So this is what I've been reduced to...

I had such great aspirations for this blog. The prospect of having one's own potentially unlimited space to write about one's self seemed a not ony a great idea, but also one that was created with me in mind.

Instead of grasping this great opportunity, I have spent my time posting videos, documenting my travels, complaining a good deal, detailing drunken nights, and putting up pictures, none of which can be that enjoyable to the audience when I know that all you people really want to hear is about the extremely intelligent thoughts that occupy my mind. Well unfortunately, I have not delivered this, somewhat conciously because I know that if I tried to explain what goes on in my head most of you would go blank and procede to melt into your keyboards.

I had other plans as well. There's still an idea about a blog mixtape, although the cleaning lady at my work threw away my trusty notepad containing the list of most of the songs. That and my home computer is broken. Am I making excuses? Yes.

The point I'm trying to make is I could have given so much more to this blog than I have already, and now its become just a glorified photo album. I apologize to all of those who were bored hearing my tales of mountains, chuar, and generally acting a ridiculous fool.

I thought about making a list of things about China as well, those that one would and wouldn't miss, similar to one that my friend Asia threw up on facebook a while back. My list of things to miss would probably include the freedom to spit wherever I please, eating out three meals a day, hearing "I've been in better crackhouses" when I give someone the tour of my apartment, tetris, paying the same price for a beer or for a ride on the subway, meeting new people, having outrageously lewd conversations that go unnoticed by taxi drivers a mere seat away (your grandmother is a nun and you did WHAT to her?), taxis, trains, Chinese children, Double Happiness, my cornerstore, baozi spot, and watchman. Things not to miss would probably have something to do with having seven varieties of tea on a menu, telling the waitress that you want whatevers delicious, and getting a blank stare.

Anyway, I'm coming home. Although I can't call an experience of 8 months one thing, China has certainly been a daily, nay hourly, mix of uphill climbs and downhill slides. Some of my favorite things about this country are some of the things I'm most eager to get away from. Regardless, I've made some great friends, been some crazy places, eaten some delicous food, and dare I say I may have even grown up a little bit in the process. There may or may not be another post or two before I get on the plane this weekend, but for now I am signing off, hoping, nay knowing, that one day soon, I will be Live from China, once again.



To leave it on a more emotional note here is a slow motion video of a car exploding:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_y7JLJGX_w&NR=1

Picture Blast.

As the end of my stay in China comes closer and closer, I've ended up with a couple sets of pictures that I had inteded to blog about at one point or another but never really got around to it. Given that I had trouble posting all of these on Blogger, I went over to flickr.com and used my Yahoo! Chess username (pawnkrusha) to make an account and post about 40 of them up:

http://www.flickr.com/gp/21691536@N07/Z13z9T

In here you'll find a variety of pictures. The first couple come from a day I spent in Gulou, which is a historic/bar district with some cool buildings and a lot of good food. I went to the Drum and Bell Towers, which used to be used to keep time and all that, and now are just some towers with Drums and Bells in them, respectively. From there I got a good view of the surrounding hutongs, which I then walked around in and snapped a couple pictures.

The next group is from a day I spent at Zhongguancun, which is a large set of electronics markets, sort of like Akihabara in Tokyo but surprisingly more organized. I went up there to take my computer to the shop (broken! Dad, let's buy some Apple Care before I take this in), and ended up putting my iPod in for repair and buying and knock-off iPodd which works beautifully.

Lastly, you'll see pictures of a recent Winter trip to the Summer Palace, a massive garden complex outside of Beijing. Although the best time to go is supposed to be the Spring or Fall, Summer Palace was easily one of the coolest historical attractions I've seen in China and I recommend it to anyone coming to Beijing.

We got the first snow of the year a little while ago. It didn't stick everywhere and quickly deteriorated to slush where it did but it was nice nonetheless. I have a couple pictures of that in there as well, along with one of my night watchman.

My house.

Located in Haidian district just inside the Third Ring Road on Chegongzhuang Xi Lu and Zizhuyuan Nan Lu, my apartment complex is just a moments walk south of the ZiZhuYuan Park and biking distance to the Beijing Zoo. Situated on the third floor of a decaying 1970s building, my apartment is complete with 1 bath, kitchen, dining room, a spare bedroom, a master suite including an entertainment system, home office, and chipped paint, and a small balcony that overlooks bike racks, a tin roof, and cats which lounge everywhere in between.



My house: D1, unmarked street perpendicular to the park (click for larger image):




Zizhuyuan Nan Lu:





My spot:



Dining Room, Fridge, couch complete with Nissan seat covers:


I eat out, a lot:


Viking is played out, I went for a more classic look to my kitchen:


I live so large, my sink has a sink:


Essentials:


The bathroom. In the following two pictures, use the Edge Shaving Gel can as a point of reference:




Spare bedroom:

Master suite with connected balcony:

Entertainment system:

Home office:

Third floor balcony vista:

Tai Ji

A little something I shot in my spare time out of my office window.

Shandong Debauchery.

The day after the insanity that was Thanksgiving, Asia and I took off work, popped some ibuprofen, and caught a train to Weifang to see our counterparts Joe, Anya, and Meredith. Joe and Anya were in Beijing while Asia and I were in Weifang, and now vice versa, so although we all came to China together, but we've spent the vast majority of the time apart and it was good to get some time to cut loose in the streets of Old Weifang.

The weekend was spent walking around the campus, eating at long-missed restaurants, and generally keeping the party going as long as possible. We met up the first night at a Muslim restaurant and got some chuar and some dishes, and then moved onto our old haunt mBox, where Joe has recently been playing guitar. The Weifangers know two other girls one from Britain named Terna and one from Ukraine named Elena and they came along as well for a couple hours of skewering topics ranging from actual meat on skewers to Margaret Thatcher to glasnost. Mostly glasnost. We ended up at some chuar place at 3 or 4 in the morning talking to some big rig truck drivers. We asked them where they were driving to and they said Weifang. We asked them where they were driving from and they said Weifang. Apparently Weifang has a lot of inter neighborhood traffic.


The next night Elena cooked us a traditional cabbage packed Ukrainian dinner and I asked her why they didn't build a better wall in Berlin if it was just gonna come down when the economic and political ties of the Soviet Union came undone. We also engaged in the Chinese custom of mixing red wine with sprite. We headed out to the new bar in town that all these mofos had been telling us about, California Dream, only to realize that it was actually Arabian Nights, but that they had just redecorated. Ended up back at mBox, and most people left early so Asia and I stayed while she talked to a German and I talked to Lee Ong, the big boss man at mBox, and later to a waitress who was studying to be a doctor. We came home for a short while, but both decided we should have gotten a McChicken on the way home, so at 3 AM Asia and I high tailed it back out of there and caught a cab back downtown for that sweet sweet processed white substance that only Ronald can supply. And I don't mean Reagan. During the day we walked around the Weifang U campus and Joe worked a door open with some technical equipment and his right shoulder so we could get up on the roof.


The last night was considerably more relaxed. We had dinner with Cathy Tan, our old big boss who has recently been promoted to the upper echelons of CIBT management, and then went home at a reasonable hour to sit around and drink and talk and do all that sort of stuff. Terna came over for a while, and when things got way to lame for our liking, we tried to lead some sort of group expedition in search of chuar, which ended up being a success, as her and I went to get chuar.


We spent the next day packing up and having one last lunch with the gang at the recently relocated Food Alley which apparently they decided to place in a wind tunnel. Guanxi George came along as well, and was quite well dressed due to the fact that he has been promoted to being a personal assistant to Dave Thomas, an upper level dude. Asia and I visited our old DVD store (I got the complete sets of That's My Bush! and the Transformers TV show, among other choice finds), and caught a train back to beautiful Beijing.

My camera got dropped on Thanksgiving and now takes beautifully clear pictures of fuzzy things. This is my third camera mishap in China. Andy Williams (my father) sent a spare to Weifang a while ago and being there gave me the perfect opportunity to pick it up, hence, the split between clear and blurred pictures.

Beijing Train Station:


Sunset on the train:


Weifang:

Real live killers:








George acting crazy:






The river in Weifang has recently been drained for cleaning purposes or something:

Asia looking tough in front of some sexy gun wielding heroines:

Thanks fucking Giving.

Pardon my language ladies.

I wrote a big, bad half a blog about last Thursday's Thanksgiving on Friday's train to Weifang. Unfortunately, my computer screen has taken to blurring and generally acting spastically so I was forced to stop. Looks like I'll be taking a trip to the Beijing Apple Store. Point is, Thanksgiving is way over and I had a killer weekend in Weifang so really this post is old news, but hey, the people need to know.

Thanksgiving manifested itself as a potluck over at Clayton and Katie's house. Prez, Asia, our boss Kathy, Tasha, and a couple others came along for a night of eating turkey and watching Danish claymation video art from the 1930s. Really. We ordered a 17 LB turkey from a restaurant that sells Western food, and got with it our choice of 1.5 L of gravy or some cranberry sauce. Against my best wishes, we got the cranberry. We had the whole nine yards, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pies, hell, Kathy made dumplings. During the winter, its common to see people selling sweet potatoes out of used oil drums converted into ovens and attached to bikes. I bought a couple hot ones and brought some sweet potato pie.

It was a good time. Guitars were brought out at one point, Asia's hat got passed around, some awful things were said about Mother Teresa and Prez, Clayton, his friend Casey, and I all ended up at a 24 hour bowling alley that actually closed at 3 negotiating with the staff to keep the lanes open.

Plenty to be Thankful for.

The Morning Commute.

Typically, my morning commute consists of a 15 second walk across the street to get my morning dumplings, a good 15 minutes of chomping down breakfast, and then a easy 10 minute stroll down Chegongzhuang Lu to get to the school. This morning was different however, and given that I haven't written anything in a while, I might as well cover the different.

Joe came to Beijing a couple weekends ago from Weifang. Joe was in Beijing while I was in Weifang, and now for the second half of our stay we've been switched. We had a good weekend of hanging out, drinking, and haggling at the infamous Pearl Market. An interesting piece was the fact that Joe and I have fallen in with the same people and coworkers in our respective environments, but not together, so there's a certain degree of "we all know each other but do you know so and so how I know so and so" going on. Whatever the hell that means. Regardless, we had some Peking duck, went around with the boss, got Joe a good old fashion Western breakfast skillet which you will have a damn hard time finding in Weifang and ended up on Friday night staying up until 5 AM to get the first dumplings of the day fresh out of the steamer.

Being that Asia and I want to pay him back, and go back and tear up the old stomping grounds, we decided to buy some train tickets and head to out to Weifang next weekend. Determining that I would rather not be pressed against a window by an 85 year old woman who was half my height with twice my balls, I opted out of going to the train station at rush hour. The problem with this was that after buying the tickets, chasing down the bus to get to Asia's, getting off at the "McDonald's on the corner across from the China Post" that was a stop before the one near Asia's house, running to catch another bus, and finally getting to her place, it was damn late to start heading home. Hence the morning commute.

I woke at 7, threw on my clothes, took a picture of the large phallic smokestack outside Asia's window (great feng shui) and grabbed a bus to the train station where there is a stop for Subway Line 2. Line 2 runs directly under second ring road, which is the first ring road around the center of Beijing. In total there are about 5 ring roads, the last ones far out in the boonies. True story is the second ring road is actually built on the former city wall, and there are still semi-presevered parts of this wall hanging around the city. I hopped on the subway and got off at my stop, where I argued with numerous pedicab men about the price of a trip on their motorcycle turned taxi. After having to practically hop out of one led by a bicycle and piloted by an incredibly slow man I found a guy with a motorcycle and a good price, and coasted on home snapping pictures out the back.

Asia's smokestack at 7AM:


The old city walls:




Suckers:


My chauffeur from the subway station onwards: