Chinese New Year

Happy Lunar New Year! The Chinese virtually ignore January 1 and instead celebrate their own New Year a few weeks later. This week-long celebration includes a countdown to midnight on a specific day, but it also is marked by grandiose displays of fireworks and indoor and outdoor decorations.


The fireworks displays in Beijing are completely home-grown. Citizens buy their stash of fireworks, just like people do in the U. S., except they purchase 10 times more stuff. There's no organized display set-up by a bank or radio station. Chinese folks simply take their fireworks to the nearest parking lot, curbside, or street, and light the fuse. During countdown night, the fireworks begin at around 11:45 p.m. and last continuously for a solid half-hour. Then, for the next week, all you hear is a dull roar and the occasional outta-nowhere series of blasts.


Since Beijing is a real urban environment, some of the fireworks don't rise above the 10th floor of the nearest high rise apartment or office building (no one shoots from the roof). The folklore goes that the loud noise scares away evil spirits and clears the way for good luck for the new year. I tried to explain to my co-workers that in the U. S., the sound of firecrackers is indistinguishable from gunshots, so personal fireworks displays are "illegal" in many parts of America. Besides, we believe evil spirits can be dispatched more quickly and effectively using bullets.

I Have A Vacuum Cleaner

I have a vacuum cleaner. And I'm not afraid to use it.


You would not believe how hard it was to find this, the Philips 900 watt Mini-Vac. In most of Beijing, cleaning the street is done with a simple pile of twigs tied to a stick. I'm no student of history, but I can almost swear that Englishwomen used a better broom 400 years ago, at least until they were found out and burned at the stake. Then again, those crude cleaning tools also were said to have enabled the power of flight, but that's another story.


After midnight, you might see an old street sweeper truck, gilding the gutters along Beijing's major highways, but it is a losing battle. For a series of reasons, this is one of the world's dirtiest cities. It's only a few hundred miles from the Gobi Desert, so sand gets blown in on a daily basis. Then, there's the usual grit and grime which is typical of a big industrial city. But why and how the dirt gets into my apartment is an absolute mystery. I've lived in big cities in the U. S., and I've never had dirt pile up...PILE UP...in the corner of an apartment within the space of 48 hours. Fortunately, the apartment is fitted hardwood and tile floors, because wall-to-wall carpet would have no chance.


I used the lame broom-and-dustpan method of cleaning the floors for 8 months before I finally located and purchased a mini-vac, a "dust buster" that is standard equipment in almost every home in the developed world. This thing produces a decent amount of suction that lets me attack piles of dirt with ease. Like the message on the box says, it "Gives a Good Result Fast!" It also packs a killer recoil. The 900 watts of power forces the handle to do the kind of gymnastics underage Chinese Olympians can only dream about. I've got to tape both of my wrists before I hit the power switch.


The good news is that it works. The bad news is it keeps me from hiring someone else to clean my apartment for me, which is apparently the option most foreigners use instead of deploying the unyielding power of the mighty mini-vac. Made here in China, by the way.

Take Beijing Taxi

Almost exactly one year ago today, the first Beijing resident I met was a taxi driver who ripped me off to the tune of 400 RMB (60 USD) for a short ride from the airport to my hotel. Welcome to China.


Ever since that day, I've had a love-hate relationship with the men and a few women behind the wheel of various Hyundai Elantras, Volkswagen Jettas, and other fine automobiles. But the basic fact is, it would be impossible for me to get around Beijing without them. As professionals, they truly do a better job navigating the streets, roads, and expressways than the typical Beijing motorist ever could.


After surviving two crashes and skating through near-misses too numerous to mention, I simply must still give proper respect to the taxi drivers and their immaculate, well-maintained vehicles (how else could the Elantra 5-speed manual transmission be so nimble in bumper-to-bumper traffic? I mean, who knew?). Not only that, but after 12 months, I also need to give them credit for avoiding practically each and every man, woman, child, bicycle, tricyle, pedicab, rickshaw, ox cart, horse-drawn rolling fruit stand, motorscooter, motorcycle, illegally-licensed truck, car, bus, and other taxi-driving scum on the road.


Any suggestion you may have heard that Beijing taxi drivers spent months learning English skills to welcome foreigners to the Olympic games was absolutely untrue. And now that the Games are long past, the drivers have all forgotten whatever English skills they never learned in the first place. But consider this: you'll stand a better chance finding an English-speaking taxi driver in Beijing than in any large city in the United States. True.

Christmas in Beijing

Happy holidays!


I am celebrating my first Christmas in Beijing. Christmas is celebrated in China basically the same as it is in most other Asian countries. It is a holiday geared toward purchasing gifts and collecting wishes, and giving them to the people you care about. Yet no one really pushes hard to take time off from work for this holiday, unlike, for example, Tomb-Sweeping Day. I guess that's because Christmas is the first in a chain of heavier holiday revelry that includes Spring Festival and Chinese New Year, which arrive in quick succession during the next six weeks.


If you are dreaming of a white Christmas in Beijing, don't bother waking up. The only flakes falling around the city are from the clouds of dust and sand that blow-in from the northwest. The Gobi Desert is only a few hundred miles from Beijing, and Christmas is the start of a cold and very dry winter season. Any amount of rain or snow would clear the air and ground of all the dirt. I'm just dreaming of a clean Christmas at this point.


But I like Christmas in China for its honesty. The holiday spirit is top-heavy on merchandising. It is marked with decorative displays borrowed from the West, mostly Christmas trees. Not real trees, but strings of lights and tinsel covering a towering cone-shaped frame set-up in front of a multi-level shopping mall. I especially like it when the light-draped tinsel frame disguises, say, an ugly heating & cooling unit. On occasion, you may see a Santa's North Pole workshop display inside the mall, but it's usually lost amid the wide variety of kiosks and counters selling ladies' cosmetics and high-heeled leather boots.


Christmas music sets the mood for the holiday, just like in the West. Except you rarely hear Christmas carols with a faith-based theme, like "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear," or "We Three Kings." Instead, it's the favorites with broad-based appeal, including "Frosty the Snowman", "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer", and "We Wish You A Merry Christmas." Pop music classics are also widely heard, with a clear preference for Wham's "Last Christmas" and other Euro-centric holiday hits. For whatever reason, one popular version of "Jingle Bells" carries the banal beat from the Macarena ("...jing-le bells, jing-le bells, heyyyyy maca-rena!" Are you kidding me?). What I'd give to hear Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town", or Elvis' "Blue Christmas." I'd even accept Hall & Oates' cheesy 80s version of Bobby Helms' "Jingle Bell Rock."

Tom & Jerry Italian Pizza Snack Sticks

No, I am not going to review these vile-looking "Italian Pizza" snack sticks. I happened to see these in the impulse-buying section at the East side Wal-Mart, right next to the flashlight batteries and Durex Condoms, and it reminded me how I am amazed at the popularity of Tom & Jerry in China. The outrageously-violent Hanna-Barbera cat vs. mouse cartoon series plays constantly on Chinese television, on-screen aboard Air China passenger jets, and you can purchase a wide variety of items for children and adults adorned with their image.


So, why Tom & Jerry? Why not Bugs Bunny? Mickey Mouse? Space Ghost? I am told it is because Tom & Jerry needs no translation into Mandarin. There's no dialogue, just action. It was a cheap and easy way to fill airtime when such shows became available to Chinese television several years ago. I hear that now there is an effort to pull T & J off of Chinese TV in favor of locally-produced animated fare. Maybe the violent content is considered too unhealthy. But I'm willing to bet the nutritional content of the pizza sticks is probably worse.

Survival Chinese

French language is popular because it has a rhythm and poetic flow that makes you want to learn it. That's not the case with Chinese. The Chinese seem to have gone out of their way to make their language so difficult that you would rather eat limburger cheese. Therefore, there are many good books out there to help foreigners figure it out. This is not one of them.

"Survival Chinese" takes false advertising to a new level by delivering the exact opposite of what the book's title implies. It does so by ignoring the tones in Mandarin, sounds which change the meaning of virtually every word that's spoken. Nowhere in "Survival Chinese" do you see tones marked above any word. In fact, the author mentions tones only once, writing, "...different people pronounce them differently, so there is some tolerance; plus the context in which words are used helps make the meaning clear."

WRONG! In fact, there is ZERO tolerance for not using the correct tones in Mandarin. If you say something to a Chinese person using the wrong tone(s), not only will there be confusion, he/she will be PISSED OFF. And then it doesn't matter what context you're using. It's the difference between receiving a hug ("bao") and getting a plastic bag ("bao"). See what I mean? It's just that simple.

Guilin

Stepping outside of Beijing for a moment to visit Guilin. Guilin is a city in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, west of Hong Kong, and it is flat-out the most beautiful place in China. The best scenery, the nicest people, the most charming women, you name it, Guilin's got it.

The karst limestone cliffs and mountains give the area its unique scenic character. Plus, it's got a sub-tropical climate, so it could be mistaken for Hawai'i if there was a beach anywhere nearby.

Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is closer in proximity to Thailand and Vietnam than Beijing, and home to many minority groups. It's one place in China where the people truly appreciate their culture year-round.