like when prepared. All I can say is yum. Definitely a meal to remember. I wonder if you can get this in America... In case you can’t tell from the picture, it’s covered with hot red peppers and garlic cloves along with onion and huajiao, the Sichuan flower-pepper I’ve mentioned before that has a numbing effect on the mouth. This taste, the combination of numbing peppers (ma) and hot peppers (la) is called mala, and it is quintessentially Sichuan. It was not the spiciest thing I’ve ever eaten, but it was up there, and oh, so delicious – surprisingly the spice did not overpower the fish and vegetable flavors. Feichang haochi!

This is what it looked like after a half hour or so:

Phase 3: Mandarin

In the midst of all the work, I’ve managed to continue my Chinese lessons. None of my coworkers who previously studied with me had time to join me, so I’ve got private lessons twice a week most weeks. I’m learning all sorts of things to stretch my poor brain, and I try to use them enough that they stick.

The really exciting thing – to me at least – is that I’ve finally progressed far enough to start learning to read and write some of those strange characters.
This is my textbook along with my little practice book and my pathetic scribbles. I’m sure the average Chinese third grader makes me look like an idiot, but you have to start somewhere.

One amusing thing is that when she gives me dictation (she says words and I write the characters), sometimes I do the writing on her mobile phone. She starts a text message, and I type in the Chinese. It’s easier than you might think. You type the phonetic spelling (pinyin) for each syllable, and the phone presents a little menu of all the possible characters. You use the arrow keys to pick the right one. That way I don’t have to worry about penmanship.

Phase 4: WTF?

I’ve come across two really wonderful examples of bad Chinese English lately, and unfortunately I was not able to get pictures of either one. I saw the first one while riding in a taxi. We were stuck in traffic, and I looked up from my Blueberry long enough to puzzle over the bumper sticker on the car ahead of us. Apparently the owner loves his or her dog. The blue sticker had the white outline of some kind of terrier and these letters.

WEET HIGFLANG WFTERRIER

I cleaned my glasses to make sure the letters weren’t getting mixed up with smudges, then I opened up a note on the Blueberry and carefully typed in the letters exactly as I saw them.

The other one was at a subway station. I saw a nice looking young woman wearing a pink T-shirt with big block letters on the back:

HOLE
LOTTA
LOVE

At first I thought her long hair was covering up the missing letter, but no. That’s what it said. I’ll just leave this one without further comment. Please believe me that I actually saw this.

Phase 5: The Nanguan Harmonica Club and Dance Auxiliary

I have noted before that I often find harmonica players in Nanguan Park. Heck, you only have to go back one post to find it. The other night I was walking home for the office after dark, and the music was louder than usual in the park, and there was a crowd of several dozen people gathered.

I counted eight harmonica players plus one guy playing a bamboo flute. There were two women in costumes dancing to their music. Tonight I got there just before the 9pm closing time, and there was quite a racket coming from the park. In addition to the harmonicas (I couldn’t tell how many, but there were at least three dancers), there were about a dozen people singing, complete with different parts for the men and women. And since too much is never enough in this town, there was a group across the pond dancing to pop music blaring out of a boom box, plus the recorded announcement that the park was closing, which was accompanied by an old pop tune I couldn’t quite place (the backing chords are a lot like “Moonlight Sonata”). Add that to the music I had playing in my earphones, and it was quite a sonic collage.

Stay tuned for some more adventures, including a (gasp!) touristy place.

Skating into the new year

Shortly after I managed to roll out of bed this morning, I got an email from TG that he and SJ were going to check out Houhai and see what it was like on New Year’s Day. I had no plans, so I decided to join them.

We caught a taxi a little after noon and headed to one of the most popular entertainment districts in town, which strangely I’ve never visited before. When we got out of the taxi, the first thing we saw was how Beijingers make use of their lakes in the winter time.
This is Qianhai, one of a series of lakes west of the Forbidden City. It’s just north of Beihai, which I wrote about a while ago. They have chairs mounted on rails, and propel themselves with metal poles.
There are also ice skates for rent. I like the tricycles parked on the ice. Off in the distance, straight beyond the skate vendor in the chair, you can see that even the ice chairs can be tricky to control. That’s a woman down on the ice with a man helping her.
This part of town is highly commercialized, with old-style hutong buildings renovated into trendy restaurants and night clubs.
Here you can see one of the ice chairs better, as well as one of the other contraptions they rent, a pedal-powered ice cycle.
The north end of Qianhai turns into a little channel that connects to the next lake in the chain, Houhai. The banks of the channel are crowded with shops, restaurants and bars.
I saw these decorations in the window of one of the restaurants.
We came across these guys, who had just finished with a swim in Houhai.
From the end of the lake you can see all the way to the China World Trade Center Tower that’s being built.
I am going to have to come back to this place when it’s warmer. You’ve got Aladdin, Nilotic Monkey, and the Water Nymph Café, and some nifty Egyptian style decorations.
And here are the namesakes for the little island in the background, Wild Duck Island.

After completing our circuit of Qianhai and Houhai, we found a taxi to take us to Ditan Park, which held the big festival I visited last year. SJ is heading back to the US tomorrow, so I suggested it as a good place to get a real look at China celebrating their biggest holiday.

For the most part, it looked very similar to last year, so you can just go back to the old post for pictures. This time we arrived earlier in the day than last year, so there were a few things I missed last time round.
Like people burning incense at an old religious site. Ditan was the Temple of Earth opposite the more famous Temple of Heaven. There are also temples of the Sun and Moon to complete the four sides.
We were in time to catch some of the entertainment. This group played traditional instruments along with an electronic backing track. And to be honest, they could have been playing along with the whole arrangement for all I could tell.
And here’s a little emperor being conveyed around by his loyal servants.

I took this standing at the intersection of two major paths in the park.

That made for a pretty tiring day, so I came home and threw some veggies in a pot with water and chicken bouillon to make a soup. I watched a bit of the CCTV Gala rerun and started organizing the day’s pictures.

This notice in my building’s lobby is how the management office greeted us for the holiday:

All Occupants/Residents
Spring Festival is approaching, our property department officer send our best wishes to you!
Spring Festival period, strengthens the safe guard work, asks you to come in and out of the building on own initiative to carry access card. Regarding the visit visitor, like is unable to determine the concrete room number, the great hall security temporarily does not give the gate and informs the property department to carry on the inquiry, the relation. Holiday period like you egress, please close, the windows and doors, the engineering department can help you to closes the electric circuit, the closure water supply pipe valve, please leave your urgent telephone at the property department.
The weather in Beijing is dry and windy, so it is very easy for the plants in and around our mansion to catch fire if they meet spark. To ensure our owners/residents have a neat and safe living environment, our management office kindly advise you not to ignite firecracker when you celebrate the Spring Festival with you family. You can ignite firecracker at designated locations outside the south gate of the east gate.
Thanks for your cooperation
Wish you to have a happy and healthy holidays!

I’m guessing this was translated from the Chinese original by Google.

Just a quick snake for me, thanks

It seems to be the solemn duty of all native English speakers who spend any time in China to compile a list of Horrid Examples. Well, maybe not so solemn, as it’s usually pretty amusing, and really, we just can’t help ourselves. And I promise my purpose is not to ridicule those who come up with these bizarre linguistic oddities. Given the goofy pseudo-Chinese that comes out of my mouth, I’m sure that native Chinese speakers who know me can compile their own lists of Horrid Examples in the opposite direction.
I believe I’ve mentioned the fact that some restaurants have opened in our building. The most popular one is Dongfangjinghu Chacanting on the first floor. I’m pretty sure chacanting just means café (the first syllable cha means tea), and I’ll have to find out what the first word means. I am absolutely sure that they got the pinyin wrong when they printed the menu. The third character is very clearly listed as jing (not jin) in the character lists and online dictionaries I’ve checked.
I’ve eaten there quite a few times, and most of what I had was pretty decent. However, the menu is a wonderful source of Horrid Examples. I had a chocolate milk shark one day, and it was very tasty. It had no teeth, fins or other fishy features whatsoever.
There’s a lot of snake on the menu – two whole sections, in fact.
I’ve had the “four treasures” balls with seaweed, and it’s actually about the best dish I’ve had there: little wonton wrappers stuffed with shrimp and ground pork in a bowl of broth.

Yes, you’ve probably caught on: snake = snack, spelled in some strange near-phonetic system.
They have an interesting selection of desserts. Sago is almost identical to tapioca, but I’m not sure what to make of the mythic fungus cream.
And moving on to a different establishment… This one is located here in the Seasons Park compound. I am curious to know how they make signboards edible.
And speaking of Seasons Park, this is the plaque at the main gate. I’ll type it in so you know what you’re reading:

Seasons park is a private resience
Any unauthorized person don’t enter
Visitors please regiser in the guard house

I feel so secure.

I was taken by a UFO

Wherein I try to remember what happened in Shanghai on 30 September. Once again, some photos by D and some by me.

You might remember that on Saturday evening, D discovered that her Zen MP3 player had been stolen. Thinking that our insurance just might cover it, and that insurance companies tend to like documentation for claims, we stopped by the hotel’s front desk and spoke to the manager about reporting the theft to the police. Although it took a while for her to understand what we wanted, she eventually assigned a purser to walk with us the two blocks to the local police station.

It was down a little side alley off Nanjing Road. It’s amazing how quickly the upscale glitz turns to piles of cardboard and lines of scrappy bikes. Lots of scooters too. Instead of going in the main entrance of the police station, our guide took us down a grubby stairway to the basement. He said he knew the officer in charge, so we didn’t have to wait in line with the general public. We went into a little cement office where there were two rickety desks, some folding chairs, and a bare light bulb for illumination. OK, maybe I’m exaggerating, but not by much – and perhaps my mind is filling in some details I don’t remember clearly.

Again, it took a little while to get our wishes across – the officer spoke almost no English – but he seemed to accept that an American insurance company might like something in writing. And it took a little while longer to figure out what form was appropriate and how it should be filled out. I ended up taking the standard Chinese form and just writing in my own words in English what happened, being careful to include such things as the estimated value and the time and place of the incident as near as I could guess.

Then we went upstairs and waited in the lobby while the officer got the document registered and stamped and whatever they do. Official paper in hand, we returned to the hotel and thanked the purser for all his assistance. Hope he wasn’t too disappointed that we didn’t tip him – but I’ve gotten so used to not tipping here, that I didn’t want to set a precedent.

After that little adventure, we had a good portion of the day to kill before it was time to head to the stadium for the final of the FIFA Women’s World Cup. We consulted a map and saw a temple near a subway station, so off we went.

The Shanghai Metro is mostly nicer than the subways in Beijing, in part because it’s simply newer. The tracks are above ground in many places.
The temple we visited is called Jing’an, and one thing sets it completely apart from the other temples I’ve visited in China. It’s new.
In fact, it’s still under construction, being built by a local religious organization. The piles of building materials don’t discourage worshippers, however. We saw many people of all ages paying their respects.
We wandered around for a while, fascinated by the setting. In China, you just get used to such things being old, not alive.
There’s also the setting. Seeing this in the middle of a bustling commercial dynamo like Shanghai makes for some pretty stark contrasts.
And also, given how shoddy most current Chinese construction is, it’s nice to see workers taking real care about their craft.
Though I suppose it’s possible some pieces, like the wood carvings, could have been salvaged from older structures.

Anyway, there you go. A temple in Shanghai that doesn’t show up in the tourist guides.

When we left the temple, we decided to wander around the neighborhood a bit to see a part of town other than Nanjing Road and the Bund.
As part of their financing for the construction, the temple rents out the ground floor of their outer walls for shops.
We saw this restaurant. Its name is translated as Fishiness Infinitude. Um, OK.
This is a typical scene.
Eventually we made a circle and came around the opposite side of the temple, where there was a shopping center having a sidewalk sale.
This was a nifty bit of public art along the same sidewalk. It was originally part of a set of statues.
But his companion has been overwhelmed by the economic boom.

Eventually it got to be time to head for the stadium. Sunday afternoon turned out to be a hideously busy time on the trains. We were crammed up against each other along with a lot of people obviously going the same place plus a lot just going wherever Shanghai people go on Sunday afternoons.
Luckily, the Metro station is right there, attached to the stadium by a raised walkway. But the trip had been so crowded and uncomfortable that D said, “We’re taking a taxi when we leave.” I didn’t argue.

A few days earlier, back in Beijing, we had watched in stunned amazement as Brazil embarrassed the American women in a big way. National pride aside, it was a wonderful performance by an underdog team of charismatic players, and the stodgy Americans didn’t stand a chance, even aside from some questionable personnel choices. Sure, Briana Scurry was less than stellar in goal, but honestly I don’t think Hope Solo’s presence would have changed the outcome. The South Americans had the North Americans beat at every single position.

That defeat set up the matches we saw in Shanghai, with the US playing Norway for third place, and Brazil taking on reigning champs Germany for the trophy.

You might remember in my description of the previous game we saw, that they had a lot of security, with at least three guys per section. Check this out:
Every single seat in the first row of the lower level was occupied by a security guard. It was a ring of white polo shirts all the way around with the exception of the VIP section behind the benches. I guess they didn’t want any trouble.
Of course, the US didn’t have much trouble with Norway. Here’s one of our goals about to go into the net. By the end of it, we felt sorry for the Scandinavians, and were kind of happy they managed to score at least once.
After it was over, we even saw Briana and Hope hug each other. Aw, ain’t that sweet?

As for the first place match, we were definitely caught up in the wave of enthusiasm for the Brazilian team. It had been really something to watch them on TV, and we would have dearly loved to see them give Germany the same treatment they had given us.
But alas, the Germany vs. Brazil match was basically a story of missed opportunities for Brazil. This is perhaps the worst of them.

Our section was populated mostly with Germans, who were quite obnoxiously enjoying their team’s success. In the second half my BlueBerry buzzed with an incoming email. It was from JW:

From: JW (China)
To: JD (China)
Sent: Sun Sep 30 06:46:05 2007
Subject: We just saw you

We just saw you on tv behind the happy Germans.

Hope you are having fun.

I replied:

From: JD (China)
To: JW (China)
Sent: Sun Sep 30 06:47:04 2007
Subject: Re: We just saw you

We'd be having more fun if brasil was ahead!
--------------------------
Sent from my BlueBerry Wireless Handheld

As soon as the game was over, they started building a stage out on the field for the trophy ceremony. We had no desire to see the Germans get all smug and even more unbearable, so we snuck out, hoping to have an easier time finding a taxi.

After a pretty wild ride where the driver tried to avoid the traffic jams on the main streets, we ended up back at the hotel. It was getting late, but we didn’t feel like retiring yet – and we hadn’t had a proper dinner (like all Chinese venues, there was no food to speak of at the stadium). I had been wanting to see what it was like up in the UFO on top of the hotel, so we went up to the 45th floor, got off the elevator and went to the little elevator that takes you up to 47. There was a little combo (piano, upright bass, drums, and a singer) playing music on the circular stage in the middle. We took a table on the second level so we could see out the windows better. We got there just before they closed the kitchen, so we picked a selection of expensive appetizers to go with our drinks.

I seem to remember as we were sitting there listening to the music that it would make a humorous blog entry to describe what they played and how they sounded, but right now I’m drawing a blank. I’ll have to consult my offboard memory (aka D) for some hints to jog something loose and post later about that.