Get to work!

Not really much to report today. I met with the real estate agent and signed the lease for my apartment. I'll meet his assistant tomorrow to pick up the keys. I'll say I don't really know what that means, since the apartment door has a keypad for entry - I'll enter my code to get in. Maybe there's a key for the outside door or something.

One thing that's different here is that the electricity is paid in advance, like a prepaid phone card. You put so much money on it, and the power runs until you've used up what you paid. Luckily water is included in the rent (along with TV cable and internet). Frank told me the ayi will warn me when the power meter gets low.

The ayi... That's the housekeeper. She'll come in on Monday and Friday to clean up. That will be strange, having that kind of service. To a middle class American like me, it feels like a huge extravagance, but it seems that pretty much everyone here has one. I did elect to do my own laundry. From what I've read, the dust storms here make it almost impossible to keep things clean, which is one reason everyone hires a maid. It will also feel a little like an invasion of privacy, having someone come into my home.

There's a huge international conference starting soon in Beijing, the China-Africa Summit, and my hotel is hosting many attendees. At breakfast this morning, two men in military dress uniforms festooned with ribbons and medals sat at the next table. After a while, I managed to see a tag that said Afghanistan. In addition to the Russians I've mentioned, there are Swedes, Brits, French, other Americans, and a variety of African guests. I'm pretty sure I saw one of the Afghan generals having a drink in the bar this evening...

Speaking of military, I was waiting in the hotel lobby for my ride to the office, when the cash machine was restocked. The worker with the cash bag was accompanied by two guards armed with machine guns. It was strange seeing that out of the corner of my eye only ten feet away. It seems everywhere you turn here there’s someone in a uniform, be it the national army, the local police, or whatever. I can’t tell all the different entities apart. Some of them seem to be little more than parking lot attendants, but the uniforms look the same. I think some of them are basically there just so they can be employed. Last night I noticed a young man in a green uniform watching the sidewalk around the corner from the hotel. He didn’t look to be more than a teenager, and he was of very slight build, but his uniform was way too big for him. It was cinched up in a big bunch around his waist.

In general, this is a very labor-intensive country. In American restaurants, it seems like under-staffing is the norm, but here every establishment has an army of employees. Last night I was at a Malaysian place, and for the upstairs room (about 20 tables) there were four waitresses, plus a man who brought food out from the kitchen. Downstairs at the entrance, there were two greeters calling out to passers-by to come in and eat. Virtually all restaurants have them. The apartment building has an attendant at every entrance to open the door for you (and probably watch for unauthorized people), and most of the elevators have an attendant to push the button for you. I can’t imagine what it’s like spending 8 or more hours a day in an elevator pushing buttons for people. You see people with brooms and hoses cleaning the sidewalks everywhere, and legions of gardeners tending the grass and flowers around buildings.

This is the entrance to the hotel's parking garage. Note the uniformed guard.

The up side of all this extravagant use of labor is that there are almost no beggars on the streets. Only two or three times have I been approached for change, always by older women.

Touch the Wonder Donkey

I had the day free from work today, but after yesterday’s strenuous sightseeing, I didn’t feel like another big expedition, so I just explored the neighborhood around the hotel, which is really not very far from where my apartment will be.

I’ve heard stories both ways about bicycles in Beijing. Some writers said with the proliferation of cars, bicycles were becoming less prominent. I don’t know what it was like twenty years ago, but to an American it seems like there are lots of bikes – way more than in any American city. And they come in quite a variety of design, two-wheeled and three, sometimes with a little motor, sometimes a weather cover.

Here’s a scene typical of the contrasts you see here. In the background is a fancy new complex. In fact, my boss JW lives in one of the buildings you can’t see, hidden behind the red and white one. CL lives in the new building farthest away. None of my coworkers lives in the foreground building, but it’s pretty standard Beijing accommodations, or a little nicer than most.

The Good Wood Coffee Company is on the street behind the hotel. I’m fascinated by words and how people communicate, so I just love things like this.

Across the street from Good Wood is the Bruce Lee Restaurant and one of many McDonalds locations.

A little further to the east you come to Alien’s Street. See? It says so right there on the sign. The aliens in this part of town seem to be mostly Russian.

Across the street from the hotel is the Dongyue Taoist Temple, which was first built in 1319. To quote the plaque outside:

In the history, the Dongyue Temple was built for offering sacrifice to gods or ancestors on a national scale. The folk sacred celebrations are more splendid, and now the Dongyue Temple, a valuable cultural and historic heritage site becomes the cultural activity center of profound cultural backgrounds in terms of folk custom. After its restoration, it is used as the Beijing Folk Custom Museum.

I proofread that paragraph very carefully. It is word for word exactly what is printed on the plaque outside the temple. Odd translation aside, it’s a very lovely spot, quite a haven of quiet in the midst of the bustling city. You step inside the gate, and suddenly the air is still and tension seeps out of you.

There are a number of ornate buildings. This is the central one, with a tour group. In the center of the doorway is a huge bronze urn with giant incense sticks burning in it.

All around the central area are little rooms with painted figures illustrating scenes from myth and history.

The courtyard is filled with carved pillars. In past centuries, the city’s trade guilds would commission pillars to commemorate their donations to the upkeep of the temple. That’s a turtle at the base, in case you’re wondering.

The most famous of these pillars is protected by a glass frame, and if you stand in just the right place, you can catch the reflection of a modern apartment building in it.

Here’s a close view of the base of one pillar. You can see how elaborate the original carving was, as well as how it’s cracked and crumbled over the centuries, plus some of the repair efforts.

There is also this life-size ceramic horse, which is called the White Jade Horse because people thought it looked like it was carved from white jade.

Opposite the White Jade Horse is the Bronze Wonder Donkey. In centuries past, it was believed that touching the statue could cure all manner of disease and ailment. They still touch it today – I saw it myself.

Dinner tonight was lasagna at JW’s place. KW wanted to try out her new oven. Their kitchen, for some reason, came without an oven. There’s a cooktop, but I guess a lot of Chinese people just don’t use ovens that much. When JW first picked out the place, he didn’t notice the absence – it’s not the kind of thing an American would think of. It took some wrangling with the landlord to get an oven installed. The experiment was a success, and the lasagna worked out quite well.

Must sleep now. Head keeps nodding over…

That’s a really great wall

After a night of on-and-off sleeping, I got up around 8 and started getting ready for a day of being a tourist. In my email was a copy of a Wall Street Journal article about Ticketmaster’s entry into China. Now the world knows what we’re up to. One thing I found interesting was the statement about how after we did ticketing for the last summer games in Athens, we closed up shop in Greece and went home, because after the Olympics there were not enough venues with enough events to sustain our kind of business. But here in Beijing, the government is very keen to keep using all these facilities they’re building for years to come, giving us a potential market of hundreds of millions of customers (counting only the growing middle class as they did in the article).

As I write this, I’m killing time waiting for D to come online on Skype. We’re hoping this nifty free software will help us keep in touch, along with all the emails we’ve been exchanging. For some of my other friends I’ve been using Trillian, chatting mostly on AIM. KW was talking at dinner lat night about how they got a webcam to use with Skype.

Later.

It’s a drive of a bit over an hour to get to Badaling, a very popular section of the Great Wall near Beijing. The city itself sits in a large flat valley, with mountains rising suddenly up to the north. A nice modern freeway goes all the way out to Badaling, and beyond.

There’s a big fancy gate here, and the driver dropped us off just outside of it. Given its proximity to the city, it’s a very popular tourist destination, very crowded, especially on a day as lovely as this one. I’ve probably mentioned before that the sky here is almost never blue. A normal day is grayish-tan above, and hazy below, and buildings ten blocks away can be hard to see. The weather today was absolutely stunning.

Entrance costs a reasonable 45RMB (something like $7.25). We skipped the museum and headed straight for the wall. This section dates from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and has been restored within the last thirty years. We also skipped the cable car, opting to do things the old fashioned way.

It was especially crowded up one side from the entrance, so we turned the other way, where fewer people went. As you can see, the terrain is quite rugged, and the Wall follows it up and down, resulting in some very steep hiking.

Did I say “hiking”? Climbing might be more accurate. At some places, the walkway at the top goes from smooth stone to steps, and even to what is nearly a ladder.

We were making our way to a particular tower we could see from the entrance. It looked like a good place to get a high vantage, which it was, but getting there was quite the cardio workout. I’m sure our leg muscles will be sore the next few days. This might have something to do with why this section was less crowded.

At the guard tower, the view was a good as we expected. We continued just a little past it to get a good view beyond. With binoculars, we could see sections ahead that didn’t seem to be open to the public, and had not yet been restored.

Among the many interesting sights were impractical footwear choices.

After all that walking and climbing, we were quite ready for chairs, food, and beverages. We picked one of a number of restaurants outside the gate and had a tolerable meal indifferently served. But it included three big (600ml!) bottles of Tsingtao as compensation.

We called for the driver, and headed back for the city. Along the way we passed the building that will house our permanent office. It will be the new home of some parts of the Gehua conglomerate (if that’s the right word), and as Gehua is part of our joint venture, we get part of the fifth floor of the G-Box, nicknamed for obvious reasons. It will be a welcome step up from the Huabei building where we are now.

That was quite an afternoon. It’s hard to imagine how remote the Great Wall was to visitors from the West who came to China in the early 20^th Century, before the Revolution, and how accessible it is now.

From the hotel, I walked over to the Wonderful Digital Jungle and bought a USB card reader for the camera’s compact flash cards for 50RMB ($8), then stopped in at 7-11 for something to drink. I picked out a bottle that looked like tea, and was happy to discover it was unsweetened. So many of the drinks I’ve had here were very sugary. Still full from lunch, I’ve opted for just a little snack instead of a full meal.

Oddly enough, while I can post to this journal, I can’t look at the completed pages. It seems that all blogspot.com addresses are inaccessible from here. Maybe some other blogger here wrote something the government did not approve of, and they’ve blocked it. Or maybe it’s some technical glitch. In any case, I click the Publish button and hope for the best.